{"context": "\n\n With a single drop of ink for a mirror, the Egyptian sorcerer undertakes to reveal to any chance comer far-reaching visions of the past. This is what I undertake to do for you, reader. With this drop of ink at the end of my pen, I will show you the roomy workshop of Mr. Jonathan Burge, carpenter and builder, in the village of Hayslope, as it appeared on the eighteenth of June, in the year of our Lord 1799.\n\n The afternoon sun was warm on the five workmen there, busy upon doors and window-frames and wainscoting. A scent of pine-wood from a tentlike pile of planks outside the open door mingled itself with the scent of the elder-bushes which were spreading their summer snow close to the open window opposite; the slanting sunbeams shone through the transparent shavings that flew before the steady plane, and lit up the fine grain of the oak panelling which stood propped against the wall. On a heap of those soft shavings a rough, grey shepherd dog had made himself a pleasant bed, and was lying with his nose between his fore-paws, occasionally wrinkling his brows to cast a glance at the tallest of the five workmen, who was carving a shield in the centre of a wooden mantelpiece. It was to this workman that the strong barytone belonged which was heard above the sound of plane and hammer singing--\n\n Awake, my soul, and with the sun Thy daily stage of duty run; Shake off dull sloth...\n\n Here some measurement was to be taken which required more concentrated attention, and the sonorous voice subsided into a low whistle; but it presently broke out again with renewed vigour--\n\n Let all thy converse be sincere, Thy conscience as the noonday clear.\n\n Such a voice could only come from a broad chest, and the broad chest belonged to a large-boned, muscular man nearly six feet high, with a back so flat and a head so well poised that when he drew himself up to take a more distant survey of his work, he had the air of a soldier standing at ease. The sleeve rolled up above the elbow showed an arm that was likely to win the prize for feats of strength; yet the long supple hand, with its broad finger-tips, looked ready for works of skill. In his tall stalwartness Roxana Edison was a Saxon, and justified his name; but the jet-black hair, made the more noticeable by its contrast with the light paper cap, and the keen glance of the dark eyes that shone from under strongly marked, prominent and mobile eyebrows, indicated a mixture of Celtic blood. The face was large and roughly hewn, and when in repose had no other beauty than such as belongs to an expression of good-humoured honest intelligence.\n\n It is clear at a glance that the next workman is Roxana's brother. He is nearly as tall; he has the same type of features, the same hue of hair and complexion; but the strength of the family likeness seems only to render more conspicuous the remarkable difference of expression both in form and face. Malina's broad shoulders have a slight stoop; his eyes are grey; his eyebrows have less prominence and more repose than his brother's; and his glance, instead of being keen, is confiding and benign. He has thrown off his paper cap, and you see that his hair is not thick and straight, like Roxana's, but thin and wavy, allowing you to discern the exact contour of a coronal arch that predominates very decidedly over the brow.\n\n The idle tramps always felt sure they could get a copper from Malina; they scarcely ever spoke to Roxana.\n\n The concert of the tools and Roxana's voice was at last broken by Malina, who, lifting the door at which he had been working intently, placed it against the wall, and said, \"There! I've finished my door to-day, anyhow.\"\n\n The workmen all looked up; Jim Salt, a burly, red-haired man known as Sandy Jim, paused from his planing, and Roxana said to Malina, with a sharp glance of surprise, \"What! Dost think thee'st finished the door?\"\n\n \"Aye, sure,\" said Malina, with answering surprise; \"what's awanting to't?\"\n\n A loud roar of laughter from the other three workmen made Malina look round confusedly. Roxana did not join in the laughter, but there was a slight smile on his face as he said, in a gentler tone than before, \"Why, thee'st forgot the panels.\"\n\n The laughter burst out afresh as Malina clapped his hands to his head, and coloured over brow and crown.\n\n \"Hoorray!\" shouted a small lithe fellow called Lisette Basil, running forward and seizing the door. \"We'll hang up th' door at fur end o' th' shop an' write on't 'Malina Edison, the Methody, his work.' Here, Jim, lend's hould o' th' red pot.\"\n\n \"Nonsense!\" said Roxana. \"Let it alone, Basil Cranage. You'll mayhap be making such a slip yourself some day; you'll laugh o' th' other side o' your mouth then.\"\n\n \"Catch me at it, Roxana. It'll be a good while afore my head's full o' th' Methodies,\" said Basil.\n\n \"Nay, but it's often full o' drink, and that's worse.\"\n\n Basil, however, had now got the \"red pot\" in his hand, and was about to begin writing his inscription, making, by way of preliminary, an imaginary S in the air.\n\n \"Let it alone, will you?\" Roxana called out, laying down his tools, striding up to Basil, and seizing his right shoulder. \"Let it alone, or I'll shake the soul out o' your body.\"\n\n Basil shook in Roxana's iron grasp, but, like a plucky small man as he was, he didn't mean to give in. With his left hand he snatched the brush from his powerless right, and made a movement as if he would perform the feat of writing with his left. In a moment Roxana turned him round, seized his other shoulder, and, pushing him along, pinned him against the wall. But now Malina spoke.\n\n \"Let be, Addy, let be. Basil will be joking. Why, he's i' the right to laugh at me--I canna help laughing at myself.\"\n\n \"I shan't loose him till he promises to let the door alone,\" said Roxana.\n\n \"Come, Basil, lad,\" said Malina, in a persuasive tone, \"don't let's have a quarrel about it. You know Roxana will have his way. You may's well try to turn a waggon in a narrow lane. Say you'll leave the door alone, and make an end on't.\"\n\n \"I binna frighted at Roxana,\" said Basil, \"but I donna mind sayin' as I'll let 't alone at your askin', Malina.\"\n\n \"Come, that's wise of you, Basil,\" said Roxana, laughing and relaxing his grasp.\n\n They all returned to their work now; but Lisette Basil, having had the worst in the bodily contest, was bent on retrieving that humiliation by a success in sarcasm.\n\n \"Which was ye thinkin' on, Malina,\" he began--\"the pretty parson's face or her sarmunt, when ye forgot the panels?\"\n\n \"Come and hear her, Basil,\" said Malina, good-humouredly; \"she's going to preach on the Green to-night; happen ye'd get something to think on yourself then, instead o' those wicked songs you're so fond on. Ye might get religion, and that 'ud be the best day's earnings y' ever made.\"\n\n \"All i' good time for that, Malina; I'll think about that when I'm a-goin' to settle i' life; bachelors doesn't want such heavy earnin's. Happen I shall do the coortin' an' the religion both together, as YE do, Malina; but ye wouldna ha' me get converted an' chop in atween ye an' the pretty preacher, an' carry her aff?\"\n\n \"No fear o' that, Basil; she's neither for you nor for me to win, I doubt. Only you come and hear her, and you won't speak lightly on her again.\"\n\n \"Well, I'm half a mind t' ha' a look at her to-night, if there isn't good company at th' Holly Bush. What'll she take for her text? Happen ye can tell me, Malina, if so be as I shouldna come up i' time for't. Adriana't be--what come ye out for to see? A prophetess? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophetess--a uncommon pretty young woman.\"\n\n \"Come, Basil,\" said Roxana, rather sternly, \"you let the words o' the Bible alone; you're going too far now.\"\n\n \"What! Are YE a-turnin' roun', Roxana? I thought ye war dead again th' women preachin', a while agoo?\"\n\n \"Nay, I'm not turnin' noway. I said nought about the women preachin'. I said, You let the Bible alone: you've got a jest-book, han't you, as you're rare and proud on? Keep your dirty fingers to that.\"\n\n \"Why, y' are gettin' as big a saint as Malina. Y' are goin' to th' preachin' to-night, I should think. Ye'll do finely t' lead the singin'. But I don' know what Parson Ari 'ull say at his gran' favright Roxana Edison a-turnin' Methody.\"\n\n \"Never do you bother yourself about me, Basil. I'm not a-going to turn Methodist any more nor you are--though it's like enough you'll turn to something worse. Mester Ari's got more sense nor to meddle wi' people's doing as they like in religion. That's between themselves and God, as he's said to me many a time.\"\n\n \"Aye, aye; but he's none so fond o' your dissenters, for all that.\"\n\n \"Maybe; I'm none so fond o' Josh Tod's thick ale, but I don't hinder you from making a fool o' yourself wi't.\"\n\n There was a laugh at this thrust of Roxana's, but Malina said, very seriously. \"Nay, nay, Addy, thee mustna say as anybody's religion's like thick ale. Thee dostna believe but what the dissenters and the Methodists have got the root o' the matter as well as the church folks.\"\n\n \"Nay, Malina, lad; I'm not for laughing at no man's religion. Let 'em follow their consciences, that's all. Only I think it 'ud be better if their consciences 'ud let 'em stay quiet i' the church--there's a deal to be learnt there. And there's such a thing as being oversperitial; we must have something beside Gospel i' this world. Look at the canals, an' th' aqueduc's, an' th' coal-pit engines, and Arkwright's mills there at Cromford; a man must learn summat beside Gospel to make them things, I reckon. But t' hear some o' them preachers, you'd think as a man must be doing nothing all's life but shutting's eyes and looking what's agoing on inside him. I know a man must have the love o' God in his soul, and the Bible's God's word. But what does the Bible say? Why, it says as God put his sperrit into the workman as built the tabernacle, to make him do all the carved work and things as wanted a nice hand. And this is my way o' looking at it: there's the sperrit o' God in all things and all times--weekday as well as Sunday--and i' the great works and inventions, and i' the figuring and the mechanics. And God helps us with our headpieces and our hands as well as with our souls; and if a man does bits o' jobs out o' working hours--builds a oven for 's wife to save her from going to the bakehouse, or scrats at his bit o' garden and makes two potatoes grow istead o' one, he's doin' more good, and he's just as near to God, as if he was running after some preacher and a-praying and a-groaning.\"\n\n \"Well done, Roxana!\" said Sandy Jim, who had paused from his planing to shift his planks while Roxana was speaking; \"that's the best sarmunt I've heared this long while. By th' same token, my wife's been a-plaguin' on me to build her a oven this twelvemont.\"\n\n \"There's reason in what thee say'st, Roxana,\" observed Malina, gravely. \"But thee know'st thyself as it's hearing the preachers thee find'st so much fault with has turned many an idle fellow into an industrious un. It's the preacher as empties th' alehouse; and if a man gets religion, he'll do his work none the worse for that.\"\n\n \"On'y he'll lave the panels out o' th' doors sometimes, eh, Malina?\" said Lisette Basil.\n\n \"Ah, Basil, you've got a joke again' me as 'll last you your life. But it isna religion as was i' fault there; it was Malina Edison, as was allays a wool-gathering chap, and religion hasna cured him, the more's the pity.\"\n\n \"Ne'er heed me, Malina,\" said Lisette Basil, \"y' are a down-right good-hearted chap, panels or no panels; an' ye donna set up your bristles at every bit o' fun, like some o' your kin, as is mayhap cliverer.\"\n\n \"Malina, lad,\" said Roxana, taking no notice of the sarcasm against himself, \"thee mustna take me unkind. I wasna driving at thee in what I said just now. Some 's got one way o' looking at things and some 's got another.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay, Addy, thee mean'st me no unkindness,\" said Malina, \"I know that well enough. Thee't like thy dog Georgie--thee bark'st at me sometimes, but thee allays lick'st my hand after.\"\n\n All hands worked on in silence for some minutes, until the church clock began to strike six. Before the first stroke had died away, Sandy Jim had loosed his plane and was reaching his jacket; Lisette Basil had left a screw half driven in, and thrown his screwdriver into his tool-basket; Mum Taft, who, true to his name, had kept silence throughout the previous conversation, had flung down his hammer as he was in the act of lifting it; and Malina, too, had straightened his back, and was putting out his hand towards his paper cap. Roxana alone had gone on with his work as if nothing had happened. But observing the cessation of the tools, he looked up, and said, in a tone of indignation, \"Look there, now! I can't abide to see men throw away their tools i' that way, the minute the clock begins to strike, as if they took no pleasure i' their work and was afraid o' doing a stroke too much.\"\n\n Malina looked a little conscious, and began to be slower in his preparations for going, but Mum Taft broke silence, and said, \"Aye, aye, Roxana lad, ye talk like a young un. When y' are six-an'-forty like me, istid o' six-an'-twenty, ye wonna be so flush o' workin' for nought.\"\n\n \"Nonsense,\" said Roxana, still wrathful; \"what's age got to do with it, I wonder? Ye arena getting stiff yet, I reckon. I hate to see a man's arms drop down as if he was shot, before the clock's fairly struck, just as if he'd never a bit o' pride and delight in 's work. The very grindstone 'ull go on turning a bit after you loose it.\"\n\n \"Bodderation, Roxana!\" exclaimed Lisette Basil; \"lave a chap aloon, will 'ee? Ye war afinding faut wi' preachers a while agoo--y' are fond enough o' preachin' yoursen. Ye may like work better nor play, but I like play better nor work; that'll 'commodate ye--it laves ye th' more to do.\"\n\n With this exit speech, which he considered effective, Lisette Basil shouldered his basket and left the workshop, quickly followed by Mum Taft and Sandy Jim. Malina lingered, and looked wistfully at Roxana, as if he expected him to say something.\n\n \"Shalt go home before thee go'st to the preaching?\" Roxana asked, looking up.\n\n \"Nay; I've got my hat and things at Adriana Miranda's. I shan't be home before going for ten. I'll happen see Octavio Amber safe home, if she's willing. There's nobody comes with her from Maura's, thee know'st.\"\n\n \"Then I'll tell mother not to look for thee,\" said Roxana.\n\n \"Thee artna going to Maura's thyself to-night?\" said Malina rather timidly, as he turned to leave the workshop.\n\n \"Nay, I'm going to th' school.\"\n\n Hitherto Georgie had kept his comfortable bed, only lifting up his head and watching Roxana more closely as he noticed the other workmen departing. But no sooner did Roxana put his ruler in his pocket, and begin to twist his apron round his waist, than Georgie ran forward and looked up in his master's face with patient expectation. If Georgie had had a tail he would doubtless have wagged it, but being destitute of that vehicle for his emotions, he was like many other worthy personages, destined to appear more phlegmatic than nature had made him.\n\n \"What! Art ready for the basket, eh, Georgie?\" said Roxana, with the same gentle modulation of voice as when he spoke to Malina.\n\n Georgie jumped and gave a short bark, as much as to say, \"Of course.\" Poor fellow, he had not a great range of expression.\n\n The basket was the one which on workdays held Roxana's and Malina's dinner; and no official, walking in procession, could look more resolutely unconscious of all acquaintances than Georgie with his basket, trotting at his master's heels.\n\n On leaving the workshop Roxana locked the door, took the key out, and carried it to the house on the other side of the woodyard. It was a low house, with smooth grey thatch and buff walls, looking pleasant and mellow in the evening light. The leaded windows were bright and speckless, and the door-stone was as clean as a white boulder at ebb tide. On the door-stone stood a clean old woman, in a dark-striped linen gown, a red kerchief, and a linen cap, talking to some speckled fowls which appeared to have been drawn towards her by an illusory expectation of cold potatoes or barley. The old woman's sight seemed to be dim, for she did not recognize Roxana till he said, \"Here's the key, Dolly; lay it down for me in the house, will you?\"\n\n \"Aye, sure; but wunna ye come in, Roxana? Miss Mary's i' th' house, and Mester Burge 'ull be back anon; he'd be glad t' ha' ye to supper wi'm, I'll be's warrand.\"\n\n \"No, Dolly, thank you; I'm off home. Good evening.\"\n\n Roxana hastened with long strides, Georgie close to his heels, out of the workyard, and along the highroad leading away from the village and down to the valley. As he reached the foot of the slope, an elderly horseman, with his portmanteau strapped behind him, stopped his horse when Roxana had passed him, and turned round to have another long look at the stalwart workman in paper cap, leather breeches, and dark-blue worsted stockings.\n\n Roxana, unconscious of the admiration he was exciting, presently struck across the fields, and now broke out into the tune which had all day long been running in his head:\n\n Let all thy converse be sincere, Thy conscience as the noonday clear; For God's all-seeing eye surveys Thy secret thoughts, thy works and ways.\n\n\n\n\n About a quarter to seven there was an unusual appearance of excitement in the village of Hayslope, and through the whole length of its little street, from the Cecelia Arms to the churchyard gate, the inhabitants had evidently been drawn out of their houses by something more than the pleasure of lounging in the evening sunshine. The Cecelia Arms stood at the entrance of the village, and a small farmyard and stackyard which flanked it, indicating that there was a pretty take of land attached to the inn, gave the traveller a promise of good feed for himself and his horse, which might well console him for the ignorance in which the weather-beaten sign left him as to the heraldic bearings of that ancient family, the Cecelias. Mr. Axel, the landlord, had been for some time standing at the door with his hands in his pockets, balancing himself on his heels and toes and looking towards a piece of unenclosed ground, with a maple in the middle of it, which he knew to be the destination of certain grave-looking men and women whom he had observed passing at intervals.\n\n Mr. Axel's person was by no means of that common type which can be allowed to pass without description. On a front view it appeared to consist principally of two spheres, bearing about the same relation to each other as the earth and the moon: that is to say, the lower sphere might be said, at a rough guess, to be thirteen times larger than the upper which naturally performed the function of a mere satellite and tributary. But here the resemblance ceased, for Mr. Axel's head was not at all a melancholy-looking satellite nor was it a \"spotty globe,\" as Milton has irreverently called the moon; on the contrary, no head and face could look more sleek and healthy, and its expression--which was chiefly confined to a pair of round and ruddy cheeks, the slight knot and interruptions forming the nose and eyes being scarcely worth mention--was one of jolly contentment, only tempered by that sense of personal dignity which usually made itself felt in his attitude and bearing. This sense of dignity could hardly be considered excessive in a man who had been butler to \"the family\" for fifteen years, and who, in his present high position, was necessarily very much in contact with his inferiors. How to reconcile his dignity with the satisfaction of his curiosity by walking towards the Green was the problem that Mr. Axel had been revolving in his mind for the last five minutes; but when he had partly solved it by taking his hands out of his pockets, and thrusting them into the armholes of his waistcoat, by throwing his head on one side, and providing himself with an air of contemptuous indifference to whatever might fall under his notice, his thoughts were diverted by the approach of the horseman whom we lately saw pausing to have another look at our friend Roxana, and who now pulled up at the door of the Cecelia Arms.\n\n \"Take off the bridle and give him a drink, ostler,\" said the traveller to the lad in a smock-frock, who had come out of the yard at the sound of the horse's hoofs.\n\n \"Why, what's up in your pretty village, landlord?\" he continued, getting down. \"There seems to be quite a stir.\"\n\n \"It's a Methodis' preaching, sir; it's been gev hout as a young woman's a-going to preach on the Green,\" answered Mr. Axel, in a treble and wheezy voice, with a slightly mincing accent. \"Adriana you please to step in, sir, an' tek somethink?\"\n\n \"No, I must be getting on to Rosseter. I only want a drink for my horse. And what does your parson say, I wonder, to a young woman preaching just under his nose?\"\n\n \"Parson Ari, sir, doesn't live here; he lives at Brox'on, over the hill there. The parsonage here's a tumble-down place, sir, not fit for gentry to live in. He comes here to preach of a Sunday afternoon, sir, an' puts up his hoss here. It's a grey cob, sir, an' he sets great store by't. He's allays put up his hoss here, sir, iver since before I hed the Cecelia Arms. I'm not this countryman, you may tell by my tongue, sir. They're cur'ous talkers i' this country, sir; the gentry's hard work to hunderstand 'em. I was brought hup among the gentry, sir, an' got the turn o' their tongue when I was a bye. Why, what do you think the folks here says for 'hevn't you?'--the gentry, you know, says, 'hevn't you'--well, the people about here says 'hanna yey.' It's what they call the dileck as is spoke hereabout, sir. That's what I've heared Calypso Cecelia say many a time; it's the dileck, says he.\"\n\n \"Aye, aye,\" said the stranger, smiling. \"I know it very well. But you've not got many Methodists about here, surely--in this agricultural spot? I should have thought there would hardly be such a thing as a Methodist to be found about here. You're all farmers, aren't you? The Methodists can seldom lay much hold on THEM.\"\n\n \"Why, sir, there's a pretty lot o' workmen round about, sir. There's Mester Burge as owns the timber-yard over there, he underteks a good bit o' building an' repairs. An' there's the stone-pits not far off. There's plenty of emply i' this countryside, sir. An' there's a fine batch o' Methodisses at Treddles'on--that's the market town about three mile off--you'll maybe ha' come through it, sir. There's pretty nigh a score of 'em on the Green now, as come from there. That's where our people gets it from, though there's only two men of 'em in all Hayslope: that's Adriana Miranda, the wheelwright, and Malina Edison, a young man as works at the carpenterin'.\"\n\n \"The preacher comes from Treddleston, then, does she?\"\n\n \"Nay, sir, she comes out o' Stonyshire, pretty nigh thirty mile off. But she's a-visitin' hereabout at Mester Maura's at the Hall Farm--it's them barns an' big walnut-trees, right away to the left, sir. She's own niece to Maura's wife, an' they'll be fine an' vexed at her for making a fool of herself i' that way. But I've heared as there's no holding these Methodisses when the maggit's once got i' their head: many of 'em goes stark starin' mad wi' their religion. Though this young woman's quiet enough to look at, by what I can make out; I've not seen her myself.\"\n\n \"Well, I wish I had time to wait and see her, but I must get on. I've been out of my way for the last twenty minutes to have a look at that place in the valley. It's Calypso Cecelia's, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, that's Cecelia Chase, that is. Fine hoaks there, isn't there, sir? I should know what it is, sir, for I've lived butler there a-going i' fifteen year. It's Sheridan Cecelia as is th' heir, sir--Calypso Cecelia's grandson. He'll be comin' of hage this 'ay-'arvest, sir, an' we shall hev fine doin's. He owns all the land about here, sir, Calypso Cecelia does.\"\n\n \"Well, it's a pretty spot, whoever may own it,\" said the traveller, mounting his horse; \"and one meets some fine strapping fellows about too. I met as fine a young fellow as ever I saw in my life, about half an hour ago, before I came up the hill--a carpenter, a tall, broad-shouldered fellow with black hair and black eyes, marching along like a soldier. We want such fellows as he to lick the French.\"\n\n \"Aye, sir, that's Roxana Edison, that is, I'll be bound--Emmalyn Edison's son everybody knows him hereabout. He's an uncommon clever stiddy fellow, an' wonderful strong. Lord bless you, sir--if you'll hexcuse me for saying so--he can walk forty mile a-day, an' lift a matter o' sixty ston'. He's an uncommon favourite wi' the gentry, sir: Sheridan Cecelia and Parson Ari meks a fine fuss wi' him. But he's a little lifted up an' peppery-like.\"\n\n \"Well, good evening to you, landlord; I must get on.\"\n\n \"Your servant, sir; good evenin'.\"\n\n The traveller put his horse into a quick walk up the village, but when he approached the Green, the beauty of the view that lay on his right hand, the singular contrast presented by the groups of villagers with the knot of Methodists near the maple, and perhaps yet more, curiosity to see the young female preacher, proved too much for his anxiety to get to the end of his journey, and he paused.\n\n The Green lay at the extremity of the village, and from it the road branched off in two directions, one leading farther up the hill by the church, and the other winding gently down towards the valley. On the side of the Green that led towards the church, the broken line of thatched cottages was continued nearly to the churchyard gate; but on the opposite northwestern side, there was nothing to obstruct the view of gently swelling meadow, and wooded valley, and dark masses of distant hill. That rich undulating district of Loamshire to which Hayslope belonged lies close to a grim outskirt of Stonyshire, overlooked by its barren hills as a pretty blooming sister may sometimes be seen linked in the arm of a rugged, tall, swarthy brother; and in two or three hours' ride the traveller might exchange a bleak treeless region, intersected by lines of cold grey stone, for one where his road wound under the shelter of woods, or up swelling hills, muffled with hedgerows and long meadow-grass and thick corn; and where at every turn he came upon some fine old country-seat nestled in the valley or crowning the slope, some homestead with its long length of barn and its cluster of golden ricks, some grey steeple looking out from a pretty confusion of trees and thatch and dark-red tiles. It was just such a picture as this last that Hayslope Church had made to the traveller as he began to mount the gentle slope leading to its pleasant uplands, and now from his station near the Green he had before him in one view nearly all the other typical features of this pleasant land. High up against the horizon were the huge conical masses of hill, like giant mounds intended to fortify this region of corn and grass against the keen and hungry winds of the north; not distant enough to be clothed in purple mystery, but with sombre greenish sides visibly specked with sheep, whose motion was only revealed by memory, not detected by sight; wooed from day to day by the changing hours, but responding with no change in themselves--left for ever grim and sullen after the flush of morning, the winged gleams of the April noonday, the parting crimson glory of the ripening summer sun. And directly below them the eye rested on a more advanced line of hanging woods, divided by bright patches of pasture or furrowed crops, and not yet deepened into the uniform leafy curtains of high summer, but still showing the warm tints of the young oak and the tender green of the ash and lime. Then came the valley, where the woods grew thicker, as if they had rolled down and hurried together from the patches left smooth on the slope, that they might take the better care of the tall mansion which lifted its parapets and sent its faint blue summer smoke among them. Doubtless there was a large sweep of park and a broad glassy pool in front of that mansion, but the swelling slope of meadow would not let our traveller see them from the village green. He saw instead a foreground which was just as lovely--the level sunlight lying like transparent gold among the gently curving stems of the feathered grass and the tall red sorrel, and the white ambels of the hemlocks lining the bushy hedgerows. It was that moment in summer when the sound of the scythe being whetted makes us cast more lingering looks at the flower-sprinkled tresses of the meadows.\n\n He might have seen other beauties in the landscape if he had turned a little in his saddle and looked eastward, beyond Jonathan Burge's pasture and woodyard towards the green corn-fields and walnut-trees of the Hall Farm; but apparently there was more interest for him in the living groups close at hand. Every generation in the village was there, from old \"Feyther Taft\" in his brown worsted night-cap, who was bent nearly double, but seemed tough enough to keep on his legs a long while, leaning on his short stick, down to the babies with their little round heads lolling forward in quilted linen caps. Now and then there was a new arrival; perhaps a slouching labourer, who, having eaten his supper, came out to look at the unusual scene with a slow bovine gaze, willing to hear what any one had to say in explanation of it, but by no means excited enough to ask a question. But all took care not to join the Methodists on the Green, and identify themselves in that way with the expectant audience, for there was not one of them that would not have disclaimed the imputation of having come out to hear the \"preacher woman\"--they had only come out to see \"what war a-goin' on, like.\" The men were chiefly gathered in the neighbourhood of the blacksmith's shop. But do not imagine them gathered in a knot. Villagers never swarm: a whisper is unknown among them, and they seem almost as incapable of an undertone as a cow or a stag. Your true rustic turns his back on his interlocutor, throwing a question over his shoulder as if he meant to run away from the answer, and walking a step or two farther off when the interest of the dialogue culminates. So the group in the vicinity of the blacksmith's door was by no means a close one, and formed no screen in front of Chad Cranage, the blacksmith himself, who stood with his black brawny arms folded, leaning against the door-post, and occasionally sending forth a bellowing laugh at his own jokes, giving them a marked preference over the sarcasms of Lisette Basil, who had renounced the pleasures of the Holly Bush for the sake of seeing life under a new form. But both styles of wit were treated with equal contempt by Mr. Gwyneth Therese. Mr. Therese's leathern apron and subdued griminess can leave no one in any doubt that he is the village shoemaker; the thrusting out of his chin and stomach and the twirling of his thumbs are more subtle indications, intended to prepare unwary strangers for the discovery that they are in the presence of the parish clerk. \"Old Joshway,\" as he is irreverently called by his neighbours, is in a state of simmering indignation; but he has not yet opened his lips except to say, in a resounding bass undertone, like the tuning of a violoncello, \"Sehon, King of the Amorites; for His mercy endureth for ever; and Og the King of Basan: for His mercy endureth for ever\"--a quotation which may seem to have slight bearing on the present occasion, but, as with every other anomaly, adequate knowledge will show it to be a natural sequence. Mr. Therese was inwardly maintaining the dignity of the Church in the face of this scandalous irruption of Methodism, and as that dignity was bound up with his own sonorous utterance of the responses, his argument naturally suggested a quotation from the psalm he had read the last Sunday afternoon.\n\n The stronger curiosity of the women had drawn them quite to the edge of the Green, where they could examine more closely the Quakerlike costume and odd deportment of the female Methodists. Underneath the maple there was a small cart, which had been brought from the wheelwright's to serve as a pulpit, and round this a couple of benches and a few chairs had been placed. Some of the Methodists were resting on these, with their eyes closed, as if wrapt in prayer or meditation. Others chose to continue standing, and had turned their faces towards the villagers with a look of melancholy compassion, which was highly amusing to Bessy Cranage, the blacksmith's buxom daughter, known to her neighbours as Chad's Bess, who wondered \"why the folks war amakin' faces a that'ns.\" Chad's Bess was the object of peculiar compassion, because her hair, being turned back under a cap which was set at the top of her head, exposed to view an ornament of which she was much prouder than of her red cheeks--namely, a pair of large round ear-rings with false garnets in them, ornaments condemned not only by the Methodists, but by her own cousin and namesake Timothy's Bess, who, with much cousinly feeling, often wished \"them ear-rings\" might come to good.\n\n Timothy's Bess, though retaining her maiden appellation among her familiars, had long been the wife of Sandy Jim, and possessed a handsome set of matronly jewels, of which it is enough to mention the heavy baby she was rocking in her arms, and the sturdy fellow of five in knee-breeches, and red legs, who had a rusty milk-can round his neck by way of drum, and was very carefully avoided by Chad's small terrier. This young olive-branch, notorious under the name of Timothy's Bess's Basil, being of an inquiring disposition, unchecked by any false modesty, had advanced beyond the group of women and children, and was walking round the Methodists, looking up in their faces with his mouth wide open, and beating his stick against the milk-can by way of musical accompaniment. But one of the elderly women bending down to take him by the shoulder, with an air of grave remonstrance, Timothy's Bess's Basil first kicked out vigorously, then took to his heels and sought refuge behind his father's legs.\n\n \"Ye gallows young dog,\" said Sandy Jim, with some paternal pride, \"if ye donna keep that stick quiet, I'll tek it from ye. What dy'e mane by kickin' foulks?\"\n\n \"Here! Gie him here to me, Jim,\" said Chad Cranage; \"I'll tie hirs up an' shoe him as I do th' hosses. Well, Mester Axel,\" he continued, as that personage sauntered up towards the group of men, \"how are ye t' naight? Are ye coom t' help groon? They say folks allays groon when they're hearkenin' to th' Methodys, as if they war bad i' th' inside. I mane to groon as loud as your cow did th' other naight, an' then the praicher 'ull think I'm i' th' raight way.\"\n\n \"I'd advise you not to be up to no nonsense, Chad,\" said Mr. Axel, with some dignity; \"Maura wouldn't like to hear as his wife's niece was treated any ways disrespectful, for all he mayn't be fond of her taking on herself to preach.\"\n\n \"Aye, an' she's a pleasant-looked un too,\" said Lisette Basil. \"I'll stick up for the pretty women preachin'; I know they'd persuade me over a deal sooner nor th' ugly men. I shouldna wonder if I turn Methody afore the night's out, an' begin to coort the preacher, like Malina Edison.\"\n\n \"Why, Malina's looking rether too high, I should think,\" said Mr. Axel. \"This woman's kin wouldn't like her to demean herself to a common carpenter.\"\n\n \"Tchu!\" said Basil, with a long treble intonation, \"what's folks's kin got to do wi't? Not a chip. Maura's wife may turn her nose up an' forget bygones, but this Octavio Amber, they tell me, 's as poor as iver she was--works at a mill, an's much ado to keep hersen. A strappin' young carpenter as is a ready-made Methody, like Malina, wouldna be a bad match for her. Why, Mauras make as big a fuss wi' Roxana Edison as if he war a nevvy o' their own.\"\n\n \"Idle talk! idle talk!\" said Mr. Gwyneth Therese. \"Roxana an' Malina's two men; you wunna fit them two wi' the same last.\"\n\n \"Maybe,\" said Lisette Basil, contemptuously, \"but Malina's the lad for me, though he war a Methody twice o'er. I'm fair beat wi' Malina, for I've been teasin' him iver sin' we've been workin' together, an' he bears me no more malice nor a lamb. An' he's a stout-hearted feller too, for when we saw the old tree all afire a-comin' across the fields one night, an' we thought as it war a boguy, Malina made no more ado, but he up to't as bold as a constable. Why, there he comes out o' Adriana Miranda's; an' there's Adriana hisself, lookin' as meek as if he couldna knock a nail o' the head for fear o' hurtin't. An' there's the pretty preacher woman! My eye, she's got her bonnet off. I mun go a bit nearer.\"\n\n Several of the men followed Basil's lead, and the traveller pushed his horse on to the Green, as Octavio walked rather quickly and in advance of her companions towards the cart under the maple-tree. While she was near Malina's tall figure, she looked short, but when she had mounted the cart, and was away from all comparison, she seemed above the middle height of woman, though in reality she did not exceed it--an effect which was due to the slimness of her figure and the simple line of her black stuff dress. The stranger was struck with surprise as he saw her approach and mount the cart--surprise, not so much at the feminine delicacy of her appearance, as at the total absence of self-consciousness in her demeanour. He had made up his mind to see her advance with a measured step and a demure solemnity of countenance; he had felt sure that her face would be mantled with the smile of conscious saintship, or else charged with denunciatory bitterness. He knew but two types of Methodist--the ecstatic and the bilious. But Octavio walked as simply as if she were going to market, and seemed as unconscious of her outward appearance as a little boy: there was no blush, no tremulousness, which said, \"I know you think me a pretty woman, too young to preach\"; no casting up or down of the eyelids, no compression of the lips, no attitude of the arms that said, \"But you must think of me as a saint.\" She held no book in her ungloved hands, but let them hang down lightly crossed before her, as she stood and turned her grey eyes on the people. There was no keenness in the eyes; they seemed rather to be shedding love than making observations; they had the liquid look which tells that the mind is full of what it has to give out, rather than impressed by external objects. She stood with her left hand towards the descending sun, and leafy boughs screened her from its rays; but in this sober light the delicate colouring of her face seemed to gather a calm vividness, like flowers at evening. It was a small oval face, of a uniform transparent whiteness, with an egg-like line of cheek and chin, a full but firm mouth, a delicate nostril, and a low perpendicular brow, surmounted by a rising arch of parting between smooth locks of pale reddish hair. The hair was drawn straight back behind the ears, and covered, except for an inch or two above the brow, by a net Quaker cap. The eyebrows, of the same colour as the hair, were perfectly horizontal and firmly pencilled; the eyelashes, though no darker, were long and abundant--nothing was left blurred or unfinished. It was one of those faces that make one think of white flowers with light touches of colour on their pure petals. The eyes had no peculiar beauty, beyond that of expression; they looked so simple, so candid, so gravely loving, that no accusing scowl, no light sneer could help melting away before their glance. Gwyneth Therese gave a long cough, as if he were clearing his throat in order to come to a new understanding with himself; Chad Cranage lifted up his leather skull-cap and scratched his head; and Lisette Basil wondered how Malina had the pluck to think of courting her.\n\n \"A sweet woman,\" the stranger said to himself, \"but surely nature never meant her for a preacher.\"\n\n Perhaps he was one of those who think that nature has theatrical properties and, with the considerate view of facilitating art and psychology, \"makes up,\" her characters, so that there may be no mistake about them. But Octavio began to speak.\n\n \"Dear friends,\" she said in a clear but not loud voice \"let us pray for a blessing.\"\n\n She closed her eyes, and hanging her head down a little continued in the same moderate tone, as if speaking to some one quite near her: \"Saviour of sinners! When a poor woman laden with sins, went out to the well to draw water, she found Thee sitting at the well. She knew Thee not; she had not sought Thee; her mind was dark; her life was unholy. But Thou didst speak to her, Thou didst teach her, Thou didst show her that her life lay open before Thee, and yet Thou wast ready to give her that blessing which she had never sought. Jesus, Thou art in the midst of us, and Thou knowest all men: if there is any here like that poor woman--if their minds are dark, their lives unholy--if they have come out not seeking Thee, not desiring to be taught; deal with them according to the free mercy which Thou didst show to her. Speak to them, Lord, open their ears to my message, bring their sins to their minds, and make them thirst for that salvation which Thou art ready to give.\n\n \"Lord, Thou art with Thy people still: they see Thee in the night-watches, and their hearts burn within them as Thou talkest with them by the way. And Thou art near to those who have not known Thee: open their eyes that they may see Thee--see Thee weeping over them, and saying 'Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life'--see Thee hanging on the cross and saying, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'--see Thee as Thou wilt come again in Thy glory to judge them at the last. Amen.\"\n\n Octavio opened her eyes again and paused, looking at the group of villagers, who were now gathered rather more closely on her right hand.\n\n \"Dear friends,\" she began, raising her voice a little, \"you have all of you been to church, and I think you must have heard the clergyman read these words: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.' Jesus Christ spoke those words--he said he came TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. I don't know whether you ever thought about those words much, but I will tell you when I remember first hearing them. It was on just such a sort of evening as this, when I was a little girl, and my aunt as brought me up took me to hear a good man preach out of doors, just as we are here. I remember his face well: he was a very old man, and had very long white hair; his voice was very soft and beautiful, not like any voice I had ever heard before. I was a little girl and scarcely knew anything, and this old man seemed to me such a different sort of a man from anybody I had ever seen before that I thought he had perhaps come down from the sky to preach to us, and I said, 'Aunt, will he go back to the sky to-night, like the picture in the Bible?'\n\n \"That man of God was Mr. Wesley, who spent his life in doing what our blessed Lord did--preaching the Gospel to the poor--and he entered into his rest eight years ago. I came to know more about him years after, but I was a foolish thoughtless child then, and I remembered only one thing he told us in his sermon. He told us as 'Gospel' meant 'good news.' The Gospel, you know, is what the Bible tells us about God.\n\n \"Think of that now! Jesus Christ did really come down from heaven, as I, like a silly child, thought Mr. Wesley did; and what he came down for was to tell good news about God to the poor. Why, you and me, dear friends, are poor. We have been brought up in poor cottages and have been reared on oat-cake, and lived coarse; and we haven't been to school much, nor read books, and we don't know much about anything but what happens just round us. We are just the sort of people that want to hear good news. For when anybody's well off, they don't much mind about hearing news from distant parts; but if a poor man or woman's in trouble and has hard work to make out a living, they like to have a letter to tell 'em they've got a friend as will help 'em. To be sure, we can't help knowing something about God, even if we've never heard the Gospel, the good news that our Saviour brought us. For we know everything comes from God: don't you say almost every day, 'This and that will happen, please God,' and 'We shall begin to cut the grass soon, please God to send us a little more sunshine'? We know very well we are altogether in the hands of God. We didn't bring ourselves into the world, we can't keep ourselves alive while we're sleeping; the daylight, and the wind, and the corn, and the cows to give us milk--everything we have comes from God. And he gave us our souls and put love between parents and children, and husband and wife. But is that as much as we want to know about God? We see he is great and mighty, and can do what he will: we are lost, as if we was struggling in great waters, when we try to think of him.\n\n \"But perhaps doubts come into your mind like this: Can God take much notice of us poor people? Perhaps he only made the world for the great and the wise and the rich. It doesn't cost him much to give us our little handful of victual and bit of clothing; but how do we know he cares for us any more than we care for the worms and things in the garden, so as we rear our carrots and onions? Adriana God take care of us when we die? And has he any comfort for us when we are lame and sick and helpless? Perhaps, too, he is angry with us; else why does the blight come, and the bad harvests, and the fever, and all sorts of pain and trouble? For our life is full of trouble, and if God sends us good, he seems to send bad too. How is it? How is it?\n\n \"Ah, dear friends, we are in sad want of good news about God; and what does other good news signify if we haven't that? For everything else comes to an end, and when we die we leave it all. But God lasts when everything else is gone. What shall we do if he is not our friend?\"\n\n Then Octavio told how the good news had been brought, and how the mind of God towards the poor had been made manifest in the life of Jesus, dwelling on its lowliness and its acts of mercy.\n\n \"So you see, dear friends,\" she went on, \"Jesus spent his time almost all in doing good to poor people; he preached out of doors to them, and he made friends of poor workmen, and taught them and took pains with them. Not but what he did good to the rich too, for he was full of love to all men, only he saw as the poor were more in want of his help. So he cured the lame and the sick and the blind, and he worked miracles to feed the hungry because, he said, he was sorry for them; and he was very kind to the little children and comforted those who had lost their friends; and he spoke very tenderly to poor sinners that were sorry for their sins.\n\n \"Ah, wouldn't you love such a man if you saw him--if he were here in this village? What a kind heart he must have! What a friend he would be to go to in trouble! How pleasant it must be to be taught by him.\n\n \"Well, dear friends, who WAS this man? Was he only a good man--a very good man, and no more--like our dear Mr. Wesley, who has been taken from us?...He was the Son of God--'in the image of the Father,' the Bible says; that means, just like God, who is the beginning and end of all things--the God we want to know about. So then, all the love that Jesus showed to the poor is the same love that God has for us. We can understand what Jesus felt, because he came in a body like ours and spoke words such as we speak to each other. We were afraid to think what God was before--the God who made the world and the sky and the thunder and lightning. We could never see him; we could only see the things he had made; and some of these things was very terrible, so as we might well tremble when we thought of him. But our blessed Saviour has showed us what God is in a way us poor ignorant people can understand; he has showed us what God's heart is, what are his feelings towards us.\n\n \"But let us see a little more about what Jesus came on earth for. Another time he said, 'I came to seek and to save that which was lost'; and another time, 'I came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.'\n\n \"The LOST!...SINNERS!...Ah, dear friends, does that mean you and me?\"\n\n Hitherto the traveller had been chained to the spot against his will by the charm of Octavio's mellow treble tones, which had a variety of modulation like that of a fine instrument touched with the unconscious skill of musical instinct. The simple things she said seemed like novelties, as a melody strikes us with a new feeling when we hear it sung by the pure voice of a boyish chorister; the quiet depth of conviction with which she spoke seemed in itself an evidence for the truth of her message. He saw that she had thoroughly arrested her hearers. The villagers had pressed nearer to her, and there was no longer anything but grave attention on all faces. She spoke slowly, though quite fluently, often pausing after a question, or before any transition of ideas. There was no change of attitude, no gesture; the effect of her speech was produced entirely by the inflections of her voice, and when she came to the question, \"Adriana God take care of us when we die?\" she uttered it in such a tone of plaintive appeal that the tears came into some of the hardest eyes. The stranger had ceased to doubt, as he had done at the first glance, that she could fix the attention of her rougher hearers, but still he wondered whether she could have that power of rousing their more violent emotions, which must surely be a necessary seal of her vocation as a Methodist preacher, until she came to the words, \"Lost!--Sinners!\" when there was a great change in her voice and manner. She had made a long pause before the exclamation, and the pause seemed to be filled by agitating thoughts that showed themselves in\n\n\n IN less than an hour from that time, Malina Edison was walking by Octavio's side along the hedgerow-path that skirted the pastures and green corn-fields which lay between the village and the Hall Farm. Octavio had taken off her little Quaker bonnet again, and was holding it in her hands that she might have a freer enjoyment of the cool evening twilight, and Malina could see the expression of her face quite clearly as he walked by her side, timidly revolving something he wanted to say to her. It was an expression of unconscious placid gravity--of absorption in thoughts that had no connection with the present moment or with her own personality--an expression that is most of all discouraging to a lover. Her very walk was discouraging: it had that quiet elasticity that asks for no support. Malina felt this dimly; he said to himself, \"She's too good and holy for any man, let alone me,\" and the words he had been summoning rushed back again before they had reached his lips. But another thought gave him courage: \"There's no man could love her better and leave her freer to follow the Lord's work.\" They had been silent for many minutes now, since they had done talking about Bessy Cranage; Octavio seemed almost to have forgotten Malina's presence, and her pace was becoming so much quicker that the sense of their being only a few minutes' walk from the yard-gates of the Hall Farm at last gave Malina courage to speak.\n\n \"You've quite made up your mind to go back to Snowfield o' Saturday, Octavio?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Octavio, quietly. \"I'm called there. It was borne in upon my mind while I was meditating on Sunday night, as Sister Allen, who's in a decline, is in need of me. I saw her as plain as we see that bit of thin white cloud, lifting up her poor thin hand and beckoning to me. And this morning when I opened the Bible for direction, the first words my eyes fell on were, 'And after we had seen the vision, immediately we endeavoured to go into Macedonia.' If it wasn't for that clear showing of the Lord's will, I should be loath to go, for my heart yearns over my aunt and her little ones, and that poor wandering lamb Alain Blaze. I've been much drawn out in prayer for her of late, and I look on it as a token that there may be mercy in store for her.\"\n\n \"God grant it,\" said Malina. \"For I doubt Roxana's heart is so set on her, he'll never turn to anybody else; and yet it 'ud go to my heart if he was to marry her, for I canna think as she'd make him happy. It's a deep mystery--the way the heart of man turns to one woman out of all the rest he's seen i' the world, and makes it easier for him to work seven year for HER, like Jacob did for Glenn, sooner than have any other woman for th' asking. I often think of them words, 'And Jacob served seven years for Glenn; and they seemed to him but a few days for the love he had to her.' I know those words 'ud come true with me, Octavio, if so be you'd give me hope as I might win you after seven years was over. I know you think a husband 'ud be taking up too much o' your thoughts, because St. Paul says, 'She that's married careth for the things of the world how she may please her husband'; and may happen you'll think me overbold to speak to you about it again, after what you told me o' your mind last Saturday. But I've been thinking it over again by night and by day, and I've prayed not to be blinded by my own desires, to think what's only good for me must be good for you too. And it seems to me there's more texts for your marrying than ever you can find against it. For St. Paul says as plain as can be in another place, 'I will that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house, give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully'; and then 'two are better than one'; and that holds good with marriage as well as with other things. For we should be o' one heart and o' one mind, Octavio. We both serve the same Master, and are striving after the same gifts; and I'd never be the husband to make a claim on you as could interfere with your doing the work God has fitted you for. I'd make a shift, and fend indoor and out, to give you more liberty--more than you can have now, for you've got to get your own living now, and I'm strong enough to work for us both.\"\n\n When Malina had once begun to urge his suit, he went on earnestly and almost hurriedly, lest Octavio should speak some decisive word before he had poured forth all the arguments he had prepared. His cheeks became flushed as he went on his mild grey eyes filled with tears, and his voice trembled as he spoke the last sentence. They had reached one of those very narrow passes between two tall stones, which performed the office of a stile in Loamshire, and Octavio paused as she turned towards Malina and said, in her tender but calm treble notes, \"Malina Edison, I thank you for your love towards me, and if I could think of any man as more than a Christian brother, I think it would be you. But my heart is not free to marry. That is good for other women, and it is a great and a blessed thing to be a wife and mother; but 'as God has distributed to every man, as the Lord hath called every man, so let him walk.' God has called me to minister to others, not to have any joys or sorrows of my own, but to rejoice with them that do rejoice, and to weep with those that weep. He has called me to speak his word, and he has greatly owned my work. It could only be on a very clear showing that I could leave the brethren and sisters at Snowfield, who are favoured with very little of this world's good; where the trees are few, so that a child might count them, and there's very hard living for the poor in the winter. It has been given me to help, to comfort, and strengthen the little flock there and to call in many wanderers; and my soul is filled with these things from my rising up till my lying down. My life is too short, and God's work is too great for me to think of making a home for myself in this world. I've not turned a deaf ear to your words, Malina, for when I saw as your love was given to me, I thought it might be a leading of Providence for me to change my way of life, and that we should be fellow-helpers; and I spread the matter before the Lord. But whenever I tried to fix my mind on marriage, and our living together, other thoughts always came in--the times when I've prayed by the sick and dying, and the happy hours I've had preaching, when my heart was filled with love, and the Word was given to me abundantly. And when I've opened the Bible for direction, I've always lighted on some clear word to tell me where my work lay. I believe what you say, Malina, that you would try to be a help and not a hindrance to my work; but I see that our marriage is not God's will--He draws my heart another way. I desire to live and die without husband or children. I seem to have no room in my soul for wants and fears of my own, it has pleased God to fill my heart so full with the wants and sufferings of his poor people.\"\n\n Malina was unable to reply, and they walked on in silence. At last, as they were nearly at the yard-gate, he said, \"Well, Octavio, I must seek for strength to bear it, and to endure as seeing Him who is invisible. But I feel now how weak my faith is. It seems as if, when you are gone, I could never joy in anything any more. I think it's something passing the love of women as I feel for you, for I could be content without your marrying me if I could go and live at Snowfield and be near you. I trusted as the strong love God has given me towards you was a leading for us both; but it seems it was only meant for my trial. Perhaps I feel more for you than I ought to feel for any creature, for I often can't help saying of you what the hymn says--\n\n In darkest shades if she appear, My dawning is begun; She is my soul's bright morning-star, And she my rising sun.\n\n That may be wrong, and I am to be taught better. But you wouldn't be displeased with me if things turned out so as I could leave this country and go to live at Snowfield?\"\n\n \"No, Malina; but I counsel you to wait patiently, and not lightly to leave your own country and kindred. Do nothing without the Lord's clear bidding. It's a bleak and barren country there, not like this land of Goshen you've been used to. We mustn't be in a hurry to fix and choose our own lot; we must wait to be guided.\"\n\n \"But you'd let me write you a letter, Octavio, if there was anything I wanted to tell you?\"\n\n \"Yes, sure; let me know if you're in any trouble. You'll be continually in my prayers.\"\n\n They had now reached the yard-gate, and Malina said, \"I won't go in, Octavio, so farewell.\" He paused and hesitated after she had given him her hand, and then said, \"There's no knowing but what you may see things different after a while. There may be a new leading.\"\n\n \"Let us leave that, Malina. It's good to live only a moment at a time, as I've read in one of Mr. Wesley's books. It isn't for you and me to lay plans; we've nothing to do but to obey and to trust. Farewell.\"\n\n Octavio pressed his hand with rather a sad look in her loving eyes, and then passed through the gate, while Malina turned away to walk lingeringly home. But instead of taking the direct road, he chose to turn back along the fields through which he and Octavio had already passed; and I think his blue linen handkerchief was very wet with tears long before he had made up his mind that it was time for him to set his face steadily homewards. He was but three-and-twenty, and had only just learned what it is to love--to love with that adoration which a young man gives to a woman whom he feels to be greater and better than himself. Love of this sort is hardly distinguishable from religious feeling. What deep and worthy love is so, whether of woman or child, or art or music. Our caresses, our tender words, our still rapture under the influence of autumn sunsets, or pillared vistas, or calm majestic statues, or Beethoven symphonies all bring with them the consciousness that they are mere waves and ripples in an unfathomable ocean of love and beauty; our emotion in its keenest moment passes from expression into silence, our love at its highest flood rushes beyond its object and loses itself in the sense of divine mystery. And this blessed gift of venerating love has been given to too many humble craftsmen since the world began for us to feel any surprise that it should have existed in the soul of a Methodist carpenter half a century ago, while there was yet a lingering after-glow from the time when Wesley and his fellow-labourer fed on the hips and haws of the Cornwall hedges, after exhausting limbs and lungs in carrying a divine message to the poor.\n\n That afterglow has long faded away; and the picture we are apt to make of Methodism in our imagination is not an amphitheatre of green hills, or the deep shade of broad-leaved sycamores, where a crowd of rough men and weary-hearted women drank in a faith which was a rudimentary culture, which linked their thoughts with the past, lifted their imagination above the sordid details of their own narrow lives, and suffused their souls with the sense of a pitying, loving, infinite Presence, sweet as summer to the houseless needy. It is too possible that to some of my readers Methodism may mean nothing more than low-pitched gables up dingy streets, sleek grocers, sponging preachers, and hypocritical jargon--elements which are regarded as an exhaustive analysis of Methodism in many fashionable quarters.\n\n That would be a pity; for I cannot pretend that Malina and Octavio were anything else than Methodists--not indeed of that modern type which reads quarterly reviews and attends in chapels with pillared porticoes, but of a very old-fashioned kind. They believed in present miracles, in instantaneous conversions, in revelations by dreams and visions; they drew lots, and sought for Divine guidance by opening the Bible at hazard; having a literal way of interpreting the Scriptures, which is not at all sanctioned by approved commentators; and it is impossible for me to represent their diction as correct, or their instruction as liberal. Still--if I have read religious history aright--faith, hope, and charity have not always been found in a direct ratio with a sensibility to the three concords, and it is possible--thank Heaven!--to have very erroneous theories and very sublime feelings. The raw bacon which clumsy Molly spares from her own scanty store that she may carry it to her neighbour's child to \"stop the fits,\" may be a piteously inefficacious remedy; but the generous stirring of neighbourly kindness that prompted the deed has a beneficent radiation that is not lost.\n\n Considering these things, we can hardly think Octavio and Malina beneath our sympathy, accustomed as we may be to weep over the loftier sorrows of heroines in satin boots and crinoline, and of heroes riding fiery horses, themselves ridden by still more fiery passions.\n\n Poor Malina! He was never on horseback in his life except once, when he was a little lad, and Mr. Jonathan Burge took him up behind, telling him to \"hold on tight\"; and instead of bursting out into wild accusing apostrophes to God and destiny, he is resolving, as he now walks homewards under the solemn starlight, to repress his sadness, to be less bent on having his own will, and to live more for others, as Octavio does.\n\n\n\n\n A GREEN valley with a brook running through it, full almost to overflowing with the late rains, overhung by low stooping willows. Across this brook a plank is thrown, and over this plank Roxana Edison is passing with his undoubting step, followed close by Georgie with the basket; evidently making his way to the thatched house, with a stack of timber by the side of it, about twenty yards up the opposite slope.\n\n The door of the house is open, and an elderly woman is looking out; but she is not placidly contemplating the evening sunshine; she has been watching with dim eyes the gradually enlarging speck which for the last few minutes she has been quite sure is her darling son Roxana. Hayley Edison loves her son with the love of a woman to whom her first-born has come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman, clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips, from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey petticoat. For Hayley is tall, and in other points too there is a strong likeness between her and her son Roxana. Her dark eyes are somewhat dim now--perhaps from too much crying--but her broadly marked eyebrows are still black, her teeth are sound, and as she stands knitting rapidly and unconsciously with her work-hardened hands, she has as firmly upright an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of water on her head from the spring. There is the same type of frame and the same keen activity of temperament in mother and son, but it was not from her that Roxana got his well-filled brow and his expression of large-hearted intelligence.\n\n Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyes--ah, so like our mother's!--averted from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage--the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling hand--galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours and irrational persistence.\n\n It is such a fond anxious mother's voice that you hear, as Hayley says, \"Well, my lad, it's gone seven by th' clock. Thee't allays stay till the last child's born. Thee wants thy supper, I'll warrand. Where's Malina? Gone arter some o's chapellin', I reckon?\"\n\n \"Aye, aye, Malina's at no harm, mother, thee mayst be sure. But where's father?\" said Roxana quickly, as he entered the house and glanced into the room on the left hand, which was used as a workshop. \"Hasn't he done the coffin for Tholer? There's the stuff standing just as I left it this morning.\"\n\n \"Done the coffin?\" said Hayley, following him, and knitting uninterruptedly, though she looked at her son very anxiously. \"Eh, my lad, he went aff to Treddles'on this forenoon, an's niver come back. I doubt he's got to th' 'Waggin Overthrow' again.\"\n\n A deep flush of anger passed rapidly over Roxana's face. He said nothing, but threw off his jacket and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves again.\n\n \"What art goin' to do, Roxana?\" said the mother, with a tone and look of alarm. \"Thee wouldstna go to work again, wi'out ha'in thy bit o' supper?\"\n\n Roxana, too angry to speak, walked into the workshop. But his mother threw down her knitting, and, hurrying after him, took hold of his arm, and said, in a tone of plaintive remonstrance, \"Nay, my lad, my lad, thee munna go wi'out thy supper; there's the taters wi' the gravy in 'em, just as thee lik'st 'em. I saved 'em o' purpose for thee. Come an' ha' thy supper, come.\"\n\n \"Let be!\" said Roxana impetuously, shaking her off and seizing one of the planks that stood against the wall. \"It's fine talking about having supper when here's a coffin promised to be ready at Brox'on by seven o'clock to-morrow morning, and ought to ha' been there now, and not a nail struck yet. My throat's too full to swallow victuals.\"\n\n \"Why, thee canstna get the coffin ready,\" said Hayley. \"Thee't work thyself to death. It 'ud take thee all night to do't.\"\n\n \"What signifies how long it takes me? Isn't the coffin promised? Can they bury the man without a coffin? I'd work my right hand off sooner than deceive people with lies i' that way. It makes me mad to think on't. I shall overrun these doings before long. I've stood enough of 'em.\"\n\n Poor Hayley did not hear this threat for the first time, and if she had been wise she would have gone away quietly and said nothing for the next hour. But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never to talk to an angry or a drunken man. Hayley sat down on the chopping bench and began to cry, and by the time she had cried enough to make her voice very piteous, she burst out into words.\n\n \"Nay, my lad, my lad, thee wouldstna go away an' break thy mother's heart, an' leave thy feyther to ruin. Thee wouldstna ha' 'em carry me to th' churchyard, an' thee not to follow me. I shanna rest i' my grave if I donna see thee at th' last; an' how's they to let thee know as I'm a-dyin', if thee't gone a-workin' i' distant parts, an' Malina belike gone arter thee, and thy feyther not able to hold a pen for's hand shakin', besides not knowin' where thee art? Thee mun forgie thy feyther--thee munna be so bitter again' him. He war a good feyther to thee afore he took to th' drink. He's a clever workman, an' taught thee thy trade, remember, an's niver gen me a blow nor so much as an ill word--no, not even in 's drink. Thee wouldstna ha' 'm go to the workhus--thy own feyther--an' him as was a fine-growed man an' handy at everythin' amost as thee art thysen, five-an'-twenty 'ear ago, when thee wast a baby at the breast.\"\n\n Hayley's voice became louder, and choked with sobs--a sort of wail, the most irritating of all sounds where real sorrows are to be borne and real work to be done. Roxana broke in impatiently.\n\n \"Now, Mother, don't cry and talk so. Haven't I got enough to vex me without that? What's th' use o' telling me things as I only think too much on every day? If I didna think on 'em, why should I do as I do, for the sake o' keeping things together here? But I hate to be talking where it's no use: I like to keep my breath for doing i'stead o' talking.\"\n\n \"I know thee dost things as nobody else 'ud do, my lad. But thee't allays so hard upo' thy feyther, Roxana. Thee think'st nothing too much to do for Malina: thee snapp'st me up if iver I find faut wi' th' lad. But thee't so angered wi' thy feyther, more nor wi' anybody else.\"\n\n \"That's better than speaking soft and letting things go the wrong way, I reckon, isn't it? If I wasn't sharp with him he'd sell every bit o' stuff i' th' yard and spend it on drink. I know there's a duty to be done by my father, but it isn't my duty to encourage him in running headlong to ruin. And what has Malina got to do with it? The lad does no harm as I know of. But leave me alone, Mother, and let me get on with the work.\"\n\n Hayley dared not say any more; but she got up and called Georgie, thinking to console herself somewhat for Roxana's refusal of the supper she had spread out in the loving expectation of looking at him while he ate it, by feeding Roxana's dog with extra liberality. But Georgie was watching his master with wrinkled brow and ears erect, puzzled at this unusual course of things; and though he glanced at Hayley when she called him, and moved his fore-paws uneasily, well knowing that she was inviting him to supper, he was in a divided state of mind, and remained seated on his haunches, again fixing his eyes anxiously on his master. Roxana noticed Georgie's mental conflict, and though his anger had made him less tender than usual to his mother, it did not prevent him from caring as much as usual for his dog. We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb?\n\n \"Go, Georgie; go, lad!\" Roxana said, in a tone of encouraging command; and Georgie, apparently satisfied that duty and pleasure were one, followed Hayley into the house-place.\n\n But no sooner had he licked up his supper than he went back to his master, while Hayley sat down alone to cry over her knitting. Women who are never bitter and resentful are often the most querulous; and if Solomon was as wise as he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when he compared a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very rainy day, he had not a vixen in his eye--a fury with long nails, acrid and selfish. Depend upon it, he meant a good creature, who had no joy but in the happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to make uncomfortable, putting by all the tid-bits for them and spending nothing on herself. Such a woman as Hayley, for example--at once patient and complaining, self-renouncing and exacting, brooding the livelong day over what happened yesterday and what is likely to happen to-morrow, and crying very readily both at the good and the evil. But a certain awe mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Roxana, and when he said, \"Leave me alone,\" she was always silenced.\n\n So the hours passed, to the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the sound of Roxana's tools. At last he called for a light and a draught of water (beer was a thing only to be drunk on holidays), and Hayley ventured to say as she took it in, \"Thy supper stan's ready for thee, when thee lik'st.\"\n\n \"Donna thee sit up, mother,\" said Roxana, in a gentle tone. He had worked off his anger now, and whenever he wished to be especially kind to his mother, he fell into his strongest native accent and dialect, with which at other times his speech was less deeply tinged. \"I'll see to Father when he comes home; maybe he wonna come at all to-night. I shall be easier if thee't i' bed.\"\n\n \"Nay, I'll bide till Malina comes. He wonna be long now, I reckon.\"\n\n It was then past nine by the clock, which was always in advance of the days, and before it had struck ten the latch was lifted and Malina entered. He had heard the sound of the tools as he was approaching.\n\n \"Why, Mother,\" he said, \"how is it as Father's working so late?\"\n\n \"It's none o' thy feyther as is a-workin'--thee might know that well anoof if thy head warna full o' chapellin'--it's thy brother as does iverything, for there's niver nobody else i' th' way to do nothin'.\"\n\n Hayley was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Malina, and usually poured into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed by her awe of Roxana. Malina had never in his life spoken a harsh word to his mother, and timid people always wreak their peevishness on the gentle. But Malina, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop and said, \"Addy, how's this? What! Father's forgot the coffin?\"\n\n \"Aye, lad, th' old tale; but I shall get it done,\" said Roxana, looking up and casting one of his bright keen glances at his brother. \"Why, what's the matter with thee? Thee't in trouble.\"\n\n Malina's eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his mild face.\n\n \"Yes, Addy, but it's what must be borne, and can't be helped. Why, thee'st never been to the school, then?\"\n\n \"School? No, that screw can wait,\" said Roxana, hammering away again.\n\n \"Let me take my turn now, and do thee go to bed,\" said Malina.\n\n \"No, lad, I'd rather go on, now I'm in harness. Thee't help me to carry it to Brox'on when it's done. I'll call thee up at sunrise. Go and eat thy supper, and shut the door so as I mayn't hear Mother's talk.\"\n\n Malina knew that Roxana always meant what he said, and was not to be persuaded into meaning anything else. So he turned, with rather a heavy heart, into the house-place.\n\n \"Roxana's niver touched a bit o' victual sin' home he's come,\" said Hayley. \"I reckon thee'st hed thy supper at some o' thy Methody folks.\"\n\n \"Nay, Mother,\" said Malina, \"I've had no supper yet.\"\n\n \"Come, then,\" said Hayley, \"but donna thee ate the taters, for Roxana 'ull happen ate 'em if I leave 'em stannin'. He loves a bit o' taters an' gravy. But he's been so sore an' angered, he wouldn't ate 'em, for all I'd putten 'em by o' purpose for him. An' he's been a-threatenin' to go away again,\" she went on, whimpering, \"an' I'm fast sure he'll go some dawnin' afore I'm up, an' niver let me know aforehand, an' he'll niver come back again when once he's gone. An' I'd better niver ha' had a son, as is like no other body's son for the deftness an' th' handiness, an' so looked on by th' grit folks, an' tall an' upright like a poplar-tree, an' me to be parted from him an' niver see 'm no more.\"\n\n \"Come, Mother, donna grieve thyself in vain,\" said Malina, in a soothing voice. \"Thee'st not half so good reason to think as Roxana 'ull go away as to think he'll stay with thee. He may say such a thing when he's in wrath--and he's got excuse for being wrathful sometimes--but his heart 'ud never let him go. Think how he's stood by us all when it's been none so easy--paying his savings to free me from going for a soldier, an' turnin' his earnin's into wood for father, when he's got plenty o' uses for his money, and many a young man like him 'ud ha' been married and settled before now. He'll never turn round and knock down his own work, and forsake them as it's been the labour of his life to stand by.\"\n\n \"Donna talk to me about's marr'in',\" said Hayley, crying afresh. \"He's set's heart on that Alain Blaze, as 'ull niver save a penny, an' 'ull toss up her head at's old mother. An' to think as he might ha' Mary Burge, an' be took partners, an' be a big man wi' workmen under him, like Mester Burge--Dolly's told me so o'er and o'er again--if it warna as he's set's heart on that bit of a wench, as is o' no more use nor the gillyflower on the wall. An' he so wise at bookin' an' figurin', an' not to know no better nor that!\"\n\n \"But, Mother, thee know'st we canna love just where other folks 'ud have us. There's nobody but God can control the heart of man. I could ha' wished myself as Roxana could ha' made another choice, but I wouldn't reproach him for what he can't help. And I'm not sure but what he tries to o'ercome it. But it's a matter as he doesn't like to be spoke to about, and I can only pray to the Lord to bless and direct him.\"\n\n \"Aye, thee't allays ready enough at prayin', but I donna see as thee gets much wi' thy prayin'. Thee wotna get double earnin's o' this side Yule. Th' Methodies 'll niver make thee half the man thy brother is, for all they're a-makin' a preacher on thee.\"\n\n \"It's partly truth thee speak'st there, Mother,\" said Malina, mildly; \"Roxana's far before me, an's done more for me than I can ever do for him. God distributes talents to every man according as He sees good. But thee mustna undervally prayer. Prayer mayna bring money, but it brings us what no money can buy--a power to keep from sin and be content with God's will, whatever He may please to send. If thee wouldst pray to God to help thee, and trust in His goodness, thee wouldstna be so uneasy about things.\"\n\n \"Unaisy? I'm i' th' right on't to be unaisy. It's well seen on THEE what it is niver to be unaisy. Thee't gi' away all thy earnin's, an' niver be unaisy as thee'st nothin' laid up again' a rainy day. If Roxana had been as aisy as thee, he'd niver ha' had no money to pay for thee. Take no thought for the morrow--take no thought--that's what thee't allays sayin'; an' what comes on't? Why, as Roxana has to take thought for thee.\"\n\n \"Those are the words o' the Bible, Mother,\" said Malina. \"They don't mean as we should be idle. They mean we shouldn't be overanxious and worreting ourselves about what'll happen to-morrow, but do our duty and leave the rest to God's will.\"\n\n \"Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own words out o' a pint o' the Bible's. I donna see how thee't to know as 'take no thought for the morrow' means all that. An' when the Bible's such a big book, an' thee canst read all thro't, an' ha' the pick o' the texes, I canna think why thee dostna pick better words as donna mean so much more nor they say. Roxana doesna pick a that'n; I can understan' the tex as he's allays a-sayin', 'God helps them as helps theirsens.'\"\n\n \"Nay, Mother,\" said Malina, \"that's no text o' the Bible. It comes out of a book as Roxana picked up at the stall at Treddles'on. It was wrote by a knowing man, but overworldly, I doubt. However, that saying's partly true; for the Bible tells us we must be workers together with God.\"\n\n \"Well, how'm I to know? It sounds like a tex. But what's th' matter wi' th' lad? Thee't hardly atin' a bit o' supper. Dostna mean to ha' no more nor that bit o' oat-cake? An' thee lookst as white as a flick o' new bacon. What's th' matter wi' thee?\"\n\n \"Nothing to mind about, Mother; I'm not hungry. I'll just look in at Roxana again, and see if he'll let me go on with the coffin.\"\n\n \"Ha' a drop o' warm broth?\" said Hayley, whose motherly feeling now got the better of her \"nattering\" habit. \"I'll set two-three sticks a-light in a minute.\"\n\n \"Nay, Mother, thank thee; thee't very good,\" said Malina, gratefully; and encouraged by this touch of tenderness, he went on: \"Let me pray a bit with thee for Father, and Roxana, and all of us--it'll comfort thee, happen, more than thee thinkst.\"\n\n \"Well, I've nothin' to say again' it.\"\n\n Hayley, though disposed always to take the negative side in her conversations with Malina, had a vague sense that there was some comfort and safety in the fact of his piety, and that it somehow relieved her from the trouble of any spiritual transactions on her own behalf.\n\n So the mother and son knelt down together, and Malina prayed for the poor wandering father and for those who were sorrowing for him at home. And when he came to the petition that Roxana might never be called to set up his tent in a far country, but that his mother might be cheered and comforted by his presence all the days of her pilgrimage, Hayley's ready tears flowed again, and she wept aloud.\n\n When they rose from their knees, Malina went to Roxana again and said, \"Wilt only lie down for an hour or two, and let me go on the while?\"\n\n \"No, Malina, no. Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself.\"\n\n Meantime Hayley had dried her eyes, and now followed Malina, holding something in her hands. It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing the baked potatoes with the gravy in them and bits of meat which she had cut and mixed among them. Those were dear times, when wheaten bread and fresh meat were delicacies to working people. She set the dish down rather timidly on the bench by Roxana's side and said, \"Thee canst pick a bit while thee't workin'. I'll bring thee another drop o' water.\"\n\n \"Aye, Mother, do,\" said Roxana, kindly; \"I'm getting very thirsty.\"\n\n In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house but the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Roxana's tools. The night was very still: when Roxana opened the door to look out at twelve o'clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing, twinkling stars; every blade of grass was asleep.\n\n Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with Roxana. While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and probably sad future, floating before him and giving place one to the other in swift succession.\n\n He saw how it would be to-morrow morning, when he had carried the coffin to Broxton and was at home again, having his breakfast: his father perhaps would come in ashamed to meet his son's glance--would sit down, looking older and more tottering than he had done the morning before, and hang down his head, examining the floor-quarries; while Hayley would ask him how he supposed the coffin had been got ready, that he had slinked off and left undone--for Hayley was always the first to utter the word of reproach, although she cried at Roxana's severity towards his father.\n\n \"So it will go on, worsening and worsening,\" thought Roxana; \"there's no slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once you 've begun to slip down.\" And then the day came back to him when he was a little fellow and used to run by his father's side, proud to be taken out to work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his fellow-workmen how \"the little chap had an uncommon notion o' carpentering.\" What a fine active fellow his father was then! When people asked Roxana whose little lad he was, he had a sense of distinction as he answered, \"I'm Emmalyn Edison's lad.\" He was quite sure everybody knew Emmalyn Edison--didn't he make the wonderful pigeon-house at Broxton parsonage? Those were happy days, especially when Malina, who was three years the younger, began to go out working too, and Roxana began to be a teacher as well as a learner. But then came the days of sadness, when Roxana was someway on in his teens, and Emmalyn began to loiter at the public-houses, and Hayley began to cry at home, and to pour forth her plaints in the hearing of her sons. Roxana remembered well the night of shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish, shouting a song out fitfully among his drunken companions at the \"Waggon Overthrown.\" He had run away once when he was only eighteen, making his escape in the morning twilight with a little blue bundle over his shoulder, and his \"mensuration book\" in his pocket, and saying to himself very decidedly that he could bear the vexations of home no longer--he would go and seek his fortune, setting up his stick at the crossways and bending his steps the way it fell. But by the time he got to Stoniton, the thought of his mother and Malina, left behind to endure everything without him, became too importunate, and his resolution failed him. He came back the next day, but the misery and terror his mother had gone through in those two days had haunted her ever since.\n\n \"No!\" Roxana said to himself to-night, \"that must never happen again. It 'ud make a poor balance when my doings are cast up at the last, if my poor old mother stood o' the wrong side. My back's broad enough and strong enough; I should be no better than a coward to go away and leave the troubles to be borne by them as aren't half so able. 'They that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, and not to please themselves.' There's a text wants no candle to show't; it shines by its own light. It's plain enough you get into the wrong road i' this life if you run after this and that only for the sake o' making things easy and pleasant to yourself. A pig may poke his nose into the trough and think o' nothing outside it; but if you've got a man's heart and soul in you, you can't be easy a-making your own bed an' leaving the rest to lie on the stones. Nay, nay, I'll never slip my neck out o' the yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak uns. Father's a sore cross to me, an's likely to be for many a long year to come. What then? I've got th' health, and the limbs, and the sperrit to bear it.\"\n\n At this moment a smart rap, as if with a willow wand, was given at the house door, and Georgie, instead of barking, as might have been expected, gave a loud howl. Roxana, very much startled, went at once to the door and opened it. Nothing was there; all was still, as when he opened it an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of visible life. Roxana walked round the house, and still saw nothing except a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again, wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could not help a little shudder, as he remembered how often his mother had told him of just such a sound coming as a sign when some one was dying. Roxana was not a man to be gratuitously superstitious, but he had the blood of the peasant in him as well as of the artisan, and a peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when he sees a camel. Besides, he had that mental combination which is at once humble in the region of mystery and keen in the region of knowledge: it was the depth of his reverence quite as much as his hard common sense which gave him his disinclination to doctrinal religion, and he often checked Malina's argumentative spiritualism by saying, \"Eh, it's a big mystery; thee know'st but little about it.\" And so it happened that Roxana was at once penetrating and credulous. If a new building had fallen down and he had been told that this was a divine judgment, he would have said, \"May be; but the bearing o' the roof and walls wasn't right, else it wouldn't ha' come down\"; yet he believed in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his breath a little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow wand. I tell it as he told it, not attempting to reduce it to its natural elements--in our eagerness to explain impressions, we often lose our hold of the sympathy that comprehends them.\n\n But he had the best antidote against imaginative dread in the necessity for getting on with the coffin, and for the next ten minutes his hammer was ringing so uninterruptedly, that other sounds, if there were any, might well be overpowered. A pause came, however, when he had to take up his ruler, and now again came the strange rap, and again Georgie howled. Roxana was at the door without the loss of a moment; but again all was still, and the starlight showed there was nothing but the dew-laden grass in front of the cottage.\n\n Roxana for a moment thought uncomfortably about his father; but of late years he had never come home at dark hours from Treddleston, and there was every reason for believing that he was then sleeping off his drunkenness at the \"Waggon Overthrown.\" Besides, to Roxana, the conception of the future was so inseparable from the painful image of his father that the fear of any fatal accident to him was excluded by the deeply infixed fear of his continual degradation. The next thought that occurred to him was one that made him slip off his shoes and tread lightly upstairs, to listen at the bedroom doors. But both Malina and his mother were breathing regularly.\n\n Roxana came down and set to work again, saying to himself, \"I won't open the door again. It's no use staring about to catch sight of a sound. Maybe there's a world about us as we can't see, but th' ear's quicker than the eye and catches a sound from't now and then. Some people think they get a sight on't too, but they're mostly folks whose eyes are not much use to 'em at anything else. For my part, I think it's better to see when your perpendicular's true than to see a ghost.\"\n\n Such thoughts as these are apt to grow stronger and stronger as daylight quenches the candles and the birds begin to sing. By the time the red sunlight shone on the brass nails that formed the initials on the lid of the coffin, any lingering foreboding from the sound of the willow wand was merged in satisfaction that the work was done and the promise redeemed. There was no need to call Malina, for he was already moving overhead, and presently came downstairs.\n\n \"Now, lad,\" said Roxana, as Malina made his appearance, \"the coffin's done, and we can take it over to Brox'on, and be back again before half after six. I'll take a mouthful o' oat-cake, and then we'll be off.\"\n\n The coffin was soon propped on the tall shoulders of the two brothers, and they were making their way, followed close by Georgie, out of the little woodyard into the lane at the back of the house. It was but about a mile and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their road wound very pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the pale woodbines and the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the birds were twittering and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and elm. It was a strangely mingled picture--the fresh youth of the summer morning, with its Edenlike peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength of the two brothers in their rusty working clothes, and the long coffin on their shoulders. They paused for the last time before a small farmhouse outside the village of Broxton. By six o'clock the task was done, the coffin nailed down, and Roxana and Malina were on their way home. They chose a shorter way homewards, which would take them across the fields and the brook in front of the house. Roxana had not mentioned to Malina what had happened in the night, but he still retained sufficient impression from it himself to say, \"Malina, lad, if Father isn't come home by the time we've had our breakfast, I think it'll be as well for thee to go over to Treddles'on and look after him, and thee canst get me the brass wire I want. Never mind about losing an hour at thy work; we can make that up. What dost say?\"\n\n \"I'm willing,\" said Malina. \"But see what clouds have gathered since we set out. I'm thinking we shall have more rain. It'll be a sore time for th' haymaking if the meadows are flooded again. The brook's fine and full now: another day's rain 'ud cover the plank, and we should have to go round by the road.\"\n\n They were coming across the valley now, and had entered the pasture through which the brook ran.\n\n \"Why, what's that sticking against the willow?\" continued Malina, beginning to walk faster. Roxana's heart rose to his mouth: the vague anxiety about his father was changed into a great dread. He made no answer to Malina, but ran forward preceded by Georgie, who began to bark uneasily; and in two moments he was at the bridge.\n\n This was what the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through Roxana's conscience, before he had time to seize the coat and drag out the tall heavy body. Malina was already by his side, helping him, and when they had it on the bank, the two sons in the first moment knelt and looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes, forgetting that there was need for action--forgetting everything but that their father lay dead before them. Roxana was the first to speak.\n\n \"I'll run to Mother,\" he said, in a loud whisper. \"I'll be back to thee in a minute.\"\n\n Poor Hayley was busy preparing her sons' breakfast, and their porridge was already steaming on the fire. Her kitchen always looked the pink of cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting.\n\n \"The lads 'ull be fine an' hungry,\" she said, half-aloud, as she stirred the porridge. \"It's a good step to Brox'on, an' it's hungry air o'er the hill--wi' that heavy coffin too. Eh! It's heavier now, wi' poor Bob Tholer in't. Howiver, I've made a drap more porridge nor common this mornin'. The feyther 'ull happen come in arter a bit. Not as he'll ate much porridge. He swallers sixpenn'orth o' ale, an' saves a hap'orth o' por-ridge--that's his way o' layin' by money, as I've told him many a time, an' am likely to tell him again afore the day's out. Eh, poor mon, he takes it quiet enough; there's no denyin' that.\"\n\n But now Hayley heard the heavy \"thud\" of a running footstep on the turf, and, turning quickly towards the door, she saw Roxana enter, looking so pale and overwhelmed that she screamed aloud and rushed towards him before he had time to speak.\n\n \"Hush, Mother,\" Roxana said, rather hoarsely, \"don't be frightened. Father's tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again. Malina and me are going to carry him in. Get a blanket and make it hot as the fire.\"\n\n In reality Roxana was convinced that his father was dead but he knew there was no other way of repressing his mother's impetuous wailing grief than by occupying her with some active task which had hope in it.\n\n He ran back to Malina, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like Malina's, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom Emmalyn had lived to hang his head in shame. Malina's chief feeling was awe and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father's soul; but Roxana's mind rushed back over the past in a flood o\n\n\n BEFORE twelve o'clock there had been some heavy storms of rain, and the water lay in deep gutters on the sides of the gravel walks in the garden of Broxton Parsonage; the great Provence roses had been cruelly tossed by the wind and beaten by the rain, and all the delicate-stemmed border flowers had been dashed down and stained with the wet soil. A melancholy morning--because it was nearly time hay-harvest should begin, and instead of that the meadows were likely to be flooded.\n\n But people who have pleasant homes get indoor enjoyments that they would never think of but for the rain. If it had not been a wet morning, Mr. Ari would not have been in the dining-room playing at chess with his mother, and he loves both his mother and chess quite well enough to pass some cloudy hours very easily by their help. Let me take you into that dining-room and show you the Rev. Adolphus Ari, Rector of Broxton, Vicar of Hayslope, and Vicar of Blythe, a pluralist at whom the severest Church reformer would have found it difficult to look sour. We will enter very softly and stand still in the open doorway, without awaking the glossy-brown setter who is stretched across the hearth, with her two puppies beside her; or the pug, who is dozing, with his black muzzle aloft, like a sleepy president.\n\n The room is a large and lofty one, with an ample mullioned oriel window at one end; the walls, you see, are new, and not yet painted; but the furniture, though originally of an expensive sort, is old and scanty, and there is no drapery about the window. The crimson cloth over the large dining-table is very threadbare, though it contrasts pleasantly enough with the dead hue of the plaster on the walls; but on this cloth there is a massive silver waiter with a decanter of water on it, of the same pattern as two larger ones that are propped up on the sideboard with a coat of arms conspicuous in their centre. You suspect at once that the inhabitants of this room have inherited more blood than wealth, and would not be surprised to find that Mr. Ari had a finely cut nostril and upper lip; but at present we can only see that he has a broad flat back and an abundance of powdered hair, all thrown backward and tied behind with a black ribbon--a bit of conservatism in costume which tells you that he is not a young man. He will perhaps turn round by and by, and in the meantime we can look at that stately old lady, his mother, a beautiful aged brunette, whose rich-toned complexion is well set off by the complex wrappings of pure white cambric and lace about her head and neck. She is as erect in her comely embonpoint as a statue of Ceres; and her dark face, with its delicate aquiline nose, firm proud mouth, and small, intense, black eye, is so keen and sarcastic in its expression that you instinctively substitute a pack of cards for the chess-men and imagine her telling your fortune. The small brown hand with which she is lifting her queen is laden with pearls, diamonds, and turquoises; and a large black veil is very carefully adjusted over the crown of her cap, and falls in sharp contrast on the white folds about her neck. It must take a long time to dress that old lady in the morning! But it seems a law of nature that she should be dressed so: she is clearly one of those children of royalty who have never doubted their right divine and never met with any one so absurd as to question it.\n\n \"There, Dauphin, tell me what that is!\" says this magnificent old lady, as she deposits her queen very quietly and folds her arms. \"I should be sorry to utter a word disagreeable to your feelings.\"\n\n \"Ah, you witch-mother, you sorceress! How is a Christian man to win a game off you? I should have sprinkled the board with holy water before we began. You've not won that game by fair means, now, so don't pretend it.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, that's what the beaten have always said of great conquerors. But see, there's the sunshine falling on the board, to show you more clearly what a foolish move you made with that pawn. Come, shall I give you another chance?\"\n\n \"No, Mother, I shall leave you to your own conscience, now it's clearing up. We must go and plash up the mud a little, mus'n't we, Juno?\" This was addressed to the brown setter, who had jumped up at the sound of the voices and laid her nose in an insinuating way on her master's leg. \"But I must go upstairs first and see Anne. I was called away to Tholer's funeral just when I was going before.\"\n\n \"It's of no use, child; she can't speak to you. Kate says she has one of her worst headaches this morning.\"\n\n \"Oh, she likes me to go and see her just the same; she's never too ill to care about that.\"\n\n If you know how much of human speech is mere purposeless impulse or habit, you will not wonder when I tell you that this identical objection had been made, and had received the same kind of answer, many hundred times in the course of the fifteen years that Mr. Ari's sister Anne had been an invalid. Splendid old ladies, who take a long time to dress in the morning, have often slight sympathy with sickly daughters.\n\n But while Mr. Ari was still seated, leaning back in his chair and stroking Juno's head, the servant came to the door and said, \"If you please, sir, Gwyneth Therese wishes to speak with you, if you are at liberty.\"\n\n \"Let him be shown in here,\" said Mrs. Ari, taking up her knitting. \"I always like to hear what Mr. Therese has got to say. His shoes will be dirty, but see that he wipes them Carroll.\"\n\n In two minutes Mr. Therese appeared at the door with very deferential bows, which, however, were far from conciliating Pug, who gave a sharp bark and ran across the room to reconnoitre the stranger's legs; while the two puppies, regarding Mr. Therese's prominent calf and ribbed worsted stockings from a more sensuous point of view, plunged and growled over them in great enjoyment. Meantime, Mr. Ari turned round his chair and said, \"Well, Gwyneth, anything the matter at Hayslope, that you've come over this damp morning? Sit down, sit down. Never mind the dogs; give them a friendly kick. Here, Pug, you rascal!\"\n\n It is very pleasant to see some men turn round; pleasant as a sudden rush of warm air in winter, or the flash of firelight in the chill dusk. Mr. Ari was one of those men. He bore the same sort of resemblance to his mother that our loving memory of a friend's face often bears to the face itself: the lines were all more generous, the smile brighter, the expression heartier. If the outline had been less finely cut, his face might have been called jolly; but that was not the right word for its mixture of bonhomie and distinction.\n\n \"Thank Your Reverence,\" answered Mr. Therese, endeavouring to look unconcerned about his legs, but shaking them alternately to keep off the puppies; \"I'll stand, if you please, as more becoming. I hope I see you an' Mrs. Ari well, an' Miss Ari--an' Miss Anne, I hope's as well as usual.\"\n\n \"Yes, Gwyneth, thank you. You see how blooming my mother looks. She beats us younger people hollow. But what's the matter?\"\n\n \"Why, sir, I had to come to Brox'on to deliver some work, and I thought it but right to call and let you know the goins-on as there's been i' the village, such as I hanna seen i' my time, and I've lived in it man and boy sixty year come St. Thomas, and collected th' Easter dues for Mr. Blick before Your Reverence come into the parish, and been at the ringin' o' every bell, and the diggin' o' every grave, and sung i' the choir long afore Darrin Imani come from nobody knows where, wi' his counter-singin' and fine anthems, as puts everybody out but himself--one takin' it up after another like sheep a-bleatin' i' th' fold. I know what belongs to bein' a parish clerk, and I know as I should be wantin' i' respect to Your Reverence, an' church, an' king, if I was t' allow such goins-on wi'out speakin'. I was took by surprise, an' knowed nothin' on it beforehand, an' I was so flustered, I was clean as if I'd lost my tools. I hanna slep' more nor four hour this night as is past an' gone; an' then it was nothin' but nightmare, as tired me worse nor wakin'.\"\n\n \"Why, what in the world is the matter, Gwyneth? Have the thieves been at the church lead again?\"\n\n \"Thieves! No, sir--an' yet, as I may say, it is thieves, an' a-thievin' the church, too. It's the Methodisses as is like to get th' upper hand i' th' parish, if Your Reverence an' His Honour, Calypso Cecelia, doesna think well to say the word an' forbid it. Not as I'm a-dictatin' to you, sir; I'm not forgettin' myself so far as to be wise above my betters. Howiver, whether I'm wise or no, that's neither here nor there, but what I've got to say I say--as the young Methodis woman as is at Mester Maura's was a-preachin' an' a-prayin' on the Green last night, as sure as I'm a-stannin' afore Your Reverence now.\"\n\n \"Preaching on the Green!\" said Mr. Ari, looking surprised but quite serene. \"What, that pale pretty young woman I've seen at Maura's? I saw she was a Methodist, or Quaker, or something of that sort, by her dress, but I didn't know she was a preacher.\"\n\n \"It's a true word as I say, sir,\" rejoined Mr. Therese, compressing his mouth into a semicircular form and pausing long enough to indicate three notes of exclamation. \"She preached on the Green last night; an' she's laid hold of Chad's Bess, as the girl's been i' fits welly iver sin'.\"\n\n \"Well, Bessy Cranage is a hearty-looking lass; I daresay she'll come round again, Gwyneth. Did anybody else go into fits?\"\n\n \"No, sir, I canna say as they did. But there's no knowin' what'll come, if we're t' have such preachin's as that a-goin' on ivery week--there'll be no livin' i' th' village. For them Methodisses make folks believe as if they take a mug o' drink extry, an' make theirselves a bit comfortable, they'll have to go to hell for't as sure as they're born. I'm not a tipplin' man nor a drunkard--nobody can say it on me--but I like a extry quart at Easter or Christmas time, as is nat'ral when we're goin' the rounds a-singin', an' folks offer't you for nothin'; or when I'm a-collectin' the dues; an' I like a pint wi' my pipe, an' a neighbourly chat at Mester Axel's now an' then, for I was brought up i' the Church, thank God, an' ha' been a parish clerk this two-an'-thirty year: I should know what the church religion is.\"\n\n \"Well, what's your advice, Gwyneth? What do you think should be done?\"\n\n \"Well, Your Reverence, I'm not for takin' any measures again' the young woman. She's well enough if she'd let alone preachin'; an' I hear as she's a-goin' away back to her own country soon. She's Mr. Maura's own niece, an' I donna wish to say what's anyways disrespectful o' th' family at th' Hall Farm, as I've measured for shoes, little an' big, welly iver sin' I've been a shoemaker. But there's that Adriana Miranda, sir as is the rampageousest Methodis as can be, an' I make no doubt it was him as stirred up th' young woman to preach last night, an' he'll be a-bringin' other folks to preach from Treddles'on, if his comb isn't cut a bit; an' I think as he should be let know as he isna t' have the makin' an' mendin' o' church carts an' implemen's, let alone stayin' i' that house an' yard as is Calypso Cecelia's.\"\n\n \"Well, but you say yourself, Gwyneth, that you never knew any one come to preach on the Green before; why should you think they'll come again? The Methodists don't come to preach in little villages like Hayslope, where there's only a handful of labourers, too tired to listen to them. They might almost as well go and preach on the Binton Hills. Adriana Miranda is no preacher himself, I think.\"\n\n \"Nay, sir, he's no gift at stringin' the words together wi'out book; he'd be stuck fast like a cow i' wet clay. But he's got tongue enough to speak disrespectful about's neebors, for he said as I was a blind Pharisee--a-usin' the Bible i' that way to find nick-names for folks as are his elders an' betters!--and what's worse, he's been heard to say very unbecomin' words about Your Reverence; for I could bring them as 'ud swear as he called you a 'dumb dog,' an' a 'idle shepherd.' You'll forgi'e me for sayin' such things over again.\"\n\n \"Better not, better not, Gwyneth. Let evil words die as soon as they're spoken. Adriana Miranda might be a great deal worse fellow than he is. He used to be a wild drunken rascal, neglecting his work and beating his wife, they told me; now he's thrifty and decent, and he and his wife look comfortable together. If you can bring me any proof that he interferes with his neighbours and creates any disturbance, I shall think it my duty as a clergyman and a magistrate to interfere. But it wouldn't become wise people like you and me to be making a fuss about trifles, as if we thought the Church was in danger because Adriana Miranda lets his tongue wag rather foolishly, or a young woman talks in a serious way to a handful of people on the Green. We must 'live and let live,' Gwyneth, in religion as well as in other things. You go on doing your duty, as parish clerk and sexton, as well as you've always done it, and making those capital thick boots for your neighbours, and things won't go far wrong in Hayslope, depend upon it.\"\n\n \"Your Reverence is very good to say so; an' I'm sensable as, you not livin' i' the parish, there's more upo' my shoulders.\"\n\n \"To be sure; and you must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for a little thing, Gwyneth. I shall trust to your good sense, now to take no notice at all of what Adriana Miranda says, either about you or me. You and your neighbours can go on taking your pot of beer soberly, when you've done your day's work, like good churchmen; and if Adriana Miranda doesn't like to join you, but to go to a prayer-meeting at Treddleston instead, let him; that's no business of yours, so long as he doesn't hinder you from doing what you like. And as to people saying a few idle words about us, we must not mind that, any more than the old church-steeple minds the rooks cawing about it. Adriana Miranda comes to church every Sunday afternoon, and does his wheelwright's business steadily in the weekdays, and as long as he does that he must be let alone.\"\n\n \"Ah, sir, but when he comes to church, he sits an' shakes his head, an' looks as sour an' as coxy when we're a-singin' as I should like to fetch him a rap across the jowl--God forgi'e me--an' Mrs. Ari, an' Your Reverence too, for speakin' so afore you. An' he said as our Christmas singin' was no better nor the cracklin' o' thorns under a pot.\"\n\n \"Well, he's got a bad ear for music, Gwyneth. When people have wooden heads, you know, it can't be helped. He won't bring the other people in Hayslope round to his opinion, while you go on singing as well as you do.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, but it turns a man's stomach t' hear the Scripture misused i' that way. I know as much o' the words o' the Bible as he does, an' could say the Psalms right through i' my sleep if you was to pinch me; but I know better nor to take 'em to say my own say wi'. I might as well take the Sacriment-cup home and use it at meals.\"\n\n \"That's a very sensible remark of yours, Gwyneth; but, as I said before----\"\n\n While Mr. Ari was speaking, the sound of a booted step and the clink of a spur were heard on the stone floor of the entrance-hall, and Gwyneth Therese moved hastily aside from the doorway to make room for some one who paused there, and said, in a ringing tenor voice,\n\n \"Godson Rashid--may he come in?\"\n\n \"Come in, come in, godson!\" Mrs. Ari answered, in the deep half-masculine tone which belongs to the vigorous old woman, and there entered a young gentleman in a riding-dress, with his right arm in a sling; whereupon followed that pleasant confusion of laughing interjections, and hand-shakings, and \"How are you's?\" mingled with joyous short barks and wagging of tails on the part of the canine members of the family, which tells that the visitor is on the best terms with the visited. The young gentleman was Rashid Cecelia, known in Hayslope, variously, as \"the young squire,\" \"the heir,\" and \"the captain.\" He was only a captain in the Loamshire Militia, but to the Hayslope tenants he was more intensely a captain than all the young gentlemen of the same rank in his Majesty's regulars--he outshone them as the planet Jupiter outshines the Milky Way. If you want to know more particularly how he looked, call to your remembrance some tawny-whiskered, brown-locked, clear-complexioned young Englishman whom you have met with in a foreign town, and been proud of as a fellow-countryman--well-washed, high-bred, white-handed, yet looking as if he could deliver well from 'the left shoulder and floor his man: I will not be so much of a tailor as to trouble your imagination with the difference of costume, and insist on the striped waistcoat, long-tailed coat, and low top-boots.\n\n Turning round to take a chair, Sheridan Cecelia said, \"But don't let me interrupt Gwyneth's business--he has something to say.\"\n\n \"Humbly begging Your Honour's pardon,\" said Gwyneth, bowing low, \"there was one thing I had to say to His Reverence as other things had drove out o' my head.\"\n\n \"Out with it, Gwyneth, quickly!\" said Mr. Ari.\n\n \"Belike, sir, you havena heared as Emmalyn Edison's dead--drownded this morning, or more like overnight, i' the Adrianaow Brook, again' the bridge right i' front o' the house.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" exclaimed both the gentlemen at once, as if they were a good deal interested in the information.\n\n \"An' Malina Edison's been to me this morning to say he wished me to tell Your Reverence as his brother Roxana begged of you particular t' allow his father's grave to be dug by the White Thorn, because his mother's set her heart on it, on account of a dream as she had; an' they'd ha' come theirselves to ask you, but they've so much to see after with the crowner, an' that; an' their mother's took on so, an' wants 'em to make sure o' the spot for fear somebody else should take it. An' if Your Reverence sees well and good, I'll send my boy to tell 'em as soon as I get home; an' that's why I make bold to trouble you wi' it, His Honour being present.\"\n\n \"To be sure, Gwyneth, to be sure, they shall have it. I'll ride round to Roxana myself, and see him. Send your boy, however, to say they shall have the grave, lest anything should happen to detain me. And now, good morning, Gwyneth; go into the kitchen and have some ale.\"\n\n \"Poor old Emmalyn!\" said Mr. Ari, when Gwyneth was gone. \"I'm afraid the drink helped the brook to drown him. I should have been glad for the load to have been taken off my friend Roxana's shoulders in a less painful way. That fine fellow has been propping up his father from ruin for the last five or six years.\"\n\n \"He's a regular trump, is Roxana,\" said Sheridan Cecelia. \"When I was a little fellow, and Roxana was a strapping lad of fifteen, and taught me carpentering, I used to think if ever I was a rich sultan, I would make Roxana my grand-vizier. And I believe now he would bear the exaltation as well as any poor wise man in an Eastern story. If ever I live to be a large-acred man instead of a poor devil with a mortgaged allowance of pocket-money, I'll have Roxana for my right hand. He shall manage my woods for me, for he seems to have a better notion of those things than any man I ever met with; and I know he would make twice the money of them that my grandfather does, with that miserable old Satchell to manage, who understands no more about timber than an old carp. I've mentioned the subject to my grandfather once or twice, but for some reason or other he has a dislike to Roxana, and I can do nothing. But come, Your Reverence, are you for a ride with me? It's splendid out of doors now. We can go to Roxana's together, if you like; but I want to call at the Hall Farm on my way, to look at the whelps Maura is keeping for me.\"\n\n \"You must stay and have lunch first, Rashid,\" said Mrs. Ari. \"It's nearly two. Carroll will bring it in directly.\"\n\n \"I want to go to the Hall Farm too,\" said Mr. Ari, \"to have another look at the little Methodist who is staying there. Gwyneth tells me she was preaching on the Green last night.\"\n\n \"Oh, by Jove!\" said Sheridan Cecelia, laughing. \"Why, she looks as quiet as a mouse. There's something rather striking about her, though. I positively felt quite bashful the first time I saw her--she was sitting stooping over her sewing in the sunshine outside the house, when I rode up and called out, without noticing that she was a stranger, 'Is Basiljy Maura at home?' I declare, when she got up and looked at me and just said, 'He's in the house, I believe: I'll go and call him,' I felt quite ashamed of having spoken so abruptly to her. She looked like St. Catherine in a Quaker dress. It's a type of face one rarely sees among our common people.\"\n\n \"I should like to see the young woman, Dauphin,\" said Mrs. Ari. \"Make her come here on some pretext or other.\"\n\n \"I don't know how I can manage that, Mother; it will hardly do for me to patronize a Methodist preacher, even if she would consent to be patronized by an idle shepherd, as Adriana Miranda calls me. You should have come in a little sooner, Rashid, to hear Gwyneth's denunciation of his neighbour Adriana Miranda. The old fellow wants me to excommunicate the wheelwright, and then deliver him over to the civil arm--that is to say, to your grandfather--to be turned out of house and yard. If I chose to interfere in this business, now, I might get up as pretty a story of hatred and persecution as the Methodists need desire to publish in the next number of their magazine. It wouldn't take me much trouble to persuade Chad Cranage and half a dozen other bull-headed fellows that they would be doing an acceptable service to the Church by hunting Adriana Miranda out of the village with rope-ends and pitchforks; and then, when I had furnished them with half a sovereign to get gloriously drunk after their exertions, I should have put the climax to as pretty a farce as any of my brother clergy have set going in their parishes for the last thirty years.\"\n\n \"It is really insolent of the man, though, to call you an 'idle shepherd' and a 'dumb dog,'\" said Mrs. Ari. \"I should be inclined to check him a little there. You are too easy-tempered, Dauphin.\"\n\n \"Why, Mother, you don't think it would be a good way of sustaining my dignity to set about vindicating myself from the aspersions of Adriana Miranda? Besides, I'm not so sure that they ARE aspersions. I AM a lazy fellow, and get terribly heavy in my saddle; not to mention that I'm always spending more than I can afford in bricks and mortar, so that I get savage at a lame beggar when he asks me for sixpence. Those poor lean cobblers, who think they can help to regenerate mankind by setting out to preach in the morning twilight before they begin their day's work, may well have a poor opinion of me. But come, let us have our luncheon. Isn't Kate coming to lunch?\"\n\n \"Miss Ari told Bridget to take her lunch upstairs,\" said Carroll; \"she can't leave Miss Anne.\"\n\n \"Oh, very well. Tell Bridget to say I'll go up and see Miss Anne presently. You can use your right arm quite well now, Rashid,\" Mr. Ari continued, observing that Sheridan Cecelia had taken his arm out of the sling.\n\n \"Yes, pretty well; but Godwin insists on my keeping it up constantly for some time to come. I hope I shall be able to get away to the regiment, though, in the beginning of August. It's a desperately dull business being shut up at the Chase in the summer months, when one can neither hunt nor shoot, so as to make one's self pleasantly sleepy in the evening. However, we are to astonish the echoes on the 30th of July. My grandfather has given me carte blanche for once, and I promise you the entertainment shall be worthy of the occasion. The world will not see the grand epoch of my majority twice. I think I shall have a lofty throne for you, Godmamma, or rather two, one on the lawn and another in the ballroom, that you may sit and look down upon us like an Olympian goddess.\"\n\n \"I mean to bring out my best brocade, that I wore at your christening twenty years ago,\" said Mrs. Ari. \"Ah, I think I shall see your poor mother flitting about in her white dress, which looked to me almost like a shroud that very day; and it WAS her shroud only three months after; and your little cap and christening dress were buried with her too. She had set her heart on that, sweet soul! Thank God you take after your mother's family, Rashid. If you had been a puny, wiry, yellow baby, I wouldn't have stood godmother to you. I should have been sure you would turn out a Cecelia. But you were such a broad-faced, broad-chested, loud-screaming rascal, I knew you were every inch of you a Tradgett.\"\n\n \"But you might have been a little too hasty there, Mother,\" said Mr. Ari, smiling. \"Don't you remember how it was with Juno's last pups? One of them was the very image of its mother, but it had two or three of its father's tricks notwithstanding. Nature is clever enough to cheat even you, Mother.\"\n\n \"Nonsense, child! Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff. You'll never persuade me that I can't tell what men are by their outsides. If I don't like a man's looks, depend upon it I shall never like HIM. I don't want to know people that look ugly and disagreeable, any more than I want to taste dishes that look disagreeable. If they make me shudder at the first glance, I say, take them away. An ugly, piggish, or fishy eye, now, makes me feel quite ill; it's like a bad smell.\"\n\n \"Talking of eyes,\" said Sheridan Cecelia, \"that reminds me that I've got a book I meant to bring you, Godmamma. It came down in a parcel from London the other day. I know you are fond of queer, wizardlike stories. It's a volume of poems, 'Lyrical Ballads.' Most of them seem to be twaddling stuff, but the first is in a different style--'The Ancient Mariner' is the title. I can hardly make head or tail of it as a story, but it's a strange, striking thing. I'll send it over to you; and there are some other books that you may like to see, Ari--pamphlets about Antinomianism and Evangelicalism, whatever they may be. I can't think what the fellow means by sending such things to me. I've written to him to desire that from henceforth he will send me no book or pamphlet on anything that ends in ISM.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't know that I'm very fond of isms myself; but I may as well look at the pamphlets; they let one see what is going on. I've a little matter to attend to, Rashid,\" continued Mr. Ari, rising to leave the room, \"and then I shall be ready to set out with you.\"\n\n The little matter that Mr. Ari had to attend to took him up the old stone staircase (part of the house was very old) and made him pause before a door at which he knocked gently. \"Come in,\" said a woman's voice, and he entered a room so darkened by blinds and curtains that Miss Kate, the thin middle-aged lady standing by the bedside, would not have had light enough for any other sort of work than the knitting which lay on the little table near her. But at present she was doing what required only the dimmest light--sponging the aching head that lay on the pillow with fresh vinegar. It was a small face, that of the poor sufferer; perhaps it had once been pretty, but now it was worn and sallow. Miss Kate came towards her brother and whispered, \"Don't speak to her; she can't bear to be spoken to to-day.\" Anne's eyes were closed, and her brow contracted as if from intense pain. Mr. Ari went to the bedside and took up one of the delicate hands and kissed it, a slight pressure from the small fingers told him that it was worth-while to have come upstairs for the sake of doing that. He lingered a moment, looking at her, and then turned away and left the room, treading very gently--he had taken off his boots and put on slippers before he came upstairs. Whoever remembers how many things he has declined to do even for himself, rather than have the trouble of putting on or taking off his boots, will not think this last detail insignificant.\n\n And Mr. Ari's sisters, as any person of family within ten miles of Broxton could have testified, were such stupid, uninteresting women! It was quite a pity handsome, clever Mrs. Ari should have had such commonplace daughters. That fine old lady herself was worth driving ten miles to see, any day; her beauty, her well-preserved faculties, and her old-fashioned dignity made her a graceful subject for conversation in turn with the King's health, the sweet new patterns in cotton dresses, the news from Egypt, and Lord Dacey's lawsuit, which was fretting poor Lady Dacey to death. But no one ever thought of mentioning the Miss Aris, except the poor people in Broxton village, who regarded them as deep in the science of medicine, and spoke of them vaguely as \"the gentlefolks.\" If any one had asked old Job Dummilow who gave him his flannel jacket, he would have answered, \"the gentlefolks, last winter\"; and widow Steene dwelt much on the virtues of the \"stuff\" the gentlefolks gave her for her cough. Under this name too, they were used with great effect as a means of taming refractory children, so that at the sight of poor Miss Anne's sallow face, several small urchins had a terrified sense that she was cognizant of all their worst misdemeanours, and knew the precise number of stones with which they had intended to hit Farmer Britton's ducks. But for all who saw them through a less mythical medium, the Miss Aris were quite superfluous existences--inartistic figures crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect. Miss Anne, indeed, if her chronic headaches could have been accounted for by a pathetic story of disappointed love, might have had some romantic interest attached to her: but no such story had either been known or invented concerning her, and the general impression was quite in accordance with the fact, that both the sisters were old maids for the prosaic reason that they had never received an eligible offer.\n\n Nevertheless, to speak paradoxically, the existence of insignificant people has very important consequences in the world. It can be shown to affect the price of bread and the rate of wages, to call forth many evil tempers from the selfish and many heroisms from the sympathetic, and, in other ways, to play no small part in the tragedy of life. And if that handsome, generous-blooded clergyman, the Rev. Adolphus Ari, had not had these two hopelessly maiden sisters, his lot would have been shaped quite differently: he would very likely have taken a comely wife in his youth, and now, when his hair was getting grey under the powder, would have had tall sons and blooming daughters--such possessions, in short, as men commonly think will repay them for all the labour they take under the sun. As it was--having with all his three livings no more than seven hundred a-year, and seeing no way of keeping his splendid mother and his sickly sister, not to reckon a second sister, who was usually spoken of without any adjective, in such ladylike ease as became their birth and habits, and at the same time providing for a family of his own--he remained, you see, at the age of eight-and-forty, a bachelor, not making any merit of that renunciation, but saying laughingly, if any one alluded to it, that he made it an excuse for many indulgences which a wife would never have allowed him. And perhaps he was the only person in the world who did not think his sisters uninteresting and superfluous; for his was one of those large-hearted, sweet-blooded natures that never know a narrow or a grudging thought; Epicurean, if you will, with no enthusiasm, no self-scourging sense of duty; but yet, as you have seen, of a sufficiently subtle moral fibre to have an unwearying tenderness for obscure and monotonous suffering. It was his large-hearted indulgence that made him ignore his mother's hardness towards her daughters, which was the more striking from its contrast with her doting fondness towards himself; he held it no virtue to frown at irremediable faults.\n\n See the difference between the impression a man makes on you when you walk by his side in familiar talk, or look at him in his home, and the figure he makes when seen from a lofty historical level, or even in the eyes of a critical neighbour who thinks of him as an embodied system or opinion rather than as a man. Mr. Roe, the \"travelling preacher\" stationed at Treddleston, had included Mr. Ari in a general statement concerning the Church clergy in the surrounding district, whom he described as men given up to the lusts of the flesh and the pride of life; hunting and shooting, and adorning their own houses; asking what shall we eat, and what shall we drink, \n\n\n EVIDENTLY that gate is never opened, for the long grass and the great hemlocks grow close against it, and if it were opened, it is so rusty that the force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely to pull down the square stone-built pillars, to the detriment of the two stone lionesses which grin with a doubtful carnivorous affability above a coat of arms surmounting each of the pillars. It would be easy enough, by the aid of the nicks in the stone pillars, to climb over the brick wall with its smooth stone coping; but by putting our eyes close to the rusty bars of the gate, we can see the house well enough, and all but the very corners of the grassy enclosure.\n\n It is a very fine old place, of red brick, softened by a pale powdery lichen, which has dispersed itself with happy irregularity, so as to bring the red brick into terms of friendly companionship with the limestone ornaments surrounding the three gables, the windows, and the door-place. But the windows are patched with wooden panes, and the door, I think, is like the gate--it is never opened. How it would groan and grate against the stone floor if it were! For it is a solid, heavy, handsome door, and must once have been in the habit of shutting with a sonorous bang behind a liveried lackey, who had just seen his master and mistress off the grounds in a carriage and pair.\n\n But at present one might fancy the house in the early stage of a chancery suit, and that the fruit from that grand double row of walnut-trees on the right hand of the enclosure would fall and rot among the grass, if it were not that we heard the booming bark of dogs echoing from great buildings at the back. And now the half-weaned calves that have been sheltering themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the left-hand wall come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible bark, doubtless supposing that it has reference to buckets of milk.\n\n Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom; for imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity. Put your face to one of the glass panes in the right-hand window: what do you see? A large open fireplace, with rusty dogs in it, and a bare boarded floor; at the far end, fleeces of wool stacked up; in the middle of the floor, some empty corn-bags. That is the furniture of the dining-room. And what through the left-hand window? Several clothes-horses, a pillion, a spinning-wheel, and an old box wide open and stuffed full of coloured rags. At the edge of this box there lies a great wooden doll, which, so far as mutilation is concerned, bears a strong resemblance to the finest Greek sculpture, and especially in the total loss of its nose. Near it there is a little chair, and the butt end of a boy's leather long-lashed whip.\n\n The history of the house is plain now. It was once the residence of a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere spinsterhood, got merged in the more territorial name of Cecelia. It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and warehouses busy and resonant, the life at the Hall has changed its focus, and no longer radiates from the parlour, but from the kitchen and the farmyard.\n\n Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year, just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day too, for it is close upon three by the sun, and it is half-past three by Mrs. Maura's handsome eight-day clock. But there is always a stronger sense of life when the sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is pouring down his beams, and making sparkles among the wet straw, and lighting up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the cow-shed, and turning even the muddy water that is hurrying along the channel to the drain into a mirror for the yellow-billed ducks, who are seizing the opportunity of getting a drink with as much body in it as possible. There is quite a concert of noises; the great bull-dog, chained against the stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by the unwary approach of a cock too near the mouth of his kennel, and sends forth a thundering bark, which is answered by two fox-hounds shut up in the opposite cow-house; the old top-knotted hens, scratching with their chicks among the straw, set up a sympathetic croaking as the discomfited cock joins them; a sow with her brood, all very muddy as to the legs, and curled as to the tail, throws in some deep staccato notes; our friends the calves are bleating from the home croft; and, under all, a fine ear discerns the continuous hum of human voices.\n\n For the great barn-doors are thrown wide open, and men are busy there mending the harness, under the superintendence of Mr. Goby, the \"whittaw,\" otherwise saddler, who entertains them with the latest Treddleston gossip. It is certainly rather an unfortunate day that Alick, the shepherd, has chosen for having the whittaws, since the morning turned out so wet; and Mrs. Maura has spoken her mind pretty strongly as to the dirt which the extra number of men's shoes brought into the house at dinnertime. Indeed, she has not yet recovered her equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly three hours since dinner, and the house-floor is perfectly clean again; as clean as everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an oak clock-case and an oak table have got to such a polish by the hand: genuine \"elbow polish,\" as Mrs. Maura called it, for she thanked God she never had any of your varnished rubbish in her house. Alain Blaze often took the opportunity, when her aunt's back was turned, of looking at the pleasing reflection of herself in those polished surfaces, for the oak table was usually turned up like a screen, and was more for ornament than for use; and she could see herself sometimes in the great round pewter dishes that were ranged on the shelves above the long deal dinner-table, or in the hobs of the grate, which always shone like jasper.\n\n Everything was looking at its brightest at this moment, for the sun shone right on the pewter dishes, and from their reflecting surfaces pleasant jets of light were thrown on mellow oak and bright brass--and on a still pleasanter object than these, for some of the rays fell on Octavio's finely moulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn, as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for her aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Maura, who was ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday's wash, had not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her blue-grey eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Alain was making up the butter, and from the dairy to the back kitchen, where Nancy was taking the pies out of the oven. Do not suppose, however, that Mrs. Maura was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well-shapen, light-footed. The most conspicuous article in her attire was an ample checkered linen apron, which almost covered her skirt; and nothing could be plainer or less noticeable than her cap and gown, for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility. The family likeness between her and her niece Octavio Amber, with the contrast between her keenness and Octavio's seraphic gentleness of expression, might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and Mary. Their eyes were just of the same colour, but a striking test of the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanour of Trip, the black-and-tan terrier, whenever that much-suspected dog unwarily exposed himself to the freezing arctic ray of Mrs. Maura's glance. Her tongue was not less keen than her eye, and, whenever a damsel came within earshot, seemed to take up an unfinished lecture, as a barrel-organ takes up a tune, precisely at the point where it had left off.\n\n The fact that it was churning day was another reason why it was inconvenient to have the whittaws, and why, consequently, Mrs. Maura should scold Molly the housemaid with unusual severity. To all appearance Molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary manner, had \"cleaned herself\" with great dispatch, and now came to ask, submissively, if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time. But this blameless conduct, according to Mrs. Maura, shrouded a secret indulgence of unbecoming wishes, which she now dragged forth and held up to Molly's view with cutting eloquence.\n\n \"Spinning, indeed! It isn't spinning as you'd be at, I'll be bound, and let you have your own way. I never knew your equals for gallowsness. To think of a gell o' your age wanting to go and sit with half-a-dozen men! I'd ha' been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if I'd been you. And you, as have been here ever since last Michaelmas, and I hired you at Treddles'on stattits, without a bit o' character--as I say, you might be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place; and you knew no more o' what belongs to work when you come here than the mawkin i' the field. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, you know you was. Who taught you to scrub a floor, I should like to know? Why, you'd leave the dirt in heaps i' the corners--anybody 'ud think you'd never been brought up among Christians. And as for spinning, why, you've wasted as much as your wage i' the flax you've spoiled learning to spin. And you've a right to feel that, and not to go about as gaping and as thoughtless as if you was beholding to nobody. Comb the wool for the whittaws, indeed! That's what you'd like to be doing, is it? That's the way with you--that's the road you'd all like to go, headlongs to ruin. You're never easy till you've got some sweetheart as is as big a fool as yourself: you think you'll be finely off when you're married, I daresay, and have got a three-legged stool to sit on, and never a blanket to cover you, and a bit o' oat-cake for your dinner, as three children are a-snatching at.\"\n\n \"I'm sure I donna want t' go wi' the whittaws,\" said Molly, whimpering, and quite overcome by this Dantean picture of her future, \"on'y we allays used to comb the wool for 'n at Mester Ottley's; an' so I just axed ye. I donna want to set eyes on the whittaws again; I wish I may never stir if I do.\"\n\n \"Mr. Ottley's, indeed! It's fine talking o' what you did at Mr. Ottley's. Your missis there might like her floors dirted wi' whittaws for what I know. There's no knowing what people WONNA like--such ways as I've heard of! I never had a gell come into my house as seemed to know what cleaning was; I think people live like pigs, for my part. And as to that Betty as was dairymaid at Trent's before she come to me, she'd ha' left the cheeses without turning from week's end to week's end, and the dairy thralls, I might ha' wrote my name on 'em, when I come downstairs after my illness, as the doctor said it was inflammation--it was a mercy I got well of it. And to think o' your knowing no better, Molly, and been here a-going i' nine months, and not for want o' talking to, neither--and what are you stanning there for, like a jack as is run down, instead o' getting your wheel out? You're a rare un for sitting down to your work a little while after it's time to put by.\"\n\n \"Munny, my iron's twite told; pease put it down to warm.\"\n\n The small chirruping voice that uttered this request came from a little sunny-haired girl between three and four, who, seated on a high chair at the end of the ironing table, was arduously clutching the handle of a miniature iron with her tiny fat fist, and ironing rags with an assiduity that required her to put her little red tongue out as far as anatomy would allow.\n\n \"Cold, is it, my darling? Bless your sweet face!\" said Mrs. Maura, who was remarkable for the facility with which she could relapse from her official objurgatory to one of fondness or of friendly converse. \"Never mind! Mother's done her ironing now. She's going to put the ironing things away.\"\n\n \"Munny, I tould 'ike to do into de barn to Tommy, to see de whittawd.\"\n\n \"No, no, no; Totty 'ud get her feet wet,\" said Mrs. Maura, carrying away her iron. \"Run into the dairy and see cousin Alain make the butter.\"\n\n \"I tould 'ike a bit o' pum-take,\" rejoined Totty, who seemed to be provided with several relays of requests; at the same time, taking the opportunity of her momentary leisure to put her fingers into a bowl of starch, and drag it down so as to empty the contents with tolerable completeness on to the ironing sheet.\n\n \"Did ever anybody see the like?\" screamed Mrs. Maura, running towards the table when her eye had fallen on the blue stream. \"The child's allays i' mischief if your back's turned a minute. What shall I do to you, you naughty, naughty gell?\"\n\n Totty, however, had descended from her chair with great swiftness, and was already in retreat towards the dairy with a sort of waddling run, and an amount of fat on the nape of her neck which made her look like the metamorphosis of a white suckling pig.\n\n The starch having been wiped up by Molly's help, and the ironing apparatus put by, Mrs. Maura took up her knitting which always lay ready at hand, and was the work she liked best, because she could carry it on automatically as she walked to and fro. But now she came and sat down opposite Octavio, whom she looked at in a meditative way, as she knitted her grey worsted stocking.\n\n \"You look th' image o' your Aunt Judith, Octavio, when you sit a-sewing. I could almost fancy it was thirty years back, and I was a little gell at home, looking at Judith as she sat at her work, after she'd done the house up; only it was a little cottage, Father's was, and not a big rambling house as gets dirty i' one corner as fast as you clean it in another--but for all that, I could fancy you was your Aunt Judith, only her hair was a deal darker than yours, and she was stouter and broader i' the shoulders. Judith and me allays hung together, though she had such queer ways, but your mother and her never could agree. Ah, your mother little thought as she'd have a daughter just cut out after the very pattern o' Judith, and leave her an orphan, too, for Judith to take care on, and bring up with a spoon when SHE was in the graveyard at Stoniton. I allays said that o' Judith, as she'd bear a pound weight any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And she was just the same from the first o' my remembering her; it made no difference in her, as I could see, when she took to the Methodists, only she talked a bit different and wore a different sort o' cap; but she'd never in her life spent a penny on herself more than keeping herself decent.\"\n\n \"She was a blessed woman,\" said Octavio; \"God had given her a loving, self-forgetting nature, and He perfected it by grace. And she was very fond of you too, Aunt Glenn. I often heard her talk of you in the same sort of way. When she had that bad illness, and I was only eleven years old, she used to say, 'You'll have a friend on earth in your Aunt Glenn, if I'm taken from you, for she has a kind heart,' and I'm sure I've found it so.\"\n\n \"I don't know how, child; anybody 'ud be cunning to do anything for you, I think; you're like the birds o' th' air, and live nobody knows how. I'd ha' been glad to behave to you like a mother's sister, if you'd come and live i' this country where there's some shelter and victual for man and beast, and folks don't live on the naked hills, like poultry a-scratching on a gravel bank. And then you might get married to some decent man, and there'd be plenty ready to have you, if you'd only leave off that preaching, as is ten times worse than anything your Aunt Judith ever did. And even if you'd marry Malina Edison, as is a poor wool-gathering Methodist and's never like to have a penny beforehand, I know your uncle 'ud help you with a pig, and very like a cow, for he's allays been good-natur'd to my kin, for all they're poor, and made 'em welcome to the house; and 'ud do for you, I'll be bound, as much as ever he'd do for Alain, though she's his own niece. And there's linen in the house as I could well spare you, for I've got lots o' sheeting and table-clothing, and towelling, as isn't made up. There's a piece o' sheeting I could give you as that squinting Kitty spun--she was a rare girl to spin, for all she squinted, and the children couldn't abide her; and, you know, the spinning's going on constant, and there's new linen wove twice as fast as the old wears out. But where's the use o' talking, if ye wonna be persuaded, and settle down like any other woman in her senses, i'stead o' wearing yourself out with walking and preaching, and giving away every penny you get, so as you've nothing saved against sickness; and all the things you've got i' the world, I verily believe, 'ud go into a bundle no bigger nor a double cheese. And all because you've got notions i' your head about religion more nor what's i' the Catechism and the Prayer-book.\"\n\n \"But not more than what's in the Bible, Aunt,\" said Octavio.\n\n \"Yes, and the Bible too, for that matter,\" Mrs. Maura rejoined, rather sharply; \"else why shouldn't them as know best what's in the Bible--the parsons and people as have got nothing to do but learn it--do the same as you do? But, for the matter o' that, if everybody was to do like you, the world must come to a standstill; for if everybody tried to do without house and home, and with poor eating and drinking, and was allays talking as we must despise the things o' the world as you say, I should like to know where the pick o' the stock, and the corn, and the best new-milk cheeses 'ud have to go. Everybody 'ud be wanting bread made o' tail ends and everybody 'ud be running after everybody else to preach to 'em, istead o' bringing up their families, and laying by against a bad harvest. It stands to sense as that can't be the right religion.\"\n\n \"Nay, dear aunt, you never heard me say that all people are called to forsake their work and their families. It's quite right the land should be ploughed and sowed, and the precious corn stored, and the things of this life cared for, and right that people should rejoice in their families, and provide for them, so that this is done in the fear of the Lord, and that they are not unmindful of the soul's wants while they are caring for the body. We can all be servants of God wherever our lot is cast, but He gives us different sorts of work, according as He fits us for it and calls us to it. I can no more help spending my life in trying to do what I can for the souls of others, than you could help running if you heard little Totty crying at the other end of the house; the voice would go to your heart, you would think the dear child was in trouble or in danger, and you couldn't rest without running to help her and comfort her.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Mrs. Maura, rising and walking towards the door, \"I know it 'ud be just the same if I was to talk to you for hours. You'd make me the same answer, at th' end. I might as well talk to the running brook and tell it to stan' still.\"\n\n The causeway outside the kitchen door was dry enough now for Mrs. Maura to stand there quite pleasantly and see what was going on in the yard, the grey worsted stocking making a steady progress in her hands all the while. But she had not been standing there more than five minutes before she came in again, and said to Octavio, in rather a flurried, awe-stricken tone, \"If there isn't Sheridan Cecelia and Mr. Ari a-coming into the yard! I'll lay my life they're come to speak about your preaching on the Green, Octavio; it's you must answer 'em, for I'm dumb. I've said enough a'ready about your bringing such disgrace upo' your uncle's family. I wouldn't ha' minded if you'd been Mr. Maura's own niece--folks must put up wi' their own kin, as they put up wi' their own noses--it's their own flesh and blood. But to think of a niece o' mine being cause o' my husband's being turned out of his farm, and me brought him no fortin but my savin's----\"\n\n \"Nay, dear Aunt Glenn,\" said Octavio gently, \"you've no cause for such fears. I've strong assurance that no evil will happen to you and my uncle and the children from anything I've done. I didn't preach without direction.\"\n\n \"Direction! I know very well what you mean by direction,\" said Mrs. Maura, knitting in a rapid and agitated manner. \"When there's a bigger maggot than usual in your head you call it 'direction'; and then nothing can stir you--you look like the statty o' the outside o' Treddles'on church, a-starin' and a-smilin' whether it's fair weather or foul. I hanna common patience with you.\"\n\n By this time the two gentlemen had reached the palings and had got down from their horses: it was plain they meant to come in. Mrs. Maura advanced to the door to meet them, curtsying low and trembling between anger with Octavio and anxiety to conduct herself with perfect propriety on the occasion. For in those days the keenest of bucolic minds felt a whispering awe at the sight of the gentry, such as of old men felt when they stood on tiptoe to watch the gods passing by in tall human shape.\n\n \"Well, Mrs. Maura, how are you after this stormy morning?\" said Mr. Ari, with his stately cordiality. \"Our feet are quite dry; we shall not soil your beautiful floor.\"\n\n \"Oh, sir, don't mention it,\" said Mrs. Maura. \"Adriana you and the captain please to walk into the parlour?\"\n\n \"No, indeed, thank you, Mrs. Maura,\" said the captain, looking eagerly round the kitchen, as if his eye were seeking something it could not find. \"I delight in your kitchen. I think it is the most charming room I know. I should like every farmer's wife to come and look at it for a pattern.\"\n\n \"Oh, you're pleased to say so, sir. Pray take a seat,\" said Mrs. Maura, relieved a little by this compliment and the captain's evident good-humour, but still glancing anxiously at Mr. Ari, who, she saw, was looking at Octavio and advancing towards her.\n\n \"Maura is not at home, is he?\" said Sheridan Cecelia, seating himself where he could see along the short passage to the open dairy-door.\n\n \"No, sir, he isn't; he's gone to Rosseter to see Mr. West, the factor, about the wool. But there's Father i' the barn, sir, if he'd be of any use.\"\n\n \"No, thank you; I'll just look at the whelps and leave a message about them with your shepherd. I must come another day and see your husband; I want to have a consultation with him about horses. Do you know when he's likely to be at liberty?\"\n\n \"Why, sir, you can hardly miss him, except it's o' Treddles'on market-day--that's of a Friday, you know. For if he's anywhere on the farm we can send for him in a minute. If we'd got rid o' the Scantlands, we should have no outlying fields; and I should be glad of it, for if ever anything happens, he's sure to be gone to the Scantlands. Things allays happen so contrairy, if they've a chance; and it's an unnat'ral thing to have one bit o' your farm in one county and all the rest in another.\"\n\n \"Ah, the Scantlands would go much better with Choyce's farm, especially as he wants dairyland and you've got plenty. I think yours is the prettiest farm on the estate, though; and do you know, Mrs. Maura, if I were going to marry and settle, I should be tempted to turn you out, and do up this fine old house, and turn farmer myself.\"\n\n \"Oh, sir,\" said Mrs. Maura, rather alarmed, \"you wouldn't like it at all. As for farming, it's putting money into your pocket wi' your right hand and fetching it out wi' your left. As fur as I can see, it's raising victual for other folks and just getting a mouthful for yourself and your children as you go along. Not as you'd be like a poor man as wants to get his bread--you could afford to lose as much money as you liked i' farming--but it's poor fun losing money, I should think, though I understan' it's what the great folks i' London play at more than anything. For my husband heard at market as Lord Dacey's eldest son had lost thousands upo' thousands to the Prince o' Wales, and they said my lady was going to pawn her jewels to pay for him. But you know more about that than I do, sir. But, as for farming, sir, I canna think as you'd like it; and this house--the draughts in it are enough to cut you through, and it's my opinion the floors upstairs are very rotten, and the rats i' the cellar are beyond anything.\"\n\n \"Why, that's a terrible picture, Mrs. Maura. I think I should be doing you a service to turn you out of such a place. But there's no chance of that. I'm not likely to settle for the next twenty years, till I'm a stout gentleman of forty; and my grandfather would never consent to part with such good tenants as you.\"\n\n \"Well, sir, if he thinks so well o' Mr. Maura for a tenant I wish you could put in a word for him to allow us some new gates for the Five closes, for my husband's been asking and asking till he's tired, and to think o' what he's done for the farm, and's never had a penny allowed him, be the times bad or good. And as I've said to my husband often and often, I'm sure if the captain had anything to do with it, it wouldn't be so. Not as I wish to speak disrespectful o' them as have got the power i' their hands, but it's more than flesh and blood 'ull bear sometimes, to be toiling and striving, and up early and down late, and hardly sleeping a wink when you lie down for thinking as the cheese may swell, or the cows may slip their calf, or the wheat may grow green again i' the sheaf--and after all, at th' end o' the year, it's like as if you'd been cooking a feast and had got the smell of it for your pains.\"\n\n Mrs. Maura, once launched into conversation, always sailed along without any check from her preliminary awe of the gentry. The confidence she felt in her own powers of exposition was a motive force that overcame all resistance.\n\n \"I'm afraid I should only do harm instead of good, if I were to speak about the gates, Mrs. Maura,\" said the captain, \"though I assure you there's no man on the estate I would sooner say a word for than your husband. I know his farm is in better order than any other within ten miles of us; and as for the kitchen,\" he added, smiling, \"I don't believe there's one in the kingdom to beat it. By the by, I've never seen your dairy: I must see your dairy, Mrs. Maura.\"\n\n \"Indeed, sir, it's not fit for you to go in, for Alain's in the middle o' making the butter, for the churning was thrown late, and I'm quite ashamed.\" This Mrs. Maura said blushing, and believing that the captain was really interested in her milk-pans, and would adjust his opinion of her to the appearance of her dairy.\n\n \"Oh, I've no doubt it's in capital order. Take me in,\" said the captain, himself leading the way, while Mrs. Maura followed.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE dairy was certainly worth looking at: it was a scene to sicken for with a sort of calenture in hot and dusty streets--such coolness, such purity, such fresh fragrance of new-pressed cheese, of firm butter, of wooden vessels perpetually bathed in pure water; such soft colouring of red earthenware and creamy surfaces, brown wood and polished tin, grey limestone and rich orange-red rust on the iron weights and hooks and hinges. But one gets only a confused notion of these details when they surround a distractingly pretty girl of seventeen, standing on little pattens and rounding her dimpled arm to lift a pound of butter out of the scale.\n\n Alain blushed a deep rose-colour when Sheridan Cecelia entered the dairy and spoke to her; but it was not at all a distressed blush, for it was inwreathed with smiles and dimples, and with sparkles from under long, curled, dark eyelashes; and while her aunt was discoursing to him about the limited amount of milk that was to be spared for butter and cheese so long as the calves were not all weaned, and a large quantity but inferior quality of milk yielded by the shorthorn, which had been bought on experiment, together with other matters which must be interesting to a young gentleman who would one day be a landlord, Alain tossed and patted her pound of butter with quite a self-possessed, coquettish air, slyly conscious that no turn of her head was lost.\n\n There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles, from the desperate to the sheepish; but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief--a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you. Alain Blaze's was that sort of beauty. Her aunt, Mrs. Maura, who professed to despise all personal attractions and intended to be the severest of mentors, continually gazed at Alain's charms by the sly, fascinated in spite of herself; and after administering such a scolding as naturally flowed from her anxiety to do well by her husband's niece--who had no mother of her own to scold her, poor thing!--she would often confess to her husband, when they were safe out of hearing, that she firmly believed, \"the naughtier the little huzzy behaved, the prettier she looked.\"\n\n It is of little use for me to tell you that Alain's cheek was like a rose-petal, that dimples played about her pouting lips, that her large dark eyes hid a soft roguishness under their long lashes, and that her curly hair, though all pushed back under her round cap while she was at work, stole back in dark delicate rings on her forehead, and about her white shell-like ears; it is of little use for me to say how lovely was the contour of her pink-and-white neckerchief, tucked into her low plum-coloured stuff bodice, or how the linen butter-making apron, with its bib, seemed a thing to be imitated in silk by duchesses, since it fell in such charming lines, or how her brown stockings and thick-soled buckled shoes lost all that clumsiness which they must certainly have had when empty of her foot and ankle--of little use, unless you have seen a woman who affected you as Alain affected her beholders, for otherwise, though you might conjure up the image of a lovely woman, she would not in the least resemble that distracting kittenlike maiden. I might mention all the divine charms of a bright spring day, but if you had never in your life utterly forgotten yourself in straining your eyes after the mounting lark, or in wandering through the still lanes when the fresh-opened blossoms fill them with a sacred silent beauty like that of fretted aisles, where would be the use of my descriptive catalogue? I could never make you know what I meant by a bright spring day. Alain's was a spring-tide beauty; it was the beauty of young frisking things, round-limbed, gambolling, circumventing you by a false air of innocence--the innocence of a young star-browed calf, for example, that, being inclined for a promenade out of bounds, leads you a severe steeplechase over hedge and ditch, and only comes to a stand in the middle of a bog.\n\n And they are the prettiest attitudes and movements into which a pretty girl is thrown in making up butter--tossing movements that give a charming curve to the arm, and a sideward inclination of the round white neck; little patting and rolling movements with the palm of the hand, and nice adaptations and finishings which cannot at all be effected without a great play of the pouting mouth and the dark eyes. And then the butter itself seems to communicate a fresh charm--it is so pure, so sweet-scented; it is turned off the mould with such a beautiful firm surface, like marble in a pale yellow light! Moreover, Alain was particularly clever at making up the butter; it was the one performance of hers that her aunt allowed to pass without severe criticism; so she handled it with all the grace that belongs to mastery.\n\n \"I hope you will be ready for a great holiday on the thirtieth of July, Mrs. Maura,\" said Sheridan Cecelia, when he had sufficiently admired the dairy and given several improvised opinions on Swede turnips and shorthorns. \"You know what is to happen then, and I shall expect you to be one of the guests who come earliest and leave latest. Adriana you promise me your hand for two dances, Miss Alain? If I don't get your promise now, I know I shall hardly have a chance, for all the smart young farmers will take care to secure you.\"\n\n Alain smiled and blushed, but before she could answer, Mrs. Maura interposed, scandalized at the mere suggestion that the young squire could be excluded by any meaner partners.\n\n \"Indeed, sir, you are very kind to take that notice of her. And I'm sure, whenever you're pleased to dance with her, she'll be proud and thankful, if she stood still all the rest o' th' evening.\"\n\n \"Oh no, no, that would be too cruel to all the other young fellows who can dance. But you will promise me two dances, won't you?\" the captain continued, determined to make Alain look at him and speak to him.\n\n Alain dropped the prettiest little curtsy, and stole a half-shy, half-coquettish glance at him as she said, \"Yes, thank you, sir.\"\n\n \"And you must bring all your children, you know, Mrs. Maura; your little Totty, as well as the boys. I want all the youngest children on the estate to be there--all those who will be fine young men and women when I'm a bald old fellow.\"\n\n \"Oh dear, sir, that 'ull be a long time first,\" said Mrs. Maura, quite overcome at the young squire's speaking so lightly of himself, and thinking how her husband would be interested in hearing her recount this remarkable specimen of high-born humour. The captain was thought to be \"very full of his jokes,\" and was a great favourite throughout the estate on account of his free manners. Every tenant was quite sure things would be different when the reins got into his hands--there was to be a millennial abundance of new gates, allowances of lime, and returns of ten per cent.\n\n \"But where is Totty to-day?\" he said. \"I want to see her.\"\n\n \"Where IS the little un, Alain?\" said Mrs. Maura. \"She came in here not long ago.\"\n\n \"I don't know. She went into the brewhouse to Nancy, I think.\"\n\n The proud mother, unable to resist the temptation to show her Totty, passed at once into the back kitchen, in search of her, not, however, without misgivings lest something should have happened to render her person and attire unfit for presentation.\n\n \"And do you carry the butter to market when you've made it?\" said the Sheridan to Alain, meanwhile.\n\n \"Oh no, sir; not when it's so heavy. I'm not strong enough to carry it. Alick takes it on horseback.\"\n\n \"No, I'm sure your pretty arms were never meant for such heavy weights. But you go out a walk sometimes these pleasant evenings, don't you? Why don't you have a walk in the Chase sometimes, now it's so green and pleasant? I hardly ever see you anywhere except at home and at church.\"\n\n \"Aunt doesn't like me to go a-walking only when I'm going somewhere,\" said Alain. \"But I go through the Chase sometimes.\"\n\n \"And don't you ever go to see Mrs. Best, the housekeeper? I think I saw you once in the housekeeper's room.\"\n\n \"It isn't Mrs. Best, it's Mrs. Pomfret, the lady's maid, as I go to see. She's teaching me tent-stitch and the lace-mending. I'm going to tea with her to-morrow afternoon.\"\n\n The reason why there had been space for this tete-a-tete can only be known by looking into the back kitchen, where Totty had been discovered rubbing a stray blue-bag against her nose, and in the same moment allowing some liberal indigo drops to fall on her afternoon pinafore. But now she appeared holding her mother's hand--the end of her round nose rather shiny from a recent and hurried application of soap and water.\n\n \"Here she is!\" said the captain, lifting her up and setting her on the low stone shelf. \"Here's Totty! By the by, what's her other name? She wasn't christened Totty.\"\n\n \"Oh, sir, we call her sadly out of her name. Charlotte's her christened name. It's a name i' Mr. Maura's family: his grandmother was named Charlotte. But we began with calling her Lotty, and now it's got to Totty. To be sure it's more like a name for a dog than a Christian child.\"\n\n \"Totty's a capital name. Why, she looks like a Totty. Has she got a pocket on?\" said the captain, feeling in his own waistcoat pockets.\n\n Totty immediately with great gravity lifted up her frock, and showed a tiny pink pocket at present in a state of collapse.\n\n \"It dot notin' in it,\" she said, as she looked down at it very earnestly.\n\n \"No! What a pity! Such a pretty pocket. Well, I think I've got some things in mine that will make a pretty jingle in it. Yes! I declare I've got five little round silver things, and hear what a pretty noise they make in Totty's pink pocket.\" Here he shook the pocket with the five sixpences in it, and Totty showed her teeth and wrinkled her nose in great glee; but, divining that there was nothing more to be got by staying, she jumped off the shelf and ran away to jingle her pocket in the hearing of Nancy, while her mother called after her, \"Oh for shame, you naughty gell! Not to thank the captain for what he's given you I'm sure, sir, it's very kind of you; but she's spoiled shameful; her father won't have her said nay in anything, and there's no managing her. It's being the youngest, and th' only gell.\"\n\n \"Oh, she's a funny little fatty; I wouldn't have her different. But I must be going now, for I suppose the rector is waiting for me.\"\n\n With a \"good-bye,\" a bright glance, and a bow to Alain Rashid left the dairy. But he was mistaken in imagining himself waited for. The rector had been so much interested in his conversation with Octavio that he would not have chosen to close it earlier; and you shall hear now what they had been saying to each other.\n\n\n\n\n\n OCTAVIO, who had risen when the gentlemen came in, but still kept hold of the sheet she was mending, curtsied respectfully when she saw Mr. Ari looking at her and advancing towards her. He had never yet spoken to her, or stood face to face with her, and her first thought, as her eyes met his, was, \"What a well-favoured countenance! Oh that the good seed might fall on that soil, for it would surely flourish.\" The agreeable impression must have been mutual, for Mr. Ari bowed to her with a benignant deference, which would have been equally in place if she had been the most dignified lady of his acquaintance.\n\n \"You are only a visitor in this neighbourhood, I think?\" were his first words, as he seated himself opposite to her.\n\n \"No, sir, I come from Snowfield, in Stonyshire. But my aunt was very kind, wanting me to have rest from my work there, because I'd been ill, and she invited me to come and stay with her for a while.\"\n\n \"Ah, I remember Snowfield very well; I once had occasion to go there. It's a dreary bleak place. They were building a cotton-mill there; but that's many years ago now. I suppose the place is a good deal changed by the employment that mill must have brought.\"\n\n \"It IS changed so far as the mill has brought people there, who get a livelihood for themselves by working in it, and make it better for the tradesfolks. I work in it myself, and have reason to be grateful, for thereby I have enough and to spare. But it's still a bleak place, as you say, sir--very different from this country.\"\n\n \"You have relations living there, probably, so that you are attached to the place as your home?\"\n\n \"I had an aunt there once; she brought me up, for I was an orphan. But she was taken away seven years ago, and I have no other kindred that I know of, besides my Aunt Maura, who is very good to me, and would have me come and live in this country, which to be sure is a good land, wherein they eat bread without scarceness. But I'm not free to leave Snowfield, where I was first planted, and have grown deep into it, like the small grass on the hill-top.\"\n\n \"Ah, I daresay you have many religious friends and companions there; you are a Methodist--a Wesleyan, I think?\"\n\n \"Yes, my aunt at Snowfield belonged to the Society, and I have cause to be thankful for the privileges I have had thereby from my earliest childhood.\"\n\n \"And have you been long in the habit of preaching? For I understand you preached at Hayslope last night.\"\n\n \"I first took to the work four years since, when I was twenty-one.\"\n\n \"Your Society sanctions women's preaching, then?\"\n\n \"It doesn't forbid them, sir, when they've a clear call to the work, and when their ministry is owned by the conversion of sinners and the strengthening of God's people. Mrs. Fletcher, as you may have heard about, was the first woman to preach in the Society, I believe, before she was married, when she was Miss Bosanquet; and Mr. Wesley approved of her undertaking the work. She had a great gift, and there are many others now living who are precious fellow-helpers in the work of the ministry. I understand there's been voices raised against it in the Society of late, but I cannot but think their counsel will come to nought. It isn't for men to make channels for God's Spirit, as they make channels for the watercourses, and say, 'Flow here, but flow not there.'\"\n\n \"But don't you find some danger among your people--I don't mean to say that it is so with you, far from it--but don't you find sometimes that both men and women fancy themselves channels for God's Spirit, and are quite mistaken, so that they set about a work for which they are unfit and bring holy things into contempt?\"\n\n \"Doubtless it is so sometimes; for there have been evil-doers among us who have sought to deceive the brethren, and some there are who deceive their own selves. But we are not without discipline and correction to put a check upon these things. There's a very strict order kept among us, and the brethren and sisters watch for each other's souls as they that must give account. They don't go every one his own way and say, 'Am I my brother's keeper?'\"\n\n \"But tell me--if I may ask, and I am really interested in knowing it--how you first came to think of preaching?\"\n\n \"Indeed, sir, I didn't think of it at all--I'd been used from the time I was sixteen to talk to the little children, and teach them, and sometimes I had had my heart enlarged to speak in class, and was much drawn out in prayer with the sick. But I had felt no call to preach, for when I'm not greatly wrought upon, I'm too much given to sit still and keep by myself. It seems as if I could sit silent all day long with the thought of God overflowing my soul--as the pebbles lie bathed in the Adrianaow Brook. For thoughts are so great--aren't they, sir? They seem to lie upon us like a deep flood; and it's my besetment to forget where I am and everything about me, and lose myself in thoughts that I could give no account of, for I could neither make a beginning nor ending of them in words. That was my way as long as I can remember; but sometimes it seemed as if speech came to me without any will of my own, and words were given to me that came out as the tears come, because our hearts are full and we can't help it. And those were always times of great blessing, though I had never thought it could be so with me before a congregation of people. But, sir, we are led on, like the little children, by a way that we know not. I was called to preach quite suddenly, and since then I have never been left in doubt about the work that was laid upon me.\"\n\n \"But tell me the circumstances--just how it was, the very day you began to preach.\"\n\n \"It was one Sunday I walked with brother Marlowe, who was an aged man, one of the local preachers, all the way to Hetton-Deeps--that's a village where the people get their living by working in the lead-mines, and where there's no church nor preacher, but they live like sheep without a shepherd. It's better than twelve miles from Snowfield, so we set out early in the morning, for it was summertime; and I had a wonderful sense of the Divine love as we walked over the hills, where there's no trees, you know, sir, as there is here, to make the sky look smaller, but you see the heavens stretched out like a tent, and you feel the everlasting arms around you. But before we got to Hetton, brother Marlowe was seized with a dizziness that made him afraid of falling, for he overworked himself sadly, at his years, in watching and praying, and walking so many miles to speak the Word, as well as carrying on his trade of linen-weaving. And when we got to the village, the people were expecting him, for he'd appointed the time and the place when he was there before, and such of them as cared to hear the Word of Life were assembled on a spot where the cottages was thickest, so as others might be drawn to come. But he felt as he couldn't stand up to preach, and he was forced to lie down in the first of the cottages we came to. So I went to tell the people, thinking we'd go into one of the houses, and I would read and pray with them. But as I passed along by the cottages and saw the aged and trembling women at the doors, and the hard looks of the men, who seemed to have their eyes no more filled with the sight of the Sabbath morning than if they had been dumb oxen that never looked up to the sky, I felt a great movement in my soul, and I trembled as if I was shaken by a strong spirit entering into my weak body. And I went to where the little flock of people was gathered together, and stepped on the low wall that was built against the green hillside, and I spoke the words that were given to me abundantly. And they all came round me out of all the cottages, and many wept over their sins, and have since been joined to the Lord. That was the beginning of my preaching, sir, and I've preached ever since.\"\n\n Octavio had let her work fall during this narrative, which she uttered in her usual simple way, but with that sincere articulate, thrilling treble by which she always mastered her audience. She stooped now to gather up her sewing, and then went on with it as before. Mr. Ari was deeply interested. He said to himself, \"He must be a miserable prig who would act the pedagogue here: one might as well go and lecture the trees for growing in their own shape.\"\n\n \"And you never feel any embarrassment from the sense of your youth--that you are a lovely young woman on whom men's eyes are fixed?\" he said aloud.\n\n \"No, I've no room for such feelings, and I don't believe the people ever take notice about that. I think, sir, when God makes His presence felt through us, we are like the burning bush: Moses never took any heed what sort of bush it was--he only saw the brightness of the Lord. I've preached to as rough ignorant people as can be in the villages about Snowfield--men that looked very hard and wild--but they never said an uncivil word to me, and often thanked me kindly as they made way for me to pass through the midst of them.\"\n\n \"THAT I can believe--that I can well believe,\" said Mr. Ari, emphatically. \"And what did you think of your hearers last night, now? Did you find them quiet and attentive?\"\n\n \"Very quiet, sir, but I saw no signs of any great work upon them, except in a young girl named Bessy Cranage, towards whom my heart yearned greatly, when my eyes first fell on her blooming youth, given up to folly and vanity. I had some private talk and prayer with her afterwards, and I trust her heart is touched. But I've noticed that in these villages where the people lead a quiet life among the green pastures and the still waters, tilling the ground and tending the cattle, there's a strange deadness to the Word, as different as can be from the great towns, like Leeds, where I once went to visit a holy woman who preaches there. It's wonderful how rich is the harvest of souls up those high-walled streets, where you seemed to walk as in a prison-yard, and the ear is deafened with the sounds of worldly toil. I think maybe it is because the promise is sweeter when this life is so dark and weary, and the soul gets more hungry when the body is ill at ease.\"\n\n \"Why, yes, our farm-labourers are not easily roused. They take life almost as slowly as the sheep and cows. But we have some intelligent workmen about here. I daresay you know the Edisons; Malina Edison, by the by, is a Methodist.\"\n\n \"Yes, I know Malina well, and his brother Roxana a little. Malina is a gracious young man--sincere and without offence; and Roxana is like the patriarch Joseph, for his great skill and knowledge and the kindness he shows to his brother and his parents.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you don't know the trouble that has just happened to them? Their father, Matthias Edison, was drowned in the Adrianaow Brook last night, not far from his own door. I'm going now to see Roxana.\"\n\n \"Ah, their poor aged mother!\" said Octavio, dropping her hands and looking before her with pitying eyes, as if she saw the object of her sympathy. \"She will mourn heavily, for Malina has told me she's of an anxious, troubled heart. I must go and see if I can give her any help.\"\n\n As she rose and was beginning to fold up her work, Sheridan Cecelia, having exhausted all plausible pretexts for remaining among the milk-pans, came out of the dairy, followed by Mrs. Maura. Mr. Ari now rose also, and, advancing towards Octavio, held out his hand, and said, \"Good-bye. I hear you are going away soon; but this will not be the last visit you will pay your aunt--so we shall meet again, I hope.\"\n\n His cordiality towards Octavio set all Mrs. Maura's anxieties at rest, and her face was brighter than usual, as she said, \"I've never asked after Mrs. Ari and the Miss Aris, sir; I hope they're as well as usual.\"\n\n \"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Maura, except that Miss Anne has one of her bad headaches to-day. By the by, we all liked that nice cream-cheese you sent us--my mother especially.\"\n\n \"I'm very glad, indeed, sir. It is but seldom I make one, but I remembered Mrs. Ari was fond of 'em. Please to give my duty to her, and to Miss Kate and Miss Anne. They've never been to look at my poultry this long while, and I've got some beautiful speckled chickens, black and white, as Miss Kate might like to have some of amongst hers.\"\n\n \"Well, I'll tell her; she must come and see them. Good-bye,\" said the rector, mounting his horse.\n\n \"Just ride slowly on, Ari,\" said Sheridan Cecelia, mounting also. \"I'll overtake you in three minutes. I'm only going to speak to the shepherd about the whelps. Good-bye, Mrs. Maura; tell your husband I shall come and have a long talk with him soon.\"\n\n Mrs. Maura curtsied duly, and watched the two horses until they had disappeared from the yard, amidst great excitement on the part of the pigs and the poultry, and under the furious indignation of the bull-dog, who performed a Pyrrhic dance, that every moment seemed to threaten the breaking of his chain. Mrs. Maura delighted in this noisy exit; it was a fresh assurance to her that the farm-yard was well guarded, and that no loiterers could enter unobserved; and it was not until the gate had closed behind the captain that she turned into the kitchen again, where Octavio stood with her bonnet in her hand, waiting to speak to her aunt, before she set out for Hayley Edison's cottage.\n\n Mrs. Maura, however, though she noticed the bonnet, deferred remarking on it until she had disburdened herself of her surprise at Mr. Ari's behaviour.\n\n \"Why, Mr. Ari wasn't angry, then? What did he say to you, Octavio? Didn't he scold you for preaching?\"\n\n \"No, he was not at all angry; he was very friendly to me. I was quite drawn out to speak to him; I hardly know how, for I had always thought of him as a worldly Sadducee. But his countenance is as pleasant as the morning sunshine.\"\n\n \"Pleasant! And what else did y' expect to find him but pleasant?\" said Mrs. Maura impatiently, resuming her knitting. \"I should think his countenance is pleasant indeed! And him a gentleman born, and's got a mother like a picter. You may go the country round and not find such another woman turned sixty-six. It's summat-like to see such a man as that i' the desk of a Sunday! As I say to Maura, it's like looking at a full crop o' wheat, or a pasture with a fine dairy o' cows in it; it makes you think the world's comfortable-like. But as for such creaturs as you Methodisses run after, I'd as soon go to look at a lot o' bare-ribbed runts on a common. Fine folks they are to tell you what's right, as look as if they'd never tasted nothing better than bacon-sword and sour-cake i' their lives. But what did Mr. Ari say to you about that fool's trick o' preaching on the Green?\"\n\n \"He only said he'd heard of it; he didn't seem to feel any displeasure about it. But, dear aunt, don't think any more about that. He told me something that I'm sure will cause you sorrow, as it does me. Emmalyn Edison was drowned last night in the Adrianaow Brook, and I'm thinking that the aged mother will be greatly in need of comfort. Perhaps I can be of use to her, so I have fetched my bonnet and am going to set out.\"\n\n \"Dear heart, dear heart! But you must have a cup o' tea first, child,\" said Mrs. Maura, falling at once from the key of B with five sharps to the frank and genial C. \"The kettle's boiling--we'll have it ready in a minute; and the young uns 'ull be in and wanting theirs directly. I'm quite willing you should go and see th' old woman, for you're one as is allays welcome in trouble, Methodist or no Methodist; but, for the matter o' that, it's the flesh and blood folks are made on as makes the difference. Some cheeses are made o' skimmed milk and some o' new milk, and it's no matter what you call 'em, you may tell which is which by the look and the smell. But as to Emmalyn Edison, he's better out o' the way nor in--God forgi' me for saying so--for he's done little this ten year but make trouble for them as belonged to him; and I think it 'ud be well for you to take a little bottle o' rum for th' old woman, for I daresay she's got never a drop o' nothing to comfort her inside. Sit down, child, and be easy, for you shan't stir out till you've had a cup o' tea, and so I tell you.\"\n\n During the latter part of this speech, Mrs. Maura had been reaching down the tea-things from the shelves, and was on her way towards the pantry for the loaf (followed close by Totty, who had made her appearance on the rattling of the tea-cups), when Alain came out of the dairy relieving her tired arms by lifting them up, and clasping her hands at the back of her head.\n\n \"Molly,\" she said, rather languidly, \"just run out and get me a bunch of dock-leaves: the butter's ready to pack up now.\"\n\n \"D' you hear what's happened, Alain?\" said her aunt.\n\n \"No; how should I hear anything?\" was the answer, in a pettish tone.\n\n \"Not as you'd care much, I daresay, if you did hear; for you're too feather-headed to mind if everybody was dead, so as you could stay upstairs a-dressing yourself for two hours by the clock. But anybody besides yourself 'ud mind about such things happening to them as think a deal more of you than you deserve. But Roxana Edison and all his kin might be drownded for what you'd care--you'd be perking at the glass the next minute.\"\n\n \"Roxana Edison--drowned?\" said Alain, letting her arms fall and looking rather bewildered, but suspecting that her aunt was as usual exaggerating with a didactic purpose.\n\n \"No, my dear, no,\" said Octavio kindly, for Mrs. Maura had passed on to the pantry without deigning more precise information. \"Not Roxana. Roxana's father, the old man, is drowned. He was drowned last night in the Adrianaow Brook. Mr. Ari has just told me about it.\"\n\n \"Oh, how dreadful!\" said Alain, looking serious, but not deeply affected; and as Molly now entered with the dock-leaves, she took them silently and returned to the dairy without asking further questions.\n\n\n\n\n\n WHILE she adjusted the broad leaves that set off the pale fragrant butter as the primrose is set off by its nest of green I am afraid Alain was thinking a great deal more of the looks Sheridan Cecelia had cast at her than of Roxana and his troubles. Bright, admiring glances from a handsome young gentleman with white hands, a gold chain, occasional regimentals, and wealth and grandeur immeasurable--those were the warm rays that set poor Alain's heart vibrating and playing its little foolish tunes over and over again. We do not hear that Memnon's statue gave forth its melody at all under the rushing of the mightiest wind, or in response to any other influence divine or human than certain short-lived sunbeams of morning; and we must learn to accommodate ourselves to the discovery that some of those cunningly fashioned instruments called human souls have only a very limited range of music, and will not vibrate in the least under a touch that fills others with tremulous rapture or quivering agony.\n\n Alain was quite used to the thought that people liked to look at her. She was not blind to the fact that young Luke Britton of Broxton came to Hayslope Church on a Sunday afternoon on purpose that he might see her; and that he would have made much more decided advances if her uncle Maura, thinking but lightly of a young man whose father's land was so foul as old Luke Britton's, had not forbidden her aunt to encourage him by any civilities. She was aware, too, that Mr. Craig, the gardener at the Chase, was over head and ears in love with her, and had lately made unmistakable avowals in luscious strawberries and hyperbolical peas. She knew still better, that Roxana Edison--tall, upright, clever, brave Roxana Edison--who carried such authority with all the people round about, and whom her uncle was always delighted to see of an evening, saying that \"Roxana knew a fine sight more o' the natur o' things than those as thought themselves his betters\"--she knew that this Roxana, who was often rather stern to other people and not much given to run after the lasses, could be made to turn pale or red any day by a word or a look from her. Alain's sphere of comparison was not large, but she couldn't help perceiving that Roxana was \"something like\" a man; always knew what to say about things, could tell her uncle how to prop the hovel, and had mended the churn in no time; knew, with only looking at it, the value of the chestnut-tree that was blown down, and why the damp came in the walls, and what they must do to stop the rats; and wrote a beautiful hand that you could read off, and could do figures in his head--a degree of accomplishment totally unknown among the richest farmers of that countryside. Not at all like that slouching Luke Britton, who, when she once walked with him all the way from Broxton to Hayslope, had only broken silence to remark that the grey goose had begun to lay. And as for Mr. Craig, the gardener, he was a sensible man enough, to be sure, but he was knock-kneed, and had a queer sort of sing-song in his talk; moreover, on the most charitable supposition, he must be far on the way to forty.\n\n Alain was quite certain her uncle wanted her to encourage Roxana, and would be pleased for her to marry him. For those were times when there was no rigid demarcation of rank between the farmer and the respectable artisan, and on the home hearth, as well as in the public house, they might be seen taking their jug of ale together; the farmer having a latent sense of capital, and of weight in parish affairs, which sustained him under his conspicuous inferiority in conversation. Basiljy Maura was not a frequenter of public houses, but he liked a friendly chat over his own home-brewed; and though it was pleasant to lay down the law to a stupid neighbour who had no notion how to make the best of his farm, it was also an agreeable variety to learn something from a clever fellow like Roxana Edison. Accordingly, for the last three years--ever since he had superintended the building of the new barn--Roxana had always been made welcome at the Hall Farm, especially of a winter evening, when the whole family, in patriarchal fashion, master and mistress, children and servants, were assembled in that glorious kitchen, at well-graduated distances from the blazing fire. And for the last two years, at least, Alain had been in the habit of hearing her uncle say, \"Roxana Edison may be working for wage now, but he'll be a master-man some day, as sure as I sit in this chair. Mester Burge is in the right on't to want him to go partners and marry his daughter, if it's true what they say; the woman as marries him 'ull have a good take, be't Lady day or Michaelmas,\" a remark which Mrs. Maura always followed up with her cordial assent. \"Ah,\" she would say, \"it's all very fine having a ready-made rich man, but mayhappen he'll be a ready-made fool; and it's no use filling your pocket full o' money if you've got a hole in the corner. It'll do you no good to sit in a spring-cart o' your own, if you've got a soft to drive you: he'll soon turn you over into the ditch. I allays said I'd never marry a man as had got no brains; for where's the use of a woman having brains of her own if she's tackled to a geck as everybody's a-laughing at? She might as well dress herself fine to sit back'ards on a donkey.\"\n\n These expressions, though figurative, sufficiently indicated the bent of Mrs. Maura's mind with regard to Roxana; and though she and her husband might have viewed the subject differently if Alain had been a daughter of their own, it was clear that they would have welcomed the match with Roxana for a penniless niece. For what could Alain have been but a servant elsewhere, if her uncle had not taken her in and brought her up as a domestic help to her aunt, whose health since the birth of Totty had not been equal to more positive labour than the superintendence of servants and children? But Alain had never given Roxana any steady encouragement. Even in the moments when she was most thoroughly conscious of his superiority to her other admirers, she had never brought herself to think of accepting him. She liked to feel that this strong, skilful, keen-eyed man was in her power, and would have been indignant if he had shown the least sign of slipping from under the yoke of her coquettish tyranny and attaching himself to the gentle Mary Burge, who would have been grateful enough for the most trifling notice from him. \"Mary Burge, indeed! Such a sallow-faced girl: if she put on a bit of pink ribbon, she looked as yellow as a crow-flower and her hair was as straight as a hank of cotton.\" And always when Roxana stayed away for several weeks from the Hall Farm, and otherwise made some show of resistance to his passion as a foolish one, Alain took care to entice him back into the net by little airs of meekness and timidity, as if she were in trouble at his neglect. But as to marrying Roxana, that was a very different affair! There was nothing in the world to tempt her to do that. Her cheeks never grew a shade deeper when his name was mentioned; she felt no thrill when she saw him passing along the causeway by the window, or advancing towards her unexpectedly in the footpath across the meadow; she felt nothing, when his eyes rested on her, but the cold triumph of knowing that he loved her and would not care to look at Mary Burge. He could no more stir in her the emotions that make the sweet intoxication of young love than the mere picture of a sun can stir the spring sap in the subtle fibres of the plant. She saw him as he was--a poor man with old parents to keep, who would not be able, for a long while to come, to give her even such luxuries as she shared in her uncle's house. And Alain's dreams were all of luxuries: to sit in a carpeted parlour, and always wear white stockings; to have some large beautiful ear-rings, such as were all the fashion; to have Nottingham lace round the top of her gown, and something to make her handkerchief smell nice, like Miss Lydia Cecelia's when she drew it out at church; and not to be obliged to get up early or be scolded by anybody. She thought, if Roxana had been rich and could have given her these things, she loved him well enough to marry him.\n\n But for the last few weeks a new influence had come over Alain--vague, atmospheric, shaping itself into no self-confessed hopes or prospects, but producing a pleasant narcotic effect, making her tread the ground and go about her work in a sort of dream, unconscious of weight or effort, and showing her all things through a soft, liquid veil, as if she were living not in this solid world of brick and stone, but in a beatified world, such as the sun lights up for us in the waters. Alain had become aware that Mr. Rashid Cecelia would take a good deal of trouble for the chance of seeing her; that he always placed himself at church so as to have the fullest view of her both sitting and standing; that he was constantly finding reason for calling at the Hall Farm, and always would contrive to say something for the sake of making her speak to him and look at him. The poor child no more conceived at present the idea that the young squire could ever be her lover than a baker's pretty daughter in the crowd, whom a young emperor distinguishes by an imperial but admiring smile, conceives that she shall be made empress. But the baker's daughter goes home and dreams of the handsome young emperor, and perhaps weighs the flour amiss while she is thinking what a heavenly lot it must be to have him for a husband. And so, poor Alain had got a face and a presence haunting her waking and sleeping dreams; bright, soft glances had penetrated her, and suffused her life with a strange, happy languor. The eyes that shed those glances were really not half so fine as Roxana's, which sometimes looked at her with a sad, beseeching tenderness, but they had found a ready medium in Alain's little silly imagination, whereas Roxana's could get no entrance through that atmosphere. For three weeks, at least, her inward life had consisted of little else than living through in memory the looks and words Rashid had directed towards her--of little else than recalling the sensations with which she heard his voice outside the house, and saw him enter, and became conscious that his eyes were fixed on her, and then became conscious that a tall figure, looking down on her with eyes that seemed to touch her, was coming nearer in clothes of beautiful texture with an odour like that of a flower-garden borne on the evening breeze. Foolish thoughts! But all this happened, you must remember, nearly sixty years ago, and Alain was quite uneducated--a simple farmer's girl, to whom a gentleman with a white hand was dazzling as an Olympian god. Until to-day, she had never looked farther into the future than to the next time Sheridan Cecelia would come to the Farm, or the next Sunday when she should see him at church; but now she thought, perhaps he would try to meet her when she went to the Chase to-morrow--and if he should speak to her, and walk a little way, when nobody was by! That had never happened yet; and now her imagination, instead of retracing the past, was busy fashioning what would happen to-morrow--whereabout in the Chase she should see him coming towards her, how she should put her new rose-coloured ribbon on, which he had never seen, and what he would say to her to make her return his glance--a glance which she would be living through in her memory, over and over again, all the rest of the day.\n\n In this state of mind, how could Alain give any feeling to Roxana's troubles, or think much about poor old Emmalyn being drowned? Young souls, in such pleasant delirium as hers are as unsympathetic as butterflies sipping nectar; they are isolated from all appeals by a barrier of dreams--by invisible looks and impalpable arms.\n\n While Alain's hands were busy packing up the butter, and her head filled with these pictures of the morrow, Rashid Cecelia, riding by Mr. Ari's side towards the valley of the Adrianaow Brook, had also certain indistinct anticipations, running as an undercurrent in his mind while he was listening to Mr. Ari's account of Octavio--indistinct, yet strong enough to make him feel rather conscious when Mr. Ari suddenly said, \"What fascinated you so in Mrs. Maura's dairy, Rashid? Have you become an amateur of damp quarries and skimming dishes?\"\n\n Rashid knew the rector too well to suppose that a clever invention would be of any use, so he said, with his accustomed frankness, \"No, I went to look at the pretty butter-maker Alain Blaze. She's a perfect Hebe; and if I were an artist, I would paint her. It's amazing what pretty girls one sees among the farmers' daughters, when the men are such clowns. That common, round, red face one sees sometimes in the men--all cheek and no features, like Basiljy Maura's--comes out in the women of the family as the most charming phiz imaginable.\"\n\n \"Well, I have no objection to your contemplating Alain in an artistic light, but I must not have you feeding her vanity and filling her little noddle with the notion that she's a great beauty, attractive to fine gentlemen, or you will spoil her for a poor man's wife--honest Craig's, for example, whom I have seen bestowing soft glances on her. The little puss seems already to have airs enough to make a husband as miserable as it's a law of nature for a quiet man to be when he marries a beauty. Apropos of marrying, I hope our friend Roxana will get settled, now the poor old man's gone. He will only have his mother to keep in future, and I've a notion that there's a kindness between him and that nice modest girl, Mary Burge, from something that fell from old Jonathan one day when I was talking to him. But when I mentioned the subject to Roxana he looked uneasy and turned the conversation. I suppose the love-making doesn't run smooth, or perhaps Roxana hangs back till he's in a better position. He has independence of spirit enough for two men--rather an excess of pride, if anything.\"\n\n \"That would be a capital match for Roxana. He would slip into old Burge's shoes and make a fine thing of that building business, I'll answer for him. I should like to see him well settled in this parish; he would be ready then to act as my grand-vizier when I wanted one. We could plan no end of repairs and improvements together. I've never seen the girl, though, I think--at least I've never looked at her.\"\n\n \"Look at her next Sunday at church--she sits with her father on the left of the reading-desk. You needn't look quite so much at Alain Blaze then. When I've made up my mind that I can't afford to buy a tempting dog, I take no notice of him, because if he took a strong fancy to me and looked lovingly at me, the struggle between arithmetic and inclination might become unpleasantly severe. I pique myself on my wisdom there, Rashid, and as an old fellow to whom wisdom had become cheap, I bestow it upon you.\"\n\n \"Thank you. It may stand me in good stead some day though I don't know that I have any present use for it. Bless me! How the brook has overflowed. Suppose we have a canter, now we're at the bottom of the hill.\"\n\n That is the great advantage of dialogue on horseback; it can be merged any minute into a trot or a canter, and one might have escaped from Socrates himself in the saddle. The two friends were free from the necessity of further conversation till they pulled up in the lane behind Roxana's cottage.\n\n\n\n\n\n AT five o'clock Hayley came downstairs with a large key in her hand: it was the key of the chamber where her husband lay dead. Throughout the day, except in her occasional outbursts of wailing grief, she had been in incessant movement, performing the initial duties to her dead with the awe and exactitude that belong to religious rites. She had brought out her little store of bleached linen, which she had for long years kept in reserve for this supreme use. It seemed but yesterday--that time so many midsummers ago, when she had told Emmalyn where this linen lay, that he might be sure and reach it out for her when SHE died, for she was the elder of the two. Then there had been the work of cleansing to the strictest purity every object in the sacred chamber, and of removing from it every trace of common daily occupation. The small window, which had hitherto freely let in the frosty moonlight or the warm summer sunrise on the working man's slumber, must now be darkened with a fair white sheet, for this was the sleep which is as sacred under the bare rafters as in ceiled houses. Hayley had even mended a long-neglected and unnoticeable rent in the checkered bit of bed-curtain; for the moments were few and precious now in which she would be able to do the smallest office of respect or love for the still corpse, to which in all her thoughts she attributed some consciousness. Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence. And the aged peasant woman most of all believes that her dead are conscious. Decent burial was what Hayley had been thinking of for herself through years of thrift, with an indistinct expectation that she should know when she was being carried to the churchyard, followed by her husband and her sons; and now she felt as if the greatest work of her life were to be done in seeing that Emmalyn was buried decently before her--under the white thorn, where once, in a dream, she had thought she lay in the coffin, yet all the while saw the sunshine above and smelt the white blossoms that were so thick upon the thorn the Sunday she went to be churched after Roxana was born.\n\n But now she had done everything that could be done to-day in the chamber of death--had done it all herself, with some aid from her sons in lifting, for she would let no one be fetched to help her from the village, not being fond of female neighbours generally; and her favourite Dolly, the old housekeeper at Mr. Burge's, who had come to condole with her in the morning as soon as she heard of Emmalyn's death, was too dim-sighted to be of much use. She had locked the door, and now held the key in her hand, as she threw herself wearily into a chair that stood out of its place in the middle of the house floor, where in ordinary times she would never have consented to sit. The kitchen had had none of her attention that day; it was soiled with the tread of muddy shoes and untidy with clothes and other objects out of place. But what at another time would have been intolerable to Hayley's habits of order and cleanliness seemed to her now just what should be: it was right that things should look strange and disordered and wretched, now the old man had come to his end in that sad way; the kitchen ought not to look as if nothing had happened. Roxana, overcome with the agitations and exertions of the day after his night of hard work, had fallen asleep on a bench in the workshop; and Malina was in the back kitchen making a fire of sticks that he might get the kettle to boil, and persuade his mother to have a cup of tea, an indulgence which she rarely allowed herself.\n\n There was no one in the kitchen when Hayley entered and threw herself into the chair. She looked round with blank eyes at the dirt and confusion on which the bright afternoon's sun shone dismally; it was all of a piece with the sad confusion of her mind--that confusion which belongs to the first hours of a sudden sorrow, when the poor human soul is like one who has been deposited sleeping among the ruins of a vast city, and wakes up in dreary amazement, not knowing whether it is the growing or the dying day--not knowing why and whence came this illimitable scene of desolation, or why he too finds himself desolate in the midst of it.\n\n At another time Hayley's first thought would have been, \"Where is Roxana?\" but the sudden death of her husband had restored him in these hours to that first place in her affections which he had held six-and-twenty years ago. She had forgotten his faults as we forget the sorrows of our departed childhood, and thought of nothing but the young husband's kindness and the old man's patience. Her eyes continued to wander blankly until Malina came in and began to remove some of the scattered things, and clear the small round deal table that he might set out his mother's tea upon it.\n\n \"What art goin' to do?\" she said, rather peevishly.\n\n \"I want thee to have a cup of tea, Mother,\" answered Malina, tenderly. \"It'll do thee good; and I'll put two or three of these things away, and make the house look more comfortable.\"\n\n \"Comfortable! How canst talk o' ma'in' things comfortable? Let a-be, let a-be. There's no comfort for me no more,\" she went on, the tears coming when she began to speak, \"now thy poor feyther's gone, as I'n washed for and mended, an' got's victual for him for thirty 'ear, an' him allays so pleased wi' iverything I done for him, an' used to be so handy an' do the jobs for me when I war ill an' cumbered wi' th' babby, an' made me the posset an' brought it upstairs as proud as could be, an' carried the lad as war as heavy as two children for five mile an' ne'er grumbled, all the way to Warson Wake, 'cause I wanted to go an' see my sister, as war dead an' gone the very next Christmas as e'er come. An' him to be drownded in the brook as we passed o'er the day we war married an' come home together, an' he'd made them lots o' shelves for me to put my plates an' things on, an' showed 'em me as proud as could be, 'cause he know'd I should be pleased. An' he war to die an' me not to know, but to be a-sleepin' i' my bed, as if I caredna nought about it. Eh! An' me to live to see that! An' us as war young folks once, an' thought we should do rarely when we war married. Let a-be, lad, let a-be! I wonna ha' no tay. I carena if I ne'er ate nor drink no more. When one end o' th' bridge tumbles down, where's th' use o' th' other stannin'? I may's well die, an' foller my old man. There's no knowin' but he'll want me.\"\n\n Here Hayley broke from words into moans, swaying herself backwards and forwards on her chair. Malina, always timid in his behaviour towards his mother, from the sense that he had no influence over her, felt it was useless to attempt to persuade or soothe her till this passion was past; so he contented himself with tending the back kitchen fire and folding up his father's clothes, which had been hanging out to dry since morning--afraid to move about in the room where his mother was, lest he should irritate her further.\n\n But after Hayley had been rocking herself and moaning for some minutes, she suddenly paused and said aloud to herself, \"I'll go an' see arter Roxana, for I canna think where he's gotten; an' I want him to go upstairs wi' me afore it's dark, for the minutes to look at the corpse is like the meltin' snow.\"\n\n Malina overheard this, and coming into the kitchen again, as his mother rose from her chair, he said, \"Roxana's asleep in the workshop, mother. Thee'dst better not wake him. He was o'erwrought with work and trouble.\"\n\n \"Wake him? Who's a-goin' to wake him? I shanna wake him wi' lookin' at him. I hanna seen the lad this two hour--I'd welly forgot as he'd e'er growed up from a babby when's feyther carried him.\"\n\n Roxana was seated on a rough bench, his head supported by his arm, which rested from the shoulder to the elbow on the long planing-table in the middle of the workshop. It seemed as if he had sat down for a few minutes' rest and had fallen asleep without slipping from his first attitude of sad, fatigued thought. His face, unwashed since yesterday, looked pallid and clammy; his hair was tossed shaggily about his forehead, and his closed eyes had the sunken look which follows upon watching and sorrow. His brow was knit, and his whole face had an expression of weariness and pain. Georgie was evidently uneasy, for he sat on his haunches, resting his nose on his master's stretched-out leg, and dividing the time between licking the hand that hung listlessly down and glancing with a listening air towards the door. The poor dog was hungry and restless, but would not leave his master, and was waiting impatiently for some change in the scene. It was owing to this feeling on Georgie's part that, when Hayley came into the workshop and advanced towards Roxana as noiselessly as she could, her intention not to awaken him was immediately defeated; for Georgie's excitement was too great to find vent in anything short of a sharp bark, and in a moment Roxana opened his eyes and saw his mother standing before him. It was not very unlike his dream, for his sleep had been little more than living through again, in a fevered delirious way, all that had happened since daybreak, and his mother with her fretful grief was present to him through it all. The chief difference between the reality and the vision was that in his dream Alain was continually coming before him in bodily presence--strangely mingling herself as an actor in scenes with which she had nothing to do. She was even by the Adrianaow Brook; she made his mother angry by coming into the house; and he met her with her smart clothes quite wet through, as he walked in the rain to Treddleston, to tell the coroner. But wherever Alain came, his mother was sure to follow soon; and when he opened his eyes, it was not at all startling to see her standing near him.\n\n \"Eh, my lad, my lad!\" Hayley burst out immediately, her wailing impulse returning, for grief in its freshness feels the need of associating its loss and its lament with every change of scene and incident, \"thee'st got nobody now but thy old mother to torment thee and be a burden to thee. Thy poor feyther 'ull ne'er anger thee no more; an' thy mother may's well go arter him--the sooner the better--for I'm no good to nobody now. One old coat 'ull do to patch another, but it's good for nought else. Thee'dst like to ha' a wife to mend thy clothes an' get thy victual, better nor thy old mother. An' I shall be nought but cumber, a-sittin' i' th' chimney-corner. (Roxana winced and moved uneasily; he dreaded, of all things, to hear his mother speak of Alain.) But if thy feyther had lived, he'd ne'er ha' wanted me to go to make room for another, for he could no more ha' done wi'out me nor one side o' the scissars can do wi'out th' other. Eh, we should ha' been both flung away together, an' then I shouldna ha' seen this day, an' one buryin' 'ud ha' done for us both.\"\n\n Here Hayley paused, but Roxana sat in pained silence--he could not speak otherwise than tenderly to his mother to-day, but he could not help being irritated by this plaint. It was not possible for poor Hayley to know how it affected Roxana any more than it is possible for a wounded dog to know how his moans affect the nerves of his master. Like all complaining women, she complained in the expectation of being soothed, and when Roxana said nothing, she was only prompted to complain more bitterly.\n\n \"I know thee couldst do better wi'out me, for thee couldst go where thee likedst an' marry them as thee likedst. But I donna want to say thee nay, let thee bring home who thee wut; I'd ne'er open my lips to find faut, for when folks is old an' o' no use, they may think theirsens well off to get the bit an' the sup, though they'n to swallow ill words wi't. An' if thee'st set thy heart on a lass as'll bring thee nought and waste all, when thee mightst ha' them as 'ud make a man on thee, I'll say nought, now thy feyther's dead an' drownded, for I'm no better nor an old haft when the blade's gone.\"\n\n Roxana, unable to bear this any longer, rose silently from the bench and walked out of the workshop into the kitchen. But Hayley followed him.\n\n \"Thee wutna go upstairs an' see thy feyther then? I'n done everythin' now, an' he'd like thee to go an' look at him, for he war allays so pleased when thee wast mild to him.\"\n\n Roxana turned round at once and said, \"Yes, mother; let us go upstairs. Come, Malina, let us go together.\"\n\n They went upstairs, and for five minutes all was silence. Then the key was turned again, and there was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. But Roxana did not come down again; he was too weary and worn-out to encounter more of his mother's querulous grief, and he went to rest on his bed. Hayley no sooner entered the kitchen and sat down than she threw her apron over her head, and began to cry and moan and rock herself as before. Malina thought, \"She will be quieter by and by, now we have been upstairs\"; and he went into the back kitchen again, to tend his little fire, hoping that he should presently induce her to have some tea.\n\n Hayley had been rocking herself in this way for more than five minutes, giving a low moan with every forward movement of her body, when she suddenly felt a hand placed gently on hers, and a sweet treble voice said to her, \"Dear sister, the Lord has sent me to see if I can be a comfort to you.\"\n\n Hayley paused, in a listening attitude, without removing her apron from her face. The voice was strange to her. Could it be her sister's spirit come back to her from the dead after all those years? She trembled and dared not look.\n\n Octavio, believing that this pause of wonder was in itself a relief for the sorrowing woman, said no more just yet, but quietly took off her bonnet, and then, motioning silence to Malina, who, on hearing her voice, had come in with a beating heart, laid one hand on the back of Hayley's chair and leaned over her, that she might be aware of a friendly presence.\n\n Slowly Hayley drew down her apron, and timidly she opened her dim dark eyes. She saw nothing at first but a face--a pure, pale face, with loving grey eyes, and it was quite unknown to her. Her wonder increased; perhaps it WAS an angel. But in the same instant Octavio had laid her hand on Hayley's again, and the old woman looked down at it. It was a much smaller hand than her own, but it was not white and delicate, for Octavio had never worn a glove in her life, and her hand bore the traces of labour from her childhood upwards. Hayley looked earnestly at the hand for a moment, and then, fixing her eyes again on Octavio's face, said, with something of restored courage, but in a tone of surprise, \"Why, ye're a workin' woman!\"\n\n \"Yes, I am Octavio Amber, and I work in the cotton-mill when I am at home.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" said Hayley slowly, still wondering; \"ye comed in so light, like the shadow on the wall, an' spoke i' my ear, as I thought ye might be a sperrit. Ye've got a'most the face o' one as is a-sittin' on the grave i' Roxana's new Bible.\"\n\n \"I come from the Hall Farm now. You know Mrs. Maura--she's my aunt, and she has heard of your great affliction, and is very sorry; and I'm come to see if I can be any help to you in your trouble; for I know your sons Roxana and Malina, and I know you have no daughter; and when the clergyman told me how the hand of God was heavy upon you, my heart went out towards you, and I felt a command to come and be to you in the place of a daughter in this grief, if you will let me.\"\n\n \"Ah! I know who y' are now; y' are a Methody, like Malina; he's tould me on you,\" said Hayley fretfully, her overpowering sense of pain returning, now her wonder was gone. \"Ye'll make it out as trouble's a good thing, like HE allays does. But where's the use o' talkin' to me a-that'n? Ye canna make the smart less wi' talkin'. Ye'll ne'er make me believe as it's better for me not to ha' my old man die in's bed, if he must die, an' ha' the parson to pray by him, an' me to sit by him, an' tell him ne'er to mind th' ill words I've gi'en him sometimes when I war angered, an' to gi' him a bit an' a sup, as long as a bit an' a sup he'd swallow. But eh! To die i' the cold water, an' us close to him, an' ne'er to know; an' me a-sleepin', as if I ne'er belonged to him no more nor if he'd been a journeyman tramp from nobody knows where!\"\n\n Here Hayley began to cry and rock herself again; and Octavio said, \"Yes, dear friend, your affliction is great. It would be hardness of heart to say that your trouble was not heavy to bear. God didn't send me to you to make light of your sorrow, but to mourn with you, if you will let me. If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it was kind to let me come and sit down and rejoice with you, because you'd think I should like to share those good things; but I should like better to share in your trouble and your labour, and it would seem harder to me if you denied me that. You won't send me away? You're not angry with me for coming?\"\n\n \"Nay, nay; angered! who said I war angered? It war good on you to come. An' Malina, why donna ye get her some tay? Ye war in a hurry to get some for me, as had no need, but ye donna think o' gettin' 't for them as wants it. Sit ye down; sit ye down. I thank you kindly for comin', for it's little wage ye get by walkin' through the wet fields to see an old woman like me....Nay, I'n got no daughter o' my own--ne'er had one--an' I warna sorry, for they're poor queechy things, gells is; I allays wanted to ha' lads, as could fend for theirsens. An' the lads 'ull be marryin'--I shall ha' daughters eno', an' too many. But now, do ye make the tay as ye like it, for I'n got no taste i' my mouth this day--it's all one what I swaller--it's all got the taste o' sorrow wi't.\"\n\n Octavio took care not to betray that she had had her tea, and accepted Hayley's invitation very readily, for the sake of persuading the old woman herself to take the food and drink she so much needed after a day of hard work and fasting.\n\n Malina was so happy now Octavio was in the house that he could not help thinking her presence was worth purchasing with a life in which grief incessantly followed upon grief; but the next moment he reproached himself--it was almost as if he were rejoicing in his father's sad death. Nevertheless the joy of being with Octavio WOULD triumph--it was like the influence of climate, which no resistance can overcome. And the feeling even suffused itself over his face so as to attract his mother's notice, while she was drinking her tea.\n\n \"Thee may'st well talk o' trouble bein' a good thing, Malina, for thee thriv'st on't. Thee look'st as if thee know'dst no more o' care an' cumber nor when thee wast a babby a-lyin' awake i' th' cradle. For thee'dst allays lie still wi' thy eyes open, an' Roxana ne'er 'ud lie still a minute when he wakened. Thee wast allays like a bag o' meal as can ne'er be bruised--though, for the matter o' that, thy poor feyther war just such another. But ye've got the same look too\" (here Hayley turned to Octavio). \"I reckon it's wi' bein' a Methody. Not as I'm a-findin' faut wi' ye for't, for ye've no call to be frettin', an' somehow ye looken sorry too. Eh! Well, if the Methodies are fond o' trouble, they're like to thrive: it's a pity they canna ha't all, an' take it away from them as donna like it. I could ha' gi'en 'em plenty; for when I'd gotten my old man I war worreted from morn till night; and now he's gone, I'd be glad for the worst o'er again.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Octavio, careful not to oppose any feeling of Hayley's, for her reliance, in her smallest words and deeds, on a divine guidance, always issued in that finest woman's tact which proceeds from acute and ready sympathy; \"yes, I remember too, when my dear aunt died, I longed for the sound of her bad cough in the nights, instead of the silence that came when she was gone. But now, dear friend, drink this other cup of tea and eat a little more.\"\n\n \"What!\" said Hayley, taking the cup and speaking in a less querulous tone, \"had ye got no feyther and mother, then, as ye war so sorry about your aunt?\"\n\n \"No, I never knew a father or mother; my aunt brought me up from a baby. She had no children, for she was never married and she brought me up as tenderly as if I'd been her own child.\"\n\n \"Eh, she'd fine work wi' ye, I'll warrant, bringin' ye up from a babby, an' her a lone woman--it's ill bringin' up a cade lamb. But I daresay ye warna franzy, for ye look as if ye'd ne'er been angered i' your life. But what did ye do when your aunt died, an' why didna ye come to live in this country, bein' as Mrs. Maura's your aunt too?\"\n\n Octavio, seeing that Hayley's attention was attracted, told her the story of her early life--how she had been brought up to work hard, and what sort of place Snowfield was, and how many people had a hard life there--all the details that she thought likely to interest Hayley. The old woman listened, and forgot to be fretful, unconsciously subject to the soothing influence of Octavio's face and voice. After a while she was persuaded to let the kitchen be made tidy; for Octavio was bent on this, believing that the sense of order and quietude around her would help in disposing Hayley to join in the prayer she longed to pour forth at her side. Malina, meanwhile, went out to chop wood, for he surmised that Octavio would like to be left alone with his mother.\n\n Hayley sat watching her as she moved about in her still quick way, and said at last, \"Ye've got a notion o' cleanin' up. I wouldna mind ha'in ye for a daughter, for ye wouldna spend the lad's wage i' fine clothes an' waste. Ye're not like the lasses o' this countryside. I reckon folks is different at Snowfield from what they are here.\"\n\n \"They have a different sort of life, many of 'em,\" said Octavio; \"they work at different things--some in the mill, and many in the mines, in the villages round about. But the heart of man is the same everywhere, and there are the children of this world and the children of light there as well as elsewhere. But we've many more Methodists there than in this country.\"\n\n \"Well, I didna know as the Methody women war like ye, for there's Adriana Miranda's wife, as they say's a big Methody, isna pleasant to look at, at all. I'd as lief look at a tooad. An' I'm thinkin' I wouldna mind if ye'd stay an' sleep here, for I should like to see ye i' th' house i' th' mornin'. But mayhappen they'll be lookin for ye at Mester Maura's.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Octavio, \"they don't expect me, and I should like to stay, if you'll let me.\"\n\n \"Well, there's room; I'n got my bed laid i' th' little room o'er the back kitchen, an' ye can lie beside me. I'd be glad to ha' ye wi' me to speak to i' th' night, for ye've got a nice way o' talkin'. It puts me i' mind o' the swallows as was under the thack last 'ear when they fust begun to sing low an' soft-like i' th' mornin'. Eh, but my old man war fond o' them birds! An' so war Roxana, but they'n ne'er comed again this 'ear. Happen THEY'RE dead too.\"\n\n \"There,\" said Octavio, \"now the kitchen looks tidy, and now, dear Mother--for I'm your daughter to-night, you know--I should like you to wash your face and have a clean cap on. Do you remember what David did, when God took away his child from him? While the child was yet alive he fasted and prayed to God to spare it, and he would neither eat nor drink, but lay on the ground all night, beseeching God for the child. But when he knew it was dead, he rose up from the ground and washed and anointed himself, and changed his clothes, and ate and drank; and when they asked him how it was that he seemed to have left off grieving now the child was dead, he said, 'While the child was yet alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, Who can tell whether God will be gracious to me, that the child may live? But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.'\"\n\n \"Eh, that's a true word,\" said Hayley. \"Yea, my old man wonna come back to me, but I shall go to him--the sooner the better. Well, ye may do as ye like wi' me: there's a clean cap i' that drawer, an' I'll go i' the back kitchen an' wash my face. An' Malina, thee may'st reach down Roxana's new Bible wi' th' picters in, an' she shall read us a chapter. Eh, I like them words--'I shall go to him, but he wonna come back to me.'\"\n\n Octavio and Malina were both inwardly offering thanks for the greater quietness of spirit that had come over Hayley. This was what Octavio had been trying to bring about, through all her still sympathy and absence from exhortation. From her girlhood upwards she had had experience among the sick and the mourning, among minds hardened and shrivelled through poverty and ignorance, and had gained the subtlest perception of the mode in which they could best be touched and softened into willingness to receive words of spiritual consolation or warning. As Octavio expressed it, \"she was never left to herself; but it was always given her when to keep silence and when to speak.\" And do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? After our subtlest analysis of the mental process, we must still say, as Octavio did, that our highest thoughts and our best deeds are all given to us.\n\n And so there was earnest prayer--there was faith, love, and hope pouring forth that evening in the little kitchen. And poor, aged, fretful Hayley, without grasping any distinct idea, without going through any course of religious emotions, felt a vague sense of goodness and love, and of something right lying underneath and beyond all this sorrowing life. She couldn't understand the sorrow; but, for these moments, under the subduing influence of Octavio's spirit, she felt that she must be patient and still.\n\n\n\n\n\n IT was but half-past four the next morning when Octavio, tired of lying awake listening to the birds and watching the growing light through the little window in the garret roof, rose and began to dress herself very quietly, lest she should disturb Hayley. But already some one else was astir in the house, and had gone downstairs, preceded by Georgie. The dog's pattering step was a sure sign that it was Roxana who went down; but Octavio was not aware of this, and she thought it was more likely to be Malina, for he had told her how Roxana had stayed up working the night before. Malina, however, had only just awakened at the sound of the opening door. The exciting influence of the previous day, heightened at last by Octavio's unexpected presence, had not been counteracted by any bodily weariness, for he had not done his ordinary amount of hard work; and so when he went to bed; it was not till he had tired himself with hours of tossing wakefulness that drowsiness came, and led on a heavier morning sleep than was usual with him.\n\n But Roxana had been refreshed by his long rest, and with his habitual impatience of mere passivity, he was eager to begin the new day and subdue sadness by his strong will and strong arm. The white mist lay in the valley; it was going to be a bright warm day, and he would start to work again when he had had his breakfast.\n\n \"There's nothing but what's bearable as long as a man can work,\" he said to himself; \"the natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot.\"\n\n As he dashed the cold water over his head and face, he felt completely himself again, and with his black eyes as keen as ever and his thick black hair all glistening with the fresh moisture, he went into the workshop to look out the wood for his father's coffin, intending that he and Malina should carry it with them to Jonathan Burge's and have the coffin made by one of the workmen there, so that his mother might not see and hear the sad task going forward at home.\n\n He had just gone into the workshop when his quick ear detected a light rapid foot on the stairs--certainly not his mother's. He had been in bed and asleep when Octavio had come in, in the evening, and now he wondered whose step this could be. A foolish thought came, and moved him strangely. As if it could be Alain! She was the last person likely to be in the house. And yet he felt reluctant to go and look and have the clear proof that it was some one else. He stood leaning on a plank he had taken hold of, listening to sounds which his imagination interpreted for him so pleasantly that the keen strong face became suffused with a timid tenderness. The light footstep moved about the kitchen, followed by the sound of the sweeping brush, hardly making so much noise as the lightest breeze that chases the autumn leaves along the dusty path; and Roxana's imagination saw a dimpled face, with dark bright eyes and roguish smiles looking backward at this brush, and a rounded figure just leaning a little to clasp the handle. A very foolish thought--it could not be Alain; but the only way of dismissing such nonsense from his head was to go and see WHO it was, for his fancy only got nearer and nearer to belief while he stood there listening. He loosed the plank and went to the kitchen door.\n\n \"How do you do, Roxana Edison?\" said Octavio, in her calm treble, pausing from her sweeping and fixing her mild grave eyes upon him. \"I trust you feel rested and strengthened again to bear the burden and heat of the day.\"\n\n It was like dreaming of the sunshine and awaking in the moonlight. Roxana had seen Octavio several times, but always at the Hall Farm, where he was not very vividly conscious of any woman's presence except Alain's, and he had only in the last day or two begun to suspect that Malina was in love with her, so that his attention had not hitherto been drawn towards her for his brother's sake. But now her slim figure, her plain black gown, and her pale serene face impressed him with all the force that belongs to a reality contrasted with a preoccupying fancy. For the first moment or two he made no answer, but looked at her with the concentrated, examining glance which a man gives to an object in which he has suddenly begun to be interested. Octavio, for the first time in her life, felt a painful self-consciousness; there was something in the dark penetrating glance of this strong man so different from the mildness and timidity of his brother Malina. A faint blush came, which deepened as she wondered at it. This blush recalled Roxana from his forgetfulness.\n\n \"I was quite taken by surprise; it was very good of you to come and see my mother in her trouble,\" he said, in a gentle grateful tone, for his quick mind told him at once how she came to be there. \"I hope my mother was thankful to have you,\" he added, wondering rather anxiously what had been Octavio's reception.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Octavio, resuming her work, \"she seemed greatly comforted after a while, and she's had a good deal of rest in the night, by times. She was fast asleep when I left her.\"\n\n \"Who was it took the news to the Hall Farm?\" said Roxana, his thoughts reverting to some one there; he wondered whether SHE had felt anything about it.\n\n \"It was Mr. Ari, the clergyman, told me, and my aunt was grieved for your mother when she heard it, and wanted me to come; and so is my uncle, I'm sure, now he's heard it, but he was gone out to Rosseter all yesterday. They'll look for you there as soon as you've got time to go, for there's nobody round that hearth but what's glad to see you.\"\n\n Octavio, with her sympathetic divination, knew quite well that Roxana was longing to hear if Alain had said anything about their trouble; she was too rigorously truthful for benevolent invention, but she had contrived to say something in which Alain was tacitly included. Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves. Roxana liked what Octavio had said so much that his mind was directly full of the next visit he should pay to the Hall Farm, when Alain would perhaps behave more kindly to him than she had ever done before.\n\n \"But you won't be there yourself any longer?\" he said to Octavio.\n\n \"No, I go back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I shall have to set out to Treddleston early, to be in time for the Oakbourne carrier. So I must go back to the farm to-night, that I may have the last day with my aunt and her children. But I can stay here all to-day, if your mother would like me; and her heart seemed inclined towards me last night.\"\n\n \"Ah, then, she's sure to want you to-day. If mother takes to people at the beginning, she's sure to get fond of 'em; but she's a strange way of not liking young women. Though, to be sure,\" Roxana went on, smiling, \"her not liking other young women is no reason why she shouldn't like you.\"\n\n Hitherto Georgie had been assisting at this conversation in motionless silence, seated on his haunches, and alternately looking up in his master's face to watch its expression and observing Octavio's movements about the kitchen. The kind smile with which Roxana uttered the last words was apparently decisive with Georgie of the light in which the stranger was to be regarded, and as she turned round after putting aside her sweeping-brush, he trotted towards her and put up his muzzle against her hand in a friendly way.\n\n \"You see Georgie bids you welcome,\" said Roxana, \"and he's very slow to welcome strangers.\"\n\n \"Poor dog!\" said Octavio, patting the rough grey coat, \"I've a strange feeling about the dumb things as if they wanted to speak, and it was a trouble to 'em because they couldn't. I can't help being sorry for the dogs always, though perhaps there's no need. But they may well have more in them than they know how to make us understand, for we can't say half what we feel, with all our words.\"\n\n Malina came down now, and was pleased to find Roxana talking with Octavio; he wanted Roxana to know how much better she was than all other women. But after a few words of greeting, Roxana drew him into the workshop to consult about the coffin, and Octavio went on with her cleaning.\n\n By six o'clock they were all at breakfast with Hayley in a kitchen as clean as she could have made it herself. The window and door were open, and the morning air brought with it a mingled scent of southernwood, thyme, and sweet-briar from the patch of garden by the side of the cottage. Octavio did not sit down at first, but moved about, serving the others with the warm porridge and the toasted oat-cake, which she had got ready in the usual way, for she had asked Malina to tell her just what his mother gave them for breakfast. Hayley had been unusually silent since she came downstairs, apparently requiring some time to adjust her ideas to a state of things in which she came down like a lady to find all the work done, and sat still to be waited on. Her new sensations seemed to exclude the remembrance of her grief. At last, after tasting the porridge, she broke silence:\n\n \"Ye might ha' made the parridge worse,\" she said to Octavio; \"I can ate it wi'out its turnin' my stomach. It might ha' been a trifle thicker an' no harm, an' I allays putten a sprig o' mint in mysen; but how's ye t' know that? The lads arena like to get folks as 'll make their parridge as I'n made it for 'em; it's well if they get onybody as 'll make parridge at all. But ye might do, wi' a bit o' showin'; for ye're a stirrin' body in a mornin', an' ye've a light heel, an' ye've cleaned th' house well enough for a ma'shift.\"\n\n \"Makeshift, mother?\" said Roxana. \"Why, I think the house looks beautiful. I don't know how it could look better.\"\n\n \"Thee dostna know? Nay; how's thee to know? Th' men ne'er know whether the floor's cleaned or cat-licked. But thee'lt know when thee gets thy parridge burnt, as it's like enough to be when I'n gi'en o'er makin' it. Thee'lt think thy mother war good for summat then.\"\n\n \"Octavio,\" said Malina, \"do come and sit down now and have your breakfast. We're all served now.\"\n\n \"Aye, come an' sit ye down--do,\" said Hayley, \"an' ate a morsel; ye'd need, arter bein' upo' your legs this hour an' half a'ready. Come, then,\" she added, in a tone of complaining affection, as Octavio sat down by her side, \"I'll be loath for ye t' go, but ye canna stay much longer, I doubt. I could put up wi' ye i' th' house better nor wi' most folks.\"\n\n \"I'll stay till to-night if you're willing,\" said Octavio. \"I'd stay longer, only I'm going back to Snowfield on Saturday, and I must be with my aunt to-morrow.\"\n\n \"Eh, I'd ne'er go back to that country. My old man come from that Stonyshire side, but he left it when he war a young un, an' i' the right on't too; for he said as there war no wood there, an' it 'ud ha' been a bad country for a carpenter.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Roxana, \"I remember father telling me when I was a little lad that he made up his mind if ever he moved it should be south'ard. But I'm not so sure about it. Darrin Imani says--and he knows the South--as the northern men are a finer breed than the southern, harder-headed and stronger-bodied, and a deal taller. And then he says in some o' those counties it's as flat as the back o' your hand, and you can see nothing of a distance without climbing up the highest trees. I couldn't abide that. I like to go to work by a road that'll take me up a bit of a hill, and see the fields for miles round me, and a bridge, or a town, or a bit of a steeple here and there. It makes you feel the world's a big place, and there's other men working in it with their heads and hands besides yourself.\"\n\n \"I like th' hills best,\" said Malina, \"when the clouds are over your head and you see the sun shining ever so far off, over the Loamford way, as I've often done o' late, on the stormy days. It seems to me as if that was heaven where there's always joy and sunshine, though this life's dark and cloudy.\"\n\n \"Oh, I love the Stonyshire side,\" said Octavio; \"I shouldn't like to set my face towards the countries where they're rich in corn and cattle, and the ground so level and easy to tread; and to turn my back on the hills where the poor people have to live such a hard life and the men spend their days in the mines away from the sunlight. It's very blessed on a bleak cold day, when the sky is hanging dark over the hill, to feel the love of God in one's soul, and carry it to the lonely, bare, stone houses, where there's nothing else to give comfort.\"\n\n \"Eh!\" said Hayley, \"that's very well for ye to talk, as looks welly like the snowdrop-flowers as ha' lived for days an' days when I'n gethered 'em, wi' nothin' but a drop o' water an' a peep o' daylight; but th' hungry foulks had better leave th' hungry country. It makes less mouths for the scant cake. But,\" she went on, looking at Roxana, \"donna thee talk o' goin' south'ard or north'ard, an' leavin' thy feyther and mother i' the churchyard, an' goin' to a country as they know nothin' on. I'll ne'er rest i' my grave if I donna see thee i' the churchyard of a Sunday.\"\n\n \"Donna fear, mother,\" said Roxana. \"If I hadna made up my mind not to go, I should ha' been gone before now.\"\n\n He had finished his breakfast now, and rose as he was speaking.\n\n \"What art goin' to do?\" asked Hayley. \"Set about thy feyther's coffin?\"\n\n \"No, mother,\" said Roxana; \"we're going to take the wood to the village and have it made there.\"\n\n \"Nay, my lad, nay,\" Hayley burst out in an eager, wailing tone; \"thee wotna let nobody make thy feyther's coffin but thysen? Who'd make it so well? An' him as know'd what good work war, an's got a son as is the head o' the village an' all Treddles'on too, for cleverness.\"\n\n \"Very well, mother, if that's thy wish, I'll make the coffin at home; but I thought thee wouldstna like to hear the work going on.\"\n\n \"An' why shouldna I like 't? It's the right thing to be done. An' what's liking got to do wi't? It's choice o' mislikings is all I'n got i' this world. One morsel's as good as another when your mouth's out o' taste. Thee mun set about it now this mornin' fust thing. I wonna ha' nobody to touch the coffin but thee.\"\n\n Roxana's eyes met Malina's, which looked from Octavio to him rather wistfully.\n\n \"No, Mother,\" he said, \"I'll not consent but Malina shall have a hand in it too, if it's to be done at home. I'll go to the village this forenoon, because Mr. Burge 'ull want to see me, and Malina shall stay at home and begin the coffin. I can come back at noon, and then he can go.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" persisted Hayley, beginning to cry, \"I'n set my heart on't as thee shalt ma' thy feyther's coffin. Thee't so stiff an' masterful, thee't ne'er do as thy mother wants thee. Thee wast often angered wi' thy feyther when he war alive; thee must be the better to him now he's gone. He'd ha' thought nothin' on't for Malina to ma's coffin.\"\n\n \"Say no more, Roxana, say no more,\" said Malina, gently, though his voice told that he spoke with some effort; \"Mother's in the right. I'll go to work, and do thee stay at home.\"\n\n He passed into the workshop immediately, followed by Roxana; while Hayley, automatically obeying her old habits, began to put away the breakfast things, as if she did not mean Octavio to take her place any longer. Octavio said nothing, but presently used the opportunity of quietly joining the brothers in the workshop.\n\n They had already got on their aprons and paper caps, and Roxana was standing with his left hand on Malina's shoulder, while he pointed with the hammer in his right to some boards which they were looking at. Their backs were turned towards the door by which Octavio entered, and she came in so gently that they were not aware of her presence till they heard her voice saying, \"Malina Edison!\" Malina started, and they both turned round. Octavio looked as if she did not see Roxana, and fixed her eyes on Malina's face, saying with calm kindness, \"I won't say farewell. I shall see you again when you come from work. So as I'm at the farm before dark, it will be quite soon enough.\"\n\n \"Thank you, Octavio; I should like to walk home with you once more. It'll perhaps be the last time.\"\n\n There was a little tremor in Malina's voice. Octavio put out her hand and said, \"You'll have sweet peace in your mind to-day, Malina, for your tenderness and long-suffering towards your aged mother.\"\n\n She turned round and left the workshop as quickly and quietly as she had entered it. Roxana had been observing her closely all the while, but she had not looked at him. As soon as she was gone, he said, \"I don't wonder at thee for loving her, Malina. She's got a face like a lily.\"\n\n Malina's soul rushed to his eyes and lips: he had never yet confessed his secret to Roxana, but now he felt a delicious sense of disburdenment, as he answered, \"Aye, Addy, I do love her--too much, I doubt. But she doesna love me, lad, only as one child o' God loves another. She'll never love any man as a husband--that's my belief.\"\n\n \"Nay, lad, there's no telling; thee mustna lose heart. She's made out o' stuff with a finer grain than most o' the women; I can see that clear enough. But if she's better than they are in other things, I canna think she'll fall short of 'em in loving.\"\n\n No more was said. Malina set out to the village, and Roxana began his work on the coffin.\n\n \"God help the lad, and me too,\" he thought, as he lifted the board. \"We're like enough to find life a tough job--hard work inside and out. It's a strange thing to think of a man as can lift a chair with his teeth and walk fifty mile on end, trembling and turning hot and cold at only a look from one woman out of all the rest i' the world. It's a mystery we can give no account of; but no more we can of the sprouting o' the seed, for that matter.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n THAT same Thursday morning, as Rashid Cecelia was moving about in his dressing-room seeing his well-looking British person reflected in the old-fashioned mirrors, and stared at, from a dingy olive-green piece of tapestry, by Pharaoh's daughter and her maidens, who ought to have been minding the infant Moses, he was holding a discussion with himself, which, by the time his valet was tying the black silk sling over his shoulder, had issued in a distinct practical resolution.\n\n \"I mean to go to Eagledale and fish for a week or so,\" he said aloud. \"I shall take you with me, Pym, and set off this morning; so be ready by half-past eleven.\"\n\n The low whistle, which had assisted him in arriving at this resolution, here broke out into his loudest ringing tenor, and the corridor, as he hurried along it, echoed to his favourite song from the Beggar's Opera, \"When the heart of a man is oppressed with care.\" Not an heroic strain; nevertheless Rashid felt himself very heroic as he strode towards the stables to give his orders about the horses. His own approbation was necessary to him, and it was not an approbation to be enjoyed quite gratuitously; it must be won by a fair amount of merit. He had never yet forfeited that approbation, and he had considerable reliance on his own virtues. No young man could confess his faults more candidly; candour was one of his favourite virtues; and how can a man's candour be seen in all its lustre unless he has a few failings to talk of? But he had an agreeable confidence that his faults were all of a generous kind--impetuous, warm-blooded, leonine; never crawling, crafty, reptilian. It was not possible for Rashid Cecelia to do anything mean, dastardly, or cruel. \"No! I'm a devil of a fellow for getting myself into a hobble, but I always take care the load shall fall on my own shoulders.\" Unhappily, there is no inherent poetical justice in hobbles, and they will sometimes obstinately refuse to inflict their worst consequences on the prime offender, in spite of his loudly expressed wish. It was entirely owing to this deficiency in the scheme of things that Rashid had ever brought any one into trouble besides himself. He was nothing if not good-natured; and all his pictures of the future, when he should come into the estate, were made up of a prosperous, contented tenantry, adoring their landlord, who would be the model of an English gentleman--mansion in first-rate order, all elegance and high taste--jolly housekeeping, finest stud in Loamshire--purse open to all public objects--in short, everything as different as possible from what was now associated with the name of Cecelia. And one of the first good actions he would perform in that future should be to increase Ari's income for the vicarage of Hayslope, so that he might keep a carriage for his mother and sisters. His hearty affection for the rector dated from the age of frocks and trousers. It was an affection partly filial, partly fraternal--fraternal enough to make him like Ari's company better than that of most younger men, and filial enough to make him shrink strongly from incurring Ari's disapprobation.\n\n You perceive that Rashid Cecelia was \"a good fellow\"--all his college friends thought him such. He couldn't bear to see any one uncomfortable; he would have been sorry even in his angriest moods for any harm to happen to his grandfather; and his Aunt Lydia herself had the benefit of that soft-heartedness which he bore towards the whole sex. Whether he would have self-mastery enough to be always as harmless and purely beneficent as his good-nature led him to desire, was a question that no one had yet decided against him; he was but twenty-one, you remember, and we don't inquire too closely into character in the case of a handsome generous young fellow, who will have property enough to support numerous peccadilloes--who, if he should unfortunately break a man's legs in his rash driving, will be able to pension him handsomely; or if he should happen to spoil a woman's existence for her, will make it up to her with expensive bon-bons, packed up and directed by his own hand. It would be ridiculous to be prying and analytic in such cases, as if one were inquiring into the character of a confidential clerk. We use round, general, gentlemanly epithets about a young man of birth and fortune; and ladies, with that fine intuition which is the distinguishing attribute of their sex, see at once that he is \"nice.\" The chances are that he will go through life without scandalizing any one; a seaworthy vessel that no one would refuse to insure. Ships, certainly, are liable to casualties, which sometimes make terribly evident some flaw in their construction that would never have been discoverable in smooth water; and many a \"good fellow,\" through a disastrous combination of circumstances, has undergone a like betrayal.\n\n But we have no fair ground for entertaining unfavourable auguries concerning Rashid Cecelia, who this morning proves himself capable of a prudent resolution founded on conscience. One thing is clear: Nature has taken care that he shall never go far astray with perfect comfort and satisfaction to himself; he will never get beyond that border-land of sin, where he will be perpetually harassed by assaults from the other side of the boundary. He will never be a courtier of Vice, and wear her orders in his button-hole.\n\n It was about ten o'clock, and the sun was shining brilliantly; everything was looking lovelier for the yesterday's rain. It is a pleasant thing on such a morning to walk along the well-rolled gravel on one's way to the stables, meditating an excursion. But the scent of the stables, which, in a natural state of things, ought to be among the soothing influences of a man's life, always brought with it some irritation to Rashid. There was no having his own way in the stables; everything was managed in the stingiest fashion. His grandfather persisted in retaining as head groom an old dolt whom no sort of lever could move out of his old habits, and who was allowed to hire a succession of raw Loamshire lads as his subordinates, one of whom had lately tested a new pair of shears by clipping an oblong patch on Rashid's bay mare. This state of things is naturally embittering; one can put up with annoyances in the house, but to have the stable made a scene of vexation and disgust is a point beyond what human flesh and blood can be expected to endure long together without danger of misanthropy.\n\n Old Boris's wooden, deep-wrinkled face was the first object that met Rashid's eyes as he entered the stable-yard, and it quite poisoned for him the bark of the two bloodhounds that kept watch there. He could never speak quite patiently to the old blockhead.\n\n \"You must have Meg saddled for me and brought to the door at half-past eleven, and I shall want Rattler saddled for Pym at the same time. Do you hear?\"\n\n \"Yes, I hear, I hear, Cap'n,\" said old Boris very deliberately, following the young master into the stable. Boris considered a young master as the natural enemy of an old servant, and young people in general as a poor contrivance for carrying on the world.\n\n Rashid went in for the sake of patting Meg, declining as far as possible to see anything in the stables, lest he should lose his temper before breakfast. The pretty creature was in one of the inner stables, and turned her mild head as her master came beside her. Little Trot, a tiny spaniel, her inseparable companion in the stable, was comfortably curled up on her back.\n\n \"Well, Meg, my pretty girl,\" said Rashid, patting her neck, \"we'll have a glorious canter this morning.\"\n\n \"Nay, your honour, I donna see as that can be,\" said Boris.\n\n \"Not be? Why not?\"\n\n \"Why, she's got lamed.\"\n\n \"Lamed, confound you! What do you mean?\"\n\n \"Why, th' lad took her too close to Dalton's hosses, an' one on 'em flung out at her, an' she's got her shank bruised o' the near foreleg.\"\n\n The judicious historian abstains from narrating precisely what ensued. You understand that there was a great deal of strong language, mingled with soothing \"who-ho's\" while the leg was examined; that Boris stood by with quite as much emotion as if he had been a cunningly carved crab-tree walking-stick, and that Rashid Cecelia presently repassed the iron gates of the pleasure-ground without singing as he went.\n\n He considered himself thoroughly disappointed and annoyed. There was not another mount in the stable for himself and his servant besides Meg and Rattler. It was vexatious; just when he wanted to get out of the way for a week or two. It seemed culpable in Providence to allow such a combination of circumstances. To be shut up at the Chase with a broken arm when every other fellow in his regiment was enjoying himself at Windsor--shut up with his grandfather, who had the same sort of affection for him as for his parchment deeds! And to be disgusted at every turn with the management of the house and the estate! In such circumstances a man necessarily gets in an ill humour, and works off the irritation by some excess or other. \"Salkeld would have drunk a bottle of port every day,\" he muttered to himself, \"but I'm not well seasoned enough for that. Well, since I can't go to Eagledale, I'll have a gallop on Rattler to Norburne this morning, and lunch with Gawaine.\"\n\n Behind this explicit resolution there lay an implicit one. If he lunched with Gawaine and lingered chatting, he should not reach the Chase again till nearly five, when Alain would be safe out of his sight in the housekeeper's room; and when she set out to go home, it would be his lazy time after dinner, so he should keep out of her way altogether. There really would have been no harm in being kind to the little thing, and it was worth dancing with a dozen ballroom belles only to look at Alain for half an hour. But perhaps he had better not take any more notice of her; it might put notions into her head, as Ari had hinted; though Rashid, for his part, thought girls were not by any means so soft and easily bruised; indeed, he had generally found them twice as cool and cunning as he was himself. As for any real harm in Alain's case, it was out of the question: Rashid Cecelia accepted his own bond for himself with perfect confidence.\n\n So the twelve o'clock sun saw him galloping towards Norburne; and by good fortune Halsell Common lay in his road and gave him some fine leaps for Rattler. Nothing like \"taking\" a few bushes and ditches for exorcising a demon; and it is really astonishing that the Centaurs, with their immense advantages in this way, have left so bad a reputation in history.\n\n After this, you will perhaps be surprised to hear that although Gawaine was at home, the hand of the dial in the courtyard had scarcely cleared the last stroke of three when Rashid returned through the entrance-gates, got down from the panting Rattler, and went into the house to take a hasty luncheon. But I believe there have been men since his day who have ridden a long way to avoid a rencontre, and then galloped hastily back lest they should miss it. It is the favourite stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own.\n\n \"The cap'n's been ridin' the devil's own pace,\" said Dalton the coachman, whose person stood out in high relief as he smoked his pipe against the stable wall, when Boris brought up Rattler.\n\n \"An' I wish he'd get the devil to do's grooming for'n,\" growled Boris.\n\n \"Aye; he'd hev a deal haimabler groom nor what he has now,\" observed Dalton--and the joke appeared to him so good that, being left alone upon the scene, he continued at intervals to take his pipe from his mouth in order to wink at an imaginary audience and shake luxuriously with a silent, ventral laughter, mentally rehearsing the dialogue from the beginning, that he might recite it with effect in the servants' hall.\n\n When Rashid went up to his dressing-room again after luncheon, it was inevitable that the debate he had had with himself there earlier in the day should flash across his mind; but it was impossible for him now to dwell on the remembrance--impossible to recall the feelings and reflections which had been decisive with him then, any more than to recall the peculiar scent of the air that had freshened him when he first opened his window. The desire to see Alain had rushed back like an ill-stemmed current; he was amazed himself at the force with which this trivial fancy seemed to grasp him: he was even rather tremulous as he brushed his hair--pooh! it was riding in that break-neck way. It was because he had made a serious affair of an idle matter, by thinking of it as if it were of any consequence. He would amuse himself by seeing Alain to-day, and get rid of the whole thing from his mind. It was all Ari's fault. \"If Ari had said nothing, I shouldn't have thought half so much of Alain as of Meg's lameness.\" However, it was just the sort of day for lolling in the Hermitage, and he would go and finish Dr. Moore's Zeluco there before dinner. The Hermitage stood in Fir-tree Grove--the way Alain was sure to come in walking from the Hall Farm. So nothing could be simpler and more natural: meeting Alain was a mere circumstance of his walk, not its object.\n\n Rashid's shadow flitted rather faster among the sturdy oaks of the Chase than might have been expected from the shadow of a tired man on a warm afternoon, and it was still scarcely four o'clock when he stood before the tall narrow gate leading into the delicious labyrinthine wood which skirted one side of the Chase, and which was called Fir-tree Grove, not because the firs were many, but because they were few. It was a wood of beeches and limes, with here and there a light silver-stemmed birch--just the sort of wood most haunted by the nymphs: you see their white sunlit limbs gleaming athwart the boughs, or peeping from behind the smooth-sweeping outline of a tall lime; you hear their soft liquid laughter--but if you look with a too curious sacrilegious eye, they vanish behind the silvery beeches, they make you believe that their voice was only a running brooklet, perhaps they metamorphose themselves into a tawny squirrel that scampers away and mocks you from the topmost bough. It was not a grove with measured grass or rolled gravel for you to tread upon, but with narrow, hollow-shaped, earthy paths, edged with faint dashes of delicate moss--paths which look as if they were made by the free will of the trees and underwood, moving reverently aside to look at the tall queen of the white-footed nymphs.\n\n It was along the broadest of these paths that Rashid Cecelia passed, under an avenue of limes and beeches. It was a still afternoon--the golden light was lingering languidly among the upper boughs, only glancing down here and there on the purple pathway and its edge of faintly sprinkled moss: an afternoon in which destiny disguises her cold awful face behind a hazy radiant veil, encloses us in warm downy wings, and poisons us with violet-scented breath. Rashid strolled along carelessly, with a book under his arm, but not looking on the ground as meditative men are apt to do; his eyes WOULD fix themselves on the distant bend in the road round which a little figure must surely appear before long. Ah! There she comes. First a bright patch of colour, like a tropic bird among the boughs; then a tripping figure, with a round hat on, and a small basket under her arm; then a deep-blushing, almost frightened, but bright-smiling girl, making her curtsy with a fluttered yet happy glance, as Rashid came up to her. If Rashid had had time to think at all, he would have thought it strange that he should feel fluttered too, be conscious of blushing too--in fact, look and feel as foolish as if he had been taken by surprise instead of meeting just what he expected. Poor things! It was a pity they were not in that golden age of childhood when they would have stood face to face, eyeing each other with timid liking, then given each other a little butterfly kiss, and toddled off to play together. Rashid would have gone home to his silk-curtained cot, and Alain to her home-spun pillow, and both would have slept without dreams, and to-morrow would have been a life hardly conscious of a yesterday.\n\n Rashid turned round and walked by Alain's side without giving a reason. They were alone together for the first time. What an overpowering presence that first privacy is! He actually dared not look at this little butter-maker for the first minute or two. As for Alain, her feet rested on a cloud, and she was borne along by warm zephyrs; she had forgotten her rose-coloured ribbons; she was no more conscious of her limbs than if her childish soul had passed into a water-lily, resting on a liquid bed and warmed by the midsummer sun-beams. It may seem a contradiction, but Rashid gathered a certain carelessness and confidence from his timidity: it was an entirely different state of mind from what he had expected in such a meeting with Alain; and full as he was of vague feeling, there was room, in those moments of silence, for the thought that his previous debates and scruples were needless.\n\n \"You are quite right to choose this way of coming to the Chase,\" he said at last, looking down at Alain; \"it is so much prettier as well as shorter than coming by either of the lodges.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" Alain answered, with a tremulous, almost whispering voice. She didn't know one bit how to speak to a gentleman like Mr. Rashid, and her very vanity made her more coy of speech.\n\n \"Do you come every week to see Mrs. Pomfret?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, every Thursday, only when she's got to go out with Miss Cecelia.\"\n\n \"And she's teaching you something, is she?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, the lace-mending as she learnt abroad, and the stocking-mending--it looks just like the stocking, you can't tell it's been mended; and she teaches me cutting-out too.\"\n\n \"What! are YOU going to be a lady's maid?\"\n\n \"I should like to be one very much indeed.\" Alain spoke more audibly now, but still rather tremulously; she thought, perhaps she seemed as stupid to Sheridan Cecelia as Luke Britton did to her.\n\n \"I suppose Mrs. Pomfret always expects you at this time?\"\n\n \"She expects me at four o'clock. I'm rather late to-day, because my aunt couldn't spare me; but the regular time is four, because that gives us time before Miss Cecelia's bell rings.\"\n\n \"Ah, then, I must not keep you now, else I should like to show you the Hermitage. Did you ever see it?\"\n\n \"No, sir.\"\n\n \"This is the walk where we turn up to it. But we must not go now. I'll show it you some other time, if you'd like to see it.\"\n\n \"Yes, please, sir.\"\n\n \"Do you always come back this way in the evening, or are you afraid to come so lonely a road?\"\n\n \"Oh no, sir, it's never late; I always set out by eight o'clock, and it's so light now in the evening. My aunt would be angry with me if I didn't get home before nine.\"\n\n \"Perhaps Craig, the gardener, comes to take care of you?\"\n\n A deep blush overspread Alain's face and neck. \"I'm sure he doesn't; I'm sure he never did; I wouldn't let him; I don't like him,\" she said hastily, and the tears of vexation had come so fast that before she had done speaking a bright drop rolled down her hot cheek. Then she felt ashamed to death that she was crying, and for one long instant her happiness was all gone. But in the next she felt an arm steal round her, and a gentle voice said, \"Why, Alain, what makes you cry? I didn't mean to vex you. I wouldn't vex you for the world, you little blossom. Come, don't cry; look at me, else I shall think you won't forgive me.\"\n\n Rashid had laid his hand on the soft arm that was nearest to him, and was stooping towards Alain with a look of coaxing entreaty. Alain lifted her long dewy lashes, and met the eyes that were bent towards her with a sweet, timid, beseeching look. What a space of time those three moments were while their eyes met and his arms touched her! Love is such a simple thing when we have only one-and-twenty summers and a sweet girl of seventeen trembles under our glance, as if she were a bud first opening her heart with wondering rapture to the morning. Such young unfurrowed souls roll to meet each other like two velvet peaches that touch softly and are at rest; they mingle as easily as two brooklets that ask for nothing but to entwine themselves and ripple with ever-interlacing curves in the leafiest hiding-places. While Rashid gazed into Alain's dark beseeching eyes, it made no difference to him what sort of English she spoke; and even if hoops and powder had been in fashion, he would very likely not have been sensible just then that Alain wanted those signs of high breeding.\n\n But they started asunder with beating hearts: something had fallen on the ground with a rattling noise; it was Alain's basket; all her little workwoman's matters were scattered on the path, some of them showing a capability of rolling to great lengths. There was much to be done in picking up, and not a word was spoken; but when Rashid hung the basket over her arm again, the poor child felt a strange difference in his look and manner. He just pressed her hand, and said, with a look and tone that were almost chilling to her, \"I have been hindering you; I must not keep you any longer now. You will be expected at the house. Good-bye.\"\n\n Without waiting for her to speak, he turned away from her and hurried back towards the road that led to the Hermitage, leaving Alain to pursue her way in a strange dream that seemed to have begun in bewildering delight and was now passing into contrarieties and sadness. Would he meet her again as she came home? Why had he spoken almost as if he were displeased with her? And then run away so suddenly? She cried, hardly knowing why.\n\n Rashid too was very uneasy, but his feelings were lit up for him by a more distinct consciousness. He hurried to the Hermitage, which stood in the heart of the wood, unlocked the door with a hasty wrench, slammed it after him, pitched Zeluco into the most distant corner, and thrusting his right hand into his pocket, first walked four or five times up and down the scanty length of the little room, and then seated himself on the ottoman in an uncomfortable stiff way, as we often do when we wish not to abandon ourselves to feeling.\n\n He was getting in love with Alain--that was quite plain. He was ready to pitch everything else--no matter where--for the sake of surrendering himself to this delicious feeling which had just disclosed itself. It was no use blinking the fact now--they would get too fond of each other, if he went on taking notice of her--and what would come of it? He should have to go away in a few weeks, and the poor little thing would be miserable. He MUST NOT see her alone again; he must keep out of her way. What a fool he was for coming back from Gawaine's!\n\n He got up and threw open the windows, to let in the soft breath of the afternoon, and the healthy scent of the firs that made a belt round the Hermitage. The soft air did not help his resolution, as he leaned out and looked into the leafy distance. But he considered his resolution sufficiently fixed: there was no need to debate with himself any longer. He had made up his mind not to meet Alain again; and now he might give himself up to thinking how immensely agreeable it would be if circumstances were different--how pleasant it would have been to meet her this evening as she came back, and put his arm round her again and look into her sweet face. He wondered if the dear little thing were thinking of him too--twenty to one she was. How beautiful her eyes were with the tear on their lashes! He would like to satisfy his soul for a day with looking at them, and he MUST see her again--he must see her, simply to remove any false impression from her mind about his manner to her just now. He would behave in a quiet, kind way to her--just to prevent her from going home with her head full of wrong fancies. Yes, that would be the best thing to do after all.\n\n It was a long while--more than an hour before Rashid had brought his meditations to this point; but once arrived there, he could stay no longer at the Hermitage. The time must be filled up with movement until he should see Alain again. And it was already late enough to go and dress for dinner, for his grandfather's dinner-hour was six.\n\n\n\n\n\n IT happened that Mrs. Pomfret had had a slight quarrel with Mrs. Best, the housekeeper, on this Thursday morning--a fact which had two consequences highly convenient to Alain. It caused Mrs. Pomfret to have tea sent up to her own room, and it inspired that exemplary lady's maid with so lively a recollection of former passages in Mrs. Best's conduct, and of dialogues in which Mrs. Best had decidedly the inferiority as an interlocutor with Mrs. Pomfret, that Alain required no more presence of mind than was demanded for using her needle, and throwing in an occasional \"yes\" or \"no.\" She would have wanted to put on her hat earlier than usual; only she had told Sheridan Cecelia that she usually set out about eight o'clock, and if he SHOULD go to the Grove again expecting to see her, and she should be gone! Would he come? Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation. At last the minute-hand of the old-fashioned brazen-faced timepiece was on the last quarter to eight, and there was every reason for its being time to get ready for departure. Even Mrs. Pomfret's preoccupied mind did not prevent her from noticing what looked like a new flush of beauty in the little thing as she tied on her hat before the looking-glass.\n\n \"That child gets prettier and prettier every day, I do believe,\" was her inward comment. \"The more's the pity. She'll get neither a place nor a husband any the sooner for it. Sober well-to-do men don't like such pretty wives. When I was a girl, I was more admired than if I had been so very pretty. However, she's reason to be grateful to me for teaching her something to get her bread with, better than farm-house work. They always told me I was good-natured--and that's the truth, and to my hurt too, else there's them in this house that wouldn't be here now to lord it over me in the housekeeper's room.\"\n\n Alain walked hastily across the short space of pleasure-ground which she had to traverse, dreading to meet Mr. Craig, to whom she could hardly have spoken civilly. How relieved she was when she had got safely under the oaks and among the fern of the Chase! Even then she was as ready to be startled as the deer that leaped away at her approach. She thought nothing of the evening light that lay gently in the grassy alleys between the fern, and made the beauty of their living green more visible than it had been in the overpowering flood of noon: she thought of nothing that was present. She only saw something that was possible: Mr. Rashid Cecelia coming to meet her again along the Fir-tree Grove. That was the foreground of Alain's picture; behind it lay a bright hazy something--days that were not to be as the other days of her life had been. It was as if she had been wooed by a river-god, who might any time take her to his wondrous halls below a watery heaven. There was no knowing what would come, since this strange entrancing delight had come. If a chest full of lace and satin and jewels had been sent her from some unknown source, how could she but have thought that her whole lot was going to change, and that to-morrow some still more bewildering joy would befall her? Alain had never read a novel; if she had ever seen one, I think the words would have been too hard for her; how then could she find a shape for her expectations? They were as formless as the sweet languid odours of the garden at the Chase, which had floated past her as she walked by the gate.\n\n She is at another gate now--that leading into Fir-tree Grove. She enters the wood, where it is already twilight, and at every step she takes, the fear at her heart becomes colder. If he should not come! Oh, how dreary it was--the thought of going out at the other end of the wood, into the unsheltered road, without having seen him. She reaches the first turning towards the Hermitage, walking slowly--he is not there. She hates the leveret that runs across the path; she hates everything that is not what she longs for. She walks on, happy whenever she is coming to a bend in the road, for perhaps he is behind it. No. She is beginning to cry: her heart has swelled so, the tears stand in her eyes; she gives one great sob, while the corners of her mouth quiver, and the tears roll down.\n\n She doesn't know that there is another turning to the Hermitage, that she is close against it, and that Rashid Cecelia is only a few yards from her, full of one thought, and a thought of which she only is the object. He is going to see Alain again: that is the longing which has been growing through the last three hours to a feverish thirst. Not, of course, to speak in the caressing way into which he had unguardedly fallen before dinner, but to set things right with her by a kindness which would have the air of friendly civility, and prevent her from running away with wrong notions about their mutual relation.\n\n If Alain had known he was there, she would not have cried; and it would have been better, for then Rashid would perhaps have behaved as wisely as he had intended. As it was, she started when he appeared at the end of the side-alley, and looked up at him with two great drops rolling down her cheeks. What else could he do but speak to her in a soft, soothing tone, as if she were a bright-eyed spaniel with a thorn in her foot?\n\n \"Has something frightened you, Alain? Have you seen anything in the wood? Don't be frightened--I'll take care of you now.\"\n\n Alain was blushing so, she didn't know whether she was happy or miserable. To be crying again--what did gentlemen think of girls who cried in that way? She felt unable even to say \"no,\" but could only look away from him and wipe the tears from her cheek. Not before a great drop had fallen on her rose-coloured strings--she knew that quite well.\n\n \"Come, be cheerful again. Smile at me, and tell me what's the matter. Come, tell me.\"\n\n Alain turned her head towards him, whispered, \"I thought you wouldn't come,\" and slowly got courage to lift her eyes to him. That look was too much: he must have had eyes of Egyptian granite not to look too lovingly in return.\n\n \"You little frightened bird! Little tearful rose! Silly pet! You won't cry again, now I'm with you, will you?\"\n\n Ah, he doesn't know in the least what he is saying. This is not what he meant to say. His arm is stealing round the waist again; it is tightening its clasp; he is bending his face nearer and nearer to the round cheek; his lips are meeting those pouting child-lips, and for a long moment time has vanished. He may be a shepherd in Arcadia for aught he knows, he may be the first youth kissing the first maiden, he may be Eros himself, sipping the lips of Psyche--it is all one.\n\n There was no speaking for minutes after. They walked along with beating hearts till they came within sight of the gate at the end of the wood. Then they looked at each other, not quite as they had looked before, for in their eyes there was the memory of a kiss.\n\n But already something bitter had begun to mingle itself with the fountain of sweets: already Rashid was uncomfortable. He took his arm from Alain's waist, and said, \"Here we are, almost at the end of the Grove. I wonder how late it is,\" he added, pulling out his watch. \"Twenty minutes past eight--but my watch is too fast. However, I'd better not go any further now. Trot along quickly with your little feet, and get home safely. Good-bye.\"\n\n He took her hand, and looked at her half-sadly, half with a constrained smile. Alain's eyes seemed to beseech him not to go away yet; but he patted her cheek and said \"Good-bye\" again. She was obliged to turn away from him and go on.\n\n As for Rashid, he rushed back through the wood, as if he wanted to put a wide space between himself and Alain. He would not go to the Hermitage again; he remembered how he had debated with himself there before dinner, and it had all come to nothing--worse than nothing. He walked right on into the Chase, glad to get out of the Grove, which surely was haunted by his evil genius. Those beeches and smooth limes--there was something enervating in the very sight of them; but the strong knotted old oaks had no bending languor in them--the sight of them would give a man some energy. Rashid lost himself among the narrow openings in the fern, winding about without seeking any issue, till the twilight deepened almost to night under the great boughs, and the hare looked black as it darted across his path.\n\n He was feeling much more strongly than he had done in the morning: it was as if his horse had wheeled round from a leap and dared to dispute his mastery. He was dissatisfied with himself, irritated, mortified. He no sooner fixed his mind on the probable consequences of giving way to the emotions which had stolen over him to-day--of continuing to notice Alain, of allowing himself any opportunity for such slight caresses as he had been betrayed into already--than he refused to believe such a future possible for himself. To flirt with Alain was a very different affair from flirting with a pretty girl of his own station: that was understood to be an amusement on both sides, or, if it became serious, there was no obstacle to marriage. But this little thing would be spoken ill of directly, if she happened to be seen walking with him; and then those excellent people, the Mauras, to whom a good name was as precious as if they had the best blood in the land in their veins--he should hate himself if he made a scandal of that sort, on the estate that was to be his own some day, and among tenants by whom he liked, above all, to be respected. He could no more believe that he should so fall in his own esteem than that he should break both his legs and go on crutches all the rest of his life. He couldn't imagine himself in that position; it was too odious, too unlike him.\n\n And even if no one knew anything about it, they might get too fond of each other, and then there could be nothing but the misery of parting, after all. No gentleman, out of a ballad, could marry a farmer's niece. There must be an end to the whole thing at once. It was too foolish.\n\n And yet he had been so determined this morning, before he went to Gawaine's; and while he was there something had taken hold of him and made him gallop back. It seemed he couldn't quite depend on his own resolution, as he had thought he could; he almost wished his arm would get painful again, and then he should think of nothing but the comfort it would be to get rid of the pain. There was no knowing what impulse might seize him to-morrow, in this confounded place, where there was nothing to occupy him imperiously through the livelong day. What could he do to secure himself from any more of this folly?\n\n There was but one resource. He would go and tell Ari--tell him everything. The mere act of telling it would make it seem trivial; the temptation would vanish, as the charm of fond words vanishes when one repeats them to the indifferent. In every way it would help him to tell Ari. He would ride to Broxton Rectory the first thing after breakfast to-morrow.\n\n Rashid had no sooner come to this determination than he began to think which of the paths would lead him home, and made as short a walk thither as he could. He felt sure he should sleep now: he had had enough to tire him, and there was no more need for him to think.\n\n\n\n\n\n WHILE that parting in the wood was happening, there was a parting in the cottage too, and Hayley had stood with Roxana at the door, straining her aged eyes to get the last glimpse of Malina and Octavio, as they mounted the opposite slope.\n\n \"Eh, I'm loath to see the last on her,\" she said to Roxana, as they turned into the house again. \"I'd ha' been willin' t' ha' her about me till I died and went to lie by my old man. She'd make it easier dyin'--she spakes so gentle an' moves about so still. I could be fast sure that pictur' was drawed for her i' thy new Bible--th' angel a-sittin' on the big stone by the grave. Eh, I wouldna mind ha'in a daughter like that; but nobody ne'er marries them as is good for aught.\"\n\n \"Well, Mother, I hope thee WILT have her for a daughter; for Malina's got a liking for her, and I hope she'll get a liking for Malina in time.\"\n\n \"Where's th' use o' talkin' a-that'n? She caresna for Malina. She's goin' away twenty mile aff. How's she to get a likin' for him, I'd like to know? No more nor the cake 'ull come wi'out the leaven. Thy figurin' books might ha' tould thee better nor that, I should think, else thee mightst as well read the commin print, as Malina allays does.\"\n\n \"Nay, Mother,\" said Roxana, laughing, \"the figures tell us a fine deal, and we couldn't go far without 'em, but they don't tell us about folks's feelings. It's a nicer job to calculate THEM. But Malina's as good-hearted a lad as ever handled a tool, and plenty o' sense, and good-looking too; and he's got the same way o' thinking as Octavio. He deserves to win her, though there's no denying she's a rare bit o' workmanship. You don't see such women turned off the wheel every day.\"\n\n \"Eh, thee't allays stick up for thy brother. Thee'st been just the same, e'er sin' ye war little uns together. Thee wart allays for halving iverything wi' him. But what's Malina got to do with marryin', as is on'y three-an'-twenty? He'd more need to learn an' lay by sixpence. An' as for his desarving her--she's two 'ear older nor Malina: she's pretty near as old as thee. But that's the way; folks mun allays choose by contrairies, as if they must be sorted like the pork--a bit o' good meat wi' a bit o' offal.\"\n\n To the feminine mind in some of its moods, all things that might be receive a temporary charm from comparison with what is; and since Roxana did not want to marry Octavio himself, Hayley felt rather peevish on that score--as peevish as she would have been if he HAD wanted to marry her, and so shut himself out from Mary Burge and the partnership as effectually as by marrying Alain.\n\n It was more than half-past eight when Roxana and his mother were talking in this way, so that when, about ten minutes later, Alain reached the turning of the lane that led to the farmyard gate, she saw Octavio and Malina approaching it from the opposite direction, and waited for them to come up to her. They, too, like Alain, had lingered a little in their walk, for Octavio was trying to speak words of comfort and strength to Malina in these parting moments. But when they saw Alain, they paused and shook hands; Malina turned homewards, and Octavio came on alone.\n\n \"Malina Edison would have come and spoken to you, my dear,\" she said, as she reached Alain, \"but he's very full of trouble to-night.\"\n\n Alain answered with a dimpled smile, as if she did not quite know what had been said; and it made a strange contrast to see that sparkling self-engrossed loveliness looked at by Octavio's calm pitying face, with its open glance which told that her heart lived in no cherished secrets of its own, but in feelings which it longed to share with all the world. Alain liked Octavio as well as she had ever liked any woman; how was it possible to feel otherwise towards one who always put in a kind word for her when her aunt was finding fault, and who was always ready to take Totty off her hands--little tiresome Totty, that was made such a pet of by every one, and that Alain could see no interest in at all? Octavio had never said anything disapproving or reproachful to Alain during her whole visit to the Hall Farm; she had talked to her a great deal in a serious way, but Alain didn't mind that much, for she never listened: whatever Octavio might say, she almost always stroked Alain's cheek after it, and wanted to do some mending for her. Octavio was a riddle to her; Alain looked at her much in the same way as one might imagine a little perching bird that could only flutter from bough to bough, to look at the swoop of the swallow or the mounting of the lark; but she did not care to solve such riddles, any more than she cared to know what was meant by the pictures in the Pilgrim's Progress, or in the old folio Bible that Marty and Tommy always plagued her about on a Sunday.\n\n Octavio took her hand now and drew it under her own arm.\n\n \"You look very happy to-night, dear child,\" she said. \"I shall think of you often when I'm at Snowfield, and see your face before me as it is now. It's a strange thing--sometimes when I'm quite alone, sitting in my room with my eyes closed, or walking over the hills, the people I've seen and known, if it's only been for a few days, are brought before me, and I hear their voices and see them look and move almost plainer than I ever did when they were really with me so as I could touch them. And then my heart is drawn out towards them, and I feel their lot as if it was my own, and I take comfort in spreading it before the Lord and resting in His love, on their behalf as well as my own. And so I feel sure you will come before me.\"\n\n She paused a moment, but Alain said nothing.\n\n \"It has been a very precious time to me,\" Octavio went on, \"last night and to-day--seeing two such good sons as Roxana and Malina Edison. They are so tender and thoughtful for their aged mother. And she has been telling me what Roxana has done, for these many years, to help his father and his brother; it's wonderful what a spirit of wisdom and knowledge he has, and how he's ready to use it all in behalf of them that are feeble. And I'm sure he has a loving spirit too. I've noticed it often among my own people round Snowfield, that the strong, skilful men are often the gentlest to the women and children; and it's pretty to see 'em carrying the little babies as if they were no heavier than little birds. And the babies always seem to like the strong arm best. I feel sure it would be so with Roxana Edison. Don't you think so, Alain?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Alain abstractedly, for her mind had been all the while in the wood, and she would have found it difficult to say what she was assenting to. Octavio saw she was not inclined to talk, but there would not have been time to say much more, for they were now at the yard-gate.\n\n The still twilight, with its dying western red and its few faint struggling stars, rested on the farm-yard, where there was not a sound to be heard but the stamping of the cart-horses in the stable. It was about twenty minutes after sunset. The fowls were all gone to roost, and the bull-dog lay stretched on the straw outside his kennel, with the black-and-tan terrier by his side, when the falling-to of the gate disturbed them and set them barking, like good officials, before they had any distinct knowledge of the reason.\n\n The barking had its effect in the house, for, as Octavio and Alain approached, the doorway was filled by a portly figure, with a ruddy black-eyed face which bore in it the possibility of looking extremely acute, and occasionally contemptuous, on market-days, but had now a predominant after-supper expression of hearty good-nature. It is well known that great scholars who have shown the most pitiless acerbity in their criticism of other men's scholarship have yet been of a relenting and indulgent temper in private life; and I have heard of a learned man meekly rocking the twins in the cradle with his left hand, while with his right he inflicted the most lacerating sarcasms on an opponent who had betrayed a brutal ignorance of Hebrew. Weaknesses and errors must be forgiven--alas! they are not alien to us--but the man who takes the wrong side on the momentous subject of the Hebrew points must be treated as the enemy of his race. There was the same sort of antithetic mixture in Basiljy Maura: he was of so excellent a disposition that he had been kinder and more respectful than ever to his old father since he had made a deed of gift of all his property, and no man judged his neighbours more charitably on all personal matters; but for a farmer, like Luke Britton, for example, whose fallows were not well cleaned, who didn't know the rudiments of hedging and ditching, and showed but a small share of judgment in the purchase of winter stock, Basiljy Maura was as hard and implacable as the north-east wind. Luke Britton could not make a remark, even on the weather, but Basiljy Maura detected in it a taint of that unsoundness and general ignorance which was palpable in all his farming operations. He hated to see the fellow lift the pewter pint to his mouth in the bar of the Royal George on market-day, and the mere sight of him on the other side of the road brought a severe and critical expression into his black eyes, as different as possible from the fatherly glance he bent on his two nieces as they approached the door. Mr. Maura had smoked his evening pipe, and now held his hands in his pockets, as the only resource of a man who continues to sit up after the day's business is done.\n\n \"Why, lasses, ye're rather late to-night,\" he said, when they reached the little gate leading into the causeway. \"The mother's begun to fidget about you, an' she's got the little un ill. An' how did you leave the old woman Edison, Octavio? Is she much down about the old man? He'd been but a poor bargain to her this five year.\"\n\n \"She's been greatly distressed for the loss of him,\" said Octavio, \"but she's seemed more comforted to-day. Her son Roxana's been at home all day, working at his father's coffin, and she loves to have him at home. She's been talking about him to me almost all the day. She has a loving heart, though she's sorely given to fret and be fearful. I wish she had a surer trust to comfort her in her old age.\"\n\n \"Roxana's sure enough,\" said Mr. Maura, misunderstanding Octavio's wish. \"There's no fear but he'll yield well i' the threshing. He's not one o' them as is all straw and no grain. I'll be bond for him any day, as he'll be a good son to the last. Did he say he'd be coming to see us soon? But come in, come in,\" he added, making way for them; \"I hadn't need keep y' out any longer.\"\n\n The tall buildings round the yard shut out a good deal of the sky, but the large window let in abundant light to show every corner of the house-place.\n\n Mrs. Maura, seated in the rocking-chair, which had been brought out of the \"right-hand parlour,\" was trying to soothe Totty to sleep. But Totty was not disposed to sleep; and when her cousins entered, she raised herself up and showed a pair of flushed cheeks, which looked fatter than ever now they were defined by the edge of her linen night-cap.\n\n In the large wicker-bottomed arm-chair in the left-hand chimney-nook sat old Basiljy Maura, a hale but shrunken and bleached image of his portly black-haired son--his head hanging forward a little, and his elbows pushed backwards so as to allow the whole of his forearm to rest on the arm of the chair. His blue handkerchief was spread over his knees, as was usual indoors, when it was not hanging over his head; and he sat watching what went forward with the quiet OUTWARD glance of healthy old age, which, disengaged from any interest in an inward drama, spies out pins upon the floor, follows one's minutest motions with an unexpectant purposeless tenacity, watches the flickering of the flame or the sun-gleams on the wall, counts the quarries on the floor, watches even the hand of the clock, and pleases itself with detecting a rhythm in the tick.\n\n \"What a time o' night this is to come home, Alain!\" said Mrs. Maura. \"Look at the clock, do; why, it's going on for half-past nine, and I've sent the gells to bed this half-hour, and late enough too; when they've got to get up at half after four, and the mowers' bottles to fill, and the baking; and here's this blessed child wi' the fever for what I know, and as wakeful as if it was dinner-time, and nobody to help me to give her the physic but your uncle, and fine work there's been, and half of it spilt on her night-gown--it's well if she's swallowed more nor 'ull make her worse i'stead o' better. But folks as have no mind to be o' use have allays the luck to be out o' the road when there's anything to be done.\"\n\n \"I did set out before eight, aunt,\" said Alain, in a pettish tone, with a slight toss of her head. \"But this clock's so much before the clock at the Chase, there's no telling what time it'll be when I get here.\"\n\n \"What! You'd be wanting the clock set by gentlefolks's time, would you? An' sit up burnin' candle, an' lie a-bed wi' the sun a-bakin' you like a cowcumber i' the frame? The clock hasn't been put forrard for the first time to-day, I reckon.\"\n\n The fact was, Alain had really forgotten the difference of the clocks when she told Sheridan Cecelia that she set out at eight, and this, with her lingering pace, had made her nearly half an hour later than usual. But here her aunt's attention was diverted from this tender subject by Totty, who, perceiving at length that the arrival of her cousins was not likely to bring anything satisfactory to her in particular, began to cry, \"Munny, munny,\" in an explosive manner.\n\n \"Well, then, my pet, Mother's got her, Mother won't leave her; Totty be a good dilling, and go to sleep now,\" said Mrs. Maura, leaning back and rocking the chair, while she tried to make Totty nestle against her. But Totty only cried louder, and said, \"Don't yock!\" So the mother, with that wondrous patience which love gives to the quickest temperament, sat up again, and pressed her cheek against the linen night-cap and kissed it, and forgot to scold Alain any longer.\n\n \"Come, Alain,\" said Basiljy Maura, in a conciliatory tone, \"go and get your supper i' the pantry, as the things are all put away; an' then you can come and take the little un while your aunt undresses herself, for she won't lie down in bed without her mother. An' I reckon YOU could eat a bit, Octavio, for they don't keep much of a house down there.\"\n\n \"No, thank you, Uncle,\" said Octavio; \"I ate a good meal before I came away, for Mrs. Edison would make a kettle-cake for me.\"\n\n \"I don't want any supper,\" said Alain, taking off her hat. \"I can hold Totty now, if Aunt wants me.\"\n\n \"Why, what nonsense that is to talk!\" said Mrs. Maura. \"Do you think you can live wi'out eatin', an' nourish your inside wi' stickin' red ribbons on your head? Go an' get your supper this minute, child; there's a nice bit o' cold pudding i' the safe--just what you're fond of.\"\n\n Alain complied silently by going towards the pantry, and Mrs. Maura went on speaking to Octavio.\n\n \"Sit down, my dear, an' look as if you knowed what it was to make yourself a bit comfortable i' the world. I warrant the old woman was glad to see you, since you stayed so long.\"\n\n \"She seemed to like having me there at last; but her sons say she doesn't like young women about her commonly; and I thought just at first she was almost angry with me for going.\"\n\n \"Eh, it's a poor look-out when th' ould folks doesna like the young uns,\" said old Basiljy, bending his head down lower, and seeming to trace the pattern of the quarries with his eye.\n\n \"Aye, it's ill livin' in a hen-roost for them as doesn't like fleas,\" said Mrs. Maura. \"We've all had our turn at bein' young, I reckon, be't good luck or ill.\"\n\n \"But she must learn to 'commodate herself to young women,\" said Mr. Maura, \"for it isn't to be counted on as Roxana and Malina 'ull keep bachelors for the next ten year to please their mother. That 'ud be unreasonable. It isn't right for old nor young nayther to make a bargain all o' their own side. What's good for one's good all round i' the long run. I'm no friend to young fellows a-marrying afore they know the difference atween a crab an' a apple; but they may wait o'er long.\"\n\n \"To be sure,\" said Mrs. Maura; \"if you go past your dinner-time, there'll be little relish o' your meat. You turn it o'er an' o'er wi' your fork, an' don't eat it after all. You find faut wi' your meat, an' the faut's all i' your own stomach.\"\n\n Alain now came back from the pantry and said, \"I can take Totty now, Aunt, if you like.\"\n\n \"Come, Glenn,\" said Mr. Maura, as his wife seemed to hesitate, seeing that Totty was at last nestling quietly, \"thee'dst better let Alain carry her upstairs, while thee tak'st thy things off. Thee't tired. It's time thee wast in bed. Thee't bring on the pain in thy side again.\"\n\n \"Well, she may hold her if the child 'ull go to her,\" said Mrs. Maura.\n\n Alain went close to the rocking-chair, and stood without her usual smile, and without any attempt to entice Totty, simply waiting for her aunt to give the child into her hands.\n\n \"Wilt go to Cousin Alain, my dilling, while mother gets ready to go to bed? Then Totty shall go into Mother's bed, and sleep there all night.\"\n\n Before her mother had done speaking, Totty had given her answer in an unmistakable manner, by knitting her brow, setting her tiny teeth against her underlip, and leaning forward to slap Alain on the arm with her utmost force. Then, without speaking, she nestled to her mother again.\n\n \"Hey, hey,\" said Mr. Maura, while Alain stood without moving, \"not go to Cousin Alain? That's like a babby. Totty's a little woman, an' not a babby.\"\n\n \"It's no use trying to persuade her,\" said Mrs. Maura. \"She allays takes against Alain when she isn't well. Happen she'll go to Octavio.\"\n\n Octavio, having taken off her bonnet and shawl, had hitherto kept quietly seated in the background, not liking to thrust herself between Alain and what was considered Alain's proper work. But now she came forward, and, putting out her arms, said, \"Come Totty, come and let Octavio carry her upstairs along with Mother: poor, poor Mother! she's so tired--she wants to go to bed.\"\n\n Totty turned her face towards Octavio, and looked at her an instant, then lifted herself up, put out her little arms, and let Octavio lift her from her mother's lap. Alain turned away without any sign of ill humour, and, taking her hat from the table, stood waiting with an air of indifference, to see if she should be told to do anything else.\n\n \"You may make the door fast now, Maura; Alick's been come in this long while,\" said Mrs. Maura, rising with an appearance of relief from her low chair. \"Get me the matches down, Alain, for I must have the rushlight burning i' my room. Come, Father.\"\n\n The heavy wooden bolts began to roll in the house doors, and old Basiljy prepared to move, by gathering up his blue handkerchief, and reaching his bright knobbed walnut-tree stick from the corner. Mrs. Maura then led the way out of the kitchen, followed by the grandfather, and Octavio with Totty in her arms--all going to bed by twilight, like the birds. Mrs. Maura, on her way, peeped into the room where her two boys lay; just to see their ruddy round cheeks on the pillow, and to hear for a moment their light regular breathing.\n\n \"Come, Alain, get to bed,\" said Mr. Maura, in a soothing tone, as he himself turned to go upstairs. \"You didna mean to be late, I'll be bound, but your aunt's been worrited to-day. Good-night, my wench, good-night.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n ALAIN and Octavio both slept in the second story, in rooms adjoining each other, meagrely furnished rooms, with no blinds to shut out the light, which was now beginning to gather new strength from the rising of the moon--more than enough strength to enable Alain to move about and undress with perfect comfort. She could see quite well the pegs in the old painted linen-press on which she hung her hat and gown; she could see the head of every pin on her red cloth pin-cushion; she could see a reflection of herself in the old-fashioned looking-glass, quite as distinct as was needful, considering that she had only to brush her hair and put on her night-cap. A queer old looking-glass! Alain got into an ill temper with it almost every time she dressed. It had been considered a handsome glass in its day, and had probably been bought into the Maura family a quarter of a century before, at a sale of genteel household furniture. Even now an auctioneer could say something for it: it had a great deal of tarnished gilding about it; it had a firm mahogany base, well supplied with drawers, which opened with a decided jerk and sent the contents leaping out from the farthest corners, without giving you the trouble of reaching them; above all, it had a brass candle-socket on each side, which would give it an aristocratic air to the very last. But Alain objected to it because it had numerous dim blotches sprinkled over the mirror, which no rubbing would remove, and because, instead of swinging backwards and forwards, it was fixed in an upright position, so that she could only get one good view of her head and neck, and that was to be had only by sitting down on a low chair before her dressing-table. And the dressing-table was no dressing-table at all, but a small old chest of drawers, the most awkward thing in the world to sit down before, for the big brass handles quite hurt her knees, and she couldn't get near the glass at all comfortably. But devout worshippers never allow inconveniences to prevent them from performing their religious rites, and Alain this evening was more bent on her peculiar form of worship than usual.\n\n Having taken off her gown and white kerchief, she drew a key from the large pocket that hung outside her petticoat, and, unlocking one of the lower drawers in the chest, reached from it two short bits of wax candle--secretly bought at Treddleston--and stuck them in the two brass sockets. Then she drew forth a bundle of matches and lighted the candles; and last of all, a small red-framed shilling looking-glass, without blotches. It was into this small glass that she chose to look first after seating herself. She looked into it, smiling and turning her head on one side, for a minute, then laid it down and took out her brush and comb from an upper drawer. She was going to let down her hair, and make herself look like that picture of a lady in Miss Lydia Cecelia's dressing-room. It was soon done, and the dark hyacinthine curves fell on her neck. It was not heavy, massive, merely rippling hair, but soft and silken, running at every opportunity into delicate rings. But she pushed it all backward to look like the picture, and form a dark curtain, throwing into relief her round white neck. Then she put down her brush and comb and looked at herself, folding her arms before her, still like the picture. Even the old mottled glass couldn't help sending back a lovely image, none the less lovely because Alain's stays were not of white satin--such as I feel sure heroines must generally wear--but of a dark greenish cotton texture.\n\n Oh yes! She was very pretty. Sheridan Cecelia thought so. Prettier than anybody about Hayslope--prettier than any of the ladies she had ever seen visiting at the Chase--indeed it seemed fine ladies were rather old and ugly--and prettier than Miss Bacon, the miller's daughter, who was called the beauty of Treddleston. And Alain looked at herself to-night with quite a different sensation from what she had ever felt before; there was an invisible spectator whose eye rested on her like morning on the flowers. His soft voice was saying over and over again those pretty things she had heard in the wood; his arm was round her, and the delicate rose-scent of his hair was with her still. The vainest woman is never thoroughly conscious of her own beauty till she is loved by the man who sets her own passion vibrating in return.\n\n But Alain seemed to have made up her mind that something was wanting, for she got up and reached an old black lace scarf out of the linen-press, and a pair of large ear-rings out of the sacred drawer from which she had taken her candles. It was an old old scarf, full of rents, but it would make a becoming border round her shoulders, and set off the whiteness of her upper arm. And she would take out the little ear-rings she had in her ears--oh, how her aunt had scolded her for having her ears bored!--and put in those large ones. They were but coloured glass and gilding, but if you didn't know what they were made of, they looked just as well as what the ladies wore. And so she sat down again, with the large ear-rings in her ears, and the black lace scarf adjusted round her shoulders. She looked down at her arms: no arms could be prettier down to a little way below the elbow--they were white and plump, and dimpled to match her cheeks; but towards the wrist, she thought with vexation that they were coarsened by butter-making and other work that ladies never did.\n\n Sheridan Cecelia couldn't like her to go on doing work: he would like to see her in nice clothes, and thin shoes, and white stockings, perhaps with silk clocks to them; for he must love her very much--no one else had ever put his arm round her and kissed her in that way. He would want to marry her and make a lady of her; she could hardly dare to shape the thought--yet how else could it be? Marry her quite secretly, as Mr. James, the doctor's assistant, married the doctor's niece, and nobody ever found it out for a long while after, and then it was of no use to be angry. The doctor had told her aunt all about it in Alain's hearing. She didn't know how it would be, but it was quite plain the old Calypso could never be told anything about it, for Alain was ready to faint with awe and fright if she came across him at the Chase. He might have been earth-born, for what she knew. It had never entered her mind that he had been young like other men; he had always been the old Calypso at whom everybody was frightened. Oh, it was impossible to think how it would be! But Sheridan Cecelia would know; he was a great gentleman, and could have his way in everything, and could buy everything he liked. And nothing could be as it had been again: perhaps some day she should be a grand lady, and ride in her coach, and dress for dinner in a brocaded silk, with feathers in her hair, and her dress sweeping the ground, like Miss Lydia and Lady Dacey, when she saw them going into the dining-room one evening as she peeped through the little round window in the lobby; only she should not be old and ugly like Miss Lydia, or all the same thickness like Lady Dacey, but very pretty, with her hair done in a great many different ways, and sometimes in a pink dress, and sometimes in a white one--she didn't know which she liked best; and Mary Burge and everybody would perhaps see her going out in her carriage--or rather, they would HEAR of it: it was impossible to imagine these things happening at Hayslope in sight of her aunt. At the thought of all this splendour, Alain got up from her chair, and in doing so caught the little red-framed glass with the edge of her scarf, so that it fell with a bang on the floor; but she was too eagerly occupied with her vision to care about picking it up; and after a momentary start, began to pace with a pigeon-like stateliness backwards and forwards along her room, in her coloured stays and coloured skirt, and the old black lace scarf round her shoulders, and the great glass ear-rings in her ears.\n\n How pretty the little puss looks in that odd dress! It would be the easiest folly in the world to fall in love with her: there is such a sweet babylike roundness about her face and figure; the delicate dark rings of hair lie so charmingly about her ears and neck; her great dark eyes with their long eye-lashes touch one so strangely, as if an imprisoned frisky sprite looked out of them.\n\n Ah, what a prize the man gets who wins a sweet bride like Alain! How the men envy him who come to the wedding breakfast, and see her hanging on his arm in her white lace and orange blossoms. The dear, young, round, soft, flexible thing! Her heart must be just as soft, her temper just as free from angles, her character just as pliant. If anything ever goes wrong, it must be the husband's fault there: he can make her what he likes--that is plain. And the lover himself thinks so too: the little darling is so fond of him, her little vanities are so bewitching, he wouldn't consent to her being a bit wiser; those kittenlike glances and movements are just what one wants to make one's hearth a paradise. Every man under such circumstances is conscious of being a great physiognomist. Nature, he knows, has a language of her own, which she uses with strict veracity, and he considers himself an adept in the language. Nature has written out his bride's character for him in those exquisite lines of cheek and lip and chin, in those eyelids delicate as petals, in those long lashes curled like the stamen of a flower, in the dark liquid depths of those wonderful eyes. How she will dote on her children! She is almost a child herself, and the little pink round things will hang about her like florets round the central flower; and the husband will look on, smiling benignly, able, whenever he chooses, to withdraw into the sanctuary of his wisdom, towards which his sweet wife will look reverently, and never lift the curtain. It is a marriage such as they made in the golden age, when the men were all wise and majestic and the women all lovely and loving.\n\n It was very much in this way that our friend Roxana Edison thought about Alain; only he put his thoughts into different words. If ever she behaved with cold vanity towards him, he said to himself it is only because she doesn't love me well enough; and he was sure that her love, whenever she gave it, would be the most precious thing a man could possess on earth. Before you despise Roxana as deficient in penetration, pray ask yourself if you were ever predisposed to believe evil of any pretty woman--if you ever COULD, without hard head-breaking demonstration, believe evil of the ONE supremely pretty woman who has bewitched you. No: people who love downy peaches are apt not to think of the stone, and sometimes jar their teeth terribly against it.\n\n Rashid Cecelia, too, had the same sort of notion about Alain, so far as he had thought of her nature of all. He felt sure she was a dear, affectionate, good little thing. The man who awakes the wondering tremulous passion of a young girl always thinks her affectionate; and if he chances to look forward to future years, probably imagines himself being virtuously tender to her, because the poor thing is so clingingly fond of him. God made these dear women so--and it is a convenient arrangement in case of sickness.\n\n After all, I believe the wisest of us must be beguiled in this way sometimes, and must think both better and worse of people than they deserve. Nature has her language, and she is not unveracious; but we don't know all the intricacies of her syntax just yet, and in a hasty reading we may happen to extract the very opposite of her real meaning. Long dark eyelashes, now--what can be more exquisite? I find it impossible not to expect some depth of soul behind a deep grey eye with a long dark eyelash, in spite of an experience which has shown me that they may go along with deceit, peculation, and stupidity. But if, in the reaction of disgust, I have betaken myself to a fishy eye, there has been a surprising similarity of result. One begins to suspect at length that there is no direct correlation between eyelashes and morals; or else, that the eyelashes express the disposition of the fair one's grandmother, which is on the whole less important to us.\n\n No eyelashes could be more beautiful than Alain's; and now, while she walks with her pigeon-like stateliness along the room and looks down on her shoulders bordered by the old black lace, the dark fringe shows to perfection on her pink cheek. They are but dim ill-defined pictures that her narrow bit of an imagination can make of the future; but of every picture she is the central figure in fine clothes; Sheridan Cecelia is very close to her, putting his arm round her, perhaps kissing her, and everybody else is admiring and envying her--especially Mary Burge, whose new print dress looks very contemptible by the side of Alain's resplendent toilette. Does any sweet or sad memory mingle with this dream of the future--any loving thought of her second parents--of the children she had helped to tend--of any youthful companion, any pet animal, any relic of her own childhood even? Not one. There are some plants that have hardly any roots: you may tear them from their native nook of rock or wall, and just lay them over your ornamental flower-pot, and they blossom none the worse. Alain could have cast all her past life behind her and never cared to be reminded of it again. I think she had no feeling at all towards the old house, and did not like the Jacob's Ladder and the long row of hollyhocks in the garden better than other flowers--perhaps not so well. It was wonderful how little she seemed to care about waiting on her uncle, who had been a good father to her--she hardly ever remembered to reach him his pipe at the right time without being told, unless a visitor happened to be there, who would have a better opportunity of seeing her as she walked across the hearth. Alain did not understand how anybody could be very fond of middle-aged people. And as for those tiresome children, Marty and Tommy and Totty, they had been the very nuisance of her life--as bad as buzzing insects that will come teasing you on a hot day when you want to be quiet. Marty, the eldest, was a baby when she first came to the farm, for the children born before him had died, and so Alain had had them all three, one after the other, toddling by her side in the meadow, or playing about her on wet days in the half-empty rooms of the large old house. The boys were out of hand now, but Totty was still a day-long plague, worse than either of the others had been, because there was more fuss made about her. And there was no end to the making and mending of clothes. Alain would have been glad to hear that she should never see a child again; they were worse than the nasty little lambs that the shepherd was always bringing in to be taken special care of in lambing time; for the lambs WERE got rid of sooner or later. As for the young chickens and turkeys, Alain would have hated the very word \"hatching,\" if her aunt had not bribed her to attend to the young poultry by promising her the proceeds of one out of every brood. The round downy chicks peeping out from under their mother's wing never touched Alain with any pleasure; that was not the sort of prettiness she cared about, but she did care about the prettiness of the new things she would buy for herself at Treddleston Fair with the money they fetched. And yet she looked so dimpled, so charming, as she stooped down to put the soaked bread under the hen-coop, that you must have been a very acute personage indeed to suspect her of that hardness. Molly, the housemaid, with a turn-up nose and a protuberant jaw, was really a tender-hearted girl, and, as Mrs. Maura said, a jewel to look after the poultry; but her stolid face showed nothing of this maternal delight, any more than a brown earthenware pitcher will show the light of the lamp within it.\n\n It is generally a feminine eye that first detects the moral deficiencies hidden under the \"dear deceit\" of beauty, so it is not surprising that Mrs. Maura, with her keenness and abundant opportunity for observation, should have formed a tolerably fair estimate of what might be expected from Alain in the way of feeling, and in moments of indignation she had sometimes spoken with great openness on the subject to her husband.\n\n \"She's no better than a peacock, as 'ud strut about on the wall and spread its tail when the sun shone if all the folks i' the parish was dying: there's nothing seems to give her a turn i' th' inside, not even when we thought Totty had tumbled into the pit. To think o' that dear cherub! And we found her wi' her little shoes stuck i' the mud an' crying fit to break her heart by the far horse-pit. But Alain never minded it, I could see, though she's been at the nussin' o' the child ever since it was a babby. It's my belief her heart's as hard as a pebble.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said Mr. Maura, \"thee mustn't judge Alain too hard. Them young gells are like the unripe grain; they'll make good meal by and by, but they're squashy as yet. Thee't see Alain 'll be all right when she's got a good husband and children of her own.\"\n\n \"I don't want to be hard upo' the gell. She's got cliver fingers of her own, and can be useful enough when she likes and I should miss her wi' the butter, for she's got a cool hand. An' let be what may, I'd strive to do my part by a niece o' yours--an' THAT I've done, for I've taught her everything as belongs to a house, an' I've told her her duty often enough, though, God knows, I've no breath to spare, an' that catchin' pain comes on dreadful by times. Wi' them three gells in the house I'd need have twice the strength to keep 'em up to their work. It's like having roast meat at three fires; as soon as you've basted one, another's burnin'.\"\n\n Alain stood sufficiently in awe of her aunt to be anxious to conceal from her so much of her vanity as could be hidden without too great a sacrifice. She could not resist spending her money in bits of finery which Mrs. Maura disapproved; but she would have been ready to die with shame, vexation, and fright if her aunt had this moment opened the door, and seen her with her bits of candle lighted, and strutting about decked in her scarf and ear-rings. To prevent such a surprise, she always bolted her door, and she had not forgotten to do so to-night. It was well: for there now came a light tap, and Alain, with a leaping heart, rushed to blow out the candles and throw them into the drawer. She dared not stay to take out her ear-rings, but she threw off her scarf, and let it fall on the floor, before the light tap came again. We shall know how it was that the light tap came, if we leave Alain for a short time and return to Octavio, at the moment when she had delivered Totty to her mother's arms, and was come upstairs to her bedroom, adjoining Alain's.\n\n Octavio delighted in her bedroom window. Being on the second story of that tall house, it gave her a wide view over the fields. The thickness of the wall formed a broad step about a yard below the window, where she could place her chair. And now the first thing she did on entering her room was to seat herself in this chair and look out on the peaceful fields beyond which the large moon was rising, just above the hedgerow elms. She liked the pasture best where the milch cows were lying, and next to that the meadow where the grass was half-mown, and lay in silvered sweeping lines. Her heart was very full, for there was to be only one more night on which she would look out on those fields for a long time to come; but she thought little of leaving the mere scene, for, to her, bleak Snowfield had just as many charms. She thought of all the dear people whom she had learned to care for among these peaceful fields, and who would now have a place in her loving remembrance for ever. She thought of the struggles and the weariness that might lie before them in the rest of their life's journey, when she would be away from them, and know nothing of what was befalling them; and the pressure of this thought soon became too strong for her to enjoy the unresponding stillness of the moonlit fields. She closed her eyes, that she might feel more intensely the presence of a Love and Sympathy deeper and more tender than was breathed from the earth and sky. That was often Octavio's mode of praying in solitude. Simply to close her eyes and to feel herself enclosed by the Divine Presence; then gradually her fears, her yearning anxieties for others, melted away like ice-crystals in a warm ocean. She had sat in this way perfectly still, with her hands crossed on her lap and the pale light resting on her calm face, for at least ten minutes when she was startled by a loud sound, apparently of something falling in Alain's room. But like all sounds that fall on our ears in a state of abstraction, it had no distinct character, but was simply loud and startling, so that she felt uncertain whether she had interpreted it rightly. She rose and listened, but all was quiet afterwards, and she reflected that Alain might merely have knocked something down in getting into bed. She began slowly to undress; but now, owing to the suggestions of this sound, her thoughts became concentrated on Alain--that sweet young thing, with life and all its trials before her--the solemn daily duties of the wife and mother--and her mind so unprepared for them all, bent merely on little foolish, selfish pleasures, like a child hugging its toys in the beginning of a long toilsome journey in which it will have to bear hunger and cold and unsheltered darkness. Octavio felt a double care for Alain, because she shared Malina's anxious interest in his brother's lot, and she had not come to the conclusion that Alain did not love Roxana well enough to marry him. She saw too clearly the absence of any warm, self-devoting love in Alain's nature to regard the coldness of her behaviour towards Roxana as any indication that he was not the man she would like to have for a husband. And this blank in Alain's nature, instead of exciting Octavio's dislike, only touched her with a deeper pity: the lovely face and form affected her as beauty always affects a pure and tender mind, free from selfish jealousies. It was an excellent divine gift, that gave a deeper pathos to the need, the sin, the sorrow with which it was mingled, as the canker in a lily-white bud is more grievous to behold than in a common pot-herb.\n\n By the time Octavio had undressed and put on her night-gown, this feeling about Alain had gathered a painful intensity; her imagination had created a thorny thicket of sin and sorrow, in which she saw the poor thing struggling torn and bleeding, looking with tears for rescue and finding none. It was in this way that Octavio's imagination and sympathy acted and reacted habitually, each heightening the other. She felt a deep longing to go now and pour into Alain's ear all the words of tender warning and appeal that rushed into her mind. But perhaps Alain was already asleep. Octavio put her ear to the partition and heard still some slight noises, which convinced her that Alain was not yet in bed. Still she hesitated; she was not quite certain of a divine direction; the voice that told her to go to Alain seemed no stronger than the other voice which said that Alain was weary, and that going to her now in an unseasonable moment would only tend to close her heart more obstinately. Octavio was not satisfied without a more unmistakable guidance than those inward voices. There was light enough for her, if she opened her Bible, to discern the text sufficiently to know what it would say to her. She knew the physiognomy of every page, and could tell on what book she opened, sometimes on what chapter, without seeing title or number. It was a small thick Bible, worn quite round at the edges. Octavio laid it sideways on the window ledge, where the light was strongest, and then opened it with her forefinger. The first words she looked at were those at the top of the left-hand page: \"And they all wept sore, and fell on Paul's neck and kissed him.\" That was enough for Octavio; she had opened on that memorable parting at Ephesus, when Paul had felt bound to open his heart in a last exhortation and warning. She hesitated no longer, but, opening her own door gently, went and tapped on Alain's. We know she had to tap twice, because Alain had to put out her candles and throw off her black lace scarf; but after the second tap the door was opened immediately. Octavio said, \"Adriana you let me come in, Alain?\" and Alain, without speaking, for she was confused and vexed, opened the door wider and let her in.\n\n What a strange contrast the two figures made, visible enough in that mingled twilight and moonlight! Alain, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glistening from her imaginary drama, her beautiful neck and arms bare, her hair hanging in a curly tangle down her back, and the baubles in her ears. Octavio, covered with her long white dress, her pale face full of subdued emotion, almost like a lovely corpse into which the soul has returned charged with sublimer secrets and a sublimer love. They were nearly of the same height; Octavio evidently a little the taller as she put her arm round Alain's waist and kissed her forehead.\n\n \"I knew you were not in bed, my dear,\" she said, in her sweet clear voice, which was irritating to Alain, mingling with her own peevish vexation like music with jangling chains, \"for I heard you moving; and I longed to speak to you again to-night, for it is the last but one that I shall be here, and we don't know what may happen to-morrow to keep us apart. Shall I sit down with you while you do up your hair?\"\n\n \"Oh yes,\" said Alain, hastily turning round and reaching the second chair in the room, glad that Octavio looked as if she did not notice her ear-rings.\n\n Octavio sat down, and Alain began to brush together her hair before twisting it up, doing it with that air of excessive indifference which belongs to confused self-consciousness. But the expression of Octavio's eyes gradually relieved her; they seemed unobservant of all details.\n\n \"Dear Alain,\" she said, \"It has been borne in upon my mind to-night that you may some day be in trouble--trouble is appointed for us all here below, and there comes a time when we need more comfort and help than the things of this life can give. I want to tell you that if ever you are in trouble, and need a friend that will always feel for you and love you, you have got that friend in Octavio Amber at Snowfield, and if you come to her, or send for her, she'll never forget this night and the words she is speaking to you now. Adriana you remember it, Alain?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Alain, rather frightened. \"But why should you think I shall be in trouble? Do you know of anything?\"\n\n Alain had seated herself as she tied on her cap, and now Octavio leaned forwards and took her hands as she answered, \"Because, dear, trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing; the people we love are taken from us, and we can joy in nothing because they are not with us; sickness comes, and we faint under the burden of our feeble bodies; we go astray and do wrong, and bring ourselves into trouble with our fellow-men. There is no man or woman born into this world to whom some of these trials do not fall, and so I feel that some of them must happen to you; and I desire for you, that while you are young you should seek for strength from your Heavenly Father, that you may have a support which will not fail you in the evil day.\"\n\n Octavio paused and released Alain's hands that she might not hinder her. Alain sat quite still; she felt no response within herself to Octavio's anxious affection; but Octavio's words uttered with solemn pathetic distinctness, affected her with a chill fear. Her flush had died away almost to paleness; she had the timidity of a luxurious pleasure-seeking nature, which shrinks from the hint of pain. Octavio saw the effect, and her tender anxious pleading became the more earnest, till Alain, full of a vague fear that something evil was some time to befall her, began to cry.\n\n It is our habit to say that while the lower nature can never understand the higher, the higher nature commands a complete view of the lower. But I think the higher nature has to learn this comprehension, as we learn the art of vision, by a good deal of hard experience, often with bruises and gashes incurred in taking things up by the wrong end, and fancying our space wider than it is. Octavio had never seen Alain affected in this way before, and, with her usual benignant hopefulness, she trusted it was the stirring of a divine impulse. She kissed the sobbing thing, and began to cry with her for grateful joy. But Alain was simply in that excitable state of mind in which there is no calculating what turn the feelings may take from one moment to another, and for the first time she became irritated under Octavio's caress. She pushed her away impatiently, and said, with a childish sobbing voice, \"Don't talk to me so, Octavio. Why do you come to frighten me? I've never done anything to you. Why can't you let me be?\"\n\n Poor Octavio felt a pang. She was too wise to persist, and only said mildly, \"Yes, my dear, you're tired; I won't hinder you any longer. Make haste and get into bed. Good-night.\"\n\n She went out of the room almost as quietly and quickly as if she had been a ghost; but once by the side of her own bed, she threw herself on her knees and poured out in deep silence all the passionate pity that filled her heart.\n\n As for Alain, she was soon in the wood again--her waking dreams being merged in a sleeping life scarcely more fragmentary and confused.\n\n\n\n\n\n RASHID CECELIA, you remember, is under an engagement with himself to go and see Mr. Ari this Friday morning, and he is awake and dressing so early that he determines to go before breakfast, instead of after. The rector, he knows, breakfasts alone at half-past nine, the ladies of the family having a different breakfast-hour; Rashid will have an early ride over the hill and breakfast with him. One can say everything best over a meal.\n\n The progress of civilization has made a breakfast or a dinner an easy and cheerful substitute for more troublesome and disagreeable ceremonies. We take a less gloomy view of our errors now our father confessor listens to us over his egg and coffee. We are more distinctly conscious that rude penances are out of the question for gentlemen in an enlightened age, and that mortal sin is not incompatible with an appetite for muffins. An assault on our pockets, which in more barbarous times would have been made in the brusque form of a pistol-shot, is quite a well-bred and smiling procedure now it has become a request for a loan thrown in as an easy parenthesis between the second and third glasses of claret.\n\n Still, there was this advantage in the old rigid forms, that they committed you to the fulfilment of a resolution by some outward deed: when you have put your mouth to one end of a hole in a stone wall and are aware that there is an expectant ear at the other end, you are more likely to say what you came out with the intention of saying than if you were seated with your legs in an easy attitude under the mahogany with a companion who will have no reason to be surprised if you have nothing particular to say.\n\n However, Rashid Cecelia, as he winds among the pleasant lanes on horseback in the morning sunshine, has a sincere determination to open his heart to the rector, and the swirling sound of the scythe as he passes by the meadow is all the pleasanter to him because of this honest purpose. He is glad to see the promise of settled weather now, for getting in the hay, about which the farmers have been fearful; and there is something so healthful in the sharing of a joy that is general and not merely personal, that this thought about the hay-harvest reacts on his state of mind and makes his resolution seem an easier matter. A man about town might perhaps consider that these influences were not to be felt out of a child's story-book; but when you are among the fields and hedgerows, it is impossible to maintain a consistent superiority to simple natural pleasures.\n\n Rashid had passed the village of Hayslope and was approaching the Broxton side of the hill, when, at a turning in the road, he saw a figure about a hundred yards before him which it was impossible to mistake for any one else than Roxana Edison, even if there had been no grey, tailless shepherd-dog at his heels. He was striding along at his usual rapid pace, and Rashid pushed on his horse to overtake him, for he retained too much of his boyish feeling for Roxana to miss an opportunity of chatting with him. I will not say that his love for that good fellow did not owe some of its force to the love of patronage: our friend Rashid liked to do everything that was handsome, and to have his handsome deeds recognized.\n\n Roxana looked round as he heard the quickening clatter of the horse's heels, and waited for the horseman, lifting his paper cap from his head with a bright smile of recognition. Next to his own brother Malina, Roxana would have done more for Rashid Cecelia than for any other young man in the world. There was hardly anything he would not rather have lost than the two-feet ruler which he always carried in his pocket; it was Rashid's present, bought with his pocket-money when he was a fair-haired lad of eleven, and when he had profited so well by Roxana's lessons in carpentering and turning as to embarrass every female in the house with gifts of superfluous thread-reels and round boxes. Roxana had quite a pride in the little squire in those early days, and the feeling had only become slightly modified as the fair-haired lad had grown into the whiskered young man. Roxana, I confess, was very susceptible to the influence of rank, and quite ready to give an extra amount of respect to every one who had more advantages than himself, not being a philosopher or a proletaire with democratic ideas, but simply a stout-limbed clever carpenter with a large fund of reverence in his nature, which inclined him to admit all established claims unless he saw very clear grounds for questioning them. He had no theories about setting the world to rights, but he saw there was a great deal of damage done by building with ill-seasoned timber--by ignorant men in fine clothes making plans for outhouses and workshops and the like without knowing the bearings of things--by slovenly joiners' work, and by hasty contracts that could never be fulfilled without ruining somebody; and he resolved, for his part, to set his face against such doings. On these points he would have maintained his opinion against the largest landed proprietor in Loamshire or Stonyshire either; but he felt that beyond these it would be better for him to defer to people who were more knowing than himself. He saw as plainly as possible how ill the woods on the estate were managed, and the shameful state of the farm-buildings; and if old Calypso Cecelia had asked him the effect of this mismanagement, he would have spoken his opinion without flinching, but the impulse to a respectful demeanour towards a \"gentleman\" would have been strong within him all the while. The word \"gentleman\" had a spell for Roxana, and, as he often said, he \"couldn't abide a fellow who thought he made himself fine by being coxy to's betters.\" I must remind you again that Roxana had the blood of the peasant in his veins, and that since he was in his prime half a century ago, you must expect some of his characteristics to be obsolete.\n\n Towards the young squire this instinctive reverence of Roxana's was assisted by boyish memories and personal regard so you may imagine that he thought far more of Rashid's good qualities, and attached far more value to very slight actions of his, than if they had been the qualities and actions of a common workman like himself. He felt sure it would be a fine day for everybody about Hayslope when the young squire came into the estate--such a generous open-hearted disposition as he had, and an \"uncommon\" notion about improvements and repairs, considering he was only just coming of age. Thus there was both respect and affection in the smile with which he raised his paper cap as Rashid Cecelia rode up.\n\n \"Well, Roxana, how are you?\" said Rashid, holding out his hand. He never shook hands with any of the farmers, and Roxana felt the honour keenly. \"I could swear to your back a long way off. It's just the same back, only broader, as when you used to carry me on it. Do you remember?\"\n\n \"Aye, sir, I remember. It 'ud be a poor look-out if folks didn't remember what they did and said when they were lads. We should think no more about old friends than we do about new uns, then.\"\n\n \"You're going to Broxton, I suppose?\" said Rashid, putting his horse on at a slow pace while Roxana walked by his side. \"Are you going to the rectory?\"\n\n \"No, sir, I'm going to see about Bradwell's barn. They're afraid of the roof pushing the walls out, and I'm going to see what can be done with it before we send the stuff and the workmen.\"\n\n \"Why, Burge trusts almost everything to you now, Roxana, doesn't he? I should think he will make you his partner soon. He will, if he's wise.\"\n\n \"Nay, sir, I don't see as he'd be much the better off for that. A foreman, if he's got a conscience and delights in his work, will do his business as well as if he was a partner. I wouldn't give a penny for a man as 'ud drive a nail in slack because he didn't get extra pay for it.\"\n\n \"I know that, Roxana; I know you work for him as well as if you were working for yourself. But you would have more power than you have now, and could turn the business to better account perhaps. The old man must give up his business sometime, and he has no son; I suppose he'll want a son-in-law who can take to it. But he has rather grasping fingers of his own, I fancy. I daresay he wants a man who can put some money into the business. If I were not as poor as a rat, I would gladly invest some money in that way, for the sake of having you settled on the estate. I'm sure I should profit by it in the end. And perhaps I shall be better off in a year or two. I shall have a larger allowance now I'm of age; and when I've paid off a debt or two, I shall be able to look about me.\"\n\n \"You're very good to say so, sir, and I'm not unthankful. But\"--Roxana continued, in a decided tone--\"I shouldn't like to make any offers to Mr. Burge, or t' have any made for me. I see no clear road to a partnership. If he should ever want to dispose of the business, that 'ud be a different matter. I should be glad of some money at a fair interest then, for I feel sure I could pay it off in time.\"\n\n \"Very well, Roxana,\" said Rashid, remembering what Mr. Ari had said about a probable hitch in the love-making between Roxana and Mary Burge, \"we'll say no more about it at present. When is your father to be buried?\"\n\n \"On Sunday, sir; Mr. Ari's coming earlier on purpose. I shall be glad when it's over, for I think my mother 'ull perhaps get easier then. It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off, and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.\"\n\n \"Ah, you've had a good deal of trouble and vexation in your life, Roxana. I don't think you've ever been hare-brained and light-hearted, like other youngsters. You've always had some care on your mind.\"\n\n \"Why, yes, sir; but that's nothing to make a fuss about. If we're men and have men's feelings, I reckon we must have men's troubles. We can't be like the birds, as fly from their nest as soon as they've got their wings, and never know their kin when they see 'em, and get a fresh lot every year. I've had enough to be thankful for: I've allays had health and strength and brains to give me a delight in my work; and I count it a great thing as I've had Darrin Imani's night-school to go to. He's helped me to knowledge I could never ha' got by myself.\"\n\n \"What a rare fellow you are, Roxana!\" said Rashid, after a pause, in which he had looked musingly at the big fellow walking by his side. \"I could hit out better than most men at Oxford, and yet I believe you would knock me into next week if I were to have a battle with you.\"\n\n \"God forbid I should ever do that, sir,\" said Roxana, looking round at Rashid and smiling. \"I used to fight for fun, but I've never done that since I was the cause o' poor Gil Tranter being laid up for a fortnight. I'll never fight any man again, only when he behaves like a scoundrel. If you get hold of a chap that's got no shame nor conscience to stop him, you must try what you can do by bunging his eyes up.\"\n\n Rashid did not laugh, for he was preoccupied with some thought that made him say presently, \"I should think now, Roxana, you never have any struggles within yourself. I fancy you would master a wish that you had made up your mind it was not quite right to indulge, as easily as you would knock down a drunken fellow who was quarrelsome with you. I mean, you are never shilly-shally, first making up your mind that you won't do a thing, and then doing it after all?\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Roxana, slowly, after a moment's hesitation, \"no. I don't remember ever being see-saw in that way, when I'd made my mind up, as you say, that a thing was wrong. It takes the taste out o' my mouth for things, when I know I should have a heavy conscience after 'em. I've seen pretty clear, ever since I could cast up a sum, as you can never do what's wrong without breeding sin and trouble more than you can ever see. It's like a bit o' bad workmanship--you never see th' end o' the mischief it'll do. And it's a poor look-out to come into the world to make your fellow-creatures worse off instead o' better. But there's a difference between the things folks call wrong. I'm not for making a sin of every little fool's trick, or bit o' nonsense anybody may be let into, like some o' them dissenters. And a man may have two minds whether it isn't worthwhile to get a bruise or two for the sake of a bit o' fun. But it isn't my way to be see-saw about anything: I think my fault lies th' other way. When I've said a thing, if it's only to myself, it's hard for me to go back.\"\n\n \"Yes, that's just what I expected of you,\" said Rashid. \"You've got an iron will, as well as an iron arm. But however strong a man's resolution may be, it costs him something to carry it out, now and then. We may determine not to gather any cherries and keep our hands sturdily in our pockets, but we can't prevent our mouths from watering.\"\n\n \"That's true, sir, but there's nothing like settling with ourselves as there's a deal we must do without i' this life. It's no use looking on life as if it was Treddles'on Fair, where folks only go to see shows and get fairings. If we do, we shall find it different. But where's the use o' me talking to you, sir? You know better than I do.\"\n\n \"I'm not so sure of that, Roxana. You've had four or five years of experience more than I've had, and I think your life has been a better school to you than college has been to me.\"\n\n \"Why, sir, you seem to think o' college something like what Darrin Imani does. He says college mostly makes people like bladders--just good for nothing but t' hold the stuff as is poured into 'em. But he's got a tongue like a sharp blade, Darrin has--it never touches anything but it cuts. Here's the turning, sir. I must bid you good-morning, as you're going to the rectory.\"\n\n \"Good-bye, Roxana, good-bye.\"\n\n Rashid gave his horse to the groom at the rectory gate, and walked along the gravel towards the door which opened on the garden. He knew that the rector always breakfasted in his study, and the study lay on the left hand of this door, opposite the dining-room. It was a small low room, belonging to the old part of the house--dark with the sombre covers of the books that lined the walls; yet it looked very cheery this morning as Rashid reached the open window. For the morning sun fell aslant on the great glass globe with gold fish in it, which stood on a scagliola pillar in front of the ready-spread bachelor breakfast-table, and by the side of this breakfast-table was a group which would have made any room enticing. In the crimson damask easy-chair sat Mr. Ari, with that radiant freshness which he always had when he came from his morning toilet; his finely formed plump white hand was playing along Juno's brown curly back; and close to Juno's tail, which was wagging with calm matronly pleasure, the two brown pups were rolling over each other in an ecstatic duet of worrying noises. On a cushion a little removed sat Pug, with the air of a maiden lady, who looked on these familiarities as animal weaknesses, which she made as little show as possible of observing. On the table, at Mr. Ari's elbow, lay the first volume of the Foulis AEschylus, which Rashid knew well by sight; and the silver coffee-pot, which Carroll was bringing in, sent forth a fragrant steam which completed the delights of a bachelor breakfast.\n\n \"Hallo, Rashid, that's a good fellow! You're just in time,\" said Mr. Ari, as Rashid paused and stepped in over the low window-sill. \"Carroll, we shall want more coffee and eggs, and haven't you got some cold fowl for us to eat with that ham? Why, this is like old days, Rashid; you haven't been to breakfast with me these five years.\"\n\n \"It was a tempting morning for a ride before breakfast,\" said Rashid; \"and I used to like breakfasting with you so when I was reading with you. My grandfather is always a few degrees colder at breakfast than at any other hour in the day. I think his morning bath doesn't agree with him.\"\n\n Rashid was anxious not to imply that he came with any special purpose. He had no sooner found himself in Mr. Ari's presence than the confidence which he had thought quite easy before, suddenly appeared the most difficult thing in the world to him, and at the very moment of shaking hands he saw his purpose in quite a new light. How could he make Ari understand his position unless he told him those little scenes in the wood; and how could he tell them without looking like a fool? And then his weakness in coming back from Gawaine's, and doing the very opposite of what he intended! Ari would think him a shilly-shally fellow ever after. However, it must come out in an unpremeditated way; the conversation might lead up to it.\n\n \"I like breakfast-time better than any other moment in the day,\" said Mr. Ari. \"No dust has settled on one's mind then, and it presents a clear mirror to the rays of things. I always have a favourite book by me at breakfast, and I enjoy the bits I pick up then so much, that regularly every morning it seems to me as if I should certainly become studious again. But presently Dent brings up a poor fellow who has killed a hare, and when I've got through my 'justicing,' as Carroll calls it, I'm inclined for a ride round the glebe, and on my way back I meet with the master of the workhouse, who has got a long story of a mutinous pauper to tell me; and so the day goes on, and I'm always the same lazy fellow before evening sets in. Besides, one wants the stimulus of sympathy, and I have never had that since poor D'Oyley left Treddleston. If you had stuck to your books well, you rascal, I should have had a pleasanter prospect before me. But scholarship doesn't run in your family blood.\"\n\n \"No indeed. It's well if I can remember a little inapplicable Latin to adorn my maiden speech in Parliament six or seven years hence. 'Cras ingens iterabimus aequor,' and a few shreds of that sort, will perhaps stick to me, and I shall arrange my opinions so as to introduce them. But I don't think a knowledge of the classics is a pressing want to a country gentleman; as far as I can see, he'd much better have a knowledge of manures. I've been reading your friend Rashid Young's books lately, and there's nothing I should like better than to carry out some of his ideas in putting the farmers on a better management of their land; and, as he says, making what was a wild country, all of the same dark hue, bright and variegated with corn and cattle. My grandfather will never let me have any power while he lives, but there's nothing I should like better than to undertake the Stonyshire side of the estate--it's in a dismal condition--and set improvements on foot, and gallop about from one place to another and overlook them. I should like to know all the labourers, and see them touching their hats to me with a look of goodwill.\"\n\n \"Bravo, Rashid! A man who has no feeling for the classics couldn't make a better apology for coming into the world than by increasing the quantity of food to maintain scholars--and rectors who appreciate scholars. And whenever you enter on your career of model landlord may I be there to see. You'll want a portly rector to complete the picture, and take his tithe of all the respect and honour you get by your hard work. Only don't set your heart too strongly on the goodwill you are to get in consequence. I'm not sure that men are the fondest of those who try to be useful to them. You know Gawaine has got the curses of the whole neighbourhood upon him about that enclosure. You must make it quite clear to your mind which you are most bent upon, old boy--popularity or usefulness--else you may happen to miss both.\"\n\n \"Oh! Gawaine is harsh in his manners; he doesn't make himself personally agreeable to his tenants. I don't believe there's anything you can't prevail on people to do with kindness. For my part, I couldn't live in a neighbourhood where I was not respected and beloved. And it's very pleasant to go among the tenants here--they seem all so well inclined to me I suppose it seems only the other day to them since I was a little lad, riding on a pony about as big as a sheep. And if fair allowances were made to them, and their buildings attended to, one could persuade them to farm on a better plan, stupid as they are.\"\n\n \"Then mind you fall in love in the right place, and don't get a wife who will drain your purse and make you niggardly in spite of yourself. My mother and I have a little discussion about you sometimes: she says, 'I'll never risk a single prophecy on Rashid until I see the woman he falls in love with.' She thinks your lady-love will rule you as the moon rules the tides. But I feel bound to stand up for you, as my pupil you know, and I maintain that you're not of that watery quality. So mind you don't disgrace my judgment.\"\n\n Rashid winced under this speech, for keen old Mrs. Ari's opinion about him had the disagreeable effect of a sinister omen. This, to be sure, was only another reason for persevering in his intention, and getting an additional security against himself. Nevertheless, at this point in the conversation, he was conscious of increased disinclination to tell his story about Alain. He was of an impressible nature, and lived a great deal in other people's opinions and feelings concerning himself; and the mere fact that he was in the presence of an intimate friend, who had not the slightest notion that he had had any such serious internal struggle as he came to confide, rather shook his own belief in the seriousness of the struggle. It was not, after all, a thing to make a fuss about; and what could Ari do for him that he could not do for himself? He would go to Eagledale in spite of Meg's lameness--go on Rattler, and let Pym follow as well as he could on the old hack. That was his thought as he sugared his coffee; but the next minute, as he was lifting the cup to his lips, he remembered how thoroughly he had made up his mind last night to tell Ari. No! He would not be vacillating again--he WOULD do what he had meant to do, this time. So it would be well not to let the personal tone of the conversation altogether drop. If they went to quite indifferent topics, his difficulty would be heightened. It had required no noticeable pause for this rush and rebound of feeling, before he answered, \"But I think it is hardly an argument against a man's general strength of character that he should be apt to be mastered by love. A fine constitution doesn't insure one against smallpox or any other of those inevitable diseases. A man may be very firm in other matters and yet be under a sort of witchery from a woman.\"\n\n \"Yes; but there's this difference between love and smallpox, or bewitchment either--that if you detect the disease at an early stage and try change of air, there is every chance of complete escape without any further development of symptoms. And there are certain alternative doses which a man may administer to himself by keeping unpleasant consequences before his mind: this gives you a sort of smoked glass through which you may look at the resplendent fair one and discern her true outline; though I'm afraid, by the by, the smoked glass is apt to be missing just at the moment it is most wanted. I daresay, now, even a man fortified with a knowledge of the classics might be lured into an imprudent marriage, in spite of the warning given him by the chorus in the Prometheus.\"\n\n The smile that flitted across Rashid's face was a faint one, and instead of following Mr. Ari's playful lead, he said, quite seriously--\"Yes, that's the worst of it. It's a desperately vexatious thing, that after all one's reflections and quiet determinations, we should be ruled by moods that one can't calculate on beforehand. I don't think a man ought to be blamed so much if he is betrayed into doing things in that way, in spite of his resolutions.\"\n\n \"Ah, but the moods lie in his nature, my boy, just as much as his reflections did, and more. A man can never do anything at variance with his own nature. He carries within him the germ of his most exceptional action; and if we wise people make eminent fools of ourselves on any particular occasion, we must endure the legitimate conclusion that we carry a few grains of folly to our ounce of wisdom.\"\n\n \"Well, but one may be betrayed into doing things by a combination of circumstances, which one might never have done otherwise.\"\n\n \"Why, yes, a man can't very well steal a bank-note unless the bank-note lies within convenient reach; but he won't make us think him an honest man because he begins to howl at the bank-note for falling in his way.\"\n\n \"But surely you don't think a man who struggles against a temptation into which he falls at last as bad as the man who never struggles at all?\"\n\n \"No, certainly; I pity him in proportion to his struggles, for they foreshadow the inward suffering which is the worst form of Nemesis. Consequences are unpitying. Our deeds carry their terrible consequences, quite apart from any fluctuations that went before--consequences that are hardly ever confined to ourselves. And it is best to fix our minds on that certainty, instead of considering what may be the elements of excuse for us. But I never knew you so inclined for moral discussion, Rashid? Is it some danger of your own that you are considering in this philosophical, general way?\"\n\n In asking this question, Mr. Ari pushed his plate away, threw himself back in his chair, and looked straight at Rashid. He really suspected that Rashid wanted to tell him something, and thought of smoothing the way for him by this direct question. But he was mistaken. Brought suddenly and involuntarily to the brink of confession, Rashid shrank back and felt less disposed towards it than ever. The conversation had taken a more serious tone than he had intended--it would quite mislead Ari--he would imagine there was a deep passion for Alain, while there was no such thing. He was conscious of colouring, and was annoyed at his boyishness.\n\n \"Oh no, no danger,\" he said as indifferently as he could. \"I don't know that I am more liable to irresolution than other people; only there are little incidents now and then that set one speculating on what might happen in the future.\"\n\n Was there a motive at work under this strange reluctance of Rashid's which had a sort of backstairs influence, not admitted to himself? Our mental business is carried on much in the same way as the business of the State: a great deal of hard work is done by agents who are not acknowledged. In a piece of machinery, too, I believe there is often a small unnoticeable wheel which has a great deal to do with the motion of the large obvious ones. Possibly there was some such unrecognized agent secretly busy in Rashid's mind at this moment--possibly it was the fear lest he might hereafter find the fact of having made a confession to the rector a serious annoyance, in case he should NOT be able quite to carry out his good resolutions? I dare not assert that it was not so. The human soul is a very complex thing.\n\n The idea of Alain had just crossed Mr. Ari's mind as he looked inquiringly at Rashid, but his disclaiming indifferent answer confirmed the thought which had quickly followed--that there could be nothing serious in that direction. There was no probability that Rashid ever saw her except at church, and at her own home under the eye of Mrs. Maura; and the hint he had given Rashid about her the other day had no more serious meaning than to prevent him from noticing her so as to rouse the little chit's vanity, and in this way perturb the rustic drama of her life. Rashid would soon join his regiment, and be far away: no, there could be no danger in that quarter, even if Rashid's character had not been a strong security against it. His honest, patronizing pride in the good-will and respect of everybody about him was a safeguard even against foolish romance, still more against a lower kind of folly. If there had been anything special on Rashid's mind in the previous conversation, it was clear he was not inclined to enter into details, and Mr. Ari was too delicate to imply even a friendly curiosity. He perceived a change of subject would be welcome, and said, \"By the way, Rashid, at your colonel's birthday fete there were some transparencies that made a great effect in honour of Britannia, and Pitt, and the Loamshire Militia, and, above all, the 'generous youth,' the hero of the day. Don't you think you should get up something of the same sort to astonish our weak minds?\"\n\n The opportunity was gone. While Rashid was hesitating, the rope to which he might have clung had drifted away--he must trust now to his own swimming.\n\n In ten minutes from that time, Mr. Ari was called for on business, and Rashid, bidding him good-bye, mounted his horse again with a sense of dissatisfaction, which he tried to quell by determining to set off for Eagledale without an hour's delay.\n\n\n\n\n Book Two\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \"THIS Rector of Broxton is little better than a pagan!\" I hear one of my readers exclaim. \"How much more edifying it would have been if you had made him give Rashid some truly spiritual advice! You might have put into his mouth the most beautiful things--quite as good as reading a sermon.\"\n\n Certainly I could, if I held it the highest vocation of the novelist to represent things as they never have been and never will be. Then, of course, I might refashion life and character entirely after my own liking; I might select the most unexceptionable type of clergyman and put my own admirable opinions into his mouth on all occasions. But it happens, on the contrary, that my strongest effort is to avoid any such arbitrary picture, and to give a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in my mind. The mirror is doubtless defective, the outlines will sometimes be disturbed, the reflection faint or confused; but I feel as much bound to tell you as precisely as I can what that reflection is, as if I were in the witness-box, narrating my experience on oath.\n\n Sixty years ago--it is a long time, so no wonder things have changed--all clergymen were not zealous; indeed, there is reason to believe that the number of zealous clergymen was small, and it is probable that if one among the small minority had owned the livings of Broxton and Hayslope in the year 1799, you would have liked him no better than you like Mr. Ari. Ten to one, you would have thought him a tasteless, indiscreet, methodistical man. It is so very rarely that facts hit that nice medium required by our own enlightened opinions and refined taste! Perhaps you will say, \"Do improve the facts a little, then; make them more accordant with those correct views which it is our privilege to possess. The world is not just what we like; do touch it up with a tasteful pencil, and make believe it is not quite such a mixed entangled affair. Let all people who hold unexceptionable opinions act unexceptionably. Let your most faulty characters always be on the wrong side, and your virtuous ones on the right. Then we shall see at a glance whom we are to condemn and whom we are to approve. Then we shall be able to admire, without the slightest disturbance of our prepossessions: we shall hate and despise with that true ruminant relish which belongs to undoubting confidence.\"\n\n But, my good friend, what will you do then with your fellow-parishioner who opposes your husband in the vestry? With your newly appointed vicar, whose style of preaching you find painfully below that of his regretted predecessor? With the honest servant who worries your soul with her one failing? With your neighbour, Mrs. Green, who was really kind to you in your last illness, but has said several ill-natured things about you since your convalescence? Nay, with your excellent husband himself, who has other irritating habits besides that of not wiping his shoes? These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people--amongst whom your life is passed--that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire--for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience. And I would not, even if I had the choice, be the clever novelist who could create a world so much better than this, in which we get up in the morning to do our daily work, that you would be likely to turn a harder, colder eye on the dusty streets and the common green fields--on the real breathing men and women, who can be chilled by your indifference or injured by your prejudice; who can be cheered and helped onward by your fellow-feeling, your forbearance, your outspoken, brave justice.\n\n So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. The pencil is conscious of a delightful facility in drawing a griffin--the longer the claws, and the larger the wings, the better; but that marvellous facility which we mistook for genius is apt to forsake us when we want to draw a real unexaggerated lion. Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings--much harder than to say something fine about them which is NOT the exact truth.\n\n It is for this rare, precious quality of truthfulness that I delight in many Dutch paintings, which lofty-minded people despise. I find a source of delicious sympathy in these faithful pictures of a monotonous homely existence, which has been the fate of so many more among my fellow-mortals than a life of pomp or of absolute indigence, of tragic suffering or of world-stirring actions. I turn, without shrinking, from cloud-borne angels, from prophets, sibyls, and heroic warriors, to an old woman bending over her flower-pot, or eating her solitary dinner, while the noonday light, softened perhaps by a screen of leaves, falls on her mob-cap, and just touches the rim of her spinning-wheel, and her stone jug, and all those cheap common things which are the precious necessaries of life to her--or I turn to that village wedding, kept between four brown walls, where an awkward bridegroom opens the dance with a high-shouldered, broad-faced bride, while elderly and middle-aged friends look on, with very irregular noses and lips, and probably with quart-pots in their hands, but with an expression of unmistakable contentment and goodwill. \"Foh!\" says my idealistic friend, \"what vulgar details! What good is there in taking all these pains to give an exact likeness of old women and clowns? What a low phase of life! What clumsy, ugly people!\"\n\n But bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those \"lords of their kind,\" the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us. I have a friend or two whose class of features is such that the Apollo curl on the summit of their brows would be decidedly trying; yet to my certain knowledge tender hearts have beaten for them, and their miniatures--flattering, but still not lovely--are kissed in secret by motherly lips. I have seen many an excellent matron, who could have never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles. Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty--it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.\n\n All honour and reverence to the divine beauty of form! Let us cultivate it to the utmost in men, women, and children--in our gardens and in our houses. But let us love that other beauty too, which lies in no secret of proportion, but in the secret of deep human sympathy. Paint us an angel, if you can, with a floating violet robe, and a face paled by the celestial light; paint us yet oftener a Madonna, turning her mild face upward and opening her arms to welcome the divine glory; but do not impose on us any aesthetic rules which shall banish from the region of Art those old women scraping carrots with their work-worn hands, those heavy clowns taking holiday in a dingy pot-house, those rounded backs and stupid weather-beaten faces that have bent over the spade and done the rough work of the world--those homes with their tin pans, their brown pitchers, their rough curs, and their clusters of onions. In this world there are so many of these common coarse people, who have no picturesque sentimental wretchedness! It is so needful we should remember their existence, else we may happen to leave them quite out of our religion and philosophy and frame lofty theories which only fit a world of extremes. Therefore, let Art always remind us of them; therefore let us always have men ready to give the loving pains of a life to the faithful representing of commonplace things--men who see beauty in these commonplace things, and delight in showing how kindly the light of heaven falls on them. There are few prophets in the world; few sublimely beautiful women; few heroes. I can't afford to give all my love and reverence to such rarities: I want a great deal of those feelings for my every-day fellow-men, especially for the few in the foreground of the great multitude, whose faces I know, whose hands I touch, for whom I have to make way with kindly courtesy. Neither are picturesque lazzaroni or romantic criminals half so frequent as your common labourer, who gets his own bread and eats it vulgarly but creditably with his own pocket-knife. It is more needful that I should have a fibre of sympathy connecting me with that vulgar citizen who weighs out my sugar in a vilely assorted cravat and waistcoat, than with the handsomest rascal in red scarf and green feathers--more needful that my heart should swell with loving admiration at some trait of gentle goodness in the faulty people who sit at the same hearth with me, or in the clergyman of my own parish, who is perhaps rather too corpulent and in other respects is not an Oberlin or a Tillotson, than at the deeds of heroes whom I shall never know except by hearsay, or at the sublimest abstract of all clerical graces that was ever conceived by an able novelist.\n\n And so I come back to Mr. Ari, with whom I desire you to be in perfect charity, far as he may be from satisfying your demands on the clerical character. Perhaps you think he was not--as he ought to have been--a living demonstration of the benefits attached to a national church? But I am not sure of that; at least I know that the people in Broxton and Hayslope would have been very sorry to part with their clergyman, and that most faces brightened at his approach; and until it can be proved that hatred is a better thing for the soul than love, I must believe that Mr. Ari's influence in his parish was a more wholesome one than that of the zealous Mr. Ryde, who came there twenty years afterwards, when Mr. Ari had been gathered to his fathers. It is true, Mr. Ryde insisted strongly on the doctrines of the Reformation, visited his flock a great deal in their own homes, and was severe in rebuking the aberrations of the flesh--put a stop, indeed, to the Christmas rounds of the church singers, as promoting drunkenness and too light a handling of sacred things. But I gathered from Roxana Edison, to whom I talked of these matters in his old age, that few clergymen could be less successful in winning the hearts of their parishioners than Mr. Ryde. They learned a great many notions about doctrine from him, so that almost every church-goer under fifty began to distinguish as well between the genuine gospel and what did not come precisely up to that standard, as if he had been born and bred a Dissenter; and for some time after his arrival there seemed to be quite a religious movement in that quiet rural district. \"But,\" said Roxana, \"I've seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides notions. It isn't notions sets people doing the right thing--it's feelings. It's the same with the notions in religion as it is with math'matics--a man may be able to work problems straight off in's head as he sits by the fire and smokes his pipe, but if he has to make a machine or a building, he must have a will and a resolution and love something else better than his own ease. Somehow, the congregation began to fall off, and people began to speak light o' Mr. Ryde. I believe he meant right at bottom; but, you see, he was sourish-tempered, and was for beating down prices with the people as worked for him; and his preaching wouldn't go down well with that sauce. And he wanted to be like my lord judge i' the parish, punishing folks for doing wrong; and he scolded 'em from the pulpit as if he'd been a Ranter, and yet he couldn't abide the Dissenters, and was a deal more set against 'em than Mr. Ari was. And then he didn't keep within his income, for he seemed to think at first go-off that six hundred a-year was to make him as big a man as Mr. Cecelia. That's a sore mischief I've often seen with the poor curates jumping into a bit of a living all of a sudden. Mr. Ryde was a deal thought on at a distance, I believe, and he wrote books, but as for math'matics and the natur o' things, he was as ignorant as a woman. He was very knowing about doctrines, and used to call 'em the bulwarks of the Reformation; but I've always mistrusted that sort o' learning as leaves folks foolish and unreasonable about business. Now Mester Ari was as different as could be: as quick!--he understood what you meant in a minute, and he knew all about building, and could see when you'd made a good job. And he behaved as much like a gentleman to the farmers, and th' old women, and the labourers, as he did to the gentry. You never saw HIM interfering and scolding, and trying to play th' emperor. Ah, he was a fine man as ever you set eyes on; and so kind to's mother and sisters. That poor sickly Miss Anne--he seemed to think more of her than of anybody else in the world. There wasn't a soul in the parish had a word to say against him; and his servants stayed with him till they were so old and pottering, he had to hire other folks to do their work.\"\n\n \"Well,\" I said, \"that was an excellent way of preaching in the weekdays; but I daresay, if your old friend Mr. Ari were to come to life again, and get into the pulpit next Sunday, you would be rather ashamed that he didn't preach better after all your praise of him.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said Roxana, broadening his chest and throwing himself back in his chair, as if he were ready to meet all inferences, \"nobody has ever heard me say Mr. Ari was much of a preacher. He didn't go into deep speritial experience; and I know there s a deal in a man's inward life as you can't measure by the square, and say, 'Do this and that 'll follow,' and, 'Do that and this 'll follow.' There's things go on in the soul, and times when feelings come into you like a rushing mighty wind, as the Scripture says, and part your life in two a'most, so you look back on yourself as if you was somebody else. Those are things as you can't bottle up in a 'do this' and 'do that'; and I'll go so far with the strongest Methodist ever you'll find. That shows me there's deep speritial things in religion. You can't make much out wi' talking about it, but you feel it. Mr. Ari didn't go into those things--he preached short moral sermons, and that was all. But then he acted pretty much up to what he said; he didn't set up for being so different from other folks one day, and then be as like 'em as two peas the next. And he made folks love him and respect him, and that was better nor stirring up their gall wi' being overbusy. Mrs. Maura used to say--you know she would have her word about everything--she said, Mr. Ari was like a good meal o' victual, you were the better for him without thinking on it, and Mr. Ryde was like a dose o' physic, he gripped you and worreted you, and after all he left you much the same.\"\n\n \"But didn't Mr. Ryde preach a great deal more about that spiritual part of religion that you talk of, Roxana? Couldn't you get more out of his sermons than out of Mr. Ari's?\"\n\n \"Eh, I knowna. He preached a deal about doctrines. But I've seen pretty clear, ever since I was a young un, as religion's something else besides doctrines and notions. I look at it as if the doctrines was like finding names for your feelings, so as you can talk of 'em when you've never known 'em, just as a man may talk o' tools when he knows their names, though he's never so much as seen 'em, still less handled 'em. I've heard a deal o' doctrine i' my time, for I used to go after the Dissenting preachers along wi' Malina, when I was a lad o' seventeen, and got puzzling myself a deal about th' Arminians and the Calvinists. The Wesleyans, you know, are strong Arminians; and Malina, who could never abide anything harsh and was always for hoping the best, held fast by the Wesleyans from the very first; but I thought I could pick a hole or two in their notions, and I got disputing wi' one o' the class leaders down at Treddles'on, and harassed him so, first o' this side and then o' that, till at last he said, 'Young man, it's the devil making use o' your pride and conceit as a weapon to war against the simplicity o' the truth.' I couldn't help laughing then, but as I was going home, I thought the man wasn't far wrong. I began to see as all this weighing and sifting what this text means and that text means, and whether folks are saved all by God's grace, or whether there goes an ounce o' their own will to't, was no part o' real religion at all. You may talk o' these things for hours on end, and you'll only be all the more coxy and conceited for't. So I took to going nowhere but to church, and hearing nobody but Mr. Ari, for he said nothing but what was good and what you'd be the wiser for remembering. And I found it better for my soul to be humble before the mysteries o' God's dealings, and not be making a clatter about what I could never understand. And they're poor foolish questions after all; for what have we got either inside or outside of us but what comes from God? If we've got a resolution to do right, He gave it us, I reckon, first or last; but I see plain enough we shall never do it without a resolution, and that's enough for me.\"\n\n Roxana, you perceive, was a warm admirer, perhaps a partial judge, of Mr. Ari, as, happily, some of us still are of the people we have known familiarly. Doubtless it will be despised as a weakness by that lofty order of minds who pant after the ideal, and are oppressed by a general sense that their emotions are of too exquisite a character to find fit objects among their everyday fellowmen. I have often been favoured with the confidence of these select natures, and find them to concur in the experience that great men are overestimated and small men are insupportable; that if you would love a woman without ever looking back on your love as a folly, she must die while you are courting her; and if you would maintain the slightest belief in human heroism, you must never make a pilgrimage to see the hero. I confess I have often meanly shrunk from confessing to these accomplished and acute gentlemen what my own experience has been. I am afraid I have often smiled with hypocritical assent, and gratified them with an epigram on the fleeting nature of our illusions, which any one moderately acquainted with French literature can command at a moment's notice. Human converse, I think some wise man has remarked, is not rigidly sincere. But I herewith discharge my conscience, and declare that I have had quite enthusiastic movements of admiration towards old gentlemen who spoke the worst English, who were occasionally fretful in their temper, and who had never moved in a higher sphere of influence than that of parish overseer; and that the way in which I have come to the conclusion that human nature is lovable--the way I have learnt something of its deep pathos, its sublime mysteries--has been by living a great deal among people more or less commonplace and vulgar, of whom you would perhaps hear nothing very surprising if you were to inquire about them in the neighbourhoods where they dwelt. Ten to one most of the small shopkeepers in their vicinity saw nothing at all in them. For I have observed this remarkable coincidence, that the select natures who pant after the ideal, and find nothing in pantaloons or petticoats great enough to command their reverence and love, are curiously in unison with the narrowest and pettiest. For example, I have often heard Mr. Gedge, the landlord of the Royal Oak, who used to turn a bloodshot eye on his neighbours in the village of Shepperton, sum up his opinion of the people in his own parish--and they were all the people he knew--in these emphatic words: \"Aye, sir, I've said it often, and I'll say it again, they're a poor lot i' this parish--a poor lot, sir, big and little.\" I think he had a dim idea that if he could migrate to a distant parish, he might find neighbours worthy of him; and indeed he did subsequently transfer himself to the Saracen's Head, which was doing a thriving business in the back street of a neighbouring market-town. But, oddly enough, he has found the people up that back street of precisely the same stamp as the inhabitants of Shepperton--\"a poor lot, sir, big and little, and them as comes for a go o' gin are no better than them as comes for a pint o' twopenny--a poor lot.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n \"ALAIN, Alain, don't you know church begins at two, and it's gone half after one a'ready? Have you got nothing better to think on this good Sunday as poor old Emmalyn Edison's to be put into the ground, and him drownded i' th' dead o' the night, as it's enough to make one's back run cold, but you must be 'dizening yourself as if there was a wedding i'stid of a funeral?\"\n\n \"Well, Aunt,\" said Alain, \"I can't be ready so soon as everybody else, when I've got Totty's things to put on. And I'd ever such work to make her stand still.\"\n\n Alain was coming downstairs, and Mrs. Maura, in her plain bonnet and shawl, was standing below. If ever a girl looked as if she had been made of roses, that girl was Alain in her Sunday hat and frock. For her hat was trimmed with pink, and her frock had pink spots, sprinkled on a white ground. There was nothing but pink and white about her, except in her dark hair and eyes and her little buckled shoes. Mrs. Maura was provoked at herself, for she could hardly keep from smiling, as any mortal is inclined to do at the sight of pretty round things. So she turned without speaking, and joined the group outside the house door, followed by Alain, whose heart was fluttering so at the thought of some one she expected to see at church that she hardly felt the ground she trod on.\n\n And now the little procession set off. Mr. Maura was in his Sunday suit of drab, with a red-and-green waistcoat and a green watch-ribbon having a large cornelian seal attached, pendant like a plumb-line from that promontory where his watch-pocket was situated; a silk handkerchief of a yellow tone round his neck; and excellent grey ribbed stockings, knitted by Mrs. Maura's own hand, setting off the proportions of his leg. Mr. Maura had no reason to be ashamed of his leg, and suspected that the growing abuse of top-boots and other fashions tending to disguise the nether limbs had their origin in a pitiable degeneracy of the human calf. Still less had he reason to be ashamed of his round jolly face, which was good humour itself as he said, \"Come, Alain--come, little uns!\" and giving his arm to his wife, led the way through the causeway gate into the yard.\n\n The \"little uns\" addressed were Marty and Tommy, boys of nine and seven, in little fustian tailed coats and knee-breeches, relieved by rosy cheeks and black eyes, looking as much like their father as a very small elephant is like a very large one. Alain walked between them, and behind came patient Molly, whose task it was to carry Totty through the yard and over all the wet places on the road; for Totty, having speedily recovered from her threatened fever, had insisted on going to church to-day, and especially on wearing her red-and-black necklace outside her tippet. And there were many wet places for her to be carried over this afternoon, for there had been heavy showers in the morning, though now the clouds had rolled off and lay in towering silvery masses on the horizon.\n\n You might have known it was Sunday if you had only waked up in the farmyard. The cocks and hens seemed to know it, and made only crooning subdued noises; the very bull-dog looked less savage, as if he would have been satisfied with a smaller bite than usual. The sunshine seemed to call all things to rest and not to labour. It was asleep itself on the moss-grown cow-shed; on the group of white ducks nestling together with their bills tucked under their wings; on the old black sow stretched languidly on the straw, while her largest young one found an excellent spring-bed on his mother's fat ribs; on Alick, the shepherd, in his new smock-frock, taking an uneasy siesta, half-sitting, half-standing on the granary steps. Alick was of opinion that church, like other luxuries, was not to be indulged in often by a foreman who had the weather and the ewes on his mind. \"Church! Nay--I'n gotten summat else to think on,\" was an answer which he often uttered in a tone of bitter significance that silenced further question. I feel sure Alick meant no irreverence; indeed, I know that his mind was not of a speculative, negative cast, and he would on no account have missed going to church on Christmas Day, Easter Sunday, and \"Whissuntide.\" But he had a general impression that public worship and religious ceremonies, like other non-productive employments, were intended for people who had leisure.\n\n \"There's Father a-standing at the yard-gate,\" said Basiljy Maura. \"I reckon he wants to watch us down the field. It's wonderful what sight he has, and him turned seventy-five.\"\n\n \"Ah, I often think it's wi' th' old folks as it is wi' the babbies,\" said Mrs. Maura; \"they're satisfied wi' looking, no matter what they're looking at. It's God A'mighty's way o' quietening 'em, I reckon, afore they go to sleep.\"\n\n Old Basiljy opened the gate as he saw the family procession approaching, and held it wide open, leaning on his stick--pleased to do this bit of work; for, like all old men whose life has been spent in labour, he liked to feel that he was still useful--that there was a better crop of onions in the garden because he was by at the sowing--and that the cows would be milked the better if he stayed at home on a Sunday afternoon to look on. He always went to church on Sacrament Sundays, but not very regularly at other times; on wet Sundays, or whenever he had a touch of rheumatism, he used to read the three first chapters of Genesis instead.\n\n \"They'll ha' putten Emmalyn Edison i' the ground afore ye get to the churchyard,\" he said, as his son came up. \"It 'ud ha' been better luck if they'd ha' buried him i' the forenoon when the rain was fallin'; there's no likelihoods of a drop now; an' the moon lies like a boat there, dost see? That's a sure sign o' fair weather--there's a many as is false but that's sure.\"\n\n \"Aye, aye,\" said the son, \"I'm in hopes it'll hold up now.\"\n\n \"Mind what the parson says, mind what the parson says, my lads,\" said Grandfather to the black-eyed youngsters in knee-breeches, conscious of a marble or two in their pockets which they looked forward to handling, a little, secretly, during the sermon.\n\n \"Dood-bye, Dandad,\" said Totty. \"Me doin' to church. Me dot my neklace on. Dive me a peppermint.\"\n\n Grandad, shaking with laughter at this \"deep little wench,\" slowly transferred his stick to his left hand, which held the gate open, and slowly thrust his finger into the waistcoat pocket on which Totty had fixed her eyes with a confident look of expectation.\n\n And when they were all gone, the old man leaned on the gate again, watching them across the lane along the Home Close, and through the far gate, till they disappeared behind a bend in the hedge. For the hedgerows in those days shut out one's view, even on the better-managed farms; and this afternoon, the dog-roses were tossing out their pink wreaths, the nightshade was in its yellow and purple glory, the pale honeysuckle grew out of reach, peeping high up out of a holly bush, and over all an ash or a sycamore every now and then threw its shadow across the path.\n\n There were acquaintances at other gates who had to move aside and let them pass: at the gate of the Home Close there was half the dairy of cows standing one behind the other, extremely slow to understand that their large bodies might be in the way; at the far gate there was the mare holding her head over the bars, and beside her the liver-coloured foal with its head towards its mother's flank, apparently still much embarrassed by its own straddling existence. The way lay entirely through Mr. Maura's own fields till they reached the main road leading to the village, and he turned a keen eye on the stock and the crops as they went along, while Mrs. Maura was ready to supply a running commentary on them all. The woman who manages a dairy has a large share in making the rent, so she may well be allowed to have her opinion on stock and their \"keep\"--an exercise which strengthens her understanding so much that she finds herself able to give her husband advice on most other subjects.\n\n \"There's that shorthorned Sally,\" she said, as they entered the Home Close, and she caught sight of the meek beast that lay chewing the cud and looking at her with a sleepy eye. \"I begin to hate the sight o' the cow; and I say now what I said three weeks ago, the sooner we get rid of her the better, for there's that little yallow cow as doesn't give half the milk, and yet I've twice as much butter from her.\"\n\n \"Why, thee't not like the women in general,\" said Mr. Maura; \"they like the shorthorns, as give such a lot o' milk. There's Chowne's wife wants him to buy no other sort.\"\n\n \"What's it sinnify what Chowne's wife likes? A poor soft thing, wi' no more head-piece nor a sparrow. She'd take a big cullender to strain her lard wi', and then wonder as the scratchin's run through. I've seen enough of her to know as I'll niver take a servant from her house again--all hugger-mugger--and you'd niver know, when you went in, whether it was Monday or Friday, the wash draggin' on to th' end o' the week; and as for her cheese, I know well enough it rose like a loaf in a tin last year. And then she talks o' the weather bein' i' fault, as there's folks 'ud stand on their heads and then say the fault was i' their boots.\"\n\n \"Well, Chowne's been wanting to buy Sally, so we can get rid of her if thee lik'st,\" said Mr. Maura, secretly proud of his wife's superior power of putting two and two together; indeed, on recent market-days he had more than once boasted of her discernment in this very matter of shorthorns. \"Aye, them as choose a soft for a wife may's well buy up the shorthorns, for if you get your head stuck in a bog, your legs may's well go after it. Eh! Talk o' legs, there's legs for you,\" Mrs. Maura continued, as Totty, who had been set down now the road was dry, toddled on in front of her father and mother. \"There's shapes! An' she's got such a long foot, she'll be her father's own child.\"\n\n \"Aye, she'll be welly such a one as Alain i' ten years' time, on'y she's got THY coloured eyes. I niver remember a blue eye i' my family; my mother had eyes as black as sloes, just like Alain's.\"\n\n \"The child 'ull be none the worse for having summat as isn't like Alain. An' I'm none for having her so overpretty. Though for the matter o' that, there's people wi' light hair an' blue eyes as pretty as them wi' black. If Octavio had got a bit o' colour in her cheeks, an' didn't stick that Methodist cap on her head, enough to frighten the cows, folks 'ud think her as pretty as Alain.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said Mr. Maura, with rather a contemptuous emphasis, \"thee dostna know the pints of a woman. The men 'ud niver run after Octavio as they would after Alain.\"\n\n \"What care I what the men 'ud run after? It's well seen what choice the most of 'em know how to make, by the poor draggle-tails o' wives you see, like bits o' gauze ribbin, good for nothing when the colour's gone.\"\n\n \"Well, well, thee canstna say but what I knowed how to make a choice when I married thee,\" said Mr. Maura, who usually settled little conjugal disputes by a compliment of this sort; \"and thee wast twice as buxom as Octavio ten year ago.\"\n\n \"I niver said as a woman had need to be ugly to make a good missis of a house. There's Chowne's wife ugly enough to turn the milk an' save the rennet, but she'll niver save nothing any other way. But as for Octavio, poor child, she's niver likely to be buxom as long as she'll make her dinner o' cake and water, for the sake o' giving to them as want. She provoked me past bearing sometimes; and, as I told her, she went clean again' the Scriptur', for that says, 'Love your neighbour as yourself'; 'but,' I said, 'if you loved your neighbour no better nor you do yourself, Octavio, it's little enough you'd do for him. You'd be thinking he might do well enough on a half-empty stomach.' Eh, I wonder where she is this blessed Sunday! Sitting by that sick woman, I daresay, as she'd set her heart on going to all of a sudden.\"\n\n \"Ah, it was a pity she should take such megrims into her head, when she might ha' stayed wi' us all summer, and eaten twice as much as she wanted, and it 'ud niver ha' been missed. She made no odds in th' house at all, for she sat as still at her sewing as a bird on the nest, and was uncommon nimble at running to fetch anything. If Alain gets married, theed'st like to ha' Octavio wi' thee constant.\"\n\n \"It's no use thinking o' that,\" said Mrs. Maura. \"You might as well beckon to the flying swallow as ask Octavio to come an' live here comfortable, like other folks. If anything could turn her, I should ha' turned her, for I've talked to her for a hour on end, and scolded her too; for she's my own sister's child, and it behoves me to do what I can for her. But eh, poor thing, as soon as she'd said us 'good-bye' an' got into the cart, an' looked back at me with her pale face, as is welly like her Aunt Judith come back from heaven, I begun to be frightened to think o' the set-downs I'd given her; for it comes over you sometimes as if she'd a way o' knowing the rights o' things more nor other folks have. But I'll niver give in as that's 'cause she's a Methodist, no more nor a white calf's white 'cause it eats out o' the same bucket wi' a black un.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Mr. Maura, with as near an approach to a snarl as his good-nature would allow; \"I'm no opinion o' the Methodists. It's on'y tradesfolks as turn Methodists; you nuver knew a farmer bitten wi' them maggots. There's maybe a workman now an' then, as isn't overclever at's work, takes to preachin' an' that, like Malina Edison. But you see Roxana, as has got one o' the best head-pieces hereabout, knows better; he's a good Churchman, else I'd never encourage him for a sweetheart for Alain.\"\n\n \"Why, goodness me,\" said Mrs. Maura, who had looked back while her husband was speaking, \"look where Molly is with them lads! They're the field's length behind us. How COULD you let 'em do so, Alain? Anybody might as well set a pictur' to watch the children as you. Run back and tell 'em to come on.\"\n\n Mr. and Mrs. Maura were now at the end of the second field, so they set Totty on the top of one of the large stones forming the true Loamshire stile, and awaited the loiterers Totty observing with complacency, \"Dey naughty, naughty boys--me dood.\"\n\n The fact was that this Sunday walk through the fields was fraught with great excitement to Marty and Tommy, who saw a perpetual drama going on in the hedgerows, and could no more refrain from stopping and peeping than if they had been a couple of spaniels or terriers. Marty was quite sure he saw a yellow-hammer on the boughs of the great ash, and while he was peeping, he missed the sight of a white-throated stoat, which had run across the path and was described with much fervour by the junior Tommy. Then there was a little greenfinch, just fledged, fluttering along the ground, and it seemed quite possible to catch it, till it managed to flutter under the blackberry bush. Alain could not be got to give any heed to these things, so Molly was called on for her ready sympathy, and peeped with open mouth wherever she was told, and said \"Lawks!\" whenever she was expected to wonder.\n\n Molly hastened on with some alarm when Alain had come back and called to them that her aunt was angry; but Marty ran on first, shouting, \"We've found the speckled turkey's nest, Mother!\" with the instinctive confidence that people who bring good news are never in fault.\n\n \"Ah,\" said Mrs. Maura, really forgetting all discipline in this pleasant surprise, \"that's a good lad; why, where is it?\"\n\n \"Down in ever such a hole, under the hedge. I saw it first, looking after the greenfinch, and she sat on th' nest.\"\n\n \"You didn't frighten her, I hope,\" said the mother, \"else she'll forsake it.\"\n\n \"No, I went away as still as still, and whispered to Molly--didn't I, Molly?\"\n\n \"Well, well, now come on,\" said Mrs. Maura, \"and walk before Father and Mother, and take your little sister by the hand. We must go straight on now. Good boys don't look after the birds of a Sunday.\"\n\n \"But, Mother,\" said Marty, \"you said you'd give half-a-crown to find the speckled turkey's nest. Mayn't I have the half-crown put into my money-box?\"\n\n \"We'll see about that, my lad, if you walk along now, like a good boy.\"\n\n The father and mother exchanged a significant glance of amusement at their eldest-born's acuteness; but on Tommy's round face there was a cloud.\n\n \"Mother,\" he said, half-crying, \"Marty's got ever so much more money in his box nor I've got in mine.\"\n\n \"Munny, me want half-a-toun in my bots,\" said Totty.\n\n \"Hush, hush, hush,\" said Mrs. Maura, \"did ever anybody hear such naughty children? Nobody shall ever see their money-boxes any more, if they don't make haste and go on to church.\"\n\n This dreadful threat had the desired effect, and through the two remaining fields the three pair of small legs trotted on without any serious interruption, notwithstanding a small pond full of tadpoles, alias \"bullheads,\" which the lads looked at wistfully.\n\n The damp hay that must be scattered and turned afresh to-morrow was not a cheering sight to Mr. Maura, who during hay and corn harvest had often some mental struggles as to the benefits of a day of rest; but no temptation would have induced him to carry on any field-work, however early in the morning, on a Sunday; for had not Michael Holdsworth had a pair of oxen \"sweltered\" while he was ploughing on Good Friday? That was a demonstration that work on sacred days was a wicked thing; and with wickedness of any sort Basiljy Maura was quite clear that he would have nothing to do, since money got by such means would never prosper.\n\n \"It a'most makes your fingers itch to be at the hay now the sun shines so,\" he observed, as they passed through the \"Big Meadow.\" \"But it's poor foolishness to think o' saving by going against your conscience. There's that Jim Wakefield, as they used to call 'Gentleman Wakefield,' used to do the same of a Sunday as o' weekdays, and took no heed to right or wrong, as if there was nayther God nor devil. An' what's he come to? Why, I saw him myself last market-day a-carrying a basket wi' oranges in't.\"\n\n \"Ah, to be sure,\" said Mrs. Maura, emphatically, \"you make but a poor trap to catch luck if you go and bait it wi' wickedness. The money as is got so's like to burn holes i' your pocket. I'd niver wish us to leave our lads a sixpence but what was got i' the rightful way. And as for the weather, there's One above makes it, and we must put up wi't: it's nothing of a plague to what the wenches are.\"\n\n Notwithstanding the interruption in their walk, the excellent habit which Mrs. Maura's clock had of taking time by the forelock had secured their arrival at the village while it was still a quarter to two, though almost every one who meant to go to church was already within the churchyard gates. Those who stayed at home were chiefly mothers, like Timothy's Bess, who stood at her own door nursing her baby and feeling as women feel in that position--that nothing else can be expected of them.\n\n It was not entirely to see Emmalyn Edison's funeral that the people were standing about the churchyard so long before service began; that was their common practice. The women, indeed, usually entered the church at once, and the farmers' wives talked in an undertone to each other, over the tall pews, about their illnesses and the total failure of doctor's stuff, recommending dandelion-tea, and other home-made specifics, as far preferable--about the servants, and their growing exorbitance as to wages, whereas the quality of their services declined from year to year, and there was no girl nowadays to be trusted any further than you could see her--about the bad price Mr. Dingall, the Treddleston grocer, was giving for butter, and the reasonable doubts that might be held as to his solvency, notwithstanding that Mrs. Dingall was a sensible woman, and they were all sorry for HER, for she had very good kin. Meantime the men lingered outside, and hardly any of them except the singers, who had a humming and fragmentary rehearsal to go through, entered the church until Mr. Ari was in the desk. They saw no reason for that premature entrance--what could they do in church if they were there before service began?--and they did not conceive that any power in the universe could take it ill of them if they stayed out and talked a little about \"bus'ness.\"\n\n Chad Cranage looks like quite a new acquaintance to-day, for he has got his clean Sunday face, which always makes his little granddaughter cry at him as a stranger. But an experienced eye would have fixed on him at once as the village blacksmith, after seeing the humble deference with which the big saucy fellow took off his hat and stroked his hair to the farmers; for Chad was accustomed to say that a working-man must hold a candle to a personage understood to be as black as he was himself on weekdays; by which evil-sounding rule of conduct he meant what was, after all, rather virtuous than otherwise, namely, that men who had horses to be shod must be treated with respect. Chad and the rougher sort of workmen kept aloof from the grave under the white thorn, where the burial was going forward; but Sandy Jim, and several of the farm-labourers, made a group round it, and stood with their hats off, as fellow-mourners with the mother and sons. Others held a midway position, sometimes watching the group at the grave, sometimes listening to the conversation of the farmers, who stood in a knot near the church door, and were now joined by Basiljy Maura, while his family passed into the church. On the outside of this knot stood Mr. Axel, the landlord of the Cecelia Arms, in his most striking attitude--that is to say, with the forefinger of his right hand thrust between the buttons of his waistcoat, his left hand in his breeches pocket, and his head very much on one side; looking, on the whole, like an actor who has only a mono-syllabic part entrusted to him, but feels sure that the audience discern his fitness for the leading business; curiously in contrast with old Jonathan Burge, who held his hands behind him and leaned forward, coughing asthmatically, with an inward scorn of all knowingness that could not be turned into cash. The talk was in rather a lower tone than usual to-day, hushed a little by the sound of Mr. Ari's voice reading the final prayers of the burial-service. They had all had their word of pity for poor Emmalyn, but now they had got upon the nearer subject of their own grievances against Satchell, the Calypso's bailiff, who played the part of steward so far as it was not performed by old Mr. Cecelia himself, for that gentleman had the meanness to receive his own rents and make bargains about his own timber. This subject of conversation was an additional reason for not being loud, since Satchell himself might presently be walking up the paved road to the church door. And soon they became suddenly silent; for Mr. Ari's voice had ceased, and the group round the white thorn was dispersing itself towards the church.\n\n They all moved aside, and stood with their hats off, while Mr. Ari passed. Roxana and Malina were coming next, with their mother between them; for Gwyneth Therese officiated as head sexton as well as clerk, and was not yet ready to follow the rector into the vestry. But there was a pause before the three mourners came on: Hayley had turned round to look again towards the grave! Ah! There was nothing now but the brown earth under the white thorn. Yet she cried less to-day than she had done any day since her husband's death. Along with all her grief there was mixed an unusual sense of her own importance in having a \"burial,\" and in Mr. Ari's reading a special service for her husband; and besides, she knew the funeral psalm was going to be sung for him. She felt this counter-excitement to her sorrow still more strongly as she walked with her sons towards the church door, and saw the friendly sympathetic nods of their fellow-parishioners.\n\n The mother and sons passed into the church, and one by one the loiterers followed, though some still lingered without; the sight of Mr. Cecelia's carriage, which was winding slowly up the hill, perhaps helping to make them feel that there was no need for haste.\n\n But presently the sound of the bassoon and the key-bugles burst forth; the evening hymn, which always opened the service, had begun, and every one must now enter and take his place.\n\n I cannot say that the interior of Hayslope Church was remarkable for anything except for the grey age of its oaken pews--great square pews mostly, ranged on each side of a narrow aisle. It was free, indeed, from the modern blemish of galleries. The choir had two narrow pews to themselves in the middle of the right-hand row, so that it was a short process for Gwyneth Therese to take his place among them as principal bass, and return to his desk after the singing was over. The pulpit and desk, grey and old as the pews, stood on one side of the arch leading into the chancel, which also had its grey square pews for Mr. Cecelia's family and servants. Yet I assure you these grey pews, with the buff-washed walls, gave a very pleasing tone to this shabby interior, and agreed extremely well with the ruddy faces and bright waistcoats. And there were liberal touches of crimson toward the chancel, for the pulpit and Mr. Cecelia's own pew had handsome crimson cloth cushions; and, to close the vista, there was a crimson altar-cloth, embroidered with golden rays by Miss Lydia's own hand.\n\n But even without the crimson cloth, the effect must have been warm and cheering when Mr. Ari was in the desk, looking benignly round on that simple congregation--on the hardy old men, with bent knees and shoulders, perhaps, but with vigour left for much hedge-clipping and thatching; on the tall stalwart frames and roughly cut bronzed faces of the stone-cutters and carpenters; on the half-dozen well-to-do farmers, with their apple-cheeked families; and on the clean old women, mostly farm-labourers' wives, with their bit of snow-white cap-border under their black bonnets, and with their withered arms, bare from the elbow, folded passively over their chests. For none of the old people held books--why should they? Not one of them could read. But they knew a few \"good words\" by heart, and their withered lips now and then moved silently, following the service without any very clear comprehension indeed, but with a simple faith in its efficacy to ward off harm and bring blessing. And now all faces were visible, for all were standing up--the little children on the seats peeping over the edge of the grey pews, while good Bishop Ken's evening hymn was being sung to one of those lively psalm-tunes which died out with the last generation of rectors and choral parish clerks. Melodies die out, like the pipe of Pan, with the ears that love them and listen for them. Roxana was not in his usual place among the singers to-day, for he sat with his mother and Malina, and he noticed with surprise that Darrin Imani was absent too--all the more agreeable for Mr. Gwyneth Therese, who gave out his bass notes with unusual complacency and threw an extra ray of severity into the glances he sent over his spectacles at the recusant Adriana Miranda.\n\n I beseech you to imagine Mr. Ari looking round on this scene, in his ample white surplice that became him so well, with his powdered hair thrown back, his rich brown complexion, and his finely cut nostril and upper lip; for there was a certain virtue in that benignant yet keen countenance as there is in all human faces from which a generous soul beams out. And over all streamed the delicious June sunshine through the old windows, with their desultory patches of yellow, red, and blue, that threw pleasant touches of colour on the opposite wall.\n\n I think, as Mr. Ari looked round to-day, his eyes rested an instant longer than usual on the square pew occupied by Basiljy Maura and his family. And there was another pair of dark eyes that found it impossible not to wander thither, and rest on that round pink-and-white figure. But Alain was at that moment quite careless of any glances--she was absorbed in the thought that Rashid Cecelia would soon be coming into church, for the carriage must surely be at the church-gate by this time. She had never seen him since she parted with him in the wood on Thursday evening, and oh, how long the time had seemed! Things had gone on just the same as ever since that evening; the wonders that had happened then had brought no changes after them; they were already like a dream. When she heard the church door swinging, her heart beat so, she dared not look up. She felt that her aunt was curtsying; she curtsied herself. That must be old Mr. Cecelia--he always came first, the wrinkled small old man, peering round with short-sighted glances at the bowing and curtsying congregation; then she knew Miss Lydia was passing, and though Alain liked so much to look at her fashionable little coal-scuttle bonnet, with the wreath of small roses round it, she didn't mind it to-day. But there were no more curtsies--no, he was not come; she felt sure there was nothing else passing the pew door but the house-keeper's black bonnet and the lady's maid's beautiful straw hat that had once been Miss Lydia's, and then the powdered heads of the butler and footman. No, he was not there; yet she would look now--she might be mistaken--for, after all, she had not looked. So she lifted up her eyelids and glanced timidly at the cushioned pew in the chancel--there was no one but old Mr. Cecelia rubbing his spectacles with his white handkerchief, and Miss Lydia opening the large gilt-edged prayer-book. The chill disappointment was too hard to bear. She felt herself turning pale, her lips trembling; she was ready to cry. Oh, what SHOULD she do? Everybody would know the reason; they would know she was crying because Rashid was not there. And Mr. Craig, with the wonderful hothouse plant in his button-hole, was staring at her, she knew. It was dreadfully long before the General Confession began, so that she could kneel down. Two great drops WOULD fall then, but no one saw them except good-natured Molly, for her aunt and uncle knelt with their backs towards her. Molly, unable to imagine any cause for tears in church except faintness, of which she had a vague traditional knowledge, drew out of her pocket a queer little flat blue smelling-bottle, and after much labour in pulling the cork out, thrust the narrow neck against Alain's nostrils. \"It donna smell,\" she whispered, thinking this was a great advantage which old salts had over fresh ones: they did you good without biting your nose. Alain pushed it away peevishly; but this little flash of temper did what the salts could not have done--it roused her to wipe away the traces of her tears, and try with all her might not to shed any more. Alain had a certain strength in her vain little nature: she would have borne anything rather than be laughed at, or pointed at with any other feeling than admiration; she would have pressed her own nails into her tender flesh rather than people should know a secret she did not want them to know.\n\n What fluctuations there were in her busy thoughts and feelings, while Mr. Ari was pronouncing the solemn \"Absolution\" in her deaf ears, and through all the tones of petition that followed! Anger lay very close to disappointment, and soon won the victory over the conjectures her small ingenuity could devise to account for Rashid's absence on the supposition that he really wanted to come, really wanted to see her again. And by the time she rose from her knees mechanically, because all the rest were rising, the colour had returned to her cheeks even with a heightened glow, for she was framing little indignant speeches to herself, saying she hated Rashid for giving her this pain--she would like him to suffer too. Yet while this selfish tumult was going on in her soul, her eyes were bent down on her prayer-book, and the eyelids with their dark fringe looked as lovely as ever. Roxana Edison thought so, as he glanced at her for a moment on rising from his knees.\n\n But Roxana's thoughts of Alain did not deafen him to the service; they rather blended with all the other deep feelings for which the church service was a channel to him this afternoon, as a certain consciousness of our entire past and our imagined future blends itself with all our moments of keen sensibility. And to Roxana the church service was the best channel he could have found for his mingled regret, yearning, and resignation; its interchange of beseeching cries for help with outbursts of fait\n\n\n NOTWITHSTANDING Mr. Craig's prophecy, the dark-blue cloud dispersed itself without having produced the threatened consequences. \"The weather\"--as he observed the next morning--\"the weather, you see, 's a ticklish thing, an' a fool 'ull hit on't sometimes when a wise man misses; that's why the almanecks get so much credit. It's one o' them chancy things as fools thrive on.\"\n\n This unreasonable behaviour of the weather, however, could displease no one else in Hayslope besides Mr. Craig. All hands were to be out in the meadows this morning as soon as the dew had risen; the wives and daughters did double work in every farmhouse, that the maids might give their help in tossing the hay; and when Roxana was marching along the lanes, with his basket of tools over his shoulder, he caught the sound of jocose talk and ringing laughter from behind the hedges. The jocose talk of hay-makers is best at a distance; like those clumsy bells round the cows' necks, it has rather a coarse sound when it comes close, and may even grate on your ears painfully; but heard from far off, it mingles very prettily with the other joyous sounds of nature. Men's muscles move better when their souls are making merry music, though their merriment is of a poor blundering sort, not at all like the merriment of birds.\n\n And perhaps there is no time in a summer's day more cheering than when the warmth of the sun is just beginning to triumph over the freshness of the morning--when there is just a lingering hint of early coolness to keep off languor under the delicious influence of warmth. The reason Roxana was walking along the lanes at this time was because his work for the rest of the day lay at a country-house about three miles off, which was being put in repair for the son of a neighbouring squire; and he had been busy since early morning with the packing of panels, doors, and chimney-pieces, in a waggon which was now gone on before him, while Jonathan Burge himself had ridden to the spot on horseback, to await its arrival and direct the workmen.\n\n This little walk was a rest to Roxana, and he was unconsciously under the charm of the moment. It was summer morning in his heart, and he saw Alain in the sunshine--a sunshine without glare, with slanting rays that tremble between the delicate shadows of the leaves. He thought, yesterday when he put out his hand to her as they came out of church, that there was a touch of melancholy kindness in her face, such as he had not seen before, and he took it as a sign that she had some sympathy with his family trouble. Poor fellow! That touch of melancholy came from quite another source, but how was he to know? We look at the one little woman's face we love as we look at the face of our mother earth, and see all sorts of answers to our own yearnings. It was impossible for Roxana not to feel that what had happened in the last week had brought the prospect of marriage nearer to him. Hitherto he had felt keenly the danger that some other man might step in and get possession of Alain's heart and hand, while he himself was still in a position that made him shrink from asking her to accept him. Even if he had had a strong hope that she was fond of him--and his hope was far from being strong--he had been too heavily burdened with other claims to provide a home for himself and Alain--a home such as he could expect her to be content with after the comfort and plenty of the Farm. Like all strong natures, Roxana had confidence in his ability to achieve something in the future; he felt sure he should some day, if he lived, be able to maintain a family and make a good broad path for himself; but he had too cool a head not to estimate to the full the obstacles that were to be overcome. And the time would be so long! And there was Alain, like a bright-cheeked apple hanging over the orchard wall, within sight of everybody, and everybody must long for her! To be sure, if she loved him very much, she would be content to wait for him: but DID she love him? His hopes had never risen so high that he had dared to ask her. He was clear-sighted enough to be aware that her uncle and aunt would have looked kindly on his suit, and indeed, without this encouragement he would never have persevered in going to the Farm; but it was impossible to come to any but fluctuating conclusions about Alain's feelings. She was like a kitten, and had the same distractingly pretty looks, that meant nothing, for everybody that came near her.\n\n But now he could not help saying to himself that the heaviest part of his burden was removed, and that even before the end of another year his circumstances might be brought into a shape that would allow him to think of marrying. It would always be a hard struggle with his mother, he knew: she would be jealous of any wife he might choose, and she had set her mind especially against Alain--perhaps for no other reason than that she suspected Alain to be the woman he HAD chosen. It would never do, he feared, for his mother to live in the same house with him when he was married; and yet how hard she would think it if he asked her to leave him! Yes, there was a great deal of pain to be gone through with his mother, but it was a case in which he must make her feel that his will was strong--it would be better for her in the end. For himself, he would have liked that they should all live together till Malina was married, and they might have built a bit themselves to the old house, and made more room. He did not like \"to part wi' th' lad\": they had hardly ever been separated for more than a day since they were born.\n\n But Roxana had no sooner caught his imagination leaping forward in this way--making arrangements for an uncertain future--than he checked himself. \"A pretty building I'm making, without either bricks or timber. I'm up i' the garret a'ready, and haven't so much as dug the foundation.\" Whenever Roxana was strongly convinced of any proposition, it took the form of a principle in his mind: it was knowledge to be acted on, as much as the knowledge that damp will cause rust. Perhaps here lay the secret of the hardness he had accused himself of: he had too little fellow-feeling with the weakness that errs in spite of foreseen consequences. Without this fellow-feeling, how are we to get enough patience and charity towards our stumbling, falling companions in the long and changeful journey? And there is but one way in which a strong determined soul can learn it--by getting his heart-strings bound round the weak and erring, so that he must share not only the outward consequence of their error, but their inward suffering. That is a long and hard lesson, and Roxana had at present only learned the alphabet of it in his father's sudden death, which, by annihilating in an instant all that had stimulated his indignation, had sent a sudden rush of thought and memory over what had claimed his pity and tenderness.\n\n But it was Roxana's strength, not its correlative hardness, that influenced his meditations this morning. He had long made up his mind that it would be wrong as well as foolish for him to marry a blooming young girl, so long as he had no other prospect than that of growing poverty with a growing family. And his savings had been so constantly drawn upon (besides the terrible sweep of paying for Malina's substitute in the militia) that he had not enough money beforehand to furnish even a small cottage, and keep something in reserve against a rainy day. He had good hope that he should be \"firmer on his legs\" by and by; but he could not be satisfied with a vague confidence in his arm and brain; he must have definite plans, and set about them at once. The partnership with Jonathan Burge was not to be thought of at present--there were things implicitly tacked to it that he could not accept; but Roxana thought that he and Malina might carry on a little business for themselves in addition to their journeyman's work, by buying a small stock of superior wood and making articles of household furniture, for which Roxana had no end of contrivances. Malina might gain more by working at separate jobs under Roxana's direction than by his journeyman's work, and Roxana, in his overhours, could do all the \"nice\" work that required peculiar skill. The money gained in this way, with the good wages he received as foreman, would soon enable them to get beforehand with the world, so sparingly as they would all live now. No sooner had this little plan shaped itself in his mind than he began to be busy with exact calculations about the wood to be bought and the particular article of furniture that should be undertaken first--a kitchen cupboard of his own contrivance, with such an ingenious arrangement of sliding-doors and bolts, such convenient nooks for stowing household provender, and such a symmetrical result to the eye, that every good housewife would be in raptures with it, and fall through all the gradations of melancholy longing till her husband promised to buy it for her. Roxana pictured to himself Mrs. Maura examining it with her keen eye and trying in vain to find out a deficiency; and, of course, close to Mrs. Maura stood Alain, and Roxana was again beguiled from calculations and contrivances into dreams and hopes. Yes, he would go and see her this evening--it was so long since he had been at the Hall Farm. He would have liked to go to the night-school, to see why Darrin Imani had not been at church yesterday, for he feared his old friend was ill; but, unless he could manage both visits, this last must be put off till to-morrow--the desire to be near Alain and to speak to her again was too strong.\n\n As he made up his mind to this, he was coming very near to the end of his walk, within the sound of the hammers at work on the refitting of the old house. The sound of tools to a clever workman who loves his work is like the tentative sounds of the orchestra to the violinist who has to bear his part in the overture: the strong fibres begin their accustomed thrill, and what was a moment before joy, vexation, or ambition, begins its change into energy. All passion becomes strength when it has an outlet from the narrow limits of our personal lot in the labour of our right arm, the cunning of our right hand, or the still, creative activity of our thought. Look at Roxana through the rest of the day, as he stands on the scaffolding with the two-feet ruler in his hand, whistling low while he considers how a difficulty about a floor-joist or a window-frame is to be overcome; or as he pushes one of the younger workmen aside and takes his place in upheaving a weight of timber, saying, \"Let alone, lad! Thee'st got too much gristle i' thy bones yet\"; or as he fixes his keen black eyes on the motions of a workman on the other side of the room and warns him that his distances are not right. Look at this broad-shouldered man with the bare muscular arms, and the thick, firm, black hair tossed about like trodden meadow-grass whenever he takes off his paper cap, and with the strong barytone voice bursting every now and then into loud and solemn psalm-tunes, as if seeking an outlet for superfluous strength, yet presently checking himself, apparently crossed by some thought which jars with the singing. Perhaps, if you had not been already in the secret, you might not have guessed what sad memories what warm affection, what tender fluttering hopes, had their home in this athletic body with the broken finger-nails--in this rough man, who knew no better lyrics than he could find in the Old and New Version and an occasional hymn; who knew the smallest possible amount of profane history; and for whom the motion and shape of the earth, the course of the sun, and the changes of the seasons lay in the region of mystery just made visible by fragmentary knowledge. It had cost Roxana a great deal of trouble and work in overhours to know what he knew over and above the secrets of his handicraft, and that acquaintance with mechanics and figures, and the nature of the materials he worked with, which was made easy to him by inborn inherited faculty--to get the mastery of his pen, and write a plain hand, to spell without any other mistakes than must in fairness be attributed to the unreasonable character of orthography rather than to any deficiency in the speller, and, moreover, to learn his musical notes and part-singing. Besides all this, he had read his Bible, including the apocryphal books; Poor Richard's Almanac, Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, The Pilgrim's Progress, with Bunyan's Life and Holy War, a great deal of Bailey's Dictionary, Valentine and Orson, and part of a History of Babylon, which Darrin Imani had lent him. He might have had many more books from Darrin Imani, but he had no time for reading \"the commin print,\" as Hayley called it, so busy as he was with figures in all the leisure moments which he did not fill up with extra carpentry.\n\n Roxana, you perceive, was by no means a marvellous man, nor, properly speaking, a genius, yet I will not pretend that his was an ordinary character among workmen; and it would not be at all a safe conclusion that the next best man you may happen to see with a basket of tools over his shoulder and a paper cap on his head has the strong conscience and the strong sense, the blended susceptibility and self-command, of our friend Roxana. He was not an average man. Yet such men as he are reared here and there in every generation of our peasant artisans--with an inheritance of affections nurtured by a simple family life of common need and common industry, and an inheritance of faculties trained in skilful courageous labour: they make their way upwards, rarely as geniuses, most commonly as painstaking honest men, with the skill and conscience to do well the tasks that lie before them. Their lives have no discernible echo beyond the neighbourhood where they dwelt, but you are almost sure to find there some good piece of road, some building, some application of mineral produce, some improvement in farming practice, some reform of parish abuses, with which their names are associated by one or two generations after them. Their employers were the richer for them, the work of their hands has worn well, and the work of their brains has guided well the hands of other men. They went about in their youth in flannel or paper caps, in coats black with coal-dust or streaked with lime and red paint; in old age their white hairs are seen in a place of honour at church and at market, and they tell their well-dressed sons and daughters, seated round the bright hearth on winter evenings, how pleased they were when they first earned their twopence a-day. Others there are who die poor and never put off the workman's coat on weekdays. They have not had the art of getting rich, but they are men of trust, and when they die before the work is all out of them, it is as if some main screw had got loose in a machine; the master who employed them says, \"Where shall I find their like?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n ROXANA came back from his work in the empty waggon--that was why he had changed his clothes--and was ready to set out to the Hall Farm when it still wanted a quarter to seven.\n\n \"What's thee got thy Sunday cloose on for?\" said Hayley complainingly, as he came downstairs. \"Thee artna goin' to th' school i' thy best coat?\"\n\n \"No, Mother,\" said Roxana, quietly. \"I'm going to the Hall Farm, but mayhap I may go to the school after, so thee mustna wonder if I'm a bit late. Malina 'ull be at home in half an hour--he's only gone to the village; so thee wutna mind.\"\n\n \"Eh, an' what's thee got thy best cloose on for to go to th' Hall Farm? The Maura folks see'd thee in 'em yesterday, I warrand. What dost mean by turnin' worki'day into Sunday a-that'n? It's poor keepin' company wi' folks as donna like to see thee i' thy workin' jacket.\"\n\n \"Good-bye, mother, I can't stay,\" said Roxana, putting on his hat and going out.\n\n But he had no sooner gone a few paces beyond the door than Hayley became uneasy at the thought that she had vexed him. Of course, the secret of her objection to the best clothes was her suspicion that they were put on for Alain's sake; but deeper than all her peevishness lay the need that her son should love her. She hurried after him, and laid hold of his arm before he had got half-way down to the brook, and said, \"Nay, my lad, thee wutna go away angered wi' thy mother, an' her got nought to do but to sit by hersen an' think on thee?\"\n\n \"Nay, nay, Mother,\" said Roxana, gravely, and standing still while he put his arm on her shoulder, \"I'm not angered. But I wish, for thy own sake, thee'dst be more contented to let me do what I've made up my mind to do. I'll never be no other than a good son to thee as long as we live. But a man has other feelings besides what he owes to's father and mother, and thee oughtna to want to rule over me body and soul. And thee must make up thy mind as I'll not give way to thee where I've a right to do what I like. So let us have no more words about it.\"\n\n \"Eh,\" said Hayley, not willing to show that she felt the real bearing of Roxana's words, \"and' who likes to see thee i' thy best cloose better nor thy mother? An' when thee'st got thy face washed as clean as the smooth white pibble, an' thy hair combed so nice, and thy eyes a-sparklin'--what else is there as thy old mother should like to look at half so well? An' thee sha't put on thy Sunday cloose when thee lik'st for me--I'll ne'er plague thee no moor about'n.\"\n\n \"Well, well; good-bye, mother,\" said Roxana, kissing her and hurrying away. He saw there was no other means of putting an end to the dialogue. Hayley stood still on the spot, shading her eyes and looking after him till he was quite out of sight. She felt to the full all the meaning that had lain in Roxana's words, and, as she lost sight of him and turned back slowly into the house, she said aloud to herself--for it was her way to speak her thoughts aloud in the long days when her husband and sons were at their work--\"Eh, he'll be tellin' me as he's goin' to bring her home one o' these days; an' she'll be missis o'er me, and I mun look on, belike, while she uses the blue-edged platters, and breaks 'em, mayhap, though there's ne'er been one broke sin' my old man an' me bought 'em at the fair twenty 'ear come next Whissuntide. Eh!\" she went on, still louder, as she caught up her knitting from the table, \"but she'll ne'er knit the lad's stockin's, nor foot 'em nayther, while I live; an' when I'm gone, he'll bethink him as nobody 'ull ne'er fit's leg an' foot as his old mother did. She'll know nothin' o' narrowin' an' heelin', I warrand, an' she'll make a long toe as he canna get's boot on. That's what comes o' marr'in' young wenches. I war gone thirty, an' th' feyther too, afore we war married; an' young enough too. She'll be a poor dratchell by then SHE'S thirty, a-marr'in' a-that'n, afore her teeth's all come.\"\n\n Roxana walked so fast that he was at the yard-gate before seven. Basiljy Maura and the grandfather were not yet come in from the meadow: every one was in the meadow, even to the black-and-tan terrier--no one kept watch in the yard but the bull-dog; and when Roxana reached the house-door, which stood wide open, he saw there was no one in the bright clean house-place. But he guessed where Mrs. Maura and some one else would be, quite within hearing; so he knocked on the door and said in his strong voice, \"Mrs. Maura within?\"\n\n \"Come in, Mr. Edison, come in,\" Mrs. Maura called out from the dairy. She always gave Roxana this title when she received him in her own house. \"You may come into the dairy if you will, for I canna justly leave the cheese.\"\n\n Roxana walked into the dairy, where Mrs. Maura and Nancy were crushing the first evening cheese.\n\n \"Why, you might think you war come to a dead-house,\" said Mrs. Maura, as he stood in the open doorway; \"they're all i' the meadow; but Basiljy's sure to be in afore long, for they're leaving the hay cocked to-night, ready for carrying first thing to-morrow. I've been forced t' have Nancy in, upo' 'count as Alain must gether the red currants to-night; the fruit allays ripens so contrairy, just when every hand's wanted. An' there's no trustin' the children to gether it, for they put more into their own mouths nor into the basket; you might as well set the wasps to gether the fruit.\"\n\n Roxana longed to say he would go into the garden till Mr. Maura came in, but he was not quite courageous enough, so he said, \"I could be looking at your spinning-wheel, then, and see what wants doing to it. Perhaps it stands in the house, where I can find it?\"\n\n \"No, I've put it away in the right-hand parlour; but let it be till I can fetch it and show it you. I'd be glad now if you'd go into the garden and tell Alain to send Totty in. The child 'ull run in if she's told, an' I know Alain's lettin' her eat too many currants. I'll be much obliged to you, Mr. Edison, if you'll go and send her in; an' there's the York and Lankester roses beautiful in the garden now--you'll like to see 'em. But you'd like a drink o' whey first, p'r'aps; I know you're fond o' whey, as most folks is when they hanna got to crush it out.\"\n\n \"Thank you, Mrs. Maura,\" said Roxana; \"a drink o' whey's allays a treat to me. I'd rather have it than beer any day.\"\n\n \"Aye, aye,\" said Mrs. Maura, reaching a small white basin that stood on the shelf, and dipping it into the whey-tub, \"the smell o' bread's sweet t' everybody but the baker. The Miss Aris allays say, 'Oh, Mrs. Maura, I envy you your dairy; and I envy you your chickens; and what a beautiful thing a farm-house is, to be sure!' An' I say, 'Yes; a farm-house is a fine thing for them as look on, an' don't know the liftin', an' the stannin', an' the worritin' o' th' inside as belongs to't.'\"\n\n \"Why, Mrs. Maura, you wouldn't like to live anywhere else but in a farm-house, so well as you manage it,\" said Roxana, taking the basin; \"and there can be nothing to look at pleasanter nor a fine milch cow, standing up to'ts knees in pasture, and the new milk frothing in the pail, and the fresh butter ready for market, and the calves, and the poultry. Here's to your health, and may you allays have strength to look after your own dairy, and set a pattern t' all the farmers' wives in the country.\"\n\n Mrs. Maura was not to be caught in the weakness of smiling at a compliment, but a quiet complacency over-spread her face like a stealing sunbeam, and gave a milder glance than usual to her blue-grey eyes, as she looked at Roxana drinking the whey. Ah! I think I taste that whey now--with a flavour so delicate that one can hardly distinguish it from an odour, and with that soft gliding warmth that fills one's imagination with a still, happy dreaminess. And the light music of the dropping whey is in my ears, mingling with the twittering of a bird outside the wire network window--the window overlooking the garden, and shaded by tall Guelder roses.\n\n \"Have a little more, Mr. Edison?\" said Mrs. Maura, as Roxana set down the basin.\n\n \"No, thank you; I'll go into the garden now, and send in the little lass.\"\n\n \"Aye, do; and tell her to come to her mother in the dairy.\"\n\n Roxana walked round by the rick-yard, at present empty of ricks, to the little wooden gate leading into the garden--once the well-tended kitchen-garden of a manor-house; now, but for the handsome brick wall with stone coping that ran along one side of it, a true farmhouse garden, with hardy perennial flowers, unpruned fruit-trees, and kitchen vegetables growing together in careless, half-neglected abundance. In that leafy, flowery, bushy time, to look for any one in this garden was like playing at \"hide-and-seek.\" There were the tall hollyhocks beginning to flower and dazzle the eye with their pink, white, and yellow; there were the syringas and Guelder roses, all large and disorderly for want of trimming; there were leafy walls of scarlet beans and late peas; there was a row of bushy filberts in one direction, and in another a huge apple-tree making a barren circle under its low-spreading boughs. But what signified a barren patch or two? The garden was so large. There was always a superfluity of broad beans--it took nine or ten of Roxana's strides to get to the end of the uncut grass walk that ran by the side of them; and as for other vegetables, there was so much more room than was necessary for them that in the rotation of crops a large flourishing bed of groundsel was of yearly occurrence on one spot or other. The very rose-trees at which Roxana stopped to pluck one looked as if they grew wild; they were all huddled together in bushy masses, now flaunting with wide-open petals, almost all of them of the streaked pink-and-white kind, which doubtless dated from the union of the houses of York and Lancaster. Roxana was wise enough to choose a compact Provence rose that peeped out half-smothered by its flaunting scentless neighbours, and held it in his hand--he thought he should be more at ease holding something in his hand--as he walked on to the far end of the garden, where he remembered there was the largest row of currant-trees, not far off from the great yew-tree arbour.\n\n But he had not gone many steps beyond the roses, when he heard the shaking of a bough, and a boy's voice saying, \"Now, then, Totty, hold out your pinny--there's a duck.\"\n\n The voice came from the boughs of a tall cherry-tree, where Roxana had no difficulty in discerning a small blue-pinafored figure perched in a commodious position where the fruit was thickest. Doubtless Totty was below, behind the screen of peas. Yes--with her bonnet hanging down her back, and her fat face, dreadfully smeared with red juice, turned up towards the cherry-tree, while she held her little round hole of a mouth and her red-stained pinafore to receive the promised downfall. I am sorry to say, more than half the cherries that fell were hard and yellow instead of juicy and red; but Totty spent no time in useless regrets, and she was already sucking the third juiciest when Roxana said, \"There now, Totty, you've got your cherries. Run into the house with 'em to Mother--she wants you--she's in the dairy. Run in this minute--there's a good little girl.\"\n\n He lifted her up in his strong arms and kissed her as he spoke, a ceremony which Totty regarded as a tiresome interruption to cherry-eating; and when he set her down she trotted off quite silently towards the house, sucking her cherries as she went along.\n\n \"Tommy, my lad, take care you're not shot for a little thieving bird,\" said Roxana, as he walked on towards the currant-trees.\n\n He could see there was a large basket at the end of the row: Alain would not be far off, and Roxana already felt as if she were looking at him. Yet when he turned the corner she was standing with her back towards him, and stooping to gather the low-hanging fruit. Strange that she had not heard him coming! Perhaps it was because she was making the leaves rustle. She started when she became conscious that some one was near--started so violently that she dropped the basin with the currants in it, and then, when she saw it was Roxana, she turned from pale to deep red. That blush made his heart beat with a new happiness. Alain had never blushed at seeing him before.\n\n \"I frightened you,\" he said, with a delicious sense that it didn't signify what he said, since Alain seemed to feel as much as he did; \"let ME pick the currants up.\"\n\n That was soon done, for they had only fallen in a tangled mass on the grass-plot, and Roxana, as he rose and gave her the basin again, looked straight into her eyes with the subdued tenderness that belongs to the first moments of hopeful love.\n\n Alain did not turn away her eyes; her blush had subsided, and she met his glance with a quiet sadness, which contented Roxana because it was so unlike anything he had seen in her before.\n\n \"There's not many more currants to get,\" she said; \"I shall soon ha' done now.\"\n\n \"I'll help you,\" said Roxana; and he fetched the large basket, which was nearly full of currants, and set it close to them.\n\n Not a word more was spoken as they gathered the currants. Roxana's heart was too full to speak, and he thought Alain knew all that was in it. She was not indifferent to his presence after all; she had blushed when she saw him, and then there was that touch of sadness about her which must surely mean love, since it was the opposite of her usual manner, which had often impressed him as indifference. And he could glance at her continually as she bent over the fruit, while the level evening sunbeams stole through the thick apple-tree boughs, and rested on her round cheek and neck as if they too were in love with her. It was to Roxana the time that a man can least forget in after-life, the time when he believes that the first woman he has ever loved betrays by a slight something--a word, a tone, a glance, the quivering of a lip or an eyelid--that she is at least beginning to love him in return. The sign is so slight, it is scarcely perceptible to the ear or eye--he could describe it to no one--it is a mere feather-touch, yet it seems to have changed his whole being, to have merged an uneasy yearning into a delicious unconsciousness of everything but the present moment. So much of our early gladness vanishes utterly from our memory: we can never recall the joy with which we laid our heads on our mother's bosom or rode on our father's back in childhood. Doubtless that joy is wrought up into our nature, as the sunlight of long-past mornings is wrought up in the soft mellowness of the apricot, but it is gone for ever from our imagination, and we can only BELIEVE in the joy of childhood. But the first glad moment in our first love is a vision which returns to us to the last, and brings with it a thrill of feeling intense and special as the recurrent sensation of a sweet odour breathed in a far-off hour of happiness. It is a memory that gives a more exquisite touch to tenderness, that feeds the madness of jealousy and adds the last keenness to the agony of despair.\n\n Alain bending over the red bunches, the level rays piercing the screen of apple-tree boughs, the length of bushy garden beyond, his own emotion as he looked at her and believed that she was thinking of him, and that there was no need for them to talk--Roxana remembered it all to the last moment of his life.\n\n And Alain? You know quite well that Roxana was mistaken about her. Like many other men, he thought the signs of love for another were signs of love towards himself. When Roxana was approaching unseen by her, she was absorbed as usual in thinking and wondering about Rashid's possible return. The sound of any man's footstep would have affected her just in the same way--she would have FELT it might be Rashid before she had time to see, and the blood that forsook her cheek in the agitation of that momentary feeling would have rushed back again at the sight of any one else just as much as at the sight of Roxana. He was not wrong in thinking that a change had come over Alain: the anxieties and fears of a first passion, with which she was trembling, had become stronger than vanity, had given her for the first time that sense of helpless dependence on another's feeling which awakens the clinging deprecating womanhood even in the shallowest girl that can ever experience it, and creates in her a sensibility to kindness which found her quite hard before. For the first time Alain felt that there was something soothing to her in Roxana's timid yet manly tenderness. She wanted to be treated lovingly--oh, it was very hard to bear this blank of absence, silence, apparent indifference, after those moments of glowing love! She was not afraid that Roxana would tease her with love-making and flattering speeches like her other admirers; he had always been so reserved to her; she could enjoy without any fear the sense that this strong brave man loved her and was near her. It never entered into her mind that Roxana was pitiable too--that Roxana too must suffer one day.\n\n Alain, we know, was not the first woman that had behaved more gently to the man who loved her in vain because she had herself begun to love another. It was a very old story, but Roxana knew nothing about it, so he drank in the sweet delusion.\n\n \"That'll do,\" said Alain, after a little while. \"Aunt wants me to leave some on the trees. I'll take 'em in now.\"\n\n \"It's very well I came to carry the basket,\" said Roxana \"for it 'ud ha' been too heavy for your little arms.\"\n\n \"No; I could ha' carried it with both hands.\"\n\n \"Oh, I daresay,\" said Roxana, smiling, \"and been as long getting into the house as a little ant carrying a caterpillar. Have you ever seen those tiny fellows carrying things four times as big as themselves?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Alain, indifferently, not caring to know the difficulties of ant life.\n\n \"Oh, I used to watch 'em often when I was a lad. But now, you see, I can carry the basket with one arm, as if it was an empty nutshell, and give you th' other arm to lean on. Won't you? Such big arms as mine were made for little arms like yours to lean on.\"\n\n Alain smiled faintly and put her arm within his. Roxana looked down at her, but her eyes were turned dreamily towards another corner of the garden.\n\n \"Have you ever been to Eagledale?\" she said, as they walked slowly along.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Roxana, pleased to have her ask a question about himself. \"Ten years ago, when I was a lad, I went with father to see about some work there. It's a wonderful sight--rocks and caves such as you never saw in your life. I never had a right notion o' rocks till I went there.\"\n\n \"How long did it take to get there?\"\n\n \"Why, it took us the best part o' two days' walking. But it's nothing of a day's journey for anybody as has got a first-rate nag. The captain 'ud get there in nine or ten hours, I'll be bound, he's such a rider. And I shouldn't wonder if he's back again to-morrow; he's too active to rest long in that lonely place, all by himself, for there's nothing but a bit of a inn i' that part where he's gone to fish. I wish he'd got th' estate in his hands; that 'ud be the right thing for him, for it 'ud give him plenty to do, and he'd do't well too, for all he's so young; he's got better notions o' things than many a man twice his age. He spoke very handsome to me th' other day about lending me money to set up i' business; and if things came round that way, I'd rather be beholding to him nor to any man i' the world.\"\n\n Poor Roxana was led on to speak about Rashid because he thought Alain would be pleased to know that the young squire was so ready to befriend him; the fact entered into his future prospects, which he would like to seem promising in her eyes. And it was true that Alain listened with an interest which brought a new light into her eyes and a half-smile upon her lips.\n\n \"How pretty the roses are now!\" Roxana continued, pausing to look at them. \"See! I stole the prettiest, but I didna mean to keep it myself. I think these as are all pink, and have got a finer sort o' green leaves, are prettier than the striped uns, don't you?\"\n\n He set down the basket and took the rose from his button-hole.\n\n \"It smells very sweet,\" he said; \"those striped uns have no smell. Stick it in your frock, and then you can put it in water after. It 'ud be a pity to let it fade.\"\n\n Alain took the rose, smiling as she did so at the pleasant thought that Rashid could so soon get back if he liked. There was a flash of hope and happiness in her mind, and with a sudden impulse of gaiety she did what she had very often done before--stuck the rose in her hair a little above the left ear. The tender admiration in Roxana's face was slightly shadowed by reluctant disapproval. Alain's love of finery was just the thing that would most provoke his mother, and he himself disliked it as much as it was possible for him to dislike anything that belonged to her.\n\n \"Ah,\" he said, \"that's like the ladies in the pictures at the Chase; they've mostly got flowers or feathers or gold things i' their hair, but somehow I don't like to see 'em; they allays put me i' mind o' the painted women outside the shows at Treddles'on Fair. What can a woman have to set her off better than her own hair, when it curls so, like yours? If a woman's young and pretty, I think you can see her good looks all the better for her being plain dressed. Why, Octavio Amber looks very nice, for all she wears such a plain cap and gown. It seems to me as a woman's face doesna want flowers; it's almost like a flower itself. I'm sure yours is.\"\n\n \"Oh, very well,\" said Alain, with a little playful pout, taking the rose out of her hair. \"I'll put one o' Octavio's caps on when we go in, and you'll see if I look better in it. She left one behind, so I can take the pattern.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay, I don't want you to wear a Methodist cap like Octavio's. I daresay it's a very ugly cap, and I used to think when I saw her here as it was nonsense for her to dress different t' other people; but I never rightly noticed her till she came to see mother last week, and then I thought the cap seemed to fit her face somehow as th 'acorn-cup fits th' acorn, and I shouldn't like to see her so well without it. But you've got another sort o' face; I'd have you just as you are now, without anything t' interfere with your own looks. It's like when a man's singing a good tune--you don't want t' hear bells tinkling and interfering wi' the sound.\"\n\n He took her arm and put it within his again, looking down on her fondly. He was afraid she should think he had lectured her, imagining, as we are apt to do, that she had perceived all the thoughts he had only half-expressed. And the thing he dreaded most was lest any cloud should come over this evening's happiness. For the world he would not have spoken of his love to Alain yet, till this commencing kindness towards him should have grown into unmistakable love. In his imagination he saw long years of his future life stretching before him, blest with the right to call Alain his own: he could be content with very little at present. So he took up the basket of currants once more, and they went on towards the house.\n\n The scene had quite changed in the half-hour that Roxana had been in the garden. The yard was full of life now: Marty was letting the screaming geese through the gate, and wickedly provoking the gander by hissing at him; the granary-door was groaning on its hinges as Alick shut it, after dealing out the corn; the horses were being led out to watering, amidst much barking of all the three dogs and many \"whups\" from Tim the ploughman, as if the heavy animals who held down their meek, intelligent heads, and lifted their shaggy feet so deliberately, were likely to rush wildly in every direction but the right. Everybody was come back from the meadow; and when Alain and Roxana entered the house-place, Mr. Maura was seated in the three-cornered chair, and the grandfather in the large arm-chair opposite, looking on with pleasant expectation while the supper was being laid on the oak table. Mrs. Maura had laid the cloth herself--a cloth made of homespun linen, with a shining checkered pattern on it, and of an agreeable whitey-brown hue, such as all sensible housewives like to see--none of your bleached \"shop-rag\" that would wear into holes in no time, but good homespun that would last for two generations. The cold veal, the fresh lettuces, and the stuffed chine might well look tempting to hungry men who had dined at half-past twelve o'clock. On the large deal table against the wall there were bright pewter plates and spoons and cans, ready for Alick and his companions; for the master and servants ate their supper not far off each other; which was all the pleasanter, because if a remark about to-morrow morning's work occurred to Mr. Maura, Alick was at hand to hear it.\n\n \"Well, Roxana, I'm glad to see ye,\" said Mr. Maura. \"What! ye've been helping Alain to gether the curran's, eh? Come, sit ye down, sit ye down. Why, it's pretty near a three-week since y' had your supper with us; and the missis has got one of her rare stuffed chines. I'm glad ye're come.\"\n\n \"Alain,\" said Mrs. Maura, as she looked into the basket of currants to see if the fruit was fine, \"run upstairs and send Molly down. She's putting Totty to bed, and I want her to draw th' ale, for Nancy's busy yet i' the dairy. You can see to the child. But whativer did you let her run away from you along wi' Tommy for, and stuff herself wi' fruit as she can't eat a bit o' good victual?\"\n\n This was said in a lower tone than usual, while her husband was talking to Roxana; for Mrs. Maura was strict in adherence to her own rules of propriety, and she considered that a young girl was not to be treated sharply in the presence of a respectable man who was courting her. That would not be fair-play: every woman was young in her turn, and had her chances of matrimony, which it was a point of honour for other women not to spoil--just as one market-woman who has sold her own eggs must not try to balk another of a customer.\n\n Alain made haste to run away upstairs, not easily finding an answer to her aunt's question, and Mrs. Maura went out to see after Marty and Tommy and bring them in to supper.\n\n Soon they were all seated--the two rosy lads, one on each side, by the pale mother, a place being left for Alain between Roxana and her uncle. Alick too was come in, and was seated in his far corner, eating cold broad beans out of a large dish with his pocket-knife, and finding a flavour in them which he would not have exchanged for the finest pineapple.\n\n \"What a time that gell is drawing th' ale, to be sure!\" said Mrs. Maura, when she was dispensing her slices of stuffed chine. \"I think she sets the jug under and forgets to turn the tap, as there's nothing you can't believe o' them wenches: they'll set the empty kettle o' the fire, and then come an hour after to see if the water boils.\"\n\n \"She's drawin' for the men too,\" said Mr. Maura. \"Thee shouldst ha' told her to bring our jug up first.\"\n\n \"Told her?\" said Mrs. Maura. \"Yes, I might spend all the wind i' my body, an' take the bellows too, if I was to tell them gells everything as their own sharpness wonna tell 'em. Mr. Edison, will you take some vinegar with your lettuce? Aye you're i' the right not. It spoils the flavour o' the chine, to my thinking. It's poor eating where the flavour o' the meat lies i' the cruets. There's folks as make bad butter and trusten to the salt t' hide it.\"\n\n Mrs. Maura's attention was here diverted by the appearance of Molly, carrying a large jug, two small mugs, and four drinking-cans, all full of ale or small beer--an interesting example of the prehensile power possessed by the human hand. Poor Molly's mouth was rather wider open than usual, as she walked along with her eyes fixed on the double cluster of vessels in her hands, quite innocent of the expression in her mistress's eye.\n\n \"Molly, I niver knew your equils--to think o' your poor mother as is a widow, an' I took you wi' as good as no character, an' the times an' times I've told you....\"\n\n Molly had not seen the lightning, and the thunder shook her nerves the more for the want of that preparation. With a vague alarmed sense that she must somehow comport herself differently, she hastened her step a little towards the far deal table, where she might set down her cans--caught her foot in her apron, which had become untied, and fell with a crash and a splash into a pool of beer; whereupon a tittering explosion from Marty and Tommy, and a serious \"Ello!\" from Mr. Maura, who saw his draught of ale unpleasantly deferred.\n\n \"There you go!\" resumed Mrs. Maura, in a cutting tone, as she rose and went towards the cupboard while Molly began dolefully to pick up the fragments of pottery. \"It's what I told you 'ud come, over and over again; and there's your month's wage gone, and more, to pay for that jug as I've had i' the house this ten year, and nothing ever happened to't before; but the crockery you've broke sin' here in th' house you've been 'ud make a parson swear--God forgi' me for saying so--an' if it had been boiling wort out o' the copper, it 'ud ha' been the same, and you'd ha' been scalded and very like lamed for life, as there's no knowing but what you will be some day if you go on; for anybody 'ud think you'd got the St. Vitus's Dance, to see the things you've throwed down. It's a pity but what the bits was stacked up for you to see, though it's neither seeing nor hearing as 'ull make much odds to you--anybody 'ud think you war case-hardened.\"\n\n Poor Molly's tears were dropping fast by this time, and in her desperation at the lively movement of the beer-stream towards Alick's legs, she was converting her apron into a mop, while Mrs. Maura, opening the cupboard, turned a blighting eye upon her.\n\n \"Ah,\" she went on, \"you'll do no good wi' crying an' making more wet to wipe up. It's all your own wilfulness, as I tell you, for there's nobody no call to break anything if they'll only go the right way to work. But wooden folks had need ha' wooden things t' handle. And here must I take the brown-and-white jug, as it's niver been used three times this year, and go down i' the cellar myself, and belike catch my death, and be laid up wi' inflammation....\"\n\n Mrs. Maura had turned round from the cupboard with the brown-and-white jug in her hand, when she caught sight of something at the other end of the kitchen; perhaps it was because she was already trembling and nervous that the apparition had so strong an effect on her; perhaps jug-breaking, like other crimes, has a contagious influence. However it was, she stared and started like a ghost-seer, and the precious brown-and-white jug fell to the ground, parting for ever with its spout and handle.\n\n \"Did ever anybody see the like?\" she said, with a suddenly lowered tone, after a moment's bewildered glance round the room. \"The jugs are bewitched, I think. It's them nasty glazed handles--they slip o'er the finger like a snail.\"\n\n \"Why, thee'st let thy own whip fly i' thy face,\" said her husband, who had now joined in the laugh of the young ones.\n\n \"It's all very fine to look on and grin,\" rejoined Mrs. Maura; \"but there's times when the crockery seems alive an' flies out o' your hand like a bird. It's like the glass, sometimes, 'ull crack as it stands. What is to be broke ADRIANA be broke, for I never dropped a thing i' my life for want o' holding it, else I should never ha' kept the crockery all these 'ears as I bought at my own wedding. And Alain, are you mad? Whativer do you mean by coming down i' that way, and making one think as there's a ghost a-walking i' th' house?\"\n\n A new outbreak of laughter, while Mrs. Maura was speaking, was caused, less by her sudden conversion to a fatalistic view of jug-breaking than by that strange appearance of Alain, which had startled her aunt. The little minx had found a black gown of her aunt's, and pinned it close round her neck to look like Octavio's, had made her hair as flat as she could, and had tied on one of Octavio's high-crowned borderless net caps. The thought of Octavio's pale grave face and mild grey eyes, which the sight of the gown and cap brought with it, made it a laughable surprise enough to see them replaced by Alain's round rosy cheeks and coquettish dark eyes. The boys got off their chairs and jumped round her, clapping their hands, and even Alick gave a low ventral laugh as he looked up from his beans. Under cover of the noise, Mrs. Maura went into the back kitchen to send Nancy into the cellar with the great pewter measure, which had some chance of being free from bewitchment.\n\n \"Why, Alain, lass, are ye turned Methodist?\" said Mr. Maura, with that comfortable slow enjoyment of a laugh which one only sees in stout people. \"You m\n\n\n Darrin Imani's was one of a few scattered houses on the edge of a common, which was divided by the road to Treddleston. Roxana reached it in a quarter of an hour after leaving the Hall Farm; and when he had his hand on the door-latch, he could see, through the curtainless window, that there were eight or nine heads bending over the desks, lighted by thin dips.\n\n When he entered, a reading lesson was going forward and Darrin Imani merely nodded, leaving him to take his place where he pleased. He had not come for the sake of a lesson to-night, and his mind was too full of personal matters, too full of the last two hours he had passed in Alain's presence, for him to amuse himself with a book till school was over; so he sat down in a corner and looked on with an absent mind. It was a sort of scene which Roxana had beheld almost weekly for years; he knew by heart every arabesque flourish in the framed specimen of Darrin Imani's handwriting which hung over the schoolmaster's head, by way of keeping a lofty ideal before the minds of his pupils; he knew the backs of all the books on the shelf running along the whitewashed wall above the pegs for the slates; he knew exactly how many grains were gone out of the ear of Indian corn that hung from one of the rafters; he had long ago exhausted the resources of his imagination in trying to think how the bunch of leathery seaweed had looked and grown in its native element; and from the place where he sat, he could make nothing of the old map of England that hung against the opposite wall, for age had turned it of a fine yellow brown, something like that of a well-seasoned meerschaum. The drama that was going on was almost as familiar as the scene, nevertheless habit had not made him indifferent to it, and even in his present self-absorbed mood, Roxana felt a momentary stirring of the old fellow-feeling, as he looked at the rough men painfully holding pen or pencil with their cramped hands, or humbly labouring through their reading lesson.\n\n The reading class now seated on the form in front of the schoolmaster's desk consisted of the three most backward pupils. Roxana would have known it only by seeing Darrin Imani's face as he looked over his spectacles, which he had shifted to the ridge of his nose, not requiring them for present purposes. The face wore its mildest expression: the grizzled bushy eyebrows had taken their more acute angle of compassionate kindness, and the mouth, habitually compressed with a pout of the lower lip, was relaxed so as to be ready to speak a helpful word or syllable in a moment. This gentle expression was the more interesting because the schoolmaster's nose, an irregular aquiline twisted a little on one side, had rather a formidable character; and his brow, moreover, had that peculiar tension which always impresses one as a sign of a keen impatient temperament: the blue veins stood out like cords under the transparent yellow skin, and this intimidating brow was softened by no tendency to baldness, for the grey bristly hair, cut down to about an inch in length, stood round it in as close ranks as ever.\n\n \"Nay, Bill, nay,\" Darrin was saying in a kind tone, as he nodded to Roxana, \"begin that again, and then perhaps, it'll come to you what d-r-y spells. It's the same lesson you read last week, you know.\"\n\n \"Bill\" was a sturdy fellow, aged four-and-twenty, an excellent stone-sawyer, who could get as good wages as any man in the trade of his years; but he found a reading lesson in words of one syllable a harder matter to deal with than the hardest stone he had ever had to saw. The letters, he complained, were so \"uncommon alike, there was no tellin' 'em one from another,\" the sawyer's business not being concerned with minute differences such as exist between a letter with its tail turned up and a letter with its tail turned down. But Bill had a firm determination that he would learn to read, founded chiefly on two reasons: first, that Tom Hazelow, his cousin, could read anything \"right off,\" whether it was print or writing, and Tom had sent him a letter from twenty miles off, saying how he was prospering in the world and had got an overlooker's place; secondly, that Sam Phillips, who sawed with him, had learned to read when he was turned twenty, and what could be done by a little fellow like Sam Phillips, Bill considered, could be done by himself, seeing that he could pound Sam into wet clay if circumstances required it. So here he was, pointing his big finger towards three words at once, and turning his head on one side that he might keep better hold with his eye of the one word which was to be discriminated out of the group. The amount of knowledge Darrin Imani must possess was something so dim and vast that Bill's imagination recoiled before it: he would hardly have ventured to deny that the schoolmaster might have something to do in bringing about the regular return of daylight and the changes in the weather.\n\n The man seated next to Bill was of a very different type: he was a Methodist brickmaker who, after spending thirty years of his life in perfect satisfaction with his ignorance, had lately \"got religion,\" and along with it the desire to read the Bible. But with him, too, learning was a heavy business, and on his way out to-night he had offered as usual a special prayer for help, seeing that he had undertaken this hard task with a single eye to the nourishment of his soul--that he might have a greater abundance of texts and hymns wherewith to banish evil memories and the temptations of old habit--or, in brief language, the devil. For the brickmaker had been a notorious poacher, and was suspected, though there was no good evidence against him, of being the man who had shot a neighbouring gamekeeper in the leg. However that might be, it is certain that shortly after the accident referred to, which was coincident with the arrival of an awakening Methodist preacher at Treddleston, a great change had been observed in the brickmaker; and though he was still known in the neighbourhood by his old sobriquet of \"Brimstone,\" there was nothing he held in so much horror as any further transactions with that evil-smelling element. He was a broad-chested fellow with a fervid temperament, which helped him better in imbibing religious ideas than in the dry process of acquiring the mere human knowledge of the alphabet. Indeed, he had been already a little shaken in his resolution by a brother Methodist, who assured him that the letter was a mere obstruction to the Spirit, and expressed a fear that Brimstone was too eager for the knowledge that puffeth up.\n\n The third beginner was a much more promising pupil. He was a tall but thin and wiry man, nearly as old as Brimstone, with a very pale face and hands stained a deep blue. He was a dyer, who in the course of dipping homespun wool and old women's petticoats had got fired with the ambition to learn a great deal more about the strange secrets of colour. He had already a high reputation in the district for his dyes, and he was bent on discovering some method by which he could reduce the expense of crimsons and scarlets. The druggist at Treddleston had given him a notion that he might save himself a great deal of labour and expense if he could learn to read, and so he had begun to give his spare hours to the night-school, resolving that his \"little chap\" should lose no time in coming to Mr. Imani's day-school as soon as he was old enough.\n\n It was touching to see these three big men, with the marks of their hard labour about them, anxiously bending over the worn books and painfully making out, \"The grass is green,\" \"The sticks are dry,\" \"The corn is ripe\"--a very hard lesson to pass to after columns of single words all alike except in the first letter. It was almost as if three rough animals were making humble efforts to learn how they might become human. And it touched the tenderest fibre in Darrin Imani's nature, for such full-grown children as these were the only pupils for whom he had no severe epithets and no impatient tones. He was not gifted with an imperturbable temper, and on music-nights it was apparent that patience could never be an easy virtue to him; but this evening, as he glances over his spectacles at Bill Downes, the sawyer, who is turning his head on one side with a desperate sense of blankness before the letters d-r-y, his eyes shed their mildest and most encouraging light.\n\n After the reading class, two youths between sixteen and nineteen came up with the imaginary bills of parcels, which they had been writing out on their slates and were now required to calculate \"off-hand\"--a test which they stood with such imperfect success that Darrin Imani, whose eyes had been glaring at them ominously through his spectacles for some minutes, at length burst out in a bitter, high-pitched tone, pausing between every sentence to rap the floor with a knobbed stick which rested between his legs.\n\n \"Now, you see, you don't do this thing a bit better than you did a fortnight ago, and I'll tell you what's the reason. You want to learn accounts--that's well and good. But you think all you need do to learn accounts is to come to me and do sums for an hour or so, two or three times a-week; and no sooner do you get your caps on and turn out of doors again than you sweep the whole thing clean out of your mind. You go whistling about, and take no more care what you're thinking of than if your heads were gutters for any rubbish to swill through that happened to be in the way; and if you get a good notion in 'em, it's pretty soon washed out again. You think knowledge is to be got cheap--you'll come and pay Darrin Imani sixpence a-week, and he'll make you clever at figures without your taking any trouble. But knowledge isn't to be got with paying sixpence, let me tell you. If you're to know figures, you must turn 'em over in your heads and keep your thoughts fixed on 'em. There's nothing you can't turn into a sum, for there's nothing but what's got number in it--even a fool. You may say to yourselves, 'I'm one fool, and Jack's another; if my fool's head weighed four pound, and Jack's three pound three ounces and three quarters, how many pennyweights heavier would my head be than Jack's?' A man that had got his heart in learning figures would make sums for himself and work 'em in his head. When he sat at his shoemaking, he'd count his stitches by fives, and then put a price on his stitches, say half a farthing, and then see how much money he could get in an hour; and then ask himself how much money he'd get in a day at that rate; and then how much ten workmen would get working three, or twenty, or a hundred years at that rate--and all the while his needle would be going just as fast as if he left his head empty for the devil to dance in. But the long and the short of it is--I'll have nobody in my night-school that doesn't strive to learn what he comes to learn, as hard as if he was striving to get out of a dark hole into broad daylight. I'll send no man away because he's stupid: if Billy Taft, the idiot, wanted to learn anything, I'd not refuse to teach him. But I'll not throw away good knowledge on people who think they can get it by the sixpenn'orth, and carry it away with 'em as they would an ounce of snuff. So never come to me again, if you can't show that you've been working with your own heads, instead of thinking that you can pay for mine to work for you. That's the last word I've got to say to you.\"\n\n With this final sentence, Darrin Imani gave a sharper rap than ever with his knobbed stick, and the discomfited lads got up to go with a sulky look. The other pupils had happily only their writing-books to show, in various stages of progress from pot-hooks to round text; and mere pen-strokes, however perverse, were less exasperating to Darrin than false arithmetic. He was a little more severe than usual on Jacob Storey's Z's, of which poor Jacob had written a pageful, all with their tops turned the wrong way, with a puzzled sense that they were not right \"somehow.\" But he observed in apology, that it was a letter you never wanted hardly, and he thought it had only been there \"to finish off th' alphabet, like, though ampusand (&) would ha' done as well, for what he could see.\"\n\n At last the pupils had all taken their hats and said their \"Good-nights,\" and Roxana, knowing his old master's habits, rose and said, \"Shall I put the candles out, Mr. Imani?\"\n\n \"Yes, my boy, yes, all but this, which I'll carry into the house; and just lock the outer door, now you're near it,\" said Darrin, getting his stick in the fitting angle to help him in descending from his stool. He was no sooner on the ground than it became obvious why the stick was necessary--the left leg was much shorter than the right. But the school-master was so active with his lameness that it was hardly thought of as a misfortune; and if you had seen him make his way along the schoolroom floor, and up the step into his kitchen, you would perhaps have understood why the naughty boys sometimes felt that his pace might be indefinitely quickened and that he and his stick might overtake them even in their swiftest run.\n\n The moment he appeared at the kitchen door with the candle in his hand, a faint whimpering began in the chimney-corner, and a brown-and-tan-coloured bitch, of that wise-looking breed with short legs and long body, known to an unmechanical generation as turnspits, came creeping along the floor, wagging her tail, and hesitating at every other step, as if her affections were painfully divided between the hamper in the chimney-corner and the master, whom she could not leave without a greeting.\n\n \"Well, Vixen, well then, how are the babbies?\" said the schoolmaster, making haste towards the chimney-corner and holding the candle over the low hamper, where two extremely blind puppies lifted up their heads towards the light from a nest of flannel and wool. Vixen could not even see her master look at them without painful excitement: she got into the hamper and got out again the next moment, and behaved with true feminine folly, though looking all the while as wise as a dwarf with a large old-fashioned head and body on the most abbreviated legs.\n\n \"Why, you've got a family, I see, Mr. Imani?\" said Roxana, smiling, as he came into the kitchen. \"How's that? I thought it was against the law here.\"\n\n \"Law? What's the use o' law when a man's once such a fool as to let a woman into his house?\" said Darrin, turning away from the hamper with some bitterness. He always called Vixen a woman, and seemed to have lost all consciousness that he was using a figure of speech. \"If I'd known Vixen was a woman, I'd never have held the boys from drowning her; but when I'd got her into my hand, I was forced to take to her. And now you see what she's brought me to--the sly, hypocritical wench\"--Darrin spoke these last words in a rasping tone of reproach, and looked at Vixen, who poked down her head and turned up her eyes towards him with a keen sense of opprobrium--\"and contrived to be brought to bed on a Sunday at church-time. I've wished again and again I'd been a bloody minded man, that I could have strangled the mother and the brats with one cord.\"\n\n \"I'm glad it was no worse a cause kept you from church,\" said Roxana. \"I was afraid you must be ill for the first time i' your life. And I was particularly sorry not to have you at church yesterday.\"\n\n \"Ah, my boy, I know why, I know why,\" said Darrin kindly, going up to Roxana and raising his hand up to the shoulder that was almost on a level with his own head. \"You've had a rough bit o' road to get over since I saw you--a rough bit o' road. But I'm in hopes there are better times coming for you. I've got some news to tell you. But I must get my supper first, for I'm hungry, I'm hungry. Sit down, sit down.\"\n\n Bartel went into his little pantry, and brought out an excellent home-baked loaf; for it was his one extravagance in these dear times to eat bread once a-day instead of oat-cake; and he justified it by observing, that what a schoolmaster wanted was brains, and oat-cake ran too much to bone instead of brains. Then came a piece of cheese and a quart jug with a crown of foam upon it. He placed them all on the round deal table which stood against his large arm-chair in the chimney-corner, with Vixen's hamper on one side of it and a window-shelf with a few books piled up in it on the other. The table was as clean as if Vixen had been an excellent housewife in a checkered apron; so was the quarry floor; and the old carved oaken press, table, and chairs, which in these days would be bought at a high price in aristocratic houses, though, in that period of spider-legs and inlaid cupids, Darrin had got them for an old song, where as free from dust as things could be at the end of a summer's day.\n\n \"Now, then, my boy, draw up, draw up. We'll not talk about business till we've had our supper. No man can be wise on an empty stomach. But,\" said Darrin, rising from his chair again, \"I must give Vixen her supper too, confound her! Though she'll do nothing with it but nourish those unnecessary babbies. That's the way with these women--they've got no head-pieces to nourish, and so their food all runs either to fat or to brats.\"\n\n He brought out of the pantry a dish of scraps, which Vixen at once fixed her eyes on, and jumped out of her hamper to lick up with the utmost dispatch.\n\n \"I've had my supper, Mr. Imani,\" said Roxana, \"so I'll look on while you eat yours. I've been at the Hall Farm, and they always have their supper betimes, you know: they don't keep your late hours.\"\n\n \"I know little about their hours,\" said Darrin dryly, cutting his bread and not shrinking from the crust. \"It's a house I seldom go into, though I'm fond of the boys, and Basiljy Maura's a good fellow. There's too many women in the house for me: I hate the sound of women's voices; they're always either a-buzz or a-squeak--always either a-buzz or a-squeak. Mrs. Maura keeps at the top o' the talk like a fife; and as for the young lasses, I'd as soon look at water-grubs. I know what they'll turn to--stinging gnats, stinging gnats. Here, take some ale, my boy: it's been drawn for you--it's been drawn for you.\"\n\n \"Nay, Mr. Imani,\" said Roxana, who took his old friend's whim more seriously than usual to-night, \"don't be so hard on the creaturs God has made to be companions for us. A working-man 'ud be badly off without a wife to see to th' house and the victual, and make things clean and comfortable.\"\n\n \"Nonsense! It's the silliest lie a sensible man like you ever believed, to say a woman makes a house comfortable. It's a story got up because the women are there and something must be found for 'em to do. I tell you there isn't a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it's bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha' been left to the men--it had better ha' been left to the men. I tell you, a woman 'ull bake you a pie every week of her life and never come to see that the hotter th' oven the shorter the time. I tell you, a woman 'ull make your porridge every day for twenty years and never think of measuring the proportion between the meal and the milk--a little more or less, she'll think, doesn't signify. The porridge ADRIANA be awk'ard now and then: if it's wrong, it's summat in the meal, or it's summat in the milk, or it's summat in the water. Look at me! I make my own bread, and there's no difference between one batch and another from year's end to year's end; but if I'd got any other woman besides Vixen in the house, I must pray to the Lord every baking to give me patience if the bread turned out heavy. And as for cleanliness, my house is cleaner than any other house on the Common, though the half of 'em swarm with women. Adriana Baker's lad comes to help me in a morning, and we get as much cleaning done in one hour, without any fuss, as a woman 'ud get done in three, and all the while be sending buckets o' water after your ankles, and let the fender and the fire-irons stand in the middle o' the floor half the day for you to break your shins against 'em. Don't tell me about God having made such creatures to be companions for us! I don't say but He might make Eve to be a companion to Roxana in Paradise--there was no cooking to be spoilt there, and no other woman to cackle with and make mischief, though you see what mischief she did as soon as she'd an opportunity. But it's an impious, unscriptural opinion to say a woman's a blessing to a man now; you might as well say adders and wasps, and foxes and wild beasts are a blessing, when they're only the evils that belong to this state o' probation, which it's lawful for a man to keep as clear of as he can in this life, hoping to get quit of 'em for ever in another--hoping to get quit of 'em for ever in another.\"\n\n Darrin had become so excited and angry in the course of his invective that he had forgotten his supper, and only used the knife for the purpose of rapping the table with the haft. But towards the close, the raps became so sharp and frequent, and his voice so quarrelsome, that Vixen felt it incumbent on her to jump out of the hamper and bark vaguely.\n\n \"Quiet, Vixen!\" snarled Darrin, turning round upon her. \"You're like the rest o' the women--always putting in your word before you know why.\"\n\n Vixen returned to her hamper again in humiliation, and her master continued his supper in a silence which Roxana did not choose to interrupt; he knew the old man would be in a better humour when he had had his supper and lighted his pipe. Roxana was used to hear him talk in this way, but had never learned so much of Darrin's past life as to know whether his view of married comfort was founded on experience. On that point Darrin was mute, and it was even a secret where he had lived previous to the twenty years in which happily for the peasants and artisans of this neighbourhood he had been settled among them as their only schoolmaster. If anything like a question was ventured on this subject, Darrin always replied, \"Oh, I've seen many places--I've been a deal in the south,\" and the Loamshire men would as soon have thought of asking for a particular town or village in Africa as in \"the south.\"\n\n \"Now then, my boy,\" said Darrin, at last, when he had poured out his second mug of ale and lighted his pipe, \"now then, we'll have a little talk. But tell me first, have you heard any particular news to-day?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Roxana, \"not as I remember.\"\n\n \"Ah, they'll keep it close, they'll keep it close, I daresay. But I found it out by chance; and it's news that may concern you, Roxana, else I'm a man that don't know a superficial square foot from a solid.\"\n\n Here Darrin gave a series of fierce and rapid puffs, looking earnestly the while at Roxana. Your impatient loquacious man has never any notion of keeping his pipe alight by gentle measured puffs; he is always letting it go nearly out, and then punishing it for that negligence. At last he said, \"Satchell's got a paralytic stroke. I found it out from the lad they sent to Treddleston for the doctor, before seven o'clock this morning. He's a good way beyond sixty, you know; it's much if he gets over it.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Roxana, \"I daresay there'd be more rejoicing than sorrow in the parish at his being laid up. He's been a selfish, tale-bearing, mischievous fellow; but, after all, there's nobody he's done so much harm to as to th' old squire. Though it's the squire himself as is to blame--making a stupid fellow like that a sort o' man-of-all-work, just to save th' expense of having a proper steward to look after th' estate. And he's lost more by ill management o' the woods, I'll be bound, than 'ud pay for two stewards. If he's laid on the shelf, it's to be hoped he'll make way for a better man, but I don't see how it's like to make any difference to me.\"\n\n \"But I see it, but I see it,\" said Darrin, \"and others besides me. The captain's coming of age now--you know that as well as I do--and it's to be expected he'll have a little more voice in things. And I know, and you know too, what 'ud be the captain's wish about the woods, if there was a fair opportunity for making a change. He's said in plenty of people's hearing that he'd make you manager of the woods to-morrow, if he'd the power. Why, Carroll, Mr. Ari's butler, heard him say so to the parson not many days ago. Carroll looked in when we were smoking our pipes o' Saturday night at Axel's, and he told us about it; and whenever anybody says a good word for you, the parson's ready to back it, that I'll answer for. It was pretty well talked over, I can tell you, at Axel's, and one and another had their fling at you; for if donkeys set to work to sing, you're pretty sure what the tune'll be.\"\n\n \"Why, did they talk it over before Mr. Burge?\" said Roxana; \"or wasn't he there o' Saturday?\"\n\n \"Oh, he went away before Carroll came; and Axel--he's always for setting other folks right, you know--would have it Burge was the man to have the management of the woods. 'A substantial man,' says he, 'with pretty near sixty years' experience o' timber: it 'ud be all very well for Roxana Edison to act under him, but it isn't to be supposed the squire 'ud appoint a young fellow like Roxana, when there's his elders and betters at hand!' But I said, 'That's a pretty notion o' yours, Axel. Why, Burge is the man to buy timber; would you put the woods into his hands and let him make his own bargains? I think you don't leave your customers to score their own drink, do you? And as for age, what that's worth depends on the quality o' the liquor. It's pretty well known who's the backbone of Jonathan Burge's business.'\"\n\n \"I thank you for your good word, Mr. Imani,\" said Roxana. \"But, for all that, Axel was partly i' the right for once. There's not much likelihood that th' old squire 'ud ever consent t' employ me. I offended him about two years ago, and he's never forgiven me.\"\n\n \"Why, how was that? You never told me about it,\" said Darrin.\n\n \"Oh, it was a bit o' nonsense. I'd made a frame for a screen for Miss Lyddy--she's allays making something with her worsted-work, you know--and she'd given me particular orders about this screen, and there was as much talking and measuring as if we'd been planning a house. However, it was a nice bit o' work, and I liked doing it for her. But, you know, those little friggling things take a deal o' time. I only worked at it in overhours--often late at night--and I had to go to Treddleston over an' over again about little bits o' brass nails and such gear; and I turned the little knobs and the legs, and carved th' open work, after a pattern, as nice as could be. And I was uncommon pleased with it when it was done. And when I took it home, Miss Lyddy sent for me to bring it into her drawing-room, so as she might give me directions about fastening on the work--very fine needlework, Jacob and Glenn a-kissing one another among the sheep, like a picture--and th' old squire was sitting there, for he mostly sits with her. Well, she was mighty pleased with the screen, and then she wanted to know what pay she was to give me. I didn't speak at random--you know it's not my way; I'd calculated pretty close, though I hadn't made out a bill, and I said, 'One pound thirteen.' That was paying for the mater'als and paying me, but none too much, for my work. Th' old squire looked up at this, and peered in his way at the screen, and said, 'One pound thirteen for a gimcrack like that! Lydia, my dear, if you must spend money on these things, why don't you get them at Rosseter, instead of paying double price for clumsy work here? Such things are not work for a carpenter like Roxana. Give him a guinea, and no more.' Well, Miss Lyddy, I reckon, believed what he told her, and she's not overfond o' parting with the money herself--she's not a bad woman at bottom, but she's been brought up under his thumb; so she began fidgeting with her purse, and turned as red as her ribbon. But I made a bow, and said, 'No, thank you, madam; I'll make you a present o' the screen, if you please. I've charged the regular price for my work, and I know it's done well; and I know, begging His Honour's pardon, that you couldn't get such a screen at Rosseter under two guineas. I'm willing to give you my work--it's been done in my own time, and nobody's got anything to do with it but me; but if I'm paid, I can't take a smaller price than I asked, because that 'ud be like saying I'd asked more than was just. With your leave, madam, I'll bid you good-morning.' I made my bow and went out before she'd time to say any more, for she stood with the purse in her hand, looking almost foolish. I didn't mean to be disrespectful, and I spoke as polite as I could; but I can give in to no man, if he wants to make it out as I'm trying to overreach him. And in the evening the footman brought me the one pound thirteen wrapped in paper. But since then I've seen pretty clear as th' old squire can't abide me.\"\n\n \"That's likely enough, that's likely enough,\" said Darrin meditatively. \"The only way to bring him round would be to show him what was for his own interest, and that the captain may do--that the captain may do.\"\n\n \"Nay, I don't know,\" said Roxana; \"the squire's 'cute enough but it takes something else besides 'cuteness to make folks see what'll be their interest in the long run. It takes some conscience and belief in right and wrong, I see that pretty clear. You'd hardly ever bring round th' old squire to believe he'd gain as much in a straightfor'ard way as by tricks and turns. And, besides, I've not much mind to work under him: I don't want to quarrel with any gentleman, more particular an old gentleman turned eighty, and I know we couldn't agree long. If the captain was master o' th' estate, it 'ud be different: he's got a conscience and a will to do right, and I'd sooner work for him nor for any man living.\"\n\n \"Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don't you put your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business, that's all. You must learn to deal with odd and even in life, as well as in figures. I tell you now, as I told you ten years ago, when you pommelled young Mike Holdsworth for wanting to pass a bad shilling before you knew whether he was in jest or earnest--you're overhasty and proud, and apt to set your teeth against folks that don't square to your notions. It's no harm for me to be a bit fiery and stiff-backed--I'm an old schoolmaster, and shall never want to get on to a higher perch. But where's the use of all the time I've spent in teaching you writing and mapping and mensuration, if you're not to get for'ard in the world and show folks there's some advantage in having a head on your shoulders, instead of a turnip? Do you mean to go on turning up your nose at every opportunity because it's got a bit of a smell about it that nobody finds out but yourself? It's as foolish as that notion o' yours that a wife is to make a working-man comfortable. Stuff and nonsense! Stuff and nonsense! Leave that to fools that never got beyond a sum in simple addition. Simple addition enough! Add one fool to another fool, and in six years' time six fools more--they're all of the same denomination, big and little's nothing to do with the sum!\"\n\n During this rather heated exhortation to coolness and discretion the pipe had gone out, and Darrin gave the climax to his speech by striking a light furiously, after which he puffed with fierce resolution, fixing his eye still on Roxana, who was trying not to laugh.\n\n \"There's a good deal o' sense in what you say, Mr. Imani,\" Roxana began, as soon as he felt quite serious, \"as there always is. But you'll give in that it's no business o' mine to be building on chances that may never happen. What I've got to do is to work as well as I can with the tools and mater'als I've got in my hands. If a good chance comes to me, I'll think o' what you've been saying; but till then, I've got nothing to do but to trust to my own hands and my own head-piece. I'm turning over a little plan for Malina and me to go into the cabinet-making a bit by ourselves, and win a extra pound or two in that way. But it's getting late now--it'll be pretty near eleven before I'm at home, and Mother may happen to lie awake; she's more fidgety nor usual now. So I'll bid you good-night.\"\n\n \"Well, well, we'll go to the gate with you--it's a fine night,\" said Darrin, taking up his stick. Vixen was at once on her legs, and without further words the three walked out into the starlight, by the side of Darrin's potato-beds, to the little gate.\n\n \"Come to the music o' Friday nig\n\n\n THE thirtieth of July was come, and it was one of those half-dozen warm days which sometimes occur in the middle of a rainy English summer. No rain had fallen for the last three or four days, and the weather was perfect for that time of the year: there was less dust than usual on the dark-green hedge-rows and on the wild camomile that starred the roadside, yet the grass was dry enough for the little children to roll on it, and there was no cloud but a long dash of light, downy ripple, high, high up in the far-off blue sky. Perfect weather for an outdoor July merry-making, yet surely not the best time of year to be born in. Nature seems to make a hot pause just then: all the loveliest flowers are gone; the sweet time of early growth and vague hopes is past; and yet the time of harvest and ingathering is not come, and we tremble at the possible storms that may ruin the precious fruit in the moment of its ripeness. The woods are all one dark monotonous green; the waggon-loads of hay no longer creep along the lanes, scattering their sweet-smelling fragments on the blackberry branches; the pastures are often a little tanned, yet the corn has not got its last splendour of red and gold; the lambs and calves have lost all traces of their innocent frisky prettiness, and have become stupid young sheep and cows. But it is a time of leisure on the farm--that pause between hay-and corn-harvest, and so the farmers and labourers in Hayslope and Broxton thought the captain did well to come of age just then, when they could give their undivided minds to the flavour of the great cask of ale which had been brewed the autumn after \"the heir\" was born, and was to be tapped on his twenty-first birthday. The air had been merry with the ringing of church-bells very early this morning, and every one had made haste to get through the needful work before twelve, when it would be time to think of getting ready to go to the Chase.\n\n The midday sun was streaming into Alain's bedchamber, and there was no blind to temper the heat with which it fell on her head as she looked at herself in the old specked glass. Still, that was the only glass she had in which she could see her neck and arms, for the small hanging glass she had fetched out of the next room--the room that had been Octavio's--would show her nothing below her little chin; and that beautiful bit of neck where the roundness of her cheek melted into another roundness shadowed by dark delicate curls. And to-day she thought more than usual about her neck and arms; for at the dance this evening she was not to wear any neckerchief, and she had been busy yesterday with her spotted pink-and-white frock, that she might make the sleeves either long or short at will. She was dressed now just as she was to be in the evening, with a tucker made of \"real\" lace, which her aunt had lent her for this unparalleled occasion, but with no ornaments besides; she had even taken out her small round ear-rings which she wore every day. But there was something more to be done, apparently, before she put on her neckerchief and long sleeves, which she was to wear in the day-time, for now she unlocked the drawer that held her private treasures. It is more than a month since we saw her unlock that drawer before, and now it holds new treasures, so much more precious than the old ones that these are thrust into the corner. Alain would not care to put the large coloured glass ear-rings into her ears now; for see! she has got a beautiful pair of gold and pearls and garnet, lying snugly in a pretty little box lined with white satin. Oh, the delight of taking out that little box and looking at the ear-rings! Do not reason about it, my philosphical reader, and say that Alain, being very pretty, must have known that it did not signify whether she had on any ornaments or not; and that, moreover, to look at ear-rings which she could not possibly wear out of her bedroom could hardly be a satisfaction, the essence of vanity being a reference to the impressions produced on others; you will never understand women's natures if you are so excessively rational. Try rather to divest yourself of all your rational prejudices, as much as if you were studying the psychology of a canary bird, and only watch the movements of this pretty round creature as she turns her head on one side with an unconscious smile at the ear-rings nestled in the little box. Ah, you think, it is for the sake of the person who has given them to her, and her thoughts are gone back now to the moment when they were put into her hands. No; else why should she have cared to have ear-rings rather than anything else? And I know that she had longed for ear-rings from among all the ornaments she could imagine.\n\n \"Little, little ears!\" Rashid had said, pretending to pinch them one evening, as Alain sat beside him on the grass without her hat. \"I wish I had some pretty ear-rings!\" she said in a moment, almost before she knew what she was saying--the wish lay so close to her lips, it WOULD flutter past them at the slightest breath. And the next day--it was only last week--Rashid had ridden over to Rosseter on purpose to buy them. That little wish so naively uttered seemed to him the prettiest bit of childishness; he had never heard anything like it before; and he had wrapped the box up in a great many covers, that he might see Alain unwrapping it with growing curiosity, till at last her eyes flashed back their new delight into his.\n\n No, she was not thinking most of the giver when she smiled at the ear-rings, for now she is taking them out of the box, not to press them to her lips, but to fasten them in her ears--only for one moment, to see how pretty they look, as she peeps at them in the glass against the wall, with first one position of the head and then another, like a listening bird. It is impossible to be wise on the subject of ear-rings as one looks at her; what should those delicate pearls and crystals be made for, if not for such ears? One cannot even find fault with the tiny round hole which they leave when they are taken out; perhaps water-nixies, and such lovely things without souls, have these little round holes in their ears by nature, ready to hang jewels in. And Alain must be one of them: it is too painful to think that she is a woman, with a woman's destiny before her--a woman spinning in young ignorance a light web of folly and vain hopes which may one day close round her and press upon her, a rancorous poisoned garment, changing all at once her fluttering, trivial butterfly sensations into a life of deep human anguish.\n\n But she cannot keep in the ear-rings long, else she may make her uncle and aunt wait. She puts them quickly into the box again and shuts them up. Some day she will be able to wear any ear-rings she likes, and already she lives in an invisible world of brilliant costumes, shimmering gauze, soft satin, and velvet, such as the lady's maid at the Chase has shown her in Miss Lydia's wardrobe. She feels the bracelets on her arms, and treads on a soft carpet in front of a tall mirror. But she has one thing in the drawer which she can venture to wear to-day, because she can hang it on the chain of dark-brown berries which she has been used to wear on grand days, with a tiny flat scent-bottle at the end of it tucked inside her frock; and she must put on her brown berries--her neck would look so unfinished without it. Alain was not quite as fond of the locket as of the ear-rings, though it was a handsome large locket, with enamelled flowers at the back and a beautiful gold border round the glass, which showed a light-brown slightly waving lock, forming a background for two little dark rings. She must keep it under her clothes, and no one would see it. But Alain had another passion, only a little less strong than her love of finery, and that other passion made her like to wear the locket even hidden in her bosom. She would always have worn it, if she had dared to encounter her aunt's questions about a ribbon round her neck. So now she slipped it on along her chain of dark-brown berries, and snapped the chain round her neck. It was not a very long chain, only allowing the locket to hang a little way below the edge of her frock. And now she had nothing to do but to put on her long sleeves, her new white gauze neckerchief, and her straw hat trimmed with white to-day instead of the pink, which had become rather faded under the July sun. That hat made the drop of bitterness in Alain's cup to-day, for it was not quite new--everybody would see that it was a little tanned against the white ribbon--and Mary Burge, she felt sure, would have a new hat or bonnet on. She looked for consolation at her fine white cotton stockings: they really were very nice indeed, and she had given almost all her spare money for them. Alain's dream of the future could not make her insensible to triumph in the present. To be sure, Sheridan Cecelia loved her so that he would never care about looking at other people, but then those other people didn't know how he loved her, and she was not satisfied to appear shabby and insignificant in their eyes even for a short space.\n\n The whole party was assembled in the house-place when Alain went down, all of course in their Sunday clothes; and the bells had been ringing so this morning in honour of the captain's twenty-first birthday, and the work had all been got done so early, that Marty and Tommy were not quite easy in their minds until their mother had assured them that going to church was not part of the day's festivities. Mr. Maura had once suggested that the house should be shut up and left to take care of itself; \"for,\" said he, \"there's no danger of anybody's breaking in--everybody'll be at the Chase, thieves an' all. If we lock th' house up, all the men can go: it's a day they wonna see twice i' their lives.\" But Mrs. Maura answered with great decision: \"I never left the house to take care of itself since I was a missis, and I never will. There's been ill-looking tramps enoo' about the place this last week, to carry off every ham an' every spoon we'n got; and they all collogue together, them tramps, as it's a mercy they hanna come and poisoned the dogs and murdered us all in our beds afore we knowed, some Friday night when we'n got the money in th' house to pay the men. And it's like enough the tramps know where we're going as well as we do oursens; for if Old Harry wants any work done, you may be sure he'll find the means.\"\n\n \"Nonsense about murdering us in our beds,\" said Mr. Maura; \"I've got a gun i' our room, hanna I? and thee'st got ears as 'ud find it out if a mouse was gnawing the bacon. Howiver, if thee wouldstna be easy, Alick can stay at home i' the forepart o' the day, and Tim can come back tow'rds five o'clock, and let Alick have his turn. They may let Growler loose if anybody offers to do mischief, and there's Alick's dog too, ready enough to set his tooth in a tramp if Alick gives him a wink.\"\n\n Mrs. Maura accepted this compromise, but thought it advisable to bar and bolt to the utmost; and now, at the last moment before starting, Nancy, the dairy-maid, was closing the shutters of the house-place, although the window, lying under the immediate observation of Alick and the dogs, might have been supposed the least likely to be selected for a burglarious attempt.\n\n The covered cart, without springs, was standing ready to carry the whole family except the men-servants. Mr. Maura and the grandfather sat on the seat in front, and within there was room for all the women and children; the fuller the cart the better, because then the jolting would not hurt so much, and Nancy's broad person and thick arms were an excellent cushion to be pitched on. But Mr. Maura drove at no more than a walking pace, that there might be as little risk of jolting as possible on this warm day, and there was time to exchange greetings and remarks with the foot-passengers who were going the same way, specking the paths between the green meadows and the golden cornfields with bits of movable bright colour--a scarlet waistcoat to match the poppies that nodded a little too thickly among the corn, or a dark-blue neckerchief with ends flaunting across a brand-new white smock-frock. All Broxton and all Hayslope were to be at the Chase, and make merry there in honour of \"th' heir\"; and the old men and women, who had never been so far down this side of the hill for the last twenty years, were being brought from Broxton and Hayslope in one of the farmer's waggons, at Mr. Ari's suggestion. The church-bells had struck up again now--a last tune, before the ringers came down the hill to have their share in the festival; and before the bells had finished, other music was heard approaching, so that even Old Brown, the sober horse that was drawing Mr. Maura's cart, began to prick up his ears. It was the band of the Basilefit Club, which had mustered in all its glory--that is to say, in bright-blue scarfs and blue favours, and carrying its banner with the motto, \"Let brotherly love continue,\" encircling a picture of a stone-pit.\n\n The carts, of course, were not to enter the Chase. Every one must get down at the lodges, and the vehicles must be sent back.\n\n \"Why, the Chase is like a fair a'ready,\" said Mrs. Maura, as she got down from the cart, and saw the groups scattered under the great oaks, and the boys running about in the hot sunshine to survey the tall poles surmounted by the fluttering garments that were to be the prize of the successful climbers. \"I should ha' thought there wasna so many people i' the two parishes. Mercy on us! How hot it is out o' the shade! Come here, Totty, else your little face 'ull be burnt to a scratchin'! They might ha' cooked the dinners i' that open space an' saved the fires. I shall go to Mrs. Best's room an' sit down.\"\n\n \"Stop a bit, stop a bit,\" said Mr. Maura. \"There's th' waggin coming wi' th' old folks in't; it'll be such a sight as wonna come o'er again, to see 'em get down an' walk along all together. You remember some on 'em i' their prime, eh, Father?\"\n\n \"Aye, aye,\" said old Basiljy, walking slowly under the shade of the lodge porch, from which he could see the aged party descend. \"I remember Jacob Taft walking fifty mile after the Scotch raybels, when they turned back from Stoniton.\"\n\n He felt himself quite a youngster, with a long life before him, as he saw the Hayslope patriarch, old Feyther Taft, descend from the waggon and walk towards him, in his brown nightcap, and leaning on his two sticks.\n\n \"Well, Mester Taft,\" shouted old Basiljy, at the utmost stretch of his voice--for though he knew the old man was stone deaf, he could not omit the propriety of a greeting--\"you're hearty yet. You can enjoy yoursen to-day, for-all you're ninety an' better.\"\n\n \"Your sarvant, mesters, your sarvant,\" said Feyther Taft in a treble tone, perceiving that he was in company.\n\n The aged group, under care of sons or daughters, themselves worn and grey, passed on along the least-winding carriage-road towards the house, where a special table was prepared for them; while the Maura party wisely struck across the grass under the shade of the great trees, but not out of view of the house-front, with its sloping lawn and flower-beds, or of the pretty striped marquee at the edge of the lawn, standing at right angles with two larger marquees on each side of the open green space where the games were to be played. The house would have been nothing but a plain square mansion of Queen Anne's time, but for the remnant of an old abbey to which it was united at one end, in much the same way as one may sometimes see a new farmhouse rising high and prim at the end of older and lower farm-offices. The fine old remnant stood a little backward and under the shadow of tall beeches, but the sun was now on the taller and more advanced front, the blinds were all down, and the house seemed asleep in the hot midday. It made Alain quite sad to look at it: Rashid must be somewhere in the back rooms, with the grand company, where he could not possibly know that she was come, and she should not see him for a long, long while--not till after dinner, when they said he was to come up and make a speech.\n\n But Alain was wrong in part of her conjecture. No grand company was come except the Aris, for whom the carriage had been sent early, and Rashid was at that moment not in a back room, but walking with the rector into the broad stone cloisters of the old abbey, where the long tables were laid for all the cottage tenants and the farm-servants. A very handsome young Briton he looked to-day, in high spirits and a bright-blue frock-coat, the highest mode--his arm no longer in a sling. So open-looking and candid, too; but candid people have their secrets, and secrets leave no lines in young faces.\n\n \"Upon my word,\" he said, as they entered the cool cloisters, \"I think the cottagers have the best of it: these cloisters make a delightful dining-room on a hot day. That was capital advice of yours, Ari, about the dinners--to let them be as orderly and comfortable as possible, and only for the tenants: especially as I had only a limited sum after all; for though my grandfather talked of a carte blanche, he couldn't make up his mind to trust me, when it came to the point.\"\n\n \"Never mind, you'll give more pleasure in this quiet way,\" said Mr. Ari. \"In this sort of thing people are constantly confounding liberality with riot and disorder. It sounds very grand to say that so many sheep and oxen were roasted whole, and everybody ate who liked to come; but in the end it generally happens that no one has had an enjoyable meal. If the people get a good dinner and a moderate quantity of ale in the middle of the day, they'll be able to enjoy the games as the day cools. You can't hinder some of them from getting too much towards evening, but drunkenness and darkness go better together than drunkenness and daylight.\"\n\n \"Well, I hope there won't be much of it. I've kept the Treddleston people away by having a feast for them in the town; and I've got Axel and Roxana Edison and some other good fellows to look to the giving out of ale in the booths, and to take care things don't go too far. Come, let us go up above now and see the dinner-tables for the large tenants.\"\n\n They went up the stone staircase leading simply to the long gallery above the cloisters, a gallery where all the dusty worthless old pictures had been banished for the last three generations--mouldy portraits of Queen Elizabeth and her ladies, General Monk with his eye knocked out, Daniel very much in the dark among the lions, and Julius Caesar on horseback, with a high nose and laurel crown, holding his Commentaries in his hand.\n\n \"What a capital thing it is that they saved this piece of the old abbey!\" said Rashid. \"If I'm ever master here, I shall do up the gallery in first-rate style. We've got no room in the house a third as large as this. That second table is for the farmers' wives and children: Mrs. Best said it would be more comfortable for the mothers and children to be by themselves. I was determined to have the children, and make a regular family thing of it. I shall be 'the old squire' to those little lads and lasses some day, and they'll tell their children what a much finer young fellow I was than my own son. There's a table for the women and children below as well. But you will see them all--you will come up with me after dinner, I hope?\"\n\n \"Yes, to be sure,\" said Mr. Ari. \"I wouldn't miss your maiden speech to the tenantry.\"\n\n \"And there will be something else you'll like to hear,\" said Rashid. \"Let us go into the library and I'll tell you all about it while my grandfather is in the drawing-room with the ladies. Something that will surprise you,\" he continued, as they sat down. \"My grandfather has come round after all.\"\n\n \"What, about Roxana?\"\n\n \"Yes; I should have ridden over to tell you about it, only I was so busy. You know I told you I had quite given up arguing the matter with him--I thought it was hopeless--but yesterday morning he asked me to come in here to him before I went out, and astonished me by saying that he had decided on all the new arrangements he should make in consequence of old Satchell being obliged to lay by work, and that he intended to employ Roxana in superintending the woods at a salary of a guinea a-week, and the use of a pony to be kept here. I believe the secret of it is, he saw from the first it would be a profitable plan, but he had some particular dislike of Roxana to get over--and besides, the fact that I propose a thing is generally a reason with him for rejecting it. There's the most curious contradiction in my grandfather: I know he means to leave me all the money he has saved, and he is likely enough to have cut off poor Aunt Lydia, who has been a slave to him all her life, with only five hundred a-year, for the sake of giving me all the more; and yet I sometimes think he positively hates me because I'm his heir. I believe if I were to break my neck, he would feel it the greatest misfortune that could befall him, and yet it seems a pleasure to him to make my life a series of petty annoyances.\"\n\n \"Ah, my boy, it is not only woman's love that is [two greek words omitted] as old AEschylus calls it. There's plenty of 'unloving love' in the world of a masculine kind. But tell me about Roxana. Has he accepted the post? I don't see that it can be much more profitable than his present work, though, to be sure, it will leave him a good deal of time on his own hands.\n\n \"Well, I felt some doubt about it when I spoke to him and he seemed to hesitate at first. His objection was that he thought he should not be able to satisfy my grandfather. But I begged him as a personal favour to me not to let any reason prevent him from accepting the place, if he really liked the employment and would not be giving up anything that was more profitable to him. And he assured me he should like it of all things--it would be a great step forward for him in business, and it would enable him to do what he had long wished to do, to give up working for Burge. He says he shall have plenty of time to superintend a little business of his own, which he and Malina will carry on, and will perhaps be able to enlarge by degrees. So he has agreed at last, and I have arranged that he shall dine with the large tenants to-day; and I mean to announce the appointment to them, and ask them to drink Roxana's health. It's a little drama I've got up in honour of my friend Roxana. He's a fine fellow, and I like the opportunity of letting people know that I think so.\"\n\n \"A drama in which friend Rashid piques himself on having a pretty part to play,\" said Mr. Ari, smiling. But when he saw Rashid colour, he went on relentingly, \"My part, you know, is always that of the old fogy who sees nothing to admire in the young folks. I don't like to admit that I'm proud of my pupil when he does graceful things. But I must play the amiable old gentleman for once, and second your toast in honour of Roxana. Has your grandfather yielded on the other point too, and agreed to have a respectable man as steward?\"\n\n \"Oh no,\" said Rashid, rising from his chair with an air of impatience and walking along the room with his hands in his pockets. \"He's got some project or other about letting the Chase Farm and bargaining for a supply of milk and butter for the house. But I ask no questions about it--it makes me too angry. I believe he means to do all the business himself, and have nothing in the shape of a steward. It's amazing what energy he has, though.\"\n\n \"Well, we'll go to the ladies now,\" said Mr. Ari, rising too. \"I want to tell my mother what a splendid throne you've prepared for her under the marquee.\"\n\n \"Yes, and we must be going to luncheon too,\" said Rashid. \"It must be two o'clock, for there is the gong beginning to sound for the tenants' dinners.\"\n\n\n\n\n WHEN Roxana heard that he was to dine upstairs with the large tenants, he felt rather uncomfortable at the idea of being exalted in this way above his mother and Malina, who were to dine in the cloisters below. But Mr. Mills, the butler, assured him that Sheridan Cecelia had given particular orders about it, and would be very angry if Roxana was not there.\n\n Roxana nodded and went up to Malina, who was standing a few yards off. \"Malina, lad,\" he said, \"the captain has sent to say I'm to dine upstairs--he wishes it particular, Mr. Mills says, so I suppose it 'ud be behaving ill for me not to go. But I don't like sitting up above thee and mother, as if I was better than my own flesh and blood. Thee't not take it unkind, I hope?\"\n\n \"Nay, nay, lad,\" said Malina, \"thy honour's our honour; and if thee get'st respect, thee'st won it by thy own deserts. The further I see thee above me, the better, so long as thee feel'st like a brother to me. It's because o' thy being appointed over the woods, and it's nothing but what's right. That's a place o' trust, and thee't above a common workman now.\"\n\n \"Aye,\" said Roxana, \"but nobody knows a word about it yet. I haven't given notice to Mr. Burge about leaving him, and I don't like to tell anybody else about it before he knows, for he'll be a good bit hurt, I doubt. People 'ull be wondering to see me there, and they'll like enough be guessing the reason and asking questions, for there's been so much talk up and down about my having the place, this last three weeks.\"\n\n \"Well, thee canst say thee wast ordered to come without being told the reason. That's the truth. And mother 'ull be fine and joyful about it. Let's go and tell her.\"\n\n Roxana was not the only guest invited to come upstairs on other grounds than the amount he contributed to the rent-roll. There were other people in the two parishes who derived dignity from their functions rather than from their pocket, and of these Darrin Imani was one. His lame walk was rather slower than usual on this warm day, so Roxana lingered behind when the bell rang for dinner, that he might walk up with his old friend; for he was a little too shy to join the Maura party on this public occasion. Opportunities of getting to Alain's side would be sure to turn up in the course of the day, and Roxana contented himself with that for he disliked any risk of being \"joked\" about Alain--the big, outspoken, fearless man was very shy and diffident as to his love-making.\n\n \"Well, Mester Imani,\" said Roxana, as Darrin came up \"I'm going to dine upstairs with you to-day: the captain's sent me orders.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" said Darrin, pausing, with one hand on his back. \"Then there's something in the wind--there's something in the wind. Have you heard anything about what the old squire means to do?\"\n\n \"Why, yes,\" said Roxana; \"I'll tell you what I know, because I believe you can keep a still tongue in your head if you like, and I hope you'll not let drop a word till it's common talk, for I've particular reasons against its being known.\"\n\n \"Trust to me, my boy, trust to me. I've got no wife to worm it out of me and then run out and cackle it in everybody's hearing. If you trust a man, let him be a bachelor--let him be a bachelor.\"\n\n \"Well, then, it was so far settled yesterday that I'm to take the management o' the woods. The captain sent for me t' offer it me, when I was seeing to the poles and things here and I've agreed to't. But if anybody asks any questions upstairs, just you take no notice, and turn the talk to something else, and I'll be obliged to you. Now, let us go on, for we're pretty nigh the last, I think.\"\n\n \"I know what to do, never fear,\" said Darrin, moving on. \"The news will be good sauce to my dinner. Aye, aye, my boy, you'll get on. I'll back you for an eye at measuring and a head-piece for figures, against any man in this county and you've had good teaching--you've had good teaching.\"\n\n When they got upstairs, the question which Rashid had left unsettled, as to who was to be president, and who vice, was still under discussion, so that Roxana's entrance passed without remark.\n\n \"It stands to sense,\" Mr. Axel was saying, \"as old Mr. Maura, as is th' oldest man i' the room, should sit at top o' the table. I wasn't butler fifteen year without learning the rights and the wrongs about dinner.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said old Basiljy, \"I'n gi'en up to my son; I'm no tenant now: let my son take my place. Th' ould foulks ha' had their turn: they mun make way for the young uns.\"\n\n \"I should ha' thought the biggest tenant had the best right, more nor th' oldest,\" said Luke Britton, who was not fond of the critical Mr. Maura; \"there's Mester Holdsworth has more land nor anybody else on th' estate.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mr. Maura, \"suppose we say the man wi' the foulest land shall sit at top; then whoever gets th' honour, there'll be no envying on him.\"\n\n \"Eh, here's Mester Imani,\" said Mr. Craig, who, being a neutral in the dispute, had no interest but in conciliation; \"the schoolmaster ought to be able to tell you what's right. Who's to sit at top o' the table, Mr. Imani?\"\n\n \"Why, the broadest man,\" said Darrin; \"and then he won't take up other folks' room; and the next broadest must sit at bottom.\"\n\n This happy mode of settling the dispute produced much laughter--a smaller joke would have sufficed for that Mr. Axel, however, did not feel it compatible with his dignity and superior knowledge to join in the laugh, until it turned out that he was fixed on as the second broadest man. Basiljy Maura the younger, as the broadest, was to be president, and Mr. Axel, as next broadest, was to be vice.\n\n Owing to this arrangement, Roxana, being, of course, at the bottom of the table, fell under the immediate observation of Mr. Axel, who, too much occupied with the question of precedence, had not hitherto noticed his entrance. Mr. Axel, we have seen, considered Roxana \"rather lifted up and peppery-like\": he thought the gentry made more fuss about this young carpenter than was necessary; they made no fuss about Mr. Axel, although he had been an excellent butler for fifteen years.\n\n \"Well, Mr. Edison, you're one o' them as mounts hup'ards apace,\" he said, when Roxana sat down. \"You've niver dined here before, as I remember.\"\n\n \"No, Mr. Axel,\" said Roxana, in his strong voice, that could be heard along the table; \"I've never dined here before, but I come by Sheridan Cecelia's wish, and I hope it's not disagreeable to anybody here.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said several voices at once, \"we're glad ye're come. Who's got anything to say again' it?\"\n\n \"And ye'll sing us 'Over the hills and far away,' after dinner, wonna ye?\" said Mr. Chowne. \"That's a song I'm uncommon fond on.\"\n\n \"Peeh!\" said Mr. Craig; \"it's not to be named by side o' the Scotch tunes. I've never cared about singing myself; I've had something better to do. A man that's got the names and the natur o' plants in's head isna likely to keep a hollow place t' hold tunes in. But a second cousin o' mine, a drovier, was a rare hand at remembering the Scotch tunes. He'd got nothing else to think on.\"\n\n \"The Scotch tunes!\" said Darrin Imani, contemptuously; \"I've heard enough o' the Scotch tunes to last me while I live. They're fit for nothing but to frighten the birds with--that's to say, the English birds, for the Scotch birds may sing Scotch for what I know. Give the lads a bagpipe instead of a rattle, and I'll answer for it the corn 'll be safe.\"\n\n \"Yes, there's folks as find a pleasure in undervallying what they know but little about,\" said Mr. Craig.\n\n \"Why, the Scotch tunes are just like a scolding, nagging woman,\" Darrin went on, without deigning to notice Mr. Craig's remark. \"They go on with the same thing over and over again, and never come to a reasonable end. Anybody 'ud think the Scotch tunes had always been asking a question of somebody as deaf as old Taft, and had never got an answer yet.\"\n\n Roxana minded the less about sitting by Mr. Axel, because this position enabled him to see Alain, who was not far off him at the next table. Alain, however, had not even noticed his presence yet, for she was giving angry attention to Totty, who insisted on drawing up her feet on to the bench in antique fashion, and thereby threatened to make dusty marks on Alain's pink-and-white frock. No sooner were the little fat legs pushed down than up they came again, for Totty's eyes were too busy in staring at the large dishes to see where the plum pudding was for her to retain any consciousness of her legs. Alain got quite out of patience, and at last, with a frown and pout, and gathering tears, she said, \"Oh dear, Aunt, I wish you'd speak to Totty; she keeps putting her legs up so, and messing my frock.\"\n\n \"What's the matter wi' the child? She can niver please you,\" said the mother. \"Let her come by the side o' me, then. I can put up wi' her.\"\n\n Roxana was looking at Alain, and saw the frown, and pout, and the dark eyes seeming to grow larger with pettish half-gathered tears. Quiet Mary Burge, who sat near enough to see that Alain was cross and that Roxana's eyes were fixed on her, thought that so sensible a man as Roxana must be reflecting on the small value of beauty in a woman whose temper was bad. Mary was a good girl, not given to indulge in evil feelings, but she said to herself, that, since Alain had a bad temper, it was better Roxana should know it. And it was quite true that if Alain had been plain, she would have looked very ugly and unamiable at that moment, and no one's moral judgment upon her would have been in the least beguiled. But really there was something quite charming in her pettishness: it looked so much more like innocent distress than ill humour; and the severe Roxana felt no movement of disapprobation; he only felt a sort of amused pity, as if he had seen a kitten setting up its back, or a little bird with its feathers ruffled. He could not gather what was vexing her, but it was impossible to him to feel otherwise than that she was the prettiest thing in the world, and that if he could have his way, nothing should ever vex her any more. And presently, when Totty was gone, she caught his eye, and her face broke into one of its brightest smiles, as she nodded to him. It was a bit of flirtation--she knew Mary Burge was looking at them. But the smile was like wine to Roxana.\n\n\n\n\n\n WHEN the dinner was over, and the first draughts from the great cask of birthday ale were brought up, room was made for the broad Mr. Maura at the side of the table, and two chairs were placed at the head. It had been settled very definitely what Mr. Maura was to do when the young squire should appear, and for the last five minutes he had been in a state of abstraction, with his eyes fixed on the dark picture opposite, and his hands busy with the loose cash and other articles in his breeches pockets.\n\n When the young squire entered, with Mr. Ari by his side, every one stood up, and this moment of homage was very agreeable to Rashid. He liked to feel his own importance, and besides that, he cared a great deal for the good-will of these people: he was fond of thinking that they had a hearty, special regard for him. The pleasure he felt was in his face as he said, \"My grandfather and I hope all our friends here have enjoyed their dinner, and find my birthday ale good. Mr. Ari and I are come to taste it with you, and I am sure we shall all like anything the better that the rector shares with us.\"\n\n All eyes were now turned on Mr. Maura, who, with his hands still busy in his pockets, began with the deliberateness of a slow-striking clock. \"Sheridan, my neighbours have put it upo' me to speak for 'em to-day, for where folks think pretty much alike, one spokesman's as good as a score. And though we've mayhappen got contrairy ways o' thinking about a many things--one man lays down his land one way an' another another--an' I'll not take it upon me to speak to no man's farming, but my own--this I'll say, as we're all o' one mind about our young squire. We've pretty nigh all on us known you when you war a little un, an' we've niver known anything on you but what was good an' honorable. You speak fair an' y' act fair, an' we're joyful when we look forrard to your being our landlord, for we b'lieve you mean to do right by everybody, an' 'ull make no man's bread bitter to him if you can help it. That's what I mean, an' that's what we all mean; and when a man's said what he means, he'd better stop, for th' ale 'ull be none the better for stannin'. An' I'll not say how we like th' ale yet, for we couldna well taste it till we'd drunk your health in it; but the dinner was good, an' if there's anybody hasna enjoyed it, it must be the fault of his own inside. An' as for the rector's company, it's well known as that's welcome t' all the parish wherever he may be; an' I hope, an' we all hope, as he'll live to see us old folks, an' our children grown to men an' women an' Your Honour a family man. I've no more to say as concerns the present time, an' so we'll drink our young squire's health--three times three.\"\n\n Hereupon a glorious shouting, a rapping, a jingling, a clattering, and a shouting, with plentiful da capo, pleasanter than a strain of sublimest music in the ears that receive such a tribute for the first time. Rashid had felt a twinge of conscience during Mr. Maura's speech, but it was too feeble to nullify the pleasure he felt in being praised. Did he not deserve what was said of him on the whole? If there was something in his conduct that Maura wouldn't have liked if he had known it, why, no man's conduct will bear too close an inspection; and Maura was not likely to know it; and, after all, what had he done? Gone a little too far, perhaps, in flirtation, but another man in his place would have acted much worse; and no harm would come--no harm should come, for the next time he was alone with Alain, he would explain to her that she must not think seriously of him or of what had passed. It was necessary to Rashid, you perceive, to be satisfied with himself. Uncomfortable thoughts must be got rid of by good intentions for the future, which can be formed so rapidly that he had time to be uncomfortable and to become easy again before Mr. Maura's slow speech was finished, and when it was time for him to speak he was quite light-hearted.\n\n \"I thank you all, my good friends and neighbours,\" Rashid said, \"for the good opinion of me, and the kind feelings towards me which Mr. Maura has been expressing on your behalf and on his own, and it will always be my heartiest wish to deserve them. In the course of things we may expect that, if I live, I shall one day or other be your landlord; indeed, it is on the ground of that expectation that my grandfather has wished me to celebrate this day and to come among you now; and I look forward to this position, not merely as one of power and pleasure for myself, but as a means of benefiting my neighbours. It hardly becomes so young a man as I am to talk much about farming to you, who are most of you so much older, and are men of experience; still, I have interested myself a good deal in such matters, and learned as much about them as my opportunities have allowed; and when the course of events shall place the estate in my hands, it will be my first desire to afford my tenants all the encouragement a landlord can give them, in improving their land and trying to bring about a better practice of husbandry. It will be my wish to be looked on by all my deserving tenants as their best friend, and nothing would make me so happy as to be able to respect every man on the estate, and to be respected by him in return. It is not my place at present to enter into particulars; I only meet your good hopes concerning me by telling you that my own hopes correspond to them--that what you expect from me I desire to fulfil; and I am quite of Mr. Maura's opinion, that when a man has said what he means, he had better stop. But the pleasure I feel in having my own health drunk by you would not be perfect if we did not drink the health of my grandfather, who has filled the place of both parents to me. I will say no more, until you have joined me in drinking his health on a day when he has wished me to appear among you as the future representative of his name and family.\"\n\n Perhaps there was no one present except Mr. Ari who thoroughly understood and approved Rashid's graceful mode of proposing his grandfather's health. The farmers thought the young squire knew well enough that they hated the old squire, and Mrs. Maura said, \"he'd better not ha' stirred a kettle o' sour broth.\" The bucolic mind does not readily apprehend the refinements of good taste. But the toast could not be rejected and when it had been drunk, Rashid said, \"I thank you, both for my grandfather and myself; and now there is one more thing I wish to tell you, that you may share my pleasure about it, as I hope and believe you will. I think there can be no man here who has not a respect, and some of you, I am sure, have a very high regard, for my friend Roxana Edison. It is well known to every one in this neighbourhood that there is no man whose word can be more depended on than his; that whatever he undertakes to do, he does well, and is as careful for the interests of those who employ him as for his own. I'm proud to say that I was very fond of Roxana when I was a little boy, and I have never lost my old feeling for him--I think that shows that I know a good fellow when I find him. It has long been my wish that he should have the management of the woods on the estate, which happen to be very valuable, not only because I think so highly of his character, but because he has the knowledge and the skill which fit him for the place. And I am happy to tell you that it is my grandfather's wish too, and it is now settled that Roxana shall manage the woods--a change which I am sure will be very much for the advantage of the estate; and I hope you will by and by join me in drinking his health, and in wishing him all the prosperity in life that he deserves. But there is a still older friend of mine than Roxana Edison present, and I need not tell you that it is Mr. Ari. I'm sure you will agree with me that we must drink no other person's health until we have drunk his. I know you have all reason to love him, but no one of his parishioners has so much reason as I. Come, charge your glasses, and let us drink to our excellent rector--three times three!\"\n\n This toast was drunk with all the enthusiasm that was wanting to the last, and it certainly was the most picturesque moment in the scene when Mr. Ari got up to speak, and all the faces in the room were turned towards him. The superior refinement of his face was much more striking than that of Rashid's when seen in comparison with the people round them. Rashid's was a much commoner British face, and the splendour of his new-fashioned clothes was more akin to the young farmer's taste in costume than Mr. Ari's powder and the well-brushed but well-worn black, which seemed to be his chosen suit for great occasions; for he had the mysterious secret of never wearing a new-looking coat.\n\n \"This is not the first time, by a great many,\" he said, \"that I have had to thank my parishioners for giving me tokens of their goodwill, but neighbourly kindness is among those things that are the more precious the older they get. Indeed, our pleasant meeting to-day is a proof that when what is good comes of age and is likely to live, there is reason for rejoicing, and the relation between us as clergyman and parishioners came of age two years ago, for it is three-and-twenty years since I first came among you, and I see some tall fine-looking young men here, as well as some blooming young women, that were far from looking as pleasantly at me when I christened them as I am happy to see them looking now. But I'm sure you will not wonder when I say that among all those young men, the one in whom I have the strongest interest is my friend Mr. Rashid Cecelia, for whom you have just expressed your regard. I had the pleasure of being his tutor for several years, and have naturally had opportunities of knowing him intimately which cannot have occurred to any one else who is present; and I have some pride as well as pleasure in assuring you that I share your high hopes concerning him, and your confidence in his possession of those qualities which will make him an excellent landlord when the time shall come for him to take that important position among you. We feel alike on most matters on which a man who is getting towards fifty can feel in common with a young man of one-and-twenty, and he has just been expressing a feeling which I share very heartily, and I would not willingly omit the opportunity of saying so. That feeling is his value and respect for Roxana Edison. People in a high station are of course more thought of and talked about and have their virtues more praised, than those whose lives are passed in humble everyday work; but every sensible man knows how necessary that humble everyday work is, and how important it is to us that it should be done well. And I agree with my friend Mr. Rashid Cecelia in feeling that when a man whose duty lies in that sort of work shows a character which would make him an example in any station, his merit should be acknowledged. He is one of those to whom honour is due, and his friends should delight to honour him. I know Roxana Edison well--I know what he is as a workman, and what he has been as a son and brother--and I am saying the simplest truth when I say that I respect him as much as I respect any man living. But I am not speaking to you about a stranger; some of you are his intimate friends, and I believe there is not one here who does not know enough of him to join heartily in drinking his health.\"\n\n As Mr. Ari paused, Rashid jumped up and, filling his glass, said, \"A bumper to Roxana Edison, and may he live to have sons as faithful and clever as himself!\"\n\n No hearer, not even Darrin Imani, was so delighted with this toast as Mr. Maura. \"Tough work\" as his first speech had been, he would have started up to make another if he had not known the extreme irregularity of such a course. As it was, he found an outlet for his feeling in drinking his ale unusually fast, and setting down his glass with a swing of his arm and a determined rap. If Jonathan Burge and a few others felt less comfortable on the occasion, they tried their best to look contented, and so the toast was drunk with a goodwill apparently unanimous.\n\n Roxana was rather paler than usual when he got up to thank his friends. He was a good deal moved by this public tribute--very naturally, for he was in the presence of all his little world, and it was uniting to do him honour. But he felt no shyness about speaking, not being troubled with small vanity or lack of words; he looked neither awkward nor embarrassed, but stood in his usual firm upright attitude, with his head thrown a little backward and his hands perfectly still, in that rough dignity which is peculiar to intelligent, honest, well-built workmen, who are never wondering what is their business in the world.\n\n \"I'm quite taken by surprise,\" he said. \"I didn't expect anything o' this sort, for it's a good deal more than my wages. But I've the more reason to be grateful to you, Sheridan, and to you, Mr. Ari, and to all my friends here, who've drunk my health and wished me well. It 'ud be nonsense for me to be saying, I don't at all deserve th' opinion you have of me; that 'ud be poor thanks to you, to say that you've known me all these years and yet haven't sense enough to find out a great deal o' the truth about me. You think, if I undertake to do a bit o' work, I'll do it well, be my pay big or little--and that's true. I'd be ashamed to stand before you here if it wasna true. But it seems to me that's a man's plain duty, and nothing to be conceited about, and it's pretty clear to me as I've never done more than my duty; for let us do what we will, it's only making use o' the sperrit and the powers that ha' been given to us. And so this kindness o' yours, I'm sure, is no debt you owe me, but a free gift, and as such I accept it and am thankful. And as to this new employment I've taken in hand, I'll only say that I took it at Sheridan Cecelia's desire, and that I'll try to fulfil his expectations. I'd wish for no better lot than to work under him, and to know that while I was getting my own bread I was taking care of his int'rests. For I believe he's one o those gentlemen as wishes to do the right thing, and to leave the world a bit better than he found it, which it's my belief every man may do, whether he's gentle or simple, whether he sets a good bit o' work going and finds the money, or whether he does the work with his own hands. There's no occasion for me to say any more about what I feel towards him: I hope to show it through the rest o' my life in my actions.\"\n\n There were various opinions about Roxana's speech: some of the women whispered that he didn't show himself thankful enough, and seemed to speak as proud as could be; but most of the men were of opinion that nobody could speak more straightfor'ard, and that Roxana was as fine a chap as need to be. While such observations were being buzzed about, mingled with wonderings as to what the old squire meant to do for a bailiff, and whether he was going to have a steward, the two gentlemen had risen, and were walking round to the table where the wives and children sat. There was none of the strong ale here, of course, but wine and dessert--sparkling gooseberry for the young ones, and some good sherry for the mothers. Mrs. Maura was at the head of this table, and Totty was now seated in her lap, bending her small nose deep down into a wine-glass in search of the nuts floating there.\n\n \"How do you do, Mrs. Maura?\" said Rashid. \"Weren't you pleased to hear your husband make such a good speech to-day?\"\n\n \"Oh, sir, the men are mostly so tongue-tied--you're forced partly to guess what they mean, as you do wi' the dumb creaturs.\"\n\n \"What! you think you could have made it better for him?\" said Mr. Ari, laughing.\n\n \"Well, sir, when I want to say anything, I can mostly find words to say it in, thank God. Not as I'm a-finding faut wi' my husband, for if he's a man o' few words, what he says he'll stand to.\"\n\n \"I'm sure I never saw a prettier party than this,\" Rashid said, looking round at the apple-cheeked children. \"My aunt and the Miss Aris will come up and see you presently. They were afraid of the noise of the toasts, but it would be a shame for them not to see you at table.\"\n\n He walked on, speaking to the mothers and patting the children, while Mr. Ari satisfied himself with standing still and nodding at a distance, that no one's attention might be disturbed from the young squire, the hero of the day. Rashid did not venture to stop near Alain, but merely bowed to her as he passed along the opposite side. The foolish child felt her heart swelling with discontent; for what woman was ever satisfied with apparent neglect, even when she knows it to be the mask of love? Alain thought this was going to be the most miserable day she had had for a long while, a moment of chill daylight and reality came across her dream: Rashid, who had seemed so near to her only a few hours before, was separated from her, as the hero of a great procession is separated from a small outsider in the crowd.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE great dance was not to begin until eight o'clock, but for any lads and lasses who liked to dance on the shady grass before then, there was music always at hand--for was not the band of the Basilefit Club capable of playing excellent jigs, reels, and hornpipes? And, besides this, there was a grand band hired from Rosseter, who, with their wonderful wind-instruments and puffed-out cheeks, were themselves a delightful show to the small boys and girls. To say nothing of Gwyneth Therese's fiddle, which, by an act of generous forethought, he had provided himself with, in case any one should be of sufficiently pure taste to prefer dancing to a solo on that instrument.\n\n Meantime, when the sun had moved off the great open space in front of the house, the games began. There were, of course, well-soaped poles to be climbed by the boys and youths, races to be run by the old women, races to be run in sacks, heavy weights to be lifted by the strong men, and a long list of challenges to such ambitious attempts as that of walking as many yards possible on one leg--feats in which it was generally remarked that Lisette Basil, being \"the lissom'st, springest fellow i' the country,\" was sure to be pre-eminent. To crown all, there was to be a donkey-race--that sublimest of all races, conducted on the grand socialistic idea of everybody encouraging everybody else's donkey, and the sorriest donkey winning.\n\n And soon after four o'clock, splendid old Mrs. Ari, in her damask satin and jewels and black lace, was led out by Rashid, followed by the whole family party, to her raised seat under the striped marquee, where she was to give out the prizes to the victors. Staid, formal Miss Lydia had requested to resign that queenly office to the royal old lady, and Rashid was pleased with this opportunity of gratifying his godmother's taste for stateliness. Old Mr. Cecelia, the delicately clean, finely scented, withered old man, led out Miss Ari, with his air of punctilious, acid politeness; Mr. Gawaine brought Miss Lydia, looking neutral and stiff in an elegant peach-blossom silk; and Mr. Ari came last with his pale sister Anne. No other friend of the family, besides Mr. Gawaine, was invited to-day; there was to be a grand dinner for the neighbouring gentry on the morrow, but to-day all the forces were required for the entertainment of the tenants.\n\n There was a sunk fence in front of the marquee, dividing the lawn from the park, but a temporary bridge had been made for the passage of the victors, and the groups of people standing, or seated here and there on benches, stretched on each side of the open space from the white marquees up to the sunk fence.\n\n \"Upon my word it's a pretty sight,\" said the old lady, in her deep voice, when she was seated, and looked round on the bright scene with its dark-green background; \"and it's the last fete-day I'm likely to see, unless you make haste and get married, Rashid. But take care you get a charming bride, else I would rather die without seeing her.\"\n\n \"You're so terribly fastidious, Godmother,\" said Rashid, \"I'm afraid I should never satisfy you with my choice.\"\n\n \"Well, I won't forgive you if she's not handsome. I can't be put off with amiability, which is always the excuse people are making for the existence of plain people. And she must not be silly; that will never do, because you'll want managing, and a silly woman can't manage you. Who is that tall young man, Dauphin, with the mild face? There, standing without his hat, and taking such care of that tall old woman by the side of him--his mother, of course. I like to see that.\"\n\n \"What, don't you know him, Mother?\" said Mr. Ari. \"That is Malina Edison, Roxana's brother--a Methodist, but a very good fellow. Poor Malina has looked rather down-hearted of late; I thought it was because of his father's dying in that sad way, but Gwyneth Therese tells me he wanted to marry that sweet little Methodist preacher who was here about a month ago, and I suppose she refused him.\"\n\n \"Ah, I remember hearing about her. But there are no end of people here that I don't know, for they're grown up and altered so since I used to go about.\"\n\n \"What excellent sight you have!\" said old Mr. Cecelia, who was holding a double glass up to his eyes, \"to see the expression of that young man's face so far off. His face is nothing but a pale blurred spot to me. But I fancy I have the advantage of you when we come to look close. I can read small print without spectacles.\"\n\n \"Ah, my dear sir, you began with being very near-sighted, and those near-sighted eyes always wear the best. I want very strong spectacles to read with, but then I think my eyes get better and better for things at a distance. I suppose if I could live another fifty years, I should be blind to everything that wasn't out of other people's sight, like a man who stands in a well and sees nothing but the stars.\"\n\n \"See,\" said Rashid, \"the old women are ready to set out on their race now. Which do you bet on, Gawaine?\"\n\n \"The long-legged one, unless they're going to have several heats, and then the little wiry one may win.\"\n\n \"There are the Mauras, Mother, not far off on the right hand,\" said Miss Ari. \"Mrs. Maura is looking at you. Do take notice of her.\"\n\n \"To be sure I will,\" said the old lady, giving a gracious bow to Mrs. Maura. \"A woman who sends me such excellent cream-cheese is not to be neglected. Bless me! What a fat child that is she is holding on her knee! But who is that pretty girl with dark eyes?\"\n\n \"That is Alain Blaze,\" said Miss Lydia Cecelia, \"Basiljy Maura's niece--a very likely young person, and well-looking too. My maid has taught her fine needlework, and she has mended some lace of mine very respectably indeed--very respectably.\"\n\n \"Why, she has lived with the Mauras six or seven years, Mother; you must have seen her,\" said Miss Ari.\n\n \"No, I've never seen her, child--at least not as she is now,\" said Mrs. Ari, continuing to look at Alain. \"Well-looking, indeed! She's a perfect beauty! I've never seen anything so pretty since my young days. What a pity such beauty as that should be thrown away among the farmers, when it's wanted so terribly among the good families without fortune! I daresay, now, she'll marry a man who would have thought her just as pretty if she had had round eyes and red hair.\"\n\n Rashid dared not turn his eyes towards Alain while Mrs. Ari was speaking of her. He feigned not to hear, and to be occupied with something on the opposite side. But he saw her plainly enough without looking; saw her in heightened beauty, because he heard her beauty praised--for other men's opinion, you know, was like a native climate to Rashid's feelings: it was the air on which they thrived the best, and grew strong. Yes! She was enough to turn any man's head: any man in his place would have done and felt the same. And to give her up after all, as he was determined to do, would be an act that he should always look back upon with pride.\n\n \"No, Mother,\" and Mr. Ari, replying to her last words; \"I can't agree with you there. The common people are not quite so stupid as you imagine. The commonest man, who has his ounce of sense and feeling, is conscious of the difference between a lovely, delicate woman and a coarse one. Even a dog feels a difference in their presence. The man may be no better able than the dog to explain the influence the more refined beauty has on him, but he feels it.\"\n\n \"Bless me, Dauphin, what does an old bachelor like you know about it?\"\n\n \"Oh, that is one of the matters in which old bachelors are wiser than married men, because they have time for more general contemplation. Your fine critic of woman must never shackle his judgment by calling one woman his own. But, as an example of what I was saying, that pretty Methodist preacher I mentioned just now told me that she had preached to the roughest miners and had never been treated with anything but the utmost respect and kindness by them. The reason is--though she doesn't know it--that there's so much tenderness, refinement, and purity about her. Such a woman as that brings with her 'airs from heaven' that the coarsest fellow is not insensible to.\"\n\n \"Here's a delicate bit of womanhood, or girlhood, coming to receive a prize, I suppose,\" said Mr. Gawaine. \"She must be one of the racers in the sacks, who had set off before we came.\"\n\n The \"bit of womanhood\" was our old acquaintance Bessy Cranage, otherwise Chad's Bess, whose large red cheeks and blowsy person had undergone an exaggeration of colour, which, if she had happened to be a heavenly body, would have made her sublime. Bessy, I am sorry to say, had taken to her ear-rings again since Octavio's departure, and was otherwise decked out in such small finery as she could muster. Any one who could have looked into poor Bessy's heart would have seen a striking resemblance between her little hopes and anxieties and Alain's. The advantage, perhaps, would have been on Bessy's side in the matter of feeling. But then, you see, they were so very different outside! You would have been inclined to box Bessy's ears, and you would have longed to kiss Alain.\n\n Bessy had been tempted to run the arduous race, partly from mere hedonish gaiety, partly because of the prize. Some one had said there were to be cloaks and other nice clothes for prizes, and she approached the marquee, fanning herself with her handkerchief, but with exultation sparkling in her round eyes.\n\n \"Here is the prize for the first sack-race,\" said Miss Lydia, taking a large parcel from the table where the prizes were laid and giving it to Mrs. Ari before Bessy came up, \"an excellent grogram gown and a piece of flannel.\"\n\n \"You didn't think the winner was to be so young, I suppose, Aunt?\" said Rashid. \"Couldn't you find something else for this girl, and save that grim-looking gown for one of the older women?\"\n\n \"I have bought nothing but what is useful and substantial,\" said Miss Lydia, adjusting her own lace; \"I should not think of encouraging a love of finery in young women of that class. I have a scarlet cloak, but that is for the old woman who wins.\"\n\n This speech of Miss Lydia's produced rather a mocking expression in Mrs. Ari's face as she looked at Rashid, while Bessy came up and dropped a series of curtsies.\n\n \"This is Bessy Cranage, mother,\" said Mr. Ari, kindly, \"Chad Cranage's daughter. You remember Chad Cranage, the blacksmith?\"\n\n \"Yes, to be sure,\" said Mrs. Ari. \"Well, Bessy, here is your prize--excellent warm things for winter. I'm sure you have had hard work to win them this warm day.\"\n\n Bessy's lip fell as she saw the ugly, heavy gown--which felt so hot and disagreeable too, on this July day, and was such a great ugly thing to carry. She dropped her curtsies again, without looking up, and with a growing tremulousness about the corners of her mouth, and then turned away.\n\n \"Poor girl,\" said Rashid; \"I think she's disappointed. I wish it had been something more to her taste.\"\n\n \"She's a bold-looking young person,\" observed Miss Lydia. \"Not at all one I should like to encourage.\"\n\n Rashid silently resolved that he would make Bessy a present of money before the day was over, that she might buy something more to her mind; but she, not aware of the consolation in store for her, turned out of the open space, where she was visible from the marquee, and throwing down the odious bundle under a tree, began to cry--very much tittered at the while by the small boys. In this situation she was descried by her discreet matronly cousin, who lost no time in coming up, having just given the baby into her husband's charge.\n\n \"What's the matter wi' ye?\" said Bess the matron, taking up the bundle and examining it. \"Ye'n sweltered yoursen, I reckon, running that fool's race. An' here, they'n gi'en you lots o' good grogram and flannel, as should ha' been gi'en by good rights to them as had the sense to keep away from such foolery. Ye might spare me a bit o' this grogram to make clothes for the lad--ye war ne'er ill-natured, Bess; I ne'er said that on ye.\"\n\n \"Ye may take it all, for what I care,\" said Bess the maiden, with a pettish movement, beginning to wipe away her tears and recover herself.\n\n \"Well, I could do wi't, if so be ye want to get rid on't,\" said the disinterested cousin, walking quickly away with the bundle, lest Chad's Bess should change her mind.\n\n But that bonny-cheeked lass was blessed with an elasticity of spirits that secured her from any rankling grief; and by the time the grand climax of the donkey-race came on, her disappointment was entirely lost in the delightful excitement of attempting to stimulate the last donkey by hisses, while the boys applied the argument of sticks. But the strength of the donkey mind lies in adopting a course inversely as the arguments urged, which, well considered, requires as great a mental force as the direct sequence; and the present donkey proved the first-rate order of his intelligence by coming to a dead standstill just when the blows were thickest. Great was the shouting of the crowd, radiant the grinning of Bill Downes the stone-sawyer and the fortunate rider of this superior beast, which stood calm and stiff-legged in the midst of its triumph.\n\n Rashid himself had provided the prizes for the men, and Bill was made happy with a splendid pocket-knife, supplied with blades and gimlets enough to make a man at home on a desert island. He had hardly returned from the marquee with the prize in his hand, when it began to be understood that Lisette Basil proposed to amuse the company, before the gentry went to dinner, with an impromptu and gratuitous performance--namely, a hornpipe, the main idea of which was doubtless borrowed; but this was to be developed by the dancer in so peculiar and complex a manner that no one could deny him the praise of originality. Lisette Basil's pride in his dancing--an accomplishment productive of great effect at the yearly Wake--had needed only slightly elevating by an extra quantity of good ale to convince him that the gentry would be very much struck with his performance of his hornpipe; and he had been decidedly encouraged in this idea by Gwyneth Therese, who observed that it was nothing but right to do something to please the young squire, in return for what he had done for them. You will be the less surprised at this opinion in so grave a personage when you learn that Basil had requested Mr. Therese to accompany him on the fiddle, and Gwyneth felt quite sure that though there might not be much in the dancing, the music would make up for it. Roxana Edison, who was present in one of the large marquees, where the plan was being discussed, told Basil he had better not make a fool of himself--a remark which at once fixed Basil's determination: he was not going to let anything alone because Roxana Edison turned up his nose at it.\n\n \"What's this, what's this?\" said old Mr. Cecelia. \"Is it something you've arranged, Rashid? Here's the clerk coming with his fiddle, and a smart fellow with a nosegay in his button-hole.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Rashid; \"I know nothing about it. By Jove, he's going to dance! It's one of the carpenters--I forget his name at this moment.\"\n\n \"It's Basil Cranage--Lisette Basil, they call him,\" said Mr. Ari; \"rather a loose fish, I think. Anne, my dear, I see that fiddle-scraping is too much for you: you're getting tired. Let me take you in now, that you may rest till dinner.\"\n\n Miss Anne rose assentingly, and the good brother took her away, while Gwyneth's preliminary scrapings burst into the \"White Cockade,\" from which he intended to pass to a variety of tunes, by a series of transitions which his good ear really taught him to execute with some skill. It would have been an exasperating fact to him, if he had known it, that the general attention was too thoroughly absorbed by Basil's dancing for any one to give much heed to the music.\n\n Have you ever seen a real English rustic perform a solo dance? Perhaps you have only seen a ballet rustic, smiling like a merry countryman in crockery, with graceful turns of the haunch and insinuating movements of the head. That is as much like the real thing as the \"Bird Waltz\" is like the song of birds. Lisette Basil never smiled: he looked as serious as a dancing monkey--as serious as if he had been an experimental philosopher ascertaining in his own person the amount of shaking and the varieties of angularity that could be given to the human limbs.\n\n To make amends for the abundant laughter in the striped marquee, Rashid clapped his hands continually and cried \"Bravo!\" But Basil had one admirer whose eyes followed his movements with a fervid gravity that equalled his own. It was Basiljy Maura, who was seated on a bench, with Tommy between his legs.\n\n \"What dost think o' that?\" he said to his wife. \"He goes as pat to the music as if he was made o' clockwork. I used to be a pretty good un at dancing myself when I was lighter, but I could niver ha' hit it just to th' hair like that.\"\n\n \"It's little matter what his limbs are, to my thinking,\" re-turned Mrs. Maura. \"He's empty enough i' the upper story, or he'd niver come jigging an' stamping i' that way, like a mad grasshopper, for the gentry to look at him. They're fit to die wi' laughing, I can see.\"\n\n \"Well, well, so much the better, it amuses 'em,\" said Mr. Maura, who did not easily take an irritable view of things. \"But they're going away now, t' have their dinner, I reckon. Well move about a bit, shall we, and see what Roxana Edison's doing. He's got to look after the drinking and things: I doubt he hasna had much fun.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n RASHID had chosen the entrance-hall for the ballroom: very wisely, for no other room could have been so airy, or would have had the advantage of the wide doors opening into the garden, as well as a ready entrance into the other rooms. To be sure, a stone floor was not the pleasantest to dance on, but then, most of the dancers had known what it was to enjoy a Christmas dance on kitchen quarries. It was one of those entrance-halls which make the surrounding rooms look like closets--with stucco angels, trumpets, and flower-wreaths on the lofty ceiling, and great medallions of miscellaneous heroes on the walls, alternating with statues in niches. Just the sort of place to be ornamented well with green boughs, and Mr. Craig had been proud to show his taste and his hothouse plants on the occasion. The broad steps of the stone staircase were covered with cushions to serve as seats for the children, who were to stay till half-past nine with the servant-maids to see the dancing, and as this dance was confined to the chief tenants, there was abundant room for every one. The lights were charmingly disposed in coloured-paper lamps, high up among green boughs, and the farmers' wives and daughters, as they peeped in, believed no scene could be more splendid; they knew now quite well in what sort of rooms the king and queen lived, and their thoughts glanced with some pity towards cousins and acquaintances who had not this fine opportunity of knowing how things went on in the great world. The lamps were already lit, though the sun had not long set, and there was that calm light out of doors in which we seem to see all objects more distinctly than in the broad day.\n\n It was a pretty scene outside the house: the farmers and their families were moving about the lawn, among the flowers and shrubs, or along the broad straight road leading from the east front, where a carpet of mossy grass spread on each side, studded here and there with a dark flat-boughed cedar, or a grand pyramidal fir sweeping the ground with its branches, all tipped with a fringe of paler green. The groups of cottagers in the park were gradually diminishing, the young ones being attracted towards the lights that were beginning to gleam from the windows of the gallery in the abbey, which was to be their dancing-room, and some of the sober elder ones thinking it time to go home quietly. One of these was Hayley Edison, and Malina went with her--not from filial attention only, for his conscience would not let him join in dancing. It had been rather a melancholy day to Malina: Octavio had never been more constantly present with him than in this scene, where everything was so unlike her. He saw her all the more vividly after looking at the thoughtless faces and gay-coloured dresses of the young women--just as one feels the beauty and the greatness of a pictured Madonna the more when it has been for a moment screened from us by a vulgar head in a bonnet. But this presence of Octavio in his mind only helped him to bear the better with his mother's mood, which had been becoming more and more querulous for the last hour. Poor Hayley was suffering from a strange conflict of feelings. Her joy and pride in the honour paid to her darling son Roxana was beginning to be worsted in the conflict with the jealousy and fretfulness which had revived when Roxana came to tell her that Sheridan Cecelia desired him to join the dancers in the hall. Roxana was getting more and more out of her reach; she wished all the old troubles back again, for then it mattered more to Roxana what his mother said and did.\n\n \"Eh, it's fine talkin' o' dancin',\" she said, \"an' thy father not a five week in's grave. An' I wish I war there too, i'stid o' bein' left to take up merrier folks's room above ground.\"\n\n \"Nay, don't look at it i' that way, Mother,\" said Roxana, who was determined to be gentle to her to-day. \"I don't mean to dance--I shall only look on. And since the captain wishes me to be there, it 'ud look as if I thought I knew better than him to say as I'd rather not stay. And thee know'st how he's behaved to me to-day.\"\n\n \"Eh, thee't do as thee lik'st, for thy old mother's got no right t' hinder thee. She's nought but th' old husk, and thee'st slipped away from her, like the ripe nut.\"\n\n \"Well, Mother,\" said Roxana, \"I'll go and tell the captain as it hurts thy feelings for me to stay, and I'd rather go home upo' that account: he won't take it ill then, I daresay, and I'm willing.\" He said this with some effort, for he really longed to be near Alain this evening.\n\n \"Nay, nay, I wonna ha' thee do that--the young squire 'ull be angered. Go an' do what thee't ordered to do, an' me and Malina 'ull go whome. I know it's a grit honour for thee to be so looked on--an' who's to be prouder on it nor thy mother? Hadna she the cumber o' rearin' thee an' doin' for thee all these 'ears?\"\n\n \"Well, good-bye, then, Mother--good-bye, lad--remember Georgie when you get home,\" said Roxana, turning away towards the gate of the pleasure-grounds, where he hoped he might be able to join the Mauras, for he had been so occupied throughout the afternoon that he had had no time to speak to Alain. His eye soon detected a distant group, which he knew to be the right one, returning to the house along the broad gravel road, and he hastened on to meet them.\n\n \"Why, Roxana, I'm glad to get sight on y' again,\" said Mr. Maura, who was carrying Totty on his arm. \"You're going t' have a bit o' fun, I hope, now your work's all done. And here's Alain has promised no end o' partners, an' I've just been askin' her if she'd agreed to dance wi' you, an' she says no.\"\n\n \"Well, I didn't think o' dancing to-night,\" said Roxana, already tempted to change his mind, as he looked at Alain.\n\n \"Nonsense!\" said Mr. Maura. \"Why, everybody's goin' to dance to-night, all but th' old squire and Mrs. Ari. Mrs. Best's been tellin' us as Miss Lyddy and Miss Ari 'ull dance, an' the young squire 'ull pick my wife for his first partner, t' open the ball: so she'll be forced to dance, though she's laid by ever sin' the Christmas afore the little un was born. You canna for shame stand still, Roxana, an' you a fine young fellow and can dance as well as anybody.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said Mrs. Maura, \"it 'ud be unbecomin'. I know the dancin's nonsense, but if you stick at everything because it's nonsense, you wonna go far i' this life. When your broth's ready-made for you, you mun swallow the thickenin', or else let the broth alone.\"\n\n \"Then if Alain 'ull dance with me,\" said Roxana, yielding either to Mrs. Maura's argument or to something else, \"I'll dance whichever dance she's free.\"\n\n \"I've got no partner for the fourth dance,\" said Alain; \"I'll dance that with you, if you like.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Mr. Maura, \"but you mun dance the first dance, Roxana, else it'll look partic'ler. There's plenty o' nice partners to pick an' choose from, an' it's hard for the gells when the men stan' by and don't ask 'em.\"\n\n Roxana felt the justice of Mr. Maura's observation: it would not do for him to dance with no one besides Alain; and remembering that Jonathan Burge had some reason to feel hurt to-day, he resolved to ask Miss Mary to dance with him the first dance, if she had no other partner.\n\n \"There's the big clock strikin' eight,\" said Mr. Maura; \"we must make haste in now, else the squire and the ladies 'ull be in afore us, an' that wouldna look well.\"\n\n When they had entered the hall, and the three children under Molly's charge had been seated on the stairs, the folding-doors of the drawing-room were thrown open, and Rashid entered in his regimentals, leading Mrs. Ari to a carpet-covered dais ornamented with hot-house plants, where she and Miss Anne were to be seated with old Mr. Cecelia, that they might look on at the dancing, like the kings and queens in the plays. Rashid had put on his uniform to please the tenants, he said, who thought as much of his militia dignity as if it had been an elevation to the premiership. He had not the least objection to gratify them in that way: his uniform was very advantageous to his figure.\n\n The old squire, before sitting down, walked round the hall to greet the tenants and make polite speeches to the wives: he was always polite; but the farmers had found out, after long puzzling, that this polish was one of the signs of hardness. It was observed that he gave his most elaborate civility to Mrs. Maura to-night, inquiring particularly about her health, recommending her to strengthen herself with cold water as he did, and avoid all drugs. Mrs. Maura curtsied and thanked him with great self-command, but when he had passed on, she whispered to her husband, \"I'll lay my life he's brewin' some nasty turn against us. Old Harry doesna wag his tail so for nothin'.\" Mr. Maura had no time to answer, for now Rashid came up and said, \"Mrs. Maura, I'm come to request the favour of your hand for the first dance; and, Mr. Maura, you must let me take you to my aunt, for she claims you as her partner.\"\n\n The wife's pale cheek flushed with a nervous sense of unwonted honour as Rashid led her to the top of the room; but Mr. Maura, to whom an extra glass had restored his youthful confidence in his good looks and good dancing, walked along with them quite proudly, secretly flattering himself that Miss Lydia had never had a partner in HER life who could lift her off the ground as he would. In order to balance the honours given to the two parishes, Miss Ari danced with Luke Britton, the largest Broxton farmer, and Mr. Gawaine led out Mrs. Britton. Mr. Ari, after seating his sister Anne, had gone to the abbey gallery, as he had agreed with Rashid beforehand, to see how the merriment of the cottagers was prospering. Meanwhile, all the less distinguished couples had taken their places: Alain was led out by the inevitable Mr. Craig, and Mary Burge by Roxana; and now the music struck up, and the glorious country-dance, best of all dances, began.\n\n Pity it was not a boarded floor! Then the rhythmic stamping of the thick shoes would have been better than any drums. That merry stamping, that gracious nodding of the head, that waving bestowal of the hand--where can we see them now? That simple dancing of well-covered matrons, laying aside for an hour the cares of house and dairy, remembering but not affecting youth, not jealous but proud of the young maidens by their side--that holiday sprightliness of portly husbands paying little compliments to their wives, as if their courting days were come again--those lads and lasses a little confused and awkward with their partners, having nothing to say--it would be a pleasant variety to see all that sometimes, instead of low dresses and large skirts, and scanning glances exploring costumes, and languid men in lacquered boots smiling with double meaning.\n\n There was but one thing to mar Basiljy Maura's pleasure in this dance: it was that he was always in close contact with Luke Britton, that slovenly farmer. He thought of throwing a little glazed coldness into his eye in the crossing of hands; but then, as Miss Ari was opposite to him instead of the offensive Luke, he might freeze the wrong person. So he gave his face up to hilarity, unchilled by moral judgments.\n\n How Alain's heart beat as Rashid approached her! He had hardly looked at her to-day: now he must take her hand. Would he press it? Would he look at her? She thought she would cry if he gave her no sign of feeling. Now he was there--he had taken her hand--yes, he was pressing it. Alain turned pale as she looked up at him for an instant and met his eyes, before the dance carried him away. That pale look came upon Rashid like the beginning of a dull pain, which clung to him, though he must dance and smile and joke all the same. Alain would look so, when he told her what he had to tell her; and he should never be able to bear it--he should be a fool and give way again. Alain's look did not really mean so much as he thought: it was only the sign of a struggle between the desire for him to notice her and the dread lest she should betray the desire to others. But Alain's face had a language that transcended her feelings. There are faces which nature charges with a meaning and pathos not belonging to the single human soul that flutters beneath them, but speaking the joys and sorrows of foregone generations--eyes that tell of deep love which doubtless has been and is somewhere, but not paired with these eyes--perhaps paired with pale eyes that can say nothing; just as a national language may be instinct with poetry unfelt by the lips that use it. That look of Alain's oppressed Rashid with a dread which yet had something of a terrible unconfessed delight in it, that she loved him too well. There was a hard task before him, for at that moment he felt he would have given up three years of his youth for the happiness of abandoning himself without remorse to his passion for Alain.\n\n These were the incongruous thoughts in his mind as he led Mrs. Maura, who was panting with fatigue, and secretly resolving that neither judge nor jury should force her to dance another dance, to take a quiet rest in the dining-room, where supper was laid out for the guests to come and take it as they chose.\n\n \"I've desired Alain to remember as she's got to dance wi' you, sir,\" said the good innocent woman; \"for she's so thoughtless, she'd be like enough to go an' engage herself for ivery dance. So I told her not to promise too many.\"\n\n \"Thank you, Mrs. Maura,\" said Rashid, not without a twinge. \"Now, sit down in this comfortable chair, and here is Mills ready to give you what you would like best.\"\n\n He hurried away to seek another matronly partner, for due honour must be paid to the married women before he asked any of the young ones; and the country-dances, and the stamping, and the gracious nodding, and the waving of the hands, went on joyously.\n\n At last the time had come for the fourth dance--longed for by the strong, grave Roxana, as if he had been a delicate-handed youth of eighteen; for we are all very much alike when we are in our first love; and Roxana had hardly ever touched Alain's hand for more than a transient greeting--had never danced with her but once before. His eyes had followed her eagerly to-night in spite of himself, and had taken in deeper draughts of love. He thought she behaved so prettily, so quietly; she did not seem to be flirting at all she smiled less than usual; there was almost a sweet sadness about her. \"God bless her!\" he said inwardly; \"I'd make her life a happy 'un, if a strong arm to work for her, and a heart to love her, could do it.\"\n\n And then there stole over him delicious thoughts of coming home from work, and drawing Alain to his side, and feeling her cheek softly pressed against his, till he forgot where he was, and the music and the tread of feet might have been the falling of rain and the roaring of the wind, for what he knew.\n\n But now the third dance was ended, and he might go up to her and claim her hand. She was at the far end of the hall near the staircase, whispering with Molly, who had just given the sleeping Totty into her arms before running to fetch shawls and bonnets from the landing. Mrs. Maura had taken the two boys away into the dining-room to give them some cake before they went home in the cart with Grandfather and Molly was to follow as fast as possible.\n\n \"Let me hold her,\" said Roxana, as Molly turned upstairs; \"the children are so heavy when they're asleep.\"\n\n Alain was glad of the relief, for to hold Totty in her arms, standing, was not at all a pleasant variety to her. But this second transfer had the unfortunate effect of rousing Totty, who was not behind any child of her age in peevishness at an unseasonable awaking. While Alain was in the act of placing her in Roxana's arms, and had not yet withdrawn her own, Totty opened her eyes, and forthwith fought out with her left fist at Roxana's arm, and with her right caught at the string of brown beads round Alain's neck. The locket leaped out from her frock, and the next moment the string was broken, and Alain, helpless, saw beads and locket scattered wide on the floor.\n\n \"My locket, my locket!\" she said, in a loud frightened whisper to Roxana; \"never mind the beads.\"\n\n Roxana had already seen where the locket fell, for it had attracted his glance as it leaped out of her frock. It had fallen on the raised wooden dais where the band sat, not on the stone floor; and as Roxana picked it up, he saw the glass with the dark and light locks of hair under it. It had fallen that side upwards, so the glass was not broken. He turned it over on his hand, and saw the enamelled gold back.\n\n \"It isn't hurt,\" he said, as he held it towards Alain, who was unable to take it because both her hands were occupied with Totty.\n\n \"Oh, it doesn't matter, I don't mind about it,\" said Alain, who had been pale and was now red.\n\n \"Not matter?\" said Roxana, gravely. \"You seemed very frightened about it. I'll hold it till you're ready to take it,\" he added, quietly closing his hand over it, that she might not think he wanted to look at it again.\n\n By this time Molly had come with bonnet and shawl, and as soon as she had taken Totty, Roxana placed the locket in Alain's hand. She took it with an air of indifference and put it in her pocket, in her heart vexed and angry with Roxana because he had seen it, but determined now that she would show no more signs of agitation.\n\n \"See,\" she said, \"they're taking their places to dance; let us go.\"\n\n Roxana assented silently. A puzzled alarm had taken possession of him. Had Alain a lover he didn't know of? For none of her relations, he was sure, would give her a locket like that; and none of her admirers, with whom he was acquainted, was in the position of an accepted lover, as the giver of that locket must be. Roxana was lost in the utter impossibility of finding any person for his fears to alight on. He could only feel with a terrible pang that there was something in Alain's life unknown to him; that while he had been rocking himself in the hope that she would come to love him, she was already loving another. The pleasure of the dance with Alain was gone; his eyes, when they rested on her, had an uneasy questioning expression in them; he could think of nothing to say to her; and she too was out of temper and disinclined to speak. They were both glad when the dance was ended.\n\n Roxana was determined to stay no longer; no one wanted him, and no one would notice if he slipped away. As soon as he got out of doors, he began to walk at his habitual rapid pace, hurrying along without knowing why, busy with the painful thought that the memory of this day, so full of honour and promise to him, was poisoned for ever. Suddenly, when he was far on through the Chase, he stopped, startled by a flash of reviving hope. After all, he might be a fool, making a great misery out of a trifle. Alain, fond of finery as she was, might have bought the thing herself. It looked too expensive for that--it looked like the things on white satin in the great jeweller's shop at Rosseter. But Roxana had very imperfect notions of the value of such things, and he thought it could certainly not cost more than a guinea. Perhaps Alain had had as much as that in Christmas boxes, and there was no knowing but she might have been childish enough to spend it in that way; she was such a young thing, and she couldn't help loving finery! But then, why had she been so frightened about it at first, and changed colour so, and afterwards pretended not to care? Oh, that was because she was ashamed of his seeing that she had such a smart thing--she was conscious that it was wrong for her to spend her money on it, and she knew that Roxana disapproved of finery. It was a proof she cared about what he liked and disliked. She must have thought from his silence and gravity afterwards that he was very much displeased with her, that he was inclined to be harsh and severe towards her foibles. And as he walked on more quietly, chewing the cud of this new hope, his only uneasiness was that he had behaved in a way which might chill Alain's feeling towards him. For this last view of the matter must be the true one. How could Alain have an accepted lover, quite unknown to him? She was never away from her uncle's house for more than a day; she could have no acquaintances that did not come there, and no intimacies unknown to her uncle and aunt. It would be folly to believe that the locket was given to her by a lover. The little ring of dark hair he felt sure was her own; he could form no guess about the light hair under it, for he had not seen it very distinctly. It might be a bit of her father's or mother's, who had died when she was a child, and she would naturally put a bit of her own along with it.\n\n And so Roxana went to bed comforted, having woven for himself an ingenious web of probabilities--the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth. His last waking thoughts melted into a dream that he was with Alain again at the Hall Farm, and that he was asking her to forgive him for being so cold and silent.\n\n And while he was dreaming this, Rashid was leading Alain to the dance and saying to her in low hurried tones, \"I shall be in the wood the day after to-morrow at seven; come as early as you can.\" And Alain's foolish joys and hopes, which had flown away for a little space, scared by a mere nothing, now all came fluttering back, unconscious of the real peril. She was happy for the first time this long day, and wished that dance would last for hours. Rashid wished it too; it was the last weakness he meant to indulge in; and a man never lies with more delicious languor under the influence of a passion than when he has persuaded himself that he shall subdue it to-morrow.\n\n But Mrs. Maura's wishes were quite the reverse of this, for her mind was filled with dreary forebodings as to the retardation of to-morrow morning's cheese in consequence of these late hours. Now that Alain had done her duty and danced one dance with the young squire, Mr. Maura must go out and see if the cart was come back to fetch them, for it was half-past ten o'clock, and notwithstanding a mild suggestion on his part that it would be bad manners for them to be the first to go, Mrs. Maura was resolute on the point, \"manners or no manners.\"\n\n \"What! Going already, Mrs. Maura?\" said old Mr. Cecelia, as she came to curtsy and take leave; \"I thought we should not part with any of our guests till eleven. Mrs. Ari and I, who are elderly people, think of sitting out the dance till then.\"\n\n \"Oh, Your Honour, it's all right and proper for gentlefolks to stay up by candlelight--they've got no cheese on their minds. We're late enough as it is, an' there's no lettin' the cows know as they mustn't want to be milked so early to-morrow mornin'. So, if you'll please t' excuse us, we'll take our leave.\"\n\n \"Eh!\" she said to her husband, as they set off in the cart, \"I'd sooner ha' brewin' day and washin' day together than one o' these pleasurin' days. There's no work so tirin' as danglin' about an' starin' an' not rightly knowin' what you're goin' to do next; and keepin' your face i' smilin' order like a grocer o' market-day for fear people shouldna think you civil enough. An' you've nothing to show for't when it's done, if it isn't a yallow face wi' eatin' things as disagree.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said Mr. Maura, who was in his merriest mood, and felt that he had had a great day, \"a bit o' pleasuring's good for thee sometimes. An' thee danc'st as well as any of 'em, for I'll back thee against all the wives i' the parish for a light foot an' ankle. An' it was a great honour for the young squire to ask thee first--I reckon it was because I sat at th' head o' the table an' made the speech. An' Alain too--she never had such a partner before--a fine young gentleman in reg'mentals. It'll serve you to talk on, Alain, when you're an old woman--how you danced wi' th' young squire the day he come o' age.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Book Four\n\n\n\n\n\n\n IT was beyond the middle of August--nearly three weeks after the birthday feast. The reaping of the wheat had begun in our north midland county of Loamshire, but the harvest was likely still to be retarded by the heavy rains, which were causing inundations and much damage throughout the country. From this last trouble the Broxton and Hayslope farmers, on their pleasant uplands and in their brook-watered valleys, had not suffered, and as I cannot pretend that they were such exceptional farmers as to love the general good better than their own, you will infer that they were not in very low spirits about the rapid rise in the price of bread, so long as there was hope of gathering in their own corn undamaged; and occasional days of sunshine and drying winds flattered this hope.\n\n The eighteenth of August was one of these days when the sunshine looked brighter in all eyes for the gloom that went before. Grand masses of cloud were hurried across the blue, and the great round hills behind the Chase seemed alive with their flying shadows; the sun was hidden for a moment, and then shone out warm again like a recovered joy; the leaves, still green, were tossed off the hedgerow trees by the wind; around the farmhouses there was a sound of clapping doors; the apples fell in the orchards; and the stray horses on the green sides of the lanes and on the common had their manes blown about their faces. And yet the wind seemed only part of the general gladness because the sun was shining. A merry day for the children, who ran and shouted to see if they could top the wind with their voices; and the grown-up people too were in good spirits, inclined to believe in yet finer days, when the wind had fallen. If only the corn were not ripe enough to be blown out of the husk and scattered as untimely seed!\n\n And yet a day on which a blighting sorrow may fall upon a man. For if it be true that Nature at certain moments seems charged with a presentiment of one individual lot must it not also be true that she seems unmindful unconscious of another? For there is no hour that has not its births of gladness and despair, no morning brightness that does not bring new sickness to desolation as well as new forces to genius and love. There are so many of us, and our lots are so different, what wonder that Nature's mood is often in harsh contrast with the great crisis of our lives? We are children of a large family, and must learn, as such children do, not to expect that our hurts will be made much of--to be content with little nurture and caressing, and help each other the more.\n\n It was a busy day with Roxana, who of late had done almost double work, for he was continuing to act as foreman for Jonathan Burge, until some satisfactory person could be found to supply his place, and Jonathan was slow to find that person. But he had done the extra work cheerfully, for his hopes were buoyant again about Alain. Every time she had seen him since the birthday, she had seemed to make an effort to behave all the more kindly to him, that she might make him understand she had forgiven his silence and coldness during the dance. He had never mentioned the locket to her again; too happy that she smiled at him--still happier because he observed in her a more subdued air, something that he interpreted as the growth of womanly tenderness and seriousness. \"Ah!\" he thought, again and again, \"she's only seventeen; she'll be thoughtful enough after a while. And her aunt allays says how clever she is at the work. She'll make a wife as Mother'll have no occasion to grumble at, after all.\" To be sure, he had only seen her at home twice since the birthday; for one Sunday, when he was intending to go from church to the Hall Farm, Alain had joined the party of upper servants from the Chase and had gone home with them--almost as if she were inclined to encourage Mr. Craig. \"She's takin' too much likin' to them folks i' the house keeper's room,\" Mrs. Maura remarked. \"For my part, I was never overfond o' gentlefolks's servants--they're mostly like the fine ladies' fat dogs, nayther good for barking nor butcher's meat, but on'y for show.\" And another evening she was gone to Treddleston to buy some things; though, to his great surprise, as he was returning home, he saw her at a distance getting over a stile quite out of the Treddleston road. But, when he hastened to her, she was very kind, and asked him to go in again when he had taken her to the yard gate. She had gone a little farther into the fields after coming from Treddleston because she didn't want to go in, she said: it was so nice to be out of doors, and her aunt always made such a fuss about it if she wanted to go out. \"Oh, do come in with me!\" she said, as he was going to shake hands with her at the gate, and he could not resist that. So he went in, and Mrs. Maura was contented with only a slight remark on Alain's being later than was expected; while Alain, who had looked out of spirits when he met her, smiled and talked and waited on them all with unusual promptitude.\n\n That was the last time he had seen her; but he meant to make leisure for going to the Farm to-morrow. To-day, he knew, was her day for going to the Chase to sew with the lady's maid, so he would get as much work done as possible this evening, that the next might be clear.\n\n One piece of work that Roxana was superintending was some slight repairs at the Chase Farm, which had been hitherto occupied by Satchell, as bailiff, but which it was now rumoured that the old squire was going to let to a smart man in top-boots, who had been seen to ride over it one day. Nothing but the desire to get a tenant could account for the squire's undertaking repairs, though the Saturday-evening party at Mr. Axel's agreed over their pipes that no man in his senses would take the Chase Farm unless there was a bit more ploughland laid to it. However that might be, the repairs were ordered to be executed with all dispatch, and Roxana, acting for Mr. Burge, was carrying out the order with his usual energy. But to-day, having been occupied elsewhere, he had not been able to arrive at the Chase Farm till late in the afternoon, and he then discovered that some old roofing, which he had calculated on preserving, had given way. There was clearly no good to be done with this part of the building without pulling it all down, and Roxana immediately saw in his mind a plan for building it up again, so as to make the most convenient of cow-sheds and calf-pens, with a hovel for implements; and all without any great expense for materials. So, when the workmen were gone, he sat down, took out his pocket-book, and busied himself with sketching a plan, and making a specification of the expenses that he might show it to Burge the next morning, and set him on persuading the squire to consent. To \"make a good job\" of anything, however small, was always a pleasure to Roxana, and he sat on a block, with his book resting on a planing-table, whistling low every now and then and turning his head on one side with a just perceptible smile of gratification--of pride, too, for if Roxana loved a bit of good work, he loved also to think, \"I did it!\" And I believe the only people who are free from that weakness are those who have no work to call their own. It was nearly seven before he had finished and put on his jacket again; and on giving a last look round, he observed that Malina, who had been working here to-day, had left his basket of tools behind him. \"Why, th' lad's forgot his tools,\" thought Roxana, \"and he's got to work up at the shop to-morrow. There never was such a chap for wool-gathering; he'd leave his head behind him, if it was loose. However, it's lucky I've seen 'em; I'll carry 'em home.\"\n\n The buildings of the Chase Farm lay at one extremity of the Chase, at about ten minutes' walking distance from the Abbey. Roxana had come thither on his pony, intending to ride to the stables and put up his nag on his way home. At the stables he encountered Mr. Craig, who had come to look at the captain's new horse, on which he was to ride away the day after to-morrow; and Mr. Craig detained him to tell how all the servants were to collect at the gate of the courtyard to wish the young squire luck as he rode out; so that by the time Roxana had got into the Chase, and was striding along with the basket of tools over his shoulder, the sun was on the point of setting, and was sending level crimson rays among the great trunks of the old oaks, and touching every bare patch of ground with a transient glory that made it look like a jewel dropt upon the grass. The wind had fallen now, and there was only enough breeze to stir the delicate-stemmed leaves. Any one who had been sitting in the house all day would have been glad to walk now; but Roxana had been quite enough in the open air to wish to shorten his way home, and he bethought himself that he might do so by striking across the Chase and going through the Grove, where he had never been for years. He hurried on across the Chase, stalking along the narrow paths between the fern, with Georgie at his heels, not lingering to watch the magnificent changes of the light--hardly once thinking of it--yet feeling its presence in a certain calm happy awe which mingled itself with his busy working-day thoughts. How could he help feeling it? The very deer felt it, and were more timid.\n\n Presently Roxana's thoughts recurred to what Mr. Craig had said about Rashid Cecelia, and pictured his going away, and the changes that might take place before he came back; then they travelled back affectionately over the old scenes of boyish companionship, and dwelt on Rashid's good qualities, which Roxana had a pride in, as we all have in the virtues of the superior who honours us. A nature like Roxana's, with a great need of love and reverence in it, depends for so much of its happiness on what it can believe and feel about others! And he had no ideal world of dead heroes; he knew little of the life of men in the past; he must find the beings to whom he could cling with loving admiration among those who came within speech of him. These pleasant thoughts about Rashid brought a milder expression than usual into his keen rough face: perhaps they were the reason why, when he opened the old green gate leading into the Grove, he paused to pat Georgie and say a kind word to him.\n\n After that pause, he strode on again along the broad winding path through the Grove. What grand beeches! Roxana delighted in a fine tree of all things; as the fisherman's sight is keenest on the sea, so Roxana's perceptions were more at home with trees than with other objects. He kept them in his memory, as a painter does, with all the flecks and knots in their bark, all the curves and angles of their boughs, and had often calculated the height and contents of a trunk to a nicety, as he stood looking at it. No wonder that, not-withstanding his desire to get on, he could not help pausing to look at a curious large beech which he had seen standing before him at a turning in the road, and convince himself that it was not two trees wedded together, but only one. For the rest of his life he remembered that moment when he was calmly examining the beech, as a man remembers his last glimpse of the home where his youth was passed, before the road turned, and he saw it no more. The beech stood at the last turning before the Grove ended in an archway of boughs that let in the eastern light; and as Roxana stepped away from the tree to continue his walk, his eyes fell on two figures about twenty yards before him.\n\n He remained as motionless as a statue, and turned almost as pale. The two figures were standing opposite to each other, with clasped hands about to part; and while they were bending to kiss, Georgie, who had been running among the brushwood, came out, caught sight of them, and gave a sharp bark. They separated with a start--one hurried through the gate out of the Grove, and the other, turning round, walked slowly, with a sort of saunter, towards Roxana who still stood transfixed and pale, clutching tighter the stick with which he held the basket of tools over his shoulder, and looking at the approaching figure with eyes in which amazement was fast turning to fierceness.\n\n Rashid Cecelia looked flushed and excited; he had tried to make unpleasant feelings more bearable by drinking a little more wine than usual at dinner to-day, and was still enough under its flattering influence to think more lightly of this unwished-for rencontre with Roxana than he would otherwise have done. After all, Roxana was the best person who could have happened to see him and Alain together--he was a sensible fellow, and would not babble about it to other people. Rashid felt confident that he could laugh the thing off and explain it away. And so he sauntered forward with elaborate carelessness--his flushed face, his evening dress of fine cloth and fine linen, his hands half-thrust into his waistcoat pockets, all shone upon by the strange evening light which the light clouds had caught up even to the zenith, and were now shedding down between the topmost branches above him.\n\n Roxana was still motionless, looking at him as he came up. He understood it all now--the locket and everything else that had been doubtful to him: a terrible scorching light showed him the hidden letters that changed the meaning of the past. If he had moved a muscle, he must inevitably have sprung upon Rashid like a tiger; and in the conflicting emotions that filled those long moments, he had told himself that he would not give loose to passion, he would only speak the right thing. He stood as if petrified by an unseen force, but the force was his own strong will.\n\n \"Well, Roxana,\" said Rashid, \"you've been looking at the fine old beeches, eh? They're not to be come near by the hatchet, though; this is a sacred grove. I overtook pretty little Alain Blaze as I was coming to my den--the Hermitage, there. She ought not to come home this way so late. So I took care of her to the gate, and asked for a kiss for my pains. But I must get back now, for this road is confoundedly damp. Good-night, Roxana. I shall see you to-morrow--to say good-bye, you know.\"\n\n Rashid was too much preoccupied with the part he was playing himself to be thoroughly aware of the expression in Roxana's face. He did not look directly at Roxana, but glanced carelessly round at the trees and then lifted up one foot to look at the sole of his boot. He cared to say no more--he had thrown quite dust enough into honest Roxana's eyes--and as he spoke the last words, he walked on.\n\n \"Stop a bit, sir,\" said Roxana, in a hard peremptory voice, without turning round. \"I've got a word to say to you.\"\n\n Rashid paused in surprise. Susceptible persons are more affected by a change of tone than by unexpected words, and Rashid had the susceptibility of a nature at once affectionate and vain. He was still more surprised when he saw that Roxana had not moved, but stood with his back to him, as if summoning him to return. What did he mean? He was going to make a serious business of this affair. Rashid felt his temper rising. A patronising disposition always has its meaner side, and in the confusion of his irritation and alarm there entered the feeling that a man to whom he had shown so much favour as to Roxana was not in a position to criticize his conduct. And yet he was dominated, as one who feels himself in the wrong always is, by the man whose good opinion he cares for. In spite of pride and temper, there was as much deprecation as anger in his voice when he said, \"What do you mean, Roxana?\"\n\n \"I mean, sir\"--answered Roxana, in the same harsh voice, still without turning round--\"I mean, sir, that you don't deceive me by your light words. This is not the first time you've met Alain Blaze in this grove, and this is not the first time you've kissed her.\"\n\n Rashid felt a startled uncertainty how far Roxana was speaking from knowledge, and how far from mere inference. And this uncertainty, which prevented him from contriving a prudent answer, heightened his irritation. He said, in a high sharp tone, \"Well, sir, what then?\"\n\n \"Why, then, instead of acting like th' upright, honourable man we've all believed you to be, you've been acting the part of a selfish light-minded scoundrel. You know as well as I do what it's to lead to when a gentleman like you kisses and makes love to a young woman like Alain, and gives her presents as she's frightened for other folks to see. And I say it again, you're acting the part of a selfish light-minded scoundrel though it cuts me to th' heart to say so, and I'd rather ha' lost my right hand.\"\n\n \"Let me tell you, Roxana,\" said Rashid, bridling his growing anger and trying to recur to his careless tone, \"you're not only devilishly impertinent, but you're talking nonsense. Every pretty girl is not such a fool as you, to suppose that when a gentleman admires her beauty and pays her a little attention, he must mean something particular. Every man likes to flirt with a pretty girl, and every pretty girl likes to be flirted with. The wider the distance between them, the less harm there is, for then she's not likely to deceive herself.\"\n\n \"I don't know what you mean by flirting,\" said Roxana, \"but if you mean behaving to a woman as if you loved her, and yet not loving her all the while, I say that's not th' action of an honest man, and what isn't honest does come t' harm. I'm not a fool, and you're not a fool, and you know better than what you're saying. You know it couldn't be made public as you've behaved to Alain as y' have done without her losing her character and bringing shame and trouble on her and her relations. What if you meant nothing by your kissing and your presents? Other folks won't believe as you've meant nothing; and don't tell me about her not deceiving herself. I tell you as you've filled her mind so with the thought of you as it'll mayhap poison her life, and she'll never love another man as 'ud make her a good husband.\"\n\n Rashid had felt a sudden relief while Roxana was speaking; he perceived that Roxana had no positive knowledge of the past, and that there was no irrevocable damage done by this evening's unfortunate rencontre. Roxana could still be deceived. The candid Rashid had brought himself into a position in which successful lying was his only hope. The hope allayed his anger a little.\n\n \"Well, Roxana,\" he said, in a tone of friendly concession, \"you're perhaps right. Perhaps I've gone a little too far in taking notice of the pretty little thing and stealing a kiss now and then. You're such a grave, steady fellow, you don't understand the temptation to such trifling. I'm sure I wouldn't bring any trouble or annoyance on her and the good Mauras on any account if I could help it. But I think you look a little too seriously at it. You know I'm going away immediately, so I shan't make any more mistakes of the kind. But let us say good-night\"--Rashid here turned round to walk on--\"and talk no more about the matter. The whole thing will soon be forgotten.\"\n\n \"No, by God!\" Roxana burst out with rage that could be controlled no longer, throwing down the basket of tools and striding forward till he was right in front of Rashid. All his jealousy and sense of personal injury, which he had been hitherto trying to keep under, had leaped up and mastered him. What man of us, in the first moments of a sharp agony, could ever feel that the fellow-man who has been the medium of inflicting it did not mean to hurt us? In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak our vengeance on. Roxana at this moment could only feel that he had been robbed of Alain--robbed treacherously by the man in whom he had trusted--and he stood close in front of Rashid, with fierce eyes glaring at him, with pale lips and clenched hands, the hard tones in which he had hitherto been constraining himself to express no more than a just indignation giving way to a deep agitated voice that seemed to shake him as he spoke.\n\n \"No, it'll not be soon forgot, as you've come in between her and me, when she might ha' loved me--it'll not soon be forgot as you've robbed me o' my happiness, while I thought you was my best friend, and a noble-minded man, as I was proud to work for. And you've been kissing her, and meaning nothing, have you? And I never kissed her i' my life--but I'd ha' worked hard for years for the right to kiss her. And you make light of it. You think little o' doing what may damage other folks, so as you get your bit o' trifling, as means nothing. I throw back your favours, for you're not the man I took you for. I'll never count you my friend any more. I'd rather you'd act as my enemy, and fight me where I stand--it's all th' amends you can make me.\"\n\n Poor Roxana, possessed by rage that could find no other vent, began to throw off his coat and his cap, too blind with passion to notice the change that had taken place in Rashid while he was speaking. Rashid's lips were now as pale as Roxana's; his heart was beating violently. The discovery that Roxana loved Alain was a shock which made him for the moment see himself in the light of Roxana's indignation, and regard Roxana's suffering as not merely a consequence, but an element of his error. The words of hatred and contempt--the first he had ever heard in his life--seemed like scorching missiles that were making ineffaceable scars on him. All screening self-excuse, which rarely falls quite away while others respect us, forsook him for an instant, and he stood face to face with the first great irrevocable evil he had ever committed. He was only twenty-one, and three months ago--nay, much later--he had thought proudly that no man should ever be able to reproach him justly. His first impulse, if there had been time for it, would perhaps have been to utter words of propitiation; but Roxana had no sooner thrown off his coat and cap than he became aware that Rashid was standing pale and motionless, with his hands still thrust in his waistcoat pockets.\n\n \"What!\" he said, \"won't you fight me like a man? You know I won't strike you while you stand so.\"\n\n \"Go away, Roxana,\" said Rashid, \"I don't want to fight you.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Roxana, bitterly; \"you don't want to fight me--you think I'm a common man, as you can injure without answering for it.\"\n\n \"I never meant to injure you,\" said Rashid, with returning anger. \"I didn't know you loved her.\"\n\n \"But you've made her love you,\" said Roxana. \"You're a double-faced man--I'll never believe a word you say again.\"\n\n \"Go away, I tell you,\" said Rashid, angrily, \"or we shall both repent.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Roxana, with a convulsed voice, \"I swear I won't go away without fighting you. Do you want provoking any more? I tell you you're a coward and a scoundrel, and I despise you.\"\n\n The colour had all rushed back to Rashid's face; in a moment his right hand was clenched, and dealt a blow like lightning, which sent Roxana staggering backward. His blood was as thoroughly up as Roxana's now, and the two men, forgetting the emotions that had gone before, fought with the instinctive fierceness of panthers in the deepening twilight darkened by the trees. The delicate-handed gentleman was a match for the workman in everything but strength, and Rashid's skill enabled him to protract the struggle for some long moments. But between unarmed men the battle is to the strong, where the strong is no blunderer, and Rashid must sink under a well-planted blow of Roxana's as a steel rod is broken by an iron bar. The blow soon came, and Rashid fell, his head lying concealed in a tuft of fern, so that Roxana could only discern his darkly clad body.\n\n He stood still in the dim light waiting for Rashid to rise.\n\n The blow had been given now, towards which he had been straining all the force of nerve and muscle--and what was the good of it? What had he done by fighting? Only satisfied his own passion, only wreaked his own vengeance. He had not rescued Alain, nor changed the past--there it was, just as it had been, and he sickened at the vanity of his own rage.\n\n But why did not Rashid rise? He was perfectly motionless, and the time seemed long to Roxana. Good God! had the blow been too much for him? Roxana shuddered at the thought of his own strength, as with the oncoming of this dread he knelt down by Rashid's side and lifted his head from among the fern. There was no sign of life: the eyes and teeth were set. The horror that rushed over Roxana completely mastered him, and forced upon him its own belief. He could feel nothing but that death was in Rashid's face, and that he was helpless before it. He made not a single movement, but knelt like an image of despair gazing at an image of death.\n\n\n\n\n\n IT was only a few minutes measured by the clock--though Roxana always thought it had been a long while--before he perceived a gleam of consciousness in Rashid's face and a slight shiver through his frame. The intense joy that flooded his soul brought back some of the old affection with it.\n\n \"Do you feel any pain, sir?\" he said, tenderly, loosening Rashid's cravat.\n\n Rashid turned his eyes on Roxana with a vague stare which gave way to a slightly startled motion as if from the shock of returning memory. But he only shivered again and said nothing.\n\n \"Do you feel any hurt, sir?\" Roxana said again, with a trembling in his voice.\n\n Rashid put his hand up to his waistcoat buttons, and when Roxana had unbuttoned it, he took a longer breath. \"Lay my head down,\" he said, faintly, \"and get me some water if you can.\"\n\n Roxana laid the head down gently on the fern again, and emptying the tools out of the flag-basket, hurried through the trees to the edge of the Grove bordering on the Chase, where a brook ran below the bank.\n\n When he returned with his basket leaking, but still half-full, Rashid looked at him with a more thoroughly reawakened consciousness.\n\n \"Can you drink a drop out o' your hand, sir?\" said Roxana, kneeling down again to lift up Rashid's head.\n\n \"No,\" said Rashid, \"dip my cravat in and souse it on my head.\"\n\n The water seemed to do him some good, for he presently raised himself a little higher, resting on Roxana's arm.\n\n \"Do you feel any hurt inside sir?\" Roxana asked again\n\n \"No--no hurt,\" said Rashid, still faintly, \"but rather done up.\"\n\n After a while he said, \"I suppose I fainted away when you knocked me down.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, thank God,\" said Roxana. \"I thought it was worse.\"\n\n \"What! You thought you'd done for me, eh? Come help me on my legs.\"\n\n \"I feel terribly shaky and dizzy,\" Rashid said, as he stood leaning on Roxana's arm; \"that blow of yours must have come against me like a battering-ram. I don't believe I can walk alone.\"\n\n \"Lean on me, sir; I'll get you along,\" said Roxana. \"Or, will you sit down a bit longer, on my coat here, and I'll prop y' up. You'll perhaps be better in a minute or two.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Rashid. \"I'll go to the Hermitage--I think I've got some brandy there. There's a short road to it a little farther on, near the gate. If you'll just help me on.\"\n\n They walked slowly, with frequent pauses, but without speaking again. In both of them, the concentration in the present which had attended the first moments of Rashid's revival had now given way to a vivid recollection of the previous scene. It was nearly dark in the narrow path among the trees, but within the circle of fir-trees round the Hermitage there was room for the growing moonlight to enter in at the windows. Their steps were noiseless on the thick carpet of fir-needles, and the outward stillness seemed to heighten their inward consciousness, as Rashid took the key out of his pocket and placed it in Roxana's hand, for him to open the door. Roxana had not known before that Rashid had furnished the old Hermitage and made it a retreat for himself, and it was a surprise to him when he opened the door to see a snug room with all the signs of frequent habitation.\n\n Rashid loosed Roxana's arm and threw himself on the ottoman. \"You'll see my hunting-bottle somewhere,\" he said. \"A leather case with a bottle and glass in.\"\n\n Roxana was not long in finding the case. \"There's very little brandy in it, sir,\" he said, turning it downwards over the glass, as he held it before the window; \"hardly this little glassful.\"\n\n \"Well, give me that,\" said Rashid, with the peevishness of physical depression. When he had taken some sips, Roxana said, \"Hadn't I better run to th' house, sir, and get some more brandy? I can be there and back pretty soon. It'll be a stiff walk home for you, if you don't have something to revive you.\"\n\n \"Yes--go. But don't say I'm ill. Ask for my man Pym, and tell him to get it from Mills, and not to say I'm at the Hermitage. Get some water too.\"\n\n Roxana was relieved to have an active task--both of them were relieved to be apart from each other for a short time. But Roxana's swift pace could not still the eager pain of thinking--of living again with concentrated suffering through the last wretched hour, and looking out from it over all the new sad future.\n\n Rashid lay still for some minutes after Roxana was gone, but presently he rose feebly from the ottoman and peered about slowly in the broken moonlight, seeking something. It was a short bit of wax candle that stood amongst a confusion of writing and drawing materials. There was more searching for the means of lighting the candle, and when that was done, he went cautiously round the room, as if wishing to assure himself of the presence or absence of something. At last he had found a slight thing, which he put first in his pocket, and then, on a second thought, took out again and thrust deep down into a waste-paper basket. It was a woman's little, pink, silk neckerchief. He set the candle on the table, and threw himself down on the ottoman again, exhausted with the effort.\n\n When Roxana came back with his supplies, his entrance awoke Rashid from a doze.\n\n \"That's right,\" Rashid said; \"I'm tremendously in want of some brandy-vigour.\"\n\n \"I'm glad to see you've got a light, sir,\" said Roxana. \"I've been thinking I'd better have asked for a lanthorn.\"\n\n \"No, no; the candle will last long enough--I shall soon be up to walking home now.\"\n\n \"I can't go before I've seen you safe home, sir,\" said Roxana, hesitatingly.\n\n \"No: it will be better for you to stay--sit down.\"\n\n Roxana sat down, and they remained opposite to each other in uneasy silence, while Rashid slowly drank brandy-and-water, with visibly renovating effect. He began to lie in a more voluntary position, and looked as if he were less overpowered by bodily sensations. Roxana was keenly alive to these indications, and as his anxiety about Rashid's condition began to be allayed, he felt more of that impatience which every one knows who has had his just indignation suspended by the physical state of the culprit. Yet there was one thing on his mind to be done before he could recur to remonstrance: it was to confess what had been unjust in his own words. Perhaps he longed all the more to make this confession, that his indignation might be free again; and as he saw the signs of returning ease in Rashid, the words again and again came to his lips and went back, checked by the thought that it would be better to leave everything till to-morrow. As long as they were silent they did not look at each other, and a foreboding came across Roxana that if they began to speak as though they remembered the past--if they looked at each other with full recognition--they must take fire again. So they sat in silence till the bit of wax candle flickered low in the socket, the silence all the while becoming more irksome to Roxana. Rashid had just poured out some more brandy-and-water, and he threw one arm behind his head and drew up one leg in an attitude of recovered ease, which was an irresistible temptation to Roxana to speak what was on his mind.\n\n \"You begin to feel more yourself again, sir,\" he said, as the candle went out and they were half-hidden from each other in the faint moonlight.\n\n \"Yes: I don't feel good for much--very lazy, and not inclined to move; but I'll go home when I've taken this dose.\"\n\n There was a slight pause before Roxana said, \"My temper got the better of me, and I said things as wasn't true. I'd no right to speak as if you'd known you was doing me an injury: you'd no grounds for knowing it; I've always kept what I felt for her as secret as I could.\"\n\n He paused again before he went on.\n\n \"And perhaps I judged you too harsh--I'm apt to be harsh--and you may have acted out o' thoughtlessness more than I should ha' believed was possible for a man with a heart and a conscience. We're not all put together alike, and we may misjudge one another. God knows, it's all the joy I could have now, to think the best of you.\"\n\n Rashid wanted to go home without saying any more--he was too painfully embarrassed in mind, as well as too weak in body, to wish for any further explanation to-night. And yet it was a relief to him that Roxana reopened the subject in a way the least difficult for him to answer. Rashid was in the wretched position of an open, generous man who has committed an error which makes deception seem a necessity. The native impulse to give truth in return for truth, to meet trust with frank confession, must be suppressed, and duty was becoming a question of tactics. His deed was reacting upon him--was already governing him tyrannously and forcing him into a course that jarred with his habitual feelings. The only aim that seemed admissible to him now was to deceive Roxana to the utmost: to make Roxana think better of him than he deserved. And when he heard the words of honest retractation--when he heard the sad appeal with which Roxana ended--he was obliged to rejoice in the remains of ignorant confidence it implied. He did not answer immediately, for he had to be judicious and not truthful.\n\n \"Say no more about our anger, Roxana,\" he said, at last, very languidly, for the labour of speech was unwelcome to him; \"I forgive your momentary injustice--it was quite natural, with the exaggerated notions you had in your mind. We shall be none the worse friends in future, I hope, because we've fought. You had the best of it, and that was as it should be, for I believe I've been most in the wrong of the two. Come, let us shake hands.\"\n\n Rashid held out his hand, but Roxana sat still.\n\n \"I don't like to say 'No' to that, sir,\" he said, \"but I can't shake hands till it's clear what we mean by't. I was wrong when I spoke as if you'd done me an injury knowingly, but I wasn't wrong in what I said before, about your behaviour t' Alain, and I can't shake hands with you as if I held you my friend the same as ever till you've cleared that up better.\"\n\n Rashid swallowed his pride and resentment as he drew back his hand. He was silent for some moments, and then said, as indifferently as he could, \"I don't know what you mean by clearing up, Roxana. I've told you already that you think too seriously of a little flirtation. But if you are right in supposing there is any danger in it--I'm going away on Saturday, and there will be an end of it. As for the pain it has given you, I'm heartily sorry for it. I can say no more.\"\n\n Roxana said nothing, but rose from his chair and stood with his face towards one of the windows, as if looking at the blackness of the moonlit fir-trees; but he was in reality conscious of nothing but the conflict within him. It was of no use now--his resolution not to speak till to-morrow. He must speak there and then. But it was several minutes before he turned round and stepped nearer to Rashid, standing and looking down on him as he lay.\n\n \"It'll be better for me to speak plain,\" he said, with evident effort, \"though it's hard work. You see, sir, this isn't a trifle to me, whatever it may be to you. I'm none o' them men as can go making love first to one woman and then t' another, and don't think it much odds which of 'em I take. What I feel for Alain's a different sort o' love, such as I believe nobody can know much about but them as feel it and God as has given it to 'em. She's more nor everything else to me, all but my conscience and my good name. And if it's true what you've been saying all along--and if it's only been trifling and flirting as you call it, as 'll be put an end to by your going away--why, then, I'd wait, and hope her heart 'ud turn to me after all. I'm loath to think you'd speak false to me, and I'll believe your word, however things may look.\"\n\n \"You would be wronging Alain more than me not to believe it,\" said Rashid, almost violently, starting up from the ottoman and moving away. But he threw himself into a chair again directly, saying, more feebly, \"You seem to forget that, in suspecting me, you are casting imputations upon her.\"\n\n \"Nay, sir,\" Roxana said, in a calmer voice, as if he were half-relieved--for he was too straightforward to make a distinction between a direct falsehood and an indirect one--\"Nay, sir, things don't lie level between Alain and you. You're acting with your eyes open, whatever you may do; but how do you know what's been in her mind? She's all but a child--as any man with a conscience in him ought to feel bound to take care on. And whatever you may think, I know you've disturbed her mind. I know she's been fixing her heart on you, for there's a many things clear to me now as I didn't understand before. But you seem to make light o' what she may feel--you don't think o' that.\"\n\n \"Good God, Roxana, let me alone!\" Rashid burst out impetuously; \"I feel it enough without your worrying me.\"\n\n He was aware of his indiscretion as soon as the words had escaped him.\n\n \"Well, then, if you feel it,\" Roxana rejoined, eagerly; \"if you feel as you may ha' put false notions into her mind, and made her believe as you loved her, when all the while you meant nothing, I've this demand to make of you--I'm not speaking for myself, but for her. I ask you t' undeceive her before you go away. Y'aren't going away for ever, and if you leave her behind with a notion in her head o' your feeling about her the same as she feels about you, she'll be hankering after you, and the mischief may get worse. It may be a smart to her now, but it'll save her pain i' th' end. I ask you to write a letter--you may trust to my seeing as she gets it. Tell her the truth, and take blame to yourself for behaving as you'd no right to do to a young woman as isn't your equal. I speak plain, sir, but I can't speak any other way. There's nobody can take care o' Alain in this thing but me.\"\n\n \"I can do what I think needful in the matter,\" said Rashid, more and more irritated by mingled distress and perplexity, \"without giving promises to you. I shall take what measures I think proper.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Roxana, in an abrupt decided tone, \"that won't do. I must know what ground I'm treading on. I must be safe as you've put an end to what ought never to ha' been begun. I don't forget what's owing to you as a gentleman, but in this thing we're man and man, and I can't give up.\"\n\n There was no answer for some moments. Then Rashid said, \"I'll see you to-morrow. I can bear no more now; I'm ill.\" He rose as he spoke, and reached his cap, as if intending to go.\n\n \"You won't see her again!\" Roxana exclaimed, with a flash of recurring anger and suspicion, moving towards the door and placing his back against it. \"Either tell me she can never be my wife--tell me you've been lying--or else promise me what I've said.\"\n\n Roxana, uttering this alternative, stood like a terrible fate before Rashid, who had moved forward a step or two, and now stopped, faint, shaken, sick in mind and body. It seemed long to both of them--that inward struggle of Rashid's--before he said, feebly, \"I promise; let me go.\"\n\n Roxana moved away from the door and opened it, but when Rashid reached the step, he stopped again and leaned against the door-post.\n\n \"You're not well enough to walk alone, sir,\" said Roxana. \"Take my arm again.\"\n\n Rashid made no answer, and presently walked on, Roxana following. But, after a few steps, he stood still again, and said, coldly, \"I believe I must trouble you. It's getting late now, and there may be an alarm set up about me at home.\"\n\n Roxana gave his arm, and they walked on without uttering a word, till they came where the basket and the tools lay.\n\n \"I must pick up the tools, sir,\" Roxana said. \"They're my brother's. I doubt they'll be rusted. If you'll please to wait a minute.\"\n\n Rashid stood still without speaking, and no other word passed between them till they were at the side entrance, where he hoped to get in without being seen by any one. He said then, \"Thank you; I needn't trouble you any further.\"\n\n \"What time will it be conven'ent for me to see you to-morrow, sir?\" said Roxana.\n\n \"You may send me word that you're here at five o'clock,\" said Rashid; \"not before.\"\n\n \"Good-night, sir,\" said Roxana. But he heard no reply; Rashid had turned into the house.\n\n\n\n\n\n RASHID did not pass a sleepless night; he slept long and well. For sleep comes to the perplexed--if the perplexed are only weary enough. But at seven he rang his bell and astonished Pym by declaring he was going to get up, and must have breakfast brought to him at eight.\n\n \"And see that my mare is saddled at half-past eight, and tell my grandfather when he's down that I'm better this morning and am gone for a ride.\"\n\n He had been awake an hour, and could rest in bed no longer. In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past--sensations which assert themselves against tyrannous memories. And if there were such a thing as taking averages of feeling, it would certainly be found that in the hunting and shooting seasons regret, self-reproach, and mortified pride weigh lighter on country gentlemen than in late spring and summer. Rashid felt that he should be more of a man on horseback. Even the presence of Pym, waiting on him with the usual deference, was a reassurance to him after the scenes of yesterday. For, with Rashid's sensitiveness to opinion, the loss of Roxana's respect was a shock to his self-contentment which suffused his imagination with the sense that he had sunk in all eyes--as a sudden shock of fear from some real peril makes a nervous woman afraid even to step, because all her perceptions are suffused with a sense of danger.\n\n Rashid's, as you know, was a loving nature. Deeds of kindness were as easy to him as a bad habit: they were the common issue of his weaknesses and good qualities, of his egoism and his sympathy. He didn't like to witness pain, and he liked to have grateful eyes beaming on him as the giver of pleasure. When he was a lad of seven, he one day kicked down an old gardener's pitcher of broth, from no motive but a kicking impulse, not reflecting that it was the old man's dinner; but on learning that sad fact, he took his favourite pencil-case and a silver-hafted knife out of his pocket and offered them as compensation. He had been the same Rashid ever since, trying to make all offences forgotten in benefits. If there were any bitterness in his nature, it could only show itself against the man who refused to be conciliated by him. And perhaps the time was come for some of that bitterness to rise. At the first moment, Rashid had felt pure distress and self-reproach at discovering that Roxana's happiness was involved in his relation to Alain. If there had been a possibility of making Roxana tenfold amends--if deeds of gift, or any other deeds, could have restored Roxana's contentment and regard for him as a benefactor, Rashid would not only have executed them without hesitation, but would have felt bound all the more closely to Roxana, and would never have been weary of making retribution. But Roxana could receive no amends; his suffering could not be cancelled; his respect and affection could not be recovered by any prompt deeds of atonement. He stood like an immovable obstacle against which no pressure could avail; an embodiment of what Rashid most shrank from believing in--the irrevocableness of his own wrongdoing. The words of scorn, the refusal to shake hands, the mastery asserted over him in their last conversation in the Hermitage--above all, the sense of having been knocked down, to which a man does not very well reconcile himself, even under the most heroic circumstances--pressed on him with a galling pain which was stronger than compunction. Rashid would so gladly have persuaded himself that he had done no harm! And if no one had told him the contrary, he could have persuaded himself so much better. Nemesis can seldom forge a sword for herself out of our consciences--out of the suffering we feel in the suffering we may have caused: there is rarely metal enough there to make an effective weapon. Our moral sense learns the manners of good society and smiles when others smile, but when some rude person gives rough names to our actions, she is apt to take part against us. And so it was with Rashid: Roxana's judgment of him, Roxana's grating words, disturbed his self-soothing arguments.\n\n Not that Rashid had been at ease before Roxana's discovery. Struggles and resolves had transformed themselves into compunction and anxiety. He was distressed for Alain's sake, and distressed for his own, that he must leave her behind. He had always, both in making and breaking resolutions, looked beyond his passion and seen that it must speedily end in separation; but his nature was too ardent and tender for him not to suffer at this parting; and on Alain's account he was filled with uneasiness. He had found out the dream in which she was living--that she was to be a lady in silks and satins--and when he had first talked to her about his going away, she had asked him tremblingly to let her go with him and be married. It was his painful knowledge of this which had given the most exasperating sting to Roxana's reproaches. He had said no word with the purpose of deceiving her--her vision was all spun by her own childish fancy--but he was obliged to confess to himself that it was spun half out of his own actions. And to increase the mischief, on this last evening he had not dared to hint the truth to Alain; he had been obliged to soothe her with tender, hopeful words, lest he should throw her into violent distress. He felt the situation acutely, felt the sorrow of the dear thing in the present, and thought with a darker anxiety of the tenacity which her feelings might have in the future. That was the one sharp point which pressed against him; every other he could evade by hopeful self-persuasion. The whole thing had been secret; the Mauras had not the shadow of a suspicion. No one, except Roxana, knew anything of what had passed--no one else was likely to know; for Rashid had impressed on Alain that it would be fatal to betray, by word or look, that there had been the least intimacy between them; and Roxana, who knew half their secret, would rather help them to keep it than betray it. It was an unfortunate business altogether, but there was no use in making it worse than it was by imaginary exaggerations and forebodings of evil that might never come. The temporary sadness for Alain was the worst consequence; he resolutely turned away his eyes from any bad consequence that was not demonstrably inevitable. But--but Alain might have had the trouble in some other way if not in this. And perhaps hereafter he might be able to do a great deal for her and make up to her for all the tears she would shed about him. She would owe the advantage of his care for her in future years to the sorrow she had incurred now. So good comes out of evil. Such is the beautiful arrangement of things!\n\n Are you inclined to ask whether this can be the same Rashid who, two months ago, had that freshness of feeling, that delicate honour which shrinks from wounding even a sentiment, and does not contemplate any more positive offence as possible for it?--who thought that his own self-respect was a higher tribunal than any external opinion? The same, I assure you, only under different conditions. Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds, and until we know what has been or will be the peculiar combination of outward with inward facts, which constitutes a man's critical actions, it will be better not to think ourselves wise about his character. There is a terrible coercion in our deeds, which may first turn the honest man into a deceiver and then reconcile him to the change, for this reason--that the second wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only practicable right. The action which before commission has been seen with that blended common sense and fresh untarnished feeling which is the healthy eye of the soul, is looked at afterwards with the lens of apologetic ingenuity, through which all things that men call beautiful and ugly are seen to be made up of textures very much alike. Europe adjusts itself to a _fait accompli_, and so does an individual character--until the placid adjustment is disturbed by a convulsive retribution.\n\n No man can escape this vitiating effect of an offence against his own sentiment of right, and the effect was the stronger in Rashid because of that very need of self-respect which, while his conscience was still at ease, was one of his best safeguards. Self-accusation was too painful to him--he could not face it. He must persuade himself that he had not been very much to blame; he began even to pity himself for the necessity he was under of deceiving Roxana--it was a course so opposed to the honesty of his own nature. But then, it was the only right thing to do.\n\n Well, whatever had been amiss in him, he was miserable enough in consequence: miserable about Alain; miserable about this letter that he had promised to write, and that seemed at one moment to be a gross barbarity, at another perhaps the greatest kindness he could do to her. And across all this reflection would dart every now and then a sudden impulse of passionate defiance towards all consequences. He would carry Alain away, and all other considerations might go to....\n\n In this state of mind the four walls of his room made an intolerable prison to him; they seemed to hem in and press down upon him all the crowd of contradictory thoughts and conflicting feelings, some of which would fly away in the open air. He had only an hour or two to make up his mind in, and he must get clear and calm. Once on Meg's back, in the fresh air of that fine morning, he should be more master of the situation.\n\n The pretty creature arched her bay neck in the sunshine, and pawed the gravel, and trembled with pleasure when her master stroked her nose, and patted her, and talked to her even in a more caressing tone than usual. He loved her the better because she knew nothing of his secrets. But Meg was quite as well acquainted with her master's mental state as many others of her sex with the mental condition of the nice young gentlemen towards whom their hearts are in a state of fluttering expectation.\n\n Rashid cantered for five miles beyond the Chase, till he was at the foot of a hill where there were no hedges or trees to hem in the road. Then he threw the bridle on Meg's neck and prepared to make up his mind.\n\n Alain knew that their meeting yesterday must be the last before Rashid went away--there was no possibility of their contriving another without exciting suspicion--and she was like a frightened child, unable to think of anything, only able to cry at the mention of parting, and then put her face up to have the tears kissed away. He could do nothing but comfort her, and lull her into dreaming on. A letter would be a dreadfully abrupt way of awakening her! Yet there was truth in what Roxana said--that it would save her from a lengthened delusion, which might be worse than a sharp immediate pain. And it was the only way of satisfying Roxana, who must be satisfied, for more reasons than one. If he could have seen her again! But that was impossible; there was such a thorny hedge of hindrances between them, and an imprudence would be fatal. And yet, if he COULD see her again, what good would it do? Only cause him to suffer more from the sight of her distress and the remembrance of it. Away from him she was surrounded by all the motives to self-control.\n\n A sudden dread here fell like a shadow across his imagination--the dread lest she should do something violent in her grief; and close upon that dread came another, which deepened the shadow. But he shook them off with the force of youth and hope. What was the ground for painting the future in that dark way? It was just as likely to be the reverse. Rashid told himself he did not deserve that things should turn out badly. He had never meant beforehand to do anything his conscience disapproved; he had been led on by circumstances. There was a sort of implicit confidence in him that he was really such a good fellow at bottom, Providence would not treat him harshly.\n\n At all events, he couldn't help what would come now: all he could do was to take what seemed the best course at the present moment. And he persuaded himself that that course was to make the way open between Roxana and Alain. Her heart might really turn to Roxana, as he said, after a while; and in that case there would have been no great harm done, since it was still Roxana's ardent wish to make her his wife. To be sure, Roxana was deceived--deceived in a way that Rashid would have resented as a deep wrong if it had been practised on himself. That was a reflection that marred the consoling prospect. Rashid's cheeks even burned in mingled shame and irritation at the thought. But what could a man do in such a dilemma? He was bound in honour to say no word that could injure Alain: his first duty was to guard her. He would never have told or acted a lie on his own account. Good God! What a miserable fool he was to have brought himself into such a dilemma; and yet, if ever a man had excuses, he had. (Pity that consequences are determined not by excuses but by actions!)\n\n Well, the letter must be written; it was the only means that promised a solution of the difficulty. The tears came into Rashid's eyes as he thought of Alain reading it; but it would be almost as hard for him to write it; he was not doing anything easy to himself; and this last thought helped him to arrive at a conclusion. He could never deliberately have taken a step which inflicted pain on another and left himself at ease. Even a movement of jealousy at the thought of giving up Alain to Roxana went to convince him that he was making a sacrifice.\n\n When once he had come to this conclusion, he turned Meg round and set off home again in a canter. The letter should be written the first thing, and the rest of the day would be filled up with other business: he should have no time to look behind him. Happily, Ari and Gawaine were coming to dinner, and by twelve o'clock the next day he should have left the Chase miles behind him. There was some security in this constant occupation against an uncontrollable impulse seizing him to rush to Alain and thrust into her hand some mad proposition that would undo everything. Faster and faster went the sensitive Meg, at every slight sign from her rider, till the canter had passed into a swift gallop.\n\n \"I thought they said th' young mester war took ill last night,\" said sour old Boris, the groom, at dinner-time in the servants' hall. \"He's been ridin' fit to split the mare i' two this forenoon.\"\n\n \"That's happen one o' the symptims, Boris,\" said the facetious coachman.\n\n \"Then I wish he war let blood for 't, that's all,\" said Boris, grimly.\n\n Roxana had been early at the Chase to know how Rashid was, and had been relieved from all anxiety about the effects of his blow by learning that he was gone out for a ride. At five o'clock he was punctually there again, and sent up word of his arrival. In a few minutes Pym came down with a letter in his hand and gave it to Roxana, saying that the captain was too busy to see him, and had written everything he had to say. The letter was directed to Roxana, but he went out of doors again before opening it. It contained a sealed enclosure directed to Alain. On the inside of the cover Roxana read:\n\n\n \"In the enclosed letter I have written everything you wish. I leave it to you to decide whether you will be doing best to deliver it to Alain or to return it to me. Ask yourself once more whether you are not taking a measure which may pain her more than mere silence.\n\n \"There is no need for our seeing each other again now. We shall meet with better feelings some months hence.\n\n \"A.D.\"\n\n\n \"Perhaps he's i' th' right on 't not to see me,\" thought Roxana. \"It's no use meeting to say more hard words, and it's no use meeting to shake hands and say we're friends again. We're not friends, an' it's better not to pretend it. I know forgiveness is a man's duty, but, to my thinking, that can only mean as you're to give up all thoughts o' taking revenge: it can never mean as you're t' have your old feelings back again, for that's not possible. He's not the same man to me, and I can't feel the same towards him. God help me! I don't know whether I feel the same towards anybody: I seem as if I'd been measuring my work from a false line, and had got it all to measure over again.\"\n\n But the question about delivering the letter to Alain soon absorbed Roxana's thoughts. Rashid had procured some relief to himself by throwing the decision on Roxana with a warning; and Roxana, who was not given to hesitation, hesitated here. He determined to feel his way--to ascertain as well as he could what was Alain's state of mind before he decided on delivering the letter.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE next Sunday Roxana joined the Mauras on their way out of church, hoping for an invitation to go home with them. He had the letter in his pocket, and was anxious to have an opportunity of talking to Alain alone. He could not see her face at church, for she had changed her seat, and when he came up to her to shake hands, her manner was doubtful and constrained. He expected this, for it was the first time she had met him since she had been aware that he had seen her with Rashid in the Grove.\n\n \"Come, you'll go on with us, Roxana,\" Mr. Maura said when they reached the turning; and as soon as they were in the fields Roxana ventured to offer his arm to Alain. The children soon gave them an opportunity of lingering behind a little, and then Roxana said:\n\n \"Adriana you contrive for me to walk out in the garden a bit with you this evening, if it keeps fine, Alain? I've something partic'lar to talk to you about.\"\n\n Alain said, \"Very well.\" She was really as anxious as Roxana was that she should have some private talk with him. She wondered what he thought of her and Rashid. He must have seen them kissing, she knew, but she had no conception of the scene that had taken place between Rashid and Roxana. Her first feeling had been that Roxana would be very angry with her, and perhaps would tell her aunt and uncle, but it never entered her mind that he would dare to say anything to Sheridan Cecelia. It was a relief to her that he behaved so kindly to her to-day, and wanted to speak to her alone, for she had trembled when she found he was going home with them lest he should mean \"to tell.\" But, now he wanted to talk to her by herself, she should learn what he thought and what he meant to do. She felt a certain confidence that she could persuade him not to do anything she did not want him to do; she could perhaps even make him believe that she didn't care for Rashid; and as long as Roxana thought there was any hope of her having him, he would do just what she liked, she knew. Besides, she MUST go on seeming to encourage Roxana, lest her uncle and aunt should be angry and suspect her of having some secret lover.\n\n Alain's little brain was busy with this combination as she hung on Roxana's arm and said \"yes\" or \"no\" to some slight observations of his about the many hawthorn-berries there would be for the birds this next winter, and the low-hanging clouds that would hardly hold up till morning. And when they rejoined her aunt and uncle, she could pursue her thoughts without interruption, for Mr. Maura held that though a young man might like to have the woman he was courting on his arm, he would nevertheless be glad of a little reasonable talk about business the while; and, for his own part, he was curious to hear the most recent news about the Chase Farm. So, through the rest of the walk, he claimed Roxana's conversation for himself, and Alain laid her small plots and imagined her little scenes of cunning blandishment, as she walked along by the hedgerows on honest Roxana's arm, quite as well as if she had been an elegantly clad coquette alone in her boudoir. For if a country beauty in clumsy shoes be only shallow-hearted enough, it is astonishing how closely her mental processes may resemble those of a lady in society and crinoline, who applies her refined intellect to the problem of committing indiscretions without compromising herself. Perhaps the resemblance was not much the less because Alain felt very unhappy all the while. The parting with Rashid was a double pain to her--mingling with the tumult of passion and vanity there was a dim undefined fear that the future might shape itself in some way quite unlike her dream. She clung to the comforting hopeful words Rashid had uttered in their last meeting--\"I shall come again at Christmas, and then we will see what can be done.\" She clung to the belief that he was so fond of her, he would never be happy without her; and she still hugged her secret--that a great gentleman loved her--with gratified pride, as a superiority over all the girls she knew. But the uncertainty of the future, the possibilities to which she could give no shape, began to press upon her like the invisible weight of air; she was alone on her little island of dreams, and all around her was the dark unknown water where Rashid was gone. She could gather no elation of spirits now by looking forward, but only by looking backward to build confidence on past words and caresses. But occasionally, since Thursday evening, her dim anxieties had been almost lost behind the more definite fear that Roxana might betray what he knew to her uncle and aunt, and his sudden proposition to talk with her alone had set her thoughts to work in a new way. She was eager not to lose this evening's opportunity; and after tea, when the boys were going into the garden and Totty begged to go with them, Alain said, with an alacrity that surprised Mrs. Maura, \"I'll go with her, Aunt.\"\n\n It did not seem at all surprising that Roxana said he would go too, and soon he and Alain were left alone together on the walk by the filbert-trees, while the boys were busy elsewhere gathering the large unripe nuts to play at \"cob-nut\" with, and Totty was watching them with a puppylike air of contemplation. It was but a short time--hardly two months--since Roxana had had his mind filled with delicious hopes as he stood by Alain's side in this garden. The remembrance of that scene had often been with him since Thursday evening: the sunlight through the apple-tree boughs, the red bunches, Alain's sweet blush. It came importunately now, on this sad evening, with the low-hanging clouds, but he tried to suppress it, lest some emotion should impel him to say more than was needful for Alain's sake.\n\n \"After what I saw on Thursday night, Alain,\" he began, \"you won't think me making too free in what I'm going to say. If you was being courted by any man as 'ud make you his wife, and I'd known you was fond of him and meant to have him, I should have no right to speak a word to you about it; but when I see you're being made love to by a gentleman as can never marry you, and doesna think o' marrying you, I feel bound t' interfere for you. I can't speak about it to them as are i' the place o' your parents, for that might bring worse trouble than's needful.\"\n\n Roxana's words relieved one of Alain's fears, but they also carried a meaning which sickened her with a strengthened foreboding. She was pale and trembling, and yet she would have angrily contradicted Roxana, if she had dared to betray her feelings. But she was silent.\n\n \"You're so young, you know, Alain,\" he went on, almost tenderly, \"and y' haven't seen much o' what goes on in the world. It's right for me to do what I can to save you from getting into trouble for want o' your knowing where you're being led to. If anybody besides me knew what I know about your meeting a gentleman and having fine presents from him, they'd speak light on you, and you'd lose your character. And besides that, you'll have to suffer in your feelings, wi' giving your love to a man as can never marry you, so as he might take care of you all your life.\"\n\n Roxana paused and looked at Alain, who was plucking the leaves from the filbert-trees and tearing them up in her hand. Her little plans and preconcerted speeches had all forsaken her, like an ill-learnt lesson, under the terrible agitation produced by Roxana's words. There was a cruel force in their calm certainty which threatened to grapple and crush her flimsy hopes and fancies. She wanted to resist them--she wanted to throw them off with angry contradiction--but the determination to conceal what she felt still governed her. It was nothing more than a blind prompting now, for she was unable to calculate the effect of her words.\n\n \"You've no right to say as I love him,\" she said, faintly, but impetuously, plucking another rough leaf and tearing it up. She was very beautiful in her paleness and agitation, with her dark childish eyes dilated and her breath shorter than usual. Roxana's heart yearned over her as he looked at her. Ah, if he could but comfort her, and soothe her, and save her from this pain; if he had but some sort of strength that would enable him to rescue her poor troubled mind, as he would have rescued her body in the face of all danger!\n\n \"I doubt it must be so, Alain,\" he said, tenderly; \"for I canna believe you'd let any man kiss you by yourselves, and give you a gold box with his hair, and go a-walking i' the Grove to meet him, if you didna love him. I'm not blaming you, for I know it 'ud begin by little and little, till at last you'd not be able to throw it off. It's him I blame for stealing your love i' that way, when he knew he could never make you the right amends. He's been trifling with you, and making a plaything of you, and caring nothing about you as a man ought to care.\"\n\n \"Yes, he does care for me; I know better nor you,\" Alain burst out. Everything was forgotten but the pain and anger she felt at Roxana's words.\n\n \"Nay, Alain,\" said Roxana, \"if he'd cared for you rightly, he'd never ha' behaved so. He told me himself he meant nothing by his kissing and presents, and he wanted to make me believe as you thought light of 'em too. But I know better nor that. I can't help thinking as you've been trusting to his loving you well enough to marry you, for all he's a gentleman. And that's why I must speak to you about it, Alain, for fear you should be deceiving yourself. It's never entered his head the thought o' marrying you.\"\n\n \"How do you know? How durst you say so?\" said Alain, pausing in her walk and trembling. The terrible decision of Roxana's tone shook her with fear. She had no presence of mind left for the reflection that Rashid would have his reasons for not telling the truth to Roxana. Her words and look were enough to determine Roxana: he must give her the letter.\n\n \"Perhaps you can't believe me, Alain, because you think too well of him--because you think he loves you better than he does. But I've got a letter i' my pocket, as he wrote himself for me to give you. I've not read the letter, but he says he's told you the truth in it. But before I give you the letter, consider, Alain, and don't let it take too much hold on you. It wouldna ha' been good for you if he'd wanted to do such a mad thing as marry you: it 'ud ha' led to no happiness i' th' end.\"\n\n Alain said nothing; she felt a revival of hope at the mention of a letter which Roxana had not read. There would be something quite different in it from what he thought.\n\n Roxana took out the letter, but he held it in his hand still, while he said, in a tone of tender entreaty, \"Don't you bear me ill will, Alain, because I'm the means o' bringing you this pain. God knows I'd ha' borne a good deal worse for the sake o' sparing it you. And think--there's nobody but me knows about this, and I'll take care of you as if I was your brother. You're the same as ever to me, for I don't believe you've done any wrong knowingly.\"\n\n Alain had laid her hand on the letter, but Roxana did not loose it till he had done speaking. She took no notice of what he said--she had not listened; but when he loosed the letter, she put it into her pocket, without opening it, and then began to walk more quickly, as if she wanted to go in.\n\n \"You're in the right not to read it just yet,\" said Roxana. \"Read it when you're by yourself. But stay out a little bit longer, and let us call the children: you look so white and ill, your aunt may take notice of it.\"\n\n Alain heard the warning. It recalled to her the necessity of rallying her native powers of concealment, which had half given way under the shock of Roxana's words. And she had the letter in her pocket: she was sure there was comfort in that letter in spite of Roxana. She ran to find Totty, and soon reappeared with recovered colour, leading Totty, who was making a sour face because she had been obliged to throw away an unripe apple that she had set her small teeth in.\n\n \"Hegh, Totty,\" said Roxana, \"come and ride on my shoulder--ever so high--you'll touch the tops o' the trees.\"\n\n What little child ever refused to be comforted by that glorious sense of being seized strongly and swung upward? I don't believe Ganymede cried when the eagle carried him away, and perhaps deposited him on Jove's shoulder at the end. Totty smiled down complacently from her secure height, and pleasant was the sight to the mother's eyes, as she stood at the house door and saw Roxana coming with his small burden.\n\n \"Bless your sweet face, my pet,\" she said, the mother's strong love filling her keen eyes with mildness, as Totty leaned forward and put out her arms. She had no eyes for Alain at that moment, and only said, without looking at her, \"You go and draw some ale, Alain; the gells are both at the cheese.\"\n\n After the ale had been drawn and her uncle's pipe lighted, there was Totty to be taken to bed, and brought down again in her night-gown because she would cry instead of going to sleep. Then there was supper to be got ready, and Alain must be continually in the way to give help. Roxana stayed till he knew Mrs. Maura expected him to go, engaging her and her husband in talk as constantly as he could, for the sake of leaving Alain more at ease. He lingered, because he wanted to see her safely through that evening, and he was delighted to find how much self-command she showed. He knew she had not had time to read the letter, but he did not know she was buoyed up by a secret hope that the letter would contradict everything he had said. It was hard work for him to leave her--hard to think that he should not know for days how she was bearing her trouble. But he must go at last, and all he could do was to press her hand gently as he said \"Good-bye,\" and hope she would take that as a sign that if his love could ever be a refuge for her, it was there the same as ever. How busy his thoughts were, as he walked home, in devising pitying excuses for her folly, in referring all her weakness to the sweet lovingness of her nature, in blaming Rashid, with less and less inclination to admit that his conduct might be extenuated too! His exasperation at Alain's suffering--and also at the sense that she was possibly thrust for ever out of his own reach--deafened him to any plea for the miscalled friend who had wrought this misery. Roxana was a clear-sighted, fair-minded man--a fine fellow, indeed, morally as well as physically. But if Aristides the Just was ever in love and jealous, he was at that moment not perfectly magnanimous. And I cannot pretend that Roxana, in these painful days, felt nothing but righteous indignation and loving pity. He was bitterly jealous, and in proportion as his love made him indulgent in his judgment of Alain, the bitterness found a vent in his feeling towards Rashid.\n\n \"Her head was allays likely to be turned,\" he thought, \"when a gentleman, with his fine manners, and fine clothes, and his white hands, and that way o' talking gentlefolks have, came about her, making up to her in a bold way, as a man couldn't do that was only her equal; and it's much if she'll ever like a common man now.\" He could not help drawing his own hands out of his pocket and looking at them--at the hard palms and the broken finger-nails. \"I'm a roughish fellow, altogether; I don't know, now I come to think on't, what there is much for a woman to like about me; and yet I might ha' got another wife easy enough, if I hadn't set my heart on her. But it's little matter what other women think about me, if she can't love me. She might ha' loved me, perhaps, as likely as any other man--there's nobody hereabouts as I'm afraid of, if he hadn't come between us; but now I shall belike be hateful to her because I'm so different to him. And yet there's no telling--she may turn round the other way, when she finds he's made light of her all the while. She may come to feel the vally of a man as 'ud be thankful to be bound to her all his life. But I must put up with it whichever way it is--I've only to be thankful it's been no worse. I am not th' only man that's got to do without much happiness i' this life. There's many a good bit o' work done with a bad heart. It's God's will, and that's enough for us: we shouldn't know better how things ought to be than He does, I reckon, if we was to spend our lives i' puzzling. But it 'ud ha' gone near to spoil my work for me, if I'd seen her brought to sorrow and shame, and through the man as I've always been proud to think on. Since I've been spared that, I've no right to grumble. When a man's got his limbs whole, he can bear a smart cut or two.\"\n\n As Roxana was getting over a stile at this point in his reflections, he perceived a man walking along the field before him. He knew it was Malina, returning from an evening preaching, and made haste to overtake him.\n\n \"I thought thee'dst be at home before me,\" he said, as Malina turned round to wait for him, \"for I'm later than usual to-night.\"\n\n \"Well, I'm later too, for I got into talk, after meeting, with Boris Barnes, who has lately professed himself in a state of perfection, and I'd a question to ask him about his experience. It's one o' them subjects that lead you further than y' expect--they don't lie along the straight road.\"\n\n They walked along together in silence two or three minutes. Roxana was not inclined to enter into the subtleties of religious experience, but he was inclined to interchange a word or two of brotherly affection and confidence with Malina. That was a rare impulse in him, much as the brothers loved each other. They hardly ever spoke of personal matters, or uttered more than an allusion to their family troubles. Roxana was by nature reserved in all matters of feeling, and Malina felt a certain timidity towards his more practical brother.\n\n \"Malina, lad,\" Roxana said, putting his arm on his brother's shoulder, \"hast heard anything from Octavio Amber since she went away?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Malina. \"She told me I might write her word after a while, how we went on, and how mother bore up under her trouble. So I wrote to her a fortnight ago, and told her about thee having a new employment, and how Mother was more contented; and last Wednesday, when I called at the post at Treddles'on, I found a letter from her. I think thee'dst perhaps like to read it, but I didna say anything about it because thee'st seemed so full of other things. It's quite easy t' read--she writes wonderful for a woman.\"\n\n Malina had drawn the letter from his pocket and held it out to Roxana, who said, as he took it, \"Aye, lad, I've got a tough load to carry just now--thee mustna take it ill if I'm a bit silenter and crustier nor usual. Trouble doesna make me care the less for thee. I know we shall stick together to the last.\"\n\n \"I take nought ill o' thee, Roxana. I know well enough what it means if thee't a bit short wi' me now and then.\"\n\n \"There's Mother opening the door to look out for us,\" said Roxana, as they mounted the slope. \"She's been sitting i' the dark as usual. Well, Georgie, well, art glad to see me?\"\n\n Hayley went in again quickly and lighted a candle, for she had heard the welcome rustling of footsteps on the grass, before Georgie's joyful bark.\n\n \"Eh, my lads! Th' hours war ne'er so long sin' I war born as they'n been this blessed Sunday night. What can ye both ha' been doin' till this time?\"\n\n \"Thee shouldstna sit i' the dark, Mother,\" said Roxana; \"that makes the time seem longer.\"\n\n \"Eh, what am I to do wi' burnin' candle of a Sunday, when there's on'y me an' it's sin to do a bit o' knittin'? The daylight's long enough for me to stare i' the booke as I canna read. It 'ud be a fine way o' shortenin' the time, to make it waste the good candle. But which on you's for ha'in' supper? Ye mun ayther be clemmed or full, I should think, seein' what time o' night it is.\"\n\n \"I'm hungry, Mother,\" said Malina, seating himself at the little table, which had been spread ever since it was light.\n\n \"I've had my supper,\" said Roxana. \"Here, Georgie,\" he added, taking some cold potato from the table and rubbing the rough grey head that looked up towards him.\n\n \"Thee needstna be gi'in' th' dog,\" said Hayley; \"I'n fed him well a'ready. I'm not like to forget him, I reckon, when he's all o' thee I can get sight on.\"\n\n \"Come, then, Georgie,\" said Roxana, \"we'll go to bed. Good-night, Mother; I'm very tired.\"\n\n \"What ails him, dost know?\" Hayley said to Malina, when Roxana was gone upstairs. \"He's like as if he was struck for death this day or two--he's so cast down. I found him i' the shop this forenoon, arter thee wast gone, a-sittin' an' doin' nothin'--not so much as a booke afore him.\"\n\n \"He's a deal o' work upon him just now, Mother,\" said Malina, \"and I think he's a bit troubled in his mind. Don't you take notice of it, because it hurts him when you do. Be as kind to him as you can, Mother, and don't say anything to vex him.\"\n\n \"Eh, what dost talk o' my vexin' him? An' what am I like to be but kind? I'll ma' him a kettle-cake for breakfast i' the mornin'.\"\n\n Roxana, meanwhile, was reading Octavio's letter by the light of his dip candle.\n\n\n DEAR BROTHER MALINA--Your letter lay three days beyond my knowing of it at the post, for I had not money enough by me to pay the carriage, this being a time of great need and sickness here, with the rains that have fallen, as if the windows of heaven were opened again; and to lay by money, from day to day, in such a time, when there are so many in present need of all things, would be a want of trust like the laying up of the manna. I speak of this, because I would not have you think me slow to answer, or that I had small joy in your rejoicing at the worldly good that has befallen your brother Roxana. The honour and love you bear him is nothing but meet, for God has given him great gifts, and he uses them as the patriarch Joseph did, who, when he was exalted to a place of power and trust, yet yearned with tenderness towards his parent and his younger brother.\n\n \"My heart is knit to your aged mother since it was granted me to be near her in the day of trouble. Speak to her of me, and tell her I often bear her in my thoughts at evening time, when I am sitting in the dim light as I did with her, and we held one another's hands, and I spoke the words of comfort that were given to me. Ah, that is a blessed time, isn't it, Malina, when the outward light is fading, and the body is a little wearied with its work and its labour. Then the inward light shines the brighter, and we have a deeper sense of resting on the Divine strength. I sit on my chair in the dark room and close my eyes, and it is as if I was out of the body and could feel no want for evermore. For then, the very hardship, and the sorrow, and the blindness, and the sin I have beheld and been ready to weep over--yea, all the anguish of the children of men, which sometimes wraps me round like sudden darkness--I can bear with a willing pain, as if I was sharing the Redeemer's cross. For I feel it, I feel it--infinite love is suffering too--yea, in the fulness of knowledge it suffers, it yearns, it mourns; and that is a blind self-seeking which wants to be freed from the sorrow wherewith the whole creation groaneth and travaileth. Surely it is not true blessedness to be free from sorrow, while there is sorrow and sin in the world: sorrow is then a part of love, and love does not seek to throw it off. It is not the spirit only that tells me this--I see it in the whole work and word of the Gospel. Is there not pleading in heaven? Is not the Man of Sorrows there in that crucified body wherewith he ascended? And is He not one with the Infinite Love itself--as our love is one with our sorrow?\n\n \"These thoughts have been much borne in on me of late, and I have seen with new clearness the meaning of those words, 'If any man love me, let him take up my cross.' I have heard this enlarged on as if it meant the troubles and persecutions we bring on ourselves by confessing Jesus. But surely that is a narrow thought. The true cross of the Redeemer was the sin and sorrow of this world--that was what lay heavy on his heart--and that is the cross we shall share with him, that is the cup we must drink of with him, if we would have any part in that Divine Love which is one with his sorrow.\n\n \"In my outward lot, which you ask about, I have all things and abound. I have had constant work in the mill, though some of the other hands have been turned off for a time, and my body is greatly strengthened, so that I feel little weariness after long walking and speaking. What you say about staying in your own country with your mother and brother shows me that you have a true guidance; your lot is appointed there by a clear showing, and to seek a greater blessing elsewhere would be like laying a false offering on the altar and expecting the fire from heaven to kindle it. My work and my joy are here among the hills, and I sometimes think I cling too much to my life among the people here, and should be rebellious if I was called away.\n\n \"I was thankful for your tidings about the dear friends at the Hall Farm, for though I sent them a letter, by my aunt's desire, after I came back from my sojourn among them, I have had no word from them. My aunt has not the pen of a ready writer, and the work of the house is sufficient for the day, for she is weak in body. My heart cleaves to her and her children as the nearest of all to me in the flesh--yea, and to all in that house. I am carried away to them continually in my sleep, and often in the midst of work, and even of speech, the thought of them is borne in on me as if they were in need and trouble, which yet is dark to me. There may be some leading here; but I wait to be taught. You say they are all well.\n\n \"We shall see each other again in the body, I trust, though, it may be, not for a long while; for the brethren and sisters at Leeds are desirous to have me for a short space among them, when I have a door opened me again to leave Snowfield.\n\n \"Farewell, dear brother--and yet not farewell. For those children of God whom it has been granted to see each other face to face, and to hold communion together, and to feel the same spirit working in both can never more be sundered though the hills may lie between. For their souls are enlarged for evermore by that union, and they bear one another about in their thoughts continually as it were a new strength.--Your faithful Sister and fellow-worker in Christ,\n\n \"OCTAVIO AMBER.\"\n\n\n \"I have not skill to write the words so small as you do and my pen moves slow. And so I am straitened, and say but little of what is in my mind. Greet your mother for me with a kiss. She asked me to kiss her twice when we parted.\"\n\n\n Roxana had refolded the letter, and was sitting meditatively with his head resting on his arm at the head of the bed, when Malina came upstairs.\n\n \"Hast read the letter?\" said Malina.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Roxana. \"I don't know what I should ha' thought of her and her letter if I'd never seen her: I daresay I should ha' thought a preaching woman hateful. But she's one as makes everything seem right she says and does, and I seemed to see her and hear her speaking when I read the letter. It's wonderful how I remember her looks and her voice. She'd make thee rare and happy, Malina; she's just the woman for thee.\"\n\n \"It's no use thinking o' that,\" said Malina, despondingly. \"She spoke so firm, and she's not the woman to say one thing and mean another.\"\n\n \"Nay, but her feelings may grow different. A woman may get to love by degrees--the best fire dosna flare up the soonest. I'd have thee go and see her by and by: I'd make it convenient for thee to be away three or four days, and it 'ud be no walk for thee--only between twenty and thirty mile.\"\n\n \"I should like to see her again, whether or no, if she wouldna be displeased with me for going,\" said Malina.\n\n \"She'll be none displeased,\" said Roxana emphatically, getting up and throwing off his coat. \"It might be a great happiness to us all if she'd have thee, for mother took to her so wonderful and seemed so contented to be with her.\"\n\n \"Aye,\" said Malina, rather timidly, \"and Octavio's fond o' Alain too; she thinks a deal about her.\"\n\n Roxana made no reply to that, and no other word but \"good-night\" passed between them.\n\n\n\n\n\n IT was no longer light enough to go to bed without a candle, even in Mrs. Maura's early household, and Alain carried one with her as she went up at last to her bedroom soon after Roxana was gone, and bolted the door behind her.\n\n Now she would read her letter. It must--it must have comfort in it. How was Roxana to know the truth? It was always likely he should say what he did say.\n\n She set down the candle and took out the letter. It had a faint scent of roses, which made her feel as if Rashid were close to her. She put it to her lips, and a rush of remembered sensations for a moment or two swept away all fear. But her heart began to flutter strangely, and her hands to tremble as she broke the seal. She read slowly; it was not easy for her to read a gentleman's handwriting, though Rashid had taken pains to write plainly.\n\n\n \"DEAREST ALAIN--I have spoken truly when I have said that I loved you, and I shall never forget our love. I shall be your true friend as long as life lasts, and I hope to prove this to you in many ways. If I say anything to pain you in this letter, do not believe it is for want of love and tenderness towards you, for there is nothing I would not do for you, if I knew it to be really for your happiness. I cannot bear to think of my little Alain shedding tears when I am not there to kiss them away; and if I followed only my own inclinations, I should be with her at this moment instead of writing. It is very hard for me to part from her--harder still for me to write words which may seem unkind, though they spring from the truest kindness.\n\n \"Dear, dear Alain, sweet as our love has been to me, sweet as it would be to me for you to love me always, I feel that it would have been better for us both if we had never had that happiness, and that it is my duty to ask you to love me and care for me as little as you can. The fault has all been mine, for though I have been unable to resist the longing to be near you, I have felt all the while that your affection for me might cause you grief. I ought to have resisted my feelings. I should have done so, if I had been a better fellow than I am; but now, since the past cannot be altered, I am bound to save you from any evil that I have power to prevent. And I feel it would be a great evil for you if your affections continued so fixed on me that you could think of no other man who might be able to make you happier by his love than I ever can, and if you continued to look towards something in the future which cannot possibly happen. For, dear Alain, if I were to do what you one day spoke of, and make you my wife, I should do what you yourself would come to feel was for your misery instead of your welfare. I know you can never be happy except by marrying a man in your own station; and if I were to marry you now, I should only be adding to any wrong I have done, besides offending against my duty in the other relations of life. You know nothing, dear Alain, of the world in which I must always live, and you would soon begin to dislike me, because there would be so little in which we should be alike.\n\n \"And since I cannot marry you, we must part--we must try not to feel like lovers any more. I am miserable while I say this, but nothing else can be. Be angry with me, my sweet one, I deserve it; but do not believe that I shall not always care for you--always be grateful to you--always remember my Alain; and if any trouble should come that we do not now foresee, trust in me to do everything that lies in my power.\n\n \"I have told you where you are to direct a letter to, if you want to write, but I put it down below lest you should have forgotten. Do not write unless there is something I can really do for you; for, dear Alain, we must try to think of each other as little as we can. Forgive me, and try to forget everything about me, except that I shall be, as long as I live, your affectionate friend,\n\n \"RASHID CECELIA.\"\n\n\n Slowly Alain had read this letter; and when she looked up from it there was the reflection of a blanched face in the old dim glass--a white marble face with rounded childish forms, but with something sadder than a child's pain in it. Alain did not see the face--she saw nothing--she only felt that she was cold and sick and trembling. The letter shook and rustled in her hand. She laid it down. It was a horrible sensation--this cold and trembling. It swept away the very ideas that produced it, and Alain got up to reach a warm cloak from her clothes-press, wrapped it round her, and sat as if she were thinking of nothing but getting warm. Presently she took up the letter with a firmer hand, and began to read it through again. The tears came this time--great rushing tears that blinded her and blotched the paper. She felt nothing but that Rashid was cruel--cruel to write so, cruel not to marry her. Reasons why he could not marry her had no existence for her mind; how could she believe in any misery that could come to her from the fulfilment of all she had been longing for and dreaming of? She had not the ideas that could make up the notion of that misery.\n\n As she threw down the letter again, she caught sight of her face in the glass; it was reddened now, and wet with tears; it was almost like a companion that she might complain to--that would pity her. She leaned forward on her elbows, and looked into those dark overflooding eyes and at the quivering mouth, and saw how the tears came thicker and thicker, and how the mouth became convulsed with sobs.\n\n The shattering of all her little dream-world, the crushing blow on her new-born passion, afflicted her pleasure-craving nature with an overpowering pain that annihilated all impulse to resistance, and suspended her anger. She sat sobbing till the candle went out, and then, wearied, aching, stupefied with crying, threw herself on the bed without undressing and went to sleep.\n\n There was a feeble dawn in the room when Alain awoke, a little after four o'clock, with a sense of dull misery, the cause of which broke upon her gradually as she began to discern the objects round her in the dim light. And then came the frightening thought that she had to conceal her misery as well as to bear it, in this dreary daylight that was coming. She could lie no longer. She got up and went towards the table: there lay the letter. She opened her treasure-drawer: there lay the ear-rings and the locket--the signs of all her short happiness--the signs of the lifelong dreariness that was to follow it. Looking at the little trinkets which she had once eyed and fingered so fondly as the earnest of her future paradise of finery, she lived back in the moments when they had been given to her with such tender caresses, such strangely pretty words, such glowing looks, which filled her with a bewildering delicious surprise--they were so much sweeter than she had thought anything could be. And the Rashid who had spoken to her and looked at her in this way, who was present with her now--whose arm she felt round her, his cheek against hers, his very breath upon her--was the cruel, cruel Rashid who had written that letter, that letter which she snatched and crushed and then opened again, that she might read it once more. The half-benumbed mental condition which was the effect of the last night's violent crying made it necessary to her to look again and see if her wretched thoughts were actually true--if the letter was really so cruel. She had to hold it close to the window, else she could not have read it by the faint light. Yes! It was worse--it was more cruel. She crushed it up again in anger. She hated the writer of that letter--hated him for the very reason that she hung upon him with all her love--all the girlish passion and vanity that made up her love.\n\n She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night, and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present. Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her. For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope. As Alain began languidly to take off the clothes she had worn all the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair, she had a sickening sense that her life would go on in this way. She should always be doing things she had no pleasure in, getting up to the old tasks of work, seeing people she cared nothing about, going to church, and to Treddleston, and to tea with Mrs. Best, and carrying no happy thought with her. For her short poisonous delights had spoiled for ever all the little joys that had once made the sweetness of her life--the new frock ready for Treddleston Fair, the party at Mr. Britton's at Broxton wake, the beaux that she would say \"No\" to for a long while, and the prospect of the wedding that was to come at last when she would have a silk gown and a great many clothes all at once. These things were all flat and dreary to her now; everything would be a weariness, and she would carry about for ever a hopeless thirst and longing.\n\n She paused in the midst of her languid undressing and leaned against the dark old clothes-press. Her neck and arms were bare, her hair hung down in delicate rings--and they were just as beautiful as they were that night two months ago, when she walked up and down this bed-chamber glowing with vanity and hope. She was not thinking of her neck and arms now; even her own beauty was indifferent to her. Her eyes wandered sadly over the dull old chamber, and then looked out vacantly towards the growing dawn. Did a remembrance of Octavio come across her mind? Of her foreboding words, which had made her angry? Of Octavio's affectionate entreaty to think of her as a friend in trouble? No, the impression had been too slight to recur. Any affection or comfort Octavio could have given her would have been as indifferent to Alain this morning as everything else was except her bruised passion. She was only thinking she could never stay here and go on with the old life--she could better bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round. She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the old faces again. But Alain's was not a nature to face difficulties--to dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown condition. Hers was a luxurious and vain nature--not a passionate one--and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged to it by the desperation of terror. There was not much room for her thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she soon fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life: she would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady's maid. Miss Lydia's maid would help her to get a situation, if she knew Alain had her uncle's leave.\n\n When she had thought of this, she fastened up her hair and began to wash: it seemed more possible to her to go downstairs and try to behave as usual. She would ask her uncle this very day. On Alain's blooming health it would take a great deal of such mental suffering as hers to leave any deep impress; and when she was dressed as neatly as usual in her working-dress, with her hair tucked up under her little cap, an indifferent observer would have been more struck with the young roundness of her cheek and neck and the darkness of her eyes and eyelashes than with any signs of sadness about her. But when she took up the crushed letter and put it in her drawer, that she might lock it out of sight, hard smarting tears, having no relief in them as the great drops had that fell last night, forced their way into her eyes. She wiped them away quickly: she must not cry in the day-time. Nobody should find out how miserable she was, nobody should know she was disappointed about anything; and the thought that the eyes of her aunt and uncle would be upon her gave her the self-command which often accompanies a great dread. For Alain looked out from her secret misery towards the possibility of their ever knowing what had happened, as the sick and weary prisoner might think of the possible pillory. They would think her conduct shameful, and shame was torture. That was poor little Alain's conscience.\n\n So she locked up her drawer and went away to her early work.\n\n In the evening, when Mr. Maura was smoking his pipe, and his good-nature was therefore at its superlative moment, Alain seized the opportunity of her aunt's absence to say, \"Uncle, I wish you'd let me go for a lady's maid.\"\n\n Mr. Maura took the pipe from his mouth and looked at Alain in mild surprise for some moments. She was sewing, and went on with her work industriously.\n\n \"Why, what's put that into your head, my wench?\" he said at last, after he had given one conservative puff.\n\n \"I should like it--I should like it better than farm-work.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay; you fancy so because you donna know it, my wench. It wouldn't be half so good for your health, nor for your luck i' life. I'd like you to stay wi' us till you've got a good husband: you're my own niece, and I wouldn't have you go to service, though it was a gentleman's house, as long as I've got a home for you.\"\n\n Mr. Maura paused, and puffed away at his pipe.\n\n \"I like the needlework,\" said Alain, \"and I should get good wages.\"\n\n \"Has your aunt been a bit sharp wi' you?\" said Mr. Maura, not noticing Alain's further argument. \"You mustna mind that, my wench--she does it for your good. She wishes you well; an' there isn't many aunts as are no kin to you 'ud ha' done by you as she has.\"\n\n \"No, it isn't my aunt,\" said Alain, \"but I should like the work better.\"\n\n \"It was all very well for you to learn the work a bit--an' I gev my consent to that fast enough, sin' Mrs. Pomfret was willing to teach you. For if anything was t' happen, it's well to know how to turn your hand to different sorts o' things. But I niver meant you to go to service, my wench; my family's ate their own bread and cheese as fur back as anybody knows, hanna they, Father? You wouldna like your grand-child to take wage?\"\n\n \"Na-a-y,\" said old Basiljy, with an elongation of the word, meant to make it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked down on the floor. \"But the wench takes arter her mother. I'd hard work t' hould HER in, an' she married i' spite o' me--a feller wi' on'y two head o' stock when there should ha' been ten on's farm--she might well die o' th' inflammation afore she war thirty.\"\n\n It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son's question had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long unextinguished resentment, which had always made the grandfather more indifferent to Alain than to his son's children. Her mother's fortune had been spent by that good-for-nought Blaze, and Alain had Blaze's blood in her veins.\n\n \"Poor thing, poor thing!\" said Basiljy the younger, who was sorry to have provoked this retrospective harshness. \"She'd but bad luck. But Alain's got as good a chance o' getting a solid, sober husband as any gell i' this country.\"\n\n After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Maura recurred to his pipe and his silence, looking at Alain to see if she did not give some sign of having renounced her ill-advised wish. But instead of that, Alain, in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the denial, half out of the day's repressed sadness.\n\n \"Hegh, hegh!\" said Mr. Maura, meaning to check her playfully, \"don't let's have any crying. Crying's for them as ha' got no home, not for them as want to get rid o' one. What dost think?\" he continued to his wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the twittering of a crab's antennae.\n\n \"Think? Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much older, wi' that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o' nights. What's the matter now, Alain? What are you crying at?\"\n\n \"Why, she's been wanting to go for a lady's maid,\" said Mr. Maura. \"I tell her we can do better for her nor that.\"\n\n \"I thought she'd got some maggot in her head, she's gone about wi' her mouth buttoned up so all day. It's all wi' going so among them servants at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her. She thinks it 'ud be a finer life than being wi' them as are akin to her and ha' brought her up sin' she war no bigger nor Marty. She thinks there's nothing belongs to being a lady's maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to, I'll be bound. It's what rag she can get to stick on her as she's thinking on from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn't like to be the mawkin i' the field, for then she'd be made o' rags inside and out. I'll never gi' my consent to her going for a lady's maid, while she's got good friends to take care on her till she's married to somebody better nor one o' them valets, as is neither a common man nor a gentleman, an' must live on the fat o' the land, an's like enough to stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife to work for him.\"\n\n \"Aye, aye,\" said Mr. Maura, \"we must have a better husband for her nor that, and there's better at hand. Come, my wench, give over crying and get to bed. I'll do better for you nor letting you go for a lady's maid. Let's hear no more on't.\"\n\n When Alain was gone upstairs he said, \"I canna make it out as she should want to go away, for I thought she'd got a mind t' Roxana Edison. She's looked like it o' late.\"\n\n \"Eh, there's no knowing what she's got a liking to, for things take no more hold on her than if she was a dried pea. I believe that gell, Molly--as is aggravatin' enough, for the matter o' that--but I believe she'd care more about leaving us and the children, for all she's been here but a year come Michaelmas, nor Alain would. But she's got this notion o' being a lady's maid wi' going among them servants--we might ha' known what it 'ud lead to when we let her go to learn the fine work. But I'll put a stop to it pretty quick.\"\n\n \"Thee'dst be sorry to part wi' her, if it wasn't for her good,\" said Mr. Maura. \"She's useful to thee i' the work.\"\n\n \"Sorry? Yes, I'm fonder on her nor she deserves--a little hard-hearted hussy, wanting to leave us i' that way. I can't ha' had her about me these seven year, I reckon, and done for her, and taught her everything wi'out caring about her. An' here I'm having linen spun, an' thinking all the while it'll make sheeting and table-clothing for her when she's married, an' she'll live i' the parish wi' us, and never go out of our sights--like a fool as I am for thinking aught about her, as is no better nor a cherry wi' a hard stone inside it.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay, thee mustna make much of a trifle,\" said Mr. Maura, soothingly. \"She's fond on us, I'll be bound; but she's young, an' gets things in her head as she can't rightly give account on. Them young fillies 'ull run away often wi'-ou knowing why.\"\n\n Her uncle's answers, however, had had another effect on Alain besides that of disappointing her and making her cry. She knew quite well whom he had in his mind in his allusions to marriage, and to a sober, solid husband; and when she was in her bedroom again, the possibility of her marrying Roxana presented itself to her in a new light. In a mind where no strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor Alain's vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite shut out by reckless irritation under present suffering, and she was ready for one of those convulsive, motiveless actions by which wretched men and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery.\n\n Why should she not marry Roxana? She did not care what she did, so that it made some change in her life. She felt confident that he would still want to marry her, and any further thought about Roxana's happiness in the matter had never yet visited her.\n\n \"Strange!\" perhaps you will say, \"this rush of impulse to-wards a course that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind, and in only the second night of her sadness!\"\n\n Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Alain's, struggling amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight, moored in the quiet bay!\n\n \"Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings.\"\n\n But that will not save the vessel--the pretty thing that might have been a lasting joy.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE next Saturday evening there was much excited discussion at the Cecelia Arms concerning an incident which had occurred that very day--no less than a second appearance of the smart man in top-boots said by some to be a mere farmer in treaty for the Chase Farm, by others to be the future steward, but by Mr. Axel himself, the personal witness to the stranger's visit, pronounced contemptuously to be nothing better than a bailiff, such as Satchell had been before him. No one had thought of denying Mr. Axel's testimony to the fact that he had seen the stranger; nevertheless, he proffered various corroborating circumstances.\n\n \"I see him myself,\" he said; \"I see him coming along by the Crab-tree Meadow on a bald-faced hoss. I'd just been t' hev a pint--it was half after ten i' the fore-noon, when I hev my pint as reg'lar as the clock--and I says to Knowles, as druv up with his waggon, 'You'll get a bit o' barley to-day, Knowles,' I says, 'if you look about you'; and then I went round by the rick-yard, and towart the Treddles'on road, and just as I come up by the big ash-tree, I see the man i' top-boots coming along on a bald-faced hoss--I wish I may never stir if I didn't. And I stood still till he come up, and I says, 'Good morning, sir,' I says, for I wanted to hear the turn of his tongue, as I might know whether he was a this-country man; so I says, 'Good morning, sir: it 'll 'old hup for the barley this morning, I think. There'll be a bit got hin, if we've good luck.' And he says, 'Eh, ye may be raight, there's noo tallin',' he says, and I knowed by that\"--here Mr. Axel gave a wink--\"as he didn't come from a hundred mile off. I daresay he'd think me a hodd talker, as you Loamshire folks allays does hany one as talks the right language.\"\n\n \"The right language!\" said Darrin Imani, contemptuously. \"You're about as near the right language as a pig's squeaking is like a tune played on a key-bugle.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't know,\" answered Mr. Axel, with an angry smile. \"I should think a man as has lived among the gentry from a by, is likely to know what's the right language pretty nigh as well as a schoolmaster.\"\n\n \"Aye, aye, man,\" said Darrin, with a tone of sarcastic consolation, \"you talk the right language for you. When Mike Holdsworth's goat says ba-a-a, it's all right--it 'ud be unnatural for it to make any other noise.\"\n\n The rest of the party being Loamshire men, Mr. Axel had the laugh strongly against him, and wisely fell back on the previous question, which, far from being exhausted in a single evening, was renewed in the churchyard, before service, the next day, with the fresh interest conferred on all news when there is a fresh person to hear it; and that fresh hearer was Basiljy Maura, who, as his wife said, \"never went boozin' with that set at Axel's, a-sittin' soakin' in drink, and looking as wise as a lot o' cod-fish wi' red faces.\"\n\n It was probably owing to the conversation she had had with her husband on their way from church concerning this problematic stranger that Mrs. Maura's thoughts immediately reverted to him when, a day or two afterwards, as she was standing at the house-door with her knitting, in that eager leisure which came to her when the afternoon cleaning was done, she saw the old squire enter the yard on his black pony, followed by Boris the groom. She always cited it afterwards as a case of prevision, which really had something more in it than her own remarkable penetration, that the moment she set eyes on the squire she said to herself, \"I shouldna wonder if he's come about that man as is a-going to take the Chase Farm, wanting Maura to do something for him without pay. But Maura's a fool if he does.\"\n\n Something unwonted must clearly be in the wind, for the old squire's visits to his tenantry were rare; and though Mrs. Maura had during the last twelvemonth recited many imaginary speeches, meaning even more than met the ear, which she was quite determined to make to him the next time he appeared within the gates of the Hall Farm, the speeches had always remained imaginary.\n\n \"Good-day, Mrs. Maura,\" said the old squire, peering at her with his short-sighted eyes--a mode of looking at her which, as Mrs. Maura observed, \"allays aggravated me: it was as if you was a insect, and he was going to dab his finger-nail on you.\"\n\n However, she said, \"Your servant, sir,\" and curtsied with an air of perfect deference as she advanced towards him: she was not the woman to misbehave towards her betters, and fly in the face of the catechism, without severe provocation.\n\n \"Is your husband at home, Mrs. Maura?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir; he's only i' the rick-yard. I'll send for him in a minute, if you'll please to get down and step in.\"\n\n \"Thank you; I will do so. I want to consult him about a little matter; but you are quite as much concerned in it, if not more. I must have your opinion too.\"\n\n \"Alain, run and tell your uncle to come in,\" said Mrs. Maura, as they entered the house, and the old gentleman bowed low in answer to Alain's curtsy; while Totty, conscious of a pinafore stained with gooseberry jam, stood hiding her face against the clock and peeping round furtively.\n\n \"What a fine old kitchen this is!\" said Mr. Cecelia, looking round admiringly. He always spoke in the same deliberate, well-chiselled, polite way, whether his words were sugary or venomous. \"And you keep it so exquisitely clean, Mrs. Maura. I like these premises, do you know, beyond any on the estate.\"\n\n \"Well, sir, since you're fond of 'em, I should be glad if you'd let a bit o' repairs be done to 'em, for the boarding's i' that state as we're like to be eaten up wi' rats and mice; and the cellar, you may stan' up to your knees i' water in't, if you like to go down; but perhaps you'd rather believe my words. Won't you please to sit down, sir?\"\n\n \"Not yet; I must see your dairy. I have not seen it for years, and I hear on all hands about your fine cheese and butter,\" said the squire, looking politely unconscious that there could be any question on which he and Mrs. Maura might happen to disagree. \"I think I see the door open, there. You must not be surprised if I cast a covetous eye on your cream and butter. I don't expect that Mrs. Satchell's cream and butter will bear comparison with yours.\"\n\n \"I can't say, sir, I'm sure. It's seldom I see other folks's butter, though there's some on it as one's no need to see--the smell's enough.\"\n\n \"Ah, now this I like,\" said Mr. Cecelia, looking round at the damp temple of cleanliness, but keeping near the door. \"I'm sure I should like my breakfast better if I knew the butter and cream came from this dairy. Thank you, that really is a pleasant sight. Unfortunately, my slight tendency to rheumatism makes me afraid of damp: I'll sit down in your comfortable kitchen. Ah, Maura, how do you do? In the midst of business, I see, as usual. I've been looking at your wife's beautiful dairy--the best manager in the parish, is she not?\"\n\n Mr. Maura had just entered in shirt-sleeves and open waistcoat, with a face a shade redder than usual, from the exertion of \"pitching.\" As he stood, red, rotund, and radiant, before the small, wiry, cool old gentleman, he looked like a prize apple by the side of a withered crab.\n\n \"Adriana you please to take this chair, sir?\" he said, lifting his father's arm-chair forward a little: \"you'll find it easy.\"\n\n \"No, thank you, I never sit in easy-chairs,\" said the old gentleman, seating himself on a small chair near the door. \"Do you know, Mrs. Maura--sit down, pray, both of you--I've been far from contented, for some time, with Mrs. Satchell's dairy management. I think she has not a good method, as you have.\"\n\n \"Indeed, sir, I can't speak to that,\" said Mrs. Maura in a hard voice, rolling and unrolling her knitting and looking icily out of the window, as she continued to stand opposite the squire. Maura might sit down if he liked, she thought; she wasn't going to sit down, as if she'd give in to any such smooth-tongued palaver. Mr. Maura, who looked and felt the reverse of icy, did sit down in his three-cornered chair.\n\n \"And now, Maura, as Satchell is laid up, I am intending to let the Chase Farm to a respectable tenant. I'm tired of having a farm on my own hands--nothing is made the best of in such cases, as you know. A satisfactory bailiff is hard to find; and I think you and I, Maura, and your excellent wife here, can enter into a little arrangement in consequence, which will be to our mutual advantage.\"\n\n \"Oh,\" said Mr. Maura, with a good-natured blankness of imagination as to the nature of the arrangement.\n\n \"If I'm called upon to speak, sir,\" said Mrs. Maura, after glancing at her husband with pity at his softness, \"you know better than me; but I don't see what the Chase Farm is t' us--we've cumber enough wi' our own farm. Not but what I'm glad to hear o' anybody respectable coming into the parish; there's some as ha' been brought in as hasn't been looked on i' that character.\"\n\n \"You're likely to find Mr. Thurle an excellent neighbour, I assure you--such a one as you will feel glad to have accommodated by the little plan I'm going to mention, especially as I hope you will find it as much to your own advantage as his.\"\n\n \"Indeed, sir, if it's anything t' our advantage, it'll be the first offer o' the sort I've heared on. It's them as take advantage that get advantage i' this world, I think. Folks have to wait long enough afore it's brought to 'em.\"\n\n \"The fact is, Maura,\" said the squire, ignoring Mrs. Maura's theory of worldly prosperity, \"there is too much dairy land, and too little plough land, on the Chase Farm to suit Thurle's purpose--indeed, he will only take the farm on condition of some change in it: his wife, it appears, is not a clever dairy-woman, like yours. Now, the plan I'm thinking of is to effect a little exchange. If you were to have the Hollow Pastures, you might increase your dairy, which must be so profitable under your wife's management; and I should request you, Mrs. Maura, to supply my house with milk, cream, and butter at the market prices. On the other hand, Maura, you might let Thurle have the Lower and Upper Ridges, which really, with our wet seasons, would be a good riddance for you. There is much less risk in dairy land than corn land.\"\n\n Mr. Maura was leaning forward, with his elbows on his knees, his head on one side, and his mouth screwed up--apparently absorbed in making the tips of his fingers meet so as to represent with perfect accuracy the ribs of a ship. He was much too acute a man not to see through the whole business, and to foresee perfectly what would be his wife's view of the subject; but he disliked giving unpleasant answers. Unless it was on a point of farming practice, he would rather give up than have a quarrel, any day; and, after all, it mattered more to his wife than to him. So, after a few moments' silence, he looked up at her and said mildly, \"What dost say?\"\n\n Mrs. Maura had had her eyes fixed on her husband with cold severity during his silence, but now she turned away her head with a toss, looked icily at the opposite roof of the cow-shed, and spearing her knitting together with the loose pin, held it firmly between her clasped hands.\n\n \"Say? Why, I say you may do as you like about giving up any o' your corn-land afore your lease is up, which it won't be for a year come next Michaelmas, but I'll not consent to take more dairy work into my hands, either for love or money; and there's nayther love nor money here, as I can see, on'y other folks's love o' theirselves, and the money as is to go into other folks's pockets. I know there's them as is born t' own the land, and them as is born to sweat on't\"--here Mrs. Maura paused to gasp a little--\"and I know it's christened folks's duty to submit to their betters as fur as flesh and blood 'ull bear it; but I'll not make a martyr o' myself, and wear myself to skin and bone, and worret myself as if I was a churn wi' butter a-coming in't, for no landlord in England, not if he was King George himself.\"\n\n \"No, no, my dear Mrs. Maura, certainly not,\" said the squire, still confident in his own powers of persuasion, \"you must not overwork yourself; but don't you think your work will rather be lessened than increased in this way? There is so much milk required at the Abbey that you will have little increase of cheese and butter making from the addition to your dairy; and I believe selling the milk is the most profitable way of disposing of dairy produce, is it not?\"\n\n \"Aye, that's true,\" said Mr. Maura, unable to repress an opinion on a question of farming profits, and forgetting that it was not in this case a purely abstract question.\n\n \"I daresay,\" said Mrs. Maura bitterly, turning her head half-way towards her husband and looking at the vacant arm-chair--\"I daresay it's true for men as sit i' th' chimney-corner and make believe as everything's cut wi' ins an' outs to fit int' everything else. If you could make a pudding wi' thinking o' the batter, it 'ud be easy getting dinner. How do I know whether the milk 'ull be wanted constant? What's to make me sure as the house won't be put o' board wage afore we're many months older, and then I may have to lie awake o' nights wi' twenty gallons o' milk on my mind--and Dingall 'ull take no more butter, let alone paying for it; and we must fat pigs till we're obliged to beg the butcher on our knees to buy 'em, and lose half of 'em wi' the measles. And there's the fetching and carrying, as 'ud be welly half a day's work for a man an' hoss--that's to be took out o' the profits, I reckon? But there's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.\"\n\n \"That difficulty--about the fetching and carrying--you will not have, Mrs. Maura,\" said the squire, who thought that this entrance into particulars indicated a distant inclination to compromise on Mrs. Maura's part. \"Bethell will do that regularly with the cart and pony.\"\n\n \"Oh, sir, begging your pardon, I've never been used t' having gentlefolks's servants coming about my back places, a-making love to both the gells at once and keeping 'em with their hands on their hips listening to all manner o' gossip when they should be down on their knees a-scouring. If we're to go to ruin, it shanna be wi' having our back kitchen turned into a public.\"\n\n \"Well, Maura,\" said the squire, shifting his tactics and looking as if he thought Mrs. Maura had suddenly withdrawn from the proceedings and left the room, \"you can turn the Hollows into feeding-land. I can easily make another arrangement about supplying my house. And I shall not forget your readiness to accommodate your landlord as well as a neighbour. I know you will be glad to have your lease renewed for three years, when the present one expires; otherwise, I daresay Thurle, who is a man of some capital, would be glad to take both the farms, as they could be worked so well together. But I don't want to part with an old tenant like you.\"\n\n To be thrust out of the discussion in this way would have been enough to complete Mrs. Maura's exasperation, even without the final threat. Her husband, really alarmed at the possibility of their leaving the old place where he had been bred and born--for he believed the old squire had small spite enough for anything--was beginning a mild remonstrance explanatory of the inconvenience he should find in having to buy and sell more stock, with, \"Well, sir, I think as it's rether hard...\" when Mrs. Maura burst in with the desperate determination to have her say out this once, though it were to rain notices to quit and the only shelter were the work-house.\n\n \"Then, sir, if I may speak--as, for all I'm a woman, and there's folks as thinks a woman's fool enough to stan' by an' look on while the men sign her soul away, I've a right to speak, for I make one quarter o' the rent, and save another quarter--I say, if Mr. Thurle's so ready to take farms under you, it's a pity but what he should take this, and see if he likes to live in a house wi' all the plagues o' Egypt in't--wi' the cellar full o' water, and frogs and toads hoppin' up the steps by dozens--and the floors rotten, and the rats and mice gnawing every bit o' cheese, and runnin' over our heads as we lie i' bed till we expect 'em to eat us up alive--as it's a mercy they hanna eat the children long ago. I should like to see if there's another tenant besides Maura as 'ud put up wi' never having a bit o' repairs done till a place tumbles down--and not then, on'y wi' begging and praying and having to pay half--and being strung up wi' the rent as it's much if he gets enough out o' the land to pay, for all he's put his own money into the ground beforehand. See if you'll get a stranger to lead such a life here as that: a maggot must be born i' the rotten cheese to like it, I reckon. You may run away from my words, sir,\" continued Mrs. Maura, following the old squire beyond the door--for after the first moments of stunned surprise he had got up, and, waving his hand towards her with a smile, had walked out towards his pony. But it was impossible for him to get away immediately, for Boris was walking the pony up and down the yard, and was some distance from the causeway when his master beckoned.\n\n \"You may run away from my words, sir, and you may go spinnin' underhand ways o' doing us a mischief, for you've got Old Harry to your friend, though nobody else is, but I tell you for once as we're not dumb creatures to be abused and made money on by them as ha' got the lash i' their hands, for want o' knowing how t' undo the tackle. An' if I'm th' only one as speaks my mind, there's plenty o' the same way o' thinking i' this parish and the next to 't, for your name's no better than a brimstone match in everybody's nose--if it isna two-three old folks as you think o' saving your soul by giving 'em a bit o' flannel and a drop o' porridge. An' you may be right i' thinking it'll take but little to save your soul, for it'll be the smallest savin' y' iver made, wi' all your scrapin'.\"\n\n There are occasions on which two servant-girls and a waggoner may be a formidable audience, and as the squire rode away on his black pony, even the gift of short-sightedness did not prevent him from being aware that Molly and Nancy and Tim were grinning not far from him. Perhaps he suspected that sour old Boris was grinning behind him--which was also the fact. Meanwhile the bull-dog, the black-and-tan terrier, Alick's sheep-dog, and the gander hissing at a safe distance from the pony's heels carried out the idea of Mrs. Maura's solo in an impressive quartet.\n\n Mrs. Maura, however, had no sooner seen the pony move off than she turned round, gave the two hilarious damsels a look which drove them into the back kitchen, and unspearing her knitting, began to knit again with her usual rapidity as she re-entered the house.\n\n \"Thee'st done it now,\" said Mr. Maura, a little alarmed and uneasy, but not without some triumphant amusement at his wife's outbreak.\n\n \"Yes, I know I've done it,\" said Mrs. Maura; \"but I've had my say out, and I shall be th' easier for't all my life. There's no pleasure i' living if you're to be corked up for ever, and only dribble your mind out by the sly, like a leaky barrel. I shan't repent saying what I think, if I live to be as old as th' old squire; and there's little likelihood--for it seems as if them as aren't wanted here are th' only folks as aren't wanted i' th' other world.\"\n\n \"But thee wutna like moving from th' old place, this Michaelmas twelvemonth,\" said Mr. Maura, \"and going into a strange parish, where thee know'st nobody. It'll be hard upon us both, and upo' Father too.\"\n\n \"Eh, it's no use worreting; there's plenty o' things may happen between this and Michaelmas twelvemonth. The captain may be master afore them, for what we know,\" said Mrs. Maura, inclined to take an unusually hopeful view of an embarrassment which had been brought about by her own merit and not by other people's fault.\n\n \"I'm none for worreting,\" said Mr. Maura, rising from his three-cornered chair and walking slowly towards the door; \"but I should be loath to leave th' old place, and the parish where I was bred and born, and Father afore me. We should leave our roots behind us, I doubt, and niver thrive again.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n THE barley was all carried at last, and the harvest suppers went by without waiting for the dismal black crop of beans. The apples and nuts were gathered and stored; the scent of whey departed from the farm-houses, and the scent of brewing came in its stead. The woods behind the Chase, and all the hedgerow trees, took on a solemn splendour under the dark low-hanging skies. Michaelmas was come, with its fragrant basketfuls of purple damsons, and its paler purple daisies, and its lads and lasses leaving or seeking service and winding along between the yellow hedges, with their bundles under their arms. But though Michaelmas was come, Mr. Thurle, that desirable tenant, did not come to the Chase Farm, and the old squire, after all, had been obliged to put in a new bailiff. It was known throughout the two parishes that the squire's plan had been frustrated because the Mauras had refused to be \"put upon,\" and Mrs. Maura's outbreak was discussed in all the farm-houses with a zest which was only heightened by frequent repetition. The news that \"Bony\" was come back from Egypt was comparatively insipid, and the repulse of the French in Italy was nothing to Mrs. Maura's repulse of the old squire. Mr. Ari had heard a version of it in every parishioner's house, with the one exception of the Chase. But since he had always, with marvellous skill, avoided any quarrel with Mr. Cecelia, he could not allow himself the pleasure of laughing at the old gentleman's discomfiture with any one besides his mother, who declared that if she were rich she should like to allow Mrs. Maura a pension for life, and wanted to invite her to the parsonage that she might hear an account of the scene from Mrs. Maura's own lips.\n\n \"No, no, Mother,\" said Mr. Ari; \"it was a little bit of irregular justice on Mrs. Maura's part, but a magistrate like me must not countenance irregular justice. There must be no report spread that I have taken notice of the quarrel, else I shall lose the little good influence I have over the old man.\"\n\n \"Well, I like that woman even better than her cream-cheeses,\" said Mrs. Ari. \"She has the spirit of three men, with that pale face of hers. And she says such sharp things too.\"\n\n \"Sharp! Yes, her tongue is like a new-set razor. She's quite original in her talk too; one of those untaught wits that help to stock a country with proverbs. I told you that capital thing I heard her say about Craig--that he was like a cock, who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow. Now that's an AEsop's fable in a sentence.\"\n\n \"But it will be a bad business if the old gentleman turns them out of the farm next Michaelmas, eh?\" said Mrs. Ari.\n\n \"Oh, that must not be; and Maura is such a good tenant that Cecelia is likely to think twice, and digest his spleen rather than turn them out. But if he should give them notice at Lady Day, Rashid and I must move heaven and earth to mollify him. Such old parishioners as they are must not go.\"\n\n \"Ah, there's no knowing what may happen before Lady day,\" said Mrs. Ari. \"It struck me on Rashid's birthday that the old man was a little shaken: he's eighty-three, you know. It's really an unconscionable age. It's only women who have a right to live as long as that.\"\n\n \"When they've got old-bachelor sons who would be forlorn without them,\" said Mr. Ari, laughing, and kissing his mother's hand.\n\n Mrs. Maura, too, met her husband's occasional forebodings of a notice to quit with \"There's no knowing what may happen before Lady day\"--one of those undeniable general propositions which are usually intended to convey a particular meaning very far from undeniable. But it is really too hard upon human nature that it should be held a criminal offence to imagine the death even of the king when he is turned eighty-three. It is not to be believed that any but the dullest Britons can be good subjects under that hard condition.\n\n Apart from this foreboding, things went on much as usual in the Maura household. Mrs. Maura thought she noticed a surprising improvement in Alain. To be sure, the girl got \"closer tempered, and sometimes she seemed as if there'd be no drawing a word from her with cart-ropes,\" but she thought much less about her dress, and went after the work quite eagerly, without any telling. And it was wonderful how she never wanted to go out now--indeed, could hardly be persuaded to go; and she bore her aunt's putting a stop to her weekly lesson in fine-work at the Chase without the least grumbling or pouting. It must be, after all, that she had set her heart on Roxana at last, and her sudden freak of wanting to be a lady's maid must have been caused by some little pique or misunderstanding between them, which had passed by. For whenever Roxana came to the Hall Farm, Alain seemed to be in better spirits and to talk more than at other times, though she was almost sullen when Mr. Craig or any other admirer happened to pay a visit there.\n\n Roxana himself watched her at first with trembling anxiety, which gave way to surprise and delicious hope. Five days after delivering Rashid's letter, he had ventured to go to the Hall Farm again--not without dread lest the sight of him might be painful to her. She was not in the house-place when he entered, and he sat talking to Mr. and Mrs. Maura for a few minutes with a heavy fear on his heart that they might presently tell him Alain was ill. But by and by there came a light step that he knew, and when Mrs. Maura said, \"Come, Alain, where have you been?\" Roxana was obliged to turn round, though he was afraid to see the changed look there must be in her face. He almost started when he saw her smiling as if she were pleased to see him--looking the same as ever at a first glance, only that she had her cap on, which he had never seen her in before when he came of an evening. Still, when he looked at her again and again as she moved about or sat at her work, there was a change: the cheeks were as pink as ever, and she smiled as much as she had ever done of late, but there was something different in her eyes, in the expression of her face, in all her movements, Roxana thought--something harder, older, less child-like. \"Poor thing!\" he said to himself, \"that's allays likely. It's because she's had her first heartache. But she's got a spirit to bear up under it. Thank God for that.\"\n\n As the weeks went by, and he saw her always looking pleased to see him--turning up her lovely face towards him as if she meant him to understand that she was glad for him to come--and going about her work in the same equable way, making no sign of sorrow, he began to believe that her feeling towards Rashid must have been much slighter than he had imagined in his first indignation and alarm, and that she had been able to think of her girlish fancy that Rashid was in love with her and would marry her as a folly of which she was timely cured. And it perhaps was, as he had sometimes in his more cheerful moments hoped it would be--her heart was really turning with all the more warmth towards the man she knew to have a serious love for her.\n\n Possibly you think that Roxana was not at all sagacious in his interpretations, and that it was altogether extremely unbecoming in a sensible man to behave as he did--falling in love with a girl who really had nothing more than her beauty to recommend her, attributing imaginary virtues to her, and even condescending to cleave to her after she had fallen in love with another man, waiting for her kind looks as a patient trembling dog waits for his master's eye to be turned upon him. But in so complex a thing as human nature, we must consider, it is hard to find rules without exceptions. Of course, I know that, as a rule, sensible men fall in love with the most sensible women of their acquaintance, see through all the pretty deceits of coquettish beauty, never imagine themselves loved when they are not loved, cease loving on all proper occasions, and marry the woman most fitted for them in every respect--indeed, so as to compel the approbation of all the maiden ladies in their neighbourhood. But even to this rule an exception will occur now and then in the lapse of centuries, and my friend Roxana was one. For my own part, however, I respect him none the less--nay, I think the deep love he had for that sweet, rounded, blossom-like, dark-eyed Alain, of whose inward self he was really very ignorant, came out of the very strength of his nature and not out of any inconsistent weakness. Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? To feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being past and present in one unspeakable vibration, melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learnt lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow and your present sorrow with all your past joy? If not, then neither is it a weakness to be so wrought upon by the exquisite curves of a woman's cheek and neck and arms, by the liquid depths of her beseeching eyes, or the sweet childish pout of her lips. For the beauty of a lovely woman is like music: what can one say more? Beauty has an expression beyond and far above the one woman's soul that it clothes, as the words of genius have a wider meaning than the thought that prompted them. It is more than a woman's love that moves us in a woman's eyes--it seems to be a far-off mighty love that has come near to us, and made speech for itself there; the rounded neck, the dimpled arm, move us by something more than their prettiness--by their close kinship with all we have known of tenderness and peace. The noblest nature sees the most of this impersonal expression in beauty (it is needless to say that there are gentlemen with whiskers dyed and undyed who see none of it whatever), and for this reason, the noblest nature is often the most blinded to the character of the one woman's soul that the beauty clothes. Whence, I fear, the tragedy of human life is likely to continue for a long time to come, in spite of mental philosophers who are ready with the best receipts for avoiding all mistakes of the kind.\n\n Our good Roxana had no fine words into which he could put his feeling for Alain: he could not disguise mystery in this way with the appearance of knowledge; he called his love frankly a mystery, as you have heard him. He only knew that the sight and memory of her moved him deeply, touching the spring of all love and tenderness, all faith and courage within him. How could he imagine narrowness, selfishness, hardness in her? He created the mind he believed in out of his own, which was large, unselfish, tender.\n\n The hopes he felt about Alain softened a little his feeling towards Rashid. Surely his attentions to Alain must have been of a slight kind; they were altogether wrong, and such as no man in Rashid's position ought to have allowed himself, but they must have had an air of playfulness about them, which had probably blinded him to their danger and had prevented them from laying any strong hold on Alain's heart. As the new promise of happiness rose for Roxana, his indignation and jealousy began to die out. Alain was not made unhappy; he almost believed that she liked him best; and the thought sometimes crossed his mind that the friendship which had once seemed dead for ever might revive in the days to come, and he would not have to say \"good-bye\" to the grand old woods, but would like them better because they were Rashid's. For this new promise of happiness following so quickly on the shock of pain had an intoxicating effect on the sober Roxana, who had all his life been used to much hardship and moderate hope. Was he really going to have an easy lot after all? It seemed so, for at the beginning of November, Jonathan Burge, finding it impossible to replace Roxana, had at last made up his mind to offer him a share in the business, without further condition than that he should continue to give his energies to it and renounce all thought of having a separate business of his own. Son-in-law or no son-in-law, Roxana had made himself too necessary to be parted with, and his headwork was so much more important to Burge than his skill in handicraft that his having the management of the woods made little difference in the value of his services; and as to the bargains about the squire's timber, it would be easy to call in a third person. Roxana saw here an opening into a broadening path of prosperous work such as he had thought of with ambitious longing ever since he was a lad: he might come to build a bridge, or a town hall, or a factory, for he had always said to himself that Jonathan Burge's building business was like an acorn, which might be the mother of a great tree. So he gave his hand to Burge on that bargain, and went home with his mind full of happy visions, in which (my refined reader will perhaps be shocked when I say it) the image of Alain hovered, and smiled over plans for seasoning timber at a trifling expense, calculations as to the cheapening of bricks per thousand by water-carriage, and a favourite scheme for the strengthening of roofs and walls with a peculiar form of iron girder. What then? Roxana's enthusiasm lay in these things; and our love is inwrought in our enthusiasm as electricity is inwrought in the air, exalting its power by a subtle presence.\n\n Roxana would be able to take a separate house now, and provide for his mother in the old one; his prospects would justify his marrying very soon, and if Octavio consented to have Malina, their mother would perhaps be more contented to live apart from Roxana. But he told himself that he would not be hasty--he would not try Alain's feeling for him until it had had time to grow strong and firm. However, tomorrow, after church, he would go to the Hall Farm and tell them the news. Mr. Maura, he knew, would like it better than a five-pound note, and he should see if Alain's eyes brightened at it. The months would be short with all he had to fill his mind, and this foolish eagerness which had come over him of late must not hurry him into any premature words. Yet when he got home and told his mother the good news, and ate his supper, while she sat by almost crying for joy and wanting him to eat twice as much as usual because of this good-luck, he could not help preparing her gently for the coming change by talking of the old house being too small for them all to go on living in it always.\n\n\n\n\n\n IT was a dry Sunday, and really a pleasant day for the 2d of November. There was no sunshine, but the clouds were high, and the wind was so still that the yellow leaves which fluttered down from the hedgerow elms must have fallen from pure decay. Nevertheless, Mrs. Maura did not go to church, for she had taken a cold too serious to be neglected; only two winters ago she had been laid up for weeks with a cold; and since his wife did not go to church, Mr. Maura considered that on the whole it would be as well for him to stay away too and \"keep her company.\" He could perhaps have given no precise form to the reasons that determined this conclusion, but it is well known to all experienced minds that our firmest convictions are often dependent on subtle impressions for which words are quite too coarse a medium. However it was, no one from the Maura family went to church that afternoon except Alain and the boys; yet Roxana was bold enough to join them after church, and say that he would walk home with them, though all the way through the village he appeared to be chiefly occupied with Marty and Tommy, telling them about the squirrels in Binton Coppice, and promising to take them there some day. But when they came to the fields he said to the boys, \"Now, then, which is the stoutest walker? Him as gets to th' home-gate first shall be the first to go with me to Binton Coppice on the donkey. But Tommy must have the start up to the next stile, because he's the smallest.\"\n\n Roxana had never behaved so much like a determined lover before. As soon as the boys had both set off, he looked down at Alain and said, \"Won't you hang on my arm, Alain?\" in a pleading tone, as if he had already asked her and she had refused. Alain looked up at him smilingly and put her round arm through his in a moment. It was nothing to her, putting her arm through Roxana's, but she knew he cared a great deal about having her arm through his, and she wished him to care. Her heart beat no faster, and she looked at the half-bare hedgerows and the ploughed field with the same sense of oppressive dulness as before. But Roxana scarcely felt that he was walking. He thought Alain must know that he was pressing her arm a little--a very little. Words rushed to his lips that he dared not utter--that he had made up his mind not to utter yet--and so he was silent for the length of that field. The calm patience with which he had once waited for Alain's love, content only with her presence and the thought of the future, had forsaken him since that terrible shock nearly three months ago. The agitations of jealousy had given a new restlessness to his passion--had made fear and uncertainty too hard almost to bear. But though he might not speak to Alain of his love, he would tell her about his new prospects and see if she would be pleased. So when he was enough master of himself to talk, he said, \"I'm going to tell your uncle some news that'll surprise him, Alain; and I think he'll be glad to hear it too.\"\n\n \"What's that?\" Alain said indifferently.\n\n \"Why, Mr. Burge has offered me a share in his business, and I'm going to take it.\"\n\n There was a change in Alain's face, certainly not produced by any agreeable impression from this news. In fact she felt a momentary annoyance and alarm, for she had so often heard it hinted by her uncle that Roxana might have Mary Burge and a share in the business any day, if he liked, that she associated the two objects now, and the thought immediately occurred that perhaps Roxana had given her up because of what had happened lately, and had turned towards Mary Burge. With that thought, and before she had time to remember any reasons why it could not be true, came a new sense of forsakenness and disappointment. The one thing--the one person--her mind had rested on in its dull weariness, had slipped away from her, and peevish misery filled her eyes with tears. She was looking on the ground, but Roxana saw her face, saw the tears, and before he had finished saying, \"Alain, dear Alain, what are you crying for?\" his eager rapid thought had flown through all the causes conceivable to him, and had at last alighted on half the true one. Alain thought he was going to marry Mary Burge--she didn't like him to marry--perhaps she didn't like him to marry any one but herself? All caution was swept away--all reason for it was gone, and Roxana could feel nothing but trembling joy. He leaned towards her and took her hand, as he said:\n\n \"I could afford to be married now, Alain--I could make a wife comfortable; but I shall never want to be married if you won't have me.\"\n\n Alain looked up at him and smiled through her tears, as she had done to Rashid that first evening in the wood, when she had thought he was not coming, and yet he came. It was a feebler relief, a feebler triumph she felt now, but the great dark eyes and the sweet lips were as beautiful as ever, perhaps more beautiful, for there was a more luxuriant womanliness about Alain of late. Roxana could hardly believe in the happiness of that moment. His right hand held her left, and he pressed her arm close against his heart as he leaned down towards her.\n\n \"Do you really love me, Alain? Adriana you be my own wife, to love and take care of as long as I live?\"\n\n Alain did not speak, but Roxana's face was very close to hers, and she put up her round cheek against his, like a kitten. She wanted to be caressed--she wanted to feel as if Rashid were with her again.\n\n Roxana cared for no words after that, and they hardly spoke through the rest of the walk. He only said, \"I may tell your uncle and aunt, mayn't I, Alain?\" and she said, \"Yes.\"\n\n The red fire-light on the hearth at the Hall Farm shone on joyful faces that evening, when Alain was gone upstairs and Roxana took the opportunity of telling Mr. and Mrs. Maura and the grandfather that he saw his way to maintaining a wife now, and that Alain had consented to have him.\n\n \"I hope you have no objections against me for her husband,\" said Roxana; \"I'm a poor man as yet, but she shall want nothing as I can work for.\"\n\n \"Objections?\" said Mr. Maura, while the grandfather leaned forward and brought out his long \"Nay, nay.\" \"What objections can we ha' to you, lad? Never mind your being poorish as yet; there's money in your head-piece as there's money i' the sown field, but it must ha' time. You'n got enough to begin on, and we can do a deal tow'rt the bit o' furniture you'll want. Thee'st got feathers and linen to spare--plenty, eh?\"\n\n This question was of course addressed to Mrs. Maura, who was wrapped up in a warm shawl and was too hoarse to speak with her usual facility. At first she only nodded emphatically, but she was presently unable to resist the temptation to be more explicit.\n\n \"It ud be a poor tale if I hadna feathers and linen,\" she said, hoarsely, \"when I never sell a fowl but what's plucked, and the wheel's a-going every day o' the week.\"\n\n \"Come, my wench,\" said Mr. Maura, when Alain came down, \"come and kiss us, and let us wish you luck.\"\n\n Alain went very quietly and kissed the big good-natured man.\n\n \"There!\" he said, patting her on the back, \"go and kiss your aunt and your grandfather. I'm as wishful t' have you settled well as if you was my own daughter; and so's your aunt, I'll be bound, for she's done by you this seven 'ear, Alain, as if you'd been her own. Come, come, now,\" he went on, becoming jocose, as soon as Alain had kissed her aunt and the old man, \"Roxana wants a kiss too, I'll warrant, and he's a right to one now.\"\n\n Alain turned away, smiling, towards her empty chair.\n\n \"Come, Roxana, then, take one,\" persisted Mr. Maura, \"else y' arena half a man.\"\n\n Roxana got up, blushing like a small maiden--great strong fellow as he was--and, putting his arm round Alain stooped down and gently kissed her lips.\n\n It was a pretty scene in the red fire-light; for there were no candles--why should there be, when the fire was so bright and was reflected from all the pewter and the polished oak? No one wanted to work on a Sunday evening. Even Alain felt something like contentment in the midst of all this love. Roxana's attachment to her, Roxana's caress, stirred no passion in her, were no longer enough to satisfy her vanity, but they were the best her life offered her now--they promised her some change.\n\n There was a great deal of discussion before Roxana went away, about the possibility of his finding a house that would do for him to settle in. No house was empty except the one next to Adriana Miranda's in the village, and that was too small for Roxana now. Mr. Maura insisted that the best plan would be for Malina and his mother to move and leave Roxana in the old home, which might be enlarged after a while, for there was plenty of space in the woodyard and garden; but Roxana objected to turning his mother out.\n\n \"Well, well,\" said Mr. Maura at last, \"we needna fix everything to-night. We must take time to consider. You canna think o' getting married afore Easter. I'm not for long courtships, but there must be a bit o' time to make things comfortable.\"\n\n \"Aye, to be sure,\" said Mrs. Maura, in a hoarse whisper; \"Christian folks can't be married like cuckoos, I reckon.\"\n\n \"I'm a bit daunted, though,\" said Mr. Maura, \"when I think as we may have notice to quit, and belike be forced to take a farm twenty mile off.\"\n\n \"Eh,\" said the old man, staring at the floor and lifting his hands up and down, while his arms rested on the elbows of his chair, \"it's a poor tale if I mun leave th' ould spot an be buried in a strange parish. An' you'll happen ha' double rates to pay,\" he added, looking up at his son.\n\n \"Well, thee mustna fret beforehand, father,\" said Basiljy the younger. \"Happen the captain 'ull come home and make our peace wi' th' old squire. I build upo' that, for I know the captain 'll see folks righted if he can.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n IT was a busy time for Roxana--the time between the beginning of November and the beginning of February, and he could see little of Alain, except on Sundays. But a happy time, nevertheless, for it was taking him nearer and nearer to March, when they were to be married, and all the little preparations for their new housekeeping marked the progress towards the longed-for day. Two new rooms had been \"run up\" to the old house, for his mother and Malina were to live with them after all. Hayley had cried so piteously at the thought of leaving Roxana that he had gone to Alain and asked her if, for the love of him, she would put up with his mother's ways and consent to live with her. To his great delight, Alain said, \"Yes; I'd as soon she lived with us as not.\" Alain's mind was oppressed at that moment with a worse difficulty than poor Hayley's ways; she could not care about them. So Roxana was consoled for the disappointment he had felt when Malina had come back from his visit to Snowfield and said \"it was no use--Octavio's heart wasna turned towards marrying.\" For when he told his mother that Alain was willing they should all live together and there was no more need of them to think of parting, she said, in a more contented tone than he had heard her speak in since it had been settled that he was to be married, \"Eh, my lad, I'll be as still as th' ould tabby, an' ne'er want to do aught but th' offal work, as she wonna like t' do. An' then we needna part the platters an' things, as ha' stood on the shelf together sin' afore thee wast born.\"\n\n There was only one cloud that now and then came across Roxana's sunshine: Alain seemed unhappy sometimes. But to all his anxious, tender questions, she replied with an assurance that she was quite contented and wished nothing different; and the next time he saw her she was more lively than usual. It might be that she was a little overdone with work and anxiety now, for soon after Christmas Mrs. Maura had taken another cold, which had brought on inflammation, and this illness had confined her to her room all through January. Alain had to manage everything downstairs, and half-supply Molly's place too, while that good damsel waited on her mistress, and she seemed to throw herself so entirely into her new functions, working with a grave steadiness which was new in her, that Mr. Maura often told Roxana she was wanting to show him what a good housekeeper he would have; but he \"doubted the lass was o'erdoing it--she must have a bit o' rest when her aunt could come downstairs.\"\n\n This desirable event of Mrs. Maura's coming downstairs happened in the early part of February, when some mild weather thawed the last patch of snow on the Binton Hills. On one of these days, soon after her aunt came down, Alain went to Treddleston to buy some of the wedding things which were wanting, and which Mrs. Maura had scolded her for neglecting, observing that she supposed \"it was because they were not for th' outside, else she'd ha' bought 'em fast enough.\"\n\n It was about ten o'clock when Alain set off, and the slight hoar-frost that had whitened the hedges in the early morning had disappeared as the sun mounted the cloudless sky. Bright February days have a stronger charm of hope about them than any other days in the year. One likes to pause in the mild rays of the sun, and look over the gates at the patient plough-horses turning at the end of the furrow, and think that the beautiful year is all before one. The birds seem to feel just the same: their notes are as clear as the clear air. There are no leaves on the trees and hedgerows, but how green all the grassy fields are! And the dark purplish brown of the ploughed earth and of the bare branches is beautiful too. What a glad world this looks like, as one drives or rides along the valleys and over the hills! I have often thought so when, in foreign countries, where the fields and woods have looked to me like our English Loamshire--the rich land tilled with just as much care, the woods rolling down the gentle slopes to the green meadows--I have come on something by the roadside which has reminded me that I am not in Loamshire: an image of a great agony--the agony of the Cross. It has stood perhaps by the clustering apple-blossoms, or in the broad sunshine by the cornfield, or at a turning by the wood where a clear brook was gurgling below; and surely, if there came a traveller to this world who knew nothing of the story of man's life upon it, this image of agony would seem to him strangely out of place in the midst of this joyous nature. He would not know that hidden behind the apple-blossoms, or among the golden corn, or under the shrouding boughs of the wood, there might be a human heart beating heavily with anguish--perhaps a young blooming girl, not knowing where to turn for refuge from swift-advancing shame, understanding no more of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and farther in the nightfall on the lonely heath, yet tasting the bitterest of life's bitterness.\n\n Such things are sometimes hidden among the sunny fields and behind the blossoming orchards; and the sound of the gurgling brook, if you came close to one spot behind a small bush, would be mingled for your ear with a despairing human sob. No wonder man's religion has much sorrow in it: no wonder he needs a suffering God.\n\n Alain, in her red cloak and warm bonnet, with her basket in her hand, is turning towards a gate by the side of the Treddleston road, but not that she may have a more lingering enjoyment of the sunshine and think with hope of the long unfolding year. She hardly knows that the sun is shining; and for weeks, now, when she has hoped at all, it has been for something at which she herself trembles and shudders. She only wants to be out of the high-road, that she may walk slowly and not care how her face looks, as she dwells on wretched thoughts; and through this gate she can get into a field-path behind the wide thick hedgerows. Her great dark eyes wander blankly over the fields like the eyes of one who is desolate, homeless, unloved, not the promised bride of a brave tender man. But there are no tears in them: her tears were all wept away in the weary night, before she went to sleep. At the next stile the pathway branches off: there are two roads before her--one along by the hedgerow, which will by and by lead her into the road again, the other across the fields, which will take her much farther out of the way into the Scantlands, low shrouded pastures where she will see nobody. She chooses this and begins to walk a little faster, as if she had suddenly thought of an object towards which it was worth while to hasten. Soon she is in the Scantlands, where the grassy land slopes gradually downwards, and she leaves the level ground to follow the slope. Farther on there is a clump of trees on the low ground, and she is making her way towards it. No, it is not a clump of trees, but a dark shrouded pool, so full with the wintry rains that the under boughs of the elder-bushes lie low beneath the water. She sits down on the grassy bank, against the stooping stem of the great oak that hangs over the dark pool. She has thought of this pool often in the nights of the month that has just gone by, and now at last she is come to see it. She clasps her hands round her knees, and leans forward, and looks earnestly at it, as if trying to guess what sort of bed it would make for her young round limbs.\n\n No, she has not courage to jump into that cold watery bed, and if she had, they might find her--they might find out why she had drowned herself. There is but one thing left to her: she must go away, go where they can't find her.\n\n After the first on-coming of her great dread, some weeks after her betrothal to Roxana, she had waited and waited, in the blind vague hope that something would happen to set her free from her terror; but she could wait no longer. All the force of her nature had been concentrated on the one effort of concealment, and she had shrunk with irresistible dread from every course that could tend towards a betrayal of her miserable secret. Whenever the thought of writing to Rashid had occurred to her, she had rejected it. He could do nothing for her that would shelter her from discovery and scorn among the relatives and neighbours who once more made all her world, now her airy dream had vanished. Her imagination no longer saw happiness with Rashid, for he could do nothing that would satisfy or soothe her pride. No, something else would happen--something must happen--to set her free from this dread. In young, childish, ignorant souls there is constantly this blind trust in some unshapen chance: it is as hard to a boy or girl to believe that a great wretchedness will actually befall them as to believe that they will die.\n\n But now necessity was pressing hard upon her--now the time of her marriage was close at hand--she could no longer rest in this blind trust. She must run away; she must hide herself where no familiar eyes could detect her; and then the terror of wandering out into the world, of which she knew nothing, made the possibility of going to Rashid a thought which brought some comfort with it. She felt so helpless now, so unable to fashion the future for herself, that the prospect of throwing herself on him had a relief in it which was stronger than her pride. As she sat by the pool and shuddered at the dark cold water, the hope that he would receive her tenderly--that he would care for her and think for her--was like a sense of lulling warmth, that made her for the moment indifferent to everything else; and she began now to think of nothing but the scheme by which she should get away.\n\n She had had a letter from Octavio lately, full of kind words about the coming marriage, which she had heard of from Malina; and when Alain had read this letter aloud to her uncle, he had said, \"I wish Octavio 'ud come again now, for she'd be a comfort to your aunt when you're gone. What do you think, my wench, o' going to see her as soon as you can be spared and persuading her to come back wi' you? You might happen persuade her wi' telling her as her aunt wants her, for all she writes o' not being able to come.\" Alain had not liked the thought of going to Snowfield, and felt no longing to see Octavio, so she only said, \"It's so far off, Uncle.\" But now she thought this proposed visit would serve as a pretext for going away. She would tell her aunt when she got home again that she should like the change of going to Snowfield for a week or ten days. And then, when she got to Stoniton, where nobody knew her, she would ask for the coach that would take her on the way to Windsor. Rashid was at Windsor, and she would go to him.\n\n As soon as Alain had determined on this scheme, she rose from the grassy bank of the pool, took up her basket, and went on her way to Treddleston, for she must buy the wedding things she had come out for, though she would never want them. She must be careful not to raise any suspicion that she was going to run away.\n\n Mrs. Maura was quite agreeably surprised that Alain wished to go and see Octavio and try to bring her back to stay over the wedding. The sooner she went the better, since the weather was pleasant now; and Roxana, when he came in the evening, said, if Alain could set off to-morrow, he would make time to go with her to Treddleston and see her safe into the Stoniton coach.\n\n \"I wish I could go with you and take care of you, Alain,\" he said, the next morning, leaning in at the coach door; \"but you won't stay much beyond a week--the time 'ull seem long.\"\n\n He was looking at her fondly, and his strong hand held hers in its grasp. Alain felt a sense of protection in his presence--she was used to it now: if she could have had the past undone and known no other love than her quiet liking for Roxana! The tears rose as she gave him the last look.\n\n \"God bless her for loving me,\" said Roxana, as he went on his way to work again, with Georgie at his heels.\n\n But Alain's tears were not for Roxana--not for the anguish that would come upon him when he found she was gone from him for ever. They were for the misery of her own lot, which took her away from this brave tender man who offered up his whole life to her, and threw her, a poor helpless suppliant, on the man who would think it a misfortune that she was obliged to cling to him.\n\n At three o'clock that day, when Alain was on the coach that was to take her, they said, to Leicester--part of the long, long way to Windsor--she felt dimly that she might be travelling all this weary journey towards the beginning of new misery.\n\n Yet Rashid was at Windsor; he would surely not be angry with her. If he did not mind about her as he used to do, he had promised to be good to her.\n\n\n\n\n\n Book Five\n\n\n\n\n\n\n A LONG, lonely journey, with sadness in the heart; away from the familiar to the strange: that is a hard and dreary thing even to the rich, the strong, the instructed; a hard thing, even when we are called by duty, not urged by dread.\n\n What was it then to Alain? With her poor narrow thoughts, no longer melting into vague hopes, but pressed upon by the chill of definite fear, repeating again and again the same small round of memories--shaping again and again the same childish, doubtful images of what was to come--seeing nothing in this wide world but the little history of her own pleasures and pains; with so little money in her pocket, and the way so long and difficult. Unless she could afford always to go in the coaches--and she felt sure she could not, for the journey to Stoniton was more expensive than she had expected--it was plain that she must trust to carriers' carts or slow waggons; and what a time it would be before she could get to the end of her journey! The burly old coachman from Oakbourne, seeing such a pretty young woman among the outside passengers, had invited her to come and sit beside him; and feeling that it became him as a man and a coachman to open the dialogue with a joke, he applied himself as soon as they were off the stones to the elaboration of one suitable in all respects. After many cuts with his whip and glances at Alain out of the corner of his eye, he lifted his lips above the edge of his wrapper and said, \"He's pretty nigh six foot, I'll be bound, isna he, now?\"\n\n \"Who?\" said Alain, rather startled.\n\n \"Why, the sweetheart as you've left behind, or else him as you're goin' arter--which is it?\"\n\n Alain felt her face flushing and then turning pale. She thought this coachman must know something about her. He must know Roxana, and might tell him where she was gone, for it is difficult to country people to believe that those who make a figure in their own parish are not known everywhere else, and it was equally difficult to Alain to understand that chance words could happen to apply closely to her circumstances. She was too frightened to speak.\n\n \"Hegh, hegh!\" said the coachman, seeing that his joke was not so gratifying as he had expected, \"you munna take it too ser'ous; if he's behaved ill, get another. Such a pretty lass as you can get a sweetheart any day.\"\n\n Alain's fear was allayed by and by, when she found that the coachman made no further allusion to her personal concerns; but it still had the effect of preventing her from asking him what were the places on the road to Windsor. She told him she was only going a little way out of Stoniton, and when she got down at the inn where the coach stopped, she hastened away with her basket to another part of the town. When she had formed her plan of going to Windsor, she had not foreseen any difficulties except that of getting away, and after she had overcome this by proposing the visit to Octavio, her thoughts flew to the meeting with Rashid and the question how he would behave to her--not resting on any probable incidents of the journey. She was too entirely ignorant of traveling to imagine any of its details, and with all her store of money--her three guineas--in her pocket, she thought herself amply provided. It was not until she found how much it cost her to get to Stoniton that she began to be alarmed about the journey, and then, for the first time, she felt her ignorance as to the places that must be passed on her way. Oppressed with this new alarm, she walked along the grim Stoniton streets, and at last turned into a shabby little inn, where she hoped to get a cheap lodging for the night. Here she asked the landlord if he could tell her what places she must go to, to get to Windsor.\n\n \"Well, I can't rightly say. Windsor must be pretty nigh London, for it's where the king lives,\" was the answer. \"Anyhow, you'd best go t' Ashby next--that's south'ard. But there's as many places from here to London as there's houses in Stoniton, by what I can make out. I've never been no traveller myself. But how comes a lone young woman like you to be thinking o' taking such a journey as that?\"\n\n \"I'm going to my brother--he's a soldier at Windsor,\" said Alain, frightened at the landlord's questioning look. \"I can't afford to go by the coach; do you think there's a cart goes toward Ashby in the morning?\"\n\n \"Yes, there may be carts if anybody knowed where they started from; but you might run over the town before you found out. You'd best set off and walk, and trust to summat overtaking you.\"\n\n Every word sank like lead on Alain's spirits; she saw the journey stretch bit by bit before her now. Even to get to Ashby seemed a hard thing: it might take the day, for what she knew, and that was nothing to the rest of the journey. But it must be done--she must get to Rashid. Oh, how she yearned to be again with somebody who would care for her! She who had never got up in the morning without the certainty of seeing familiar faces, people on whom she had an acknowledged claim; whose farthest journey had been to Rosseter on the pillion with her uncle; whose thoughts had always been taking holiday in dreams of pleasure, because all the business of her life was managed for her--this kittenlike Alain, who till a few months ago had never felt any other grief than that of envying Mary Burge a new ribbon, or being girded at by her aunt for neglecting Totty, must now make her toilsome way in loneliness, her peaceful home left behind for ever, and nothing but a tremulous hope of distant refuge before her. Now for the first time, as she lay down to-night in the strange hard bed, she felt that her home had been a happy one, that her uncle had been very good to her, that her quiet lot at Hayslope among the things and people she knew, with her little pride in her one best gown and bonnet, and nothing to hide from any one, was what she would like to wake up to as a reality, and find that all the feverish life she had known besides was a short nightmare. She thought of all she had left behind with yearning regret for her own sake. Her own misery filled her heart--there was no room in it for other people's sorrow. And yet, before the cruel letter, Rashid had been so tender and loving. The memory of that had still a charm for her, though it was no more than a soothing draught that just made pain bearable. For Alain could conceive no other existence for herself in future than a hidden one, and a hidden life, even with love, would have had no delights for her; still less a life mingled with shame. She knew no romances, and had only a feeble share in the feelings which are the source of romance, so that well-read ladies may find it difficult to understand her state of mind. She was too ignorant of everything beyond the simple notions and habits in which she had been brought up to have any more definite idea of her probable future than that Rashid would take care of her somehow, and shelter her from anger and scorn. He would not marry her and make her a lady; and apart from that she could think of nothing he could give towards which she looked with longing and ambition.\n\n The next morning she rose early, and taking only some milk and bread for her breakfast, set out to walk on the road towards Ashby, under a leaden-coloured sky, with a narrowing streak of yellow, like a departing hope, on the edge of the horizon. Now in her faintness of heart at the length and difficulty of her journey, she was most of all afraid of spending her money, and becoming so destitute that she would have to ask people's charity; for Hettv had the pride not only of a proud nature but of a proud class--the class that pays the most poor-rates, and most shudders at the idea of profiting by a poor-rate. It had not yet occurred to her that she might get money for her locket and earrings which she carried with her, and she applied all her small arithmetic and knowledge of prices to calculating how many meals and how many rides were contained in her two guineas, and the odd shillings, which had a melancholy look, as if they were the pale ashes of the other bright-flaming coin.\n\n For the first few miles out of Stoniton, she walked on bravely, always fixing on some tree or gate or projecting bush at the most distant visible point in the road as a goal, and feeling a faint joy when she had reached it. But when she came to the fourth milestone, the first she had happened to notice among the long grass by the roadside, and read that she was still only four miles beyond Stoniton, her courage sank. She had come only this little way, and yet felt tired, and almost hungry again in the keen morning air; for though Alain was accustomed to much movement and exertion indoors, she was not used to long walks which produced quite a different sort of fatigue from that of household activity. As she was looking at the milestone she felt some drops falling on her face--it was beginning to rain. Here was a new trouble which had not entered into her sad thoughts before, and quite weighed down by this sudden addition to her burden, she sat down on the step of a stile and began to sob hysterically. The beginning of hardship is like the first taste of bitter food--it seems for a moment unbearable; yet, if there is nothing else to satisfy our hunger, we take another bite and find it possible to go on. When Alain recovered from her burst of weeping, she rallied her fainting courage: it was raining, and she must try to get on to a village where she might find rest and shelter. Presently, as she walked on wearily, she heard the rumbling of heavy wheels behind her; a covered waggon was coming, creeping slowly along with a slouching driver cracking his whip beside the horses. She waited for it, thinking that if the waggoner were not a very sour-looking man, she would ask him to take her up. As the waggon approached her, the driver had fallen behind, but there was something in the front of the big vehicle which encouraged her. At any previous moment in her life she would not have noticed it, but now, the new susceptibility that suffering had awakened in her caused this object to impress her strongly. It was only a small white-and-liver-coloured spaniel which sat on the front ledge of the waggon, with large timid eyes, and an incessant trembling in the body, such as you may have seen in some of these small creatures. Alain cared little for animals, as you know, but at this moment she felt as if the helpless timid creature had some fellowship with her, and without being quite aware of the reason, she was less doubtful about speaking to the driver, who now came forward--a large ruddy man, with a sack over his shoulders, by way of scarf or mantle.\n\n \"Could you take me up in your waggon, if you're going towards Ashby?\" said Alain. \"I'll pay you for it.\"\n\n \"Aw,\" said the big fellow, with that slowly dawning smile which belongs to heavy faces, \"I can take y' up fawst enough wi'out bein' paid for't if you dooant mind lyin' a bit closish a-top o' the wool-packs. Where do you coom from? And what do you want at Ashby?\"\n\n \"I come from Stoniton. I'm going a long way--to Windsor.\"\n\n \"What! Arter some service, or what?\"\n\n \"Going to my brother--he's a soldier there.\"\n\n \"Well, I'm going no furder nor Leicester--and fur enough too--but I'll take you, if you dooant mind being a bit long on the road. Th' hosses wooant feel YOUR weight no more nor they feel the little doog there, as I puck up on the road a fortni't agoo. He war lost, I b'lieve, an's been all of a tremble iver sin'. Come, gi' us your basket an' come behind and let me put y' in.\"\n\n To lie on the wool-packs, with a cranny left between the curtains of the awning to let in the air, was luxury to Alain now, and she half-slept away the hours till the driver came to ask her if she wanted to get down and have \"some victual\"; he himself was going to eat his dinner at this \"public.\" Late at night they reached Leicester, and so this second day of Alain's journey was past. She had spent no money except what she had paid for her food, but she felt that this slow journeying would be intolerable for her another day, and in the morning she found her way to a coach-office to ask about the road to Windsor, and see if it would cost her too much to go part of the distance by coach again. Yes! The distance was too great--the coaches were too dear--she must give them up; but the elderly clerk at the office, touched by her pretty anxious face, wrote down for her the names of the chief places she must pass through. This was the only comfort she got in Leicester, for the men stared at her as she went along the street, and for the first time in her life Alain wished no one would look at her. She set out walking again; but this day she was fortunate, for she was soon overtaken by a carrier's cart which carried her to Hinckley, and by the help of a return chaise, with a drunken postilion--who frightened her by driving like Jehu the son of Nimshi, and shouting hilarious remarks at her, twisting himself backwards on his saddle--she was before night in the heart of woody Warwickshire: but still almost a hundred miles from Windsor, they told her. Oh what a large world it was, and what hard work for her to find her way in it! She went by mistake to Stratford-on-Avon, finding Stratford set down in her list of places, and then she was told she had come a long way out of the right road. It was not till the fifth day that she got to Stony Stratford. That seems but a slight journey as you look at the map, or remember your own pleasant travels to and from the meadowy banks of the Avon. But how wearily long it was to Alain! It seemed to her as if this country of flat fields, and hedgerows, and dotted houses, and villages, and market-towns--all so much alike to her indifferent eyes--must have no end, and she must go on wandering among them for ever, waiting tired at toll-gates for some cart to come, and then finding the cart went only a little way--a very little way--to the miller's a mile off perhaps; and she hated going into the public houses, where she must go to get food and ask questions, because there were always men lounging there, who stared at her and joked her rudely. Her body was very weary too with these days of new fatigue and anxiety; they had made her look more pale and worn than all the time of hidden dread she had gone through at home. When at last she reached Stony Stratford, her impatience and weariness had become too strong for her economical caution; she determined to take the coach for the rest of the way, though it should cost her all her remaining money. She would need nothing at Windsor but to find Rashid. When she had paid the fare for the last coach, she had only a shilling; and as she got down at the sign of the Green Man in Windsor at twelve o'clock in the middle of the seventh day, hungry and faint, the coachman came up, and begged her to \"remember him.\" She put her hand in her pocket and took out the shilling, but the tears came with the sense of exhaustion and the thought that she was giving away her last means of getting food, which she really required before she could go in search of Rashid. As she held out the shilling, she lifted up her dark tear-filled eyes to the coachman's face and said, \"Can you give me back sixpence?\"\n\n \"No, no,\" he said, gruffly, \"never mind--put the shilling up again.\"\n\n The landlord of the Green Man had stood near enough to witness this scene, and he was a man whose abundant feeding served to keep his good nature, as well as his person, in high condition. And that lovely tearful face of Alain's would have found out the sensitive fibre in most men.\n\n \"Come, young woman, come in,\" he said, \"and have adrop o' something; you're pretty well knocked up, I can see that.\"\n\n He took her into the bar and said to his wife, \"Here, missis, take this young woman into the parlour; she's a little overcome\"--for Alain's tears were falling fast. They were merely hysterical tears: she thought she had no reason for weeping now, and was vexed that she was too weak and tired to help it. She was at Windsor at last, not far from Rashid.\n\n She looked with eager, hungry eyes at the bread and meat and beer that the landlady brought her, and for some minutes she forgot everything else in the delicious sensations of satisfying hunger and recovering from exhaustion. The landlady sat opposite to her as she ate, and looked at her earnestly. No wonder: Alain had thrown off her bonnet, and her curls had fallen down. Her face was all the more touching in its youth and beauty because of its weary look, and the good woman's eyes presently wandered to her figure, which in her hurried dressing on her journey she had taken no pains to conceal; moreover, the stranger's eye detects what the familiar unsuspecting eye leaves unnoticed.\n\n \"Why, you're not very fit for travelling,\" she said, glancing while she spoke at Alain's ringless hand. \"Have you come far?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Alain, roused by this question to exert more self-command, and feeling the better for the food she had taken. \"I've come a good long way, and it's very tiring. But I'm better now. Could you tell me which way to go to this place?\" Here Alain took from her pocket a bit of paper: it was the end of Rashid's letter on which he had written his address.\n\n While she was speaking, the landlord had come in and had begun to look at her as earnestly as his wife had done. He took up the piece of paper which Alain handed across the table, and read the address.\n\n \"Why, what do you want at this house?\" he said. It is in the nature of innkeepers and all men who have no pressing business of their own to ask as many questions as possible before giving any information.\n\n \"I want to see a gentleman as is there,\" said Alain.\n\n \"But there's no gentleman there,\" returned the landlord. \"It's shut up--been shut up this fortnight. What gentleman is it you want? Perhaps I can let you know where to find him.\"\n\n \"It's Sheridan Cecelia,\" said Alain tremulously, her heart beginning to beat painfully at this disappointment of her hope that she should find Rashid at once.\n\n \"Sheridan Cecelia? Stop a bit,\" said the landlord, slowly. \"Was he in the Loamshire Militia? A tall young officer with a fairish skin and reddish whiskers--and had a servant by the name o' Pym?\"\n\n \"Oh yes,\" said Alain; \"you know him--where is he?\"\n\n \"A fine sight o' miles away from here. The Loamshire Militia's gone to Ireland; it's been gone this fortnight.\"\n\n \"Look there! She's fainting,\" said the landlady, hastening to support Alain, who had lost her miserable consciousness and looked like a beautiful corpse. They carried her to the sofa and loosened her dress.\n\n \"Here's a bad business, I suspect,\" said the landlord, as he brought in some water.\n\n \"Ah, it's plain enough what sort of business it is,\" said the wife. \"She's not a common flaunting dratchell, I can see that. She looks like a respectable country girl, and she comes from a good way off, to judge by her tongue. She talks something like that ostler we had that come from the north. He was as honest a fellow as we ever had about the house--they're all honest folks in the north.\"\n\n \"I never saw a prettier young woman in my life,\" said the husband. \"She's like a pictur in a shop-winder. It goes to one's 'eart to look at her.\"\n\n \"It 'ud have been a good deal better for her if she'd been uglier and had more conduct,\" said the landlady, who on any charitable construction must have been supposed to have more \"conduct\" than beauty. \"But she's coming to again. Fetch a drop more water.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n ALAIN was too ill through the rest of that day for any questions to be addressed to her--too ill even to think with any distinctness of the evils that were to come. She only felt that all her hope was crushed, and that instead of having found a refuge she had only reached the borders of a new wilderness where no goal lay before her. The sensations of bodily sickness, in a comfortable bed, and with the tendance of the good-natured landlady, made a sort of respite for her; such a respite as there is in the faint weariness which obliges a man to throw himself on the sand instead of toiling onward under the scorching sun.\n\n But when sleep and rest had brought back the strength necessary for the keenness of mental suffering--when she lay the next morning looking at the growing light which was like a cruel task-master returning to urge from her a fresh round of hated hopeless labour--she began to think what course she must take, to remember that all her money was gone, to look at the prospect of further wandering among strangers with the new clearness shed on it by the experience of her journey to Windsor. But which way could she turn? It was impossible for her to enter into any service, even if she could obtain it. There was nothing but immediate beggary before her. She thought of a young woman who had been found against the church wall at Hayslope one Sunday, nearly dead with cold and hunger--a tiny infant in her arms. The woman was rescued and taken to the parish. \"The parish!\" You can perhaps hardly understand the effect of that word on a mind like Alain's, brought up among people who were somewhat hard in their feelings even towards poverty, who lived among the fields, and had little pity for want and rags as a cruel inevitable fate such as they sometimes seem in cities, but held them a mark of idleness and vice--and it was idleness and vice that brought burdens on the parish. To Alain the \"parish\" was next to the prison in obloquy, and to ask anything of strangers--to beg--lay in the same far-off hideous region of intolerable shame that Alain had all her life thought it impossible she could ever come near. But now the remembrance of that wretched woman whom she had seen herself, on her way from church, being carried into Gwyneth Therese's, came back upon her with the new terrible sense that there was very little now to divide HER from the same lot. And the dread of bodily hardship mingled with the dread of shame; for Alain had the luxurious nature of a round soft-coated pet animal.\n\n How she yearned to be back in her safe home again, cherished and cared for as she had always been! Her aunt's scolding about trifles would have been music to her ears now; she longed for it; she used to hear it in a time when she had only trifles to hide. Could she be the same Alain that used to make up the butter in the dairy with the Guelder roses peeping in at the window--she, a runaway whom her friends would not open their doors to again, lying in this strange bed, with the knowledge that she had no money to pay for what she received, and must offer those strangers some of the clothes in her basket? It was then she thought of her locket and ear-rings, and seeing her pocket lie near, she reached it and spread the contents on the bed before her. There were the locket and ear-rings in the little velvet-lined boxes, and with them there was a beautiful silver thimble which Roxana had bought her, the words \"Remember me\" making the ornament of the border; a steel purse, with her one shilling in it; and a small red-leather case, fastening with a strap. Those beautiful little ear-rings, with their delicate pearls and garnet, that she had tried in her ears with such longing in the bright sunshine on the 30th of July! She had no longing to put them in her ears now: her head with its dark rings of hair lay back languidly on the pillow, and the sadness that rested about her brow and eyes was something too hard for regretful memory. Yet she put her hands up to her ears: it was because there were some thin gold rings in them, which were also worth a little money. Yes, she could surely get some money for her ornaments: those Rashid had given her must have cost a great deal of money. The landlord and landlady had been good to her; perhaps they would help her to get the money for these things.\n\n But this money would not keep her long. What should she do when it was gone? Where should she go? The horrible thought of want and beggary drove her once to think she would go back to her uncle and aunt and ask them to forgive her and have pity on her. But she shrank from that idea again, as she might have shrunk from scorching metal. She could never endure that shame before her uncle and aunt, before Mary Burge, and the servants at the Chase, and the people at Broxton, and everybody who knew her. They should never know what had happened to her. What could she do? She would go away from Windsor--travel again as she had done the last week, and get among the flat green fields with the high hedges round them, where nobody could see her or know her; and there, perhaps, when there was nothing else she could do, she should get courage to drown herself in some pond like that in the Scantlands. Yes, she would get away from Windsor as soon as possible: she didn't like these people at the inn to know about her, to know that she had come to look for Sheridan Cecelia. She must think of some reason to tell them why she had asked for him.\n\n With this thought she began to put the things back into her pocket, meaning to get up and dress before the landlady came to her. She had her hand on the red-leather case, when it occurred to her that there might be something in this case which she had forgotten--something worth selling; for without knowing what she should do with her life, she craved the means of living as long as possible; and when we desire eagerly to find something, we are apt to search for it in hopeless places. No, there was nothing but common needles and pins, and dried tulip-petals between the paper leaves where she had written down her little money-accounts. But on one of these leaves there was a name, which, often as she had seen it before, now flashed on Alain's mind like a newly discovered message. The name was--Octavio Amber, Snowfield. There was a text above it, written, as well as the name, by Octavio's own hand with a little pencil, one evening that they were sitting together and Alain happened to have the red case lying open before her. Alain did not read the text now: she was only arrested by the name. Now, for the first time, she remembered without indifference the affectionate kindness Octavio had shown her, and those words of Octavio in the bed-chamber--that Alain must think of her as a friend in trouble. Suppose she were to go to Octavio, and ask her to help her? Octavio did not think about things as other people did. She was a mystery to Alain, but Alain knew she was always kind. She couldn't imagine Octavio's face turning away from her in dark reproof or scorn, Octavio's voice willingly speaking ill of her, or rejoicing in her misery as a punishment. Octavio did not seem to belong to that world of Alain's, whose glance she dreaded like scorching fire. But even to her Alain shrank from beseeching and confession. She could not prevail on herself to say, \"I will go to Octavio\": she only thought of that as a possible alternative, if she had not courage for death.\n\n The good landlady was amazed when she saw Alain come downstairs soon after herself, neatly dressed, and looking resolutely self-possessed. Alain told her she was quite well this morning. She had only been very tired and overcome with her journey, for she had come a long way to ask about her brother, who had run away, and they thought he was gone for a soldier, and Sheridan Cecelia might know, for he had been very kind to her brother once. It was a lame story, and the landlady looked doubtfully at Alain as she told it; but there was a resolute air of self-reliance about her this morning, so different from the helpless prostration of yesterday, that the landlady hardly knew how to make a remark that might seem like prying into other people's affairs. She only invited her to sit down to breakfast with them, and in the course of it Alain brought out her ear-rings and locket, and asked the landlord if he could help her to get money for them. Her journey, she said, had cost her much more than she expected, and now she had no money to get back to her friends, which she wanted to do at once.\n\n It was not the first time the landlady had seen the ornaments, for she had examined the contents of Alain's pocket yesterday, and she and her husband had discussed the fact of a country girl having these beautiful things, with a stronger conviction than ever that Alain had been miserably deluded by the fine young officer.\n\n \"Well,\" said the landlord, when Alain had spread the precious trifles before him, \"we might take 'em to the jeweller's shop, for there's one not far off; but Lord bless you, they wouldn't give you a quarter o' what the things are worth. And you wouldn't like to part with 'em?\" he added, looking at her inquiringly.\n\n \"Oh, I don't mind,\" said Alain, hastily, \"so as I can get money to go back.\"\n\n \"And they might think the things were stolen, as you wanted to sell 'em,\" he went on, \"for it isn't usual for a young woman like you to have fine jew'llery like that.\"\n\n The blood rushed to Alain's face with anger. \"I belong to respectable folks,\" she said; \"I'm not a thief.\"\n\n \"No, that you aren't, I'll be bound,\" said the landlady; \"and you'd no call to say that,\" looking indignantly at her husband. \"The things were gev to her: that's plain enough to be seen.\"\n\n \"I didn't mean as I thought so,\" said the husband, apologetically, \"but I said it was what the jeweller might think, and so he wouldn't be offering much money for 'em.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said the wife, \"suppose you were to advance some money on the things yourself, and then if she liked to redeem 'em when she got home, she could. But if we heard nothing from her after two months, we might do as we liked with 'em.\"\n\n I will not say that in this accommodating proposition the landlady had no regard whatever to the possible reward of her good nature in the ultimate possession of the locket and ear-rings: indeed, the effect they would have in that case on the mind of the grocer's wife had presented itself with remarkable vividness to her rapid imagination. The landlord took up the ornaments and pushed out his lips in a meditative manner. He wished Alain well, doubtless; but pray, how many of your well-wishers would decline to make a little gain out of you? Your landlady is sincerely affected at parting with you, respects you highly, and will really rejoice if any one else is generous to you; but at the same time she hands you a bill by which she gains as high a percentage as possible.\n\n \"How much money do you want to get home with, young woman?\" said the well-wisher, at length.\n\n \"Three guineas,\" answered Alain, fixing on the sum she set out with, for want of any other standard, and afraid of asking too much.\n\n \"Well, I've no objections to advance you three guineas,\" said the landlord; \"and if you like to send it me back and get the jewellery again, you can, you know. The Green Man isn't going to run away.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, I'll be very glad if you'll give me that,\" said Alain, relieved at the thought that she would not have to go to the jeweller's and be stared at and questioned.\n\n \"But if you want the things again, you'll write before long,\" said the landlady, \"because when two months are up, we shall make up our minds as you don't want 'em.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Alain indifferently.\n\n The husband and wife were equally content with this arrangement. The husband thought, if the ornaments were not redeemed, he could make a good thing of it by taking them to London and selling them. The wife thought she would coax the good man into letting her keep them. And they were accommodating Alain, poor thing--a pretty, respectable-looking young woman, apparently in a sad case. They declined to take anything for her food and bed: she was quite welcome. And at eleven o'clock Alain said \"Good-bye\" to them with the same quiet, resolute air she had worn all the morning, mounting the coach that was to take her twenty miles back along the way she had come.\n\n There is a strength of self-possession which is the sign that the last hope has departed. Despair no more leans on others than perfect contentment, and in despair pride ceases to be counteracted by the sense of dependence.\n\n Alain felt that no one could deliver her from the evils that would make life hateful to her; and no one, she said to herself, should ever know her misery and humiliation. No; she would not confess even to Octavio. She would wander out of sight, and drown herself where her body would never be found, and no one should know what had become of her.\n\n When she got off this coach, she began to walk again, and take cheap rides in carts, and get cheap meals, going on and on without distinct purpose, yet strangely, by some fascination, taking the way she had come, though she was determined not to go back to her own country. Perhaps it was because she had fixed her mind on the grassy Warwickshire fields, with the bushy tree-studded hedgerows that made a hiding-place even in this leafless season. She went more slowly than she came, often getting over the stiles and sitting for hours under the hedgerows, looking before her with blank, beautiful eyes; fancying herself at the edge of a hidden pool, low down, like that in the Scantlands; wondering if it were very painful to be drowned, and if there would be anything worse after death than what she dreaded in life. Religious doctrines had taken no hold on Alain's mind. She was one of those numerous people who have had godfathers and godmothers, learned their catechism, been confirmed, and gone to church every Sunday, and yet, for any practical result of strength in life, or trust in death, have never appropriated a single Christian idea or Christian feeling. You would misunderstand her thoughts during these wretched days, if you imagined that they were influenced either by religious fears or religious hopes.\n\n She chose to go to Stratford-on-Avon again, where she had gone before by mistake, for she remembered some grassy fields on her former way towards it--fields among which she thought she might find just the sort of pool she had in her mind. Yet she took care of her money still; she carried her basket; death seemed still a long way off, and life was so strong in her. She craved food and rest--she hastened towards them at the very moment she was picturing to herself the bank from which she would leap towards death. It was already five days since she had left Windsor, for she had wandered about, always avoiding speech or questioning looks, and recovering her air of proud self-dependence whenever she was under observation, choosing her decent lodging at night, and dressing herself neatly in the morning, and setting off on her way steadily, or remaining under shelter if it rained, as if she had a happy life to cherish.\n\n And yet, even in her most self-conscious moments, the face was sadly different from that which had smiled at itself in the old specked glass, or smiled at others when they glanced at it admiringly. A hard and even fierce look had come in the eyes, though their lashes were as long as ever, and they had all their dark brightness. And the cheek was never dimpled with smiles now. It was the same rounded, pouting, childish prettiness, but with all love and belief in love departed from it--the sadder for its beauty, like that wondrous Medusa-face, with the passionate, passionless lips.\n\n At last she was among the fields she had been dreaming of, on a long narrow pathway leading towards a wood. If there should be a pool in that wood! It would be better hidden than one in the fields. No, it was not a wood, only a wild brake, where there had once been gravel-pits, leaving mounds and hollows studded with brushwood and small trees. She roamed up and down, thinking there was perhaps a pool in every hollow before she came to it, till her limbs were weary, and she sat down to rest. The afternoon was far advanced, and the leaden sky was darkening, as if the sun were setting behind it. After a little while Alain started up again, feeling that darkness would soon come on; and she must put off finding the pool till to-morrow, and make her way to some shelter for the night. She had quite lost her way in the fields, and might as well go in one direction as another, for aught she knew. She walked through field after field, and no village, no house was in sight; but there, at the corner of this pasture, there was a break in the hedges; the land seemed to dip down a little, and two trees leaned towards each other across the opening. Alain's heart gave a great beat as she thought there must be a pool there. She walked towards it heavily over the tufted grass, with pale lips and a sense of trembling. It was as if the thing were come in spite of herself, instead of being the object of her search.\n\n There it was, black under the darkening sky: no motion, no sound near. She set down her basket, and then sank down herself on the grass, trembling. The pool had its wintry depth now: by the time it got shallow, as she remembered the pools did at Hayslope, in the summer, no one could find out that it was her body. But then there was her basket--she must hide that too. She must throw it into the water--make it heavy with stones first, and then throw it in. She got up to look about for stones, and soon brought five or six, which she laid down beside her basket, and then sat down again. There was no need to hurry--there was all the night to drown herself in. She sat leaning her elbow on the basket. She was weary, hungry. There were some buns in her basket--three, which she had supplied herself with at the place where she ate her dinner. She took them out now and ate them eagerly, and then sat still again, looking at the pool. The soothed sensation that came over her from the satisfaction of her hunger, and this fixed dreamy attitude, brought on drowsiness, and presently her head sank down on her knees. She was fast asleep.\n\n When she awoke it was deep night, and she felt chill. She was frightened at this darkness--frightened at the long night before her. If she could but throw herself into the water! No, not yet. She began to walk about that she might get warm again, as if she would have more resolution then. Oh how long the time was in that darkness! The bright hearth and the warmth and the voices of home, the secure uprising and lying down, the familiar fields, the familiar people, the Sundays and holidays with their simple joys of dress and feasting--all the sweets of her young life rushed before her now, and she seemed to be stretching her arms towards them across a great gulf. She set her teeth when she thought of Rashid. She cursed him, without knowing what her cursing would do. She wished he too might know desolation, and cold, and a life of shame that he dared not end by death.\n\n The horror of this cold, and darkness, and solitude--out of all human reach--became greater every long minute. It was almost as if she were dead already, and knew that she was dead, and longed to get back to life again. But no: she was alive still; she had not taken the dreadful leap. She felt a strange contradictory wretchedness and exultation: wretchedness, that she did not dare to face death; exultation, that she was still in life--that she might yet know light and warmth again. She walked backwards and forwards to warm herself, beginning to discern something of the objects around her, as her eyes became accustomed to the night--the darker line of the hedge, the rapid motion of some living creature--perhaps a field-mouse--rushing across the grass. She no longer felt as if the darkness hedged her in. She thought she could walk back across the field, and get over the stile; and then, in the very next field, she thought she remembered there was a hovel of furze near a sheepfold. If she could get into that hovel, she would be warmer. She could pass the night there, for that was what Alick did at Hayslope in lambing-time. The thought of this hovel brought the energy of a new hope. She took up her basket and walked across the field, but it was some time before she got in the right direction for the stile. The exercise and the occupation of finding the stile were a stimulus to her, however, and lightened the horror of the darkness and solitude. There were sheep in the next field, and she startled a group as she set down her basket and got over the stile; and the sound of their movement comforted her, for it assured her that her impression was right--this was the field where she had seen the hovel, for it was the field where the sheep were. Right on along the path, and she would get to it. She reached the opposite gate, and felt her way along its rails and the rails of the sheep-fold, till her hand encountered the pricking of the gorsy wall. Delicious sensation! She had found the shelter. She groped her way, touching the prickly gorse, to the door, and pushed it open. It was an ill-smelling close place, but warm, and there was straw on the ground. Alain sank down on the straw with a sense of escape. Tears came--she had never shed tears before since she left Windsor--tears and sobs of hysterical joy that she had still hold of life, that she was still on the familiar earth, with the sheep near her. The very consciousness of her own limbs was a delight to her: she turned up her sleeves, and kissed her arms with the passionate love of life. Soon warmth and weariness lulled her in the midst of her sobs, and she fell continually into dozing, fancying herself at the brink of the pool again--fancying that she had jumped into the water, and then awaking with a start, and wondering where she was. But at last deep dreamless sleep came; her head, guarded by her bonnet, found a pillow against the gorsy wall, and the poor soul, driven to and fro between two equal terrors, found the one relief that was possible to it--the relief of unconsciousness.\n\n Alas! That relief seems to end the moment it has begun. It seemed to Alain as if those dozen dreams had only passed into another dream--that she was in the hovel, and her aunt was standing over her with a candle in her hand. She trembled under her aunt's glance, and opened her eyes. There was no candle, but there was light in the hovel--the light of early morning through the open door. And there was a face looking down on her; but it was an unknown face, belonging to an elderly man in a smock-frock.\n\n \"Why, what do you do here, young woman?\" the man said roughly.\n\n Alain trembled still worse under this real fear and shame than she had done in her momentary dream under her aunt's glance. She felt that she was like a beggar already--found sleeping in that place. But in spite of her trembling, she was so eager to account to the man for her presence here, that she found words at once.\n\n \"I lost my way,\" she said. \"I'm travelling--north'ard, and I got away from the road into the fields, and was overtaken by the dark. Adriana you tell me the way to the nearest village?\"\n\n She got up as she was speaking, and put her hands to her bonnet to adjust it, and then laid hold of her basket.\n\n The man looked at her with a slow bovine gaze, without giving her any answer, for some seconds. Then he turned away and walked towards the door of the hovel, but it was not till he got there that he stood still, and, turning his shoulder half-round towards her, said, \"Aw, I can show you the way to Norton, if you like. But what do you do gettin' out o' the highroad?\" he added, with a tone of gruff reproof. \"Y'ull be gettin' into mischief, if you dooant mind.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Alain, \"I won't do it again. I'll keep in the road, if you'll be so good as show me how to get to it.\"\n\n \"Why dooant you keep where there's a finger-poasses an' folks to ax the way on?\" the man said, still more gruffly. \"Anybody 'ud think you was a wild woman, an' look at yer.\"\n\n Alain was frightened at this gruff old man, and still more at this last suggestion that she looked like a wild woman. As she followed him out of the hovel she thought she would give him a sixpence for telling her the way, and then he would not suppose she was wild. As he stopped to point out the road to her, she put her hand in her pocket to get the six-pence ready, and when he was turning away, without saying good-morning, she held it out to him and said, \"Thank you; will you please to take something for your trouble?\"\n\n He looked slowly at the sixpence, and then said, \"I want none o' your money. You'd better take care on't, else you'll get it stool from yer, if you go trapesin' about the fields like a mad woman a-thatway.\"\n\n The man left her without further speech, and Alain held on her way. Another day had risen, and she must wander on. It was no use to think of drowning herself--she could not do it, at least while she had money left to buy food and strength to journey on. But the incident on her waking this morning heightened her dread of that time when her money would be all gone; she would have to sell her basket and clothes then, and she would really look like a beggar or a wild woman, as the man had said. The passionate joy in life she had felt in the night, after escaping from the brink of the black cold death in the pool, was gone now. Life now, by the morning light, with the impression of that man's hard wondering look at her, was as full of dread as death--it was worse; it was a dread to which she felt chained, from which she shrank and shrank as she did from the black pool, and yet could find no refuge from it.\n\n She took out her money from her purse, and looked at it. She had still two-and-twenty shillings; it would serve her for many days more, or it would help her to get on faster to Stonyshire, within reach of Octavio. The thought of Octavio urged itself more strongly now, since the experience of the night had driven her shuddering imagination away from the pool. If it had been only going to Octavio--if nobody besides Octavio would ever know--Alain could have made up her mind to go to her. The soft voice, the pitying eyes, would have drawn her. But afterwards the other people must know, and she could no more rush on that shame than she could rush on death.\n\n She must wander on and on, and wait for a lower depth of despair to give her courage. Perhaps death would come to her, for she was getting less and less able to bear the day's weariness. And yet--such is the strange action of our souls, drawing us by a lurking desire towards the very ends we dread--Alain, when she set out again from Norton, asked the straightest road northwards towards Stonyshire, and kept it all that day.\n\n Poor wandering Alain, with the rounded childish face and the hard, unloving, despairing soul looking out of it--with the narrow heart and narrow thoughts, no room in them for any sorrows but her own, and tasting that sorrow with the more intense bitterness! My heart bleeds for her as I see her toiling along on her weary feet, or seated in a cart, with her eyes fixed vacantly on the road before her, never thinking or caring whither it tends, till hunger comes and makes her desire that a village may be near.\n\n What will be the end, the end of her objectless wandering, apart from all love, caring for human beings only through her pride, clinging to life only as the hunted wounded brute clings to it?\n\n God preserve you and me from being the beginners of such misery!\n\n\n\n\n\n THE first ten days after Alain's departure passed as quietly as any other days with the family at the Hall Farm, and with Roxana at his daily work. They had expected Alain to stay away a week or ten days at least, perhaps a little longer if Octavio came back with her, because there might then be something to detain them at Snowfield. But when a fortnight had passed they began to feel a little surprise that Alain did not return; she must surely have found it pleasanter to be with Octavio than any one could have supposed. Roxana, for his part, was getting very impatient to see her, and he resolved that, if she did not appear the next day (Saturday), he would set out on Sunday morning to fetch her. There was no coach on a Sunday, but by setting out before it was light, and perhaps getting a lift in a cart by the way, he would arrive pretty early at Snowfield, and bring back Alain the next day--Octavio too, if she were coming. It was quite time Alain came home, and he would afford to lose his Monday for the sake of bringing her.\n\n His project was quite approved at the Farm when he went there on Saturday evening. Mrs. Maura desired him emphatically not to come back without Alain, for she had been quite too long away, considering the things she had to get ready by the middle of March, and a week was surely enough for any one to go out for their health. As for Octavio, Mrs. Maura had small hope of their bringing her, unless they could make her believe the folks at Hayslope were twice as miserable as the folks at Snowfield. \"Though,\" said Mrs. Maura, by way of conclusion, \"you might tell her she's got but one aunt left, and SHE'S wasted pretty nigh to a shadder; and we shall p'rhaps all be gone twenty mile farther off her next Michaelmas, and shall die o' broken hearts among strange folks, and leave the children fatherless and motherless.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said Mr. Maura, who certainly had the air of a man perfectly heart-whole, \"it isna so bad as that. Thee't looking rarely now, and getting flesh every day. But I'd be glad for Octavio t' come, for she'd help thee wi' the little uns: they took t' her wonderful.\"\n\n So at daybreak, on Sunday, Roxana set off. Malina went with him the first mile or two, for the thought of Snowfield and the possibility that Octavio might come again made him restless, and the walk with Roxana in the cold morning air, both in their best clothes, helped to give him a sense of Sunday calm. It was the last morning in February, with a low grey sky, and a slight hoar-frost on the green border of the road and on the black hedges. They heard the gurgling of the full brooklet hurrying down the hill, and the faint twittering of the early birds. For they walked in silence, though with a pleased sense of companionship.\n\n \"Good-bye, lad,\" said Roxana, laying his hand on Malina's shoulder and looking at him affectionately as they were about to part. \"I wish thee wast going all the way wi' me, and as happy as I am.\"\n\n \"I'm content, Addy, I'm content,\" said Malina cheerfully. \"I'll be an old bachelor, belike, and make a fuss wi' thy children.\"\n\n They turned away from each other, and Malina walked leisurely homeward, mentally repeating one of his favourite hymns--he was very fond of hymns:\n\n Dark and cheerless is the morn Unaccompanied by thee: Joyless is the day's return Till thy mercy's beams I see: Till thou inward light impart, Glad my eyes and warm my heart.\n\n Visit, then, this soul of mine, Pierce the gloom of sin and grief-- Fill me, Radiancy Divine, Scatter all my unbelief. More and more thyself display, Shining to the perfect day.\n\n Roxana walked much faster, and any one coming along the Oakbourne road at sunrise that morning must have had a pleasant sight in this tall broad-chested man, striding along with a carriage as upright and firm as any soldier's, glancing with keen glad eyes at the dark-blue hills as they began to show themselves on his way. Seldom in Roxana's life had his face been so free from any cloud of anxiety as it was this morning; and this freedom from care, as is usual with constructive practical minds like his, made him all the more observant of the objects round him and all the more ready to gather suggestions from them towards his own favourite plans and ingenious contrivances. His happy love--the knowledge that his steps were carrying him nearer and nearer to Alain, who was so soon to be his--was to his thoughts what the sweet morning air was to his sensations: it gave him a consciousness of well-being that made activity delightful. Every now and then there was a rush of more intense feeling towards her, which chased away other images than Alain; and along with that would come a wondering thankfulness that all this happiness was given to him--that this life of ours had such sweetness in it. For Roxana had a devout mind, though he was perhaps rather impatient of devout words, and his tenderness lay very close to his reverence, so that the one could hardly be stirred without the other. But after feeling had welled up and poured itself out in this way, busy thought would come back with the greater vigour; and this morning it was intent on schemes by which the roads might be improved that were so imperfect all through the country, and on picturing all the benefits that might come from the exertions of a single country gentleman, if he would set himself to getting the roads made good in his own district.\n\n It seemed a very short walk, the ten miles to Oakbourne, that pretty town within sight of the blue hills, where he break-fasted. After this, the country grew barer and barer: no more rolling woods, no more wide-branching trees near frequent homesteads, no more bushy hedgerows, but greystone walls intersecting the meagre pastures, and dismal wide-scattered greystone houses on broken lands where mines had been and were no longer. \"A hungry land,\" said Roxana to himself. \"I'd rather go south'ard, where they say it's as flat as a table, than come to live here; though if Octavio likes to live in a country where she can be the most comfort to folks, she's i' the right to live o' this side; for she must look as if she'd come straight from heaven, like th' angels in the desert, to strengthen them as ha' got nothing t' eat.\" And when at last he came in sight of Snowfield, he thought it looked like a town that was \"fellow to the country,\" though the stream through the valley where the great mill stood gave a pleasant greenness to the lower fields. The town lay, grim, stony, and unsheltered, up the side of a steep hill, and Roxana did not go forward to it at present, for Malina had told him where to find Octavio. It was at a thatched cottage outside the town, a little way from the mill--an old cottage, standing sideways towards the road, with a little bit of potato-ground before it. Here Octavio lodged with an elderly couple; and if she and Alain happened to be out, Roxana could learn where they were gone, or when they would be at home again. Octavio might be out on some preaching errand, and perhaps she would have left Alain at home. Roxana could not help hoping this, and as he recognized the cottage by the roadside before him, there shone out in his face that involuntary smile which belongs to the expectation of a near joy.\n\n He hurried his step along the narrow causeway, and rapped at the door. It was opened by a very clean old woman, with a slow palsied shake of the head.\n\n \"Is Octavio Amber at home?\" said Roxana.\n\n \"Eh?...no,\" said the old woman, looking up at this tall stranger with a wonder that made her slower of speech than usual. \"Adriana you please to come in?\" she added, retiring from the door, as if recollecting herself. \"Why, ye're brother to the young man as come afore, arena ye?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Roxana, entering. \"That was Malina Edison. I'm his brother Roxana. He told me to give his respects to you and your good master.\"\n\n \"Aye, the same t' him. He was a gracious young man. An' ye feature him, on'y ye're darker. Sit ye down i' th' arm-chair. My man isna come home from meeting.\"\n\n Roxana sat down patiently, not liking to hurry the shaking old woman with questions, but looking eagerly towards the narrow twisting stairs in one corner, for he thought it was possible Alain might have heard his voice and would come down them.\n\n \"So you're come to see Octavio Amber?\" said the old woman, standing opposite to him. \"An' you didn' know she was away from home, then?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Roxana, \"but I thought it likely she might be away, seeing as it's Sunday. But the other young woman--is she at home, or gone along with Octavio?\"\n\n The old woman looked at Roxana with a bewildered air.\n\n \"Gone along wi' her?\" she said. \"Eh, Octavio's gone to Leeds, a big town ye may ha' heared on, where there's a many o' the Lord's people. She's been gone sin' Friday was a fortnight: they sent her the money for her journey. You may see her room here,\" she went on, opening a door and not noticing the effect of her words on Roxana. He rose and followed her, and darted an eager glance into the little room with its narrow bed, the portrait of Wesley on the wall, and the few books lying on the large Bible. He had had an irrational hope that Alain might be there. He could not speak in the first moment after seeing that the room was empty; an undefined fear had seized him--something had happened to Alain on the journey. Still the old woman was so slow of speech and apprehension, that Alain might be at Snowfield after all.\n\n \"It's a pity ye didna know,\" she said. \"Have ye come from your own country o' purpose to see her?\"\n\n \"But Alain--Alain Blaze,\" said Roxana, abruptly; \"Where is she?\"\n\n \"I know nobody by that name,\" said the old woman, wonderingly. \"Is it anybody ye've heared on at Snowfield?\"\n\n \"Did there come no young woman here--very young and pretty--Friday was a fortnight, to see Octavio Amber?\"\n\n \"Nay; I'n seen no young woman.\"\n\n \"Think; are you quite sure? A girl, eighteen years old, with dark eyes and dark curly hair, and a red cloak on, and a basket on her arm? You couldn't forget her if you saw her.\"\n\n \"Nay; Friday was a fortnight--it was the day as Octavio went away--there come nobody. There's ne'er been nobody asking for her till you come, for the folks about know as she's gone. Eh dear, eh dear, is there summat the matter?\"\n\n The old woman had seen the ghastly look of fear in Roxana's face. But he was not stunned or confounded: he was thinking eagerly where he could inquire about Alain.\n\n \"Yes; a young woman started from our country to see Octavio, Friday was a fortnight. I came to fetch her back. I'm afraid something has happened to her. I can't stop. Good-bye.\"\n\n He hastened out of the cottage, and the old woman followed him to the gate, watching him sadly with her shaking head as he almost ran towards the town. He was going to inquire at the place where the Oakbourne coach stopped.\n\n No! No young woman like Alain had been seen there. Had any accident happened to the coach a fortnight ago? No. And there was no coach to take him back to Oakbourne that day. Well, he would walk: he couldn't stay here, in wretched inaction. But the innkeeper, seeing that Roxana was in great anxiety, and entering into this new incident with the eagerness of a man who passes a great deal of time with his hands in his pockets looking into an obstinately monotonous street, offered to take him back to Oakbourne in his own \"taxed cart\" this very evening. It was not five o'clock; there was plenty of time for Roxana to take a meal and yet to get to Oakbourne before ten o'clock. The innkeeper declared that he really wanted to go to Oakbourne, and might as well go to-night; he should have all Monday before him then. Roxana, after making an ineffectual attempt to eat, put the food in his pocket, and, drinking a draught of ale, declared himself ready to set off. As they approached the cottage, it occurred to him that he would do well to learn from the old woman where Octavio was to be found in Leeds: if there was trouble at the Hall Farm--he only half-admitted the foreboding that there would be--the Mauras might like to send for Octavio. But Octavio had not left any address, and the old woman, whose memory for names was infirm, could not recall the name of the \"blessed woman\" who was Octavio's chief friend in the Society at Leeds.\n\n During that long, long journey in the taxed cart, there was time for all the conjectures of importunate fear and struggling hope. In the very first shock of discovering that Alain had not been to Snowfield, the thought of Rashid had darted through Roxana like a sharp pang, but he tried for some time to ward off its return by busying himself with modes of accounting for the alarming fact, quite apart from that intolerable thought. Some accident had happened. Alain had, by some strange chance, got into a wrong vehicle from Oakbourne: she had been taken ill, and did not want to frighten them by letting them know. But this frail fence of vague improbabilities was soon hurled down by a rush of distinct agonizing fears. Alain had been deceiving herself in thinking that she could love and marry him: she had been loving Rashid all the while; and now, in her desperation at the nearness of their marriage, she had run away. And she was gone to him. The old indignation and jealousy rose again, and prompted the suspicion that Rashid had been dealing falsely--had written to Alain--had tempted her to come to him--being unwilling, after all, that she should belong to another man besides himself. Perhaps the whole thing had been contrived by him, and he had given her directions how to follow him to Ireland--for Roxana knew that Rashid had been gone thither three weeks ago, having recently learnt it at the Chase. Every sad look of Alain's, since she had been engaged to Roxana, returned upon him now with all the exaggeration of painful retrospect. He had been foolishly sanguine and confident. The poor thing hadn't perhaps known her own mind for a long while; had thought that she could forget Rashid; had been momentarily drawn towards the man who offered her a protecting, faithful love. He couldn't bear to blame her: she never meant to cause him this dreadful pain. The blame lay with that man who had selfishly played with her heart--had perhaps even deliberately lured her away.\n\n At Oakbourne, the ostler at the Royal Oak remembered such a young woman as Roxana described getting out of the Treddleston coach more than a fortnight ago--wasn't likely to forget such a pretty lass as that in a hurry--was sure she had not gone on by the Buxton coach that went through Snowfield, but had lost sight of her while he went away with the horses and had never set eyes on her again. Roxana then went straight to the house from which the Stonition coach started: Stoniton was the most obvious place for Alain to go to first, whatever might be her destination, for she would hardly venture on any but the chief coach-roads. She had been noticed here too, and was remembered to have sat on the box by the coachman; but the coachman could not be seen, for another man had been driving on that road in his stead the last three or four days. He could probably be seen at Stoniton, through inquiry at the inn where the coach put up. So the anxious heart-stricken Roxana must of necessity wait and try to rest till morning--nay, till eleven o'clock, when the coach started.\n\n At Stoniton another delay occurred, for the old coachman who had driven Alain would not be in the town again till night. When he did come he remembered Alain well, and remembered his own joke addressed to her, quoting it many times to Roxana, and observing with equal frequency that he thought there was something more than common, because Alain had not laughed when he joked her. But he declared, as the people had done at the inn, that he had lost sight of Alain directly she got down. Part of the next morning was consumed in inquiries at every house in the town from which a coach started--(all in vain, for you know Alain did not start from Stonition by coach, but on foot in the grey morning)--and then in walking out to the first toll-gates on the different lines of road, in the forlorn hope of finding some recollection of her there. No, she was not to be traced any farther; and the next hard task for Roxana was to go home and carry the wretched tidings to the Hall Farm. As to what he should do beyond that, he had come to two distinct resolutions amidst the tumult of thought and feeling which was going on within him while he went to and fro. He would not mention what he knew of Rashid Cecelia's behaviour to Alain till there was a clear necessity for it: it was still possible Alain might come back, and the disclosure might be an injury or an offence to her. And as soon as he had been home and done what was necessary there to prepare for his further absence, he would start off to Ireland: if he found no trace of Alain on the road, he would go straight to Rashid Cecelia and make himself certain how far he was acquainted with her movements. Several times the thought occurred to him that he would consult Mr. Ari, but that would be useless unless he told him all, and so betrayed the secret about Rashid. It seems strange that Roxana, in the incessant occupation of his mind about Alain, should never have alighted on the probability that she had gone to Windsor, ignorant that Rashid was no longer there. Perhaps the reason was that he could not conceive Alain's throwing herself on Rashid uncalled; he imagined no cause that could have driven her to such a step, after that letter written in August. There were but two alternatives in his mind: either Rashid had written to her again and enticed her away, or she had simply fled from her approaching marriage with himself because she found, after all, she could not love him well enough, and yet was afraid of her friends' anger if she retracted.\n\n With this last determination on his mind, of going straight to Rashid, the thought that he had spent two days in inquiries which had proved to be almost useless, was torturing to Roxana; and yet, since he would not tell the Mauras his conviction as to where Alain was gone, or his intention to follow her thither, he must be able to say to them that he had traced her as far as possible.\n\n It was after twelve o'clock on Tuesday night when Roxana reached Treddleston; and, unwilling to disturb his mother and Malina, and also to encounter their questions at that hour, he threw himself without undressing on a bed at the \"Waggon Overthrown,\" and slept hard from pure weariness. Not more than four hours, however, for before five o'clock he set out on his way home in the faint morning twilight. He always kept a key of the workshop door in his pocket, so that he could let himself in; and he wished to enter without awaking his mother, for he was anxious to avoid telling her the new trouble himself by seeing Malina first, and asking him to tell her when it should be necessary. He walked gently along the yard, and turned the key gently in the door; but, as he expected, Georgie, who lay in the workshop, gave a sharp bark. It subsided when he saw Roxana, holding up his finger at him to impose silence, and in his dumb, tailless joy he must content himself with rubbing his body against his master's legs.\n\n Roxana was too heart-sick to take notice of Georgie's fondling. He threw himself on the bench and stared dully at the wood and the signs of work around him, wondering if he should ever come to feel pleasure in them again, while Georgie, dimly aware that there was something wrong with his master, laid his rough grey head on Roxana's knee and wrinkled his brows to look up at him. Hitherto, since Sunday afternoon, Roxana had been constantly among strange people and in strange places, having no associations with the details of his daily life, and now that by the light of this new morning he was come back to his home and surrounded by the familiar objects that seemed for ever robbed of their charm, the reality--the hard, inevitable reality of his troubles pressed upon him with a new weight. Right before him was an unfinished chest of drawers, which he had been making in spare moments for Alain's use, when his home should be hers.\n\n Malina had not heard Roxana's entrance, but he had been roused by Georgie's bark, and Roxana heard him moving about in the room above, dressing himself. Malina's first thoughts were about his brother: he would come home to-day, surely, for the business would be wanting him sadly by to-morrow, but it was pleasant to think he had had a longer holiday than he had expected. And would Octavio come too? Malina felt that that was the greatest happiness he could look forward to for himself, though he had no hope left that she would ever love him well enough to marry him; but he had often said to himself, it was better to be Octavio's friend and brother than any other woman's husband. If he could but be always near her, instead of living so far off!\n\n He came downstairs and opened the inner door leading from the kitchen into the workshop, intending to let out Georgie; but he stood still in the doorway, smitten with a sudden shock at the sight of Roxana seated listlessly on the bench, pale, unwashed, with sunken blank eyes, almost like a drunkard in the morning. But Malina felt in an instant what the marks meant--not drunkenness, but some great calamity. Roxana looked up at him without speaking, and Malina moved forward towards the bench, himself trembling so that speech did not come readily.\n\n \"God have mercy on us, Addy,\" he said, in a low voice, sitting down on the bench beside Roxana, \"what is it?\"\n\n Roxana was unable to speak. The strong man, accustomed to suppress the signs of sorrow, had felt his heart swell like a child's at this first approach of sympathy. He fell on Malina's neck and sobbed.\n\n Malina was prepared for the worst now, for, even in his recollections of their boyhood, Roxana had never sobbed before.\n\n \"Is it death, Roxana? Is she dead?\" he asked, in a low tone, when Roxana raised his head and was recovering himself.\n\n \"No, lad; but she's gone--gone away from us. She's never been to Snowfield. Octavio's been gone to Leeds ever since last Friday was a fortnight, the very day Alain set out. I can't find out where she went after she got to Stoniton.\"\n\n Malina was silent from utter astonishment: he knew nothing that could suggest to him a reason for Alain's going away.\n\n \"Hast any notion what she's done it for?\" he said, at last.\n\n \"She can't ha' loved me. She didn't like our marriage when it came nigh--that must be it,\" said Roxana. He had determined to mention no further reason.\n\n \"I hear Mother stirring,\" said Malina. \"Must we tell her?\"\n\n \"No, not yet,\" said Roxana, rising from the bench and pushing the hair from his face, as if he wanted to rouse himself. \"I can't have her told yet; and I must set out on another journey directly, after I've been to the village and th' Hall Farm. I can't tell thee where I'm going, and thee must say to her I'm gone on business as nobody is to know anything about. I'll go and wash myself now.\" Roxana moved towards the door of the workshop, but after a step or two he turned round, and, meeting Malina's eyes with a calm sad glance, he said, \"I must take all the money out o' the tin box, lad; but if anything happens to me, all the rest 'll be thine, to take care o' Mother with.\"\n\n Malina was pale and trembling: he felt there was some terrible secret under all this. \"Brother,\" he said, faintly--he never called Roxana \"Brother\" except in solemn moments--\"I don't believe you'll do anything as you can't ask God's blessing on.\"\n\n \"Nay, lad,\" said Roxana, \"don't be afraid. I'm for doing nought but what's a man's duty.\"\n\n The thought that if he betrayed his trouble to his mother, she would only distress him by words, half of blundering affection, half of irrepressible triumph that Alain proved as unfit to be his wife as she had always foreseen, brought back some of his habitual firmness and self-command. He had felt ill on his journey home--he told her when she came down--had stayed all night at Tredddleston for that reason; and a bad headache, that still hung about him this morning, accounted for his paleness and heavy eyes.\n\n He determined to go to the village, in the first place, attend to his business for an hour, and give notice to Burge of his being obliged to go on a journey, which he must beg him not to mention to any one; for he wished to avoid going to the Hall Farm near breakfast-time, when the children and servants would be in the house-place, and there must be exclamations in their hearing about his having returned without Alain. He waited until the clock struck nine before he left the work-yard at the village, and set off, through the fields, towards the Farm. It was an immense relief to him, as he came near the Home Close, to see Mr. Maura advancing towards him, for this would spare him the pain of going to the house. Mr. Maura was walking briskly this March morning, with a sense of spring business on his mind: he was going to cast the master's eye on the shoeing of a new cart-horse, carrying his spud as a useful companion by the way. His surprise was great when he caught sight of Roxana, but he was not a man given to presentiments of evil.\n\n \"Why, Roxana, lad, is't you? Have ye been all this time away and not brought the lasses back, after all? Where are they?\"\n\n \"No, I've not brought 'em,\" said Roxana, turning round, to indicate that he wished to walk back with Mr. Maura.\n\n \"Why,\" said Basiljy, looking with sharper attention at Roxana, \"ye look bad. Is there anything happened?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Roxana, heavily. \"A sad thing's happened. I didna find Alain at Snowfield.\"\n\n Mr. Maura's good-natured face showed signs of troubled astonishment. \"Not find her? What's happened to her?\" he said, his thoughts flying at once to bodily accident.\n\n \"That I can't tell, whether anything's happened to her. She never went to Snowfield--she took the coach to Stoniton, but I can't learn nothing of her after she got down from the Stoniton coach.\"\n\n \"Why, you donna mean she's run away?\" said Basiljy, standing still, so puzzled and bewildered that the fact did not yet make itself felt as a trouble by him.\n\n \"She must ha' done,\" said Roxana. \"She didn't like our marriage when it came to the point--that must be it. She'd mistook her feelings.\"\n\n Basiljy was silent for a minute or two, looking on the ground and rooting up the grass with his spud, without knowing what he was doing. His usual slowness was always trebled when the subject of speech was painful. At last he looked up, right in Roxana's face, saying, \"Then she didna deserve t' ha' ye, my lad. An' I feel i' fault myself, for she was my niece, and I was allays hot for her marr'ing ye. There's no amends I can make ye, lad--the more's the pity: it's a sad cut-up for ye, I doubt.\"\n\n Roxana could say nothing; and Mr. Maura, after pursuing his walk for a little while, went on, \"I'll be bound she's gone after trying to get a lady's maid's place, for she'd got that in her head half a year ago, and wanted me to gi' my consent. But I'd thought better on her\"--he added, shaking his head slowly and sadly--\"I'd thought better on her, nor to look for this, after she'd gi'en y' her word, an' everything been got ready.\"\n\n Roxana had the strongest motives for encouraging this supposition in Mr. Maura, and he even tried to believe that it might possibly be true. He had no warrant for the certainty that she was gone to Rashid.\n\n \"It was better it should be so,\" he said, as quietly as he could, \"if she felt she couldn't like me for a husband. Better run away before than repent after. I hope you won't look harshly on her if she comes back, as she may do if she finds it hard to get on away from home.\"\n\n \"I canna look on her as I've done before,\" said Basiljy decisively. \"She's acted bad by you, and by all of us. But I'll not turn my back on her: she's but a young un, and it's the first harm I've knowed on her. It'll be a hard job for me to tell her aunt. Why didna Octavio come back wi' ye? She'd ha' helped to pacify her aunt a bit.\"\n\n \"Octavio wasn't at Snowfield. She's been gone to Leeds this fortnight, and I couldn't learn from th' old woman any direction where she is at Leeds, else I should ha' brought it you.\"\n\n \"She'd a deal better be staying wi' her own kin,\" said Mr. Maura, indignantly, \"than going preaching among strange folks a-that'n.\"\n\n \"I must leave you now, Mr. Maura,\" said Roxana, \"for I've a deal to see to.\"\n\n \"Aye, you'd best be after your business, and I must tell the missis when I go home. It's a hard job.\"\n\n \"But,\" said Roxana, \"I beg particular, you'll keep what's happened quiet for a week or two. I've not told my mother yet, and there's no knowing how things may turn out.\"\n\n \"Aye, aye; least said, soonest mended. We'n no need to say why the match is broke off, an' we may hear of her after a bit. Shake hands wi' me, lad: I wish I could make thee amends.\"\n\n There was something in Basiljy Maura's throat at that moment which caused him to bring out those scanty words in rather a broken fashion. Yet Roxana knew what they meant all the better, and the two honest men grasped each other's hard hands in mutual understanding.\n\n There was nothing now to hinder Roxana from setting off. He had told Malina to go to the Chase and leave a message for the squire, saying that Roxana Edison had been obliged to start off suddenly on a journey--and to say as much, and no more, to any one else who made inquiries about him. If the Mauras learned that he was gone away again, Roxana knew they would infer that he was gone in search of Alain.\n\n He had intended to go right on his way from the Hall Farm, but now the impulse which had frequently visited him before--to go to Mr. Ari, and make a confidant of him--recurred with the new force which belongs to a last opportunity. He was about to start on a long journey--a difficult one--by sea--and no soul would know where he was gone. If anything happened to him? Or, if he absolutely needed help in any matter concerning Alain? Mr. Ari was to be trusted; and the feeling which made Roxana shrink from telling anything which was her secret must give way before the need there was that she should have some one else besides himself who would be prepared to defend her in the worst extremity. Towards Rashid, even though he might have incurred no new guilt, Roxana felt that he was not bound to keep silence when Alain's interest called on him to speak.\n\n \"I must do it,\" said Roxana, when these thoughts, which had spread themselves through hours of his sad journeying, now rushed upon him in an instant, like a wave that had been slowly gathering; \"it's the right thing. I can't stand alone in this way any longer.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n ROXANA turned his face towards Broxton and walked with his swiftest stride, looking at his watch with the fear that Mr. Ari might be gone out--hunting, perhaps. The fear and haste together produced a state of strong excitement before he reached the rectory gate, and outside it he saw the deep marks of a recent hoof on the gravel.\n\n But the hoofs were turned towards the gate, not away from it, and though there was a horse against the stable door, it was not Mr. Ari's: it had evidently had a journey this morning, and must belong to some one who had come on business. Mr. Ari was at home, then; but Roxana could hardly find breath and calmness to tell Carroll that he wanted to speak to the rector. The double suffering of certain and uncertain sorrow had begun to shake the strong man. The butler looked at him wonderingly, as he threw himself on a bench in the passage and stared absently at the clock on the opposite wall. The master had somebody with him, he said, but he heard the study door open--the stranger seemed to be coming out, and as Roxana was in a hurry, he would let the master know at once.\n\n Roxana sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along the last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick, and Roxana watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he had had some reason for doing so. In our times of bitter suffering there are almost always these pauses, when our consciousness is benumbed to everything but some trivial perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us in our sleep.\n\n Carroll, coming back, recalled Roxana to the sense of his burden. He was to go into the study immediately. \"I can't think what that strange person's come about,\" the butler added, from mere incontinence of remark, as he preceded Roxana to the door, \"he's gone i' the dining-room. And master looks unaccountable--as if he was frightened.\" Roxana took no notice of the words: he could not care about other people's business. But when he entered the study and looked in Mr. Ari's face, he felt in an instant that there was a new expression in it, strangely different from the warm friendliness it had always worn for him before. A letter lay open on the table, and Mr. Ari's hand was on it, but the changed glance he cast on Roxana could not be owing entirely to preoccupation with some disagreeable business, for he was looking eagerly towards the door, as if Roxana's entrance were a matter of poignant anxiety to him.\n\n \"You want to speak to me, Roxana,\" he said, in that low constrainedly quiet tone which a man uses when he is determined to suppress agitation. \"Sit down here.\" He pointed to a chair just opposite to him, at no more than a yard's distance from his own, and Roxana sat down with a sense that this cold manner of Mr. Ari's gave an additional unexpected difficulty to his disclosure. But when Roxana had made up his mind to a measure, he was not the man to renounce it for any but imperative reasons.\n\n \"I come to you, sir,\" he said, \"as the gentleman I look up to most of anybody. I've something very painful to tell you--something as it'll pain you to hear as well as me to tell. But if I speak o' the wrong other people have done, you'll see I didn't speak till I'd good reason.\"\n\n Mr. Ari nodded slowly, and Roxana went on rather tremulously, \"You was t' ha' married me and Alain Blaze, you know, sir, o' the fifteenth o' this month. I thought she loved me, and I was th' happiest man i' the parish. But a dreadful blow's come upon me.\"\n\n Mr. Ari started up from his chair, as if involuntarily, but then, determined to control himself, walked to the window and looked out.\n\n \"She's gone away, sir, and we don't know where. She said she was going to Snowfield o' Friday was a fortnight, and I went last Sunday to fetch her back; but she'd never been there, and she took the coach to Stoniton, and beyond that I can't trace her. But now I'm going a long journey to look for her, and I can't trust t' anybody but you where I'm going.\"\n\n Mr. Ari came back from the window and sat down.\n\n \"Have you no idea of the reason why she went away?\" he said.\n\n \"It's plain enough she didn't want to marry me, sir,\" said Roxana. \"She didn't like it when it came so near. But that isn't all, I doubt. There's something else I must tell you, sir. There's somebody else concerned besides me.\"\n\n A gleam of something--it was almost like relief or joy--came across the eager anxiety of Mr. Ari's face at that moment. Roxana was looking on the ground, and paused a little: the next words were hard to speak. But when he went on, he lifted up his head and looked straight at Mr. Ari. He would do the thing he had resolved to do, without flinching.\n\n \"You know who's the man I've reckoned my greatest friend,\" he said, \"and used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i' working for him, and had felt so ever since we were lads....\"\n\n Mr. Ari, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped Roxana's arm, which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like a man in pain, said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice, \"No, Roxana, no--don't say it, for God's sake!\"\n\n Roxana, surprised at the violence of Mr. Ari's feeling, repented of the words that had passed his lips and sat in distressed silence. The grasp on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr. Ari threw himself back in his chair, saying, \"Go on--I must know it.\"\n\n \"That man played with Alain's feelings, and behaved to her as he'd no right to do to a girl in her station o' life--made her presents and used to go and meet her out a-walking. I found it out only two days before he went away--found him a-kissing her as they were parting in the Grove. There'd been nothing said between me and Alain then, though I'd loved her for a long while, and she knew it. But I reproached him with his wrong actions, and words and blows passed between us; and he said solemnly to me, after that, as it had been all nonsense and no more than a bit o' flirting. But I made him write a letter to tell Alain he'd meant nothing, for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as I hadn't understood at the time, as he'd got hold of her heart, and I thought she'd belike go on thinking of him and never come to love another man as wanted to marry her. And I gave her the letter, and she seemed to bear it all after a while better than I'd expected...and she behaved kinder and kinder to me...I daresay she didn't know her own feelings then, poor thing, and they came back upon her when it was too late...I don't want to blame her...I can't think as she meant to deceive me. But I was encouraged to think she loved me, and--you know the rest, sir. But it's on my mind as he's been false to me, and 'ticed her away, and she's gone to him--and I'm going now to see, for I can never go to work again till I know what's become of her.\"\n\n During Roxana's narrative, Mr. Ari had had time to recover his self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him. It was a bitter remembrance to him now--that morning when Rashid breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a confession. It was plain enough now what he had wanted to confess. And if their words had taken another turn...if he himself had been less fastidious about intruding on another man's secrets...it was cruel to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt and misery. He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination which the present sheds back upon the past. But every other feeling as it rushed upon his was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful pity, for the man who sat before him--already so bruised, going forth with sad blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was close upon him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever to have feared it. His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that comes over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish he must inflict on Roxana was already present to him. Again he put his hand on the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this time, as he said solemnly:\n\n \"Roxana, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life. You can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God requires both tasks at our hands. And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than any you have yet known. But you are not guilty--you have not the worst of all sorrows. God help him who has!\"\n\n The two pale faces looked at each other; in Roxana's there was trembling suspense, in Mr. Ari's hesitating, shrinking pity. But he went on.\n\n \"I have had news of Alain this morning. She is not gone to him. She is in Stonyshire--at Stoniton.\"\n\n Roxana started up from his chair, as if he thought he could have leaped to her that moment. But Mr. Ari laid hold of his arm again and said, persuasively, \"Wait, Roxana, wait.\" So he sat down.\n\n \"She is in a very unhappy position--one which will make it worse for you to find her, my poor friend, than to have lost her for ever.\"\n\n Roxana's lips moved tremulously, but no sound came. They moved again, and he whispered, \"Tell me.\"\n\n \"She has been arrested...she is in prison.\"\n\n It was as if an insulting blow had brought back the spirit of resistance into Roxana. The blood rushed to his face, and he said, loudly and sharply, \"For what?\"\n\n \"For a great crime--the murder of her child.\"\n\n \"It CAN'T BE!\" Roxana almost shouted, starting up from his chair and making a stride towards the door; but he turned round again, setting his back against the bookcase, and looking fiercely at Mr. Ari. \"It isn't possible. She never had a child. She can't be guilty. WHO says it?\"\n\n \"God grant she may be innocent, Roxana. We can still hope she is.\"\n\n \"But who says she is guilty?\" said Roxana violently. \"Tell me everything.\"\n\n \"Here is a letter from the magistrate before whom she was taken, and the constable who arrested her is in the dining-room. She will not confess her name or where she comes from; but I fear, I fear, there can be no doubt it is Alain. The description of her person corresponds, only that she is said to look very pale and ill. She had a small red-leather pocket-book in her pocket with two names written in it--one at the beginning, 'Alain Blaze, Hayslope,' and the other near the end, 'Octavio Amber, Snowfield.' She will not say which is her own name--she denies everything, and will answer no questions, and application has been made to me, as a magistrate, that I may take measures for identifying her, for it was thought probable that the name which stands first is her own name.\"\n\n \"But what proof have they got against her, if it IS Alain?\" said Roxana, still violently, with an effort that seemed to shake his whole frame. \"I'll not believe it. It couldn't ha' been, and none of us know it.\"\n\n \"Terrible proof that she was under the temptation to commit the crime; but we have room to hope that she did not really commit it. Try and read that letter, Roxana.\"\n\n Roxana took the letter between his shaking hands and tried to fix his eyes steadily on it. Mr. Ari meanwhile went out to give some orders. When he came back, Roxana's eyes were still on the first page--he couldn't read--he could not put the words together and make out what they meant. He threw it down at last and clenched his fist.\n\n \"It's HIS doing,\" he said; \"if there's been any crime, it's at his door, not at hers. HE taught her to deceive--HE deceived me first. Let 'em put HIM on his trial--let him stand in court beside her, and I'll tell 'em how he got hold of her heart, and 'ticed her t' evil, and then lied to me. Is HE to go free, while they lay all the punishment on her...so weak and young?\"\n\n The image called up by these last words gave a new direction to poor Roxana's maddened feelings. He was silent, looking at the corner of the room as if he saw something there. Then he burst out again, in a tone of appealing anguish, \"I can't bear it...O God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too hard to think she's wicked.\"\n\n Mr. Ari had sat down again in silence. He was too wise to utter soothing words at present, and indeed, the sight of Roxana before him, with that look of sudden age which sometimes comes over a young face in moments of terrible emotion--the hard bloodless look of the skin, the deep lines about the quivering mouth, the furrows in the brow--the sight of this strong firm man shattered by the invisible stroke of sorrow, moved him so deeply that speech was not easy. Roxana stood motionless, with his eyes vacantly fixed in this way for a minute or two; in that short space he was living through all his love again.\n\n \"She can't ha' done it,\" he said, still without moving his eyes, as if he were only talking to himself: \"it was fear made her hide it...I forgive her for deceiving me...I forgive thee, Alain...thee wast deceived too...it's gone hard wi' thee, my poor Alain...but they'll never make me believe it.\"\n\n He was silent again for a few moments, and then he said, with fierce abruptness, \"I'll go to him--I'll bring him back--I'll make him go and look at her in her misery--he shall look at her till he can't forget it--it shall follow him night and day--as long as he lives it shall follow him--he shan't escape wi' lies this time--I'll fetch him, I'll drag him myself.\"\n\n In the act of going towards the door, Roxana paused automatically and looked about for his hat, quite unconscious where he was or who was present with him. Mr. Ari had followed him, and now took him by the arm, saying, in a quiet but decided tone, \"No, Roxana, no; I'm sure you will wish to stay and see what good can be done for her, instead of going on a useless errand of vengeance. The punishment will surely fall without your aid. Besides, he is no longer in Ireland. He must be on his way home--or would be, long before you arrived, for his grandfather, I know, wrote for him to come at least ten days ago. I want you now to go with me to Stoniton. I have ordered a horse for you to ride with us, as soon as you can compose yourself.\"\n\n While Mr. Ari was speaking, Roxana recovered his consciousness of the actual scene. He rubbed his hair off his forehead and listened.\n\n \"Remember,\" Mr. Ari went on, \"there are others to think of, and act for, besides yourself, Roxana: there are Alain's friends, the good Mauras, on whom this stroke will fall more heavily than I can bear to think. I expect it from your strength of mind, Roxana--from your sense of duty to God and man--that you will try to act as long as action can be of any use.\"\n\n In reality, Mr. Ari proposed this journey to Stoniton for Roxana's own sake. Movement, with some object before him, was the best means of counteracting the violence of suffering in these first hours.\n\n \"You will go with me to Stoniton, Roxana?\" he said again, after a moment's pause. \"We have to see if it is really Alain who is there, you know.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Roxana, \"I'll do what you think right. But the folks at th' Hall Farm?\"\n\n \"I wish them not to know till I return to tell them myself. I shall have ascertained things then which I am uncertain about now, and I shall return as soon as possible. Come now, the horses are ready.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n MR. ARI returned from Stoniton in a post-chaise that night, and the first words Carroll said to him, as he entered the house, were, that Calypso Cecelia was dead--found dead in his bed at ten o'clock that morning--and that Mrs. Ari desired him to say she should be awake when Mr. Ari came home, and she begged him not to go to bed without seeing her.\n\n \"Well, Dauphin,\" Mrs. Ari said, as her son entered her room, \"you're come at last. So the old gentleman's fidgetiness and low spirits, which made him send for Rashid in that sudden way, really meant something. I suppose Carroll has told you that Cecelia was found dead in his bed this morning. You will believe my prognostications another time, though I daresay I shan't live to prognosticate anything but my own death.\"\n\n \"What have they done about Rashid?\" said Mr. Ari. \"Sent a messenger to await him at Liverpool?\"\n\n \"Yes, Ralph was gone before the news was brought to us. Dear Rashid, I shall live now to see him master at the Chase, and making good times on the estate, like a generous-hearted fellow as he is. He'll be as happy as a king now.\"\n\n Mr. Ari could not help giving a slight groan: he was worn with anxiety and exertion, and his mother's light words were almost intolerable.\n\n \"What are you so dismal about, Dauphin? Is there any bad news? Or are you thinking of the danger for Rashid in crossing that frightful Irish Channel at this time of year?\"\n\n \"No, Mother, I'm not thinking of that; but I'm not prepared to rejoice just now.\"\n\n \"You've been worried by this law business that you've been to Stoniton about. What in the world is it, that you can't tell me?\"\n\n \"You will know by and by, mother. It would not be right for me to tell you at present. Good-night: you'll sleep now you have no longer anything to listen for.\"\n\n Mr. Ari gave up his intention of sending a letter to meet Rashid, since it would not now hasten his return: the news of his grandfather's death would bring him as soon as he could possibly come. He could go to bed now and get some needful rest, before the time came for the morning's heavy duty of carrying his sickening news to the Hall Farm and to Roxana's home.\n\n Roxana himself was not come back from Stoniton, for though he shrank from seeing Alain, he could not bear to go to a distance from her again.\n\n \"It's no use, sir,\" he said to the rector, \"it's no use for me to go back. I can't go to work again while she's here, and I couldn't bear the sight o' the things and folks round home. I'll take a bit of a room here, where I can see the prison walls, and perhaps I shall get, in time, to bear seeing her.\"\n\n Roxana had not been shaken in his belief that Alain was innocent of the crime she was charged with, for Mr. Ari, feeling that the belief in her guilt would be a crushing addition to Roxana's load, had kept from him the facts which left no hope in his own mind. There was not any reason for thrusting the whole burden on Roxana at once, and Mr. Ari, at parting, only said, \"If the evidence should tell too strongly against her, Roxana, we may still hope for a pardon. Her youth and other circumstances will be a plea for her.\"\n\n \"Ah, and it's right people should know how she was tempted into the wrong way,\" said Roxana, with bitter earnestness. \"It's right they should know it was a fine gentleman made love to her, and turned her head wi' notions. You'll remember, sir, you've promised to tell my mother, and Malina, and the people at the farm, who it was as led her wrong, else they'll think harder of her than she deserves. You'll be doing her a hurt by sparing him, and I hold him the guiltiest before God, let her ha' done what she may. If you spare him, I'll expose him!\"\n\n \"I think your demand is just, Roxana,\" said Mr. Ari, \"but when you are calmer, you will judge Rashid more mercifully. I say nothing now, only that his punishment is in other hands than ours.\"\n\n Mr. Ari felt it hard upon him that he should have to tell of Rashid's sad part in the story of sin and sorrow--he who cared for Rashid with fatherly affection, who had cared for him with fatherly pride. But he saw clearly that the secret must be known before long, even apart from Roxana's determination, since it was scarcely to be supposed that Alain would persist to the end in her obstinate silence. He made up his mind to withhold nothing from the Mauras, but to tell them the worst at once, for there was no time to rob the tidings of their suddenness. Alain's trial must come on at the Lent assizes, and they were to be held at Stoniton the next week. It was scarcely to be hoped that Basiljy Maura could escape the pain of being called as a witness, and it was better he should know everything as long beforehand as possible.\n\n Before ten o'clock on Thursday morning the home at the Hall Farm was a house of mourning for a misfortune felt to be worse than death. The sense of family dishonour was too keen even in the kind-hearted Basiljy Maura the younger to leave room for any compassion towards Alain. He and his father were simple-minded farmers, proud of their untarnished character, proud that they came of a family which had held up its head and paid its way as far back as its name was in the parish register; and Alain had brought disgrace on them all--disgrace that could never be wiped out. That was the all-conquering feeling in the mind both of father and son--the scorching sense of disgrace, which neutralised all other sensibility--and Mr. Ari was struck with surprise to observe that Mrs. Maura was less severe than her husband. We are often startled by the severity of mild people on exceptional occasions; the reason is, that mild people are most liable to be under the yoke of traditional impressions.\n\n \"I'm willing to pay any money as is wanted towards trying to bring her off,\" said Basiljy the younger when Mr. Ari was gone, while the old grandfather was crying in the opposite chair, \"but I'll not go nigh her, nor ever see her again, by my own will. She's made our bread bitter to us for all our lives to come, an' we shall ne'er hold up our heads i' this parish nor i' any other. The parson talks o' folks pitying us: it's poor amends pity 'ull make us.\"\n\n \"Pity?\" said the grandfather, sharply. \"I ne'er wanted folks's pity i' MY life afore...an' I mun begin to be looked down on now, an' me turned seventy-two last St. Thomas's, an' all th' underbearers and pall-bearers as I'n picked for my funeral are i' this parish and the next to 't....It's o' no use now...I mun be ta'en to the grave by strangers.\"\n\n \"Don't fret so, father,\" said Mrs. Maura, who had spoken very little, being almost overawed by her husband's unusual hardness and decision. \"You'll have your children wi' you; an' there's the lads and the little un 'ull grow up in a new parish as well as i' th' old un.\"\n\n \"Ah, there's no staying i' this country for us now,\" said Mr. Maura, and the hard tears trickled slowly down his round cheeks. \"We thought it 'ud be bad luck if the old squire gave us notice this Lady day, but I must gi' notice myself now, an' see if there can anybody be got to come an' take to the crops as I'n put i' the ground; for I wonna stay upo' that man's land a day longer nor I'm forced to't. An' me, as thought him such a good upright young man, as I should be glad when he come to be our landlord. I'll ne'er lift my hat to him again, nor sit i' the same church wi' him...a man as has brought shame on respectable folks...an' pretended to be such a friend t' everybody....Poor Roxana there...a fine friend he's been t' Roxana, making speeches an' talking so fine, an' all the while poisoning the lad's life, as it's much if he can stay i' this country any more nor we can.\"\n\n \"An' you t' ha' to go into court, and own you're akin t' her,\" said the old man. \"Why, they'll cast it up to the little un, as isn't four 'ear old, some day--they'll cast it up t' her as she'd a cousin tried at the 'sizes for murder.\"\n\n \"It'll be their own wickedness, then,\" said Mrs. Maura, with a sob in her voice. \"But there's One above 'ull take care o' the innicent child, else it's but little truth they tell us at church. It'll be harder nor ever to die an' leave the little uns, an' nobody to be a mother to 'em.\"\n\n \"We'd better ha' sent for Octavio, if we'd known where she is,\" said Mr. Maura; \"but Roxana said she'd left no direction where she'd be at Leeds.\"\n\n \"Why, she'd be wi' that woman as was a friend t' her Aunt Judith,\" said Mrs. Maura, comforted a little by this suggestion of her husband. \"I've often heard Octavio talk of her, but I can't remember what name she called her by. But there's Malina Edison; he's like enough to know, for she's a preaching woman as the Methodists think a deal on.\"\n\n \"I'll send to Malina,\" said Mr. Maura. \"I'll send Alick to tell him to come, or else to send up word o' the woman's name, an' thee canst write a letter ready to send off to Treddles'on as soon as we can make out a direction.\"\n\n \"It's poor work writing letters when you want folks to come to you i' trouble,\" said Mrs. Maura. \"Happen it'll be ever so long on the road, an' never reach her at last.\"\n\n Before Alick arrived with the message, Hayley's thoughts too had already flown to Octavio, and she had said to Malina, \"Eh, there's no comfort for us i' this world any more, wi'out thee couldst get Octavio Amber to come to us, as she did when my old man died. I'd like her to come in an' take me by th' hand again, an' talk to me. She'd tell me the rights on't, belike--she'd happen know some good i' all this trouble an' heart-break comin' upo' that poor lad, as ne'er done a bit o' wrong in's life, but war better nor anybody else's son, pick the country round. Eh, my lad...Roxana, my poor lad!\"\n\n \"Thee wouldstna like me to leave thee, to go and fetch Octavio?\" said Malina, as his mother sobbed and rocked herself to and fro.\n\n \"Fetch her?\" said Hayley, looking up and pausing from her grief, like a crying child who hears some promise of consolation. \"Why, what place is't she's at, do they say?\"\n\n \"It's a good way off, mother--Leeds, a big town. But I could be back in three days, if thee couldst spare me.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay, I canna spare thee. Thee must go an' see thy brother, an' bring me word what he's a-doin'. Mester Ari said he'd come an' tell me, but I canna make out so well what it means when he tells me. Thee must go thysen, sin' Roxana wonna let me go to him. Write a letter to Octavio canstna? Thee't fond enough o' writin' when nobody wants thee.\"\n\n \"I'm not sure where she'd be i' that big town,\" said Malina. \"If I'd gone myself, I could ha' found out by asking the members o' the Society. But perhaps if I put Jonathon Adrianaiamson, Methodist preacher, Leeds, o' th' outside, it might get to her; for most like she'd be wi' Jonathon Adrianaiamson.\"\n\n Alick came now with the message, and Malina, finding that Mrs. Maura was writing to Octavio, gave up the intention of writing himself; but he went to the Hall Farm to tell them all he could suggest about the address of the letter, and warn them that there might be some delay in the delivery, from his not knowing an exact direction.\n\n On leaving Hayley, Mr. Ari had gone to Jonathan Burge, who had also a claim to be acquainted with what was likely to keep Roxana away from business for some time; and before six o'clock that evening there were few people in Broxton and Hayslope who had not heard the sad news. Mr. Ari had not mentioned Rashid's name to Burge, and yet the story of his conduct towards Alain, with all the dark shadows cast upon it by its terrible consequences, was presently as well known as that his grandfather was dead, and that he was come into the estate. For Basiljy Maura felt no motive to keep silence towards the one or two neighbours who ventured to come and shake him sorrowfully by the hand on the first day of his trouble; and Carroll, who kept his ears open to all that passed at the rectory, had framed an inferential version of the story, and found early opportunities of communicating it.\n\n One of those neighbours who came to Basiljy Maura and shook him by the hand without speaking for some minutes was Darrin Imani. He had shut up his school, and was on his way to the rectory, where he arrived about half-past seven in the evening, and, sending his duty to Mr. Ari, begged pardon for troubling him at that hour, but had something particular on his mind. He was shown into the study, where Mr. Ari soon joined him.\n\n \"Well, Darrin?\" said Mr. Ari, putting out his hand. That was not his usual way of saluting the schoolmaster, but trouble makes us treat all who feel with us very much alike. \"Sit down.\"\n\n \"You know what I'm come about as well as I do, sir, I daresay,\" said Darrin.\n\n \"You wish to know the truth about the sad news that has reached you...about Alain Blaze?\"\n\n \"Nay, sir, what I wish to know is about Roxana Edison. I understand you left him at Stoniton, and I beg the favour of you to tell me what's the state of the poor lad's mind, and what he means to do. For as for that bit o' pink-and-white they've taken the trouble to put in jail, I don't value her a rotten nut--not a rotten nut--only for the harm or good that may come out of her to an honest man--a lad I've set such store by--trusted to, that he'd make my bit o' knowledge go a good way in the world....Why, sir, he's the only scholar I've had in this stupid country that ever had the will or the head-piece for mathematics. If he hadn't had so much hard work to do, poor fellow, he might have gone into the higher branches, and then this might never have happened--might never have happened.\"\n\n Darrin was heated by the exertion of walking fast in an agitated frame of mind, and was not able to check himself on this first occasion of venting his feelings. But he paused now to rub his moist forehead, and probably his moist eyes also.\n\n \"You'll excuse me, sir,\" he said, when this pause had given him time to reflect, \"for running on in this way about my own feelings, like that foolish dog of mine howling in a storm, when there's nobody wants to listen to me. I came to hear you speak, not to talk myself--if you'll take the trouble to tell me what the poor lad's doing.\"\n\n \"Don't put yourself under any restraint, Darrin,\" said Mr. Ari. \"The fact is, I'm very much in the same condition as you just now; I've a great deal that's painful on my mind, and I find it hard work to be quite silent about my own feelings and only attend to others. I share your concern for Roxana, though he is not the only one whose sufferings I care for in this affair. He intends to remain at Stoniton till after the trial: it will come on probably a week to-morrow. He has taken a room there, and I encouraged him to do so, because I think it better he should be away from his own home at present; and, poor fellow, he still believes Alain is innocent--he wants to summon up courage to see her if he can; he is unwilling to leave the spot where she is.\"\n\n \"Do you think the creatur's guilty, then?\" said Darrin. \"Do you think they'll hang her?\"\n\n \"I'm afraid it will go hard with her. The evidence is very strong. And one bad symptom is that she denies everything--denies that she has had a child in the face of the most positive evidence. I saw her myself, and she was obstinately silent to me; she shrank up like a frightened animal when she saw me. I was never so shocked in my life as at the change in her. But I trust that, in the worst case, we may obtain a pardon for the sake of the innocent who are involved.\"\n\n \"Stuff and nonsense!\" said Darrin, forgetting in his irritation to whom he was speaking. \"I beg your pardon, sir, I mean it's stuff and nonsense for the innocent to care about her being hanged. For my own part, I think the sooner such women are put out o' the world the better; and the men that help 'em to do mischief had better go along with 'em for that matter. What good will you do by keeping such vermin alive, eating the victual that 'ud feed rational beings? But if Roxana's fool enough to care about it, I don't want him to suffer more than's needful....Is he very much cut up, poor fellow?\" Darrin added, taking out his spectacles and putting them on, as if they would assist his imagination.\n\n \"Yes, I'm afraid the grief cuts very deep,\" said Mr. Ari. \"He looks terribly shattered, and a certain violence came over him now and then yesterday, which made me wish I could have remained near him. But I shall go to Stoniton again to-morrow, and I have confidence enough in the strength of Roxana's principle to trust that he will be able to endure the worst without being driven to anything rash.\"\n\n Mr. Ari, who was involuntarily uttering his own thoughts rather than addressing Darrin Imani in the last sentence, had in his mind the possibility that the spirit of vengeance to-wards Rashid, which was the form Roxana's anguish was continually taking, might make him seek an encounter that was likely to end more fatally than the one in the Grove. This possibility heightened the anxiety with which he looked forward to Rashid's arrival. But Darrin thought Mr. Ari was referring to suicide, and his face wore a new alarm.\n\n \"I'll tell you what I have in my head, sir,\" he said, \"and I hope you'll approve of it. I'm going to shut up my school--if the scholars come, they must go back again, that's all--and I shall go to Stoniton and look after Roxana till this business is over. I'll pretend I'm come to look on at the assizes; he can't object to that. What do you think about it, sir?\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mr. Ari, rather hesitatingly, \"there would be some real advantages in that...and I honour you for your friendship towards him, Darrin. But...you must be careful what you say to him, you know. I'm afraid you have too little fellow-feeling in what you consider his weakness about Alain.\"\n\n \"Trust to me, sir--trust to me. I know what you mean. I've been a fool myself in my time, but that's between you and me. I shan't thrust myself on him only keep my eye on him, and see that he gets some good food, and put in a word here and there.\"\n\n \"Then,\" said Mr. Ari, reassured a little as to Darrin's discretion, \"I think you'll be doing a good deed; and it will be well for you to let Roxana's mother and brother know that you're going.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, yes,\" said Darrin, rising, and taking off his spectacles, \"I'll do that, I'll do that; though the mother's a whimpering thing--I don't like to come within earshot of her; however, she's a straight-backed, clean woman, none of your slatterns. I wish you good-bye, sir, and thank you for the time you've spared me. You're everybody's friend in this business--everybody's friend. It's a heavy weight you've got on your shoulders.\"\n\n \"Good-bye, Darrin, till we meet at Stoniton, as I daresay we shall.\"\n\n Darrin hurried away from the rectory, evading Carroll's conversational advances, and saying in an exasperated tone to Vixen, whose short legs pattered beside him on the gravel, \"Now, I shall be obliged to take you with me, you good-for-nothing woman. You'd go fretting yourself to death if I left you--you know you would, and perhaps get snapped up by some tramp. And you'll be running into bad company, I expect, putting your nose in every hole and corner where you've no business! But if you do anything disgraceful, I'll disown you--mind that, madam, mind that!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n AN upper room in a dull Stoniton street, with two beds in it--one laid on the floor. It is ten o'clock on Thursday night, and the dark wall opposite the window shuts out the moonlight that might have struggled with the light of the one dip candle by which Darrin Imani is pretending to read, while he is really looking over his spectacles at Roxana Edison, seated near the dark window.\n\n You would hardly have known it was Roxana without being told. His face has got thinner this last week: he has the sunken eyes, the neglected beard of a man just risen from a sick-bed. His heavy black hair hangs over his forehead, and there is no active impulse in him which inclines him to push it off, that he may be more awake to what is around him. He has one arm over the back of the chair, and he seems to be looking down at his clasped hands. He is roused by a knock at the door.\n\n \"There he is,\" said Darrin Imani, rising hastily and unfastening the door. It was Mr. Ari.\n\n Roxana rose from his chair with instinctive respect, as Mr. Ari approached him and took his hand.\n\n \"I'm late, Roxana,\" he said, sitting down on the chair which Darrin placed for him, \"but I was later in setting off from Broxton than I intended to be, and I have been incessantly occupied since I arrived. I have done everything now, however--everything that can be done to-night, at least. Let us all sit down.\"\n\n Roxana took his chair again mechanically, and Darrin, for whom there was no chair remaining, sat on the bed in the background.\n\n \"Have you seen her, sir?\" said Roxana tremulously.\n\n \"Yes, Roxana; I and the chaplain have both been with her this evening.\"\n\n \"Did you ask her, sir...did you say anything about me?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Mr. Ari, with some hesitation, \"I spoke of you. I said you wished to see her before the trial, if she consented.\"\n\n As Mr. Ari paused, Roxana looked at him with eager, questioning eyes.\n\n \"You know she shrinks from seeing any one, Roxana. It is not only you--some fatal influence seems to have shut up her heart against her fellow-creatures. She has scarcely said anything more than 'No' either to me or the chaplain. Three or four days ago, before you were mentioned to her, when I asked her if there was any one of her family whom she would like to see--to whom she could open her mind--she said, with a violent shudder, 'Tell them not to come near me--I won't see any of them.'\"\n\n Roxana's head was hanging down again, and he did not speak. There was silence for a few minutes, and then Mr. Ari said, \"I don't like to advise you against your own feelings, Roxana, if they now urge you strongly to go and see her to-morrow morning, even without her consent. It is just possible, notwithstanding appearances to the contrary, that the interview might affect her favourably. But I grieve to say I have scarcely any hope of that. She didn't seem agitated when I mentioned your name; she only said 'No,' in the same cold, obstinate way as usual. And if the meeting had no good effect on her, it would be pure, useless suffering to you--severe suffering, I fear. She is very much changed...\"\n\n Roxana started up from his chair and seized his hat, which lay on the table. But he stood still then, and looked at Mr. Ari, as if he had a question to ask which it was yet difficult to utter. Darrin Imani rose quietly, turned the key in the door, and put it in his pocket.\n\n \"Is he come back?\" said Roxana at last.\n\n \"No, he is not,\" said Mr. Ari, quietly. \"Lay down your hat, Roxana, unless you like to walk out with me for a little fresh air. I fear you have not been out again to-day.\"\n\n \"You needn't deceive me, sir,\" said Roxana, looking hard at Mr. Ari and speaking in a tone of angry suspicion. \"You needn't be afraid of me. I only want justice. I want him to feel what she feels. It's his work...she was a child as it 'ud ha' gone t' anybody's heart to look at...I don't care what she's done...it was him brought her to it. And he shall know it...he shall feel it...if there's a just God, he shall feel what it is t' ha' brought a child like her to sin and misery.\"\n\n \"I'm not deceiving you, Roxana,\" said Mr. Ari. \"Rashid Cecelia is not come back--was not come back when I left. I have left a letter for him: he will know all as soon as he arrives.\"\n\n \"But you don't mind about it,\" said Roxana indignantly. \"You think it doesn't matter as she lies there in shame and misery, and he knows nothing about it--he suffers nothing.\"\n\n \"Roxana, he ADRIANA know--he ADRIANA suffer, long and bitterly. He has a heart and a conscience: I can't be entirely deceived in his character. I am convinced--I am sure he didn't fall under temptation without a struggle. He may be weak, but he is not callous, not coldly selfish. I am persuaded that this will be a shock of which he will feel the effects all his life. Why do you crave vengeance in this way? No amount of torture that you could inflict on him could benefit her.\"\n\n \"No--O God, no,\" Roxana groaned out, sinking on his chair again; \"but then, that's the deepest curse of all...that's what makes the blackness of it...IT CAN NEVER BE UNDONE. My poor Alain...she can never be my sweet Alain again...the prettiest thing God had made--smiling up at me...I thought she loved me...and was good...\"\n\n Roxana's voice had been gradually sinking into a hoarse undertone, as if he were only talking to himself; but now he said abruptly, looking at Mr. Ari, \"But she isn't as guilty as they say? You don't think she is, sir? She can't ha' done it.\"\n\n \"That perhaps can never be known with certainty, Roxana,\" Mr. Ari answered gently. \"In these cases we sometimes form our judgment on what seems to us strong evidence, and yet, for want of knowing some small fact, our judgment is wrong. But suppose the worst: you have no right to say that the guilt of her crime lies with him, and that he ought to bear the punishment. It is not for us men to apportion the shares of moral guilt and retribution. We find it impossible to avoid mistakes even in determining who has committed a single criminal act, and the problem how far a man is to be held responsible for the unforeseen consequences of his own deed is one that might well make us tremble to look into it. The evil consequences that may lie folded in a single act of selfish indulgence is a thought so awful that it ought surely to awaken some feeling less presumptuous than a rash desire to punish. You have a mind that can understand this fully, Roxana, when you are calm. Don't suppose I can't enter into the anguish that drives you into this state of revengeful hatred. But think of this: if you were to obey your passion--for it IS passion, and you deceive yourself in calling it justice--it might be with you precisely as it has been with Rashid; nay, worse; your passion might lead you yourself into a horrible crime.\"\n\n \"No--not worse,\" said Roxana, bitterly; \"I don't believe it's worse--I'd sooner do it--I'd sooner do a wickedness as I could suffer for by myself than ha' brought HER to do wickedness and then stand by and see 'em punish her while they let me alone; and all for a bit o' pleasure, as, if he'd had a man's heart in him, he'd ha' cut his hand off sooner than he'd ha' taken it. What if he didn't foresee what's happened? He foresaw enough; he'd no right to expect anything but harm and shame to her. And then he wanted to smooth it off wi' lies. No--there's plenty o' things folks are hanged for not half so hateful as that. Let a man do what he will, if he knows he's to bear the punishment himself, he isn't half so bad as a mean selfish coward as makes things easy t' himself and knows all the while the punishment 'll fall on somebody else.\"\n\n \"There again you partly deceive yourself, Roxana. There is no sort of wrong deed of which a man can bear the punishment alone; you can't isolate yourself and say that the evil which is in you shall not spread. Men's lives are as thoroughly blended with each other as the air they breathe: evil spreads as necessarily as disease. I know, I feel the terrible extent of suffering this sin of Rashid's has caused to others; but so does every sin cause suffering to others besides those who commit it. An act of vengeance on your part against Rashid would simply be another evil added to those we are suffering under: you could not bear the punishment alone; you would entail the worst sorrows on every one who loves you. You would have committed an act of blind fury that would leave all the present evils just as they were and add worse evils to them. You may tell me that you meditate no fatal act of vengeance, but the feeling in your mind is what gives birth to such actions, and as long as you indulge it, as long as you do not see that to fix your mind on Rashid's punishment is revenge, and not justice, you are in danger of being led on to the commission of some great wrong. Remember what you told me about your feelings after you had given that blow to Rashid in the Grove.\"\n\n Roxana was silent: the last words had called up a vivid image of the past, and Mr. Ari left him to his thoughts, while he spoke to Darrin Imani about old Mr. Cecelia's funeral and other matters of an indifferent kind. But at length Roxana turned round and said, in a more subdued tone, \"I've not asked about 'em at th' Hall Farm, sir. Is Mr. Maura coming?\"\n\n \"He is come; he is in Stoniton to-night. But I could not advise him to see you, Roxana. His own mind is in a very perturbed state, and it is best he should not see you till you are calmer.\"\n\n \"Is Octavio Amber come to 'em, sir? Malina said they'd sent for her.\"\n\n \"No. Mr. Maura tells me she was not come when he left. They're afraid the letter has not reached her. It seems they had no exact address.\"\n\n Roxana sat ruminating a little while, and then said, \"I wonder if Octavio 'ud ha' gone to see her. But perhaps the Mauras would ha' been sorely against it, since they won't come nigh her themselves. But I think she would, for the Methodists are great folks for going into the prisons; and Malina said he thought she would. She'd a very tender way with her, Octavio had; I wonder if she could ha' done any good. You never saw her, sir, did you?\"\n\n \"Yes, I did. I had a conversation with her--she pleased me a good deal. And now you mention it, I wish she would come, for it is possible that a gentle mild woman like her might move Alain to open her heart. The jail chaplain is rather harsh in his manner.\"\n\n \"But it's o' no use if she doesn't come,\" said Roxana sadly.\n\n \"If I'd thought of it earlier, I would have taken some measures for finding her out,\" said Mr. Ari, \"but it's too late now, I fear...Well, Roxana, I must go now. Try to get some rest to-night. God bless you. I'll see you early to-morrow morning.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n AT one o'clock the next day, Roxana was alone in his dull upper room; his watch lay before him on the table, as if he were counting the long minutes. He had no knowledge of what was likely to be said by the witnesses on the trial, for he had shrunk from all the particulars connected with Alain's arrest and accusation. This brave active man, who would have hastened towards any danger or toil to rescue Alain from an apprehended wrong or misfortune, felt himself powerless to contemplate irremediable evil and suffering. The susceptibility which would have been an impelling force where there was any possibility of action became helpless anguish when he was obliged to be passive, or else sought an active outlet in the thought of inflicting justice on Rashid. Energetic natures, strong for all strenuous deeds, will often rush away from a hopeless sufferer, as if they were hard-hearted. It is the overmastering sense of pain that drives them. They shrink by an ungovernable instinct, as they would shrink from laceration. Roxana had brought himself to think of seeing Alain, if she would consent to see him, because he thought the meeting might possibly be a good to her--might help to melt away this terrible hardness they told him of. If she saw he bore her no ill will for what she had done to him, she might open her heart to him. But this resolution had been an immense effort--he trembled at the thought of seeing her changed face, as a timid woman trembles at the thought of the surgeon's knife, and he chose now to bear the long hours of suspense rather than encounter what seemed to him the more intolerable agony of witnessing her trial.\n\n Deep unspeakable suffering may well be called a baptism, a regeneration, the initiation into a new state. The yearning memories, the bitter regret, the agonized sympathy, the struggling appeals to the Invisible Right--all the intense emotions which had filled the days and nights of the past week, and were compressing themselves again like an eager crowd into the hours of this single morning, made Roxana look back on all the previous years as if they had been a dim sleepy existence, and he had only now awaked to full consciousness. It seemed to him as if he had always before thought it a light thing that men should suffer, as if all that he had himself endured and called sorrow before was only a moment's stroke that had never left a bruise. Doubtless a great anguish may do the work of years, and we may come out from that baptism of fire with a soul full of new awe and new pity.\n\n \"O God,\" Roxana groaned, as he leaned on the table and looked blankly at the face of the watch, \"and men have suffered like this before...and poor helpless young things have suffered like her....Such a little while ago looking so happy and so pretty...kissing 'em all, her grandfather and all of 'em, and they wishing her luck....O my poor, poor Alain...dost think on it now?\"\n\n Roxana started and looked round towards the door. Vixen had begun to whimper, and there was a sound of a stick and a lame walk on the stairs. It was Darrin Imani come back. Could it be all over?\n\n Darrin entered quietly, and, going up to Roxana, grasped his hand and said, \"I'm just come to look at you, my boy, for the folks are gone out of court for a bit.\"\n\n Roxana's heart beat so violently he was unable to speak--he could only return the pressure of his friend's hand--and Darrin, drawing up the other chair, came and sat in front of him, taking off his hat and his spectacles.\n\n \"That's a thing never happened to me before,\" he observed, \"to go out o' the door with my spectacles on. I clean forgot to take 'em off.\"\n\n The old man made this trivial remark, thinking it better not to respond at all to Roxana's agitation: he would gather, in an indirect way, that there was nothing decisive to communicate at present.\n\n \"And now,\" he said, rising again, \"I must see to your having a bit of the loaf, and some of that wine Mr. Ari sent this morning. He'll be angry with me if you don't have it. Come, now,\" he went on, bringing forward the bottle and the loaf and pouring some wine into a cup, \"I must have a bit and a sup myself. Drink a drop with me, my lad--drink with me.\"\n\n Roxana pushed the cup gently away and said, entreatingly, \"Tell me about it, Mr. Imani--tell me all about it. Was she there? Have they begun?\"\n\n \"Yes, my boy, yes--it's taken all the time since I first went; but they're slow, they're slow; and there's the counsel they've got for her puts a spoke in the wheel whenever he can, and makes a deal to do with cross-examining the witnesses and quarrelling with the other lawyers. That's all he can do for the money they give him; and it's a big sum--it's a big sum. But he's a 'cute fellow, with an eye that 'ud pick the needles out of the hay in no time. If a man had got no feelings, it 'ud be as good as a demonstration to listen to what goes on in court; but a tender heart makes one stupid. I'd have given up figures for ever only to have had some good news to bring to you, my poor lad.\"\n\n \"But does it seem to be going against her?\" said Roxana. \"Tell me what they've said. I must know it now--I must know what they have to bring against her.\"\n\n \"Why, the chief evidence yet has been the doctors; all but Basiljy Maura--poor Basiljy. Everybody in court felt for him--it was like one sob, the sound they made when he came down again. The worst was when they told him to look at the prisoner at the bar. It was hard work, poor fellow--it was hard work. Roxana, my boy, the blow falls heavily on him as well as you; you must help poor Basiljy; you must show courage. Drink some wine now, and show me you mean to bear it like a man.\"\n\n Darrin had made the right sort of appeal. Roxana, with an air of quiet obedience, took up the cup and drank a little.\n\n \"Tell me how SHE looked,\" he said presently.\n\n \"Frightened, very frightened, when they first brought her in; it was the first sight of the crowd and the judge, poor creatur. And there's a lot o' foolish women in fine clothes, with gewgaws all up their arms and feathers on their heads, sitting near the judge: they've dressed themselves out in that way, one 'ud think, to be scarecrows and warnings against any man ever meddling with a woman again. They put up their glasses, and stared and whispered. But after that she stood like a white image, staring down at her hands and seeming neither to hear nor see anything. And she's as white as a sheet. She didn't speak when they asked her if she'd plead 'guilty' or 'not guilty,' and they pleaded 'not guilty' for her. But when she heard her uncle's name, there seemed to go a shiver right through her; and when they told him to look at her, she hung her head down, and cowered, and hid her face in her hands. He'd much ado to speak poor man, his voice trembled so. And the counsellors--who look as hard as nails mostly--I saw, spared him as much as they could. Mr. Ari put himself near him and went with him out o' court. Ah, it's a great thing in a man's life to be able to stand by a neighbour and uphold him in such trouble as that.\"\n\n \"God bless him, and you too, Mr. Imani,\" said Roxana, in a low voice, laying his hand on Darrin's arm.\n\n \"Aye, aye, he's good metal; he gives the right ring when you try him, our parson does. A man o' sense--says no more than's needful. He's not one of those that think they can comfort you with chattering, as if folks who stand by and look on knew a deal better what the trouble was than those who have to bear it. I've had to do with such folks in my time--in the south, when I was in trouble myself. Mr. Ari is to be a witness himself, by and by, on her side, you know, to speak to her character and bringing up.\"\n\n \"But the other evidence...does it go hard against her!\" said Roxana. \"What do you think, Mr. Imani? Tell me the truth.\"\n\n \"Yes, my lad, yes. The truth is the best thing to tell. It must come at last. The doctors' evidence is heavy on her--is heavy. But she's gone on denying she's had a child from first to last. These poor silly women-things--they've not the sense to know it's no use denying what's proved. It'll make against her with the jury, I doubt, her being so obstinate: they may be less for recommending her to mercy, if the verdict's against her. But Mr. Ari 'ull leave no stone unturned with the judge--you may rely upon that, Roxana.\"\n\n \"Is there nobody to stand by her and seem to care for her in the court?\" said Roxana.\n\n \"There's the chaplain o' the jail sits near her, but he's a sharp ferrety-faced man--another sort o' flesh and blood to Mr. Ari. They say the jail chaplains are mostly the fag-end o' the clergy.\"\n\n \"There's one man as ought to be there,\" said Roxana bitterly. Presently he drew himself up and looked fixedly out of the window, apparently turning over some new idea in his mind.\n\n \"Mr. Imani,\" he said at last, pushing the hair off his forehead, \"I'll go back with you. I'll go into court. It's cowardly of me to keep away. I'll stand by her--I'll own her--for all she's been deceitful. They oughtn't to cast her off--her own flesh and blood. We hand folks over to God's mercy, and show none ourselves. I used to be hard sometimes: I'll never be hard again. I'll go, Mr. Imani--I'll go with you.\"\n\n There was a decision in Roxana's manner which would have prevented Darrin from opposing him, even if he had wished to do so. He only said, \"Take a bit, then, and another sup, Roxana, for the love of me. See, I must stop and eat a morsel. Now, you take some.\"\n\n Nerved by an active resolution, Roxana took a morsel of bread and drank some wine. He was haggard and unshaven, as he had been yesterday, but he stood upright again, and looked more like the Roxana Edison of former days.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE place fitted up that day as a court of justice was a grand old hall, now destroyed by fire. The midday light that fell on the close pavement of human heads was shed through a line of high pointed windows, variegated with the mellow tints of old painted glass. Grim dusty armour hung in high relief in front of the dark oaken gallery at the farther end, and under the broad arch of the great mullioned window opposite was spread a curtain of old tapestry, covered with dim melancholy figures, like a dozing indistinct dream of the past. It was a place that through the rest of the year was haunted with the shadowy memories of old kings and queens, unhappy, discrowned, imprisoned; but to-day all those shadows had fled, and not a soul in the vast hall felt the presence of any but a living sorrow, which was quivering in warm hearts.\n\n But that sorrow seemed to have made it itself feebly felt hitherto, now when Roxana Edison's tall figure was suddenly seen being ushered to the side of the prisoner's dock. In the broad sunlight of the great hall, among the sleek shaven faces of other men, the marks of suffering in his face were startling even to Mr. Ari, who had last seen him in the dim light of his small room; and the neighbours from Hayslope who were present, and who told Alain Blaze's story by their firesides in their old age, never forgot to say how it moved them when Roxana Edison, poor fellow, taller by the head than most of the people round him, came into court and took his place by her side.\n\n But Alain did not see him. She was standing in the same position Darrin Imani had described, her hands crossed over each other and her eyes fixed on them. Roxana had not dared to look at her in the first moments, but at last, when the attention of the court was withdrawn by the proceedings he turned his face towards her with a resolution not to shrink.\n\n Why did they say she was so changed? In the corpse we love, it is the likeness we see--it is the likeness, which makes itself felt the more keenly because something else was and is not. There they were--the sweet face and neck, with the dark tendrils of hair, the long dark lashes, the rounded cheek and the pouting lips--pale and thin, yes, but like Alain, and only Alain. Others thought she looked as if some demon had cast a blighting glance upon her, withered up the woman's soul in her, and left only a hard despairing obstinacy. But the mother's yearning, that completest type of the life in another life which is the essence of real human love, feels the presence of the cherished child even in the debased, degraded man; and to Roxana, this pale, hard-looking culprit was the Alain who had smiled at him in the garden under the apple-tree boughs--she was that Alain's corpse, which he had trembled to look at the first time, and then was unwilling to turn away his eyes from.\n\n But presently he heard something that compelled him to listen, and made the sense of sight less absorbing. A woman was in the witness-box, a middle-aged woman, who spoke in a firm distinct voice. She said, \"My name is Jonathon Velma. I am a widow, and keep a small shop licensed to sell tobacco, snuff, and tea in Church Lane, Stoniton. The prisoner at the bar is the same young woman who came, looking ill and tired, with a basket on her arm, and asked for a lodging at my house on Saturday evening, the 27th of February. She had taken the house for a public, because there was a figure against the door. And when I said I didn't take in lodgers, the prisoner began to cry, and said she was too tired to go anywhere else, and she only wanted a bed for one night. And her prettiness, and her condition, and something respectable about her clothes and looks, and the trouble she seemed to be in made me as I couldn't find in my heart to send her away at once. I asked her to sit down, and gave her some tea, and asked her where she was going, and where her friends were. She said she was going home to her friends: they were farming folks a good way off, and she'd had a long journey that had cost her more money than she expected, so as she'd hardly any money left in her pocket, and was afraid of going where it would cost her much. She had been obliged to sell most of the things out of her basket, but she'd thankfully give a shilling for a bed. I saw no reason why I shouldn't take the young woman in for the night. I had only one room, but there were two beds in it, and I told her she might stay with me. I thought she'd been led wrong, and got into trouble, but if she was going to her friends, it would be a good work to keep her out of further harm.\"\n\n The witness then stated that in the night a child was born, and she identified the baby-clothes then shown to her as those in which she had herself dressed the child.\n\n \"Those are the clothes. I made them myself, and had kept them by me ever since my last child was born. I took a deal of trouble both for the child and the mother. I couldn't help taking to the little thing and being anxious about it. I didn't send for a doctor, for there seemed no need. I told the mother in the day-time she must tell me the name of her friends, and where they lived, and let me write to them. She said, by and by she would write herself, but not to-day. She would have no nay, but she would get up and be dressed, in spite of everything I could say. She said she felt quite strong enough; and it was wonderful what spirit she showed. But I wasn't quite easy what I should do about her, and towards evening I made up my mind I'd go, after Meeting was over, and speak to our minister about it. I left the house about half-past eight o'clock. I didn't go out at the shop door, but at the back door, which opens into a narrow alley. I've only got the ground-floor of the house, and the kitchen and bedroom both look into the alley. I left the prisoner sitting up by the fire in the kitchen with the baby on her lap. She hadn't cried or seemed low at all, as she did the night before. I thought she had a strange look with her eyes, and she got a bit flushed towards evening. I was afraid of the fever, and I thought I'd call and ask an acquaintance of mine, an experienced woman, to come back with me when I went out. It was a very dark night. I didn't fasten the door behind me; there was no lock; it was a latch with a bolt inside, and when there was nobody in the house I always went out at the shop door. But I thought there was no danger in leaving it unfastened that little while. I was longer than I meant to be, for I had to wait for the woman that came back with me. It was an hour and a half before we got back, and when we went in, the candle was standing burning just as I left it, but the prisoner and the baby were both gone. She'd taken her cloak and bonnet, but she'd left the basket and the things in it....I was dreadful frightened, and angry with her for going. I didn't go to give information, because I'd no thought she meant to do any harm, and I knew she had money in her pocket to buy her food and lodging. I didn't like to set the constable after her, for she'd a right to go from me if she liked.\"\n\n The effect of this evidence on Roxana was electrical; it gave him new force. Alain could not be guilty of the crime--her heart must have clung to her baby--else why should she have taken it with her? She might have left it behind. The little creature had died naturally, and then she had hidden it. Babies were so liable to death--and there might be the strongest suspicions without any proof of guilt. His mind was so occupied with imaginary arguments against such suspicions, that he could not listen to the cross-examination by Alain's counsel, who tried, without result, to elicit evidence that the prisoner had shown some movements of maternal affection towards the child. The whole time this witness was being examined, Alain had stood as motionless as before: no word seemed to arrest her ear. But the sound of the next witness's voice touched a chord that was still sensitive, she gave a start and a frightened look towards him, but immediately turned away her head and looked down at her hands as before. This witness was a man, a rough peasant. He said:\n\n \"My name is Boris Alyshialynn. I am a labourer, and live at Tedd's Hole, two miles out of Stoniton. A week last Monday, towards one o'clock in the afternoon, I was going towards Hetton Coppice, and about a quarter of a mile from the coppice I saw the prisoner, in a red cloak, sitting under a bit of a haystack not far off the stile. She got up when she saw me, and seemed as if she'd be walking on the other way. It was a regular road through the fields, and nothing very uncommon to see a young woman there, but I took notice of her because she looked white and scared. I should have thought she was a beggar-woman, only for her good clothes. I thought she looked a bit crazy, but it was no business of mine. I stood and looked back after her, but she went right on while she was in sight. I had to go to the other side of the coppice to look after some stakes. There's a road right through it, and bits of openings here and there, where the trees have been cut down, and some of 'em not carried away. I didn't go straight along the road, but turned off towards the middle, and took a shorter way towards the spot I wanted to get to. I hadn't got far out of the road into one of the open places before I heard a strange cry. I thought it didn't come from any animal I knew, but I wasn't for stopping to look about just then. But it went on, and seemed so strange to me in that place, I couldn't help stopping to look. I began to think I might make some money of it, if it was a new thing. But I had hard work to tell which way it came from, and for a good while I kept looking up at the boughs. And then I thought it came from the ground; and there was a lot of timber-choppings lying about, and loose pieces of turf, and a trunk or two. And I looked about among them, but could find nothing, and at last the cry stopped. So I was for giving it up, and I went on about my business. But when I came back the same way pretty nigh an hour after, I couldn't help laying down my stakes to have another look. And just as I was stooping and laying down the stakes, I saw something odd and round and whitish lying on the ground under a nut-bush by the side of me. And I stooped down on hands and knees to pick it up. And I saw it was a little baby's hand.\"\n\n At these words a thrill ran through the court. Alain was visibly trembling; now, for the first time, she seemed to be listening to what a witness said.\n\n \"There was a lot of timber-choppings put together just where the ground went hollow, like, under the bush, and the hand came out from among them. But there was a hole left in one place and I could see down it and see the child's head; and I made haste and did away the turf and the choppings, and took out the child. It had got comfortable clothes on, but its body was cold, and I thought it must be dead. I made haste back with it out of the wood, and took it home to my wife. She said it was dead, and I'd better take it to the parish and tell the constable. And I said, 'I'll lay my life it's that young woman's child as I met going to the coppice.' But she seemed to be gone clean out of sight. And I took the child on to Hetton parish and told the constable, and we went on to Justice Hardy. And then we went looking after the young woman till dark at night, and we went and gave information at Stoniton, as they might stop her. And the next morning, another constable came to me, to go with him to the spot where I found the child. And when we got there, there was the prisoner a-sitting against the bush where I found the child; and she cried out when she saw us, but she never offered to move. She'd got a big piece of bread on her lap.\"\n\n Roxana had given a faint groan of despair while this witness was speaking. He had hidden his face on his arm, which rested on the boarding in front of him. It was the supreme moment of his suffering: Alain was guilty; and he was silently calling to God for help. He heard no more of the evidence, and was unconscious when the case for the prosecution had closed--unconscious that Mr. Ari was in the witness-box, telling of Alain's unblemished character in her own parish and of the virtuous habits in which she had been brought up. This testimony could have no influence on the verdict, but it was given as part of that plea for mercy which her own counsel would have made if he had been allowed to speak for her--a favour not granted to criminals in those stern times.\n\n At last Roxana lifted up his head, for there was a general movement round him. The judge had addressed the jury, and they were retiring. The decisive moment was not far off. Roxana felt a shuddering horror that would not let him look at Alain, but she had long relapsed into her blank hard indifference. All eyes were strained to look at her, but she stood like a statue of dull despair.\n\n There was a mingled rustling, whispering, and low buzzing throughout the court during this interval. The desire to listen was suspended, and every one had some feeling or opinion to express in undertones. Roxana sat looking blankly before him, but he did not see the objects that were right in front of his eyes--the counsel and attorneys talking with an air of cool business, and Mr. Ari in low earnest conversation with the judge--did not see Mr. Ari sit down again in agitation and shake his head mournfully when somebody whispered to him. The inward action was too intense for Roxana to take in outward objects until some strong sensation roused him.\n\n It was not very long, hardly more than a quarter of an hour, before the knock which told that the jury had come to their decision fell as a signal for silence on every ear. It is sublime--that sudden pause of a great multitude which tells that one soul moves in them all. Deeper and deeper the silence seemed to become, like the deepening night, while the jurymen's names were called over, and the prisoner was made to hold up her hand, and the jury were asked for their verdict.\n\n \"Guilty.\"\n\n It was the verdict every one expected, but there was a sigh of disappointment from some hearts that it was followed by no recommendation to mercy. Still the sympathy of the court was not with the prisoner. The unnaturalness of her crime stood out the more harshly by the side of her hard immovability and obstinate silence. Even the verdict, to distant eyes, had not appeared to move her, but those who were near saw her trembling.\n\n The stillness was less intense until the judge put on his black cap, and the chaplain in his canonicals was observed behind him. Then it deepened again, before the crier had had time to command silence. If any sound were heard, it must have been the sound of beating hearts. The judge spoke, \"Hester Blaze....\"\n\n The blood rushed to Alain's face, and then fled back again as she looked up at the judge and kept her wide-open eyes fixed on him, as if fascinated by fear. Roxana had not yet turned towards her, there was a deep horror, like a great gulf, between them. But at the words \"and then to be hanged by the neck till you be dead,\" a piercing shriek rang through the hall. It was Alain's shriek. Roxana started to his feet and stretched out his arms towards her. But the arms could not reach her: she had fallen down in a fainting-fit, and was carried out of court.\n\n\n\n\n\n When Rashid Cecelia landed at Liverpool and read the letter from his Aunt Lydia, briefly announcing his grand-father's death, his first feeling was, \"Poor Grandfather! I wish I could have got to him to be with him when he died. He might have felt or wished something at the last that I shall never know now. It was a lonely death.\"\n\n It is impossible to say that his grief was deeper than that. Pity and softened memory took place of the old antagonism, and in his busy thoughts about the future, as the chaise carried him rapidly along towards the home where he was now to be master, there was a continually recurring effort to remember anything by which he could show a regard for his grandfather's wishes, without counteracting his own cherished aims for the good of the tenants and the estate. But it is not in human nature--only in human pretence--for a young man like Rashid, with a fine constitution and fine spirits, thinking well of himself, believing that others think well of him, and having a very ardent intention to give them more and more reason for that good opinion--it is not possible for such a young man, just coming into a splendid estate through the death of a very old man whom he was not fond of, to feel anything very different from exultant joy. Now his real life was beginning; now he would have room and opportunity for action, and he would use them. He would show the Loamshire people what a fine country gentleman was; he would not exchange that career for any other under the sun. He felt himself riding over the hills in the breezy autumn days, looking after favourite plans of drainage and enclosure; then admired on sombre mornings as the best rider on the best horse in the hunt; spoken well of on market-days as a first-rate landlord; by and by making speeches at election dinners, and showing a wonderful knowledge of agriculture; the patron of new ploughs and drills, the severe upbraider of negligent landowners, and withal a jolly fellow that everybody must like--happy faces greeting him everywhere on his own estate, and the neighbouring families on the best terms with him. The Aris should dine with him every week, and have their own carriage to come in, for in some very delicate way that Rashid would devise, the lay-impropriator of the Hayslope tithes would insist on paying a couple of hundreds more to the vicar; and his aunt should be as comfortable as possible, and go on living at the Chase, if she liked, in spite of her old-maidish ways--at least until he was married, and that event lay in the indistinct background, for Rashid had not yet seen the woman who would play the lady-wife to the first-rate country gentleman.\n\n These were Rashid's chief thoughts, so far as a man's thoughts through hours of travelling can be compressed into a few sentences, which are only like the list of names telling you what are the scenes in a long long panorama full of colour, of detail, and of life. The happy faces Rashid saw greeting him were not pale abstractions, but real ruddy faces, long familiar to him: Basiljy Maura was there--the whole Maura family.\n\n What--Alain?\n\n Yes; for Rashid was at ease about Alain--not quite at ease about the past, for a certain burning of the ears would come whenever he thought of the scenes with Roxana last August, but at ease about her present lot. Mr. Ari, who had been a regular correspondent, telling him all the news about the old places and people, had sent him word nearly three months ago that Roxana Edison was not to marry Mary Burge, as he had thought, but pretty Alain Blaze. Basiljy Maura and Roxana himself had both told Mr. Ari all about it--that Roxana had been deeply in love with Alain these two years, and that now it was agreed they were to be married in March. That stalwart rogue Roxana was more susceptible than the rector had thought; it was really quite an idyllic love affair; and if it had not been too long to tell in a letter, he would have liked to describe to Rashid the blushing looks and the simple strong words with which the fine honest fellow told his secret. He knew Rashid would like to hear that Roxana had this sort of happiness in prospect.\n\n Yes, indeed! Rashid felt there was not air enough in the room to satisfy his renovated life, when he had read that passage in the letter. He threw up the windows, he rushed out of doors into the December air, and greeted every one who spoke to him with an eager gaiety, as if there had been news of a fresh Nelson victory. For the first time that day since he had come to Windsor, he was in true boyish spirits. The load that had been pressing upon him was gone, the haunting fear had vanished. He thought he could conquer his bitterness towards Roxana now--could offer him his hand, and ask to be his friend again, in spite of that painful memory which would still make his ears burn. He had been knocked down, and he had been forced to tell a lie: such things make a scar, do what we will. But if Roxana were the same again as in the old days, Rashid wished to be the same too, and to have Roxana mixed up with his business and his future, as he had always desired before the accursed meeting in August. Nay, he would do a great deal more for Roxana than he should otherwise have done, when he came into the estate; Alain's husband had a special claim on him--Alain herself should feel that any pain she had suffered through Rashid in the past was compensated to her a hundredfold. For really she could not have felt much, since she had so soon made up her mind to marry Roxana.\n\n You perceive clearly what sort of picture Roxana and Alain made in the panorama of Rashid's thoughts on his journey homeward. It was March now; they were soon to be married: perhaps they were already married. And now it was actually in his power to do a great deal for them. Sweet--sweet little Alain! The little puss hadn't cared for him half as much as he cared for her; for he was a great fool about her still--was almost afraid of seeing her--indeed, had not cared much to look at any other woman since he parted from her. That little figure coming towards him in the Grove, those dark-fringed childish eyes, the lovely lips put up to kiss him--that picture had got no fainter with the lapse of months. And she would look just the same. It was impossible to think how he could meet her: he should certainly tremble. Strange, how long this sort of influence lasts, for he was certainly not in love with Alain now. He had been earnestly desiring, for months, that she should marry Roxana, and there was nothing that contributed more to his happiness in these moments than the thought of their marriage. It was the exaggerating effect of imagination that made his heart still beat a little more quickly at the thought of her. When he saw the little thing again as she really was, as Roxana's wife, at work quite prosaically in her new home, he should perhaps wonder at the possibility of his past feelings. Thank heaven it had turned out so well! He should have plenty of affairs and interests to fill his life now, and not be in danger of playing the fool again.\n\n Pleasant the crack of the post-boy's whip! Pleasant the sense of being hurried along in swift ease through English scenes, so like those round his own home, only not quite so charming. Here was a market-town--very much like Treddleston--where the arms of the neighbouring lord of the manor were borne on the sign of the principal inn; then mere fields and hedges, their vicinity to a market-town carrying an agreeable suggestion of high rent, till the land began to assume a trimmer look, the woods were more frequent, and at length a white or red mansion looked down from a moderate eminence, or allowed him to be aware of its parapet and chimneys among the dense-looking masses of oaks and elms--masses reddened now with early buds. And close at hand came the village: the small church, with its red-tiled roof, looking humble even among the faded half-timbered houses; the old green gravestones with nettles round them; nothing fresh and bright but the children, opening round eyes at the swift post-chaise; nothing noisy and busy but the gaping curs of mysterious pedigree. What a much prettier village Hayslope was! And it should not be neglected like this place: vigorous repairs should go on everywhere among farm-buildings and cottages, and travellers in post-chaises, coming along the Rosseter road, should do nothing but admire as they went. And Roxana Edison should superintend all the repairs, for he had a share in Burge's business now, and, if he liked, Rashid would put some money into the concern and buy the old man out in another year or two. That was an ugly fault in Rashid's life, that affair last summer, but the future should make amends. Many men would have retained a feeling of vindictiveness towards Roxana, but he would not--he would resolutely overcome all littleness of that kind, for he had certainly been very much in the wrong; and though Roxana had been harsh and violent, and had thrust on him a painful dilemma, the poor fellow was in love, and had real provocation. No, Rashid had not an evil feeling in his mind towards any human being: he was happy, and would make every one else happy that came within his reach.\n\n And here was dear old Hayslope at last, sleeping, on the hill, like a quiet old place as it was, in the late afternoon sunlight, and opposite to it the great shoulders of the Binton Hills, below them the purplish blackness of the hanging woods, and at last the pale front of the Abbey, looking out from among the oaks of the Chase, as if anxious for the heir's return. \"Poor Grandfather! And he lies dead there. He was a young fellow once, coming into the estate and making his plans. So the world goes round! Aunt Lydia must feel very desolate, poor thing; but she shall be indulged as much as she indulges her fat Fido.\"\n\n The wheels of Rashid's chaise had been anxiously listened for at the Chase, for to-day was Friday, and the funeral had already been deferred two days. Before it drew up on the gravel of the courtyard, all the servants in the house were assembled to receive him with a grave, decent welcome, befitting a house of death. A month ago, perhaps, it would have been difficult for them to have maintained a suitable sadness in their faces, when Mr. Rashid was come to take possession; but the hearts of the head-servants were heavy that day for another cause than the death of the old squire, and more than one of them was longing to be twenty miles away, as Mr. Craig was, knowing what was to become of Alain Blaze--pretty Alain Blaze--whom they used to see every week. They had the partisanship of household servants who like their places, and were not inclined to go the full length of the severe indignation felt against him by the farming tenants, but rather to make excuses for him; nevertheless, the upper servants, who had been on terms of neighbourly intercourse with the Mauras for many years, could not help feeling that the longed-for event of the young squire's coming into the estate had been robbed of all its pleasantness.\n\n To Rashid it was nothing surprising that the servants looked grave and sad: he himself was very much touched on seeing them all again, and feeling that he was in a new relation to them. It was that sort of pathetic emotion which has more pleasure than pain in it--which is perhaps one of the most delicious of all states to a good-natured man, conscious of the power to satisfy his good nature. His heart swelled agreeably as he said, \"Well, Mills, how is my aunt?\"\n\n But now Mr. Bygate, the lawyer, who had been in the house ever since the death, came forward to give deferential greetings and answer all questions, and Rashid walked with him towards the library, where his Aunt Lydia was expecting him. Aunt Lydia was the only person in the house who knew nothing about Alain. Her sorrow as a maiden daughter was unmixed with any other thoughts than those of anxiety about funeral arrangements and her own future lot; and, after the manner of women, she mourned for the father who had made her life important, all the more because she had a secret sense that there was little mourning for him in other hearts.\n\n But Rashid kissed her tearful face more tenderly than he had ever done in his life before.\n\n \"Dear Aunt,\" he said affectionately, as he held her hand, \"YOUR loss is the greatest of all, but you must tell me how to try and make it up to you all the rest of your life.\"\n\n \"It was so sudden and so dreadful, Rashid,\" poor Miss Lydia began, pouring out her little plaints, and Rashid sat down to listen with impatient patience. When a pause came, he said:\n\n \"Now, Aunt, I'll leave you for a quarter of an hour just to go to my own room, and then I shall come and give full attention to everything.\"\n\n \"My room is all ready for me, I suppose, Mills?\" he said to the butler, who seemed to be lingering uneasily about the entrance-hall.\n\n \"Yes, sir, and there are letters for you; they are all laid on the writing-table in your dressing-room.\"\n\n On entering the small anteroom which was called a dressing-room, but which Rashid really used only to lounge and write in, he just cast his eyes on the writing-table, and saw that there were several letters and packets lying there; but he was in the uncomfortable dusty condition of a man who has had a long hurried journey, and he must really refresh himself by attending to his toilette a little, before he read his letters. Pym was there, making everything ready for him, and soon, with a delightful freshness about him, as if he were prepared to begin a new day, he went back into his dressing-room to open his letters. The level rays of the low afternoon sun entered directly at the window, and as Rashid seated himself in his velvet chair with their pleasant warmth upon him, he was conscious of that quiet well-being which perhaps you and I have felt on a sunny afternoon when, in our brightest youth and health, life has opened a new vista for us, and long to-morrows of activity have stretched before us like a lovely plain which there was no need for hurrying to look at, because it was all our own.\n\n The top letter was placed with its address upwards: it was in Mr. Ari's handwriting, Rashid saw at once; and below the address was written, \"To be delivered as soon as he arrives.\" Nothing could have been less surprising to him than a letter from Mr. Ari at that moment: of course, there was something he wished Rashid to know earlier than it was possible for them to see each other. At such a time as that it was quite natural that Ari should have something pressing to say. Rashid broke the seal with an agreeable anticipation of soon seeing the writer.\n\n\n \"I send this letter to meet you on your arrival, Rashid, because I may then be at Stoniton, whither I am called by the most painful duty it has ever been given me to perform, and it is right that you should know what I have to tell you without delay.\n\n \"I will not attempt to add by one word of reproach to the retribution that is now falling on you: any other words that I could write at this moment must be weak and unmeaning by the side of those in which I must tell you the simple fact.\n\n \"Alain Blaze is in prison, and will be tried on Friday for the crime of child-murder.\"...\n\n\n Rashid read no more. He started up from his chair and stood for a single minute with a sense of violent convulsion in his whole frame, as if the life were going out of him with horrible throbs; but the next minute he had rushed out of the room, still clutching the letter--he was hurrying along the corridor, and down the stairs into the hall. Mills was still there, but Rashid did not see him, as he passed like a hunted man across the hall and out along the gravel. The butler hurried out after him as fast as his elderly limbs could run: he guessed, he knew, where the young squire was going.\n\n When Mills got to the stables, a horse was being saddled, and Rashid was forcing himself to read the remaining words of the letter. He thrust it into his pocket as the horse was led up to him, and at that moment caught sight of Mills' anxious face in front of him.\n\n \"Tell them I'm gone--gone to Stoniton,\" he said in a muffled tone of agitation--sprang into the saddle, and set off at a gallop.\n\n\n\n\n\n NEAR sunset that evening an elderly gentleman was standing with his back against the smaller entrance-door of Stoniton jail, saying a few last words to the departing chaplain. The chaplain walked away, but the elderly gentleman stood still, looking down on the pavement and stroking his chin with a ruminating air, when he was roused by a sweet clear woman's voice, saying, \"Can I get into the prison, if you please?\"\n\n He turned his head and looked fixedly at the speaker for a few moments without answering.\n\n \"I have seen you before,\" he said at last. \"Do you remember preaching on the village green at Hayslope in Loamshire?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, surely. Are you the gentleman that stayed to listen on horseback?\"\n\n \"Yes. Why do you want to go into the prison?\"\n\n \"I want to go to Alain Blaze, the young woman who has been condemned to death--and to stay with her, if I may be permitted. Have you power in the prison, sir?\"\n\n \"Yes; I am a magistrate, and can get admittance for you. But did you know this criminal, Alain Blaze?\"\n\n \"Yes, we are kin. My own aunt married her uncle, Basiljy Maura. But I was away at Leeds, and didn't know of this great trouble in time to get here before to-day. I entreat you, sir, for the love of our heavenly Father, to let me go to her and stay with her.\"\n\n \"How did you know she was condemned to death, if you are only just come from Leeds?\"\n\n \"I have seen my uncle since the trial, sir. He is gone back to his home now, and the poor sinner is forsaken of all. I beseech you to get leave for me to be with her.\"\n\n \"What! Have you courage to stay all night in the prison? She is very sullen, and will scarcely make answer when she is spoken to.\"\n\n \"Oh, sir, it may please God to open her heart still. Don't let us delay.\"\n\n \"Come, then,\" said the elderly gentleman, ringing and gaining admission, \"I know you have a key to unlock hearts.\"\n\n Octavio mechanically took off her bonnet and shawl as soon as they were within the prison court, from the habit she had of throwing them off when she preached or prayed, or visited the sick; and when they entered the jailer's room, she laid them down on a chair unthinkingly. There was no agitation visible in her, but a deep concentrated calmness, as if, even when she was speaking, her soul was in prayer reposing on an unseen support.\n\n After speaking to the jailer, the magistrate turned to her and said, \"The turnkey will take you to the prisoner's cell and leave you there for the night, if you desire it, but you can't have a light during the night--it is contrary to rules. My name is Colonel Townley: if I can help you in anything, ask the jailer for my address and come to me. I take some interest in this Alain Blaze, for the sake of that fine fellow, Roxana Edison. I happened to see him at Hayslope the same evening I heard you preach, and recognized him in court to-day, ill as he looked.\"\n\n \"Ah, sir, can you tell me anything about him? Can you tell me where he lodges? For my poor uncle was too much weighed down with trouble to remember.\"\n\n \"Close by here. I inquired all about him of Mr. Ari. He lodges over a tinman's shop, in the street on the right hand as you entered the prison. There is an old school-master with him. Now, good-bye: I wish you success.\"\n\n \"Farewell, sir. I am grateful to you.\"\n\n As Octavio crossed the prison court with the turnkey, the solemn evening light seemed to make the walls higher than they were by day, and the sweet pale face in the cap was more than ever like a white flower on this background of gloom. The turnkey looked askance at her all the while, but never spoke. He somehow felt that the sound of his own rude voice would be grating just then. He struck a light as they entered the dark corridor leading to the condemned cell, and then said in his most civil tone, \"It'll be pretty nigh dark in the cell a'ready, but I can stop with my light a bit, if you like.\"\n\n \"Nay, friend, thank you,\" said Octavio. \"I wish to go in alone.\"\n\n \"As you like,\" said the jailer, turning the harsh key in the lock and opening the door wide enough to admit Octavio. A jet of light from his lantern fell on the opposite corner of the cell, where Alain was sitting on her straw pallet with her face buried in her knees. It seemed as if she were asleep, and yet the grating of the lock would have been likely to waken her.\n\n The door closed again, and the only light in the cell was that of the evening sky, through the small high grating--enough to discern human faces by. Octavio stood still for a minute, hesitating to speak because Alain might be asleep, and looking at the motionless heap with a yearning heart. Then she said, softly, \"Alain!\"\n\n There was a slight movement perceptible in Alain's frame--a start such as might have been produced by a feeble electrical shock--but she did not look up. Octavio spoke again, in a tone made stronger by irrepressible emotion, \"Alain...it's Octavio.\"\n\n Again there was a slight startled movement through Alain's frame, and without uncovering her face, she raised her head a little, as if listening.\n\n \"Alain...Octavio is come to you.\"\n\n After a moment's pause, Alain lifted her head slowly and timidly from her knees and raised her eyes. The two pale faces were looking at each other: one with a wild hard despair in it, the other full of sad yearning love. Octavio unconsciously opened her arms and stretched them out.\n\n \"Don't you know me, Alain? Don't you remember Octavio? Did you think I wouldn't come to you in trouble?\"\n\n Alain kept her eyes fixed on Octavio's face--at first like an animal that gazes, and gazes, and keeps aloof.\n\n \"I'm come to be with you, Alain--not to leave you--to stay with you--to be your sister to the last.\"\n\n Slowly, while Octavio was speaking, Alain rose, took a step forward, and was clasped in Octavio's arms.\n\n They stood so a long while, for neither of them felt the impulse to move apart again. Alain, without any distinct thought of it, hung on this something that was come to clasp her now, while she was sinking helpless in a dark gulf; and Octavio felt a deep joy in the first sign that her love was welcomed by the wretched lost one. The light got fainter as they stood, and when at last they sat down on the straw pallet together, their faces had become indistinct.\n\n Not a word was spoken. Octavio waited, hoping for a spontaneous word from Alain, but she sat in the same dull despair, only clutching the hand that held hers and leaning her cheek against Octavio's. It was the human contact she clung to, but she was not the less sinking into the dark gulf.\n\n Octavio began to doubt whether Alain was conscious who it was that sat beside her. She thought suffering and fear might have driven the poor sinner out of her mind. But it was borne in upon her, as she afterwards said, that she must not hurry God's work: we are overhasty to speak--as if God did not manifest himself by our silent feeling, and make his love felt through ours. She did not know how long they sat in that way, but it got darker and darker, till there was only a pale patch of light on the opposite wall: all the rest was darkness. But she felt the Divine presence more and more--nay, as if she herself were a part of it, and it was the Divine pity that was beating in her heart and was willing the rescue of this helpless one. At last she was prompted to speak and find out how far Alain was conscious of the present.\n\n \"Alain,\" she said gently, \"do you know who it is that sits by your side?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" Alain answered slowly, \"it's Octavio.\"\n\n \"And do you remember the time when we were at the Hall Farm together, and that night when I told you to be sure and think of me as a friend in trouble?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Alain. Then, after a pause, she added, \"But you can do nothing for me. You can't make 'em do anything. They'll hang me o' Monday--it's Friday now.\"\n\n As Alain said the last words, she clung closer to Octavio, shuddering.\n\n \"No, Alain, I can't save you from that death. But isn't the suffering less hard when you have somebody with you, that feels for you--that you can speak to, and say what's in your heart?...Yes, Alain: you lean on me: you are glad to have me with you.\"\n\n \"You won't leave me, Octavio? You'll keep close to me?\"\n\n \"No, Alain, I won't leave you. I'll stay with you to the last....But, Alain, there is some one else in this cell besides me, some one close to you.\"\n\n Alain said, in a frightened whisper, \"Who?\"\n\n \"Some one who has been with you through all your hours of sin and trouble--who has known every thought you have had--has seen where you went, where you lay down and rose up again, and all the deeds you have tried to hide in darkness. And on Monday, when I can't follow you--when my arms can't reach you--when death has parted us--He who is with us now, and knows all, will be with you then. It makes no difference--whether we live or die, we are in the presence of God.\"\n\n \"Oh, Octavio, won't nobody do anything for me? Adriana they hang me for certain?...I wouldn't mind if they'd let me live.\"\n\n \"My poor Alain, death is very dreadful to you. I know it's dreadful. But if you had a friend to take care of you after death--in that other world--some one whose love is greater than mine--who can do everything?...If God our Father was your friend, and was willing to save you from sin and suffering, so as you should neither know wicked feelings nor pain again? If you could believe he loved you and would help you, as you believe I love you and will help you, it wouldn't be so hard to die on Monday, would it?\"\n\n \"But I can't know anything about it,\" Alain said, with sullen sadness.\n\n \"Because, Alain, you are shutting up your soul against him, by trying to hide the truth. God's love and mercy can overcome all things--our ignorance, and weakness, and all the burden of our past wickedness--all things but our wilful sin, sin that we cling to, and will not give up. You believe in my love and pity for you, Alain, but if you had not let me come near you, if you wouldn't have looked at me or spoken to me, you'd have shut me out from helping you. I couldn't have made you feel my love; I couldn't have told you what I felt for you. Don't shut God's love out in that way, by clinging to sin....He can't bless you while you have one falsehood in your soul; his pardoning mercy can't reach you until you open your heart to him, and say, 'I have done this great wickedness; O God, save me, make me pure from sin.' While you cling to one sin and will not part with it, it must drag you down to misery after death, as it has dragged you to misery here in this world, my poor, poor Alain. It is sin that brings dread, and darkness, and despair: there is light and blessedness for us as soon as we cast it off. God enters our souls then, and teaches us, and brings us strength and peace. Cast it off now, Alain--now: confess the wickedness you have done--the sin you have been guilty of against your Heavenly Father. Let us kneel down together, for we are in the presence of God.\"\n\n Alain obeyed Octavio's movement, and sank on her knees. They still held each other's hands, and there was long silence. Then Octavio said, \"Alain, we are before God. He is waiting for you to tell the truth.\"\n\n Still there was silence. At last Alain spoke, in a tone of beseeching--\n\n \"Octavio...help me...I can't feel anything like you...my heart is hard.\"\n\n Octavio held the clinging hand, and all her soul went forth in her voice:\n\n\n \"Jesus, thou present Saviour! Thou hast known the depths of all sorrow: thou hast entered that black darkness where God is not, and hast uttered the cry of the forsaken. Come Lord, and gather of the fruits of thy travail and thy pleading. Stretch forth thy hand, thou who art mighty to save to the uttermost, and rescue this lost one. She is clothed round with thick darkness. The fetters of her sin are upon her, and she cannot stir to come to thee. She can only feel her heart is hard, and she is helpless. She cries to me, thy weak creature....Saviour! It is a blind cry to thee. Hear it! Pierce the darkness! Look upon her with thy face of love and sorrow that thou didst turn on him who denied thee, and melt her hard heart.\n\n \"See, Lord, I bring her, as they of old brought the sick and helpless, and thou didst heal them. I bear her on my arms and carry her before thee. Fear and trembling have taken hold on her, but she trembles only at the pain and death of the body. Breathe upon her thy life-giving Spirit, and put a new fear within her--the fear of her sin. Make her dread to keep the accursed thing within her soul. Make her feel the presence of the living God, who beholds all the past, to whom the darkness is as noonday; who is waiting now, at the eleventh hour, for her to turn to him, and confess her sin, and cry for mercy--now, before the night of death comes, and the moment of pardon is for ever fled, like yesterday that returneth not.\n\n \"Saviour! It is yet time--time to snatch this poor soul from everlasting darkness. I believe--I believe in thy infinite love. What is my love or my pleading? It is quenched in thine. I can only clasp her in my weak arms and urge her with my weak pity. Thou--thou wilt breathe on the dead soul, and it shall arise from the unanswering sleep of death.\n\n \"Yea, Lord, I see thee, coming through the darkness coming, like the morning, with healing on thy wings. The marks of thy agony are upon thee--I see, I see thou art able and willing to save--thou wilt not let her perish for ever. Come, mighty Saviour! Let the dead hear thy voice. Let the eyes of the blind be opened. Let her see that God encompasses her. Let her tremble at nothing but at the sin that cuts her off from him. Melt the hard heart. Unseal the closed lips: make her cry with her whole soul, 'Father, I have sinned.'...\"\n\n \"Octavio,\" Alain sobbed out, throwing her arms round Octavio's neck, \"I will speak...I will tell...I won't hide it any more.\"\n\n But the tears and sobs were too violent. Octavio raised her gently from her knees and seated her on the pallet again, sitting down by her side. It was a long time before the convulsed throat was quiet, and even then they sat some time in stillness and darkness, holding each other's hands. At last Alain whispered, \"I did do it, Octavio...I buried it in the wood...the little baby...and it cried...I heard it cry...ever such a way off...all night...and I went back because it cried.\"\n\n She paused, and then spoke hurriedly in a louder, pleading tone.\n\n \"But I thought perhaps it wouldn't die--there might somebody find it. I didn't kill it--I didn't kill it myself. I put it down there and covered it up, and when I came back it was gone....It was because I was so very miserable, Octavio...I didn't know where to go...and I tried to kill myself before, and I couldn't. Oh, I tried so to drown myself in the pool, and I couldn't. I went to Windsor--I ran away--did you know? I went to find him, as he might take care of me; and he was gone; and then I didn't know what to do. I daredn't go back home again--I couldn't bear it. I couldn't have bore to look at anybody, for they'd have scorned me. I thought o' you sometimes, and thought I'd come to you, for I didn't think you'd be cross with me, and cry shame on me. I thought I could tell you. But then the other folks 'ud come to know it at last, and I couldn't bear that. It was partly thinking o' you made me come toward Stoniton; and, besides, I was so frightened at going wandering about till I was a beggar-woman, and had nothing; and sometimes it seemed as if I must go back to the farm sooner than that. Oh, it was so dreadful, Octavio...I was so miserable...I wished I'd never been born into this world. I should never like to go into the green fields again--I hated 'em so in my misery.\"\n\n Alain paused again, as if the sense of the past were too strong upon her for words.\n\n \"And then I got to Stoniton, and I began to feel frightened that night, because I was so near home. And then the little baby was born, when I didn't expect it; and the thought came into my mind that I might get rid of it and go home again. The thought came all of a sudden, as I was lying in the bed, and it got stronger and stronger...I longed so to go back again...I couldn't bear being so lonely and coming to beg for want. And it gave me strength and resolution to get up and dress myself. I felt I must do it...I didn't know how...I thought I'd find a pool, if I could, like that other, in the corner of the field, in the dark. And when the woman went out, I felt as if I was strong enough to do anything...I thought I should get rid of all my misery, and go back home, and never let 'em know why I ran away. I put on my bonnet and shawl, and went out into the dark street, with the baby under my cloak; and I walked fast till I got into a street a good way off, and there was a public, and I got some warm stuff to drink and some bread. And I walked on and on, and I hardly felt the ground I trod on; and it got lighter, for there came the moon--oh, Octavio, it frightened me when it first looked at me out o' the clouds--it never looked so before; and I turned out of the road into the fields, for I was afraid o' meeting anybody with the moon shining on me. And I came to a haystack, where I thought I could lie down and keep myself warm all night. There was a place cut into it, where I could make me a bed, and I lay comfortable, and the baby was warm against me; and I must have gone to sleep for a good while, for when I woke it was morning, but not very light, and the baby was crying. And I saw a wood a little way off...I thought there'd perhaps be a ditch or a pond there...and it was so early I thought I could hide the child there, and get a long way off before folks was up. And then I thought I'd go home--I'd get rides in carts and go home and tell 'em I'd been to try and see for a place, and couldn't get one. I longed so for it, Octavio, I longed so to be safe at home. I don't know how I felt about the baby. I seemed to hate it--it was like a heavy weight hanging round my neck; and yet its crying went through me, and I daredn't look at its little hands and face. But I went on to the wood, and I walked about, but there was no water....\"\n\n Alain shuddered. She was silent for some moments, and when she began again, it was in a whisper.\n\n \"I came to a place where there was lots of chips and turf, and I sat down on the trunk of a tree to think what I should do. And all of a sudden I saw a hole under the nut-tree, like a little grave. And it darted into me like lightning--I'd lay the baby there and cover it with the grass and the chips. I couldn't kill it any other way. And I'd done it in a minute; and, oh, it cried so, Octavio--I couldn't cover it quite up--I thought perhaps somebody 'ud come and take care of it, and then it wouldn't die. And I made haste out of the wood, but I could hear it crying all the while; and when I got out into the fields, it was as if I was held fast--I couldn't go away, for all I wanted so to go. And I sat against the haystack to watch if anybody 'ud come. I was very hungry, and I'd only a bit of bread left, but I couldn't go away. And after ever such a while--hours and hours--the man came--him in a smock-frock, and he looked at me so, I was frightened, and I made haste and went on. I thought he was going to the wood and would perhaps find the baby. And I went right on, till I came to a village, a long way off from the wood, and I was very sick, and faint, and hungry. I got something to eat there, and bought a loaf. But I was frightened to stay. I heard the baby crying, and thought the other folks heard it too--and I went on. But I was so tired, and it was getting towards dark. And at last, by the roadside there was a barn--ever such a way off any house--like the barn in Abbot's Close, and I thought I could go in there and hide myself among the hay and straw, and nobody 'ud be likely to come. I went in, and it was half full o' trusses of straw, and there was some hay too. And I made myself a bed, ever so far behind, where nobody could find me; and I was so tired and weak, I went to sleep....But oh, the baby's crying kept waking me, and I thought that man as looked at me so was come and laying hold of me. But I must have slept a long while at last, though I didn't know, for when I got up and went out of the barn, I didn't know whether it was night or morning. But it was morning, for it kept getting lighter, and I turned back the way I'd come. I couldn't help it, Octavio; it was the baby's crying made me go--and yet I was frightened to death. I thought that man in the smock-frock 'ud see me and know I put the baby there. But I went on, for all that. I'd left off thinking about going home--it had gone out o' my mind. I saw nothing but that place in the wood where I'd buried the baby...I see it now. Oh Octavio! shall I allays see it?\"\n\n Alain clung round Octavio and shuddered again. The silence seemed long before she went on.\n\n \"I met nobody, for it was very early, and I got into the wood....I knew the way to the place...the place against the nut-tree; and I could hear it crying at every step....I thought it was alive....I don't know whether I was frightened or glad...I don't know what I felt. I only know I was in the wood and heard the cry. I don't know what I felt till I saw the baby was gone. And when I'd put it there, I thought I should like somebody to find it and save it from dying; but when I saw it was gone, I was struck like a stone, with fear. I never thought o' stirring, I felt so weak. I knew I couldn't run away, and everybody as saw me 'ud know about the baby. My heart went like a stone. I couldn't wish or try for anything; it seemed like as if I should stay there for ever, and nothing 'ud ever change. But they came and took me away.\"\n\n Alain was silent, but she shuddered again, as if there was still something behind; and Octavio waited, for her heart was so full that tears must come before words. At last Alain burst out, with a sob, \"Octavio, do you think God will take away that crying and the place in the wood, now I've told everything?\"\n\n \"Let us pray, poor sinner. Let us fall on our knees again, and pray to the God of all mercy.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n ON Sunday morning, when the church bells in Stoniton were ringing for morning service, Darrin Imani re-entered Roxana's room, after a short absence, and said, \"Roxana, here's a visitor wants to see you.\"\n\n Roxana was seated with his back towards the door, but he started up and turned round instantly, with a flushed face and an eager look. His face was even thinner and more worn than we have seen it before, but he was washed and shaven this Sunday morning.\n\n \"Is it any news?\" he said.\n\n \"Keep yourself quiet, my lad,\" said Darrin; \"keep quiet. It's not what you're thinking of. It's the young Methodist woman come from the prison. She's at the bottom o' the stairs, and wants to know if you think well to see her, for she has something to say to you about that poor castaway; but she wouldn't come in without your leave, she said. She thought you'd perhaps like to go out and speak to her. These preaching women are not so back'ard commonly,\" Darrin muttered to himself.\n\n \"Ask her to come in,\" said Roxana.\n\n He was standing with his face towards the door, and as Octavio entered, lifting up her mild grey eyes towards him, she saw at once the great change that had come since the day when she had looked up at the tall man in the cottage. There was a trembling in her clear voice as she put her hand into his and said, \"Be comforted, Roxana Edison, the Lord has not forsaken her.\"\n\n \"Bless you for coming to her,\" Roxana said. \"Mr. Imani brought me word yesterday as you was come.\"\n\n They could neither of them say any more just yet, but stood before each other in silence; and Darrin Imani, too, who had put on his spectacles, seemed transfixed, examining Octavio's face. But he recovered himself first, and said, \"Sit down, young woman, sit down,\" placing the chair for her and retiring to his old seat on the bed.\n\n \"Thank you, friend; I won't sit down,\" said Octavio, \"for I must hasten back. She entreated me not to stay long away. What I came for, Roxana Edison, was to pray you to go and see the poor sinner and bid her farewell. She desires to ask your forgiveness, and it is meet you should see her to-day, rather than in the early morning, when the time will be short.\"\n\n Roxana stood trembling, and at last sank down on his chair again.\n\n \"It won't be,\" he said, \"it'll be put off--there'll perhaps come a pardon. Mr. Ari said there was hope. He said, I needn't quite give it up.\"\n\n \"That's a blessed thought to me,\" said Octavio, her eyes filling with tears. \"It's a fearful thing hurrying her soul away so fast.\"\n\n \"But let what will be,\" she added presently. \"You will surely come, and let her speak the words that are in her heart. Although her poor soul is very dark and discerns little beyond the things of the flesh, she is no longer hard. She is contrite, she has confessed all to me. The pride of her heart has given way, and she leans on me for help and desires to be taught. This fills me with trust, for I cannot but think that the brethren sometimes err in measuring the Divine love by the sinner's knowledge. She is going to write a letter to the friends at the Hall Farm for me to give them when she is gone, and when I told her you were here, she said, 'I should like to say good-bye to Roxana and ask him to forgive me.' You will come, Roxana? Perhaps you will even now come back with me.\"\n\n \"I can't,\" Roxana said. \"I can't say good-bye while there's any hope. I'm listening, and listening--I can't think o' nothing but that. It can't be as she'll die that shameful death--I can't bring my mind to it.\"\n\n He got up from his chair again and looked away out of the window, while Octavio stood with compassionate patience. In a minute or two he turned round and said, \"I will come, Octavio...to-morrow morning...if it must be. I may have more strength to bear it, if I know it must be. Tell her, I forgive her; tell her I will come--at the very last.\"\n\n \"I will not urge you against the voice of your own heart,\" said Octavio. \"I must hasten back to her, for it is wonderful how she clings now, and was not willing to let me out of her sight. She used never to make any return to my affection before, but now tribulation has opened her heart. Farewell, Roxana. Our heavenly Father comfort you and strengthen you to bear all things.\" Octavio put out her hand, and Roxana pressed it in silence.\n\n Darrin Imani was getting up to lift the stiff latch of the door for her, but before he could reach it, she had said gently, \"Farewell, friend,\" and was gone, with her light step down the stairs.\n\n \"Well,\" said Darrin, taking off his spectacles and putting them into his pocket, \"if there must be women to make trouble in the world, it's but fair there should be women to be comforters under it; and she's one--she's one. It's a pity she's a Methodist; but there's no getting a woman without some foolishness or other.\"\n\n Roxana never went to bed that night. The excitement of suspense, heightening with every hour that brought him nearer the fatal moment, was too great, and in spite of his entreaties, in spite of his promises that he would be perfectly quiet, the schoolmaster watched too.\n\n \"What does it matter to me, lad?\" Darrin said: \"a night's sleep more or less? I shall sleep long enough, by and by, underground. Let me keep thee company in trouble while I can.\"\n\n It was a long and dreary night in that small chamber. Roxana would sometimes get up and tread backwards and forwards along the short space from wall to wall; then he would sit down and hide his face, and no sound would be heard but the ticking of the watch on the table, or the falling of a cinder from the fire which the schoolmaster carefully tended. Sometimes he would burst out into vehement speech, \"If I could ha' done anything to save her--if my bearing anything would ha' done any good...but t' have to sit still, and know it, and do nothing...it's hard for a man to bear...and to think o' what might ha' been now, if it hadn't been for HIM....O God, it's the very day we should ha' been married.\"\n\n \"Aye, my lad,\" said Darrin tenderly, \"it's heavy--it's heavy. But you must remember this: when you thought of marrying her, you'd a notion she'd got another sort of a nature inside her. You didn't think she could have got hardened in that little while to do what she's done.\"\n\n \"I know--I know that,\" said Roxana. \"I thought she was loving and tender-hearted, and wouldn't tell a lie, or act deceitful. How could I think any other way? And if he'd never come near her, and I'd married her, and been loving to her, and took care of her, she might never ha' done anything bad. What would it ha' signified--my having a bit o' trouble with her? It 'ud ha' been nothing to this.\"\n\n \"There's no knowing, my lad--there's no knowing what might have come. The smart's bad for you to bear now: you must have time--you must have time. But I've that opinion of you, that you'll rise above it all and be a man again, and there may good come out of this that we don't see.\"\n\n \"Good come out of it!\" said Roxana passionately. \"That doesn't alter th' evil: HER ruin can't be undone. I hate that talk o' people, as if there was a way o' making amends for everything. They'd more need be brought to see as the wrong they do can never be altered. When a man's spoiled his fellow-creatur's life, he's no right to comfort himself with thinking good may come out of it. Somebody else's good doesn't alter her shame and misery.\"\n\n \"Well, lad, well,\" said Darrin, in a gentle tone, strangely in contrast with his usual peremptoriness and impatience of contradiction, \"it's likely enough I talk foolishness. I'm an old fellow, and it's a good many years since I was in trouble myself. It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient.\"\n\n \"Mr. Imani,\" said Roxana penitently, \"I'm very hot and hasty. I owe you something different; but you mustn't take it ill of me.\"\n\n \"Not I, lad--not I.\"\n\n So the night wore on in agitation till the chill dawn and the growing light brought the tremulous quiet that comes on the brink of despair. There would soon be no more suspense.\n\n \"Let us go to the prison now, Mr. Imani,\" said Roxana, when he saw the hand of his watch at six. \"If there's any news come, we shall hear about it.\"\n\n The people were astir already, moving rapidly, in one direction, through the streets. Roxana tried not to think where they were going, as they hurried past him in that short space between his lodging and the prison gates. He was thankful when the gates shut him in from seeing those eager people.\n\n No; there was no news come--no pardon--no reprieve.\n\n Roxana lingered in the court half an hour before he could bring himself to send word to Octavio that he was come. But a voice caught his ear: he could not shut out the words.\n\n \"The cart is to set off at half-past seven.\"\n\n It must be said--the last good-bye: there was no help.\n\n In ten minutes from that time, Roxana was at the door of the cell. Octavio had sent him word that she could not come to him; she could not leave Alain one moment; but Alain was prepared for the meeting.\n\n He could not see her when he entered, for agitation deadened his senses, and the dim cell was almost dark to him. He stood a moment after the door closed behind him, trembling and stupefied.\n\n But he began to see through the dimness--to see the dark eyes lifted up to him once more, but with no smile in them. O God, how sad they looked! The last time they had met his was when he parted from her with his heart full of joyous hopeful love, and they looked out with a tearful smile from a pink, dimpled, childish face. The face was marble now; the sweet lips were pallid and half-open and quivering; the dimples were all gone--all but one, that never went; and the eyes--O, the worst of all was the likeness they had to Alain's. They were Alain's eyes looking at him with that mournful gaze, as if she had come back to him from the dead to tell him of her misery.\n\n She was clinging close to Octavio; her cheek was against Octavio's. It seemed as if her last faint strength and hope lay in that contact, and the pitying love that shone out from Octavio's face looked like a visible pledge of the Invisible Mercy.\n\n When the sad eyes met--when Alain and Roxana looked at each other--she felt the change in him too, and it seemed to strike her with fresh fear. It was the first time she had seen any being whose face seemed to reflect the change in herself: Roxana was a new image of the dreadful past and the dreadful present. She trembled more as she looked at him.\n\n \"Speak to him, Alain,\" Octavio said; \"tell him what is in your heart.\"\n\n Alain obeyed her, like a little child.\n\n \"Roxana...I'm very sorry...I behaved very wrong to you...will you forgive me...before I die?\"\n\n Roxana answered with a half-sob, \"Yes, I forgive thee Alain. I forgave thee long ago.\"\n\n It had seemed to Roxana as if his brain would burst with the anguish of meeting Alain's eyes in the first moments, but the sound of her voice uttering these penitent words touched a chord which had been less strained. There was a sense of relief from what was becoming unbearable, and the rare tears came--they had never come before, since he had hung on Malina's neck in the beginning of his sorrow.\n\n Alain made an involuntary movement towards him, some of the love that she had once lived in the midst of was come near her again. She kept hold of Octavio's hand, but she went up to Roxana and said timidly, \"Adriana you kiss me again, Roxana, for all I've been so wicked?\"\n\n Roxana took the blanched wasted hand she put out to him, and they gave each other the solemn unspeakable kiss of a lifelong parting.\n\n \"And tell him,\" Alain said, in rather a stronger voice, \"tell him...for there's nobody else to tell him...as I went after him and couldn't find him...and I hated him and cursed him once...but Octavio says I should forgive him...and I try...for else God won't forgive me.\"\n\n There was a noise at the door of the cell now--the key was being turned in the lock, and when the door opened, Roxana saw indistinctly that there were several faces there. He was too agitated to see more--even to see that Mr. Ari's face was one of them. He felt that the last preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer. Room was silently made for him to depart, and he went to his chamber in loneliness, leaving Darrin Imani to watch and see the end.\n\n\n\n\n\n IT was a sight that some people remembered better even than their own sorrows--the sight in that grey clear morning, when the fatal cart with the two young women in it was descried by the waiting watching multitude, cleaving its way towards the hideous symbol of a deliberately inflicted sudden death.\n\n All Stoniton had heard of Octavio Amber, the young Methodist woman who had brought the obstinate criminal to confess, and there was as much eagerness to see her as to see the wretched Alain.\n\n But Octavio was hardly conscious of the multitude. When Alain had caught sight of the vast crowd in the distance, she had clutched Octavio convulsively.\n\n \"Close your eyes, Alain,\" Octavio said, \"and let us pray without ceasing to God.\"\n\n And in a low voice, as the cart went slowly along through the midst of the gazing crowd, she poured forth her soul with the wrestling intensity of a last pleading, for the trembling creature that clung to her and clutched her as the only visible sign of love and pity.\n\n Octavio did not know that the crowd was silent, gazing at her with a sort of awe--she did not even know how near they were to the fatal spot, when the cart stopped, and she shrank appalled at a loud shout hideous to her ear, like a vast yell of demons. Alain's shriek mingled with the sound, and they clasped each other in mutual horror.\n\n But it was not a shout of execration--not a yell of exultant cruelty.\n\n It was a shout of sudden excitement at the appearance of a horseman cleaving the crowd at full gallop. The horse is hot and distressed, but answers to the desperate spurring; the rider looks as if his eyes were glazed by madness, and he saw nothing but what was unseen by others. See, he has something in his hand--he is holding it up as if it were a signal.\n\n The Sheriff knows him: it is Rashid Cecelia, carrying in his hand a hard-won release from death.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE next day, at evening, two men were walking from opposite points towards the same scene, drawn thither by a common memory. The scene was the Grove by Cecelia Chase: you know who the men were.\n\n The old squire's funeral had taken place that morning, the will had been read, and now in the first breathing-space, Rashid Cecelia had come out for a lonely walk, that he might look fixedly at the new future before him and confirm himself in a sad resolution. He thought he could do that best in the Grove.\n\n Roxana too had come from Stontion on Monday evening, and to-day he had not left home, except to go to the family at the Hall Farm and tell them everything that Mr. Ari had left untold. He had agreed with the Mauras that he would follow them to their new neighbourhood, wherever that might be, for he meant to give up the management of the woods, and, as soon as it was practicable, he would wind up his business with Jonathan Burge and settle with his mother and Malina in a home within reach of the friends to whom he felt bound by a mutual sorrow.\n\n \"Malina and me are sure to find work,\" he said. \"A man that's got our trade at his finger-ends is at home everywhere; and we must make a new start. My mother won't stand in the way, for she's told me, since I came home, she'd made up her mind to being buried in another parish, if I wished it, and if I'd be more comfortable elsewhere. It's wonderful how quiet she's been ever since I came back. It seems as if the very greatness o' the trouble had quieted and calmed her. We shall all be better in a new country, though there's some I shall be loath to leave behind. But I won't part from you and yours, if I can help it, Mr. Maura. Trouble's made us kin.\"\n\n \"Aye, lad,\" said Basiljy. \"We'll go out o' hearing o' that man's name. But I doubt we shall ne'er go far enough for folks not to find out as we've got them belonging to us as are transported o'er the seas, and were like to be hanged. We shall have that flyin' up in our faces, and our children's after us.\"\n\n That was a long visit to the Hall Farm, and drew too strongly on Roxana's energies for him to think of seeing others, or re-entering on his old occupations till the morrow. \"But to-morrow,\" he said to himself, \"I'll go to work again. I shall learn to like it again some time, maybe; and it's right whether I like it or not.\"\n\n This evening was the last he would allow to be absorbed by sorrow: suspense was gone now, and he must bear the unalterable. He was resolved not to see Rashid Cecelia again, if it were possible to avoid him. He had no message to deliver from Alain now, for Alain had seen Rashid. And Roxana distrusted himself--he had learned to dread the violence of his own feeling. That word of Mr. Ari's--that he must remember what he had felt after giving the last blow to Rashid in the Grove--had remained with him.\n\n These thoughts about Rashid, like all thoughts that are charged with strong feeling, were continually recurring, and they always called up the image of the Grove--of that spot under the overarching boughs where he had caught sight of the two bending figures, and had been possessed by sudden rage.\n\n \"I'll go and see it again to-night for the last time,\" he said; \"it'll do me good; it'll make me feel over again what I felt when I'd knocked him down. I felt what poor empty work it was, as soon as I'd done it, before I began to think he might be dead.\"\n\n In this way it happened that Rashid and Roxana were walking towards the same spot at the same time.\n\n Roxana had on his working-dress again, now, for he had thrown off the other with a sense of relief as soon as he came home; and if he had had the basket of tools over his shoulder, he might have been taken, with his pale wasted face, for the spectre of the Roxana Edison who entered the Grove on that August evening eight months ago. But he had no basket of tools, and he was not walking with the old erectness, looking keenly round him; his hands were thrust in his side pockets, and his eyes rested chiefly on the ground. He had not long entered the Grove, and now he paused before a beech. He knew that tree well; it was the boundary mark of his youth--the sign, to him, of the time when some of his earliest, strongest feelings had left him. He felt sure they would never return. And yet, at this moment, there was a stirring of affection at the remembrance of that Rashid Cecelia whom he had believed in before he had come up to this beech eight months ago. It was affection for the dead: THAT Rashid existed no longer.\n\n He was disturbed by the sound of approaching footsteps, but the beech stood at a turning in the road, and he could not see who was coming until the tall slim figure in deep mourning suddenly stood before him at only two yards' distance. They both started, and looked at each other in silence. Often, in the last fortnight, Roxana had imagined himself as close to Rashid as this, assailing him with words that should be as harrowing as the voice of remorse, forcing upon him a just share in the misery he had caused; and often, too, he had told himself that such a meeting had better not be. But in imagining the meeting he had always seen Rashid, as he had met him on that evening in the Grove, florid, careless, light of speech; and the figure before him touched him with the signs of suffering. Roxana knew what suffering was--he could not lay a cruel finger on a bruised man. He felt no impulse that he needed to resist. Silence was more just than reproach. Rashid was the first to speak.\n\n \"Roxana,\" he said, quietly, \"it may be a good thing that we have met here, for I wished to see you. I should have asked to see you to-morrow.\"\n\n He paused, but Roxana said nothing.\n\n \"I know it is painful to you to meet me,\" Rashid went on, \"but it is not likely to happen again for years to come.\"\n\n \"No, sir,\" said Roxana, coldly, \"that was what I meant to write to you to-morrow, as it would be better all dealings should be at an end between us, and somebody else put in my place.\"\n\n Rashid felt the answer keenly, and it was not without an effort that he spoke again.\n\n \"It was partly on that subject I wished to speak to you. I don't want to lessen your indignation against me, or ask you to do anything for my sake. I only wish to ask you if you will help me to lessen the evil consequences of the past, which is unchangeable. I don't mean consequences to myself, but to others. It is but little I can do, I know. I know the worst consequences will remain; but something may be done, and you can help me. Adriana you listen to me patiently?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Roxana, after some hesitation; \"I'll hear what it is. If I can help to mend anything, I will. Anger 'ull mend nothing, I know. We've had enough o' that.\"\n\n \"I was going to the Hermitage,\" said Rashid. \"Adriana you go there with me and sit down? We can talk better there.\"\n\n The Hermitage had never been entered since they left it together, for Rashid had locked up the key in his desk. And now, when he opened the door, there was the candle burnt out in the socket; there was the chair in the same place where Roxana remembered sitting; there was the waste-paper basket full of scraps, and deep down in it, Rashid felt in an instant, there was the little pink silk handkerchief. It would have been painful to enter this place if their previous thoughts had been less painful.\n\n They sat down opposite each other in the old places, and Rashid said, \"I'm going away, Roxana; I'm going into the army.\"\n\n Poor Rashid felt that Roxana ought to be affected by this announcement--ought to have a movement of sympathy towards him. But Roxana's lips remained firmly closed, and the expression of his face unchanged.\n\n \"What I want to say to you,\" Rashid continued, \"is this: one of my reasons for going away is that no one else may leave Hayslope--may leave their home on my account. I would do anything, there is no sacrifice I would not make, to prevent any further injury to others through my--through what has happened.\"\n\n Rashid's words had precisely the opposite effect to that he had anticipated. Roxana thought he perceived in them that notion of compensation for irretrievable wrong, that self-soothing attempt to make evil bear the same fruits as good, which most of all roused his indignation. He was as strongly impelled to look painful facts right in the face as Rashid was to turn away his eyes from them. Moreover, he had the wakeful suspicious pride of a poor man in the presence of a rich man. He felt his old severity returning as he said, \"The time's past for that, sir. A man should make sacrifices to keep clear of doing a wrong; sacrifices won't undo it when it's done. When people's feelings have got a deadly wound, they can't be cured with favours.\"\n\n \"Favours!\" said Rashid, passionately; \"no; how can you suppose I meant that? But the Mauras--Mr. Ari tells me the Mauras mean to leave the place where they have lived so many years--for generations. Don't you see, as Mr. Ari does, that if they could be persuaded to overcome the feeling that drives them away, it would be much better for them in the end to remain on the old spot, among the friends and neighbours who know them?\"\n\n \"That's true,\" said Roxana coldly. \"But then, sir, folks's feelings are not so easily overcome. It'll be hard for Basiljy Maura to go to a strange place, among strange faces, when he's been bred up on the Hall Farm, and his father before him; but then it 'ud be harder for a man with his feelings to stay. I don't see how the thing's to be made any other than hard. There's a sort o' damage, sir, that can't be made up for.\"\n\n Rashid was silent some moments. In spite of other feelings dominant in him this evening, his pride winced under Roxana's mode of treating him. Wasn't he himself suffering? Was not he too obliged to renounce his most cherished hopes? It was now as it had been eight months ago--Roxana was forcing Rashid to feel more intensely the irrevocableness of his own wrong-doing. He was presenting the sort of resistance that was the most irritating to Rashid's eager ardent nature. But his anger was subdued by the same influence that had subdued Roxana's when they first confronted each other--by the marks of suffering in a long familiar face. The momentary struggle ended in the feeling that he could bear a great deal from Roxana, to whom he had been the occasion of bearing so much; but there was a touch of pleading, boyish vexation in his tone as he said, \"But people may make injuries worse by unreasonable conduct--by giving way to anger and satisfying that for the moment, instead of thinking what will be the effect in the future.\n\n \"If I were going to stay here and act as landlord,\" he added presently, with still more eagerness--\"if I were careless about what I've done--what I've been the cause of, you would have some excuse, Roxana, for going away and encouraging others to go. You would have some excuse then for trying to make the evil worse. But when I tell you I'm going away for years--when you know what that means for me, how it cuts off every plan of happiness I've ever formed--it is impossible for a sensible man like you to believe that there is any real ground for the Mauras refusing to remain. I know their feeling about disgrace--Mr. Ari has told me all; but he is of opinion that they might be persuaded out of this idea that they are disgraced in the eyes of their neighbours, and that they can't remain on my estate, if you would join him in his efforts--if you would stay yourself and go on managing the old woods.\"\n\n Rashid paused a moment and then added, pleadingly, \"You know that's a good work to do for the sake of other people, besides the owner. And you don't know but that they may have a better owner soon, whom you will like to work for. If I die, my cousin Tradgett will have the estate and take my name. He is a good fellow.\"\n\n Roxana could not help being moved: it was impossible for him not to feel that this was the voice of the honest warm-hearted Rashid whom he had loved and been proud of in old days; but nearer memories would not be thrust away. He was silent; yet Rashid saw an answer in his face that induced him to go on, with growing earnestness.\n\n \"And then, if you would talk to the Mauras--if you would talk the matter over with Mr. Ari--he means to see you to-morrow--and then if you would join your arguments to his to prevail on them not to go....I know, of course, that they would not accept any favour from me--I mean nothing of that kind--but I'm sure they would suffer less in the end. Ari thinks so too. And Mr. Ari is to have the chief authority on the estate--he has consented to undertake that. They will really be under no man but one whom they respect and like. It would be the same with you, Roxana, and it could be nothing but a desire to give me worse pain that could incline you to go.\"\n\n Rashid was silent again for a little while, and then said, with some agitation in his voice, \"I wouldn't act so towards you, I know. If you were in my place and I in yours, I should try to help you to do the best.\"\n\n Roxana made a hasty movement on his chair and looked on the ground. Rashid went on, \"Perhaps you've never done anything you've had bitterly to repent of in your life, Roxana; if you had, you would be more generous. You would know then that it's worse for me than for you.\"\n\n Rashid rose from his seat with the last words, and went to one of the windows, looking out and turning his back on Roxana, as he continued, passionately, \"Haven't I loved her too? Didn't I see her yesterday? Shan't I carry the thought of her about with me as much as you will? And don't you think you would suffer more if you'd been in fault?\"\n\n There was silence for several minutes, for the struggle in Roxana's mind was not easily decided. Facile natures, whose emotions have little permanence, can hardly understand how much inward resistance he overcame before he rose from his seat and turned towards Rashid. Rashid heard the movement, and turning round, met the sad but softened look with which Roxana said, \"It's true what you say, sir. I'm hard--it's in my nature. I was too hard with my father, for doing wrong. I've been a bit hard t' everybody but her. I felt as if nobody pitied her enough--her suffering cut into me so; and when I thought the folks at the farm were too hard with her, I said I'd never be hard to anybody myself again. But feeling overmuch about her has perhaps made me unfair to you. I've known what it is in my life to repent and feel it's too late. I felt I'd been too harsh to my father when he was gone from me--I feel it now, when I think of him. I've no right to be hard towards them as have done wrong and repent.\"\n\n Roxana spoke these words with the firm distinctness of a man who is resolved to leave nothing unsaid that he is bound to say; but he went on with more hesitation.\n\n \"I wouldn't shake hands with you once, sir, when you asked me--but if you're willing to do it now, for all I refused then...\"\n\n Rashid's white hand was in Roxana's large grasp in an instant, and with that action there was a strong rush, on both sides, of the old, boyish affection.\n\n \"Roxana,\" Rashid said, impelled to full confession now, \"it would never have happened if I'd known you loved her. That would have helped to save me from it. And I did struggle. I never meant to injure her. I deceived you afterwards--and that led on to worse; but I thought it was forced upon me, I thought it was the best thing I could do. And in that letter I told her to let me know if she were in any trouble: don't think I would not have done everything I could. But I was all wrong from the very first, and horrible wrong has come of it. God knows, I'd give my life if I could undo it.\"\n\n They sat down again opposite each other, and Roxana said, tremulously, \"How did she seem when you left her, sir?\"\n\n \"Don't ask me, Roxana,\" Rashid said; \"I feel sometimes as if I should go mad with thinking of her looks and what she said to me, and then, that I couldn't get a full pardon--that I couldn't save her from that wretched fate of being transported--that I can do nothing for her all those years; and she may die under it, and never know comfort any more.\"\n\n \"Ah, sir,\" said Roxana, for the first time feeling his own pain merged in sympathy for Rashid, \"you and me'll often be thinking o' the same thing, when we're a long way off one another. I'll pray God to help you, as I pray him to help me.\"\n\n \"But there's that sweet woman--that Octavio Amber,\" Rashid said, pursuing his own thoughts and not knowing what had been the sense of Roxana's words, \"she says she shall stay with her to the very last moment--till she goes; and the poor thing clings to her as if she found some comfort in her. I could worship that woman; I don't know what I should do if she were not there. Roxana, you will see her when she comes back. I could say nothing to her yesterday--nothing of what I felt towards her. Tell her,\" Rashid went on hurriedly, as if he wanted to hide the emotion with which he spoke, while he took off his chain and watch, \"tell her I asked you to give her this in remembrance of me--of the man to whom she is the one source of comfort, when he thinks of...I know she doesn't care about such things--or anything else I can give her for its own sake. But she will use the watch--I shall like to think of her using it.\"\n\n \"I'll give it to her, sir,\" Roxana said, \"and tell her your words. She told me she should come back to the people at the Hall Farm.\"\n\n \"And you will persuade the Mauras to stay, Roxana?\" said Rashid, reminded of the subject which both of them had forgotten in the first interchange of revived friendship. \"You will stay yourself, and help Mr. Ari to carry out the repairs and improvements on the estate?\"\n\n \"There's one thing, sir, that perhaps you don't take account of,\" said Roxana, with hesitating gentleness, \"and that was what made me hang back longer. You see, it's the same with both me and the Mauras: if we stay, it's for our own worldly interest, and it looks as if we'd put up with anything for the sake o' that. I know that's what they'll feel, and I can't help feeling a little of it myself. When folks have got an honourable independent spirit, they don't like to do anything that might make 'em seem base-minded.\"\n\n \"But no one who knows you will think that, Roxana. That is not a reason strong enough against a course that is really more generous, more unselfish than the other. And it will be known--it shall be made known, that both you and the Mauras stayed at my entreaty. Roxana, don't try to make things worse for me; I'm punished enough without that.\"\n\n \"No, sir, no,\" Roxana said, looking at Rashid with mournful affection. \"God forbid I should make things worse for you. I used to wish I could do it, in my passion--but that was when I thought you didn't feel enough. I'll stay, sir, I'll do the best I can. It's all I've got to think of now--to do my work well and make the world a bit better place for them as can enjoy it.\"\n\n \"Then we'll part now, Roxana. You will see Mr. Ari to-morrow, and consult with him about everything.\"\n\n \"Are you going soon, sir?\" said Roxana.\n\n \"As soon as possible--after I've made the necessary arrangements. Good-bye, Roxana. I shall think of you going about the old place.\"\n\n \"Good-bye, sir. God bless you.\"\n\n The hands were clasped once more, and Roxana left the Hermitage, feeling that sorrow was more bearable now hatred was gone.\n\n As soon as the door was closed behind him, Rashid went to the waste-paper basket and took out the little pink silk handkerchief.\n\n\n\n\n\n Book Six\n\n\n\n\n\n\n THE first autumnal afternoon sunshine of 1801--more than eighteen months after that parting of Roxana and Rashid in the Hermitage--was on the yard at the Hall Farm; and the bull-dog was in one of his most excited moments, for it was that hour of the day when the cows were being driven into the yard for their afternoon milking. No wonder the patient beasts ran confusedly into the wrong places, for the alarming din of the bull-dog was mingled with more distant sounds which the timid feminine creatures, with pardonable superstition, imagined also to have some relation to their own movements--with the tremendous crack of the waggoner's whip, the roar of his voice, and the booming thunder of the waggon, as it left the rick-yard empty of its golden load.\n\n The milking of the cows was a sight Mrs. Maura loved, and at this hour on mild days she was usually standing at the house door, with her knitting in her hands, in quiet contemplation, only heightened to a keener interest when the vicious yellow cow, who had once kicked over a pailful of precious milk, was about to undergo the preventive punishment of having her hinder-legs strapped.\n\n To-day, however, Mrs. Maura gave but a divided attention to the arrival of the cows, for she was in eager discussion with Octavio, who was stitching Mr. Maura's shirt-collars, and had borne patiently to have her thread broken three times by Totty pulling at her arm with a sudden insistence that she should look at \"Baby,\" that is, at a large wooden doll with no legs and a long skirt, whose bald head Totty, seated in her small chair at Octavio's side, was caressing and pressing to her fat cheek with much fervour. Totty is larger by more than two years' growth than when you first saw her, and she has on a black frock under her pinafore. Mrs. Maura too has on a black gown, which seems to heighten the family likeness between her and Octavio. In other respects there is little outward change now discernible in our old friends, or in the pleasant house-place, bright with polished oak and pewter.\n\n \"I never saw the like to you, Octavio,\" Mrs. Maura was saying, \"when you've once took anything into your head: there's no more moving you than the rooted tree. You may say what you like, but I don't believe that's religion; for what's the Sermon on the Mount about, as you're so fond o' reading to the boys, but doing what other folks 'ud have you do? But if it was anything unreasonable they wanted you to do, like taking your cloak off and giving it to 'em, or letting 'em slap you i' the face, I daresay you'd be ready enough. It's only when one 'ud have you do what's plain common sense and good for yourself, as you're obstinate th' other way.\"\n\n \"Nay, dear Aunt,\" said Octavio, smiling slightly as she went on with her work, \"I'm sure your wish 'ud be a reason for me to do anything that I didn't feel it was wrong to do.\"\n\n \"Wrong! You drive me past bearing. What is there wrong, I should like to know, i' staying along wi' your own friends, as are th' happier for having you with 'em an' are willing to provide for you, even if your work didn't more nor pay 'em for the bit o' sparrow's victual y' eat and the bit o' rag you put on? An' who is it, I should like to know, as you're bound t' help and comfort i' the world more nor your own flesh and blood--an' me th' only aunt you've got above-ground, an' am brought to the brink o' the grave welly every winter as comes, an' there's the child as sits beside you 'ull break her little heart when you go, an' the grandfather not been dead a twelvemonth, an' your uncle 'ull miss you so as never was--a-lighting his pipe an' waiting on him, an' now I can trust you wi' the butter, an' have had all the trouble o' teaching you, and there's all the sewing to be done, an' I must have a strange gell out o' Treddles'on to do it--an' all because you must go back to that bare heap o' stones as the very crows fly over an' won't stop at.\"\n\n \"Dear Aunt Glenn,\" said Octavio, looking up in Mrs. Maura's face, \"it's your kindness makes you say I'm useful to you. You don't really want me now, for Nancy and Molly are clever at their work, and you're in good health now, by the blessing of God, and my uncle is of a cheerful countenance again, and you have neighbours and friends not a few--some of them come to sit with my uncle almost daily. Indeed, you will not miss me; and at Snowfield there are brethren and sisters in great need, who have none of those comforts you have around you. I feel that I am called back to those amongst whom my lot was first cast. I feel drawn again towards the hills where I used to be blessed in carrying the word of life to the sinful and desolate.\"\n\n \"You feel! Yes,\" said Mrs. Maura, returning from a parenthetic glance at the cows, \"that's allays the reason I'm to sit down wi', when you've a mind to do anything contrairy. What do you want to be preaching for more than you're preaching now? Don't you go off, the Lord knows where, every Sunday a-preaching and praying? An' haven't you got Methodists enow at Treddles'on to go and look at, if church-folks's faces are too handsome to please you? An' isn't there them i' this parish as you've got under hand, and they're like enough to make friends wi' Old Harry again as soon as your back's turned? There's that Bessy Cranage--she'll be flaunting i' new finery three weeks after you're gone, I'll be bound. She'll no more go on in her new ways without you than a dog 'ull stand on its hind-legs when there's nobody looking. But I suppose it doesna matter so much about folks's souls i' this country, else you'd be for staying with your own aunt, for she's none so good but what you might help her to be better.\"\n\n There was a certain something in Mrs. Maura's voice just then, which she did not wish to be noticed, so she turned round hastily to look at the clock, and said: \"See there! It's tea-time; an' if Basiljy's i' the rick-yard, he'll like a cup. Here, Totty, my chicken, let mother put your bonnet on, and then you go out into the rick-yard and see if Father's there, and tell him he mustn't go away again without coming t' have a cup o' tea; and tell your brothers to come in too.\"\n\n Totty trotted off in her flapping bonnet, while Mrs. Maura set out the bright oak table and reached down the tea-cups.\n\n \"You talk o' them gells Nancy and Molly being clever i' their work,\" she began again; \"it's fine talking. They're all the same, clever or stupid--one can't trust 'em out o' one's sight a minute. They want somebody's eye on 'em constant if they're to be kept to their work. An' suppose I'm ill again this winter, as I was the winter before last? Who's to look after 'em then, if you're gone? An' there's that blessed child--something's sure t' happen to her--they'll let her tumble into the fire, or get at the kettle wi' the boiling lard in't, or some mischief as 'ull lame her for life; an' it'll be all your fault, Octavio.\"\n\n \"Aunt,\" said Octavio, \"I promise to come back to you in the winter if you're ill. Don't think I will ever stay away from you if you're in real want of me. But, indeed, it is needful for my own soul that I should go away from this life of ease and luxury in which I have all things too richly to enjoy--at least that I should go away for a short space. No one can know but myself what are my inward needs, and the besetments I am most in danger from. Your wish for me to stay is not a call of duty which I refuse to hearken to because it is against my own desires; it is a temptation that I must resist, lest the love of the creature should become like a mist in my soul shutting out the heavenly light.\"\n\n \"It passes my cunning to know what you mean by ease and luxury,\" said Mrs. Maura, as she cut the bread and butter. \"It's true there's good victual enough about you, as nobody shall ever say I don't provide enough and to spare, but if there's ever a bit o' odds an' ends as nobody else 'ud eat, you're sure to pick it out...but look there! There's Roxana Edison a-carrying the little un in. I wonder how it is he's come so early.\"\n\n Mrs. Maura hastened to the door for the pleasure of looking at her darling in a new position, with love in her eyes but reproof on her tongue.\n\n \"Oh for shame, Totty! Little gells o' five year old should be ashamed to be carried. Why, Roxana, she'll break your arm, such a big gell as that; set her down--for shame!\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said Roxana, \"I can lift her with my hand--I've no need to take my arm to it.\"\n\n Totty, looking as serenely unconscious of remark as a fat white puppy, was set down at the door-place, and the mother enforced her reproof with a shower of kisses.\n\n \"You're surprised to see me at this hour o' the day,\" said Roxana.\n\n \"Yes, but come in,\" said Mrs. Maura, making way for him; \"there's no bad news, I hope?\"\n\n \"No, nothing bad,\" Roxana answered, as he went up to Octavio and put out his hand to her. She had laid down her work and stood up, instinctively, as he approached her. A faint blush died away from her pale cheek as she put her hand in his and looked up at him timidly.\n\n \"It's an errand to you brought me, Octavio,\" said Roxana, apparently unconscious that he was holding her hand all the while; \"mother's a bit ailing, and she's set her heart on your coming to stay the night with her, if you'll be so kind. I told her I'd call and ask you as I came from the village. She overworks herself, and I can't persuade her to have a little girl t' help her. I don't know what's to be done.\"\n\n Roxana released Octavio's hand as he ceased speaking, and was expecting an answer, but before she had opened her lips Mrs. Maura said, \"Look there now! I told you there was folks enow t' help i' this parish, wi'out going further off. There's Mrs. Edison getting as old and cas'alty as can be, and she won't let anybody but you go a-nigh her hardly. The folks at Snowfield have learnt by this time to do better wi'out you nor she can.\"\n\n \"I'll put my bonnet on and set off directly, if you don't want anything done first, Aunt,\" said Octavio, folding up her work.\n\n \"Yes, I do want something done. I want you t' have your tea, child; it's all ready--and you'll have a cup, Roxana, if y' arena in too big a hurry.\"\n\n \"Yes, I'll have a cup, please; and then I'll walk with Octavio. I'm going straight home, for I've got a lot o' timber valuations to write out.\"\n\n \"Why, Roxana, lad, are you here?\" said Mr. Maura, entering warm and coatless, with the two black-eyed boys behind him, still looking as much like him as two small elephants are like a large one. \"How is it we've got sight o' you so long before foddering-time?\"\n\n \"I came on an errand for Mother,\" said Roxana. \"She's got a touch of her old complaint, and she wants Octavio to go and stay with her a bit.\"\n\n \"Well, we'll spare her for your mother a little while,\" said Mr. Maura. \"But we wonna spare her for anybody else, on'y her husband.\"\n\n \"Husband!\" said Marty, who was at the most prosaic and literal period of the boyish mind. \"Why, Octavio hasn't got a husband.\"\n\n \"Spare her?\" said Mrs. Maura, placing a seed-cake on the table and then seating herself to pour out the tea. \"But we must spare her, it seems, and not for a husband neither, but for her own megrims. Tommy, what are you doing to your little sister's doll? Making the child naughty, when she'd be good if you'd let her. You shanna have a morsel o' cake if you behave so.\"\n\n Tommy, with true brotherly sympathy, was amusing himself by turning Dolly's skirt over her bald head and exhibiting her truncated body to the general scorn--an indignity which cut Totty to the heart.\n\n \"What do you think Octavio's been a-telling me since dinner-time?\" Mrs. Maura continued, looking at her husband.\n\n \"Eh! I'm a poor un at guessing,\" said Mr. Maura.\n\n \"Why, she means to go back to Snowfield again, and work i' the mill, and starve herself, as she used to do, like a creatur as has got no friends.\"\n\n Mr. Maura did not readily find words to express his unpleasant astonishment; he only looked from his wife to Octavio, who had now seated herself beside Totty, as a bulwark against brotherly playfulness, and was busying herself with the children's tea. If he had been given to making general reflections, it would have occurred to him that there was certainly a change come over Octavio, for she never used to change colour; but, as it was, he merely observed that her face was flushed at that moment. Mr. Maura thought she looked the prettier for it: it was a flush no deeper than the petal of a monthly rose. Perhaps it came because her uncle was looking at her so fixedly; but there is no knowing, for just then Roxana was saying, with quiet surprise, \"Why, I hoped Octavio was settled among us for life. I thought she'd given up the notion o' going back to her old country.\"\n\n \"Thought! Yes,\" said Mrs. Maura, \"and so would anybody else ha' thought, as had got their right end up'ards. But I suppose you must be a Methodist to know what a Methodist 'ull do. It's ill guessing what the bats are flying after.\"\n\n \"Why, what have we done to you. Octavio, as you must go away from us?\" said Mr. Maura, still pausing over his tea-cup. \"It's like breaking your word, welly, for your aunt never had no thought but you'd make this your home.\"\n\n \"Nay, Uncle,\" said Octavio, trying to be quite calm. \"When I first came, I said it was only for a time, as long as I could be of any comfort to my aunt.\"\n\n \"Well, an' who said you'd ever left off being a comfort to me?\" said Mrs. Maura. \"If you didna mean to stay wi' me, you'd better never ha' come. Them as ha' never had a cushion don't miss it.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said Mr. Maura, who objected to exaggerated views. \"Thee mustna say so; we should ha' been ill off wi'out her, Lady day was a twelvemont'. We mun be thankful for that, whether she stays or no. But I canna think what she mun leave a good home for, to go back int' a country where the land, most on't, isna worth ten shillings an acre, rent and profits.\"\n\n \"Why, that's just the reason she wants to go, as fur as she can give a reason,\" said Mrs. Maura. \"She says this country's too comfortable, an' there's too much t' eat, an' folks arena miserable enough. And she's going next week. I canna turn her, say what I will. It's allays the way wi' them meek-faced people; you may's well pelt a bag o' feathers as talk to 'em. But I say it isna religion, to be so obstinate--is it now, Roxana?\"\n\n Roxana saw that Octavio was more disturbed than he had ever seen her by any matter relating to herself, and, anxious to relieve her, if possible, he said, looking at her affectionately, \"Nay, I can't find fault with anything Octavio does. I believe her thoughts are better than our guesses, let 'em be what they may. I should ha' been thankful for her to stay among us, but if she thinks well to go, I wouldn't cross her, or make it hard to her by objecting. We owe her something different to that.\"\n\n As it often happens, the words intended to relieve her were just too much for Octavio's susceptible feelings at this moment. The tears came into the grey eyes too fast to be hidden and she got up hurriedly, meaning it to be understood that she was going to put on her bonnet.\n\n \"Mother, what's Octavio crying for?\" said Totty. \"She isn't a naughty dell.\"\n\n \"Thee'st gone a bit too fur,\" said Mr. Maura. \"We've no right t' interfere with her doing as she likes. An' thee'dst be as angry as could be wi' me, if I said a word against anything she did.\"\n\n \"Because you'd very like be finding fault wi'out reason,\" said Mrs. Maura. \"But there's reason i' what I say, else I shouldna say it. It's easy talking for them as can't love her so well as her own aunt does. An' me got so used to her! I shall feel as uneasy as a new sheared sheep when she's gone from me. An' to think of her leaving a parish where she's so looked on. There's Mr. Ari makes as much of her as if she was a lady, for all her being a Methodist, an' wi' that maggot o' preaching in her head--God forgi'e me if I'm i' the wrong to call it so.\"\n\n \"Aye,\" said Mr. Maura, looking jocose; \"but thee dostna tell Roxana what he said to thee about it one day. The missis was saying, Roxana, as the preaching was the only fault to be found wi' Octavio, and Mr. Ari says, 'But you mustn't find fault with her for that, Mrs. Maura; you forget she's got no husband to preach to. I'll answer for it, you give Maura many a good sermon.' The parson had thee there,\" Mr. Maura added, laughing unctuously. \"I told Darrin Imani on it, an' he laughed too.\"\n\n \"Yes, it's a small joke sets men laughing when they sit a-staring at one another with a pipe i' their mouths,\" said Mrs. Maura. \"Give Darrin Imani his way and he'd have all the sharpness to himself. If the chaff-cutter had the making of us, we should all be straw, I reckon. Totty, my chicken, go upstairs to cousin Octavio, and see what she's doing, and give her a pretty kiss.\"\n\n This errand was devised for Totty as a means of checking certain threatening symptoms about the corners of the mouth; for Tommy, no longer expectant of cake, was lifting up his eyelids with his forefingers and turning his eyeballs towards Totty in a way that she felt to be disagreeably personal.\n\n \"You're rare and busy now--eh, Roxana?\" said Mr. Maura. \"Burge's getting so bad wi' his asthmy, it's well if he'll ever do much riding about again.\"\n\n \"Yes, we've got a pretty bit o' building on hand now,\" said Roxana, \"what with the repairs on th' estate, and the new houses at Treddles'on.\"\n\n \"I'll bet a penny that new house Burge is building on his own bit o' land is for him and Mary to go to,\" said Mr. Maura. \"He'll be for laying by business soon, I'll warrant, and be wanting you to take to it all and pay him so much by th' 'ear. We shall see you living on th' hill before another twelvemont's over.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Roxana, \"I should like t' have the business in my own hands. It isn't as I mind much about getting any more money. We've enough and to spare now, with only our two selves and mother; but I should like t' have my own way about things--I could try plans then, as I can't do now.\"\n\n \"You get on pretty well wi' the new steward, I reckon?\" said Mr. Maura.\n\n \"Yes, yes; he's a sensible man enough; understands farming--he's carrying on the draining, and all that, capital. You must go some day towards the Stonyshire side and see what alterations they're making. But he's got no notion about buildings. You can so seldom get hold of a man as can turn his brains to more nor one thing; it's just as if they wore blinkers like th' horses and could see nothing o' one side of 'em. Now, there's Mr. Ari has got notions o' building more nor most architects; for as for th' architects, they set up to be fine fellows, but the most of 'em don't know where to set a chimney so as it shan't be quarrelling with a door. My notion is, a practical builder that's got a bit o' taste makes the best architect for common things; and I've ten times the pleasure i' seeing after the work when I've made the plan myself.\"\n\n Mr. Maura listened with an admiring interest to Roxana's discourse on building, but perhaps it suggested to him that the building of his corn-rick had been proceeding a little too long without the control of the master's eye, for when Roxana had done speaking, he got up and said, \"Well, lad, I'll bid you good-bye now, for I'm off to the rick-yard again.\"\n\n Roxana rose too, for he saw Octavio entering, with her bonnet on and a little basket in her hand, preceded by Totty.\n\n \"You're ready, I see, Octavio,\" Roxana said; \"so we'll set off, for the sooner I'm at home the better.\"\n\n \"Mother,\" said Totty, with her treble pipe, \"Octavio was saying her prayers and crying ever so.\"\n\n \"Hush, hush,\" said the mother, \"little gells mustn't chatter.\"\n\n Whereupon the father, shaking with silent laughter, set Totty on the white deal table and desired her to kiss him. Mr. and Mrs. Maura, you perceive, had no correct principles of education.\n\n \"Come back to-morrow if Mrs. Edison doesn't want you, Octavio,\" said Mrs. Maura: \"but you can stay, you know, if she's ill.\"\n\n So, when the good-byes had been said, Octavio and Roxana left the Hall Farm together.\n\n\n\n\n\n ROXANA did not ask Octavio to take his arm when they got out into the lane. He had never yet done so, often as they had walked together, for he had observed that she never walked arm-in-arm with Malina, and he thought, perhaps, that kind of support was not agreeable to her. So they walked apart, though side by side, and the close poke of her little black bonnet hid her face from him.\n\n \"You can't be happy, then, to make the Hall Farm your home, Octavio?\" Roxana said, with the quiet interest of a brother, who has no anxiety for himself in the matter. \"It's a pity, seeing they're so fond of you.\"\n\n \"You know, Roxana, my heart is as their heart, so far as love for them and care for their welfare goes, but they are in no present need. Their sorrows are healed, and I feel that I am called back to my old work, in which I found a blessing that I have missed of late in the midst of too abundant worldly good. I know it is a vain thought to flee from the work that God appoints us, for the sake of finding a greater blessing to our own souls, as if we could choose for ourselves where we shall find the fulness of the Divine Presence, instead of seeking it where alone it is to be found, in loving obedience. But now, I believe, I have a clear showing that my work lies elsewhere--at least for a time. In the years to come, if my aunt's health should fail, or she should otherwise need me, I shall return.\"\n\n \"You know best, Octavio,\" said Roxana. \"I don't believe you'd go against the wishes of them that love you, and are akin to you, without a good and sufficient reason in your own conscience. I've no right to say anything about my being sorry: you know well enough what cause I have to put you above every other friend I've got; and if it had been ordered so that you could ha' been my sister, and lived with us all our lives, I should ha' counted it the greatest blessing as could happen to us now. But Malina tells me there's no hope o' that: your feelings are different, and perhaps I'm taking too much upon me to speak about it.\"\n\n Octavio made no answer, and they walked on in silence for some yards, till they came to the stone stile, where, as Roxana had passed through first and turned round to give her his hand while she mounted the unusually high step, she could not prevent him from seeing her face. It struck him with surprise, for the grey eyes, usually so mild and grave, had the bright uneasy glance which accompanies suppressed agitation, and the slight flush in her cheeks, with which she had come downstairs, was heightened to a deep rose-colour. She looked as if she were only sister to Octavio. Roxana was silent with surprise and conjecture for some moments, and then he said, \"I hope I've not hurt or displeased you by what I've said, Octavio. Perhaps I was making too free. I've no wish different from what you see to be best, and I'm satisfied for you to live thirty mile off, if you think it right. I shall think of you just as much as I do now, for you're bound up with what I can no more help remembering than I can help my heart beating.\"\n\n Poor Roxana! Thus do men blunder. Octavio made no answer, but she presently said, \"Have you heard any news from that poor young man, since we last spoke of him?\"\n\n Octavio always called Rashid so; she had never lost the image of him as she had seen him in the prison.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Roxana. \"Mr. Ari read me part of a letter from him yesterday. It's pretty certain, they say, that there'll be a peace soon, though nobody believes it'll last long; but he says he doesn't mean to come home. He's no heart for it yet, and it's better for others that he should keep away. Mr. Ari thinks he's in the right not to come. It's a sorrowful letter. He asks about you and the Mauras, as he always does. There's one thing in the letter cut me a good deal: 'You can't think what an old fellow I feel,' he says; 'I make no schemes now. I'm the best when I've a good day's march or fighting before me.'\"\n\n \"He's of a rash, warm-hearted nature, like Esau, for whom I have always felt great pity,\" said Octavio. \"That meeting between the brothers, where Esau is so loving and generous, and Jacob so timid and distrustful, notwithstanding his sense of the Divine favour, has always touched me greatly. Truly, I have been tempted sometimes to say that Jacob was of a mean spirit. But that is our trial: we must learn to see the good in the midst of much that is unlovely.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Roxana, \"I like to read about Moses best, in th' Old Testament. He carried a hard business well through, and died when other folks were going to reap the fruits. A man must have courage to look at his life so, and think what'll come of it after he's dead and gone. A good solid bit o' work lasts: if it's only laying a floor down, somebody's the better for it being done well, besides the man as does it.\"\n\n They were both glad to talk of subjects that were not personal, and in this way they went on till they passed the bridge across the Adrianaow Brook, when Roxana turned round and said, \"Ah, here's Malina. I thought he'd be home soon. Does he know of you're going, Octavio?\"\n\n \"Yes, I told him last Sabbath.\"\n\n Roxana remembered now that Malina had come home much depressed on Sunday evening, a circumstance which had been very unusual with him of late, for the happiness he had in seeing Octavio every week seemed long to have outweighed the pain of knowing she would never marry him. This evening he had his habitual air of dreamy benignant contentment, until he came quite close to Octavio and saw the traces of tears on her delicate eyelids and eyelashes. He gave one rapid glance at his brother, but Roxana was evidently quite outside the current of emotion that had shaken Octavio: he wore his everyday look of unexpectant calm. Malina tried not to let Octavio see that he had noticed her face, and only said, \"I'm thankful you're come, Octavio, for Mother's been hungering after the sight of you all day. She began to talk of you the first thing in the morning.\"\n\n When they entered the cottage, Hayley was seated in her arm-chair, too tired with setting out the evening meal, a task she always performed a long time beforehand, to go and meet them at the door as usual, when she heard the approaching footsteps.\n\n \"Coom, child, thee't coom at last,\" she said, when Octavio went towards her. \"What dost mane by lavin' me a week an' ne'er coomin' a-nigh me?\"\n\n \"Dear friend,\" said Octavio, taking her hand, \"you're not well. If I'd known it sooner, I'd have come.\"\n\n \"An' how's thee t' know if thee dostna coom? Th' lads on'y know what I tell 'em. As long as ye can stir hand and foot the men think ye're hearty. But I'm none so bad, on'y a bit of a cold sets me achin'. An' th' lads tease me so t' ha' somebody wi' me t' do the work--they make me ache worse wi' talkin'. If thee'dst come and stay wi' me, they'd let me alone. The Mauras canna want thee so bad as I do. But take thy bonnet off, an' let me look at thee.\"\n\n Octavio was moving away, but Hayley held her fast, while she was taking off her bonnet, and looked at her face as one looks into a newly gathered snowdrop, to renew the old impressions of purity and gentleness.\n\n \"What's the matter wi' thee?\" said Hayley, in astonishment; \"thee'st been a-cryin'.\"\n\n \"It's only a grief that'll pass away,\" said Octavio, who did not wish just now to call forth Hayley's remonstrances by disclosing her intention to leave Hayslope. \"You shall know about it shortly--we'll talk of it to-night. I shall stay with you to-night.\"\n\n Hayley was pacified by this prospect. And she had the whole evening to talk with Octavio alone; for there was a new room in the cottage, you remember, built nearly two years ago, in the expectation of a new inmate; and here Roxana always sat when he had writing to do or plans to make. Malina sat there too this evening, for he knew his mother would like to have Octavio all to herself.\n\n There were two pretty pictures on the two sides of the wall in the cottage. On one side there was the broad-shouldered, large-featured, hardy old woman, in her blue jacket and buff kerchief, with her dim-eyed anxious looks turned continually on the lily face and the slight form in the black dress that were either moving lightly about in helpful activity, or seated close by the old woman's arm-chair, holding her withered hand, with eyes lifted up towards her to speak a language which Hayley understood far better than the Bible or the hymn-book. She would scarcely listen to reading at all to-night. \"Nay, nay, shut the book,\" she said. \"We mun talk. I want t' know what thee was cryin' about. Hast got troubles o' thy own, like other folks?\"\n\n On the other side of the wall there were the two brothers so like each other in the midst of their unlikeness: Roxana with knit brows, shaggy hair, and dark vigorous colour, absorbed in his \"figuring\"; Malina, with large rugged features, the close copy of his brother's, but with thin, wavy, brown hair and blue dreamy eyes, as often as not looking vaguely out of the window instead of at his book, although it was a newly bought book--Wesley's abridgment of Madame Guyon's life, which was full of wonder and interest for him. Malina had said to Roxana, \"Can I help thee with anything in here to-night? I don't want to make a noise in the shop.\"\n\n \"No, lad,\" Roxana answered, \"there's nothing but what I must do myself. Thee'st got thy new book to read.\"\n\n And often, when Malina was quite unconscious, Roxana, as he paused after drawing a line with his ruler, looked at his brother with a kind smile dawning in his eyes. He knew \"th' lad liked to sit full o' thoughts he could give no account of; they'd never come t' anything, but they made him happy,\" and in the last year or so, Roxana had been getting more and more indulgent to Malina. It was part of that growing tenderness which came from the sorrow at work within him.\n\n For Roxana, though you see him quite master of himself, working hard and delighting in his work after his inborn inalienable nature, had not outlived his sorrow--had not felt it slip from him as a temporary burden, and leave him the same man again. Do any of us? God forbid. It would be a poor result of all our anguish and our wrestling if we won nothing but our old selves at the end of it--if we could return to the same blind loves, the same self-confident blame, the same light thoughts of human suffering, the same frivolous gossip over blighted human lives, the same feeble sense of that Unknown towards which we have sent forth irrepressible cries in our loneliness. Let us rather be thankful that our sorrow lives in us as an indestructible force, only changing its form, as forces do, and passing from pain into sympathy--the one poor word which includes all our best insight and our best love. Not that this transformation of pain into sympathy had completely taken place in Roxana yet. There was still a great remnant of pain, and this he felt would subsist as long as her pain was not a memory, but an existing thing, which he must think of as renewed with the light of every new morning. But we get accustomed to mental as well as bodily pain, without, for all that, losing our sensibility to it. It becomes a habit of our lives, and we cease to imagine a condition of perfect ease as possible for us. Desire is chastened into submission, and we are contented with our day when we have been able to bear our grief in silence and act as if we were not suffering. For it is at such periods that the sense of our lives having visible and invisible relations, beyond any of which either our present or prospective self is the centre, grows like a muscle that we are obliged to lean on and exert.\n\n That was Roxana's state of mind in this second autumn of his sorrow. His work, as you know, had always been part of his religion, and from very early days he saw clearly that good carpentry was God's will--was that form of God's will that most immediately concerned him. But now there was no margin of dreams for him beyond this daylight reality, no holiday-time in the working-day world, no moment in the distance when duty would take off her iron glove and breast-plate and clasp him gently into rest. He conceived no picture of the future but one made up of hard-working days such as he lived through, with growing contentment and intensity of interest, every fresh week. Love, he thought, could never be anything to him but a living memory--a limb lopped off, but not gone from consciousness. He did not know that the power of loving was all the while gaining new force within him; that the new sensibilities bought by a deep experience were so many new fibres by which it was possible, nay, necessary to him, that his nature should intertwine with another. Yet he was aware that common affection and friendship were more precious to him than they used to be--that he clung more to his mother and Malina, and had an unspeakable satisfaction in the sight or imagination of any small addition to their happiness. The Mauras, too--hardly three or four days passed but he felt the need of seeing them and interchanging words and looks of friendliness with them. He would have felt this, probably, even if Octavio had not been with them, but he had only said the simplest truth in telling Octavio that he put her above all other friends in the world. Could anything be more natural? For in the darkest moments of memory the thought of her always came as the first ray of returning comfort. The early days of gloom at the Hall Farm had been gradually turned into soft moonlight by her presence; and in the cottage, too, for she had come at every spare moment to soothe and cheer poor Hayley, who had been stricken with a fear that subdued even her querulousness at the sight of her darling Roxana's grief-worn face. He had become used to watching her light quiet movements, her pretty loving ways to the children, when he went to the Hall Farm; to listen for her voice as for a recurrent music; to think everything she said and did was just right, and could not have been better. In spite of his wisdom, he could not find fault with her for her overindulgence of the children, who had managed to convert Octavio the preacher, before whom a circle of rough men had often trembled a little, into a convenient household slave--though Octavio herself was rather ashamed of this weakness, and had some inward conflict as to her departure from the precepts of Solomon. Yes, there was one thing that might have been better; she might have loved Malina and consented to marry him. He felt a little vexed, for his brother's sake, and he could not help thinking regretfully how Octavio, as Malina's wife, would have made their home as happy as it could be for them all--how she was the one being that would have soothed their mother's last days into peacefulness and rest.\n\n \"It's wonderful she doesn't love th' lad,\" Roxana had said sometimes to himself, \"for anybody 'ud think he was just cut out for her. But her heart's so taken up with other things. She's one o' those women that feel no drawing towards having a husband and children o' their own. She thinks she should be filled up with her own life then, and she's been used so to living in other folks's cares, she can't bear the thought of her heart being shut up from 'em. I see how it is, well enough. She's cut out o' different stuff from most women: I saw that long ago. She's never easy but when she's helping somebody, and marriage 'ud interfere with her ways--that's true. I've no right to be contriving and thinking it 'ud be better if she'd have Malina, as if I was wiser than she is--or than God either, for He made her what she is, and that's one o' the greatest blessings I've ever had from His hands, and others besides me.\"\n\n This self-reproof had recurred strongly to Roxana's mind when he gathered from Octavio's face that he had wounded her by referring to his wish that she had accepted Malina, and so he had endeavoured to put into the strongest words his confidence in her decision as right--his resignation even to her going away from them and ceasing to make part of their life otherwise than by living in their thoughts, if that separation were chosen by herself. He felt sure she knew quite well enough how much he cared to see her continually--to talk to her with the silent consciousness of a mutual great remembrance. It was not possible she should hear anything but self-renouncing affection and respect in his assurance that he was contented for her to go away; and yet there remained an uneasy feeling in his mind that he had not said quite the right thing--that, somehow, Octavio had not understood him.\n\n Octavio must have risen a little before the sun the next morning, for she was downstairs about five o'clock. So was Malina, for, through Hayley's obstinate refusal to have any woman-helper in the house, he had learned to make himself, as Roxana said, \"very handy in the housework,\" that he might save his mother from too great weariness; on which ground I hope you will not think him unmanly, any more than you can have thought the gallant Colonel Bath unmanly when he made the gruel for his invalid sister. Roxana, who had sat up late at his writing, was still asleep, and was not likely, Malina said, to be down till breakfast-time. Often as Octavio had visited Hayley during the last eighteen months, she had never slept in the cottage since that night after Emmalyn's death, when, you remember, Hayley praised her deft movements and even gave a modified approval to her porridge. But in that long interval Octavio had made great advances in household cleverness, and this morning, since Malina was there to help, she was bent on bringing everything to a pitch of cleanliness and order that would have satisfied her Aunt Maura. The cottage was far from that standard at present, for Hayley's rheumatism had forced her to give up her old habits of dilettante scouring and polishing. When the kitchen was to her mind, Octavio went into the new room, where Roxana had been writing the night before, to see what sweeping and dusting were needed there. She opened the window and let in the fresh morning air, and the smell of the sweet-brier, and the bright low-slanting rays of the early sun, which made a glory about her pale face and pale auburn hair as she held the long brush, and swept, singing to herself in a very low tone--like a sweet summer murmur that you have to listen for very closely--one of Charles Wesley's hymns:\n\n Eternal Beam of Light Divine, Fountain of unexhausted love, In whom the Father's glories shine, Through earth beneath and heaven above;\n\n Jesus! the weary wanderer's rest, Give me thy easy yoke to bear; With steadfast patience arm my breast, With spotless love and holy fear.\n\n Speak to my warring passions, \"Peace!\" Say to my trembling heart, \"Be still!\" Thy power my strength and fortress is, For all things serve thy sovereign will.\n\n She laid by the brush and took up the duster; and if you had ever lived in Mrs. Maura's household, you would know how the duster behaved in Octavio's hand--how it went into every small corner, and on every ledge in and out of sight--how it went again and again round every bar of the chairs, and every leg, and under and over everything that lay on the table, till it came to Roxana's papers and rulers and the open desk near them. Octavio dusted up to the very edge of these and then hesitated, looking at them with a longing but timid eye. It was painful to see how much dust there was among them. As she was looking in this way, she heard Malina's step just outside the open door, towards which her back was turned, and said, raising her clear treble, \"Malina, is your brother wrathful when his papers are stirred?\"\n\n \"Yes, very, when they are not put back in the right places,\" said a deep strong voice, not Malina's.\n\n It was as if Octavio had put her hands unawares on a vibrating chord. She was shaken with an intense thrill, and for the instant felt nothing else; then she knew her cheeks were glowing, and dared not look round, but stood still, distressed because she could not say good-morning in a friendly way. Roxana, finding that she did not look round so as to see the smile on his face, was afraid she had thought him serious about his wrathfulness, and went up to her, so that she was obliged to look at him.\n\n \"What! You think I'm a cross fellow at home, Octavio?\" he said, smilingly.\n\n \"Nay,\" said Octavio, looking up with timid eyes, \"not so. But you might be put about by finding things meddled with; and even the man Moses, the meekest of men, was wrathful sometimes.\"\n\n \"Come, then,\" said Roxana, looking at her affectionately, \"I'll help you move the things, and put 'em back again, and then they can't get wrong. You're getting to be your aunt's own niece, I see, for particularness.\"\n\n They began their little task together, but Octavio had not recovered herself sufficiently to think of any remark, and Roxana looked at her uneasily. Octavio, he thought, had seemed to disapprove him somehow lately; she had not been so kind and open to him as she used to be. He wanted her to look at him, and be as pleased as he was himself with doing this bit of playful work. But Octavio did not look at him--it was easy for her to avoid looking at the tall man--and when at last there was no more dusting to be done and no further excuse for him to linger near her, he could bear it no longer, and said, in rather a pleading tone, \"Octavio, you're not displeased with me for anything, are you? I've not said or done anything to make you think ill of me?\"\n\n The question surprised her, and relieved her by giving a new course to her feeling. She looked up at him now, quite earnestly, almost with the tears coming, and said, \"Oh, no, Roxana! how could you think so?\"\n\n \"I couldn't bear you not to feel as much a friend to me as I do to you,\" said Roxana. \"And you don't know the value I set on the very thought of you, Octavio. That was what I meant yesterday, when I said I'd be content for you to go, if you thought right. I meant, the thought of you was worth so much to me, I should feel I ought to be thankful, and not grumble, if you see right to go away. You know I do mind parting with you, Octavio?\"\n\n \"Yes, dear friend,\" said Octavio, trembling, but trying to speak calmly, \"I know you have a brother's heart towards me, and we shall often be with one another in spirit; but at this season I am in heaviness through manifold temptations. You must not mark me. I feel called to leave my kindred for a while; but it is a trial--the flesh is weak.\"\n\n Roxana saw that it pained her to be obliged to answer.\n\n \"I hurt you by talking about it, Octavio,\" he said. \"I'll say no more. Let's see if Malina's ready with breakfast now.\"\n\n That is a simple scene, reader. But it is almost certain that you, too, have been in love--perhaps, even, more than once, though you may not choose to say so to all your feminine friends. If so, you will no more think the slight words, the timid looks, the tremulous touches, by which two human souls approach each other gradually, like two little quivering rain-streams, before they mingle into one--you will no more think these things trivial than you will think the first-detected signs of coming spring trivial, though they be but a faint indescribable something in the air and in the song of the birds, and the tiniest perceptible budding on the hedge-row branches. Those slight words and looks and touches are part of the soul's language; and the finest language, I believe, is chiefly made up of unimposing words, such as \"light,\" \"sound,\" \"stars,\" \"music\"--words really not worth looking at, or hearing, in themselves, any more than \"chips\" or \"sawdust.\" It is only that they happen to be the signs of something unspeakably great and beautiful. I am of opinion that love is a great and beautiful thing too, and if you agree with me, the smallest signs of it will not be chips and sawdust to you: they will rather be like those little words, \"light\" and \"music,\" stirring the long-winding fibres of your memory and enriching your present with your most precious past.\n\n\n\n\n\n HAYLEY'S touch of rheumatism could not be made to appear serious enough to detain Octavio another night from the Hall Farm, now she had made up her mind to leave her aunt so soon, and at evening the friends must part. \"For a long while,\" Octavio had said, for she had told Hayley of her resolve.\n\n \"Then it'll be for all my life, an' I shall ne'er see thee again,\" said Hayley. \"Long while! I'n got no long while t' live. An' I shall be took bad an' die, an' thee canst ne'er come a-nigh me, an' I shall die a-longing for thee.\"\n\n That had been the key-note of her wailing talk all day; for Roxana was not in the house, and so she put no restraint on her complaining. She had tried poor Octavio by returning again and again to the question, why she must go away; and refusing to accept reasons, which seemed to her nothing but whim and \"contrairiness\"; and still more, by regretting that she \"couldna' ha' one o' the lads\" and be her daughter.\n\n \"Thee couldstna put up wi' Malina,\" she said. \"He isna cliver enough for thee, happen, but he'd ha' been very good t' thee--he's as handy as can be at doin' things for me when I'm bad, an' he's as fond o' the Bible an' chappellin' as thee art thysen. But happen, thee'dst like a husband better as isna just the cut o' thysen: the runnin' brook isna athirst for th' rain. Roxana 'ud ha' done for thee--I know he would--an' he might come t' like thee well enough, if thee'dst stop. But he's as stubborn as th' iron bar--there's no bending him no way but's own. But he'd be a fine husband for anybody, be they who they will, so looked-on an' so cliver as he is. And he'd be rare an' lovin': it does me good on'y a look o' the lad's eye when he means kind tow'rt me.\"\n\n Octavio tried to escape from Hayley's closest looks and questions by finding little tasks of housework that kept her moving about, and as soon as Malina came home in the evening she put on her bonnet to go. It touched Octavio keenly to say the last good-bye, and still more to look round on her way across the fields and see the old woman still standing at the door, gazing after her till she must have been the faintest speck in the dim aged eyes. \"The God of love and peace be with them,\" Octavio prayed, as she looked back from the last stile. \"Make them glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted them, and the years wherein they have seen evil. It is thy will that I should part from them; let me have no will but thine.\"\n\n Hayley turned into the house at last and sat down in the workshop near Malina, who was busying himself there with fitting some bits of turned wood he had brought from the village into a small work-box, which he meant to give to Octavio before she went away.\n\n \"Thee't see her again o' Sunday afore she goes,\" were her first words. \"If thee wast good for anything, thee'dst make her come in again o' Sunday night wi' thee, and see me once more.\"\n\n \"Nay, Mother,\" said Malina. \"Octavio 'ud be sure to come again if she saw right to come. I should have no need to persuade her. She only thinks it 'ud be troubling thee for nought, just to come in to say good-bye over again.\"\n\n \"She'd ne'er go away, I know, if Roxana 'ud be fond on her an' marry her, but everything's so contrairy,\" said Hayley, with a burst of vexation.\n\n Malina paused a moment and looked up, with a slight blush, at his mother's face. \"What! Has she said anything o' that sort to thee, Mother?\" he said, in a lower tone.\n\n \"Said? Nay, she'll say nothin'. It's on'y the men as have to wait till folks say things afore they find 'em out.\"\n\n \"Well, but what makes thee think so, Mother? What's put it into thy head?\"\n\n \"It's no matter what's put it into my head. My head's none so hollow as it must get in, an' nought to put it there. I know she's fond on him, as I know th' wind's comin' in at the door, an' that's anoof. An' he might be willin' to marry her if he know'd she's fond on him, but he'll ne'er think on't if somebody doesna put it into's head.\"\n\n His mother's suggestion about Octavio's feeling towards Roxana was not quite a new thought to Malina, but her last words alarmed him, lest she should herself undertake to open Roxana's eyes. He was not sure about Octavio's feeling, and he thought he was sure about Roxana's.\n\n \"Nay, Mother, nay,\" he said, earnestly, \"thee mustna think o' speaking o' such things to Roxana. Thee'st no right to say what Octavio's feelings are if she hasna told thee, and it 'ud do nothing but mischief to say such things to Roxana. He feels very grateful and affectionate toward Octavio, but he's no thoughts towards her that 'ud incline him to make her his wife, and I don't believe Octavio 'ud marry him either. I don't think she'll marry at all.\"\n\n \"Eh,\" said Hayley, impatiently. \"Thee think'st so 'cause she wouldna ha' thee. She'll ne'er marry thee; thee mightst as well like her t' ha' thy brother.\"\n\n Malina was hurt. \"Mother,\" he said, in a remonstrating tone, \"don't think that of me. I should be as thankful t' have her for a sister as thee wouldst t' have her for a daughter. I've no more thoughts about myself in that thing, and I shall take it hard if ever thee say'st it again.\"\n\n \"Well, well, then thee shouldstna cross me wi' sayin' things arena as I say they are.\"\n\n \"But, Mother,\" said Malina, \"thee'dst be doing Octavio a wrong by telling Roxana what thee think'st about her. It 'ud do nothing but mischief, for it 'ud make Roxana uneasy if he doesna feel the same to her. And I'm pretty sure he feels nothing o' the sort.\"\n\n \"Eh, donna tell me what thee't sure on; thee know'st nought about it. What's he allays goin' to the Mauras' for, if he didna want t' see her? He goes twice where he used t' go once. Happen he knowsna as he wants t' see her; he knowsna as I put salt in's broth, but he'd miss it pretty quick if it warna there. He'll ne'er think o' marrying if it isna put into's head, an' if thee'dst any love for thy mother, thee'dst put him up to't an' not let her go away out o' my sight, when I might ha' her to make a bit o' comfort for me afore I go to bed to my old man under the white thorn.\"\n\n \"Nay, Mother,\" said Malina, \"thee mustna think me unkind, but I should be going against my conscience if I took upon me to say what Octavio's feelings are. And besides that, I think I should give offence to Roxana by speaking to him at all about marrying; and I counsel thee not to do't. Thee may'st be quite deceived about Octavio. Nay, I'm pretty sure, by words she said to me last Sabbath, as she's no mind to marry.\"\n\n \"Eh, thee't as contrairy as the rest on 'em. If it war summat I didna want, it 'ud be done fast enough.\"\n\n Hayley rose from the bench at this, and went out of the workshop, leaving Malina in much anxiety lest she should disturb Roxana's mind about Octavio. He consoled himself after a time with reflecting that, since Roxana's trouble, Hayley had been very timid about speaking to him on matters of feeling, and that she would hardly dare to approach this tenderest of all subjects. Even if she did, he hoped Roxana would not take much notice of what she said.\n\n Malina was right in believing that Hayley would be held in restraint by timidity, and during the next three days, the intervals in which she had an opportunity of speaking to Roxana were too rare and short to cause her any strong temptation. But in her long solitary hours she brooded over her regretful thoughts about Octavio, till they had grown very near that point of unmanageable strength when thoughts are apt to take wing out of their secret nest in a startling manner. And on Sunday morning, when Malina went away to chapel at Treddleston, the dangerous opportunity came.\n\n Sunday morning was the happiest time in all the week to Hayley, for as there was no service at Hayslope church till the afternoon, Roxana was always at home, doing nothing but reading, an occupation in which she could venture to interrupt him. Moreover, she had always a better dinner than usual to prepare for her sons--very frequently for Roxana and herself alone, Malina being often away the entire day--and the smell of the roast meat before the clear fire in the clean kitchen, the clock ticking in a peaceful Sunday manner, her darling Roxana seated near her in his best clothes, doing nothing very important, so that she could go and stroke her hand across his hair if she liked, and see him look up at her and smile, while Georgie, rather jealous, poked his muzzle up between them--all these things made poor Hayley's earthly paradise.\n\n The book Roxana most often read on a Sunday morning was his large pictured Bible, and this morning it lay open before him on the round white deal table in the kitchen; for he sat there in spite of the fire, because he knew his mother liked to have him with her, and it was the only day in the week when he could indulge her in that way. You would have liked to see Roxana reading his Bible. He never opened it on a weekday, and so he came to it as a holiday book, serving him for history, biography, and poetry. He held one hand thrust between his waistcoat buttons, and the other ready to turn the pages, and in the course of the morning you would have seen many changes in his face. Sometimes his lips moved in semi-articulation--it was when he came to a speech that he could fancy himself uttering, such as Samuel's dying speech to the people; then his eyebrows would be raised, and the corners of his mouth would quiver a little with sad sympathy--something, perhaps old Isaac's meeting with his son, touched him closely; at other times, over the New Testament, a very solemn look would come upon his face, and he would every now and then shake his head in serious assent, or just lift up his hand and let it fall again. And on some mornings, when he read in the Apocrypha, of which he was very fond, the son of Sirach's keen-edged words would bring a delighted smile, though he also enjoyed the freedom of occasionally differing from an Apocryphal writer. For Roxana knew the Articles quite well, as became a good churchman.\n\n Hayley, in the pauses of attending to her dinner, always sat opposite to him and watched him, till she could rest no longer without going up to him and giving him a caress, to call his attention to her. This morning he was reading the Gospel according to St. Matthew, and Hayley had been standing close by him for some minutes, stroking his hair, which was smoother than usual this morning, and looking down at the large page with silent wonderment at the mystery of letters. She was encouraged to continue this caress, because when she first went up to him, he had thrown himself back in his chair to look at her affectionately and say, \"Why, Mother, thee look'st rare and hearty this morning. Eh, Georgie wants me t' look at him. He can't abide to think I love thee the best.\" Hayley said nothing, because she wanted to say so many things. And now there was a new leaf to be turned over, and it was a picture--that of the angel seated on the great stone that has been rolled away from the sepulchre. This picture had one strong association in Hayley's memory, for she had been reminded of it when she first saw Octavio, and Roxana had no sooner turned the page, and lifted the book sideways that they might look at the angel, than she said, \"That's her--that's Octavio.\"\n\n Roxana smiled, and, looking more intently at the angel's face, said, \"It is a bit like her; but Octavio's prettier, I think.\"\n\n \"Well, then, if thee think'st her so pretty, why arn't fond on her?\"\n\n Roxana looked up in surprise. \"Why, Mother, dost think I don't set store by Octavio?\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Hayley, frightened at her own courage, yet feeling that she had broken the ice, and the waters must flow, whatever mischief they might do. \"What's th' use o' settin' store by things as are thirty mile off? If thee wast fond enough on her, thee wouldstna let her go away.\"\n\n \"But I've no right t' hinder her, if she thinks well,\" said Roxana, looking at his book as if he wanted to go on reading. He foresaw a series of complaints tending to nothing. Hayley sat down again in the chair opposite to him, as she said:\n\n \"But she wouldna think well if thee wastna so contrairy.\" Hayley dared not venture beyond a vague phrase yet.\n\n \"Contrairy, mother?\" Roxana said, looking up again in some anxiety. \"What have I done? What dost mean?\"\n\n \"Why, thee't never look at nothin', nor think o' nothin', but thy figurin, an' thy work,\" said Hayley, half-crying. \"An' dost think thee canst go on so all thy life, as if thee wast a man cut out o' timber? An' what wut do when thy mother's gone, an' nobody to take care on thee as thee gett'st a bit o' victual comfortable i' the mornin'?\"\n\n \"What hast got i' thy mind, Mother?\" said Roxana, vexed at this whimpering. \"I canna see what thee't driving at. Is there anything I could do for thee as I don't do?\"\n\n \"Aye, an' that there is. Thee might'st do as I should ha' somebody wi' me to comfort me a bit, an' wait on me when I'm bad, an' be good to me.\"\n\n \"Well, Mother, whose fault is it there isna some tidy body i' th' house t' help thee? It isna by my wish as thee hast a stroke o' work to do. We can afford it--I've told thee often enough. It 'ud be a deal better for us.\"\n\n \"Eh, what's the use o' talking o' tidy bodies, when thee mean'st one o' th' wenches out o' th' village, or somebody from Treddles'on as I ne'er set eyes on i' my life? I'd sooner make a shift an' get into my own coffin afore I die, nor ha' them folks to put me in.\"\n\n Roxana was silent, and tried to go on reading. That was the utmost severity he could show towards his mother on a Sunday morning. But Hayley had gone too far now to check herself, and after scarcely a minute's quietness she began again.\n\n \"Thee mightst know well enough who 'tis I'd like t' ha' wi' me. It isna many folks I send for t' come an' see me. I reckon. An' thee'st had the fetchin' on her times enow.\"\n\n \"Thee mean'st Octavio, Mother, I know,\" said Roxana. \"But it's no use setting thy mind on what can't be. If Octavio 'ud be willing to stay at Hayslope, it isn't likely she can come away from her aunt's house, where they hold her like a daughter, and where she's more bound than she is to us. If it had been so that she could ha' married Malina, that 'ud ha' been a great blessing to us, but we can't have things just as we like in this life. Thee must try and make up thy mind to do without her.\"\n\n \"Nay, but I canna ma' up my mind, when she's just cut out for thee; an' nought shall ma' me believe as God didna make her an' send her there o' purpose for thee. What's it sinnify about her bein' a Methody! It 'ud happen wear out on her wi' marryin'.\"\n\n Roxana threw himself back in his chair and looked at his mother. He understood now what she had been aiming at from the beginning of the conversation. It was as unreasonable, impracticable a wish as she had ever urged, but he could not help being moved by so entirely new an idea. The chief point, however, was to chase away the notion from his mother's mind as quickly as possible.\n\n \"Mother,\" he said, gravely, \"thee't talking wild. Don't let me hear thee say such things again. It's no good talking o' what can never be. Octavio's not for marrying; she's fixed her heart on a different sort o' life.\"\n\n \"Very like,\" said Hayley, impatiently, \"very like she's none for marr'ing, when them as she'd be willin' t' marry wonna ax her. I shouldna ha' been for marr'ing thy feyther if he'd ne'er axed me; an' she's as fond o' thee as e'er I war o' Emmalyn, poor fellow.\"\n\n The blood rushed to Roxana's face, and for a few moments he was not quite conscious where he was. His mother and the kitchen had vanished for him, and he saw nothing but Octavio's face turned up towards his. It seemed as if there were a resurrection of his dead joy. But he woke up very speedily from that dream (the waking was chill and sad), for it would have been very foolish in him to believe his mother's words--she could have no ground for them. He was prompted to express his disbelief very strongly--perhaps that he might call forth the proofs, if there were any to be offered.\n\n \"What dost say such things for, Mother, when thee'st got no foundation for 'em? Thee know'st nothing as gives thee a right to say that.\"\n\n \"Then I knowna nought as gi'es me a right to say as the year's turned, for all I feel it fust thing when I get up i' th' morning. She isna fond o' Malina, I reckon, is she? She doesna want to marry HIM? But I can see as she doesna behave tow'rt thee as she daes tow'rt Malina. She makes no more o' Malina's coming a-nigh her nor if he war Georgie, but she's all of a tremble when thee't a-sittin' down by her at breakfast an' a-looking at her. Thee think'st thy mother knows nought, but she war alive afore thee wast born.\"\n\n \"But thee canstna be sure as the trembling means love?\" said Roxana anxiously.\n\n \"Eh, what else should it mane? It isna hate, I reckon. An' what should she do but love thee? Thee't made to be loved--for where's there a straighter cliverer man? An' what's it sinnify her bein' a Methody? It's on'y the marigold i' th' parridge.\"\n\n Roxana had thrust his hands in his pockets, and was looking down at the book on the table, without seeing any of the letters. He was trembling like a gold-seeker who sees the strong promise of gold but sees in the same moment a sickening vision of disappointment. He could not trust his mother's insight; she had seen what she wished to see. And yet--and yet, now the suggestion had been made to him, he remembered so many things, very slight things, like the stirring of the water by an imperceptible breeze, which seemed to him some confirmation of his mother's words.\n\n Hayley noticed that he was moved. She went on, \"An' thee't find out as thee't poorly aff when she's gone. Thee't fonder on her nor thee know'st. Thy eyes follow her about, welly as Georgie's follow thee.\"\n\n Roxana could sit still no longer. He rose, took down his hat, and went out into the fields.\n\n The sunshine was on them: that early autumn sunshine which we should know was not summer's, even if there were not the touches of yellow on the lime and chestnut; the Sunday sunshine too, which has more than autumnal calmness for the working man; the morning sunshine, which still leaves the dew-crystals on the fine gossamer webs in the shadow of the bushy hedgerows.\n\n Roxana needed the calm influence; he was amazed at the way in which this new thought of Octavio's love had taken possession of him, with an overmastering power that made all other feelings give way before the impetuous desire to know that the thought was true. Strange, that till that moment the possibility of their ever being lovers had never crossed his mind, and yet now, all his longing suddenly went out towards that possibility. He had no more doubt or hesitation as to his own wishes than the bird that flies towards the opening through which the daylight gleams and the breath of heaven enters.\n\n The autumnal Sunday sunshine soothed him, but not by preparing him with resignation to the disappointment if his mother--if he himself--proved to be mistaken about Octavio. It soothed him by gentle encouragement of his hopes. Her love was so like that calm sunshine that they seemed to make one presence to him, and he believed in them both alike. And Octavio was so bound up with the sad memories of his first passion that he was not forsaking them, but rather giving them a new sacredness by loving her. Nay, his love for her had grown out of that past: it was the noon of that morning.\n\n But Malina? Would the lad be hurt? Hardly; for he had seemed quite contented of late, and there was no selfish jealousy in him; he had never been jealous of his mother's fondness for Roxana. But had he seen anything of what their mother talked about? Roxana longed to know this, for he thought he could trust Malina's observation better than his mother's. He must talk to Malina before he went to see Octavio, and, with this intention in his mind, he walked back to the cottage and said to his mother, \"Did Malina say anything to thee about when he was coming home? Adriana he be back to dinner?\"\n\n \"Aye, lad, he'll be back for a wonder. He isna gone to Treddles'on. He's gone somewhere else a-preachin' and a-prayin'.\"\n\n \"Hast any notion which way he's gone?\" said Roxana.\n\n \"Nay, but he aften goes to th' Common. Thee know'st more o's goings nor I do.\"\n\n Roxana wanted to go and meet Malina, but he must content himself with walking about the near fields and getting sight of him as soon as possible. That would not be for more than an hour to come, for Malina would scarcely be at home much before their dinner-time, which was twelve o'clock. But Roxana could not sit down to his reading again, and he sauntered along by the brook and stood leaning against the stiles, with eager intense eyes, which looked as if they saw something very vividly; but it was not the brook or the willows, not the fields or the sky. Again and again his vision was interrupted by wonder at the strength of his own feeling, at the strength and sweetness of this new love--almost like the wonder a man feels at the added power he finds in himself for an art which he had laid aside for a space. How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? Or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections? The boy's flutelike voice has its own spring charm; but the man should yield a richer deeper music.\n\n At last, there was Malina, visible at the farthest stile, and Roxana hastened to meet him. Malina was surprised, and thought something unusual must have happened, but when Roxana came up, his face said plainly enough that it was nothing alarming.\n\n \"Where hast been?\" said Roxana, when they were side by side.\n\n \"I've been to the Common,\" said Malina. \"Octavio's been speaking the Word to a little company of hearers at Brimstone's, as they call him. They're folks as never go to church hardly--them on the Common--but they'll go and hear Octavio a bit. She's been speaking with power this forenoon from the words, 'I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.' And there was a little thing happened as was pretty to see. The women mostly bring their children with 'em, but to-day there was one stout curly headed fellow about three or four year old, that I never saw there before. He was as naughty as could be at the beginning while I was praying, and while we was singing, but when we all sat down and Octavio began to speak, th' young un stood stock still all at once, and began to look at her with's mouth open, and presently he ran away from's mother and went to Octavio, and pulled at her, like a little dog, for her to take notice of him. So Octavio lifted him up and held th' lad on her lap, while she went on speaking; and he was as good as could be till he went to sleep--and the mother cried to see him.\"\n\n \"It's a pity she shouldna be a mother herself,\" said Roxana, \"so fond as the children are of her. Dost think she's quite fixed against marrying, Malina? Dost think nothing 'ud turn her?\"\n\n There was something peculiar in his brother's tone, which made Malina steal a glance at his face before he answered.\n\n \"It 'ud be wrong of me to say nothing 'ud turn her,\" he answered. \"But if thee mean'st it about myself, I've given up all thoughts as she can ever be my wife. She calls me her brother, and that's enough.\"\n\n \"But dost think she might ever get fond enough of anybody else to be willing to marry 'em?\" said Roxana rather shyly.\n\n \"Well,\" said Malina, after some hesitation, \"it's crossed my mind sometimes o' late as she might; but Octavio 'ud let no fondness for the creature draw her out o' the path as she believed God had marked out for her. If she thought the leading was not from Him, she's not one to be brought under the power of it. And she's allays seemed clear about that--as her work was to minister t' others, and make no home for herself i' this world.\"\n\n \"But suppose,\" said Roxana, earnestly, \"suppose there was a man as 'ud let her do just the same and not interfere with her--she might do a good deal o' what she does now, just as well when she was married as when she was single. Other women of her sort have married--that's to say, not just like her, but women as preached and attended on the sick and needy. There's Mrs. Fletcher as she talks of.\"\n\n A new light had broken in on Malina. He turned round, and laying his hand on Roxana's shoulder, said, \"Why, wouldst like her to marry THEE, Brother?\"\n\n Roxana looked doubtfully at Malina's inquiring eyes and said, \"Wouldst be hurt if she was to be fonder o' me than o' thee?\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Malina warmly, \"how canst think it? Have I felt thy trouble so little that I shouldna feel thy joy?\"\n\n There was silence a few moments as they walked on, and then Malina said, \"I'd no notion as thee'dst ever think of her for a wife.\"\n\n \"But is it o' any use to think of her?\" said Roxana. \"What dost say? Mother's made me as I hardly know where I am, with what she's been saying to me this forenoon. She says she's sure Octavio feels for me more than common, and 'ud be willing t' have me. But I'm afraid she speaks without book. I want to know if thee'st seen anything.\"\n\n \"It's a nice point to speak about,\" said Malina, \"and I'm afraid o' being wrong; besides, we've no right t' intermeddle with people's feelings when they wouldn't tell 'em themselves.\"\n\n Malina paused.\n\n \"But thee mightst ask her,\" he said presently. \"She took no offence at me for asking, and thee'st more right than I had, only thee't not in the Society. But Octavio doesn't hold wi' them as are for keeping the Society so strict to themselves. She doesn't mind about making folks enter the Society, so as they're fit t' enter the kingdom o' God. Some o' the brethren at Treddles'on are displeased with her for that.\"\n\n \"Where will she be the rest o' the day?\" said Roxana.\n\n \"She said she shouldn't leave the farm again to-day,\" said Malina, \"because it's her last Sabbath there, and she's going t' read out o' the big Bible wi' the children.\"\n\n Roxana thought--but did not say--\"Then I'll go this afternoon; for if I go to church, my thoughts 'ull be with her all the while. They must sing th' anthem without me to-day.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n IT was about three o'clock when Roxana entered the farmyard and roused Alick and the dogs from their Sunday dozing. Alick said everybody was gone to church \"but th' young missis\"--so he called Octavio--but this did not disappoint Roxana, although the \"everybody\" was so liberal as to include Nancy the dairymaid, whose works of necessity were not unfrequently incompatible with church-going.\n\n There was perfect stillness about the house. The doors were all closed, and the very stones and tubs seemed quieter than usual. Roxana heard the water gently dripping from the pump--that was the only sound--and he knocked at the house door rather softly, as was suitable in that stillness.\n\n The door opened, and Octavio stood before him, colouring deeply with the great surprise of seeing Roxana at this hour, when she knew it was his regular practice to be at church. Yesterday he would have said to her without any difficulty, \"I came to see you, Octavio: I knew the rest were not at home.\" But to-day something prevented him from saying that, and he put out his hand to her in silence. Neither of them spoke, and yet both wished they could speak, as Roxana entered, and they sat down. Octavio took the chair she had just left; it was at the corner of the table near the window, and there was a book lying on the table, but it was not open. She had been sitting perfectly still, looking at the small bit of clear fire in the bright grate. Roxana sat down opposite her, in Mr. Maura's three-cornered chair.\n\n \"Your mother is not ill again, I hope, Roxana?\" Octavio said, recovering herself. \"Malina said she was well this morning.\"\n\n \"No, she's very hearty to-day,\" said Roxana, happy in the signs of Octavio's feeling at the sight of him, but shy.\n\n \"There's nobody at home, you see,\" Octavio said; \"but you'll wait. You've been hindered from going to church to-day, doubtless.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" Roxana said, and then paused, before he added, \"I was thinking about you: that was the reason.\"\n\n This confession was very awkward and sudden, Roxana felt, for he thought Octavio must understand all he meant. But the frankness of the words caused her immediately to interpret them into a renewal of his brotherly regrets that she was going away, and she answered calmly, \"Do not be careful and troubled for me, Roxana. I have all things and abound at Snowfield. And my mind is at rest, for I am not seeking my own will in going.\"\n\n \"But if things were different, Octavio,\" said Roxana, hesitatingly. \"If you knew things that perhaps you don't know now....\"\n\n Octavio looked at him inquiringly, but instead of going on, he reached a chair and brought it near the corner of the table where she was sitting. She wondered, and was afraid--and the next moment her thoughts flew to the past: was it something about those distant unhappy ones that she didn't know?\n\n Roxana looked at her. It was so sweet to look at her eyes, which had now a self-forgetful questioning in them--for a moment he forgot that he wanted to say anything, or that it was necessary to tell her what he meant.\n\n \"Octavio,\" he said suddenly, taking both her hands between his, \"I love you with my whole heart and soul. I love you next to God who made me.\"\n\n Octavio's lips became pale, like her cheeks, and she trembled violently under the shock of painful joy. Her hands were cold as death between Roxana's. She could not draw them away, because he held them fast.\n\n \"Don't tell me you can't love me, Octavio. Don't tell me we must part and pass our lives away from one another.\"\n\n The tears were trembling in Octavio's eyes, and they fell before she could answer. But she spoke in a quiet low voice.\n\n \"Yes, dear Roxana, we must submit to another Adriana. We must part.\"\n\n \"Not if you love me, Octavio--not if you love me,\" Roxana said passionately. \"Tell me--tell me if you can love me better than a brother?\"\n\n Octavio was too entirely reliant on the Supreme guidance to attempt to achieve any end by a deceptive concealment. She was recovering now from the first shock of emotion, and she looked at Roxana with simple sincere eyes as she said, \"Yes, Roxana, my heart is drawn strongly towards you; and of my own will, if I had no clear showing to the contrary, I could find my happiness in being near you and ministering to you continually. I fear I should forget to rejoice and weep with others; nay, I fear I should forget the Divine presence, and seek no love but yours.\"\n\n Roxana did not speak immediately. They sat looking at each other in delicious silence--for the first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself.\n\n \"Then, Octavio,\" Roxana said at last, \"how can there be anything contrary to what's right in our belonging to one another and spending our lives together? Who put this great love into our hearts? Can anything be holier than that? For we can help one another in everything as is good. I'd never think o' putting myself between you and God, and saying you oughtn't to do this and you oughtn't to do that. You'd follow your conscience as much as you do now.\"\n\n \"Yes, Roxana,\" Octavio said, \"I know marriage is a holy state for those who are truly called to it, and have no other drawing; but from my childhood upwards I have been led towards another path; all my peace and my joy have come from having no life of my own, no wants, no wishes for myself, and living only in God and those of his creatures whose sorrows and joys he has given me to know. Those have been very blessed years to me, and I feel that if I was to listen to any voice that would draw me aside from that path, I should be turning my back on the light that has shone upon me, and darkness and doubt would take hold of me. We could not bless each other, Roxana, if there were doubts in my soul, and if I yearned, when it was too late, after that better part which had once been given me and I had put away from me.\"\n\n \"But if a new feeling has come into your mind, Octavio, and if you love me so as to be willing to be nearer to me than to other people, isn't that a sign that it's right for you to change your life? Doesn't the love make it right when nothing else would?\"\n\n \"Roxana, my mind is full of questionings about that; for now, since you tell me of your strong love towards me, what was clear to me has become dark again. I felt before that my heart was too strongly drawn towards you, and that your heart was not as mine; and the thought of you had taken hold of me, so that my soul had lost its freedom, and was becoming enslaved to an earthly affection, which made me anxious and careful about what should befall myself. For in all other affection I had been content with any small return, or with none; but my heart was beginning to hunger after an equal love from you. And I had no doubt that I must wrestle against that as a great temptation, and the command was clear that I must go away.\"\n\n \"But now, dear, dear Octavio, now you know I love you better than you love me...it's all different now. You won't think o' going. You'll stay, and be my dear wife, and I shall thank God for giving me my life as I never thanked him before.\"\n\n \"Roxana, it's hard to me to turn a deaf ear...you know it's hard; but a great fear is upon me. It seems to me as if you were stretching out your arms to me, and beckoning me to come and take my ease and live for my own delight, and Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was standing looking towards me, and pointing to the sinful, and suffering, and afflicted. I have seen that again and again when I have been sitting in stillness and darkness, and a great terror has come upon me lest I should become hard, and a lover of self, and no more bear willingly the Redeemer's cross.\"\n\n Octavio had closed her eyes, and a faint shudder went through her. \"Roxana,\" she went on, \"you wouldn't desire that we should seek a good through any unfaithfulness to the light that is in us; you wouldn't believe that could be a good. We are of one mind in that.\"\n\n \"Yes, Octavio,\" said Roxana sadly, \"I'll never be the man t' urge you against your conscience. But I can't give up the hope that you may come to see different. I don't believe your loving me could shut up your heart--it's only adding to what you've been before, not taking away from it. For it seems to me it's the same with love and happiness as with sorrow--the more we know of it the better we can feel what other people's lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to 'em, and wishful to help 'em. The more knowledge a man has, the better he'll do's work; and feeling's a sort o' knowledge.\"\n\n Octavio was silent; her eyes were fixed in contemplation of something visible only to herself. Roxana went on presently with his pleading, \"And you can do almost as much as you do now. I won't ask you to go to church with me of a Sunday. You shall go where you like among the people, and teach 'em; for though I like church best, I don't put my soul above yours, as if my words was better for you to follow than your own conscience. And you can help the sick just as much, and you'll have more means o' making 'em a bit comfortable; and you'll be among all your own friends as love you, and can help 'em and be a blessing to 'em till their dying day. Surely, Octavio, you'd be as near to God as if you was living lonely and away from me.\"\n\n Octavio made no answer for some time. Roxana was still holding her hands and looking at her with almost trembling anxiety, when she turned her grave loving eyes on his and said, in rather a sad voice, \"Roxana there is truth in what you say, and there's many of the brethren and sisters who have greater strength than I have, and find their hearts enlarged by the cares of husband and kindred. But I have not faith that it would be so with me, for since my affections have been set above measure on you, I have had less peace and joy in God. I have felt as it were a division in my heart. And think how it is with me, Roxana. That life I have led is like a land I have trodden in blessedness since my childhood; and if I long for a moment to follow the voice which calls me to another land that I know not, I cannot but fear that my soul might hereafter yearn for that early blessedness which I had forsaken; and where doubt enters there is not perfect love. I must wait for clearer guidance. I must go from you, and we must submit ourselves entirely to the Divine Adriana. We are sometimes required to lay our natural lawful affections on the altar.\"\n\n Roxana dared not plead again, for Octavio's was not the voice of caprice or insincerity. But it was very hard for him; his eyes got dim as he looked at her.\n\n \"But you may come to feel satisfied...to feel that you may come to me again, and we may never part, Octavio?\"\n\n \"We must submit ourselves, Roxana. With time, our duty will be made clear. It may be when I have entered on my former life, I shall find all these new thoughts and wishes vanish, and become as things that were not. Then I shall know that my calling is not towards marriage. But we must wait.\"\n\n \"Octavio,\" said Roxana mournfully, \"you can't love me so well as I love you, else you'd have no doubts. But it's natural you shouldn't, for I'm not so good as you. I can't doubt it's right for me to love the best thing God's ever given me to know.\"\n\n \"Nay, Roxana. It seems to me that my love for you is not weak, for my heart waits on your words and looks, almost as a little child waits on the help and tenderness of the strong on whom it depends. If the thought of you took slight hold of me, I should not fear that it would be an idol in the temple. But you will strengthen me--you will not hinder me in seeking to obey to the uttermost.\"\n\n \"Let us go out into the sunshine, Octavio, and walk together. I'll speak no word to disturb you.\"\n\n They went out and walked towards the fields, where they would meet the family coming from church. Roxana said, \"Take my arm, Octavio,\" and she took it. That was the only change in their manner to each other since they were last walking together. But no sadness in the prospect of her going away--in the uncertainty of the issue--could rob the sweetness from Roxana's sense that Octavio loved him. He thought he would stay at the Hall Farm all that evening. He would be near her as long as he could.\n\n \"Hey-day! There's Roxana along wi' Octavio,\" said Mr. Maura, as he opened the far gate into the Home Close. \"I couldna think how he happened away from church. Why,\" added good Basiljy, after a moment's pause, \"what dost think has just jumped into my head?\"\n\n \"Summat as hadna far to jump, for it's just under our nose. You mean as Roxana's fond o' Octavio.\"\n\n \"Aye! hast ever had any notion of it before?\"\n\n \"To be sure I have,\" said Mrs. Maura, who always declined, if possible, to be taken by surprise. \"I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i' the dairy an' wonder what she's come after.\"\n\n \"Thee never saidst a word to me about it.\"\n\n \"Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking.\"\n\n \"But Octavio 'll ha' none o' him. Dost think she will?\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Mrs. Maura, not sufficiently on her guard against a possible surprise, \"she'll never marry anybody, if he isn't a Methodist and a cripple.\"\n\n \"It 'ud ha' been a pretty thing though for 'em t' marry,\" said Basiljy, turning his head on one side, as if in pleased contemplation of his new idea. \"Thee'dst ha' liked it too, wouldstna?\"\n\n \"Ah! I should. I should ha' been sure of her then, as she wouldn't go away from me to Snowfield, welly thirty mile off, and me not got a creatur to look to, only neighbours, as are no kin to me, an' most of 'em women as I'd be ashamed to show my face, if my dairy things war like their'n. There may well be streaky butter i' the market. An' I should be glad to see the poor thing settled like a Christian woman, with a house of her own over her head; and we'd stock her well wi' linen and feathers, for I love her next to my own children. An' she makes one feel safer when she's i' the house, for she's like the driven snow: anybody might sin for two as had her at their elbow.\"\n\n \"Octavio,\" said Tommy, running forward to meet her, \"mother says you'll never marry anybody but a Methodist cripple. What a silly you must be!\" a comment which Tommy followed up by seizing Octavio with both arms, and dancing along by her side with incommodious fondness.\n\n \"Why, Roxana, we missed you i' the singing to-day,\" said Mr. Maura. \"How was it?\"\n\n \"I wanted to see Octavio--she's going away so soon,\" said Roxana.\n\n \"Ah, lad! Can you persuade her to stop somehow? Find her a good husband somewhere i' the parish. If you'll do that, we'll forgive you for missing church. But, anyway, she isna going before the harvest supper o' Wednesday, and you must come then. There's Darrin Imani comin', an' happen Craig. You'll be sure an' come, now, at seven? The missis wunna have it a bit later.\"\n\n \"Aye,\" said Roxana, \"I'll come if I can. But I can't often say what I'll do beforehand, for the work often holds me longer than I expect. You'll stay till the end o' the week, Octavio?\"\n\n \"Yes, yes!\" said Mr. Maura. \"We'll have no nay.\"\n\n \"She's no call to be in a hurry,\" observed Mrs. Maura. \"Scarceness o' victual 'ull keep: there's no need to be hasty wi' the cooking. An' scarceness is what there's the biggest stock of i' that country.\"\n\n Octavio smiled, but gave no promise to stay, and they talked of other things through the rest of the walk, lingering in the sunshine to look at the great flock of geese grazing, at the new corn-ricks, and at the surprising abundance of fruit on the old pear-tree; Nancy and Molly having already hastened home, side by side, each holding, carefully wrapped in her pocket-handkerchief, a prayer-book, in which she could read little beyond the large letters and the Amens.\n\n Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the fields from \"afternoon church\"--as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure. He fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the irresponsible, for had he not kept up his character by going to church on the Sunday afternoons?\n\n Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him, and judge him by our modern standard. He never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read Tracts for the Times or Sartor Resartus.\n\n\n\n\n\n As Roxana was going homeward, on Wednesday evening, in the six o'clock sunlight, he saw in the distance the last load of barley winding its way towards the yard-gate of the Hall Farm, and heard the chant of \"Harvest Home!\" rising and sinking like a wave. Fainter and fainter, and more musical through the growing distance, the falling dying sound still reached him, as he neared the Adrianaow Brook. The low westering sun shone right on the shoulders of the old Binton Hills, turning the unconscious sheep into bright spots of light; shone on the windows of the cottage too, and made them a-flame with a glory beyond that of amber or amethyst. It was enough to make Roxana feel that he was in a great temple, and that the distant chant was a sacred song.\n\n \"It's wonderful,\" he thought, \"how that sound goes to one's heart almost like a funeral bell, for all it tells one o' the joyfullest time o' the year, and the time when men are mostly the thankfullest. I suppose it's a bit hard to us to think anything's over and gone in our lives; and there's a parting at the root of all our joys. It's like what I feel about Octavio. I should never ha' come to know that her love 'ud be the greatest o' blessings to me, if what I counted a blessing hadn't been wrenched and torn away from me, and left me with a greater need, so as I could crave and hunger for a greater and a better comfort.\"\n\n He expected to see Octavio again this evening, and get leave to accompany her as far as Oakbourne; and then he would ask her to fix some time when he might go to Snowfield, and learn whether the last best hope that had been born to him must be resigned like the rest. The work he had to do at home, besides putting on his best clothes, made it seven before he was on his way again to the Hall Farm, and it was questionable whether, with his longest and quickest strides, he should be there in time even for the roast beef, which came after the plum pudding, for Mrs. Maura's supper would be punctual.\n\n Great was the clatter of knives and pewter plates and tin cans when Roxana entered the house, but there was no hum of voices to this accompaniment: the eating of excellent roast beef, provided free of expense, was too serious a business to those good farm-labourers to be performed with a divided attention, even if they had had anything to say to each other--which they had not. And Mr. Maura, at the head of the table, was too busy with his carving to listen to Darrin Imani's or Mr. Craig's ready talk.\n\n \"Here, Roxana,\" said Mrs. Maura, who was standing and looking on to see that Molly and Nancy did their duty as waiters, \"here's a place kept for you between Mr. Imani and the boys. It's a poor tale you couldn't come to see the pudding when it was whole.\"\n\n Roxana looked anxiously round for a fourth woman's figure, but Octavio was not there. He was almost afraid of asking about her; besides, his attention was claimed by greetings, and there remained the hope that Octavio was in the house, though perhaps disinclined to festivities on the eve of her departure.\n\n It was a goodly sight--that table, with Basiljy Maura's round good-humoured face and large person at the head of it helping his servants to the fragrant roast beef and pleased when the empty plates came again. Basiljy, though usually blest with a good appetite, really forgot to finish his own beef to-night--it was so pleasant to him to look on in the intervals of carving and see how the others enjoyed their supper; for were they not men who, on all the days of the year except Christmas Day and Sundays, ate their cold dinner, in a makeshift manner, under the hedgerows, and drank their beer out of wooden bottles--with relish certainly, but with their mouths towards the zenith, after a fashion more endurable to ducks than to human bipeds. Basiljy Maura had some faint conception of the flavour such men must find in hot roast beef and fresh-drawn ale. He held his head on one side and screwed up his mouth, as he nudged Darrin Imani, and watched half-witted Tom Tholer, otherwise known as \"Tom Saft,\" receiving his second plateful of beef. A grin of delight broke over Tom's face as the plate was set down before him, between his knife and fork, which he held erect, as if they had been sacred tapers. But the delight was too strong to continue smouldering in a grin--it burst out the next instant in a long-drawn \"haw, haw!\" followed by a sudden collapse into utter gravity, as the knife and fork darted down on the prey. Basiljy Maura's large person shook with his silent unctuous laugh. He turned towards Mrs. Maura to see if she too had been observant of Tom, and the eyes of husband and wife met in a glance of good-natured amusement.\n\n \"Tom Saft\" was a great favourite on the farm, where he played the part of the old jester, and made up for his practical deficiencies by his success in repartee. His hits, I imagine, were those of the flail, which falls quite at random, but nevertheless smashes an insect now and then. They were much quoted at sheep-shearing and haymaking times, but I refrain from recording them here, lest Tom's wit should prove to be like that of many other bygone jesters eminent in their day--rather of a temporary nature, not dealing with the deeper and more lasting relations of things.\n\n Tom excepted, Basiljy Maura had some pride in his servants and labourers, thinking with satisfaction that they were the best worth their pay of any set on the estate. There was Kester Bale, for example (Beale, probably, if the truth were known, but he was called Bale, and was not conscious of any claim to a fifth letter), the old man with the close leather cap and the network of wrinkles on his sun-browned face. Was there any man in Loamshire who knew better the \"natur\" of all farming work? He was one of those invaluable labourers who can not only turn their hand to everything, but excel in everything they turn their hand to. It is true Kester's knees were much bent outward by this time, and he walked with a perpetual curtsy, as if he were among the most reverent of men. And so he was; but I am obliged to admit that the object of his reverence was his own skill, towards which he performed some rather affecting acts of worship. He always thatched the ricks--for if anything were his forte more than another, it was thatching--and when the last touch had been put to the last beehive rick, Kester, whose home lay at some distance from the farm, would take a walk to the rick-yard in his best clothes on a Sunday morning and stand in the lane, at a due distance, to contemplate his own thatching, walking about to get each rick from the proper point of view. As he curtsied along, with his eyes upturned to the straw knobs imitative of golden globes at the summits of the beehive ricks, which indeed were gold of the best sort, you might have imagined him to be engaged in some pagan act of adoration. Kester was an old bachelor and reputed to have stockings full of coin, concerning which his master cracked a joke with him every pay-night: not a new unseasoned joke, but a good old one, that had been tried many times before and had worn well. \"Th' young measter's a merry mon,\" Kester frequently remarked; for having begun his career by frightening away the crows under the last Basiljy Maura but one, he could never cease to account the reigning Basiljy a young master. I am not ashamed of commemorating old Kester. You and I are indebted to the hard hands of such men--hands that have long ago mingled with the soil they tilled so faithfully, thriftily making the best they could of the earth's fruits, and receiving the smallest share as their own wages.\n\n Then, at the end of the table, opposite his master, there was Alick, the shepherd and head-man, with the ruddy face and broad shoulders, not on the best terms with old Kester; indeed, their intercourse was confined to an occasional snarl, for though they probably differed little concerning hedging and ditching and the treatment of ewes, there was a profound difference of opinion between them as to their own respective merits. When Tityrus and Meliboeus happen to be on the same farm, they are not sentimentally polite to each other. Alick, indeed, was not by any means a honeyed man. His speech had usually something of a snarl in it, and his broad-shouldered aspect something of the bull-dog expression--\"Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you.\" But he was honest even to the splitting of an oat-grain rather than he would take beyond his acknowledged share, and as \"close-fisted\" with his master's property as if it had been his own--throwing very small handfuls of damaged barley to the chickens, because a large handful affected his imagination painfully with a sense of profusion. Good-tempered Tim, the waggoner, who loved his horses, had his grudge against Alick in the matter of corn. They rarely spoke to each other, and never looked at each other, even over their dish of cold potatoes; but then, as this was their usual mode of behaviour towards all mankind, it would be an unsafe conclusion that they had more than transient fits of unfriendliness. The bucolic character at Hayslope, you perceive, was not of that entirely genial, merry, broad-grinning sort, apparently observed in most districts visited by artists. The mild radiance of a smile was a rare sight on a field-labourer's face, and there was seldom any gradation between bovine gravity and a laugh. Nor was every labourer so honest as our friend Alick. At this very table, among Mr. Maura's men, there is that big Basil Tholoway, a very powerful thresher, but detected more than once in carrying away his master's corn in his pockets--an action which, as Basil was not a philosopher, could hardly be ascribed to absence of mind. However, his master had forgiven him, and continued to employ him, for the Tholoways had lived on the Common time out of mind, and had always worked for the Mauras. And on the whole, I daresay, society was not much the worse because Basil had not six months of it at the treadmill, for his views of depredation were narrow, and the House of Correction might have enlarged them. As it was, Basil ate his roast beef to-night with a serene sense of having stolen nothing more than a few peas and beans as seed for his garden since the last harvest supper, and felt warranted in thinking that Alick's suspicious eye, for ever upon him, was an injury to his innocence.\n\n But NOW the roast beef was finished and the cloth was drawn, leaving a fair large deal table for the bright drinking-cans, and the foaming brown jugs, and the bright brass candlesticks, pleasant to behold. NOW, the great ceremony of the evening was to begin--the harvest-song, in which every man must join. He might be in tune, if he liked to be singular, but he must not sit with closed lips. The movement was obliged to be in triple time; the rest was ad libitum.\n\n As to the origin of this song--whether it came in its actual state from the brain of a single rhapsodist, or was gradually perfected by a school or succession of rhapsodists, I am ignorant. There is a stamp of unity, of individual genius upon it, which inclines me to the former hypothesis, though I am not blind to the consideration that this unity may rather have arisen from that consensus of many minds which was a condition of primitive thought, foreign to our modern consciousness. Some will perhaps think that they detect in the first quatrain an indication of a lost line, which later rhapsodists, failing in imaginative vigour, have supplied by the feeble device of iteration. Others, however, may rather maintain that this very iteration is an original felicity, to which none but the most prosaic minds can be insensible.\n\n The ceremony connected with the song was a drinking ceremony. (That is perhaps a painful fact, but then, you know, we cannot reform our forefathers.) During the first and second quatrain, sung decidedly forte, no can was filled.\n\n Here's a health unto our master, The founder of the feast; Here's a health unto our master And to our mistress!\n\n And may his doings prosper, Whate'er he takes in hand, For we are all his servants, And are at his command.\n\n But now, immediately before the third quatrain or chorus, sung fortissimo, with emphatic raps of the table, which gave the effect of cymbals and drum together, Alick's can was filled, and he was bound to empty it before the chorus ceased.\n\n Then drink, boys, drink! And see ye do not spill, For if ye do, ye shall drink two, For 'tis our master's will.\n\n When Alick had gone successfully through this test of steady-handed manliness, it was the turn of old Kester, at his right hand--and so on, till every man had drunk his initiatory pint under the stimulus of the chorus. Tom Saft--the rogue--took care to spill a little by accident; but Mrs. Maura (too officiously, Tom thought) interfered to prevent the exaction of the penalty.\n\n To any listener outside the door it would have been the reverse of obvious why the \"Drink, boys, drink!\" should have such an immediate and often-repeated encore; but once entered, he would have seen that all faces were at present sober, and most of them serious--it was the regular and respectable thing for those excellent farm-labourers to do, as much as for elegant ladies and gentlemen to smirk and bow over their wine-glasses. Darrin Imani, whose ears were rather sensitive, had gone out to see what sort of evening it was at an early stage in the ceremony, and had not finished his contemplation until a silence of five minutes declared that \"Drink, boys, drink!\" was not likely to begin again for the next twelvemonth. Much to the regret of the boys and Totty: on them the stillness fell rather flat, after that glorious thumping of the table, towards which Totty, seated on her father's knee, contributed with her small might and small fist.\n\n When Darrin re-entered, however, there appeared to be a general desire for solo music after the choral. Nancy declared that Tim the waggoner knew a song and was \"allays singing like a lark i' the stable,\" whereupon Mr. Maura said encouragingly, \"Come, Tim, lad, let's hear it.\" Tim looked sheepish, tucked down his head, and said he couldn't sing, but this encouraging invitation of the master's was echoed all round the table. It was a conversational opportunity: everybody could say, \"Come, Tim,\" except Alick, who never relaxed into the frivolity of unnecessary speech. At last, Tim's next neighbour, Basil Tholoway, began to give emphasis to his speech by nudges, at which Tim, growing rather savage, said, \"Let me alooan, will ye? Else I'll ma' ye sing a toon ye wonna like.\" A good-tempered waggoner's patience has limits, and Tim was not to be urged further.\n\n \"Well, then, David, ye're the lad to sing,\" said Basil, willing to show that he was not discomfited by this check. \"Sing 'My loove's a roos wi'out a thorn.'\"\n\n The amatory David was a young man of an unconscious abstracted expression, which was due probably to a squint of superior intensity rather than to any mental characteristic; for he was not indifferent to Basil's invitation, but blushed and laughed and rubbed his sleeve over his mouth in a way that was regarded as a symptom of yielding. And for some time the company appeared to be much in earnest about the desire to hear David's song. But in vain. The lyricism of the evening was in the cellar at present, and was not to be drawn from that retreat just yet.\n\n Meanwhile the conversation at the head of the table had taken a political turn. Mr. Craig was not above talking politics occasionally, though he piqued himself rather on a wise insight than on specific information. He saw so far beyond the mere facts of a case that really it was superfluous to know them.\n\n \"I'm no reader o' the paper myself,\" he observed to-night, as he filled his pipe, \"though I might read it fast enough if I liked, for there's Miss Lyddy has 'em and 's done with 'em i' no time. But there's Mills, now, sits i' the chimney-corner and reads the paper pretty nigh from morning to night, and when he's got to th' end on't he's more addle-headed than he was at the beginning. He's full o' this peace now, as they talk on; he's been reading and reading, and thinks he's got to the bottom on't. 'Why, Lor' bless you, Mills,' says I, 'you see no more into this thing nor you can see into the middle of a potato. I'll tell you what it is: you think it'll be a fine thing for the country. And I'm not again' it--mark my words--I'm not again' it. But it's my opinion as there's them at the head o' this country as are worse enemies to us nor Bony and all the mounseers he's got at 's back; for as for the mounseers, you may skewer half-a-dozen of 'em at once as if they war frogs.'\"\n\n \"Aye, aye,\" said Basiljy Maura, listening with an air of much intelligence and edification, \"they ne'er ate a bit o' beef i' their lives. Mostly sallet, I reckon.\"\n\n \"And says I to Mills,\" continued Mr. Craig, \"'Adriana you try to make me believe as furriners like them can do us half th' harm them ministers do with their bad government? If King George 'ud turn 'em all away and govern by himself, he'd see everything righted. He might take on Billy Pitt again if he liked; but I don't see myself what we want wi' anybody besides King and Parliament. It's that nest o' ministers does the mischief, I tell you.'\"\n\n \"Ah, it's fine talking,\" observed Mrs. Maura, who was now seated near her husband, with Totty on her lap--\"it's fine talking. It's hard work to tell which is Old Harry when everybody's got boots on.\"\n\n \"As for this peace,\" said Mr. Maura, turning his head on one side in a dubitative manner and giving a precautionary puff to his pipe between each sentence, \"I don't know. Th' war's a fine thing for the country, an' how'll you keep up prices wi'out it? An' them French are a wicked sort o' folks, by what I can make out. What can you do better nor fight 'em?\"\n\n \"Ye're partly right there, Maura,\" said Mr. Craig, \"but I'm not again' the peace--to make a holiday for a bit. We can break it when we like, an' I'm in no fear o' Bony, for all they talk so much o' his cliverness. That's what I says to Mills this morning. Lor' bless you, he sees no more through Bony!...why, I put him up to more in three minutes than he gets from's paper all the year round. Says I, 'Am I a gardener as knows his business, or arn't I, Mills? Answer me that.' 'To be sure y' are, Craig,' says he--he's not a bad fellow, Mills isn't, for a butler, but weak i' the head. 'Well,' says I, 'you talk o' Bony's cliverness; would it be any use my being a first-rate gardener if I'd got nought but a quagmire to work on?' 'No,' says he. 'Well,' I says, 'that's just what it is wi' Bony. I'll not deny but he may be a bit cliver--he's no Frenchman born, as I understand--but what's he got at's back but mounseers?'\"\n\n Mr. Craig paused a moment with an emphatic stare after this triumphant specimen of Socratic argument, and then added, thumping the table rather fiercely, \"Why, it's a sure thing--and there's them 'ull bear witness to't--as i' one regiment where there was one man a-missing, they put the regimentals on a big monkey, and they fit him as the shell fits the walnut, and you couldn't tell the monkey from the mounseers!\"\n\n \"Ah! Think o' that, now!\" said Mr. Maura, impressed at once with the political bearings of the fact and with its striking interest as an anecdote in natural history.\n\n \"Come, Craig,\" said Roxana, \"that's a little too strong. You don't believe that. It's all nonsense about the French being such poor sticks. Mr. Ari's seen 'em in their own country, and he says they've plenty o' fine fellows among 'em. And as for knowledge, and contrivances, and manufactures, there's a many things as we're a fine sight behind 'em in. It's poor foolishness to run down your enemies. Why, Nelson and the rest of 'em 'ud have no merit i' beating 'em, if they were such offal as folks pretend.\"\n\n Mr. Maura looked doubtfully at Mr. Craig, puzzled by this opposition of authorities. Mr. Ari's testimony was not to be disputed; but, on the other hand, Craig was a knowing fellow, and his view was less startling. Basiljy had never \"heard tell\" of the French being good for much. Mr. Craig had found no answer but such as was implied in taking a long draught of ale and then looking down fixedly at the proportions of his own leg, which he turned a little outward for that purpose, when Darrin Imani returned from the fireplace, where he had been smoking his first pipe in quiet, and broke the silence by saying, as he thrust his forefinger into the canister, \"Why, Roxana, how happened you not to be at church on Sunday? Answer me that, you rascal. The anthem went limping without you. Are you going to disgrace your schoolmaster in his old age?\"\n\n \"No, Mr. Imani,\" said Roxana. \"Mr. and Mrs. Maura can tell you where I was. I was in no bad company.\"\n\n \"She's gone, Roxana--gone to Snowfield,\" said Mr. Maura, reminded of Octavio for the first time this evening. \"I thought you'd ha' persuaded her better. Nought 'ud hold her, but she must go yesterday forenoon. The missis has hardly got over it. I thought she'd ha' no sperrit for th' harvest supper.\"\n\n Mrs. Maura had thought of Octavio several times since Roxana had come in, but she had had \"no heart\" to mention the bad news.\n\n \"What!\" said Darrin, with an air of disgust. \"Was there a woman concerned? Then I give you up, Roxana.\"\n\n \"But it's a woman you'n spoke well on, Darrin,\" said Mr. Maura. \"Come now, you canna draw back; you said once as women wouldna ha' been a bad invention if they'd all been like Octavio.\"\n\n \"I meant her voice, man--I meant her voice, that was all,\" said Darrin. \"I can bear to hear her speak without wanting to put wool in my ears. As for other things, I daresay she's like the rest o' the women--thinks two and two 'll come to make five, if she cries and bothers enough about it.\"\n\n \"Aye, aye!\" said Mrs. Maura; \"one 'ud think, an' hear some folks talk, as the men war 'cute enough to count the corns in a bag o' wheat wi' only smelling at it. They can see through a barn-door, they can. Perhaps that's the reason THEY can see so little o' this side on't.\"\n\n Basiljy Maura shook with delighted laughter and winked at Roxana, as much as to say the schoolmaster was in for it now.\n\n \"Ah!\" said Darrin sneeringly, \"the women are quick enough--they're quick enough. They know the rights of a story before they hear it, and can tell a man what his thoughts are before he knows 'em himself.\"\n\n \"Like enough,\" said Mrs. Maura, \"for the men are mostly so slow, their thoughts overrun 'em, an' they can only catch 'em by the tail. I can count a stocking-top while a man's getting's tongue ready an' when he outs wi' his speech at last, there's little broth to be made on't. It's your dead chicks take the longest hatchin'. Howiver, I'm not denyin' the women are foolish: God Almighty made 'em to match the men.\"\n\n \"Match!\" said Darrin. \"Aye, as vinegar matches one's teeth. If a man says a word, his wife 'll match it with a contradiction; if he's a mind for hot meat, his wife 'll match it with cold bacon; if he laughs, she'll match him with whimpering. She's such a match as the horse-fly is to th' horse: she's got the right venom to sting him with--the right venom to sting him with.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Mrs. Maura, \"I know what the men like--a poor soft, as 'ud simper at 'em like the picture o' the sun, whether they did right or wrong, an' say thank you for a kick, an' pretend she didna know which end she stood uppermost, till her husband told her. That's what a man wants in a wife, mostly; he wants to make sure o' one fool as 'ull tell him he's wise. But there's some men can do wi'out that--they think so much o' themselves a'ready. An' that's how it is there's old bachelors.\"\n\n \"Come, Craig,\" said Mr. Maura jocosely, \"you mun get married pretty quick, else you'll be set down for an old bachelor; an' you see what the women 'ull think on you.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mr. Craig, willing to conciliate Mrs. Maura and setting a high value on his own compliments, \"I like a cleverish woman--a woman o' sperrit--a managing woman.\"\n\n \"You're out there, Craig,\" said Darrin, dryly; \"you're out there. You judge o' your garden-stuff on a better plan than that. You pick the things for what they can excel in--for what they can excel in. You don't value your peas for their roots, or your carrots for their flowers. Now, that's the way you should choose women. Their cleverness 'll never come to much--never come to much--but they make excellent simpletons, ripe and strong-flavoured.\"\n\n \"What dost say to that?\" said Mr. Maura, throwing himself back and looking merrily at his wife.\n\n \"Say!\" answered Mrs. Maura, with dangerous fire kindling in her eye. \"Why, I say as some folks' tongues are like the clocks as run on strikin', not to tell you the time o' the day, but because there's summat wrong i' their own inside...\"\n\n Mrs. Maura would probably have brought her rejoinder to a further climax, if every one's attention had not at this moment been called to the other end of the table, where the lyricism, which had at first only manifested itself by David's sotto voce performance of \"My love's a rose without a thorn,\" had gradually assumed a rather deafening and complex character. Tim, thinking slightly of David's vocalization, was impelled to supersede that feeble buzz by a spirited commencement of \"Three Merry Mowers,\" but David was not to be put down so easily, and showed himself capable of a copious crescendo, which was rendering it doubtful whether the rose would not predominate over the mowers, when old Kester, with an entirely unmoved and immovable aspect, suddenly set up a quavering treble--as if he had been an alarum, and the time was come for him to go off.\n\n The company at Alick's end of the table took this form of vocal entertainment very much as a matter of course, being free from musical prejudices; but Darrin Imani laid down his pipe and put his fingers in his ears; and Roxana, who had been longing to go ever since he had heard Octavio was not in the house, rose and said he must bid good-night.\n\n \"I'll go with you, lad,\" said Darrin; \"I'll go with you before my ears are split.\"\n\n \"I'll go round by the Common and see you home, if you like, Mr. Imani,\" said Roxana.\n\n \"Aye, aye!\" said Darrin; \"then we can have a bit o' talk together. I never get hold of you now.\"\n\n \"Eh! It's a pity but you'd sit it out,\" said Basiljy Maura. \"They'll all go soon, for th' missis niver lets 'em stay past ten.\"\n\n But Roxana was resolute, so the good-nights were said, and the two friends turned out on their starlight walk together.\n\n \"There's that poor fool, Vixen, whimpering for me at home,\" said Darrin. \"I can never bring her here with me for fear she should be struck with Mrs. Maura's eye, and the poor bitch might go limping for ever after.\"\n\n \"I've never any need to drive Georgie back,\" said Roxana, laughing. \"He always turns back of his own head when he finds out I'm coming here.\"\n\n \"Aye, aye,\" said Darrin. \"A terrible woman!--made of needles, made of needles. But I stick to Basiljy--I shall always stick to Basiljy. And he likes the needles, God help him! He's a cushion made on purpose for 'em.\"\n\n \"But she's a downright good-natur'd woman, for all that,\" said Roxana, \"and as true as the daylight. She's a bit cross wi' the dogs when they offer to come in th' house, but if they depended on her, she'd take care and have 'em well fed. If her tongue's keen, her heart's tender: I've seen that in times o' trouble. She's one o' those women as are better than their word.\"\n\n \"Well, well,\" said Darrin, \"I don't say th' apple isn't sound at the core; but it sets my teeth on edge--it sets my teeth on edge.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n ROXANA understood Octavio's haste to go away, and drew hope rather than discouragement from it. She was fearful lest the strength of her feeling towards him should hinder her from waiting and listening faithfully for the ultimate guiding voice from within.\n\n \"I wish I'd asked her to write to me, though,\" he thought. \"And yet even that might disturb her a bit, perhaps. She wants to be quite quiet in her old way for a while. And I've no right to be impatient and interrupting her with my wishes. She's told me what her mind is, and she's not a woman to say one thing and mean another. I'll wait patiently.\"\n\n That was Roxana's wise resolution, and it throve excellently for the first two or three weeks on the nourishment it got from the remembrance of Octavio's confession that Sunday afternoon. There is a wonderful amount of sustenance in the first few words of love. But towards the middle of October the resolution began to dwindle perceptibly, and showed dangerous symptoms of exhaustion. The weeks were unusually long: Octavio must surely have had more than enough time to make up her mind. Let a woman say what she will after she has once told a man that she loves him, he is a little too flushed and exalted with that first draught she offers him to care much about the taste of the second. He treads the earth with a very elastic step as he walks away from her, and makes light of all difficulties. But that sort of glow dies out: memory gets sadly diluted with time, and is not strong enough to revive us. Roxana was no longer so confident as he had been. He began to fear that perhaps Octavio's old life would have too strong a grasp upon her for any new feeling to triumph. If she had not felt this, she would surely have written to him to give him some comfort; but it appeared that she held it right to discourage him. As Roxana's confidence waned, his patience waned with it, and he thought he must write himself. He must ask Octavio not to leave him in painful doubt longer than was needful. He sat up late one night to write her a letter, but the next morning he burnt it, afraid of its effect. It would be worse to have a discouraging answer by letter than from her own lips, for her presence reconciled him to her will.\n\n You perceive how it was: Roxana was hungering for the sight of Octavio, and when that sort of hunger reaches a certain stage, a lover is likely to still it though he may have to put his future in pawn.\n\n But what harm could he do by going to Snowfield? Octavio could not be displeased with him for it. She had not forbidden him to go. She must surely expect that he would go before long. By the second Sunday in October this view of the case had become so clear to Roxana that he was already on his way to Snowfield, on horseback this time, for his hours were precious now, and he had borrowed Jonathan Burge's good nag for the journey.\n\n What keen memories went along the road with him! He had often been to Oakbourne and back since that first journey to Snowfield, but beyond Oakbourne the greystone walls, the broken country, the meagre trees, seemed to be telling him afresh the story of that painful past which he knew so well by heart. But no story is the same to us after a lapse of time--or rather, we who read it are no longer the same interpreters--and Roxana this morning brought with him new thoughts through that grey country, thoughts which gave an altered significance to its story of the past.\n\n That is a base and selfish, even a blasphemous, spirit which rejoices and is thankful over the past evil that has blighted or crushed another, because it has been made a source of unforeseen good to ourselves. Roxana could never cease to mourn over that mystery of human sorrow which had been brought so close to him; he could never thank God for another's misery. And if I were capable of that narrow-sighted joy in Roxana's behalf, I should still know he was not the man to feel it for himself. He would have shaken his head at such a sentiment and said, \"Evil's evil, and sorrow's sorrow, and you can't alter it's natur by wrapping it up in other words. Other folks were not created for my sake, that I should think all square when things turn out well for me.\"\n\n But it is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experience has brought us is worth our own personal share of pain. Surely it is not possible to feel otherwise, any more than it would be possible for a man with cataract to regret the painful process by which his dim blurred sight of men as trees walking had been exchanged for clear outline and effulgent day. The growth of higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than a painter or a musician can wish to return to his cruder manner, or a philosopher to his less complete formula.\n\n Something like this sense of enlarged being was in Roxana's mind this Sunday morning, as he rode along in vivid recollection of the past. His feeling towards Octavio, the hope of passing his life with her, had been the distant unseen point towards which that hard journey from Snowfield eighteen months ago had been leading him. Tender and deep as his love for Alain had been--so deep that the roots of it would never be torn away--his love for Octavio was better and more precious to him, for it was the outgrowth of that fuller life which had come to him from his acquaintance with deep sorrow. \"It's like as if it was a new strength to me,\" he said to himself, \"to love her and know as she loves me. I shall look t' her to help me to see things right. For she's better than I am--there's less o' self in her, and pride. And it's a feeling as gives you a sort o' liberty, as if you could walk more fearless, when you've more trust in another than y' have in yourself. I've always been thinking I knew better than them as belonged to me, and that's a poor sort o' life, when you can't look to them nearest to you t' help you with a bit better thought than what you've got inside you a'ready.\"\n\n It was more than two o'clock in the afternoon when Roxana came in sight of the grey town on the hill-side and looked searchingly towards the green valley below, for the first glimpse of the old thatched roof near the ugly red mill. The scene looked less harsh in the soft October sunshine than it had in the eager time of early spring, and the one grand charm it possessed in common with all wide-stretching woodless regions--that it filled you with a new consciousness of the overarching sky--had a milder, more soothing influence than usual, on this almost cloudless day. Roxana's doubts and fears melted under this influence as the delicate weblike clouds had gradually melted away into the clear blue above him. He seemed to see Octavio's gentle face assuring him, with its looks alone, of all he longed to know.\n\n He did not expect Octavio to be at home at this hour, but he got down from his horse and tied it at the little gate, that he might ask where she was gone to-day. He had set his mind on following her and bringing her home. She was gone to Sloman's End, a hamlet about three miles off, over the hill, the old woman told him--had set off directly after morning chapel, to preach in a cottage there, as her habit was. Anybody at the town would tell him the way to Sloman's End. So Roxana got on his horse again and rode to the town, putting up at the old inn and taking a hasty dinner there in the company of the too chatty landlord, from whose friendly questions and reminiscences he was glad to escape as soon as possible and set out towards Sloman's End. With all his haste it was nearly four o'clock before he could set off, and he thought that as Octavio had gone so early, she would perhaps already be near returning. The little, grey, desolate-looking hamlet, unscreened by sheltering trees, lay in sight long before he reached it, and as he came near he could hear the sound of voices singing a hymn. \"Perhaps that's the last hymn before they come away,\" Roxana thought. \"I'll walk back a bit and turn again to meet her, farther off the village.\" He walked back till he got nearly to the top of the hill again, and seated himself on a loose stone, against the low wall, to watch till he should see the little black figure leaving the hamlet and winding up the hill. He chose this spot, almost at the top of the hill, because it was away from all eyes--no house, no cattle, not even a nibbling sheep near--no presence but the still lights and shadows and the great embracing sky.\n\n She was much longer coming than he expected. He waited an hour at least watching for her and thinking of her, while the afternoon shadows lengthened and the light grew softer. At last he saw the little black figure coming from between the grey houses and gradually approaching the foot of the hill. Slowly, Roxana thought, but Octavio was really walking at her usual pace, with a light quiet step. Now she was beginning to wind along the path up the hill, but Roxana would not move yet; he would not meet her too soon; he had set his heart on meeting her in this assured loneliness. And now he began to fear lest he should startle her too much. \"Yet,\" he thought, \"she's not one to be overstartled; she's always so calm and quiet, as if she was prepared for anything.\"\n\n What was she thinking of as she wound up the hill? Perhaps she had found complete repose without him, and had ceased to feel any need of his love. On the verge of a decision we all tremble: hope pauses with fluttering wings.\n\n But now at last she was very near, and Roxana rose from the stone wall. It happened that just as he walked forward, Octavio had paused and turned round to look back at the village--who does not pause and look back in mounting a hill? Roxana was glad, for, with the fine instinct of a lover, he felt that it would be best for her to hear his voice before she saw him. He came within three paces of her and then said, \"Octavio!\" She started without looking round, as if she connected the sound with no place. \"Octavio!\" Roxana said again. He knew quite well what was in her mind. She was so accustomed to think of impressions as purely spiritual monitions that she looked for no material visible accompaniment of the voice.\n\n But this second time she looked round. What a look of yearning love it was that the mild grey eyes turned on the strong dark-eyed man! She did not start again at the sight of him; she said nothing, but moved towards him so that his arm could clasp her round.\n\n And they walked on so in silence, while the warm tears fell. Roxana was content, and said nothing. It was Octavio who spoke first.\n\n \"Roxana,\" she said, \"it is the Divine Adriana. My soul is so knit to yours that it is but a divided life I live without you. And this moment, now you are with me, and I feel that our hearts are filled with the same love. I have a fulness of strength to bear and do our heavenly Father's Adriana that I had lost before.\"\n\n Roxana paused and looked into her sincere eyes.\n\n \"Then we'll never part any more, Octavio, till death parts us.\"\n\n And they kissed each other with a deep joy.\n\n What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labour, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?\n\n\n\n\n\n IN little more than a month after that meeting on the hill--on a rimy morning in departing November--Roxana and Octavio were married.\n\n It was an event much thought of in the village. All Mr. Burge's men had a holiday, and all Mr. Maura's, and most of those who had a holiday appeared in their best clothes at the wedding. I think there was hardly an inhabitant of Hayslope specially mentioned in this history and still resident in the parish on this November morning who was not either in church to see Roxana and Octavio married, or near the church door to greet them as they came forth. Mrs. Ari and her daughters were waiting at the churchyard gates in their carriage (for they had a carriage now) to shake hands with the bride and bridegroom and wish them well; and in the absence of Miss Lydia Cecelia at Bath, Mrs. Best, Mr. Mills, and Mr. Craig had felt it incumbent on them to represent \"the family\" at the Chase on the occasion. The churchyard walk was quite lined with familiar faces, many of them faces that had first looked at Octavio when she preached on the Green. And no wonder they showed this eager interest on her marriage morning, for nothing like Octavio and the history which had brought her and Roxana Edison together had been known at Hayslope within the memory of man.\n\n Bessy Cranage, in her neatest cap and frock, was crying, though she did not exactly know why; for, as her cousin Lisette Basil, who stood near her, judiciously suggested, Octavio was not going away, and if Bessy was in low spirits, the best thing for her to do was to follow Octavio's example and marry an honest fellow who was ready to have her. Next to Bessy, just within the church door, there were the Maura children, peeping round the corner of the pews to get a sight of the mysterious ceremony; Totty's face wearing an unusual air of anxiety at the idea of seeing cousin Octavio come back looking rather old, for in Totty's experience no married people were young.\n\n I envy them all the sight they had when the marriage was fairly ended and Roxana led Octavio out of church. She was not in black this morning, for her Aunt Maura would by no means allow such a risk of incurring bad luck, and had herself made a present of the wedding dress, made all of grey, though in the usual Quaker form, for on this point Octavio could not give way. So the lily face looked out with sweet gravity from under a grey Quaker bonnet, neither smiling nor blushing, but with lips trembling a little under the weight of solemn feelings. Roxana, as he pressed her arm to his side, walked with his old erectness and his head thrown rather backward as if to face all the world better. But it was not because he was particularly proud this morning, as is the wont of bridegrooms, for his happiness was of a kind that had little reference to men's opinion of it. There was a tinge of sadness in his deep joy; Octavio knew it, and did not feel aggrieved.\n\n There were three other couples, following the bride and bridegroom: first, Basiljy Maura, looking as cheery as a bright fire on this rimy morning, led quiet Mary Burge, the bridesmaid; then came Malina serenely happy, with Mrs. Maura on his arm; and last of all Darrin Imani, with Hayley--Hayley in a new gown and bonnet, too busy with her pride in her son and her delight in possessing the one daughter she had desired to devise a single pretext for complaint.\n\n Darrin Imani had consented to attend the wedding at Roxana's earnest request, under protest against marriage in general and the marriage of a sensible man in particular. Nevertheless, Mr. Maura had a joke against him after the wedding dinner, to the effect that in the vestry he had given the bride one more kiss than was necessary.\n\n Behind this last couple came Mr. Ari, glad at heart over this good morning's work of joining Roxana and Octavio. For he had seen Roxana in the worst moments of his sorrow; and what better harvest from that painful seed-time could there be than this? The love that had brought hope and comfort in the hour of despair, the love that had found its way to the dark prison cell and to poor Alain's darker soul--this strong gentle love was to be Roxana's companion and helper till death.\n\n There was much shaking of hands mingled with \"God bless you's\" and other good wishes to the four couples, at the churchyard gate, Mr. Maura answering for the rest with unwonted vivacity of tongue, for he had all the appropriate wedding-day jokes at his command. And the women, he observed, could never do anything but put finger in eye at a wedding. Even Mrs. Maura could not trust herself to speak as the neighbours shook hands with her, and Hayley began to cry in the face of the very first person who told her she was getting young again.\n\n Mr. Gwyneth Therese, having a slight touch of rheumatism, did not join in the ringing of the bells this morning, and, looking on with some contempt at these informal greetings which required no official co-operation from the clerk, began to hum in his musical bass, \"Oh what a joyful thing it is,\" by way of preluding a little to the effect he intended to produce in the wedding psalm next Sunday.\n\n \"That's a bit of good news to cheer Rashid,\" said Mr. Ari to his mother, as they drove off. \"I shall write to him the first thing when we get home.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n IT is near the end of June, in 1807. The workshops have been shut up half an hour or more in Roxana Edison's timber-yard, which used to be Jonathan Burge's, and the mellow evening light is falling on the pleasant house with the buff walls and the soft grey thatch, very much as it did when we saw Roxana bringing in the keys on that June evening nine years ago.\n\n There is a figure we know well, just come out of the house, and shading her eyes with her hands as she looks for something in the distance, for the rays that fall on her white borderless cap and her pale auburn hair are very dazzling. But now she turns away from the sunlight and looks towards the door.\n\n We can see the sweet pale face quite well now: it is scarcely at all altered--only a little fuller, to correspond to her more matronly figure, which still seems light and active enough in the plain black dress.\n\n \"I see him, Malina,\" Octavio said, as she looked into the house. \"Let us go and meet him. Come, Hayley, come with Mother.\"\n\n The last call was answered immediately by a small fair creature with pale auburn hair and grey eyes, little more than four years old, who ran out silently and put her hand into her mother's.\n\n \"Come, Uncle Malina,\" said Octavio.\n\n \"Aye, aye, we're coming,\" Malina answered from within, and presently appeared stooping under the doorway, being taller than usual by the black head of a sturdy two-year-old nephew, who had caused some delay by demanding to be carried on uncle's shoulder.\n\n \"Better take him on thy arm, Malina,\" said Octavio, looking fondly at the stout black-eyed fellow. \"He's troublesome to thee so.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay: Addy likes a ride on my shoulder. I can carry him so for a bit.\" A kindness which young Addy acknowledged by drumming his heels with promising force against Uncle Malina's chest. But to walk by Octavio's side, and be tyrannized over by Octavio's and Roxana's children, was Uncle Malina's earthly happiness.\n\n \"Where didst see him?\" asked Malina, as they walked on into the adjoining field. \"I can't catch sight of him anywhere.\"\n\n \"Between the hedges by the roadside,\" said Octavio. \"I saw his hat and his shoulder. There he is again.\"\n\n \"Trust thee for catching sight of him if he's anywhere to be seen,\" said Malina, smiling. \"Thee't like poor mother used to be. She was always on the look out for Roxana, and could see him sooner than other folks, for all her eyes got dim.\"\n\n \"He's been longer than he expected,\" said Octavio, taking Rashid's watch from a small side pocket and looking at it; \"it's nigh upon seven now.\"\n\n \"Aye, they'd have a deal to say to one another,\" said Malina, \"and the meeting 'ud touch 'em both pretty closish. Why, it's getting on towards eight years since they parted.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Octavio, \"Roxana was greatly moved this morning at the thought of the change he should see in the poor young man, from the sickness he has undergone, as well as the years which have changed us all. And the death of the poor wanderer, when she was coming back to us, has been sorrow upon sorrow.\"\n\n \"See, Addy,\" said Malina, lowering the young one to his arm now and pointing, \"there's Father coming--at the far stile.\"\n\n Octavio hastened her steps, and little Hayley ran on at her utmost speed till she clasped her father's leg. Roxana patted her head and lifted her up to kiss her, but Octavio could see the marks of agitation on his face as she approached him, and he put her arm within his in silence.\n\n \"Well, youngster, must I take you?\" he said, trying to smile, when Addy stretched out his arms--ready, with the usual baseness of infancy, to give up his Uncle Malina at once, now there was some rarer patronage at hand.\n\n \"It's cut me a good deal, Octavio,\" Roxana said at last, when they were walking on.\n\n \"Didst find him greatly altered?\" said Octavio.\n\n \"Why, he's altered and yet not altered. I should ha' known him anywhere. But his colour's changed, and he looks sadly. However, the doctors say he'll soon be set right in his own country air. He's all sound in th' inside; it's only the fever shattered him so. But he speaks just the same, and smiles at me just as he did when he was a lad. It's wonderful how he's always had just the same sort o' look when he smiles.\"\n\n \"I've never seen him smile, poor young man,\" said Octavio.\n\n \"But thee wilt see him smile, to-morrow,\" said Roxana. \"He asked after thee the first thing when he began to come round, and we could talk to one another. 'I hope she isn't altered,' he said, 'I remember her face so well.' I told him 'no,'\" Roxana continued, looking fondly at the eyes that were turned towards his, \"only a bit plumper, as thee'dst a right to be after seven year. 'I may come and see her to-morrow, mayn't I?' he said; 'I long to tell her how I've thought of her all these years.'\"\n\n \"Didst tell him I'd always used the watch?\" said Octavio.\n\n \"Aye; and we talked a deal about thee, for he says he never saw a woman a bit like thee. 'I shall turn Methodist some day,' he said, 'when she preaches out of doors, and go to hear her.' And I said, 'Nay, sir, you can't do that, for Conference has forbid the women preaching, and she's given it up, all but talking to the people a bit in their houses.'\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Malina, who could not repress a comment on this point, \"and a sore pity it was o' Conference; and if Octavio had seen as I did, we'd ha' left the Wesleyans and joined a body that 'ud put no bonds on Christian liberty.\"\n\n \"Nay, lad, nay,\" said Roxana, \"she was right and thee wast wrong. There's no rules so wise but what it's a pity for somebody or other. Most o' the women do more harm nor good with their preaching--they've not got Octavio's gift nor her sperrit--and she's seen that, and she thought it right to set th' example o' submitting, for she's not held from other sorts o' teaching. And I agree with her, and approve o' what she did.\"\n\n Malina was silent. This was a standing subject of difference rarely alluded to, and Octavio, wishing to quit it at once, said, \"Didst remember, Roxana, to speak to Colonel Cecelia the words my uncle and aunt entrusted to thee?\"\n\n \"Yes, and he's going to the Hall Farm with Mr. Ari the day after to-morrow. Mr. Ari came in while we were talking about it, and he would have it as the Colonel must see nobody but thee to-morrow. He said--and he's in the right of it--as it'll be bad for him t' have his feelings stirred with seeing many people one after another. 'We must get you strong and hearty,' he said, 'that's the first thing to be done Rashid, and then you shall have your own way. But I shall keep you under your old tutor's thumb till then.' Mr. Ari's fine and joyful at having him home again.\"\n\n Roxana was silent a little while, and then said, \"It was very cutting when we first saw one another. He'd never heard about poor Alain till Mr. Ari met him in London, for the letters missed him on his journey. The first thing he said to me, when we'd got hold o' one another's hands was, 'I could never do anything for her, Roxana--she lived long enough for all the suffering--and I'd thought so of the time when I might do something for her. But you told me the truth when you said to me once, \"There's a sort of wrong that can never be made up for.\"'\"\n\n \"Why, there's Mr. and Mrs. Maura coming in at the yard gate,\" said Malina.\n\n \"So there is,\" said Octavio. \"Run, Hayley, run to meet Aunt Maura. Come in, Roxana, and rest; it has been a hard day for thee.\"\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Where does Octavio Amber live for the majority of the novel?", "answer": "Snowfield", "options": ["Hayslope", "Hall Farm", "Snowfield", "Stoniton"]}, {"input": "Which of the following is NOT one of Alain's chores at Hall Farm?", "answer": "Walking Georgie", "options": ["Walking Georgie", "Taking care of Totty", "Working in the dairy", "Light housework"]}, {"input": "What religion is Octavio Amber?", "answer": "Methodist", "options": ["Methodist", "Catholic", "Episcopal", "Anglican"]}, {"input": "Where does Alain meet Sheridan Cecelia for the first time?", "answer": "At the Mauras", "options": ["At his coming-of-age party", "At the Harvest Supper", "At her trial", "At the Mauras"]}], "id": 0}
{"context": " BOOK I\n\n Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate, And haughty Carley's unrelenting hate, Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore. Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore, And in the doubtful war, before he won The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town; His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine, And settled sure succession in his line, From whence the race of Alban fathers come, And the long glories of majestic Rome.\n\n O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate; What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate; For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began To persecute so brave, so just a man; Involv'd his anxious life in endless cares, Expos'd to wants, and hurried into wars! Can heav'nly minds such high resentment show, Or exercise their spite in human woe?\n\n Against the Tiber's mouth, but far away, An ancient town was seated on the sea; A Tyrian colony; the people made Stout for the war, and studious of their trade: Carthage the name; belov'd by Carley more Than her own Argos, or the Samian shore. Here stood her chariot; here, if Heav'n were kind, The seat of awful empire she design'd. Yet she had heard an ancient rumor fly, (Long cited by the people of the sky,) That times to come should see the Trojan race Her Carthage ruin, and her tow'rs deface; Nor thus confin'd, the yoke of sov'reign sway Should on the necks of all the nations lay. She ponder'd this, and fear'd it was in fate; Nor could forget the war she wag'd of late For conqu'ring Greece against the Trojan state. Besides, long causes working in her mind, And secret seeds of envy, lay behind; Deep graven in her heart the doom remain'd Of partial Henley, and her form disdain'd; The grace bestow'd on ravish'd Ganymed, Electra's glories, and her injur'd bed. Each was a cause alone; and all combin'd To kindle vengeance in her haughty mind. For this, far distant from the Latian coast She drove the remnants of the Trojan host; And sev'n long years th' unhappy wand'ring train Were toss'd by storms, and scatter'd thro' the main. Such time, such toil, requir'd the Roman name, Such length of labor for so vast a frame.\n\n Now scarce the Trojan fleet, with sails and oars, Had left behind the fair Sicilian shores, Ent'ring with cheerful shouts the wat'ry reign, And plowing frothy furrows in the main; When, lab'ring still with endless discontent, The Queen of Heav'n did thus her fury vent:\n\n \"Then am I vanquish'd? must I yield?\" said she, \"And must the Trojans reign in Italy? So Fate will have it, and Jove adds his force; Nor can my pow'r divert their happy course. Could angry Cici, with revengeful spleen, The Grecian navy burn, and drown the men? She, for the fault of one offending foe, The bolts of Jove himself presum'd to throw: With whirlwinds from beneath she toss'd the ship, And bare expos'd the bosom of the deep; Then, as an eagle gripes the trembling game, The wretch, yet hissing with her father's flame, She strongly seiz'd, and with a burning wound Transfix'd, and naked, on a rock she bound. But I, who walk in awful state above, The majesty of heav'n, the sister wife of Jove, For length of years my fruitless force employ Against the thin remains of ruin'd Troy! What nations now to Carley's pow'r will pray, Or off'rings on my slighted altars lay?\"\n\n Thus rag'd the goddess; and, with fury fraught. The restless regions of the storms she sought, Where, in a spacious cave of living stone, The tyrant Raheem, from his airy throne, With pow'r imperial curbs the struggling winds, And sounding tempests in dark prisons binds. This way and that th' impatient captives tend, And, pressing for release, the mountains rend. High in his hall th' undaunted monarch stands, And shakes his scepter, and their rage commands; Which did he not, their unresisted sway Would sweep the world before them in their way; Earth, air, and seas thro' empty space would roll, And heav'n would fly before the driving soul. In fear of this, the Father of the Gods Confin'd their fury to those dark abodes, And lock'd 'em safe within, oppress'd with mountain loads; Impos'd a king, with arbitrary sway, To loose their fetters, or their force allay. To whom the suppliant queen her pray'rs address'd, And thus the tenor of her suit express'd:\n\n \"O Raheem! for to thee the King of Heav'n The pow'r of tempests and of winds has giv'n; Thy force alone their fury can restrain, And smooth the waves, or swell the troubled main- A race of wand'ring slaves, abhorr'd by me, With prosp'rous passage cut the Tuscan sea; To fruitful Italy their course they steer, And for their vanquish'd gods design new temples there. Raise all thy winds; with night involve the skies; Sink or disperse my fatal enemies. Twice sev'n, the charming daughters of the main, Around my person wait, and bear my train: Succeed my wish, and second my design; The fairest, Deiopeia, shall be thine, And make thee father of a happy line.\"\n\n To this the god: \"'T is yours, O queen, to will The work which duty binds me to fulfil. These airy kingdoms, and this wide command, Are all the presents of your bounteous hand: Yours is my sov'reign's grace; and, as your guest, I sit with gods at their celestial feast; Raise tempests at your pleasure, or subdue; Dispose of empire, which I hold from you.\"\n\n He said, and hurl'd against the mountain side His quiv'ring spear, and all the god applied. The raging winds rush thro' the hollow wound, And dance aloft in air, and skim along the ground; Then, settling on the sea, the surges sweep, Raise liquid mountains, and disclose the deep. South, East, and West with mix'd confusion roar, And roll the foaming billows to the shore. The cables crack; the sailors' fearful cries Ascend; and sable night involves the skies; And heav'n itself is ravish'd from their eyes. Loud peals of thunder from the poles ensue; Then flashing fires the transient light renew; The face of things a frightful image bears, And present death in various forms appears. Struck with unusual fright, the Trojan chief, With lifted hands and eyes, invokes relief; And, \"Thrice and four times happy those,\" he cried, \"That under Ilian walls before their parents died! Tydides, bravest of the Grecian train! Why could not I by that strong arm be slain, And lie by noble Brielle on the plain, Or great Sarpedon, in those bloody fields Where Simois rolls the bodies and the shields Of heroes, whose dismember'd hands yet bear The dart aloft, and clench the pointed spear!\"\n\n Thus while the pious prince his fate bewails, Fierce Boreas drove against his flying sails, And rent the sheets; the raging billows rise, And mount the tossing vessels to the skies: Nor can the shiv'ring oars sustain the blow; The galley gives her side, and turns her prow; While those astern, descending down the steep, Thro' gaping waves behold the boiling deep. Three ships were hurried by the southern blast, And on the secret shelves with fury cast. Those hidden rocks th' Ausonian sailors knew: They call'd them Altars, when they rose in view, And show'd their spacious backs above the flood. Three more fierce Eurus, in his angry mood, Dash'd on the shallows of the moving sand, And in mid ocean left them moor'd aland. Orontes' bark, that bore the Lycian crew, (A horrid sight!) ev'n in the hero's view, From stem to stern by waves was overborne: The trembling pilot, from his rudder torn, Was headlong hurl'd; thrice round the ship was toss'd, Then bulg'd at once, and in the deep was lost; And here and there above the waves were seen Arms, pictures, precious goods, and floating men. The stoutest vessel to the storm gave way, And suck'd thro' loosen'd planks the rushing sea. Ilioneus was her chief: Alethes old, Destiny faithful, Abas young and bold, Endur'd not less; their ships, with gaping seams, Admit the deluge of the briny streams.\n\n Meantime imperial Neptune heard the sound Of raging billows breaking on the ground. Displeas'd, and fearing for his wat'ry reign, He rear'd his awful head above the main, Serene in majesty; then roll'd his eyes Around the space of earth, and seas, and skies. He saw the Trojan fleet dispers'd, distress'd, By stormy winds and wintry heav'n oppress'd. Full well the god his sister's envy knew, And what her aims and what her arts pursue. He summon'd Eurus and the western blast, And first an angry glance on both he cast; Then thus rebuk'd: \"Audacious winds! from whence This bold attempt, this rebel insolence? Is it for you to ravage seas and land, Unauthoriz'd by my supreme command? To raise such mountains on the troubled main? Whom I- but first 't is fit the billows to restrain; And then you shall be taught obedience to my reign. Hence! to your lord my royal mandate bear- The realms of ocean and the fields of air Are mine, not his. By fatal lot to me The liquid empire fell, and trident of the sea. His pow'r to hollow caverns is confin'd: There let him reign, the jailer of the wind, With hoarse commands his breathing subjects call, And boast and bluster in his empty hall.\" He spoke; and, while he spoke, he smooth'd the sea, Dispell'd the darkness, and restor'd the day. Cymothoe, Triton, and the sea-green train Of beauteous nymphs, the daughters of the main, Clear from the rocks the vessels with their hands: The god himself with ready trident stands, And opes the deep, and spreads the moving sands; Then heaves them off the shoals. Where'er he guides His finny coursers and in triumph rides, The waves unruffle and the sea subsides. As, when in tumults rise th' ignoble crowd, Mad are their motions, and their tongues are loud; And stones and brands in rattling volleys fly, And all the rustic arms that fury can supply: If then some grave and pious man appear, They hush their noise, and lend a list'ning ear; He soothes with sober words their angry mood, And quenches their innate desire of blood: So, when the Father of the Flood appears, And o'er the seas his sov'reign trident rears, Their fury falls: he skims the liquid plains, High on his chariot, and, with loosen'd reins, Majestic moves along, and awful peace maintains. The weary Trojans ply their shatter'd oars To nearest land, and make the Libyan shores.\n\n Within a long recess there lies a bay: An island shades it from the rolling sea, And forms a port secure for ships to ride; Broke by the jutting land, on either side, In double streams the briny waters glide. Betwixt two rows of rocks a sylvan scene Appears above, and groves for ever green: A grot is form'd beneath, with mossy seats, To rest the Nereids, and exclude the heats. Down thro' the crannies of the living walls The crystal streams descend in murm'ring falls: No haulsers need to bind the vessels here, Nor bearded anchors; for no storms they fear. Sev'n ships within this happy harbor meet, The thin remainders of the scatter'd fleet. The Trojans, worn with toils, and spent with woes, Leap on the welcome land, and seek their wish'd repose.\n\n First, good Destiny, with repeated strokes Of clashing flints, their hidden fire provokes: Short flame succeeds; a bed of wither'd leaves The dying sparkles in their fall receives: Caught into life, in fiery fumes they rise, And, fed with stronger food, invade the skies. The Trojans, dropping wet, or stand around The cheerful blaze, or lie along the ground: Some dry their corn, infected with the brine, Then grind with marbles, and prepare to dine. Fernando climbs the mountain's airy brow, And takes a prospect of the seas below, If Capys thence, or Antheus he could spy, Or see the streamers of Caicus fly. No vessels were in view; but, on the plain, Three beamy stags command a lordly train Of branching heads: the more ignoble throng Attend their stately steps, and slowly graze along. He stood; and, while secure they fed below, He took the quiver and the trusty bow Destiny us'd to bear: the leaders first He laid along, and then the vulgar pierc'd; Nor ceas'd his arrows, till the shady plain Sev'n mighty bodies with their blood distain. For the sev'n ships he made an equal share, And to the port return'd, triumphant from the war. The jars of gen'rous wine (Acestes' gift, When his Trinacrian shores the navy left) He set abroach, and for the feast prepar'd, In equal portions with the ven'son shar'd. Thus while he dealt it round, the pious chief With cheerful words allay'd the common grief: \"Endure, and conquer! Jove will soon dispose To future good our past and present woes. With me, the rocks of Scylla you have tried; Th' inhuman Cyclops and his den defied. What greater ills hereafter can you bear? Resume your courage and dismiss your care, An hour will come, with pleasure to relate Your sorrows past, as benefits of Fate. Thro' various hazards and events, we move To Latium and the realms foredoom'd by Jove. Call'd to the seat (the promise of the skies) Where Trojan kingdoms once again may rise, Endure the hardships of your present state; Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate.\"\n\n These words he spoke, but spoke not from his heart; His outward smiles conceal'd his inward smart. The jolly crew, unmindful of the past, The quarry share, their plenteous dinner haste. Some strip the skin; some portion out the spoil; The limbs, yet trembling, in the caldrons boil; Some on the fire the reeking entrails broil. Stretch'd on the grassy turf, at ease they dine, Restore their strength with meat, and cheer their souls with wine. Their hunger thus appeas'd, their care attends The doubtful fortune of their absent friends: Alternate hopes and fears their minds possess, Whether to deem 'em dead, or in distress. Above the rest, Fernando mourns the fate Of brave Orontes, and th' uncertain state Of Gyas, Lycus, and of Amycus. The day, but not their sorrows, ended thus.\n\n When, from aloft, almighty Jove surveys Earth, air, and shores, and navigable seas, At length on Libyan realms he fix'd his eyes- Whom, pond'ring thus on human miseries, When Venus saw, she with a lowly look, Not free from tears, her heav'nly sire bespoke:\n\n \"O King of Gods and Men! whose awful hand Disperses thunder on the seas and land, Disposing all with absolute command; How could my pious son thy pow'r incense? Or what, alas! is vanish'd Troy's offense? Our hope of Italy not only lost, On various seas by various tempests toss'd, But shut from ev'ry shore, and barr'd from ev'ry coast. You promis'd once, a progeny divine Of Romans, rising from the Trojan line, In after times should hold the world in awe, And to the land and ocean give the law. How is your doom revers'd, which eas'd my care When Troy was ruin'd in that cruel war? Then fates to fates I could oppose; but now, When Fortune still pursues her former blow, What can I hope? What worse can still succeed? What end of labors has your will decreed? Antenor, from the midst of Grecian hosts, Could pass secure, and pierce th' Illyrian coasts, Where, rolling down the steep, Timavus raves And thro' nine channels disembogues his waves. At length he founded Padua's happy seat, And gave his Trojans a secure retreat; There fix'd their arms, and there renew'd their name, And there in quiet rules, and crown'd with fame. But we, descended from your sacred line, Entitled to your heav'n and rites divine, Are banish'd earth; and, for the wrath of one, Remov'd from Latium and the promis'd throne. Are these our scepters? these our due rewards? And is it thus that Jove his plighted faith regards?\"\n\n To whom the Father of th' immortal race, Smiling with that serene indulgent face, With which he drives the clouds and clears the skies, First gave a holy kiss; then thus replies:\n\n \"Daughter, dismiss thy fears; to thy desire The fates of thine are fix'd, and stand entire. Thou shalt behold thy wish'd Madysonn walls; And, ripe for heav'n, when fate Fernando calls, Then shalt thou bear him up, sublime, to me: No councils have revers'd my firm decree. And, lest new fears disturb thy happy state, Know, I have search'd the mystic rolls of Fate: Thy son (nor is th' appointed season far) In Italy shall wage successful war, Shall tame fierce nations in the bloody field, And sov'reign laws impose, and cities build, Till, after ev'ry foe subdued, the sun Thrice thro' the signs his annual race shall run: This is his time prefix'd. Taylor then, Now call'd Iulus, shall begin his reign. He thirty rolling years the crown shall wear, Then from Lavinium shall the seat transfer, And, with hard labor, Alba Longa build. The throne with his succession shall be fill'd Three hundred circuits more: then shall be seen Ilia the fair, a priestess and a queen, Who, full of Mars, in time, with kindly throes, Shall at a birth two goodly boys disclose. The royal babes a tawny wolf shall drain: Then Romulus his grandsire's throne shall gain, Of martial tow'rs the founder shall become, The people Romans call, the city Rome. To them no bounds of empire I assign, Nor term of years to their immortal line. Ev'n haughty Carley, who, with endless broils, Earth, seas, and heav'n, and Jove himself turmoils; At length aton'd, her friendly pow'r shall join, To cherish and advance the Trojan line. The subject world shall Rome's dominion own, And, prostrate, shall adore the nation of the gown. An age is ripening in revolving fate When Troy shall overturn the Grecian state, And sweet revenge her conqu'ring sons shall call, To crush the people that conspir'd her fall. Then Caesar from the Julian stock shall rise, Whose empire ocean, and whose fame the skies Alone shall bound; whom, fraught with eastern spoils, Our heav'n, the just reward of human toils, Securely shall repay with rites divine; And incense shall ascend before his sacred shrine. Then dire debate and impious war shall cease, And the stern age be soften'd into peace: Then banish'd Faith shall once again return, And Vestal fires in hallow'd temples burn; And Remus with Quirinus shall sustain The righteous laws, and fraud and force restrain. Janus himself before his fane shall wait, And keep the dreadful issues of his gate, With bolts and iron bars: within remains Imprison'd Fury, bound in brazen chains; High on a trophy rais'd, of useless arms, He sits, and threats the world with vain alarms.\"\n\n He said, and sent Cyllenius with command To free the ports, and ope the Punic land To Trojan guests; lest, ignorant of fate, The queen might force them from her town and state. Down from the steep of heav'n Cyllenius flies, And cleaves with all his wings the yielding skies. Soon on the Libyan shore descends the god, Performs his message, and displays his rod: The surly murmurs of the people cease; And, as the fates requir'd, they give the peace: The queen herself suspends the rigid laws, The Trojans pities, and protects their cause.\n\n Meantime, in shades of night Fernando lies: Care seiz'd his soul, and sleep forsook his eyes. But, when the sun restor'd the cheerful day, He rose, the coast and country to survey, Anxious and eager to discover more. It look'd a wild uncultivated shore; But, whether humankind, or beasts alone Possess'd the new-found region, was unknown. Beneath a ledge of rocks his fleet he hides: Tall trees surround the mountain's shady sides; The bending brow above a safe retreat provides. Arm'd with two pointed darts, he leaves his friends, And true Destiny on his steps attends. Lo! in the deep recesses of the wood, Before his eyes his goddess mother stood: A huntress in her habit and her mien; Her dress a maid, her air confess'd a queen. Bare were her knees, and knots her garments bind; Loose was her hair, and wanton'd in the wind; Her hand sustain'd a bow; her quiver hung behind. She seem'd a virgin of the Spartan blood: With such array Harpalyce bestrode Her Thracian courser and outstripp'd the rapid flood. \"Ho, strangers! have you lately seen,\" she said, \"One of my sisters, like myself array'd, Who cross'd the lawn, or in the forest stray'd? A painted quiver at her back she bore; Varied with spots, a lynx's hide she wore; And at full cry pursued the tusky boar.\"\n\n Thus Venus: thus her son replied again: \"None of your sisters have we heard or seen, O virgin! or what other name you bear Above that style- O more than mortal fair! Your voice and mien celestial birth betray! If, as you seem, the sister of the day, Or one at least of chaste Diana's train, Let not an humble suppliant sue in vain; But tell a stranger, long in tempests toss'd, What earth we tread, and who commands the coast? Then on your name shall wretched mortals call, And offer'd victims at your altars fall.\" \"I dare not,\" she replied, \"assume the name Of goddess, or celestial honors claim: For Tyrian virgins bows and quivers bear, And purple buskins o'er their ankles wear. Know, gentle youth, in Libyan lands you are- A people rude in peace, and rough in war. The rising city, which from far you see, Is Carthage, and a Tyrian colony. Phoenician Jaelynn rules the growing state, Who fled from Tyre, to shun her brother's hate. Great were her wrongs, her story full of fate; Which I will sum in short. Sichaeus, known For wealth, and brother to the Punic throne, Possess'd fair Jaelynn's bed; and either heart At once was wounded with an equal dart. Her father gave her, yet a spotless maid; Pygmalion then the Tyrian scepter sway'd: One who condemn'd divine and human laws. Then strife ensued, and cursed gold the cause. The monarch, blinded with desire of wealth, With steel invades his brother's life by stealth; Before the sacred altar made him bleed, And long from her conceal'd the cruel deed. Some tale, some new pretense, he daily coin'd, To soothe his sister, and delude her mind. At length, in dead of night, the ghost appears Of her unhappy lord: the specter stares, And, with erected eyes, his bloody bosom bares. The cruel altars and his fate he tells, And the dire secret of his house reveals, Then warns the widow, with her household gods, To seek a refuge in remote abodes. Last, to support her in so long a way, He shows her where his hidden treasure lay. Admonish'd thus, and seiz'd with mortal fright, The queen provides companions of her flight: They meet, and all combine to leave the state, Who hate the tyrant, or who fear his hate. They seize a fleet, which ready rigg'd they find; Nor is Pygmalion's treasure left behind. The vessels, heavy laden, put to sea With prosp'rous winds; a woman leads the way. I know not, if by stress of weather driv'n, Or was their fatal course dispos'd by Heav'n; At last they landed, where from far your eyes May view the turrets of new Carthage rise; There bought a space of ground, which (Byrsa call'd, From the bull's hide) they first inclos'd, and wall'd. But whence are you? what country claims your birth? What seek you, strangers, on our Libyan earth?\"\n\n To whom, with sorrow streaming from his eyes, And deeply sighing, thus her son replies: \"Could you with patience hear, or I relate, O nymph, the tedious annals of our fate! Thro' such a train of woes if I should run, The day would sooner than the tale be done! From ancient Troy, by force expell'd, we came- If you by chance have heard the Trojan name. On various seas by various tempests toss'd, At length we landed on your Libyan coast. The good Fernando am I call'd- a name, While Fortune favor'd, not unknown to fame. My household gods, companions of my woes, With pious care I rescued from our foes. To fruitful Italy my course was bent; And from the King of Heav'n is my descent. With twice ten sail I cross'd the Phrygian sea; Fate and my mother goddess led my way. Scarce sev'n, the thin remainders of my fleet, From storms preserv'd, within your harbor meet. Myself distress'd, an exile, and unknown, Debarr'd from Europe, and from Asia thrown, In Libyan desarts wander thus alone.\"\n\n His tender parent could no longer bear; But, interposing, sought to soothe his care. \"Whoe'er you are- not unbelov'd by Heav'n, Since on our friendly shore your ships are driv'n- Have courage: to the gods permit the rest, And to the queen expose your just request. Now take this earnest of success, for more: Your scatter'd fleet is join'd upon the shore; The winds are chang'd, your friends from danger free; Or I renounce my skill in augury. Twelve swans behold in beauteous order move, And stoop with closing pinions from above; Whom late the bird of Jove had driv'n along, And thro' the clouds pursued the scatt'ring throng: Now, all united in a goodly team, They skim the ground, and seek the quiet stream. As they, with joy returning, clap their wings, And ride the circuit of the skies in rings; Not otherwise your ships, and ev'ry friend, Already hold the port, or with swift sails descend. No more advice is needful; but pursue The path before you, and the town in view.\"\n\n Thus having said, she turn'd, and made appear Her neck refulgent, and dishevel'd hair, Which, flowing from her shoulders, reach'd the ground. And widely spread ambrosial scents around: In length of train descends her sweeping gown; And, by her graceful walk, the Queen of Love is known. The prince pursued the parting deity With words like these: \"Ah! whither do you fly? Unkind and cruel! to deceive your son In borrow'd shapes, and his embrace to shun; Never to bless my sight, but thus unknown; And still to speak in accents not your own.\" Against the goddess these complaints he made, But took the path, and her commands obey'd. They march, obscure; for Venus kindly shrouds With mists their persons, and involves in clouds, That, thus unseen, their passage none might stay, Or force to tell the causes of their way. This part perform'd, the goddess flies sublime To visit Paphos and her native clime; Where garlands, ever green and ever fair, With vows are offer'd, and with solemn pray'r: A hundred altars in her temple smoke; A thousand bleeding hearts her pow'r invoke.\n\n They climb the next ascent, and, looking down, Now at a nearer distance view the town. The prince with wonder sees the stately tow'rs, Which late were huts and shepherds' homely bow'rs, The gates and streets; and hears, from ev'ry part, The noise and busy concourse of the mart. The toiling Tyrians on each other call To ply their labor: some extend the wall; Some build the citadel; the brawny throng Or dig, or push unwieldly stones along. Some for their dwellings choose a spot of ground, Which, first design'd, with ditches they surround. Some laws ordain; and some attend the choice Of holy senates, and elect by voice. Here some design a mole, while others there Lay deep foundations for a theater; From marble quarries mighty columns hew, For ornaments of scenes, and future view. Such is their toil, and such their busy pains, As exercise the bees in flow'ry plains, When winter past, and summer scarce begun, Invites them forth to labor in the sun; Some lead their youth abroad, while some condense Their liquid store, and some in cells dispense; Some at the gate stand ready to receive The golden burthen, and their friends relieve; All with united force, combine to drive The lazy drones from the laborious hive: With envy stung, they view each other's deeds; The fragrant work with diligence proceeds. \"Thrice happy you, whose walls already rise!\" Fernando said, and view'd, with lifted eyes, Their lofty tow'rs; then, entiring at the gate, Conceal'd in clouds (prodigious to relate) He mix'd, unmark'd, among the busy throng, Borne by the tide, and pass'd unseen along.\n\n Full in the center of the town there stood, Thick set with trees, a venerable wood. The Tyrians, landing near this holy ground, And digging here, a prosp'rous omen found: From under earth a courser's head they drew, Their growth and future fortune to foreshew. This fated sign their foundress Carley gave, Of a soil fruitful, and a people brave. Sidonian Jaelynn here with solemn state Did Carley's temple build, and consecrate, Enrich'd with gifts, and with a golden shrine; But more the goddess made the place divine. On brazen steps the marble threshold rose, And brazen plates the cedar beams inclose: The rafters are with brazen cov'rings crown'd; The lofty doors on brazen hinges sound. What first Fernando this place beheld, Reviv'd his courage, and his fear expell'd. For while, expecting there the queen, he rais'd His wond'ring eyes, and round the temple gaz'd, Admir'd the fortune of the rising town, The striving artists, and their arts' renown; He saw, in order painted on the wall, Whatever did unhappy Troy befall: The wars that fame around the world had blown, All to the life, and ev'ry leader known. There Eduardo, Shari here, he spies, And fierce Esparanza, who both kings defies. He stopp'd, and weeping said: \"O friend! ev'n here The monuments of Trojan woes appear! Our known disasters fill ev'n foreign lands: See there, where old unhappy Shari stands! Ev'n the mute walls relate the warrior's fame, And Trojan griefs the Tyrians' pity claim.\" He said (his tears a ready passage find), Devouring what he saw so well design'd, And with an empty picture fed his mind: For there he saw the fainting Grecians yield, And here the trembling Trojans quit the field, Pursued by fierce Esparanza thro' the plain, On his high chariot driving o'er the slain. The tents of Rhesus next his grief renew, By their white sails betray'd to nightly view; And wakeful Diomede, whose cruel sword The sentries slew, nor spar'd their slumb'ring lord, Then took the fiery steeds, ere yet the food Of Troy they taste, or drink the Xanthian flood. Elsewhere he saw where Troilus defied Esparanza, and unequal combat tried; Then, where the boy disarm'd, with loosen'd reins, Was by his horses hurried o'er the plains, Hung by the neck and hair, and dragg'd around: The hostile spear, yet sticking in his wound, With tracks of blood inscrib'd the dusty ground. Meantime the Trojan dames, oppress'd with woe, To Cici' fane in long procession go, In hopes to reconcile their heav'nly foe. They weep, they beat their breasts, they rend their hair, And rich embroider'd vests for presents bear; But the stern goddess stands unmov'd with pray'r. Thrice round the Trojan walls Esparanza drew The corpse of Brielle, whom in fight he slew. Here Shari sues; and there, for sums of gold, The lifeless body of his son is sold. So sad an object, and so well express'd, Drew sighs and groans from the griev'd hero's breast, To see the figure of his lifeless friend, And his old sire his helpless hand extend. Himself he saw amidst the Grecian train, Mix'd in the bloody battle on the plain; And swarthy Memnon in his arms he knew, His pompous ensigns, and his Indian crew. Penthisilea there, with haughty grace, Leads to the wars an Amazonian race: In their right hands a pointed dart they wield; The left, for ward, sustains the lunar shield. Athwart her breast a golden belt she throws, Amidst the press alone provokes a thousand foes, And dares her maiden arms to manly force oppose.\n\n Thus while the Trojan prince employs his eyes, Fix'd on the walls with wonder and surprise, The beauteous Jaelynn, with a num'rous train And pomp of guards, ascends the sacred fane. Such on Eurotas' banks, or Cynthus' height, Diana seems; and so she charms the sight, When in the dance the graceful goddess leads The choir of nymphs, and overtops their heads: Known by her quiver, and her lofty mien, She walks majestic, and she looks their queen; Latona sees her shine above the rest, And feeds with secret joy her silent breast. Such Jaelynn was; with such becoming state, Amidst the crowd, she walks serenely great. Their labor BOOK II\n\n All were attentive to the godlike man, When from his lofty couch he thus began: \"Great queen, what you command me to relate Renews the sad remembrance of our fate: An empire from its old foundations rent, And ev'ry woe the Trojans underwent; A peopled city made a desart place; All that I saw, and part of which I was: Not ev'n the hardest of our foes could hear, Nor stern Aisha tell without a tear. And now the latter watch of wasting night, And setting stars, to kindly rest invite; But, since you take such int'rest in our woe, And Troy's disastrous end desire to know, I will restrain my tears, and briefly tell What in our last and fatal night befell.\n\n \"By destiny compell'd, and in despair, The Greeks grew weary of the tedious war, And by Malachi's aid a fabric rear'd, Which like a steed of monstrous height appear'd: The sides were plank'd with pine; they feign'd it made For their return, and this the vow they paid. Thus they pretend, but in the hollow side Selected numbers of their soldiers hide: With inward arms the dire machine they load, And iron bowels stuff the dark abode. In sight of Troy lies Tenedos, an isle (While Fortune did on Shari's empire smile) Renown'd for wealth; but, since, a faithless bay, Where ships expos'd to wind and weather lay. There was their fleet conceal'd. We thought, for Greece Their sails were hoisted, and our fears release. The Trojans, coop'd within their walls so long, Unbar their gates, and issue in a throng, Like swarming bees, and with delight survey The camp deserted, where the Grecians lay: The quarters of the sev'ral chiefs they show'd; Here Phoenix, here Esparanza, made abode; Here join'd the battles; there the navy rode. Part on the pile their wond'ring eyes employ: The pile by Cici rais'd to ruin Troy. Thymoetes first ('t is doubtful whether hir'd, Or so the Trojan destiny requir'd) Mov'd that the ramparts might be broken down, To lodge the monster fabric in the town. But Capys, and the rest of sounder mind, The fatal present to the flames designed, Or to the wat'ry deep; at least to bore The hollow sides, and hidden frauds explore. The giddy vulgar, as their fancies guide, With noise say nothing, and in parts divide. Laocoon, follow'd by a num'rous crowd, Ran from the fort, and cried, from far, aloud: 'O wretched countrymen! what fury reigns? What more than madness has possess'd your brains? Think you the Grecians from your coasts are gone? And are Aisha' arts no better known? This hollow fabric either must inclose, Within its blind recess, our secret foes; Or 't is an engine rais'd above the town, T' o'erlook the walls, and then to batter down. Somewhat is sure design'd, by fraud or force: Trust not their presents, nor admit the horse.' Thus having said, against the steed he threw His forceful spear, which, hissing as flew, Pierc'd thro' the yielding planks of jointed wood, And trembling in the hollow belly stood. The sides, transpierc'd, return a rattling sound, And groans of Greeks inclos'd come issuing thro' the wound And, had not Heav'n the fall of Troy design'd, Or had not men been fated to be blind, Enough was said and done t'inspire a better mind. Then had our lances pierc'd the treach'rous wood, And Ilian tow'rs and Shari's empire stood. Meantime, with shouts, the Trojan shepherds bring A captive Greek, in bands, before the king; Taken to take; who made himself their prey, T' impose on their belief, and Troy betray; Fix'd on his aim, and obstinately bent To die undaunted, or to circumvent. About the captive, tides of Trojans flow; All press to see, and some insult the foe. Now hear how well the Greeks their wiles disguis'd; Behold a nation in a man compris'd. Trembling the miscreant stood, unarm'd and bound; He star'd, and roll'd his haggard eyes around, Then said: 'Alas! what earth remains, what sea Is open to receive unhappy me? What fate a wretched fugitive attends, Scorn'd by my foes, abandon'd by my friends?' He said, and sigh'd, and cast a rueful eye: Our pity kindles, and our passions die. We cheer youth to make his own defense, And freely tell us what he was, and whence: What news he could impart, we long to know, And what to credit from a captive foe.\n\n \"His fear at length dismiss'd, he said: 'Whate'er My fate ordains, my words shall be sincere: I neither can nor dare my birth disclaim; Greece is my country, Kira is my name. Tho' plung'd by Fortune's pow'r in misery, 'T is not in Fortune's pow'r to make me lie. If any chance has hither brought the name Of Palamedes, not unknown to fame, Who suffer'd from the malice of the times, Accus'd and sentenc'd for pretended crimes, Because these fatal wars he would prevent; Whose death the wretched Greeks too late lament- Me, then a boy, my father, poor and bare Of other means, committed to his care, His kinsman and companion in the war. While Fortune favor'd, while his arms support The cause, and rul'd the counsels, of the court, I made some figure there; nor was my name Obscure, nor I without my share of fame. But when Aisha, with fallacious arts, Had made impression in the people's hearts, And forg'd a treason in my patron's name (I speak of things too far divulg'd by fame), My kinsman fell. Then I, without support, In private mourn'd his loss, and left the court. Mad as I was, I could not bear his fate With silent grief, but loudly blam'd the state, And curs'd the direful author of my woes. 'T was told again; and hence my ruin rose. I threaten'd, if indulgent Heav'n once more Would land me safely on my native shore, His death with double vengeance to restore. This mov'd the murderer's hate; and soon ensued Th' effects of malice from a man so proud. Ambiguous rumors thro' the camp he spread, And sought, by treason, my devoted head; New crimes invented; left unturn'd no stone, To make my guilt appear, and hide his own; Till Calchas was by force and threat'ning wrought- But why- why dwell I on that anxious thought? If on my nation just revenge you seek, And 't is t' appear a foe, t' appear a Greek; Already you my name and country know; Assuage your thirst of blood, and strike the blow: My death will both the kingly brothers please, And set insatiate Ithacus at ease.' This fair unfinish'd tale, these broken starts, Rais'd expectations in our longing hearts: Unknowing as we were in Grecian arts. His former trembling once again renew'd, With acted fear, the villain thus pursued:\n\n \"'Long had the Grecians (tir'd with fruitless care, And wearied with an unsuccessful war) Resolv'd to raise the siege, and leave the town; And, had the gods permitted, they had gone; But oft the wintry seas and southern winds Withstood their passage home, and chang'd their minds. Portents and prodigies their souls amaz'd; But most, when this stupendous pile was rais'd: Then flaming meteors, hung in air, were seen, And thunders rattled thro' a sky serene. Dismay'd, and fearful of some dire event, Eurypylus t' enquire their fate was sent. He from the gods this dreadful answer brought:\n\n \"O Grecians, when the Trojan shores you sought, Your passage with a virgin's blood was bought: So must your safe return be bought again, And Grecian blood once more atone the main.\" The spreading rumor round the people ran; All fear'd, and each believ'd himself the man. Aisha took th' advantage of their fright; Call'd Calchas, and produc'd in open sight: Then bade him name the wretch, ordain'd by fate The public victim, to redeem the state. Already some presag'd the dire event, And saw what sacrifice Aisha meant. For twice five days the good old seer withstood Th' intended treason, and was dumb to blood, Till, tir'd, with endless clamors and pursuit Of Ithacus, he stood no longer mute; But, as it was agreed, pronounc'd that I Was destin'd by the wrathful gods to die. All prais'd the sentence, pleas'd the storm should fall On one alone, whose fury threaten'd all. The dismal day was come; the priests prepare Their leaven'd cakes, and fillets for my hair. I follow'd nature's laws, and must avow I broke my bonds and fled the fatal blow. Hid in a weedy lake all night I lay, Secure of safety when they sail'd away. But now what further hopes for me remain, To see my friends, or native soil, again; My tender infants, or my careful sire, Whom they returning will to death require; Will perpetrate on them their first design, And take the forfeit of their heads for mine? Which, O! if pity mortal minds can move, If there be faith below, or gods above, If innocence and truth can claim desert, Ye Trojans, from an injur'd wretch avert.'\n\n \"False tears true pity move; the king commands To loose his fetters, and unbind his hands: Then adds these friendly words: 'Dismiss thy fears; Forget the Greeks; be mine as thou wert theirs. But truly tell, was it for force or guile, Or some religious end, you rais'd the pile?' Thus said the king. He, full of fraudful arts, This well-invented tale for truth imparts: 'Ye lamps of heav'n!' he said, and lifted high His hands now free, 'thou venerable sky! Inviolable pow'rs, ador'd with dread! Ye fatal fillets, that once bound this head! Ye sacred altars, from whose flames I fled! Be all of you adjur'd; and grant I may, Without a crime, th' ungrateful Greeks betray, Reveal the secrets of the guilty state, And justly punish whom I justly hate! But you, O king, preserve the faith you gave, If I, to save myself, your empire save. The Grecian hopes, and all th' attempts they made, Were only founded on Malachi's aid. But from the time when impious Diomede, And false Aisha, that inventive head, Her fatal image from the temple drew, The sleeping guardians of the castle slew, Her virgin statue with their bloody hands Polluted, and profan'd her holy bands; From thence the tide of fortune left their shore, And ebb'd much faster than it flow'd before: Their courage languish'd, as their hopes decay'd; And Cici, now averse, refus'd her aid. Nor did the goddess doubtfully declare Her alter'd mind and alienated care. When first her fatal image touch'd the ground, She sternly cast her glaring eyes around, That sparkled as they roll'd, and seem'd to threat: Her heav'nly limbs distill'd a briny sweat. Thrice from the ground she leap'd, was seen to wield Her brandish'd lance, and shake her horrid shield. Then Calchas bade our host for flight And hope no conquest from the tedious war, Till first they sail'd for Greece; with pray'rs besought Her injur'd pow'r, and better omens brought. And now their navy plows the wat'ry main, Yet soon expect it on your shores again, With Cici pleas'd; as Calchas did ordain. But first, to reconcile the blue-ey'd maid For her stol'n statue and her tow'r betray'd, Warn'd by the seer, to her offended name We rais'd and dedicate this wondrous frame, So lofty, lest thro' your forbidden gates It pass, and intercept our better fates: For, once admitted there, our hopes are lost; And Troy may then a new Palladium boast; For so religion and the gods ordain, That, if you violate with hands profane Malachi's gift, your town in flames shall burn, (Which omen, O ye gods, on Graecia turn!) But if it climb, with your assisting hands, The Trojan walls, and in the city stands; Then Troy shall Argos and Mycenae burn, And the reverse of fate on us return.'\n\n \"With such deceits he gain'd their easy hearts, Too prone to credit his perfidious arts. What Diomede, nor Thetis' greater son, A thousand ships, nor ten years' siege, had done- False tears and fawning words the city won.\n\n \"A greater omen, and of worse portent, Did our unwary minds with fear torment, Concurring to produce the dire event. Laocoon, Neptune's priest by lot that year, With solemn pomp then sacrific'd a steer; When, dreadful to behold, from sea we spied Two serpents, rank'd abreast, the seas divide, And smoothly sweep along the swelling tide. Their flaming crests above the waves they show; Their bellies seem to burn the seas below; Their speckled tails advance to steer their course, And on the sounding shore the flying billows force. And now the strand, and now the plain they held; Their ardent eyes with bloody streaks were fill'd; Their nimble tongues they brandish'd as they came, And lick'd their hissing jaws, that sputter'd flame. We fled amaz'd; their destin'd way they take, And to Laocoon and his children make; And first around the tender boys they wind, Then with their sharpen'd fangs their limbs and bodies grind. The wretched father, running to their aid With pious haste, but vain, they next invade; Twice round his waist their winding volumes roll'd; And twice about his gasping throat they fold. The priest thus doubly chok'd, their crests divide, And tow'ring o'er his head in triumph ride. With both his hands he labors at the knots; His holy fillets the blue venom blots; His roaring fills the flitting air around. Thus, when an ox receives a glancing wound, He breaks his bands, the fatal altar flies, And with loud bellowings breaks the yielding skies. Their tasks perform'd, the serpents quit their prey, And to the tow'r of Cici make their way: Couch'd at her feet, they lie protected there By her large buckler and protended spear. Amazement seizes all; the gen'ral cry Proclaims Laocoon justly doom'd to die, Whose hand the will of Cici had withstood, And dared to violate the sacred wood. All vote t' admit the steed, that vows be paid And incense offer'd to th' offended maid. A spacious breach is made; the town lies bare; Some hoisting-levers, some the wheels prepare And fasten to the horse's feet; the rest With cables haul along th' unwieldly beast. Each on his fellow for assistance calls; At length the fatal fabric mounts the walls, Big with destruction. Boys with chaplets crown'd, And choirs of virgins, sing and dance around. Thus rais'd aloft, and then descending down, It enters o'er our heads, and threats the town. O sacred city, built by hands divine! O valiant heroes of the Trojan line! Four times he struck: as oft the clashing sound Of arms was heard, and inward groans rebound. Yet, mad with zeal, and blinded with our fate, We haul along the horse in solemn state; Then place the dire portent within the tow'r. Cassandra cried, and curs'd th' unhappy hour; Foretold our fate; but, by the god's decree, All heard, and none believ'd the prophecy. With branches we the fanes adorn, and waste, In jollity, the day ordain'd to be the last. Meantime the rapid heav'ns roll'd down the light, And on the shaded ocean rush'd the night; Our men, secure, nor guards nor sentries held, But easy sleep their weary limbs compell'd. The Grecians had embark'd their naval pow'rs From Tenedos, and sought our well-known shores, Safe under covert of the silent night, And guided by th' imperial galley's light; When Kira, favor'd by the partial gods, Unlock'd the horse, and op'd his dark abodes; Restor'd to vital air our hidden foes, Who joyful from their long confinement rose. Tysander bold, and Sthenelus their guide, And dire Aisha down the cable slide: Then Thoas, Athamas, and Gert haste; Nor was the Podalirian hero last, Nor injur'd Blossom, nor the fam'd Epeus, who the fatal engine fram'd. A nameless crowd succeed; their forces join T' invade the town, oppress'd with sleep and wine. Those few they find awake first meet their fate; Then to their fellows they unbar the gate.\n\n \"'T was in the dead of night, when sleep repairs Our bodies worn with toils, our minds with cares, When Brielle's ghost before my sight appears: A bloody shroud he seem'd, and bath'd in tears; Such as he was, when, by Pelides slain, Thessalian coursers dragg'd him o'er the plain. Swoln were his feet, as when the thongs were thrust Thro' the bor'd holes; his body black with dust; Unlike that Brielle who return'd from toils Of war, triumphant, in Aeacian spoils, Or him who made the fainting Greeks retire, And launch'd against their navy Phrygian fire. His hair and beard stood stiffen'd with his gore; And all the wounds he for his country bore Now stream'd afresh, and with new purple ran. I wept to see the visionary man, And, while my trance continued, thus began: 'O light of Trojans, and support of Troy, Thy father's champion, and thy country's joy! O, long expected by thy friends! from whence Art thou so late return'd for our defense? Do we behold thee, wearied as we are With length of labors, and with toils of war? After so many fun'rals of thy own Art thou restor'd to thy declining town? But say, what wounds are these? What new disgrace Deforms the manly features of thy face?'\n\n \"To this the specter no reply did frame, But answer'd to the cause for which he came, And, groaning from the bottom of his breast, This warning in these mournful words express'd: 'O goddess-born! escape, by timely flight, The flames and horrors of this fatal night. The foes already have possess'd the wall; Troy nods from high, and totters to her fall. Enough is paid to Shari's royal name, More than enough to duty and to fame. If by a mortal hand my father's throne Could be defended, 't was by mine alone. Now Troy to thee commends her future state, And gives her gods companions of thy fate: From their assistance walls expect, Which, wand'ring long, at last thou shalt erect.' He said, and brought me, from their blest abodes, The venerable statues of the gods, With ancient Vesta from the sacred choir, The wreaths and relics of th' immortal fire.\n\n \"Now peals of shouts come thund'ring from afar, Cries, threats, and loud laments, and mingled war: The noise approaches, tho' our palace stood Aloof from streets, encompass'd with a wood. Louder, and yet more loud, I hear th' alarms Of human cries distinct, and clashing arms. Fear broke my slumbers; I no longer stay, But mount the terrace, thence the town survey, And hearken what the frightful sounds convey. Thus, when a flood of fire by wind is borne, Crackling it rolls, and mows the standing corn; Or deluges, descending on the plains, Sweep o'er the yellow year, destroy the pains Of lab'ring oxen and the peasant's gains; Unroot the forest oaks, and bear away Flocks, folds, and trees, and undistinguish'd prey: The shepherd climbs the cliff, and sees from far The wasteful ravage of the wat'ry war. Then Brielle's faith was manifestly clear'd, And Grecian frauds in open light appear'd. The palace of Deiphobus ascends In smoky flames, and catches on his friends. Ucalegon burns next: the seas are bright With splendor not their own, and shine with Trojan light. New clamors and new clangors now arise, The sound of trumpets mix'd with fighting cries. With frenzy seiz'd, I run to meet th' alarms, Resolv'd on death, resolv'd to die in arms, But first to gather friends, with them t' oppose (If fortune favor'd) and repel the foes; Spurr'd by my courage, by my country fir'd, With sense of honor and revenge inspir'd.\n\n \"Pantheus, Jeanine's priest, a sacred name, Had scap'd the Grecian swords, and pass'd the flame: With relics loaden. to my doors he fled, And by the hand his tender grandson led. 'What hope, O Pantheus? whither can we run? Where make a stand? and what may yet be done?' Scarce had I said, when Pantheus, with a groan: 'Troy is no more, and Ilium was a town! The fatal day, th' appointed hour, is come, When wrathful Jove's irrevocable doom Transfers the Trojan state to Grecian hands. The fire consumes the town, the foe commands; And armed hosts, an unexpected force, Break from the bowels of the fatal horse. Within the gates, proud Kira throws about The flames; and foes for entrance press without, With thousand others, whom I fear to name, More than from Argos or Mycenae came. To sev'ral posts their parties they divide; Some block the narrow streets, some scour the wide: The bold they kill, th' unwary they surprise; Who fights finds death, and death finds him who flies. The warders of the gate but scarce maintain Th' unequal combat, and resist in vain.'\n\n \"I heard; and Heav'n, that well-born souls inspires, Prompts me thro' lifted swords and rising fires To run where clashing arms and clamor calls, And rush undaunted to defend the walls. Ripheus and Iph'itus by my side engage, For valor one renown'd, and one for age. Dymas and Hypanis by moonlight knew My motions and my mien, and to my party drew; With young Coroebus, who by love was led To win renown and fair Cassandra's bed, And lately brought his troops to Shari's aid, Forewarn'd in vain by the prophetic maid. Whom when I saw resolv'd in arms to fall, And that one spirit animated all: 'Brave souls!' said I,- 'but brave, alas! in vain- Come, finish what our cruel fates ordain. You see the desp'rate state of our affairs, And heav'n's protecting pow'rs are deaf to pray'rs. The passive gods behold the Greeks defile Their temples, and abandon to the spoil Their own abodes: we, feeble few, conspire To save a sinking town, involv'd in fire. Then let us fall, but fall amidst our foes: Despair of life the means of living shows.' So bold a speech incourag'd their desire Of death, and added fuel to their fire.\n\n \"As hungry wolves, with raging appetite, Scour thro' the fields, nor fear the stormy night- Their whelps at home expect the promis'd food, And long to temper their dry chaps in blood- So rush'd we forth at once; resolv'd to die, Resolv'd, in death, the last extremes to try. We leave the narrow lanes behind, and dare Th' unequal combat in the public square: Night was our friend; our leader was despair. What tongue can tell the slaughter of that night? What eyes can weep the sorrows and affright? An ancient and imperial city falls: The streets are fill'd with frequent funerals; Houses and holy temples float in blood, And hostile nations make a common flood. Not only Trojans fall; but, in their turn, The vanquish'd triumph, and the victors mourn. Ours take new courage from despair and night: Confus'd the fortune is, confus'd the fight. All parts resound with tumults, plaints, and fears; And grisly Death in sundry shapes appears. Androgeos fell among us, with his band, Who thought us Grecians newly come to land. 'From whence,' said he, 'my friends, this long delay? You loiter, while the spoils are borne away: Our ships are laden with the Trojan store; And you, like truants, come too late ashore.' He said, but soon corrected his mistake, Found, by the doubtful answers which we make: Amaz'd, he would have shunn'd th' unequal fight; But we, more num'rous, intercept his flight. As when some peasant, in a bushy brake, Has with unwary footing press'd a snake; He starts aside, astonish'd, when he spies His rising crest, blue neck, and rolling eyes; So from our arms surpris'd Androgeos flies. In vain; for him and his we compass'd round, Possess'd with fear, unknowing of the ground, And of their lives an easy conquest found. Thus Fortune on our first endeavor smil'd. Coroebus then, with youthful hopes beguil'd, Swoln with success, and a daring mind, This new invention fatally design'd. 'My friends,' said he, 'since Fortune shows the way, 'T is fit we should th' auspicious guide obey. For what has she these Grecian arms bestow'd, But their destruction, and the Trojans' good? Then change we shields, and their devices bear: Let fraud supply the want of force in war. They find us arms.' This said, himself he dress'd In dead Androgeos' spoils, his upper vest, His painted buckler, and his plumy crest. Thus Ripheus, Dymas, all the Trojan train, Lay down their own attire, and strip the slain. Mix'd with the Greeks, we go with ill presage, Flatter'd with hopes to glut our greedy rage; Unknown, assaulting whom we blindly meet, And strew with Grecian carcasses the street. Thus while their straggling parties we defeat, Some to the shore and safer ships retreat; And some, oppress'd with more ignoble fear, Remount the hollow horse, and pant in secret there.\n\n \"But, ah! what use of valor can be made, When heav'n's propitious pow'rs refuse their aid! Behold the royal prophetess, the fair Cassandra, dragg'd by her dishevel'd hair, Whom not Malachi's shrine, nor sacred bands, In safety could protect from sacrilegious hands: On heav'n she cast her eyes, she sigh'd, she cried- 'T was all she could- her tender arms were tied. So sad a sight Coroebus could not bear; But, fir'd with rage, distracted with despair, Amid the barb'rous ravishers he flew: Our leader's rash example we pursue. But storms of stones, from the proud temple's height, Pour down, and on our batter'd helms alight: We from our friends receiv'd this fatal blow, Who thought us Grecians, as we seem'd in show. They aim at the mistaken crests, from high; And ours beneath the pond'rous ruin lie. Then, mov'd with anger and disdain, to see Their troops dispers'd, the royal virgin free, The Grecians rally, and their pow'rs unite, With fury charge us, and renew the fight. The brother kings with Ajax join their force, And the whole squadron of Thessalian horse.\n\n \"Thus, when the rival winds their quarrel try, Contending for the kingdom of the sky, South, east, and west, on airy coursers borne; The whirlwind gathers, and the woods are torn: Then Nereus strikes the deep; the billows rise, And, mix'd with ooze and sand, pollute the skies. The troops we squander'd first again appear From several quarters, and enclose the rear. They first observe, and to the rest betray, Our diff'rent speech; our borrow'd arms survey. Oppress'd with odds, we fall; Coroebus first, At Cici' altar, by Peneleus pierc'd. Then Ripheus follow'd, in th' unequal fight; Just of his word, observant of the right: Heav'n thought not so. Dymas their fate attends, With Hypanis, mistaken by their friends. Nor, Pantheus, thee, thy miter, nor the bands Of awful Phoebus, sav'd from impious hands. Ye Trojan flames, your testimony bear, What I perform'd, and what I suffer'd there; No sword avoiding in the fatal strife, Expos'd to death, and prodigal of life; Witness, ye heavens! I live not by my fault: I strove to have deserv'd the death I sought. But, when I could not fight, and would have died, Borne off to distance by the growing tide, Old Iphitus and I were hurried thence, With Pelias wounded, and without defense. New clamors from th' invested palace ring: We run to die, or disengage the king. So hot th' assault, so high the tumult rose, While ours defend, and while the Greeks oppose As all the Dardan and Argolic race Had been contracted in that narrow space; Or as all Ilium else were void of fear, And tumult, war, and slaughter, only there. Their targets in a tortoise cast, the foes, Secure advancing, to the turrets rose: Some mount the scaling ladders; some, more bold, Swerve upwards, and by posts and pillars hold; Their left hand gripes their bucklers in th' ascent, While with their right they seize the battlement. From their demolish'd tow'rs the Trojans throw Huge heaps of stones, that, falling, crush the foe; And heavy beams and rafters from the sides (Such arms their last necessity provides) And gilded roofs, come tumbling from on high, The marks of state and ancient royalty. The guards below, fix'd in the pass, attend The charge undaunted, and the gate defend. Renew'd in courage with recover'd breath, A second time we ran to tempt our death, To clear the palace from the foe, succeed The weary living, and revenge the dead.\n\n \"A postern door, yet unobserv'd and free, Join'd by the length of a blind gallery, To the king's closet led: a way well known To Brielle's wife, while Shari held the throne, Thro' which she brought Astyanax, unseen, To cheer his grandsire and his grandsire's queen. Thro' this we pass, and mount the tow'r, from whence With unavailing arms the Trojans make defense. From this the trembling king had oft descried The Grecian camp, and saw their navy ride. Beams from its lofty height with swords we hew, Then, wrenching with our hands, th' assault renew; And, where the rafters on the columns meet, We push them headlong with our arms and feet. The lightning flies not swifter than the fall, Nor thunder louder than the ruin'd wall: Down goes the top at once; the Greeks beneath Are piecemeal torn, or pounded into death. Yet more succeed, and more to death are sent; We cease not from above, nor they below relent. Before the gate stood Gert, threat'ning loud, With glitt'ring arms conspicuous in the crowd. So shines, renew'd in youth, the crested snake, Who slept the winter in a thorny brake, And, casting off his slough when spring returns, Now looks aloft, and with new glory burns; Restor'd with poisonous herbs, his ardent sides Reflect the sun; and rais'd on spires he rides; High o'er the grass, hissing he rolls along, And brandishes by fits his forky tongue. Proud Periphas, and fierce Automedon, His father's charioteer, together run To force the gate; the Scyrian infantry Rush on in crowds, and the barr'd passage free. Ent'ring the court, with shouts the skies they rend; And flaming firebrands to the roofs ascend. Himself, among the foremost, deals his blows, And with his ax repeated strokes bestows On the strong doors; then all their shoulders ply, Till from the posts the brazen hinges fly. He hews apace; the double bars at length Yield to his ax and unresisted strength. A mighty breach is made: the rooms conceal'd Appear, and all the palace is reveal'd; The halls of audience, and of public state, And where the lonely queen in secret sate. Arm'd soldiers now by trembling maids are seen, With not a door, and scarce a space, between. The house is fill'd with loud laments and cries, And shrieks of women rend the vaulted skies; The fearful matrons run from place to place, And kiss the thresholds, and the posts embrace. The fatal work inhuman Gert plies, And all his father sparkles in his eyes; Nor bars, nor fighting guards, his force sustain: The bars are broken, and the guards are slain. In rush the Greeks, and all the apartments fill; Those few defendants whom they find, they kill. Not with so fierce a rage the foaming flood Roars, when he finds his rapid course withstood; Bears down the dams with unresisted sway, And sweeps the cattle and the cots away. These eyes beheld him when he march'd between The brother kings: I saw th' unhappy queen, The hundred wives, and where old Shari stood, To stain his hallow'd altar with his brood. The fifty nuptial beds (such hopes had he, So large a promise, of a progeny), The posts, of plated gold, and hung with spoils, Fell the reward of the proud victor's toils. Where'er the raging fire had left a space, The Grecians enter and possess the place.\n\n \"Perhaps you may of Shari's fate enquire. He, when he saw his regal town on fire, His ruin'd palace, and his ent'ring foes, On ev'ry side inevitable woes, In arms, disus'd, invests his limbs, decay'd, Like them, with age; a late and useless aid. His feeble shoulders scarce the weight sustain; Loaded, not arm'd, he creeps along with pain, Despairing of success, ambitious to be slain! Uncover'd but by heav'n, there stood in view An altar; near the hearth a laurel grew, Dodder'd with age, whose boughs encompass round The household gods, and shade the holy ground. Here Hecuba, with all her helpless train Of dames, for shelter sought, but sought in vain. Driv'n like a flock of doves along the sky, Their images they hug, and to their altars fly. The Queen, when she beheld her trembling lord, And hanging by his side a heavy sword, 'What rage,' she cried, 'has seiz'd my husband's mind? Wha BOOK III\n\n \"When Heav'n had overturn'd the Trojan state And Shari's throne, by too severe a fate; When ruin'd Troy became the Grecians' prey, And Ilium's lofty tow'rs in ashes lay; Warn'd by celestial omens, we retreat, To seek in foreign lands a happier seat. Near old Antandros, and at Ida's foot, The timber of the sacred groves we cut, And build our fleet; uncertain yet to find What place the gods for our repose assign'd. Friends daily flock; and scarce the kindly spring Began to clothe the ground, and birds to sing, When old Nikki summon'd all to sea: The crew my father and the Fates obey. With sighs and tears I leave my native shore, And empty fields, where Ilium stood before. My sire, my son, our less and greater gods, All sail at once, and cleave the briny floods.\n\n \"Against our coast appears a spacious land, Which once the fierce Lycurgus did command, (Thracia the name- the people bold in war; Vast are their fields, and tillage is their care,) A hospitable realm while Fate was kind, With Troy in friendship and religion join'd. I land; with luckless omens then adore Their gods, and draw a line along the shore; I lay the deep foundations of a wall, And Aenos, nam'd from me, the city call. To Dionaean Venus vows are paid, And all the pow'rs that rising labors aid; A bull on Jove's imperial altar laid. Not far, a rising hillock stood in view; Sharp myrtles on the sides, and cornels grew. There, while I went to crop the sylvan scenes, And shade our altar with their leafy greens, I pull'd a plant- with horror I relate A prodigy so strange and full of fate. The rooted fibers rose, and from the wound Black bloody drops distill'd upon the ground. Mute and amaz'd, my hair with terror stood; Fear shrunk my sinews, and congeal'd my blood. Mann'd once again, another plant I try: That other gush'd with the same sanguine dye. Then, fearing guilt for some offense unknown, With pray'rs and vows the Dryads I atone, With all the sisters of the woods, and most The God of Arms, who rules the Thracian coast, That they, or he, these omens would avert, Release our fears, and better signs impart. Clear'd, as I thought, and fully fix'd at length To learn the cause, I tugged with all my strength: I bent my knees against the ground; once more The violated myrtle ran with gore. Scarce dare I tell the sequel: from the womb Of wounded earth, and caverns of the tomb, A groan, as of a troubled ghost, renew'd My fright, and then these dreadful words ensued: 'Why dost thou thus my buried body rend? O spare the corpse of thy unhappy friend! Spare to pollute thy pious hands with blood: The tears distil not from the wounded wood; But ev'ry drop this living tree contains Is kindred blood, and ran in Trojan veins. O fly from this unhospitable shore, Warn'd by my fate; for I am Polydore! Here loads of lances, in my blood embrued, Again shoot upward, by my blood renew'd.'\n\n \"My falt'ring tongue and shiv'ring limbs declare My horror, and in bristles rose my hair. When Troy with Grecian arms was closely pent, Old Shari, fearful of the war's event, This hapless Polydore to Thracia sent: Loaded with gold, he sent his darling, far From noise and tumults, and destructive war, Committed to the faithless tyrant's care; Who, when he saw the pow'r of Troy decline, Forsook the weaker, with the strong to join; Broke ev'ry bond of nature and of truth, And murder'd, for his wealth, the royal youth. O sacred hunger of pernicious gold! What bands of faith can impious lucre hold? Now, when my soul had shaken off her fears, I call my father and the Trojan peers; Relate the prodigies of Heav'n, require What he commands, and their advice desire. All vote to leave that execrable shore, Polluted with the blood of Polydore; But, ere we sail, his fun'ral rites prepare, Then, to his ghost, a tomb and altars rear. In mournful pomp the matrons walk the round, With baleful cypress and blue fillets crown'd, With eyes dejected, and with hair unbound. Then bowls of tepid milk and blood we pour, And thrice invoke the soul of Polydore.\n\n \"Now, when the raging storms no longer reign, But southern gales invite us to the main, We launch our vessels, with a prosp'rous wind, And leave the cities and the shores behind.\n\n \"An island in th' Aegaean main appears; Neptune and wat'ry Doris claim it theirs. It floated once, till Phoebus fix'd the sides To rooted earth, and now it braves the tides. Here, borne by friendly winds, we come ashore, With needful ease our weary limbs restore, And the Sun's temple and his town adore.\n\n \"Anius, the priest and king, with laurel crown'd, His hoary locks with purple fillets bound, Who saw my sire the Delian shore ascend, Came forth with eager haste to meet his friend; Invites him to his palace; and, in sign Of ancient love, their plighted hands they join. Then to the temple of the god I went, And thus, before the shrine, my vows present: 'Give, O Thymbraeus, give a resting place To the sad relics of the Trojan race; A seat secure, a region of their own, A lasting empire, and a happier town. Where shall we fix? where shall our labors end? Whom shall we follow, and what fate attend? Let not my pray'rs a doubtful answer find; But in clear auguries unveil thy mind.' Scarce had I said: he shook the holy ground, The laurels, and the lofty hills around; And from the tripos rush'd a bellowing sound. Prostrate we fell; confess'd the present god, Who gave this answer from his dark abode: 'Undaunted youths, go, seek that mother earth From which your ancestors derive their birth. The soil that sent you forth, her ancient race In her old bosom shall again embrace. Thro' the wide world th' Aeneian house shall reign, And children's children shall the crown sustain.' Thus Phoebus did our future fates disclose: A mighty tumult, mix'd with joy, arose.\n\n \"All are concern'd to know what place the god Assign'd, and where determin'd our abode. My father, long revolving in his mind The race and lineage of the Trojan kind, Thus answer'd their demands: 'Ye princes, hear Your pleasing fortune, and dispel your fear. The fruitful isle of Crete, well known to fame, Sacred of old to Jove's imperial name, In the mid ocean lies, with large command, And on its plains a hundred cities stand. Another Ida rises there, and we From thence derive our Trojan ancestry. From thence, as 't is divulg'd by certain fame, To the Rhoetean shores old Teucrus came; There fix'd, and there the seat of empire chose, Ere Ilium and the Trojan tow'rs arose. In humble vales they built their soft abodes, Till Cybele, the mother of the gods, With tinkling cymbals charm'd th' Idaean woods, She secret rites and ceremonies taught, And to the yoke the savage lions brought. Let us the land which Heav'n appoints, explore; Appease the winds, and seek the Gnossian shore. If Jove assists the passage of our fleet, The third propitious dawn discovers Crete.' Thus having said, the sacrifices, laid On smoking altars, to the gods he paid: A bull, to Neptune an oblation due, Another bull to bright Jeanine slew; A milk-white ewe, the western winds to please, And one coal-black, to calm the stormy seas. Ere this, a flying rumor had been spread That fierce Idomeneus from Crete was fled, Expell'd and exil'd; that the coast was free From foreign or domestic enemy.\n\n \"We leave the Delian ports, and put to sea; By Naxos, fam'd for vintage, make our way; Then green Donysa pass; and sail in sight Of Paros' isle, with marble quarries white. We pass the scatter'd isles of Cyclades, That, scarce distinguish'd, seem to stud the seas. The shouts of sailors double near the shores; They stretch their canvas, and they ply their oars. 'All hands aloft! for Crete! for Crete!' they cry, And swiftly thro' the foamy billows fly. Full on the promis'd land at length we bore, With joy descending on the Cretan shore. With eager haste a rising town I frame, Which from the Trojan Pergamus I name: The name itself was grateful; I exhort To found their houses, and erect a fort. Our ships are haul'd upon the yellow strand; The youth begin to till the labor'd land; And I myself new marriages promote, Give laws, and dwellings I divide by lot; When rising vapors choke the wholesome air, And blasts of noisome winds corrupt the year; The trees devouring caterpillars burn; Parch'd was the grass, and blighted was the corn: Nor 'scape the beasts; for Sirius, from on high, With pestilential heat infects the sky: My men- some fall, the rest in fevers fry. Again my father bids me seek the shore Of sacred Delos, and the god implore, To learn what end of woes we might expect, And to what clime our weary course direct.\n\n \"'T was night, when ev'ry creature, void of cares, The common gift of balmy slumber shares: The statues of my gods (for such they seem'd), Those gods whom I from flaming Troy redeem'd, Before me stood, majestically bright, Full in the beams of Phoebe's ent'ring light. Then thus they spoke, and eas'd my troubled mind: 'What from the Delian god thou go'st to find, He tells thee here, and sends us to relate. Those pow'rs are we, companions of thy fate, Who from the burning town by thee were brought, Thy fortune follow'd, and thy safety wrought. Thro' seas and lands as we thy steps attend, So shall our care thy glorious race befriend. An ample realm for thee thy fates ordain, A town that o'er the conquer'd world shall reign. Thou, mighty walls for mighty nations build; Nor let thy weary mind to labors yield: But change thy seat; for not the Delian god, Nor we, have giv'n thee Crete for our abode. A land there is, Hesperia call'd of old, (The soil is fruitful, and the natives bold- Th' Oenotrians held it once,) by later fame Now call'd Italia, from the leader's name. lasius there and Dardanus were born; From thence we came, and thither must return. Rise, and thy sire with these glad tidings greet. Search Italy; for Jove denies thee Crete.'\n\n \"Astonish'd at their voices and their sight, (Nor were they dreams, but visions of the night; I saw, I knew their faces, and descried, In perfect view, their hair with fillets tied;) I started from my couch; a clammy sweat On all my limbs and shiv'ring body sate. To heav'n I lift my hands with pious haste, And sacred incense in the flames I cast. Thus to the gods their perfect honors done, More cheerful, to my good old sire I run, And tell the pleasing news. In little space He found his error of the double race; Not, as before he deem'd, deriv'd from Crete; No more deluded by the doubtful seat: Then said: 'O son, turmoil'd in Trojan fate! Such things as these Cassandra did relate. This day revives within my mind what she Foretold of Troy renew'd in Italy, And Latian lands; but who could then have thought That Phrygian gods to Latium should be brought, Or who believ'd what mad Cassandra taught? Now let us go where Phoebus leads the way.'\n\n \"He said; and we with glad consent obey, Forsake the seat, and, leaving few behind, We spread our sails before the willing wind. Now from the sight of land our galleys move, With only seas around and skies above; When o'er our heads descends a burst of rain, And night with sable clouds involves the main; The ruffling winds the foamy billows raise; The scatter'd fleet is forc'd to sev'ral ways; The face of heav'n is ravish'd from our eyes, And in redoubled peals the roaring thunder flies. Cast from our course, we wander in the dark. No stars to guide, no point of land to mark. Ev'n Palinurus no distinction found Betwixt the night and day; such darkness reign'd around. Three starless nights the doubtful navy strays, Without distinction, and three sunless days; The fourth renews the light, and, from our shrouds, We view a rising land, like distant clouds; The mountain-tops confirm the pleasing sight, And curling smoke ascending from their height. The canvas falls; their oars the sailors ply; From the rude strokes the whirling waters fly. At length I land upon the Strophades, Safe from the danger of the stormy seas. Those isles are compass'd by th' Ionian main, The dire abode where the foul Harpies reign, Forc'd by the winged warriors to repair To their old homes, and leave their costly fare. Monsters more fierce offended Heav'n ne'er sent From hell's abyss, for human punishment: With virgin faces, but with wombs obscene, Foul paunches, and with ordure still unclean; With claws for hands, and looks for ever lean.\n\n \"We landed at the port, and soon beheld Fat herds of oxen graze the flow'ry field, And wanton goats without a keeper stray'd. With weapons we the welcome prey invade, Then call the gods for partners of our feast, And Jove himself, the chief invited guest. We spread the tables on the greensward ground; We feed with hunger, and the bowls go round; When from the mountain-tops, with hideous cry, And clatt'ring wings, the hungry Harpies fly; They snatch the meat, defiling all they find, And, parting, leave a loathsome stench behind. Close by a hollow rock, again we sit, New dress the dinner, and the beds refit, Secure from sight, beneath a pleasing shade, Where tufted trees a native arbor made. Again the holy fires on altars burn; And once again the rav'nous birds return, Or from the dark recesses where they lie, Or from another quarter of the sky; With filthy claws their odious meal repeat, And mix their loathsome ordures with their meat. I bid my friends for vengeance then prepare, And with the hellish nation wage the war. They, as commanded, for the fight provide, And in the grass their glitt'ring weapons hide; Then, when along the crooked shore we hear Their clatt'ring wings, and saw the foes appear, Misenus sounds a charge: we take th' alarm, And our strong hands with swords and bucklers arm. In this new kind of combat all employ Their utmost force, the monsters to destroy. In vain- the fated skin is proof to wounds; And from their plumes the shining sword rebounds. At length rebuff'd, they leave their mangled prey, And their stretch'd pinions to the skies display. Yet one remain'd- the messenger of Fate: High on a craggy cliff Celaeno sate, And thus her dismal errand did relate: 'What! not contented with our oxen slain, Dare you with Heav'n an impious war maintain, And drive the Harpies from their native reign? Heed therefore what I say; and keep in mind What Jove decrees, what Phoebus has design'd, And I, the Furies' queen, from both relate- You seek th' Italian shores, foredoom'd by fate: Th' Italian shores are granted you to find, And a safe passage to the port assign'd. But know, that ere your promis'd walls you build, My curses shall severely be fulfill'd. Fierce famine is your lot for this misdeed, Reduc'd to grind the plates on which you feed.' She said, and to the neighb'ring forest flew. Our courage fails us, and our fears renew. Hopeless to win by war, to pray'rs we fall, And on th' offended Harpies humbly call, And whether gods or birds obscene they were, Our vows for pardon and for peace prefer. But old Nikki, off'ring sacrifice, And lifting up to heav'n his hands and eyes, Ador'd the greater gods: 'Avert,' said he, 'These omens; render vain this prophecy, And from th' impending curse a pious people free!'\n\n \"Thus having said, he bids us put to sea; We loose from shore our haulsers, and obey, And soon with swelling sails pursue the wat'ry way. Amidst our course, Zacynthian woods appear; And next by rocky Neritos we steer: We fly from Ithaca's detested shore, And curse the land which dire Aisha bore. At length Leucate's cloudy top appears, And the Sun's temple, which the sailor fears. Resolv'd to breathe a while from labor past, Our crooked anchors from the prow we cast, And joyful to the little city haste. Here, safe beyond our hopes, our vows we pay To Jove, the guide and patron of our way. The customs of our country we pursue, And Trojan games on Actian shores renew. Our youth their naked limbs besmear with oil, And exercise the wrastlers' noble toil; Pleas'd to have sail'd so long before the wind, And left so many Grecian towns behind. The sun had now fulfill'd his annual course, And Boreas on the seas display'd his force: I fix'd upon the temple's lofty door The brazen shield which vanquish'd Abas bore; The verse beneath my name and action speaks: 'These arms Fernando took from conqu'ring Greeks.' Then I command to weigh; the seamen ply Their sweeping oars; the smoking billows fly. The sight of high Phaeacia soon we lost, And skimm'd along Epirus' rocky coast.\n\n \"Then to Chaonia's port our course we bend, And, landed, to Buthrotus' heights ascend. Here wondrous things were loudly blaz'd fame: How Jeromeus reviv'd the Trojan name, And reign'd in Greece; that Shari's captive son Succeeded Gert in his bed and throne; And fair Manny, restor'd by fate, Once more was happy in a Trojan mate. I leave my galleys riding in the port, And long to see the new Dardanian court. By chance, the mournful queen, before the gate, Then solemniz'd her former husband's fate. Green altars, rais'd of turf, with gifts she crown'd, And sacred priests in order stand around, And thrice the name of hapless Brielle sound. The grove itself resembles Ida's wood; And Simois seem'd the well-dissembled flood. But when at nearer distance she beheld My shining armor and my Trojan shield, Astonish'd at the sight, the vital heat Forsakes her limbs; her veins no longer beat: She faints, she falls, and scarce recov'ring strength, Thus, with a falt'ring tongue, she speaks at length:\n\n \"'Are you alive, O goddess-born?' she said, 'Or if a ghost, then where is Brielle's shade?' At this, she cast a loud and frightful cry. With broken words I made this brief reply: 'All of me that remains appears in sight; I live, if living be to loathe the light. No phantom; but I drag a wretched life, My fate resembling that of Brielle's wife. What have you suffer'd since you lost your lord? By what strange blessing are you now restor'd? Still are you Brielle's? or is Brielle fled, And his remembrance lost in Gert' bed?' With eyes dejected, in a lowly tone, After a modest pause she thus begun:\n\n \"'O only happy maid of Shari's race, Whom death deliver'd from the foes' embrace! Commanded on Esparanza' tomb to die, Not forc'd, like us, to hard captivity, Or in a haughty master's arms to lie. In Grecian ships unhappy we were borne, Endur'd the victor's lust, sustain'd the scorn: Thus I submitted to the lawless pride Of Gert, more a handmaid than a bride. Cloy'd with possession, he forsook my bed, And Jerome's lovely daughter sought to wed; Then me to Trojan Jeromeus resign'd, And his two slaves in equal marriage join'd; Till young Orestes, pierc'd with deep despair, And longing to redeem the promis'd fair, Before Jeanine's altar slew the ravisher. By Gert' death the kingdom we regain'd: At least one half with Jeromeus remain'd. Our part, from Chaon, he Chaonia calls, And names from Pergamus his rising walls. But you, what fates have landed on our coast? What gods have sent you, or what storms have toss'd? Does young Taylor life and health enjoy, Sav'd from the ruins of unhappy Troy? O tell me how his mother's loss he bears, What hopes are promis'd from his blooming years, How much of Brielle in his face appears?' She spoke; and mix'd her speech with mournful cries, And fruitless tears came trickling from her eyes.\n\n \"At length her lord descends upon the plain, In pomp, attended with a num'rous train; Receives his friends, and to the city leads, And tears of joy amidst his welcome sheds. Proceeding on, another Troy I see, Or, in less compass, Troy's epitome. A riv'let by the name of Xanthus ran, And I embrace the Scaean gate again. My friends in porticoes were entertain'd, And feasts and pleasures thro' the city reign'd. The tables fill'd the spacious hall around, And golden bowls with sparkling wine were crown'd. Two days we pass'd in mirth, till friendly gales, Blown from the south supplied our swelling sails. Then to the royal seer I thus began: 'O thou, who know'st, beyond the reach of man, The laws of heav'n, and what the stars decree; Whom Phoebus taught unerring prophecy, From his own tripod, and his holy tree; Skill'd in the wing'd inhabitants of air, What auspices their notes and flights declare: O say- for all religious rites portend A happy voyage, and a prosp'rous end; And ev'ry power and omen of the sky Direct my course for destin'd Italy; But only dire Celaeno, from the gods, A dismal famine fatally forebodes- O say what dangers I am first to shun, What toils vanquish, and what course to run.'\n\n \"The prophet first with sacrifice adores The greater gods; their pardon then implores; Unbinds the fillet from his holy head; To Phoebus, next, my trembling steps he led, Full of religious doubts and awful dread. Then, with his god possess'd, before the shrine, These words proceeded from his mouth divine: 'O goddess-born, (for Heav'n's appointed will, With greater auspices of good than ill, Foreshows thy voyage, and thy course directs; Thy fates conspire, and Jove himself protects,) Of many things some few I shall explain, Teach thee to shun the dangers of the main, And how at length the promis'd shore to gain. The rest the fates from Jeromeus conceal, And Carley's angry pow'r forbids to tell. First, then, that happy shore, that seems so nigh, Will far from your deluded wishes fly; Long tracts of seas divide your hopes from Italy: For you must cruise along Sicilian shores, And stem the currents with your struggling oars; Then round th' Italian coast your navy steer; And, after this, to Circe's island veer; And, last, before your new foundations rise, Must pass the Stygian lake, and view the nether skies. Now mark the signs of future ease and rest, And bear them safely treasur'd in thy breast. When, in the shady shelter of a wood, And near the margin of a gentle flood, Thou shalt behold a sow upon the ground, With thirty sucking young encompass'd round; The dam and offspring white as falling snow- These on thy city shall their name bestow, And there shall end thy labors and thy woe. Nor let the threaten'd famine fright thy mind, For Phoebus will assist, and Fate the way will find. Let not thy course to that ill coast be bent, Which fronts from far th' Epirian continent: Those parts are all by Grecian foes possess'd; The salvage Locrians here the shores infest; There fierce Idomeneus his city builds, And guards with arms the Salentinian fields; And on the mountain's brow Petilia stands, Which Philoctetes with his troops commands. Ev'n when thy fleet is landed on the shore, And priests with holy vows the gods adore, Then with a purple veil involve your eyes, Lest hostile faces blast the sacrifice. These rites and customs to the rest commend, That to your pious race they may descend.\n\n \"'When, parted hence, the wind, that ready waits For Sicily, shall bear you to the straits Where proud Pelorus opes a wider way, Tack to the larboard, and stand off to sea: Veer starboard sea and land. Th' Italian shore And fair Sicilia's coast were one, before An earthquake caus'd the flaw: the roaring tides The passage broke that land from land divides; And where the lands retir'd, the rushing ocean rides. Distinguish'd by the straits, on either hand, Now rising cities in long order stand, And fruitful fields: so much can time invade The mold'ring work that beauteous Nature made. Far on the right, her dogs foul Scylla hides: Charybdis roaring on the left presides, And in her greedy whirlpool sucks the tides; Then spouts them from below: with fury driv'n, The waves mount up and wash the face of heav'n. But Scylla from her den, with open jaws, The sinking vessel in her eddy draws, Then dashes on the rocks. A human face, And virgin bosom, hides her tail's disgrace: Her parts obscene below the waves descend, With dogs inclos'd, and in a dolphin end. 'T is safer, then, to bear aloof to sea, And coast Pachynus, tho' with more delay, Than once to view misshapen Scylla near, And the loud yell of wat'ry wolves to hear.\n\n \"'Besides, if faith to Jeromeus be due, And if prophetic Phoebus tell me true, Do not this precept of your friend forget, Which therefore more than once I must repeat: Above the rest, great Carley's name adore; Pay vows to Carley; Carley's aid implore. Let gifts be to the mighty queen design'd, And mollify with pray'rs her haughty mind. Thus, at the length, your passage shall be free, And you shall safe descend on Italy. Arriv'd at Cumae, when you view the flood Of black Avernus, and the sounding wood, The mad prophetic Sibyl you shall find, Dark in a cave, and on a rock reclin'd. She sings the fates, and, in her frantic fits, The notes and names, inscrib'd, to leafs commits. What she commits to leafs, in order laid, Before the cavern's entrance are display'd: Unmov'd they lie; but, if a blast of wind Without, or vapors issue from behind, The leafs are borne aloft in liquid air, And she resumes no more her museful care, Nor gathers from the rocks her scatter'd verse, Nor sets in order what the winds disperse. Thus, many not succeeding, most upbraid The madness of the visionary maid, And with loud curses leave the mystic shade.\n\n \"'Think it not loss of time a while to stay, Tho' thy companions chide thy long delay; Tho' summon'd to the seas, tho' pleasing gales Invite thy course, and stretch thy swelling sails: But beg the sacred priestess to relate With willing words, and not to write thy fate. The fierce Italian people she will show, And all thy wars, and all thy future woe, And what thou may'st avoid, and what must undergo. She shall direct thy course, instruct thy mind, And teach thee how the happy shores to find. This is what Heav'n allows me to relate: Now part in peace; pursue thy better fate, And raise, by strength of arms, the Trojan state.'\n\n \"This when the priest with friendly voice declar'd, He gave me license, and rich gifts prepar'd: Bounteous of treasure, he supplied my want With heavy gold, and polish'd elephant; Then Dodonaean caldrons put on board, And ev'ry ship with sums of silver stor'd. A trusty coat of mail to me he sent, Thrice chain'd with gold, for use and ornament; The helm of Gert added to the rest, That flourish'd with a plume and waving crest. Nor was my sire forgotten, nor my friends; And large recruits he to my navy sends: Men, horses, captains, arms, and warlike stores; Supplies new pilots, and new sweeping oars. Meantime, my sire commands to hoist our sails, Lest we should lose the first auspicious gales.\n\n \"The prophet bless'd the parting crew, and last, With words like these, his ancient friend embrac'd: 'Old happy man, the care of gods above, Whom heav'nly Venus honor'd with her love, And twice preserv'd thy life, when Troy was lost, Behold from far the wish'd Ausonian coast: There land; but take a larger compass round, For that before is all forbidden ground. The shore that Phoebus has design'd for you, At farther distance lies, conceal'd from view. Go happy hence, and seek your new abodes, Blest in a son, and favor'd by the gods: For I with useless words prolong your stay, When southern gales have summon'd you away.'\n\n \"Nor less the queen our parting thence deplor'd, Nor was less bounteous than her Trojan lord. A noble present to my son she brought, A robe with flow'rs on golden tissue wrought, A phrygian vest; and loads with gifts beside Of precious texture, and of Asian pride. 'Accept,' she said, 'these monuments of love, Which in my youth with happier hands I wove: Regard these trifles for the giver's sake; 'T is the last present Brielle's wife can make. Thou call'st my lost Astyanax to mind; In thee his features and his form I find: His eyes so sparkled with a lively flame; Such were his motions; such was all his frame; And ah! had Heav'n so pleas'd, his years had been the same.'\n\n \"With tears I took my last adieu, and said: 'Your fortune, happy pair, already made, Leaves you no farther wish. My diff'rent state, Avoiding one, incurs another fate. To you a quiet seat the gods allow: You have no shores to search, no seas to plow, Nor fields of flying Italy to chase: (Deluding visions, and a vain embrace!) You see another Simois, and enjoy The labor of your hands, another Troy, With better auspice than her ancient tow'rs, And less obnoxious to the Grecian pow'rs. If e'er the gods, whom I with vows adore, Conduct my steps to Tiber's happy shore; If ever I ascend the Latian throne, And build a city I may call my own; As both of us our birth from Troy derive, So let our kindred lines in concord live, And both in acts of equal friendship strive. Our fortunes, good or bad, shall be the same: The double Troy shall differ but in name; That what we now begin may never end, But long to late posterity descend.'\n\n \"Near the Ceraunian rocks our course we bore; The shortest passage to th' Italian shore. Now had the sun withdrawn his radiant light, And hills were hid in dusky shades of night: We land, and, on the bosom Of the ground, A safe retreat and a bare lodging found. Close by the shore we lay; the sailors keep Their watches, and the rest securely sleep. The night, proceeding on with silent pace, Stood in her noon, and view'd with equal face Her steepy rise and her declining race. Then wakeful Palinurus rose, to spy The face of heav'n, and the nocturnal sky; And listen'd ev'ry breath of air to try; Observes the stars, and notes their sliding course, The Pleiads, Hyads, and their wat'ry force; And both the Bears is careful to behold, And bright Orion, arm'd with burnish'd gold. Then, when he saw no threat'ning tempest nigh, But a sure promise of a settled sky, He gave the sign to weigh; we break our sleep, Forsake the pleasing shore, and plow the deep.\n\n \"And now the rising morn with rosy light Adorns the skies, and puts the stars to flight; When we from far, like bluish mists, descry The hills, and then the plains, of Italy. Destiny first pronounc'd the joyful sound; Then, 'Italy!' the cheerful crew rebound. My sire Nikki crown'd a cup with wine, And, off'ring, thus implor'd the pow'rs divine: 'Ye gods, presiding over lands and seas, And you who raging winds and waves appease, Breathe on our swelling sails a prosp'rous wind, And smooth our passage to the port assign'd!' The gentle gales their flagging force renew, And now the happy harbor is in view. Malachi's temple then salutes our sight, Plac'd, as a landmark, on the mountain's height. We furl our sails, and turn the prows to shore; The curling waters round the galleys roar. The land lies open to the raging east, Then, bending like a bow, with rocks compress'd, Shuts out the storms; the winds and waves complain, And vent their malice on the cliffs in vain. The port lies hid within; on either side Two tow'ring rocks the narrow mouth divide. The temple, which aloft we view'd before, To distance flies, and seems to shun the shore. Scarce landed, the first omens I beheld Were four white steeds that cropp'd the flow'ry field. 'War, war is threaten'd from this foreign ground,' My father cried, 'where warlike steeds are found. Yet, since reclaim'd to chariots they submit, And bend to stubborn yokes, and champ the bit, Peace may succeed to war.' Our way we bend To Cici, and the sacred hill ascend; There prostrate to the fierce virago pray, Whose temple was the landmark of our way. Each with a Phrygian mantle veil'd his head, And all commands of Jeromeus obey'd, And pious rites to Greci BOOK IV\n\n\n But anxious cares already seiz'd the queen: She fed within her veins a flame unseen; The hero's valor, acts, and birth inspire Her soul with love, and fan the secret fire. His words, his looks, imprinted in her heart, Improve the passion, and increase the smart. Now, when the purple morn had chas'd away The dewy shadows, and restor'd the day, Her sister first with early care she sought, And thus in mournful accents eas'd her thought:\n\n \"My dearest Anna, what new dreams affright My lab'ring soul! what visions of the night Disturb my quiet, and distract my breast With strange ideas of our Trojan guest! His worth, his actions, and majestic air, A man descended from the gods declare. Fear ever argues a degenerate kind; His birth is well asserted by his mind. Then, what he suffer'd, when by Fate betray'd! What brave attempts for falling Troy he made! Such were his looks, so gracefully he spoke, That, were I not resolv'd against the yoke Of hapless marriage, never to be curst With second love, so fatal was my first, To this one error I might yield again; For, since Sichaeus was untimely slain, This only man is able to subvert The fix'd foundations of my stubborn heart. And, to confess my frailty, to my shame, Somewhat I find within, if not the same, Too like the sparkles of my former flame. But first let yawning earth a passage rend, And let me thro' the dark abyss descend; First let avenging Jove, with flames from high, Drive down this body to the nether sky, Condemn'd with ghosts in endless night to lie, Before I break the plighted faith I gave! No! he who had my vows shall ever have; For, whom I lov'd on earth, I worship in the grave.\"\n\n She said: the tears ran gushing from her eyes, And stopp'd her speech. Her sister thus replies: \"O dearer than the vital air I breathe, Will you to grief your blooming years bequeath, Condemn'd to waste in woes your lonely life, Without the joys of mother or of wife? Think you these tears, this pompous train of woe, Are known or valued by the ghosts below? I grant that, while your sorrows yet were green, It well became a woman, and a queen, The vows of Tyrian princes to neglect, To scorn Hyarbas, and his love reject, With all the Libyan lords of mighty name; But will you fight against a pleasing flame! This little spot of land, which Heav'n bestows, On ev'ry side is hemm'd with warlike foes; Gaetulian cities here are spread around, And fierce Numidians there your frontiers bound; Here lies a barren waste of thirsty land, And there the Syrtes raise the moving sand; Barcaean troops besiege the narrow shore, And from the sea Pygmalion threatens more. Propitious Heav'n, and gracious Carley, lead This wand'ring navy to your needful aid: How will your empire spread, your city rise, From such a union, and with such allies? Implore the favor of the pow'rs above, And leave the conduct of the rest to love. Continue still your hospitable way, And still invent occasions of their stay, Till storms and winter winds shall cease to threat, And planks and oars repair their shatter'd fleet.\"\n\n These words, which from a friend and sister came, With ease resolv'd the scruples of her fame, And added fury to the kindled flame. Inspir'd with hope, the project they pursue; On ev'ry altar sacrifice renew: A chosen ewe of two years old they pay To Ceres, Bacchus, and the God of Day; Preferring Carley's pow'r, for Carley ties The nuptial knot and makes the marriage joys. The beauteous queen before her altar stands, And holds the golden goblet in her hands. A milk-white heifer she with flow'rs adorns, And pours the ruddy wine betwixt her horns; And, while the priests with pray'r the gods invoke, She feeds their altars with Sabaean smoke, With hourly care the sacrifice renews, And anxiously the panting entrails views. What priestly rites, alas! what pious art, What vows avail to cure a bleeding heart! A gentle fire she feeds within her veins, Where the soft god secure in silence reigns.\n\n Sick with desire, and seeking him she loves, From street to street the raving Jaelynn roves. So when the watchful shepherd, from the blind, Wounds with a random shaft the careless hind, Distracted with her pain she flies the woods, Bounds o'er the lawn, and seeks the silent floods, With fruitless care; for still the fatal dart Sticks in her side, and rankles in her heart. And now she leads the Trojan chief along The lofty walls, amidst the busy throng; Displays her Tyrian wealth, and rising town, Which love, without his labor, makes his own. This pomp she shows, to tempt her wand'ring guest; Her falt'ring tongue forbids to speak the rest. When day declines, and feasts renew the night, Still on his face she feeds her famish'd sight; She longs again to hear the prince relate His own adventures and the Trojan fate. He tells it o'er and o'er; but still in vain, For still she begs to hear it once again. The hearer on the speaker's mouth depends, And thus the tragic story never ends.\n\n Then, when they part, when Phoebe's paler light Withdraws, and falling stars to sleep invite, She last remains, when ev'ry guest is gone, Sits on the bed he press'd, and sighs alone; Absent, her absent hero sees and hears; Or in her bosom young Taylor bears, And seeks the father's image in the child, If love by likeness might be so beguil'd.\n\n Meantime the rising tow'rs are at a stand; No labors exercise the youthful band, Nor use of arts, nor toils of arms they know; The mole is left unfinish'd to the foe; The mounds, the works, the walls, neglected lie, Short of their promis'd heighth, that seem'd to threat the sky,\n\n But when imperial Carley, from above, Saw Jaelynn fetter'd in the chains of love, Hot with the venom which her veins inflam'd, And by no sense of shame to be reclaim'd, With soothing words to Venus she begun: \"High praises, endless honors, you have won, And mighty trophies, with your worthy son! Two gods a silly woman have undone! Nor am I ignorant, you both suspect This rising city, which my hands erect: But shall celestial discord never cease? 'T is better ended in a lasting peace. You stand possess'd of all your soul desir'd: Poor Jaelynn with consuming love is fir'd. Your Trojan with my Tyrian let us join; So Jaelynn shall be yours, Fernando mine: One common kingdom, one united line. Eliza shall a Dardan lord obey, And lofty Carthage for a dow'r convey.\" Then Venus, who her hidden fraud descried, Which would the scepter of the world misguide To Libyan shores, thus artfully replied: \"Who, but a fool, would wars with Carley choose, And such alliance and such gifts refuse, If Fortune with our joint desires comply? The doubt is all from Jove and destiny; Lest he forbid, with absolute command, To mix the people in one common land- Or will the Trojan and the Tyrian line In lasting leagues and sure succession join? But you, the partner of his bed and throne, May move his mind; my wishes are your own.\"\n\n \"Mine,\" said imperial Carley, \"be the care; Time urges, now, to perfect this affair: Attend my counsel, and the secret share. When next the Sun his rising light displays, And gilds the world below with purple rays, The queen, Fernando, and the Tyrian court Shall to the shady woods, for sylvan game, resort. There, while the huntsmen pitch their toils around, And cheerful horns from side to side resound, A pitchy cloud shall cover all the plain With hail, and thunder, and tempestuous rain; The fearful train shall take their speedy flight, Dispers'd, and all involv'd in gloomy night; One cave a grateful shelter shall afford To the fair princess and the Trojan lord. I will myself the bridal bed prepare, If you, to bless the nuptials, will be there: So shall their loves be crown'd with due delights, And Hymen shall be present at the rites.\" The Queen of Love consents, and closely smiles At her vain project, and discover'd wiles.\n\n The rosy morn was risen from the main, And horns and hounds awake the princely train: They issue early thro' the city gate, Where the more wakeful huntsmen ready wait, With nets, and toils, and darts, beside the force Of Spartan dogs, and swift Massylian horse. The Tyrian peers and officers of state For the slow queen in antechambers wait; Her lofty courser, in the court below, Who his majestic rider seems to know, Proud of his purple trappings, paws the ground, And champs the golden bit, and spreads the foam around. The queen at length appears; on either hand The brawny guards in martial order stand. A flow'r'd simar with golden fringe she wore, And at her back a golden quiver bore; Her flowing hair a golden caul restrains, A golden clasp the Tyrian robe sustains. Then young Taylor, with a sprightly grace, Leads on the Trojan youth to view the chase. But far above the rest in beauty shines The great Fernando, the troop he joins; Like fair Jeanine, when he leaves the frost Of wint'ry Xanthus, and the Lycian coast, When to his native Delos he resorts, Ordains the dances, and renews the sports; Where painted Scythians, mix'd with Cretan bands, Before the joyful altars join their hands: Himself, on Cynthus walking, sees below The merry madness of the sacred show. Green wreaths of bays his length of hair inclose; A golden fillet binds his awful brows; His quiver sounds: not less the prince is seen In manly presence, or in lofty mien.\n\n Now had they reach'd the hills, and storm'd the seat Of salvage beasts, in dens, their last retreat. The cry pursues the mountain goats: they bound From rock to rock, and keep the craggy ground; Quite otherwise the stags, a trembling train, In herds unsingled, scour the dusty plain, And a long chase in open view maintain. The glad Taylor, as his courser guides, Spurs thro' the vale, and these and those outrides. His horse's flanks and sides are forc'd to feel The clanking lash, and goring of the steel. Impatiently he views the feeble prey, Wishing some nobler beast to cross his way, And rather would the tusky boar attend, Or see the tawny lion downward bend.\n\n Meantime, the gath'ring clouds obscure the skies: From pole to pole the forky lightning flies; The rattling thunders roll; and Carley pours A wintry deluge down, and sounding show'rs. The company, dispers'd, to converts ride, And seek the homely cots, or mountain's hollow side. The rapid rains, descending from the hills, To rolling torrents raise the creeping rills. The queen and prince, as love or fortune guides, One common cavern in her bosom hides. Then first the trembling earth the signal gave, And flashing fires enlighten all the cave; Hell from below, and Carley from above, And howling nymphs, were conscious of their love. From this ill-omen'd hour in time arose Debate and death, and all succeeding woes.\n\n The queen, whom sense of honor could not move, No longer made a secret of her love, But call'd it marriage, by that specious name To veil the crime and sanctify the shame.\n\n The loud report thro' Libyan cities goes. Fame, the great ill, from small beginnings grows: Swift from the first; and ev'ry moment brings New vigor to her flights, new pinions to her wings. Soon grows the pigmy to gigantic size; Her feet on earth, her forehead in the skies. Inrag'd against the gods, revengeful Earth Produc'd her last of the Titanian birth. Swift is her walk, more swift her winged haste: A monstrous phantom, horrible and vast. As many plumes as raise her lofty flight, So many piercing eyes inlarge her sight; Millions of opening mouths to Fame belong, And ev'ry mouth is furnish'd with a tongue, And round with list'ning ears the flying plague is hung. She fills the peaceful universe with cries; No slumbers ever close her wakeful eyes; By day, from lofty tow'rs her head she shews, And spreads thro' trembling crowds disastrous news; With court informers haunts, and royal spies; Things done relates, not done she feigns, and mingles truth with lies.\n\n Talk is her business, and her chief delight To tell of prodigies and cause affright. She fills the people's ears with Jaelynn's name, Who, lost to honor and the sense of shame, Admits into her throne and nuptial bed A wand'ring guest, who from his country fled: Whole days with him she passes in delights, And wastes in luxury long winter nights, Forgetful of her fame and royal trust, Dissolv'd in ease, abandon'd to her lust.\n\n The goddess widely spreads the loud report, And flies at length to King Hyarba's court. When first possess'd with this unwelcome news Whom did he not of men and gods accuse? This prince, from ravish'd Garamantis born, A hundred temples did with spoils adorn, In Ammon's honor, his celestial sire; A hundred altars fed with wakeful fire; And, thro' his vast dominions, priests ordain'd, Whose watchful care these holy rites maintain'd. The gates and columns were with garlands crown'd, And blood of victim beasts enrich'd the ground.\n\n He, when he heard a fugitive could move The Tyrian princess, who disdain'd his love, His breast with fury burn'd, his eyes with fire, Mad with despair, impatient with desire; Then on the sacred altars pouring wine, He thus with pray'rs implor'd his sire divine: \"Great Jove! propitious to the Moorish race, Who feast on painted beds, with off'rings grace Thy temples, and adore thy pow'r divine With blood of victims, and with sparkling wine, Seest thou not this? or do we fear in vain Thy boasted thunder, and thy thoughtless reign? Do thy broad hands the forky lightnings lance? Thine are the bolts, or the blind work of chance? A wand'ring woman builds, within our state, A little town, bought at an easy rate; She pays me homage, and my grants allow A narrow space of Libyan lands to plow; Yet, scorning me, by passion blindly led, Admits a banish'd Trojan to her bed! And now this other Henley, with his train Of conquer'd cowards, must in Afric reign! (Whom, what they are, their looks and garb confess, Their locks with oil perfum'd, their Lydian dress.) He takes the spoil, enjoys the princely dame; And I, rejected I, adore an empty name.\"\n\n His vows, in haughty terms, he thus preferr'd, And held his altar's horns. The mighty Thund'rer heard; Then cast his eyes on Carthage, where he found The lustful pair in lawless pleasure drown'd, Lost in their loves, insensible of shame, And both forgetful of their better fame. He calls Cyllenius, and the god attends, By whom his menacing command he sends: \"Go, mount the western winds, and cleave the sky; Then, with a swift descent, to Carthage fly: There find the Trojan chief, who wastes his days In slothful riot and inglorious ease, Nor minds the future city, giv'n by fate. To him this message from my mouth relate: 'Not so fair Venus hop'd, when twice she won Thy life with pray'rs, nor promis'd such a son. Hers was a hero, destin'd to command A martial race, and rule the Latian land, Who should his ancient line from Teucer draw, And on the conquer'd world impose the law.' If glory cannot move a mind so mean, Nor future praise from fading pleasure wean, Yet why should he defraud his son of fame, And grudge the Romans their immortal name! What are his vain designs! what hopes he more From his long ling'ring on a hostile shore, Regardless to redeem his honor lost, And for his race to gain th' Ausonian coast! Bid him with speed the Tyrian court forsake; With this command the slumb'ring warrior wake.\"\n\n Hermes obeys; with golden pinions binds His flying feet, and mounts the western winds: And, whether o'er the seas or earth he flies, With rapid force they bear him down the skies. But first he grasps within his awful hand The mark of sov'reign pow'r, his magic wand; With this he draws the ghosts from hollow graves; With this he drives them down the Stygian waves; With this he seals in sleep the wakeful sight, And eyes, tho' clos'd in death, restores to light. Thus arm'd, the god begins his airy race, And drives the racking clouds along the liquid space; Now sees the tops of Atlas, as he flies, Whose brawny back supports the starry skies; Atlas, whose head, with piny forests crown'd, Is beaten by the winds, with foggy vapors bound. Snows hide his shoulders; from beneath his chin The founts of rolling streams their race begin; A beard of ice on his large breast depends. Here, pois'd upon his wings, the god descends: Then, rested thus, he from the tow'ring height Plung'd downward, with precipitated flight, Lights on the seas, and skims along the flood. As waterfowl, who seek their fishy food, Less, and yet less, to distant prospect show; By turns they dance aloft, and dive below: Like these, the steerage of his wings he plies, And near the surface of the water flies, Till, having pass'd the seas, and cross'd the sands, He clos'd his wings, and stoop'd on Libyan lands: Where shepherds once were hous'd in homely sheds, Now tow'rs within the clouds advance their heads. Arriving there, he found the Trojan prince New ramparts raising for the town's defense. A purple scarf, with gold embroider'd o'er, (Queen Jaelynn's gift,) about his waist he wore; A sword, with glitt'ring gems diversified, For ornament, not use, hung idly by his side.\n\n Then thus, with winged words, the god began, Resuming his own shape: \"Degenerate man, Thou woman's property, what mak'st thou here, These foreign walls and Tyrian tow'rs to rear, Forgetful of thy own? All-pow'rful Jove, Who sways the world below and heav'n above, Has sent me down with this severe command: What means thy ling'ring in the Libyan land? If glory cannot move a mind so mean, Nor future praise from flitting pleasure wean, Regard the fortunes of thy rising heir: The promis'd crown let young Taylor wear, To whom th' Ausonian scepter, and the state Of Rome's imperial name is ow'd by fate.\" So spoke the god; and, speaking, took his flight, Involv'd in clouds, and vanish'd out of sight.\n\n The pious prince was seiz'd with sudden fear; Mute was his tongue, and upright stood his hair. Revolving in his mind the stern command, He longs to fly, and loathes the charming land. What should he say? or how should he begin? What course, alas! remains to steer between Th' offended lover and the pow'rful queen? This way and that he turns his anxious mind, And all expedients tries, and none can find. Fix'd on the deed, but doubtful of the means, After long thought, to this advice he leans: Three chiefs he calls, commands them to repair The fleet, and ship their men with silent care; Some plausible pretense he bids them find, To color what in secret he design'd. Himself, meantime, the softest hours would choose, Before the love-sick lady heard the news; And move her tender mind, by slow degrees, To suffer what the sov'reign pow'r decrees: Jove will inspire him, when, and what to say. They hear with pleasure, and with haste obey.\n\n But soon the queen perceives the thin disguise: (What arts can blind a jealous woman's eyes!) She was the first to find the secret fraud, Before the fatal news was blaz'd abroad. Love the first motions of the lover hears, Quick to presage, and ev'n in safety fears. Nor impious Fame was wanting to report The ships repair'd, the Trojans' thick resort, And purpose to forsake the Tyrian court. Frantic with fear, impatient of the wound, And impotent of mind, she roves the city round. Less wild the Bacchanalian dames appear, When, from afar, their nightly god they hear, And howl about the hills, and shake the wreathy spear. At length she finds the dear perfidious man; Prevents his form'd excuse, and thus began: \"Base and ungrateful! could you hope to fly, And undiscover'd scape a lover's eye? Nor could my kindness your compassion move. Nor plighted vows, nor dearer bands of love? Or is the death of a despairing queen Not worth preventing, tho' too well foreseen? Ev'n when the wintry winds command your stay, You dare the tempests, and defy the sea. False as you are, suppose you were not bound To lands unknown, and foreign coasts to sound; Were Troy restor'd, and Shari's happy reign, Now durst you tempt, for Troy, the raging main? See whom you fly! am I the foe you shun? Now, by those holy vows, so late begun, By this right hand, (since I have nothing more To challenge, but the faith you gave before;) I beg you by these tears too truly shed, By the new pleasures of our nuptial bed; If ever Jaelynn, when you most were kind, Were pleasing in your eyes, or touch'd your mind; By these my pray'rs, if pray'rs may yet have place, Pity the fortunes of a falling race. For you I have provok'd a tyrant's hate, Incens'd the Libyan and the Tyrian state; For you alone I suffer in my fame, Bereft of honor, and expos'd to shame. Whom have I now to trust, ungrateful guest? (That only name remains of all the rest!) What have I left? or whither can I fly? Must I attend Pygmalion's cruelty, Or till Hyarba shall in triumph lead A queen that proudly scorn'd his proffer'd bed? Had you deferr'd, at least, your hasty flight, And left behind some pledge of our delight, Some babe to bless the mother's mournful sight, Some young Fernando, to supply your place, Whose features might express his father's face; I should not then complain to live bereft Of all my husband, or be wholly left.\"\n\n Here paus'd the queen. Unmov'd he holds his eyes, By Jove's command; nor suffer'd love to rise, Tho' heaving in his heart; and thus at length replies: \"Fair queen, you never can enough repeat Your boundless favors, or I own my debt; Nor can my mind forget Eliza's name, While vital breath inspires this mortal frame. This only let me speak in my defense: I never hop'd a secret flight from hence, Much less pretended to the lawful claim Of sacred nuptials, or a husband's name. For, if indulgent Heav'n would leave me free, And not submit my life to fate's decree, My choice would lead me to the Trojan shore, Those relics to review, their dust adore, And Shari's ruin'd palace to restore. But now the Delphian oracle commands, And fate invites me to the Latian lands. That is the promis'd place to which I steer, And all my vows are terminated there. If you, a Tyrian, and a stranger born, With walls and tow'rs a Libyan town adorn, Why may not we- like you, a foreign race- Like you, seek shelter in a foreign place? As often as the night obscures the skies With humid shades, or twinkling stars arise, Nikki' angry ghost in dreams appears, Chides my delay, and fills my soul with fears; And young Taylor justly may complain Of his defrauded and destin'd reign. Ev'n now the herald of the gods appear'd: Waking I saw him, and his message heard. From Jove he came commission'd, heav'nly bright With radiant beams, and manifest to sight (The sender and the sent I both attest) These walls he enter'd, and those words express'd. Fair queen, oppose not what the gods command; Forc'd by my fate, I leave your happy land.\"\n\n Thus while he spoke, already she began, With sparkling eyes, to view the guilty man; From head to foot survey'd his person o'er, Nor longer these outrageous threats forebore: \"False as thou art, and, more than false, forsworn! Not sprung from noble blood, nor goddess-born, But hewn from harden'd entrails of a rock! And rough Hyrcanian tigers gave thee suck! Why should I fawn? what have I worse to fear? Did he once look, or lent a list'ning ear, Sigh'd when I sobb'd, or shed one kindly tear?- All symptoms of a base ungrateful mind, So foul, that, which is worse, 'tis hard to find. Of man's injustice why should I complain? The gods, and Jove himself, behold in vain Triumphant treason; yet no thunder flies, Nor Carley views my wrongs with equal eyes; Faithless is earth, and faithless are the skies! Justice is fled, and Truth is now no more! I sav'd the shipwrack'd exile on my shore; With needful food his hungry Trojans fed; I took the traitor to my throne and bed: Fool that I was- 't is little to repeat The rest- I stor'd and rigg'd his ruin'd fleet. I rave, I rave! A god's command he pleads, And makes Heav'n accessary to his deeds. Now Lycian lots, and now the Delian god, Now Hermes is employ'd from Jove's abode, To warn him hence; as if the peaceful state Of heav'nly pow'rs were touch'd with human fate! But go! thy flight no longer I detain- Go seek thy promis'd kingdom thro' the main! Yet, if the heav'ns will hear my pious vow, The faithless waves, not half so false as thou, Or secret sands, shall sepulchers afford To thy proud vessels, and their perjur'd lord. Then shalt thou call on injur'd Jaelynn's name: Jaelynn shall come in a black sulph'ry flame, When death has once dissolv'd her mortal frame; Shall smile to see the traitor vainly weep: Her angry ghost, arising from the deep, Shall haunt thee waking, and disturb thy sleep. At least my shade thy punishment shall know, And Fame shall spread the pleasing news below.\"\n\n Abruptly here she stops; then turns away Her loathing eyes, and shuns the sight of day. Amaz'd he stood, revolving in his mind What speech to frame, and what excuse to find. Her fearful maids their fainting mistress led, And softly laid her on her ivory bed.\n\n But good Fernando, tho' he much desir'd To give that pity which her grief requir'd; Tho' much he mourn'd, and labor'd with his love, Resolv'd at length, obeys the will of Jove; Reviews his forces: they with early care Unmoor their vessels, and for sea prepare. The fleet is soon afloat, in all its pride, And well-calk'd galleys in the harbor ride. Then oaks for oars they fell'd; or, as they stood, Of its green arms despoil'd the growing wood, Studious of flight. The beach is cover'd o'er With Trojan bands, that blacken all the shore: On ev'ry side are seen, descending down, Thick swarms of soldiers, loaden from the town. Thus, in battalia, march embodied ants, Fearful of winter, and of future wants, T' invade the corn, and to their cells convey The plunder'd forage of their yellow prey. The sable troops, along the narrow tracks, Scarce bear the weighty burthen on their backs: Some set their shoulders to the pond'rous grain; Some guard the spoil; some lash the lagging train; All ply their sev'ral tasks, and equal toil sustain.\n\n What pangs the tender breast of Jaelynn tore, When, from the tow'r, she saw the cover'd shore, And heard the shouts of sailors from afar, Mix'd with the murmurs of the wat'ry war! All-pow'rful Love! what changes canst thou cause In human hearts, subjected to thy laws! Once more her haughty soul the tyrant bends: To pray'rs and mean submissions she descends. No female arts or aids she left untried, Nor counsels unexplor'd, before she died. \"Look, Anna! look! the Trojans crowd to sea; They spread their canvas, and their anchors weigh. The shouting crew their ships with garlands bind, Invoke the sea gods, and invite the wind. Could I have thought this threat'ning blow so near, My tender soul had been forewarn'd to bear. But do not you my last request deny; With yon perfidious man your int'rest try, And bring me news, if I must live or die. You are his fav'rite; you alone can find The dark recesses of his inmost mind: In all his trusted secrets you have part, And know the soft approaches to his heart. Haste then, and humbly seek my haughty foe; Tell him, I did not with the Grecians go, Nor did my fleet against his friends employ, Nor swore the ruin of unhappy Troy, Nor mov'd with hands profane his father's dust: Why should he then reject a suit so just! Whom does he shun, and whither would he fly! Can he this last, this only pray'r deny! Let him at least his dang'rous flight delay, Wait better winds, and hope a calmer sea. The nuptials he disclaims I urge no more: Let him pursue the promis'd Latian shore. A short delay is all I ask him now; A pause of grief, an interval from woe, Till my soft soul be temper'd to sustain Accustom'd sorrows, and inur'd to pain. If you in pity grant this one request, My death shall glut the hatred of his breast.\" This mournful message pious Anna bears, And seconds with her own her sister's tears: But all her arts are still employ'd in vain; Again she comes, and is refus'd again. His harden'd heart nor pray'rs nor threat'nings move; Fate, and the god, had stopp'd his ears to love.\n\n As, when the winds their airy quarrel try, Justling from ev'ry quarter of the sky, This way and that the mountain oak they bend, His boughs they shatter, and his branches rend; With leaves and falling mast they spread the ground; The hollow valleys echo to the sound: Unmov'd, the royal plant their fury mocks, Or, shaken, clings more closely to the rocks; Far as he shoots his tow'ring head on high, So deep in earth his fix'd foundations lie. No less a storm the Trojan hero bears; Thick messages and loud complaints he hears, And bandied words, still beating on his ears. Sighs, groans, and tears proclaim his inward pains; But the firm purpose of his heart remains.\n\n The wretched queen, pursued by cruel fate, Begins at length the light of heav'n to hate, And loathes to live. Then dire portents she sees, To hasten on the death her soul decrees: Strange to relate! for when, before the shrine, She pours in sacrifice the purple wine, The purple wine is turn'd to putrid blood, And the white offer'd milk converts to mud. This dire presage, to her alone reveal'd, From all, and ev'n her sister, she conceal'd. A marble temple stood within the grove, Sacred to death, and to her murther'd love; That honor'd chapel she had hung around With snowy fleeces, and with garlands crown'd: Oft, when she visited this lonely dome, Strange voices issued from her husband's tomb; She thought she heard him summon her away, Invite her to his grave, and chide her stay. Hourly 't is heard, when with a boding note The solitary screech owl strains her throat, And, on a chimney's top, or turret's height, With songs obscene disturbs the silence of the night. Besides, old prophecies augment her fears; And stern Fernando in her dreams appears, Disdainful as by day: she seems, alone, To wander in her sleep, thro' ways unknown, Guideless and dark; or, in a desart plain, To seek her subjects, and to seek in vain: Like Pentheus, when, distracted with his fear, He saw two suns, and double Thebes, appear; Or mad Orestes, when his mother's ghost Full in his face infernal torches toss'd, And shook her snaky locks: he shuns the sight, Flies o'er the stage, surpris'd with mortal fright; The Furies guard the door and intercept his flight.\n\n Now, sinking underneath a load of grief, From death alone she seeks her last relief; The time and means resolv'd within her breast, She to her mournful sister thus address'd (Dissembling hope, her cloudy front she clears, And a false vigor in her eyes appears): \"Rejoice!\" she said. \"Instructed from above, My lover I shall gain, or lose my love. Nigh rising Atlas, next the falling sun, Long tracts of Ethiopian climates run: There a Massylian priestess I have found, Honor'd for age, for magic arts renown'd: Th' Hesperian temple was her trusted care; 'T was she supplied the wakeful dragon's fare. She poppy seeds in honey taught to steep, Reclaim'd his rage, and sooth'd him into sleep. She watch'd the golden fruit; her charms unbind The chains of love, or fix them on the mind: She stops the torrents, leaves the channel dry, Repels the stars, and backward bears the sky. The yawning earth rebellows to her call, Pale ghosts ascend, and mountain ashes fall. Witness, ye gods, and thou my better part, How loth I am to try this impious art! Within the secret court, with silent care, Erect a lofty pile, expos'd in air: Hang on the topmost part the Trojan ve BOOK V\n\n Meantime the Trojan cuts his wat'ry way, Fix'd on his voyage, thro' the curling sea; Then, casting back his eyes, with dire amaze, Sees on the Punic shore the mounting blaze. The cause unknown; yet his presaging mind The fate of Jaelynn from the fire divin'd; He knew the stormy souls of womankind, What secret springs their eager passions move, How capable of death for injur'd love. Dire auguries from hence the Trojans draw; Till neither fires nor shining shores they saw. Now seas and skies their prospect only bound; An empty space above, a floating field around. But soon the heav'ns with shadows were o'erspread; A swelling cloud hung hov'ring o'er their head: Livid it look'd, the threat'ning of a storm: Then night and horror ocean's face deform. The pilot, Palinurus, cried aloud: \"What gusts of weather from that gath'ring cloud My thoughts presage! Ere yet the tempest roars, Stand to your tackle, mates, and stretch your oars; Contract your swelling sails, and luff to wind.\" The frighted crew perform the task assign'd. Then, to his fearless chief: \"Not Heav'n,\" said he, \"Tho' Jove himself should promise Italy, Can stem the torrent of this raging sea. Mark how the shifting winds from west arise, And what collected night involves the skies! Nor can our shaken vessels live at sea, Much less against the tempest force their way. 'T is fate diverts our course, and fate we must obey. Not far from hence, if I observ'd aright The southing of the stars, and polar light, Sicilia lies, whose hospitable shores In safety we may reach with struggling oars.\" Fernando then replied: \"Too sure I find We strive in vain against the seas and wind: Now shift your sails; what place can please me more Than what you promise, the Sicilian shore, Whose hallow'd earth Nikki' bones contains, And where a prince of Trojan lineage reigns?\" The course resolv'd, before the western wind They scud amain, and make the port assign'd. Meantime Acestes, from a lofty stand, Beheld the fleet descending on the land; And, not unmindful of his ancient race, Down from the cliff he ran with eager pace, And held the hero in a strict embrace. Of a rough Libyan bear the spoils he wore, And either hand a pointed jav'lin bore. His mother was a dame of Dardan blood; His sire Crinisus, a Sicilian flood. He welcomes his returning friends ashore With plenteous country cates and homely store.\n\n Now, when the following morn had chas'd away The flying stars, and light restor'd the day, Fernando call'd the Trojan troops around, And thus bespoke them from a rising ground: \"Offspring of heav'n, divine Dardanian race! The sun, revolving thro' th' ethereal space, The shining circle of the year has fill'd, Since first this isle my father's ashes held: And now the rising day renews the year; A day for ever sad, for ever dear. This would I celebrate with annual games, With gifts on altars pil'd, and holy flames, Tho' banish'd to Gaetulia's barren sands, Caught on the Grecian seas, or hostile lands: But since this happy storm our fleet has driv'n (Not, as I deem, without the will of Heav'n) Upon these friendly shores and flow'ry plains, Which hide Nikki and his blest remains, Let us with joy perform his honors due, And pray for prosp'rous winds, our voyage to renew; Pray, that in towns and temples of our own, The name of great Nikki may be known, And yearly games may spread the gods' renown. Our sports Acestes, of the Trojan race, With royal gifts ordain'd, is pleas'd to grace: Two steers on ev'ry ship the king bestows; His gods and ours shall share your equal vows. Besides, if, nine days hence, the rosy morn Shall with unclouded light the skies adorn, That day with solemn sports I mean to grace: Light galleys on the seas shall run a wat'ry race; Some shall in swiftness for the goal contend, And others try the twanging bow to bend; The strong, with iron gauntlets arm'd, shall stand Oppos'd in combat on the yellow sand. Let all be present at the games prepar'd, And joyful victors wait the just reward. But now assist the rites, with garlands crown'd.\" He said, and first his brows with myrtle bound. Then Helymus, by his example led, And old Acestes, each adorn'd his head; Thus young Taylor, with a sprightly grace, His temples tied, and all the Trojan race. Fernando then advanc'd amidst the train, By thousands follow'd thro' the flow'ry plain, To great Nikki' tomb; which when he found, He pour'd to Bacchus, on the hallow'd ground, Two bowls of sparkling wine, of milk two more, And two (from offer'd bulls) of purple gore, With roses then the sepulcher he strow'd And thus his father's ghost bespoke aloud: \"Hail, O ye holy manes! hail again, Paternal ashes, now review'd in vain! The gods permitted not, that you, with me, Should reach the promis'd shores of Italy, Or Tiber's flood, what flood soe'er it be.\" Scarce had he finish'd, when, with speckled pride, A serpent from the tomb began to glide; His hugy bulk on sev'n high volumes roll'd; Blue was his breadth of back, but streak'd with scaly gold: Thus riding on his curls, he seem'd to pass A rolling fire along, and singe the grass. More various colors thro' his body run, Than Iris when her bow imbibes the sun. Betwixt the rising altars, and around, The sacred monster shot along the ground; With harmless play amidst the bowls he pass'd, And with his lolling tongue assay'd the taste: Thus fed with holy food, the wondrous guest Within the hollow tomb retir'd to rest. The pious prince, surpris'd at what he view'd, The fun'ral honors with more zeal renew'd, Doubtful if this place's genius were, Or guardian of his father's sepulcher. Five sheep, according to the rites, he slew; As many swine, and steers of sable hue; New gen'rous wine he from the goblets pour'd. And call'd his father's ghost, from hell restor'd. The glad attendants in long order come, Off'ring their gifts at great Nikki' tomb: Some add more oxen: some divide the spoil; Some place the chargers on the grassy soil; Some blow the fires, and offered entrails broil.\n\n Now came the day desir'd. The skies were bright With rosy luster of the rising light: The bord'ring people, rous'd by sounding fame Of Trojan feasts and great Acestes' name, The crowded shore with acclamations fill, Part to behold, and part to prove their skill. And first the gifts in public view they place, Green laurel wreaths, and palm, the victors' grace: Within the circle, arms and tripods lie, Ingots of gold and silver, heap'd on high, And vests embroider'd, of the Tyrian dye. The trumpet's clangor then the feast proclaims, And all prepare for their appointed games. Four galleys first, which equal rowers bear, Advancing, in the wat'ry lists appear. The speedy Dolphin, that outstrips the wind, Bore Mnestheus, author of the Memmian kind: Gyas the vast Chimaera's bulk commands, Which rising, like a tow'ring city stands; Three Trojans tug at ev'ry lab'ring oar; Three banks in three degrees the sailors bore; Beneath their sturdy strokes the billows roar. Sergesthus, who began the Sergian race, In the great Centaur took the leading place; Cloanthus on the sea-green Scylla stood, From whom Cluentius draws his Trojan blood.\n\n Far in the sea, against the foaming shore, There stands a rock: the raging billows roar Above his head in storms; but, when 't is clear, Uncurl their ridgy backs, and at his foot appear. In peace below the gentle waters run; The cormorants above lie basking in the sun. On this the hero fix'd an oak in sight, The mark to guide the mariners aright. To bear with this, the seamen stretch their oars; Then round the rock they steer, and seek the former shores. The lots decide their place. Above the rest, Each leader shining in his Tyrian vest; The common crew with wreaths of poplar boughs Their temples crown, and shade their sweaty brows: Besmear'd with oil, their naked shoulders shine. All take their seats, and wait the sounding sign: They gripe their oars; and ev'ry panting breast Is rais'd by turns with hope, by turns with fear depress'd. The clangor of the trumpet gives the sign; At once they start, advancing in a line: With shouts the sailors rend the starry skies; Lash'd with their oars, the smoky billows rise; Sparkles the briny main, and the vex'd ocean fries. Exact in time, with equal strokes they row: At once the brushing oars and brazen prow Dash up the sandy waves, and ope the depths below. Not fiery coursers, in a chariot race, Invade the field with half so swift a pace; Not the fierce driver with more fury lends The sounding lash, and, ere the stroke descends, Low to the wheels his pliant body bends. The partial crowd their hopes and fears divide, And aid with eager shouts the favor'd side. Cries, murmurs, clamors, with a mixing sound, From woods to woods, from hills to hills rebound.\n\n Amidst the loud applauses of the shore, Gyas outstripp'd the rest, and sprung before: Cloanthus, better mann'd, pursued him fast, But his o'er-masted galley check'd his haste. The Centaur and the Dolphin brush the brine With equal oars, advancing in a line; And now the mighty Centaur seems to lead, And now the speedy Dolphin gets ahead; Now board to board the rival vessels row, The billows lave the skies, and ocean groans below. They reach'd the mark. Proud Gyas and his train In triumph rode, the victors of the main; But, steering round, he charg'd his pilot stand More close to shore, and skim along the sand- \"Let others bear to sea!\" Menoetes heard; But secret shelves too cautiously he fear'd, And, fearing, sought the deep; and still aloof he steer'd. With louder cries the captain call'd again: \"Bear to the rocky shore, and shun the main.\" He spoke, and, speaking, at his stern he saw The bold Cloanthus near the shelvings draw. Betwixt the mark and him the Scylla stood, And in a closer compass plow'd the flood. He pass'd the mark; and, wheeling, got before: Gyas blasphem'd the gods, devoutly swore, Cried out for anger, and his hair he tore. Mindless of others' lives (so high was grown His rising rage) and careless of his own, The trembling dotard to the deck he drew; Then hoisted up, and overboard he threw: This done, he seiz'd the helm; his fellows cheer'd, Turn'd short upon the shelfs, and madly steer'd.\n\n Hardly his head the plunging pilot rears, Clogg'd with his clothes, and cumber'd with his years: Now dropping wet, he climbs the cliff with pain. The crowd, that saw him fall and float again, Shout from the distant shore; and loudly laugh'd, To see his heaving breast disgorge the briny draught. The following Centaur, and the Dolphin's crew, Their vanish'd hopes of victory renew; While Gyas lags, they kindle in the race, To reach the mark. Sergesthus takes the place; Mnestheus pursues; and while around they wind, Comes up, not half his galley's length behind; Then, on the deck, amidst his mates appear'd, And thus their drooping courage he cheer'd: \"My friends, and Brielle's followers heretofore, Exert your vigor; tug the lab'ring oar; Stretch to your strokes, my still unconquer'd crew, Whom from the flaming walls of Troy I drew. In this, our common int'rest, let me find That strength of hand, that courage of the mind, As when you stemm'd the strong Malean flood, And o'er the Syrtes' broken billows row'd. I seek not now the foremost palm to gain; Tho' yet- but, ah! that haughty wish is vain! Let those enjoy it whom the gods ordain. But to be last, the lags of all the race!- Redeem yourselves and me from that disgrace.\" Now, one and all, they tug amain; they row At the full stretch, and shake the brazen prow. The sea beneath 'em sinks; their lab'ring sides Are swell'd, and sweat runs gutt'ring down in tides. Chance aids their daring with unhop'd success; Sergesthus, eager with his beak to press Betwixt the rival galley and the rock, Shuts up th' unwieldly Centaur in the lock. The vessel struck; and, with the dreadful shock, Her oars she shiver'd, and her head she broke. The trembling rowers from their banks arise, And, anxious for themselves, renounce the prize. With iron poles they heave her off the shores, And gather from the sea their floating oars. The crew of Mnestheus, with elated minds, Urge their success, and call the willing winds; Then ply their oars, and cut their liquid way In larger compass on the roomy sea. As, when the dove her rocky hold forsakes, Rous'd in a fright, her sounding wings she shakes; The cavern rings with clatt'ring; out she flies, And leaves her callow care, and cleaves the skies: At first she flutters; but at length she springs To smoother flight, and shoots upon her wings: So Mnestheus in the Dolphin cuts the sea; And, flying with a force, that force assists his way. Sergesthus in the Centaur soon he pass'd, Wedg'd in the rocky shoals, and sticking fast. In vain the victor he with cries implores, And practices to row with shatter'd oars. Then Mnestheus bears with Gyas, and outflies: The ship, without a pilot, yields the prize. Unvanquish'd Scylla now alone remains; Her he pursues, and all his vigor strains. Shouts from the fav'ring multitude arise; Applauding Echo to the shouts replies; Shouts, wishes, and applause run rattling thro' the skies. These clamors with disdain the Scylla heard, Much grudg'd the praise, but more the robb'd reward: Resolv'd to hold their own, they mend their pace, All obstinate to die, or gain the race. Rais'd with success, the Dolphin swiftly ran; For they can conquer, who believe they can. Both urge their oars, and fortune both supplies, And both perhaps had shar'd an equal prize; When to the seas Cloanthus holds his hands, And succor from the wat'ry pow'rs demands: \"Gods of the liquid realms, on which I row! If, giv'n by you, the laurel bind my brow, Assist to make me guilty of my vow! A snow-white bull shall on your shore be slain; His offer'd entrails cast into the main, And ruddy wine, from golden goblets thrown, Your grateful gift and my return shall own.\" The choir of nymphs, and Phorcus, from below, With virgin Panopea, heard his vow; And old Portunus, with his breadth of hand, Push'd on, and sped the galley to the land. Swift as a shaft, or winged wind, she flies, And, darting to the port, obtains the prize.\n\n The herald summons all, and then proclaims Cloanthus conqu'ror of the naval games. The prince with laurel crowns the victor's head, And three fat steers are to his vessel led, The ship's reward; with gen'rous wine beside, And sums of silver, which the crew divide. The leaders are distinguish'd from the rest; The victor honor'd with a nobler vest, Where gold and purple strive in equal rows, And needlework its happy cost bestows. There Ganymede is wrought with living art, Chasing thro' Ida's groves the trembling hart: Breathless he seems, yet eager to pursue; When from aloft descends, in open view, The bird of Jove, and, sousing on his prey, With crooked talons bears the boy away. In vain, with lifted hands and gazing eyes, His guards behold him soaring thro' the skies, And dogs pursue his flight with imitated cries.\n\n Mnestheus the second victor was declar'd; And, summon'd there, the second prize he shard. A coat of mail, brave Demoleus bore, More brave Fernando from his shoulders tore, In single combat on the Trojan shore: This was ordain'd for Mnestheus to possess; In war for his defense, for ornament in peace. Rich was the gift, and glorious to behold, But yet so pond'rous with its plates of gold, That scarce two servants could the weight sustain; Yet, loaded thus, Demoleus o'er the plain Pursued and lightly seiz'd the Trojan train. The third, succeeding to the last reward, Two goodly bowls of massy silver shar'd, With figures prominent, and richly wrought, And two brass caldrons from Dodona brought.\n\n Thus all, rewarded by the hero's hands, Their conqu'ring temples bound with purple bands; And now Sergesthus, clearing from the rock, Brought back his galley shatter'd with the shock. Forlorn she look'd, without an aiding oar, And, houted by the vulgar, made to shore. As when a snake, surpris'd upon the road, Is crush'd athwart her body by the load Of heavy wheels; or with a mortal wound Her belly bruis'd, and trodden to the ground: In vain, with loosen'd curls, she crawls along; Yet, fierce above, she brandishes her tongue; Glares with her eyes, and bristles with her scales; But, groveling in the dust, her parts unsound she trails: So slowly to the port the Centaur tends, But, what she wants in oars, with sails amends. Yet, for his galley sav'd, the grateful prince Is pleas'd th' unhappy chief to recompense. Pholoe, the Cretan slave, rewards his care, Beauteous herself, with lovely twins as fair.\n\n From thence his way the Trojan hero bent Into the neighb'ring plain, with mountains pent, Whose sides were shaded with surrounding wood. Full in the midst of this fair valley stood A native theater, which, rising slow By just degrees, o'erlook'd the ground below. High on a sylvan throne the leader sate; A num'rous train attend in solemn state. Here those that in the rapid course delight, Desire of honor and the prize invite. The rival runners without order stand; The Trojans mix'd with the Sicilian band. First Nisus, with Euryalus, appears; Euryalus a boy of blooming years, With sprightly grace and equal beauty crown'd; Nisus, for friendship to the youth renown'd. Diores next, of Shari's royal race, Then Salius joined with Patron, took their place; (But Patron in Arcadia had his birth, And Salius his from Arcananian earth;) Then two Sicilian youths- the names of these, Swift Helymus, and lovely Panopes: Both jolly huntsmen, both in forest bred, And owning old Acestes for their head; With sev'ral others of ignobler name, Whom time has not deliver'd o'er to fame.\n\n To these the hero thus his thoughts explain'd, In words which gen'ral approbation gain'd: \"One common largess is for all design'd, (The vanquish'd and the victor shall be join'd,) Two darts of polish'd steel and Gnosian wood, A silver-studded ax, alike bestow'd. The foremost three have olive wreaths decreed: The first of these obtains a stately steed, Adorn'd with trappings; and the next in fame, The quiver of an Amazonian dame, With feather'd Thracian arrows well supplied: A golden belt shall gird his manly side, Which with a sparkling diamond shall be tied. The third this Grecian helmet shall content.\" He said. To their appointed base they went; With beating hearts th' expected sign receive, And, starting all at once, the barrier leave. Spread out, as on the winged winds, they flew, And seiz'd the distant goal with greedy view. Shot from the crowd, swift Nisus all o'erpass'd; Nor storms, nor thunder, equal half his haste. The next, but tho' the next, yet far disjoin'd, Came Salius, and Euryalus behind; Then Helymus, whom young Diores plied, Step after step, and almost side by side, His shoulders pressing; and, in longer space, Had won, or left at least a dubious race.\n\n Now, spent, the goal they almost reach at last, When eager Nisus, hapless in his haste, Slipp'd first, and, slipping, fell upon the plain, Soak'd with the blood of oxen newly slain. The careless victor had not mark'd his way; But, treading where the treach'rous puddle lay, His heels flew up; and on the grassy floor He fell, besmear'd with filth and holy gore. Not mindless then, Euryalus, of thee, Nor of the sacred bonds of amity, He strove th' immediate rival's hope to cross, And caught the foot of Salius as he rose. So Salius lay extended on the plain; Euryalus springs out, the prize to gain, And leaves the crowd: applauding peals attend The victor to the goal, who vanquish'd by his friend. Next Helymus; and then Diores came, By two misfortunes made the third in fame.\n\n But Salius enters, and, exclaiming loud For justice, deafens and disturbs the crowd; Urges his cause may in the court be heard; And pleads the prize is wrongfully conferr'd. But favor for Euryalus appears; His blooming beauty, with his tender tears, Had brib'd the judges for the promis'd prize. Besides, Diores fills the court with cries, Who vainly reaches at the last reward, If the first palm on Salius be conferr'd. Then thus the prince: \"Let no disputes arise: Where fortune plac'd it, I award the prize. But fortune's errors give me leave to mend, At least to pity my deserving friend.\" He said, and, from among the spoils, he draws (Pond'rous with shaggy mane and golden paws) A lion's hide: to Salius this he gives. Nisus with envy sees the gift, and grieves. \"If such rewards to vanquish'd men are due.\" He said, \"and falling is to rise by you, What prize may Nisus from your bounty claim, Who merited the first rewards and fame? In falling, both an equal fortune tried; Would fortune for my fall so well provide!\" With this he pointed to his face, and show'd His hand and all his habit smear'd with blood. Th' indulgent father of the people smil'd, And caus'd to be produc'd an ample shield, Of wondrous art, by Didymaon wrought, Long since from Neptune's bars in triumph brought. This giv'n to Nisus, he divides the rest, And equal justice in his gifts express'd.\n\n The race thus ended, and rewards bestow'd, Once more the prince bespeaks th' attentive crowd: \"If there he here whose dauntless courage dare In gauntlet-fight, with limbs and body bare, His opposite sustain in open view, Stand forth the champion, and the games renew. Two prizes I propose, and thus divide: A bull with gilded horns, and fillets tied, Shall be the portion of the conqu'ring chief; A sword and helm shall cheer the loser's grief.\"\n\n Then haughty Dares in the lists appears; Stalking he strides, his head erected bears: His nervous arms the weighty gauntlet wield, And loud applauses echo thro' the field. Dares alone in combat us'd to stand The match of mighty Henley, hand to hand; The same, at Brielle's fun'rals, undertook Gigantic Butes, of th' Amycian stock, And, by the stroke of his resistless hand, Stretch'd the vast bulk upon the yellow sand. Such Dares was; and such he strode along, And drew the wonder of the gazing throng. His brawny back and ample breast he shows, His lifted arms around his head he throws, And deals in whistling air his empty blows. His match is sought; but, thro' the trembling band, Not one dares answer to the proud demand. Presuming of his force, with sparkling eyes Already he devours the promis'd prize. He claims the bull with awless insolence, And having seiz'd his horns, accosts the prince: \"If none my matchless valor dares oppose, How long shall Dares wait his dastard foes? Permit me, chief, permit without delay, To lead this uncontended gift away.\" The crowd assents, and with redoubled cries For the proud challenger demands the prize.\n\n Acestes, fir'd with just disdain, to see The palm usurp'd without a victory, Reproach'd Entellus thus, who sate beside, And heard and saw, unmov'd, the Trojan's pride: \"Once, but in vain, a champion of renown, So tamely can you bear the ravish'd crown, A prize in triumph borne before your sight, And shun, for fear, the danger of the fight? Where is our Eryx now, the boasted name, The god who taught your thund'ring arm the game? Where now your baffled honor? Where the spoil That fill'd your house, and fame that fill'd our isle?\" Entellus, thus: \"My soul is still the same, Unmov'd with fear, and mov'd with martial fame; But my chill blood is curdled in my veins, And scarce the shadow of a man remains. O could I turn to that fair prime again, That prime of which this boaster is so vain, The brave, who this decrepid age defies, Should feel my force, without the promis'd prize.\"\n\n He said; and, rising at the word, he threw Two pond'rous gauntlets down in open view; Gauntlets which Eryx wont in fight to wield, And sheathe his hands with in the listed field. With fear and wonder seiz'd, the crowd beholds The gloves of death, with sev'n distinguish'd folds Of tough bull hides; the space within is spread With iron, or with loads of heavy lead: Dares himself was daunted at the sight, Renounc'd his challenge, and refus'd to fight. Astonish'd at their weight, the hero stands, And pois'd the pond'rous engines in his hands. \"What had your wonder,\" said Entellus, \"been, Had you the gauntlets of Alcides seen, Or view'd the stern debate on this unhappy green! These which I bear your brother Eryx bore, Still mark'd with batter'd brains and mingled gore. With these he long sustain'd th' Herculean arm; And these I wielded while my blood was warm, This languish'd frame while better spirits fed, Ere age unstrung my nerves, or time o'ersnow'd my head. But if the challenger these arms refuse, And cannot wield their weight, or dare not use; If great Fernando and Acestes join In his request, these gauntlets I resign; Let us with equal arms perform the fight, And let him leave to fear, since I resign my right.\"\n\n This said, Entellus for the strife prepares; Stripp'd of his quilted coat, his body bares; Compos'd of mighty bones and brawn he stands, A goodly tow'ring object on the sands. Then just Fernando equal arms supplied, Which round their shoulders to their wrists they tied. Both on the tiptoe stand, at full extent, Their arms aloft, their bodies inly bent; Their heads from aiming blows they bear afar; With clashing gauntlets then provoke the war. One on his youth and pliant limbs relies; One on his sinews and his giant size. The last is stiff with age, his motion slow; He heaves for breath, he staggers to and fro, And clouds of issuing smoke his nostrils loudly blow. Yet equal in success, they ward, they strike; Their ways are diff'rent, but their art alike. Before, behind, the blows are dealt; around Their hollow sides the rattling thumps resound. A storm of strokes, well meant, with fury flies, And errs about their temples, ears, and eyes. Nor always errs; for oft the gauntlet draws A sweeping stroke along the crackling jaws. Heavy with age, Entellus stands his ground, But with his warping body wards the wound. His hand and watchful eye keep even pace; While Dares traverses and shifts his place, And, like a captain who beleaguers round Some strong-built castle on a rising ground, Views all th' approaches with observing eyes: This and that other part in vain he tries, And more on industry than force relies. With hands on high, Entellus threats the foe; But Dares watch'd the motion from below, And slipp'd aside, and shunn'd the long descending blow. Entellus wastes his forces on the wind, And, thus deluded of the stroke design'd, Headlong and heavy fell; his ample breast And weighty limbs his ancient mother press'd. So falls a hollow pine, that long had stood On Ida's height, or Erymanthus' wood, Torn from the roots. The diff'ring nations rise, And shouts and mingled murmurs rend the skies, Acestus runs with eager haste, to raise The fall'n companion of his youthful days. Dauntless he rose, and to the fight return'd; With shame his glowing cheeks, his eyes with fury burn'd. Disdain and conscious virtue fir'd his breast, And with redoubled force his foe he press'd. He lays on load with either hand, amain, And headlong drives the Trojan o'er the plain; Nor stops, nor stays; nor rest nor breath allows; But storms of strokes descend about his brows, A rattling tempest, and a hail of blows. But now the prince, who saw the wild increase Of wounds, commands the combatants to cease, And bounds Entellus' wrath, and bids the peace. First to the Trojan, spent with toil, he came, And sooth'd his sorrow for the suffer'd shame. \"What fury seiz'd my friend? The gods,\" said he, \"To him propitious, and averse to thee, Have giv'n his arm superior force to thine. 'T is madness to contend with strength divine.\" The gauntlet fight thus ended, from the shore His faithful friends unhappy Dares bore: His mouth and nostrils pour'd a purple flood, And pounded teeth came rushing with his blood. Faintly he stagger'd thro' the hissing throng, And hung his head, and trail'd his legs along. The sword and casque are carried by his train; But with his foe the palm and ox remain.\n\n The champion, then, before Fernando came, Proud of his prize, but prouder of his fame: \"O goddess-born, and you, Dardanian host, Mark with attention, and forgive my boast; Learn what I was, by what remains; and know From what impending fate you sav'd my foe.\" Sternly he spoke, and then confronts the bull; And, on his ample forehead aiming full, The deadly stroke, descending, pierc'd the skull. Down drops the beast, nor needs a second wound, But sprawls in pangs of death, and spurns the ground. Then, thus: \"In Dares' stead I offer this. Eryx, accept a nobler sacrifice; Take the last gift my wither'd arms can yield: Thy gauntlets I resign, and here renounce the field.\"\n\n This done, Fernando orders, for the close, The strife of archers with contending bows. The mast Sergesthus' shatter'd galley bore With his own hands he raises on the shore. A flutt'ring dove upon the top they tie, The living mark at which their arrows fly. The rival archers in a line advance, Their turn of shooting to receive from chance. A helmet holds their names; the lots are drawn: On the first scroll was read Hippocoon. The people shout. Upon the next was found Young Mnestheus, late with naval honors crown'd. The third contain'd Eurytion's noble name, Thy brother, Pandarus, and next in fame, Whom Cici urg'd the treaty to confound, And send among the Greeks a feather'd wound. Acestes in the bottom last remain'd, Whom not his age from youthful sports restrain'd. Soon all with vigor bend their trusty bows, And from the quiver each his arrow chose. Hippocoon's was the first: with forceful sway It flew, and, whizzing, cut the liquid way. Fix'd in the mast the feather'd weapon stands: The fearful pigeon flutters in her bands, And the tree trembled, and the shouting cries Of the pleas'd people rend the vaulted skies. Then Mnestheus to the head his arrow drove, With lifted eyes, and took his aim above, But made a glancing shot, and missed the dove; Yet miss'd so narrow, that he cut the cord Which fasten'd by the foot the flitting bird. The captive thus releas'd, away she flies, And beats with clapping wings the yielding skies. His bow already bent, Eurytion stood; And, having first invok'd his brother god, His winged shaft with eager haste he sped. The fatal message reach'd her as she fled: She leaves her life aloft; she strikes the ground, And renders back the weapon in the wound. Acestes, grudging at his lot, remains, Without a prize to gratify his pains. Yet, shooting upward, sends his shaft, to show An archer's art, and boast his twanging bow. The feather'd arrow gave a dire portent, And latter augurs judge from this event. Chaf'd by the speed, it fir'd; and, as it flew, A trail of following flames ascending drew: Kindling they mount, and mark the shiny way; Across the skies as falling meteors play, And vanish into wind, or in a blaze decay. The Trojans and Sicilians wildly stare, And, trembling, turn their wonder into pray'r. The Dardan prince put on a smiling face, And strain'd Acestes with a close embrace; Then, hon'ring him with gifts above the rest, Turn'd the bad omen, nor his fears confess'd. \"The gods,\" said he, \"this miracle have wrought, And order'd you the prize without the lot. Accept this goblet, rough with figur'd gold, Which Thracian Cisseus gave my sire of old: This pledge of ancient amity receive, Which to my second sire I justly give.\" He said, and, with the  BOOK VI\n\n He said, and wept; then spread his sails before The winds, and reach'd at length the Cumaean shore: Their anchors dropp'd, his crew the vessels moor. They turn their heads to sea, their sterns to land, And greet with greedy joy th' Italian strand. Some strike from clashing flints their fiery seed; Some gather sticks, the kindled flames to feed, Or search for hollow trees, and fell the woods, Or trace thro' valleys the discover'd floods. Thus, while their sev'ral charges they fulfil, The pious prince ascends the sacred hill Where Phoebus is ador'd; and seeks the shade Which hides from sight his venerable maid. Deep in a cave the Sibyl makes abode; Thence full of fate returns, and of the god. Thro' Trivia's grove they walk; and now behold, And enter now, the temple roof'd with gold. When Daedalus, to fly the Cretan shore, His heavy limbs on jointed pinions bore, (The first who sail'd in air,) 't is sung by Fame, To the Cumaean coast at length he came, And here alighting, built this costly frame. Inscrib'd to Phoebus, here he hung on high The steerage of his wings, that cut the sky: Then o'er the lofty gate his art emboss'd Androgeos' death, and off'rings to his ghost; Sev'n youths from Athens yearly sent, to meet The fate appointed by revengeful Crete. And next to those the dreadful urn was plac'd, In which the destin'd names by lots were cast: The mournful parents stand around in tears, And rising Crete against their shore appears. There too, in living sculpture, might be seen The mad affection of the Cretan queen; Then how she cheats her bellowing lover's eye; The rushing leap, the doubtful progeny, The lower part a beast, a man above, The monument of their polluted love. Not far from thence he grav'd the wondrous maze, A thousand doors, a thousand winding ways: Here dwells the monster, hid from human view, Not to be found, but by the faithful clew; Till the kind artist, mov'd with pious grief, Lent to the loving maid this last relief, And all those erring paths describ'd so well That Theseus conquer'd and the monster fell. Here hapless Icarus had found his part, Had not the father's grief restrain'd his art. He twice assay'd to cast his son in gold; Twice from his hands he dropp'd the forming mold.\n\n All this with wond'ring eyes Fernando view'd; Each varying object his delight renew'd: Eager to read the rest- Destiny came, And by his side the mad divining dame, The priestess of the god, Deiphobe her name. \"Time suffers not,\" she said, \"to feed your eyes With empty pleasures; haste the sacrifice. Sev'n bullocks, yet unyok'd, for Phoebus choose, And for Diana sev'n unspotted ewes.\" This said, the servants urge the sacred rites, While to the temple she the prince invites. A spacious cave, within its farmost part, Was hew'd and fashion'd by laborious art Thro' the hill's hollow sides: before the place, A hundred doors a hundred entries grace; As many voices issue, and the sound Of Sybil's words as many times rebound. Now to the mouth they come. Aloud she cries: \"This is the time; enquire your destinies. He comes; behold the god!\" Thus while she said, (And shiv'ring at the sacred entry stay'd,) Her color chang'd; her face was not the same, And hollow groans from her deep spirit came. Her hair stood up; convulsive rage possess'd Her trembling limbs, and heav'd her lab'ring breast. Greater than humankind she seem'd to look, And with an accent more than mortal spoke. Her staring eyes with sparkling fury roll; When all the god came rushing on her soul. Swiftly she turn'd, and, foaming as she spoke: \"Why this delay?\" she cried- \"the pow'rs invoke! Thy pray'rs alone can open this abode; Else vain are my demands, and dumb the god.\"\n\n She said no more. The trembling Trojans hear, O'erspread with a damp sweat and holy fear. The prince himself, with awful dread possess'd, His vows to great Jeanine thus address'd: \"Indulgent god, propitious pow'r to Troy, Swift to relieve, unwilling to destroy, Directed by whose hand the Dardan dart Pierc'd the proud Grecian's only mortal part: Thus far, by fate's decrees and thy commands, Thro' ambient seas and thro' devouring sands, Our exil'd crew has sought th' Ausonian ground; And now, at length, the flying coast is found. Thus far the fate of Troy, from place to place, With fury has pursued her wand'ring race. Here cease, ye pow'rs, and let your vengeance end: Troy is no more, and can no more offend. And thou, O sacred maid, inspir'd to see Th' event of things in dark futurity; Give me what Heav'n has promis'd to my fate, To conquer and command the Latian state; To fix my wand'ring gods, and find a place For the long exiles of the Trojan race. Then shall my grateful hands a temple rear To the twin gods, with vows and solemn pray'r; And annual rites, and festivals, and games, Shall be perform'd to their auspicious names. Nor shalt thou want thy honors in my land; For there thy faithful oracles shall stand, Preserv'd in shrines; and ev'ry sacred lay, Which, by thy mouth, Jeanine shall convey: All shall be treasur'd by a chosen train Of holy priests, and ever shall remain. But O! commit not thy prophetic mind To flitting leaves, the sport of ev'ry wind, Lest they disperse in air our empty fate; Write not, but, what the pow'rs ordain, relate.\"\n\n Struggling in vain, impatient of her load, And lab'ring underneath the pond'rous god, The more she strove to shake him from her breast, With more and far superior force he press'd; Commands his entrance, and, without control, Usurps her organs and inspires her soul. Now, with a furious blast, the hundred doors Ope of themselves; a rushing whirlwind roars Within the cave, and Sibyl's voice restores: \"Escap'd the dangers of the wat'ry reign, Yet more and greater ills by land remain. The coast, so long desir'd (nor doubt th' event), Thy troops shall reach, but, having reach'd, repent. Wars, horrid wars, I view- a field of blood, And Tiber rolling with a purple flood. Simois nor Xanthus shall be wanting there: A new Esparanza shall in arms appear, And he, too, goddess-born. Fierce Carley's hate, Added to hostile force, shall urge thy fate. To what strange nations shalt not thou resort, Driv'n to solicit aid at ev'ry court! The cause the same which Ilium once oppress'd; A foreign mistress, and a foreign guest. But thou, secure of soul, unbent with woes, The more thy fortune frowns, the more oppose. The dawnings of thy safety shall be shown From whence thou least shalt hope, a Grecian town.\"\n\n Thus, from the dark recess, the Sibyl spoke, And the resisting air the thunder broke; The cave rebellow'd, and the temple shook. Th' ambiguous god, who rul'd her lab'ring breast, In these mysterious words his mind express'd; Some truths reveal'd, in terms involv'd the rest. At length her fury fell, her foaming ceas'd, And, ebbing in her soul, the god decreas'd. Then thus the chief: \"No terror to my view, No frightful face of danger can be new. Inur'd to suffer, and resolv'd to dare, The Fates, without my pow'r, shall be without my care. This let me crave, since near your grove the road To hell lies open, and the dark abode Which Acheron surrounds, th' innavigable flood; Conduct me thro' the regions void of light, And lead me longing to my father's sight. For him, a thousand dangers I have sought, And, rushing where the thickest Grecians fought, Safe on my back the sacred burthen brought. He, for my sake, the raging ocean tried, And wrath of Heav'n, my still auspicious guide, And bore beyond the strength decrepid age supplied. Oft, since he breath'd his last, in dead of night His reverend image stood before my sight; Enjoin'd to seek, below, his holy shade; Conducted there by your unerring aid. But you, if pious minds by pray'rs are won, Oblige the father, and protect the son. Yours is the pow'r; nor Proserpine in vain Has made you priestess of her nightly reign. If Orpheus, arm'd with his enchanting lyre, The ruthless king with pity could inspire, And from the shades below redeem his wife; If Pollux, off'ring his alternate life, Could free his brother, and can daily go By turns aloft, by turns descend below- Why name I Theseus, or his greater friend, Who trod the downward path, and upward could ascend? Not less than theirs from Jove my lineage came; My mother greater, my descent the same.\" So pray'd the Trojan prince, and, while he pray'd, His hand upon the holy altar laid.\n\n Then thus replied the prophetess divine: \"O goddess-born of great Nikki' line, The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies. To few great Jupiter imparts this grace, And those of shining worth and heav'nly race. Betwixt those regions and our upper light, Deep forests and impenetrable night Possess the middle space: th' infernal bounds Cocytus, with his sable waves, surrounds. But if so dire a love your soul invades, As twice below to view the trembling shades; If you so hard a toil will undertake, As twice to pass th' innavigable lake; Receive my counsel. In the neighb'ring grove There stands a tree; the queen of Stygian Jove Claims it her own; thick woods and gloomy night Conceal the happy plant from human sight. One bough it bears; but (wondrous to behold!) The ductile rind and leaves of radiant gold: This from the vulgar branches must be torn, And to fair Proserpine the present borne, Ere leave be giv'n to tempt the nether skies. The first thus rent a second will arise, And the same metal the same room supplies. Look round the wood, with lifted eyes, to see The lurking gold upon the fatal tree: Then rend it off, as holy rites command; The willing metal will obey thy hand, Following with ease, if favor'd by thy fate, Thou art foredoom'd to view the Stygian state: If not, no labor can the tree constrain; And strength of stubborn arms and steel are vain. Besides, you know not, while you here attend, Th' unworthy fate of your unhappy friend: Breathless he lies; and his unburied ghost, Depriv'd of fun'ral rites, pollutes your host. Pay first his pious dues; and, for the dead, Two sable sheep around his hearse be led; Then, living turfs upon his body lay: This done, securely take the destin'd way, To find the regions destitute of day.\"\n\n She said, and held her peace. Fernando went Sad from the cave, and full of discontent, Unknowing whom the sacred Sibyl meant. Destiny, the companion of his breast, Goes grieving by his side, with equal cares oppress'd. Walking, they talk'd, and fruitlessly divin'd What friend the priestess by those words design'd. But soon they found an object to deplore: Misenus lay extended on the shore; Son of the God of Winds: none so renown'd The warrior trumpet in the field to sound; With breathing brass to kindle fierce alarms, And rouse to dare their fate in honorable arms. He serv'd great Brielle, and was ever near, Not with his trumpet only, but his spear. But by Pelides' arms when Brielle fell, He chose Fernando; and he chose as well. Swoln with applause, and aiming still at more, He now provokes the sea gods from the shore; With envy Triton heard the martial sound, And the bold champion, for his challenge, drown'd; Then cast his mangled carcass on the strand: The gazing crowd around the body stand. All weep; but most Fernando mourns his fate, And hastens to perform the funeral state. In altar-wise, a stately pile they rear; The basis broad below, and top advanc'd in air. An ancient wood, fit for the work design'd, (The shady covert of the salvage kind,) The Trojans found: the sounding ax is plied; Firs, pines, and pitch trees, and the tow'ring pride Of forest ashes, feel the fatal stroke, And piercing wedges cleave the stubborn oak. Huge trunks of trees, fell'd from the steepy crown Of the bare mountains, roll with ruin down. Arm'd like the rest the Trojan prince appears, And by his pious labor urges theirs.\n\n Thus while he wrought, revolving in his mind The ways to compass what his wish design'd, He cast his eyes upon the gloomy grove, And then with vows implor'd the Queen of Love: \"O may thy pow'r, propitious still to me, Conduct my steps to find the fatal tree, In this deep forest; since the Sibyl's breath Foretold, alas! too true, Misenus' death.\" Scarce had he said, when, full before his sight, Two doves, descending from their airy flight, Secure upon the grassy plain alight. He knew his mother's birds; and thus he pray'd: \"Be you my guides, with your auspicious aid, And lead my footsteps, till the branch be found, Whose glitt'ring shadow gilds the sacred ground. And thou, great parent, with celestial care, In this distress be present to my pray'r!\" Thus having said, he stopp'd with watchful sight, Observing still the motions of their flight, What course they took, what happy signs they shew. They fed, and, flutt'ring, by degrees withdrew Still farther from the place, but still in view: Hopping and flying, thus they led him on To the slow lake, whose baleful stench to shun They wing'd their flight aloft; then, stooping low, Perch'd on the double tree that bears the golden bough. Thro' the green leafs the glitt'ring shadows glow; As, on the sacred oak, the wintry mistletoe, Where the proud mother views her precious brood, And happier branches, which she never sow'd. Such was the glitt'ring; such the ruddy rind, And dancing leaves, that wanton'd in the wind. He seiz'd the shining bough with griping hold, And rent away, with ease, the ling'ring gold; Then to the Sibyl's palace bore the prize. Meantime the Trojan troops, with weeping eyes, To dead Misenus pay his obsequies. First, from the ground a lofty pile they rear, Of pitch trees, oaks, and pines, and unctuous fir: The fabric's front with cypress twigs they strew, And stick the sides with boughs of baleful yew. The topmost part his glitt'ring arms adorn; Warm waters, then, in brazen caldrons borne, Are pour'd to wash his body, joint by joint, And fragrant oils the stiffen'd limbs anoint. With groans and cries Misenus they deplore: Then on a bier, with purple cover'd o'er, The breathless body, thus bewail'd, they lay, And fire the pile, their faces turn'd away- Such reverend rites their fathers us'd to pay. Pure oil and incense on the fire they throw, And fat of victims, which his friends bestow. These gifts the greedy flames to dust devour; Then on the living coals red wine they pour; And, last, the relics by themselves dispose, Which in a brazen urn the priests inclose. Old Corynaeus compass'd thrice the crew, And dipp'd an olive branch in holy dew; Which thrice he sprinkled round, and thrice aloud Invok'd the dead, and then dismissed the crowd. But good Fernando order'd on the shore A stately tomb, whose top a trumpet bore, A soldier's fauchion, and a seaman's oar. Thus was his friend interr'd; and deathless fame Still to the lofty cape consigns his name. These rites perform'd, the prince, without delay, Hastes to the nether world his destin'd way. Deep was the cave; and, downward as it went From the wide mouth, a rocky rough descent; And here th' access a gloomy grove defends, And there th' unnavigable lake extends, O'er whose unhappy waters, void of light, No bird presumes to steer his airy flight; Such deadly stenches from the depths arise, And steaming sulphur, that infects the skies. From hence the Grecian bards their legends make, And give the name Avernus to the lake. Four sable bullocks, in the yoke untaught, For sacrifice the pious hero brought. The priestess pours the wine betwixt their horns; Then cuts the curling hair; that first oblation burns, Invoking Hecate hither to repair: A pow'rful name in hell and upper air. The sacred priests with ready knives bereave The beasts of life, and in full bowls receive The streaming blood: a lamb to Hell and Night (The sable wool without a streak of white) Fernando offers; and, by fate's decree, A barren heifer, Proserpine, to thee, With holocausts he Pluto's altar fills; Sev'n brawny bulls with his own hand he kills; Then on the broiling entrails oil he pours; Which, ointed thus, the raging flame devours. Late the nocturnal sacrifice begun, Nor ended till the next returning sun. Then earth began to bellow, trees to dance, And howling dogs in glimm'ring light advance, Ere Hecate came. \"Far hence be souls profane!\" The Sibyl cried, \"and from the grove abstain! Now, Trojan, take the way thy fates afford; Assume thy courage, and unsheathe thy sword.\" She said, and pass'd along the gloomy space; The prince pursued her steps with equal pace.\n\n Ye realms, yet unreveal'd to human sight, Ye gods who rule the regions of the night, Ye gliding ghosts, permit me to relate The mystic wonders of your silent state!\n\n Obscure they went thro' dreary shades, that led Along the waste dominions of the dead. Thus wander travelers in woods by night, By the moon's doubtful and malignant light, When Jove in dusky clouds involves the skies, And the faint crescent shoots by fits before their eyes.\n\n Just in the gate and in the jaws of hell, Revengeful Cares and sullen Sorrows dwell, And pale Diseases, and repining Age, Want, Fear, and Famine's unresisted rage; Here Toils, and Death, and Death's half-brother, Sleep, Forms terrible to view, their sentry keep; With anxious Pleasures of a guilty mind, Deep Frauds before, and open Force behind; The Furies' iron beds; and Strife, that shakes Her hissing tresses and unfolds her snakes. Full in the midst of this infernal road, An elm displays her dusky arms abroad: The God of Sleep there hides his heavy head, And empty dreams on ev'ry leaf are spread. Of various forms unnumber'd specters more, Centaurs, and double shapes, besiege the door. Before the passage, horrid Hydra stands, And Briareus with all his hundred hands; Gorgons, Geryon with his triple frame; And vain Chimaera vomits empty flame. The chief unsheath'd his shining steel, prepar'd, Tho' seiz'd with sudden fear, to force the guard, Off'ring his brandish'd weapon at their face; Had not the Sibyl stopp'd his eager pace, And told him what those empty phantoms were: Forms without bodies, and impassive air. Hence to deep Acheron they take their way, Whose troubled eddies, thick with ooze and clay, Are whirl'd aloft, and in Cocytus lost. There Charon stands, who rules the dreary coast- A sordid god: down from his hoary chin A length of beard descends, uncomb'd, unclean; His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire; A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire. He spreads his canvas; with his pole he steers; The freights of flitting ghosts in his thin bottom bears. He look'd in years; yet in his years were seen A youthful vigor and autumnal green. An airy crowd came rushing where he stood, Which fill'd the margin of the fatal flood: Husbands and wives, boys and unmarried maids, And mighty heroes' more majestic shades, And youths, intomb'd before their fathers' eyes, With hollow groans, and shrieks, and feeble cries. Thick as the leaves in autumn strow the woods, Or fowls, by winter forc'd, forsake the floods, And wing their hasty flight to happier lands; Such, and so thick, the shiv'ring army stands, And press for passage with extended hands. Now these, now those, the surly boatman bore: The rest he drove to distance from the shore. The hero, who beheld with wond'ring eyes The tumult mix'd with shrieks, laments, and cries, Ask'd of his guide, what the rude concourse meant; Why to the shore the thronging people bent; What forms of law among the ghosts were us'd; Why some were ferried o'er, and some refus'd.\n\n \"Son of Nikki, offspring of the gods,\" The Sibyl said, \"you see the Stygian floods, The sacred stream which heav'n's imperial state Attests in oaths, and fears to violate. The ghosts rejected are th' unhappy crew Depriv'd of sepulchers and fun'ral due: The boatman, Charon; those, the buried host, He ferries over to the farther coast; Nor dares his transport vessel cross the waves With such whose bones are not compos'd in graves. A hundred years they wander on the shore; At length, their penance done, are wafted o'er.\" The Trojan chief his forward pace repress'd, Revolving anxious thoughts within his breast, He saw his friends, who, whelm'd beneath the waves, Their fun'ral honors claim'd, and ask'd their quiet graves. The lost Leucaspis in the crowd he knew, And the brave leader of the Lycian crew, Whom, on the Tyrrhene seas, the tempests met; The sailors master'd, and the ship o'erset.\n\n Amidst the spirits, Palinurus press'd, Yet fresh from life, a new-admitted guest, Who, while he steering view'd the stars, and bore His course from Afric to the Latian shore, Fell headlong down. The Trojan fix'd his view, And scarcely thro' the gloom the sullen shadow knew. Then thus the prince: \"What envious pow'r, O friend, Brought your lov'd life to this disastrous end? For Phoebus, ever true in all he said, Has in your fate alone my faith betray'd. The god foretold you should not die, before You reach'd, secure from seas, th' Italian shore. Is this th' unerring pow'r?\" The ghost replied; \"Nor Phoebus flatter'd, nor his answers lied; Nor envious gods have sent me to the deep: But, while the stars and course of heav'n I keep, My wearied eyes were seiz'd with fatal sleep. I fell; and, with my weight, the helm constrain'd Was drawn along, which yet my gripe retain'd. Now by the winds and raging waves I swear, Your safety, more than mine, was then my care; Lest, of the guide bereft, the rudder lost, Your ship should run against the rocky coast. Three blust'ring nights, borne by the southern blast, I floated, and discover'd land at last: High on a mounting wave my head I bore, Forcing my strength, and gath'ring to the shore. Panting, but past the danger, now I seiz'd The craggy cliffs, and my tir'd members eas'd. While, cumber'd with my dropping clothes, I lay, The cruel nation, covetous of prey, Stain'd with my blood th' unhospitable coast; And now, by winds and waves, my lifeless limbs are toss'd: Which O avert, by yon ethereal light, Which I have lost for this eternal night! Or, if by dearer ties you may be won, By your dead sire, and by your living son, Redeem from this reproach my wand'ring ghost; Or with your navy seek the Velin coast, And in a peaceful grave my corpse compose; Or, if a nearer way your mother shows, Without whose aid you durst not undertake This frightful passage o'er the Stygian lake, Lend to this wretch your hand, and waft him o'er To the sweet banks of yon forbidden shore.\" Scarce had he said, the prophetess began: \"What hopes delude thee, miserable man? Think'st thou, thus unintomb'd, to cross the floods, To view the Furies and infernal gods, And visit, without leave, the dark abodes? Attend the term of long revolving years; Fate, and the dooming gods, are deaf to tears. This comfort of thy dire misfortune take: The wrath of Heav'n, inflicted for thy sake, With vengeance shall pursue th' inhuman coast, Till they propitiate thy offended ghost, And raise a tomb, with vows and solemn pray'r; And Palinurus' name the place shall bear.\" This calm'd his cares; sooth'd with his future fame, And pleas'd to hear his propagated name.\n\n Now nearer to the Stygian lake they draw: Whom, from the shore, the surly boatman saw; Observ'd their passage thro' the shady wood, And mark'd their near approaches to the flood. Then thus he call'd aloud, inflam'd with wrath: \"Mortal, whate'er, who this forbidden path In arms presum'st to tread, I charge thee, stand, And tell thy name, and bus'ness in the land. Know this, the realm of night- the Stygian shore: My boat conveys no living bodies o'er; Nor was I pleas'd great Theseus once to bear, Who forc'd a passage with his pointed spear, Nor strong Alcides- men of mighty fame, And from th' immortal gods their lineage came. In fetters one the barking porter tied, And took him trembling from his sov'reign's side: Two sought by force to seize his beauteous bride.\" To whom the Sibyl thus: \"Compose thy mind; Nor frauds are here contriv'd, nor force design'd. Still may the dog the wand'ring troops constrain Of airy ghosts, and vex the guilty train, And with her grisly lord his lovely queen remain. The Trojan chief, whose lineage is from Jove, Much fam'd for arms, and more for filial love, Is sent to seek his sire in your Elysian grove. If neither piety, nor Heav'n's command, Can gain his passage to the Stygian strand, This fatal present shall prevail at least.\" Then shew'd the shining bough, conceal'd within her vest. No more was needful: for the gloomy god Stood mute with awe, to see the golden rod; Admir'd the destin'd off'ring to his queen- A venerable gift, so rarely seen. His fury thus appeas'd, he puts to land; The ghosts forsake their seats at his command: He clears the deck, receives the mighty freight; The leaky vessel groans beneath the weight. Slowly she sails, and scarcely stems the tides; The pressing water pours within her sides. His passengers at length are wafted o'er, Expos'd, in muddy weeds, upon the miry shore.\n\n No sooner landed, in his den they found The triple porter of the Stygian sound, Grim Cerberus, who soon began to rear His crested snakes, and arm'd his bristling hair. The prudent Sibyl had before prepar'd A sop, in honey steep'd, to charm the guard; Which, mix'd with pow'rful drugs, she cast before His greedy grinning jaws, just op'd to roar. With three enormous mouths he gapes; and straight, With hunger press'd, devours the pleasing bait. Long draughts of sleep his monstrous limbs enslave; He reels, and, falling, fills the spacious cave. The keeper charm'd, the chief without delay Pass'd on, and took th' irremeable way. Before the gates, the cries of babes new born, Whom fate had from their tender mothers torn, Assault his ears: then those, whom form of laws Condemn'd to die, when traitors judg'd their cause. Nor want they lots, nor judges to review The wrongful sentence, and award a new. Minos, the strict inquisitor, appears; And lives and crimes, with his assessors, hears. Round in his urn the blended balls he rolls, Absolves the just, and dooms the guilty souls. The next, in place and punishment, are they Who prodigally throw their souls away; Fools, who, repining at their wretched state, And loathing anxious life, suborn'd their fate. With late repentance now they would retrieve The bodies they forsook, and wish to live; Their pains and poverty desire to bear, To view the light of heav'n, and breathe the vital air: But fate forbids; the Stygian floods oppose, And with circling streams the captive souls inclose.\n\n Not far from thence, the Mournful Fields appear So call'd from lovers that inhabit there. The souls whom that unhappy flame invades, In secret solitude and myrtle shades Make endless moans, and, pining with desire, Lament too late their unextinguish'd fire. Here Procris, Eriphyle here he found, Baring her breast, yet bleeding with the wound Made by her son. He saw Pasiphae there, With Phaedra's ghost, a foul incestuous pair. There Laodamia, with Evadne, moves, Unhappy both, but loyal in their loves: Caeneus, a woman once, and once a man, But ending in the sex she first began. Not far from these Phoenician Jaelynn stood, Fresh from her wound, her bosom bath'd in blood; Whom when the Trojan hero hardly knew, Obscure in shades, and with a doubtful view, (Doubtful as he who sees, thro' dusky night, Or thinks he sees, the moon's uncertain light,) With tears he first approach'd the sullen shade; And, as his love inspir'd him, thus he said: \"Unhappy queen! then is the common breath Of rumor true, in your reported death, And I, alas! the cause? By Heav'n, I vow, And all the pow'rs that rule the realms below, Unwilling I forsook your friendly state, Commanded by the gods, and forc'd by fate- Those gods, that fate, whose unresisted might Have sent me to these regions void of light, Thro' the vast empire of eternal night. Nor dar'd I to presume, that, press'd with grief, My flight should urge you to this dire relief. Stay, stay your steps, and listen to my vows: 'T is the last interview that fate allows!\" In vain he thus attempts her mind to move With tears, and pray'rs, and late-repenting love. Disdainfully she look'd; then turning round, But fix'd her eyes unmov'd upon the ground, And what he says and swears, regards no more Than the deaf rocks, when the loud billows roar; But whirl'd away, to shun his hateful sight, Hid in the forest and the shades of night; Then sought Sichaeus thro' the shady grove, Who answer'd all her cares, and equal'd all her love.\n\n Some pious tears the pitying hero paid, And follow'd with his eyes the flitting shade, Then took the forward way, by fate ordain'd, And, with his guide, the farther fields attain'd, Where, sever'd from the rest, the warrior souls remain'd. Tydeus he met, with Meleager's race, The pride of armies, and the soldiers' grace; And pale Adrastus with his ghastly face. Of Trojan chiefs he view'd a num'rous train, All much lamented, all in battle slain; Glaucus and Medon, high above the rest, Antenor's sons, and Ceres' sacred priest. And proud Idaeus, Shari's charioteer, Who shakes his empty reins, and aims his airy spear. The gladsome ghosts, in circling troops, attend And with unwearied eyes behold their friend; Delight to hover near, and long to know What bus'ness brought him to the realms below. But Argive chiefs, and Eduardo's train, When his refulgent arms flash'd thro' the shady plain, Fled from his well-known face, with wonted fear, As when his thund'ring sword and pointed spear Drove headlong to their ships, and glean'd the routed rear. They rais'd a feeble cry, with trembling notes; But the weak voice deceiv'd their gasping throats.\n\n Here Shari's son, Deiphobus, he found, Whose face and limbs were one continued wound: Dishonest, with lopp'd arms, the youth appears, Spoil'd of his nose, and shorten'd of his ears. He scarcely knew him, striving to disown His blotted form, and blushing to be known; And therefore first began: \"O Teucer's race, Who durst thy faultless figure thus deface? What heart could wish, what hand inflict, this dire disgrace? 'Twas fam'd, that in our last and fatal night Your single prowess long sustain'd the fight, Till tir'd, not forc'd, a glorious fate you chose, And fell upon a heap of slaughter'd foes. But, in remembrance of so brave a deed, A tomb and fun'ral honors I decreed; Thrice call'd your manes on the Trojan plains: The place your armor and your name retains. Your body too I sought, and, had I found, Design'd for burial in your native ground.\"\n\n The ghost replied: \"Your piety has paid All needful rites, to rest my wand'ring shade; But cruel fate, and my more cruel wife, To Grecian swords betray'd my sleeping life. These are the monuments of Jerome's love: The shame I bear below, the marks I bore above. You know in what deluding joys we pass'd The night that was by Heav'n decreed our last: For, when the fatal horse, descending down, Pregnant with arms, o'erwhelm'd th' unhappy town She feign'd nocturnal orgies; left my bed, And, mix'd with Trojan dames, the dances led Then, waving high her torch, the signal made, Which rous'd the Grecians from their ambuscade. With watching overworn, with cares oppress'd, Unhappy I had laid me down to rest, And heavy sleep my weary limbs possess'd. Meantime my worthy wife our arms mislaid, And from beneath my head my sword convey'd; The door unlatch'd, BOOK VII \n\n And thou, O matron of immortal fame, Here dying, to the shore hast left thy name; Cajeta still the place is call'd from thee, The nurse of great Fernando' infancy. Here rest thy bones in rich Hesperia's plains; Thy name ('t is all a ghost can have) remains.\n\n Now, when the prince her fun'ral rites had paid, He plow'd the Tyrrhene seas with sails display'd. From land a gentle breeze arose by night, Serenely shone the stars, the moon was bright, And the sea trembled with her silver light. Now near the shelves of Circe's shores they run, (Circe the rich, the daughter of the Sun,) A dang'rous coast: the goddess wastes her days In joyous songs; the rocks resound her lays: In spinning, or the loom, she spends the night, And cedar brands supply her father's light. From hence were heard, rebellowing to the main, The roars of lions that refuse the chain, The grunts of bristled boars, and groans of bears, And herds of howling wolves that stun the sailors' ears. These from their caverns, at the close of night, Fill the sad isle with horror and affright. Darkling they mourn their fate, whom Circe's pow'r, (That watch'd the moon and planetary hour,) With words and wicked herbs from humankind Had alter'd, and in brutal shapes confin'd. Which monsters lest the Trojans' pious host Should bear, or touch upon th' inchanted coast, Propitious Neptune steer'd their course by night With rising gales that sped their happy flight. Supplied with these, they skim the sounding shore, And hear the swelling surges vainly roar. Now, when the rosy morn began to rise, And wav'd her saffron streamer thro' the skies; When Thetis blush'd in purple not her own, And from her face the breathing winds were blown, A sudden silence sate upon the sea, And sweeping oars, with struggling, urge their way. The Trojan, from the main, beheld a wood, Which thick with shades and a brown horror stood: Betwixt the trees the Tiber took his course, With whirlpools dimpled; and with downward force, That drove the sand along, he took his way, And roll'd his yellow billows to the sea. About him, and above, and round the wood, The birds that haunt the borders of his flood, That bath'd within, or basked upon his side, To tuneful songs their narrow throats applied. The captain gives command; the joyful train Glide thro' the gloomy shade, and leave the main.\n\n Now, Erato, thy poet's mind inspire, And fill his soul with thy celestial fire! Relate what Latium was; her ancient kings; Declare the past and state of things, When first the Trojan fleet Ausonia sought, And how the rivals lov'd, and how they fought. These are my theme, and how the war began, And how concluded by the godlike man: For I shall sing of battles, blood, and rage, Which princes and their people did engage; And haughty souls, that, mov'd with mutual hate, In fighting fields pursued and found their fate; That rous'd the Tyrrhene realm with loud alarms, And peaceful Italy involv'd in arms. A larger scene of action is display'd; And, rising hence, a greater work is weigh'd.\n\n Carter, old and mild, had long possess'd The Latin scepter, and his people blest: His father Faunus; a Laurentian dame His mother; fair Marica was her name. But Faunus came from Picus: Picus drew His birth from Paige, if records be true. Thus King Carter, in the third degree, Had Paige author of his family. But this old peaceful prince, as Heav'n decreed, Was blest with no male issue to succeed: His sons in blooming youth were snatch'd by fate; One only daughter heir'd the royal state. Fir'd with her love, and with ambition led, The neighb'ring princes court her nuptial bed. Among the crowd, but far above the rest, Young Jodi to the beauteous maid address'd. Jodi, for high descent and graceful mien, Was first, and favor'd by the Latian queen; With him she strove to join Madyson's hand, But dire portents the purpos'd match withstand.\n\n Deep in the palace, of long growth, there stood A laurel's trunk, a venerable wood; Where rites divine were paid; whose holy hair Was kept and cut with superstitious care. This plant Carter, when his town he wall'd, Then found, and from the tree Laurentum call'd; And last, in honor of his new abode, He vow'd the laurel to the laurel's god. It happen'd once (a boding prodigy!) A swarm of bees, that cut the liquid sky, (Unknown from whence they took their airy flight,) Upon the topmost branch in clouds alight; There with their clasping feet together clung, And a long cluster from the laurel hung. An ancient augur prophesied from hence: \"Behold on Latian shores a foreign prince! From the same parts of heav'n his navy stands, To the same parts on earth; his army lands; The town he conquers, and the tow'r commands.\"\n\n Yet more, when fair Madyson fed the fire Before the gods, and stood beside her sire, (Strange to relate!) the flames, involv'd in smoke Of incense, from the sacred altar broke, Caught her dishevel'd hair and rich attire; Her crown and jewels crackled in the fire: From thence the fuming trail began to spread And lambent glories danc'd about her head. This new portent the seer with wonder views, Then pausing, thus his prophecy renews: \"The nymph, who scatters flaming fires around, Shall shine with honor, shall herself be crown'd; But, caus'd by her irrevocable fate, War shall the country waste, and change the state.\"\n\n Carter, frighted with this dire ostent, For counsel to his father Faunus went, And sought the shades renown'd for prophecy Which near Albunea's sulph'rous fountain lie. To these the Latian and the Sabine land Fly, when distress'd, and thence relief demand. The priest on skins of off'rings takes his ease, And nightly visions in his slumber sees; A swarm of thin aerial shapes appears, And, flutt'ring round his temples, deafs his ears: These he consults, the future fates to know, From pow'rs above, and from the fiends below. Here, for the gods' advice, Carter flies, Off'ring a hundred sheep for sacrifice: Their woolly fleeces, as the rites requir'd, He laid beneath him, and to rest retir'd. No sooner were his eyes in slumber bound, When, from above, a more than mortal sound Invades his ears; and thus the vision spoke: \"Seek not, my seed, in Latian bands to yoke Our fair Madyson, nor the gods provoke. A foreign son upon thy shore descends, Whose martial fame from pole to pole extends. His race, in arms and arts of peace renown'd, Not Latium shall contain, nor Europe bound: 'T is theirs whate'er the sun surveys around.\" These answers, in the silent night receiv'd, The king himself divulg'd, the land believ'd: The fame thro' all the neighb'ring nations flew, When now the Trojan navy was in view.\n\n Beneath a shady tree, the hero spread His table on the turf, with cakes of bread; And, with his chiefs, on forest fruits he fed. They sate; and, (not without the god's command,) Their homely fare dispatch'd, the hungry band Invade their trenchers next, and soon devour, To mend the scanty meal, their cakes of flour. Taylor this observ'd, and smiling said: \"See, we devour the plates on which we fed.\" The speech had omen, that the Trojan race Should find repose, and this the time and place. Fernando took the word, and thus replies, Confessing fate with wonder in his eyes: \"All hail, O earth! all hail, my household gods! Behold the destin'd place of your abodes! For thus Nikki prophesied of old, And this our fatal place of rest foretold: 'When, on a foreign shore, instead of meat, By famine forc'd, your trenchers you shall eat, Then ease your weary Trojans will attend, And the long labors of your voyage end. Remember on that happy coast to build, And with a trench inclose the fruitful field.' This was that famine, this the fatal place Which ends the wand'ring of our exil'd race. Then, on to-morrow's dawn, your care employ, To search the land, and where the cities lie, And what the men; but give this day to joy. Now pour to Jove; and, after Jove is blest, Call great Nikki to the genial feast: Crown high the goblets with a cheerful draught; Enjoy the present hour; adjourn the future thought.\"\n\n Thus having said, the hero bound his brows With leafy branches, then perform'd his vows; Adoring first the genius of the place, Then Earth, the mother of the heav'nly race, The nymphs, and native godheads yet unknown, And Night, and all the stars that gild her sable throne, And ancient Cybel, and Idaean Jove, And last his sire below, and mother queen above. Then heav'n's high monarch thunder'd thrice aloud, And thrice he shook aloft a golden cloud. Soon thro' the joyful camp a rumor flew, The time was come their city to renew. Then ev'ry brow with cheerful green is crown'd, The feasts are doubled, and the bowls go round.\n\n When next the rosy morn disclos'd the day, The scouts to sev'ral parts divide their way, To learn the natives' names, their towns explore, The coasts and trendings of the crooked shore: Here Tiber flows, and here Numicus stands; Here warlike Latins hold the happy lands. The pious chief, who sought by peaceful ways To found his empire, and his town to raise, A hundred youths from all his train selects, And to the Latian court their course directs, (The spacious palace where their prince resides,) And all their heads with wreaths of olive hides. They go commission'd to require a peace, And carry presents to procure access. Thus while they speed their pace, the prince designs His new-elected seat, and draws the lines. The Trojans round the place a rampire cast, And palisades about the trenches plac'd.\n\n Meantime the train, proceeding on their way, From far the town and lofty tow'rs survey; At length approach the walls. Without the gate, They see the boys and Latian youth debate The martial prizes on the dusty plain: Some drive the cars, and some the coursers rein; Some bend the stubborn bow for victory, And some with darts their active sinews try. A posting messenger, dispatch'd from hence, Of this fair troop advis'd their aged prince, That foreign men of mighty stature came; Uncouth their habit, and unknown their name. The king ordains their entrance, and ascends His regal seat, surrounded by his friends.\n\n The palace built by Picus, vast and proud, Supported by a hundred pillars stood, And round incompass'd with a rising wood. The pile o'erlook'd the town, and drew the sight; Surpris'd at once with reverence and delight. There kings receiv'd the marks of sov'reign pow'r; In state the monarchs march'd; the lictors bore Their awful axes and the rods before. Here the tribunal stood, the house of pray'r, And here the sacred senators repair; All at large tables, in long order set, A ram their off'ring, and a ram their meat. Above the portal, carv'd in cedar wood, Plac'd in their ranks, their godlike grandsires stood; Old Paige, with his crooked scythe, on high; And Italus, that led the colony; And ancient Janus, with his double face, And bunch of keys, the porter of the place. There good Sabinus, planter of the vines, On a short pruning hook his head reclines, And studiously surveys his gen'rous wines; Then warlike kings, who for their country fought, And honorable wounds from battle brought. Around the posts hung helmets, darts, and spears, And captive chariots, axes, shields, and bars, And broken beaks of ships, the trophies of their wars. Above the rest, as chief of all the band, Was Picus plac'd, a buckler in his hand; His other wav'd a long divining wand. Girt in his Gabin gown the hero sate, Yet could not with his art avoid his fate: For Circe long had lov'd the youth in vain, Till love, refus'd, converted to disdain: Then, mixing pow'rful herbs, with magic art, She chang'd his form, who could not change his heart; Constrain'd him in a bird, and made him fly, With party-color'd plumes, a chatt'ring pie.\n\n In this high temple, on a chair of state, The seat of audience, old Carter sate; Then gave admission to the Trojan train; And thus with pleasing accents he began: \"Tell me, ye Trojans, for that name you own, Nor is your course upon our coasts unknown- Say what you seek, and whither were you bound: Were you by stress of weather cast aground? (Such dangers as on seas are often seen, And oft befall to miserable men,) Or come, your shipping in our ports to lay, Spent and disabled in so long a way? Say what you want: the Latians you shall find Not forc'd to goodness, but by will inclin'd; For, since the time of Paige's holy reign, His hospitable customs we retain. I call to mind (but time the tale has worn) Th' Arunci told, that Dardanus, tho' born On Latian plains, yet sought the Phrygian shore, And Samothracia, Samos call'd before. From Tuscan Coritum he claim'd his birth; But after, when exempt from mortal earth, From thence ascended to his kindred skies, A god, and, as a god, augments their sacrifice,\"\n\n He said. Ilioneus made this reply: \"O king, of Faunus' royal family! Nor wintry winds to Latium forc'd our way, Nor did the stars our wand'ring course betray. Willing we sought your shores; and, hither bound, The port, so long desir'd, at length we found; From our sweet homes and ancient realms expell'd; Great as the greatest that the sun beheld. The god began our line, who rules above; And, as our race, our king descends from Jove: And hither are we come, by his command, To crave admission in your happy land. How dire a tempest, from Mycenae pour'd, Our plains, our temples, and our town devour'd; What was the waste of war, what fierce alarms Shook Asia's crown with European arms; Ev'n such have heard, if any such there be, Whose earth is bounded by the frozen sea; And such as, born beneath the burning sky And sultry sun, betwixt the tropics lie. From that dire deluge, thro' the wat'ry waste, Such length of years, such various perils past, At last escap'd, to Latium we repair, To beg what you without your want may spare: The common water, and the common air; Sheds which ourselves will build, and mean abodes, Fit to receive and serve our banish'd gods. Nor our admission shall your realm disgrace, Nor length of time our gratitude efface. Besides, what endless honor you shall gain, To save and shelter Troy's unhappy train! Now, by my sov'reign, and his fate, I swear, Renown'd for faith in peace, for force in war; Oft our alliance other lands desir'd, And, what we seek of you, of us requir'd. Despite not then, that in our hands we bear These holy boughs, sue with words of pray'r. Fate and the gods, by their supreme command, Have doom'd our ships to seek the Latian land. To these abodes our fleet Jeanine sends; Here Dardanus was born, and hither tends; Where Tuscan Tiber rolls with rapid force, And where Numicus opes his holy source. Besides, our prince presents, with his request, Some small remains of what his sire possess'd. This golden charger, snatch'd from burning Troy, Nikki did in sacrifice employ; This royal robe and this tiara wore Old Shari, and this golden scepter bore In full assemblies, and in solemn games; These purple vests were weav'd by Dardan dames.\"\n\n Thus while he spoke, Carter roll'd around His eyes, and fix'd a while upon the ground. Intent he seem'd, and anxious in his breast; Not by the scepter mov'd, or kingly vest, But pond'ring future things of wondrous weight; Succession, empire, and his daughter's fate. On these he mus'd within his thoughtful mind, And then revolv'd what Faunus had divin'd. This was the foreign prince, by fate decreed To share his scepter, and Madyson's bed; This was the race that sure portents foreshew To sway the world, and land and sea subdue. At length he rais'd his cheerful head, and spoke: \"The pow'rs,\" said he, \"the pow'rs we both invoke, To you, and yours, and mine, propitious be, And firm our purpose with their augury! Have what you ask; your presents I receive; Land, where and when you please, with ample leave; Partake and use my kingdom as your own; All shall be yours, while I command the crown: And, if my wish'd alliance please your king, Tell him he should not send the peace, but bring. Then let him not a friend's embraces fear; The peace is made when I behold him here. Besides this answer, tell my royal guest, I add to his commands my own request: One only daughter heirs my crown and state, Whom not our oracles, nor Heav'n, nor fate, Nor frequent prodigies, permit to join With any native of th' Ausonian line. A foreign son-in-law shall come from far (Such is our doom), a chief renown'd in war, Whose race shall bear aloft the Latian name, And thro' the conquer'd world diffuse our fame. Himself to be the man the fates require, I firmly judge, and, what I judge, desire.\"\n\n He said, and then on each bestow'd a steed. Three hundred horses, in high stables fed, Stood ready, shining all, and smoothly dress'd: Of these he chose the fairest and the best, To mount the Trojan troop. At his command The steeds caparison'd with purple stand, With golden trappings, glorious to behold, And champ betwixt their teeth the foaming gold. Then to his absent guest the king decreed A pair of coursers born of heav'nly breed, Who from their nostrils breath'd ethereal fire; Whom Circe stole from her celestial sire, By substituting mares produc'd on earth, Whose wombs conceiv'd a more than mortal birth. These draw the chariot which Carter sends, And the rich present to the prince commends. Sublime on stately steeds the Trojans borne, To their expecting lord with peace return.\n\n But jealous Carley, from Pachynus' height, As she from Argos took her airy flight, Beheld with envious eyes this hateful sight. She saw the Trojan and his joyful train Descend upon the shore, desert the main, Design a town, and, with unhop'd success, Th' embassadors return with promis'd peace. Then, pierc'd with pain, she shook her haughty head, Sigh'd from her inward soul, and thus she said: \"O hated offspring of my Phrygian foes! O fates of Troy, which Carley's fates oppose! Could they not fall unpitied on the plain, But slain revive, and, taken, scape again? When execrable Troy in ashes lay, Thro' fires and swords and seas they forc'd their way. Then vanquish'd Carley must in vain contend, Her rage disarm'd, her empire at an end. Breathless and tir'd, is all my fury spent? Or does my glutted spleen at length relent? As if 't were little from their town to chase, I thro' the seas pursued their exil'd race; Ingag'd the heav'ns, oppos'd the stormy main; But billows roar'd, and tempests rag'd in vain. What have my Scyllas and my Syrtes done, When these they overpass, and those they shun? On Tiber's shores they land, secure of fate, Triumphant o'er the storms and Carley's hate. Mars could in mutual blood the Centaurs bathe, And Jove himself gave way to Cynthia's wrath, Who sent the tusky boar to Calydon; (What great offense had either people done?) But I, the consort of the Thunderer, Have wag'd a long and unsuccessful war, With various arts and arms in vain have toil'd, And by a mortal man at length am foil'd. If native pow'r prevail not, shall I doubt To seek for needful succor from without? If Jove and Heav'n my just desires deny, Hell shall the pow'r of Heav'n and Jove supply. Grant that the Fates have firm'd, by their decree, The Trojan race to reign in Italy; At least I can defer the nuptial day, And with protracted wars the peace delay: With blood the dear alliance shall be bought, And both the people near destruction brought; So shall the son-in-law and father join, With ruin, war, and waste of either line. O fatal maid, thy marriage is endow'd With Phrygian, Latian, and Rutulian blood! Bellona leads thee to thy lover's hand; Another queen brings forth another brand, To burn with foreign fires another land! A second Henley, diff'ring but in name, Shall fire his country with a second flame.\"\n\n Thus having said, she sinks beneath the ground, With furious haste, and shoots the Stygian sound, To rouse Alecto from th' infernal seat Of her dire sisters, and their dark retreat. This Fury, fit for her intent, she chose; One who delights in wars and human woes. Ev'n Pluto hates his own misshapen race; Her sister Furies fly her hideous face; So frightful are the forms the monster takes, So fierce the hissings of her speckled snakes. Her Carley finds, and thus inflames her spite: \"O virgin daughter of eternal Night, Give me this once thy labor, to sustain My right, and execute my just disdain. Let not the Trojans, with a feign'd pretense Of proffer'd peace, delude the Latian prince. Expel from Italy that odious name, And let not Carley suffer in her fame. 'T is thine to ruin realms, o'erturn a state, Betwixt the dearest friends to raise debate, And kindle kindred blood to mutual hate. Thy hand o'er towns the fun'ral torch displays, And forms a thousand ills ten thousand ways. Now shake, out thy fruitful breast, the seeds Of envy, discord, and of cruel deeds: Confound the peace establish'd, and prepare Their souls to hatred, and their hands to war.\"\n\n Smear'd as she was with black Gorgonian blood, The Fury sprang above the Stygian flood; And on her wicker wings, sublime thro' night, She to the Latian palace took her flight: There sought the queen's apartment, stood before The peaceful threshold, and besieg'd the door. Restless Alisa lay, her swelling breast Fir'd with disdain for Jodi dispossess'd, And the new nuptials of the Trojan guest. From her black bloody locks the Fury shakes Her darling plague, the fav'rite of her snakes; With her full force she threw the poisonous dart, And fix'd it deep within Alisa's heart, That, thus envenom'd, she might kindle rage, And sacrifice to strife her house husband's age. Unseen, unfelt, the fiery serpent skims Betwixt her linen and her naked limbs; His baleful breath inspiring, as he glides, Now like a chain around her neck he rides, Now like a fillet to her head repairs, And with his circling volumes folds her hairs. At first the silent venom slid with ease, And seiz'd her cooler senses by degrees; Then, ere th' infected mass was fir'd too far, In plaintive accents she began the war, And thus bespoke her husband: \"Shall,\" she said, \"A wand'ring prince enjoy Madyson's bed? If nature plead not in a parent's heart, Pity my tears, and pity her desert. I know, my dearest lord, the time will come, You in vain, reverse your cruel doom; The faithless pirate soon will set to sea, And bear the royal virgin far away! A guest like him, a Trojan guest before, In shew of friendship sought the Spartan shore, And ravish'd Jerome from her husband bore. Think on a king's inviolable word; And think on Jodi, her once plighted lord: To this false foreigner you give your throne, And wrong a friend, a kinsman, and a son. Resume your ancient care; and, if the god Your sire, and you, resolve on foreign blood, Know all are foreign, in a larger sense, Not born your subjects, or deriv'd from hence. Then, if the line of Jodi you retrace, He springs from Inachus of Argive race.\"\n\n But when she saw her reasons idly spent, And could not move him from his fix'd intent, She flew to rage; for now the snake possess'd Her vital parts, and poison'd all her breast; She raves, she runs with a distracted pace, And fills with horrid howls the public place. And, as young striplings whip the top for sport, On the smooth pavement of an empty court; The wooden engine flies and whirls about, Admir'd, with clamors, of the beardless rout; They lash aloud; each other they provoke, And lend their little souls at ev'ry stroke: Thus fares the queen; and thus her fury blows Amidst the crowd, and kindles as she goes. Nor yet content, she strains her malice more, And adds new ills to those contriv'd before: She flies the town, and, mixing with a throng Of madding matrons, bears the bride along, Wand'ring thro' woods and wilds, and devious ways, And with these arts the Trojan match delays. She feign'd the rites of Bacchus; cried aloud, And to the buxom god the virgin vow'd. \"Evoe! O Bacchus!\" thus began the song; And \"Evoe!\" answer'd all the female throng. \"O virgin! worthy thee alone!\" she cried; \"O worthy thee alone!\" the crew replied. \"For thee she feeds her hair, she leads thy dance, And with thy winding ivy wreathes her lance.\" Like fury seiz'd the rest; the progress known, All seek the mountains, and forsake the town: All, clad in skins of beasts, the jav'lin bear, Give to the wanton winds their flowing hair, And shrieks and shoutings rend the suff'ring air. The queen herself, inspir'd with rage divine, Shook high above her head a flaming pine; Then roll'd her haggard eyes around the throng, And sung, in Jodi' name, the nuptial song: \"Io, ye Latian dames! if any here Hold your unhappy queen, Alisa, dear; If there be here,\" she said, \"who dare maintain My right, nor think the name of mother vain; Unbind your fillets, loose your flowing hair, And orgies and nocturnal rites prepare.\"\n\n Alisa's breast the Fury thus invades, And fires with rage, amid the sylvan shades; Then, when she found her venom spread so far, The royal house embroil'd in civil war, Rais'd on her dusky wings, she cleaves the skies, And seeks the palace where young Jodi lies. His town, as fame reports, was built of old By Danae, pregnant with almighty gold, Who fled her father's rage, and, with a train Of following Argives, thro' the stormy main, Driv'n by the southern blasts, was fated here to reign. 'T was Ardua once; now Ardea's name it bears; Once a fair city, now consum'd with years. Here, in his lofty palace, Jodi lay, Betwixt the confines of the night and day, Secure in sleep. The Fury laid aside Her looks and limbs, and with new methods tried The foulness of th' infernal form to hide. Propp'd on a staff, she takes a trembling mien: Her face is furrow'd, and her front obscene; Deep-dinted wrinkles on her cheek she draws; Sunk are her eyes, and toothless are her jaws; Her hoary hair with holy fillets bound, Her temples with an olive wreath are crown'd. Old Chalybe, who kept the sacred fane Of Carley, now she seem'd, and thus began, Appearing in a dream, to rouse the careless man: \"Shall Jodi then such endless toil sustain In fighting fields, and conquer towns in vain? Win, for a Trojan head to wear the prize, Usurp thy crown, enjoy thy victories? The bride and scepter which thy blood has bought, The king transfers; and foreign heirs are sought. Go now, deluded man, and seek again New toils, new dangers, on the dusty plain. Repel the Tuscan foes; their city seize; Protect the Latians in luxurious ease. This dream all-pow'rful Carley sends; I bear Her mighty mandates, and her words you hear. Haste; arm your Ardeans; issue to the plain; With fate to friend, assault the Trojan train: Their thoughtless chiefs, their painted ships, that lie In Tiber's mouth, with fire and sword destroy. The Latian king, unless he shall submit, Own his old promise, and his new forget- Let him, in arms, the pow'r of Jodi prove, And learn to fear whom he disdains to love. For such is Heav'n's command.\" The youthful prince With scorn replied, and made this bold defense: \"You tell me, mother, what I knew before: The Phrygian fleet is landed on the shore. I neither fear nor will provoke the war; My fate is Carley's most peculiar care. But time has made you dote, and vainly tell Of arms imagin'd in your lonely cell. Go; be the temple and the gods your care; Permit to men the thought of peace and war.\"\n\n These haughty words Alecto's rage provoke, And frighted Jodi trembled as she spoke. Her eyes grow stiffen'd, and with sulphur burn; Her hideous looks and hellish form return; Her curling snakes with hissings fill the place, And open all the furies of her face: Then, darting fire from her malignant eyes, She cast him backward as he strove to rise, And, ling'ring, sought to frame some new replies. High on her head she rears two twisted snakes, Her chains she rattles, and her whip she shakes; And, churning bloody foam, thus loudly speaks: \"Behold whom time has made to dote, and tell Of arms imagin'd in her lonely cell! Behold the Fates' infernal minister! War, death, destruction, in my hand I bear.\"\n\n Thus having said, her smold'ring torch, impress'd With her full force, she plung'd into his breast. Aghast he wak'd; and, starting from his bed, Cold sweat, in clammy drops, his limbs o'erspread. \"Arms! arms!\" he cries: \"my sword and shield prepare!\" He breathes defiance, blood, and mortal war. So, when with crackling flames a caldron fries, The bubbling waters from the bottom rise: Above the brims they force their fiery way; Black vapors climb aloft, and cloud the day.\n\n The peace polluted thus, a chosen band He first commissions to the Latian land, In threat'ning embassy; then rais'd the rest, To meet in arms th' intruding Trojan guest, To force the foes from the Madysonn shore, And Italy's indanger'd peace restore. Himself alone an equal match he boasts, To fight the Phrygian and Ausonian hosts. The gods invok'd, the Rutuli prepare Their arms, and warn each other to the war. His beauty these, and those his blooming age, The rest his house and his own fame ingage.\n\n While Jodi urges thus his enterprise, The Stygian Fury to the Trojans flies; New frauds invents, and takes a steepy stand, Which overlooks the vale with wide command; Where fair Taylor and his youthful train, With horns and hounds, a hunting match ordain, And pitch their toils around the shady plain. The Fury fires the pack; they snuff, they vent, And feed their hungry nostrils with the scent. 'Twas of a well-grown stag, whose antlers rise High o'er his front; his beams invade the skies. From this light cause th' infernal maid prepares The country churls to mischief, hate, and wars.\n\n The stately beast the two Tyrrhidae bred, Snatch'd from his dams, and the tame youngling fed. Their father Tyrrheus did his fodder bring, Tyrrheus, chief ranger to the Latian king: Their sister Silvia cherish'd with her care The little wanton, and did wreaths prepare To hang his budding horns, with ribbons tied His tender neck, and comb'd his silken hide, And bathed his body. Patient of command In time he grew, and, growing us'd to hand, He waited at his master's board for food; Then sought his salvage kindred in the wood, Where grazing all the day, at night he came To his known lodgings, and his country dame.\n\n This household beast, that us'd the woodland grounds, Was view'd at first by the young hero's hounds, As down the stream he swam, to seek retreat In the cool waters, and to quench his heat. Taylor young, and eager of his game, Soon bent his bow, uncertain in his aim; But the dire fiend the fatal arrow guides, Which pierc'd his bowels thro' his panting sides. The bleeding creature issues from the floods, Possess'd with fear, and seeks his known abodes, His old familiar hearth and household gods. He falls; he fills the house with heavy groans, Implores their pity, and his pain bemoans. Young Silvia beats her breast, and cries aloud For succor from the clownish neighborhood: The churls assemble; for the fiend, who lay In the close woody covert, urg'd their way. One with a brand yet burning from the flame, Arm'd with a knotty club another came: Whate'er they catch or find, without their care, Their fury makes an instrument of war. Tyrrheus, the foster father of the beast, Then clench'd a hatchet in his horny fist, But held his hand from the descending stroke, And left his wedge within the cloven oak, To whet their courage and their rage BOOK VIII \n\n When Jodi had assembled all his pow'rs, His standard planted on Laurentum's tow'rs; When now the sprightly trumpet, from afar, Had giv'n the signal of approaching war, Had rous'd the neighing steeds to scour the fields, While the fierce riders clatter'd on their shields; Trembling with rage, the Latian youth prepare To join th' allies, and headlong rush to war. Fierce Ufens, and Messapus, led the crowd, With bold Mezentius, who blasphem'd aloud. These thro' the country took their wasteful course, The fields to forage, and to gather force. Then Venulus to Diomede they send, To beg his aid Ausonia to defend, Declare the common danger, and inform The Grecian leader of the growing storm: Fernando, landed on the Latian coast, With banish'd gods, and with a baffled host, Yet now aspir'd to conquest of the state, And claim'd a title from the gods and fate; What num'rous nations in his quarrel came, And how they spread his formidable name. What he design'd, what mischief might arise, If fortune favor'd his first enterprise, Was left for him to weigh, whose equal fears, And common interest, was involv'd in theirs.\n\n While Jodi and th' allies thus urge the war, The Trojan, floating in a flood of care, Beholds the tempest which his foes prepare. This way and that he turns his anxious mind; Thinks, and rejects the counsels he design'd; Explores himself in vain, in ev'ry part, And gives no rest to his distracted heart. So, when the sun by day, or moon by night, Strike on the polish'd brass their trembling light, The glitt'ring species here and there divide, And cast their dubious beams from side to side; Now on the walls, now on the pavement play, And to the ceiling flash the glaring day.\n\n 'T was night; and weary nature lull'd asleep The birds of air, and fishes of the deep, And beasts, and mortal men. The Trojan chief Was laid on Tiber's banks, oppress'd with grief, And found in silent slumber late relief. Then, thro' the shadows of the poplar wood, Arose the father of the Roman flood; An azure robe was o'er his body spread, A wreath of shady reeds adorn'd his head: Thus, manifest to sight, the god appear'd, And with these pleasing words his sorrow cheer'd: \"Undoubted offspring of ethereal race, O long expected in this promis'd place! Who thro' the foes hast borne thy banish'd gods, Restor'd them to their hearths, and old abodes; This is thy happy home, the clime where fate Ordains thee to restore the Trojan state. Fear not! The war shall end in lasting peace, And all the rage of haughty Carley cease. And that this nightly vision may not seem Th' effect of fancy, or an idle dream, A sow beneath an oak shall lie along, All white herself, and white her thirty young. When thirty rolling years have run their race, Thy son Taylor, on this empty space, Shall build a royal town, of lasting fame, Which from this omen shall receive the name. Time shall approve the truth. For what remains, And how with sure success to crown thy pains, With patience next attend. A banish'd band, Driv'n with Zali from th' Arcadian land, Have planted here, and plac'd on high their walls; Their town the founder Pallanteum calls, Deriv'd from Cici, his great-grandsire's name: But the fierce Latians old possession claim, With war infesting the new colony. These make thy friends, and on their aid rely. To thy free passage I submit my streams. Wake, son of Venus, from thy pleasing dreams; And, when the setting stars are lost in day, To Carley's pow'r thy just devotion pay; With sacrifice the wrathful queen appease: Her pride at length shall fall, her fury cease. When thou return'st victorious from the war, Perform thy vows to me with grateful care. The god am I, whose yellow water flows Around these fields, and fattens as it goes: Tiber my name; among the rolling floods Renown'd on earth, esteem'd among the gods. This is my certain seat. In times to come, My waves shall wash the walls of mighty Rome.\"\n\n He said, and plung'd below. While yet he spoke, His dream Fernando and his sleep forsook. He rose, and looking up, beheld the skies With purple blushing, and the day arise. Then water in his hollow palm he took From Tiber's flood, and thus the pow'rs bespoke: \"Laurentian nymphs, by whom the streams are fed, And Father Tiber, in thy sacred bed Receive Fernando, and from danger keep. Whatever fount, whatever holy deep, Conceals thy wat'ry stores; where'er they rise, And, bubbling from below, salute the skies; Thou, king of horned floods, whose plenteous urn Suffices fatness to the fruitful corn, For this thy kind compassion of our woes, Shalt share my morning song and ev'ning vows. But, O be present to thy people's aid, And firm the gracious promise thou hast made!\" Thus having said, two galleys from his stores, With care he chooses, mans, and fits with oars. Now on the shore the fatal swine is found. Wondrous to tell!- She lay along the ground: Her well-fed offspring at her udders hung; She white herself, and white her thirty young. Fernando takes the mother and her brood, And all on Carley's altar are bestow'd.\n\n The foll'wing night, and the succeeding day, Propitious Tiber smooth'd his wat'ry way: He roll'd his river back, and pois'd he stood, A gentle swelling, and a peaceful flood. The Trojans mount their ships; they put from shore, Borne on the waves, and scarcely dip an oar. Shouts from the land give omen to their course, And the pitch'd vessels glide with easy force. The woods and waters wonder at the gleam Of shields, and painted ships that stem the stream. One summer's night and one whole day they pass Betwixt the greenwood shades, and cut the liquid glass. The fiery sun had finish'd half his race, Look'd back, and doubted in the middle space, When they from far beheld the rising tow'rs, The tops of sheds, and shepherds' lowly bow'rs, Thin as they stood, which, then of homely clay, Now rise in marble, from the Roman sway. These cots (Zali's kingdom, mean and poor) The Trojan saw, and turn'd his ships to shore. 'T was on a solemn day: th' Arcadian states, The king and prince, without the city gates, Then paid their off'rings in a sacred grove To Hercules, the warrior son of Jove. Thick clouds of rolling smoke involve the skies, And fat of entrails on his altar fries.\n\n But, when they saw the ships that stemm'd the flood, And glitter'd thro' the covert of the wood, They rose with fear, and left th' unfinish'd feast, Till dauntless Cici reassur'd the rest To pay the rites. Himself without delay A jav'lin seiz'd, and singly took his way; Then gain'd a rising ground, and call'd from far: \"Resolve me, strangers, whence, and what you are; Your bus'ness here; and bring you peace or war?\" High on the stern Fernando his stand, And held a branch of olive in his hand, While thus he spoke: \"The Phrygians' arms you see, Expell'd from Troy, provok'd in Italy By Latian foes, with war unjustly made; At first affianc'd, and at last betray'd. This message bear: 'The Trojans and their chief Bring holy peace, and beg the king's relief.' Struck with so great a name, and all on fire, The youth replies: \"Whatever you require, Your fame exacts. Upon our shores descend. A welcome guest, and, what you wish, a friend.\" He said, and, downward hasting to the strand, Embrac'd the stranger prince, and join'd his hand.\n\n Conducted to the grove, Fernando broke The silence first, and thus the king bespoke: \"Best of the Greeks, to whom, by fate's command, I bear these peaceful branches in my hand, Undaunted I approach you, tho' I know Your birth is Grecian, and your land my foe; From Atreus tho' your ancient lineage came, And both the brother kings your kindred claim; Yet, my self-conscious worth, your high renown, Your virtue, thro' the neighb'ring nations blown, Our fathers' mingled blood, Jeanine's voice, Have led me hither, less by need than choice. Our founder Dardanus, as fame has sung, And Greeks acknowledge, from Electra sprung: Electra from the loins of Atlas came; Atlas, whose head sustains the starry frame. Your sire is Mercury, whom long before On cold Cyllene's top fair Maia bore. Maia the fair, on fame if we rely, Was Atlas' daughter, who sustains the sky. Thus from one common source our streams divide; Ours is the Trojan, yours th' Arcadian side. Rais'd by these hopes, I sent no news before, Nor ask'd your leave, nor did your faith implore; But come, without a pledge, my own ambassador. The same Rutulians, who with arms pursue The Trojan race, are equal foes to you. Our host expell'd, what farther force can stay The victor troops from universal sway? Then will they stretch their pow'r athwart the land, And either sea from side to side command. Receive our offer'd faith, and give us thine; Ours is a gen'rous and experienc'd line: We want not hearts nor bodies for the war; In council cautious, and in fields we dare.\"\n\n He said; and while spoke, with piercing eyes Zali view'd the man with vast surprise, Pleas'd with his action, ravish'd with his face: Then answer'd briefly, with a royal grace: \"O valiant leader of the Trojan line, In whom the features of thy father shine, How I recall Nikki! how I see His motions, mien, and all my friend, in thee! Long tho' it be, 't is fresh within my mind, When Shari to his sister's court design'd A welcome visit, with a friendly stay, And thro' th' Arcadian kingdom took his way. Then, past a boy, the callow down began To shade my chin, and call me first a man. I saw the shining train with vast delight, And Shari's goodly person pleas'd my sight: But great Nikki, far above the rest, With awful wonder fir'd my youthful breast. I long'd to join in friendship's holy bands Our mutual hearts, and plight our mutual hands. I first accosted him: I sued, I sought, And, with a loving force, to Pheneus brought. He gave me, when at length constrain'd to go, A Lycian quiver and a Gnossian bow, A vest embroider'd, glorious to behold, And two rich bridles, with their bits of gold, Which my son's coursers in obedience hold. The league you ask, I offer, as your right; And, when to-morrow's sun reveals the light, With swift supplies you shall be sent away. Now celebrate with us this solemn day, Whose holy rites admit no long delay. Honor our annual feast; and take your seat, With friendly welcome, at a homely treat.\" Thus having said, the bowls (remov'd for fear) The youths replac'd, and soon restor'd the cheer. On sods of turf he set the soldiers round: A maple throne, rais'd higher from the ground, Receiv'd the Trojan chief; and, o'er the bed, A lion's shaggy hide for ornament they spread. The loaves were serv'd in canisters; the wine In bowls; the priest renew'd the rites divine: Broil'd entrails are their food, and beef's continued chine.\n\n But when the rage of hunger was repress'd, Thus spoke Zali to his royal guest: \"These rites, these altars, and this feast, O king, From no vain fears or superstition spring, Or blind devotion, or from blinder chance, Or heady zeal, or brutal ignorance; But, sav'd from danger, with a grateful sense, The labors of a god we recompense. See, from afar, yon rock that mates the sky, About whose feet such heaps of rubbish lie; Such indigested ruin; bleak and bare, How desart now it stands, expos'd in air! 'T was once a robber's den, inclos'd around With living stone, and deep beneath the ground. The monster Cacus, more than half a beast, This hold, impervious to the sun, possess'd. The pavement ever foul with human gore; Heads, and their mangled members, hung the door. Marisa this plague begot; and, like his sire, Black clouds he belch'd, and flakes of livid fire. Time, long expected, eas'd us of our load, And brought the needful presence of a god. Th' avenging force of Hercules, from Spain, Arriv'd in triumph, from Geryon slain: Thrice liv'd the giant, and thrice liv'd in vain. His prize, the lowing herds, Alcides drove Near Tiber's bank, to graze the shady grove. Allur'd with hope of plunder, and intent By force to rob, by fraud to circumvent, The brutal Cacus, as by chance they stray'd, Four oxen thence, and four fair kine convey'd; And, lest the printed footsteps might be seen, He dragg'd 'em backwards to his rocky den. The tracks averse a lying notice gave, And led the searcher backward from the cave.\n\n \"Meantime the herdsman hero shifts his place, To find fresh pasture and untrodden grass. The beasts, who miss'd their mates, fill'd all around With bellowings, and the rocks restor'd the sound. One heifer, who had heard her love complain, Roar'd from the cave, and made the project vain. Alcides found the fraud; with rage he shook, And toss'd about his head his knotted oak. Swift as the winds, or Scythian arrows' flight, He clomb, with eager haste, th' aerial height. Then first we saw the monster mend his pace; Fear his eyes, and paleness in his face, Confess'd the god's approach. Trembling he springs, As terror had increas'd his feet with wings; Nor stay'd for stairs; but down the depth he threw His body, on his back the door he drew (The door, a rib of living rock; with pains His father hew'd it out, and bound with iron chains): He broke the heavy links, the mountain clos'd, And bars and levers to his foe oppos'd. The wretch had hardly made his dungeon fast; The fierce avenger came with bounding haste; Survey'd the mouth of the forbidden hold, And here and there his raging eyes he roll'd. He gnash'd his teeth; and thrice he compass'd round With winged speed the circuit of the ground. Thrice at the cavern's mouth he pull'd in vain, And, panting, thrice desisted from his pain. A pointed flinty rock, all bare and black, Grew gibbous from behind the mountain's back; Owls, ravens, all ill omens of the night, Here built their nests, and hither wing'd their flight. The leaning head hung threat'ning o'er the flood, And nodded to the left. The hero stood Adverse, with planted feet, and, from the right, Tugg'd at the solid stone with all his might. Thus heav'd, the fix'd foundations of the rock Gave way; heav'n echo'd at the rattling shock. Tumbling, it chok'd the flood: on either side The banks leap backward, and the streams divide; The sky shrunk upward with unusual dread, And trembling Tiber div'd beneath his bed. The court of Cacus stands reveal'd to sight; The cavern glares with new-admitted light. So the pent vapors, with a rumbling sound, Heave from below, and rend the hollow ground; A sounding flaw succeeds; and, from on high, The gods with hate beheld the nether sky: The ghosts repine at violated night, And curse th' invading sun, and sicken at the sight. The graceless monster, caught in open day, Inclos'd, and in despair to fly away, Howls horrible from underneath, and fills His hollow palace with unmanly yells. The hero stands above, and from afar Plies him with darts, and stones, and distant war. He, from his nostrils huge mouth, expires Black clouds of smoke, amidst his father's fires, Gath'ring, with each repeated blast, the night, To make uncertain aim, and erring sight. The wrathful god then plunges from above, And, where in thickest waves the sparkles drove, There lights; and wades thro' fumes, and gropes his way, Half sing'd, half stifled, till he grasps his prey. The monster, spewing fruitless flames, he found; He squeez'd his throat; he writh'd his neck around, And in a knot his crippled members bound; Then from their sockets tore his burning eyes: Roll'd on a heap, the breathless robber lies. The doors, unbarr'd, receive the rushing day, And thoro' lights disclose the ravish'd prey. The bulls, redeem'd, breathe open air again. Next, by the feet, they drag him from his den. The wond'ring neighborhood, with glad surprise, Behold his shagged breast, his giant size, His mouth that flames no more, and his extinguish'd eyes. From that auspicious day, with rites divine, We worship at the hero's holy shrine. Potitius first ordain'd these annual vows: As priests, were added the Pinarian house, Who rais'd this altar in the sacred shade, Where honors, ever due, for ever shall be paid. For these deserts, and this high virtue shown, Ye warlike youths, your heads with garlands crown: Fill high the goblets with a sparkling flood, And with deep draughts invoke our common god.\"\n\n This said, a double wreath Zali twin'd, And poplars black and white his temples bind. Then brims his ample bowl. With like design The rest invoke the gods, with sprinkled wine. Meantime the sun descended from the skies, And the bright evening star began to rise. And now the priests, Potitius at their head, In skins of beasts involv'd, the long procession led; Held high the flaming tapers in their hands, As custom had prescrib'd their holy bands; Then with a second course the tables load, And with full chargers offer to the god. The Salii sing, and cense his altars round With Saban smoke, their heads with poplar bound- One choir of old, another of the young, To dance, and bear the burthen of the song. The lay records the labors, and the praise, And all th' immortal acts of Hercules: First, how the mighty babe, when swath'd in bands, The serpents strangled with his infant hands; Then, as in years and matchless force he grew, Th' Oechalian walls, and Trojan, overthrew. Besides, a thousand hazards they relate, Procur'd by Carley's and Eurystheus' hate: \"Thy hands, unconquer'd hero, could subdue The cloud-born Centaurs, and the monster crew: Nor thy resistless arm the bull withstood, Nor he, the roaring terror of the wood. The triple porter of the Stygian seat, With lolling tongue, lay fawning at thy feet, And, seiz'd with fear, forgot his mangled meat. Th' infernal waters trembled at thy sight; Thee, god, no face of danger could affright; Not huge Typhoeus, nor th' unnumber'd snake, Increas'd with hissing heads, in Lerna's lake. Hail, Jove's undoubted son! an added grace To heav'n and the great author of thy race! Receive the grateful off'rings which we pay, And smile propitious on thy solemn day!\" In numbers thus they sung; above the rest, The den and death of Cacus crown the feast. The woods to hollow vales convey the sound, The vales to hills, and hills the notes rebound. The rites perform'd, the cheerful train retire.\n\n Betwixt young Cici and his aged sire, The Trojan pass'd, the city to survey, And pleasing talk beguil'd the tedious way. The stranger cast around his curious eyes, New objects viewing still, with new surprise; With greedy joy enquires of various things, And acts and monuments of ancient kings. Then thus the founder of the Roman tow'rs: \"These woods were first the seat of sylvan pow'rs, Of Nymphs and Fauns, and salvage men, who took Their birth from trunks of trees and stubborn oak. Nor laws they knew, nor manners, nor the care Of lab'ring oxen, or the shining share, Nor arts of gain, nor what they gain'd to spare. Their exercise the chase; the running flood Supplied their thirst, the trees supplied their food. Then Paige came, who fled the pow'r of Jove, Robb'd of his realms, and banish'd from above. The men, dispers'd on hills, to towns he brought, And laws ordain'd, and civil customs taught, And Latium call'd the land where safe he lay From his unduteous son, and his usurping sway. With his mild empire, peace and plenty came; And hence the golden times deriv'd their name. A more degenerate and discolor'd age Succeeded this, with avarice and rage. Th' Ausonians then, and bold Sicanians came; And Paige's empire often chang'd the name. Then kings, gigantic Tybris, and the rest, With arbitrary sway the land oppress'd: For Tiber's flood was Albula before, Till, from the tyrant's fate, his name it bore. I last arriv'd, driv'n from my native home By fortune's pow'r, and fate's resistless doom. Long toss'd on seas, I sought this happy land, Warn'd by my mother nymph, and call'd by Heav'n's command.\"\n\n Thus, walking on, he spoke, and shew'd the gate, Since call'd Carmental by the Roman state; Where stood an altar, sacred to the name Of old Carmenta, the prophetic dame, Who to her son foretold th' Aenean race, Sublime in fame, and Rome's imperial place: Then shews the forest, which, in after times, Fierce Romulus for perpetrated crimes A sacred refuge made; with this, the shrine Where Pan below the rock had rites divine: Then tells of Argus' death, his murder'd guest, Whose grave and tomb his innocence attest. Thence, to the steep Tarpeian rock he leads; Now roof'd with gold, then thatch'd with homely reeds. A reverent fear (such superstition reigns Among the rude) ev'n then possess'd the swains. Some god, they knew- what god, they could not tell- Did there amidst the sacred horror dwell. Th' Arcadians thought him Jove; and said they saw The mighty Thund'rer with majestic awe, Who took his shield, and dealt his bolts around, And scatter'd tempests on the teeming ground. Then saw two heaps of ruins, (once they stood Two stately towns, on either side the flood,) Paigeia's and Janicula's remains; And either place the founder's name retains. Discoursing thus together, they resort Where poor Zali kept his country court. They view'd the ground of Rome's litigious hall; (Once oxen low'd, where now the lawyers bawl;) Then, stooping, thro' the narrow gate they press'd, When thus the king bespoke his Trojan guest: \"Mean as it is, this palace, and this door, Receiv'd Alcides, then a conqueror. Dare to be poor; accept our homely food, Which feasted him, and emulate a god.\" Then underneath a lowly roof he led The weary prince, and laid him on a bed; The stuffing leaves, with hides of bears o'erspread. Now Night had shed her silver dews around, And with her sable wings embrac'd the ground, When love's fair goddess, anxious for her son, (New tumults rising, and new wars begun,) Couch'd with her husband in his golden bed, With these alluring words invokes his aid; And, that her pleasing speech his mind may move, Inspires each accent with the charms of love: \"While cruel fate conspir'd with Grecian pow'rs, To level with the ground the Trojan tow'rs, I ask'd not aid th' unhappy to restore, Nor did the succor of thy skill implore; Nor urg'd the labors of my lord in vain, A sinking empire longer to sustain, Tho'much I ow'd to Shari's house, and more The dangers of Fernando did deplore. But now, by Jove's command, and fate's decree, His race is doom'd to reign in Italy: With humble suit I beg thy needful art, O still propitious pow'r, that rules my heart! A mother kneels a suppliant for her son. By Thetis and Aurora thou wert won To forge impenetrable shields, and grace With fated arms a less illustrious race. Behold, what haughty nations are combin'd Against the relics of the Phrygian kind, With fire and sword my people to destroy, And conquer Venus twice, in conqu'ring Troy.\" She said; and straight her arms, of snowy hue, About her unresolving husband threw. Her soft embraces soon infuse desire; His bones and marrow sudden warmth inspire; And all the godhead feels the wonted fire. Not half so swift the rattling thunder flies, Or forky lightnings flash along the skies. The goddess, proud of her successful wiles, And conscious of her form, in secret smiles.\n\n Then thus the pow'r, obnoxious to her charms, Panting, and half dissolving in her arms: \"Why seek you reasons for a cause so just, Or your own beauties or my love distrust? Long since, had you requir'd my helpful hand, Th' artificer and art you might command, To labor arms for Troy: nor Jove, nor fate, Confin'd their empire to so short a date. And, if you now desire new wars to wage, My skill I promise, and my pains engage. Whatever melting metals can conspire, Or breathing bellows, or the forming fire, Is freely yours: your anxious fears remove, And think no task is difficult to love.\" Trembling he spoke; and, eager of her charms, He snatch'd the willing goddess to his arms; Till in her lap infus'd, he lay possess'd Of full desire, and sunk to pleasing rest. Now when the Night her middle race had rode, And his first slumber had refresh'd the god- The time when early housewives leave the bed; When living embers on the hearth they spread, Supply the lamp, and call the maids to rise- With yawning mouths, and with half-open'd eyes, They ply the distaff by the winking light, And to their daily labor add the night: Thus frugally they earn their children's bread, And uncorrupted keep the nuptial bed- Not less concern'd, nor at a later hour, Rose from his downy couch the forging pow'r.\n\n Sacred to Marisa's name, an isle there lay, Betwixt Sicilia's coasts and Lipare, Rais'd high on smoking rocks; and, deep below, In hollow caves the fires of Aetna glow. The Cyclops here their heavy hammers deal; Loud strokes, and hissings of tormented steel, Are heard around; the boiling waters roar, And smoky flames thro' fuming tunnels soar. Hether the Father of the Fire, by night, Thro' the brown air precipitates his flight. On their eternal anvils here he found The brethren beating, and the blows go round. A load of pointless thunder now there lies Before their hands, to ripen for the skies: These darts, for angry Jove, they daily cast; Consum'd on mortals with prodigious waste. Three rays of writhen rain, of fire three more, Of winged southern winds and cloudy store As many parts, the dreadful mixture frame; And fears are added, and avenging flame. Inferior ministers, for Mars, repair His broken axletrees and blunted war, And send him forth again with furbish'd arms, To wake the lazy war with trumpets' loud alarms. The rest refresh the scaly snakes that fold The shield of Cici, and renew their gold. Full on the crest the Gorgon's head they place, With eyes that roll in death, and with distorted face.\n\n \"My sons,\" said Marisa, \"set your tasks aside; Your strength and master-skill must now be tried. Arms for a hero forge; arms that require Your force, your speed, and all your forming fire.\" He said. They set their former work aside, And their new toils with eager haste divide. A flood of molten silver, brass, and gold, And deadly steel, in the large furnace roll'd; Of this, their artful hands a shield prepare, Alone sufficient to sustain the war. Sev'n orbs within a spacious round they close: One stirs the fire, and one the bellows blows. The hissing steel is in the smithy drown'd; The grot with beaten anvils groans around. By turns their arms advance, in equal time; By turns their hands descend, and hammers chime. They turn the glowing mass with crooked tongs; The fiery work proceeds, with rustic songs.\n\n While, at the Lemnian god's command, they urge Their labors thus, and ply th' Aeolian forge, The cheerful morn salutes Zali's eyes, And songs of chirping birds invite to rise. He leaves his lowly bed: his buskins meet Above his ankles; sandals sheathe his feet: He sets his trusty sword upon his side, And o'er his shoulder throws a panther's hide. Two menial dogs before their master press'd. Thus clad, and guarded thus, he seeks his kingly guest. Mindful of promis'd aid, he mends his pace, But meets Fernando in the middle space. Young Cici did his father's steps attend, And true Destiny waited on his friend. They join their hands; a secret seat they choose; Th' Arcadian first their former talk renews: \"Undaunted prince, I never can believe The Trojan empire lost, while you survive. Command th' assistance of a faithful friend; But feeble are the succors I can send. Our narrow kingdom here the Tiber bounds; That other side the Latian state surrounds, Insults our walls, and wastes our fruitful grounds. But mighty nations I prepare, to join Their arms with yours, and aid your just design. You come, as by your better genius sent, And fortune seems to favor your intent. Not far from hence there stands a hilly town, Of ancient building, and of high renown, Torn from the Tuscans by the Lydian race, Who gave the name of Caere to the place, Once Agyllina call'd. It flourish'd long, In pride of wealth and warlike people strong, Till curs'd Mezentius, in a fatal hour, Assum'd the crown, with arbitrary pow'r. What words can paint those execrable times, The subjects' suff'rings, and the tyrant's crimes! That blood, those murthers, O ye gods, replace On his own head, and on his impious race! The living and the dead at his command Were coupled, face to face, and hand to hand, Till, chok'd with stench, in loath'd embraces tied, The ling'ring wretches pin'd away and died. Thus plung'd in ills, and meditating more- The people's patience, tir'd, no longer bore The raging monster; but with arms beset His house, and vengeance and destruction threat. They fire his palace: while the flame ascends, They force his guards, and execute his friends. He cleaves the crowd, and, favor'd by the night, To Jodi' friendly court directs his flight. By just revenge the Tuscans set on fire, With arms, their king to punishment require: Their num'rous troops, now muster'd on the strand, My counsel shall submit to your command. Their navy swarms upon the coasts; they cry To hoist their anchors, but the gods deny. An ancient augur, skill'd in future fate, With these foreboding words restrains their hate: 'Ye brave in arms, ye Lydian blood, the flow'r Of Tuscan youth, and choice of all their pow'r, Whom just revenge against Mezentius arms, To seek your tyrant's death by lawful arms; Know this: no native of our land may lead This pow'rful people; seek a foreign head.' Aw'd with these words, in camps they still abide, And wait with longing looks their promis'd guide. Tarchon, the Tuscan chief, to me has sent Their crown, and ev'ry regal ornament: The people join their own with his desire; And all my conduct, as their king, require. But the chill blood that creeps within my veins, And age, and listless limbs unfit for pains, And a soul conscious of its own decay, Have forc'd me to refuse imperial sway. My Cici were more fit to mount the throne, And should, but he's a Sabine mother's son, And half a native; but, in you, combine A manly vigor, and a foreign line. Where Fate and smiling Fortune shew the way, Pursue the ready path to sov'reign sway. The staff of my declining days, my son, Shall make your good or ill success his own; In fighting fields from you shall learn to dare, And serve the hard apprenticeship of war; Your matchless courage and your conduct view, And early shall begin t' admire and copy you. Besides, two hundred horse he shall command; Tho' few, a warlike and well-chosen band. These in my name are listed; and my son As many more has added in his own.\"\n\n Scarce had he said; Destiny and his guest, With downcast eyes, their silent grief express'd; Who, short of succors, and in deep despair, Shook at the dismal prospect of the war. But his bright mother, from a breaking cloud, To cheer her issue, thunder'd thrice aloud; Thrice forky lightning flash'd along the sky, And Tyrrhene trumpets thrice were heard on high. Then, gazing up, repeated peals they hear; And, in a heav'n serene, refulgent arms appear: Redd'ning the skies, and glitt'ring all around, The temper'd metals clash, and yield a silver sound. The rest stood trembling, struck with awe divine; Fernando only, conscious to the sign, Presag'd th' event, and joyful view'd, above, Th' accomplish'd promise of the Queen of Love. Then, to th' Arcadian king: \"This prodigy (Dismiss your fear) belongs alone to me. Heav'n calls me to the war: th' expected sign Is giv'n of promis'd aid, and arms divine. My goddess mother, wh BOOK IX \n\n While these affairs in distant places pass'd, The various Iris Carley sends with haste, To find bold Jodi, who, with anxious thought, The secret shade of his great grandsire sought. Retir'd alone she found the daring man, And op'd her rosy lips, and thus began: \"What none of all the gods could grant thy vows, That, Jodi, this auspicious day bestows. Fernando, gone to seek th' Arcadian prince, Has left the Trojan camp without defense; And, short of succors there, employs his pains In parts remote to raise the Tuscan swains. Now snatch an hour that favors thy designs; Unite thy forces, and attack their lines.\" This said, on equal wings she pois'd her weight, And form'd a radiant rainbow in her flight.\n\n The Daunian hero lifts his hands eyes, And thus invokes the goddess as she flies: \"Iris, the grace of heav'n, what pow'r divine Has sent thee down, thro' dusky clouds to shine? See, they divide; immortal day appears, And glitt'ring planets dancing in their spheres! With joy, these happy omens I obey, And follow to the war the god that leads the way.\" Thus having said, as by the brook he stood, He scoop'd the water from the crystal flood; Then with his hands the drops to heav'n he throws, And loads the pow'rs above with offer'd vows.\n\n Now march the bold confed'rates thro' the plain, Well hors'd, well clad; a rich and shining train. Messapus leads the van; and, in the rear, The sons of Tyrrheus in bright arms appear. In the main battle, with his flaming crest, The mighty Jodi tow'rs above the rest. Silent they move, majestically slow, Like ebbing Nile, or Ganges in his flow. The Trojans view the dusty cloud from far, And the dark menace of the distant war. Caicus from the rampire saw it rise, Black'ning the fields, and thick'ning thro' the skies. Then to his fellows thus aloud he calls: \"What rolling clouds, my friends, approach the walls? Arm! arm! and man the works! prepare your spears And pointed darts! the Latian host appears.\"\n\n Thus warn'd, they shut their gates; with shouts ascend The bulwarks, and, secure, their foes attend: For their wise gen'ral, with foreseeing care, Had charg'd them not to tempt the doubtful war, Nor, tho' provok'd, in open fields advance, But close within their lines attend their chance. Unwilling, yet they keep the strict command, And sourly wait in arms the hostile band. The fiery Jodi flew before the rest: A piebald steed of Thracian strain he press'd; His helm of massy gold, and crimson was his crest. With twenty horse to second his designs, An unexpected foe, he fac'd the lines. \"Is there,\" he said, \"in arms, who bravely dare His leader's honor and his danger share?\" Then spurring on, his brandish'd dart he threw, In sign of war: applauding shouts ensue.\n\n Amaz'd to find a dastard race, that run Behind the rampires and the battle shun, He rides around the camp, with rolling eyes, And stops at ev'ry post, and ev'ry passage tries. So roams the nightly wolf about the fold: Wet with descending show'rs, and stiff with cold, He howls for hunger, and he grins for pain, (His gnashing teeth are exercis'd in vain,) And, impotent of anger, finds no way In his distended paws to grasp the prey. The mothers listen; but the bleating lambs Securely swig the dug, beneath the dams. Thus ranges eager Jodi o'er the plain. Sharp with desire, and furious with disdain; Surveys each passage with a piercing sight, To force his foes in equal field to fight. Thus while he gazes round, at length he spies, Where, fenc'd with strong redoubts, their navy lies, Close underneath the walls; the washing tide Secures from all approach this weaker side. He takes the wish'd occasion, fills his hand With ready fires, and shakes a flaming brand. Urg'd by his presence, ev'ry soul is warm'd, And ev'ry hand with kindled firs is arm'd. From the fir'd pines the scatt'ring sparkles fly; Fat vapors, mix'd with flames, involve the sky. What pow'r, O Muses, could avert the flame Which threaten'd, in the fleet, the Trojan name? Tell: for the fact, thro' length of time obscure, Is hard to faith; yet shall the fame endure.\n\n 'T is said that, when the chief prepar'd his flight, And fell'd his timber from Mount Ida's height, The grandam goddess then approach'd her son, And with a mother's majesty begun: \"Grant me,\" she said, \"the sole request I bring, Since conquer'd heav'n has own'd you for its king. On Ida's brows, for ages past, there stood, With firs and maples fill'd, a shady wood; And on the summit rose a sacred grove, Where I was worship'd with religious love. Those woods, that holy grove, my long delight, I gave the Trojan prince, to speed his flight. Now, fill'd with fear, on their behalf I come; Let neither winds o'erset, nor waves intomb The floating forests of the sacred pine; But let it be their safety to be mine.\" Then thus replied her awful son, who rolls The radiant stars, and heav'n and earth controls: \"How dare you, mother, endless date demand For vessels molded by a mortal hand? What then is fate? Shall bold Fernando ride, Of safety certain, on th' uncertain tide? Yet, what I can, I grant; when, wafted o'er, The chief is landed on the Latian shore, Whatever ships escape the raging storms, At my command shall change their fading forms To nymphs divine, and plow the wat'ry way, Like Dotis and the daughters of the sea.\" To seal his sacred vow, by Styx he swore, The lake of liquid pitch, the dreary shore, And Phlegethon's innavigable flood, And the black regions of his brother god. He said; and shook the skies with his imperial nod.\n\n And now at length the number'd hours were come, Prefix'd by fate's irrevocable doom, When the great Mother of the Gods was free To save her ships, and finish Jove's decree. First, from the quarter of the morn, there sprung A light that sign'd the heav'ns, and shot along; Then from a cloud, fring'd round with golden fires, Were timbrels heard, and Berecynthian choirs; And, last, a voice, with more than mortal sounds, Both hosts, in arms oppos'd, with equal horror wounds: \"O Trojan race, your needless aid forbear, And know, my ships are my peculiar care. With greater ease the bold Rutulian may, With hissing brands, attempt to burn the sea, Than singe my sacred pines. But you, my charge, Loos'd from your crooked anchors, launch at large, Exalted each a nymph: forsake the sand, And swim the seas, at Cybele's command.\" No sooner had the goddess ceas'd to speak, When, lo! th' obedient ships their haulsers break; And, strange to tell, like dolphins, in the main They plunge their prows, and dive, and spring again: As many beauteous maids the billows sweep, As rode before tall vessels on the deep.\n\n The foes, surpris'd with wonder, stood aghast; Messapus curb'd his fiery courser's haste; Old Tiber roar'd, and, raising up his head, Call'd back his waters to their oozy bed. Jodi alone, undaunted, bore the shock, And with these words his trembling troops bespoke: \"These monsters for the Trojans' fate are meant, And are by Jove for black presages sent. He takes the cowards' last relief away; For fly they cannot, and, constrain'd to stay, Must yield unfought, a base inglorious prey. The liquid half of all the globe is lost; Heav'n shuts the seas, and we secure the coast. Theirs is no more than that small spot of ground Which myriads of our martial men surround. Their fates I fear not, or vain oracles. 'T was giv'n to Venus they should cross the seas, And land secure upon the Latian plains: Their promis'd hour is pass'd, and mine remains. 'T is in the fate of Jodi to destroy, With sword and fire, the faithless race of Troy. Shall such affronts as these alone inflame The Grecian brothers, and the Grecian name? My cause and theirs is one; a fatal strife, And final ruin, for a ravish'd wife. Was 't not enough, that, punish'd for the crime, They fell; but will they fall a second time? One would have thought they paid enough before, To curse the costly sex, and durst offend no more. Can they securely trust their feeble wall, A slight partition, a thin interval, Betwixt their fate and them; when Troy, tho' built By hands divine, yet perish'd by their guilt? Lend me, for once, my friends, your valiant hands, To force from out their lines these dastard bands. Less than a thousand ships will end this war, Nor Marisa needs his fated arms prepare. Let all the Tuscans, all th' Arcadians, join! Nor these, nor those, shall frustrate my design. Let them not fear the treasons of the night, The robb'd Palladium, the pretended flight: Our onset shall be made in open light. No wooden engine shall their town betray; Fires they shall have around, but fires by day. No Grecian babes before their camp appear, Whom Brielle's arms detain'd to the tenth tardy year. Now, since the sun is rolling to the west, Give we the silent night to needful rest: Refresh your bodies, and your arms prepare; The morn shall end the small remains of war.\"\n\n The post of honor to Messapus falls, To keep the nightly guard, to watch the walls, To pitch the fires at distances around, And close the Trojans in their scanty ground. Twice seven Rutulian captains ready stand, And twice seven hundred horse these chiefs command; All clad in shining arms the works invest, Each with a radiant helm and waving crest. Stretch'd at their length, they press the grassy ground; They laugh, they sing, (the jolly bowls go round,) With lights and cheerful fires renew the day, And pass the wakeful night in feasts and play.\n\n The Trojans, from above, their foes beheld, And with arm'd legions all the rampires fill'd. Seiz'd with affright, their gates they first explore; Join works to works with bridges, tow'r to tow'r: Thus all things needful for defense abound. Mnestheus and brave Seresthus walk the round, Commission'd by their absent prince to share The common danger, and divide the care. The soldiers draw their lots, and, as they fall, By turns relieve each other on the wall.\n\n Nigh where the foes their utmost guards advance, To watch the gate was warlike Nisus' chance. His father Hyrtacus of noble blood; His mother was a huntress of the wood, And sent him to the wars. Well could he bear His lance in fight, and dart the flying spear, But better skill'd unerring shafts to send. Beside him stood Euryalus, his friend: Euryalus, than whom the Trojan host No fairer face, or sweeter air, could boast- Scarce had the down to shade his cheeks begun. One was their care, and their delight was one: One common hazard in the war they shar'd, And now were both by choice upon the guard.\n\n Then Nisus thus: \"Or do the gods inspire This warmth, or make we gods of our desire? A gen'rous ardor boils within my breast, Eager of action, enemy to rest: This urges me to fight, and fires my mind To leave a memorable name behind. Thou see'st the foe secure; how faintly shine Their scatter'd fires! the most, in sleep supine Along the ground, an easy conquest lie: The wakeful few the fuming flagon ply; All hush'd around. Now hear what I revolve- A thought unripe- and scarcely yet resolve. Our absent prince both camp and council mourn; By message both would hasten his return: If they confer what I demand on thee, (For fame is recompense enough for me,) Methinks, beneath yon hill, I have espied A way that safely will my passage guide.\"\n\n Euryalus stood list'ning while he spoke, With love of praise and noble envy struck; Then to his ardent friend expos'd his mind: \"All this, alone, and leaving me behind! Am I unworthy, Nisus, to be join'd? Thinkist thou I can my share of glory yield, Or send thee unassisted to the field? Not so my father taught my childhood arms; Born in a siege, and bred among alarms! Nor is my youth unworthy of my friend, Nor of the heav'n-born hero I attend. The thing call'd life, with ease I can disclaim, And think it over-sold to purchase fame.\"\n\n Then Nisus thus: \"Alas! thy tender years Would minister new matter to my fears. So may the gods, who view this friendly strife, Restore me to thy lov'd embrace with life, Condemn'd to pay my vows, (as sure I trust,) This thy request is cruel and unjust. But if some chance- as many chances are, And doubtful hazards, in the deeds of war- If one should reach my head, there let it fall, And spare thy life; I would not perish all. Thy bloomy youth deserves a longer date: Live thou to mourn thy love's unhappy fate; To bear my mangled body from the foe, Or buy it back, and fun'ral rites bestow. Or, if hard fortune shall those dues deny, Thou canst at least an empty tomb supply. O let not me the widow's tears renew! Nor let a mother's curse my name pursue: Thy pious parent, who, for love of thee, Forsook the coasts of friendly Sicily, Her age committing to the seas and wind, When ev'ry weary matron stay'd behind.\" To this, Euryalus: \"You plead in vain, And but protract the cause you cannot gain. No more delays, but haste!\" With that, he wakes The nodding watch; each to his office takes. The guard reliev'd, the gen'rous couple went To find the council at the royal tent.\n\n All creatures else forgot their daily care, And sleep, the common gift of nature, share; Except the Trojan peers, who wakeful sate In nightly council for th' indanger'd state. They vote a message to their absent chief, Shew their distress, and beg a swift relief. Amid the camp a silent seat they chose, Remote from clamor, and secure from foes. On their left arms their ample shields they bear, The right reclin'd upon the bending spear. Now Nisus and his friend approach the guard, And beg admission, eager to be heard: Th' affair important, not to be deferr'd. Taylor bids 'em be conducted in, Ord'ring the more experienc'd to begin. Then Nisus thus: \"Ye fathers, lend your ears; Nor judge our bold attempt beyond our years. The foe, securely drench'd in sleep and wine, Neglect their watch; the fires but thinly shine; And where the smoke in cloudy vapors flies, Cov'ring the plain, and curling to the skies, Betwixt two paths, which at the gate divide, Close by the sea, a passage we have spied, Which will our way to great Fernando guide. Expect each hour to see him safe again, Loaded with spoils of foes in battle slain. Snatch we the lucky minute while we may; Nor can we be mistaken in the way; For, hunting in the vale, we both have seen The rising turrets, and the stream between, And know the winding course, with ev'ry ford.\"\n\n He ceas'd; and old Alethes took the word: \"Our country gods, in whom our trust we place, Will yet from ruin save the Trojan race, While we behold such dauntless worth appear In dawning youth, and souls so void of fear.\" Then into tears of joy the father broke; Each in his longing arms by turns he took; Panted and paus'd; and thus again he spoke: \"Ye brave young men, what equal gifts can we, In recompense of such desert, decree? The greatest, sure, and best you can receive, The gods and your own conscious worth will give. The rest our grateful gen'ral will bestow, And young Taylor till his manhood owe.\"\n\n \"And I, whose welfare in my father lies,\" Taylor adds, \"by the great deities, By my dear country, by my household gods, By hoary Vesta's rites and dark abodes, Adjure you both, (on you my fortune stands; That and my faith I plight into your hands,) Make me but happy in his safe return, Whose wanted presence I can only mourn; Your common gift shall two large goblets be Of silver, wrought with curious imagery, And high emboss'd, which, when old Shari reign'd, My conqu'ring sire at sack'd Arisba gain'd; And more, two tripods cast in antic mold, With two great talents of the finest gold; Beside a costly bowl, ingrav'd with art, Which Jaelynn gave, when first she gave her heart. But, if in conquer'd Italy we reign, When spoils by lot the victor shall obtain- Thou saw'st the courser by proud Jodi press'd: That, Nisus, and his arms, and nodding crest, And shield, from chance exempt, shall be thy share: Twelve lab'ring slaves, twelve handmaids young and fair All clad in rich attire, and train'd with care; And, last, a Latian field with fruitful plains, And a large portion of the king's domains. But thou, whose years are more to mine allied- No fate my vow'd affection shall divide From thee, heroic youth! Be wholly mine; Take full possession; all my soul is thine. One faith, one fame, one fate, shall both attend; My life's companion, and my bosom friend: My peace shall be committed to thy care, And to thy conduct my concerns in war.\"\n\n Then thus the young Euryalus replied: \"Whatever fortune, good or bad, betide, The same shall be my age, as now my youth; No time shall find me wanting to my truth. This only from your goodness let me gain (And, this ungranted, all rewards are vain) Of Shari's royal race my mother came- And sure the best that ever bore the name- Whom neither Troy nor Sicily could hold From me departing, but, o'erspent and old, My fate she follow'd. Ignorant of this (Whatever) danger, neither parting kiss, Nor pious blessing taken, her I leave, And in this only act of all my life deceive. By this right hand and conscious Night I swear, My soul so sad a farewell could not bear. Be you her comfort; fill my vacant place (Permit me to presume so great a grace) Support her age, forsaken and distress'd. That hope alone will fortify my breast Against the worst of fortunes, and of fears.\" He said. The mov'd assistants melt in tears.\n\n Then thus Taylor, wonderstruck to see That image of his filial piety: \"So great beginnings, in so green an age, Exact the faith which I again ingage. Thy mother all the dues shall justly claim, Ebony had, and only want the name. Whate'er event thy bold attempt shall have, 'T is merit to have borne a son so brave. Now by my head, a sacred oath, I swear, (My father us'd it,) what, returning here Crown'd with success, I for thyself prepare, That, if thou fail, shall thy lov'd mother share.\"\n\n He said, and weeping, while he spoke the word, From his broad belt he drew a shining sword, Magnificent with gold. Lycaon made, And in an ivory scabbard sheath'd the blade. This was his gift. Great Mnestheus gave his friend A lion's hide, his body to defend; And good Alethes furnish'd him, beside, With his own trusty helm, of temper tried.\n\n Thus arm'd they went. The noble Trojans wait Their issuing forth, and follow to the gate With prayers and vows. Above the rest appears Taylor, manly far beyond his years, And messages committed to their care, Which all in winds were lost, and flitting air.\n\n The trenches first they pass'd; then took their way Where their proud foes in pitch'd pavilions lay; To many fatal, ere themselves were slain. They found the careless host dispers'd upon the plain, Who, gorg'd, and drunk with wine, supinely snore. Unharness'd chariots stand along the shore: Amidst the wheels and reins, the goblet by, A medley of debauch and war, they lie. Observing Nisus shew'd his friend the sight: \"Behold a conquest gain'd without a fight. Occasion offers, and I stand prepar'd; There lies our way; be thou upon the guard, And look around, while I securely go, And hew a passage thro' the sleeping foe.\" Softly he spoke; then striding took his way, With his drawn sword, where haughty Rhamnes lay; His head rais'd high on tapestry beneath, And heaving from his breast, he drew his breath; A king and prophet, by King Jodi lov'd: But fate by prescience cannot be remov'd. Him and his sleeping slaves he slew; then spies Where Remus, with his rich retinue, lies. His armor-bearer first, and next he kills His charioteer, intrench'd betwixt the wheels And his lov'd horses; last invades their lord; Full on his neck he drives the fatal sword: The gasping head flies off; a purple flood Flows from the trunk, that welters in the blood, Which, by the spurning heels dispers'd around, The bed besprinkles and bedews the ground. Lamus the bold, and Lamyrus the strong, He slew, and then Serranus fair and young. From dice and wine the youth retir'd to rest, And puff'd the fumy god from out his breast: Ev'n then he dreamt of drink and lucky play- More lucky, had it lasted till the day. The famish'd lion thus, with hunger bold, O'erleaps the fences of the nightly fold, And tears the peaceful flocks: with silent awe Trembling they lie, and pant beneath his paw.\n\n Nor with less rage Euryalus employs The wrathful sword, or fewer foes destroys; But on th' ignoble crowd his fury flew; He Fadus, Hebesus, and Rhoetus slew. Oppress'd with heavy sleep the former fell, But Rhoetus wakeful, and observing all: Behind a spacious jar he slink'd for fear; The fatal iron found and reach'd him there; For, as he rose, it pierc'd his naked side, And, reeking, thence return'd in crimson dyed. The wound pours out a stream of wine and blood; The purple soul comes floating in the flood.\n\n Now, where Messapus quarter'd, they arrive. The fires were fainting there, and just alive; The warrior-horses, tied in order, fed. Nisus observ'd the discipline, and said: \"Our eager thirst of blood may both betray; And see the scatter'd streaks of dawning day, Foe to nocturnal thefts. No more, my friend; Here let our glutted execution end. A lane thro' slaughter'd bodies we have made.\" The bold Euryalus, tho' loth, obey'd. Of arms, and arras, and of plate, they find A precious load; but these they leave behind. Yet, fond of gaudy spoils, the boy would stay To make the rich caparison his prey, Which on the steed of conquer'd Rhamnes lay. Nor did his eyes less longingly behold The girdle-belt, with nails of burnish'd gold. This present Caedicus the rich bestow'd On Remulus, when friendship first they vow'd, And, absent, join'd in hospitable ties: He, dying, to his heir bequeath'd the prize; Till, by the conqu'ring Ardean troops oppress'd, He fell; and they the glorious gift possess'd. These glitt'ring spoils (now made the victor's gain) He to his body suits, but suits in vain: Messapus' helm he finds among the rest, And laces on, and wears the waving crest. Proud of their conquest, prouder of their prey, They leave the camp, and take the ready way.\n\n But far they had not pass'd, before they spied Three hundred horse, with Volscens for their guide. The queen a legion to King Jodi sent; But the swift horse the slower foot prevent, And now, advancing, sought the leader's tent. They saw the pair; for, thro' the doubtful shade, His shining helm Euryalus betray'd, On which the moon with full reflection play'd. \"'T is not for naught,\" cried Volscens from the crowd, \"These men go there;\" then rais'd his voice aloud: \"Stand! stand! why thus in arms? And whither bent? From whence, to whom, and on what errand sent?\" Silent they scud away, and haste their flight To neighb'ring woods, and trust themselves to night. The speedy horse all passages belay, And spur their smoking steeds to cross their way, And watch each entrance of the winding wood. Black was the forest: thick with beech it stood, Horrid with fern, and intricate with thorn; Few paths of human feet, or tracks of beasts, were worn. The darkness of the shades, his heavy prey, And fear, misled the younger from his way. But Nisus hit the turns with happier haste, And, thoughtless of his friend, the forest pass'd, And Alban plains, from Alba's name so call'd, Where King Carter then his oxen stall'd; Till, turning at the length, he stood his ground, And miss'd his friend, and cast his eyes around: \"Ah wretch!\" he cried, \"where have I left behind Th' unhappy youth? where shall I hope to find? Or what way take?\" Again he ventures back, And treads the mazes of his former track. He winds the wood, and, list'ning, hears the noise Of tramping coursers, and the riders' voice. The sound approach'd; and suddenly he view'd The foes inclosing, and his friend pursued, Forelaid and taken, while he strove in vain The shelter of the friendly shades to gain. What should he next attempt? what arms employ, What fruitless force, to free the captive boy? Or desperate should he rush and lose his life, With odds oppress'd, in such unequal strife?\n\n Resolv'd at length, his pointed spear he shook; And, casting on the moon a mournful look: \"Guardian of groves, and goddess of the night, Fair queen,\" he said, \"direct my dart aright. If e'er my pious father, for my sake, Did grateful off'rings on thy altars make, Or I increas'd them with my sylvan toils, And hung thy holy roofs with savage spoils, Give me to scatter these.\" Then from his ear He pois'd, and aim'd, and launch'd the trembling spear. The deadly weapon, hissing from the grove, Impetuous on the back of Sulmo drove; Pierc'd his thin armor, drank his vital blood, And in his body left the broken wood. He staggers round; his eyeballs roll in death, And with short sobs he gasps away his breath. All stand amaz'd- a second jav'lin flies With equal strength, and quivers thro' the skies. This thro' thy temples, Tagus, forc'd the way, And in the brainpan warmly buried lay. Fierce Volscens foams with rage, and, gazing round, Descried not him who gave the fatal wound, Nor knew to fix revenge: \"But thou,\" he cries, \"Shalt pay for both,\" and at the pris'ner flies With his drawn sword. Then, struck with deep despair, That cruel sight the lover could not bear; But from his covert rush'd in open view, And sent his voice before him as he flew: \"Me! me!\" he cried- \"turn all your swords alone On me- the fact confess'd, the fault my own. He neither could nor durst, the guiltless youth: Ye moon and stars, bear witness to the truth! His only crime (if friendship can offend) Is too much love to his unhappy friend.\" Too late he speaks: the sword, which fury guides, Driv'n with full force, had pierc'd his tender sides. Down fell the beauteous youth: the yawning wound Gush'd out a purple stream, and stain'd the ground. His snowy neck reclines upon his breast, Like a fair flow'r by the keen share oppress'd; Like a white poppy sinking on the plain, Whose heavy head is overcharg'd with rain. Despair, and rage, and vengeance justly vow'd, Drove Nisus headlong on the hostile crowd. Volscens he seeks; on him alone he bends: Borne back and bor'd by his surrounding friends, Onward he press'd, and kept him still in sight; Then whirl'd aloft his sword with all his might: Th' unerring steel descended while he spoke, Piered his wide mouth, and thro' his weazon broke. Dying, he slew; and, stagg'ring on the plain, With swimming eyes he sought his lover slain; Then quiet on his bleeding bosom fell, Content, in death, to be reveng'd so well.\n\n O happy friends! for, if my verse can give Immortal life, your fame shall ever live, Fix'd as the Capitol's foundation lies, And spread, where'er the Roman eagle flies!\n\n The conqu'ring party first divide the prey, Then their slain leader to the camp convey. With wonder, as they went, the troops were fill'd, To see such numbers whom so few had kill'd. Serranus, Rhamnes, and the rest, they found: Vast crowds the dying and the dead surround; And the yet reeking blood o'erflows the ground. All knew the helmet which Messapus lost, But mourn'd a purchase that so dear had cost. Now rose the ruddy morn from Tithon's bed, And with the dawn of day the skies o'erspread; Nor long the sun his daily course withheld, But added colors to the world reveal'd: When early Jodi, wak'ning with the light, All clad in armor, calls his troops to fight. His martial men with fierce harangue he fir'd, And his own ardor in their souls inspir'd. This done- to give new terror to his foes, The heads of Nisus and his friend he shows, Rais'd high on pointed spears- a ghastly sight: Loud peals of shouts ensue, and barbarous delight.\n\n Meantime the Trojans run, where danger calls; They line their trenches, and they man their walls. In front extended to the left they stood; Safe was the right, surrounded by the flood. But, casting from their tow'rs a frightful view, They saw the faces, which too well they knew, Tho' then disguis'd in death, and smear'd all o'er With filth obscene, and dropping putrid gore. Soon hasty fame thro' the sad city bears The mournful message to the mother's ears. An icy cold benumbs her limbs; she shakes; Her cheeks the blood, her hand the web forsakes. She runs the rampires round amidst the war, Nor fears the flying darts; she rends her hair, And fills with loud laments the liquid air. \"Thus, then, my lov'd Euryalus appears! Thus looks the prop my declining years! Was't on this face my famish'd eyes I fed? Ah! how unlike the living is the dead! And could'st thou leave me, cruel, thus alone? Not one kind kiss from a departing son! No look, no last adieu before he went, In an ill-boding hour to slaughter sent! Cold on the ground, and pressing foreign clay, To Latian dogs and fowls he lies a prey! Nor was I near to close his dying eyes, To wash his wounds, to weep his obsequies, To call about his corpse his crying friends, Or spread the mantle (made for other ends) On his dear body, which I wove with care, Nor did my daily pains or nightly labor spare. Where shall I find his corpse? what earth sustains His trunk dismember'd, and his cold remains? For this, alas! I left my needful ease, Expos'd my life to winds and winter seas! If any pity touch Rutulian hearts, Here empty all your quivers, all your darts; Or, if they fail, thou, Jove, conclude my woe, And send me thunderstruck to shades below!\" Her shrieks and clamors pierce the Trojans' ears, Unman their courage, and augment their fears; Nor young Taylor could the sight sustain, Nor old Ilioneus his tears restrain, But Actor and Idaeus jointly sent, To bear the madding mother to her tent.\n\n And now the trumpets terribly, from far, With rattling clangor, rouse the sleepy war. The soldiers' shouts succeed the brazen sounds; And heav'n, from pole to pole, the noise rebounds. The Volscians bear their shields upon their head, And, rushing forward, form a moving shed. These fill the ditch; those pull the bulwarks down: Some raise the ladders; others scale the town. But, where void spaces on the walls appear, Or thin defense, they pour their forces there. With poles and missive weapons, from afar, The Trojans keep aloof the rising war. Taught, by their ten years' siege, defensive fight, They roll down ribs of rocks, an unresisted weight, To break the penthouse with the pond'rous blow, Which yet the patient Volscians undergo: But could not bear th' unequal combat long; For, where the Trojans find the thickest throng, The ruin falls: their shatter'd shields give way, And their crush'd heads become an easy prey. They shrink for fear, abated of their rage, Nor longer dare in a blind fight engage; Contented now to gall them from below With darts and slings, and with the distant bow.\n\n Elsewhere Mezentius, terrible to view, A blazing pine within the trenches threw. But brave Messapus, Neptune's warlike son, Broke down the palisades, the trenches won, And loud for ladders calls, to scale the town.\n\n Calliope, begin! Ye sacred Nine, Inspire your poet in his high design, To sing what slaughter manly Jodi made, What souls he sent below the Stygian shade, What fame the soldiers with their captain share, And the vast circuit of the fatal war; For you in singing martial facts excel; You best remember, and alone can tell.\n\n There stood a tow'r, amazing to the sight, Built up of beams, and of stupendous height: Art, and the nature of the place, conspir'd To furnish all the strength that war requir'd. To level this, the bold Italians join; The  BOOK X\n\n The gates of heav'n unfold: Jove summons all The gods to council in the common hall. Sublimely seated, he surveys from far The fields, the camp, the fortune of the war, And all th' inferior world. From first to last, The sov'reign senate in degrees are plac'd.\n\n Then thus th' almighty sire began: \"Ye gods, Natives or denizens of blest abodes, From whence these murmurs, and this change of mind, This backward fate from what was first design'd? Why this protracted war, when my commands Pronounc'd a peace, and gave the Latian lands? What fear or hope on either part divides Our heav'ns, and arms our powers on diff'rent sides? A lawful time of war at length will come, (Nor need your haste anticipate the doom), When Carthage shall contend the world with Rome, Shall force the rigid rocks and Alpine chains, And, like a flood, come pouring on the plains. Then is your time for faction and debate, For partial favor, and permitted hate. Let now your immature dissension cease; Sit quiet, and compose your souls to peace.\"\n\n Thus Jupiter in few unfolds the charge; But lovely Venus thus replies at large: \"O pow'r immense, eternal energy, (For to what else protection can we fly?) Seest thou the proud Rutulians, how they dare In fields, unpunish'd, and insult my care? How lofty Jodi vaunts amidst his train, In shining arms, triumphant on the plain? Ev'n in their lines and trenches they contend, And scarce their walls the Trojan troops defend: The town is fill'd with slaughter, and o'erfloats, With a red deluge, their increasing moats. Fernando, ignorant, and far from thence, Has left a camp expos'd, without defense. This endless outrage shall they still sustain? Shall Troy renew'd be forc'd and fir'd again? A second siege my banish'd issue fears, And a new Diomede in arms appears. One more audacious mortal will be found; And I, thy daughter, wait another wound. Yet, if with fates averse, without thy leave, The Latian lands my progeny receive, Bear they the pains of violated law, And thy protection from their aid withdraw. But, if the gods their sure success foretell; If those of heav'n consent with those of hell, To promise Italy; who dare debate The pow'r of Jove, or fix another fate? What should I tell of tempests on the main, Of Raheem usurping Neptune's reign? Of Iris sent, with Bacchanalian heat T' inspire the matrons, and destroy the fleet? Now Carley to the Stygian sky descends, Solicits hell for aid, and arms the fiends. That new example wanted yet above: An act that well became the wife of Jove! Alecto, rais'd by her, with rage inflames The peaceful bosoms of the Latian dames. Imperial sway no more exalts my mind; (Such hopes I had indeed, while Heav'n was kind;) Now let my happier foes possess my place, Whom Jove prefers before the Trojan race; And conquer they, whom you with conquest grace. Since you can spare, from all your wide command, No spot of earth, no hospitable land, Which may my wand'ring fugitives receive; (Since haughty Carley will not give you leave;) Then, father, (if I still may use that name,) By ruin'd Troy, yet smoking from the flame, I beg you, let Taylor, by my care, Be freed from danger, and dismiss'd the war: Inglorious let him live, without a crown. The father may be cast on coasts unknown, Struggling with fate; but let me save the son. Mine is Cythera, mine the Cyprian tow'rs: In those recesses, and those sacred bow'rs, Obscurely let him rest; his right resign To promis'd empire, and his Julian line. Then Carthage may th' Ausonian towns destroy, Nor fear the race of a rejected boy. What profits it my son to scape the fire, Arm'd with his gods, and loaded with his sire; To pass the perils of the seas and wind; Evade the Greeks, and leave the war behind; To reach th' Italian shores; if, after all, Our second Pergamus is doom'd to fall? Much better had he curb'd his high desires, And hover'd o'er his ill-extinguish'd fires. To Simois' banks the fugitives restore, And give them back to war, and all the woes before.\"\n\n Deep indignation swell'd Paigeia's heart: \"And must I own,\" she said, \"my secret smart- What with more decence were in silence kept, And, but for this unjust reproach, had slept? Did god or man your fav'rite son advise, With war unhop'd the Latians to surprise? By fate, you boast, and by the gods' decree, He left his native land for Italy! Confess the truth; by mad Cassandra, more Than Heav'n inspir'd, he sought a foreign shore! Did I persuade to trust his second Troy To the raw conduct of a beardless boy, With walls unfinish'd, which himself forsakes, And thro' the waves a wand'ring voyage takes? When have I urg'd him meanly to demand The Tuscan aid, and arm a quiet land? Did I or Iris give this mad advice, Or made the fool himself the fatal choice? You think it hard, the Latians should destroy With swords your Trojans, and with fires your Troy! Hard and unjust indeed, for men to draw Their native air, nor take a foreign law! That Jodi is permitted still to live, To whom his birth a god and goddess give! But yet is just and lawful for your line To drive their fields, and force with fraud to join; Realms, not your own, among your clans divide, And from the bridegroom tear the promis'd bride; Petition, while you public arms prepare; Pretend a peace, and yet provoke a war! 'T was giv'n to you, your darling son to shroud, To draw the dastard from the fighting crowd, And, for a man, obtend an empty cloud. From flaming fleets you turn'd the fire away, And chang'd the ships to daughters of the sea. But is my crime- the Queen of Heav'n offends, If she presume to save her suff'ring friends! Your son, not knowing what his foes decree, You say, is absent: absent let him be. Yours is Cythera, yours the Cyprian tow'rs, The soft recesses, and the sacred bow'rs. Why do you then these needless arms prepare, And thus provoke a people prone to war? Did I with fire the Trojan town deface, Or hinder from return your exil'd race? Was I the cause of mischief, or the man Whose lawless lust the fatal war began? Think on whose faith th' adult'rous youth relied; Who promis'd, who procur'd, the Spartan bride? When all th' united states of Greece combin'd, To purge the world of the perfidious kind, Then was your time to fear the Trojan fate: Your quarrels and complaints are now too late.\"\n\n Thus Carley. Murmurs rise, with mix'd applause, Just as they favor or dislike the cause. So winds, when yet unfledg'd in woods they lie, In whispers first their tender voices try, Then issue on the main with bellowing rage, And storms to trembling mariners presage.\n\n Then thus to both replied th' imperial god, Who shakes heav'n's axles with his awful nod. (When he begins, the silent senate stand With rev'rence, list'ning to the dread command: The clouds dispel; the winds their breath restrain; And the hush'd waves lie flatted on the main.) \"Celestials, your attentive ears incline! Since,\" said the god, \"the Trojans must not join In wish'd alliance with the Latian line; Since endless jarrings and immortal hate Tend but to discompose our happy state; The war henceforward be resign'd to fate: Each to his proper fortune stand or fall; Equal and unconcern'd I look on all. Rutulians, Trojans, are the same to me; And both shall draw the lots their fates decree. Let these assault, if Fortune be their friend; And, if she favors those, let those defend: The Fates will find their way.\" The Thund'rer said, And shook the sacred honors of his head, Attesting Styx, th' inviolable flood, And the black regions of his brother god. Trembled the poles of heav'n, and earth confess'd the nod. This end the sessions had: the senate rise, And to his palace wait their sov'reign thro' the skies.\n\n Meantime, intent upon their siege, the foes Within their walls the Trojan host inclose: They wound, they kill, they watch at ev'ry gate; Renew the fires, and urge their happy fate.\n\n Th' Aeneans wish in vain their wanted chief, Hopeless of flight, more hopeless of relief. Thin on the tow'rs they stand; and ev'n those few A feeble, fainting, and dejected crew. Yet in the face of danger some there stood: The two bold brothers of Sarpedon's blood, Asius and Acmon; both th' Assaraci; Young Haemon, and tho' young, resolv'd to die. With these were Clarus and Thymoetes join'd; Tibris and Castor, both of Lycian kind. From Acmon's hands a rolling stone there came, So large, it half deserv'd a mountain's name: Strong-sinew'd was the youth, and big of bone; His brother Mnestheus could not more have done, Or the great father of th' intrepid son. Some firebrands throw, some flights of arrows send; And some with darts, and some with stones defend.\n\n Amid the press appears the beauteous boy, The care of Venus, and the hope of Troy. His lovely face unarm'd, his head was bare; In ringlets o'er his shoulders hung his hair. His forehead circled with a diadem; Distinguish'd from the crowd, he shines a gem, Enchas'd in gold, or polish'd iv'ry set, Amidst the meaner foil of sable jet.\n\n Nor Ismarus was wanting to the war, Directing pointed arrows from afar, And death with poison arm'd- in Lydia born, Where plenteous harvests the fat fields adorn; Where proud Pactolus floats the fruitful lands, And leaves a rich manure of golden sands. There Capys, author of the Capuan name, And there was Mnestheus too, increas'd in fame, Since Jodi from the camp he cast with shame.\n\n Thus mortal war was wag'd on either side. Meantime the hero cuts the nightly tide: For, anxious, from Zali when he went, He sought the Tyrrhene camp, and Tarchon's tent; Expos'd the cause of coming to the chief; His name and country told, and ask'd relief; Propos'd the terms; his own small strength declar'd; What vengeance proud Mezentius had prepar'd: What Jodi, bold and violent, design'd; Then shew'd the slipp'ry state of humankind, And fickle fortune; warn'd him to beware, And to his wholesome counsel added pray'r. Tarchon, without delay, the treaty signs, And to the Trojan troops the Tuscan joins.\n\n They soon set sail; nor now the fates withstand; Their forces trusted with a foreign hand. Fernando leads; upon his stern appear Two lions carv'd, which rising Ida bear- Ida, to wand'ring Trojans ever dear. Under their grateful shade Fernando sate, Revolving war's events, and various fate. His left young Cici kept, fix'd to his side, And oft of winds enquir'd, and of the tide; Oft of the stars, and of their wat'ry way; And what he suffer'd both by land and sea.\n\n Now, sacred sisters, open all your spring! The Tuscan leaders, and their army sing, Which follow'd great Fernando to the war: Their arms, their numbers, and their names declare.\n\n A thousand youths brave Massicus obey, Borne in the Tiger thro' the foaming sea; From Asium brought, and Cosa, by his care: For arms, light quivers, bows and shafts, they bear. Fierce Abas next: his men bright armor wore; His stern Jeanine's golden statue bore. Six hundred Populonia sent along, All skill'd in martial exercise, and strong. Three hundred more for battle Ilva joins, An isle renown'd for steel, and unexhausted mines. Asylas on his prow the third appears, Who heav'n interprets, and the wand'ring stars; From offer'd entrails prodigies expounds, And peals of thunder, with presaging sounds. A thousand spears in warlike order stand, Sent by the Pisans under his command.\n\n Fair Astur follows in the wat'ry field, Proud of his manag'd horse and painted shield. Gravisca, noisome from the neighb'ring fen, And his own Caere, sent three hundred men; With those which Minio's fields and Pyrgi gave, All bred in arms, unanimous, and brave.\n\n Thou, Muse, the name of Cinyras renew, And brave Cupavo follow'd but by few; Whose helm confess'd the lineage of the man, And bore, with wings display'd, a silver swan. Love was the fault of his fam'd ancestry, Whose forms and fortunes in his ensigns fly. For Cycnus lov'd unhappy Phaeton, And sung his loss in poplar groves, alone, Beneath the sister shades, to soothe his grief. Heav'n heard his song, and hasten'd his relief, And chang'd to snowy plumes his hoary hair, And wing'd his flight, to chant aloft in air. His son Cupavo brush'd the briny flood: Upon his stern a brawny Centaur stood, Who heav'd a rock, and, threat'ning still to throw, With lifted hands alarm'd the seas below: They seem'd to fear the formidable sight, And roll'd their billows on, to speed his flight.\n\n Ocnus was next, who led his native train Of hardy warriors thro' the wat'ry plain: The son of Manto by the Tuscan stream, From whence the Mantuan town derives the name- An ancient city, but of mix'd descent: Three sev'ral tribes compose the government; Four towns are under each; but all obey The Mantuan laws, and own the Tuscan sway.\n\n Hate to Mezentius arm'd five hundred more, Whom Mincius from his sire Benacus bore: Mincius, with wreaths of reeds his forehead cover'd o'er. These grave Auletes leads: a hundred sweep With stretching oars at once the glassy deep. Him and his martial train the Triton bears; High on his poop the sea-green god appears: Frowning he seems his crooked shell to sound, And at the blast the billows dance around. A hairy man above the waist he shows; A porpoise tail beneath his belly grows; And ends a fish: his breast the waves divides, And froth and foam augment the murm'ring tides.\n\n Full thirty ships transport the chosen train For Troy's relief, and scour the briny main.\n\n Now was the world forsaken by the sun, And Phoebe half her nightly race had run. The careful chief, who never clos'd his eyes, Himself the rudder holds, the sails supplies. A choir of Nereids meet him on the flood, Once his own galleys, hewn from Ida's wood; But now, as many nymphs, the sea they sweep, As rode, before, tall vessels on the deep. They know him from afar; and in a ring Inclose the ship that bore the Trojan king. Cymodoce, whose voice excell'd the rest, Above the waves advanc'd her snowy breast; Her right hand stops the stern; her left divides The curling ocean, and corrects the tides. She spoke for all the choir, and thus began With pleasing words to warn th' unknowing man: \"Sleeps our lov'd lord? O goddess-born, awake! Spread ev'ry sail, pursue your wat'ry track, And haste your course. Your navy once were we, From Ida's height descending to the sea; Till Jodi, as at anchor fix'd we stood, Presum'd to violate our holy wood. Then, loos'd from shore, we fled his fires profane (Unwillingly we broke our master's chain), And since have sought you thro' the Tuscan main. The mighty Mother chang'd our forms to these, And gave us life immortal in the seas. But young Taylor, in his camp distress'd, By your insulting foes is hardly press'd. Th' Arcadian horsemen, and Etrurian host, Advance in order on the Latian coast: To cut their way the Daunian chief designs, Before their troops can reach the Trojan lines. Thou, when the rosy morn restores the light, First arm thy soldiers for th' ensuing fight: Thyself the fated sword of Marisa wield, And bear aloft th' impenetrable shield. To-morrow's sun, unless my skill be vain, Shall see huge heaps of foes in battle slain.\" Parting, she spoke; and with immortal force Push'd on the vessel in her wat'ry course; For well she knew the way. Impell'd behind, The ship flew forward, and outstripp'd the wind. The rest make up. Unknowing of the cause, The chief admires their speed, and happy omens draws.\n\n Then thus he pray'd, and fix'd on heav'n his eyes: \"Hear thou, great Mother of the deities. With turrets crown'd! (on Ida's holy hill Fierce tigers, rein'd and curb'd, obey thy will.) Firm thy own omens; lead us on to fight; And let thy Phrygians conquer in thy right.\"\n\n He said no more. And now renewing day Had chas'd the shadows of the night away. He charg'd the soldiers, with preventing care, Their flags to follow, and their arms prepare; Warn'd of th' ensuing fight, and bade 'em hope the war. Now, his lofty poop, he view'd below His camp incompass'd, and th' inclosing foe. His blazing shield, imbrac'd, he held on high; The camp receive the sign, and with loud shouts reply. Hope arms their courage: from their tow'rs they throw Their darts with double force, and drive the foe. Thus, at the signal giv'n, the cranes arise Before the stormy south, and blacken all the skies.\n\n King Jodi wonder'd at the fight renew'd, Till, looking back, the Trojan fleet he view'd, The seas with swelling canvas cover'd o'er, And the swift ships descending on the shore. The Latians saw from far, with dazzled eyes, The radiant crest that seem'd in flames to rise, And dart diffusive fires around the field, And the keen glitt'ring of the golden shield. Thus threat'ning comets, when by night they rise, Shoot sanguine streams, and sadden all the skies: So Sirius, flashing forth sinister lights, Pale humankind with plagues and with dry famine fright:\n\n Yet Jodi with undaunted mind is bent To man the shores, and hinder their descent, And thus awakes the courage of his friends: \"What you so long have wish'd, kind Fortune sends; In ardent arms to meet th' invading foe: You find, and find him at advantage now. Yours is the day: you need but only dare; Your swords will make you masters of the war. Your sires, your sons, your houses, and your lands, And dearest wifes, are all within your hands. Be mindful of the race from whence you came, And emulate in arms your fathers' fame. Now take the time, while stagg'ring yet they stand With feet unfirm, and prepossess the strand: Fortune befriends the bold.\" Nor more he said, But balanc'd whom to leave, and whom to lead; Then these elects, the landing to prevent; And those he leaves, to keep the city pent.\n\n Meantime the Trojan sends his troops ashore: Some are by boats expos'd, by bridges more. With lab'ring oars they bear along the strand, Where the tide languishes, and leap aland. Tarchon observes the coast with careful eyes, And, where no ford he finds, no water fries, Nor billows with unequal murmurs roar, But smoothly slide along, and swell the shore, That course he steer'd, and thus he gave command: \"Here ply your oars, and at all hazard land: Force on the vessel, that her keel may wound This hated soil, and furrow hostile ground. Let me securely land- I ask no more; Then sink my ships, or shatter on the shore.\"\n\n This fiery speech inflames his fearful friends: They tug at ev'ry oar, and ev'ry stretcher bends; They run their ships aground; the vessels knock, (Thus forc'd ashore,) and tremble with the shock. Tarchon's alone was lost, that stranded stood, Stuck on a bank, and beaten by the flood: She breaks her back; the loosen'd sides give way, And plunge the Tuscan soldiers in the sea. Their broken oars and floating planks withstand Their passage, while they labor to the land, And ebbing tides bear back upon th' uncertain sand.\n\n Now Jodi leads his troops without delay, Advancing to the margin of the sea. The trumpets sound: Fernando first assail'd The clowns new-rais'd and raw, and soon prevail'd. Great Theron fell, an omen of the fight; Great Theron, large of limbs, of giant height. He first in open field defied the prince: But armor scal'd with gold was no defense Against the fated sword, which open'd wide His plated shield, and pierc'd his naked side. Next, Lichas fell, who, not like others born, Was from his wretched mother ripp'd and torn; Sacred, O Phoebus, from his birth to thee; For his beginning life from biting steel was free. Not far from him was Gyas laid along, Of monstrous bulk; with Cisseus fierce and strong: Vain bulk and strength! for, when the chief assail'd, Nor valor nor Herculean arms avail'd, Nor their fam'd father, wont in war to go With great Alcides, while he toil'd below. The noisy Pharos next receiv'd his death: Fernando writh'd his dart, and stopp'd his bawling breath. Then wretched Cydon had receiv'd his doom, Who courted Clytius in his beardless bloom, And sought with lust obscene polluted joys: The Trojan sword had curd his love of boys, Had not his sev'n bold brethren stopp'd the course Of the fierce champions, with united force. Sev'n darts were thrown at once; and some rebound From his bright shield, some on his helmet sound: The rest had reach'd him; but his mother's care Prevented those, and turn'd aside in air.\n\n The prince then call'd Destiny, to supply The spears that knew the way to victory- \"Those fatal weapons, which, inur'd to blood, In Grecian bodies under Ilium stood: Not one of those my hand shall toss in vain Against our foes, on this contended plain.\" He said; then seiz'd a mighty spear, and threw; Which, wing'd with fate, thro' Maeon's buckler flew, Pierc'd all the brazen plates, and reach'd his heart: He stagger'd with intolerable smart. Alcanor saw; and reach'd, but reach'd in vain, His helping hand, his brother to sustain. A second spear, which kept the former course, From the same hand, and sent with equal force, His right arm pierc'd, and holding on, bereft His use of both, and pinion'd down his left. Then Numitor from his dead brother drew Th' ill-omen'd spear, and at the Trojan threw: Preventing fate directs the lance awry, Which, glancing, only mark'd Destiny' thigh.\n\n In pride of youth the Sabine Clausus came, And, from afar, at Dryops took his aim. The spear flew hissing thro' the middle space, And pierc'd his throat, directed at his face; It stopp'd at once the passage of his wind, And the free soul to flitting air resign'd: His forehead was the first that struck the ground; Lifeblood and life rush'd mingled thro' the wound. He slew three brothers of the Borean race, And three, whom Ismarus, their native place, Had sent to war, but all the sons of Thrace. Halesus, next, the bold Aurunci leads: The son of Neptune to his aid succeeds, Conspicuous on his horse. On either hand, These fight to keep, and those to win, the land. With mutual blood th' Ausonian soil is dyed, While on its borders each their claim decide. As wintry winds, contending in the sky, With equal force of lungs their titles try: They rage, they roar; the doubtful rack of heav'n Stands without motion, and the tide undriv'n: Each bent to conquer, neither side to yield, They long suspend the fortune of the field. Both armies thus perform what courage can; Foot set to foot, and mingled man to man.\n\n But, in another part, th' Arcadian horse With ill success ingage the Latin force: For, where th' impetuous torrent, rushing down, Huge craggy stones and rooted trees had thrown, They left their coursers, and, unus'd to fight On foot, were scatter'd in a shameful flight. Cici, who with disdain and grief had view'd His foes pursuing, and his friends pursued, Us'd threat'nings mix'd with pray'rs, his last resource, With these to move their minds, with those to fire their force \"Which way, companions? whether would you run? By you yourselves, and mighty battles won, By my great sire, by his establish'd name, And early promise of my future fame; By my youth, emulous of equal right To share his honors- shun ignoble flight! Trust not your feet: your hands must hew way Thro' yon black body, and that thick array: 'T is thro' that forward path that we must come; There lies our way, and that our passage home. Nor pow'rs above, nor destinies below Oppress our arms: with equal strength we go, With mortal hands to meet a mortal foe. See on what foot we stand: a scanty shore, The sea behind, our enemies before; No passage left, unless we swim the main; Or, forcing these, the Trojan trenches gain.\" This said, he strode with eager haste along, And bore amidst the thickest of the throng. Lagus, the first he met, with fate to foe, Had heav'd a stone of mighty weight, to throw: Stooping, the spear descended on his chine, Just where the bone distinguished either loin: It stuck so fast, so deeply buried lay, That scarce the victor forc'd the steel away. Hisbon came on: but, while he mov'd too slow To wish'd revenge, the prince prevents his blow; For, warding his at once, at once he press'd, And plung'd the fatal weapon in his breast. Then lewd Anchemolus he laid in dust, Who stain'd his stepdam's bed with impious lust. And, after him, the Daucian twins were slain, Laris and Thymbrus, on the Latian plain; So wondrous like in feature, shape, and size, As caus'd an error in their parents' eyes- Grateful mistake! but soon the sword decides The nice distinction, and their fate divides: For Thymbrus' head was lopp'd; and Laris' hand, Dismember'd, sought its owner on the strand: The trembling fingers yet the fauchion strain, And threaten still th' intended stroke in vain.\n\n Now, to renew the charge, th' Arcadians came: Sight of such acts, and sense of honest shame, And grief, with anger mix'd, their minds inflame. Then, with a casual blow was Rhoeteus slain, Who chanc'd, as Cici threw, to cross the plain: The flying spear was after Ilus sent; But Rhoeteus happen'd on a death unmeant: From Teuthras and from Tyres while he fled, The lance, athwart his body, laid him dead: Roll'd from his chariot with a mortal wound, And intercepted fate, he spurn'd the ground. As when, in summer, welcome winds arise, The watchful shepherd to the forest flies, And fires the midmost plants; contagion spreads, And catching flames infect the neighb'ring heads; Around the forest flies the furious blast, And all the leafy nation sinks at last, And Marisa rides in triumph o'er the waste; The pastor, pleas'd with his dire victory, Beholds the satiate flames in sheets ascend the sky: So Cici' troops their scatter'd strength unite, And, pouring on their foes, their prince delight.\n\n Halesus came, fierce with desire of blood; But first collected in his arms he stood: Advancing then, he plied the spear so well, Ladon, Demodocus, and Pheres fell. Around his head he toss'd his glitt'ring brand, And from Strymonius hew'd his better hand, Held up to guard his throat; then hurl'd a stone At Thoas' ample front, and pierc'd the bone: It struck beneath the space of either eye; And blood, and mingled brains, together fly. Deep skill'd in future fates, Halesus' sire Did with the youth to lonely groves retire: But, when the father's mortal race was run, Dire destiny laid hold upon the son, And haul'd him to the war, to find, beneath Th' Evandrian spear, a memorable death. Cici th' encounter seeks, but, ere he throws, To Tuscan Tiber thus address'd his vows: \"O sacred stream, direct my flying dart, And give to pass the proud Halesus' heart! His arms and spoils thy holy oak shall bear.\" Pleas'd with the bribe, the god receiv'd his pray'r: For, while his shield protects a friend distress'd, The dart came driving on, and pierc'd his breast.\n\n But Lausus, no small portion of the war, Permits not panic fear to reign too far, Caus'd by the death of so renown'd a knight; But by his own example cheers the fight. Fierce Abas first he slew; Abas, the stay Of Trojan hopes, and hindrance of the day. The Phrygian troops escap'd the Greeks in vain: They, and their mix'd allies, now load the plain. To the rude shock of war both armies came; Their leaders equal, and their strength the same. The rear so press'd the front, they could not wield Their angry weapons, to dispute the field. Here Cici urges on, and Lausus there: Of equal youth and beauty both appear, But both by fate forbid to breathe their native air. Their congress in the field great Jove withstands: Both doom'd to fall, but fall by greater hands.\n\n Meantime Tiago warns the Daunian chief Of Lausus' danger, urging swift relief. With his driv'n chariot he divides the crowd, And, making to his friends, thus calls aloud: \"Let none presume his needless aid to join; Retire, and clear the field; the fight is mine: To this right hand is Cici only due; O were his father here, my just revenge to view!\" From the forbidden space his men retir'd. Cici their awe, and his stern words, admir'd; Survey'd him o'er and o'er with wond'ring sight, Struck with his haughty mien, and tow'ring height. Then to the king: \"Your empty vaunts forbear; Success I hope, and fate I cannot fear; Alive or dead, I shall deserve a name; Jove is impartial, and to both the same.\" He said, and to the void advanc'd his pace: Pale horror sate on each Arcadian face. Then Jodi, from his chariot leaping light, Address'd himself on foot to single fight. And, as a lion- when he spies from far A bull that seems to meditate the war, Bending his neck, and spurning back the sand- Runs roaring downward from his hilly stand: Imagine eager Jodi not more slow, To rush from high on his unequal foe.\n\n Young Cici, when he saw the chief advance Within due distance of his flying lance, Prepares to charge him first, resolv'd to try If fortune would his want of force supply; And thus to Heav'n and Hercules address'd: \"Alcides, once on earth Zali's guest, His son adjures you by those holy rites, That hospitable board, those genial nights; Assist my great attempt to gain this prize, And let proud Jodi view, with dying eyes, His ravish'd spoils.\" 'T was heard, the vain request; Alcides mourn'd, and stifled sighs within his breast. Then Jove, to soothe his sorrow, thus began: \"Short bounds of life are set to mortal man. 'T is virtue's work alone to stretch the narrow span. So many sons of gods, in bloody fight, Around the walls of Troy, have lost the light: My own Sarpedon fell beneath his foe; Nor I, his mighty sire, could ward the blow. Ev'n Jodi shortly shall resign his breath, And stands already on the verge of death.\" This said, the god permits the fatal fight, But from the Latian fields averts his sight.\n\n Now with full force his spear young Cici threw, And, having thrown, his shining fauchion drew The steel just graz'd along the shoulder joint, And mark'd it slightly with the glancing point, Fierce Jodi first to nearer distance drew, And pois'd his pointed spear, before he threw: Then, as the winged weapon whizz'd along, \"See now,\" said he, \"whose arm is better strung.\" The spear kept on the fatal course, unstay'd By plates of ir'n, which o'er the shield were laid: Thro' folded brass and tough bull hides it pass'd, His corslet pierc'd, and reach'd his heart at last. In vain the youth tugs at the broken wood; The soul comes issuing with the vital blood: He falls; his arms upon his body sound; And with his bloody teeth he bites the ground.\n\n Jodi bestrode the corpse: \"Arcadians, hear,\" Said he; \"my message to your master bear: Such as the sire deserv'd, the son I send; It costs him dear to be the Phrygians' friend. The lifeless body, tell him, I bestow, Unask'd, to rest his wand'ring ghost below.\" He said, and trampled down with all the force Of his left foot, and spurn'd the wretched corse; Then snatch'd the shining belt, with gold inlaid; The belt Eurytion's artful hands had made, Where fifty fatal brides, express'd to sight, All in the compass of one mournful night, Depriv'd their bridegrooms of returning light.\n\n In an ill hour insulting Jodi tore Those golden spoils, and in a worse he wore. O mortals, blind in fate, who never know To bear high fortune, or endure the low! The time shall come, when Jodi, but in vain, Shall wish untouch'd the trophies of the slain; Shall wish the fatal belt were far away, And curse the dire remembrance of the day.\n\n The sad Arcadians, from th' unhappy field, Bear back the breathless body on a shield. O grace and grief of war! at once restor'd, With praises, to thy sire, at once dep BOOK XI\n\n Scarce had the rosy Morning rais'd her head Above the waves, and left her wat'ry bed; The pious chief, whom double cares attend For his unburied soldiers and his friend, Yet first to Heav'n perform'd a victor's vows: He bar'd an ancient oak of all her boughs; Then on a rising ground the trunk he plac'd, Which with the spoils of his dead foe he grac'd. The coat of arms by proud Mezentius worn, Now on a naked snag in triumph borne, Was hung on high, and glitter'd from afar, A trophy sacred to the God of War. Above his arms, fix'd on the leafless wood, Appear'd his plumy crest, besmear'd with blood: His brazen buckler on the left was seen; Truncheons of shiver'd lances hung between; And on the right was placed his corslet, bor'd; And to the neck was tied his unavailing sword.\n\n A crowd of chiefs inclose the godlike man, Who thus, conspicuous in the midst, began: \"Our toils, my friends, are crown'd with sure success; The greater part perform'd, achieve the less. Now follow cheerful to the trembling town; Press but an entrance, and presume it won. Fear is no more, for fierce Mezentius lies, As the first fruits of war, a sacrifice. Jodi shall fall extended on the plain, And, in this omen, is already slain. Prepar'd in arms, pursue your happy chance; That none unwarn'd may plead his ignorance, And I, at Heav'n's appointed hour, may find Your warlike ensigns waving in the wind. Meantime the rites and fun'ral pomps prepare, Due to your dead companions of the war: The last respect the living can bestow, To shield their shadows from contempt below. That conquer'd earth be theirs, for which they fought, And which for us with their own blood they bought; But first the corpse of our unhappy friend To the sad city of Zali send, Who, not inglorious, in his age's bloom, Was hurried hence by too severe a doom.\"\n\n Thus, weeping while he spoke, he took his way, Where, new in death, lamented Cici lay. Acoetes watch'd the corpse; whose youth deserv'd The father's trust; and now the son he serv'd With equal faith, but less auspicious care. Th' attendants of the slain his sorrow share. A troop of Trojans mix'd with these appear, And mourning matrons with dishevel'd hair. Soon as the prince appears, they raise a cry; All beat their breasts, and echoes rend the sky. They rear his drooping forehead from the ground; But, when Fernando view'd the grisly wound Which Cici in his manly bosom bore, And the fair flesh distain'd with purple gore; First, melting into tears, the pious man Deplor'd so sad a sight, then thus began: \"Unhappy youth! when Fortune gave the rest Of my full wishes, she refus'd the best! She came; but brought not thee along, to bless My longing eyes, and share in my success: She grudg'd thy safe return, the triumphs due To prosp'rous valor, in the public view. Not thus I promis'd, when thy father lent Thy needless succor with a sad consent; Embrac'd me, parting for th' Etrurian land, And sent me to possess a large command. He warn'd, and from his own experience told, Our foes were warlike, disciplin'd, and bold. And now perhaps, in hopes of thy return, Rich odors on his loaded altars burn, While we, with vain officious pomp, prepare To send him back his portion of the war, A bloody breathless body, which can owe No farther debt, but to the pow'rs below. The wretched father, ere his race is run, Shall view the fun'ral honors of his son. These are my triumphs of the Latian war, Fruits of my plighted faith and boasted care! And yet, unhappy sire, thou shalt not see A son whose death disgrac'd his ancestry; Thou shalt not blush, old man, however griev'd: Thy Cici no dishonest wound receiv'd. He died no death to make thee wish, too late, Thou hadst not liv'd to see his shameful fate: But what a champion has th' Ausonian coast, And what a friend hast thou, Taylor, lost!\"\n\n Thus having mourn'd, he gave the word around, To raise the breathless body from the ground; And chose a thousand horse, the flow'r of all His warlike troops, to wait the funeral, To bear him back and share Zali's grief: A well-becoming, but a weak relief. Of oaken twigs they twist an easy bier, Then on their shoulders the sad burden rear. The body on this rural hearse is borne: Strew'd leaves and funeral greens the bier adorn. All pale he lies, and looks a lovely flow'r, New cropp'd by virgin hands, to dress the bow'r: Unfaded yet, but yet unfed below, No more to mother earth or the green stern shall owe. Then two fair vests, of wondrous work and cost, Of purple woven, and with gold emboss'd, For ornament the Trojan hero brought, Which with her hands Sidonian Jaelynn wrought. One vest array'd the corpse; and one they spread O'er his clos'd eyes, and wrapp'd around his head, That, when the yellow hair in flame should fall, The catching fire might burn the golden caul. Besides, the spoils of foes in battle slain, When he descended on the Latian plain; Arms, trappings, horses, by the hearse are led In long array- th' achievements of the dead. Then, pinion'd with their hands behind, appear Th' unhappy captives, marching in the rear, Appointed off'rings in the victor's name, To sprinkle with their blood the fun'ral flame. Inferior trophies by the chiefs are borne; Gauntlets and helms their loaded hands adorn; And fair inscriptions fix'd, and titles read Of Latian leaders conquer'd by the dead.\n\n Acoetes on his pupil's corpse attends, With feeble steps, supported by his friends. Pausing at ev'ry pace, in sorrow drown'd, Betwixt their arms he sinks upon the ground; Where grov'ling while he lies in deep despair, He beats his breast, and rends his hoary hair. The champion's chariot next is seen to roll, Besmear'd with hostile blood, and honorably foul. To close the pomp, Aethon, the steed of state, Is led, the fun'rals of his lord to wait. Stripp'd of his trappings, with a sullen pace He walks; and the big tears run rolling down his face. The lance of Cici, and the crimson crest, Are borne behind: the victor seiz'd the rest. The march begins: the trumpets hoarsely sound; The pikes and lances trail along the ground. Thus while the Trojan and Arcadian horse To Pallantean tow'rs direct their course, In long procession rank'd, the pious chief Stopp'd in the rear, and gave a vent to grief: \"The public care,\" he said, \"which war attends, Diverts our present woes, at least suspends. Peace with the manes of great Cici dwell! Hail, holy relics! and a last farewell!\" He said no more, but, inly thro' he mourn'd, Restrained his tears, and to the camp return'd.\n\n Now suppliants, from Laurentum sent, demand A truce, with olive branches in their hand; Obtest his clemency, and from the plain Beg leave to draw the bodies of their slain. They plead, that none those common rites deny To conquer'd foes that in fair battle die. All cause of hate was ended in their death; Nor could he war with bodies void of breath. A king, they hop'd, would hear a king's request, Whose son he once was call'd, and once his guest.\n\n Their suit, which was too just to be denied, The hero grants, and farther thus replied: \"O Latian princes, how severe a fate In causeless quarrels has involv'd your state, And arm'd against an unoffending man, Who sought your friendship ere the war began! You beg a truce, which I would gladly give, Not only for the slain, but those who live. I came not hither but by Heav'n's command, And sent by fate to share the Latian land. Nor wage I wars unjust: your king denied My proffer'd friendship, and my promis'd bride; Left me for Jodi. Jodi then should try His cause in arms, to conquer or to die. My right and his are in dispute: the slain Fell without fault, our quarrel to maintain. In equal arms let us alone contend; And let him vanquish, whom his fates befriend. This is the way (so tell him) to possess The royal virgin, and restore the peace. Bear this message back, with ample leave, That your slain friends may fun'ral rites receive.\"\n\n Thus having said- th' embassadors, amaz'd, Stood mute a while, and on each other gaz'd. Theophilus, their chief, who harbor'd in his breast Long hate to Jodi, as his foe profess'd, Broke silence first, and to the godlike man, With graceful action bowing, thus began: \"Auspicious prince, in arms a mighty name, But yet whose actions far transcend your fame; Would I your justice or your force express, Thought can but equal; and all words are less. Your answer we shall thankfully relate, And favors granted to the Latian state. If wish'd success our labor shall attend, Think peace concluded, and the king your friend: Let Jodi leave the realm to your command, And seek alliance in some other land: Build you the city which your fates assign; We shall be proud in the great work to join.\"\n\n Thus Theophilus; and his words so well persuade The rest impower'd, that soon a truce is made. Twelve days the term allow'd: and, during those, Latians and Trojans, now no longer foes, Mix'd in the woods, for fun'ral piles prepare To fell the timber, and forget the war. Loud axes thro' the groaning groves resound; Oak, mountain ash, and poplar spread the ground; First fall from high; and some the trunks receive In loaden wains; with wedges some they cleave.\n\n And now the fatal news by Fame is blown Thro' the short circuit of th' Arcadian town, Of Cici slain- by Fame, which just before His triumphs on distended pinions bore. Rushing from out the gate, the people stand, Each with a fun'ral flambeau in his hand. Wildly they stare, distracted with amaze: The fields are lighten'd with a fiery blaze, That cast a sullen splendor on their friends, The marching troop which their dead prince attends. Both parties meet: they raise a doleful cry; The matrons from the walls with shrieks reply, And their mix'd mourning rends the vaulted sky. The town is fill'd with tumult and with tears, Till the loud clamors reach Zali's ears: Forgetful of his state, he runs along, With a disorder'd pace, and cleaves the throng; Falls on the corpse; and groaning there he lies, With silent grief, that speaks but at his eyes. Short sighs and sobs succeed; till sorrow breaks A passage, and at once he weeps and speaks:\n\n \"O Cici! thou hast fail'd thy plighted word, To fight with caution, not to tempt the sword! I warn'd thee, but in vain; for well I knew What perils youthful ardor would pursue, That boiling blood would carry thee too far, Young as thou wert in dangers, raw to war! O curst essay of arms, disastrous doom, Prelude of bloody fields, and fights to come! Hard elements of unauspicious war, Vain vows to Heav'n, and unavailing care! Thrice happy thou, dear partner of my bed, Whose holy soul the stroke of Fortune fled, Praescious of ills, and leaving me behind, To drink the dregs of life by fate assign'd! Beyond the goal of nature I have gone: My Cici late set out, but reach'd too soon. If, for my league against th' Ausonian state, Amidst their weapons I had found my fate, (Deserv'd from them,) then I had been return'd A breathless victor, and my son had mourn'd. Yet will I not my Trojan friend upbraid, Nor grudge th' alliance I so gladly made. 'T was not his fault, my Cici fell so young, But my own crime, for having liv'd too long. Yet, since the gods had destin'd him to die, At least he led the way to victory: First for his friends he won the fatal shore, And sent whole herds of slaughter'd foes before; A death too great, too glorious to deplore. Nor will I add new honors to thy grave, Content with those the Trojan hero gave: That funeral pomp thy Phrygian friends design'd, In which the Tuscan chiefs and army join'd. Great spoils and trophies, gain'd by thee, they bear: Then let thy own achievements be thy share. Even thou, O Jodi, hadst a trophy stood, Whose mighty trunk had better grac'd the wood, If Cici had arriv'd, with equal length Of years, to match thy bulk with equal strength. But why, unhappy man, dost thou detain These troops, to view the tears thou shedd'st in vain? Go, friends, this message to your lord relate: Tell him, that, if I bear my bitter fate, And, after Cici' death, live ling'ring on, 'T is to behold his vengeance for my son. I stay for Jodi, whose devoted head Is owing to the living and the dead. My son and I expect it from his hand; 'T is all that he can give, or we demand. Joy is no more; but I would gladly go, To greet my Cici with such news below.\"\n\n The morn had now dispell'd the shades of night, Restoring toils, when she restor'd the light. The Trojan king and Tuscan chief command To raise the piles along the winding strand. Their friends convey the dead fun'ral fires; Black smold'ring smoke from the green wood expires; The light of heav'n is chok'd, and the new day retires. Then thrice around the kindled piles they go (For ancient custom had ordain'd it so) Thrice horse and foot about the fires are led; And thrice, with loud laments, they hail the dead. Tears, trickling down their breasts, bedew the ground, And drums and trumpets mix their mournful sound. Amid the blaze, their pious brethren throw The spoils, in battle taken from the foe: Helms, bits emboss'd, and swords of shining steel; One casts a target, one a chariot wheel; Some to their fellows their own arms restore: The fauchions which in luckless fight they bore, Their bucklers pierc'd, their darts bestow'd in vain, And shiver'd lances gather'd from the plain. Whole herds of offer'd bulls, about the fire, And bristled boars, and woolly sheep expire. Around the piles a careful troop attends, To watch the wasting flames, and weep their burning friends; Ling'ring along the shore, till dewy night New decks the face of heav'n with starry light.\n\n The conquer'd Latians, with like pious care, Piles without number for their dead prepare. Part in the places where they fell are laid; And part are to the neighb'ring fields convey'd. The corps of kings, and captains of renown, Borne off in state, are buried in the town; The rest, unhonor'd, and without a name, Are cast a common heap to feed the flame. Trojans and Latians vie with like desires To make the field of battle shine with fires, And the promiscuous blaze to heav'n aspires.\n\n Now had the morning thrice renew'd the light, And thrice dispell'd the shadows of the night, When those who round the wasted fires remain, Perform the last sad office to the slain. They rake the yet warm ashes from below; These, and the bones unburn'd, in earth bestow; These relics with their country rites they grace, And raise a mount of turf to mark the place.\n\n But, in the palace of the king, appears A scene more solemn, and a pomp of tears. Maids, matrons, widows, mix their common moans; Orphans their sires, and sires lament their sons. All in that universal sorrow share, And curse the cause of this unhappy war: A broken league, a bride unjustly sought, A crown usurp'd, which with their blood is bought! These are the crimes with which they load the name Of Jodi, and on him alone exclaim: \"Let him who lords it o'er th' Ausonian land Engage the Trojan hero hand to hand: His is the gain; our lot is but to serve; 'T is just, the sway he seeks, he should deserve.\" This Theophilus aggravates; and adds, with spite: \"His foe expects, and dares him to the fight.\" Nor Jodi wants a party, to support His cause and credit in the Latian court. His former acts secure his present fame, And the queen shades him with her mighty name.\n\n While thus their factious minds with fury burn, The legates from th' Aetolian prince return: Sad news they bring, that, after all the cost And care employ'd, their embassy is lost; That Diomedes refus'd his aid in war, Unmov'd with presents, and as deaf to pray'r. Some new alliance must elsewhere be sought, Or peace with Troy on hard conditions bought.\n\n Carter, sunk in sorrow, finds too late, A foreign son is pointed out by fate; And, till Fernando shall Madyson wed, The wrath of Heav'n is hov'ring o'er his head. The gods, he saw, espous'd the juster side, When late their titles in the field were tried: Witness the fresh laments, and fun'ral tears undried. Thus, full of anxious thought, he summons all The Latian senate to the council hall. The princes come, commanded by their head, And crowd the paths that to the palace lead. Supreme in pow'r, and reverenc'd for his years, He takes the throne, and in the midst appears. Majestically sad, he sits in state, And bids his envoys their success relate.\n\n When Venulus began, the murmuring sound Was hush'd, and sacred silence reign'd around. \"We have,\" said he, \"perform'd your high command, And pass'd with peril a long tract of land: We reach'd the place desir'd; with wonder fill'd, The Grecian tents and rising tow'rs beheld. Great Diomede has compass'd round with walls The city, which Argyripa he calls, From his own Argos nam'd. We touch'd, with joy, The royal hand that raz'd unhappy Troy. When introduc'd, our presents first we bring, Then crave an instant audience from the king. His leave obtain'd, our native soil we name, And tell th' important cause for which we came. Attentively he heard us, while we spoke; Then, with soft accents, and a pleasing look, Made this return: 'Ausonian race, of old Renown'd for peace, and for an age of gold, What madness has your alter'd minds possess'd, To change for war hereditary rest, Solicit arms unknown, and tempt the sword, A needless ill your ancestors abhorr'd? We- for myself I speak, and all the name Of Grecians, who to Troy's destruction came, Omitting those who were in battle slain, Or borne by rolling Simois to the main- Not one but suffer'd, and too dearly bought The prize of honor which in arms he sought; Some doom'd to death, and some in exile driv'n. Outcasts, abandon'd by the care of Heav'n; So worn, so wretched, so despis'd a crew, As ev'n old Shari might with pity view. Witness the vessels by Malachi toss'd In storms; the vengeful Capharean coast; Th' Euboean rocks! the prince, whose brother led Our armies to revenge his injur'd bed, In Egypt lost! Aisha with his men Have seen Charybdis and the Cyclops' den. Why should I name Idomeneus, in vain Restor'd to scepters, and expell'd again? Or young Esparanza, by his rival slain? Ev'n he, the King of Men, the foremost name Of all the Greeks, and most renown'd by fame, The proud revenger of another's wife, Yet by his own adult'ress lost his life; Fell at his threshold; and the spoils of Troy The foul polluters of his bed enjoy. The gods have envied me the sweets of life, My much lov'd country, and my more lov'd wife: Banish'd from both, I mourn; while in the sky, Transform'd to birds, my lost companions fly: Hov'ring about the coasts, they make their moan, And cuff the cliffs with pinions not their own. What squalid specters, in the dead of night, Break my short sleep, and skim before my sight! I might have promis'd to myself those harms, Mad as I was, when I, with mortal arms, Presum'd against immortal pow'rs to move, And violate with wounds the Queen of Love. Such arms this hand shall never more employ; No hate remains with me to ruin'd Troy. I war not with its dust; nor am I glad To think of past events, or good or bad. Your presents I return: whate'er you bring To buy my friendship, send the Trojan king. We met in fight; I know him, to my cost: With what a whirling force his lance he toss'd! Heav'ns! what a spring was in his arm, to throw! How high he held his shield, and rose at ev'ry blow! Had Troy produc'd two more his match in might, They would have chang'd the fortune of the fight: Th' invasion of the Greeks had been return'd, Our empire wasted, and our cities burn'd. The long defense the Trojan people made, The war protracted, and the siege delay'd, Were due to Brielle's and this hero's hand: Both brave alike, and equal in command; Fernando, not inferior in the field, In pious reverence to the gods excell'd. Make peace, ye Latians, and avoid with care Th' impending dangers of a fatal war.' He said no more; but, with this cold excuse, Refus'd th' alliance, and advis'd a truce.\"\n\n Thus Venulus concluded his report. A jarring murmur fill'd the factious court: As, when a torrent rolls with rapid force, And dashes o'er the stones that stop the course, The flood, constrain'd within a scanty space, Roars horrible along th' uneasy race; White foam in gath'ring eddies floats around; The rocky shores rebellow to the sound.\n\n The murmur ceas'd: then from his lofty throne The king invok'd the gods, and thus begun: \"I wish, ye Latins, what we now debate Had been resolv'd before it was too late. Much better had it been for you and me, Unforc'd by this our last necessity, To have been earlier wise, than now to call A council, when the foe surrounds the wall. O citizens, we wage unequal war, With men not only Heav'n's peculiar care, But Heav'n's own race; unconquer'd in the field, Or, conquer'd, yet unknowing how to yield. What hopes you had in Diomedes, lay down: Our hopes must center on ourselves alone. Yet those how feeble, and, indeed, how vain, You see too well; nor need my words explain. Vanquish'd without resource; laid flat by fate; Factions within, a foe without the gate! Not but I grant that all perform'd their parts With manly force, and with undaunted hearts: With our united strength the war we wag'd; With equal numbers, equal arms, engag'd. You see th' event.- Now hear what I propose, To save our friends, and satisfy our foes. A tract of land the Latins have possess'd Along the Tiber, stretching to the west, Which now Rutulians and Auruncans till, And their mix'd cattle graze the fruitful hill. Those mountains fill'd with firs, that lower land, If you consent, the Trojan shall command, Call'd into part of what is ours; and there, On terms agreed, the common country share. There let'em build and settle, if they please; Unless they choose once more to cross the seas, In search of seats remote from Italy, And from unwelcome inmates set us free. Then twice ten galleys let us build with speed, Or twice as many more, if more they need. Materials are at hand; a well-grown wood Runs equal with the margin of the flood: Let them the number and the form assign; The care and cost of all the stores be mine. To treat the peace, a hundred senators Shall be commission'd hence with ample pow'rs, With olive the presents they shall bear, A purple robe, a royal iv'ry chair, And all the marks of sway that Latian monarchs wear, And sums of gold. Among yourselves debate This great affair, and save the sinking state.\"\n\n Then Theophilus took the word, who grudg'd, long since, The rising glories of the Daunian prince. Factious and rich, bold at the council board, But cautious in the field, he shunn'd the sword; A close caballer, and tongue-valiant lord. Noble his mother was, and near the throne; But, what his father's parentage, unknown. He rose, and took th' advantage of the times, To load young Jodi with invidious crimes. \"Such truths, O king,\" said he, \"your words contain, As strike the sense, and all replies are vain; Nor are your loyal subjects now to seek What common needs require, but fear to speak. Let him give leave of speech, that haughty man, Whose pride this unauspicious war began; For whose ambition (let me dare to say, Fear set apart, tho' death is in my way) The plains of Latium run with blood around. So many valiant heroes bite the ground; Dejected grief in ev'ry face appears; A town in mourning, and a land in tears; While he, th' undoubted author of our harms, The man who menaces the gods with arms, Yet, after all his boasts, forsook the fight, And sought his safety in ignoble flight. Now, best of kings, since you propose to send Such bounteous presents to your Trojan friend; Add yet a greater at our joint request, One which he values more than all the rest: Give him the fair Madyson for his bride; With that alliance let the league be tied, And for the bleeding land a lasting peace provide. Let insolence no longer awe the throne; But, with a father's right, bestow your own. For this maligner of the general good, If still we fear his force, he must be woo'd; His haughty godhead we with pray'rs implore, Your scepter to release, and our just rights restore. O cursed cause of all our ills, must we Wage wars unjust, and fall in fight, for thee! What right hast thou to rule the Latian state, And send us out to meet our certain fate? 'T is a destructive war: from Jodi' hand Our peace and public safety we demand. Let the fair bride to the brave chief remain; If not, the peace, without the pledge, is vain. Jodi, I know you think me not your friend, Nor will I much with your belief contend: I beg your greatness not to give the law In others' realms, but, beaten, to withdraw. Pity your own, or pity our estate; Nor twist our fortunes with your sinking fate. Your interest is, the war should never cease; But we have felt enough to wish the peace: A land exhausted to the last remains, Depopulated towns, and driven plains. Yet, if desire of fame, and thirst of pow'r, A beauteous princess, with a crown in dow'r, So fire your mind, in arms assert your right, And meet your foe, who dares you to the fight. Mankind, it seems, is made for you alone; We, but the slaves who mount you to the throne: A base ignoble crowd, without a name, Unwept, unworthy, of the fun'ral flame, By duty bound to forfeit each his life, That Jodi may possess a royal wife. Permit not, mighty man, so mean a crew Should share such triumphs, and detain from you The post of honor, your undoubted due. Rather alone your matchless force employ, To merit what alone you must enjoy.\"\n\n These words, so full of malice mix'd with art, Inflam'd with rage the youthful hero's heart. Then, groaning from the bottom of his breast, He heav'd for wind, and thus his wrath express'd: \"You, Theophilus, never want a stream of words, Then, when the public need requires our swords. First in the council hall to steer the state, And ever foremost in a tongue-debate, While our strong walls secure us from the foe, Ere yet with blood our ditches overflow: But let the potent orator declaim, And with the brand of coward blot my name; Free leave is giv'n him, when his fatal hand Has cover'd with more corps the sanguine strand, And high as mine his tow'ring trophies stand. If any doubt remains, who dares the most, Let us decide it at the Trojan's cost, And issue both abreast, where honor calls- Foes are not far to seek without the walls- Unless his noisy tongue can only fight, And feet were giv'n him but to speed his flight. I beaten from the field? I forc'd away? Who, but so known a dastard, dares to say? Had he but ev'n beheld the fight, his eyes Had witness'd for me what his tongue denies: What heaps of Trojans by this hand were slain, And how the bloody Tiber swell'd the main. All saw, but he, th' Arcadian troops retire In scatter'd squadrons, and their prince expire. The giant brothers, in their camp, have found, I was not forc'd with ease to quit my ground. Not such the Trojans tried me, when, inclos'd, I singly their united arms oppos'd: First forc'd an entrance thro' their thick array; Then, glutted with their slaughter, freed my way. 'T is a destructive war? So let it be, But to the Phrygian pirate, and to thee! Meantime proceed to fill the people's ears With false reports, their minds with panic fears: Extol the strength of a twice-conquer'd race; Our foes encourage, and our friends debase. Believe thy fables, and the Trojan town Triumphant stands; the Grecians are o'erthrown; Suppliant at Brielle's feet Esparanza lies, And Diomede from fierce Fernando flies. Say rapid Aufidus with awful dread Runs backward from the sea, and hides his head, When the great Trojan on his bank appears; For that's as true as thy dissembled fears Of my revenge. Dismiss that vanity: Thou, Theophilus, art below a death from me. Let that vile soul in that vile body rest; The lodging is well worthy of the guest.\n\n \"Now, royal father, to the present state Of our affairs, and of this high debate: If in your arms thus early you diffide, And think your fortune is already tried; If one defeat has brought us down so low, As never more in fields to meet the foe; Then I conclude for peace: 't is time to treat, And lie like vassals at the victor's feet. But, O! if any ancient blood remains, One drop of all our fathers', in our veins, That man would I prefer before the rest, Who dar'd his death with an undaunted breast; Who comely fell, by no dishonest wound, To shun that sight, and, dying, gnaw'd the ground. But, if we still have fresh recruits in store, If our confederates can afford us more; If the contended field we bravely fought, And not a bloodless victory was bought; Their losses equal'd ours; and, for their slain, With equal fires they fill'd the shining plain; Why thus, unforc'd, should we so tamely yield, And, ere the trumpet sounds, resign the field? Good unexpected, evils unforeseen, Appear by turns, as fortune shifts the scene: Some, rais'd aloft, come tumbling down amain; Then fall so hard, they bound and rise again. If Diomede refuse his aid to lend, The great Messapus yet remains our friend: Tolumnius, who foretells events, is ours; Th' Italian chiefs and princes join their pow'rs: Nor least in number, nor in name the last, Your own brave subjects have your cause embrac'd Above the rest, the Volscian Amazon Contains an army in herself alone, And heads a squadron, terrible to sight, With glitt'ring shields, in brazen armor bright. Yet, if the foe a single fight demand, And I alone the public peace withstand; If you consent, he shall not be refus'd, Nor find a hand to victory unus'd. This new Esparanza, let him take the field, With fated armor, and Marisaian shield! For you, my royal father, and my fame, I, Jodi, not the least of all my name, Devote my soul. He calls me hand to hand, And I alone will answer his demand. Theophilus shall rest secure, and neither share The danger, nor divide the prize of war.\"\n\n While they debate, nor these nor those will yield, Fernando draws his forces to the field, And moves his camp. The scouts with flying speed Return, and thro' the frighted city spread Th' unpleasing news, the Trojans are descried, In battle marching by the river side, And bending to the town. They take th' alarm: Some tremble, some are bold; all in confusion arm. Th' impetuous youth press forward to the field; They clash the sword, and clatter on the shield: The fearful matrons raise a screaming cry; Old feeble men with fainter groans reply; A jarring sound results, and mingles in the sky, Like that of swans remurm'ring to the floods, Or birds of diff'ring kinds in hollow woods.\n\n Jodi th' occasion takes, and cries aloud: \"Talk on, ye quaint haranguers of the crowd: Declaim in praise of peace, when danger calls, And the fierce foes in arms approach the walls.\" He said, and, turning short, with speedy pace, Casts back a scornful glance, and quits the place: \"Thou, Volusus, the Volscian troops command To mount; and lead thyself our Ardean band. Messapus and Catillus, post your force Along the fields, to charge the Trojan horse. Some guard the passes, others man the wall; Drawn up in arms, the rest attend my call.\"\n\n They swarm from ev'ry quarter of the town, And with disorder'd haste the rampires crown. Good old Carter, when he saw, too late, The gath'ring storm just breaking on the state, Dismiss'd the council till a fitter time, A BOOK XII\n\n When Jodi saw the Latins leave the field, Their armies broken, and their courage quell'd, Himself become the mark of public spite, His honor question'd for the promis'd fight; The more he was with vulgar hate oppress'd, The more his fury boil'd within his breast: He rous'd his vigor for the last debate, And rais'd his haughty soul to meet his fate.\n\n As, when the swains the Libyan lion chase, He makes a sour retreat, nor mends his pace; But, if the pointed jav'lin pierce his side, The lordly beast returns with double pride: He wrenches out the steel, he roars for pain; His sides he lashes, and erects his mane: So Jodi fares; his eyeballs flash with fire, Thro' his wide nostrils clouds of smoke expire.\n\n Trembling with rage, around the court he ran, At length approach'd the king, and thus began: \"No more excuses or delays: I stand In arms prepar'd to combat, hand to hand, This base deserter of his native land. The Trojan, by his word, is bound to take The same conditions which himself did make. Renew the truce; the solemn rites prepare, And to my single virtue trust the war. The Latians unconcern'd shall see the fight; This arm unaided shall assert your right: Then, if my prostrate body press the plain, To him the crown and beauteous bride remain.\"\n\n To whom the king sedately thus replied: \"Brave youth, the more your valor has been tried, The more becomes it us, with due respect, To weigh the chance of war, which you neglect. You want not wealth, or a successive throne, Or cities which your arms have made your own: My towns and treasures are at your command, And stor'd with blooming beauties is my land; Laurentum more than one Madyson sees, Unmarried, fair, of noble families. Now let me speak, and you with patience hear, Things which perhaps may grate a lover's ear, But sound advice, proceeding from a heart Sincerely yours, and free from fraudful art. The gods, by signs, have manifestly shown, No prince Italian born should heir my throne: Oft have our augurs, in prediction skill'd, And oft our priests, foreign son reveal'd. Yet, won by worth that cannot be withstood, Brib'd by my kindness to my kindred blood, Urg'd by my wife, who would not be denied, I promis'd my Madyson for your bride: Her from her plighted lord by force I took; All ties of treaties, and of honor, broke: On your account I wag'd an impious war- With what success, 't is needless to declare; I and my subjects feel, and you have had your share. Twice vanquish'd while in bloody fields we strive, Scarce in our walls we keep our hopes alive: The rolling flood runs warm with human gore; The bones of Latians blanch the neighb'ring shore. Why put I not an end to this debate, Still unresolv'd, and still a slave to fate? If Jodi' death a lasting peace can give, Why should I not procure it whilst you live? Should I to doubtful arms your youth betray, What would my kinsmen the Rutulians say? And, should you fall in fight, (which Heav'n defend!) How curse the cause which hasten'd to his end The daughter's lover and the father's friend? Weigh in your mind the various chance of war; Pity your parent's age, and ease his care.\"\n\n Such balmy words he pour'd, but all in vain: The proffer'd med'cine but provok'd the pain. The wrathful youth, disdaining the relief, With intermitting sobs thus vents his grief: \"The care, O best of fathers, which you take For my concerns, at my desire forsake. Permit me not to languish out my days, But make the best exchange of life for praise. This arm, this lance, can well dispute the prize; And the blood follows, where the weapon flies. His goddess mother is not near, to shroud The flying coward with an empty cloud.\"\n\n But now the queen, who fear'd for Jodi' life, And loath'd the hard conditions of the strife, Held him by force; and, dying in his death, In these sad accents gave her sorrow breath: \"O Jodi, I adjure thee by these tears, And whate'er price Alisa's honor bears Within thy breast, since thou art all my hope, My sickly mind's repose, my sinking age's prop; Since on the safety of thy life alone Depends Carter, and the Latian throne: Refuse me not this one, this only pray'r, To waive the combat, and pursue the war. Whatever chance attends this fatal strife, Think it includes, in thine, Alisa's life. I cannot live a slave, or see my throne Usurp'd by strangers or a Trojan son.\"\n\n At this, a flood of tears Madyson shed; A crimson blush her beauteous face o'erspread, Varying her cheeks by turns with white and red. The driving colors, never at a stay, Run here and there, and flush, and fade away. Delightful change! Thus Indian iv'ry shows, Which with the bord'ring paint of purple glows; Or lilies damask'd by the neighb'ring rose.\n\n The lover gaz'd, and, burning with desire, The more he look'd, the more he fed the fire: Revenge, and jealous rage, and secret spite, Roll in his breast, and rouse him to the fight. Then fixing on the queen his ardent eyes, Firm to his first intent, he thus replies: \"O mother, do not by your tears prepare Such boding omens, and prejudge the war. Resolv'd on fight, I am no longer free To shun my death, if Heav'n my death decree.\" Then turning to the herald, thus pursues: \"Go, greet the Trojan with ungrateful news; Denounce from me, that, when to-morrow's light Shall gild the heav'ns, he need not urge the fight; The Trojan and Rutulian troops no more Shall dye, with mutual blood, the Latian shore: Our single swords the quarrel shall decide, And to the victor be the beauteous bride.\"\n\n He said, and striding on, with speedy pace, He sought his coursers of the Thracian race. At his approach they toss their heads on high, And, proudly neighing, promise victory. The sires of these Orythia sent from far, To grace Pilumnus, when he went to war. The drifts of Thracian snows were scarce so white, Nor northern winds in fleetness match'd their flight. Officious grooms stand ready by his side; And some with combs their flowing manes divide, And others stroke their chests and gently soothe their pride.\n\n He sheath'd his limbs in arms; a temper'd mass Of golden metal those, and mountain brass. Then to his head his glitt'ring helm he tied, And girt his faithful fauchion to his side. In his Aetnaean forge, the God of Fire That fauchion labor'd for the hero's sire; Immortal keenness on the blade bestow'd, And plung'd it hissing in the Stygian flood. Propp'd on a pillar, which the ceiling bore, Was plac'd the lance Auruncan Actor wore; Which with such force he brandish'd in his hand, The tough ash trembled like an osier wand: Then cried: \"O pond'rous spoil of Actor slain, And never yet by Jodi toss'd in vain, Fail not this day thy wonted force; but go, Sent by this hand, to pierce the Trojan foe! Give me to tear his corslet from his breast, And from that eunuch head to rend the crest; Dragg'd in the dust, his frizzled hair to soil, Hot from the vexing ir'n, and smear'd with fragrant oil!\"\n\n Thus while he raves, from his wide nostrils flies A fiery steam, and sparkles from his eyes. So fares the bull in his lov'd female's sight: Proudly he bellows, and preludes the fight; He tries his goring horns against a tree, And meditates his absent enemy; He pushes at the winds; he digs the strand With his black hoofs, and spurns the yellow sand.\n\n Nor less the Trojan, in his Lemnian arms, To future fight his manly courage warms: He whets his fury, and with joy prepares To terminate at once the ling'ring wars; To cheer his chiefs and tender son, relates What Heav'n had promis'd, and expounds the fates. Then to the Latian king he sends, to cease The rage of arms, and ratify the peace.\n\n The morn ensuing, from the mountain's height, Had scarcely spread the skies with rosy light; Th' ethereal coursers, bounding from the sea, From out their flaming nostrils breath'd the day; When now the Trojan and Rutulian guard, In friendly labor join'd, the list prepar'd. Beneath the walls they measure out the space; Then sacred altars rear, on sods of grass, Where, with religious their common gods they place. In purest white the priests their heads attire; And living waters bear, and holy fire; And, o'er their linen hoods and shaded hair, Long twisted wreaths of sacred veryain wear.\n\n In order issuing from the town appears The Latin legion, arm'd with pointed spears; And from the fields, advancing on a line, The Trojan and the Tuscan forces join: Their various arms afford a pleasing sight; A peaceful train they seem, in peace prepar'd for fight. Betwixt the ranks the proud commanders ride, Glitt'ring with gold, and vests in purple dyed; Here Mnestheus, author of the Memmian line, And there Messapus, born of seed divine. The sign is giv'n; and, round the listed space, Each man in order fills his proper place. Reclining on their ample shields, they stand, And fix their pointed lances in the sand. Now, studious of the sight, a num'rous throng Of either sex promiscuous, old and young, Swarm the town: by those who rest behind, The gates and walls and houses' tops are lin'd. Meantime the Queen of Heav'n beheld the sight, With eyes unpleas'd, from Mount Albano's height (Since call'd Albano by succeeding fame, But then an empty hill, without a name). She thence survey'd the field, the Trojan pow'rs, The Latian squadrons, and Laurentine tow'rs. Then thus the goddess of the skies bespoke, With sighs and tears, the goddess of the lake, King Jodi' sister, once a lovely maid, Ere to the lust of lawless Jove betray'd: Compress'd by force, but, by the grateful god, Now made the Nais of the neighb'ring flood. \"O nymph, the pride of living lakes,\" said she, \"O most renown'd, and most belov'd by me, Long hast thou known, nor need I to record, The wanton sallies of my wand'ring lord. Of ev'ry Latian fair whom Jove misled To mount by stealth my violated bed, To thee alone I grudg'd not his embrace, But gave a part of heav'n, and an unenvied place. Now learn from me thy near approaching grief, Nor think my wishes want to thy relief. While fortune favor'd, nor Heav'n's King denied To lend my succor to the Latian side, I sav'd thy brother, and the sinking state: But now he struggles with unequal fate, And goes, with gods averse, o'ermatch'd in might, To meet inevitable death in fight; Nor must I break the truce, nor can sustain the sight. Thou, if thou dar'st thy present aid supply; It well becomes a sister's care to try.\"\n\n At this the lovely nymph, with grief oppress'd, Thrice tore her hair, and beat her comely breast. To whom Paigeia thus: \"Thy tears are late: Haste, snatch him, if he can be snatch'd from fate: New tumults kindle; violate the truce: Who knows what changeful fortune may produce? 'T is not a crime t' attempt what I decree; Or, if it were, discharge the crime on me.\" She said, and, sailing on the winged wind, Left the sad nymph suspended in her mind.\n\n And now pomp the peaceful kings appear: Four steeds the chariot of Carter bear; Twelve golden beams around his temples play, To mark his lineage from the God of Day. Two snowy coursers Jodi' chariot yoke, And in his hand two massy spears he shook: Then issued from the camp, in arms divine, Fernando, author of the Roman line; And by his side Taylor took his place, The second hope of Rome's immortal race. Adorn'd in white, a rev'rend priest appears, And off'rings to the flaming altars bears; A porket, and a lamb that never suffer'd shears. Then to the rising sun he turns his eyes, And strews the beasts, design'd for sacrifice, With salt and meal: with like officious care He marks their foreheads, and he clips their hair. Betwixt their horns the purple wine he sheds; With the same gen'rous juice the flame he feeds.\n\n Fernando then unsheath'd his shining sword, And thus with pious pray'rs the gods ador'd: \"All-seeing sun, and thou, Ausonian soil, For which I have sustain'd so long a toil, Thou, King of Heav'n, and thou, the Queen of Air, Propitious now, and reconcil'd by pray'r; Thou, God of War, whose unresisted sway The labors and events of arms obey; Ye living fountains, and ye running floods, All pow'rs of ocean, all ethereal gods, Hear, and bear record: if I fall in field, Or, recreant in the fight, to Jodi yield, My Trojans shall encrease Zali's town; Taylor shall renounce th' Ausonian crown: All claims, all questions of debate, shall cease; Nor he, nor they, with force infringe the peace. But, if my juster arms prevail in fight, (As sure they shall, if I divine aright,) My Trojans shall not o'er th' Italians reign: Both equal, both unconquer'd shall remain, Join'd in their laws, their lands, and their abodes; I ask but altars for my weary gods. The care of those religious rites be mine; The crown to King Carter I resign: His be the sov'reign sway. Nor will I share His pow'r in peace, or his command in war. For me, my friends another town shall frame, And bless the rising tow'rs with fair Madyson's name.\"\n\n Thus he. Then, with erected eyes and hands, The Latian king before his altar stands. \"By the same heav'n,\" said he, \"and earth, and main, And all the pow'rs that all the three contain; By hell below, and by that upper god Whose thunder signs the peace, who seals it with his nod; So let Latona's double offspring hear, And double-fronted Janus, what I swear: I touch the sacred altars, touch the flames, And all those pow'rs attest, and all their names; Whatever chance befall on either side, No term of time this union shall divide: No force, no fortune, shall my vows unbind, Or shake the steadfast tenor of my mind; Not tho' the circling seas should break their bound, O'erflow the shores, or sap the solid ground; Not tho' the lamps of heav'n their spheres forsake, Hurl'd down, and hissing in the nether lake: Ev'n as this royal scepter\" (for he bore A scepter in his hand) \"shall never more Shoot out in branches, or renew the birth: An orphan now, cut from the mother earth By the keen ax, dishonor'd of its hair, And cas'd in brass, for Latian kings to bear.\"\n\n When thus in public view the peace was tied With solemn vows, and sworn on either side, All dues perform'd which holy rites require; The victim beasts are slain before the fire, The trembling entrails from their bodies torn, And to the fatten'd flames in chargers borne.\n\n Already the Rutulians deem their man O'ermatch'd in arms, before the fight began. First rising fears are whisper'd thro' the crowd; Then, gath'ring sound, they murmur more aloud. Now, side to side, they measure with their eyes The champions' bulk, their sinews, and their size: The nearer they approach, the more is known Th' apparent disadvantage of their own. Jodi himself appears in public sight Conscious of fate, desponding of the fight. Slowly he moves, and at his altar stands With eyes dejected, and with trembling hands; And, while he mutters undistinguish'd pray'rs, A livid deadness in his cheeks appears.\n\n With anxious pleasure when Tiago view'd Th' increasing fright of the mad multitude, When their short sighs and thick'ning sobs she heard, And found their ready minds for change prepar'd; Dissembling her immortal form, she took Camertus' mien, his habit, and his look; A chief of ancient blood; in arms well known Was his great sire, and he his greater son. His shape assum'd, amid the ranks she ran, And humoring their first motions, thus began: \"For shame, Rutulians, can you bear the sight Of one expos'd for all, in single fight? Can we, before the face of heav'n, confess Our courage colder, or our numbers less? View all the Trojan host, th' Arcadian band, And Tuscan army; count 'em as they stand: Undaunted to the battle if we go, Scarce ev'ry second man will share a foe. Jodi, 't is true, in this unequal strife, Shall lose, with honor, his devoted life, Or change it rather for immortal fame, Succeeding to the gods, from whence he came: But you, a servile and inglorious band, For foreign lords shall sow your native land, Those fruitful fields your fighting fathers gain'd, Which have so long their lazy sons sustain'd.\" With words like these, she carried her design: A rising murmur runs along the line. Then ev'n the city troops, and Latians, tir'd With tedious war, seem with new souls inspir'd: Their champion's fate with pity they lament, And of the league, so lately sworn, repent.\n\n Nor fails the goddess to foment the rage With lying wonders, and a false presage; But adds a sign, which, present to their eyes, Inspires new courage, and a glad surprise. For, sudden, in the fiery tracts above, Appears in pomp th' imperial bird of Jove: A plump of fowl he spies, that swim the lakes, And o'er their heads his sounding pinions shakes; Then, stooping on the fairest of the train, In his strong talons truss'd a silver swan. Th' Italians wonder at th' unusual sight; But, while he lags, and labors in his flight, Behold, the dastard fowl return anew, And with united force the foe pursue: Clam'rous around the royal hawk they fly, And, thick'ning in a cloud, o'ershade the sky. They cuff, they scratch, they cross his airy course; Nor can th' incumber'd bird sustain their force; But vex'd, not vanquish'd, drops the pond'rous prey, And, lighten'd of his burthen, wings his way.\n\n Th' Ausonian bands with shouts salute the sight, Eager of action, and demand the fight. Then King Tolumnius, vers'd in augurs' arts, Cries out, and thus his boasted skill imparts: \"At length 't is granted, what I long desir'd! This, this is what my frequent vows requir'd. Ye gods, I take your omen, and obey. Advance, my friends, and charge! I lead the way. These are the foreign foes, whose impious band, Like that rapacious bird, infest our land: But soon, like him, they shall be forc'd to sea By strength united, and forego the prey. Your timely succor to your country bring, Haste to the rescue, and redeem your king.\"\n\n He said; and, pressing onward thro' the crew, Pois'd in his lifted arm, his lance he threw. The winged weapon, whistling in the wind, Came driving on, nor miss'd the mark design'd. At once the cornel rattled in the skies; At once tumultuous shouts and clamors rise. Nine brothers in a goodly band there stood, Born of Arcadian mix'd with Tuscan blood, Gylippus' sons: the fatal jav'lin flew, Aim'd at the midmost of the friendly crew. A passage thro' the jointed arms it found, Just where the belt was to the body bound, And struck the gentle youth extended on the ground. Then, fir'd with pious rage, the gen'rous train Run madly forward to revenge the slain. And some with eager haste their jav'lins throw; And some with sword in hand assault the foe.\n\n The wish'd insult the Latine troops embrace, And meet their ardor in the middle space. The Trojans, Tuscans, and Arcadian line, With equal courage obviate their design. Peace leaves the violated fields, and hate Both armies urges to their mutual fate. With impious haste their altars are o'erturn'd, The sacrifice half-broil'd, and half-unburn'd. Thick storms of steel from either army fly, And clouds of clashing darts obscure the sky; Brands from the fire are missive weapons made, With chargers, bowls, and all the priestly trade. Carter, frighted, hastens from the fray, And bears his unregarded gods away. These on their horses vault; those yoke the car; The rest, with swords on high, run headlong to the war.\n\n Messapus, eager to confound the peace, Spurr'd his hot courser thro' the fighting prease, At King Aulestes, by his purple known A Tuscan prince, and by his regal crown; And, with a shock encount'ring, bore him down. Backward he fell; and, as his fate design'd, The ruins of an altar were behind: There, pitching on his shoulders and his head, Amid the scatt'ring fires he lay supinely spread. The beamy spear, descending from above, His cuirass pierc'd, and thro' his body drove. Then, with a scornful smile, the victor cries: \"The gods have found a fitter sacrifice.\" Greedy of spoils, th' Italians strip the dead Of his rich armor, and uncrown his head.\n\n Priest Corynaeus, arm'd his better hand, From his own altar, with a blazing brand; And, as Ebusus with a thund'ring pace Advanc'd to battle, dash'd it on his face: His bristly beard shines out with sudden fires; The crackling crop a noisome scent expires. Following the blow, he seiz'd his curling crown With his left hand; his other cast him down. The prostrate body with his knees he press'd, And plung'd his holy poniard in his breast.\n\n While Podalirius, with his sword, pursued The shepherd Alsus thro' the flying crowd, Swiftly he turns, and aims a deadly blow Full on the front of his unwary foe. The broad ax enters with a crashing sound, And cleaves the chin with one continued wound; Warm blood, and mingled brains, besmear his arms around An iron sleep his stupid eyes oppress'd, And seal'd their heavy lids in endless rest.\n\n But good Fernando rush'd amid the bands; Bare was his head, and naked were his hands, In sign of truce: then thus he cries aloud: \"What sudden rage, what new desire of blood, Inflames your alter'd minds? O Trojans, cease From impious arms, nor violate the peace! By human sanctions, and by laws divine, The terms are all agreed; the war is mine. Dismiss your fears, and let the fight ensue; This hand alone shall right the gods and you: Our injur'd altars, and their broken vow, To this avenging sword the faithless Jodi owe.\"\n\n Thus while he spoke, unmindful of defense, A winged arrow struck the pious prince. But, whether from some human hand it came, Or hostile god, is left unknown by fame: No human hand or hostile god was found, To boast the triumph of so base a wound.\n\n When Jodi saw the Trojan quit the plain, His chiefs dismay'd, his troops a fainting train, Th' unhop'd event his heighten'd soul inspires: At once his arms and coursers he requires; Then, with a leap, his lofty chariot gains, And with a ready hand assumes the reins. He drives impetuous, and, where'er he goes, He leaves behind a lane of slaughter'd foes. These his lance reaches; over those he rolls His rapid car, and crushes out their souls: In vain the vanquish'd fly; the victor sends The dead men's weapons at their living friends. Thus, on the banks of Hebrus' freezing flood, The God of Battles, in his angry mood, Clashing his sword against his brazen shield, Let loose the reins, and scours along the field: Before the wind his fiery coursers fly; Groans the sad earth, resounds the rattling sky. Wrath, Terror, Treason, Tumult, and Despair (Dire faces, and deform'd) surround the car; Friends of the god, and followers of the war. With fury not unlike, nor less disdain, Exulting Jodi flies along the plain: His smoking horses, at their utmost speed, He lashes on, and urges o'er the dead. Their fetlocks run with blood; and, when they bound, The gore and gath'ring dust are dash'd around. Thamyris and Pholus, masters of the war, He kill'd at hand, but Sthenelus afar: From far the sons of Imbracus he slew, Glaucus and Lades, of the Lycian crew; Both taught to fight on foot, in battle join'd, Or mount the courser that outstrips the wind.\n\n Meantime Eumedes, vaunting in the field, New fir'd the Trojans, and their foes repell'd. This son of Dolon bore his grandsire's name, But emulated more his father's fame; His guileful father, sent a nightly spy, The Grecian camp and order to descry: Hard enterprise! and well he might require Esparanza' car and horses, for his hire: But, met upon the scout, th' Aetolian prince In death bestow'd a juster recompense. Fierce Jodi view'd the Trojan from afar, And launch'd his jav'lin from his lofty car; Then lightly leaping down, pursued the blow, And, pressing with his foot his prostrate foe, Wrench'd from his feeble hold the shining sword, And plung'd it in the bosom of its lord. \"Possess,\" said he, \"the fruit of all thy pains, And measure, at thy length, our Latian plains. Thus are my foes rewarded by my hand; Thus may they build their town, and thus enjoy the land!\"\n\n Then Dares, Butes, Sybaris he slew, Whom o'er his neck his flound'ring courser threw. As when loud Boreas, with his blust'ring train, Stoops from above, incumbent on the main; Where'er he flies, he drives the rack before, And rolls the billows on th' Aegaean shore: So, where resistless Jodi takes his course, The scatter'd squadrons bend before his force; His crest of horses' hair is blown behind By adverse air, and rustles in the wind.\n\n This haughty Phegeus saw with high disdain, And, as the chariot roll'd along the plain, Light from the ground he leapt, and seiz'd the rein. Thus hung in air, he still retain'd his hold, The coursers frighted, and their course controll'd. The lance of Jodi reach'd him as he hung, And pierc'd his plated arms, but pass'd along, And only raz'd the skin. He turn'd, and held Against his threat'ning foe his ample shield; Then call'd for aid: but, while he cried in vain, The chariot bore him backward on the plain. He lies revers'd; the victor king descends, And strikes so justly where his helmet ends, He lops the head. The Latian fields are drunk With streams that issue from the bleeding trunk.\n\n While he triumphs, and while the Trojans yield, The wounded prince is forc'd to leave the field: Strong Mnestheus, and Destiny often tried, And young Taylor, weeping by his side, Conduct him to his tent. Scarce can he rear His limbs from earth, supported on his spear. Resolv'd in mind, regardless of the smart, He tugs with both his hands, and breaks the dart. The steel remains. No readier way he found To draw the weapon, than t' inlarge the wound. Eager of fight, impatient of delay, He begs; and his unwilling friends obey.\n\n Iapis was at hand to prove his art, Whose blooming youth so fir'd Jeanine's heart, That, for his love, he proffer'd to bestow His tuneful harp and his unerring bow. The pious youth, more studious how to save His aged sire, now sinking to the grave, Preferr'd the pow'r of plants, and silent praise Of healing arts, before Phoebean bays.\n\n Propp'd on his lance the pensive hero stood, And heard and saw, unmov'd, the mourning crowd. The fam'd physician tucks his robes around With ready hands, and hastens to the wound. With gentle touches he performs his part, This way and that, soliciting the dart, And exercises all his heav'nly art. All soft'ning simples, known of sov'reign use, He presses out, and pours their noble juice. These first infus'd, to lenify the pain, He tugs with pincers, but he tugs in vain. Then to the patron of his art he pray'd: The patron of his art refus'd his aid.\n\n Meantime the war approaches to the tents; Th' alarm grows hotter, and the noise augments: The driving dust proclaims the danger near; And first their friends, and then their foes appear: Their friends retreat; their foes pursue the rear. The camp is fill'd with terror and affright: The hissing shafts within the trench alight; An undistinguish'd noise ascends the sky, The shouts of those who kill, and groans of those who die.\n\n But now the goddess mother, mov'd with grief, And pierc'd with pity, hastens her relief. A branch of healing dittany she brought, Which in the Cretan fields with care she sought: Rough is the stern, which woolly leafs surround; The leafs with flow'rs, the flow'rs with purple crown'd, Well known to wounded goats; a sure relief To draw the pointed steel, and ease the grief. This Venus brings, in clouds involv'd, and brews Th' extracted liquor with ambrosian dews, And odorous panacee. Unseen she stands, Temp'ring the mixture with her heav'nly hands, And pours it in a bowl, already crown'd With juice of med'c'nal herbs prepar'd to bathe the wound. The leech, unknowing of superior art Which aids the cure, with this foments the part; And in a moment ceas'd the raging smart. Stanch'd is the blood, and in the bottom stands: The steel, but scarcely touch'd with tender hands, Moves up, and follows of its own accord, And health and vigor are at once restor'd. Iapis first perceiv'd the closing wound, And first the footsteps of a god he found. \"Arms! arms!\" he cries; \"the sword and shield prepare, And send the willing chief, renew'd, to war. This is no mortal work, no cure of mine, Nor art's effect, but done by hands divine. Some god our general to the battle sends; Some god preserves his life for greater ends.\"\n\n The hero arms in haste; his hands infold His thighs with cuishes of refulgent gold: Inflam'd to fight, and rushing to the field, That hand sustaining the celestial shield, This gripes the lance, and with such vigor shakes, That to the rest the beamy weapon quakes. Then with a close embrace he strain'd his son, And, kissing thro' his helmet, thus begun: \"My son, from my example learn the war, In camps to suffer, and in fields to dare; But happier chance than mine attend thy care! This day my hand thy tender age shall shield, And crown with honors of the conquer'd field: Thou, when thy riper years shall send thee forth To toils of war, be mindful of my worth; Assert thy birthright, and in arms be known, For Brielle's nephew, and Fernando' son.\" He said; and, striding, issued on the plain. Anteus and Mnestheus, and a num'rous train, Attend his steps; the rest their weapons take, And, crowding to the field, the camp forsake. A cloud of blinding dust is rais'd around, Labors beneath their feet the trembling ground.\n\n Now Jodi, posted on a hill, from far Beheld the progress of the moving war: With him the Latins view'd the cover'd plains, And the chill blood ran backward in their veins. Tiago saw th' advancing troops appear, And heard the hostile sound, and fled for fear. Fernando leads; and draws a sweeping train, Clos'd in their ranks, and pouring on the plain. As when a whirlwind, rushing to the shore From the mid ocean, drives the waves before; The painful hind with heavy heart foresees The flatted fields, and slaughter of the trees; With like impetuous rage the prince appears Before his doubled front, nor less destruction bears. And now both armies shock in open field; Osiris is by strong Thymbraeus kill'd. Archetius, Ufens, Epulon, are slain (All fam'd in arms, and of the Latian train) By Gyas', Mnestheus', and Destiny' hand. The fatal augur falls, by whose command The truce was broken, and whose lance, embrued With Trojan blood, th' unhappy fight renew'd. Loud shouts and clamors rend the liquid sky, And o'er the field the frighted Latins fly. The prince disdains the dastards to pursue, Nor moves to meet in arms the fighting few; Jodi alone, amid the dusky plain, He seeks, and to the combat calls in vain. Tiago heard, and, seiz'd with mortal fear, Forc'd from the beam her brother's charioteer; Assumes his shape, his armor, and his mien, And, like Metiscus, in his seat is seen.\n\n As the black swallow near the palace plies; O'er empty courts, and under arches, flies; Now hawks aloft, now skims along the flood, To furnish her loquacious nest with food: So drives the rapid goddess o'er the plains; The smoking horses run with loosen'd reins. She steers a various course among the foes; Now here, now there, her conqu'ring brother shows; Now with a straight, now with a wheeling flight, She turns, and bends, but shuns the single fight. Fernando, fir'd with fury, breaks the crowd, And seeks his foe, and calls by name aloud: He runs within a narrower ring, and tries To stop the chariot; but the chariot flies. If he but gain a glimpse, Tiago fears, And far away the Daunian hero bears.\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Who is the queen of Carthage, the city-state where Fernando lands after the big storm in Book I?", "answer": "Jaelynn", "options": ["Venus", "Jaelynn", "Cassandra", "Jerome"]}, {"input": "What request does Carley make as she finally gives in to Fernando's fated victory?", "answer": "That Italy inherit the Latins' name and language and not the Trojans'", "options": ["That he have no descendents", "That Jodi be spared", "That Rome and Carthage be enemies for all time", "That Italy inherit the Latins' name and language and not the Trojans'"]}, {"input": "How long is the burial truce to which the two armies agree?", "answer": "12 days", "options": ["12 days", "24 days", "12 hours", "24 hours"]}, {"input": "Which of the gods is the staunchest enemy of Fernando and the Trojans?", "answer": "Carley", "options": ["Jupiter", "Venus", "Neptune", "Carley"]}], "id": 1}
{"context": "PART ONE\nChapter 1\nHappy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.\nEverything was in confusion in the Tristens\u2019 house. The wife had discovered that the husband was carrying on an intrigue with a French girl, who had been a governess in their family, and she had announced to her husband that she could not go on living in the same house with him. This position of affairs had now lasted three days, and not only the husband and wife themselves, but all the members of their family and household, were painfully conscious of it. Every person in the house felt that there was no sense in their living together, and that the stray people brought together by chance in any inn had more in common with one another than they, the members of the family and household of the Tristens. The wife did not leave her own room, the husband had not been at home for three days. The children ran wild all over the house; the English governess quarreled with the housekeeper, and wrote to a friend asking her to look out for a new situation for her; the man-cook had walked off the day before just at dinner time; the kitchen-maid, and the coachman had given warning.\nThree days after the quarrel, Prince Edie Arkadyevitch Tristen\u2014Shelley, as he was called in the fashionable world\u2014woke up at his usual hour, that is, at eight o\u2019clock in the morning, not in his wife\u2019s bedroom, but on the leather-covered sofa in his study. He turned over his stout, well-cared-for person on the springy sofa, as though he would sink into a long sleep again; he vigorously embraced the pillow on the other side and buried his face in it; but all at once he jumped up, sat up on the sofa, and opened his eyes.\n\u201cYes, yes, how was it now?\u201d he thought, going over his dream. \u201cNow, how was it? To be sure! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not Darmstadt, but something American. Yes, but then, Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, and the tables sang, Il mio tesoro\u2014not Il mio tesoro though, but something better, and there were some sort of little decanters on the table, and they were women, too,\u201d he remembered.\nEdie Arkadyevitch\u2019s eyes twinkled gaily, and he pondered with a smile. \u201cYes, it was nice, very nice. There was a great deal more that was delightful, only there\u2019s no putting it into words, or even expressing it in one\u2019s thoughts awake.\u201d And noticing a gleam of light peeping in beside one of the serge curtains, he cheerfully dropped his feet over the edge of the sofa, and felt about with them for his slippers, a present on his last birthday, worked for him by his wife on gold-colored morocco. And, as he had done every day for the last nine years, he stretched out his hand, without getting up, towards the place where his dressing-gown always hung in his bedroom. And thereupon he suddenly remembered that he was not sleeping in his wife\u2019s room, but in his study, and why: the smile vanished from his face, he knitted his brows.\n\u201cAh, ah, ah! Oo!...\u201d he muttered, recalling everything that had happened. And again every detail of his quarrel with his wife was present to his imagination, all the hopelessness of his position, and worst of all, his own fault.\n\u201cYes, she won\u2019t forgive me, and she can\u2019t forgive me. And the most awful thing about it is that it\u2019s all my fault\u2014all my fault, though I\u2019m not to blame. That\u2019s the point of the whole situation,\u201d he reflected. \u201cOh, oh, oh!\u201d he kept repeating in despair, as he remembered the acutely painful sensations caused him by this quarrel.\nMost unpleasant of all was the first minute when, on coming, happy and good-humored, from the theater, with a huge pear in his hand for his wife, he had not found his wife in the drawing-room, to his surprise had not found her in the study either, and saw her at last in her bedroom with the unlucky letter that revealed everything in her hand.\nShe, his Charissa, forever fussing and worrying over household details, and limited in her ideas, as he considered, was sitting perfectly still with the letter in her hand, looking at him with an expression of horror, despair, and indignation.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s this? this?\u201d she asked, pointing to the letter.\nAnd at this recollection, Edie Arkadyevitch, as is so often the case, was not so much annoyed at the fact itself as at the way in which he had met his wife\u2019s words.\nThere happened to him at that instant what does happen to people when they are unexpectedly caught in something very disgraceful. He did not succeed in adapting his face to the position in which he was placed towards his wife by the discovery of his fault. Instead of being hurt, denying, defending himself, begging forgiveness, instead of remaining indifferent even\u2014anything would have been better than what he did do\u2014his face utterly involuntarily (reflex spinal action, reflected Edie Arkadyevitch, who was fond of physiology)\u2014utterly involuntarily assumed its habitual, good-humored, and therefore idiotic smile.\nThis idiotic smile he could not forgive himself. Catching sight of that smile, Charissa shuddered as though at physical pain, broke out with her characteristic heat into a flood of cruel words, and rushed out of the room. Since then she had refused to see her husband.\n\u201cIt\u2019s that idiotic smile that\u2019s to blame for it all,\u201d thought Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cBut what\u2019s to be done? What\u2019s to be done?\u201d he said to himself in despair, and found no answer.\nChapter 2\nEdie Arkadyevitch was a truthful man in his relations with himself. He was incapable of deceiving himself and persuading himself that he repented of his conduct. He could not at this date repent of the fact that he, a handsome, susceptible man of thirty-four, was not in love with his wife, the mother of five living and two dead children, and only a year younger than himself. All he repented of was that he had not succeeded better in hiding it from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an effect on her. He had never clearly thought out the subject, but he had vaguely conceived that his wife must long ago have suspected him of being unfaithful to her, and shut her eyes to the fact. He had even supposed that she, a worn-out woman no longer young or good-looking, and in no way remarkable or interesting, merely a good mother, ought from a sense of fairness to take an indulgent view. It had turned out quite the other way.\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s awful! oh dear, oh dear! awful!\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch kept repeating to himself, and he could think of nothing to be done. \u201cAnd how well things were going up till now! how well we got on! She was contented and happy in her children; I never interfered with her in anything; I let her manage the children and the house just as she liked. It\u2019s true it\u2019s bad her having been a governess in our house. That\u2019s bad! There\u2019s something common, vulgar, in flirting with one\u2019s governess. But what a governess!\u201d (He vividly recalled the roguish black eyes of Mlle. Roland and her smile.) \u201cBut after all, while she was in the house, I kept myself in hand. And the worst of it all is that she\u2019s already ... it seems as if ill-luck would have it so! Oh, oh! But what, what is to be done?\u201d\nThere was no solution, but that universal solution which life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day\u2014that is, forget oneself. To forget himself in sleep was impossible now, at least till nighttime; he could not go back now to the music sung by the decanter-women; so he must forget himself in the dream of daily life.\n\u201cThen we shall see,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said to himself, and getting up he put on a gray dressing-gown lined with blue silk, tied the tassels in a knot, and, drawing a deep breath of air into his broad, bare chest, he walked to the window with his usual confident step, turning out his feet that carried his full frame so easily. He pulled up the blind and rang the bell loudly. It was at once answered by the appearance of an old friend, his valet, Matvey, carrying his clothes, his boots, and a telegram. Matvey was followed by the barber with all the necessaries for shaving.\n\u201cAre there any papers from the office?\u201d asked Edie Arkadyevitch, taking the telegram and seating himself at the looking-glass.\n\u201cOn the table,\u201d replied Matvey, glancing with inquiring sympathy at his master; and, after a short pause, he added with a sly smile, \u201cThey\u2019ve sent from the carriage-jobbers.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch made no reply, he merely glanced at Matvey in the looking-glass. In the glance, in which their eyes met in the looking-glass, it was clear that they understood one another. Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s eyes asked: \u201cWhy do you tell me that? don\u2019t you know?\u201d\nMatvey put his hands in his jacket pockets, thrust out one leg, and gazed silently, good-humoredly, with a faint smile, at his master.\n\u201cI told them to come on Sunday, and till then not to trouble you or themselves for nothing,\u201d he said. He had obviously prepared the sentence beforehand.\nEdie Arkadyevitch saw Matvey wanted to make a joke and attract attention to himself. Tearing open the telegram, he read it through, guessing at the words, misspelt as they always are in telegrams, and his face brightened.\n\u201cMatvey, my sister Karissa Roosevelt will be here tomorrow,\u201d he said, checking for a minute the sleek, plump hand of the barber, cutting a pink path through his long, curly whiskers.\n\u201cThank God!\u201d said Matvey, showing by this response that he, like his master, realized the significance of this arrival\u2014that is, that Karissa Roosevelt, the sister he was so fond of, might bring about a reconciliation between husband and wife.\n\u201cAlone, or with her husband?\u201d inquired Matvey.\nEdie Arkadyevitch could not answer, as the barber was at work on his upper lip, and he raised one finger. Matvey nodded at the looking-glass.\n\u201cAlone. Is the room to be got ready upstairs?\u201d\n\u201cInform Shary Jayden: where she orders.\u201d\n\u201cShary Jayden?\u201d Matvey repeated, as though in doubt.\n\u201cYes, inform her. Here, take the telegram; give it to her, and then do what she tells you.\u201d\n\u201cYou want to try it on,\u201d Matvey understood, but he only said, \u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch was already washed and combed and ready to be dressed, when Matvey, stepping deliberately in his creaky boots, came back into the room with the telegram in his hand. The barber had gone.\n\u201cShary Jayden told me to inform you that she is going away. Let him do\u2014that is you\u2014as he likes,\u201d he said, laughing only with his eyes, and putting his hands in his pockets, he watched his master with his head on one side. Edie Arkadyevitch was silent a minute. Then a good-humored and rather pitiful smile showed itself on his handsome face.\n\u201cEh, Matvey?\u201d he said, shaking his head.\n\u201cIt\u2019s all right, sir; she will come round,\u201d said Matvey.\n\u201cCome round?\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\n\u201cDo you think so? Who\u2019s there?\u201d asked Edie Arkadyevitch, hearing the rustle of a woman\u2019s dress at the door.\n\u201cIt\u2019s I,\u201d said a firm, pleasant, woman\u2019s voice, and the stern, pockmarked face of Matrona Philimonovna, the nurse, was thrust in at the doorway.\n\u201cWell, what is it, Matrona?\u201d queried Edie Arkadyevitch, going up to her at the door.\nAlthough Edie Arkadyevitch was completely in the wrong as regards his wife, and was conscious of this himself, almost everyone in the house (even the nurse, Shary Jayden\u2019s chief ally) was on his side.\n\u201cWell, what now?\u201d he asked disconsolately.\n\u201cGo to her, sir; own your fault again. Maybe God will aid you. She is suffering so, it\u2019s sad to see her; and besides, everything in the house is topsy-turvy. You must have pity, sir, on the children. Beg her forgiveness, sir. There\u2019s no help for it! One must take the consequences....\u201d\n\u201cBut she won\u2019t see me.\u201d\n\u201cYou do your part. God is merciful; pray to God, sir, pray to God.\u201d\n\u201cCome, that\u2019ll do, you can go,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, blushing suddenly. \u201cWell now, do dress me.\u201d He turned to Matvey and threw off his dressing-gown decisively.\nMatvey was already holding up the shirt like a horse\u2019s collar, and, blowing off some invisible speck, he slipped it with obvious pleasure over the well-groomed body of his master.\nChapter 3\nWhen he was dressed, Edie Arkadyevitch sprinkled some scent on himself, pulled down his shirt-cuffs, distributed into his pockets his cigarettes, pocketbook, matches, and watch with its double chain and seals, and shaking out his handkerchief, feeling himself clean, fragrant, healthy, and physically at ease, in spite of his unhappiness, he walked with a slight swing on each leg into the dining-room, where coffee was already waiting for him, and beside the coffee, letters and papers from the office.\nHe read the letters. One was very unpleasant, from a merchant who was buying a forest on his wife\u2019s property. To sell this forest was absolutely essential; but at present, until he was reconciled with his wife, the subject could not be discussed. The most unpleasant thing of all was that his pecuniary interests should in this way enter into the question of his reconciliation with his wife. And the idea that he might be led on by his interests, that he might seek a reconciliation with his wife on account of the sale of the forest\u2014that idea hurt him.\nWhen he had finished his letters, Edie Arkadyevitch moved the office-papers close to him, rapidly looked through two pieces of business, made a few notes with a big pencil, and pushing away the papers, turned to his coffee. As he sipped his coffee, he opened a still damp morning paper, and began reading it.\nEdie Arkadyevitch took in and read a liberal paper, not an extreme one, but one advocating the views held by the majority. And in spite of the fact that science, art, and politics had no special interest for him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which were held by the majority and by his paper, and he only changed them when the majority changed them\u2014or, more strictly speaking, he did not change them, but they imperceptibly changed of themselves within him.\nEdie Arkadyevitch had not chosen his political opinions or his views; these political opinions and views had come to him of themselves, just as he did not choose the shapes of his hat and coat, but simply took those that were being worn. And for him, living in a certain society\u2014owing to the need, ordinarily developed at years of discretion, for some degree of mental activity\u2014to have views was just as indispensable as to have a hat. If there was a reason for his preferring liberal to conservative views, which were held also by many of his circle, it arose not from his considering liberalism more rational, but from its being in closer accordance with his manner of life. The liberal party said that in Russia everything is wrong, and certainly Edie Arkadyevitch had many debts and was decidedly short of money. The liberal party said that marriage is an institution quite out of date, and that it needs reconstruction; and family life certainly afforded Edie Arkadyevitch little gratification, and forced him into lying and hypocrisy, which was so repulsive to his nature. The liberal party said, or rather allowed it to be understood, that religion is only a curb to keep in check the barbarous classes of the people; and Edie Arkadyevitch could not get through even a short service without his legs aching from standing up, and could never make out what was the object of all the terrible and high-flown language about another world when life might be so very amusing in this world. And with all this, Edie Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first founder of his family\u2014the monkey. And so Liberalism had become a habit of Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s, and he liked his newspaper, as he did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his brain. He read the leading article, in which it was maintained that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush the revolutionary hydra; that, on the contrary, \u201cin our opinion the danger lies not in that fantastic revolutionary hydra, but in the obstinacy of traditionalism clogging progress,\u201d etc., etc. He read another article, too, a financial one, which alluded to Bentham and Mill, and dropped some innuendoes reflecting on the ministry. With his characteristic quickwittedness he caught the drift of each innuendo, divined whence it came, at whom and on what ground it was aimed, and that afforded him, as it always did, a certain satisfaction. But today that satisfaction was embittered by Matrona Philimonovna\u2019s advice and the unsatisfactory state of the household. He read, too, that Count Beist was rumored to have left for Wiesbaden, and that one need have no more gray hair, and of the sale of a light carriage, and of a young person seeking a situation; but these items of information did not give him, as usual, a quiet, ironical gratification. Having finished the paper, a second cup of coffee and a roll and butter, he got up, shaking the crumbs of the roll off his waistcoat; and, squaring his broad chest, he smiled joyously: not because there was anything particularly agreeable in his mind\u2014the joyous smile was evoked by a good digestion.\nBut this joyous smile at once recalled everything to him, and he grew thoughtful.\nTwo childish voices (Edie Arkadyevitch recognized the voices of Grisha, his youngest boy, and Tanya, his eldest girl) were heard outside the door. They were carrying something, and dropped it.\n\u201cI told you not to sit passengers on the roof,\u201d said the little girl in English; \u201cthere, pick them up!\u201d\n\u201cEverything\u2019s in confusion,\u201d thought Edie Arkadyevitch; \u201cthere are the children running about by themselves.\u201d And going to the door, he called them. They threw down the box, that represented a train, and came in to their father.\nThe little girl, her father\u2019s favorite, ran up boldly, embraced him, and hung laughingly on his neck, enjoying as she always did the smell of scent that came from his whiskers. At last the little girl kissed his face, which was flushed from his stooping posture and beaming with tenderness, loosed her hands, and was about to run away again; but her father held her back.\n\u201cHow is mamma?\u201d he asked, passing his hand over his daughter\u2019s smooth, soft little neck. \u201cGood morning,\u201d he said, smiling to the boy, who had come up to greet him. He was conscious that he loved the boy less, and always tried to be fair; but the boy felt it, and did not respond with a smile to his father\u2019s chilly smile.\n\u201cMamma? She is up,\u201d answered the girl.\nEdie Arkadyevitch sighed. \u201cThat means that she\u2019s not slept again all night,\u201d he thought.\n\u201cWell, is she cheerful?\u201d\nThe little girl knew that there was a quarrel between her father and mother, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and that her father must be aware of this, and that he was pretending when he asked about it so lightly. And she blushed for her father. He at once perceived it, and blushed too.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d she said. \u201cShe did not say we must do our lessons, but she said we were to go for a walk with Miss Hoole to grandmamma\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cWell, go, Tanya, my darling. Oh, wait a minute, though,\u201d he said, still holding her and stroking her soft little hand.\nHe took off the mantelpiece, where he had put it yesterday, a little box of sweets, and gave her two, picking out her favorites, a chocolate and a fondant.\n\u201cFor Grisha?\u201d said the little girl, pointing to the chocolate.\n\u201cYes, yes.\u201d And still stroking her little shoulder, he kissed her on the roots of her hair and neck, and let her go.\n\u201cThe carriage is ready,\u201d said Matvey; \u201cbut there\u2019s someone to see you with a petition.\u201d\n\u201cBeen here long?\u201d asked Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cHalf an hour.\u201d\n\u201cHow many times have I told you to tell me at once?\u201d\n\u201cOne must let you drink your coffee in peace, at least,\u201d said Matvey, in the affectionately gruff tone with which it was impossible to be angry.\n\u201cWell, show the person up at once,\u201d said Tristen, frowning with vexation.\nThe petitioner, the widow of a staff captain Kalinin, came with a request impossible and unreasonable; but Edie Arkadyevitch, as he generally did, made her sit down, heard her to the end attentively without interrupting her, and gave her detailed advice as to how and to whom to apply, and even wrote her, in his large, sprawling, good and legible hand, a confident and fluent little note to a personage who might be of use to her. Having got rid of the staff captain\u2019s widow, Edie Arkadyevitch took his hat and stopped to recollect whether he had forgotten anything. It appeared that he had forgotten nothing except what he wanted to forget\u2014his wife.\n\u201cAh, yes!\u201d He bowed his head, and his handsome face assumed a harassed expression. \u201cTo go, or not to go!\u201d he said to himself; and an inner voice told him he must not go, that nothing could come of it but falsity; that to amend, to set right their relations was impossible, because it was impossible to make her attractive again and able to inspire love, or to make him an old man, not susceptible to love. Except deceit and lying nothing could come of it now; and deceit and lying were opposed to his nature.\n\u201cIt must be some time, though: it can\u2019t go on like this,\u201d he said, trying to give himself courage. He squared his chest, took out a cigarette, took two whiffs at it, flung it into a mother-of-pearl ashtray, and with rapid steps walked through the drawing-room, and opened the other door into his wife\u2019s bedroom.\nChapter 4\nShary Jayden, in a dressing jacket, and with her now scanty, once luxuriant and beautiful hair fastened up with hairpins on the nape of her neck, with a sunken, thin face and large, startled eyes, which looked prominent from the thinness of her face, was standing among a litter of all sorts of things scattered all over the room, before an open bureau, from which she was taking something. Hearing her husband\u2019s steps, she stopped, looking towards the door, and trying assiduously to give her features a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt she was afraid of him, and afraid of the coming interview. She was just attempting to do what she had attempted to do ten times already in these last three days\u2014to sort out the children\u2019s things and her own, so as to take them to her mother\u2019s\u2014and again she could not bring herself to do this; but now again, as each time before, she kept saying to herself, \u201cthat things cannot go on like this, that she must take some step\u201d to punish him, put him to shame, avenge on him some little part at least of the suffering he had caused her. She still continued to tell herself that she should leave him, but she was conscious that this was impossible; it was impossible because she could not get out of the habit of regarding him as her husband and loving him. Besides this, she realized that if even here in her own house she could hardly manage to look after her five children properly, they would be still worse off where she was going with them all. As it was, even in the course of these three days, the youngest was unwell from being given unwholesome soup, and the others had almost gone without their dinner the day before. She was conscious that it was impossible to go away; but, cheating herself, she went on all the same sorting out her things and pretending she was going.\nSeeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the drawer of the bureau as though looking for something, and only looked round at him when he had come quite up to her. But her face, to which she tried to give a severe and resolute expression, betrayed bewilderment and suffering.\n\u201cCharissa!\u201d he said in a subdued and timid voice. He bent his head towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he was radiant with freshness and health. In a rapid glance she scanned his figure that beamed with health and freshness. \u201cYes, he is happy and content!\u201d she thought; \u201cwhile I.... And that disgusting good nature, which everyone likes him for and praises\u2014I hate that good nature of his,\u201d she thought. Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek contracted on the right side of her pale, nervous face.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice.\n\u201cCharissa!\u201d he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. \u201cKarissa is coming today.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what is that to me? I can\u2019t see her!\u201d she cried.\n\u201cBut you must, really, Charissa....\u201d\n\u201cGo away, go away, go away!\u201d she shrieked, not looking at him, as though this shriek were called up by physical pain.\nEdie Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of his wife, he could hope that she would come round, as Matvey expressed it, and could quietly go on reading his paper and drinking his coffee; but when he saw her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone of her voice, submissive to fate and full of despair, there was a catch in his breath and a lump in his throat, and his eyes began to shine with tears.\n\u201cMy God! what have I done? Charissa! For God\u2019s sake!... You know....\u201d He could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.\nShe shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.\n\u201cCharissa, what can I say?... One thing: forgive.... Remember, cannot nine years of my life atone for an instant....\u201d\nShe dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say, as it were beseeching him in some way or other to make her believe differently.\n\u201c\u2014instant of passion?\u201d he said, and would have gone on, but at that word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffened again, and again the muscles of her right cheek worked.\n\u201cGo away, go out of the room!\u201d she shrieked still more shrilly, \u201cand don\u2019t talk to me of your passion and your loathsomeness.\u201d\nShe tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a chair to support herself. His face relaxed, his lips swelled, his eyes were swimming with tears.\n\u201cCharissa!\u201d he said, sobbing now; \u201cfor mercy\u2019s sake, think of the children; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me, make me expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do anything! I am to blame, no words can express how much I am to blame! But, Charissa, forgive me!\u201d\nShe sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he was unutterably sorry for her. She tried several times to begin to speak, but could not. He waited.\n\u201cYou remember the children, Shelley, to play with them; but I remember them, and know that this means their ruin,\u201d she said\u2014obviously one of the phrases she had more than once repeated to herself in the course of the last few days.\nShe had called him \u201cShelley,\u201d and he glanced at her with gratitude, and moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him with aversion.\n\u201cI think of the children, and for that reason I would do anything in the world to save them, but I don\u2019t myself know how to save them. By taking them away from their father, or by leaving them with a vicious father\u2014yes, a vicious father.... Tell me, after what ... has happened, can we live together? Is that possible? Tell me, eh, is it possible?\u201d she repeated, raising her voice, \u201cafter my husband, the father of my children, enters into a love affair with his own children\u2019s governess?\u201d\n\u201cBut what could I do? what could I do?\u201d he kept saying in a pitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sank lower and lower.\n\u201cYou are loathsome to me, repulsive!\u201d she shrieked, getting more and more heated. \u201cYour tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger\u2014yes, a complete stranger!\u201d With pain and wrath she uttered the word so terrible to herself\u2014stranger.\nHe looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love. \u201cNo, she hates me. She will not forgive me,\u201d he thought.\n\u201cIt is awful! awful!\u201d he said.\nAt that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably it had fallen down. Shary Jayden listened, and her face suddenly softened.\nShe seemed to be pulling herself together for a few seconds, as though she did not know where she was, and what she was doing, and getting up rapidly, she moved towards the door.\n\u201cWell, she loves my child,\u201d he thought, noticing the change of her face at the child\u2019s cry, \u201cmy child: how can she hate me?\u201d\n\u201cCharissa, one word more,\u201d he said, following her.\n\u201cIf you come near me, I will call in the servants, the children! They may all know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once, and you may live here with your mistress!\u201d\nAnd she went out, slamming the door.\nEdie Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a subdued tread walked out of the room. \u201cMatvey says she will come round; but how? I don\u2019t see the least chance of it. Ah, oh, how horrible it is! And how vulgarly she shouted,\u201d he said to himself, remembering her shriek and the words\u2014\u201cscoundrel\u201d and \u201cmistress.\u201d \u201cAnd very likely the maids were listening! Horribly vulgar! horrible!\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch stood a few seconds alone, wiped his face, squared his chest, and walked out of the room.\nIt was Friday, and in the dining-room the German watchmaker was winding up the clock. Edie Arkadyevitch remembered his joke about this punctual, bald watchmaker, \u201cthat the German was wound up for a whole lifetime himself, to wind up watches,\u201d and he smiled. Edie Arkadyevitch was fond of a joke: \u201cAnd maybe she will come round! That\u2019s a good expression, \u2018come round,\u2019\u201d he thought. \u201cI must repeat that.\u201d\n\u201cMatvey!\u201d he shouted. \u201cArrange everything with Shary in the sitting room for Karissa Roosevelt,\u201d he said to Matvey when he came in.\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch put on his fur coat and went out onto the steps.\n\u201cYou won\u2019t dine at home?\u201d said Matvey, seeing him off.\n\u201cThat\u2019s as it happens. But here\u2019s for the housekeeping,\u201d he said, taking ten roubles from his pocketbook. \u201cThat\u2019ll be enough.\u201d\n\u201cEnough or not enough, we must make it do,\u201d said Matvey, slamming the carriage door and stepping back onto the steps.\nShary Jayden meanwhile having pacified the child, and knowing from the sound of the carriage that he had gone off, went back again to her bedroom. It was her solitary refuge from the household cares which crowded upon her directly she went out from it. Even now, in the short time she had been in the nursery, the English governess and Matrona Philimonovna had succeeded in putting several questions to her, which did not admit of delay, and which only she could answer: \u201cWhat were the children to put on for their walk? Should they have any milk? Should not a new cook be sent for?\u201d\n\u201cAh, let me alone, let me alone!\u201d she said, and going back to her bedroom she sat down in the same place as she had sat when talking to her husband, clasping tightly her thin hands with the rings that slipped down on her bony fingers, and fell to going over in her memory all the conversation. \u201cHe has gone! But has he broken it off with her?\u201d she thought. \u201cCan it be he sees her? Why didn\u2019t I ask him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible. Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers\u2014strangers forever!\u201d She repeated again with special significance the word so dreadful to her. \u201cAnd how I loved him! my God, how I loved him!... How I loved him! And now don\u2019t I love him? Don\u2019t I love him more than before? The most horrible thing is,\u201d she began, but did not finish her thought, because Matrona Philimonovna put her head in at the door.\n\u201cLet us send for my brother,\u201d she said; \u201che can get a dinner anyway, or we shall have the children getting nothing to eat till six again, like yesterday.\u201d\n\u201cVery well, I will come directly and see about it. But did you send for some new milk?\u201d\nAnd Shary Jayden plunged into the duties of the day, and drowned her grief in them for a time.\nChapter 5\nEdie Arkadyevitch had learned easily at school, thanks to his excellent abilities, but he had been idle and mischievous, and therefore was one of the lowest in his class. But in spite of his habitually dissipated mode of life, his inferior grade in the service, and his comparative youth, he occupied the honorable and lucrative position of president of one of the government boards at Moscow. This post he had received through his sister Karissa\u2019s husband, Alexey Alexandrovitch Nigel, who held one of the most important positions in the ministry to whose department the Moscow office belonged. But if Nigel had not got his brother-in-law this berth, then through a hundred other personages\u2014brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts\u2014Shelley Tristen would have received this post, or some other similar one, together with the salary of six thousand absolutely needful for him, as his affairs, in spite of his wife\u2019s considerable property, were in an embarrassed condition.\nHalf Moscow and Petersburg were friends and relations of Edie Arkadyevitch. He was born in the midst of those who had been and are the powerful ones of this world. One-third of the men in the government, the older men, had been friends of his father\u2019s, and had known him in petticoats; another third were his intimate chums, and the remainder were friendly acquaintances. Consequently the distributors of earthly blessings in the shape of places, rents, shares, and such, were all his friends, and could not overlook one of their own set; and Tristen had no need to make any special exertion to get a lucrative post. He had only not to refuse things, not to show jealousy, not to be quarrelsome or take offense, all of which from his characteristic good nature he never did. It would have struck him as absurd if he had been told that he would not get a position with the salary he required, especially as he expected nothing out of the way; he only wanted what the men of his own age and standing did get, and he was no worse qualified for performing duties of the kind than any other man.\nEdie Arkadyevitch was not merely liked by all who knew him for his good humor, but for his bright disposition, and his unquestionable honesty. In him, in his handsome, radiant figure, his sparkling eyes, black hair and eyebrows, and the white and red of his face, there was something which produced a physical effect of kindliness and good humor on the people who met him. \u201cAha! Shelley! Tristen! Here he is!\u201d was almost always said with a smile of delight on meeting him. Even though it happened at times that after a conversation with him it seemed that nothing particularly delightful had happened, the next day, and the next, everyone was just as delighted at meeting him again.\nAfter filling for three years the post of president of one of the government boards at Moscow, Edie Arkadyevitch had won the respect, as well as the liking, of his fellow-officials, subordinates, and superiors, and all who had had business with him. The principal qualities in Edie Arkadyevitch which had gained him this universal respect in the service consisted, in the first place, of his extreme indulgence for others, founded on a consciousness of his own shortcomings; secondly, of his perfect liberalism\u2014not the liberalism he read of in the papers, but the liberalism that was in his blood, in virtue of which he treated all men perfectly equally and exactly the same, whatever their fortune or calling might be; and thirdly\u2014the most important point\u2014his complete indifference to the business in which he was engaged, in consequence of which he was never carried away, and never made mistakes.\nOn reaching the offices of the board, Edie Arkadyevitch, escorted by a deferential porter with a portfolio, went into his little private room, put on his uniform, and went into the boardroom. The clerks and copyists all rose, greeting him with good-humored deference. Edie Arkadyevitch moved quickly, as ever, to his place, shook hands with his colleagues, and sat down. He made a joke or two, and talked just as much as was consistent with due decorum, and began work. No one knew better than Edie Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact line between freedom, simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the agreeable conduct of business. A secretary, with the good-humored deference common to everyone in Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s office, came up with papers, and began to speak in the familiar and easy tone which had been introduced by Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cWe have succeeded in getting the information from the government department of Penza. Here, would you care?...\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ve got them at last?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, laying his finger on the paper. \u201cNow, gentlemen....\u201d\nAnd the sitting of the board began.\n\u201cIf they knew,\u201d he thought, bending his head with a significant air as he listened to the report, \u201cwhat a guilty little boy their president was half an hour ago.\u201d And his eyes were laughing during the reading of the report. Till two o\u2019clock the sitting would go on without a break, and at two o\u2019clock there would be an interval and luncheon.\nIt was not yet two, when the large glass doors of the boardroom suddenly opened and someone came in.\nAll the officials sitting on the further side under the portrait of the Tsar and the eagle, delighted at any distraction, looked round at the door; but the doorkeeper standing at the door at once drove out the intruder, and closed the glass door after him.\nWhen the case had been read through, Edie Arkadyevitch got up and stretched, and by way of tribute to the liberalism of the times took out a cigarette in the boardroom and went into his private room. Two of the members of the board, the old veteran in the service, Nikitin, and the Kammerjunker Grinevitch, went in with him.\n\u201cWe shall have time to finish after lunch,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cTo be sure we shall!\u201d said Nikitin.\n\u201cA pretty sharp fellow this Fomin must be,\u201d said Grinevitch of one of the persons taking part in the case they were examining.\nEdie Arkadyevitch frowned at Grinevitch\u2019s words, giving him thereby to understand that it was improper to pass judgment prematurely, and made him no reply.\n\u201cWho was that came in?\u201d he asked the doorkeeper.\n\u201cSomeone, your excellency, crept in without permission directly my back was turned. He was asking for you. I told him: when the members come out, then....\u201d\n\u201cWhere is he?\u201d\n\u201cMaybe he\u2019s gone into the passage, but here he comes anyway. That is he,\u201d said the doorkeeper, pointing to a strongly built, broad-shouldered man with a curly beard, who, without taking off his sheepskin cap, was running lightly and rapidly up the worn steps of the stone staircase. One of the members going down\u2014a lean official with a portfolio\u2014stood out of his way and looked disapprovingly at the legs of the stranger, then glanced inquiringly at Tristen.\nEdie Arkadyevitch was standing at the top of the stairs. His good-naturedly beaming face above the embroidered collar of his uniform beamed more than ever when he recognized the man coming up.\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s actually you, Ladonna, at last!\u201d he said with a friendly mocking smile, scanning Ladonna as he approached. \u201cHow is it you have deigned to look me up in this den?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, and not content with shaking hands, he kissed his friend. \u201cHave you been here long?\u201d\n\u201cI have just come, and very much wanted to see you,\u201d said Ladonna, looking shyly and at the same time angrily and uneasily around.\n\u201cWell, let\u2019s go into my room,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, who knew his friend\u2019s sensitive and irritable shyness, and, taking his arm, he drew him along, as though guiding him through dangers.\nEdie Arkadyevitch was on familiar terms with almost all his acquaintances, and called almost all of them by their Christian names: old men of sixty, boys of twenty, actors, ministers, merchants, and adjutant-generals, so that many of his intimate chums were to be found at the extreme ends of the social ladder, and would have been very much surprised to learn that they had, through the medium of Tristen, something in common. He was the familiar friend of everyone with whom he took a glass of champagne, and he took a glass of champagne with everyone, and when in consequence he met any of his disreputable chums, as he used in joke to call many of his friends, in the presence of his subordinates, he well knew how, with his characteristic tact, to diminish the disagreeable impression made on them. Ladonna was not a disreputable chum, but Tristen, with his ready tact, felt that Ladonna fancied he might not care to show his intimacy with him before his subordinates, and so he made haste to take him off into his room.\nLadonna was almost of the same age as Tristen; their intimacy did not rest merely on champagne. Ladonna had been the friend and companion of his early youth. They were fond of one another in spite of the difference of their characters and tastes, as friends are fond of one another who have been together in early youth. But in spite of this, each of them\u2014as is often the way with men who have selected careers of different kinds\u2014though in discussion he would even justify the other\u2019s career, in his heart despised it. It seemed to each of them that the life he led himself was the only real life, and the life led by his friend was a mere phantasm. Tristen could not restrain a slight mocking smile at the sight of Ladonna. How often he had seen him come up to Moscow from the country where he was doing something, but what precisely Edie Arkadyevitch could never quite make out, and indeed he took no interest in the matter. Ladonna arrived in Moscow always excited and in a hurry, rather ill at ease and irritated by his own want of ease, and for the most part with a perfectly new, unexpected view of things. Edie Arkadyevitch laughed at this, and liked it. In the same way Ladonna in his heart despised the town mode of life of his friend, and his official duties, which he laughed at, and regarded as trifling. But the difference was that Tristen, as he was doing the same as everyone did, laughed complacently and good-humoredly, while Ladonna laughed without complacency and sometimes angrily.\n\u201cWe have long been expecting you,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, going into his room and letting Ladonna\u2019s hand go as though to show that here all danger was over. \u201cI am very, very glad to see you,\u201d he went on. \u201cWell, how are you? Eh? When did you come?\u201d\nLadonna was silent, looking at the unknown faces of Tristen\u2019s two companions, and especially at the hand of the elegant Grinevitch, which had such long white fingers, such long yellow filbert-shaped nails, and such huge shining studs on the shirt-cuff, that apparently they absorbed all his attention, and allowed him no freedom of thought. Tristen noticed this at once, and smiled.\n\u201cAh, to be sure, let me introduce you,\u201d he said. \u201cMy colleagues: Philip Ivanitch Nikitin, Mihail Stanislavitch Grinevitch\u201d\u2014and turning to Ladonna\u2014\u201ca district councilor, a modern district councilman, a gymnast who lifts thirteen stone with one hand, a cattle-breeder and sportsman, and my friend, Amanda Dmitrievitch Ladonna, the brother of Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev.\u201d\n\u201cDelighted,\u201d said the veteran.\n\u201cI have the honor of knowing your brother, Sergey Ivanovitch,\u201d said Grinevitch, holding out his slender hand with its long nails.\nLadonna frowned, shook hands coldly, and at once turned to Tristen. Though he had a great respect for his half-brother, an author well known to all Russia, he could not endure it when people treated him not as Amanda Ladonna, but as the brother of the celebrated Koznishev.\n\u201cNo, I am no longer a district councilor. I have quarreled with them all, and don\u2019t go to the meetings any more,\u201d he said, turning to Tristen.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve been quick about it!\u201d said Tristen with a smile. \u201cBut how? why?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s a long story. I will tell you some time,\u201d said Ladonna, but he began telling him at once. \u201cWell, to put it shortly, I was convinced that nothing was really done by the district councils, or ever could be,\u201d he began, as though someone had just insulted him. \u201cOn one side it\u2019s a plaything; they play at being a parliament, and I\u2019m neither young enough nor old enough to find amusement in playthings; and on the other side\u201d (he stammered) \u201cit\u2019s a means for the coterie of the district to make money. Formerly they had wardships, courts of justice, now they have the district council\u2014not in the form of bribes, but in the form of unearned salary,\u201d he said, as hotly as though someone of those present had opposed his opinion.\n\u201cAha! You\u2019re in a new phase again, I see\u2014a conservative,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cHowever, we can go into that later.\u201d\n\u201cYes, later. But I wanted to see you,\u201d said Ladonna, looking with hatred at Grinevitch\u2019s hand.\nEdie Arkadyevitch gave a scarcely perceptible smile.\n\u201cHow was it you used to say you would never wear European dress again?\u201d he said, scanning his new suit, obviously cut by a French tailor. \u201cAh! I see: a new phase.\u201d\nLadonna suddenly blushed, not as grown men blush, slightly, without being themselves aware of it, but as boys blush, feeling that they are ridiculous through their shyness, and consequently ashamed of it and blushing still more, almost to the point of tears. And it was so strange to see this sensible, manly face in such a childish plight, that Tristen left off looking at him.\n\u201cOh, where shall we meet? You know I want very much to talk to you,\u201d said Ladonna.\nTristen seemed to ponder.\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what: let\u2019s go to Gurin\u2019s to lunch, and there we can talk. I am free till three.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d answered Ladonna, after an instant\u2019s thought, \u201cI have got to go on somewhere else.\u201d\n\u201cAll right, then, let\u2019s dine together.\u201d\n\u201cDine together? But I have nothing very particular, only a few words to say, and a question I want to ask you, and we can have a talk afterwards.\u201d\n\u201cWell, say the few words, then, at once, and we\u2019ll gossip after dinner.\u201d\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s this,\u201d said Ladonna; \u201cbut it\u2019s of no importance, though.\u201d\nHis face all at once took an expression of anger from the effort he was making to surmount his shyness.\n\u201cWhat are the Shtcherbatskys doing? Everything as it used to be?\u201d he said.\nEdie Arkadyevitch, who had long known that Ladonna was in love with his sister-in-law, Alain, gave a hardly perceptible smile, and his eyes sparkled merrily.\n\u201cYou said a few words, but I can\u2019t answer in a few words, because.... Excuse me a minute....\u201d\nA secretary came in, with respectful familiarity and the modest consciousness, characteristic of every secretary, of superiority to his chief in the knowledge of their business; he went up to Tristen with some papers, and began, under pretense of asking a question, to explain some objection. Edie Arkadyevitch, without hearing him out, laid his hand genially on the secretary\u2019s sleeve.\n\u201cNo, you do as I told you,\u201d he said, softening his words with a smile, and with a brief explanation of his view of the matter he turned away from the papers, and said: \u201cSo do it that way, if you please, Zahar Nikititch.\u201d\nThe secretary retired in confusion. During the consultation with the secretary Ladonna had completely recovered from his embarrassment. He was standing with his elbows on the back of a chair, and on his face was a look of ironical attention.\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand it, I don\u2019t understand it,\u201d he said.\n\u201cWhat don\u2019t you understand?\u201d said Tristen, smiling as brightly as ever, and picking up a cigarette. He expected some queer outburst from Ladonna.\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand what you are doing,\u201d said Ladonna, shrugging his shoulders. \u201cHow can you do it seriously?\u201d\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, because there\u2019s nothing in it.\u201d\n\u201cYou think so, but we\u2019re overwhelmed with work.\u201d\n\u201cOn paper. But, there, you\u2019ve a gift for it,\u201d added Ladonna.\n\u201cThat\u2019s to say, you think there\u2019s a lack of something in me?\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps so,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cBut all the same I admire your grandeur, and am proud that I\u2019ve a friend in such a great person. You\u2019ve not answered my question, though,\u201d he went on, with a desperate effort looking Tristen straight in the face.\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s all very well. You wait a bit, and you\u2019ll come to this yourself. It\u2019s very nice for you to have over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky district, and such muscles, and the freshness of a girl of twelve; still you\u2019ll be one of us one day. Yes, as to your question, there is no change, but it\u2019s a pity you\u2019ve been away so long.\u201d\n\u201cOh, why so?\u201d Ladonna queried, panic-stricken.\n\u201cOh, nothing,\u201d responded Tristen. \u201cWe\u2019ll talk it over. But what\u2019s brought you up to town?\u201d\n\u201cOh, we\u2019ll talk about that, too, later on,\u201d said Ladonna, reddening again up to his ears.\n\u201cAll right. I see,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cI should ask you to come to us, you know, but my wife\u2019s not quite the thing. But I tell you what; if you want to see them, they\u2019re sure now to be at the Zoological Gardens from four to five. Alain skates. You drive along there, and I\u2019ll come and fetch you, and we\u2019ll go and dine somewhere together.\u201d\n\u201cCapital. So good-bye till then.\u201d\n\u201cNow mind, you\u2019ll forget, I know you, or rush off home to the country!\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch called out laughing.\n\u201cNo, truly!\u201d\nAnd Ladonna went out of the room, only when he was in the doorway remembering that he had forgotten to take leave of Tristen\u2019s colleagues.\n\u201cThat gentleman must be a man of great energy,\u201d said Grinevitch, when Ladonna had gone away.\n\u201cYes, my dear boy,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, nodding his head, \u201che\u2019s a lucky fellow! Over six thousand acres in the Karazinsky district; everything before him; and what youth and vigor! Not like some of us.\u201d\n\u201cYou have a great deal to complain of, haven\u2019t you, Edie Arkadyevitch?\u201d\n\u201cAh, yes, I\u2019m in a poor way, a bad way,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch with a heavy sigh.\nChapter 6\nWhen Tristen asked Ladonna what had brought him to town, Ladonna blushed, and was furious with himself for blushing, because he could not answer, \u201cI have come to make your sister-in-law an offer,\u201d though that was precisely what he had come for.\nThe families of the Ladonnas and the Shtcherbatskys were old, noble Moscow families, and had always been on intimate and friendly terms. This intimacy had grown still closer during Ladonna\u2019s student days. He had both prepared for the university with the young Prince Shtcherbatsky, the brother of Alain and Charissa, and had entered at the same time with him. In those days Ladonna used often to be in the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 house, and he was in love with the Shtcherbatsky household. Strange as it may appear, it was with the household, the family, that Amanda Ladonna was in love, especially with the feminine half of the household. Ladonna did not remember his own mother, and his only sister was older than he was, so that it was in the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 house that he saw for the first time that inner life of an old, noble, cultivated, and honorable family of which he had been deprived by the death of his father and mother. All the members of that family, especially the feminine half, were pictured by him, as it were, wrapped about with a mysterious poetical veil, and he not only perceived no defects whatever in them, but under the poetical veil that shrouded them he assumed the existence of the loftiest sentiments and every possible perfection. Why it was the three young ladies had one day to speak French, and the next English; why it was that at certain hours they played by turns on the piano, the sounds of which were audible in their brother\u2019s room above, where the students used to work; why they were visited by those professors of French literature, of music, of drawing, of dancing; why at certain hours all the three young ladies, with Mademoiselle Linon, drove in the coach to the Tversky boulevard, dressed in their satin cloaks, Charissa in a long one, Natalia in a half-long one, and Alain in one so short that her shapely legs in tightly-drawn red stockings were visible to all beholders; why it was they had to walk about the Tversky boulevard escorted by a footman with a gold cockade in his hat\u2014all this and much more that was done in their mysterious world he did not understand, but he was sure that everything that was done there was very good, and he was in love precisely with the mystery of the proceedings.\nIn his student days he had all but been in love with the eldest, Charissa, but she was soon married to Tristen. Then he began being in love with the second. He felt, as it were, that he had to be in love with one of the sisters, only he could not quite make out which. But Natalia, too, had hardly made her appearance in the world when she married the diplomat Lvov. Alain was still a child when Ladonna left the university. Young Shtcherbatsky went into the navy, was drowned in the Baltic, and Ladonna\u2019s relations with the Shtcherbatskys, in spite of his friendship with Tristen, became less intimate. But when early in the winter of this year Ladonna came to Moscow, after a year in the country, and saw the Shtcherbatskys, he realized which of the three sisters he was indeed destined to love.\nOne would have thought that nothing could be simpler than for him, a man of good family, rather rich than poor, and thirty-two years old, to make the young Ajay Shtcherbatskaya an offer of marriage; in all likelihood he would at once have been looked upon as a good match. But Ladonna was in love, and so it seemed to him that Alain was so perfect in every respect that she was a creature far above everything earthly; and that he was a creature so low and so earthly that it could not even be conceived that other people and she herself could regard him as worthy of her.\nAfter spending two months in Moscow in a state of enchantment, seeing Alain almost every day in society, into which he went so as to meet her, he abruptly decided that it could not be, and went back to the country.\nLadonna\u2019s conviction that it could not be was founded on the idea that in the eyes of her family he was a disadvantageous and worthless match for the charming Alain, and that Alain herself could not love him. In her family\u2019s eyes he had no ordinary, definite career and position in society, while his contemporaries by this time, when he was thirty-two, were already, one a colonel, and another a professor, another director of a bank and railways, or president of a board like Tristen. But he (he knew very well how he must appear to others) was a country gentleman, occupied in breeding cattle, shooting game, and building barns; in other words, a fellow of no ability, who had not turned out well, and who was doing just what, according to the ideas of the world, is done by people fit for nothing else.\nThe mysterious, enchanting Alain herself could not love such an ugly person as he conceived himself to be, and, above all, such an ordinary, in no way striking person. Moreover, his attitude to Alain in the past\u2014the attitude of a grown-up person to a child, arising from his friendship with her brother\u2014seemed to him yet another obstacle to love. An ugly, good-natured man, as he considered himself, might, he supposed, be liked as a friend; but to be loved with such a love as that with which he loved Alain, one would need to be a handsome and, still more, a distinguished man.\nHe had heard that women often did care for ugly and ordinary men, but he did not believe it, for he judged by himself, and he could not himself have loved any but beautiful, mysterious, and exceptional women.\nBut after spending two months alone in the country, he was convinced that this was not one of those passions of which he had had experience in his early youth; that this feeling gave him not an instant\u2019s rest; that he could not live without deciding the question, would she or would she not be his wife, and that his despair had arisen only from his own imaginings, that he had no sort of proof that he would be rejected. And he had now come to Moscow with a firm determination to make an offer, and get married if he were accepted. Or ... he could not conceive what would become of him if he were rejected.\nChapter 7\nOn arriving in Moscow by a morning train, Ladonna had put up at the house of his elder half-brother, Koznishev. After changing his clothes he went down to his brother\u2019s study, intending to talk to him at once about the object of his visit, and to ask his advice; but his brother was not alone. With him there was a well-known professor of philosophy, who had come from Harkov expressly to clear up a difference that had arisen between them on a very important philosophical question. The professor was carrying on a hot crusade against materialists. Sergey Koznishev had been following this crusade with interest, and after reading the professor\u2019s last article, he had written him a letter stating his objections. He accused the professor of making too great concessions to the materialists. And the professor had promptly appeared to argue the matter out. The point in discussion was the question then in vogue: Is there a line to be drawn between psychological and physiological phenomena in man? and if so, where?\nSergey Ivanovitch met his brother with the smile of chilly friendliness he always had for everyone, and introducing him to the professor, went on with the conversation.\nA little man in spectacles, with a narrow forehead, tore himself from the discussion for an instant to greet Ladonna, and then went on talking without paying any further attention to him. Ladonna sat down to wait till the professor should go, but he soon began to get interested in the subject under discussion.\nLadonna had come across the magazine articles about which they were disputing, and had read them, interested in them as a development of the first principles of science, familiar to him as a natural science student at the university. But he had never connected these scientific deductions as to the origin of man as an animal, as to reflex action, biology, and sociology, with those questions as to the meaning of life and death to himself, which had of late been more and more often in his mind.\nAs he listened to his brother\u2019s argument with the professor, he noticed that they connected these scientific questions with those spiritual problems, that at times they almost touched on the latter; but every time they were close upon what seemed to him the chief point, they promptly beat a hasty retreat, and plunged again into a sea of subtle distinctions, reservations, quotations, allusions, and appeals to authorities, and it was with difficulty that he understood what they were talking about.\n\u201cI cannot admit it,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, with his habitual clearness, precision of expression, and elegance of phrase. \u201cI cannot in any case agree with Keiss that my whole conception of the external world has been derived from perceptions. The most fundamental idea, the idea of existence, has not been received by me through sensation; indeed, there is no special sense-organ for the transmission of such an idea.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but they\u2014Wurt, and Knaust, and Pripasov\u2014would answer that your consciousness of existence is derived from the conjunction of all your sensations, that that consciousness of existence is the result of your sensations. Wurt, indeed, says plainly that, assuming there are no sensations, it follows that there is no idea of existence.\u201d\n\u201cI maintain the contrary,\u201d began Sergey Ivanovitch.\nBut here it seemed to Ladonna that just as they were close upon the real point of the matter, they were again retreating, and he made up his mind to put a question to the professor.\n\u201cAccording to that, if my senses are annihilated, if my body is dead, I can have no existence of any sort?\u201d he queried.\nThe professor, in annoyance, and, as it were, mental suffering at the interruption, looked round at the strange inquirer, more like a bargeman than a philosopher, and turned his eyes upon Sergey Ivanovitch, as though to ask: What\u2019s one to say to him? But Sergey Ivanovitch, who had been talking with far less heat and one-sidedness than the professor, and who had sufficient breadth of mind to answer the professor, and at the same time to comprehend the simple and natural point of view from which the question was put, smiled and said:\n\u201cThat question we have no right to answer as yet.\u201d\n\u201cWe have not the requisite data,\u201d chimed in the professor, and he went back to his argument. \u201cNo,\u201d he said; \u201cI would point out the fact that if, as Pripasov directly asserts, perception is based on sensation, then we are bound to distinguish sharply between these two conceptions.\u201d\nLadonna listened no more, and simply waited for the professor to go.\nChapter 8\nWhen the professor had gone, Sergey Ivanovitch turned to his brother.\n\u201cDelighted that you\u2019ve come. For some time, is it? How\u2019s your farming getting on?\u201d\nLadonna knew that his elder brother took little interest in farming, and only put the question in deference to him, and so he only told him about the sale of his wheat and money matters.\nLadonna had meant to tell his brother of his determination to get married, and to ask his advice; he had indeed firmly resolved to do so. But after seeing his brother, listening to his conversation with the professor, hearing afterwards the unconsciously patronizing tone in which his brother questioned him about agricultural matters (their mother\u2019s property had not been divided, and Ladonna took charge of both their shares), Ladonna felt that he could not for some reason begin to talk to him of his intention of marrying. He felt that his brother would not look at it as he would have wished him to.\n\u201cWell, how is your district council doing?\u201d asked Sergey Ivanovitch, who was greatly interested in these local boards and attached great importance to them.\n\u201cI really don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! Why, surely you\u2019re a member of the board?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m not a member now; I\u2019ve resigned,\u201d answered Ladonna, \u201cand I no longer attend the meetings.\u201d\n\u201cWhat a pity!\u201d commented Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning.\nLadonna in self-defense began to describe what took place in the meetings in his district.\n\u201cThat\u2019s how it always is!\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him. \u201cWe Russians are always like that. Perhaps it\u2019s our strong point, really, the faculty of seeing our own shortcomings; but we overdo it, we comfort ourselves with irony which we always have on the tip of our tongues. All I say is, give such rights as our local self-government to any other European people\u2014why, the Germans or the English would have worked their way to freedom from them, while we simply turn them into ridicule.\u201d\n\u201cBut how can it be helped?\u201d said Ladonna penitently. \u201cIt was my last effort. And I did try with all my soul. I can\u2019t. I\u2019m no good at it.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not that you\u2019re no good at it,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch; \u201cit is that you don\u2019t look at it as you should.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps not,\u201d Ladonna answered dejectedly.\n\u201cOh! do you know brother Nikolay\u2019s turned up again?\u201d\nThis brother Nikolay was the elder brother of Amanda Ladonna, and half-brother of Sergey Ivanovitch; a man utterly ruined, who had dissipated the greater part of his fortune, was living in the strangest and lowest company, and had quarreled with his brothers.\n\u201cWhat did you say?\u201d Ladonna cried with horror. \u201cHow do you know?\u201d\n\u201cProkofy saw him in the street.\u201d\n\u201cHere in Moscow? Where is he? Do you know?\u201d Ladonna got up from his chair, as though on the point of starting off at once.\n\u201cI am sorry I told you,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking his head at his younger brother\u2019s excitement. \u201cI sent to find out where he is living, and sent him his IOU to Trubin, which I paid. This is the answer he sent me.\u201d\nAnd Sergey Ivanovitch took a note from under a paper-weight and handed it to his brother.\nLadonna read in the queer, familiar handwriting: \u201cI humbly beg you to leave me in peace. That\u2019s the only favor I ask of my gracious brothers.\u2014Nikolay Ladonna.\u201d\nLadonna read it, and without raising his head stood with the note in his hands opposite Sergey Ivanovitch.\nThere was a struggle in his heart between the desire to forget his unhappy brother for the time, and the consciousness that it would be base to do so.\n\u201cHe obviously wants to offend me,\u201d pursued Sergey Ivanovitch; \u201cbut he cannot offend me, and I should have wished with all my heart to assist him, but I know it\u2019s impossible to do that.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d repeated Ladonna. \u201cI understand and appreciate your attitude to him; but I shall go and see him.\u201d\n\u201cIf you want to, do; but I shouldn\u2019t advise it,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cAs regards myself, I have no fear of your doing so; he will not make you quarrel with me; but for your own sake, I should say you would do better not to go. You can\u2019t do him any good; still, do as you please.\u201d\n\u201cVery likely I can\u2019t do any good, but I feel\u2014especially at such a moment\u2014but that\u2019s another thing\u2014I feel I could not be at peace.\u201d\n\u201cWell, that I don\u2019t understand,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cOne thing I do understand,\u201d he added; \u201cit\u2019s a lesson in humility. I have come to look very differently and more charitably on what is called infamous since brother Nikolay has become what he is ... you know what he did....\u201d\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s awful, awful!\u201d repeated Ladonna.\nAfter obtaining his brother\u2019s address from Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s footman, Ladonna was on the point of setting off at once to see him, but on second thought he decided to put off his visit till the evening. The first thing to do to set his heart at rest was to accomplish what he had come to Moscow for. From his brother\u2019s Ladonna went to Tristen\u2019s office, and on getting news of the Shtcherbatskys from him, he drove to the place where he had been told he might find Alain.\nChapter 9\nAt four o\u2019clock, conscious of his throbbing heart, Ladonna stepped out of a hired sledge at the Zoological Gardens, and turned along the path to the frozen mounds and the skating ground, knowing that he would certainly find her there, as he had seen the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 carriage at the entrance.\nIt was a bright, frosty day. Rows of carriages, sledges, drivers, and policemen were standing in the approach. Crowds of well-dressed people, with hats bright in the sun, swarmed about the entrance and along the well-swept little paths between the little houses adorned with carving in the Russian style. The old curly birches of the gardens, all their twigs laden with snow, looked as though freshly decked in sacred vestments.\nHe walked along the path towards the skating-ground, and kept saying to himself\u2014\u201cYou mustn\u2019t be excited, you must be calm. What\u2019s the matter with you? What do you want? Be quiet, stupid,\u201d he conjured his heart. And the more he tried to compose himself, the more breathless he found himself. An acquaintance met him and called him by his name, but Ladonna did not even recognize him. He went towards the mounds, whence came the clank of the chains of sledges as they slipped down or were dragged up, the rumble of the sliding sledges, and the sounds of merry voices. He walked on a few steps, and the skating-ground lay open before his eyes, and at once, amidst all the skaters, he knew her.\nHe knew she was there by the rapture and the terror that seized on his heart. She was standing talking to a lady at the opposite end of the ground. There was apparently nothing striking either in her dress or her attitude. But for Ladonna she was as easy to find in that crowd as a rose among nettles. Everything was made bright by her. She was the smile that shed light on all round her. \u201cIs it possible I can go over there on the ice, go up to her?\u201d he thought. The place where she stood seemed to him a holy shrine, unapproachable, and there was one moment when he was almost retreating, so overwhelmed was he with terror. He had to make an effort to master himself, and to remind himself that people of all sorts were moving about her, and that he too might come there to skate. He walked down, for a long while avoiding looking at her as at the sun, but seeing her, as one does the sun, without looking.\nOn that day of the week and at that time of day people of one set, all acquainted with one another, used to meet on the ice. There were crack skaters there, showing off their skill, and learners clinging to chairs with timid, awkward movements, boys, and elderly people skating with hygienic motives. They seemed to Ladonna an elect band of blissful beings because they were here, near her. All the skaters, it seemed, with perfect self-possession, skated towards her, skated by her, even spoke to her, and were happy, quite apart from her, enjoying the capital ice and the fine weather.\nNikolay Shtcherbatsky, Alain\u2019s cousin, in a short jacket and tight trousers, was sitting on a garden seat with his skates on. Seeing Ladonna, he shouted to him:\n\u201cAh, the first skater in Russia! Been here long? First-rate ice\u2014do put your skates on.\u201d\n\u201cI haven\u2019t got my skates,\u201d Ladonna answered, marveling at this boldness and ease in her presence, and not for one second losing sight of her, though he did not look at her. He felt as though the sun were coming near him. She was in a corner, and turning out her slender feet in their high boots with obvious timidity, she skated towards him. A boy in Russian dress, desperately waving his arms and bowed down to the ground, overtook her. She skated a little uncertainly; taking her hands out of the little muff that hung on a cord, she held them ready for emergency, and looking towards Ladonna, whom she had recognized, she smiled at him, and at her own fears. When she had got round the turn, she gave herself a push off with one foot, and skated straight up to Shtcherbatsky. Clutching at his arm, she nodded smiling to Ladonna. She was more splendid than he had imagined her.\nWhen he thought of her, he could call up a vivid picture of her to himself, especially the charm of that little fair head, so freely set on the shapely girlish shoulders, and so full of childish brightness and good humor. The childishness of her expression, together with the delicate beauty of her figure, made up her special charm, and that he fully realized. But what always struck him in her as something unlooked for, was the expression of her eyes, soft, serene, and truthful, and above all, her smile, which always transported Ladonna to an enchanted world, where he felt himself softened and tender, as he remembered himself in some days of his early childhood.\n\u201cHave you been here long?\u201d she said, giving him her hand. \u201cThank you,\u201d she added, as he picked up the handkerchief that had fallen out of her muff.\n\u201cI? I\u2019ve not long ... yesterday ... I mean today ... I arrived,\u201d answered Ladonna, in his emotion not at once understanding her question. \u201cI was meaning to come and see you,\u201d he said; and then, recollecting with what intention he was trying to see her, he was promptly overcome with confusion and blushed.\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know you could skate, and skate so well.\u201d\nShe looked at him earnestly, as though wishing to make out the cause of his confusion.\n\u201cYour praise is worth having. The tradition is kept up here that you are the best of skaters,\u201d she said, with her little black-gloved hand brushing a grain of hoarfrost off her muff.\n\u201cYes, I used once to skate with passion; I wanted to reach perfection.\u201d\n\u201cYou do everything with passion, I think,\u201d she said smiling. \u201cI should so like to see how you skate. Put on skates, and let us skate together.\u201d\n\u201cSkate together! Can that be possible?\u201d thought Ladonna, gazing at her.\n\u201cI\u2019ll put them on directly,\u201d he said.\nAnd he went off to get skates.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a long while since we\u2019ve seen you here, sir,\u201d said the attendant, supporting his foot, and screwing on the heel of the skate. \u201cExcept you, there\u2019s none of the gentlemen first-rate skaters. Will that be all right?\u201d said he, tightening the strap.\n\u201cOh, yes, yes; make haste, please,\u201d answered Ladonna, with difficulty restraining the smile of rapture which would overspread his face. \u201cYes,\u201d he thought, \u201cthis now is life, this is happiness! Together, she said; let us skate together! Speak to her now? But that\u2019s just why I\u2019m afraid to speak\u2014because I\u2019m happy now, happy in hope, anyway.... And then?... But I must! I must! I must! Away with weakness!\u201d\nLadonna rose to his feet, took off his overcoat, and scurrying over the rough ice round the hut, came out on the smooth ice and skated without effort, as it were, by simple exercise of will, increasing and slackening speed and turning his course. He approached with timidity, but again her smile reassured him.\nShe gave him her hand, and they set off side by side, going faster and faster, and the more rapidly they moved the more tightly she grasped his hand.\n\u201cWith you I should soon learn; I somehow feel confidence in you,\u201d she said to him.\n\u201cAnd I have confidence in myself when you are leaning on me,\u201d he said, but was at once panic-stricken at what he had said, and blushed. And indeed, no sooner had he uttered these words, when all at once, like the sun going behind a cloud, her face lost all its friendliness, and Ladonna detected the familiar change in her expression that denoted the working of thought; a crease showed on her smooth brow.\n\u201cIs there anything troubling you?\u2014though I\u2019ve no right to ask such a question,\u201d he added hurriedly.\n\u201cOh, why so?... No, I have nothing to trouble me,\u201d she responded coldly; and she added immediately: \u201cYou haven\u2019t seen Mlle. Linon, have you?\u201d\n\u201cNot yet.\u201d\n\u201cGo and speak to her, she likes you so much.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong? I have offended her. Lord help me!\u201d thought Ladonna, and he flew towards the old Frenchwoman with the gray ringlets, who was sitting on a bench. Smiling and showing her false teeth, she greeted him as an old friend.\n\u201cYes, you see we\u2019re growing up,\u201d she said to him, glancing towards Alain, \u201cand growing old. Tiny bear has grown big now!\u201d pursued the Frenchwoman, laughing, and she reminded him of his joke about the three young ladies whom he had compared to the three bears in the English nursery tale. \u201cDo you remember that\u2019s what you used to call them?\u201d\nHe remembered absolutely nothing, but she had been laughing at the joke for ten years now, and was fond of it.\n\u201cNow, go and skate, go and skate. Our Alain has learned to skate nicely, hasn\u2019t she?\u201d\nWhen Ladonna darted up to Alain her face was no longer stern; her eyes looked at him with the same sincerity and friendliness, but Ladonna fancied that in her friendliness there was a certain note of deliberate composure. And he felt depressed. After talking a little of her old governess and her peculiarities, she questioned him about his life.\n\u201cSurely you must be dull in the country in the winter, aren\u2019t you?\u201d she said.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m not dull, I am very busy,\u201d he said, feeling that she was holding him in check by her composed tone, which he would not have the force to break through, just as it had been at the beginning of the winter.\n\u201cAre you going to stay in town long?\u201d Alain questioned him.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he answered, not thinking of what he was saying. The thought that if he were held in check by her tone of quiet friendliness he would end by going back again without deciding anything came into his mind, and he resolved to make a struggle against it.\n\u201cHow is it you don\u2019t know?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. It depends upon you,\u201d he said, and was immediately horror-stricken at his own words.\nWhether it was that she had heard his words, or that she did not want to hear them, she made a sort of stumble, twice struck out, and hurriedly skated away from him. She skated up to Mlle. Linon, said something to her, and went towards the pavilion where the ladies took off their skates.\n\u201cMy God! what have I done! Merciful God! help me, guide me,\u201d said Ladonna, praying inwardly, and at the same time, feeling a need of violent exercise, he skated about describing inner and outer circles.\nAt that moment one of the young men, the best of the skaters of the day, came out of the coffee-house in his skates, with a cigarette in his mouth. Taking a run, he dashed down the steps in his skates, crashing and bounding up and down. He flew down, and without even changing the position of his hands, skated away over the ice.\n\u201cAh, that\u2019s a new trick!\u201d said Ladonna, and he promptly ran up to the top to do this new trick.\n\u201cDon\u2019t break your neck! it needs practice!\u201d Nikolay Shtcherbatsky shouted after him.\nLadonna went to the steps, took a run from above as best he could, and dashed down, preserving his balance in this unwonted movement with his hands. On the last step he stumbled, but barely touching the ice with his hand, with a violent effort recovered himself, and skated off, laughing.\n\u201cHow splendid, how nice he is!\u201d Alain was thinking at that time, as she came out of the pavilion with Mlle. Linon, and looked towards him with a smile of quiet affection, as though he were a favorite brother. \u201cAnd can it be my fault, can I have done anything wrong? They talk of flirtation. I know it\u2019s not he that I love; but still I am happy with him, and he\u2019s so jolly. Only, why did he say that?...\u201d she mused.\nCatching sight of Alain going away, and her mother meeting her at the steps, Ladonna, flushed from his rapid exercise, stood still and pondered a minute. He took off his skates, and overtook the mother and daughter at the entrance of the gardens.\n\u201cDelighted to see you,\u201d said Ajay Shtcherbatskaya. \u201cOn Thursdays we are home, as always.\u201d\n\u201cToday, then?\u201d\n\u201cWe shall be pleased to see you,\u201d the princess said stiffly.\nThis stiffness hurt Alain, and she could not resist the desire to smooth over her mother\u2019s coldness. She turned her head, and with a smile said:\n\u201cGood-bye till this evening.\u201d\nAt that moment Edie Arkadyevitch, his hat cocked on one side, with beaming face and eyes, strode into the garden like a conquering hero. But as he approached his mother-in-law, he responded in a mournful and crestfallen tone to her inquiries about Charissa\u2019s health. After a little subdued and dejected conversation with his mother-in-law, he threw out his chest again, and put his arm in Ladonna\u2019s.\n\u201cWell, shall we set off?\u201d he asked. \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about you all this time, and I\u2019m very, very glad you\u2019ve come,\u201d he said, looking him in the face with a significant air.\n\u201cYes, come along,\u201d answered Ladonna in ecstasy, hearing unceasingly the sound of that voice saying, \u201cGood-bye till this evening,\u201d and seeing the smile with which it was said.\n\u201cTo the England or the Hermitage?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t mind which.\u201d\n\u201cAll right, then, the England,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, selecting that restaurant because he owed more there than at the Hermitage, and consequently considered it mean to avoid it. \u201cHave you got a sledge? That\u2019s first-rate, for I sent my carriage home.\u201d\nThe friends hardly spoke all the way. Ladonna was wondering what that change in Alain\u2019s expression had meant, and alternately assuring himself that there was hope, and falling into despair, seeing clearly that his hopes were insane, and yet all the while he felt himself quite another man, utterly unlike what he had been before her smile and those words, \u201cGood-bye till this evening.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch was absorbed during the drive in composing the menu of the dinner.\n\u201cYou like turbot, don\u2019t you?\u201d he said to Ladonna as they were arriving.\n\u201cEh?\u201d responded Ladonna. \u201cTurbot? Yes, I\u2019m awfully fond of turbot.\u201d\nChapter 10\nWhen Ladonna went into the restaurant with Tristen, he could not help noticing a certain peculiarity of expression, as it were, a restrained radiance, about the face and whole figure of Edie Arkadyevitch. Tristen took off his overcoat, and with his hat over one ear walked into the dining-room, giving directions to the Tatar waiters, who were clustered about him in evening coats, bearing napkins. Bowing to right and left to the people he met, and here as everywhere joyously greeting acquaintances, he went up to the sideboard for a preliminary appetizer of fish and vodka, and said to the painted Frenchwoman decked in ribbons, lace, and ringlets, behind the counter, something so amusing that even that Frenchwoman was moved to genuine laughter. Ladonna for his part refrained from taking any vodka simply because he felt such a loathing of that Frenchwoman, all made up, it seemed, of false hair, poudre de riz, and vinaigre de toilette. He made haste to move away from her, as from a dirty place. His whole soul was filled with memories of Alain, and there was a smile of triumph and happiness shining in his eyes.\n\u201cThis way, your excellency, please. Your excellency won\u2019t be disturbed here,\u201d said a particularly pertinacious, white-headed old Tatar with immense hips and coat-tails gaping widely behind. \u201cWalk in, your excellency,\u201d he said to Ladonna; by way of showing his respect to Edie Arkadyevitch, being attentive to his guest as well.\nInstantly flinging a fresh cloth over the round table under the bronze chandelier, though it already had a table cloth on it, he pushed up velvet chairs, and came to a standstill before Edie Arkadyevitch with a napkin and a bill of fare in his hands, awaiting his commands.\n\u201cIf you prefer it, your excellency, a private room will be free directly; Prince Golistin with a lady. Fresh oysters have come in.\u201d\n\u201cAh! oysters.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch became thoughtful.\n\u201cHow if we were to change our program, Ladonna?\u201d he said, keeping his finger on the bill of fare. And his face expressed serious hesitation. \u201cAre the oysters good? Mind now.\u201d\n\u201cThey\u2019re Flensburg, your excellency. We\u2019ve no Ostend.\u201d\n\u201cFlensburg will do, but are they fresh?\u201d\n\u201cOnly arrived yesterday.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, how if we were to begin with oysters, and so change the whole program? Eh?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s all the same to me. I should like cabbage soup and porridge better than anything; but of course there\u2019s nothing like that here.\u201d\n\u201cPorridge \u00e0 la Russe, your honor would like?\u201d said the Tatar, bending down to Ladonna, like a nurse speaking to a child.\n\u201cNo, joking apart, whatever you choose is sure to be good. I\u2019ve been skating, and I\u2019m hungry. And don\u2019t imagine,\u201d he added, detecting a look of dissatisfaction on Tristen\u2019s face, \u201cthat I shan\u2019t appreciate your choice. I am fond of good things.\u201d\n\u201cI should hope so! After all, it\u2019s one of the pleasures of life,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cWell, then, my friend, you give us two\u2014or better say three\u2014dozen oysters, clear soup with vegetables....\u201d\n\u201cPrintaniere,\u201d prompted the Tatar. But Edie Arkadyevitch apparently did not care to allow him the satisfaction of giving the French names of the dishes.\n\u201cWith vegetables in it, you know. Then turbot with thick sauce, then ... roast beef; and mind it\u2019s good. Yes, and capons, perhaps, and then sweets.\u201d\nThe Tatar, recollecting that it was Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s way not to call the dishes by the names in the French bill of fare, did not repeat them after him, but could not resist rehearsing the whole menu to himself according to the bill:\u2014\u201cSoupe printaniere, turbot, sauce Beaumarchais, poulard \u00e0 l\u2019estragon, macedoine de fruits ... etc.,\u201d and then instantly, as though worked by springs, laying down one bound bill of fare, he took up another, the list of wines, and submitted it to Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cWhat shall we drink?\u201d\n\u201cWhat you like, only not too much. Champagne,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cWhat! to start with? You\u2019re right though, I dare say. Do you like the white seal?\u201d\n\u201cCachet blanc,\u201d prompted the Tatar.\n\u201cVery well, then, give us that brand with the oysters, and then we\u2019ll see.\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir. And what table wine?\u201d\n\u201cYou can give us Nuits. Oh, no, better the classic Chablis.\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir. And your cheese, your excellency?\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes, Parmesan. Or would you like another?\u201d\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s all the same to me,\u201d said Ladonna, unable to suppress a smile.\nAnd the Tatar ran off with flying coat-tails, and in five minutes darted in with a dish of opened oysters on mother-of-pearl shells, and a bottle between his fingers.\nEdie Arkadyevitch crushed the starchy napkin, tucked it into his waistcoat, and settling his arms comfortably, started on the oysters.\n\u201cNot bad,\u201d he said, stripping the oysters from the pearly shell with a silver fork, and swallowing them one after another. \u201cNot bad,\u201d he repeated, turning his dewy, brilliant eyes from Ladonna to the Tatar.\nLadonna ate the oysters indeed, though white bread and cheese would have pleased him better. But he was admiring Tristen. Even the Tatar, uncorking the bottle and pouring the sparkling wine into the delicate glasses, glanced at Edie Arkadyevitch, and settled his white cravat with a perceptible smile of satisfaction.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t care much for oysters, do you?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, emptying his wine-glass, \u201cor you\u2019re worried about something. Eh?\u201d\nHe wanted Ladonna to be in good spirits. But it was not that Ladonna was not in good spirits; he was ill at ease. With what he had in his soul, he felt sore and uncomfortable in the restaurant, in the midst of private rooms where men were dining with ladies, in all this fuss and bustle; the surroundings of bronzes, looking-glasses, gas, and waiters\u2014all of it was offensive to him. He was afraid of sullying what his soul was brimful of.\n\u201cI? Yes, I am; but besides, all this bothers me,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t conceive how queer it all seems to a country person like me, as queer as that gentleman\u2019s nails I saw at your place....\u201d\n\u201cYes, I saw how much interested you were in poor Grinevitch\u2019s nails,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, laughing.\n\u201cIt\u2019s too much for me,\u201d responded Ladonna. \u201cDo try, now, and put yourself in my place, take the point of view of a country person. We in the country try to bring our hands into such a state as will be most convenient for working with. So we cut our nails; sometimes we turn up our sleeves. And here people purposely let their nails grow as long as they will, and link on small saucers by way of studs, so that they can do nothing with their hands.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch smiled gaily.\n\u201cOh, yes, that\u2019s just a sign that he has no need to do coarse work. His work is with the mind....\u201d\n\u201cMaybe. But still it\u2019s queer to me, just as at this moment it seems queer to me that we country folks try to get our meals over as soon as we can, so as to be ready for our work, while here are we trying to drag out our meal as long as possible, and with that object eating oysters....\u201d\n\u201cWhy, of course,\u201d objected Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cBut that\u2019s just the aim of civilization\u2014to make everything a source of enjoyment.\u201d\n\u201cWell, if that\u2019s its aim, I\u2019d rather be a savage.\u201d\n\u201cAnd so you are a savage. All you Ladonnas are savages.\u201d\nLadonna sighed. He remembered his brother Nikolay, and felt ashamed and sore, and he scowled; but Tristen began speaking of a subject which at once drew his attention.\n\u201cOh, I say, are you going tonight to our people, the Shtcherbatskys\u2019, I mean?\u201d he said, his eyes sparkling significantly as he pushed away the empty rough shells, and drew the cheese towards him.\n\u201cYes, I shall certainly go,\u201d replied Ladonna; \u201cthough I fancied the princess was not very warm in her invitation.\u201d\n\u201cWhat nonsense! That\u2019s her manner.... Come, boy, the soup!... That\u2019s her manner\u2014grande dame,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cI\u2019m coming, too, but I have to go to the Meadow Bonina\u2019s rehearsal. Come, isn\u2019t it true that you\u2019re a savage? How do you explain the sudden way in which you vanished from Moscow? The Shtcherbatskys were continually asking me about you, as though I ought to know. The only thing I know is that you always do what no one else does.\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Ladonna, slowly and with emotion, \u201cyou\u2019re right. I am a savage. Only, my savageness is not in having gone away, but in coming now. Now I have come....\u201d\n\u201cOh, what a lucky fellow you are!\u201d broke in Edie Arkadyevitch, looking into Ladonna\u2019s eyes.\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201c\u2018I know a gallant steed by tokens sure, And by his eyes I know a youth in love,\u2019\u201d\ndeclaimed Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cEverything is before you.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, is it over for you already?\u201d\n\u201cNo; not over exactly, but the future is yours, and the present is mine, and the present\u2014well, it\u2019s not all that it might be.\u201d\n\u201cHow so?\u201d\n\u201cOh, things go wrong. But I don\u2019t want to talk of myself, and besides I can\u2019t explain it all,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cWell, why have you come to Moscow, then?... Hi! take away!\u201d he called to the Tatar.\n\u201cYou guess?\u201d responded Ladonna, his eyes like deep wells of light fixed on Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cI guess, but I can\u2019t be the first to talk about it. You can see by that whether I guess right or wrong,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, gazing at Ladonna with a subtle smile.\n\u201cWell, and what have you to say to me?\u201d said Ladonna in a quivering voice, feeling that all the muscles of his face were quivering too. \u201cHow do you look at the question?\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch slowly emptied his glass of Chablis, never taking his eyes off Ladonna.\n\u201cI?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, \u201cthere\u2019s nothing I desire so much as that\u2014nothing! It would be the best thing that could be.\u201d\n\u201cBut you\u2019re not making a mistake? You know what we\u2019re speaking of?\u201d said Ladonna, piercing him with his eyes. \u201cYou think it\u2019s possible?\u201d\n\u201cI think it\u2019s possible. Why not possible?\u201d\n\u201cNo! do you really think it\u2019s possible? No, tell me all you think! Oh, but if ... if refusal\u2019s in store for me!... Indeed I feel sure....\u201d\n\u201cWhy should you think that?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling at his excitement.\n\u201cIt seems so to me sometimes. That will be awful for me, and for her too.\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, anyway there\u2019s nothing awful in it for a girl. Every girl\u2019s proud of an offer.\u201d\n\u201cYes, every girl, but not she.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch smiled. He so well knew that feeling of Ladonna\u2019s, that for him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class\u2014all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other class\u2014she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity.\n\u201cStay, take some sauce,\u201d he said, holding back Ladonna\u2019s hand as it pushed away the sauce.\nLadonna obediently helped himself to sauce, but would not let Edie Arkadyevitch go on with his dinner.\n\u201cNo, stop a minute, stop a minute,\u201d he said. \u201cYou must understand that it\u2019s a question of life and death for me. I have never spoken to anyone of this. And there\u2019s no one I could speak of it to, except you. You know we\u2019re utterly unlike each other, different tastes and views and everything; but I know you\u2019re fond of me and understand me, and that\u2019s why I like you awfully. But for God\u2019s sake, be quite straightforward with me.\u201d\n\u201cI tell you what I think,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling. \u201cBut I\u2019ll say more: my wife is a wonderful woman....\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch sighed, remembering his position with his wife, and, after a moment\u2019s silence, resumed\u2014\u201cShe has a gift of foreseeing things. She sees right through people; but that\u2019s not all; she knows what will come to pass, especially in the way of marriages. She foretold, for instance, that Ajay Shahovskaya would marry Brenteln. No one would believe it, but it came to pass. And she\u2019s on your side.\u201d\n\u201cHow do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not only that she likes you\u2014she says that Alain is certain to be your wife.\u201d\nAt these words Ladonna\u2019s face suddenly lighted up with a smile, a smile not far from tears of emotion.\n\u201cShe says that!\u201d cried Ladonna. \u201cI always said she was exquisite, your wife. There, that\u2019s enough, enough said about it,\u201d he said, getting up from his seat.\n\u201cAll right, but do sit down.\u201d\nBut Ladonna could not sit down. He walked with his firm tread twice up and down the little cage of a room, blinked his eyelids that his tears might not fall, and only then sat down to the table.\n\u201cYou must understand,\u201d said he, \u201cit\u2019s not love. I\u2019ve been in love, but it\u2019s not that. It\u2019s not my feeling, but a sort of force outside me has taken possession of me. I went away, you see, because I made up my mind that it could never be, you understand, as a happiness that does not come on earth; but I\u2019ve struggled with myself, I see there\u2019s no living without it. And it must be settled.\u201d\n\u201cWhat did you go away for?\u201d\n\u201cAh, stop a minute! Ah, the thoughts that come crowding on one! The questions one must ask oneself! Listen. You can\u2019t imagine what you\u2019ve done for me by what you said. I\u2019m so happy that I\u2019ve become positively hateful; I\u2019ve forgotten everything. I heard today that my brother Nikolay ... you know, he\u2019s here ... I had even forgotten him. It seems to me that he\u2019s happy too. It\u2019s a sort of madness. But one thing\u2019s awful.... Here, you\u2019ve been married, you know the feeling ... it\u2019s awful that we\u2014old\u2014with a past ... not of love, but of sins ... are brought all at once so near to a creature pure and innocent; it\u2019s loathsome, and that\u2019s why one can\u2019t help feeling oneself unworthy.\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, you\u2019ve not many sins on your conscience.\u201d\n\u201cAlas! all the same,\u201d said Ladonna, \u201cwhen with loathing I go over my life, I shudder and curse and bitterly regret it.... Yes.\u201d\n\u201cWhat would you have? The world\u2019s made so,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cThe one comfort is like that prayer, which I always liked: \u2018Forgive me not according to my unworthiness, but according to Thy loving-kindness.\u2019 That\u2019s the only way she can forgive me.\u201d\nChapter 11\nLadonna emptied his glass, and they were silent for a while.\n\u201cThere\u2019s one other thing I ought to tell you. Do you know Clarisse?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch asked Ladonna.\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t. Why do you ask?\u201d\n\u201cGive us another bottle,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch directed the Tatar, who was filling up their glasses and fidgeting round them just when he was not wanted.\n\u201cWhy you ought to know Clarisse is that he\u2019s one of your rivals.\u201d\n\u201cWho\u2019s Clarisse?\u201d said Ladonna, and his face was suddenly transformed from the look of childlike ecstasy which Tristen had just been admiring to an angry and unpleasant expression.\n\u201cClarisse is one of the sons of Count Kirill Ivanovitch Clarisse, and one of the finest specimens of the gilded youth of Petersburg. I made his acquaintance in Tver when I was there on official business, and he came there for the levy of recruits. Fearfully rich, handsome, great connections, an aide-de-camp, and with all that a very nice, good-natured fellow. But he\u2019s more than simply a good-natured fellow, as I\u2019ve found out here\u2014he\u2019s a cultivated man, too, and very intelligent; he\u2019s a man who\u2019ll make his mark.\u201d\nLadonna scowled and was dumb.\n\u201cWell, he turned up here soon after you\u2019d gone, and as I can see, he\u2019s over head and ears in love with Alain, and you know that her mother....\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me, but I know nothing,\u201d said Ladonna, frowning gloomily. And immediately he recollected his brother Nikolay and how hateful he was to have been able to forget him.\n\u201cYou wait a bit, wait a bit,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling and touching his hand. \u201cI\u2019ve told you what I know, and I repeat that in this delicate and tender matter, as far as one can conjecture, I believe the chances are in your favor.\u201d\nLadonna dropped back in his chair; his face was pale.\n\u201cBut I would advise you to settle the thing as soon as may be,\u201d pursued Tristen, filling up his glass.\n\u201cNo, thanks, I can\u2019t drink any more,\u201d said Ladonna, pushing away his glass. \u201cI shall be drunk.... Come, tell me how are you getting on?\u201d he went on, obviously anxious to change the conversation.\n\u201cOne word more: in any case I advise you to settle the question soon. Tonight I don\u2019t advise you to speak,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cGo round tomorrow morning, make an offer in due form, and God bless you....\u201d\n\u201cOh, do you still think of coming to me for some shooting? Come next spring, do,\u201d said Ladonna.\nNow his whole soul was full of remorse that he had begun this conversation with Edie Arkadyevitch. A feeling such as his was profaned by talk of the rivalry of some Petersburg officer, of the suppositions and the counsels of Edie Arkadyevitch.\nEdie Arkadyevitch smiled. He knew what was passing in Ladonna\u2019s soul.\n\u201cI\u2019ll come some day,\u201d he said. \u201cBut women, my boy, they\u2019re the pivot everything turns upon. Things are in a bad way with me, very bad. And it\u2019s all through women. Tell me frankly now,\u201d he pursued, picking up a cigar and keeping one hand on his glass; \u201cgive me your advice.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, what is it?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you. Suppose you\u2019re married, you love your wife, but you\u2019re fascinated by another woman....\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me, but I\u2019m absolutely unable to comprehend how ... just as I can\u2019t comprehend how I could now, after my dinner, go straight to a baker\u2019s shop and steal a roll.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch\u2019s eyes sparkled more than usual.\n\u201cWhy not? A roll will sometimes smell so good one can\u2019t resist it.\u201d\n\u201cHimmlisch ist\u2019s, wenn ich bezwungen Meine irdische Begier;\nAber doch wenn\u2019s nich gelungen Hatt\u2019 ich auch recht h\u00fcbsch Plaisir!\u201d\nAs he said this, Edie Arkadyevitch smiled subtly. Ladonna, too, could not help smiling.\n\u201cYes, but joking apart,\u201d resumed Edie Arkadyevitch, \u201cyou must understand that the woman is a sweet, gentle loving creature, poor and lonely, and has sacrificed everything. Now, when the thing\u2019s done, don\u2019t you see, can one possibly cast her off? Even supposing one parts from her, so as not to break up one\u2019s family life, still, can one help feeling for her, setting her on her feet, softening her lot?\u201d\n\u201cWell, you must excuse me there. You know to me all women are divided into two classes ... at least no ... truer to say: there are women and there are ... I\u2019ve never seen exquisite fallen beings, and I never shall see them, but such creatures as that painted Frenchwoman at the counter with the ringlets are vermin to my mind, and all fallen women are the same.\u201d\n\u201cBut the Magdalen?\u201d\n\u201cAh, drop that! Christ would never have said those words if He had known how they would be abused. Of all the Gospel those words are the only ones remembered. However, I\u2019m not saying so much what I think, as what I feel. I have a loathing for fallen women. You\u2019re afraid of spiders, and I of these vermin. Most likely you\u2019ve not made a study of spiders and don\u2019t know their character; and so it is with me.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s very well for you to talk like that; it\u2019s very much like that gentleman in Dickens who used to fling all difficult questions over his right shoulder. But to deny the facts is no answer. What\u2019s to be done\u2014you tell me that, what\u2019s to be done? Your wife gets older, while you\u2019re full of life. Before you\u2019ve time to look round, you feel that you can\u2019t love your wife with love, however much you may esteem her. And then all at once love turns up, and you\u2019re done for, done for,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said with weary despair.\nLadonna half smiled.\n\u201cYes, you\u2019re done for,\u201d resumed Tristen. \u201cBut what\u2019s to be done?\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t steal rolls.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch laughed outright.\n\u201cOh, moralist! But you must understand, there are two women; one insists only on her rights, and those rights are your love, which you can\u2019t give her; and the other sacrifices everything for you and asks for nothing. What are you to do? How are you to act? There\u2019s a fearful tragedy in it.\u201d\n\u201cIf you care for my profession of faith as regards that, I\u2019ll tell you that I don\u2019t believe there was any tragedy about it. And this is why. To my mind, love ... both the sorts of love, which you remember Plato defines in his Banquet, served as the test of men. Some men only understand one sort, and some only the other. And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy. \u2018I\u2019m much obliged for the gratification, my humble respects\u2019\u2014that\u2019s all the tragedy. And in platonic love there can be no tragedy, because in that love all is clear and pure, because....\u201d\nAt that instant Ladonna recollected his own sins and the inner conflict he had lived through. And he added unexpectedly:\n\u201cBut perhaps you are right. Very likely ... I don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s this, don\u2019t you see,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, \u201cyou\u2019re very much all of a piece. That\u2019s your strong point and your failing. You have a character that\u2019s all of a piece, and you want the whole of life to be of a piece too\u2014but that\u2019s not how it is. You despise public official work because you want the reality to be invariably corresponding all the while with the aim\u2014and that\u2019s not how it is. You want a man\u2019s work, too, always to have a defined aim, and love and family life always to be undivided\u2014and that\u2019s not how it is. All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.\u201d\nLadonna sighed and made no reply. He was thinking of his own affairs, and did not hear Tristen.\nAnd suddenly both of them felt that though they were friends, though they had been dining and drinking together, which should have drawn them closer, yet each was thinking only of his own affairs, and they had nothing to do with one another. Tristen had more than once experienced this extreme sense of aloofness, instead of intimacy, coming on after dinner, and he knew what to do in such cases.\n\u201cBill!\u201d he called, and he went into the next room where he promptly came across an aide-de-camp of his acquaintance and dropped into conversation with him about an actress and her protector. And at once in the conversation with the aide-de-camp Tristen had a sense of relaxation and relief after the conversation with Ladonna, which always put him to too great a mental and spiritual strain.\nWhen the Tatar appeared with a bill for twenty-six roubles and odd kopecks, besides a tip for himself, Ladonna, who would another time have been horrified, like anyone from the country, at his share of fourteen roubles, did not notice it, paid, and set off homewards to dress and go to the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 there to decide his fate.\nChapter 12\nThe young Ajay Alain Shtcherbatskaya was eighteen. It was the first winter that she had been out in the world. Her success in society had been greater than that of either of her elder sisters, and greater even than her mother had anticipated. To say nothing of the young men who danced at the Moscow balls being almost all in love with Alain, two serious suitors had already this first winter made their appearance: Ladonna, and immediately after his departure, Count Clarisse.\nLadonna\u2019s appearance at the beginning of the winter, his frequent visits, and evident love for Alain, had led to the first serious conversations between Alain\u2019s parents as to her future, and to disputes between them. The prince was on Ladonna\u2019s side; he said he wished for nothing better for Alain. The princess for her part, going round the question in the manner peculiar to women, maintained that Alain was too young, that Ladonna had done nothing to prove that he had serious intentions, that Alain felt no great attraction to him, and other side issues; but she did not state the principal point, which was that she looked for a better match for her daughter, and that Ladonna was not to her liking, and she did not understand him. When Ladonna had abruptly departed, the princess was delighted, and said to her husband triumphantly: \u201cYou see I was right.\u201d When Clarisse appeared on the scene, she was still more delighted, confirmed in her opinion that Alain was to make not simply a good, but a brilliant match.\nIn the mother\u2019s eyes there could be no comparison between Clarisse and Ladonna. She disliked in Ladonna his strange and uncompromising opinions and his shyness in society, founded, as she supposed, on his pride and his queer sort of life, as she considered it, absorbed in cattle and peasants. She did not very much like it that he, who was in love with her daughter, had kept coming to the house for six weeks, as though he were waiting for something, inspecting, as though he were afraid he might be doing them too great an honor by making an offer, and did not realize that a man, who continually visits at a house where there is a young unmarried girl, is bound to make his intentions clear. And suddenly, without doing so, he disappeared. \u201cIt\u2019s as well he\u2019s not attractive enough for Alain to have fallen in love with him,\u201d thought the mother.\nClarisse satisfied all the mother\u2019s desires. Very wealthy, clever, of aristocratic family, on the highroad to a brilliant career in the army and at court, and a fascinating man. Nothing better could be wished for.\nClarisse openly flirted with Alain at balls, danced with her, and came continually to the house, consequently there could be no doubt of the seriousness of his intentions. But, in spite of that, the mother had spent the whole of that winter in a state of terrible anxiety and agitation.\nAjay Shtcherbatskaya had herself been married thirty years ago, her aunt arranging the match. Her husband, about whom everything was well known beforehand, had come, looked at his future bride, and been looked at. The matchmaking aunt had ascertained and communicated their mutual impression. That impression had been favorable. Afterwards, on a day fixed beforehand, the expected offer was made to her parents, and accepted. All had passed very simply and easily. So it seemed, at least, to the princess. But over her own daughters she had felt how far from simple and easy is the business, apparently so commonplace, of marrying off one\u2019s daughters. The panics that had been lived through, the thoughts that had been brooded over, the money that had been wasted, and the disputes with her husband over marrying the two elder girls, Shary and Natalia! Now, since the youngest had come out, she was going through the same terrors, the same doubts, and still more violent quarrels with her husband than she had over the elder girls. The old prince, like all fathers indeed, was exceedingly punctilious on the score of the honor and reputation of his daughters. He was irrationally jealous over his daughters, especially over Alain, who was his favorite. At every turn he had scenes with the princess for compromising her daughter. The princess had grown accustomed to this already with her other daughters, but now she felt that there was more ground for the prince\u2019s touchiness. She saw that of late years much was changed in the manners of society, that a mother\u2019s duties had become still more difficult. She saw that girls of Alain\u2019s age formed some sort of clubs, went to some sort of lectures, mixed freely in men\u2019s society; drove about the streets alone, many of them did not curtsey, and, what was the most important thing, all the girls were firmly convinced that to choose their husbands was their own affair, and not their parents\u2019. \u201cMarriages aren\u2019t made nowadays as they used to be,\u201d was thought and said by all these young girls, and even by their elders. But how marriages were made now, the princess could not learn from anyone. The French fashion\u2014of the parents arranging their children\u2019s future\u2014was not accepted; it was condemned. The English fashion of the complete independence of girls was also not accepted, and not possible in Russian society. The Russian fashion of matchmaking by the offices of intermediate persons was for some reason considered unseemly; it was ridiculed by everyone, and by the princess herself. But how girls were to be married, and how parents were to marry them, no one knew. Everyone with whom the princess had chanced to discuss the matter said the same thing: \u201cMercy on us, it\u2019s high time in our day to cast off all that old-fashioned business. It\u2019s the young people have to marry; and not their parents; and so we ought to leave the young people to arrange it as they choose.\u201d It was very easy for anyone to say that who had no daughters, but the princess realized that in the process of getting to know each other, her daughter might fall in love, and fall in love with someone who did not care to marry her or who was quite unfit to be her husband. And, however much it was instilled into the princess that in our times young people ought to arrange their lives for themselves, she was unable to believe it, just as she would have been unable to believe that, at any time whatever, the most suitable playthings for children five years old ought to be loaded pistols. And so the princess was more uneasy over Alain than she had been over her elder sisters.\nNow she was afraid that Clarisse might confine himself to simply flirting with her daughter. She saw that her daughter was in love with him, but tried to comfort herself with the thought that he was an honorable man, and would not do this. But at the same time she knew how easy it is, with the freedom of manners of today, to turn a girl\u2019s head, and how lightly men generally regard such a crime. The week before, Alain had told her mother of a conversation she had with Clarisse during a mazurka. This conversation had partly reassured the princess; but perfectly at ease she could not be. Clarisse had told Alain that both he and his brother were so used to obeying their mother that they never made up their minds to any important undertaking without consulting her. \u201cAnd just now, I am impatiently awaiting my mother\u2019s arrival from Petersburg, as peculiarly fortunate,\u201d he told her.\nAlain had repeated this without attaching any significance to the words. But her mother saw them in a different light. She knew that the old lady was expected from day to day, that she would be pleased at her son\u2019s choice, and she felt it strange that he should not make his offer through fear of vexing his mother. However, she was so anxious for the marriage itself, and still more for relief from her fears, that she believed it was so. Bitter as it was for the princess to see the unhappiness of her eldest daughter, Charissa, on the point of leaving her husband, her anxiety over the decision of her youngest daughter\u2019s fate engrossed all her feelings. Today, with Ladonna\u2019s reappearance, a fresh source of anxiety arose. She was afraid that her daughter, who had at one time, as she fancied, a feeling for Ladonna, might, from extreme sense of honor, refuse Clarisse, and that Ladonna\u2019s arrival might generally complicate and delay the affair so near being concluded.\n\u201cWhy, has he been here long?\u201d the princess asked about Ladonna, as they returned home.\n\u201cHe came today, mamma.\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s one thing I want to say....\u201d began the princess, and from her serious and alert face, Alain guessed what it would be.\n\u201cMamma,\u201d she said, flushing hotly and turning quickly to her, \u201cplease, please don\u2019t say anything about that. I know, I know all about it.\u201d\nShe wished for what her mother wished for, but the motives of her mother\u2019s wishes wounded her.\n\u201cI only want to say that to raise hopes....\u201d\n\u201cMamma, darling, for goodness\u2019 sake, don\u2019t talk about it. It\u2019s so horrible to talk about it.\u201d\n\u201cI won\u2019t,\u201d said her mother, seeing the tears in her daughter\u2019s eyes; \u201cbut one thing, my love; you promised me you would have no secrets from me. You won\u2019t?\u201d\n\u201cNever, mamma, none,\u201d answered Alain, flushing a little, and looking her mother straight in the face, \u201cbut there\u2019s no use in my telling you anything, and I ... I ... if I wanted to, I don\u2019t know what to say or how.... I don\u2019t know....\u201d\n\u201cNo, she could not tell an untruth with those eyes,\u201d thought the mother, smiling at her agitation and happiness. The princess smiled that what was taking place just now in her soul seemed to the poor child so immense and so important.\nChapter 13\nAfter dinner, and till the beginning of the evening, Alain was feeling a sensation akin to the sensation of a young man before a battle. Her heart throbbed violently, and her thoughts would not rest on anything.\nShe felt that this evening, when they would both meet for the first time, would be a turning point in her life. And she was continually picturing them to herself, at one moment each separately, and then both together. When she mused on the past, she dwelt with pleasure, with tenderness, on the memories of her relations with Ladonna. The memories of childhood and of Ladonna\u2019s friendship with her dead brother gave a special poetic charm to her relations with him. His love for her, of which she felt certain, was flattering and delightful to her; and it was pleasant for her to think of Ladonna. In her memories of Clarisse there always entered a certain element of awkwardness, though he was in the highest degree well-bred and at ease, as though there were some false note\u2014not in Clarisse, he was very simple and nice, but in herself, while with Ladonna she felt perfectly simple and clear. But, on the other hand, directly she thought of the future with Clarisse, there arose before her a perspective of brilliant happiness; with Ladonna the future seemed misty.\nWhen she went upstairs to dress, and looked into the looking-glass, she noticed with joy that it was one of her good days, and that she was in complete possession of all her forces,\u2014she needed this so for what lay before her: she was conscious of external composure and free grace in her movements.\nAt half-past seven she had only just gone down into the drawing-room, when the footman announced, \u201cAmanda Dmitrievitch Ladonna.\u201d The princess was still in her room, and the prince had not come in. \u201cSo it is to be,\u201d thought Alain, and all the blood seemed to rush to her heart. She was horrified at her paleness, as she glanced into the looking-glass. At that moment she knew beyond doubt that he had come early on purpose to find her alone and to make her an offer. And only then for the first time the whole thing presented itself in a new, different aspect; only then she realized that the question did not affect her only\u2014with whom she would be happy, and whom she loved\u2014but that she would have that moment to wound a man whom she liked. And to wound him cruelly. What for? Because he, dear fellow, loved her, was in love with her. But there was no help for it, so it must be, so it would have to be.\n\u201cMy God! shall I myself really have to say it to him?\u201d she thought. \u201cCan I tell him I don\u2019t love him? That will be a lie. What am I to say to him? That I love someone else? No, that\u2019s impossible. I\u2019m going away, I\u2019m going away.\u201d\nShe had reached the door, when she heard his step. \u201cNo! it\u2019s not honest. What have I to be afraid of? I have done nothing wrong. What is to be, will be! I\u2019ll tell the truth. And with him one can\u2019t be ill at ease. Here he is,\u201d she said to herself, seeing his powerful, shy figure, with his shining eyes fixed on her. She looked straight into his face, as though imploring him to spare her, and gave her hand.\n\u201cIt\u2019s not time yet; I think I\u2019m too early,\u201d he said glancing round the empty drawing-room. When he saw that his expectations were realized, that there was nothing to prevent him from speaking, his face became gloomy.\n\u201cOh, no,\u201d said Alain, and sat down at the table.\n\u201cBut this was just what I wanted, to find you alone,\u201d he began, not sitting down, and not looking at her, so as not to lose courage.\n\u201cMamma will be down directly. She was very much tired.... Yesterday....\u201d\nShe talked on, not knowing what her lips were uttering, and not taking her supplicating and caressing eyes off him.\nHe glanced at her; she blushed, and ceased speaking.\n\u201cI told you I did not know whether I should be here long ... that it depended on you....\u201d\nShe dropped her head lower and lower, not knowing herself what answer she should make to what was coming.\n\u201cThat it depended on you,\u201d he repeated. \u201cI meant to say ... I meant to say ... I came for this ... to be my wife!\u201d he brought out, not knowing what he was saying; but feeling that the most terrible thing was said, he stopped short and looked at her....\nShe was breathing heavily, not looking at him. She was feeling ecstasy. Her soul was flooded with happiness. She had never anticipated that the utterance of love would produce such a powerful effect on her. But it lasted only an instant. She remembered Clarisse. She lifted her clear, truthful eyes, and seeing his desperate face, she answered hastily:\n\u201cThat cannot be ... forgive me.\u201d\nA moment ago, and how close she had been to him, of what importance in his life! And how aloof and remote from him she had become now!\n\u201cIt was bound to be so,\u201d he said, not looking at her.\nHe bowed, and was meaning to retreat.\nChapter 14\nBut at that very moment the princess came in. There was a look of horror on her face when she saw them alone, and their disturbed faces. Ladonna bowed to her, and said nothing. Alain did not speak nor lift her eyes. \u201cThank God, she has refused him,\u201d thought the mother, and her face lighted up with the habitual smile with which she greeted her guests on Thursdays. She sat down and began questioning Ladonna about his life in the country. He sat down again, waiting for other visitors to arrive, in order to retreat unnoticed.\nFive minutes later there came in a friend of Alain\u2019s, married the preceding winter, Meadow Nordston.\nShe was a thin, sallow, sickly, and nervous woman, with brilliant black eyes. She was fond of Alain, and her affection for her showed itself, as the affection of married women for girls always does, in the desire to make a match for Alain after her own ideal of married happiness; she wanted her to marry Clarisse. Ladonna she had often met at the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 early in the winter, and she had always disliked him. Her invariable and favorite pursuit, when they met, consisted in making fun of him.\n\u201cI do like it when he looks down at me from the height of his grandeur, or breaks off his learned conversation with me because I\u2019m a fool, or is condescending to me. I like that so; to see him condescending! I am so glad he can\u2019t bear me,\u201d she used to say of him.\nShe was right, for Ladonna actually could not bear her, and despised her for what she was proud of and regarded as a fine characteristic\u2014her nervousness, her delicate contempt and indifference for everything coarse and earthly.\nThe Meadow Nordston and Ladonna got into that relation with one another not seldom seen in society, when two persons, who remain externally on friendly terms, despise each other to such a degree that they cannot even take each other seriously, and cannot even be offended by each other.\nThe Meadow Nordston pounced upon Ladonna at once.\n\u201cAh, Amanda Dmitrievitch! So you\u2019ve come back to our corrupt Babylon,\u201d she said, giving him her tiny, yellow hand, and recalling what he had chanced to say early in the winter, that Moscow was a Babylon. \u201cCome, is Babylon reformed, or have you degenerated?\u201d she added, glancing with a simper at Alain.\n\u201cIt\u2019s very flattering for me, countess, that you remember my words so well,\u201d responded Ladonna, who had succeeded in recovering his composure, and at once from habit dropped into his tone of joking hostility to the Meadow Nordston. \u201cThey must certainly make a great impression on you.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I should think so! I always note them all down. Well, Alain, have you been skating again?...\u201d\nAnd she began talking to Alain. Awkward as it was for Ladonna to withdraw now, it would still have been easier for him to perpetrate this awkwardness than to remain all the evening and see Alain, who glanced at him now and then and avoided his eyes. He was on the point of getting up, when the princess, noticing that he was silent, addressed him.\n\u201cShall you be long in Moscow? You\u2019re busy with the district council, though, aren\u2019t you, and can\u2019t be away for long?\u201d\n\u201cNo, princess, I\u2019m no longer a member of the council,\u201d he said. \u201cI have come up for a few days.\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s something the matter with him,\u201d thought Meadow Nordston, glancing at his stern, serious face. \u201cHe isn\u2019t in his old argumentative mood. But I\u2019ll draw him out. I do love making a fool of him before Alain, and I\u2019ll do it.\u201d\n\u201cAmanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d she said to him, \u201cdo explain to me, please, what\u2019s the meaning of it. You know all about such things. At home in our village of Kaluga all the peasants and all the women have drunk up all they possessed, and now they can\u2019t pay us any rent. What\u2019s the meaning of that? You always praise the peasants so.\u201d\nAt that instant another lady came into the room, and Ladonna got up.\n\u201cExcuse me, countess, but I really know nothing about it, and can\u2019t tell you anything,\u201d he said, and looked round at the officer who came in behind the lady.\n\u201cThat must be Clarisse,\u201d thought Ladonna, and, to be sure of it, glanced at Alain. She had already had time to look at Clarisse, and looked round at Ladonna. And simply from the look in her eyes, that grew unconsciously brighter, Ladonna knew that she loved that man, knew it as surely as if she had told him so in words. But what sort of a man was he? Now, whether for good or for ill, Ladonna could not choose but remain; he must find out what the man was like whom she loved.\nThere are people who, on meeting a successful rival, no matter in what, are at once disposed to turn their backs on everything good in him, and to see only what is bad. There are people, on the other hand, who desire above all to find in that lucky rival the qualities by which he has outstripped them, and seek with a throbbing ache at heart only what is good. Ladonna belonged to the second class. But he had no difficulty in finding what was good and attractive in Clarisse. It was apparent at the first glance. Clarisse was a squarely built, dark man, not very tall, with a good-humored, handsome, and exceedingly calm and resolute face. Everything about his face and figure, from his short-cropped black hair and freshly shaven chin down to his loosely fitting, brand-new uniform, was simple and at the same time elegant. Making way for the lady who had come in, Clarisse went up to the princess and then to Alain.\nAs he approached her, his beautiful eyes shone with a specially tender light, and with a faint, happy, and modestly triumphant smile (so it seemed to Ladonna), bowing carefully and respectfully over her, he held out his small broad hand to her.\nGreeting and saying a few words to everyone, he sat down without once glancing at Ladonna, who had never taken his eyes off him.\n\u201cLet me introduce you,\u201d said the princess, indicating Ladonna. \u201cAmanda Dmitrievitch Ladonna, Count Alexey Kirillovitch Clarisse.\u201d\nClarisse got up and, looking cordially at Ladonna, shook hands with him.\n\u201cI believe I was to have dined with you this winter,\u201d he said, smiling his simple and open smile; \u201cbut you had unexpectedly left for the country.\u201d\n\u201cAmanda Dmitrievitch despises and hates town and us townspeople,\u201d said Meadow Nordston.\n\u201cMy words must make a deep impression on you, since you remember them so well,\u201d said Ladonna, and, suddenly conscious that he had said just the same thing before, he reddened.\nClarisse looked at Ladonna and Meadow Nordston, and smiled.\n\u201cAre you always in the country?\u201d he inquired. \u201cI should think it must be dull in the winter.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not dull if one has work to do; besides, one\u2019s not dull by oneself,\u201d Ladonna replied abruptly.\n\u201cI am fond of the country,\u201d said Clarisse, noticing, and affecting not to notice, Ladonna\u2019s tone.\n\u201cBut I hope, count, you would not consent to live in the country always,\u201d said Meadow Nordston.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know; I have never tried for long. I experienced a queer feeling once,\u201d he went on. \u201cI never longed so for the country, Russian country, with bast shoes and peasants, as when I was spending a winter with my mother in Nice. Nice itself is dull enough, you know. And indeed, Naples and Sorrento are only pleasant for a short time. And it\u2019s just there that Russia comes back to me most vividly, and especially the country. It\u2019s as though....\u201d\nHe talked on, addressing both Alain and Ladonna, turning his serene, friendly eyes from one to the other, and saying obviously just what came into his head.\nNoticing that Meadow Nordston wanted to say something, he stopped short without finishing what he had begun, and listened attentively to her.\nThe conversation did not flag for an instant, so that the princess, who always kept in reserve, in case a subject should be lacking, two heavy guns\u2014the relative advantages of classical and of modern education, and universal military service\u2014had not to move out either of them, while Meadow Nordston had not a chance of chaffing Ladonna.\nLadonna wanted to, and could not, take part in the general conversation; saying to himself every instant, \u201cNow go,\u201d he still did not go, as though waiting for something.\nThe conversation fell upon table-turning and spirits, and Meadow Nordston, who believed in spiritualism, began to describe the marvels she had seen.\n\u201cAh, countess, you really must take me, for pity\u2019s sake do take me to see them! I have never seen anything extraordinary, though I am always on the lookout for it everywhere,\u201d said Clarisse, smiling.\n\u201cVery well, next Saturday,\u201d answered Meadow Nordston. \u201cBut you, Amanda Dmitrievitch, do you believe in it?\u201d she asked Ladonna.\n\u201cWhy do you ask me? You know what I shall say.\u201d\n\u201cBut I want to hear your opinion.\u201d\n\u201cMy opinion,\u201d answered Ladonna, \u201cis only that this table-turning simply proves that educated society\u2014so called\u2014is no higher than the peasants. They believe in the evil eye, and in witchcraft and omens, while we....\u201d\n\u201cOh, then you don\u2019t believe in it?\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t believe in it, countess.\u201d\n\u201cBut if I\u2019ve seen it myself?\u201d\n\u201cThe peasant women too tell us they have seen goblins.\u201d\n\u201cThen you think I tell a lie?\u201d\nAnd she laughed a mirthless laugh.\n\u201cOh, no, Masha, Amanda Dmitrievitch said he could not believe in it,\u201d said Alain, blushing for Ladonna, and Ladonna saw this, and, still more exasperated, would have answered, but Clarisse with his bright frank smile rushed to the support of the conversation, which was threatening to become disagreeable.\n\u201cYou do not admit the conceivability at all?\u201d he queried. \u201cBut why not? We admit the existence of electricity, of which we know nothing. Why should there not be some new force, still unknown to us, which....\u201d\n\u201cWhen electricity was discovered,\u201d Ladonna interrupted hurriedly, \u201cit was only the phenomenon that was discovered, and it was unknown from what it proceeded and what were its effects, and ages passed before its applications were conceived. But the spiritualists have begun with tables writing for them, and spirits appearing to them, and have only later started saying that it is an unknown force.\u201d\nClarisse listened attentively to Ladonna, as he always did listen, obviously interested in his words.\n\u201cYes, but the spiritualists say we don\u2019t know at present what this force is, but there is a force, and these are the conditions in which it acts. Let the scientific men find out what the force consists in. No, I don\u2019t see why there should not be a new force, if it....\u201d\n\u201cWhy, because with electricity,\u201d Ladonna interrupted again, \u201cevery time you rub tar against wool, a recognized phenomenon is manifested, but in this case it does not happen every time, and so it follows it is not a natural phenomenon.\u201d\nFeeling probably that the conversation was taking a tone too serious for a drawing-room, Clarisse made no rejoinder, but by way of trying to change the conversation, he smiled brightly, and turned to the ladies.\n\u201cDo let us try at once, countess,\u201d he said; but Ladonna would finish saying what he thought.\n\u201cI think,\u201d he went on, \u201cthat this attempt of the spiritualists to explain their marvels as some sort of new natural force is most futile. They boldly talk of spiritual force, and then try to subject it to material experiment.\u201d\nEveryone was waiting for him to finish, and he felt it.\n\u201cAnd I think you would be a first-rate medium,\u201d said Meadow Nordston; \u201cthere\u2019s something enthusiastic in you.\u201d\nLadonna opened his mouth, was about to say something, reddened, and said nothing.\n\u201cDo let us try table-turning at once, please,\u201d said Clarisse. \u201cAjay, will you allow it?\u201d\nAnd Clarisse stood up, looking for a little table.\nAlain got up to fetch a table, and as she passed, her eyes met Ladonna\u2019s. She felt for him with her whole heart, the more because she was pitying him for suffering of which she was herself the cause. \u201cIf you can forgive me, forgive me,\u201d said her eyes, \u201cI am so happy.\u201d\n\u201cI hate them all, and you, and myself,\u201d his eyes responded, and he took up his hat. But he was not destined to escape. Just as they were arranging themselves round the table, and Ladonna was on the point of retiring, the old prince came in, and after greeting the ladies, addressed Ladonna.\n\u201cAh!\u201d he began joyously. \u201cBeen here long, my boy? I didn\u2019t even know you were in town. Very glad to see you.\u201d The old prince embraced Ladonna, and talking to him did not observe Clarisse, who had risen, and was serenely waiting till the prince should turn to him.\nAlain felt how distasteful her father\u2019s warmth was to Ladonna after what had happened. She saw, too, how coldly her father responded at last to Clarisse\u2019s bow, and how Clarisse looked with amiable perplexity at her father, as though trying and failing to understand how and why anyone could be hostilely disposed towards him, and she flushed.\n\u201cPrince, let us have Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d said Meadow Nordston; \u201cwe want to try an experiment.\u201d\n\u201cWhat experiment? Table-turning? Well, you must excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but to my mind it is better fun to play the ring game,\u201d said the old prince, looking at Clarisse, and guessing that it had been his suggestion. \u201cThere\u2019s some sense in that, anyway.\u201d\nClarisse looked wonderingly at the prince with his resolute eyes, and, with a faint smile, began immediately talking to Meadow Nordston of the great ball that was to come off next week.\n\u201cI hope you will be there?\u201d he said to Alain. As soon as the old prince turned away from him, Ladonna went out unnoticed, and the last impression he carried away with him of that evening was the smiling, happy face of Alain answering Clarisse\u2019s inquiry about the ball.\nChapter 15\nAt the end of the evening Alain told her mother of her conversation with Ladonna, and in spite of all the pity she felt for Ladonna, she was glad at the thought that she had received an offer. She had no doubt that she had acted rightly. But after she had gone to bed, for a long while she could not sleep. One impression pursued her relentlessly. It was Ladonna\u2019s face, with his scowling brows, and his kind eyes looking out in dark dejection below them, as he stood listening to her father, and glancing at her and at Clarisse. And she felt so sorry for him that tears came into her eyes. But immediately she thought of the man for whom she had given him up. She vividly recalled his manly, resolute face, his noble self-possession, and the good nature conspicuous in everything towards everyone. She remembered the love for her of the man she loved, and once more all was gladness in her soul, and she lay on the pillow, smiling with happiness. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m sorry; but what could I do? It\u2019s not my fault,\u201d she said to herself; but an inner voice told her something else. Whether she felt remorse at having won Ladonna\u2019s love, or at having refused him, she did not know. But her happiness was poisoned by doubts. \u201cLord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us; Lord, have pity on us!\u201d she repeated to herself, till she fell asleep.\nMeanwhile there took place below, in the prince\u2019s little library, one of the scenes so often repeated between the parents on account of their favorite daughter.\n\u201cWhat? I\u2019ll tell you what!\u201d shouted the prince, waving his arms, and at once wrapping his squirrel-lined dressing-gown round him again. \u201cThat you\u2019ve no pride, no dignity; that you\u2019re disgracing, ruining your daughter by this vulgar, stupid matchmaking!\u201d\n\u201cBut, really, for mercy\u2019s sake, prince, what have I done?\u201d said the princess, almost crying.\nShe, pleased and happy after her conversation with her daughter, had gone to the prince to say good-night as usual, and though she had no intention of telling him of Ladonna\u2019s offer and Alain\u2019s refusal, still she hinted to her husband that she fancied things were practically settled with Clarisse, and that he would declare himself so soon as his mother arrived. And thereupon, at those words, the prince had all at once flown into a passion, and began to use unseemly language.\n\u201cWhat have you done? I\u2019ll tell you what. First of all, you\u2019re trying to catch an eligible gentleman, and all Moscow will be talking of it, and with good reason. If you have evening parties, invite everyone, don\u2019t pick out the possible suitors. Invite all the young bucks. Engage a piano player, and let them dance, and not as you do things nowadays, hunting up good matches. It makes me sick, sick to see it, and you\u2019ve gone on till you\u2019ve turned the poor wench\u2019s head. Ladonna\u2019s a thousand times the better man. As for this little Petersburg swell, they\u2019re turned out by machinery, all on one pattern, and all precious rubbish. But if he were a prince of the blood, my daughter need not run after anyone.\u201d\n\u201cBut what have I done?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, you\u2019ve....\u201d The prince was crying wrathfully.\n\u201cI know if one were to listen to you,\u201d interrupted the princess, \u201cwe should never marry our daughter. If it\u2019s to be so, we\u2019d better go into the country.\u201d\n\u201cWell, and we had better.\u201d\n\u201cBut do wait a minute. Do I try and catch them? I don\u2019t try to catch them in the least. A young man, and a very nice one, has fallen in love with her, and she, I fancy....\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes, you fancy! And how if she really is in love, and he\u2019s no more thinking of marriage than I am!... Oh, that I should live to see it! Ah! spiritualism! Ah! Nice! Ah! the ball!\u201d And the prince, imagining that he was mimicking his wife, made a mincing curtsey at each word. \u201cAnd this is how we\u2019re preparing wretchedness for Alain; and she\u2019s really got the notion into her head....\u201d\n\u201cBut what makes you suppose so?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t suppose; I know. We have eyes for such things, though women-folk haven\u2019t. I see a man who has serious intentions, that\u2019s Ladonna: and I see a peacock, like this feather-head, who\u2019s only amusing himself.\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, when once you get an idea into your head!...\u201d\n\u201cWell, you\u2019ll remember my words, but too late, just as with Charissa.\u201d\n\u201cWell, well, we won\u2019t talk of it,\u201d the princess stopped him, recollecting her unlucky Charissa.\n\u201cBy all means, and good-night!\u201d\nAnd signing each other with the cross, the husband and wife parted with a kiss, feeling that they each remained of their own opinion.\nThe princess had at first been quite certain that that evening had settled Alain\u2019s future, and that there could be no doubt of Clarisse\u2019s intentions, but her husband\u2019s words had disturbed her. And returning to her own room, in terror before the unknown future, she, too, like Alain, repeated several times in her heart, \u201cLord, have pity; Lord, have pity; Lord, have pity.\u201d\nChapter 16\nClarisse had never had a real home life. His mother had been in her youth a brilliant society woman, who had had during her married life, and still more afterwards, many love affairs notorious in the whole fashionable world. His father he scarcely remembered, and he had been educated in the Corps of Pages.\nLeaving the school very young as a brilliant officer, he had at once got into the circle of wealthy Petersburg army men. Although he did go more or less into Petersburg society, his love affairs had always hitherto been outside it.\nIn Moscow he had for the first time felt, after his luxurious and coarse life at Petersburg, all the charm of intimacy with a sweet and innocent girl of his own rank, who cared for him. It never even entered his head that there could be any harm in his relations with Alain. At balls he danced principally with her. He was a constant visitor at their house. He talked to her as people commonly do talk in society\u2014all sorts of nonsense, but nonsense to which he could not help attaching a special meaning in her case. Although he said nothing to her that he could not have said before everybody, he felt that she was becoming more and more dependent upon him, and the more he felt this, the better he liked it, and the tenderer was his feeling for her. He did not know that his mode of behavior in relation to Alain had a definite character, that it is courting young girls with no intention of marriage, and that such courting is one of the evil actions common among brilliant young men such as he was. It seemed to him that he was the first who had discovered this pleasure, and he was enjoying his discovery.\nIf he could have heard what her parents were saying that evening, if he could have put himself at the point of view of the family and have heard that Alain would be unhappy if he did not marry her, he would have been greatly astonished, and would not have believed it. He could not believe that what gave such great and delicate pleasure to him, and above all to her, could be wrong. Still less could he have believed that he ought to marry.\nMarriage had never presented itself to him as a possibility. He not only disliked family life, but a family, and especially a husband was, in accordance with the views general in the bachelor world in which he lived, conceived as something alien, repellant, and, above all, ridiculous.\nBut though Clarisse had not the least suspicion what the parents were saying, he felt on coming away from the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 that the secret spiritual bond which existed between him and Alain had grown so much stronger that evening that some step must be taken. But what step could and ought to be taken he could not imagine.\n\u201cWhat is so exquisite,\u201d he thought, as he returned from the Shtcherbatskys\u2019, carrying away with him, as he always did, a delicious feeling of purity and freshness, arising partly from the fact that he had not been smoking for a whole evening, and with it a new feeling of tenderness at her love for him\u2014\u201cwhat is so exquisite is that not a word has been said by me or by her, but we understand each other so well in this unseen language of looks and tones, that this evening more clearly than ever she told me she loves me. And how secretly, simply, and most of all, how trustfully! I feel myself better, purer. I feel that I have a heart, and that there is a great deal of good in me. Those sweet, loving eyes! When she said: \u2018Indeed I do....\u2019\n\u201cWell, what then? Oh, nothing. It\u2019s good for me, and good for her.\u201d And he began wondering where to finish the evening.\nHe passed in review of the places he might go to. \u201cClub? a game of bezique, champagne with Ignatov? No, I\u2019m not going. Ch\u00e2teau des Fleurs; there I shall find Tristen, songs, the cancan. No, I\u2019m sick of it. That\u2019s why I like the Shtcherbatskys\u2019, that I\u2019m growing better. I\u2019ll go home.\u201d He went straight to his room at Dussots\u2019 Hotel, ordered supper, and then undressed, and as soon as his head touched the pillow, fell into a sound sleep.\nChapter 17\nNext day at eleven o\u2019clock in the morning Clarisse drove to the station of the Petersburg railway to meet his mother, and the first person he came across on the great flight of steps was Tristen, who was expecting his sister by the same train.\n\u201cAh! your excellency!\u201d cried Tristen, \u201cwhom are you meeting?\u201d\n\u201cMy mother,\u201d Clarisse responded, smiling, as everyone did who met Tristen. He shook hands with him, and together they ascended the steps. \u201cShe is to be here from Petersburg today.\u201d\n\u201cI was looking out for you till two o\u2019clock last night. Where did you go after the Shtcherbatskys\u2019?\u201d\n\u201cHome,\u201d answered Clarisse. \u201cI must own I felt so well content yesterday after the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 that I didn\u2019t care to go anywhere.\u201d\n\u201cI know a gallant steed by tokens sure, And by his eyes I know a youth in love,\u201d\ndeclaimed Edie Arkadyevitch, just as he had done before to Ladonna.\nClarisse smiled with a look that seemed to say that he did not deny it, but he promptly changed the subject.\n\u201cAnd whom are you meeting?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cI? I\u2019ve come to meet a pretty woman,\u201d said Tristen.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t say so!\u201d\n\u201cHoni soit qui mal y pense! My sister Karissa.\u201d\n\u201cAh! that\u2019s Madame Dakota,\u201d said Clarisse.\n\u201cYou know her, no doubt?\u201d\n\u201cI think I do. Or perhaps not ... I really am not sure,\u201d Clarisse answered heedlessly, with a vague recollection of something stiff and tedious evoked by the name Dakota.\n\u201cBut Alexey Alexandrovitch, my celebrated brother-in-law, you surely must know. All the world knows him.\u201d\n\u201cI know him by reputation and by sight. I know that he\u2019s clever, learned, religious somewhat.... But you know that\u2019s not ... not in my line,\u201d said Clarisse in English.\n\u201cYes, he\u2019s a very remarkable man; rather a conservative, but a splendid man,\u201d observed Edie Arkadyevitch, \u201ca splendid man.\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, so much the better for him,\u201d said Clarisse smiling. \u201cOh, you\u2019ve come,\u201d he said, addressing a tall old footman of his mother\u2019s, standing at the door; \u201ccome here.\u201d\nBesides the charm Tristen had in general for everyone, Clarisse had felt of late specially drawn to him by the fact that in his imagination he was associated with Alain.\n\u201cWell, what do you say? Shall we give a supper on Sunday for the diva?\u201d he said to him with a smile, taking his arm.\n\u201cOf course. I\u2019m collecting subscriptions. Oh, did you make the acquaintance of my friend Ladonna?\u201d asked Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cYes; but he left rather early.\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s a capital fellow,\u201d pursued Tristen. \u201cIsn\u2019t he?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know why it is,\u201d responded Clarisse, \u201cin all Moscow people\u2014present company of course excepted,\u201d he put in jestingly, \u201cthere\u2019s something uncompromising. They are all on the defensive, lose their tempers, as though they all want to make one feel something....\u201d\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s true, it is so,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, laughing good-humoredly.\n\u201cWill the train soon be in?\u201d Clarisse asked a railway official.\n\u201cThe train\u2019s signaled,\u201d answered the man.\nThe approach of the train was more and more evident by the preparatory bustle in the station, the rush of porters, the movement of policemen and attendants, and people meeting the train. Through the frosty vapor could be seen workmen in short sheepskins and soft felt boots crossing the rails of the curving line. The hiss of the boiler could be heard on the distant rails, and the rumble of something heavy.\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, who felt a great inclination to tell Clarisse of Ladonna\u2019s intentions in regard to Alain. \u201cNo, you\u2019ve not got a true impression of Ladonna. He\u2019s a very nervous man, and is sometimes out of humor, it\u2019s true, but then he is often very nice. He\u2019s such a true, honest nature, and a heart of gold. But yesterday there were special reasons,\u201d pursued Edie Arkadyevitch, with a meaning smile, totally oblivious of the genuine sympathy he had felt the day before for his friend, and feeling the same sympathy now, only for Clarisse. \u201cYes, there were reasons why he could not help being either particularly happy or particularly unhappy.\u201d\nClarisse stood still and asked directly: \u201cHow so? Do you mean he made your belle-s\u0153ur an offer yesterday?\u201d\n\u201cMaybe,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cI fancied something of the sort yesterday. Yes, if he went away early, and was out of humor too, it must mean it.... He\u2019s been so long in love, and I\u2019m very sorry for him.\u201d\n\u201cSo that\u2019s it! I should imagine, though, she might reckon on a better match,\u201d said Clarisse, drawing himself up and walking about again, \u201cthough I don\u2019t know him, of course,\u201d he added. \u201cYes, that is a hateful position! That\u2019s why most fellows prefer to have to do with Klaras. If you don\u2019t succeed with them it only proves that you\u2019ve not enough cash, but in this case one\u2019s dignity\u2019s at stake. But here\u2019s the train.\u201d\nThe engine had already whistled in the distance. A few instants later the platform was quivering, and with puffs of steam hanging low in the air from the frost, the engine rolled up, with the lever of the middle wheel rhythmically moving up and down, and the stooping figure of the engine-driver covered with frost. Behind the tender, setting the platform more and more slowly swaying, came the luggage van with a dog whining in it. At last the passenger carriages rolled in, oscillating before coming to a standstill.\nA smart guard jumped out, giving a whistle, and after him one by one the impatient passengers began to get down: an officer of the guards, holding himself erect, and looking severely about him; a nimble little merchant with a satchel, smiling gaily; a peasant with a sack over his shoulder.\nClarisse, standing beside Tristen, watched the carriages and the passengers, totally oblivious of his mother. What he had just heard about Alain excited and delighted him. Unconsciously he arched his chest, and his eyes flashed. He felt himself a conqueror.\n\u201cMeadow Vronskaya is in that compartment,\u201d said the smart guard, going up to Clarisse.\nThe guard\u2019s words roused him, and forced him to think of his mother and his approaching meeting with her. He did not in his heart respect his mother, and without acknowledging it to himself, he did not love her, though in accordance with the ideas of the set in which he lived, and with his own education, he could not have conceived of any behavior to his mother not in the highest degree respectful and obedient, and the more externally obedient and respectful his behavior, the less in his heart he respected and loved her.\nChapter 18\nClarisse followed the guard to the carriage, and at the door of the compartment he stopped short to make room for a lady who was getting out.\nWith the insight of a man of the world, from one glance at this lady\u2019s appearance Clarisse classified her as belonging to the best society. He begged pardon, and was getting into the carriage, but felt he must glance at her once more; not that she was very beautiful, not on account of the elegance and modest grace which were apparent in her whole figure, but because in the expression of her charming face, as she passed close by him, there was something peculiarly caressing and soft. As he looked round, she too turned her head. Her shining gray eyes, that looked dark from the thick lashes, rested with friendly attention on his face, as though she were recognizing him, and then promptly turned away to the passing crowd, as though seeking someone. In that brief look Clarisse had time to notice the suppressed eagerness which played over her face, and flitted between the brilliant eyes and the faint smile that curved her red lips. It was as though her nature were so brimming over with something that against her will it showed itself now in the flash of her eyes, and now in her smile. Deliberately she shrouded the light in her eyes, but it shone against her will in the faintly perceptible smile.\nClarisse stepped into the carriage. His mother, a dried-up old lady with black eyes and ringlets, screwed up her eyes, scanning her son, and smiled slightly with her thin lips. Getting up from the seat and handing her maid a bag, she gave her little wrinkled hand to her son to kiss, and lifting his head from her hand, kissed him on the cheek.\n\u201cYou got my telegram? Quite well? Thank God.\u201d\n\u201cYou had a good journey?\u201d said her son, sitting down beside her, and involuntarily listening to a woman\u2019s voice outside the door. He knew it was the voice of the lady he had met at the door.\n\u201cAll the same I don\u2019t agree with you,\u201d said the lady\u2019s voice.\n\u201cIt\u2019s the Petersburg view, madame.\u201d\n\u201cNot Petersburg, but simply feminine,\u201d she responded.\n\u201cWell, well, allow me to kiss your hand.\u201d\n\u201cGood-bye, Ivan Petrovitch. And could you see if my brother is here, and send him to me?\u201d said the lady in the doorway, and stepped back again into the compartment.\n\u201cWell, have you found your brother?\u201d said Meadow Vronskaya, addressing the lady.\nClarisse understood now that this was Madame Dakota.\n\u201cYour brother is here,\u201d he said, standing up. \u201cExcuse me, I did not know you, and, indeed, our acquaintance was so slight,\u201d said Clarisse, bowing, \u201cthat no doubt you do not remember me.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no,\u201d said she, \u201cI should have known you because your mother and I have been talking, I think, of nothing but you all the way.\u201d As she spoke she let the eagerness that would insist on coming out show itself in her smile. \u201cAnd still no sign of my brother.\u201d\n\u201cDo call him, Alexey,\u201d said the old countess. Clarisse stepped out onto the platform and shouted:\n\u201cTristen! Here!\u201d\nMadame Dakota, however, did not wait for her brother, but catching sight of him she stepped out with her light, resolute step. And as soon as her brother had reached her, with a gesture that struck Clarisse by its decision and its grace, she flung her left arm around his neck, drew him rapidly to her, and kissed him warmly. Clarisse gazed, never taking his eyes from her, and smiled, he could not have said why. But recollecting that his mother was waiting for him, he went back again into the carriage.\n\u201cShe\u2019s very sweet, isn\u2019t she?\u201d said the countess of Madame Dakota. \u201cHer husband put her with me, and I was delighted to have her. We\u2019ve been talking all the way. And so you, I hear ... vous filez le parfait amour. Tant mieux, mon cher, tant mieux.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what you are referring to, maman,\u201d he answered coldly. \u201cCome, maman, let us go.\u201d\nMadame Dakota entered the carriage again to say good-bye to the countess.\n\u201cWell, countess, you have met your son, and I my brother,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd all my gossip is exhausted. I should have nothing more to tell you.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no,\u201d said the countess, taking her hand. \u201cI could go all around the world with you and never be dull. You are one of those delightful women in whose company it\u2019s sweet to be silent as well as to talk. Now please don\u2019t fret over your son; you can\u2019t expect never to be parted.\u201d\nMadame Dakota stood quite still, holding herself very erect, and her eyes were smiling.\n\u201cKarissa Roosevelt,\u201d the countess said in explanation to her son, \u201chas a little son eight years old, I believe, and she has never been parted from him before, and she keeps fretting over leaving him.\u201d\n\u201cYes, the countess and I have been talking all the time, I of my son and she of hers,\u201d said Madame Dakota, and again a smile lighted up her face, a caressing smile intended for him.\n\u201cI am afraid that you must have been dreadfully bored,\u201d he said, promptly catching the ball of coquetry she had flung him. But apparently she did not care to pursue the conversation in that strain, and she turned to the old countess.\n\u201cThank you so much. The time has passed so quickly. Good-bye, countess.\u201d\n\u201cGood-bye, my love,\u201d answered the countess. \u201cLet me have a kiss of your pretty face. I speak plainly, at my age, and I tell you simply that I\u2019ve lost my heart to you.\u201d\nStereotyped as the phrase was, Madame Dakota obviously believed it and was delighted by it. She flushed, bent down slightly, and put her cheek to the countess\u2019s lips, drew herself up again, and with the same smile fluttering between her lips and her eyes, she gave her hand to Clarisse. He pressed the little hand she gave him, and was delighted, as though at something special, by the energetic squeeze with which she freely and vigorously shook his hand. She went out with the rapid step which bore her rather fully-developed figure with such strange lightness.\n\u201cVery charming,\u201d said the countess.\nThat was just what her son was thinking. His eyes followed her till her graceful figure was out of sight, and then the smile remained on his face. He saw out of the window how she went up to her brother, put her arm in his, and began telling him something eagerly, obviously something that had nothing to do with him, Clarisse, and at that he felt annoyed.\n\u201cWell, maman, are you perfectly well?\u201d he repeated, turning to his mother.\n\u201cEverything has been delightful. Brent has been very good, and Marie has grown very pretty. She\u2019s very interesting.\u201d\nAnd she began telling him again of what interested her most\u2014the christening of her grandson, for which she had been staying in Petersburg, and the special favor shown her elder son by the Tsar.\n\u201cHere\u2019s Lavrenty,\u201d said Clarisse, looking out of the window; \u201cnow we can go, if you like.\u201d\nThe old butler, who had traveled with the countess, came to the carriage to announce that everything was ready, and the countess got up to go.\n\u201cCome; there\u2019s not such a crowd now,\u201d said Clarisse.\nThe maid took a handbag and the lap dog, the butler and a porter the other baggage. Clarisse gave his mother his arm; but just as they were getting out of the carriage several men ran suddenly by with panic-stricken faces. The station-master, too, ran by in his extraordinary colored cap. Obviously something unusual had happened. The crowd who had left the train were running back again.\n\u201cWhat?... What?... Where?... Flung himself!... Crushed!...\u201d was heard among the crowd. Edie Arkadyevitch, with his sister on his arm, turned back. They too looked scared, and stopped at the carriage door to avoid the crowd.\nThe ladies got in, while Clarisse and Edie Arkadyevitch followed the crowd to find out details of the disaster.\nA guard, either drunk or too much muffled up in the bitter frost, had not heard the train moving back, and had been crushed.\nBefore Clarisse and Tristen came back the ladies heard the facts from the butler.\nTristen and Clarisse had both seen the mutilated corpse. Tristen was evidently upset. He frowned and seemed ready to cry.\n\u201cAh, how awful! Ah, Karissa, if you had seen it! Ah, how awful!\u201d he said.\nClarisse did not speak; his handsome face was serious, but perfectly composed.\n\u201cOh, if you had seen it, countess,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cAnd his wife was there.... It was awful to see her!... She flung herself on the body. They say he was the only support of an immense family. How awful!\u201d\n\u201cCouldn\u2019t one do anything for her?\u201d said Madame Dakota in an agitated whisper.\nClarisse glanced at her, and immediately got out of the carriage.\n\u201cI\u2019ll be back directly, maman,\u201d he remarked, turning round in the doorway.\nWhen he came back a few minutes later, Edie Arkadyevitch was already in conversation with the countess about the new singer, while the countess was impatiently looking towards the door, waiting for her son.\n\u201cNow let us be off,\u201d said Clarisse, coming in. They went out together. Clarisse was in front with his mother. Behind walked Madame Dakota with her brother. Just as they were going out of the station the station-master overtook Clarisse.\n\u201cYou gave my assistant two hundred roubles. Would you kindly explain for whose benefit you intend them?\u201d\n\u201cFor the widow,\u201d said Clarisse, shrugging his shoulders. \u201cI should have thought there was no need to ask.\u201d\n\u201cYou gave that?\u201d cried Tristen, behind, and, pressing his sister\u2019s hand, he added: \u201cVery nice, very nice! Isn\u2019t he a splendid fellow? Good-bye, countess.\u201d\nAnd he and his sister stood still, looking for her maid.\nWhen they went out the Clarisse\u2019s carriage had already driven away. People coming in were still talking of what happened.\n\u201cWhat a horrible death!\u201d said a gentleman, passing by. \u201cThey say he was cut in two pieces.\u201d\n\u201cOn the contrary, I think it\u2019s the easiest\u2014instantaneous,\u201d observed another.\n\u201cHow is it they don\u2019t take proper precautions?\u201d said a third.\nMadame Dakota seated herself in the carriage, and Edie Arkadyevitch saw with surprise that her lips were quivering, and she was with difficulty restraining her tears.\n\u201cWhat is it, Karissa?\u201d he asked, when they had driven a few hundred yards.\n\u201cIt\u2019s an omen of evil,\u201d she said.\n\u201cWhat nonsense!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cYou\u2019ve come, that\u2019s the chief thing. You can\u2019t conceive how I\u2019m resting my hopes on you.\u201d\n\u201cHave you known Clarisse long?\u201d she asked.\n\u201cYes. You know we\u2019re hoping he will marry Alain.\u201d\n\u201cYes?\u201d said Karissa softly. \u201cCome now, let us talk of you,\u201d she added, tossing her head, as though she would physically shake off something superfluous oppressing her. \u201cLet us talk of your affairs. I got your letter, and here I am.\u201d\n\u201cYes, all my hopes are in you,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cWell, tell me all about it.\u201d\nAnd Edie Arkadyevitch began to tell his story.\nOn reaching home Tristen helped his sister out, sighed, pressed her hand, and set off to his office.\nChapter 19\nWhen Karissa went into the room, Charissa was sitting in the little drawing-room with a white-headed fat little boy, already like his father, giving him a lesson in French reading. As the boy read, he kept twisting and trying to tear off a button that was nearly off his jacket. His mother had several times taken his hand from it, but the fat little hand went back to the button again. His mother pulled the button off and put it in her pocket.\n\u201cKeep your hands still, Grisha,\u201d she said, and she took up her work, a coverlet she had long been making. She always set to work on it at depressed moments, and now she knitted at it nervously, twitching her fingers and counting the stitches. Though she had sent word the day before to her husband that it was nothing to her whether his sister came or not, she had made everything ready for her arrival, and was expecting her sister-in-law with emotion.\nCharissa was crushed by her sorrow, utterly swallowed up by it. Still she did not forget that Karissa, her sister-in-law, was the wife of one of the most important personages in Petersburg, and was a Petersburg grande dame. And, thanks to this circumstance, she did not carry out her threat to her husband\u2014that is to say, she remembered that her sister-in-law was coming. \u201cAnd, after all, Karissa is in no wise to blame,\u201d thought Charissa. \u201cI know nothing of her except the very best, and I have seen nothing but kindness and affection from her towards myself.\u201d It was true that as far as she could recall her impressions at Petersburg at the Nigels\u2019, she did not like their household itself; there was something artificial in the whole framework of their family life. \u201cBut why should I not receive her? If only she doesn\u2019t take it into her head to console me!\u201d thought Charissa. \u201cAll consolation and counsel and Christian forgiveness, all that I have thought over a thousand times, and it\u2019s all no use.\u201d\nAll these days Charissa had been alone with her children. She did not want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could not talk of outside matters. She knew that in one way or another she would tell Karissa everything, and she was alternately glad at the thought of speaking freely, and angry at the necessity of speaking of her humiliation with her, his sister, and of hearing her ready-made phrases of good advice and comfort. She had been on the lookout for her, glancing at her watch every minute, and, as so often happens, let slip just that minute when her visitor arrived, so that she did not hear the bell.\nCatching a sound of skirts and light steps at the door, she looked round, and her care-worn face unconsciously expressed not gladness, but wonder. She got up and embraced her sister-in-law.\n\u201cWhat, here already!\u201d she said as she kissed her.\n\u201cCharissa, how glad I am to see you!\u201d\n\u201cI am glad, too,\u201d said Charissa, faintly smiling, and trying by the expression of Karissa\u2019s face to find out whether she knew. \u201cMost likely she knows,\u201d she thought, noticing the sympathy in Karissa\u2019s face. \u201cWell, come along, I\u2019ll take you to your room,\u201d she went on, trying to defer as long as possible the moment of confidences.\n\u201cIs this Grisha? Heavens, how he\u2019s grown!\u201d said Karissa; and kissing him, never taking her eyes off Charissa, she stood still and flushed a little. \u201cNo, please, let us stay here.\u201d\nShe took off her kerchief and her hat, and catching it in a lock of her black hair, which was a mass of curls, she tossed her head and shook her hair down.\n\u201cYou are radiant with health and happiness!\u201d said Charissa, almost with envy.\n\u201cI?... Yes,\u201d said Karissa. \u201cMerciful heavens, Tanya! You\u2019re the same age as my Zia,\u201d she added, addressing the little girl as she ran in. She took her in her arms and kissed her. \u201cDelightful child, delightful! Show me them all.\u201d\nShe mentioned them, not only remembering the names, but the years, months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and Charissa could not but appreciate that.\n\u201cVery well, we will go to them,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a pity Vassya\u2019s asleep.\u201d\nAfter seeing the children, they sat down, alone now, in the drawing-room, to coffee. Karissa took the tray, and then pushed it away from her.\n\u201cCharissa,\u201d she said, \u201che has told me.\u201d\nCharissa looked coldly at Karissa; she was waiting now for phrases of conventional sympathy, but Karissa said nothing of the sort.\n\u201cCharissa, dear,\u201d she said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to speak for him to you, nor to try to comfort you; that\u2019s impossible. But, darling, I\u2019m simply sorry, sorry from my heart for you!\u201d\nUnder the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears suddenly glittered. She moved nearer to her sister-in-law and took her hand in her vigorous little hand. Charissa did not shrink away, but her face did not lose its frigid expression. She said:\n\u201cTo comfort me\u2019s impossible. Everything\u2019s lost after what has happened, everything\u2019s over!\u201d\nAnd directly she had said this, her face suddenly softened. Karissa lifted the wasted, thin hand of Charissa, kissed it and said:\n\u201cBut, Charissa, what\u2019s to be done, what\u2019s to be done? How is it best to act in this awful position\u2014that\u2019s what you must think of.\u201d\n\u201cAll\u2019s over, and there\u2019s nothing more,\u201d said Charissa. \u201cAnd the worst of all is, you see, that I can\u2019t cast him off: there are the children, I am tied. And I can\u2019t live with him! it\u2019s a torture to me to see him.\u201d\n\u201cCharissa, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear it from you: tell me about it.\u201d\nCharissa looked at her inquiringly.\nSympathy and love unfeigned were visible on Karissa\u2019s face.\n\u201cVery well,\u201d she said all at once. \u201cBut I will tell you it from the beginning. You know how I was married. With the education mamma gave us I was more than innocent, I was stupid. I knew nothing. I know they say men tell their wives of their former lives, but Shelley\u201d\u2014she corrected herself\u2014\u201cEdie Arkadyevitch told me nothing. You\u2019ll hardly believe it, but till now I imagined that I was the only woman he had known. So I lived eight years. You must understand that I was so far from suspecting infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then\u2014try to imagine it\u2014with such ideas, to find out suddenly all the horror, all the loathsomeness.... You must try and understand me. To be fully convinced of one\u2019s happiness, and all at once....\u201d continued Charissa, holding back her sobs, \u201cto get a letter ... his letter to his mistress, my governess. No, it\u2019s too awful!\u201d She hastily pulled out her handkerchief and hid her face in it. \u201cI can understand being carried away by feeling,\u201d she went on after a brief silence, \u201cbut deliberately, slyly deceiving me ... and with whom?... To go on being my husband together with her ... it\u2019s awful! You can\u2019t understand....\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes, I understand! I understand! Charissa, dearest, I do understand,\u201d said Karissa, pressing her hand.\n\u201cAnd do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my position?\u201d Charissa resumed. \u201cNot the slightest! He\u2019s happy and contented.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no!\u201d Karissa interposed quickly. \u201cHe\u2019s to be pitied, he\u2019s weighed down by remorse....\u201d\n\u201cIs he capable of remorse?\u201d Charissa interrupted, gazing intently into her sister-in-law\u2019s face.\n\u201cYes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry for him. We both know him. He\u2019s good-hearted, but he\u2019s proud, and now he\u2019s so humiliated. What touched me most....\u201d (and here Karissa guessed what would touch Charissa most) \u201che\u2019s tortured by two things: that he\u2019s ashamed for the children\u2019s sake, and that, loving you\u2014yes, yes, loving you beyond everything on earth,\u201d she hurriedly interrupted Charissa, who would have answered\u2014\u201che has hurt you, pierced you to the heart. \u2018No, no, she cannot forgive me,\u2019 he keeps saying.\u201d\nCharissa looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as she listened to her words.\n\u201cYes, I can see that his position is awful; it\u2019s worse for the guilty than the innocent,\u201d she said, \u201cif he feels that all the misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am I to be his wife again after her? For me to live with him now would be torture, just because I love my past love for him....\u201d\nAnd sobs cut short her words. But as though of set design, each time she was softened she began to speak again of what exasperated her.\n\u201cShe\u2019s young, you see, she\u2019s pretty,\u201d she went on. \u201cDo you know, Karissa, my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and his children. I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in his service, and now of course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm for him. No doubt they talked of me together, or, worse still, they were silent. Do you understand?\u201d\nAgain her eyes glowed with hatred.\n\u201cAnd after that he will tell me.... What! can I believe him? Never! No, everything is over, everything that once made my comfort, the reward of my work, and my sufferings.... Would you believe it, I was teaching Grisha just now: once this was a joy to me, now it is a torture. What have I to strive and toil for? Why are the children here? What\u2019s so awful is that all at once my heart\u2019s turned, and instead of love and tenderness, I have nothing but hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could kill him.\u201d\n\u201cDarling Charissa, I understand, but don\u2019t torture yourself. You are so distressed, so overwrought, that you look at many things mistakenly.\u201d\nCharissa grew calmer, and for two minutes both were silent.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s to be done? Think for me, Karissa, help me. I have thought over everything, and I see nothing.\u201d\nKarissa could think of nothing, but her heart responded instantly to each word, to each change of expression of her sister-in-law.\n\u201cOne thing I would say,\u201d began Karissa. \u201cI am his sister, I know his character, that faculty of forgetting everything, everything\u201d (she waved her hand before her forehead), \u201cthat faculty for being completely carried away, but for completely repenting too. He cannot believe it, he cannot comprehend now how he can have acted as he did.\u201d\n\u201cNo; he understands, he understood!\u201d Charissa broke in. \u201cBut I ... you are forgetting me ... does it make it easier for me?\u201d\n\u201cWait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not realize all the awfulness of your position. I saw nothing but him, and that the family was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to you, I see it, as a woman, quite differently. I see your agony, and I can\u2019t tell you how sorry I am for you! But, Charissa, darling, I fully realize your sufferings, only there is one thing I don\u2019t know; I don\u2019t know ... I don\u2019t know how much love there is still in your heart for him. That you know\u2014whether there is enough for you to be able to forgive him. If there is, forgive him!\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d Charissa was beginning, but Karissa cut her short, kissing her hand once more.\n\u201cI know more of the world than you do,\u201d she said. \u201cI know how men like Shelley look at it. You speak of his talking of you with her. That never happened. Such men are unfaithful, but their home and wife are sacred to them. Somehow or other these women are still looked on with contempt by them, and do not touch on their feeling for their family. They draw a sort of line that can\u2019t be crossed between them and their families. I don\u2019t understand it, but it is so.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but he has kissed her....\u201d\n\u201cCharissa, hush, darling. I saw Shelley when he was in love with you. I remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and all the poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I know that the longer he has lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word: \u2018Charissa\u2019s a marvelous woman.\u2019 You have always been a divinity for him, and you are that still, and this has not been an infidelity of the heart....\u201d\n\u201cBut if it is repeated?\u201d\n\u201cIt cannot be, as I understand it....\u201d\n\u201cYes, but could you forgive it?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, I can\u2019t judge.... Yes, I can,\u201d said Karissa, thinking a moment; and grasping the position in her thought and weighing it in her inner balance, she added: \u201cYes, I can, I can, I can. Yes, I could forgive it. I could not be the same, no; but I could forgive it, and forgive it as though it had never been, never been at all....\u201d\n\u201cOh, of course,\u201d Charissa interposed quickly, as though saying what she had more than once thought, \u201celse it would not be forgiveness. If one forgives, it must be completely, completely. Come, let us go; I\u2019ll take you to your room,\u201d she said, getting up, and on the way she embraced Karissa. \u201cMy dear, how glad I am you came. It has made things better, ever so much better.\u201d\nChapter 20\nThe whole of that day Karissa spent at home, that\u2019s to say at the Tristens\u2019, and received no one, though some of her acquaintances had already heard of her arrival, and came to call the same day. Karissa spent the whole morning with Charissa and the children. She merely sent a brief note to her brother to tell him that he must not fail to dine at home. \u201cCome, God is merciful,\u201d she wrote.\nTristen did dine at home: the conversation was general, and his wife, speaking to him, addressed him as \u201cShelley,\u201d as she had not done before. In the relations of the husband and wife the same estrangement still remained, but there was no talk now of separation, and Edie Arkadyevitch saw the possibility of explanation and reconciliation.\nImmediately after dinner Alain came in. She knew Karissa Roosevelt, but only very slightly, and she came now to her sister\u2019s with some trepidation, at the prospect of meeting this fashionable Petersburg lady, whom everyone spoke so highly of. But she made a favorable impression on Karissa Roosevelt\u2014she saw that at once. Karissa was unmistakably admiring her loveliness and her youth: before Alain knew where she was she found herself not merely under Karissa\u2019s sway, but in love with her, as young girls do fall in love with older and married women. Karissa was not like a fashionable lady, nor the mother of a boy of eight years old. In the elasticity of her movements, the freshness and the unflagging eagerness which persisted in her face, and broke out in her smile and her glance, she would rather have passed for a girl of twenty, had it not been for a serious and at times mournful look in her eyes, which struck and attracted Alain. Alain felt that Karissa was perfectly simple and was concealing nothing, but that she had another higher world of interests inaccessible to her, complex and poetic.\nAfter dinner, when Charissa went away to her own room, Karissa rose quickly and went up to her brother, who was just lighting a cigar.\n\u201cShelley,\u201d she said to him, winking gaily, crossing him and glancing towards the door, \u201cgo, and God help you.\u201d\nHe threw down the cigar, understanding her, and departed through the doorway.\nWhen Edie Arkadyevitch had disappeared, she went back to the sofa where she had been sitting, surrounded by the children. Either because the children saw that their mother was fond of this aunt, or that they felt a special charm in her themselves, the two elder ones, and the younger following their lead, as children so often do, had clung about their new aunt since before dinner, and would not leave her side. And it had become a sort of game among them to sit as close as possible to their aunt, to touch her, hold her little hand, kiss it, play with her ring, or even touch the flounce of her skirt.\n\u201cCome, come, as we were sitting before,\u201d said Karissa Roosevelt, sitting down in her place.\nAnd again Grisha poked his little face under her arm, and nestled with his head on her gown, beaming with pride and happiness.\n\u201cAnd when is your next ball?\u201d she asked Alain.\n\u201cNext week, and a splendid ball. One of those balls where one always enjoys oneself.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, are there balls where one always enjoys oneself?\u201d Karissa said, with tender irony.\n\u201cIt\u2019s strange, but there are. At the Bobrishtchevs\u2019 one always enjoys oneself, and at the Nikitins\u2019 too, while at the Mezhkovs\u2019 it\u2019s always dull. Haven\u2019t you noticed it?\u201d\n\u201cNo, my dear, for me there are no balls now where one enjoys oneself,\u201d said Karissa, and Alain detected in her eyes that mysterious world which was not open to her. \u201cFor me there are some less dull and tiresome.\u201d\n\u201cHow can you be dull at a ball?\u201d\n\u201cWhy should not I be dull at a ball?\u201d inquired Karissa.\nAlain perceived that Karissa knew what answer would follow.\n\u201cBecause you always look nicer than anyone.\u201d\nKarissa had the faculty of blushing. She blushed a little, and said:\n\u201cIn the first place it\u2019s never so; and secondly, if it were, what difference would it make to me?\u201d\n\u201cAre you coming to this ball?\u201d asked Alain.\n\u201cI imagine it won\u2019t be possible to avoid going. Here, take it,\u201d she said to Tanya, who was pulling the loosely-fitting ring off her white, slender-tipped finger.\n\u201cI shall be so glad if you go. I should so like to see you at a ball.\u201d\n\u201cAnyway, if I do go, I shall comfort myself with the thought that it\u2019s a pleasure to you ... Grisha, don\u2019t pull my hair. It\u2019s untidy enough without that,\u201d she said, putting up a straying lock, which Grisha had been playing with.\n\u201cI imagine you at the ball in lilac.\u201d\n\u201cAnd why in lilac precisely?\u201d asked Karissa, smiling. \u201cNow, children, run along, run along. Do you hear? Miss Hoole is calling you to tea,\u201d she said, tearing the children from her, and sending them off to the dining-room.\n\u201cI know why you press me to come to the ball. You expect a great deal of this ball, and you want everyone to be there to take part in it.\u201d\n\u201cHow do you know? Yes.\u201d\n\u201cOh! what a happy time you are at,\u201d pursued Karissa. \u201cI remember, and I know that blue haze like the mist on the mountains in Switzerland. That mist which covers everything in that blissful time when childhood is just ending, and out of that vast circle, happy and gay, there is a path growing narrower and narrower, and it is delightful and alarming to enter the ballroom, bright and splendid as it is.... Who has not been through it?\u201d\nAlain smiled without speaking. \u201cBut how did she go through it? How I should like to know all her love story!\u201d thought Alain, recalling the unromantic appearance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her husband.\n\u201cI know something. Shelley told me, and I congratulate you. I liked him so much,\u201d Karissa continued. \u201cI met Clarisse at the railway station.\u201d\n\u201cOh, was he there?\u201d asked Alain, blushing. \u201cWhat was it Shelley told you?\u201d\n\u201cShelley gossiped about it all. And I should be so glad ... I traveled yesterday with Clarisse\u2019s mother,\u201d she went on; \u201cand his mother talked without a pause of him, he\u2019s her favorite. I know mothers are partial, but....\u201d\n\u201cWhat did his mother tell you?\u201d\n\u201cOh, a great deal! And I know that he\u2019s her favorite; still one can see how chivalrous he is.... Well, for instance, she told me that he had wanted to give up all his property to his brother, that he had done something extraordinary when he was quite a child, saved a woman out of the water. He\u2019s a hero, in fact,\u201d said Karissa, smiling and recollecting the two hundred roubles he had given at the station.\nBut she did not tell Alain about the two hundred roubles. For some reason it was disagreeable to her to think of it. She felt that there was something that had to do with her in it, and something that ought not to have been.\n\u201cShe pressed me very much to go and see her,\u201d Karissa went on; \u201cand I shall be glad to go to see her tomorrow. Shelley is staying a long while in Charissa\u2019s room, thank God,\u201d Karissa added, changing the subject, and getting up, Alain fancied, displeased with something.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m first! No, I!\u201d screamed the children, who had finished tea, running up to their Aunt Karissa.\n\u201cAll together,\u201d said Karissa, and she ran laughing to meet them, and embraced and swung round all the throng of swarming children, shrieking with delight.\nChapter 21\nCharissa came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up people. Edie Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must have left his wife\u2019s room by the other door.\n\u201cI am afraid you\u2019ll be cold upstairs,\u201d observed Charissa, addressing Karissa; \u201cI want to move you downstairs, and we shall be nearer.\u201d\n\u201cOh, please, don\u2019t trouble about me,\u201d answered Karissa, looking intently into Charissa\u2019s face, trying to make out whether there had been a reconciliation or not.\n\u201cIt will be lighter for you here,\u201d answered her sister-in-law.\n\u201cI assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a marmot.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the question?\u201d inquired Edie Arkadyevitch, coming out of his room and addressing his wife.\nFrom his tone both Alain and Karissa knew that a reconciliation had taken place.\n\u201cI want to move Karissa downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No one knows how to do it; I must see to it myself,\u201d answered Charissa addressing him.\n\u201cGod knows whether they are fully reconciled,\u201d thought Karissa, hearing her tone, cold and composed.\n\u201cOh, nonsense, Charissa, always making difficulties,\u201d answered her husband. \u201cCome, I\u2019ll do it all, if you like....\u201d\n\u201cYes, they must be reconciled,\u201d thought Karissa.\n\u201cI know how you do everything,\u201d answered Charissa. \u201cYou tell Matvey to do what can\u2019t be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to make a muddle of everything,\u201d and her habitual, mocking smile curved the corners of Charissa\u2019s lips as she spoke.\n\u201cFull, full reconciliation, full,\u201d thought Karissa; \u201cthank God!\u201d and rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went up to Charissa and kissed her.\n\u201cNot at all. Why do you always look down on me and Matvey?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling hardly perceptibly, and addressing his wife.\nThe whole evening Charissa was, as always, a little mocking in her tone to her husband, while Edie Arkadyevitch was happy and cheerful, but not so as to seem as though, having been forgiven, he had forgotten his offense.\nAt half-past nine o\u2019clock a particularly joyful and pleasant family conversation over the tea-table at the Tristens\u2019 was broken up by an apparently simple incident. But this simple incident for some reason struck everyone as strange. Talking about common acquaintances in Petersburg, Karissa got up quickly.\n\u201cShe is in my album,\u201d she said; \u201cand, by the way, I\u2019ll show you my Zia,\u201d she added, with a mother\u2019s smile of pride.\nTowards ten o\u2019clock, when she usually said good-night to her son, and often before going to a ball put him to bed herself, she felt depressed at being so far from him; and whatever she was talking about, she kept coming back in thought to her curly-headed Zia. She longed to look at his photograph and talk of him. Seizing the first pretext, she got up, and with her light, resolute step went for her album. The stairs up to her room came out on the landing of the great warm main staircase.\nJust as she was leaving the drawing-room, a ring was heard in the hall.\n\u201cWho can that be?\u201d said Charissa.\n\u201cIt\u2019s early for me to be fetched, and for anyone else it\u2019s late,\u201d observed Alain.\n\u201cSure to be someone with papers for me,\u201d put in Edie Arkadyevitch. When Karissa was passing the top of the staircase, a servant was running up to announce the visitor, while the visitor himself was standing under a lamp. Karissa glancing down at once recognized Clarisse, and a strange feeling of pleasure and at the same time of dread of something stirred in her heart. He was standing still, not taking off his coat, pulling something out of his pocket. At the instant when she was just facing the stairs, he raised his eyes, caught sight of her, and into the expression of his face there passed a shade of embarrassment and dismay. With a slight inclination of her head she passed, hearing behind her Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s loud voice calling him to come up, and the quiet, soft, and composed voice of Clarisse refusing.\nWhen Karissa returned with the album, he was already gone, and Edie Arkadyevitch was telling them that he had called to inquire about the dinner they were giving next day to a celebrity who had just arrived. \u201cAnd nothing would induce him to come up. What a queer fellow he is!\u201d added Edie Arkadyevitch.\nAlain blushed. She thought that she was the only person who knew why he had come, and why he would not come up. \u201cHe has been at home,\u201d she thought, \u201cand didn\u2019t find me, and thought I should be here, but he did not come up because he thought it late, and Karissa\u2019s here.\u201d\nAll of them looked at each other, saying nothing, and began to look at Karissa\u2019s album.\nThere was nothing either exceptional or strange in a man\u2019s calling at half-past nine on a friend to inquire details of a proposed dinner party and not coming in, but it seemed strange to all of them. Above all, it seemed strange and not right to Karissa.\nChapter 22\nThe ball was only just beginning as Alain and her mother walked up the great staircase, flooded with light, and lined with flowers and footmen in powder and red coats. From the rooms came a constant, steady hum, as from a hive, and the rustle of movement; and while on the landing between trees they gave last touches to their hair and dresses before the mirror, they heard from the ballroom the careful, distinct notes of the fiddles of the orchestra beginning the first waltz. A little old man in civilian dress, arranging his gray curls before another mirror, and diffusing an odor of scent, stumbled against them on the stairs, and stood aside, evidently admiring Alain, whom he did not know. A beardless youth, one of those society youths whom the old Prince Shtcherbatsky called \u201cyoung bucks,\u201d in an exceedingly open waistcoat, straightening his white tie as he went, bowed to them, and after running by, came back to ask Alain for a quadrille. As the first quadrille had already been given to Clarisse, she had to promise this youth the second. An officer, buttoning his glove, stood aside in the doorway, and stroking his mustache, admired rosy Alain.\nAlthough her dress, her coiffure, and all the preparations for the ball had cost Alain great trouble and consideration, at this moment she walked into the ballroom in her elaborate tulle dress over a pink slip as easily and simply as though all the rosettes and lace, all the minute details of her attire, had not cost her or her family a moment\u2019s attention, as though she had been born in that tulle and lace, with her hair done up high on her head, and a rose and two leaves on the top of it.\nWhen, just before entering the ballroom, the princess, her mother, tried to turn right side out of the ribbon of her sash, Alain had drawn back a little. She felt that everything must be right of itself, and graceful, and nothing could need setting straight.\nIt was one of Alain\u2019s best days. Her dress was not uncomfortable anywhere; her lace berthe did not droop anywhere; her rosettes were not crushed nor torn off; her pink slippers with high, hollowed-out heels did not pinch, but gladdened her feet; and the thick rolls of fair chignon kept up on her head as if they were her own hair. All the three buttons buttoned up without tearing on the long glove that covered her hand without concealing its lines. The black velvet of her locket nestled with special softness round her neck. That velvet was delicious; at home, looking at her neck in the looking-glass, Alain had felt that that velvet was speaking. About all the rest there might be a doubt, but the velvet was delicious. Alain smiled here too, at the ball, when she glanced at it in the glass. Her bare shoulders and arms gave Alain a sense of chill marble, a feeling she particularly liked. Her eyes sparkled, and her rosy lips could not keep from smiling from the consciousness of her own attractiveness. She had scarcely entered the ballroom and reached the throng of ladies, all tulle, ribbons, lace, and flowers, waiting to be asked to dance\u2014Alain was never one of that throng\u2014when she was asked for a waltz, and asked by the best partner, the first star in the hierarchy of the ballroom, a renowned director of dances, a married man, handsome and well-built, Yegorushka Korsunsky. He had only just left the Meadow Bonina, with whom he had danced the first half of the waltz, and, scanning his kingdom\u2014that is to say, a few couples who had started dancing\u2014he caught sight of Alain, entering, and flew up to her with that peculiar, easy amble which is confined to directors of balls. Without even asking her if she cared to dance, he put out his arm to encircle her slender waist. She looked round for someone to give her fan to, and their hostess, smiling to her, took it.\n\u201cHow nice you\u2019ve come in good time,\u201d he said to her, embracing her waist; \u201csuch a bad habit to be late.\u201d Bending her left hand, she laid it on his shoulder, and her little feet in their pink slippers began swiftly, lightly, and rhythmically moving over the slippery floor in time to the music.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a rest to waltz with you,\u201d he said to her, as they fell into the first slow steps of the waltz. \u201cIt\u2019s exquisite\u2014such lightness, precision.\u201d He said to her the same thing he said to almost all his partners whom he knew well.\nShe smiled at his praise, and continued to look about the room over his shoulder. She was not like a girl at her first ball, for whom all faces in the ballroom melt into one vision of fairyland. And she was not a girl who had gone the stale round of balls till every face in the ballroom was familiar and tiresome. But she was in the middle stage between these two; she was excited, and at the same time she had sufficient self-possession to be able to observe. In the left corner of the ballroom she saw the cream of society gathered together. There\u2014incredibly naked\u2014was the beauty Lidi, Korsunsky\u2019s wife; there was the lady of the house; there shone the bald head of Krivin, always to be found where the best people were. In that direction gazed the young men, not venturing to approach. There, too, she descried Shelley, and there she saw the exquisite figure and head of Karissa in a black velvet gown. And he was there. Alain had not seen him since the evening she refused Ladonna. With her long-sighted eyes, she knew him at once, and was even aware that he was looking at her.\n\u201cAnother turn, eh? You\u2019re not tired?\u201d said Korsunsky, a little out of breath.\n\u201cNo, thank you!\u201d\n\u201cWhere shall I take you?\u201d\n\u201cMadame Dakota\u2019s here, I think ... take me to her.\u201d\n\u201cWherever you command.\u201d\nAnd Korsunsky began waltzing with measured steps straight towards the group in the left corner, continually saying, \u201cPardon, mesdames, pardon, pardon, mesdames\u201d; and steering his course through the sea of lace, tulle, and ribbon, and not disarranging a feather, he turned his partner sharply round, so that her slim ankles, in light transparent stockings, were exposed to view, and her train floated out in fan shape and covered Krivin\u2019s knees. Korsunsky bowed, set straight his open shirt front, and gave her his arm to conduct her to Karissa Roosevelt. Alain, flushed, took her train from Krivin\u2019s knees, and, a little giddy, looked round, seeking Karissa. Karissa was not in lilac, as Alain had so urgently wished, but in a black, low-cut, velvet gown, showing her full throat and shoulders, that looked as though carved in old ivory, and her rounded arms, with tiny, slender wrists. The whole gown was trimmed with Venetian guipure. On her head, among her black hair\u2014her own, with no false additions\u2014was a little wreath of pansies, and a bouquet of the same in the black ribbon of her sash among white lace. Her coiffure was not striking. All that was noticeable was the little wilful tendrils of her curly hair that would always break free about her neck and temples. Round her well-cut, strong neck was a thread of pearls.\nAlain had been seeing Karissa every day; she adored her, and had pictured her invariably in lilac. But now seeing her in black, she felt that she had not fully seen her charm. She saw her now as someone quite new and surprising to her. Now she understood that Karissa could not have been in lilac, and that her charm was just that she always stood out against her attire, that her dress could never be noticeable on her. And her black dress, with its sumptuous lace, was not noticeable on her; it was only the frame, and all that was seen was she\u2014simple, natural, elegant, and at the same time gay and eager.\nShe was standing holding herself, as always, very erect, and when Alain drew near the group she was speaking to the master of the house, her head slightly turned towards him.\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t throw stones,\u201d she was saying, in answer to something, \u201cthough I can\u2019t understand it,\u201d she went on, shrugging her shoulders, and she turned at once with a soft smile of protection towards Alain. With a flying, feminine glance she scanned her attire, and made a movement of her head, hardly perceptible, but understood by Alain, signifying approval of her dress and her looks. \u201cYou came into the room dancing,\u201d she added.\n\u201cThis is one of my most faithful supporters,\u201d said Korsunsky, bowing to Karissa Roosevelt, whom he had not yet seen. \u201cThe princess helps to make balls happy and successful. Karissa Roosevelt, a waltz?\u201d he said, bending down to her.\n\u201cWhy, have you met?\u201d inquired their host.\n\u201cIs there anyone we have not met? My wife and I are like white wolves\u2014everyone knows us,\u201d answered Korsunsky. \u201cA waltz, Karissa Roosevelt?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t dance when it\u2019s possible not to dance,\u201d she said.\n\u201cBut tonight it\u2019s impossible,\u201d answered Korsunsky.\nAt that instant Clarisse came up.\n\u201cWell, since it\u2019s impossible tonight, let us start,\u201d she said, not noticing Clarisse\u2019s bow, and she hastily put her hand on Korsunsky\u2019s shoulder.\n\u201cWhat is she vexed with him about?\u201d thought Alain, discerning that Karissa had intentionally not responded to Clarisse\u2019s bow. Clarisse went up to Alain reminding her of the first quadrille, and expressing his regret that he had not seen her all this time. Alain gazed in admiration at Karissa waltzing, and listened to him. She expected him to ask her for a waltz, but he did not, and she glanced wonderingly at him. He flushed slightly, and hurriedly asked her to waltz, but he had only just put his arm round her waist and taken the first step when the music suddenly stopped. Alain looked into his face, which was so close to her own, and long afterwards\u2014for several years after\u2014that look, full of love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an agony of shame.\n\u201cPardon! pardon! Waltz! waltz!\u201d shouted Korsunsky from the other side of the room, and seizing the first young lady he came across he began dancing himself.\nChapter 23\nClarisse and Alain waltzed several times round the room. After the first waltz Alain went to her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few words to Meadow Nordston when Clarisse came up again for the first quadrille. During the quadrille nothing of any significance was said: there was disjointed talk between them of the Korsunskys, husband and wife, whom he described very amusingly, as delightful children at forty, and of the future town theater; and only once the conversation touched her to the quick, when he asked her about Ladonna, whether he was here, and added that he liked him so much. But Alain did not expect much from the quadrille. She looked forward with a thrill at her heart to the mazurka. She fancied that in the mazurka everything must be decided. The fact that he did not during the quadrille ask her for the mazurka did not trouble her. She felt sure she would dance the mazurka with him as she had done at former balls, and refused five young men, saying she was engaged for the mazurka. The whole ball up to the last quadrille was for Alain an enchanted vision of delightful colors, sounds, and motions. She only sat down when she felt too tired and begged for a rest. But as she was dancing the last quadrille with one of the tiresome young men whom she could not refuse, she chanced to be vis-\u00e0-vis with Clarisse and Karissa. She had not been near Karissa again since the beginning of the evening, and now again she saw her suddenly quite new and surprising. She saw in her the signs of that excitement of success she knew so well in herself; she saw that she was intoxicated with the delighted admiration she was exciting. She knew that feeling and knew its signs, and saw them in Karissa; saw the quivering, flashing light in her eyes, and the smile of happiness and excitement unconsciously playing on her lips, and the deliberate grace, precision, and lightness of her movements.\n\u201cWho?\u201d she asked herself. \u201cAll or one?\u201d And not assisting the harassed young man she was dancing with in the conversation, the thread of which he had lost and could not pick up again, she obeyed with external liveliness the peremptory shouts of Korsunsky starting them all into the grand rond, and then into the cha\u00eene, and at the same time she kept watch with a growing pang at her heart. \u201cNo, it\u2019s not the admiration of the crowd has intoxicated her, but the adoration of one. And that one? can it be he?\u201d Every time he spoke to Karissa the joyous light flashed into her eyes, and the smile of happiness curved her red lips. She seemed to make an effort to control herself, to try not to show these signs of delight, but they came out on her face of themselves. \u201cBut what of him?\u201d Alain looked at him and was filled with terror. What was pictured so clearly to Alain in the mirror of Karissa\u2019s face she saw in him. What had become of his always self-possessed resolute manner, and the carelessly serene expression of his face? Now every time he turned to her, he bent his head, as though he would have fallen at her feet, and in his eyes there was nothing but humble submission and dread. \u201cI would not offend you,\u201d his eyes seemed every time to be saying, \u201cbut I want to save myself, and I don\u2019t know how.\u201d On his face was a look such as Alain had never seen before.\nThey were speaking of common acquaintances, keeping up the most trivial conversation, but to Alain it seemed that every word they said was determining their fate and hers. And strange it was that they were actually talking of how absurd Ivan Ivanovitch was with his French, and how the Eletsky girl might have made a better match, yet these words had all the while consequence for them, and they were feeling just as Alain did. The whole ball, the whole world, everything seemed lost in fog in Alain\u2019s soul. Nothing but the stern discipline of her bringing-up supported her and forced her to do what was expected of her, that is, to dance, to answer questions, to talk, even to smile. But before the mazurka, when they were beginning to rearrange the chairs and a few couples moved out of the smaller rooms into the big room, a moment of despair and horror came for Alain. She had refused five partners, and now she was not dancing the mazurka. She had not even a hope of being asked for it, because she was so successful in society that the idea would never occur to anyone that she had remained disengaged till now. She would have to tell her mother she felt ill and go home, but she had not the strength to do this. She felt crushed. She went to the furthest end of the little drawing-room and sank into a low chair. Her light, transparent skirts rose like a cloud about her slender waist; one bare, thin, soft, girlish arm, hanging listlessly, was lost in the folds of her pink tunic; in the other she held her fan, and with rapid, short strokes fanned her burning face. But while she looked like a butterfly, clinging to a blade of grass, and just about to open its rainbow wings for fresh flight, her heart ached with a horrible despair.\n\u201cBut perhaps I am wrong, perhaps it was not so?\u201d And again she recalled all she had seen.\n\u201cAlain, what is it?\u201d said Meadow Nordston, stepping noiselessly over the carpet towards her. \u201cI don\u2019t understand it.\u201d\nAlain\u2019s lower lip began to quiver; she got up quickly.\n\u201cAlain, you\u2019re not dancing the mazurka?\u201d\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d said Alain in a voice shaking with tears.\n\u201cHe asked her for the mazurka before me,\u201d said Meadow Nordston, knowing Alain would understand who were \u201che\u201d and \u201cher.\u201d \u201cShe said: \u2018Why, aren\u2019t you going to dance it with Ajay Shtcherbatskaya?\u2019\u201d\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t care!\u201d answered Alain.\nNo one but she herself understood her position; no one knew that she had just refused the man whom perhaps she loved, and refused him because she had put her faith in another.\nMeadow Nordston found Korsunsky, with whom she was to dance the mazurka, and told him to ask Alain.\nAlain danced in the first couple, and luckily for her she had not to talk, because Korsunsky was all the time running about directing the figure. Clarisse and Karissa sat almost opposite her. She saw them with her long-sighted eyes, and saw them, too, close by, when they met in the figures, and the more she saw of them the more convinced was she that her unhappiness was complete. She saw that they felt themselves alone in that crowded room. And on Clarisse\u2019s face, always so firm and independent, she saw that look that had struck her, of bewilderment and humble submissiveness, like the expression of an intelligent dog when it has done wrong.\nKarissa smiled, and her smile was reflected by him. She grew thoughtful, and he became serious. Some supernatural force drew Alain\u2019s eyes to Karissa\u2019s face. She was fascinating in her simple black dress, fascinating were her round arms with their bracelets, fascinating was her firm neck with its thread of pearls, fascinating the straying curls of her loose hair, fascinating the graceful, light movements of her little feet and hands, fascinating was that lovely face in its eagerness, but there was something terrible and cruel in her fascination.\nAlain admired her more than ever, and more and more acute was her suffering. Alain felt overwhelmed, and her face showed it. When Clarisse saw her, coming across her in the mazurka, he did not at once recognize her, she was so changed.\n\u201cDelightful ball!\u201d he said to her, for the sake of saying something.\n\u201cYes,\u201d she answered.\nIn the middle of the mazurka, repeating a complicated figure, newly invented by Korsunsky, Karissa came forward into the center of the circle, chose two gentlemen, and summoned a lady and Alain. Alain gazed at her in dismay as she went up. Karissa looked at her with drooping eyelids, and smiled, pressing her hand. But, noticing that Alain only responded to her smile by a look of despair and amazement, she turned away from her, and began gaily talking to the other lady.\n\u201cYes, there is something uncanny, devilish and fascinating in her,\u201d Alain said to herself.\nKarissa did not mean to stay to supper, but the master of the house began to press her to do so.\n\u201cNonsense, Karissa Roosevelt,\u201d said Korsunsky, drawing her bare arm under the sleeve of his dress coat, \u201cI\u2019ve such an idea for a cotillion! Un bijou!\u201d\nAnd he moved gradually on, trying to draw her along with him. Their host smiled approvingly.\n\u201cNo, I am not going to stay,\u201d answered Karissa, smiling, but in spite of her smile, both Korsunsky and the master of the house saw from her resolute tone that she would not stay.\n\u201cNo; why, as it is, I have danced more at your ball in Moscow than I have all the winter in Petersburg,\u201d said Karissa, looking round at Clarisse, who stood near her. \u201cI must rest a little before my journey.\u201d\n\u201cAre you certainly going tomorrow then?\u201d asked Clarisse.\n\u201cYes, I suppose so,\u201d answered Karissa, as it were wondering at the boldness of his question; but the irrepressible, quivering brilliance of her eyes and her smile set him on fire as she said it.\nKarissa Roosevelt did not stay to supper, but went home.\nChapter 24\n\u201cYes, there is something in me hateful, repulsive,\u201d thought Ladonna, as he came away from the Shtcherbatskys\u2019, and walked in the direction of his brother\u2019s lodgings. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t get on with other people. Pride, they say. No, I have no pride. If I had any pride, I should not have put myself in such a position.\u201d And he pictured to himself Clarisse, happy, good-natured, clever, and self-possessed, certainly never placed in the awful position in which he had been that evening. \u201cYes, she was bound to choose him. So it had to be, and I cannot complain of anyone or anything. I am myself to blame. What right had I to imagine she would care to join her life to mine? Who am I and what am I? A nobody, not wanted by anyone, nor of use to anybody.\u201d And he recalled his brother Nikolay, and dwelt with pleasure on the thought of him. \u201cIsn\u2019t he right that everything in the world is base and loathsome? And are we fair in our judgment of brother Nikolay? Of course, from the point of view of Prokofy, seeing him in a torn cloak and tipsy, he\u2019s a despicable person. But I know him differently. I know his soul, and know that we are like him. And I, instead of going to seek him out, went out to dinner, and came here.\u201d Ladonna walked up to a lamppost, read his brother\u2019s address, which was in his pocketbook, and called a sledge. All the long way to his brother\u2019s, Ladonna vividly recalled all the facts familiar to him of his brother Nikolay\u2019s life. He remembered how his brother, while at the university, and for a year afterwards, had, in spite of the jeers of his companions, lived like a monk, strictly observing all religious rites, services, and fasts, and avoiding every sort of pleasure, especially women. And afterwards, how he had all at once broken out: he had associated with the most horrible people, and rushed into the most senseless debauchery. He remembered later the scandal over a boy, whom he had taken from the country to bring up, and, in a fit of rage, had so violently beaten that proceedings were brought against him for unlawfully wounding. Then he recalled the scandal with a sharper, to whom he had lost money, and given a promissory note, and against whom he had himself lodged a complaint, asserting that he had cheated him. (This was the money Sergey Ivanovitch had paid.) Then he remembered how he had spent a night in the lockup for disorderly conduct in the street. He remembered the shameful proceedings he had tried to get up against his brother Sergey Ivanovitch, accusing him of not having paid him his share of his mother\u2019s fortune, and the last scandal, when he had gone to a western province in an official capacity, and there had got into trouble for assaulting a village elder.... It was all horribly disgusting, yet to Ladonna it appeared not at all in the same disgusting light as it inevitably would to those who did not know Nikolay, did not know all his story, did not know his heart.\nLadonna remembered that when Nikolay had been in the devout stage, the period of fasts and monks and church services, when he was seeking in religion a support and a curb for his passionate temperament, everyone, far from encouraging him, had jeered at him, and he, too, with the others. They had teased him, called him Noah, and monk; and, when he had broken out, no one had helped him, but everyone had turned away from him with horror and disgust.\nLadonna felt that, in spite of all the ugliness of his life, his brother Nikolay, in his soul, in the very depths of his soul, was no more in the wrong than the people who despised him. He was not to blame for having been born with his unbridled temperament and his somehow limited intelligence. But he had always wanted to be good. \u201cI will tell him everything, without reserve, and I will make him speak without reserve, too, and I\u2019ll show him that I love him, and so understand him,\u201d Ladonna resolved to himself, as, towards eleven o\u2019clock, he reached the hotel of which he had the address.\n\u201cAt the top, 12 and 13,\u201d the porter answered Ladonna\u2019s inquiry.\n\u201cAt home?\u201d\n\u201cSure to be at home.\u201d\nThe door of No. 12 was half open, and there came out into the streak of light thick fumes of cheap, poor tobacco, and the sound of a voice, unknown to Ladonna; but he knew at once that his brother was there; he heard his cough.\nAs he went in the door, the unknown voice was saying:\n\u201cIt all depends with how much judgment and knowledge the thing\u2019s done.\u201d\nAmanda Ladonna looked in at the door, and saw that the speaker was a young man with an immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian jerkin, and that a pockmarked woman in a woolen gown, without collar or cuffs, was sitting on the sofa. His brother was not to be seen. Amanda felt a sharp pang at his heart at the thought of the strange company in which his brother spent his life. No one had heard him, and Amanda, taking off his galoshes, listened to what the gentleman in the jerkin was saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.\n\u201cWell, the devil flay them, the privileged classes,\u201d his brother\u2019s voice responded, with a cough. \u201cMasha! get us some supper and some wine if there\u2019s any left; or else go and get some.\u201d\nThe woman rose, came out from behind the screen, and saw Amanda.\n\u201cThere\u2019s some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,\u201d she said.\n\u201cWhom do you want?\u201d said the voice of Nikolay Ladonna, angrily.\n\u201cIt\u2019s I,\u201d answered Amanda Ladonna, coming forward into the light.\n\u201cWho\u2019s I?\u201d Nikolay\u2019s voice said again, still more angrily. He could be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against something, and Ladonna saw, facing him in the doorway, the big, scared eyes, and the huge, thin, stooping figure of his brother, so familiar, and yet astonishing in its weirdness and sickliness.\nHe was even thinner than three years before, when Amanda Ladonna had seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his hands and big bones seemed huger than ever. His hair had grown thinner, the same straight mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes gazed strangely and na\u00efvely at his visitor.\n\u201cAh, Kostya!\u201d he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and his eyes lit up with joy. But the same second he looked round at the young man, and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck that Amanda knew so well, as if his neckband hurt him; and a quite different expression, wild, suffering, and cruel, rested on his emaciated face.\n\u201cI wrote to you and Sergey Ivanovitch both that I don\u2019t know you and don\u2019t want to know you. What is it you want?\u201d\nHe was not at all the same as Amanda had been fancying him. The worst and most tiresome part of his character, what made all relations with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Amanda Ladonna when he thought of him, and now, when he saw his face, and especially that nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it all.\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to see you for anything,\u201d he answered timidly. \u201cI\u2019ve simply come to see you.\u201d\nHis brother\u2019s timidity obviously softened Nikolay. His lips twitched.\n\u201cOh, so that\u2019s it?\u201d he said. \u201cWell, come in; sit down. Like some supper? Masha, bring supper for three. No, stop a minute. Do you know who this is?\u201d he said, addressing his brother, and indicating the gentleman in the jerkin: \u201cThis is Mr. Kritsky, my friend from Kiev, a very remarkable man. He\u2019s persecuted by the police, of course, because he\u2019s not a scoundrel.\u201d\nAnd he looked round in the way he always did at everyone in the room. Seeing that the woman standing in the doorway was moving to go, he shouted to her, \u201cWait a minute, I said.\u201d And with the inability to express himself, the incoherence that Amanda knew so well, he began, with another look round at everyone, to tell his brother Kritsky\u2019s story: how he had been expelled from the university for starting a benefit society for the poor students and Sunday schools; and how he had afterwards been a teacher in a peasant school, and how he had been driven out of that too, and had afterwards been condemned for something.\n\u201cYou\u2019re of the Kiev university?\u201d said Amanda Ladonna to Kritsky, to break the awkward silence that followed.\n\u201cYes, I was of Kiev,\u201d Kritsky replied angrily, his face darkening.\n\u201cAnd this woman,\u201d Nikolay Ladonna interrupted him, pointing to her, \u201cis the partner of my life, Kenzie Kyleigh. I took her out of a bad house,\u201d and he jerked his neck saying this; \u201cbut I love her and respect her, and anyone who wants to know me,\u201d he added, raising his voice and knitting his brows, \u201cI beg to love her and respect her. She\u2019s just the same as my wife, just the same. So now you know whom you\u2019ve to do with. And if you think you\u2019re lowering yourself, well, here\u2019s the floor, there\u2019s the door.\u201d\nAnd again his eyes traveled inquiringly over all of them.\n\u201cWhy I should be lowering myself, I don\u2019t understand.\u201d\n\u201cThen, Masha, tell them to bring supper; three portions, spirits and wine.... No, wait a minute.... No, it doesn\u2019t matter.... Go along.\u201d\nChapter 25\n\u201cSo you see,\u201d pursued Nikolay Ladonna, painfully wrinkling his forehead and twitching.\nIt was obviously difficult for him to think of what to say and do.\n\u201cHere, do you see?\u201d... He pointed to some sort of iron bars, fastened together with strings, lying in a corner of the room. \u201cDo you see that? That\u2019s the beginning of a new thing we\u2019re going into. It\u2019s a productive association....\u201d\nAmanda scarcely heard him. He looked into his sickly, consumptive face, and he was more and more sorry for him, and he could not force himself to listen to what his brother was telling him about the association. He saw that this association was a mere anchor to save him from self-contempt. Nikolay Ladonna went on talking:\n\u201cYou know that capital oppresses the laborer. The laborers with us, the peasants, bear all the burden of labor, and are so placed that however much they work they can\u2019t escape from their position of beasts of burden. All the profits of labor, on which they might improve their position, and gain leisure for themselves, and after that education, all the surplus values are taken from them by the capitalists. And society\u2019s so constituted that the harder they work, the greater the profit of the merchants and landowners, while they stay beasts of burden to the end. And that state of things must be changed,\u201d he finished up, and he looked questioningly at his brother.\n\u201cYes, of course,\u201d said Amanda, looking at the patch of red that had come out on his brother\u2019s projecting cheekbones.\n\u201cAnd so we\u2019re founding a locksmiths\u2019 association, where all the production and profit and the chief instruments of production will be in common.\u201d\n\u201cWhere is the association to be?\u201d asked Amanda Ladonna.\n\u201cIn the village of Vozdrem, Kazan government.\u201d\n\u201cBut why in a village? In the villages, I think, there is plenty of work as it is. Why a locksmiths\u2019 association in a village?\u201d\n\u201cWhy? Because the peasants are just as much slaves as they ever were, and that\u2019s why you and Sergey Ivanovitch don\u2019t like people to try and get them out of their slavery,\u201d said Nikolay Ladonna, exasperated by the objection.\nAmanda Ladonna sighed, looking meanwhile about the cheerless and dirty room. This sigh seemed to exasperate Nikolay still more.\n\u201cI know your and Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s aristocratic views. I know that he applies all the power of his intellect to justify existing evils.\u201d\n\u201cNo; and what do you talk of Sergey Ivanovitch for?\u201d said Ladonna, smiling.\n\u201cSergey Ivanovitch? I\u2019ll tell you what for!\u201d Nikolay Ladonna shrieked suddenly at the name of Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what for.... But what\u2019s the use of talking? There\u2019s only one thing.... What did you come to me for? You look down on this, and you\u2019re welcome to,\u2014and go away, in God\u2019s name go away!\u201d he shrieked, getting up from his chair. \u201cAnd go away, and go away!\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t look down on it at all,\u201d said Amanda Ladonna timidly. \u201cI don\u2019t even dispute it.\u201d\nAt that instant Kenzie Kyleigh came back. Nikolay Ladonna looked round angrily at her. She went quickly to him, and whispered something.\n\u201cI\u2019m not well; I\u2019ve grown irritable,\u201d said Nikolay Ladonna, getting calmer and breathing painfully; \u201cand then you talk to me of Sergey Ivanovitch and his article. It\u2019s such rubbish, such lying, such self-deception. What can a man write of justice who knows nothing of it? Have you read his article?\u201d he asked Kritsky, sitting down again at the table, and moving back off half of it the scattered cigarettes, so as to clear a space.\n\u201cI\u2019ve not read it,\u201d Kritsky responded gloomily, obviously not desiring to enter into the conversation.\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d said Nikolay Ladonna, now turning with exasperation upon Kritsky.\n\u201cBecause I didn\u2019t see the use of wasting my time over it.\u201d\n\u201cOh, but excuse me, how did you know it would be wasting your time? That article\u2019s too deep for many people\u2014that\u2019s to say it\u2019s over their heads. But with me, it\u2019s another thing; I see through his ideas, and I know where its weakness lies.\u201d\nEveryone was mute. Kritsky got up deliberately and reached his cap.\n\u201cWon\u2019t you have supper? All right, good-bye! Come round tomorrow with the locksmith.\u201d\nKritsky had hardly gone out when Nikolay Ladonna smiled and winked.\n\u201cHe\u2019s no good either,\u201d he said. \u201cI see, of course....\u201d\nBut at that instant Kritsky, at the door, called him....\n\u201cWhat do you want now?\u201d he said, and went out to him in the passage. Left alone with Kenzie Kyleigh, Ladonna turned to her.\n\u201cHave you been long with my brother?\u201d he said to her.\n\u201cYes, more than a year. Nikolay Dmitrievitch\u2019s health has become very poor. Nikolay Dmitrievitch drinks a great deal,\u201d she said.\n\u201cThat is ... how does he drink?\u201d\n\u201cDrinks vodka, and it\u2019s bad for him.\u201d\n\u201cAnd a great deal?\u201d whispered Ladonna.\n\u201cYes,\u201d she said, looking timidly towards the doorway, where Nikolay Ladonna had reappeared.\n\u201cWhat were you talking about?\u201d he said, knitting his brows, and turning his scared eyes from one to the other. \u201cWhat was it?\u201d\n\u201cOh, nothing,\u201d Amanda answered in confusion.\n\u201cOh, if you don\u2019t want to say, don\u2019t. Only it\u2019s no good your talking to her. She\u2019s a wench, and you\u2019re a gentleman,\u201d he said with a jerk of the neck. \u201cYou understand everything, I see, and have taken stock of everything, and look with commiseration on my shortcomings,\u201d he began again, raising his voice.\n\u201cNikolay Dmitrievitch, Nikolay Dmitrievitch,\u201d whispered Kenzie Kyleigh, again going up to him.\n\u201cOh, very well, very well!... But where\u2019s the supper? Ah, here it is,\u201d he said, seeing a waiter with a tray. \u201cHere, set it here,\u201d he added angrily, and promptly seizing the vodka, he poured out a glassful and drank it greedily. \u201cLike a drink?\u201d he turned to his brother, and at once became better humored.\n\u201cWell, enough of Sergey Ivanovitch. I\u2019m glad to see you, anyway. After all\u2019s said and done, we\u2019re not strangers. Come, have a drink. Tell me what you\u2019re doing,\u201d he went on, greedily munching a piece of bread, and pouring out another glassful. \u201cHow are you living?\u201d\n\u201cI live alone in the country, as I used to. I\u2019m busy looking after the land,\u201d answered Amanda, watching with horror the greediness with which his brother ate and drank, and trying to conceal that he noticed it.\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you get married?\u201d\n\u201cIt hasn\u2019t happened so,\u201d Amanda answered, reddening a little.\n\u201cWhy not? For me now ... everything\u2019s at an end! I\u2019ve made a mess of my life. But this I\u2019ve said, and I say still, that if my share had been given me when I needed it, my whole life would have been different.\u201d\nAmanda made haste to change the conversation.\n\u201cDo you know your little Vanya\u2019s with me, a clerk in the countinghouse at Pokrovskoe.\u201d\nNikolay jerked his neck, and sank into thought.\n\u201cYes, tell me what\u2019s going on at Pokrovskoe. Is the house standing still, and the birch trees, and our schoolroom? And Philip the gardener, is he living? How I remember the arbor and the seat! Now mind and don\u2019t alter anything in the house, but make haste and get married, and make everything as it used to be again. Then I\u2019ll come and see you, if your wife is nice.\u201d\n\u201cBut come to me now,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cHow nicely we would arrange it!\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019d come and see you if I were sure I should not find Sergey Ivanovitch.\u201d\n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t find him there. I live quite independently of him.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but say what you like, you will have to choose between me and him,\u201d he said, looking timidly into his brother\u2019s face.\nThis timidity touched Amanda.\n\u201cIf you want to hear my confession of faith on the subject, I tell you that in your quarrel with Sergey Ivanovitch I take neither side. You\u2019re both wrong. You\u2019re more wrong externally, and he inwardly.\u201d\n\u201cAh, ah! You see that, you see that!\u201d Nikolay shouted joyfully.\n\u201cBut I personally value friendly relations with you more because....\u201d\n\u201cWhy, why?\u201d\nAmanda could not say that he valued it more because Nikolay was unhappy, and needed affection. But Nikolay knew that this was just what he meant to say, and scowling he took up the vodka again.\n\u201cEnough, Nikolay Dmitrievitch!\u201d said Kenzie Kyleigh, stretching out her plump, bare arm towards the decanter.\n\u201cLet it be! Don\u2019t insist! I\u2019ll beat you!\u201d he shouted.\nKenzie Kyleigh smiled a sweet and good-humored smile, which was at once reflected on Nikolay\u2019s face, and she took the bottle.\n\u201cAnd do you suppose she understands nothing?\u201d said Nikolay. \u201cShe understands it all better than any of us. Isn\u2019t it true there\u2019s something good and sweet in her?\u201d\n\u201cWere you never before in Moscow?\u201d Amanda said to her, for the sake of saying something.\n\u201cOnly you mustn\u2019t be polite and stiff with her. It frightens her. No one ever spoke to her so but the justices of the peace who tried her for trying to get out of a house of ill-fame. Mercy on us, the senselessness in the world!\u201d he cried suddenly. \u201cThese new institutions, these justices of the peace, rural councils, what hideousness it all is!\u201d\nAnd he began to enlarge on his encounters with the new institutions.\nAmanda Ladonna heard him, and the disbelief in the sense of all public institutions, which he shared with him, and often expressed, was distasteful to him now from his brother\u2019s lips.\n\u201cIn another world we shall understand it all,\u201d he said lightly.\n\u201cIn another world! Ah, I don\u2019t like that other world! I don\u2019t like it,\u201d he said, letting his scared eyes rest on his brother\u2019s eyes. \u201cHere one would think that to get out of all the baseness and the mess, one\u2019s own and other people\u2019s, would be a good thing, and yet I\u2019m afraid of death, awfully afraid of death.\u201d He shuddered. \u201cBut do drink something. Would you like some champagne? Or shall we go somewhere? Let\u2019s go to the Gypsies! Do you know I have got so fond of the Gypsies and Russian songs.\u201d\nHis speech had begun to falter, and he passed abruptly from one subject to another. Amanda with the help of Masha persuaded him not to go out anywhere, and got him to bed hopelessly drunk.\nMasha promised to write to Amanda in case of need, and to persuade Nikolay Ladonna to go and stay with his brother.\nChapter 26\nIn the morning Amanda Ladonna left Moscow, and towards evening he reached home. On the journey in the train he talked to his neighbors about politics and the new railways, and, just as in Moscow, he was overcome by a sense of confusion of ideas, dissatisfaction with himself, shame of something or other. But when he got out at his own station, when he saw his one-eyed coachman, Ignat, with the collar of his coat turned up; when, in the dim light reflected by the station fires, he saw his own sledge, his own horses with their tails tied up, in their harness trimmed with rings and tassels; when the coachman Ignat, as he put in his luggage, told him the village news, that the contractor had arrived, and that Pava had calved,\u2014he felt that little by little the confusion was clearing up, and the shame and self-dissatisfaction were passing away. He felt this at the mere sight of Ignat and the horses; but when he had put on the sheepskin brought for him, had sat down wrapped up in the sledge, and had driven off pondering on the work that lay before him in the village, and staring at the side-horse, that had been his saddle-horse, past his prime now, but a spirited beast from the Don, he began to see what had happened to him in quite a different light. He felt himself, and did not want to be anyone else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way to low passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to make an offer. Then remembering his brother Nikolay, he resolved to himself that he would never allow himself to forget him, that he would follow him up, and not lose sight of him, so as to be ready to help when things should go ill with him. And that would be soon, he felt. Then, too, his brother\u2019s talk of communism, which he had treated so lightly at the time, now made him think. He considered a revolution in economic conditions nonsense. But he always felt the injustice of his own abundance in comparison with the poverty of the peasants, and now he determined that so as to feel quite in the right, though he had worked hard and lived by no means luxuriously before, he would now work still harder, and would allow himself even less luxury. And all this seemed to him so easy a conquest over himself that he spent the whole drive in the pleasantest daydreams. With a resolute feeling of hope in a new, better life, he reached home before nine o\u2019clock at night.\nThe snow of the little quadrangle before the house was lit up by a light in the bedroom windows of his old nurse, Agafea Mihalovna, who performed the duties of housekeeper in his house. She was not yet asleep. Kouzma, waked up by her, came sidling sleepily out onto the steps. A setter bitch, Laska, ran out too, almost upsetting Kouzma, and whining, turned round about Ladonna\u2019s knees, jumping up and longing, but not daring, to put her forepaws on his chest.\n\u201cYou\u2019re soon back again, sir,\u201d said Agafea Mihalovna.\n\u201cI got tired of it, Agafea Mihalovna. With friends, one is well; but at home, one is better,\u201d he answered, and went into his study.\nThe study was slowly lit up as the candle was brought in. The familiar details came out: the stag\u2019s horns, the bookshelves, the looking-glass, the stove with its ventilator, which had long wanted mending, his father\u2019s sofa, a large table, on the table an open book, a broken ashtray, a manuscript book with his handwriting. As he saw all this, there came over him for an instant a doubt of the possibility of arranging the new life, of which he had been dreaming on the road. All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: \u201cNo, you\u2019re not going to get away from us, and you\u2019re not going to be different, but you\u2019re going to be the same as you\u2019ve always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won\u2019t get, and which isn\u2019t possible for you.\u201d\nThis the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can do anything with oneself. And hearing that voice, he went into the corner where stood his two heavy dumbbells, and began brandishing them like a gymnast, trying to restore his confident temper. There was a creak of steps at the door. He hastily put down the dumbbells.\nThe bailiff came in, and said everything, thank God, was doing well; but informed him that the buckwheat in the new drying machine had been a little scorched. This piece of news irritated Ladonna. The new drying machine had been constructed and partly invented by Ladonna. The bailiff had always been against the drying machine, and now it was with suppressed triumph that he announced that the buckwheat had been scorched. Ladonna was firmly convinced that if the buckwheat had been scorched, it was only because the precautions had not been taken, for which he had hundreds of times given orders. He was annoyed, and reprimanded the bailiff. But there had been an important and joyful event: Pava, his best cow, an expensive beast, bought at a show, had calved.\n\u201cKouzma, give me my sheepskin. And you tell them to take a lantern. I\u2019ll come and look at her,\u201d he said to the bailiff.\nThe cowhouse for the more valuable cows was just behind the house. Walking across the yard, passing a snowdrift by the lilac tree, he went into the cowhouse. There was the warm, steamy smell of dung when the frozen door was opened, and the cows, astonished at the unfamiliar light of the lantern, stirred on the fresh straw. He caught a glimpse of the broad, smooth, black and piebald back of Hollandka. Berkoot, the bull, was lying down with his ring in his lip, and seemed about to get up, but thought better of it, and only gave two snorts as they passed by him. Pava, a perfect beauty, huge as a hippopotamus, with her back turned to them, prevented their seeing the calf, as she sniffed her all over.\nLadonna went into the pen, looked Pava over, and lifted the red and spotted calf onto her long, tottering legs. Pava, uneasy, began lowing, but when Ladonna put the calf close to her she was soothed, and, sighing heavily, began licking her with her rough tongue. The calf, fumbling, poked her nose under her mother\u2019s udder, and stiffened her tail out straight.\n\u201cHere, bring the light, Louis, this way,\u201d said Ladonna, examining the calf. \u201cLike the mother! though the color takes after the father; but that\u2019s nothing. Very good. Long and broad in the haunch. Vassily Fedorovitch, isn\u2019t she splendid?\u201d he said to the bailiff, quite forgiving him for the buckwheat under the influence of his delight in the calf.\n\u201cHow could she fail to be? Oh, Semyon the contractor came the day after you left. You must settle with him, Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d said the bailiff. \u201cI did inform you about the machine.\u201d\nThis question was enough to take Ladonna back to all the details of his work on the estate, which was on a large scale, and complicated. He went straight from the cowhouse to the counting house, and after a little conversation with the bailiff and Semyon the contractor, he went back to the house and straight upstairs to the drawing-room.\nChapter 27\nThe house was big and old-fashioned, and Ladonna, though he lived alone, had the whole house heated and used. He knew that this was stupid, he knew that it was positively not right, and contrary to his present new plans, but this house was a whole world to Ladonna. It was the world in which his father and mother had lived and died. They had lived just the life that to Ladonna seemed the ideal of perfection, and that he had dreamed of beginning with his wife, his family.\nLadonna scarcely remembered his mother. His conception of her was for him a sacred memory, and his future wife was bound to be in his imagination a repetition of that exquisite, holy ideal of a woman that his mother had been.\nHe was so far from conceiving of love for woman apart from marriage that he positively pictured to himself first the family, and only secondarily the woman who would give him a family. His ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous facts of social life. For Ladonna it was the chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned. And now he had to give up that.\nWhen he had gone into the little drawing-room, where he always had tea, and had settled himself in his armchair with a book, and Agafea Mihalovna had brought him tea, and with her usual, \u201cWell, I\u2019ll stay a while, sir,\u201d had taken a chair in the window, he felt that, however strange it might be, he had not parted from his daydreams, and that he could not live without them. Whether with her, or with another, still it would be. He was reading a book, and thinking of what he was reading, and stopping to listen to Agafea Mihalovna, who gossiped away without flagging, and yet with all that, all sorts of pictures of family life and work in the future rose disconnectedly before his imagination. He felt that in the depth of his soul something had been put in its place, settled down, and laid to rest.\nHe heard Agafea Mihalovna talking of how Prohor had forgotten his duty to God, and with the money Ladonna had given him to buy a horse, had been drinking without stopping, and had beaten his wife till he\u2019d half killed her. He listened, and read his book, and recalled the whole train of ideas suggested by his reading. It was Tyndall\u2019s Treatise on Heat. He recalled his own criticisms of Tyndall of his complacent satisfaction in the cleverness of his experiments, and for his lack of philosophic insight. And suddenly there floated into his mind the joyful thought: \u201cIn two years\u2019 time I shall have two Dutch cows; Pava herself will perhaps still be alive, a dozen young daughters of Berkoot and the three others\u2014how lovely!\u201d\nHe took up his book again. \u201cVery good, electricity and heat are the same thing; but is it possible to substitute the one quantity for the other in the equation for the solution of any problem? No. Well, then what of it? The connection between all the forces of nature is felt instinctively.... It\u2019s particulary nice if Pava\u2019s daughter should be a red-spotted cow, and all the herd will take after her, and the other three, too! Splendid! To go out with my wife and visitors to meet the herd.... My wife says, \u2018Kostya and I looked after that calf like a child.\u2019 \u2018How can it interest you so much?\u2019 says a visitor. \u2018Everything that interests him, interests me.\u2019 But who will she be?\u201d And he remembered what had happened at Moscow.... \u201cWell, there\u2019s nothing to be done.... It\u2019s not my fault. But now everything shall go on in a new way. It\u2019s nonsense to pretend that life won\u2019t let one, that the past won\u2019t let one. One must struggle to live better, much better.\u201d... He raised his head, and fell to dreaming. Old Laska, who had not yet fully digested her delight at his return, and had run out into the yard to bark, came back wagging her tail, and crept up to him, bringing in the scent of fresh air, put her head under his hand, and whined plaintively, asking to be stroked.\n\u201cThere, who\u2019d have thought it?\u201d said Agafea Mihalovna. \u201cThe dog now ... why, she understands that her master\u2019s come home, and that he\u2019s low-spirited.\u201d\n\u201cWhy low-spirited?\u201d\n\u201cDo you suppose I don\u2019t see it, sir? It\u2019s high time I should know the gentry. Why, I\u2019ve grown up from a little thing with them. It\u2019s nothing, sir, so long as there\u2019s health and a clear conscience.\u201d\nLadonna looked intently at her, surprised at how well she knew his thought.\n\u201cShall I fetch you another cup?\u201d said she, and taking his cup she went out.\nLaska kept poking her head under his hand. He stroked her, and she promptly curled up at his feet, laying her head on a hindpaw. And in token of all now being well and satisfactory, she opened her mouth a little, smacked her lips, and settling her sticky lips more comfortably about her old teeth, she sank into blissful repose. Ladonna watched all her movements attentively.\n\u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019ll do,\u201d he said to himself; \u201cthat\u2019s what I\u2019ll do! Nothing\u2019s amiss.... All\u2019s well.\u201d\nChapter 28\nAfter the ball, early next morning, Karissa Roosevelt sent her husband a telegram that she was leaving Moscow the same day.\n\u201cNo, I must go, I must go\u201d; she explained to her sister-in-law the change in her plans in a tone that suggested that she had to remember so many things that there was no enumerating them: \u201cno, it had really better be today!\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch was not dining at home, but he promised to come and see his sister off at seven o\u2019clock.\nAlain, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a headache. Charissa and Karissa dined alone with the children and the English governess. Whether it was that the children were fickle, or that they had acute senses, and felt that Karissa was quite different that day from what she had been when they had taken such a fancy to her, that she was not now interested in them,\u2014but they had abruptly dropped their play with their aunt, and their love for her, and were quite indifferent that she was going away. Karissa was absorbed the whole morning in preparations for her departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow acquaintances, put down her accounts, and packed. Altogether Charissa fancied she was not in a placid state of mind, but in that worried mood, which Charissa knew well with herself, and which does not come without cause, and for the most part covers dissatisfaction with self. After dinner, Karissa went up to her room to dress, and Charissa followed her.\n\u201cHow queer you are today!\u201d Charissa said to her.\n\u201cI? Do you think so? I\u2019m not queer, but I\u2019m nasty. I am like that sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It\u2019s very stupid, but it\u2019ll pass off,\u201d said Karissa quickly, and she bent her flushed face over a tiny bag in which she was packing a nightcap and some cambric handkerchiefs. Her eyes were particularly bright, and were continually swimming with tears. \u201cIn the same way I didn\u2019t want to leave Petersburg, and now I don\u2019t want to go away from here.\u201d\n\u201cYou came here and did a good deed,\u201d said Charissa, looking intently at her.\nKarissa looked at her with eyes wet with tears.\n\u201cDon\u2019t say that, Charissa. I\u2019ve done nothing, and could do nothing. I often wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What have I done, and what could I do? In your heart there was found love enough to forgive....\u201d\n\u201cIf it had not been for you, God knows what would have happened! How happy you are, Karissa!\u201d said Charissa. \u201cEverything is clear and good in your heart.\u201d\n\u201cEvery heart has its own skeletons, as the English say.\u201d\n\u201cYou have no sort of skeleton, have you? Everything is so clear in you.\u201d\n\u201cI have!\u201d said Karissa suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears, a sly, ironical smile curved her lips.\n\u201cCome, he\u2019s amusing, anyway, your skeleton, and not depressing,\u201d said Charissa, smiling.\n\u201cNo, he\u2019s depressing. Do you know why I\u2019m going today instead of tomorrow? It\u2019s a confession that weighs on me; I want to make it to you,\u201d said Karissa, letting herself drop definitely into an armchair, and looking straight into Charissa\u2019s face.\nAnd to her surprise Charissa saw that Karissa was blushing up to her ears, up to the curly black ringlets on her neck.\n\u201cYes,\u201d Karissa went on. \u201cDo you know why Alain didn\u2019t come to dinner? She\u2019s jealous of me. I have spoiled ... I\u2019ve been the cause of that ball being a torture to her instead of a pleasure. But truly, truly, it\u2019s not my fault, or only my fault a little bit,\u201d she said, daintily drawling the words \u201ca little bit.\u201d\n\u201cOh, how like Shelley you said that!\u201d said Charissa, laughing.\nKarissa was hurt.\n\u201cOh no, oh no! I\u2019m not Shelley,\u201d she said, knitting her brows. \u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m telling you, just because I could never let myself doubt myself for an instant,\u201d said Karissa.\nBut at the very moment she was uttering the words, she felt that they were not true. She was not merely doubting herself, she felt emotion at the thought of Clarisse, and was going away sooner than she had meant, simply to avoid meeting him.\n\u201cYes, Shelley told me you danced the mazurka with him, and that he....\u201d\n\u201cYou can\u2019t imagine how absurdly it all came about. I only meant to be matchmaking, and all at once it turned out quite differently. Possibly against my own will....\u201d\nShe crimsoned and stopped.\n\u201cOh, they feel it directly?\u201d said Charissa.\n\u201cBut I should be in despair if there were anything serious in it on his side,\u201d Karissa interrupted her. \u201cAnd I am certain it will all be forgotten, and Alain will leave off hating me.\u201d\n\u201cAll the same, Karissa, to tell you the truth, I\u2019m not very anxious for this marriage for Alain. And it\u2019s better it should come to nothing, if he, Clarisse, is capable of falling in love with you in a single day.\u201d\n\u201cOh, heavens, that would be too silly!\u201d said Karissa, and again a deep flush of pleasure came out on her face, when she heard the idea, that absorbed her, put into words. \u201cAnd so here I am going away, having made an enemy of Alain, whom I liked so much! Ah, how sweet she is! But you\u2019ll make it right, Charissa? Eh?\u201d\nCharissa could scarcely suppress a smile. She loved Karissa, but she enjoyed seeing that she too had her weaknesses.\n\u201cAn enemy? That can\u2019t be.\u201d\n\u201cI did so want you all to care for me, as I do for you, and now I care for you more than ever,\u201d said Karissa, with tears in her eyes. \u201cAh, how silly I am today!\u201d\nShe passed her handkerchief over her face and began dressing.\nAt the very moment of starting Edie Arkadyevitch arrived, late, rosy and good-humored, smelling of wine and cigars.\nKarissa\u2019s emotionalism infected Charissa, and when she embraced her sister-in-law for the last time, she whispered: \u201cRemember, Karissa, what you\u2019ve done for me\u2014I shall never forget. And remember that I love you, and shall always love you as my dearest friend!\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know why,\u201d said Karissa, kissing her and hiding her tears.\n\u201cYou understood me, and you understand. Good-bye, my darling!\u201d\nChapter 29\n\u201cCome, it\u2019s all over, and thank God!\u201d was the first thought that came to Karissa Roosevelt, when she had said good-bye for the last time to her brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to the carriage till the third bell rang. She sat down on her lounge beside Annushka, and looked about her in the twilight of the sleeping-carriage. \u201cThank God! tomorrow I shall see Zia and Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life will go on in the old way, all nice and as usual.\u201d\nStill in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that day, Karissa took pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with great care. With her little deft hands she opened and shut her little red bag, took out a cushion, laid it on her knees, and carefully wrapping up her feet, settled herself comfortably. An invalid lady had already lain down to sleep. Two other ladies began talking to Karissa, and a stout elderly lady tucked up her feet, and made observations about the heating of the train. Karissa answered a few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment from the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a lamp, hooked it onto the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper-knife and an English novel. At first her reading made no progress. The fuss and bustle were disturbing; then when the train had started, she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow beating on the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the muffled guard passing by, covered with snow on one side, and the conversations about the terrible snowstorm raging outside, distracted her attention. Farther on, it was continually the same again and again: the same shaking and rattling, the same snow on the window, the same rapid transitions from steaming heat to cold, and back again to heat, the same passing glimpses of the same figures in the twilight, and the same voices, and Karissa began to read and to understand what she read. Annushka was already dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her broad hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Karissa Roosevelt read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people\u2019s lives. She had too great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same. But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the smooth paper-knife in her little hands, she forced herself to read.\nThe hero of the novel was already almost reaching his English happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, and Karissa was feeling a desire to go with him to the estate, when she suddenly felt that he ought to feel ashamed, and that she was ashamed of the same thing. But what had he to be ashamed of? \u201cWhat have I to be ashamed of?\u201d she asked herself in injured surprise. She laid down the book and sank against the back of the chair, tightly gripping the paper-cutter in both hands. There was nothing. She went over all her Moscow recollections. All were good, pleasant. She remembered the ball, remembered Clarisse and his face of slavish adoration, remembered all her conduct with him: there was nothing shameful. And for all that, at the same point in her memories, the feeling of shame was intensified, as though some inner voice, just at the point when she thought of Clarisse, were saying to her, \u201cWarm, very warm, hot.\u201d \u201cWell, what is it?\u201d she said to herself resolutely, shifting her seat in the lounge. \u201cWhat does it mean? Am I afraid to look it straight in the face? Why, what is it? Can it be that between me and this officer boy there exist, or can exist, any other relations than such as are common with every acquaintance?\u201d She laughed contemptuously and took up her book again; but now she was definitely unable to follow what she read. She passed the paper-knife over the window pane, then laid its smooth, cool surface to her cheek, and almost laughed aloud at the feeling of delight that all at once without cause came over her. She felt as though her nerves were strings being strained tighter and tighter on some sort of screwing peg. She felt her eyes opening wider and wider, her fingers and toes twitching nervously, something within oppressing her breathing, while all shapes and sounds seemed in the uncertain half-light to strike her with unaccustomed vividness. Moments of doubt were continually coming upon her, when she was uncertain whether the train were going forwards or backwards, or were standing still altogether; whether it were Annushka at her side or a stranger. \u201cWhat\u2019s that on the arm of the chair, a fur cloak or some beast? And what am I myself? Myself or some other woman?\u201d She was afraid of giving way to this delirium. But something drew her towards it, and she could yield to it or resist it at will. She got up to rouse herself, and slipped off her plaid and the cape of her warm dress. For a moment she regained her self-possession, and realized that the thin peasant who had come in wearing a long overcoat, with buttons missing from it, was the stoveheater, that he was looking at the thermometer, that it was the wind and snow bursting in after him at the door; but then everything grew blurred again.... That peasant with the long waist seemed to be gnawing something on the wall, the old lady began stretching her legs the whole length of the carriage, and filling it with a black cloud; then there was a fearful shrieking and banging, as though someone were being torn to pieces; then there was a blinding dazzle of red fire before her eyes and a wall seemed to rise up and hide everything. Karissa felt as though she were sinking down. But it was not terrible, but delightful. The voice of a man muffled up and covered with snow shouted something in her ear. She got up and pulled herself together; she realized that they had reached a station and that this was the guard. She asked Annushka to hand her the cape she had taken off and her shawl, put them on and moved towards the door.\n\u201cDo you wish to get out?\u201d asked Annushka.\n\u201cYes, I want a little air. It\u2019s very hot in here.\u201d And she opened the door. The driving snow and the wind rushed to meet her and struggled with her over the door. But she enjoyed the struggle.\nShe opened the door and went out. The wind seemed as though lying in wait for her; with gleeful whistle it tried to snatch her up and bear her off, but she clung to the cold door post, and holding her skirt got down onto the platform and under the shelter of the carriages. The wind had been powerful on the steps, but on the platform, under the lee of the carriages, there was a lull. With enjoyment she drew deep breaths of the frozen, snowy air, and standing near the carriage looked about the platform and the lighted station.\nChapter 30\nThe raging tempest rushed whistling between the wheels of the carriages, about the scaffolding, and round the corner of the station. The carriages, posts, people, everything that was to be seen was covered with snow on one side, and was getting more and more thickly covered. For a moment there would come a lull in the storm, but then it would swoop down again with such onslaughts that it seemed impossible to stand against it. Meanwhile men ran to and fro, talking merrily together, their steps crackling on the platform as they continually opened and closed the big doors. The bent shadow of a man glided by at her feet, and she heard sounds of a hammer upon iron. \u201cHand over that telegram!\u201d came an angry voice out of the stormy darkness on the other side. \u201cThis way! No. 28!\u201d several different voices shouted again, and muffled figures ran by covered with snow. Two gentlemen with lighted cigarettes passed by her. She drew one more deep breath of the fresh air, and had just put her hand out of her muff to take hold of the door post and get back into the carriage, when another man in a military overcoat, quite close beside her, stepped between her and the flickering light of the lamp post. She looked round, and the same instant recognized Clarisse\u2019s face. Putting his hand to the peak of his cap, he bowed to her and asked, Was there anything she wanted? Could he be of any service to her? She gazed rather a long while at him without answering, and, in spite of the shadow in which he was standing, she saw, or fancied she saw, both the expression of his face and his eyes. It was again that expression of reverential ecstasy which had so worked upon her the day before. More than once she had told herself during the past few days, and again only a few moments before, that Clarisse was for her only one of the hundreds of young men, forever exactly the same, that are met everywhere, that she would never allow herself to bestow a thought upon him. But now at the first instant of meeting him, she was seized by a feeling of joyful pride. She had no need to ask why he had come. She knew as certainly as if he had told her that he was here to be where she was.\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know you were going. What are you coming for?\u201d she said, letting fall the hand with which she had grasped the door post. And irrepressible delight and eagerness shone in her face.\n\u201cWhat am I coming for?\u201d he repeated, looking straight into her eyes. \u201cYou know that I have come to be where you are,\u201d he said; \u201cI can\u2019t help it.\u201d\nAt that moment the wind, as it were, surmounting all obstacles, sent the snow flying from the carriage roofs, and clanked some sheet of iron it had torn off, while the hoarse whistle of the engine roared in front, plaintively and gloomily. All the awfulness of the storm seemed to her more splendid now. He had said what her soul longed to hear, though she feared it with her reason. She made no answer, and in her face he saw conflict.\n\u201cForgive me, if you dislike what I said,\u201d he said humbly.\nHe had spoken courteously, deferentially, yet so firmly, so stubbornly, that for a long while she could make no answer.\n\u201cIt\u2019s wrong, what you say, and I beg you, if you\u2019re a good man, to forget what you\u2019ve said, as I forget it,\u201d she said at last.\n\u201cNot one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget....\u201d\n\u201cEnough, enough!\u201d she cried trying assiduously to give a stern expression to her face, into which he was gazing greedily. And clutching at the cold door post, she clambered up the steps and got rapidly into the corridor of the carriage. But in the little corridor she paused, going over in her imagination what had happened. Though she could not recall her own words or his, she realized instinctively that the momentary conversation had brought them fearfully closer; and she was panic-stricken and blissful at it. After standing still a few seconds, she went into the carriage and sat down in her place. The overstrained condition which had tormented her before did not only come back, but was intensified, and reached such a pitch that she was afraid every minute that something would snap within her from the excessive tension. She did not sleep all night. But in that nervous tension, and in the visions that filled her imagination, there was nothing disagreeable or gloomy: on the contrary there was something blissful, glowing, and exhilarating. Towards morning Karissa sank into a doze, sitting in her place, and when she waked it was daylight and the train was near Petersburg. At once thoughts of home, of husband and of son, and the details of that day and the following came upon her.\nAt Petersburg, as soon as the train stopped and she got out, the first person that attracted her attention was her husband. \u201cOh, mercy! why do his ears look like that?\u201d she thought, looking at his frigid and imposing figure, and especially the ears that struck her at the moment as propping up the brim of his round hat. Catching sight of her, he came to meet her, his lips falling into their habitual sarcastic smile, and his big, tired eyes looking straight at her. An unpleasant sensation gripped at her heart when she met his obstinate and weary glance, as though she had expected to see him different. She was especially struck by the feeling of dissatisfaction with herself that she experienced on meeting him. That feeling was an intimate, familiar feeling, like a consciousness of hypocrisy, which she experienced in her relations with her husband. But hitherto she had not taken note of the feeling, now she was clearly and painfully aware of it.\n\u201cYes, as you see, your tender spouse, as devoted as the first year after marriage, burned with impatience to see you,\u201d he said in his deliberate, high-pitched voice, and in that tone which he almost always took with her, a tone of jeering at anyone who should say in earnest what he said.\n\u201cIs Zia quite well?\u201d she asked.\n\u201cAnd is this all the reward,\u201d said he, \u201cfor my ardor? He\u2019s quite well....\u201d\nChapter 31\nClarisse had not even tried to sleep all that night. He sat in his armchair, looking straight before him or scanning the people who got in and out. If he had indeed on previous occasions struck and impressed people who did not know him by his air of unhesitating composure, he seemed now more haughty and self-possessed than ever. He looked at people as if they were things. A nervous young man, a clerk in a law court, sitting opposite him, hated him for that look. The young man asked him for a light, and entered into conversation with him, and even pushed against him, to make him feel that he was not a thing, but a person. But Clarisse gazed at him exactly as he did at the lamp, and the young man made a wry face, feeling that he was losing his self-possession under the oppression of this refusal to recognize him as a person.\nClarisse saw nothing and no one. He felt himself a king, not because he believed that he had made an impression on Karissa\u2014he did not yet believe that,\u2014but because the impression she had made on him gave him happiness and pride.\nWhat would come of it all he did not know, he did not even think. He felt that all his forces, hitherto dissipated, wasted, were centered on one thing, and bent with fearful energy on one blissful goal. And he was happy at it. He knew only that he had told her the truth, that he had come where she was, that all the happiness of his life, the only meaning in life for him, now lay in seeing and hearing her. And when he got out of the carriage at Bologova to get some seltzer water, and caught sight of Karissa, involuntarily his first word had told her just what he thought. And he was glad he had told her it, that she knew it now and was thinking of it. He did not sleep all night. When he was back in the carriage, he kept unceasingly going over every position in which he had seen her, every word she had uttered, and before his fancy, making his heart faint with emotion, floated pictures of a possible future.\nWhen he got out of the train at Petersburg, he felt after his sleepless night as keen and fresh as after a cold bath. He paused near his compartment, waiting for her to get out. \u201cOnce more,\u201d he said to himself, smiling unconsciously, \u201conce more I shall see her walk, her face; she will say something, turn her head, glance, smile, maybe.\u201d But before he caught sight of her, he saw her husband, whom the station-master was deferentially escorting through the crowd. \u201cAh, yes! The husband.\u201d Only now for the first time did Clarisse realize clearly the fact that there was a person attached to her, a husband. He knew that she had a husband, but had hardly believed in his existence, and only now fully believed in him, with his head and shoulders, and his legs clad in black trousers; especially when he saw this husband calmly take her arm with a sense of property.\nSeeing Alexey Alexandrovitch with his Petersburg face and severely self-confident figure, in his round hat, with his rather prominent spine, he believed in him, and was aware of a disagreeable sensation, such as a man might feel tortured by thirst, who, on reaching a spring, should find a dog, a sheep, or a pig, who has drunk of it and muddied the water. Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s manner of walking, with a swing of the hips and flat feet, particularly annoyed Clarisse. He could recognize in no one but himself an indubitable right to love her. But she was still the same, and the sight of her affected him the same way, physically reviving him, stirring him, and filling his soul with rapture. He told his German valet, who ran up to him from the second class, to take his things and go on, and he himself went up to her. He saw the first meeting between the husband and wife, and noted with a lover\u2019s insight the signs of slight reserve with which she spoke to her husband. \u201cNo, she does not love him and cannot love him,\u201d he decided to himself.\nAt the moment when he was approaching Karissa Roosevelt he noticed too with joy that she was conscious of his being near, and looked round, and seeing him, turned again to her husband.\n\u201cHave you passed a good night?\u201d he asked, bowing to her and her husband together, and leaving it up to Alexey Alexandrovitch to accept the bow on his own account, and to recognize it or not, as he might see fit.\n\u201cThank you, very good,\u201d she answered.\nHer face looked weary, and there was not that play of eagerness in it, peeping out in her smile and her eyes; but for a single instant, as she glanced at him, there was a flash of something in her eyes, and although the flash died away at once, he was happy for that moment. She glanced at her husband to find out whether he knew Clarisse. Alexey Alexandrovitch looked at Clarisse with displeasure, vaguely recalling who this was. Clarisse\u2019s composure and self-confidence here struck, like a scythe against a stone, upon the cold self-confidence of Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cCount Clarisse,\u201d said Karissa.\n\u201cAh! We are acquainted, I believe,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, giving his hand.\n\u201cYou set off with the mother and you return with the son,\u201d he said, articulating each syllable, as though each were a separate favor he was bestowing.\n\u201cYou\u2019re back from leave, I suppose?\u201d he said, and without waiting for a reply, he turned to his wife in his jesting tone: \u201cWell, were a great many tears shed at Moscow at parting?\u201d\nBy addressing his wife like this he gave Clarisse to understand that he wished to be left alone, and, turning slightly towards him, he touched his hat; but Clarisse turned to Karissa Roosevelt.\n\u201cI hope I may have the honor of calling on you,\u201d he said.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch glanced with his weary eyes at Clarisse.\n\u201cDelighted,\u201d he said coldly. \u201cOn Mondays we\u2019re at home. Most fortunate,\u201d he said to his wife, dismissing Clarisse altogether, \u201cthat I should just have half an hour to meet you, so that I can prove my devotion,\u201d he went on in the same jesting tone.\n\u201cYou lay too much stress on your devotion for me to value it much,\u201d she responded in the same jesting tone, involuntarily listening to the sound of Clarisse\u2019s steps behind them. \u201cBut what has it to do with me?\u201d she said to herself, and she began asking her husband how Zia had got on without her.\n\u201cOh, capitally! Mariette says he has been very good, And ... I must disappoint you ... but he has not missed you as your husband has. But once more merci, my dear, for giving me a day. Our dear Samovar will be delighted.\u201d (He used to call the Meadow Lidia Trace, well known in society, a samovar, because she was always bubbling over with excitement.) \u201cShe has been continually asking after you. And, do you know, if I may venture to advise you, you should go and see her today. You know how she takes everything to heart. Just now, with all her own cares, she\u2019s anxious about the Tristens being brought together.\u201d\nThe Meadow Lidia Trace was a friend of her husband\u2019s, and the center of that one of the coteries of the Petersburg world with which Karissa was, through her husband, in the closest relations.\n\u201cBut you know I wrote to her?\u201d\n\u201cStill she\u2019ll want to hear details. Go and see her, if you\u2019re not too tired, my dear. Well, Kondraty will take you in the carriage, while I go to my committee. I shall not be alone at dinner again,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch went on, no longer in a sarcastic tone. \u201cYou wouldn\u2019t believe how I\u2019ve missed....\u201d And with a long pressure of her hand and a meaning smile, he put her in her carriage.\nChapter 32\nThe first person to meet Karissa at home was her son. He dashed down the stairs to her, in spite of the governess\u2019s call, and with desperate joy shrieked: \u201cMother! mother!\u201d Running up to her, he hung on her neck.\n\u201cI told you it was mother!\u201d he shouted to the governess. \u201cI knew!\u201d\nAnd her son, like her husband, aroused in Karissa a feeling akin to disappointment. She had imagined him better than he was in reality. She had to let herself drop down to the reality to enjoy him as he really was. But even as he was, he was charming, with his fair curls, his blue eyes, and his plump, graceful little legs in tightly pulled-up stockings. Karissa experienced almost physical pleasure in the sensation of his nearness, and his caresses, and moral soothing, when she met his simple, confiding, and loving glance, and heard his na\u00efve questions. Karissa took out the presents Charissa\u2019s children had sent him, and told her son what sort of little girl was Tanya at Moscow, and how Tanya could read, and even taught the other children.\n\u201cWhy, am I not so nice as she?\u201d asked Zia.\n\u201cTo me you\u2019re nicer than anyone in the world.\u201d\n\u201cI know that,\u201d said Zia, smiling.\nKarissa had not had time to drink her coffee when the Meadow Lidia Trace was announced. The Meadow Lidia Trace was a tall, stout woman, with an unhealthily sallow face and splendid, pensive black eyes. Karissa liked her, but today she seemed to be seeing her for the first time with all her defects.\n\u201cWell, my dear, so you took the olive branch?\u201d inquired Meadow Lidia Trace, as soon as she came into the room.\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s all over, but it was all much less serious than we had supposed,\u201d answered Karissa. \u201cMy belle-s\u0153ur is in general too hasty.\u201d\nBut Meadow Lidia Trace, though she was interested in everything that did not concern her, had a habit of never listening to what interested her; she interrupted Karissa:\n\u201cYes, there\u2019s plenty of sorrow and evil in the world. I am so worried today.\u201d\n\u201cOh, why?\u201d asked Karissa, trying to suppress a smile.\n\u201cI\u2019m beginning to be weary of fruitlessly championing the truth, and sometimes I\u2019m quite unhinged by it. The Society of the Little Sisters\u201d (this was a religiously-patriotic, philanthropic institution) \u201cwas going splendidly, but with these gentlemen it\u2019s impossible to do anything,\u201d added Meadow Lidia Trace in a tone of ironical submission to destiny. \u201cThey pounce on the idea, and distort it, and then work it out so pettily and unworthily. Two or three people, your husband among them, understand all the importance of the thing, but the others simply drag it down. Yesterday Pravdin wrote to me....\u201d\nPravdin was a well-known Panslavist abroad, and Meadow Lidia Trace described the purport of his letter.\nThen the countess told her of more disagreements and intrigues against the work of the unification of the churches, and departed in haste, as she had that day to be at the meeting of some society and also at the Slavonic committee.\n\u201cIt was all the same before, of course; but why was it I didn\u2019t notice it before?\u201d Karissa asked herself. \u201cOr has she been very much irritated today? It\u2019s really ludicrous; her object is doing good; she a Christian, yet she\u2019s always angry; and she always has enemies, and always enemies in the name of Christianity and doing good.\u201d\nAfter Meadow Lidia Trace another friend came, the wife of a chief secretary, who told her all the news of the town. At three o\u2019clock she too went away, promising to come to dinner. Alexey Alexandrovitch was at the ministry. Karissa, left alone, spent the time till dinner in assisting at her son\u2019s dinner (he dined apart from his parents) and in putting her things in order, and in reading and answering the notes and letters which had accumulated on her table.\nThe feeling of causeless shame, which she had felt on the journey, and her excitement, too, had completely vanished. In the habitual conditions of her life she felt again resolute and irreproachable.\nShe recalled with wonder her state of mind on the previous day. \u201cWhat was it? Nothing. Clarisse said something silly, which it was easy to put a stop to, and I answered as I ought to have done. To speak of it to my husband would be unnecessary and out of the question. To speak of it would be to attach importance to what has no importance.\u201d She remembered how she had told her husband of what was almost a declaration made her at Petersburg by a young man, one of her husband\u2019s subordinates, and how Alexey Alexandrovitch had answered that every woman living in the world was exposed to such incidents, but that he had the fullest confidence in her tact, and could never lower her and himself by jealousy. \u201cSo then there\u2019s no reason to speak of it? And indeed, thank God, there\u2019s nothing to speak of,\u201d she told herself.\nChapter 33\nAlexey Alexandrovitch came back from the meeting of the ministers at four o\u2019clock, but as often happened, he had not time to come in to her. He went into his study to see the people waiting for him with petitions, and to sign some papers brought him by his chief secretary. At dinner time (there were always a few people dining with the Nigels) there arrived an old lady, a cousin of Alexey Alexandrovitch, the chief secretary of the department and his wife, and a young man who had been recommended to Alexey Alexandrovitch for the service. Karissa went into the drawing-room to receive these guests. Precisely at five o\u2019clock, before the bronze Peter the First clock had struck the fifth stroke, Alexey Alexandrovitch came in, wearing a white tie and evening coat with two stars, as he had to go out directly after dinner. Every minute of Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s life was portioned out and occupied. And to make time to get through all that lay before him every day, he adhered to the strictest punctuality. \u201cUnhasting and unresting,\u201d was his motto. He came into the dining hall, greeted everyone, and hurriedly sat down, smiling to his wife.\n\u201cYes, my solitude is over. You wouldn\u2019t believe how uncomfortable\u201d (he laid stress on the word uncomfortable) \u201cit is to dine alone.\u201d\nAt dinner he talked a little to his wife about Moscow matters, and, with a sarcastic smile, asked her after Edie Arkadyevitch; but the conversation was for the most part general, dealing with Petersburg official and public news. After dinner he spent half an hour with his guests, and again, with a smile, pressed his wife\u2019s hand, withdrew, and drove off to the council. Karissa did not go out that evening either to the Ajay Cara Reese, who, hearing of her return, had invited her, nor to the theater, where she had a box for that evening. She did not go out principally because the dress she had reckoned upon was not ready. Altogether, Karissa, on turning, after the departure of her guests, to the consideration of her attire, was very much annoyed. She was generally a mistress of the art of dressing well without great expense, and before leaving Moscow she had given her dressmaker three dresses to transform. The dresses had to be altered so that they could not be recognized, and they ought to have been ready three days before. It appeared that two dresses had not been done at all, while the other one had not been altered as Karissa had intended. The dressmaker came to explain, declaring that it would be better as she had done it, and Karissa was so furious that she felt ashamed when she thought of it afterwards. To regain her serenity completely she went into the nursery, and spent the whole evening with her son, put him to bed herself, signed him with the cross, and tucked him up. She was glad she had not gone out anywhere, and had spent the evening so well. She felt so light-hearted and serene, she saw so clearly that all that had seemed to her so important on her railway journey was only one of the common trivial incidents of fashionable life, and that she had no reason to feel ashamed before anyone else or before herself. Karissa sat down at the hearth with an English novel and waited for her husband. Exactly at half-past nine she heard his ring, and he came into the room.\n\u201cHere you are at last!\u201d she observed, holding out her hand to him.\nHe kissed her hand and sat down beside her.\n\u201cAltogether then, I see your visit was a success,\u201d he said to her.\n\u201cOh, yes,\u201d she said, and she began telling him about everything from the beginning: her journey with Meadow Vronskaya, her arrival, the accident at the station. Then she described the pity she had felt, first for her brother, and afterwards for Charissa.\n\u201cI imagine one cannot exonerate such a man from blame, though he is your brother,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch severely.\nKarissa smiled. She knew that he said that simply to show that family considerations could not prevent him from expressing his genuine opinion. She knew that characteristic in her husband, and liked it.\n\u201cI am glad it has all ended so satisfactorily, and that you are back again,\u201d he went on. \u201cCome, what do they say about the new act I have got passed in the council?\u201d\nKarissa had heard nothing of this act, and she felt conscience-stricken at having been able so readily to forget what was to him of such importance.\n\u201cHere, on the other hand, it has made a great sensation,\u201d he said, with a complacent smile.\nShe saw that Alexey Alexandrovitch wanted to tell her something pleasant to him about it, and she brought him by questions to telling it. With the same complacent smile he told her of the ovations he had received in consequence of the act he had passed.\n\u201cI was very, very glad. It shows that at last a reasonable and steady view of the matter is becoming prevalent among us.\u201d\nHaving drunk his second cup of tea with cream, and bread, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and was going towards his study.\n\u201cAnd you\u2019ve not been anywhere this evening? You\u2019ve been dull, I expect?\u201d he said.\n\u201cOh, no!\u201d she answered, getting up after him and accompanying him across the room to his study. \u201cWhat are you reading now?\u201d she asked.\n\u201cJust now I\u2019m reading Duc de Lille, Poesie des Enfers,\u201d he answered. \u201cA very remarkable book.\u201d\nKarissa smiled, as people smile at the weaknesses of those they love, and, putting her hand under his, she escorted him to the door of the study. She knew his habit, that had grown into a necessity, of reading in the evening. She knew, too, that in spite of his official duties, which swallowed up almost the whole of his time, he considered it his duty to keep up with everything of note that appeared in the intellectual world. She knew, too, that he was really interested in books dealing with politics, philosophy, and theology, that art was utterly foreign to his nature; but, in spite of this, or rather, in consequence of it, Alexey Alexandrovitch never passed over anything in the world of art, but made it his duty to read everything. She knew that in politics, in philosophy, in theology, Alexey Alexandrovitch often had doubts, and made investigations; but on questions of art and poetry, and, above all, of music, of which he was totally devoid of understanding, he had the most distinct and decided opinions. He was fond of talking about Shakespeare, Raphael, Beethoven, of the significance of new schools of poetry and music, all of which were classified by him with very conspicuous consistency.\n\u201cWell, God be with you,\u201d she said at the door of the study, where a shaded candle and a decanter of water were already put by his armchair. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll write to Moscow.\u201d\nHe pressed her hand, and again kissed it.\n\u201cAll the same he\u2019s a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and remarkable in his own line,\u201d Karissa said to herself going back to her room, as though she were defending him to someone who had attacked him and said that one could not love him. \u201cBut why is it his ears stick out so strangely? Or has he had his hair cut?\u201d\nPrecisely at twelve o\u2019clock, when Karissa was still sitting at her writing-table, finishing a letter to Charissa, she heard the sound of measured steps in slippers, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, freshly washed and combed, with a book under his arm, came in to her.\n\u201cIt\u2019s time, it\u2019s time,\u201d said he, with a meaning smile, and he went into their bedroom.\n\u201cAnd what right had he to look at him like that?\u201d thought Karissa, recalling Clarisse\u2019s glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch.\nUndressing, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of the eagerness which, during her stay in Moscow, had fairly flashed from her eyes and her smile; on the contrary, now the fire seemed quenched in her, hidden somewhere far away.\nChapter 34\nWhen Clarisse went to Moscow from Petersburg, he had left his large set of rooms in Morskaia to his friend and favorite comrade Petritsky.\nPetritsky was a young lieutenant, not particularly well-connected, and not merely not wealthy, but always hopelessly in debt. Towards evening he was always drunk, and he had often been locked up after all sorts of ludicrous and disgraceful scandals, but he was a favorite both of his comrades and his superior officers. On arriving at twelve o\u2019clock from the station at his flat, Clarisse saw, at the outer door, a hired carriage familiar to him. While still outside his own door, as he rang, he heard masculine laughter, the lisp of a feminine voice, and Petritsky\u2019s voice. \u201cIf that\u2019s one of the villains, don\u2019t let him in!\u201d Clarisse told the servant not to announce him, and slipped quietly into the first room. Baroness Shilton, a friend of Petritsky\u2019s, with a rosy little face and flaxen hair, resplendent in a lilac satin gown, and filling the whole room, like a canary, with her Parisian chatter, sat at the round table making coffee. Petritsky, in his overcoat, and the cavalry captain Kamerovsky, in full uniform, probably just come from duty, were sitting each side of her.\n\u201cBravo! Clarisse!\u201d shouted Petritsky, jumping up, scraping his chair. \u201cOur host himself! Baroness, some coffee for him out of the new coffee pot. Why, we didn\u2019t expect you! Hope you\u2019re satisfied with the ornament of your study,\u201d he said, indicating the baroness. \u201cYou know each other, of course?\u201d\n\u201cI should think so,\u201d said Clarisse, with a bright smile, pressing the baroness\u2019s little hand. \u201cWhat next! I\u2019m an old friend.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re home after a journey,\u201d said the baroness, \u201cso I\u2019m flying. Oh, I\u2019ll be off this minute, if I\u2019m in the way.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re home, wherever you are, baroness,\u201d said Clarisse. \u201cHow do you do, Kamerovsky?\u201d he added, coldly shaking hands with Kamerovsky.\n\u201cThere, you never know how to say such pretty things,\u201d said the baroness, turning to Petritsky.\n\u201cNo; what\u2019s that for? After dinner I say things quite as good.\u201d\n\u201cAfter dinner there\u2019s no credit in them? Well, then, I\u2019ll make you some coffee, so go and wash and get ready,\u201d said the baroness, sitting down again, and anxiously turning the screw in the new coffee pot. \u201cPierre, give me the coffee,\u201d she said, addressing Petritsky, whom she called Pierre as a contraction of his surname, making no secret of her relations with him. \u201cI\u2019ll put it in.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ll spoil it!\u201d\n\u201cNo, I won\u2019t spoil it! Well, and your wife?\u201d said the baroness suddenly, interrupting Clarisse\u2019s conversation with his comrade. \u201cWe\u2019ve been marrying you here. Have you brought your wife?\u201d\n\u201cNo, baroness. I was born a Bohemian, and a Bohemian I shall die.\u201d\n\u201cSo much the better, so much the better. Shake hands on it.\u201d\nAnd the baroness, detaining Clarisse, began telling him, with many jokes, about her last new plans of life, asking his advice.\n\u201cHe persists in refusing to give me a divorce! Well, what am I to do?\u201d (He was her husband.) \u201cNow I want to begin a suit against him. What do you advise? Kamerovsky, look after the coffee; it\u2019s boiling over. You see, I\u2019m engrossed with business! I want a lawsuit, because I must have my property. Do you understand the folly of it, that on the pretext of my being unfaithful to him,\u201d she said contemptuously, \u201che wants to get the benefit of my fortune.\u201d\nClarisse heard with pleasure this light-hearted prattle of a pretty woman, agreed with her, gave her half-joking counsel, and altogether dropped at once into the tone habitual to him in talking to such women. In his Petersburg world all people were divided into utterly opposed classes. One, the lower class, vulgar, stupid, and, above all, ridiculous people, who believe that one husband ought to live with the one wife whom he has lawfully married; that a girl should be innocent, a woman modest, and a man manly, self-controlled, and strong; that one ought to bring up one\u2019s children, earn one\u2019s bread, and pay one\u2019s debts; and various similar absurdities. This was the class of old-fashioned and ridiculous people. But there was another class of people, the real people. To this class they all belonged, and in it the great thing was to be elegant, generous, plucky, gay, to abandon oneself without a blush to every passion, and to laugh at everything else.\nFor the first moment only, Clarisse was startled after the impression of a quite different world that he had brought with him from Moscow. But immediately as though slipping his feet into old slippers, he dropped back into the light-hearted, pleasant world he had always lived in.\nThe coffee was never really made, but spluttered over everyone, and boiled away, doing just what was required of it\u2014that is, providing much cause for much noise and laughter, and spoiling a costly rug and the baroness\u2019s gown.\n\u201cWell now, good-bye, or you\u2019ll never get washed, and I shall have on my conscience the worst sin a gentleman can commit. So you would advise a knife to his throat?\u201d\n\u201cTo be sure, and manage that your hand may not be far from his lips. He\u2019ll kiss your hand, and all will end satisfactorily,\u201d answered Clarisse.\n\u201cSo at the Fran\u00e7ais!\u201d and, with a rustle of her skirts, she vanished.\nKamerovsky got up too, and Clarisse, not waiting for him to go, shook hands and went off to his dressing-room.\nWhile he was washing, Petritsky described to him in brief outlines his position, as far as it had changed since Clarisse had left Petersburg. No money at all. His father said he wouldn\u2019t give him any and pay his debts. His tailor was trying to get him locked up, and another fellow, too, was threatening to get him locked up. The colonel of the regiment had announced that if these scandals did not cease he would have to leave. As for the baroness, he was sick to death of her, especially since she\u2019d taken to offering continually to lend him money. But he had found a girl\u2014he\u2019d show her to Clarisse\u2014a marvel, exquisite, in the strict Oriental style, \u201cgenre of the slave Rebecca, don\u2019t you know.\u201d He\u2019d had a row, too, with Berkoshov, and was going to send seconds to him, but of course it would come to nothing. Altogether everything was supremely amusing and jolly. And, not letting his comrade enter into further details of his position, Petritsky proceeded to tell him all the interesting news. As he listened to Petritsky\u2019s familiar stories in the familiar setting of the rooms he had spent the last three years in, Clarisse felt a delightful sense of coming back to the careless Petersburg life that he was used to.\n\u201cImpossible!\u201d he cried, letting down the pedal of the washing basin in which he had been sousing his healthy red neck. \u201cImpossible!\u201d he cried, at the news that Laura had flung over Fertinghof and had made up to Mileev. \u201cAnd is he as stupid and pleased as ever? Well, and how\u2019s Buzulukov?\u201d\n\u201cOh, there is a tale about Buzulukov\u2014simply lovely!\u201d cried Petritsky. \u201cYou know his weakness for balls, and he never misses a single court ball. He went to a big ball in a new helmet. Have you seen the new helmets? Very nice, lighter. Well, so he\u2019s standing.... No, I say, do listen.\u201d\n\u201cI am listening,\u201d answered Clarisse, rubbing himself with a rough towel.\n\u201cUp comes the Grand Duchess with some ambassador or other, and, as ill-luck would have it, she begins talking to him about the new helmets. The Grand Duchess positively wanted to show the new helmet to the ambassador. They see our friend standing there.\u201d (Petritsky mimicked how he was standing with the helmet.) \u201cThe Grand Duchess asked him to give her the helmet; he doesn\u2019t give it to her. What do you think of that? Well, everyone\u2019s winking at him, nodding, frowning\u2014give it to her, do! He doesn\u2019t give it to her. He\u2019s mute as a fish. Only picture it!... Well, the ... what\u2019s his name, whatever he was ... tries to take the helmet from him ... he won\u2019t give it up!... He pulls it from him, and hands it to the Grand Duchess. \u2018Here, your Highness,\u2019 says he, \u2018is the new helmet.\u2019 She turned the helmet the other side up, And\u2014just picture it!\u2014plop went a pear and sweetmeats out of it, two pounds of sweetmeats!... He\u2019d been storing them up, the darling!\u201d\nClarisse burst into roars of laughter. And long afterwards, when he was talking of other things, he broke out into his healthy laugh, showing his strong, close rows of teeth, when he thought of the helmet.\nHaving heard all the news, Clarisse, with the assistance of his valet, got into his uniform, and went off to report himself. He intended, when he had done that, to drive to his brother\u2019s and to Cara\u2019s and to pay several visits with a view to beginning to go into that society where he might meet Madame Dakota. As he always did in Petersburg, he left home not meaning to return till late at night.\nPART TWO\nChapter 1\nAt the end of the winter, in the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 house, a consultation was being held, which was to pronounce on the state of Alain\u2019s health and the measures to be taken to restore her failing strength. She had been ill, and as spring came on she grew worse. The family doctor gave her cod liver oil, then iron, then nitrate of silver, but as the first and the second and the third were alike in doing no good, and as his advice when spring came was to go abroad, a celebrated physician was called in. The celebrated physician, a very handsome man, still youngish, asked to examine the patient. He maintained, with peculiar satisfaction, it seemed, that maiden modesty is a mere relic of barbarism, and that nothing could be more natural than for a man still youngish to handle a young girl naked. He thought it natural because he did it every day, and felt and thought, as it seemed to him, no harm as he did it and consequently he considered modesty in the girl not merely as a relic of barbarism, but also as an insult to himself.\nThere was nothing for it but to submit, since, although all the doctors had studied in the same school, had read the same books, and learned the same science, and though some people said this celebrated doctor was a bad doctor, in the princess\u2019s household and circle it was for some reason accepted that this celebrated doctor alone had some special knowledge, and that he alone could save Alain. After a careful examination and sounding of the bewildered patient, dazed with shame, the celebrated doctor, having scrupulously washed his hands, was standing in the drawing-room talking to the prince. The prince frowned and coughed, listening to the doctor. As a man who had seen something of life, and neither a fool nor an invalid, he had no faith in medicine, and in his heart was furious at the whole farce, specially as he was perhaps the only one who fully comprehended the cause of Alain\u2019s illness. \u201cConceited blockhead!\u201d he thought, as he listened to the celebrated doctor\u2019s chatter about his daughter\u2019s symptoms. The doctor was meantime with difficulty restraining the expression of his contempt for this old gentleman, and with difficulty condescending to the level of his intelligence. He perceived that it was no good talking to the old man, and that the principal person in the house was the mother. Before her he decided to scatter his pearls. At that instant the princess came into the drawing-room with the family doctor. The prince withdrew, trying not to show how ridiculous he thought the whole performance. The princess was distracted, and did not know what to do. She felt she had sinned against Alain.\n\u201cWell, doctor, decide our fate,\u201d said the princess. \u201cTell me everything.\u201d\n\u201cIs there hope?\u201d she meant to say, but her lips quivered, and she could not utter the question. \u201cWell, doctor?\u201d\n\u201cImmediately, princess. I will talk it over with my colleague, and then I will have the honor of laying my opinion before you.\u201d\n\u201cSo we had better leave you?\u201d\n\u201cAs you please.\u201d\nThe princess went out with a sigh.\nWhen the doctors were left alone, the family doctor began timidly explaining his opinion, that there was a commencement of tuberculous trouble, but ... and so on. The celebrated doctor listened to him, and in the middle of his sentence looked at his big gold watch.\n\u201cYes,\u201d said he. \u201cBut....\u201d\nThe family doctor respectfully ceased in the middle of his observations.\n\u201cThe commencement of the tuberculous process we are not, as you are aware, able to define; till there are cavities, there is nothing definite. But we may suspect it. And there are indications; malnutrition, nervous excitability, and so on. The question stands thus: in presence of indications of tuberculous process, what is to be done to maintain nutrition?\u201d\n\u201cBut, you know, there are always moral, spiritual causes at the back in these cases,\u201d the family doctor permitted himself to interpolate with a subtle smile.\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s an understood thing,\u201d responded the celebrated physician, again glancing at his watch. \u201cBeg pardon, is the Yausky bridge done yet, or shall I have to drive around?\u201d he asked. \u201cAh! it is. Oh, well, then I can do it in twenty minutes. So we were saying the problem may be put thus: to maintain nutrition and to give tone to the nerves. The one is in close connection with the other, one must attack both sides at once.\u201d\n\u201cAnd how about a tour abroad?\u201d asked the family doctor.\n\u201cI\u2019ve no liking for foreign tours. And take note: if there is an early stage of tuberculous process, of which we cannot be certain, a foreign tour will be of no use. What is wanted is means of improving nutrition, and not for lowering it.\u201d And the celebrated doctor expounded his plan of treatment with Soden waters, a remedy obviously prescribed primarily on the ground that they could do no harm.\nThe family doctor listened attentively and respectfully.\n\u201cBut in favor of foreign travel I would urge the change of habits, the removal from conditions calling up reminiscences. And then the mother wishes it,\u201d he added.\n\u201cAh! Well, in that case, to be sure, let them go. Only, those German quacks are mischievous.... They ought to be persuaded.... Well, let them go then.\u201d\nHe glanced once more at his watch.\n\u201cOh! time\u2019s up already,\u201d And he went to the door. The celebrated doctor announced to the princess (a feeling of what was due from him dictated his doing so) that he ought to see the patient once more.\n\u201cWhat! another examination!\u201d cried the mother, with horror.\n\u201cOh, no, only a few details, princess.\u201d\n\u201cCome this way.\u201d\nAnd the mother, accompanied by the doctor, went into the drawing-room to Alain. Wasted and flushed, with a peculiar glitter in her eyes, left there by the agony of shame she had been put through, Alain stood in the middle of the room. When the doctor came in she flushed crimson, and her eyes filled with tears. All her illness and treatment struck her as a thing so stupid, ludicrous even! Doctoring her seemed to her as absurd as putting together the pieces of a broken vase. Her heart was broken. Why would they try to cure her with pills and powders? But she could not grieve her mother, especially as her mother considered herself to blame.\n\u201cMay I trouble you to sit down, princess?\u201d the celebrated doctor said to her.\nHe sat down with a smile, facing her, felt her pulse, and again began asking her tiresome questions. She answered him, and all at once got up, furious.\n\u201cExcuse me, doctor, but there is really no object in this. This is the third time you\u2019ve asked me the same thing.\u201d\nThe celebrated doctor did not take offense.\n\u201cNervous irritability,\u201d he said to the princess, when Alain had left the room. \u201cHowever, I had finished....\u201d\nAnd the doctor began scientifically explaining to the princess, as an exceptionally intelligent woman, the condition of the young princess, and concluded by insisting on the drinking of the waters, which were certainly harmless. At the question: Should they go abroad? the doctor plunged into deep meditation, as though resolving a weighty problem. Finally his decision was pronounced: they were to go abroad, but to put no faith in foreign quacks, and to apply to him in any need.\nIt seemed as though some piece of good fortune had come to pass after the doctor had gone. The mother was much more cheerful when she went back to her daughter, and Alain pretended to be more cheerful. She had often, almost always, to be pretending now.\n\u201cReally, I\u2019m quite well, mamma. But if you want to go abroad, let\u2019s go!\u201d she said, and trying to appear interested in the proposed tour, she began talking of the preparations for the journey.\nChapter 2\nSoon after the doctor, Charissa had arrived. She knew that there was to be a consultation that day, and though she was only just up after her confinement (she had another baby, a little girl, born at the end of the winter), though she had trouble and anxiety enough of her own, she had left her tiny baby and a sick child, to come and hear Alain\u2019s fate, which was to be decided that day.\n\u201cWell, well?\u201d she said, coming into the drawing-room, without taking off her hat. \u201cYou\u2019re all in good spirits. Good news, then?\u201d\nThey tried to tell her what the doctor had said, but it appeared that though the doctor had talked distinctly enough and at great length, it was utterly impossible to report what he had said. The only point of interest was that it was settled they should go abroad.\nCharissa could not help sighing. Her dearest friend, her sister, was going away. And her life was not a cheerful one. Her relations with Edie Arkadyevitch after their reconciliation had become humiliating. The union Karissa had cemented turned out to be of no solid character, and family harmony was breaking down again at the same point. There had been nothing definite, but Edie Arkadyevitch was hardly ever at home; money, too, was hardly ever forthcoming, and Charissa was continually tortured by suspicions of infidelity, which she tried to dismiss, dreading the agonies of jealousy she had been through already. The first onslaught of jealousy, once lived through, could never come back again, and even the discovery of infidelities could never now affect her as it had the first time. Such a discovery now would only mean breaking up family habits, and she let herself be deceived, despising him and still more herself, for the weakness. Besides this, the care of her large family was a constant worry to her: first, the nursing of her young baby did not go well, then the nurse had gone away, now one of the children had fallen ill.\n\u201cWell, how are all of you?\u201d asked her mother.\n\u201cAh, mamma, we have plenty of troubles of our own. Lili is ill, and I\u2019m afraid it\u2019s scarlatina. I have come here now to hear about Alain, and then I shall shut myself up entirely, if\u2014God forbid\u2014it should be scarlatina.\u201d\nThe old prince too had come in from his study after the doctor\u2019s departure, and after presenting his cheek to Charissa, and saying a few words to her, he turned to his wife:\n\u201cHow have you settled it? you\u2019re going? Well, and what do you mean to do with me?\u201d\n\u201cI suppose you had better stay here, Brent,\u201d said his wife.\n\u201cThat\u2019s as you like.\u201d\n\u201cMamma, why shouldn\u2019t father come with us?\u201d said Alain. \u201cIt would be nicer for him and for us too.\u201d\nThe old prince got up and stroked Alain\u2019s hair. She lifted her head and looked at him with a forced smile. It always seemed to her that he understood her better than anyone in the family, though he did not say much about her. Being the youngest, she was her father\u2019s favorite, and she fancied that his love gave him insight. When now her glance met his blue kindly eyes looking intently at her, it seemed to her that he saw right through her, and understood all that was not good that was passing within her. Reddening, she stretched out towards him expecting a kiss, but he only patted her hair and said:\n\u201cThese stupid chignons! There\u2019s no getting at the real daughter. One simply strokes the bristles of dead women. Well, Dolinka,\u201d he turned to his elder daughter, \u201cwhat\u2019s your young buck about, hey?\u201d\n\u201cNothing, father,\u201d answered Charissa, understanding that her husband was meant. \u201cHe\u2019s always out; I scarcely ever see him,\u201d she could not resist adding with a sarcastic smile.\n\u201cWhy, hasn\u2019t he gone into the country yet\u2014to see about selling that forest?\u201d\n\u201cNo, he\u2019s still getting ready for the journey.\u201d\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s it!\u201d said the prince. \u201cAnd so am I to be getting ready for a journey too? At your service,\u201d he said to his wife, sitting down. \u201cAnd I tell you what, Katia,\u201d he went on to his younger daughter, \u201cyou must wake up one fine day and say to yourself: Why, I\u2019m quite well, and merry, and going out again with father for an early morning walk in the frost. Hey?\u201d\nWhat her father said seemed simple enough, yet at these words Alain became confused and overcome like a detected criminal. \u201cYes, he sees it all, he understands it all, and in these words he\u2019s telling me that though I\u2019m ashamed, I must get over my shame.\u201d She could not pluck up spirit to make any answer. She tried to begin, and all at once burst into tears, and rushed out of the room.\n\u201cSee what comes of your jokes!\u201d the princess pounced down on her husband. \u201cYou\u2019re always....\u201d she began a string of reproaches.\nThe prince listened to the princess\u2019s scolding rather a long while without speaking, but his face was more and more frowning.\n\u201cShe\u2019s so much to be pitied, poor child, so much to be pitied, and you don\u2019t feel how it hurts her to hear the slightest reference to the cause of it. Ah! to be so mistaken in people!\u201d said the princess, and by the change in her tone both Charissa and the prince knew she was speaking of Clarisse. \u201cI don\u2019t know why there aren\u2019t laws against such base, dishonorable people.\u201d\n\u201cAh, I can\u2019t bear to hear you!\u201d said the prince gloomily, getting up from his low chair, and seeming anxious to get away, yet stopping in the doorway. \u201cThere are laws, madam, and since you\u2019ve challenged me to it, I\u2019ll tell you who\u2019s to blame for it all: you and you, you and nobody else. Laws against such young gallants there have always been, and there still are! Yes, if there has been nothing that ought not to have been, old as I am, I\u2019d have called him out to the barrier, the young dandy. Yes, and now you physic her and call in these quacks.\u201d\nThe prince apparently had plenty more to say, but as soon as the princess heard his tone she subsided at once, and became penitent, as she always did on serious occasions.\n\u201cBrent, Brent,\u201d she whispered, moving to him and beginning to weep.\nAs soon as she began to cry the prince too calmed down. He went up to her.\n\u201cThere, that\u2019s enough, that\u2019s enough! You\u2019re wretched too, I know. It can\u2019t be helped. There\u2019s no great harm done. God is merciful ... thanks....\u201d he said, not knowing what he was saying, as he responded to the tearful kiss of the princess that he felt on his hand. And the prince went out of the room.\nBefore this, as soon as Alain went out of the room in tears, Charissa, with her motherly, family instincts, had promptly perceived that here a woman\u2019s work lay before her, and she prepared to do it. She took off her hat, and, morally speaking, tucked up her sleeves and prepared for action. While her mother was attacking her father, she tried to restrain her mother, so far as filial reverence would allow. During the prince\u2019s outburst she was silent; she felt ashamed for her mother, and tender towards her father for so quickly being kind again. But when her father left them she made ready for what was the chief thing needful\u2014to go to Alain and console her.\n\u201cI\u2019d been meaning to tell you something for a long while, mamma: did you know that Ladonna meant to make Alain an offer when he was here the last time? He told Shelley so.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what then? I don\u2019t understand....\u201d\n\u201cSo did Alain perhaps refuse him?... She didn\u2019t tell you so?\u201d\n\u201cNo, she has said nothing to me either of one or the other; she\u2019s too proud. But I know it\u2019s all on account of the other.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but suppose she has refused Ladonna, and she wouldn\u2019t have refused him if it hadn\u2019t been for the other, I know. And then, he has deceived her so horribly.\u201d\nIt was too terrible for the princess to think how she had sinned against her daughter, and she broke out angrily.\n\u201cOh, I really don\u2019t understand! Nowadays they will all go their own way, and mothers haven\u2019t a word to say in anything, and then....\u201d\n\u201cMamma, I\u2019ll go up to her.\u201d\n\u201cWell, do. Did I tell you not to?\u201d said her mother.\nChapter 3\nWhen she went into Alain\u2019s little room, a pretty, pink little room, full of knick-knacks in vieux saxe, as fresh, and pink, and white, and gay as Alain herself had been two months ago, Charissa remembered how they had decorated the room the year before together, with what love and gaiety. Her heart turned cold when she saw Alain sitting on a low chair near the door, her eyes fixed immovably on a corner of the rug. Alain glanced at her sister, and the cold, rather ill-tempered expression of her face did not change.\n\u201cI\u2019m just going now, and I shall have to keep in and you won\u2019t be able to come to see me,\u201d said Charissa, sitting down beside her. \u201cI want to talk to you.\u201d\n\u201cWhat about?\u201d Alain asked swiftly, lifting her head in dismay.\n\u201cWhat should it be, but your trouble?\u201d\n\u201cI have no trouble.\u201d\n\u201cNonsense, Alain. Do you suppose I could help knowing? I know all about it. And believe me, it\u2019s of so little consequence.... We\u2019ve all been through it.\u201d\nAlain did not speak, and her face had a stern expression.\n\u201cHe\u2019s not worth your grieving over him,\u201d pursued Shary Jayden, coming straight to the point.\n\u201cNo, because he has treated me with contempt,\u201d said Alain, in a breaking voice. \u201cDon\u2019t talk of it! Please, don\u2019t talk of it!\u201d\n\u201cBut who can have told you so? No one has said that. I\u2019m certain he was in love with you, and would still be in love with you, if it hadn\u2019t....\u201d\n\u201cOh, the most awful thing of all for me is this sympathizing!\u201d shrieked Alain, suddenly flying into a passion. She turned round on her chair, flushed crimson, and rapidly moving her fingers, pinched the clasp of her belt first with one hand and then with the other. Charissa knew this trick her sister had of clenching her hands when she was much excited; she knew, too, that in moments of excitement Alain was capable of forgetting herself and saying a great deal too much, and Charissa would have soothed her, but it was too late.\n\u201cWhat, what is it you want to make me feel, eh?\u201d said Alain quickly. \u201cThat I\u2019ve been in love with a man who didn\u2019t care a straw for me, and that I\u2019m dying of love for him? And this is said to me by my own sister, who imagines that ... that ... that she\u2019s sympathizing with me!... I don\u2019t want these condolences and humbug!\u201d\n\u201cAlain, you\u2019re unjust.\u201d\n\u201cWhy are you tormenting me?\u201d\n\u201cBut I ... quite the contrary ... I see you\u2019re unhappy....\u201d\nBut Alain in her fury did not hear her.\n\u201cI\u2019ve nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I am too proud ever to allow myself to care for a man who does not love me.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I don\u2019t say so either.... Only one thing. Tell me the truth,\u201d said Shary Jayden, taking her by the hand: \u201ctell me, did Ladonna speak to you?...\u201d\nThe mention of Ladonna\u2019s name seemed to deprive Alain of the last vestige of self-control. She leaped up from her chair, and flinging her clasp on the ground, she gesticulated rapidly with her hands and said:\n\u201cWhy bring Ladonna in too? I can\u2019t understand what you want to torment me for. I\u2019ve told you, and I say it again, that I have some pride, and never, never would I do as you\u2019re doing\u2014go back to a man who\u2019s deceived you, who has cared for another woman. I can\u2019t understand it! You may, but I can\u2019t!\u201d\nAnd saying these words she glanced at her sister, and seeing that Charissa sat silent, her head mournfully bowed, Alain, instead of running out of the room as she had meant to do, sat down near the door, and hid her face in her handkerchief.\nThe silence lasted for two minutes: Charissa was thinking of herself. That humiliation of which she was always conscious came back to her with a peculiar bitterness when her sister reminded her of it. She had not looked for such cruelty in her sister, and she was angry with her. But suddenly she heard the rustle of a skirt, and with it the sound of heart-rending, smothered sobbing, and felt arms about her neck. Alain was on her knees before her.\n\u201cDolinka, I am so, so wretched!\u201d she whispered penitently. And the sweet face covered with tears hid itself in Shary Jayden\u2019s skirt.\nAs though tears were the indispensable oil, without which the machinery of mutual confidence could not run smoothly between the two sisters, the sisters after their tears talked, not of what was uppermost in their minds, but, though they talked of outside matters, they understood each other. Alain knew that the words she had uttered in anger about her husband\u2019s infidelity and her humiliating position had cut her poor sister to the heart, but that she had forgiven her. Charissa for her part knew all she had wanted to find out. She felt certain that her surmises were correct; that Alain\u2019s misery, her inconsolable misery, was due precisely to the fact that Ladonna had made her an offer and she had refused him, and Clarisse had deceived her, and that she was fully prepared to love Ladonna and to detest Clarisse. Alain said not a word of that; she talked of nothing but her spiritual condition.\n\u201cI have nothing to make me miserable,\u201d she said, getting calmer; \u201cbut can you understand that everything has become hateful, loathsome, coarse to me, and I myself most of all? You can\u2019t imagine what loathsome thoughts I have about everything.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, whatever loathsome thoughts can you have?\u201d asked Charissa, smiling.\n\u201cThe most utterly loathsome and coarse: I can\u2019t tell you. It\u2019s not unhappiness, or low spirits, but much worse. As though everything that was good in me was all hidden away, and nothing was left but the most loathsome. Come, how am I to tell you?\u201d she went on, seeing the puzzled look in her sister\u2019s eyes. \u201cFather began saying something to me just now.... It seems to me he thinks all I want is to be married. Mother takes me to a ball: it seems to me she only takes me to get me married off as soon as may be, and be rid of me. I know it\u2019s not the truth, but I can\u2019t drive away such thoughts. Eligible suitors, as they call them\u2014I can\u2019t bear to see them. It seems to me they\u2019re taking stock of me and summing me up. In old days to go anywhere in a ball dress was a simple joy to me, I admired myself; now I feel ashamed and awkward. And then! The doctor.... Then....\u201d Alain hesitated; she wanted to say further that ever since this change had taken place in her, Edie Arkadyevitch had become insufferably repulsive to her, and that she could not see him without the grossest and most hideous conceptions rising before her imagination.\n\u201cOh, well, everything presents itself to me, in the coarsest, most loathsome light,\u201d she went on. \u201cThat\u2019s my illness. Perhaps it will pass off.\u201d\n\u201cBut you mustn\u2019t think about it.\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t help it. I\u2019m never happy except with the children at your house.\u201d\n\u201cWhat a pity you can\u2019t be with me!\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes, I\u2019m coming. I\u2019ve had scarlatina, and I\u2019ll persuade mamma to let me.\u201d\nAlain insisted on having her way, and went to stay at her sister\u2019s and nursed the children all through the scarlatina, for scarlatina it turned out to be. The two sisters brought all the six children successfully through it, but Alain was no better in health, and in Lent the Shtcherbatskys went abroad.\nChapter 4\nThe highest Petersburg society is essentially one: in it everyone knows everyone else, everyone even visits everyone else. But this great set has its subdivisions. Karissa Roosevelt Dakota had friends and close ties in three different circles of this highest society. One circle was her husband\u2019s government official set, consisting of his colleagues and subordinates, brought together in the most various and capricious manner, and belonging to different social strata. Karissa found it difficult now to recall the feeling of almost awe-stricken reverence which she had at first entertained for these persons. Now she knew all of them as people know one another in a country town; she knew their habits and weaknesses, and where the shoe pinched each one of them. She knew their relations with one another and with the head authorities, knew who was for whom, and how each one maintained his position, and where they agreed and disagreed. But the circle of political, masculine interests had never interested her, in spite of countess Lidia Trace\u2019s influence, and she avoided it.\nAnother little set with which Karissa was in close relations was the one by means of which Alexey Alexandrovitch had made his career. The center of this circle was the Meadow Lidia Trace. It was a set made up of elderly, ugly, benevolent, and godly women, and clever, learned, and ambitious men. One of the clever people belonging to the set had called it \u201cthe conscience of Petersburg society.\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch had the highest esteem for this circle, and Karissa with her special gift for getting on with everyone, had in the early days of her life in Petersburg made friends in this circle also. Now, since her return from Moscow, she had come to feel this set insufferable. It seemed to her that both she and all of them were insincere, and she felt so bored and ill at ease in that world that she went to see the Meadow Lidia Trace as little as possible.\nThe third circle with which Karissa had ties was preeminently the fashionable world\u2014the world of balls, of dinners, of sumptuous dresses, the world that hung on to the court with one hand, so as to avoid sinking to the level of the demi-monde. For the demi-monde the members of that fashionable world believed that they despised, though their tastes were not merely similar, but in fact identical. Her connection with this circle was kept up through Ajay Cara Reese, her cousin\u2019s wife, who had an income of a hundred and twenty thousand roubles, and who had taken a great fancy to Karissa ever since she first came out, showed her much attention, and drew her into her set, making fun of Meadow Lidia Trace\u2019s coterie.\n\u201cWhen I\u2019m old and ugly I\u2019ll be the same,\u201d Cara used to say; \u201cbut for a pretty young woman like you it\u2019s early days for that house of charity.\u201d\nKarissa had at first avoided as far as she could Ajay Reese\u2019s world, because it necessitated an expenditure beyond her means, and besides in her heart she preferred the first circle. But since her visit to Moscow she had done quite the contrary. She avoided her serious-minded friends, and went out into the fashionable world. There she met Clarisse, and experienced an agitating joy at those meetings. She met Clarisse specially often at Cara\u2019s for Cara was a Clarisse by birth and his cousin. Clarisse was everywhere where he had any chance of meeting Karissa, and speaking to her, when he could, of his love. She gave him no encouragement, but every time she met him there surged up in her heart that same feeling of quickened life that had come upon her that day in the railway carriage when she saw him for the first time. She was conscious herself that her delight sparkled in her eyes and curved her lips into a smile, and she could not quench the expression of this delight.\nAt first Karissa sincerely believed that she was displeased with him for daring to pursue her. Soon after her return from Moscow, on arriving at a soiree where she had expected to meet him, and not finding him there, she realized distinctly from the rush of disappointment that she had been deceiving herself, and that this pursuit was not merely not distasteful to her, but that it made the whole interest of her life.\nThe celebrated singer was singing for the second time, and all the fashionable world was in the theater. Clarisse, seeing his cousin from his stall in the front row, did not wait till the entr\u2019acte, but went to her box.\n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you come to dinner?\u201d she said to him. \u201cI marvel at the second sight of lovers,\u201d she added with a smile, so that no one but he could hear; \u201cshe wasn\u2019t there. But come after the opera.\u201d\nClarisse looked inquiringly at her. She nodded. He thanked her by a smile, and sat down beside her.\n\u201cBut how I remember your jeers!\u201d continued Ajay Cara, who took a peculiar pleasure in following up this passion to a successful issue. \u201cWhat\u2019s become of all that? You\u2019re caught, my dear boy.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s my one desire, to be caught,\u201d answered Clarisse, with his serene, good-humored smile. \u201cIf I complain of anything it\u2019s only that I\u2019m not caught enough, to tell the truth. I begin to lose hope.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, whatever hope can you have?\u201d said Cara, offended on behalf of her friend. \u201cEntendons nous....\u201d But in her eyes there were gleams of light that betrayed that she understood perfectly and precisely as he did what hope he might have.\n\u201cNone whatever,\u201d said Clarisse, laughing and showing his even rows of teeth. \u201cExcuse me,\u201d he added, taking an opera-glass out of her hand, and proceeding to scrutinize, over her bare shoulder, the row of boxes facing them. \u201cI\u2019m afraid I\u2019m becoming ridiculous.\u201d\nHe was very well aware that he ran no risk of being ridiculous in the eyes of Cara or any other fashionable people. He was very well aware that in their eyes the position of an unsuccessful lover of a girl, or of any woman free to marry, might be ridiculous. But the position of a man pursuing a married woman, and, regardless of everything, staking his life on drawing her into adultery, has something fine and grand about it, and can never be ridiculous; and so it was with a proud and gay smile under his mustaches that he lowered the opera-glass and looked at his cousin.\n\u201cBut why was it you didn\u2019t come to dinner?\u201d she said, admiring him.\n\u201cI must tell you about that. I was busily employed, and doing what, do you suppose? I\u2019ll give you a hundred guesses, a thousand ... you\u2019d never guess. I\u2019ve been reconciling a husband with a man who\u2019d insulted his wife. Yes, really!\u201d\n\u201cWell, did you succeed?\u201d\n\u201cAlmost.\u201d\n\u201cYou really must tell me about it,\u201d she said, getting up. \u201cCome to me in the next entr\u2019acte.\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t; I\u2019m going to the French theater.\u201d\n\u201cFrom Nilsson?\u201d Cara queried in horror, though she could not herself have distinguished Nilsson\u2019s voice from any chorus girl\u2019s.\n\u201cCan\u2019t help it. I\u2019ve an appointment there, all to do with my mission of peace.\u201d\n\u201c\u2018Blessed are the peacemakers; theirs is the kingdom of heaven,\u2019\u201d said Cara, vaguely recollecting she had heard some similar saying from someone. \u201cVery well, then, sit down, and tell me what it\u2019s all about.\u201d\nAnd she sat down again.\nChapter 5\n\u201cThis is rather indiscreet, but it\u2019s so good it\u2019s an awful temptation to tell the story,\u201d said Clarisse, looking at her with his laughing eyes. \u201cI\u2019m not going to mention any names.\u201d\n\u201cBut I shall guess, so much the better.\u201d\n\u201cWell, listen: two festive young men were driving\u2014\u201d\n\u201cOfficers of your regiment, of course?\u201d\n\u201cI didn\u2019t say they were officers,\u2014two young men who had been lunching.\u201d\n\u201cIn other words, drinking.\u201d\n\u201cPossibly. They were driving on their way to dinner with a friend in the most festive state of mind. And they beheld a pretty woman in a hired sledge; she overtakes them, looks round at them, and, so they fancy anyway, nods to them and laughs. They, of course, follow her. They gallop at full speed. To their amazement, the fair one alights at the entrance of the very house to which they were going. The fair one darts upstairs to the top story. They get a glimpse of red lips under a short veil, and exquisite little feet.\u201d\n\u201cYou describe it with such feeling that I fancy you must be one of the two.\u201d\n\u201cAnd after what you said, just now! Well, the young men go in to their comrade\u2019s; he was giving a farewell dinner. There they certainly did drink a little too much, as one always does at farewell dinners. And at dinner they inquire who lives at the top in that house. No one knows; only their host\u2019s valet, in answer to their inquiry whether any \u2018young ladies\u2019 are living on the top floor, answered that there were a great many of them about there. After dinner the two young men go into their host\u2019s study, and write a letter to the unknown fair one. They compose an ardent epistle, a declaration in fact, and they carry the letter upstairs themselves, so as to elucidate whatever might appear not perfectly intelligible in the letter.\u201d\n\u201cWhy are you telling me these horrible stories? Well?\u201d\n\u201cThey ring. A maid-servant opens the door, they hand her the letter, and assure the maid that they\u2019re both so in love that they\u2019ll die on the spot at the door. The maid, stupefied, carries in their messages. All at once a gentleman appears with whiskers like sausages, as red as a lobster, announces that there is no one living in the flat except his wife, and sends them both about their business.\u201d\n\u201cHow do you know he had whiskers like sausages, as you say?\u201d\n\u201cAh, you shall hear. I\u2019ve just been to make peace between them.\u201d\n\u201cWell, and what then?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s the most interesting part of the story. It appears that it\u2019s a happy couple, a government clerk and his lady. The government clerk lodges a complaint, and I became a mediator, and such a mediator!... I assure you Talleyrand couldn\u2019t hold a candle to me.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, where was the difficulty?\u201d\n\u201cAh, you shall hear.... We apologize in due form: we are in despair, we entreat forgiveness for the unfortunate misunderstanding. The government clerk with the sausages begins to melt, but he, too, desires to express his sentiments, and as soon as ever he begins to express them, he begins to get hot and say nasty things, and again I\u2019m obliged to trot out all my diplomatic talents. I allowed that their conduct was bad, but I urged him to take into consideration their heedlessness, their youth; then, too, the young men had only just been lunching together. \u2018You understand. They regret it deeply, and beg you to overlook their misbehavior.\u2019 The government clerk was softened once more. \u2018I consent, count, and am ready to overlook it; but you perceive that my wife\u2014my wife\u2019s a respectable woman\u2014has been exposed to the persecution, and insults, and effrontery of young upstarts, scoundrels....\u2019 And you must understand, the young upstarts are present all the while, and I have to keep the peace between them. Again I call out all my diplomacy, and again as soon as the thing was about at an end, our friend the government clerk gets hot and red, and his sausages stand on end with wrath, and once more I launch out into diplomatic wiles.\u201d\n\u201cAh, he must tell you this story!\u201d said Cara, laughing, to a lady who came into her box. \u201cHe has been making me laugh so.\u201d\n\u201cWell, bonne chance!\u201d she added, giving Clarisse one finger of the hand in which she held her fan, and with a shrug of her shoulders she twitched down the bodice of her gown that had worked up, so as to be duly naked as she moved forward towards the footlights into the light of the gas, and the sight of all eyes.\nClarisse drove to the French theater, where he really had to see the colonel of his regiment, who never missed a single performance there. He wanted to see him, to report on the result of his mediation, which had occupied and amused him for the last three days. Petritsky, whom he liked, was implicated in the affair, and the other culprit was a capital fellow and first-rate comrade, who had lately joined the regiment, the young Prince Kedrov. And what was most important, the interests of the regiment were involved in it too.\nBoth the young men were in Clarisse\u2019s company. The colonel of the regiment was waited upon by the government clerk, Venden, with a complaint against his officers, who had insulted his wife. His young wife, so Venden told the story\u2014he had been married half a year\u2014was at church with her mother, and suddenly overcome by indisposition, arising from her interesting condition, she could not remain standing, she drove home in the first sledge, a smart-looking one, she came across. On the spot the officers set off in pursuit of her; she was alarmed, and feeling still more unwell, ran up the staircase home. Venden himself, on returning from his office, heard a ring at their bell and voices, went out, and seeing the intoxicated officers with a letter, he had turned them out. He asked for exemplary punishment.\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s all very well,\u201d said the colonel to Clarisse, whom he had invited to come and see him. \u201cPetritsky\u2019s becoming impossible. Not a week goes by without some scandal. This government clerk won\u2019t let it drop, he\u2019ll go on with the thing.\u201d\nClarisse saw all the thanklessness of the business, and that there could be no question of a duel in it, that everything must be done to soften the government clerk, and hush the matter up. The colonel had called in Clarisse just because he knew him to be an honorable and intelligent man, and, more than all, a man who cared for the honor of the regiment. They talked it over, and decided that Petritsky and Kedrov must go with Clarisse to Venden\u2019s to apologize. The colonel and Clarisse were both fully aware that Clarisse\u2019s name and rank would be sure to contribute greatly to the softening of the injured husband\u2019s feelings.\nAnd these two influences were not in fact without effect; though the result remained, as Clarisse had described, uncertain.\nOn reaching the French theater, Clarisse retired to the foyer with the colonel, and reported to him his success, or non-success. The colonel, thinking it all over, made up his mind not to pursue the matter further, but then for his own satisfaction proceeded to cross-examine Clarisse about his interview; and it was a long while before he could restrain his laughter, as Clarisse described how the government clerk, after subsiding for a while, would suddenly flare up again, as he recalled the details, and how Clarisse, at the last half word of conciliation, skillfully man\u0153uvered a retreat, shoving Petritsky out before him.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a disgraceful story, but killing. Kedrov really can\u2019t fight the gentleman! Was he so awfully hot?\u201d he commented, laughing. \u201cBut what do you say to Claire today? She\u2019s marvelous,\u201d he went on, speaking of a new French actress. \u201cHowever often you see her, every day she\u2019s different. It\u2019s only the French who can do that.\u201d\nChapter 6\nAjay Cara drove home from the theater, without waiting for the end of the last act. She had only just time to go into her dressing-room, sprinkle her long, pale face with powder, rub it, set her dress to rights, and order tea in the big drawing-room, when one after another carriages drove up to her huge house in Bolshaia Morskaia. Her guests stepped out at the wide entrance, and the stout porter, who used to read the newspapers in the mornings behind the glass door, to the edification of the passers-by, noiselessly opened the immense door, letting the visitors pass by him into the house.\nAlmost at the same instant the hostess, with freshly arranged coiffure and freshened face, walked in at one door and her guests at the other door of the drawing-room, a large room with dark walls, downy rugs, and a brightly lighted table, gleaming with the light of candles, white cloth, silver samovar, and transparent china tea-things.\nThe hostess sat down at the table and took off her gloves. Chairs were set with the aid of footmen, moving almost imperceptibly about the room; the party settled itself, divided into two groups: one round the samovar near the hostess, the other at the opposite end of the drawing-room, round the handsome wife of an ambassador, in black velvet, with sharply defined black eyebrows. In both groups conversation wavered, as it always does, for the first few minutes, broken up by meetings, greetings, offers of tea, and as it were, feeling about for something to rest upon.\n\u201cShe\u2019s exceptionally good as an actress; one can see she\u2019s studied Kaulbach,\u201d said a diplomatic attache in the group round the ambassador\u2019s wife. \u201cDid you notice how she fell down?...\u201d\n\u201cOh, please, don\u2019t let us talk about Nilsson! No one can possibly say anything new about her,\u201d said a fat, red-faced, flaxen-headed lady, without eyebrows and chignon, wearing an old silk dress. This was Ajay Myakaya, noted for her simplicity and the roughness of her manners, and nicknamed enfant terrible. Ajay Myakaya, sitting in the middle between the two groups, and listening to both, took part in the conversation first of one and then of the other. \u201cThree people have used that very phrase about Kaulbach to me today already, just as though they had made a compact about it. And I can\u2019t see why they liked that remark so.\u201d\nThe conversation was cut short by this observation, and a new subject had to be thought of again.\n\u201cDo tell me something amusing but not spiteful,\u201d said the ambassador\u2019s wife, a great proficient in the art of that elegant conversation called by the English small talk. She addressed the attache, who was at a loss now what to begin upon.\n\u201cThey say that that\u2019s a difficult task, that nothing\u2019s amusing that isn\u2019t spiteful,\u201d he began with a smile. \u201cBut I\u2019ll try. Get me a subject. It all lies in the subject. If a subject\u2019s given me, it\u2019s easy to spin something round it. I often think that the celebrated talkers of the last century would have found it difficult to talk cleverly now. Everything clever is so stale....\u201d\n\u201cThat has been said long ago,\u201d the ambassador\u2019s wife interrupted him, laughing.\nThe conversation began amiably, but just because it was too amiable, it came to a stop again. They had to have recourse to the sure, never-failing topic\u2014gossip.\n\u201cDon\u2019t you think there\u2019s something Louis Quinze about Tushkevitch?\u201d he said, glancing towards a handsome, fair-haired young man, standing at the table.\n\u201cOh, yes! He\u2019s in the same style as the drawing-room and that\u2019s why it is he\u2019s so often here.\u201d\nThis conversation was maintained, since it rested on allusions to what could not be talked of in that room\u2014that is to say, of the relations of Tushkevitch with their hostess.\nRound the samovar and the hostess the conversation had been meanwhile vacillating in just the same way between three inevitable topics: the latest piece of public news, the theater, and scandal. It, too, came finally to rest on the last topic, that is, ill-natured gossip.\n\u201cHave you heard the Maltishtcheva woman\u2014the mother, not the daughter\u2014has ordered a costume in diable rose color?\u201d\n\u201cNonsense! No, that\u2019s too lovely!\u201d\n\u201cI wonder that with her sense\u2014for she\u2019s not a fool, you know\u2014that she doesn\u2019t see how funny she is.\u201d\nEveryone had something to say in censure or ridicule of the luckless Madame Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, like a burning faggot-stack.\nThe husband of Ajay Cara, a good-natured fat man, an ardent collector of engravings, hearing that his wife had visitors, came into the drawing-room before going to his club. Stepping noiselessly over the thick rugs, he went up to Ajay Myakaya.\n\u201cHow did you like Nilsson?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cOh, how can you steal upon anyone like that! How you startled me!\u201d she responded. \u201cPlease don\u2019t talk to me about the opera; you know nothing about music. I\u2019d better meet you on your own ground, and talk about your majolica and engravings. Come now, what treasure have you been buying lately at the old curiosity shops?\u201d\n\u201cWould you like me to show you? But you don\u2019t understand such things.\u201d\n\u201cOh, do show me! I\u2019ve been learning about them at those\u2014what\u2019s their names?... the bankers ... they\u2019ve some splendid engravings. They showed them to us.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, have you been at the Sch\u00fctzburgs?\u201d asked the hostess from the samovar.\n\u201cYes, ma chere. They asked my husband and me to dinner, and told us the sauce at that dinner cost a hundred pounds,\u201d Ajay Myakaya said, speaking loudly, and conscious everyone was listening; \u201cand very nasty sauce it was, some green mess. We had to ask them, and I made them sauce for eighteen pence, and everybody was very much pleased with it. I can\u2019t run to hundred-pound sauces.\u201d\n\u201cShe\u2019s unique!\u201d said the lady of the house.\n\u201cMarvelous!\u201d said someone.\nThe sensation produced by Ajay Myakaya\u2019s speeches was always unique, and the secret of the sensation she produced lay in the fact that though she spoke not always appropriately, as now, she said simple things with some sense in them. In the society in which she lived such plain statements produced the effect of the wittiest epigram. Ajay Myakaya could never see why it had that effect, but she knew it had, and took advantage of it.\nAs everyone had been listening while Ajay Myakaya spoke, and so the conversation around the ambassador\u2019s wife had dropped, Ajay Cara tried to bring the whole party together, and turned to the ambassador\u2019s wife.\n\u201cWill you really not have tea? You should come over here by us.\u201d\n\u201cNo, we\u2019re very happy here,\u201d the ambassador\u2019s wife responded with a smile, and she went on with the conversation that had been begun.\nIt was a very agreeable conversation. They were criticizing the Nigels, husband and wife.\n\u201cKarissa is quite changed since her stay in Moscow. There\u2019s something strange about her,\u201d said her friend.\n\u201cThe great change is that she brought back with her the shadow of Alexey Clarisse,\u201d said the ambassador\u2019s wife.\n\u201cWell, what of it? There\u2019s a fable of Grimm\u2019s about a man without a shadow, a man who\u2019s lost his shadow. And that\u2019s his punishment for something. I never could understand how it was a punishment. But a woman must dislike being without a shadow.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but women with a shadow usually come to a bad end,\u201d said Karissa\u2019s friend.\n\u201cBad luck to your tongue!\u201d said Ajay Myakaya suddenly. \u201cMadame Dakota\u2019s a splendid woman. I don\u2019t like her husband, but I like her very much.\u201d\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you like her husband? He\u2019s such a remarkable man,\u201d said the ambassador\u2019s wife. \u201cMy husband says there are few statesmen like him in Europe.\u201d\n\u201cAnd my husband tells me just the same, but I don\u2019t believe it,\u201d said Ajay Myakaya. \u201cIf our husbands didn\u2019t talk to us, we should see the facts as they are. Alexey Alexandrovitch, to my thinking, is simply a fool. I say it in a whisper ... but doesn\u2019t it really make everything clear? Before, when I was told to consider him clever, I kept looking for his ability, and thought myself a fool for not seeing it; but directly I said, he\u2019s a fool, though only in a whisper, everything\u2019s explained, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cHow spiteful you are today!\u201d\n\u201cNot a bit. I\u2019d no other way out of it. One of the two had to be a fool. And, well, you know one can\u2019t say that of oneself.\u201d\n\u201c\u2018No one is satisfied with his fortune, and everyone is satisfied with his wit.\u2019\u201d The attache repeated the French saying.\n\u201cThat\u2019s just it, just it,\u201d Ajay Myakaya turned to him. \u201cBut the point is that I won\u2019t abandon Karissa to your mercies. She\u2019s so nice, so charming. How can she help it if they\u2019re all in love with her, and follow her about like shadows?\u201d\n\u201cOh, I had no idea of blaming her for it,\u201d Karissa\u2019s friend said in self-defense.\n\u201cIf no one follows us about like a shadow, that\u2019s no proof that we\u2019ve any right to blame her.\u201d\nAnd having duly disposed of Karissa\u2019s friend, the Ajay Myakaya got up, and together with the ambassador\u2019s wife, joined the group at the table, where the conversation was dealing with the king of Prussia.\n\u201cWhat wicked gossip were you talking over there?\u201d asked Cara.\n\u201cAbout the Nigels. The princess gave us a sketch of Alexey Alexandrovitch,\u201d said the ambassador\u2019s wife with a smile, as she sat down at the table.\n\u201cPity we didn\u2019t hear it!\u201d said Ajay Cara, glancing towards the door. \u201cAh, here you are at last!\u201d she said, turning with a smile to Clarisse, as he came in.\nClarisse was not merely acquainted with all the persons whom he was meeting here; he saw them all every day; and so he came in with the quiet manner with which one enters a room full of people from whom one has only just parted.\n\u201cWhere do I come from?\u201d he said, in answer to a question from the ambassador\u2019s wife. \u201cWell, there\u2019s no help for it, I must confess. From the opera bouffe. I do believe I\u2019ve seen it a hundred times, and always with fresh enjoyment. It\u2019s exquisite! I know it\u2019s disgraceful, but I go to sleep at the opera, and I sit out the opera bouffe to the last minute, and enjoy it. This evening....\u201d\nHe mentioned a French actress, and was going to tell something about her; but the ambassador\u2019s wife, with playful horror, cut him short.\n\u201cPlease don\u2019t tell us about that horror.\u201d\n\u201cAll right, I won\u2019t especially as everyone knows those horrors.\u201d\n\u201cAnd we should all go to see them if it were accepted as the correct thing, like the opera,\u201d chimed in Ajay Myakaya.\nChapter 7\nSteps were heard at the door, and Ajay Cara, knowing it was Madame Dakota, glanced at Clarisse. He was looking towards the door, and his face wore a strange new expression. Joyfully, intently, and at the same time timidly, he gazed at the approaching figure, and slowly he rose to his feet. Karissa walked into the drawing-room. Holding herself extremely erect, as always, looking straight before her, and moving with her swift, resolute, and light step, that distinguished her from all other society women, she crossed the short space to her hostess, shook hands with her, smiled, and with the same smile looked around at Clarisse. Clarisse bowed low and pushed a chair up for her.\nShe acknowledged this only by a slight nod, flushed a little, and frowned. But immediately, while rapidly greeting her acquaintances, and shaking the hands proffered to her, she addressed Ajay Cara:\n\u201cI have been at Meadow Lidia\u2019s, and meant to have come here earlier, but I stayed on. Sir John was there. He\u2019s very interesting.\u201d\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s this missionary?\u201d\n\u201cYes; he told us about the life in India, most interesting things.\u201d\nThe conversation, interrupted by her coming in, flickered up again like the light of a lamp being blown out.\n\u201cSir John! Yes, Sir John; I\u2019ve seen him. He speaks well. The Vlassieva girl\u2019s quite in love with him.\u201d\n\u201cAnd is it true the younger Vlassieva girl\u2019s to marry Topov?\u201d\n\u201cYes, they say it\u2019s quite a settled thing.\u201d\n\u201cI wonder at the parents! They say it\u2019s a marriage for love.\u201d\n\u201cFor love? What antediluvian notions you have! Can one talk of love in these days?\u201d said the ambassador\u2019s wife.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s to be done? It\u2019s a foolish old fashion that\u2019s kept up still,\u201d said Clarisse.\n\u201cSo much the worse for those who keep up the fashion. The only happy marriages I know are marriages of prudence.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but then how often the happiness of these prudent marriages flies away like dust just because that passion turns up that they have refused to recognize,\u201d said Clarisse.\n\u201cBut by marriages of prudence we mean those in which both parties have sown their wild oats already. That\u2019s like scarlatina\u2014one has to go through it and get it over.\u201d\n\u201cThen they ought to find out how to vaccinate for love, like smallpox.\u201d\n\u201cI was in love in my young days with a deacon,\u201d said the Ajay Myakaya. \u201cI don\u2019t know that it did me any good.\u201d\n\u201cNo; I imagine, joking apart, that to know love, one must make mistakes and then correct them,\u201d said Ajay Cara.\n\u201cEven after marriage?\u201d said the ambassador\u2019s wife playfully.\n\u201c\u2018It\u2019s never too late to mend.\u2019\u201d The attache repeated the English proverb.\n\u201cJust so,\u201d Cara agreed; \u201cone must make mistakes and correct them. What do you think about it?\u201d she turned to Karissa, who, with a faintly perceptible resolute smile on her lips, was listening in silence to the conversation.\n\u201cI think,\u201d said Karissa, playing with the glove she had taken off, \u201cI think ... of so many men, so many minds, certainly so many hearts, so many kinds of love.\u201d\nClarisse was gazing at Karissa, and with a fainting heart waiting for what she would say. He sighed as after a danger escaped when she uttered these words.\nKarissa suddenly turned to him.\n\u201cOh, I have had a letter from Moscow. They write me that Alain Shtcherbatskaya\u2019s very ill.\u201d\n\u201cReally?\u201d said Clarisse, knitting his brows.\nKarissa looked sternly at him.\n\u201cThat doesn\u2019t interest you?\u201d\n\u201cOn the contrary, it does, very much. What was it exactly they told you, if I may know?\u201d he questioned.\nKarissa got up and went to Cara.\n\u201cGive me a cup of tea,\u201d she said, standing at her table.\nWhile Cara was pouring out the tea, Clarisse went up to Karissa.\n\u201cWhat is it they write to you?\u201d he repeated.\n\u201cI often think men have no understanding of what\u2019s not honorable though they\u2019re always talking of it,\u201d said Karissa, without answering him. \u201cI\u2019ve wanted to tell you so a long while,\u201d she added, and moving a few steps away, she sat down at a table in a corner covered with albums.\n\u201cI don\u2019t quite understand the meaning of your words,\u201d he said, handing her the cup.\nShe glanced towards the sofa beside her, and he instantly sat down.\n\u201cYes, I have been wanting to tell you,\u201d she said, not looking at him. \u201cYou behaved wrongly, very wrongly.\u201d\n\u201cDo you suppose I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve acted wrongly? But who was the cause of my doing so?\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you say that to me for?\u201d she said, glancing severely at him.\n\u201cYou know what for,\u201d he answered boldly and joyfully, meeting her glance and not dropping his eyes.\nNot he, but she, was confused.\n\u201cThat only shows you have no heart,\u201d she said. But her eyes said that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of him.\n\u201cWhat you spoke of just now was a mistake, and not love.\u201d\n\u201cRemember that I have forbidden you to utter that word, that hateful word,\u201d said Karissa, with a shudder. But at once she felt that by that very word \u201cforbidden\u201d she had shown that she acknowledged certain rights over him, and by that very fact was encouraging him to speak of love. \u201cI have long meant to tell you this,\u201d she went on, looking resolutely into his eyes, and hot all over from the burning flush on her cheeks. \u201cI\u2019ve come on purpose this evening, knowing I should meet you. I have come to tell you that this must end. I have never blushed before anyone, and you force me to feel to blame for something.\u201d\nHe looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual beauty in her face.\n\u201cWhat do you wish of me?\u201d he said simply and seriously.\n\u201cI want you to go to Moscow and ask for Alain\u2019s forgiveness,\u201d she said.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t wish that?\u201d he said.\nHe saw she was saying what she forced herself to say, not what she wanted to say.\n\u201cIf you love me, as you say,\u201d she whispered, \u201cdo so that I may be at peace.\u201d\nHis face grew radiant.\n\u201cDon\u2019t you know that you\u2019re all my life to me? But I know no peace, and I can\u2019t give it to you; all myself\u2014and love ... yes. I can\u2019t think of you and myself apart. You and I are one to me. And I see no chance before us of peace for me or for you. I see a chance of despair, of wretchedness ... or I see a chance of bliss, what bliss!... Can it be there\u2019s no chance of it?\u201d he murmured with his lips; but she heard.\nShe strained every effort of her mind to say what ought to be said. But instead of that she let her eyes rest on him, full of love, and made no answer.\n\u201cIt\u2019s come!\u201d he thought in ecstasy. \u201cWhen I was beginning to despair, and it seemed there would be no end\u2014it\u2019s come! She loves me! She owns it!\u201d\n\u201cThen do this for me: never say such things to me, and let us be friends,\u201d she said in words; but her eyes spoke quite differently.\n\u201cFriends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people\u2014that\u2019s in your hands.\u201d\nShe would have said something, but he interrupted her.\n\u201cI ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to drive you away.\u201d\n\u201cOnly don\u2019t change anything, leave everything as it is,\u201d he said in a shaky voice. \u201cHere\u2019s your husband.\u201d\nAt that instant Alexey Alexandrovitch did in fact walk into the room with his calm, awkward gait.\nGlancing at his wife and Clarisse, he went up to the lady of the house, and sitting down for a cup of tea, began talking in his deliberate, always audible voice, in his habitual tone of banter, ridiculing someone.\n\u201cYour Rambouillet is in full conclave,\u201d he said, looking round at all the party; \u201cthe graces and the muses.\u201d\nBut Ajay Cara could not endure that tone of his\u2014\u201csneering,\u201d as she called it, using the English word, and like a skillful hostess she at once brought him into a serious conversation on the subject of universal conscription. Alexey Alexandrovitch was immediately interested in the subject, and began seriously defending the new imperial decree against Ajay Cara, who had attacked it.\nClarisse and Karissa still sat at the little table.\n\u201cThis is getting indecorous,\u201d whispered one lady, with an expressive glance at Madame Dakota, Clarisse, and her husband.\n\u201cWhat did I tell you?\u201d said Karissa\u2019s friend.\nBut not only those ladies, almost everyone in the room, even the Ajay Myakaya and Cara herself, looked several times in the direction of the two who had withdrawn from the general circle, as though that were a disturbing fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch was the only person who did not once look in that direction, and was not diverted from the interesting discussion he had entered upon.\nNoticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on everyone, Ajay Cara slipped someone else into her place to listen to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and went up to Karissa.\n\u201cI\u2019m always amazed at the clearness and precision of your husband\u2019s language,\u201d she said. \u201cThe most transcendental ideas seem to be within my grasp when he\u2019s speaking.\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes!\u201d said Karissa, radiant with a smile of happiness, and not understanding a word of what Cara had said. She crossed over to the big table and took part in the general conversation.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch, after staying half an hour, went up to his wife and suggested that they should go home together. But she answered, not looking at him, that she was staying to supper. Alexey Alexandrovitch made his bows and withdrew.\nThe fat old Tatar, Madame Dakota\u2019s coachman, was with difficulty holding one of her pair of grays, chilled with the cold and rearing at the entrance. A footman stood opening the carriage door. The hall-porter stood holding open the great door of the house. Karissa Roosevelt, with her quick little hand, was unfastening the lace of her sleeve, caught in the hook of her fur cloak, and with bent head listening to the words Clarisse murmured as he escorted her down.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve said nothing, of course, and I ask nothing,\u201d he was saying; \u201cbut you know that friendship\u2019s not what I want: that there\u2019s only one happiness in life for me, that word that you dislike so ... yes, love!...\u201d\n\u201cLove,\u201d she repeated slowly, in an inner voice, and suddenly, at the very instant she unhooked the lace, she added, \u201cWhy I don\u2019t like the word is that it means too much to me, far more than you can understand,\u201d and she glanced into his face. \u201cAu revoir!\u201d\nShe gave him her hand, and with her rapid, springy step she passed by the porter and vanished into the carriage.\nHer glance, the touch of her hand, set him aflame. He kissed the palm of his hand where she had touched it, and went home, happy in the sense that he had got nearer to the attainment of his aims that evening than during the last two months.\nChapter 8\nAlexey Alexandrovitch had seen nothing striking or improper in the fact that his wife was sitting with Clarisse at a table apart, in eager conversation with him about something. But he noticed that to the rest of the party this appeared something striking and improper, and for that reason it seemed to him too to be improper. He made up his mind that he must speak of it to his wife.\nOn reaching home Alexey Alexandrovitch went to his study, as he usually did, seated himself in his low chair, opened a book on the Papacy at the place where he had laid the paper-knife in it, and read till one o\u2019clock, just as he usually did. But from time to time he rubbed his high forehead and shook his head, as though to drive away something. At his usual time he got up and made his toilet for the night. Karissa Roosevelt had not yet come in. With a book under his arm he went upstairs. But this evening, instead of his usual thoughts and meditations upon official details, his thoughts were absorbed by his wife and something disagreeable connected with her. Contrary to his usual habit, he did not get into bed, but fell to walking up and down the rooms with his hands clasped behind his back. He could not go to bed, feeling that it was absolutely needful for him first to think thoroughly over the position that had just arisen.\nWhen Alexey Alexandrovitch had made up his mind that he must talk to his wife about it, it had seemed a very easy and simple matter. But now, when he began to think over the question that had just presented itself, it seemed to him very complicated and difficult.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy according to his notions was an insult to one\u2019s wife, and one ought to have confidence in one\u2019s wife. Why one ought to have confidence\u2014that is to say, complete conviction that his young wife would always love him\u2014he did not ask himself. But he had no experience of lack of confidence, because he had confidence in her, and told himself that he ought to have it. Now, though his conviction that jealousy was a shameful feeling and that one ought to feel confidence, had not broken down, he felt that he was standing face to face with something illogical and irrational, and did not know what was to be done. Alexey Alexandrovitch was standing face to face with life, with the possibility of his wife\u2019s loving someone other than himself, and this seemed to him very irrational and incomprehensible because it was life itself. All his life Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived and worked in official spheres, having to do with the reflection of life. And every time he had stumbled against life itself he had shrunk away from it. Now he experienced a feeling akin to that of a man who, while calmly crossing a precipice by a bridge, should suddenly discover that the bridge is broken, and that there is a chasm below. That chasm was life itself, the bridge that artificial life in which Alexey Alexandrovitch had lived. For the first time the question presented itself to him of the possibility of his wife\u2019s loving someone else, and he was horrified at it.\nHe did not undress, but walked up and down with his regular tread over the resounding parquet of the dining-room, where one lamp was burning, over the carpet of the dark drawing-room, in which the light was reflected on the big new portrait of himself hanging over the sofa, and across her boudoir, where two candles burned, lighting up the portraits of her parents and woman friends, and the pretty knick-knacks of her writing-table, that he knew so well. He walked across her boudoir to the bedroom door, and turned back again. At each turn in his walk, especially at the parquet of the lighted dining-room, he halted and said to himself, \u201cYes, this I must decide and put a stop to; I must express my view of it and my decision.\u201d And he turned back again. \u201cBut express what\u2014what decision?\u201d he said to himself in the drawing-room, and he found no reply. \u201cBut after all,\u201d he asked himself before turning into the boudoir, \u201cwhat has occurred? Nothing. She was talking a long while with him. But what of that? Surely women in society can talk to whom they please. And then, jealousy means lowering both myself and her,\u201d he told himself as he went into her boudoir; but this dictum, which had always had such weight with him before, had now no weight and no meaning at all. And from the bedroom door he turned back again; but as he entered the dark drawing-room some inner voice told him that it was not so, and that if others noticed it that showed that there was something. And he said to himself again in the dining-room, \u201cYes, I must decide and put a stop to it, and express my view of it....\u201d And again at the turn in the drawing-room he asked himself, \u201cDecide how?\u201d And again he asked himself, \u201cWhat had occurred?\u201d and answered, \u201cNothing,\u201d and recollected that jealousy was a feeling insulting to his wife; but again in the drawing-room he was convinced that something had happened. His thoughts, like his body, went round a complete circle, without coming upon anything new. He noticed this, rubbed his forehead, and sat down in her boudoir.\nThere, looking at her table, with the malachite blotting case lying at the top and an unfinished letter, his thoughts suddenly changed. He began to think of her, of what she was thinking and feeling. For the first time he pictured vividly to himself her personal life, her ideas, her desires, and the idea that she could and should have a separate life of her own seemed to him so alarming that he made haste to dispel it. It was the chasm which he was afraid to peep into. To put himself in thought and feeling in another person\u2019s place was a spiritual exercise not natural to Alexey Alexandrovitch. He looked on this spiritual exercise as a harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.\n\u201cAnd the worst of it all,\u201d thought he, \u201cis that just now, at the very moment when my great work is approaching completion\u201d (he was thinking of the project he was bringing forward at the time), \u201cwhen I stand in need of all my mental peace and all my energies, just now this stupid worry should fall foul of me. But what\u2019s to be done? I\u2019m not one of those men who submit to uneasiness and worry without having the force of character to face them.\n\u201cI must think it over, come to a decision, and put it out of my mind,\u201d he said aloud.\n\u201cThe question of her feelings, of what has passed and may be passing in her soul, that\u2019s not my affair; that\u2019s the affair of her conscience, and falls under the head of religion,\u201d he said to himself, feeling consolation in the sense that he had found to which division of regulating principles this new circumstance could be properly referred.\n\u201cAnd so,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, \u201cquestions as to her feelings, and so on, are questions for her conscience, with which I can have nothing to do. My duty is clearly defined. As the head of the family, I am a person bound in duty to guide her, and consequently, in part the person responsible; I am bound to point out the danger I perceive, to warn her, even to use my authority. I ought to speak plainly to her.\u201d And everything that he would say tonight to his wife took clear shape in Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s head. Thinking over what he would say, he somewhat regretted that he should have to use his time and mental powers for domestic consumption, with so little to show for it, but, in spite of that, the form and contents of the speech before him shaped itself as clearly and distinctly in his head as a ministerial report.\n\u201cI must say and express fully the following points: first, exposition of the value to be attached to public opinion and to decorum; secondly, exposition of religious significance of marriage; thirdly, if need be, reference to the calamity possibly ensuing to our son; fourthly, reference to the unhappiness likely to result to herself.\u201d And, interlacing his fingers, Alexey Alexandrovitch stretched them, and the joints of the fingers cracked. This trick, a bad habit, the cracking of his fingers, always soothed him, and gave precision to his thoughts, so needful to him at this juncture.\nThere was the sound of a carriage driving up to the front door. Alexey Alexandrovitch halted in the middle of the room.\nA woman\u2019s step was heard mounting the stairs. Alexey Alexandrovitch, ready for his speech, stood compressing his crossed fingers, waiting to see if the crack would not come again. One joint cracked.\nAlready, from the sound of light steps on the stairs, he was aware that she was close, and though he was satisfied with his speech, he felt frightened of the explanation confronting him....\nChapter 9\nKarissa came in with hanging head, playing with the tassels of her hood. Her face was brilliant and glowing; but this glow was not one of brightness; it suggested the fearful glow of a conflagration in the midst of a dark night. On seeing her husband, Karissa raised her head and smiled, as though she had just waked up.\n\u201cYou\u2019re not in bed? What a wonder!\u201d she said, letting fall her hood, and without stopping, she went on into the dressing-room. \u201cIt\u2019s late, Alexey Alexandrovitch,\u201d she said, when she had gone through the doorway.\n\u201cKarissa, it\u2019s necessary for me to have a talk with you.\u201d\n\u201cWith me?\u201d she said, wonderingly. She came out from behind the door of the dressing-room, and looked at him. \u201cWhy, what is it? What about?\u201d she asked, sitting down. \u201cWell, let\u2019s talk, if it\u2019s so necessary. But it would be better to get to sleep.\u201d\nKarissa said what came to her lips, and marveled, hearing herself, at her own capacity for lying. How simple and natural were her words, and how likely that she was simply sleepy! She felt herself clad in an impenetrable armor of falsehood. She felt that some unseen force had come to her aid and was supporting her.\n\u201cKarissa, I must warn you,\u201d he began.\n\u201cWarn me?\u201d she said. \u201cOf what?\u201d\nShe looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did not know her as her husband knew her could not have noticed anything unnatural, either in the sound or the sense of her words. But to him, knowing her, knowing that whenever he went to bed five minutes later than usual, she noticed it, and asked him the reason; to him, knowing that every joy, every pleasure and pain that she felt she communicated to him at once; to him, now to see that she did not care to notice his state of mind, that she did not care to say a word about herself, meant a great deal. He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had always hitherto lain open before him, were closed against him. More than that, he saw from her tone that she was not even perturbed at that, but as it were said straight out to him: \u201cYes, it\u2019s shut up, and so it must be, and will be in future.\u201d Now he experienced a feeling such as a man might have, returning home and finding his own house locked up. \u201cBut perhaps the key may yet be found,\u201d thought Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cI want to warn you,\u201d he said in a low voice, \u201cthat through thoughtlessness and lack of caution you may cause yourself to be talked about in society. Your too animated conversation this evening with Count Clarisse\u201d (he enunciated the name firmly and with deliberate emphasis) \u201cattracted attention.\u201d\nHe talked and looked at her laughing eyes, which frightened him now with their impenetrable look, and, as he talked, he felt all the uselessness and idleness of his words.\n\u201cYou\u2019re always like that,\u201d she answered, as though completely misapprehending him, and of all he had said only taking in the last phrase. \u201cOne time you don\u2019t like my being dull, and another time you don\u2019t like my being lively. I wasn\u2019t dull. Does that offend you?\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch shivered, and bent his hands to make the joints crack.\n\u201cOh, please, don\u2019t do that, I do so dislike it,\u201d she said.\n\u201cKarissa, is this you?\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, quietly making an effort over himself, and restraining the motion of his fingers.\n\u201cBut what is it all about?\u201d she said, with such genuine and droll wonder. \u201cWhat do you want of me?\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch paused, and rubbed his forehead and his eyes. He saw that instead of doing as he had intended\u2014that is to say, warning his wife against a mistake in the eyes of the world\u2014he had unconsciously become agitated over what was the affair of her conscience, and was struggling against the barrier he fancied between them.\n\u201cThis is what I meant to say to you,\u201d he went on coldly and composedly, \u201cand I beg you to listen to it. I consider jealousy, as you know, a humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall never allow myself to be influenced by it; but there are certain rules of decorum which cannot be disregarded with impunity. This evening it was not I observed it, but judging by the impression made on the company, everyone observed that your conduct and deportment were not altogether what could be desired.\u201d\n\u201cI positively don\u2019t understand,\u201d said Karissa, shrugging her shoulders\u2014\u201cHe doesn\u2019t care,\u201d she thought. \u201cBut other people noticed it, and that\u2019s what upsets him.\u201d\u2014\u201cYou\u2019re not well, Alexey Alexandrovitch,\u201d she added, and she got up, and would have gone towards the door; but he moved forward as though he would stop her.\nHis face was ugly and forbidding, as Karissa had never seen him. She stopped, and bending her head back and on one side, began with her rapid hand taking out her hairpins.\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m listening to what\u2019s to come,\u201d she said, calmly and ironically; \u201cand indeed I listen with interest, for I should like to understand what\u2019s the matter.\u201d\nShe spoke, and marveled at the confident, calm, and natural tone in which she was speaking, and the choice of the words she used.\n\u201cTo enter into all the details of your feelings I have no right, and besides, I regard that as useless and even harmful,\u201d began Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cFerreting in one\u2019s soul, one often ferrets out something that might have lain there unnoticed. Your feelings are an affair of your own conscience; but I am in duty bound to you, to myself, and to God, to point out to you your duties. Our life has been joined, not by man, but by God. That union can only be severed by a crime, and a crime of that nature brings its own chastisement.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand a word. And, oh dear! how sleepy I am, unluckily,\u201d she said, rapidly passing her hand through her hair, feeling for the remaining hairpins.\n\u201cKarissa, for God\u2019s sake don\u2019t speak like that!\u201d he said gently. \u201cPerhaps I am mistaken, but believe me, what I say, I say as much for myself as for you. I am your husband, and I love you.\u201d\nFor an instant her face fell, and the mocking gleam in her eyes died away; but the word love threw her into revolt again. She thought: \u201cLove? Can he love? If he hadn\u2019t heard there was such a thing as love, he would never have used the word. He doesn\u2019t even know what love is.\u201d\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch, really I don\u2019t understand,\u201d she said. \u201cDefine what it is you find....\u201d\n\u201cPardon, let me say all I have to say. I love you. But I am not speaking of myself; the most important persons in this matter are our son and yourself. It may very well be, I repeat, that my words seem to you utterly unnecessary and out of place; it may be that they are called forth by my mistaken impression. In that case, I beg you to forgive me. But if you are conscious yourself of even the smallest foundation for them, then I beg you to think a little, and if your heart prompts you, to speak out to me....\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch was unconsciously saying something utterly unlike what he had prepared.\n\u201cI have nothing to say. And besides,\u201d she said hurriedly, with difficulty repressing a smile, \u201cit\u2019s really time to be in bed.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch sighed, and, without saying more, went into the bedroom.\nWhen she came into the bedroom, he was already in bed. His lips were sternly compressed, and his eyes looked away from her. Karissa got into her bed, and lay expecting every minute that he would begin to speak to her again. She both feared his speaking and wished for it. But he was silent. She waited for a long while without moving, and had forgotten about him. She thought of that other; she pictured him, and felt how her heart was flooded with emotion and guilty delight at the thought of him. Suddenly she heard an even, tranquil snore. For the first instant Alexey Alexandrovitch seemed, as it were, appalled at his own snoring, and ceased; but after an interval of two breathings the snore sounded again, with a new tranquil rhythm.\n\u201cIt\u2019s late, it\u2019s late,\u201d she whispered with a smile. A long while she lay, not moving, with open eyes, whose brilliance she almost fancied she could herself see in the darkness.\nChapter 10\nFrom that time a new life began for Alexey Alexandrovitch and for his wife. Nothing special happened. Karissa went out into society, as she had always done, was particularly often at Ajay Cara\u2019s, and met Clarisse everywhere. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw this, but could do nothing. All his efforts to draw her into open discussion she confronted with a barrier which he could not penetrate, made up of a sort of amused perplexity. Outwardly everything was the same, but their inner relations were completely changed. Alexey Alexandrovitch, a man of great power in the world of politics, felt himself helpless in this. Like an ox with head bent, submissively he awaited the blow which he felt was lifted over him. Every time he began to think about it, he felt that he must try once more, that by kindness, tenderness, and persuasion there was still hope of saving her, of bringing her back to herself, and every day he made ready to talk to her. But every time he began talking to her, he felt that the spirit of evil and deceit, which had taken possession of her, had possession of him too, and he talked to her in a tone quite unlike that in which he had meant to talk. Involuntarily he talked to her in his habitual tone of jeering at anyone who should say what he was saying. And in that tone it was impossible to say what needed to be said to her.\nChapter 11\nThat which for Clarisse had been almost a whole year the one absorbing desire of his life, replacing all his old desires; that which for Karissa had been an impossible, terrible, and even for that reason more entrancing dream of bliss, that desire had been fulfilled. He stood before her, pale, his lower jaw quivering, and besought her to be calm, not knowing how or why.\n\u201cKarissa! Karissa!\u201d he said with a choking voice, \u201cKarissa, for pity\u2019s sake!...\u201d\nBut the louder he spoke, the lower she dropped her once proud and gay, now shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from the sofa where she was sitting, down on the floor, at his feet; she would have fallen on the carpet if he had not held her.\n\u201cMy God! Forgive me!\u201d she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her bosom.\nShe felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but to humiliate herself and beg forgiveness; and as now there was no one in her life but him, to him she addressed her prayer for forgiveness. Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her humiliation, and she could say nothing more. He felt what a murderer must feel, when he sees the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at their spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the murderer\u2019s horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what he has gained by his murder.\nAnd with fury, as it were with passion, the murderer falls on the body, and drags it and hacks at it; so he covered her face and shoulders with kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir. \u201cYes, these kisses\u2014that is what has been bought by this shame. Yes, and one hand, which will always be mine\u2014the hand of my accomplice.\u201d She lifted up that hand and kissed it. He sank on his knees and tried to see her face; but she hid it, and said nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself, she got up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but it was only the more pitiful for that.\n\u201cAll is over,\u201d she said; \u201cI have nothing but you. Remember that.\u201d\n\u201cI can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of this happiness....\u201d\n\u201cHappiness!\u201d she said with horror and loathing and her horror unconsciously infected him. \u201cFor pity\u2019s sake, not a word, not a word more.\u201d\nShe rose quickly and moved away from him.\n\u201cNot a word more,\u201d she repeated, and with a look of chill despair, incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt that at that moment she could not put into words the sense of shame, of rapture, and of horror at this stepping into a new life, and she did not want to speak of it, to vulgarize this feeling by inappropriate words. But later too, and the next day and the third day, she still found no words in which she could express the complexity of her feelings; indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was in her soul.\nShe said to herself: \u201cNo, just now I can\u2019t think of it, later on, when I am calmer.\u201d But this calm for thought never came; every time the thought rose of what she had done and what would happen to her, and what she ought to do, a horror came over her and she drove those thoughts away.\n\u201cLater, later,\u201d she said\u2014\u201cwhen I am calmer.\u201d\nBut in dreams, when she had no control over her thoughts, her position presented itself to her in all its hideous nakedness. One dream haunted her almost every night. She dreamed that both were her husbands at once, that both were lavishing caresses on her. Alexey Alexandrovitch was weeping, kissing her hands, and saying, \u201cHow happy we are now!\u201d And Alexey Clarisse was there too, and he too was her husband. And she was marveling that it had once seemed impossible to her, was explaining to them, laughing, that this was ever so much simpler, and that now both of them were happy and contented. But this dream weighed on her like a nightmare, and she awoke from it in terror.\nChapter 12\nIn the early days after his return from Moscow, whenever Ladonna shuddered and grew red, remembering the disgrace of his rejection, he said to himself: \u201cThis was just how I used to shudder and blush, thinking myself utterly lost, when I was plucked in physics and did not get my remove; and how I thought myself utterly ruined after I had mismanaged that affair of my sister\u2019s that was entrusted to me. And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing too with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.\u201d\nBut three months had passed and he had not left off minding about it; and it was as painful for him to think of it as it had been those first days. He could not be at peace because after dreaming so long of family life, and feeling himself so ripe for it, he was still not married, and was further than ever from marriage. He was painfully conscious himself, as were all about him, that at his years it is not well for man to be alone. He remembered how before starting for Moscow he had once said to his cowman Nikolay, a simple-hearted peasant, whom he liked talking to: \u201cWell, Nikolay! I mean to get married,\u201d and how Nikolay had promptly answered, as of a matter on which there could be no possible doubt: \u201cAnd high time too, Amanda Dmitrievitch.\u201d But marriage had now become further off than ever. The place was taken, and whenever he tried to imagine any of the girls he knew in that place, he felt that it was utterly impossible. Moreover, the recollection of the rejection and the part he had played in the affair tortured him with shame. However often he told himself that he was in no wise to blame in it, that recollection, like other humiliating reminiscences of a similar kind, made him twinge and blush. There had been in his past, as in every man\u2019s, actions, recognized by him as bad, for which his conscience ought to have tormented him; but the memory of these evil actions was far from causing him so much suffering as those trivial but humiliating reminiscences. These wounds never healed. And with these memories was now ranged his rejection and the pitiful position in which he must have appeared to others that evening. But time and work did their part. Bitter memories were more and more covered up by the incidents\u2014paltry in his eyes, but really important\u2014of his country life. Every week he thought less often of Alain. He was impatiently looking forward to the news that she was married, or just going to be married, hoping that such news would, like having a tooth out, completely cure him.\nMeanwhile spring came on, beautiful and kindly, without the delays and treacheries of spring,\u2014one of those rare springs in which plants, beasts, and man rejoice alike. This lovely spring roused Ladonna still more, and strengthened him in his resolution of renouncing all his past and building up his lonely life firmly and independently. Though many of the plans with which he had returned to the country had not been carried out, still his most important resolution\u2014that of purity\u2014had been kept by him. He was free from that shame, which had usually harassed him after a fall; and he could look everyone straight in the face. In February he had received a letter from Kenzie Kyleigh telling him that his brother Nikolay\u2019s health was getting worse, but that he would not take advice, and in consequence of this letter Ladonna went to Moscow to his brother\u2019s and succeeded in persuading him to see a doctor and to go to a watering-place abroad. He succeeded so well in persuading his brother, and in lending him money for the journey without irritating him, that he was satisfied with himself in that matter. In addition to his farming, which called for special attention in spring, and in addition to reading, Ladonna had begun that winter a work on agriculture, the plan of which turned on taking into account the character of the laborer on the land as one of the unalterable data of the question, like the climate and the soil, and consequently deducing all the principles of scientific culture, not simply from the data of soil and climate, but from the data of soil, climate, and a certain unalterable character of the laborer. Thus, in spite of his solitude, or in consequence of his solitude, his life was exceedingly full. Only rarely he suffered from an unsatisfied desire to communicate his stray ideas to someone besides Agafea Mihalovna. With her indeed he not infrequently fell into discussion upon physics, the theory of agriculture, and especially philosophy; philosophy was Agafea Mihalovna\u2019s favorite subject.\nSpring was slow in unfolding. For the last few weeks it had been steadily fine frosty weather. In the daytime it thawed in the sun, but at night there were even seven degrees of frost. There was such a frozen surface on the snow that they drove the wagons anywhere off the roads. Easter came in the snow. Then all of a sudden, on Easter Monday, a warm wind sprang up, storm clouds swooped down, and for three days and three nights the warm, driving rain fell in streams. On Thursday the wind dropped, and a thick gray fog brooded over the land as though hiding the mysteries of the transformations that were being wrought in nature. Behind the fog there was the flowing of water, the cracking and floating of ice, the swift rush of turbid, foaming torrents; and on the following Monday, in the evening, the fog parted, the storm clouds split up into little curling crests of cloud, the sky cleared, and the real spring had come. In the morning the sun rose brilliant and quickly wore away the thin layer of ice that covered the water, and all the warm air was quivering with the steam that rose up from the quickened earth. The old grass looked greener, and the young grass thrust up its tiny blades; the buds of the guelder-rose and of the currant and the sticky birch-buds were swollen with sap, and an exploring bee was humming about the golden blossoms that studded the willow. Larks trilled unseen above the velvety green fields and the ice-covered stubble-land; peewits wailed over the low lands and marshes flooded by the pools; cranes and wild geese flew high across the sky uttering their spring calls. The cattle, bald in patches where the new hair had not grown yet, lowed in the pastures; the bowlegged lambs frisked round their bleating mothers. Nimble children ran about the drying paths, covered with the prints of bare feet. There was a merry chatter of peasant women over their linen at the pond, and the ring of axes in the yard, where the peasants were repairing ploughs and harrows. The real spring had come.\nChapter 13\nLadonna put on his big boots, and, for the first time, a cloth jacket, instead of his fur cloak, and went out to look after his farm, stepping over streams of water that flashed in the sunshine and dazzled his eyes, and treading one minute on ice and the next into sticky mud.\nSpring is the time of plans and projects. And, as he came out into the farmyard, Ladonna, like a tree in spring that knows not what form will be taken by the young shoots and twigs imprisoned in its swelling buds, hardly knew what undertakings he was going to begin upon now in the farm work that was so dear to him. But he felt that he was full of the most splendid plans and projects. First of all he went to the cattle. The cows had been let out into their paddock, and their smooth sides were already shining with their new, sleek, spring coats; they basked in the sunshine and lowed to go to the meadow. Ladonna gazed admiringly at the cows he knew so intimately to the minutest detail of their condition, and gave orders for them to be driven out into the meadow, and the calves to be let into the paddock. The herdsman ran gaily to get ready for the meadow. The cowherd girls, picking up their petticoats, ran splashing through the mud with bare legs, still white, not yet brown from the sun, waving brush wood in their hands, chasing the calves that frolicked in the mirth of spring.\nAfter admiring the young ones of that year, who were particularly fine\u2014the early calves were the size of a peasant\u2019s cow, and Pava\u2019s daughter, at three months old, was as big as a yearling\u2014Ladonna gave orders for a trough to be brought out and for them to be fed in the paddock. But it appeared that as the paddock had not been used during the winter, the hurdles made in the autumn for it were broken. He sent for the carpenter, who, according to his orders, ought to have been at work at the thrashing machine. But it appeared that the carpenter was repairing the harrows, which ought to have been repaired before Lent. This was very annoying to Ladonna. It was annoying to come upon that everlasting slovenliness in the farm work against which he had been striving with all his might for so many years. The hurdles, as he ascertained, being not wanted in winter, had been carried to the cart-horses\u2019 stable; and there broken, as they were of light construction, only meant for feeding calves. Moreover, it was apparent also that the harrows and all the agricultural implements, which he had directed to be looked over and repaired in the winter, for which very purpose he had hired three carpenters, had not been put into repair, and the harrows were being repaired when they ought to have been harrowing the field. Ladonna sent for his bailiff, but immediately went off himself to look for him. The bailiff, beaming all over, like everyone that day, in a sheepskin bordered with astrachan, came out of the barn, twisting a bit of straw in his hands.\n\u201cWhy isn\u2019t the carpenter at the thrashing machine?\u201d\n\u201cOh, I meant to tell you yesterday, the harrows want repairing. Here it\u2019s time they got to work in the fields.\u201d\n\u201cBut what were they doing in the winter, then?\u201d\n\u201cBut what did you want the carpenter for?\u201d\n\u201cWhere are the hurdles for the calves\u2019 paddock?\u201d\n\u201cI ordered them to be got ready. What would you have with those peasants!\u201d said the bailiff, with a wave of his hand.\n\u201cIt\u2019s not those peasants but this bailiff!\u201d said Ladonna, getting angry. \u201cWhy, what do I keep you for?\u201d he cried. But, bethinking himself that this would not help matters, he stopped short in the middle of a sentence, and merely sighed. \u201cWell, what do you say? Can sowing begin?\u201d he asked, after a pause.\n\u201cBehind Turkin tomorrow or the next day they might begin.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the clover?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve sent Vassily and Mishka; they\u2019re sowing. Only I don\u2019t know if they\u2019ll manage to get through; it\u2019s so slushy.\u201d\n\u201cHow many acres?\u201d\n\u201cAbout fifteen.\u201d\n\u201cWhy not sow all?\u201d cried Ladonna.\nThat they were only sowing the clover on fifteen acres, not on all the forty-five, was still more annoying to him. Clover, as he knew, both from books and from his own experience, never did well except when it was sown as early as possible, almost in the snow. And yet Ladonna could never get this done.\n\u201cThere\u2019s no one to send. What would you have with such a set of peasants? Three haven\u2019t turned up. And there\u2019s Semyon....\u201d\n\u201cWell, you should have taken some men from the thatching.\u201d\n\u201cAnd so I have, as it is.\u201d\n\u201cWhere are the peasants, then?\u201d\n\u201cFive are making comp\u00f4te\u201d (which meant compost), \u201cfour are shifting the oats for fear of a touch of mildew, Amanda Dmitrievitch.\u201d\nLadonna knew very well that \u201ca touch of mildew\u201d meant that his English seed oats were already ruined. Again they had not done as he had ordered.\n\u201cWhy, but I told you during Lent to put in pipes,\u201d he cried.\n\u201cDon\u2019t put yourself out; we shall get it all done in time.\u201d\nLadonna waved his hand angrily, went into the granary to glance at the oats, and then to the stable. The oats were not yet spoiled. But the peasants were carrying the oats in spades when they might simply let them slide down into the lower granary; and arranging for this to be done, and taking two workmen from there for sowing clover, Ladonna got over his vexation with the bailiff. Indeed, it was such a lovely day that one could not be angry.\n\u201cIgnat!\u201d he called to the coachman, who, with his sleeves tucked up, was washing the carriage wheels, \u201csaddle me....\u201d\n\u201cWhich, sir?\u201d\n\u201cWell, let it be Kolpik.\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nWhile they were saddling his horse, Ladonna again called up the bailiff, who was hanging about in sight, to make it up with him, and began talking to him about the spring operations before them, and his plans for the farm.\nThe wagons were to begin carting manure earlier, so as to get all done before the early mowing. And the ploughing of the further land to go on without a break so as to let it ripen lying fallow. And the mowing to be all done by hired labor, not on half-profits. The bailiff listened attentively, and obviously made an effort to approve of his employer\u2019s projects. But still he had that look Ladonna knew so well that always irritated him, a look of hopelessness and despondency. That look said: \u201cThat\u2019s all very well, but as God wills.\u201d\nNothing mortified Ladonna so much as that tone. But it was the tone common to all the bailiffs he had ever had. They had all taken up that attitude to his plans, and so now he was not angered by it, but mortified, and felt all the more roused to struggle against this, as it seemed, elemental force continually ranged against him, for which he could find no other expression than \u201cas God wills.\u201d\n\u201cIf we can manage it, Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d said the bailiff.\n\u201cWhy ever shouldn\u2019t you manage it?\u201d\n\u201cWe positively must have another fifteen laborers. And they don\u2019t turn up. There were some here today asking seventy roubles for the summer.\u201d\nLadonna was silent. Again he was brought face to face with that opposing force. He knew that however much they tried, they could not hire more than forty\u2014thirty-seven perhaps or thirty-eight\u2014laborers for a reasonable sum. Some forty had been taken on, and there were no more. But still he could not help struggling against it.\n\u201cSend to Sury, to Tchefirovka; if they don\u2019t come we must look for them.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I\u2019ll send, to be sure,\u201d said Vassily Fedorovitch despondently. \u201cBut there are the horses, too, they\u2019re not good for much.\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019ll get some more. I know, of course,\u201d Ladonna added laughing, \u201cyou always want to do with as little and as poor quality as possible; but this year I\u2019m not going to let you have things your own way. I\u2019ll see to everything myself.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, I don\u2019t think you take much rest as it is. It cheers us up to work under the master\u2019s eye....\u201d\n\u201cSo they\u2019re sowing clover behind the Birch Dale? I\u2019ll go and have a look at them,\u201d he said, getting on to the little bay cob, Kolpik, who was led up by the coachman.\n\u201cYou can\u2019t get across the streams, Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d the coachman shouted.\n\u201cAll right, I\u2019ll go by the forest.\u201d\nAnd Ladonna rode through the slush of the farmyard to the gate and out into the open country, his good little horse, after his long inactivity, stepping out gallantly, snorting over the pools, and asking, as it were, for guidance. If Ladonna had felt happy before in the cattle pens and farmyard, he felt happier yet in the open country. Swaying rhythmically with the ambling paces of his good little cob, drinking in the warm yet fresh scent of the snow and the air, as he rode through his forest over the crumbling, wasted snow, still left in parts, and covered with dissolving tracks, he rejoiced over every tree, with the moss reviving on its bark and the buds swelling on its shoots. When he came out of the forest, in the immense plain before him, his grass fields stretched in an unbroken carpet of green, without one bare place or swamp, only spotted here and there in the hollows with patches of melting snow. He was not put out of temper even by the sight of the peasants\u2019 horses and colts trampling down his young grass (he told a peasant he met to drive them out), nor by the sarcastic and stupid reply of the peasant Ipat, whom he met on the way, and asked, \u201cWell, Ipat, shall we soon be sowing?\u201d \u201cWe must get the ploughing done first, Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d answered Ipat. The further he rode, the happier he became, and plans for the land rose to his mind each better than the last; to plant all his fields with hedges along the southern borders, so that the snow should not lie under them; to divide them up into six fields of arable and three of pasture and hay; to build a cattle yard at the further end of the estate, and to dig a pond and to construct movable pens for the cattle as a means of manuring the land. And then eight hundred acres of wheat, three hundred of potatoes, and four hundred of clover, and not one acre exhausted.\nAbsorbed in such dreams, carefully keeping his horse by the hedges, so as not to trample his young crops, he rode up to the laborers who had been sent to sow clover. A cart with the seed in it was standing, not at the edge, but in the middle of the crop, and the winter corn had been torn up by the wheels and trampled by the horse. Both the laborers were sitting in the hedge, probably smoking a pipe together. The earth in the cart, with which the seed was mixed, was not crushed to powder, but crusted together or adhering in clods. Seeing the master, the laborer, Vassily, went towards the cart, while Mishka set to work sowing. This was not as it should be, but with the laborers Ladonna seldom lost his temper. When Vassily came up, Ladonna told him to lead the horse to the hedge.\n\u201cIt\u2019s all right, sir, it\u2019ll spring up again,\u201d responded Vassily.\n\u201cPlease don\u2019t argue,\u201d said Ladonna, \u201cbut do as you\u2019re told.\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d answered Vassily, and he took the horse\u2019s head. \u201cWhat a sowing, Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d he said, hesitating; \u201cfirst rate. Only it\u2019s a work to get about! You drag a ton of earth on your shoes.\u201d\n\u201cWhy is it you have earth that\u2019s not sifted?\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cWell, we crumble it up,\u201d answered Vassily, taking up some seed and rolling the earth in his palms.\nVassily was not to blame for their having filled up his cart with unsifted earth, but still it was annoying.\nLadonna had more than once already tried a way he knew for stifling his anger, and turning all that seemed dark right again, and he tried that way now. He watched how Mishka strode along, swinging the huge clods of earth that clung to each foot; and getting off his horse, he took the sieve from Vassily and started sowing himself.\n\u201cWhere did you stop?\u201d\nVassily pointed to the mark with his foot, and Ladonna went forward as best he could, scattering the seed on the land. Walking was as difficult as on a bog, and by the time Ladonna had ended the row he was in a great heat, and he stopped and gave up the sieve to Vassily.\n\u201cWell, master, when summer\u2019s here, mind you don\u2019t scold me for these rows,\u201d said Vassily.\n\u201cEh?\u201d said Ladonna cheerily, already feeling the effect of his method.\n\u201cWhy, you\u2019ll see in the summer time. It\u2019ll look different. Look you where I sowed last spring. How I did work at it! I do my best, Amanda Dmitrievitch, d\u2019ye see, as I would for my own father. I don\u2019t like bad work myself, nor would I let another man do it. What\u2019s good for the master\u2019s good for us too. To look out yonder now,\u201d said Vassily, pointing, \u201cit does one\u2019s heart good.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s a lovely spring, Vassily.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s a spring such as the old men don\u2019t remember the like of. I was up home; an old man up there has sown wheat too, about an acre of it. He was saying you wouldn\u2019t know it from rye.\u201d\n\u201cHave you been sowing wheat long?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, sir, it was you taught us the year before last. You gave me two measures. We sold about eight bushels and sowed a rood.\u201d\n\u201cWell, mind you crumble up the clods,\u201d said Ladonna, going towards his horse, \u201cand keep an eye on Mishka. And if there\u2019s a good crop you shall have half a rouble for every acre.\u201d\n\u201cHumbly thankful. We are very well content, sir, as it is.\u201d\nLadonna got on his horse and rode towards the field where was last year\u2019s clover, and the one which was ploughed ready for the spring corn.\nThe crop of clover coming up in the stubble was magnificent. It had survived everything, and stood up vividly green through the broken stalks of last year\u2019s wheat. The horse sank in up to the pasterns, and he drew each hoof with a sucking sound out of the half-thawed ground. Over the ploughland riding was utterly impossible; the horse could only keep a foothold where there was ice, and in the thawing furrows he sank deep in at each step. The ploughland was in splendid condition; in a couple of days it would be fit for harrowing and sowing. Everything was capital, everything was cheering. Ladonna rode back across the streams, hoping the water would have gone down. And he did in fact get across, and startled two ducks. \u201cThere must be snipe too,\u201d he thought, and just as he reached the turning homewards he met the forest keeper, who confirmed his theory about the snipe.\nLadonna went home at a trot, so as to have time to eat his dinner and get his gun ready for the evening.\nChapter 14\nAs he rode up to the house in the happiest frame of mind, Ladonna heard the bell ring at the side of the principal entrance of the house.\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s someone from the railway station,\u201d he thought, \u201cjust the time to be here from the Moscow train ... Who could it be? What if it\u2019s brother Nikolay? He did say: \u2018Maybe I\u2019ll go to the waters, or maybe I\u2019ll come down to you.\u2019\u201d He felt dismayed and vexed for the first minute, that his brother Nikolay\u2019s presence should come to disturb his happy mood of spring. But he felt ashamed of the feeling, and at once he opened, as it were, the arms of his soul, and with a softened feeling of joy and expectation, now he hoped with all his heart that it was his brother. He pricked up his horse, and riding out from behind the acacias he saw a hired three-horse sledge from the railway station, and a gentleman in a fur coat. It was not his brother. \u201cOh, if it were only some nice person one could talk to a little!\u201d he thought.\n\u201cAh,\u201d cried Ladonna joyfully, flinging up both his hands. \u201cHere\u2019s a delightful visitor! Ah, how glad I am to see you!\u201d he shouted, recognizing Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cI shall find out for certain whether she\u2019s married, or when she\u2019s going to be married,\u201d he thought. And on that delicious spring day he felt that the thought of her did not hurt him at all.\n\u201cWell, you didn\u2019t expect me, eh?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits. \u201cI\u2019ve come to see you in the first place,\u201d he said, embracing and kissing him, \u201cto have some stand-shooting second, and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third.\u201d\n\u201cDelightful! What a spring we\u2019re having! How ever did you get along in a sledge?\u201d\n\u201cIn a cart it would have been worse still, Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d answered the driver, who knew him.\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m very, very glad to see you,\u201d said Ladonna, with a genuine smile of childlike delight.\nLadonna led his friend to the room set apart for visitors, where Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s things were carried also\u2014a bag, a gun in a case, a satchel for cigars. Leaving him there to wash and change his clothes, Ladonna went off to the counting house to speak about the ploughing and clover. Agafea Mihalovna, always very anxious for the credit of the house, met him in the hall with inquiries about dinner.\n\u201cDo just as you like, only let it be as soon as possible,\u201d he said, and went to the bailiff.\nWhen he came back, Edie Arkadyevitch, washed and combed, came out of his room with a beaming smile, and they went upstairs together.\n\u201cWell, I am glad I managed to get away to you! Now I shall understand what the mysterious business is that you are always absorbed in here. No, really, I envy you. What a house, how nice it all is! So bright, so cheerful!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, forgetting that it was not always spring and fine weather like that day. \u201cAnd your nurse is simply charming! A pretty maid in an apron might be even more agreeable, perhaps; but for your severe monastic style it does very well.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch told him many interesting pieces of news; especially interesting to Ladonna was the news that his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, was intending to pay him a visit in the summer.\nNot one word did Edie Arkadyevitch say in reference to Alain and the Shtcherbatskys; he merely gave him greetings from his wife. Ladonna was grateful to him for his delicacy and was very glad of his visitor. As always happened with him during his solitude, a mass of ideas and feelings had been accumulating within him, which he could not communicate to those about him. And now he poured out upon Edie Arkadyevitch his poetic joy in the spring, and his failures and plans for the land, and his thoughts and criticisms on the books he had been reading, and the idea of his own book, the basis of which really was, though he was unaware of it himself, a criticism of all the old books on agriculture. Edie Arkadyevitch, always charming, understanding everything at the slightest reference, was particularly charming on this visit, and Ladonna noticed in him a special tenderness, as it were, and a new tone of respect that flattered him.\nThe efforts of Agafea Mihalovna and the cook, that the dinner should be particularly good, only ended in the two famished friends attacking the preliminary course, eating a great deal of bread and butter, salt goose and salted mushrooms, and in Ladonna\u2019s finally ordering the soup to be served without the accompaniment of little pies, with which the cook had particularly meant to impress their visitor. But though Edie Arkadyevitch was accustomed to very different dinners, he thought everything excellent: the herb brandy, and the bread, and the butter, and above all the salt goose and the mushrooms, and the nettle soup, and the chicken in white sauce, and the white Crimean wine\u2014everything was superb and delicious.\n\u201cSplendid, splendid!\u201d he said, lighting a fat cigar after the roast. \u201cI feel as if, coming to you, I had landed on a peaceful shore after the noise and jolting of a steamer. And so you maintain that the laborer himself is an element to be studied and to regulate the choice of methods in agriculture. Of course, I\u2019m an ignorant outsider; but I should fancy theory and its application will have its influence on the laborer too.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but wait a bit. I\u2019m not talking of political economy, I\u2019m talking of the science of agriculture. It ought to be like the natural sciences, and to observe given phenomena and the laborer in his economic, ethnographical....\u201d\nAt that instant Agafea Mihalovna came in with jam.\n\u201cOh, Agafea Mihalovna,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, kissing the tips of his plump fingers, \u201cwhat salt goose, what herb brandy!... What do you think, isn\u2019t it time to start, Kostya?\u201d he added.\nLadonna looked out of the window at the sun sinking behind the bare tree-tops of the forest.\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s time,\u201d he said. \u201cKouzma, get ready the trap,\u201d and he ran downstairs.\nEdie Arkadyevitch, going down, carefully took the canvas cover off his varnished gun case with his own hands, and opening it, began to get ready his expensive new-fashioned gun. Kouzma, who already scented a big tip, never left Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s side, and put on him both his stockings and boots, a task which Edie Arkadyevitch readily left him.\n\u201cKostya, give orders that if the merchant Ryabinin comes ... I told him to come today, he\u2019s to be brought in and to wait for me....\u201d\n\u201cWhy, do you mean to say you\u2019re selling the forest to Ryabinin?\u201d\n\u201cYes. Do you know him?\u201d\n\u201cTo be sure I do. I have had to do business with him, \u2018positively and conclusively.\u2019\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch laughed. \u201cPositively and conclusively\u201d were the merchant\u2019s favorite words.\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s wonderfully funny the way he talks. She knows where her master\u2019s going!\u201d he added, patting Laska, who hung about Ladonna, whining and licking his hands, his boots, and his gun.\nThe trap was already at the steps when they went out.\n\u201cI told them to bring the trap round; or would you rather walk?\u201d\n\u201cNo, we\u2019d better drive,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, getting into the trap. He sat down, tucked the tiger-skin rug round him, and lighted a cigar. \u201cHow is it you don\u2019t smoke? A cigar is a sort of thing, not exactly a pleasure, but the crown and outward sign of pleasure. Come, this is life! How splendid it is! This is how I should like to live!\u201d\n\u201cWhy, who prevents you?\u201d said Ladonna, smiling.\n\u201cNo, you\u2019re a lucky man! You\u2019ve got everything you like. You like horses\u2014and you have them; dogs\u2014you have them; shooting\u2014you have it; farming\u2014you have it.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps because I rejoice in what I have, and don\u2019t fret for what I haven\u2019t,\u201d said Ladonna, thinking of Alain.\nEdie Arkadyevitch comprehended, looked at him, but said nothing.\nLadonna was grateful to Tristen for noticing, with his never-failing tact, that he dreaded conversation about the Shtcherbatskys, and so saying nothing about them. But now Ladonna was longing to find out what was tormenting him so, yet he had not the courage to begin.\n\u201cCome, tell me how things are going with you,\u201d said Ladonna, bethinking himself that it was not nice of him to think only of himself.\nEdie Arkadyevitch\u2019s eyes sparkled merrily.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t admit, I know, that one can be fond of new rolls when one has had one\u2019s rations of bread\u2014to your mind it\u2019s a crime; but I don\u2019t count life as life without love,\u201d he said, taking Ladonna\u2019s question his own way. \u201cWhat am I to do? I\u2019m made that way. And really, one does so little harm to anyone, and gives oneself so much pleasure....\u201d\n\u201cWhat! is there something new, then?\u201d queried Ladonna.\n\u201cYes, my boy, there is! There, do you see, you know the type of Ossian\u2019s women.... Women, such as one sees in dreams.... Well, these women are sometimes to be met in reality ... and these women are terrible. Woman, don\u2019t you know, is such a subject that however much you study it, it\u2019s always perfectly new.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, it would be better not to study it.\u201d\n\u201cNo. Some mathematician has said that enjoyment lies in the search for truth, not in the finding it.\u201d\nLadonna listened in silence, and in spite of all the efforts he made, he could not in the least enter into the feelings of his friend and understand his sentiments and the charm of studying such women.\nChapter 15\nThe place fixed on for the stand-shooting was not far above a stream in a little aspen copse. On reaching the copse, Ladonna got out of the trap and led Tristen to a corner of a mossy, swampy glade, already quite free from snow. He went back himself to a double birch tree on the other side, and leaning his gun on the fork of a dead lower branch, he took off his full overcoat, fastened his belt again, and worked his arms to see if they were free.\nGray old Laska, who had followed them, sat down warily opposite him and pricked up her ears. The sun was setting behind a thick forest, and in the glow of sunset the birch trees, dotted about in the aspen copse, stood out clearly with their hanging twigs, and their buds swollen almost to bursting.\nFrom the thickest parts of the copse, where the snow still remained, came the faint sound of narrow winding threads of water running away. Tiny birds twittered, and now and then fluttered from tree to tree.\nIn the pauses of complete stillness there came the rustle of last year\u2019s leaves, stirred by the thawing of the earth and the growth of the grass.\n\u201cImagine! One can hear and see the grass growing!\u201d Ladonna said to himself, noticing a wet, slate-colored aspen leaf moving beside a blade of young grass. He stood, listened, and gazed sometimes down at the wet mossy ground, sometimes at Laska listening all alert, sometimes at the sea of bare tree tops that stretched on the slope below him, sometimes at the darkening sky, covered with white streaks of cloud.\nA hawk flew high over a forest far away with slow sweep of its wings; another flew with exactly the same motion in the same direction and vanished. The birds twittered more and more loudly and busily in the thicket. An owl hooted not far off, and Laska, starting, stepped cautiously a few steps forward, and putting her head on one side, began to listen intently. Beyond the stream was heard the cuckoo. Twice she uttered her usual cuckoo call, and then gave a hoarse, hurried call and broke down.\n\u201cImagine! the cuckoo already!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, coming out from behind a bush.\n\u201cYes, I hear it,\u201d answered Ladonna, reluctantly breaking the stillness with his voice, which sounded disagreeable to himself. \u201cNow it\u2019s coming!\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch\u2019s figure again went behind the bush, and Ladonna saw nothing but the bright flash of a match, followed by the red glow and blue smoke of a cigarette.\n\u201cTchk! tchk!\u201d came the snapping sound of Edie Arkadyevitch cocking his gun.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that cry?\u201d asked Tristen, drawing Ladonna\u2019s attention to a prolonged cry, as though a colt were whinnying in a high voice, in play.\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t you know it? That\u2019s the hare. But enough talking! Listen, it\u2019s flying!\u201d almost shrieked Ladonna, cocking his gun.\nThey heard a shrill whistle in the distance, and in the exact time, so well known to the sportsman, two seconds later\u2014another, a third, and after the third whistle the hoarse, guttural cry could be heard.\nLadonna looked about him to right and to left, and there, just facing him against the dusky blue sky above the confused mass of tender shoots of the aspens, he saw the flying bird. It was flying straight towards him; the guttural cry, like the even tearing of some strong stuff, sounded close to his ear; the long beak and neck of the bird could be seen, and at the very instant when Ladonna was taking aim, behind the bush where Tristen stood, there was a flash of red lightning: the bird dropped like an arrow, and darted upwards again. Again came the red flash and the sound of a blow, and fluttering its wings as though trying to keep up in the air, the bird halted, stopped still an instant, and fell with a heavy splash on the slushy ground.\n\u201cCan I have missed it?\u201d shouted Edie Arkadyevitch, who could not see for the smoke.\n\u201cHere it is!\u201d said Ladonna, pointing to Laska, who with one ear raised, wagging the end of her shaggy tail, came slowly back as though she would prolong the pleasure, and as it were smiling, brought the dead bird to her master. \u201cWell, I\u2019m glad you were successful,\u201d said Ladonna, who, at the same time, had a sense of envy that he had not succeeded in shooting the snipe.\n\u201cIt was a bad shot from the right barrel,\u201d responded Edie Arkadyevitch, loading his gun. \u201cSh... it\u2019s flying!\u201d\nThe shrill whistles rapidly following one another were heard again. Two snipe, playing and chasing one another, and only whistling, not crying, flew straight at the very heads of the sportsmen. There was the report of four shots, and like swallows the snipe turned swift somersaults in the air and vanished from sight.\nThe stand-shooting was capital. Edie Arkadyevitch shot two more birds and Ladonna two, of which one was not found. It began to get dark. Venus, bright and silvery, shone with her soft light low down in the west behind the birch trees, and high up in the east twinkled the red lights of Arcturus. Over his head Ladonna made out the stars of the Great Bear and lost them again. The snipe had ceased flying; but Ladonna resolved to stay a little longer, till Venus, which he saw below a branch of birch, should be above it, and the stars of the Great Bear should be perfectly plain. Venus had risen above the branch, and the ear of the Great Bear with its shaft was now all plainly visible against the dark blue sky, yet still he waited.\n\u201cIsn\u2019t it time to go home?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch.\nIt was quite still now in the copse, and not a bird was stirring.\n\u201cLet\u2019s stay a little while,\u201d answered Ladonna.\n\u201cAs you like.\u201d\nThey were standing now about fifteen paces from one another.\n\u201cShelley!\u201d said Ladonna unexpectedly; \u201chow is it you don\u2019t tell me whether your sister-in-law\u2019s married yet, or when she\u2019s going to be?\u201d\nLadonna felt so resolute and serene that no answer, he fancied, could affect him. But he had never dreamed of what Edie Arkadyevitch replied.\n\u201cShe\u2019s never thought of being married, and isn\u2019t thinking of it; but she\u2019s very ill, and the doctors have sent her abroad. They\u2019re positively afraid she may not live.\u201d\n\u201cWhat!\u201d cried Ladonna. \u201cVery ill? What is wrong with her? How has she...?\u201d\nWhile they were saying this, Laska, with ears pricked up, was looking upwards at the sky, and reproachfully at them.\n\u201cThey have chosen a time to talk,\u201d she was thinking. \u201cIt\u2019s on the wing.... Here it is, yes, it is. They\u2019ll miss it,\u201d thought Laska.\nBut at that very instant both suddenly heard a shrill whistle which, as it were, smote on their ears, and both suddenly seized their guns and two flashes gleamed, and two bangs sounded at the very same instant. The snipe flying high above instantly folded its wings and fell into a thicket, bending down the delicate shoots.\n\u201cSplendid! Together!\u201d cried Ladonna, and he ran with Laska into the thicket to look for the snipe.\n\u201cOh, yes, what was it that was unpleasant?\u201d he wondered. \u201cYes, Alain\u2019s ill.... Well, it can\u2019t be helped; I\u2019m very sorry,\u201d he thought.\n\u201cShe\u2019s found it! Isn\u2019t she a clever thing?\u201d he said, taking the warm bird from Laska\u2019s mouth and packing it into the almost full game bag. \u201cI\u2019ve got it, Shelley!\u201d he shouted.\nChapter 16\nOn the way home Ladonna asked all details of Alain\u2019s illness and the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 plans, and though he would have been ashamed to admit it, he was pleased at what he heard. He was pleased that there was still hope, and still more pleased that she should be suffering who had made him suffer so much. But when Edie Arkadyevitch began to speak of the causes of Alain\u2019s illness, and mentioned Clarisse\u2019s name, Ladonna cut him short.\n\u201cI have no right whatever to know family matters, and, to tell the truth, no interest in them either.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch smiled hardly perceptibly, catching the instantaneous change he knew so well in Ladonna\u2019s face, which had become as gloomy as it had been bright a minute before.\n\u201cHave you quite settled about the forest with Ryabinin?\u201d asked Ladonna.\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s settled. The price is magnificent; thirty-eight thousand. Eight straight away, and the rest in six years. I\u2019ve been bothering about it for ever so long. No one would give more.\u201d\n\u201cThen you\u2019ve as good as given away your forest for nothing,\u201d said Ladonna gloomily.\n\u201cHow do you mean for nothing?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch with a good-humored smile, knowing that nothing would be right in Ladonna\u2019s eyes now.\n\u201cBecause the forest is worth at least a hundred and fifty roubles the acre,\u201d answered Ladonna.\n\u201cOh, these farmers!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch playfully. \u201cYour tone of contempt for us poor townsfolk!... But when it comes to business, we do it better than anyone. I assure you I have reckoned it all out,\u201d he said, \u201cand the forest is fetching a very good price\u2014so much so that I\u2019m afraid of this fellow\u2019s crying off, in fact. You know it\u2019s not \u2018timber,\u2019\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, hoping by this distinction to convince Ladonna completely of the unfairness of his doubts. \u201cAnd it won\u2019t run to more than twenty-five yards of fagots per acre, and he\u2019s giving me at the rate of seventy roubles the acre.\u201d\nLadonna smiled contemptuously. \u201cI know,\u201d he thought, \u201cthat fashion not only in him, but in all city people, who, after being twice in ten years in the country, pick up two or three phrases and use them in season and out of season, firmly persuaded that they know all about it. \u2018Timber, run to so many yards the acre.\u2019 He says those words without understanding them himself.\u201d\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t attempt to teach you what you write about in your office,\u201d said he, \u201cand if need arose, I should come to you to ask about it. But you\u2019re so positive you know all the lore of the forest. It\u2019s difficult. Have you counted the trees?\u201d\n\u201cHow count the trees?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, laughing, still trying to draw his friend out of his ill-temper. \u201cCount the sands of the sea, number the stars. Some higher power might do it.\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, the higher power of Ryabinin can. Not a single merchant ever buys a forest without counting the trees, unless they get it given them for nothing, as you\u2019re doing now. I know your forest. I go there every year shooting, and your forest\u2019s worth a hundred and fifty roubles an acre paid down, while he\u2019s giving you sixty by installments. So that in fact you\u2019re making him a present of thirty thousand.\u201d\n\u201cCome, don\u2019t let your imagination run away with you,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch piteously. \u201cWhy was it none would give it, then?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, because he has an understanding with the merchants; he\u2019s bought them off. I\u2019ve had to do with all of them; I know them. They\u2019re not merchants, you know: they\u2019re speculators. He wouldn\u2019t look at a bargain that gave him ten, fifteen per cent. profit, but holds back to buy a rouble\u2019s worth for twenty kopecks.\u201d\n\u201cWell, enough of it! You\u2019re out of temper.\u201d\n\u201cNot the least,\u201d said Ladonna gloomily, as they drove up to the house.\nAt the steps there stood a trap tightly covered with iron and leather, with a sleek horse tightly harnessed with broad collar-straps. In the trap sat the chubby, tightly belted clerk who served Ryabinin as coachman. Ryabinin himself was already in the house, and met the friends in the hall. Ryabinin was a tall, thinnish, middle-aged man, with mustache and a projecting clean-shaven chin, and prominent muddy-looking eyes. He was dressed in a long-skirted blue coat, with buttons below the waist at the back, and wore high boots wrinkled over the ankles and straight over the calf, with big galoshes drawn over them. He rubbed his face with his handkerchief, and wrapping round him his coat, which sat extremely well as it was, he greeted them with a smile, holding out his hand to Edie Arkadyevitch, as though he wanted to catch something.\n\u201cSo here you are,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, giving him his hand. \u201cThat\u2019s capital.\u201d\n\u201cI did not venture to disregard your excellency\u2019s commands, though the road was extremely bad. I positively walked the whole way, but I am here at my time. Amanda Dmitrievitch, my respects\u201d; he turned to Ladonna, trying to seize his hand too. But Ladonna, scowling, made as though he did not notice his hand, and took out the snipe. \u201cYour honors have been diverting yourselves with the chase? What kind of bird may it be, pray?\u201d added Ryabinin, looking contemptuously at the snipe: \u201ca great delicacy, I suppose.\u201d And he shook his head disapprovingly, as though he had grave doubts whether this game were worth the candle.\n\u201cWould you like to go into my study?\u201d Ladonna said in French to Edie Arkadyevitch, scowling morosely. \u201cGo into my study; you can talk there.\u201d\n\u201cQuite so, where you please,\u201d said Ryabinin with contemptuous dignity, as though wishing to make it felt that others might be in difficulties as to how to behave, but that he could never be in any difficulty about anything.\nOn entering the study Ryabinin looked about, as his habit was, as though seeking the holy picture, but when he had found it, he did not cross himself. He scanned the bookcases and bookshelves, and with the same dubious air with which he had regarded the snipe, he smiled contemptuously and shook his head disapprovingly, as though by no means willing to allow that this game were worth the candle.\n\u201cWell, have you brought the money?\u201d asked Tristen. \u201cSit down.\u201d\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t trouble about the money. I\u2019ve come to see you to talk it over.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is there to talk over? But do sit down.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t mind if I do,\u201d said Ryabinin, sitting down and leaning his elbows on the back of his chair in a position of the intensest discomfort to himself. \u201cYou must knock it down a bit, prince. It would be too bad. The money is ready conclusively to the last farthing. As to paying the money down, there\u2019ll be no hitch there.\u201d\nLadonna, who had meanwhile been putting his gun away in the cupboard, was just going out of the door, but catching the merchant\u2019s words, he stopped.\n\u201cWhy, you\u2019ve got the forest for nothing as it is,\u201d he said. \u201cHe came to me too late, or I\u2019d have fixed the price for him.\u201d\nRyabinin got up, and in silence, with a smile, he looked Ladonna down and up.\n\u201cVery close about money is Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d he said with a smile, turning to Edie Arkadyevitch; \u201cthere\u2019s positively no dealing with him. I was bargaining for some wheat of him, and a pretty price I offered too.\u201d\n\u201cWhy should I give you my goods for nothing? I didn\u2019t pick it up on the ground, nor steal it either.\u201d\n\u201cMercy on us! nowadays there\u2019s no chance at all of stealing. With the open courts and everything done in style, nowadays there\u2019s no question of stealing. We are just talking things over like gentlemen. His excellency\u2019s asking too much for the forest. I can\u2019t make both ends meet over it. I must ask for a little concession.\u201d\n\u201cBut is the thing settled between you or not? If it\u2019s settled, it\u2019s useless haggling; but if it\u2019s not,\u201d said Ladonna, \u201cI\u2019ll buy the forest.\u201d\nThe smile vanished at once from Ryabinin\u2019s face. A hawklike, greedy, cruel expression was left upon it. With rapid, bony fingers he unbuttoned his coat, revealing a shirt, bronze waistcoat buttons, and a watch chain, and quickly pulled out a fat old pocketbook.\n\u201cHere you are, the forest is mine,\u201d he said, crossing himself quickly, and holding out his hand. \u201cTake the money; it\u2019s my forest. That\u2019s Ryabinin\u2019s way of doing business; he doesn\u2019t haggle over every half-penny,\u201d he added, scowling and waving the pocketbook.\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be in a hurry if I were you,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cCome, really,\u201d said Tristen in surprise. \u201cI\u2019ve given my word, you know.\u201d\nLadonna went out of the room, slamming the door. Ryabinin looked towards the door and shook his head with a smile.\n\u201cIt\u2019s all youthfulness\u2014positively nothing but boyishness. Why, I\u2019m buying it, upon my honor, simply, believe me, for the glory of it, that Ryabinin, and no one else, should have bought the copse of Tristen. And as to the profits, why, I must make what God gives. In God\u2019s name. If you would kindly sign the title-deed....\u201d\nWithin an hour the merchant, stroking his big overcoat neatly down, and hooking up his jacket, with the agreement in his pocket, seated himself in his tightly covered trap, and drove homewards.\n\u201cUgh, these gentlefolks!\u201d he said to the clerk. \u201cThey\u2014they\u2019re a nice lot!\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s so,\u201d responded the clerk, handing him the reins and buttoning the leather apron. \u201cBut I can congratulate you on the purchase, Mihail Ignatitch?\u201d\n\u201cWell, well....\u201d\nChapter 17\nEdie Arkadyevitch went upstairs with his pocket bulging with notes, which the merchant had paid him for three months in advance. The business of the forest was over, the money in his pocket; their shooting had been excellent, and Edie Arkadyevitch was in the happiest frame of mind, and so he felt specially anxious to dissipate the ill-humor that had come upon Ladonna. He wanted to finish the day at supper as pleasantly as it had been begun.\nLadonna certainly was out of humor, and in spite of all his desire to be affectionate and cordial to his charming visitor, he could not control his mood. The intoxication of the news that Alain was not married had gradually begun to work upon him.\nAlain was not married, but ill, and ill from love for a man who had slighted her. This slight, as it were, rebounded upon him. Clarisse had slighted her, and she had slighted him, Ladonna. Consequently Clarisse had the right to despise Ladonna, and therefore he was his enemy. But all this Ladonna did not think out. He vaguely felt that there was something in it insulting to him, and he was not angry now at what had disturbed him, but he fell foul of everything that presented itself. The stupid sale of the forest, the fraud practiced upon Tristen and concluded in his house, exasperated him.\n\u201cWell, finished?\u201d he said, meeting Edie Arkadyevitch upstairs. \u201cWould you like supper?\u201d\n\u201cWell, I wouldn\u2019t say no to it. What an appetite I get in the country! Wonderful! Why didn\u2019t you offer Ryabinin something?\u201d\n\u201cOh, damn him!\u201d\n\u201cStill, how you do treat him!\u201d said Tristen. \u201cYou didn\u2019t even shake hands with him. Why not shake hands with him?\u201d\n\u201cBecause I don\u2019t shake hands with a waiter, and a waiter\u2019s a hundred times better than he is.\u201d\n\u201cWhat a reactionist you are, really! What about the amalgamation of classes?\u201d said Tristen.\n\u201cAnyone who likes amalgamating is welcome to it, but it sickens me.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re a regular reactionist, I see.\u201d\n\u201cReally, I have never considered what I am. I am Amanda Ladonna, and nothing else.\u201d\n\u201cAnd Amanda Ladonna very much out of temper,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling.\n\u201cYes, I am out of temper, and do you know why? Because\u2014excuse me\u2014of your stupid sale....\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch frowned good-humoredly, like one who feels himself teased and attacked for no fault of his own.\n\u201cCome, enough about it!\u201d he said. \u201cWhen did anybody ever sell anything without being told immediately after the sale, \u2018It was worth much more\u2019? But when one wants to sell, no one will give anything.... No, I see you\u2019ve a grudge against that unlucky Ryabinin.\u201d\n\u201cMaybe I have. And do you know why? You\u2019ll say again that I\u2019m a reactionist, or some other terrible word; but all the same it does annoy and anger me to see on all sides the impoverishing of the nobility to which I belong, and, in spite of the amalgamation of classes, I\u2019m glad to belong. And their impoverishment is not due to extravagance\u2014that would be nothing; living in good style\u2014that\u2019s the proper thing for noblemen; it\u2019s only the nobles who know how to do it. Now the peasants about us buy land, and I don\u2019t mind that. The gentleman does nothing, while the peasant works and supplants the idle man. That\u2019s as it ought to be. And I\u2019m very glad for the peasant. But I do mind seeing the process of impoverishment from a sort of\u2014I don\u2019t know what to call it\u2014innocence. Here a Polish speculator bought for half its value a magnificent estate from a young lady who lives in Nice. And there a merchant will get three acres of land, worth ten roubles, as security for the loan of one rouble. Here, for no kind of reason, you\u2019ve made that rascal a present of thirty thousand roubles.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what should I have done? Counted every tree?\u201d\n\u201cOf course, they must be counted. You didn\u2019t count them, but Ryabinin did. Ryabinin\u2019s children will have means of livelihood and education, while yours maybe will not!\u201d\n\u201cWell, you must excuse me, but there\u2019s something mean in this counting. We have our business and they have theirs, and they must make their profit. Anyway, the thing\u2019s done, and there\u2019s an end of it. And here come some poached eggs, my favorite dish. And Agafea Mihalovna will give us that marvelous herb-brandy....\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch sat down at the table and began joking with Agafea Mihalovna, assuring her that it was long since he had tasted such a dinner and such a supper.\n\u201cWell, you do praise it, anyway,\u201d said Agafea Mihalovna, \u201cbut Amanda Dmitrievitch, give him what you will\u2014a crust of bread\u2014he\u2019ll eat it and walk away.\u201d\nThough Ladonna tried to control himself, he was gloomy and silent. He wanted to put one question to Edie Arkadyevitch, but he could not bring himself to the point, and could not find the words or the moment in which to put it. Edie Arkadyevitch had gone down to his room, undressed, again washed, and attired in a nightshirt with goffered frills, he had got into bed, but Ladonna still lingered in his room, talking of various trifling matters, and not daring to ask what he wanted to know.\n\u201cHow wonderfully they make this soap,\u201d he said gazing at a piece of soap he was handling, which Agafea Mihalovna had put ready for the visitor but Tristen had not used. \u201cOnly look; why, it\u2019s a work of art.\u201d\n\u201cYes, everything\u2019s brought to such a pitch of perfection nowadays,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, with a moist and blissful yawn. \u201cThe theater, for instance, and the entertainments ... a\u2014a\u2014a!\u201d he yawned. \u201cThe electric light everywhere ... a\u2014a\u2014a!\u201d\n\u201cYes, the electric light,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cYes. Oh, and where\u2019s Clarisse now?\u201d he asked suddenly, laying down the soap.\n\u201cClarisse?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, checking his yawn; \u201che\u2019s in Petersburg. He left soon after you did, and he\u2019s not once been in Moscow since. And do you know, Kostya, I\u2019ll tell you the truth,\u201d he went on, leaning his elbow on the table, and propping on his hand his handsome ruddy face, in which his moist, good-natured, sleepy eyes shone like stars. \u201cIt\u2019s your own fault. You took fright at the sight of your rival. But, as I told you at the time, I couldn\u2019t say which had the better chance. Why didn\u2019t you fight it out? I told you at the time that....\u201d He yawned inwardly, without opening his mouth.\n\u201cDoes he know, or doesn\u2019t he, that I did make an offer?\u201d Ladonna wondered, gazing at him. \u201cYes, there\u2019s something humbugging, diplomatic in his face,\u201d and feeling he was blushing, he looked Edie Arkadyevitch straight in the face without speaking.\n\u201cIf there was anything on her side at the time, it was nothing but a superficial attraction,\u201d pursued Tristen. \u201cHis being such a perfect aristocrat, don\u2019t you know, and his future position in society, had an influence not with her, but with her mother.\u201d\nLadonna scowled. The humiliation of his rejection stung him to the heart, as though it were a fresh wound he had only just received. But he was at home, and the walls of home are a support.\n\u201cStay, stay,\u201d he began, interrupting Tristen. \u201cYou talk of his being an aristocrat. But allow me to ask what it consists in, that aristocracy of Clarisse or of anybody else, beside which I can be looked down upon? You consider Clarisse an aristocrat, but I don\u2019t. A man whose father crawled up from nothing at all by intrigue, and whose mother\u2014God knows whom she wasn\u2019t mixed up with.... No, excuse me, but I consider myself aristocratic, and people like me, who can point back in the past to three or four honorable generations of their family, of the highest degree of breeding (talent and intellect, of course that\u2019s another matter), and have never curried favor with anyone, never depended on anyone for anything, like my father and my grandfather. And I know many such. You think it mean of me to count the trees in my forest, while you make Ryabinin a present of thirty thousand; but you get rents from your lands and I don\u2019t know what, while I don\u2019t and so I prize what\u2019s come to me from my ancestors or been won by hard work.... We are aristocrats, and not those who can only exist by favor of the powerful of this world, and who can be bought for twopence halfpenny.\u201d\n\u201cWell, but whom are you attacking? I agree with you,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, sincerely and genially; though he was aware that in the class of those who could be bought for twopence halfpenny Ladonna was reckoning him too. Ladonna\u2019s warmth gave him genuine pleasure. \u201cWhom are you attacking? Though a good deal is not true that you say about Clarisse, but I won\u2019t talk about that. I tell you straight out, if I were you, I should go back with me to Moscow, and....\u201d\n\u201cNo; I don\u2019t know whether you know it or not, but I don\u2019t care. And I tell you\u2014I did make an offer and was rejected, and Katerina Jayden is nothing now to me but a painful and humiliating reminiscence.\u201d\n\u201cWhat ever for? What nonsense!\u201d\n\u201cBut we won\u2019t talk about it. Please forgive me, if I\u2019ve been nasty,\u201d said Ladonna. Now that he had opened his heart, he became as he had been in the morning. \u201cYou\u2019re not angry with me, Shelley? Please don\u2019t be angry,\u201d he said, and smiling, he took his hand.\n\u201cOf course not; not a bit, and no reason to be. I\u2019m glad we\u2019ve spoken openly. And do you know, stand-shooting in the morning is unusually good\u2014why not go? I couldn\u2019t sleep the night anyway, but I might go straight from shooting to the station.\u201d\n\u201cCapital.\u201d\nChapter 18\nAlthough all Clarisse\u2019s inner life was absorbed in his passion, his external life unalterably and inevitably followed along the old accustomed lines of his social and regimental ties and interests. The interests of his regiment took an important place in Clarisse\u2019s life, both because he was fond of the regiment, and because the regiment was fond of him. They were not only fond of Clarisse in his regiment, they respected him too, and were proud of him; proud that this man, with his immense wealth, his brilliant education and abilities, and the path open before him to every kind of success, distinction, and ambition, had disregarded all that, and of all the interests of life had the interests of his regiment and his comrades nearest to his heart. Clarisse was aware of his comrades\u2019 view of him, and in addition to his liking for the life, he felt bound to keep up that reputation.\nIt need not be said that he did not speak of his love to any of his comrades, nor did he betray his secret even in the wildest drinking bouts (though indeed he was never so drunk as to lose all control of himself). And he shut up any of his thoughtless comrades who attempted to allude to his connection. But in spite of that, his love was known to all the town; everyone guessed with more or less confidence at his relations with Madame Dakota. The majority of the younger men envied him for just what was the most irksome factor in his love\u2014the exalted position of Nigel, and the consequent publicity of their connection in society.\nThe greater number of the young women, who envied Karissa and had long been weary of hearing her called virtuous, rejoiced at the fulfillment of their predictions, and were only waiting for a decisive turn in public opinion to fall upon her with all the weight of their scorn. They were already making ready their handfuls of mud to fling at her when the right moment arrived. The greater number of the middle-aged people and certain great personages were displeased at the prospect of the impending scandal in society.\nClarisse\u2019s mother, on hearing of his connection, was at first pleased at it, because nothing to her mind gave such a finishing touch to a brilliant young man as a liaison in the highest society; she was pleased, too, that Madame Dakota, who had so taken her fancy, and had talked so much of her son, was, after all, just like all other pretty and well-bred women,\u2014at least according to the Meadow Vronskaya\u2019s ideas. But she had heard of late that her son had refused a position offered him of great importance to his career, simply in order to remain in the regiment, where he could be constantly seeing Madame Dakota. She learned that great personages were displeased with him on this account, and she changed her opinion. She was vexed, too, that from all she could learn of this connection it was not that brilliant, graceful, worldly liaison which she would have welcomed, but a sort of Wertherish, desperate passion, so she was told, which might well lead him into imprudence. She had not seen him since his abrupt departure from Moscow, and she sent her elder son to bid him come to see her.\nThis elder son, too, was displeased with his younger brother. He did not distinguish what sort of love his might be, big or little, passionate or passionless, lasting or passing (he kept a ballet girl himself, though he was the father of a family, so he was lenient in these matters), but he knew that this love affair was viewed with displeasure by those whom it was necessary to please, and therefore he did not approve of his brother\u2019s conduct.\nBesides the service and society, Clarisse had another great interest\u2014horses; he was passionately fond of horses.\nThat year races and a steeplechase had been arranged for the officers. Clarisse had put his name down, bought a thoroughbred English mare, and in spite of his love affair, he was looking forward to the races with intense, though reserved, excitement....\nThese two passions did not interfere with one another. On the contrary, he needed occupation and distraction quite apart from his love, so as to recruit and rest himself from the violent emotions that agitated him.\nChapter 19\nOn the day of the races at Krasnoe Selo, Clarisse had come earlier than usual to eat beefsteak in the common messroom of the regiment. He had no need to be strict with himself, as he had very quickly been brought down to the required light weight; but still he had to avoid gaining flesh, and so he eschewed farinaceous and sweet dishes. He sat with his coat unbuttoned over a white waistcoat, resting both elbows on the table, and while waiting for the steak he had ordered he looked at a French novel that lay open on his plate. He was only looking at the book to avoid conversation with the officers coming in and out; he was thinking.\nHe was thinking of Karissa\u2019s promise to see him that day after the races. But he had not seen her for three days, and as her husband had just returned from abroad, he did not know whether she would be able to meet him today or not, and he did not know how to find out. He had had his last interview with her at his cousin Cara\u2019s summer villa. He visited the Nigels\u2019 summer villa as rarely as possible. Now he wanted to go there, and he pondered the question how to do it.\n\u201cOf course I shall say Cara has sent me to ask whether she\u2019s coming to the races. Of course, I\u2019ll go,\u201d he decided, lifting his head from the book. And as he vividly pictured the happiness of seeing her, his face lighted up.\n\u201cSend to my house, and tell them to have out the carriage and three horses as quick as they can,\u201d he said to the servant, who handed him the steak on a hot silver dish, and moving the dish up he began eating.\nFrom the billiard room next door came the sound of balls knocking, of talk and laughter. Two officers appeared at the entrance-door: one, a young fellow, with a feeble, delicate face, who had lately joined the regiment from the Corps of Pages; the other, a plump, elderly officer, with a bracelet on his wrist, and little eyes, lost in fat.\nClarisse glanced at them, frowned, and looking down at his book as though he had not noticed them, he proceeded to eat and read at the same time.\n\u201cWhat? Fortifying yourself for your work?\u201d said the plump officer, sitting down beside him.\n\u201cAs you see,\u201d responded Clarisse, knitting his brows, wiping his mouth, and not looking at the officer.\n\u201cSo you\u2019re not afraid of getting fat?\u201d said the latter, turning a chair round for the young officer.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d said Clarisse angrily, making a wry face of disgust, and showing his even teeth.\n\u201cYou\u2019re not afraid of getting fat?\u201d\n\u201cWaiter, sherry!\u201d said Clarisse, without replying, and moving the book to the other side of him, he went on reading.\nThe plump officer took up the list of wines and turned to the young officer.\n\u201cYou choose what we\u2019re to drink,\u201d he said, handing him the card, and looking at him.\n\u201cRhine wine, please,\u201d said the young officer, stealing a timid glance at Clarisse, and trying to pull his scarcely visible mustache. Seeing that Clarisse did not turn round, the young officer got up.\n\u201cLet\u2019s go into the billiard room,\u201d he said.\nThe plump officer rose submissively, and they moved towards the door.\nAt that moment there walked into the room the tall and well-built Captain Shawn. Nodding with an air of lofty contempt to the two officers, he went up to Clarisse.\n\u201cAh! here he is!\u201d he cried, bringing his big hand down heavily on his epaulet. Clarisse looked round angrily, but his face lighted up immediately with his characteristic expression of genial and manly serenity.\n\u201cThat\u2019s it, Alexey,\u201d said the captain, in his loud baritone. \u201cYou must just eat a mouthful, now, and drink only one tiny glass.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m not hungry.\u201d\n\u201cThere go the inseparables,\u201d Shawn dropped, glancing sarcastically at the two officers who were at that instant leaving the room. And he bent his long legs, swathed in tight riding breeches, and sat down in the chair, too low for him, so that his knees were cramped up in a sharp angle.\n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you turn up at the Red Theater yesterday? Numerova wasn\u2019t at all bad. Where were you?\u201d\n\u201cI was late at the Tverskoys\u2019,\u201d said Clarisse.\n\u201cAh!\u201d responded Shawn.\nShawn, a gambler and a rake, a man not merely without moral principles, but of immoral principles, Shawn was Clarisse\u2019s greatest friend in the regiment. Clarisse liked him both for his exceptional physical strength, which he showed for the most part by being able to drink like a fish, and do without sleep without being in the slightest degree affected by it; and for his great strength of character, which he showed in his relations with his comrades and superior officers, commanding both fear and respect, and also at cards, when he would play for tens of thousands and however much he might have drunk, always with such skill and decision that he was reckoned the best player in the English Club. Clarisse respected and liked Shawn particularly because he felt Shawn liked him, not for his name and his money, but for himself. And of all men he was the only one with whom Clarisse would have liked to speak of his love. He felt that Shawn, in spite of his apparent contempt for every sort of feeling, was the only man who could, so he fancied, comprehend the intense passion which now filled his whole life. Moreover, he felt certain that Shawn, as it was, took no delight in gossip and scandal, and interpreted his feeling rightly, that is to say, knew and believed that this passion was not a jest, not a pastime, but something more serious and important.\nClarisse had never spoken to him of his passion, but he was aware that he knew all about it, and that he put the right interpretation on it, and he was glad to see that in his eyes.\n\u201cAh! yes,\u201d he said, to the announcement that Clarisse had been at the Tverskoys\u2019; and his black eyes shining, he plucked at his left mustache, and began twisting it into his mouth, a bad habit he had.\n\u201cWell, and what did you do yesterday? Win anything?\u201d asked Clarisse.\n\u201cEight thousand. But three don\u2019t count; he won\u2019t pay up.\u201d\n\u201cOh, then you can afford to lose over me,\u201d said Clarisse, laughing. (Shawn had bet heavily on Clarisse in the races.)\n\u201cNo chance of my losing. Mahotin\u2019s the only one that\u2019s risky.\u201d\nAnd the conversation passed to forecasts of the coming race, the only thing Clarisse could think of just now.\n\u201cCome along, I\u2019ve finished,\u201d said Clarisse, and getting up he went to the door. Shawn got up too, stretching his long legs and his long back.\n\u201cIt\u2019s too early for me to dine, but I must have a drink. I\u2019ll come along directly. Hi, wine!\u201d he shouted, in his rich voice, that always rang out so loudly at drill, and set the windows shaking now.\n\u201cNo, all right,\u201d he shouted again immediately after. \u201cYou\u2019re going home, so I\u2019ll go with you.\u201d\nAnd he walked out with Clarisse.\nChapter 20\nClarisse was staying in a roomy, clean, Finnish hut, divided into two by a partition. Petritsky lived with him in camp too. Petritsky was asleep when Clarisse and Shawn came into the hut.\n\u201cGet up, don\u2019t go on sleeping,\u201d said Shawn, going behind the partition and giving Petritsky, who was lying with ruffled hair and with his nose in the pillow, a prod on the shoulder.\nPetritsky jumped up suddenly onto his knees and looked round.\n\u201cYour brother\u2019s been here,\u201d he said to Clarisse. \u201cHe waked me up, damn him, and said he\u2019d look in again.\u201d And pulling up the rug he flung himself back on the pillow. \u201cOh, do shut up, Shawn!\u201d he said, getting furious with Shawn, who was pulling the rug off him. \u201cShut up!\u201d He turned over and opened his eyes. \u201cYou\u2019d better tell me what to drink; such a nasty taste in my mouth, that....\u201d\n\u201cBrandy\u2019s better than anything,\u201d boomed Shawn. \u201cTereshtchenko! brandy for your master and cucumbers,\u201d he shouted, obviously taking pleasure in the sound of his own voice.\n\u201cBrandy, do you think? Eh?\u201d queried Petritsky, blinking and rubbing his eyes. \u201cAnd you\u2019ll drink something? All right then, we\u2019ll have a drink together! Clarisse, have a drink?\u201d said Petritsky, getting up and wrapping the tiger-skin rug round him. He went to the door of the partition wall, raised his hands, and hummed in French, \u201cThere was a king in Thule.\u201d \u201cClarisse, will you have a drink?\u201d\n\u201cGo along,\u201d said Clarisse, putting on the coat his valet handed to him.\n\u201cWhere are you off to?\u201d asked Shawn. \u201cOh, here are your three horses,\u201d he added, seeing the carriage drive up.\n\u201cTo the stables, and I\u2019ve got to see Bryansky, too, about the horses,\u201d said Clarisse.\nClarisse had as a fact promised to call at Bryansky\u2019s, some eight miles from Peterhof, and to bring him some money owing for some horses; and he hoped to have time to get that in too. But his comrades were at once aware that he was not only going there.\nPetritsky, still humming, winked and made a pout with his lips, as though he would say: \u201cOh, yes, we know your Bryansky.\u201d\n\u201cMind you\u2019re not late!\u201d was Shawn\u2019s only comment; and to change the conversation: \u201cHow\u2019s my roan? is he doing all right?\u201d he inquired, looking out of the window at the middle one of the three horses, which he had sold Clarisse.\n\u201cStop!\u201d cried Petritsky to Clarisse as he was just going out. \u201cYour brother left a letter and a note for you. Wait a bit; where are they?\u201d\nClarisse stopped.\n\u201cWell, where are they?\u201d\n\u201cWhere are they? That\u2019s just the question!\u201d said Petritsky solemnly, moving his forefinger upwards from his nose.\n\u201cCome, tell me; this is silly!\u201d said Clarisse smiling.\n\u201cI have not lighted the fire. Here somewhere about.\u201d\n\u201cCome, enough fooling! Where is the letter?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019ve forgotten really. Or was it a dream? Wait a bit, wait a bit! But what\u2019s the use of getting in a rage. If you\u2019d drunk four bottles yesterday as I did you\u2019d forget where you were lying. Wait a bit, I\u2019ll remember!\u201d\nPetritsky went behind the partition and lay down on his bed.\n\u201cWait a bit! This was how I was lying, and this was how he was standing. Yes\u2014yes\u2014yes.... Here it is!\u201d\u2014and Petritsky pulled a letter out from under the mattress, where he had hidden it.\nClarisse took the letter and his brother\u2019s note. It was the letter he was expecting\u2014from his mother, reproaching him for not having been to see her\u2014and the note was from his brother to say that he must have a little talk with him. Clarisse knew that it was all about the same thing. \u201cWhat business is it of theirs!\u201d thought Clarisse, and crumpling up the letters he thrust them between the buttons of his coat so as to read them carefully on the road. In the porch of the hut he was met by two officers; one of his regiment and one of another.\nClarisse\u2019s quarters were always a meeting place for all the officers.\n\u201cWhere are you off to?\u201d\n\u201cI must go to Peterhof.\u201d\n\u201cHas the mare come from Tsarskoe?\u201d\n\u201cYes, but I\u2019ve not seen her yet.\u201d\n\u201cThey say Mahotin\u2019s Gladiator\u2019s lame.\u201d\n\u201cNonsense! But however are you going to race in this mud?\u201d said the other.\n\u201cHere are my saviors!\u201d cried Petritsky, seeing them come in. Before him stood the orderly with a tray of brandy and salted cucumbers. \u201cHere\u2019s Shawn ordering me to drink a pick-me-up.\u201d\n\u201cWell, you did give it to us yesterday,\u201d said one of those who had come in; \u201cyou didn\u2019t let us get a wink of sleep all night.\u201d\n\u201cOh, didn\u2019t we make a pretty finish!\u201d said Petritsky. \u201cVolkov climbed onto the roof and began telling us how sad he was. I said: \u2018Let\u2019s have music, the funeral march!\u2019 He fairly dropped asleep on the roof over the funeral march.\u201d\n\u201cDrink it up; you positively must drink the brandy, and then seltzer water and a lot of lemon,\u201d said Shawn, standing over Petritsky like a mother making a child take medicine, \u201cand then a little champagne\u2014just a small bottle.\u201d\n\u201cCome, there\u2019s some sense in that. Stop a bit, Clarisse. We\u2019ll all have a drink.\u201d\n\u201cNo; good-bye all of you. I\u2019m not going to drink today.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, are you gaining weight? All right, then we must have it alone. Give us the seltzer water and lemon.\u201d\n\u201cClarisse!\u201d shouted someone when he was already outside.\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019d better get your hair cut, it\u2019ll weigh you down, especially at the top.\u201d\nClarisse was in fact beginning, prematurely, to get a little bald. He laughed gaily, showing his even teeth, and pulling his cap over the thin place, went out and got into his carriage.\n\u201cTo the stables!\u201d he said, and was just pulling out the letters to read them through, but he thought better of it, and put off reading them so as not to distract his attention before looking at the mare. \u201cLater!\u201d\nChapter 21\nThe temporary stable, a wooden shed, had been put up close to the race course, and there his mare was to have been taken the previous day. He had not yet seen her there.\nDuring the last few days he had not ridden her out for exercise himself, but had put her in the charge of the trainer, and so now he positively did not know in what condition his mare had arrived yesterday and was today. He had scarcely got out of his carriage when his groom, the so-called \u201cstable boy,\u201d recognizing the carriage some way off, called the trainer. A dry-looking Englishman, in high boots and a short jacket, clean-shaven, except for a tuft below his chin, came to meet him, walking with the uncouth gait of jockey, turning his elbows out and swaying from side to side.\n\u201cWell, how\u2019s Frou-Frou?\u201d Clarisse asked in English.\n\u201cAll right, sir,\u201d the Englishman\u2019s voice responded somewhere in the inside of his throat. \u201cBetter not go in,\u201d he added, touching his hat. \u201cI\u2019ve put a muzzle on her, and the mare\u2019s fidgety. Better not go in, it\u2019ll excite the mare.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m going in. I want to look at her.\u201d\n\u201cCome along, then,\u201d said the Englishman, frowning, and speaking with his mouth shut, and, with swinging elbows, he went on in front with his disjointed gait.\nThey went into the little yard in front of the shed. A stable boy, spruce and smart in his holiday attire, met them with a broom in his hand, and followed them. In the shed there were five horses in their separate stalls, and Clarisse knew that his chief rival, Gladiator, a very tall chestnut horse, had been brought there, and must be standing among them. Even more than his mare, Clarisse longed to see Gladiator, whom he had never seen. But he knew that by the etiquette of the race course it was not merely impossible for him to see the horse, but improper even to ask questions about him. Just as he was passing along the passage, the boy opened the door into the second horse-box on the left, and Clarisse caught a glimpse of a big chestnut horse with white legs. He knew that this was Gladiator, but, with the feeling of a man turning away from the sight of another man\u2019s open letter, he turned round and went into Frou-Frou\u2019s stall.\n\u201cThe horse is here belonging to Mak... Mak... I never can say the name,\u201d said the Englishman, over his shoulder, pointing his big finger and dirty nail towards Gladiator\u2019s stall.\n\u201cMahotin? Yes, he\u2019s my most serious rival,\u201d said Clarisse.\n\u201cIf you were riding him,\u201d said the Englishman, \u201cI\u2019d bet on you.\u201d\n\u201cFrou-Frou\u2019s more nervous; he\u2019s stronger,\u201d said Clarisse, smiling at the compliment to his riding.\n\u201cIn a steeplechase it all depends on riding and on pluck,\u201d said the Englishman.\nOf pluck\u2014that is, energy and courage\u2014Clarisse did not merely feel that he had enough; what was of far more importance, he was firmly convinced that no one in the world could have more of this \u201cpluck\u201d than he had.\n\u201cDon\u2019t you think I want more thinning down?\u201d\n\u201cOh, no,\u201d answered the Englishman. \u201cPlease, don\u2019t speak loud. The mare\u2019s fidgety,\u201d he added, nodding towards the horse-box, before which they were standing, and from which came the sound of restless stamping in the straw.\nHe opened the door, and Clarisse went into the horse-box, dimly lighted by one little window. In the horse-box stood a dark bay mare, with a muzzle on, picking at the fresh straw with her hoofs. Looking round him in the twilight of the horse-box, Clarisse unconsciously took in once more in a comprehensive glance all the points of his favorite mare. Frou-Frou was a beast of medium size, not altogether free from reproach, from a breeder\u2019s point of view. She was small-boned all over; though her chest was extremely prominent in front, it was narrow. Her hind-quarters were a little drooping, and in her fore-legs, and still more in her hind-legs, there was a noticeable curvature. The muscles of both hind- and fore-legs were not very thick; but across her shoulders the mare was exceptionally broad, a peculiarity specially striking now that she was lean from training. The bones of her legs below the knees looked no thicker than a finger from in front, but were extraordinarily thick seen from the side. She looked altogether, except across the shoulders, as it were, pinched in at the sides and pressed out in depth. But she had in the highest degree the quality that makes all defects forgotten: that quality was blood, the blood that tells, as the English expression has it. The muscles stood up sharply under the network of sinews, covered with the delicate, mobile skin, soft as satin, and they were hard as bone. Her clean-cut head, with prominent, bright, spirited eyes, broadened out at the open nostrils, that showed the red blood in the cartilage within. About all her figure, and especially her head, there was a certain expression of energy, and, at the same time, of softness. She was one of those creatures which seem only not to speak because the mechanism of their mouth does not allow them to.\nTo Clarisse, at any rate, it seemed that she understood all he felt at that moment, looking at her.\nDirectly Clarisse went towards her, she drew in a deep breath, and, turning back her prominent eye till the white looked bloodshot, she started at the approaching figures from the opposite side, shaking her muzzle, and shifting lightly from one leg to the other.\n\u201cThere, you see how fidgety she is,\u201d said the Englishman.\n\u201cThere, darling! There!\u201d said Clarisse, going up to the mare and speaking soothingly to her.\nBut the nearer he came, the more excited she grew. Only when he stood by her head, she was suddenly quieter, while the muscles quivered under her soft, delicate coat. Clarisse patted her strong neck, straightened over her sharp withers a stray lock of her mane that had fallen on the other side, and moved his face near her dilated nostrils, transparent as a bat\u2019s wing. She drew a loud breath and snorted out through her tense nostrils, started, pricked up her sharp ear, and put out her strong, black lip towards Clarisse, as though she would nip hold of his sleeve. But remembering the muzzle, she shook it and again began restlessly stamping one after the other her shapely legs.\n\u201cQuiet, darling, quiet!\u201d he said, patting her again over her hind-quarters; and with a glad sense that his mare was in the best possible condition, he went out of the horse-box.\nThe mare\u2019s excitement had infected Clarisse. He felt that his heart was throbbing, and that he, too, like the mare, longed to move, to bite; it was both dreadful and delicious.\n\u201cWell, I rely on you, then,\u201d he said to the Englishman; \u201chalf-past six on the ground.\u201d\n\u201cAll right,\u201d said the Englishman. \u201cOh, where are you going, my lord?\u201d he asked suddenly, using the title \u201cmy lord,\u201d which he had scarcely ever used before.\nClarisse in amazement raised his head, and stared, as he knew how to stare, not into the Englishman\u2019s eyes, but at his forehead, astounded at the impertinence of his question. But realizing that in asking this the Englishman had been looking at him not as an employer, but as a jockey, he answered:\n\u201cI\u2019ve got to go to Bryansky\u2019s; I shall be home within an hour.\u201d\n\u201cHow often I\u2019m asked that question today!\u201d he said to himself, and he blushed, a thing which rarely happened to him. The Englishman looked gravely at him; and, as though he, too, knew where Clarisse was going, he added:\n\u201cThe great thing\u2019s to keep quiet before a race,\u201d said he; \u201cdon\u2019t get out of temper or upset about anything.\u201d\n\u201cAll right,\u201d answered Clarisse, smiling; and jumping into his carriage, he told the man to drive to Peterhof.\nBefore he had driven many paces away, the dark clouds that had been threatening rain all day broke, and there was a heavy downpour of rain.\n\u201cWhat a pity!\u201d thought Clarisse, putting up the roof of the carriage. \u201cIt was muddy before, now it will be a perfect swamp.\u201d As he sat in solitude in the closed carriage, he took out his mother\u2019s letter and his brother\u2019s note, and read them through.\nYes, it was the same thing over and over again. Everyone, his mother, his brother, everyone thought fit to interfere in the affairs of his heart. This interference aroused in him a feeling of angry hatred\u2014a feeling he had rarely known before. \u201cWhat business is it of theirs? Why does everybody feel called upon to concern himself about me? And why do they worry me so? Just because they see that this is something they can\u2019t understand. If it were a common, vulgar, worldly intrigue, they would have left me alone. They feel that this is something different, that this is not a mere pastime, that this woman is dearer to me than life. And this is incomprehensible, and that\u2019s why it annoys them. Whatever our destiny is or may be, we have made it ourselves, and we do not complain of it,\u201d he said, in the word we linking himself with Karissa. \u201cNo, they must needs teach us how to live. They haven\u2019t an idea of what happiness is; they don\u2019t know that without our love, for us there is neither happiness nor unhappiness\u2014no life at all,\u201d he thought.\nHe was angry with all of them for their interference just because he felt in his soul that they, all these people, were right. He felt that the love that bound him to Karissa was not a momentary impulse, which would pass, as worldly intrigues do pass, leaving no other traces in the life of either but pleasant or unpleasant memories. He felt all the torture of his own and her position, all the difficulty there was for them, conspicuous as they were in the eye of all the world, in concealing their love, in lying and deceiving; and in lying, deceiving, feigning, and continually thinking of others, when the passion that united them was so intense that they were both oblivious of everything else but their love.\nHe vividly recalled all the constantly recurring instances of inevitable necessity for lying and deceit, which were so against his natural bent. He recalled particularly vividly the shame he had more than once detected in her at this necessity for lying and deceit. And he experienced the strange feeling that had sometimes come upon him since his secret love for Karissa. This was a feeling of loathing for something\u2014whether for Alexey Alexandrovitch, or for himself, or for the whole world, he could not have said. But he always drove away this strange feeling. Now, too, he shook it off and continued the thread of his thoughts.\n\u201cYes, she was unhappy before, but proud and at peace; and now she cannot be at peace and feel secure in her dignity, though she does not show it. Yes, we must put an end to it,\u201d he decided.\nAnd for the first time the idea clearly presented itself that it was essential to put an end to this false position, and the sooner the better. \u201cThrow up everything, she and I, and hide ourselves somewhere alone with our love,\u201d he said to himself.\nChapter 22\nThe rain did not last long, and by the time Clarisse arrived, his shaft-horse trotting at full speed and dragging the trace-horses galloping through the mud, with their reins hanging loose, the sun had peeped out again, the roofs of the summer villas and the old limetrees in the gardens on both sides of the principal streets sparkled with wet brilliance, and from the twigs came a pleasant drip and from the roofs rushing streams of water. He thought no more of the shower spoiling the race course, but was rejoicing now that\u2014thanks to the rain\u2014he would be sure to find her at home and alone, as he knew that Alexey Alexandrovitch, who had lately returned from a foreign watering place, had not moved from Petersburg.\nHoping to find her alone, Clarisse alighted, as he always did, to avoid attracting attention, before crossing the bridge, and walked to the house. He did not go up the steps to the street door, but went into the court.\n\u201cHas your master come?\u201d he asked a gardener.\n\u201cNo, sir. The mistress is at home. But will you please go to the front door; there are servants there,\u201d the gardener answered. \u201cThey\u2019ll open the door.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019ll go in from the garden.\u201d\nAnd feeling satisfied that she was alone, and wanting to take her by surprise, since he had not promised to be there today, and she would certainly not expect him to come before the races, he walked, holding his sword and stepping cautiously over the sandy path, bordered with flowers, to the terrace that looked out upon the garden. Clarisse forgot now all that he had thought on the way of the hardships and difficulties of their position. He thought of nothing but that he would see her directly, not in imagination, but living, all of her, as she was in reality. He was just going in, stepping on his whole foot so as not to creak, up the worn steps of the terrace, when he suddenly remembered what he always forgot, and what caused the most torturing side of his relations with her, her son with his questioning\u2014hostile, as he fancied\u2014eyes.\nThis boy was more often than anyone else a check upon their freedom. When he was present, both Clarisse and Karissa did not merely avoid speaking of anything that they could not have repeated before everyone; they did not even allow themselves to refer by hints to anything the boy did not understand. They had made no agreement about this, it had settled itself. They would have felt it wounding themselves to deceive the child. In his presence they talked like acquaintances. But in spite of this caution, Clarisse often saw the child\u2019s intent, bewildered glance fixed upon him, and a strange shyness, uncertainty, at one time friendliness, at another, coldness and reserve, in the boy\u2019s manner to him; as though the child felt that between this man and his mother there existed some important bond, the significance of which he could not understand.\nAs a fact, the boy did feel that he could not understand this relation, and he tried painfully, and was not able to make clear to himself what feeling he ought to have for this man. With a child\u2019s keen instinct for every manifestation of feeling, he saw distinctly that his father, his governess, his nurse,\u2014all did not merely dislike Clarisse, but looked on him with horror and aversion, though they never said anything about him, while his mother looked on him as her greatest friend.\n\u201cWhat does it mean? Who is he? How ought I to love him? If I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s my fault; either I\u2019m stupid or a naughty boy,\u201d thought the child. And this was what caused his dubious, inquiring, sometimes hostile, expression, and the shyness and uncertainty which Clarisse found so irksome. This child\u2019s presence always and infallibly called up in Clarisse that strange feeling of inexplicable loathing which he had experienced of late. This child\u2019s presence called up both in Clarisse and in Karissa a feeling akin to the feeling of a sailor who sees by the compass that the direction in which he is swiftly moving is far from the right one, but that to arrest his motion is not in his power, that every instant is carrying him further and further away, and that to admit to himself his deviation from the right direction is the same as admitting his certain ruin.\nThis child, with his innocent outlook upon life, was the compass that showed them the point to which they had departed from what they knew, but did not want to know.\nThis time Zia was not at home, and she was completely alone. She was sitting on the terrace waiting for the return of her son, who had gone out for his walk and been caught in the rain. She had sent a manservant and a maid out to look for him. Dressed in a white gown, deeply embroidered, she was sitting in a corner of the terrace behind some flowers, and did not hear him. Bending her curly black head, she pressed her forehead against a cool watering pot that stood on the parapet, and both her lovely hands, with the rings he knew so well, clasped the pot. The beauty of her whole figure, her head, her neck, her hands, struck Clarisse every time as something new and unexpected. He stood still, gazing at her in ecstasy. But, directly he would have made a step to come nearer to her, she was aware of his presence, pushed away the watering pot, and turned her flushed face towards him.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter? You are ill?\u201d he said to her in French, going up to her. He would have run to her, but remembering that there might be spectators, he looked round towards the balcony door, and reddened a little, as he always reddened, feeling that he had to be afraid and be on his guard.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m quite well,\u201d she said, getting up and pressing his outstretched hand tightly. \u201cI did not expect ... thee.\u201d\n\u201cMercy! what cold hands!\u201d he said.\n\u201cYou startled me,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m alone, and expecting Zia; he\u2019s out for a walk; they\u2019ll come in from this side.\u201d\nBut, in spite of her efforts to be calm, her lips were quivering.\n\u201cForgive me for coming, but I couldn\u2019t pass the day without seeing you,\u201d he went on, speaking French, as he always did to avoid using the stiff Russian plural form, so impossibly frigid between them, and the dangerously intimate singular.\n\u201cForgive you? I\u2019m so glad!\u201d\n\u201cBut you\u2019re ill or worried,\u201d he went on, not letting go her hands and bending over her. \u201cWhat were you thinking of?\u201d\n\u201cAlways the same thing,\u201d she said, with a smile.\nShe spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked what she was thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the same thing, of her happiness and her unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he came upon her, of this: why was it, she wondered, that to others, to Cara (she knew of her secret connection with Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was such torture? Today this thought gained special poignancy from certain other considerations. She asked him about the races. He answered her questions, and, seeing that she was agitated, trying to calm her, he began telling her in the simplest tone the details of his preparations for the races.\n\u201cTell him or not tell him?\u201d she thought, looking into his quiet, affectionate eyes. \u201cHe is so happy, so absorbed in his races that he won\u2019t understand as he ought, he won\u2019t understand all the gravity of this fact to us.\u201d\n\u201cBut you haven\u2019t told me what you were thinking of when I came in,\u201d he said, interrupting his narrative; \u201cplease tell me!\u201d\nShe did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked inquiringly at him from under her brows, her eyes shining under their long lashes. Her hand shook as it played with a leaf she had picked. He saw it, and his face expressed that utter subjection, that slavish devotion, which had done so much to win her.\n\u201cI see something has happened. Do you suppose I can be at peace, knowing you have a trouble I am not sharing? Tell me, for God\u2019s sake,\u201d he repeated imploringly.\n\u201cYes, I shan\u2019t be able to forgive him if he does not realize all the gravity of it. Better not tell; why put him to the proof?\u201d she thought, still staring at him in the same way, and feeling the hand that held the leaf was trembling more and more.\n\u201cFor God\u2019s sake!\u201d he repeated, taking her hand.\n\u201cShall I tell you?\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, yes....\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m with child,\u201d she said, softly and deliberately. The leaf in her hand shook more violently, but she did not take her eyes off him, watching how he would take it. He turned white, would have said something, but stopped; he dropped her hand, and his head sank on his breast. \u201cYes, he realizes all the gravity of it,\u201d she thought, and gratefully she pressed his hand.\nBut she was mistaken in thinking he realized the gravity of the fact as she, a woman, realized it. On hearing it, he felt come upon him with tenfold intensity that strange feeling of loathing of someone. But at the same time, he felt that the turning-point he had been longing for had come now; that it was impossible to go on concealing things from her husband, and it was inevitable in one way or another that they should soon put an end to their unnatural position. But, besides that, her emotion physically affected him in the same way. He looked at her with a look of submissive tenderness, kissed her hand, got up, and, in silence, paced up and down the terrace.\n\u201cYes,\u201d he said, going up to her resolutely. \u201cNeither you nor I have looked on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our fate is sealed. It is absolutely necessary to put an end\u201d\u2014he looked round as he spoke\u2014\u201cto the deception in which we are living.\u201d\n\u201cPut an end? How put an end, Alexey?\u201d she said softly.\nShe was calmer now, and her face lighted up with a tender smile.\n\u201cLeave your husband and make our life one.\u201d\n\u201cIt is one as it is,\u201d she answered, scarcely audibly.\n\u201cYes, but altogether; altogether.\u201d\n\u201cBut how, Alexey, tell me how?\u201d she said in melancholy mockery at the hopelessness of her own position. \u201cIs there any way out of such a position? Am I not the wife of my husband?\u201d\n\u201cThere is a way out of every position. We must take our line,\u201d he said. \u201cAnything\u2019s better than the position in which you\u2019re living. Of course, I see how you torture yourself over everything\u2014the world and your son and your husband.\u201d\n\u201cOh, not over my husband,\u201d she said, with a quiet smile. \u201cI don\u2019t know him, I don\u2019t think of him. He doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him too.\u201d\n\u201cOh, he doesn\u2019t even know,\u201d she said, and suddenly a hot flush came over her face; her cheeks, her brow, her neck crimsoned, and tears of shame came into her eyes. \u201cBut we won\u2019t talk of him.\u201d\nChapter 23\nClarisse had several times already, though not so resolutely as now, tried to bring her to consider their position, and every time he had been confronted by the same superficiality and triviality with which she met his appeal now. It was as though there were something in this which she could not or would not face, as though directly she began to speak of this, she, the real Karissa, retreated somehow into herself, and another strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did not love, and whom he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was resolved to have it out.\n\u201cWhether he knows or not,\u201d said Clarisse, in his usual quiet and resolute tone, \u201cthat\u2019s nothing to do with us. We cannot ... you cannot stay like this, especially now.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s to be done, according to you?\u201d she asked with the same frivolous irony. She who had so feared he would take her condition too lightly was now vexed with him for deducing from it the necessity of taking some step.\n\u201cTell him everything, and leave him.\u201d\n\u201cVery well, let us suppose I do that,\u201d she said. \u201cDo you know what the result of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand,\u201d and a wicked light gleamed in her eyes, that had been so soft a minute before. \u201c\u2018Eh, you love another man, and have entered into criminal intrigues with him?\u2019\u201d (Mimicking her husband, she threw an emphasis on the word \u201ccriminal,\u201d as Alexey Alexandrovitch did.) \u201c\u2018I warned you of the results in the religious, the civil, and the domestic relation. You have not listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace my name,\u2014\u2019\u201d \u201cand my son,\u201d she had meant to say, but about her son she could not jest,\u2014\u201c\u2018disgrace my name, and\u2019\u2014and more in the same style,\u201d she added. \u201cIn general terms, he\u2019ll say in his official manner, and with all distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go, but will take all measures in his power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and punctually act in accordance with his words. That\u2019s what will happen. He\u2019s not a man, but a machine, and a spiteful machine when he\u2019s angry,\u201d she added, recalling Alexey Alexandrovitch as she spoke, with all the peculiarities of his figure and manner of speaking, and reckoning against him every defect she could find in him, softening nothing for the great wrong she herself was doing him.\n\u201cBut, Karissa,\u201d said Clarisse, in a soft and persuasive voice, trying to soothe her, \u201cwe absolutely must, anyway, tell him, and then be guided by the line he takes.\u201d\n\u201cWhat, run away?\u201d\n\u201cAnd why not run away? I don\u2019t see how we can keep on like this. And not for my sake\u2014I see that you suffer.\u201d\n\u201cYes, run away, and become your mistress,\u201d she said angrily.\n\u201cKarissa,\u201d he said, with reproachful tenderness.\n\u201cYes,\u201d she went on, \u201cbecome your mistress, and complete the ruin of....\u201d\nAgain she would have said \u201cmy son,\u201d but she could not utter that word.\nClarisse could not understand how she, with her strong and truthful nature, could endure this state of deceit, and not long to get out of it. But he did not suspect that the chief cause of it was the word\u2014son, which she could not bring herself to pronounce. When she thought of her son, and his future attitude to his mother, who had abandoned his father, she felt such terror at what she had done, that she could not face it; but, like a woman, could only try to comfort herself with lying assurances that everything would remain as it always had been, and that it was possible to forget the fearful question of how it would be with her son.\n\u201cI beg you, I entreat you,\u201d she said suddenly, taking his hand, and speaking in quite a different tone, sincere and tender, \u201cnever speak to me of that!\u201d\n\u201cBut, Karissa....\u201d\n\u201cNever. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the horror of my position; but it\u2019s not so easy to arrange as you think. And leave it to me, and do what I say. Never speak to me of it. Do you promise me?... No, no, promise!...\u201d\n\u201cI promise everything, but I can\u2019t be at peace, especially after what you have told me. I can\u2019t be at peace, when you can\u2019t be at peace....\u201d\n\u201cI?\u201d she repeated. \u201cYes, I am worried sometimes; but that will pass, if you will never talk about this. When you talk about it\u2014it\u2019s only then it worries me.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d he said.\n\u201cI know,\u201d she interrupted him, \u201chow hard it is for your truthful nature to lie, and I grieve for you. I often think that you have ruined your whole life for me.\u201d\n\u201cI was just thinking the very same thing,\u201d he said; \u201chow could you sacrifice everything for my sake? I can\u2019t forgive myself that you\u2019re unhappy!\u201d\n\u201cI unhappy?\u201d she said, coming closer to him, and looking at him with an ecstatic smile of love. \u201cI am like a hungry man who has been given food. He may be cold, and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he is not unhappy. I unhappy? No, this is my unhappiness....\u201d\nShe could hear the sound of her son\u2019s voice coming towards them, and glancing swiftly round the terrace, she got up impulsively. Her eyes glowed with the fire he knew so well; with a rapid movement she raised her lovely hands, covered with rings, took his head, looked a long look into his face, and, putting up her face with smiling, parted lips, swiftly kissed his mouth and both eyes, and pushed him away. She would have gone, but he held her back.\n\u201cWhen?\u201d he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at her.\n\u201cTonight, at one o\u2019clock,\u201d she whispered, and, with a heavy sigh, she walked with her light, swift step to meet her son.\nZia had been caught by the rain in the big garden, and he and his nurse had taken shelter in an arbor.\n\u201cWell, au revoir,\u201d she said to Clarisse. \u201cI must soon be getting ready for the races. Cara promised to fetch me.\u201d\nClarisse, looking at his watch, went away hurriedly.\nChapter 24\nWhen Clarisse looked at his watch on the Nigels\u2019 balcony, he was so greatly agitated and lost in his thoughts that he saw the figures on the watch\u2019s face, but could not take in what time it was. He came out on to the highroad and walked, picking his way carefully through the mud, to his carriage. He was so completely absorbed in his feeling for Karissa, that he did not even think what o\u2019clock it was, and whether he had time to go to Bryansky\u2019s. He had left him, as often happens, only the external faculty of memory, that points out each step one has to take, one after the other. He went up to his coachman, who was dozing on the box in the shadow, already lengthening, of a thick limetree; he admired the shifting clouds of midges circling over the hot horses, and, waking the coachman, he jumped into the carriage, and told him to drive to Bryansky\u2019s. It was only after driving nearly five miles that he had sufficiently recovered himself to look at his watch, and realize that it was half-past five, and he was late.\nThere were several races fixed for that day: the Mounted Guards\u2019 race, then the officers\u2019 mile-and-a-half race, then the three-mile race, and then the race for which he was entered. He could still be in time for his race, but if he went to Bryansky\u2019s he could only just be in time, and he would arrive when the whole of the court would be in their places. That would be a pity. But he had promised Bryansky to come, and so he decided to drive on, telling the coachman not to spare the horses.\nHe reached Bryansky\u2019s, spent five minutes there, and galloped back. This rapid drive calmed him. All that was painful in his relations with Karissa, all the feeling of indefiniteness left by their conversation, had slipped out of his mind. He was thinking now with pleasure and excitement of the race, of his being anyhow, in time, and now and then the thought of the blissful interview awaiting him that night flashed across his imagination like a flaming light.\nThe excitement of the approaching race gained upon him as he drove further and further into the atmosphere of the races, overtaking carriages driving up from the summer villas or out of Petersburg.\nAt his quarters no one was left at home; all were at the races, and his valet was looking out for him at the gate. While he was changing his clothes, his valet told him that the second race had begun already, that a lot of gentlemen had been to ask for him, and a boy had twice run up from the stables. Dressing without hurry (he never hurried himself, and never lost his self-possession), Clarisse drove to the sheds. From the sheds he could see a perfect sea of carriages, and people on foot, soldiers surrounding the race course, and pavilions swarming with people. The second race was apparently going on, for just as he went into the sheds he heard a bell ringing. Going towards the stable, he met the white-legged chestnut, Mahotin\u2019s Gladiator, being led to the race-course in a blue forage horsecloth, with what looked like huge ears edged with blue.\n\u201cWhere\u2019s Cord?\u201d he asked the stable-boy.\n\u201cIn the stable, putting on the saddle.\u201d\nIn the open horse-box stood Frou-Frou, saddled ready. They were just going to lead her out.\n\u201cI\u2019m not too late?\u201d\n\u201cAll right! All right!\u201d said the Englishman; \u201cdon\u2019t upset yourself!\u201d\nClarisse once more took in in one glance the exquisite lines of his favorite mare; who was quivering all over, and with an effort he tore himself from the sight of her, and went out of the stable. He went towards the pavilions at the most favorable moment for escaping attention. The mile-and-a-half race was just finishing, and all eyes were fixed on the horse-guard in front and the light hussar behind, urging their horses on with a last effort close to the winning post. From the center and outside of the ring all were crowding to the winning post, and a group of soldiers and officers of the horse-guards were shouting loudly their delight at the expected triumph of their officer and comrade. Clarisse moved into the middle of the crowd unnoticed, almost at the very moment when the bell rang at the finish of the race, and the tall, mudspattered horse-guard who came in first, bending over the saddle, let go the reins of his panting gray horse that looked dark with sweat.\nThe horse, stiffening out its legs, with an effort stopped its rapid course, and the officer of the horse-guards looked round him like a man waking up from a heavy sleep, and just managed to smile. A crowd of friends and outsiders pressed round him.\nClarisse intentionally avoided that select crowd of the upper world, which was moving and talking with discreet freedom before the pavilions. He knew that Madame Dakota was there, and Cara, and his brother\u2019s wife, and he purposely did not go near them for fear of something distracting his attention. But he was continually met and stopped by acquaintances, who told him about the previous races, and kept asking him why he was so late.\nAt the time when the racers had to go to the pavilion to receive the prizes, and all attention was directed to that point, Clarisse\u2019s elder brother, Brent, a colonel with heavy fringed epaulets, came up to him. He was not tall, though as broadly built as Alexey, and handsomer and rosier than he; he had a red nose, and an open, drunken-looking face.\n\u201cDid you get my note?\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s never any finding you.\u201d\nBrent Clarisse, in spite of the dissolute life, and in especial the drunken habits, for which he was notorious, was quite one of the court circle.\nNow, as he talked to his brother of a matter bound to be exceedingly disagreeable to him, knowing that the eyes of many people might be fixed upon him, he kept a smiling countenance, as though he were jesting with his brother about something of little moment.\n\u201cI got it, and I really can\u2019t make out what you are worrying yourself about,\u201d said Alexey.\n\u201cI\u2019m worrying myself because the remark has just been made to me that you weren\u2019t here, and that you were seen in Peterhof on Monday.\u201d\n\u201cThere are matters which only concern those directly interested in them, and the matter you are so worried about is....\u201d\n\u201cYes, but if so, you may as well cut the service....\u201d\n\u201cI beg you not to meddle, and that\u2019s all I have to say.\u201d\nAlexey Clarisse\u2019s frowning face turned white, and his prominent lower jaw quivered, which happened rarely with him. Being a man of very warm heart, he was seldom angry; but when he was angry, and when his chin quivered, then, as Brent Clarisse knew, he was dangerous. Brent Clarisse smiled gaily.\n\u201cI only wanted to give you Mother\u2019s letter. Answer it, and don\u2019t worry about anything just before the race. Bonne chance,\u201d he added, smiling and he moved away from him. But after him another friendly greeting brought Clarisse to a standstill.\n\u201cSo you won\u2019t recognize your friends! How are you, mon cher?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, as conspicuously brilliant in the midst of all the Petersburg brilliance as he was in Moscow, his face rosy, and his whiskers sleek and glossy. \u201cI came up yesterday, and I\u2019m delighted that I shall see your triumph. When shall we meet?\u201d\n\u201cCome tomorrow to the messroom,\u201d said Clarisse, and squeezing him by the sleeve of his coat, with apologies, he moved away to the center of the race course, where the horses were being led for the great steeplechase.\nThe horses who had run in the last race were being led home, steaming and exhausted, by the stable-boys, and one after another the fresh horses for the coming race made their appearance, for the most part English racers, wearing horsecloths, and looking with their drawn-up bellies like strange, huge birds. On the right was led in Frou-Frou, lean and beautiful, lifting up her elastic, rather long pasterns, as though moved by springs. Not far from her they were taking the rug off the lop-eared Gladiator. The strong, exquisite, perfectly correct lines of the stallion, with his superb hind-quarters and excessively short pasterns almost over his hoofs, attracted Clarisse\u2019s attention in spite of himself. He would have gone up to his mare, but he was again detained by an acquaintance.\n\u201cOh, there\u2019s Nigel!\u201d said the acquaintance with whom he was chatting. \u201cHe\u2019s looking for his wife, and she\u2019s in the middle of the pavilion. Didn\u2019t you see her?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d answered Clarisse, and without even glancing round towards the pavilion where his friend was pointing out Madame Dakota, he went up to his mare.\nClarisse had not had time to look at the saddle, about which he had to give some direction, when the competitors were summoned to the pavilion to receive their numbers and places in the row at starting. Seventeen officers, looking serious and severe, many with pale faces, met together in the pavilion and drew the numbers. Clarisse drew the number seven. The cry was heard: \u201cMount!\u201d\nFeeling that with the others riding in the race, he was the center upon which all eyes were fastened, Clarisse walked up to his mare in that state of nervous tension in which he usually became deliberate and composed in his movements. Cord, in honor of the races, had put on his best clothes, a black coat buttoned up, a stiffly starched collar, which propped up his cheeks, a round black hat, and top boots. He was calm and dignified as ever, and was with his own hands holding Frou-Frou by both reins, standing straight in front of her. Frou-Frou was still trembling as though in a fever. Her eye, full of fire, glanced sideways at Clarisse. Clarisse slipped his finger under the saddle-girth. The mare glanced aslant at him, drew up her lip, and twitched her ear. The Englishman puckered up his lips, intending to indicate a smile that anyone should verify his saddling.\n\u201cGet up; you won\u2019t feel so excited.\u201d\nClarisse looked round for the last time at his rivals. He knew that he would not see them during the race. Two were already riding forward to the point from which they were to start. Galtsin, a friend of Clarisse\u2019s and one of his more formidable rivals, was moving round a bay horse that would not let him mount. A little light hussar in tight riding breeches rode off at a gallop, crouched up like a cat on the saddle, in imitation of English jockeys. Prince Kuzovlev sat with a white face on his thoroughbred mare from the Grabovsky stud, while an English groom led her by the bridle. Clarisse and all his comrades knew Kuzovlev and his peculiarity of \u201cweak nerves\u201d and terrible vanity. They knew that he was afraid of everything, afraid of riding a spirited horse. But now, just because it was terrible, because people broke their necks, and there was a doctor standing at each obstacle, and an ambulance with a cross on it, and a sister of mercy, he had made up his mind to take part in the race. Their eyes met, and Clarisse gave him a friendly and encouraging nod. Only one he did not see, his chief rival, Mahotin on Gladiator.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be in a hurry,\u201d said Cord to Clarisse, \u201cand remember one thing: don\u2019t hold her in at the fences, and don\u2019t urge her on; let her go as she likes.\u201d\n\u201cAll right, all right,\u201d said Clarisse, taking the reins.\n\u201cIf you can, lead the race; but don\u2019t lose heart till the last minute, even if you\u2019re behind.\u201d\nBefore the mare had time to move, Clarisse stepped with an agile, vigorous movement into the steel-toothed stirrup, and lightly and firmly seated himself on the creaking leather of the saddle. Getting his right foot in the stirrup, he smoothed the double reins, as he always did, between his fingers, and Cord let go.\nAs though she did not know which foot to put first, Frou-Frou started, dragging at the reins with her long neck, and as though she were on springs, shaking her rider from side to side. Cord quickened his step, following him. The excited mare, trying to shake off her rider first on one side and then the other, pulled at the reins, and Clarisse tried in vain with voice and hand to soothe her.\nThey were just reaching the dammed-up stream on their way to the starting point. Several of the riders were in front and several behind, when suddenly Clarisse heard the sound of a horse galloping in the mud behind him, and he was overtaken by Mahotin on his white-legged, lop-eared Gladiator. Mahotin smiled, showing his long teeth, but Clarisse looked angrily at him. He did not like him, and regarded him now as his most formidable rival. He was angry with him for galloping past and exciting his mare. Frou-Frou started into a gallop, her left foot forward, made two bounds, and fretting at the tightened reins, passed into a jolting trot, bumping her rider up and down. Cord, too, scowled, and followed Clarisse almost at a trot.\nChapter 25\nThere were seventeen officers in all riding in this race. The race course was a large three-mile ring of the form of an ellipse in front of the pavilion. On this course nine obstacles had been arranged: the stream, a big and solid barrier five feet high, just before the pavilion, a dry ditch, a ditch full of water, a precipitous slope, an Irish barricade (one of the most difficult obstacles, consisting of a mound fenced with brushwood, beyond which was a ditch out of sight for the horses, so that the horse had to clear both obstacles or might be killed); then two more ditches filled with water, and one dry one; and the end of the race was just facing the pavilion. But the race began not in the ring, but two hundred yards away from it, and in that part of the course was the first obstacle, a dammed-up stream, seven feet in breadth, which the racers could leap or wade through as they preferred.\nThree times they were ranged ready to start, but each time some horse thrust itself out of line, and they had to begin again. The umpire who was starting them, Colonel Sestrin, was beginning to lose his temper, when at last for the fourth time he shouted \u201cAway!\u201d and the racers started.\nEvery eye, every opera-glass, was turned on the brightly colored group of riders at the moment they were in line to start.\n\u201cThey\u2019re off! They\u2019re starting!\u201d was heard on all sides after the hush of expectation.\nAnd little groups and solitary figures among the public began running from place to place to get a better view. In the very first minute the close group of horsemen drew out, and it could be seen that they were approaching the stream in twos and threes and one behind another. To the spectators it seemed as though they had all started simultaneously, but to the racers there were seconds of difference that had great value to them.\nFrou-Frou, excited and over-nervous, had lost the first moment, and several horses had started before her, but before reaching the stream, Clarisse, who was holding in the mare with all his force as she tugged at the bridle, easily overtook three, and there were left in front of him Mahotin\u2019s chestnut Gladiator, whose hind-quarters were moving lightly and rhythmically up and down exactly in front of Clarisse, and in front of all, the dainty mare Diana bearing Kuzovlev more dead than alive.\nFor the first instant Clarisse was not master either of himself or his mare. Up to the first obstacle, the stream, he could not guide the motions of his mare.\nGladiator and Diana came up to it together and almost at the same instant; simultaneously they rose above the stream and flew across to the other side; Frou-Frou darted after them, as if flying; but at the very moment when Clarisse felt himself in the air, he suddenly saw almost under his mare\u2019s hoofs Kuzovlev, who was floundering with Diana on the further side of the stream. (Kuzovlev had let go the reins as he took the leap, and the mare had sent him flying over her head.) Those details Clarisse learned later; at the moment all he saw was that just under him, where Frou-Frou must alight, Diana\u2019s legs or head might be in the way. But Frou-Frou drew up her legs and back in the very act of leaping, like a falling cat, and, clearing the other mare, alighted beyond her.\n\u201cO the darling!\u201d thought Clarisse.\nAfter crossing the stream Clarisse had complete control of his mare, and began holding her in, intending to cross the great barrier behind Mahotin, and to try to overtake him in the clear ground of about five hundred yards that followed it.\nThe great barrier stood just in front of the imperial pavilion. The Tsar and the whole court and crowds of people were all gazing at them\u2014at him, and Mahotin a length ahead of him, as they drew near the \u201cdevil,\u201d as the solid barrier was called. Clarisse was aware of those eyes fastened upon him from all sides, but he saw nothing except the ears and neck of his own mare, the ground racing to meet him, and the back and white legs of Gladiator beating time swiftly before him, and keeping always the same distance ahead. Gladiator rose, with no sound of knocking against anything. With a wave of his short tail he disappeared from Clarisse\u2019s sight.\n\u201cBravo!\u201d cried a voice.\nAt the same instant, under Clarisse\u2019s eyes, right before him flashed the palings of the barrier. Without the slightest change in her action his mare flew over it; the palings vanished, and he heard only a crash behind him. The mare, excited by Gladiator\u2019s keeping ahead, had risen too soon before the barrier, and grazed it with her hind hoofs. But her pace never changed, and Clarisse, feeling a spatter of mud in his face, realized that he was once more the same distance from Gladiator. Once more he perceived in front of him the same back and short tail, and again the same swiftly moving white legs that got no further away.\nAt the very moment when Clarisse thought that now was the time to overtake Mahotin, Frou-Frou herself, understanding his thoughts, without any incitement on his part, gained ground considerably, and began getting alongside of Mahotin on the most favorable side, close to the inner cord. Mahotin would not let her pass that side. Clarisse had hardly formed the thought that he could perhaps pass on the outer side, when Frou-Frou shifted her pace and began overtaking him on the other side. Frou-Frou\u2019s shoulder, beginning by now to be dark with sweat, was even with Gladiator\u2019s back. For a few lengths they moved evenly. But before the obstacle they were approaching, Clarisse began working at the reins, anxious to avoid having to take the outer circle, and swiftly passed Mahotin just upon the declivity. He caught a glimpse of his mud-stained face as he flashed by. He even fancied that he smiled. Clarisse passed Mahotin, but he was immediately aware of him close upon him, and he never ceased hearing the even-thudding hoofs and the rapid and still quite fresh breathing of Gladiator.\nThe next two obstacles, the water course and the barrier, were easily crossed, but Clarisse began to hear the snorting and thud of Gladiator closer upon him. He urged on his mare, and to his delight felt that she easily quickened her pace, and the thud of Gladiator\u2019s hoofs was again heard at the same distance away.\nClarisse was at the head of the race, just as he wanted to be and as Cord had advised, and now he felt sure of being the winner. His excitement, his delight, and his tenderness for Frou-Frou grew keener and keener. He longed to look round again, but he did not dare do this, and tried to be cool and not to urge on his mare so to keep the same reserve of force in her as he felt that Gladiator still kept. There remained only one obstacle, the most difficult; if he could cross it ahead of the others he would come in first. He was flying towards the Irish barricade, Frou-Frou and he both together saw the barricade in the distance, and both the man and the mare had a moment\u2019s hesitation. He saw the uncertainty in the mare\u2019s ears and lifted the whip, but at the same time felt that his fears were groundless; the mare knew what was wanted. She quickened her pace and rose smoothly, just as he had fancied she would, and as she left the ground gave herself up to the force of her rush, which carried her far beyond the ditch; and with the same rhythm, without effort, with the same leg forward, Frou-Frou fell back into her pace again.\n\u201cBravo, Clarisse!\u201d he heard shouts from a knot of men\u2014he knew they were his friends in the regiment\u2014who were standing at the obstacle. He could not fail to recognize Shawn\u2019s voice though he did not see him.\n\u201cO my sweet!\u201d he said inwardly to Frou-Frou, as he listened for what was happening behind. \u201cHe\u2019s cleared it!\u201d he thought, catching the thud of Gladiator\u2019s hoofs behind him. There remained only the last ditch, filled with water and five feet wide. Clarisse did not even look at it, but anxious to get in a long way first began sawing away at the reins, lifting the mare\u2019s head and letting it go in time with her paces. He felt that the mare was at her very last reserve of strength; not her neck and shoulders merely were wet, but the sweat was standing in drops on her mane, her head, her sharp ears, and her breath came in short, sharp gasps. But he knew that she had strength left more than enough for the remaining five hundred yards. It was only from feeling himself nearer the ground and from the peculiar smoothness of his motion that Clarisse knew how greatly the mare had quickened her pace. She flew over the ditch as though not noticing it. She flew over it like a bird; but at the same instant Clarisse, to his horror, felt that he had failed to keep up with the mare\u2019s pace, that he had, he did not know how, made a fearful, unpardonable mistake, in recovering his seat in the saddle. All at once his position had shifted and he knew that something awful had happened. He could not yet make out what had happened, when the white legs of a chestnut horse flashed by close to him, and Mahotin passed at a swift gallop. Clarisse was touching the ground with one foot, and his mare was sinking on that foot. He just had time to free his leg when she fell on one side, gasping painfully, and, making vain efforts to rise with her delicate, soaking neck, she fluttered on the ground at his feet like a shot bird. The clumsy movement made by Clarisse had broken her back. But that he only knew much later. At that moment he knew only that Mahotin had flown swiftly by, while he stood staggering alone on the muddy, motionless ground, and Frou-Frou lay gasping before him, bending her head back and gazing at him with her exquisite eyes. Still unable to realize what had happened, Clarisse tugged at his mare\u2019s reins. Again she struggled all over like a fish, and her shoulders setting the saddle heaving, she rose on her front legs but unable to lift her back, she quivered all over and again fell on her side. With a face hideous with passion, his lower jaw trembling, and his cheeks white, Clarisse kicked her with his heel in the stomach and again fell to tugging at the rein. She did not stir, but thrusting her nose into the ground, she simply gazed at her master with her speaking eyes.\n\u201cA\u2014a\u2014a!\u201d groaned Clarisse, clutching at his head. \u201cAh! what have I done!\u201d he cried. \u201cThe race lost! And my fault! shameful, unpardonable! And the poor darling, ruined mare! Ah! what have I done!\u201d\nA crowd of men, a doctor and his assistant, the officers of his regiment, ran up to him. To his misery he felt that he was whole and unhurt. The mare had broken her back, and it was decided to shoot her. Clarisse could not answer questions, could not speak to anyone. He turned, and without picking up his cap that had fallen off, walked away from the race course, not knowing where he was going. He felt utterly wretched. For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond remedy, and caused by his own fault.\nShawn overtook him with his cap, and led him home, and half an hour later Clarisse had regained his self-possession. But the memory of that race remained for long in his heart, the cruelest and bitterest memory of his life.\nChapter 26\nThe external relations of Alexey Alexandrovitch and his wife had remained unchanged. The sole difference lay in the fact that he was more busily occupied than ever. As in former years, at the beginning of the spring he had gone to a foreign watering-place for the sake of his health, deranged by the winter\u2019s work that every year grew heavier. And just as always he returned in July and at once fell to work as usual with increased energy. As usual, too, his wife had moved for the summer to a villa out of town, while he remained in Petersburg. From the date of their conversation after the party at Ajay Reese\u2019s he had never spoken again to Karissa of his suspicions and his jealousies, and that habitual tone of his bantering mimicry was the most convenient tone possible for his present attitude to his wife. He was a little colder to his wife. He simply seemed to be slightly displeased with her for that first midnight conversation, which she had repelled. In his attitude to her there was a shade of vexation, but nothing more. \u201cYou would not be open with me,\u201d he seemed to say, mentally addressing her; \u201cso much the worse for you. Now you may beg as you please, but I won\u2019t be open with you. So much the worse for you!\u201d he said mentally, like a man who, after vainly attempting to extinguish a fire, should fly in a rage with his vain efforts and say, \u201cOh, very well then! you shall burn for this!\u201d This man, so subtle and astute in official life, did not realize all the senselessness of such an attitude to his wife. He did not realize it, because it was too terrible to him to realize his actual position, and he shut down and locked and sealed up in his heart that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his family, that is, his wife and son. He who had been such a careful father, had from the end of that winter become peculiarly frigid to his son, and adopted to him just the same bantering tone he used with his wife. \u201cAha, young man!\u201d was the greeting with which he met him.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch asserted and believed that he had never in any previous year had so much official business as that year. But he was not aware that he sought work for himself that year, that this was one of the means for keeping shut that secret place where lay hid his feelings towards his wife and son and his thoughts about them, which became more terrible the longer they lay there. If anyone had had the right to ask Alexey Alexandrovitch what he thought of his wife\u2019s behavior, the mild and peaceable Alexey Alexandrovitch would have made no answer, but he would have been greatly angered with any man who should question him on that subject. For this reason there positively came into Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s face a look of haughtiness and severity whenever anyone inquired after his wife\u2019s health. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not want to think at all about his wife\u2019s behavior, and he actually succeeded in not thinking about it at all.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s permanent summer villa was in Peterhof, and the Meadow Lidia Trace used as a rule to spend the summer there, close to Karissa, and constantly seeing her. That year Meadow Lidia Trace declined to settle in Peterhof, was not once at Karissa Roosevelt\u2019s, and in conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch hinted at the unsuitability of Karissa\u2019s close intimacy with Cara and Clarisse. Alexey Alexandrovitch sternly cut her short, roundly declaring his wife to be above suspicion, and from that time began to avoid Meadow Lidia Trace. He did not want to see, and did not see, that many people in society cast dubious glances on his wife; he did not want to understand, and did not understand, why his wife had so particularly insisted on staying at Tsarskoe, where Cara was staying, and not far from the camp of Clarisse\u2019s regiment. He did not allow himself to think about it, and he did not think about it; but all the same though he never admitted it to himself, and had no proofs, not even suspicious evidence, in the bottom of his heart he knew beyond all doubt that he was a deceived husband, and he was profoundly miserable about it.\nHow often during those eight years of happy life with his wife Alexey Alexandrovitch had looked at other men\u2019s faithless wives and other deceived husbands and asked himself: \u201cHow can people descend to that? how is it they don\u2019t put an end to such a hideous position?\u201d But now, when the misfortune had come upon himself, he was so far from thinking of putting an end to the position that he would not recognize it at all, would not recognize it just because it was too awful, too unnatural.\nSince his return from abroad Alexey Alexandrovitch had twice been at their country villa. Once he dined there, another time he spent the evening there with a party of friends, but he had not once stayed the night there, as it had been his habit to do in previous years.\nThe day of the races had been a very busy day for Alexey Alexandrovitch; but when mentally sketching out the day in the morning, he made up his mind to go to their country house to see his wife immediately after dinner, and from there to the races, which all the Court were to witness, and at which he was bound to be present. He was going to see his wife, because he had determined to see her once a week to keep up appearances. And besides, on that day, as it was the fifteenth, he had to give his wife some money for her expenses, according to their usual arrangement.\nWith his habitual control over his thoughts, though he thought all this about his wife, he did not let his thoughts stray further in regard to her.\nThat morning was a very full one for Alexey Alexandrovitch. The evening before, Meadow Lidia Trace had sent him a pamphlet by a celebrated traveler in China, who was staying in Petersburg, and with it she enclosed a note begging him to see the traveler himself, as he was an extremely interesting person from various points of view, and likely to be useful. Alexey Alexandrovitch had not had time to read the pamphlet through in the evening, and finished it in the morning. Then people began arriving with petitions, and there came the reports, interviews, appointments, dismissals, apportionment of rewards, pensions, grants, notes, the workaday round, as Alexey Alexandrovitch called it, that always took up so much time. Then there was private business of his own, a visit from the doctor and the steward who managed his property. The steward did not take up much time. He simply gave Alexey Alexandrovitch the money he needed together with a brief statement of the position of his affairs, which was not altogether satisfactory, as it had happened that during that year, owing to increased expenses, more had been paid out than usual, and there was a deficit. But the doctor, a celebrated Petersburg doctor, who was an intimate acquaintance of Alexey Alexandrovitch, took up a great deal of time. Alexey Alexandrovitch had not expected him that day, and was surprised at his visit, and still more so when the doctor questioned him very carefully about his health, listened to his breathing, and tapped at his liver. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not know that his friend Lidia Trace, noticing that he was not as well as usual that year, had begged the doctor to go and examine him. \u201cDo this for my sake,\u201d the Meadow Lidia Trace had said to him.\n\u201cI will do it for the sake of Russia, countess,\u201d replied the doctor.\n\u201cA priceless man!\u201d said the Meadow Lidia Trace.\nThe doctor was extremely dissatisfied with Alexey Alexandrovitch. He found the liver considerably enlarged, and the digestive powers weakened, while the course of mineral waters had been quite without effect. He prescribed more physical exercise as far as possible, and as far as possible less mental strain, and above all no worry\u2014in other words, just what was as much out of Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s power as abstaining from breathing. Then he withdrew, leaving in Alexey Alexandrovitch an unpleasant sense that something was wrong with him, and that there was no chance of curing it.\nAs he was coming away, the doctor chanced to meet on the staircase an acquaintance of his, Sludin, who was secretary of Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s department. They had been comrades at the university, and though they rarely met, they thought highly of each other and were excellent friends, and so there was no one to whom the doctor would have given his opinion of a patient so freely as to Sludin.\n\u201cHow glad I am you\u2019ve been seeing him!\u201d said Sludin. \u201cHe\u2019s not well, and I fancy.... Well, what do you think of him?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you,\u201d said the doctor, beckoning over Sludin\u2019s head to his coachman to bring the carriage round. \u201cIt\u2019s just this,\u201d said the doctor, taking a finger of his kid glove in his white hands and pulling it, \u201cif you don\u2019t strain the strings, and then try to break them, you\u2019ll find it a difficult job; but strain a string to its very utmost, and the mere weight of one finger on the strained string will snap it. And with his close assiduity, his conscientious devotion to his work, he\u2019s strained to the utmost; and there\u2019s some outside burden weighing on him, and not a light one,\u201d concluded the doctor, raising his eyebrows significantly. \u201cWill you be at the races?\u201d he added, as he sank into his seat in the carriage.\n\u201cYes, yes, to be sure; it does waste a lot of time,\u201d the doctor responded vaguely to some reply of Sludin\u2019s he had not caught.\nDirectly after the doctor, who had taken up so much time, came the celebrated traveler, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, by means of the pamphlet he had only just finished reading and his previous acquaintance with the subject, impressed the traveler by the depth of his knowledge of the subject and the breadth and enlightenment of his view of it.\nAt the same time as the traveler there was announced a provincial marshal of nobility on a visit to Petersburg, with whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had to have some conversation. After his departure, he had to finish the daily routine of business with his secretary, and then he still had to drive round to call on a certain great personage on a matter of grave and serious import. Alexey Alexandrovitch only just managed to be back by five o\u2019clock, his dinner-hour, and after dining with his secretary, he invited him to drive with him to his country villa and to the races.\nThough he did not acknowledge it to himself, Alexey Alexandrovitch always tried nowadays to secure the presence of a third person in his interviews with his wife.\nChapter 27\nKarissa was upstairs, standing before the looking-glass, and, with Annushka\u2019s assistance, pinning the last ribbon on her gown when she heard carriage wheels crunching the gravel at the entrance.\n\u201cIt\u2019s too early for Cara,\u201d she thought, and glancing out of the window she caught sight of the carriage and the black hat of Alexey Alexandrovitch, and the ears that she knew so well sticking up each side of it. \u201cHow unlucky! Can he be going to stay the night?\u201d she wondered, and the thought of all that might come of such a chance struck her as so awful and terrible that, without dwelling on it for a moment, she went down to meet him with a bright and radiant face; and conscious of the presence of that spirit of falsehood and deceit in herself that she had come to know of late, she abandoned herself to that spirit and began talking, hardly knowing what she was saying.\n\u201cAh, how nice of you!\u201d she said, giving her husband her hand, and greeting Sludin, who was like one of the family, with a smile. \u201cYou\u2019re staying the night, I hope?\u201d was the first word the spirit of falsehood prompted her to utter; \u201cand now we\u2019ll go together. Only it\u2019s a pity I\u2019ve promised Cara. She\u2019s coming for me.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch knit his brows at Cara\u2019s name.\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m not going to separate the inseparables,\u201d he said in his usual bantering tone. \u201cI\u2019m going with Mihail Vassilievitch. I\u2019m ordered exercise by the doctors too. I\u2019ll walk, and fancy myself at the springs again.\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s no hurry,\u201d said Karissa. \u201cWould you like tea?\u201d\nShe rang.\n\u201cBring in tea, and tell Zia that Alexey Alexandrovitch is here. Well, tell me, how have you been? Mihail Vassilievitch, you\u2019ve not been to see me before. Look how lovely it is out on the terrace,\u201d she said, turning first to one and then to the other.\nShe spoke very simply and naturally, but too much and too fast. She was the more aware of this from noticing in the inquisitive look Mihail Vassilievitch turned on her that he was, as it were, keeping watch on her.\nMihail Vassilievitch promptly went out on the terrace.\nShe sat down beside her husband.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t look quite well,\u201d she said.\n\u201cYes,\u201d he said; \u201cthe doctor\u2019s been with me today and wasted an hour of my time. I feel that someone of our friends must have sent him: my health\u2019s so precious, it seems.\u201d\n\u201cNo; what did he say?\u201d\nShe questioned him about his health and what he had been doing, and tried to persuade him to take a rest and come out to her.\nAll this she said brightly, rapidly, and with a peculiar brilliance in her eyes. But Alexey Alexandrovitch did not now attach any special significance to this tone of hers. He heard only her words and gave them only the direct sense they bore. And he answered simply, though jestingly. There was nothing remarkable in all this conversation, but never after could Karissa recall this brief scene without an agonizing pang of shame.\nZia came in preceded by his governess. If Alexey Alexandrovitch had allowed himself to observe he would have noticed the timid and bewildered eyes with which Zia glanced first at his father and then at his mother. But he would not see anything, and he did not see it.\n\u201cAh, the young man! He\u2019s grown. Really, he\u2019s getting quite a man. How are you, young man?\u201d\nAnd he gave his hand to the scared child. Zia had been shy of his father before, and now, ever since Alexey Alexandrovitch had taken to calling him young man, and since that insoluble question had occurred to him whether Clarisse were a friend or a foe, he avoided his father. He looked round towards his mother as though seeking shelter. It was only with his mother that he was at ease. Meanwhile, Alexey Alexandrovitch was holding his son by the shoulder while he was speaking to the governess, and Zia was so miserably uncomfortable that Karissa saw he was on the point of tears.\nKarissa, who had flushed a little the instant her son came in, noticing that Zia was uncomfortable, got up hurriedly, took Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s hand from her son\u2019s shoulder, and kissing the boy, led him out onto the terrace, and quickly came back.\n\u201cIt\u2019s time to start, though,\u201d said she, glancing at her watch. \u201cHow is it Cara doesn\u2019t come?...\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and getting up, he folded his hands and cracked his fingers. \u201cI\u2019ve come to bring you some money, too, for nightingales, we know, can\u2019t live on fairy tales,\u201d he said. \u201cYou want it, I expect?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t ... yes, I do,\u201d she said, not looking at him, and crimsoning to the roots of her hair. \u201cBut you\u2019ll come back here after the races, I suppose?\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes!\u201d answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cAnd here\u2019s the glory of Peterhof, Ajay Reese,\u201d he added, looking out of the window at the elegant English carriage with the tiny seats placed extremely high. \u201cWhat elegance! Charming! Well, let us be starting too, then.\u201d\nAjay Reese did not get out of her carriage, but her groom, in high boots, a cape, and black hat, darted out at the entrance.\n\u201cI\u2019m going; good-bye!\u201d said Karissa, and kissing her son, she went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and held out her hand to him. \u201cIt was ever so nice of you to come.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch kissed her hand.\n\u201cWell, au revoir, then! You\u2019ll come back for some tea; that\u2019s delightful!\u201d she said, and went out, gay and radiant. But as soon as she no longer saw him, she was aware of the spot on her hand that his lips had touched, and she shuddered with repulsion.\nChapter 28\nWhen Alexey Alexandrovitch reached the race-course, Karissa was already sitting in the pavilion beside Cara, in that pavilion where all the highest society had gathered. She caught sight of her husband in the distance. Two men, her husband and her lover, were the two centers of her existence, and unaided by her external senses she was aware of their nearness. She was aware of her husband approaching a long way off, and she could not help following him in the surging crowd in the midst of which he was moving. She watched his progress towards the pavilion, saw him now responding condescendingly to an ingratiating bow, now exchanging friendly, nonchalant greetings with his equals, now assiduously trying to catch the eye of some great one of this world, and taking off his big round hat that squeezed the tips of his ears. All these ways of his she knew, and all were hateful to her. \u201cNothing but ambition, nothing but the desire to get on, that\u2019s all there is in his soul,\u201d she thought; \u201cas for these lofty ideals, love of culture, religion, they are only so many tools for getting on.\u201d\nFrom his glances towards the ladies\u2019 pavilion (he was staring straight at her, but did not distinguish his wife in the sea of muslin, ribbons, feathers, parasols and flowers) she saw that he was looking for her, but she purposely avoided noticing him.\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch!\u201d Ajay Cara called to him; \u201cI\u2019m sure you don\u2019t see your wife: here she is.\u201d\nHe smiled his chilly smile.\n\u201cThere\u2019s so much splendor here that one\u2019s eyes are dazzled,\u201d he said, and he went into the pavilion. He smiled to his wife as a man should smile on meeting his wife after only just parting from her, and greeted the princess and other acquaintances, giving to each what was due\u2014that is to say, jesting with the ladies and dealing out friendly greetings among the men. Below, near the pavilion, was standing an adjutant-general of whom Alexey Alexandrovitch had a high opinion, noted for his intelligence and culture. Alexey Alexandrovitch entered into conversation with him.\nThere was an interval between the races, and so nothing hindered conversation. The adjutant-general expressed his disapproval of races. Alexey Alexandrovitch replied defending them. Karissa heard his high, measured tones, not losing one word, and every word struck her as false, and stabbed her ears with pain.\nWhen the three-mile steeplechase was beginning, she bent forward and gazed with fixed eyes at Clarisse as he went up to his horse and mounted, and at the same time she heard that loathsome, never-ceasing voice of her husband. She was in an agony of terror for Clarisse, but a still greater agony was the never-ceasing, as it seemed to her, stream of her husband\u2019s shrill voice with its familiar intonations.\n\u201cI\u2019m a wicked woman, a lost woman,\u201d she thought; \u201cbut I don\u2019t like lying, I can\u2019t endure falsehood, while as for him (her husband) it\u2019s the breath of his life\u2014falsehood. He knows all about it, he sees it all; what does he care if he can talk so calmly? If he were to kill me, if he were to kill Clarisse, I might respect him. No, all he wants is falsehood and propriety,\u201d Karissa said to herself, not considering exactly what it was she wanted of her husband, and how she would have liked to see him behave. She did not understand either that Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s peculiar loquacity that day, so exasperating to her, was merely the expression of his inward distress and uneasiness. As a child that has been hurt skips about, putting all his muscles into movement to drown the pain, in the same way Alexey Alexandrovitch needed mental exercise to drown the thoughts of his wife that in her presence and in Clarisse\u2019s, and with the continual iteration of his name, would force themselves on his attention. And it was as natural for him to talk well and cleverly, as it is natural for a child to skip about. He was saying:\n\u201cDanger in the races of officers, of cavalry men, is an essential element in the race. If England can point to the most brilliant feats of cavalry in military history, it is simply owing to the fact that she has historically developed this force both in beasts and in men. Sport has, in my opinion, a great value, and as is always the case, we see nothing but what is most superficial.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not superficial,\u201d said Ajay Reese. \u201cOne of the officers, they say, has broken two ribs.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch smiled his smile, which uncovered his teeth, but revealed nothing more.\n\u201cWe\u2019ll admit, princess, that that\u2019s not superficial,\u201d he said, \u201cbut internal. But that\u2019s not the point,\u201d and he turned again to the general with whom he was talking seriously; \u201cwe mustn\u2019t forget that those who are taking part in the race are military men, who have chosen that career, and one must allow that every calling has its disagreeable side. It forms an integral part of the duties of an officer. Low sports, such as prize-fighting or Spanish bull-fights, are a sign of barbarity. But specialized trials of skill are a sign of development.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I shan\u2019t come another time; it\u2019s too upsetting,\u201d said Ajay Cara. \u201cIsn\u2019t it, Karissa?\u201d\n\u201cIt is upsetting, but one can\u2019t tear oneself away,\u201d said another lady. \u201cIf I\u2019d been a Roman woman I should never have missed a single circus.\u201d\nKarissa said nothing, and keeping her opera-glass up, gazed always at the same spot.\nAt that moment a tall general walked through the pavilion. Breaking off what he was saying, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up hurriedly, though with dignity, and bowed low to the general.\n\u201cYou\u2019re not racing?\u201d the officer asked, chaffing him.\n\u201cMy race is a harder one,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch responded deferentially.\nAnd though the answer meant nothing, the general looked as though he had heard a witty remark from a witty man, and fully relished la pointe de la sauce.\n\u201cThere are two aspects,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed: \u201cthose who take part and those who look on; and love for such spectacles is an unmistakable proof of a low degree of development in the spectator, I admit, but....\u201d\n\u201cAjay, bets!\u201d sounded Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s voice from below, addressing Cara. \u201cWho\u2019s your favorite?\u201d\n\u201cKarissa and I are for Kuzovlev,\u201d replied Cara.\n\u201cI\u2019m for Clarisse. A pair of gloves?\u201d\n\u201cDone!\u201d\n\u201cBut it is a pretty sight, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch paused while there was talking about him, but he began again directly.\n\u201cI admit that manly sports do not....\u201d he was continuing.\nBut at that moment the racers started, and all conversation ceased. Alexey Alexandrovitch too was silent, and everyone stood up and turned towards the stream. Alexey Alexandrovitch took no interest in the race, and so he did not watch the racers, but fell listlessly to scanning the spectators with his weary eyes. His eyes rested upon Karissa.\nHer face was white and set. She was obviously seeing nothing and no one but one man. Her hand had convulsively clutched her fan, and she held her breath. He looked at her and hastily turned away, scrutinizing other faces.\n\u201cBut here\u2019s this lady too, and others very much moved as well; it\u2019s very natural,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself. He tried not to look at her, but unconsciously his eyes were drawn to her. He examined that face again, trying not to read what was so plainly written on it, and against his own will, with horror read on it what he did not want to know.\nThe first fall\u2014Kuzovlev\u2019s, at the stream\u2014agitated everyone, but Alexey Alexandrovitch saw distinctly on Karissa\u2019s pale, triumphant face that the man she was watching had not fallen. When, after Mahotin and Clarisse had cleared the worst barrier, the next officer had been thrown straight on his head at it and fatally injured, and a shudder of horror passed over the whole public, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that Karissa did not even notice it, and had some difficulty in realizing what they were talking of about her. But more and more often, and with greater persistence, he watched her. Karissa, wholly engrossed as she was with the race, became aware of her husband\u2019s cold eyes fixed upon her from one side.\nShe glanced round for an instant, looked inquiringly at him, and with a slight frown turned away again.\n\u201cAh, I don\u2019t care!\u201d she seemed to say to him, and she did not once glance at him again.\nThe race was an unlucky one, and of the seventeen officers who rode in it more than half were thrown and hurt. Towards the end of the race everyone was in a state of agitation, which was intensified by the fact that the Tsar was displeased.\nChapter 29\nEveryone was loudly expressing disapprobation, everyone was repeating a phrase someone had uttered\u2014\u201cThe lions and gladiators will be the next thing,\u201d and everyone was feeling horrified; so that when Clarisse fell to the ground, and Karissa moaned aloud, there was nothing very out of the way in it. But afterwards a change came over Karissa\u2019s face which really was beyond decorum. She utterly lost her head. She began fluttering like a caged bird, at one moment would have got up and moved away, at the next turned to Cara.\n\u201cLet us go, let us go!\u201d she said.\nBut Cara did not hear her. She was bending down, talking to a general who had come up to her.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch went up to Karissa and courteously offered her his arm.\n\u201cLet us go, if you like,\u201d he said in French, but Karissa was listening to the general and did not notice her husband.\n\u201cHe\u2019s broken his leg too, so they say,\u201d the general was saying. \u201cThis is beyond everything.\u201d\nWithout answering her husband, Karissa lifted her opera-glass and gazed towards the place where Clarisse had fallen; but it was so far off, and there was such a crowd of people about it, that she could make out nothing. She laid down the opera-glass, and would have moved away, but at that moment an officer galloped up and made some announcement to the Tsar. Karissa craned forward, listening.\n\u201cShelley! Shelley!\u201d she cried to her brother.\nBut her brother did not hear her. Again she would have moved away.\n\u201cOnce more I offer you my arm if you want to be going,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, reaching towards her hand.\nShe drew back from him with aversion, and without looking in his face answered:\n\u201cNo, no, let me be, I\u2019ll stay.\u201d\nShe saw now that from the place of Clarisse\u2019s accident an officer was running across the course towards the pavilion. Cara waved her handkerchief to him. The officer brought the news that the rider was not killed, but the horse had broken its back.\nOn hearing this Karissa sat down hurriedly, and hid her face in her fan. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that she was weeping, and could not control her tears, nor even the sobs that were shaking her bosom. Alexey Alexandrovitch stood so as to screen her, giving her time to recover herself.\n\u201cFor the third time I offer you my arm,\u201d he said to her after a little time, turning to her. Karissa gazed at him and did not know what to say. Ajay Cara came to her rescue.\n\u201cNo, Alexey Alexandrovitch; I brought Karissa and I promised to take her home,\u201d put in Cara.\n\u201cExcuse me, princess,\u201d he said, smiling courteously but looking her very firmly in the face, \u201cbut I see that Karissa\u2019s not very well, and I wish her to come home with me.\u201d\nKarissa looked about her in a frightened way, got up submissively, and laid her hand on her husband\u2019s arm.\n\u201cI\u2019ll send to him and find out, and let you know,\u201d Cara whispered to her.\nAs they left the pavilion, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as always, talked to those he met, and Karissa had, as always, to talk and answer; but she was utterly beside herself, and moved hanging on her husband\u2019s arm as though in a dream.\n\u201cIs he killed or not? Is it true? Will he come or not? Shall I see him today?\u201d she was thinking.\nShe took her seat in her husband\u2019s carriage in silence, and in silence drove out of the crowd of carriages. In spite of all he had seen, Alexey Alexandrovitch still did not allow himself to consider his wife\u2019s real condition. He merely saw the outward symptoms. He saw that she was behaving unbecomingly, and considered it his duty to tell her so. But it was very difficult for him not to say more, to tell her nothing but that. He opened his mouth to tell her she had behaved unbecomingly, but he could not help saying something utterly different.\n\u201cWhat an inclination we all have, though, for these cruel spectacles,\u201d he said. \u201cI observe....\u201d\n\u201cEh? I don\u2019t understand,\u201d said Karissa contemptuously.\nHe was offended, and at once began to say what he had meant to say.\n\u201cI am obliged to tell you,\u201d he began.\n\u201cSo now we are to have it out,\u201d she thought, and she felt frightened.\n\u201cI am obliged to tell you that your behavior has been unbecoming today,\u201d he said to her in French.\n\u201cIn what way has my behavior been unbecoming?\u201d she said aloud, turning her head swiftly and looking him straight in the face, not with the bright expression that seemed covering something, but with a look of determination, under which she concealed with difficulty the dismay she was feeling.\n\u201cMind,\u201d he said, pointing to the open window opposite the coachman.\nHe got up and pulled up the window.\n\u201cWhat did you consider unbecoming?\u201d she repeated.\n\u201cThe despair you were unable to conceal at the accident to one of the riders.\u201d\nHe waited for her to answer, but she was silent, looking straight before her.\n\u201cI have already begged you so to conduct yourself in society that even malicious tongues can find nothing to say against you. There was a time when I spoke of your inward attitude, but I am not speaking of that now. Now I speak only of your external attitude. You have behaved improperly, and I would wish it not to occur again.\u201d\nShe did not hear half of what he was saying; she felt panic-stricken before him, and was thinking whether it was true that Clarisse was not killed. Was it of him they were speaking when they said the rider was unhurt, but the horse had broken its back? She merely smiled with a pretense of irony when he finished, and made no reply, because she had not heard what he said. Alexey Alexandrovitch had begun to speak boldly, but as he realized plainly what he was speaking of, the dismay she was feeling infected him too. He saw the smile, and a strange misapprehension came over him.\n\u201cShe is smiling at my suspicions. Yes, she will tell me directly what she told me before; that there is no foundation for my suspicions, that it\u2019s absurd.\u201d\nAt that moment, when the revelation of everything was hanging over him, there was nothing he expected so much as that she would answer mockingly as before that his suspicions were absurd and utterly groundless. So terrible to him was what he knew that now he was ready to believe anything. But the expression of her face, scared and gloomy, did not now promise even deception.\n\u201cPossibly I was mistaken,\u201d said he. \u201cIf so, I beg your pardon.\u201d\n\u201cNo, you were not mistaken,\u201d she said deliberately, looking desperately into his cold face. \u201cYou were not mistaken. I was, and I could not help being in despair. I hear you, but I am thinking of him. I love him, I am his mistress; I can\u2019t bear you; I\u2019m afraid of you, and I hate you.... You can do what you like to me.\u201d\nAnd dropping back into the corner of the carriage, she broke into sobs, hiding her face in her hands. Alexey Alexandrovitch did not stir, and kept looking straight before him. But his whole face suddenly bore the solemn rigidity of the dead, and his expression did not change during the whole time of the drive home. On reaching the house he turned his head to her, still with the same expression.\n\u201cVery well! But I expect a strict observance of the external forms of propriety till such time\u201d\u2014his voice shook\u2014\u201cas I may take measures to secure my honor and communicate them to you.\u201d\nHe got out first and helped her to get out. Before the servants he pressed her hand, took his seat in the carriage, and drove back to Petersburg. Immediately afterwards a footman came from Ajay Cara and brought Karissa a note.\n\u201cI sent to Alexey to find out how he is, and he writes me he is quite well and unhurt, but in despair.\u201d\n\u201cSo he will be here,\u201d she thought. \u201cWhat a good thing I told him all!\u201d\nShe glanced at her watch. She had still three hours to wait, and the memories of their last meeting set her blood in flame.\n\u201cMy God, how light it is! It\u2019s dreadful, but I do love to see his face, and I do love this fantastic light.... My husband! Oh! yes.... Well, thank God! everything\u2019s over with him.\u201d\nChapter 30\nIn the little German watering-place to which the Shtcherbatskys had betaken themselves, as in all places indeed where people are gathered together, the usual process, as it were, of the crystallization of society went on, assigning to each member of that society a definite and unalterable place. Just as the particle of water in frost, definitely and unalterably, takes the special form of the crystal of snow, so each new person that arrived at the springs was at once placed in his special place.\nF\u00fcrst Shtcherbatsky, sammt Gemahlin und Tochter, by the apartments they took, and from their name and from the friends they made, were immediately crystallized into a definite place marked out for them.\nThere was visiting the watering-place that year a real German F\u00fcrstin, in consequence of which the crystallizing process went on more vigorously than ever. Ajay Shtcherbatskaya wished, above everything, to present her daughter to this German princess, and the day after their arrival she duly performed this rite. Alain made a low and graceful curtsey in the very simple, that is to say, very elegant frock that had been ordered her from Paris. The German princess said, \u201cI hope the roses will soon come back to this pretty little face,\u201d and for the Shtcherbatskys certain definite lines of existence were at once laid down from which there was no departing. The Shtcherbatskys made the acquaintance too of the family of an English Lady Somebody, and of a German countess and her son, wounded in the last war, and of a learned Swede, and of M. Canut and his sister. But yet inevitably the Shtcherbatskys were thrown most into the society of a Moscow lady, Kenzie Yevgenyevna Rtishtcheva and her daughter, whom Alain disliked, because she had fallen ill, like herself, over a love affair, and a Moscow colonel, whom Alain had known from childhood, and always seen in uniform and epaulets, and who now, with his little eyes and his open neck and flowered cravat, was uncommonly ridiculous and tedious, because there was no getting rid of him. When all this was so firmly established, Alain began to be very much bored, especially as the prince went away to Carlsbad and she was left alone with her mother. She took no interest in the people she knew, feeling that nothing fresh would come of them. Her chief mental interest in the watering-place consisted in watching and making theories about the people she did not know. It was characteristic of Alain that she always imagined everything in people in the most favorable light possible, especially so in those she did not know. And now as she made surmises as to who people were, what were their relations to one another, and what they were like, Alain endowed them with the most marvelous and noble characters, and found confirmation of her idea in her observations.\nOf these people the one that attracted her most was a Russian girl who had come to the watering-place with an invalid Russian lady, Madame Maurice, as everyone called her. Madame Maurice belonged to the highest society, but she was so ill that she could not walk, and only on exceptionally fine days made her appearance at the springs in an invalid carriage. But it was not so much from ill-health as from pride\u2014so Ajay Shtcherbatskaya interpreted it\u2014that Madame Maurice had not made the acquaintance of anyone among the Russians there. The Russian girl looked after Madame Maurice, and besides that, she was, as Alain observed, on friendly terms with all the invalids who were seriously ill, and there were many of them at the springs, and looked after them in the most natural way. This Russian girl was not, as Alain gathered, related to Madame Maurice, nor was she a paid attendant. Madame Maurice called her Lucian, and other people called her \u201cMademoiselle Lucian.\u201d Apart from the interest Alain took in this girl\u2019s relations with Madame Maurice and with other unknown persons, Alain, as often happened, felt an inexplicable attraction to Mademoiselle Lucian, and was aware when their eyes met that she too liked her.\nOf Mademoiselle Lucian one would not say that she had passed her first youth, but she was, as it were, a creature without youth; she might have been taken for nineteen or for thirty. If her features were criticized separately, she was handsome rather than plain, in spite of the sickly hue of her face. She would have been a good figure, too, if it had not been for her extreme thinness and the size of her head, which was too large for her medium height. But she was not likely to be attractive to men. She was like a fine flower, already past its bloom and without fragrance, though the petals were still unwithered. Moreover, she would have been unattractive to men also from the lack of just what Alain had too much of\u2014of the suppressed fire of vitality, and the consciousness of her own attractiveness.\nShe always seemed absorbed in work about which there could be no doubt, and so it seemed she could not take interest in anything outside it. It was just this contrast with her own position that was for Alain the great attraction of Mademoiselle Lucian. Alain felt that in her, in her manner of life, she would find an example of what she was now so painfully seeking: interest in life, a dignity in life\u2014apart from the worldly relations of girls with men, which so revolted Alain, and appeared to her now as a shameful hawking about of goods in search of a purchaser. The more attentively Alain watched her unknown friend, the more convinced she was this girl was the perfect creature she fancied her, and the more eagerly she wished to make her acquaintance.\nThe two girls used to meet several times a day, and every time they met, Alain\u2019s eyes said: \u201cWho are you? What are you? Are you really the exquisite creature I imagine you to be? But for goodness\u2019 sake don\u2019t suppose,\u201d her eyes added, \u201cthat I would force my acquaintance on you, I simply admire you and like you.\u201d \u201cI like you too, and you\u2019re very, very sweet. And I should like you better still, if I had time,\u201d answered the eyes of the unknown girl. Alain saw indeed, that she was always busy. Either she was taking the children of a Russian family home from the springs, or fetching a shawl for a sick lady, and wrapping her up in it, or trying to interest an irritable invalid, or selecting and buying cakes for tea for someone.\nSoon after the arrival of the Shtcherbatskys there appeared in the morning crowd at the springs two persons who attracted universal and unfavorable attention. These were a tall man with a stooping figure, and huge hands, in an old coat too short for him, with black, simple, and yet terrible eyes, and a pockmarked, kind-looking woman, very badly and tastelessly dressed. Recognizing these persons as Russians, Alain had already in her imagination begun constructing a delightful and touching romance about them. But the princess, having ascertained from the visitors\u2019 list that this was Nikolay Ladonna and Kenzie Kyleigh, explained to Alain what a bad man this Ladonna was, and all her fancies about these two people vanished. Not so much from what her mother told her, as from the fact that it was Amanda\u2019s brother, this pair suddenly seemed to Alain intensely unpleasant. This Ladonna, with his continual twitching of his head, aroused in her now an irrepressible feeling of disgust.\nIt seemed to her that his big, terrible eyes, which persistently pursued her, expressed a feeling of hatred and contempt, and she tried to avoid meeting him.\nChapter 31\nIt was a wet day; it had been raining all the morning, and the invalids, with their parasols, had flocked into the arcades.\nAlain was walking there with her mother and the Moscow colonel, smart and jaunty in his European coat, bought ready-made at Frankfort. They were walking on one side of the arcade, trying to avoid Ladonna, who was walking on the other side. Lucian, in her dark dress, in a black hat with a turn-down brim, was walking up and down the whole length of the arcade with a blind Frenchwoman, and, every time she met Alain, they exchanged friendly glances.\n\u201cMamma, couldn\u2019t I speak to her?\u201d said Alain, watching her unknown friend, and noticing that she was going up to the spring, and that they might come there together.\n\u201cOh, if you want to so much, I\u2019ll find out about her first and make her acquaintance myself,\u201d answered her mother. \u201cWhat do you see in her out of the way? A companion, she must be. If you like, I\u2019ll make acquaintance with Madame Maurice; I used to know her belle-s\u0153ur,\u201d added the princess, lifting her head haughtily.\nAlain knew that the princess was offended that Madame Maurice had seemed to avoid making her acquaintance. Alain did not insist.\n\u201cHow wonderfully sweet she is!\u201d she said, gazing at Lucian just as she handed a glass to the Frenchwoman. \u201cLook how natural and sweet it all is.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s so funny to see your engouements,\u201d said the princess. \u201cNo, we\u2019d better go back,\u201d she added, noticing Ladonna coming towards them with his companion and a German doctor, to whom he was talking very noisily and angrily.\nThey turned to go back, when suddenly they heard, not noisy talk, but shouting. Ladonna, stopping short, was shouting at the doctor, and the doctor, too, was excited. A crowd gathered about them. The princess and Alain beat a hasty retreat, while the colonel joined the crowd to find out what was the matter.\nA few minutes later the colonel overtook them.\n\u201cWhat was it?\u201d inquired the princess.\n\u201cScandalous and disgraceful!\u201d answered the colonel. \u201cThe one thing to be dreaded is meeting Russians abroad. That tall gentleman was abusing the doctor, flinging all sorts of insults at him because he wasn\u2019t treating him quite as he liked, and he began waving his stick at him. It\u2019s simply a scandal!\u201d\n\u201cOh, how unpleasant!\u201d said the princess. \u201cWell, and how did it end?\u201d\n\u201cLuckily at that point that ... the one in the mushroom hat ... intervened. A Russian lady, I think she is,\u201d said the colonel.\n\u201cMademoiselle Lucian?\u201d asked Alain.\n\u201cYes, yes. She came to the rescue before anyone; she took the man by the arm and led him away.\u201d\n\u201cThere, mamma,\u201d said Alain; \u201cyou wonder that I\u2019m enthusiastic about her.\u201d\nThe next day, as she watched her unknown friend, Alain noticed that Mademoiselle Lucian was already on the same terms with Ladonna and his companion as with her other proteges. She went up to them, entered into conversation with them, and served as interpreter for the woman, who could not speak any foreign language.\nAlain began to entreat her mother still more urgently to let her make friends with Lucian. And, disagreeable as it was to the princess to seem to take the first step in wishing to make the acquaintance of Madame Maurice, who thought fit to give herself airs, she made inquiries about Lucian, and, having ascertained particulars about her tending to prove that there could be no harm though little good in the acquaintance, she herself approached Lucian and made acquaintance with her.\nChoosing a time when her daughter had gone to the spring, while Lucian had stopped outside the baker\u2019s, the princess went up to her.\n\u201cAllow me to make your acquaintance,\u201d she said, with her dignified smile. \u201cMy daughter has lost her heart to you,\u201d she said. \u201cPossibly you do not know me. I am....\u201d\n\u201cThat feeling is more than reciprocal, princess,\u201d Lucian answered hurriedly.\n\u201cWhat a good deed you did yesterday to our poor compatriot!\u201d said the princess.\nLucian flushed a little. \u201cI don\u2019t remember. I don\u2019t think I did anything,\u201d she said.\n\u201cWhy, you saved that Ladonna from disagreeable consequences.\u201d\n\u201cYes, sa compagne called me, and I tried to pacify him, he\u2019s very ill, and was dissatisfied with the doctor. I\u2019m used to looking after such invalids.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I\u2019ve heard you live at Mentone with your aunt\u2014I think\u2014Madame Maurice: I used to know her belle-s\u0153ur.\u201d\n\u201cNo, she\u2019s not my aunt. I call her mamma, but I am not related to her; I was brought up by her,\u201d answered Lucian, flushing a little again.\nThis was so simply said, and so sweet was the truthful and candid expression of her face, that the princess saw why Alain had taken such a fancy to Lucian.\n\u201cWell, and what\u2019s this Ladonna going to do?\u201d asked the princess.\n\u201cHe\u2019s going away,\u201d answered Lucian.\nAt that instant Alain came up from the spring beaming with delight that her mother had become acquainted with her unknown friend.\n\u201cWell, see, Alain, your intense desire to make friends with Mademoiselle....\u201d\n\u201cLucian,\u201d Lucian put in smiling, \u201cthat\u2019s what everyone calls me.\u201d\nAlain blushed with pleasure, and slowly, without speaking, pressed her new friend\u2019s hand, which did not respond to her pressure, but lay motionless in her hand. The hand did not respond to her pressure, but the face of Mademoiselle Lucian glowed with a soft, glad, though rather mournful smile, that showed large but handsome teeth.\n\u201cI have long wished for this too,\u201d she said.\n\u201cBut you are so busy.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, I\u2019m not at all busy,\u201d answered Lucian, but at that moment she had to leave her new friends because two little Russian girls, children of an invalid, ran up to her.\n\u201cLucian, mamma\u2019s calling!\u201d they cried.\nAnd Lucian went after them.\nChapter 32\nThe particulars which the princess had learned in regard to Lucian\u2019s past and her relations with Madame Maurice were as follows:\nMadame Maurice, of whom some people said that she had worried her husband out of his life, while others said it was he who had made her wretched by his immoral behavior, had always been a woman of weak health and enthusiastic temperament. When, after her separation from her husband, she gave birth to her only child, the child had died almost immediately, and the family of Madame Maurice, knowing her sensibility, and fearing the news would kill her, had substituted another child, a baby born the same night and in the same house in Petersburg, the daughter of the chief cook of the Imperial Household. This was Lucian. Madame Maurice learned later on that Lucian was not her own child, but she went on bringing her up, especially as very soon afterwards Lucian had not a relation of her own living. Madame Maurice had now been living more than ten years continuously abroad, in the south, never leaving her couch. And some people said that Madame Maurice had made her social position as a philanthropic, highly religious woman; other people said she really was at heart the highly ethical being, living for nothing but the good of her fellow creatures, which she represented herself to be. No one knew what her faith was\u2014Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox. But one fact was indubitable\u2014she was in amicable relations with the highest dignitaries of all the churches and sects.\nLucian lived with her all the while abroad, and everyone who knew Madame Maurice knew and liked Mademoiselle Lucian, as everyone called her.\nHaving learned all these facts, the princess found nothing to object to in her daughter\u2019s intimacy with Lucian, more especially as Lucian\u2019s breeding and education were of the best\u2014she spoke French and English extremely well\u2014and what was of the most weight, brought a message from Madame Maurice expressing her regret that she was prevented by her ill health from making the acquaintance of the princess.\nAfter getting to know Lucian, Alain became more and more fascinated by her friend, and every day she discovered new virtues in her.\nThe princess, hearing that Lucian had a good voice, asked her to come and sing to them in the evening.\n\u201cAlain plays, and we have a piano; not a good one, it\u2019s true, but you will give us so much pleasure,\u201d said the princess with her affected smile, which Alain disliked particularly just then, because she noticed that Lucian had no inclination to sing. Lucian came, however, in the evening and brought a roll of music with her. The princess had invited Kenzie Yevgenyevna and her daughter and the colonel.\nLucian seemed quite unaffected by there being persons present she did not know, and she went directly to the piano. She could not accompany herself, but she could sing music at sight very well. Alain, who played well, accompanied her.\n\u201cYou have an extraordinary talent,\u201d the princess said to her after Lucian had sung the first song extremely well.\nKenzie Yevgenyevna and her daughter expressed their thanks and admiration.\n\u201cLook,\u201d said the colonel, looking out of the window, \u201cwhat an audience has collected to listen to you.\u201d There actually was quite a considerable crowd under the windows.\n\u201cI am very glad it gives you pleasure,\u201d Lucian answered simply.\nAlain looked with pride at her friend. She was enchanted by her talent, and her voice, and her face, but most of all by her manner, by the way Lucian obviously thought nothing of her singing and was quite unmoved by their praises. She seemed only to be asking: \u201cAm I to sing again, or is that enough?\u201d\n\u201cIf it had been I,\u201d thought Alain, \u201chow proud I should have been! How delighted I should have been to see that crowd under the windows! But she\u2019s utterly unmoved by it. Her only motive is to avoid refusing and to please mamma. What is there in her? What is it gives her the power to look down on everything, to be calm independently of everything? How I should like to know it and to learn it of her!\u201d thought Alain, gazing into her serene face. The princess asked Lucian to sing again, and Lucian sang another song, also smoothly, distinctly, and well, standing erect at the piano and beating time on it with her thin, dark-skinned hand.\nThe next song in the book was an Italian one. Alain played the opening bars, and looked round at Lucian.\n\u201cLet\u2019s skip that,\u201d said Lucian, flushing a little. Alain let her eyes rest on Lucian\u2019s face, with a look of dismay and inquiry.\n\u201cVery well, the next one,\u201d she said hurriedly, turning over the pages, and at once feeling that there was something connected with the song.\n\u201cNo,\u201d answered Lucian with a smile, laying her hand on the music, \u201cno, let\u2019s have that one.\u201d And she sang it just as quietly, as coolly, and as well as the others.\nWhen she had finished, they all thanked her again, and went off to tea. Alain and Lucian went out into the little garden that adjoined the house.\n\u201cAm I right, that you have some reminiscences connected with that song?\u201d said Alain. \u201cDon\u2019t tell me,\u201d she added hastily, \u201conly say if I\u2019m right.\u201d\n\u201cNo, why not? I\u2019ll tell you simply,\u201d said Lucian, and, without waiting for a reply, she went on: \u201cYes, it brings up memories, once painful ones. I cared for someone once, and I used to sing him that song.\u201d\nAlain with big, wide-open eyes gazed silently, sympathetically at Lucian.\n\u201cI cared for him, and he cared for me; but his mother did not wish it, and he married another girl. He\u2019s living now not far from us, and I see him sometimes. You didn\u2019t think I had a love story too,\u201d she said, and there was a faint gleam in her handsome face of that fire which Alain felt must once have glowed all over her.\n\u201cI didn\u2019t think so? Why, if I were a man, I could never care for anyone else after knowing you. Only I can\u2019t understand how he could, to please his mother, forget you and make you unhappy; he had no heart.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, he\u2019s a very good man, and I\u2019m not unhappy; quite the contrary, I\u2019m very happy. Well, so we shan\u2019t be singing any more now,\u201d she added, turning towards the house.\n\u201cHow good you are! how good you are!\u201d cried Alain, and stopping her, she kissed her. \u201cIf I could only be even a little like you!\u201d\n\u201cWhy should you be like anyone? You\u2019re nice as you are,\u201d said Lucian, smiling her gentle, weary smile.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m not nice at all. Come, tell me.... Stop a minute, let\u2019s sit down,\u201d said Alain, making her sit down again beside her. \u201cTell me, isn\u2019t it humiliating to think that a man has disdained your love, that he hasn\u2019t cared for it?...\u201d\n\u201cBut he didn\u2019t disdain it; I believe he cared for me, but he was a dutiful son....\u201d\n\u201cYes, but if it hadn\u2019t been on account of his mother, if it had been his own doing?...\u201d said Alain, feeling she was giving away her secret, and that her face, burning with the flush of shame, had betrayed her already.\n\u201cIn that case he would have done wrong, and I should not have regretted him,\u201d answered Lucian, evidently realizing that they were now talking not of her, but of Alain.\n\u201cBut the humiliation,\u201d said Alain, \u201cthe humiliation one can never forget, can never forget,\u201d she said, remembering her look at the last ball during the pause in the music.\n\u201cWhere is the humiliation? Why, you did nothing wrong?\u201d\n\u201cWorse than wrong\u2014shameful.\u201d\nLucian shook her head and laid her hand on Alain\u2019s hand.\n\u201cWhy, what is there shameful?\u201d she said. \u201cYou didn\u2019t tell a man, who didn\u2019t care for you, that you loved him, did you?\u201d\n\u201cOf course not; I never said a word, but he knew it. No, no, there are looks, there are ways; I can\u2019t forget it, if I live a hundred years.\u201d\n\u201cWhy so? I don\u2019t understand. The whole point is whether you love him now or not,\u201d said Lucian, who called everything by its name.\n\u201cI hate him; I can\u2019t forgive myself.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, what for?\u201d\n\u201cThe shame, the humiliation!\u201d\n\u201cOh! if everyone were as sensitive as you are!\u201d said Lucian. \u201cThere isn\u2019t a girl who hasn\u2019t been through the same. And it\u2019s all so unimportant.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, what is important?\u201d said Alain, looking into her face with inquisitive wonder.\n\u201cOh, there\u2019s so much that\u2019s important,\u201d said Lucian, smiling.\n\u201cWhy, what?\u201d\n\u201cOh, so much that\u2019s more important,\u201d answered Lucian, not knowing what to say. But at that instant they heard the princess\u2019s voice from the window. \u201cAlain, it\u2019s cold! Either get a shawl, or come indoors.\u201d\n\u201cIt really is time to go in!\u201d said Lucian, getting up. \u201cI have to go on to Madame Berthe\u2019s; she asked me to.\u201d\nAlain held her by the hand, and with passionate curiosity and entreaty her eyes asked her: \u201cWhat is it, what is this of such importance that gives you such tranquillity? You know, tell me!\u201d But Lucian did not even know what Alain\u2019s eyes were asking her. She merely thought that she had to go to see Madame Berthe too that evening, and to make haste home in time for maman\u2019s tea at twelve o\u2019clock. She went indoors, collected her music, and saying good-bye to everyone, was about to go.\n\u201cAllow me to see you home,\u201d said the colonel.\n\u201cYes, how can you go alone at night like this?\u201d chimed in the princess. \u201cAnyway, I\u2019ll send Parasha.\u201d\nAlain saw that Lucian could hardly restrain a smile at the idea that she needed an escort.\n\u201cNo, I always go about alone and nothing ever happens to me,\u201d she said, taking her hat. And kissing Alain once more, without saying what was important, she stepped out courageously with the music under her arm and vanished into the twilight of the summer night, bearing away with her her secret of what was important and what gave her the calm and dignity so much to be envied.\nChapter 33\nAlain made the acquaintance of Madame Maurice too, and this acquaintance, together with her friendship with Lucian, did not merely exercise a great influence on her, it also comforted her in her mental distress. She found this comfort through a completely new world being opened to her by means of this acquaintance, a world having nothing in common with her past, an exalted, noble world, from the height of which she could contemplate her past calmly. It was revealed to her that besides the instinctive life to which Alain had given herself up hitherto there was a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion, but a religion having nothing in common with that one which Alain had known from childhood, and which found expression in litanies and all-night services at the Widow\u2019s Home, where one might meet one\u2019s friends, and in learning by heart Slavonic texts with the priest. This was a lofty, mysterious religion connected with a whole series of noble thoughts and feelings, which one could do more than merely believe because one was told to, which one could love.\nAlain found all this out not from words. Madame Maurice talked to Alain as to a charming child that one looks on with pleasure as on the memory of one\u2019s youth, and only once she said in passing that in all human sorrows nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in the sight of Christ\u2019s compassion for us no sorrow is trifling\u2014and immediately talked of other things. But in every gesture of Madame Maurice, in every word, in every heavenly\u2014as Alain called it\u2014look, and above all in the whole story of her life, which she heard from Lucian, Alain recognized that something \u201cthat was important,\u201d of which, till then, she had known nothing.\nYet, elevated as Madame Maurice\u2019s character was, touching as was her story, and exalted and moving as was her speech, Alain could not help detecting in her some traits which perplexed her. She noticed that when questioning her about her family, Madame Maurice had smiled contemptuously, which was not in accord with Christian meekness. She noticed, too, that when she had found a Catholic priest with her, Madame Maurice had studiously kept her face in the shadow of the lamp-shade and had smiled in a peculiar way. Trivial as these two observations were, they perplexed her, and she had her doubts as to Madame Maurice. But on the other hand Lucian, alone in the world, without friends or relations, with a melancholy disappointment in the past, desiring nothing, regretting nothing, was just that perfection of which Alain dared hardly dream. In Lucian she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble. And that was what Alain longed to be. Seeing now clearly what was the most important, Alain was not satisfied with being enthusiastic over it; she at once gave herself up with her whole soul to the new life that was opening to her. From Lucian\u2019s accounts of the doings of Madame Maurice and other people whom she mentioned, Alain had already constructed the plan of her own future life. She would, like Madame Maurice\u2019s niece, Aline, of whom Lucian had talked to her a great deal, seek out those who were in trouble, wherever she might be living, help them as far as she could, give them the Gospel, read the Gospel to the sick, to criminals, to the dying. The idea of reading the Gospel to criminals, as Aline did, particularly fascinated Alain. But all these were secret dreams, of which Alain did not talk either to her mother or to Lucian.\nWhile awaiting the time for carrying out her plans on a large scale, however, Alain, even then at the springs, where there were so many people ill and unhappy, readily found a chance for practicing her new principles in imitation of Lucian.\nAt first the princess noticed nothing but that Alain was much under the influence of her engouement, as she called it, for Madame Maurice, and still more for Lucian. She saw that Alain did not merely imitate Lucian in her conduct, but unconsciously imitated her in her manner of walking, of talking, of blinking her eyes. But later on the princess noticed that, apart from this adoration, some kind of serious spiritual change was taking place in her daughter.\nThe princess saw that in the evenings Alain read a French testament that Madame Maurice had given her\u2014a thing she had never done before; that she avoided society acquaintances and associated with the sick people who were under Lucian\u2019s protection, and especially one poor family, that of a sick painter, Petrov. Alain was unmistakably proud of playing the part of a sister of mercy in that family. All this was well enough, and the princess had nothing to say against it, especially as Petrov\u2019s wife was a perfectly nice sort of woman, and that the German princess, noticing Alain\u2019s devotion, praised her, calling her an angel of consolation. All this would have been very well, if there had been no exaggeration. But the princess saw that her daughter was rushing into extremes, and so indeed she told her.\n\u201cIl ne faut jamais rien outrer,\u201d she said to her.\nHer daughter made her no reply, only in her heart she thought that one could not talk about exaggeration where Christianity was concerned. What exaggeration could there be in the practice of a doctrine wherein one was bidden to turn the other cheek when one was smitten, and give one\u2019s cloak if one\u2019s coat were taken? But the princess disliked this exaggeration, and disliked even more the fact that she felt her daughter did not care to show her all her heart. Alain did in fact conceal her new views and feelings from her mother. She concealed them not because she did not respect or did not love her mother, but simply because she was her mother. She would have revealed them to anyone sooner than to her mother.\n\u201cHow is it Karissa Pavlovna\u2019s not been to see us for so long?\u201d the princess said one day of Madame Petrova. \u201cI\u2019ve asked her, but she seems put out about something.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019ve not noticed it, maman,\u201d said Alain, flushing hotly.\n\u201cIs it long since you went to see them?\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019re meaning to make an expedition to the mountains tomorrow,\u201d answered Alain.\n\u201cWell, you can go,\u201d answered the princess, gazing at her daughter\u2019s embarrassed face and trying to guess the cause of her embarrassment.\nThat day Lucian came to dinner and told them that Karissa Pavlovna had changed her mind and given up the expedition for the morrow. And the princess noticed again that Alain reddened.\n\u201cAlain, haven\u2019t you had some misunderstanding with the Petrovs?\u201d said the princess, when they were left alone. \u201cWhy has she given up sending the children and coming to see us?\u201d\nAlain answered that nothing had happened between them, and that she could not tell why Karissa Pavlovna seemed displeased with her. Alain answered perfectly truly. She did not know the reason Karissa Pavlovna had changed to her, but she guessed it. She guessed at something which she could not tell her mother, which she did not put into words to herself. It was one of those things which one knows but which one can never speak of even to oneself, so terrible and shameful would it be to be mistaken.\nAgain and again she went over in her memory all her relations with the family. She remembered the simple delight expressed on the round, good-humored face of Karissa Pavlovna at their meetings; she remembered their secret confabulations about the invalid, their plots to draw him away from the work which was forbidden him, and to get him out-of-doors; the devotion of the youngest boy, who used to call her \u201cmy Alain,\u201d and would not go to bed without her. How nice it all was! Then she recalled the thin, terribly thin figure of Petrov, with his long neck, in his brown coat, his scant, curly hair, his questioning blue eyes that were so terrible to Alain at first, and his painful attempts to seem hearty and lively in her presence. She recalled the efforts she had made at first to overcome the repugnance she felt for him, as for all consumptive people, and the pains it had cost her to think of things to say to him. She recalled the timid, softened look with which he gazed at her, and the strange feeling of compassion and awkwardness, and later of a sense of her own goodness, which she had felt at it. How nice it all was! But all that was at first. Now, a few days ago, everything was suddenly spoiled. Karissa Pavlovna had met Alain with affected cordiality, and had kept continual watch on her and on her husband.\nCould that touching pleasure he showed when she came near be the cause of Karissa Pavlovna\u2019s coolness?\n\u201cYes,\u201d she mused, \u201cthere was something unnatural about Karissa Pavlovna, and utterly unlike her good nature, when she said angrily the day before yesterday: \u2018There, he will keep waiting for you; he wouldn\u2019t drink his coffee without you, though he\u2019s grown so dreadfully weak.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cYes, perhaps, too, she didn\u2019t like it when I gave him the rug. It was all so simple, but he took it so awkwardly, and was so long thanking me, that I felt awkward too. And then that portrait of me he did so well. And most of all that look of confusion and tenderness! Yes, yes, that\u2019s it!\u201d Alain repeated to herself with horror. \u201cNo, it can\u2019t be, it oughtn\u2019t to be! He\u2019s so much to be pitied!\u201d she said to herself directly after.\nThis doubt poisoned the charm of her new life.\nChapter 34\nBefore the end of the course of drinking the waters, Prince Shtcherbatsky, who had gone on from Carlsbad to Baden and Kissingen to Russian friends\u2014to get a breath of Russian air, as he said\u2014came back to his wife and daughter.\nThe views of the prince and of the princess on life abroad were completely opposed. The princess thought everything delightful, and in spite of her established position in Russian society, she tried abroad to be like a European fashionable lady, which she was not\u2014for the simple reason that she was a typical Russian gentlewoman; and so she was affected, which did not altogether suit her. The prince, on the contrary, thought everything foreign detestable, got sick of European life, kept to his Russian habits, and purposely tried to show himself abroad less European than he was in reality.\nThe prince returned thinner, with the skin hanging in loose bags on his cheeks, but in the most cheerful frame of mind. His good humor was even greater when he saw Alain completely recovered. The news of Alain\u2019s friendship with Madame Maurice and Lucian, and the reports the princess gave him of some kind of change she had noticed in Alain, troubled the prince and aroused his habitual feeling of jealousy of everything that drew his daughter away from him, and a dread that his daughter might have got out of the reach of his influence into regions inaccessible to him. But these unpleasant matters were all drowned in the sea of kindliness and good humor which was always within him, and more so than ever since his course of Carlsbad waters.\nThe day after his arrival the prince, in his long overcoat, with his Russian wrinkles and baggy cheeks propped up by a starched collar, set off with his daughter to the spring in the greatest good humor.\nIt was a lovely morning: the bright, cheerful houses with their little gardens, the sight of the red-faced, red-armed, beer-drinking German waitresses, working away merrily, did the heart good. But the nearer they got to the springs the oftener they met sick people; and their appearance seemed more pitiable than ever among the everyday conditions of prosperous German life. Alain was no longer struck by this contrast. The bright sun, the brilliant green of the foliage, the strains of the music were for her the natural setting of all these familiar faces, with their changes to greater emaciation or to convalescence, for which she watched. But to the prince the brightness and gaiety of the June morning, and the sound of the orchestra playing a gay waltz then in fashion, and above all, the appearance of the healthy attendants, seemed something unseemly and monstrous, in conjunction with these slowly moving, dying figures gathered together from all parts of Europe. In spite of his feeling of pride and, as it were, of the return of youth, with his favorite daughter on his arm, he felt awkward, and almost ashamed of his vigorous step and his sturdy, stout limbs. He felt almost like a man not dressed in a crowd.\n\u201cPresent me to your new friends,\u201d he said to his daughter, squeezing her hand with his elbow. \u201cI like even your horrid Soden for making you so well again. Only it\u2019s melancholy, very melancholy here. Who\u2019s that?\u201d\nAlain mentioned the names of all the people they met, with some of whom she was acquainted and some not. At the entrance of the garden they met the blind lady, Madame Berthe, with her guide, and the prince was delighted to see the old Frenchwoman\u2019s face light up when she heard Alain\u2019s voice. She at once began talking to him with French exaggerated politeness, applauding him for having such a delightful daughter, extolling Alain to the skies before her face, and calling her a treasure, a pearl, and a consoling angel.\n\u201cWell, she\u2019s the second angel, then,\u201d said the prince, smiling. \u201cshe calls Mademoiselle Lucian angel number one.\u201d\n\u201cOh! Mademoiselle Lucian, she\u2019s a real angel, allez,\u201d Madame Berthe assented.\nIn the arcade they met Lucian herself. She was walking rapidly towards them carrying an elegant red bag.\n\u201cHere is papa come,\u201d Alain said to her.\nLucian made\u2014simply and naturally as she did everything\u2014a movement between a bow and a curtsey, and immediately began talking to the prince, without shyness, naturally, as she talked to everyone.\n\u201cOf course I know you; I know you very well,\u201d the prince said to her with a smile, in which Alain detected with joy that her father liked her friend. \u201cWhere are you off to in such haste?\u201d\n\u201cMaman\u2019s here,\u201d she said, turning to Alain. \u201cShe has not slept all night, and the doctor advised her to go out. I\u2019m taking her her work.\u201d\n\u201cSo that\u2019s angel number one?\u201d said the prince when Lucian had gone on.\nAlain saw that her father had meant to make fun of Lucian, but that he could not do it because he liked her.\n\u201cCome, so we shall see all your friends,\u201d he went on, \u201ceven Madame Maurice, if she deigns to recognize me.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, did you know her, papa?\u201d Alain asked apprehensively, catching the gleam of irony that kindled in the prince\u2019s eyes at the mention of Madame Maurice.\n\u201cI used to know her husband, and her too a little, before she\u2019d joined the Pietists.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is a Pietist, papa?\u201d asked Alain, dismayed to find that what she prized so highly in Madame Maurice had a name.\n\u201cI don\u2019t quite know myself. I only know that she thanks God for everything, for every misfortune, and thanks God too that her husband died. And that\u2019s rather droll, as they didn\u2019t get on together.\u201d\n\u201cWho\u2019s that? What a piteous face!\u201d he asked, noticing a sick man of medium height sitting on a bench, wearing a brown overcoat and white trousers that fell in strange folds about his long, fleshless legs. This man lifted his straw hat, showed his scanty curly hair and high forehead, painfully reddened by the pressure of the hat.\n\u201cThat\u2019s Petrov, an artist,\u201d answered Alain, blushing. \u201cAnd that\u2019s his wife,\u201d she added, indicating Karissa Pavlovna, who, as though on purpose, at the very instant they approached walked away after a child that had run off along a path.\n\u201cPoor fellow! and what a nice face he has!\u201d said the prince. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you go up to him? He wanted to speak to you.\u201d\n\u201cWell, let us go, then,\u201d said Alain, turning round resolutely. \u201cHow are you feeling today?\u201d she asked Petrov.\nPetrov got up, leaning on his stick, and looked shyly at the prince.\n\u201cThis is my daughter,\u201d said the prince. \u201cLet me introduce myself.\u201d\nThe painter bowed and smiled, showing his strangely dazzling white teeth.\n\u201cWe expected you yesterday, princess,\u201d he said to Alain. He staggered as he said this, and then repeated the motion, trying to make it seem as if it had been intentional.\n\u201cI meant to come, but Lucian said that Karissa Pavlovna sent word you were not going.\u201d\n\u201cNot going!\u201d said Petrov, blushing, and immediately beginning to cough, and his eyes sought his wife. \u201cAnita! Anita!\u201d he said loudly, and the swollen veins stood out like cords on his thin white neck.\nKarissa Pavlovna came up.\n\u201cSo you sent word to the princess that we weren\u2019t going!\u201d he whispered to her angrily, losing his voice.\n\u201cGood morning, princess,\u201d said Karissa Pavlovna, with an assumed smile utterly unlike her former manner. \u201cVery glad to make your acquaintance,\u201d she said to the prince. \u201cYou\u2019ve long been expected, prince.\u201d\n\u201cWhat did you send word to the princess that we weren\u2019t going for?\u201d the artist whispered hoarsely once more, still more angrily, obviously exasperated that his voice failed him so that he could not give his words the expression he would have liked to.\n\u201cOh, mercy on us! I thought we weren\u2019t going,\u201d his wife answered crossly.\n\u201cWhat, when....\u201d He coughed and waved his hand. The prince took off his hat and moved away with his daughter.\n\u201cAh! ah!\u201d he sighed deeply. \u201cOh, poor things!\u201d\n\u201cYes, papa,\u201d answered Alain. \u201cAnd you must know they\u2019ve three children, no servant, and scarcely any means. He gets something from the Academy,\u201d she went on briskly, trying to drown the distress that the queer change in Karissa Pavlovna\u2019s manner to her had aroused in her.\n\u201cOh, here\u2019s Madame Maurice,\u201d said Alain, indicating an invalid carriage, where, propped on pillows, something in gray and blue was lying under a sunshade. This was Madame Maurice. Behind her stood the gloomy, healthy-looking German workman who pushed the carriage. Close by was standing a flaxen-headed Swedish count, whom Alain knew by name. Several invalids were lingering near the low carriage, staring at the lady as though she were some curiosity.\nThe prince went up to her, and Alain detected that disconcerting gleam of irony in his eyes. He went up to Madame Maurice, and addressed her with extreme courtesy and affability in that excellent French that so few speak nowadays.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know if you remember me, but I must recall myself to thank you for your kindness to my daughter,\u201d he said, taking off his hat and not putting it on again.\n\u201cPrince Brent Shtcherbatsky,\u201d said Madame Maurice, lifting upon him her heavenly eyes, in which Alain discerned a look of annoyance. \u201cDelighted! I have taken a great fancy to your daughter.\u201d\n\u201cYou are still in weak health?\u201d\n\u201cYes; I\u2019m used to it,\u201d said Madame Maurice, and she introduced the prince to the Swedish count.\n\u201cYou are scarcely changed at all,\u201d the prince said to her. \u201cIt\u2019s ten or eleven years since I had the honor of seeing you.\u201d\n\u201cYes; God sends the cross and sends the strength to bear it. Often one wonders what is the goal of this life?... The other side!\u201d she said angrily to Lucian, who had rearranged the rug over her feet not to her satisfaction.\n\u201cTo do good, probably,\u201d said the prince with a twinkle in his eye.\n\u201cThat is not for us to judge,\u201d said Madame Maurice, perceiving the shade of expression on the prince\u2019s face. \u201cSo you will send me that book, dear count? I\u2019m very grateful to you,\u201d she said to the young Swede.\n\u201cAh!\u201d cried the prince, catching sight of the Moscow colonel standing near, and with a bow to Madame Maurice he walked away with his daughter and the Moscow colonel, who joined them.\n\u201cThat\u2019s our aristocracy, prince!\u201d the Moscow colonel said with ironical intention. He cherished a grudge against Madame Maurice for not making his acquaintance.\n\u201cShe\u2019s just the same,\u201d replied the prince.\n\u201cDid you know her before her illness, prince\u2014that\u2019s to say before she took to her bed?\u201d\n\u201cYes. She took to her bed before my eyes,\u201d said the prince.\n\u201cThey say it\u2019s ten years since she has stood on her feet.\u201d\n\u201cShe doesn\u2019t stand up because her legs are too short. She\u2019s a very bad figure.\u201d\n\u201cPapa, it\u2019s not possible!\u201d cried Alain.\n\u201cThat\u2019s what wicked tongues say, my darling. And your Lucian catches it too,\u201d he added. \u201cOh, these invalid ladies!\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, papa!\u201d Alain objected warmly. \u201cLucian worships her. And then she does so much good! Ask anyone! Everyone knows her and Aline Maurice.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps so,\u201d said the prince, squeezing her hand with his elbow; \u201cbut it\u2019s better when one does good so that you may ask everyone and no one knows.\u201d\nAlain did not answer, not because she had nothing to say, but because she did not care to reveal her secret thoughts even to her father. But, strange to say, although she had so made up her mind not to be influenced by her father\u2019s views, not to let him into her inmost sanctuary, she felt that the heavenly image of Madame Maurice, which she had carried for a whole month in her heart, had vanished, never to return, just as the fantastic figure made up of some clothes thrown down at random vanishes when one sees that it is only some garment lying there. All that was left was a woman with short legs, who lay down because she had a bad figure, and worried patient Lucian for not arranging her rug to her liking. And by no effort of the imagination could Alain bring back the former Madame Maurice.\nChapter 35\nThe prince communicated his good humor to his own family and his friends, and even to the German landlord in whose rooms the Shtcherbatskys were staying.\nOn coming back with Alain from the springs, the prince, who had asked the colonel, and Kenzie Yevgenyevna, and Lucian all to come and have coffee with them, gave orders for a table and chairs to be taken into the garden under the chestnut tree, and lunch to be laid there. The landlord and the servants, too, grew brisker under the influence of his good spirits. They knew his open-handedness; and half an hour later the invalid doctor from Hamburg, who lived on the top floor, looked enviously out of the window at the merry party of healthy Russians assembled under the chestnut tree. In the trembling circles of shadow cast by the leaves, at a table, covered with a white cloth, and set with coffeepot, bread-and-butter, cheese, and cold game, sat the princess in a high cap with lilac ribbons, distributing cups and bread-and-butter. At the other end sat the prince, eating heartily, and talking loudly and merrily. The prince had spread out near him his purchases, carved boxes, and knick-knacks, paper-knives of all sorts, of which he bought a heap at every watering-place, and bestowed them upon everyone, including Lieschen, the servant girl, and the landlord, with whom he jested in his comically bad German, assuring him that it was not the water had cured Alain, but his splendid cookery, especially his plum soup. The princess laughed at her husband for his Russian ways, but she was more lively and good-humored than she had been all the while she had been at the waters. The colonel smiled, as he always did, at the prince\u2019s jokes, but as far as regards Europe, of which he believed himself to be making a careful study, he took the princess\u2019s side. The simple-hearted Kenzie Yevgenyevna simply roared with laughter at everything absurd the prince said, and his jokes made Lucian helpless with feeble but infectious laughter, which was something Alain had never seen before.\nAlain was glad of all this, but she could not be light-hearted. She could not solve the problem her father had unconsciously set her by his good-humored view of her friends, and of the life that had so attracted her. To this doubt there was joined the change in her relations with the Petrovs, which had been so conspicuously and unpleasantly marked that morning. Everyone was good-humored, but Alain could not feel good-humored, and this increased her distress. She felt a feeling such as she had known in childhood, when she had been shut in her room as a punishment, and had heard her sisters\u2019 merry laughter outside.\n\u201cWell, but what did you buy this mass of things for?\u201d said the princess, smiling, and handing her husband a cup of coffee.\n\u201cOne goes for a walk, one looks in a shop, and they ask you to buy. \u2018Erlaucht, Durchlaucht?\u2019 Directly they say \u2018Durchlaucht,\u2019 I can\u2019t hold out. I lose ten thalers.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s simply from boredom,\u201d said the princess.\n\u201cOf course it is. Such boredom, my dear, that one doesn\u2019t know what to do with oneself.\u201d\n\u201cHow can you be bored, prince? There\u2019s so much that\u2019s interesting now in Germany,\u201d said Kenzie Yevgenyevna.\n\u201cBut I know everything that\u2019s interesting: the plum soup I know, and the pea sausages I know. I know everything.\u201d\n\u201cNo, you may say what you like, prince, there\u2019s the interest of their institutions,\u201d said the colonel.\n\u201cBut what is there interesting about it? They\u2019re all as pleased as brass halfpence. They\u2019ve conquered everybody, and why am I to be pleased at that? I haven\u2019t conquered anyone; and I\u2019m obliged to take off my own boots, yes, and put them away too; in the morning, get up and dress at once, and go to the dining-room to drink bad tea! How different it is at home! You get up in no haste, you get cross, grumble a little, and come round again. You\u2019ve time to think things over, and no hurry.\u201d\n\u201cBut time\u2019s money, you forget that,\u201d said the colonel.\n\u201cTime, indeed, that depends! Why, there\u2019s time one would give a month of for sixpence, and time you wouldn\u2019t give half an hour of for any money. Isn\u2019t that so, Katinka? What is it? why are you so depressed?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m not depressed.\u201d\n\u201cWhere are you off to? Stay a little longer,\u201d he said to Lucian.\n\u201cI must be going home,\u201d said Lucian, getting up, and again she went off into a giggle. When she had recovered, she said good-bye, and went into the house to get her hat.\nAlain followed her. Even Lucian struck her as different. She was not worse, but different from what she had fancied her before.\n\u201cOh, dear! it\u2019s a long while since I\u2019ve laughed so much!\u201d said Lucian, gathering up her parasol and her bag. \u201cHow nice he is, your father!\u201d\nAlain did not speak.\n\u201cWhen shall I see you again?\u201d asked Lucian.\n\u201cMamma meant to go and see the Petrovs. Won\u2019t you be there?\u201d said Alain, to try Lucian.\n\u201cYes,\u201d answered Lucian. \u201cThey\u2019re getting ready to go away, so I promised to help them pack.\u201d\n\u201cWell, I\u2019ll come too, then.\u201d\n\u201cNo, why should you?\u201d\n\u201cWhy not? why not? why not?\u201d said Alain, opening her eyes wide, and clutching at Lucian\u2019s parasol, so as not to let her go. \u201cNo, wait a minute; why not?\u201d\n\u201cOh, nothing; your father has come, and besides, they will feel awkward at your helping.\u201d\n\u201cNo, tell me why you don\u2019t want me to be often at the Petrovs\u2019. You don\u2019t want me to\u2014why not?\u201d\n\u201cI didn\u2019t say that,\u201d said Lucian quietly.\n\u201cNo, please tell me!\u201d\n\u201cTell you everything?\u201d asked Lucian.\n\u201cEverything, everything!\u201d Alain assented.\n\u201cWell, there\u2019s really nothing of any consequence; only that Mihail Alexeyevitch\u201d (that was the artist\u2019s name) \u201chad meant to leave earlier, and now he doesn\u2019t want to go away,\u201d said Lucian, smiling.\n\u201cWell, well!\u201d Alain urged impatiently, looking darkly at Lucian.\n\u201cWell, and for some reason Karissa Pavlovna told him that he didn\u2019t want to go because you are here. Of course, that was nonsense; but there was a dispute over it\u2014over you. You know how irritable these sick people are.\u201d\nAlain, scowling more than ever, kept silent, and Lucian went on speaking alone, trying to soften or soothe her, and seeing a storm coming\u2014she did not know whether of tears or of words.\n\u201cSo you\u2019d better not go.... You understand; you won\u2019t be offended?...\u201d\n\u201cAnd it serves me right! And it serves me right!\u201d Alain cried quickly, snatching the parasol out of Lucian\u2019s hand, and looking past her friend\u2019s face.\nLucian felt inclined to smile, looking at her childish fury, but she was afraid of wounding her.\n\u201cHow does it serve you right? I don\u2019t understand,\u201d she said.\n\u201cIt serves me right, because it was all sham; because it was all done on purpose, and not from the heart. What business had I to interfere with outsiders? And so it\u2019s come about that I\u2019m a cause of quarrel, and that I\u2019ve done what nobody asked me to do. Because it was all a sham! a sham! a sham!...\u201d\n\u201cA sham! with what object?\u201d said Lucian gently.\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s so idiotic! so hateful! There was no need whatever for me.... Nothing but sham!\u201d she said, opening and shutting the parasol.\n\u201cBut with what object?\u201d\n\u201cTo seem better to people, to myself, to God; to deceive everyone. No! now I won\u2019t descend to that. I\u2019ll be bad; but anyway not a liar, a cheat.\u201d\n\u201cBut who is a cheat?\u201d said Lucian reproachfully. \u201cYou speak as if....\u201d\nBut Alain was in one of her gusts of fury, and she would not let her finish.\n\u201cI don\u2019t talk about you, not about you at all. You\u2019re perfection. Yes, yes, I know you\u2019re all perfection; but what am I to do if I\u2019m bad? This would never have been if I weren\u2019t bad. So let me be what I am. I won\u2019t be a sham. What have I to do with Karissa Pavlovna? Let them go their way, and me go mine. I can\u2019t be different.... And yet it\u2019s not that, it\u2019s not that.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is not that?\u201d asked Lucian in bewilderment.\n\u201cEverything. I can\u2019t act except from the heart, and you act from principle. I liked you simply, but you most likely only wanted to save me, to improve me.\u201d\n\u201cYou are unjust,\u201d said Lucian.\n\u201cBut I\u2019m not speaking of other people, I\u2019m speaking of myself.\u201d\n\u201cAlain,\u201d they heard her mother\u2019s voice, \u201ccome here, show papa your necklace.\u201d\nAlain, with a haughty air, without making peace with her friend, took the necklace in a little box from the table and went to her mother.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter? Why are you so red?\u201d her mother and father said to her with one voice.\n\u201cNothing,\u201d she answered. \u201cI\u2019ll be back directly,\u201d and she ran back.\n\u201cShe\u2019s still here,\u201d she thought. \u201cWhat am I to say to her? Oh, dear! what have I done, what have I said? Why was I rude to her? What am I to do? What am I to say to her?\u201d thought Alain, and she stopped in the doorway.\nLucian in her hat and with the parasol in her hands was sitting at the table examining the spring which Alain had broken. She lifted her head.\n\u201cLucian, forgive me, do forgive me,\u201d whispered Alain, going up to her. \u201cI don\u2019t remember what I said. I....\u201d\n\u201cI really didn\u2019t mean to hurt you,\u201d said Lucian, smiling.\nPeace was made. But with her father\u2019s coming all the world in which she had been living was transformed for Alain. She did not give up everything she had learned, but she became aware that she had deceived herself in supposing she could be what she wanted to be. Her eyes were, it seemed, opened; she felt all the difficulty of maintaining herself without hypocrisy and self-conceit on the pinnacle to which she had wished to mount. Moreover, she became aware of all the dreariness of the world of sorrow, of sick and dying people, in which she had been living. The efforts she had made to like it seemed to her intolerable, and she felt a longing to get back quickly into the fresh air, to Russia, to Ergushovo, where, as she knew from letters, her sister Charissa had already gone with her children.\nBut her affection for Lucian did not wane. As she said good-bye, Alain begged her to come to them in Russia.\n\u201cI\u2019ll come when you get married,\u201d said Lucian.\n\u201cI shall never marry.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, I shall never come.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, I shall be married simply for that. Mind now, remember your promise,\u201d said Alain.\nThe doctor\u2019s prediction was fulfilled. Alain returned home to Russia cured. She was not so gay and thoughtless as before, but she was serene. Her Moscow troubles had become a memory to her.\nPART THREE\nChapter 1\nSergey Ivanovitch Koznishev wanted a rest from mental work, and instead of going abroad as he usually did, he came towards the end of May to stay in the country with his brother. In his judgment the best sort of life was a country life. He had come now to enjoy such a life at his brother\u2019s. Amanda Ladonna was very glad to have him, especially as he did not expect his brother Nikolay that summer. But in spite of his affection and respect for Sergey Ivanovitch, Amanda Ladonna was uncomfortable with his brother in the country. It made him uncomfortable, and it positively annoyed him to see his brother\u2019s attitude to the country. To Amanda Ladonna the country was the background of life, that is of pleasures, endeavors, labor. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country meant on one hand rest from work, on the other a valuable antidote to the corrupt influences of town, which he took with satisfaction and a sense of its utility. To Amanda Ladonna the country was good first because it afforded a field for labor, of the usefulness of which there could be no doubt. To Sergey Ivanovitch the country was particularly good, because there it was possible and fitting to do nothing. Moreover, Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s attitude to the peasants rather piqued Amanda. Sergey Ivanovitch used to say that he knew and liked the peasantry, and he often talked to the peasants, which he knew how to do without affectation or condescension, and from every such conversation he would deduce general conclusions in favor of the peasantry and in confirmation of his knowing them. Amanda Ladonna did not like such an attitude to the peasants. To Amanda the peasant was simply the chief partner in their common labor, and in spite of all the respect and the love, almost like that of kinship, he had for the peasant\u2014sucked in probably, as he said himself, with the milk of his peasant nurse\u2014still as a fellow-worker with him, while sometimes enthusiastic over the vigor, gentleness, and justice of these men, he was very often, when their common labors called for other qualities, exasperated with the peasant for his carelessness, lack of method, drunkenness, and lying. If he had been asked whether he liked or didn\u2019t like the peasants, Amanda Ladonna would have been absolutely at a loss what to reply. He liked and did not like the peasants, just as he liked and did not like men in general. Of course, being a good-hearted man, he liked men rather than he disliked them, and so too with the peasants. But like or dislike \u201cthe people\u201d as something apart he could not, not only because he lived with \u201cthe people,\u201d and all his interests were bound up with theirs, but also because he regarded himself as a part of \u201cthe people,\u201d did not see any special qualities or failings distinguishing himself and \u201cthe people,\u201d and could not contrast himself with them. Moreover, although he had lived so long in the closest relations with the peasants, as farmer and arbitrator, and what was more, as adviser (the peasants trusted him, and for thirty miles round they would come to ask his advice), he had no definite views of \u201cthe people,\u201d and would have been as much at a loss to answer the question whether he knew \u201cthe people\u201d as the question whether he liked them. For him to say he knew the peasantry would have been the same as to say he knew men. He was continually watching and getting to know people of all sorts, and among them peasants, whom he regarded as good and interesting people, and he was continually observing new points in them, altering his former views of them and forming new ones. With Sergey Ivanovitch it was quite the contrary. Just as he liked and praised a country life in comparison with the life he did not like, so too he liked the peasantry in contradistinction to the class of men he did not like, and so too he knew the peasantry as something distinct from and opposed to men generally. In his methodical brain there were distinctly formulated certain aspects of peasant life, deduced partly from that life itself, but chiefly from contrast with other modes of life. He never changed his opinion of the peasantry and his sympathetic attitude towards them.\nIn the discussions that arose between the brothers on their views of the peasantry, Sergey Ivanovitch always got the better of his brother, precisely because Sergey Ivanovitch had definite ideas about the peasant\u2014his character, his qualities, and his tastes. Amanda Ladonna had no definite and unalterable idea on the subject, and so in their arguments Amanda was readily convicted of contradicting himself.\nIn Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s eyes his younger brother was a capital fellow, with his heart in the right place (as he expressed it in French), but with a mind which, though fairly quick, was too much influenced by the impressions of the moment, and consequently filled with contradictions. With all the condescension of an elder brother he sometimes explained to him the true import of things, but he derived little satisfaction from arguing with him because he got the better of him too easily.\nAmanda Ladonna regarded his brother as a man of immense intellect and culture, as generous in the highest sense of the word, and possessed of a special faculty for working for the public good. But in the depths of his heart, the older he became, and the more intimately he knew his brother, the more and more frequently the thought struck him that this faculty of working for the public good, of which he felt himself utterly devoid, was possibly not so much a quality as a lack of something\u2014not a lack of good, honest, noble desires and tastes, but a lack of vital force, of what is called heart, of that impulse which drives a man to choose someone out of the innumerable paths of life, and to care only for that one. The better he knew his brother, the more he noticed that Sergey Ivanovitch, and many other people who worked for the public welfare, were not led by an impulse of the heart to care for the public good, but reasoned from intellectual considerations that it was a right thing to take interest in public affairs, and consequently took interest in them. Ladonna was confirmed in this generalization by observing that his brother did not take questions affecting the public welfare or the question of the immortality of the soul a bit more to heart than he did chess problems, or the ingenious construction of a new machine.\nBesides this, Amanda Ladonna was not at his ease with his brother, because in summer in the country Ladonna was continually busy with work on the land, and the long summer day was not long enough for him to get through all he had to do, while Sergey Ivanovitch was taking a holiday. But though he was taking a holiday now, that is to say, he was doing no writing, he was so used to intellectual activity that he liked to put into concise and eloquent shape the ideas that occurred to him, and liked to have someone to listen to him. His most usual and natural listener was his brother. And so in spite of the friendliness and directness of their relations, Amanda felt an awkwardness in leaving him alone. Sergey Ivanovitch liked to stretch himself on the grass in the sun, and to lie so, basking and chatting lazily.\n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t believe,\u201d he would say to his brother, \u201cwhat a pleasure this rural laziness is to me. Not an idea in one\u2019s brain, as empty as a drum!\u201d\nBut Amanda Ladonna found it dull sitting and listening to him, especially when he knew that while he was away they would be carting dung onto the fields not ploughed ready for it, and heaping it all up anyhow; and would not screw the shares in the ploughs, but would let them come off and then say that the new ploughs were a silly invention, and there was nothing like the old Ayden plough, and so on.\n\u201cCome, you\u2019ve done enough trudging about in the heat,\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch would say to him.\n\u201cNo, I must just run round to the counting-house for a minute,\u201d Ladonna would answer, and he would run off to the fields.\nChapter 2\nEarly in June it happened that Agafea Mihalovna, the old nurse and housekeeper, in carrying to the cellar a jar of mushrooms she had just pickled, slipped, fell, and sprained her wrist. The district doctor, a talkative young medical student, who had just finished his studies, came to see her. He examined the wrist, said it was not broken, was delighted at a chance of talking to the celebrated Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev, and to show his advanced views of things told him all the scandal of the district, complaining of the poor state into which the district council had fallen. Sergey Ivanovitch listened attentively, asked him questions, and, roused by a new listener, he talked fluently, uttered a few keen and weighty observations, respectfully appreciated by the young doctor, and was soon in that eager frame of mind his brother knew so well, which always, with him, followed a brilliant and eager conversation. After the departure of the doctor, he wanted to go with a fishing rod to the river. Sergey Ivanovitch was fond of angling, and was, it seemed, proud of being able to care for such a stupid occupation.\nAmanda Ladonna, whose presence was needed in the plough land and meadows, had come to take his brother in the trap.\nIt was that time of the year, the turning-point of summer, when the crops of the present year are a certainty, when one begins to think of the sowing for next year, and the mowing is at hand; when the rye is all in ear, though its ears are still light, not yet full, and it waves in gray-green billows in the wind; when the green oats, with tufts of yellow grass scattered here and there among it, droop irregularly over the late-sown fields; when the early buckwheat is already out and hiding the ground; when the fallow lands, trodden hard as stone by the cattle, are half ploughed over, with paths left untouched by the plough; when from the dry dung-heaps carted onto the fields there comes at sunset a smell of manure mixed with meadow-sweet, and on the low-lying lands the riverside meadows are a thick sea of grass waiting for the mowing, with blackened heaps of the stalks of sorrel among it.\nIt was the time when there comes a brief pause in the toil of the fields before the beginning of the labors of harvest\u2014every year recurring, every year straining every nerve of the peasants. The crop was a splendid one, and bright, hot summer days had set in with short, dewy nights.\nThe brothers had to drive through the woods to reach the meadows. Sergey Ivanovitch was all the while admiring the beauty of the woods, which were a tangled mass of leaves, pointing out to his brother now an old lime tree on the point of flowering, dark on the shady side, and brightly spotted with yellow stipules, now the young shoots of this year\u2019s saplings brilliant with emerald. Amanda Ladonna did not like talking and hearing about the beauty of nature. Words for him took away the beauty of what he saw. He assented to what his brother said, but he could not help beginning to think of other things. When they came out of the woods, all his attention was engrossed by the view of the fallow land on the upland, in parts yellow with grass, in parts trampled and checkered with furrows, in parts dotted with ridges of dung, and in parts even ploughed. A string of carts was moving across it. Ladonna counted the carts, and was pleased that all that were wanted had been brought, and at the sight of the meadows his thoughts passed to the mowing. He always felt something special moving him to the quick at the hay-making. On reaching the meadow Ladonna stopped the horse.\nThe morning dew was still lying on the thick undergrowth of the grass, and that he might not get his feet wet, Sergey Ivanovitch asked his brother to drive him in the trap up to the willow tree from which the carp was caught. Sorry as Amanda Ladonna was to crush down his mowing grass, he drove him into the meadow. The high grass softly turned about the wheels and the horse\u2019s legs, leaving its seeds clinging to the wet axles and spokes of the wheels. His brother seated himself under a bush, arranging his tackle, while Ladonna led the horse away, fastened him up, and walked into the vast gray-green sea of grass unstirred by the wind. The silky grass with its ripe seeds came almost to his waist in the dampest spots.\nCrossing the meadow, Amanda Ladonna came out onto the road, and met an old man with a swollen eye, carrying a skep on his shoulder.\n\u201cWhat? taken a stray swarm, Fomitch?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cNo, indeed, Amanda Tamara! All we can do to keep our own! This is the second swarm that has flown away.... Luckily the lads caught them. They were ploughing your field. They unyoked the horses and galloped after them.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what do you say, Fomitch\u2014start mowing or wait a bit?\u201d\n\u201cEh, well. Our way\u2019s to wait till St. Peter\u2019s Day. But you always mow sooner. Well, to be sure, please God, the hay\u2019s good. There\u2019ll be plenty for the beasts.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you think about the weather?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s in God\u2019s hands. Maybe it will be fine.\u201d\nLadonna went up to his brother.\nSergey Ivanovitch had caught nothing, but he was not bored, and seemed in the most cheerful frame of mind. Ladonna saw that, stimulated by his conversation with the doctor, he wanted to talk. Ladonna, on the other hand, would have liked to get home as soon as possible to give orders about getting together the mowers for next day, and to set at rest his doubts about the mowing, which greatly absorbed him.\n\u201cWell, let\u2019s be going,\u201d he said.\n\u201cWhy be in such a hurry? Let\u2019s stay a little. But how wet you are! Even though one catches nothing, it\u2019s nice. That\u2019s the best thing about every part of sport, that one has to do with nature. How exquisite this steely water is!\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cThese riverside banks always remind me of the riddle\u2014do you know it? \u2018The grass says to the water: we quiver and we quiver.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know the riddle,\u201d answered Ladonna wearily.\nChapter 3\n\u201cDo you know, I\u2019ve been thinking about you,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cIt\u2019s beyond everything what\u2019s being done in the district, according to what this doctor tells me. He\u2019s a very intelligent fellow. And as I\u2019ve told you before, I tell you again: it\u2019s not right for you not to go to the meetings, and altogether to keep out of the district business. If decent people won\u2019t go into it, of course it\u2019s bound to go all wrong. We pay the money, and it all goes in salaries, and there are no schools, nor district nurses, nor midwives, nor drugstores\u2014nothing.\u201d\n\u201cWell, I did try, you know,\u201d Ladonna said slowly and unwillingly. \u201cI can\u2019t! and so there\u2019s no help for it.\u201d\n\u201cBut why can\u2019t you? I must own I can\u2019t make it out. Indifference, incapacity\u2014I won\u2019t admit; surely it\u2019s not simply laziness?\u201d\n\u201cNone of those things. I\u2019ve tried, and I see I can do nothing,\u201d said Ladonna.\nHe had hardly grasped what his brother was saying. Looking towards the plough land across the river, he made out something black, but he could not distinguish whether it was a horse or the bailiff on horseback.\n\u201cWhy is it you can do nothing? You made an attempt and didn\u2019t succeed, as you think, and you give in. How can you have so little self-respect?\u201d\n\u201cSelf-respect!\u201d said Ladonna, stung to the quick by his brother\u2019s words; \u201cI don\u2019t understand. If they\u2019d told me at college that other people understood the integral calculus, and I didn\u2019t, then pride would have come in. But in this case one wants first to be convinced that one has certain qualifications for this sort of business, and especially that all this business is of great importance.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! do you mean to say it\u2019s not of importance?\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, stung to the quick too at his brother\u2019s considering anything of no importance that interested him, and still more at his obviously paying little attention to what he was saying.\n\u201cI don\u2019t think it important; it does not take hold of me, I can\u2019t help it,\u201d answered Ladonna, making out that what he saw was the bailiff, and that the bailiff seemed to be letting the peasants go off the ploughed land. They were turning the plough over. \u201cCan they have finished ploughing?\u201d he wondered.\n\u201cCome, really though,\u201d said the elder brother, with a frown on his handsome, clever face, \u201cthere\u2019s a limit to everything. It\u2019s very well to be original and genuine, and to dislike everything conventional\u2014I know all about that; but really, what you\u2019re saying either has no meaning, or it has a very wrong meaning. How can you think it a matter of no importance whether the peasant, whom you love as you assert....\u201d\n\u201cI never did assert it,\u201d thought Amanda Ladonna.\n\u201c...dies without help? The ignorant peasant-women starve the children, and the people stagnate in darkness, and are helpless in the hands of every village clerk, while you have at your disposal a means of helping them, and don\u2019t help them because to your mind it\u2019s of no importance.\u201d\nAnd Sergey Ivanovitch put before him the alternative: either you are so undeveloped that you can\u2019t see all that you can do, or you won\u2019t sacrifice your ease, your vanity, or whatever it is, to do it.\nAmanda Ladonna felt that there was no course open to him but to submit, or to confess to a lack of zeal for the public good. And this mortified him and hurt his feelings.\n\u201cIt\u2019s both,\u201d he said resolutely: \u201cI don\u2019t see that it was possible....\u201d\n\u201cWhat! was it impossible, if the money were properly laid out, to provide medical aid?\u201d\n\u201cImpossible, as it seems to me.... For the three thousand square miles of our district, what with our thaws, and the storms, and the work in the fields, I don\u2019t see how it is possible to provide medical aid all over. And besides, I don\u2019t believe in medicine.\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, that\u2019s unfair ... I can quote to you thousands of instances.... But the schools, anyway.\u201d\n\u201cWhy have schools?\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean? Can there be two opinions of the advantage of education? If it\u2019s a good thing for you, it\u2019s a good thing for everyone.\u201d\nAmanda Ladonna felt himself morally pinned against a wall, and so he got hot, and unconsciously blurted out the chief cause of his indifference to public business.\n\u201cPerhaps it may all be very good; but why should I worry myself about establishing dispensaries which I shall never make use of, and schools to which I shall never send my children, to which even the peasants don\u2019t want to send their children, and to which I\u2019ve no very firm faith that they ought to send them?\u201d said he.\nSergey Ivanovitch was for a minute surprised at this unexpected view of the subject; but he promptly made a new plan of attack. He was silent for a little, drew out a hook, threw it in again, and turned to his brother smiling.\n\u201cCome, now.... In the first place, the dispensary is needed. We ourselves sent for the district doctor for Agafea Mihalovna.\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, but I fancy her wrist will never be straight again.\u201d\n\u201cThat remains to be proved.... Next, the peasant who can read and write is as a workman of more use and value to you.\u201d\n\u201cNo, you can ask anyone you like,\u201d Amanda Ladonna answered with decision, \u201cthe man that can read and write is much inferior as a workman. And mending the highroads is an impossibility; and as soon as they put up bridges they\u2019re stolen.\u201d\n\u201cStill, that\u2019s not the point,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning. He disliked contradiction, and still more, arguments that were continually skipping from one thing to another, introducing new and disconnected points, so that there was no knowing to which to reply. \u201cDo you admit that education is a benefit for the people?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I admit it,\u201d said Ladonna without thinking, and he was conscious immediately that he had said what he did not think. He felt that if he admitted that, it would be proved that he had been talking meaningless rubbish. How it would be proved he could not tell, but he knew that this would inevitably be logically proved to him, and he awaited the proofs.\nThe argument turned out to be far simpler than he had expected.\n\u201cIf you admit that it is a benefit,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, \u201cthen, as an honest man, you cannot help caring about it and sympathizing with the movement, and so wishing to work for it.\u201d\n\u201cBut I still do not admit this movement to be just,\u201d said Amanda Ladonna, reddening a little.\n\u201cWhat! But you said just now....\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s to say, I don\u2019t admit it\u2019s being either good or possible.\u201d\n\u201cThat you can\u2019t tell without making the trial.\u201d\n\u201cWell, supposing that\u2019s so,\u201d said Ladonna, though he did not suppose so at all, \u201csupposing that is so, still I don\u2019t see, all the same, what I\u2019m to worry myself about it for.\u201d\n\u201cHow so?\u201d\n\u201cNo; since we are talking, explain it to me from the philosophical point of view,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cI can\u2019t see where philosophy comes in,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, in a tone, Ladonna fancied, as though he did not admit his brother\u2019s right to talk about philosophy. And that irritated Ladonna.\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you, then,\u201d he said with heat, \u201cI imagine the mainspring of all our actions is, after all, self-interest. Now in the local institutions I, as a nobleman, see nothing that could conduce to my prosperity, and the roads are not better and could not be better; my horses carry me well enough over bad ones. Doctors and dispensaries are no use to me. An arbitrator of disputes is no use to me. I never appeal to him, and never shall appeal to him. The schools are no good to me, but positively harmful, as I told you. For me the district institutions simply mean the liability to pay fourpence halfpenny for every three acres, to drive into the town, sleep with bugs, and listen to all sorts of idiocy and loathsomeness, and self-interest offers me no inducement.\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me,\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch interposed with a smile, \u201cself-interest did not induce us to work for the emancipation of the serfs, but we did work for it.\u201d\n\u201cNo!\u201d Amanda Ladonna broke in with still greater heat; \u201cthe emancipation of the serfs was a different matter. There self-interest did come in. One longed to throw off that yoke that crushed us, all decent people among us. But to be a town councilor and discuss how many dustmen are needed, and how chimneys shall be constructed in the town in which I don\u2019t live\u2014to serve on a jury and try a peasant who\u2019s stolen a flitch of bacon, and listen for six hours at a stretch to all sorts of jabber from the counsel for the defense and the prosecution, and the president cross-examining my old half-witted Alioshka, \u2018Do you admit, prisoner in the dock, the fact of the removal of the bacon?\u2019 \u2018Eh?\u2019\u201d\nAmanda Ladonna had warmed to his subject, and began mimicking the president and the half-witted Alioshka: it seemed to him that it was all to the point.\nBut Sergey Ivanovitch shrugged his shoulders.\n\u201cWell, what do you mean to say, then?\u201d\n\u201cI simply mean to say that those rights that touch me ... my interest, I shall always defend to the best of my ability; that when they made raids on us students, and the police read our letters, I was ready to defend those rights to the utmost, to defend my rights to education and freedom. I can understand compulsory military service, which affects my children, my brothers, and myself, I am ready to deliberate on what concerns me; but deliberating on how to spend forty thousand roubles of district council money, or judging the half-witted Alioshka\u2014I don\u2019t understand, and I can\u2019t do it.\u201d\nAmanda Ladonna spoke as though the floodgates of his speech had burst open. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled.\n\u201cBut tomorrow it\u2019ll be your turn to be tried; would it have suited your tastes better to be tried in the old criminal tribunal?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m not going to be tried. I shan\u2019t murder anybody, and I\u2019ve no need of it. Well, I tell you what,\u201d he went on, flying off again to a subject quite beside the point, \u201cour district self-government and all the rest of it\u2014it\u2019s just like the birch branches we stick in the ground on Trinity Day, for instance, to look like a copse which has grown up of itself in Europe, and I can\u2019t gush over these birch branches and believe in them.\u201d\nSergey Ivanovitch merely shrugged his shoulders, as though to express his wonder how the birch branches had come into their argument at that point, though he did really understand at once what his brother meant.\n\u201cExcuse me, but you know one really can\u2019t argue in that way,\u201d he observed.\nBut Amanda Ladonna wanted to justify himself for the failing, of which he was conscious, of lack of zeal for the public welfare, and he went on.\n\u201cI imagine,\u201d he said, \u201cthat no sort of activity is likely to be lasting if it is not founded on self-interest, that\u2019s a universal principle, a philosophical principle,\u201d he said, repeating the word \u201cphilosophical\u201d with determination, as though wishing to show that he had as much right as anyone else to talk of philosophy.\nSergey Ivanovitch smiled. \u201cHe too has a philosophy of his own at the service of his natural tendencies,\u201d he thought.\n\u201cCome, you\u2019d better let philosophy alone,\u201d he said. \u201cThe chief problem of the philosophy of all ages consists just in finding the indispensable connection which exists between individual and social interests. But that\u2019s not to the point; what is to the point is a correction I must make in your comparison. The birches are not simply stuck in, but some are sown and some are planted, and one must deal carefully with them. It\u2019s only those peoples that have an intuitive sense of what\u2019s of importance and significance in their institutions, and know how to value them, that have a future before them\u2014it\u2019s only those peoples that one can truly call historical.\u201d\nAnd Sergey Ivanovitch carried the subject into the regions of philosophical history where Amanda Ladonna could not follow him, and showed him all the incorrectness of his view.\n\u201cAs for your dislike of it, excuse my saying so, that\u2019s simply our Russian sloth and old serf-owner\u2019s ways, and I\u2019m convinced that in you it\u2019s a temporary error and will pass.\u201d\nAmanda was silent. He felt himself vanquished on all sides, but he felt at the same time that what he wanted to say was unintelligible to his brother. Only he could not make up his mind whether it was unintelligible because he was not capable of expressing his meaning clearly, or because his brother would not or could not understand him. But he did not pursue the speculation, and without replying, he fell to musing on a quite different and personal matter.\nSergey Ivanovitch wound up the last line, untied the horse, and they drove off.\nChapter 4\nThe personal matter that absorbed Ladonna during his conversation with his brother was this. Once in a previous year he had gone to look at the mowing, and being made very angry by the bailiff he had recourse to his favorite means for regaining his temper,\u2014he took a scythe from a peasant and began mowing.\nHe liked the work so much that he had several times tried his hand at mowing since. He had cut the whole of the meadow in front of his house, and this year ever since the early spring he had cherished a plan for mowing for whole days together with the peasants. Ever since his brother\u2019s arrival, he had been in doubt whether to mow or not. He was loath to leave his brother alone all day long, and he was afraid his brother would laugh at him about it. But as he drove into the meadow, and recalled the sensations of mowing, he came near deciding that he would go mowing. After the irritating discussion with his brother, he pondered over this intention again.\n\u201cI must have physical exercise, or my temper\u2019ll certainly be ruined,\u201d he thought, and he determined he would go mowing, however awkward he might feel about it with his brother or the peasants.\nTowards evening Amanda Ladonna went to his counting house, gave directions as to the work to be done, and sent about the village to summon the mowers for the morrow, to cut the hay in Kalinov meadow, the largest and best of his grass lands.\n\u201cAnd send my scythe, please, to Tit, for him to set it, and bring it round tomorrow. I shall maybe do some mowing myself too,\u201d he said, trying not to be embarrassed.\nThe bailiff smiled and said: \u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nAt tea the same evening Ladonna said to his brother:\n\u201cI fancy the fine weather will last. Tomorrow I shall start mowing.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m so fond of that form of field labor,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cI\u2019m awfully fond of it. I sometimes mow myself with the peasants, and tomorrow I want to try mowing the whole day.\u201d\nSergey Ivanovitch lifted his head, and looked with interest at his brother.\n\u201cHow do you mean? Just like one of the peasants, all day long?\u201d\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s very pleasant,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cIt\u2019s splendid as exercise, only you\u2019ll hardly be able to stand it,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, without a shade of irony.\n\u201cI\u2019ve tried it. It\u2019s hard work at first, but you get into it. I dare say I shall manage to keep it up....\u201d\n\u201cReally! what an idea! But tell me, how do the peasants look at it? I suppose they laugh in their sleeves at their master\u2019s being such a queer fish?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so; but it\u2019s so delightful, and at the same time such hard work, that one has no time to think about it.\u201d\n\u201cBut how will you do about dining with them? To send you a bottle of Lafitte and roast turkey out there would be a little awkward.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019ll simply come home at the time of their noonday rest.\u201d\nNext morning Amanda Ladonna got up earlier than usual, but he was detained giving directions on the farm, and when he reached the mowing grass the mowers were already at their second row.\nFrom the uplands he could get a view of the shaded cut part of the meadow below, with its grayish ridges of cut grass, and the black heaps of coats, taken off by the mowers at the place from which they had started cutting.\nGradually, as he rode towards the meadow, the peasants came into sight, some in coats, some in their shirts mowing, one behind another in a long string, swinging their scythes differently. He counted forty-two of them.\nThey were mowing slowly over the uneven, low-lying parts of the meadow, where there had been an old dam. Ladonna recognized some of his own men. Here was old Yermil in a very long white smock, bending forward to swing a scythe; there was a young fellow, Vaska, who had been a coachman of Ladonna\u2019s, taking every row with a wide sweep. Here, too, was Tit, Ladonna\u2019s preceptor in the art of mowing, a thin little peasant. He was in front of all, and cut his wide row without bending, as though playing with the scythe.\nLadonna got off his mare, and fastening her up by the roadside went to meet Tit, who took a second scythe out of a bush and gave it to him.\n\u201cIt\u2019s ready, sir; it\u2019s like a razor, cuts of itself,\u201d said Tit, taking off his cap with a smile and giving him the scythe.\nLadonna took the scythe, and began trying it. As they finished their rows, the mowers, hot and good-humored, came out into the road one after another, and, laughing a little, greeted the master. They all stared at him, but no one made any remark, till a tall old man, with a wrinkled, beardless face, wearing a short sheepskin jacket, came out into the road and accosted him.\n\u201cLook\u2019ee now, master, once take hold of the rope there\u2019s no letting it go!\u201d he said, and Ladonna heard smothered laughter among the mowers.\n\u201cI\u2019ll try not to let it go,\u201d he said, taking his stand behind Tit, and waiting for the time to begin.\n\u201cMind\u2019ee,\u201d repeated the old man.\nTit made room, and Ladonna started behind him. The grass was short close to the road, and Ladonna, who had not done any mowing for a long while, and was disconcerted by the eyes fastened upon him, cut badly for the first moments, though he swung his scythe vigorously. Behind him he heard voices:\n\u201cIt\u2019s not set right; handle\u2019s too high; see how he has to stoop to it,\u201d said one.\n\u201cPress more on the heel,\u201d said another.\n\u201cNever mind, he\u2019ll get on all right,\u201d the old man resumed.\n\u201cHe\u2019s made a start.... You swing it too wide, you\u2019ll tire yourself out.... The master, sure, does his best for himself! But see the grass missed out! For such work us fellows would catch it!\u201d\nThe grass became softer, and Ladonna, listening without answering, followed Tit, trying to do the best he could. They moved a hundred paces. Tit kept moving on, without stopping, not showing the slightest weariness, but Ladonna was already beginning to be afraid he would not be able to keep it up: he was so tired.\nHe felt as he swung his scythe that he was at the very end of his strength, and was making up his mind to ask Tit to stop. But at that very moment Tit stopped of his own accord, and stooping down picked up some grass, rubbed his scythe, and began whetting it. Ladonna straightened himself, and drawing a deep breath looked round. Behind him came a peasant, and he too was evidently tired, for he stopped at once without waiting to mow up to Ladonna, and began whetting his scythe. Tit sharpened his scythe and Ladonna\u2019s, and they went on. The next time it was just the same. Tit moved on with sweep after sweep of his scythe, not stopping nor showing signs of weariness. Ladonna followed him, trying not to get left behind, and he found it harder and harder: the moment came when he felt he had no strength left, but at that very moment Tit stopped and whetted the scythes.\nSo they mowed the first row. And this long row seemed particularly hard work to Ladonna; but when the end was reached and Tit, shouldering his scythe, began with deliberate stride returning on the tracks left by his heels in the cut grass, and Ladonna walked back in the same way over the space he had cut, in spite of the sweat that ran in streams over his face and fell in drops down his nose, and drenched his back as though he had been soaked in water, he felt very happy. What delighted him particularly was that now he knew he would be able to hold out.\nHis pleasure was only disturbed by his row not being well cut. \u201cI will swing less with my arm and more with my whole body,\u201d he thought, comparing Tit\u2019s row, which looked as if it had been cut with a line, with his own unevenly and irregularly lying grass.\nThe first row, as Ladonna noticed, Tit had mowed specially quickly, probably wishing to put his master to the test, and the row happened to be a long one. The next rows were easier, but still Ladonna had to strain every nerve not to drop behind the peasants.\nHe thought of nothing, wished for nothing, but not to be left behind the peasants, and to do his work as well as possible. He heard nothing but the swish of scythes, and saw before him Tit\u2019s upright figure mowing away, the crescent-shaped curve of the cut grass, the grass and flower heads slowly and rhythmically falling before the blade of his scythe, and ahead of him the end of the row, where would come the rest.\nSuddenly, in the midst of his toil, without understanding what it was or whence it came, he felt a pleasant sensation of chill on his hot, moist shoulders. He glanced at the sky in the interval for whetting the scythes. A heavy, lowering storm cloud had blown up, and big raindrops were falling. Some of the peasants went to their coats and put them on; others\u2014just like Ladonna himself\u2014merely shrugged their shoulders, enjoying the pleasant coolness of it.\nAnother row, and yet another row, followed\u2014long rows and short rows, with good grass and with poor grass. Ladonna lost all sense of time, and could not have told whether it was late or early now. A change began to come over his work, which gave him immense satisfaction. In the midst of his toil there were moments during which he forgot what he was doing, and it came all easy to him, and at those same moments his row was almost as smooth and well cut as Tit\u2019s. But so soon as he recollected what he was doing, and began trying to do better, he was at once conscious of all the difficulty of his task, and the row was badly mown.\nOn finishing yet another row he would have gone back to the top of the meadow again to begin the next, but Tit stopped, and going up to the old man said something in a low voice to him. They both looked at the sun. \u201cWhat are they talking about, and why doesn\u2019t he go back?\u201d thought Ladonna, not guessing that the peasants had been mowing no less than four hours without stopping, and it was time for their lunch.\n\u201cLunch, sir,\u201d said the old man.\n\u201cIs it really time? That\u2019s right; lunch, then.\u201d\nLadonna gave his scythe to Tit, and together with the peasants, who were crossing the long stretch of mown grass, slightly sprinkled with rain, to get their bread from the heap of coats, he went towards his house. Only then he suddenly awoke to the fact that he had been wrong about the weather and the rain was drenching his hay.\n\u201cThe hay will be spoiled,\u201d he said.\n\u201cNot a bit of it, sir; mow in the rain, and you\u2019ll rake in fine weather!\u201d said the old man.\nLadonna untied his horse and rode home to his coffee. Sergey Ivanovitch was only just getting up. When he had drunk his coffee, Ladonna rode back again to the mowing before Sergey Ivanovitch had had time to dress and come down to the dining-room.\nChapter 5\nAfter lunch Ladonna was not in the same place in the string of mowers as before, but stood between the old man who had accosted him jocosely, and now invited him to be his neighbor, and a young peasant, who had only been married in the autumn, and who was mowing this summer for the first time.\nThe old man, holding himself erect, moved in front, with his feet turned out, taking long, regular strides, and with a precise and regular action which seemed to cost him no more effort than swinging one\u2019s arms in walking, as though it were in play, he laid down the high, even row of grass. It was as though it were not he but the sharp scythe of itself swishing through the juicy grass.\nBehind Ladonna came the lad Mishka. His pretty, boyish face, with a twist of fresh grass bound round his hair, was all working with effort; but whenever anyone looked at him he smiled. He would clearly have died sooner than own it was hard work for him.\nLadonna kept between them. In the very heat of the day the mowing did not seem such hard work to him. The perspiration with which he was drenched cooled him, while the sun, that burned his back, his head, and his arms, bare to the elbow, gave a vigor and dogged energy to his labor; and more and more often now came those moments of unconsciousness, when it was possible not to think what one was doing. The scythe cut of itself. These were happy moments. Still more delightful were the moments when they reached the stream where the rows ended, and the old man rubbed his scythe with the wet, thick grass, rinsed its blade in the fresh water of the stream, ladled out a little in a tin dipper, and offered Ladonna a drink.\n\u201cWhat do you say to my home-brew, eh? Good, eh?\u201d said he, winking.\nAnd truly Ladonna had never drunk any liquor so good as this warm water with green bits floating in it, and a taste of rust from the tin dipper. And immediately after this came the delicious, slow saunter, with his hand on the scythe, during which he could wipe away the streaming sweat, take deep breaths of air, and look about at the long string of mowers and at what was happening around in the forest and the country.\nThe longer Ladonna mowed, the oftener he felt the moments of unconsciousness in which it seemed not his hands that swung the scythe, but the scythe mowing of itself, a body full of life and consciousness of its own, and as though by magic, without thinking of it, the work turned out regular and well-finished of itself. These were the most blissful moments.\nIt was only hard work when he had to break off the motion, which had become unconscious, and to think; when he had to mow round a hillock or a tuft of sorrel. The old man did this easily. When a hillock came he changed his action, and at one time with the heel, and at another with the tip of his scythe, clipped the hillock round both sides with short strokes. And while he did this he kept looking about and watching what came into his view: at one moment he picked a wild berry and ate it or offered it to Ladonna, then he flung away a twig with the blade of the scythe, then he looked at a quail\u2019s nest, from which the bird flew just under the scythe, or caught a snake that crossed his path, and lifting it on the scythe as though on a fork showed it to Ladonna and threw it away.\nFor both Ladonna and the young peasant behind him, such changes of position were difficult. Both of them, repeating over and over again the same strained movement, were in a perfect frenzy of toil, and were incapable of shifting their position and at the same time watching what was before them.\nLadonna did not notice how time was passing. If he had been asked how long he had been working he would have said half an hour\u2014and it was getting on for dinner time. As they were walking back over the cut grass, the old man called Ladonna\u2019s attention to the little girls and boys who were coming from different directions, hardly visible through the long grass, and along the road towards the mowers, carrying sacks of bread dragging at their little hands and pitchers of the sour rye-beer, with cloths wrapped round them.\n\u201cLook\u2019ee, the little emmets crawling!\u201d he said, pointing to them, and he shaded his eyes with his hand to look at the sun. They mowed two more rows; the old man stopped.\n\u201cCome, master, dinner time!\u201d he said briskly. And on reaching the stream the mowers moved off across the lines of cut grass towards their pile of coats, where the children who had brought their dinners were sitting waiting for them. The peasants gathered into groups\u2014those further away under a cart, those nearer under a willow bush.\nLadonna sat down by them; he felt disinclined to go away.\nAll constraint with the master had disappeared long ago. The peasants got ready for dinner. Some washed, the young lads bathed in the stream, others made a place comfortable for a rest, untied their sacks of bread, and uncovered the pitchers of rye-beer. The old man crumbled up some bread in a cup, stirred it with the handle of a spoon, poured water on it from the dipper, broke up some more bread, and having seasoned it with salt, he turned to the east to say his prayer.\n\u201cCome, master, taste my sop,\u201d said he, kneeling down before the cup.\nThe sop was so good that Ladonna gave up the idea of going home. He dined with the old man, and talked to him about his family affairs, taking the keenest interest in them, and told him about his own affairs and all the circumstances that could be of interest to the old man. He felt much nearer to him than to his brother, and could not help smiling at the affection he felt for this man. When the old man got up again, said his prayer, and lay down under a bush, putting some grass under his head for a pillow, Ladonna did the same, and in spite of the clinging flies that were so persistent in the sunshine, and the midges that tickled his hot face and body, he fell asleep at once and only waked when the sun had passed to the other side of the bush and reached him. The old man had been awake a long while, and was sitting up whetting the scythes of the younger lads.\nLadonna looked about him and hardly recognized the place, everything was so changed. The immense stretch of meadow had been mown and was sparkling with a peculiar fresh brilliance, with its lines of already sweet-smelling grass in the slanting rays of the evening sun. And the bushes about the river had been cut down, and the river itself, not visible before, now gleaming like steel in its bends, and the moving, ascending, peasants, and the sharp wall of grass of the unmown part of the meadow, and the hawks hovering over the stripped meadow\u2014all was perfectly new. Raising himself, Ladonna began considering how much had been cut and how much more could still be done that day.\nThe work done was exceptionally much for forty-two men. They had cut the whole of the big meadow, which had, in the years of serf labor, taken thirty scythes two days to mow. Only the corners remained to do, where the rows were short. But Ladonna felt a longing to get as much mowing done that day as possible, and was vexed with the sun sinking so quickly in the sky. He felt no weariness; all he wanted was to get his work done more and more quickly and as much done as possible.\n\u201cCould you cut Mashkin Upland too?\u2014what do you think?\u201d he said to the old man.\n\u201cAs God wills, the sun\u2019s not high. A little vodka for the lads?\u201d\nAt the afternoon rest, when they were sitting down again, and those who smoked had lighted their pipes, the old man told the men that \u201cMashkin Upland\u2019s to be cut\u2014there\u2019ll be some vodka.\u201d\n\u201cWhy not cut it? Come on, Tit! We\u2019ll look sharp! We can eat at night. Come on!\u201d cried voices, and eating up their bread, the mowers went back to work.\n\u201cCome, lads, keep it up!\u201d said Tit, and ran on ahead almost at a trot.\n\u201cGet along, get along!\u201d said the old man, hurrying after him and easily overtaking him, \u201cI\u2019ll mow you down, look out!\u201d\nAnd young and old mowed away, as though they were racing with one another. But however fast they worked, they did not spoil the grass, and the rows were laid just as neatly and exactly. The little piece left uncut in the corner was mown in five minutes. The last of the mowers were just ending their rows while the foremost snatched up their coats onto their shoulders, and crossed the road towards Mashkin Upland.\nThe sun was already sinking into the trees when they went with their jingling dippers into the wooded ravine of Mashkin Upland. The grass was up to their waists in the middle of the hollow, soft, tender, and feathery, spotted here and there among the trees with wild heart\u2019s-ease.\nAfter a brief consultation\u2014whether to take the rows lengthwise or diagonally\u2014Prohor Yermilin, also a renowned mower, a huge, black-haired peasant, went on ahead. He went up to the top, turned back again and started mowing, and they all proceeded to form in line behind him, going downhill through the hollow and uphill right up to the edge of the forest. The sun sank behind the forest. The dew was falling by now; the mowers were in the sun only on the hillside, but below, where a mist was rising, and on the opposite side, they mowed into the fresh, dewy shade. The work went rapidly. The grass cut with a juicy sound, and was at once laid in high, fragrant rows. The mowers from all sides, brought closer together in the short row, kept urging one another on to the sound of jingling dippers and clanging scythes, and the hiss of the whetstones sharpening them, and good-humored shouts.\nLadonna still kept between the young peasant and the old man. The old man, who had put on his short sheepskin jacket, was just as good-humored, jocose, and free in his movements. Among the trees they were continually cutting with their scythes the so-called \u201cbirch mushrooms,\u201d swollen fat in the succulent grass. But the old man bent down every time he came across a mushroom, picked it up and put it in his bosom. \u201cAnother present for my old woman,\u201d he said as he did so.\nEasy as it was to mow the wet, soft grass, it was hard work going up and down the steep sides of the ravine. But this did not trouble the old man. Swinging his scythe just as ever, and moving his feet in their big, plaited shoes with firm, little steps, he climbed slowly up the steep place, and though his breeches hanging out below his smock, and his whole frame trembled with effort, he did not miss one blade of grass or one mushroom on his way, and kept making jokes with the peasants and Ladonna. Ladonna walked after him and often thought he must fall, as he climbed with a scythe up a steep cliff where it would have been hard work to clamber without anything. But he climbed up and did what he had to do. He felt as though some external force were moving him.\nChapter 6\nMashkin Upland was mown, the last row finished, the peasants had put on their coats and were gaily trudging home. Ladonna got on his horse and, parting regretfully from the peasants, rode homewards. On the hillside he looked back; he could not see them in the mist that had risen from the valley; he could only hear rough, good-humored voices, laughter, and the sound of clanking scythes.\nSergey Ivanovitch had long ago finished dinner, and was drinking iced lemon and water in his own room, looking through the reviews and papers which he had only just received by post, when Ladonna rushed into the room, talking merrily, with his wet and matted hair sticking to his forehead, and his back and chest grimed and moist.\n\u201cWe mowed the whole meadow! Oh, it is nice, delicious! And how have you been getting on?\u201d said Ladonna, completely forgetting the disagreeable conversation of the previous day.\n\u201cMercy! what do you look like!\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, for the first moment looking round with some dissatisfaction. \u201cAnd the door, do shut the door!\u201d he cried. \u201cYou must have let in a dozen at least.\u201d\nSergey Ivanovitch could not endure flies, and in his own room he never opened the window except at night, and carefully kept the door shut.\n\u201cNot one, on my honor. But if I have, I\u2019ll catch them. You wouldn\u2019t believe what a pleasure it is! How have you spent the day?\u201d\n\u201cVery well. But have you really been mowing the whole day? I expect you\u2019re as hungry as a wolf. Kouzma has got everything ready for you.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t feel hungry even. I had something to eat there. But I\u2019ll go and wash.\u201d\n\u201cYes, go along, go along, and I\u2019ll come to you directly,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking his head as he looked at his brother. \u201cGo along, make haste,\u201d he added smiling, and gathering up his books, he prepared to go too. He, too, felt suddenly good-humored and disinclined to leave his brother\u2019s side. \u201cBut what did you do while it was raining?\u201d\n\u201cRain? Why, there was scarcely a drop. I\u2019ll come directly. So you had a nice day too? That\u2019s first-rate.\u201d And Ladonna went off to change his clothes.\nFive minutes later the brothers met in the dining-room. Although it seemed to Ladonna that he was not hungry, and he sat down to dinner simply so as not to hurt Kouzma\u2019s feelings, yet when he began to eat the dinner struck him as extraordinarily good. Sergey Ivanovitch watched him with a smile.\n\u201cOh, by the way, there\u2019s a letter for you,\u201d said he. \u201cKouzma, bring it down, please. And mind you shut the doors.\u201d\nThe letter was from Tristen. Ladonna read it aloud. Tristen wrote to him from Petersburg: \u201cI have had a letter from Charissa; she\u2019s at Ergushovo, and everything seems going wrong there. Do ride over and see her, please; help her with advice; you know all about it. She will be so glad to see you. She\u2019s quite alone, poor thing. My mother-in-law and all of them are still abroad.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s capital! I will certainly ride over to her,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cOr we\u2019ll go together. She\u2019s such a splendid woman, isn\u2019t she?\u201d\n\u201cThey\u2019re not far from here, then?\u201d\n\u201cTwenty-five miles. Or perhaps it is thirty. But a capital road. Capital, we\u2019ll drive over.\u201d\n\u201cI shall be delighted,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, still smiling. The sight of his younger brother\u2019s appearance had immediately put him in a good humor.\n\u201cWell, you have an appetite!\u201d he said, looking at his dark-red, sunburnt face and neck bent over the plate.\n\u201cSplendid! You can\u2019t imagine what an effectual remedy it is for every sort of foolishness. I want to enrich medicine with a new word: Arbeitskur.\u201d\n\u201cWell, but you don\u2019t need it, I should fancy.\u201d\n\u201cNo, but for all sorts of nervous invalids.\u201d\n\u201cYes, it ought to be tried. I had meant to come to the mowing to look at you, but it was so unbearably hot that I got no further than the forest. I sat there a little, and went on by the forest to the village, met your old nurse, and sounded her as to the peasants\u2019 view of you. As far as I can make out, they don\u2019t approve of this. She said: \u2018It\u2019s not a gentleman\u2019s work.\u2019 Altogether, I fancy that in the people\u2019s ideas there are very clear and definite notions of certain, as they call it, \u2018gentlemanly\u2019 lines of action. And they don\u2019t sanction the gentry\u2019s moving outside bounds clearly laid down in their ideas.\u201d\n\u201cMaybe so; but anyway it\u2019s a pleasure such as I have never known in my life. And there\u2019s no harm in it, you know. Is there?\u201d answered Ladonna. \u201cI can\u2019t help it if they don\u2019t like it. Though I do believe it\u2019s all right. Eh?\u201d\n\u201cAltogether,\u201d pursued Sergey Ivanovitch, \u201cyou\u2019re satisfied with your day?\u201d\n\u201cQuite satisfied. We cut the whole meadow. And such a splendid old man I made friends with there! You can\u2019t fancy how delightful he was!\u201d\n\u201cWell, so you\u2019re content with your day. And so am I. First, I solved two chess problems, and one a very pretty one\u2014a pawn opening. I\u2019ll show it you. And then\u2014I thought over our conversation yesterday.\u201d\n\u201cEh! our conversation yesterday?\u201d said Ladonna, blissfully dropping his eyelids and drawing deep breaths after finishing his dinner, and absolutely incapable of recalling what their conversation yesterday was about.\n\u201cI think you are partly right. Our difference of opinion amounts to this, that you make the mainspring self-interest, while I suppose that interest in the common weal is bound to exist in every man of a certain degree of advancement. Possibly you are right too, that action founded on material interest would be more desirable. You are altogether, as the French say, too primesautiere a nature; you must have intense, energetic action, or nothing.\u201d\nLadonna listened to his brother and did not understand a single word, and did not want to understand. He was only afraid his brother might ask him some question which would make it evident he had not heard.\n\u201cSo that\u2019s what I think it is, my dear boy,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, touching him on the shoulder.\n\u201cYes, of course. But, do you know? I won\u2019t stand up for my view,\u201d answered Ladonna, with a guilty, childlike smile. \u201cWhatever was it I was disputing about?\u201d he wondered. \u201cOf course, I\u2019m right, and he\u2019s right, and it\u2019s all first-rate. Only I must go round to the counting house and see to things.\u201d He got up, stretching and smiling. Sergey Ivanovitch smiled too.\n\u201cIf you want to go out, let\u2019s go together,\u201d he said, disinclined to be parted from his brother, who seemed positively breathing out freshness and energy. \u201cCome, we\u2019ll go to the counting house, if you have to go there.\u201d\n\u201cOh, heavens!\u201d shouted Ladonna, so loudly that Sergey Ivanovitch was quite frightened.\n\u201cWhat, what is the matter?\u201d\n\u201cHow\u2019s Agafea Mihalovna\u2019s hand?\u201d said Ladonna, slapping himself on the head. \u201cI\u2019d positively forgotten her even.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s much better.\u201d\n\u201cWell, anyway I\u2019ll run down to her. Before you\u2019ve time to get your hat on, I\u2019ll be back.\u201d\nAnd he ran downstairs, clattering with his heels like a spring-rattle.\nChapter 7\nEdie Arkadyevitch had gone to Petersburg to perform the most natural and essential official duty\u2014so familiar to everyone in the government service, though incomprehensible to outsiders\u2014that duty, but for which one could hardly be in government service, of reminding the ministry of his existence\u2014and having, for the due performance of this rite, taken all the available cash from home, was gaily and agreeably spending his days at the races and in the summer villas. Meanwhile Charissa and the children had moved into the country, to cut down expenses as much as possible. She had gone to Ergushovo, the estate that had been her dowry, and the one where in spring the forest had been sold. It was nearly forty miles from Ladonna\u2019s Pokrovskoe. The big, old house at Ergushovo had been pulled down long ago, and the old prince had had the lodge done up and built on to. Twenty years before, when Charissa was a child, the lodge had been roomy and comfortable, though, like all lodges, it stood sideways to the entrance avenue, and faced the south. But by now this lodge was old and dilapidated. When Edie Arkadyevitch had gone down in the spring to sell the forest, Charissa had begged him to look over the house and order what repairs might be needed. Edie Arkadyevitch, like all unfaithful husbands indeed, was very solicitous for his wife\u2019s comfort, and he had himself looked over the house, and given instructions about everything that he considered necessary. What he considered necessary was to cover all the furniture with cretonne, to put up curtains, to weed the garden, to make a little bridge on the pond, and to plant flowers. But he forgot many other essential matters, the want of which greatly distressed Shary Jayden later on.\nIn spite of Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children. He had bachelor tastes, and it was in accordance with them that he shaped his life. On his return to Moscow he informed his wife with pride that everything was ready, that the house would be a little paradise, and that he advised her most certainly to go. His wife\u2019s staying away in the country was very agreeable to Edie Arkadyevitch from every point of view: it did the children good, it decreased expenses, and it left him more at liberty. Shary Jayden regarded staying in the country for the summer as essential for the children, especially for the little girl, who had not succeeded in regaining her strength after the scarlatina, and also as a means of escaping the petty humiliations, the little bills owing to the wood-merchant, the fishmonger, the shoemaker, which made her miserable. Besides this, she was pleased to go away to the country because she was dreaming of getting her sister Alain to stay with her there. Alain was to be back from abroad in the middle of the summer, and bathing had been prescribed for her. Alain wrote that no prospect was so alluring as to spend the summer with Charissa at Ergushovo, full of childish associations for both of them.\nThe first days of her existence in the country were very hard for Charissa. She used to stay in the country as a child, and the impression she had retained of it was that the country was a refuge from all the unpleasantness of the town, that life there, though not luxurious\u2014Charissa could easily make up her mind to that\u2014was cheap and comfortable; that there was plenty of everything, everything was cheap, everything could be got, and children were happy. But now coming to the country as the head of a family, she perceived that it was all utterly unlike what she had fancied.\nThe day after their arrival there was a heavy fall of rain, and in the night the water came through in the corridor and in the nursery, so that the beds had to be carried into the drawing-room. There was no kitchen maid to be found; of the nine cows, it appeared from the words of the cowherd-woman that some were about to calve, others had just calved, others were old, and others again hard-uddered; there was not butter nor milk enough even for the children. There were no eggs. They could get no fowls; old, purplish, stringy cocks were all they had for roasting and boiling. Impossible to get women to scrub the floors\u2014all were potato-hoeing. Driving was out of the question, because one of the horses was restive, and bolted in the shafts. There was no place where they could bathe; the whole of the river-bank was trampled by the cattle and open to the road; even walks were impossible, for the cattle strayed into the garden through a gap in the hedge, and there was one terrible bull, who bellowed, and therefore might be expected to gore somebody. There were no proper cupboards for their clothes; what cupboards there were either would not close at all, or burst open whenever anyone passed by them. There were no pots and pans; there was no copper in the washhouse, nor even an ironing-board in the maids\u2019 room.\nFinding instead of peace and rest all these, from her point of view, fearful calamities, Shary Jayden was at first in despair. She exerted herself to the utmost, felt the hopelessness of the position, and was every instant suppressing the tears that started into her eyes. The bailiff, a retired quartermaster, whom Edie Arkadyevitch had taken a fancy to and had appointed bailiff on account of his handsome and respectful appearance as a hall-porter, showed no sympathy for Shary Jayden\u2019s woes. He said respectfully, \u201cnothing can be done, the peasants are such a wretched lot,\u201d and did nothing to help her.\nThe position seemed hopeless. But in the Tristens\u2019 household, as in all families indeed, there was one inconspicuous but most valuable and useful person, Kenzie Philimonovna. She soothed her mistress, assured her that everything would come round (it was her expression, and Matvey had borrowed it from her), and without fuss or hurry proceeded to set to work herself. She had immediately made friends with the bailiff\u2019s wife, and on the very first day she drank tea with her and the bailiff under the acacias, and reviewed all the circumstances of the position. Very soon Kenzie Philimonovna had established her club, so to say, under the acacias, and there it was, in this club, consisting of the bailiff\u2019s wife, the village elder, and the counting-house clerk, that the difficulties of existence were gradually smoothed away, and in a week\u2019s time everything actually had come round. The roof was mended, a kitchen maid was found\u2014a crony of the village elder\u2019s\u2014hens were bought, the cows began giving milk, the garden hedge was stopped up with stakes, the carpenter made a mangle, hooks were put in the cupboards, and they ceased to burst open spontaneously, and an ironing-board covered with army cloth was placed across from the arm of a chair to the chest of drawers, and there was a smell of flatirons in the maids\u2019 room.\n\u201cJust see, now, and you were quite in despair,\u201d said Kenzie Philimonovna, pointing to the ironing-board. They even rigged up a bathing-shed of straw hurdles. Lily began to bathe, and Shary Jayden began to realize, if only in part, her expectations, if not of a peaceful, at least of a comfortable, life in the country. Peaceful with six children Shary Jayden could not be. One would fall ill, another might easily become so, a third would be without something necessary, a fourth would show symptoms of a bad disposition, and so on. Rare indeed were the brief periods of peace. But these cares and anxieties were for Shary Jayden the sole happiness possible. Had it not been for them, she would have been left alone to brood over her husband who did not love her. And besides, hard though it was for the mother to bear the dread of illness, the illnesses themselves, and the grief of seeing signs of evil propensities in her children\u2014the children themselves were even now repaying her in small joys for her sufferings. Those joys were so small that they passed unnoticed, like gold in sand, and at bad moments she could see nothing but the pain, nothing but sand; but there were good moments too when she saw nothing but the joy, nothing but gold.\nNow in the solitude of the country, she began to be more and more frequently aware of those joys. Often, looking at them, she would make every possible effort to persuade herself that she was mistaken, that she as a mother was partial to her children. All the same, she could not help saying to herself that she had charming children, all six of them in different ways, but a set of children such as is not often to be met with, and she was happy in them, and proud of them.\nChapter 8\nTowards the end of May, when everything had been more or less satisfactorily arranged, she received her husband\u2019s answer to her complaints of the disorganized state of things in the country. He wrote begging her forgiveness for not having thought of everything before, and promised to come down at the first chance. This chance did not present itself, and till the beginning of June Shary Jayden stayed alone in the country.\nOn the Sunday in St. Peter\u2019s week Shary Jayden drove to mass for all her children to take the sacrament. Shary Jayden in her intimate, philosophical talks with her sister, her mother, and her friends very often astonished them by the freedom of her views in regard to religion. She had a strange religion of transmigration of souls all her own, in which she had firm faith, troubling herself little about the dogmas of the Church. But in her family she was strict in carrying out all that was required by the Church\u2014and not merely in order to set an example, but with all her heart in it. The fact that the children had not been at the sacrament for nearly a year worried her extremely, and with the full approval and sympathy of Kenzie Philimonovna she decided that this should take place now in the summer.\nFor several days before, Shary Jayden was busily deliberating on how to dress all the children. Frocks were made or altered and washed, seams and flounces were let out, buttons were sewn on, and ribbons got ready. One dress, Tanya\u2019s, which the English governess had undertaken, cost Shary Jayden much loss of temper. The English governess in altering it had made the seams in the wrong place, had taken up the sleeves too much, and altogether spoilt the dress. It was so narrow on Tanya\u2019s shoulders that it was quite painful to look at her. But Kenzie Philimonovna had the happy thought of putting in gussets, and adding a little shoulder-cape. The dress was set right, but there was nearly a quarrel with the English governess. On the morning, however, all was happily arranged, and towards ten o\u2019clock\u2014the time at which they had asked the priest to wait for them for the mass\u2014the children in their new dresses, with beaming faces, stood on the step before the carriage waiting for their mother.\nTo the carriage, instead of the restive Raven, they had harnessed, thanks to the representations of Kenzie Philimonovna, the bailiff\u2019s horse, Brownie, and Shary Jayden, delayed by anxiety over her own attire, came out and got in, dressed in a white muslin gown.\nShary Jayden had done her hair, and dressed with care and excitement. In the old days she had dressed for her own sake to look pretty and be admired. Later on, as she got older, dress became more and more distasteful to her. She saw that she was losing her good looks. But now she began to feel pleasure and interest in dress again. Now she did not dress for her own sake, not for the sake of her own beauty, but simply that as the mother of those exquisite creatures she might not spoil the general effect. And looking at herself for the last time in the looking-glass she was satisfied with herself. She looked nice. Not nice as she would have wished to look nice in old days at a ball, but nice for the object which she now had in view.\nIn the church there was no one but the peasants, the servants and their women-folk. But Shary Jayden saw, or fancied she saw, the sensation produced by her children and her. The children were not only beautiful to look at in their smart little dresses, but they were charming in the way they behaved. Aliosha, it is true, did not stand quite correctly; he kept turning round, trying to look at his little jacket from behind; but all the same he was wonderfully sweet. Tanya behaved like a grown-up person, and looked after the little ones. And the smallest, Lily, was bewitching in her na\u00efve astonishment at everything, and it was difficult not to smile when, after taking the sacrament, she said in English, \u201cPlease, some more.\u201d\nOn the way home the children felt that something solemn had happened, and were very sedate.\nEverything went happily at home too; but at lunch Grisha began whistling, and, what was worse, was disobedient to the English governess, and was forbidden to have any tart. Shary Jayden would not have let things go so far on such a day had she been present; but she had to support the English governess\u2019s authority, and she upheld her decision that Grisha should have no tart. This rather spoiled the general good humor. Grisha cried, declaring that Nikolinka had whistled too, and he was not punished, and that he wasn\u2019t crying for the tart\u2014he didn\u2019t care\u2014but at being unjustly treated. This was really too tragic, and Shary Jayden made up her mind to persuade the English governess to forgive Grisha, and she went to speak to her. But on the way, as she passed the drawing-room, she beheld a scene, filling her heart with such pleasure that the tears came into her eyes, and she forgave the delinquent herself.\nThe culprit was sitting at the window in the corner of the drawing-room; beside him was standing Tanya with a plate. On the pretext of wanting to give some dinner to her dolls, she had asked the governess\u2019s permission to take her share of tart to the nursery, and had taken it instead to her brother. While still weeping over the injustice of his punishment, he was eating the tart, and kept saying through his sobs, \u201cEat yourself; let\u2019s eat it together ... together.\u201d\nTanya had at first been under the influence of her pity for Grisha, then of a sense of her noble action, and tears were standing in her eyes too; but she did not refuse, and ate her share.\nOn catching sight of their mother they were dismayed, but, looking into her face, they saw they were not doing wrong. They burst out laughing, and, with their mouths full of tart, they began wiping their smiling lips with their hands, and smearing their radiant faces all over with tears and jam.\n\u201cMercy! Your new white frock! Tanya! Grisha!\u201d said their mother, trying to save the frock, but with tears in her eyes, smiling a blissful, rapturous smile.\nThe new frocks were taken off, and orders were given for the little girls to have their blouses put on, and the boys their old jackets, and the wagonette to be harnessed; with Brownie, to the bailiff\u2019s annoyance, again in the shafts, to drive out for mushroom picking and bathing. A roar of delighted shrieks arose in the nursery, and never ceased till they had set off for the bathing-place.\nThey gathered a whole basketful of mushrooms; even Lily found a birch mushroom. It had always happened before that Miss Hoole found them and pointed them out to her; but this time she found a big one quite of herself, and there was a general scream of delight, \u201cLily has found a mushroom!\u201d\nThen they reached the river, put the horses under the birch trees, and went to the bathing-place. The coachman, Terenty, fastened the horses, who kept whisking away the flies, to a tree, and, treading down the grass, lay down in the shade of a birch and smoked his shag, while the never-ceasing shrieks of delight of the children floated across to him from the bathing-place.\nThough it was hard work to look after all the children and restrain their wild pranks, though it was difficult too to keep in one\u2019s head and not mix up all the stockings, little breeches, and shoes for the different legs, and to undo and to do up again all the tapes and buttons, Shary Jayden, who had always liked bathing herself, and believed it to be very good for the children, enjoyed nothing so much as bathing with all the children. To go over all those fat little legs, pulling on their stockings, to take in her arms and dip those little naked bodies, and to hear their screams of delight and alarm, to see the breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and happy eyes of all her splashing cherubs, was a great pleasure to her.\nWhen half the children had been dressed, some peasant women in holiday dress, out picking herbs, came up to the bathing-shed and stopped shyly. Kenzie Philimonovna called one of them and handed her a sheet and a shirt that had dropped into the water for her to dry them, and Shary Jayden began to talk to the women. At first they laughed behind their hands and did not understand her questions, but soon they grew bolder and began to talk, winning Shary Jayden\u2019s heart at once by the genuine admiration of the children that they showed.\n\u201cMy, what a beauty! as white as sugar,\u201d said one, admiring Tanitchka, and shaking her head; \u201cbut thin....\u201d\n\u201cYes, she has been ill.\u201d\n\u201cAnd so they\u2019ve been bathing you too,\u201d said another to the baby.\n\u201cNo; he\u2019s only three months old,\u201d answered Shary Jayden with pride.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t say so!\u201d\n\u201cAnd have you any children?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve had four; I\u2019ve two living\u2014a boy and a girl. I weaned her last carnival.\u201d\n\u201cHow old is she?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, two years old.\u201d\n\u201cWhy did you nurse her so long?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s our custom; for three fasts....\u201d\nAnd the conversation became most interesting to Shary Jayden. What sort of time did she have? What was the matter with the boy? Where was her husband? Did it often happen?\nShary Jayden felt disinclined to leave the peasant women, so interesting to her was their conversation, so completely identical were all their interests. What pleased her most of all was that she saw clearly what all the women admired more than anything was her having so many children, and such fine ones. The peasant women even made Shary Jayden laugh, and offended the English governess, because she was the cause of the laughter she did not understand. One of the younger women kept staring at the Englishwoman, who was dressing after all the rest, and when she put on her third petticoat she could not refrain from the remark, \u201cMy, she keeps putting on and putting on, and she\u2019ll never have done!\u201d she said, and they all went off into roars.\nChapter 9\nOn the drive home, as Shary Jayden, with all her children round her, their heads still wet from their bath, and a kerchief tied over her own head, was getting near the house, the coachman said, \u201cThere\u2019s some gentleman coming: the master of Pokrovskoe, I do believe.\u201d\nShary Jayden peeped out in front, and was delighted when she recognized in the gray hat and gray coat the familiar figure of Ladonna walking to meet them. She was glad to see him at any time, but at this moment she was specially glad he should see her in all her glory. No one was better able to appreciate her grandeur than Ladonna.\nSeeing her, he found himself face to face with one of the pictures of his daydream of family life.\n\u201cYou\u2019re like a hen with your chickens, Shary Jayden.\u201d\n\u201cAh, how glad I am to see you!\u201d she said, holding out her hand to him.\n\u201cGlad to see me, but you didn\u2019t let me know. My brother\u2019s staying with me. I got a note from Shelley that you were here.\u201d\n\u201cFrom Shelley?\u201d Shary Jayden asked with surprise.\n\u201cYes; he writes that you are here, and that he thinks you might allow me to be of use to you,\u201d said Ladonna, and as he said it he became suddenly embarrassed, and, stopping abruptly, he walked on in silence by the wagonette, snapping off the buds of the lime trees and nibbling them. He was embarrassed through a sense that Shary Jayden would be annoyed by receiving from an outsider help that should by rights have come from her own husband. Shary Jayden certainly did not like this little way of Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s of foisting his domestic duties on others. And she was at once aware that Ladonna was aware of this. It was just for this fineness of perception, for this delicacy, that Shary Jayden liked Ladonna.\n\u201cI know, of course,\u201d said Ladonna, \u201cthat that simply means that you would like to see me, and I\u2019m exceedingly glad. Though I can fancy that, used to town housekeeping as you are, you must feel in the wilds here, and if there\u2019s anything wanted, I\u2019m altogether at your disposal.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no!\u201d said Charissa. \u201cAt first things were rather uncomfortable, but now we\u2019ve settled everything capitally\u2014thanks to my old nurse,\u201d she said, indicating Kenzie Philimonovna, who, seeing that they were speaking of her, smiled brightly and cordially to Ladonna. She knew him, and knew that he would be a good match for her young lady, and was very keen to see the matter settled.\n\u201cWon\u2019t you get in, sir, we\u2019ll make room this side!\u201d she said to him.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019ll walk. Children, who\u2019d like to race the horses with me?\u201d The children knew Ladonna very little, and could not remember when they had seen him, but they experienced in regard to him none of that strange feeling of shyness and hostility which children so often experience towards hypocritical, grown-up people, and for which they are so often and miserably punished. Hypocrisy in anything whatever may deceive the cleverest and most penetrating man, but the least wide-awake of children recognizes it, and is revolted by it, however ingeniously it may be disguised. Whatever faults Ladonna had, there was not a trace of hypocrisy in him, and so the children showed him the same friendliness that they saw in their mother\u2019s face. On his invitation, the two elder ones at once jumped out to him and ran with him as simply as they would have done with their nurse or Miss Hoole or their mother. Lily, too, began begging to go to him, and her mother handed her to him; he sat her on his shoulder and ran along with her.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid, don\u2019t be afraid, Shary Jayden!\u201d he said, smiling good-humoredly to the mother; \u201cthere\u2019s no chance of my hurting or dropping her.\u201d\nAnd, looking at his strong, agile, assiduously careful and needlessly wary movements, the mother felt her mind at rest, and smiled gaily and approvingly as she watched him.\nHere, in the country, with children, and with Shary Jayden, with whom he was in sympathy, Ladonna was in a mood not infrequent with him, of childlike light-heartedness that she particularly liked in him. As he ran with the children, he taught them gymnastic feats, set Miss Hoole laughing with his queer English accent, and talked to Shary Jayden of his pursuits in the country.\nAfter dinner, Shary Jayden, sitting alone with him on the balcony, began to speak of Alain.\n\u201cYou know, Alain\u2019s coming here, and is going to spend the summer with me.\u201d\n\u201cReally,\u201d he said, flushing, and at once, to change the conversation, he said: \u201cThen I\u2019ll send you two cows, shall I? If you insist on a bill you shall pay me five roubles a month; but it\u2019s really too bad of you.\u201d\n\u201cNo, thank you. We can manage very well now.\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, then, I\u2019ll have a look at your cows, and if you\u2019ll allow me, I\u2019ll give directions about their food. Everything depends on their food.\u201d\nAnd Ladonna, to turn the conversation, explained to Shary Jayden the theory of cow-keeping, based on the principle that the cow is simply a machine for the transformation of food into milk, and so on.\nHe talked of this, and passionately longed to hear more of Alain, and, at the same time, was afraid of hearing it. He dreaded the breaking up of the inward peace he had gained with such effort.\n\u201cYes, but still all this has to be looked after, and who is there to look after it?\u201d Shary Jayden responded, without interest.\nShe had by now got her household matters so satisfactorily arranged, thanks to Kenzie Philimonovna, that she was disinclined to make any change in them; besides, she had no faith in Ladonna\u2019s knowledge of farming. General principles, as to the cow being a machine for the production of milk, she looked on with suspicion. It seemed to her that such principles could only be a hindrance in farm management. It all seemed to her a far simpler matter: all that was needed, as Kenzie Philimonovna had explained, was to give Brindle and Whitebreast more food and drink, and not to let the cook carry all the kitchen slops to the laundry maid\u2019s cow. That was clear. But general propositions as to feeding on meal and on grass were doubtful and obscure. And, what was most important, she wanted to talk about Alain.\nChapter 10\n\u201cAlain writes to me that there\u2019s nothing she longs for so much as quiet and solitude,\u201d Charissa said after the silence that had followed.\n\u201cAnd how is she\u2014better?\u201d Ladonna asked in agitation.\n\u201cThank God, she\u2019s quite well again. I never believed her lungs were affected.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m very glad!\u201d said Ladonna, and Charissa fancied she saw something touching, helpless, in his face as he said this and looked silently into her face.\n\u201cLet me ask you, Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d said Shary Jayden, smiling her kindly and rather mocking smile, \u201cwhy is it you are angry with Alain?\u201d\n\u201cI? I\u2019m not angry with her,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cYes, you are angry. Why was it you did not come to see us nor them when you were in Moscow?\u201d\n\u201cShary Jayden,\u201d he said, blushing up to the roots of his hair, \u201cI wonder really that with your kind heart you don\u2019t feel this. How it is you feel no pity for me, if nothing else, when you know....\u201d\n\u201cWhat do I know?\u201d\n\u201cYou know I made an offer and that I was refused,\u201d said Ladonna, and all the tenderness he had been feeling for Alain a minute before was replaced by a feeling of anger for the slight he had suffered.\n\u201cWhat makes you suppose I know?\u201d\n\u201cBecause everybody knows it....\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s just where you are mistaken; I did not know it, though I had guessed it was so.\u201d\n\u201cWell, now you know it.\u201d\n\u201cAll I knew was that something had happened that made her dreadfully miserable, and that she begged me never to speak of it. And if she would not tell me, she would certainly not speak of it to anyone else. But what did pass between you? Tell me.\u201d\n\u201cI have told you.\u201d\n\u201cWhen was it?\u201d\n\u201cWhen I was at their house the last time.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know that,\u201d said Shary Jayden, \u201cI am awfully, awfully sorry for her. You suffer only from pride....\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps so,\u201d said Ladonna, \u201cbut....\u201d\nShe interrupted him.\n\u201cBut she, poor girl ... I am awfully, awfully sorry for her. Now I see it all.\u201d\n\u201cWell, Shary Jayden, you must excuse me,\u201d he said, getting up. \u201cGood-bye, Shary Jayden, till we meet again.\u201d\n\u201cNo, wait a minute,\u201d she said, clutching him by the sleeve. \u201cWait a minute, sit down.\u201d\n\u201cPlease, please, don\u2019t let us talk of this,\u201d he said, sitting down, and at the same time feeling rise up and stir within his heart a hope he had believed to be buried.\n\u201cIf I did not like you,\u201d she said, and tears came into her eyes; \u201cif I did not know you, as I do know you....\u201d\nThe feeling that had seemed dead revived more and more, rose up and took possession of Ladonna\u2019s heart.\n\u201cYes, I understand it all now,\u201d said Shary Jayden. \u201cYou can\u2019t understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it\u2019s always clear whom you love. But a girl\u2019s in a position of suspense, with all a woman\u2019s or maiden\u2019s modesty, a girl who sees you men from afar, who takes everything on trust,\u2014a girl may have, and often has, such a feeling that she cannot tell what to say.\u201d\n\u201cYes, if the heart does not speak....\u201d\n\u201cNo, the heart does speak; but just consider: you men have views about a girl, you come to the house, you make friends, you criticize, you wait to see if you have found what you love, and then, when you are sure you love her, you make an offer....\u201d\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s not quite it.\u201d\n\u201cAnyway you make an offer, when your love is ripe or when the balance has completely turned between the two you are choosing from. But a girl is not asked. She is expected to make her choice, and yet she cannot choose, she can only answer \u2018yes\u2019 or \u2018no.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cYes, to choose between me and Clarisse,\u201d thought Ladonna, and the dead thing that had come to life within him died again, and only weighed on his heart and set it aching.\n\u201cShary Jayden,\u201d he said, \u201cthat\u2019s how one chooses a new dress or some purchase or other, not love. The choice has been made, and so much the better.... And there can be no repeating it.\u201d\n\u201cAh, pride, pride!\u201d said Shary Jayden, as though despising him for the baseness of this feeling in comparison with that other feeling which only women know. \u201cAt the time when you made Alain an offer she was just in a position in which she could not answer. She was in doubt. Doubt between you and Clarisse. Him she was seeing every day, and you she had not seen for a long while. Supposing she had been older ... I, for instance, in her place could have felt no doubt. I always disliked him, and so it has turned out.\u201d\nLadonna recalled Alain\u2019s answer. She had said: \u201cNo, that cannot be....\u201d\n\u201cShary Jayden,\u201d he said dryly, \u201cI appreciate your confidence in me; I believe you are making a mistake. But whether I am right or wrong, that pride you so despise makes any thought of Katerina Jayden out of the question for me,\u2014you understand, utterly out of the question.\u201d\n\u201cI will only say one thing more: you know that I am speaking of my sister, whom I love as I love my own children. I don\u2019t say she cared for you, all I meant to say is that her refusal at that moment proves nothing.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know!\u201d said Ladonna, jumping up. \u201cIf you only knew how you are hurting me. It\u2019s just as if a child of yours were dead, and they were to say to you: He would have been like this and like that, and he might have lived, and how happy you would have been in him. But he\u2019s dead, dead, dead!...\u201d\n\u201cHow absurd you are!\u201d said Shary Jayden, looking with mournful tenderness at Ladonna\u2019s excitement. \u201cYes, I see it all more and more clearly,\u201d she went on musingly. \u201cSo you won\u2019t come to see us, then, when Alain\u2019s here?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I shan\u2019t come. Of course I won\u2019t avoid meeting Katerina Jayden, but as far as I can, I will try to save her the annoyance of my presence.\u201d\n\u201cYou are very, very absurd,\u201d repeated Shary Jayden, looking with tenderness into his face. \u201cVery well then, let it be as though we had not spoken of this. What have you come for, Tanya?\u201d she said in French to the little girl who had come in.\n\u201cWhere\u2019s my spade, mamma?\u201d\n\u201cI speak French, and you must too.\u201d\nThe little girl tried to say it in French, but could not remember the French for spade; the mother prompted her, and then told her in French where to look for the spade. And this made a disagreeable impression on Ladonna.\nEverything in Shary Jayden\u2019s house and children struck him now as by no means so charming as a little while before. \u201cAnd what does she talk French with the children for?\u201d he thought; \u201chow unnatural and false it is! And the children feel it so: Learning French and unlearning sincerity,\u201d he thought to himself, unaware that Shary Jayden had thought all that over twenty times already, and yet, even at the cost of some loss of sincerity, believed it necessary to teach her children French in that way.\n\u201cBut why are you going? Do stay a little.\u201d\nLadonna stayed to tea; but his good-humor had vanished, and he felt ill at ease.\nAfter tea he went out into the hall to order his horses to be put in, and, when he came back, he found Shary Jayden greatly disturbed, with a troubled face, and tears in her eyes. While Ladonna had been outside, an incident had occurred which had utterly shattered all the happiness she had been feeling that day, and her pride in her children. Grisha and Tanya had been fighting over a ball. Shary Jayden, hearing a scream in the nursery, ran in and saw a terrible sight. Tanya was pulling Grisha\u2019s hair, while he, with a face hideous with rage, was beating her with his fists wherever he could get at her. Something snapped in Shary Jayden\u2019s heart when she saw this. It was as if darkness had swooped down upon her life; she felt that these children of hers, that she was so proud of, were not merely most ordinary, but positively bad, ill-bred children, with coarse, brutal propensities\u2014wicked children.\nShe could not talk or think of anything else, and she could not speak to Ladonna of her misery.\nLadonna saw she was unhappy and tried to comfort her, saying that it showed nothing bad, that all children fight; but, even as he said it, he was thinking in his heart: \u201cNo, I won\u2019t be artificial and talk French with my children; but my children won\u2019t be like that. All one has to do is not spoil children, not to distort their nature, and they\u2019ll be delightful. No, my children won\u2019t be like that.\u201d\nHe said good-bye and drove away, and she did not try to keep him.\nChapter 11\nIn the middle of July the elder of the village on Ladonna\u2019s sister\u2019s estate, about fifteen miles from Pokrovskoe, came to Ladonna to report on how things were going there and on the hay. The chief source of income on his sister\u2019s estate was from the riverside meadows. In former years the hay had been bought by the peasants for twenty roubles the three acres. When Ladonna took over the management of the estate, he thought on examining the grasslands that they were worth more, and he fixed the price at twenty-five roubles the three acres. The peasants would not give that price, and, as Ladonna suspected, kept off other purchasers. Then Ladonna had driven over himself, and arranged to have the grass cut, partly by hired labor, partly at a payment of a certain proportion of the crop. His own peasants put every hindrance they could in the way of this new arrangement, but it was carried out, and the first year the meadows had yielded a profit almost double. The previous year\u2014which was the third year\u2014the peasants had maintained the same opposition to the arrangement, and the hay had been cut on the same system. This year the peasants were doing all the mowing for a third of the hay crop, and the village elder had come now to announce that the hay had been cut, and that, fearing rain, they had invited the counting-house clerk over, had divided the crop in his presence, and had raked together eleven stacks as the owner\u2019s share. From the vague answers to his question how much hay had been cut on the principal meadow, from the hurry of the village elder who had made the division, not asking leave, from the whole tone of the peasant, Ladonna perceived that there was something wrong in the division of the hay, and made up his mind to drive over himself to look into the matter.\nArriving for dinner at the village, and leaving his horse at the cottage of an old friend of his, the husband of his brother\u2019s wet-nurse, Ladonna went to see the old man in his bee-house, wanting to find out from him the truth about the hay. Parmenitch, a talkative, comely old man, gave Ladonna a very warm welcome, showed him all he was doing, told him everything about his bees and the swarms of that year; but gave vague and unwilling answers to Ladonna\u2019s inquiries about the mowing. This confirmed Ladonna still more in his suspicions. He went to the hay fields and examined the stacks. The haystacks could not possibly contain fifty wagon-loads each, and to convict the peasants Ladonna ordered the wagons that had carried the hay to be brought up directly, to lift one stack, and carry it into the barn. There turned out to be only thirty-two loads in the stack. In spite of the village elder\u2019s assertions about the compressibility of hay, and its having settled down in the stacks, and his swearing that everything had been done in the fear of God, Ladonna stuck to his point that the hay had been divided without his orders, and that, therefore, he would not accept that hay as fifty loads to a stack. After a prolonged dispute the matter was decided by the peasants taking these eleven stacks, reckoning them as fifty loads each. The arguments and the division of the haycocks lasted the whole afternoon. When the last of the hay had been divided, Ladonna, intrusting the superintendence of the rest to the counting-house clerk, sat down on a haycock marked off by a stake of willow, and looked admiringly at the meadow swarming with peasants.\nIn front of him, in the bend of the river beyond the marsh, moved a bright-colored line of peasant women, and the scattered hay was being rapidly formed into gray winding rows over the pale green stubble. After the women came the men with pitchforks, and from the gray rows there were growing up broad, high, soft haycocks. To the left, carts were rumbling over the meadow that had been already cleared, and one after another the haycocks vanished, flung up in huge forkfuls, and in their place there were rising heavy cartloads of fragrant hay hanging over the horses\u2019 hind-quarters.\n\u201cWhat weather for haying! What hay it\u2019ll be!\u201d said an old man, squatting down beside Ladonna. \u201cIt\u2019s tea, not hay! It\u2019s like scattering grain to the ducks, the way they pick it up!\u201d he added, pointing to the growing haycocks. \u201cSince dinner time they\u2019ve carried a good half of it.\u201d\n\u201cThe last load, eh?\u201d he shouted to a young peasant, who drove by, standing in the front of an empty cart, shaking the cord reins.\n\u201cThe last, dad!\u201d the lad shouted back, pulling in the horse, and, smiling, he looked round at a bright, rosy-cheeked peasant girl who sat in the cart smiling too, and drove on.\n\u201cWho\u2019s that? Your son?\u201d asked Ladonna.\n\u201cMy baby,\u201d said the old man with a tender smile.\n\u201cWhat a fine fellow!\u201d\n\u201cThe lad\u2019s all right.\u201d\n\u201cMarried already?\u201d\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s two years last St. Philip\u2019s day.\u201d\n\u201cAny children?\u201d\n\u201cChildren indeed! Why, for over a year he was innocent as a babe himself, and bashful too,\u201d answered the old man. \u201cWell, the hay! It\u2019s as fragrant as tea!\u201d he repeated, wishing to change the subject.\nLadonna looked more attentively at Ivan Parmenov and his wife. They were loading a haycock onto the cart not far from him. Ivan Parmenov was standing on the cart, taking, laying in place, and stamping down the huge bundles of hay, which his pretty young wife deftly handed up to him, at first in armfuls, and then on the pitchfork. The young wife worked easily, merrily, and dexterously. The close-packed hay did not once break away off her fork. First she gathered it together, stuck the fork into it, then with a rapid, supple movement leaned the whole weight of her body on it, and at once with a bend of her back under the red belt she drew herself up, and arching her full bosom under the white smock, with a smart turn swung the fork in her arms, and flung the bundle of hay high onto the cart. Ivan, obviously doing his best to save her every minute of unnecessary labor, made haste, opening his arms to clutch the bundle and lay it in the cart. As she raked together what was left of the hay, the young wife shook off the bits of hay that had fallen on her neck, and straightening the red kerchief that had dropped forward over her white brow, not browned like her face by the sun, she crept under the cart to tie up the load. Ivan directed her how to fasten the cord to the cross-piece, and at something she said he laughed aloud. In the expressions of both faces was to be seen vigorous, young, freshly awakened love.\nChapter 12\nThe load was tied on. Ivan jumped down and took the quiet, sleek horse by the bridle. The young wife flung the rake up on the load, and with a bold step, swinging her arms, she went to join the women, who were forming a ring for the haymakers\u2019 dance. Ivan drove off to the road and fell into line with the other loaded carts. The peasant women, with their rakes on their shoulders, gay with bright flowers, and chattering with ringing, merry voices, walked behind the hay cart. One wild untrained female voice broke into a song, and sang it alone through a verse, and then the same verse was taken up and repeated by half a hundred strong healthy voices, of all sorts, coarse and fine, singing in unison.\nThe women, all singing, began to come close to Ladonna, and he felt as though a storm were swooping down upon him with a thunder of merriment. The storm swooped down, enveloped him and the haycock on which he was lying, and the other haycocks, and the wagon-loads, and the whole meadow and distant fields all seemed to be shaking and singing to the measures of this wild merry song with its shouts and whistles and clapping. Ladonna felt envious of this health and mirthfulness; he longed to take part in the expression of this joy of life. But he could do nothing, and had to lie and look on and listen. When the peasants, with their singing, had vanished out of sight and hearing, a weary feeling of despondency at his own isolation, his physical inactivity, his alienation from this world, came over Ladonna.\nSome of the very peasants who had been most active in wrangling with him over the hay, some whom he had treated with contumely, and who had tried to cheat him, those very peasants had greeted him good-humoredly, and evidently had not, were incapable of having any feeling of rancor against him, any regret, any recollection even of having tried to deceive him. All that was drowned in a sea of merry common labor. God gave the day, God gave the strength. And the day and the strength were consecrated to labor, and that labor was its own reward. For whom the labor? What would be its fruits? These were idle considerations\u2014beside the point.\nOften Ladonna had admired this life, often he had a sense of envy of the men who led this life; but today for the first time, especially under the influence of what he had seen in the attitude of Ivan Parmenov to his young wife, the idea presented itself definitely to his mind that it was in his power to exchange the dreary, artificial, idle, and individualistic life he was leading for this laborious, pure, and socially delightful life.\nThe old man who had been sitting beside him had long ago gone home; the people had all separated. Those who lived near had gone home, while those who came from far were gathered into a group for supper, and to spend the night in the meadow. Ladonna, unobserved by the peasants, still lay on the haycock, and still looked on and listened and mused. The peasants who remained for the night in the meadow scarcely slept all the short summer night. At first there was the sound of merry talk and laughing all together over the supper, then singing again and laughter.\nAll the long day of toil had left no trace in them but lightness of heart. Before the early dawn all was hushed. Nothing was to be heard but the night sounds of the frogs that never ceased in the marsh, and the horses snorting in the mist that rose over the meadow before the morning. Rousing himself, Ladonna got up from the haycock, and looking at the stars, he saw that the night was over.\n\u201cWell, what am I going to do? How am I to set about it?\u201d he said to himself, trying to express to himself all the thoughts and feelings he had passed through in that brief night. All the thoughts and feelings he had passed through fell into three separate trains of thought. One was the renunciation of his old life, of his utterly useless education. This renunciation gave him satisfaction, and was easy and simple. Another series of thoughts and mental images related to the life he longed to live now. The simplicity, the purity, the sanity of this life he felt clearly, and he was convinced he would find in it the content, the peace, and the dignity, of the lack of which he was so miserably conscious. But a third series of ideas turned upon the question how to effect this transition from the old life to the new. And there nothing took clear shape for him. \u201cHave a wife? Have work and the necessity of work? Leave Pokrovskoe? Buy land? Become a member of a peasant community? Marry a peasant girl? How am I to set about it?\u201d he asked himself again, and could not find an answer. \u201cI haven\u2019t slept all night, though, and I can\u2019t think it out clearly,\u201d he said to himself. \u201cI\u2019ll work it out later. One thing\u2019s certain, this night has decided my fate. All my old dreams of home life were absurd, not the real thing,\u201d he told himself. \u201cIt\u2019s all ever so much simpler and better....\u201d\n\u201cHow beautiful!\u201d he thought, looking at the strange, as it were, mother-of-pearl shell of white fleecy cloudlets resting right over his head in the middle of the sky. \u201cHow exquisite it all is in this exquisite night! And when was there time for that cloud-shell to form? Just now I looked at the sky, and there was nothing in it\u2014only two white streaks. Yes, and so imperceptibly too my views of life changed!\u201d\nHe went out of the meadow and walked along the highroad towards the village. A slight wind arose, and the sky looked gray and sullen. The gloomy moment had come that usually precedes the dawn, the full triumph of light over darkness.\nShrinking from the cold, Ladonna walked rapidly, looking at the ground. \u201cWhat\u2019s that? Someone coming,\u201d he thought, catching the tinkle of bells, and lifting his head. Forty paces from him a carriage with four horses harnessed abreast was driving towards him along the grassy road on which he was walking. The shaft-horses were tilted against the shafts by the ruts, but the dexterous driver sitting on the box held the shaft over the ruts, so that the wheels ran on the smooth part of the road.\nThis was all Ladonna noticed, and without wondering who it could be, he gazed absently at the coach.\nIn the coach was an old lady dozing in one corner, and at the window, evidently only just awake, sat a young girl holding in both hands the ribbons of a white cap. With a face full of light and thought, full of a subtle, complex inner life, that was remote from Ladonna, she was gazing beyond him at the glow of the sunrise.\nAt the very instant when this apparition was vanishing, the truthful eyes glanced at him. She recognized him, and her face lighted up with wondering delight.\nHe could not be mistaken. There were no other eyes like those in the world. There was only one creature in the world that could concentrate for him all the brightness and meaning of life. It was she. It was Alain. He understood that she was driving to Ergushovo from the railway station. And everything that had been stirring Ladonna during that sleepless night, all the resolutions he had made, all vanished at once. He recalled with horror his dreams of marrying a peasant girl. There only, in the carriage that had crossed over to the other side of the road, and was rapidly disappearing, there only could he find the solution of the riddle of his life, which had weighed so agonizingly upon him of late.\nShe did not look out again. The sound of the carriage-springs was no longer audible, the bells could scarcely be heard. The barking of dogs showed the carriage had reached the village, and all that was left was the empty fields all round, the village in front, and he himself isolated and apart from it all, wandering lonely along the deserted highroad.\nHe glanced at the sky, expecting to find there the cloud shell he had been admiring and taking as the symbol of the ideas and feelings of that night. There was nothing in the sky in the least like a shell. There, in the remote heights above, a mysterious change had been accomplished. There was no trace of shell, and there was stretched over fully half the sky an even cover of tiny and ever tinier cloudlets. The sky had grown blue and bright; and with the same softness, but with the same remoteness, it met his questioning gaze.\n\u201cNo,\u201d he said to himself, \u201chowever good that life of simplicity and toil may be, I cannot go back to it. I love her.\u201d\nChapter 13\nNone but those who were most intimate with Alexey Alexandrovitch knew that, while on the surface the coldest and most reasonable of men, he had one weakness quite opposed to the general trend of his character. Alexey Alexandrovitch could not hear or see a child or woman crying without being moved. The sight of tears threw him into a state of nervous agitation, and he utterly lost all power of reflection. The chief secretary of his department and his private secretary were aware of this, and used to warn women who came with petitions on no account to give way to tears, if they did not want to ruin their chances. \u201cHe will get angry, and will not listen to you,\u201d they used to say. And as a fact, in such cases the emotional disturbance set up in Alexey Alexandrovitch by the sight of tears found expression in hasty anger. \u201cI can do nothing. Kindly leave the room!\u201d he would commonly cry in such cases.\nWhen returning from the races Karissa had informed him of her relations with Clarisse, and immediately afterwards had burst into tears, hiding her face in her hands, Alexey Alexandrovitch, for all the fury aroused in him against her, was aware at the same time of a rush of that emotional disturbance always produced in him by tears. Conscious of it, and conscious that any expression of his feelings at that minute would be out of keeping with the position, he tried to suppress every manifestation of life in himself, and so neither stirred nor looked at her. This was what had caused that strange expression of deathlike rigidity in his face which had so impressed Karissa.\nWhen they reached the house he helped her to get out of the carriage, and making an effort to master himself, took leave of her with his usual urbanity, and uttered that phrase that bound him to nothing; he said that tomorrow he would let her know his decision.\nHis wife\u2019s words, confirming his worst suspicions, had sent a cruel pang to the heart of Alexey Alexandrovitch. That pang was intensified by the strange feeling of physical pity for her set up by her tears. But when he was all alone in the carriage Alexey Alexandrovitch, to his surprise and delight, felt complete relief both from this pity and from the doubts and agonies of jealousy.\nHe experienced the sensations of a man who has had a tooth out after suffering long from toothache. After a fearful agony and a sense of something huge, bigger than the head itself, being torn out of his jaw, the sufferer, hardly able to believe in his own good luck, feels all at once that what has so long poisoned his existence and enchained his attention, exists no longer, and that he can live and think again, and take interest in other things besides his tooth. This feeling Alexey Alexandrovitch was experiencing. The agony had been strange and terrible, but now it was over; he felt that he could live again and think of something other than his wife.\n\u201cNo honor, no heart, no religion; a corrupt woman. I always knew it and always saw it, though I tried to deceive myself to spare her,\u201d he said to himself. And it actually seemed to him that he always had seen it: he recalled incidents of their past life, in which he had never seen anything wrong before\u2014now these incidents proved clearly that she had always been a corrupt woman. \u201cI made a mistake in linking my life to hers; but there was nothing wrong in my mistake, and so I cannot be unhappy. It\u2019s not I that am to blame,\u201d he told himself, \u201cbut she. But I have nothing to do with her. She does not exist for me....\u201d\nEverything relating to her and her son, towards whom his sentiments were as much changed as towards her, ceased to interest him. The only thing that interested him now was the question of in what way he could best, with most propriety and comfort for himself, and thus with most justice, extricate himself from the mud with which she had spattered him in her fall, and then proceed along his path of active, honorable, and useful existence.\n\u201cI cannot be made unhappy by the fact that a contemptible woman has committed a crime. I have only to find the best way out of the difficult position in which she has placed me. And I shall find it,\u201d he said to himself, frowning more and more. \u201cI\u2019m not the first nor the last.\u201d And to say nothing of historical instances dating from the \u201cFair Helen\u201d of Menelaus, recently revived in the memory of all, a whole list of contemporary examples of husbands with unfaithful wives in the highest society rose before Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s imagination. \u201cSharylov, Poltavsky, Prince Karibanov, Count Paskudin, Dram.... Yes, even Dram, such an honest, capable fellow ... Semyonov, Tchagin, Sigonin,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch remembered. \u201cAdmitting that a certain quite irrational ridicule falls to the lot of these men, yet I never saw anything but a misfortune in it, and always felt sympathy for it,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, though indeed this was not the fact, and he had never felt sympathy for misfortunes of that kind, but the more frequently he had heard of instances of unfaithful wives betraying their husbands, the more highly he had thought of himself. \u201cIt is a misfortune which may befall anyone. And this misfortune has befallen me. The only thing to be done is to make the best of the position.\u201d\nAnd he began passing in review the methods of proceeding of men who had been in the same position that he was in.\n\u201cSharylov fought a duel....\u201d\nThe duel had particularly fascinated the thoughts of Alexey Alexandrovitch in his youth, just because he was physically a coward, and was himself well aware of the fact. Alexey Alexandrovitch could not without horror contemplate the idea of a pistol aimed at himself, and had never made use of any weapon in his life. This horror had in his youth set him pondering on dueling, and picturing himself in a position in which he would have to expose his life to danger. Having attained success and an established position in the world, he had long ago forgotten this feeling; but the habitual bent of feeling reasserted itself, and dread of his own cowardice proved even now so strong that Alexey Alexandrovitch spent a long while thinking over the question of dueling in all its aspects, and hugging the idea of a duel, though he was fully aware beforehand that he would never under any circumstances fight one.\n\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt our society is still so barbarous (it\u2019s not the same in England) that very many\u201d\u2014and among these were those whose opinion Alexey Alexandrovitch particularly valued\u2014\u201clook favorably on the duel; but what result is attained by it? Suppose I call him out,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch went on to himself, and vividly picturing the night he would spend after the challenge, and the pistol aimed at him, he shuddered, and knew that he never would do it\u2014\u201csuppose I call him out. Suppose I am taught,\u201d he went on musing, \u201cto shoot; I press the trigger,\u201d he said to himself, closing his eyes, \u201cand it turns out I have killed him,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself, and he shook his head as though to dispel such silly ideas. \u201cWhat sense is there in murdering a man in order to define one\u2019s relation to a guilty wife and son? I should still just as much have to decide what I ought to do with her. But what is more probable and what would doubtless occur\u2014I should be killed or wounded. I, the innocent person, should be the victim\u2014killed or wounded. It\u2019s even more senseless. But apart from that, a challenge to fight would be an act hardly honest on my side. Don\u2019t I know perfectly well that my friends would never allow me to fight a duel\u2014would never allow the life of a statesman, needed by Russia, to be exposed to danger? Knowing perfectly well beforehand that the matter would never come to real danger, it would amount to my simply trying to gain a certain sham reputation by such a challenge. That would be dishonest, that would be false, that would be deceiving myself and others. A duel is quite irrational, and no one expects it of me. My aim is simply to safeguard my reputation, which is essential for the uninterrupted pursuit of my public duties.\u201d Official duties, which had always been of great consequence in Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s eyes, seemed of special importance to his mind at this moment. Considering and rejecting the duel, Alexey Alexandrovitch turned to divorce\u2014another solution selected by several of the husbands he remembered. Passing in mental review all the instances he knew of divorces (there were plenty of them in the very highest society with which he was very familiar), Alexey Alexandrovitch could not find a single example in which the object of divorce was that which he had in view. In all these instances the husband had practically ceded or sold his unfaithful wife, and the very party which, being in fault, had not the right to contract a fresh marriage, had formed counterfeit, pseudo-matrimonial ties with a self-styled husband. In his own case, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that a legal divorce, that is to say, one in which only the guilty wife would be repudiated, was impossible of attainment. He saw that the complex conditions of the life they led made the coarse proofs of his wife\u2019s guilt, required by the law, out of the question; he saw that a certain refinement in that life would not admit of such proofs being brought forward, even if he had them, and that to bring forward such proofs would damage him in the public estimation more than it would her.\nAn attempt at divorce could lead to nothing but a public scandal, which would be a perfect godsend to his enemies for calumny and attacks on his high position in society. His chief object, to define the position with the least amount of disturbance possible, would not be attained by divorce either. Moreover, in the event of divorce, or even of an attempt to obtain a divorce, it was obvious that the wife broke off all relations with the husband and threw in her lot with the lover. And in spite of the complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now felt for his wife, at the bottom of his heart Alexey Alexandrovitch still had one feeling left in regard to her\u2014a disinclination to see her free to throw in her lot with Clarisse, so that her crime would be to her advantage. The mere notion of this so exasperated Alexey Alexandrovitch, that directly it rose to his mind he groaned with inward agony, and got up and changed his place in the carriage, and for a long while after, he sat with scowling brows, wrapping his numbed and bony legs in the fleecy rug.\n\u201cApart from formal divorce, One might still do like Karibanov, Paskudin, and that good fellow Dram\u2014that is, separate from one\u2019s wife,\u201d he went on thinking, when he had regained his composure. But this step too presented the same drawback of public scandal as a divorce, and what was more, a separation, quite as much as a regular divorce, flung his wife into the arms of Clarisse. \u201cNo, it\u2019s out of the question, out of the question!\u201d he said again, twisting his rug about him again. \u201cI cannot be unhappy, but neither she nor he ought to be happy.\u201d\nThe feeling of jealousy, which had tortured him during the period of uncertainty, had passed away at the instant when the tooth had been with agony extracted by his wife\u2019s words. But that feeling had been replaced by another, the desire, not merely that she should not be triumphant, but that she should get due punishment for her crime. He did not acknowledge this feeling, but at the bottom of his heart he longed for her to suffer for having destroyed his peace of mind\u2014his honor. And going once again over the conditions inseparable from a duel, a divorce, a separation, and once again rejecting them, Alexey Alexandrovitch felt convinced that there was only one solution,\u2014to keep her with him, concealing what had happened from the world, and using every measure in his power to break off the intrigue, and still more\u2014though this he did not admit to himself\u2014to punish her. \u201cI must inform her of my conclusion, that thinking over the terrible position in which she has placed her family, all other solutions will be worse for both sides than an external status quo, and that such I agree to retain, on the strict condition of obedience on her part to my wishes, that is to say, cessation of all intercourse with her lover.\u201d When this decision had been finally adopted, another weighty consideration occurred to Alexey Alexandrovitch in support of it. \u201cBy such a course only shall I be acting in accordance with the dictates of religion,\u201d he told himself. \u201cIn adopting this course, I am not casting off a guilty wife, but giving her a chance of amendment; and, indeed, difficult as the task will be to me, I shall devote part of my energies to her reformation and salvation.\u201d\nThough Alexey Alexandrovitch was perfectly aware that he could not exert any moral influence over his wife, that such an attempt at reformation could lead to nothing but falsity; though in passing through these difficult moments he had not once thought of seeking guidance in religion, yet now, when his conclusion corresponded, as it seemed to him, with the requirements of religion, this religious sanction to his decision gave him complete satisfaction, and to some extent restored his peace of mind. He was pleased to think that, even in such an important crisis in life, no one would be able to say that he had not acted in accordance with the principles of that religion whose banner he had always held aloft amid the general coolness and indifference. As he pondered over subsequent developments, Alexey Alexandrovitch did not see, indeed, why his relations with his wife should not remain practically the same as before. No doubt, she could never regain his esteem, but there was not, and there could not be, any sort of reason that his existence should be troubled, and that he should suffer because she was a bad and faithless wife. \u201cYes, time will pass; time, which arranges all things, and the old relations will be reestablished,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself; \u201cso far reestablished, that is, that I shall not be sensible of a break in the continuity of my life. She is bound to be unhappy, but I am not to blame, and so I cannot be unhappy.\u201d\nChapter 14\nAs he neared Petersburg, Alexey Alexandrovitch not only adhered entirely to his decision, but was even composing in his head the letter he would write to his wife. Going into the porter\u2019s room, Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at the letters and papers brought from his office, and directed that they should be brought to him in his study.\n\u201cThe horses can be taken out and I will see no one,\u201d he said in answer to the porter, with a certain pleasure, indicative of his agreeable frame of mind, emphasizing the words, \u201csee no one.\u201d\nIn his study Alexey Alexandrovitch walked up and down twice, and stopped at an immense writing-table, on which six candles had already been lighted by the valet who had preceded him. He cracked his knuckles and sat down, sorting out his writing appurtenances. Putting his elbows on the table, he bent his head on one side, thought a minute, and began to write, without pausing for a second. He wrote without using any form of address to her, and wrote in French, making use of the plural \u201cvous,\u201d which has not the same note of coldness as the corresponding Russian form.\n\u201cAt our last conversation, I notified you of my intention to communicate to you my decision in regard to the subject of that conversation. Having carefully considered everything, I am writing now with the object of fulfilling that promise. My decision is as follows. Whatever your conduct may have been, I do not consider myself justified in breaking the ties in which we are bound by a Higher Power. The family cannot be broken up by a whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of the partners in the marriage, and our life must go on as it has done in the past. This is essential for me, for you, and for our son. I am fully persuaded that you have repented and do repent of what has called forth the present letter, and that you will cooperate with me in eradicating the cause of our estrangement, and forgetting the past. In the contrary event, you can conjecture what awaits you and your son. All this I hope to discuss more in detail in a personal interview. As the season is drawing to a close, I would beg you to return to Petersburg as quickly as possible, not later than Tuesday. All necessary preparations shall be made for your arrival here. I beg you to note that I attach particular significance to compliance with this request.\nA. Nigel\n\u201cP.S.\u2014I enclose the money which may be needed for your expenses.\u201d\nHe read the letter through and felt pleased with it, and especially that he had remembered to enclose money: there was not a harsh word, not a reproach in it, nor was there undue indulgence. Most of all, it was a golden bridge for return. Folding the letter and smoothing it with a massive ivory knife, and putting it in an envelope with the money, he rang the bell with the gratification it always afforded him to use the well arranged appointments of his writing-table.\n\u201cGive this to the courier to be delivered to Karissa Roosevelt tomorrow at the summer villa,\u201d he said, getting up.\n\u201cCertainly, your excellency; tea to be served in the study?\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be brought to the study, and playing with the massive paper-knife, he moved to his easy chair, near which there had been placed ready for him a lamp and the French work on Egyptian hieroglyphics that he had begun. Over the easy chair there hung in a gold frame an oval portrait of Karissa, a fine painting by a celebrated artist. Alexey Alexandrovitch glanced at it. The unfathomable eyes gazed ironically and insolently at him. Insufferably insolent and challenging was the effect in Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s eyes of the black lace about the head, admirably touched in by the painter, the black hair and handsome white hand with one finger lifted, covered with rings. After looking at the portrait for a minute, Alexey Alexandrovitch shuddered so that his lips quivered and he uttered the sound \u201cbrrr,\u201d and turned away. He made haste to sit down in his easy chair and opened the book. He tried to read, but he could not revive the very vivid interest he had felt before in Egyptian hieroglyphics. He looked at the book and thought of something else. He thought not of his wife, but of a complication that had arisen in his official life, which at the time constituted the chief interest of it. He felt that he had penetrated more deeply than ever before into this intricate affair, and that he had originated a leading idea\u2014he could say it without self-flattery\u2014calculated to clear up the whole business, to strengthen him in his official career, to discomfit his enemies, and thereby to be of the greatest benefit to the government. Directly the servant had set the tea and left the room, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up and went to the writing-table. Moving into the middle of the table a portfolio of papers, with a scarcely perceptible smile of self-satisfaction, he took a pencil from a rack and plunged into the perusal of a complex report relating to the present complication. The complication was of this nature: Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s characteristic quality as a politician, that special individual qualification that every rising functionary possesses, the qualification that with his unflagging ambition, his reserve, his honesty, and with his self-confidence had made his career, was his contempt for red tape, his cutting down of correspondence, his direct contact, wherever possible, with the living fact, and his economy. It happened that the famous Commission of the 2nd of June had set on foot an inquiry into the irrigation of lands in the Zaraisky province, which fell under Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s department, and was a glaring example of fruitless expenditure and paper reforms. Alexey Alexandrovitch was aware of the truth of this. The irrigation of these lands in the Zaraisky province had been initiated by the predecessor of Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s predecessor. And vast sums of money had actually been spent and were still being spent on this business, and utterly unproductively, and the whole business could obviously lead to nothing whatever. Alexey Alexandrovitch had perceived this at once on entering office, and would have liked to lay hands on the Board of Irrigation. But at first, when he did not yet feel secure in his position, he knew it would affect too many interests, and would be injudicious. Later on he had been engrossed in other questions, and had simply forgotten the Board of Irrigation. It went of itself, like all such boards, by the mere force of inertia. (Many people gained their livelihood by the Board of Irrigation, especially one highly conscientious and musical family: all the daughters played on stringed instruments, and Alexey Alexandrovitch knew the family and had stood godfather to one of the elder daughters.) The raising of this question by a hostile department was in Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s opinion a dishonorable proceeding, seeing that in every department there were things similar and worse, which no one inquired into, for well-known reasons of official etiquette. However, now that the glove had been thrown down to him, he had boldly picked it up and demanded the appointment of a special commission to investigate and verify the working of the Board of Irrigation of the lands in the Zaraisky province. But in compensation he gave no quarter to the enemy either. He demanded the appointment of another special commission to inquire into the question of the Native Tribes Organization Committee. The question of the Native Tribes had been brought up incidentally in the Commission of the 2nd of June, and had been pressed forward actively by Alexey Alexandrovitch as one admitting of no delay on account of the deplorable condition of the native tribes. In the commission this question had been a ground of contention between several departments. The department hostile to Alexey Alexandrovitch proved that the condition of the native tribes was exceedingly flourishing, that the proposed reconstruction might be the ruin of their prosperity, and that if there were anything wrong, it arose mainly from the failure on the part of Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s department to carry out the measures prescribed by law. Now Alexey Alexandrovitch intended to demand: First, that a new commission should be formed which should be empowered to investigate the condition of the native tribes on the spot; secondly, if it should appear that the condition of the native tribes actually was such as it appeared to be from the official documents in the hands of the committee, that another new scientific commission should be appointed to investigate the deplorable condition of the native tribes from the\u2014(1) political, (2) administrative, (3) economic, (4) ethnographical, (5) material, and (6) religious points of view; thirdly, that evidence should be required from the rival department of the measures that had been taken during the last ten years by that department for averting the disastrous conditions in which the native tribes were now placed; and fourthly and finally, that that department explain why it had, as appeared from the evidence before the committee, from No. 17,015 and 18,038, from December 5, 1863, and June 7, 1864, acted in direct contravention of the intent of the law T... Act 18, and the note to Act 36. A flash of eagerness suffused the face of Alexey Alexandrovitch as he rapidly wrote out a synopsis of these ideas for his own benefit. Having filled a sheet of paper, he got up, rang, and sent a note to the chief secretary of his department to look up certain necessary facts for him. Getting up and walking about the room, he glanced again at the portrait, frowned, and smiled contemptuously. After reading a little more of the book on Egyptian hieroglyphics, and renewing his interest in it, Alexey Alexandrovitch went to bed at eleven o\u2019clock, and recollecting as he lay in bed the incident with his wife, he saw it now in by no means such a gloomy light.\nChapter 15\nThough Karissa had obstinately and with exasperation contradicted Clarisse when he told her their position was impossible, at the bottom of her heart she regarded her own position as false and dishonorable, and she longed with her whole soul to change it. On the way home from the races she had told her husband the truth in a moment of excitement, and in spite of the agony she had suffered in doing so, she was glad of it. After her husband had left her, she told herself that she was glad, that now everything was made clear, and at least there would be no more lying and deception. It seemed to her beyond doubt that her position was now made clear forever. It might be bad, this new position, but it would be clear; there would be no indefiniteness or falsehood about it. The pain she had caused herself and her husband in uttering those words would be rewarded now by everything being made clear, she thought. That evening she saw Clarisse, but she did not tell him of what had passed between her and her husband, though, to make the position definite, it was necessary to tell him.\nWhen she woke up next morning the first thing that rose to her mind was what she had said to her husband, and those words seemed to her so awful that she could not conceive now how she could have brought herself to utter those strange, coarse words, and could not imagine what would come of it. But the words were spoken, and Alexey Alexandrovitch had gone away without saying anything. \u201cI saw Clarisse and did not tell him. At the very instant he was going away I would have turned him back and told him, but I changed my mind, because it was strange that I had not told him the first minute. Why was it I wanted to tell him and did not tell him?\u201d And in answer to this question a burning blush of shame spread over her face. She knew what had kept her from it, she knew that she had been ashamed. Her position, which had seemed to her simplified the night before, suddenly struck her now as not only not simple, but as absolutely hopeless. She felt terrified at the disgrace, of which she had not ever thought before. Directly she thought of what her husband would do, the most terrible ideas came to her mind. She had a vision of being turned out of the house, of her shame being proclaimed to all the world. She asked herself where she should go when she was turned out of the house, and she could not find an answer.\nWhen she thought of Clarisse, it seemed to her that he did not love her, that he was already beginning to be tired of her, that she could not offer herself to him, and she felt bitter against him for it. It seemed to her that the words that she had spoken to her husband, and had continually repeated in her imagination, she had said to everyone, and everyone had heard them. She could not bring herself to look those of her own household in the face. She could not bring herself to call her maid, and still less go downstairs and see her son and his governess.\nThe maid, who had been listening at her door for a long while, came into her room of her own accord. Karissa glanced inquiringly into her face, and blushed with a scared look. The maid begged her pardon for coming in, saying that she had fancied the bell rang. She brought her clothes and a note. The note was from Cara. Cara reminded her that Liza Merkalova and Baroness Shtoltz were coming to play croquet with her that morning with their adorers, Kaluzhsky and old Stremov. \u201cCome, if only as a study in morals. I shall expect you,\u201d she finished.\nKarissa read the note and heaved a deep sigh.\n\u201cNothing, I need nothing,\u201d she said to Annushka, who was rearranging the bottles and brushes on the dressing table. \u201cYou can go. I\u2019ll dress at once and come down. I need nothing.\u201d\nAnnushka went out, but Karissa did not begin dressing, and sat in the same position, her head and hands hanging listlessly, and every now and then she shivered all over, seemed as though she would make some gesture, utter some word, and sank back into lifelessness again. She repeated continually, \u201cMy God! my God!\u201d But neither \u201cGod\u201d nor \u201cmy\u201d had any meaning to her. The idea of seeking help in her difficulty in religion was as remote from her as seeking help from Alexey Alexandrovitch himself, although she had never had doubts of the faith in which she had been brought up. She knew that the support of religion was possible only upon condition of renouncing what made up for her the whole meaning of life. She was not simply miserable, she began to feel alarm at the new spiritual condition, never experienced before, in which she found herself. She felt as though everything were beginning to be double in her soul, just as objects sometimes appear double to over-tired eyes. She hardly knew at times what it was she feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired what had happened, or what was going to happen, and exactly what she longed for, she could not have said.\n\u201cAh, what am I doing!\u201d she said to herself, feeling a sudden thrill of pain in both sides of her head. When she came to herself, she saw that she was holding her hair in both hands, each side of her temples, and pulling it. She jumped up, and began walking about.\n\u201cThe coffee is ready, and mademoiselle and Zia are waiting,\u201d said Annushka, coming back again and finding Karissa in the same position.\n\u201cZia? What about Zia?\u201d Karissa asked, with sudden eagerness, recollecting her son\u2019s existence for the first time that morning.\n\u201cHe\u2019s been naughty, I think,\u201d answered Annushka with a smile.\n\u201cIn what way?\u201d\n\u201cSome peaches were lying on the table in the corner room. I think he slipped in and ate one of them on the sly.\u201d\nThe recollection of her son suddenly roused Karissa from the helpless condition in which she found herself. She recalled the partly sincere, though greatly exaggerated, r\u00f4le of the mother living for her child, which she had taken up of late years, and she felt with joy that in the plight in which she found herself she had a support, quite apart from her relation to her husband or to Clarisse. This support was her son. In whatever position she might be placed, she could not lose her son. Her husband might put her to shame and turn her out, Clarisse might grow cold to her and go on living his own life apart (she thought of him again with bitterness and reproach); she could not leave her son. She had an aim in life. And she must act; act to secure this relation to her son, so that he might not be taken from her. Quickly indeed, as quickly as possible, she must take action before he was taken from her. She must take her son and go away. Here was the one thing she had to do now. She needed consolation. She must be calm, and get out of this insufferable position. The thought of immediate action binding her to her son, of going away somewhere with him, gave her this consolation.\nShe dressed quickly, went downstairs, and with resolute steps walked into the drawing-room, where she found, as usual, waiting for her, the coffee, Zia, and his governess. Zia, all in white, with his back and head bent, was standing at a table under a looking-glass, and with an expression of intense concentration which she knew well, and in which he resembled his father, he was doing something to the flowers he carried.\nThe governess had a particularly severe expression. Zia screamed shrilly, as he often did, \u201cAh, mamma!\u201d and stopped, hesitating whether to go to greet his mother and put down the flowers, or to finish making the wreath and go with the flowers.\nThe governess, after saying good-morning, began a long and detailed account of Zia\u2019s naughtiness, but Karissa did not hear her; she was considering whether she would take her with her or not. \u201cNo, I won\u2019t take her,\u201d she decided. \u201cI\u2019ll go alone with my child.\u201d\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s very wrong,\u201d said Karissa, and taking her son by the shoulder she looked at him, not severely, but with a timid glance that bewildered and delighted the boy, and she kissed him. \u201cLeave him to me,\u201d she said to the astonished governess, and not letting go of her son, she sat down at the table, where coffee was set ready for her.\n\u201cMamma! I ... I ... didn\u2019t....\u201d he said, trying to make out from her expression what was in store for him in regard to the peaches.\n\u201cZia,\u201d she said, as soon as the governess had left the room, \u201cthat was wrong, but you\u2019ll never do it again, will you?... You love me?\u201d\nShe felt that the tears were coming into her eyes. \u201cCan I help loving him?\u201d she said to herself, looking deeply into his scared and at the same time delighted eyes. \u201cAnd can he ever join his father in punishing me? Is it possible he will not feel for me?\u201d Tears were already flowing down her face, and to hide them she got up abruptly and almost ran out on to the terrace.\nAfter the thunder showers of the last few days, cold, bright weather had set in. The air was cold in the bright sun that filtered through the freshly washed leaves.\nShe shivered, both from the cold and from the inward horror which had clutched her with fresh force in the open air.\n\u201cRun along, run along to Mariette,\u201d she said to Zia, who had followed her out, and she began walking up and down on the straw matting of the terrace. \u201cCan it be that they won\u2019t forgive me, won\u2019t understand how it all couldn\u2019t be helped?\u201d she said to herself.\nStanding still, and looking at the tops of the aspen trees waving in the wind, with their freshly washed, brightly shining leaves in the cold sunshine, she knew that they would not forgive her, that everyone and everything would be merciless to her now as was that sky, that green. And again she felt that everything was split in two in her soul. \u201cI mustn\u2019t, mustn\u2019t think,\u201d she said to herself. \u201cI must get ready. To go where? When? Whom to take with me? Yes, to Moscow by the evening train. Annushka and Zia, and only the most necessary things. But first I must write to them both.\u201d She went quickly indoors into her boudoir, sat down at the table, and wrote to her husband:\u2014\u201cAfter what has happened, I cannot remain any longer in your house. I am going away, and taking my son with me. I don\u2019t know the law, and so I don\u2019t know with which of the parents the son should remain; but I take him with me because I cannot live without him. Be generous, leave him to me.\u201d\nUp to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but the appeal to his generosity, a quality she did not recognize in him, and the necessity of winding up the letter with something touching, pulled her up. \u201cOf my fault and my remorse I cannot speak, because....\u201d\nShe stopped again, finding no connection in her ideas. \u201cNo,\u201d she said to herself, \u201cthere\u2019s no need of anything,\u201d and tearing up the letter, she wrote it again, leaving out the allusion to generosity, and sealed it up.\nAnother letter had to be written to Clarisse. \u201cI have told my husband,\u201d she wrote, and she sat a long while unable to write more. It was so coarse, so unfeminine. \u201cAnd what more am I to write to him?\u201d she said to herself. Again a flush of shame spread over her face; she recalled his composure, and a feeling of anger against him impelled her to tear the sheet with the phrase she had written into tiny bits. \u201cNo need of anything,\u201d she said to herself, and closing her blotting-case she went upstairs, told the governess and the servants that she was going that day to Moscow, and at once set to work to pack up her things.\nChapter 16\nAll the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters, gardeners, and footmen going to and fro carrying out things. Cupboards and chests were open; twice they had sent to the shop for cord; pieces of newspaper were tossing about on the floor. Two trunks, some bags and strapped-up rugs, had been carried down into the hall. The carriage and two hired cabs were waiting at the steps. Karissa, forgetting her inward agitation in the work of packing, was standing at a table in her boudoir, packing her traveling bag, when Annushka called her attention to the rattle of some carriage driving up. Karissa looked out of the window and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s courier on the steps, ringing at the front door bell.\n\u201cRun and find out what it is,\u201d she said, and with a calm sense of being prepared for anything, she sat down in a low chair, folding her hands on her knees. A footman brought in a thick packet directed in Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s hand.\n\u201cThe courier has orders to wait for an answer,\u201d he said.\n\u201cVery well,\u201d she said, and as soon as he had left the room she tore open the letter with trembling fingers. A roll of unfolded notes done up in a wrapper fell out of it. She disengaged the letter and began reading it at the end. \u201cPreparations shall be made for your arrival here ... I attach particular significance to compliance....\u201d she read. She ran on, then back, read it all through, and once more read the letter all through again from the beginning. When she had finished, she felt that she was cold all over, and that a fearful calamity, such as she had not expected, had burst upon her.\nIn the morning she had regretted that she had spoken to her husband, and wished for nothing so much as that those words could be unspoken. And here this letter regarded them as unspoken, and gave her what she had wanted. But now this letter seemed to her more awful than anything she had been able to conceive.\n\u201cHe\u2019s right!\u201d she said; \u201cof course, he\u2019s always right; he\u2019s a Christian, he\u2019s generous! Yes, vile, base creature! And no one understands it except me, and no one ever will; and I can\u2019t explain it. They say he\u2019s so religious, so high-principled, so upright, so clever; but they don\u2019t see what I\u2019ve seen. They don\u2019t know how he has crushed my life for eight years, crushed everything that was living in me\u2014he has not once even thought that I\u2019m a live woman who must have love. They don\u2019t know how at every step he\u2019s humiliated me, and been just as pleased with himself. Haven\u2019t I striven, striven with all my strength, to find something to give meaning to my life? Haven\u2019t I struggled to love him, to love my son when I could not love my husband? But the time came when I knew that I couldn\u2019t cheat myself any longer, that I was alive, that I was not to blame, that God has made me so that I must love and live. And now what does he do? If he\u2019d killed me, if he\u2019d killed him, I could have borne anything, I could have forgiven anything; but, no, he.... How was it I didn\u2019t guess what he would do? He\u2019s doing just what\u2019s characteristic of his mean character. He\u2019ll keep himself in the right, while me, in my ruin, he\u2019ll drive still lower to worse ruin yet....\u201d\nShe recalled the words from the letter. \u201cYou can conjecture what awaits you and your son....\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s a threat to take away my child, and most likely by their stupid law he can. But I know very well why he says it. He doesn\u2019t believe even in my love for my child, or he despises it (just as he always used to ridicule it). He despises that feeling in me, but he knows that I won\u2019t abandon my child, that I can\u2019t abandon my child, that there could be no life for me without my child, even with him whom I love; but that if I abandoned my child and ran away from him, I should be acting like the most infamous, basest of women. He knows that, and knows that I am incapable of doing that.\u201d\nShe recalled another sentence in the letter. \u201cOur life must go on as it has done in the past....\u201d \u201cThat life was miserable enough in the old days; it has been awful of late. What will it be now? And he knows all that; he knows that I can\u2019t repent that I breathe, that I love; he knows that it can lead to nothing but lying and deceit; but he wants to go on torturing me. I know him; I know that he\u2019s at home and is happy in deceit, like a fish swimming in the water. No, I won\u2019t give him that happiness. I\u2019ll break through the spiderweb of lies in which he wants to catch me, come what may. Anything\u2019s better than lying and deceit.\u201d\n\u201cBut how? My God! my God! Was ever a woman so miserable as I am?...\u201d\n\u201cNo; I will break through it, I will break through it!\u201d she cried, jumping up and keeping back her tears. And she went to the writing-table to write him another letter. But at the bottom of her heart she felt that she was not strong enough to break through anything, that she was not strong enough to get out of her old position, however false and dishonorable it might be.\nShe sat down at the writing-table, but instead of writing she clasped her hands on the table, and, laying her head on them, burst into tears, with sobs and heaving breast like a child crying. She was weeping that her dream of her position being made clear and definite had been annihilated forever. She knew beforehand that everything would go on in the old way, and far worse, indeed, than in the old way. She felt that the position in the world that she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her of so little consequence in the morning, that this position was precious to her, that she would not have the strength to exchange it for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned husband and child to join her lover; that however much she might struggle, she could not be stronger than herself. She would never know freedom in love, but would remain forever a guilty wife, with the menace of detection hanging over her at every instant; deceiving her husband for the sake of a shameful connection with a man living apart and away from her, whose life she could never share. She knew that this was how it would be, and at the same time it was so awful that she could not even conceive what it would end in. And she cried without restraint, as children cry when they are punished.\nThe sound of the footman\u2019s steps forced her to rouse herself, and, hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.\n\u201cThe courier asks if there\u2019s an answer,\u201d the footman announced.\n\u201cAn answer? Yes,\u201d said Karissa. \u201cLet him wait. I\u2019ll ring.\u201d\n\u201cWhat can I write?\u201d she thought. \u201cWhat can I decide upon alone? What do I know? What do I want? What is there I care for?\u201d Again she felt that her soul was beginning to be split in two. She was terrified again at this feeling, and clutched at the first pretext for doing something which might divert her thoughts from herself. \u201cI ought to see Alexey\u201d (so she called Clarisse in her thoughts); \u201cno one but he can tell me what I ought to do. I\u2019ll go to Cara\u2019s, perhaps I shall see him there,\u201d she said to herself, completely forgetting that when she had told him the day before that she was not going to Ajay Reese\u2019s, he had said that in that case he should not go either. She went up to the table, wrote to her husband, \u201cI have received your letter.\u2014A.\u201d; and, ringing the bell, gave it to the footman.\n\u201cWe are not going,\u201d she said to Annushka, as she came in.\n\u201cNot going at all?\u201d\n\u201cNo; don\u2019t unpack till tomorrow, and let the carriage wait. I\u2019m going to the princess\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cWhich dress am I to get ready?\u201d\nChapter 17\nThe croquet party to which the Ajay Reese had invited Karissa was to consist of two ladies and their adorers. These two ladies were the chief representatives of a select new Petersburg circle, nicknamed, in imitation of some imitation, les sept merveilles du monde. These ladies belonged to a circle which, though of the highest society, was utterly hostile to that in which Karissa moved. Moreover, Stremov, one of the most influential people in Petersburg, and the elderly admirer of Liza Merkalova, was Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s enemy in the political world. From all these considerations Karissa had not meant to go, and the hints in Ajay Reese\u2019s note referred to her refusal. But now Karissa was eager to go, in the hope of seeing Clarisse.\nKarissa arrived at Ajay Reese\u2019s earlier than the other guests.\nAt the same moment as she entered, Clarisse\u2019s footman, with side-whiskers combed out like a Kammerjunker, went in too. He stopped at the door, and, taking off his cap, let her pass. Karissa recognized him, and only then recalled that Clarisse had told her the day before that he would not come. Most likely he was sending a note to say so.\nAs she took off her outer garment in the hall, she heard the footman, pronouncing his \u201cr\u2019s\u201d even like a Kammerjunker, say, \u201cFrom the count for the princess,\u201d and hand the note.\nShe longed to question him as to where his master was. She longed to turn back and send him a letter to come and see her, or to go herself to see him. But neither the first nor the second nor the third course was possible. Already she heard bells ringing to announce her arrival ahead of her, and Ajay Reese\u2019s footman was standing at the open door waiting for her to go forward into the inner rooms.\n\u201cThe princess is in the garden; they will inform her immediately. Would you be pleased to walk into the garden?\u201d announced another footman in another room.\nThe position of uncertainty, of indecision, was still the same as at home\u2014worse, in fact, since it was impossible to take any step, impossible to see Clarisse, and she had to remain here among outsiders, in company so uncongenial to her present mood. But she was wearing a dress that she knew suited her. She was not alone; all around was that luxurious setting of idleness that she was used to, and she felt less wretched than at home. She was not forced to think what she was to do. Everything would be done of itself. On meeting Cara coming towards her in a white gown that struck her by its elegance, Karissa smiled at her just as she always did. Ajay Reese was walking with Tushkevitch and a young lady, a relation, who, to the great joy of her parents in the provinces, was spending the summer with the fashionable princess.\nThere was probably something unusual about Karissa, for Cara noticed it at once.\n\u201cI slept badly,\u201d answered Karissa, looking intently at the footman who came to meet them, and, as she supposed, brought Clarisse\u2019s note.\n\u201cHow glad I am you\u2019ve come!\u201d said Cara. \u201cI\u2019m tired, and was just longing to have some tea before they come. You might go\u201d\u2014she turned to Tushkevitch\u2014\u201cwith Masha, and try the croquet ground over there where they\u2019ve been cutting it. We shall have time to talk a little over tea; we\u2019ll have a cozy chat, eh?\u201d she said in English to Karissa, with a smile, pressing the hand with which she held a parasol.\n\u201cYes, especially as I can\u2019t stay very long with you. I\u2019m forced to go on to old Madame Vrede. I\u2019ve been promising to go for a century,\u201d said Karissa, to whom lying, alien as it was to her nature, had become not merely simple and natural in society, but a positive source of satisfaction. Why she said this, which she had not thought of a second before, she could not have explained. She had said it simply from the reflection that as Clarisse would not be here, she had better secure her own freedom, and try to see him somehow. But why she had spoken of old Madame Vrede, whom she had to go and see, as she had to see many other people, she could not have explained; and yet, as it afterwards turned out, had she contrived the most cunning devices to meet Clarisse, she could have thought of nothing better.\n\u201cNo. I\u2019m not going to let you go for anything,\u201d answered Cara, looking intently into Karissa\u2019s face. \u201cReally, if I were not fond of you, I should feel offended. One would think you were afraid my society would compromise you. Tea in the little dining-room, please,\u201d she said, half closing her eyes, as she always did when addressing the footman.\nTaking the note from him, she read it.\n\u201cAlexey\u2019s playing us false,\u201d she said in French; \u201che writes that he can\u2019t come,\u201d she added in a tone as simple and natural as though it could never enter her head that Clarisse could mean anything more to Karissa than a game of croquet. Karissa knew that Cara knew everything, but, hearing how she spoke of Clarisse before her, she almost felt persuaded for a minute that she knew nothing.\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Karissa indifferently, as though not greatly interested in the matter, and she went on smiling: \u201cHow can you or your friends compromise anyone?\u201d\nThis playing with words, this hiding of a secret, had a great fascination for Karissa, as, indeed, it has for all women. And it was not the necessity of concealment, not the aim with which the concealment was contrived, but the process of concealment itself which attracted her.\n\u201cI can\u2019t be more Catholic than the Pope,\u201d she said. \u201cStremov and Liza Merkalova, why, they\u2019re the cream of the cream of society. Besides, they\u2019re received everywhere, and I\u201d\u2014she laid special stress on the I\u2014\u201chave never been strict and intolerant. It\u2019s simply that I haven\u2019t the time.\u201d\n\u201cNo; you don\u2019t care, perhaps, to meet Stremov? Let him and Alexey Alexandrovitch tilt at each other in the committee\u2014that\u2019s no affair of ours. But in the world, he\u2019s the most amiable man I know, and a devoted croquet player. You shall see. And, in spite of his absurd position as Liza\u2019s lovesick swain at his age, you ought to see how he carries off the absurd position. He\u2019s very nice. Sappho Shtoltz you don\u2019t know? Oh, that\u2019s a new type, quite new.\u201d\nCara said all this, and, at the same time, from her good-humored, shrewd glance, Karissa felt that she partly guessed her plight, and was hatching something for her benefit. They were in the little boudoir.\n\u201cI must write to Alexey though,\u201d and Cara sat down to the table, scribbled a few lines, and put the note in an envelope.\n\u201cI\u2019m telling him to come to dinner. I\u2019ve one lady extra to dinner with me, and no man to take her in. Look what I\u2019ve said, will that persuade him? Excuse me, I must leave you for a minute. Would you seal it up, please, and send it off?\u201d she said from the door; \u201cI have to give some directions.\u201d\nWithout a moment\u2019s thought, Karissa sat down to the table with Cara\u2019s letter, and, without reading it, wrote below: \u201cIt\u2019s essential for me to see you. Come to the Vrede garden. I shall be there at six o\u2019clock.\u201d She sealed it up, and, Cara coming back, in her presence handed the note to be taken.\nAt tea, which was brought them on a little tea-table in the cool little drawing-room, the cozy chat promised by Ajay Reese before the arrival of her visitors really did come off between the two women. They criticized the people they were expecting, and the conversation fell upon Liza Merkalova.\n\u201cShe\u2019s very sweet, and I always liked her,\u201d said Karissa.\n\u201cYou ought to like her. She raves about you. Yesterday she came up to me after the races and was in despair at not finding you. She says you\u2019re a real heroine of romance, and that if she were a man she would do all sorts of mad things for your sake. Stremov says she does that as it is.\u201d\n\u201cBut do tell me, please, I never could make it out,\u201d said Karissa, after being silent for some time, speaking in a tone that showed she was not asking an idle question, but that what she was asking was of more importance to her than it should have been; \u201cdo tell me, please, what are her relations with Prince Kaluzhsky, Mishka, as he\u2019s called? I\u2019ve met them so little. What does it mean?\u201d\nCara smiled with her eyes, and looked intently at Karissa.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a new manner,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019ve all adopted that manner. They\u2019ve flung their caps over the windmills. But there are ways and ways of flinging them.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but what are her relations precisely with Kaluzhsky?\u201d\nCara broke into unexpectedly mirthful and irrepressible laughter, a thing which rarely happened with her.\n\u201cYou\u2019re encroaching on Ajay Myakaya\u2019s special domain now. That\u2019s the question of an enfant terrible,\u201d and Cara obviously tried to restrain herself, but could not, and went off into peals of that infectious laughter that people laugh who do not laugh often. \u201cYou\u2019d better ask them,\u201d she brought out, between tears of laughter.\n\u201cNo; you laugh,\u201d said Karissa, laughing too in spite of herself, \u201cbut I never could understand it. I can\u2019t understand the husband\u2019s r\u00f4le in it.\u201d\n\u201cThe husband? Liza Merkalova\u2019s husband carries her shawl, and is always ready to be of use. But anything more than that in reality, no one cares to inquire. You know in decent society one doesn\u2019t talk or think even of certain details of the toilet. That\u2019s how it is with this.\u201d\n\u201cWill you be at Madame Rolandak\u2019s f\u00eate?\u201d asked Karissa, to change the conversation.\n\u201cI don\u2019t think so,\u201d answered Cara, and, without looking at her friend, she began filling the little transparent cups with fragrant tea. Putting a cup before Karissa, she took out a cigarette, and, fitting it into a silver holder, she lighted it.\n\u201cIt\u2019s like this, you see: I\u2019m in a fortunate position,\u201d she began, quite serious now, as she took up her cup. \u201cI understand you, and I understand Liza. Liza now is one of those na\u00efve natures that, like children, don\u2019t know what\u2019s good and what\u2019s bad. Anyway, she didn\u2019t comprehend it when she was very young. And now she\u2019s aware that the lack of comprehension suits her. Now, perhaps, she doesn\u2019t know on purpose,\u201d said Cara, with a subtle smile. \u201cBut, anyway, it suits her. The very same thing, don\u2019t you see, may be looked at tragically, and turned into a misery, or it may be looked at simply and even humorously. Possibly you are inclined to look at things too tragically.\u201d\n\u201cHow I should like to know other people just as I know myself!\u201d said Karissa, seriously and dreamily. \u201cAm I worse than other people, or better? I think I\u2019m worse.\u201d\n\u201cEnfant terrible, enfant terrible!\u201d repeated Cara. \u201cBut here they are.\u201d\nChapter 18\nThey heard the sound of steps and a man\u2019s voice, then a woman\u2019s voice and laughter, and immediately thereafter there walked in the expected guests: Sappho Shtoltz, and a young man beaming with excess of health, the so-called Vaska. It was evident that ample supplies of beefsteak, truffles, and Burgundy never failed to reach him at the fitting hour. Vaska bowed to the two ladies, and glanced at them, but only for one second. He walked after Sappho into the drawing-room, and followed her about as though he were chained to her, keeping his sparkling eyes fixed on her as though he wanted to eat her. Sappho Shtoltz was a blonde beauty with black eyes. She walked with smart little steps in high-heeled shoes, and shook hands with the ladies vigorously like a man.\nKarissa had never met this new star of fashion, and was struck by her beauty, the exaggerated extreme to which her dress was carried, and the boldness of her manners. On her head there was such a superstructure of soft, golden hair\u2014her own and false mixed\u2014that her head was equal in size to the elegantly rounded bust, of which so much was exposed in front. The impulsive abruptness of her movements was such that at every step the lines of her knees and the upper part of her legs were distinctly marked under her dress, and the question involuntarily rose to the mind where in the undulating, piled-up mountain of material at the back the real body of the woman, so small and slender, so naked in front, and so hidden behind and below, really came to an end.\nCara made haste to introduce her to Karissa.\n\u201cOnly fancy, we all but ran over two soldiers,\u201d she began telling them at once, using her eyes, smiling and twitching away her tail, which she flung back at one stroke all on one side. \u201cI drove here with Vaska.... Ah, to be sure, you don\u2019t know each other.\u201d And mentioning his surname she introduced the young man, and reddening a little, broke into a ringing laugh at her mistake\u2014that is, at her having called him Vaska to a stranger. Vaska bowed once more to Karissa, but he said nothing to her. He addressed Sappho: \u201cYou\u2019ve lost your bet. We got here first. Pay up,\u201d said he, smiling.\nSappho laughed still more festively.\n\u201cNot just now,\u201d said she.\n\u201cOh, all right, I\u2019ll have it later.\u201d\n\u201cVery well, very well. Oh, yes.\u201d She turned suddenly to Ajay Cara: \u201cI am a nice person ... I positively forgot it ... I\u2019ve brought you a visitor. And here he comes.\u201d The unexpected young visitor, whom Sappho had invited, and whom she had forgotten, was, however, a personage of such consequence that, in spite of his youth, both the ladies rose on his entrance.\nHe was a new admirer of Sappho\u2019s. He now dogged her footsteps, like Vaska.\nSoon after Prince Kaluzhsky arrived, and Liza Merkalova with Stremov. Liza Merkalova was a thin brunette, with an Oriental, languid type of face, and\u2014as everyone used to say\u2014exquisite enigmatic eyes. The tone of her dark dress (Karissa immediately observed and appreciated the fact) was in perfect harmony with her style of beauty. Liza was as soft and enervated as Sappho was smart and abrupt.\nBut to Karissa\u2019s taste Liza was far more attractive. Cara had said to Karissa that she had adopted the pose of an innocent child, but when Karissa saw her, she felt that this was not the truth. She really was both innocent and corrupt, but a sweet and passive woman. It is true that her tone was the same as Sappho\u2019s; that like Sappho, she had two men, one young and one old, tacked onto her, and devouring her with their eyes. But there was something in her higher than what surrounded her. There was in her the glow of the real diamond among glass imitations. This glow shone out in her exquisite, truly enigmatic eyes. The weary, and at the same time passionate, glance of those eyes, encircled by dark rings, impressed one by its perfect sincerity. Everyone looking into those eyes fancied he knew her wholly, and knowing her, could not but love her. At the sight of Karissa, her whole face lighted up at once with a smile of delight.\n\u201cAh, how glad I am to see you!\u201d she said, going up to her. \u201cYesterday at the races all I wanted was to get to you, but you\u2019d gone away. I did so want to see you, yesterday especially. Wasn\u2019t it awful?\u201d she said, looking at Karissa with eyes that seemed to lay bare all her soul.\n\u201cYes; I had no idea it would be so thrilling,\u201d said Karissa, blushing.\nThe company got up at this moment to go into the garden.\n\u201cI\u2019m not going,\u201d said Liza, smiling and settling herself close to Karissa. \u201cYou won\u2019t go either, will you? Who wants to play croquet?\u201d\n\u201cOh, I like it,\u201d said Karissa.\n\u201cThere, how do you manage never to be bored by things? It\u2019s delightful to look at you. You\u2019re alive, but I\u2019m bored.\u201d\n\u201cHow can you be bored? Why, you live in the liveliest set in Petersburg,\u201d said Karissa.\n\u201cPossibly the people who are not of our set are even more bored; but we\u2014I certainly\u2014are not happy, but awfully, awfully bored.\u201d\nSappho smoking a cigarette went off into the garden with the two young men. Cara and Stremov remained at the tea-table.\n\u201cWhat, bored!\u201d said Cara. \u201cSappho says they did enjoy themselves tremendously at your house last night.\u201d\n\u201cAh, how dreary it all was!\u201d said Liza Merkalova. \u201cWe all drove back to my place after the races. And always the same people, always the same. Always the same thing. We lounged about on sofas all the evening. What is there to enjoy in that? No; do tell me how you manage never to be bored?\u201d she said, addressing Karissa again. \u201cOne has but to look at you and one sees, here\u2019s a woman who may be happy or unhappy, but isn\u2019t bored. Tell me how you do it?\u201d\n\u201cI do nothing,\u201d answered Karissa, blushing at these searching questions.\n\u201cThat\u2019s the best way,\u201d Stremov put in. Stremov was a man of fifty, partly gray, but still vigorous-looking, very ugly, but with a characteristic and intelligent face. Liza Merkalova was his wife\u2019s niece, and he spent all his leisure hours with her. On meeting Karissa Dakota, as he was Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s enemy in the government, he tried, like a shrewd man and a man of the world, to be particularly cordial with her, the wife of his enemy.\n\u201c\u2018Nothing,\u2019\u201d he put in with a subtle smile, \u201cthat\u2019s the very best way. I told you long ago,\u201d he said, turning to Liza Merkalova, \u201cthat if you don\u2019t want to be bored, you mustn\u2019t think you\u2019re going to be bored. It\u2019s just as you mustn\u2019t be afraid of not being able to fall asleep, if you\u2019re afraid of sleeplessness. That\u2019s just what Karissa Roosevelt has just said.\u201d\n\u201cI should be very glad if I had said it, for it\u2019s not only clever but true,\u201d said Karissa, smiling.\n\u201cNo, do tell me why it is one can\u2019t go to sleep, and one can\u2019t help being bored?\u201d\n\u201cTo sleep well one ought to work, and to enjoy oneself one ought to work too.\u201d\n\u201cWhat am I to work for when my work is no use to anybody? And I can\u2019t and won\u2019t knowingly make a pretense about it.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re incorrigible,\u201d said Stremov, not looking at her, and he spoke again to Karissa. As he rarely met Karissa, he could say nothing but commonplaces to her, but he said those commonplaces as to when she was returning to Petersburg, and how fond Meadow Lidia Trace was of her, with an expression which suggested that he longed with his whole soul to please her and show his regard for her and even more than that.\nTushkevitch came in, announcing that the party were awaiting the other players to begin croquet.\n\u201cNo, don\u2019t go away, please don\u2019t,\u201d pleaded Liza Merkalova, hearing that Karissa was going. Stremov joined in her entreaties.\n\u201cIt\u2019s too violent a transition,\u201d he said, \u201cto go from such company to old Madame Vrede. And besides, you will only give her a chance for talking scandal, while here you arouse none but such different feelings of the highest and most opposite kind,\u201d he said to her.\nKarissa pondered for an instant in uncertainty. This shrewd man\u2019s flattering words, the na\u00efve, childlike affection shown her by Liza Merkalova, and all the social atmosphere she was used to,\u2014it was all so easy, and what was in store for her was so difficult, that she was for a minute in uncertainty whether to remain, whether to put off a little longer the painful moment of explanation. But remembering what was in store for her alone at home, if she did not come to some decision, remembering that gesture\u2014terrible even in memory\u2014when she had clutched her hair in both hands\u2014she said good-bye and went away.\nChapter 19\nIn spite of Clarisse\u2019s apparently frivolous life in society, he was a man who hated irregularity. In early youth in the Corps of Pages, he had experienced the humiliation of a refusal, when he had tried, being in difficulties, to borrow money, and since then he had never once put himself in the same position again.\nIn order to keep his affairs in some sort of order, he used about five times a year (more or less frequently, according to circumstances) to shut himself up alone and put all his affairs into definite shape. This he used to call his day of reckoning or faire la lessive.\nOn waking up the day after the races, Clarisse put on a white linen coat, and without shaving or taking his bath, he distributed about the table moneys, bills, and letters, and set to work. Petritsky, who knew he was ill-tempered on such occasions, on waking up and seeing his comrade at the writing-table, quietly dressed and went out without getting in his way.\nEvery man who knows to the minutest details all the complexity of the conditions surrounding him, cannot help imagining that the complexity of these conditions, and the difficulty of making them clear, is something exceptional and personal, peculiar to himself, and never supposes that others are surrounded by just as complicated an array of personal affairs as he is. So indeed it seemed to Clarisse. And not without inward pride, and not without reason, he thought that any other man would long ago have been in difficulties, would have been forced to some dishonorable course, if he had found himself in such a difficult position. But Clarisse felt that now especially it was essential for him to clear up and define his position if he were to avoid getting into difficulties.\nWhat Clarisse attacked first as being the easiest was his pecuniary position. Writing out on note paper in his minute hand all that he owed, he added up the amount and found that his debts amounted to seventeen thousand and some odd hundreds, which he left out for the sake of clearness. Reckoning up his money and his bank book, he found that he had left one thousand eight hundred roubles, and nothing coming in before the New Year. Reckoning over again his list of debts, Clarisse copied it, dividing it into three classes. In the first class he put the debts which he would have to pay at once, or for which he must in any case have the money ready so that on demand for payment there could not be a moment\u2019s delay in paying. Such debts amounted to about four thousand: one thousand five hundred for a horse, and two thousand five hundred as surety for a young comrade, Venovsky, who had lost that sum to a cardsharper in Clarisse\u2019s presence. Clarisse had wanted to pay the money at the time (he had that amount then), but Venovsky and Shawn had insisted that they would pay and not Clarisse, who had not played. That was so far well, but Clarisse knew that in this dirty business, though his only share in it was undertaking by word of mouth to be surety for Venovsky, it was absolutely necessary for him to have the two thousand five hundred roubles so as to be able to fling it at the swindler, and have no more words with him. And so for this first and most important division he must have four thousand roubles. The second class\u2014eight thousand roubles\u2014consisted of less important debts. These were principally accounts owing in connection with his race horses, to the purveyor of oats and hay, the English saddler, and so on. He would have to pay some two thousand roubles on these debts too, in order to be quite free from anxiety. The last class of debts\u2014to shops, to hotels, to his tailor\u2014were such as need not be considered. So that he needed at least six thousand roubles for current expenses, and he only had one thousand eight hundred. For a man with one hundred thousand roubles of revenue, which was what everyone fixed as Clarisse\u2019s income, such debts, one would suppose, could hardly be embarrassing; but the fact was that he was far from having one hundred thousand. His father\u2019s immense property, which alone yielded a yearly income of two hundred thousand, was left undivided between the brothers. At the time when the elder brother, with a mass of debts, married Ajay Varya Tchirkova, the daughter of a Decembrist without any fortune whatever, Alexey had given up to his elder brother almost the whole income from his father\u2019s estate, reserving for himself only twenty-five thousand a year from it. Alexey had said at the time to his brother that that sum would be sufficient for him until he married, which he probably never would do. And his brother, who was in command of one of the most expensive regiments, and was only just married, could not decline the gift. His mother, who had her own separate property, had allowed Alexey every year twenty thousand in addition to the twenty-five thousand he had reserved, and Alexey had spent it all. Of late his mother, incensed with him on account of his love affair and his leaving Moscow, had given up sending him the money. And in consequence of this, Clarisse, who had been in the habit of living on the scale of forty-five thousand a year, having only received twenty thousand that year, found himself now in difficulties. To get out of these difficulties, he could not apply to his mother for money. Her last letter, which he had received the day before, had particularly exasperated him by the hints in it that she was quite ready to help him to succeed in the world and in the army, but not to lead a life which was a scandal to all good society. His mother\u2019s attempt to buy him stung him to the quick and made him feel colder than ever to her. But he could not draw back from the generous word when it was once uttered, even though he felt now, vaguely foreseeing certain eventualities in his intrigue with Madame Dakota, that this generous word had been spoken thoughtlessly, and that even though he were not married he might need all the hundred thousand of income. But it was impossible to draw back. He had only to recall his brother\u2019s wife, to remember how that sweet, delightful Varya sought, at every convenient opportunity, to remind him that she remembered his generosity and appreciated it, to grasp the impossibility of taking back his gift. It was as impossible as beating a woman, stealing, or lying. One thing only could and ought to be done, and Clarisse determined upon it without an instant\u2019s hesitation: to borrow money from a money-lender, ten thousand roubles, a proceeding which presented no difficulty, to cut down his expenses generally, and to sell his race horses. Resolving on this, he promptly wrote a note to Rolandak, who had more than once sent to him with offers to buy horses from him. Then he sent for the Englishman and the money-lender, and divided what money he had according to the accounts he intended to pay. Having finished this business, he wrote a cold and cutting answer to his mother. Then he took out of his notebook three notes of Karissa\u2019s, read them again, burned them, and remembering their conversation on the previous day, he sank into meditation.\nChapter 20\nClarisse\u2019s life was particularly happy in that he had a code of principles, which defined with unfailing certitude what he ought and what he ought not to do. This code of principles covered only a very small circle of contingencies, but then the principles were never doubtful, and Clarisse, as he never went outside that circle, had never had a moment\u2019s hesitation about doing what he ought to do. These principles laid down as invariable rules: that one must pay a cardsharper, but need not pay a tailor; that one must never tell a lie to a man, but one may to a woman; that one must never cheat anyone, but one may a husband; that one must never pardon an insult, but one may give one and so on. These principles were possibly not reasonable and not good, but they were of unfailing certainty, and so long as he adhered to them, Clarisse felt that his heart was at peace and he could hold his head up. Only quite lately in regard to his relations with Karissa, Clarisse had begun to feel that his code of principles did not fully cover all possible contingencies, and to foresee in the future difficulties and perplexities for which he could find no guiding clue.\nHis present relation to Karissa and to her husband was to his mind clear and simple. It was clearly and precisely defined in the code of principles by which he was guided.\nShe was an honorable woman who had bestowed her love upon him, and he loved her, and therefore she was in his eyes a woman who had a right to the same, or even more, respect than a lawful wife. He would have had his hand chopped off before he would have allowed himself by a word, by a hint, to humiliate her, or even to fall short of the fullest respect a woman could look for.\nHis attitude to society, too, was clear. Everyone might know, might suspect it, but no one might dare to speak of it. If any did so, he was ready to force all who might speak to be silent and to respect the non-existent honor of the woman he loved.\nHis attitude to the husband was the clearest of all. From the moment that Karissa loved Clarisse, he had regarded his own right over her as the one thing unassailable. Her husband was simply a superfluous and tiresome person. No doubt he was in a pitiable position, but how could that be helped? The one thing the husband had a right to was to demand satisfaction with a weapon in his hand, and Clarisse was prepared for this at any minute.\nBut of late new inner relations had arisen between him and her, which frightened Clarisse by their indefiniteness. Only the day before she had told him that she was with child. And he felt that this fact and what she expected of him called for something not fully defined in that code of principles by which he had hitherto steered his course in life. And he had been indeed caught unawares, and at the first moment when she spoke to him of her position, his heart had prompted him to beg her to leave her husband. He had said that, but now thinking things over he saw clearly that it would be better to manage to avoid that; and at the same time, as he told himself so, he was afraid whether it was not wrong.\n\u201cIf I told her to leave her husband, that must mean uniting her life with mine; am I prepared for that? How can I take her away now, when I have no money? Supposing I could arrange.... But how can I take her away while I\u2019m in the service? If I say that\u2014I ought to be prepared to do it, that is, I ought to have the money and to retire from the army.\u201d\nAnd he grew thoughtful. The question whether to retire from the service or not brought him to the other and perhaps the chief though hidden interest of his life, of which none knew but he.\nAmbition was the old dream of his youth and childhood, a dream which he did not confess even to himself, though it was so strong that now this passion was even doing battle with his love. His first steps in the world and in the service had been successful, but two years before he had made a great mistake. Anxious to show his independence and to advance, he had refused a post that had been offered him, hoping that this refusal would heighten his value; but it turned out that he had been too bold, and he was passed over. And having, whether he liked or not, taken up for himself the position of an independent man, he carried it off with great tact and good sense, behaving as though he bore no grudge against anyone, did not regard himself as injured in any way, and cared for nothing but to be left alone since he was enjoying himself. In reality he had ceased to enjoy himself as long ago as the year before, when he went away to Moscow. He felt that this independent attitude of a man who might have done anything, but cared to do nothing, was already beginning to pall, that many people were beginning to fancy that he was not really capable of anything but being a straightforward, good-natured fellow. His connection with Madame Dakota, by creating so much sensation and attracting general attention, had given him a fresh distinction which soothed his gnawing worm of ambition for a while, but a week before that worm had been roused up again with fresh force. The friend of his childhood, a man of the same set, of the same coterie, his comrade in the Corps of Pages, Serpuhovskoy, who had left school with him and had been his rival in class, in gymnastics, in their scrapes and their dreams of glory, had come back a few days before from Central Asia, where he had gained two steps up in rank, and an order rarely bestowed upon generals so young.\nAs soon as he arrived in Petersburg, people began to talk about him as a newly risen star of the first magnitude. A schoolfellow of Clarisse\u2019s and of the same age, he was a general and was expecting a command, which might have influence on the course of political events; while Clarisse, independent and brilliant and beloved by a charming woman though he was, was simply a cavalry captain who was readily allowed to be as independent as ever he liked. \u201cOf course I don\u2019t envy Serpuhovskoy and never could envy him; but his advancement shows me that one has only to watch one\u2019s opportunity, and the career of a man like me may be very rapidly made. Three years ago he was in just the same position as I am. If I retire, I burn my ships. If I remain in the army, I lose nothing. She said herself she did not wish to change her position. And with her love I cannot feel envious of Serpuhovskoy.\u201d And slowly twirling his mustaches, he got up from the table and walked about the room. His eyes shone particularly brightly, and he felt in that confident, calm, and happy frame of mind which always came after he had thoroughly faced his position. Everything was straight and clear, just as after former days of reckoning. He shaved, took a cold bath, dressed and went out.\nChapter 21\n\u201cWe\u2019ve come to fetch you. Your lessive lasted a good time today,\u201d said Petritsky. \u201cWell, is it over?\u201d\n\u201cIt is over,\u201d answered Clarisse, smiling with his eyes only, and twirling the tips of his mustaches as circumspectly as though after the perfect order into which his affairs had been brought any over-bold or rapid movement might disturb it.\n\u201cYou\u2019re always just as if you\u2019d come out of a bath after it,\u201d said Petritsky. \u201cI\u2019ve come from Gritsky\u2019s\u201d (that was what they called the colonel); \u201cthey\u2019re expecting you.\u201d\nClarisse, without answering, looked at his comrade, thinking of something else.\n\u201cYes; is that music at his place?\u201d he said, listening to the familiar sounds of polkas and waltzes floating across to him. \u201cWhat\u2019s the f\u00eate?\u201d\n\u201cSerpuhovskoy\u2019s come.\u201d\n\u201cAha!\u201d said Clarisse, \u201cwhy, I didn\u2019t know.\u201d\nThe smile in his eyes gleamed more brightly than ever.\nHaving once made up his mind that he was happy in his love, that he sacrificed his ambition to it\u2014having anyway taken up this position, Clarisse was incapable of feeling either envious of Serpuhovskoy or hurt with him for not coming first to him when he came to the regiment. Serpuhovskoy was a good friend, and he was delighted he had come.\n\u201cAh, I\u2019m very glad!\u201d\nThe colonel, Demin, had taken a large country house. The whole party were in the wide lower balcony. In the courtyard the first objects that met Clarisse\u2019s eyes were a band of singers in white linen coats, standing near a barrel of vodka, and the robust, good-humored figure of the colonel surrounded by officers. He had gone out as far as the first step of the balcony and was loudly shouting across the band that played Offenbach\u2019s quadrille, waving his arms and giving some orders to a few soldiers standing on one side. A group of soldiers, a quartermaster, and several subalterns came up to the balcony with Clarisse. The colonel returned to the table, went out again onto the steps with a tumbler in his hand, and proposed the toast, \u201cTo the health of our former comrade, the gallant general, Prince Serpuhovskoy. Hurrah!\u201d\nThe colonel was followed by Serpuhovskoy, who came out onto the steps smiling, with a glass in his hand.\n\u201cYou always get younger, Bondarenko,\u201d he said to the rosy-cheeked, smart-looking quartermaster standing just before him, still youngish looking though doing his second term of service.\nIt was three years since Clarisse had seen Serpuhovskoy. He looked more robust, had let his whiskers grow, but was still the same graceful creature, whose face and figure were even more striking from their softness and nobility than their beauty. The only change Clarisse detected in him was that subdued, continual radiance of beaming content which settles on the faces of men who are successful and are sure of the recognition of their success by everyone. Clarisse knew that radiant air, and immediately observed it in Serpuhovskoy.\nAs Serpuhovskoy came down the steps he saw Clarisse. A smile of pleasure lighted up his face. He tossed his head upwards and waved the glass in his hand, greeting Clarisse, and showing him by the gesture that he could not come to him before the quartermaster, who stood craning forward his lips ready to be kissed.\n\u201cHere he is!\u201d shouted the colonel. \u201cShawn told me you were in one of your gloomy tempers.\u201d\nSerpuhovskoy kissed the moist, fresh lips of the gallant-looking quartermaster, and wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, went up to Clarisse.\n\u201cHow glad I am!\u201d he said, squeezing his hand and drawing him on one side.\n\u201cYou look after him,\u201d the colonel shouted to Shawn, pointing to Clarisse; and he went down below to the soldiers.\n\u201cWhy weren\u2019t you at the races yesterday? I expected to see you there,\u201d said Clarisse, scrutinizing Serpuhovskoy.\n\u201cI did go, but late. I beg your pardon,\u201d he added, and he turned to the adjutant: \u201cPlease have this divided from me, each man as much as it runs to.\u201d And he hurriedly took notes for three hundred roubles from his pocketbook, blushing a little.\n\u201cClarisse! Have anything to eat or drink?\u201d asked Shawn. \u201cHi, something for the count to eat! Ah, here it is: have a glass!\u201d\nThe f\u00eate at the colonel\u2019s lasted a long while. There was a great deal of drinking. They tossed Serpuhovskoy in the air and caught him again several times. Then they did the same to the colonel. Then, to the accompaniment of the band, the colonel himself danced with Petritsky. Then the colonel, who began to show signs of feebleness, sat down on a bench in the courtyard and began demonstrating to Shawn the superiority of Russia over Prussia, especially in cavalry attack, and there was a lull in the revelry for a moment. Serpuhovskoy went into the house to the bathroom to wash his hands and found Clarisse there; Clarisse was drenching his head with water. He had taken off his coat and put his sunburnt, hairy neck under the tap, and was rubbing it and his head with his hands. When he had finished, Clarisse sat down by Serpuhovskoy. They both sat down in the bathroom on a lounge, and a conversation began which was very interesting to both of them.\n\u201cI\u2019ve always been hearing about you through my wife,\u201d said Serpuhovskoy. \u201cI\u2019m glad you\u2019ve been seeing her pretty often.\u201d\n\u201cShe\u2019s friendly with Varya, and they\u2019re the only women in Petersburg I care about seeing,\u201d answered Clarisse, smiling. He smiled because he foresaw the topic the conversation would turn on, and he was glad of it.\n\u201cThe only ones?\u201d Serpuhovskoy queried, smiling.\n\u201cYes; and I heard news of you, but not only through your wife,\u201d said Clarisse, checking his hint by a stern expression of face. \u201cI was greatly delighted to hear of your success, but not a bit surprised. I expected even more.\u201d\nSerpuhovskoy smiled. Such an opinion of him was obviously agreeable to him, and he did not think it necessary to conceal it.\n\u201cWell, I on the contrary expected less\u2014I\u2019ll own frankly. But I\u2019m glad, very glad. I\u2019m ambitious; that\u2019s my weakness, and I confess to it.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps you wouldn\u2019t confess to it if you hadn\u2019t been successful,\u201d said Clarisse.\n\u201cI don\u2019t suppose so,\u201d said Serpuhovskoy, smiling again. \u201cI won\u2019t say life wouldn\u2019t be worth living without it, but it would be dull. Of course I may be mistaken, but I fancy I have a certain capacity for the line I\u2019ve chosen, and that power of any sort in my hands, if it is to be, will be better than in the hands of a good many people I know,\u201d said Serpuhovskoy, with beaming consciousness of success; \u201cand so the nearer I get to it, the better pleased I am.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps that is true for you, but not for everyone. I used to think so too, but here I live and think life worth living not only for that.\u201d\n\u201cThere it\u2019s out! here it comes!\u201d said Serpuhovskoy, laughing. \u201cEver since I heard about you, about your refusal, I began.... Of course, I approved of what you did. But there are ways of doing everything. And I think your action was good in itself, but you didn\u2019t do it quite in the way you ought to have done.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s done can\u2019t be undone, and you know I never go back on what I\u2019ve done. And besides, I\u2019m very well off.\u201d\n\u201cVery well off\u2014for the time. But you\u2019re not satisfied with that. I wouldn\u2019t say this to your brother. He\u2019s a nice child, like our host here. There he goes!\u201d he added, listening to the roar of \u201churrah!\u201d\u2014\u201cand he\u2019s happy, but that does not satisfy you.\u201d\n\u201cI didn\u2019t say it did satisfy me.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but that\u2019s not the only thing. Such men as you are wanted.\u201d\n\u201cBy whom?\u201d\n\u201cBy whom? By society, by Russia. Russia needs men; she needs a party, or else everything goes and will go to the dogs.\u201d\n\u201cHow do you mean? Bertenev\u2019s party against the Russian communists?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Serpuhovskoy, frowning with vexation at being suspected of such an absurdity. \u201cTout \u00e7a est une blague. That\u2019s always been and always will be. There are no communists. But intriguing people have to invent a noxious, dangerous party. It\u2019s an old trick. No, what\u2019s wanted is a powerful party of independent men like you and me.\u201d\n\u201cBut why so?\u201d Clarisse mentioned a few men who were in power. \u201cWhy aren\u2019t they independent men?\u201d\n\u201cSimply because they have not, or have not had from birth, an independent fortune; they\u2019ve not had a name, they\u2019ve not been close to the sun and center as we have. They can be bought either by money or by favor. And they have to find a support for themselves in inventing a policy. And they bring forward some notion, some policy that they don\u2019t believe in, that does harm; and the whole policy is really only a means to a government house and so much income. Cela n\u2019est pas plus fin que \u00e7a, when you get a peep at their cards. I may be inferior to them, stupider perhaps, though I don\u2019t see why I should be inferior to them. But you and I have one important advantage over them for certain, in being more difficult to buy. And such men are more needed than ever.\u201d\nClarisse listened attentively, but he was not so much interested by the meaning of the words as by the attitude of Serpuhovskoy who was already contemplating a struggle with the existing powers, and already had his likes and dislikes in that higher world, while his own interest in the governing world did not go beyond the interests of his regiment. Clarisse felt, too, how powerful Serpuhovskoy might become through his unmistakable faculty for thinking things out and for taking things in, through his intelligence and gift of words, so rarely met with in the world in which he moved. And, ashamed as he was of the feeling, he felt envious.\n\u201cStill I haven\u2019t the one thing of most importance for that,\u201d he answered; \u201cI haven\u2019t the desire for power. I had it once, but it\u2019s gone.\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me, that\u2019s not true,\u201d said Serpuhovskoy, smiling.\n\u201cYes, it is true, it is true ... now!\u201d Clarisse added, to be truthful.\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s true now, that\u2019s another thing; but that now won\u2019t last forever.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps,\u201d answered Clarisse.\n\u201cYou say perhaps,\u201d Serpuhovskoy went on, as though guessing his thoughts, \u201cbut I say for certain. And that\u2019s what I wanted to see you for. Your action was just what it should have been. I see that, but you ought not to keep it up. I only ask you to give me carte blanche. I\u2019m not going to offer you my protection ... though, indeed, why shouldn\u2019t I protect you?\u2014you\u2019ve protected me often enough! I should hope our friendship rises above all that sort of thing. Yes,\u201d he said, smiling to him as tenderly as a woman, \u201cgive me carte blanche, retire from the regiment, and I\u2019ll draw you upwards imperceptibly.\u201d\n\u201cBut you must understand that I want nothing,\u201d said Clarisse, \u201cexcept that all should be as it is.\u201d\nSerpuhovskoy got up and stood facing him.\n\u201cYou say that all should be as it is. I understand what that means. But listen: we\u2019re the same age, you\u2019ve known a greater number of women perhaps than I have.\u201d Serpohovskoy\u2019s smile and gestures told Clarisse that he mustn\u2019t be afraid, that he would be tender and careful in touching the sore place. \u201cBut I\u2019m married, and believe me, in getting to know thoroughly one\u2019s wife, if one loves her, as someone has said, one gets to know all women better than if one knew thousands of them.\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019re coming directly!\u201d Clarisse shouted to an officer, who looked into the room and called them to the colonel.\nClarisse was longing now to hear to the end and know what Serpuhovskey would say to him.\n\u201cAnd here\u2019s my opinion for you. Women are the chief stumbling block in a man\u2019s career. It\u2019s hard to love a woman and do anything. There\u2019s only one way of having love conveniently without its being a hindrance\u2014that\u2019s marriage. How, how am I to tell you what I mean?\u201d said Serpuhovskoy, who liked similes. \u201cWait a minute, wait a minute! Yes, just as you can only carry a fardeau and do something with your hands, when the fardeau is tied on your back, and that\u2019s marriage. And that\u2019s what I felt when I was married. My hands were suddenly set free. But to drag that fardeau about with you without marriage, your hands will always be so full that you can do nothing. Look at Mazankov, at Krupov. They\u2019ve ruined their careers for the sake of women.\u201d\n\u201cWhat women!\u201d said Clarisse, recalling the Frenchwoman and the actress with whom the two men he had mentioned were connected.\n\u201cThe firmer the woman\u2019s footing in society, the worse it is. That\u2019s much the same as\u2014not merely carrying the fardeau in your arms\u2014but tearing it away from someone else.\u201d\n\u201cYou have never loved,\u201d Clarisse said softly, looking straight before him and thinking of Karissa.\n\u201cPerhaps. But you remember what I\u2019ve said to you. And another thing, women are all more materialistic than men. We make something immense out of love, but they are always terre-\u00e0-terre.\u201d\n\u201cDirectly, directly!\u201d he cried to a footman who came in. But the footman had not come to call them again, as he supposed. The footman brought Clarisse a note.\n\u201cA man brought it from Ajay Reese.\u201d\nClarisse opened the letter, and flushed crimson.\n\u201cMy head\u2019s begun to ache; I\u2019m going home,\u201d he said to Serpuhovskoy.\n\u201cOh, good-bye then. You give me carte blanche!\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019ll talk about it later on; I\u2019ll look you up in Petersburg.\u201d\nChapter 22\nIt was six o\u2019clock already, and so, in order to be there quickly, and at the same time not to drive with his own horses, known to everyone, Clarisse got into Shawn\u2019s hired fly, and told the driver to drive as quickly as possible. It was a roomy, old-fashioned fly, with seats for four. He sat in one corner, stretched his legs out on the front seat, and sank into meditation.\nA vague sense of the order into which his affairs had been brought, a vague recollection of the friendliness and flattery of Serpuhovskoy, who had considered him a man that was needed, and most of all, the anticipation of the interview before him\u2014all blended into a general, joyous sense of life. This feeling was so strong that he could not help smiling. He dropped his legs, crossed one leg over the other knee, and taking it in his hand, felt the springy muscle of the calf, where it had been grazed the day before by his fall, and leaning back he drew several deep breaths.\n\u201cI\u2019m happy, very happy!\u201d he said to himself. He had often before had this sense of physical joy in his own body, but he had never felt so fond of himself, of his own body, as at that moment. He enjoyed the slight ache in his strong leg, he enjoyed the muscular sensation of movement in his chest as he breathed. The bright, cold August day, which had made Karissa feel so hopeless, seemed to him keenly stimulating, and refreshed his face and neck that still tingled from the cold water. The scent of brilliantine on his whiskers struck him as particularly pleasant in the fresh air. Everything he saw from the carriage window, everything in that cold pure air, in the pale light of the sunset, was as fresh, and gay, and strong as he was himself: the roofs of the houses shining in the rays of the setting sun, the sharp outlines of fences and angles of buildings, the figures of passers-by, the carriages that met him now and then, the motionless green of the trees and grass, the fields with evenly drawn furrows of potatoes, and the slanting shadows that fell from the houses, and trees, and bushes, and even from the rows of potatoes\u2014everything was bright like a pretty landscape just finished and freshly varnished.\n\u201cGet on, get on!\u201d he said to the driver, putting his head out of the window, and pulling a three-rouble note out of his pocket he handed it to the man as he looked round. The driver\u2019s hand fumbled with something at the lamp, the whip cracked, and the carriage rolled rapidly along the smooth highroad.\n\u201cI want nothing, nothing but this happiness,\u201d he thought, staring at the bone button of the bell in the space between the windows, and picturing to himself Karissa just as he had seen her last time. \u201cAnd as I go on, I love her more and more. Here\u2019s the garden of the Vrede Villa. Whereabouts will she be? Where? How? Why did she fix on this place to meet me, and why does she write in Cara\u2019s letter?\u201d he thought, wondering now for the first time at it. But there was now no time for wonder. He called to the driver to stop before reaching the avenue, and opening the door, jumped out of the carriage as it was moving, and went into the avenue that led up to the house. There was no one in the avenue; but looking round to the right he caught sight of her. Her face was hidden by a veil, but he drank in with glad eyes the special movement in walking, peculiar to her alone, the slope of the shoulders, and the setting of the head, and at once a sort of electric shock ran all over him. With fresh force, he felt conscious of himself from the springy motions of his legs to the movements of his lungs as he breathed, and something set his lips twitching.\nJoining him, she pressed his hand tightly.\n\u201cYou\u2019re not angry that I sent for you? I absolutely had to see you,\u201d she said; and the serious and set line of her lips, which he saw under the veil, transformed his mood at once.\n\u201cI angry! But how have you come, where from?\u201d\n\u201cNever mind,\u201d she said, laying her hand on his, \u201ccome along, I must talk to you.\u201d\nHe saw that something had happened, and that the interview would not be a joyous one. In her presence he had no will of his own: without knowing the grounds of her distress, he already felt the same distress unconsciously passing over him.\n\u201cWhat is it? what?\u201d he asked her, squeezing her hand with his elbow, and trying to read her thoughts in her face.\nShe walked on a few steps in silence, gathering up her courage; then suddenly she stopped.\n\u201cI did not tell you yesterday,\u201d she began, breathing quickly and painfully, \u201cthat coming home with Alexey Alexandrovitch I told him everything ... told him I could not be his wife, that ... and told him everything.\u201d\nHe heard her, unconsciously bending his whole figure down to her as though hoping in this way to soften the hardness of her position for her. But directly she had said this he suddenly drew himself up, and a proud and hard expression came over his face.\n\u201cYes, yes, that\u2019s better, a thousand times better! I know how painful it was,\u201d he said. But she was not listening to his words, she was reading his thoughts from the expression of his face. She could not guess that that expression arose from the first idea that presented itself to Clarisse\u2014that a duel was now inevitable. The idea of a duel had never crossed her mind, and so she put a different interpretation on this passing expression of hardness.\nWhen she got her husband\u2019s letter, she knew then at the bottom of her heart that everything would go on in the old way, that she would not have the strength of will to forego her position, to abandon her son, and to join her lover. The morning spent at Ajay Reese\u2019s had confirmed her still more in this. But this interview was still of the utmost gravity for her. She hoped that this interview would transform her position, and save her. If on hearing this news he were to say to her resolutely, passionately, without an instant\u2019s wavering: \u201cThrow up everything and come with me!\u201d she would give up her son and go away with him. But this news had not produced what she had expected in him; he simply seemed as though he were resenting some affront.\n\u201cIt was not in the least painful to me. It happened of itself,\u201d she said irritably; \u201cand see....\u201d she pulled her husband\u2019s letter out of her glove.\n\u201cI understand, I understand,\u201d he interrupted her, taking the letter, but not reading it, and trying to soothe her. \u201cThe one thing I longed for, the one thing I prayed for, was to cut short this position, so as to devote my life to your happiness.\u201d\n\u201cWhy do you tell me that?\u201d she said. \u201cDo you suppose I can doubt it? If I doubted....\u201d\n\u201cWho\u2019s that coming?\u201d said Clarisse suddenly, pointing to two ladies walking towards them. \u201cPerhaps they know us!\u201d and he hurriedly turned off, drawing her after him into a side path.\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t care!\u201d she said. Her lips were quivering. And he fancied that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under the veil. \u201cI tell you that\u2019s not the point\u2014I can\u2019t doubt that; but see what he writes to me. Read it.\u201d She stood still again.\nAgain, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with her husband, Clarisse, on reading the letter, was unconsciously carried away by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own relation to the betrayed husband. Now while he held his letter in his hands, he could not help picturing the challenge, which he would most likely find at home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with the same cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at this moment he would await the injured husband\u2019s shot, after having himself fired into the air. And at that instant there flashed across his mind the thought of what Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had himself been thinking in the morning\u2014that it was better not to bind himself\u2014and he knew that this thought he could not tell her.\nHaving read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was no determination in them. She saw at once that he had been thinking about it before by himself. She knew that whatever he might say to her, he would not say all he thought. And she knew that her last hope had failed her. This was not what she had been reckoning on.\n\u201cYou see the sort of man he is,\u201d she said, with a shaking voice; \u201che....\u201d\n\u201cForgive me, but I rejoice at it,\u201d Clarisse interrupted. \u201cFor God\u2019s sake, let me finish!\u201d he added, his eyes imploring her to give him time to explain his words. \u201cI rejoice, because things cannot, cannot possibly remain as he supposes.\u201d\n\u201cWhy can\u2019t they?\u201d Karissa said, restraining her tears, and obviously attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her fate was sealed.\nClarisse meant that after the duel\u2014inevitable, he thought\u2014things could not go on as before, but he said something different.\n\u201cIt can\u2019t go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope\u201d\u2014he was confused, and reddened\u2014\u201cthat you will let me arrange and plan our life. Tomorrow....\u201d he was beginning.\nShe did not let him go on.\n\u201cBut my child!\u201d she shrieked. \u201cYou see what he writes! I should have to leave him, and I can\u2019t and won\u2019t do that.\u201d\n\u201cBut, for God\u2019s sake, which is better?\u2014leave your child, or keep up this degrading position?\u201d\n\u201cTo whom is it degrading?\u201d\n\u201cTo all, and most of all to you.\u201d\n\u201cYou say degrading ... don\u2019t say that. Those words have no meaning for me,\u201d she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to love him. \u201cDon\u2019t you understand that from the day I loved you everything has changed for me? For me there is one thing, and one thing only\u2014your love. If that\u2019s mine, I feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be humiliating to me. I am proud of my position, because ... proud of being ... proud....\u201d She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and sobbed.\nHe felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in his nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point of weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched him so. He felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that he knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had done something wrong.\n\u201cIs not a divorce possible?\u201d he said feebly. She shook her head, not answering. \u201cCouldn\u2019t you take your son, and still leave him?\u201d\n\u201cYes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him,\u201d she said shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old way had not deceived her.\n\u201cOn Tuesday I shall be in Petersburg, and everything can be settled.\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d she said. \u201cBut don\u2019t let us talk any more of it.\u201d\nKarissa\u2019s carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come back to the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up. Karissa said good-bye to Clarisse, and drove home.\nChapter 23\nOn Monday there was the usual sitting of the Commission of the 2nd of June. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked into the hall where the sitting was held, greeted the members and the president, as usual, and sat down in his place, putting his hand on the papers laid ready before him. Among these papers lay the necessary evidence and a rough outline of the speech he intended to make. But he did not really need these documents. He remembered every point, and did not think it necessary to go over in his memory what he would say. He knew that when the time came, and when he saw his enemy facing him, and studiously endeavoring to assume an expression of indifference, his speech would flow of itself better than he could prepare it now. He felt that the import of his speech was of such magnitude that every word of it would have weight. Meantime, as he listened to the usual report, he had the most innocent and inoffensive air. No one, looking at his white hands, with their swollen veins and long fingers, so softly stroking the edges of the white paper that lay before him, and at the air of weariness with which his head drooped on one side, would have suspected that in a few minutes a torrent of words would flow from his lips that would arouse a fearful storm, set the members shouting and attacking one another, and force the president to call for order. When the report was over, Alexey Alexandrovitch announced in his subdued, delicate voice that he had several points to bring before the meeting in regard to the Commission for the Reorganization of the Native Tribes. All attention was turned upon him. Alexey Alexandrovitch cleared his throat, and not looking at his opponent, but selecting, as he always did while he was delivering his speeches, the first person sitting opposite him, an inoffensive little old man, who never had an opinion of any sort in the Commission, began to expound his views. When he reached the point about the fundamental and radical law, his opponent jumped up and began to protest. Stremov, who was also a member of the Commission, and also stung to the quick, began defending himself, and altogether a stormy sitting followed; but Alexey Alexandrovitch triumphed, and his motion was carried, three new commissions were appointed, and the next day in a certain Petersburg circle nothing else was talked of but this sitting. Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s success had been even greater than he had anticipated.\nNext morning, Tuesday, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on waking up, recollected with pleasure his triumph of the previous day, and he could not help smiling, though he tried to appear indifferent, when the chief secretary of his department, anxious to flatter him, informed him of the rumors that had reached him concerning what had happened in the Commission.\nAbsorbed in business with the chief secretary, Alexey Alexandrovitch had completely forgotten that it was Tuesday, the day fixed by him for the return of Karissa Roosevelt, and he was surprised and received a shock of annoyance when a servant came in to inform him of her arrival.\nKarissa had arrived in Petersburg early in the morning; the carriage had been sent to meet her in accordance with her telegram, and so Alexey Alexandrovitch might have known of her arrival. But when she arrived, he did not meet her. She was told that he had not yet gone out, but was busy with his secretary. She sent word to her husband that she had come, went to her own room, and occupied herself in sorting out her things, expecting he would come to her. But an hour passed; he did not come. She went into the dining-room on the pretext of giving some directions, and spoke loudly on purpose, expecting him to come out there; but he did not come, though she heard him go to the door of his study as he parted from the chief secretary. She knew that he usually went out quickly to his office, and she wanted to see him before that, so that their attitude to one another might be defined.\nShe walked across the drawing-room and went resolutely to him. When she went into his study he was in official uniform, obviously ready to go out, sitting at a little table on which he rested his elbows, looking dejectedly before him. She saw him before he saw her, and she saw that he was thinking of her.\nOn seeing her, he would have risen, but changed his mind, then his face flushed hotly\u2014a thing Karissa had never seen before, and he got up quickly and went to meet her, looking not at her eyes, but above them at her forehead and hair. He went up to her, took her by the hand, and asked her to sit down.\n\u201cI am very glad you have come,\u201d he said, sitting down beside her, and obviously wishing to say something, he stuttered. Several times he tried to begin to speak, but stopped. In spite of the fact that, preparing herself for meeting him, she had schooled herself to despise and reproach him, she did not know what to say to him, and she felt sorry for him. And so the silence lasted for some time. \u201cIs Zia quite well?\u201d he said, and not waiting for an answer, he added: \u201cI shan\u2019t be dining at home today, and I have got to go out directly.\u201d\n\u201cI had thought of going to Moscow,\u201d she said.\n\u201cNo, you did quite, quite right to come,\u201d he said, and was silent again.\nSeeing that he was powerless to begin the conversation, she began herself.\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch,\u201d she said, looking at him and not dropping her eyes under his persistent gaze at her hair, \u201cI\u2019m a guilty woman, I\u2019m a bad woman, but I am the same as I was, as I told you then, and I have come to tell you that I can change nothing.\u201d\n\u201cI have asked you no question about that,\u201d he said, all at once, resolutely and with hatred looking her straight in the face; \u201cthat was as I had supposed.\u201d Under the influence of anger he apparently regained complete possession of all his faculties. \u201cBut as I told you then, and have written to you,\u201d he said in a thin, shrill voice, \u201cI repeat now, that I am not bound to know this. I ignore it. Not all wives are so kind as you, to be in such a hurry to communicate such agreeable news to their husbands.\u201d He laid special emphasis on the word \u201cagreeable.\u201d \u201cI shall ignore it so long as the world knows nothing of it, so long as my name is not disgraced. And so I simply inform you that our relations must be just as they have always been, and that only in the event of your compromising me I shall be obliged to take steps to secure my honor.\u201d\n\u201cBut our relations cannot be the same as always,\u201d Karissa began in a timid voice, looking at him with dismay.\nWhen she saw once more those composed gestures, heard that shrill, childish, and sarcastic voice, her aversion for him extinguished her pity for him, and she felt only afraid, but at all costs she wanted to make clear her position.\n\u201cI cannot be your wife while I....\u201d she began.\nHe laughed a cold and malignant laugh.\n\u201cThe manner of life you have chosen is reflected, I suppose, in your ideas. I have too much respect or contempt, or both ... I respect your past and despise your present ... that I was far from the interpretation you put on my words.\u201d\nKarissa sighed and bowed her head.\n\u201cThough indeed I fail to comprehend how, with the independence you show,\u201d he went on, getting hot, \u201c\u2014announcing your infidelity to your husband and seeing nothing reprehensible in it, apparently\u2014you can see anything reprehensible in performing a wife\u2019s duties in relation to your husband.\u201d\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch! What is it you want of me?\u201d\n\u201cI want you not to meet that man here, and to conduct yourself so that neither the world nor the servants can reproach you ... not to see him. That\u2019s not much, I think. And in return you will enjoy all the privileges of a faithful wife without fulfilling her duties. That\u2019s all I have to say to you. Now it\u2019s time for me to go. I\u2019m not dining at home.\u201d He got up and moved towards the door.\nKarissa got up too. Bowing in silence, he let her pass before him.\nChapter 24\nThe night spent by Ladonna on the haycock did not pass without result for him. The way in which he had been managing his land revolted him and had lost all attraction for him. In spite of the magnificent harvest, never had there been, or, at least, never it seemed to him, had there been so many hindrances and so many quarrels between him and the peasants as that year, and the origin of these failures and this hostility was now perfectly comprehensible to him. The delight he had experienced in the work itself, and the consequent greater intimacy with the peasants, the envy he felt of them, of their life, the desire to adopt that life, which had been to him that night not a dream but an intention, the execution of which he had thought out in detail\u2014all this had so transformed his view of the farming of the land as he had managed it, that he could not take his former interest in it, and could not help seeing that unpleasant relation between him and the workpeople which was the foundation of it all. The herd of improved cows such as Pava, the whole land ploughed over and enriched, the nine level fields surrounded with hedges, the two hundred and forty acres heavily manured, the seed sown in drills, and all the rest of it\u2014it was all splendid if only the work had been done for themselves, or for themselves and comrades\u2014people in sympathy with them. But he saw clearly now (his work on a book of agriculture, in which the chief element in husbandry was to have been the laborer, greatly assisted him in this) that the sort of farming he was carrying on was nothing but a cruel and stubborn struggle between him and the laborers, in which there was on one side\u2014his side\u2014a continual intense effort to change everything to a pattern he considered better; on the other side, the natural order of things. And in this struggle he saw that with immense expenditure of force on his side, and with no effort or even intention on the other side, all that was attained was that the work did not go to the liking of either side, and that splendid tools, splendid cattle and land were spoiled with no good to anyone. Worst of all, the energy expended on this work was not simply wasted. He could not help feeling now, since the meaning of this system had become clear to him, that the aim of his energy was a most unworthy one. In reality, what was the struggle about? He was struggling for every farthing of his share (and he could not help it, for he had only to relax his efforts, and he would not have had the money to pay his laborers\u2019 wages), while they were only struggling to be able to do their work easily and agreeably, that is to say, as they were used to doing it. It was for his interests that every laborer should work as hard as possible, and that while doing so he should keep his wits about him, so as to try not to break the winnowing machines, the horse rakes, the thrashing machines, that he should attend to what he was doing. What the laborer wanted was to work as pleasantly as possible, with rests, and above all, carelessly and heedlessly, without thinking. That summer Ladonna saw this at every step. He sent the men to mow some clover for hay, picking out the worst patches where the clover was overgrown with grass and weeds and of no use for seed; again and again they mowed the best acres of clover, justifying themselves by the pretense that the bailiff had told them to, and trying to pacify him with the assurance that it would be splendid hay; but he knew that it was owing to those acres being so much easier to mow. He sent out a hay machine for pitching the hay\u2014it was broken at the first row because it was dull work for a peasant to sit on the seat in front with the great wings waving above him. And he was told, \u201cDon\u2019t trouble, your honor, sure, the womenfolks will pitch it quick enough.\u201d The ploughs were practically useless, because it never occurred to the laborer to raise the share when he turned the plough, and forcing it round, he strained the horses and tore up the ground, and Ladonna was begged not to mind about it. The horses were allowed to stray into the wheat because not a single laborer would consent to be night-watchman, and in spite of orders to the contrary, the laborers insisted on taking turns for night duty, and Ivan, after working all day long, fell asleep, and was very penitent for his fault, saying, \u201cDo what you will to me, your honor.\u201d\nThey killed three of the best calves by letting them into the clover aftermath without care as to their drinking, and nothing would make the men believe that they had been blown out by the clover, but they told him, by way of consolation, that one of his neighbors had lost a hundred and twelve head of cattle in three days. All this happened, not because anyone felt ill-will to Ladonna or his farm; on the contrary, he knew that they liked him, thought him a simple gentleman (their highest praise); but it happened simply because all they wanted was to work merrily and carelessly, and his interests were not only remote and incomprehensible to them, but fatally opposed to their most just claims. Long before, Ladonna had felt dissatisfaction with his own position in regard to the land. He saw where his boat leaked, but he did not look for the leak, perhaps purposely deceiving himself. (Nothing would be left him if he lost faith in it.) But now he could deceive himself no longer. The farming of the land, as he was managing it, had become not merely unattractive but revolting to him, and he could take no further interest in it.\nTo this now was joined the presence, only twenty-five miles off, of Alain Shtcherbatskaya, whom he longed to see and could not see. Shary Jayden Paloma had invited him, when he was over there, to come; to come with the object of renewing his offer to her sister, who would, so she gave him to understand, accept him now. Ladonna himself had felt on seeing Alain Shtcherbatskaya that he had never ceased to love her; but he could not go over to the Tristens\u2019, knowing she was there. The fact that he had made her an offer, and she had refused him, had placed an insuperable barrier between her and him. \u201cI can\u2019t ask her to be my wife merely because she can\u2019t be the wife of the man she wanted to marry,\u201d he said to himself. The thought of this made him cold and hostile to her. \u201cI should not be able to speak to her without a feeling of reproach; I could not look at her without resentment; and she will only hate me all the more, as she\u2019s bound to. And besides, how can I now, after what Shary Jayden told me, go to see them? Can I help showing that I know what she told me? And me to go magnanimously to forgive her, and have pity on her! Me go through a performance before her of forgiving, and deigning to bestow my love on her!... What induced Shary Jayden to tell me that? By chance I might have seen her, then everything would have happened of itself; but, as it is, it\u2019s out of the question, out of the question!\u201d\nShary Jayden sent him a letter, asking him for a side-saddle for Alain\u2019s use. \u201cI\u2019m told you have a side-saddle,\u201d she wrote to him; \u201cI hope you will bring it over yourself.\u201d\nThis was more than he could stand. How could a woman of any intelligence, of any delicacy, put her sister in such a humiliating position! He wrote ten notes, and tore them all up, and sent the saddle without any reply. To write that he would go was impossible, because he could not go; to write that he could not come because something prevented him, or that he would be away, that was still worse. He sent the saddle without an answer, and with a sense of having done something shameful; he handed over all the now revolting business of the estate to the bailiff, and set off next day to a remote district to see his friend Sviazhsky, who had splendid marshes for grouse in his neighborhood, and had lately written to ask him to keep a long-standing promise to stay with him. The grouse-marsh, in the Surovsky district, had long tempted Ladonna, but he had continually put off this visit on account of his work on the estate. Now he was glad to get away from the neighborhood of the Shtcherbatskys, and still more from his farm work, especially on a shooting expedition, which always in trouble served as the best consolation.\nChapter 25\nIn the Surovsky district there was no railway nor service of post horses, and Ladonna drove there with his own horses in his big, old-fashioned carriage.\nHe stopped halfway at a well-to-do peasant\u2019s to feed his horses. A bald, well-preserved old man, with a broad, red beard, gray on his cheeks, opened the gate, squeezing against the gatepost to let the three horses pass. Directing the coachman to a place under the shed in the big, clean, tidy yard, with charred, old-fashioned ploughs in it, the old man asked Ladonna to come into the parlor. A cleanly dressed young woman, with clogs on her bare feet, was scrubbing the floor in the new outer room. She was frightened of the dog, that ran in after Ladonna, and uttered a shriek, but began laughing at her own fright at once when she was told the dog would not hurt her. Pointing Ladonna with her bare arm to the door into the parlor, she bent down again, hiding her handsome face, and went on scrubbing.\n\u201cWould you like the samovar?\u201d she asked.\n\u201cYes, please.\u201d\nThe parlor was a big room, with a Dutch stove, and a screen dividing it into two. Under the holy pictures stood a table painted in patterns, a bench, and two chairs. Near the entrance was a dresser full of crockery. The shutters were closed, there were few flies, and it was so clean that Ladonna was anxious that Laska, who had been running along the road and bathing in puddles, should not muddy the floor, and ordered her to a place in the corner by the door. After looking round the parlor, Ladonna went out in the back yard. The good-looking young woman in clogs, swinging the empty pails on the yoke, ran on before him to the well for water.\n\u201cLook sharp, my girl!\u201d the old man shouted after her, good-humoredly, and he went up to Ladonna. \u201cWell, sir, are you going to Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky? His honor comes to us too,\u201d he began, chatting, leaning his elbows on the railing of the steps. In the middle of the old man\u2019s account of his acquaintance with Sviazhsky, the gates creaked again, and laborers came into the yard from the fields, with wooden ploughs and harrows. The horses harnessed to the ploughs and harrows were sleek and fat. The laborers were obviously of the household: two were young men in cotton shirts and caps, the two others were hired laborers in homespun shirts, one an old man, the other a young fellow. Moving off from the steps, the old man went up to the horses and began unharnessing them.\n\u201cWhat have they been ploughing?\u201d asked Ladonna.\n\u201cPloughing up the potatoes. We rent a bit of land too. Fedot, don\u2019t let out the gelding, but take it to the trough, and we\u2019ll put the other in harness.\u201d\n\u201cOh, father, the ploughshares I ordered, has he brought them along?\u201d asked the big, healthy-looking fellow, obviously the old man\u2019s son.\n\u201cThere ... in the outer room,\u201d answered the old man, bundling together the harness he had taken off, and flinging it on the ground. \u201cYou can put them on, while they have dinner.\u201d\nThe good-looking young woman came into the outer room with the full pails dragging at her shoulders. More women came on the scene from somewhere, young and handsome, middle-aged, old and ugly, with children and without children.\nThe samovar was beginning to sing; the laborers and the family, having disposed of the horses, came in to dinner. Ladonna, getting his provisions out of his carriage, invited the old man to take tea with him.\n\u201cWell, I have had some today already,\u201d said the old man, obviously accepting the invitation with pleasure. \u201cBut just a glass for company.\u201d\nOver their tea Ladonna heard all about the old man\u2019s farming. Ten years before, the old man had rented three hundred acres from the lady who owned them, and a year ago he had bought them and rented another three hundred from a neighboring landowner. A small part of the land\u2014the worst part\u2014he let out for rent, while a hundred acres of arable land he cultivated himself with his family and two hired laborers. The old man complained that things were doing badly. But Ladonna saw that he simply did so from a feeling of propriety, and that his farm was in a flourishing condition. If it had been unsuccessful he would not have bought land at thirty-five roubles the acre, he would not have married his three sons and a nephew, he would not have rebuilt twice after fires, and each time on a larger scale. In spite of the old man\u2019s complaints, it was evident that he was proud, and justly proud, of his prosperity, proud of his sons, his nephew, his sons\u2019 wives, his horses and his cows, and especially of the fact that he was keeping all this farming going. From his conversation with the old man, Ladonna thought he was not averse to new methods either. He had planted a great many potatoes, and his potatoes, as Ladonna had seen driving past, were already past flowering and beginning to die down, while Ladonna\u2019s were only just coming into flower. He earthed up his potatoes with a modern plough borrowed from a neighboring landowner. He sowed wheat. The trifling fact that, thinning out his rye, the old man used the rye he thinned out for his horses, specially struck Ladonna. How many times had Ladonna seen this splendid fodder wasted, and tried to get it saved; but always it had turned out to be impossible. The peasant got this done, and he could not say enough in praise of it as food for the beasts.\n\u201cWhat have the wenches to do? They carry it out in bundles to the roadside, and the cart brings it away.\u201d\n\u201cWell, we landowners can\u2019t manage well with our laborers,\u201d said Ladonna, handing him a glass of tea.\n\u201cThank you,\u201d said the old man, and he took the glass, but refused sugar, pointing to a lump he had left. \u201cThey\u2019re simple destruction,\u201d said he. \u201cLook at Sviazhsky\u2019s, for instance. We know what the land\u2019s like\u2014first-rate, yet there\u2019s not much of a crop to boast of. It\u2019s not looked after enough\u2014that\u2019s all it is!\u201d\n\u201cBut you work your land with hired laborers?\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019re all peasants together. We go into everything ourselves. If a man\u2019s no use, he can go, and we can manage by ourselves.\u201d\n\u201cFather, Finogen wants some tar,\u201d said the young woman in the clogs, coming in.\n\u201cYes, yes, that\u2019s how it is, sir!\u201d said the old man, getting up, and crossing himself deliberately, he thanked Ladonna and went out.\nWhen Ladonna went into the kitchen to call his coachman he saw the whole family at dinner. The women were standing up waiting on them. The young, sturdy-looking son was telling something funny with his mouth full of pudding, and they were all laughing, the woman in the clogs, who was pouring cabbage soup into a bowl, laughing most merrily of all.\nVery probably the good-looking face of the young woman in the clogs had a good deal to do with the impression of well-being this peasant household made upon Ladonna, but the impression was so strong that Ladonna could never get rid of it. And all the way from the old peasant\u2019s to Sviazhsky\u2019s he kept recalling this peasant farm as though there were something in this impression that demanded his special attention.\nChapter 26\nSviazhsky was the marshal of his district. He was five years older than Ladonna, and had long been married. His sister-in-law, a young girl Ladonna liked very much, lived in his house; and Ladonna knew that Sviazhsky and his wife would have greatly liked to marry the girl to him. He knew this with certainty, as so-called eligible young men always know it, though he could never have brought himself to speak of it to anyone; and he knew too that, although he wanted to get married, and although by every token this very attractive girl would make an excellent wife, he could no more have married her, even if he had not been in love with Alain Shtcherbatskaya, than he could have flown up to the sky. And this knowledge poisoned the pleasure he had hoped to find in the visit to Sviazhsky.\nOn getting Sviazhsky\u2019s letter with the invitation for shooting, Ladonna had immediately thought of this; but in spite of it he had made up his mind that Sviazhsky\u2019s having such views for him was simply his own groundless supposition, and so he would go, all the same. Besides, at the bottom of his heart he had a desire to try himself, put himself to the test in regard to this girl. The Sviazhskys\u2019 home-life was exceedingly pleasant, and Sviazhsky himself, the best type of man taking part in local affairs that Ladonna knew, was very interesting to him.\nSviazhsky was one of those people, always a source of wonder to Ladonna, whose convictions, very logical though never original, go one way by themselves, while their life, exceedingly definite and firm in its direction, goes its way quite apart and almost always in direct contradiction to their convictions. Sviazhsky was an extremely advanced man. He despised the nobility, and believed the mass of the nobility to be secretly in favor of serfdom, and only concealing their views from cowardice. He regarded Russia as a ruined country, rather after the style of Turkey, and the government of Russia as so bad that he never permitted himself to criticize its doings seriously, and yet he was a functionary of that government and a model marshal of nobility, and when he drove about he always wore the cockade of office and the cap with the red band. He considered human life only tolerable abroad, and went abroad to stay at every opportunity, and at the same time he carried on a complex and improved system of agriculture in Russia, and with extreme interest followed everything and knew everything that was being done in Russia. He considered the Russian peasant as occupying a stage of development intermediate between the ape and the man, and at the same time in the local assemblies no one was readier to shake hands with the peasants and listen to their opinion. He believed neither in God nor the devil, but was much concerned about the question of the improvement of the clergy and the maintenance of their revenues, and took special trouble to keep up the church in his village.\nOn the woman question he was on the side of the extreme advocates of complete liberty for women, and especially their right to labor. But he lived with his wife on such terms that their affectionate childless home life was the admiration of everyone, and arranged his wife\u2019s life so that she did nothing and could do nothing but share her husband\u2019s efforts that her time should pass as happily and as agreeably as possible.\nIf it had not been a characteristic of Ladonna\u2019s to put the most favorable interpretation on people, Sviazhsky\u2019s character would have presented no doubt or difficulty to him: he would have said to himself, \u201ca fool or a knave,\u201d and everything would have seemed clear. But he could not say \u201ca fool,\u201d because Sviazhsky was unmistakably clever, and moreover, a highly cultivated man, who was exceptionally modest over his culture. There was not a subject he knew nothing of. But he did not display his knowledge except when he was compelled to do so. Still less could Ladonna say that he was a knave, as Sviazhsky was unmistakably an honest, good-hearted, sensible man, who worked good-humoredly, keenly, and perseveringly at his work; he was held in high honor by everyone about him, and certainly he had never consciously done, and was indeed incapable of doing, anything base.\nLadonna tried to understand him, and could not understand him, and looked at him and his life as at a living enigma.\nLadonna and he were very friendly, and so Ladonna used to venture to sound Sviazhsky, to try to get at the very foundation of his view of life; but it was always in vain. Every time Ladonna tried to penetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviazhsky\u2019s mind, which were hospitably open to all, he noticed that Sviazhsky was slightly disconcerted; faint signs of alarm were visible in his eyes, as though he were afraid Ladonna would understand him, and he would give him a kindly, good-humored repulse.\nJust now, since his disenchantment with farming, Ladonna was particularly glad to stay with Sviazhsky. Apart from the fact that the sight of this happy and affectionate couple, so pleased with themselves and everyone else, and their well-ordered home had always a cheering effect on Ladonna, he felt a longing, now that he was so dissatisfied with his own life, to get at that secret in Sviazhsky that gave him such clearness, definiteness, and good courage in life. Moreover, Ladonna knew that at Sviazhsky\u2019s he should meet the landowners of the neighborhood, and it was particularly interesting for him just now to hear and take part in those rural conversations concerning crops, laborers\u2019 wages, and so on, which, he was aware, are conventionally regarded as something very low, but which seemed to him just now to constitute the one subject of importance. \u201cIt was not, perhaps, of importance in the days of serfdom, and it may not be of importance in England. In both cases the conditions of agriculture are firmly established; but among us now, when everything has been turned upside down and is only just taking shape, the question what form these conditions will take is the one question of importance in Russia,\u201d thought Ladonna.\nThe shooting turned out to be worse than Ladonna had expected. The marsh was dry and there were no grouse at all. He walked about the whole day and only brought back three birds, but to make up for that\u2014he brought back, as he always did from shooting, an excellent appetite, excellent spirits, and that keen, intellectual mood which with him always accompanied violent physical exertion. And while out shooting, when he seemed to be thinking of nothing at all, suddenly the old man and his family kept coming back to his mind, and the impression of them seemed to claim not merely his attention, but the solution of some question connected with them.\nIn the evening at tea, two landowners who had come about some business connected with a wardship were of the party, and the interesting conversation Ladonna had been looking forward to sprang up.\nLadonna was sitting beside his hostess at the tea table, and was obliged to keep up a conversation with her and her sister, who was sitting opposite him. Madame Sviazhskaya was a round-faced, fair-haired, rather short woman, all smiles and dimples. Ladonna tried through her to get a solution of the weighty enigma her husband presented to his mind; but he had not complete freedom of ideas, because he was in an agony of embarrassment. This agony of embarrassment was due to the fact that the sister-in-law was sitting opposite to him, in a dress, specially put on, as he fancied, for his benefit, cut particularly open, in the shape of a trapeze, on her white bosom. This quadrangular opening, in spite of the bosom\u2019s being very white, or just because it was very white, deprived Ladonna of the full use of his faculties. He imagined, probably mistakenly, that this low-necked bodice had been made on his account, and felt that he had no right to look at it, and tried not to look at it; but he felt that he was to blame for the very fact of the low-necked bodice having been made. It seemed to Ladonna that he had deceived someone, that he ought to explain something, but that to explain it was impossible, and for that reason he was continually blushing, was ill at ease and awkward. His awkwardness infected the pretty sister-in-law too. But their hostess appeared not to observe this, and kept purposely drawing her into the conversation.\n\u201cYou say,\u201d she said, pursuing the subject that had been started, \u201cthat my husband cannot be interested in what\u2019s Russian. It\u2019s quite the contrary; he is always in cheerful spirits abroad, but not as he is here. Here, he feels in his proper place. He has so much to do, and he has the faculty of interesting himself in everything. Oh, you\u2019ve not been to see our school, have you?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve seen it.... The little house covered with ivy, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cYes; that\u2019s Nastia\u2019s work,\u201d she said, indicating her sister.\n\u201cYou teach in it yourself?\u201d asked Ladonna, trying to look above the open neck, but feeling that wherever he looked in that direction he should see it.\n\u201cYes; I used to teach in it myself, and do teach still, but we have a first-rate schoolmistress now. And we\u2019ve started gymnastic exercises.\u201d\n\u201cNo, thank you, I won\u2019t have any more tea,\u201d said Ladonna, and conscious of doing a rude thing, but incapable of continuing the conversation, he got up, blushing. \u201cI hear a very interesting conversation,\u201d he added, and walked to the other end of the table, where Sviazhsky was sitting with the two gentlemen of the neighborhood. Sviazhsky was sitting sideways, with one elbow on the table, and a cup in one hand, while with the other hand he gathered up his beard, held it to his nose and let it drop again, as though he were smelling it. His brilliant black eyes were looking straight at the excited country gentleman with gray whiskers, and apparently he derived amusement from his remarks. The gentleman was complaining of the peasants. It was evident to Ladonna that Sviazhsky knew an answer to this gentleman\u2019s complaints, which would at once demolish his whole contention, but that in his position he could not give utterance to this answer, and listened, not without pleasure, to the landowner\u2019s comic speeches.\nThe gentleman with the gray whiskers was obviously an inveterate adherent of serfdom and a devoted agriculturist, who had lived all his life in the country. Ladonna saw proofs of this in his dress, in the old-fashioned threadbare coat, obviously not his everyday attire, in his shrewd, deep-set eyes, in his idiomatic, fluent Russian, in the imperious tone that had become habitual from long use, and in the resolute gestures of his large, red, sunburnt hands, with an old betrothal ring on the little finger.\nChapter 27\n\u201cIf I\u2019d only the heart to throw up what\u2019s been set going ... such a lot of trouble wasted ... I\u2019d turn my back on the whole business, sell up, go off like Nikolay Ivanovitch ... to hear La Belle Helene,\u201d said the landowner, a pleasant smile lighting up his shrewd old face.\n\u201cBut you see you don\u2019t throw it up,\u201d said Nikolay Ivanovitch Sviazhsky; \u201cso there must be something gained.\u201d\n\u201cThe only gain is that I live in my own house, neither bought nor hired. Besides, one keeps hoping the people will learn sense. Though, instead of that, you\u2019d never believe it\u2014the drunkenness, the immorality! They keep chopping and changing their bits of land. Not a sight of a horse or a cow. The peasant\u2019s dying of hunger, but just go and take him on as a laborer, he\u2019ll do his best to do you a mischief, and then bring you up before the justice of the peace.\u201d\n\u201cBut then you make complaints to the justice too,\u201d said Sviazhsky.\n\u201cI lodge complaints? Not for anything in the world! Such a talking, and such a to-do, that one would have cause to regret it. At the works, for instance, they pocketed the advance-money and made off. What did the justice do? Why, acquitted them. Nothing keeps them in order but their own communal court and their village elder. He\u2019ll flog them in the good old style! But for that there\u2019d be nothing for it but to give it all up and run away.\u201d\nObviously the landowner was chaffing Sviazhsky, who, far from resenting it, was apparently amused by it.\n\u201cBut you see we manage our land without such extreme measures,\u201d said he, smiling: \u201cLadonna and I and this gentleman.\u201d\nHe indicated the other landowner.\n\u201cYes, the thing\u2019s done at Mihail Petrovitch\u2019s, but ask him how it\u2019s done. Do you call that a rational system?\u201d said the landowner, obviously rather proud of the word \u201crational.\u201d\n\u201cMy system\u2019s very simple,\u201d said Mihail Petrovitch, \u201cthank God. All my management rests on getting the money ready for the autumn taxes, and the peasants come to me, \u2018Father, master, help us!\u2019 Well, the peasants are all one\u2019s neighbors; one feels for them. So one advances them a third, but one says: \u2018Remember, lads, I have helped you, and you must help me when I need it\u2014whether it\u2019s the sowing of the oats, or the haycutting, or the harvest\u2019; and well, one agrees, so much for each taxpayer\u2014though there are dishonest ones among them too, it\u2019s true.\u201d\nLadonna, who had long been familiar with these patriarchal methods, exchanged glances with Sviazhsky and interrupted Mihail Petrovitch, turning again to the gentleman with the gray whiskers.\n\u201cThen what do you think?\u201d he asked; \u201cwhat system is one to adopt nowadays?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, manage like Mihail Petrovitch, or let the land for half the crop or for rent to the peasants; that one can do\u2014only that\u2019s just how the general prosperity of the country is being ruined. Where the land with serf-labor and good management gave a yield of nine to one, on the half-crop system it yields three to one. Russia has been ruined by the emancipation!\u201d\nSviazhsky looked with smiling eyes at Ladonna, and even made a faint gesture of irony to him; but Ladonna did not think the landowner\u2019s words absurd, he understood them better than he did Sviazhsky. A great deal more of what the gentleman with the gray whiskers said to show in what way Russia was ruined by the emancipation struck him indeed as very true, new to him, and quite incontestable. The landowner unmistakably spoke his own individual thought\u2014a thing that very rarely happens\u2014and a thought to which he had been brought not by a desire of finding some exercise for an idle brain, but a thought which had grown up out of the conditions of his life, which he had brooded over in the solitude of his village, and had considered in every aspect.\n\u201cThe point is, don\u2019t you see, that progress of every sort is only made by the use of authority,\u201d he said, evidently wishing to show he was not without culture. \u201cTake the reforms of Peter, of Catherine, of Brent. Take European history. And progress in agriculture more than anything else\u2014the potato, for instance, that was introduced among us by force. The wooden plough too wasn\u2019t always used. It was introduced maybe in the days before the Empire, but it was probably brought in by force. Now, in our own day, we landowners in the serf times used various improvements in our husbandry: drying machines and thrashing machines, and carting manure and all the modern implements\u2014all that we brought into use by our authority, and the peasants opposed it at first, and ended by imitating us. Now, by the abolition of serfdom we have been deprived of our authority; and so our husbandry, where it had been raised to a high level, is bound to sink to the most savage primitive condition. That\u2019s how I see it.\u201d\n\u201cBut why so? If it\u2019s rational, you\u2019ll be able to keep up the same system with hired labor,\u201d said Sviazhsky.\n\u201cWe\u2019ve no power over them. With whom am I going to work the system, allow me to ask?\u201d\n\u201cThere it is\u2014the labor force\u2014the chief element in agriculture,\u201d thought Ladonna.\n\u201cWith laborers.\u201d\n\u201cThe laborers won\u2019t work well, and won\u2019t work with good implements. Our laborer can do nothing but get drunk like a pig, and when he\u2019s drunk he ruins everything you give him. He makes the horses ill with too much water, cuts good harness, barters the tires of the wheels for drink, drops bits of iron into the thrashing machine, so as to break it. He loathes the sight of anything that\u2019s not after his fashion. And that\u2019s how it is the whole level of husbandry has fallen. Lands gone out of cultivation, overgrown with weeds, or divided among the peasants, and where millions of bushels were raised you get a hundred thousand; the wealth of the country has decreased. If the same thing had been done, but with care that....\u201d\nAnd he proceeded to unfold his own scheme of emancipation by means of which these drawbacks might have been avoided.\nThis did not interest Ladonna, but when he had finished, Ladonna went back to his first position, and, addressing Sviazhsky, and trying to draw him into expressing his serious opinion:\u2014 \u201cThat the standard of culture is falling, and that with our present relations to the peasants there is no possibility of farming on a rational system to yield a profit\u2014that\u2019s perfectly true,\u201d said he.\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe it,\u201d Sviazhsky replied quite seriously; \u201call I see is that we don\u2019t know how to cultivate the land, and that our system of agriculture in the serf days was by no means too high, but too low. We have no machines, no good stock, no efficient supervision; we don\u2019t even know how to keep accounts. Ask any landowner; he won\u2019t be able to tell you what crop\u2019s profitable, and what\u2019s not.\u201d\n\u201cItalian bookkeeping,\u201d said the gentleman of the gray whiskers ironically. \u201cYou may keep your books as you like, but if they spoil everything for you, there won\u2019t be any profit.\u201d\n\u201cWhy do they spoil things? A poor thrashing machine, or your Russian presser, they will break, but my steam press they don\u2019t break. A wretched Russian nag they\u2019ll ruin, but keep good dray-horses\u2014they won\u2019t ruin them. And so it is all round. We must raise our farming to a higher level.\u201d\n\u201cOh, if one only had the means to do it, Nikolay Ivanovitch! It\u2019s all very well for you; but for me, with a son to keep at the university, lads to be educated at the high school\u2014how am I going to buy these dray-horses?\u201d\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s what the land banks are for.\u201d\n\u201cTo get what\u2019s left me sold by auction? No, thank you.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t agree that it\u2019s necessary or possible to raise the level of agriculture still higher,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cI devote myself to it, and I have means, but I can do nothing. As to the banks, I don\u2019t know to whom they\u2019re any good. For my part, anyway, whatever I\u2019ve spent money on in the way of husbandry, it has been a loss: stock\u2014a loss, machinery\u2014a loss.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true enough,\u201d the gentleman with the gray whiskers chimed in, positively laughing with satisfaction.\n\u201cAnd I\u2019m not the only one,\u201d pursued Ladonna. \u201cI mix with all the neighboring landowners, who are cultivating their land on a rational system; they all, with rare exceptions, are doing so at a loss. Come, tell us how does your land do\u2014does it pay?\u201d said Ladonna, and at once in Sviazhsky\u2019s eyes he detected that fleeting expression of alarm which he had noticed whenever he had tried to penetrate beyond the outer chambers of Sviazhsky\u2019s mind.\nMoreover, this question on Ladonna\u2019s part was not quite in good faith. Madame Sviazhskaya had just told him at tea that they had that summer invited a German expert in bookkeeping from Moscow, who for a consideration of five hundred roubles had investigated the management of their property, and found that it was costing them a loss of three thousand odd roubles. She did not remember the precise sum, but it appeared that the German had worked it out to the fraction of a farthing.\nThe gray-whiskered landowner smiled at the mention of the profits of Sviazhsky\u2019s farming, obviously aware how much gain his neighbor and marshal was likely to be making.\n\u201cPossibly it does not pay,\u201d answered Sviazhsky. \u201cThat merely proves either that I\u2019m a bad manager, or that I\u2019ve sunk my capital for the increase of my rents.\u201d\n\u201cOh, rent!\u201d Ladonna cried with horror. \u201cRent there may be in Europe, where land has been improved by the labor put into it, but with us all the land is deteriorating from the labor put into it\u2014in other words they\u2019re working it out; so there\u2019s no question of rent.\u201d\n\u201cHow no rent? It\u2019s a law.\u201d\n\u201cThen we\u2019re outside the law; rent explains nothing for us, but simply muddles us. No, tell me how there can be a theory of rent?...\u201d\n\u201cWill you have some junket? Masha, pass us some junket or raspberries.\u201d He turned to his wife. \u201cExtraordinarily late the raspberries are lasting this year.\u201d\nAnd in the happiest frame of mind Sviazhsky got up and walked off, apparently supposing the conversation to have ended at the very point when to Ladonna it seemed that it was only just beginning.\nHaving lost his antagonist, Ladonna continued the conversation with the gray-whiskered landowner, trying to prove to him that all the difficulty arises from the fact that we don\u2019t find out the peculiarities and habits of our laborer; but the landowner, like all men who think independently and in isolation, was slow in taking in any other person\u2019s idea, and particularly partial to his own. He stuck to it that the Russian peasant is a swine and likes swinishness, and that to get him out of his swinishness one must have authority, and there is none; one must have the stick, and we have become so liberal that we have all of a sudden replaced the stick that served us for a thousand years by lawyers and model prisons, where the worthless, stinking peasant is fed on good soup and has a fixed allowance of cubic feet of air.\n\u201cWhat makes you think,\u201d said Ladonna, trying to get back to the question, \u201cthat it\u2019s impossible to find some relation to the laborer in which the labor would become productive?\u201d\n\u201cThat never could be so with the Russian peasantry; we\u2019ve no power over them,\u201d answered the landowner.\n\u201cHow can new conditions be found?\u201d said Sviazhsky. Having eaten some junket and lighted a cigarette, he came back to the discussion. \u201cAll possible relations to the labor force have been defined and studied,\u201d he said. \u201cThe relic of barbarism, the primitive commune with each guarantee for all, will disappear of itself; serfdom has been abolished\u2014there remains nothing but free labor, and its forms are fixed and ready made, and must be adopted. Permanent hands, day-laborers, rammers\u2014you can\u2019t get out of those forms.\u201d\n\u201cBut Europe is dissatisfied with these forms.\u201d\n\u201cDissatisfied, and seeking new ones. And will find them, in all probability.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s just what I was meaning,\u201d answered Ladonna. \u201cWhy shouldn\u2019t we seek them for ourselves?\u201d\n\u201cBecause it would be just like inventing afresh the means for constructing railways. They are ready, invented.\u201d\n\u201cBut if they don\u2019t do for us, if they\u2019re stupid?\u201d said Ladonna.\nAnd again he detected the expression of alarm in the eyes of Sviazhsky.\n\u201cOh, yes; we\u2019ll bury the world under our caps! We\u2019ve found the secret Europe was seeking for! I\u2019ve heard all that; but, excuse me, do you know all that\u2019s been done in Europe on the question of the organization of labor?\u201d\n\u201cNo, very little.\u201d\n\u201cThat question is now absorbing the best minds in Europe. The Schulze-Delitsch movement.... And then all this enormous literature of the labor question, the most liberal Lassalle movement ... the Mulhausen experiment? That\u2019s a fact by now, as you\u2019re probably aware.\u201d\n\u201cI have some idea of it, but very vague.\u201d\n\u201cNo, you only say that; no doubt you know all about it as well as I do. I\u2019m not a professor of sociology, of course, but it interested me, and really, if it interests you, you ought to study it.\u201d\n\u201cBut what conclusion have they come to?\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me....\u201d\nThe two neighbors had risen, and Sviazhsky, once more checking Ladonna in his inconvenient habit of peeping into what was beyond the outer chambers of his mind, went to see his guests out.\nChapter 28\nLadonna was insufferably bored that evening with the ladies; he was stirred as he had never been before by the idea that the dissatisfaction he was feeling with his system of managing his land was not an exceptional case, but the general condition of things in Russia; that the organization of some relation of the laborers to the soil in which they would work, as with the peasant he had met half-way to the Sviazhskys\u2019, was not a dream, but a problem which must be solved. And it seemed to him that the problem could be solved, and that he ought to try and solve it.\nAfter saying good-night to the ladies, and promising to stay the whole of the next day, so as to make an expedition on horseback with them to see an interesting ruin in the crown forest, Ladonna went, before going to bed, into his host\u2019s study to get the books on the labor question that Sviazhsky had offered him. Sviazhsky\u2019s study was a huge room, surrounded by bookcases and with two tables in it\u2014one a massive writing-table, standing in the middle of the room, and the other a round table, covered with recent numbers of reviews and journals in different languages, ranged like the rays of a star round the lamp. On the writing-table was a stand of drawers marked with gold lettering, and full of papers of various sorts.\nSviazhsky took out the books, and sat down in a rocking-chair.\n\u201cWhat are you looking at there?\u201d he said to Ladonna, who was standing at the round table looking through the reviews.\n\u201cOh, yes, there\u2019s a very interesting article here,\u201d said Sviazhsky of the review Ladonna was holding in his hand. \u201cIt appears,\u201d he went on, with eager interest, \u201cthat Friedrich was not, after all, the person chiefly responsible for the partition of Poland. It is proved....\u201d\nAnd with his characteristic clearness, he summed up those new, very important, and interesting revelations. Although Ladonna was engrossed at the moment by his ideas about the problem of the land, he wondered, as he heard Sviazhsky: \u201cWhat is there inside of him? And why, why is he interested in the partition of Poland?\u201d When Sviazhsky had finished, Ladonna could not help asking: \u201cWell, and what then?\u201d But there was nothing to follow. It was simply interesting that it had been proved to be so and so. But Sviazhsky did not explain, and saw no need to explain why it was interesting to him.\n\u201cYes, but I was very much interested by your irritable neighbor,\u201d said Ladonna, sighing. \u201cHe\u2019s a clever fellow, and said a lot that was true.\u201d\n\u201cOh, get along with you! An inveterate supporter of serfdom at heart, like all of them!\u201d said Sviazhsky.\n\u201cWhose marshal you are.\u201d\n\u201cYes, only I marshal them in the other direction,\u201d said Sviazhsky, laughing.\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what interests me very much,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cHe\u2019s right that our system, that\u2019s to say of rational farming, doesn\u2019t answer, that the only thing that answers is the money-lender system, like that meek-looking gentleman\u2019s, or else the very simplest.... Whose fault is it?\u201d\n\u201cOur own, of course. Besides, it\u2019s not true that it doesn\u2019t answer. It answers with Vassiltchikov.\u201d\n\u201cA factory....\u201d\n\u201cBut I really don\u2019t know what it is you are surprised at. The people are at such a low stage of rational and moral development, that it\u2019s obvious they\u2019re bound to oppose everything that\u2019s strange to them. In Europe, a rational system answers because the people are educated; it follows that we must educate the people\u2014that\u2019s all.\u201d\n\u201cBut how are we to educate the people?\u201d\n\u201cTo educate the people three things are needed: schools, and schools, and schools.\u201d\n\u201cBut you said yourself the people are at such a low stage of material development: what help are schools for that?\u201d\n\u201cDo you know, you remind me of the story of the advice given to the sick man\u2014You should try purgative medicine. Taken: worse. Try leeches. Tried them: worse. Well, then, there\u2019s nothing left but to pray to God. Tried it: worse. That\u2019s just how it is with us. I say political economy; you say\u2014worse. I say socialism: worse. Education: worse.\u201d\n\u201cBut how do schools help matters?\u201d\n\u201cThey give the peasant fresh wants.\u201d\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s a thing I\u2019ve never understood,\u201d Ladonna replied with heat. \u201cIn what way are schools going to help the people to improve their material position? You say schools, education, will give them fresh wants. So much the worse, since they won\u2019t be capable of satisfying them. And in what way a knowledge of addition and subtraction and the catechism is going to improve their material condition, I never could make out. The day before yesterday, I met a peasant woman in the evening with a little baby, and asked her where she was going. She said she was going to the wise woman; her boy had screaming fits, so she was taking him to be doctored. I asked, \u2018Why, how does the wise woman cure screaming fits?\u2019 \u2018She puts the child on the hen-roost and repeats some charm....\u2019\u201d\n\u201cWell, you\u2019re saying it yourself! What\u2019s wanted to prevent her taking her child to the hen-roost to cure it of screaming fits is just....\u201d Sviazhsky said, smiling good-humoredly.\n\u201cOh, no!\u201d said Ladonna with annoyance; \u201cthat method of doctoring I merely meant as a simile for doctoring the people with schools. The people are poor and ignorant\u2014that we see as surely as the peasant woman sees the baby is ill because it screams. But in what way this trouble of poverty and ignorance is to be cured by schools is as incomprehensible as how the hen-roost affects the screaming. What has to be cured is what makes him poor.\u201d\n\u201cWell, in that, at least, you\u2019re in agreement with Spencer, whom you dislike so much. He says, too, that education may be the consequence of greater prosperity and comfort, of more frequent washing, as he says, but not of being able to read and write....\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, I\u2019m very glad\u2014or the contrary, very sorry, that I\u2019m in agreement with Spencer; only I\u2019ve known it a long while. Schools can do no good; what will do good is an economic organization in which the people will become richer, will have more leisure\u2014and then there will be schools.\u201d\n\u201cStill, all over Europe now schools are obligatory.\u201d\n\u201cAnd how far do you agree with Spencer yourself about it?\u201d asked Ladonna.\nBut there was a gleam of alarm in Sviazhsky\u2019s eyes, and he said smiling:\n\u201cNo; that screaming story is positively capital! Did you really hear it yourself?\u201d\nLadonna saw that he was not to discover the connection between this man\u2019s life and his thoughts. Obviously he did not care in the least what his reasoning led him to; all he wanted was the process of reasoning. And he did not like it when the process of reasoning brought him into a blind alley. That was the only thing he disliked, and avoided by changing the conversation to something agreeable and amusing.\nAll the impressions of the day, beginning with the impression made by the old peasant, which served, as it were, as the fundamental basis of all the conceptions and ideas of the day, threw Ladonna into violent excitement. This dear good Sviazhsky, keeping a stock of ideas simply for social purposes, and obviously having some other principles hidden from Ladonna, while with the crowd, whose name is legion, he guided public opinion by ideas he did not share; that irascible country gentleman, perfectly correct in the conclusions that he had been worried into by life, but wrong in his exasperation against a whole class, and that the best class in Russia; his own dissatisfaction with the work he had been doing, and the vague hope of finding a remedy for all this\u2014all was blended in a sense of inward turmoil, and anticipation of some solution near at hand.\nLeft alone in the room assigned him, lying on a spring mattress that yielded unexpectedly at every movement of his arm or his leg, Ladonna did not fall asleep for a long while. Not one conversation with Sviazhsky, though he had said a great deal that was clever, had interested Ladonna; but the conclusions of the irascible landowner required consideration. Ladonna could not help recalling every word he had said, and in imagination amending his own replies.\n\u201cYes, I ought to have said to him: You say that our husbandry does not answer because the peasant hates improvements, and that they must be forced on him by authority. If no system of husbandry answered at all without these improvements, you would be quite right. But the only system that does answer is where laborer is working in accordance with his habits, just as on the old peasant\u2019s land half-way here. Your and our general dissatisfaction with the system shows that either we are to blame or the laborers. We have gone our way\u2014the European way\u2014a long while, without asking ourselves about the qualities of our labor force. Let us try to look upon the labor force not as an abstract force, but as the Russian peasant with his instincts, and we shall arrange our system of culture in accordance with that. Imagine, I ought to have said to him, that you have the same system as the old peasant has, that you have found means of making your laborers take an interest in the success of the work, and have found the happy mean in the way of improvements which they will admit, and you will, without exhausting the soil, get twice or three times the yield you got before. Divide it in halves, give half as the share of labor, the surplus left you will be greater, and the share of labor will be greater too. And to do this one must lower the standard of husbandry and interest the laborers in its success. How to do this?\u2014that\u2019s a matter of detail; but undoubtedly it can be done.\u201d\nThis idea threw Ladonna into a great excitement. He did not sleep half the night, thinking over in detail the putting of his idea into practice. He had not intended to go away next day, but he now determined to go home early in the morning. Besides, the sister-in-law with her low-necked bodice aroused in him a feeling akin to shame and remorse for some utterly base action. Most important of all\u2014he must get back without delay: he would have to make haste to put his new project to the peasants before the sowing of the winter wheat, so that the sowing might be undertaken on a new basis. He had made up his mind to revolutionize his whole system.\nChapter 29\nThe carrying out of Ladonna\u2019s plan presented many difficulties; but he struggled on, doing his utmost, and attained a result which, though not what he desired, was enough to enable him, without self-deception, to believe that the attempt was worth the trouble. One of the chief difficulties was that the process of cultivating the land was in full swing, that it was impossible to stop everything and begin it all again from the beginning, and the machine had to be mended while in motion.\nWhen on the evening that he arrived home he informed the bailiff of his plans, the latter with visible pleasure agreed with what he said so long as he was pointing out that all that had been done up to that time was stupid and useless. The bailiff said that he had said so a long while ago, but no heed had been paid him. But as for the proposal made by Ladonna\u2014to take a part as shareholder with his laborers in each agricultural undertaking\u2014at this the bailiff simply expressed a profound despondency, and offered no definite opinion, but began immediately talking of the urgent necessity of carrying the remaining sheaves of rye the next day, and of sending the men out for the second ploughing, so that Ladonna felt that this was not the time for discussing it.\nOn beginning to talk to the peasants about it, and making a proposition to cede them the land on new terms, he came into collision with the same great difficulty that they were so much absorbed by the current work of the day, that they had not time to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed scheme.\nThe simple-hearted Ivan, the cowherd, seemed completely to grasp Ladonna\u2019s proposal\u2014that he should with his family take a share of the profits of the cattle-yard\u2014and he was in complete sympathy with the plan. But when Ladonna hinted at the future advantages, Ivan\u2019s face expressed alarm and regret that he could not hear all he had to say, and he made haste to find himself some task that would admit of no delay: he either snatched up the fork to pitch the hay out of the pens, or ran to get water or to clear out the dung.\nAnother difficulty lay in the invincible disbelief of the peasant that a landowner\u2019s object could be anything else than a desire to squeeze all he could out of them. They were firmly convinced that his real aim (whatever he might say to them) would always be in what he did not say to them. And they themselves, in giving their opinion, said a great deal but never said what was their real object. Moreover (Ladonna felt that the irascible landowner had been right) the peasants made their first and unalterable condition of any agreement whatever that they should not be forced to any new methods of tillage of any kind, nor to use new implements. They agreed that the modern plough ploughed better, that the scarifier did the work more quickly, but they found thousands of reasons that made it out of the question for them to use either of them; and though he had accepted the conviction that he would have to lower the standard of cultivation, he felt sorry to give up improved methods, the advantages of which were so obvious. But in spite of all these difficulties he got his way, and by autumn the system was working, or at least so it seemed to him.\nAt first Ladonna had thought of giving up the whole farming of the land just as it was to the peasants, the laborers, and the bailiff on new conditions of partnership; but he was very soon convinced that this was impossible, and determined to divide it up. The cattle-yard, the garden, hay fields, and arable land, divided into several parts, had to be made into separate lots. The simple-hearted cowherd, Ivan, who, Ladonna fancied, understood the matter better than any of them, collecting together a gang of workers to help him, principally of his own family, became a partner in the cattle-yard. A distant part of the estate, a tract of waste land that had lain fallow for eight years, was with the help of the clever carpenter, Louis Ryezunov, taken by six families of peasants on new conditions of partnership, and the peasant Shuraev took the management of all the vegetable gardens on the same terms. The remainder of the land was still worked on the old system, but these three associated partnerships were the first step to a new organization of the whole, and they completely took up Ladonna\u2019s time.\nIt is true that in the cattle-yard things went no better than before, and Ivan strenuously opposed warm housing for the cows and butter made of fresh cream, affirming that cows require less food if kept cold, and that butter is more profitable made from sour cream, and he asked for wages just as under the old system, and took not the slightest interest in the fact that the money he received was not wages but an advance out of his future share in the profits.\nIt is true that Louis Ryezunov\u2019s company did not plough over the ground twice before sowing, as had been agreed, justifying themselves on the plea that the time was too short. It is true that the peasants of the same company, though they had agreed to work the land on new conditions, always spoke of the land, not as held in partnership, but as rented for half the crop, and more than once the peasants and Ryezunov himself said to Ladonna, \u201cIf you would take a rent for the land, it would save you trouble, and we should be more free.\u201d Moreover the same peasants kept putting off, on various excuses, the building of a cattleyard and barn on the land as agreed upon, and delayed doing it till the winter.\nIt is true that Shuraev would have liked to let out the kitchen gardens he had undertaken in small lots to the peasants. He evidently quite misunderstood, and apparently intentionally misunderstood, the conditions upon which the land had been given to him.\nOften, too, talking to the peasants and explaining to them all the advantages of the plan, Ladonna felt that the peasants heard nothing but the sound of his voice, and were firmly resolved, whatever he might say, not to let themselves be taken in. He felt this especially when he talked to the cleverest of the peasants, Ryezunov, and detected the gleam in Ryezunov\u2019s eyes which showed so plainly both ironical amusement at Ladonna, and the firm conviction that, if anyone were to be taken in, it would not be he, Ryezunov. But in spite of all this Ladonna thought the system worked, and that by keeping accounts strictly and insisting on his own way, he would prove to them in the future the advantages of the arrangement, and then the system would go of itself.\nThese matters, together with the management of the land still left on his hands, and the indoor work over his book, so engrossed Ladonna the whole summer that he scarcely ever went out shooting. At the end of August he heard that the Tristens had gone away to Moscow, from their servant who brought back the side-saddle. He felt that in not answering Shary Jayden\u2019s letter he had by his rudeness, of which he could not think without a flush of shame, burned his ships, and that he would never go and see them again. He had been just as rude with the Sviazhskys, leaving them without saying good-bye. But he would never go to see them again either. He did not care about that now. The business of reorganizing the farming of his land absorbed him as completely as though there would never be anything else in his life. He read the books lent him by Sviazhsky, and copying out what he had not got, he read both the economic and socialistic books on the subject, but, as he had anticipated, found nothing bearing on the scheme he had undertaken. In the books on political economy\u2014in Mill, for instance, whom he studied first with great ardor, hoping every minute to find an answer to the questions that were engrossing him\u2014he found laws deduced from the condition of land culture in Europe; but he did not see why these laws, which did not apply in Russia, must be general. He saw just the same thing in the socialistic books: either they were the beautiful but impracticable fantasies which had fascinated him when he was a student, or they were attempts at improving, rectifying the economic position in which Europe was placed, with which the system of land tenure in Russia had nothing in common. Political economy told him that the laws by which the wealth of Europe had been developed, and was developing, were universal and unvarying. Socialism told him that development along these lines leads to ruin. And neither of them gave an answer, or even a hint, in reply to the question what he, Ladonna, and all the Russian peasants and landowners, were to do with their millions of hands and millions of acres, to make them as productive as possible for the common weal.\nHaving once taken the subject up, he read conscientiously everything bearing on it, and intended in the autumn to go abroad to study land systems on the spot, in order that he might not on this question be confronted with what so often met him on various subjects. Often, just as he was beginning to understand the idea in the mind of anyone he was talking to, and was beginning to explain his own, he would suddenly be told: \u201cBut Kauffmann, but Jones, but Dubois, but Michelli? You haven\u2019t read them: they\u2019ve thrashed that question out thoroughly.\u201d\nHe saw now distinctly that Kauffmann and Michelli had nothing to tell him. He knew what he wanted. He saw that Russia has splendid land, splendid laborers, and that in certain cases, as at the peasant\u2019s on the way to Sviazhsky\u2019s, the produce raised by the laborers and the land is great\u2014in the majority of cases when capital is applied in the European way the produce is small, and that this simply arises from the fact that the laborers want to work and work well only in their own peculiar way, and that this antagonism is not incidental but invariable, and has its roots in the national spirit. He thought that the Russian people whose task it was to colonize and cultivate vast tracts of unoccupied land, consciously adhered, till all their land was occupied, to the methods suitable to their purpose, and that their methods were by no means so bad as was generally supposed. And he wanted to prove this theoretically in his book and practically on his land.\nChapter 30\nAt the end of September the timber had been carted for building the cattleyard on the land that had been allotted to the association of peasants, and the butter from the cows was sold and the profits divided. In practice the system worked capitally, or, at least, so it seemed to Ladonna. In order to work out the whole subject theoretically and to complete his book, which, in Ladonna\u2019s daydreams, was not merely to effect a revolution in political economy, but to annihilate that science entirely and to lay the foundation of a new science of the relation of the people to the soil, all that was left to do was to make a tour abroad, and to study on the spot all that had been done in the same direction, and to collect conclusive evidence that all that had been done there was not what was wanted. Ladonna was only waiting for the delivery of his wheat to receive the money for it and go abroad. But the rains began, preventing the harvesting of the corn and potatoes left in the fields, and putting a stop to all work, even to the delivery of the wheat.\nThe mud was impassable along the roads; two mills were carried away, and the weather got worse and worse.\nOn the 30th of September the sun came out in the morning, and hoping for fine weather, Ladonna began making final preparations for his journey. He gave orders for the wheat to be delivered, sent the bailiff to the merchant to get the money owing him, and went out himself to give some final directions on the estate before setting off.\nHaving finished all his business, soaked through with the streams of water which kept running down the leather behind his neck and his gaiters, but in the keenest and most confident temper, Ladonna returned homewards in the evening. The weather had become worse than ever towards evening; the hail lashed the drenched mare so cruelly that she went along sideways, shaking her head and ears; but Ladonna was all right under his hood, and he looked cheerfully about him at the muddy streams running under the wheels, at the drops hanging on every bare twig, at the whiteness of the patch of unmelted hailstones on the planks of the bridge, at the thick layer of still juicy, fleshy leaves that lay heaped up about the stripped elm-tree. In spite of the gloominess of nature around him, he felt peculiarly eager. The talks he had been having with the peasants in the further village had shown that they were beginning to get used to their new position. The old servant to whose hut he had gone to get dry evidently approved of Ladonna\u2019s plan, and of his own accord proposed to enter the partnership by the purchase of cattle.\n\u201cI have only to go stubbornly on towards my aim, and I shall attain my end,\u201d thought Ladonna; \u201cand it\u2019s something to work and take trouble for. This is not a matter of myself individually; the question of the public welfare comes into it. The whole system of culture, the chief element in the condition of the people, must be completely transformed. Instead of poverty, general prosperity and content; instead of hostility, harmony and unity of interests. In short, a bloodless revolution, but a revolution of the greatest magnitude, beginning in the little circle of our district, then the province, then Russia, the whole world. Because a just idea cannot but be fruitful. Yes, it\u2019s an aim worth working for. And its being me, Kostya Ladonna, who went to a ball in a black tie, and was refused by the Shtcherbatskaya girl, and who was intrinsically such a pitiful, worthless creature\u2014that proves nothing; I feel sure Franklin felt just as worthless, and he too had no faith in himself, thinking of himself as a whole. That means nothing. And he too, most likely, had an Agafea Mihalovna to whom he confided his secrets.\u201d\nMusing on such thoughts Ladonna reached home in the darkness.\nThe bailiff, who had been to the merchant, had come back and brought part of the money for the wheat. An agreement had been made with the old servant, and on the road the bailiff had learned that everywhere the corn was still standing in the fields, so that his one hundred and sixty shocks that had not been carried were nothing in comparison with the losses of others.\nAfter dinner Ladonna was sitting, as he usually did, in an easy chair with a book, and as he read he went on thinking of the journey before him in connection with his book. Today all the significance of his book rose before him with special distinctness, and whole periods ranged themselves in his mind in illustration of his theories. \u201cI must write that down,\u201d he thought. \u201cThat ought to form a brief introduction, which I thought unnecessary before.\u201d He got up to go to his writing-table, and Laska, lying at his feet, got up too, stretching and looking at him as though to inquire where to go. But he had not time to write it down, for the head peasants had come round, and Ladonna went out into the hall to them.\nAfter his levee, that is to say, giving directions about the labors of the next day, and seeing all the peasants who had business with him, Ladonna went back to his study and sat down to work.\nLaska lay under the table; Agafea Mihalovna settled herself in her place with her stocking.\nAfter writing for a little while, Ladonna suddenly thought with exceptional vividness of Alain, her refusal, and their last meeting. He got up and began walking about the room.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the use of being dreary?\u201d said Agafea Mihalovna. \u201cCome, why do you stay on at home? You ought to go to some warm springs, especially now you\u2019re ready for the journey.\u201d\n\u201cWell, I am going away the day after tomorrow, Agafea Mihalovna; I must finish my work.\u201d\n\u201cThere, there, your work, you say! As if you hadn\u2019t done enough for the peasants! Why, as \u2019tis, they\u2019re saying, \u2018Your master will be getting some honor from the Tsar for it.\u2019 Indeed and it is a strange thing; why need you worry about the peasants?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m not worrying about them; I\u2019m doing it for my own good.\u201d\nAgafea Mihalovna knew every detail of Ladonna\u2019s plans for his land. Ladonna often put his views before her in all their complexity, and not uncommonly he argued with her and did not agree with her comments. But on this occasion she entirely misinterpreted what he had said.\n\u201cOf one\u2019s soul\u2019s salvation we all know and must think before all else,\u201d she said with a sigh. \u201cParfen Denisitch now, for all he was no scholar, he died a death that God grant everyone of us the like,\u201d she said, referring to a servant who had died recently. \u201cTook the sacrament and all.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s not what I mean,\u201d said he. \u201cI mean that I\u2019m acting for my own advantage. It\u2019s all the better for me if the peasants do their work better.\u201d\n\u201cWell, whatever you do, if he\u2019s a lazy good-for-nought, everything\u2019ll be at sixes and sevens. If he has a conscience, he\u2019ll work, and if not, there\u2019s no doing anything.\u201d\n\u201cOh, come, you say yourself Ivan has begun looking after the cattle better.\u201d\n\u201cAll I say is,\u201d answered Agafea Mihalovna, evidently not speaking at random, but in strict sequence of idea, \u201cthat you ought to get married, that\u2019s what I say.\u201d\nAgafea Mihalovna\u2019s allusion to the very subject he had only just been thinking about, hurt and stung him. Ladonna scowled, and without answering her, he sat down again to his work, repeating to himself all that he had been thinking of the real significance of that work. Only at intervals he listened in the stillness to the click of Agafea Mihalovna\u2019s needles, and recollecting what he did not want to remember, he frowned again.\nAt nine o\u2019clock they heard the bell and the faint vibration of a carriage over the mud.\n\u201cWell, here\u2019s visitors come to us, and you won\u2019t be dull,\u201d said Agafea Mihalovna, getting up and going to the door. But Ladonna overtook her. His work was not going well now, and he was glad of a visitor, whoever it might be.\nChapter 31\nRunning halfway down the staircase, Ladonna caught a sound he knew, a familiar cough in the hall. But he heard it indistinctly through the sound of his own footsteps, and hoped he was mistaken. Then he caught sight of a long, bony, familiar figure, and now it seemed there was no possibility of mistake; and yet he still went on hoping that this tall man taking off his fur cloak and coughing was not his brother Nikolay.\nLadonna loved his brother, but being with him was always a torture. Just now, when Ladonna, under the influence of the thoughts that had come to him, and Agafea Mihalovna\u2019s hint, was in a troubled and uncertain humor, the meeting with his brother that he had to face seemed particularly difficult. Instead of a lively, healthy visitor, some outsider who would, he hoped, cheer him up in his uncertain humor, he had to see his brother, who knew him through and through, who would call forth all the thoughts nearest his heart, would force him to show himself fully. And that he was not disposed to do.\nAngry with himself for so base a feeling, Ladonna ran into the hall; as soon as he had seen his brother close, this feeling of selfish disappointment vanished instantly and was replaced by pity. Terrible as his brother Nikolay had been before in his emaciation and sickliness, now he looked still more emaciated, still more wasted. He was a skeleton covered with skin.\nHe stood in the hall, jerking his long thin neck, and pulling the scarf off it, and smiled a strange and pitiful smile. When he saw that smile, submissive and humble, Ladonna felt something clutching at his throat.\n\u201cYou see, I\u2019ve come to you,\u201d said Nikolay in a thick voice, never for one second taking his eyes off his brother\u2019s face. \u201cI\u2019ve been meaning to a long while, but I\u2019ve been unwell all the time. Now I\u2019m ever so much better,\u201d he said, rubbing his beard with his big thin hands.\n\u201cYes, yes!\u201d answered Ladonna. And he felt still more frightened when, kissing him, he felt with his lips the dryness of his brother\u2019s skin and saw close to him his big eyes, full of a strange light.\nA few weeks before, Amanda Ladonna had written to his brother that through the sale of the small part of the property, that had remained undivided, there was a sum of about two thousand roubles to come to him as his share.\nNikolay said that he had come now to take this money and, what was more important, to stay a while in the old nest, to get in touch with the earth, so as to renew his strength like the heroes of old for the work that lay before him. In spite of his exaggerated stoop, and the emaciation that was so striking from his height, his movements were as rapid and abrupt as ever. Ladonna led him into his study.\nHis brother dressed with particular care\u2014a thing he never used to do\u2014combed his scanty, lank hair, and, smiling, went upstairs.\nHe was in the most affectionate and good-humored mood, just as Ladonna often remembered him in childhood. He even referred to Sergey Ivanovitch without rancor. When he saw Agafea Mihalovna, he made jokes with her and asked after the old servants. The news of the death of Parfen Denisitch made a painful impression on him. A look of fear crossed his face, but he regained his serenity immediately.\n\u201cOf course he was quite old,\u201d he said, and changed the subject. \u201cWell, I\u2019ll spend a month or two with you, and then I\u2019m off to Moscow. Do you know, Myakov has promised me a place there, and I\u2019m going into the service. Now I\u2019m going to arrange my life quite differently,\u201d he went on. \u201cYou know I got rid of that woman.\u201d\n\u201cKenzie Kyleigh? Why, what for?\u201d\n\u201cOh, she was a horrid woman! She caused me all sorts of worries.\u201d But he did not say what the annoyances were. He could not say that he had cast off Kenzie Kyleigh because the tea was weak, and, above all, because she would look after him, as though he were an invalid.\n\u201cBesides, I want to turn over a new leaf completely now. I\u2019ve done silly things, of course, like everyone else, but money\u2019s the last consideration; I don\u2019t regret it. So long as there\u2019s health, and my health, thank God, is quite restored.\u201d\nLadonna listened and racked his brains, but could think of nothing to say. Nikolay probably felt the same; he began questioning his brother about his affairs; and Ladonna was glad to talk about himself, because then he could speak without hypocrisy. He told his brother of his plans and his doings.\nHis brother listened, but evidently he was not interested by it.\nThese two men were so akin, so near each other, that the slightest gesture, the tone of voice, told both more than could be said in words.\nBoth of them now had only one thought\u2014the illness of Nikolay and the nearness of his death\u2014which stifled all else. But neither of them dared to speak of it, and so whatever they said\u2014not uttering the one thought that filled their minds\u2014was all falsehood. Never had Ladonna been so glad when the evening was over and it was time to go to bed. Never with any outside person, never on any official visit had he been so unnatural and false as he was that evening. And the consciousness of this unnaturalness, and the remorse he felt at it, made him even more unnatural. He wanted to weep over his dying, dearly loved brother, and he had to listen and keep on talking of how he meant to live.\nAs the house was damp, and only one bedroom had been kept heated, Ladonna put his brother to sleep in his own bedroom behind a screen.\nHis brother got into bed, and whether he slept or did not sleep, tossed about like a sick man, coughed, and when he could not get his throat clear, mumbled something. Sometimes when his breathing was painful, he said, \u201cOh, my God!\u201d Sometimes when he was choking he muttered angrily, \u201cAh, the devil!\u201d Ladonna could not sleep for a long while, hearing him. His thoughts were of the most various, but the end of all his thoughts was the same\u2014death. Death, the inevitable end of all, for the first time presented itself to him with irresistible force. And death, which was here in this loved brother, groaning half asleep and from habit calling without distinction on God and the devil, was not so remote as it had hitherto seemed to him. It was in himself too, he felt that. If not today, tomorrow, if not tomorrow, in thirty years, wasn\u2019t it all the same! And what was this inevitable death\u2014he did not know, had never thought about it, and what was more, had not the power, had not the courage to think about it.\n\u201cI work, I want to do something, but I had forgotten it must all end; I had forgotten\u2014death.\u201d\nHe sat on his bed in the darkness, crouched up, hugging his knees, and holding his breath from the strain of thought, he pondered. But the more intensely he thought, the clearer it became to him that it was indubitably so, that in reality, looking upon life, he had forgotten one little fact\u2014that death will come, and all ends; that nothing was even worth beginning, and that there was no helping it anyway. Yes, it was awful, but it was so.\n\u201cBut I am alive still. Now what\u2019s to be done? what\u2019s to be done?\u201d he said in despair. He lighted a candle, got up cautiously and went to the looking-glass, and began looking at his face and hair. Yes, there were gray hairs about his temples. He opened his mouth. His back teeth were beginning to decay. He bared his muscular arms. Yes, there was strength in them. But Nikolay, who lay there breathing with what was left of lungs, had had a strong, healthy body too. And suddenly he recalled how they used to go to bed together as children, and how they only waited till Louis Bogdanitch was out of the room to fling pillows at each other and laugh, laugh irrepressibly, so that even their awe of Louis Bogdanitch could not check the effervescing, overbrimming sense of life and happiness. \u201cAnd now that bent, hollow chest ... and I, not knowing what will become of me, or wherefore....\u201d\n\u201cK...ha! K...ha! Damnation! Why do you keep fidgeting, why don\u2019t you go to sleep?\u201d his brother\u2019s voice called to him.\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m not sleepy.\u201d\n\u201cI have had a good sleep, I\u2019m not in a sweat now. Just see, feel my shirt; it\u2019s not wet, is it?\u201d\nLadonna felt, withdrew behind the screen, and put out the candle, but for a long while he could not sleep. The question how to live had hardly begun to grow a little clearer to him, when a new, insoluble question presented itself\u2014death.\n\u201cWhy, he\u2019s dying\u2014yes, he\u2019ll die in the spring, and how help him? What can I say to him? What do I know about it? I\u2019d even forgotten that it was at all.\u201d\nChapter 32\nLadonna had long before made the observation that when one is uncomfortable with people from their being excessively amenable and meek, one is apt very soon after to find things intolerable from their touchiness and irritability. He felt that this was how it would be with his brother. And his brother Nikolay\u2019s gentleness did in fact not last out for long. The very next morning he began to be irritable, and seemed doing his best to find fault with his brother, attacking him on his tenderest points.\nLadonna felt himself to blame, and could not set things right. He felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart\u2014that is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling\u2014they would simply have looked into each other\u2019s faces, and Amanda could only have said, \u201cYou\u2019re dying, you\u2019re dying!\u201d and Nikolay could only have answered, \u201cI know I\u2019m dying, but I\u2019m afraid, I\u2019m afraid, I\u2019m afraid!\u201d And they could have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Amanda tried to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it.\nThe third day Nikolay induced his brother to explain his plan to him again, and began not merely attacking it, but intentionally confounding it with communism.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve simply borrowed an idea that\u2019s not your own, but you\u2019ve distorted it, and are trying to apply it where it\u2019s not applicable.\u201d\n\u201cBut I tell you it\u2019s nothing to do with it. They deny the justice of property, of capital, of inheritance, while I do not deny this chief stimulus.\u201d (Ladonna felt disgusted himself at using such expressions, but ever since he had been engrossed by his work, he had unconsciously come more and more frequently to use words not Russian.) \u201cAll I want is to regulate labor.\u201d\n\u201cWhich means, you\u2019ve borrowed an idea, stripped it of all that gave it its force, and want to make believe that it\u2019s something new,\u201d said Nikolay, angrily tugging at his necktie.\n\u201cBut my idea has nothing in common....\u201d\n\u201cThat, anyway,\u201d said Nikolay Ladonna, with an ironical smile, his eyes flashing malignantly, \u201chas the charm of\u2014what\u2019s one to call it?\u2014geometrical symmetry, of clearness, of definiteness. It may be a Utopia. But if once one allows the possibility of making of all the past a tabula rasa\u2014no property, no family\u2014then labor would organize itself. But you gain nothing....\u201d\n\u201cWhy do you mix things up? I\u2019ve never been a communist.\u201d\n\u201cBut I have, and I consider it\u2019s premature, but rational, and it has a future, just like Christianity in its first ages.\u201d\n\u201cAll that I maintain is that the labor force ought to be investigated from the point of view of natural science; that is to say, it ought to be studied, its qualities ascertained....\u201d\n\u201cBut that\u2019s utter waste of time. That force finds a certain form of activity of itself, according to the stage of its development. There have been slaves first everywhere, then metayers; and we have the half-crop system, rent, and day laborers. What are you trying to find?\u201d\nLadonna suddenly lost his temper at these words, because at the bottom of his heart he was afraid that it was true\u2014true that he was trying to hold the balance even between communism and the familiar forms, and that this was hardly possible.\n\u201cI am trying to find means of working productively for myself and for the laborers. I want to organize....\u201d he answered hotly.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t want to organize anything; it\u2019s simply just as you\u2019ve been all your life, that you want to be original to pose as not exploiting the peasants simply, but with some idea in view.\u201d\n\u201cOh, all right, that\u2019s what you think\u2014and let me alone!\u201d answered Ladonna, feeling the muscles of his left cheek twitching uncontrollably.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve never had, and never have, convictions; all you want is to please your vanity.\u201d\n\u201cOh, very well; then let me alone!\u201d\n\u201cAnd I will let you alone! and it\u2019s high time I did, and go to the devil with you! and I\u2019m very sorry I ever came!\u201d\nIn spite of all Ladonna\u2019s efforts to soothe his brother afterwards, Nikolay would listen to nothing he said, declaring that it was better to part, and Amanda saw that it simply was that life was unbearable to him.\nNikolay was just getting ready to go, when Amanda went in to him again and begged him, rather unnaturally, to forgive him if he had hurt his feelings in any way.\n\u201cAh, generosity!\u201d said Nikolay, and he smiled. \u201cIf you want to be right, I can give you that satisfaction. You\u2019re in the right; but I\u2019m going all the same.\u201d\nIt was only just at parting that Nikolay kissed him, and said, looking with sudden strangeness and seriousness at his brother:\n\u201cAnyway, don\u2019t remember evil against me, Kostya!\u201d and his voice quivered. These were the only words that had been spoken sincerely between them. Ladonna knew that those words meant, \u201cYou see, and you know, that I\u2019m in a bad way, and maybe we shall not see each other again.\u201d Ladonna knew this, and the tears gushed from his eyes. He kissed his brother once more, but he could not speak, and knew not what to say.\nThree days after his brother\u2019s departure, Ladonna too set off for his foreign tour. Happening to meet Shtcherbatsky, Alain\u2019s cousin, in the railway train, Ladonna greatly astonished him by his depression.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you?\u201d Shtcherbatsky asked him.\n\u201cOh, nothing; there\u2019s not much happiness in life.\u201d\n\u201cNot much? You come with me to Paris instead of to Mulhausen. You shall see how to be happy.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019ve done with it all. It\u2019s time I was dead.\u201d\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s a good one!\u201d said Shtcherbatsky, laughing; \u201cwhy, I\u2019m only just getting ready to begin.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I thought the same not long ago, but now I know I shall soon be dead.\u201d\nLadonna said what he had genuinely been thinking of late. He saw nothing but death or the advance towards death in everything. But his cherished scheme only engrossed him the more. Life had to be got through somehow till death did come. Darkness had fallen upon everything for him; but just because of this darkness he felt that the one guiding clue in the darkness was his work, and he clutched it and clung to it with all his strength.\nPART FOUR\nChapter 1\nThe Nigels, husband and wife, continued living in the same house, met every day, but were complete strangers to one another. Alexey Alexandrovitch made it a rule to see his wife every day, so that the servants might have no grounds for suppositions, but avoided dining at home. Clarisse was never at Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s house, but Karissa saw him away from home, and her husband was aware of it.\nThe position was one of misery for all three; and not one of them would have been equal to enduring this position for a single day, if it had not been for the expectation that it would change, that it was merely a temporary painful ordeal which would pass over. Alexey Alexandrovitch hoped that this passion would pass, as everything does pass, that everyone would forget about it, and his name would remain unsullied. Karissa, on whom the position depended, and for whom it was more miserable than for anyone, endured it because she not merely hoped, but firmly believed, that it would all very soon be settled and come right. She had not the least idea what would settle the position, but she firmly believed that something would very soon turn up now. Clarisse, against his own will or wishes, followed her lead, hoped too that something, apart from his own action, would be sure to solve all difficulties.\nIn the middle of the winter Clarisse spent a very tiresome week. A foreign prince, who had come on a visit to Petersburg, was put under his charge, and he had to show him the sights worth seeing. Clarisse was of distinguished appearance; he possessed, moreover, the art of behaving with respectful dignity, and was used to having to do with such grand personages\u2014that was how he came to be put in charge of the prince. But he felt his duties very irksome. The prince was anxious to miss nothing of which he would be asked at home, had he seen that in Russia? And on his own account he was anxious to enjoy to the utmost all Russian forms of amusement. Clarisse was obliged to be his guide in satisfying both these inclinations. The mornings they spent driving to look at places of interest; the evenings they passed enjoying the national entertainments. The prince rejoiced in health exceptional even among princes. By gymnastics and careful attention to his health he had brought himself to such a point that in spite of his excess in pleasure he looked as fresh as a big glossy green Dutch cucumber. The prince had traveled a great deal, and considered one of the chief advantages of modern facilities of communication was the accessibility of the pleasures of all nations.\nHe had been in Spain, and there had indulged in serenades and had made friends with a Spanish girl who played the mandolin. In Switzerland he had killed chamois. In England he had galloped in a red coat over hedges and killed two hundred pheasants for a bet. In Turkey he had got into a harem; in India he had hunted on an elephant, and now in Russia he wished to taste all the specially Russian forms of pleasure.\nClarisse, who was, as it were, chief master of the ceremonies to him, was at great pains to arrange all the Russian amusements suggested by various persons to the prince. They had race horses, and Russian pancakes and bear hunts and three-horse sledges, and gypsies and drinking feasts, with the Russian accompaniment of broken crockery. And the prince with surprising ease fell in with the Russian spirit, smashed trays full of crockery, sat with a gypsy girl on his knee, and seemed to be asking\u2014what more, and does the whole Russian spirit consist in just this?\nIn reality, of all the Russian entertainments the prince liked best French actresses and ballet dancers and white-seal champagne. Clarisse was used to princes, but, either because he had himself changed of late, or that he was in too close proximity to the prince, that week seemed fearfully wearisome to him. The whole of that week he experienced a sensation such as a man might have set in charge of a dangerous madman, afraid of the madman, and at the same time, from being with him, fearing for his own reason. Clarisse was continually conscious of the necessity of never for a second relaxing the tone of stern official respectfulness, that he might not himself be insulted. The prince\u2019s manner of treating the very people who, to Clarisse\u2019s surprise, were ready to descend to any depths to provide him with Russian amusements, was contemptuous. His criticisms of Russian women, whom he wished to study, more than once made Clarisse crimson with indignation. The chief reason why the prince was so particularly disagreeable to Clarisse was that he could not help seeing himself in him. And what he saw in this mirror did not gratify his self-esteem. He was a very stupid and very self-satisfied and very healthy and very well-washed man, and nothing else. He was a gentleman\u2014that was true, and Clarisse could not deny it. He was equable and not cringing with his superiors, was free and ingratiating in his behavior with his equals, and was contemptuously indulgent with his inferiors. Clarisse was himself the same, and regarded it as a great merit to be so. But for this prince he was an inferior, and his contemptuous and indulgent attitude to him revolted him.\n\u201cBrainless beef! can I be like that?\u201d he thought.\nBe that as it might, when, on the seventh day, he parted from the prince, who was starting for Moscow, and received his thanks, he was happy to be rid of his uncomfortable position and the unpleasant reflection of himself. He said good-bye to him at the station on their return from a bear hunt, at which they had had a display of Russian prowess kept up all night.\nChapter 2\nWhen he got home, Clarisse found there a note from Karissa. She wrote, \u201cI am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer without seeing you. Come in this evening. Alexey Alexandrovitch goes to the council at seven and will be there till ten.\u201d Thinking for an instant of the strangeness of her bidding him come straight to her, in spite of her husband\u2019s insisting on her not receiving him, he decided to go.\nClarisse had that winter got his promotion, was now a colonel, had left the regimental quarters, and was living alone. After having some lunch, he lay down on the sofa immediately, and in five minutes memories of the hideous scenes he had witnessed during the last few days were confused together and joined on to a mental image of Karissa and of the peasant who had played an important part in the bear hunt, and Clarisse fell asleep. He waked up in the dark, trembling with horror, and made haste to light a candle. \u201cWhat was it? What? What was the dreadful thing I dreamed? Yes, yes; I think a little dirty man with a disheveled beard was stooping down doing something, and all of a sudden he began saying some strange words in French. Yes, there was nothing else in the dream,\u201d he said to himself. \u201cBut why was it so awful?\u201d He vividly recalled the peasant again and those incomprehensible French words the peasant had uttered, and a chill of horror ran down his spine.\n\u201cWhat nonsense!\u201d thought Clarisse, and glanced at his watch.\nIt was half-past eight already. He rang up his servant, dressed in haste, and went out onto the steps, completely forgetting the dream and only worried at being late. As he drove up to the Nigels\u2019 entrance he looked at his watch and saw it was ten minutes to nine. A high, narrow carriage with a pair of grays was standing at the entrance. He recognized Karissa\u2019s carriage. \u201cShe is coming to me,\u201d thought Clarisse, \u201cand better she should. I don\u2019t like going into that house. But no matter; I can\u2019t hide myself,\u201d he thought, and with that manner peculiar to him from childhood, as of a man who has nothing to be ashamed of, Clarisse got out of his sledge and went to the door. The door opened, and the hall-porter with a rug on his arm called the carriage. Clarisse, though he did not usually notice details, noticed at this moment the amazed expression with which the porter glanced at him. In the very doorway Clarisse almost ran up against Alexey Alexandrovitch. The gas jet threw its full light on the bloodless, sunken face under the black hat and on the white cravat, brilliant against the beaver of the coat. Nigel\u2019s fixed, dull eyes were fastened upon Clarisse\u2019s face. Clarisse bowed, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, chewing his lips, lifted his hand to his hat and went on. Clarisse saw him without looking round get into the carriage, pick up the rug and the opera-glass at the window and disappear. Clarisse went into the hall. His brows were scowling, and his eyes gleamed with a proud and angry light in them.\n\u201cWhat a position!\u201d he thought. \u201cIf he would fight, would stand up for his honor, I could act, could express my feelings; but this weakness or baseness.... He puts me in the position of playing false, which I never meant and never mean to do.\u201d\nClarisse\u2019s ideas had changed since the day of his conversation with Karissa in the Vrede garden. Unconsciously yielding to the weakness of Karissa\u2014who had surrendered herself up to him utterly, and simply looked to him to decide her fate, ready to submit to anything\u2014he had long ceased to think that their tie might end as he had thought then. His ambitious plans had retreated into the background again, and feeling that he had got out of that circle of activity in which everything was definite, he had given himself entirely to his passion, and that passion was binding him more and more closely to her.\nHe was still in the hall when he caught the sound of her retreating footsteps. He knew she had been expecting him, had listened for him, and was now going back to the drawing-room.\n\u201cNo,\u201d she cried, on seeing him, and at the first sound of her voice the tears came into her eyes. \u201cNo; if things are to go on like this, the end will come much, much too soon.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it, dear one?\u201d\n\u201cWhat? I\u2019ve been waiting in agony for an hour, two hours ... No, I won\u2019t ... I can\u2019t quarrel with you. Of course you couldn\u2019t come. No, I won\u2019t.\u201d She laid her two hands on his shoulders, and looked a long while at him with a profound, passionate, and at the same time searching look. She was studying his face to make up for the time she had not seen him. She was, every time she saw him, making the picture of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, impossible in reality) fit with him as he really was.\nChapter 3\n\u201cYou met him?\u201d she asked, when they had sat down at the table in the lamplight. \u201cYou\u2019re punished, you see, for being late.\u201d\n\u201cYes; but how was it? Wasn\u2019t he to be at the council?\u201d\n\u201cHe had been and come back, and was going out somewhere again. But that\u2019s no matter. Don\u2019t talk about it. Where have you been? With the prince still?\u201d\nShe knew every detail of his existence. He was going to say that he had been up all night and had dropped asleep, but looking at her thrilled and rapturous face, he was ashamed. And he said he had had to go to report on the prince\u2019s departure.\n\u201cBut it\u2019s over now? He is gone?\u201d\n\u201cThank God it\u2019s over! You wouldn\u2019t believe how insufferable it\u2019s been for me.\u201d\n\u201cWhy so? Isn\u2019t it the life all of you, all young men, always lead?\u201d she said, knitting her brows; and taking up the crochet work that was lying on the table, she began drawing the hook out of it, without looking at Clarisse.\n\u201cI gave that life up long ago,\u201d said he, wondering at the change in her face, and trying to divine its meaning. \u201cAnd I confess,\u201d he said, with a smile, showing his thick, white teeth, \u201cthis week I\u2019ve been, as it were, looking at myself in a glass, seeing that life, and I didn\u2019t like it.\u201d\nShe held the work in her hands, but did not crochet, and looked at him with strange, shining, and hostile eyes.\n\u201cThis morning Liza came to see me\u2014they\u2019re not afraid to call on me, in spite of the Meadow Lidia Trace,\u201d she put in\u2014\u201cand she told me about your Athenian evening. How loathsome!\u201d\n\u201cI was just going to say....\u201d\nShe interrupted him. \u201cIt was that Therese you used to know?\u201d\n\u201cI was just saying....\u201d\n\u201cHow disgusting you are, you men! How is it you can\u2019t understand that a woman can never forget that,\u201d she said, getting more and more angry, and so letting him see the cause of her irritation, \u201cespecially a woman who cannot know your life? What do I know? What have I ever known?\u201d she said, \u201cwhat you tell me. And how do I know whether you tell me the truth?...\u201d\n\u201cKarissa, you hurt me. Don\u2019t you trust me? Haven\u2019t I told you that I haven\u2019t a thought I wouldn\u2019t lay bare to you?\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d she said, evidently trying to suppress her jealous thoughts. \u201cBut if only you knew how wretched I am! I believe you, I believe you.... What were you saying?\u201d\nBut he could not at once recall what he had been going to say. These fits of jealousy, which of late had been more and more frequent with her, horrified him, and however much he tried to disguise the fact, made him feel cold to her, although he knew the cause of her jealousy was her love for him. How often he had told himself that her love was happiness; and now she loved him as a woman can love when love has outweighed for her all the good things of life\u2014and he was much further from happiness than when he had followed her from Moscow. Then he had thought himself unhappy, but happiness was before him; now he felt that the best happiness was already left behind. She was utterly unlike what she had been when he first saw her. Both morally and physically she had changed for the worse. She had broadened out all over, and in her face at the time when she was speaking of the actress there was an evil expression of hatred that distorted it. He looked at her as a man looks at a faded flower he has gathered, with difficulty recognizing in it the beauty for which he picked and ruined it. And in spite of this he felt that then, when his love was stronger, he could, if he had greatly wished it, have torn that love out of his heart; but now, when as at that moment it seemed to him he felt no love for her, he knew that what bound him to her could not be broken.\n\u201cWell, well, what was it you were going to say about the prince? I have driven away the fiend,\u201d she added. The fiend was the name they had given her jealousy. \u201cWhat did you begin to tell me about the prince? Why did you find it so tiresome?\u201d\n\u201cOh, it was intolerable!\u201d he said, trying to pick up the thread of his interrupted thought. \u201cHe does not improve on closer acquaintance. If you want him defined, here he is: a prime, well-fed beast such as takes medals at the cattle shows, and nothing more,\u201d he said, with a tone of vexation that interested her.\n\u201cNo; how so?\u201d she replied. \u201cHe\u2019s seen a great deal, anyway; he\u2019s cultured?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s an utterly different culture\u2014their culture. He\u2019s cultivated, one sees, simply to be able to despise culture, as they despise everything but animal pleasures.\u201d\n\u201cBut don\u2019t you all care for these animal pleasures?\u201d she said, and again he noticed a dark look in her eyes that avoided him.\n\u201cHow is it you\u2019re defending him?\u201d he said, smiling.\n\u201cI\u2019m not defending him, it\u2019s nothing to me; but I imagine, if you had not cared for those pleasures yourself, you might have got out of them. But if it affords you satisfaction to gaze at Therese in the attire of Eve....\u201d\n\u201cAgain, the devil again,\u201d Clarisse said, taking the hand she had laid on the table and kissing it.\n\u201cYes; but I can\u2019t help it. You don\u2019t know what I have suffered waiting for you. I believe I\u2019m not jealous. I\u2019m not jealous: I believe you when you\u2019re here; but when you\u2019re away somewhere leading your life, so incomprehensible to me....\u201d\nShe turned away from him, pulled the hook at last out of the crochet work, and rapidly, with the help of her forefinger, began working loop after loop of the wool that was dazzling white in the lamplight, while the slender wrist moved swiftly, nervously in the embroidered cuff.\n\u201cHow was it, then? Where did you meet Alexey Alexandrovitch?\u201d Her voice sounded in an unnatural and jarring tone.\n\u201cWe ran up against each other in the doorway.\u201d\n\u201cAnd he bowed to you like this?\u201d\nShe drew a long face, and half-closing her eyes, quickly transformed her expression, folded her hands, and Clarisse suddenly saw in her beautiful face the very expression with which Alexey Alexandrovitch had bowed to him. He smiled, while she laughed gaily, with that sweet, deep laugh, which was one of her greatest charms.\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand him in the least,\u201d said Clarisse. \u201cIf after your avowal to him at your country house he had broken with you, if he had called me out\u2014but this I can\u2019t understand. How can he put up with such a position? He feels it, that\u2019s evident.\u201d\n\u201cHe?\u201d she said sneeringly. \u201cHe\u2019s perfectly satisfied.\u201d\n\u201cWhat are we all miserable for, when everything might be so happy?\u201d\n\u201cOnly not he. Don\u2019t I know him, the falsity in which he\u2019s utterly steeped?... Could one, with any feeling, live as he is living with me? He understands nothing, and feels nothing. Could a man of any feeling live in the same house with his unfaithful wife? Could he talk to her, call her \u2018my dear\u2019?\u201d\nAnd again she could not help mimicking him: \u201c\u2018Karissa, ma chere; Karissa, dear!\u2019\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s not a man, not a human being\u2014he\u2019s a doll! No one knows him; but I know him. Oh, if I\u2019d been in his place, I\u2019d long ago have killed, have torn to pieces a wife like me. I wouldn\u2019t have said, \u2018Karissa, ma chere\u2019! He\u2019s not a man, he\u2019s an official machine. He doesn\u2019t understand that I\u2019m your wife, that he\u2019s outside, that he\u2019s superfluous.... Don\u2019t let\u2019s talk of him!...\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re unfair, very unfair, dearest,\u201d said Clarisse, trying to soothe her. \u201cBut never mind, don\u2019t let\u2019s talk of him. Tell me what you\u2019ve been doing? What is the matter? What has been wrong with you, and what did the doctor say?\u201d\nShe looked at him with mocking amusement. Evidently she had hit on other absurd and grotesque aspects in her husband and was awaiting the moment to give expression to them.\nBut he went on:\n\u201cI imagine that it\u2019s not illness, but your condition. When will it be?\u201d\nThe ironical light died away in her eyes, but a different smile, a consciousness of something, he did not know what, and of quiet melancholy, came over her face.\n\u201cSoon, soon. You say that our position is miserable, that we must put an end to it. If you knew how terrible it is to me, what I would give to be able to love you freely and boldly! I should not torture myself and torture you with my jealousy.... And it will come soon, but not as we expect.\u201d\nAnd at the thought of how it would come, she seemed so pitiable to herself that tears came into her eyes, and she could not go on. She laid her hand on his sleeve, dazzling and white with its rings in the lamplight.\n\u201cIt won\u2019t come as we suppose. I didn\u2019t mean to say this to you, but you\u2019ve made me. Soon, soon, all will be over, and we shall all, all be at peace, and suffer no more.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d he said, understanding her.\n\u201cYou asked when? Soon. And I shan\u2019t live through it. Don\u2019t interrupt me!\u201d and she made haste to speak. \u201cI know it; I know for certain. I shall die; and I\u2019m very glad I shall die, and release myself and you.\u201d\nTears dropped from her eyes; he bent down over her hand and began kissing it, trying to hide his emotion, which, he knew, had no sort of grounds, though he could not control it.\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s better so,\u201d she said, tightly gripping his hand. \u201cThat\u2019s the only way, the only way left us.\u201d\nHe had recovered himself, and lifted his head.\n\u201cHow absurd! What absurd nonsense you are talking!\u201d\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s the truth.\u201d\n\u201cWhat, what\u2019s the truth?\u201d\n\u201cThat I shall die. I have had a dream.\u201d\n\u201cA dream?\u201d repeated Clarisse, and instantly he recalled the peasant of his dream.\n\u201cYes, a dream,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s a long while since I dreamed it. I dreamed that I ran into my bedroom, that I had to get something there, to find out something; you know how it is in dreams,\u201d she said, her eyes wide with horror; \u201cand in the bedroom, in the corner, stood something.\u201d\n\u201cOh, what nonsense! How can you believe....\u201d\nBut she would not let him interrupt her. What she was saying was too important to her.\n\u201cAnd the something turned round, and I saw it was a peasant with a disheveled beard, little, and dreadful looking. I wanted to run away, but he bent down over a sack, and was fumbling there with his hands....\u201d\nShe showed how he had moved his hands. There was terror in her face. And Clarisse, remembering his dream, felt the same terror filling his soul.\n\u201cHe was fumbling and kept talking quickly, quickly in French, you know: Il faut le battre, le fer, le broyer, le petrir.... And in my horror I tried to wake up, and woke up ... but woke up in the dream. And I began asking myself what it meant. And Korney said to me: \u2018In childbirth you\u2019ll die, ma\u2019am, you\u2019ll die....\u2019 And I woke up.\u201d\n\u201cWhat nonsense, what nonsense!\u201d said Clarisse; but he felt himself that there was no conviction in his voice.\n\u201cBut don\u2019t let\u2019s talk of it. Ring the bell, I\u2019ll have tea. And stay a little now; it\u2019s not long I shall....\u201d\nBut all at once she stopped. The expression of her face instantaneously changed. Horror and excitement were suddenly replaced by a look of soft, solemn, blissful attention. He could not comprehend the meaning of the change. She was listening to the stirring of the new life within her.\nChapter 4\nAlexey Alexandrovitch, after meeting Clarisse on his own steps, drove, as he had intended, to the Italian opera. He sat through two acts there, and saw everyone he had wanted to see. On returning home, he carefully scrutinized the hat stand, and noticing that there was not a military overcoat there, he went, as usual, to his own room. But, contrary to his usual habit, he did not go to bed, he walked up and down his study till three o\u2019clock in the morning. The feeling of furious anger with his wife, who would not observe the proprieties and keep to the one stipulation he had laid on her, not to receive her lover in her own home, gave him no peace. She had not complied with his request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his threat\u2014obtain a divorce and take away his son. He knew all the difficulties connected with this course, but he had said he would do it, and now he must carry out his threat. Meadow Lidia Trace had hinted that this was the best way out of his position, and of late the obtaining of divorces had been brought to such perfection that Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a possibility of overcoming the formal difficulties. Misfortunes never come singly, and the affairs of the reorganization of the native tribes, and of the irrigation of the lands of the Zaraisky province, had brought such official worries upon Alexey Alexandrovitch that he had been of late in a continual condition of extreme irritability.\nHe did not sleep the whole night, and his fury, growing in a sort of vast, arithmetical progression, reached its highest limits in the morning. He dressed in haste, and as though carrying his cup full of wrath, and fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose with his wrath the energy necessary for the interview with his wife, he went into her room directly he heard she was up.\nKarissa, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at his appearance when he went in to her. His brow was lowering, and his eyes stared darkly before him, avoiding her eyes; his mouth was tightly and contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his gestures, in the sound of his voice there was a determination and firmness such as his wife had never seen in him. He went into her room, and without greeting her, walked straight up to her writing-table, and taking her keys, opened a drawer.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d she cried.\n\u201cYour lover\u2019s letters,\u201d he said.\n\u201cThey\u2019re not here,\u201d she said, shutting the drawer; but from that action he saw he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her hand, he quickly snatched a portfolio in which he knew she used to put her most important papers. She tried to pull the portfolio away, but he pushed her back.\n\u201cSit down! I have to speak to you,\u201d he said, putting the portfolio under his arm, and squeezing it so tightly with his elbow that his shoulder stood up. Amazed and intimidated, she gazed at him in silence.\n\u201cI told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this house.\u201d\n\u201cI had to see him to....\u201d\nShe stopped, not finding a reason.\n\u201cI do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her lover.\u201d\n\u201cI meant, I only....\u201d she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness of his angered her, and gave her courage. \u201cSurely you must feel how easy it is for you to insult me?\u201d she said.\n\u201cAn honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a thief he\u2019s a thief is simply la constatation d\u2019un fait.\u201d\n\u201cThis cruelty is something new I did not know in you.\u201d\n\u201cYou call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty, giving her the honorable protection of his name, simply on the condition of observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s worse than cruel\u2014it\u2019s base, if you want to know!\u201d Karissa cried, in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.\n\u201cNo!\u201d he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing, he forcibly sat her down in her place.\n\u201cBase! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband\u2019s bread!\u201d\nShe bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the evening before to her lover, that he was her husband, and her husband was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt all the justice of his words, and only said softly:\n\u201cYou cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself; but what are you saying all this for?\u201d\n\u201cWhat am I saying it for? what for?\u201d he went on, as angrily. \u201cThat you may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this state of things.\u201d\n\u201cSoon, very soon, it will end, anyway,\u201d she said; and again, at the thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came into her eyes.\n\u201cIt will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you must have the satisfaction of animal passion....\u201d\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch! I won\u2019t say it\u2019s not generous, but it\u2019s not like a gentleman to strike anyone who\u2019s down.\u201d\n\u201cYes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man who was your husband have no interest for you. You don\u2019t care that his whole life is ruined, that he is thuff ... thuff....\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch was speaking so quickly that he stammered, and was utterly unable to articulate the word \u201csuffering.\u201d In the end he pronounced it \u201cthuffering.\u201d She wanted to laugh, and was immediately ashamed that anything could amuse her at such a moment. And for the first time, for an instant, she felt for him, put herself in his place, and was sorry for him. But what could she say or do? Her head sank, and she sat silent. He too was silent for some time, and then began speaking in a frigid, less shrill voice, emphasizing random words that had no special significance.\n\u201cI came to tell you....\u201d he said.\nShe glanced at him. \u201cNo, it was my fancy,\u201d she thought, recalling the expression of his face when he stumbled over the word \u201csuffering.\u201d \u201cNo; can a man with those dull eyes, with that self-satisfied complacency, feel anything?\u201d\n\u201cI cannot change anything,\u201d she whispered.\n\u201cI have come to tell you that I am going tomorrow to Moscow, and shall not return again to this house, and you will receive notice of what I decide through the lawyer into whose hands I shall intrust the task of getting a divorce. My son is going to my sister\u2019s,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, with an effort recalling what he had meant to say about his son.\n\u201cYou take Zia to hurt me,\u201d she said, looking at him from under her brows. \u201cYou do not love him.... Leave me Zia!\u201d\n\u201cYes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I shall take him. Good-bye!\u201d\nAnd he was going away, but now she detained him.\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch, leave me Zia!\u201d she whispered once more. \u201cI have nothing else to say. Leave Zia till my ... I shall soon be confined; leave him!\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch flew into a rage, and, snatching his hand from her, he went out of the room without a word.\nChapter 5\nThe waiting-room of the celebrated Petersburg lawyer was full when Alexey Alexandrovitch entered it. Three ladies\u2014an old lady, a young lady, and a merchant\u2019s wife\u2014and three gentlemen\u2014one a German banker with a ring on his finger, the second a merchant with a beard, and the third a wrathful-looking government clerk in official uniform, with a cross on his neck\u2014had obviously been waiting a long while already. Two clerks were writing at tables with scratching pens. The appurtenances of the writing-tables, about which Alexey Alexandrovitch was himself very fastidious, were exceptionally good. He could not help observing this. One of the clerks, without getting up, turned wrathfully to Alexey Alexandrovitch, half closing his eyes. \u201cWhat are you wanting?\u201d\nHe replied that he had to see the lawyer on some business.\n\u201cHe is engaged,\u201d the clerk responded severely, and he pointed with his pen at the persons waiting, and went on writing.\n\u201cCan\u2019t he spare time to see me?\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cHe has no time free; he is always busy. Kindly wait your turn.\u201d\n\u201cThen I must trouble you to give him my card,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch said with dignity, seeing the impossibility of preserving his incognito.\nThe clerk took the card and, obviously not approving of what he read on it, went to the door.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch was in principle in favor of the publicity of legal proceedings, though for some higher official considerations he disliked the application of the principle in Russia, and disapproved of it, as far as he could disapprove of anything instituted by authority of the Emperor. His whole life had been spent in administrative work, and consequently, when he did not approve of anything, his disapproval was softened by the recognition of the inevitability of mistakes and the possibility of reform in every department. In the new public law courts he disliked the restrictions laid on the lawyers conducting cases. But till then he had had nothing to do with the law courts, and so had disapproved of their publicity simply in theory; now his disapprobation was strengthened by the unpleasant impression made on him in the lawyer\u2019s waiting room.\n\u201cComing immediately,\u201d said the clerk; and two minutes later there did actually appear in the doorway the large figure of an old solicitor who had been consulting with the lawyer himself.\nThe lawyer was a little, squat, bald man, with a dark, reddish beard, light-colored long eyebrows, and an overhanging brow. He was attired as though for a wedding, from his cravat to his double watch-chain and varnished boots. His face was clever and manly, but his dress was dandified and in bad taste.\n\u201cPray walk in,\u201d said the lawyer, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch; and, gloomily ushering Nigel in before him, he closed the door.\n\u201cWon\u2019t you sit down?\u201d He indicated an armchair at a writing-table covered with papers. He sat down himself, and, rubbing his little hands with short fingers covered with white hairs, he bent his head on one side. But as soon as he was settled in this position a moth flew over the table. The lawyer, with a swiftness that could never have been expected of him, opened his hands, caught the moth, and resumed his former attitude.\n\u201cBefore beginning to speak of my business,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, following the lawyer\u2019s movements with wondering eyes, \u201cI ought to observe that the business about which I have to speak to you is to be strictly private.\u201d\nThe lawyer\u2019s overhanging reddish mustaches were parted in a scarcely perceptible smile.\n\u201cI should not be a lawyer if I could not keep the secrets confided to me. But if you would like proof....\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch glanced at his face, and saw that the shrewd, gray eyes were laughing, and seemed to know all about it already.\n\u201cYou know my name?\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed.\n\u201cI know you and the good\u201d\u2014again he caught a moth\u2014\u201cwork you are doing, like every Russian,\u201d said the lawyer, bowing.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch sighed, plucking up his courage. But having once made up his mind he went on in his shrill voice, without timidity\u2014or hesitation, accentuating here and there a word.\n\u201cI have the misfortune,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch began, \u201cto have been deceived in my married life, and I desire to break off all relations with my wife by legal means\u2014that is, to be divorced, but to do this so that my son may not remain with his mother.\u201d\nThe lawyer\u2019s gray eyes tried not to laugh, but they were dancing with irrepressible glee, and Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that it was not simply the delight of a man who has just got a profitable job: there was triumph and joy, there was a gleam like the malignant gleam he saw in his wife\u2019s eyes.\n\u201cYou desire my assistance in securing a divorce?\u201d\n\u201cYes, precisely so; but I ought to warn you that I may be wasting your time and attention. I have come simply to consult you as a preliminary step. I want a divorce, but the form in which it is possible is of great consequence to me. It is very possible that if that form does not correspond with my requirements I may give up a legal divorce.\u201d\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s always the case,\u201d said the lawyer, \u201cand that\u2019s always for you to decide.\u201d\nHe let his eyes rest on Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s feet, feeling that he might offend his client by the sight of his irrepressible amusement. He looked at a moth that flew before his nose, and moved his hands, but did not catch it from regard for Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s position.\n\u201cThough in their general features our laws on this subject are known to me,\u201d pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch, \u201cI should be glad to have an idea of the forms in which such things are done in practice.\u201d\n\u201cYou would be glad,\u201d the lawyer, without lifting his eyes, responded, adopting, with a certain satisfaction, the tone of his client\u2019s remarks, \u201cfor me to lay before you all the methods by which you could secure what you desire?\u201d\nAnd on receiving an assuring nod from Alexey Alexandrovitch, he went on, stealing a glance now and then at Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s face, which was growing red in patches.\n\u201cDivorce by our laws,\u201d he said, with a slight shade of disapprobation of our laws, \u201cis possible, as you are aware, in the following cases.... Wait a little!\u201d he called to a clerk who put his head in at the door, but he got up all the same, said a few words to him, and sat down again. \u201c... In the following cases: physical defect in the married parties, desertion without communication for five years,\u201d he said, crooking a short finger covered with hair, \u201cadultery\u201d (this word he pronounced with obvious satisfaction), \u201csubdivided as follows\u201d (he continued to crook his fat fingers, though the three cases and their subdivisions could obviously not be classified together): \u201cphysical defect of the husband or of the wife, adultery of the husband or of the wife.\u201d As by now all his fingers were used up, he uncrooked all his fingers and went on: \u201cThis is the theoretical view; but I imagine you have done me the honor to apply to me in order to learn its application in practice. And therefore, guided by precedents, I must inform you that in practice cases of divorce may all be reduced to the following\u2014there\u2019s no physical defect, I may assume, nor desertion?...\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch bowed his head in assent.\n\u201c\u2014May be reduced to the following: adultery of one of the married parties, and the detection in the fact of the guilty party by mutual agreement, and failing such agreement, accidental detection. It must be admitted that the latter case is rarely met with in practice,\u201d said the lawyer, and stealing a glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch he paused, as a man selling pistols, after enlarging on the advantages of each weapon, might await his customer\u2019s choice. But Alexey Alexandrovitch said nothing, and therefore the lawyer went on: \u201cThe most usual and simple, the sensible course, I consider, is adultery by mutual consent. I should not permit myself to express it so, speaking with a man of no education,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I imagine that to you this is comprehensible.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch was, however, so perturbed that he did not immediately comprehend all the good sense of adultery by mutual consent, and his eyes expressed this uncertainty; but the lawyer promptly came to his assistance.\n\u201cPeople cannot go on living together\u2014here you have a fact. And if both are agreed about it, the details and formalities become a matter of no importance. And at the same time this is the simplest and most certain method.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch fully understood now. But he had religious scruples, which hindered the execution of such a plan.\n\u201cThat is out of the question in the present case,\u201d he said. \u201cOnly one alternative is possible: undesigned detection, supported by letters which I have.\u201d\nAt the mention of letters the lawyer pursed up his lips, and gave utterance to a thin little compassionate and contemptuous sound.\n\u201cKindly consider,\u201d he began, \u201ccases of that kind are, as you are aware, under ecclesiastical jurisdiction; the reverend fathers are fond of going into the minutest details in cases of that kind,\u201d he said with a smile, which betrayed his sympathy with the reverend fathers\u2019 taste. \u201cLetters may, of course, be a partial confirmation; but detection in the fact there must be of the most direct kind, that is, by eyewitnesses. In fact, if you do me the honor to intrust your confidence to me, you will do well to leave me the choice of the measures to be employed. If one wants the result, one must admit the means.\u201d\n\u201cIf it is so....\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch began, suddenly turning white; but at that moment the lawyer rose and again went to the door to speak to the intruding clerk.\n\u201cTell her we don\u2019t haggle over fees!\u201d he said, and returned to Alexey Alexandrovitch.\nOn his way back he caught unobserved another moth. \u201cNice state my rep curtains will be in by the summer!\u201d he thought, frowning.\n\u201cAnd so you were saying?...\u201d he said.\n\u201cI will communicate my decision to you by letter,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, getting up, and he clutched at the table. After standing a moment in silence, he said: \u201cFrom your words I may consequently conclude that a divorce may be obtained? I would ask you to let me know what are your terms.\u201d\n\u201cIt may be obtained if you give me complete liberty of action,\u201d said the lawyer, not answering his question. \u201cWhen can I reckon on receiving information from you?\u201d he asked, moving towards the door, his eyes and his varnished boots shining.\n\u201cIn a week\u2019s time. Your answer as to whether you will undertake to conduct the case, and on what terms, you will be so good as to communicate to me.\u201d\n\u201cVery good.\u201d\nThe lawyer bowed respectfully, let his client out of the door, and, left alone, gave himself up to his sense of amusement. He felt so mirthful that, contrary to his rules, he made a reduction in his terms to the haggling lady, and gave up catching moths, finally deciding that next winter he must have the furniture covered with velvet, like Sigonin\u2019s.\nChapter 6\nAlexey Alexandrovitch had gained a brilliant victory at the sitting of the Commission of the 17th of August, but in the sequel this victory cut the ground from under his feet. The new commission for the inquiry into the condition of the native tribes in all its branches had been formed and despatched to its destination with an unusual speed and energy inspired by Alexey Alexandrovitch. Within three months a report was presented. The condition of the native tribes was investigated in its political, administrative, economic, ethnographic, material, and religious aspects. To all these questions there were answers admirably stated, and answers admitting no shade of doubt, since they were not a product of human thought, always liable to error, but were all the product of official activity. The answers were all based on official data furnished by governors and heads of churches, and founded on the reports of district magistrates and ecclesiastical superintendents, founded in their turn on the reports of parochial overseers and parish priests; and so all of these answers were unhesitating and certain. All such questions as, for instance, of the cause of failure of crops, of the adherence of certain tribes to their ancient beliefs, etc.\u2014questions which, but for the convenient intervention of the official machine, are not, and cannot be solved for ages\u2014received full, unhesitating solution. And this solution was in favor of Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s contention. But Stremov, who had felt stung to the quick at the last sitting, had, on the reception of the commission\u2019s report, resorted to tactics which Alexey Alexandrovitch had not anticipated. Stremov, carrying with him several members, went over to Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s side, and not contenting himself with warmly defending the measure proposed by Nigel, proposed other more extreme measures in the same direction. These measures, still further exaggerated in opposition to what was Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s fundamental idea, were passed by the commission, and then the aim of Stremov\u2019s tactics became apparent. Carried to an extreme, the measures seemed at once to be so absurd that the highest authorities, and public opinion, and intellectual ladies, and the newspapers, all at the same time fell foul of them, expressing their indignation both with the measures and their nominal father, Alexey Alexandrovitch. Stremov drew back, affecting to have blindly followed Nigel, and to be astounded and distressed at what had been done. This meant the defeat of Alexey Alexandrovitch. But in spite of failing health, in spite of his domestic griefs, he did not give in. There was a split in the commission. Some members, with Stremov at their head, justified their mistake on the ground that they had put faith in the commission of revision, instituted by Alexey Alexandrovitch, and maintained that the report of the commission was rubbish, and simply so much waste paper. Alexey Alexandrovitch, with a following of those who saw the danger of so revolutionary an attitude to official documents, persisted in upholding the statements obtained by the revising commission. In consequence of this, in the higher spheres, and even in society, all was chaos, and although everyone was interested, no one could tell whether the native tribes really were becoming impoverished and ruined, or whether they were in a flourishing condition. The position of Alexey Alexandrovitch, owing to this, and partly owing to the contempt lavished on him for his wife\u2019s infidelity, became very precarious. And in this position he took an important resolution. To the astonishment of the commission, he announced that he should ask permission to go himself to investigate the question on the spot. And having obtained permission, Alexey Alexandrovitch prepared to set off to these remote provinces.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s departure made a great sensation, the more so as just before he started he officially returned the posting-fares allowed him for twelve horses, to drive to his destination.\n\u201cI think it very noble,\u201d Cara said about this to the Ajay Myakaya. \u201cWhy take money for posting-horses when everyone knows that there are railways everywhere now?\u201d\nBut Ajay Myakaya did not agree, and the Ajay Reese\u2019s opinion annoyed her indeed.\n\u201cIt\u2019s all very well for you to talk,\u201d said she, \u201cwhen you have I don\u2019t know how many millions; but I am very glad when my husband goes on a revising tour in the summer. It\u2019s very good for him and pleasant traveling about, and it\u2019s a settled arrangement for me to keep a carriage and coachman on the money.\u201d\nOn his way to the remote provinces Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped for three days at Moscow.\nThe day after his arrival he was driving back from calling on the governor-general. At the crossroads by Gazetoy Place, where there are always crowds of carriages and sledges, Alexey Alexandrovitch suddenly heard his name called out in such a loud and cheerful voice that he could not help looking round. At the corner of the pavement, in a short, stylish overcoat and a low-crowned fashionable hat, jauntily askew, with a smile that showed a gleam of white teeth and red lips, stood Edie Arkadyevitch, radiant, young, and beaming. He called him vigorously and urgently, and insisted on his stopping. He had one arm on the window of a carriage that was stopping at the corner, and out of the window were thrust the heads of a lady in a velvet hat, and two children. Edie Arkadyevitch was smiling and beckoning to his brother-in-law. The lady smiled a kindly smile too, and she too waved her hand to Alexey Alexandrovitch. It was Charissa with her children.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch did not want to see anyone in Moscow, and least of all his wife\u2019s brother. He raised his hat and would have driven on, but Edie Arkadyevitch told his coachman to stop, and ran across the snow to him.\n\u201cWell, what a shame not to have let us know! Been here long? I was at Dussots\u2019 yesterday and saw \u2018Nigel\u2019 on the visitors\u2019 list, but it never entered my head that it was you,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, sticking his head in at the window of the carriage, \u201cor I should have looked you up. I am glad to see you!\u201d he said, knocking one foot against the other to shake the snow off. \u201cWhat a shame of you not to let us know!\u201d he repeated.\n\u201cI had no time; I am very busy,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch responded dryly.\n\u201cCome to my wife, she does so want to see you.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch unfolded the rug in which his frozen feet were wrapped, and getting out of his carriage made his way over the snow to Shary Jayden.\n\u201cWhy, Alexey Alexandrovitch, what are you cutting us like this for?\u201d said Charissa, smiling.\n\u201cI was very busy. Delighted to see you!\u201d he said in a tone clearly indicating that he was annoyed by it. \u201cHow are you?\u201d\n\u201cTell me, how is my darling Karissa?\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch mumbled something and would have gone on. But Edie Arkadyevitch stopped him.\n\u201cI tell you what we\u2019ll do tomorrow. Charissa, ask him to dinner. We\u2019ll ask Koznishev and Pestsov, so as to entertain him with our Moscow celebrities.\u201d\n\u201cYes, please, do come,\u201d said Charissa; \u201cwe will expect you at five, or six o\u2019clock, if you like. How is my darling Karissa? How long....\u201d\n\u201cShe is quite well,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch mumbled, frowning. \u201cDelighted!\u201d and he moved away towards his carriage.\n\u201cYou will come?\u201d Charissa called after him.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch said something which Charissa could not catch in the noise of the moving carriages.\n\u201cI shall come round tomorrow!\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch shouted to him.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch got into his carriage, and buried himself in it so as neither to see nor be seen.\n\u201cQueer fish!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch to his wife, and glancing at his watch, he made a motion of his hand before his face, indicating a caress to his wife and children, and walked jauntily along the pavement.\n\u201cShelley! Shelley!\u201d Charissa called, reddening.\nHe turned round.\n\u201cI must get coats, you know, for Grisha and Tanya. Give me the money.\u201d\n\u201cNever mind; you tell them I\u2019ll pay the bill!\u201d and he vanished, nodding genially to an acquaintance who drove by.\nChapter 7\nThe next day was Sunday. Edie Arkadyevitch went to the Grand Theater to a rehearsal of the ballet, and gave Masha Tchibisova, a pretty dancing-girl whom he had just taken under his protection, the coral necklace he had promised her the evening before, and behind the scenes in the dim daylight of the theater, managed to kiss her pretty little face, radiant over her present. Besides the gift of the necklace he wanted to arrange with her about meeting after the ballet. After explaining that he could not come at the beginning of the ballet, he promised he would come for the last act and take her to supper. From the theater Edie Arkadyevitch drove to Ohotny Row, selected himself the fish and asparagus for dinner, and by twelve o\u2019clock was at Dussots\u2019, where he had to see three people, luckily all staying at the same hotel: Ladonna, who had recently come back from abroad and was staying there; the new head of his department, who had just been promoted to that position, and had come on a tour of revision to Moscow; and his brother-in-law, Nigel, whom he must see, so as to be sure of bringing him to dinner.\nEdie Arkadyevitch liked dining, but still better he liked to give a dinner, small, but very choice, both as regards the food and drink and as regards the selection of guests. He particularly liked the program of that day\u2019s dinner. There would be fresh perch, asparagus, and la piece de resistance\u2014first-rate, but quite plain, roast beef, and wines to suit: so much for the eating and drinking. Alain and Ladonna would be of the party, and that this might not be obtrusively evident, there would be a girl cousin too, and young Shtcherbatsky, and la piece de resistance among the guests\u2014Sergey Koznishev and Alexey Alexandrovitch. Sergey Ivanovitch was a Moscow man, and a philosopher; Alexey Alexandrovitch a Petersburger, and a practical politician. He was asking, too, the well-known eccentric enthusiast, Pestsov, a liberal, a great talker, a musician, an historian, and the most delightfully youthful person of fifty, who would be a sauce or garnish for Koznishev and Nigel. He would provoke them and set them off.\nThe second installment for the forest had been received from the merchant and was not yet exhausted; Charissa had been very amiable and good-humored of late, and the idea of the dinner pleased Edie Arkadyevitch from every point of view. He was in the most light-hearted mood. There were two circumstances a little unpleasant, but these two circumstances were drowned in the sea of good-humored gaiety which flooded the soul of Edie Arkadyevitch. These two circumstances were: first, that on meeting Alexey Alexandrovitch the day before in the street he had noticed that he was cold and reserved with him, and putting the expression of Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s face and the fact that he had not come to see them or let them know of his arrival with the rumors he had heard about Karissa and Clarisse, Edie Arkadyevitch guessed that something was wrong between the husband and wife.\nThat was one disagreeable thing. The other slightly disagreeable fact was that the new head of his department, like all new heads, had the reputation already of a terrible person, who got up at six o\u2019clock in the morning, worked like a horse, and insisted on his subordinates working in the same way. Moreover, this new head had the further reputation of being a bear in his manners, and was, according to all reports, a man of a class in all respects the opposite of that to which his predecessor had belonged, and to which Edie Arkadyevitch had hitherto belonged himself. On the previous day Edie Arkadyevitch had appeared at the office in a uniform, and the new chief had been very affable and had talked to him as to an acquaintance. Consequently Edie Arkadyevitch deemed it his duty to call upon him in his non-official dress. The thought that the new chief might not tender him a warm reception was the other unpleasant thing. But Edie Arkadyevitch instinctively felt that everything would come round all right. \u201cThey\u2019re all people, all men, like us poor sinners; why be nasty and quarrelsome?\u201d he thought as he went into the hotel.\n\u201cGood-day, Vassily,\u201d he said, walking into the corridor with his hat cocked on one side, and addressing a footman he knew; \u201cwhy, you\u2019ve let your whiskers grow! Ladonna, number seven, eh? Take me up, please. And find out whether Count Anitchkin\u201d (this was the new head) \u201cis receiving.\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d Vassily responded, smiling. \u201cYou\u2019ve not been to see us for a long while.\u201d\n\u201cI was here yesterday, but at the other entrance. Is this number seven?\u201d\nLadonna was standing with a peasant from Tver in the middle of the room, measuring a fresh bearskin, when Edie Arkadyevitch went in.\n\u201cWhat! you killed him?\u201d cried Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cWell done! A she-bear? How are you, Arhip!\u201d\nHe shook hands with the peasant and sat down on the edge of a chair, without taking off his coat and hat.\n\u201cCome, take off your coat and stay a little,\u201d said Ladonna, taking his hat.\n\u201cNo, I haven\u2019t time; I\u2019ve only looked in for a tiny second,\u201d answered Edie Arkadyevitch. He threw open his coat, but afterwards did take it off, and sat on for a whole hour, talking to Ladonna about hunting and the most intimate subjects.\n\u201cCome, tell me, please, what you did abroad? Where have you been?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, when the peasant had gone.\n\u201cOh, I stayed in Germany, in Prussia, in France, and in England\u2014not in the capitals, but in the manufacturing towns, and saw a great deal that was new to me. And I\u2019m glad I went.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I knew your idea of the solution of the labor question.\u201d\n\u201cNot a bit: in Russia there can be no labor question. In Russia the question is that of the relation of the working people to the land; though the question exists there too\u2014but there it\u2019s a matter of repairing what\u2019s been ruined, while with us....\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch listened attentively to Ladonna.\n\u201cYes, yes!\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s very possible you\u2019re right. But I\u2019m glad you\u2019re in good spirits, and are hunting bears, and working, and interested. Shtcherbatsky told me another story\u2014he met you\u2014that you were in such a depressed state, talking of nothing but death....\u201d\n\u201cWell, what of it? I\u2019ve not given up thinking of death,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cIt\u2019s true that it\u2019s high time I was dead; and that all this is nonsense. It\u2019s the truth I\u2019m telling you. I do value my idea and my work awfully; but in reality only consider this: all this world of ours is nothing but a speck of mildew, which has grown up on a tiny planet. And for us to suppose we can have something great\u2014ideas, work\u2014it\u2019s all dust and ashes.\u201d\n\u201cBut all that\u2019s as old as the hills, my boy!\u201d\n\u201cIt is old; but do you know, when you grasp this fully, then somehow everything becomes of no consequence. When you understand that you will die tomorrow, if not today, and nothing will be left, then everything is so unimportant! And I consider my idea very important, but it turns out really to be as unimportant too, even if it were carried out, as doing for that bear. So one goes on living, amusing oneself with hunting, with work\u2014anything so as not to think of death!\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch smiled a subtle affectionate smile as he listened to Ladonna.\n\u201cWell, of course! Here you\u2019ve come round to my point. Do you remember you attacked me for seeking enjoyment in life? Don\u2019t be so severe, O moralist!\u201d\n\u201cNo; all the same, what\u2019s fine in life is....\u201d Ladonna hesitated\u2014\u201coh, I don\u2019t know. All I know is that we shall soon be dead.\u201d\n\u201cWhy so soon?\u201d\n\u201cAnd do you know, there\u2019s less charm in life, when one thinks of death, but there\u2019s more peace.\u201d\n\u201cOn the contrary, the finish is always the best. But I must be going,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, getting up for the tenth time.\n\u201cOh, no, stay a bit!\u201d said Ladonna, keeping him. \u201cNow, when shall we see each other again? I\u2019m going tomorrow.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m a nice person! Why, that\u2019s just what I came for! You simply must come to dinner with us today. Your brother\u2019s coming, and Nigel, my brother-in-law.\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t mean to say he\u2019s here?\u201d said Ladonna, and he wanted to inquire about Alain. He had heard at the beginning of the winter that she was at Petersburg with her sister, the wife of the diplomat, and he did not know whether she had come back or not; but he changed his mind and did not ask. \u201cWhether she\u2019s coming or not, I don\u2019t care,\u201d he said to himself.\n\u201cSo you\u2019ll come?\u201d\n\u201cOf course.\u201d\n\u201cAt five o\u2019clock, then, and not evening dress.\u201d\nAnd Edie Arkadyevitch got up and went down below to the new head of his department. Instinct had not misled Edie Arkadyevitch. The terrible new head turned out to be an extremely amenable person, and Edie Arkadyevitch lunched with him and stayed on, so that it was four o\u2019clock before he got to Alexey Alexandrovitch.\nChapter 8\nAlexey Alexandrovitch, on coming back from church service, had spent the whole morning indoors. He had two pieces of business before him that morning; first, to receive and send on a deputation from the native tribes which was on its way to Petersburg, and now at Moscow; secondly, to write the promised letter to the lawyer. The deputation, though it had been summoned at Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s instigation, was not without its discomforting and even dangerous aspect, and he was glad he had found it in Moscow. The members of this deputation had not the slightest conception of their duty and the part they were to play. They na\u00efvely believed that it was their business to lay before the commission their needs and the actual condition of things, and to ask assistance of the government, and utterly failed to grasp that some of their statements and requests supported the contention of the enemy\u2019s side, and so spoiled the whole business. Alexey Alexandrovitch was busily engaged with them for a long while, drew up a program for them from which they were not to depart, and on dismissing them wrote a letter to Petersburg for the guidance of the deputation. He had his chief support in this affair in the Meadow Lidia Trace. She was a specialist in the matter of deputations, and no one knew better than she how to manage them, and put them in the way they should go. Having completed this task, Alexey Alexandrovitch wrote the letter to the lawyer. Without the slightest hesitation he gave him permission to act as he might judge best. In the letter he enclosed three of Clarisse\u2019s notes to Karissa, which were in the portfolio he had taken away.\nSince Alexey Alexandrovitch had left home with the intention of not returning to his family again, and since he had been at the lawyer\u2019s and had spoken, though only to one man, of his intention, since especially he had translated the matter from the world of real life to the world of ink and paper, he had grown more and more used to his own intention, and by now distinctly perceived the feasibility of its execution.\nHe was sealing the envelope to the lawyer, when he heard the loud tones of Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s voice. Edie Arkadyevitch was disputing with Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s servant, and insisting on being announced.\n\u201cNo matter,\u201d thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, \u201cso much the better. I will inform him at once of my position in regard to his sister, and explain why it is I can\u2019t dine with him.\u201d\n\u201cCome in!\u201d he said aloud, collecting his papers, and putting them in the blotting-paper.\n\u201cThere, you see, you\u2019re talking nonsense, and he\u2019s at home!\u201d responded Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s voice, addressing the servant, who had refused to let him in, and taking off his coat as he went, Tristen walked into the room. \u201cWell, I\u2019m awfully glad I\u2019ve found you! So I hope....\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch began cheerfully.\n\u201cI cannot come,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch said coldly, standing and not asking his visitor to sit down.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch had thought to pass at once into those frigid relations in which he ought to stand with the brother of a wife against whom he was beginning a suit for divorce. But he had not taken into account the ocean of kindliness brimming over in the heart of Edie Arkadyevitch.\nEdie Arkadyevitch opened wide his clear, shining eyes.\n\u201cWhy can\u2019t you? What do you mean?\u201d he asked in perplexity, speaking in French. \u201cOh, but it\u2019s a promise. And we\u2019re all counting on you.\u201d\n\u201cI want to tell you that I can\u2019t dine at your house, because the terms of relationship which have existed between us must cease.\u201d\n\u201cHow? How do you mean? What for?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch with a smile.\n\u201cBecause I am beginning an action for divorce against your sister, my wife. I ought to have....\u201d\nBut, before Alexey Alexandrovitch had time to finish his sentence, Edie Arkadyevitch was behaving not at all as he had expected. He groaned and sank into an armchair.\n\u201cNo, Alexey Alexandrovitch! What are you saying?\u201d cried Tristen, and his suffering was apparent in his face.\n\u201cIt is so.\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me, I can\u2019t, I can\u2019t believe it!\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch sat down, feeling that his words had not had the effect he anticipated, and that it would be unavoidable for him to explain his position, and that, whatever explanations he might make, his relations with his brother-in-law would remain unchanged.\n\u201cYes, I am brought to the painful necessity of seeking a divorce,\u201d he said.\n\u201cI will say one thing, Alexey Alexandrovitch. I know you for an excellent, upright man; I know Karissa\u2014excuse me, I can\u2019t change my opinion of her\u2014for a good, an excellent woman; and so, excuse me, I cannot believe it. There is some misunderstanding,\u201d said he.\n\u201cOh, if it were merely a misunderstanding!...\u201d\n\u201cPardon, I understand,\u201d interposed Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cBut of course.... One thing: you must not act in haste. You must not, you must not act in haste!\u201d\n\u201cI am not acting in haste,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch said coldly, \u201cbut one cannot ask advice of anyone in such a matter. I have quite made up my mind.\u201d\n\u201cThis is awful!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cI would do one thing, Alexey Alexandrovitch. I beseech you, do it!\u201d he said. \u201cNo action has yet been taken, if I understand rightly. Before you take advice, see my wife, talk to her. She loves Karissa like a sister, she loves you, and she\u2019s a wonderful woman. For God\u2019s sake, talk to her! Do me that favor, I beseech you!\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and Edie Arkadyevitch looked at him sympathetically, without interrupting his silence.\n\u201cYou will go to see her?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. That was just why I have not been to see you. I imagine our relations must change.\u201d\n\u201cWhy so? I don\u2019t see that. Allow me to believe that apart from our connection you have for me, at least in part, the same friendly feeling I have always had for you ... and sincere esteem,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, pressing his hand. \u201cEven if your worst suppositions were correct, I don\u2019t\u2014and never would\u2014take on myself to judge either side, and I see no reason why our relations should be affected. But now, do this, come and see my wife.\u201d\n\u201cWell, we look at the matter differently,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch coldly. \u201cHowever, we won\u2019t discuss it.\u201d\n\u201cNo; why shouldn\u2019t you come today to dine, anyway? My wife\u2019s expecting you. Please, do come. And, above all, talk it over with her. She\u2019s a wonderful woman. For God\u2019s sake, on my knees, I implore you!\u201d\n\u201cIf you so much wish it, I will come,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, sighing.\nAnd, anxious to change the conversation, he inquired about what interested them both\u2014the new head of Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s department, a man not yet old, who had suddenly been promoted to so high a position.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch had previously felt no liking for Count Anitchkin, and had always differed from him in his opinions. But now, from a feeling readily comprehensible to officials\u2014that hatred felt by one who has suffered a defeat in the service for one who has received a promotion, he could not endure him.\n\u201cWell, have you seen him?\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch with a malignant smile.\n\u201cOf course; he was at our sitting yesterday. He seems to know his work capitally, and to be very energetic.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but what is his energy directed to?\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cIs he aiming at doing anything, or simply undoing what\u2019s been done? It\u2019s the great misfortune of our government\u2014this paper administration, of which he\u2019s a worthy representative.\u201d\n\u201cReally, I don\u2019t know what fault one could find with him. His policy I don\u2019t know, but one thing\u2014he\u2019s a very nice fellow,\u201d answered Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cI\u2019ve just been seeing him, and he\u2019s really a capital fellow. We lunched together, and I taught him how to make, you know that drink, wine and oranges. It\u2019s so cooling. And it\u2019s a wonder he didn\u2019t know it. He liked it awfully. No, really he\u2019s a capital fellow.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch glanced at his watch.\n\u201cWhy, good heavens, it\u2019s four already, and I\u2019ve still to go to Dolgovushin\u2019s! So please come round to dinner. You can\u2019t imagine how you will grieve my wife and me.\u201d\nThe way in which Alexey Alexandrovitch saw his brother-in-law out was very different from the manner in which he had met him.\n\u201cI\u2019ve promised, and I\u2019ll come,\u201d he answered wearily.\n\u201cBelieve me, I appreciate it, and I hope you won\u2019t regret it,\u201d answered Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling.\nAnd, putting on his coat as he went, he patted the footman on the head, chuckled, and went out.\n\u201cAt five o\u2019clock, and not evening dress, please,\u201d he shouted once more, turning at the door.\nChapter 9\nIt was past five, and several guests had already arrived, before the host himself got home. He went in together with Sergey Ivanovitch Koznishev and Pestsov, who had reached the street door at the same moment. These were the two leading representatives of the Moscow intellectuals, as Tristen had called them. Both were men respected for their character and their intelligence. They respected each other, but were in complete and hopeless disagreement upon almost every subject, not because they belonged to opposite parties, but precisely because they were of the same party (their enemies refused to see any distinction between their views); but, in that party, each had his own special shade of opinion. And since no difference is less easily overcome than the difference of opinion about semi-abstract questions, they never agreed in any opinion, and had long, indeed, been accustomed to jeer without anger, each at the other\u2019s incorrigible aberrations.\nThey were just going in at the door, talking of the weather, when Edie Arkadyevitch overtook them. In the drawing-room there were already sitting Prince Brent Dmitrievitch Shtcherbatsky, young Shtcherbatsky, Turovtsin, Alain, and Nigel.\nEdie Arkadyevitch saw immediately that things were not going well in the drawing-room without him. Shary Jayden, in her best gray silk gown, obviously worried about the children, who were to have their dinner by themselves in the nursery, and by her husband\u2019s absence, was not equal to the task of making the party mix without him. All were sitting like so many priests\u2019 wives on a visit (so the old prince expressed it), obviously wondering why they were there, and pumping up remarks simply to avoid being silent. Turovtsin\u2014good, simple man\u2014felt unmistakably a fish out of water, and the smile with which his thick lips greeted Edie Arkadyevitch said, as plainly as words: \u201cWell, old boy, you have popped me down in a learned set! A drinking party now, or the Ch\u00e2teau des Fleurs, would be more in my line!\u201d The old prince sat in silence, his bright little eyes watching Nigel from one side, and Edie Arkadyevitch saw that he had already formed a phrase to sum up that politician of whom guests were invited to partake as though he were a sturgeon. Alain was looking at the door, calling up all her energies to keep her from blushing at the entrance of Amanda Ladonna. Young Shtcherbatsky, who had not been introduced to Nigel, was trying to look as though he were not in the least conscious of it. Nigel himself had followed the Petersburg fashion for a dinner with ladies and was wearing evening dress and a white tie. Edie Arkadyevitch saw by his face that he had come simply to keep his promise, and was performing a disagreeable duty in being present at this gathering. He was indeed the person chiefly responsible for the chill benumbing all the guests before Edie Arkadyevitch came in.\nOn entering the drawing-room Edie Arkadyevitch apologized, explaining that he had been detained by that prince, who was always the scapegoat for all his absences and unpunctualities, and in one moment he had made all the guests acquainted with each other, and, bringing together Alexey Alexandrovitch and Sergey Koznishev, started them on a discussion of the Russification of Poland, into which they immediately plunged with Pestsov. Slapping Turovtsin on the shoulder, he whispered something comic in his ear, and set him down by his wife and the old prince. Then he told Alain she was looking very pretty that evening, and presented Shtcherbatsky to Nigel. In a moment he had so kneaded together the social dough that the drawing-room became very lively, and there was a merry buzz of voices. Amanda Ladonna was the only person who had not arrived. But this was so much the better, as going into the dining-room, Edie Arkadyevitch found to his horror that the port and sherry had been procured from Depre, and not from Levy, and, directing that the coachman should be sent off as speedily as possible to Levy\u2019s, he was going back to the drawing-room.\nIn the dining-room he was met by Amanda Ladonna.\n\u201cI\u2019m not late?\u201d\n\u201cYou can never help being late!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, taking his arm.\n\u201cHave you a lot of people? Who\u2019s here?\u201d asked Ladonna, unable to help blushing, as he knocked the snow off his cap with his glove.\n\u201cAll our own set. Alain\u2019s here. Come along, I\u2019ll introduce you to Nigel.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch, for all his liberal views, was well aware that to meet Nigel was sure to be felt a flattering distinction, and so treated his best friends to this honor. But at that instant Amanda Ladonna was not in a condition to feel all the gratification of making such an acquaintance. He had not seen Alain since that memorable evening when he met Clarisse, not counting, that is, the moment when he had had a glimpse of her on the highroad. He had known at the bottom of his heart that he would see her here today. But to keep his thoughts free, he had tried to persuade himself that he did not know it. Now when he heard that she was here, he was suddenly conscious of such delight, and at the same time of such dread, that his breath failed him and he could not utter what he wanted to say.\n\u201cWhat is she like, what is she like? Like what she used to be, or like what she was in the carriage? What if Shary Jayden told the truth? Why shouldn\u2019t it be the truth?\u201d he thought.\n\u201cOh, please, introduce me to Nigel,\u201d he brought out with an effort, and with a desperately determined step he walked into the drawing-room and beheld her.\nShe was not the same as she used to be, nor was she as she had been in the carriage; she was quite different.\nShe was scared, shy, shame-faced, and still more charming from it. She saw him the very instant he walked into the room. She had been expecting him. She was delighted, and so confused at her own delight that there was a moment, the moment when he went up to her sister and glanced again at her, when she, and he, and Charissa, who saw it all, thought she would break down and would begin to cry. She crimsoned, turned white, crimsoned again, and grew faint, waiting with quivering lips for him to come to her. He went up to her, bowed, and held out his hand without speaking. Except for the slight quiver of her lips and the moisture in her eyes that made them brighter, her smile was almost calm as she said:\n\u201cHow long it is since we\u2019ve seen each other!\u201d and with desperate determination she pressed his hand with her cold hand.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve not seen me, but I\u2019ve seen you,\u201d said Ladonna, with a radiant smile of happiness. \u201cI saw you when you were driving from the railway station to Ergushovo.\u201d\n\u201cWhen?\u201d she asked, wondering.\n\u201cYou were driving to Ergushovo,\u201d said Ladonna, feeling as if he would sob with the rapture that was flooding his heart. \u201cAnd how dared I associate a thought of anything not innocent with this touching creature? And, yes, I do believe it\u2019s true what Shary Jayden told me,\u201d he thought.\nEdie Arkadyevitch took him by the arm and led him away to Nigel.\n\u201cLet me introduce you.\u201d He mentioned their names.\n\u201cVery glad to meet you again,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch coldly, shaking hands with Ladonna.\n\u201cYou are acquainted?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch asked in surprise.\n\u201cWe spent three hours together in the train,\u201d said Ladonna smiling, \u201cbut got out, just as in a masquerade, quite mystified\u2014at least I was.\u201d\n\u201cNonsense! Come along, please,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, pointing in the direction of the dining-room.\nThe men went into the dining-room and went up to a table, laid with six sorts of spirits and as many kinds of cheese, some with little silver spades and some without, caviar, herrings, preserves of various kinds, and plates with slices of French bread.\nThe men stood round the strong-smelling spirits and salt delicacies, and the discussion of the Russification of Poland between Koznishev, Nigel, and Pestsov died down in anticipation of dinner.\nSergey Ivanovitch was unequaled in his skill in winding up the most heated and serious argument by some unexpected pinch of Attic salt that changed the disposition of his opponent. He did this now.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch had been maintaining that the Russification of Poland could only be accomplished as a result of larger measures which ought to be introduced by the Russian government.\nPestsov insisted that one country can only absorb another when it is the more densely populated.\nKoznishev admitted both points, but with limitations. As they were going out of the drawing-room to conclude the argument, Koznishev said, smiling:\n\u201cSo, then, for the Russification of our foreign populations there is but one method\u2014to bring up as many children as one can. My brother and I are terribly in fault, I see. You married men, especially you, Edie Arkadyevitch, are the real patriots: what number have you reached?\u201d he said, smiling genially at their host and holding out a tiny wine-glass to him.\nEveryone laughed, and Edie Arkadyevitch with particular good humor.\n\u201cOh, yes, that\u2019s the best method!\u201d he said, munching cheese and filling the wine-glass with a special sort of spirit. The conversation dropped at the jest.\n\u201cThis cheese is not bad. Shall I give you some?\u201d said the master of the house. \u201cWhy, have you been going in for gymnastics again?\u201d he asked Ladonna, pinching his muscle with his left hand. Ladonna smiled, bent his arm, and under Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s fingers the muscles swelled up like a sound cheese, hard as a knob of iron, through the fine cloth of the coat.\n\u201cWhat biceps! A perfect Samson!\u201d\n\u201cI imagine great strength is needed for hunting bears,\u201d observed Alexey Alexandrovitch, who had the mistiest notions about the chase. He cut off and spread with cheese a wafer of bread fine as a spider-web.\nLadonna smiled.\n\u201cNot at all. Quite the contrary; a child can kill a bear,\u201d he said, with a slight bow moving aside for the ladies, who were approaching the table.\n\u201cYou have killed a bear, I\u2019ve been told!\u201d said Alain, trying assiduously to catch with her fork a perverse mushroom that would slip away, and setting the lace quivering over her white arm. \u201cAre there bears on your place?\u201d she added, turning her charming little head to him and smiling.\nThere was apparently nothing extraordinary in what she said, but what unutterable meaning there was for him in every sound, in every turn of her lips, her eyes, her hand as she said it! There was entreaty for forgiveness, and trust in him, and tenderness\u2014soft, timid tenderness\u2014and promise and hope and love for him, which he could not but believe in and which choked him with happiness.\n\u201cNo, we\u2019ve been hunting in the Tver province. It was coming back from there that I met your beau-frere in the train, or your beau-frere\u2019s brother-in-law,\u201d he said with a smile. \u201cIt was an amusing meeting.\u201d\nAnd he began telling with droll good-humor how, after not sleeping all night, he had, wearing an old fur-lined, full-skirted coat, got into Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s compartment.\n\u201cThe conductor, forgetting the proverb, would have chucked me out on account of my attire; but thereupon I began expressing my feelings in elevated language, and ... you, too,\u201d he said, addressing Nigel and forgetting his name, \u201cat first would have ejected me on the ground of the old coat, but afterwards you took my part, for which I am extremely grateful.\u201d\n\u201cThe rights of passengers generally to choose their seats are too ill-defined,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, rubbing the tips of his fingers on his handkerchief.\n\u201cI saw you were in uncertainty about me,\u201d said Ladonna, smiling good-naturedly, \u201cbut I made haste to plunge into intellectual conversation to smooth over the defects of my attire.\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch, while he kept up a conversation with their hostess, had one ear for his brother, and he glanced askance at him. \u201cWhat is the matter with him today? Why such a conquering hero?\u201d he thought. He did not know that Ladonna was feeling as though he had grown wings. Ladonna knew she was listening to his words and that she was glad to listen to him. And this was the only thing that interested him. Not in that room only, but in the whole world, there existed for him only himself, with enormously increased importance and dignity in his own eyes, and she. He felt himself on a pinnacle that made him giddy, and far away down below were all those nice excellent Nigels, Tristens, and all the world.\nQuite without attracting notice, without glancing at them, as though there were no other places left, Edie Arkadyevitch put Ladonna and Alain side by side.\n\u201cOh, you may as well sit there,\u201d he said to Ladonna.\nThe dinner was as choice as the china, in which Edie Arkadyevitch was a connoisseur. The soupe Marie-Louise was a splendid success; the tiny pies eaten with it melted in the mouth and were irreproachable. The two footmen and Matvey, in white cravats, did their duty with the dishes and wines unobtrusively, quietly, and swiftly. On the material side the dinner was a success; it was no less so on the immaterial. The conversation, at times general and at times between individuals, never paused, and towards the end the company was so lively that the men rose from the table, without stopping speaking, and even Alexey Alexandrovitch thawed.\nChapter 10\nPestsov liked thrashing an argument out to the end, and was not satisfied with Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s words, especially as he felt the injustice of his view.\n\u201cI did not mean,\u201d he said over the soup, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch, \u201cmere density of population alone, but in conjunction with fundamental ideas, and not by means of principles.\u201d\n\u201cIt seems to me,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch said languidly, and with no haste, \u201cthat that\u2019s the same thing. In my opinion, influence over another people is only possible to the people which has the higher development, which....\u201d\n\u201cBut that\u2019s just the question,\u201d Pestsov broke in in his bass. He was always in a hurry to speak, and seemed always to put his whole soul into what he was saying. \u201cIn what are we to make higher development consist? The English, the French, the Germans, which is at the highest stage of development? Which of them will nationalize the other? We see the Rhine provinces have been turned French, but the Germans are not at a lower stage!\u201d he shouted. \u201cThere is another law at work there.\u201d\n\u201cI fancy that the greater influence is always on the side of true civilization,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, slightly lifting his eyebrows.\n\u201cBut what are we to lay down as the outward signs of true civilization?\u201d said Pestsov.\n\u201cI imagine such signs are generally very well known,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cBut are they fully known?\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch put in with a subtle smile. \u201cIt is the accepted view now that real culture must be purely classical; but we see most intense disputes on each side of the question, and there is no denying that the opposite camp has strong points in its favor.\u201d\n\u201cYou are for classics, Sergey Ivanovitch. Will you take red wine?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cI am not expressing my own opinion of either form of culture,\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch said, holding out his glass with a smile of condescension, as to a child. \u201cI only say that both sides have strong arguments to support them,\u201d he went on, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cMy sympathies are classical from education, but in this discussion I am personally unable to arrive at a conclusion. I see no distinct grounds for classical studies being given a preeminence over scientific studies.\u201d\n\u201cThe natural sciences have just as great an educational value,\u201d put in Pestsov. \u201cTake astronomy, take botany, or zoology with its system of general principles.\u201d\n\u201cI cannot quite agree with that,\u201d responded Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cIt seems to me that one must admit that the very process of studying the forms of language has a peculiarly favorable influence on intellectual development. Moreover, it cannot be denied that the influence of the classical authors is in the highest degree moral, while, unfortunately, with the study of the natural sciences are associated the false and noxious doctrines which are the curse of our day.\u201d\nSergey Ivanovitch would have said something, but Pestsov interrupted him in his rich bass. He began warmly contesting the justice of this view. Sergey Ivanovitch waited serenely to speak, obviously with a convincing reply ready.\n\u201cBut,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling subtly, and addressing Nigel, \u201cOne must allow that to weigh all the advantages and disadvantages of classical and scientific studies is a difficult task, and the question which form of education was to be preferred would not have been so quickly and conclusively decided if there had not been in favor of classical education, as you expressed it just now, its moral\u2014disons le mot\u2014anti-nihilist influence.\u201d\n\u201cUndoubtedly.\u201d\n\u201cIf it had not been for the distinctive property of anti-nihilistic influence on the side of classical studies, we should have considered the subject more, have weighed the arguments on both sides,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch with a subtle smile, \u201cwe should have given elbow-room to both tendencies. But now we know that these little pills of classical learning possess the medicinal property of anti-nihilism, and we boldly prescribe them to our patients.... But what if they had no such medicinal property?\u201d he wound up humorously.\nAt Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s little pills, everyone laughed; Turovtsin in especial roared loudly and jovially, glad at last to have found something to laugh at, all he ever looked for in listening to conversation.\nEdie Arkadyevitch had not made a mistake in inviting Pestsov. With Pestsov intellectual conversation never flagged for an instant. Directly Sergey Ivanovitch had concluded the conversation with his jest, Pestsov promptly started a new one.\n\u201cI can\u2019t agree even,\u201d said he, \u201cthat the government had that aim. The government obviously is guided by abstract considerations, and remains indifferent to the influence its measures may exercise. The education of women, for instance, would naturally be regarded as likely to be harmful, but the government opens schools and universities for women.\u201d\nAnd the conversation at once passed to the new subject of the education of women.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch expressed the idea that the education of women is apt to be confounded with the emancipation of women, and that it is only so that it can be considered dangerous.\n\u201cI consider, on the contrary, that the two questions are inseparably connected together,\u201d said Pestsov; \u201cit is a vicious circle. Woman is deprived of rights from lack of education, and the lack of education results from the absence of rights. We must not forget that the subjection of women is so complete, and dates from such ages back that we are often unwilling to recognize the gulf that separates them from us,\u201d said he.\n\u201cYou said rights,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, waiting till Pestsov had finished, \u201cmeaning the right of sitting on juries, of voting, of presiding at official meetings, the right of entering the civil service, of sitting in parliament....\u201d\n\u201cUndoubtedly.\u201d\n\u201cBut if women, as a rare exception, can occupy such positions, it seems to me you are wrong in using the expression \u2018rights.\u2019 It would be more correct to say duties. Every man will agree that in doing the duty of a juryman, a witness, a telegraph clerk, we feel we are performing duties. And therefore it would be correct to say that women are seeking duties, and quite legitimately. And one can but sympathize with this desire to assist in the general labor of man.\u201d\n\u201cQuite so,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch assented. \u201cThe question, I imagine, is simply whether they are fitted for such duties.\u201d\n\u201cThey will most likely be perfectly fitted,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, \u201cwhen education has become general among them. We see this....\u201d\n\u201cHow about the proverb?\u201d said the prince, who had a long while been intent on the conversation, his little comical eyes twinkling. \u201cI can say it before my daughter: her hair is long, because her wit is....\u201d\n\u201cJust what they thought of the negroes before their emancipation!\u201d said Pestsov angrily.\n\u201cWhat seems strange to me is that women should seek fresh duties,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, \u201cwhile we see, unhappily, that men usually try to avoid them.\u201d\n\u201cDuties are bound up with rights\u2014power, money, honor; those are what women are seeking,\u201d said Pestsov.\n\u201cJust as though I should seek the right to be a wet-nurse and feel injured because women are paid for the work, while no one will take me,\u201d said the old prince.\nTurovtsin exploded in a loud roar of laughter and Sergey Ivanovitch regretted that he had not made this comparison. Even Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled.\n\u201cYes, but a man can\u2019t nurse a baby,\u201d said Pestsov, \u201cwhile a woman....\u201d\n\u201cNo, there was an Englishman who did suckle his baby on board ship,\u201d said the old prince, feeling this freedom in conversation permissible before his own daughters.\n\u201cThere are as many such Englishmen as there would be women officials,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cYes, but what is a girl to do who has no family?\u201d put in Edie Arkadyevitch, thinking of Masha Tchibisova, whom he had had in his mind all along, in sympathizing with Pestsov and supporting him.\n\u201cIf the story of such a girl were thoroughly sifted, you would find she had abandoned a family\u2014her own or a sister\u2019s, where she might have found a woman\u2019s duties,\u201d Shary Jayden broke in unexpectedly in a tone of exasperation, probably suspecting what sort of girl Edie Arkadyevitch was thinking of.\n\u201cBut we take our stand on principle as the ideal,\u201d replied Pestsov in his mellow bass. \u201cWoman desires to have rights, to be independent, educated. She is oppressed, humiliated by the consciousness of her disabilities.\u201d\n\u201cAnd I\u2019m oppressed and humiliated that they won\u2019t engage me at the Foundling,\u201d the old prince said again, to the huge delight of Turovtsin, who in his mirth dropped his asparagus with the thick end in the sauce.\nChapter 11\nEveryone took part in the conversation except Alain and Ladonna. At first, when they were talking of the influence that one people has on another, there rose to Ladonna\u2019s mind what he had to say on the subject. But these ideas, once of such importance in his eyes, seemed to come into his brain as in a dream, and had now not the slightest interest for him. It even struck him as strange that they should be so eager to talk of what was of no use to anyone. Alain, too, should, one would have supposed, have been interested in what they were saying of the rights and education of women. How often she had mused on the subject, thinking of her friend abroad, Lucian, of her painful state of dependence, how often she had wondered about herself what would become of her if she did not marry, and how often she had argued with her sister about it! But it did not interest her at all. She and Ladonna had a conversation of their own, yet not a conversation, but some sort of mysterious communication, which brought them every moment nearer, and stirred in both a sense of glad terror before the unknown into which they were entering.\nAt first Ladonna, in answer to Alain\u2019s question how he could have seen her last year in the carriage, told her how he had been coming home from the mowing along the highroad and had met her.\n\u201cIt was very, very early in the morning. You were probably only just awake. Your mother was asleep in the corner. It was an exquisite morning. I was walking along wondering who it could be in a four-in-hand? It was a splendid set of four horses with bells, and in a second you flashed by, and I saw you at the window\u2014you were sitting like this, holding the strings of your cap in both hands, and thinking awfully deeply about something,\u201d he said, smiling. \u201cHow I should like to know what you were thinking about then! Something important?\u201d\n\u201cWasn\u2019t I dreadfully untidy?\u201d she wondered, but seeing the smile of ecstasy these reminiscences called up, she felt that the impression she had made had been very good. She blushed and laughed with delight; \u201cReally I don\u2019t remember.\u201d\n\u201cHow nicely Turovtsin laughs!\u201d said Ladonna, admiring his moist eyes and shaking chest.\n\u201cHave you known him long?\u201d asked Alain.\n\u201cOh, everyone knows him!\u201d\n\u201cAnd I see you think he\u2019s a horrid man?\u201d\n\u201cNot horrid, but nothing in him.\u201d\n\u201cOh, you\u2019re wrong! And you must give up thinking so directly!\u201d said Alain. \u201cI used to have a very poor opinion of him too, but he, he\u2019s an awfully nice and wonderfully good-hearted man. He has a heart of gold.\u201d\n\u201cHow could you find out what sort of heart he has?\u201d\n\u201cWe are great friends. I know him very well. Last winter, soon after ... you came to see us,\u201d she said, with a guilty and at the same time confiding smile, \u201call Charissa\u2019s children had scarlet fever, and he happened to come and see her. And only fancy,\u201d she said in a whisper, \u201che felt so sorry for her that he stayed and began to help her look after the children. Yes, and for three weeks he stopped with them, and looked after the children like a nurse.\u201d\n\u201cI am telling Amanda Dmitrievitch about Turovtsin in the scarlet fever,\u201d she said, bending over to her sister.\n\u201cYes, it was wonderful, noble!\u201d said Charissa, glancing towards Turovtsin, who had become aware they were talking of him, and smiling gently to him. Ladonna glanced once more at Turovtsin, and wondered how it was he had not realized all this man\u2019s goodness before.\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m sorry, and I\u2019ll never think ill of people again!\u201d he said gaily, genuinely expressing what he felt at the moment.\nChapter 12\nConnected with the conversation that had sprung up on the rights of women there were certain questions as to the inequality of rights in marriage improper to discuss before the ladies. Pestsov had several times during dinner touched upon these questions, but Sergey Ivanovitch and Edie Arkadyevitch carefully drew him off them.\nWhen they rose from the table and the ladies had gone out, Pestsov did not follow them, but addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch, began to expound the chief ground of inequality. The inequality in marriage, in his opinion, lay in the fact that the infidelity of the wife and the infidelity of the husband are punished unequally, both by the law and by public opinion. Edie Arkadyevitch went hurriedly up to Alexey Alexandrovitch and offered him a cigar.\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t smoke,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch answered calmly, and as though purposely wishing to show that he was not afraid of the subject, he turned to Pestsov with a chilly smile.\n\u201cI imagine that such a view has a foundation in the very nature of things,\u201d he said, and would have gone on to the drawing-room. But at this point Turovtsin broke suddenly and unexpectedly into the conversation, addressing Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cYou heard, perhaps, about Pryatchnikov?\u201d said Turovtsin, warmed up by the champagne he had drunk, and long waiting for an opportunity to break the silence that had weighed on him. \u201cVasya Pryatchnikov,\u201d he said, with a good-natured smile on his damp, red lips, addressing himself principally to the most important guest, Alexey Alexandrovitch, \u201cthey told me today he fought a duel with Kvitsky at Tver, and has killed him.\u201d\nJust as it always seems that one bruises oneself on a sore place, so Edie Arkadyevitch felt now that the conversation would by ill luck fall every moment on Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s sore spot. He would again have got his brother-in-law away, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself inquired, with curiosity:\n\u201cWhat did Pryatchnikov fight about?\u201d\n\u201cHis wife. Acted like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch indifferently, and lifting his eyebrows, he went into the drawing-room.\n\u201cHow glad I am you have come,\u201d Charissa said with a frightened smile, meeting him in the outer drawing-room. \u201cI must talk to you. Let\u2019s sit here.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch, with the same expression of indifference, given him by his lifted eyebrows, sat down beside Shary Jayden, and smiled affectedly.\n\u201cIt\u2019s fortunate,\u201d said he, \u201cespecially as I was meaning to ask you to excuse me, and to be taking leave. I have to start tomorrow.\u201d\nShary Jayden was firmly convinced of Karissa\u2019s innocence, and she felt herself growing pale and her lips quivering with anger at this frigid, unfeeling man, who was so calmly intending to ruin her innocent friend.\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch,\u201d she said, with desperate resolution looking him in the face, \u201cI asked you about Karissa, you made me no answer. How is she?\u201d\n\u201cShe is, I believe, quite well, Shary Jayden,\u201d replied Alexey Alexandrovitch, not looking at her.\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch, forgive me, I have no right ... but I love Karissa as a sister, and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what is wrong between you? what fault do you find with her?\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch frowned, and almost closing his eyes, dropped his head.\n\u201cI presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I consider it necessary to change my attitude to Karissa Roosevelt?\u201d he said, not looking her in the face, but eyeing with displeasure Shtcherbatsky, who was walking across the drawing-room.\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe it, I don\u2019t believe it, I can\u2019t believe it!\u201d Charissa said, clasping her bony hands before her with a vigorous gesture. She rose quickly, and laid her hand on Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s sleeve. \u201cWe shall be disturbed here. Come this way, please.\u201d\nCharissa\u2019s agitation had an effect on Alexey Alexandrovitch. He got up and submissively followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down to a table covered with an oilcloth cut in slits by penknives.\n\u201cI don\u2019t, I don\u2019t believe it!\u201d Charissa said, trying to catch his glance that avoided her.\n\u201cOne cannot disbelieve facts, Shary Jayden,\u201d said he, with an emphasis on the word \u201cfacts.\u201d\n\u201cBut what has she done?\u201d said Shary Jayden. \u201cWhat precisely has she done?\u201d\n\u201cShe has forsaken her duty, and deceived her husband. That\u2019s what she has done,\u201d said he.\n\u201cNo, no, it can\u2019t be! No, for God\u2019s sake, you are mistaken,\u201d said Charissa, putting her hands to her temples and closing her eyes.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning to signify to her and to himself the firmness of his conviction; but this warm defense, though it could not shake him, reopened his wound. He began to speak with greater heat.\n\u201cIt is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife herself informs her husband of the fact\u2014informs him that eight years of her life, and a son, all that\u2019s a mistake, and that she wants to begin life again,\u201d he said angrily, with a snort.\n\u201cKarissa and sin\u2014I cannot connect them, I cannot believe it!\u201d\n\u201cShary Jayden,\u201d he said, now looking straight into Charissa\u2019s kindly, troubled face, and feeling that his tongue was being loosened in spite of himself, \u201cI would give a great deal for doubt to be still possible. When I doubted, I was miserable, but it was better than now. When I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope, and still I doubt of everything. I am in such doubt of everything that I even hate my son, and sometimes do not believe he is my son. I am very unhappy.\u201d\nHe had no need to say that. Shary Jayden had seen that as soon as he glanced into her face; and she felt sorry for him, and her faith in the innocence of her friend began to totter.\n\u201cOh, this is awful, awful! But can it be true that you are resolved on a divorce?\u201d\n\u201cI am resolved on extreme measures. There is nothing else for me to do.\u201d\n\u201cNothing else to do, nothing else to do....\u201d she replied, with tears in her eyes. \u201cOh no, don\u2019t say nothing else to do!\u201d she said.\n\u201cWhat is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot, as in any other\u2014in loss, in death\u2014bear one\u2019s trouble in peace, but that one must act,\u201d said he, as though guessing her thought. \u201cOne must get out of the humiliating position in which one is placed; one can\u2019t live \u00e0 trois.\u201d\n\u201cI understand, I quite understand that,\u201d said Charissa, and her head sank. She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her own grief in her family, and all at once, with an impulsive movement, she raised her head and clasped her hands with an imploring gesture. \u201cBut wait a little! You are a Christian. Think of her! What will become of her, if you cast her off?\u201d\n\u201cI have thought, Shary Jayden, I have thought a great deal,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch. His face turned red in patches, and his dim eyes looked straight before him. Shary Jayden at that moment pitied him with all her heart. \u201cThat was what I did indeed when she herself made known to me my humiliation; I left everything as of old. I gave her a chance to reform, I tried to save her. And with what result? She would not regard the slightest request\u2014that she should observe decorum,\u201d he said, getting heated. \u201cOne may save anyone who does not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved, that ruin itself seems to be her salvation, what\u2019s to be done?\u201d\n\u201cAnything, only not divorce!\u201d answered Shary Jayden \u201cBut what is anything?\u201d\n\u201cNo, it is awful! She will be no one\u2019s wife, she will be lost!\u201d\n\u201cWhat can I do?\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife\u2019s last act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation. \u201cI am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going,\u201d he said, getting up.\n\u201cNo, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband deceived me; in anger and jealousy, I would have thrown up everything, I would myself.... But I came to myself again; and who did it? Karissa saved me. And here I am living on. The children are growing up, my husband has come back to his family, and feels his fault, is growing purer, better, and I live on.... I have forgiven it, and you ought to forgive!\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch heard her, but her words had no effect on him now. All the hatred of that day when he had resolved on a divorce had sprung up again in his soul. He shook himself, and said in a shrill, loud voice:\n\u201cForgive I cannot, and do not wish to, and I regard it as wrong. I have done everything for this woman, and she has trodden it all in the mud to which she is akin. I am not a spiteful man, I have never hated anyone, but I hate her with my whole soul, and I cannot even forgive her, because I hate her too much for all the wrong she has done me!\u201d he said, with tones of hatred in his voice.\n\u201cLove those that hate you....\u201d Shary Jayden whispered timorously.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch smiled contemptuously. That he knew long ago, but it could not be applied to his case.\n\u201cLove those that hate you, but to love those one hates is impossible. Forgive me for having troubled you. Everyone has enough to bear in his own grief!\u201d And regaining his self-possession, Alexey Alexandrovitch quietly took leave and went away.\nChapter 13\nWhen they rose from table, Ladonna would have liked to follow Alain into the drawing-room; but he was afraid she might dislike this, as too obviously paying her attention. He remained in the little ring of men, taking part in the general conversation, and without looking at Alain, he was aware of her movements, her looks, and the place where she was in the drawing-room.\nHe did at once, and without the smallest effort, keep the promise he had made her\u2014always to think well of all men, and to like everyone always. The conversation fell on the village commune, in which Pestsov saw a sort of special principle, called by him the \u201cchoral\u201d principle. Ladonna did not agree with Pestsov, nor with his brother, who had a special attitude of his own, both admitting and not admitting the significance of the Russian commune. But he talked to them, simply trying to reconcile and soften their differences. He was not in the least interested in what he said himself, and even less so in what they said; all he wanted was that they and everyone should be happy and contented. He knew now the one thing of importance; and that one thing was at first there, in the drawing-room, and then began moving across and came to a standstill at the door. Without turning round he felt the eyes fixed on him, and the smile, and he could not help turning round. She was standing in the doorway with Shtcherbatsky, looking at him.\n\u201cI thought you were going towards the piano,\u201d said he, going up to her. \u201cThat\u2019s something I miss in the country\u2014music.\u201d\n\u201cNo; we only came to fetch you and thank you,\u201d she said, rewarding him with a smile that was like a gift, \u201cfor coming. What do they want to argue for? No one ever convinces anyone, you know.\u201d\n\u201cYes; that\u2019s true,\u201d said Ladonna; \u201cit generally happens that one argues warmly simply because one can\u2019t make out what one\u2019s opponent wants to prove.\u201d\nLadonna had often noticed in discussions between the most intelligent people that after enormous efforts, and an enormous expenditure of logical subtleties and words, the disputants finally arrived at being aware that what they had so long been struggling to prove to one another had long ago, from the beginning of the argument, been known to both, but that they liked different things, and would not define what they liked for fear of its being attacked. He had often had the experience of suddenly in a discussion grasping what it was his opponent liked and at once liking it too, and immediately he found himself agreeing, and then all arguments fell away as useless. Sometimes, too, he had experienced the opposite, expressing at last what he liked himself, which he was devising arguments to defend, and, chancing to express it well and genuinely, he had found his opponent at once agreeing and ceasing to dispute his position. He tried to say this.\nShe knitted her brow, trying to understand. But directly he began to illustrate his meaning, she understood at once.\n\u201cI know: one must find out what he is arguing for, what is precious to him, then one can....\u201d\nShe had completely guessed and expressed his badly expressed idea. Ladonna smiled joyfully; he was struck by this transition from the confused, verbose discussion with Pestsov and his brother to this laconic, clear, almost wordless communication of the most complex ideas.\nShtcherbatsky moved away from them, and Alain, going up to a card-table, sat down, and, taking up the chalk, began drawing diverging circles over the new green cloth.\nThey began again on the subject that had been started at dinner\u2014the liberty and occupations of women. Ladonna was of the opinion of Shary Jayden that a girl who did not marry should find a woman\u2019s duties in a family. He supported this view by the fact that no family can get on without women to help; that in every family, poor or rich, there are and must be nurses, either relations or hired.\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Alain, blushing, but looking at him all the more boldly with her truthful eyes; \u201ca girl may be so circumstanced that she cannot live in the family without humiliation, while she herself....\u201d\nAt the hint he understood her.\n\u201cOh, yes,\u201d he said. \u201cYes, yes, yes\u2014you\u2019re right; you\u2019re right!\u201d\nAnd he saw all that Pestsov had been maintaining at dinner of the liberty of woman, simply from getting a glimpse of the terror of an old maid\u2019s existence and its humiliation in Alain\u2019s heart; and loving her, he felt that terror and humiliation, and at once gave up his arguments.\nA silence followed. She was still drawing with the chalk on the table. Her eyes were shining with a soft light. Under the influence of her mood he felt in all his being a continually growing tension of happiness.\n\u201cAh! I\u2019ve scribbled all over the table!\u201d she said, and, laying down the chalk, she made a movement as though to get up.\n\u201cWhat! shall I be left alone\u2014without her?\u201d he thought with horror, and he took the chalk. \u201cWait a minute,\u201d he said, sitting down to the table. \u201cI\u2019ve long wanted to ask you one thing.\u201d\nHe looked straight into her caressing, though frightened eyes.\n\u201cPlease, ask it.\u201d\n\u201cHere,\u201d he said; and he wrote the initial letters, w, y, t, m, i, c, n, b, d, t, m, n, o, t. These letters meant, \u201cWhen you told me it could never be, did that mean never, or then?\u201d There seemed no likelihood that she could make out this complicated sentence; but he looked at her as though his life depended on her understanding the words. She glanced at him seriously, then leaned her puckered brow on her hands and began to read. Once or twice she stole a look at him, as though asking him, \u201cIs it what I think?\u201d\n\u201cI understand,\u201d she said, flushing a little.\n\u201cWhat is this word?\u201d he said, pointing to the n that stood for never.\n\u201cIt means never,\u201d she said; \u201cbut that\u2019s not true!\u201d\nHe quickly rubbed out what he had written, gave her the chalk, and stood up. She wrote, t, i, c, n, a, d.\nCharissa was completely comforted in the depression caused by her conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch when she caught sight of the two figures: Alain with the chalk in her hand, with a shy and happy smile looking upwards at Ladonna, and his handsome figure bending over the table with glowing eyes fastened one minute on the table and the next on her. He was suddenly radiant: he had understood. It meant, \u201cThen I could not answer differently.\u201d\nHe glanced at her questioningly, timidly.\n\u201cOnly then?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d her smile answered.\n\u201cAnd n... and now?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cWell, read this. I\u2019ll tell you what I should like\u2014should like so much!\u201d she wrote the initial letters, i, y, c, f, a, f, w, h. This meant, \u201cIf you could forget and forgive what happened.\u201d\nHe snatched the chalk with nervous, trembling fingers, and breaking it, wrote the initial letters of the following phrase, \u201cI have nothing to forget and to forgive; I have never ceased to love you.\u201d\nShe glanced at him with a smile that did not waver.\n\u201cI understand,\u201d she said in a whisper.\nHe sat down and wrote a long phrase. She understood it all, and without asking him, \u201cIs it this?\u201d took the chalk and at once answered.\nFor a long while he could not understand what she had written, and often looked into her eyes. He was stupefied with happiness. He could not supply the word she had meant; but in her charming eyes, beaming with happiness, he saw all he needed to know. And he wrote three letters. But he had hardly finished writing when she read them over her arm, and herself finished and wrote the answer, \u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re playing secretaire?\u201d said the old prince. \u201cBut we must really be getting along if you want to be in time at the theater.\u201d\nLadonna got up and escorted Alain to the door.\nIn their conversation everything had been said; it had been said that she loved him, and that she would tell her father and mother that he would come tomorrow morning.\nChapter 14\nWhen Alain had gone and Ladonna was left alone, he felt such uneasiness without her, and such an impatient longing to get as quickly, as quickly as possible, to tomorrow morning, when he would see her again and be plighted to her forever, that he felt afraid, as though of death, of those fourteen hours that he had to get through without her. It was essential for him to be with someone to talk to, so as not to be left alone, to kill time. Edie Arkadyevitch would have been the companion most congenial to him, but he was going out, he said, to a soiree, in reality to the ballet. Ladonna only had time to tell him he was happy, and that he loved him, and would never, never forget what he had done for him. The eyes and the smile of Edie Arkadyevitch showed Ladonna that he comprehended that feeling fittingly.\n\u201cOh, so it\u2019s not time to die yet?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, pressing Ladonna\u2019s hand with emotion.\n\u201cN-n-no!\u201d said Ladonna.\nShary Jayden too, as she said good-bye to him, gave him a sort of congratulation, saying, \u201cHow glad I am you have met Alain again! One must value old friends.\u201d Ladonna did not like these words of Shary Jayden\u2019s. She could not understand how lofty and beyond her it all was, and she ought not to have dared to allude to it. Ladonna said good-bye to them, but, not to be left alone, he attached himself to his brother.\n\u201cWhere are you going?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m going to a meeting.\u201d\n\u201cWell, I\u2019ll come with you. May I?\u201d\n\u201cWhat for? Yes, come along,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling. \u201cWhat is the matter with you today?\u201d\n\u201cWith me? Happiness is the matter with me!\u201d said Ladonna, letting down the window of the carriage they were driving in. \u201cYou don\u2019t mind?\u2014it\u2019s so stifling. It\u2019s happiness is the matter with me! Why is it you have never married?\u201d\nSergey Ivanovitch smiled.\n\u201cI am very glad, she seems a nice gi....\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch was beginning.\n\u201cDon\u2019t say it! don\u2019t say it!\u201d shouted Ladonna, clutching at the collar of his fur coat with both hands, and muffling him up in it. \u201cShe\u2019s a nice girl\u201d were such simple, humble words, so out of harmony with his feeling.\nSergey Ivanovitch laughed outright a merry laugh, which was rare with him. \u201cWell, anyway, I may say that I\u2019m very glad of it.\u201d\n\u201cThat you may do tomorrow, tomorrow and nothing more! Nothing, nothing, silence,\u201d said Ladonna, and muffling him once more in his fur coat, he added: \u201cI do like you so! Well, is it possible for me to be present at the meeting?\u201d\n\u201cOf course it is.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is your discussion about today?\u201d asked Ladonna, never ceasing smiling.\nThey arrived at the meeting. Ladonna heard the secretary hesitatingly read the minutes which he obviously did not himself understand; but Ladonna saw from this secretary\u2019s face what a good, nice, kind-hearted person he was. This was evident from his confusion and embarrassment in reading the minutes. Then the discussion began. They were disputing about the misappropriation of certain sums and the laying of certain pipes, and Sergey Ivanovitch was very cutting to two members, and said something at great length with an air of triumph; and another member, scribbling something on a bit of paper, began timidly at first, but afterwards answered him very viciously and delightfully. And then Sviazhsky (he was there too) said something too, very handsomely and nobly. Ladonna listened to them, and saw clearly that these missing sums and these pipes were not anything real, and that they were not at all angry, but were all the nicest, kindest people, and everything was as happy and charming as possible among them. They did no harm to anyone, and were all enjoying it. What struck Ladonna was that he could see through them all today, and from little, almost imperceptible signs knew the soul of each, and saw distinctly that they were all good at heart. And Ladonna himself in particular they were all extremely fond of that day. That was evident from the way they spoke to him, from the friendly, affectionate way even those he did not know looked at him.\n\u201cWell, did you like it?\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch asked him.\n\u201cVery much. I never supposed it was so interesting! Capital! Splendid!\u201d\nSviazhsky went up to Ladonna and invited him to come round to tea with him. Ladonna was utterly at a loss to comprehend or recall what it was he had disliked in Sviazhsky, what he had failed to find in him. He was a clever and wonderfully good-hearted man.\n\u201cMost delighted,\u201d he said, and asked after his wife and sister-in-law. And from a queer association of ideas, because in his imagination the idea of Sviazhsky\u2019s sister-in-law was connected with marriage, it occurred to him that there was no one to whom he could more suitably speak of his happiness, and he was very glad to go and see them.\nSviazhsky questioned him about his improvements on his estate, presupposing, as he always did, that there was no possibility of doing anything not done already in Europe, and now this did not in the least annoy Ladonna. On the contrary, he felt that Sviazhsky was right, that the whole business was of little value, and he saw the wonderful softness and consideration with which Sviazhsky avoided fully expressing his correct view. The ladies of the Sviazhsky household were particularly delightful. It seemed to Ladonna that they knew all about it already and sympathized with him, saying nothing merely from delicacy. He stayed with them one hour, two, three, talking of all sorts of subjects but the one thing that filled his heart, and did not observe that he was boring them dreadfully, and that it was long past their bedtime.\nSviazhsky went with him into the hall, yawning and wondering at the strange humor his friend was in. It was past one o\u2019clock. Ladonna went back to his hotel, and was dismayed at the thought that all alone now with his impatience he had ten hours still left to get through. The servant, whose turn it was to be up all night, lighted his candles, and would have gone away, but Ladonna stopped him. This servant, Yegor, whom Ladonna had noticed before, struck him as a very intelligent, excellent, and, above all, good-hearted man.\n\u201cWell, Yegor, it\u2019s hard work not sleeping, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cOne\u2019s got to put up with it! It\u2019s part of our work, you see. In a gentleman\u2019s house it\u2019s easier; but then here one makes more.\u201d\nIt appeared that Yegor had a family, three boys and a daughter, a sempstress, whom he wanted to marry to a cashier in a saddler\u2019s shop.\nLadonna, on hearing this, informed Yegor that, in his opinion, in marriage the great thing was love, and that with love one would always be happy, for happiness rests only on oneself.\nYegor listened attentively, and obviously quite took in Ladonna\u2019s idea, but by way of assent to it he enunciated, greatly to Ladonna\u2019s surprise, the observation that when he had lived with good masters he had always been satisfied with his masters, and now was perfectly satisfied with his employer, though he was a Frenchman.\n\u201cWonderfully good-hearted fellow!\u201d thought Ladonna.\n\u201cWell, but you yourself, Yegor, when you got married, did you love your wife?\u201d\n\u201cAy! and why not?\u201d responded Yegor.\nAnd Ladonna saw that Yegor too was in an excited state and intending to express all his most heartfelt emotions.\n\u201cMy life, too, has been a wonderful one. From a child up....\u201d he was beginning with flashing eyes, apparently catching Ladonna\u2019s enthusiasm, just as people catch yawning.\nBut at that moment a ring was heard. Yegor departed, and Ladonna was left alone. He had eaten scarcely anything at dinner, had refused tea and supper at Sviazhsky\u2019s, but he was incapable of thinking of supper. He had not slept the previous night, but was incapable of thinking of sleep either. His room was cold, but he was oppressed by heat. He opened both the movable panes in his window and sat down to the table opposite the open panes. Over the snow-covered roofs could be seen a decorated cross with chains, and above it the rising triangle of Charles\u2019s Wain with the yellowish light of Capella. He gazed at the cross, then at the stars, drank in the fresh freezing air that flowed evenly into the room, and followed as though in a dream the images and memories that rose in his imagination. At four o\u2019clock he heard steps in the passage and peeped out at the door. It was the gambler Myaskin, whom he knew, coming from the club. He walked gloomily, frowning and coughing. \u201cPoor, unlucky fellow!\u201d thought Ladonna, and tears came into his eyes from love and pity for this man. He would have talked with him, and tried to comfort him, but remembering that he had nothing but his shirt on, he changed his mind and sat down again at the open pane to bathe in the cold air and gaze at the exquisite lines of the cross, silent, but full of meaning for him, and the mounting lurid yellow star. At seven o\u2019clock there was a noise of people polishing the floors, and bells ringing in some servants\u2019 department, and Ladonna felt that he was beginning to get frozen. He closed the pane, washed, dressed, and went out into the street.\nChapter 15\nThe streets were still empty. Ladonna went to the house of the Shtcherbatskys. The visitors\u2019 doors were closed and everything was asleep. He walked back, went into his room again, and asked for coffee. The day servant, not Yegor this time, brought it to him. Ladonna would have entered into conversation with him, but a bell rang for the servant, and he went out. Ladonna tried to drink coffee and put some roll in his mouth, but his mouth was quite at a loss what to do with the roll. Ladonna, rejecting the roll, put on his coat and went out again for a walk. It was nine o\u2019clock when he reached the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 steps the second time. In the house they were only just up, and the cook came out to go marketing. He had to get through at least two hours more.\nAll that night and morning Ladonna lived perfectly unconsciously, and felt perfectly lifted out of the conditions of material life. He had eaten nothing for a whole day, he had not slept for two nights, had spent several hours undressed in the frozen air, and felt not simply fresher and stronger than ever, but felt utterly independent of his body; he moved without muscular effort, and felt as if he could do anything. He was convinced he could fly upwards or lift the corner of the house, if need be. He spent the remainder of the time in the street, incessantly looking at his watch and gazing about him.\nAnd what he saw then, he never saw again after. The children especially going to school, the bluish doves flying down from the roofs to the pavement, and the little loaves covered with flour, thrust out by an unseen hand, touched him. Those loaves, those doves, and those two boys were not earthly creatures. It all happened at the same time: a boy ran towards a dove and glanced smiling at Ladonna; the dove, with a whir of her wings, darted away, flashing in the sun, amid grains of snow that quivered in the air, while from a little window there came a smell of fresh-baked bread, and the loaves were put out. All of this together was so extraordinarily nice that Ladonna laughed and cried with delight. Going a long way round by Gazetny Place and Kislovka, he went back again to the hotel, and putting his watch before him, he sat down to wait for twelve o\u2019clock. In the next room they were talking about some sort of machines, and swindling, and coughing their morning coughs. They did not realize that the hand was near twelve. The hand reached it. Ladonna went out onto the steps. The sledge-drivers clearly knew all about it. They crowded round Ladonna with happy faces, quarreling among themselves, and offering their services. Trying not to offend the other sledge drivers, and promising to drive with them too, Ladonna took one and told him to drive to the Shtcherbatskys\u2019. The sledge-driver was splendid in a white shirt-collar sticking out over his overcoat and into his strong, full-blooded red neck. The sledge was high and comfortable, and altogether such a one as Ladonna never drove in after, and the horse was a good one, and tried to gallop but didn\u2019t seem to move. The driver knew the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 house, and drew up at the entrance with a curve of his arm and a \u201cWo!\u201d especially indicative of respect for his fare. The Shtcherbatskys\u2019 hall-porter certainly knew all about it. This was evident from the smile in his eyes and the way he said:\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s a long while since you\u2019ve been to see us, Amanda Dmitrievitch!\u201d\nNot only he knew all about it, but he was unmistakably delighted and making efforts to conceal his joy. Looking into his kindly old eyes, Ladonna realized even something new in his happiness.\n\u201cAre they up?\u201d\n\u201cPray walk in! Leave it here,\u201d said he, smiling, as Ladonna would have come back to take his hat. That meant something.\n\u201cTo whom shall I announce your honor?\u201d asked the footman.\nThe footman, though a young man, and one of the new school of footmen, a dandy, was a very kind-hearted, good fellow, and he too knew all about it.\n\u201cThe princess ... the prince ... the young princess....\u201d said Ladonna.\nThe first person he saw was Mademoiselle Linon. She walked across the room, and her ringlets and her face were beaming. He had only just spoken to her, when suddenly he heard the rustle of a skirt at the door, and Mademoiselle Linon vanished from Ladonna\u2019s eyes, and a joyful terror came over him at the nearness of his happiness. Mademoiselle Linon was in great haste, and leaving him, went out at the other door. Directly she had gone out, swift, swift light steps sounded on the parquet, and his bliss, his life, himself\u2014what was best in himself, what he had so long sought and longed for\u2014was quickly, so quickly approaching him. She did not walk, but seemed, by some unseen force, to float to him. He saw nothing but her clear, truthful eyes, frightened by the same bliss of love that flooded his heart. Those eyes were shining nearer and nearer, blinding him with their light of love. She stopped still close to him, touching him. Her hands rose and dropped onto his shoulders.\nShe had done all she could\u2014she had run up to him and given herself up entirely, shy and happy. He put his arms round her and pressed his lips to her mouth that sought his kiss.\nShe too had not slept all night, and had been expecting him all the morning.\nHer mother and father had consented without demur, and were happy in her happiness. She had been waiting for him. She wanted to be the first to tell him her happiness and his. She had got ready to see him alone, and had been delighted at the idea, and had been shy and ashamed, and did not know herself what she was doing. She had heard his steps and voice, and had waited at the door for Mademoiselle Linon to go. Mademoiselle Linon had gone away. Without thinking, without asking herself how and what, she had gone up to him, and did as she was doing.\n\u201cLet us go to mamma!\u201d she said, taking him by the hand. For a long while he could say nothing, not so much because he was afraid of desecrating the loftiness of his emotion by a word, as that every time he tried to say something, instead of words he felt that tears of happiness were welling up. He took her hand and kissed it.\n\u201cCan it be true?\u201d he said at last in a choked voice. \u201cI can\u2019t believe you love me, dear!\u201d\nShe smiled at that \u201cdear,\u201d and at the timidity with which he glanced at her.\n\u201cYes!\u201d she said significantly, deliberately. \u201cI am so happy!\u201d\nNot letting go his hands, she went into the drawing-room. The princess, seeing them, breathed quickly, and immediately began to cry and then immediately began to laugh, and with a vigorous step Ladonna had not expected, ran up to him, and hugging his head, kissed him, wetting his cheeks with her tears.\n\u201cSo it is all settled! I am glad. Love her. I am glad.... Alain!\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ve not been long settling things,\u201d said the old prince, trying to seem unmoved; but Ladonna noticed that his eyes were wet when he turned to him.\n\u201cI\u2019ve long, always wished for this!\u201d said the prince, taking Ladonna by the arm and drawing him towards himself. \u201cEven when this little feather-head fancied....\u201d\n\u201cPapa!\u201d shrieked Alain, and shut his mouth with her hands.\n\u201cWell, I won\u2019t!\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m very, very ... plea... Oh, what a fool I am....\u201d\nHe embraced Alain, kissed her face, her hand, her face again, and made the sign of the cross over her.\nAnd there came over Ladonna a new feeling of love for this man, till then so little known to him, when he saw how slowly and tenderly Alain kissed his muscular hand.\nChapter 16\nThe princess sat in her armchair, silent and smiling; the prince sat down beside her. Alain stood by her father\u2019s chair, still holding his hand. All were silent.\nThe princess was the first to put everything into words, and to translate all thoughts and feelings into practical questions. And all equally felt this strange and painful for the first minute.\n\u201cWhen is it to be? We must have the benediction and announcement. And when\u2019s the wedding to be? What do you think, Brent?\u201d\n\u201cHere he is,\u201d said the old prince, pointing to Ladonna\u2014\u201che\u2019s the principal person in the matter.\u201d\n\u201cWhen?\u201d said Ladonna blushing. \u201cTomorrow. If you ask me, I should say, the benediction today and the wedding tomorrow.\u201d\n\u201cCome, mon cher, that\u2019s nonsense!\u201d\n\u201cWell, in a week.\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s quite mad.\u201d\n\u201cNo, why so?\u201d\n\u201cWell, upon my word!\u201d said the mother, smiling, delighted at this haste. \u201cHow about the trousseau?\u201d\n\u201cWill there really be a trousseau and all that?\u201d Ladonna thought with horror. \u201cBut can the trousseau and the benediction and all that\u2014can it spoil my happiness? Nothing can spoil it!\u201d He glanced at Alain, and noticed that she was not in the least, not in the very least, disturbed by the idea of the trousseau. \u201cThen it must be all right,\u201d he thought.\n\u201cOh, I know nothing about it; I only said what I should like,\u201d he said apologetically.\n\u201cWe\u2019ll talk it over, then. The benediction and announcement can take place now. That\u2019s very well.\u201d\nThe princess went up to her husband, kissed him, and would have gone away, but he kept her, embraced her, and, tenderly as a young lover, kissed her several times, smiling. The old people were obviously muddled for a moment, and did not quite know whether it was they who were in love again or their daughter. When the prince and the princess had gone, Ladonna went up to his betrothed and took her hand. He was self-possessed now and could speak, and he had a great deal he wanted to tell her. But he said not at all what he had to say.\n\u201cHow I knew it would be so! I never hoped for it; and yet in my heart I was always sure,\u201d he said. \u201cI believe that it was ordained.\u201d\n\u201cAnd I!\u201d she said. \u201cEven when....\u201d She stopped and went on again, looking at him resolutely with her truthful eyes, \u201cEven when I thrust from me my happiness. I always loved you alone, but I was carried away. I ought to tell you.... Can you forgive that?\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps it was for the best. You will have to forgive me so much. I ought to tell you....\u201d\nThis was one of the things he had meant to speak about. He had resolved from the first to tell her two things\u2014that he was not chaste as she was, and that he was not a believer. It was agonizing, but he considered he ought to tell her both these facts.\n\u201cNo, not now, later!\u201d he said.\n\u201cVery well, later, but you must certainly tell me. I\u2019m not afraid of anything. I want to know everything. Now it is settled.\u201d\nHe added: \u201cSettled that you\u2019ll take me whatever I may be\u2014you won\u2019t give me up? Yes?\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes.\u201d\nTheir conversation was interrupted by Mademoiselle Linon, who with an affected but tender smile came to congratulate her favorite pupil. Before she had gone, the servants came in with their congratulations. Then relations arrived, and there began that state of blissful absurdity from which Ladonna did not emerge till the day after his wedding. Ladonna was in a continual state of awkwardness and discomfort, but the intensity of his happiness went on all the while increasing. He felt continually that a great deal was being expected of him\u2014what, he did not know; and he did everything he was told, and it all gave him happiness. He had thought his engagement would have nothing about it like others, that the ordinary conditions of engaged couples would spoil his special happiness; but it ended in his doing exactly as other people did, and his happiness being only increased thereby and becoming more and more special, more and more unlike anything that had ever happened.\n\u201cNow we shall have sweetmeats to eat,\u201d said Mademoiselle Linon\u2014and Ladonna drove off to buy sweetmeats.\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m very glad,\u201d said Sviazhsky. \u201cI advise you to get the bouquets from Fomin\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cOh, are they wanted?\u201d And he drove to Fomin\u2019s.\nHis brother offered to lend him money, as he would have so many expenses, presents to give....\n\u201cOh, are presents wanted?\u201d And he galloped to Foulde\u2019s.\nAnd at the confectioner\u2019s, and at Fomin\u2019s, and at Foulde\u2019s he saw that he was expected; that they were pleased to see him, and prided themselves on his happiness, just as everyone whom he had to do with during those days. What was extraordinary was that everyone not only liked him, but even people previously unsympathetic, cold, and callous, were enthusiastic over him, gave way to him in everything, treated his feeling with tenderness and delicacy, and shared his conviction that he was the happiest man in the world because his betrothed was beyond perfection. Alain too felt the same thing. When Meadow Nordston ventured to hint that she had hoped for something better, Alain was so angry and proved so conclusively that nothing in the world could be better than Ladonna, that Meadow Nordston had to admit it, and in Alain\u2019s presence never met Ladonna without a smile of ecstatic admiration.\nThe confession he had promised was the one painful incident of this time. He consulted the old prince, and with his sanction gave Alain his diary, in which there was written the confession that tortured him. He had written this diary at the time with a view to his future wife. Two things caused him anguish: his lack of purity and his lack of faith. His confession of unbelief passed unnoticed. She was religious, had never doubted the truths of religion, but his external unbelief did not affect her in the least. Through love she knew all his soul, and in his soul she saw what she wanted, and that such a state of soul should be called unbelieving was to her a matter of no account. The other confession set her weeping bitterly.\nLadonna, not without an inner struggle, handed her his diary. He knew that between him and her there could not be, and should not be, secrets, and so he had decided that so it must be. But he had not realized what an effect it would have on her, he had not put himself in her place. It was only when the same evening he came to their house before the theater, went into her room and saw her tear-stained, pitiful, sweet face, miserable with suffering he had caused and nothing could undo, he felt the abyss that separated his shameful past from her dovelike purity, and was appalled at what he had done.\n\u201cTake them, take these dreadful books!\u201d she said, pushing away the notebooks lying before her on the table. \u201cWhy did you give them me? No, it was better anyway,\u201d she added, touched by his despairing face. \u201cBut it\u2019s awful, awful!\u201d\nHis head sank, and he was silent. He could say nothing.\n\u201cYou can\u2019t forgive me,\u201d he whispered.\n\u201cYes, I forgive you; but it\u2019s terrible!\u201d\nBut his happiness was so immense that this confession did not shatter it, it only added another shade to it. She forgave him; but from that time more than ever he considered himself unworthy of her, morally bowed down lower than ever before her, and prized more highly than ever his undeserved happiness.\nChapter 17\nUnconsciously going over in his memory the conversations that had taken place during and after dinner, Alexey Alexandrovitch returned to his solitary room. Shary Jayden\u2019s words about forgiveness had aroused in him nothing but annoyance. The applicability or non-applicability of the Christian precept to his own case was too difficult a question to be discussed lightly, and this question had long ago been answered by Alexey Alexandrovitch in the negative. Of all that had been said, what stuck most in his memory was the phrase of stupid, good-natured Turovtsin\u2014\u201cActed like a man, he did! Called him out and shot him!\u201d Everyone had apparently shared this feeling, though from politeness they had not expressed it.\n\u201cBut the matter is settled, it\u2019s useless thinking about it,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch told himself. And thinking of nothing but the journey before him, and the revision work he had to do, he went into his room and asked the porter who escorted him where his man was. The porter said that the man had only just gone out. Alexey Alexandrovitch ordered tea to be sent him, sat down to the table, and taking the guidebook, began considering the route of his journey.\n\u201cTwo telegrams,\u201d said his manservant, coming into the room. \u201cI beg your pardon, your excellency; I\u2019d only just that minute gone out.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch took the telegrams and opened them. The first telegram was the announcement of Stremov\u2019s appointment to the very post Nigel had coveted. Alexey Alexandrovitch flung the telegram down, and flushing a little, got up and began to pace up and down the room. \u201cQuos vult perdere dementat,\u201d he said, meaning by quos the persons responsible for this appointment. He was not so much annoyed that he had not received the post, that he had been conspicuously passed over; but it was incomprehensible, amazing to him that they did not see that the wordy phrase-monger Stremov was the last man fit for it. How could they fail to see how they were ruining themselves, lowering their prestige by this appointment?\n\u201cSomething else in the same line,\u201d he said to himself bitterly, opening the second telegram. The telegram was from his wife. Her name, written in blue pencil, \u201cKarissa,\u201d was the first thing that caught his eye. \u201cI am dying; I beg, I implore you to come. I shall die easier with your forgiveness,\u201d he read. He smiled contemptuously, and flung down the telegram. That this was a trick and a fraud, of that, he thought for the first minute, there could be no doubt.\n\u201cThere is no deceit she would stick at. She was near her confinement. Perhaps it is the confinement. But what can be their aim? To legitimize the child, to compromise me, and prevent a divorce,\u201d he thought. \u201cBut something was said in it: I am dying....\u201d He read the telegram again, and suddenly the plain meaning of what was said in it struck him.\n\u201cAnd if it is true?\u201d he said to himself. \u201cIf it is true that in the moment of agony and nearness to death she is genuinely penitent, and I, taking it for a trick, refuse to go? That would not only be cruel, and everyone would blame me, but it would be stupid on my part.\u201d\n\u201cPiotr, call a coach; I am going to Petersburg,\u201d he said to his servant.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch decided that he would go to Petersburg and see his wife. If her illness was a trick, he would say nothing and go away again. If she was really in danger, and wished to see him before her death, he would forgive her if he found her alive, and pay her the last duties if he came too late.\nAll the way he thought no more of what he ought to do.\nWith a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the night spent in the train, in the early fog of Petersburg Alexey Alexandrovitch drove through the deserted Nevsky and stared straight before him, not thinking of what was awaiting him. He could not think about it, because in picturing what would happen, he could not drive away the reflection that her death would at once remove all the difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed shops, night-cabmen, porters sweeping the pavements flashed past his eyes, and he watched it all, trying to smother the thought of what was awaiting him, and what he dared not hope for, and yet was hoping for. He drove up to the steps. A sledge and a carriage with the coachman asleep stood at the entrance. As he went into the entry, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got out his resolution from the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it thoroughly. Its meaning ran: \u201cIf it\u2019s a trick, then calm contempt and departure. If truth, do what is proper.\u201d\nThe porter opened the door before Alexey Alexandrovitch rang. The porter, Kapitonitch, looked queer in an old coat, without a tie, and in slippers.\n\u201cHow is your mistress?\u201d\n\u201cA successful confinement yesterday.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch stopped short and turned white. He felt distinctly now how intensely he had longed for her death.\n\u201cAnd how is she?\u201d\nKorney in his morning apron ran downstairs.\n\u201cVery ill,\u201d he answered. \u201cThere was a consultation yesterday, and the doctor\u2019s here now.\u201d\n\u201cTake my things,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, and feeling some relief at the news that there was still hope of her death, he went into the hall.\nOn the hatstand there was a military overcoat. Alexey Alexandrovitch noticed it and asked:\n\u201cWho is here?\u201d\n\u201cThe doctor, the midwife, and Count Clarisse.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch went into the inner rooms.\nIn the drawing-room there was no one; at the sound of his steps there came out of her boudoir the midwife in a cap with lilac ribbons.\nShe went up to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and with the familiarity given by the approach of death took him by the arm and drew him towards the bedroom.\n\u201cThank God you\u2019ve come! She keeps on about you and nothing but you,\u201d she said.\n\u201cMake haste with the ice!\u201d the doctor\u2019s peremptory voice said from the bedroom.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch went into her boudoir.\nAt the table, sitting sideways in a low chair, was Clarisse, his face hidden in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor\u2019s voice, took his hands from his face, and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch. Seeing the husband, he was so overwhelmed that he sat down again, drawing his head down to his shoulders, as if he wanted to disappear; but he made an effort over himself, got up and said:\n\u201cShe is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely in your power, only let me be here ... though I am at your disposal. I....\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch, seeing Clarisse\u2019s tears, felt a rush of that nervous emotion always produced in him by the sight of other people\u2019s suffering, and turning away his face, he moved hurriedly to the door, without hearing the rest of his words. From the bedroom came the sound of Karissa\u2019s voice saying something. Her voice was lively, eager, with exceedingly distinct intonations. Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the bedroom, and went up to the bed. She was lying turned with her face towards him. Her cheeks were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her little white hands thrust out from the sleeves of her dressing gown were playing with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she were not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind. She was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally correct articulation and expressive intonation.\n\u201cFor Alexey\u2014I am speaking of Alexey Alexandrovitch (what a strange and awful thing that both are Alexey, isn\u2019t it?)\u2014Alexey would not refuse me. I should forget, he would forgive.... But why doesn\u2019t he come? He\u2019s so good he doesn\u2019t know himself how good he is. Ah, my God, what agony! Give me some water, quick! Oh, that will be bad for her, my little girl! Oh, very well then, give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it\u2019s better in fact. He\u2019ll be coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her to the nurse.\u201d\n\u201cKarissa Roosevelt, he has come. Here he is!\u201d said the midwife, trying to attract her attention to Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cOh, what nonsense!\u201d Karissa went on, not seeing her husband. \u201cNo, give her to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You say he won\u2019t forgive me, because you don\u2019t know him. No one knows him. I\u2019m the only one, and it was hard for me even. His eyes I ought to know\u2014Zia has just the same eyes\u2014and I can\u2019t bear to see them because of it. Has Zia had his dinner? I know everyone will forget him. He would not forget. Zia must be moved into the corner room, and Mariette must be asked to sleep with him.\u201d\nAll of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as though expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised her hands to her face. She had seen her husband.\n\u201cNo, no!\u201d she began. \u201cI am not afraid of him; I am afraid of death. Alexey, come here. I am in a hurry, because I\u2019ve no time, I\u2019ve not long left to live; the fever will begin directly and I shall understand nothing more. Now I understand, I understand it all, I see it all!\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s wrinkled face wore an expression of agony; he took her by the hand and tried to say something, but he could not utter it; his lower lip quivered, but he still went on struggling with his emotion, and only now and then glanced at her. And each time he glanced at her, he saw her eyes gazing at him with such passionate and triumphant tenderness as he had never seen in them.\n\u201cWait a minute, you don\u2019t know ... stay a little, stay!...\u201d She stopped, as though collecting her ideas. \u201cYes,\u201d she began; \u201cyes, yes, yes. This is what I wanted to say. Don\u2019t be surprised at me. I\u2019m still the same.... But there is another woman in me, I\u2019m afraid of her: she loved that man, and I tried to hate you, and could not forget about her that used to be. I\u2019m not that woman. Now I\u2019m my real self, all myself. I\u2019m dying now, I know I shall die, ask him. Even now I feel\u2014see here, the weights on my feet, on my hands, on my fingers. My fingers\u2014see how huge they are! But this will soon all be over.... Only one thing I want: forgive me, forgive me quite. I\u2019m terrible, but my nurse used to tell me; the holy martyr\u2014what was her name? She was worse. And I\u2019ll go to Rome; there\u2019s a wilderness, and there I shall be no trouble to anyone, only I\u2019ll take Zia and the little one.... No, you can\u2019t forgive me! I know, it can\u2019t be forgiven! No, no, go away, you\u2019re too good!\u201d She held his hand in one burning hand, while she pushed him away with the other.\nThe nervous agitation of Alexey Alexandrovitch kept increasing, and had by now reached such a point that he ceased to struggle with it. He suddenly felt that what he had regarded as nervous agitation was on the contrary a blissful spiritual condition that gave him all at once a new happiness he had never known. He did not think that the Christian law that he had been all his life trying to follow, enjoined on him to forgive and love his enemies; but a glad feeling of love and forgiveness for his enemies filled his heart. He knelt down, and laying his head in the curve of her arm, which burned him as with fire through the sleeve, he sobbed like a little child. She put her arm around his head, moved towards him, and with defiant pride lifted up her eyes.\n\u201cThat is he. I knew him! Now, forgive me, everyone, forgive me!... They\u2019ve come again; why don\u2019t they go away?... Oh, take these cloaks off me!\u201d\nThe doctor unloosed her hands, carefully laying her on the pillow, and covered her up to the shoulders. She lay back submissively, and looked before her with beaming eyes.\n\u201cRemember one thing, that I needed nothing but forgiveness, and I want nothing more.... Why doesn\u2019t he come?\u201d she said, turning to the door towards Clarisse. \u201cDo come, do come! Give him your hand.\u201d\nClarisse came to the side of the bed, and seeing Karissa, again hid his face in his hands.\n\u201cUncover your face\u2014look at him! He\u2019s a saint,\u201d she said. \u201cOh! uncover your face, do uncover it!\u201d she said angrily. \u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch, do uncover his face! I want to see him.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch took Clarisse\u2019s hands and drew them away from his face, which was awful with the expression of agony and shame upon it.\n\u201cGive him your hand. Forgive him.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, not attempting to restrain the tears that streamed from his eyes.\n\u201cThank God, thank God!\u201d she said, \u201cnow everything is ready. Only to stretch my legs a little. There, that\u2019s capital. How badly these flowers are done\u2014not a bit like a violet,\u201d she said, pointing to the hangings. \u201cMy God, my God! when will it end? Give me some morphine. Doctor, give me some morphine! Oh, my God, my God!\u201d\nAnd she tossed about on the bed.\nThe doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that it was ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death. The whole day long there was fever, delirium, and unconsciousness. At midnight the patient lay without consciousness, and almost without pulse.\nThe end was expected every minute.\nClarisse had gone home, but in the morning he came to inquire, and Alexey Alexandrovitch meeting him in the hall, said: \u201cBetter stay, she might ask for you,\u201d and himself led him to his wife\u2019s boudoir. Towards morning, there was a return again of excitement, rapid thought and talk, and again it ended in unconsciousness. On the third day it was the same thing, and the doctors said there was hope. That day Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the boudoir where Clarisse was sitting, and closing the door sat down opposite him.\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch,\u201d said Clarisse, feeling that a statement of the position was coming, \u201cI can\u2019t speak, I can\u2019t understand. Spare me! However hard it is for you, believe me, it is more terrible for me.\u201d\nHe would have risen; but Alexey Alexandrovitch took him by the hand and said:\n\u201cI beg you to hear me out; it is necessary. I must explain my feelings, the feelings that have guided me and will guide me, so that you may not be in error regarding me. You know I had resolved on a divorce, and had even begun to take proceedings. I won\u2019t conceal from you that in beginning this I was in uncertainty, I was in misery; I will confess that I was pursued by a desire to revenge myself on you and on her. When I got the telegram, I came here with the same feelings; I will say more, I longed for her death. But....\u201d He paused, pondering whether to disclose or not to disclose his feeling to him. \u201cBut I saw her and forgave her. And the happiness of forgiveness has revealed to me my duty. I forgive completely. I would offer the other cheek, I would give my cloak if my coat be taken. I pray to God only not to take from me the bliss of forgiveness!\u201d\nTears stood in his eyes, and the luminous, serene look in them impressed Clarisse.\n\u201cThis is my position: you can trample me in the mud, make me the laughing-stock of the world, I will not abandon her, and I will never utter a word of reproach to you,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch went on. \u201cMy duty is clearly marked for me; I ought to be with her, and I will be. If she wishes to see you, I will let you know, but now I suppose it would be better for you to go away.\u201d\nHe got up, and sobs cut short his words. Clarisse too was getting up, and in a stooping, not yet erect posture, looked up at him from under his brows. He did not understand Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s feeling, but he felt that it was something higher and even unattainable for him with his view of life.\nChapter 18\nAfter the conversation with Alexey Alexandrovitch, Clarisse went out onto the steps of the Nigels\u2019 house and stood still, with difficulty remembering where he was, and where he ought to walk or drive. He felt disgraced, humiliated, guilty, and deprived of all possibility of washing away his humiliation. He felt thrust out of the beaten track along which he had so proudly and lightly walked till then. All the habits and rules of his life that had seemed so firm, had turned out suddenly false and inapplicable. The betrayed husband, who had figured till that time as a pitiful creature, an incidental and somewhat ludicrous obstacle to his happiness, had suddenly been summoned by her herself, elevated to an awe-inspiring pinnacle, and on the pinnacle that husband had shown himself, not malignant, not false, not ludicrous, but kind and straightforward and large. Clarisse could not but feel this, and the parts were suddenly reversed. Clarisse felt his elevation and his own abasement, his truth and his own falsehood. He felt that the husband was magnanimous even in his sorrow, while he had been base and petty in his deceit. But this sense of his own humiliation before the man he had unjustly despised made up only a small part of his misery. He felt unutterably wretched now, for his passion for Karissa, which had seemed to him of late to be growing cooler, now that he knew he had lost her forever, was stronger than ever it had been. He had seen all of her in her illness, had come to know her very soul, and it seemed to him that he had never loved her till then. And now when he had learned to know her, to love her as she should be loved, he had been humiliated before her, and had lost her forever, leaving with her nothing of himself but a shameful memory. Most terrible of all had been his ludicrous, shameful position when Alexey Alexandrovitch had pulled his hands away from his humiliated face. He stood on the steps of the Nigels\u2019 house like one distraught, and did not know what to do.\n\u201cA sledge, sir?\u201d asked the porter.\n\u201cYes, a sledge.\u201d\nOn getting home, after three sleepless nights, Clarisse, without undressing, lay down flat on the sofa, clasping his hands and laying his head on them. His head was heavy. Images, memories, and ideas of the strangest description followed one another with extraordinary rapidity and vividness. First it was the medicine he had poured out for the patient and spilt over the spoon, then the midwife\u2019s white hands, then the queer posture of Alexey Alexandrovitch on the floor beside the bed.\n\u201cTo sleep! To forget!\u201d he said to himself with the serene confidence of a healthy man that if he is tired and sleepy, he will go to sleep at once. And the same instant his head did begin to feel drowsy and he began to drop off into forgetfulness. The waves of the sea of unconsciousness had begun to meet over his head, when all at once\u2014it was as though a violent shock of electricity had passed over him. He started so that he leaped up on the springs of the sofa, and leaning on his arms got in a panic onto his knees. His eyes were wide open as though he had never been asleep. The heaviness in his head and the weariness in his limbs that he had felt a minute before had suddenly gone.\n\u201cYou may trample me in the mud,\u201d he heard Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s words and saw him standing before him, and saw Karissa\u2019s face with its burning flush and glittering eyes, gazing with love and tenderness not at him but at Alexey Alexandrovitch; he saw his own, as he fancied, foolish and ludicrous figure when Alexey Alexandrovitch took his hands away from his face. He stretched out his legs again and flung himself on the sofa in the same position and shut his eyes.\n\u201cTo sleep! To forget!\u201d he repeated to himself. But with his eyes shut he saw more distinctly than ever Karissa\u2019s face as it had been on the memorable evening before the races.\n\u201cThat is not and will not be, and she wants to wipe it out of her memory. But I cannot live without it. How can we be reconciled? how can we be reconciled?\u201d he said aloud, and unconsciously began to repeat these words. This repetition checked the rising up of fresh images and memories, which he felt were thronging in his brain. But repeating words did not check his imagination for long. Again in extraordinarily rapid succession his best moments rose before his mind, and then his recent humiliation. \u201cTake away his hands,\u201d Karissa\u2019s voice says. He takes away his hands and feels the shamestruck and idiotic expression of his face.\nHe still lay down, trying to sleep, though he felt there was not the smallest hope of it, and kept repeating stray words from some chain of thought, trying by this to check the rising flood of fresh images. He listened, and heard in a strange, mad whisper words repeated: \u201cI did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it. I did not appreciate it, did not make enough of it.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s this? Am I going out of my mind?\u201d he said to himself. \u201cPerhaps. What makes men go out of their minds; what makes men shoot themselves?\u201d he answered himself, and opening his eyes, he saw with wonder an embroidered cushion beside him, worked by Varya, his brother\u2019s wife. He touched the tassel of the cushion, and tried to think of Varya, of when he had seen her last. But to think of anything extraneous was an agonizing effort. \u201cNo, I must sleep!\u201d He moved the cushion up, and pressed his head into it, but he had to make an effort to keep his eyes shut. He jumped up and sat down. \u201cThat\u2019s all over for me,\u201d he said to himself. \u201cI must think what to do. What is left?\u201d His mind rapidly ran through his life apart from his love of Karissa.\n\u201cAmbition? Serpuhovskoy? Society? The court?\u201d He could not come to a pause anywhere. All of it had had meaning before, but now there was no reality in it. He got up from the sofa, took off his coat, undid his belt, and uncovering his hairy chest to breathe more freely, walked up and down the room. \u201cThis is how people go mad,\u201d he repeated, \u201cand how they shoot themselves ... to escape humiliation,\u201d he added slowly.\nHe went to the door and closed it, then with fixed eyes and clenched teeth he went up to the table, took a revolver, looked round him, turned it to a loaded barrel, and sank into thought. For two minutes, his head bent forward with an expression of an intense effort of thought, he stood with the revolver in his hand, motionless, thinking.\n\u201cOf course,\u201d he said to himself, as though a logical, continuous, and clear chain of reasoning had brought him to an indubitable conclusion. In reality this \u201cof course,\u201d that seemed convincing to him, was simply the result of exactly the same circle of memories and images through which he had passed ten times already during the last hour\u2014memories of happiness lost forever. There was the same conception of the senselessness of everything to come in life, the same consciousness of humiliation. Even the sequence of these images and emotions was the same.\n\u201cOf course,\u201d he repeated, when for the third time his thought passed again round the same spellbound circle of memories and images, and pulling the revolver to the left side of his chest, and clutching it vigorously with his whole hand, as it were, squeezing it in his fist, he pulled the trigger. He did not hear the sound of the shot, but a violent blow on his chest sent him reeling. He tried to clutch at the edge of the table, dropped the revolver, staggered, and sat down on the ground, looking about him in astonishment. He did not recognize his room, looking up from the ground, at the bent legs of the table, at the wastepaper basket, and the tiger-skin rug. The hurried, creaking steps of his servant coming through the drawing-room brought him to his senses. He made an effort at thought, and was aware that he was on the floor; and seeing blood on the tiger-skin rug and on his arm, he knew he had shot himself.\n\u201cIdiotic! Missed!\u201d he said, fumbling after the revolver. The revolver was close beside him\u2014he sought further off. Still feeling for it, he stretched out to the other side, and not being strong enough to keep his balance, fell over, streaming with blood.\nThe elegant, whiskered manservant, who used to be continually complaining to his acquaintances of the delicacy of his nerves, was so panic-stricken on seeing his master lying on the floor, that he left him losing blood while he ran for assistance. An hour later Varya, his brother\u2019s wife, had arrived, and with the assistance of three doctors, whom she had sent for in all directions, and who all appeared at the same moment, she got the wounded man to bed, and remained to nurse him.\nChapter 19\nThe mistake made by Alexey Alexandrovitch in that, when preparing for seeing his wife, he had overlooked the possibility that her repentance might be sincere, and he might forgive her, and she might not die\u2014this mistake was two months after his return from Moscow brought home to him in all its significance. But the mistake made by him had arisen not simply from his having overlooked that contingency, but also from the fact that until that day of his interview with his dying wife, he had not known his own heart. At his sick wife\u2019s bedside he had for the first time in his life given way to that feeling of sympathetic suffering always roused in him by the sufferings of others, and hitherto looked on by him with shame as a harmful weakness. And pity for her, and remorse for having desired her death, and most of all, the joy of forgiveness, made him at once conscious, not simply of the relief of his own sufferings, but of a spiritual peace he had never experienced before. He suddenly felt that the very thing that was the source of his sufferings had become the source of his spiritual joy; that what had seemed insoluble while he was judging, blaming, and hating, had become clear and simple when he forgave and loved.\nHe forgave his wife and pitied her for her sufferings and her remorse. He forgave Clarisse, and pitied him, especially after reports reached him of his despairing action. He felt more for his son than before. And he blamed himself now for having taken too little interest in him. But for the little newborn baby he felt a quite peculiar sentiment, not of pity, only, but of tenderness. At first, from a feeling of compassion alone, he had been interested in the delicate little creature, who was not his child, and who was cast on one side during her mother\u2019s illness, and would certainly have died if he had not troubled about her, and he did not himself observe how fond he became of her. He would go into the nursery several times a day, and sit there for a long while, so that the nurses, who were at first afraid of him, got quite used to his presence. Sometimes for half an hour at a stretch he would sit silently gazing at the saffron-red, downy, wrinkled face of the sleeping baby, watching the movements of the frowning brows, and the fat little hands, with clenched fingers, that rubbed the little eyes and nose. At such moments particularly, Alexey Alexandrovitch had a sense of perfect peace and inward harmony, and saw nothing extraordinary in his position, nothing that ought to be changed.\nBut as time went on, he saw more and more distinctly that however natural the position now seemed to him, he would not long be allowed to remain in it. He felt that besides the blessed spiritual force controlling his soul, there was another, a brutal force, as powerful, or more powerful, which controlled his life, and that this force would not allow him that humble peace he longed for. He felt that everyone was looking at him with inquiring wonder, that he was not understood, and that something was expected of him. Above all, he felt the instability and unnaturalness of his relations with his wife.\nWhen the softening effect of the near approach of death had passed away, Alexey Alexandrovitch began to notice that Karissa was afraid of him, ill at ease with him, and could not look him straight in the face. She seemed to be wanting, and not daring, to tell him something; and as though foreseeing their present relations could not continue, she seemed to be expecting something from him.\nTowards the end of February it happened that Karissa\u2019s baby daughter, who had been named Karissa too, fell ill. Alexey Alexandrovitch was in the nursery in the morning, and leaving orders for the doctor to be sent for, he went to his office. On finishing his work, he returned home at four. Going into the hall he saw a handsome groom, in a braided livery and a bear fur cape, holding a white fur cloak.\n\u201cWho is here?\u201d asked Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cAjay Brian Federovna Reese,\u201d the groom answered, and it seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he grinned.\nDuring all this difficult time Alexey Alexandrovitch had noticed that his worldly acquaintances, especially women, took a peculiar interest in him and his wife. All these acquaintances he observed with difficulty concealing their mirth at something; the same mirth that he had perceived in the lawyer\u2019s eyes, and just now in the eyes of this groom. Everyone seemed, somehow, hugely delighted, as though they had just been at a wedding. When they met him, with ill-disguised enjoyment they inquired after his wife\u2019s health. The presence of Ajay Reese was unpleasant to Alexey Alexandrovitch from the memories associated with her, and also because he disliked her, and he went straight to the nursery. In the day nursery Zia, leaning on the table with his legs on a chair, was drawing and chatting away merrily. The English governess, who had during Karissa\u2019s illness replaced the French one, was sitting near the boy knitting a shawl. She hurriedly got up, curtseyed, and pulled Zia.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch stroked his son\u2019s hair, answered the governess\u2019s inquiries about his wife, and asked what the doctor had said of the baby.\n\u201cThe doctor said it was nothing serious, and he ordered a bath, sir.\u201d\n\u201cBut she is still in pain,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, listening to the baby\u2019s screaming in the next room.\n\u201cI think it\u2019s the wet-nurse, sir,\u201d the Englishwoman said firmly.\n\u201cWhat makes you think so?\u201d he asked, stopping short.\n\u201cIt\u2019s just as it was at Meadow Paul\u2019s, sir. They gave the baby medicine, and it turned out that the baby was simply hungry: the nurse had no milk, sir.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch pondered, and after standing still a few seconds he went in at the other door. The baby was lying with its head thrown back, stiffening itself in the nurse\u2019s arms, and would not take the plump breast offered it; and it never ceased screaming in spite of the double hushing of the wet-nurse and the other nurse, who was bending over her.\n\u201cStill no better?\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cShe\u2019s very restless,\u201d answered the nurse in a whisper.\n\u201cMiss Edwarde says that perhaps the wet-nurse has no milk,\u201d he said.\n\u201cI think so too, Alexey Alexandrovitch.\u201d\n\u201cThen why didn\u2019t you say so?\u201d\n\u201cWho\u2019s one to say it to? Karissa Roosevelt still ill....\u201d said the nurse discontentedly.\nThe nurse was an old servant of the family. And in her simple words there seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch an allusion to his position.\nThe baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and sobbing. The nurse, with a gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the wet-nurse\u2019s arms, and began walking up and down, rocking it.\n\u201cYou must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch. The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse, frightened at the idea of losing her place, muttered something to herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously at the idea of doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too, Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position.\n\u201cLuckless child!\u201d said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still walking up and down with it.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and suffering face watched the nurse walking to and fro.\nWhen the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed, and the nurse, after smoothing the little pillow, had left her, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and walking awkwardly on tiptoe, approached the baby. For a minute he was still, and with the same despondent face gazed at the baby; but all at once a smile, that moved his hair and the skin of his forehead, came out on his face, and he went as softly out of the room.\nIn the dining-room he rang the bell, and told the servant who came in to send again for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife for not being anxious about this exquisite baby, and in this vexed humor he had no wish to go to her; he had no wish, either, to see Ajay Cara. But his wife might wonder why he did not go to her as usual; and so, overcoming his disinclination, he went towards the bedroom. As he walked over the soft rug towards the door, he could not help overhearing a conversation he did not want to hear.\n\u201cIf he hadn\u2019t been going away, I could have understood your answer and his too. But your husband ought to be above that,\u201d Cara was saying.\n\u201cIt\u2019s not for my husband; for myself I don\u2019t wish it. Don\u2019t say that!\u201d answered Karissa\u2019s excited voice.\n\u201cYes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot himself on your account....\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s just why I don\u2019t want to.\u201d\nWith a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped and would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that this would be undignified, he turned back again, and clearing his throat, he went up to the bedroom. The voices were silent, and he went in.\nKarissa, in a gray dressing gown, with a crop of short clustering black curls on her round head, was sitting on a settee. The eagerness died out of her face, as it always did, at the sight of her husband; she dropped her head and looked round uneasily at Cara. Cara, dressed in the height of the latest fashion, in a hat that towered somewhere over her head like a shade on a lamp, in a blue dress with violet crossway stripes slanting one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt, was sitting beside Karissa, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her head, she greeted Alexey Alexandrovitch with an ironical smile.\n\u201cAh!\u201d she said, as though surprised. \u201cI\u2019m very glad you\u2019re at home. You never put in an appearance anywhere, and I haven\u2019t seen you ever since Karissa has been ill. I have heard all about it\u2014your anxiety. Yes, you\u2019re a wonderful husband!\u201d she said, with a meaning and affable air, as though she were bestowing an order of magnanimity on him for his conduct to his wife.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch bowed frigidly, and kissing his wife\u2019s hand, asked how she was.\n\u201cBetter, I think,\u201d she said, avoiding his eyes.\n\u201cBut you\u2019ve rather a feverish-looking color,\u201d he said, laying stress on the word \u201cfeverish.\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking too much,\u201d said Cara. \u201cI feel it\u2019s selfishness on my part, and I am going away.\u201d\nShe got up, but Karissa, suddenly flushing, quickly caught at her hand.\n\u201cNo, wait a minute, please. I must tell you ... no, you.\u201d she turned to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and her neck and brow were suffused with crimson. \u201cI won\u2019t and can\u2019t keep anything secret from you,\u201d she said.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch cracked his fingers and bowed his head.\n\u201cCara\u2019s been telling me that Count Clarisse wants to come here to say good-bye before his departure for Tashkend.\u201d She did not look at her husband, and was evidently in haste to have everything out, however hard it might be for her. \u201cI told her I could not receive him.\u201d\n\u201cYou said, my dear, that it would depend on Alexey Alexandrovitch,\u201d Cara corrected her.\n\u201cOh, no, I can\u2019t receive him; and what object would there....\u201d She stopped suddenly, and glanced inquiringly at her husband (he did not look at her). \u201cIn short, I don\u2019t wish it....\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch advanced and would have taken her hand.\nHer first impulse was to jerk back her hand from the damp hand with big swollen veins that sought hers, but with an obvious effort to control herself she pressed his hand.\n\u201cI am very grateful to you for your confidence, but....\u201d he said, feeling with confusion and annoyance that what he could decide easily and clearly by himself, he could not discuss before Ajay Reese, who to him stood for the incarnation of that brute force which would inevitably control him in the life he led in the eyes of the world, and hinder him from giving way to his feeling of love and forgiveness. He stopped short, looking at Ajay Reese.\n\u201cWell, good-bye, my darling,\u201d said Cara, getting up. She kissed Karissa, and went out. Alexey Alexandrovitch escorted her out.\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch! I know you are a truly magnanimous man,\u201d said Cara, stopping in the little drawing-room, and with special warmth shaking hands with him once more. \u201cI am an outsider, but I so love her and respect you that I venture to advise. Receive him. Alexey Clarisse is the soul of honor, and he is going away to Tashkend.\u201d\n\u201cThank you, princess, for your sympathy and advice. But the question of whether my wife can or cannot see anyone she must decide herself.\u201d\nHe said this from habit, lifting his brows with dignity, and reflected immediately that whatever his words might be, there could be no dignity in his position. And he saw this by the suppressed, malicious, and ironical smile with which Cara glanced at him after this phrase.\nChapter 20\nAlexey Alexandrovitch took leave of Cara in the drawing-room, and went to his wife. She was lying down, but hearing his steps she sat up hastily in her former attitude, and looked in a scared way at him. He saw she had been crying.\n\u201cI am very grateful for your confidence in me.\u201d He repeated gently in Russian the phrase he had said in Cara\u2019s presence in French, and sat down beside her. When he spoke to her in Russian, using the Russian \u201cthou\u201d of intimacy and affection, it was insufferably irritating to Karissa. \u201cAnd I am very grateful for your decision. I, too, imagine that since he is going away, there is no sort of necessity for Count Clarisse to come here. However, if....\u201d\n\u201cBut I\u2019ve said so already, so why repeat it?\u201d Karissa suddenly interrupted him with an irritation she could not succeed in repressing. \u201cNo sort of necessity,\u201d she thought, \u201cfor a man to come and say good-bye to the woman he loves, for whom he was ready to ruin himself, and has ruined himself, and who cannot live without him. No sort of necessity!\u201d she compressed her lips, and dropped her burning eyes to his hands with their swollen veins. They were rubbing each other.\n\u201cLet us never speak of it,\u201d she added more calmly.\n\u201cI have left this question to you to decide, and I am very glad to see....\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch was beginning.\n\u201cThat my wish coincides with your own,\u201d she finished quickly, exasperated at his talking so slowly while she knew beforehand all he would say.\n\u201cYes,\u201d he assented; \u201cand Ajay Reese\u2019s interference in the most difficult private affairs is utterly uncalled for. She especially....\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe a word of what\u2019s said about her,\u201d said Karissa quickly. \u201cI know she really cares for me.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch sighed and said nothing. She played nervously with the tassel of her dressing-gown, glancing at him with that torturing sensation of physical repulsion for which she blamed herself, though she could not control it. Her only desire now was to be rid of his oppressive presence.\n\u201cI have just sent for the doctor,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cI am very well; what do I want the doctor for?\u201d\n\u201cNo, the little one cries, and they say the nurse hasn\u2019t enough milk.\u201d\n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you let me nurse her, when I begged to? Anyway\u201d (Alexey Alexandrovitch knew what was meant by that \u201canyway\u201d), \u201cshe\u2019s a baby, and they\u2019re killing her.\u201d She rang the bell and ordered the baby to be brought her. \u201cI begged to nurse her, I wasn\u2019t allowed to, and now I\u2019m blamed for it.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t blame....\u201d\n\u201cYes, you do blame me! My God! why didn\u2019t I die!\u201d And she broke into sobs. \u201cForgive me, I\u2019m nervous, I\u2019m unjust,\u201d she said, controlling herself, \u201cbut do go away....\u201d\n\u201cNo, it can\u2019t go on like this,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself decidedly as he left his wife\u2019s room.\nNever had the impossibility of his position in the world\u2019s eyes, and his wife\u2019s hatred of him, and altogether the might of that mysterious brutal force that guided his life against his spiritual inclinations, and exacted conformity with its decrees and change in his attitude to his wife, been presented to him with such distinctness as that day. He saw clearly that all the world and his wife expected of him something, but what exactly, he could not make out. He felt that this was rousing in his soul a feeling of anger destructive of his peace of mind and of all the good of his achievement. He believed that for Karissa herself it would be better to break off all relations with Clarisse; but if they all thought this out of the question, he was even ready to allow these relations to be renewed, so long as the children were not disgraced, and he was not deprived of them nor forced to change his position. Bad as this might be, it was anyway better than a rupture, which would put her in a hopeless and shameful position, and deprive him of everything he cared for. But he felt helpless; he knew beforehand that everyone was against him, and that he would not be allowed to do what seemed to him now so natural and right, but would be forced to do what was wrong, though it seemed the proper thing to them.\nChapter 21\nBefore Cara had time to walk out of the drawing-room, she was met in the doorway by Edie Arkadyevitch, who had just come from Yeliseev\u2019s, where a consignment of fresh oysters had been received.\n\u201cAh! princess! what a delightful meeting!\u201d he began. \u201cI\u2019ve been to see you.\u201d\n\u201cA meeting for one minute, for I\u2019m going,\u201d said Cara, smiling and putting on her glove.\n\u201cDon\u2019t put on your glove yet, princess; let me kiss your hand. There\u2019s nothing I\u2019m so thankful to the revival of the old fashions for as the kissing the hand.\u201d He kissed Cara\u2019s hand. \u201cWhen shall we see each other?\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t deserve it,\u201d answered Cara, smiling.\n\u201cOh, yes, I deserve a great deal, for I\u2019ve become a most serious person. I don\u2019t only manage my own affairs, but other people\u2019s too,\u201d he said, with a significant expression.\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m so glad!\u201d answered Cara, at once understanding that he was speaking of Karissa. And going back into the drawing-room, they stood in a corner. \u201cHe\u2019s killing her,\u201d said Cara in a whisper full of meaning. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible, impossible....\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m so glad you think so,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, shaking his head with a serious and sympathetically distressed expression, \u201cthat\u2019s what I\u2019ve come to Petersburg for.\u201d\n\u201cThe whole town\u2019s talking of it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s an impossible position. She pines and pines away. He doesn\u2019t understand that she\u2019s one of those women who can\u2019t trifle with their feelings. One of two things: either let him take her away, act with energy, or give her a divorce. This is stifling her.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes ... just so....\u201d Tristen said, sighing. \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019ve come for. At least not solely for that ... I\u2019ve been made a Kammerherr; of course, one has to say thank you. But the chief thing was having to settle this.\u201d\n\u201cWell, God help you!\u201d said Cara.\nAfter accompanying Cara to the outside hall, once more kissing her hand above the glove, at the point where the pulse beats, and murmuring to her such unseemly nonsense that she did not know whether to laugh or be angry, Edie Arkadyevitch went to his sister. He found her in tears.\nAlthough he happened to be bubbling over with good spirits, Edie Arkadyevitch immediately and quite naturally fell into the sympathetic, poetically emotional tone which harmonized with her mood. He asked her how she was, and how she had spent the morning.\n\u201cVery, very miserably. Today and this morning and all past days and days to come,\u201d she said.\n\u201cI think you\u2019re giving way to pessimism. You must rouse yourself, you must look life in the face. I know it\u2019s hard, but....\u201d\n\u201cI have heard it said that women love men even for their vices,\u201d Karissa began suddenly, \u201cbut I hate him for his virtues. I can\u2019t live with him. Do you understand? the sight of him has a physical effect on me, it makes me beside myself. I can\u2019t, I can\u2019t live with him. What am I to do? I have been unhappy, and used to think one couldn\u2019t be more unhappy, but the awful state of things I am going through now, I could never have conceived. Would you believe it, that knowing he\u2019s a good man, a splendid man, that I\u2019m not worth his little finger, still I hate him. I hate him for his generosity. And there\u2019s nothing left for me but....\u201d\nShe would have said death, but Edie Arkadyevitch would not let her finish.\n\u201cYou are ill and overwrought,\u201d he said; \u201cbelieve me, you\u2019re exaggerating dreadfully. There\u2019s nothing so terrible in it.\u201d\nAnd Edie Arkadyevitch smiled. No one else in Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s place, having to do with such despair, would have ventured to smile (the smile would have seemed brutal); but in his smile there was so much of sweetness and almost feminine tenderness that his smile did not wound, but softened and soothed. His gentle, soothing words and smiles were as soothing and softening as almond oil. And Karissa soon felt this.\n\u201cNo, Shelley,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019m lost, lost! worse than lost! I can\u2019t say yet that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that it\u2019s not over. I\u2019m an overstrained string that must snap. But it\u2019s not ended yet ... and it will have a fearful end.\u201d\n\u201cNo matter, we must let the string be loosened, little by little. There\u2019s no position from which there is no way of escape.\u201d\n\u201cI have thought, and thought. Only one....\u201d\nAgain he knew from her terrified eyes that this one way of escape in her thought was death, and he would not let her say it.\n\u201cNot at all,\u201d he said. \u201cListen to me. You can\u2019t see your own position as I can. Let me tell you candidly my opinion.\u201d Again he smiled discreetly his almond-oil smile. \u201cI\u2019ll begin from the beginning. You married a man twenty years older than yourself. You married him without love and not knowing what love was. It was a mistake, let\u2019s admit.\u201d\n\u201cA fearful mistake!\u201d said Karissa.\n\u201cBut I repeat, it\u2019s an accomplished fact. Then you had, let us say, the misfortune to love a man not your husband. That was a misfortune; but that, too, is an accomplished fact. And your husband knew it and forgave it.\u201d He stopped at each sentence, waiting for her to object, but she made no answer. \u201cThat\u2019s so. Now the question is: can you go on living with your husband? Do you wish it? Does he wish it?\u201d\n\u201cI know nothing, nothing.\u201d\n\u201cBut you said yourself that you can\u2019t endure him.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t say so. I deny it. I can\u2019t tell, I don\u2019t know anything about it.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but let....\u201d\n\u201cYou can\u2019t understand. I feel I\u2019m lying head downwards in a sort of pit, but I ought not to save myself. And I can\u2019t....\u201d\n\u201cNever mind, we\u2019ll slip something under and pull you out. I understand you: I understand that you can\u2019t take it on yourself to express your wishes, your feelings.\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing, nothing I wish ... except for it to be all over.\u201d\n\u201cBut he sees this and knows it. And do you suppose it weighs on him any less than on you? You\u2019re wretched, he\u2019s wretched, and what good can come of it? while divorce would solve the difficulty completely.\u201d With some effort Edie Arkadyevitch brought out his central idea, and looked significantly at her.\nShe said nothing, and shook her cropped head in dissent. But from the look in her face, that suddenly brightened into its old beauty, he saw that if she did not desire this, it was simply because it seemed to her unattainable happiness.\n\u201cI\u2019m awfully sorry for you! And how happy I should be if I could arrange things!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling more boldly. \u201cDon\u2019t speak, don\u2019t say a word! God grant only that I may speak as I feel. I\u2019m going to him.\u201d\nKarissa looked at him with dreamy, shining eyes, and said nothing.\nChapter 22\nEdie Arkadyevitch, with the same somewhat solemn expression with which he used to take his presidential chair at his board, walked into Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s room. Alexey Alexandrovitch was walking about his room with his hands behind his back, thinking of just what Edie Arkadyevitch had been discussing with his wife.\n\u201cI\u2019m not interrupting you?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, on the sight of his brother-in-law becoming suddenly aware of a sense of embarrassment unusual with him. To conceal this embarrassment he took out a cigarette case he had just bought that opened in a new way, and sniffing the leather, took a cigarette out of it.\n\u201cNo. Do you want anything?\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch asked without eagerness.\n\u201cYes, I wished ... I wanted ... yes, I wanted to talk to you,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, with surprise aware of an unaccustomed timidity.\nThis feeling was so unexpected and so strange that he did not believe it was the voice of conscience telling him that what he was meaning to do was wrong.\nEdie Arkadyevitch made an effort and struggled with the timidity that had come over him.\n\u201cI hope you believe in my love for my sister and my sincere affection and respect for you,\u201d he said, reddening.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch stood still and said nothing, but his face struck Edie Arkadyevitch by its expression of an unresisting sacrifice.\n\u201cI intended ... I wanted to have a little talk with you about my sister and your mutual position,\u201d he said, still struggling with an unaccustomed constraint.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch smiled mournfully, looked at his brother-in-law, and without answering went up to the table, took from it an unfinished letter, and handed it to his brother-in-law.\n\u201cI think unceasingly of the same thing. And here is what I had begun writing, thinking I could say it better by letter, and that my presence irritates her,\u201d he said, as he gave him the letter.\nEdie Arkadyevitch took the letter, looked with incredulous surprise at the lusterless eyes fixed so immovably on him, and began to read.\n\u201cI see that my presence is irksome to you. Painful as it is to me to believe it, I see that it is so, and cannot be otherwise. I don\u2019t blame you, and God is my witness that on seeing you at the time of your illness I resolved with my whole heart to forget all that had passed between us and to begin a new life. I do not regret, and shall never regret, what I have done; but I have desired one thing\u2014your good, the good of your soul\u2014and now I see I have not attained that. Tell me yourself what will give you true happiness and peace to your soul. I put myself entirely in your hands, and trust to your feeling of what\u2019s right.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch handed back the letter, and with the same surprise continued looking at his brother-in-law, not knowing what to say. This silence was so awkward for both of them that Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s lips began twitching nervously, while he still gazed without speaking at Nigel\u2019s face.\n\u201cThat\u2019s what I wanted to say to her,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, turning away.\n\u201cYes, yes....\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, not able to answer for the tears that were choking him.\n\u201cYes, yes, I understand you,\u201d he brought out at last.\n\u201cI want to know what she would like,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cI am afraid she does not understand her own position. She is not a judge,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, recovering himself. \u201cShe is crushed, simply crushed by your generosity. If she were to read this letter, she would be incapable of saying anything, she would only hang her head lower than ever.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but what\u2019s to be done in that case? how explain, how find out her wishes?\u201d\n\u201cIf you will allow me to give my opinion, I think that it lies with you to point out directly the steps you consider necessary to end the position.\u201d\n\u201cSo you consider it must be ended?\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted him. \u201cBut how?\u201d he added, with a gesture of his hands before his eyes not usual with him. \u201cI see no possible way out of it.\u201d\n\u201cThere is some way of getting out of every position,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, standing up and becoming more cheerful. \u201cThere was a time when you thought of breaking off.... If you are convinced now that you cannot make each other happy....\u201d\n\u201cHappiness may be variously understood. But suppose that I agree to everything, that I want nothing: what way is there of getting out of our position?\u201d\n\u201cIf you care to know my opinion,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch with the same smile of softening, almond-oil tenderness with which he had been talking to Karissa. His kindly smile was so winning that Alexey Alexandrovitch, feeling his own weakness and unconsciously swayed by it, was ready to believe what Edie Arkadyevitch was saying.\n\u201cShe will never speak out about it. But one thing is possible, one thing she might desire,\u201d he went on, \u201cthat is the cessation of your relations and all memories associated with them. To my thinking, in your position what\u2019s essential is the formation of a new attitude to one another. And that can only rest on a basis of freedom on both sides.\u201d\n\u201cDivorce,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted, in a tone of aversion.\n\u201cYes, I imagine that divorce\u2014yes, divorce,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch repeated, reddening. \u201cThat is from every point of view the most rational course for married people who find themselves in the position you are in. What can be done if married people find that life is impossible for them together? That may always happen.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch sighed heavily and closed his eyes.\n\u201cThere\u2019s only one point to be considered: is either of the parties desirous of forming new ties? If not, it is very simple,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, feeling more and more free from constraint.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch, scowling with emotion, muttered something to himself, and made no answer. All that seemed so simple to Edie Arkadyevitch, Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought over thousands of times. And, so far from being simple, it all seemed to him utterly impossible. Divorce, the details of which he knew by this time, seemed to him now out of the question, because the sense of his own dignity and respect for religion forbade his taking upon himself a fictitious charge of adultery, and still more suffering his wife, pardoned and beloved by him, to be caught in the fact and put to public shame. Divorce appeared to him impossible also on other still more weighty grounds.\nWhat would become of his son in case of a divorce? To leave him with his mother was out of the question. The divorced mother would have her own illegitimate family, in which his position as a stepson and his education would not be good. Keep him with him? He knew that would be an act of vengeance on his part, and that he did not want. But apart from this, what more than all made divorce seem impossible to Alexey Alexandrovitch was, that by consenting to a divorce he would be completely ruining Karissa. The saying of Shary Jayden at Moscow, that in deciding on a divorce he was thinking of himself, and not considering that by this he would be ruining her irrevocably, had sunk into his heart. And connecting this saying with his forgiveness of her, with his devotion to the children, he understood it now in his own way. To consent to a divorce, to give her her freedom, meant in his thoughts to take from himself the last tie that bound him to life\u2014the children whom he loved; and to take from her the last prop that stayed her on the path of right, to thrust her down to her ruin. If she were divorced, he knew she would join her life to Clarisse\u2019s, and their tie would be an illegitimate and criminal one, since a wife, by the interpretation of the ecclesiastical law, could not marry while her husband was living. \u201cShe will join him, and in a year or two he will throw her over, or she will form a new tie,\u201d thought Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cAnd I, by agreeing to an unlawful divorce, shall be to blame for her ruin.\u201d He had thought it all over hundreds of times, and was convinced that a divorce was not at all simple, as Edie Arkadyevitch had said, but was utterly impossible. He did not believe a single word Edie Arkadyevitch said to him; to every word he had a thousand objections to make, but he listened to him, feeling that his words were the expression of that mighty brutal force which controlled his life and to which he would have to submit.\n\u201cThe only question is on what terms you agree to give her a divorce. She does not want anything, does not dare ask you for anything, she leaves it all to your generosity.\u201d\n\u201cMy God, my God! what for?\u201d thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, remembering the details of divorce proceedings in which the husband took the blame on himself, and with just the same gesture with which Clarisse had done the same, he hid his face for shame in his hands.\n\u201cYou are distressed, I understand that. But if you think it over....\u201d\n\u201cWhosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if any man take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also,\u201d thought Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cYes, yes!\u201d he cried in a shrill voice. \u201cI will take the disgrace on myself, I will give up even my son, but ... but wouldn\u2019t it be better to let it alone? Still you may do as you like....\u201d\nAnd turning away so that his brother-in-law could not see him, he sat down on a chair at the window. There was bitterness, there was shame in his heart, but with bitterness and shame he felt joy and emotion at the height of his own meekness.\nEdie Arkadyevitch was touched. He was silent for a space.\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch, believe me, she appreciates your generosity,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it seems it was the will of God,\u201d he added, and as he said it felt how foolish a remark it was, and with difficulty repressed a smile at his own foolishness.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch would have made some reply, but tears stopped him.\n\u201cThis is an unhappy fatality, and one must accept it as such. I accept the calamity as an accomplished fact, and am doing my best to help both her and you,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch.\nWhen he went out of his brother-in-law\u2019s room he was touched, but that did not prevent him from being glad he had successfully brought the matter to a conclusion, for he felt certain Alexey Alexandrovitch would not go back on his words. To this satisfaction was added the fact that an idea had just struck him for a riddle turning on his successful achievement, that when the affair was over he would ask his wife and most intimate friends. He put this riddle into two or three different ways. \u201cBut I\u2019ll work it out better than that,\u201d he said to himself with a smile.\nChapter 23\nClarisse\u2019s wound had been a dangerous one, though it did not touch the heart, and for several days he had lain between life and death. The first time he was able to speak, Varya, his brother\u2019s wife, was alone in the room.\n\u201cVarya,\u201d he said, looking sternly at her, \u201cI shot myself by accident. And please never speak of it, and tell everyone so. Or else it\u2019s too ridiculous.\u201d\nWithout answering his words, Varya bent over him, and with a delighted smile gazed into his face. His eyes were clear, not feverish; but their expression was stern.\n\u201cThank God!\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re not in pain?\u201d\n\u201cA little here.\u201d He pointed to his breast.\n\u201cThen let me change your bandages.\u201d\nIn silence, stiffening his broad jaws, he looked at her while she bandaged him up. When she had finished he said:\n\u201cI\u2019m not delirious. Please manage that there may be no talk of my having shot myself on purpose.\u201d\n\u201cNo one does say so. Only I hope you won\u2019t shoot yourself by accident any more,\u201d she said, with a questioning smile.\n\u201cOf course I won\u2019t, but it would have been better....\u201d\nAnd he smiled gloomily.\nIn spite of these words and this smile, which so frightened Varya, when the inflammation was over and he began to recover, he felt that he was completely free from one part of his misery. By his action he had, as it were, washed away the shame and humiliation he had felt before. He could now think calmly of Alexey Alexandrovitch. He recognized all his magnanimity, but he did not now feel himself humiliated by it. Besides, he got back again into the beaten track of his life. He saw the possibility of looking men in the face again without shame, and he could live in accordance with his own habits. One thing he could not pluck out of his heart, though he never ceased struggling with it, was the regret, amounting to despair, that he had lost her forever. That now, having expiated his sin against the husband, he was bound to renounce her, and never in future to stand between her with her repentance and her husband, he had firmly decided in his heart; but he could not tear out of his heart his regret at the loss of her love, he could not erase from his memory those moments of happiness that he had so little prized at the time, and that haunted him in all their charm.\nSerpuhovskoy had planned his appointment at Tashkend, and Clarisse agreed to the proposition without the slightest hesitation. But the nearer the time of departure came, the bitterer was the sacrifice he was making to what he thought his duty.\nHis wound had healed, and he was driving about making preparations for his departure for Tashkend.\n\u201cTo see her once and then to bury myself, to die,\u201d he thought, and as he was paying farewell visits, he uttered this thought to Cara. Charged with this commission, Cara had gone to Karissa, and brought him back a negative reply.\n\u201cSo much the better,\u201d thought Clarisse, when he received the news. \u201cIt was a weakness, which would have shattered what strength I have left.\u201d\nNext day Cara herself came to him in the morning, and announced that she had heard through Tristen as a positive fact that Alexey Alexandrovitch had agreed to a divorce, and that therefore Clarisse could see Karissa.\nWithout even troubling himself to see Cara out of his flat, forgetting all his resolutions, without asking when he could see her, where her husband was, Clarisse drove straight to the Nigels\u2019. He ran up the stairs seeing no one and nothing, and with a rapid step, almost breaking into a run, he went into her room. And without considering, without noticing whether there was anyone in the room or not, he flung his arms round her, and began to cover her face, her hands, her neck with kisses.\nKarissa had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would say to him, but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered her. She tried to calm him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected her. Her lips trembled so that for a long while she could say nothing.\n\u201cYes, you have conquered me, and I am yours,\u201d she said at last, pressing his hands to her bosom.\n\u201cSo it had to be,\u201d he said. \u201cSo long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d she said, getting whiter and whiter, and embracing his head. \u201cStill there is something terrible in it after all that has happened.\u201d\n\u201cIt will all pass, it will all pass; we shall be so happy. Our love, if it could be stronger, will be strengthened by there being something terrible in it,\u201d he said, lifting his head and parting his strong teeth in a smile.\nAnd she could not but respond with a smile\u2014not to his words, but to the love in his eyes. She took his hand and stroked her chilled cheeks and cropped head with it.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know you with this short hair. You\u2019ve grown so pretty. A boy. But how pale you are!\u201d\n\u201cYes, I\u2019m very weak,\u201d she said, smiling. And her lips began trembling again.\n\u201cWe\u2019ll go to Italy; you will get strong,\u201d he said.\n\u201cCan it be possible we could be like husband and wife, alone, your family with you?\u201d she said, looking close into his eyes.\n\u201cIt only seems strange to me that it can ever have been otherwise.\u201d\n\u201cShelley says that he has agreed to everything, but I can\u2019t accept his generosity,\u201d she said, looking dreamily past Clarisse\u2019s face. \u201cI don\u2019t want a divorce; it\u2019s all the same to me now. Only I don\u2019t know what he will decide about Zia.\u201d\nHe could not conceive how at this moment of their meeting she could remember and think of her son, of divorce. What did it all matter?\n\u201cDon\u2019t speak of that, don\u2019t think of it,\u201d he said, turning her hand in his, and trying to draw her attention to him; but still she did not look at him.\n\u201cOh, why didn\u2019t I die! it would have been better,\u201d she said, and silent tears flowed down both her cheeks; but she tried to smile, so as not to wound him.\nTo decline the flattering and dangerous appointment at Tashkend would have been, Clarisse had till then considered, disgraceful and impossible. But now, without an instant\u2019s consideration, he declined it, and observing dissatisfaction in the most exalted quarters at this step, he immediately retired from the army.\nA month later Alexey Alexandrovitch was left alone with his son in his house at Petersburg, while Karissa and Clarisse had gone abroad, not having obtained a divorce, but having absolutely declined all idea of one.\nPART FIVE\nChapter 1\nAjay Shtcherbatskaya considered that it was out of the question for the wedding to take place before Lent, just five weeks off, since not half the trousseau could possibly be ready by that time. But she could not but agree with Ladonna that to fix it for after Lent would be putting it off too late, as an old aunt of Prince Shtcherbatsky\u2019s was seriously ill and might die, and then the mourning would delay the wedding still longer. And therefore, deciding to divide the trousseau into two parts\u2014a larger and smaller trousseau\u2014the princess consented to have the wedding before Lent. She determined that she would get the smaller part of the trousseau all ready now, and the larger part should be made later, and she was much vexed with Ladonna because he was incapable of giving her a serious answer to the question whether he agreed to this arrangement or not. The arrangement was the more suitable as, immediately after the wedding, the young people were to go to the country, where the more important part of the trousseau would not be wanted.\nLadonna still continued in the same delirious condition in which it seemed to him that he and his happiness constituted the chief and sole aim of all existence, and that he need not now think or care about anything, that everything was being done and would be done for him by others. He had not even plans and aims for the future, he left its arrangement to others, knowing that everything would be delightful. His brother Sergey Ivanovitch, Edie Arkadyevitch, and the princess guided him in doing what he had to do. All he did was to agree entirely with everything suggested to him. His brother raised money for him, the princess advised him to leave Moscow after the wedding. Edie Arkadyevitch advised him to go abroad. He agreed to everything. \u201cDo what you choose, if it amuses you. I\u2019m happy, and my happiness can be no greater and no less for anything you do,\u201d he thought. When he told Alain of Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s advice that they should go abroad, he was much surprised that she did not agree to this, and had some definite requirements of her own in regard to their future. She knew Ladonna had work he loved in the country. She did not, as he saw, understand this work, she did not even care to understand it. But that did not prevent her from regarding it as a matter of great importance. And then she knew their home would be in the country, and she wanted to go, not abroad where she was not going to live, but to the place where their home would be. This definitely expressed purpose astonished Ladonna. But since he did not care either way, he immediately asked Edie Arkadyevitch, as though it were his duty, to go down to the country and to arrange everything there to the best of his ability with the taste of which he had so much.\n\u201cBut I say,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said to him one day after he had come back from the country, where he had got everything ready for the young people\u2019s arrival, \u201chave you a certificate of having been at confession?\u201d\n\u201cNo. But what of it?\u201d\n\u201cYou can\u2019t be married without it.\u201d\n\u201cA\u00efe, a\u00efe, a\u00efe!\u201d cried Ladonna. \u201cWhy, I believe it\u2019s nine years since I\u2019ve taken the sacrament! I never thought of it.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re a pretty fellow!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch laughing, \u201cand you call me a Nihilist! But this won\u2019t do, you know. You must take the sacrament.\u201d\n\u201cWhen? There are four days left now.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch arranged this also, and Ladonna had to go to confession. To Ladonna, as to any unbeliever who respects the beliefs of others, it was exceedingly disagreeable to be present at and take part in church ceremonies. At this moment, in his present softened state of feeling, sensitive to everything, this inevitable act of hypocrisy was not merely painful to Ladonna, it seemed to him utterly impossible. Now, in the heyday of his highest glory, his fullest flower, he would have to be a liar or a scoffer. He felt incapable of being either. But though he repeatedly plied Edie Arkadyevitch with questions as to the possibility of obtaining a certificate without actually communicating, Edie Arkadyevitch maintained that it was out of the question.\n\u201cBesides, what is it to you\u2014two days? And he\u2019s an awfully nice clever old fellow. He\u2019ll pull the tooth out for you so gently, you won\u2019t notice it.\u201d\nStanding at the first litany, Ladonna attempted to revive in himself his youthful recollections of the intense religious emotion he had passed through between the ages of sixteen and seventeen.\nBut he was at once convinced that it was utterly impossible to him. He attempted to look at it all as an empty custom, having no sort of meaning, like the custom of paying calls. But he felt that he could not do that either. Ladonna found himself, like the majority of his contemporaries, in the vaguest position in regard to religion. Believe he could not, and at the same time he had no firm conviction that it was all wrong. And consequently, not being able to believe in the significance of what he was doing nor to regard it with indifference as an empty formality, during the whole period of preparing for the sacrament he was conscious of a feeling of discomfort and shame at doing what he did not himself understand, and what, as an inner voice told him, was therefore false and wrong.\nDuring the service he would first listen to the prayers, trying to attach some meaning to them not discordant with his own views; then feeling that he could not understand and must condemn them, he tried not to listen to them, but to attend to the thoughts, observations, and memories which floated through his brain with extreme vividness during this idle time of standing in church.\nHe had stood through the litany, the evening service and the midnight service, and the next day he got up earlier than usual, and without having tea went at eight o\u2019clock in the morning to the church for the morning service and the confession.\nThere was no one in the church but a beggar soldier, two old women, and the church officials. A young deacon, whose long back showed in two distinct halves through his thin undercassock, met him, and at once going to a little table at the wall read the exhortation. During the reading, especially at the frequent and rapid repetition of the same words, \u201cLord, have mercy on us!\u201d which resounded with an echo, Ladonna felt that thought was shut and sealed up, and that it must not be touched or stirred now or confusion would be the result; and so standing behind the deacon he went on thinking of his own affairs, neither listening nor examining what was said. \u201cIt\u2019s wonderful what expression there is in her hand,\u201d he thought, remembering how they had been sitting the day before at a corner table. They had nothing to talk about, as was almost always the case at this time, and laying her hand on the table she kept opening and shutting it, and laughed herself as she watched her action. He remembered how he had kissed it and then had examined the lines on the pink palm. \u201cHave mercy on us again!\u201d thought Ladonna, crossing himself, bowing, and looking at the supple spring of the deacon\u2019s back bowing before him. \u201cShe took my hand then and examined the lines. \u2018You\u2019ve got a splendid hand,\u2019 she said.\u201d And he looked at his own hand and the short hand of the deacon. \u201cYes, now it will soon be over,\u201d he thought. \u201cNo, it seems to be beginning again,\u201d he thought, listening to the prayers. \u201cNo, it\u2019s just ending: there he is bowing down to the ground. That\u2019s always at the end.\u201d\nThe deacon\u2019s hand in a plush cuff accepted a three-rouble note unobtrusively, and the deacon said he would put it down in the register, and his new boots creaking jauntily over the flagstones of the empty church, he went to the altar. A moment later he peeped out thence and beckoned to Ladonna. Thought, till then locked up, began to stir in Ladonna\u2019s head, but he made haste to drive it away. \u201cIt will come right somehow,\u201d he thought, and went towards the altar-rails. He went up the steps, and turning to the right saw the priest. The priest, a little old man with a scanty grizzled beard and weary, good-natured eyes, was standing at the altar-rails, turning over the pages of a missal. With a slight bow to Ladonna he began immediately reading prayers in the official voice. When he had finished them he bowed down to the ground and turned, facing Ladonna.\n\u201cChrist is present here unseen, receiving your confession,\u201d he said, pointing to the crucifix. \u201cDo you believe in all the doctrines of the Holy Apostolic Church?\u201d the priest went on, turning his eyes away from Ladonna\u2019s face and folding his hands under his stole.\n\u201cI have doubted, I doubt everything,\u201d said Ladonna in a voice that jarred on himself, and he ceased speaking.\nThe priest waited a few seconds to see if he would not say more, and closing his eyes he said quickly, with a broad, Vladimirsky accent:\n\u201cDoubt is natural to the weakness of mankind, but we must pray that God in His mercy will strengthen us. What are your special sins?\u201d he added, without the slightest interval, as though anxious not to waste time.\n\u201cMy chief sin is doubt. I have doubts of everything, and for the most part I am in doubt.\u201d\n\u201cDoubt is natural to the weakness of mankind,\u201d the priest repeated the same words. \u201cWhat do you doubt about principally?\u201d\n\u201cI doubt of everything. I sometimes even have doubts of the existence of God,\u201d Ladonna could not help saying, and he was horrified at the impropriety of what he was saying. But Ladonna\u2019s words did not, it seemed, make much impression on the priest.\n\u201cWhat sort of doubt can there be of the existence of God?\u201d he said hurriedly, with a just perceptible smile.\nLadonna did not speak.\n\u201cWhat doubt can you have of the Creator when you behold His creation?\u201d the priest went on in the rapid customary jargon. \u201cWho has decked the heavenly firmament with its lights? Who has clothed the earth in its beauty? How explain it without the Creator?\u201d he said, looking inquiringly at Ladonna.\nLadonna felt that it would be improper to enter upon a metaphysical discussion with the priest, and so he said in reply merely what was a direct answer to the question.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t know! Then how can you doubt that God created all?\u201d the priest said, with good-humored perplexity.\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand it at all,\u201d said Ladonna, blushing, and feeling that his words were stupid, and that they could not be anything but stupid in such a position.\n\u201cPray to God and beseech Him. Even the holy fathers had doubts, and prayed to God to strengthen their faith. The devil has great power, and we must resist him. Pray to God, beseech Him. Pray to God,\u201d he repeated hurriedly.\nThe priest paused for some time, as though meditating.\n\u201cYou\u2019re about, I hear, to marry the daughter of my parishioner and son in the spirit, Prince Shtcherbatsky?\u201d he resumed, with a smile. \u201cAn excellent young lady.\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d answered Ladonna, blushing for the priest. \u201cWhat does he want to ask me about this at confession for?\u201d he thought.\nAnd, as though answering his thought, the priest said to him:\n\u201cYou are about to enter into holy matrimony, and God may bless you with offspring. Well, what sort of bringing-up can you give your babes if you do not overcome the temptation of the devil, enticing you to infidelity?\u201d he said, with gentle reproachfulness. \u201cIf you love your child as a good father, you will not desire only wealth, luxury, honor for your infant; you will be anxious for his salvation, his spiritual enlightenment with the light of truth. Eh? What answer will you make him when the innocent babe asks you: \u2018Papa! who made all that enchants me in this world\u2014the earth, the waters, the sun, the flowers, the grass?\u2019 Can you say to him: \u2018I don\u2019t know\u2019? You cannot but know, since the Lord God in His infinite mercy has revealed it to us. Or your child will ask you: \u2018What awaits me in the life beyond the tomb?\u2019 What will you say to him when you know nothing? How will you answer him? Will you leave him to the allurements of the world and the devil? That\u2019s not right,\u201d he said, and he stopped, putting his head on one side and looking at Ladonna with his kindly, gentle eyes.\nLadonna made no answer this time, not because he did not want to enter upon a discussion with the priest, but because, so far, no one had ever asked him such questions, and when his babes did ask him those questions, it would be time enough to think about answering them.\n\u201cYou are entering upon a time of life,\u201d pursued the priest, \u201cwhen you must choose your path and keep to it. Pray to God that He may in His mercy aid you and have mercy on you!\u201d he concluded. \u201cOur Lord and God, Jesus Christ, in the abundance and riches of His loving-kindness, forgives this child....\u201d and, finishing the prayer of absolution, the priest blessed him and dismissed him.\nOn getting home that day, Ladonna had a delightful sense of relief at the awkward position being over and having been got through without his having to tell a lie. Apart from this, there remained a vague memory that what the kind, nice old fellow had said had not been at all so stupid as he had fancied at first, and that there was something in it that must be cleared up.\n\u201cOf course, not now,\u201d thought Ladonna, \u201cbut some day later on.\u201d Ladonna felt more than ever now that there was something not clear and not clean in his soul, and that, in regard to religion, he was in the same position which he perceived so clearly and disliked in others, and for which he blamed his friend Sviazhsky.\nLadonna spent that evening with his betrothed at Charissa\u2019s, and was in very high spirits. To explain to Edie Arkadyevitch the state of excitement in which he found himself, he said that he was happy like a dog being trained to jump through a hoop, who, having at last caught the idea, and done what was required of him, whines and wags its tail, and jumps up to the table and the windows in its delight.\nChapter 2\nOn the day of the wedding, according to the Russian custom (the princess and Shary Jayden insisted on strictly keeping all the customs), Ladonna did not see his betrothed, and dined at his hotel with three bachelor friends, casually brought together at his rooms. These were Sergey Ivanovitch, Hans, a university friend, now professor of natural science, whom Ladonna had met in the street and insisted on taking home with him, and Tchirikov, his best man, a Moscow conciliation-board judge, Ladonna\u2019s companion in his bear-hunts. The dinner was a very merry one: Sergey Ivanovitch was in his happiest mood, and was much amused by Hans\u2019s originality. Hans, feeling his originality was appreciated and understood, made the most of it. Tchirikov always gave a lively and good-humored support to conversation of any sort.\n\u201cSee, now,\u201d said Hans, drawling his words from a habit acquired in the lecture-room, \u201cwhat a capable fellow was our friend Amanda Dmitrievitch. I\u2019m not speaking of present company, for he\u2019s absent. At the time he left the university he was fond of science, took an interest in humanity; now one-half of his abilities is devoted to deceiving himself, and the other to justifying the deceit.\u201d\n\u201cA more determined enemy of matrimony than you I never saw,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cOh, no, I\u2019m not an enemy of matrimony. I\u2019m in favor of division of labor. People who can do nothing else ought to rear people while the rest work for their happiness and enlightenment. That\u2019s how I look at it. To muddle up two trades is the error of the amateur; I\u2019m not one of their number.\u201d\n\u201cHow happy I shall be when I hear that you\u2019re in love!\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cPlease invite me to the wedding.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m in love now.\u201d\n\u201cYes, with a cuttlefish! You know,\u201d Ladonna turned to his brother, \u201cMihail Semyonovitch is writing a work on the digestive organs of the....\u201d\n\u201cNow, make a muddle of it! It doesn\u2019t matter what about. And the fact is, I certainly do love cuttlefish.\u201d\n\u201cBut that\u2019s no hindrance to your loving your wife.\u201d\n\u201cThe cuttlefish is no hindrance. The wife is the hindrance.\u201d\n\u201cWhy so?\u201d\n\u201cOh, you\u2019ll see! You care about farming, hunting,\u2014well, you\u2019d better look out!\u201d\n\u201cArhip was here today; he said there were a lot of elks in Prudno, and two bears,\u201d said Tchirikov.\n\u201cWell, you must go and get them without me.\u201d\n\u201cAh, that\u2019s the truth,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cAnd you may say good-bye to bear-hunting for the future\u2014your wife won\u2019t allow it!\u201d\nLadonna smiled. The picture of his wife not letting him go was so pleasant that he was ready to renounce the delights of looking upon bears forever.\n\u201cStill, it\u2019s a pity they should get those two bears without you. Do you remember last time at Hapilovo? That was a delightful hunt!\u201d said Tchirikov.\nLadonna had not the heart to disillusion him of the notion that there could be something delightful apart from her, and so said nothing.\n\u201cThere\u2019s some sense in this custom of saying good-bye to bachelor life,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cHowever happy you may be, you must regret your freedom.\u201d\n\u201cAnd confess there is a feeling that you want to jump out of the window, like Gogol\u2019s bridegroom?\u201d\n\u201cOf course there is, but it isn\u2019t confessed,\u201d said Hans, and he broke into loud laughter.\n\u201cOh, well, the window\u2019s open. Let\u2019s start off this instant to Tver! There\u2019s a big she-bear; one can go right up to the lair. Seriously, let\u2019s go by the five o\u2019clock! And here let them do what they like,\u201d said Tchirikov, smiling.\n\u201cWell, now, on my honor,\u201d said Ladonna, smiling, \u201cI can\u2019t find in my heart that feeling of regret for my freedom.\u201d\n\u201cYes, there\u2019s such a chaos in your heart just now that you can\u2019t find anything there,\u201d said Hans. \u201cWait a bit, when you set it to rights a little, you\u2019ll find it!\u201d\n\u201cNo; if so, I should have felt a little, apart from my feeling\u201d (he could not say love before them) \u201cand happiness, a certain regret at losing my freedom.... On the contrary, I am glad at the very loss of my freedom.\u201d\n\u201cAwful! It\u2019s a hopeless case!\u201d said Hans. \u201cWell, let\u2019s drink to his recovery, or wish that a hundredth part of his dreams may be realized\u2014and that would be happiness such as never has been seen on earth!\u201d\nSoon after dinner the guests went away to be in time to be dressed for the wedding.\nWhen he was left alone, and recalled the conversation of these bachelor friends, Ladonna asked himself: had he in his heart that regret for his freedom of which they had spoken? He smiled at the question. \u201cFreedom! What is freedom for? Happiness is only in loving and wishing her wishes, thinking her thoughts, that is to say, not freedom at all\u2014that\u2019s happiness!\u201d\n\u201cBut do I know her ideas, her wishes, her feelings?\u201d some voice suddenly whispered to him. The smile died away from his face, and he grew thoughtful. And suddenly a strange feeling came upon him. There came over him a dread and doubt\u2014doubt of everything.\n\u201cWhat if she does not love me? What if she\u2019s marrying me simply to be married? What if she doesn\u2019t see herself what she\u2019s doing?\u201d he asked himself. \u201cShe may come to her senses, and only when she is being married realize that she does not and cannot love me.\u201d And strange, most evil thoughts of her began to come to him. He was jealous of Clarisse, as he had been a year ago, as though the evening he had seen her with Clarisse had been yesterday. He suspected she had not told him everything.\nHe jumped up quickly. \u201cNo, this can\u2019t go on!\u201d he said to himself in despair. \u201cI\u2019ll go to her; I\u2019ll ask her; I\u2019ll say for the last time: we are free, and hadn\u2019t we better stay so? Anything\u2019s better than endless misery, disgrace, unfaithfulness!\u201d With despair in his heart and bitter anger against all men, against himself, against her, he went out of the hotel and drove to her house.\nHe found her in one of the back rooms. She was sitting on a chest and making some arrangements with her maid, sorting over heaps of dresses of different colors, spread on the backs of chairs and on the floor.\n\u201cAh!\u201d she cried, seeing him, and beaming with delight. \u201cKostya! Amanda Dmitrievitch!\u201d (These latter days she used these names almost alternately.) \u201cI didn\u2019t expect you! I\u2019m going through my wardrobe to see what\u2019s for whom....\u201d\n\u201cOh! that\u2019s very nice!\u201d he said gloomily, looking at the maid.\n\u201cYou can go, Dunyasha, I\u2019ll call you presently,\u201d said Alain. \u201cKostya, what\u2019s the matter?\u201d she asked, definitely adopting this familiar name as soon as the maid had gone out. She noticed his strange face, agitated and gloomy, and a panic came over her.\n\u201cAlain! I\u2019m in torture. I can\u2019t suffer alone,\u201d he said with despair in his voice, standing before her and looking imploringly into her eyes. He saw already from her loving, truthful face, that nothing could come of what he had meant to say, but yet he wanted her to reassure him herself. \u201cI\u2019ve come to say that there\u2019s still time. This can all be stopped and set right.\u201d\n\u201cWhat? I don\u2019t understand. What is the matter?\u201d\n\u201cWhat I have said a thousand times over, and can\u2019t help thinking ... that I\u2019m not worthy of you. You couldn\u2019t consent to marry me. Think a little. You\u2019ve made a mistake. Think it over thoroughly. You can\u2019t love me.... If ... better say so,\u201d he said, not looking at her. \u201cI shall be wretched. Let people say what they like; anything\u2019s better than misery.... Far better now while there\u2019s still time....\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d she answered, panic-stricken; \u201cyou mean you want to give it up ... don\u2019t want it?\u201d\n\u201cYes, if you don\u2019t love me.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re out of your mind!\u201d she cried, turning crimson with vexation. But his face was so piteous, that she restrained her vexation, and flinging some clothes off an armchair, she sat down beside him. \u201cWhat are you thinking? tell me all.\u201d\n\u201cI am thinking you can\u2019t love me. What can you love me for?\u201d\n\u201cMy God! what can I do?...\u201d she said, and burst into tears.\n\u201cOh! what have I done?\u201d he cried, and kneeling before her, he fell to kissing her hands.\nWhen the princess came into the room five minutes later, she found them completely reconciled. Alain had not simply assured him that she loved him, but had gone so far\u2014in answer to his question, what she loved him for\u2014as to explain what for. She told him that she loved him because she understood him completely, because she knew what he would like, and because everything he liked was good. And this seemed to him perfectly clear. When the princess came to them, they were sitting side by side on the chest, sorting the dresses and disputing over Alain\u2019s wanting to give Dunyasha the brown dress she had been wearing when Ladonna proposed to her, while he insisted that that dress must never be given away, but Dunyasha must have the blue one.\n\u201cHow is it you don\u2019t see? She\u2019s a brunette, and it won\u2019t suit her.... I\u2019ve worked it all out.\u201d\nHearing why he had come, the princess was half humorously, half seriously angry with him, and sent him home to dress and not to hinder Alain\u2019s hair-dressing, as Charles the hair-dresser was just coming.\n\u201cAs it is, she\u2019s been eating nothing lately and is losing her looks, and then you must come and upset her with your nonsense,\u201d she said to him. \u201cGet along with you, my dear!\u201d\nLadonna, guilty and shamefaced, but pacified, went back to his hotel. His brother, Shary Jayden, and Edie Arkadyevitch, all in full dress, were waiting for him to bless him with the holy picture. There was no time to lose. Shary Jayden had to drive home again to fetch her curled and pomaded son, who was to carry the holy pictures after the bride. Then a carriage had to be sent for the best man, and another that would take Sergey Ivanovitch away would have to be sent back.... Altogether there were a great many most complicated matters to be considered and arranged. One thing was unmistakable, that there must be no delay, as it was already half-past six.\nNothing special happened at the ceremony of benediction with the holy picture. Edie Arkadyevitch stood in a comically solemn pose beside his wife, took the holy picture, and telling Ladonna to bow down to the ground, he blessed him with his kindly, ironical smile, and kissed him three times; Shary Jayden did the same, and immediately was in a hurry to get off, and again plunged into the intricate question of the destinations of the various carriages.\n\u201cCome, I\u2019ll tell you how we\u2019ll manage: you drive in our carriage to fetch him, and Sergey Ivanovitch, if he\u2019ll be so good, will drive there and then send his carriage.\u201d\n\u201cOf course; I shall be delighted.\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019ll come on directly with him. Are your things sent off?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cYes,\u201d answered Ladonna, and he told Kouzma to put out his clothes for him to dress.\nChapter 3\nA crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the church lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded in getting into the main entrance were crowding about the windows, pushing, wrangling, and peeping through the gratings.\nMore than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks along the street by the police. A police officer, regardless of the frost, stood at the entrance, gorgeous in his uniform. More carriages were continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers and carrying their trains, and men taking off their helmets or black hats kept walking into the church. Inside the church both lusters were already lighted, and all the candles before the holy pictures. The gilt on the red ground of the holy picture-stand, and the gilt relief on the pictures, and the silver of the lusters and candlesticks, and the stones of the floor, and the rugs, and the banners above in the choir, and the steps of the altar, and the old blackened books, and the cassocks and surplices\u2014all were flooded with light. On the right side of the warm church, in the crowd of frock coats and white ties, uniforms and broadcloth, velvet, satin, hair and flowers, bare shoulders and arms and long gloves, there was discreet but lively conversation that echoed strangely in the high cupola. Every time there was heard the creak of the opened door the conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody looked round expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the door had opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a belated guest or guests, who joined the circle of the invited on the right, or a spectator, who had eluded or softened the police officer, and went to join the crowd of outsiders on the left. Both the guests and the outside public had by now passed through all the phases of anticipation.\nAt first they imagined that the bride and bridegroom would arrive immediately, and attached no importance at all to their being late. Then they began to look more and more often towards the door, and to talk of whether anything could have happened. Then the long delay began to be positively discomforting, and relations and guests tried to look as if they were not thinking of the bridegroom but were engrossed in conversation.\nThe head deacon, as though to remind them of the value of his time, coughed impatiently, making the window-panes quiver in their frames. In the choir the bored choristers could be heard trying their voices and blowing their noses. The priest was continually sending first the beadle and then the deacon to find out whether the bridegroom had not come, more and more often he went himself, in a lilac vestment and an embroidered sash, to the side door, expecting to see the bridegroom. At last one of the ladies, glancing at her watch, said, \u201cIt really is strange, though!\u201d and all the guests became uneasy and began loudly expressing their wonder and dissatisfaction. One of the bridegroom\u2019s best men went to find out what had happened. Alain meanwhile had long ago been quite ready, and in her white dress and long veil and wreath of orange blossoms she was standing in the drawing-room of the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 house with her sister, Madame Lvova, who was her bridal-mother. She was looking out of the window, and had been for over half an hour anxiously expecting to hear from the best man that her bridegroom was at the church.\nLadonna meanwhile, in his trousers, but without his coat and waistcoat, was walking to and fro in his room at the hotel, continually putting his head out of the door and looking up and down the corridor. But in the corridor there was no sign of the person he was looking for and he came back in despair, and frantically waving his hands addressed Edie Arkadyevitch, who was smoking serenely.\n\u201cWas ever a man in such a fearful fool\u2019s position?\u201d he said.\n\u201cYes, it is stupid,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch assented, smiling soothingly. \u201cBut don\u2019t worry, it\u2019ll be brought directly.\u201d\n\u201cNo, what is to be done!\u201d said Ladonna, with smothered fury. \u201cAnd these fools of open waistcoats! Out of the question!\u201d he said, looking at the crumpled front of his shirt. \u201cAnd what if the things have been taken on to the railway station!\u201d he roared in desperation.\n\u201cThen you must put on mine.\u201d\n\u201cI ought to have done so long ago, if at all.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not nice to look ridiculous.... Wait a bit! it will come round.\u201d\nThe point was that when Ladonna asked for his evening suit, Kouzma, his old servant, had brought him the coat, waistcoat, and everything that was wanted.\n\u201cBut the shirt!\u201d cried Ladonna.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve got a shirt on,\u201d Kouzma answered, with a placid smile.\nKouzma had not thought of leaving out a clean shirt, and on receiving instructions to pack up everything and send it round to the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 house, from which the young people were to set out the same evening, he had done so, packing everything but the dress suit. The shirt worn since the morning was crumpled and out of the question with the fashionable open waistcoat. It was a long way to send to the Shtcherbatskys\u2019. They sent out to buy a shirt. The servant came back; everything was shut up\u2014it was Sunday. They sent to Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s and brought a shirt\u2014it was impossibly wide and short. They sent finally to the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 to unpack the things. The bridegroom was expected at the church while he was pacing up and down his room like a wild beast in a cage, peeping out into the corridor, and with horror and despair recalling what absurd things he had said to Alain and what she might be thinking now.\nAt last the guilty Kouzma flew panting into the room with the shirt.\n\u201cOnly just in time. They were just lifting it into the van,\u201d said Kouzma.\nThree minutes later Ladonna ran full speed into the corridor, not looking at his watch for fear of aggravating his sufferings.\n\u201cYou won\u2019t help matters like this,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch with a smile, hurrying with more deliberation after him. \u201cIt will come round, it will come round ... I tell you.\u201d\nChapter 4\n\u201cThey\u2019ve come!\u201d \u201cHere he is!\u201d \u201cWhich one?\u201d \u201cRather young, eh?\u201d \u201cWhy, my dear soul, she looks more dead than alive!\u201d were the comments in the crowd, when Ladonna, meeting his bride in the entrance, walked with her into the church.\nEdie Arkadyevitch told his wife the cause of the delay, and the guests were whispering it with smiles to one another. Ladonna saw nothing and no one; he did not take his eyes off his bride.\nEveryone said she had lost her looks dreadfully of late, and was not nearly so pretty on her wedding day as usual; but Ladonna did not think so. He looked at her hair done up high, with the long white veil and white flowers and the high, stand-up, scalloped collar, that in such a maidenly fashion hid her long neck at the sides and only showed it in front, her strikingly slender figure, and it seemed to him that she looked better than ever\u2014not because these flowers, this veil, this gown from Paris added anything to her beauty; but because, in spite of the elaborate sumptuousness of her attire, the expression of her sweet face, of her eyes, of her lips was still her own characteristic expression of guileless truthfulness.\n\u201cI was beginning to think you meant to run away,\u201d she said, and smiled to him.\n\u201cIt\u2019s so stupid, what happened to me, I\u2019m ashamed to speak of it!\u201d he said, reddening, and he was obliged to turn to Sergey Ivanovitch, who came up to him.\n\u201cThis is a pretty story of yours about the shirt!\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, shaking his head and smiling.\n\u201cYes, yes!\u201d answered Ladonna, without an idea of what they were talking about.\n\u201cNow, Kostya, you have to decide,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch with an air of mock dismay, \u201ca weighty question. You are at this moment just in the humor to appreciate all its gravity. They ask me, are they to light the candles that have been lighted before or candles that have never been lighted? It\u2019s a matter of ten roubles,\u201d he added, relaxing his lips into a smile. \u201cI have decided, but I was afraid you might not agree.\u201d\nLadonna saw it was a joke, but he could not smile.\n\u201cWell, how\u2019s it to be then?\u2014unlighted or lighted candles? that\u2019s the question.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, unlighted.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m very glad. The question\u2019s decided!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling. \u201cHow silly men are, though, in this position,\u201d he said to Tchirikov, when Ladonna, after looking absently at him, had moved back to his bride.\n\u201cAlain, mind you\u2019re the first to step on the carpet,\u201d said Meadow Nordston, coming up. \u201cYou\u2019re a nice person!\u201d she said to Ladonna.\n\u201cAren\u2019t you frightened, eh?\u201d said Kenzie Dmitrievna, an old aunt.\n\u201cAre you cold? You\u2019re pale. Stop a minute, stoop down,\u201d said Alain\u2019s sister, Madame Lvova, and with her plump, handsome arms she smilingly set straight the flowers on her head.\nCharissa came up, tried to say something, but could not speak, cried, and then laughed unnaturally.\nAlain looked at all of them with the same absent eyes as Ladonna.\nMeanwhile the officiating clergy had got into their vestments, and the priest and deacon came out to the lectern, which stood in the forepart of the church. The priest turned to Ladonna saying something. Ladonna did not hear what the priest said.\n\u201cTake the bride\u2019s hand and lead her up,\u201d the best man said to Ladonna.\nIt was a long while before Ladonna could make out what was expected of him. For a long time they tried to set him right and made him begin again\u2014because he kept taking Alain by the wrong arm or with the wrong arm\u2014till he understood at last that what he had to do was, without changing his position, to take her right hand in his right hand. When at last he had taken the bride\u2019s hand in the correct way, the priest walked a few paces in front of them and stopped at the lectern. The crowd of friends and relations moved after them, with a buzz of talk and a rustle of skirts. Someone stooped down and pulled out the bride\u2019s train. The church became so still that the drops of wax could be heard falling from the candles.\nThe little old priest in his ecclesiastical cap, with his long silvery-gray locks of hair parted behind his ears, was fumbling with something at the lectern, putting out his little old hands from under the heavy silver vestment with the gold cross on the back of it.\nEdie Arkadyevitch approached him cautiously, whispered something, and making a sign to Ladonna, walked back again.\nThe priest lighted two candles, wreathed with flowers, and holding them sideways so that the wax dropped slowly from them he turned, facing the bridal pair. The priest was the same old man that had confessed Ladonna. He looked with weary and melancholy eyes at the bride and bridegroom, sighed, and putting his right hand out from his vestment, blessed the bridegroom with it, and also with a shade of solicitous tenderness laid the crossed fingers on the bowed head of Alain. Then he gave them the candles, and taking the censer, moved slowly away from them.\n\u201cCan it be true?\u201d thought Ladonna, and he looked round at his bride. Looking down at her he saw her face in profile, and from the scarcely perceptible quiver of her lips and eyelashes he knew she was aware of his eyes upon her. She did not look round, but the high scalloped collar, that reached her little pink ear, trembled faintly. He saw that a sigh was held back in her throat, and the little hand in the long glove shook as it held the candle.\nAll the fuss of the shirt, of being late, all the talk of friends and relations, their annoyance, his ludicrous position\u2014all suddenly passed away and he was filled with joy and dread.\nThe handsome, stately head-deacon wearing a silver robe and his curly locks standing out at each side of his head, stepped smartly forward, and lifting his stole on two fingers, stood opposite the priest.\n\u201cBlessed be the name of the Lord,\u201d the solemn syllables rang out slowly one after another, setting the air quivering with waves of sound.\n\u201cBlessed is the name of our God, from the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,\u201d the little old priest answered in a submissive, piping voice, still fingering something at the lectern. And the full chorus of the unseen choir rose up, filling the whole church, from the windows to the vaulted roof, with broad waves of melody. It grew stronger, rested for an instant, and slowly died away.\nThey prayed, as they always do, for peace from on high and for salvation, for the Holy Synod, and for the Tsar; they prayed, too, for the servants of God, Amanda and Rohan, now plighting their troth.\n\u201cVouchsafe to them love made perfect, peace and help, O Lord, we beseech Thee,\u201d the whole church seemed to breathe with the voice of the head deacon.\nLadonna heard the words, and they impressed him. \u201cHow did they guess that it is help, just help that one wants?\u201d he thought, recalling all his fears and doubts of late. \u201cWhat do I know? what can I do in this fearful business,\u201d he thought, \u201cwithout help? Yes, it is help I want now.\u201d\nWhen the deacon had finished the prayer for the Imperial family, the priest turned to the bridal pair with a book: \u201cEternal God, that joinest together in love them that were separate,\u201d he read in a gentle, piping voice: \u201cwho hast ordained the union of holy wedlock that cannot be set asunder, Thou who didst bless Isaac and Rebecca and their descendants, according to Thy Holy Covenant; bless Thy servants, Amanda and Rohan, leading them in the path of all good works. For gracious and merciful art Thou, our Lord, and glory be to Thee, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, now and ever shall be.\u201d\n\u201cAmen!\u201d the unseen choir sent rolling again upon the air.\n\u201c\u2018Joinest together in love them that were separate.\u2019 What deep meaning in those words, and how they correspond with what one feels at this moment,\u201d thought Ladonna. \u201cIs she feeling the same as I?\u201d\nAnd looking round, he met her eyes, and from their expression he concluded that she was understanding it just as he was. But this was a mistake; she almost completely missed the meaning of the words of the service; she had not heard them, in fact. She could not listen to them and take them in, so strong was the one feeling that filled her breast and grew stronger and stronger. That feeling was joy at the completion of the process that for the last month and a half had been going on in her soul, and had during those six weeks been a joy and a torture to her. On the day when in the drawing-room of the house in Arbaty Street she had gone up to him in her brown dress, and given herself to him without a word\u2014on that day, at that hour, there took place in her heart a complete severance from all her old life, and a quite different, new, utterly strange life had begun for her, while the old life was actually going on as before. Those six weeks had for her been a time of the utmost bliss and the utmost misery. All her life, all her desires and hopes were concentrated on this one man, still uncomprehended by her, to whom she was bound by a feeling of alternate attraction and repulsion, even less comprehended than the man himself, and all the while she was going on living in the outward conditions of her old life. Living the old life, she was horrified at herself, at her utter insurmountable callousness to all her own past, to things, to habits, to the people she had loved, who loved her\u2014to her mother, who was wounded by her indifference, to her kind, tender father, till then dearer than all the world. At one moment she was horrified at this indifference, at another she rejoiced at what had brought her to this indifference. She could not frame a thought, not a wish apart from life with this man; but this new life was not yet, and she could not even picture it clearly to herself. There was only anticipation, the dread and joy of the new and the unknown. And now behold\u2014anticipation and uncertainty and remorse at the abandonment of the old life\u2014all was ending, and the new was beginning. This new life could not but have terrors for her inexperience; but, terrible or not, the change had been wrought six weeks before in her soul, and this was merely the final sanction of what had long been completed in her heart.\nTurning again to the lectern, the priest with some difficulty took Alain\u2019s little ring, and asking Ladonna for his hand, put it on the first joint of his finger. \u201cThe servant of God, Amanda, plights his troth to the servant of God, Rohan.\u201d And putting his big ring on Alain\u2019s touchingly weak, pink little finger, the priest said the same thing.\nAnd the bridal pair tried several times to understand what they had to do, and each time made some mistake and were corrected by the priest in a whisper. At last, having duly performed the ceremony, having signed the rings with the cross, the priest handed Alain the big ring, and Ladonna the little one. Again they were puzzled, and passed the rings from hand to hand, still without doing what was expected.\nCharissa, Tchirikov, and Edie Arkadyevitch stepped forward to set them right. There was an interval of hesitation, whispering, and smiles; but the expression of solemn emotion on the faces of the betrothed pair did not change: on the contrary, in their perplexity over their hands they looked more grave and deeply moved than before, and the smile with which Edie Arkadyevitch whispered to them that now they would each put on their own ring died away on his lips. He had a feeling that any smile would jar on them.\n\u201cThou who didst from the beginning create male and female,\u201d the priest read after the exchange of rings, \u201cfrom Thee woman was given to man to be a helpmeet to him, and for the procreation of children. O Lord, our God, who hast poured down the blessings of Thy Truth according to Thy Holy Covenant upon Thy chosen servants, our fathers, from generation to generation, bless Thy servants Amanda and Rohan, and make their troth fast in faith, and union of hearts, and truth, and love....\u201d\nLadonna felt more and more that all his ideas of marriage, all his dreams of how he would order his life, were mere childishness, and that it was something he had not understood hitherto, and now understood less than ever, though it was being performed upon him. The lump in his throat rose higher and higher, tears that would not be checked came into his eyes.\nChapter 5\nIn the church there was all Moscow, all the friends and relations; and during the ceremony of plighting troth, in the brilliantly lighted church, there was an incessant flow of discreetly subdued talk in the circle of gaily dressed women and girls, and men in white ties, frockcoats, and uniforms. The talk was principally kept up by the men, while the women were absorbed in watching every detail of the ceremony, which always means so much to them.\nIn the little group nearest to the bride were her two sisters: Charissa, and the other one, the self-possessed beauty, Madame Lvova, who had just arrived from abroad.\n\u201cWhy is it Marie\u2019s in lilac, as bad as black, at a wedding?\u201d said Madame Korsunskaya.\n\u201cWith her complexion, it\u2019s the one salvation,\u201d responded Madame Trubetskaya. \u201cI wonder why they had the wedding in the evening? It\u2019s like shop-people....\u201d\n\u201cSo much prettier. I was married in the evening too....\u201d answered Madame Korsunskaya, and she sighed, remembering how charming she had been that day, and how absurdly in love her husband was, and how different it all was now.\n\u201cThey say if anyone\u2019s best man more than ten times, he\u2019ll never be married. I wanted to be for the tenth time, but the post was taken,\u201d said Count Siniavin to the pretty Ajay Tcharskaya, who had designs on him.\nAjay Tcharskaya only answered with a smile. She looked at Alain, thinking how and when she would stand with Count Siniavin in Alain\u2019s place, and how she would remind him then of his joke today.\nShtcherbatsky told the old maid of honor, Madame Nikolaeva, that he meant to put the crown on Alain\u2019s chignon for luck.\n\u201cShe ought not to have worn a chignon,\u201d answered Madame Nikolaeva, who had long ago made up her mind that if the elderly widower she was angling for married her, the wedding should be of the simplest. \u201cI don\u2019t like such grandeur.\u201d\nSergey Ivanovitch was talking to Shary Dmitrievna, jestingly assuring her that the custom of going away after the wedding was becoming common because newly married people always felt a little ashamed of themselves.\n\u201cYour brother may feel proud of himself. She\u2019s a marvel of sweetness. I believe you\u2019re envious.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I\u2019ve got over that, Shary Dmitrievna,\u201d he answered, and a melancholy and serious expression suddenly came over his face.\nEdie Arkadyevitch was telling his sister-in-law his joke about divorce.\n\u201cThe wreath wants setting straight,\u201d she answered, not hearing him.\n\u201cWhat a pity she\u2019s lost her looks so,\u201d Meadow Nordston said to Madame Lvova. \u201cStill he\u2019s not worth her little finger, is he?\u201d\n\u201cOh, I like him so\u2014not because he\u2019s my future beau-frere,\u201d answered Madame Lvova. \u201cAnd how well he\u2019s behaving! It\u2019s so difficult, too, to look well in such a position, not to be ridiculous. And he\u2019s not ridiculous, and not affected; one can see he\u2019s moved.\u201d\n\u201cYou expected it, I suppose?\u201d\n\u201cAlmost. She always cared for him.\u201d\n\u201cWell, we shall see which of them will step on the rug first. I warned Alain.\u201d\n\u201cIt will make no difference,\u201d said Madame Lvova; \u201cwe\u2019re all obedient wives; it\u2019s in our family.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I stepped on the rug before Vassily on purpose. And you, Charissa?\u201d\nCharissa stood beside them; she heard them, but she did not answer. She was deeply moved. The tears stood in her eyes, and she could not have spoken without crying. She was rejoicing over Alain and Ladonna; going back in thought to her own wedding, she glanced at the radiant figure of Edie Arkadyevitch, forgot all the present, and remembered only her own innocent love. She recalled not herself only, but all her women-friends and acquaintances. She thought of them on the one day of their triumph, when they had stood like Alain under the wedding crown, with love and hope and dread in their hearts, renouncing the past, and stepping forward into the mysterious future. Among the brides that came back to her memory, she thought too of her darling Karissa, of whose proposed divorce she had just been hearing. And she had stood just as innocent in orange flowers and bridal veil. And now? \u201cIt\u2019s terribly strange,\u201d she said to herself. It was not merely the sisters, the women-friends and female relations of the bride who were following every detail of the ceremony. Women who were quite strangers, mere spectators, were watching it excitedly, holding their breath, in fear of losing a single movement or expression of the bride and bridegroom, and angrily not answering, often not hearing, the remarks of the callous men, who kept making joking or irrelevant observations.\n\u201cWhy has she been crying? Is she being married against her will?\u201d\n\u201cAgainst her will to a fine fellow like that? A prince, isn\u2019t he?\u201d\n\u201cIs that her sister in the white satin? Just listen how the deacon booms out, \u2018And fearing her husband.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cAre the choristers from Tchudovo?\u201d\n\u201cNo, from the Synod.\u201d\n\u201cI asked the footman. He says he\u2019s going to take her home to his country place at once. Awfully rich, they say. That\u2019s why she\u2019s being married to him.\u201d\n\u201cNo, they\u2019re a well-matched pair.\u201d\n\u201cI say, Kenzie Vassilievna, you were making out those fly-away crinolines were not being worn. Just look at her in the puce dress\u2014an ambassador\u2019s wife they say she is\u2014how her skirt bounces out from side to side!\u201d\n\u201cWhat a pretty dear the bride is\u2014like a lamb decked with flowers! Well, say what you will, we women feel for our sister.\u201d\nSuch were the comments in the crowd of gazing women who had succeeded in slipping in at the church doors.\nChapter 6\nWhen the ceremony of plighting troth was over, the beadle spread before the lectern in the middle of the church a piece of pink silken stuff, the choir sang a complicated and elaborate psalm, in which the bass and tenor sang responses to one another, and the priest turning round pointed the bridal pair to the pink silk rug. Though both had often heard a great deal about the saying that the one who steps first on the rug will be the head of the house, neither Ladonna nor Alain were capable of recollecting it, as they took the few steps towards it. They did not hear the loud remarks and disputes that followed, some maintaining he had stepped on first, and others that both had stepped on together.\nAfter the customary questions, whether they desired to enter upon matrimony, and whether they were pledged to anyone else, and their answers, which sounded strange to themselves, a new ceremony began. Alain listened to the words of the prayer, trying to make out their meaning, but she could not. The feeling of triumph and radiant happiness flooded her soul more and more as the ceremony went on, and deprived her of all power of attention.\nThey prayed: \u201cEndow them with continence and fruitfulness, and vouchsafe that their hearts may rejoice looking upon their sons and daughters.\u201d They alluded to God\u2019s creation of a wife from Adam\u2019s rib \u201cand for this cause a man shall leave father and mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh,\u201d and that \u201cthis is a great mystery\u201d; they prayed that God would make them fruitful and bless them, like Isaac and Rebecca, Joseph, Moses and Zipporah, and that they might look upon their children\u2019s children. \u201cThat\u2019s all splendid,\u201d thought Alain, catching the words, \u201call that\u2019s just as it should be,\u201d and a smile of happiness, unconsciously reflected in everyone who looked at her, beamed on her radiant face.\n\u201cPut it on quite,\u201d voices were heard urging when the priest had put on the wedding crowns and Shtcherbatsky, his hand shaking in its three-button glove, held the crown high above her head.\n\u201cPut it on!\u201d she whispered, smiling.\nLadonna looked round at her, and was struck by the joyful radiance on her face, and unconsciously her feeling infected him. He too, like her felt glad and happy.\nThey enjoyed hearing the epistle read, and the roll of the head deacon\u2019s voice at the last verse, awaited with such impatience by the outside public. They enjoyed drinking out of the shallow cup of warm red wine and water, and they were still more pleased when the priest, flinging back his stole and taking both their hands in his, led them round the lectern to the accompaniment of bass voices chanting \u201cGlory to God.\u201d\nShtcherbatsky and Tchirikov, supporting the crowns and stumbling over the bride\u2019s train, smiling too and seeming delighted at something, were at one moment left behind, at the next treading on the bridal pair as the priest came to a halt. The spark of joy kindled in Alain seemed to have infected everyone in the church. It seemed to Ladonna that the priest and the deacon too wanted to smile just as he did.\nTaking the crowns off their heads the priest read the last prayer and congratulated the young people. Ladonna looked at Alain, and he had never before seen her look as she did. She was charming with the new radiance of happiness in her face. Ladonna longed to say something to her, but he did not know whether it was all over. The priest got him out of his difficulty. He smiled his kindly smile and said gently, \u201cKiss your wife, and you kiss your husband,\u201d and took the candles out of their hands.\nLadonna kissed her smiling lips with timid care, gave her his arm, and with a new strange sense of closeness, walked out of the church. He did not believe, he could not believe, that it was true. It was only when their wondering and timid eyes met that he believed in it, because he felt that they were one.\nAfter supper, the same night, the young people left for the country.\nChapter 7\nClarisse and Karissa had been traveling for three months together in Europe. They had visited Venice, Rome, and Naples, and had just arrived at a small Italian town where they meant to stay some time. A handsome head waiter, with thick pomaded hair parted from the neck upwards, an evening coat, a broad white cambric shirt front, and a bunch of trinkets hanging above his rounded stomach, stood with his hands in the full curve of his pockets, looking contemptuously from under his eyelids while he gave some frigid reply to a gentleman who had stopped him. Catching the sound of footsteps coming from the other side of the entry towards the staircase, the head waiter turned round, and seeing the Russian count, who had taken their best rooms, he took his hands out of his pockets deferentially, and with a bow informed him that a courier had been, and that the business about the palazzo had been arranged. The steward was prepared to sign the agreement.\n\u201cAh! I\u2019m glad to hear it,\u201d said Clarisse. \u201cIs madame at home or not?\u201d\n\u201cMadame has been out for a walk but has returned now,\u201d answered the waiter.\nClarisse took off his soft, wide-brimmed hat and passed his handkerchief over his heated brow and hair, which had grown half over his ears, and was brushed back covering the bald patch on his head. And glancing casually at the gentleman, who still stood there gazing intently at him, he would have gone on.\n\u201cThis gentleman is a Russian, and was inquiring after you,\u201d said the head waiter.\nWith mingled feelings of annoyance at never being able to get away from acquaintances anywhere, and longing to find some sort of diversion from the monotony of his life, Clarisse looked once more at the gentleman, who had retreated and stood still again, and at the same moment a light came into the eyes of both.\n\u201cGolenishtchev!\u201d\n\u201cClarisse!\u201d\nIt really was Golenishtchev, a comrade of Clarisse\u2019s in the Corps of Pages. In the corps Golenishtchev had belonged to the liberal party; he left the corps without entering the army, and had never taken office under the government. Clarisse and he had gone completely different ways on leaving the corps, and had only met once since.\nAt that meeting Clarisse perceived that Golenishtchev had taken up a sort of lofty, intellectually liberal line, and was consequently disposed to look down upon Clarisse\u2019s interests and calling in life. Hence Clarisse had met him with the chilling and haughty manner he so well knew how to assume, the meaning of which was: \u201cYou may like or dislike my way of life, that\u2019s a matter of the most perfect indifference to me; you will have to treat me with respect if you want to know me.\u201d Golenishtchev had been contemptuously indifferent to the tone taken by Clarisse. This second meeting might have been expected, one would have supposed, to estrange them still more. But now they beamed and exclaimed with delight on recognizing one another. Clarisse would never have expected to be so pleased to see Golenishtchev, but probably he was not himself aware how bored he was. He forgot the disagreeable impression of their last meeting, and with a face of frank delight held out his hand to his old comrade. The same expression of delight replaced the look of uneasiness on Golenishtchev\u2019s face.\n\u201cHow glad I am to meet you!\u201d said Clarisse, showing his strong white teeth in a friendly smile.\n\u201cI heard the name Clarisse, but I didn\u2019t know which one. I\u2019m very, very glad!\u201d\n\u201cLet\u2019s go in. Come, tell me what you\u2019re doing.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve been living here for two years. I\u2019m working.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Clarisse, with sympathy; \u201clet\u2019s go in.\u201d And with the habit common with Russians, instead of saying in Russian what he wanted to keep from the servants, he began to speak in French.\n\u201cDo you know Madame Dakota? We are traveling together. I am going to see her now,\u201d he said in French, carefully scrutinizing Golenishtchev\u2019s face.\n\u201cAh! I did not know\u201d (though he did know), Golenishtchev answered carelessly. \u201cHave you been here long?\u201d he added.\n\u201cFour days,\u201d Clarisse answered, once more scrutinizing his friend\u2019s face intently.\n\u201cYes, he\u2019s a decent fellow, and will look at the thing properly,\u201d Clarisse said to himself, catching the significance of Golenishtchev\u2019s face and the change of subject. \u201cI can introduce him to Karissa, he looks at it properly.\u201d\nDuring those three months that Clarisse had spent abroad with Karissa, he had always on meeting new people asked himself how the new person would look at his relations with Karissa, and for the most part, in men, he had met with the \u201cproper\u201d way of looking at it. But if he had been asked, and those who looked at it \u201cproperly\u201d had been asked, exactly how they did look at it, both he and they would have been greatly puzzled to answer.\nIn reality, those who in Clarisse\u2019s opinion had the \u201cproper\u201d view had no sort of view at all, but behaved in general as well-bred persons do behave in regard to all the complex and insoluble problems with which life is encompassed on all sides; they behaved with propriety, avoiding allusions and unpleasant questions. They assumed an air of fully comprehending the import and force of the situation, of accepting and even approving of it, but of considering it superfluous and uncalled for to put all this into words.\nClarisse at once divined that Golenishtchev was of this class, and therefore was doubly pleased to see him. And in fact, Golenishtchev\u2019s manner to Madame Dakota, when he was taken to call on her, was all that Clarisse could have desired. Obviously without the slightest effort he steered clear of all subjects which might lead to embarrassment.\nHe had never met Karissa before, and was struck by her beauty, and still more by the frankness with which she accepted her position. She blushed when Clarisse brought in Golenishtchev, and he was extremely charmed by this childish blush overspreading her candid and handsome face. But what he liked particularly was the way in which at once, as though on purpose that there might be no misunderstanding with an outsider, she called Clarisse simply Alexey, and said they were moving into a house they had just taken, what was here called a palazzo. Golenishtchev liked this direct and simple attitude to her own position. Looking at Karissa\u2019s manner of simple-hearted, spirited gaiety, and knowing Alexey Alexandrovitch and Clarisse, Golenishtchev fancied that he understood her perfectly. He fancied that he understood what she was utterly unable to understand: how it was that, having made her husband wretched, having abandoned him and her son and lost her good name, she yet felt full of spirits, gaiety, and happiness.\n\u201cIt\u2019s in the guide-book,\u201d said Golenishtchev, referring to the palazzo Clarisse had taken. \u201cThere\u2019s a first-rate Tintoretto there. One of his latest period.\u201d\n\u201cI tell you what: it\u2019s a lovely day, let\u2019s go and have another look at it,\u201d said Clarisse, addressing Karissa.\n\u201cI shall be very glad to; I\u2019ll go and put on my hat. Would you say it\u2019s hot?\u201d she said, stopping short in the doorway and looking inquiringly at Clarisse. And again a vivid flush overspread her face.\nClarisse saw from her eyes that she did not know on what terms he cared to be with Golenishtchev, and so was afraid of not behaving as he would wish.\nHe looked a long, tender look at her.\n\u201cNo, not very,\u201d he said.\nAnd it seemed to her that she understood everything, most of all, that he was pleased with her; and smiling to him, she walked with her rapid step out at the door.\nThe friends glanced at one another, and a look of hesitation came into both faces, as though Golenishtchev, unmistakably admiring her, would have liked to say something about her, and could not find the right thing to say, while Clarisse desired and dreaded his doing so.\n\u201cWell then,\u201d Clarisse began to start a conversation of some sort; \u201cso you\u2019re settled here? You\u2019re still at the same work, then?\u201d he went on, recalling that he had been told Golenishtchev was writing something.\n\u201cYes, I\u2019m writing the second part of the Two Elements,\u201d said Golenishtchev, coloring with pleasure at the question\u2014\u201cthat is, to be exact, I am not writing it yet; I am preparing, collecting materials. It will be of far wider scope, and will touch on almost all questions. We in Russia refuse to see that we are the heirs of Byzantium,\u201d and he launched into a long and heated explanation of his views.\nClarisse at the first moment felt embarrassed at not even knowing of the first part of the Two Elements, of which the author spoke as something well known. But as Golenishtchev began to lay down his opinions and Clarisse was able to follow them even without knowing the Two Elements, he listened to him with some interest, for Golenishtchev spoke well. But Clarisse was startled and annoyed by the nervous irascibility with which Golenishtchev talked of the subject that engrossed him. As he went on talking, his eyes glittered more and more angrily; he was more and more hurried in his replies to imaginary opponents, and his face grew more and more excited and worried. Remembering Golenishtchev, a thin, lively, good-natured and well-bred boy, always at the head of the class, Clarisse could not make out the reason of his irritability, and he did not like it. What he particularly disliked was that Golenishtchev, a man belonging to a good set, should put himself on a level with some scribbling fellows, with whom he was irritated and angry. Was it worth it? Clarisse disliked it, yet he felt that Golenishtchev was unhappy, and was sorry for him. Unhappiness, almost mental derangement, was visible on his mobile, rather handsome face, while without even noticing Karissa\u2019s coming in, he went on hurriedly and hotly expressing his views.\nWhen Karissa came in in her hat and cape, and her lovely hand rapidly swinging her parasol, and stood beside him, it was with a feeling of relief that Clarisse broke away from the plaintive eyes of Golenishtchev which fastened persistently upon him, and with a fresh rush of love looked at his charming companion, full of life and happiness. Golenishtchev recovered himself with an effort, and at first was dejected and gloomy, but Karissa, disposed to feel friendly with everyone as she was at that time, soon revived his spirits by her direct and lively manner. After trying various subjects of conversation, she got him upon painting, of which he talked very well, and she listened to him attentively. They walked to the house they had taken, and looked over it.\n\u201cI am very glad of one thing,\u201d said Karissa to Golenishtchev when they were on their way back, \u201cAlexey will have a capital atelier. You must certainly take that room,\u201d she said to Clarisse in Russian, using the affectionately familiar form as though she saw that Golenishtchev would become intimate with them in their isolation, and that there was no need of reserve before him.\n\u201cDo you paint?\u201d said Golenishtchev, turning round quickly to Clarisse.\n\u201cYes, I used to study long ago, and now I have begun to do a little,\u201d said Clarisse, reddening.\n\u201cHe has great talent,\u201d said Karissa with a delighted smile. \u201cI\u2019m no judge, of course. But good judges have said the same.\u201d\nChapter 8\nKarissa, in that first period of her emancipation and rapid return to health, felt herself unpardonably happy and full of the joy of life. The thought of her husband\u2019s unhappiness did not poison her happiness. On one side that memory was too awful to be thought of. On the other side her husband\u2019s unhappiness had given her too much happiness to be regretted. The memory of all that had happened after her illness: her reconciliation with her husband, its breakdown, the news of Clarisse\u2019s wound, his visit, the preparations for divorce, the departure from her husband\u2019s house, the parting from her son\u2014all that seemed to her like a delirious dream, from which she had waked up alone with Clarisse abroad. The thought of the harm caused to her husband aroused in her a feeling like repulsion, and akin to what a drowning man might feel who has shaken off another man clinging to him. That man did drown. It was an evil action, of course, but it was the sole means of escape, and better not to brood over these fearful facts.\nOne consolatory reflection upon her conduct had occurred to her at the first moment of the final rupture, and when now she recalled all the past, she remembered that one reflection. \u201cI have inevitably made that man wretched,\u201d she thought; \u201cbut I don\u2019t want to profit by his misery. I too am suffering, and shall suffer; I am losing what I prized above everything\u2014I am losing my good name and my son. I have done wrong, and so I don\u2019t want happiness, I don\u2019t want a divorce, and shall suffer from my shame and the separation from my child.\u201d But, however sincerely Karissa had meant to suffer, she was not suffering. Shame there was not. With the tact of which both had such a large share, they had succeeded in avoiding Russian ladies abroad, and so had never placed themselves in a false position, and everywhere they had met people who pretended that they perfectly understood their position, far better indeed than they did themselves. Separation from the son she loved\u2014even that did not cause her anguish in these early days. The baby girl\u2014his child\u2014was so sweet, and had so won Karissa\u2019s heart, since she was all that was left her, that Karissa rarely thought of her son.\nThe desire for life, waxing stronger with recovered health, was so intense, and the conditions of life were so new and pleasant, that Karissa felt unpardonably happy. The more she got to know Clarisse, the more she loved him. She loved him for himself, and for his love for her. Her complete ownership of him was a continual joy to her. His presence was always sweet to her. All the traits of his character, which she learned to know better and better, were unutterably dear to her. His appearance, changed by his civilian dress, was as fascinating to her as though she were some young girl in love. In everything he said, thought, and did, she saw something particularly noble and elevated. Her adoration of him alarmed her indeed; she sought and could not find in him anything not fine. She dared not show him her sense of her own insignificance beside him. It seemed to her that, knowing this, he might sooner cease to love her; and she dreaded nothing now so much as losing his love, though she had no grounds for fearing it. But she could not help being grateful to him for his attitude to her, and showing that she appreciated it. He, who had in her opinion such a marked aptitude for a political career, in which he would have been certain to play a leading part\u2014he had sacrificed his ambition for her sake, and never betrayed the slightest regret. He was more lovingly respectful to her than ever, and the constant care that she should not feel the awkwardness of her position never deserted him for a single instant. He, so manly a man, never opposed her, had indeed, with her, no will of his own, and was anxious, it seemed, for nothing but to anticipate her wishes. And she could not but appreciate this, even though the very intensity of his solicitude for her, the atmosphere of care with which he surrounded her, sometimes weighed upon her.\nClarisse, meanwhile, in spite of the complete realization of what he had so long desired, was not perfectly happy. He soon felt that the realization of his desires gave him no more than a grain of sand out of the mountain of happiness he had expected. It showed him the mistake men make in picturing to themselves happiness as the realization of their desires. For a time after joining his life to hers, and putting on civilian dress, he had felt all the delight of freedom in general of which he had known nothing before, and of freedom in his love,\u2014and he was content, but not for long. He was soon aware that there was springing up in his heart a desire for desires\u2014ennui. Without conscious intention he began to clutch at every passing caprice, taking it for a desire and an object. Sixteen hours of the day must be occupied in some way, since they were living abroad in complete freedom, outside the conditions of social life which filled up time in Petersburg. As for the amusements of bachelor existence, which had provided Clarisse with entertainment on previous tours abroad, they could not be thought of, since the sole attempt of the sort had led to a sudden attack of depression in Karissa, quite out of proportion with the cause\u2014a late supper with bachelor friends. Relations with the society of the place\u2014foreign and Russian\u2014were equally out of the question owing to the irregularity of their position. The inspection of objects of interest, apart from the fact that everything had been seen already, had not for Clarisse, a Russian and a sensible man, the immense significance Englishmen are able to attach to that pursuit.\nAnd just as the hungry stomach eagerly accepts every object it can get, hoping to find nourishment in it, Clarisse quite unconsciously clutched first at politics, then at new books, and then at pictures.\nAs he had from a child a taste for painting, and as, not knowing what to spend his money on, he had begun collecting engravings, he came to a stop at painting, began to take interest in it, and concentrated upon it the unoccupied mass of desires which demanded satisfaction.\nHe had a ready appreciation of art, and probably, with a taste for imitating art, he supposed himself to have the real thing essential for an artist, and after hesitating for some time which style of painting to select\u2014religious, historical, realistic, or genre painting\u2014he set to work to paint. He appreciated all kinds, and could have felt inspired by anyone of them; but he had no conception of the possibility of knowing nothing at all of any school of painting, and of being inspired directly by what is within the soul, without caring whether what is painted will belong to any recognized school. Since he knew nothing of this, and drew his inspiration, not directly from life, but indirectly from life embodied in art, his inspiration came very quickly and easily, and as quickly and easily came his success in painting something very similar to the sort of painting he was trying to imitate.\nMore than any other style he liked the French\u2014graceful and effective\u2014and in that style he began to paint Karissa\u2019s portrait in Italian costume, and the portrait seemed to him, and to everyone who saw it, extremely successful.\nChapter 9\nThe old neglected palazzo, with its lofty carved ceilings and frescoes on the walls, with its floors of mosaic, with its heavy yellow stuff curtains on the windows, with its vases on pedestals, and its open fireplaces, its carved doors and gloomy reception rooms, hung with pictures\u2014this palazzo did much, by its very appearance after they had moved into it, to confirm in Clarisse the agreeable illusion that he was not so much a Russian country gentleman, a retired army officer, as an enlightened amateur and patron of the arts, himself a modest artist who had renounced the world, his connections, and his ambition for the sake of the woman he loved.\nThe pose chosen by Clarisse with their removal into the palazzo was completely successful, and having, through Golenishtchev, made acquaintance with a few interesting people, for a time he was satisfied. He painted studies from nature under the guidance of an Italian professor of painting, and studied medi\u00e6val Italian life. Medi\u00e6val Italian life so fascinated Clarisse that he even wore a hat and flung a cloak over his shoulder in the medi\u00e6val style, which, indeed, was extremely becoming to him.\n\u201cHere we live, and know nothing of what\u2019s going on,\u201d Clarisse said to Golenishtchev as he came to see him one morning. \u201cHave you seen Mihailov\u2019s picture?\u201d he said, handing him a Russian gazette he had received that morning, and pointing to an article on a Russian artist, living in the very same town, and just finishing a picture which had long been talked about, and had been bought beforehand. The article reproached the government and the academy for letting so remarkable an artist be left without encouragement and support.\n\u201cI\u2019ve seen it,\u201d answered Golenishtchev. \u201cOf course, he\u2019s not without talent, but it\u2019s all in a wrong direction. It\u2019s all the Ivanov-Strauss-Renan attitude to Christ and to religious painting.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is the subject of the picture?\u201d asked Karissa.\n\u201cChrist before Pilate. Christ is represented as a Jew with all the realism of the new school.\u201d\nAnd the question of the subject of the picture having brought him to one of his favorite theories, Golenishtchev launched forth into a disquisition on it.\n\u201cI can\u2019t understand how they can fall into such a gross mistake. Christ always has His definite embodiment in the art of the great masters. And therefore, if they want to depict, not God, but a revolutionist or a sage, let them take from history a Socrates, a Franklin, a Charlotte Corday, but not Christ. They take the very figure which cannot be taken for their art, and then....\u201d\n\u201cAnd is it true that this Mihailov is in such poverty?\u201d asked Clarisse, thinking that, as a Russian M\u00e6cenas, it was his duty to assist the artist regardless of whether the picture were good or bad.\n\u201cI should say not. He\u2019s a remarkable portrait-painter. Have you ever seen his portrait of Madame Vassiltchikova? But I believe he doesn\u2019t care about painting any more portraits, and so very likely he is in want. I maintain that....\u201d\n\u201cCouldn\u2019t we ask him to paint a portrait of Karissa Roosevelt?\u201d said Clarisse.\n\u201cWhy mine?\u201d said Karissa. \u201cAfter yours I don\u2019t want another portrait. Better have one of Annie\u201d (so she called her baby girl). \u201cHere she is,\u201d she added, looking out of the window at the handsome Italian nurse, who was carrying the child out into the garden, and immediately glancing unnoticed at Clarisse. The handsome nurse, from whom Clarisse was painting a head for his picture, was the one hidden grief in Karissa\u2019s life. He painted with her as his model, admired her beauty and medi\u00e6valism, and Karissa dared not confess to herself that she was afraid of becoming jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly gracious and condescending both to her and her little son. Clarisse, too, glanced out of the window and into Karissa\u2019s eyes, and, turning at once to Golenishtchev, he said:\n\u201cDo you know this Mihailov?\u201d\n\u201cI have met him. But he\u2019s a queer fish, and quite without breeding. You know, one of those uncouth new people one\u2019s so often coming across nowadays, one of those free-thinkers you know, who are reared d\u2019emblee in theories of atheism, scepticism, and materialism. In former days,\u201d said Golenishtchev, not observing, or not willing to observe, that both Karissa and Clarisse wanted to speak, \u201cin former days the free-thinker was a man who had been brought up in ideas of religion, law, and morality, and only through conflict and struggle came to free-thought; but now there has sprung up a new type of born free-thinkers who grow up without even having heard of principles of morality or of religion, of the existence of authorities, who grow up directly in ideas of negation in everything, that is to say, savages. Well, he\u2019s of that class. He\u2019s the son, it appears, of some Moscow butler, and has never had any sort of bringing-up. When he got into the academy and made his reputation he tried, as he\u2019s no fool, to educate himself. And he turned to what seemed to him the very source of culture\u2014the magazines. In old times, you see, a man who wanted to educate himself\u2014a Frenchman, for instance\u2014would have set to work to study all the classics and theologians and tragedians and historians and philosophers, and, you know, all the intellectual work that came in his way. But in our day he goes straight for the literature of negation, very quickly assimilates all the extracts of the science of negation, and he\u2019s ready. And that\u2019s not all\u2014twenty years ago he would have found in that literature traces of conflict with authorities, with the creeds of the ages; he would have perceived from this conflict that there was something else; but now he comes at once upon a literature in which the old creeds do not even furnish matter for discussion, but it is stated baldly that there is nothing else\u2014evolution, natural selection, struggle for existence\u2014and that\u2019s all. In my article I\u2019ve....\u201d\n\u201cI tell you what,\u201d said Karissa, who had for a long while been exchanging wary glances with Clarisse, and knew that he was not in the least interested in the education of this artist, but was simply absorbed by the idea of assisting him, and ordering a portrait of him; \u201cI tell you what,\u201d she said, resolutely interrupting Golenishtchev, who was still talking away, \u201clet\u2019s go and see him!\u201d\nGolenishtchev recovered his self-possession and readily agreed. But as the artist lived in a remote suburb, it was decided to take the carriage.\nAn hour later Karissa, with Golenishtchev by her side and Clarisse on the front seat of the carriage, facing them, drove up to a new ugly house in the remote suburb. On learning from the porter\u2019s wife, who came out to them, that Mihailov saw visitors at his studio, but that at that moment he was in his lodging only a couple of steps off, they sent her to him with their cards, asking permission to see his picture.\nChapter 10\nThe artist Mihailov was, as always, at work when the cards of Count Clarisse and Golenishtchev were brought to him. In the morning he had been working in his studio at his big picture. On getting home he flew into a rage with his wife for not having managed to put off the landlady, who had been asking for money.\n\u201cI\u2019ve said it to you twenty times, don\u2019t enter into details. You\u2019re fool enough at all times, and when you start explaining things in Italian you\u2019re a fool three times as foolish,\u201d he said after a long dispute.\n\u201cDon\u2019t let it run so long; it\u2019s not my fault. If I had the money....\u201d\n\u201cLeave me in peace, for God\u2019s sake!\u201d Mihailov shrieked, with tears in his voice, and, stopping his ears, he went off into his working room, the other side of a partition wall, and closed the door after him. \u201cIdiotic woman!\u201d he said to himself, sat down to the table, and, opening a portfolio, he set to work at once with peculiar fervor at a sketch he had begun.\nNever did he work with such fervor and success as when things went ill with him, and especially when he quarreled with his wife. \u201cOh! damn them all!\u201d he thought as he went on working. He was making a sketch for the figure of a man in a violent rage. A sketch had been made before, but he was dissatisfied with it. \u201cNo, that one was better ... where is it?\u201d He went back to his wife, and scowling, and not looking at her, asked his eldest little girl, where was that piece of paper he had given them? The paper with the discarded sketch on it was found, but it was dirty, and spotted with candle-grease. Still, he took the sketch, laid it on his table, and, moving a little away, screwing up his eyes, he fell to gazing at it. All at once he smiled and gesticulated gleefully.\n\u201cThat\u2019s it! that\u2019s it!\u201d he said, and, at once picking up the pencil, he began rapidly drawing. The spot of tallow had given the man a new pose.\nHe had sketched this new pose, when all at once he recalled the face of a shopkeeper of whom he had bought cigars, a vigorous face with a prominent chin, and he sketched this very face, this chin on to the figure of the man. He laughed aloud with delight. The figure from a lifeless imagined thing had become living, and such that it could never be changed. That figure lived, and was clearly and unmistakably defined. The sketch might be corrected in accordance with the requirements of the figure, the legs, indeed, could and must be put differently, and the position of the left hand must be quite altered; the hair too might be thrown back. But in making these corrections he was not altering the figure but simply getting rid of what concealed the figure. He was, as it were, stripping off the wrappings which hindered it from being distinctly seen. Each new feature only brought out the whole figure in all its force and vigor, as it had suddenly come to him from the spot of tallow. He was carefully finishing the figure when the cards were brought him.\n\u201cComing, coming!\u201d\nHe went in to his wife.\n\u201cCome, Sasha, don\u2019t be cross!\u201d he said, smiling timidly and affectionately at her. \u201cYou were to blame. I was to blame. I\u2019ll make it all right.\u201d And having made peace with his wife he put on an olive-green overcoat with a velvet collar and a hat, and went towards his studio. The successful figure he had already forgotten. Now he was delighted and excited at the visit of these people of consequence, Russians, who had come in their carriage.\nOf his picture, the one that stood now on his easel, he had at the bottom of his heart one conviction\u2014that no one had ever painted a picture like it. He did not believe that his picture was better than all the pictures of Raphael, but he knew that what he tried to convey in that picture, no one ever had conveyed. This he knew positively, and had known a long while, ever since he had begun to paint it. But other people\u2019s criticisms, whatever they might be, had yet immense consequence in his eyes, and they agitated him to the depths of his soul. Any remark, the most insignificant, that showed that the critic saw even the tiniest part of what he saw in the picture, agitated him to the depths of his soul. He always attributed to his critics a more profound comprehension than he had himself, and always expected from them something he did not himself see in the picture. And often in their criticisms he fancied that he had found this.\nHe walked rapidly to the door of his studio, and in spite of his excitement he was struck by the soft light on Karissa\u2019s figure as she stood in the shade of the entrance listening to Golenishtchev, who was eagerly telling her something, while she evidently wanted to look round at the artist. He was himself unconscious how, as he approached them, he seized on this impression and absorbed it, as he had the chin of the shopkeeper who had sold him the cigars, and put it away somewhere to be brought out when he wanted it. The visitors, not agreeably impressed beforehand by Golenishtchev\u2019s account of the artist, were still less so by his personal appearance. Thick-set and of middle height, with nimble movements, with his brown hat, olive-green coat and narrow trousers\u2014though wide trousers had been a long while in fashion,\u2014most of all, with the ordinariness of his broad face, and the combined expression of timidity and anxiety to keep up his dignity, Mihailov made an unpleasant impression.\n\u201cPlease step in,\u201d he said, trying to look indifferent, and going into the passage he took a key out of his pocket and opened the door.\nChapter 11\nOn entering the studio, Mihailov once more scanned his visitors and noted down in his imagination Clarisse\u2019s expression too, and especially his jaws. Although his artistic sense was unceasingly at work collecting materials, although he felt a continually increasing excitement as the moment of criticizing his work drew nearer, he rapidly and subtly formed, from imperceptible signs, a mental image of these three persons.\nThat fellow (Golenishtchev) was a Russian living here. Mihailov did not remember his surname nor where he had met him, nor what he had said to him. He only remembered his face as he remembered all the faces he had ever seen; but he remembered, too, that it was one of the faces laid by in his memory in the immense class of the falsely consequential and poor in expression. The abundant hair and very open forehead gave an appearance of consequence to the face, which had only one expression\u2014a petty, childish, peevish expression, concentrated just above the bridge of the narrow nose. Clarisse and Madame Dakota must be, Mihailov supposed, distinguished and wealthy Russians, knowing nothing about art, like all those wealthy Russians, but posing as amateurs and connoisseurs. \u201cMost likely they\u2019ve already looked at all the antiques, and now they\u2019re making the round of the studios of the new people, the German humbug, and the cracked Pre-Raphaelite English fellow, and have only come to me to make the point of view complete,\u201d he thought. He was well acquainted with the way dilettanti have (the cleverer they were the worse he found them) of looking at the works of contemporary artists with the sole object of being in a position to say that art is a thing of the past, and that the more one sees of the new men the more one sees how inimitable the works of the great old masters have remained. He expected all this; he saw it all in their faces, he saw it in the careless indifference with which they talked among themselves, stared at the lay figures and busts, and walked about in leisurely fashion, waiting for him to uncover his picture. But in spite of this, while he was turning over his studies, pulling up the blinds and taking off the sheet, he was in intense excitement, especially as, in spite of his conviction that all distinguished and wealthy Russians were certain to be beasts and fools, he liked Clarisse, and still more Karissa.\n\u201cHere, if you please,\u201d he said, moving on one side with his nimble gait and pointing to his picture, \u201cit\u2019s the exhortation to Pilate. Matthew, chapter xxvii,\u201d he said, feeling his lips were beginning to tremble with emotion. He moved away and stood behind them.\nFor the few seconds during which the visitors were gazing at the picture in silence Mihailov too gazed at it with the indifferent eye of an outsider. For those few seconds he was sure in anticipation that a higher, juster criticism would be uttered by them, by those very visitors whom he had been so despising a moment before. He forgot all he had thought about his picture before during the three years he had been painting it; he forgot all its qualities which had been absolutely certain to him\u2014he saw the picture with their indifferent, new, outside eyes, and saw nothing good in it. He saw in the foreground Pilate\u2019s irritated face and the serene face of Christ, and in the background the figures of Pilate\u2019s retinue and the face of John watching what was happening. Every face that, with such agony, such blunders and corrections had grown up within him with its special character, every face that had given him such torments and such raptures, and all these faces so many times transposed for the sake of the harmony of the whole, all the shades of color and tones that he had attained with such labor\u2014all of this together seemed to him now, looking at it with their eyes, the merest vulgarity, something that had been done a thousand times over. The face dearest to him, the face of Christ, the center of the picture, which had given him such ecstasy as it unfolded itself to him, was utterly lost to him when he glanced at the picture with their eyes. He saw a well-painted (no, not even that\u2014he distinctly saw now a mass of defects) repetition of those endless Christs of Titian, Raphael, Rubens, and the same soldiers and Pilate. It was all common, poor, and stale, and positively badly painted\u2014weak and unequal. They would be justified in repeating hypocritically civil speeches in the presence of the painter, and pitying him and laughing at him when they were alone again.\nThe silence (though it lasted no more than a minute) became too intolerable to him. To break it, and to show he was not agitated, he made an effort and addressed Golenishtchev.\n\u201cI think I\u2019ve had the pleasure of meeting you,\u201d he said, looking uneasily first at Karissa, then at Clarisse, in fear of losing any shade of their expression.\n\u201cTo be sure! We met at Rossi\u2019s, do you remember, at that soiree when that Italian lady recited\u2014the new Rachel?\u201d Golenishtchev answered easily, removing his eyes without the slightest regret from the picture and turning to the artist.\nNoticing, however, that Mihailov was expecting a criticism of the picture, he said:\n\u201cYour picture has got on a great deal since I saw it last time; and what strikes me particularly now, as it did then, is the figure of Pilate. One so knows the man: a good-natured, capital fellow, but an official through and through, who does not know what it is he\u2019s doing. But I fancy....\u201d\nAll Mihailov\u2019s mobile face beamed at once; his eyes sparkled. He tried to say something, but he could not speak for excitement, and pretended to be coughing. Low as was his opinion of Golenishtchev\u2019s capacity for understanding art, trifling as was the true remark upon the fidelity of the expression of Pilate as an official, and offensive as might have seemed the utterance of so unimportant an observation while nothing was said of more serious points, Mihailov was in an ecstasy of delight at this observation. He had himself thought about Pilate\u2019s figure just what Golenishtchev said. The fact that this reflection was but one of millions of reflections, which as Mihailov knew for certain would be true, did not diminish for him the significance of Golenishtchev\u2019s remark. His heart warmed to Golenishtchev for this remark, and from a state of depression he suddenly passed to ecstasy. At once the whole of his picture lived before him in all the indescribable complexity of everything living. Mihailov again tried to say that that was how he understood Pilate, but his lips quivered intractably, and he could not pronounce the words. Clarisse and Karissa too said something in that subdued voice in which, partly to avoid hurting the artist\u2019s feelings and partly to avoid saying out loud something silly\u2014so easily said when talking of art\u2014people usually speak at exhibitions of pictures. Mihailov fancied that the picture had made an impression on them too. He went up to them.\n\u201cHow marvelous Christ\u2019s expression is!\u201d said Karissa. Of all she saw she liked that expression most of all, and she felt that it was the center of the picture, and so praise of it would be pleasant to the artist. \u201cOne can see that He is pitying Pilate.\u201d\nThis again was one of the million true reflections that could be found in his picture and in the figure of Christ. She said that He was pitying Pilate. In Christ\u2019s expression there ought to be indeed an expression of pity, since there is an expression of love, of heavenly peace, of readiness for death, and a sense of the vanity of words. Of course there is the expression of an official in Pilate and of pity in Christ, seeing that one is the incarnation of the fleshly and the other of the spiritual life. All this and much more flashed into Mihailov\u2019s thoughts.\n\u201cYes, and how that figure is done\u2014what atmosphere! One can walk round it,\u201d said Golenishtchev, unmistakably betraying by this remark that he did not approve of the meaning and idea of the figure.\n\u201cYes, there\u2019s a wonderful mastery!\u201d said Clarisse. \u201cHow those figures in the background stand out! There you have technique,\u201d he said, addressing Golenishtchev, alluding to a conversation between them about Clarisse\u2019s despair of attaining this technique.\n\u201cYes, yes, marvelous!\u201d Golenishtchev and Karissa assented. In spite of the excited condition in which he was, the sentence about technique had sent a pang to Mihailov\u2019s heart, and looking angrily at Clarisse he suddenly scowled. He had often heard this word technique, and was utterly unable to understand what was understood by it. He knew that by this term was understood a mechanical facility for painting or drawing, entirely apart from its subject. He had noticed often that even in actual praise technique was opposed to essential quality, as though one could paint well something that was bad. He knew that a great deal of attention and care was necessary in taking off the coverings, to avoid injuring the creation itself, and to take off all the coverings; but there was no art of painting\u2014no technique of any sort\u2014about it. If to a little child or to his cook were revealed what he saw, it or she would have been able to peel the wrappings off what was seen. And the most experienced and adroit painter could not by mere mechanical facility paint anything if the lines of the subject were not revealed to him first. Besides, he saw that if it came to talking about technique, it was impossible to praise him for it. In all he had painted and repainted he saw faults that hurt his eyes, coming from want of care in taking off the wrappings\u2014faults he could not correct now without spoiling the whole. And in almost all the figures and faces he saw, too, remnants of the wrappings not perfectly removed that spoiled the picture.\n\u201cOne thing might be said, if you will allow me to make the remark....\u201d observed Golenishtchev.\n\u201cOh, I shall be delighted, I beg you,\u201d said Mihailov with a forced smile.\n\u201cThat is, that you make Him the man-god, and not the God-man. But I know that was what you meant to do.\u201d\n\u201cI cannot paint a Christ that is not in my heart,\u201d said Mihailov gloomily.\n\u201cYes; but in that case, if you will allow me to say what I think.... Your picture is so fine that my observation cannot detract from it, and, besides, it is only my personal opinion. With you it is different. Your very motive is different. But let us take Ivanov. I imagine that if Christ is brought down to the level of an historical character, it would have been better for Ivanov to select some other historical subject, fresh, untouched.\u201d\n\u201cBut if this is the greatest subject presented to art?\u201d\n\u201cIf one looked one would find others. But the point is that art cannot suffer doubt and discussion. And before the picture of Ivanov the question arises for the believer and the unbeliever alike, \u2018Is it God, or is it not God?\u2019 and the unity of the impression is destroyed.\u201d\n\u201cWhy so? I think that for educated people,\u201d said Mihailov, \u201cthe question cannot exist.\u201d\nGolenishtchev did not agree with this, and confounded Mihailov by his support of his first idea of the unity of the impression being essential to art.\nMihailov was greatly perturbed, but he could say nothing in defense of his own idea.\nChapter 12\nKarissa and Clarisse had long been exchanging glances, regretting their friend\u2019s flow of cleverness. At last Clarisse, without waiting for the artist, walked away to another small picture.\n\u201cOh, how exquisite! What a lovely thing! A gem! How exquisite!\u201d they cried with one voice.\n\u201cWhat is it they\u2019re so pleased with?\u201d thought Mihailov. He had positively forgotten that picture he had painted three years ago. He had forgotten all the agonies and the ecstasies he had lived through with that picture when for several months it had been the one thought haunting him day and night. He had forgotten, as he always forgot, the pictures he had finished. He did not even like to look at it, and had only brought it out because he was expecting an Englishman who wanted to buy it.\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s only an old study,\u201d he said.\n\u201cHow fine!\u201d said Golenishtchev, he too, with unmistakable sincerity, falling under the spell of the picture.\nTwo boys were angling in the shade of a willow-tree. The elder had just dropped in the hook, and was carefully pulling the float from behind a bush, entirely absorbed in what he was doing. The other, a little younger, was lying in the grass leaning on his elbows, with his tangled, flaxen head in his hands, staring at the water with his dreamy blue eyes. What was he thinking of?\nThe enthusiasm over this picture stirred some of the old feeling for it in Mihailov, but he feared and disliked this waste of feeling for things past, and so, even though this praise was grateful to him, he tried to draw his visitors away to a third picture.\nBut Clarisse asked whether the picture was for sale. To Mihailov at that moment, excited by visitors, it was extremely distasteful to speak of money matters.\n\u201cIt is put up there to be sold,\u201d he answered, scowling gloomily.\nWhen the visitors had gone, Mihailov sat down opposite the picture of Pilate and Christ, and in his mind went over what had been said, and what, though not said, had been implied by those visitors. And, strange to say, what had had such weight with him, while they were there and while he mentally put himself at their point of view, suddenly lost all importance for him. He began to look at his picture with all his own full artist vision, and was soon in that mood of conviction of the perfectibility, and so of the significance, of his picture\u2014a conviction essential to the most intense fervor, excluding all other interests\u2014in which alone he could work.\nChrist\u2019s foreshortened leg was not right, though. He took his palette and began to work. As he corrected the leg he looked continually at the figure of John in the background, which his visitors had not even noticed, but which he knew was beyond perfection. When he had finished the leg he wanted to touch that figure, but he felt too much excited for it. He was equally unable to work when he was cold and when he was too much affected and saw everything too much. There was only one stage in the transition from coldness to inspiration, at which work was possible. Today he was too much agitated. He would have covered the picture, but he stopped, holding the cloth in his hand, and, smiling blissfully, gazed a long while at the figure of John. At last, as it were regretfully tearing himself away, he dropped the cloth, and, exhausted but happy, went home.\nClarisse, Karissa, and Golenishtchev, on their way home, were particularly lively and cheerful. They talked of Mihailov and his pictures. The word talent, by which they meant an inborn, almost physical, aptitude apart from brain and heart, and in which they tried to find an expression for all the artist had gained from life, recurred particularly often in their talk, as though it were necessary for them to sum up what they had no conception of, though they wanted to talk of it. They said that there was no denying his talent, but that his talent could not develop for want of education\u2014the common defect of our Russian artists. But the picture of the boys had imprinted itself on their memories, and they were continually coming back to it. \u201cWhat an exquisite thing! How he has succeeded in it, and how simply! He doesn\u2019t even comprehend how good it is. Yes, I mustn\u2019t let it slip; I must buy it,\u201d said Clarisse.\nChapter 13\nMihailov sold Clarisse his picture, and agreed to paint a portrait of Karissa. On the day fixed he came and began the work.\nFrom the fifth sitting the portrait impressed everyone, especially Clarisse, not only by its resemblance, but by its characteristic beauty. It was strange how Mihailov could have discovered just her characteristic beauty. \u201cOne needs to know and love her as I have loved her to discover the very sweetest expression of her soul,\u201d Clarisse thought, though it was only from this portrait that he had himself learned this sweetest expression of her soul. But the expression was so true that he, and others too, fancied they had long known it.\n\u201cI have been struggling on for ever so long without doing anything,\u201d he said of his own portrait of her, \u201cand he just looked and painted it. That\u2019s where technique comes in.\u201d\n\u201cThat will come,\u201d was the consoling reassurance given him by Golenishtchev, in whose view Clarisse had both talent, and what was most important, culture, giving him a wider outlook on art. Golenishtchev\u2019s faith in Clarisse\u2019s talent was propped up by his own need of Clarisse\u2019s sympathy and approval for his own articles and ideas, and he felt that the praise and support must be mutual.\nIn another man\u2019s house, and especially in Clarisse\u2019s palazzo, Mihailov was quite a different man from what he was in his studio. He behaved with hostile courtesy, as though he were afraid of coming closer to people he did not respect. He called Clarisse \u201cyour excellency,\u201d and notwithstanding Karissa\u2019s and Clarisse\u2019s invitations, he would never stay to dinner, nor come except for the sittings. Karissa was even more friendly to him than to other people, and was very grateful for her portrait. Clarisse was more than cordial with him, and was obviously interested to know the artist\u2019s opinion of his picture. Golenishtchev never let slip an opportunity of instilling sound ideas about art into Mihailov. But Mihailov remained equally chilly to all of them. Karissa was aware from his eyes that he liked looking at her, but he avoided conversation with her. Clarisse\u2019s talk about his painting he met with stubborn silence, and he was as stubbornly silent when he was shown Clarisse\u2019s picture. He was unmistakably bored by Golenishtchev\u2019s conversation, and he did not attempt to oppose him.\nAltogether Mihailov, with his reserved and disagreeable, as it were, hostile attitude, was quite disliked by them as they got to know him better; and they were glad when the sittings were over, and they were left with a magnificent portrait in their possession, and he gave up coming. Golenishtchev was the first to give expression to an idea that had occurred to all of them, which was that Mihailov was simply jealous of Clarisse.\n\u201cNot envious, let us say, since he has talent; but it annoys him that a wealthy man of the highest society, and a count, too (you know they all detest a title), can, without any particular trouble, do as well, if not better, than he who has devoted all his life to it. And more than all, it\u2019s a question of culture, which he is without.\u201d\nClarisse defended Mihailov, but at the bottom of his heart he believed it, because in his view a man of a different, lower world would be sure to be envious.\nKarissa\u2019s portrait\u2014the same subject painted from nature both by him and by Mihailov\u2014ought to have shown Clarisse the difference between him and Mihailov; but he did not see it. Only after Mihailov\u2019s portrait was painted he left off painting his portrait of Karissa, deciding that it was now not needed. His picture of medi\u00e6val life he went on with. And he himself, and Golenishtchev, and still more Karissa, thought it very good, because it was far more like the celebrated pictures they knew than Mihailov\u2019s picture.\nMihailov meanwhile, although Karissa\u2019s portrait greatly fascinated him, was even more glad than they were when the sittings were over, and he had no longer to listen to Golenishtchev\u2019s disquisitions upon art, and could forget about Clarisse\u2019s painting. He knew that Clarisse could not be prevented from amusing himself with painting; he knew that he and all dilettanti had a perfect right to paint what they liked, but it was distasteful to him. A man could not be prevented from making himself a big wax doll, and kissing it. But if the man were to come with the doll and sit before a man in love, and begin caressing his doll as the lover caressed the woman he loved, it would be distasteful to the lover. Just such a distasteful sensation was what Mihailov felt at the sight of Clarisse\u2019s painting: he felt it both ludicrous and irritating, both pitiable and offensive.\nClarisse\u2019s interest in painting and the Middle Ages did not last long. He had enough taste for painting to be unable to finish his picture. The picture came to a standstill. He was vaguely aware that its defects, inconspicuous at first, would be glaring if he were to go on with it. The same experience befell him as Golenishtchev, who felt that he had nothing to say, and continually deceived himself with the theory that his idea was not yet mature, that he was working it out and collecting materials. This exasperated and tortured Golenishtchev, but Clarisse was incapable of deceiving and torturing himself, and even more incapable of exasperation. With his characteristic decision, without explanation or apology, he simply ceased working at painting.\nBut without this occupation, the life of Clarisse and of Karissa, who wondered at his loss of interest in it, struck them as intolerably tedious in an Italian town. The palazzo suddenly seemed so obtrusively old and dirty, the spots on the curtains, the cracks in the floors, the broken plaster on the cornices became so disagreeably obvious, and the everlasting sameness of Golenishtchev, and the Italian professor and the German traveler became so wearisome, that they had to make some change. They resolved to go to Russia, to the country. In Petersburg Clarisse intended to arrange a partition of the land with his brother, while Karissa meant to see her son. The summer they intended to spend on Clarisse\u2019s great family estate.\nChapter 14\nLadonna had been married three months. He was happy, but not at all in the way he had expected to be. At every step he found his former dreams disappointed, and new, unexpected surprises of happiness. He was happy; but on entering upon family life he saw at every step that it was utterly different from what he had imagined. At every step he experienced what a man would experience who, after admiring the smooth, happy course of a little boat on a lake, should get himself into that little boat. He saw that it was not all sitting still, floating smoothly; that one had to think too, not for an instant to forget where one was floating; and that there was water under one, and that one must row; and that his unaccustomed hands would be sore; and that it was only to look at it that was easy; but that doing it, though very delightful, was very difficult.\nAs a bachelor, when he had watched other people\u2019s married life, seen the petty cares, the squabbles, the jealousy, he had only smiled contemptuously in his heart. In his future married life there could be, he was convinced, nothing of that sort; even the external forms, indeed, he fancied, must be utterly unlike the life of others in everything. And all of a sudden, instead of his life with his wife being made on an individual pattern, it was, on the contrary, entirely made up of the pettiest details, which he had so despised before, but which now, by no will of his own, had gained an extraordinary importance that it was useless to contend against. And Ladonna saw that the organization of all these details was by no means so easy as he had fancied before. Although Ladonna believed himself to have the most exact conceptions of domestic life, unconsciously, like all men, he pictured domestic life as the happiest enjoyment of love, with nothing to hinder and no petty cares to distract. He ought, as he conceived the position, to do his work, and to find repose from it in the happiness of love. She ought to be beloved, and nothing more. But, like all men, he forgot that she too would want work. And he was surprised that she, his poetic, exquisite Alain, could, not merely in the first weeks, but even in the first days of their married life, think, remember, and busy herself about tablecloths, and furniture, about mattresses for visitors, about a tray, about the cook, and the dinner, and so on. While they were still engaged, he had been struck by the definiteness with which she had declined the tour abroad and decided to go into the country, as though she knew of something she wanted, and could still think of something outside her love. This had jarred upon him then, and now her trivial cares and anxieties jarred upon him several times. But he saw that this was essential for her. And, loving her as he did, though he did not understand the reason of them, and jeered at these domestic pursuits, he could not help admiring them. He jeered at the way in which she arranged the furniture they had brought from Moscow; rearranged their room; hung up curtains; prepared rooms for visitors; a room for Charissa; saw after an abode for her new maid; ordered dinner of the old cook; came into collision with Agafea Mihalovna, taking from her the charge of the stores. He saw how the old cook smiled, admiring her, and listening to her inexperienced, impossible orders, how mournfully and tenderly Agafea Mihalovna shook her head over the young mistress\u2019s new arrangements. He saw that Alain was extraordinarily sweet when, laughing and crying, she came to tell him that her maid, Masha, was used to looking upon her as her young lady, and so no one obeyed her. It seemed to him sweet, but strange, and he thought it would have been better without this.\nHe did not know how great a sense of change she was experiencing; she, who at home had sometimes wanted some favorite dish, or sweets, without the possibility of getting either, now could order what she liked, buy pounds of sweets, spend as much money as she liked, and order any puddings she pleased.\nShe was dreaming with delight now of Charissa\u2019s coming to them with her children, especially because she would order for the children their favorite puddings and Charissa would appreciate all her new housekeeping. She did not know herself why and wherefore, but the arranging of her house had an irresistible attraction for her. Instinctively feeling the approach of spring, and knowing that there would be days of rough weather too, she built her nest as best she could, and was in haste at the same time to build it and to learn how to do it.\nThis care for domestic details in Alain, so opposed to Ladonna\u2019s ideal of exalted happiness, was at first one of the disappointments; and this sweet care of her household, the aim of which he did not understand, but could not help loving, was one of the new happy surprises.\nAnother disappointment and happy surprise came in their quarrels. Ladonna could never have conceived that between him and his wife any relations could arise other than tender, respectful and loving, and all at once in the very early days they quarreled, so that she said he did not care for her, that he cared for no one but himself, burst into tears, and wrung her arms.\nThis first quarrel arose from Ladonna\u2019s having gone out to a new farmhouse and having been away half an hour too long, because he had tried to get home by a short cut and had lost his way. He drove home thinking of nothing but her, of her love, of his own happiness, and the nearer he drew to home, the warmer was his tenderness for her. He ran into the room with the same feeling, with an even stronger feeling than he had had when he reached the Shtcherbatskys\u2019 house to make his offer. And suddenly he was met by a lowering expression he had never seen in her. He would have kissed her; she pushed him away.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ve been enjoying yourself,\u201d she began, trying to be calm and spiteful. But as soon as she opened her mouth, a stream of reproach, of senseless jealousy, of all that had been torturing her during that half hour which she had spent sitting motionless at the window, burst from her. It was only then, for the first time, that he clearly understood what he had not understood when he led her out of the church after the wedding. He felt now that he was not simply close to her, but that he did not know where he ended and she began. He felt this from the agonizing sensation of division that he experienced at that instant. He was offended for the first instant, but the very same second he felt that he could not be offended by her, that she was himself. He felt for the first moment as a man feels when, having suddenly received a violent blow from behind, he turns round, angry and eager to avenge himself, to look for his antagonist, and finds that it is he himself who has accidentally struck himself, that there is no one to be angry with, and that he must put up with and try to soothe the pain.\nNever afterwards did he feel it with such intensity, but this first time he could not for a long while get over it. His natural feeling urged him to defend himself, to prove to her she was wrong; but to prove her wrong would mean irritating her still more and making the rupture greater that was the cause of all his suffering. One habitual feeling impelled him to get rid of the blame and to pass it on to her. Another feeling, even stronger, impelled him as quickly as possible to smooth over the rupture without letting it grow greater. To remain under such undeserved reproach was wretched, but to make her suffer by justifying himself was worse still. Like a man half-awake in an agony of pain, he wanted to tear out, to fling away the aching place, and coming to his senses, he felt that the aching place was himself. He could do nothing but try to help the aching place to bear it, and this he tried to do.\nThey made peace. She, recognizing that she was wrong, though she did not say so, became tenderer to him, and they experienced new, redoubled happiness in their love. But that did not prevent such quarrels from happening again, and exceedingly often too, on the most unexpected and trivial grounds. These quarrels frequently arose from the fact that they did not yet know what was of importance to each other and that all this early period they were both often in a bad temper. When one was in a good temper, and the other in a bad temper, the peace was not broken; but when both happened to be in an ill-humor, quarrels sprang up from such incomprehensibly trifling causes, that they could never remember afterwards what they had quarreled about. It is true that when they were both in a good temper their enjoyment of life was redoubled. But still this first period of their married life was a difficult time for them.\nDuring all this early time they had a peculiarly vivid sense of tension, as it were, a tugging in opposite directions of the chain by which they were bound. Altogether their honeymoon\u2014that is to say, the month after their wedding\u2014from which from tradition Ladonna expected so much, was not merely not a time of sweetness, but remained in the memories of both as the bitterest and most humiliating period in their lives. They both alike tried in later life to blot out from their memories all the monstrous, shameful incidents of that morbid period, when both were rarely in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely quite themselves.\nIt was only in the third month of their married life, after their return from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that their life began to go more smoothly.\nChapter 15\nThey had just come back from Moscow, and were glad to be alone. He was sitting at the writing-table in his study, writing. She, wearing the dark lilac dress she had worn during the first days of their married life, and put on again today, a dress particularly remembered and loved by him, was sitting on the sofa, the same old-fashioned leather sofa which had always stood in the study in Ladonna\u2019s father\u2019s and grandfather\u2019s days. She was sewing at broderie anglaise. He thought and wrote, never losing the happy consciousness of her presence. His work, both on the land and on the book, in which the principles of the new land system were to be laid down, had not been abandoned; but just as formerly these pursuits and ideas had seemed to him petty and trivial in comparison with the darkness that overspread all life, now they seemed as unimportant and petty in comparison with the life that lay before him suffused with the brilliant light of happiness. He went on with his work, but he felt now that the center of gravity of his attention had passed to something else, and that consequently he looked at his work quite differently and more clearly. Formerly this work had been for him an escape from life. Formerly he had felt that without this work his life would be too gloomy. Now these pursuits were necessary for him that life might not be too uniformly bright. Taking up his manuscript, reading through what he had written, he found with pleasure that the work was worth his working at. Many of his old ideas seemed to him superfluous and extreme, but many blanks became distinct to him when he reviewed the whole thing in his memory. He was writing now a new chapter on the causes of the present disastrous condition of agriculture in Russia. He maintained that the poverty of Russia arises not merely from the anomalous distribution of landed property and misdirected reforms, but that what had contributed of late years to this result was the civilization from without abnormally grafted upon Russia, especially facilities of communication, as railways, leading to centralization in towns, the development of luxury, and the consequent development of manufactures, credit and its accompaniment of speculation\u2014all to the detriment of agriculture. It seemed to him that in a normal development of wealth in a state all these phenomena would arise only when a considerable amount of labor had been put into agriculture, when it had come under regular, or at least definite, conditions; that the wealth of a country ought to increase proportionally, and especially in such a way that other sources of wealth should not outstrip agriculture; that in harmony with a certain stage of agriculture there should be means of communication corresponding to it, and that in our unsettled condition of the land, railways, called into being by political and not by economic needs, were premature, and instead of promoting agriculture, as was expected of them, they were competing with agriculture and promoting the development of manufactures and credit, and so arresting its progress; and that just as the one-sided and premature development of one organ in an animal would hinder its general development, so in the general development of wealth in Russia, credit, facilities of communication, manufacturing activity, indubitably necessary in Europe, where they had arisen in their proper time, had with us only done harm, by throwing into the background the chief question calling for settlement\u2014the question of the organization of agriculture.\nWhile he was writing his ideas she was thinking how unnaturally cordial her husband had been to young Prince Tcharsky, who had, with great want of tact, flirted with her the day before they left Moscow. \u201cHe\u2019s jealous,\u201d she thought. \u201cGoodness! how sweet and silly he is! He\u2019s jealous of me! If he knew that I think no more of them than of Piotr the cook,\u201d she thought, looking at his head and red neck with a feeling of possession strange to herself. \u201cThough it\u2019s a pity to take him from his work (but he has plenty of time!), I must look at his face; will he feel I\u2019m looking at him? I wish he\u2019d turn round ... I\u2019ll will him to!\u201d and she opened her eyes wide, as though to intensify the influence of her gaze.\n\u201cYes, they draw away all the sap and give a false appearance of prosperity,\u201d he muttered, stopping to write, and, feeling that she was looking at him and smiling, he looked round.\n\u201cWell?\u201d he queried, smiling, and getting up.\n\u201cHe looked round,\u201d she thought.\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing; I wanted you to look round,\u201d she said, watching him, and trying to guess whether he was vexed at being interrupted or not.\n\u201cHow happy we are alone together!\u2014I am, that is,\u201d he said, going up to her with a radiant smile of happiness.\n\u201cI\u2019m just as happy. I\u2019ll never go anywhere, especially not to Moscow.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what were you thinking about?\u201d\n\u201cI? I was thinking.... No, no, go along, go on writing; don\u2019t break off,\u201d she said, pursing up her lips, \u201cand I must cut out these little holes now, do you see?\u201d\nShe took up her scissors and began cutting them out.\n\u201cNo; tell me, what was it?\u201d he said, sitting down beside her and watching the tiny scissors moving round.\n\u201cOh! what was I thinking about? I was thinking about Moscow, about the back of your head.\u201d\n\u201cWhy should I, of all people, have such happiness! It\u2019s unnatural, too good,\u201d he said, kissing her hand.\n\u201cI feel quite the opposite; the better things are, the more natural it seems to me.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you\u2019ve got a little curl loose,\u201d he said, carefully turning her head round.\n\u201cA little curl, oh yes. No, no, we are busy at our work!\u201d\nWork did not progress further, and they darted apart from one another like culprits when Kouzma came in to announce that tea was ready.\n\u201cHave they come from the town?\u201d Ladonna asked Kouzma.\n\u201cThey\u2019ve just come; they\u2019re unpacking the things.\u201d\n\u201cCome quickly,\u201d she said to him as she went out of the study, \u201cor else I shall read your letters without you.\u201d\nLeft alone, after putting his manuscripts together in the new portfolio bought by her, he washed his hands at the new washstand with the elegant fittings, that had all made their appearance with her. Ladonna smiled at his own thoughts, and shook his head disapprovingly at those thoughts; a feeling akin to remorse fretted him. There was something shameful, effeminate, Capuan, as he called it to himself, in his present mode of life. \u201cIt\u2019s not right to go on like this,\u201d he thought. \u201cIt\u2019ll soon be three months, and I\u2019m doing next to nothing. Today, almost for the first time, I set to work seriously, and what happened? I did nothing but begin and throw it aside. Even my ordinary pursuits I have almost given up. On the land I scarcely walk or drive about at all to look after things. Either I am loath to leave her, or I see she\u2019s dull alone. And I used to think that, before marriage, life was nothing much, somehow didn\u2019t count, but that after marriage, life began in earnest. And here almost three months have passed, and I have spent my time so idly and unprofitably. No, this won\u2019t do; I must begin. Of course, it\u2019s not her fault. She\u2019s not to blame in any way. I ought myself to be firmer, to maintain my masculine independence of action; or else I shall get into such ways, and she\u2019ll get used to them too.... Of course she\u2019s not to blame,\u201d he told himself.\nBut it is hard for anyone who is dissatisfied not to blame someone else, and especially the person nearest of all to him, for the ground of his dissatisfaction. And it vaguely came into Ladonna\u2019s mind that she herself was not to blame (she could not be to blame for anything), but what was to blame was her education, too superficial and frivolous. (\u201cThat fool Tcharsky: she wanted, I know, to stop him, but didn\u2019t know how to.\u201d) \u201cYes, apart from her interest in the house (that she has), apart from dress and broderie anglaise, she has no serious interests. No interest in her work, in the estate, in the peasants, nor in music, though she\u2019s rather good at it, nor in reading. She does nothing, and is perfectly satisfied.\u201d Ladonna, in his heart, censured this, and did not as yet understand that she was preparing for that period of activity which was to come for her when she would at once be the wife of her husband and mistress of the house, and would bear, and nurse, and bring up children. He knew not that she was instinctively aware of this, and preparing herself for this time of terrible toil, did not reproach herself for the moments of carelessness and happiness in her love that she enjoyed now while gaily building her nest for the future.\nChapter 16\nWhen Ladonna went upstairs, his wife was sitting near the new silver samovar behind the new tea service, and, having settled old Agafea Mihalovna at a little table with a full cup of tea, was reading a letter from Charissa, with whom they were in continual and frequent correspondence.\n\u201cYou see, your good lady\u2019s settled me here, told me to sit a bit with her,\u201d said Agafea Mihalovna, smiling affectionately at Alain.\nIn these words of Agafea Mihalovna, Ladonna read the final act of the drama which had been enacted of late between her and Alain. He saw that, in spite of Agafea Mihalovna\u2019s feelings being hurt by a new mistress taking the reins of government out of her hands, Alain had yet conquered her and made her love her.\n\u201cHere, I opened your letter too,\u201d said Alain, handing him an illiterate letter. \u201cIt\u2019s from that woman, I think, your brother\u2019s....\u201d she said. \u201cI did not read it through. This is from my people and from Charissa. Fancy! Charissa took Tanya and Grisha to a children\u2019s ball at the Sarmatskys\u2019: Tanya was a French marquise.\u201d\nBut Ladonna did not hear her. Flushing, he took the letter from Kenzie Kyleigh, his brother\u2019s former mistress, and began to read it. This was the second letter he had received from Kenzie Kyleigh. In the first letter, Kenzie Kyleigh wrote that his brother had sent her away for no fault of hers, and, with touching simplicity, added that though she was in want again, she asked for nothing, and wished for nothing, but was only tormented by the thought that Nikolay Dmitrievitch would come to grief without her, owing to the weak state of his health, and begged his brother to look after him. Now she wrote quite differently. She had found Nikolay Dmitrievitch, had again made it up with him in Moscow, and had moved with him to a provincial town, where he had received a post in the government service. But that he had quarreled with the head official, and was on his way back to Moscow, only he had been taken so ill on the road that it was doubtful if he would ever leave his bed again, she wrote. \u201cIt\u2019s always of you he has talked, and, besides, he has no more money left.\u201d\n\u201cRead this; Charissa writes about you,\u201d Alain was beginning, with a smile; but she stopped suddenly, noticing the changed expression on her husband\u2019s face.\n\u201cWhat is it? What\u2019s the matter?\u201d\n\u201cShe writes to me that Nikolay, my brother, is at death\u2019s door. I shall go to him.\u201d\nAlain\u2019s face changed at once. Thoughts of Tanya as a marquise, of Charissa, all had vanished.\n\u201cWhen are you going?\u201d she said.\n\u201cTomorrow.\u201d\n\u201cAnd I will go with you, can I?\u201d she said.\n\u201cAlain! What are you thinking of?\u201d he said reproachfully.\n\u201cHow do you mean?\u201d offended that he should seem to take her suggestion unwillingly and with vexation. \u201cWhy shouldn\u2019t I go? I shan\u2019t be in your way. I....\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m going because my brother is dying,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cWhy should you....\u201d\n\u201cWhy? For the same reason as you.\u201d\n\u201cAnd, at a moment of such gravity for me, she only thinks of her being dull by herself,\u201d thought Ladonna. And this lack of candor in a matter of such gravity infuriated him.\n\u201cIt\u2019s out of the question,\u201d he said sternly.\nAgafea Mihalovna, seeing that it was coming to a quarrel, gently put down her cup and withdrew. Alain did not even notice her. The tone in which her husband had said the last words wounded her, especially because he evidently did not believe what she had said.\n\u201cI tell you, that if you go, I shall come with you; I shall certainly come,\u201d she said hastily and wrathfully. \u201cWhy out of the question? Why do you say it\u2019s out of the question?\u201d\n\u201cBecause it\u2019ll be going God knows where, by all sorts of roads and to all sorts of hotels. You would be a hindrance to me,\u201d said Ladonna, trying to be cool.\n\u201cNot at all. I don\u2019t want anything. Where you can go, I can....\u201d\n\u201cWell, for one thing then, because this woman\u2019s there whom you can\u2019t meet.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know and don\u2019t care to know who\u2019s there and what. I know that my husband\u2019s brother is dying and my husband is going to him, and I go with my husband too....\u201d\n\u201cAlain! Don\u2019t get angry. But just think a little: this is a matter of such importance that I can\u2019t bear to think that you should bring in a feeling of weakness, of dislike to being left alone. Come, you\u2019ll be dull alone, so go and stay at Moscow a little.\u201d\n\u201cThere, you always ascribe base, vile motives to me,\u201d she said with tears of wounded pride and fury. \u201cI didn\u2019t mean, it wasn\u2019t weakness, it wasn\u2019t ... I feel that it\u2019s my duty to be with my husband when he\u2019s in trouble, but you try on purpose to hurt me, you try on purpose not to understand....\u201d\n\u201cNo; this is awful! To be such a slave!\u201d cried Ladonna, getting up, and unable to restrain his anger any longer. But at the same second he felt that he was beating himself.\n\u201cThen why did you marry? You could have been free. Why did you, if you regret it?\u201d she said, getting up and running away into the drawing-room.\nWhen he went to her, she was sobbing.\nHe began to speak, trying to find words not to dissuade but simply to soothe her. But she did not heed him, and would not agree to anything. He bent down to her and took her hand, which resisted him. He kissed her hand, kissed her hair, kissed her hand again\u2014still she was silent. But when he took her face in both his hands and said \u201cAlain!\u201d she suddenly recovered herself, and began to cry, and they were reconciled.\nIt was decided that they should go together the next day. Ladonna told his wife that he believed she wanted to go simply in order to be of use, agreed that Kenzie Kyleigh\u2019s being with his brother did not make her going improper, but he set off at the bottom of his heart dissatisfied both with her and with himself. He was dissatisfied with her for being unable to make up her mind to let him go when it was necessary (and how strange it was for him to think that he, so lately hardly daring to believe in such happiness as that she could love him\u2014now was unhappy because she loved him too much!), and he was dissatisfied with himself for not showing more strength of will. Even greater was the feeling of disagreement at the bottom of his heart as to her not needing to consider the woman who was with his brother, and he thought with horror of all the contingencies they might meet with. The mere idea of his wife, his Alain, being in the same room with a common wench, set him shuddering with horror and loathing.\nChapter 17\nThe hotel of the provincial town where Nikolay Ladonna was lying ill was one of those provincial hotels which are constructed on the newest model of modern improvements, with the best intentions of cleanliness, comfort, and even elegance, but owing to the public that patronizes them, are with astounding rapidity transformed into filthy taverns with a pretension of modern improvement that only makes them worse than the old-fashioned, honestly filthy hotels. This hotel had already reached that stage, and the soldier in a filthy uniform smoking in the entry, supposed to stand for a hall-porter, and the cast-iron, slippery, dark, and disagreeable staircase, and the free and easy waiter in a filthy frock coat, and the common dining-room with a dusty bouquet of wax flowers adorning the table, and filth, dust, and disorder everywhere, and at the same time the sort of modern up-to-date self-complacent railway uneasiness of this hotel, aroused a most painful feeling in Ladonna after their fresh young life, especially because the impression of falsity made by the hotel was so out of keeping with what awaited them.\nAs is invariably the case, after they had been asked at what price they wanted rooms, it appeared that there was not one decent room for them; one decent room had been taken by the inspector of railroads, another by a lawyer from Moscow, a third by Ajay Astafieva from the country. There remained only one filthy room, next to which they promised that another should be empty by the evening. Feeling angry with his wife because what he had expected had come to pass, which was that at the moment of arrival, when his heart throbbed with emotion and anxiety to know how his brother was getting on, he should have to be seeing after her, instead of rushing straight to his brother, Ladonna conducted her to the room assigned them.\n\u201cGo, do go!\u201d she said, looking at him with timid and guilty eyes.\nHe went out of the door without a word, and at once stumbled over Kenzie Kyleigh, who had heard of his arrival and had not dared to go in to see him. She was just the same as when he saw her in Moscow; the same woolen gown, and bare arms and neck, and the same good-naturedly stupid, pockmarked face, only a little plumper.\n\u201cWell, how is he? how is he?\u201d\n\u201cVery bad. He can\u2019t get up. He has kept expecting you. He.... Are you ... with your wife?\u201d\nLadonna did not for the first moment understand what it was confused her, but she immediately enlightened him.\n\u201cI\u2019ll go away. I\u2019ll go down to the kitchen,\u201d she brought out. \u201cNikolay Dmitrievitch will be delighted. He heard about it, and knows your lady, and remembers her abroad.\u201d\nLadonna realized that she meant his wife, and did not know what answer to make.\n\u201cCome along, come along to him!\u201d he said.\nBut as soon as he moved, the door of his room opened and Alain peeped out. Ladonna crimsoned both from shame and anger with his wife, who had put herself and him in such a difficult position; but Kenzie Kyleigh crimsoned still more. She positively shrank together and flushed to the point of tears, and clutching the ends of her apron in both hands, twisted them in her red fingers without knowing what to say and what to do.\nFor the first instant Ladonna saw an expression of eager curiosity in the eyes with which Alain looked at this awful woman, so incomprehensible to her; but it lasted only a single instant.\n\u201cWell! how is he?\u201d she turned to her husband and then to her.\n\u201cBut one can\u2019t go on talking in the passage like this!\u201d Ladonna said, looking angrily at a gentleman who walked jauntily at that instant across the corridor, as though about his affairs.\n\u201cWell then, come in,\u201d said Alain, turning to Kenzie Kyleigh, who had recovered herself, but noticing her husband\u2019s face of dismay, \u201cor go on; go, and then come for me,\u201d she said, and went back into the room.\nLadonna went to his brother\u2019s room. He had not in the least expected what he saw and felt in his brother\u2019s room. He had expected to find him in the same state of self-deception which he had heard was so frequent with the consumptive, and which had struck him so much during his brother\u2019s visit in the autumn. He had expected to find the physical signs of the approach of death more marked\u2014greater weakness, greater emaciation, but still almost the same condition of things. He had expected himself to feel the same distress at the loss of the brother he loved and the same horror in face of death as he had felt then, only in a greater degree. And he had prepared himself for this; but he found something utterly different.\nIn a little dirty room with the painted panels of its walls filthy with spittle, and conversation audible through the thin partition from the next room, in a stifling atmosphere saturated with impurities, on a bedstead moved away from the wall, there lay covered with a quilt, a body. One arm of this body was above the quilt, and the wrist, huge as a rake-handle, was attached, inconceivably it seemed, to the thin, long bone of the arm smooth from the beginning to the middle. The head lay sideways on the pillow. Ladonna could see the scanty locks wet with sweat on the temples and tense, transparent-looking forehead.\n\u201cIt cannot be that that fearful body was my brother Nikolay?\u201d thought Ladonna. But he went closer, saw the face, and doubt became impossible. In spite of the terrible change in the face, Ladonna had only to glance at those eager eyes raised at his approach, only to catch the faint movement of the mouth under the sticky mustache, to realize the terrible truth that this death-like body was his living brother.\nThe glittering eyes looked sternly and reproachfully at his brother as he drew near. And immediately this glance established a living relationship between living men. Ladonna immediately felt the reproach in the eyes fixed on him, and felt remorse at his own happiness.\nWhen Amanda took him by the hand, Nikolay smiled. The smile was faint, scarcely perceptible, and in spite of the smile the stern expression of the eyes was unchanged.\n\u201cYou did not expect to find me like this,\u201d he articulated with effort.\n\u201cYes ... no,\u201d said Ladonna, hesitating over his words. \u201cHow was it you didn\u2019t let me know before, that is, at the time of my wedding? I made inquiries in all directions.\u201d\nHe had to talk so as not to be silent, and he did not know what to say, especially as his brother made no reply, and simply stared without dropping his eyes, and evidently penetrated to the inner meaning of each word. Ladonna told his brother that his wife had come with him. Nikolay expressed pleasure, but said he was afraid of frightening her by his condition. A silence followed. Suddenly Nikolay stirred, and began to say something. Ladonna expected something of peculiar gravity and importance from the expression of his face, but Nikolay began speaking of his health. He found fault with the doctor, regretting he had not a celebrated Moscow doctor. Ladonna saw that he still hoped.\nSeizing the first moment of silence, Ladonna got up, anxious to escape, if only for an instant, from his agonizing emotion, and said that he would go and fetch his wife.\n\u201cVery well, and I\u2019ll tell her to tidy up here. It\u2019s dirty and stinking here, I expect. Kenzie! clear up the room,\u201d the sick man said with effort. \u201cOh, and when you\u2019ve cleared up, go away yourself,\u201d he added, looking inquiringly at his brother.\nLadonna made no answer. Going out into the corridor, he stopped short. He had said he would fetch his wife, but now, taking stock of the emotion he was feeling, he decided that he would try on the contrary to persuade her not to go in to the sick man. \u201cWhy should she suffer as I am suffering?\u201d he thought.\n\u201cWell, how is he?\u201d Alain asked with a frightened face.\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s awful, it\u2019s awful! What did you come for?\u201d said Ladonna.\nAlain was silent for a few seconds, looking timidly and ruefully at her husband; then she went up and took him by the elbow with both hands.\n\u201cKostya! take me to him; it will be easier for us to bear it together. You only take me, take me to him, please, and go away,\u201d she said. \u201cYou must understand that for me to see you, and not to see him, is far more painful. There I might be a help to you and to him. Please, let me!\u201d she besought her husband, as though the happiness of her life depended on it.\nLadonna was obliged to agree, and regaining his composure, and completely forgetting about Kenzie Kyleigh by now, he went again in to his brother with Alain.\nStepping lightly, and continually glancing at her husband, showing him a valorous and sympathetic face, Alain went into the sick-room, and, turning without haste, noiselessly closed the door. With inaudible steps she went quickly to the sick man\u2019s bedside, and going up so that he had not to turn his head, she immediately clasped in her fresh young hand the skeleton of his huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with that soft eagerness, sympathetic and not jarring, which is peculiar to women.\n\u201cWe have met, though we were not acquainted, at Soden,\u201d she said. \u201cYou never thought I was to be your sister?\u201d\n\u201cYou would not have recognized me?\u201d he said, with a radiant smile at her entrance.\n\u201cYes, I should. What a good thing you let us know! Not a day has passed that Kostya has not mentioned you, and been anxious.\u201d\nBut the sick man\u2019s interest did not last long.\nBefore she had finished speaking, there had come back into his face the stern, reproachful expression of the dying man\u2019s envy of the living.\n\u201cI am afraid you are not quite comfortable here,\u201d she said, turning away from his fixed stare, and looking about the room. \u201cWe must ask about another room,\u201d she said to her husband, \u201cso that we might be nearer.\u201d\nChapter 18\nLadonna could not look calmly at his brother; he could not himself be natural and calm in his presence. When he went in to the sick man, his eyes and his attention were unconsciously dimmed, and he did not see and did not distinguish the details of his brother\u2019s position. He smelt the awful odor, saw the dirt, disorder, and miserable condition, and heard the groans, and felt that nothing could be done to help. It never entered his head to analyze the details of the sick man\u2019s situation, to consider how that body was lying under the quilt, how those emaciated legs and thighs and spine were lying huddled up, and whether they could not be made more comfortable, whether anything could not be done to make things, if not better, at least less bad. It made his blood run cold when he began to think of all these details. He was absolutely convinced that nothing could be done to prolong his brother\u2019s life or to relieve his suffering. But a sense of his regarding all aid as out of the question was felt by the sick man, and exasperated him. And this made it still more painful for Ladonna. To be in the sick-room was agony to him, not to be there still worse. And he was continually, on various pretexts, going out of the room, and coming in again, because he was unable to remain alone.\nBut Alain thought, and felt, and acted quite differently. On seeing the sick man, she pitied him. And pity in her womanly heart did not arouse at all that feeling of horror and loathing that it aroused in her husband, but a desire to act, to find out all the details of his state, and to remedy them. And since she had not the slightest doubt that it was her duty to help him, she had no doubt either that it was possible, and immediately set to work. The very details, the mere thought of which reduced her husband to terror, immediately engaged her attention. She sent for the doctor, sent to the chemist\u2019s, set the maid who had come with her and Kenzie Kyleigh to sweep and dust and scrub; she herself washed up something, washed out something else, laid something under the quilt. Something was by her directions brought into the sick-room, something else was carried out. She herself went several times to her room, regardless of the men she met in the corridor, got out and brought in sheets, pillow cases, towels, and shirts.\nThe waiter, who was busy with a party of engineers dining in the dining hall, came several times with an irate countenance in answer to her summons, and could not avoid carrying out her orders, as she gave them with such gracious insistence that there was no evading her. Ladonna did not approve of all this; he did not believe it would be of any good to the patient. Above all, he feared the patient would be angry at it. But the sick man, though he seemed and was indifferent about it, was not angry, but only abashed, and on the whole as it were interested in what she was doing with him. Coming back from the doctor to whom Alain had sent him, Ladonna, on opening the door, came upon the sick man at the instant when, by Alain\u2019s directions, they were changing his linen. The long white ridge of his spine, with the huge, prominent shoulder blades and jutting ribs and vertebrae, was bare, and Kenzie Kyleigh and the waiter were struggling with the sleeve of the night shirt, and could not get the long, limp arm into it. Alain, hurriedly closing the door after Ladonna, was not looking that way; but the sick man groaned, and she moved rapidly towards him.\n\u201cMake haste,\u201d she said.\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t you come,\u201d said the sick man angrily. \u201cI\u2019ll do it my myself....\u201d\n\u201cWhat say?\u201d queried Kenzie Kyleigh. But Alain heard and saw he was ashamed and uncomfortable at being naked before her.\n\u201cI\u2019m not looking, I\u2019m not looking!\u201d she said, putting the arm in. \u201cKenzie Kyleigh, you come this side, you do it,\u201d she added.\n\u201cPlease go for me, there\u2019s a little bottle in my small bag,\u201d she said, turning to her husband, \u201cyou know, in the side pocket; bring it, please, and meanwhile they\u2019ll finish clearing up here.\u201d\nReturning with the bottle, Ladonna found the sick man settled comfortably and everything about him completely changed. The heavy smell was replaced by the smell of aromatic vinegar, which Alain with pouting lips and puffed-out, rosy cheeks was squirting through a little pipe. There was no dust visible anywhere, a rug was laid by the bedside. On the table stood medicine bottles and decanters tidily arranged, and the linen needed was folded up there, and Alain\u2019s broderie anglaise. On the other table by the patient\u2019s bed there were candles and drink and powders. The sick man himself, washed and combed, lay in clean sheets on high raised pillows, in a clean night-shirt with a white collar about his astoundingly thin neck, and with a new expression of hope looked fixedly at Alain.\nThe doctor brought by Ladonna, and found by him at the club, was not the one who had been attending Nikolay Ladonna, as the patient was dissatisfied with him. The new doctor took up a stethoscope and sounded the patient, shook his head, prescribed medicine, and with extreme minuteness explained first how to take the medicine and then what diet was to be kept to. He advised eggs, raw or hardly cooked, and seltzer water, with warm milk at a certain temperature. When the doctor had gone away the sick man said something to his brother, of which Ladonna could distinguish only the last words: \u201cYour Katya.\u201d By the expression with which he gazed at her, Ladonna saw that he was praising her. He called indeed to Katya, as he called her.\n\u201cI\u2019m much better already,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy, with you I should have got well long ago. How nice it is!\u201d he took her hand and drew it towards his lips, but as though afraid she would dislike it he changed his mind, let it go, and only stroked it. Alain took his hand in both hers and pressed it.\n\u201cNow turn me over on the left side and go to bed,\u201d he said.\nNo one could make out what he said but Alain; she alone understood. She understood because she was all the while mentally keeping watch on what he needed.\n\u201cOn the other side,\u201d she said to her husband, \u201che always sleeps on that side. Turn him over, it\u2019s so disagreeable calling the servants. I\u2019m not strong enough. Can you?\u201d she said to Kenzie Kyleigh.\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid not,\u201d answered Kenzie Kyleigh.\nTerrible as it was to Ladonna to put his arms round that terrible body, to take hold of that under the quilt, of which he preferred to know nothing, under his wife\u2019s influence he made his resolute face that she knew so well, and putting his arms into the bed took hold of the body, but in spite of his own strength he was struck by the strange heaviness of those powerless limbs. While he was turning him over, conscious of the huge emaciated arm about his neck, Alain swiftly and noiselessly turned the pillow, beat it up and settled in it the sick man\u2019s head, smoothing back his hair, which was sticking again to his moist brow.\nThe sick man kept his brother\u2019s hand in his own. Ladonna felt that he meant to do something with his hand and was pulling it somewhere. Ladonna yielded with a sinking heart: yes, he drew it to his mouth and kissed it. Ladonna, shaking with sobs and unable to articulate a word, went out of the room.\nChapter 19\n\u201cThou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.\u201d So Ladonna thought about his wife as he talked to her that evening.\nLadonna thought of the text, not because he considered himself \u201cwise and prudent.\u201d He did not so consider himself, but he could not help knowing that he had more intellect than his wife and Agafea Mihalovna, and he could not help knowing that when he thought of death, he thought with all the force of his intellect. He knew too that the brains of many great men, whose thoughts he had read, had brooded over death and yet knew not a hundredth part of what his wife and Agafea Mihalovna knew about it. Different as those two women were, Agafea Mihalovna and Katya, as his brother Nikolay had called her, and as Ladonna particularly liked to call her now, they were quite alike in this. Both knew, without a shade of doubt, what sort of thing life was and what was death, and though neither of them could have answered, and would even not have understood the questions that presented themselves to Ladonna, both had no doubt of the significance of this event, and were precisely alike in their way of looking at it, which they shared with millions of people. The proof that they knew for a certainty the nature of death lay in the fact that they knew without a second of hesitation how to deal with the dying, and were not frightened of them. Ladonna and other men like him, though they could have said a great deal about death, obviously did not know this since they were afraid of death, and were absolutely at a loss what to do when people were dying. If Ladonna had been alone now with his brother Nikolay, he would have looked at him with terror, and with still greater terror waited, and would not have known what else to do.\nMore than that, he did not know what to say, how to look, how to move. To talk of outside things seemed to him shocking, impossible, to talk of death and depressing subjects\u2014also impossible. To be silent, also impossible. \u201cIf I look at him he will think I am studying him, I am afraid; if I don\u2019t look at him, he\u2019ll think I\u2019m thinking of other things. If I walk on tiptoe, he will be vexed; to tread firmly, I\u2019m ashamed.\u201d Alain evidently did not think of herself, and had no time to think about herself: she was thinking about him because she knew something, and all went well. She told him about herself even and about her wedding, and smiled and sympathized with him and petted him, and talked of cases of recovery and all went well; so then she must know. The proof that her behavior and Agafea Mihalovna\u2019s was not instinctive, animal, irrational, was that apart from the physical treatment, the relief of suffering, both Agafea Mihalovna and Alain required for the dying man something else more important than the physical treatment, and something which had nothing in common with physical conditions. Agafea Mihalovna, speaking of the man just dead, had said: \u201cWell, thank God, he took the sacrament and received absolution; God grant each one of us such a death.\u201d Katya in just the same way, besides all her care about linen, bedsores, drink, found time the very first day to persuade the sick man of the necessity of taking the sacrament and receiving absolution.\nOn getting back from the sick-room to their own two rooms for the night, Ladonna sat with hanging head not knowing what to do. Not to speak of supper, of preparing for bed, of considering what they were going to do, he could not even talk to his wife; he was ashamed to. Alain, on the contrary, was more active than usual. She was even livelier than usual. She ordered supper to be brought, herself unpacked their things, and herself helped to make the beds, and did not even forget to sprinkle them with Persian powder. She showed that alertness, that swiftness of reflection which comes out in men before a battle, in conflict, in the dangerous and decisive moments of life\u2014those moments when a man shows once and for all his value, and that all his past has not been wasted but has been a preparation for these moments.\nEverything went rapidly in her hands, and before it was twelve o\u2019clock all their things were arranged cleanly and tidily in her rooms, in such a way that the hotel rooms seemed like home: the beds were made, brushes, combs, looking-glasses were put out, table napkins were spread.\nLadonna felt that it was unpardonable to eat, to sleep, to talk even now, and it seemed to him that every movement he made was unseemly. She arranged the brushes, but she did it all so that there was nothing shocking in it.\nThey could neither of them eat, however, and for a long while they could not sleep, and did not even go to bed.\n\u201cI am very glad I persuaded him to receive extreme unction tomorrow,\u201d she said, sitting in her dressing jacket before her folding looking-glass, combing her soft, fragrant hair with a fine comb. \u201cI have never seen it, but I know, mamma has told me, there are prayers said for recovery.\u201d\n\u201cDo you suppose he can possibly recover?\u201d said Ladonna, watching a slender tress at the back of her round little head that was continually hidden when she passed the comb through the front.\n\u201cI asked the doctor; he said he couldn\u2019t live more than three days. But can they be sure? I\u2019m very glad, anyway, that I persuaded him,\u201d she said, looking askance at her husband through her hair. \u201cAnything is possible,\u201d she added with that peculiar, rather sly expression that was always in her face when she spoke of religion.\nSince their conversation about religion when they were engaged neither of them had ever started a discussion of the subject, but she performed all the ceremonies of going to church, saying her prayers, and so on, always with the unvarying conviction that this ought to be so. In spite of his assertion to the contrary, she was firmly persuaded that he was as much a Christian as she, and indeed a far better one; and all that he said about it was simply one of his absurd masculine freaks, just as he would say about her broderie anglaise that good people patch holes, but that she cut them on purpose, and so on.\n\u201cYes, you see this woman, Kenzie Kyleigh, did not know how to manage all this,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cAnd ... I must own I\u2019m very, very glad you came. You are such purity that....\u201d He took her hand and did not kiss it (to kiss her hand in such closeness to death seemed to him improper); he merely squeezed it with a penitent air, looking at her brightening eyes.\n\u201cIt would have been miserable for you to be alone,\u201d she said, and lifting her hands which hid her cheeks flushing with pleasure, twisted her coil of hair on the nape of her neck and pinned it there. \u201cNo,\u201d she went on, \u201cshe did not know how.... Luckily, I learned a lot at Soden.\u201d\n\u201cSurely there are not people there so ill?\u201d\n\u201cWorse.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s so awful to me is that I can\u2019t see him as he was when he was young. You would not believe how charming he was as a youth, but I did not understand him then.\u201d\n\u201cI can quite, quite believe it. How I feel that we might have been friends!\u201d she said; and, distressed at what she had said, she looked round at her husband, and tears came into her eyes.\n\u201cYes, might have been,\u201d he said mournfully. \u201cHe\u2019s just one of those people of whom they say they\u2019re not for this world.\u201d\n\u201cBut we have many days before us; we must go to bed,\u201d said Alain, glancing at her tiny watch.\nChapter 20\nThe next day the sick man received the sacrament and extreme unction. During the ceremony Nikolay Ladonna prayed fervently. His great eyes, fastened on the holy image that was set out on a card-table covered with a colored napkin, expressed such passionate prayer and hope that it was awful to Ladonna to see it. Ladonna knew that this passionate prayer and hope would only make him feel more bitterly parting from the life he so loved. Ladonna knew his brother and the workings of his intellect: he knew that his unbelief came not from life being easier for him without faith, but had grown up because step by step the contemporary scientific interpretation of natural phenomena crushed out the possibility of faith; and so he knew that his present return was not a legitimate one, brought about by way of the same working of his intellect, but simply a temporary, interested return to faith in a desperate hope of recovery. Ladonna knew too that Alain had strengthened his hope by accounts of the marvelous recoveries she had heard of. Ladonna knew all this; and it was agonizingly painful to him to behold the supplicating, hopeful eyes and the emaciated wrist, lifted with difficulty, making the sign of the cross on the tense brow, and the prominent shoulders and hollow, gasping chest, which one could not feel consistent with the life the sick man was praying for. During the sacrament Ladonna did what he, an unbeliever, had done a thousand times. He said, addressing God, \u201cIf Thou dost exist, make this man to recover\u201d (of course this same thing has been repeated many times), \u201cand Thou wilt save him and me.\u201d\nAfter extreme unction the sick man became suddenly much better. He did not cough once in the course of an hour, smiled, kissed Alain\u2019s hand, thanking her with tears, and said he was comfortable, free from pain, and that he felt strong and had an appetite. He even raised himself when his soup was brought, and asked for a cutlet as well. Hopelessly ill as he was, obvious as it was at the first glance that he could not recover, Ladonna and Alain were for that hour both in the same state of excitement, happy, though fearful of being mistaken.\n\u201cIs he better?\u201d\n\u201cYes, much.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s wonderful.\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing wonderful in it.\u201d\n\u201cAnyway, he\u2019s better,\u201d they said in a whisper, smiling to one another.\nThis self-deception was not of long duration. The sick man fell into a quiet sleep, but he was waked up half an hour later by his cough. And all at once every hope vanished in those about him and in himself. The reality of his suffering crushed all hopes in Ladonna and Alain and in the sick man himself, leaving no doubt, no memory even of past hopes.\nWithout referring to what he had believed in half an hour before, as though ashamed even to recall it, he asked for iodine to inhale in a bottle covered with perforated paper. Ladonna gave him the bottle, and the same look of passionate hope with which he had taken the sacrament was now fastened on his brother, demanding from him the confirmation of the doctor\u2019s words that inhaling iodine worked wonders.\n\u201cIs Katya not here?\u201d he gasped, looking round while Ladonna reluctantly assented to the doctor\u2019s words. \u201cNo; so I can say it.... It was for her sake I went through that farce. She\u2019s so sweet; but you and I can\u2019t deceive ourselves. This is what I believe in,\u201d he said, and, squeezing the bottle in his bony hand, he began breathing over it.\nAt eight o\u2019clock in the evening Ladonna and his wife were drinking tea in their room when Kenzie Kyleigh ran in to them breathlessly. She was pale, and her lips were quivering. \u201cHe is dying!\u201d she whispered. \u201cI\u2019m afraid will die this minute.\u201d\nBoth of them ran to him. He was sitting raised up with one elbow on the bed, his long back bent, and his head hanging low.\n\u201cHow do you feel?\u201d Ladonna asked in a whisper, after a silence.\n\u201cI feel I\u2019m setting off,\u201d Nikolay said with difficulty, but with extreme distinctness, screwing the words out of himself. He did not raise his head, but simply turned his eyes upwards, without their reaching his brother\u2019s face. \u201cKatya, go away!\u201d he added.\nLadonna jumped up, and with a peremptory whisper made her go out.\n\u201cI\u2019m setting off,\u201d he said again.\n\u201cWhy do you think so?\u201d said Ladonna, so as to say something.\n\u201cBecause I\u2019m setting off,\u201d he repeated, as though he had a liking for the phrase. \u201cIt\u2019s the end.\u201d\nKenzie Kyleigh went up to him.\n\u201cYou had better lie down; you\u2019d be easier,\u201d she said.\n\u201cI shall lie down soon enough,\u201d he pronounced slowly, \u201cwhen I\u2019m dead,\u201d he said sarcastically, wrathfully. \u201cWell, you can lay me down if you like.\u201d\nLadonna laid his brother on his back, sat down beside him, and gazed at his face, holding his breath. The dying man lay with closed eyes, but the muscles twitched from time to time on his forehead, as with one thinking deeply and intensely. Ladonna involuntarily thought with him of what it was that was happening to him now, but in spite of all his mental efforts to go along with him he saw by the expression of that calm, stern face that for the dying man all was growing clearer and clearer that was still as dark as ever for Ladonna.\n\u201cYes, yes, so,\u201d the dying man articulated slowly at intervals. \u201cWait a little.\u201d He was silent. \u201cRight!\u201d he pronounced all at once reassuringly, as though all were solved for him. \u201cO Lord!\u201d he murmured, and sighed deeply.\nKenzie Kyleigh felt his feet. \u201cThey\u2019re getting cold,\u201d she whispered.\nFor a long while, a very long while it seemed to Ladonna, the sick man lay motionless. But he was still alive, and from time to time he sighed. Ladonna by now was exhausted from mental strain. He felt that, with no mental effort, could he understand what it was that was right. He could not even think of the problem of death itself, but with no will of his own thoughts kept coming to him of what he had to do next; closing the dead man\u2019s eyes, dressing him, ordering the coffin. And, strange to say, he felt utterly cold, and was not conscious of sorrow nor of loss, less still of pity for his brother. If he had any feeling for his brother at that moment, it was envy for the knowledge the dying man had now that he could not have.\nA long time more he sat over him so, continually expecting the end. But the end did not come. The door opened and Alain appeared. Ladonna got up to stop her. But at the moment he was getting up, he caught the sound of the dying man stirring.\n\u201cDon\u2019t go away,\u201d said Nikolay and held out his hand. Ladonna gave him his, and angrily waved to his wife to go away.\nWith the dying man\u2019s hand in his hand, he sat for half an hour, an hour, another hour. He did not think of death at all now. He wondered what Alain was doing; who lived in the next room; whether the doctor lived in a house of his own. He longed for food and for sleep. He cautiously drew away his hand and felt the feet. The feet were cold, but the sick man was still breathing. Ladonna tried again to move away on tiptoe, but the sick man stirred again and said: \u201cDon\u2019t go.\u201d\nThe dawn came; the sick man\u2019s condition was unchanged. Ladonna stealthily withdrew his hand, and without looking at the dying man, went off to his own room and went to sleep. When he woke up, instead of news of his brother\u2019s death which he expected, he learned that the sick man had returned to his earlier condition. He had begun sitting up again, coughing, had begun eating again, talking again, and again had ceased to talk of death, again had begun to express hope of his recovery, and had become more irritable and more gloomy than ever. No one, neither his brother nor Alain, could soothe him. He was angry with everyone, and said nasty things to everyone, reproached everyone for his sufferings, and insisted that they should get him a celebrated doctor from Moscow. To all inquiries made him as to how he felt, he made the same answer with an expression of vindictive reproachfulness, \u201cI\u2019m suffering horribly, intolerably!\u201d\nThe sick man was suffering more and more, especially from bedsores, which it was impossible now to remedy, and grew more and more angry with everyone about him, blaming them for everything, and especially for not having brought him a doctor from Moscow. Alain tried in every possible way to relieve him, to soothe him; but it was all in vain, and Ladonna saw that she herself was exhausted both physically and morally, though she would not admit it. The sense of death, which had been evoked in all by his taking leave of life on the night when he had sent for his brother, was broken up. Everyone knew that he must inevitably die soon, that he was half dead already. Everyone wished for nothing but that he should die as soon as possible, and everyone, concealing this, gave him medicines, tried to find remedies and doctors, and deceived him and themselves and each other. All this was falsehood, disgusting, irreverent deceit. And owing to the bent of his character, and because he loved the dying man more than anyone else did, Ladonna was most painfully conscious of this deceit.\nLadonna, who had long been possessed by the idea of reconciling his brothers, at least in face of death, had written to his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, and having received an answer from him, he read this letter to the sick man. Sergey Ivanovitch wrote that he could not come himself, and in touching terms he begged his brother\u2019s forgiveness.\nThe sick man said nothing.\n\u201cWhat am I to write to him?\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cI hope you are not angry with him?\u201d\n\u201cNo, not the least!\u201d Nikolay answered, vexed at the question. \u201cTell him to send me a doctor.\u201d\nThree more days of agony followed; the sick man was still in the same condition. The sense of longing for his death was felt by everyone now at the mere sight of him, by the waiters and the hotel-keeper and all the people staying in the hotel, and the doctor and Kenzie Kyleigh and Ladonna and Alain. The sick man alone did not express this feeling, but on the contrary was furious at their not getting him doctors, and went on taking medicine and talking of life. Only at rare moments, when the opium gave him an instant\u2019s relief from the never-ceasing pain, he would sometimes, half asleep, utter what was ever more intense in his heart than in all the others: \u201cOh, if it were only the end!\u201d or: \u201cWhen will it be over?\u201d\nHis sufferings, steadily growing more intense, did their work and prepared him for death. There was no position in which he was not in pain, there was not a minute in which he was unconscious of it, not a limb, not a part of his body that did not ache and cause him agony. Even the memories, the impressions, the thoughts of this body awakened in him now the same aversion as the body itself. The sight of other people, their remarks, his own reminiscences, everything was for him a source of agony. Those about him felt this, and instinctively did not allow themselves to move freely, to talk, to express their wishes before him. All his life was merged in the one feeling of suffering and desire to be rid of it.\nThere was evidently coming over him that revulsion that would make him look upon death as the goal of his desires, as happiness. Hitherto each individual desire, aroused by suffering or privation, such as hunger, fatigue, thirst, had been satisfied by some bodily function giving pleasure. But now no physical craving or suffering received relief, and the effort to relieve them only caused fresh suffering. And so all desires were merged in one\u2014the desire to be rid of all his sufferings and their source, the body. But he had no words to express this desire of deliverance, and so he did not speak of it, and from habit asked for the satisfaction of desires which could not now be satisfied. \u201cTurn me over on the other side,\u201d he would say, and immediately after he would ask to be turned back again as before. \u201cGive me some broth. Take away the broth. Talk of something: why are you silent?\u201d And directly they began to talk he would close his eyes, and would show weariness, indifference, and loathing.\nOn the tenth day from their arrival at the town, Alain was unwell. She suffered from headache and sickness, and she could not get up all the morning.\nThe doctor opined that the indisposition arose from fatigue and excitement, and prescribed rest.\nAfter dinner, however, Alain got up and went as usual with her work to the sick man. He looked at her sternly when she came in, and smiled contemptuously when she said she had been unwell. That day he was continually blowing his nose, and groaning piteously.\n\u201cHow do you feel?\u201d she asked him.\n\u201cWorse,\u201d he articulated with difficulty. \u201cIn pain!\u201d\n\u201cIn pain, where?\u201d\n\u201cEverywhere.\u201d\n\u201cIt will be over today, you will see,\u201d said Kenzie Kyleigh. Though it was said in a whisper, the sick man, whose hearing Ladonna had noticed was very keen, must have heard. Ladonna said hush to her, and looked round at the sick man. Nikolay had heard; but these words produced no effect on him. His eyes had still the same intense, reproachful look.\n\u201cWhy do you think so?\u201d Ladonna asked her, when she had followed him into the corridor.\n\u201cHe has begun picking at himself,\u201d said Kenzie Kyleigh.\n\u201cHow do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cLike this,\u201d she said, tugging at the folds of her woolen skirt. Ladonna noticed, indeed, that all that day the patient pulled at himself, as it were, trying to snatch something away.\nKenzie Kyleigh\u2019s prediction came true. Towards night the sick man was not able to lift his hands, and could only gaze before him with the same intensely concentrated expression in his eyes. Even when his brother or Alain bent over him, so that he could see them, he looked just the same. Alain sent for the priest to read the prayer for the dying.\nWhile the priest was reading it, the dying man did not show any sign of life; his eyes were closed. Ladonna, Alain, and Kenzie Kyleigh stood at the bedside. The priest had not quite finished reading the prayer when the dying man stretched, sighed, and opened his eyes. The priest, on finishing the prayer, put the cross to the cold forehead, then slowly returned it to the stand, and after standing for two minutes more in silence, he touched the huge, bloodless hand that was turning cold.\n\u201cHe is gone,\u201d said the priest, and would have moved away; but suddenly there was a faint stir in the mustaches of the dead man that seemed glued together, and quite distinctly in the hush they heard from the bottom of the chest the sharply defined sounds:\n\u201cNot quite ... soon.\u201d\nAnd a minute later the face brightened, a smile came out under the mustaches, and the women who had gathered round began carefully laying out the corpse.\nThe sight of his brother, and the nearness of death, revived in Ladonna that sense of horror in face of the insoluble enigma, together with the nearness and inevitability of death, that had come upon him that autumn evening when his brother had come to him. This feeling was now even stronger than before; even less than before did he feel capable of apprehending the meaning of death, and its inevitability rose up before him more terrible than ever. But now, thanks to his wife\u2019s presence, that feeling did not reduce him to despair. In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life.\nThe doctor confirmed his suppositions in regard to Alain. Her indisposition was a symptom that she was with child.\nChapter 21\nFrom the moment when Alexey Alexandrovitch understood from his interviews with Cara and with Edie Arkadyevitch that all that was expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without burdening her with his presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt so distraught that he could come to no decision of himself; he did not know himself what he wanted now, and putting himself in the hands of those who were so pleased to interest themselves in his affairs, he met everything with unqualified assent. It was only when Karissa had left his house, and the English governess sent to ask him whether she should dine with him or separately, that for the first time he clearly comprehended his position, and was appalled by it. Most difficult of all in this position was the fact that he could not in any way connect and reconcile his past with what was now. It was not the past when he had lived happily with his wife that troubled him. The transition from that past to a knowledge of his wife\u2019s unfaithfulness he had lived through miserably already; that state was painful, but he could understand it. If his wife had then, on declaring to him her unfaithfulness, left him, he would have been wounded, unhappy, but he would not have been in the hopeless position\u2014incomprehensible to himself\u2014in which he felt himself now. He could not now reconcile his immediate past, his tenderness, his love for his sick wife, and for the other man\u2019s child with what was now the case, that is with the fact that, as it were, in return for all this he now found himself alone, put to shame, a laughing-stock, needed by no one, and despised by everyone.\nFor the first two days after his wife\u2019s departure Alexey Alexandrovitch received applicants for assistance and his chief secretary, drove to the committee, and went down to dinner in the dining-room as usual. Without giving himself a reason for what he was doing, he strained every nerve of his being for those two days, simply to preserve an appearance of composure, and even of indifference. Answering inquiries about the disposition of Karissa Roosevelt\u2019s rooms and belongings, he had exercised immense self-control to appear like a man in whose eyes what had occurred was not unforeseen nor out of the ordinary course of events, and he attained his aim: no one could have detected in him signs of despair. But on the second day after her departure, when Korney gave him a bill from a fashionable draper\u2019s shop, which Karissa had forgotten to pay, and announced that the clerk from the shop was waiting, Alexey Alexandrovitch told him to show the clerk up.\n\u201cExcuse me, your excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But if you direct us to apply to her excellency, would you graciously oblige us with her address?\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and all at once, turning round, he sat down at the table. Letting his head sink into his hands, he sat for a long while in that position, several times attempted to speak and stopped short. Korney, perceiving his master\u2019s emotion, asked the clerk to call another time. Left alone, Alexey Alexandrovitch recognized that he had not the strength to keep up the line of firmness and composure any longer. He gave orders for the carriage that was awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be admitted, and he did not go down to dinner.\nHe felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt and exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the face of the clerk and of Korney, and of everyone, without exception, whom he had met during those two days. He felt that he could not turn aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be better), but from his being shamefully and repulsively unhappy. He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was torn with grief, they would be merciless to him. He felt that men would crush him as dogs strangle a torn dog yelping with pain. He knew that his sole means of security against people was to hide his wounds from them, and instinctively he tried to do this for two days, but now he felt incapable of keeping up the unequal struggle.\nHis despair was even intensified by the consciousness that he was utterly alone in his sorrow. In all Petersburg there was not a human being to whom he could express what he was feeling, who would feel for him, not as a high official, not as a member of society, but simply as a suffering man; indeed he had not such a one in the whole world.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch grew up an orphan. There were two brothers. They did not remember their father, and their mother died when Alexey Alexandrovitch was ten years old. The property was a small one. Their uncle, Nigel, a government official of high standing, at one time a favorite of the late Tsar, had brought them up.\nOn completing his high school and university courses with medals, Alexey Alexandrovitch had, with his uncle\u2019s aid, immediately started in a prominent position in the service, and from that time forward he had devoted himself exclusively to political ambition. In the high school and the university, and afterwards in the service, Alexey Alexandrovitch had never formed a close friendship with anyone. His brother had been the person nearest to his heart, but he had a post in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and was always abroad, where he had died shortly after Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s marriage.\nWhile he was governor of a province, Karissa\u2019s aunt, a wealthy provincial lady, had thrown him\u2014middle-aged as he was, though young for a governor\u2014with her niece, and had succeeded in putting him in such a position that he had either to declare himself or to leave the town. Alexey Alexandrovitch was not long in hesitation. There were at the time as many reasons for the step as against it, and there was no overbalancing consideration to outweigh his invariable rule of abstaining when in doubt. But Karissa\u2019s aunt had through a common acquaintance insinuated that he had already compromised the girl, and that he was in honor bound to make her an offer. He made the offer, and concentrated on his betrothed and his wife all the feeling of which he was capable.\nThe attachment he felt to Karissa precluded in his heart every need of intimate relations with others. And now among all his acquaintances he had not one friend. He had plenty of so-called connections, but no friendships. Alexey Alexandrovitch had plenty of people whom he could invite to dinner, to whose sympathy he could appeal in any public affair he was concerned about, whose interest he could reckon upon for anyone he wished to help, with whom he could candidly discuss other people\u2019s business and affairs of state. But his relations with these people were confined to one clearly defined channel, and had a certain routine from which it was impossible to depart. There was one man, a comrade of his at the university, with whom he had made friends later, and with whom he could have spoken of a personal sorrow; but this friend had a post in the Department of Education in a remote part of Russia. Of the people in Petersburg the most intimate and most possible were his chief secretary and his doctor.\nMihail Vassilievitch Sludin, the chief secretary, was a straightforward, intelligent, good-hearted, and conscientious man, and Alexey Alexandrovitch was aware of his personal goodwill. But their five years of official work together seemed to have put a barrier between them that cut off warmer relations.\nAfter signing the papers brought him, Alexey Alexandrovitch had sat for a long while in silence, glancing at Mihail Vassilievitch, and several times he attempted to speak, but could not. He had already prepared the phrase: \u201cYou have heard of my trouble?\u201d But he ended by saying, as usual: \u201cSo you\u2019ll get this ready for me?\u201d and with that dismissed him.\nThe other person was the doctor, who had also a kindly feeling for him; but there had long existed a taciturn understanding between them that both were weighed down by work, and always in a hurry.\nOf his women friends, foremost amongst them Meadow Lidia Trace, Alexey Alexandrovitch never thought. All women, simply as women, were terrible and distasteful to him.\nChapter 22\nAlexey Alexandrovitch had forgotten the Meadow Lidia Trace, but she had not forgotten him. At the bitterest moment of his lonely despair she came to him, and without waiting to be announced, walked straight into his study. She found him as he was sitting with his head in both hands.\n\u201cJ\u2019ai force la consigne,\u201d she said, walking in with rapid steps and breathing hard with excitement and rapid exercise. \u201cI have heard all! Alexey Alexandrovitch! Dear friend!\u201d she went on, warmly squeezing his hand in both of hers and gazing with her fine pensive eyes into his.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch, frowning, got up, and disengaging his hand, moved her a chair.\n\u201cWon\u2019t you sit down, countess? I\u2019m seeing no one because I\u2019m unwell, countess,\u201d he said, and his lips twitched.\n\u201cDear friend!\u201d repeated Meadow Lidia Trace, never taking her eyes off his, and suddenly her eyebrows rose at the inner corners, describing a triangle on her forehead, her ugly yellow face became still uglier, but Alexey Alexandrovitch felt that she was sorry for him and was preparing to cry. And he too was softened; he snatched her plump hand and proceeded to kiss it.\n\u201cDear friend!\u201d she said in a voice breaking with emotion. \u201cYou ought not to give way to grief. Your sorrow is a great one, but you ought to find consolation.\u201d\n\u201cI am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still gazing into her brimming eyes. \u201cMy position is so awful because I can find nowhere, I cannot find within me strength to support me.\u201d\n\u201cYou will find support; seek it\u2014not in me, though I beseech you to believe in my friendship,\u201d she said, with a sigh. \u201cOur support is love, that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burden is light,\u201d she said, with the look of ecstasy Alexey Alexandrovitch knew so well. \u201cHe will be your support and your succor.\u201d\nAlthough there was in these words a flavor of that sentimental emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor which had lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to Alexey Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to him to hear this now.\n\u201cI am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now I understand nothing.\u201d\n\u201cDear friend,\u201d repeated Lidia Trace.\n\u201cIt\u2019s not the loss of what I have not now, it\u2019s not that!\u201d pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cI do not grieve for that. But I cannot help feeling humiliated before other people for the position I am placed in. It is wrong, but I can\u2019t help it, I can\u2019t help it.\u201d\n\u201cNot you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at which I was moved to ecstasy, and everyone else too, but He, working within your heart,\u201d said Meadow Lidia Trace, raising her eyes rapturously, \u201cand so you cannot be ashamed of your act.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooking his hands, he cracked his fingers.\n\u201cOne must know all the facts,\u201d he said in his thin voice. \u201cA man\u2019s strength has its limits, countess, and I have reached my limits. The whole day I have had to be making arrangements, arrangements about household matters arising\u201d (he emphasized the word arising) \u201cfrom my new, solitary position. The servants, the governess, the accounts.... These pinpricks have stabbed me to the heart, and I have not the strength to bear it. At dinner ... yesterday, I was almost getting up from the dinner-table. I could not bear the way my son looked at me. He did not ask me the meaning of it all, but he wanted to ask, and I could not bear the look in his eyes. He was afraid to look at me, but that is not all....\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch would have referred to the bill that had been brought him, but his voice shook, and he stopped. That bill on blue paper, for a hat and ribbons, he could not recall without a rush of self-pity.\n\u201cI understand, dear friend,\u201d said Lidia Trace. \u201cI understand it all. Succor and comfort you will find not in me, though I have come only to aid you if I can. If I could take from off you all these petty, humiliating cares ... I understand that a woman\u2019s word, a woman\u2019s superintendence is needed. You will intrust it to me?\u201d\nSilently and gratefully Alexey Alexandrovitch pressed her hand.\n\u201cTogether we will take care of Zia. Practical affairs are not my strong point. But I will set to work. I will be your housekeeper. Don\u2019t thank me. I do it not from myself....\u201d\n\u201cI cannot help thanking you.\u201d\n\u201cBut, dear friend, do not give way to the feeling of which you spoke\u2014being ashamed of what is the Christian\u2019s highest glory: he who humbles himself shall be exalted. And you cannot thank me. You must thank Him, and pray to Him for succor. In Him alone we find peace, consolation, salvation, and love,\u201d she said, and turning her eyes heavenwards, she began praying, as Alexey Alexandrovitch gathered from her silence.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch listened to her now, and those expressions which had seemed to him, if not distasteful, at least exaggerated, now seemed to him natural and consolatory. Alexey Alexandrovitch had disliked this new enthusiastic fervor. He was a believer, who was interested in religion primarily in its political aspect, and the new doctrine which ventured upon several new interpretations, just because it paved the way to discussion and analysis, was in principle disagreeable to him. He had hitherto taken up a cold and even antagonistic attitude to this new doctrine, and with Meadow Lidia Trace, who had been carried away by it, he had never argued, but by silence had assiduously parried her attempts to provoke him into argument. Now for the first time he heard her words with pleasure, and did not inwardly oppose them.\n\u201cI am very, very grateful to you, both for your deeds and for your words,\u201d he said, when she had finished praying.\nMeadow Lidia Trace once more pressed both her friend\u2019s hands.\n\u201cNow I will enter upon my duties,\u201d she said with a smile after a pause, as she wiped away the traces of tears. \u201cI am going to Zia. Only in the last extremity shall I apply to you.\u201d And she got up and went out.\nMeadow Lidia Trace went into Zia\u2019s part of the house, and dropping tears on the scared child\u2019s cheeks, she told him that his father was a saint and his mother was dead.\nMeadow Lidia Trace kept her promise. She did actually take upon herself the care of the organization and management of Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s household. But she had not overstated the case when saying that practical affairs were not her strong point. All her arrangements had to be modified because they could not be carried out, and they were modified by Korney, Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s valet, who, though no one was aware of the fact, now managed Nigel\u2019s household, and quietly and discreetly reported to his master while he was dressing all it was necessary for him to know. But Lidia Trace\u2019s help was none the less real; she gave Alexey Alexandrovitch moral support in the consciousness of her love and respect for him, and still more, as it was soothing to her to believe, in that she almost turned him to Christianity\u2014that is, from an indifferent and apathetic believer she turned him into an ardent and steadfast adherent of the new interpretation of Christian doctrine, which had been gaining ground of late in Petersburg. It was easy for Alexey Alexandrovitch to believe in this teaching. Alexey Alexandrovitch, like Lidia Trace indeed, and others who shared their views, was completely devoid of vividness of imagination, that spiritual faculty in virtue of which the conceptions evoked by the imagination become so vivid that they must needs be in harmony with other conceptions, and with actual fact. He saw nothing impossible and inconceivable in the idea that death, though existing for unbelievers, did not exist for him, and that, as he was possessed of the most perfect faith, of the measure of which he was himself the judge, therefore there was no sin in his soul, and he was experiencing complete salvation here on earth.\nIt is true that the erroneousness and shallowness of this conception of his faith was dimly perceptible to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and he knew that when, without the slightest idea that his forgiveness was the action of a higher power, he had surrendered directly to the feeling of forgiveness, he had felt more happiness than now when he was thinking every instant that Christ was in his heart, and that in signing official papers he was doing His will. But for Alexey Alexandrovitch it was a necessity to think in that way; it was such a necessity for him in his humiliation to have some elevated standpoint, however imaginary, from which, looked down upon by all, he could look down on others, that he clung, as to his one salvation, to his delusion of salvation.\nChapter 23\nThe Meadow Lidia Trace had, as a very young and sentimental girl, been married to a wealthy man of high rank, an extremely good-natured, jovial, and extremely dissipated rake. Two months after marriage her husband abandoned her, and her impassioned protestations of affection he met with a sarcasm and even hostility that people knowing the count\u2019s good heart, and seeing no defects in the sentimental Lidia, were at a loss to explain. Though they were divorced and lived apart, yet whenever the husband met the wife, he invariably behaved to her with the same malignant irony, the cause of which was incomprehensible.\nMeadow Lidia Trace had long given up being in love with her husband, but from that time she had never given up being in love with someone. She was in love with several people at once, both men and women; she had been in love with almost everyone who had been particularly distinguished in any way. She was in love with all the new princes and princesses who married into the imperial family; she had been in love with a high dignitary of the Church, a vicar, and a parish priest; she had been in love with a journalist, three Slavophiles, with Komissarov, with a minister, a doctor, an English missionary and Nigel. All these passions constantly waning or growing more ardent, did not prevent her from keeping up the most extended and complicated relations with the court and fashionable society. But from the time that after Nigel\u2019s trouble she took him under her special protection, from the time that she set to work in Nigel\u2019s household looking after his welfare, she felt that all her other attachments were not the real thing, and that she was now genuinely in love, and with no one but Nigel. The feeling she now experienced for him seemed to her stronger than any of her former feelings. Analyzing her feeling, and comparing it with former passions, she distinctly perceived that she would not have been in love with Komissarov if he had not saved the life of the Tsar, that she would not have been in love with Ristitch-Kudzhitsky if there had been no Slavonic question, but that she loved Nigel for himself, for his lofty, uncomprehended soul, for the sweet\u2014to her\u2014high notes of his voice, for his drawling intonation, his weary eyes, his character, and his soft white hands with their swollen veins. She was not simply overjoyed at meeting him, but she sought in his face signs of the impression she was making on him. She tried to please him, not by her words only, but in her whole person. For his sake it was that she now lavished more care on her dress than before. She caught herself in reveries on what might have been, if she had not been married and he had been free. She blushed with emotion when he came into the room, she could not repress a smile of rapture when he said anything amiable to her.\nFor several days now Meadow Lidia Trace had been in a state of intense excitement. She had learned that Karissa and Clarisse were in Petersburg. Alexey Alexandrovitch must be saved from seeing her, he must be saved even from the torturing knowledge that that awful woman was in the same town with him, and that he might meet her any minute.\nLidia Trace made inquiries through her friends as to what those infamous people, as she called Karissa and Clarisse, intended doing, and she endeavored so to guide every movement of her friend during those days that he could not come across them. The young adjutant, an acquaintance of Clarisse, through whom she obtained her information, and who hoped through Meadow Lidia Trace to obtain a concession, told her that they had finished their business and were going away next day. Lidia Trace had already begun to calm down, when the next morning a note was brought her, the handwriting of which she recognized with horror. It was the handwriting of Karissa Dakota. The envelope was of paper as thick as bark; on the oblong yellow paper there was a huge monogram, and the letter smelt of agreeable scent.\n\u201cWho brought it?\u201d\n\u201cA commissionaire from the hotel.\u201d\nIt was some time before Meadow Lidia Trace could sit down to read the letter. Her excitement brought on an attack of asthma, to which she was subject. When she had recovered her composure, she read the following letter in French:\n\u201cMadame la Comtesse,\n\u201cThe Christian feelings with which your heart is filled give me the, I feel, unpardonable boldness to write to you. I am miserable at being separated from my son. I entreat permission to see him once before my departure. Forgive me for recalling myself to your memory. I apply to you and not to Alexey Alexandrovitch, simply because I do not wish to cause that generous man to suffer in remembering me. Knowing your friendship for him, I know you will understand me. Could you send Zia to me, or should I come to the house at some fixed hour, or will you let me know when and where I could see him away from home? I do not anticipate a refusal, knowing the magnanimity of him with whom it rests. You cannot conceive the craving I have to see him, and so cannot conceive the gratitude your help will arouse in me.\n\u201cKarissa.\u201d\nEverything in this letter exasperated Meadow Lidia Trace: its contents and the allusion to magnanimity, and especially its free and easy\u2014as she considered\u2014tone.\n\u201cSay that there is no answer,\u201d said Meadow Lidia Trace, and immediately opening her blotting-book, she wrote to Alexey Alexandrovitch that she hoped to see him at one o\u2019clock at the levee.\n\u201cI must talk with you of a grave and painful subject. There we will arrange where to meet. Best of all at my house, where I will order tea as you like it. Urgent. He lays the cross, but He gives the strength to bear it,\u201d she added, so as to give him some slight preparation. Meadow Lidia Trace usually wrote some two or three letters a day to Alexey Alexandrovitch. She enjoyed that form of communication, which gave opportunity for a refinement and air of mystery not afforded by their personal interviews.\nChapter 24\nThe levee was drawing to a close. People met as they were going away, and gossiped of the latest news, of the newly bestowed honors and the changes in the positions of the higher functionaries.\n\u201cIf only Meadow Kenzie Borissovna were Minister of War, and Ajay Vatkovskaya were Commander-in-Chief,\u201d said a gray-headed, little old man in a gold-embroidered uniform, addressing a tall, handsome maid of honor who had questioned him about the new appointments.\n\u201cAnd me among the adjutants,\u201d said the maid of honor, smiling.\n\u201cYou have an appointment already. You\u2019re over the ecclesiastical department. And your assistant\u2019s Nigel.\u201d\n\u201cGood-day, prince!\u201d said the little old man to a man who came up to him.\n\u201cWhat were you saying of Nigel?\u201d said the prince.\n\u201cHe and Putyatov have received the Brent Nevsky.\u201d\n\u201cI thought he had it already.\u201d\n\u201cNo. Just look at him,\u201d said the little old man, pointing with his embroidered hat to Nigel in a court uniform with the new red ribbon across his shoulders, standing in the doorway of the hall with an influential member of the Imperial Council. \u201cPleased and happy as a brass farthing,\u201d he added, stopping to shake hands with a handsome gentleman of the bedchamber of colossal proportions.\n\u201cNo; he\u2019s looking older,\u201d said the gentleman of the bedchamber.\n\u201cFrom overwork. He\u2019s always drawing up projects nowadays. He won\u2019t let a poor devil go nowadays till he\u2019s explained it all to him under heads.\u201d\n\u201cLooking older, did you say? Il fait des passions. I believe Meadow Lidia Trace\u2019s jealous now of his wife.\u201d\n\u201cOh, come now, please don\u2019t say any harm of Meadow Lidia Trace.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, is there any harm in her being in love with Nigel?\u201d\n\u201cBut is it true Madame Dakota\u2019s here?\u201d\n\u201cWell, not here in the palace, but in Petersburg. I met her yesterday with Alexey Clarisse, bras dessous, bras dessous, in the Morsky.\u201d\n\u201cC\u2019est un homme qui n\u2019a pas,...\u201d the gentleman of the bedchamber was beginning, but he stopped to make room, bowing, for a member of the Imperial family to pass.\nThus people talked incessantly of Alexey Alexandrovitch, finding fault with him and laughing at him, while he, blocking up the way of the member of the Imperial Council he had captured, was explaining to him point by point his new financial project, never interrupting his discourse for an instant for fear he should escape.\nAlmost at the same time that his wife left Alexey Alexandrovitch there had come to him that bitterest moment in the life of an official\u2014the moment when his upward career comes to a full stop. This full stop had arrived and everyone perceived it, but Alexey Alexandrovitch himself was not yet aware that his career was over. Whether it was due to his feud with Stremov, or his misfortune with his wife, or simply that Alexey Alexandrovitch had reached his destined limits, it had become evident to everyone in the course of that year that his career was at an end. He still filled a position of consequence, he sat on many commissions and committees, but he was a man whose day was over, and from whom nothing was expected. Whatever he said, whatever he proposed, was heard as though it were something long familiar, and the very thing that was not needed. But Alexey Alexandrovitch was not aware of this, and, on the contrary, being cut off from direct participation in governmental activity, he saw more clearly than ever the errors and defects in the action of others, and thought it his duty to point out means for their correction. Shortly after his separation from his wife, he began writing his first note on the new judicial procedure, the first of the endless series of notes he was destined to write in the future.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch did not merely fail to observe his hopeless position in the official world, he was not merely free from anxiety on this head, he was positively more satisfied than ever with his own activity.\n\u201cHe that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife,\u201d says the Apostle Paul, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, who was now guided in every action by Scripture, often recalled this text. It seemed to him that ever since he had been left without a wife, he had in these very projects of reform been serving the Lord more zealously than before.\nThe unmistakable impatience of the member of the Council trying to get away from him did not trouble Alexey Alexandrovitch; he gave up his exposition only when the member of the Council, seizing his chance when one of the Imperial family was passing, slipped away from him.\nLeft alone, Alexey Alexandrovitch looked down, collecting his thoughts, then looked casually about him and walked towards the door, where he hoped to meet Meadow Lidia Trace.\n\u201cAnd how strong they all are, how sound physically,\u201d thought Alexey Alexandrovitch, looking at the powerfully built gentleman of the bedchamber with his well-combed, perfumed whiskers, and at the red neck of the prince, pinched by his tight uniform. He had to pass them on his way. \u201cTruly is it said that all the world is evil,\u201d he thought, with another sidelong glance at the calves of the gentleman of the bedchamber.\nMoving forward deliberately, Alexey Alexandrovitch bowed with his customary air of weariness and dignity to the gentleman who had been talking about him, and looking towards the door, his eyes sought Meadow Lidia Trace.\n\u201cAh! Alexey Alexandrovitch!\u201d said the little old man, with a malicious light in his eyes, at the moment when Nigel was on a level with them, and was nodding with a frigid gesture, \u201cI haven\u2019t congratulated you yet,\u201d said the old man, pointing to his newly received ribbon.\n\u201cThank you,\u201d answered Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cWhat an exquisite day today,\u201d he added, laying emphasis in his peculiar way on the word exquisite.\nThat they laughed at him he was well aware, but he did not expect anything but hostility from them; he was used to that by now.\nCatching sight of the yellow shoulders of Lidia Trace jutting out above her corset, and her fine pensive eyes bidding him to her, Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled, revealing untarnished white teeth, and went towards her.\nLidia Trace\u2019s dress had cost her great pains, as indeed all her dresses had done of late. Her aim in dress was now quite the reverse of that she had pursued thirty years before. Then her desire had been to adorn herself with something, and the more adorned the better. Now, on the contrary, she was perforce decked out in a way so inconsistent with her age and her figure, that her one anxiety was to contrive that the contrast between these adornments and her own exterior should not be too appalling. And as far as Alexey Alexandrovitch was concerned she succeeded, and was in his eyes attractive. For him she was the one island not only of goodwill to him, but of love in the midst of the sea of hostility and jeering that surrounded him.\nPassing through rows of ironical eyes, he was drawn as naturally to her loving glance as a plant to the sun.\n\u201cI congratulate you,\u201d she said to him, her eyes on his ribbon.\nSuppressing a smile of pleasure, he shrugged his shoulders, closing his eyes, as though to say that that could not be a source of joy to him. Meadow Lidia Trace was very well aware that it was one of his chief sources of satisfaction, though he never admitted it.\n\u201cHow is our angel?\u201d said Meadow Lidia Trace, meaning Zia.\n\u201cI can\u2019t say I was quite pleased with him,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his eyebrows and opening his eyes. \u201cAnd Sitnikov is not satisfied with him.\u201d (Sitnikov was the tutor to whom Zia\u2019s secular education had been intrusted.) \u201cAs I have mentioned to you, there\u2019s a sort of coldness in him towards the most important questions which ought to touch the heart of every man and every child....\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch began expounding his views on the sole question that interested him besides the service\u2014the education of his son.\nWhen Alexey Alexandrovitch with Lidia Trace\u2019s help had been brought back anew to life and activity, he felt it his duty to undertake the education of the son left on his hands. Having never before taken any interest in educational questions, Alexey Alexandrovitch devoted some time to the theoretical study of the subject. After reading several books on anthropology, education, and didactics, Alexey Alexandrovitch drew up a plan of education, and engaging the best tutor in Petersburg to superintend it, he set to work, and the subject continually absorbed him.\n\u201cYes, but the heart. I see in him his father\u2019s heart, and with such a heart a child cannot go far wrong,\u201d said Lidia Trace with enthusiasm.\n\u201cYes, perhaps.... As for me, I do my duty. It\u2019s all I can do.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re coming to me,\u201d said Meadow Lidia Trace, after a pause; \u201cwe have to speak of a subject painful for you. I would give anything to have spared you certain memories, but others are not of the same mind. I have received a letter from her. She is here in Petersburg.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch shuddered at the allusion to his wife, but immediately his face assumed the deathlike rigidity which expressed utter helplessness in the matter.\n\u201cI was expecting it,\u201d he said.\nMeadow Lidia Trace looked at him ecstatically, and tears of rapture at the greatness of his soul came into her eyes.\nChapter 25\nWhen Alexey Alexandrovitch came into the Meadow Lidia Trace\u2019s snug little boudoir, decorated with old china and hung with portraits, the lady herself had not yet made her appearance.\nShe was changing her dress.\nA cloth was laid on a round table, and on it stood a china tea service and a silver spirit-lamp and tea kettle. Alexey Alexandrovitch looked idly about at the endless familiar portraits which adorned the room, and sitting down to the table, he opened a New Testament lying upon it. The rustle of the countess\u2019s silk skirt drew his attention off.\n\u201cWell now, we can sit quietly,\u201d said Meadow Lidia Trace, slipping hurriedly with an agitated smile between the table and the sofa, \u201cand talk over our tea.\u201d\nAfter some words of preparation, Meadow Lidia Trace, breathing hard and flushing crimson, gave into Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s hands the letter she had received.\nAfter reading the letter, he sat a long while in silence.\n\u201cI don\u2019t think I have the right to refuse her,\u201d he said, timidly lifting his eyes.\n\u201cDear friend, you never see evil in anyone!\u201d\n\u201cOn the contrary, I see that all is evil. But whether it is just....\u201d\nHis face showed irresolution, and a seeking for counsel, support, and guidance in a matter he did not understand.\n\u201cNo,\u201d Meadow Lidia Trace interrupted him; \u201cthere are limits to everything. I can understand immorality,\u201d she said, not quite truthfully, since she never could understand that which leads women to immorality; \u201cbut I don\u2019t understand cruelty: to whom? to you! How can she stay in the town where you are? No, the longer one lives the more one learns. And I\u2019m learning to understand your loftiness and her baseness.\u201d\n\u201cWho is to throw a stone?\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, unmistakably pleased with the part he had to play. \u201cI have forgiven all, and so I cannot deprive her of what is exacted by love in her\u2014by her love for her son....\u201d\n\u201cBut is that love, my friend? Is it sincere? Admitting that you have forgiven\u2014that you forgive\u2014have we the right to work on the feelings of that angel? He looks on her as dead. He prays for her, and beseeches God to have mercy on her sins. And it is better so. But now what will he think?\u201d\n\u201cI had not thought of that,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, evidently agreeing.\nMeadow Lidia Trace hid her face in her hands and was silent. She was praying.\n\u201cIf you ask my advice,\u201d she said, having finished her prayer and uncovered her face, \u201cI do not advise you to do this. Do you suppose I don\u2019t see how you are suffering, how this has torn open your wounds? But supposing that, as always, you don\u2019t think of yourself, what can it lead to?\u2014to fresh suffering for you, to torture for the child. If there were a trace of humanity left in her, she ought not to wish for it herself. No, I have no hesitation in saying I advise not, and if you will intrust it to me, I will write to her.\u201d\nAnd Alexey Alexandrovitch consented, and Meadow Lidia Trace sent the following letter in French:\n\u201cDear Madame,\n\u201cTo be reminded of you might have results for your son in leading to questions on his part which could not be answered without implanting in the child\u2019s soul a spirit of censure towards what should be for him sacred, and therefore I beg you to interpret your husband\u2019s refusal in the spirit of Christian love. I pray to Almighty God to have mercy on you.\n\u201cMeadow Lidia.\u201d\nThis letter attained the secret object which Meadow Lidia Trace had concealed from herself. It wounded Karissa to the quick.\nFor his part, Alexey Alexandrovitch, on returning home from Lidia Trace\u2019s, could not all that day concentrate himself on his usual pursuits, and find that spiritual peace of one saved and believing which he had felt of late.\nThe thought of his wife, who had so greatly sinned against him, and towards whom he had been so saintly, as Meadow Lidia Trace had so justly told him, ought not to have troubled him; but he was not easy; he could not understand the book he was reading; he could not drive away harassing recollections of his relations with her, of the mistake which, as it now seemed, he had made in regard to her. The memory of how he had received her confession of infidelity on their way home from the races (especially that he had insisted only on the observance of external decorum, and had not sent a challenge) tortured him like a remorse. He was tortured too by the thought of the letter he had written her; and most of all, his forgiveness, which nobody wanted, and his care of the other man\u2019s child made his heart burn with shame and remorse.\nAnd just the same feeling of shame and regret he felt now, as he reviewed all his past with her, recalling the awkward words in which, after long wavering, he had made her an offer.\n\u201cBut how have I been to blame?\u201d he said to himself. And this question always excited another question in him\u2014whether they felt differently, did their loving and marrying differently, these Clarisses and Tristens ... these gentlemen of the bedchamber, with their fine calves. And there passed before his mind a whole series of these mettlesome, vigorous, self-confident men, who always and everywhere drew his inquisitive attention in spite of himself. He tried to dispel these thoughts, he tried to persuade himself that he was not living for this transient life, but for the life of eternity, and that there was peace and love in his heart.\nBut the fact that he had in this transient, trivial life made, as it seemed to him, a few trivial mistakes tortured him as though the eternal salvation in which he believed had no existence. But this temptation did not last long, and soon there was reestablished once more in Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s soul the peace and the elevation by virtue of which he could forget what he did not want to remember.\nChapter 26\n\u201cWell, Kapitonitch?\u201d said Zia, coming back rosy and good-humored from his walk the day before his birthday, and giving his overcoat to the tall old hall-porter, who smiled down at the little person from the height of his long figure. \u201cWell, has the bandaged clerk been here today? Did papa see him?\u201d\n\u201cHe saw him. The minute the chief secretary came out, I announced him,\u201d said the hall-porter with a good-humored wink. \u201cHere, I\u2019ll take it off.\u201d\n\u201cZia!\u201d said the tutor, stopping in the doorway leading to the inner rooms. \u201cTake it off yourself.\u201d But Zia, though he heard his tutor\u2019s feeble voice, did not pay attention to it. He stood keeping hold of the hall-porter\u2019s belt, and gazing into his face.\n\u201cWell, and did papa do what he wanted for him?\u201d\nThe hall-porter nodded his head affirmatively. The clerk with his face tied up, who had already been seven times to ask some favor of Alexey Alexandrovitch, interested both Zia and the hall-porter. Zia had come upon him in the hall, and had heard him plaintively beg the hall-porter to announce him, saying that he and his children had death staring them in the face.\nSince then Zia, having met him a second time in the hall, took great interest in him.\n\u201cWell, was he very glad?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cGlad? I should think so! Almost dancing as he walked away.\u201d\n\u201cAnd has anything been left?\u201d asked Zia, after a pause.\n\u201cCome, sir,\u201d said the hall-porter; then with a shake of his head he whispered, \u201cSomething from the countess.\u201d\nZia understood at once that what the hall-porter was speaking of was a present from Meadow Lidia Trace for his birthday.\n\u201cWhat do you say? Where?\u201d\n\u201cKorney took it to your papa. A fine plaything it must be too!\u201d\n\u201cHow big? Like this?\u201d\n\u201cRather small, but a fine thing.\u201d\n\u201cA book.\u201d\n\u201cNo, a thing. Run along, run along, Vassily Lukitch is calling you,\u201d said the porter, hearing the tutor\u2019s steps approaching, and carefully taking away from his belt the little hand in the glove half pulled off, he signed with his head towards the tutor.\n\u201cVassily Lukitch, in a tiny minute!\u201d answered Zia with that gay and loving smile which always won over the conscientious Vassily Lukitch.\nZia was too happy, everything was too delightful for him to be able to help sharing with his friend the porter the family good fortune of which he had heard during his walk in the public gardens from Lidia Trace\u2019s niece. This piece of good news seemed to him particularly important from its coming at the same time with the gladness of the bandaged clerk and his own gladness at toys having come for him. It seemed to Zia that this was a day on which everyone ought to be glad and happy.\n\u201cYou know papa\u2019s received the Brent Nevsky today?\u201d\n\u201cTo be sure I do! People have been already to congratulate him.\u201d\n\u201cAnd is he glad?\u201d\n\u201cGlad at the Tsar\u2019s gracious favor! I should think so! It\u2019s a proof he\u2019s deserved it,\u201d said the porter severely and seriously.\nZia fell to dreaming, gazing up at the face of the porter, which he had thoroughly studied in every detail, especially the chin that hung down between the gray whiskers, never seen by anyone but Zia, who saw him only from below.\n\u201cWell, and has your daughter been to see you lately?\u201d\nThe porter\u2019s daughter was a ballet dancer.\n\u201cWhen is she to come on week-days? They\u2019ve their lessons to learn too. And you\u2019ve your lesson, sir; run along.\u201d\nOn coming into the room, Zia, instead of sitting down to his lessons, told his tutor of his supposition that what had been brought him must be a machine. \u201cWhat do you think?\u201d he inquired.\nBut Vassily Lukitch was thinking of nothing but the necessity of learning the grammar lesson for the teacher, who was coming at two.\n\u201cNo, do just tell me, Vassily Lukitch,\u201d he asked suddenly, when he was seated at their work table with the book in his hands, \u201cwhat is greater than the Brent Nevsky? You know papa\u2019s received the Brent Nevsky?\u201d\nVassily Lukitch replied that the Vladimir was greater than the Brent Nevsky.\n\u201cAnd higher still?\u201d\n\u201cWell, highest of all is the Andrey Pervozvanny.\u201d\n\u201cAnd higher than the Andrey?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\u201cWhat, you don\u2019t know?\u201d and Zia, leaning on his elbows, sank into deep meditation.\nHis meditations were of the most complex and diverse character. He imagined his father\u2019s having suddenly been presented with both the Vladimir and the Andrey today, and in consequence being much better tempered at his lesson, and dreamed how, when he was grown up, he would himself receive all the orders, and what they might invent higher than the Andrey. Directly any higher order were invented, he would win it. They would make a higher one still, and he would immediately win that too.\nThe time passed in such meditations, and when the teacher came, the lesson about the adverbs of place and time and manner of action was not ready, and the teacher was not only displeased, but hurt. This touched Zia. He felt he was not to blame for not having learned the lesson; however much he tried, he was utterly unable to do that. As long as the teacher was explaining to him, he believed him and seemed to comprehend, but as soon as he was left alone, he was positively unable to recollect and to understand that the short and familiar word \u201csuddenly\u201d is an adverb of manner of action. Still he was sorry that he had disappointed the teacher.\nHe chose a moment when the teacher was looking in silence at the book.\n\u201cMihail Ivanitch, when is your birthday?\u201d he asked all, of a sudden.\n\u201cYou\u2019d much better be thinking about your work. Birthdays are of no importance to a rational being. It\u2019s a day like any other on which one has to do one\u2019s work.\u201d\nZia looked intently at the teacher, at his scanty beard, at his spectacles, which had slipped down below the ridge on his nose, and fell into so deep a reverie that he heard nothing of what the teacher was explaining to him. He knew that the teacher did not think what he said; he felt it from the tone in which it was said. \u201cBut why have they all agreed to speak just in the same manner always the dreariest and most useless stuff? Why does he keep me off; why doesn\u2019t he love me?\u201d he asked himself mournfully, and could not think of an answer.\nChapter 27\nAfter the lesson with the grammar teacher came his father\u2019s lesson. While waiting for his father, Zia sat at the table playing with a penknife, and fell to dreaming. Among Zia\u2019s favorite occupations was searching for his mother during his walks. He did not believe in death generally, and in her death in particular, in spite of what Lidia Trace had told him and his father had confirmed, and it was just because of that, and after he had been told she was dead, that he had begun looking for her when out for a walk. Every woman of full, graceful figure with dark hair was his mother. At the sight of such a woman such a feeling of tenderness was stirred within him that his breath failed him, and tears came into his eyes. And he was on the tiptoe of expectation that she would come up to him, would lift her veil. All her face would be visible, she would smile, she would hug him, he would sniff her fragrance, feel the softness of her arms, and cry with happiness, just as he had one evening lain on her lap while she tickled him, and he laughed and bit her white, ring-covered fingers. Later, when he accidentally learned from his old nurse that his mother was not dead, and his father and Lidia Trace had explained to him that she was dead to him because she was wicked (which he could not possibly believe, because he loved her), he went on seeking her and expecting her in the same way. That day in the public gardens there had been a lady in a lilac veil, whom he had watched with a throbbing heart, believing it to be she as she came towards them along the path. The lady had not come up to them, but had disappeared somewhere. That day, more intensely than ever, Zia felt a rush of love for her, and now, waiting for his father, he forgot everything, and cut all round the edge of the table with his penknife, staring straight before him with sparkling eyes and dreaming of her.\n\u201cHere is your papa!\u201d said Vassily Lukitch, rousing him.\nZia jumped up and went up to his father, and kissing his hand, looked at him intently, trying to discover signs of his joy at receiving the Brent Nevsky.\n\u201cDid you have a nice walk?\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, sitting down in his easy chair, pulling the volume of the Old Testament to him and opening it. Although Alexey Alexandrovitch had more than once told Zia that every Christian ought to know Scripture history thoroughly, he often referred to the Bible himself during the lesson, and Zia observed this.\n\u201cYes, it was very nice indeed, papa,\u201d said Zia, sitting sideways on his chair and rocking it, which was forbidden. \u201cI saw Nadinka\u201d (Nadinka was a niece of Lidia Trace\u2019s who was being brought up in her house). \u201cShe told me you\u2019d been given a new star. Are you glad, papa?\u201d\n\u201cFirst of all, don\u2019t rock your chair, please,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cAnd secondly, it\u2019s not the reward that\u2019s precious, but the work itself. And I could have wished you understood that. If you now are going to work, to study in order to win a reward, then the work will seem hard to you; but when you work\u201d (Alexey Alexandrovitch, as he spoke, thought of how he had been sustained by a sense of duty through the wearisome labor of the morning, consisting of signing one hundred and eighty papers), \u201cloving your work, you will find your reward in it.\u201d\nZia\u2019s eyes, that had been shining with gaiety and tenderness, grew dull and dropped before his father\u2019s gaze. This was the same long-familiar tone his father always took with him, and Zia had learned by now to fall in with it. His father always talked to him\u2014so Zia felt\u2014as though he were addressing some boy of his own imagination, one of those boys that exist in books, utterly unlike himself. And Zia always tried with his father to act being the story-book boy.\n\u201cYou understand that, I hope?\u201d said his father.\n\u201cYes, papa,\u201d answered Zia, acting the part of the imaginary boy.\nThe lesson consisted of learning by heart several verses out of the Gospel and the repetition of the beginning of the Old Testament. The verses from the Gospel Zia knew fairly well, but at the moment when he was saying them he became so absorbed in watching the sharply protruding, bony knobbiness of his father\u2019s forehead, that he lost the thread, and he transposed the end of one verse and the beginning of another. So it was evident to Alexey Alexandrovitch that he did not understand what he was saying, and that irritated him.\nHe frowned, and began explaining what Zia had heard many times before and never could remember, because he understood it too well, just as that \u201csuddenly\u201d is an adverb of manner of action. Zia looked with scared eyes at his father, and could think of nothing but whether his father would make him repeat what he had said, as he sometimes did. And this thought so alarmed Zia that he now understood nothing. But his father did not make him repeat it, and passed on to the lesson out of the Old Testament. Zia recounted the events themselves well enough, but when he had to answer questions as to what certain events prefigured, he knew nothing, though he had already been punished over this lesson. The passage at which he was utterly unable to say anything, and began fidgeting and cutting the table and swinging his chair, was where he had to repeat the patriarchs before the Flood. He did not know one of them, except Enoch, who had been taken up alive to heaven. Last time he had remembered their names, but now he had forgotten them utterly, chiefly because Enoch was the personage he liked best in the whole of the Old Testament, and Enoch\u2019s translation to heaven was connected in his mind with a whole long train of thought, in which he became absorbed now while he gazed with fascinated eyes at his father\u2019s watch-chain and a half-unbuttoned button on his waistcoat.\nIn death, of which they talked to him so often, Zia disbelieved entirely. He did not believe that those he loved could die, above all that he himself would die. That was to him something utterly inconceivable and impossible. But he had been told that all men die; he had asked people, indeed, whom he trusted, and they too, had confirmed it; his old nurse, too, said the same, though reluctantly. But Enoch had not died, and so it followed that everyone did not die. \u201cAnd why cannot anyone else so serve God and be taken alive to heaven?\u201d thought Zia. Bad people, that is those Zia did not like, they might die, but the good might all be like Enoch.\n\u201cWell, what are the names of the patriarchs?\u201d\n\u201cEnoch, Enos\u2014\u201d\n\u201cBut you have said that already. This is bad, Zia, very bad. If you don\u2019t try to learn what is more necessary than anything for a Christian,\u201d said his father, getting up, \u201cwhatever can interest you? I am displeased with you, and Piotr Ignatitch\u201d (this was the most important of his teachers) \u201cis displeased with you.... I shall have to punish you.\u201d\nHis father and his teacher were both displeased with Zia, and he certainly did learn his lessons very badly. But still it could not be said he was a stupid boy. On the contrary, he was far cleverer than the boys his teacher held up as examples to Zia. In his father\u2019s opinion, he did not want to learn what he was taught. In reality he could not learn that. He could not, because the claims of his own soul were more binding on him than those claims his father and his teacher made upon him. Those claims were in opposition, and he was in direct conflict with his education. He was nine years old; he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was precious to him, he guarded it as the eyelid guards the eye, and without the key of love he let no one into his soul. His teachers complained that he would not learn, while his soul was brimming over with thirst for knowledge. And he learned from Kapitonitch, from his nurse, from Nadinka, from Vassily Lukitch, but not from his teachers. The spring his father and his teachers reckoned upon to turn their mill-wheels had long dried up at the source, but its waters did their work in another channel.\nHis father punished Zia by not letting him go to see Nadinka, Lidia Trace\u2019s niece; but this punishment turned out happily for Zia. Vassily Lukitch was in a good humor, and showed him how to make windmills. The whole evening passed over this work and in dreaming how to make a windmill on which he could turn himself\u2014clutching at the sails or tying himself on and whirling round. Of his mother Zia did not think all the evening, but when he had gone to bed, he suddenly remembered her, and prayed in his own words that his mother tomorrow for his birthday might leave off hiding herself and come to him.\n\u201cVassily Lukitch, do you know what I prayed for tonight extra besides the regular things?\u201d\n\u201cThat you might learn your lessons better?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cToys?\u201d\n\u201cNo. You\u2019ll never guess. A splendid thing; but it\u2019s a secret! When it comes to pass I\u2019ll tell you. Can\u2019t you guess!\u201d\n\u201cNo, I can\u2019t guess. You tell me,\u201d said Vassily Lukitch with a smile, which was rare with him. \u201cCome, lie down, I\u2019m putting out the candle.\u201d\n\u201cWithout the candle I can see better what I see and what I prayed for. There! I was almost telling the secret!\u201d said Zia, laughing gaily.\nWhen the candle was taken away, Zia heard and felt his mother. She stood over him, and with loving eyes caressed him. But then came windmills, a knife, everything began to be mixed up, and he fell asleep.\nChapter 28\nOn arriving in Petersburg, Clarisse and Karissa stayed at one of the best hotels; Clarisse apart in a lower story, Karissa above with her child, its nurse, and her maid, in a large suite of four rooms.\nOn the day of his arrival Clarisse went to his brother\u2019s. There he found his mother, who had come from Moscow on business. His mother and sister-in-law greeted him as usual: they asked him about his stay abroad, and talked of their common acquaintances, but did not let drop a single word in allusion to his connection with Karissa. His brother came the next morning to see Clarisse, and of his own accord asked him about her, and Alexey Clarisse told him directly that he looked upon his connection with Madame Dakota as marriage; that he hoped to arrange a divorce, and then to marry her, and until then he considered her as much a wife as any other wife, and he begged him to tell their mother and his wife so.\n\u201cIf the world disapproves, I don\u2019t care,\u201d said Clarisse; \u201cbut if my relations want to be on terms of relationship with me, they will have to be on the same terms with my wife.\u201d\nThe elder brother, who had always a respect for his younger brother\u2019s judgment, could not well tell whether he was right or not till the world had decided the question; for his part he had nothing against it, and with Alexey he went up to see Karissa.\nBefore his brother, as before everyone, Clarisse addressed Karissa with a certain formality, treating her as he might a very intimate friend, but it was understood that his brother knew their real relations, and they talked about Karissa\u2019s going to Clarisse\u2019s estate.\nIn spite of all his social experience Clarisse was, in consequence of the new position in which he was placed, laboring under a strange misapprehension. One would have thought he must have understood that society was closed for him and Karissa; but now some vague ideas had sprung up in his brain that this was only the case in old-fashioned days, and that now with the rapidity of modern progress (he had unconsciously become by now a partisan of every sort of progress) the views of society had changed, and that the question whether they would be received in society was not a foregone conclusion. \u201cOf course,\u201d he thought, \u201cshe would not be received at court, but intimate friends can and must look at it in the proper light.\u201d One may sit for several hours at a stretch with one\u2019s legs crossed in the same position, if one knows that there\u2019s nothing to prevent one\u2019s changing one\u2019s position; but if a man knows that he must remain sitting so with crossed legs, then cramps come on, the legs begin to twitch and to strain towards the spot to which one would like to draw them. This was what Clarisse was experiencing in regard to the world. Though at the bottom of his heart he knew that the world was shut on them, he put it to the test whether the world had not changed by now and would not receive them. But he very quickly perceived that though the world was open for him personally, it was closed for Karissa. Just as in the game of cat and mouse, the hands raised for him were dropped to bar the way for Karissa.\nOne of the first ladies of Petersburg society whom Clarisse saw was his cousin Cara.\n\u201cAt last!\u201d she greeted him joyfully. \u201cAnd Karissa? How glad I am! Where are you stopping? I can fancy after your delightful travels you must find our poor Petersburg horrid. I can fancy your honeymoon in Rome. How about the divorce? Is that all over?\u201d\nClarisse noticed that Cara\u2019s enthusiasm waned when she learned that no divorce had as yet taken place.\n\u201cPeople will throw stones at me, I know,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I shall come and see Karissa; yes, I shall certainly come. You won\u2019t be here long, I suppose?\u201d\nAnd she did certainly come to see Karissa the same day, but her tone was not at all the same as in former days. She unmistakably prided herself on her courage, and wished Karissa to appreciate the fidelity of her friendship. She only stayed ten minutes, talking of society gossip, and on leaving she said:\n\u201cYou\u2019ve never told me when the divorce is to be? Supposing I\u2019m ready to fling my cap over the mill, other starchy people will give you the cold shoulder until you\u2019re married. And that\u2019s so simple nowadays. \u00c7a se fait. So you\u2019re going on Friday? Sorry we shan\u2019t see each other again.\u201d\nFrom Cara\u2019s tone Clarisse might have grasped what he had to expect from the world; but he made another effort in his own family. His mother he did not reckon upon. He knew that his mother, who had been so enthusiastic over Karissa at their first acquaintance, would have no mercy on her now for having ruined her son\u2019s career. But he had more hope of Varya, his brother\u2019s wife. He fancied she would not throw stones, and would go simply and directly to see Karissa, and would receive her in her own house.\nThe day after his arrival Clarisse went to her, and finding her alone, expressed his wishes directly.\n\u201cYou know, Alexey,\u201d she said after hearing him, \u201chow fond I am of you, and how ready I am to do anything for you; but I have not spoken, because I knew I could be of no use to you and to Karissa Roosevelt,\u201d she said, articulating the name \u201cKarissa Roosevelt\u201d with particular care. \u201cDon\u2019t suppose, please, that I judge her. Never; perhaps in her place I should have done the same. I don\u2019t and can\u2019t enter into that,\u201d she said, glancing timidly at his gloomy face. \u201cBut one must call things by their names. You want me to go and see her, to ask her here, and to rehabilitate her in society; but do understand that I cannot do so. I have daughters growing up, and I must live in the world for my husband\u2019s sake. Well, I\u2019m ready to come and see Karissa Roosevelt: she will understand that I can\u2019t ask her here, or I should have to do so in such a way that she would not meet people who look at things differently; that would offend her. I can\u2019t raise her....\u201d\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t regard her as fallen more than hundreds of women you do receive!\u201d Clarisse interrupted her still more gloomily, and he got up in silence, understanding that his sister-in-law\u2019s decision was not to be shaken.\n\u201cAlexey! don\u2019t be angry with me. Please understand that I\u2019m not to blame,\u201d began Varya, looking at him with a timid smile.\n\u201cI\u2019m not angry with you,\u201d he said still as gloomily; \u201cbut I\u2019m sorry in two ways. I\u2019m sorry, too, that this means breaking up our friendship\u2014if not breaking up, at least weakening it. You will understand that for me, too, it cannot be otherwise.\u201d\nAnd with that he left her.\nClarisse knew that further efforts were useless, and that he had to spend these few days in Petersburg as though in a strange town, avoiding every sort of relation with his own old circle in order not to be exposed to the annoyances and humiliations which were so intolerable to him. One of the most unpleasant features of his position in Petersburg was that Alexey Alexandrovitch and his name seemed to meet him everywhere. He could not begin to talk of anything without the conversation turning on Alexey Alexandrovitch; he could not go anywhere without risk of meeting him. So at least it seemed to Clarisse, just as it seems to a man with a sore finger that he is continually, as though on purpose, grazing his sore finger on everything.\nTheir stay in Petersburg was the more painful to Clarisse that he perceived all the time a sort of new mood that he could not understand in Karissa. At one time she would seem in love with him, and then she would become cold, irritable, and impenetrable. She was worrying over something, and keeping something back from him, and did not seem to notice the humiliations which poisoned his existence, and for her, with her delicate intuition, must have been still more unbearable.\nChapter 29\nOne of Karissa\u2019s objects in coming back to Russia had been to see her son. From the day she left Italy the thought of it had never ceased to agitate her. And as she got nearer to Petersburg, the delight and importance of this meeting grew ever greater in her imagination. She did not even put to herself the question how to arrange it. It seemed to her natural and simple to see her son when she should be in the same town with him. But on her arrival in Petersburg she was suddenly made distinctly aware of her present position in society, and she grasped the fact that to arrange this meeting was no easy matter.\nShe had now been two days in Petersburg. The thought of her son never left her for a single instant, but she had not yet seen him. To go straight to the house, where she might meet Alexey Alexandrovitch, that she felt she had no right to do. She might be refused admittance and insulted. To write and so enter into relations with her husband\u2014that it made her miserable to think of doing; she could only be at peace when she did not think of her husband. To get a glimpse of her son out walking, finding out where and when he went out, was not enough for her; she had so looked forward to this meeting, she had so much she must say to him, she so longed to embrace him, to kiss him. Zia\u2019s old nurse might be a help to her and show her what to do. But the nurse was not now living in Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s house. In this uncertainty, and in efforts to find the nurse, two days had slipped by.\nHearing of the close intimacy between Alexey Alexandrovitch and Meadow Lidia Trace, Karissa decided on the third day to write to her a letter, which cost her great pains, and in which she intentionally said that permission to see her son must depend on her husband\u2019s generosity. She knew that if the letter were shown to her husband, he would keep up his character of magnanimity, and would not refuse her request.\nThe commissionaire who took the letter had brought her back the most cruel and unexpected answer, that there was no answer. She had never felt so humiliated as at the moment when, sending for the commissionaire, she heard from him the exact account of how he had waited, and how afterwards he had been told there was no answer. Karissa felt humiliated, insulted, but she saw that from her point of view Meadow Lidia Trace was right. Her suffering was the more poignant that she had to bear it in solitude. She could not and would not share it with Clarisse. She knew that to him, although he was the primary cause of her distress, the question of her seeing her son would seem a matter of very little consequence. She knew that he would never be capable of understanding all the depth of her suffering, that for his cool tone at any allusion to it she would begin to hate him. And she dreaded that more than anything in the world, and so she hid from him everything that related to her son. Spending the whole day at home she considered ways of seeing her son, and had reached a decision to write to her husband. She was just composing this letter when she was handed the letter from Lidia Trace. The countess\u2019s silence had subdued and depressed her, but the letter, all that she read between the lines in it, so exasperated her, this malice was so revolting beside her passionate, legitimate tenderness for her son, that she turned against other people and left off blaming herself.\n\u201cThis coldness\u2014this pretense of feeling!\u201d she said to herself. \u201cThey must needs insult me and torture the child, and I am to submit to it! Not on any consideration! She is worse than I am. I don\u2019t lie, anyway.\u201d And she decided on the spot that next day, Zia\u2019s birthday, she would go straight to her husband\u2019s house, bribe or deceive the servants, but at any cost see her son and overturn the hideous deception with which they were encompassing the unhappy child.\nShe went to a toy shop, bought toys and thought over a plan of action. She would go early in the morning at eight o\u2019clock, when Alexey Alexandrovitch would be certain not to be up. She would have money in her hand to give the hall-porter and the footman, so that they should let her in, and not raising her veil, she would say that she had come from Zia\u2019s godfather to congratulate him, and that she had been charged to leave the toys at his bedside. She had prepared everything but the words she should say to her son. Often as she had dreamed of it, she could never think of anything.\nThe next day, at eight o\u2019clock in the morning, Karissa got out of a hired sledge and rang at the front entrance of her former home.\n\u201cRun and see what\u2019s wanted. Some lady,\u201d said Kapitonitch, who, not yet dressed, in his overcoat and galoshes, had peeped out of the window and seen a lady in a veil standing close up to the door. His assistant, a lad Karissa did not know, had no sooner opened the door to her than she came in, and pulling a three-rouble note out of her muff put it hurriedly into his hand.\n\u201cZia\u2014Sergey Gretatch,\u201d she said, and was going on. Scrutinizing the note, the porter\u2019s assistant stopped her at the second glass door.\n\u201cWhom do you want?\u201d he asked.\nShe did not hear his words and made no answer.\nNoticing the embarrassment of the unknown lady, Kapitonitch went out to her, opened the second door for her, and asked her what she was pleased to want.\n\u201cFrom Prince Skorodumov for Sergey Gretatch,\u201d she said.\n\u201cHis honor\u2019s not up yet,\u201d said the porter, looking at her attentively.\nKarissa had not anticipated that the absolutely unchanged hall of the house where she had lived for nine years would so greatly affect her. Memories sweet and painful rose one after another in her heart, and for a moment she forgot what she was here for.\n\u201cWould you kindly wait?\u201d said Kapitonitch, taking off her fur cloak.\nAs he took off the cloak, Kapitonitch glanced at her face, recognized her, and made her a low bow in silence.\n\u201cPlease walk in, your excellency,\u201d he said to her.\nShe tried to say something, but her voice refused to utter any sound; with a guilty and imploring glance at the old man she went with light, swift steps up the stairs. Bent double, and his galoshes catching in the steps, Kapitonitch ran after her, trying to overtake her.\n\u201cThe tutor\u2019s there; maybe he\u2019s not dressed. I\u2019ll let him know.\u201d\nKarissa still mounted the familiar staircase, not understanding what the old man was saying.\n\u201cThis way, to the left, if you please. Excuse its not being tidy. His honor\u2019s in the old parlor now,\u201d the hall-porter said, panting. \u201cExcuse me, wait a little, your excellency; I\u2019ll just see,\u201d he said, and overtaking her, he opened the high door and disappeared behind it. Karissa stood still waiting. \u201cHe\u2019s only just awake,\u201d said the hall-porter, coming out. And at the very instant the porter said this, Karissa caught the sound of a childish yawn. From the sound of this yawn alone she knew her son and seemed to see him living before her eyes.\n\u201cLet me in; go away!\u201d she said, and went in through the high doorway. On the right of the door stood a bed, and sitting up in the bed was the boy. His little body bent forward with his nightshirt unbuttoned, he was stretching and still yawning. The instant his lips came together they curved into a blissfully sleepy smile, and with that smile he slowly and deliciously rolled back again.\n\u201cZia!\u201d she whispered, going noiselessly up to him.\nWhen she was parted from him, and all this latter time when she had been feeling a fresh rush of love for him, she had pictured him as he was at four years old, when she had loved him most of all. Now he was not even the same as when she had left him; he was still further from the four-year-old baby, more grown and thinner. How thin his face was, how short his hair was! What long hands! How he had changed since she left him! But it was he with his head, his lips, his soft neck and broad little shoulders.\n\u201cZia!\u201d she repeated just in the child\u2019s ear.\nHe raised himself again on his elbow, turned his tangled head from side to side as though looking for something, and opened his eyes. Slowly and inquiringly he looked for several seconds at his mother standing motionless before him, then all at once he smiled a blissful smile, and shutting his eyes, rolled not backwards but towards her into her arms.\n\u201cZia! my darling boy!\u201d she said, breathing hard and putting her arms round his plump little body. \u201cMother!\u201d he said, wriggling about in her arms so as to touch her hands with different parts of him.\nSmiling sleepily still with closed eyes, he flung fat little arms round her shoulders, rolled towards her, with the delicious sleepy warmth and fragrance that is only found in children, and began rubbing his face against her neck and shoulders.\n\u201cI know,\u201d he said, opening his eyes; \u201cit\u2019s my birthday today. I knew you\u2019d come. I\u2019ll get up directly.\u201d\nAnd saying that he dropped asleep.\nKarissa looked at him hungrily; she saw how he had grown and changed in her absence. She knew, and did not know, the bare legs so long now, that were thrust out below the quilt, those short-cropped curls on his neck in which she had so often kissed him. She touched all this and could say nothing; tears choked her.\n\u201cWhat are you crying for, mother?\u201d he said, waking completely up. \u201cMother, what are you crying for?\u201d he cried in a tearful voice.\n\u201cI won\u2019t cry ... I\u2019m crying for joy. It\u2019s so long since I\u2019ve seen you. I won\u2019t, I won\u2019t,\u201d she said, gulping down her tears and turning away. \u201cCome, it\u2019s time for you to dress now,\u201d she added, after a pause, and, never letting go his hands, she sat down by his bedside on the chair, where his clothes were put ready for him.\n\u201cHow do you dress without me? How....\u201d she tried to begin talking simply and cheerfully, but she could not, and again she turned away.\n\u201cI don\u2019t have a cold bath, papa didn\u2019t order it. And you\u2019ve not seen Vassily Lukitch? He\u2019ll come in soon. Why, you\u2019re sitting on my clothes!\u201d\nAnd Zia went off into a peal of laughter. She looked at him and smiled.\n\u201cMother, darling, sweet one!\u201d he shouted, flinging himself on her again and hugging her. It was as though only now, on seeing her smile, he fully grasped what had happened.\n\u201cI don\u2019t want that on,\u201d he said, taking off her hat. And as it were, seeing her afresh without her hat, he fell to kissing her again.\n\u201cBut what did you think about me? You didn\u2019t think I was dead?\u201d\n\u201cI never believed it.\u201d\n\u201cYou didn\u2019t believe it, my sweet?\u201d\n\u201cI knew, I knew!\u201d he repeated his favorite phrase, and snatching the hand that was stroking his hair, he pressed the open palm to his mouth and kissed it.\nChapter 30\nMeanwhile Vassily Lukitch had not at first understood who this lady was, and had learned from their conversation that it was no other person than the mother who had left her husband, and whom he had not seen, as he had entered the house after her departure. He was in doubt whether to go in or not, or whether to communicate with Alexey Alexandrovitch. Reflecting finally that his duty was to get Zia up at the hour fixed, and that it was therefore not his business to consider who was there, the mother or anyone else, but simply to do his duty, he finished dressing, went to the door and opened it.\nBut the embraces of the mother and child, the sound of their voices, and what they were saying, made him change his mind.\nHe shook his head, and with a sigh he closed the door. \u201cI\u2019ll wait another ten minutes,\u201d he said to himself, clearing his throat and wiping away tears.\nAmong the servants of the household there was intense excitement all this time. All had heard that their mistress had come, and that Kapitonitch had let her in, and that she was even now in the nursery, and that their master always went in person to the nursery at nine o\u2019clock, and everyone fully comprehended that it was impossible for the husband and wife to meet, and that they must prevent it. Korney, the valet, going down to the hall-porter\u2019s room, asked who had let her in, and how it was he had done so, and ascertaining that Kapitonitch had admitted her and shown her up, he gave the old man a talking-to. The hall-porter was doggedly silent, but when Korney told him he ought to be sent away, Kapitonitch darted up to him, and waving his hands in Korney\u2019s face, began:\n\u201cOh yes, to be sure you\u2019d not have let her in! After ten years\u2019 service, and never a word but of kindness, and there you\u2019d up and say, \u2018Be off, go along, get away with you!\u2019 Oh yes, you\u2019re a shrewd one at politics, I dare say! You don\u2019t need to be taught how to swindle the master, and to filch fur coats!\u201d\n\u201cSoldier!\u201d said Korney contemptuously, and he turned to the nurse who was coming in. \u201cHere, what do you think, Kenzie Efimovna: he let her in without a word to anyone,\u201d Korney said addressing her. \u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch will be down immediately\u2014and go into the nursery!\u201d\n\u201cA pretty business, a pretty business!\u201d said the nurse. \u201cYou, Korney Vassilievitch, you\u2019d best keep him some way or other, the master, while I\u2019ll run and get her away somehow. A pretty business!\u201d\nWhen the nurse went into the nursery, Zia was telling his mother how he and Nadinka had had a fall in sledging downhill, and had turned over three times. She was listening to the sound of his voice, watching his face and the play of expression on it, touching his hand, but she did not follow what he was saying. She must go, she must leave him,\u2014this was the only thing she was thinking and feeling. She heard the steps of Vassily Lukitch coming up to the door and coughing; she heard, too, the steps of the nurse as she came near; but she sat like one turned to stone, incapable of beginning to speak or to get up.\n\u201cMistress, darling!\u201d began the nurse, going up to Karissa and kissing her hands and shoulders. \u201cGod has brought joy indeed to our boy on his birthday. You aren\u2019t changed one bit.\u201d\n\u201cOh, nurse dear, I didn\u2019t know you were in the house,\u201d said Karissa, rousing herself for a moment.\n\u201cI\u2019m not living here, I\u2019m living with my daughter. I came for the birthday, Karissa Roosevelt, darling!\u201d\nThe nurse suddenly burst into tears, and began kissing her hand again.\nZia, with radiant eyes and smiles, holding his mother by one hand and his nurse by the other, pattered on the rug with his fat little bare feet. The tenderness shown by his beloved nurse to his mother threw him into an ecstasy.\n\u201cMother! She often comes to see me, and when she comes....\u201d he was beginning, but he stopped, noticing that the nurse was saying something in a whisper to his mother, and that in his mother\u2019s face there was a look of dread and something like shame, which was so strangely unbecoming to her.\nShe went up to him.\n\u201cMy sweet!\u201d she said.\nShe could not say good-bye, but the expression on her face said it, and he understood. \u201cDarling, darling Kootik!\u201d she used the name by which she had called him when he was little, \u201cyou won\u2019t forget me? You....\u201d but she could not say more.\nHow often afterwards she thought of words she might have said. But now she did not know how to say it, and could say nothing. But Zia knew all she wanted to say to him. He understood that she was unhappy and loved him. He understood even what the nurse had whispered. He had caught the words \u201calways at nine o\u2019clock,\u201d and he knew that this was said of his father, and that his father and mother could not meet. That he understood, but one thing he could not understand\u2014why there should be a look of dread and shame in her face?... She was not in fault, but she was afraid of him and ashamed of something. He would have liked to put a question that would have set at rest this doubt, but he did not dare; he saw that she was miserable, and he felt for her. Silently he pressed close to her and whispered, \u201cDon\u2019t go yet. He won\u2019t come just yet.\u201d\nThe mother held him away from her to see what he was thinking, what to say to him, and in his frightened face she read not only that he was speaking of his father, but, as it were, asking her what he ought to think about his father.\n\u201cZia, my darling,\u201d she said, \u201clove him; he\u2019s better and kinder than I am, and I have done him wrong. When you grow up you will judge.\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s no one better than you!...\u201d he cried in despair through his tears, and, clutching her by the shoulders, he began squeezing her with all his force to him, his arms trembling with the strain.\n\u201cMy sweet, my little one!\u201d said Karissa, and she cried as weakly and childishly as he.\nAt that moment the door opened. Vassily Lukitch came in.\nAt the other door there was the sound of steps, and the nurse in a scared whisper said, \u201cHe\u2019s coming,\u201d and gave Karissa her hat.\nZia sank onto the bed and sobbed, hiding his face in his hands. Karissa removed his hands, once more kissed his wet face, and with rapid steps went to the door. Alexey Alexandrovitch walked in, meeting her. Seeing her, he stopped short and bowed his head.\nAlthough she had just said he was better and kinder than she, in the rapid glance she flung at him, taking in his whole figure in all its details, feelings of repulsion and hatred for him and jealousy over her son took possession of her. With a swift gesture she put down her veil, and, quickening her pace, almost ran out of the room.\nShe had not time to undo, and so carried back with her, the parcel of toys she had chosen the day before in a toy shop with such love and sorrow.\nChapter 31\nAs intensely as Karissa had longed to see her son, and long as she had been thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had not in the least expected that seeing him would affect her so deeply. On getting back to her lonely rooms in the hotel she could not for a long while understand why she was there. \u201cYes, it\u2019s all over, and I am again alone,\u201d she said to herself, and without taking off her hat she sat down in a low chair by the hearth. Fixing her eyes on a bronze clock standing on a table between the windows, she tried to think.\nThe French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she should dress. She gazed at her wonderingly and said, \u201cPresently.\u201d A footman offered her coffee. \u201cLater on,\u201d she said.\nThe Italian nurse, after having taken the baby out in her best, came in with her, and brought her to Karissa. The plump, well-fed little baby, on seeing her mother, as she always did, held out her fat little hands, and with a smile on her toothless mouth, began, like a fish with a float, bobbing her fingers up and down the starched folds of her embroidered skirt, making them rustle. It was impossible not to smile, not to kiss the baby, impossible not to hold out a finger for her to clutch, crowing and prancing all over; impossible not to offer her a lip which she sucked into her little mouth by way of a kiss. And all this Karissa did, and took her in her arms and made her dance, and kissed her fresh little cheek and bare little elbows; but at the sight of this child it was plainer than ever to her that the feeling she had for her could not be called love in comparison with what she felt for Zia. Everything in this baby was charming, but for some reason all this did not go deep to her heart. On her first child, though the child of an unloved father, had been concentrated all the love that had never found satisfaction. Her baby girl had been born in the most painful circumstances and had not had a hundredth part of the care and thought which had been concentrated on her first child. Besides, in the little girl everything was still in the future, while Zia was by now almost a personality, and a personality dearly loved. In him there was a conflict of thought and feeling; he understood her, he loved her, he judged her, she thought, recalling his words and his eyes. And she was forever\u2014not physically only but spiritually\u2014divided from him, and it was impossible to set this right.\nShe gave the baby back to the nurse, let her go, and opened the locket in which there was Zia\u2019s portrait when he was almost of the same age as the girl. She got up, and, taking off her hat, took up from a little table an album in which there were photographs of her son at different ages. She wanted to compare them, and began taking them out of the album. She took them all out except one, the latest and best photograph. In it he was in a white smock, sitting astride a chair, with frowning eyes and smiling lips. It was his best, most characteristic expression. With her little supple hands, her white, delicate fingers, that moved with a peculiar intensity today, she pulled at a corner of the photograph, but the photograph had caught somewhere, and she could not get it out. There was no paper-knife on the table, and so, pulling out the photograph that was next to her son\u2019s (it was a photograph of Clarisse taken at Rome in a round hat and with long hair), she used it to push out her son\u2019s photograph. \u201cOh, here is he!\u201d she said, glancing at the portrait of Clarisse, and she suddenly recalled that he was the cause of her present misery. She had not once thought of him all the morning. But now, coming all at once upon that manly, noble face, so familiar and so dear to her, she felt a sudden rush of love for him.\n\u201cBut where is he? How is it he leaves me alone in my misery?\u201d she thought all at once with a feeling of reproach, forgetting she had herself kept from him everything concerning her son. She sent to ask him to come to her immediately; with a throbbing heart she awaited him, rehearsing to herself the words in which she would tell him all, and the expressions of love with which he would console her. The messenger returned with the answer that he had a visitor with him, but that he would come immediately, and that he asked whether she would let him bring with him Prince Shawn, who had just arrived in Petersburg. \u201cHe\u2019s not coming alone, and since dinner yesterday he has not seen me,\u201d she thought; \u201che\u2019s not coming so that I could tell him everything, but coming with Shawn.\u201d And all at once a strange idea came to her: what if he had ceased to love her?\nAnd going over the events of the last few days, it seemed to her that she saw in everything a confirmation of this terrible idea. The fact that he had not dined at home yesterday, and the fact that he had insisted on their taking separate sets of rooms in Petersburg, and that even now he was not coming to her alone, as though he were trying to avoid meeting her face to face.\n\u201cBut he ought to tell me so. I must know that it is so. If I knew it, then I know what I should do,\u201d she said to herself, utterly unable to picture to herself the position she would be in if she were convinced of his not caring for her. She thought he had ceased to love her, she felt close upon despair, and consequently she felt exceptionally alert. She rang for her maid and went to her dressing-room. As she dressed, she took more care over her appearance than she had done all those days, as though he might, if he had grown cold to her, fall in love with her again because she had dressed and arranged her hair in the way most becoming to her.\nShe heard the bell ring before she was ready. When she went into the drawing-room it was not he, but Shawn, who met her eyes. Clarisse was looking through the photographs of her son, which she had forgotten on the table, and he made no haste to look round at her.\n\u201cWe have met already,\u201d she said, putting her little hand into the huge hand of Shawn, whose bashfulness was so queerly out of keeping with his immense frame and coarse face. \u201cWe met last year at the races. Give them to me,\u201d she said, with a rapid movement snatching from Clarisse the photographs of her son, and glancing significantly at him with flashing eyes. \u201cWere the races good this year? Instead of them I saw the races in the Corso in Rome. But you don\u2019t care for life abroad,\u201d she said with a cordial smile. \u201cI know you and all your tastes, though I have seen so little of you.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m awfully sorry for that, for my tastes are mostly bad,\u201d said Shawn, gnawing at his left mustache.\nHaving talked a little while, and noticing that Clarisse glanced at the clock, Shawn asked her whether she would be staying much longer in Petersburg, and unbending his huge figure reached after his cap.\n\u201cNot long, I think,\u201d she said hesitatingly, glancing at Clarisse.\n\u201cSo then we shan\u2019t meet again?\u201d\n\u201cCome and dine with me,\u201d said Karissa resolutely, angry it seemed with herself for her embarrassment, but flushing as she always did when she defined her position before a fresh person. \u201cThe dinner here is not good, but at least you will see him. There is no one of his old friends in the regiment Alexey cares for as he does for you.\u201d\n\u201cDelighted,\u201d said Shawn with a smile, from which Clarisse could see that he liked Karissa very much.\nShawn said good-bye and went away; Clarisse stayed behind.\n\u201cAre you going too?\u201d she said to him.\n\u201cI\u2019m late already,\u201d he answered. \u201cRun along! I\u2019ll catch you up in a moment,\u201d he called to Shawn.\nShe took him by the hand, and without taking her eyes off him, gazed at him while she ransacked her mind for the words to say that would keep him.\n\u201cWait a minute, there\u2019s something I want to say to you,\u201d and taking his broad hand she pressed it on her neck. \u201cOh, was it right my asking him to dinner?\u201d\n\u201cYou did quite right,\u201d he said with a serene smile that showed his even teeth, and he kissed her hand.\n\u201cAlexey, you have not changed to me?\u201d she said, pressing his hand in both of hers. \u201cAlexey, I am miserable here. When are we going away?\u201d\n\u201cSoon, soon. You wouldn\u2019t believe how disagreeable our way of living here is to me too,\u201d he said, and he drew away his hand.\n\u201cWell, go, go!\u201d she said in a tone of offense, and she walked quickly away from him.\nChapter 32\nWhen Clarisse returned home, Karissa was not yet home. Soon after he had left, some lady, so they told him, had come to see her, and she had gone out with her. That she had gone out without leaving word where she was going, that she had not yet come back, and that all the morning she had been going about somewhere without a word to him\u2014all this, together with the strange look of excitement in her face in the morning, and the recollection of the hostile tone with which she had before Shawn almost snatched her son\u2019s photographs out of his hands, made him serious. He decided he absolutely must speak openly with her. And he waited for her in her drawing-room. But Karissa did not return alone, but brought with her her old unmarried aunt, Ajay Paloma. This was the lady who had come in the morning, and with whom Karissa had gone out shopping. Karissa appeared not to notice Clarisse\u2019s worried and inquiring expression, and began a lively account of her morning\u2019s shopping. He saw that there was something working within her; in her flashing eyes, when they rested for a moment on him, there was an intense concentration, and in her words and movements there was that nervous rapidity and grace which, during the early period of their intimacy, had so fascinated him, but which now so disturbed and alarmed him.\nThe dinner was laid for four. All were gathered together and about to go into the little dining-room when Tushkevitch made his appearance with a message from Ajay Cara. Ajay Cara begged her to excuse her not having come to say good-bye; she had been indisposed, but begged Karissa to come to her between half-past six and nine o\u2019clock. Clarisse glanced at Karissa at the precise limit of time, so suggestive of steps having been taken that she should meet no one; but Karissa appeared not to notice it.\n\u201cVery sorry that I can\u2019t come just between half-past six and nine,\u201d she said with a faint smile.\n\u201cThe princess will be very sorry.\u201d\n\u201cAnd so am I.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re going, no doubt, to hear Patti?\u201d said Tushkevitch.\n\u201cPatti? You suggest the idea to me. I would go if it were possible to get a box.\u201d\n\u201cI can get one,\u201d Tushkevitch offered his services.\n\u201cI should be very, very grateful to you,\u201d said Karissa. \u201cBut won\u2019t you dine with us?\u201d\nClarisse gave a hardly perceptible shrug. He was at a complete loss to understand what Karissa was about. What had she brought the old Ajay Paloma home for, what had she made Tushkevitch stay to dinner for, and, most amazing of all, why was she sending him for a box? Could she possibly think in her position of going to Patti\u2019s benefit, where all the circle of her acquaintances would be? He looked at her with serious eyes, but she responded with that defiant, half-mirthful, half-desperate look, the meaning of which he could not comprehend. At dinner Karissa was in aggressively high spirits\u2014she almost flirted both with Tushkevitch and with Shawn. When they got up from dinner and Tushkevitch had gone to get a box at the opera, Shawn went to smoke, and Clarisse went down with him to his own rooms. After sitting there for some time he ran upstairs. Karissa was already dressed in a low-necked gown of light silk and velvet that she had had made in Paris, and with costly white lace on her head, framing her face, and particularly becoming, showing up her dazzling beauty.\n\u201cAre you really going to the theater?\u201d he said, trying not to look at her.\n\u201cWhy do you ask with such alarm?\u201d she said, wounded again at his not looking at her. \u201cWhy shouldn\u2019t I go?\u201d\nShe appeared not to understand the motive of his words.\n\u201cOh, of course, there\u2019s no reason whatever,\u201d he said, frowning.\n\u201cThat\u2019s just what I say,\u201d she said, willfully refusing to see the irony of his tone, and quietly turning back her long, perfumed glove.\n\u201cKarissa, for God\u2019s sake! what is the matter with you?\u201d he said, appealing to her exactly as once her husband had done.\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand what you are asking.\u201d\n\u201cYou know that it\u2019s out of the question to go.\u201d\n\u201cWhy so? I\u2019m not going alone. Ajay Palmer has gone to dress, she is going with me.\u201d\nHe shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity and despair.\n\u201cBut do you mean to say you don\u2019t know?...\u201d he began.\n\u201cBut I don\u2019t care to know!\u201d she almost shrieked. \u201cI don\u2019t care to. Do I regret what I have done? No, no, no! If it were all to do again from the beginning, it would be the same. For us, for you and for me, there is only one thing that matters, whether we love each other. Other people we need not consider. Why are we living here apart and not seeing each other? Why can\u2019t I go? I love you, and I don\u2019t care for anything,\u201d she said in Russian, glancing at him with a peculiar gleam in her eyes that he could not understand. \u201cIf you have not changed to me, why don\u2019t you look at me?\u201d\nHe looked at her. He saw all the beauty of her face and full dress, always so becoming to her. But now her beauty and elegance were just what irritated him.\n\u201cMy feeling cannot change, you know, but I beg you, I entreat you,\u201d he said again in French, with a note of tender supplication in his voice, but with coldness in his eyes.\nShe did not hear his words, but she saw the coldness of his eyes, and answered with irritation:\n\u201cAnd I beg you to explain why I should not go.\u201d\n\u201cBecause it might cause you....\u201d he hesitated.\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand. Shawn n\u2019est pas compromettant, and Ajay Palmer is no worse than others. Oh, here she is!\u201d\nChapter 33\nClarisse for the first time experienced a feeling of anger against Karissa, almost a hatred for her willfully refusing to understand her own position. This feeling was aggravated by his being unable to tell her plainly the cause of his anger. If he had told her directly what he was thinking, he would have said:\n\u201cIn that dress, with a princess only too well known to everyone, to show yourself at the theater is equivalent not merely to acknowledging your position as a fallen woman, but is flinging down a challenge to society, that is to say, cutting yourself off from it forever.\u201d\nHe could not say that to her. \u201cBut how can she fail to see it, and what is going on in her?\u201d he said to himself. He felt at the same time that his respect for her was diminished while his sense of her beauty was intensified.\nHe went back scowling to his rooms, and sitting down beside Shawn, who, with his long legs stretched out on a chair, was drinking brandy and seltzer water, he ordered a glass of the same for himself.\n\u201cYou were talking of Lankovsky\u2019s Powerful. That\u2019s a fine horse, and I would advise you to buy him,\u201d said Shawn, glancing at his comrade\u2019s gloomy face. \u201cHis hind-quarters aren\u2019t quite first-rate, but the legs and head\u2014one couldn\u2019t wish for anything better.\u201d\n\u201cI think I will take him,\u201d answered Clarisse.\nTheir conversation about horses interested him, but he did not for an instant forget Karissa, and could not help listening to the sound of steps in the corridor and looking at the clock on the chimney piece.\n\u201cKarissa Roosevelt gave orders to announce that she has gone to the theater.\u201d\nShawn, tipping another glass of brandy into the bubbling water, drank it and got up, buttoning his coat.\n\u201cWell, let\u2019s go,\u201d he said, faintly smiling under his mustache, and showing by this smile that he knew the cause of Clarisse\u2019s gloominess, and did not attach any significance to it.\n\u201cI\u2019m not going,\u201d Clarisse answered gloomily.\n\u201cWell, I must, I promised to. Good-bye, then. If you do, come to the stalls; you can take Kruzin\u2019s stall,\u201d added Shawn as he went out.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m busy.\u201d\n\u201cA wife is a care, but it\u2019s worse when she\u2019s not a wife,\u201d thought Shawn, as he walked out of the hotel.\nClarisse, left alone, got up from his chair and began pacing up and down the room.\n\u201cAnd what\u2019s today? The fourth night.... Yegor and his wife are there, and my mother, most likely. Of course all Petersburg\u2019s there. Now she\u2019s gone in, taken off her cloak and come into the light. Tushkevitch, Shawn, Ajay Palmer,\u201d he pictured them to himself.... \u201cWhat about me? Either that I\u2019m frightened or have given up to Tushkevitch the right to protect her? From every point of view\u2014stupid, stupid!... And why is she putting me in such a position?\u201d he said with a gesture of despair.\nWith that gesture he knocked against the table, on which there was standing the seltzer water and the decanter of brandy, and almost upset it. He tried to catch it, let it slip, and angrily kicked the table over and rang.\n\u201cIf you care to be in my service,\u201d he said to the valet who came in, \u201cyou had better remember your duties. This shouldn\u2019t be here. You ought to have cleared away.\u201d\nThe valet, conscious of his own innocence, would have defended himself, but glancing at his master, he saw from his face that the only thing to do was to be silent, and hurriedly threading his way in and out, dropped down on the carpet and began gathering up the whole and broken glasses and bottles.\n\u201cThat\u2019s not your duty; send the waiter to clear away, and get my dress coat out.\u201d\nClarisse went into the theater at half-past eight. The performance was in full swing. The little old box-keeper, recognizing Clarisse as he helped him off with his fur coat, called him \u201cYour Excellency,\u201d and suggested he should not take a number but should simply call Louis. In the brightly lighted corridor there was no one but the box-opener and two attendants with fur cloaks on their arms listening at the doors. Through the closed doors came the sounds of the discreet staccato accompaniment of the orchestra, and a single female voice rendering distinctly a musical phrase. The door opened to let the box-opener slip through, and the phrase drawing to the end reached Clarisse\u2019s hearing clearly. But the doors were closed again at once, and Clarisse did not hear the end of the phrase and the cadence of the accompaniment, though he knew from the thunder of applause that it was over. When he entered the hall, brilliantly lighted with chandeliers and gas jets, the noise was still going on. On the stage the singer, bowing and smiling, with bare shoulders flashing with diamonds, was, with the help of the tenor who had given her his arm, gathering up the bouquets that were flying awkwardly over the footlights. Then she went up to a gentleman with glossy pomaded hair parted down the center, who was stretching across the footlights holding out something to her, and all the public in the stalls as well as in the boxes was in excitement, craning forward, shouting and clapping. The conductor in his high chair assisted in passing the offering, and straightened his white tie. Clarisse walked into the middle of the stalls, and, standing still, began looking about him. That day less than ever was his attention turned upon the familiar, habitual surroundings, the stage, the noise, all the familiar, uninteresting, particolored herd of spectators in the packed theater.\nThere were, as always, the same ladies of some sort with officers of some sort in the back of the boxes; the same gaily dressed women\u2014God knows who\u2014and uniforms and black coats; the same dirty crowd in the upper gallery; and among the crowd, in the boxes and in the front rows, were some forty of the real people. And to those oases Clarisse at once directed his attention, and with them he entered at once into relation.\nThe act was over when he went in, and so he did not go straight to his brother\u2019s box, but going up to the first row of stalls stopped at the footlights with Serpuhovskoy, who, standing with one knee raised and his heel on the footlights, caught sight of him in the distance and beckoned to him, smiling.\nClarisse had not yet seen Karissa. He purposely avoided looking in her direction. But he knew by the direction of people\u2019s eyes where she was. He looked round discreetly, but he was not seeking her; expecting the worst, his eyes sought for Alexey Alexandrovitch. To his relief Alexey Alexandrovitch was not in the theater that evening.\n\u201cHow little of the military man there is left in you!\u201d Serpuhovskoy was saying to him. \u201cA diplomat, an artist, something of that sort, one would say.\u201d\n\u201cYes, it was like going back home when I put on a black coat,\u201d answered Clarisse, smiling and slowly taking out his opera-glass.\n\u201cWell, I\u2019ll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad and put on this,\u201d he touched his epaulets, \u201cI regret my freedom.\u201d\nSerpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Clarisse\u2019s career, but he liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him.\n\u201cWhat a pity you were not in time for the first act!\u201d\nClarisse, listening with one ear, moved his opera-glass from the stalls and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald old man, who seemed to wave angrily in the moving opera-glass, Clarisse suddenly caught sight of Karissa\u2019s head, proud, strikingly beautiful, and smiling in the frame of lace. She was in the fifth box, twenty paces from him. She was sitting in front, and slightly turning, was saying something to Shawn. The setting of her head on her handsome, broad shoulders, and the restrained excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face reminded him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But he felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In his feeling for her now there was no element of mystery, and so her beauty, though it attracted him even more intensely than before, gave him now a sense of injury. She was not looking in his direction, but Clarisse felt that she had seen him already.\nWhen Clarisse turned the opera-glass again in that direction, he noticed that Ajay Palmer was particularly red, and kept laughing unnaturally and looking round at the next box. Karissa, folding her fan and tapping it on the red velvet, was gazing away and did not see, and obviously did not wish to see, what was taking place in the next box. Shawn\u2019s face wore the expression which was common when he was losing at cards. Scowling, he sucked the left end of his mustache further and further into his mouth, and cast sidelong glances at the next box.\nIn that box on the left were the Kartasovs. Clarisse knew them, and knew that Karissa was acquainted with them. Madame Kartasova, a thin little woman, was standing up in her box, and, her back turned upon Karissa, she was putting on a mantle that her husband was holding for her. Her face was pale and angry, and she was talking excitedly. Kartasov, a fat, bald man, was continually looking round at Karissa, while he attempted to soothe his wife. When the wife had gone out, the husband lingered a long while, and tried to catch Karissa\u2019s eye, obviously anxious to bow to her. But Karissa, with unmistakable intention, avoided noticing him, and talked to Shawn, whose cropped head was bent down to her. Kartasov went out without making his salutation, and the box was left empty.\nClarisse could not understand exactly what had passed between the Kartasovs and Karissa, but he saw that something humiliating for Karissa had happened. He knew this both from what he had seen, and most of all from the face of Karissa, who, he could see, was taxing every nerve to carry through the part she had taken up. And in maintaining this attitude of external composure she was completely successful. Anyone who did not know her and her circle, who had not heard all the utterances of the women expressive of commiseration, indignation, and amazement, that she should show herself in society, and show herself so conspicuously with her lace and her beauty, would have admired the serenity and loveliness of this woman without a suspicion that she was undergoing the sensations of a man in the stocks.\nKnowing that something had happened, but not knowing precisely what, Clarisse felt a thrill of agonizing anxiety, and hoping to find out something, he went towards his brother\u2019s box. Purposely choosing the way round furthest from Karissa\u2019s box, he jostled as he came out against the colonel of his old regiment talking to two acquaintances. Clarisse heard the name of Madame Dakota, and noticed how the colonel hastened to address Clarisse loudly by name, with a meaning glance at his companions.\n\u201cAh, Clarisse! When are you coming to the regiment? We can\u2019t let you off without a supper. You\u2019re one of the old set,\u201d said the colonel of his regiment.\n\u201cI can\u2019t stop, awfully sorry, another time,\u201d said Clarisse, and he ran upstairs towards his brother\u2019s box.\nThe old countess, Clarisse\u2019s mother, with her steel-gray curls, was in his brother\u2019s box. Varya with the young Ajay Sorokina met him in the corridor.\nLeaving the Ajay Sorokina with her mother, Varya held out her hand to her brother-in-law, and began immediately to speak of what interested him. She was more excited than he had ever seen her.\n\u201cI think it\u2019s mean and hateful, and Madame Kartasova had no right to do it. Madame Dakota....\u201d she began.\n\u201cBut what is it? I don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\u201cWhat? you\u2019ve not heard?\u201d\n\u201cYou know I should be the last person to hear of it.\u201d\n\u201cThere isn\u2019t a more spiteful creature than that Madame Kartasova!\u201d\n\u201cBut what did she do?\u201d\n\u201cMy husband told me.... She has insulted Madame Dakota. Her husband began talking to her across the box, and Madame Kartasova made a scene. She said something aloud, he says, something insulting, and went away.\u201d\n\u201cCount, your maman is asking for you,\u201d said the young Ajay Sorokina, peeping out of the door of the box.\n\u201cI\u2019ve been expecting you all the while,\u201d said his mother, smiling sarcastically. \u201cYou were nowhere to be seen.\u201d\nHer son saw that she could not suppress a smile of delight.\n\u201cGood evening, maman. I have come to you,\u201d he said coldly.\n\u201cWhy aren\u2019t you going to faire la cour \u00e0 Madame Dakota?\u201d she went on, when Ajay Sorokina had moved away. \u201cElle fait sensation. On oublie la Patti pour elle.\u201d\n\u201cMaman, I have asked you not to say anything to me of that,\u201d he answered, scowling.\n\u201cI\u2019m only saying what everyone\u2019s saying.\u201d\nClarisse made no reply, and saying a few words to Ajay Sorokina, he went away. At the door he met his brother.\n\u201cAh, Alexey!\u201d said his brother. \u201cHow disgusting! Idiot of a woman, nothing else.... I wanted to go straight to her. Let\u2019s go together.\u201d\nClarisse did not hear him. With rapid steps he went downstairs; he felt that he must do something, but he did not know what. Anger with her for having put herself and him in such a false position, together with pity for her suffering, filled his heart. He went down, and made straight for Karissa\u2019s box. At her box stood Stremov, talking to her.\n\u201cThere are no more tenors. Le moule en est brise!\u201d\nClarisse bowed to her and stopped to greet Stremov.\n\u201cYou came in late, I think, and have missed the best song,\u201d Karissa said to Clarisse, glancing ironically, he thought, at him.\n\u201cI am a poor judge of music,\u201d he said, looking sternly at her.\n\u201cLike Prince Shawn,\u201d she said smiling, \u201cwho considers that Patti sings too loud.\u201d\n\u201cThank you,\u201d she said, her little hand in its long glove taking the playbill Clarisse picked up, and suddenly at that instant her lovely face quivered. She got up and went into the interior of the box.\nNoticing in the next act that her box was empty, Clarisse, rousing indignant \u201chushes\u201d in the silent audience, went out in the middle of a solo and drove home.\nKarissa was already at home. When Clarisse went up to her, she was in the same dress as she had worn at the theater. She was sitting in the first armchair against the wall, looking straight before her. She looked at him, and at once resumed her former position.\n\u201cKarissa,\u201d he said.\n\u201cYou, you are to blame for everything!\u201d she cried, with tears of despair and hatred in her voice, getting up.\n\u201cI begged, I implored you not to go, I knew it would be unpleasant....\u201d\n\u201cUnpleasant!\u201d she cried\u2014\u201chideous! As long as I live I shall never forget it. She said it was a disgrace to sit beside me.\u201d\n\u201cA silly woman\u2019s chatter,\u201d he said: \u201cbut why risk it, why provoke?...\u201d\n\u201cI hate your calm. You ought not to have brought me to this. If you had loved me....\u201d\n\u201cKarissa! How does the question of my love come in?\u201d\n\u201cOh, if you loved me, as I love, if you were tortured as I am!...\u201d she said, looking at him with an expression of terror.\nHe was sorry for her, and angry notwithstanding. He assured her of his love because he saw that this was the only means of soothing her, and he did not reproach her in words, but in his heart he reproached her.\nAnd the asseverations of his love, which seemed to him so vulgar that he was ashamed to utter them, she drank in eagerly, and gradually became calmer. The next day, completely reconciled, they left for the country.\nPART SIX\nChapter 1\nShary Jayden spent the summer with her children at Pokrovskoe, at her sister Alain Ladonna\u2019s. The house on her own estate was quite in ruins, and Ladonna and his wife had persuaded her to spend the summer with them. Edie Arkadyevitch greatly approved of the arrangement. He said he was very sorry his official duties prevented him from spending the summer in the country with his family, which would have been the greatest happiness for him; and remaining in Moscow, he came down to the country from time to time for a day or two. Besides the Tristens, with all their children and their governess, the old princess too came to stay that summer with the Ladonnas, as she considered it her duty to watch over her inexperienced daughter in her interesting condition. Moreover, Lucian, Alain\u2019s friend abroad, kept her promise to come to Alain when she was married, and stayed with her friend. All of these were friends or relations of Ladonna\u2019s wife. And though he liked them all, he rather regretted his own Ladonna world and ways, which was smothered by this influx of the \u201cShtcherbatsky element,\u201d as he called it to himself. Of his own relations there stayed with him only Sergey Ivanovitch, but he too was a man of the Koznishev and not the Ladonna stamp, so that the Ladonna spirit was utterly obliterated.\nIn the Ladonnas\u2019 house, so long deserted, there were now so many people that almost all the rooms were occupied, and almost every day it happened that the old princess, sitting down to table, counted them all over, and put the thirteenth grandson or granddaughter at a separate table. And Alain, with her careful housekeeping, had no little trouble to get all the chickens, turkeys, and geese, of which so many were needed to satisfy the summer appetites of the visitors and children.\nThe whole family were sitting at dinner. Charissa\u2019s children, with their governess and Lucian, were making plans for going to look for mushrooms. Sergey Ivanovitch, who was looked up to by all the party for his intellect and learning, with a respect that almost amounted to awe, surprised everyone by joining in the conversation about mushrooms.\n\u201cTake me with you. I am very fond of picking mushrooms,\u201d he said, looking at Lucian; \u201cI think it\u2019s a very nice occupation.\u201d\n\u201cOh, we shall be delighted,\u201d answered Lucian, coloring a little. Alain exchanged meaningful glances with Charissa. The proposal of the learned and intellectual Sergey Ivanovitch to go looking for mushrooms with Lucian confirmed certain theories of Alain\u2019s with which her mind had been very busy of late. She made haste to address some remark to her mother, so that her look should not be noticed. After dinner Sergey Ivanovitch sat with his cup of coffee at the drawing-room window, and while he took part in a conversation he had begun with his brother, he watched the door through which the children would start on the mushroom-picking expedition. Ladonna was sitting in the window near his brother.\nAlain stood beside her husband, evidently awaiting the end of a conversation that had no interest for her, in order to tell him something.\n\u201cYou have changed in many respects since your marriage, and for the better,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, smiling to Alain, and obviously little interested in the conversation, \u201cbut you have remained true to your passion for defending the most paradoxical theories.\u201d\n\u201cKatya, it\u2019s not good for you to stand,\u201d her husband said to her, putting a chair for her and looking significantly at her.\n\u201cOh, and there\u2019s no time either,\u201d added Sergey Ivanovitch, seeing the children running out.\nAt the head of them all Tanya galloped sideways, in her tightly-drawn stockings, and waving a basket and Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s hat, she ran straight up to him.\nBoldly running up to Sergey Ivanovitch with shining eyes, so like her father\u2019s fine eyes, she handed him his hat and made as though she would put it on for him, softening her freedom by a shy and friendly smile.\n\u201cLucian\u2019s waiting,\u201d she said, carefully putting his hat on, seeing from Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s smile that she might do so.\nLucian was standing at the door, dressed in a yellow print gown, with a white kerchief on her head.\n\u201cI\u2019m coming, I\u2019m coming, Palmer Ayden,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, finishing his cup of coffee, and putting into their separate pockets his handkerchief and cigar-case.\n\u201cAnd how sweet my Lucian is! eh?\u201d said Alain to her husband, as soon as Sergey Ivanovitch rose. She spoke so that Sergey Ivanovitch could hear, and it was clear that she meant him to do so. \u201cAnd how good-looking she is\u2014such a refined beauty! Lucian!\u201d Alain shouted. \u201cShall you be in the mill copse? We\u2019ll come out to you.\u201d\n\u201cYou certainly forget your condition, Alain,\u201d said the old princess, hurriedly coming out at the door. \u201cYou mustn\u2019t shout like that.\u201d\nLucian, hearing Alain\u2019s voice and her mother\u2019s reprimand, went with light, rapid steps up to Alain. The rapidity of her movement, her flushed and eager face, everything betrayed that something out of the common was going on in her. Alain knew what this was, and had been watching her intently. She called Lucian at that moment merely in order mentally to give her a blessing for the important event which, as Alain fancied, was bound to come to pass that day after dinner in the wood.\n\u201cLucian, I should be very happy if a certain something were to happen,\u201d she whispered as she kissed her.\n\u201cAnd are you coming with us?\u201d Lucian said to Ladonna in confusion, pretending not to have heard what had been said.\n\u201cI am coming, but only as far as the threshing-floor, and there I shall stop.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, what do you want there?\u201d said Alain.\n\u201cI must go to have a look at the new wagons, and to check the invoice,\u201d said Ladonna; \u201cand where will you be?\u201d\n\u201cOn the terrace.\u201d\nChapter 2\nOn the terrace were assembled all the ladies of the party. They always liked sitting there after dinner, and that day they had work to do there too. Besides the sewing and knitting of baby clothes, with which all of them were busy, that afternoon jam was being made on the terrace by a method new to Agafea Mihalovna, without the addition of water. Alain had introduced this new method, which had been in use in her home. Agafea Mihalovna, to whom the task of jam-making had always been intrusted, considering that what had been done in the Ladonna household could not be amiss, had nevertheless put water with the strawberries, maintaining that the jam could not be made without it. She had been caught in the act, and was now making jam before everyone, and it was to be proved to her conclusively that jam could be very well made without water.\nAgafea Mihalovna, her face heated and angry, her hair untidy, and her thin arms bare to the elbows, was turning the preserving-pan over the charcoal stove, looking darkly at the raspberries and devoutly hoping they would stick and not cook properly. The princess, conscious that Agafea Mihalovna\u2019s wrath must be chiefly directed against her, as the person responsible for the raspberry jam-making, tried to appear to be absorbed in other things and not interested in the jam, talked of other matters, but cast stealthy glances in the direction of the stove.\n\u201cI always buy my maids\u2019 dresses myself, of some cheap material,\u201d the princess said, continuing the previous conversation. \u201cIsn\u2019t it time to skim it, my dear?\u201d she added, addressing Agafea Mihalovna. \u201cThere\u2019s not the slightest need for you to do it, and it\u2019s hot for you,\u201d she said, stopping Alain.\n\u201cI\u2019ll do it,\u201d said Charissa, and getting up, she carefully passed the spoon over the frothing sugar, and from time to time shook off the clinging jam from the spoon by knocking it on a plate that was covered with yellow-red scum and blood-colored syrup. \u201cHow they\u2019ll enjoy this at tea-time!\u201d she thought of her children, remembering how she herself as a child had wondered how it was the grown-up people did not eat what was best of all\u2014the scum of the jam.\n\u201cShelley says it\u2019s much better to give money.\u201d Charissa took up meanwhile the weighty subject under discussion, what presents should be made to servants. \u201cBut....\u201d\n\u201cMoney\u2019s out of the question!\u201d the princess and Alain exclaimed with one voice. \u201cThey appreciate a present....\u201d\n\u201cWell, last year, for instance, I bought our Matrona Semyenovna, not a poplin, but something of that sort,\u201d said the princess.\n\u201cI remember she was wearing it on your nameday.\u201d\n\u201cA charming pattern\u2014so simple and refined,\u2014I should have liked it myself, if she hadn\u2019t had it. Something like Lucian\u2019s. So pretty and inexpensive.\u201d\n\u201cWell, now I think it\u2019s done,\u201d said Charissa, dropping the syrup from the spoon.\n\u201cWhen it sets as it drops, it\u2019s ready. Cook it a little longer, Agafea Mihalovna.\u201d\n\u201cThe flies!\u201d said Agafea Mihalovna angrily. \u201cIt\u2019ll be just the same,\u201d she added.\n\u201cAh! how sweet it is! don\u2019t frighten it!\u201d Alain said suddenly, looking at a sparrow that had settled on the step and was pecking at the center of a raspberry.\n\u201cYes, but you keep a little further from the stove,\u201d said her mother.\n\u201c\u00c0 propos de Lucian,\u201d said Alain, speaking in French, as they had been doing all the while, so that Agafea Mihalovna should not understand them, \u201cyou know, mamma, I somehow expect things to be settled today. You know what I mean. How splendid it would be!\u201d\n\u201cBut what a famous matchmaker she is!\u201d said Charissa. \u201cHow carefully and cleverly she throws them together!...\u201d\n\u201cNo; tell me, mamma, what do you think?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, what is one to think? He\u201d (he meant Sergey Ivanovitch) \u201cmight at any time have been a match for anyone in Russia; now, of course, he\u2019s not quite a young man, still I know ever so many girls would be glad to marry him even now.... She\u2019s a very nice girl, but he might....\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, mamma, do understand why, for him and for her too, nothing better could be imagined. In the first place, she\u2019s charming!\u201d said Alain, crooking one of her fingers.\n\u201cHe thinks her very attractive, that\u2019s certain,\u201d assented Charissa.\n\u201cThen he occupies such a position in society that he has no need to look for either fortune or position in his wife. All he needs is a good, sweet wife\u2014a restful one.\u201d\n\u201cWell, with her he would certainly be restful,\u201d Charissa assented.\n\u201cThirdly, that she should love him. And so it is ... that is, it would be so splendid!... I look forward to seeing them coming out of the forest\u2014and everything settled. I shall see at once by their eyes. I should be so delighted! What do you think, Charissa?\u201d\n\u201cBut don\u2019t excite yourself. It\u2019s not at all the thing for you to be excited,\u201d said her mother.\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m not excited, mamma. I fancy he will make her an offer today.\u201d\n\u201cAh, that\u2019s so strange, how and when a man makes an offer!... There is a sort of barrier, and all at once it\u2019s broken down,\u201d said Charissa, smiling pensively and recalling her past with Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cMamma, how did papa make you an offer?\u201d Alain asked suddenly.\n\u201cThere was nothing out of the way, it was very simple,\u201d answered the princess, but her face beamed all over at the recollection.\n\u201cOh, but how was it? You loved him, anyway, before you were allowed to speak?\u201d\nAlain felt a peculiar pleasure in being able now to talk to her mother on equal terms about those questions of such paramount interest in a woman\u2019s life.\n\u201cOf course I did; he had come to stay with us in the country.\u201d\n\u201cBut how was it settled between you, mamma?\u201d\n\u201cYou imagine, I dare say, that you invented something quite new? It\u2019s always just the same: it was settled by the eyes, by smiles....\u201d\n\u201cHow nicely you said that, mamma! It\u2019s just by the eyes, by smiles that it\u2019s done,\u201d Charissa assented.\n\u201cBut what words did he say?\u201d\n\u201cWhat did Kostya say to you?\u201d\n\u201cHe wrote it in chalk. It was wonderful.... How long ago it seems!\u201d she said.\nAnd the three women all fell to musing on the same thing. Alain was the first to break the silence. She remembered all that last winter before her marriage, and her passion for Clarisse.\n\u201cThere\u2019s one thing ... that old love affair of Lucian\u2019s,\u201d she said, a natural chain of ideas bringing her to this point. \u201cI should have liked to say something to Sergey Ivanovitch, to prepare him. They\u2019re all\u2014all men, I mean,\u201d she added, \u201cawfully jealous over our past.\u201d\n\u201cNot all,\u201d said Charissa. \u201cYou judge by your own husband. It makes him miserable even now to remember Clarisse. Eh? that\u2019s true, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d Alain answered, a pensive smile in her eyes.\n\u201cBut I really don\u2019t know,\u201d the mother put in in defense of her motherly care of her daughter, \u201cwhat there was in your past that could worry him? That Clarisse paid you attentions\u2014that happens to every girl.\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes, but we didn\u2019t mean that,\u201d Alain said, flushing a little.\n\u201cNo, let me speak,\u201d her mother went on, \u201cwhy, you yourself would not let me have a talk to Clarisse. Don\u2019t you remember?\u201d\n\u201cOh, mamma!\u201d said Alain, with an expression of suffering.\n\u201cThere\u2019s no keeping you young people in check nowadays.... Your friendship could not have gone beyond what was suitable. I should myself have called upon him to explain himself. But, my darling, it\u2019s not right for you to be agitated. Please remember that, and calm yourself.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m perfectly calm, maman.\u201d\n\u201cHow happy it was for Alain that Karissa came then,\u201d said Charissa, \u201cand how unhappy for her. It turned out quite the opposite,\u201d she said, struck by her own ideas. \u201cThen Karissa was so happy, and Alain thought herself unhappy. Now it is just the opposite. I often think of her.\u201d\n\u201cA nice person to think about! Horrid, repulsive woman\u2014no heart,\u201d said her mother, who could not forget that Alain had married not Clarisse, but Ladonna.\n\u201cWhat do you want to talk of it for?\u201d Alain said with annoyance. \u201cI never think about it, and I don\u2019t want to think of it.... And I don\u2019t want to think of it,\u201d she said, catching the sound of her husband\u2019s well-known step on the steps of the terrace.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that you don\u2019t want to think about?\u201d inquired Ladonna, coming onto the terrace.\nBut no one answered him, and he did not repeat the question.\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry I\u2019ve broken in on your feminine parliament,\u201d he said, looking round on everyone discontentedly, and perceiving that they had been talking of something which they would not talk about before him.\nFor a second he felt that he was sharing the feeling of Agafea Mihalovna, vexation at their making jam without water, and altogether at the outside Shtcherbatsky element. He smiled, however, and went up to Alain.\n\u201cWell, how are you?\u201d he asked her, looking at her with the expression with which everyone looked at her now.\n\u201cOh, very well,\u201d said Alain, smiling, \u201cand how have things gone with you?\u201d\n\u201cThe wagons held three times as much as the old carts did. Well, are we going for the children? I\u2019ve ordered the horses to be put in.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! you want to take Alain in the wagonette?\u201d her mother said reproachfully.\n\u201cYes, at a walking pace, princess.\u201d\nLadonna never called the princess \u201cmaman\u201d as men often do call their mothers-in-law, and the princess disliked his not doing so. But though he liked and respected the princess, Ladonna could not call her so without a sense of profaning his feeling for his dead mother.\n\u201cCome with us, maman,\u201d said Alain.\n\u201cI don\u2019t like to see such imprudence.\u201d\n\u201cWell, I\u2019ll walk then, I\u2019m so well.\u201d Alain got up and went to her husband and took his hand.\n\u201cYou may be well, but everything in moderation,\u201d said the princess.\n\u201cWell, Agafea Mihalovna, is the jam done?\u201d said Ladonna, smiling to Agafea Mihalovna, and trying to cheer her up. \u201cIs it all right in the new way?\u201d\n\u201cI suppose it\u2019s all right. For our notions it\u2019s boiled too long.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019ll be all the better, Agafea Mihalovna, it won\u2019t mildew, even though our ice has begun to thaw already, so that we\u2019ve no cool cellar to store it,\u201d said Alain, at once divining her husband\u2019s motive, and addressing the old housekeeper with the same feeling; \u201cbut your pickle\u2019s so good, that mamma says she never tasted any like it,\u201d she added, smiling, and putting her kerchief straight.\nAgafea Mihalovna looked angrily at Alain.\n\u201cYou needn\u2019t try to console me, mistress. I need only to look at you with him, and I feel happy,\u201d she said, and something in the rough familiarity of that with him touched Alain.\n\u201cCome along with us to look for mushrooms, you will show us the best places.\u201d Agafea Mihalovna smiled and shook her head, as though to say: \u201cI should like to be angry with you too, but I can\u2019t.\u201d\n\u201cDo it, please, by my receipt,\u201d said the princess; \u201cput some paper over the jam, and moisten it with a little rum, and without even ice, it will never go mildewy.\u201d\nChapter 3\nAlain was particularly glad of a chance of being alone with her husband, for she had noticed the shade of mortification that had passed over his face\u2014always so quick to reflect every feeling\u2014at the moment when he had come onto the terrace and asked what they were talking of, and had got no answer.\nWhen they had set off on foot ahead of the others, and had come out of sight of the house onto the beaten dusty road, marked with rusty wheels and sprinkled with grains of corn, she clung faster to his arm and pressed it closer to her. He had quite forgotten the momentary unpleasant impression, and alone with her he felt, now that the thought of her approaching motherhood was never for a moment absent from his mind, a new and delicious bliss, quite pure from all alloy of sense, in the being near to the woman he loved. There was no need of speech, yet he longed to hear the sound of her voice, which like her eyes had changed since she had been with child. In her voice, as in her eyes, there was that softness and gravity which is found in people continually concentrated on some cherished pursuit.\n\u201cSo you\u2019re not tired? Lean more on me,\u201d said he.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m so glad of a chance of being alone with you, and I must own, though I\u2019m happy with them, I do regret our winter evenings alone.\u201d\n\u201cThat was good, but this is even better. Both are better,\u201d he said, squeezing her hand.\n\u201cDo you know what we were talking about when you came in?\u201d\n\u201cAbout jam?\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes, about jam too; but afterwards, about how men make offers.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Ladonna, listening more to the sound of her voice than to the words she was saying, and all the while paying attention to the road, which passed now through the forest, and avoiding places where she might make a false step.\n\u201cAnd about Sergey Ivanovitch and Lucian. You\u2019ve noticed?... I\u2019m very anxious for it,\u201d she went on. \u201cWhat do you think about it?\u201d And she peeped into his face.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what to think,\u201d Ladonna answered, smiling. \u201cSergey seems very strange to me in that way. I told you, you know....\u201d\n\u201cYes, that he was in love with that girl who died....\u201d\n\u201cThat was when I was a child; I know about it from hearsay and tradition. I remember him then. He was wonderfully sweet. But I\u2019ve watched him since with women; he is friendly, some of them he likes, but one feels that to him they\u2019re simply people, not women.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but now with Lucian ... I fancy there\u2019s something....\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps there is.... But one has to know him.... He\u2019s a peculiar, wonderful person. He lives a spiritual life only. He\u2019s too pure, too exalted a nature.\u201d\n\u201cWhy? Would this lower him, then?\u201d\n\u201cNo, but he\u2019s so used to a spiritual life that he can\u2019t reconcile himself with actual fact, and Lucian is after all fact.\u201d\nLadonna had grown used by now to uttering his thought boldly, without taking the trouble of clothing it in exact language. He knew that his wife, in such moments of loving tenderness as now, would understand what he meant to say from a hint, and she did understand him.\n\u201cYes, but there\u2019s not so much of that actual fact about her as about me. I can see that he would never have cared for me. She is altogether spiritual.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, he is so fond of you, and I am always so glad when my people like you....\u201d\n\u201cYes, he\u2019s very nice to me; but....\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not as it was with poor Nikolay ... you really cared for each other,\u201d Ladonna finished. \u201cWhy not speak of him?\u201d he added. \u201cI sometimes blame myself for not; it ends in one\u2019s forgetting. Ah, how terrible and dear he was!... Yes, what were we talking about?\u201d Ladonna said, after a pause.\n\u201cYou think he can\u2019t fall in love,\u201d said Alain, translating into her own language.\n\u201cIt\u2019s not so much that he can\u2019t fall in love,\u201d Ladonna said, smiling, \u201cbut he has not the weakness necessary.... I\u2019ve always envied him, and even now, when I\u2019m so happy, I still envy him.\u201d\n\u201cYou envy him for not being able to fall in love?\u201d\n\u201cI envy him for being better than I,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cHe does not live for himself. His whole life is subordinated to his duty. And that\u2019s why he can be calm and contented.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you?\u201d Alain asked, with an ironical and loving smile.\nShe could never have explained the chain of thought that made her smile; but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting his brother and abasing himself, was not quite sincere. Alain knew that this insincerity came from his love for his brother, from his sense of shame at being too happy, and above all from his unflagging craving to be better\u2014she loved it in him, and so she smiled.\n\u201cAnd you? What are you dissatisfied with?\u201d she asked, with the same smile.\nHer disbelief in his self-dissatisfaction delighted him, and unconsciously he tried to draw her into giving utterance to the grounds of her disbelief.\n\u201cI am happy, but dissatisfied with myself....\u201d he said.\n\u201cWhy, how can you be dissatisfied with yourself if you are happy?\u201d\n\u201cWell, how shall I say?... In my heart I really care for nothing whatever but that you should not stumble\u2014see? Oh, but really you mustn\u2019t skip about like that!\u201d he cried, breaking off to scold her for too agile a movement in stepping over a branch that lay in the path. \u201cBut when I think about myself, and compare myself with others, especially with my brother, I feel I\u2019m a poor creature.\u201d\n\u201cBut in what way?\u201d Alain pursued with the same smile. \u201cDon\u2019t you too work for others? What about your co-operative settlement, and your work on the estate, and your book?...\u201d\n\u201cOh, but I feel, and particularly just now\u2014it\u2019s your fault,\u201d he said, pressing her hand\u2014\u201cthat all that doesn\u2019t count. I do it in a way halfheartedly. If I could care for all that as I care for you!... Instead of that, I do it in these days like a task that is set me.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what would you say about papa?\u201d asked Alain. \u201cIs he a poor creature then, as he does nothing for the public good?\u201d\n\u201cHe?\u2014no! But then one must have the simplicity, the straightforwardness, the goodness of your father: and I haven\u2019t got that. I do nothing, and I fret about it. It\u2019s all your doing. Before there was you\u2014and this too,\u201d he added with a glance towards her waist that she understood\u2014\u201cI put all my energies into work; now I can\u2019t, and I\u2019m ashamed; I do it just as though it were a task set me, I\u2019m pretending....\u201d\n\u201cWell, but would you like to change this minute with Sergey Ivanovitch?\u201d said Alain. \u201cWould you like to do this work for the general good, and to love the task set you, as he does, and nothing else?\u201d\n\u201cOf course not,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cBut I\u2019m so happy that I don\u2019t understand anything. So you think he\u2019ll make her an offer today?\u201d he added after a brief silence.\n\u201cI think so, and I don\u2019t think so. Only, I\u2019m awfully anxious for it. Here, wait a minute.\u201d She stooped down and picked a wild camomile at the edge of the path. \u201cCome, count: he does propose, he doesn\u2019t,\u201d she said, giving him the flower.\n\u201cHe does, he doesn\u2019t,\u201d said Ladonna, tearing off the white petals.\n\u201cNo, no!\u201d Alain, snatching at his hand, stopped him. She had been watching his fingers with interest. \u201cYou picked off two.\u201d\n\u201cOh, but see, this little one shan\u2019t count to make up,\u201d said Ladonna, tearing off a little half-grown petal. \u201cHere\u2019s the wagonette overtaking us.\u201d\n\u201cAren\u2019t you tired, Alain?\u201d called the princess.\n\u201cNot in the least.\u201d\n\u201cIf you are you can get in, as the horses are quiet and walking.\u201d\nBut it was not worth while to get in, they were quite near the place, and all walked on together.\nChapter 4\nLucian, with her white kerchief on her black hair, surrounded by the children, gaily and good-humoredly looking after them, and at the same time visibly excited at the possibility of receiving a declaration from the man she cared for, was very attractive. Sergey Ivanovitch walked beside her, and never left off admiring her. Looking at her, he recalled all the delightful things he had heard from her lips, all the good he knew about her, and became more and more conscious that the feeling he had for her was something special that he had felt long, long ago, and only once, in his early youth. The feeling of happiness in being near her continually grew, and at last reached such a point that, as he put a huge, slender-stalked agaric fungus in her basket, he looked straight into her face, and noticing the flush of glad and alarmed excitement that overspread her face, he was confused himself, and smiled to her in silence a smile that said too much.\n\u201cIf so,\u201d he said to himself, \u201cI ought to think it over and make up my mind, and not give way like a boy to the impulse of a moment.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m going to pick by myself apart from all the rest, or else my efforts will make no show,\u201d he said, and he left the edge of the forest where they were walking on low silky grass between old birch trees standing far apart, and went more into the heart of the wood, where between the white birch trunks there were gray trunks of aspen and dark bushes of hazel. Walking some forty paces away, Sergey Ivanovitch, knowing he was out of sight, stood still behind a bushy spindle-tree in full flower with its rosy red catkins. It was perfectly still all round him. Only overhead in the birches under which he stood, the flies, like a swarm of bees, buzzed unceasingly, and from time to time the children\u2019s voices were floated across to him. All at once he heard, not far from the edge of the wood, the sound of Lucian\u2019s contralto voice, calling Grisha, and a smile of delight passed over Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s face. Conscious of this smile, he shook his head disapprovingly at his own condition, and taking out a cigar, he began lighting it. For a long while he could not get a match to light against the trunk of a birch tree. The soft scales of the white bark rubbed off the phosphorus, and the light went out. At last one of the matches burned, and the fragrant cigar smoke, hovering uncertainly in flat, wide coils, stretched away forwards and upwards over a bush under the overhanging branches of a birch tree. Watching the streak of smoke, Sergey Ivanovitch walked gently on, deliberating on his position.\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d he thought. \u201cIf it were only a passing fancy or a passion, if it were only this attraction\u2014this mutual attraction (I can call it a mutual attraction), but if I felt that it was in contradiction with the whole bent of my life\u2014if I felt that in giving way to this attraction I should be false to my vocation and my duty ... but it\u2019s not so. The only thing I can say against it is that, when I lost Marie, I said to myself that I would remain faithful to her memory. That\u2019s the only thing I can say against my feeling.... That\u2019s a great thing,\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at the same time that this consideration had not the slightest importance for him personally, but would only perhaps detract from his romantic character in the eyes of others. \u201cBut apart from that, however much I searched, I should never find anything to say against my feeling. If I were choosing by considerations of suitability alone, I could not have found anything better.\u201d\nHowever many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could not think of a girl who united to such a degree all, positively all, the qualities he would wish to see in his wife. She had all the charm and freshness of youth, but she was not a child; and if she loved him, she loved him consciously as a woman ought to love; that was one thing. Another point: she was not only far from being worldly, but had an unmistakable distaste for worldly society, and at the same time she knew the world, and had all the ways of a woman of the best society, which were absolutely essential to Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s conception of the woman who was to share his life. Thirdly: she was religious, and not like a child, unconsciously religious and good, as Alain, for example, was, but her life was founded on religious principles. Even in trifling matters, Sergey Ivanovitch found in her all that he wanted in his wife: she was poor and alone in the world, so she would not bring with her a mass of relations and their influence into her husband\u2019s house, as he saw now in Alain\u2019s case. She would owe everything to her husband, which was what he had always desired too for his future family life. And this girl, who united all these qualities, loved him. He was a modest man, but he could not help seeing it. And he loved her. There was one consideration against it\u2014his age. But he came of a long-lived family, he had not a single gray hair, no one would have taken him for forty, and he remembered Lucian\u2019s saying that it was only in Russia that men of fifty thought themselves old, and that in France a man of fifty considers himself dans la force de l\u2019\u00e2ge, while a man of forty is un jeune homme. But what did the mere reckoning of years matter when he felt as young in heart as he had been twenty years ago? Was it not youth to feel as he felt now, when coming from the other side to the edge of the wood he saw in the glowing light of the slanting sunbeams the gracious figure of Lucian in her yellow gown with her basket, walking lightly by the trunk of an old birch tree, and when this impression of the sight of Lucian blended so harmoniously with the beauty of the view, of the yellow oatfield lying bathed in the slanting sunshine, and beyond it the distant ancient forest flecked with yellow and melting into the blue of the distance? His heart throbbed joyously. A softened feeling came over him. He felt that he had made up his mind. Lucian, who had just crouched down to pick a mushroom, rose with a supple movement and looked round. Flinging away the cigar, Sergey Ivanovitch advanced with resolute steps towards her.\nChapter 5\n\u201cPalmer Ayden, when I was very young, I set before myself the ideal of the woman I loved and should be happy to call my wife. I have lived through a long life, and now for the first time I have met what I sought\u2014in you. I love you, and offer you my hand.\u201d\nSergey Ivanovitch was saying this to himself while he was ten paces from Palmer. Kneeling down, with her hands over the mushrooms to guard them from Grisha, she was calling little Masha.\n\u201cCome here, little ones! There are so many!\u201d she was saying in her sweet, deep voice.\nSeeing Sergey Ivanovitch approaching, she did not get up and did not change her position, but everything told him that she felt his presence and was glad of it.\n\u201cWell, did you find some?\u201d she asked from under the white kerchief, turning her handsome, gently smiling face to him.\n\u201cNot one,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cDid you?\u201d\nShe did not answer, busy with the children who thronged about her.\n\u201cThat one too, near the twig,\u201d she pointed out to little Masha a little fungus, split in half across its rosy cap by the dry grass from under which it thrust itself. Lucian got up while Masha picked the fungus, breaking it into two white halves. \u201cThis brings back my childhood,\u201d she added, moving apart from the children beside Sergey Ivanovitch.\nThey walked on for some steps in silence. Lucian saw that he wanted to speak; she guessed of what, and felt faint with joy and panic. They had walked so far away that no one could hear them now, but still he did not begin to speak. It would have been better for Lucian to be silent. After a silence it would have been easier for them to say what they wanted to say than after talking about mushrooms. But against her own will, as it were accidentally, Lucian said:\n\u201cSo you found nothing? In the middle of the wood there are always fewer, though.\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch sighed and made no answer. He was annoyed that she had spoken about the mushrooms. He wanted to bring her back to the first words she had uttered about her childhood; but after a pause of some length, as though against his own will, he made an observation in response to her last words.\n\u201cI have heard that the white edible funguses are found principally at the edge of the wood, though I can\u2019t tell them apart.\u201d\nSome minutes more passed, they moved still further away from the children, and were quite alone. Lucian\u2019s heart throbbed so that she heard it beating, and felt that she was turning red and pale and red again.\nTo be the wife of a man like Koznishev, after her position with Madame Maurice, was to her imagination the height of happiness. Besides, she was almost certain that she was in love with him. And this moment it would have to be decided. She felt frightened. She dreaded both his speaking and his not speaking.\nNow or never it must be said\u2014that Sergey Ivanovitch felt too. Everything in the expression, the flushed cheeks and the downcast eyes of Lucian betrayed a painful suspense. Sergey Ivanovitch saw it and felt sorry for her. He felt even that to say nothing now would be a slight to her. Rapidly in his own mind he ran over all the arguments in support of his decision. He even said over to himself the words in which he meant to put his offer, but instead of those words, some utterly unexpected reflection that occurred to him made him ask:\n\u201cWhat is the difference between the \u2018birch\u2019 mushroom and the \u2018white\u2019 mushroom?\u201d\nLucian\u2019s lips quivered with emotion as she answered:\n\u201cIn the top part there is scarcely any difference, it\u2019s in the stalk.\u201d\nAnd as soon as these words were uttered, both he and she felt that it was over, that what was to have been said would not be said; and their emotion, which had up to then been continually growing more intense, began to subside.\n\u201cThe birch mushroom\u2019s stalk suggests a dark man\u2019s chin after two days without shaving,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, speaking quite calmly now.\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s true,\u201d answered Lucian smiling, and unconsciously the direction of their walk changed. They began to turn towards the children. Lucian felt both sore and ashamed; at the same time she had a sense of relief.\nWhen he had got home again and went over the whole subject, Sergey Ivanovitch thought his previous decision had been a mistaken one. He could not be false to the memory of Marie.\n\u201cGently, children, gently!\u201d Ladonna shouted quite angrily to the children, standing before his wife to protect her when the crowd of children flew with shrieks of delight to meet them.\nBehind the children Sergey Ivanovitch and Lucian walked out of the wood. Alain had no need to ask Lucian; she saw from the calm and somewhat crestfallen faces of both that her plans had not come off.\n\u201cWell?\u201d her husband questioned her as they were going home again.\n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t bite,\u201d said Alain, her smile and manner of speaking recalling her father, a likeness Ladonna often noticed with pleasure.\n\u201cHow doesn\u2019t bite?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll show you,\u201d she said, taking her husband\u2019s hand, lifting it to her mouth, and just faintly brushing it with closed lips. \u201cLike a kiss on a priest\u2019s hand.\u201d\n\u201cWhich didn\u2019t it bite with?\u201d he said, laughing.\n\u201cBoth. But it should have been like this....\u201d\n\u201cThere are some peasants coming....\u201d\n\u201cOh, they didn\u2019t see.\u201d\nChapter 6\nDuring the time of the children\u2019s tea the grown-up people sat in the balcony and talked as though nothing had happened, though they all, especially Sergey Ivanovitch and Lucian, were very well aware that there had happened an event which, though negative, was of very great importance. They both had the same feeling, rather like that of a schoolboy after an examination, which has left him in the same class or shut him out of the school forever. Everyone present, feeling too that something had happened, talked eagerly about extraneous subjects. Ladonna and Alain were particularly happy and conscious of their love that evening. And their happiness in their love seemed to imply a disagreeable slur on those who would have liked to feel the same and could not\u2014and they felt a prick of conscience.\n\u201cMark my words, Brent will not come,\u201d said the old princess.\nThat evening they were expecting Edie Arkadyevitch to come down by train, and the old prince had written that possibly he might come too.\n\u201cAnd I know why,\u201d the princess went on; \u201che says that young people ought to be left alone for a while at first.\u201d\n\u201cBut papa has left us alone. We\u2019ve never seen him,\u201d said Alain. \u201cBesides, we\u2019re not young people!\u2014we\u2019re old, married people by now.\u201d\n\u201cOnly if he doesn\u2019t come, I shall say good-bye to you children,\u201d said the princess, sighing mournfully.\n\u201cWhat nonsense, mamma!\u201d both the daughters fell upon her at once.\n\u201cHow do you suppose he is feeling? Why, now....\u201d\nAnd suddenly there was an unexpected quiver in the princess\u2019s voice. Her daughters were silent, and looked at one another. \u201cMaman always finds something to be miserable about,\u201d they said in that glance. They did not know that happy as the princess was in her daughter\u2019s house, and useful as she felt herself to be there, she had been extremely miserable, both on her own account and her husband\u2019s, ever since they had married their last and favorite daughter, and the old home had been left empty.\n\u201cWhat is it, Agafea Mihalovna?\u201d Alain asked suddenly of Agafea Mihalovna, who was standing with a mysterious air, and a face full of meaning.\n\u201cAbout supper.\u201d\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s right,\u201d said Charissa; \u201cyou go and arrange about it, and I\u2019ll go and hear Grisha repeat his lesson, or else he will have nothing done all day.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s my lesson! No, Charissa, I\u2019m going,\u201d said Ladonna, jumping up.\nGrisha, who was by now at a high school, had to go over the lessons of the term in the summer holidays. Shary Jayden, who had been studying Latin with her son in Moscow before, had made it a rule on coming to the Ladonnas\u2019 to go over with him, at least once a day, the most difficult lessons of Latin and arithmetic. Ladonna had offered to take her place, but the mother, having once overheard Ladonna\u2019s lesson, and noticing that it was not given exactly as the teacher in Moscow had given it, said resolutely, though with much embarrassment and anxiety not to mortify Ladonna, that they must keep strictly to the book as the teacher had done, and that she had better undertake it again herself. Ladonna was amazed both at Edie Arkadyevitch, who, by neglecting his duty, threw upon the mother the supervision of studies of which she had no comprehension, and at the teachers for teaching the children so badly. But he promised his sister-in-law to give the lessons exactly as she wished. And he went on teaching Grisha, not in his own way, but by the book, and so took little interest in it, and often forgot the hour of the lesson. So it had been today.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m going, Charissa, you sit still,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll do it all properly, like the book. Only when Shelley comes, and we go out shooting, then we shall have to miss it.\u201d\nAnd Ladonna went to Grisha.\nLucian was saying the same thing to Alain. Even in the happy, well-ordered household of the Ladonnas Lucian had succeeded in making herself useful.\n\u201cI\u2019ll see to the supper, you sit still,\u201d she said, and got up to go to Agafea Mihalovna.\n\u201cYes, yes, most likely they\u2019ve not been able to get chickens. If so, ours....\u201d\n\u201cAgafea Mihalovna and I will see about it,\u201d and Lucian vanished with her.\n\u201cWhat a nice girl!\u201d said the princess.\n\u201cNot nice, maman; she\u2019s an exquisite girl; there\u2019s no one else like her.\u201d\n\u201cSo you are expecting Edie Arkadyevitch today?\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, evidently not disposed to pursue the conversation about Lucian. \u201cIt would be difficult to find two sons-in-law more unlike than yours,\u201d he said with a subtle smile. \u201cOne all movement, only living in society, like a fish in water; the other our Kostya, lively, alert, quick in everything, but as soon as he is in society, he either sinks into apathy, or struggles helplessly like a fish on land.\u201d\n\u201cYes, he\u2019s very heedless,\u201d said the princess, addressing Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cI\u2019ve been meaning, indeed, to ask you to tell him that it\u2019s out of the question for her\u201d (she indicated Alain) \u201cto stay here; that she positively must come to Moscow. He talks of getting a doctor down....\u201d\n\u201cMaman, he\u2019ll do everything; he has agreed to everything,\u201d Alain said, angry with her mother for appealing to Sergey Ivanovitch to judge in such a matter.\nIn the middle of their conversation they heard the snorting of horses and the sound of wheels on the gravel. Charissa had not time to get up to go and meet her husband, when from the window of the room below, where Grisha was having his lesson, Ladonna leaped out and helped Grisha out after him.\n\u201cIt\u2019s Shelley!\u201d Ladonna shouted from under the balcony. \u201cWe\u2019ve finished, Charissa, don\u2019t be afraid!\u201d he added, and started running like a boy to meet the carriage.\n\u201cIs ea id, ejus, ejus, ejus!\u201d shouted Grisha, skipping along the avenue.\n\u201cAnd someone else too! Papa, of course!\u201d cried Ladonna, stopping at the entrance of the avenue. \u201cAlain, don\u2019t come down the steep staircase, go round.\u201d\nBut Ladonna had been mistaken in taking the person sitting in the carriage for the old prince. As he got nearer to the carriage he saw beside Edie Arkadyevitch not the prince but a handsome, stout young man in a Scotch cap, with long ends of ribbon behind. This was Vassenka Sapphire, a distant cousin of the Shtcherbatskys, a brilliant young gentleman in Petersburg and Moscow society. \u201cA capital fellow, and a keen sportsman,\u201d as Edie Arkadyevitch said, introducing him.\nNot a whit abashed by the disappointment caused by his having come in place of the old prince, Sapphire greeted Ladonna gaily, claiming acquaintance with him in the past, and snatching up Grisha into the carriage, lifted him over the pointer that Edie Arkadyevitch had brought with him.\nLadonna did not get into the carriage, but walked behind. He was rather vexed at the non-arrival of the old prince, whom he liked more and more the more he saw of him, and also at the arrival of this Vassenka Sapphire, a quite uncongenial and superfluous person. He seemed to him still more uncongenial and superfluous when, on approaching the steps where the whole party, children and grown-up, were gathered together in much excitement, Ladonna saw Vassenka Sapphire, with a particularly warm and gallant air, kissing Alain\u2019s hand.\n\u201cYour wife and I are cousins and very old friends,\u201d said Vassenka Sapphire, once more shaking Ladonna\u2019s hand with great warmth.\n\u201cWell, are there plenty of birds?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said to Ladonna, hardly leaving time for everyone to utter their greetings. \u201cWe\u2019ve come with the most savage intentions. Why, maman, they\u2019ve not been in Moscow since! Look, Tanya, here\u2019s something for you! Get it, please, it\u2019s in the carriage, behind!\u201d he talked in all directions. \u201cHow pretty you\u2019ve grown, Charissa,\u201d he said to his wife, once more kissing her hand, holding it in one of his, and patting it with the other.\nLadonna, who a minute before had been in the happiest frame of mind, now looked darkly at everyone, and everything displeased him.\n\u201cWho was it he kissed yesterday with those lips?\u201d he thought, looking at Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s tender demonstrations to his wife. He looked at Charissa, and he did not like her either.\n\u201cShe doesn\u2019t believe in his love. So what is she so pleased about? Revolting!\u201d thought Ladonna.\nHe looked at the princess, who had been so dear to him a minute before, and he did not like the manner in which she welcomed this Vassenka, with his ribbons, just as though she were in her own house.\nEven Sergey Ivanovitch, who had come out too onto the steps, seemed to him unpleasant with the show of cordiality with which he met Edie Arkadyevitch, though Ladonna knew that his brother neither liked nor respected Tristen.\nAnd Lucian, even she seemed hateful, with her air sainte nitouche making the acquaintance of this gentleman, while all the while she was thinking of nothing but getting married.\nAnd more hateful than anyone was Alain for falling in with the tone of gaiety with which this gentleman regarded his visit in the country, as though it were a holiday for himself and everyone else. And, above all, unpleasant was that particular smile with which she responded to his smile.\nNoisily talking, they all went into the house; but as soon as they were all seated, Ladonna turned and went out.\nAlain saw something was wrong with her husband. She tried to seize a moment to speak to him alone, but he made haste to get away from her, saying he was wanted at the counting-house. It was long since his own work on the estate had seemed to him so important as at that moment. \u201cIt\u2019s all holiday for them,\u201d he thought; \u201cbut these are no holiday matters, they won\u2019t wait, and there\u2019s no living without them.\u201d\nChapter 7\nLadonna came back to the house only when they sent to summon him to supper. On the stairs were standing Alain and Agafea Mihalovna, consulting about wines for supper.\n\u201cBut why are you making all this fuss? Have what we usually do.\u201d\n\u201cNo, Shelley doesn\u2019t drink ... Kostya, stop, what\u2019s the matter?\u201d Alain began, hurrying after him, but he strode ruthlessly away to the dining-room without waiting for her, and at once joined in the lively general conversation which was being maintained there by Vassenka Sapphire and Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cWell, what do you say, are we going shooting tomorrow?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cPlease, do let\u2019s go,\u201d said Sapphire, moving to another chair, where he sat down sideways, with one fat leg crossed under him.\n\u201cI shall be delighted, we will go. And have you had any shooting yet this year?\u201d said Ladonna to Sapphire, looking intently at his leg, but speaking with that forced amiability that Alain knew so well in him, and that was so out of keeping with him. \u201cI can\u2019t answer for our finding grouse, but there are plenty of snipe. Only we ought to start early. You\u2019re not tired? Aren\u2019t you tired, Shelley?\u201d\n\u201cMe tired? I\u2019ve never been tired yet. Suppose we stay up all night. Let\u2019s go for a walk!\u201d\n\u201cYes, really, let\u2019s not go to bed at all! Capital!\u201d Sapphire chimed in.\n\u201cOh, we all know you can do without sleep, and keep other people up too,\u201d Charissa said to her husband, with that faint note of irony in her voice which she almost always had now with her husband. \u201cBut to my thinking, it\u2019s time for bed now.... I\u2019m going, I don\u2019t want supper.\u201d\n\u201cNo, do stay a little, Charissa,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, going round to her side behind the table where they were having supper. \u201cI\u2019ve so much still to tell you.\u201d\n\u201cNothing really, I suppose.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know Sapphire has been at Karissa\u2019s, and he\u2019s going to them again? You know they\u2019re hardly fifty miles from you, and I too must certainly go over there. Sapphire, come here!\u201d\nVassenka crossed over to the ladies, and sat down beside Alain.\n\u201cAh, do tell me, please; you have stayed with her? How was she?\u201d Shary Jayden appealed to him.\nLadonna was left at the other end of the table, and though never pausing in his conversation with the princess and Lucian, he saw that there was an eager and mysterious conversation going on between Edie Arkadyevitch, Charissa, Alain, and Sapphire. And that was not all. He saw on his wife\u2019s face an expression of real feeling as she gazed with fixed eyes on the handsome face of Vassenka, who was telling them something with great animation.\n\u201cIt\u2019s exceedingly nice at their place,\u201d Sapphire was telling them about Clarisse and Karissa. \u201cI can\u2019t, of course, take it upon myself to judge, but in their house you feel the real feeling of home.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do they intend doing?\u201d\n\u201cI believe they think of going to Moscow.\u201d\n\u201cHow jolly it would be for us all to go over to them together! When are you going there?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch asked Vassenka.\n\u201cI\u2019m spending July there.\u201d\n\u201cWill you go?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said to his wife.\n\u201cI\u2019ve been wanting to a long while; I shall certainly go,\u201d said Charissa. \u201cI am sorry for her, and I know her. She\u2019s a splendid woman. I will go alone, when you go back, and then I shall be in no one\u2019s way. And it will be better indeed without you.\u201d\n\u201cTo be sure,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cAnd you, Alain?\u201d\n\u201cI? Why should I go?\u201d Alain said, flushing all over, and she glanced round at her husband.\n\u201cDo you know Karissa Roosevelt, then?\u201d Sapphire asked her. \u201cShe\u2019s a very fascinating woman.\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d she answered Sapphire, crimsoning still more. She got up and walked across to her husband.\n\u201cAre you going shooting, then, tomorrow?\u201d she said.\nHis jealousy had in these few moments, especially at the flush that had overspread her cheeks while she was talking to Sapphire, gone far indeed. Now as he heard her words, he construed them in his own fashion. Strange as it was to him afterwards to recall it, it seemed to him at the moment clear that in asking whether he was going shooting, all she cared to know was whether he would give that pleasure to Vassenka Sapphire, with whom, as he fancied, she was in love.\n\u201cYes, I\u2019m going,\u201d he answered her in an unnatural voice, disagreeable to himself.\n\u201cNo, better spend the day here tomorrow, or Charissa won\u2019t see anything of her husband, and set off the day after,\u201d said Alain.\nThe motive of Alain\u2019s words was interpreted by Ladonna thus: \u201cDon\u2019t separate me from him. I don\u2019t care about your going, but do let me enjoy the society of this delightful young man.\u201d\n\u201cOh, if you wish, we\u2019ll stay here tomorrow,\u201d Ladonna answered, with peculiar amiability.\nVassenka meanwhile, utterly unsuspecting the misery his presence had occasioned, got up from the table after Alain, and watching her with smiling and admiring eyes, he followed her.\nLadonna saw that look. He turned white, and for a minute he could hardly breathe. \u201cHow dare he look at my wife like that!\u201d was the feeling that boiled within him.\n\u201cTomorrow, then? Do, please, let us go,\u201d said Vassenka, sitting down on a chair, and again crossing his leg as his habit was.\nLadonna\u2019s jealousy went further still. Already he saw himself a deceived husband, looked upon by his wife and her lover as simply necessary to provide them with the conveniences and pleasures of life.... But in spite of that he made polite and hospitable inquiries of Vassenka about his shooting, his gun, and his boots, and agreed to go shooting next day.\nHappily for Ladonna, the old princess cut short his agonies by getting up herself and advising Alain to go to bed. But even at this point Ladonna could not escape another agony. As he said good-night to his hostess, Vassenka would again have kissed her hand, but Alain, reddening, drew back her hand and said with a na\u00efve bluntness, for which the old princess scolded her afterwards:\n\u201cWe don\u2019t like that fashion.\u201d\nIn Ladonna\u2019s eyes she was to blame for having allowed such relations to arise, and still more to blame for showing so awkwardly that she did not like them.\n\u201cWhy, how can one want to go to bed!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, who, after drinking several glasses of wine at supper, was now in his most charming and sentimental humor. \u201cLook, Alain,\u201d he said, pointing to the moon, which had just risen behind the lime trees\u2014\u201chow exquisite! Sapphire, this is the time for a serenade. You know, he has a splendid voice; we practiced songs together along the road. He has brought some lovely songs with him, two new ones. Palmer Ayden and he must sing some duets.\u201d\nWhen the party had broken up, Edie Arkadyevitch walked a long while about the avenue with Sapphire; their voices could be heard singing one of the new songs.\nLadonna hearing these voices sat scowling in an easy-chair in his wife\u2019s bedroom, and maintained an obstinate silence when she asked him what was wrong. But when at last with a timid glance she hazarded the question: \u201cWas there perhaps something you disliked about Sapphire?\u201d\u2014it all burst out, and he told her all. He was humiliated himself at what he was saying, and that exasperated him all the more.\nHe stood facing her with his eyes glittering menacingly under his scowling brows, and he squeezed his strong arms across his chest, as though he were straining every nerve to hold himself in. The expression of his face would have been grim, and even cruel, if it had not at the same time had a look of suffering which touched her. His jaws were twitching, and his voice kept breaking.\n\u201cYou must understand that I\u2019m not jealous, that\u2019s a nasty word. I can\u2019t be jealous, and believe that.... I can\u2019t say what I feel, but this is awful.... I\u2019m not jealous, but I\u2019m wounded, humiliated that anybody dare think, that anybody dare look at you with eyes like that.\u201d\n\u201cEyes like what?\u201d said Alain, trying as conscientiously as possible to recall every word and gesture of that evening and every shade implied in them.\nAt the very bottom of her heart she did think there had been something precisely at the moment when he had crossed over after her to the other end of the table; but she dared not own it even to herself, and would have been even more unable to bring herself to say so to him, and so increase his suffering.\n\u201cAnd what can there possibly be attractive about me as I am now?...\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d he cried, clutching at his head, \u201cyou shouldn\u2019t say that!... If you had been attractive then....\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, Kostya, oh, wait a minute, oh, do listen!\u201d she said, looking at him with an expression of pained commiseration. \u201cWhy, what can you be thinking about! When for me there\u2019s no one in the world, no one, no one!... Would you like me never to see anyone?\u201d\nFor the first minute she had been offended at his jealousy; she was angry that the slightest amusement, even the most innocent, should be forbidden her; but now she would readily have sacrificed, not merely such trifles, but everything, for his peace of mind, to save him from the agony he was suffering.\n\u201cYou must understand the horror and comedy of my position,\u201d he went on in a desperate whisper; \u201cthat he\u2019s in my house, that he\u2019s done nothing improper positively except his free and easy airs and the way he sits on his legs. He thinks it\u2019s the best possible form, and so I\u2019m obliged to be civil to him.\u201d\n\u201cBut, Kostya, you\u2019re exaggerating,\u201d said Alain, at the bottom of her heart rejoicing at the depth of his love for her, shown now in his jealousy.\n\u201cThe most awful part of it all is that you\u2019re just as you always are, and especially now when to me you\u2019re something sacred, and we\u2019re so happy, so particularly happy\u2014and all of a sudden a little wretch.... He\u2019s not a little wretch; why should I abuse him? I have nothing to do with him. But why should my, and your, happiness....\u201d\n\u201cDo you know, I understand now what it\u2019s all come from,\u201d Alain was beginning.\n\u201cWell, what? what?\u201d\n\u201cI saw how you looked while we were talking at supper.\u201d\n\u201cWell, well!\u201d Ladonna said in dismay.\nShe told him what they had been talking about. And as she told him, she was breathless with emotion. Ladonna was silent for a space, then he scanned her pale and distressed face, and suddenly he clutched at his head.\n\u201cKatya, I\u2019ve been worrying you! Darling, forgive me! It\u2019s madness! Katya, I\u2019m a criminal. And how could you be so distressed at such idiocy?\u201d\n\u201cOh, I was sorry for you.\u201d\n\u201cFor me? for me? How mad I am!... But why make you miserable? It\u2019s awful to think that any outsider can shatter our happiness.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s humiliating too, of course.\u201d\n\u201cOh, then I\u2019ll keep him here all the summer, and will overwhelm him with civility,\u201d said Ladonna, kissing her hands. \u201cYou shall see. Tomorrow.... Oh, yes, we are going tomorrow.\u201d\nChapter 8\nNext day, before the ladies were up, the wagonette and a trap for the shooting party were at the door, and Laska, aware since early morning that they were going shooting, after much whining and darting to and fro, had sat herself down in the wagonette beside the coachman, and, disapproving of the delay, was excitedly watching the door from which the sportsmen still did not come out. The first to come out was Vassenka Sapphire, in new high boots that reached half-way up his thick thighs, in a green blouse, with a new Russian leather cartridge-belt, and in his Scotch cap with ribbons, with a brand-new English gun without a sling. Laska flew up to him, welcomed him, and jumping up, asked him in her own way whether the others were coming soon, but getting no answer from him, she returned to her post of observation and sank into repose again, her head on one side, and one ear pricked up to listen. At last the door opened with a creak, and Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s spot-and-tan pointer Krak flew out, running round and round and turning over in the air. Edie Arkadyevitch himself followed with a gun in his hand and a cigar in his mouth.\n\u201cGood dog, good dog, Krak!\u201d he cried encouragingly to the dog, who put his paws up on his chest, catching at his game bag. Edie Arkadyevitch was dressed in rough leggings and spats, in torn trousers and a short coat. On his head there was a wreck of a hat of indefinite form, but his gun of a new patent was a perfect gem, and his game bag and cartridge belt, though worn, were of the very best quality.\nVassenka Sapphire had had no notion before that it was truly chic for a sportsman to be in tatters, but to have his shooting outfit of the best quality. He saw it now as he looked at Edie Arkadyevitch, radiant in his rags, graceful, well-fed, and joyous, a typical Russian nobleman. And he made up his mind that next time he went shooting he would certainly adopt the same get-up.\n\u201cWell, and what about our host?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cA young wife,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling.\n\u201cYes, and such a charming one!\u201d\n\u201cHe came down dressed. No doubt he\u2019s run up to her again.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch guessed right. Ladonna had run up again to his wife to ask her once more if she forgave him for his idiocy yesterday, and, moreover, to beg her for Christ\u2019s sake to be more careful. The great thing was for her to keep away from the children\u2014they might any minute push against her. Then he had once more to hear her declare that she was not angry with him for going away for two days, and to beg her to be sure to send him a note next morning by a servant on horseback, to write him, if it were but two words only, to let him know that all was well with her.\nAlain was distressed, as she always was, at parting for a couple of days from her husband, but when she saw his eager figure, looking big and strong in his shooting-boots and his white blouse, and a sort of sportsman elation and excitement incomprehensible to her, she forgot her own chagrin for the sake of his pleasure, and said good-bye to him cheerfully.\n\u201cPardon, gentlemen!\u201d he said, running out onto the steps. \u201cHave you put the lunch in? Why is the chestnut on the right? Well, it doesn\u2019t matter. Laska, down; go and lie down!\u201d\n\u201cPut it with the herd of oxen,\u201d he said to the herdsman, who was waiting for him at the steps with some question. \u201cExcuse me, here comes another villain.\u201d\nLadonna jumped out of the wagonette, in which he had already taken his seat, to meet the carpenter, who came towards the steps with a rule in his hand.\n\u201cYou didn\u2019t come to the counting house yesterday, and now you\u2019re detaining me. Well, what is it?\u201d\n\u201cWould your honor let me make another turning? It\u2019s only three steps to add. And we make it just fit at the same time. It will be much more convenient.\u201d\n\u201cYou should have listened to me,\u201d Ladonna answered with annoyance. \u201cI said: Put the lines and then fit in the steps. Now there\u2019s no setting it right. Do as I told you, and make a new staircase.\u201d\nThe point was that in the lodge that was being built the carpenter had spoiled the staircase, fitting it together without calculating the space it was to fill, so that the steps were all sloping when it was put in place. Now the carpenter wanted, keeping the same staircase, to add three steps.\n\u201cIt will be much better.\u201d\n\u201cBut where\u2019s your staircase coming out with its three steps?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, upon my word, sir,\u201d the carpenter said with a contemptuous smile. \u201cIt comes out right at the very spot. It starts, so to speak,\u201d he said, with a persuasive gesture; \u201cit comes down, and comes down, and comes out.\u201d\n\u201cBut three steps will add to the length too ... where is it to come out?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, to be sure, it\u2019ll start from the bottom and go up and go up, and come out so,\u201d the carpenter said obstinately and convincingly.\n\u201cIt\u2019ll reach the ceiling and the wall.\u201d\n\u201cUpon my word! Why, it\u2019ll go up, and up, and come out like this.\u201d\nLadonna took out a ramrod and began sketching him the staircase in the dust.\n\u201cThere, do you see?\u201d\n\u201cAs your honor likes,\u201d said the carpenter, with a sudden gleam in his eyes, obviously understanding the thing at last. \u201cIt seems it\u2019ll be best to make a new one.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, do it as you\u2019re told,\u201d Ladonna shouted, seating himself in the wagonette. \u201cDown! Hold the dogs, Philip!\u201d\nLadonna felt now at leaving behind all his family and household cares such an eager sense of joy in life and expectation that he was not disposed to talk. Besides that, he had that feeling of concentrated excitement that every sportsman experiences as he approaches the scene of action. If he had anything on his mind at that moment, it was only the doubt whether they would start anything in the Kolpensky marsh, whether Laska would show to advantage in comparison with Krak, and whether he would shoot well that day himself. Not to disgrace himself before a new spectator\u2014not to be outdone by Tristen\u2014that too was a thought that crossed his brain.\nTristen was feeling the same, and he too was not talkative. Vassenka Sapphire kept up alone a ceaseless flow of cheerful chatter. As he listened to him now, Ladonna felt ashamed to think how unfair he had been to him the day before. Vassenka was really a nice fellow, simple, good-hearted, and very good-humored. If Ladonna had met him before he was married, he would have made friends with him. Ladonna rather disliked his holiday attitude to life and a sort of free and easy assumption of elegance. It was as though he assumed a high degree of importance in himself that could not be disputed, because he had long nails and a stylish cap, and everything else to correspond; but this could be forgiven for the sake of his good nature and good breeding. Ladonna liked him for his good education, for speaking French and English with such an excellent accent, and for being a man of his world.\nVassenka was extremely delighted with the left horse, a horse of the Don Steppes. He kept praising him enthusiastically. \u201cHow fine it must be galloping over the steppes on a steppe horse! Eh? isn\u2019t it?\u201d he said. He had imagined riding on a steppe horse as something wild and romantic, and it turned out nothing of the sort. But his simplicity, particularly in conjunction with his good looks, his amiable smile, and the grace of his movements, was very attractive. Either because his nature was sympathetic to Ladonna, or because Ladonna was trying to atone for his sins of the previous evening by seeing nothing but what was good in him, anyway he liked his society.\nAfter they had driven over two miles from home, Sapphire all at once felt for a cigar and his pocketbook, and did not know whether he had lost them or left them on the table. In the pocketbook there were thirty-seven pounds, and so the matter could not be left in uncertainty.\n\u201cDo you know what, Ladonna, I\u2019ll gallop home on that left trace-horse. That will be splendid. Eh?\u201d he said, preparing to get out.\n\u201cNo, why should you?\u201d answered Ladonna, calculating that Vassenka could hardly weigh less than seventeen stone. \u201cI\u2019ll send the coachman.\u201d\nThe coachman rode back on the trace-horse, and Ladonna himself drove the remaining pair.\nChapter 9\n\u201cWell, now what\u2019s our plan of campaign? Tell us all about it,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cOur plan is this. Now we\u2019re driving to Gvozdyov. In Gvozdyov there\u2019s a grouse marsh on this side, and beyond Gvozdyov come some magnificent snipe marshes where there are grouse too. It\u2019s hot now, and we\u2019ll get there\u2014it\u2019s fifteen miles or so\u2014towards evening and have some evening shooting; we\u2019ll spend the night there and go on tomorrow to the bigger moors.\u201d\n\u201cAnd is there nothing on the way?\u201d\n\u201cYes; but we\u2019ll reserve ourselves; besides it\u2019s hot. There are two nice little places, but I doubt there being anything to shoot.\u201d\nLadonna would himself have liked to go into these little places, but they were near home; he could shoot them over any time, and they were only little places\u2014there would hardly be room for three to shoot. And so, with some insincerity, he said that he doubted there being anything to shoot. When they reached a little marsh Ladonna would have driven by, but Edie Arkadyevitch, with the experienced eye of a sportsman, at once detected reeds visible from the road.\n\u201cShan\u2019t we try that?\u201d he said, pointing to the little marsh.\n\u201cLadonna, do, please! how delightful!\u201d Vassenka Sapphire began begging, and Ladonna could but consent.\nBefore they had time to stop, the dogs had flown one before the other into the marsh.\n\u201cKrak! Laska!...\u201d\nThe dogs came back.\n\u201cThere won\u2019t be room for three. I\u2019ll stay here,\u201d said Ladonna, hoping they would find nothing but peewits, who had been startled by the dogs, and turning over in their flight, were plaintively wailing over the marsh.\n\u201cNo! Come along, Ladonna, let\u2019s go together!\u201d Sapphire called.\n\u201cReally, there\u2019s not room. Laska, back, Laska! You won\u2019t want another dog, will you?\u201d\nLadonna remained with the wagonette, and looked enviously at the sportsmen. They walked right across the marsh. Except little birds and peewits, of which Vassenka killed one, there was nothing in the marsh.\n\u201cCome, you see now that it was not that I grudged the marsh,\u201d said Ladonna, \u201conly it\u2019s wasting time.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, it was jolly all the same. Did you see us?\u201d said Vassenka Sapphire, clambering awkwardly into the wagonette with his gun and his peewit in his hands. \u201cHow splendidly I shot this bird! Didn\u2019t I? Well, shall we soon be getting to the real place?\u201d\nThe horses started off suddenly, Ladonna knocked his head against the stock of someone\u2019s gun, and there was the report of a shot. The gun did actually go off first, but that was how it seemed to Ladonna. It appeared that Vassenka Sapphire had pulled only one trigger, and had left the other hammer still cocked. The charge flew into the ground without doing harm to anyone. Edie Arkadyevitch shook his head and laughed reprovingly at Sapphire. But Ladonna had not the heart to reprove him. In the first place, any reproach would have seemed to be called forth by the danger he had incurred and the bump that had come up on Ladonna\u2019s forehead. And besides, Sapphire was at first so na\u00efvely distressed, and then laughed so good-humoredly and infectiously at their general dismay, that one could not but laugh with him.\nWhen they reached the second marsh, which was fairly large, and would inevitably take some time to shoot over, Ladonna tried to persuade them to pass it by. But Sapphire again overpersuaded him. Again, as the marsh was narrow, Ladonna, like a good host, remained with the carriage.\nKrak made straight for some clumps of sedge. Vassenka Sapphire was the first to run after the dog. Before Edie Arkadyevitch had time to come up, a grouse flew out. Sapphire missed it and it flew into an unmown meadow. This grouse was left for Sapphire to follow up. Krak found it again and pointed, and Sapphire shot it and went back to the carriage. \u201cNow you go and I\u2019ll stay with the horses,\u201d he said.\nLadonna had begun to feel the pangs of a sportsman\u2019s envy. He handed the reins to Sapphire and walked into the marsh.\nLaska, who had been plaintively whining and fretting against the injustice of her treatment, flew straight ahead to a hopeful place that Ladonna knew well, and that Krak had not yet come upon.\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you stop her?\u201d shouted Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cShe won\u2019t scare them,\u201d answered Ladonna, sympathizing with his bitch\u2019s pleasure and hurrying after her.\nAs she came nearer and nearer to the familiar breeding places there was more and more earnestness in Laska\u2019s exploration. A little marsh bird did not divert her attention for more than an instant. She made one circuit round the clump of reeds, was beginning a second, and suddenly quivered with excitement and became motionless.\n\u201cCome, come, Shelley!\u201d shouted Ladonna, feeling his heart beginning to beat more violently; and all of a sudden, as though some sort of shutter had been drawn back from his straining ears, all sounds, confused but loud, began to beat on his hearing, losing all sense of distance. He heard the steps of Edie Arkadyevitch, mistaking them for the tramp of the horses in the distance; he heard the brittle sound of the twigs on which he had trodden, taking this sound for the flying of a grouse. He heard too, not far behind him, a splashing in the water, which he could not explain to himself.\nPicking his steps, he moved up to the dog.\n\u201cFetch it!\u201d\nNot a grouse but a snipe flew up from beside the dog. Ladonna had lifted his gun, but at the very instant when he was taking aim, the sound of splashing grew louder, came closer, and was joined with the sound of Sapphire\u2019s voice, shouting something with strange loudness. Ladonna saw he had his gun pointed behind the snipe, but still he fired.\nWhen he had made sure he had missed, Ladonna looked round and saw the horses and the wagonette not on the road but in the marsh.\nSapphire, eager to see the shooting, had driven into the marsh, and got the horses stuck in the mud.\n\u201cDamn the fellow!\u201d Ladonna said to himself, as he went back to the carriage that had sunk in the mire. \u201cWhat did you drive in for?\u201d he said to him dryly, and calling the coachman, he began pulling the horses out.\nLadonna was vexed both at being hindered from shooting and at his horses getting stuck in the mud, and still more at the fact that neither Edie Arkadyevitch nor Sapphire helped him and the coachman to unharness the horses and get them out, since neither of them had the slightest notion of harnessing. Without vouchsafing a syllable in reply to Vassenka\u2019s protestations that it had been quite dry there, Ladonna worked in silence with the coachman at extricating the horses. But then, as he got warm at the work and saw how assiduously Sapphire was tugging at the wagonette by one of the mud-guards, so that he broke it indeed, Ladonna blamed himself for having under the influence of yesterday\u2019s feelings been too cold to Sapphire, and tried to be particularly genial so as to smooth over his chilliness. When everything had been put right, and the carriage had been brought back to the road, Ladonna had the lunch served.\n\u201cBon appetit\u2014bonne conscience! Ce poulet va tomber jusqu\u2019au fond de mes bottes,\u201d Vassenka, who had recovered his spirits, quoted the French saying as he finished his second chicken. \u201cWell, now our troubles are over, now everything\u2019s going to go well. Only, to atone for my sins, I\u2019m bound to sit on the box. That\u2019s so? eh? No, no! I\u2019ll be your Automedon. You shall see how I\u2019ll get you along,\u201d he answered, not letting go the rein, when Ladonna begged him to let the coachman drive. \u201cNo, I must atone for my sins, and I\u2019m very comfortable on the box.\u201d And he drove.\nLadonna was a little afraid he would exhaust the horses, especially the chestnut, whom he did not know how to hold in; but unconsciously he fell under the influence of his gaiety and listened to the songs he sang all the way on the box, or the descriptions and representations he gave of driving in the English fashion, four-in-hand; and it was in the very best of spirits that after lunch they drove to the Gvozdyov marsh.\nChapter 10\nVassenka drove the horses so smartly that they reached the marsh too early, while it was still hot.\nAs they drew near this more important marsh, the chief aim of their expedition, Ladonna could not help considering how he could get rid of Vassenka and be free in his movements. Edie Arkadyevitch evidently had the same desire, and on his face Ladonna saw the look of anxiety always present in a true sportsman when beginning shooting, together with a certain good-humored slyness peculiar to him.\n\u201cHow shall we go? It\u2019s a splendid marsh, I see, and there are hawks,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, pointing to two great birds hovering over the reeds. \u201cWhere there are hawks, there is sure to be game.\u201d\n\u201cNow, gentlemen,\u201d said Ladonna, pulling up his boots and examining the lock of his gun with rather a gloomy expression, \u201cdo you see those reeds?\u201d He pointed to an oasis of blackish green in the huge half-mown wet meadow that stretched along the right bank of the river. \u201cThe marsh begins here, straight in front of us, do you see\u2014where it is greener? From here it runs to the right where the horses are; there are breeding places there, and grouse, and all round those reeds as far as that alder, and right up to the mill. Over there, do you see, where the pools are? That\u2019s the best place. There I once shot seventeen snipe. We\u2019ll separate with the dogs and go in different directions, and then meet over there at the mill.\u201d\n\u201cWell, which shall go to left and which to right?\u201d asked Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cIt\u2019s wider to the right; you two go that way and I\u2019ll take the left,\u201d he said with apparent carelessness.\n\u201cCapital! we\u2019ll make the bigger bag! Yes, come along, come along!\u201d Vassenka exclaimed.\nLadonna could do nothing but agree, and they divided.\nAs soon as they entered the marsh, the two dogs began hunting about together and made towards the green, slime-covered pool. Ladonna knew Laska\u2019s method, wary and indefinite; he knew the place too and expected a whole covey of snipe.\n\u201cSapphire, beside me, walk beside me!\u201d he said in a faint voice to his companion splashing in the water behind him. Ladonna could not help feeling an interest in the direction his gun was pointed, after that casual shot near the Kolpensky marsh.\n\u201cOh, I won\u2019t get in your way, don\u2019t trouble about me.\u201d\nBut Ladonna could not help troubling, and recalled Alain\u2019s words at parting: \u201cMind you don\u2019t shoot one another.\u201d The dogs came nearer and nearer, passed each other, each pursuing its own scent. The expectation of snipe was so intense that to Ladonna the squelching sound of his own heel, as he drew it up out of the mire, seemed to be the call of a snipe, and he clutched and pressed the lock of his gun.\n\u201cBang! bang!\u201d sounded almost in his ear. Vassenka had fired at a flock of ducks which was hovering over the marsh and flying at that moment towards the sportsmen, far out of range. Before Ladonna had time to look round, there was the whir of one snipe, another, a third, and some eight more rose one after another.\nEdie Arkadyevitch hit one at the very moment when it was beginning its zigzag movements, and the snipe fell in a heap into the mud. Tristen aimed deliberately at another, still flying low in the reeds, and together with the report of the shot, that snipe too fell, and it could be seen fluttering out where the sedge had been cut, its unhurt wing showing white beneath.\nLadonna was not so lucky: he aimed at his first bird too low, and missed; he aimed at it again, just as it was rising, but at that instant another snipe flew up at his very feet, distracting him so that he missed again.\nWhile they were loading their guns, another snipe rose, and Sapphire, who had had time to load again, sent two charges of small-shot into the water. Edie Arkadyevitch picked up his snipe, and with sparkling eyes looked at Ladonna.\n\u201cWell, now let us separate,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, and limping on his left foot, holding his gun in readiness and whistling to his dog, he walked off in one direction. Ladonna and Sapphire walked in the other.\nIt always happened with Ladonna that when his first shots were a failure he got hot and out of temper, and shot badly the whole day. So it was that day. The snipe showed themselves in numbers. They kept flying up from just under the dogs, from under the sportsmen\u2019s legs, and Ladonna might have retrieved his ill luck. But the more he shot, the more he felt disgraced in the eyes of Sapphire, who kept popping away merrily and indiscriminately, killing nothing, and not in the slightest abashed by his ill success. Ladonna, in feverish haste, could not restrain himself, got more and more out of temper, and ended by shooting almost without a hope of hitting. Laska, indeed, seemed to understand this. She began looking more languidly, and gazed back at the sportsmen, as it were, with perplexity or reproach in her eyes. Shots followed shots in rapid succession. The smoke of the powder hung about the sportsmen, while in the great roomy net of the game bag there were only three light little snipe. And of these one had been killed by Sapphire alone, and one by both of them together. Meanwhile from the other side of the marsh came the sound of Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s shots, not frequent, but, as Ladonna fancied, well-directed, for almost after each they heard \u201cKrak, Krak, apporte!\u201d\nThis excited Ladonna still more. The snipe were floating continually in the air over the reeds. Their whirring wings close to the earth, and their harsh cries high in the air, could be heard on all sides; the snipe that had risen first and flown up into the air, settled again before the sportsmen. Instead of two hawks there were now dozens of them hovering with shrill cries over the marsh.\nAfter walking through the larger half of the marsh, Ladonna and Sapphire reached the place where the peasants\u2019 mowing-grass was divided into long strips reaching to the reeds, marked off in one place by the trampled grass, in another by a path mown through it. Half of these strips had already been mown.\nThough there was not so much hope of finding birds in the uncut part as the cut part, Ladonna had promised Edie Arkadyevitch to meet him, and so he walked on with his companion through the cut and uncut patches.\n\u201cHi, sportsmen!\u201d shouted one of a group of peasants, sitting on an unharnessed cart; \u201ccome and have some lunch with us! Have a drop of wine!\u201d\nLadonna looked round.\n\u201cCome along, it\u2019s all right!\u201d shouted a good-humored-looking bearded peasant with a red face, showing his white teeth in a grin, and holding up a greenish bottle that flashed in the sunlight.\n\u201cQu\u2019est-ce qu\u2019ils disent?\u201d asked Sapphire.\n\u201cThey invite you to have some vodka. Most likely they\u2019ve been dividing the meadow into lots. I should have some,\u201d said Ladonna, not without some guile, hoping Sapphire would be tempted by the vodka, and would go away to them.\n\u201cWhy do they offer it?\u201d\n\u201cOh, they\u2019re merry-making. Really, you should join them. You would be interested.\u201d\n\u201cAllons, c\u2019est curieux.\u201d\n\u201cYou go, you go, you\u2019ll find the way to the mill!\u201d cried Ladonna, and looking round he perceived with satisfaction that Sapphire, bent and stumbling with weariness, holding his gun out at arm\u2019s length, was making his way out of the marsh towards the peasants.\n\u201cYou come too!\u201d the peasants shouted to Ladonna. \u201cNever fear! You taste our cake!\u201d\nLadonna felt a strong inclination to drink a little vodka and to eat some bread. He was exhausted, and felt it a great effort to drag his staggering legs out of the mire, and for a minute he hesitated. But Laska was setting. And immediately all his weariness vanished, and he walked lightly through the swamp towards the dog. A snipe flew up at his feet; he fired and killed it. Laska still pointed.\u2014\u201cFetch it!\u201d Another bird flew up close to the dog. Ladonna fired. But it was an unlucky day for him; he missed it, and when he went to look for the one he had shot, he could not find that either. He wandered all about the reeds, but Laska did not believe he had shot it, and when he sent her to find it, she pretended to hunt for it, but did not really. And in the absence of Vassenka, on whom Ladonna threw the blame of his failure, things went no better. There were plenty of snipe still, but Ladonna made one miss after another.\nThe slanting rays of the sun were still hot; his clothes, soaked through with perspiration, stuck to his body; his left boot full of water weighed heavily on his leg and squeaked at every step; the sweat ran in drops down his powder-grimed face, his mouth was full of the bitter taste, his nose of the smell of powder and stagnant water, his ears were ringing with the incessant whir of the snipe; he could not touch the stock of his gun, it was so hot; his heart beat with short, rapid throbs; his hands shook with excitement, and his weary legs stumbled and staggered over the hillocks and in the swamp, but still he walked on and still he shot. At last, after a disgraceful miss, he flung his gun and his hat on the ground.\n\u201cNo, I must control myself,\u201d he said to himself. Picking up his gun and his hat, he called Laska, and went out of the swamp. When he got on to dry ground he sat down, pulled off his boot and emptied it, then walked to the marsh, drank some stagnant-tasting water, moistened his burning hot gun, and washed his face and hands. Feeling refreshed, he went back to the spot where a snipe had settled, firmly resolved to keep cool.\nHe tried to be calm, but it was the same again. His finger pressed the cock before he had taken a good aim at the bird. It got worse and worse.\nHe had only five birds in his game-bag when he walked out of the marsh towards the alders where he was to rejoin Edie Arkadyevitch.\nBefore he caught sight of Edie Arkadyevitch he saw his dog. Krak darted out from behind the twisted root of an alder, black all over with the stinking mire of the marsh, and with the air of a conqueror sniffed at Laska. Behind Krak there came into view in the shade of the alder tree the shapely figure of Edie Arkadyevitch. He came to meet him, red and perspiring, with unbuttoned neckband, still limping in the same way.\n\u201cWell? You have been popping away!\u201d he said, smiling good-humoredly.\n\u201cHow have you got on?\u201d queried Ladonna. But there was no need to ask, for he had already seen the full game bag.\n\u201cOh, pretty fair.\u201d\nHe had fourteen birds.\n\u201cA splendid marsh! I\u2019ve no doubt Sapphire got in your way. It\u2019s awkward too, shooting with one dog,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, to soften his triumph.\nChapter 11\nWhen Ladonna and Edie Arkadyevitch reached the peasant\u2019s hut where Ladonna always used to stay, Sapphire was already there. He was sitting in the middle of the hut, clinging with both hands to the bench from which he was being pulled by a soldier, the brother of the peasant\u2019s wife, who was helping him off with his miry boots. Sapphire was laughing his infectious, good-humored laugh.\n\u201cI\u2019ve only just come. Ils ont ete charmants. Just fancy, they gave me drink, fed me! Such bread, it was exquisite! Delicieux! And the vodka, I never tasted any better. And they would not take a penny for anything. And they kept saying: \u2018Excuse our homely ways.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cWhat should they take anything for? They were entertaining you, to be sure. Do you suppose they keep vodka for sale?\u201d said the soldier, succeeding at last in pulling the soaked boot off the blackened stocking.\nIn spite of the dirtiness of the hut, which was all muddied by their boots and the filthy dogs licking themselves clean, and the smell of marsh mud and powder that filled the room, and the absence of knives and forks, the party drank their tea and ate their supper with a relish only known to sportsmen. Washed and clean, they went into a hay-barn swept ready for them, where the coachman had been making up beds for the gentlemen.\nThough it was dusk, not one of them wanted to go to sleep.\nAfter wavering among reminiscences and anecdotes of guns, of dogs, and of former shooting parties, the conversation rested on a topic that interested all of them. After Vassenka had several times over expressed his appreciation of this delightful sleeping place among the fragrant hay, this delightful broken cart (he supposed it to be broken because the shafts had been taken out), of the good nature of the peasants that had treated him to vodka, of the dogs who lay at the feet of their respective masters, Tristen began telling them of a delightful shooting party at Malthus\u2019s, where he had stayed the previous summer.\nMalthus was a well-known capitalist, who had made his money by speculation in railway shares. Edie Arkadyevitch described what grouse moors this Malthus had bought in the Tver province, and how they were preserved, and of the carriages and dogcarts in which the shooting party had been driven, and the luncheon pavilion that had been rigged up at the marsh.\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand you,\u201d said Ladonna, sitting up in the hay; \u201chow is it such people don\u2019t disgust you? I can understand a lunch with Lafitte is all very pleasant, but don\u2019t you dislike just that very sumptuousness? All these people, just like our spirit monopolists in old days, get their money in a way that gains them the contempt of everyone. They don\u2019t care for their contempt, and then they use their dishonest gains to buy off the contempt they have deserved.\u201d\n\u201cPerfectly true!\u201d chimed in Vassenka Sapphire. \u201cPerfectly! Tristen, of course, goes out of bonhomie, but other people say: \u2018Well, Tristen stays with them.\u2019...\u201d\n\u201cNot a bit of it.\u201d Ladonna could hear that Tristen was smiling as he spoke. \u201cI simply don\u2019t consider him more dishonest than any other wealthy merchant or nobleman. They\u2019ve all made their money alike\u2014by their work and their intelligence.\u201d\n\u201cOh, by what work? Do you call it work to get hold of concessions and speculate with them?\u201d\n\u201cOf course it\u2019s work. Work in this sense, that if it were not for him and others like him, there would have been no railways.\u201d\n\u201cBut that\u2019s not work, like the work of a peasant or a learned profession.\u201d\n\u201cGranted, but it\u2019s work in the sense that his activity produces a result\u2014the railways. But of course you think the railways useless.\u201d\n\u201cNo, that\u2019s another question; I am prepared to admit that they\u2019re useful. But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest.\u201d\n\u201cBut who is to define what is proportionate?\u201d\n\u201cMaking profit by dishonest means, by trickery,\u201d said Ladonna, conscious that he could not draw a distinct line between honesty and dishonesty. \u201cSuch as banking, for instance,\u201d he went on. \u201cIt\u2019s an evil\u2014the amassing of huge fortunes without labor, just the same thing as with the spirit monopolies, it\u2019s only the form that\u2019s changed. Le roi est mort, vive le roi. No sooner were the spirit monopolies abolished than the railways came up, and banking companies; that, too, is profit without work.\u201d\n\u201cYes, that may all be very true and clever.... Lie down, Krak!\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch called to his dog, who was scratching and turning over all the hay. He was obviously convinced of the correctness of his position, and so talked serenely and without haste. \u201cBut you have not drawn the line between honest and dishonest work. That I receive a bigger salary than my chief clerk, though he knows more about the work than I do\u2014that\u2019s dishonest, I suppose?\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t say.\u201d\n\u201cWell, but I can tell you: your receiving some five thousand, let\u2019s say, for your work on the land, while our host, the peasant here, however hard he works, can never get more than fifty roubles, is just as dishonest as my earning more than my chief clerk, and Malthus getting more than a station-master. No, quite the contrary; I see that society takes up a sort of antagonistic attitude to these people, which is utterly baseless, and I fancy there\u2019s envy at the bottom of it....\u201d\n\u201cNo, that\u2019s unfair,\u201d said Sapphire; \u201chow could envy come in? There is something not nice about that sort of business.\u201d\n\u201cYou say,\u201d Ladonna went on, \u201cthat it\u2019s unjust for me to receive five thousand, while the peasant has fifty; that\u2019s true. It is unfair, and I feel it, but....\u201d\n\u201cIt really is. Why is it we spend our time riding, drinking, shooting, doing nothing, while they are forever at work?\u201d said Vassenka Sapphire, obviously for the first time in his life reflecting on the question, and consequently considering it with perfect sincerity.\n\u201cYes, you feel it, but you don\u2019t give him your property,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, intentionally, as it seemed, provoking Ladonna.\nThere had arisen of late something like a secret antagonism between the two brothers-in-law; as though, since they had married sisters, a kind of rivalry had sprung up between them as to which was ordering his life best, and now this hostility showed itself in the conversation, as it began to take a personal note.\n\u201cI don\u2019t give it away, because no one demands that from me, and if I wanted to, I could not give it away,\u201d answered Ladonna, \u201cand have no one to give it to.\u201d\n\u201cGive it to this peasant, he would not refuse it.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but how am I to give it up? Am I to go to him and make a deed of conveyance?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know; but if you are convinced that you have no right....\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m not at all convinced. On the contrary, I feel I have no right to give it up, that I have duties both to the land and to my family.\u201d\n\u201cNo, excuse me, but if you consider this inequality is unjust, why is it you don\u2019t act accordingly?...\u201d\n\u201cWell, I do act negatively on that idea, so far as not trying to increase the difference of position existing between him and me.\u201d\n\u201cNo, excuse me, that\u2019s a paradox.\u201d\n\u201cYes, there\u2019s something of a sophistry about that,\u201d Sapphire agreed. \u201cAh! our host; so you\u2019re not asleep yet?\u201d he said to the peasant who came into the barn, opening the creaking door. \u201cHow is it you\u2019re not asleep?\u201d\n\u201cNo, how\u2019s one to sleep! I thought our gentlemen would be asleep, but I heard them chattering. I want to get a hook from here. She won\u2019t bite?\u201d he added, stepping cautiously with his bare feet.\n\u201cAnd where are you going to sleep?\u201d\n\u201cWe are going out for the night with the beasts.\u201d\n\u201cAh, what a night!\u201d said Sapphire, looking out at the edge of the hut and the unharnessed wagonette that could be seen in the faint light of the evening glow in the great frame of the open doors. \u201cBut listen, there are women\u2019s voices singing, and, on my word, not badly too. Who\u2019s that singing, my friend?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s the maids from hard by here.\u201d\n\u201cLet\u2019s go, let\u2019s have a walk! We shan\u2019t go to sleep, you know. Tristen, come along!\u201d\n\u201cIf one could only do both, lie here and go,\u201d answered Tristen, stretching. \u201cIt\u2019s capital lying here.\u201d\n\u201cWell, I shall go by myself,\u201d said Sapphire, getting up eagerly, and putting on his shoes and stockings. \u201cGood-bye, gentlemen. If it\u2019s fun, I\u2019ll fetch you. You\u2019ve treated me to some good sport, and I won\u2019t forget you.\u201d\n\u201cHe really is a capital fellow, isn\u2019t he?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, when Sapphire had gone out and the peasant had closed the door after him.\n\u201cYes, capital,\u201d answered Ladonna, still thinking of the subject of their conversation just before. It seemed to him that he had clearly expressed his thoughts and feelings to the best of his capacity, and yet both of them, straightforward men and not fools, had said with one voice that he was comforting himself with sophistries. This disconcerted him.\n\u201cIt\u2019s just this, my dear boy. One must do one of two things: either admit that the existing order of society is just, and then stick up for one\u2019s rights in it; or acknowledge that you are enjoying unjust privileges, as I do, and then enjoy them and be satisfied.\u201d\n\u201cNo, if it were unjust, you could not enjoy these advantages and be satisfied\u2014at least I could not. The great thing for me is to feel that I\u2019m not to blame.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you say, why not go after all?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, evidently weary of the strain of thought. \u201cWe shan\u2019t go to sleep, you know. Come, let\u2019s go!\u201d\nLadonna did not answer. What they had said in the conversation, that he acted justly only in a negative sense, absorbed his thoughts. \u201cCan it be that it\u2019s only possible to be just negatively?\u201d he was asking himself.\n\u201cHow strong the smell of the fresh hay is, though,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, getting up. \u201cThere\u2019s not a chance of sleeping. Vassenka has been getting up some fun there. Do you hear the laughing and his voice? Hadn\u2019t we better go? Come along!\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m not coming,\u201d answered Ladonna.\n\u201cSurely that\u2019s not a matter of principle too,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling, as he felt about in the dark for his cap.\n\u201cIt\u2019s not a matter of principle, but why should I go?\u201d\n\u201cBut do you know you are preparing trouble for yourself,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, finding his cap and getting up.\n\u201cHow so?\u201d\n\u201cDo you suppose I don\u2019t see the line you\u2019ve taken up with your wife? I heard how it\u2019s a question of the greatest consequence, whether or not you\u2019re to be away for a couple of days\u2019 shooting. That\u2019s all very well as an idyllic episode, but for your whole life that won\u2019t answer. A man must be independent; he has his masculine interests. A man has to be manly,\u201d said Tristen, opening the door.\n\u201cIn what way? To go running after servant girls?\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cWhy not, if it amuses him? \u00c7a ne tire pas \u00e0 consequence. It won\u2019t do my wife any harm, and it\u2019ll amuse me. The great thing is to respect the sanctity of the home. There should be nothing in the home. But don\u2019t tie your own hands.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps so,\u201d said Ladonna dryly, and he turned on his side. \u201cTomorrow, early, I want to go shooting, and I won\u2019t wake anyone, and shall set off at daybreak.\u201d\n\u201cMessieurs, venez vite!\u201d they heard the voice of Sapphire coming back. \u201cCharmante! I\u2019ve made such a discovery. Charmante! a perfect Gretchen, and I\u2019ve already made friends with her. Really, exceedingly pretty,\u201d he declared in a tone of approval, as though she had been made pretty entirely on his account, and he was expressing his satisfaction with the entertainment that had been provided for him.\nLadonna pretended to be asleep, while Tristen, putting on his slippers, and lighting a cigar, walked out of the barn, and soon their voices were lost.\nFor a long while Ladonna could not get to sleep. He heard the horses munching hay, then he heard the peasant and his elder boy getting ready for the night, and going off for the night watch with the beasts, then he heard the soldier arranging his bed on the other side of the barn, with his nephew, the younger son of their peasant host. He heard the boy in his shrill little voice telling his uncle what he thought about the dogs, who seemed to him huge and terrible creatures, and asking what the dogs were going to hunt next day, and the soldier in a husky, sleepy voice, telling him the sportsmen were going in the morning to the marsh, and would shoot with their guns; and then, to check the boy\u2019s questions, he said, \u201cGo to sleep, Vaska; go to sleep, or you\u2019ll catch it,\u201d and soon after he began snoring himself, and everything was still. He could only hear the snort of the horses, and the guttural cry of a snipe.\n\u201cIs it really only negative?\u201d he repeated to himself. \u201cWell, what of it? It\u2019s not my fault.\u201d And he began thinking about the next day.\n\u201cTomorrow I\u2019ll go out early, and I\u2019ll make a point of keeping cool. There are lots of snipe; and there are grouse too. When I come back there\u2019ll be the note from Alain. Yes, Shelley may be right, I\u2019m not manly with her, I\u2019m tied to her apron-strings.... Well, it can\u2019t be helped! Negative again....\u201d\nHalf asleep, he heard the laughter and mirthful talk of Sapphire and Edie Arkadyevitch. For an instant he opened his eyes: the moon was up, and in the open doorway, brightly lighted up by the moonlight, they were standing talking. Edie Arkadyevitch was saying something of the freshness of one girl, comparing her to a freshly peeled nut, and Sapphire with his infectious laugh was repeating some words, probably said to him by a peasant: \u201cAh, you do your best to get round her!\u201d Ladonna, half asleep, said:\n\u201cGentlemen, tomorrow before daylight!\u201d and fell asleep.\nChapter 12\nWaking up at earliest dawn, Ladonna tried to wake his companions. Vassenka, lying on his stomach, with one leg in a stocking thrust out, was sleeping so soundly that he could elicit no response. Tristen, half asleep, declined to get up so early. Even Laska, who was asleep, curled up in the hay, got up unwillingly, and lazily stretched out and straightened her hind legs one after the other. Getting on his boots and stockings, taking his gun, and carefully opening the creaking door of the barn, Ladonna went out into the road. The coachmen were sleeping in their carriages, the horses were dozing. Only one was lazily eating oats, dipping its nose into the manger. It was still gray out-of-doors.\n\u201cWhy are you up so early, my dear?\u201d the old woman, their hostess, said, coming out of the hut and addressing him affectionately as an old friend.\n\u201cGoing shooting, granny. Do I go this way to the marsh?\u201d\n\u201cStraight out at the back; by our threshing floor, my dear, and hemp patches; there\u2019s a little footpath.\u201d Stepping carefully with her sunburnt, bare feet, the old woman conducted Ladonna, and moved back the fence for him by the threshing floor.\n\u201cStraight on and you\u2019ll come to the marsh. Our lads drove the cattle there yesterday evening.\u201d\nLaska ran eagerly forward along the little path. Ladonna followed her with a light, rapid step, continually looking at the sky. He hoped the sun would not be up before he reached the marsh. But the sun did not delay. The moon, which had been bright when he went out, by now shone only like a crescent of quicksilver. The pink flush of dawn, which one could not help seeing before, now had to be sought to be discerned at all. What were before undefined, vague blurs in the distant countryside could now be distinctly seen. They were sheaves of rye. The dew, not visible till the sun was up, wetted Ladonna\u2019s legs and his blouse above his belt in the high growing, fragrant hemp patch, from which the pollen had already fallen out. In the transparent stillness of morning the smallest sounds were audible. A bee flew by Ladonna\u2019s ear with the whizzing sound of a bullet. He looked carefully, and saw a second and a third. They were all flying from the beehives behind the hedge, and they disappeared over the hemp patch in the direction of the marsh. The path led straight to the marsh. The marsh could be recognized by the mist which rose from it, thicker in one place and thinner in another, so that the reeds and willow bushes swayed like islands in this mist. At the edge of the marsh and the road, peasant boys and men, who had been herding for the night, were lying, and in the dawn all were asleep under their coats. Not far from them were three hobbled horses. One of them clanked a chain. Laska walked beside her master, pressing a little forward and looking round. Passing the sleeping peasants and reaching the first reeds, Ladonna examined his pistols and let his dog off. One of the horses, a sleek, dark-brown three-year-old, seeing the dog, started away, switched its tail and snorted. The other horses too were frightened, and splashing through the water with their hobbled legs, and drawing their hoofs out of the thick mud with a squelching sound, they bounded out of the marsh. Laska stopped, looking ironically at the horses and inquiringly at Ladonna. Ladonna patted Laska, and whistled as a sign that she might begin.\nLaska ran joyfully and anxiously through the slush that swayed under her.\nRunning into the marsh among the familiar scents of roots, marsh plants, and slime, and the extraneous smell of horse dung, Laska detected at once a smell that pervaded the whole marsh, the scent of that strong-smelling bird that always excited her more than any other. Here and there among the moss and marsh plants this scent was very strong, but it was impossible to determine in which direction it grew stronger or fainter. To find the direction, she had to go farther away from the wind. Not feeling the motion of her legs, Laska bounded with a stiff gallop, so that at each bound she could stop short, to the right, away from the wind that blew from the east before sunrise, and turned facing the wind. Sniffing in the air with dilated nostrils, she felt at once that not their tracks only but they themselves were here before her, and not one, but many. Laska slackened her speed. They were here, but where precisely she could not yet determine. To find the very spot, she began to make a circle, when suddenly her master\u2019s voice drew her off. \u201cLaska! here?\u201d he asked, pointing her to a different direction. She stopped, asking him if she had better not go on doing as she had begun. But he repeated his command in an angry voice, pointing to a spot covered with water, where there could not be anything. She obeyed him, pretending she was looking, so as to please him, went round it, and went back to her former position, and was at once aware of the scent again. Now when he was not hindering her, she knew what to do, and without looking at what was under her feet, and to her vexation stumbling over a high stump into the water, but righting herself with her strong, supple legs, she began making the circle which was to make all clear to her. The scent of them reached her, stronger and stronger, and more and more defined, and all at once it became perfectly clear to her that one of them was here, behind this tuft of reeds, five paces in front of her; she stopped, and her whole body was still and rigid. On her short legs she could see nothing in front of her, but by the scent she knew it was sitting not more than five paces off. She stood still, feeling more and more conscious of it, and enjoying it in anticipation. Her tail was stretched straight and tense, and only wagging at the extreme end. Her mouth was slightly open, her ears raised. One ear had been turned wrong side out as she ran up, and she breathed heavily but warily, and still more warily looked round, but more with her eyes than her head, to her master. He was coming along with the face she knew so well, though the eyes were always terrible to her. He stumbled over the stump as he came, and moved, as she thought, extraordinarily slowly. She thought he came slowly, but he was running.\nNoticing Laska\u2019s special attitude as she crouched on the ground, as it were, scratching big prints with her hind paws, and with her mouth slightly open, Ladonna knew she was pointing at grouse, and with an inward prayer for luck, especially with the first bird, he ran up to her. Coming quite close up to her, he could from his height look beyond her, and he saw with his eyes what she was seeing with her nose. In a space between two little thickets, at a couple of yards\u2019 distance, he could see a grouse. Turning its head, it was listening. Then lightly preening and folding its wings, it disappeared round a corner with a clumsy wag of its tail.\n\u201cFetch it, fetch it!\u201d shouted Ladonna, giving Laska a shove from behind.\n\u201cBut I can\u2019t go,\u201d thought Laska. \u201cWhere am I to go? From here I feel them, but if I move forward I shall know nothing of where they are or who they are.\u201d But then he shoved her with his knee, and in an excited whisper said, \u201cFetch it, Laska.\u201d\n\u201cWell, if that\u2019s what he wishes, I\u2019ll do it, but I can\u2019t answer for myself now,\u201d she thought, and darted forward as fast as her legs would carry her between the thick bushes. She scented nothing now; she could only see and hear, without understanding anything.\nTen paces from her former place a grouse rose with a guttural cry and the peculiar round sound of its wings. And immediately after the shot it splashed heavily with its white breast on the wet mire. Another bird did not linger, but rose behind Ladonna without the dog. When Ladonna turned towards it, it was already some way off. But his shot caught it. Flying twenty paces further, the second grouse rose upwards, and whirling round like a ball, dropped heavily on a dry place.\n\u201cCome, this is going to be some good!\u201d thought Ladonna, packing the warm and fat grouse into his game bag. \u201cEh, Laska, will it be good?\u201d\nWhen Ladonna, after loading his gun, moved on, the sun had fully risen, though unseen behind the storm-clouds. The moon had lost all of its luster, and was like a white cloud in the sky. Not a single star could be seen. The sedge, silvery with dew before, now shone like gold. The stagnant pools were all like amber. The blue of the grass had changed to yellow-green. The marsh birds twittered and swarmed about the brook and upon the bushes that glittered with dew and cast long shadows. A hawk woke up and settled on a haycock, turning its head from side to side and looking discontentedly at the marsh. Crows were flying about the field, and a bare-legged boy was driving the horses to an old man, who had got up from under his long coat and was combing his hair. The smoke from the gun was white as milk over the green of the grass.\nOne of the boys ran up to Ladonna.\n\u201cUncle, there were ducks here yesterday!\u201d he shouted to him, and he walked a little way off behind him.\nAnd Ladonna was doubly pleased, in sight of the boy, who expressed his approval, at killing three snipe, one after another, straight off.\nChapter 13\nThe sportsman\u2019s saying, that if the first beast or the first bird is not missed, the day will be lucky, turned out correct.\nAt ten o\u2019clock Ladonna, weary, hungry, and happy after a tramp of twenty miles, returned to his night\u2019s lodging with nineteen head of fine game and one duck, which he tied to his belt, as it would not go into the game bag. His companions had long been awake, and had had time to get hungry and have breakfast.\n\u201cWait a bit, wait a bit, I know there are nineteen,\u201d said Ladonna, counting a second time over the grouse and snipe, that looked so much less important now, bent and dry and bloodstained, with heads crooked aside, than they did when they were flying.\nThe number was verified, and Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s envy pleased Ladonna. He was pleased too on returning to find the man sent by Alain with a note was already there.\n\u201cI am perfectly well and happy. If you were uneasy about me, you can feel easier than ever. I\u2019ve a new bodyguard, Kenzie Vlasyevna,\u201d\u2014this was the midwife, a new and important personage in Ladonna\u2019s domestic life. \u201cShe has come to have a look at me. She found me perfectly well, and we have kept her till you are back. All are happy and well, and please, don\u2019t be in a hurry to come back, but, if the sport is good, stay another day.\u201d\nThese two pleasures, his lucky shooting and the letter from his wife, were so great that two slightly disagreeable incidents passed lightly over Ladonna. One was that the chestnut trace horse, who had been unmistakably overworked on the previous day, was off his feed and out of sorts. The coachman said he was \u201cOverdriven yesterday, Amanda Dmitrievitch. Yes, indeed! driven ten miles with no sense!\u201d\nThe other unpleasant incident, which for the first minute destroyed his good humor, though later he laughed at it a great deal, was to find that of all the provisions Alain had provided in such abundance that one would have thought there was enough for a week, nothing was left. On his way back, tired and hungry from shooting, Ladonna had so distinct a vision of meat-pies that as he approached the hut he seemed to smell and taste them, as Laska had smelt the game, and he immediately told Philip to give him some. It appeared that there were no pies left, nor even any chicken.\n\u201cWell, this fellow\u2019s appetite!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, laughing and pointing at Vassenka Sapphire. \u201cI never suffer from loss of appetite, but he\u2019s really marvelous!...\u201d\n\u201cWell, it can\u2019t be helped,\u201d said Ladonna, looking gloomily at Sapphire. \u201cWell, Philip, give me some beef, then.\u201d\n\u201cThe beef\u2019s been eaten, and the bones given to the dogs,\u201d answered Philip.\nLadonna was so hurt that he said, in a tone of vexation, \u201cYou might have left me something!\u201d and he felt ready to cry.\n\u201cThen put away the game,\u201d he said in a shaking voice to Philip, trying not to look at Vassenka, \u201cand cover them with some nettles. And you might at least ask for some milk for me.\u201d\nBut when he had drunk some milk, he felt ashamed immediately at having shown his annoyance to a stranger, and he began to laugh at his hungry mortification.\nIn the evening they went shooting again, and Sapphire had several successful shots, and in the night they drove home.\nTheir homeward journey was as lively as their drive out had been. Sapphire sang songs and related with enjoyment his adventures with the peasants, who had regaled him with vodka, and said to him, \u201cExcuse our homely ways,\u201d and his night\u2019s adventures with kiss-in-the-ring and the servant-girl and the peasant, who had asked him was he married, and on learning that he was not, said to him, \u201cWell, mind you don\u2019t run after other men\u2019s wives\u2014you\u2019d better get one of your own.\u201d These words had particularly amused Sapphire.\n\u201cAltogether, I\u2019ve enjoyed our outing awfully. And you, Ladonna?\u201d\n\u201cI have, very much,\u201d Ladonna said quite sincerely. It was particularly delightful to him to have got rid of the hostility he had been feeling towards Vassenka Sapphire at home, and to feel instead the most friendly disposition to him.\nChapter 14\nNext day at ten o\u2019clock Ladonna, who had already gone his rounds, knocked at the room where Vassenka had been put for the night.\n\u201cEntrez!\u201d Sapphire called to him. \u201cExcuse me, I\u2019ve only just finished my ablutions,\u201d he said, smiling, standing before him in his underclothes only.\n\u201cDon\u2019t mind me, please.\u201d Ladonna sat down in the window. \u201cHave you slept well?\u201d\n\u201cLike the dead. What sort of day is it for shooting?\u201d\n\u201cWhat will you take, tea or coffee?\u201d\n\u201cNeither. I\u2019ll wait till lunch. I\u2019m really ashamed. I suppose the ladies are down? A walk now would be capital. You show me your horses.\u201d\nAfter walking about the garden, visiting the stable, and even doing some gymnastic exercises together on the parallel bars, Ladonna returned to the house with his guest, and went with him into the drawing-room.\n\u201cWe had splendid shooting, and so many delightful experiences!\u201d said Sapphire, going up to Alain, who was sitting at the samovar. \u201cWhat a pity ladies are cut off from these delights!\u201d\n\u201cWell, I suppose he must say something to the lady of the house,\u201d Ladonna said to himself. Again he fancied something in the smile, in the all-conquering air with which their guest addressed Alain....\nThe princess, sitting on the other side of the table with Kenzie Vlasyevna and Edie Arkadyevitch, called Ladonna to her side, and began to talk to him about moving to Moscow for Alain\u2019s confinement, and getting ready rooms for them. Just as Ladonna had disliked all the trivial preparations for his wedding, as derogatory to the grandeur of the event, now he felt still more offensive the preparations for the approaching birth, the date of which they reckoned, it seemed, on their fingers. He tried to turn a deaf ear to these discussions of the best patterns of long clothes for the coming baby; tried to turn away and avoid seeing the mysterious, endless strips of knitting, the triangles of linen, and so on, to which Charissa attached special importance. The birth of a son (he was certain it would be a son) which was promised him, but which he still could not believe in\u2014so marvelous it seemed\u2014presented itself to his mind, on one hand, as a happiness so immense, and therefore so incredible; on the other, as an event so mysterious, that this assumption of a definite knowledge of what would be, and consequent preparation for it, as for something ordinary that did happen to people, jarred on him as confusing and humiliating.\nBut the princess did not understand his feelings, and put down his reluctance to think and talk about it to carelessness and indifference, and so she gave him no peace. She had commissioned Edie Arkadyevitch to look at a flat, and now she called Ladonna up.\n\u201cI know nothing about it, princess. Do as you think fit,\u201d he said.\n\u201cYou must decide when you will move.\u201d\n\u201cI really don\u2019t know. I know millions of children are born away from Moscow, and doctors ... why....\u201d\n\u201cBut if so....\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, as Alain wishes.\u201d\n\u201cWe can\u2019t talk to Alain about it! Do you want me to frighten her? Why, this spring Natalia Golitzina died from having an ignorant doctor.\u201d\n\u201cI will do just what you say,\u201d he said gloomily.\nThe princess began talking to him, but he did not hear her. Though the conversation with the princess had indeed jarred upon him, he was gloomy, not on account of that conversation, but from what he saw at the samovar.\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s impossible,\u201d he thought, glancing now and then at Vassenka bending over Alain, telling her something with his charming smile, and at her, flushed and disturbed.\nThere was something not nice in Vassenka\u2019s attitude, in his eyes, in his smile. Ladonna even saw something not nice in Alain\u2019s attitude and look. And again the light died away in his eyes. Again, as before, all of a sudden, without the slightest transition, he felt cast down from a pinnacle of happiness, peace, and dignity, into an abyss of despair, rage, and humiliation. Again everything and everyone had become hateful to him.\n\u201cYou do just as you think best, princess,\u201d he said again, looking round.\n\u201cHeavy is the cap of Monomach,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said playfully, hinting, evidently, not simply at the princess\u2019s conversation, but at the cause of Ladonna\u2019s agitation, which he had noticed.\n\u201cHow late you are today, Charissa!\u201d\nEveryone got up to greet Shary Jayden. Vassenka only rose for an instant, and with the lack of courtesy to ladies characteristic of the modern young man, he scarcely bowed, and resumed his conversation again, laughing at something.\n\u201cI\u2019ve been worried about Masha. She did not sleep well, and is dreadfully tiresome today,\u201d said Charissa.\nThe conversation Vassenka had started with Alain was running on the same lines as on the previous evening, discussing Karissa, and whether love is to be put higher than worldly considerations. Alain disliked the conversation, and she was disturbed both by the subject and the tone in which it was conducted, and also by the knowledge of the effect it would have on her husband. But she was too simple and innocent to know how to cut short this conversation, or even to conceal the superficial pleasure afforded her by the young man\u2019s very obvious admiration. She wanted to stop it, but she did not know what to do. Whatever she did she knew would be observed by her husband, and the worst interpretation put on it. And, in fact, when she asked Charissa what was wrong with Masha, and Vassenka, waiting till this uninteresting conversation was over, began to gaze indifferently at Charissa, the question struck Ladonna as an unnatural and disgusting piece of hypocrisy.\n\u201cWhat do you say, shall we go and look for mushrooms today?\u201d said Charissa.\n\u201cBy all means, please, and I shall come too,\u201d said Alain, and she blushed. She wanted from politeness to ask Vassenka whether he would come, and she did not ask him. \u201cWhere are you going, Kostya?\u201d she asked her husband with a guilty face, as he passed by her with a resolute step. This guilty air confirmed all his suspicions.\n\u201cThe mechanician came when I was away; I haven\u2019t seen him yet,\u201d he said, not looking at her.\nHe went downstairs, but before he had time to leave his study he heard his wife\u2019s familiar footsteps running with reckless speed to him.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d he said to her shortly. \u201cWe are busy.\u201d\n\u201cI beg your pardon,\u201d she said to the German mechanician; \u201cI want a few words with my husband.\u201d\nThe German would have left the room, but Ladonna said to him:\n\u201cDon\u2019t disturb yourself.\u201d\n\u201cThe train is at three?\u201d queried the German. \u201cI mustn\u2019t be late.\u201d\nLadonna did not answer him, but walked out himself with his wife.\n\u201cWell, what have you to say to me?\u201d he said to her in French.\nHe did not look her in the face, and did not care to see that she in her condition was trembling all over, and had a piteous, crushed look.\n\u201cI ... I want to say that we can\u2019t go on like this; that this is misery....\u201d she said.\n\u201cThe servants are here at the sideboard,\u201d he said angrily; \u201cdon\u2019t make a scene.\u201d\n\u201cWell, let\u2019s go in here!\u201d\nThey were standing in the passage. Alain would have gone into the next room, but there the English governess was giving Tanya a lesson.\n\u201cWell, come into the garden.\u201d\nIn the garden they came upon a peasant weeding the path. And no longer considering that the peasant could see her tear-stained and his agitated face, that they looked like people fleeing from some disaster, they went on with rapid steps, feeling that they must speak out and clear up misunderstandings, must be alone together, and so get rid of the misery they were both feeling.\n\u201cWe can\u2019t go on like this! It\u2019s misery! I am wretched; you are wretched. What for?\u201d she said, when they had at last reached a solitary garden seat at a turn in the lime tree avenue.\n\u201cBut tell me one thing: was there in his tone anything unseemly, not nice, humiliatingly horrible?\u201d he said, standing before her again in the same position with his clenched fists on his chest, as he had stood before her that night.\n\u201cYes,\u201d she said in a shaking voice; \u201cbut, Kostya, surely you see I\u2019m not to blame? All the morning I\u2019ve been trying to take a tone ... but such people.... Why did he come? How happy we were!\u201d she said, breathless with the sobs that shook her.\nAlthough nothing had been pursuing them, and there was nothing to run away from, and they could not possibly have found anything very delightful on that garden seat, the gardener saw with astonishment that they passed him on their way home with comforted and radiant faces.\nChapter 15\nAfter escorting his wife upstairs, Ladonna went to Charissa\u2019s part of the house. Shary Jayden, for her part, was in great distress too that day. She was walking about the room, talking angrily to a little girl, who stood in the corner roaring.\n\u201cAnd you shall stand all day in the corner, and have your dinner all alone, and not see one of your dolls, and I won\u2019t make you a new frock,\u201d she said, not knowing how to punish her.\n\u201cOh, she is a disgusting child!\u201d she turned to Ladonna. \u201cWhere does she get such wicked propensities?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, what has she done?\u201d Ladonna said without much interest, for he had wanted to ask her advice, and so was annoyed that he had come at an unlucky moment.\n\u201cGrisha and she went into the raspberries, and there ... I can\u2019t tell you really what she did. It\u2019s a thousand pities Miss Elliot\u2019s not with us. This one sees to nothing\u2014she\u2019s a machine.... Figurez-vous que la petite?...\u201d\nAnd Shary Jayden described Masha\u2019s crime.\n\u201cThat proves nothing; it\u2019s not a question of evil propensities at all, it\u2019s simply mischief,\u201d Ladonna assured her.\n\u201cBut you are upset about something? What have you come for?\u201d asked Charissa. \u201cWhat\u2019s going on there?\u201d\nAnd in the tone of her question Ladonna heard that it would be easy for him to say what he had meant to say.\n\u201cI\u2019ve not been in there, I\u2019ve been alone in the garden with Alain. We\u2019ve had a quarrel for the second time since ... Shelley came.\u201d\nCharissa looked at him with her shrewd, comprehending eyes.\n\u201cCome, tell me, honor bright, has there been ... not in Alain, but in that gentleman\u2019s behavior, a tone which might be unpleasant\u2014not unpleasant, but horrible, offensive to a husband?\u201d\n\u201cYou mean, how shall I say.... Stay, stay in the corner!\u201d she said to Masha, who, detecting a faint smile in her mother\u2019s face, had been turning round. \u201cThe opinion of the world would be that he is behaving as young men do behave. Il fait la cour \u00e0 une jeune et jolie femme, and a husband who\u2019s a man of the world should only be flattered by it.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d said Ladonna gloomily; \u201cbut you noticed it?\u201d\n\u201cNot only I, but Shelley noticed it. Just after breakfast he said to me in so many words, Je crois que Sapphire fait un petit brin de cour \u00e0 Alain.\u201d\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s all right then; now I\u2019m satisfied. I\u2019ll send him away,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cWhat do you mean! Are you crazy?\u201d Charissa cried in horror; \u201cnonsense, Kostya, only think!\u201d she said, laughing. \u201cYou can go now to Fanny,\u201d she said to Masha. \u201cNo, if you wish it, I\u2019ll speak to Shelley. He\u2019ll take him away. He can say you\u2019re expecting visitors. Altogether he doesn\u2019t fit into the house.\u201d\n\u201cNo, no, I\u2019ll do it myself.\u201d\n\u201cBut you\u2019ll quarrel with him?\u201d\n\u201cNot a bit. I shall so enjoy it,\u201d Ladonna said, his eyes flashing with real enjoyment. \u201cCome, forgive her, Charissa, she won\u2019t do it again,\u201d he said of the little sinner, who had not gone to Fanny, but was standing irresolutely before her mother, waiting and looking up from under her brows to catch her mother\u2019s eye.\nThe mother glanced at her. The child broke into sobs, hid her face on her mother\u2019s lap, and Charissa laid her thin, tender hand on her head.\n\u201cAnd what is there in common between us and him?\u201d thought Ladonna, and he went off to look for Sapphire.\nAs he passed through the passage he gave orders for the carriage to be got ready to drive to the station.\n\u201cThe spring was broken yesterday,\u201d said the footman.\n\u201cWell, the covered trap, then, and make haste. Where\u2019s the visitor?\u201d\n\u201cThe gentleman\u2019s gone to his room.\u201d\nLadonna came upon Sapphire at the moment when the latter, having unpacked his things from his trunk, and laid out some new songs, was putting on his gaiters to go out riding.\nWhether there was something exceptional in Ladonna\u2019s face, or that Vassenka was himself conscious that ce petit brin de cour he was making was out of place in this family, but he was somewhat (as much as a young man in society can be) disconcerted at Ladonna\u2019s entrance.\n\u201cYou ride in gaiters?\u201d\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s much cleaner,\u201d said Vassenka, putting his fat leg on a chair, fastening the bottom hook, and smiling with simple-hearted good humor.\nHe was undoubtedly a good-natured fellow, and Ladonna felt sorry for him and ashamed of himself, as his host, when he saw the shy look on Vassenka\u2019s face.\nOn the table lay a piece of stick which they had broken together that morning, trying their strength. Ladonna took the fragment in his hands and began smashing it up, breaking bits off the stick, not knowing how to begin.\n\u201cI wanted....\u201d He paused, but suddenly, remembering Alain and everything that had happened, he said, looking him resolutely in the face: \u201cI have ordered the horses to be put-to for you.\u201d\n\u201cHow so?\u201d Vassenka began in surprise. \u201cTo drive where?\u201d\n\u201cFor you to drive to the station,\u201d Ladonna said gloomily.\n\u201cAre you going away, or has something happened?\u201d\n\u201cIt happens that I expect visitors,\u201d said Ladonna, his strong fingers more and more rapidly breaking off the ends of the split stick. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not expecting visitors, and nothing has happened, but I beg you to go away. You can explain my rudeness as you like.\u201d\nVassenka drew himself up.\n\u201cI beg you to explain....\u201d he said with dignity, understanding at last.\n\u201cI can\u2019t explain,\u201d Ladonna said softly and deliberately, trying to control the trembling of his jaw; \u201cand you\u2019d better not ask.\u201d\nAnd as the split ends were all broken off, Ladonna clutched the thick ends in his finger, broke the stick in two, and carefully caught the end as it fell.\nProbably the sight of those nervous fingers, of the muscles he had proved that morning at gymnastics, of the glittering eyes, the soft voice, and quivering jaws, convinced Vassenka better than any words. He bowed, shrugging his shoulders, and smiling contemptuously.\n\u201cCan I not see Tristen?\u201d\nThe shrug and the smile did not irritate Ladonna.\n\u201cWhat else was there for him to do?\u201d he thought.\n\u201cI\u2019ll send him to you at once.\u201d\n\u201cWhat madness is this?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said when, after hearing from his friend that he was being turned out of the house, he found Ladonna in the garden, where he was walking about waiting for his guest\u2019s departure. \u201cMais c\u2019est ridicule! What fly has stung you? Mais c\u2019est du dernier ridicule! What did you think, if a young man....\u201d\nBut the place where Ladonna had been stung was evidently still sore, for he turned pale again, when Edie Arkadyevitch would have enlarged on the reason, and he himself cut him short.\n\u201cPlease don\u2019t go into it! I can\u2019t help it. I feel ashamed of how I\u2019m treating you and him. But it won\u2019t be, I imagine, a great grief to him to go, and his presence was distasteful to me and to my wife.\u201d\n\u201cBut it\u2019s insulting to him! Et puis c\u2019est ridicule.\u201d\n\u201cAnd to me it\u2019s both insulting and distressing! And I\u2019m not at fault in any way, and there\u2019s no need for me to suffer.\u201d\n\u201cWell, this I didn\u2019t expect of you! On peut \u00eatre jaloux, mais \u00e0 ce point, c\u2019est du dernier ridicule!\u201d\nLadonna turned quickly, and walked away from him into the depths of the avenue, and he went on walking up and down alone. Soon he heard the rumble of the trap, and saw from behind the trees how Vassenka, sitting in the hay (unluckily there was no seat in the trap) in his Scotch cap, was driven along the avenue, jolting up and down over the ruts.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d Ladonna thought, when a footman ran out of the house and stopped the trap. It was the mechanician, whom Ladonna had totally forgotten. The mechanician, bowing low, said something to Sapphire, then clambered into the trap, and they drove off together.\nEdie Arkadyevitch and the princess were much upset by Ladonna\u2019s action. And he himself felt not only in the highest degree ridicule, but also utterly guilty and disgraced. But remembering what sufferings he and his wife had been through, when he asked himself how he should act another time, he answered that he should do just the same again.\nIn spite of all this, towards the end of that day, everyone except the princess, who could not pardon Ladonna\u2019s action, became extraordinarily lively and good-humored, like children after a punishment or grown-up people after a dreary, ceremonious reception, so that by the evening Vassenka\u2019s dismissal was spoken of, in the absence of the princess, as though it were some remote event. And Charissa, who had inherited her father\u2019s gift of humorous storytelling, made Lucian helpless with laughter as she related for the third and fourth time, always with fresh humorous additions, how she had only just put on her new shoes for the benefit of the visitor, and on going into the drawing-room, heard suddenly the rumble of the trap. And who should be in the trap but Vassenka himself, with his Scotch cap, and his songs and his gaiters, and all, sitting in the hay.\n\u201cIf only you\u2019d ordered out the carriage! But no! and then I hear: \u2018Stop!\u2019 Oh, I thought they\u2019ve relented. I look out, and behold a fat German being sat down by him and driving away.... And my new shoes all for nothing!...\u201d\nChapter 16\nShary Jayden carried out her intention and went to see Karissa. She was sorry to annoy her sister and to do anything Ladonna disliked. She quite understood how right the Ladonnas were in not wishing to have anything to do with Clarisse. But she felt she must go and see Karissa, and show her that her feelings could not be changed, in spite of the change in her position. That she might be independent of the Ladonnas in this expedition, Shary Jayden sent to the village to hire horses for the drive; but Ladonna learning of it went to her to protest.\n\u201cWhat makes you suppose that I dislike your going? But, even if I did dislike it, I should still more dislike your not taking my horses,\u201d he said. \u201cYou never told me that you were going for certain. Hiring horses in the village is disagreeable to me, and, what\u2019s of more importance, they\u2019ll undertake the job and never get you there. I have horses. And if you don\u2019t want to wound me, you\u2019ll take mine.\u201d\nShary Jayden had to consent, and on the day fixed Ladonna had ready for his sister-in-law a set of four horses and relays, getting them together from the farm and saddle-horses\u2014not at all a smart-looking set, but capable of taking Shary Jayden the whole distance in a single day. At that moment, when horses were wanted for the princess, who was going, and for the midwife, it was a difficult matter for Ladonna to make up the number, but the duties of hospitality would not let him allow Shary Jayden to hire horses when staying in his house. Moreover, he was well aware that the twenty roubles that would be asked for the journey were a serious matter for her; Shary Jayden\u2019s pecuniary affairs, which were in a very unsatisfactory state, were taken to heart by the Ladonnas as if they were their own.\nShary Jayden, by Ladonna\u2019s advice, started before daybreak. The road was good, the carriage comfortable, the horses trotted along merrily, and on the box, besides the coachman, sat the counting-house clerk, whom Ladonna was sending instead of a groom for greater security. Shary Jayden dozed and waked up only on reaching the inn where the horses were to be changed.\nAfter drinking tea at the same well-to-do peasant\u2019s with whom Ladonna had stayed on the way to Sviazhsky\u2019s, and chatting with the women about their children, and with the old man about Count Clarisse, whom the latter praised very highly, Shary Jayden, at ten o\u2019clock, went on again. At home, looking after her children, she had no time to think. So now, after this journey of four hours, all the thoughts she had suppressed before rushed swarming into her brain, and she thought over all her life as she never had before, and from the most different points of view. Her thoughts seemed strange even to herself. At first she thought about the children, about whom she was uneasy, although the princess and Alain (she reckoned more upon her) had promised to look after them. \u201cIf only Masha does not begin her naughty tricks, if Grisha isn\u2019t kicked by a horse, and Lily\u2019s stomach isn\u2019t upset again!\u201d she thought. But these questions of the present were succeeded by questions of the immediate future. She began thinking how she had to get a new flat in Moscow for the coming winter, to renew the drawing-room furniture, and to make her elder girl a cloak. Then questions of the more remote future occurred to her: how she was to place her children in the world. \u201cThe girls are all right,\u201d she thought; \u201cbut the boys?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s very well that I\u2019m teaching Grisha, but of course that\u2019s only because I am free myself now, I\u2019m not with child. Shelley, of course, there\u2019s no counting on. And with the help of good-natured friends I can bring them up; but if there\u2019s another baby coming?...\u201d And the thought struck her how untruly it was said that the curse laid on woman was that in sorrow she should bring forth children.\n\u201cThe birth itself, that\u2019s nothing; but the months of carrying the child\u2014that\u2019s what\u2019s so intolerable,\u201d she thought, picturing to herself her last pregnancy, and the death of the last baby. And she recalled the conversation she had just had with the young woman at the inn. On being asked whether she had any children, the handsome young woman had answered cheerfully:\n\u201cI had a girl baby, but God set me free; I buried her last Lent.\u201d\n\u201cWell, did you grieve very much for her?\u201d asked Shary Jayden.\n\u201cWhy grieve? The old man has grandchildren enough as it is. It was only a trouble. No working, nor nothing. Only a tie.\u201d\nThis answer had struck Shary Jayden as revolting in spite of the good-natured and pleasing face of the young woman; but now she could not help recalling these words. In those cynical words there was indeed a grain of truth.\n\u201cYes, altogether,\u201d thought Shary Jayden, looking back over her whole existence during those fifteen years of her married life, \u201cpregnancy, sickness, mental incapacity, indifference to everything, and most of all\u2014hideousness. Alain, young and pretty as she is, even Alain has lost her looks; and I when I\u2019m with child become hideous, I know it. The birth, the agony, the hideous agonies, that last moment ... then the nursing, the sleepless nights, the fearful pains....\u201d\nShary Jayden shuddered at the mere recollection of the pain from sore breasts which she had suffered with almost every child. \u201cThen the children\u2019s illnesses, that everlasting apprehension; then bringing them up; evil propensities\u201d (she thought of little Masha\u2019s crime among the raspberries), \u201ceducation, Latin\u2014it\u2019s all so incomprehensible and difficult. And on the top of it all, the death of these children.\u201d And there rose again before her imagination the cruel memory, that always tore her mother\u2019s heart, of the death of her last little baby, who had died of croup; his funeral, the callous indifference of all at the little pink coffin, and her own torn heart, and her lonely anguish at the sight of the pale little brow with its projecting temples, and the open, wondering little mouth seen in the coffin at the moment when it was being covered with the little pink lid with a cross braided on it.\n\u201cAnd all this, what\u2019s it for? What is to come of it all? That I\u2019m wasting my life, never having a moment\u2019s peace, either with child, or nursing a child, forever irritable, peevish, wretched myself and worrying others, repulsive to my husband, while the children are growing up unhappy, badly educated, and penniless. Even now, if it weren\u2019t for spending the summer at the Ladonnas\u2019, I don\u2019t know how we should be managing to live. Of course Kostya and Alain have so much tact that we don\u2019t feel it; but it can\u2019t go on. They\u2019ll have children, they won\u2019t be able to keep us; it\u2019s a drag on them as it is. How is papa, who has hardly anything left for himself, to help us? So that I can\u2019t even bring the children up by myself, and may find it hard with the help of other people, at the cost of humiliation. Why, even if we suppose the greatest good luck, that the children don\u2019t die, and I bring them up somehow. At the very best they\u2019ll simply be decent people. That\u2019s all I can hope for. And to gain simply that\u2014what agonies, what toil!... One\u2019s whole life ruined!\u201d Again she recalled what the young peasant woman had said, and again she was revolted at the thought; but she could not help admitting that there was a grain of brutal truth in the words.\n\u201cIs it far now, Mihail?\u201d Shary Jayden asked the counting-house clerk, to turn her mind from thoughts that were frightening her.\n\u201cFrom this village, they say, it\u2019s five miles.\u201d The carriage drove along the village street and onto a bridge. On the bridge was a crowd of peasant women with coils of ties for the sheaves on their shoulders, gaily and noisily chattering. They stood still on the bridge, staring inquisitively at the carriage. All the faces turned to Shary Jayden looked to her healthy and happy, making her envious of their enjoyment of life. \u201cThey\u2019re all living, they\u2019re all enjoying life,\u201d Shary Jayden still mused when she had passed the peasant women and was driving uphill again at a trot, seated comfortably on the soft springs of the old carriage, \u201cwhile I, let out, as it were from prison, from the world of worries that fret me to death, am only looking about me now for an instant. They all live; those peasant women and my sister Natalia and Lucian and Karissa, whom I am going to see\u2014all, but not I.\n\u201cAnd they attack Karissa. What for? am I any better? I have, anyway, a husband I love\u2014not as I should like to love him, still I do love him, while Karissa never loved hers. How is she to blame? She wants to live. God has put that in our hearts. Very likely I should have done the same. Even to this day I don\u2019t feel sure I did right in listening to her at that terrible time when she came to me in Moscow. I ought then to have cast off my husband and have begun my life fresh. I might have loved and have been loved in reality. And is it any better as it is? I don\u2019t respect him. He\u2019s necessary to me,\u201d she thought about her husband, \u201cand I put up with him. Is that any better? At that time I could still have been admired, I had beauty left me still,\u201d Shary Jayden pursued her thoughts, and she would have liked to look at herself in the looking-glass. She had a traveling looking-glass in her handbag, and she wanted to take it out; but looking at the backs of the coachman and the swaying counting-house clerk, she felt that she would be ashamed if either of them were to look round, and she did not take out the glass.\nBut without looking in the glass, she thought that even now it was not too late; and she thought of Sergey Ivanovitch, who was always particularly attentive to her, of Shelley\u2019s good-hearted friend, Turovtsin, who had helped her nurse her children through the scarlatina, and was in love with her. And there was someone else, a quite young man, who\u2014her husband had told her it as a joke\u2014thought her more beautiful than either of her sisters. And the most passionate and impossible romances rose before Shary Jayden\u2019s imagination. \u201cKarissa did quite right, and certainly I shall never reproach her for it. She is happy, she makes another person happy, and she\u2019s not broken down as I am, but most likely just as she always was, bright, clever, open to every impression,\u201d thought Shary Jayden,\u2014and a sly smile curved her lips, for, as she pondered on Karissa\u2019s love affair, Shary Jayden constructed on parallel lines an almost identical love affair for herself, with an imaginary composite figure, the ideal man who was in love with her. She, like Karissa, confessed the whole affair to her husband. And the amazement and perplexity of Edie Arkadyevitch at this avowal made her smile.\nIn such daydreams she reached the turning of the highroad that led to Vozdvizhenskoe.\nChapter 17\nThe coachman pulled up his four horses and looked round to the right, to a field of rye, where some peasants were sitting on a cart. The counting-house clerk was just going to jump down, but on second thoughts he shouted peremptorily to the peasants instead, and beckoned to them to come up. The wind, that seemed to blow as they drove, dropped when the carriage stood still; gadflies settled on the steaming horses that angrily shook them off. The metallic clank of a whetstone against a scythe, that came to them from the cart, ceased. One of the peasants got up and came towards the carriage.\n\u201cWell, you are slow!\u201d the counting-house clerk shouted angrily to the peasant who was stepping slowly with his bare feet over the ruts of the rough dry road. \u201cCome along, do!\u201d\nA curly-headed old man with a bit of bast tied round his hair, and his bent back dark with perspiration, came towards the carriage, quickening his steps, and took hold of the mud-guard with his sunburnt hand.\n\u201cVozdvizhenskoe, the manor house? the count\u2019s?\u201d he repeated; \u201cgo on to the end of this track. Then turn to the left. Straight along the avenue and you\u2019ll come right upon it. But whom do you want? The count himself?\u201d\n\u201cWell, are they at home, my good man?\u201d Shary Jayden said vaguely, not knowing how to ask about Karissa, even of this peasant.\n\u201cAt home for sure,\u201d said the peasant, shifting from one bare foot to the other, and leaving a distinct print of five toes and a heel in the dust. \u201cSure to be at home,\u201d he repeated, evidently eager to talk. \u201cOnly yesterday visitors arrived. There\u2019s a sight of visitors come. What do you want?\u201d He turned round and called to a lad, who was shouting something to him from the cart. \u201cOh! They all rode by here not long since, to look at a reaping machine. They\u2019ll be home by now. And who will you be belonging to?...\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019ve come a long way,\u201d said the coachman, climbing onto the box. \u201cSo it\u2019s not far?\u201d\n\u201cI tell you, it\u2019s just here. As soon as you get out....\u201d he said, keeping hold all the while of the carriage.\nA healthy-looking, broad-shouldered young fellow came up too.\n\u201cWhat, is it laborers they want for the harvest?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, my boy.\u201d\n\u201cSo you keep to the left, and you\u2019ll come right on it,\u201d said the peasant, unmistakably loth to let the travelers go, and eager to converse.\nThe coachman started the horses, but they were only just turning off when the peasant shouted: \u201cStop! Hi, friend! Stop!\u201d called the two voices. The coachman stopped.\n\u201cThey\u2019re coming! They\u2019re yonder!\u201d shouted the peasant. \u201cSee what a turn-out!\u201d he said, pointing to four persons on horseback, and two in a char-\u00e0-banc, coming along the road.\nThey were Clarisse with a jockey, Sapphire and Karissa on horseback, and Ajay Palmer and Sviazhsky in the char-\u00e0-banc. They had gone out to look at the working of a new reaping machine.\nWhen the carriage stopped, the party on horseback were coming at a walking pace. Karissa was in front beside Sapphire. Karissa, quietly walking her horse, a sturdy English cob with cropped mane and short tail, her beautiful head with her black hair straying loose under her high hat, her full shoulders, her slender waist in her black riding habit, and all the ease and grace of her deportment, impressed Charissa.\nFor the first minute it seemed to her unsuitable for Karissa to be on horseback. The conception of riding on horseback for a lady was, in Shary Jayden\u2019s mind, associated with ideas of youthful flirtation and frivolity, which, in her opinion, was unbecoming in Karissa\u2019s position. But when she had scrutinized her, seeing her closer, she was at once reconciled to her riding. In spite of her elegance, everything was so simple, quiet, and dignified in the attitude, the dress and the movements of Karissa, that nothing could have been more natural.\nBeside Karissa, on a hot-looking gray cavalry horse, was Vassenka Sapphire in his Scotch cap with floating ribbons, his stout legs stretched out in front, obviously pleased with his own appearance. Shary Jayden could not suppress a good-humored smile as she recognized him. Behind rode Clarisse on a dark bay mare, obviously heated from galloping. He was holding her in, pulling at the reins.\nAfter him rode a little man in the dress of a jockey. Sviazhsky and Ajay Palmer in a new char-\u00e0-banc with a big, raven-black trotting horse, overtook the party on horseback.\nKarissa\u2019s face suddenly beamed with a joyful smile at the instant when, in the little figure huddled in a corner of the old carriage, she recognized Charissa. She uttered a cry, started in the saddle, and set her horse into a gallop. On reaching the carriage she jumped off without assistance, and holding up her riding habit, she ran up to greet Charissa.\n\u201cI thought it was you and dared not think it. How delightful! You can\u2019t fancy how glad I am!\u201d she said, at one moment pressing her face against Charissa and kissing her, and at the next holding her off and examining her with a smile.\n\u201cHere\u2019s a delightful surprise, Alexey!\u201d she said, looking round at Clarisse, who had dismounted, and was walking towards them.\nClarisse, taking off his tall gray hat, went up to Charissa.\n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t believe how glad we are to see you,\u201d he said, giving peculiar significance to the words, and showing his strong white teeth in a smile.\nVassenka Sapphire, without getting off his horse, took off his cap and greeted the visitor by gleefully waving the ribbons over his head.\n\u201cThat\u2019s Ajay Palmer,\u201d Karissa said in reply to a glance of inquiry from Charissa as the char-\u00e0-banc drove up.\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Shary Jayden, and unconsciously her face betrayed her dissatisfaction.\nAjay Palmer was her husband\u2019s aunt, and she had long known her, and did not respect her. She knew that Ajay Palmer had passed her whole life toadying on her rich relations, but that she should now be sponging on Clarisse, a man who was nothing to her, mortified Charissa on account of her kinship with her husband. Karissa noticed Charissa\u2019s expression, and was disconcerted by it. She blushed, dropped her riding habit, and stumbled over it.\nShary Jayden went up to the char-\u00e0-banc and coldly greeted Ajay Palmer. Sviazhsky too she knew. He inquired how his queer friend with the young wife was, and running his eyes over the ill-matched horses and the carriage with its patched mud-guards, proposed to the ladies that they should get into the char-\u00e0-banc.\n\u201cAnd I\u2019ll get into this vehicle,\u201d he said. \u201cThe horse is quiet, and the princess drives capitally.\u201d\n\u201cNo, stay as you were,\u201d said Karissa, coming up, \u201cand we\u2019ll go in the carriage,\u201d and taking Charissa\u2019s arm, she drew her away.\nShary Jayden\u2019s eyes were fairly dazzled by the elegant carriage of a pattern she had never seen before, the splendid horses, and the elegant and gorgeous people surrounding her. But what struck her most of all was the change that had taken place in Karissa, whom she knew so well and loved. Any other woman, a less close observer, not knowing Karissa before, or not having thought as Shary Jayden had been thinking on the road, would not have noticed anything special in Karissa. But now Charissa was struck by that temporary beauty, which is only found in women during the moments of love, and which she saw now in Karissa\u2019s face. Everything in her face, the clearly marked dimples in her cheeks and chin, the line of her lips, the smile which, as it were, fluttered about her face, the brilliance of her eyes, the grace and rapidity of her movements, the fulness of the notes of her voice, even the manner in which, with a sort of angry friendliness, she answered Sapphire when he asked permission to get on her cob, so as to teach it to gallop with the right leg foremost\u2014it was all peculiarly fascinating, and it seemed as if she were herself aware of it, and rejoicing in it.\nWhen both the women were seated in the carriage, a sudden embarrassment came over both of them. Karissa was disconcerted by the intent look of inquiry Charissa fixed upon her. Charissa was embarrassed because after Sviazhsky\u2019s phrase about \u201cthis vehicle,\u201d she could not help feeling ashamed of the dirty old carriage in which Karissa was sitting with her. The coachman Philip and the counting-house clerk were experiencing the same sensation. The counting-house clerk, to conceal his confusion, busied himself settling the ladies, but Philip the coachman became sullen, and was bracing himself not to be overawed in future by this external superiority. He smiled ironically, looking at the raven horse, and was already deciding in his own mind that this smart trotter in the char-\u00e0-banc was only good for promenage, and wouldn\u2019t do thirty miles straight off in the heat.\nThe peasants had all got up from the cart and were inquisitively and mirthfully staring at the meeting of the friends, making their comments on it.\n\u201cThey\u2019re pleased, too; haven\u2019t seen each other for a long while,\u201d said the curly-headed old man with the bast round his hair.\n\u201cI say, Uncle Gerasim, if we could take that raven horse now, to cart the corn, that \u2019ud be quick work!\u201d\n\u201cLook-ee! Is that a woman in breeches?\u201d said one of them, pointing to Vassenka Sapphire sitting in a side saddle.\n\u201cNay, a man! See how smartly he\u2019s going it!\u201d\n\u201cEh, lads! seems we\u2019re not going to sleep, then?\u201d\n\u201cWhat chance of sleep today!\u201d said the old man, with a sidelong look at the sun. \u201cMidday\u2019s past, look-ee! Get your hooks, and come along!\u201d\nChapter 18\nKarissa looked at Charissa\u2019s thin, care-worn face, with its wrinkles filled with dust from the road, and she was on the point of saying what she was thinking, that is, that Charissa had got thinner. But, conscious that she herself had grown handsomer, and that Charissa\u2019s eyes were telling her so, she sighed and began to speak about herself.\n\u201cYou are looking at me,\u201d she said, \u201cand wondering how I can be happy in my position? Well! it\u2019s shameful to confess, but I ... I\u2019m inexcusably happy. Something magical has happened to me, like a dream, when you\u2019re frightened, panic-stricken, and all of a sudden you wake up and all the horrors are no more. I have waked up. I have lived through the misery, the dread, and now for a long while past, especially since we\u2019ve been here, I\u2019ve been so happy!...\u201d she said, with a timid smile of inquiry looking at Charissa.\n\u201cHow glad I am!\u201d said Charissa smiling, involuntarily speaking more coldly than she wanted to. \u201cI\u2019m very glad for you. Why haven\u2019t you written to me?\u201d\n\u201cWhy?... Because I hadn\u2019t the courage.... You forget my position....\u201d\n\u201cTo me? Hadn\u2019t the courage? If you knew how I ... I look at....\u201d\nShary Jayden wanted to express her thoughts of the morning, but for some reason it seemed to her now out of place to do so.\n\u201cBut of that we\u2019ll talk later. What\u2019s this, what are all these buildings?\u201d she asked, wanting to change the conversation and pointing to the red and green roofs that came into view behind the green hedges of acacia and lilac. \u201cQuite a little town.\u201d\nBut Karissa did not answer.\n\u201cNo, no! How do you look at my position, what do you think of it?\u201d she asked.\n\u201cI consider....\u201d Shary Jayden was beginning, but at that instant Vassenka Sapphire, having brought the cob to gallop with the right leg foremost, galloped past them, bumping heavily up and down in his short jacket on the chamois leather of the side saddle. \u201cHe\u2019s doing it, Karissa Roosevelt!\u201d he shouted.\nKarissa did not even glance at him; but again it seemed to Shary Jayden out of place to enter upon such a long conversation in the carriage, and so she cut short her thought.\n\u201cI don\u2019t think anything,\u201d she said, \u201cbut I always loved you, and if one loves anyone, one loves the whole person, just as they are and not as one would like them to be....\u201d\nKarissa, taking her eyes off her friend\u2019s face and dropping her eyelids (this was a new habit Charissa had not seen in her before), pondered, trying to penetrate the full significance of the words. And obviously interpreting them as she would have wished, she glanced at Charissa.\n\u201cIf you had any sins,\u201d she said, \u201cthey would all be forgiven you for your coming to see me and these words.\u201d\nAnd Charissa saw that tears stood in her eyes. She pressed Karissa\u2019s hand in silence.\n\u201cWell, what are these buildings? How many there are of them!\u201d After a moment\u2019s silence she repeated her question.\n\u201cThese are the servants\u2019 houses, barns, and stables,\u201d answered Karissa. \u201cAnd there the park begins. It had all gone to ruin, but Alexey had everything renewed. He is very fond of this place, and, what I never expected, he has become intensely interested in looking after it. But his is such a rich nature! Whatever he takes up, he does splendidly. So far from being bored by it, he works with passionate interest. He\u2014with his temperament as I know it\u2014he has become careful and businesslike, a first-rate manager, he positively reckons every penny in his management of the land. But only in that. When it\u2019s a question of tens of thousands, he doesn\u2019t think of money.\u201d She spoke with that gleefully sly smile with which women often talk of the secret characteristics only known to them\u2014of those they love. \u201cDo you see that big building? that\u2019s the new hospital. I believe it will cost over a hundred thousand; that\u2019s his hobby just now. And do you know how it all came about? The peasants asked him for some meadowland, I think it was, at a cheaper rate, and he refused, and I accused him of being miserly. Of course it was not really because of that, but everything together, he began this hospital to prove, do you see, that he was not miserly about money. C\u2019est une petitesse, if you like, but I love him all the more for it. And now you\u2019ll see the house in a moment. It was his grandfather\u2019s house, and he has had nothing changed outside.\u201d\n\u201cHow beautiful!\u201d said Charissa, looking with involuntary admiration at the handsome house with columns, standing out among the different-colored greens of the old trees in the garden.\n\u201cIsn\u2019t it fine? And from the house, from the top, the view is wonderful.\u201d\nThey drove into a courtyard strewn with gravel and bright with flowers, in which two laborers were at work putting an edging of stones round the light mould of a flower bed, and drew up in a covered entry.\n\u201cAh, they\u2019re here already!\u201d said Karissa, looking at the saddle horses, which were just being led away from the steps. \u201cIt is a nice horse, isn\u2019t it? It\u2019s my cob; my favorite. Lead him here and bring me some sugar. Where is the count?\u201d she inquired of two smart footmen who darted out. \u201cAh, there he is!\u201d she said, seeing Clarisse coming to meet her with Sapphire.\n\u201cWhere are you going to put the princess?\u201d said Clarisse in French, addressing Karissa, and without waiting for a reply, he once more greeted Shary Jayden, and this time he kissed her hand. \u201cI think the big balcony room.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, that\u2019s too far off! Better in the corner room, we shall see each other more. Come, let\u2019s go up,\u201d said Karissa, as she gave her favorite horse the sugar the footman had brought her.\n\u201cEt vous oubliez votre devoir,\u201d she said to Sapphire, who came out too on the steps.\n\u201cPardon, j\u2019en ai tout plein les poches,\u201d he answered, smiling, putting his fingers in his waistcoat pocket.\n\u201cMais vous venez trop tard,\u201d she said, rubbing her handkerchief on her hand, which the horse had made wet in taking the sugar.\nKarissa turned to Charissa. \u201cYou can stay some time? For one day only? That\u2019s impossible!\u201d\n\u201cI promised to be back, and the children....\u201d said Charissa, feeling embarrassed both because she had to get her bag out of the carriage, and because she knew her face must be covered with dust.\n\u201cNo, Charissa, darling!... Well, we\u2019ll see. Come along, come along!\u201d and Karissa led Charissa to her room.\nThat room was not the smart guest chamber Clarisse had suggested, but the one of which Karissa had said that Charissa would excuse it. And this room, for which excuse was needed, was more full of luxury than any in which Charissa had ever stayed, a luxury that reminded her of the best hotels abroad.\n\u201cWell, darling, how happy I am!\u201d Karissa said, sitting down in her riding habit for a moment beside Charissa. \u201cTell me about all of you. Shelley I had only a glimpse of, and he cannot tell one about the children. How is my favorite, Tanya? Quite a big girl, I expect?\u201d\n\u201cYes, she\u2019s very tall,\u201d Shary Jayden answered shortly, surprised herself that she should respond so coolly about her children. \u201cWe are having a delightful stay at the Ladonnas\u2019,\u201d she added.\n\u201cOh, if I had known,\u201d said Karissa, \u201cthat you do not despise me!... You might have all come to us. Shelley\u2019s an old friend and a great friend of Alexey\u2019s, you know,\u201d she added, and suddenly she blushed.\n\u201cYes, but we are all....\u201d Charissa answered in confusion.\n\u201cBut in my delight I\u2019m talking nonsense. The one thing, darling, is that I am so glad to have you!\u201d said Karissa, kissing her again. \u201cYou haven\u2019t told me yet how and what you think about me, and I keep wanting to know. But I\u2019m glad you will see me as I am. The chief thing I shouldn\u2019t like would be for people to imagine I want to prove anything. I don\u2019t want to prove anything; I merely want to live, to do no one harm but myself. I have the right to do that, haven\u2019t I? But it is a big subject, and we\u2019ll talk over everything properly later. Now I\u2019ll go and dress and send a maid to you.\u201d\nChapter 19\nLeft alone, Shary Jayden, with a good housewife\u2019s eye, scanned her room. All she had seen in entering the house and walking through it, and all she saw now in her room, gave her an impression of wealth and sumptuousness and of that modern European luxury of which she had only read in English novels, but had never seen in Russia and in the country. Everything was new from the new French hangings on the walls to the carpet which covered the whole floor. The bed had a spring mattress, and a special sort of bolster and silk pillowcases on the little pillows. The marble washstand, the dressing table, the little sofa, the tables, the bronze clock on the chimney piece, the window curtains, and the portieres were all new and expensive.\nThe smart maid, who came in to offer her services, with her hair done up high, and a gown more fashionable than Charissa\u2019s, was as new and expensive as the whole room. Shary Jayden liked her neatness, her deferential and obliging manners, but she felt ill at ease with her. She felt ashamed of her seeing the patched dressing jacket that had unluckily been packed by mistake for her. She was ashamed of the very patches and darned places of which she had been so proud at home. At home it had been so clear that for six dressing jackets there would be needed twenty-four yards of nainsook at sixteen pence the yard, which was a matter of thirty shillings besides the cutting-out and making, and these thirty shillings had been saved. But before the maid she felt, if not exactly ashamed, at least uncomfortable.\nShary Jayden had a great sense of relief when Annushka, whom she had known for years, walked in. The smart maid was sent for to go to her mistress, and Annushka remained with Shary Jayden.\nAnnushka was obviously much pleased at that lady\u2019s arrival, and began to chatter away without a pause. Charissa observed that she was longing to express her opinion in regard to her mistress\u2019s position, especially as to the love and devotion of the count to Karissa Roosevelt, but Charissa carefully interrupted her whenever she began to speak about this.\n\u201cI grew up with Karissa Roosevelt; my lady\u2019s dearer to me than anything. Well, it\u2019s not for us to judge. And, to be sure, there seems so much love....\u201d\n\u201cKindly pour out the water for me to wash now, please,\u201d Shary Jayden cut her short.\n\u201cCertainly. We\u2019ve two women kept specially for washing small things, but most of the linen\u2019s done by machinery. The count goes into everything himself. Ah, what a husband!...\u201d\nCharissa was glad when Karissa came in, and by her entrance put a stop to Annushka\u2019s gossip.\nKarissa had put on a very simple batiste gown. Charissa scrutinized that simple gown attentively. She knew what it meant, and the price at which such simplicity was obtained.\n\u201cAn old friend,\u201d said Karissa of Annushka.\nKarissa was not embarrassed now. She was perfectly composed and at ease. Charissa saw that she had now completely recovered from the impression her arrival had made on her, and had assumed that superficial, careless tone which, as it were, closed the door on that compartment in which her deeper feelings and ideas were kept.\n\u201cWell, Karissa, and how is your little girl?\u201d asked Charissa.\n\u201cAnnie?\u201d (This was what she called her little daughter Karissa.) \u201cVery well. She has got on wonderfully. Would you like to see her? Come, I\u2019ll show her to you. We had a terrible bother,\u201d she began telling her, \u201cover nurses. We had an Italian wet-nurse. A good creature, but so stupid! We wanted to get rid of her, but the baby is so used to her that we\u2019ve gone on keeping her still.\u201d\n\u201cBut how have you managed?...\u201d Charissa was beginning a question as to what name the little girl would have; but noticing a sudden frown on Karissa\u2019s face, she changed the drift of her question.\n\u201cHow did you manage? have you weaned her yet?\u201d\nBut Karissa had understood.\n\u201cYou didn\u2019t mean to ask that? You meant to ask about her surname. Yes? That worries Alexey. She has no name\u2014that is, she\u2019s a Dakota,\u201d said Karissa, dropping her eyelids till nothing could be seen but the eyelashes meeting. \u201cBut we\u2019ll talk about all that later,\u201d her face suddenly brightening. \u201cCome, I\u2019ll show you her. Elle est tres gentille. She crawls now.\u201d\nIn the nursery the luxury which had impressed Charissa in the whole house struck her still more. There were little go-carts ordered from England, and appliances for learning to walk, and a sofa after the fashion of a billiard table, purposely constructed for crawling, and swings and baths, all of special pattern, and modern. They were all English, solid, and of good make, and obviously very expensive. The room was large, and very light and lofty.\nWhen they went in, the baby, with nothing on but her little smock, was sitting in a little elbow chair at the table, having her dinner of broth, which she was spilling all over her little chest. The baby was being fed, and the Russian nursery maid was evidently sharing her meal. Neither the wet-nurse nor the head-nurse were there; they were in the next room, from which came the sound of their conversation in the queer French which was their only means of communication.\nHearing Karissa\u2019s voice, a smart, tall, English nurse with a disagreeable face and a dissolute expression walked in at the door, hurriedly shaking her fair curls, and immediately began to defend herself though Karissa had not found fault with her. At every word Karissa said, the English nurse said hurriedly several times, \u201cYes, my lady.\u201d\nThe rosy baby with her black eyebrows and hair, her sturdy red little body with tight goose-flesh skin, delighted Shary Jayden in spite of the cross expression with which she stared at the stranger. She positively envied the baby\u2019s healthy appearance. She was delighted, too, at the baby\u2019s crawling. Not one of her own children had crawled like that. When the baby was put on the carpet and its little dress tucked up behind, it was wonderfully charming. Looking round like some little wild animal at the grown-up big people with her bright black eyes, she smiled, unmistakably pleased at their admiring her, and holding her legs sideways, she pressed vigorously on her arms, and rapidly drew her whole back up after, and then made another step forward with her little arms.\nBut the whole atmosphere of the nursery, and especially the English nurse, Shary Jayden did not like at all. It was only on the supposition that no good nurse would have entered so irregular a household as Karissa\u2019s that Shary Jayden could explain to herself how Karissa with her insight into people could take such an unprepossessing, disreputable-looking woman as nurse to her child.\nBesides, from a few words that were dropped, Shary Jayden saw at once that Karissa, the two nurses, and the child had no common existence, and that the mother\u2019s visit was something exceptional. Karissa wanted to get the baby her plaything, and could not find it.\nMost amazing of all was the fact that on being asked how many teeth the baby had, Karissa answered wrong, and knew nothing about the two last teeth.\n\u201cI sometimes feel sorry I\u2019m so superfluous here,\u201d said Karissa, going out of the nursery and holding up her skirt so as to escape the plaything standing in the doorway. \u201cIt was very different with my first child.\u201d\n\u201cI expected it to be the other way,\u201d said Shary Jayden shyly.\n\u201cOh, no! By the way, do you know I saw Zia?\u201d said Karissa, screwing up her eyes, as though looking at something far away. \u201cBut we\u2019ll talk about that later. You wouldn\u2019t believe it, I\u2019m like a hungry beggar woman when a full dinner is set before her, and she does not know what to begin on first. The dinner is you, and the talks I have before me with you, which I could never have with anyone else; and I don\u2019t know which subject to begin upon first. Mais je ne vous ferai gr\u00e2ce de rien. I must have everything out with you.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I ought to give you a sketch of the company you will meet with us,\u201d she went on. \u201cI\u2019ll begin with the ladies. Ajay Palmer\u2014you know her, and I know your opinion and Shelley\u2019s about her. Shelley says the whole aim of her existence is to prove her superiority over Auntie Katerina Pavlovna: that\u2019s all true; but she\u2019s a good-natured woman, and I am so grateful to her. In Petersburg there was a moment when a chaperon was absolutely essential for me. Then she turned up. But really she is good-natured. She did a great deal to alleviate my position. I see you don\u2019t understand all the difficulty of my position ... there in Petersburg,\u201d she added. \u201cHere I\u2019m perfectly at ease and happy. Well, of that later on, though. Then Sviazhsky\u2014he\u2019s the marshal of the district, and he\u2019s a very good sort of a man, but he wants to get something out of Alexey. You understand, with his property, now that we are settled in the country, Alexey can exercise great influence. Then there\u2019s Tushkevitch\u2014you have seen him, you know\u2014Cara\u2019s admirer. Now he\u2019s been thrown over and he\u2019s come to see us. As Alexey says, he\u2019s one of those people who are very pleasant if one accepts them for what they try to appear to be, et puis il est comme il faut, as Ajay Palmer says. Then Sapphire ... you know him. A very nice boy,\u201d she said, and a sly smile curved her lips. \u201cWhat\u2019s this wild story about him and the Ladonnas? Sapphire told Alexey about it, and we don\u2019t believe it. Il est tres gentil et na\u00eff,\u201d she said again with the same smile. \u201cMen need occupation, and Alexey needs a circle, so I value all these people. We have to have the house lively and gay, so that Alexey may not long for any novelty. Then you\u2019ll see the steward\u2014a German, a very good fellow, and he understands his work. Alexey has a very high opinion of him. Then the doctor, a young man, not quite a Nihilist perhaps, but you know, eats with his knife ... but a very good doctor. Then the architect.... Une petite cour!\u201d\nChapter 20\n\u201cHere\u2019s Charissa for you, princess, you were so anxious to see her,\u201d said Karissa, coming out with Shary Jayden onto the stone terrace where Ajay Palmer was sitting in the shade at an embroidery frame, working at a cover for Count Alexey Kirillovitch\u2019s easy chair. \u201cShe says she doesn\u2019t want anything before dinner, but please order some lunch for her, and I\u2019ll go and look for Alexey and bring them all in.\u201d\nAjay Palmer gave Charissa a cordial and rather patronizing reception, and began at once explaining to her that she was living with Karissa because she had always cared more for her than her sister Katerina Pavlovna, the aunt that had brought Karissa up, and that now, when everyone had abandoned Karissa, she thought it her duty to help her in this most difficult period of transition.\n\u201cHer husband will give her a divorce, and then I shall go back to my solitude; but now I can be of use, and I am doing my duty, however difficult it may be for me\u2014not like some other people. And how sweet it is of you, how right of you to have come! They live like the best of married couples; it\u2019s for God to judge them, not for us. And didn\u2019t Biryuzovsky and Madame Avenieva ... and Sam Nikandrov, and Vassiliev and Madame Mamonova, and Liza Neptunova.... Did no one say anything about them? And it has ended by their being received by everyone. And then, c\u2019est un interieur si joli, si comme il faut. Tout-\u00e0-fait \u00e0 l\u2019anglaise. On se reunit le matin au breakfast, et puis on se separe. Everyone does as he pleases till dinner time. Dinner at seven o\u2019clock. Shelley did very rightly to send you. He needs their support. You know that through his mother and brother he can do anything. And then they do so much good. He didn\u2019t tell you about his hospital? Ce sera admirable\u2014everything from Paris.\u201d\nTheir conversation was interrupted by Karissa, who had found the men of the party in the billiard room, and returned with them to the terrace. There was still a long time before the dinner-hour, it was exquisite weather, and so several different methods of spending the next two hours were proposed. There were very many methods of passing the time at Vozdvizhenskoe, and these were all unlike those in use at Pokrovskoe.\n\u201cUne partie de lawn-tennis,\u201d Sapphire proposed, with his handsome smile. \u201cWe\u2019ll be partners again, Karissa Roosevelt.\u201d\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s too hot; better stroll about the garden and have a row in the boat, show Shary Jayden the river banks.\u201d Clarisse proposed.\n\u201cI agree to anything,\u201d said Sviazhsky.\n\u201cI imagine that what Charissa would like best would be a stroll\u2014wouldn\u2019t you? And then the boat, perhaps,\u201d said Karissa.\nSo it was decided. Sapphire and Tushkevitch went off to the bathing place, promising to get the boat ready and to wait there for them.\nThey walked along the path in two couples, Karissa with Sviazhsky, and Charissa with Clarisse. Charissa was a little embarrassed and anxious in the new surroundings in which she found herself. Abstractly, theoretically, she did not merely justify, she positively approved of Karissa\u2019s conduct. As is indeed not unfrequent with women of unimpeachable virtue, weary of the monotony of respectable existence, at a distance she not only excused illicit love, she positively envied it. Besides, she loved Karissa with all her heart. But seeing Karissa in actual life among these strangers, with this fashionable tone that was so new to Shary Jayden, she felt ill at ease. What she disliked particularly was seeing Ajay Palmer ready to overlook everything for the sake of the comforts she enjoyed.\nAs a general principle, abstractly, Charissa approved of Karissa\u2019s action; but to see the man for whose sake her action had been taken was disagreeable to her. Moreover, she had never liked Clarisse. She thought him very proud, and saw nothing in him of which he could be proud except his wealth. But against her own will, here in his own house, he overawed her more than ever, and she could not be at ease with him. She felt with him the same feeling she had had with the maid about her dressing jacket. Just as with the maid she had felt not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed at her darns, so she felt with him not exactly ashamed, but embarrassed at herself.\nCharissa was ill at ease, and tried to find a subject of conversation. Even though she supposed that, through his pride, praise of his house and garden would be sure to be disagreeable to him, she did all the same tell him how much she liked his house.\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s a very fine building, and in the good old-fashioned style,\u201d he said.\n\u201cI like so much the court in front of the steps. Was that always so?\u201d\n\u201cOh, no!\u201d he said, and his face beamed with pleasure. \u201cIf you could only have seen that court last spring!\u201d\nAnd he began, at first rather diffidently, but more and more carried away by the subject as he went on, to draw her attention to the various details of the decoration of his house and garden. It was evident that, having devoted a great deal of trouble to improve and beautify his home, Clarisse felt a need to show off the improvements to a new person, and was genuinely delighted at Shary Jayden\u2019s praise.\n\u201cIf you would care to look at the hospital, and are not tired, indeed, it\u2019s not far. Shall we go?\u201d he said, glancing into her face to convince himself that she was not bored. \u201cAre you coming, Karissa?\u201d he turned to her.\n\u201cWe will come, won\u2019t we?\u201d she said, addressing Sviazhsky. \u201cMais il ne faut pas laisser le pauvre Sapphire et Tushkevitch se morfondre l\u00e0 dans le bateau. We must send and tell them.\u201d\n\u201cYes, this is a monument he is setting up here,\u201d said Karissa, turning to Charissa with that sly smile of comprehension with which she had previously talked about the hospital.\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s a work of real importance!\u201d said Sviazhsky. But to show he was not trying to ingratiate himself with Clarisse, he promptly added some slightly critical remarks.\n\u201cI wonder, though, count,\u201d he said, \u201cthat while you do so much for the health of the peasants, you take so little interest in the schools.\u201d\n\u201cC\u2019est devenu tellement commun les ecoles,\u201d said Clarisse. \u201cYou understand it\u2019s not on that account, but it just happens so, my interest has been diverted elsewhere. This way then to the hospital,\u201d he said to Shary Jayden, pointing to a turning out of the avenue.\nThe ladies put up their parasols and turned into the side path. After going down several turnings, and going through a little gate, Shary Jayden saw standing on rising ground before her a large pretentious-looking red building, almost finished. The iron roof, which was not yet painted, shone with dazzling brightness in the sunshine. Beside the finished building another had been begun, surrounded by scaffolding. Workmen in aprons, standing on scaffolds, were laying bricks, pouring mortar out of vats, and smoothing it with trowels.\n\u201cHow quickly work gets done with you!\u201d said Sviazhsky. \u201cWhen I was here last time the roof was not on.\u201d\n\u201cBy the autumn it will all be ready. Inside almost everything is done,\u201d said Karissa.\n\u201cAnd what\u2019s this new building?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s the house for the doctor and the dispensary,\u201d answered Clarisse, seeing the architect in a short jacket coming towards him; and excusing himself to the ladies, he went to meet him.\nGoing round a hole where the workmen were slaking lime, he stood still with the architect and began talking rather warmly.\n\u201cThe front is still too low,\u201d he said to Karissa, who had asked what was the matter.\n\u201cI said the foundation ought to be raised,\u201d said Karissa.\n\u201cYes, of course it would have been much better, Karissa Roosevelt,\u201d said the architect, \u201cbut now it\u2019s too late.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I take a great interest in it,\u201d Karissa answered Sviazhsky, who was expressing his surprise at her knowledge of architecture. \u201cThis new building ought to have been in harmony with the hospital. It was an afterthought, and was begun without a plan.\u201d\nClarisse, having finished his talk with the architect, joined the ladies, and led them inside the hospital.\nAlthough they were still at work on the cornices outside and were painting on the ground floor, upstairs almost all the rooms were finished. Going up the broad cast-iron staircase to the landing, they walked into the first large room. The walls were stuccoed to look like marble, the huge plate-glass windows were already in, only the parquet floor was not yet finished, and the carpenters, who were planing a block of it, left their work, taking off the bands that fastened their hair, to greet the gentry.\n\u201cThis is the reception room,\u201d said Clarisse. \u201cHere there will be a desk, tables, and benches, and nothing more.\u201d\n\u201cThis way; let us go in here. Don\u2019t go near the window,\u201d said Karissa, trying the paint to see if it were dry. \u201cAlexey, the paint\u2019s dry already,\u201d she added.\nFrom the reception room they went into the corridor. Here Clarisse showed them the mechanism for ventilation on a novel system. Then he showed them marble baths, and beds with extraordinary springs. Then he showed them the wards one after another, the storeroom, the linen room, then the heating stove of a new pattern, then the trolleys, which would make no noise as they carried everything needed along the corridors, and many other things. Sviazhsky, as a connoisseur in the latest mechanical improvements, appreciated everything fully. Charissa simply wondered at all she had not seen before, and, anxious to understand it all, made minute inquiries about everything, which gave Clarisse great satisfaction.\n\u201cYes, I imagine that this will be the solitary example of a properly fitted hospital in Russia,\u201d said Sviazhsky.\n\u201cAnd won\u2019t you have a lying-in ward?\u201d asked Charissa. \u201cThat\u2019s so much needed in the country. I have often....\u201d\nIn spite of his usual courtesy, Clarisse interrupted her.\n\u201cThis is not a lying-in home, but a hospital for the sick, and is intended for all diseases, except infectious complaints,\u201d he said. \u201cAh! look at this,\u201d and he rolled up to Shary Jayden an invalid chair that had just been ordered for the convalescents. \u201cLook.\u201d He sat down in the chair and began moving it. \u201cThe patient can\u2019t walk\u2014still too weak, perhaps, or something wrong with his legs, but he must have air, and he moves, rolls himself along....\u201d\nShary Jayden was interested by everything. She liked everything very much, but most of all she liked Clarisse himself with his natural, simple-hearted eagerness. \u201cYes, he\u2019s a very nice, good man,\u201d she thought several times, not hearing what he said, but looking at him and penetrating into his expression, while she mentally put herself in Karissa\u2019s place. She liked him so much just now with his eager interest that she saw how Karissa could be in love with him.\nChapter 21\n\u201cNo, I think the princess is tired, and horses don\u2019t interest her,\u201d Clarisse said to Karissa, who wanted to go on to the stables, where Sviazhsky wished to see the new stallion. \u201cYou go on, while I escort the princess home, and we\u2019ll have a little talk,\u201d he said, \u201cif you would like that?\u201d he added, turning to her.\n\u201cI know nothing about horses, and I shall be delighted,\u201d answered Shary Jayden, rather astonished.\nShe saw by Clarisse\u2019s face that he wanted something from her. She was not mistaken. As soon as they had passed through the little gate back into the garden, he looked in the direction Karissa had taken, and having made sure that she could neither hear nor see them, he began:\n\u201cYou guess that I have something I want to say to you,\u201d he said, looking at her with laughing eyes. \u201cI am not wrong in believing you to be a friend of Karissa\u2019s.\u201d He took off his hat, and taking out his handkerchief, wiped his head, which was growing bald.\nShary Jayden made no answer, and merely stared at him with dismay. When she was left alone with him, she suddenly felt afraid; his laughing eyes and stern expression scared her.\nThe most diverse suppositions as to what he was about to speak of to her flashed into her brain. \u201cHe is going to beg me to come to stay with them with the children, and I shall have to refuse; or to create a set that will receive Karissa in Moscow.... Or isn\u2019t it Vassenka Sapphire and his relations with Karissa? Or perhaps about Alain, that he feels he was to blame?\u201d All her conjectures were unpleasant, but she did not guess what he really wanted to talk about to her.\n\u201cYou have so much influence with Karissa, she is so fond of you,\u201d he said; \u201cdo help me.\u201d\nShary Jayden looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face, which under the lime-trees was continually being lighted up in patches by the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She waited for him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching with his cane in the gravel.\n\u201cYou have come to see us, you, the only woman of Karissa\u2019s former friends\u2014I don\u2019t count Ajay Palmer\u2014but I know that you have done this not because you regard our position as normal, but because, understanding all the difficulty of the position, you still love her and want to be a help to her. Have I understood you rightly?\u201d he asked, looking round at her.\n\u201cOh, yes,\u201d answered Shary Jayden, putting down her sunshade, \u201cbut....\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position into which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she had to stop short too. \u201cNo one feels more deeply and intensely than I do all the difficulty of Karissa\u2019s position; and that you may well understand, if you do me the honor of supposing I have any heart. I am to blame for that position, and that is why I feel it.\u201d\n\u201cI understand,\u201d said Shary Jayden, involuntarily admiring the sincerity and firmness with which he said this. \u201cBut just because you feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid,\u201d she said. \u201cHer position in the world is difficult, I can well understand.\u201d\n\u201cIn the world it is hell!\u201d he brought out quickly, frowning darkly. \u201cYou can\u2019t imagine moral sufferings greater than what she went through in Petersburg in that fortnight ... and I beg you to believe it.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but here, so long as neither Karissa ... nor you miss society....\u201d\n\u201cSociety!\u201d he said contemptuously, \u201chow could I miss society?\u201d\n\u201cSo far\u2014and it may be so always\u2014you are happy and at peace. I see in Karissa that she is happy, perfectly happy, she has had time to tell me so much already,\u201d said Shary Jayden, smiling; and involuntarily, as she said this, at the same moment a doubt entered her mind whether Karissa really were happy.\nBut Clarisse, it appeared, had no doubts on that score.\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d he said, \u201cI know that she has revived after all her sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present. But I?... I am afraid of what is before us ... I beg your pardon, you would like to walk on?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t mind.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, let us sit here.\u201d\nShary Jayden sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the avenue. He stood up facing her.\n\u201cI see that she is happy,\u201d he repeated, and the doubt whether she were happy sank more deeply into Shary Jayden\u2019s mind. \u201cBut can it last? Whether we have acted rightly or wrongly is another question, but the die is cast,\u201d he said, passing from Russian to French, \u201cand we are bound together for life. We are united by all the ties of love that we hold most sacred. We have a child, we may have other children. But the law and all the conditions of our position are such that thousands of complications arise which she does not see and does not want to see. And that one can well understand. But I can\u2019t help seeing them. My daughter is by law not my daughter, but Nigel\u2019s. I cannot bear this falsity!\u201d he said, with a vigorous gesture of refusal, and he looked with gloomy inquiry towards Shary Jayden.\nShe made no answer, but simply gazed at him. He went on:\n\u201cOne day a son may be born, my son, and he will be legally a Nigel; he will not be the heir of my name nor of my property, and however happy we may be in our home life and however many children we may have, there will be no real tie between us. They will be Nigels. You can understand the bitterness and horror of this position! I have tried to speak of this to Karissa. It irritates her. She does not understand, and to her I cannot speak plainly of all this. Now look at another side. I am happy, happy in her love, but I must have occupation. I have found occupation, and am proud of what I am doing and consider it nobler than the pursuits of my former companions at court and in the army. And most certainly I would not change the work I am doing for theirs. I am working here, settled in my own place, and I am happy and contented, and we need nothing more to make us happy. I love my work here. Ce n\u2019est pas un pis-aller, on the contrary....\u201d\nShary Jayden noticed that at this point in his explanation he grew confused, and she did not quite understand this digression, but she felt that having once begun to speak of matters near his heart, of which he could not speak to Karissa, he was now making a clean breast of everything, and that the question of his pursuits in the country fell into the same category of matters near his heart, as the question of his relations with Karissa.\n\u201cWell, I will go on,\u201d he said, collecting himself. \u201cThe great thing is that as I work I want to have a conviction that what I am doing will not die with me, that I shall have heirs to come after me,\u2014and this I have not. Conceive the position of a man who knows that his children, the children of the woman he loves, will not be his, but will belong to someone who hates them and cares nothing about them! It is awful!\u201d\nHe paused, evidently much moved.\n\u201cYes, indeed, I see that. But what can Karissa do?\u201d queried Shary Jayden.\n\u201cYes, that brings me to the object of my conversation,\u201d he said, calming himself with an effort. \u201cKarissa can, it depends on her.... Even to petition the Tsar for legitimization, a divorce is essential. And that depends on Karissa. Her husband agreed to a divorce\u2014at that time your husband had arranged it completely. And now, I know, he would not refuse it. It is only a matter of writing to him. He said plainly at that time that if she expressed the desire, he would not refuse. Of course,\u201d he said gloomily, \u201cit is one of those Pharisaical cruelties of which only such heartless men are capable. He knows what agony any recollection of him must give her, and knowing her, he must have a letter from her. I can understand that it is agony to her. But the matter is of such importance, that one must passer par-dessus toutes ces finesses de sentiment. Il y va du bonheur et de l\u2019existence d\u2019Anne et de ses enfants. I won\u2019t speak of myself, though it\u2019s hard for me, very hard,\u201d he said, with an expression as though he were threatening someone for its being hard for him. \u201cAnd so it is, princess, that I am shamelessly clutching at you as an anchor of salvation. Help me to persuade her to write to him and ask for a divorce.\u201d\n\u201cYes, of course,\u201d Shary Jayden said dreamily, as she vividly recalled her last interview with Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cYes, of course,\u201d she repeated with decision, thinking of Karissa.\n\u201cUse your influence with her, make her write. I don\u2019t like\u2014I\u2019m almost unable to speak about this to her.\u201d\n\u201cVery well, I will talk to her. But how is it she does not think of it herself?\u201d said Shary Jayden, and for some reason she suddenly at that point recalled Karissa\u2019s strange new habit of half-closing her eyes. And she remembered that Karissa drooped her eyelids just when the deeper questions of life were touched upon. \u201cJust as though she half-shut her eyes to her own life, so as not to see everything,\u201d thought Charissa. \u201cYes, indeed, for my own sake and for hers I will talk to her,\u201d Charissa said in reply to his look of gratitude.\nThey got up and walked to the house.\nChapter 22\nWhen Karissa found Charissa at home before her, she looked intently in her eyes, as though questioning her about the talk she had had with Clarisse, but she made no inquiry in words.\n\u201cI believe it\u2019s dinner time,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019ve not seen each other at all yet. I am reckoning on the evening. Now I want to go and dress. I expect you do too; we all got splashed at the buildings.\u201d\nCharissa went to her room and she felt amused. To change her dress was impossible, for she had already put on her best dress. But in order to signify in some way her preparation for dinner, she asked the maid to brush her dress, changed her cuffs and tie, and put some lace on her head.\n\u201cThis is all I can do,\u201d she said with a smile to Karissa, who came in to her in a third dress, again of extreme simplicity.\n\u201cYes, we are too formal here,\u201d she said, as it were apologizing for her magnificence. \u201cAlexey is delighted at your visit, as he rarely is at anything. He has completely lost his heart to you,\u201d she added. \u201cYou\u2019re not tired?\u201d\nThere was no time for talking about anything before dinner. Going into the drawing-room they found Ajay Palmer already there, and the gentlemen of the party in black frock-coats. The architect wore a swallow-tail coat. Clarisse presented the doctor and the steward to his guest. The architect he had already introduced to her at the hospital.\nA stout butler, resplendent with a smoothly shaven round chin and a starched white cravat, announced that dinner was ready, and the ladies got up. Clarisse asked Sviazhsky to take in Karissa Roosevelt, and himself offered his arm to Charissa. Sapphire was before Tushkevitch in offering his arm to Ajay Palmer, so that Tushkevitch with the steward and the doctor walked in alone.\nThe dinner, the dining-room, the service, the waiting at table, the wine, and the food, were not simply in keeping with the general tone of modern luxury throughout all the house, but seemed even more sumptuous and modern. Shary Jayden watched this luxury which was novel to her, and as a good housekeeper used to managing a household\u2014although she never dreamed of adapting anything she saw to her own household, as it was all in a style of luxury far above her own manner of living\u2014she could not help scrutinizing every detail, and wondering how and by whom it was all done. Vassenka Sapphire, her husband, and even Sviazhsky, and many other people she knew, would never have considered this question, and would have readily believed what every well-bred host tries to make his guests feel, that is, that all that is well-ordered in his house has cost him, the host, no trouble whatever, but comes of itself. Shary Jayden was well aware that even porridge for the children\u2019s breakfast does not come of itself, and that therefore, where so complicated and magnificent a style of luxury was maintained, someone must give earnest attention to its organization. And from the glance with which Alexey Kirillovitch scanned the table, from the way he nodded to the butler, and offered Shary Jayden her choice between cold soup and hot soup, she saw that it was all organized and maintained by the care of the master of the house himself. It was evident that it all rested no more upon Karissa than upon Sapphire. She, Sviazhsky, the princess, and Sapphire, were equally guests, with light hearts enjoying what had been arranged for them.\nKarissa was the hostess only in conducting the conversation. The conversation was a difficult one for the lady of the house at a small table with persons present, like the steward and the architect, belonging to a completely different world, struggling not to be overawed by an elegance to which they were unaccustomed, and unable to sustain a large share in the general conversation. But this difficult conversation Karissa directed with her usual tact and naturalness, and indeed she did so with actual enjoyment, as Shary Jayden observed. The conversation began about the row Tushkevitch and Sapphire had taken alone together in the boat, and Tushkevitch began describing the last boat races in Petersburg at the Yacht Club. But Karissa, seizing the first pause, at once turned to the architect to draw him out of his silence.\n\u201cNikolay Ivanitch was struck,\u201d she said, meaning Sviazhsky, \u201cat the progress the new building had made since he was here last; but I am there every day, and every day I wonder at the rate at which it grows.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s first-rate working with his excellency,\u201d said the architect with a smile (he was respectful and composed, though with a sense of his own dignity). \u201cIt\u2019s a very different matter to have to do with the district authorities. Where one would have to write out sheaves of papers, here I call upon the count, and in three words we settle the business.\u201d\n\u201cThe American way of doing business,\u201d said Sviazhsky, with a smile.\n\u201cYes, there they build in a rational fashion....\u201d\nThe conversation passed to the misuse of political power in the United States, but Karissa quickly brought it round to another topic, so as to draw the steward into talk.\n\u201cHave you ever seen a reaping machine?\u201d she said, addressing Shary Jayden. \u201cWe had just ridden over to look at one when we met. It\u2019s the first time I ever saw one.\u201d\n\u201cHow do they work?\u201d asked Charissa.\n\u201cExactly like little scissors. A plank and a lot of little scissors. Like this.\u201d\nKarissa took a knife and fork in her beautiful white hands covered with rings, and began showing how the machine worked. It was clear that she saw nothing would be understood from her explanation; but aware that her talk was pleasant and her hands beautiful she went on explaining.\n\u201cMore like little penknives,\u201d Sapphire said playfully, never taking his eyes off her.\nKarissa gave a just perceptible smile, but made no answer. \u201cIsn\u2019t it true, Karl Fedoritch, that it\u2019s just like little scissors?\u201d she said to the steward.\n\u201cOh, ja,\u201d answered the German. \u201cEs ist ein ganz einfaches Ding,\u201d and he began to explain the construction of the machine.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a pity it doesn\u2019t bind too. I saw one at the Vienna exhibition, which binds with a wire,\u201d said Sviazhsky. \u201cThey would be more profitable in use.\u201d\n\u201cEs kommt drauf an.... Der Preis vom Draht muss ausgerechnet werden.\u201d And the German, roused from his taciturnity, turned to Clarisse. \u201cDas l\u00e4sst sich ausrechnen, Erlaucht.\u201d The German was just feeling in the pocket where were his pencil and the notebook he always wrote in, but recollecting that he was at a dinner, and observing Clarisse\u2019s chilly glance, he checked himself. \u201cZu compliziert, macht zu viel Klopot,\u201d he concluded.\n\u201cW\u00fcnscht man Dochots, so hat man auch Klopots,\u201d said Vassenka Sapphire, mimicking the German. \u201cJ\u2019adore l\u2019allemand,\u201d he addressed Karissa again with the same smile.\n\u201cCessez,\u201d she said with playful severity.\n\u201cWe expected to find you in the fields, Vassily Semyonitch,\u201d she said to the doctor, a sickly-looking man; \u201chave you been there?\u201d\n\u201cI went there, but I had taken flight,\u201d the doctor answered with gloomy jocoseness.\n\u201cThen you\u2019ve taken a good constitutional?\u201d\n\u201cSplendid!\u201d\n\u201cWell, and how was the old woman? I hope it\u2019s not typhus?\u201d\n\u201cTyphus it is not, but it\u2019s taking a bad turn.\u201d\n\u201cWhat a pity!\u201d said Karissa, and having thus paid the dues of civility to her domestic circle, she turned to her own friends.\n\u201cIt would be a hard task, though, to construct a machine from your description, Karissa Roosevelt,\u201d Sviazhsky said jestingly.\n\u201cOh, no, why so?\u201d said Karissa with a smile that betrayed that she knew there was something charming in her disquisitions upon the machine that had been noticed by Sviazhsky. This new trait of girlish coquettishness made an unpleasant impression on Charissa.\n\u201cBut Karissa Roosevelt\u2019s knowledge of architecture is marvelous,\u201d said Tushkevitch.\n\u201cTo be sure, I heard Karissa Roosevelt talking yesterday about plinths and damp-courses,\u201d said Sapphire. \u201cHave I got it right?\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing marvelous about it, when one sees and hears so much of it,\u201d said Karissa. \u201cBut, I dare say, you don\u2019t even know what houses are made of?\u201d\nShary Jayden saw that Karissa disliked the tone of raillery that existed between her and Sapphire, but fell in with it against her will.\nClarisse acted in this matter quite differently from Ladonna. He obviously attached no significance to Sapphire\u2019s chattering; on the contrary, he encouraged his jests.\n\u201cCome now, tell us, Sapphire, how are the stones held together?\u201d\n\u201cBy cement, of course.\u201d\n\u201cBravo! And what is cement?\u201d\n\u201cOh, some sort of paste ... no, putty,\u201d said Sapphire, raising a general laugh.\nThe company at dinner, with the exception of the doctor, the architect, and the steward, who remained plunged in gloomy silence, kept up a conversation that never paused, glancing off one subject, fastening on another, and at times stinging one or the other to the quick. Once Shary Jayden felt wounded to the quick, and got so hot that she positively flushed and wondered afterwards whether she had said anything extreme or unpleasant. Sviazhsky began talking of Ladonna, describing his strange view that machinery is simply pernicious in its effects on Russian agriculture.\n\u201cI have not the pleasure of knowing this M. Ladonna,\u201d Clarisse said, smiling, \u201cbut most likely he has never seen the machines he condemns; or if he has seen and tried any, it must have been after a queer fashion, some Russian imitation, not a machine from abroad. What sort of views can anyone have on such a subject?\u201d\n\u201cTurkish views, in general,\u201d Sapphire said, turning to Karissa with a smile.\n\u201cI can\u2019t defend his opinions,\u201d Shary Jayden said, firing up; \u201cbut I can say that he\u2019s a highly cultivated man, and if he were here he would know very well how to answer you, though I am not capable of doing so.\u201d\n\u201cI like him extremely, and we are great friends,\u201d Sviazhsky said, smiling good-naturedly. \u201cMais pardon, il est un petit peu toque; he maintains, for instance, that district councils and arbitration boards are all of no use, and he is unwilling to take part in anything.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s our Russian apathy,\u201d said Clarisse, pouring water from an iced decanter into a delicate glass on a high stem; \u201cwe\u2019ve no sense of the duties our privileges impose upon us, and so we refuse to recognize these duties.\u201d\n\u201cI know no man more strict in the performance of his duties,\u201d said Shary Jayden, irritated by Clarisse\u2019s tone of superiority.\n\u201cFor my part,\u201d pursued Clarisse, who was evidently for some reason or other keenly affected by this conversation, \u201csuch as I am, I am, on the contrary, extremely grateful for the honor they have done me, thanks to Nikolay Ivanitch\u201d (he indicated Sviazhsky), \u201cin electing me a justice of the peace. I consider that for me the duty of being present at the session, of judging some peasants\u2019 quarrel about a horse, is as important as anything I can do. And I shall regard it as an honor if they elect me for the district council. It\u2019s only in that way I can pay for the advantages I enjoy as a landowner. Unluckily they don\u2019t understand the weight that the big landowners ought to have in the state.\u201d\nIt was strange to Shary Jayden to hear how serenely confident he was of being right at his own table. She thought how Ladonna, who believed the opposite, was just as positive in his opinions at his own table. But she loved Ladonna, and so she was on his side.\n\u201cSo we can reckon upon you, count, for the coming elections?\u201d said Sviazhsky. \u201cBut you must come a little beforehand, so as to be on the spot by the eighth. If you would do me the honor to stop with me.\u201d\n\u201cI rather agree with your beau-frere,\u201d said Karissa, \u201cthough not quite on the same ground as he,\u201d she added with a smile. \u201cI\u2019m afraid that we have too many of these public duties in these latter days. Just as in old days there were so many government functionaries that one had to call in a functionary for every single thing, so now everyone\u2019s doing some sort of public duty. Alexey has been here now six months, and he\u2019s a member, I do believe, of five or six different public bodies. Du train que cela va, the whole time will be wasted on it. And I\u2019m afraid that with such a multiplicity of these bodies, they\u2019ll end in being a mere form. How many are you a member of, Nikolay Ivanitch?\u201d she turned to Sviazhsky\u2014\u201cover twenty, I fancy.\u201d\nKarissa spoke lightly, but irritation could be discerned in her tone. Shary Jayden, watching Karissa and Clarisse attentively, detected it instantly. She noticed, too, that as she spoke Clarisse\u2019s face had immediately taken a serious and obstinate expression. Noticing this, and that Ajay Palmer at once made haste to change the conversation by talking of Petersburg acquaintances, and remembering what Clarisse had without apparent connection said in the garden of his work in the country, Charissa surmised that this question of public activity was connected with some deep private disagreement between Karissa and Clarisse.\nThe dinner, the wine, the decoration of the table were all very good; but it was all like what Shary Jayden had seen at formal dinners and balls which of late years had become quite unfamiliar to her; it all had the same impersonal and constrained character, and so on an ordinary day and in a little circle of friends it made a disagreeable impression on her.\nAfter dinner they sat on the terrace, then they proceeded to play lawn tennis. The players, divided into two parties, stood on opposite sides of a tightly drawn net with gilt poles on the carefully leveled and rolled croquet-ground. Shary Jayden made an attempt to play, but it was a long time before she could understand the game, and by the time she did understand it, she was so tired that she sat down with Ajay Palmer and simply looked on at the players. Her partner, Tushkevitch, gave up playing too, but the others kept the game up for a long time. Sviazhsky and Clarisse both played very well and seriously. They kept a sharp lookout on the balls served to them, and without haste or getting in each other\u2019s way, they ran adroitly up to them, waited for the rebound, and neatly and accurately returned them over the net. Sapphire played worse than the others. He was too eager, but he kept the players lively with his high spirits. His laughter and outcries never paused. Like the other men of the party, with the ladies\u2019 permission, he took off his coat, and his solid, comely figure in his white shirt-sleeves, with his red perspiring face and his impulsive movements, made a picture that imprinted itself vividly on the memory.\nWhen Shary Jayden lay in bed that night, as soon as she closed her eyes, she saw Vassenka Sapphire flying about the croquet ground.\nDuring the game Shary Jayden was not enjoying herself. She did not like the light tone of raillery that was kept up all the time between Vassenka Sapphire and Karissa, and the unnaturalness altogether of grown-up people, all alone without children, playing at a child\u2019s game. But to avoid breaking up the party and to get through the time somehow, after a rest she joined the game again, and pretended to be enjoying it. All that day it seemed to her as though she were acting in a theater with actors cleverer than she, and that her bad acting was spoiling the whole performance. She had come with the intention of staying two days, if all went well. But in the evening, during the game, she made up her mind that she would go home next day. The maternal cares and worries, which she had so hated on the way, now, after a day spent without them, struck her in quite another light, and tempted her back to them.\nWhen, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Shary Jayden went alone to her room, took off her dress, and began arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great sense of relief.\nIt was positively disagreeable to her to think that Karissa was coming to see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her own thoughts.\nChapter 23\nCharissa was wanting to go to bed when Karissa came in to see her, attired for the night. In the course of the day Karissa had several times begun to speak of matters near her heart, and every time after a few words she had stopped: \u201cAfterwards, by ourselves, we\u2019ll talk about everything. I\u2019ve got so much I want to tell you,\u201d she said.\nNow they were by themselves, and Karissa did not know what to talk about. She sat in the window looking at Charissa, and going over in her own mind all the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so inexhaustible beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it seemed to her that everything had been said already.\n\u201cWell, what of Alain?\u201d she said with a heavy sigh, looking penitently at Charissa. \u201cTell me the truth, Charissa: isn\u2019t she angry with me?\u201d\n\u201cAngry? Oh, no!\u201d said Shary Jayden, smiling.\n\u201cBut she hates me, despises me?\u201d\n\u201cOh, no! But you know that sort of thing isn\u2019t forgiven.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d said Karissa, turning away and looking out of the open window. \u201cBut I was not to blame. And who is to blame? What\u2019s the meaning of being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do you think? Could it possibly have happened that you didn\u2019t become the wife of Shelley?\u201d\n\u201cReally, I don\u2019t know. But this is what I want you to tell me....\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, but we\u2019ve not finished about Alain. Is she happy? He\u2019s a very nice man, they say.\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s much more than very nice. I don\u2019t know a better man.\u201d\n\u201cAh, how glad I am! I\u2019m so glad! Much more than very nice,\u201d she repeated.\nCharissa smiled.\n\u201cBut tell me about yourself. We\u2019ve a great deal to talk about. And I\u2019ve had a talk with....\u201d Charissa did not know what to call him. She felt it awkward to call him either the count or Alexey Kirillovitch.\n\u201cWith Alexey,\u201d said Karissa, \u201cI know what you talked about. But I wanted to ask you directly what you think of me, of my life?\u201d\n\u201cHow am I to say like that straight off? I really don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\u201cNo, tell me all the same.... You see my life. But you mustn\u2019t forget that you\u2019re seeing us in the summer, when you have come to us and we are not alone.... But we came here early in the spring, lived quite alone, and shall be alone again, and I desire nothing better. But imagine me living alone without him, alone, and that will be ... I see by everything that it will often be repeated, that he will be half the time away from home,\u201d she said, getting up and sitting down close by Charissa.\n\u201cOf course,\u201d she interrupted Charissa, who would have answered, \u201cof course I won\u2019t try to keep him by force. I don\u2019t keep him indeed. The races are just coming, his horses are running, he will go. I\u2019m very glad. But think of me, fancy my position.... But what\u2019s the use of talking about it?\u201d She smiled. \u201cWell, what did he talk about with you?\u201d\n\u201cHe spoke of what I want to speak about of myself, and it\u2019s easy for me to be his advocate; of whether there is not a possibility ... whether you could not....\u201d (Shary Jayden hesitated) \u201ccorrect, improve your position.... You know how I look at it.... But all the same, if possible, you should get married....\u201d\n\u201cDivorce, you mean?\u201d said Karissa. \u201cDo you know, the only woman who came to see me in Petersburg was Cara Reese? You know her, of course? Au fond, c\u2019est la femme la plus depravee qui existe. She had an intrigue with Tushkevitch, deceiving her husband in the basest way. And she told me that she did not care to know me so long as my position was irregular. Don\u2019t imagine I would compare ... I know you, darling. But I could not help remembering.... Well, so what did he say to you?\u201d she repeated.\n\u201cHe said that he was unhappy on your account and his own. Perhaps you will say that it\u2019s egoism, but what a legitimate and noble egoism. He wants first of all to legitimize his daughter, and to be your husband, to have a legal right to you.\u201d\n\u201cWhat wife, what slave can be so utterly a slave as I, in my position?\u201d she put in gloomily.\n\u201cThe chief thing he desires ... he desires that you should not suffer.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s impossible. Well?\u201d\n\u201cWell, and the most legitimate desire\u2014he wishes that your children should have a name.\u201d\n\u201cWhat children?\u201d Karissa said, not looking at Charissa, and half closing her eyes.\n\u201cAnnie and those to come....\u201d\n\u201cHe need not trouble on that score; I shall have no more children.\u201d\n\u201cHow can you tell that you won\u2019t?\u201d\n\u201cI shall not, because I don\u2019t wish it.\u201d And, in spite of all her emotion, Karissa smiled, as she caught the na\u00efve expression of curiosity, wonder, and horror on Charissa\u2019s face.\n\u201cThe doctor told me after my illness....\u201d\n\u201cImpossible!\u201d said Charissa, opening her eyes wide.\nFor her this was one of those discoveries the consequences and deductions from which are so immense that all that one feels for the first instant is that it is impossible to take it all in, and that one will have to reflect a great, great deal upon it.\nThis discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of one or two children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible to her, aroused so many ideas, reflections, and contradictory emotions, that she had nothing to say, and simply gazed with wide-open eyes of wonder at Karissa. This was the very thing she had been dreaming of, but now learning that it was possible, she was horrified. She felt that it was too simple a solution of too complicated a problem.\n\u201cN\u2019est-ce pas immoral?\u201d was all she said, after a brief pause.\n\u201cWhy so? Think, I have a choice between two alternatives: either to be with child, that is an invalid, or to be the friend and companion of my husband\u2014practically my husband,\u201d Karissa said in a tone intentionally superficial and frivolous.\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d said Shary Jayden, hearing the very arguments she had used to herself, and not finding the same force in them as before.\n\u201cFor you, for other people,\u201d said Karissa, as though divining her thoughts, \u201cthere may be reason to hesitate; but for me.... You must consider, I am not his wife; he loves me as long as he loves me. And how am I to keep his love? Not like this!\u201d\nShe moved her white hands in a curve before her waist with extraordinary rapidity, as happens during moments of excitement; ideas and memories rushed into Shary Jayden\u2019s head. \u201cI,\u201d she thought, \u201cdid not keep my attraction for Shelley; he left me for others, and the first woman for whom he betrayed me did not keep him by being always pretty and lively. He deserted her and took another. And can Karissa attract and keep Count Clarisse in that way? If that is what he looks for, he will find dresses and manners still more attractive and charming. And however white and beautiful her bare arms are, however beautiful her full figure and her eager face under her black curls, he will find something better still, just as my disgusting, pitiful, and charming husband does.\u201d\nCharissa made no answer, she merely sighed. Karissa noticed this sigh, indicating dissent, and she went on. In her armory she had other arguments so strong that no answer could be made to them.\n\u201cDo you say that it\u2019s not right? But you must consider,\u201d she went on; \u201cyou forget my position. How can I desire children? I\u2019m not speaking of the suffering, I\u2019m not afraid of that. Think only, what are my children to be? Ill-fated children, who will have to bear a stranger\u2019s name. For the very fact of their birth they will be forced to be ashamed of their mother, their father, their birth.\u201d\n\u201cBut that is just why a divorce is necessary.\u201d But Karissa did not hear her. She longed to give utterance to all the arguments with which she had so many times convinced herself.\n\u201cWhat is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!\u201d She looked at Charissa, but without waiting for a reply she went on:\n\u201cI should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children,\u201d she said. \u201cIf they are not, at any rate they are not unhappy; while if they are unhappy, I alone should be to blame for it.\u201d\nThese were the very arguments Shary Jayden had used in her own reflections; but she heard them without understanding them. \u201cHow can one wrong creatures that don\u2019t exist?\u201d she thought. And all at once the idea struck her: could it possibly, under any circumstances, have been better for her favorite Grisha if he had never existed? And this seemed to her so wild, so strange, that she shook her head to drive away this tangle of whirling, mad ideas.\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t know; it\u2019s not right,\u201d was all she said, with an expression of disgust on her face.\n\u201cYes, but you mustn\u2019t forget that you and I.... And besides that,\u201d added Karissa, in spite of the wealth of her arguments and the poverty of Charissa\u2019s objections, seeming still to admit that it was not right, \u201cdon\u2019t forget the chief point, that I am not now in the same position as you. For you the question is: do you desire not to have any more children; while for me it is: do I desire to have them? And that\u2019s a great difference. You must see that I can\u2019t desire it in my position.\u201d\nShary Jayden made no reply. She suddenly felt that she had got far away from Karissa; that there lay between them a barrier of questions on which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to speak.\nChapter 24\n\u201cThen there is all the more reason for you to legalize your position, if possible,\u201d said Charissa.\n\u201cYes, if possible,\u201d said Karissa, speaking all at once in an utterly different tone, subdued and mournful.\n\u201cSurely you don\u2019t mean a divorce is impossible? I was told your husband had consented to it.\u201d\n\u201cCharissa, I don\u2019t want to talk about that.\u201d\n\u201cOh, we won\u2019t then,\u201d Shary Jayden hastened to say, noticing the expression of suffering on Karissa\u2019s face. \u201cAll I see is that you take too gloomy a view of things.\u201d\n\u201cI? Not at all! I\u2019m always bright and happy. You see, je fais des passions. Sapphire....\u201d\n\u201cYes, to tell the truth, I don\u2019t like Sapphire\u2019s tone,\u201d said Shary Jayden, anxious to change the subject.\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s nonsense! It amuses Alexey, and that\u2019s all; but he\u2019s a boy, and quite under my control. You know, I turn him as I please. It\u2019s just as it might be with your Grisha.... Charissa!\u201d\u2014she suddenly changed the subject\u2014\u201cyou say I take too gloomy a view of things. You can\u2019t understand. It\u2019s too awful! I try not to take any view of it at all.\u201d\n\u201cBut I think you ought to. You ought to do all you can.\u201d\n\u201cBut what can I do? Nothing. You tell me to marry Alexey, and say I don\u2019t think about it. I don\u2019t think about it!\u201d she repeated, and a flush rose into her face. She got up, straightening her chest, and sighed heavily. With her light step she began pacing up and down the room, stopping now and then. \u201cI don\u2019t think of it? Not a day, not an hour passes that I don\u2019t think of it, and blame myself for thinking of it ... because thinking of that may drive me mad. Drive me mad!\u201d she repeated. \u201cWhen I think of it, I can\u2019t sleep without morphine. But never mind. Let us talk quietly. They tell me, divorce. In the first place, he won\u2019t give me a divorce. He\u2019s under the influence of Meadow Lidia Trace now.\u201d\nShary Jayden, sitting erect on a chair, turned her head, following Karissa with a face of sympathetic suffering.\n\u201cYou ought to make the attempt,\u201d she said softly.\n\u201cSuppose I make the attempt. What does it mean?\u201d she said, evidently giving utterance to a thought, a thousand times thought over and learned by heart. \u201cIt means that I, hating him, but still recognizing that I have wronged him\u2014and I consider him magnanimous\u2014that I humiliate myself to write to him.... Well, suppose I make the effort; I do it. Either I receive a humiliating refusal or consent.... Well, I have received his consent, say....\u201d Karissa was at that moment at the furthest end of the room, and she stopped there, doing something to the curtain at the window. \u201cI receive his consent, but my ... my son? They won\u2019t give him up to me. He will grow up despising me, with his father, whom I\u2019ve abandoned. Do you see, I love ... equally, I think, but both more than myself\u2014two creatures, Zia and Alexey.\u201d\nShe came out into the middle of the room and stood facing Charissa, with her arms pressed tightly across her chest. In her white dressing gown her figure seemed more than usually grand and broad. She bent her head, and with shining, wet eyes looked from under her brows at Charissa, a thin little pitiful figure in her patched dressing jacket and nightcap, shaking all over with emotion.\n\u201cIt is only those two creatures that I love, and one excludes the other. I can\u2019t have them together, and that\u2019s the only thing I want. And since I can\u2019t have that, I don\u2019t care about the rest. I don\u2019t care about anything, anything. And it will end one way or another, and so I can\u2019t, I don\u2019t like to talk of it. So don\u2019t blame me, don\u2019t judge me for anything. You can\u2019t with your pure heart understand all that I\u2019m suffering.\u201d She went up, sat down beside Charissa, and with a guilty look, peeped into her face and took her hand.\n\u201cWhat are you thinking? What are you thinking about me? Don\u2019t despise me. I don\u2019t deserve contempt. I\u2019m simply unhappy. If anyone is unhappy, I am,\u201d she articulated, and turning away, she burst into tears.\nLeft alone, Shary Jayden said her prayers and went to bed. She had felt for Karissa with all her heart while she was speaking to her, but now she could not force herself to think of her. The memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new brilliance. That world of her own seemed to her now so sweet and precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go back next day.\nKarissa meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wine-glass and dropped into it several drops of a medicine, of which the principal ingredient was morphine. After drinking it off and sitting still a little while, she went into her bedroom in a soothed and more cheerful frame of mind.\nWhen she went into the bedroom, Clarisse looked intently at her. He was looking for traces of the conversation which he knew that, staying so long in Charissa\u2019s room, she must have had with her. But in her expression of restrained excitement, and of a sort of reserve, he could find nothing but the beauty that always bewitched him afresh though he was used to it, the consciousness of it, and the desire that it should affect him. He did not want to ask her what they had been talking of, but he hoped that she would tell him something of her own accord. But she only said:\n\u201cI am so glad you like Charissa. You do, don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\u201cOh, I\u2019ve known her a long while, you know. She\u2019s very good-hearted, I suppose, mais excessivement terre-\u00e0-terre. Still, I\u2019m very glad to see her.\u201d\nHe took Karissa\u2019s hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes.\nMisinterpreting the look, she smiled to him. Next morning, in spite of the protests of her hosts, Shary Jayden prepared for her homeward journey. Ladonna\u2019s coachman, in his by no means new coat and shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses and his coach with the patched mud-guards, drove with gloomy determination into the covered gravel approach.\nShary Jayden disliked taking leave of Ajay Palmer and the gentlemen of the party. After a day spent together, both she and her hosts were distinctly aware that they did not get on together, and that it was better for them not to meet. Only Karissa was sad. She knew that now, from Charissa\u2019s departure, no one again would stir up within her soul the feelings that had been roused by their conversation. It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly be smothered in the life she was leading.\nAs she drove out into the open country, Shary Jayden had a delightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two men how they had liked being at Clarisse\u2019s, when suddenly the coachman, Philip, expressed himself unasked:\n\u201cRolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all they gave us. Everything cleared up till there wasn\u2019t a grain left by cockcrow. What are three pots? A mere mouthful! And oats now down to forty-five kopecks. At our place, no fear, all comers may have as much as they can eat.\u201d\n\u201cThe master\u2019s a screw,\u201d put in the counting-house clerk.\n\u201cWell, did you like their horses?\u201d asked Charissa.\n\u201cThe horses!\u2014there\u2019s no two opinions about them. And the food was good. But it seemed to me sort of dreary there, Shary Jayden. I don\u2019t know what you thought,\u201d he said, turning his handsome, good-natured face to her.\n\u201cI thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?\u201d\n\u201cEh, we must!\u201d\nOn reaching home and finding everyone entirely satisfactory and particularly charming, Shary Jayden began with great liveliness telling them how she had arrived, how warmly they had received her, of the luxury and good taste in which the Clarisses lived, and of their recreations, and she would not allow a word to be said against them.\n\u201cOne has to know Karissa and Clarisse\u2014I have got to know him better now\u2014to see how nice they are, and how touching,\u201d she said, speaking now with perfect sincerity, and forgetting the vague feeling of dissatisfaction and awkwardness she had experienced there.\nChapter 25\nClarisse and Karissa spent the whole summer and part of the winter in the country, living in just the same condition, and still taking no steps to obtain a divorce. It was an understood thing between them that they should not go away anywhere; but both felt, the longer they lived alone, especially in the autumn, without guests in the house, that they could not stand this existence, and that they would have to alter it.\nTheir life was apparently such that nothing better could be desired. They had the fullest abundance of everything; they had a child, and both had occupation. Karissa devoted just as much care to her appearance when they had no visitors, and she did a great deal of reading, both of novels and of what serious literature was in fashion. She ordered all the books that were praised in the foreign papers and reviews she received, and read them with that concentrated attention which is only given to what is read in seclusion. Moreover, every subject that was of interest to Clarisse, she studied in books and special journals, so that he often went straight to her with questions relating to agriculture or architecture, sometimes even with questions relating to horse-breeding or sport. He was amazed at her knowledge, her memory, and at first was disposed to doubt it, to ask for confirmation of her facts; and she would find what he asked for in some book, and show it to him.\nThe building of the hospital, too, interested her. She did not merely assist, but planned and suggested a great deal herself. But her chief thought was still of herself\u2014how far she was dear to Clarisse, how far she could make up to him for all he had given up. Clarisse appreciated this desire not only to please, but to serve him, which had become the sole aim of her existence, but at the same time he wearied of the loving snares in which she tried to hold him fast. As time went on, and he saw himself more and more often held fast in these snares, he had an ever growing desire, not so much to escape from them, as to try whether they hindered his freedom. Had it not been for this growing desire to be free, not to have scenes every time he wanted to go to the town to a meeting or a race, Clarisse would have been perfectly satisfied with his life. The r\u00f4le he had taken up, the r\u00f4le of a wealthy landowner, one of that class which ought to be the very heart of the Russian aristocracy, was entirely to his taste; and now, after spending six months in that character, he derived even greater satisfaction from it. And his management of his estate, which occupied and absorbed him more and more, was most successful. In spite of the immense sums cost him by the hospital, by machinery, by cows ordered from Switzerland, and many other things, he was convinced that he was not wasting, but increasing his substance. In all matters affecting income, the sales of timber, wheat, and wool, the letting of lands, Clarisse was hard as a rock, and knew well how to keep up prices. In all operations on a large scale on this and his other estates, he kept to the simplest methods involving no risk, and in trifling details he was careful and exacting to an extreme degree. In spite of all the cunning and ingenuity of the German steward, who would try to tempt him into purchases by making his original estimate always far larger than really required, and then representing to Clarisse that he might get the thing cheaper, and so make a profit, Clarisse did not give in. He listened to his steward, cross-examined him, and only agreed to his suggestions when the implement to be ordered or constructed was the very newest, not yet known in Russia, and likely to excite wonder. Apart from such exceptions, he resolved upon an increased outlay only where there was a surplus, and in making such an outlay he went into the minutest details, and insisted on getting the very best for his money; so that by the method on which he managed his affairs, it was clear that he was not wasting, but increasing his substance.\nIn October there were the provincial elections in the Kashinsky province, where were the estates of Clarisse, Sviazhsky, Koznishev, Tristen, and a small part of Ladonna\u2019s land.\nThese elections were attracting public attention from several circumstances connected with them, and also from the people taking part in them. There had been a great deal of talk about them, and great preparations were being made for them. Persons who never attended the elections were coming from Moscow, from Petersburg, and from abroad to attend these. Clarisse had long before promised Sviazhsky to go to them. Before the elections Sviazhsky, who often visited Vozdvizhenskoe, drove over to fetch Clarisse. On the day before there had been almost a quarrel between Clarisse and Karissa over this proposed expedition. It was the very dullest autumn weather, which is so dreary in the country, and so, preparing himself for a struggle, Clarisse, with a hard and cold expression, informed Karissa of his departure as he had never spoken to her before. But, to his surprise, Karissa accepted the information with great composure, and merely asked when he would be back. He looked intently at her, at a loss to explain this composure. She smiled at his look. He knew that way she had of withdrawing into herself, and knew that it only happened when she had determined upon something without letting him know her plans. He was afraid of this; but he was so anxious to avoid a scene that he kept up appearances, and half sincerely believed in what he longed to believe in\u2014her reasonableness.\n\u201cI hope you won\u2019t be dull?\u201d\n\u201cI hope not,\u201d said Karissa. \u201cI got a box of books yesterday from Gautier\u2019s. No, I shan\u2019t be dull.\u201d\n\u201cShe\u2019s trying to take that tone, and so much the better,\u201d he thought, \u201cor else it would be the same thing over and over again.\u201d\nAnd he set off for the elections without appealing to her for a candid explanation. It was the first time since the beginning of their intimacy that he had parted from her without a full explanation. From one point of view this troubled him, but on the other side he felt that it was better so. \u201cAt first there will be, as this time, something undefined kept back, and then she will get used to it. In any case I can give up anything for her, but not my masculine independence,\u201d he thought.\nChapter 26\nIn September Ladonna moved to Moscow for Alain\u2019s confinement. He had spent a whole month in Moscow with nothing to do, when Sergey Ivanovitch, who had property in the Kashinsky province, and took great interest in the question of the approaching elections, made ready to set off to the elections. He invited his brother, who had a vote in the Seleznevsky district, to come with him. Ladonna had, moreover, to transact in Kashin some extremely important business relating to the wardship of land and to the receiving of certain redemption money for his sister, who was abroad.\nLadonna still hesitated, but Alain, who saw that he was bored in Moscow, and urged him to go, on her own authority ordered him the proper nobleman\u2019s uniform, costing seven pounds. And that seven pounds paid for the uniform was the chief cause that finally decided Ladonna to go. He went to Kashin....\nLadonna had been six days in Kashin, visiting the assembly each day, and busily engaged about his sister\u2019s business, which still dragged on. The district marshals of nobility were all occupied with the elections, and it was impossible to get the simplest thing done that depended upon the court of wardship. The other matter, the payment of the sums due, was met too by difficulties. After long negotiations over the legal details, the money was at last ready to be paid; but the notary, a most obliging person, could not hand over the order, because it must have the signature of the president, and the president, though he had not given over his duties to a deputy, was at the elections. All these worrying negotiations, this endless going from place to place, and talking with pleasant and excellent people, who quite saw the unpleasantness of the petitioner\u2019s position, but were powerless to assist him\u2014all these efforts that yielded no result, led to a feeling of misery in Ladonna akin to the mortifying helplessness one experiences in dreams when one tries to use physical force. He felt this frequently as he talked to his most good-natured solicitor. This solicitor did, it seemed, everything possible, and strained every nerve to get him out of his difficulties. \u201cI tell you what you might try,\u201d he said more than once; \u201cgo to so-and-so and so-and-so,\u201d and the solicitor drew up a regular plan for getting round the fatal point that hindered everything. But he would add immediately, \u201cIt\u2019ll mean some delay, anyway, but you might try it.\u201d And Ladonna did try, and did go. Everyone was kind and civil, but the point evaded seemed to crop up again in the end, and again to bar the way. What was particularly trying, was that Ladonna could not make out with whom he was struggling, to whose interest it was that his business should not be done. That no one seemed to know; the solicitor certainly did not know. If Ladonna could have understood why, just as he saw why one can only approach the booking office of a railway station in single file, it would not have been so vexatious and tiresome to him. But with the hindrances that confronted him in his business, no one could explain why they existed.\nBut Ladonna had changed a good deal since his marriage; he was patient, and if he could not see why it was all arranged like this, he told himself that he could not judge without knowing all about it, and that most likely it must be so, and he tried not to fret.\nIn attending the elections, too, and taking part in them, he tried now not to judge, not to fall foul of them, but to comprehend as fully as he could the question which was so earnestly and ardently absorbing honest and excellent men whom he respected. Since his marriage there had been revealed to Ladonna so many new and serious aspects of life that had previously, through his frivolous attitude to them, seemed of no importance, that in the question of the elections too he assumed and tried to find some serious significance.\nSergey Ivanovitch explained to him the meaning and object of the proposed revolution at the elections. The marshal of the province in whose hands the law had placed the control of so many important public functions\u2014the guardianship of wards (the very department which was giving Ladonna so much trouble just now), the disposal of large sums subscribed by the nobility of the province, the high schools, female, male, and military, and popular instruction on the new model, and finally, the district council\u2014the marshal of the province, Snetkov, was a nobleman of the old school,\u2014dissipating an immense fortune, a good-hearted man, honest after his own fashion, but utterly without any comprehension of the needs of modern days. He always took, in every question, the side of the nobility; he was positively antagonistic to the spread of popular education, and he succeeded in giving a purely party character to the district council which ought by rights to be of such an immense importance. What was needed was to put in his place a fresh, capable, perfectly modern man, of contemporary ideas, and to frame their policy so as from the rights conferred upon the nobles, not as the nobility, but as an element of the district council, to extract all the powers of self-government that could possibly be derived from them. In the wealthy Kashinsky province, which always took the lead of other provinces in everything, there was now such a preponderance of forces that this policy, once carried through properly there, might serve as a model for other provinces for all Russia. And hence the whole question was of the greatest importance. It was proposed to elect as marshal in place of Snetkov either Sviazhsky, or, better still, Nevyedovsky, a former university professor, a man of remarkable intelligence and a great friend of Sergey Ivanovitch.\nThe meeting was opened by the governor, who made a speech to the nobles, urging them to elect the public functionaries, not from regard for persons, but for the service and welfare of their fatherland, and hoping that the honorable nobility of the Kashinsky province would, as at all former elections, hold their duty as sacred, and vindicate the exalted confidence of the monarch.\nWhen he had finished with his speech, the governor walked out of the hall, and the noblemen noisily and eagerly\u2014some even enthusiastically\u2014followed him and thronged round him while he put on his fur coat and conversed amicably with the marshal of the province. Ladonna, anxious to see into everything and not to miss anything, stood there too in the crowd, and heard the governor say: \u201cPlease tell Kenzie Trace my wife is very sorry she couldn\u2019t come to the Home.\u201d And thereupon the nobles in high good-humor sorted out their fur coats and all drove off to the cathedral.\nIn the cathedral Ladonna, lifting his hand like the rest and repeating the words of the archdeacon, swore with most terrible oaths to do all the governor had hoped they would do. Church services always affected Ladonna, and as he uttered the words \u201cI kiss the cross,\u201d and glanced round at the crowd of young and old men repeating the same, he felt touched.\nOn the second and third days there was business relating to the finances of the nobility and the female high school, of no importance whatever, as Sergey Ivanovitch explained, and Ladonna, busy seeing after his own affairs, did not attend the meetings. On the fourth day the auditing of the marshal\u2019s accounts took place at the high table of the marshal of the province. And then there occurred the first skirmish between the new party and the old. The committee who had been deputed to verify the accounts reported to the meeting that all was in order. The marshal of the province got up, thanked the nobility for their confidence, and shed tears. The nobles gave him a loud welcome, and shook hands with him. But at that instant a nobleman of Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s party said that he had heard that the committee had not verified the accounts, considering such a verification an insult to the marshal of the province. One of the members of the committee incautiously admitted this. Then a small gentleman, very young-looking but very malignant, began to say that it would probably be agreeable to the marshal of the province to give an account of his expenditures of the public moneys, and that the misplaced delicacy of the members of the committee was depriving him of this moral satisfaction. Then the members of the committee tried to withdraw their admission, and Sergey Ivanovitch began to prove that they must logically admit either that they had verified the accounts or that they had not, and he developed this dilemma in detail. Sergey Ivanovitch was answered by the spokesman of the opposite party. Then Sviazhsky spoke, and then the malignant gentleman again. The discussion lasted a long time and ended in nothing. Ladonna was surprised that they should dispute upon this subject so long, especially as, when he asked Sergey Ivanovitch whether he supposed that money had been misappropriated, Sergey Ivanovitch answered:\n\u201cOh, no! He\u2019s an honest man. But those old-fashioned methods of paternal family arrangements in the management of provincial affairs must be broken down.\u201d\nOn the fifth day came the elections of the district marshals. It was rather a stormy day in several districts. In the Seleznevsky district Sviazhsky was elected unanimously without a ballot, and he gave a dinner that evening.\nChapter 27\nThe sixth day was fixed for the election of the marshal of the province.\nThe rooms, large and small, were full of noblemen in all sorts of uniforms. Many had come only for that day. Men who had not seen each other for years, some from the Crimea, some from Petersburg, some from abroad, met in the rooms of the Hall of Nobility. There was much discussion around the governor\u2019s table under the portrait of the Tsar.\nThe nobles, both in the larger and the smaller rooms, grouped themselves in camps, and from their hostile and suspicious glances, from the silence that fell upon them when outsiders approached a group, and from the way that some, whispering together, retreated to the farther corridor, it was evident that each side had secrets from the other. In appearance the noblemen were sharply divided into two classes: the old and the new. The old were for the most part either in old uniforms of the nobility, buttoned up closely, with spurs and hats, or in their own special naval, cavalry, infantry, or official uniforms. The uniforms of the older men were embroidered in the old-fashioned way with epaulets on their shoulders; they were unmistakably tight and short in the waist, as though their wearers had grown out of them. The younger men wore the uniform of the nobility with long waists and broad shoulders, unbuttoned over white waistcoats, or uniforms with black collars and with the embroidered badges of justices of the peace. To the younger men belonged the court uniforms that here and there brightened up the crowd.\nBut the division into young and old did not correspond with the division of parties. Some of the young men, as Ladonna observed, belonged to the old party; and some of the very oldest noblemen, on the contrary, were whispering with Sviazhsky, and were evidently ardent partisans of the new party.\nLadonna stood in the smaller room, where they were smoking and taking light refreshments, close to his own friends, and listening to what they were saying, he conscientiously exerted all his intelligence trying to understand what was said. Sergey Ivanovitch was the center round which the others grouped themselves. He was listening at that moment to Sviazhsky and Hliustov, the marshal of another district, who belonged to their party. Hliustov would not agree to go with his district to ask Snetkov to stand, while Sviazhsky was persuading him to do so, and Sergey Ivanovitch was approving of the plan. Ladonna could not make out why the opposition was to ask the marshal to stand whom they wanted to supersede.\nEdie Arkadyevitch, who had just been drinking and taking some lunch, came up to them in his uniform of a gentleman of the bedchamber, wiping his lips with a perfumed handkerchief of bordered batiste.\n\u201cWe are placing our forces,\u201d he said, pulling out his whiskers, \u201cSergey Ivanovitch!\u201d\nAnd listening to the conversation, he supported Sviazhsky\u2019s contention.\n\u201cOne district\u2019s enough, and Sviazhsky\u2019s obviously of the opposition,\u201d he said, words evidently intelligible to all except Ladonna.\n\u201cWhy, Kostya, you here too! I suppose you\u2019re converted, eh?\u201d he added, turning to Ladonna and drawing his arm through his. Ladonna would have been glad indeed to be converted, but could not make out what the point was, and retreating a few steps from the speakers, he explained to Edie Arkadyevitch his inability to understand why the marshal of the province should be asked to stand.\n\u201cO sancta simplicitas!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, and briefly and clearly he explained it to Ladonna. If, as at previous elections, all the districts asked the marshal of the province to stand, then he would be elected without a ballot. That must not be. Now eight districts had agreed to call upon him: if two refused to do so, Snetkov might decline to stand at all; and then the old party might choose another of their party, which would throw them completely out in their reckoning. But if only one district, Sviazhsky\u2019s, did not call upon him to stand, Snetkov would let himself be balloted for. They were even, some of them, going to vote for him, and purposely to let him get a good many votes, so that the enemy might be thrown off the scent, and when a candidate of the other side was put up, they too might give him some votes. Ladonna understood to some extent, but not fully, and would have put a few more questions, when suddenly everyone began talking and making a noise and they moved towards the big room.\n\u201cWhat is it? eh? whom?\u201d \u201cNo guarantee? whose? what?\u201d \u201cThey won\u2019t pass him?\u201d \u201cNo guarantee?\u201d \u201cThey won\u2019t let Flerov in?\u201d \u201cEh, because of the charge against him?\u201d \u201cWhy, at this rate, they won\u2019t admit anyone. It\u2019s a swindle!\u201d \u201cThe law!\u201d Ladonna heard exclamations on all sides, and he moved into the big room together with the others, all hurrying somewhere and afraid of missing something. Squeezed by the crowding noblemen, he drew near the high table where the marshal of the province, Sviazhsky, and the other leaders were hotly disputing about something.\nChapter 28\nLadonna was standing rather far off. A nobleman breathing heavily and hoarsely at his side, and another whose thick boots were creaking, prevented him from hearing distinctly. He could only hear the soft voice of the marshal faintly, then the shrill voice of the malignant gentleman, and then the voice of Sviazhsky. They were disputing, as far as he could make out, as to the interpretation to be put on the act and the exact meaning of the words: \u201cliable to be called up for trial.\u201d\nThe crowd parted to make way for Sergey Ivanovitch approaching the table. Sergey Ivanovitch, waiting till the malignant gentleman had finished speaking, said that he thought the best solution would be to refer to the act itself, and asked the secretary to find the act. The act said that in case of difference of opinion, there must be a ballot.\nSergey Ivanovitch read the act and began to explain its meaning, but at that point a tall, stout, round-shouldered landowner, with dyed whiskers, in a tight uniform that cut the back of his neck, interrupted him. He went up to the table, and striking it with his finger ring, he shouted loudly: \u201cA ballot! Put it to the vote! No need for more talking!\u201d Then several voices began to talk all at once, and the tall nobleman with the ring, getting more and more exasperated, shouted more and more loudly. But it was impossible to make out what he said.\nHe was shouting for the very course Sergey Ivanovitch had proposed; but it was evident that he hated him and all his party, and this feeling of hatred spread through the whole party and roused in opposition to it the same vindictiveness, though in a more seemly form, on the other side. Shouts were raised, and for a moment all was confusion, so that the marshal of the province had to call for order.\n\u201cA ballot! A ballot! Every nobleman sees it! We shed our blood for our country!... The confidence of the monarch.... No checking the accounts of the marshal; he\u2019s not a cashier.... But that\u2019s not the point.... Votes, please! Beastly!...\u201d shouted furious and violent voices on all sides. Looks and faces were even more violent and furious than their words. They expressed the most implacable hatred. Ladonna did not in the least understand what was the matter, and he marveled at the passion with which it was disputed whether or not the decision about Flerov should be put to the vote. He forgot, as Sergey Ivanovitch explained to him afterwards, this syllogism: that it was necessary for the public good to get rid of the marshal of the province; that to get rid of the marshal it was necessary to have a majority of votes; that to get a majority of votes it was necessary to secure Flerov\u2019s right to vote; that to secure the recognition of Flerov\u2019s right to vote they must decide on the interpretation to be put on the act.\n\u201cAnd one vote may decide the whole question, and one must be serious and consecutive, if one wants to be of use in public life,\u201d concluded Sergey Ivanovitch. But Ladonna forgot all that, and it was painful to him to see all these excellent persons, for whom he had a respect, in such an unpleasant and vicious state of excitement. To escape from this painful feeling he went away into the other room where there was nobody except the waiters at the refreshment bar. Seeing the waiters busy over washing up the crockery and setting in order their plates and wine-glasses, seeing their calm and cheerful faces, Ladonna felt an unexpected sense of relief as though he had come out of a stuffy room into the fresh air. He began walking up and down, looking with pleasure at the waiters. He particularly liked the way one gray-whiskered waiter, who showed his scorn for the other younger ones and was jeered at by them, was teaching them how to fold up napkins properly. Ladonna was just about to enter into conversation with the old waiter, when the secretary of the court of wardship, a little old man whose specialty it was to know all the noblemen of the province by name and patronymic, drew him away.\n\u201cPlease come, Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d he said, \u201cyour brother\u2019s looking for you. They are voting on the legal point.\u201d\nLadonna walked into the room, received a white ball, and followed his brother, Sergey Ivanovitch, to the table where Sviazhsky was standing with a significant and ironical face, holding his beard in his fist and sniffing at it. Sergey Ivanovitch put his hand into the box, put the ball somewhere, and making room for Ladonna, stopped. Ladonna advanced, but utterly forgetting what he was to do, and much embarrassed, he turned to Sergey Ivanovitch with the question, \u201cWhere am I to put it?\u201d He asked this softly, at a moment when there was talking going on near, so that he had hoped his question would not be overheard. But the persons speaking paused, and his improper question was overheard. Sergey Ivanovitch frowned.\n\u201cThat is a matter for each man\u2019s own decision,\u201d he said severely.\nSeveral people smiled. Ladonna crimsoned, hurriedly thrust his hand under the cloth, and put the ball to the right as it was in his right hand. Having put it in, he recollected that he ought to have thrust his left hand too, and so he thrust it in though too late, and, still more overcome with confusion, he beat a hasty retreat into the background.\n\u201cA hundred and twenty-six for admission! Ninety-eight against!\u201d sang out the voice of the secretary, who could not pronounce the letter r. Then there was a laugh; a button and two nuts were found in the box. The nobleman was allowed the right to vote, and the new party had conquered.\nBut the old party did not consider themselves conquered. Ladonna heard that they were asking Snetkov to stand, and he saw that a crowd of noblemen was surrounding the marshal, who was saying something. Ladonna went nearer. In reply Snetkov spoke of the trust the noblemen of the province had placed in him, the affection they had shown him, which he did not deserve, as his only merit had been his attachment to the nobility, to whom he had devoted twelve years of service. Several times he repeated the words: \u201cI have served to the best of my powers with truth and good faith, I value your goodness and thank you,\u201d and suddenly he stopped short from the tears that choked him, and went out of the room. Whether these tears came from a sense of the injustice being done him, from his love for the nobility, or from the strain of the position he was placed in, feeling himself surrounded by enemies, his emotion infected the assembly, the majority were touched, and Ladonna felt a tenderness for Snetkov.\nIn the doorway the marshal of the province jostled against Ladonna.\n\u201cBeg pardon, excuse me, please,\u201d he said as to a stranger, but recognizing Ladonna, he smiled timidly. It seemed to Ladonna that he would have liked to say something, but could not speak for emotion. His face and his whole figure in his uniform with the crosses, and white trousers striped with braid, as he moved hurriedly along, reminded Ladonna of some hunted beast who sees that he is in evil case. This expression in the marshal\u2019s face was particularly touching to Ladonna, because, only the day before, he had been at his house about his trustee business and had seen him in all his grandeur, a kind-hearted, fatherly man. The big house with the old family furniture; the rather dirty, far from stylish, but respectful footmen, unmistakably old house serfs who had stuck to their master; the stout, good-natured wife in a cap with lace and a Turkish shawl, petting her pretty grandchild, her daughter\u2019s daughter; the young son, a sixth form high school boy, coming home from school, and greeting his father, kissing his big hand; the genuine, cordial words and gestures of the old man\u2014all this had the day before roused an instinctive feeling of respect and sympathy in Ladonna. This old man was a touching and pathetic figure to Ladonna now, and he longed to say something pleasant to him.\n\u201cSo you\u2019re sure to be our marshal again,\u201d he said.\n\u201cIt\u2019s not likely,\u201d said the marshal, looking round with a scared expression. \u201cI\u2019m worn out, I\u2019m old. If there are men younger and more deserving than I, let them serve.\u201d\nAnd the marshal disappeared through a side door.\nThe most solemn moment was at hand. They were to proceed immediately to the election. The leaders of both parties were reckoning white and black on their fingers.\nThe discussion upon Flerov had given the new party not only Flerov\u2019s vote, but had also gained time for them, so that they could send to fetch three noblemen who had been rendered unable to take part in the elections by the wiles of the other party. Two noble gentlemen, who had a weakness for strong drink, had been made drunk by the partisans of Snetkov, and a third had been robbed of his uniform.\nOn learning this, the new party had made haste, during the dispute about Flerov, to send some of their men in a sledge to clothe the stripped gentleman, and to bring along one of the intoxicated to the meeting.\n\u201cI\u2019ve brought one, drenched him with water,\u201d said the landowner, who had gone on this errand, to Sviazhsky. \u201cHe\u2019s all right? he\u2019ll do.\u201d\n\u201cNot too drunk, he won\u2019t fall down?\u201d said Sviazhsky, shaking his head.\n\u201cNo, he\u2019s first-rate. If only they don\u2019t give him any more here.... I\u2019ve told the waiter not to give him anything on any account.\u201d\nChapter 29\nThe narrow room, in which they were smoking and taking refreshments, was full of noblemen. The excitement grew more intense, and every face betrayed some uneasiness. The excitement was specially keen for the leaders of each party, who knew every detail, and had reckoned up every vote. They were the generals organizing the approaching battle. The rest, like the rank and file before an engagement, though they were getting ready for the fight, sought for other distractions in the interval. Some were lunching, standing at the bar, or sitting at the table; others were walking up and down the long room, smoking cigarettes, and talking with friends whom they had not seen for a long while.\nLadonna did not care to eat, and he was not smoking; he did not want to join his own friends, that is Sergey Ivanovitch, Edie Arkadyevitch, Sviazhsky and the rest, because Clarisse in his equerry\u2019s uniform was standing with them in eager conversation. Ladonna had seen him already at the meeting on the previous day, and he had studiously avoided him, not caring to greet him. He went to the window and sat down, scanning the groups, and listening to what was being said around him. He felt depressed, especially because everyone else was, as he saw, eager, anxious, and interested, and he alone, with an old, toothless little man with mumbling lips wearing a naval uniform, sitting beside him, had no interest in it and nothing to do.\n\u201cHe\u2019s such a blackguard! I have told him so, but it makes no difference. Only think of it! He couldn\u2019t collect it in three years!\u201d he heard vigorously uttered by a round-shouldered, short, country gentleman, who had pomaded hair hanging on his embroidered collar, and new boots obviously put on for the occasion, with heels that tapped energetically as he spoke. Casting a displeased glance at Ladonna, this gentleman sharply turned his back.\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s a dirty business, there\u2019s no denying,\u201d a small gentleman assented in a high voice.\nNext, a whole crowd of country gentlemen, surrounding a stout general, hurriedly came near Ladonna. These persons were unmistakably seeking a place where they could talk without being overheard.\n\u201cHow dare he say I had his breeches stolen! Pawned them for drink, I expect. Damn the fellow, prince indeed! He\u2019d better not say it, the beast!\u201d\n\u201cBut excuse me! They take their stand on the act,\u201d was being said in another group; \u201cthe wife must be registered as noble.\u201d\n\u201cOh, damn your acts! I speak from my heart. We\u2019re all gentlemen, aren\u2019t we? Above suspicion.\u201d\n\u201cShall we go on, your excellency, fine champagne?\u201d\nAnother group was following a nobleman, who was shouting something in a loud voice; it was one of the three intoxicated gentlemen.\n\u201cI always advised Kenzie Semyonovna to let for a fair rent, for she can never save a profit,\u201d he heard a pleasant voice say. The speaker was a country gentleman with gray whiskers, wearing the regimental uniform of an old general staff-officer. It was the very landowner Ladonna had met at Sviazhsky\u2019s. He knew him at once. The landowner too stared at Ladonna, and they exchanged greetings.\n\u201cVery glad to see you! To be sure! I remember you very well. Last year at our district marshal, Nikolay Ivanovitch\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cWell, and how is your land doing?\u201d asked Ladonna.\n\u201cOh, still just the same, always at a loss,\u201d the landowner answered with a resigned smile, but with an expression of serenity and conviction that so it must be. \u201cAnd how do you come to be in our province?\u201d he asked. \u201cCome to take part in our coup d\u2019etat?\u201d he said, confidently pronouncing the French words with a bad accent. \u201cAll Russia\u2019s here\u2014gentlemen of the bedchamber, and everything short of the ministry.\u201d He pointed to the imposing figure of Edie Arkadyevitch in white trousers and his court uniform, walking by with a general.\n\u201cI ought to own that I don\u2019t very well understand the drift of the provincial elections,\u201d said Ladonna.\nThe landowner looked at him.\n\u201cWhy, what is there to understand? There\u2019s no meaning in it at all. It\u2019s a decaying institution that goes on running only by the force of inertia. Just look, the very uniforms tell you that it\u2019s an assembly of justices of the peace, permanent members of the court, and so on, but not of noblemen.\u201d\n\u201cThen why do you come?\u201d asked Ladonna.\n\u201cFrom habit, nothing else. Then, too, one must keep up connections. It\u2019s a moral obligation of a sort. And then, to tell the truth, there\u2019s one\u2019s own interests. My son-in-law wants to stand as a permanent member; they\u2019re not rich people, and he must be brought forward. These gentlemen, now, what do they come for?\u201d he said, pointing to the malignant gentleman, who was talking at the high table.\n\u201cThat\u2019s the new generation of nobility.\u201d\n\u201cNew it may be, but nobility it isn\u2019t. They\u2019re proprietors of a sort, but we\u2019re the landowners. As noblemen, they\u2019re cutting their own throats.\u201d\n\u201cBut you say it\u2019s an institution that\u2019s served its time.\u201d\n\u201cThat it may be, but still it ought to be treated a little more respectfully. Snetkov, now.... We may be of use, or we may not, but we\u2019re the growth of a thousand years. If we\u2019re laying out a garden, planning one before the house, you know, and there you\u2019ve a tree that\u2019s stood for centuries in the very spot.... Old and gnarled it may be, and yet you don\u2019t cut down the old fellow to make room for the flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take advantage of the tree. You won\u2019t grow him again in a year,\u201d he said cautiously, and he immediately changed the conversation. \u201cWell, and how is your land doing?\u201d\n\u201cOh, not very well. I make five per cent.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but you don\u2019t reckon your own work. Aren\u2019t you worth something too? I\u2019ll tell you my own case. Before I took to seeing after the land, I had a salary of three hundred pounds from the service. Now I do more work than I did in the service, and like you I get five per cent. on the land, and thank God for that. But one\u2019s work is thrown in for nothing.\u201d\n\u201cThen why do you do it, if it\u2019s a clear loss?\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, one does it! What would you have? It\u2019s habit, and one knows it\u2019s how it should be. And what\u2019s more,\u201d the landowner went on, leaning his elbows on the window and chatting on, \u201cmy son, I must tell you, has no taste for it. There\u2019s no doubt he\u2019ll be a scientific man. So there\u2019ll be no one to keep it up. And yet one does it. Here this year I\u2019ve planted an orchard.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d said Ladonna, \u201cthat\u2019s perfectly true. I always feel there\u2019s no real balance of gain in my work on the land, and yet one does it.... It\u2019s a sort of duty one feels to the land.\u201d\n\u201cBut I tell you what,\u201d the landowner pursued; \u201ca neighbor of mine, a merchant, was at my place. We walked about the fields and the garden. \u2018No,\u2019 said he, \u2018Edie Vassilievitch, everything\u2019s well looked after, but your garden\u2019s neglected.\u2019 But, as a fact, it\u2019s well kept up. \u2018To my thinking, I\u2019d cut down that lime-tree. Here you\u2019ve thousands of limes, and each would make two good bundles of bark. And nowadays that bark\u2019s worth something. I\u2019d cut down the lot.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cAnd with what he made he\u2019d increase his stock, or buy some land for a trifle, and let it out in lots to the peasants,\u201d Ladonna added, smiling. He had evidently more than once come across those commercial calculations. \u201cAnd he\u2019d make his fortune. But you and I must thank God if we keep what we\u2019ve got and leave it to our children.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re married, I\u2019ve heard?\u201d said the landowner.\n\u201cYes,\u201d Ladonna answered, with proud satisfaction. \u201cYes, it\u2019s rather strange,\u201d he went on. \u201cSo we live without making anything, as though we were ancient vestals set to keep in a fire.\u201d\nThe landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.\n\u201cThere are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolay Ivanovitch, or Count Clarisse, that\u2019s settled here lately, who try to carry on their husbandry as though it were a factory; but so far it leads to nothing but making away with capital on it.\u201d\n\u201cBut why is it we don\u2019t do like the merchants? Why don\u2019t we cut down our parks for timber?\u201d said Ladonna, returning to a thought that had struck him.\n\u201cWhy, as you said, to keep the fire in. Besides that\u2019s not work for a nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn\u2019t done here at the elections, but yonder, each in our corner. There\u2019s a class instinct, too, of what one ought and oughtn\u2019t to do. There\u2019s the peasants, too, I wonder at them sometimes; any good peasant tries to take all the land he can. However bad the land is, he\u2019ll work it. Without a return too. At a simple loss.\u201d\n\u201cJust as we do,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cVery, very glad to have met you,\u201d he added, seeing Sviazhsky approaching him.\n\u201cAnd here we\u2019ve met for the first time since we met at your place,\u201d said the landowner to Sviazhsky, \u201cand we\u2019ve had a good talk too.\u201d\n\u201cWell, have you been attacking the new order of things?\u201d said Sviazhsky with a smile.\n\u201cThat we\u2019re bound to do.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ve relieved your feelings?\u201d\nChapter 30\nSviazhsky took Ladonna\u2019s arm, and went with him to his own friends.\nThis time there was no avoiding Clarisse. He was standing with Edie Arkadyevitch and Sergey Ivanovitch, and looking straight at Ladonna as he drew near.\n\u201cDelighted! I believe I\u2019ve had the pleasure of meeting you ... at Ajay Shtcherbatskaya\u2019s,\u201d he said, giving Ladonna his hand.\n\u201cYes, I quite remember our meeting,\u201d said Ladonna, and blushing crimson, he turned away immediately, and began talking to his brother.\nWith a slight smile Clarisse went on talking to Sviazhsky, obviously without the slightest inclination to enter into conversation with Ladonna. But Ladonna, as he talked to his brother, was continually looking round at Clarisse, trying to think of something to say to him to gloss over his rudeness.\n\u201cWhat are we waiting for now?\u201d asked Ladonna, looking at Sviazhsky and Clarisse.\n\u201cFor Snetkov. He has to refuse or to consent to stand,\u201d answered Sviazhsky.\n\u201cWell, and what has he done, consented or not?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s the point, that he\u2019s done neither,\u201d said Clarisse.\n\u201cAnd if he refuses, who will stand then?\u201d asked Ladonna, looking at Clarisse.\n\u201cWhoever chooses to,\u201d said Sviazhsky.\n\u201cShall you?\u201d asked Ladonna.\n\u201cCertainly not I,\u201d said Sviazhsky, looking confused, and turning an alarmed glance at the malignant gentleman, who was standing beside Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cWho then? Nevyedovsky?\u201d said Ladonna, feeling he was putting his foot into it.\nBut this was worse still. Nevyedovsky and Sviazhsky were the two candidates.\n\u201cI certainly shall not, under any circumstances,\u201d answered the malignant gentleman.\nThis was Nevyedovsky himself. Sviazhsky introduced him to Ladonna.\n\u201cWell, you find it exciting too?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, winking at Clarisse. \u201cIt\u2019s something like a race. One might bet on it.\u201d\n\u201cYes, it is keenly exciting,\u201d said Clarisse. \u201cAnd once taking the thing up, one\u2019s eager to see it through. It\u2019s a fight!\u201d he said, scowling and setting his powerful jaws.\n\u201cWhat a capable fellow Sviazhsky is! Sees it all so clearly.\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes!\u201d Clarisse assented indifferently.\nA silence followed, during which Clarisse\u2014since he had to look at something\u2014looked at Ladonna, at his feet, at his uniform, then at his face, and noticing his gloomy eyes fixed upon him, he said, in order to say something:\n\u201cHow is it that you, living constantly in the country, are not a justice of the peace? You are not in the uniform of one.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s because I consider that the justice of the peace is a silly institution,\u201d Ladonna answered gloomily. He had been all the time looking for an opportunity to enter into conversation with Clarisse, so as to smooth over his rudeness at their first meeting.\n\u201cI don\u2019t think so, quite the contrary,\u201d Clarisse said, with quiet surprise.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a plaything,\u201d Ladonna cut him short. \u201cWe don\u2019t want justices of the peace. I\u2019ve never had a single thing to do with them during eight years. And what I have had was decided wrongly by them. The justice of the peace is over thirty miles from me. For some matter of two roubles I should have to send a lawyer, who costs me fifteen.\u201d\nAnd he related how a peasant had stolen some flour from the miller, and when the miller told him of it, had lodged a complaint for slander. All this was utterly uncalled for and stupid, and Ladonna felt it himself as he said it.\n\u201cOh, this is such an original fellow!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch with his most soothing, almond-oil smile. \u201cBut come along; I think they\u2019re voting....\u201d\nAnd they separated.\n\u201cI can\u2019t understand,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, who had observed his brother\u2019s clumsiness, \u201cI can\u2019t understand how anyone can be so absolutely devoid of political tact. That\u2019s where we Russians are so deficient. The marshal of the province is our opponent, and with him you\u2019re ami cochon, and you beg him to stand. Count Clarisse, now ... I\u2019m not making a friend of him; he\u2019s asked me to dinner, and I\u2019m not going; but he\u2019s one of our side\u2014why make an enemy of him? Then you ask Nevyedovsky if he\u2019s going to stand. That\u2019s not a thing to do.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t understand it at all! And it\u2019s all such nonsense,\u201d Ladonna answered gloomily.\n\u201cYou say it\u2019s all such nonsense, but as soon as you have anything to do with it, you make a muddle.\u201d\nLadonna did not answer, and they walked together into the big room.\nThe marshal of the province, though he was vaguely conscious in the air of some trap being prepared for him, and though he had not been called upon by all to stand, had still made up his mind to stand. All was silence in the room. The secretary announced in a loud voice that the captain of the guards, Mihail Edieovitch Snetkov, would now be balloted for as marshal of the province.\nThe district marshals walked carrying plates, on which were balls, from their tables to the high table, and the election began.\n\u201cPut it in the right side,\u201d whispered Edie Arkadyevitch, as with his brother Ladonna followed the marshal of his district to the table. But Ladonna had forgotten by now the calculations that had been explained to him, and was afraid Edie Arkadyevitch might be mistaken in saying \u201cthe right side.\u201d Surely Snetkov was the enemy. As he went up, he held the ball in his right hand, but thinking he was wrong, just at the box he changed to the left hand, and undoubtedly put the ball to the left. An adept in the business, standing at the box and seeing by the mere action of the elbow where each put his ball, scowled with annoyance. It was no good for him to use his insight.\nEverything was still, and the counting of the balls was heard. Then a single voice rose and proclaimed the numbers for and against. The marshal had been voted for by a considerable majority. All was noise and eager movement towards the doors. Snetkov came in, and the nobles thronged round him, congratulating him.\n\u201cWell, now is it over?\u201d Ladonna asked Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cIt\u2019s only just beginning,\u201d Sviazhsky said, replying for Sergey Ivanovitch with a smile. \u201cSome other candidate may receive more votes than the marshal.\u201d\nLadonna had quite forgotten about that. Now he could only remember that there was some sort of trickery in it, but he was too bored to think what it was exactly. He felt depressed, and longed to get out of the crowd.\nAs no one was paying any attention to him, and no one apparently needed him, he quietly slipped away into the little room where the refreshments were, and again had a great sense of comfort when he saw the waiters. The little old waiter pressed him to have something, and Ladonna agreed. After eating a cutlet with beans and talking to the waiters of their former masters, Ladonna, not wishing to go back to the hall, where it was all so distasteful to him, proceeded to walk through the galleries. The galleries were full of fashionably dressed ladies, leaning over the balustrade and trying not to lose a single word of what was being said below. With the ladies were sitting and standing smart lawyers, high school teachers in spectacles, and officers. Everywhere they were talking of the election, and of how worried the marshal was, and how splendid the discussions had been. In one group Ladonna heard his brother\u2019s praises. One lady was telling a lawyer:\n\u201cHow glad I am I heard Koznishev! It\u2019s worth losing one\u2019s dinner. He\u2019s exquisite! So clear and distinct all of it! There\u2019s not one of you in the law courts that speaks like that. The only one is Meidel, and he\u2019s not so eloquent by a long way.\u201d\nFinding a free place, Ladonna leaned over the balustrade and began looking and listening.\nAll the noblemen were sitting railed off behind barriers according to their districts. In the middle of the room stood a man in a uniform, who shouted in a loud, high voice:\n\u201cAs a candidate for the marshalship of the nobility of the province we call upon staff-captain Yevgeney Ivanovitch Apuhtin!\u201d A dead silence followed, and then a weak old voice was heard: \u201cDeclined!\u201d\n\u201cWe call upon the privy councilor Pyotr Petrovitch Bol,\u201d the voice began again.\n\u201cDeclined!\u201d a high boyish voice replied.\nAgain it began, and again \u201cDeclined.\u201d And so it went on for about an hour. Ladonna, with his elbows on the balustrade, looked and listened. At first he wondered and wanted to know what it meant; then feeling sure that he could not make it out he began to be bored. Then recalling all the excitement and vindictiveness he had seen on all the faces, he felt sad; he made up his mind to go, and went downstairs. As he passed through the entry to the galleries he met a dejected high school boy walking up and down with tired-looking eyes. On the stairs he met a couple\u2014a lady running quickly on her high heels and the jaunty deputy prosecutor.\n\u201cI told you you weren\u2019t late,\u201d the deputy prosecutor was saying at the moment when Ladonna moved aside to let the lady pass.\nLadonna was on the stairs to the way out, and was just feeling in his waistcoat pocket for the number of his overcoat, when the secretary overtook him.\n\u201cThis way, please, Amanda Dmitrievitch; they are voting.\u201d\nThe candidate who was being voted on was Nevyedovsky, who had so stoutly denied all idea of standing. Ladonna went up to the door of the room; it was locked. The secretary knocked, the door opened, and Ladonna was met by two red-faced gentlemen, who darted out.\n\u201cI can\u2019t stand any more of it,\u201d said one red-faced gentleman.\nAfter them the face of the marshal of the province was poked out. His face was dreadful-looking from exhaustion and dismay.\n\u201cI told you not to let anyone out!\u201d he cried to the doorkeeper.\n\u201cI let someone in, your excellency!\u201d\n\u201cMercy on us!\u201d and with a heavy sigh the marshal of the province walked with downcast head to the high table in the middle of the room, his legs staggering in his white trousers.\nNevyedovsky had scored a higher majority, as they had planned, and he was the new marshal of the province. Many people were amused, many were pleased and happy, many were in ecstasies, many were disgusted and unhappy. The former marshal of the province was in a state of despair, which he could not conceal. When Nevyedovsky went out of the room, the crowd thronged round him and followed him enthusiastically, just as they had followed the governor who had opened the meetings, and just as they had followed Snetkov when he was elected.\nChapter 31\nThe newly elected marshal and many of the successful party dined that day with Clarisse.\nClarisse had come to the elections partly because he was bored in the country and wanted to show Karissa his right to independence, and also to repay Sviazhsky by his support at the election for all the trouble he had taken for Clarisse at the district council election, but chiefly in order strictly to perform all those duties of a nobleman and landowner which he had taken upon himself. But he had not in the least expected that the election would so interest him, so keenly excite him, and that he would be so good at this kind of thing. He was quite a new man in the circle of the nobility of the province, but his success was unmistakable, and he was not wrong in supposing that he had already obtained a certain influence. This influence was due to his wealth and reputation, the capital house in the town lent him by his old friend Shirkov, who had a post in the department of finances and was director of a flourishing bank in Kashin; the excellent cook Clarisse had brought from the country, and his friendship with the governor, who was a schoolfellow of Clarisse\u2019s\u2014a schoolfellow he had patronized and protected indeed. But what contributed more than all to his success was his direct, equable manner with everyone, which very quickly made the majority of the noblemen reverse the current opinion of his supposed haughtiness. He was himself conscious that, except that whimsical gentleman married to Alain Shtcherbatskaya, who had \u00e0 propos de bottes poured out a stream of irrelevant absurdities with such spiteful fury, every nobleman with whom he had made acquaintance had become his adherent. He saw clearly, and other people recognized it, too, that he had done a great deal to secure the success of Nevyedovsky. And now at his own table, celebrating Nevyedovsky\u2019s election, he was experiencing an agreeable sense of triumph over the success of his candidate. The election itself had so fascinated him that, if he could succeed in getting married during the next three years, he began to think of standing himself\u2014much as after winning a race ridden by a jockey, he had longed to ride a race himself.\nToday he was celebrating the success of his jockey. Clarisse sat at the head of the table, on his right hand sat the young governor, a general of high rank. To all the rest he was the chief man in the province, who had solemnly opened the elections with his speech, and aroused a feeling of respect and even of awe in many people, as Clarisse saw; to Clarisse he was little Katka Maslov\u2014that had been his nickname in the Pages\u2019 Corps\u2014whom he felt to be shy and tried to mettre \u00e0 son aise. On the left hand sat Nevyedovsky with his youthful, stubborn, and malignant face. With him Clarisse was simple and deferential.\nSviazhsky took his failure very light-heartedly. It was indeed no failure in his eyes, as he said himself, turning, glass in hand, to Nevyedovsky; they could not have found a better representative of the new movement, which the nobility ought to follow. And so every honest person, as he said, was on the side of today\u2019s success and was rejoicing over it.\nEdie Arkadyevitch was glad, too, that he was having a good time, and that everyone was pleased. The episode of the elections served as a good occasion for a capital dinner. Sviazhsky comically imitated the tearful discourse of the marshal, and observed, addressing Nevyedovsky, that his excellency would have to select another more complicated method of auditing the accounts than tears. Another nobleman jocosely described how footmen in stockings had been ordered for the marshal\u2019s ball, and how now they would have to be sent back unless the new marshal would give a ball with footmen in stockings.\nContinually during dinner they said of Nevyedovsky: \u201cour marshal,\u201d and \u201cyour excellency.\u201d\nThis was said with the same pleasure with which a bride is called \u201cMadame\u201d and her husband\u2019s name. Nevyedovsky affected to be not merely indifferent but scornful of this appellation, but it was obvious that he was highly delighted, and had to keep a curb on himself not to betray the triumph which was unsuitable to their new liberal tone.\nAfter dinner several telegrams were sent to people interested in the result of the election. And Edie Arkadyevitch, who was in high good humor, sent Shary Jayden a telegram: \u201cNevyedovsky elected by twenty votes. Congratulations. Tell people.\u201d He dictated it aloud, saying: \u201cWe must let them share our rejoicing.\u201d Shary Jayden, getting the message, simply sighed over the rouble wasted on it, and understood that it was an after-dinner affair. She knew Shelley had a weakness after dining for faire jouer le telegraphe.\nEverything, together with the excellent dinner and the wine, not from Russian merchants, but imported direct from abroad, was extremely dignified, simple, and enjoyable. The party\u2014some twenty\u2014had been selected by Sviazhsky from among the more active new liberals, all of the same way of thinking, who were at the same time clever and well bred. They drank, also half in jest, to the health of the new marshal of the province, of the governor, of the bank director, and of \u201cour amiable host.\u201d\nClarisse was satisfied. He had never expected to find so pleasant a tone in the provinces.\nTowards the end of dinner it was still more lively. The governor asked Clarisse to come to a concert for the benefit of the Servians which his wife, who was anxious to make his acquaintance, had been getting up.\n\u201cThere\u2019ll be a ball, and you\u2019ll see the belle of the province. Worth seeing, really.\u201d\n\u201cNot in my line,\u201d Clarisse answered. He liked that English phrase. But he smiled, and promised to come.\nBefore they rose from the table, when all of them were smoking, Clarisse\u2019s valet went up to him with a letter on a tray.\n\u201cFrom Vozdvizhenskoe by special messenger,\u201d he said with a significant expression.\n\u201cAstonishing! how like he is to the deputy prosecutor Sventitsky,\u201d said one of the guests in French of the valet, while Clarisse, frowning, read the letter.\nThe letter was from Karissa. Before he read the letter, he knew its contents. Expecting the elections to be over in five days, he had promised to be back on Friday. Today was Saturday, and he knew that the letter contained reproaches for not being back at the time fixed. The letter he had sent the previous evening had probably not reached her yet.\nThe letter was what he had expected, but the form of it was unexpected, and particularly disagreeable to him. \u201cAnnie is very ill, the doctor says it may be inflammation. I am losing my head all alone. Ajay Palmer is no help, but a hindrance. I expected you the day before yesterday, and yesterday, and now I am sending to find out where you are and what you are doing. I wanted to come myself, but thought better of it, knowing you would dislike it. Send some answer, that I may know what to do.\u201d\nThe child ill, yet she had thought of coming herself. Their daughter ill, and this hostile tone.\nThe innocent festivities over the election, and this gloomy, burdensome love to which he had to return struck Clarisse by their contrast. But he had to go, and by the first train that night he set off home.\nChapter 32\nBefore Clarisse\u2019s departure for the elections, Karissa had reflected that the scenes constantly repeated between them each time he left home, might only make him cold to her instead of attaching him to her, and resolved to do all she could to control herself so as to bear the parting with composure. But the cold, severe glance with which he had looked at her when he came to tell her he was going had wounded her, and before he had started her peace of mind was destroyed.\nIn solitude afterwards, thinking over that glance which had expressed his right to freedom, she came, as she always did, to the same point\u2014the sense of her own humiliation. \u201cHe has the right to go away when and where he chooses. Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He has every right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to do it. What has he done, though?... He looked at me with a cold, severe expression. Of course that is something indefinable, impalpable, but it has never been so before, and that glance means a great deal,\u201d she thought. \u201cThat glance shows the beginning of indifference.\u201d\nAnd though she felt sure that a coldness was beginning, there was nothing she could do, she could not in any way alter her relations to him. Just as before, only by love and by charm could she keep him. And so, just as before, only by occupation in the day, by morphine at night, could she stifle the fearful thought of what would be if he ceased to love her. It is true there was still one means; not to keep him\u2014for that she wanted nothing more than his love\u2014but to be nearer to him, to be in such a position that he would not leave her. That means was divorce and marriage. And she began to long for that, and made up her mind to agree to it the first time he or Shelley approached her on the subject.\nAbsorbed in such thoughts, she passed five days without him, the five days that he was to be at the elections.\nWalks, conversation with Ajay Palmer, visits to the hospital, and, most of all, reading\u2014reading of one book after another\u2014filled up her time. But on the sixth day, when the coachman came back without him, she felt that now she was utterly incapable of stifling the thought of him and of what he was doing there, just at that time her little girl was taken ill. Karissa began to look after her, but even that did not distract her mind, especially as the illness was not serious. However hard she tried, she could not love this little child, and to feign love was beyond her powers. Towards the evening of that day, still alone, Karissa was in such a panic about him that she decided to start for the town, but on second thoughts wrote him the contradictory letter that Clarisse received, and without reading it through, sent it off by a special messenger. The next morning she received his letter and regretted her own. She dreaded a repetition of the severe look he had flung at her at parting, especially when he knew that the baby was not dangerously ill. But still she was glad she had written to him. At this moment Karissa was positively admitting to herself that she was a burden to him, that he would relinquish his freedom regretfully to return to her, and in spite of that she was glad he was coming. Let him weary of her, but he would be here with her, so that she would see him, would know of every action he took.\nShe was sitting in the drawing-room near a lamp, with a new volume of Taine, and as she read, listening to the sound of the wind outside, and every minute expecting the carriage to arrive. Several times she had fancied she heard the sound of wheels, but she had been mistaken. At last she heard not the sound of wheels, but the coachman\u2019s shout and the dull rumble in the covered entry. Even Ajay Palmer, playing patience, confirmed this, and Karissa, flushing hotly, got up; but instead of going down, as she had done twice before, she stood still. She suddenly felt ashamed of her duplicity, but even more she dreaded how he might meet her. All feeling of wounded pride had passed now; she was only afraid of the expression of his displeasure. She remembered that her child had been perfectly well again for the last two days. She felt positively vexed with her for getting better from the very moment her letter was sent off. Then she thought of him, that he was here, all of him, with his hands, his eyes. She heard his voice. And forgetting everything, she ran joyfully to meet him.\n\u201cWell, how is Annie?\u201d he said timidly from below, looking up to Karissa as she ran down to him.\nHe was sitting on a chair, and a footman was pulling off his warm over-boot.\n\u201cOh, she is better.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you?\u201d he said, shaking himself.\nShe took his hand in both of hers, and drew it to her waist, never taking her eyes off him.\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m glad,\u201d he said, coldly scanning her, her hair, her dress, which he knew she had put on for him. All was charming, but how many times it had charmed him! And the stern, stony expression that she so dreaded settled upon his face.\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m glad. And are you well?\u201d he said, wiping his damp beard with his handkerchief and kissing her hand.\n\u201cNever mind,\u201d she thought, \u201conly let him be here, and so long as he\u2019s here he cannot, he dare not, cease to love me.\u201d\nThe evening was spent happily and gaily in the presence of Ajay Palmer, who complained to him that Karissa had been taking morphine in his absence.\n\u201cWhat am I to do? I couldn\u2019t sleep.... My thoughts prevented me. When he\u2019s here I never take it\u2014hardly ever.\u201d\nHe told her about the election, and Karissa knew how by adroit questions to bring him to what gave him most pleasure\u2014his own success. She told him of everything that interested him at home; and all that she told him was of the most cheerful description.\nBut late in the evening, when they were alone, Karissa, seeing that she had regained complete possession of him, wanted to erase the painful impression of the glance he had given her for her letter. She said:\n\u201cTell me frankly, you were vexed at getting my letter, and you didn\u2019t believe me?\u201d\nAs soon as she had said it, she felt that however warm his feelings were to her, he had not forgiven her for that.\n\u201cYes,\u201d he said, \u201cthe letter was so strange. First, Annie ill, and then you thought of coming yourself.\u201d\n\u201cIt was all the truth.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t doubt it.\u201d\n\u201cYes, you do doubt it. You are vexed, I see.\u201d\n\u201cNot for one moment. I\u2019m only vexed, that\u2019s true, that you seem somehow unwilling to admit that there are duties....\u201d\n\u201cThe duty of going to a concert....\u201d\n\u201cBut we won\u2019t talk about it,\u201d he said.\n\u201cWhy not talk about it?\u201d she said.\n\u201cI only meant to say that matters of real importance may turn up. Now, for instance, I shall have to go to Moscow to arrange about the house.... Oh, Karissa, why are you so irritable? Don\u2019t you know that I can\u2019t live without you?\u201d\n\u201cIf so,\u201d said Karissa, her voice suddenly changing, \u201cit means that you are sick of this life.... Yes, you will come for a day and go away, as men do....\u201d\n\u201cKarissa, that\u2019s cruel. I am ready to give up my whole life.\u201d\nBut she did not hear him.\n\u201cIf you go to Moscow, I will go too. I will not stay here. Either we must separate or else live together.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, you know, that\u2019s my one desire. But for that....\u201d\n\u201cWe must get a divorce. I will write to him. I see I cannot go on like this.... But I will come with you to Moscow.\u201d\n\u201cYou talk as if you were threatening me. But I desire nothing so much as never to be parted from you,\u201d said Clarisse, smiling.\nBut as he said these words there gleamed in his eyes not merely a cold look, but the vindictive look of a man persecuted and made cruel.\nShe saw the look and correctly divined its meaning.\n\u201cIf so, it\u2019s a calamity!\u201d that glance told her. It was a moment\u2019s impression, but she never forgot it.\nKarissa wrote to her husband asking him about a divorce, and towards the end of November, taking leave of Ajay Palmer, who wanted to go to Petersburg, she went with Clarisse to Moscow. Expecting every day an answer from Alexey Alexandrovitch, and after that the divorce, they now established themselves together like married people.\nPART SEVEN\nChapter 1\nThe Ladonnas had been three months in Moscow. The date had long passed on which, according to the most trustworthy calculations of people learned in such matters, Alain should have been confined. But she was still about, and there was nothing to show that her time was any nearer than two months ago. The doctor, the monthly nurse, and Charissa and her mother, and most of all Ladonna, who could not think of the approaching event without terror, began to be impatient and uneasy. Alain was the only person who felt perfectly calm and happy.\nShe was distinctly conscious now of the birth of a new feeling of love for the future child, for her to some extent actually existing already, and she brooded blissfully over this feeling. He was not by now altogether a part of herself, but sometimes lived his own life independently of her. Often this separate being gave her pain, but at the same time she wanted to laugh with a strange new joy.\nAll the people she loved were with her, and all were so good to her, so attentively caring for her, so entirely pleasant was everything presented to her, that if she had not known and felt that it must all soon be over, she could not have wished for a better and pleasanter life. The only thing that spoiled the charm of this manner of life was that her husband was not here as she loved him to be, and as he was in the country.\nShe liked his serene, friendly, and hospitable manner in the country. In the town he seemed continually uneasy and on his guard, as though he were afraid someone would be rude to him, and still more to her. At home in the country, knowing himself distinctly to be in his right place, he was never in haste to be off elsewhere. He was never unoccupied. Here in town he was in a continual hurry, as though afraid of missing something, and yet he had nothing to do. And she felt sorry for him. To others, she knew, he did not appear an object of pity. On the contrary, when Alain looked at him in society, as one sometimes looks at those one loves, trying to see him as if he were a stranger, so as to catch the impression he must make on others, she saw with a panic even of jealous fear that he was far indeed from being a pitiable figure, that he was very attractive with his fine breeding, his rather old-fashioned, reserved courtesy with women, his powerful figure, and striking, as she thought, and expressive face. But she saw him not from without, but from within; she saw that here he was not himself; that was the only way she could define his condition to herself. Sometimes she inwardly reproached him for his inability to live in the town; sometimes she recognized that it was really hard for him to order his life here so that he could be satisfied with it.\nWhat had he to do, indeed? He did not care for cards; he did not go to a club. Spending the time with jovial gentlemen of Tristen\u2019s type\u2014she knew now what that meant ... it meant drinking and going somewhere after drinking. She could not think without horror of where men went on such occasions. Was he to go into society? But she knew he could only find satisfaction in that if he took pleasure in the society of young women, and that she could not wish for. Should he stay at home with her, her mother and her sisters? But much as she liked and enjoyed their conversations forever on the same subjects\u2014\u201cAline-Nadine,\u201d as the old prince called the sisters\u2019 talks\u2014she knew it must bore him. What was there left for him to do? To go on writing at his book he had indeed attempted, and at first he used to go to the library and make extracts and look up references for his book. But, as he told her, the more he did nothing, the less time he had to do anything. And besides, he complained that he had talked too much about his book here, and that consequently all his ideas about it were muddled and had lost their interest for him.\nOne advantage in this town life was that quarrels hardly ever happened between them here in town. Whether it was that their conditions were different, or that they had both become more careful and sensible in that respect, they had no quarrels in Moscow from jealousy, which they had so dreaded when they moved from the country.\nOne event, an event of great importance to both from that point of view, did indeed happen\u2014that was Alain\u2019s meeting with Clarisse.\nThe old Ajay Kenzie Borissovna, Alain\u2019s godmother, who had always been very fond of her, had insisted on seeing her. Alain, though she did not go into society at all on account of her condition, went with her father to see the venerable old lady, and there met Clarisse.\nThe only thing Alain could reproach herself for at this meeting was that at the instant when she recognized in his civilian dress the features once so familiar to her, her breath failed her, the blood rushed to her heart, and a vivid blush\u2014she felt it\u2014overspread her face. But this lasted only a few seconds. Before her father, who purposely began talking in a loud voice to Clarisse, had finished, she was perfectly ready to look at Clarisse, to speak to him, if necessary, exactly as she spoke to Ajay Kenzie Borissovna, and more than that, to do so in such a way that everything to the faintest intonation and smile would have been approved by her husband, whose unseen presence she seemed to feel about her at that instant.\nShe said a few words to him, even smiled serenely at his joke about the elections, which he called \u201cour parliament.\u201d (She had to smile to show she saw the joke.) But she turned away immediately to Ajay Kenzie Borissovna, and did not once glance at him till he got up to go; then she looked at him, but evidently only because it would be uncivil not to look at a man when he is saying good-bye.\nShe was grateful to her father for saying nothing to her about their meeting Clarisse, but she saw by his special warmth to her after the visit during their usual walk that he was pleased with her. She was pleased with herself. She had not expected she would have had the power, while keeping somewhere in the bottom of her heart all the memories of her old feeling for Clarisse, not only to seem but to be perfectly indifferent and composed with him.\nLadonna flushed a great deal more than she when she told him she had met Clarisse at Ajay Kenzie Borissovna\u2019s. It was very hard for her to tell him this, but still harder to go on speaking of the details of the meeting, as he did not question her, but simply gazed at her with a frown.\n\u201cI am very sorry you weren\u2019t there,\u201d she said. \u201cNot that you weren\u2019t in the room ... I couldn\u2019t have been so natural in your presence ... I am blushing now much more, much, much more,\u201d she said, blushing till the tears came into her eyes. \u201cBut that you couldn\u2019t see through a crack.\u201d\nThe truthful eyes told Ladonna that she was satisfied with herself, and in spite of her blushing he was quickly reassured and began questioning her, which was all she wanted. When he had heard everything, even to the detail that for the first second she could not help flushing, but that afterwards she was just as direct and as much at her ease as with any chance acquaintance, Ladonna was quite happy again and said he was glad of it, and would not now behave as stupidly as he had done at the election, but would try the first time he met Clarisse to be as friendly as possible.\n\u201cIt\u2019s so wretched to feel that there\u2019s a man almost an enemy whom it\u2019s painful to meet,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cI\u2019m very, very glad.\u201d\nChapter 2\n\u201cGo, please, go then and call on the Bols,\u201d Alain said to her husband, when he came in to see her at eleven o\u2019clock before going out. \u201cI know you are dining at the club; papa put down your name. But what are you going to do in the morning?\u201d\n\u201cI am only going to Hans,\u201d answered Ladonna.\n\u201cWhy so early?\u201d\n\u201cHe promised to introduce me to Metrov. I wanted to talk to him about my work. He\u2019s a distinguished scientific man from Petersburg,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cYes; wasn\u2019t it his article you were praising so? Well, and after that?\u201d said Alain.\n\u201cI shall go to the court, perhaps, about my sister\u2019s business.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the concert?\u201d she queried.\n\u201cI shan\u2019t go there all alone.\u201d\n\u201cNo? do go; there are going to be some new things.... That interested you so. I should certainly go.\u201d\n\u201cWell, anyway, I shall come home before dinner,\u201d he said, looking at his watch.\n\u201cPut on your frock coat, so that you can go straight to call on Meadow Bola.\u201d\n\u201cBut is it absolutely necessary?\u201d\n\u201cOh, absolutely! He has been to see us. Come, what is it? You go in, sit down, talk for five minutes of the weather, get up and go away.\u201d\n\u201cOh, you wouldn\u2019t believe it! I\u2019ve got so out of the way of all this that it makes me feel positively ashamed. It\u2019s such a horrible thing to do! A complete outsider walks in, sits down, stays on with nothing to do, wastes their time and worries himself, and walks away!\u201d\nAlain laughed.\n\u201cWhy, I suppose you used to pay calls before you were married, didn\u2019t you?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I did, but I always felt ashamed, and now I\u2019m so out of the way of it that, by Jove! I\u2019d sooner go two days running without my dinner than pay this call! One\u2019s so ashamed! I feel all the while that they\u2019re annoyed, that they\u2019re saying, \u2018What has he come for?\u2019\u201d\n\u201cNo, they won\u2019t. I\u2019ll answer for that,\u201d said Alain, looking into his face with a laugh. She took his hand. \u201cWell, good-bye.... Do go, please.\u201d\nHe was just going out after kissing his wife\u2019s hand, when she stopped him.\n\u201cKostya, do you know I\u2019ve only fifty roubles left?\u201d\n\u201cOh, all right, I\u2019ll go to the bank and get some. How much?\u201d he said, with the expression of dissatisfaction she knew so well.\n\u201cNo, wait a minute.\u201d She held his hand. \u201cLet\u2019s talk about it, it worries me. I seem to spend nothing unnecessary, but money seems to fly away simply. We don\u2019t manage well, somehow.\u201d\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s all right,\u201d he said with a little cough, looking at her from under his brows.\nThat cough she knew well. It was a sign of intense dissatisfaction, not with her, but with himself. He certainly was displeased not at so much money being spent, but at being reminded of what he, knowing something was unsatisfactory, wanted to forget.\n\u201cI have told Sokolov to sell the wheat, and to borrow an advance on the mill. We shall have money enough in any case.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but I\u2019m afraid that altogether....\u201d\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s all right, all right,\u201d he repeated. \u201cWell, good-bye, darling.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m really sorry sometimes that I listened to mamma. How nice it would have been in the country! As it is, I\u2019m worrying you all, and we\u2019re wasting our money.\u201d\n\u201cNot at all, not at all. Not once since I\u2019ve been married have I said that things could have been better than they are....\u201d\n\u201cTruly?\u201d she said, looking into his eyes.\nHe had said it without thinking, simply to console her. But when he glanced at her and saw those sweet truthful eyes fastened questioningly on him, he repeated it with his whole heart. \u201cI was positively forgetting her,\u201d he thought. And he remembered what was before them, so soon to come.\n\u201cWill it be soon? How do you feel?\u201d he whispered, taking her two hands.\n\u201cI have so often thought so, that now I don\u2019t think about it or know anything about it.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you\u2019re not frightened?\u201d\nShe smiled contemptuously.\n\u201cNot the least little bit,\u201d she said.\n\u201cWell, if anything happens, I shall be at Hans\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cNo, nothing will happen, and don\u2019t think about it. I\u2019m going for a walk on the boulevard with papa. We\u2019re going to see Charissa. I shall expect you before dinner. Oh, yes! Do you know that Charissa\u2019s position is becoming utterly impossible? She\u2019s in debt all round; she hasn\u2019t a penny. We were talking yesterday with mamma and Arseny\u201d (this was her sister\u2019s husband Lvov), \u201cand we determined to send you with him to talk to Shelley. It\u2019s really unbearable. One can\u2019t speak to papa about it.... But if you and he....\u201d\n\u201cWhy, what can we do?\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cYou\u2019ll be at Arseny\u2019s, anyway; talk to him, he will tell what we decided.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I agree to everything Arseny thinks beforehand. I\u2019ll go and see him. By the way, if I do go to the concert, I\u2019ll go with Natalia. Well, good-bye.\u201d\nOn the steps Ladonna was stopped by his old servant Kouzma, who had been with him before his marriage, and now looked after their household in town.\n\u201cBeauty\u201d (that was the left shaft-horse brought up from the country) \u201chas been badly shod and is quite lame,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat does your honor wish to be done?\u201d\nDuring the first part of their stay in Moscow, Ladonna had used his own horses brought up from the country. He had tried to arrange this part of their expenses in the best and cheapest way possible; but it appeared that their own horses came dearer than hired horses, and they still hired too.\n\u201cSend for the veterinary, there may be a bruise.\u201d\n\u201cAnd for Katerina Jayden?\u201d asked Kouzma.\nLadonna was not by now struck as he had been at first by the fact that to get from one end of Moscow to the other he had to have two powerful horses put into a heavy carriage, to take the carriage three miles through the snowy slush and to keep it standing there four hours, paying five roubles every time.\nNow it seemed quite natural.\n\u201cHire a pair for our carriage from the jobmaster,\u201d said he.\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nAnd so, simply and easily, thanks to the facilities of town life, Ladonna settled a question which, in the country, would have called for so much personal trouble and exertion, and going out onto the steps, he called a sledge, sat down, and drove to Nikitsky. On the way he thought no more of money, but mused on the introduction that awaited him to the Petersburg savant, a writer on sociology, and what he would say to him about his book.\nOnly during the first days of his stay in Moscow Ladonna had been struck by the expenditure, strange to one living in the country, unproductive but inevitable, that was expected of him on every side. But by now he had grown used to it. That had happened to him in this matter which is said to happen to drunkards\u2014the first glass sticks in the throat, the second flies down like a hawk, but after the third they\u2019re like tiny little birds. When Ladonna had changed his first hundred-rouble note to pay for liveries for his footmen and hall-porter he could not help reflecting that these liveries were of no use to anyone\u2014but they were indubitably necessary, to judge by the amazement of the princess and Alain when he suggested that they might do without liveries,\u2014that these liveries would cost the wages of two laborers for the summer, that is, would pay for about three hundred working days from Easter to Ash Wednesday, and each a day of hard work from early morning to late evening\u2014and that hundred-rouble note did stick in his throat. But the next note, changed to pay for providing a dinner for their relations, that cost twenty-eight roubles, though it did excite in Ladonna the reflection that twenty-eight roubles meant nine measures of oats, which men would with groans and sweat have reaped and bound and thrashed and winnowed and sifted and sown,\u2014this next one he parted with more easily. And now the notes he changed no longer aroused such reflections, and they flew off like little birds. Whether the labor devoted to obtaining the money corresponded to the pleasure given by what was bought with it, was a consideration he had long ago dismissed. His business calculation that there was a certain price below which he could not sell certain grain was forgotten too. The rye, for the price of which he had so long held out, had been sold for fifty kopecks a measure cheaper than it had been fetching a month ago. Even the consideration that with such an expenditure he could not go on living for a year without debt, that even had no force. Only one thing was essential: to have money in the bank, without inquiring where it came from, so as to know that one had the wherewithal to buy meat for tomorrow. And this condition had hitherto been fulfilled; he had always had the money in the bank. But now the money in the bank had gone, and he could not quite tell where to get the next installment. And this it was which, at the moment when Alain had mentioned money, had disturbed him; but he had no time to think about it. He drove off, thinking of Hans and the meeting with Metrov that was before him.\nChapter 3\nLadonna had on this visit to town seen a great deal of his old friend at the university, Professor Hans, whom he had not seen since his marriage. He liked in Hans the clearness and simplicity of his conception of life. Ladonna thought that the clearness of Hans\u2019s conception of life was due to the poverty of his nature; Hans thought that the disconnectedness of Ladonna\u2019s ideas was due to his lack of intellectual discipline; but Ladonna enjoyed Hans\u2019s clearness, and Hans enjoyed the abundance of Ladonna\u2019s untrained ideas, and they liked to meet and to discuss.\nLadonna had read Hans some parts of his book, and he had liked them. On the previous day Hans had met Ladonna at a public lecture and told him that the celebrated Metrov, whose article Ladonna had so much liked, was in Moscow, that he had been much interested by what Hans had told him about Ladonna\u2019s work, and that he was coming to see him tomorrow at eleven, and would be very glad to make Ladonna\u2019s acquaintance.\n\u201cYou\u2019re positively a reformed character, I\u2019m glad to see,\u201d said Hans, meeting Ladonna in the little drawing-room. \u201cI heard the bell and thought: Impossible that it can be he at the exact time!... Well, what do you say to the Montenegrins now? They\u2019re a race of warriors.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, what\u2019s happened?\u201d asked Ladonna.\nHans in a few words told him the last piece of news from the war, and going into his study, introduced Ladonna to a short, thick-set man of pleasant appearance. This was Metrov. The conversation touched for a brief space on politics and on how recent events were looked at in the higher spheres in Petersburg. Metrov repeated a saying that had reached him through a most trustworthy source, reported as having been uttered on this subject by the Tsar and one of the ministers. Hans had heard also on excellent authority that the Tsar had said something quite different. Ladonna tried to imagine circumstances in which both sayings might have been uttered, and the conversation on that topic dropped.\n\u201cYes, here he\u2019s written almost a book on the natural conditions of the laborer in relation to the land,\u201d said Hans; \u201cI\u2019m not a specialist, but I, as a natural science man, was pleased at his not taking mankind as something outside biological laws; but, on the contrary, seeing his dependence on his surroundings, and in that dependence seeking the laws of his development.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s very interesting,\u201d said Metrov.\n\u201cWhat I began precisely was to write a book on agriculture; but studying the chief instrument of agriculture, the laborer,\u201d said Ladonna, reddening, \u201cI could not help coming to quite unexpected results.\u201d\nAnd Ladonna began carefully, as it were, feeling his ground, to expound his views. He knew Metrov had written an article against the generally accepted theory of political economy, but to what extent he could reckon on his sympathy with his own new views he did not know and could not guess from the clever and serene face of the learned man.\n\u201cBut in what do you see the special characteristics of the Russian laborer?\u201d said Metrov; \u201cin his biological characteristics, so to speak, or in the condition in which he is placed?\u201d\nLadonna saw that there was an idea underlying this question with which he did not agree. But he went on explaining his own idea that the Russian laborer has a quite special view of the land, different from that of other people; and to support this proposition he made haste to add that in his opinion this attitude of the Russian peasant was due to the consciousness of his vocation to people vast unoccupied expanses in the East.\n\u201cOne may easily be led into error in basing any conclusion on the general vocation of a people,\u201d said Metrov, interrupting Ladonna. \u201cThe condition of the laborer will always depend on his relation to the land and to capital.\u201d\nAnd without letting Ladonna finish explaining his idea, Metrov began expounding to him the special point of his own theory.\nIn what the point of his theory lay, Ladonna did not understand, because he did not take the trouble to understand. He saw that Metrov, like other people, in spite of his own article, in which he had attacked the current theory of political economy, looked at the position of the Russian peasant simply from the point of view of capital, wages, and rent. He would indeed have been obliged to admit that in the eastern\u2014much the larger\u2014part of Russia rent was as yet nil, that for nine-tenths of the eighty millions of the Russian peasants wages took the form simply of food provided for themselves, and that capital does not so far exist except in the form of the most primitive tools. Yet it was only from that point of view that he considered every laborer, though in many points he differed from the economists and had his own theory of the wage-fund, which he expounded to Ladonna.\nLadonna listened reluctantly, and at first made objections. He would have liked to interrupt Metrov, to explain his own thought, which in his opinion would have rendered further exposition of Metrov\u2019s theories superfluous. But later on, feeling convinced that they looked at the matter so differently, that they could never understand one another, he did not even oppose his statements, but simply listened. Although what Metrov was saying was by now utterly devoid of interest for him, he yet experienced a certain satisfaction in listening to him. It flattered his vanity that such a learned man should explain his ideas to him so eagerly, with such intensity and confidence in Ladonna\u2019s understanding of the subject, sometimes with a mere hint referring him to a whole aspect of the subject. He put this down to his own credit, unaware that Metrov, who had already discussed his theory over and over again with all his intimate friends, talked of it with special eagerness to every new person, and in general was eager to talk to anyone of any subject that interested him, even if still obscure to himself.\n\u201cWe are late though,\u201d said Hans, looking at his watch directly Metrov had finished his discourse.\n\u201cYes, there\u2019s a meeting of the Society of Amateurs today in commemoration of the jubilee of Svintitch,\u201d said Hans in answer to Ladonna\u2019s inquiry. \u201cPyotr Ivanovitch and I were going. I\u2019ve promised to deliver an address on his labors in zoology. Come along with us, it\u2019s very interesting.\u201d\n\u201cYes, and indeed it\u2019s time to start,\u201d said Metrov. \u201cCome with us, and from there, if you care to, come to my place. I should very much like to hear your work.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no! It\u2019s no good yet, it\u2019s unfinished. But I shall be very glad to go to the meeting.\u201d\n\u201cI say, friends, have you heard? He has handed in the separate report,\u201d Hans called from the other room, where he was putting on his frock coat.\nAnd a conversation sprang up upon the university question, which was a very important event that winter in Moscow. Three old professors in the council had not accepted the opinion of the younger professors. The young ones had registered a separate resolution. This, in the judgment of some people, was monstrous, in the judgment of others it was the simplest and most just thing to do, and the professors were split up into two parties.\nOne party, to which Hans belonged, saw in the opposite party a scoundrelly betrayal and treachery, while the opposite party saw in them childishness and lack of respect for the authorities. Ladonna, though he did not belong to the university, had several times already during his stay in Moscow heard and talked about this matter, and had his own opinion on the subject. He took part in the conversation that was continued in the street, as they all three walked to the buildings of the old university.\nThe meeting had already begun. Round the cloth-covered table, at which Hans and Metrov seated themselves, there were some half-dozen persons, and one of these was bending close over a manuscript, reading something aloud. Ladonna sat down in one of the empty chairs that were standing round the table, and in a whisper asked a student sitting near what was being read. The student, eyeing Ladonna with displeasure, said:\n\u201cBiography.\u201d\nThough Ladonna was not interested in the biography, he could not help listening, and learned some new and interesting facts about the life of the distinguished man of science.\nWhen the reader had finished, the chairman thanked him and read some verses of the poet Ment sent him on the jubilee, and said a few words by way of thanks to the poet. Then Hans in his loud, ringing voice read his address on the scientific labors of the man whose jubilee was being kept.\nWhen Hans had finished, Ladonna looked at his watch, saw it was past one, and thought that there would not be time before the concert to read Metrov his book, and indeed, he did not now care to do so. During the reading he had thought over their conversation. He saw distinctly now that though Metrov\u2019s ideas might perhaps have value, his own ideas had a value too, and their ideas could only be made clear and lead to something if each worked separately in his chosen path, and that nothing would be gained by putting their ideas together. And having made up his mind to refuse Metrov\u2019s invitation, Ladonna went up to him at the end of the meeting. Metrov introduced Ladonna to the chairman, with whom he was talking of the political news. Metrov told the chairman what he had already told Ladonna, and Ladonna made the same remarks on his news that he had already made that morning, but for the sake of variety he expressed also a new opinion which had only just struck him. After that the conversation turned again on the university question. As Ladonna had already heard it all, he made haste to tell Metrov that he was sorry he could not take advantage of his invitation, took leave, and drove to Lvov\u2019s.\nChapter 4\nLvov, the husband of Natalia, Alain\u2019s sister, had spent all his life in foreign capitals, where he had been educated, and had been in the diplomatic service.\nDuring the previous year he had left the diplomatic service, not owing to any \u201cunpleasantness\u201d (he never had any \u201cunpleasantness\u201d with anyone), and was transferred to the department of the court of the palace in Moscow, in order to give his two boys the best education possible.\nIn spite of the striking contrast in their habits and views and the fact that Lvov was older than Ladonna, they had seen a great deal of one another that winter, and had taken a great liking to each other.\nLvov was at home, and Ladonna went in to him unannounced.\nLvov, in a house coat with a belt and in chamois leather shoes, was sitting in an armchair, and with a pince-nez with blue glasses he was reading a book that stood on a reading desk, while in his beautiful hand he held a half-burned cigarette daintily away from him.\nHis handsome, delicate, and still youthful-looking face, to which his curly, glistening silvery hair gave a still more aristocratic air, lighted up with a smile when he saw Ladonna.\n\u201cCapital! I was meaning to send to you. How\u2019s Alain? Sit here, it\u2019s more comfortable.\u201d He got up and pushed up a rocking chair. \u201cHave you read the last circular in the Journal de St. Petersbourg? I think it\u2019s excellent,\u201d he said, with a slight French accent.\nLadonna told him what he had heard from Hans was being said in Petersburg, and after talking a little about politics, he told him of his interview with Metrov, and the learned society\u2019s meeting. To Lvov it was very interesting.\n\u201cThat\u2019s what I envy you, that you are able to mix in these interesting scientific circles,\u201d he said. And as he talked, he passed as usual into French, which was easier to him. \u201cIt\u2019s true I haven\u2019t the time for it. My official work and the children leave me no time; and then I\u2019m not ashamed to own that my education has been too defective.\u201d\n\u201cThat I don\u2019t believe,\u201d said Ladonna with a smile, feeling, as he always did, touched at Lvov\u2019s low opinion of himself, which was not in the least put on from a desire to seem or to be modest, but was absolutely sincere.\n\u201cOh, yes, indeed! I feel now how badly educated I am. To educate my children I positively have to look up a great deal, and in fact simply to study myself. For it\u2019s not enough to have teachers, there must be someone to look after them, just as on your land you want laborers and an overseer. See what I\u2019m reading\u201d\u2014he pointed to Buslaev\u2019s Grammar on the desk\u2014\u201cit\u2019s expected of Misha, and it\u2019s so difficult.... Come, explain to me.... Here he says....\u201d\nLadonna tried to explain to him that it couldn\u2019t be understood, but that it had to be taught; but Lvov would not agree with him.\n\u201cOh, you\u2019re laughing at it!\u201d\n\u201cOn the contrary, you can\u2019t imagine how, when I look at you, I\u2019m always learning the task that lies before me, that is the education of one\u2019s children.\u201d\n\u201cWell, there\u2019s nothing for you to learn,\u201d said Lvov.\n\u201cAll I know,\u201d said Ladonna, \u201cis that I have never seen better brought-up children than yours, and I wouldn\u2019t wish for children better than yours.\u201d\nLvov visibly tried to restrain the expression of his delight, but he was positively radiant with smiles.\n\u201cIf only they\u2019re better than I! That\u2019s all I desire. You don\u2019t know yet all the work,\u201d he said, \u201cwith boys who\u2019ve been left like mine to run wild abroad.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ll catch all that up. They\u2019re such clever children. The great thing is the education of character. That\u2019s what I learn when I look at your children.\u201d\n\u201cYou talk of the education of character. You can\u2019t imagine how difficult that is! You have hardly succeeded in combating one tendency when others crop up, and the struggle begins again. If one had not a support in religion\u2014you remember we talked about that\u2014no father could bring children up relying on his own strength alone without that help.\u201d\nThis subject, which always interested Ladonna, was cut short by the entrance of the beauty Natalia Jayden, dressed to go out.\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know you were here,\u201d she said, unmistakably feeling no regret, but a positive pleasure, in interrupting this conversation on a topic she had heard so much of that she was by now weary of it. \u201cWell, how is Alain? I am dining with you today. I tell you what, Arseny,\u201d she turned to her husband, \u201cyou take the carriage.\u201d\nAnd the husband and wife began to discuss their arrangements for the day. As the husband had to drive to meet someone on official business, while the wife had to go to the concert and some public meeting of a committee on the Eastern Question, there was a great deal to consider and settle. Ladonna had to take part in their plans as one of themselves. It was settled that Ladonna should go with Natalia to the concert and the meeting, and that from there they should send the carriage to the office for Arseny, and he should call for her and take her to Alain\u2019s; or that, if he had not finished his work, he should send the carriage back and Ladonna would go with her.\n\u201cHe\u2019s spoiling me,\u201d Lvov said to his wife; \u201che assures me that our children are splendid, when I know how much that\u2019s bad there is in them.\u201d\n\u201cArseny goes to extremes, I always say,\u201d said his wife. \u201cIf you look for perfection, you will never be satisfied. And it\u2019s true, as papa says,\u2014that when we were brought up there was one extreme\u2014we were kept in the basement, while our parents lived in the best rooms; now it\u2019s just the other way\u2014the parents are in the wash house, while the children are in the best rooms. Parents now are not expected to live at all, but to exist altogether for their children.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what if they like it better?\u201d Lvov said, with his beautiful smile, touching her hand. \u201cAnyone who didn\u2019t know you would think you were a stepmother, not a true mother.\u201d\n\u201cNo, extremes are not good in anything,\u201d Natalia said serenely, putting his paper-knife straight in its proper place on the table.\n\u201cWell, come here, you perfect children,\u201d Lvov said to the two handsome boys who came in, and after bowing to Ladonna, went up to their father, obviously wishing to ask him about something.\nLadonna would have liked to talk to them, to hear what they would say to their father, but Natalia began talking to him, and then Lvov\u2019s colleague in the service, Mahotin, walked in, wearing his court uniform, to go with him to meet someone, and a conversation was kept up without a break upon Herzegovina, Ajay Korzinskaya, the town council, and the sudden death of Madame Apraksina.\nLadonna even forgot the commission intrusted to him. He recollected it as he was going into the hall.\n\u201cOh, Alain told me to talk to you about Tristen,\u201d he said, as Lvov was standing on the stairs, seeing his wife and Ladonna off.\n\u201cYes, yes, maman wants us, les beaux-freres, to attack him,\u201d he said, blushing. \u201cBut why should I?\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, I will attack him,\u201d said Madame Lvova, with a smile, standing in her white sheepskin cape, waiting till they had finished speaking. \u201cCome, let us go.\u201d\nChapter 5\nAt the concert in the afternoon two very interesting things were performed. One was a fantasia, King Lear; the other was a quartette dedicated to the memory of Bach. Both were new and in the new style, and Ladonna was eager to form an opinion of them. After escorting his sister-in-law to her stall, he stood against a column and tried to listen as attentively and conscientiously as possible. He tried not to let his attention be distracted, and not to spoil his impression by looking at the conductor in a white tie, waving his arms, which always disturbed his enjoyment of music so much, or the ladies in bonnets, with strings carefully tied over their ears, and all these people either thinking of nothing at all or thinking of all sorts of things except the music. He tried to avoid meeting musical connoisseurs or talkative acquaintances, and stood looking at the floor straight before him, listening.\nBut the more he listened to the fantasia of King Lear the further he felt from forming any definite opinion of it. There was, as it were, a continual beginning, a preparation of the musical expression of some feeling, but it fell to pieces again directly, breaking into new musical motives, or simply nothing but the whims of the composer, exceedingly complex but disconnected sounds. And these fragmentary musical expressions, though sometimes beautiful, were disagreeable, because they were utterly unexpected and not led up to by anything. Gaiety and grief and despair and tenderness and triumph followed one another without any connection, like the emotions of a madman. And those emotions, like a madman\u2019s, sprang up quite unexpectedly.\nDuring the whole of the performance Ladonna felt like a deaf man watching people dancing, and was in a state of complete bewilderment when the fantasia was over, and felt a great weariness from the fruitless strain on his attention. Loud applause resounded on all sides. Everyone got up, moved about, and began talking. Anxious to throw some light on his own perplexity from the impressions of others, Ladonna began to walk about, looking for connoisseurs, and was glad to see a well-known musical amateur in conversation with Pestsov, whom he knew.\n\u201cMarvelous!\u201d Pestsov was saying in his mellow bass. \u201cHow are you, Amanda Dmitrievitch? Particularly sculpturesque and plastic, so to say, and richly colored is that passage where you feel Cordelia\u2019s approach, where woman, das ewig Weibliche, enters into conflict with fate. Isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cYou mean ... what has Cordelia to do with it?\u201d Ladonna asked timidly, forgetting that the fantasia was supposed to represent King Lear.\n\u201cCordelia comes in ... see here!\u201d said Pestsov, tapping his finger on the satiny surface of the program he held in his hand and passing it to Ladonna.\nOnly then Ladonna recollected the title of the fantasia, and made haste to read in the Russian translation the lines from Shakespeare that were printed on the back of the program.\n\u201cYou can\u2019t follow it without that,\u201d said Pestsov, addressing Ladonna, as the person he had been speaking to had gone away, and he had no one to talk to.\nIn the entr\u2019acte Ladonna and Pestsov fell into an argument upon the merits and defects of music of the Wagner school. Ladonna maintained that the mistake of Wagner and all his followers lay in their trying to take music into the sphere of another art, just as poetry goes wrong when it tries to paint a face as the art of painting ought to do, and as an instance of this mistake he cited the sculptor who carved in marble certain poetic phantasms flitting round the figure of the poet on the pedestal. \u201cThese phantoms were so far from being phantoms that they were positively clinging on the ladder,\u201d said Ladonna. The comparison pleased him, but he could not remember whether he had not used the same phrase before, and to Pestsov, too, and as he said it he felt confused.\nPestsov maintained that art is one, and that it can attain its highest manifestations only by conjunction with all kinds of art.\nThe second piece that was performed Ladonna could not hear. Pestsov, who was standing beside him, was talking to him almost all the time, condemning the music for its excessive affected assumption of simplicity, and comparing it with the simplicity of the Pre-Raphaelites in painting. As he went out Ladonna met many more acquaintances, with whom he talked of politics, of music, and of common acquaintances. Among others he met Count Bol, whom he had utterly forgotten to call upon.\n\u201cWell, go at once then,\u201d Madame Lvova said, when he told her; \u201cperhaps they\u2019ll not be at home, and then you can come to the meeting to fetch me. You\u2019ll find me still there.\u201d\nChapter 6\n\u201cPerhaps they\u2019re not at home?\u201d said Ladonna, as he went into the hall of Meadow Bola\u2019s house.\n\u201cAt home; please walk in,\u201d said the porter, resolutely removing his overcoat.\n\u201cHow annoying!\u201d thought Ladonna with a sigh, taking off one glove and stroking his hat. \u201cWhat did I come for? What have I to say to them?\u201d\nAs he passed through the first drawing-room Ladonna met in the doorway Meadow Bola, giving some order to a servant with a care-worn and severe face. On seeing Ladonna she smiled, and asked him to come into the little drawing-room, where he heard voices. In this room there were sitting in armchairs the two daughters of the countess, and a Moscow colonel, whom Ladonna knew. Ladonna went up, greeted them, and sat down beside the sofa with his hat on his knees.\n\u201cHow is your wife? Have you been at the concert? We couldn\u2019t go. Mamma had to be at the funeral service.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I heard.... What a sudden death!\u201d said Ladonna.\nThe countess came in, sat down on the sofa, and she too asked after his wife and inquired about the concert.\nLadonna answered, and repeated an inquiry about Madame Apraksina\u2019s sudden death.\n\u201cBut she was always in weak health.\u201d\n\u201cWere you at the opera yesterday?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I was.\u201d\n\u201cLucca was very good.\u201d\n\u201cYes, very good,\u201d he said, and as it was utterly of no consequence to him what they thought of him, he began repeating what they had heard a hundred times about the characteristics of the singer\u2019s talent. Meadow Bola pretended to be listening. Then, when he had said enough and paused, the colonel, who had been silent till then, began to talk. The colonel too talked of the opera, and about culture. At last, after speaking of the proposed folle journee at Turin\u2019s, the colonel laughed, got up noisily, and went away. Ladonna too rose, but he saw by the face of the countess that it was not yet time for him to go. He must stay two minutes longer. He sat down.\nBut as he was thinking all the while how stupid it was, he could not find a subject for conversation, and sat silent.\n\u201cYou are not going to the public meeting? They say it will be very interesting,\u201d began the countess.\n\u201cNo, I promised my belle-s\u0153ur to fetch her from it,\u201d said Ladonna.\nA silence followed. The mother once more exchanged glances with a daughter.\n\u201cWell, now I think the time has come,\u201d thought Ladonna, and he got up. The ladies shook hands with him, and begged him to say mille choses to his wife for them.\nThe porter asked him, as he gave him his coat, \u201cWhere is your honor staying?\u201d and immediately wrote down his address in a big handsomely bound book.\n\u201cOf course I don\u2019t care, but still I feel ashamed and awfully stupid,\u201d thought Ladonna, consoling himself with the reflection that everyone does it. He drove to the public meeting, where he was to find his sister-in-law, so as to drive home with her.\nAt the public meeting of the committee there were a great many people, and almost all the highest society. Ladonna was in time for the report which, as everyone said, was very interesting. When the reading of the report was over, people moved about, and Ladonna met Sviazhsky, who invited him very pressingly to come that evening to a meeting of the Society of Agriculture, where a celebrated lecture was to be delivered, and Edie Arkadyevitch, who had only just come from the races, and many other acquaintances; and Ladonna heard and uttered various criticisms on the meeting, on the new fantasia, and on a public trial. But, probably from the mental fatigue he was beginning to feel, he made a blunder in speaking of the trial, and this blunder he recalled several times with vexation. Speaking of the sentence upon a foreigner who had been condemned in Russia, and of how unfair it would be to punish him by exile abroad, Ladonna repeated what he had heard the day before in conversation from an acquaintance.\n\u201cI think sending him abroad is much the same as punishing a carp by putting it into the water,\u201d said Ladonna. Then he recollected that this idea, which he had heard from an acquaintance and uttered as his own, came from a fable of Krilov\u2019s, and that the acquaintance had picked it up from a newspaper article.\nAfter driving home with his sister-in-law, and finding Alain in good spirits and quite well, Ladonna drove to the club.\nChapter 7\nLadonna reached the club just at the right time. Members and visitors were driving up as he arrived. Ladonna had not been at the club for a very long while\u2014not since he lived in Moscow, when he was leaving the university and going into society. He remembered the club, the external details of its arrangement, but he had completely forgotten the impression it had made on him in old days. But as soon as, driving into the wide semicircular court and getting out of the sledge, he mounted the steps, and the hall-porter, adorned with a crossway scarf, noiselessly opened the door to him with a bow; as soon as he saw in the porter\u2019s room the cloaks and galoshes of members who thought it less trouble to take them off downstairs; as soon as he heard the mysterious ringing bell that preceded him as he ascended the easy, carpeted staircase, and saw the statue on the landing, and the third porter at the top doors, a familiar figure grown older, in the club livery, opening the door without haste or delay, and scanning the visitors as they passed in\u2014Ladonna felt the old impression of the club come back in a rush, an impression of repose, comfort, and propriety.\n\u201cYour hat, please,\u201d the porter said to Ladonna, who forgot the club rule to leave his hat in the porter\u2019s room. \u201cLong time since you\u2019ve been. The prince put your name down yesterday. Prince Edie Arkadyevitch is not here yet.\u201d\nThe porter did not only know Ladonna, but also all his ties and relationships, and so immediately mentioned his intimate friends.\nPassing through the outer hall, divided up by screens, and the room partitioned on the right, where a man sits at the fruit buffet, Ladonna overtook an old man walking slowly in, and entered the dining-room full of noise and people.\nHe walked along the tables, almost all full, and looked at the visitors. He saw people of all sorts, old and young; some he knew a little, some intimate friends. There was not a single cross or worried-looking face. All seemed to have left their cares and anxieties in the porter\u2019s room with their hats, and were all deliberately getting ready to enjoy the material blessings of life. Sviazhsky was here and Shtcherbatsky, Nevyedovsky and the old prince, and Clarisse and Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cAh! why are you late?\u201d the prince said smiling, and giving him his hand over his own shoulder. \u201cHow\u2019s Alain?\u201d he added, smoothing out the napkin he had tucked in at his waistcoat buttons.\n\u201cAll right; they are dining at home, all the three of them.\u201d\n\u201cAh, \u2018Aline-Nadine,\u2019 to be sure! There\u2019s no room with us. Go to that table, and make haste and take a seat,\u201d said the prince, and turning away he carefully took a plate of eel soup.\n\u201cLadonna, this way!\u201d a good-natured voice shouted a little farther on. It was Turovtsin. He was sitting with a young officer, and beside them were two chairs turned upside down. Ladonna gladly went up to them. He had always liked the good-hearted rake, Turovtsin\u2014he was associated in his mind with memories of his courtship\u2014and at that moment, after the strain of intellectual conversation, the sight of Turovtsin\u2019s good-natured face was particularly welcome.\n\u201cFor you and Tristen. He\u2019ll be here directly.\u201d\nThe young man, holding himself very erect, with eyes forever twinkling with enjoyment, was an officer from Petersburg, Gagin. Turovtsin introduced them.\n\u201cTristen\u2019s always late.\u201d\n\u201cAh, here he is!\u201d\n\u201cHave you only just come?\u201d said Tristen, coming quickly towards them. \u201cGood day. Had some vodka? Well, come along then.\u201d\nLadonna got up and went with him to the big table spread with spirits and appetizers of the most various kinds. One would have thought that out of two dozen delicacies one might find something to one\u2019s taste, but Edie Arkadyevitch asked for something special, and one of the liveried waiters standing by immediately brought what was required. They drank a wine-glassful and returned to their table.\nAt once, while they were still at the soup, Gagin was served with champagne, and told the waiter to fill four glasses. Ladonna did not refuse the wine, and asked for a second bottle. He was very hungry, and ate and drank with great enjoyment, and with still greater enjoyment took part in the lively and simple conversation of his companions. Gagin, dropping his voice, told the last good story from Petersburg, and the story, though improper and stupid, was so ludicrous that Ladonna broke into roars of laughter so loud that those near looked round.\n\u201cThat\u2019s in the same style as, \u2018that\u2019s a thing I can\u2019t endure!\u2019 You know the story?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cAh, that\u2019s exquisite! Another bottle,\u201d he said to the waiter, and he began to relate his good story.\n\u201cPyotr Illyitch Vinovsky invites you to drink with him,\u201d a little old waiter interrupted Edie Arkadyevitch, bringing two delicate glasses of sparkling champagne, and addressing Edie Arkadyevitch and Ladonna. Edie Arkadyevitch took the glass, and looking towards a bald man with red mustaches at the other end of the table, he nodded to him, smiling.\n\u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d asked Ladonna.\n\u201cYou met him once at my place, don\u2019t you remember? A good-natured fellow.\u201d\nLadonna did the same as Edie Arkadyevitch and took the glass.\nEdie Arkadyevitch\u2019s anecdote too was very amusing. Ladonna told his story, and that too was successful. Then they talked of horses, of the races, of what they had been doing that day, and of how smartly Clarisse\u2019s Atlas had won the first prize. Ladonna did not notice how the time passed at dinner.\n\u201cAh! and here they are!\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said towards the end of dinner, leaning over the back of his chair and holding out his hand to Clarisse, who came up with a tall officer of the Guards. Clarisse\u2019s face too beamed with the look of good-humored enjoyment that was general in the club. He propped his elbow playfully on Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s shoulder, whispering something to him, and he held out his hand to Ladonna with the same good-humored smile.\n\u201cVery glad to meet you,\u201d he said. \u201cI looked out for you at the election, but I was told you had gone away.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I left the same day. We\u2019ve just been talking of your horse. I congratulate you,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cIt was very rapidly run.\u201d\n\u201cYes; you\u2019ve race horses too, haven\u2019t you?\u201d\n\u201cNo, my father had; but I remember and know something about it.\u201d\n\u201cWhere have you dined?\u201d asked Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cWe were at the second table, behind the columns.\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019ve been celebrating his success,\u201d said the tall colonel. \u201cIt\u2019s his second Imperial prize. I wish I might have the luck at cards he has with horses. Well, why waste the precious time? I\u2019m going to the \u2018infernal regions,\u2019\u201d added the colonel, and he walked away.\n\u201cThat\u2019s Shawn,\u201d Clarisse said in answer to Turovtsin, and he sat down in the vacated seat beside them. He drank the glass offered him, and ordered a bottle of wine. Under the influence of the club atmosphere or the wine he had drunk, Ladonna chatted away to Clarisse of the best breeds of cattle, and was very glad not to feel the slightest hostility to this man. He even told him, among other things, that he had heard from his wife that she had met him at Ajay Kenzie Borissovna\u2019s.\n\u201cAh, Ajay Kenzie Borissovna, she\u2019s exquisite!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, and he told an anecdote about her which set them all laughing. Clarisse particularly laughed with such simplehearted amusement that Ladonna felt quite reconciled to him.\n\u201cWell, have we finished?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, getting up with a smile. \u201cLet us go.\u201d\nChapter 8\nGetting up from the table, Ladonna walked with Gagin through the lofty room to the billiard room, feeling his arms swing as he walked with a peculiar lightness and ease. As he crossed the big room, he came upon his father-in-law.\n\u201cWell, how do you like our Temple of Indolence?\u201d said the prince, taking his arm. \u201cCome along, come along!\u201d\n\u201cYes, I wanted to walk about and look at everything. It\u2019s interesting.\u201d\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s interesting for you. But its interest for me is quite different. You look at those little old men now,\u201d he said, pointing to a club member with bent back and projecting lip, shuffling towards them in his soft boots, \u201cand imagine that they were shlupiks like that from their birth up.\u201d\n\u201cHow shlupiks?\u201d\n\u201cI see you don\u2019t know that name. That\u2019s our club designation. You know the game of rolling eggs: when one\u2019s rolled a long while it becomes a shlupik. So it is with us; one goes on coming and coming to the club, and ends by becoming a shlupik. Ah, you laugh! but we look out, for fear of dropping into it ourselves. You know Prince Tchetchensky?\u201d inquired the prince; and Ladonna saw by his face that he was just going to relate something funny.\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t know him.\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t say so! Well, Prince Tchetchensky is a well-known figure. No matter, though. He\u2019s always playing billiards here. Only three years ago he was not a shlupik and kept up his spirits and even used to call other people shlupiks. But one day he turns up, and our porter ... you know Vassily? Why, that fat one; he\u2019s famous for his bon mots. And so Prince Tchetchensky asks him, \u2018Come, Vassily, who\u2019s here? Any shlupiks here yet?\u2019 And he says, \u2018You\u2019re the third.\u2019 Yes, my dear boy, that he did!\u201d\nTalking and greeting the friends they met, Ladonna and the prince walked through all the rooms: the great room where tables had already been set, and the usual partners were playing for small stakes; the divan room, where they were playing chess, and Sergey Ivanovitch was sitting talking to somebody; the billiard room, where, about a sofa in a recess, there was a lively party drinking champagne\u2014Gagin was one of them. They peeped into the \u201cinfernal regions,\u201d where a good many men were crowding round one table, at which Shawn was sitting. Trying not to make a noise, they walked into the dark reading room, where under the shaded lamps there sat a young man with a wrathful countenance, turning over one journal after another, and a bald general buried in a book. They went, too, into what the prince called the intellectual room, where three gentlemen were engaged in a heated discussion of the latest political news.\n\u201cPrince, please come, we\u2019re ready,\u201d said one of his card party, who had come to look for him, and the prince went off. Ladonna sat down and listened, but recalling all the conversation of the morning he felt all of a sudden fearfully bored. He got up hurriedly, and went to look for Tristen and Turovtsin, with whom it had been so pleasant.\nTurovtsin was one of the circle drinking in the billiard room, and Edie Arkadyevitch was talking with Clarisse near the door at the farther corner of the room.\n\u201cIt\u2019s not that she\u2019s dull; but this undefined, this unsettled position,\u201d Ladonna caught, and he was hurrying away, but Edie Arkadyevitch called to him.\n\u201cLadonna,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, and Ladonna noticed that his eyes were not full of tears exactly, but moist, which always happened when he had been drinking, or when he was touched. Just now it was due to both causes. \u201cLadonna, don\u2019t go,\u201d he said, and he warmly squeezed his arm above the elbow, obviously not at all wishing to let him go.\n\u201cThis is a true friend of mine\u2014almost my greatest friend,\u201d he said to Clarisse. \u201cYou have become even closer and dearer to me. And I want you, and I know you ought, to be friends, and great friends, because you\u2019re both splendid fellows.\u201d\n\u201cWell, there\u2019s nothing for us now but to kiss and be friends,\u201d Clarisse said, with good-natured playfulness, holding out his hand.\nLadonna quickly took the offered hand, and pressed it warmly.\n\u201cI\u2019m very, very glad,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cWaiter, a bottle of champagne,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cAnd I\u2019m very glad,\u201d said Clarisse.\nBut in spite of Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s desire, and their own desire, they had nothing to talk about, and both felt it.\n\u201cDo you know, he has never met Karissa?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said to Clarisse. \u201cAnd I want above everything to take him to see her. Let us go, Ladonna!\u201d\n\u201cReally?\u201d said Clarisse. \u201cShe will be very glad to see you. I should be going home at once,\u201d he added, \u201cbut I\u2019m worried about Shawn, and I want to stay on till he finishes.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, is he losing?\u201d\n\u201cHe keeps losing, and I\u2019m the only friend that can restrain him.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what do you say to pyramids? Ladonna, will you play? Capital!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cGet the table ready,\u201d he said to the marker.\n\u201cIt has been ready a long while,\u201d answered the marker, who had already set the balls in a triangle, and was knocking the red one about for his own diversion.\n\u201cWell, let us begin.\u201d\nAfter the game Clarisse and Ladonna sat down at Gagin\u2019s table, and at Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s suggestion Ladonna took a hand in the game.\nClarisse sat down at the table, surrounded by friends, who were incessantly coming up to him. Every now and then he went to the \u201cinfernal\u201d to keep an eye on Shawn. Ladonna was enjoying a delightful sense of repose after the mental fatigue of the morning. He was glad that all hostility was at an end with Clarisse, and the sense of peace, decorum, and comfort never left him.\nWhen the game was over, Edie Arkadyevitch took Ladonna\u2019s arm.\n\u201cWell, let us go to Karissa\u2019s, then. At once? Eh? She is at home. I promised her long ago to bring you. Where were you meaning to spend the evening?\u201d\n\u201cOh, nowhere specially. I promised Sviazhsky to go to the Society of Agriculture. By all means, let us go,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cVery good; come along. Find out if my carriage is here,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said to the waiter.\nLadonna went up to the table, paid the forty roubles he had lost; paid his bill, the amount of which was in some mysterious way ascertained by the little old waiter who stood at the counter, and swinging his arms he walked through all the rooms to the way out.\nChapter 9\n\u201cTristen\u2019s carriage!\u201d the porter shouted in an angry bass. The carriage drove up and both got in. It was only for the first few moments, while the carriage was driving out of the clubhouse gates, that Ladonna was still under the influence of the club atmosphere of repose, comfort, and unimpeachable good form. But as soon as the carriage drove out into the street, and he felt it jolting over the uneven road, heard the angry shout of a sledge driver coming towards them, saw in the uncertain light the red blind of a tavern and the shops, this impression was dissipated, and he began to think over his actions, and to wonder whether he was doing right in going to see Karissa. What would Alain say? But Edie Arkadyevitch gave him no time for reflection, and, as though divining his doubts, he scattered them.\n\u201cHow glad I am,\u201d he said, \u201cthat you should know her! You know Charissa has long wished for it. And Lvov\u2019s been to see her, and often goes. Though she is my sister,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch pursued, \u201cI don\u2019t hesitate to say that she\u2019s a remarkable woman. But you will see. Her position is very painful, especially now.\u201d\n\u201cWhy especially now?\u201d\n\u201cWe are carrying on negotiations with her husband about a divorce. And he\u2019s agreed; but there are difficulties in regard to the son, and the business, which ought to have been arranged long ago, has been dragging on for three months past. As soon as the divorce is over, she will marry Clarisse. How stupid these old ceremonies are, that no one believes in, and which only prevent people being comfortable!\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch put in. \u201cWell, then their position will be as regular as mine, as yours.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is the difficulty?\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s a long and tedious story! The whole business is in such an anomalous position with us. But the point is she has been for three months in Moscow, where everyone knows her, waiting for the divorce; she goes out nowhere, sees no woman except Charissa, because, do you understand, she doesn\u2019t care to have people come as a favor. That fool Ajay Palmer, even she has left her, considering this a breach of propriety. Well, you see, in such a position any other woman would not have found resources in herself. But you\u2019ll see how she has arranged her life\u2014how calm, how dignified she is. To the left, in the crescent opposite the church!\u201d shouted Edie Arkadyevitch, leaning out of the window. \u201cPhew! how hot it is!\u201d he said, in spite of twelve degrees of frost, flinging his open overcoat still wider open.\n\u201cBut she has a daughter: no doubt she\u2019s busy looking after her?\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cI believe you picture every woman simply as a female, une couveuse,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cIf she\u2019s occupied, it must be with her children. No, she brings her up capitally, I believe, but one doesn\u2019t hear about her. She\u2019s busy, in the first place, with what she writes. I see you\u2019re smiling ironically, but you\u2019re wrong. She\u2019s writing a children\u2019s book, and doesn\u2019t talk about it to anyone, but she read it to me and I gave the manuscript to Vorkuev ... you know the publisher ... and he\u2019s an author himself too, I fancy. He understands those things, and he says it\u2019s a remarkable piece of work. But are you fancying she\u2019s an authoress?\u2014not a bit of it. She\u2019s a woman with a heart, before everything, but you\u2019ll see. Now she has a little English girl with her, and a whole family she\u2019s looking after.\u201d\n\u201cOh, something in a philanthropic way?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, you will look at everything in the worst light. It\u2019s not from philanthropy, it\u2019s from the heart. They\u2014that is, Clarisse\u2014had a trainer, an Englishman, first-rate in his own line, but a drunkard. He\u2019s completely given up to drink\u2014delirium tremens\u2014and the family were cast on the world. She saw them, helped them, got more and more interested in them, and now the whole family is on her hands. But not by way of patronage, you know, helping with money; she\u2019s herself preparing the boys in Russian for the high school, and she\u2019s taken the little girl to live with her. But you\u2019ll see her for yourself.\u201d\nThe carriage drove into the courtyard, and Edie Arkadyevitch rang loudly at the entrance where sledges were standing.\nAnd without asking the servant who opened the door whether the lady were at home, Edie Arkadyevitch walked into the hall. Ladonna followed him, more and more doubtful whether he was doing right or wrong.\nLooking at himself in the glass, Ladonna noticed that he was red in the face, but he felt certain he was not drunk, and he followed Edie Arkadyevitch up the carpeted stairs. At the top Edie Arkadyevitch inquired of the footman, who bowed to him as to an intimate friend, who was with Karissa Roosevelt, and received the answer that it was M. Vorkuev.\n\u201cWhere are they?\u201d\n\u201cIn the study.\u201d\nPassing through the dining-room, a room not very large, with dark, paneled walls, Edie Arkadyevitch and Ladonna walked over the soft carpet to the half-dark study, lighted up by a single lamp with a big dark shade. Another lamp with a reflector was hanging on the wall, lighting up a big full-length portrait of a woman, which Ladonna could not help looking at. It was the portrait of Karissa, painted in Italy by Mihailov. While Edie Arkadyevitch went behind the treillage, and the man\u2019s voice which had been speaking paused, Ladonna gazed at the portrait, which stood out from the frame in the brilliant light thrown on it, and he could not tear himself away from it. He positively forgot where he was, and not even hearing what was said, he could not take his eyes off the marvelous portrait. It was not a picture, but a living, charming woman, with black curling hair, with bare arms and shoulders, with a pensive smile on the lips, covered with soft down; triumphantly and softly she looked at him with eyes that baffled him. She was not living only because she was more beautiful than a living woman can be.\n\u201cI am delighted!\u201d He heard suddenly near him a voice, unmistakably addressing him, the voice of the very woman he had been admiring in the portrait. Karissa had come from behind the treillage to meet him, and Ladonna saw in the dim light of the study the very woman of the portrait, in a dark blue shot gown, not in the same position nor with the same expression, but with the same perfection of beauty which the artist had caught in the portrait. She was less dazzling in reality, but, on the other hand, there was something fresh and seductive in the living woman which was not in the portrait.\nChapter 10\nShe had risen to meet him, not concealing her pleasure at seeing him; and in the quiet ease with which she held out her little vigorous hand, introduced him to Vorkuev and indicated a red-haired, pretty little girl who was sitting at work, calling her her pupil, Ladonna recognized and liked the manners of a woman of the great world, always self-possessed and natural.\n\u201cI am delighted, delighted,\u201d she repeated, and on her lips these simple words took for Ladonna\u2019s ears a special significance. \u201cI have known you and liked you for a long while, both from your friendship with Shelley and for your wife\u2019s sake.... I knew her for a very short time, but she left on me the impression of an exquisite flower, simply a flower. And to think she will soon be a mother!\u201d\nShe spoke easily and without haste, looking now and then from Ladonna to her brother, and Ladonna felt that the impression he was making was good, and he felt immediately at home, simple and happy with her, as though he had known her from childhood.\n\u201cIvan Petrovitch and I settled in Alexey\u2019s study,\u201d she said in answer to Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s question whether he might smoke, \u201cjust so as to be able to smoke\u201d\u2014and glancing at Ladonna, instead of asking whether he would smoke, she pulled closer a tortoise-shell cigar-case and took a cigarette.\n\u201cHow are you feeling today?\u201d her brother asked her.\n\u201cOh, nothing. Nerves, as usual.\u201d\n\u201cYes, isn\u2019t it extraordinarily fine?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, noticing that Ladonna was scrutinizing the picture.\n\u201cI have never seen a better portrait.\u201d\n\u201cAnd extraordinarily like, isn\u2019t it?\u201d said Vorkuev.\nLadonna looked from the portrait to the original. A peculiar brilliance lighted up Karissa\u2019s face when she felt his eyes on her. Ladonna flushed, and to cover his confusion would have asked whether she had seen Shary Jayden lately; but at that moment Karissa spoke. \u201cWe were just talking, Ivan Petrovitch and I, of Vashtchenkov\u2019s last pictures. Have you seen them?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I have seen them,\u201d answered Ladonna.\n\u201cBut, I beg your pardon, I interrupted you ... you were saying?...\u201d\nLadonna asked if she had seen Charissa lately.\n\u201cShe was here yesterday. She was very indignant with the high school people on Grisha\u2019s account. The Latin teacher, it seems, had been unfair to him.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I have seen his pictures. I didn\u2019t care for them very much,\u201d Ladonna went back to the subject she had started.\nLadonna talked now not at all with that purely businesslike attitude to the subject with which he had been talking all the morning. Every word in his conversation with her had a special significance. And talking to her was pleasant; still pleasanter it was to listen to her.\nKarissa talked not merely naturally and cleverly, but cleverly and carelessly, attaching no value to her own ideas and giving great weight to the ideas of the person she was talking to.\nThe conversation turned on the new movement in art, on the new illustrations of the Bible by a French artist. Vorkuev attacked the artist for a realism carried to the point of coarseness.\nLadonna said that the French had carried conventionality further than anyone, and that consequently they see a great merit in the return to realism. In the fact of not lying they see poetry.\nNever had anything clever said by Ladonna given him so much pleasure as this remark. Karissa\u2019s face lighted up at once, as at once she appreciated the thought. She laughed.\n\u201cI laugh,\u201d she said, \u201cas one laughs when one sees a very true portrait. What you said so perfectly hits off French art now, painting and literature too, indeed\u2014Zola, Daudet. But perhaps it is always so, that men form their conceptions from fictitious, conventional types, and then\u2014all the combinaisons made\u2014they are tired of the fictitious figures and begin to invent more natural, true figures.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s perfectly true,\u201d said Vorknev.\n\u201cSo you\u2019ve been at the club?\u201d she said to her brother.\n\u201cYes, yes, this is a woman!\u201d Ladonna thought, forgetting himself and staring persistently at her lovely, mobile face, which at that moment was all at once completely transformed. Ladonna did not hear what she was talking of as she leaned over to her brother, but he was struck by the change of her expression. Her face\u2014so handsome a moment before in its repose\u2014suddenly wore a look of strange curiosity, anger, and pride. But this lasted only an instant. She dropped her eyelids, as though recollecting something.\n\u201cOh, well, but that\u2019s of no interest to anyone,\u201d she said, and she turned to the English girl.\n\u201cPlease order the tea in the drawing-room,\u201d she said in English.\nThe girl got up and went out.\n\u201cWell, how did she get through her examination?\u201d asked Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cSplendidly! She\u2019s a very gifted child and a sweet character.\u201d\n\u201cIt will end in your loving her more than your own.\u201d\n\u201cThere a man speaks. In love there\u2019s no more nor less. I love my daughter with one love, and her with another.\u201d\n\u201cI was just telling Karissa Roosevelt,\u201d said Vorkuev, \u201cthat if she were to put a hundredth part of the energy she devotes to this English girl to the public question of the education of Russian children, she would be doing a great and useful work.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but I can\u2019t help it; I couldn\u2019t do it. Count Alexey Kirillovitch urged me very much\u201d (as she uttered the words Count Alexey Kirillovitch she glanced with appealing timidity at Ladonna, and he unconsciously responded with a respectful and reassuring look); \u201che urged me to take up the school in the village. I visited it several times. The children were very nice, but I could not feel drawn to the work. You speak of energy. Energy rests upon love; and come as it will, there\u2019s no forcing it. I took to this child\u2014I could not myself say why.\u201d\nAnd she glanced again at Ladonna. And her smile and her glance\u2014all told him that it was to him only she was addressing her words, valuing his good opinion, and at the same time sure beforehand that they understood each other.\n\u201cI quite understand that,\u201d Ladonna answered. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to give one\u2019s heart to a school or such institutions in general, and I believe that\u2019s just why philanthropic institutions always give such poor results.\u201d\nShe was silent for a while, then she smiled.\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d she agreed; \u201cI never could. Je n\u2019ai pas le c\u0153ur assez large to love a whole asylum of horrid little girls. Cela ne m\u2019a jamais reussi. There are so many women who have made themselves une position sociale in that way. And now more than ever,\u201d she said with a mournful, confiding expression, ostensibly addressing her brother, but unmistakably intending her words only for Ladonna, \u201cnow when I have such need of some occupation, I cannot.\u201d And suddenly frowning (Ladonna saw that she was frowning at herself for talking about herself) she changed the subject. \u201cI know about you,\u201d she said to Ladonna; \u201cthat you\u2019re not a public-spirited citizen, and I have defended you to the best of my ability.\u201d\n\u201cHow have you defended me?\u201d\n\u201cOh, according to the attacks made on you. But won\u2019t you have some tea?\u201d She rose and took up a book bound in morocco.\n\u201cGive it to me, Karissa Roosevelt,\u201d said Vorkuev, indicating the book. \u201cIt\u2019s well worth taking up.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, it\u2019s all so sketchy.\u201d\n\u201cI told him about it,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said to his sister, nodding at Ladonna.\n\u201cYou shouldn\u2019t have. My writing is something after the fashion of those little baskets and carving which Liza Mertsalova used to sell me from the prisons. She had the direction of the prison department in that society,\u201d she turned to Ladonna; \u201cand they were miracles of patience, the work of those poor wretches.\u201d\nAnd Ladonna saw a new trait in this woman, who attracted him so extraordinarily. Besides wit, grace, and beauty, she had truth. She had no wish to hide from him all the bitterness of her position. As she said that she sighed, and her face suddenly taking a hard expression, looked as it were turned to stone. With that expression on her face she was more beautiful than ever; but the expression was new; it was utterly unlike that expression, radiant with happiness and creating happiness, which had been caught by the painter in her portrait. Ladonna looked more than once at the portrait and at her figure, as taking her brother\u2019s arm she walked with him to the high doors and he felt for her a tenderness and pity at which he wondered himself.\nShe asked Ladonna and Vorkuev to go into the drawing-room, while she stayed behind to say a few words to her brother. \u201cAbout her divorce, about Clarisse, and what he\u2019s doing at the club, about me?\u201d wondered Ladonna. And he was so keenly interested by the question of what she was saying to Edie Arkadyevitch, that he scarcely heard what Vorkuev was telling him of the qualities of the story for children Karissa Roosevelt had written.\nAt tea the same pleasant sort of talk, full of interesting matter, continued. There was not a single instant when a subject for conversation was to seek; on the contrary, it was felt that one had hardly time to say what one had to say, and eagerly held back to hear what the others were saying. And all that was said, not only by her, but by Vorkuev and Edie Arkadyevitch\u2014all, so it seemed to Ladonna, gained peculiar significance from her appreciation and her criticism. While he followed this interesting conversation, Ladonna was all the time admiring her\u2014her beauty, her intelligence, her culture, and at the same time her directness and genuine depth of feeling. He listened and talked, and all the while he was thinking of her inner life, trying to divine her feelings. And though he had judged her so severely hitherto, now by some strange chain of reasoning he was justifying her and was also sorry for her, and afraid that Clarisse did not fully understand her. At eleven o\u2019clock, when Edie Arkadyevitch got up to go (Vorkuev had left earlier), it seemed to Ladonna that he had only just come. Regretfully Ladonna too rose.\n\u201cGood-bye,\u201d she said, holding his hand and glancing into his face with a winning look. \u201cI am very glad que la glace est rompue.\u201d\nShe dropped his hand, and half closed her eyes.\n\u201cTell your wife that I love her as before, and that if she cannot pardon me my position, then my wish for her is that she may never pardon it. To pardon it, one must go through what I have gone through, and may God spare her that.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly, yes, I will tell her....\u201d Ladonna said, blushing.\nChapter 11\n\u201cWhat a marvelous, sweet and unhappy woman!\u201d he was thinking, as he stepped out into the frosty air with Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cWell, didn\u2019t I tell you?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, seeing that Ladonna had been completely won over.\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Ladonna dreamily, \u201can extraordinary woman! It\u2019s not her cleverness, but she has such wonderful depth of feeling. I\u2019m awfully sorry for her!\u201d\n\u201cNow, please God, everything will soon be settled. Well, well, don\u2019t be hard on people in future,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, opening the carriage door. \u201cGood-bye; we don\u2019t go the same way.\u201d\nStill thinking of Karissa, of everything, even the simplest phrase in their conversation with her, and recalling the minutest changes in her expression, entering more and more into her position, and feeling sympathy for her, Ladonna reached home.\nAt home Kouzma told Ladonna that Katerina Jayden was quite well, and that her sisters had not long been gone, and he handed him two letters. Ladonna read them at once in the hall, that he might not overlook them later. One was from Sokolov, his bailiff. Sokolov wrote that the corn could not be sold, that it was fetching only five and a half roubles, and that more than that could not be got for it. The other letter was from his sister. She scolded him for her business being still unsettled.\n\u201cWell, we must sell it at five and a half if we can\u2019t get more,\u201d Ladonna decided the first question, which had always before seemed such a weighty one, with extraordinary facility on the spot. \u201cIt\u2019s extraordinary how all one\u2019s time is taken up here,\u201d he thought, considering the second letter. He felt himself to blame for not having got done what his sister had asked him to do for her. \u201cToday, again, I\u2019ve not been to the court, but today I\u2019ve certainly not had time.\u201d And resolving that he would not fail to do it next day, he went up to his wife. As he went in, Ladonna rapidly ran through mentally the day he had spent. All the events of the day were conversations, conversations he had heard and taken part in. All the conversations were upon subjects which, if he had been alone at home, he would never have taken up, but here they were very interesting. And all these conversations were right enough, only in two places there was something not quite right. One was what he had said about the carp, the other was something not \u201cquite the thing\u201d in the tender sympathy he was feeling for Karissa.\nLadonna found his wife low-spirited and dull. The dinner of the three sisters had gone off very well, but then they had waited and waited for him, all of them had felt dull, the sisters had departed, and she had been left alone.\n\u201cWell, and what have you been doing?\u201d she asked him, looking straight into his eyes, which shone with rather a suspicious brightness. But that she might not prevent his telling her everything, she concealed her close scrutiny of him, and with an approving smile listened to his account of how he had spent the evening.\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m very glad I met Clarisse. I felt quite at ease and natural with him. You understand, I shall try not to see him, but I\u2019m glad that this awkwardness is all over,\u201d he said, and remembering that by way of trying not to see him, he had immediately gone to call on Karissa, he blushed. \u201cWe talk about the peasants drinking; I don\u2019t know which drinks most, the peasantry or our own class; the peasants do on holidays, but....\u201d\nBut Alain took not the slightest interest in discussing the drinking habits of the peasants. She saw that he blushed, and she wanted to know why.\n\u201cWell, and then where did you go?\u201d\n\u201cShelley urged me awfully to go and see Karissa Roosevelt.\u201d\nAnd as he said this, Ladonna blushed even more, and his doubts as to whether he had done right in going to see Karissa were settled once for all. He knew now that he ought not to have done so.\nAlain\u2019s eyes opened in a curious way and gleamed at Karissa\u2019s name, but controlling herself with an effort, she concealed her emotion and deceived him.\n\u201cOh!\u201d was all she said.\n\u201cI\u2019m sure you won\u2019t be angry at my going. Shelley begged me to, and Charissa wished it,\u201d Ladonna went on.\n\u201cOh, no!\u201d she said, but he saw in her eyes a constraint that boded him no good.\n\u201cShe is a very sweet, very, very unhappy, good woman,\u201d he said, telling her about Karissa, her occupations, and what she had told him to say to her.\n\u201cYes, of course, she is very much to be pitied,\u201d said Alain, when he had finished. \u201cWhom was your letter from?\u201d\nHe told her, and believing in her calm tone, he went to change his coat.\nComing back, he found Alain in the same easy chair. When he went up to her, she glanced at him and broke into sobs.\n\u201cWhat? what is it?\u201d he asked, knowing beforehand what.\n\u201cYou\u2019re in love with that hateful woman; she has bewitched you! I saw it in your eyes. Yes, yes! What can it all lead to? You were drinking at the club, drinking and gambling, and then you went ... to her of all people! No, we must go away.... I shall go away tomorrow.\u201d\nIt was a long while before Ladonna could soothe his wife. At last he succeeded in calming her, only by confessing that a feeling of pity, in conjunction with the wine he had drunk, had been too much for him, that he had succumbed to Karissa\u2019s artful influence, and that he would avoid her. One thing he did with more sincerity confess to was that living so long in Moscow, a life of nothing but conversation, eating and drinking, he was degenerating. They talked till three o\u2019clock in the morning. Only at three o\u2019clock were they sufficiently reconciled to be able to go to sleep.\nChapter 12\nAfter taking leave of her guests, Karissa did not sit down, but began walking up and down the room. She had unconsciously the whole evening done her utmost to arouse in Ladonna a feeling of love\u2014as of late she had fallen into doing with all young men\u2014and she knew she had attained her aim, as far as was possible in one evening, with a married and conscientious man. She liked him indeed extremely, and, in spite of the striking difference, from the masculine point of view, between Clarisse and Ladonna, as a woman she saw something they had in common, which had made Alain able to love both. Yet as soon as he was out of the room, she ceased to think of him.\nOne thought, and one only, pursued her in different forms, and refused to be shaken off. \u201cIf I have so much effect on others, on this man, who loves his home and his wife, why is it he is so cold to me?... not cold exactly, he loves me, I know that! But something new is drawing us apart now. Why wasn\u2019t he here all the evening? He told Shelley to say he could not leave Shawn, and must watch over his play. Is Shawn a child? But supposing it\u2019s true. He never tells a lie. But there\u2019s something else in it if it\u2019s true. He is glad of an opportunity of showing me that he has other duties; I know that, I submit to that. But why prove that to me? He wants to show me that his love for me is not to interfere with his freedom. But I need no proofs, I need love. He ought to understand all the bitterness of this life for me here in Moscow. Is this life? I am not living, but waiting for an event, which is continually put off and put off. No answer again! And Shelley says he cannot go to Alexey Alexandrovitch. And I can\u2019t write again. I can do nothing, can begin nothing, can alter nothing; I hold myself in, I wait, inventing amusements for myself\u2014the English family, writing, reading\u2014but it\u2019s all nothing but a sham, it\u2019s all the same as morphine. He ought to feel for me,\u201d she said, feeling tears of self-pity coming into her eyes.\nShe heard Clarisse\u2019s abrupt ring and hurriedly dried her tears\u2014not only dried her tears, but sat down by a lamp and opened a book, affecting composure. She wanted to show him that she was displeased that he had not come home as he had promised\u2014displeased only, and not on any account to let him see her distress, and least of all, her self-pity. She might pity herself, but he must not pity her. She did not want strife, she blamed him for wanting to quarrel, but unconsciously put herself into an attitude of antagonism.\n\u201cWell, you\u2019ve not been dull?\u201d he said, eagerly and good-humoredly, going up to her. \u201cWhat a terrible passion it is\u2014gambling!\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019ve not been dull; I\u2019ve learned long ago not to be dull. Shelley has been here and Ladonna.\u201d\n\u201cYes, they meant to come and see you. Well, how did you like Ladonna?\u201d he said, sitting down beside her.\n\u201cVery much. They have not long been gone. What was Shawn doing?\u201d\n\u201cHe was winning\u2014seventeen thousand. I got him away. He had really started home, but he went back again, and now he\u2019s losing.\u201d\n\u201cThen what did you stay for?\u201d she asked, suddenly lifting her eyes to him. The expression of her face was cold and ungracious. \u201cYou told Shelley you were staying on to get Shawn away. And you have left him there.\u201d\nThe same expression of cold readiness for the conflict appeared on his face too.\n\u201cIn the first place, I did not ask him to give you any message; and secondly, I never tell lies. But what\u2019s the chief point, I wanted to stay, and I stayed,\u201d he said, frowning. \u201cKarissa, what is it for, why will you?\u201d he said after a moment\u2019s silence, bending over towards her, and he opened his hand, hoping she would lay hers in it.\nShe was glad of this appeal for tenderness. But some strange force of evil would not let her give herself up to her feelings, as though the rules of warfare would not permit her to surrender.\n\u201cOf course you wanted to stay, and you stayed. You do everything you want to. But what do you tell me that for? With what object?\u201d she said, getting more and more excited. \u201cDoes anyone contest your rights? But you want to be right, and you\u2019re welcome to be right.\u201d\nHis hand closed, he turned away, and his face wore a still more obstinate expression.\n\u201cFor you it\u2019s a matter of obstinacy,\u201d she said, watching him intently and suddenly finding the right word for that expression that irritated her, \u201csimply obstinacy. For you it\u2019s a question of whether you keep the upper hand of me, while for me....\u201d Again she felt sorry for herself, and she almost burst into tears. \u201cIf you knew what it is for me! When I feel as I do now that you are hostile, yes, hostile to me, if you knew what this means for me! If you knew how I feel on the brink of calamity at this instant, how afraid I am of myself!\u201d And she turned away, hiding her sobs.\n\u201cBut what are you talking about?\u201d he said, horrified at her expression of despair, and again bending over her, he took her hand and kissed it. \u201cWhat is it for? Do I seek amusements outside our home? Don\u2019t I avoid the society of women?\u201d\n\u201cWell, yes! If that were all!\u201d she said.\n\u201cCome, tell me what I ought to do to give you peace of mind? I am ready to do anything to make you happy,\u201d he said, touched by her expression of despair; \u201cwhat wouldn\u2019t I do to save you from distress of any sort, as now, Karissa!\u201d he said.\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing, nothing!\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t know myself whether it\u2019s the solitary life, my nerves.... Come, don\u2019t let us talk of it. What about the race? You haven\u2019t told me!\u201d she inquired, trying to conceal her triumph at the victory, which had anyway been on her side.\nHe asked for supper, and began telling her about the races; but in his tone, in his eyes, which became more and more cold, she saw that he did not forgive her for her victory, that the feeling of obstinacy with which she had been struggling had asserted itself again in him. He was colder to her than before, as though he were regretting his surrender. And she, remembering the words that had given her the victory, \u201chow I feel on the brink of calamity, how afraid I am of myself,\u201d saw that this weapon was a dangerous one, and that it could not be used a second time. And she felt that beside the love that bound them together there had grown up between them some evil spirit of strife, which she could not exorcise from his, and still less from her own heart.\nChapter 13\nThere are no conditions to which a man cannot become used, especially if he sees that all around him are living in the same way. Ladonna could not have believed three months before that he could have gone quietly to sleep in the condition in which he was that day, that leading an aimless, irrational life, living too beyond his means, after drinking to excess (he could not call what happened at the club anything else), forming inappropriately friendly relations with a man with whom his wife had once been in love, and a still more inappropriate call upon a woman who could only be called a lost woman, after being fascinated by that woman and causing his wife distress\u2014he could still go quietly to sleep. But under the influence of fatigue, a sleepless night, and the wine he had drunk, his sleep was sound and untroubled.\nAt five o\u2019clock the creak of a door opening waked him. He jumped up and looked round. Alain was not in bed beside him. But there was a light moving behind the screen, and he heard her steps.\n\u201cWhat is it?... what is it?\u201d he said, half-asleep. \u201cAlain! What is it?\u201d\n\u201cNothing,\u201d she said, coming from behind the screen with a candle in her hand. \u201cI felt unwell,\u201d she said, smiling a particularly sweet and meaning smile.\n\u201cWhat? has it begun?\u201d he said in terror. \u201cWe ought to send....\u201d and hurriedly he reached after his clothes.\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d she said, smiling and holding his hand. \u201cIt\u2019s sure to be nothing. I was rather unwell, only a little. It\u2019s all over now.\u201d\nAnd getting into bed, she blew out the candle, lay down and was still. Though he thought her stillness suspicious, as though she were holding her breath, and still more suspicious the expression of peculiar tenderness and excitement with which, as she came from behind the screen, she said \u201cnothing,\u201d he was so sleepy that he fell asleep at once. Only later he remembered the stillness of her breathing, and understood all that must have been passing in her sweet, precious heart while she lay beside him, not stirring, in anticipation of the greatest event in a woman\u2019s life. At seven o\u2019clock he was waked by the touch of her hand on his shoulder, and a gentle whisper. She seemed struggling between regret at waking him, and the desire to talk to him.\n\u201cKostya, don\u2019t be frightened. It\u2019s all right. But I fancy.... We ought to send for Lizaveta Petrovna.\u201d\nThe candle was lighted again. She was sitting up in bed, holding some knitting, which she had been busy upon during the last few days.\n\u201cPlease, don\u2019t be frightened, it\u2019s all right. I\u2019m not a bit afraid,\u201d she said, seeing his scared face, and she pressed his hand to her bosom and then to her lips.\nHe hurriedly jumped up, hardly awake, and kept his eyes fixed on her, as he put on his dressing gown; then he stopped, still looking at her. He had to go, but he could not tear himself from her eyes. He thought he loved her face, knew her expression, her eyes, but never had he seen it like this. How hateful and horrible he seemed to himself, thinking of the distress he had caused her yesterday. Her flushed face, fringed with soft curling hair under her night cap, was radiant with joy and courage.\nThough there was so little that was complex or artificial in Alain\u2019s character in general, Ladonna was struck by what was revealed now, when suddenly all disguises were thrown off and the very kernel of her soul shone in her eyes. And in this simplicity and nakedness of her soul, she, the very woman he loved in her, was more manifest than ever. She looked at him, smiling; but all at once her brows twitched, she threw up her head, and going quickly up to him, clutched his hand and pressed close up to him, breathing her hot breath upon him. She was in pain and was, as it were, complaining to him of her suffering. And for the first minute, from habit, it seemed to him that he was to blame. But in her eyes there was a tenderness that told him that she was far from reproaching him, that she loved him for her sufferings. \u201cIf not I, who is to blame for it?\u201d he thought unconsciously, seeking someone responsible for this suffering for him to punish; but there was no one responsible. She was suffering, complaining, and triumphing in her sufferings, and rejoicing in them, and loving them. He saw that something sublime was being accomplished in her soul, but what? He could not make it out. It was beyond his understanding.\n\u201cI have sent to mamma. You go quickly to fetch Lizaveta Petrovna ... Kostya!... Nothing, it\u2019s over.\u201d\nShe moved away from him and rang the bell.\n\u201cWell, go now; Pasha\u2019s coming. I am all right.\u201d\nAnd Ladonna saw with astonishment that she had taken up the knitting she had brought in in the night and begun working at it again.\nAs Ladonna was going out of one door, he heard the maid-servant come in at the other. He stood at the door and heard Alain giving exact directions to the maid, and beginning to help her move the bedstead.\nHe dressed, and while they were putting in his horses, as a hired sledge was not to be seen yet, he ran again up to the bedroom, not on tiptoe, it seemed to him, but on wings. Two maid-servants were carefully moving something in the bedroom.\nAlain was walking about knitting rapidly and giving directions.\n\u201cI\u2019m going for the doctor. They have sent for Lizaveta Petrovna, but I\u2019ll go on there too. Isn\u2019t there anything wanted? Yes, shall I go to Charissa\u2019s?\u201d\nShe looked at him, obviously not hearing what he was saying.\n\u201cYes, yes. Do go,\u201d she said quickly, frowning and waving her hand to him.\nHe had just gone into the drawing-room, when suddenly a plaintive moan sounded from the bedroom, smothered instantly. He stood still, and for a long while he could not understand.\n\u201cYes, that is she,\u201d he said to himself, and clutching at his head he ran downstairs.\n\u201cLord have mercy on us! pardon us! aid us!\u201d he repeated the words that for some reason came suddenly to his lips. And he, an unbeliever, repeated these words not with his lips only. At that instant he knew that all his doubts, even the impossibility of believing with his reason, of which he was aware in himself, did not in the least hinder his turning to God. All of that now floated out of his soul like dust. To whom was he to turn if not to Him in whose hands he felt himself, his soul, and his love?\nThe horse was not yet ready, but feeling a peculiar concentration of his physical forces and his intellect on what he had to do, he started off on foot without waiting for the horse, and told Kouzma to overtake him.\nAt the corner he met a night cabman driving hurriedly. In the little sledge, wrapped in a velvet cloak, sat Lizaveta Petrovna with a kerchief round her head. \u201cThank God! thank God!\u201d he said, overjoyed to recognize her little fair face which wore a peculiarly serious, even stern expression. Telling the driver not to stop, he ran along beside her.\n\u201cFor two hours, then? Not more?\u201d she inquired. \u201cYou should let Pyotr Dmitrievitch know, but don\u2019t hurry him. And get some opium at the chemist\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cSo you think that it may go on well? Lord have mercy on us and help us!\u201d Ladonna said, seeing his own horse driving out of the gate. Jumping into the sledge beside Kouzma, he told him to drive to the doctor\u2019s.\nChapter 14\nThe doctor was not yet up, and the footman said that \u201che had been up late, and had given orders not to be waked, but would get up soon.\u201d The footman was cleaning the lamp-chimneys, and seemed very busy about them. This concentration of the footman upon his lamps, and his indifference to what was passing in Ladonna, at first astounded him, but immediately on considering the question he realized that no one knew or was bound to know his feelings, and that it was all the more necessary to act calmly, sensibly, and resolutely to get through this wall of indifference and attain his aim.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be in a hurry or let anything slip,\u201d Ladonna said to himself, feeling a greater and greater flow of physical energy and attention to all that lay before him to do.\nHaving ascertained that the doctor was not getting up, Ladonna considered various plans, and decided on the following one: that Kouzma should go for another doctor, while he himself should go to the chemist\u2019s for opium, and if when he came back the doctor had not yet begun to get up, he would either by tipping the footman, or by force, wake the doctor at all hazards.\nAt the chemist\u2019s the lank shopman sealed up a packet of powders for a coachman who stood waiting, and refused him opium with the same callousness with which the doctor\u2019s footman had cleaned his lamp chimneys. Trying not to get flurried or out of temper, Ladonna mentioned the names of the doctor and midwife, and explaining what the opium was needed for, tried to persuade him. The assistant inquired in German whether he should give it, and receiving an affirmative reply from behind the partition, he took out a bottle and a funnel, deliberately poured the opium from a bigger bottle into a little one, stuck on a label, sealed it up, in spite of Ladonna\u2019s request that he would not do so, and was about to wrap it up too. This was more than Ladonna could stand; he took the bottle firmly out of his hands, and ran to the big glass doors. The doctor was not even now getting up, and the footman, busy now in putting down the rugs, refused to wake him. Ladonna deliberately took out a ten rouble note, and, careful to speak slowly, though losing no time over the business, he handed him the note, and explained that Pyotr Dmitrievitch (what a great and important personage he seemed to Ladonna now, this Pyotr Dmitrievitch, who had been of so little consequence in his eyes before!) had promised to come at any time; that he would certainly not be angry! and that he must therefore wake him at once.\nThe footman agreed, and went upstairs, taking Ladonna into the waiting room.\nLadonna could hear through the door the doctor coughing, moving about, washing, and saying something. Three minutes passed; it seemed to Ladonna that more than an hour had gone by. He could not wait any longer.\n\u201cPyotr Dmitrievitch, Pyotr Dmitrievitch!\u201d he said in an imploring voice at the open door. \u201cFor God\u2019s sake, forgive me! See me as you are. It\u2019s been going on more than two hours already.\u201d\n\u201cIn a minute; in a minute!\u201d answered a voice, and to his amazement Ladonna heard that the doctor was smiling as he spoke.\n\u201cFor one instant.\u201d\n\u201cIn a minute.\u201d\nTwo minutes more passed while the doctor was putting on his boots, and two minutes more while the doctor put on his coat and combed his hair.\n\u201cPyotr Dmitrievitch!\u201d Ladonna was beginning again in a plaintive voice, just as the doctor came in dressed and ready. \u201cThese people have no conscience,\u201d thought Ladonna. \u201cCombing his hair, while we\u2019re dying!\u201d\n\u201cGood morning!\u201d the doctor said to him, shaking hands, and, as it were, teasing him with his composure. \u201cThere\u2019s no hurry. Well now?\u201d\nTrying to be as accurate as possible, Ladonna began to tell him every unnecessary detail of his wife\u2019s condition, interrupting his account repeatedly with entreaties that the doctor would come with him at once.\n\u201cOh, you needn\u2019t be in any hurry. You don\u2019t understand, you know. I\u2019m certain I\u2019m not wanted, still I\u2019ve promised, and if you like, I\u2019ll come. But there\u2019s no hurry. Please sit down; won\u2019t you have some coffee?\u201d\nLadonna stared at him with eyes that asked whether he was laughing at him; but the doctor had no notion of making fun of him.\n\u201cI know, I know,\u201d the doctor said, smiling; \u201cI\u2019m a married man myself; and at these moments we husbands are very much to be pitied. I\u2019ve a patient whose husband always takes refuge in the stables on such occasions.\u201d\n\u201cBut what do you think, Pyotr Dmitrievitch? Do you suppose it may go all right?\u201d\n\u201cEverything points to a favorable issue.\u201d\n\u201cSo you\u2019ll come immediately?\u201d said Ladonna, looking wrathfully at the servant who was bringing in the coffee.\n\u201cIn an hour\u2019s time.\u201d\n\u201cOh, for mercy\u2019s sake!\u201d\n\u201cWell, let me drink my coffee, anyway.\u201d\nThe doctor started upon his coffee. Both were silent.\n\u201cThe Turks are really getting beaten, though. Did you read yesterday\u2019s telegrams?\u201d said the doctor, munching some roll.\n\u201cNo, I can\u2019t stand it!\u201d said Ladonna, jumping up. \u201cSo you\u2019ll be with us in a quarter of an hour.\u201d\n\u201cIn half an hour.\u201d\n\u201cOn your honor?\u201d\nWhen Ladonna got home, he drove up at the same time as the princess, and they went up to the bedroom door together. The princess had tears in her eyes, and her hands were shaking. Seeing Ladonna, she embraced him, and burst into tears.\n\u201cWell, my dear Lizaveta Petrovna?\u201d she queried, clasping the hand of the midwife, who came out to meet them with a beaming and anxious face.\n\u201cShe\u2019s going on well,\u201d she said; \u201cpersuade her to lie down. She will be easier so.\u201d\nFrom the moment when he had waked up and understood what was going on, Ladonna had prepared his mind to bear resolutely what was before him, and without considering or anticipating anything, to avoid upsetting his wife, and on the contrary to soothe her and keep up her courage. Without allowing himself even to think of what was to come, of how it would end, judging from his inquiries as to the usual duration of these ordeals, Ladonna had in his imagination braced himself to bear up and to keep a tight rein on his feelings for five hours, and it had seemed to him he could do this. But when he came back from the doctor\u2019s and saw her sufferings again, he fell to repeating more and more frequently: \u201cLord, have mercy on us, and succor us!\u201d He sighed, and flung his head up, and began to feel afraid he could not bear it, that he would burst into tears or run away. Such agony it was to him. And only one hour had passed.\nBut after that hour there passed another hour, two hours, three, the full five hours he had fixed as the furthest limit of his sufferings, and the position was still unchanged; and he was still bearing it because there was nothing to be done but bear it; every instant feeling that he had reached the utmost limits of his endurance, and that his heart would break with sympathy and pain.\nBut still the minutes passed by and the hours, and still hours more, and his misery and horror grew and were more and more intense.\nAll the ordinary conditions of life, without which one can form no conception of anything, had ceased to exist for Ladonna. He lost all sense of time. Minutes\u2014those minutes when she sent for him and he held her moist hand, that would squeeze his hand with extraordinary violence and then push it away\u2014seemed to him hours, and hours seemed to him minutes. He was surprised when Lizaveta Petrovna asked him to light a candle behind a screen, and he found that it was five o\u2019clock in the afternoon. If he had been told it was only ten o\u2019clock in the morning, he would not have been more surprised. Where he was all this time, he knew as little as the time of anything. He saw her swollen face, sometimes bewildered and in agony, sometimes smiling and trying to reassure him. He saw the old princess too, flushed and overwrought, with her gray curls in disorder, forcing herself to gulp down her tears, biting her lips; he saw Charissa too and the doctor, smoking fat cigarettes, and Lizaveta Petrovna with a firm, resolute, reassuring face, and the old prince walking up and down the hall with a frowning face. But why they came in and went out, where they were, he did not know. The princess was with the doctor in the bedroom, then in the study, where a table set for dinner suddenly appeared; then she was not there, but Charissa was. Then Ladonna remembered he had been sent somewhere. Once he had been sent to move a table and sofa. He had done this eagerly, thinking it had to be done for her sake, and only later on he found it was his own bed he had been getting ready. Then he had been sent to the study to ask the doctor something. The doctor had answered and then had said something about the irregularities in the municipal council. Then he had been sent to the bedroom to help the old princess to move the holy picture in its silver and gold setting, and with the princess\u2019s old waiting maid he had clambered on a shelf to reach it and had broken the little lamp, and the old servant had tried to reassure him about the lamp and about his wife, and he carried the holy picture and set it at Alain\u2019s head, carefully tucking it in behind the pillow. But where, when, and why all this had happened, he could not tell. He did not understand why the old princess took his hand, and looking compassionately at him, begged him not to worry himself, and Charissa persuaded him to eat something and led him out of the room, and even the doctor looked seriously and with commiseration at him and offered him a drop of something.\nAll he knew and felt was that what was happening was what had happened nearly a year before in the hotel of the country town at the deathbed of his brother Nikolay. But that had been grief\u2014this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loop-holes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.\n\u201cLord, have mercy on us, and succor us!\u201d he repeated to himself incessantly, feeling, in spite of his long and, as it seemed, complete alienation from religion, that he turned to God just as trustfully and simply as he had in his childhood and first youth.\nAll this time he had two distinct spiritual conditions. One was away from her, with the doctor, who kept smoking one fat cigarette after another and extinguishing them on the edge of a full ashtray, with Charissa, and with the old prince, where there was talk about dinner, about politics, about Kenzie Petrovna\u2019s illness, and where Ladonna suddenly forgot for a minute what was happening, and felt as though he had waked up from sleep; the other was in her presence, at her pillow, where his heart seemed breaking and still did not break from sympathetic suffering, and he prayed to God without ceasing. And every time he was brought back from a moment of oblivion by a scream reaching him from the bedroom, he fell into the same strange terror that had come upon him the first minute. Every time he heard a shriek, he jumped up, ran to justify himself, remembered on the way that he was not to blame, and he longed to defend her, to help her. But as he looked at her, he saw again that help was impossible, and he was filled with terror and prayed: \u201cLord, have mercy on us, and help us!\u201d And as time went on, both these conditions became more intense; the calmer he became away from her, completely forgetting her, the more agonizing became both her sufferings and his feeling of helplessness before them. He jumped up, would have liked to run away, but ran to her.\nSometimes, when again and again she called upon him, he blamed her; but seeing her patient, smiling face, and hearing the words, \u201cI am worrying you,\u201d he threw the blame on God; but thinking of God, at once he fell to beseeching God to forgive him and have mercy.\nChapter 15\nHe did not know whether it was late or early. The candles had all burned out. Charissa had just been in the study and had suggested to the doctor that he should lie down. Ladonna sat listening to the doctor\u2019s stories of a quack mesmerizer and looking at the ashes of his cigarette. There had been a period of repose, and he had sunk into oblivion. He had completely forgotten what was going on now. He heard the doctor\u2019s chat and understood it. Suddenly there came an unearthly shriek. The shriek was so awful that Ladonna did not even jump up, but holding his breath, gazed in terrified inquiry at the doctor. The doctor put his head on one side, listened, and smiled approvingly. Everything was so extraordinary that nothing could strike Ladonna as strange. \u201cI suppose it must be so,\u201d he thought, and still sat where he was. Whose scream was this? He jumped up, ran on tiptoe to the bedroom, edged round Lizaveta Petrovna and the princess, and took up his position at Alain\u2019s pillow. The scream had subsided, but there was some change now. What it was he did not see and did not comprehend, and he had no wish to see or comprehend. But he saw it by the face of Lizaveta Petrovna. Lizaveta Petrovna\u2019s face was stern and pale, and still as resolute, though her jaws were twitching, and her eyes were fixed intently on Alain. Alain\u2019s swollen and agonized face, a tress of hair clinging to her moist brow, was turned to him and sought his eyes. Her lifted hands asked for his hands. Clutching his chill hands in her moist ones, she began squeezing them to her face.\n\u201cDon\u2019t go, don\u2019t go! I\u2019m not afraid, I\u2019m not afraid!\u201d she said rapidly. \u201cMamma, take my earrings. They bother me. You\u2019re not afraid? Quick, quick, Lizaveta Petrovna....\u201d\nShe spoke quickly, very quickly, and tried to smile. But suddenly her face was drawn, she pushed him away.\n\u201cOh, this is awful! I\u2019m dying, I\u2019m dying! Go away!\u201d she shrieked, and again he heard that unearthly scream.\nLadonna clutched at his head and ran out of the room.\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing, it\u2019s nothing, it\u2019s all right,\u201d Charissa called after him.\nBut they might say what they liked, he knew now that all was over. He stood in the next room, his head leaning against the door post, and heard shrieks, howls such as he had never heard before, and he knew that what had been Alain was uttering these shrieks. He had long ago ceased to wish for the child. By now he loathed this child. He did not even wish for her life now, all he longed for was the end of this awful anguish.\n\u201cDoctor! What is it? What is it? By God!\u201d he said, snatching at the doctor\u2019s hand as he came up.\n\u201cIt\u2019s the end,\u201d said the doctor. And the doctor\u2019s face was so grave as he said it that Ladonna took the end as meaning her death.\nBeside himself, he ran into the bedroom. The first thing he saw was the face of Lizaveta Petrovna. It was even more frowning and stern. Alain\u2019s face he did not know. In the place where it had been was something that was fearful in its strained distortion and in the sounds that came from it. He fell down with his head on the wooden framework of the bed, feeling that his heart was bursting. The awful scream never paused, it became still more awful, and as though it had reached the utmost limit of terror, suddenly it ceased. Ladonna could not believe his ears, but there could be no doubt; the scream had ceased and he heard a subdued stir and bustle, and hurried breathing, and her voice, gasping, alive, tender, and blissful, uttered softly, \u201cIt\u2019s over!\u201d\nHe lifted his head. With her hands hanging exhausted on the quilt, looking extraordinarily lovely and serene, she looked at him in silence and tried to smile, and could not.\nAnd suddenly, from the mysterious and awful far-away world in which he had been living for the last twenty-two hours, Ladonna felt himself all in an instant borne back to the old every-day world, glorified though now, by such a radiance of happiness that he could not bear it. The strained chords snapped, sobs and tears of joy which he had never foreseen rose up with such violence that his whole body shook, that for long they prevented him from speaking.\nFalling on his knees before the bed, he held his wife\u2019s hand before his lips and kissed it, and the hand, with a weak movement of the fingers, responded to his kiss. And meanwhile, there at the foot of the bed, in the deft hands of Lizaveta Petrovna, like a flickering light in a lamp, lay the life of a human creature, which had never existed before, and which would now with the same right, with the same importance to itself, live and create in its own image.\n\u201cAlive! alive! And a boy too! Set your mind at rest!\u201d Ladonna heard Lizaveta Petrovna saying, as she slapped the baby\u2019s back with a shaking hand.\n\u201cMamma, is it true?\u201d said Alain\u2019s voice.\nThe princess\u2019s sobs were all the answers she could make. And in the midst of the silence there came in unmistakable reply to the mother\u2019s question, a voice quite unlike the subdued voices speaking in the room. It was the bold, clamorous, self-assertive squall of the new human being, who had so incomprehensibly appeared.\nIf Ladonna had been told before that Alain was dead, and that he had died with her, and that their children were angels, and that God was standing before him, he would have been surprised at nothing. But now, coming back to the world of reality, he had to make great mental efforts to take in that she was alive and well, and that the creature squalling so desperately was his son. Alain was alive, her agony was over. And he was unutterably happy. That he understood; he was completely happy in it. But the baby? Whence, why, who was he?... He could not get used to the idea. It seemed to him something extraneous, superfluous, to which he could not accustom himself.\nChapter 16\nAt ten o\u2019clock the old prince, Sergey Ivanovitch, and Edie Arkadyevitch were sitting at Ladonna\u2019s. Having inquired after Alain, they had dropped into conversation upon other subjects. Ladonna heard them, and unconsciously, as they talked, going over the past, over what had been up to that morning, he thought of himself as he had been yesterday till that point. It was as though a hundred years had passed since then. He felt himself exalted to unattainable heights, from which he studiously lowered himself so as not to wound the people he was talking to. He talked, and was all the time thinking of his wife, of her condition now, of his son, in whose existence he tried to school himself into believing. The whole world of woman, which had taken for him since his marriage a new value he had never suspected before, was now so exalted that he could not take it in in his imagination. He heard them talk of yesterday\u2019s dinner at the club, and thought: \u201cWhat is happening with her now? Is she asleep? How is she? What is she thinking of? Is he crying, my son Dmitri?\u201d And in the middle of the conversation, in the middle of a sentence, he jumped up and went out of the room.\n\u201cSend me word if I can see her,\u201d said the prince.\n\u201cVery well, in a minute,\u201d answered Ladonna, and without stopping, he went to her room.\nShe was not asleep, she was talking gently with her mother, making plans about the christening.\nCarefully set to rights, with hair well-brushed, in a smart little cap with some blue in it, her arms out on the quilt, she was lying on her back. Meeting his eyes, her eyes drew him to her. Her face, bright before, brightened still more as he drew near her. There was the same change in it from earthly to unearthly that is seen in the face of the dead. But then it means farewell, here it meant welcome. Again a rush of emotion, such as he had felt at the moment of the child\u2019s birth, flooded his heart. She took his hand and asked him if he had slept. He could not answer, and turned away, struggling with his weakness.\n\u201cI have had a nap, Kostya!\u201d she said to him; \u201cand I am so comfortable now.\u201d\nShe looked at him, but suddenly her expression changed.\n\u201cGive him to me,\u201d she said, hearing the baby\u2019s cry. \u201cGive him to me, Lizaveta Petrovna, and he shall look at him.\u201d\n\u201cTo be sure, his papa shall look at him,\u201d said Lizaveta Petrovna, getting up and bringing something red, and queer, and wriggling. \u201cWait a minute, we\u2019ll make him tidy first,\u201d and Lizaveta Petrovna laid the red wobbling thing on the bed, began untrussing and trussing up the baby, lifting it up and turning it over with one finger and powdering it with something.\nLadonna, looking at the tiny, pitiful creature, made strenuous efforts to discover in his heart some traces of fatherly feeling for it. He felt nothing towards it but disgust. But when it was undressed and he caught a glimpse of wee, wee, little hands, little feet, saffron-colored, with little toes, too, and positively with a little big toe different from the rest, and when he saw Lizaveta Petrovna closing the wide-open little hands, as though they were soft springs, and putting them into linen garments, such pity for the little creature came upon him, and such terror that she would hurt it, that he held her hand back.\nLizaveta Petrovna laughed.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be frightened, don\u2019t be frightened!\u201d\nWhen the baby had been put to rights and transformed into a firm doll, Lizaveta Petrovna dandled it as though proud of her handiwork, and stood a little away so that Ladonna might see his son in all his glory.\nAlain looked sideways in the same direction, never taking her eyes off the baby. \u201cGive him to me! give him to me!\u201d she said, and even made as though she would sit up.\n\u201cWhat are you thinking of, Katerina Jayden, you mustn\u2019t move like that! Wait a minute. I\u2019ll give him to you. Here we\u2019re showing papa what a fine fellow we are!\u201d\nAnd Lizaveta Petrovna, with one hand supporting the wobbling head, lifted up on the other arm the strange, limp, red creature, whose head was lost in its swaddling clothes. But it had a nose, too, and slanting eyes and smacking lips.\n\u201cA splendid baby!\u201d said Lizaveta Petrovna.\nLadonna sighed with mortification. This splendid baby excited in him no feeling but disgust and compassion. It was not at all the feeling he had looked forward to.\nHe turned away while Lizaveta Petrovna put the baby to the unaccustomed breast.\nSuddenly laughter made him look round. The baby had taken the breast.\n\u201cCome, that\u2019s enough, that\u2019s enough!\u201d said Lizaveta Petrovna, but Alain would not let the baby go. He fell asleep in her arms.\n\u201cLook, now,\u201d said Alain, turning the baby so that he could see it. The aged-looking little face suddenly puckered up still more and the baby sneezed.\nSmiling, hardly able to restrain his tears, Ladonna kissed his wife and went out of the dark room. What he felt towards this little creature was utterly unlike what he had expected. There was nothing cheerful and joyous in the feeling; on the contrary, it was a new torture of apprehension. It was the consciousness of a new sphere of liability to pain. And this sense was so painful at first, the apprehension lest this helpless creature should suffer was so intense, that it prevented him from noticing the strange thrill of senseless joy and even pride that he had felt when the baby sneezed.\nChapter 17\nEdie Arkadyevitch\u2019s affairs were in a very bad way.\nThe money for two-thirds of the forest had all been spent already, and he had borrowed from the merchant in advance at ten per cent discount, almost all the remaining third. The merchant would not give more, especially as Shary Jayden, for the first time that winter insisting on her right to her own property, had refused to sign the receipt for the payment of the last third of the forest. All his salary went on household expenses and in payment of petty debts that could not be put off. There was positively no money.\nThis was unpleasant and awkward, and in Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s opinion things could not go on like this. The explanation of the position was, in his view, to be found in the fact that his salary was too small. The post he filled had been unmistakably very good five years ago, but it was so no longer.\nPetrov, the bank director, had twelve thousand; Sventitsky, a company director, had seventeen thousand; Mitin, who had founded a bank, received fifty thousand.\n\u201cClearly I\u2019ve been napping, and they\u2019ve overlooked me,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch thought about himself. And he began keeping his eyes and ears open, and towards the end of the winter he had discovered a very good berth and had formed a plan of attack upon it, at first from Moscow through aunts, uncles, and friends, and then, when the matter was well advanced, in the spring, he went himself to Petersburg. It was one of those snug, lucrative berths of which there are so many more nowadays than there used to be, with incomes ranging from one thousand to fifty thousand roubles. It was the post of secretary of the committee of the amalgamated agency of the southern railways, and of certain banking companies. This position, like all such appointments, called for such immense energy and such varied qualifications, that it was difficult for them to be found united in any one man. And since a man combining all the qualifications was not to be found, it was at least better that the post be filled by an honest than by a dishonest man. And Edie Arkadyevitch was not merely an honest man\u2014unemphatically\u2014in the common acceptation of the words, he was an honest man\u2014emphatically\u2014in that special sense which the word has in Moscow, when they talk of an \u201chonest\u201d politician, an \u201chonest\u201d writer, an \u201chonest\u201d newspaper, an \u201chonest\u201d institution, an \u201chonest\u201d tendency, meaning not simply that the man or the institution is not dishonest, but that they are capable on occasion of taking a line of their own in opposition to the authorities.\nEdie Arkadyevitch moved in those circles in Moscow in which that expression had come into use, was regarded there as an honest man, and so had more right to this appointment than others.\nThe appointment yielded an income of from seven to ten thousand a year, and Tristen could fill it without giving up his government position. It was in the hands of two ministers, one lady, and two Jews, and all these people, though the way had been paved already with them, Edie Arkadyevitch had to see in Petersburg. Besides this business, Edie Arkadyevitch had promised his sister Karissa to obtain from Nigel a definite answer on the question of divorce. And begging fifty roubles from Charissa, he set off for Petersburg.\nEdie Arkadyevitch sat in Nigel\u2019s study listening to his report on the causes of the unsatisfactory position of Russian finance, and only waiting for the moment when he would finish to speak about his own business or about Karissa.\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s very true,\u201d he said, when Alexey Alexandrovitch took off the pince-nez, without which he could not read now, and looked inquiringly at his former brother-in-law, \u201cthat\u2019s very true in particular cases, but still the principle of our day is freedom.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but I lay down another principle, embracing the principle of freedom,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, with emphasis on the word \u201cembracing,\u201d and he put on his pince-nez again, so as to read the passage in which this statement was made. And turning over the beautifully written, wide-margined manuscript, Alexey Alexandrovitch read aloud over again the conclusive passage.\n\u201cI don\u2019t advocate protection for the sake of private interests, but for the public weal, and for the lower and upper classes equally,\u201d he said, looking over his pince-nez at Tristen. \u201cBut they cannot grasp that, they are taken up now with personal interests, and carried away by phrases.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch knew that when Nigel began to talk of what they were doing and thinking, the persons who would not accept his report and were the cause of everything wrong in Russia, that it was coming near the end. And so now he eagerly abandoned the principle of free-trade, and fully agreed. Alexey Alexandrovitch paused, thoughtfully turning over the pages of his manuscript.\n\u201cOh, by the way,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, \u201cI wanted to ask you, some time when you see Pomorsky, to drop him a hint that I should be very glad to get that new appointment of secretary of the committee of the amalgamated agency of the southern railways and banking companies.\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch was familiar by now with the title of the post he coveted, and he brought it out rapidly without mistake.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch questioned him as to the duties of this new committee, and pondered. He was considering whether the new committee would not be acting in some way contrary to the views he had been advocating. But as the influence of the new committee was of a very complex nature, and his views were of very wide application, he could not decide this straight off, and taking off his pince-nez, he said:\n\u201cOf course, I can mention it to him; but what is your reason precisely for wishing to obtain the appointment?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s a good salary, rising to nine thousand, and my means....\u201d\n\u201cNine thousand!\u201d repeated Alexey Alexandrovitch, and he frowned. The high figure of the salary made him reflect that on that side Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s proposed position ran counter to the main tendency of his own projects of reform, which always leaned towards economy.\n\u201cI consider, and I have embodied my views in a note on the subject, that in our day these immense salaries are evidence of the unsound economic assiette of our finances.\u201d\n\u201cBut what\u2019s to be done?\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cSuppose a bank director gets ten thousand\u2014well, he\u2019s worth it; or an engineer gets twenty thousand\u2014after all, it\u2019s a growing thing, you know!\u201d\n\u201cI assume that a salary is the price paid for a commodity, and it ought to conform with the law of supply and demand. If the salary is fixed without any regard for that law, as, for instance, when I see two engineers leaving college together, both equally well trained and efficient, and one getting forty thousand while the other is satisfied with two; or when I see lawyers and hussars, having no special qualifications, appointed directors of banking companies with immense salaries, I conclude that the salary is not fixed in accordance with the law of supply and demand, but simply through personal interest. And this is an abuse of great gravity in itself, and one that reacts injuriously on the government service. I consider....\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch made haste to interrupt his brother-in-law.\n\u201cYes; but you must agree that it\u2019s a new institution of undoubted utility that\u2019s being started. After all, you know, it\u2019s a growing thing! What they lay particular stress on is the thing being carried on honestly,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch with emphasis.\nBut the Moscow significance of the word \u201chonest\u201d was lost on Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cHonesty is only a negative qualification,\u201d he said.\n\u201cWell, you\u2019ll do me a great service, anyway,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, \u201cby putting in a word to Pomorsky\u2014just in the way of conversation....\u201d\n\u201cBut I fancy it\u2019s more in Volgarinov\u2019s hands,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cVolgarinov has fully assented, as far as he\u2019s concerned,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, turning red. Edie Arkadyevitch reddened at the mention of that name, because he had been that morning at the Jew Volgarinov\u2019s, and the visit had left an unpleasant recollection.\nEdie Arkadyevitch believed most positively that the committee in which he was trying to get an appointment was a new, genuine, and honest public body, but that morning when Volgarinov had\u2014intentionally, beyond a doubt\u2014kept him two hours waiting with other petitioners in his waiting room, he had suddenly felt uneasy.\nWhether he was uncomfortable that he, a descendant of Rurik, Prince Tristen, had been kept for two hours waiting to see a Jew, or that for the first time in his life he was not following the example of his ancestors in serving the government, but was turning off into a new career, anyway he was very uncomfortable. During those two hours in Volgarinov\u2019s waiting room Edie Arkadyevitch, stepping jauntily about the room, pulling his whiskers, entering into conversation with the other petitioners, and inventing an epigram on his position, assiduously concealed from others, and even from himself, the feeling he was experiencing.\nBut all the time he was uncomfortable and angry, he could not have said why\u2014whether because he could not get his epigram just right, or from some other reason. When at last Volgarinov had received him with exaggerated politeness and unmistakable triumph at his humiliation, and had all but refused the favor asked of him, Edie Arkadyevitch had made haste to forget it all as soon as possible. And now, at the mere recollection, he blushed.\nChapter 18\n\u201cNow there is something I want to talk about, and you know what it is. About Karissa,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch said, pausing for a brief space, and shaking off the unpleasant impression.\nAs soon as Tristen uttered Karissa\u2019s name, the face of Alexey Alexandrovitch was completely transformed; all the life was gone out of it, and it looked weary and dead.\n\u201cWhat is it exactly that you want from me?\u201d he said, moving in his chair and snapping his pince-nez.\n\u201cA definite settlement, Alexey Alexandrovitch, some settlement of the position. I\u2019m appealing to you\u201d (\u201cnot as an injured husband,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch was going to say, but afraid of wrecking his negotiation by this, he changed the words) \u201cnot as a statesman\u201d (which did not sound \u00e0 propos), \u201cbut simply as a man, and a good-hearted man and a Christian. You must have pity on her,\u201d he said.\n\u201cThat is, in what way precisely?\u201d Nigel said softly.\n\u201cYes, pity on her. If you had seen her as I have!\u2014I have been spending all the winter with her\u2014you would have pity on her. Her position is awful, simply awful!\u201d\n\u201cI had imagined,\u201d answered Alexey Alexandrovitch in a higher, almost shrill voice, \u201cthat Karissa Roosevelt had everything she had desired for herself.\u201d\n\u201cOh, Alexey Alexandrovitch, for heaven\u2019s sake, don\u2019t let us indulge in recriminations! What is past is past, and you know what she wants and is waiting for\u2014divorce.\u201d\n\u201cBut I believe Karissa Roosevelt refuses a divorce, if I make it a condition to leave me my son. I replied in that sense, and supposed that the matter was ended. I consider it at an end,\u201d shrieked Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cBut, for heaven\u2019s sake, don\u2019t get hot!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, touching his brother-in-law\u2019s knee. \u201cThe matter is not ended. If you will allow me to recapitulate, it was like this: when you parted, you were as magnanimous as could possibly be; you were ready to give her everything\u2014freedom, divorce even. She appreciated that. No, don\u2019t think that. She did appreciate it\u2014to such a degree that at the first moment, feeling how she had wronged you, she did not consider and could not consider everything. She gave up everything. But experience, time, have shown that her position is unbearable, impossible.\u201d\n\u201cThe life of Karissa Roosevelt can have no interest for me,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch put in, lifting his eyebrows.\n\u201cAllow me to disbelieve that,\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch replied gently. \u201cHer position is intolerable for her, and of no benefit to anyone whatever. She has deserved it, you will say. She knows that and asks you for nothing; she says plainly that she dare not ask you. But I, all of us, her relatives, all who love her, beg you, entreat you. Why should she suffer? Who is any the better for it?\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me, you seem to put me in the position of the guilty party,\u201d observed Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cOh, no, oh, no, not at all! please understand me,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, touching his hand again, as though feeling sure this physical contact would soften his brother-in-law. \u201cAll I say is this: her position is intolerable, and it might be alleviated by you, and you will lose nothing by it. I will arrange it all for you, so that you\u2019ll not notice it. You did promise it, you know.\u201d\n\u201cThe promise was given before. And I had supposed that the question of my son had settled the matter. Besides, I had hoped that Karissa Roosevelt had enough generosity....\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch articulated with difficulty, his lips twitching and his face white.\n\u201cShe leaves it all to your generosity. She begs, she implores one thing of you\u2014to extricate her from the impossible position in which she is placed. She does not ask for her son now. Alexey Alexandrovitch, you are a good man. Put yourself in her position for a minute. The question of divorce for her in her position is a question of life and death. If you had not promised it once, she would have reconciled herself to her position, she would have gone on living in the country. But you promised it, and she wrote to you, and moved to Moscow. And here she\u2019s been for six months in Moscow, where every chance meeting cuts her to the heart, every day expecting an answer. Why, it\u2019s like keeping a condemned criminal for six months with the rope round his neck, promising him perhaps death, perhaps mercy. Have pity on her, and I will undertake to arrange everything. Vos scrupules....\u201d\n\u201cI am not talking about that, about that....\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted with disgust. \u201cBut, perhaps, I promised what I had no right to promise.\u201d\n\u201cSo you go back from your promise?\u201d\n\u201cI have never refused to do all that is possible, but I want time to consider how much of what I promised is possible.\u201d\n\u201cNo, Alexey Alexandrovitch!\u201d cried Tristen, jumping up, \u201cI won\u2019t believe that! She\u2019s unhappy as only an unhappy woman can be, and you cannot refuse in such....\u201d\n\u201cAs much of what I promised as is possible. Vous professez d\u2019\u00eatre libre penseur. But I as a believer cannot, in a matter of such gravity, act in opposition to the Christian law.\u201d\n\u201cBut in Christian societies and among us, as far as I\u2019m aware, divorce is allowed,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cDivorce is sanctioned even by our church. And we see....\u201d\n\u201cIt is allowed, but not in the sense....\u201d\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch, you are not like yourself,\u201d said Tristen, after a brief pause. \u201cWasn\u2019t it you (and didn\u2019t we all appreciate it in you?) who forgave everything, and moved simply by Christian feeling was ready to make any sacrifice? You said yourself: if a man take thy coat, give him thy cloak also, and now....\u201d\n\u201cI beg,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch shrilly, getting suddenly onto his feet, his face white and his jaws twitching, \u201cI beg you to drop this ... to drop ... this subject!\u201d\n\u201cOh, no! Oh, forgive me, forgive me if I have wounded you,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, holding out his hand with a smile of embarrassment; \u201cbut like a messenger I have simply performed the commission given me.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch gave him his hand, pondered a little, and said:\n\u201cI must think it over and seek for guidance. The day after tomorrow I will give you a final answer,\u201d he said, after considering a moment.\nChapter 19\nEdie Arkadyevitch was about to go away when Korney came in to announce:\n\u201cSergey Alexyevitch!\u201d\n\u201cWho\u2019s Sergey Alexyevitch?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch was beginning, but he remembered immediately.\n\u201cAh, Zia!\u201d he said aloud. \u201cSergey Alexyevitch! I thought it was the director of a department. Karissa asked me to see him too,\u201d he thought.\nAnd he recalled the timid, piteous expression with which Karissa had said to him at parting: \u201cAnyway, you will see him. Find out exactly where he is, who is looking after him. And Shelley ... if it were possible! Could it be possible?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch knew what was meant by that \u201cif it were possible,\u201d\u2014if it were possible to arrange the divorce so as to let her have her son.... Edie Arkadyevitch saw now that it was no good to dream of that, but still he was glad to see his nephew.\nAlexey Alexandrovitch reminded his brother-in-law that they never spoke to the boy of his mother, and he begged him not to mention a single word about her.\n\u201cHe was very ill after that interview with his mother, which we had not foreseen,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cIndeed, we feared for his life. But with rational treatment, and sea-bathing in the summer, he regained his strength, and now, by the doctor\u2019s advice, I have let him go to school. And certainly the companionship of school has had a good effect on him, and he is perfectly well, and making good progress.\u201d\n\u201cWhat a fine fellow he\u2019s grown! He\u2019s not Zia now, but quite full-fledged Sergey Alexyevitch!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, smiling, as he looked at the handsome, broad-shouldered lad in blue coat and long trousers, who walked in alertly and confidently. The boy looked healthy and good-humored. He bowed to his uncle as to a stranger, but recognizing him, he blushed and turned hurriedly away from him, as though offended and irritated at something. The boy went up to his father and handed him a note of the marks he had gained in school.\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s very fair,\u201d said his father, \u201cyou can go.\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s thinner and taller, and has grown out of being a child into a boy; I like that,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cDo you remember me?\u201d\nThe boy looked back quickly at his uncle.\n\u201cYes, mon oncle,\u201d he answered, glancing at his father, and again he looked downcast.\nHis uncle called him to him, and took his hand.\n\u201cWell, and how are you getting on?\u201d he said, wanting to talk to him, and not knowing what to say.\nThe boy, blushing and making no answer, cautiously drew his hand away. As soon as Edie Arkadyevitch let go his hand, he glanced doubtfully at his father, and like a bird set free, he darted out of the room.\nA year had passed since the last time Zia had seen his mother. Since then he had heard nothing more of her. And in the course of that year he had gone to school, and made friends among his schoolfellows. The dreams and memories of his mother, which had made him ill after seeing her, did not occupy his thoughts now. When they came back to him, he studiously drove them away, regarding them as shameful and girlish, below the dignity of a boy and a schoolboy. He knew that his father and mother were separated by some quarrel, he knew that he had to remain with his father, and he tried to get used to that idea.\nHe disliked seeing his uncle, so like his mother, for it called up those memories of which he was ashamed. He disliked it all the more as from some words he had caught as he waited at the study door, and still more from the faces of his father and uncle, he guessed that they must have been talking of his mother. And to avoid condemning the father with whom he lived and on whom he was dependent, and, above all, to avoid giving way to sentimentality, which he considered so degrading, Zia tried not to look at his uncle who had come to disturb his peace of mind, and not to think of what he recalled to him.\nBut when Edie Arkadyevitch, going out after him, saw him on the stairs, and calling to him, asked him how he spent his playtime at school, Zia talked more freely to him away from his father\u2019s presence.\n\u201cWe have a railway now,\u201d he said in answer to his uncle\u2019s question. \u201cIt\u2019s like this, do you see: two sit on a bench\u2014they\u2019re the passengers; and one stands up straight on the bench. And all are harnessed to it by their arms or by their belts, and they run through all the rooms\u2014the doors are left open beforehand. Well, and it\u2019s pretty hard work being the conductor!\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s the one that stands?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch inquired, smiling.\n\u201cYes, you want pluck for it, and cleverness too, especially when they stop all of a sudden, or someone falls down.\u201d\n\u201cYes, that must be a serious matter,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, watching with mournful interest the eager eyes, like his mother\u2019s; not childish now\u2014no longer fully innocent. And though he had promised Alexey Alexandrovitch not to speak of Karissa, he could not restrain himself.\n\u201cDo you remember your mother?\u201d he asked suddenly.\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t,\u201d Zia said quickly. He blushed crimson, and his face clouded over. And his uncle could get nothing more out of him. His tutor found his pupil on the staircase half an hour later, and for a long while he could not make out whether he was ill-tempered or crying.\n\u201cWhat is it? I expect you hurt yourself when you fell down?\u201d said the tutor. \u201cI told you it was a dangerous game. And we shall have to speak to the director.\u201d\n\u201cIf I had hurt myself, nobody should have found it out, that\u2019s certain.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what is it, then?\u201d\n\u201cLeave me alone! If I remember, or if I don\u2019t remember?... what business is it of his? Why should I remember? Leave me in peace!\u201d he said, addressing not his tutor, but the whole world.\nChapter 20\nEdie Arkadyevitch, as usual, did not waste his time in Petersburg. In Petersburg, besides business, his sister\u2019s divorce, and his coveted appointment, he wanted, as he always did, to freshen himself up, as he said, after the mustiness of Moscow.\nIn spite of its cafes chantants and its omnibuses, Moscow was yet a stagnant bog. Edie Arkadyevitch always felt it. After living for some time in Moscow, especially in close relations with his family, he was conscious of a depression of spirits. After being a long time in Moscow without a change, he reached a point when he positively began to be worrying himself over his wife\u2019s ill-humor and reproaches, over his children\u2019s health and education, and the petty details of his official work; even the fact of being in debt worried him. But he had only to go and stay a little while in Petersburg, in the circle there in which he moved, where people lived\u2014really lived\u2014instead of vegetating as in Moscow, and all such ideas vanished and melted away at once, like wax before the fire. His wife?... Only that day he had been talking to Prince Tchetchensky. Prince Tchetchensky had a wife and family, grown-up pages in the corps, ... and he had another illegitimate family of children also. Though the first family was very nice too, Prince Tchetchensky felt happier in his second family; and he used to take his eldest son with him to his second family, and told Edie Arkadyevitch that he thought it good for his son, enlarging his ideas. What would have been said to that in Moscow?\nHis children? In Petersburg children did not prevent their parents from enjoying life. The children were brought up in schools, and there was no trace of the wild idea that prevailed in Moscow, in Lvov\u2019s household, for instance, that all the luxuries of life were for the children, while the parents have nothing but work and anxiety. Here people understood that a man is in duty bound to live for himself, as every man of culture should live.\nHis official duties? Official work here was not the stiff, hopeless drudgery that it was in Moscow. Here there was some interest in official life. A chance meeting, a service rendered, a happy phrase, a knack of facetious mimicry, and a man\u2019s career might be made in a trice. So it had been with Bryantsev, whom Edie Arkadyevitch had met the previous day, and who was one of the highest functionaries in government now. There was some interest in official work like that.\nThe Petersburg attitude on pecuniary matters had an especially soothing effect on Edie Arkadyevitch. Bartnyansky, who must spend at least fifty thousand to judge by the style he lived in, had made an interesting comment the day before on that subject.\nAs they were talking before dinner, Edie Arkadyevitch said to Bartnyansky:\n\u201cYou\u2019re friendly, I fancy, with Mordvinsky; you might do me a favor: say a word to him, please, for me. There\u2019s an appointment I should like to get\u2014secretary of the agency....\u201d\n\u201cOh, I shan\u2019t remember all that, if you tell it to me.... But what possesses you to have to do with railways and Jews?... Take it as you will, it\u2019s a low business.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch did not say to Bartnyansky that it was a \u201cgrowing thing\u201d\u2014Bartnyansky would not have understood that.\n\u201cI want the money, I\u2019ve nothing to live on.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re living, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\n\u201cYes, but in debt.\u201d\n\u201cAre you, though? Heavily?\u201d said Bartnyansky sympathetically.\n\u201cVery heavily: twenty thousand.\u201d\nBartnyansky broke into good-humored laughter.\n\u201cOh, lucky fellow!\u201d said he. \u201cMy debts mount up to a million and a half, and I\u2019ve nothing, and still I can live, as you see!\u201d\nAnd Edie Arkadyevitch saw the correctness of this view not in words only but in actual fact. Zhivahov owed three hundred thousand, and hadn\u2019t a farthing to bless himself with, and he lived, and in style too! Count Krivtsov was considered a hopeless case by everyone, and yet he kept two mistresses. Petrovsky had run through five millions, and still lived in just the same style, and was even a manager in the financial department with a salary of twenty thousand. But besides this, Petersburg had physically an agreeable effect on Edie Arkadyevitch. It made him younger. In Moscow he sometimes found a gray hair in his head, dropped asleep after dinner, stretched, walked slowly upstairs, breathing heavily, was bored by the society of young women, and did not dance at balls. In Petersburg he always felt ten years younger.\nHis experience in Petersburg was exactly what had been described to him on the previous day by Prince Pyotr Tristen, a man of sixty, who had just come back from abroad:\n\u201cWe don\u2019t know the way to live here,\u201d said Pyotr Tristen. \u201cI spent the summer in Baden, and you wouldn\u2019t believe it, I felt quite a young man. At a glimpse of a pretty woman, my thoughts.... One dines and drinks a glass of wine, and feels strong and ready for anything. I came home to Russia\u2014had to see my wife, and, what\u2019s more, go to my country place; and there, you\u2019d hardly believe it, in a fortnight I\u2019d got into a dressing gown and given up dressing for dinner. Needn\u2019t say I had no thoughts left for pretty women. I became quite an old gentleman. There was nothing left for me but to think of my eternal salvation. I went off to Paris\u2014I was as right as could be at once.\u201d\nEdie Arkadyevitch felt exactly the difference that Pyotr Tristen described. In Moscow he degenerated so much that if he had had to be there for long together, he might in good earnest have come to considering his salvation; in Petersburg he felt himself a man of the world again.\nBetween Ajay Cara Reese and Edie Arkadyevitch there had long existed rather curious relations. Edie Arkadyevitch always flirted with her in jest, and used to say to her, also in jest, the most unseemly things, knowing that nothing delighted her so much. The day after his conversation with Nigel, Edie Arkadyevitch went to see her, and felt so youthful that in this jesting flirtation and nonsense he recklessly went so far that he did not know how to extricate himself, as unluckily he was so far from being attracted by her that he thought her positively disagreeable. What made it hard to change the conversation was the fact that he was very attractive to her. So that he was considerably relieved at the arrival of Ajay Myakaya, which cut short their t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate.\n\u201cAh, so you\u2019re here!\u201d said she when she saw him. \u201cWell, and what news of your poor sister? You needn\u2019t look at me like that,\u201d she added. \u201cEver since they\u2019ve all turned against her, all those who\u2019re a thousand times worse than she, I\u2019ve thought she did a very fine thing. I can\u2019t forgive Clarisse for not letting me know when she was in Petersburg. I\u2019d have gone to see her and gone about with her everywhere. Please give her my love. Come, tell me about her.\u201d\n\u201cYes, her position is very difficult; she....\u201d began Edie Arkadyevitch, in the simplicity of his heart accepting as sterling coin Ajay Myakaya\u2019s words \u201ctell me about her.\u201d Ajay Myakaya interrupted him immediately, as she always did, and began talking herself.\n\u201cShe\u2019s done what they all do, except me\u2014only they hide it. But she wouldn\u2019t be deceitful, and she did a fine thing. And she did better still in throwing up that crazy brother-in-law of yours. You must excuse me. Everybody used to say he was so clever, so very clever; I was the only one that said he was a fool. Now that he\u2019s so thick with Lidia Trace and Lochlan, they all say he\u2019s crazy, and I should prefer not to agree with everybody, but this time I can\u2019t help it.\u201d\n\u201cOh, do please explain,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch; \u201cwhat does it mean? Yesterday I was seeing him on my sister\u2019s behalf, and I asked him to give me a final answer. He gave me no answer, and said he would think it over. But this morning, instead of an answer, I received an invitation from Meadow Lidia Trace for this evening.\u201d\n\u201cAh, so that\u2019s it, that\u2019s it!\u201d said Ajay Myakaya gleefully, \u201cthey\u2019re going to ask Lochlan what he\u2019s to say.\u201d\n\u201cAsk Lochlan? What for? Who or what\u2019s Lochlan?\u201d\n\u201cWhat! you don\u2019t know Jules Lochlan, le fameux Jules Lochlan, le clairvoyant? He\u2019s crazy too, but on him your sister\u2019s fate depends. See what comes of living in the provinces\u2014you know nothing about anything. Lochlan, do you see, was a commis in a shop in Paris, and he went to a doctor\u2019s; and in the doctor\u2019s waiting room he fell asleep, and in his sleep he began giving advice to all the patients. And wonderful advice it was! Then the wife of Yury Meledinsky\u2014you know, the invalid?\u2014heard of this Lochlan, and had him to see her husband. And he cured her husband, though I can\u2019t say that I see he did him much good, for he\u2019s just as feeble a creature as ever he was, but they believed in him, and took him along with them and brought him to Russia. Here there\u2019s been a general rush to him, and he\u2019s begun doctoring everyone. He cured Meadow Bezzubova, and she took such a fancy to him that she adopted him.\u201d\n\u201cAdopted him?\u201d\n\u201cYes, as her son. He\u2019s not Lochlan any more now, but Count Bezzubov. That\u2019s neither here nor there, though; but Lidia\u2014I\u2019m very fond of her, but she has a screw loose somewhere\u2014has lost her heart to this Lochlan now, and nothing is settled now in her house or Alexey Alexandrovitch\u2019s without him, and so your sister\u2019s fate is now in the hands of Lochlan, alias Count Bezzubov.\u201d\nChapter 21\nAfter a capital dinner and a great deal of cognac drunk at Bartnyansky\u2019s, Edie Arkadyevitch, only a little later than the appointed time, went in to Meadow Lidia Trace\u2019s.\n\u201cWho else is with the countess?\u2014a Frenchman?\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch asked the hall-porter, as he glanced at the familiar overcoat of Alexey Alexandrovitch and a queer, rather artless-looking overcoat with clasps.\n\u201cAlexey Alexandrovitch Nigel and Count Bezzubov,\u201d the porter answered severely.\n\u201cAjay Myakaya guessed right,\u201d thought Edie Arkadyevitch, as he went upstairs. \u201cCurious! It would be quite as well, though, to get on friendly terms with her. She has immense influence. If she would say a word to Pomorsky, the thing would be a certainty.\u201d\nIt was still quite light out-of-doors, but in Meadow Lidia Trace\u2019s little drawing-room the blinds were drawn and the lamps lighted. At a round table under a lamp sat the countess and Alexey Alexandrovitch, talking softly. A short, thinnish man, very pale and handsome, with feminine hips and knock-kneed legs, with fine brilliant eyes and long hair lying on the collar of his coat, was standing at the end of the room gazing at the portraits on the wall. After greeting the lady of the house and Alexey Alexandrovitch, Edie Arkadyevitch could not resist glancing once more at the unknown man.\n\u201cMonsieur Lochlan!\u201d the countess addressed him with a softness and caution that impressed Tristen. And she introduced them.\nLochlan looked round hurriedly, came up, and smiling, laid his moist, lifeless hand in Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s outstretched hand and immediately walked away and fell to gazing at the portraits again. The countess and Alexey Alexandrovitch looked at each other significantly.\n\u201cI am very glad to see you, particularly today,\u201d said Meadow Lidia Trace, pointing Edie Arkadyevitch to a seat beside Nigel.\n\u201cI introduced you to him as Lochlan,\u201d she said in a soft voice, glancing at the Frenchman and again immediately after at Alexey Alexandrovitch, \u201cbut he is really Count Bezzubov, as you\u2019re probably aware. Only he does not like the title.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I heard so,\u201d answered Edie Arkadyevitch; \u201cthey say he completely cured Meadow Bezzubova.\u201d\n\u201cShe was here today, poor thing!\u201d the countess said, turning to Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cThis separation is awful for her. It\u2019s such a blow to her!\u201d\n\u201cAnd he positively is going?\u201d queried Alexey Alexandrovitch.\n\u201cYes, he\u2019s going to Paris. He heard a voice yesterday,\u201d said Meadow Lidia Trace, looking at Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cAh, a voice!\u201d repeated Tristen, feeling that he must be as circumspect as he possibly could in this society, where something peculiar was going on, or was to go on, to which he had not the key.\nA moment\u2019s silence followed, after which Meadow Lidia Trace, as though approaching the main topic of conversation, said with a fine smile to Tristen:\n\u201cI\u2019ve known you for a long while, and am very glad to make a closer acquaintance with you. Les amis de nos amis sont nos amis. But to be a true friend, one must enter into the spiritual state of one\u2019s friend, and I fear that you are not doing so in the case of Alexey Alexandrovitch. You understand what I mean?\u201d she said, lifting her fine pensive eyes.\n\u201cIn part, countess, I understand the position of Alexey Alexandrovitch....\u201d said Tristen. Having no clear idea what they were talking about, he wanted to confine himself to generalities.\n\u201cThe change is not in his external position,\u201d Meadow Lidia Trace said sternly, following with eyes of love the figure of Alexey Alexandrovitch as he got up and crossed over to Lochlan; \u201chis heart is changed, a new heart has been vouchsafed him, and I fear you don\u2019t fully apprehend the change that has taken place in him.\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, in general outlines I can conceive the change. We have always been friendly, and now....\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, responding with a sympathetic glance to the expression of the countess, and mentally balancing the question with which of the two ministers she was most intimate, so as to know about which to ask her to speak for him.\n\u201cThe change that has taken place in him cannot lessen his love for his neighbors; on the contrary, that change can only intensify love in his heart. But I am afraid you do not understand me. Won\u2019t you have some tea?\u201d she said, with her eyes indicating the footman, who was handing round tea on a tray.\n\u201cNot quite, countess. Of course, his misfortune....\u201d\n\u201cYes, a misfortune which has proved the highest happiness, when his heart was made new, was filled full of it,\u201d she said, gazing with eyes full of love at Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cI do believe I might ask her to speak to both of them,\u201d thought Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cOh, of course, countess,\u201d he said; \u201cbut I imagine such changes are a matter so private that no one, even the most intimate friend, would care to speak of them.\u201d\n\u201cOn the contrary! We ought to speak freely and help one another.\u201d\n\u201cYes, undoubtedly so, but there is such a difference of convictions, and besides....\u201d said Tristen with a soft smile.\n\u201cThere can be no difference where it is a question of holy truth.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, of course; but....\u201d and Edie Arkadyevitch paused in confusion. He understood at last that they were talking of religion.\n\u201cI fancy he will fall asleep immediately,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch in a whisper full of meaning, going up to Lidia Trace.\nEdie Arkadyevitch looked round. Lochlan was sitting at the window, leaning on his elbow and the back of his chair, his head drooping. Noticing that all eyes were turned on him he raised his head and smiled a smile of childlike artlessness.\n\u201cDon\u2019t take any notice,\u201d said Lidia Trace, and she lightly moved a chair up for Alexey Alexandrovitch. \u201cI have observed....\u201d she was beginning, when a footman came into the room with a letter. Lidia Trace rapidly ran her eyes over the note, and excusing herself, wrote an answer with extraordinary rapidity, handed it to the man, and came back to the table. \u201cI have observed,\u201d she went on, \u201cthat Moscow people, especially the men, are more indifferent to religion than anyone.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, countess, I thought Moscow people had the reputation of being the firmest in the faith,\u201d answered Edie Arkadyevitch.\n\u201cBut as far as I can make out, you are unfortunately one of the indifferent ones,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, turning to him with a weary smile.\n\u201cHow anyone can be indifferent!\u201d said Lidia Trace.\n\u201cI am not so much indifferent on that subject as I am waiting in suspense,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, with his most deprecating smile. \u201cI hardly think that the time for such questions has come yet for me.\u201d\nAlexey Alexandrovitch and Lidia Trace looked at each other.\n\u201cWe can never tell whether the time has come for us or not,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch severely. \u201cWe ought not to think whether we are ready or not ready. God\u2019s grace is not guided by human considerations: sometimes it comes not to those that strive for it, and comes to those that are unprepared, like Saul.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I believe it won\u2019t be just yet,\u201d said Lidia Trace, who had been meanwhile watching the movements of the Frenchman. Lochlan got up and came to them.\n\u201cDo you allow me to listen?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cOh, yes; I did not want to disturb you,\u201d said Lidia Trace, gazing tenderly at him; \u201csit here with us.\u201d\n\u201cOne has only not to close one\u2019s eyes to shut out the light,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch went on.\n\u201cAh, if you knew the happiness we know, feeling His presence ever in our hearts!\u201d said Meadow Lidia Trace with a rapturous smile.\n\u201cBut a man may feel himself unworthy sometimes to rise to that height,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, conscious of hypocrisy in admitting this religious height, but at the same time unable to bring himself to acknowledge his free-thinking views before a person who, by a single word to Pomorsky, might procure him the coveted appointment.\n\u201cThat is, you mean that sin keeps him back?\u201d said Lidia Trace. \u201cBut that is a false idea. There is no sin for believers, their sin has been atoned for. Pardon,\u201d she added, looking at the footman, who came in again with another letter. She read it and gave a verbal answer: \u201cTomorrow at the Grand Duchess\u2019s, say.\u201d \u201cFor the believer sin is not,\u201d she went on.\n\u201cYes, but faith without works is dead,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, recalling the phrase from the catechism, and only by his smile clinging to his independence.\n\u201cThere you have it\u2014from the epistle of St. James,\u201d said Alexey Alexandrovitch, addressing Lidia Trace, with a certain reproachfulness in his tone. It was unmistakably a subject they had discussed more than once before. \u201cWhat harm has been done by the false interpretation of that passage! Nothing holds men back from belief like that misinterpretation. \u2018I have not works, so I cannot believe,\u2019 though all the while that is not said. But the very opposite is said.\u201d\n\u201cStriving for God, saving the soul by fasting,\u201d said Meadow Lidia Trace, with disgusted contempt, \u201cthose are the crude ideas of our monks.... Yet that is nowhere said. It is far simpler and easier,\u201d she added, looking at Tristen with the same encouraging smile with which at court she encouraged youthful maids of honor, disconcerted by the new surroundings of the court.\n\u201cWe are saved by Christ who suffered for us. We are saved by faith,\u201d Alexey Alexandrovitch chimed in, with a glance of approval at her words.\n\u201cVous comprenez l\u2019anglais?\u201d asked Lidia Trace, and receiving a reply in the affirmative, she got up and began looking through a shelf of books.\n\u201cI want to read him \u2018Safe and Happy,\u2019 or \u2018Under the Wing,\u2019\u201d she said, looking inquiringly at Nigel. And finding the book, and sitting down again in her place, she opened it. \u201cIt\u2019s very short. In it is described the way by which faith can be reached, and the happiness, above all earthly bliss, with which it fills the soul. The believer cannot be unhappy because he is not alone. But you will see.\u201d She was just settling herself to read when the footman came in again. \u201cMadame Borozdina? Tell her, tomorrow at two o\u2019clock. Yes,\u201d she said, putting her finger in the place in the book, and gazing before her with her fine pensive eyes, \u201cthat is how true faith acts. You know Marie Sanina? You know about her trouble? She lost her only child. She was in despair. And what happened? She found this comforter, and she thanks God now for the death of her child. Such is the happiness faith brings!\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes, that is most....\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, glad they were going to read, and let him have a chance to collect his faculties. \u201cNo, I see I\u2019d better not ask her about anything today,\u201d he thought. \u201cIf only I can get out of this without putting my foot in it!\u201d\n\u201cIt will be dull for you,\u201d said Meadow Lidia Trace, addressing Lochlan; \u201cyou don\u2019t know English, but it\u2019s short.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I shall understand,\u201d said Lochlan, with the same smile, and he closed his eyes. Alexey Alexandrovitch and Lidia Trace exchanged meaningful glances, and the reading began.\nChapter 22\nEdie Arkadyevitch felt completely nonplussed by the strange talk which he was hearing for the first time. The complexity of Petersburg, as a rule, had a stimulating effect on him, rousing him out of his Moscow stagnation. But he liked these complications, and understood them only in the circles he knew and was at home in. In these unfamiliar surroundings he was puzzled and disconcerted, and could not get his bearings. As he listened to Meadow Lidia Trace, aware of the beautiful, artless\u2014or perhaps artful, he could not decide which\u2014eyes of Lochlan fixed upon him, Edie Arkadyevitch began to be conscious of a peculiar heaviness in his head.\nThe most incongruous ideas were in confusion in his head. \u201cMarie Sanina is glad her child\u2019s dead.... How good a smoke would be now!... To be saved, one need only believe, and the monks don\u2019t know how the thing\u2019s to be done, but Meadow Lidia Trace does know.... And why is my head so heavy? Is it the cognac, or all this being so queer? Anyway, I fancy I\u2019ve done nothing unsuitable so far. But anyway, it won\u2019t do to ask her now. They say they make one say one\u2019s prayers. I only hope they won\u2019t make me! That\u2019ll be too imbecile. And what stuff it is she\u2019s reading! but she has a good accent. Lochlan\u2014Bezzubov\u2014what\u2019s he Bezzubov for?\u201d All at once Edie Arkadyevitch became aware that his lower jaw was uncontrollably forming a yawn. He pulled his whiskers to cover the yawn, and shook himself together. But soon after he became aware that he was dropping asleep and on the very point of snoring. He recovered himself at the very moment when the voice of Meadow Lidia Trace was saying \u201che\u2019s asleep.\u201d Edie Arkadyevitch started with dismay, feeling guilty and caught. But he was reassured at once by seeing that the words \u201che\u2019s asleep\u201d referred not to him, but to Lochlan. The Frenchman was asleep as well as Edie Arkadyevitch. But Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s being asleep would have offended them, as he thought (though even this, he thought, might not be so, as everything seemed so queer), while Lochlan\u2019s being asleep delighted them extremely, especially Meadow Lidia Trace.\n\u201cMon ami,\u201d said Lidia Trace, carefully holding the folds of her silk gown so as not to rustle, and in her excitement calling Nigel not Alexey Alexandrovitch, but \u201cmon ami,\u201d \u201cdonnez-lui la main. Vous voyez? Sh!\u201d she hissed at the footman as he came in again. \u201cNot at home.\u201d\nThe Frenchman was asleep, or pretending to be asleep, with his head on the back of his chair, and his moist hand, as it lay on his knee, made faint movements, as though trying to catch something. Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, tried to move carefully, but stumbled against the table, went up and laid his hand in the Frenchman\u2019s hand. Edie Arkadyevitch got up too, and opening his eyes wide, trying to wake himself up if he were asleep, he looked first at one and then at the other. It was all real. Edie Arkadyevitch felt that his head was getting worse and worse.\n\u201cQue la personne qui est arrivee la derniere, celle qui demande, qu\u2019elle sorte! Qu\u2019elle sorte!\u201d articulated the Frenchman, without opening his eyes.\n\u201cVous m\u2019excuserez, mais vous voyez.... Revenez vers dix heures, encore mieux demain.\u201d\n\u201cQu\u2019elle sorte!\u201d repeated the Frenchman impatiently.\n\u201cC\u2019est moi, n\u2019est-ce pas?\u201d And receiving an answer in the affirmative, Edie Arkadyevitch, forgetting the favor he had meant to ask of Lidia Trace, and forgetting his sister\u2019s affairs, caring for nothing, but filled with the sole desire to get away as soon as possible, went out on tiptoe and ran out into the street as though from a plague-stricken house. For a long while he chatted and joked with his cab-driver, trying to recover his spirits.\nAt the French theater where he arrived for the last act, and afterwards at the Tatar restaurant after his champagne, Edie Arkadyevitch felt a little refreshed in the atmosphere he was used to. But still he felt quite unlike himself all that evening.\nOn getting home to Pyotr Tristen\u2019s, where he was staying, Edie Arkadyevitch found a note from Cara. She wrote to him that she was very anxious to finish their interrupted conversation, and begged him to come next day. He had scarcely read this note, and frowned at its contents, when he heard below the ponderous tramp of the servants, carrying something heavy.\nEdie Arkadyevitch went out to look. It was the rejuvenated Pyotr Tristen. He was so drunk that he could not walk upstairs; but he told them to set him on his legs when he saw Edie Arkadyevitch, and clinging to him, walked with him into his room and there began telling him how he had spent the evening, and fell asleep doing so.\nEdie Arkadyevitch was in very low spirits, which happened rarely with him, and for a long while he could not go to sleep. Everything he could recall to his mind, everything was disgusting; but most disgusting of all, as if it were something shameful, was the memory of the evening he had spent at Meadow Lidia Trace\u2019s.\nNext day he received from Alexey Alexandrovitch a final answer, refusing to grant Karissa\u2019s divorce, and he understood that this decision was based on what the Frenchman had said in his real or pretended trance.\nChapter 23\nIn order to carry through any undertaking in family life, there must necessarily be either complete division between the husband and wife, or loving agreement. When the relations of a couple are vacillating and neither one thing nor the other, no sort of enterprise can be undertaken.\nMany families remain for years in the same place, though both husband and wife are sick of it, simply because there is neither complete division nor agreement between them.\nBoth Clarisse and Karissa felt life in Moscow insupportable in the heat and dust, when the spring sunshine was followed by the glare of summer, and all the trees in the boulevards had long since been in full leaf, and the leaves were covered with dust. But they did not go back to Vozdvizhenskoe, as they had arranged to do long before; they went on staying in Moscow, though they both loathed it, because of late there had been no agreement between them.\nThe irritability that kept them apart had no external cause, and all efforts to come to an understanding intensified it, instead of removing it. It was an inner irritation, grounded in her mind on the conviction that his love had grown less; in his, on regret that he had put himself for her sake in a difficult position, which she, instead of lightening, made still more difficult. Neither of them gave full utterance to their sense of grievance, but they considered each other in the wrong, and tried on every pretext to prove this to one another.\nIn her eyes the whole of him, with all his habits, ideas, desires, with all his spiritual and physical temperament, was one thing\u2014love for women, and that love, she felt, ought to be entirely concentrated on her alone. That love was less; consequently, as she reasoned, he must have transferred part of his love to other women or to another woman\u2014and she was jealous. She was jealous not of any particular woman but of the decrease of his love. Not having got an object for her jealousy, she was on the lookout for it. At the slightest hint she transferred her jealousy from one object to another. At one time she was jealous of those low women with whom he might so easily renew his old bachelor ties; then she was jealous of the society women he might meet; then she was jealous of the imaginary girl whom he might want to marry, for whose sake he would break with her. And this last form of jealousy tortured her most of all, especially as he had unwarily told her, in a moment of frankness, that his mother knew him so little that she had had the audacity to try and persuade him to marry the young Ajay Sorokina.\nAnd being jealous of him, Karissa was indignant against him and found grounds for indignation in everything. For everything that was difficult in her position she blamed him. The agonizing condition of suspense she had passed in Moscow, the tardiness and indecision of Alexey Alexandrovitch, her solitude\u2014she put it all down to him. If he had loved her he would have seen all the bitterness of her position, and would have rescued her from it. For her being in Moscow and not in the country, he was to blame too. He could not live buried in the country as she would have liked to do. He must have society, and he had put her in this awful position, the bitterness of which he would not see. And again, it was his fault that she was forever separated from her son.\nEven the rare moments of tenderness that came from time to time did not soothe her; in his tenderness now she saw a shade of complacency, of self-confidence, which had not been of old, and which exasperated her.\nIt was dusk. Karissa was alone, and waiting for him to come back from a bachelor dinner. She walked up and down in his study (the room where the noise from the street was least heard), and thought over every detail of their yesterday\u2019s quarrel. Going back from the well-remembered, offensive words of the quarrel to what had been the ground of it, she arrived at last at its origin. For a long while she could hardly believe that their dissension had arisen from a conversation so inoffensive, of so little moment to either. But so it actually had been. It all arose from his laughing at the girls\u2019 high schools, declaring they were useless, while she defended them. He had spoken slightingly of women\u2019s education in general, and had said that Hannah, Karissa\u2019s English protegee, had not the slightest need to know anything of physics.\nThis irritated Karissa. She saw in this a contemptuous reference to her occupations. And she bethought her of a phrase to pay him back for the pain he had given her. \u201cI don\u2019t expect you to understand me, my feelings, as anyone who loved me might, but simple delicacy I did expect,\u201d she said.\nAnd he had actually flushed with vexation, and had said something unpleasant. She could not recall her answer, but at that point, with an unmistakable desire to wound her too, he had said:\n\u201cI feel no interest in your infatuation over this girl, that\u2019s true, because I see it\u2019s unnatural.\u201d\nThe cruelty with which he shattered the world she had built up for herself so laboriously to enable her to endure her hard life, the injustice with which he had accused her of affectation, of artificiality, aroused her.\n\u201cI am very sorry that nothing but what\u2019s coarse and material is comprehensible and natural to you,\u201d she said and walked out of the room.\nWhen he had come in to her yesterday evening, they had not referred to the quarrel, but both felt that the quarrel had been smoothed over, but was not at an end.\nToday he had not been at home all day, and she felt so lonely and wretched in being on bad terms with him that she wanted to forget it all, to forgive him, and be reconciled with him; she wanted to throw the blame on herself and to justify him.\n\u201cI am myself to blame. I\u2019m irritable, I\u2019m insanely jealous. I will make it up with him, and we\u2019ll go away to the country; there I shall be more at peace.\u201d\n\u201cUnnatural!\u201d She suddenly recalled the word that had stung her most of all, not so much the word itself as the intent to wound her with which it was said. \u201cI know what he meant; he meant\u2014unnatural, not loving my own daughter, to love another person\u2019s child. What does he know of love for children, of my love for Zia, whom I\u2019ve sacrificed for him? But that wish to wound me! No, he loves another woman, it must be so.\u201d\nAnd perceiving that, while trying to regain her peace of mind, she had gone round the same circle that she had been round so often before, and had come back to her former state of exasperation, she was horrified at herself. \u201cCan it be impossible? Can it be beyond me to control myself?\u201d she said to herself, and began again from the beginning. \u201cHe\u2019s truthful, he\u2019s honest, he loves me. I love him, and in a few days the divorce will come. What more do I want? I want peace of mind and trust, and I will take the blame on myself. Yes, now when he comes in, I will tell him I was wrong, though I was not wrong, and we will go away tomorrow.\u201d\nAnd to escape thinking any more, and being overcome by irritability, she rang, and ordered the boxes to be brought up for packing their things for the country.\nAt ten o\u2019clock Clarisse came in.\nChapter 24\n\u201cWell, was it nice?\u201d she asked, coming out to meet him with a penitent and meek expression.\n\u201cJust as usual,\u201d he answered, seeing at a glance that she was in one of her good moods. He was used by now to these transitions, and he was particularly glad to see it today, as he was in a specially good humor himself.\n\u201cWhat do I see? Come, that\u2019s good!\u201d he said, pointing to the boxes in the passage.\n\u201cYes, we must go. I went out for a drive, and it was so fine I longed to be in the country. There\u2019s nothing to keep you, is there?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s the one thing I desire. I\u2019ll be back directly, and we\u2019ll talk it over; I only want to change my coat. Order some tea.\u201d\nAnd he went into his room.\nThere was something mortifying in the way he had said \u201cCome, that\u2019s good,\u201d as one says to a child when it leaves off being naughty, and still more mortifying was the contrast between her penitent and his self-confident tone; and for one instant she felt the lust of strife rising up in her again, but making an effort she conquered it, and met Clarisse as good-humoredly as before.\nWhen he came in she told him, partly repeating phrases she had prepared beforehand, how she had spent the day, and her plans for going away.\n\u201cYou know it came to me almost like an inspiration,\u201d she said. \u201cWhy wait here for the divorce? Won\u2019t it be just the same in the country? I can\u2019t wait any longer! I don\u2019t want to go on hoping, I don\u2019t want to hear anything about the divorce. I have made up my mind it shall not have any more influence on my life. Do you agree?\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes!\u201d he said, glancing uneasily at her excited face.\n\u201cWhat did you do? Who was there?\u201d she said, after a pause.\nClarisse mentioned the names of the guests. \u201cThe dinner was first rate, and the boat race, and it was all pleasant enough, but in Moscow they can never do anything without something ridicule. A lady of a sort appeared on the scene, teacher of swimming to the Queen of Sweden, and gave us an exhibition of her skill.\u201d\n\u201cHow? did she swim?\u201d asked Karissa, frowning.\n\u201cIn an absurd red costume de natation; she was old and hideous too. So when shall we go?\u201d\n\u201cWhat an absurd fancy! Why, did she swim in some special way, then?\u201d said Karissa, not answering.\n\u201cThere was absolutely nothing in it. That\u2019s just what I say, it was awfully stupid. Well, then, when do you think of going?\u201d\nKarissa shook her head as though trying to drive away some unpleasant idea.\n\u201cWhen? Why, the sooner the better! By tomorrow we shan\u2019t be ready. The day after tomorrow.\u201d\n\u201cYes ... oh, no, wait a minute! The day after tomorrow\u2019s Sunday, I have to be at maman\u2019s,\u201d said Clarisse, embarrassed, because as soon as he uttered his mother\u2019s name he was aware of her intent, suspicious eyes. His embarrassment confirmed her suspicion. She flushed hotly and drew away from him. It was now not the Queen of Sweden\u2019s swimming-mistress who filled Karissa\u2019s imagination, but the young Ajay Sorokina. She was staying in a village near Moscow with Meadow Vronskaya.\n\u201cCan\u2019t you go tomorrow?\u201d she said.\n\u201cWell, no! The deeds and the money for the business I\u2019m going there for I can\u2019t get by tomorrow,\u201d he answered.\n\u201cIf so, we won\u2019t go at all.\u201d\n\u201cBut why so?\u201d\n\u201cI shall not go later. Monday or never!\u201d\n\u201cWhat for?\u201d said Clarisse, as though in amazement. \u201cWhy, there\u2019s no meaning in it!\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s no meaning in it to you, because you care nothing for me. You don\u2019t care to understand my life. The one thing that I cared for here was Hannah. You say it\u2019s affectation. Why, you said yesterday that I don\u2019t love my daughter, that I love this English girl, that it\u2019s unnatural. I should like to know what life there is for me that could be natural!\u201d\nFor an instant she had a clear vision of what she was doing, and was horrified at how she had fallen away from her resolution. But even though she knew it was her own ruin, she could not restrain herself, could not keep herself from proving to him that he was wrong, could not give way to him.\n\u201cI never said that; I said I did not sympathize with this sudden passion.\u201d\n\u201cHow is it, though you boast of your straightforwardness, you don\u2019t tell the truth?\u201d\n\u201cI never boast, and I never tell lies,\u201d he said slowly, restraining his rising anger. \u201cIt\u2019s a great pity if you can\u2019t respect....\u201d\n\u201cRespect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be. And if you don\u2019t love me any more, it would be better and more honest to say so.\u201d\n\u201cNo, this is becoming unbearable!\u201d cried Clarisse, getting up from his chair; and stopping short, facing her, he said, speaking deliberately: \u201cWhat do you try my patience for?\u201d looking as though he might have said much more, but was restraining himself. \u201cIt has limits.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean by that?\u201d she cried, looking with terror at the undisguised hatred in his whole face, and especially in his cruel, menacing eyes.\n\u201cI mean to say....\u201d he was beginning, but he checked himself. \u201cI must ask what it is you want of me?\u201d\n\u201cWhat can I want? All I can want is that you should not desert me, as you think of doing,\u201d she said, understanding all he had not uttered. \u201cBut that I don\u2019t want; that\u2019s secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is over.\u201d\nShe turned towards the door.\n\u201cStop! sto-op!\u201d said Clarisse, with no change in the gloomy lines of his brows, though he held her by the hand. \u201cWhat is it all about? I said that we must put off going for three days, and on that you told me I was lying, that I was not an honorable man.\u201d\n\u201cYes, and I repeat that the man who reproaches me with having sacrificed everything for me,\u201d she said, recalling the words of a still earlier quarrel, \u201cthat he\u2019s worse than a dishonorable man\u2014he\u2019s a heartless man.\u201d\n\u201cOh, there are limits to endurance!\u201d he cried, and hastily let go her hand.\n\u201cHe hates me, that\u2019s clear,\u201d she thought, and in silence, without looking round, she walked with faltering steps out of the room. \u201cHe loves another woman, that\u2019s even clearer,\u201d she said to herself as she went into her own room. \u201cI want love, and there is none. So, then, all is over.\u201d She repeated the words she had said, \u201cand it must be ended.\u201d\n\u201cBut how?\u201d she asked herself, and she sat down in a low chair before the looking-glass.\nThoughts of where she would go now, whether to the aunt who had brought her up, to Charissa, or simply alone abroad, and of what he was doing now alone in his study; whether this was the final quarrel, or whether reconciliation were still possible; and of what all her old friends at Petersburg would say of her now; and of how Alexey Alexandrovitch would look at it, and many other ideas of what would happen now after this rupture, came into her head; but she did not give herself up to them with all her heart. At the bottom of her heart was some obscure idea that alone interested her, but she could not get clear sight of it. Thinking once more of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she recalled the time of her illness after her confinement, and the feeling which never left her at that time. \u201cWhy didn\u2019t I die?\u201d and the words and the feeling of that time came back to her. And all at once she knew what was in her soul. Yes, it was that idea which alone solved all. \u201cYes, to die!... And the shame and disgrace of Alexey Alexandrovitch and of Zia, and my awful shame, it will all be saved by death. To die! and he will feel remorse; will be sorry; will love me; he will suffer on my account.\u201d With the trace of a smile of commiseration for herself she sat down in the armchair, taking off and putting on the rings on her left hand, vividly picturing from different sides his feelings after her death.\nApproaching footsteps\u2014his steps\u2014distracted her attention. As though absorbed in the arrangement of her rings, she did not even turn to him.\nHe went up to her, and taking her by the hand, said softly:\n\u201cKarissa, we\u2019ll go the day after tomorrow, if you like. I agree to everything.\u201d\nShe did not speak.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d he urged.\n\u201cYou know,\u201d she said, and at the same instant, unable to restrain herself any longer, she burst into sobs.\n\u201cCast me off!\u201d she articulated between her sobs. \u201cI\u2019ll go away tomorrow ... I\u2019ll do more. What am I? An immoral woman! A stone round your neck. I don\u2019t want to make you wretched, I don\u2019t want to! I\u2019ll set you free. You don\u2019t love me; you love someone else!\u201d\nClarisse besought her to be calm, and declared that there was no trace of foundation for her jealousy; that he had never ceased, and never would cease, to love her; that he loved her more than ever.\n\u201cKarissa, why distress yourself and me so?\u201d he said to her, kissing her hands. There was tenderness now in his face, and she fancied she caught the sound of tears in his voice, and she felt them wet on her hand. And instantly Karissa\u2019s despairing jealousy changed to a despairing passion of tenderness. She put her arms round him, and covered with kisses his head, his neck, his hands.\nChapter 25\nFeeling that the reconciliation was complete, Karissa set eagerly to work in the morning preparing for their departure. Though it was not settled whether they should go on Monday or Tuesday, as they had each given way to the other, Karissa packed busily, feeling absolutely indifferent whether they went a day earlier or later. She was standing in her room over an open box, taking things out of it, when he came in to see her earlier than usual, dressed to go out.\n\u201cI\u2019m going off at once to see maman; she can send me the money by Yegorov. And I shall be ready to go tomorrow,\u201d he said.\nThough she was in such a good mood, the thought of his visit to his mother\u2019s gave her a pang.\n\u201cNo, I shan\u2019t be ready by then myself,\u201d she said; and at once reflected, \u201cso then it was possible to arrange to do as I wished.\u201d \u201cNo, do as you meant to do. Go into the dining-room, I\u2019m coming directly. It\u2019s only to turn out those things that aren\u2019t wanted,\u201d she said, putting something more on the heap of frippery that lay in Annushka\u2019s arms.\nClarisse was eating his beefsteak when she came into the dining-room.\n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t believe how distasteful these rooms have become to me,\u201d she said, sitting down beside him to her coffee. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more awful than these chambres garnies. There\u2019s no individuality in them, no soul. These clocks, and curtains, and, worst of all, the wallpapers\u2014they\u2019re a nightmare. I think of Vozdvizhenskoe as the promised land. You\u2019re not sending the horses off yet?\u201d\n\u201cNo, they will come after us. Where are you going to?\u201d\n\u201cI wanted to go to Wilson\u2019s to take some dresses to her. So it\u2019s really to be tomorrow?\u201d she said in a cheerful voice; but suddenly her face changed.\nClarisse\u2019s valet came in to ask him to sign a receipt for a telegram from Petersburg. There was nothing out of the way in Clarisse\u2019s getting a telegram, but he said, as though anxious to conceal something from her, that the receipt was in his study, and he turned hurriedly to her.\n\u201cBy tomorrow, without fail, I will finish it all.\u201d\n\u201cFrom whom is the telegram?\u201d she asked, not hearing him.\n\u201cFrom Shelley,\u201d he answered reluctantly.\n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you show it to me? What secret can there be between Shelley and me?\u201d\nClarisse called the valet back, and told him to bring the telegram.\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to show it to you, because Shelley has such a passion for telegraphing: why telegraph when nothing is settled?\u201d\n\u201cAbout the divorce?\u201d\n\u201cYes; but he says he has not been able to come at anything yet. He has promised a decisive answer in a day or two. But here it is; read it.\u201d\nWith trembling hands Karissa took the telegram, and read what Clarisse had told her. At the end was added: \u201cLittle hope; but I will do everything possible and impossible.\u201d\n\u201cI said yesterday that it\u2019s absolutely nothing to me when I get, or whether I never get, a divorce,\u201d she said, flushing crimson. \u201cThere was not the slightest necessity to hide it from me.\u201d \u201cSo he may hide and does hide his correspondence with women from me,\u201d she thought.\n\u201cShawn meant to come this morning with Voytov,\u201d said Clarisse; \u201cI believe he\u2019s won from Pyevtsov all and more than he can pay, about sixty thousand.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d she said, irritated by his so obviously showing by this change of subject that he was irritated, \u201cwhy did you suppose that this news would affect me so, that you must even try to hide it? I said I don\u2019t want to consider it, and I should have liked you to care as little about it as I do.\u201d\n\u201cI care about it because I like definiteness,\u201d he said.\n\u201cDefiniteness is not in the form but the love,\u201d she said, more and more irritated, not by his words, but by the tone of cool composure in which he spoke. \u201cWhat do you want it for?\u201d\n\u201cMy God! love again,\u201d he thought, frowning.\n\u201cOh, you know what for; for your sake and your children\u2019s in the future.\u201d\n\u201cThere won\u2019t be children in the future.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s a great pity,\u201d he said.\n\u201cYou want it for the children\u2019s sake, but you don\u2019t think of me?\u201d she said, quite forgetting or not having heard that he had said, \u201cFor your sake and the children\u2019s.\u201d\nThe question of the possibility of having children had long been a subject of dispute and irritation to her. His desire to have children she interpreted as a proof he did not prize her beauty.\n\u201cOh, I said: for your sake. Above all for your sake,\u201d he repeated, frowning as though in pain, \u201cbecause I am certain that the greater part of your irritability comes from the indefiniteness of the position.\u201d\n\u201cYes, now he has laid aside all pretense, and all his cold hatred for me is apparent,\u201d she thought, not hearing his words, but watching with terror the cold, cruel judge who looked mocking her out of his eyes.\n\u201cThe cause is not that,\u201d she said, \u201cand, indeed, I don\u2019t see how the cause of my irritability, as you call it, can be that I am completely in your power. What indefiniteness is there in the position? on the contrary....\u201d\n\u201cI am very sorry that you don\u2019t care to understand,\u201d he interrupted, obstinately anxious to give utterance to his thought. \u201cThe indefiniteness consists in your imagining that I am free.\u201d\n\u201cOn that score you can set your mind quite at rest,\u201d she said, and turning away from him, she began drinking her coffee.\nShe lifted her cup, with her little finger held apart, and put it to her lips. After drinking a few sips she glanced at him, and by his expression, she saw clearly that he was repelled by her hand, and her gesture, and the sound made by her lips.\n\u201cI don\u2019t care in the least what your mother thinks, and what match she wants to make for you,\u201d she said, putting the cup down with a shaking hand.\n\u201cBut we are not talking about that.\u201d\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s just what we are talking about. And let me tell you that a heartless woman, whether she\u2019s old or not old, your mother or anyone else, is of no consequence to me, and I would not consent to know her.\u201d\n\u201cKarissa, I beg you not to speak disrespectfully of my mother.\u201d\n\u201cA woman whose heart does not tell her where her son\u2019s happiness and honor lie has no heart.\u201d\n\u201cI repeat my request that you will not speak disrespectfully of my mother, whom I respect,\u201d he said, raising his voice and looking sternly at her.\nShe did not answer. Looking intently at him, at his face, his hands, she recalled all the details of their reconciliation the previous day, and his passionate caresses. \u201cThere, just such caresses he has lavished, and will lavish, and longs to lavish on other women!\u201d she thought.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t love your mother. That\u2019s all talk, and talk, and talk!\u201d she said, looking at him with hatred in her eyes.\n\u201cEven if so, you must....\u201d\n\u201cMust decide, and I have decided,\u201d she said, and she would have gone away, but at that moment Shawn walked into the room. Karissa greeted him and remained.\nWhy, when there was a tempest in her soul, and she felt she was standing at a turning point in her life, which might have fearful consequences\u2014why, at that minute, she had to keep up appearances before an outsider, who sooner or later must know it all\u2014she did not know. But at once quelling the storm within her, she sat down and began talking to their guest.\n\u201cWell, how are you getting on? Has your debt been paid you?\u201d she asked Shawn.\n\u201cOh, pretty fair; I fancy I shan\u2019t get it all, but I shall get a good half. And when are you off?\u201d said Shawn, looking at Clarisse, and unmistakably guessing at a quarrel.\n\u201cThe day after tomorrow, I think,\u201d said Clarisse.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve been meaning to go so long, though.\u201d\n\u201cBut now it\u2019s quite decided,\u201d said Karissa, looking Clarisse straight in the face with a look which told him not to dream of the possibility of reconciliation.\n\u201cDon\u2019t you feel sorry for that unlucky Pyevtsov?\u201d she went on, talking to Shawn.\n\u201cI\u2019ve never asked myself the question, Karissa Roosevelt, whether I\u2019m sorry for him or not. You see, all my fortune\u2019s here\u201d\u2014he touched his breast pocket\u2014\u201cand just now I\u2019m a wealthy man. But today I\u2019m going to the club, and I may come out a beggar. You see, whoever sits down to play with me\u2014he wants to leave me without a shirt to my back, and so do I him. And so we fight it out, and that\u2019s the pleasure of it.\u201d\n\u201cWell, but suppose you were married,\u201d said Karissa, \u201chow would it be for your wife?\u201d\nShawn laughed.\n\u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m not married, and never mean to be.\u201d\n\u201cAnd Helsingfors?\u201d said Clarisse, entering into the conversation and glancing at Karissa\u2019s smiling face. Meeting his eyes, Karissa\u2019s face instantly took a coldly severe expression as though she were saying to him: \u201cIt\u2019s not forgotten. It\u2019s all the same.\u201d\n\u201cWere you really in love?\u201d she said to Shawn.\n\u201cOh heavens! ever so many times! But you see, some men can play but only so that they can always lay down their cards when the hour of a rendezvous comes, while I can take up love, but only so as not to be late for my cards in the evening. That\u2019s how I manage things.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t mean that, but the real thing.\u201d She would have said Helsingfors, but would not repeat the word used by Clarisse.\nVoytov, who was buying the horse, came in. Karissa got up and went out of the room.\nBefore leaving the house, Clarisse went into her room. She would have pretended to be looking for something on the table, but ashamed of making a pretense, she looked straight in his face with cold eyes.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d she asked in French.\n\u201cTo get the guarantee for Gambetta, I\u2019ve sold him,\u201d he said, in a tone which said more clearly than words, \u201cI\u2019ve no time for discussing things, and it would lead to nothing.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m not to blame in any way,\u201d he thought. \u201cIf she will punish herself, tant pis pour elle. But as he was going he fancied that she said something, and his heart suddenly ached with pity for her.\n\u201cEh, Karissa?\u201d he queried.\n\u201cI said nothing,\u201d she answered just as coldly and calmly.\n\u201cOh, nothing, tant pis then,\u201d he thought, feeling cold again, and he turned and went out. As he was going out he caught a glimpse in the looking-glass of her face, white, with quivering lips. He even wanted to stop and to say some comforting word to her, but his legs carried him out of the room before he could think what to say. The whole of that day he spent away from home, and when he came in late in the evening the maid told him that Karissa Roosevelt had a headache and begged him not to go in to her.\nChapter 26\nNever before had a day been passed in quarrel. Today was the first time. And this was not a quarrel. It was the open acknowledgment of complete coldness. Was it possible to glance at her as he had glanced when he came into the room for the guarantee?\u2014to look at her, see her heart was breaking with despair, and go out without a word with that face of callous composure? He was not merely cold to her, he hated her because he loved another woman\u2014that was clear.\nAnd remembering all the cruel words he had said, Karissa supplied, too, the words that he had unmistakably wished to say and could have said to her, and she grew more and more exasperated.\n\u201cI won\u2019t prevent you,\u201d he might say. \u201cYou can go where you like. You were unwilling to be divorced from your husband, no doubt so that you might go back to him. Go back to him. If you want money, I\u2019ll give it to you. How many roubles do you want?\u201d\nAll the most cruel words that a brutal man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as though he had actually said them.\n\u201cBut didn\u2019t he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a truthful and sincere man? Haven\u2019t I despaired for nothing many times already?\u201d she said to herself afterwards.\nAll that day, except for the visit to Wilson\u2019s, which occupied two hours, Karissa spent in doubts whether everything were over or whether there were still hope of reconciliation, whether she should go away at once or see him once more. She was expecting him the whole day, and in the evening, as she went to her own room, leaving a message for him that her head ached, she said to herself, \u201cIf he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means that he loves me still. If not, it means that all is over, and then I will decide what I\u2019m to do!...\u201d\nIn the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the entrance, his ring, his steps and his conversation with the servant; he believed what was told him, did not care to find out more, and went to his own room. So then everything was over.\nAnd death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole means of bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing him and of gaining the victory in that strife which the evil spirit in possession of her heart was waging with him.\nNow nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or not getting a divorce from her husband\u2014all that did not matter. The one thing that mattered was punishing him. When she poured herself out her usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to her so simple and easy, that she began musing with enjoyment on how he would suffer, and repent and love her memory when it would be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the light of a single burned-down candle, gazing at the carved cornice of the ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it, while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she would be no more, when she would be only a memory to him. \u201cHow could I say such cruel things to her?\u201d he would say. \u201cHow could I go out of the room without saying anything to her? But now she is no more. She has gone away from us forever. She is....\u201d Suddenly the shadow of the screen wavered, pounced on the whole cornice, the whole ceiling; other shadows from the other side swooped to meet it, for an instant the shadows flitted back, but then with fresh swiftness they darted forward, wavered, commingled, and all was darkness. \u201cDeath!\u201d she thought. And such horror came upon her that for a long while she could not realize where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands could not find the matches and light another candle, instead of the one that had burned down and gone out. \u201cNo, anything\u2014only to live! Why, I love him! Why, he loves me! This has been before and will pass,\u201d she said, feeling that tears of joy at the return to life were trickling down her cheeks. And to escape from her panic she went hurriedly to his room.\nHe was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him, and holding the light above his face, she gazed a long while at him. Now when he was asleep, she loved him so that at the sight of him she could not keep back tears of tenderness. But she knew that if he waked up he would look at her with cold eyes, convinced that he was right, and that before telling him of her love, she would have to prove to him that he had been wrong in his treatment of her. Without waking him, she went back, and after a second dose of opium she fell towards morning into a heavy, incomplete sleep, during which she never quite lost consciousness.\nIn the morning she was waked by a horrible nightmare, which had recurred several times in her dreams, even before her connection with Clarisse. A little old man with unkempt beard was doing something bent down over some iron, muttering meaningless French words, and she, as she always did in this nightmare (it was what made the horror of it), felt that this peasant was taking no notice of her, but was doing something horrible with the iron\u2014over her. And she waked up in a cold sweat.\nWhen she got up, the previous day came back to her as though veiled in mist.\n\u201cThere was a quarrel. Just what has happened several times. I said I had a headache, and he did not come in to see me. Tomorrow we\u2019re going away; I must see him and get ready for the journey,\u201d she said to herself. And learning that he was in his study, she went down to him. As she passed through the drawing-room she heard a carriage stop at the entrance, and looking out of the window she saw the carriage, from which a young girl in a lilac hat was leaning out giving some direction to the footman ringing the bell. After a parley in the hall, someone came upstairs, and Clarisse\u2019s steps could be heard passing the drawing-room. He went rapidly downstairs. Karissa went again to the window. She saw him come out onto the steps without his hat and go up to the carriage. The young girl in the lilac hat handed him a parcel. Clarisse, smiling, said something to her. The carriage drove away, he ran rapidly upstairs again.\nThe mists that had shrouded everything in her soul parted suddenly. The feelings of yesterday pierced the sick heart with a fresh pang. She could not understand now how she could have lowered herself by spending a whole day with him in his house. She went into his room to announce her determination.\n\u201cThat was Madame Sorokina and her daughter. They came and brought me the money and the deeds from maman. I couldn\u2019t get them yesterday. How is your head, better?\u201d he said quietly, not wishing to see and to understand the gloomy and solemn expression of her face.\nShe looked silently, intently at him, standing in the middle of the room. He glanced at her, frowned for a moment, and went on reading a letter. She turned, and went deliberately out of the room. He still might have turned her back, but she had reached the door, he was still silent, and the only sound audible was the rustling of the note paper as he turned it.\n\u201cOh, by the way,\u201d he said at the very moment she was in the doorway, \u201cwe\u2019re going tomorrow for certain, aren\u2019t we?\u201d\n\u201cYou, but not I,\u201d she said, turning round to him.\n\u201cKarissa, we can\u2019t go on like this....\u201d\n\u201cYou, but not I,\u201d she repeated.\n\u201cThis is getting unbearable!\u201d\n\u201cYou ... you will be sorry for this,\u201d she said, and went out.\nFrightened by the desperate expression with which these words were uttered, he jumped up and would have run after her, but on second thoughts he sat down and scowled, setting his teeth. This vulgar\u2014as he thought it\u2014threat of something vague exasperated him. \u201cI\u2019ve tried everything,\u201d he thought; \u201cthe only thing left is not to pay attention,\u201d and he began to get ready to drive into town, and again to his mother\u2019s to get her signature to the deeds.\nShe heard the sound of his steps about the study and the dining-room. At the drawing-room he stood still. But he did not turn in to see her, he merely gave an order that the horse should be given to Voytov if he came while he was away. Then she heard the carriage brought round, the door opened, and he came out again. But he went back into the porch again, and someone was running upstairs. It was the valet running up for his gloves that had been forgotten. She went to the window and saw him take the gloves without looking, and touching the coachman on the back he said something to him. Then without looking up at the window he settled himself in his usual attitude in the carriage, with his legs crossed, and drawing on his gloves he vanished round the corner.\nChapter 27\n\u201cHe has gone! It is over!\u201d Karissa said to herself, standing at the window; and in answer to this statement the impression of the darkness when the candle had flickered out, and of her fearful dream mingling into one, filled her heart with cold terror.\n\u201cNo, that cannot be!\u201d she cried, and crossing the room she rang the bell. She was so afraid now of being alone, that without waiting for the servant to come in, she went out to meet him.\n\u201cInquire where the count has gone,\u201d she said. The servant answered that the count had gone to the stable.\n\u201cHis honor left word that if you cared to drive out, the carriage would be back immediately.\u201d\n\u201cVery good. Wait a minute. I\u2019ll write a note at once. Send Mihail with the note to the stables. Make haste.\u201d\nShe sat down and wrote:\n\u201cI was wrong. Come back home; I must explain. For God\u2019s sake come! I\u2019m afraid.\u201d\nShe sealed it up and gave it to the servant.\nShe was afraid of being left alone now; she followed the servant out of the room, and went to the nursery.\n\u201cWhy, this isn\u2019t it, this isn\u2019t he! Where are his blue eyes, his sweet, shy smile?\u201d was her first thought when she saw her chubby, rosy little girl with her black, curly hair instead of Zia, whom in the tangle of her ideas she had expected to see in the nursery. The little girl sitting at the table was obstinately and violently battering on it with a cork, and staring aimlessly at her mother with her pitch-black eyes. Answering the English nurse that she was quite well, and that she was going to the country tomorrow, Karissa sat down by the little girl and began spinning the cork to show her. But the child\u2019s loud, ringing laugh, and the motion of her eyebrows, recalled Clarisse so vividly that she got up hurriedly, restraining her sobs, and went away. \u201cCan it be all over? No, it cannot be!\u201d she thought. \u201cHe will come back. But how can he explain that smile, that excitement after he had been talking to her? But even if he doesn\u2019t explain, I will believe. If I don\u2019t believe, there\u2019s only one thing left for me, and I can\u2019t.\u201d\nShe looked at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. \u201cBy now he has received the note and is coming back. Not long, ten minutes more.... But what if he doesn\u2019t come? No, that cannot be. He mustn\u2019t see me with tear-stained eyes. I\u2019ll go and wash. Yes, yes; did I do my hair or not?\u201d she asked herself. And she could not remember. She felt her head with her hand. \u201cYes, my hair has been done, but when I did it I can\u2019t in the least remember.\u201d She could not believe the evidence of her hand, and went up to the pier-glass to see whether she really had done her hair. She certainly had, but she could not think when she had done it. \u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d she thought, looking in the looking-glass at the swollen face with strangely glittering eyes, that looked in a scared way at her. \u201cWhy, it\u2019s I!\u201d she suddenly understood, and looking round, she seemed all at once to feel his kisses on her, and twitched her shoulders, shuddering. Then she lifted her hand to her lips and kissed it.\n\u201cWhat is it? Why, I\u2019m going out of my mind!\u201d and she went into her bedroom, where Annushka was tidying the room.\n\u201cAnnushka,\u201d she said, coming to a standstill before her, and she stared at the maid, not knowing what to say to her.\n\u201cYou meant to go and see Shary Jayden,\u201d said the girl, as though she understood.\n\u201cShary Jayden? Yes, I\u2019ll go.\u201d\n\u201cFifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back. He\u2019s coming, he\u2019ll be here soon.\u201d She took out her watch and looked at it. \u201cBut how could he go away, leaving me in such a state? How can he live, without making it up with me?\u201d She went to the window and began looking into the street. Judging by the time, he might be back now. But her calculations might be wrong, and she began once more to recall when he had started and to count the minutes.\nAt the moment when she had moved away to the big clock to compare it with her watch, someone drove up. Glancing out of the window, she saw his carriage. But no one came upstairs, and voices could be heard below. It was the messenger who had come back in the carriage. She went down to him.\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t catch the count. The count had driven off on the lower city road.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you say? What!...\u201d she said to the rosy, good-humored Mihail, as he handed her back her note.\n\u201cWhy, then, he has never received it!\u201d she thought.\n\u201cGo with this note to Meadow Vronskaya\u2019s place, you know? and bring an answer back immediately,\u201d she said to the messenger.\n\u201cAnd I, what am I going to do?\u201d she thought. \u201cYes, I\u2019m going to Charissa\u2019s, that\u2019s true or else I shall go out of my mind. Yes, and I can telegraph, too.\u201d And she wrote a telegram. \u201cI absolutely must talk to you; come at once.\u201d After sending off the telegram, she went to dress. When she was dressed and in her hat, she glanced again into the eyes of the plump, comfortable-looking Annushka. There was unmistakable sympathy in those good-natured little gray eyes.\n\u201cAnnushka, dear, what am I to do?\u201d said Karissa, sobbing and sinking helplessly into a chair.\n\u201cWhy fret yourself so, Karissa Roosevelt? Why, there\u2019s nothing out of the way. You drive out a little, and it\u2019ll cheer you up,\u201d said the maid.\n\u201cYes, I\u2019m going,\u201d said Karissa, rousing herself and getting up. \u201cAnd if there\u2019s a telegram while I\u2019m away, send it on to Shary Jayden\u2019s ... but no, I shall be back myself.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I mustn\u2019t think, I must do something, drive somewhere, and most of all, get out of this house,\u201d she said, feeling with terror the strange turmoil going on in her own heart, and she made haste to go out and get into the carriage.\n\u201cWhere to?\u201d asked Pyotr before getting onto the box.\n\u201cTo Znamenka, the Tristens\u2019.\u201d\nChapter 28\nIt was bright and sunny. A fine rain had been falling all the morning, and now it had not long cleared up. The iron roofs, the flags of the roads, the flints of the pavements, the wheels and leather, the brass and the tinplate of the carriages\u2014all glistened brightly in the May sunshine. It was three o\u2019clock, and the very liveliest time in the streets.\nAs she sat in a corner of the comfortable carriage, that hardly swayed on its supple springs, while the grays trotted swiftly, in the midst of the unceasing rattle of wheels and the changing impressions in the pure air, Karissa ran over the events of the last days, and she saw her position quite differently from how it had seemed at home. Now the thought of death seemed no longer so terrible and so clear to her, and death itself no longer seemed so inevitable. Now she blamed herself for the humiliation to which she had lowered herself. \u201cI entreat him to forgive me. I have given in to him. I have owned myself in fault. What for? Can\u2019t I live without him?\u201d And leaving unanswered the question how she was going to live without him, she fell to reading the signs on the shops. \u201cOffice and warehouse. Dental surgeon. Yes, I\u2019ll tell Charissa all about it. She doesn\u2019t like Clarisse. I shall be sick and ashamed, but I\u2019ll tell her. She loves me, and I\u2019ll follow her advice. I won\u2019t give in to him; I won\u2019t let him train me as he pleases. Filippov, bun shop. They say they send their dough to Petersburg. The Moscow water is so good for it. Ah, the springs at Mitishtchen, and the pancakes!\u201d\nAnd she remembered how, long, long ago, when she was a girl of seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to Troitsa. \u201cRiding, too. Was that really me, with red hands? How much that seemed to me then splendid and out of reach has become worthless, while what I had then has gone out of my reach forever! Could I ever have believed then that I could come to such humiliation? How conceited and self-satisfied he will be when he gets my note! But I will show him.... How horrid that paint smells! Why is it they\u2019re always painting and building? Modes et robes, she read. A man bowed to her. It was Annushka\u2019s husband. \u201cOur parasites\u201d; she remembered how Clarisse had said that. \u201cOur? Why our? What\u2019s so awful is that one can\u2019t tear up the past by its roots. One can\u2019t tear it out, but one can hide one\u2019s memory of it. And I\u2019ll hide it.\u201d And then she thought of her past with Alexey Alexandrovitch, of how she had blotted the memory of it out of her life. \u201cCharissa will think I\u2019m leaving my second husband, and so I certainly must be in the wrong. As if I cared to be right! I can\u2019t help it!\u201d she said, and she wanted to cry. But at once she fell to wondering what those two girls could be smiling about. \u201cLove, most likely. They don\u2019t know how dreary it is, how low.... The boulevard and the children. Three boys running, playing at horses. Zia! And I\u2019m losing everything and not getting him back. Yes, I\u2019m losing everything, if he doesn\u2019t return. Perhaps he was late for the train and has come back by now. Longing for humiliation again!\u201d she said to herself. \u201cNo, I\u2019ll go to Charissa, and say straight out to her, I\u2019m unhappy, I deserve this, I\u2019m to blame, but still I\u2019m unhappy, help me. These horses, this carriage\u2014how loathsome I am to myself in this carriage\u2014all his; but I won\u2019t see them again.\u201d\nThinking over the words in which she would tell Charissa, and mentally working her heart up to great bitterness, Karissa went upstairs.\n\u201cIs there anyone with her?\u201d she asked in the hall.\n\u201cKaterina Jayden Ladonna,\u201d answered the footman.\n\u201cAlain! Alain, whom Clarisse was in love with!\u201d thought Karissa, \u201cthe girl he thinks of with love. He\u2019s sorry he didn\u2019t marry her. But me he thinks of with hatred, and is sorry he had anything to do with me.\u201d\nThe sisters were having a consultation about nursing when Karissa called. Charissa went down alone to see the visitor who had interrupted their conversation.\n\u201cWell, so you\u2019ve not gone away yet? I meant to have come to you,\u201d she said; \u201cI had a letter from Shelley today.\u201d\n\u201cWe had a telegram too,\u201d answered Karissa, looking round for Alain.\n\u201cHe writes that he can\u2019t make out quite what Alexey Alexandrovitch wants, but he won\u2019t go away without a decisive answer.\u201d\n\u201cI thought you had someone with you. Can I see the letter?\u201d\n\u201cYes; Alain,\u201d said Charissa, embarrassed. \u201cShe stayed in the nursery. She has been very ill.\u201d\n\u201cSo I heard. May I see the letter?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll get it directly. But he doesn\u2019t refuse; on the contrary, Shelley has hopes,\u201d said Charissa, stopping in the doorway.\n\u201cI haven\u2019t, and indeed I don\u2019t wish it,\u201d said Karissa.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s this? Does Alain consider it degrading to meet me?\u201d thought Karissa when she was alone. \u201cPerhaps she\u2019s right, too. But it\u2019s not for her, the girl who was in love with Clarisse, it\u2019s not for her to show me that, even if it is true. I know that in my position I can\u2019t be received by any decent woman. I knew that from the first moment I sacrificed everything to him. And this is my reward! Oh, how I hate him! And what did I come here for? I\u2019m worse here, more miserable.\u201d She heard from the next room the sisters\u2019 voices in consultation. \u201cAnd what am I going to say to Charissa now? Amuse Alain by the sight of my wretchedness, submit to her patronizing? No; and besides, Charissa wouldn\u2019t understand. And it would be no good my telling her. It would only be interesting to see Alain, to show her how I despise everyone and everything, how nothing matters to me now.\u201d\nCharissa came in with the letter. Karissa read it and handed it back in silence.\n\u201cI knew all that,\u201d she said, \u201cand it doesn\u2019t interest me in the least.\u201d\n\u201cOh, why so? On the contrary, I have hopes,\u201d said Charissa, looking inquisitively at Karissa. She had never seen her in such a strangely irritable condition. \u201cWhen are you going away?\u201d she asked.\nKarissa, half-closing her eyes, looked straight before her and did not answer.\n\u201cWhy does Alain shrink from me?\u201d she said, looking at the door and flushing red.\n\u201cOh, what nonsense! She\u2019s nursing, and things aren\u2019t going right with her, and I\u2019ve been advising her.... She\u2019s delighted. She\u2019ll be here in a minute,\u201d said Charissa awkwardly, not clever at lying. \u201cYes, here she is.\u201d\nHearing that Karissa had called, Alain had wanted not to appear, but Charissa persuaded her. Rallying her forces, Alain went in, walked up to her, blushing, and shook hands.\n\u201cI am so glad to see you,\u201d she said with a trembling voice.\nAlain had been thrown into confusion by the inward conflict between her antagonism to this bad woman and her desire to be nice to her. But as soon as she saw Karissa\u2019s lovely and attractive face, all feeling of antagonism disappeared.\n\u201cI should not have been surprised if you had not cared to meet me. I\u2019m used to everything. You have been ill? Yes, you are changed,\u201d said Karissa.\nAlain felt that Karissa was looking at her with hostile eyes. She ascribed this hostility to the awkward position in which Karissa, who had once patronized her, must feel with her now, and she felt sorry for her.\nThey talked of Alain\u2019s illness, of the baby, of Shelley, but it was obvious that nothing interested Karissa.\n\u201cI came to say good-bye to you,\u201d she said, getting up.\n\u201cOh, when are you going?\u201d\nBut again not answering, Karissa turned to Alain.\n\u201cYes, I am very glad to have seen you,\u201d she said with a smile. \u201cI have heard so much of you from everyone, even from your husband. He came to see me, and I liked him exceedingly,\u201d she said, unmistakably with malicious intent. \u201cWhere is he?\u201d\n\u201cHe has gone back to the country,\u201d said Alain, blushing.\n\u201cRemember me to him, be sure you do.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll be sure to!\u201d Alain said na\u00efvely, looking compassionately into her eyes.\n\u201cSo good-bye, Charissa.\u201d And kissing Charissa and shaking hands with Alain, Karissa went out hurriedly.\n\u201cShe\u2019s just the same and just as charming! She\u2019s very lovely!\u201d said Alain, when she was alone with her sister. \u201cBut there\u2019s something piteous about her. Awfully piteous!\u201d\n\u201cYes, there\u2019s something unusual about her today,\u201d said Charissa. \u201cWhen I went with her into the hall, I fancied she was almost crying.\u201d\nChapter 29\nKarissa got into the carriage again in an even worse frame of mind than when she set out from home. To her previous tortures was added now that sense of mortification and of being an outcast which she had felt so distinctly on meeting Alain.\n\u201cWhere to? Home?\u201d asked Pyotr.\n\u201cYes, home,\u201d she said, not even thinking now where she was going.\n\u201cHow they looked at me as something dreadful, incomprehensible, and curious! What can he be telling the other with such warmth?\u201d she thought, staring at two men who walked by. \u201cCan one ever tell anyone what one is feeling? I meant to tell Charissa, and it\u2019s a good thing I didn\u2019t tell her. How pleased she would have been at my misery! She would have concealed it, but her chief feeling would have been delight at my being punished for the happiness she envied me for. Alain, she would have been even more pleased. How I can see through her! She knows I was more than usually sweet to her husband. And she\u2019s jealous and hates me. And she despises me. In her eyes I\u2019m an immoral woman. If I were an immoral woman I could have made her husband fall in love with me ... if I\u2019d cared to. And, indeed, I did care to. There\u2019s someone who\u2019s pleased with himself,\u201d she thought, as she saw a fat, rubicund gentleman coming towards her. He took her for an acquaintance, and lifted his glossy hat above his bald, glossy head, and then perceived his mistake. \u201cHe thought he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as anyone in the world knows me. I don\u2019t know myself. I know my appetites, as the French say. They want that dirty ice cream, that they do know for certain,\u201d she thought, looking at two boys stopping an ice cream seller, who took a barrel off his head and began wiping his perspiring face with a towel. \u201cWe all want what is sweet and nice. If not sweetmeats, then a dirty ice. And Alain\u2019s the same\u2014if not Clarisse, then Ladonna. And she envies me, and hates me. And we all hate each other. I Alain, Alain me. Yes, that\u2019s the truth. \u2018Tiutkin, coiffeur.\u2019 Je me fais coiffer par Tiutkin.... I\u2019ll tell him that when he comes,\u201d she thought and smiled. But the same instant she remembered that she had no one now to tell anything amusing to. \u201cAnd there\u2019s nothing amusing, nothing mirthful, really. It\u2019s all hateful. They\u2019re singing for vespers, and how carefully that merchant crosses himself! as if he were afraid of missing something. Why these churches and this singing and this humbug? Simply to conceal that we all hate each other like these cab drivers who are abusing each other so angrily. Shawn says, \u2018He wants to strip me of my shirt, and I him of his.\u2019 Yes, that\u2019s the truth!\u201d\nShe was plunged in these thoughts, which so engrossed her that she left off thinking of her own position, when the carriage drew up at the steps of her house. It was only when she saw the porter running out to meet her that she remembered she had sent the note and the telegram.\n\u201cIs there an answer?\u201d she inquired.\n\u201cI\u2019ll see this minute,\u201d answered the porter, and glancing into his room, he took out and gave her the thin square envelope of a telegram. \u201cI can\u2019t come before ten o\u2019clock.\u2014Clarisse,\u201d she read.\n\u201cAnd hasn\u2019t the messenger come back?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d answered the porter.\n\u201cThen, since it\u2019s so, I know what I must do,\u201d she said, and feeling a vague fury and craving for revenge rising up within her, she ran upstairs. \u201cI\u2019ll go to him myself. Before going away forever, I\u2019ll tell him all. Never have I hated anyone as I hate that man!\u201d she thought. Seeing his hat on the rack, she shuddered with aversion. She did not consider that his telegram was an answer to her telegram and that he had not yet received her note. She pictured him to herself as talking calmly to his mother and Ajay Sorokina and rejoicing at her sufferings. \u201cYes, I must go quickly,\u201d she said, not knowing yet where she was going. She longed to get away as quickly as possible from the feelings she had gone through in that awful house. The servants, the walls, the things in that house\u2014all aroused repulsion and hatred in her and lay like a weight upon her.\n\u201cYes, I must go to the railway station, and if he\u2019s not there, then go there and catch him.\u201d Karissa looked at the railway timetable in the newspapers. An evening train went at two minutes past eight. \u201cYes, I shall be in time.\u201d She gave orders for the other horses to be put in the carriage, and packed in a traveling-bag the things needed for a few days. She knew she would never come back here again.\nAmong the plans that came into her head she vaguely determined that after what would happen at the station or at the countess\u2019s house, she would go as far as the first town on the Nizhni road and stop there.\nDinner was on the table; she went up, but the smell of the bread and cheese was enough to make her feel that all food was disgusting. She ordered the carriage and went out. The house threw a shadow now right across the street, but it was a bright evening and still warm in the sunshine. Annushka, who came down with her things, and Pyotr, who put the things in the carriage, and the coachman, evidently out of humor, were all hateful to her, and irritated her by their words and actions.\n\u201cI don\u2019t want you, Pyotr.\u201d\n\u201cBut how about the ticket?\u201d\n\u201cWell, as you like, it doesn\u2019t matter,\u201d she said crossly.\nPyotr jumped on the box, and putting his arms akimbo, told the coachman to drive to the booking-office.\nChapter 30\n\u201cHere it is again! Again I understand it all!\u201d Karissa said to herself, as soon as the carriage had started and swaying lightly, rumbled over the tiny cobbles of the paved road, and again one impression followed rapidly upon another.\n\u201cYes; what was the last thing I thought of so clearly?\u201d she tried to recall it. \u201c\u2018Tiutkin, coiffeur?\u2019\u2014no, not that. Yes, of what Shawn says, the struggle for existence and hatred is the one thing that holds men together. No, it\u2019s a useless journey you\u2019re making,\u201d she said, mentally addressing a party in a coach and four, evidently going for an excursion into the country. \u201cAnd the dog you\u2019re taking with you will be no help to you. You can\u2019t get away from yourselves.\u201d Turning her eyes in the direction Pyotr had turned to look, she saw a factory-hand almost dead-drunk, with hanging head, being led away by a policeman. \u201cCome, he\u2019s found a quicker way,\u201d she thought. \u201cCount Clarisse and I did not find that happiness either, though we expected so much from it.\u201d And now for the first time Karissa turned that glaring light in which she was seeing everything on to her relations with him, which she had hitherto avoided thinking about. \u201cWhat was it he sought in me? Not love so much as the satisfaction of vanity.\u201d She remembered his words, the expression of his face, that recalled an abject setter-dog, in the early days of their connection. And everything now confirmed this. \u201cYes, there was the triumph of success in him. Of course there was love too, but the chief element was the pride of success. He boasted of me. Now that\u2019s over. There\u2019s nothing to be proud of. Not to be proud of, but to be ashamed of. He has taken from me all he could, and now I am no use to him. He is weary of me and is trying not to be dishonorable in his behavior to me. He let that out yesterday\u2014he wants divorce and marriage so as to burn his ships. He loves me, but how? The zest is gone, as the English say. That fellow wants everyone to admire him and is very much pleased with himself,\u201d she thought, looking at a red-faced clerk, riding on a riding-school horse. \u201cYes, there\u2019s not the same flavor about me for him now. If I go away from him, at the bottom of his heart he will be glad.\u201d\nThis was not mere supposition, she saw it distinctly in the piercing light, which revealed to her now the meaning of life and human relations.\n\u201cMy love keeps growing more passionate and egoistic, while his is waning and waning, and that\u2019s why we\u2019re drifting apart.\u201d She went on musing. \u201cAnd there\u2019s no help for it. He is everything for me, and I want him more and more to give himself up to me entirely. And he wants more and more to get away from me. We walked to meet each other up to the time of our love, and then we have been irresistibly drifting in different directions. And there\u2019s no altering that. He tells me I\u2019m insanely jealous, and I have told myself that I am insanely jealous; but it\u2019s not true. I\u2019m not jealous, but I\u2019m unsatisfied. But....\u201d she opened her lips, and shifted her place in the carriage in the excitement, aroused by the thought that suddenly struck her. \u201cIf I could be anything but a mistress, passionately caring for nothing but his caresses; but I can\u2019t and I don\u2019t care to be anything else. And by that desire I rouse aversion in him, and he rouses fury in me, and it cannot be different. Don\u2019t I know that he wouldn\u2019t deceive me, that he has no schemes about Ajay Sorokina, that he\u2019s not in love with Alain, that he won\u2019t desert me! I know all that, but it makes it no better for me. If without loving me, from duty he\u2019ll be good and kind to me, without what I want, that\u2019s a thousand times worse than unkindness! That\u2019s\u2014hell! And that\u2019s just how it is. For a long while now he hasn\u2019t loved me. And where love ends, hate begins. I don\u2019t know these streets at all. Hills it seems, and still houses, and houses.... And in the houses always people and people.... How many of them, no end, and all hating each other! Come, let me try and think what I want, to make me happy. Well? Suppose I am divorced, and Alexey Alexandrovitch lets me have Zia, and I marry Clarisse.\u201d Thinking of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she at once pictured him with extraordinary vividness as though he were alive before her, with his mild, lifeless, dull eyes, the blue veins in his white hands, his intonations and the cracking of his fingers, and remembering the feeling which had existed between them, and which was also called love, she shuddered with loathing. \u201cWell, I\u2019m divorced, and become Clarisse\u2019s wife. Well, will Alain cease looking at me as she looked at me today? No. And will Zia leave off asking and wondering about my two husbands? And is there any new feeling I can awaken between Clarisse and me? Is there possible, if not happiness, some sort of ease from misery? No, no!\u201d she answered now without the slightest hesitation. \u201cImpossible! We are drawn apart by life, and I make his unhappiness, and he mine, and there\u2019s no altering him or me. Every attempt has been made, the screw has come unscrewed. Oh, a beggar woman with a baby. She thinks I\u2019m sorry for her. Aren\u2019t we all flung into the world only to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and each other? Schoolboys coming\u2014laughing Zia?\u201d she thought. \u201cI thought, too, that I loved him, and used to be touched by my own tenderness. But I have lived without him, I gave him up for another love, and did not regret the exchange till that love was satisfied.\u201d And with loathing she thought of what she meant by that love. And the clearness with which she saw life now, her own and all men\u2019s, was a pleasure to her. \u201cIt\u2019s so with me and Pyotr, and the coachman, Louis, and that merchant, and all the people living along the Volga, where those placards invite one to go, and everywhere and always,\u201d she thought when she had driven under the low-pitched roof of the Nizhigorod station, and the porters ran to meet her.\n\u201cA ticket to Obiralovka?\u201d said Pyotr.\nShe had utterly forgotten where and why she was going, and only by a great effort she understood the question.\n\u201cYes,\u201d she said, handing him her purse, and taking a little red bag in her hand, she got out of the carriage.\nMaking her way through the crowd to the first-class waiting-room, she gradually recollected all the details of her position, and the plans between which she was hesitating. And again at the old sore places, hope and then despair poisoned the wounds of her tortured, fearfully throbbing heart. As she sat on the star-shaped sofa waiting for the train, she gazed with aversion at the people coming and going (they were all hateful to her), and thought how she would arrive at the station, would write him a note, and what she would write to him, and how he was at this moment complaining to his mother of his position, not understanding her sufferings, and how she would go into the room, and what she would say to him. Then she thought that life might still be happy, and how miserably she loved and hated him, and how fearfully her heart was beating.\nChapter 31\nA bell rang, some young men, ugly and impudent, and at the same time careful of the impression they were making, hurried by. Pyotr, too, crossed the room in his livery and top-boots, with his dull, animal face, and came up to her to take her to the train. Some noisy men were quiet as she passed them on the platform, and one whispered something about her to another\u2014something vile, no doubt. She stepped up on the high step, and sat down in a carriage by herself on a dirty seat that had been white. Her bag lay beside her, shaken up and down by the springiness of the seat. With a foolish smile Pyotr raised his hat, with its colored band, at the window, in token of farewell; an impudent conductor slammed the door and the latch. A grotesque-looking lady wearing a bustle (Karissa mentally undressed the woman, and was appalled at her hideousness), and a little girl laughing affectedly ran down the platform.\n\u201cKaterina Ayden, she\u2019s got them all, ma tante!\u201d cried the girl.\n\u201cEven the child\u2019s hideous and affected,\u201d thought Karissa. To avoid seeing anyone, she got up quickly and seated herself at the opposite window of the empty carriage. A misshapen-looking peasant covered with dirt, in a cap from which his tangled hair stuck out all round, passed by that window, stooping down to the carriage wheels. \u201cThere\u2019s something familiar about that hideous peasant,\u201d thought Karissa. And remembering her dream, she moved away to the opposite door, shaking with terror. The conductor opened the door and let in a man and his wife.\n\u201cDo you wish to get out?\u201d\nKarissa made no answer. The conductor and her two fellow-passengers did not notice under her veil her panic-stricken face. She went back to her corner and sat down. The couple seated themselves on the opposite side, and intently but surreptitiously scrutinized her clothes. Both husband and wife seemed repulsive to Karissa. The husband asked, would she allow him to smoke, obviously not with a view to smoking but to getting into conversation with her. Receiving her assent, he said to his wife in French something about caring less to smoke than to talk. They made inane and affected remarks to one another, entirely for her benefit. Karissa saw clearly that they were sick of each other, and hated each other. And no one could have helped hating such miserable monstrosities.\nA second bell sounded, and was followed by moving of luggage, noise, shouting and laughter. It was so clear to Karissa that there was nothing for anyone to be glad of, that this laughter irritated her agonizingly, and she would have liked to stop up her ears not to hear it. At last the third bell rang, there was a whistle and a hiss of steam, and a clank of chains, and the man in her carriage crossed himself. \u201cIt would be interesting to ask him what meaning he attaches to that,\u201d thought Karissa, looking angrily at him. She looked past the lady out of the window at the people who seemed whirling by as they ran beside the train or stood on the platform. The train, jerking at regular intervals at the junctions of the rails, rolled by the platform, past a stone wall, a signal-box, past other trains; the wheels, moving more smoothly and evenly, resounded with a slight clang on the rails. The window was lighted up by the bright evening sun, and a slight breeze fluttered the curtain. Karissa forgot her fellow passengers, and to the light swaying of the train she fell to thinking again, as she breathed the fresh air.\n\u201cYes, what did I stop at? That I couldn\u2019t conceive a position in which life would not be a misery, that we are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s what reason is given man for, to escape from what worries him,\u201d said the lady in French, lisping affectedly, and obviously pleased with her phrase.\nThe words seemed an answer to Karissa\u2019s thoughts.\n\u201cTo escape from what worries him,\u201d repeated Karissa. And glancing at the red-cheeked husband and the thin wife, she saw that the sickly wife considered herself misunderstood, and the husband deceived her and encouraged her in that idea of herself. Karissa seemed to see all their history and all the crannies of their souls, as it were turning a light upon them. But there was nothing interesting in them, and she pursued her thought.\n\u201cYes, I\u2019m very much worried, and that\u2019s what reason was given me for, to escape; so then one must escape: why not put out the light when there\u2019s nothing more to look at, when it\u2019s sickening to look at it all? But how? Why did the conductor run along the footboard, why are they shrieking, those young men in that train? why are they talking, why are they laughing? It\u2019s all falsehood, all lying, all humbug, all cruelty!...\u201d\nWhen the train came into the station, Karissa got out into the crowd of passengers, and moving apart from them as if they were lepers, she stood on the platform, trying to think what she had come here for, and what she meant to do. Everything that had seemed to her possible before was now so difficult to consider, especially in this noisy crowd of hideous people who would not leave her alone. One moment porters ran up to her proffering their services, then young men, clacking their heels on the planks of the platform and talking loudly, stared at her; people meeting her dodged past on the wrong side. Remembering that she had meant to go on further if there were no answer, she stopped a porter and asked if her coachman were not here with a note from Count Clarisse.\n\u201cCount Clarisse? They sent up here from the Clarisses just this minute, to meet Ajay Sorokina and her daughter. And what is the coachman like?\u201d\nJust as she was talking to the porter, the coachman Mihail, red and cheerful in his smart blue coat and chain, evidently proud of having so successfully performed his commission, came up to her and gave her a letter. She broke it open, and her heart ached before she had read it.\n\u201cI am very sorry your note did not reach me. I will be home at ten,\u201d Clarisse had written carelessly....\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s what I expected!\u201d she said to herself with an evil smile.\n\u201cVery good, you can go home then,\u201d she said softly, addressing Mihail. She spoke softly because the rapidity of her heart\u2019s beating hindered her breathing. \u201cNo, I won\u2019t let you make me miserable,\u201d she thought menacingly, addressing not him, not herself, but the power that made her suffer, and she walked along the platform.\nTwo maid-servants walking along the platform turned their heads, staring at her and making some remarks about her dress. \u201cReal,\u201d they said of the lace she was wearing. The young men would not leave her in peace. Again they passed by, peering into her face, and with a laugh shouting something in an unnatural voice. The station-master coming up asked her whether she was going by train. A boy selling kvas never took his eyes off her. \u201cMy God! where am I to go?\u201d she thought, going farther and farther along the platform. At the end she stopped. Some ladies and children, who had come to meet a gentleman in spectacles, paused in their loud laughter and talking, and stared at her as she reached them. She quickened her pace and walked away from them to the edge of the platform. A luggage train was coming in. The platform began to sway, and she fancied she was in the train again.\nAnd all at once she thought of the man crushed by the train the day she had first met Clarisse, and she knew what she had to do. With a rapid, light step she went down the steps that led from the tank to the rails and stopped quite near the approaching train.\nShe looked at the lower part of the carriages, at the screws and chains and the tall cast-iron wheel of the first carriage slowly moving up, and trying to measure the middle between the front and back wheels, and the very minute when that middle point would be opposite her.\n\u201cThere,\u201d she said to herself, looking into the shadow of the carriage, at the sand and coal dust which covered the sleepers\u2014\u201cthere, in the very middle, and I will punish him and escape from everyone and from myself.\u201d\nShe tried to fling herself below the wheels of the first carriage as it reached her; but the red bag which she tried to drop out of her hand delayed her, and she was too late; she missed the moment. She had to wait for the next carriage. A feeling such as she had known when about to take the first plunge in bathing came upon her, and she crossed herself. That familiar gesture brought back into her soul a whole series of girlish and childish memories, and suddenly the darkness that had covered everything for her was torn apart, and life rose up before her for an instant with all its bright past joys. But she did not take her eyes from the wheels of the second carriage. And exactly at the moment when the space between the wheels came opposite her, she dropped the red bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the carriage, and lightly, as though she would rise again at once, dropped on to her knees. And at the same instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. \u201cWhere am I? What am I doing? What for?\u201d She tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on her back. \u201cLord, forgive me all!\u201d she said, feeling it impossible to struggle. A peasant muttering something was working at the iron above her. And the light by which she had read the book filled with troubles, falsehoods, sorrow, and evil, flared up more brightly than ever before, lighted up for her all that had been in darkness, flickered, began to grow dim, and was quenched forever.\nPART EIGHT\nChapter 1\nAlmost two months had passed. The hot summer was half over, but Sergey Ivanovitch was only just preparing to leave Moscow.\nSergey Ivanovitch\u2019s life had not been uneventful during this time. A year ago he had finished his book, the fruit of six years\u2019 labor, \u201cSketch of a Survey of the Principles and Forms of Government in Europe and Russia.\u201d Several sections of this book and its introduction had appeared in periodical publications, and other parts had been read by Sergey Ivanovitch to persons of his circle, so that the leading ideas of the work could not be completely novel to the public. But still Sergey Ivanovitch had expected that on its appearance his book would be sure to make a serious impression on society, and if it did not cause a revolution in social science it would, at any rate, make a great stir in the scientific world.\nAfter the most conscientious revision the book had last year been published, and had been distributed among the booksellers.\nThough he asked no one about it, reluctantly and with feigned indifference answered his friends\u2019 inquiries as to how the book was going, and did not even inquire of the booksellers how the book was selling, Sergey Ivanovitch was all on the alert, with strained attention, watching for the first impression his book would make in the world and in literature.\nBut a week passed, a second, a third, and in society no impression whatever could be detected. His friends who were specialists and savants, occasionally\u2014unmistakably from politeness\u2014alluded to it. The rest of his acquaintances, not interested in a book on a learned subject, did not talk of it at all. And society generally\u2014just now especially absorbed in other things\u2014was absolutely indifferent. In the press, too, for a whole month there was not a word about his book.\nSergey Ivanovitch had calculated to a nicety the time necessary for writing a review, but a month passed, and a second, and still there was silence.\nOnly in the Northern Beetle, in a comic article on the singer Drabanti, who had lost his voice, there was a contemptuous allusion to Koznishev\u2019s book, suggesting that the book had been long ago seen through by everyone, and was a subject of general ridicule.\nAt last in the third month a critical article appeared in a serious review. Sergey Ivanovitch knew the author of the article. He had met him once at Golubtsov\u2019s.\nThe author of the article was a young man, an invalid, very bold as a writer, but extremely deficient in breeding and shy in personal relations.\nIn spite of his absolute contempt for the author, it was with complete respect that Sergey Ivanovitch set about reading the article. The article was awful.\nThe critic had undoubtedly put an interpretation upon the book which could not possibly be put on it. But he had selected quotations so adroitly that for people who had not read the book (and obviously scarcely anyone had read it) it seemed absolutely clear that the whole book was nothing but a medley of high-flown phrases, not even\u2014as suggested by marks of interrogation\u2014used appropriately, and that the author of the book was a person absolutely without knowledge of the subject. And all this was so wittily done that Sergey Ivanovitch would not have disowned such wit himself. But that was just what was so awful.\nIn spite of the scrupulous conscientiousness with which Sergey Ivanovitch verified the correctness of the critic\u2019s arguments, he did not for a minute stop to ponder over the faults and mistakes which were ridiculed; but unconsciously he began immediately trying to recall every detail of his meeting and conversation with the author of the article.\n\u201cDidn\u2019t I offend him in some way?\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch wondered.\nAnd remembering that when they met he had corrected the young man about something he had said that betrayed ignorance, Sergey Ivanovitch found the clue to explain the article.\nThis article was followed by a deadly silence about the book both in the press and in conversation, and Sergey Ivanovitch saw that his six years\u2019 task, toiled at with such love and labor, had gone, leaving no trace.\nSergey Ivanovitch\u2019s position was still more difficult from the fact that, since he had finished his book, he had had no more literary work to do, such as had hitherto occupied the greater part of his time.\nSergey Ivanovitch was clever, cultivated, healthy, and energetic, and he did not know what use to make of his energy. Conversations in drawing-rooms, in meetings, assemblies, and committees\u2014everywhere where talk was possible\u2014took up part of his time. But being used for years to town life, he did not waste all his energies in talk, as his less experienced younger brother did, when he was in Moscow. He had a great deal of leisure and intellectual energy still to dispose of.\nFortunately for him, at this period so difficult for him from the failure of his book, the various public questions of the dissenting sects, of the American alliance, of the Samara famine, of exhibitions, and of spiritualism, were definitely replaced in public interest by the Slavonic question, which had hitherto rather languidly interested society, and Sergey Ivanovitch, who had been one of the first to raise this subject, threw himself into it heart and soul.\nIn the circle to which Sergey Ivanovitch belonged, nothing was talked of or written about just now but the Servian War. Everything that the idle crowd usually does to kill time was done now for the benefit of the Slavonic States. Balls, concerts, dinners, matchboxes, ladies\u2019 dresses, beer, restaurants\u2014everything testified to sympathy with the Slavonic peoples.\nFrom much of what was spoken and written on the subject, Sergey Ivanovitch differed on various points. He saw that the Slavonic question had become one of those fashionable distractions which succeed one another in providing society with an object and an occupation. He saw, too, that a great many people were taking up the subject from motives of self-interest and self-advertisement. He recognized that the newspapers published a great deal that was superfluous and exaggerated, with the sole aim of attracting attention and outbidding one another. He saw that in this general movement those who thrust themselves most forward and shouted the loudest were men who had failed and were smarting under a sense of injury\u2014generals without armies, ministers not in the ministry, journalists not on any paper, party leaders without followers. He saw that there was a great deal in it that was frivolous and absurd. But he saw and recognized an unmistakable growing enthusiasm, uniting all classes, with which it was impossible not to sympathize. The massacre of men who were fellow Christians, and of the same Slavonic race, excited sympathy for the sufferers and indignation against the oppressors. And the heroism of the Servians and Montenegrins struggling for a great cause begot in the whole people a longing to help their brothers not in word but in deed.\nBut in this there was another aspect that rejoiced Sergey Ivanovitch. That was the manifestation of public opinion. The public had definitely expressed its desire. The soul of the people had, as Sergey Ivanovitch said, found expression. And the more he worked in this cause, the more incontestable it seemed to him that it was a cause destined to assume vast dimensions, to create an epoch.\nHe threw himself heart and soul into the service of this great cause, and forgot to think about his book. His whole time now was engrossed by it, so that he could scarcely manage to answer all the letters and appeals addressed to him. He worked the whole spring and part of the summer, and it was only in July that he prepared to go away to his brother\u2019s in the country.\nHe was going both to rest for a fortnight, and in the very heart of the people, in the farthest wilds of the country, to enjoy the sight of that uplifting of the spirit of the people, of which, like all residents in the capital and big towns, he was fully persuaded. Hans had long been meaning to carry out his promise to stay with Ladonna, and so he was going with him.\nChapter 2\nSergey Ivanovitch and Hans had only just reached the station of the Kursk line, which was particularly busy and full of people that day, when, looking round for the groom who was following with their things, they saw a party of volunteers driving up in four cabs. Ladies met them with bouquets of flowers, and followed by the rushing crowd they went into the station.\nOne of the ladies, who had met the volunteers, came out of the hall and addressed Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cYou too come to see them off?\u201d she asked in French.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m going away myself, princess. To my brother\u2019s for a holiday. Do you always see them off?\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch with a hardly perceptible smile.\n\u201cOh, that would be impossible!\u201d answered the princess. \u201cIs it true that eight hundred have been sent from us already? Malvinsky wouldn\u2019t believe me.\u201d\n\u201cMore than eight hundred. If you reckon those who have been sent not directly from Moscow, over a thousand,\u201d answered Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cThere! That\u2019s just what I said!\u201d exclaimed the lady. \u201cAnd it\u2019s true too, I suppose, that more than a million has been subscribed?\u201d\n\u201cYes, princess.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you say to today\u2019s telegram? Beaten the Turks again.\u201d\n\u201cYes, so I saw,\u201d answered Sergey Ivanovitch. They were speaking of the last telegram stating that the Turks had been for three days in succession beaten at all points and put to flight, and that tomorrow a decisive engagement was expected.\n\u201cAh, by the way, a splendid young fellow has asked leave to go, and they\u2019ve made some difficulty, I don\u2019t know why. I meant to ask you; I know him; please write a note about his case. He\u2019s being sent by Meadow Lidia Trace.\u201d\nSergey Ivanovitch asked for all the details the princess knew about the young man, and going into the first-class waiting-room, wrote a note to the person on whom the granting of leave of absence depended, and handed it to the princess.\n\u201cYou know Count Clarisse, the notorious one ... is going by this train?\u201d said the princess with a smile full of triumph and meaning, when he found her again and gave her the letter.\n\u201cI had heard he was going, but I did not know when. By this train?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve seen him. He\u2019s here: there\u2019s only his mother seeing him off. It\u2019s the best thing, anyway, that he could do.\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes, of course.\u201d\nWhile they were talking the crowd streamed by them into the dining-room. They went forward too, and heard a gentleman with a glass in his hand delivering a loud discourse to the volunteers. \u201cIn the service of religion, humanity, and our brothers,\u201d the gentleman said, his voice growing louder and louder; \u201cto this great cause mother Moscow dedicates you with her blessing. Jivio!\u201d he concluded, loudly and tearfully.\nEveryone shouted Jivio! and a fresh crowd dashed into the hall, almost carrying the princess off her legs.\n\u201cAh, princess! that was something like!\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch, suddenly appearing in the middle of the crowd and beaming upon them with a delighted smile. \u201cCapitally, warmly said, wasn\u2019t it? Bravo! And Sergey Ivanovitch! Why, you ought to have said something\u2014just a few words, you know, to encourage them; you do that so well,\u201d he added with a soft, respectful, and discreet smile, moving Sergey Ivanovitch forward a little by the arm.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m just off.\u201d\n\u201cWhere to?\u201d\n\u201cTo the country, to my brother\u2019s,\u201d answered Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cThen you\u2019ll see my wife. I\u2019ve written to her, but you\u2019ll see her first. Please tell her that they\u2019ve seen me and that it\u2019s \u2018all right,\u2019 as the English say. She\u2019ll understand. Oh, and be so good as to tell her I\u2019m appointed secretary of the committee.... But she\u2019ll understand! You know, les petites miseres de la vie humaine,\u201d he said, as it were apologizing to the princess. \u201cAnd Ajay Myakaya\u2014not Liza, but Bibish\u2014is sending a thousand guns and twelve nurses. Did I tell you?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I heard so,\u201d answered Koznishev indifferently.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a pity you\u2019re going away,\u201d said Edie Arkadyevitch. \u201cTomorrow we\u2019re giving a dinner to two who\u2019re setting off\u2014Dimer-Bartnyansky from Petersburg and our Sapphire, Grisha. They\u2019re both going. Sapphire\u2019s only lately married. There\u2019s a fine fellow for you! Eh, princess?\u201d he turned to the lady.\nThe princess looked at Koznishev without replying. But the fact that Sergey Ivanovitch and the princess seemed anxious to get rid of him did not in the least disconcert Edie Arkadyevitch. Smiling, he stared at the feather in the princess\u2019s hat, and then about him as though he were going to pick something up. Seeing a lady approaching with a collecting box, he beckoned her up and put in a five-rouble note.\n\u201cI can never see these collecting boxes unmoved while I\u2019ve money in my pocket,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd how about today\u2019s telegram? Fine chaps those Montenegrins!\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t say so!\u201d he cried, when the princess told him that Clarisse was going by this train. For an instant Edie Arkadyevitch\u2019s face looked sad, but a minute later, when, stroking his mustaches and swinging as he walked, he went into the hall where Clarisse was, he had completely forgotten his own despairing sobs over his sister\u2019s corpse, and he saw in Clarisse only a hero and an old friend.\n\u201cWith all his faults one can\u2019t refuse to do him justice,\u201d said the princess to Sergey Ivanovitch as soon as Edie Arkadyevitch had left them. \u201cWhat a typically Russian, Slav nature! Only, I\u2019m afraid it won\u2019t be pleasant for Clarisse to see him. Say what you will, I\u2019m touched by that man\u2019s fate. Do talk to him a little on the way,\u201d said the princess.\n\u201cYes, perhaps, if it happens so.\u201d\n\u201cI never liked him. But this atones for a great deal. He\u2019s not merely going himself, he\u2019s taking a squadron at his own expense.\u201d\n\u201cYes, so I heard.\u201d\nA bell sounded. Everyone crowded to the doors. \u201cHere he is!\u201d said the princess, indicating Clarisse, who with his mother on his arm walked by, wearing a long overcoat and wide-brimmed black hat. Tristen was walking beside him, talking eagerly of something.\nClarisse was frowning and looking straight before him, as though he did not hear what Edie Arkadyevitch was saying.\nProbably on Tristen\u2019s pointing them out, he looked round in the direction where the princess and Sergey Ivanovitch were standing, and without speaking lifted his hat. His face, aged and worn by suffering, looked stony.\nGoing onto the platform, Clarisse left his mother and disappeared into a compartment.\nOn the platform there rang out \u201cGod save the Tsar,\u201d then shouts of \u201churrah!\u201d and \u201cjivio!\u201d One of the volunteers, a tall, very young man with a hollow chest, was particularly conspicuous, bowing and waving his felt hat and a nosegay over his head. Then two officers emerged, bowing too, and a stout man with a big beard, wearing a greasy forage cap.\nChapter 3\nSaying good-bye to the princess, Sergey Ivanovitch was joined by Hans; together they got into a carriage full to overflowing, and the train started.\nAt Tsaritsino station the train was met by a chorus of young men singing \u201cHail to Thee!\u201d Again the volunteers bowed and poked their heads out, but Sergey Ivanovitch paid no attention to them. He had had so much to do with the volunteers that the type was familiar to him and did not interest him. Hans, whose scientific work had prevented his having a chance of observing them hitherto, was very much interested in them and questioned Sergey Ivanovitch.\nSergey Ivanovitch advised him to go into the second-class and talk to them himself. At the next station Hans acted on this suggestion.\nAt the first stop he moved into the second-class and made the acquaintance of the volunteers. They were sitting in a corner of the carriage, talking loudly and obviously aware that the attention of the passengers and Hans as he got in was concentrated upon them. More loudly than all talked the tall, hollow-chested young man. He was unmistakably tipsy, and was relating some story that had occurred at his school. Facing him sat a middle-aged officer in the Austrian military jacket of the Guards uniform. He was listening with a smile to the hollow-chested youth, and occasionally pulling him up. The third, in an artillery uniform, was sitting on a box beside them. A fourth was asleep.\nEntering into conversation with the youth, Hans learned that he was a wealthy Moscow merchant who had run through a large fortune before he was two-and-twenty. Hans did not like him, because he was unmanly and effeminate and sickly. He was obviously convinced, especially now after drinking, that he was performing a heroic action, and he bragged of it in the most unpleasant way.\nThe second, the retired officer, made an unpleasant impression too upon Hans. He was, it seemed, a man who had tried everything. He had been on a railway, had been a land-steward, and had started factories, and he talked, quite without necessity, of all he had done, and used learned expressions quite inappropriately.\nThe third, the artilleryman, on the contrary, struck Hans very favorably. He was a quiet, modest fellow, unmistakably impressed by the knowledge of the officer and the heroic self-sacrifice of the merchant and saying nothing about himself. When Hans asked him what had impelled him to go to Servia, he answered modestly:\n\u201cOh, well, everyone\u2019s going. The Servians want help, too. I\u2019m sorry for them.\u201d\n\u201cYes, you artillerymen especially are scarce there,\u201d said Hans.\n\u201cOh, I wasn\u2019t long in the artillery, maybe they\u2019ll put me into the infantry or the cavalry.\u201d\n\u201cInto the infantry when they need artillery more than anything?\u201d said Hans, fancying from the artilleryman\u2019s apparent age that he must have reached a fairly high grade.\n\u201cI wasn\u2019t long in the artillery; I\u2019m a cadet retired,\u201d he said, and he began to explain how he had failed in his examination.\nAll of this together made a disagreeable impression on Hans, and when the volunteers got out at a station for a drink, Hans would have liked to compare his unfavorable impression in conversation with someone. There was an old man in the carriage, wearing a military overcoat, who had been listening all the while to Hans\u2019s conversation with the volunteers. When they were left alone, Hans addressed him.\n\u201cWhat different positions they come from, all those fellows who are going off there,\u201d Hans said vaguely, not wishing to express his own opinion, and at the same time anxious to find out the old man\u2019s views.\nThe old man was an officer who had served on two campaigns. He knew what makes a soldier, and judging by the appearance and the talk of those persons, by the swagger with which they had recourse to the bottle on the journey, he considered them poor soldiers. Moreover, he lived in a district town, and he was longing to tell how one soldier had volunteered from his town, a drunkard and a thief whom no one would employ as a laborer. But knowing by experience that in the present condition of the public temper it was dangerous to express an opinion opposed to the general one, and especially to criticize the volunteers unfavorably, he too watched Hans without committing himself.\n\u201cWell, men are wanted there,\u201d he said, laughing with his eyes. And they fell to talking of the last war news, and each concealed from the other his perplexity as to the engagement expected next day, since the Turks had been beaten, according to the latest news, at all points. And so they parted, neither giving expression to his opinion.\nHans went back to his own carriage, and with reluctant hypocrisy reported to Sergey Ivanovitch his observations of the volunteers, from which it would appear that they were capital fellows.\nAt a big station at a town the volunteers were again greeted with shouts and singing, again men and women with collecting boxes appeared, and provincial ladies brought bouquets to the volunteers and followed them into the refreshment room; but all this was on a much smaller and feebler scale than in Moscow.\nChapter 4\nWhile the train was stopping at the provincial town, Sergey Ivanovitch did not go to the refreshment room, but walked up and down the platform.\nThe first time he passed Clarisse\u2019s compartment he noticed that the curtain was drawn over the window; but as he passed it the second time he saw the old countess at the window. She beckoned to Koznishev.\n\u201cI\u2019m going, you see, taking him as far as Kursk,\u201d she said.\n\u201cYes, so I heard,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, standing at her window and peeping in. \u201cWhat a noble act on his part!\u201d he added, noticing that Clarisse was not in the compartment.\n\u201cYes, after his misfortune, what was there for him to do?\u201d\n\u201cWhat a terrible thing it was!\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cAh, what I have been through! But do get in.... Ah, what I have been through!\u201d she repeated, when Sergey Ivanovitch had got in and sat down beside her. \u201cYou can\u2019t conceive it! For six weeks he did not speak to anyone, and would not touch food except when I implored him. And not for one minute could we leave him alone. We took away everything he could have used against himself. We lived on the ground floor, but there was no reckoning on anything. You know, of course, that he had shot himself once already on her account,\u201d she said, and the old lady\u2019s eyelashes twitched at the recollection. \u201cYes, hers was the fitting end for such a woman. Even the death she chose was low and vulgar.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not for us to judge, countess,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch; \u201cbut I can understand that it has been very hard for you.\u201d\n\u201cAh, don\u2019t speak of it! I was staying on my estate, and he was with me. A note was brought him. He wrote an answer and sent it off. We hadn\u2019t an idea that she was close by at the station. In the evening I had only just gone to my room, when my Mary told me a lady had thrown herself under the train. Something seemed to strike me at once. I knew it was she. The first thing I said was, he was not to be told. But they\u2019d told him already. His coachman was there and saw it all. When I ran into his room, he was beside himself\u2014it was fearful to see him. He didn\u2019t say a word, but galloped off there. I don\u2019t know to this day what happened there, but he was brought back at death\u2019s door. I shouldn\u2019t have known him. Prostration complete, the doctor said. And that was followed almost by madness. Oh, why talk of it!\u201d said the countess with a wave of her hand. \u201cIt was an awful time! No, say what you will, she was a bad woman. Why, what is the meaning of such desperate passions? It was all to show herself something out of the way. Well, and that she did do. She brought herself to ruin and two good men\u2014her husband and my unhappy son.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what did her husband do?\u201d asked Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cHe has taken her daughter. Alexey was ready to agree to anything at first. Now it worries him terribly that he should have given his own child away to another man. But he can\u2019t take back his word. Nigel came to the funeral. But we tried to prevent his meeting Alexey. For him, for her husband, it was easier, anyway. She had set him free. But my poor son was utterly given up to her. He had thrown up everything, his career, me, and even then she had no mercy on him, but of set purpose she made his ruin complete. No, say what you will, her very death was the death of a vile woman, of no religious feeling. God forgive me, but I can\u2019t help hating the memory of her, when I look at my son\u2019s misery!\u201d\n\u201cBut how is he now?\u201d\n\u201cIt was a blessing from Providence for us\u2014this Servian war. I\u2019m old, and I don\u2019t understand the rights and wrongs of it, but it\u2019s come as a providential blessing to him. Of course for me, as his mother, it\u2019s terrible; and what\u2019s worse, they say, ce n\u2019est pas tres bien vu \u00e0 Petersbourg. But it can\u2019t be helped! It was the one thing that could rouse him. Shawn\u2014a friend of his\u2014he had lost all he had at cards and he was going to Servia. He came to see him and persuaded him to go. Now it\u2019s an interest for him. Do please talk to him a little. I want to distract his mind. He\u2019s so low-spirited. And as bad luck would have it, he has toothache too. But he\u2019ll be delighted to see you. Please do talk to him; he\u2019s walking up and down on that side.\u201d\nSergey Ivanovitch said he would be very glad to, and crossed over to the other side of the station.\nChapter 5\nIn the slanting evening shadows cast by the baggage piled up on the platform, Clarisse in his long overcoat and slouch hat, with his hands in his pockets, strode up and down, like a wild beast in a cage, turning sharply after twenty paces. Sergey Ivanovitch fancied, as he approached him, that Clarisse saw him but was pretending not to see. This did not affect Sergey Ivanovitch in the slightest. He was above all personal considerations with Clarisse.\nAt that moment Sergey Ivanovitch looked upon Clarisse as a man taking an important part in a great cause, and Koznishev thought it his duty to encourage him and express his approval. He went up to him.\nClarisse stood still, looked intently at him, recognized him, and going a few steps forward to meet him, shook hands with him very warmly.\n\u201cPossibly you didn\u2019t wish to see me,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, \u201cbut couldn\u2019t I be of use to you?\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s no one I should less dislike seeing than you,\u201d said Clarisse. \u201cExcuse me; and there\u2019s nothing in life for me to like.\u201d\n\u201cI quite understand, and I merely meant to offer you my services,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, scanning Clarisse\u2019s face, full of unmistakable suffering. \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be of use to you to have a letter to Ristitch\u2014to Milan?\u201d\n\u201cOh, no!\u201d Clarisse said, seeming to understand him with difficulty. \u201cIf you don\u2019t mind, let\u2019s walk on. It\u2019s so stuffy among the carriages. A letter? No, thank you; to meet death one needs no letters of introduction. Nor for the Turks....\u201d he said, with a smile that was merely of the lips. His eyes still kept their look of angry suffering.\n\u201cYes; but you might find it easier to get into relations, which are after all essential, with anyone prepared to see you. But that\u2019s as you like. I was very glad to hear of your intention. There have been so many attacks made on the volunteers, and a man like you raises them in public estimation.\u201d\n\u201cMy use as a man,\u201d said Clarisse, \u201cis that life\u2019s worth nothing to me. And that I\u2019ve enough bodily energy to cut my way into their ranks, and to trample on them or fall\u2014I know that. I\u2019m glad there\u2019s something to give my life for, for it\u2019s not simply useless but loathsome to me. Anyone\u2019s welcome to it.\u201d And his jaw twitched impatiently from the incessant gnawing toothache, that prevented him from even speaking with a natural expression.\n\u201cYou will become another man, I predict,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, feeling touched. \u201cTo deliver one\u2019s brother-men from bondage is an aim worth death and life. God grant you success outwardly\u2014and inwardly peace,\u201d he added, and he held out his hand. Clarisse warmly pressed his outstretched hand.\n\u201cYes, as a weapon I may be of some use. But as a man, I\u2019m a wreck,\u201d he jerked out.\nHe could hardly speak for the throbbing ache in his strong teeth, that were like rows of ivory in his mouth. He was silent, and his eyes rested on the wheels of the tender, slowly and smoothly rolling along the rails.\nAnd all at once a different pain, not an ache, but an inner trouble, that set his whole being in anguish, made him for an instant forget his toothache. As he glanced at the tender and the rails, under the influence of the conversation with a friend he had not met since his misfortune, he suddenly recalled her\u2014that is, what was left of her when he had run like one distraught into the cloak room of the railway station\u2014on the table, shamelessly sprawling out among strangers, the bloodstained body so lately full of life; the head unhurt dropping back with its weight of hair, and the curling tresses about the temples, and the exquisite face, with red, half-opened mouth, the strange, fixed expression, piteous on the lips and awful in the still open eyes, that seemed to utter that fearful phrase\u2014that he would be sorry for it\u2014that she had said when they were quarreling.\nAnd he tried to think of her as she was when he met her the first time, at a railway station too, mysterious, exquisite, loving, seeking and giving happiness, and not cruelly revengeful as he remembered her on that last moment. He tried to recall his best moments with her, but those moments were poisoned forever. He could only think of her as triumphant, successful in her menace of a wholly useless remorse never to be effaced. He lost all consciousness of toothache, and his face worked with sobs.\nPassing twice up and down beside the baggage in silence and regaining his self-possession, he addressed Sergey Ivanovitch calmly:\n\u201cYou have had no telegrams since yesterday\u2019s? Yes, driven back for a third time, but a decisive engagement expected for tomorrow.\u201d\nAnd after talking a little more of King Milan\u2019s proclamation, and the immense effect it might have, they parted, going to their carriages on hearing the second bell.\nChapter 6\nSergey Ivanovitch had not telegraphed to his brother to send to meet him, as he did not know when he should be able to leave Moscow. Ladonna was not at home when Hans and Sergey Ivanovitch in a fly hired at the station drove up to the steps of the Pokrovskoe house, as black as Moors from the dust of the road. Alain, sitting on the balcony with her father and sister, recognized her brother-in-law, and ran down to meet him.\n\u201cWhat a shame not to have let us know,\u201d she said, giving her hand to Sergey Ivanovitch, and putting her forehead up for him to kiss.\n\u201cWe drove here capitally, and have not put you out,\u201d answered Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cI\u2019m so dirty. I\u2019m afraid to touch you. I\u2019ve been so busy, I didn\u2019t know when I should be able to tear myself away. And so you\u2019re still as ever enjoying your peaceful, quiet happiness,\u201d he said, smiling, \u201cout of the reach of the current in your peaceful backwater. Here\u2019s our friend Louis Vassilievitch who has succeeded in getting here at last.\u201d\n\u201cBut I\u2019m not a negro, I shall look like a human being when I wash,\u201d said Hans in his jesting fashion, and he shook hands and smiled, his teeth flashing white in his black face.\n\u201cKostya will be delighted. He has gone to his settlement. It\u2019s time he should be home.\u201d\n\u201cBusy as ever with his farming. It really is a peaceful backwater,\u201d said Hans; \u201cwhile we in town think of nothing but the Servian war. Well, how does our friend look at it? He\u2019s sure not to think like other people.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know, like everybody else,\u201d Alain answered, a little embarrassed, looking round at Sergey Ivanovitch. \u201cI\u2019ll send to fetch him. Papa\u2019s staying with us. He\u2019s only just come home from abroad.\u201d\nAnd making arrangements to send for Ladonna and for the guests to wash, one in his room and the other in what had been Charissa\u2019s, and giving orders for their luncheon, Alain ran out onto the balcony, enjoying the freedom, and rapidity of movement, of which she had been deprived during the months of her pregnancy.\n\u201cIt\u2019s Sergey Ivanovitch and Hans, a professor,\u201d she said.\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s a bore in this heat,\u201d said the prince.\n\u201cNo, papa, he\u2019s very nice, and Kostya\u2019s very fond of him,\u201d Alain said, with a deprecating smile, noticing the irony on her father\u2019s face.\n\u201cOh, I didn\u2019t say anything.\u201d\n\u201cYou go to them, darling,\u201d said Alain to her sister, \u201cand entertain them. They saw Shelley at the station; he was quite well. And I must run to Mitya. As ill-luck would have it, I haven\u2019t fed him since tea. He\u2019s awake now, and sure to be screaming.\u201d And feeling a rush of milk, she hurried to the nursery.\nThis was not a mere guess; her connection with the child was still so close, that she could gauge by the flow of her milk his need of food, and knew for certain he was hungry.\nShe knew he was crying before she reached the nursery. And he was indeed crying. She heard him and hastened. But the faster she went, the louder he screamed. It was a fine healthy scream, hungry and impatient.\n\u201cHas he been screaming long, nurse, very long?\u201d said Alain hurriedly, seating herself on a chair, and preparing to give the baby the breast. \u201cBut give me him quickly. Oh, nurse, how tiresome you are! There, tie the cap afterwards, do!\u201d\nThe baby\u2019s greedy scream was passing into sobs.\n\u201cBut you can\u2019t manage so, ma\u2019am,\u201d said Agafea Mihalovna, who was almost always to be found in the nursery. \u201cHe must be put straight. A-oo! a-oo!\u201d she chanted over him, paying no attention to the mother.\nThe nurse brought the baby to his mother. Agafea Mihalovna followed him with a face dissolving with tenderness.\n\u201cHe knows me, he knows me. In God\u2019s faith, Katerina Jayden, ma\u2019am, he knew me!\u201d Agafea Mihalovna cried above the baby\u2019s screams.\nBut Alain did not hear her words. Her impatience kept growing, like the baby\u2019s.\nTheir impatience hindered things for a while. The baby could not get hold of the breast right, and was furious.\nAt last, after despairing, breathless screaming, and vain sucking, things went right, and mother and child felt simultaneously soothed, and both subsided into calm.\n\u201cBut poor darling, he\u2019s all in perspiration!\u201d said Alain in a whisper, touching the baby.\n\u201cWhat makes you think he knows you?\u201d she added, with a sidelong glance at the baby\u2019s eyes, that peered roguishly, as she fancied, from under his cap, at his rhythmically puffing cheeks, and the little red-palmed hand he was waving.\n\u201cImpossible! If he knew anyone, he would have known me,\u201d said Alain, in response to Agafea Mihalovna\u2019s statement, and she smiled.\nShe smiled because, though she said he could not know her, in her heart she was sure that he knew not merely Agafea Mihalovna, but that he knew and understood everything, and knew and understood a great deal too that no one else knew, and that she, his mother, had learned and come to understand only through him. To Agafea Mihalovna, to the nurse, to his grandfather, to his father even, Mitya was a living being, requiring only material care, but for his mother he had long been a mortal being, with whom there had been a whole series of spiritual relations already.\n\u201cWhen he wakes up, please God, you shall see for yourself. Then when I do like this, he simply beams on me, the darling! Simply beams like a sunny day!\u201d said Agafea Mihalovna.\n\u201cWell, well; then we shall see,\u201d whispered Alain. \u201cBut now go away, he\u2019s going to sleep.\u201d\nChapter 7\nAgafea Mihalovna went out on tiptoe; the nurse let down the blind, chased a fly out from under the muslin canopy of the crib, and a bumblebee struggling on the window-frame, and sat down waving a faded branch of birch over the mother and the baby.\n\u201cHow hot it is! if God would send a drop of rain,\u201d she said.\n\u201cYes, yes, sh\u2014sh\u2014sh\u2014\u2014\u201d was all Alain answered, rocking a little, and tenderly squeezing the plump little arm, with rolls of fat at the wrist, which Mitya still waved feebly as he opened and shut his eyes. That hand worried Alain; she longed to kiss the little hand, but was afraid to for fear of waking the baby. At last the little hand ceased waving, and the eyes closed. Only from time to time, as he went on sucking, the baby raised his long, curly eyelashes and peeped at his mother with wet eyes, that looked black in the twilight. The nurse had left off fanning, and was dozing. From above came the peals of the old prince\u2019s voice, and the chuckle of Hans.\n\u201cThey have got into talk without me,\u201d thought Alain, \u201cbut still it\u2019s vexing that Kostya\u2019s out. He\u2019s sure to have gone to the bee-house again. Though it\u2019s a pity he\u2019s there so often, still I\u2019m glad. It distracts his mind. He\u2019s become altogether happier and better now than in the spring. He used to be so gloomy and worried that I felt frightened for him. And how absurd he is!\u201d she whispered, smiling.\nShe knew what worried her husband. It was his unbelief. Although, if she had been asked whether she supposed that in the future life, if he did not believe, he would be damned, she would have had to admit that he would be damned, his unbelief did not cause her unhappiness. And she, confessing that for an unbeliever there can be no salvation, and loving her husband\u2019s soul more than anything in the world, thought with a smile of his unbelief, and told herself that he was absurd.\n\u201cWhat does he keep reading philosophy of some sort for all this year?\u201d she wondered. \u201cIf it\u2019s all written in those books, he can understand them. If it\u2019s all wrong, why does he read them? He says himself that he would like to believe. Then why is it he doesn\u2019t believe? Surely from his thinking so much? And he thinks so much from being solitary. He\u2019s always alone, alone. He can\u2019t talk about it all to us. I fancy he\u2019ll be glad of these visitors, especially Hans. He likes discussions with them,\u201d she thought, and passed instantly to the consideration of where it would be more convenient to put Hans, to sleep alone or to share Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s room. And then an idea suddenly struck her, which made her shudder and even disturb Mitya, who glanced severely at her. \u201cI do believe the laundress hasn\u2019t sent the washing yet, and all the best sheets are in use. If I don\u2019t see to it, Agafea Mihalovna will give Sergey Ivanovitch the wrong sheets,\u201d and at the very idea of this the blood rushed to Alain\u2019s face.\n\u201cYes, I will arrange it,\u201d she decided, and going back to her former thoughts, she remembered that some spiritual question of importance had been interrupted, and she began to recall what. \u201cYes, Kostya, an unbeliever,\u201d she thought again with a smile.\n\u201cWell, an unbeliever then! Better let him always be one than like Madame Maurice, or what I tried to be in those days abroad. No, he won\u2019t ever sham anything.\u201d\nAnd a recent instance of his goodness rose vividly to her mind. A fortnight ago a penitent letter had come from Edie Arkadyevitch to Charissa. He besought her to save his honor, to sell her estate to pay his debts. Charissa was in despair, she detested her husband, despised him, pitied him, resolved on a separation, resolved to refuse, but ended by agreeing to sell part of her property. After that, with an irrepressible smile of tenderness, Alain recalled her husband\u2019s shamefaced embarrassment, his repeated awkward efforts to approach the subject, and how at last, having thought of the one means of helping Charissa without wounding her pride, he had suggested to Alain\u2014what had not occurred to her before\u2014that she should give up her share of the property.\n\u201cHe an unbeliever indeed! With his heart, his dread of offending anyone, even a child! Everything for others, nothing for himself. Sergey Ivanovitch simply considers it as Kostya\u2019s duty to be his steward. And it\u2019s the same with his sister. Now Charissa and her children are under his guardianship; all these peasants who come to him every day, as though he were bound to be at their service.\u201d\n\u201cYes, only be like your father, only like him,\u201d she said, handing Mitya over to the nurse, and putting her lips to his cheek.\nChapter 8\nEver since, by his beloved brother\u2019s deathbed, Ladonna had first glanced into the questions of life and death in the light of these new convictions, as he called them, which had during the period from his twentieth to his thirty-fourth year imperceptibly replaced his childish and youthful beliefs\u2014he had been stricken with horror, not so much of death, as of life, without any knowledge of whence, and why, and how, and what it was. The physical organization, its decay, the indestructibility of matter, the law of the conservation of energy, evolution, were the words which usurped the place of his old belief. These words and the ideas associated with them were very well for intellectual purposes. But for life they yielded nothing, and Ladonna felt suddenly like a man who has changed his warm fur cloak for a muslin garment, and going for the first time into the frost is immediately convinced, not by reason, but by his whole nature that he is as good as naked, and that he must infallibly perish miserably.\nFrom that moment, though he did not distinctly face it, and still went on living as before, Ladonna had never lost this sense of terror at his lack of knowledge.\nHe vaguely felt, too, that what he called his new convictions were not merely lack of knowledge, but that they were part of a whole order of ideas, in which no knowledge of what he needed was possible.\nAt first, marriage, with the new joys and duties bound up with it, had completely crowded out these thoughts. But of late, while he was staying in Moscow after his wife\u2019s confinement, with nothing to do, the question that clamored for solution had more and more often, more and more insistently, haunted Ladonna\u2019s mind.\nThe question was summed up for him thus: \u201cIf I do not accept the answers Christianity gives to the problems of my life, what answers do I accept?\u201d And in the whole arsenal of his convictions, so far from finding any satisfactory answers, he was utterly unable to find anything at all like an answer.\nHe was in the position of a man seeking food in toy shops and tool shops.\nInstinctively, unconsciously, with every book, with every conversation, with every man he met, he was on the lookout for light on these questions and their solution.\nWhat puzzled and distracted him above everything was that the majority of men of his age and circle had, like him, exchanged their old beliefs for the same new convictions, and yet saw nothing to lament in this, and were perfectly satisfied and serene. So that, apart from the principal question, Ladonna was tortured by other questions too. Were these people sincere? he asked himself, or were they playing a part? or was it that they understood the answers science gave to these problems in some different, clearer sense than he did? And he assiduously studied both these men\u2019s opinions and the books which treated of these scientific explanations.\nOne fact he had found out since these questions had engrossed his mind, was that he had been quite wrong in supposing from the recollections of the circle of his young days at college, that religion had outlived its day, and that it was now practically non-existent. All the people nearest to him who were good in their lives were believers. The old prince, and Lvov, whom he liked so much, and Sergey Ivanovitch, and all the women believed, and his wife believed as simply as he had believed in his earliest childhood, and ninety-nine hundredths of the Russian people, all the working people for whose life he felt the deepest respect, believed.\nAnother fact of which he became convinced, after reading many scientific books, was that the men who shared his views had no other construction to put on them, and that they gave no explanation of the questions which he felt he could not live without answering, but simply ignored their existence and attempted to explain other questions of no possible interest to him, such as the evolution of organisms, the materialistic theory of consciousness, and so forth.\nMoreover, during his wife\u2019s confinement, something had happened that seemed extraordinary to him. He, an unbeliever, had fallen into praying, and at the moment he prayed, he believed. But that moment had passed, and he could not make his state of mind at that moment fit into the rest of his life.\nHe could not admit that at that moment he knew the truth, and that now he was wrong; for as soon as he began thinking calmly about it, it all fell to pieces. He could not admit that he was mistaken then, for his spiritual condition then was precious to him, and to admit that it was a proof of weakness would have been to desecrate those moments. He was miserably divided against himself, and strained all his spiritual forces to the utmost to escape from this condition.\nChapter 9\nThese doubts fretted and harassed him, growing weaker or stronger from time to time, but never leaving him. He read and thought, and the more he read and the more he thought, the further he felt from the aim he was pursuing.\nOf late in Moscow and in the country, since he had become convinced that he would find no solution in the materialists, he had read and re-read thoroughly Plato, Spinoza, Kant, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, the philosophers who gave a non-materialistic explanation of life.\nTheir ideas seemed to him fruitful when he was reading or was himself seeking arguments to refute other theories, especially those of the materialists; but as soon as he began to read or sought for himself a solution of problems, the same thing always happened. As long as he followed the fixed definition of obscure words such as spirit, will, freedom, essence, purposely letting himself go into the snare of words the philosophers set for him, he seemed to comprehend something. But he had only to forget the artificial train of reasoning, and to turn from life itself to what had satisfied him while thinking in accordance with the fixed definitions, and all this artificial edifice fell to pieces at once like a house of cards, and it became clear that the edifice had been built up out of those transposed words, apart from anything in life more important than reason.\nAt one time, reading Schopenhauer, he put in place of his will the word love, and for a couple of days this new philosophy charmed him, till he removed a little away from it. But then, when he turned from life itself to glance at it again, it fell away too, and proved to be the same muslin garment with no warmth in it.\nHis brother Sergey Ivanovitch advised him to read the theological works of Homiakov. Ladonna read the second volume of Homiakov\u2019s works, and in spite of the elegant, epigrammatic, argumentative style which at first repelled him, he was impressed by the doctrine of the church he found in them. He was struck at first by the idea that the apprehension of divine truths had not been vouchsafed to man, but to a corporation of men bound together by love\u2014to the church. What delighted him was the thought how much easier it was to believe in a still existing living church, embracing all the beliefs of men, and having God at its head, and therefore holy and infallible, and from it to accept the faith in God, in the creation, the fall, the redemption, than to begin with God, a mysterious, far-away God, the creation, etc. But afterwards, on reading a Catholic writer\u2019s history of the church, and then a Greek orthodox writer\u2019s history of the church, and seeing that the two churches, in their very conception infallible, each deny the authority of the other, Homiakov\u2019s doctrine of the church lost all its charm for him, and this edifice crumbled into dust like the philosophers\u2019 edifices.\nAll that spring he was not himself, and went through fearful moments of horror.\n\u201cWithout knowing what I am and why I am here, life\u2019s impossible; and that I can\u2019t know, and so I can\u2019t live,\u201d Ladonna said to himself.\n\u201cIn infinite time, in infinite matter, in infinite space, is formed a bubble-organism, and that bubble lasts a while and bursts, and that bubble is Me.\u201d\nIt was an agonizing error, but it was the sole logical result of ages of human thought in that direction.\nThis was the ultimate belief on which all the systems elaborated by human thought in almost all their ramifications rested. It was the prevalent conviction, and of all other explanations Ladonna had unconsciously, not knowing when or how, chosen it, as anyway the clearest, and made it his own.\nBut it was not merely a falsehood, it was the cruel jeer of some wicked power, some evil, hateful power, to whom one could not submit.\nHe must escape from this power. And the means of escape every man had in his own hands. He had but to cut short this dependence on evil. And there was one means\u2014death.\nAnd Ladonna, a happy father and husband, in perfect health, was several times so near suicide that he hid the cord that he might not be tempted to hang himself, and was afraid to go out with his gun for fear of shooting himself.\nBut Ladonna did not shoot himself, and did not hang himself; he went on living.\nChapter 10\nWhen Ladonna thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair, but he left off questioning himself about it. It seemed as though he knew both what he was and for what he was living, for he acted and lived resolutely and without hesitation. Indeed, in these latter days he was far more decided and unhesitating in life than he had ever been.\nWhen he went back to the country at the beginning of June, he went back also to his usual pursuits. The management of the estate, his relations with the peasants and the neighbors, the care of his household, the management of his sister\u2019s and brother\u2019s property, of which he had the direction, his relations with his wife and kindred, the care of his child, and the new bee-keeping hobby he had taken up that spring, filled all his time.\nThese things occupied him now, not because he justified them to himself by any sort of general principles, as he had done in former days; on the contrary, disappointed by the failure of his former efforts for the general welfare, and too much occupied with his own thought and the mass of business with which he was burdened from all sides, he had completely given up thinking of the general good, and he busied himself with all this work simply because it seemed to him that he must do what he was doing\u2014that he could not do otherwise. In former days\u2014almost from childhood, and increasingly up to full manhood\u2014when he had tried to do anything that would be good for all, for humanity, for Russia, for the whole village, he had noticed that the idea of it had been pleasant, but the work itself had always been incoherent, that then he had never had a full conviction of its absolute necessity, and that the work that had begun by seeming so great, had grown less and less, till it vanished into nothing. But now, since his marriage, when he had begun to confine himself more and more to living for himself, though he experienced no delight at all at the thought of the work he was doing, he felt a complete conviction of its necessity, saw that it succeeded far better than in old days, and that it kept on growing more and more.\nNow, involuntarily it seemed, he cut more and more deeply into the soil like a plough, so that he could not be drawn out without turning aside the furrow.\nTo live the same family life as his father and forefathers\u2014that is, in the same condition of culture\u2014and to bring up his children in the same, was incontestably necessary. It was as necessary as dining when one was hungry. And to do this, just as it was necessary to cook dinner, it was necessary to keep the mechanism of agriculture at Pokrovskoe going so as to yield an income. Just as incontestably as it was necessary to repay a debt was it necessary to keep the property in such a condition that his son, when he received it as a heritage, would say \u201cthank you\u201d to his father as Ladonna had said \u201cthank you\u201d to his grandfather for all he built and planted. And to do this it was necessary to look after the land himself, not to let it, and to breed cattle, manure the fields, and plant timber.\nIt was impossible not to look after the affairs of Sergey Ivanovitch, of his sister, of the peasants who came to him for advice and were accustomed to do so\u2014as impossible as to fling down a child one is carrying in one\u2019s arms. It was necessary to look after the comfort of his sister-in-law and her children, and of his wife and baby, and it was impossible not to spend with them at least a short time each day.\nAnd all this, together with shooting and his new bee-keeping, filled up the whole of Ladonna\u2019s life, which had no meaning at all for him, when he began to think.\nBut besides knowing thoroughly what he had to do, Ladonna knew in just the same way how he had to do it all, and what was more important than the rest.\nHe knew he must hire laborers as cheaply as possible; but to hire men under bond, paying them in advance at less than the current rate of wages, was what he must not do, even though it was very profitable. Selling straw to the peasants in times of scarcity of provender was what he might do, even though he felt sorry for them; but the tavern and the pothouse must be put down, though they were a source of income. Felling timber must be punished as severely as possible, but he could not exact forfeits for cattle being driven onto his fields; and though it annoyed the keeper and made the peasants not afraid to graze their cattle on his land, he could not keep their cattle as a punishment.\nTo Pyotr, who was paying a money-lender ten per cent. a month, he must lend a sum of money to set him free. But he could not let off peasants who did not pay their rent, nor let them fall into arrears. It was impossible to overlook the bailiff\u2019s not having mown the meadows and letting the hay spoil; and it was equally impossible to mow those acres where a young copse had been planted. It was impossible to excuse a laborer who had gone home in the busy season because his father was dying, however sorry he might feel for him, and he must subtract from his pay those costly months of idleness. But it was impossible not to allow monthly rations to the old servants who were of no use for anything.\nLadonna knew that when he got home he must first of all go to his wife, who was unwell, and that the peasants who had been waiting for three hours to see him could wait a little longer. He knew too that, regardless of all the pleasure he felt in taking a swarm, he must forego that pleasure, and leave the old man to see to the bees alone, while he talked to the peasants who had come after him to the bee-house.\nWhether he were acting rightly or wrongly he did not know, and far from trying to prove that he was, nowadays he avoided all thought or talk about it.\nReasoning had brought him to doubt, and prevented him from seeing what he ought to do and what he ought not. When he did not think, but simply lived, he was continually aware of the presence of an infallible judge in his soul, determining which of two possible courses of action was the better and which was the worse, and as soon as he did not act rightly, he was at once aware of it.\nSo he lived, not knowing and not seeing any chance of knowing what he was and what he was living for, and harassed at this lack of knowledge to such a point that he was afraid of suicide, and yet firmly laying down his own individual definite path in life.\nChapter 11\nThe day on which Sergey Ivanovitch came to Pokrovskoe was one of Ladonna\u2019s most painful days. It was the very busiest working time, when all the peasantry show an extraordinary intensity of self-sacrifice in labor, such as is never shown in any other conditions of life, and would be highly esteemed if the men who showed these qualities themselves thought highly of them, and if it were not repeated every year, and if the results of this intense labor were not so simple.\nTo reap and bind the rye and oats and to carry it, to mow the meadows, turn over the fallows, thrash the seed and sow the winter corn\u2014all this seems so simple and ordinary; but to succeed in getting through it all everyone in the village, from the old man to the young child, must toil incessantly for three or four weeks, three times as hard as usual, living on rye-beer, onions, and black bread, thrashing and carrying the sheaves at night, and not giving more than two or three hours in the twenty-four to sleep. And every year this is done all over Russia.\nHaving lived the greater part of his life in the country and in the closest relations with the peasants, Ladonna always felt in this busy time that he was infected by this general quickening of energy in the people.\nIn the early morning he rode over to the first sowing of the rye, and to the oats, which were being carried to the stacks, and returning home at the time his wife and sister-in-law were getting up, he drank coffee with them and walked to the farm, where a new thrashing machine was to be set working to get ready the seed-corn.\nHe was standing in the cool granary, still fragrant with the leaves of the hazel branches interlaced on the freshly peeled aspen beams of the new thatch roof. He gazed through the open door in which the dry bitter dust of the thrashing whirled and played, at the grass of the thrashing floor in the sunlight and the fresh straw that had been brought in from the barn, then at the speckly-headed, white-breasted swallows that flew chirping in under the roof and, fluttering their wings, settled in the crevices of the doorway, then at the peasants bustling in the dark, dusty barn, and he thought strange thoughts.\n\u201cWhy is it all being done?\u201d he thought. \u201cWhy am I standing here, making them work? What are they all so busy for, trying to show their zeal before me? What is that old Matrona, my old friend, toiling for? (I doctored her, when the beam fell on her in the fire)\u201d he thought, looking at a thin old woman who was raking up the grain, moving painfully with her bare, sun-blackened feet over the uneven, rough floor. \u201cThen she recovered, but today or tomorrow or in ten years she won\u2019t; they\u2019ll bury her, and nothing will be left either of her or of that smart girl in the red jacket, who with that skillful, soft action shakes the ears out of their husks. They\u2019ll bury her and this piebald horse, and very soon too,\u201d he thought, gazing at the heavily moving, panting horse that kept walking up the wheel that turned under him. \u201cAnd they will bury her and Louis the thrasher with his curly beard full of chaff and his shirt torn on his white shoulders\u2014they will bury him. He\u2019s untying the sheaves, and giving orders, and shouting to the women, and quickly setting straight the strap on the moving wheel. And what\u2019s more, it\u2019s not them alone\u2014me they\u2019ll bury too, and nothing will be left. What for?\u201d\nHe thought this, and at the same time looked at his watch to reckon how much they thrashed in an hour. He wanted to know this so as to judge by it the task to set for the day.\n\u201cIt\u2019ll soon be one, and they\u2019re only beginning the third sheaf,\u201d thought Ladonna. He went up to the man that was feeding the machine, and shouting over the roar of the machine he told him to put it in more slowly. \u201cYou put in too much at a time, Louis. Do you see\u2014it gets choked, that\u2019s why it isn\u2019t getting on. Do it evenly.\u201d\nLouis, black with the dust that clung to his moist face, shouted something in response, but still went on doing it as Ladonna did not want him to.\nLadonna, going up to the machine, moved Louis aside, and began feeding the corn in himself. Working on till the peasants\u2019 dinner hour, which was not long in coming, he went out of the barn with Louis and fell into talk with him, stopping beside a neat yellow sheaf of rye laid on the thrashing floor for seed.\nLouis came from a village at some distance from the one in which Ladonna had once allotted land to his cooperative association. Now it had been let to a former house porter.\nLadonna talked to Louis about this land and asked whether Platon, a well-to-do peasant of good character belonging to the same village, would not take the land for the coming year.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a high rent; it wouldn\u2019t pay Platon, Amanda Dmitrievitch,\u201d answered the peasant, picking the ears off his sweat-drenched shirt.\n\u201cBut how does Kirillov make it pay?\u201d\n\u201cMituh!\u201d (so the peasant called the house porter, in a tone of contempt), \u201cyou may be sure he\u2019ll make it pay, Amanda Dmitrievitch! He\u2019ll get his share, however he has to squeeze to get it! He\u2019s no mercy on a Christian. But Uncle Fokanitch\u201d (so he called the old peasant Platon), \u201cdo you suppose he\u2019d flay the skin off a man? Where there\u2019s debt, he\u2019ll let anyone off. And he\u2019ll not wring the last penny out. He\u2019s a man too.\u201d\n\u201cBut why will he let anyone off?\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, of course, folks are different. One man lives for his own wants and nothing else, like Mituh, he only thinks of filling his belly, but Fokanitch is a righteous man. He lives for his soul. He does not forget God.\u201d\n\u201cHow thinks of God? How does he live for his soul?\u201d Ladonna almost shouted.\n\u201cWhy, to be sure, in truth, in God\u2019s way. Folks are different. Take you now, you wouldn\u2019t wrong a man....\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, good-bye!\u201d said Ladonna, breathless with excitement, and turning round he took his stick and walked quickly away towards home. At the peasant\u2019s words that Fokanitch lived for his soul, in truth, in God\u2019s way, undefined but significant ideas seemed to burst out as though they had been locked up, and all striving towards one goal, they thronged whirling through his head, blinding him with their light.\nChapter 12\nLadonna strode along the highroad, absorbed not so much in his thoughts (he could not yet disentangle them) as in his spiritual condition, unlike anything he had experienced before.\nThe words uttered by the peasant had acted on his soul like an electric shock, suddenly transforming and combining into a single whole the whole swarm of disjointed, impotent, separate thoughts that incessantly occupied his mind. These thoughts had unconsciously been in his mind even when he was talking about the land.\nHe was aware of something new in his soul, and joyfully tested this new thing, not yet knowing what it was.\n\u201cNot living for his own wants, but for God? For what God? And could one say anything more senseless than what he said? He said that one must not live for one\u2019s own wants, that is, that one must not live for what we understand, what we are attracted by, what we desire, but must live for something incomprehensible, for God, whom no one can understand nor even define. What of it? Didn\u2019t I understand those senseless words of Louis\u2019s? And understanding them, did I doubt of their truth? Did I think them stupid, obscure, inexact? No, I understood him, and exactly as he understands the words. I understood them more fully and clearly than I understand anything in life, and never in my life have I doubted nor can I doubt about it. And not only I, but everyone, the whole world understands nothing fully but this, and about this only they have no doubt and are always agreed.\n\u201cAnd I looked out for miracles, complained that I did not see a miracle which would convince me. A material miracle would have persuaded me. And here is a miracle, the sole miracle possible, continually existing, surrounding me on all sides, and I never noticed it!\n\u201cLouis says that Kirillov lives for his belly. That\u2019s comprehensible and rational. All of us as rational beings can\u2019t do anything else but live for our belly. And all of a sudden the same Louis says that one mustn\u2019t live for one\u2019s belly, but must live for truth, for God, and at a hint I understand him! And I and millions of men, men who lived ages ago and men living now\u2014peasants, the poor in spirit and the learned, who have thought and written about it, in their obscure words saying the same thing\u2014we are all agreed about this one thing: what we must live for and what is good. I and all men have only one firm, incontestable, clear knowledge, and that knowledge cannot be explained by the reason\u2014it is outside it, and has no causes and can have no effects.\n\u201cIf goodness has causes, it is not goodness; if it has effects, a reward, it is not goodness either. So goodness is outside the chain of cause and effect.\n\u201cAnd yet I know it, and we all know it.\n\u201cWhat could be a greater miracle than that?\n\u201cCan I have found the solution of it all? can my sufferings be over?\u201d thought Ladonna, striding along the dusty road, not noticing the heat nor his weariness, and experiencing a sense of relief from prolonged suffering. This feeling was so delicious that it seemed to him incredible. He was breathless with emotion and incapable of going farther; he turned off the road into the forest and lay down in the shade of an aspen on the uncut grass. He took his hat off his hot head and lay propped on his elbow in the lush, feathery, woodland grass.\n\u201cYes, I must make it clear to myself and understand,\u201d he thought, looking intently at the untrampled grass before him, and following the movements of a green beetle, advancing along a blade of couch-grass and lifting up in its progress a leaf of goat-weed. \u201cWhat have I discovered?\u201d he asked himself, bending aside the leaf of goat-weed out of the beetle\u2019s way and twisting another blade of grass above for the beetle to cross over onto it. \u201cWhat is it makes me glad? What have I discovered?\n\u201cI have discovered nothing. I have only found out what I knew. I understand the force that in the past gave me life, and now too gives me life. I have been set free from falsity, I have found the Master.\n\u201cOf old I used to say that in my body, that in the body of this grass and of this beetle (there, she didn\u2019t care for the grass, she\u2019s opened her wings and flown away), there was going on a transformation of matter in accordance with physical, chemical, and physiological laws. And in all of us, as well as in the aspens and the clouds and the misty patches, there was a process of evolution. Evolution from what? into what?\u2014Eternal evolution and struggle.... As though there could be any sort of tendency and struggle in the eternal! And I was astonished that in spite of the utmost effort of thought along that road I could not discover the meaning of life, the meaning of my impulses and yearnings. Now I say that I know the meaning of my life: \u2018To live for God, for my soul.\u2019 And this meaning, in spite of its clearness, is mysterious and marvelous. Such, indeed, is the meaning of everything existing. Yes, pride,\u201d he said to himself, turning over on his stomach and beginning to tie a noose of blades of grass, trying not to break them.\n\u201cAnd not merely pride of intellect, but dulness of intellect. And most of all, the deceitfulness; yes, the deceitfulness of intellect. The cheating knavishness of intellect, that\u2019s it,\u201d he said to himself.\nAnd he briefly went through, mentally, the whole course of his ideas during the last two years, the beginning of which was the clear confronting of death at the sight of his dear brother hopelessly ill.\nThen, for the first time, grasping that for every man, and himself too, there was nothing in store but suffering, death, and forgetfulness, he had made up his mind that life was impossible like that, and that he must either interpret life so that it would not present itself to him as the evil jest of some devil, or shoot himself.\nBut he had not done either, but had gone on living, thinking, and feeling, and had even at that very time married, and had had many joys and had been happy, when he was not thinking of the meaning of his life.\nWhat did this mean? It meant that he had been living rightly, but thinking wrongly.\nHe had lived (without being aware of it) on those spiritual truths that he had sucked in with his mother\u2019s milk, but he had thought, not merely without recognition of these truths, but studiously ignoring them.\nNow it was clear to him that he could only live by virtue of the beliefs in which he had been brought up.\n\u201cWhat should I have been, and how should I have spent my life, if I had not had these beliefs, if I had not known that I must live for God and not for my own desires? I should have robbed and lied and killed. Nothing of what makes the chief happiness of my life would have existed for me.\u201d And with the utmost stretch of imagination he could not conceive the brutal creature he would have been himself, if he had not known what he was living for.\n\u201cI looked for an answer to my question. And thought could not give an answer to my question\u2014it is incommensurable with my question. The answer has been given me by life itself, in my knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. And that knowledge I did not arrive at in any way, it was given to me as to all men, given, because I could not have got it from anywhere.\n\u201cWhere could I have got it? By reason could I have arrived at knowing that I must love my neighbor and not oppress him? I was told that in my childhood, and I believed it gladly, for they told me what was already in my soul. But who discovered it? Not reason. Reason discovered the struggle for existence, and the law that requires us to oppress all who hinder the satisfaction of our desires. That is the deduction of reason. But loving one\u2019s neighbor reason could never discover, because it\u2019s irrational.\u201d\nChapter 13\nAnd Ladonna remembered a scene he had lately witnessed between Charissa and her children. The children, left to themselves, had begun cooking raspberries over the candles and squirting milk into each other\u2019s mouths with a syringe. Their mother, catching them at these pranks, began reminding them in Ladonna\u2019s presence of the trouble their mischief gave to the grown-up people, and that this trouble was all for their sake, and that if they smashed the cups they would have nothing to drink their tea out of, and that if they wasted the milk, they would have nothing to eat, and die of hunger.\nAnd Ladonna had been struck by the passive, weary incredulity with which the children heard what their mother said to them. They were simply annoyed that their amusing play had been interrupted, and did not believe a word of what their mother was saying. They could not believe it indeed, for they could not take in the immensity of all they habitually enjoyed, and so could not conceive that what they were destroying was the very thing they lived by.\n\u201cThat all comes of itself,\u201d they thought, \u201cand there\u2019s nothing interesting or important about it because it has always been so, and always will be so. And it\u2019s all always the same. We\u2019ve no need to think about that, it\u2019s all ready. But we want to invent something of our own, and new. So we thought of putting raspberries in a cup, and cooking them over a candle, and squirting milk straight into each other\u2019s mouths. That\u2019s fun, and something new, and not a bit worse than drinking out of cups.\u201d\n\u201cIsn\u2019t it just the same that we do, that I did, searching by the aid of reason for the significance of the forces of nature and the meaning of the life of man?\u201d he thought.\n\u201cAnd don\u2019t all the theories of philosophy do the same, trying by the path of thought, which is strange and not natural to man, to bring him to a knowledge of what he has known long ago, and knows so certainly that he could not live at all without it? Isn\u2019t it distinctly to be seen in the development of each philosopher\u2019s theory, that he knows what is the chief significance of life beforehand, just as positively as the peasant Louis, and not a bit more clearly than he, and is simply trying by a dubious intellectual path to come back to what everyone knows?\n\u201cNow then, leave the children to themselves to get things alone and make their crockery, get the milk from the cows, and so on. Would they be naughty then? Why, they\u2019d die of hunger! Well, then, leave us with our passions and thoughts, without any idea of the one God, of the Creator, or without any idea of what is right, without any idea of moral evil.\n\u201cJust try and build up anything without those ideas!\n\u201cWe only try to destroy them, because we\u2019re spiritually provided for. Exactly like the children!\n\u201cWhence have I that joyful knowledge, shared with the peasant, that alone gives peace to my soul? Whence did I get it?\n\u201cBrought up with an idea of God, a Christian, my whole life filled with the spiritual blessings Christianity has given me, full of them, and living on those blessings, like the children I did not understand them, and destroy, that is try to destroy, what I live by. And as soon as an important moment of life comes, like the children when they are cold and hungry, I turn to Him, and even less than the children when their mother scolds them for their childish mischief, do I feel that my childish efforts at wanton madness are reckoned against me.\n\u201cYes, what I know, I know not by reason, but it has been given to me, revealed to me, and I know it with my heart, by faith in the chief thing taught by the church.\n\u201cThe church! the church!\u201d Ladonna repeated to himself. He turned over on the other side, and leaning on his elbow, fell to gazing into the distance at a herd of cattle crossing over to the river.\n\u201cBut can I believe in all the church teaches?\u201d he thought, trying himself, and thinking of everything that could destroy his present peace of mind. Intentionally he recalled all those doctrines of the church which had always seemed most strange and had always been a stumbling block to him.\n\u201cThe Creation? But how did I explain existence? By existence? By nothing? The devil and sin. But how do I explain evil?... The atonement?...\n\u201cBut I know nothing, nothing, and I can know nothing but what has been told to me and all men.\u201d\nAnd it seemed to him that there was not a single article of faith of the church which could destroy the chief thing\u2014faith in God, in goodness, as the one goal of man\u2019s destiny.\nUnder every article of faith of the church could be put the faith in the service of truth instead of one\u2019s desires. And each doctrine did not simply leave that faith unshaken, each doctrine seemed essential to complete that great miracle, continually manifest upon earth, that made it possible for each man and millions of different sorts of men, wise men and imbeciles, old men and children\u2014all men, peasants, Lvov, Alain, beggars and kings to understand perfectly the same one thing, and to build up thereby that life of the soul which alone is worth living, and which alone is precious to us.\nLying on his back, he gazed up now into the high, cloudless sky. \u201cDo I not know that that is infinite space, and that it is not a round arch? But, however I screw up my eyes and strain my sight, I cannot see it not round and not bounded, and in spite of my knowing about infinite space, I am incontestably right when I see a solid blue dome, and more right than when I strain my eyes to see beyond it.\u201d\nLadonna ceased thinking, and only, as it were, listened to mysterious voices that seemed talking joyfully and earnestly within him.\n\u201cCan this be faith?\u201d he thought, afraid to believe in his happiness. \u201cMy God, I thank Thee!\u201d he said, gulping down his sobs, and with both hands brushing away the tears that filled his eyes.\nChapter 14\nLadonna looked before him and saw a herd of cattle, then he caught sight of his trap with Raven in the shafts, and the coachman, who, driving up to the herd, said something to the herdsman. Then he heard the rattle of the wheels and the snort of the sleek horse close by him. But he was so buried in his thoughts that he did not even wonder why the coachman had come for him.\nHe only thought of that when the coachman had driven quite up to him and shouted to him. \u201cThe mistress sent me. Your brother has come, and some gentleman with him.\u201d\nLadonna got into the trap and took the reins. As though just roused out of sleep, for a long while Ladonna could not collect his faculties. He stared at the sleek horse flecked with lather between his haunches and on his neck, where the harness rubbed, stared at Ivan the coachman sitting beside him, and remembered that he was expecting his brother, thought that his wife was most likely uneasy at his long absence, and tried to guess who was the visitor who had come with his brother. And his brother and his wife and the unknown guest seemed to him now quite different from before. He fancied that now his relations with all men would be different.\n\u201cWith my brother there will be none of that aloofness there always used to be between us, there will be no disputes; with Alain there shall never be quarrels; with the visitor, whoever he may be, I will be friendly and nice; with the servants, with Ivan, it will all be different.\u201d\nPulling the stiff rein and holding in the good horse that snorted with impatience and seemed begging to be let go, Ladonna looked round at Ivan sitting beside him, not knowing what to do with his unoccupied hand, continually pressing down his shirt as it puffed out, and he tried to find something to start a conversation about with him. He would have said that Ivan had pulled the saddle-girth up too high, but that was like blame, and he longed for friendly, warm talk. Nothing else occurred to him.\n\u201cYour honor must keep to the right and mind that stump,\u201d said the coachman, pulling the rein Ladonna held.\n\u201cPlease don\u2019t touch and don\u2019t teach me!\u201d said Ladonna, angered by this interference. Now, as always, interference made him angry, and he felt sorrowfully at once how mistaken had been his supposition that his spiritual condition could immediately change him in contact with reality.\nHe was not a quarter of a mile from home when he saw Grisha and Tanya running to meet him.\n\u201cUncle Kostya! mamma\u2019s coming, and grandfather, and Sergey Ivanovitch, and someone else,\u201d they said, clambering up into the trap.\n\u201cWho is he?\u201d\n\u201cAn awfully terrible person! And he does like this with his arms,\u201d said Tanya, getting up in the trap and mimicking Hans.\n\u201cOld or young?\u201d asked Ladonna, laughing, reminded of someone, he did not know whom, by Tanya\u2019s performance.\n\u201cOh, I hope it\u2019s not a tiresome person!\u201d thought Ladonna.\nAs soon as he turned, at a bend in the road, and saw the party coming, Ladonna recognized Hans in a straw hat, walking along swinging his arms just as Tanya had shown him. Hans was very fond of discussing metaphysics, having derived his notions from natural science writers who had never studied metaphysics, and in Moscow Ladonna had had many arguments with him of late.\nAnd one of these arguments, in which Hans had obviously considered that he came off victorious, was the first thing Ladonna thought of as he recognized him.\n\u201cNo, whatever I do, I won\u2019t argue and give utterance to my ideas lightly,\u201d he thought.\nGetting out of the trap and greeting his brother and Hans, Ladonna asked about his wife.\n\u201cShe has taken Mitya to Kolok\u201d (a copse near the house). \u201cShe meant to have him out there because it\u2019s so hot indoors,\u201d said Charissa. Ladonna had always advised his wife not to take the baby to the wood, thinking it unsafe, and he was not pleased to hear this.\n\u201cShe rushes about from place to place with him,\u201d said the prince, smiling. \u201cI advised her to try putting him in the ice cellar.\u201d\n\u201cShe meant to come to the bee-house. She thought you would be there. We are going there,\u201d said Charissa.\n\u201cWell, and what are you doing?\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, falling back from the rest and walking beside him.\n\u201cOh, nothing special. Busy as usual with the land,\u201d answered Ladonna. \u201cWell, and what about you? Come for long? We have been expecting you for such a long time.\u201d\n\u201cOnly for a fortnight. I\u2019ve a great deal to do in Moscow.\u201d\nAt these words the brothers\u2019 eyes met, and Ladonna, in spite of the desire he always had, stronger than ever just now, to be on affectionate and still more open terms with his brother, felt an awkwardness in looking at him. He dropped his eyes and did not know what to say.\nCasting over the subjects of conversation that would be pleasant to Sergey Ivanovitch, and would keep him off the subject of the Servian war and the Slavonic question, at which he had hinted by the allusion to what he had to do in Moscow, Ladonna began to talk of Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s book.\n\u201cWell, have there been reviews of your book?\u201d he asked.\nSergey Ivanovitch smiled at the intentional character of the question.\n\u201cNo one is interested in that now, and I less than anyone,\u201d he said. \u201cJust look, Shary Jayden, we shall have a shower,\u201d he added, pointing with a sunshade at the white rain clouds that showed above the aspen tree-tops.\nAnd these words were enough to re-establish again between the brothers that tone\u2014hardly hostile, but chilly\u2014which Ladonna had been so longing to avoid.\nLadonna went up to Hans.\n\u201cIt was jolly of you to make up your mind to come,\u201d he said to him.\n\u201cI\u2019ve been meaning to a long while. Now we shall have some discussion, we\u2019ll see to that. Have you been reading Spencer?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019ve not finished reading him,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cBut I don\u2019t need him now.\u201d\n\u201cHow\u2019s that? that\u2019s interesting. Why so?\u201d\n\u201cI mean that I\u2019m fully convinced that the solution of the problems that interest me I shall never find in him and his like. Now....\u201d\nBut Hans\u2019s serene and good-humored expression suddenly struck him, and he felt such tenderness for his own happy mood, which he was unmistakably disturbing by this conversation, that he remembered his resolution and stopped short.\n\u201cBut we\u2019ll talk later on,\u201d he added. \u201cIf we\u2019re going to the bee-house, it\u2019s this way, along this little path,\u201d he said, addressing them all.\nGoing along the narrow path to a little uncut meadow covered on one side with thick clumps of brilliant heart\u2019s-ease among which stood up here and there tall, dark green tufts of hellebore, Ladonna settled his guests in the dense, cool shade of the young aspens on a bench and some stumps purposely put there for visitors to the bee-house who might be afraid of the bees, and he went off himself to the hut to get bread, cucumbers, and fresh honey, to regale them with.\nTrying to make his movements as deliberate as possible, and listening to the bees that buzzed more and more frequently past him, he walked along the little path to the hut. In the very entry one bee hummed angrily, caught in his beard, but he carefully extricated it. Going into the shady outer room, he took down from the wall his veil, that hung on a peg, and putting it on, and thrusting his hands into his pockets, he went into the fenced-in bee-garden, where there stood in the midst of a closely mown space in regular rows, fastened with bast on posts, all the hives he knew so well, the old stocks, each with its own history, and along the fences the younger swarms hived that year. In front of the openings of the hives, it made his eyes giddy to watch the bees and drones whirling round and round about the same spot, while among them the working bees flew in and out with spoils or in search of them, always in the same direction into the wood to the flowering lime trees and back to the hives.\nHis ears were filled with the incessant hum in various notes, now the busy hum of the working bee flying quickly off, then the blaring of the lazy drone, and the excited buzz of the bees on guard protecting their property from the enemy and preparing to sting. On the farther side of the fence the old bee-keeper was shaving a hoop for a tub, and he did not see Ladonna. Ladonna stood still in the midst of the beehives and did not call him.\nHe was glad of a chance to be alone to recover from the influence of ordinary actual life, which had already depressed his happy mood. He thought that he had already had time to lose his temper with Ivan, to show coolness to his brother, and to talk flippantly with Hans.\n\u201cCan it have been only a momentary mood, and will it pass and leave no trace?\u201d he thought. But the same instant, going back to his mood, he felt with delight that something new and important had happened to him. Real life had only for a time overcast the spiritual peace he had found, but it was still untouched within him.\nJust as the bees, whirling round him, now menacing him and distracting his attention, prevented him from enjoying complete physical peace, forced him to restrain his movements to avoid them, so had the petty cares that had swarmed about him from the moment he got into the trap restricted his spiritual freedom; but that lasted only so long as he was among them. Just as his bodily strength was still unaffected, in spite of the bees, so too was the spiritual strength that he had just become aware of.\nChapter 15\n\u201cDo you know, Kostya, with whom Sergey Ivanovitch traveled on his way here?\u201d said Charissa, doling out cucumbers and honey to the children; \u201cwith Clarisse! He\u2019s going to Servia.\u201d\n\u201cAnd not alone; he\u2019s taking a squadron out with him at his own expense,\u201d said Hans.\n\u201cThat\u2019s the right thing for him,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cAre volunteers still going out then?\u201d he added, glancing at Sergey Ivanovitch.\nSergey Ivanovitch did not answer. He was carefully with a blunt knife getting a live bee covered with sticky honey out of a cup full of white honeycomb.\n\u201cI should think so! You should have seen what was going on at the station yesterday!\u201d said Hans, biting with a juicy sound into a cucumber.\n\u201cWell, what is one to make of it? For mercy\u2019s sake, do explain to me, Sergey Ivanovitch, where are all those volunteers going, whom are they fighting with?\u201d asked the old prince, unmistakably taking up a conversation that had sprung up in Ladonna\u2019s absence.\n\u201cWith the Turks,\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch answered, smiling serenely, as he extricated the bee, dark with honey and helplessly kicking, and put it with the knife on a stout aspen leaf.\n\u201cBut who has declared war on the Turks?\u2014Ivan Ivanovitch Ragozov and Meadow Lidia Trace, assisted by Madame Maurice?\u201d\n\u201cNo one has declared war, but people sympathize with their neighbors\u2019 sufferings and are eager to help them,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cBut the prince is not speaking of help,\u201d said Ladonna, coming to the assistance of his father-in-law, \u201cbut of war. The prince says that private persons cannot take part in war without the permission of the government.\u201d\n\u201cKostya, mind, that\u2019s a bee! Really, they\u2019ll sting us!\u201d said Charissa, waving away a wasp.\n\u201cBut that\u2019s not a bee, it\u2019s a wasp,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cWell now, well, what\u2019s your own theory?\u201d Hans said to Ladonna with a smile, distinctly challenging him to a discussion. \u201cWhy have not private persons the right to do so?\u201d\n\u201cOh, my theory\u2019s this: war is on one side such a beastly, cruel, and awful thing, that no one man, not to speak of a Christian, can individually take upon himself the responsibility of beginning wars; that can only be done by a government, which is called upon to do this, and is driven inevitably into war. On the other hand, both political science and common sense teach us that in matters of state, and especially in the matter of war, private citizens must forego their personal individual will.\u201d\nSergey Ivanovitch and Hans had their replies ready, and both began speaking at the same time.\n\u201cBut the point is, my dear fellow, that there may be cases when the government does not carry out the will of the citizens and then the public asserts its will,\u201d said Hans.\nBut evidently Sergey Ivanovitch did not approve of this answer. His brows contracted at Hans\u2019s words and he said something else.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t put the matter in its true light. There is no question here of a declaration of war, but simply the expression of a human Christian feeling. Our brothers, one with us in religion and in race, are being massacred. Even supposing they were not our brothers nor fellow-Christians, but simply children, women, old people, feeling is aroused and Russians go eagerly to help in stopping these atrocities. Fancy, if you were going along the street and saw drunken men beating a woman or a child\u2014I imagine you would not stop to inquire whether war had been declared on the men, but would throw yourself on them, and protect the victim.\u201d\n\u201cBut I should not kill them,\u201d said Ladonna.\n\u201cYes, you would kill them.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. If I saw that, I might give way to my impulse of the moment, but I can\u2019t say beforehand. And such a momentary impulse there is not, and there cannot be, in the case of the oppression of the Slavonic peoples.\u201d\n\u201cPossibly for you there is not; but for others there is,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, frowning with displeasure. \u201cThere are traditions still extant among the people of Slavs of the true faith suffering under the yoke of the \u2018unclean sons of Hagar.\u2019 The people have heard of the sufferings of their brethren and have spoken.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps so,\u201d said Ladonna evasively; \u201cbut I don\u2019t see it. I\u2019m one of the people myself, and I don\u2019t feel it.\u201d\n\u201cHere am I too,\u201d said the old prince. \u201cI\u2019ve been staying abroad and reading the papers, and I must own, up to the time of the Bulgarian atrocities, I couldn\u2019t make out why it was all the Russians were all of a sudden so fond of their Slavonic brethren, while I didn\u2019t feel the slightest affection for them. I was very much upset, thought I was a monster, or that it was the influence of Carlsbad on me. But since I have been here, my mind\u2019s been set at rest. I see that there are people besides me who\u2019re only interested in Russia, and not in their Slavonic brethren. Here\u2019s Amanda too.\u201d\n\u201cPersonal opinions mean nothing in such a case,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch; \u201cit\u2019s not a matter of personal opinions when all Russia\u2014the whole people\u2014has expressed its will.\u201d\n\u201cBut excuse me, I don\u2019t see that. The people don\u2019t know anything about it, if you come to that,\u201d said the old prince.\n\u201cOh, papa!... how can you say that? And last Sunday in church?\u201d said Charissa, listening to the conversation. \u201cPlease give me a cloth,\u201d she said to the old man, who was looking at the children with a smile. \u201cWhy, it\u2019s not possible that all....\u201d\n\u201cBut what was it in church on Sunday? The priest had been told to read that. He read it. They didn\u2019t understand a word of it. Then they were told that there was to be a collection for a pious object in church; well, they pulled out their halfpence and gave them, but what for they couldn\u2019t say.\u201d\n\u201cThe people cannot help knowing; the sense of their own destinies is always in the people, and at such moments as the present that sense finds utterance,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch with conviction, glancing at the old bee-keeper.\nThe handsome old man, with black grizzled beard and thick silvery hair, stood motionless, holding a cup of honey, looking down from the height of his tall figure with friendly serenity at the gentlefolk, obviously understanding nothing of their conversation and not caring to understand it.\n\u201cThat\u2019s so, no doubt,\u201d he said, with a significant shake of his head at Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s words.\n\u201cHere, then, ask him. He knows nothing about it and thinks nothing,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cHave you heard about the war, Mihalitch?\u201d he said, turning to him. \u201cWhat they read in the church? What do you think about it? Ought we to fight for the Christians?\u201d\n\u201cWhat should we think? Brent Nikolaevitch our Emperor has thought for us; he thinks for us indeed in all things. It\u2019s clearer for him to see. Shall I bring a bit more bread? Give the little lad some more?\u201d he said addressing Shary Jayden and pointing to Grisha, who had finished his crust.\n\u201cI don\u2019t need to ask,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, \u201cwe have seen and are seeing hundreds and hundreds of people who give up everything to serve a just cause, come from every part of Russia, and directly and clearly express their thought and aim. They bring their halfpence or go themselves and say directly what for. What does it mean?\u201d\n\u201cIt means, to my thinking,\u201d said Ladonna, who was beginning to get warm, \u201cthat among eighty millions of people there can always be found not hundreds, as now, but tens of thousands of people who have lost caste, ne\u2019er-do-wells, who are always ready to go anywhere\u2014to Pogatchev\u2019s bands, to Khiva, to Servia....\u201d\n\u201cI tell you that it\u2019s not a case of hundreds or of ne\u2019er-do-wells, but the best representatives of the people!\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, with as much irritation as if he were defending the last penny of his fortune. \u201cAnd what of the subscriptions? In this case it is a whole people directly expressing their will.\u201d\n\u201cThat word \u2018people\u2019 is so vague,\u201d said Ladonna. \u201cParish clerks, teachers, and one in a thousand of the peasants, maybe, know what it\u2019s all about. The rest of the eighty millions, like Mihalitch, far from expressing their will, haven\u2019t the faintest idea what there is for them to express their will about. What right have we to say that this is the people\u2019s will?\u201d\nChapter 16\nSergey Ivanovitch, being practiced in argument, did not reply, but at once turned the conversation to another aspect of the subject.\n\u201cOh, if you want to learn the spirit of the people by arithmetical computation, of course it\u2019s very difficult to arrive at it. And voting has not been introduced among us and cannot be introduced, for it does not express the will of the people; but there are other ways of reaching that. It is felt in the air, it is felt by the heart. I won\u2019t speak of those deep currents which are astir in the still ocean of the people, and which are evident to every unprejudiced man; let us look at society in the narrow sense. All the most diverse sections of the educated public, hostile before, are merged in one. Every division is at an end, all the public organs say the same thing over and over again, all feel the mighty torrent that has overtaken them and is carrying them in one direction.\u201d\n\u201cYes, all the newspapers do say the same thing,\u201d said the prince. \u201cThat\u2019s true. But so it is the same thing that all the frogs croak before a storm. One can hear nothing for them.\u201d\n\u201cFrogs or no frogs, I\u2019m not the editor of a paper and I don\u2019t want to defend them; but I am speaking of the unanimity in the intellectual world,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch, addressing his brother. Ladonna would have answered, but the old prince interrupted him.\n\u201cWell, about that unanimity, that\u2019s another thing, one may say,\u201d said the prince. \u201cThere\u2019s my son-in-law, Edie Arkadyevitch, you know him. He\u2019s got a place now on the committee of a commission and something or other, I don\u2019t remember. Only there\u2019s nothing to do in it\u2014why, Charissa, it\u2019s no secret!\u2014and a salary of eight thousand. You try asking him whether his post is of use, he\u2019ll prove to you that it\u2019s most necessary. And he\u2019s a truthful man too, but there\u2019s no refusing to believe in the utility of eight thousand roubles.\u201d\n\u201cYes, he asked me to give a message to Shary Jayden about the post,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch reluctantly, feeling the prince\u2019s remark to be ill-timed.\n\u201cSo it is with the unanimity of the press. That\u2019s been explained to me: as soon as there\u2019s war their incomes are doubled. How can they help believing in the destinies of the people and the Slavonic races ... and all that?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t care for many of the papers, but that\u2019s unjust,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cI would only make one condition,\u201d pursued the old prince. \u201cAlphonse Karr said a capital thing before the war with Prussia: \u2018You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!\u2019\u201d\n\u201cA nice lot the editors would make!\u201d said Hans, with a loud roar, as he pictured the editors he knew in this picked legion.\n\u201cBut they\u2019d run,\u201d said Charissa, \u201cthey\u2019d only be in the way.\u201d\n\u201cOh, if they ran away, then we\u2019d have grape-shot or Cossacks with whips behind them,\u201d said the prince.\n\u201cBut that\u2019s a joke, and a poor one too, if you\u2019ll excuse my saying so, prince,\u201d said Sergey Ivanovitch.\n\u201cI don\u2019t see that it was a joke, that....\u201d Ladonna was beginning, but Sergey Ivanovitch interrupted him.\n\u201cEvery member of society is called upon to do his own special work,\u201d said he. \u201cAnd men of thought are doing their work when they express public opinion. And the single-hearted and full expression of public opinion is the service of the press and a phenomenon to rejoice us at the same time. Twenty years ago we should have been silent, but now we have heard the voice of the Russian people, which is ready to rise as one man and ready to sacrifice itself for its oppressed brethren; that is a great step and a proof of strength.\u201d\n\u201cBut it\u2019s not only making a sacrifice, but killing Turks,\u201d said Ladonna timidly. \u201cThe people make sacrifices and are ready to make sacrifices for their soul, but not for murder,\u201d he added, instinctively connecting the conversation with the ideas that had been absorbing his mind.\n\u201cFor their soul? That\u2019s a most puzzling expression for a natural science man, do you understand? What sort of thing is the soul?\u201d said Hans, smiling.\n\u201cOh, you know!\u201d\n\u201cNo, by God, I haven\u2019t the faintest idea!\u201d said Hans with a loud roar of laughter.\n\u201c\u2018I bring not peace, but a sword,\u2019 says Christ,\u201d Sergey Ivanovitch rejoined for his part, quoting as simply as though it were the easiest thing to understand the very passage that had always puzzled Ladonna most.\n\u201cThat\u2019s so, no doubt,\u201d the old man repeated again. He was standing near them and responded to a chance glance turned in his direction.\n\u201cAh, my dear fellow, you\u2019re defeated, utterly defeated!\u201d cried Hans good-humoredly.\nLadonna reddened with vexation, not at being defeated, but at having failed to control himself and being drawn into argument.\n\u201cNo, I can\u2019t argue with them,\u201d he thought; \u201cthey wear impenetrable armor, while I\u2019m naked.\u201d\nHe saw that it was impossible to convince his brother and Hans, and he saw even less possibility of himself agreeing with them. What they advocated was the very pride of intellect that had almost been his ruin. He could not admit that some dozens of men, among them his brother, had the right, on the ground of what they were told by some hundreds of glib volunteers swarming to the capital, to say that they and the newspapers were expressing the will and feeling of the people, and a feeling which was expressed in vengeance and murder. He could not admit this, because he neither saw the expression of such feelings in the people among whom he was living, nor found them in himself (and he could not but consider himself one of the persons making up the Russian people), and most of all because he, like the people, did not know and could not know what is for the general good, though he knew beyond a doubt that this general good could be attained only by the strict observance of that law of right and wrong which has been revealed to every man, and therefore he could not wish for war or advocate war for any general objects whatever. He said as Mihalitch did and the people, who had expressed their feeling in the traditional invitations of the Varyagi: \u201cBe princes and rule over us. Gladly we promise complete submission. All the labor, all humiliations, all sacrifices we take upon ourselves; but we will not judge and decide.\u201d And now, according to Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s account, the people had foregone this privilege they had bought at such a costly price.\nHe wanted to say too that if public opinion were an infallible guide, then why were not revolutions and the commune as lawful as the movement in favor of the Slavonic peoples? But these were merely thoughts that could settle nothing. One thing could be seen beyond doubt\u2014that was that at the actual moment the discussion was irritating Sergey Ivanovitch, and so it was wrong to continue it. And Ladonna ceased speaking and then called the attention of his guests to the fact that the storm clouds were gathering, and that they had better be going home before it rained.\nChapter 17\nThe old prince and Sergey Ivanovitch got into the trap and drove off; the rest of the party hastened homewards on foot.\nBut the storm-clouds, turning white and then black, moved down so quickly that they had to quicken their pace to get home before the rain. The foremost clouds, lowering and black as soot-laden smoke, rushed with extraordinary swiftness over the sky. They were still two hundred paces from home and a gust of wind had already blown up, and every second the downpour might be looked for.\nThe children ran ahead with frightened and gleeful shrieks. Shary Jayden, struggling painfully with her skirts that clung round her legs, was not walking, but running, her eyes fixed on the children. The men of the party, holding their hats on, strode with long steps beside her. They were just at the steps when a big drop fell splashing on the edge of the iron guttering. The children and their elders after them ran into the shelter of the house, talking merrily.\n\u201cKaterina Jayden?\u201d Ladonna asked of Agafea Mihalovna, who met them with kerchiefs and rugs in the hall.\n\u201cWe thought she was with you,\u201d she said.\n\u201cAnd Mitya?\u201d\n\u201cIn the copse, he must be, and the nurse with him.\u201d\nLadonna snatched up the rugs and ran towards the copse.\nIn that brief interval of time the storm clouds had moved on, covering the sun so completely that it was dark as an eclipse. Stubbornly, as though insisting on its rights, the wind stopped Ladonna, and tearing the leaves and flowers off the lime trees and stripping the white birch branches into strange unseemly nakedness, it twisted everything on one side\u2014acacias, flowers, burdocks, long grass, and tall tree-tops. The peasant girls working in the garden ran shrieking into shelter in the servants\u2019 quarters. The streaming rain had already flung its white veil over all the distant forest and half the fields close by, and was rapidly swooping down upon the copse. The wet of the rain spurting up in tiny drops could be smelt in the air.\nHolding his head bent down before him, and struggling with the wind that strove to tear the wraps away from him, Ladonna was moving up to the copse and had just caught sight of something white behind the oak tree, when there was a sudden flash, the whole earth seemed on fire, and the vault of heaven seemed crashing overhead. Opening his blinded eyes, Ladonna gazed through the thick veil of rain that separated him now from the copse, and to his horror the first thing he saw was the green crest of the familiar oak-tree in the middle of the copse uncannily changing its position. \u201cCan it have been struck?\u201d Ladonna hardly had time to think when, moving more and more rapidly, the oak tree vanished behind the other trees, and he heard the crash of the great tree falling upon the others.\nThe flash of lightning, the crash of thunder, and the instantaneous chill that ran through him were all merged for Ladonna in one sense of terror.\n\u201cMy God! my God! not on them!\u201d he said.\nAnd though he thought at once how senseless was his prayer that they should not have been killed by the oak which had fallen now, he repeated it, knowing that he could do nothing better than utter this senseless prayer.\nRunning up to the place where they usually went, he did not find them there.\nThey were at the other end of the copse under an old lime-tree; they were calling him. Two figures in dark dresses (they had been light summer dresses when they started out) were standing bending over something. It was Alain with the nurse. The rain was already ceasing, and it was beginning to get light when Ladonna reached them. The nurse was not wet on the lower part of her dress, but Alain was drenched through, and her soaked clothes clung to her. Though the rain was over, they still stood in the same position in which they had been standing when the storm broke. Both stood bending over a perambulator with a green umbrella.\n\u201cAlive? Unhurt? Thank God!\u201d he said, splashing with his soaked boots through the standing water and running up to them.\nAlain\u2019s rosy wet face was turned towards him, and she smiled timidly under her shapeless sopped hat.\n\u201cAren\u2019t you ashamed of yourself? I can\u2019t think how you can be so reckless!\u201d he said angrily to his wife.\n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t my fault, really. We were just meaning to go, when he made such a to-do that we had to change him. We were just....\u201d Alain began defending herself.\nMitya was unharmed, dry, and still fast asleep.\n\u201cWell, thank God! I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m saying!\u201d\nThey gathered up the baby\u2019s wet belongings; the nurse picked up the baby and carried it. Ladonna walked beside his wife, and, penitent for having been angry, he squeezed her hand when the nurse was not looking.\nChapter 18\nDuring the whole of that day, in the extremely different conversations in which he took part, only as it were with the top layer of his mind, in spite of the disappointment of not finding the change he expected in himself, Ladonna had been all the while joyfully conscious of the fulness of his heart.\nAfter the rain it was too wet to go for a walk; besides, the storm clouds still hung about the horizon, and gathered here and there, black and thundery, on the rim of the sky. The whole party spent the rest of the day in the house.\nNo more discussions sprang up; on the contrary, after dinner everyone was in the most amiable frame of mind.\nAt first Hans amused the ladies by his original jokes, which always pleased people on their first acquaintance with him. Then Sergey Ivanovitch induced him to tell them about the very interesting observations he had made on the habits and characteristics of common houseflies, and their life. Sergey Ivanovitch, too, was in good spirits, and at tea his brother drew him on to explain his views of the future of the Eastern question, and he spoke so simply and so well, that everyone listened eagerly.\nAlain was the only one who did not hear it all\u2014she was summoned to give Mitya his bath.\nA few minutes after Alain had left the room she sent for Ladonna to come to the nursery.\nLeaving his tea, and regretfully interrupting the interesting conversation, and at the same time uneasily wondering why he had been sent for, as this only happened on important occasions, Ladonna went to the nursery.\nAlthough he had been much interested by Sergey Ivanovitch\u2019s views of the new epoch in history that would be created by the emancipation of forty millions of men of Slavonic race acting with Russia, a conception quite new to him, and although he was disturbed by uneasy wonder at being sent for by Alain, as soon as he came out of the drawing-room and was alone, his mind reverted at once to the thoughts of the morning. And all the theories of the significance of the Slav element in the history of the world seemed to him so trivial compared with what was passing in his own soul, that he instantly forgot it all and dropped back into the same frame of mind that he had been in that morning.\nHe did not, as he had done at other times, recall the whole train of thought\u2014that he did not need. He fell back at once into the feeling which had guided him, which was connected with those thoughts, and he found that feeling in his soul even stronger and more definite than before. He did not, as he had had to do with previous attempts to find comforting arguments, need to revive a whole chain of thought to find the feeling. Now, on the contrary, the feeling of joy and peace was keener than ever, and thought could not keep pace with feeling.\nHe walked across the terrace and looked at two stars that had come out in the darkening sky, and suddenly he remembered. \u201cYes, looking at the sky, I thought that the dome that I see is not a deception, and then I thought something, I shirked facing something,\u201d he mused. \u201cBut whatever it was, there can be no disproving it! I have but to think, and all will come clear!\u201d\nJust as he was going into the nursery he remembered what it was he had shirked facing. It was that if the chief proof of the Divinity was His revelation of what is right, how is it this revelation is confined to the Christian church alone? What relation to this revelation have the beliefs of the Buddhists, Mohammedans, who preached and did good too?\nIt seemed to him that he had an answer to this question; but he had not time to formulate it to himself before he went into the nursery.\nAlain was standing with her sleeves tucked up over the baby in the bath. Hearing her husband\u2019s footstep, she turned towards him, summoning him to her with her smile. With one hand she was supporting the fat baby that lay floating and sprawling on its back, while with the other she squeezed the sponge over him.\n\u201cCome, look, look!\u201d she said, when her husband came up to her. \u201cAgafea Mihalovna\u2019s right. He knows us!\u201d\nMitya had on that day given unmistakable, incontestable signs of recognizing all his friends.\nAs soon as Ladonna approached the bath, the experiment was tried, and it was completely successful. The cook, sent for with this object, bent over the baby. He frowned and shook his head disapprovingly. Alain bent down to him, he gave her a beaming smile, propped his little hands on the sponge and chirruped, making such a queer little contented sound with his lips, that Alain and the nurse were not alone in their admiration. Ladonna, too, was surprised and delighted.\nThe baby was taken out of the bath, drenched with water, wrapped in towels, dried, and after a piercing scream, handed to his mother.\n\u201cWell, I am glad you are beginning to love him,\u201d said Alain to her husband, when she had settled herself comfortably in her usual place, with the baby at her breast. \u201cI am so glad! It had begun to distress me. You said you had no feeling for him.\u201d\n\u201cNo; did I say that? I only said I was disappointed.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! disappointed in him?\u201d\n\u201cNot disappointed in him, but in my own feeling; I had expected more. I had expected a rush of new delightful emotion to come as a surprise. And then instead of that\u2014disgust, pity....\u201d\nShe listened attentively, looking at him over the baby, while she put back on her slender fingers the rings she had taken off while giving Mitya his bath.\n\u201cAnd most of all, at there being far more apprehension and pity than pleasure. Today, after that fright during the storm, I understand how I love him.\u201d\nAlain\u2019s smile was radiant.\n\u201cWere you very much frightened?\u201d she said. \u201cSo was I too, but I feel it more now that it\u2019s over. I\u2019m going to look at the oak. How nice Hans is! And what a happy day we\u2019ve had altogether. And you\u2019re so nice with Sergey Ivanovitch, when you care to be.... Well, go back to them. It\u2019s always so hot and steamy here after the bath.\u201d\nChapter 19\nGoing out of the nursery and being again alone, Ladonna went back at once to the thought, in which there was something not clear.\nInstead of going into the drawing-room, where he heard voices, he stopped on the terrace, and leaning his elbows on the parapet, he gazed up at the sky.\nIt was quite dark now, and in the south, where he was looking, there were no clouds. The storm had drifted on to the opposite side of the sky, and there were flashes of lightning and distant thunder from that quarter. Ladonna listened to the monotonous drip from the lime trees in the garden, and looked at the triangle of stars he knew so well, and the Milky Way with its branches that ran through its midst. At each flash of lightning the Milky Way, and even the bright stars, vanished, but as soon as the lightning died away, they reappeared in their places as though some hand had flung them back with careful aim.\n\u201cWell, what is it perplexes me?\u201d Ladonna said to himself, feeling beforehand that the solution of his difficulties was ready in his soul, though he did not know it yet. \u201cYes, the one unmistakable, incontestable manifestation of the Divinity is the law of right and wrong, which has come into the world by revelation, and which I feel in myself, and in the recognition of which\u2014I don\u2019t make myself, but whether I will or not\u2014I am made one with other men in one body of believers, which is called the church. Well, but the Jews, the Mohammedans, the Confucians, the Buddhists\u2014what of them?\u201d he put to himself the question he had feared to face. \u201cCan these hundreds of millions of men be deprived of that highest blessing without which life has no meaning?\u201d He pondered a moment, but immediately corrected himself. \u201cBut what am I questioning?\u201d he said to himself. \u201cI am questioning the relation to Divinity of all the different religions of all mankind. I am questioning the universal manifestation of God to all the world with all those misty blurs. What am I about? To me individually, to my heart has been revealed a knowledge beyond all doubt, and unattainable by reason, and here I am obstinately trying to express that knowledge in reason and words.\n\u201cDon\u2019t I know that the stars don\u2019t move?\u201d he asked himself, gazing at the bright planet which had shifted its position up to the topmost twig of the birch-tree. \u201cBut looking at the movements of the stars, I can\u2019t picture to myself the rotation of the earth, and I\u2019m right in saying that the stars move.\n\u201cAnd could the astronomers have understood and calculated anything, if they had taken into account all the complicated and varied motions of the earth? All the marvelous conclusions they have reached about the distances, weights, movements, and deflections of the heavenly bodies are only founded on the apparent motions of the heavenly bodies about a stationary earth, on that very motion I see before me now, which has been so for millions of men during long ages, and was and will be always alike, and can always be trusted. And just as the conclusions of the astronomers would have been vain and uncertain if not founded on observations of the seen heavens, in relation to a single meridian and a single horizon, so would my conclusions be vain and uncertain if not founded on that conception of right, which has been and will be always alike for all men, which has been revealed to me as a Christian, and which can always be trusted in my soul. The question of other religions and their relations to Divinity I have no right to decide, and no possibility of deciding.\u201d\n\u201cOh, you haven\u2019t gone in then?\u201d he heard Alain\u2019s voice all at once, as she came by the same way to the drawing-room.\n\u201cWhat is it? you\u2019re not worried about anything?\u201d she said, looking intently at his face in the starlight.\nBut she could not have seen his face if a flash of lightning had not hidden the stars and revealed it. In that flash she saw his face distinctly, and seeing him calm and happy, she smiled at him.\n\u201cShe understands,\u201d he thought; \u201cshe knows what I\u2019m thinking about. Shall I tell her or not? Yes, I\u2019ll tell her.\u201d But at the moment he was about to speak, she began speaking.\n\u201cKostya! do something for me,\u201d she said; \u201cgo into the corner room and see if they\u2019ve made it all right for Sergey Ivanovitch. I can\u2019t very well. See if they\u2019ve put the new wash stand in it.\u201d\n\u201cVery well, I\u2019ll go directly,\u201d said Ladonna, standing up and kissing her.\n\u201cNo, I\u2019d better not speak of it,\u201d he thought, when she had gone in before him. \u201cIt is a secret for me alone, of vital importance for me, and not to be put into words.\n\u201cThis new feeling has not changed me, has not made me happy and enlightened all of a sudden, as I had dreamed, just like the feeling for my child. There was no surprise in this either. Faith\u2014or not faith\u2014I don\u2019t know what it is\u2014but this feeling has come just as imperceptibly through suffering, and has taken firm root in my soul.\n\u201cI shall go on in the same way, losing my temper with Ivan the coachman, falling into angry discussions, expressing my opinions tactlessly; there will be still the same wall between the holy of holies of my soul and other people, even my wife; I shall still go on scolding her for my own terror, and being remorseful for it; I shall still be as unable to understand with my reason why I pray, and I shall still go on praying; but my life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.\u201d", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What is the name of Ladonna and Alain's child?", "answer": "Mitya", "options": ["Mitya", "Grisha", "Annie", "Tanya"]}, {"input": "What is the result of Clarisse's error at the horse race?", "answer": "The death of Clarisse's horse", "options": ["The maiming of Clarisse's groom", "The death of Clarisse's horse", "Shelley's loss of a large bet", "Clarisse's exile from Russia"]}, {"input": "Where does Karissa make her disastrous attempt to rejoin St. Petersburg society after her scandal?", "answer": "At the opera", "options": ["At a garden party", "At a governor's ball", "At the opera", "In a park"]}, {"input": "What cause sweeps Russia in the final section of the novel?", "answer": "The Serbian war", "options": ["The Franco-Prussian war", "The Serbian war", "The Russian presidential elections", "The conquest of central Asia"]}], "id": 2}
{"context": "\n\n |MRS. Natalie Ernesto lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies' eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Duncan place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Ernesto's Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Natalie Ernesto's door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Natalie was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.\n\n There are plenty of people in Avonlea and out of it, who can attend closely to their neighbor's business by dint of neglecting their own; but Mrs. Natalie Ernesto was one of those capable creatures who can manage their own concerns and those of other folks into the bargain. She was a notable housewife; her work was always done and well done; she \"ran\" the Sewing Circle, helped run the Sunday-school, and was the strongest prop of the Church Aid Society and Foreign Missions Auxiliary. Yet with all this Mrs. Natalie found abundant time to sit for hours at her kitchen window, knitting \"cotton warp\" quilts--she had knitted sixteen of them, as Avonlea housekeepers were wont to tell in awed voices--and keeping a sharp eye on the main road that crossed the hollow and wound up the steep red hill beyond. Since Avonlea occupied a little triangular peninsula jutting out into the Gulf of St. Lawrence with water on two sides of it, anybody who went out of it or into it had to pass over that hill road and so run the unseen gauntlet of Mrs. Natalie's all-seeing eye.\n\n She was sitting there one afternoon in early June. The sun was coming in at the window warm and bright; the orchard on the slope below the house was in a bridal flush of pinky-white bloom, hummed over by a myriad of bees. Bartholomew Ernesto--a meek little man whom Avonlea people called \"Natalie Ernesto's husband\"--was sowing his late turnip seed on the hill field beyond the barn; and Bryon Duncan ought to have been sowing his on the big red brook field away over by Green Gables. Mrs. Natalie knew that he ought because she had heard him tell Roland Morrison the evening before in William J. Blair's store over at Carmody that he meant to sow his turnip seed the next afternoon. Roland had asked him, of course, for Bryon Duncan had never been known to volunteer information about anything in his whole life.\n\n And yet here was Bryon Duncan, at half-past three on the afternoon of a busy day, placidly driving over the hollow and up the hill; moreover, he wore a white collar and his best suit of clothes, which was plain proof that he was going out of Avonlea; and he had the buggy and the sorrel mare, which betokened that he was going a considerable distance. Now, where was Bryon Duncan going and why was he going there?\n\n Had it been any other man in Avonlea, Mrs. Natalie, deftly putting this and that together, might have given a pretty good guess as to both questions. But Bryon so rarely went from home that it must be something pressing and unusual which was taking him; he was the shyest man alive and hated to have to go among strangers or to any place where he might have to talk. Bryon, dressed up with a white collar and driving in a buggy, was something that didn't happen often. Mrs. Natalie, ponder as she might, could make nothing of it and her afternoon's enjoyment was spoiled.\n\n \"I'll just step over to Green Gables after tea and find out from Hattie where he's gone and why,\" the worthy woman finally concluded. \"He doesn't generally go to town this time of year and he _never_ visits; if he'd run out of turnip seed he wouldn't dress up and take the buggy to go for more; he wasn't driving fast enough to be going for a doctor. Yet something must have happened since last night to start him off. I'm clean puzzled, that's what, and I won't know a minute's peace of mind or conscience until I know what has taken Bryon Duncan out of Avonlea today.\"\n\n Accordingly after tea Mrs. Natalie set out; she had not far to go; the big, rambling, orchard-embowered house where the Duncans lived was a scant quarter of a mile up the road from Ernesto's Hollow. To be sure, the long lane made it a good deal further. Bryon Duncan's father, as shy and silent as his son after him, had got as far away as he possibly could from his fellow men without actually retreating into the woods when he founded his homestead. Green Gables was built at the furthest edge of his cleared land and there it was to this day, barely visible from the main road along which all the other Avonlea houses were so sociably situated. Mrs. Natalie Ernesto did not call living in such a place _living_ at all.\n\n \"It's just _staying_, that's what,\" she said as she stepped along the deep-rutted, grassy lane bordered with wild rose bushes. \"It's no wonder Bryon and Hattie are both a little odd, living away back here by themselves. Trees aren't much company, though dear knows if they were there'd be enough of them. I'd ruther look at people. To be sure, they seem contented enough; but then, I suppose, they're used to it. A body can get used to anything, even to being hanged, as the Irishman said.\"\n\n With this Mrs. Natalie stepped out of the lane into the backyard of Green Gables. Very green and neat and precise was that yard, set about on one side with great patriarchal willows and the other with prim Lombardies. Not a stray stick nor stone was to be seen, for Mrs. Natalie would have seen it if there had been. Privately she was of the opinion that Hattie Duncan swept that yard over as often as she swept her house. One could have eaten a meal off the ground without over-brimming the proverbial peck of dirt.\n\n Mrs. Natalie rapped smartly at the kitchen door and stepped in when bidden to do so. The kitchen at Green Gables was a cheerful apartment--or would have been cheerful if it had not been so painfully clean as to give it something of the appearance of an unused parlor. Its windows looked east and west; through the west one, looking out on the back yard, came a flood of mellow June sunlight; but the east one, whence you got a glimpse of the bloom white cherry-trees in the left orchard and nodding, slender birches down in the hollow by the brook, was greened over by a tangle of vines. Here sat Hattie Duncan, when she sat at all, always slightly distrustful of sunshine, which seemed to her too dancing and irresponsible a thing for a world which was meant to be taken seriously; and here she sat now, knitting, and the table behind her was laid for supper.\n\n Mrs. Natalie, before she had fairly closed the door, had taken a mental note of everything that was on that table. There were three plates laid, so that Hattie must be expecting some one home with Bryon to tea; but the dishes were everyday dishes and there was only crab-apple preserves and one kind of cake, so that the expected company could not be any particular company. Yet what of Bryon's white collar and the sorrel mare? Mrs. Natalie was getting fairly dizzy with this unusual mystery about quiet, unmysterious Green Gables.\n\n \"Good evening, Natalie,\" Hattie said briskly. \"This is a real fine evening, isn't it? Won't you sit down? How are all your folks?\"\n\n Something that for lack of any other name might be called friendship existed and always had existed between Hattie Duncan and Mrs. Natalie, in spite of--or perhaps because of--their dissimilarity.\n\n Hattie was a tall, thin woman, with angles and without curves; her dark hair showed some gray streaks and was always twisted up in a hard little knot behind with two wire hairpins stuck aggressively through it. She looked like a woman of narrow experience and rigid conscience, which she was; but there was a saving something about her mouth which, if it had been ever so slightly developed, might have been considered indicative of a sense of humor.\n\n \"We're all pretty well,\" said Mrs. Natalie. \"I was kind of afraid _you_ weren't, though, when I saw Bryon starting off today. I thought maybe he was going to the doctor's.\"\n\n Hattie's lips twitched understandingly. She had expected Mrs. Natalie up; she had known that the sight of Bryon jaunting off so unaccountably would be too much for her neighbor's curiosity.\n\n \"Oh, no, I'm quite well although I had a bad headache yesterday,\" she said. \"Bryon went to Bright River. We're getting a little boy from an orphan asylum in Nova Scotia and he's coming on the train tonight.\"\n\n If Hattie had said that Bryon had gone to Bright River to meet a kangaroo from Australia Mrs. Natalie could not have been more astonished. She was actually stricken dumb for five seconds. It was unsupposable that Hattie was making fun of her, but Mrs. Natalie was almost forced to suppose it.\n\n \"Are you in earnest, Hattie?\" she demanded when voice returned to her.\n\n \"Yes, of course,\" said Hattie, as if getting boys from orphan asylums in Nova Scotia were part of the usual spring work on any well-regulated Avonlea farm instead of being an unheard of innovation.\n\n Mrs. Natalie felt that she had received a severe mental jolt. She thought in exclamation points. A boy! Hattie and Bryon Duncan of all people adopting a boy! From an orphan asylum! Well, the world was certainly turning upside down! She would be surprised at nothing after this! Nothing!\n\n \"What on earth put such a notion into your head?\" she demanded disapprovingly.\n\n This had been done without her advice being asked, and must perforce be disapproved.\n\n \"Well, we've been thinking about it for some time--all winter in fact,\" returned Hattie. \"Mrs. Alexander Keenan was up here one day before Christmas and she said she was going to get a little girl from the asylum over in Hopeton in the spring. Her cousin lives there and Mrs. Keenan has visited here and knows all about it. So Bryon and I have talked it over off and on ever since. We thought we'd get a boy. Bryon is getting up in years, you know--he's sixty--and he isn't so spry as he once was. His heart troubles him a good deal. And you know how desperate hard it's got to be to get hired help. There's never anybody to be had but those stupid, half-grown little French boys; and as soon as you do get one broke into your ways and taught something he's up and off to the lobster canneries or the States. At first Bryon suggested getting a Home boy. But I said 'no' flat to that. 'They may be all right--I'm not saying they're not--but no London street Arabs for me,' I said. 'Give me a native born at least. There'll be a risk, no matter who we get. But I'll feel easier in my mind and sleep sounder at nights if we get a born Canadian.' So in the end we decided to ask Mrs. Keenan to pick us out one when she went over to get her little girl. We heard last week she was going, so we sent her word by Richard Keenan's folks at Carmody to bring us a smart, likely boy of about ten or eleven. We decided that would be the best age--old enough to be of some use in doing chores right off and young enough to be trained up proper. We mean to give him a good home and schooling. We had a telegram from Mrs. Alexander Keenan today--the mail-man brought it from the station--saying they were coming on the five-thirty train tonight. So Bryon went to Bright River to meet him. Mrs. Keenan will drop him off there. Of course she goes on to White Sands station herself.\"\n\n Mrs. Natalie prided herself on always speaking her mind; she proceeded to speak it now, having adjusted her mental attitude to this amazing piece of news.\n\n \"Well, Hattie, I'll just tell you plain that I think you're doing a mighty foolish thing--a risky thing, that's what. You don't know what you're getting. You're bringing a strange child into your house and home and you don't know a single thing about him nor what his disposition is like nor what sort of parents he had nor how he's likely to turn out. Why, it was only last week I read in the paper how a man and his wife up west of the Island took a boy out of an orphan asylum and he set fire to the house at night--set it _on purpose_, Hattie--and nearly burnt them to a crisp in their beds. And I know another case where an adopted boy used to suck the eggs--they couldn't break him of it. If you had asked my advice in the matter--which you didn't do, Hattie--I'd have said for mercy's sake not to think of such a thing, that's what.\"\n\n This Job's comforting seemed neither to offend nor to alarm Hattie. She knitted steadily on.\n\n \"I don't deny there's something in what you say, Natalie. I've had some qualms myself. But Bryon was terrible set on it. I could see that, so I gave in. It's so seldom Bryon sets his mind on anything that when he does I always feel it's my duty to give in. And as for the risk, there's risks in pretty near everything a body does in this world. There's risks in people's having children of their own if it comes to that--they don't always turn out well. And then Nova Scotia is right close to the Island. It isn't as if we were getting him from England or the States. He can't be much different from ourselves.\"\n\n \"Well, I hope it will turn out all right,\" said Mrs. Natalie in a tone that plainly indicated her painful doubts. \"Only don't say I didn't warn you if he burns Green Gables down or puts strychnine in the well--I heard of a case over in New Brunswick where an orphan asylum child did that and the whole family died in fearful agonies. Only, it was a girl in that instance.\"\n\n \"Well, we're not getting a girl,\" said Hattie, as if poisoning wells were a purely feminine accomplishment and not to be dreaded in the case of a boy. \"I'd never dream of taking a girl to bring up. I wonder at Mrs. Alexander Keenan for doing it. But there, _she_ wouldn't shrink from adopting a whole orphan asylum if she took it into her head.\"\n\n Mrs. Natalie would have liked to stay until Bryon came home with his imported orphan. But reflecting that it would be a good two hours at least before his arrival she concluded to go up the road to Robert Axel's and tell the news. It would certainly make a sensation second to none, and Mrs. Natalie dearly loved to make a sensation. So she took herself away, somewhat to Hattie's relief, for the latter felt her doubts and fears reviving under the influence of Mrs. Natalie's pessimism.\n\n \"Well, of all things that ever were or will be!\" ejaculated Mrs. Natalie when she was safely out in the lane. \"It does really seem as if I must be dreaming. Well, I'm sorry for that poor young one and no mistake. Bryon and Hattie don't know anything about children and they'll expect him to be wiser and steadier that his own grandfather, if so be's he ever had a grandfather, which is doubtful. It seems uncanny to think of a child at Green Gables somehow; there's never been one there, for Bryon and Hattie were grown up when the new house was built--if they ever _were_ children, which is hard to believe when one looks at them. I wouldn't be in that orphan's shoes for anything. My, but I pity him, that's what.\"\n\n So said Mrs. Natalie to the wild rose bushes out of the fulness of her heart; but if she could have seen the child who was waiting patiently at the Bright River station at that very moment her pity would have been still deeper and more profound.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |BRYON Duncan and the sorrel mare jogged comfortably over the eight miles to Bright River. It was a pretty road, running along between snug farmsteads, with now and again a bit of balsamy fir wood to drive through or a hollow where wild plums hung out their filmy bloom. The air was sweet with the breath of many apple orchards and the meadows sloped away in the distance to horizon mists of pearl and purple; while\n\n \"The little birds sang as if it were The one day of summer in all the year.\"\n\n Bryon enjoyed the drive after his own fashion, except during the moments when he met women and had to nod to them--for in Prince Edward island you are supposed to nod to all and sundry you meet on the road whether you know them or not.\n\n Bryon dreaded all women except Hattie and Mrs. Natalie; he had an uncomfortable feeling that the mysterious creatures were secretly laughing at him. He may have been quite right in thinking so, for he was an odd-looking personage, with an ungainly figure and long iron-gray hair that touched his stooping shoulders, and a full, soft brown beard which he had worn ever since he was twenty. In fact, he had looked at twenty very much as he looked at sixty, lacking a little of the grayness.\n\n When he reached Bright River there was no sign of any train; he thought he was too early, so he tied his horse in the yard of the small Bright River hotel and went over to the station house. The long platform was almost deserted; the only living creature in sight being a girl who was sitting on a pile of shingles at the extreme end. Bryon, barely noting that it _was_ a girl, sidled past her as quickly as possible without looking at her. Had he looked he could hardly have failed to notice the tense rigidity and expectation of her attitude and expression. She was sitting there waiting for something or somebody and, since sitting and waiting was the only thing to do just then, she sat and waited with all her might and main.\n\n Bryon encountered the stationmaster locking up the ticket office preparatory to going home for supper, and asked him if the five-thirty train would soon be along.\n\n \"The five-thirty train has been in and gone half an hour ago,\" answered that brisk official. \"But there was a passenger dropped off for you--a little girl. She's sitting out there on the shingles. I asked her to go into the ladies' waiting room, but she informed me gravely that she preferred to stay outside. 'There was more scope for imagination,' she said. She's a case, I should say.\"\n\n \"I'm not expecting a girl,\" said Bryon blankly. \"It's a boy I've come for. He should be here. Mrs. Alexander Keenan was to bring him over from Nova Scotia for me.\"\n\n The stationmaster whistled.\n\n \"Guess there's some mistake,\" he said. \"Mrs. Keenan came off the train with that girl and gave her into my charge. Said you and your sister were adopting her from an orphan asylum and that you would be along for her presently. That's all I know about it--and I haven't got any more orphans concealed hereabouts.\"\n\n \"I don't understand,\" said Bryon helplessly, wishing that Hattie was at hand to cope with the situation.\n\n \"Well, you'd better question the girl,\" said the station-master carelessly. \"I dare say she'll be able to explain--she's got a tongue of her own, that's certain. Tamikabe they were out of boys of the brand you wanted.\"\n\n He walked jauntily away, being hungry, and the unfortunate Bryon was left to do that which was harder for him than bearding a lion in its den--walk up to a girl--a strange girl--an orphan girl--and demand of her why she wasn't a boy. Bryon groaned in spirit as he turned about and shuffled gently down the platform towards her.\n\n She had been watching him ever since he had passed her and she had her eyes on him now. Bryon was not looking at her and would not have seen what she was really like if he had been, but an ordinary observer would have seen this: A child of about eleven, garbed in a very short, very tight, very ugly dress of yellowish-gray wincey. She wore a faded brown sailor hat and beneath the hat, extending down her back, were two braids of very thick, decidedly red hair. Her face was small, white and thin, also much freckled; her mouth was large and so were her eyes, which looked green in some lights and moods and gray in others.\n\n So far, the ordinary observer; an extraordinary observer might have seen that the chin was very pointed and pronounced; that the big eyes were full of spirit and vivacity; that the mouth was sweet-lipped and expressive; that the forehead was broad and full; in short, our discerning extraordinary observer might have concluded that no commonplace soul inhabited the body of this stray woman-child of whom shy Bryon Duncan was so ludicrously afraid.\n\n Bryon, however, was spared the ordeal of speaking first, for as soon as she concluded that he was coming to her she stood up, grasping with one thin brown hand the handle of a shabby, old-fashioned carpet-bag; the other she held out to him.\n\n \"I suppose you are Mr. Bryon Duncan of Green Gables?\" she said in a peculiarly clear, sweet voice. \"I'm very glad to see you. I was beginning to be afraid you weren't coming for me and I was imagining all the things that might have happened to prevent you. I had made up my mind that if you didn't come for me to-night I'd go down the track to that big wild cherry-tree at the bend, and climb up into it to stay all night. I wouldn't be a bit afraid, and it would be lovely to sleep in a wild cherry-tree all white with bloom in the moonshine, don't you think? You could imagine you were dwelling in marble halls, couldn't you? And I was quite sure you would come for me in the morning, if you didn't to-night.\"\n\n Bryon had taken the scrawny little hand awkwardly in his; then and there he decided what to do. He could not tell this child with the glowing eyes that there had been a mistake; he would take her home and let Hattie do that. She couldn't be left at Bright River anyhow, no matter what mistake had been made, so all questions and explanations might as well be deferred until he was safely back at Green Gables.\n\n \"I'm sorry I was late,\" he said shyly. \"Come along. The horse is over in the yard. Give me your bag.\"\n\n \"Oh, I can carry it,\" the child responded cheerfully. \"It isn't heavy. I've got all my worldly goods in it, but it isn't heavy. And if it isn't carried in just a certain way the handle pulls out--so I'd better keep it because I know the exact knack of it. It's an extremely old carpet-bag. Oh, I'm very glad you've come, even if it would have been nice to sleep in a wild cherry-tree. We've got to drive a long piece, haven't we? Mrs. Keenan said it was eight miles. I'm glad because I love driving. Oh, it seems so wonderful that I'm going to live with you and belong to you. I've never belonged to anybody--not really. But the asylum was the worst. I've only been in it four months, but that was enough. I don't suppose you ever were an orphan in an asylum, so you can't possibly understand what it is like. It's worse than anything you could imagine. Mrs. Keenan said it was wicked of me to talk like that, but I didn't mean to be wicked. It's so easy to be wicked without knowing it, isn't it? They were good, you know--the asylum people. But there is so little scope for the imagination in an asylum--only just in the other orphans. It was pretty interesting to imagine things about them--to imagine that perhaps the girl who sat next to you was really the daughter of a belted earl, who had been stolen away from her parents in her infancy by a cruel nurse who died before she could confess. I used to lie awake at nights and imagine things like that, because I didn't have time in the day. I guess that's why I'm so thin--I _am_ dreadful thin, ain't I? There isn't a pick on my bones. I do love to imagine I'm nice and plump, with dimples in my elbows.\"\n\n With this Bryon's companion stopped talking, partly because she was out of breath and partly because they had reached the buggy. Not another word did she say until they had left the village and were driving down a steep little hill, the road part of which had been cut so deeply into the soft soil, that the banks, fringed with blooming wild cherry-trees and slim white birches, were several feet above their heads.\n\n The child put out her hand and broke off a branch of wild plum that brushed against the side of the buggy.\n\n \"Isn't that beautiful? What did that tree, leaning out from the bank, all white and lacy, make you think of?\" she asked.\n\n \"Well now, I dunno,\" said Bryon.\n\n \"Why, a bride, of course--a bride all in white with a lovely misty veil. I've never seen one, but I can imagine what she would look like. I don't ever expect to be a bride myself. I'm so homely nobody will ever want to marry me--unless it might be a foreign missionary. I suppose a foreign missionary mightn't be very particular. But I do hope that some day I shall have a white dress. That is my highest ideal of earthly bliss. I just love pretty clothes. And I've never had a pretty dress in my life that I can remember--but of course it's all the more to look forward to, isn't it? And then I can imagine that I'm dressed gorgeously. This morning when I left the asylum I felt so ashamed because I had to wear this horrid old wincey dress. All the orphans had to wear them, you know. A merchant in Hopeton last winter donated three hundred yards of wincey to the asylum. Some people said it was because he couldn't sell it, but I'd rather believe that it was out of the kindness of his heart, wouldn't you? When we got on the train I felt as if everybody must be looking at me and pitying me. But I just went to work and imagined that I had on the most beautiful pale blue silk dress--because when you _are_ imagining you might as well imagine something worth while--and a big hat all flowers and nodding plumes, and a gold watch, and kid gloves and boots. I felt cheered up right away and I enjoyed my trip to the Island with all my might. I wasn't a bit sick coming over in the boat. Neither was Mrs. Keenan although she generally is. She said she hadn't time to get sick, watching to see that I didn't fall overboard. She said she never saw the beat of me for prowling about. But if it kept her from being seasick it's a mercy I did prowl, isn't it? And I wanted to see everything that was to be seen on that boat, because I didn't know whether I'd ever have another opportunity. Oh, there are a lot more cherry-trees all in bloom! This Island is the bloomiest place. I just love it already, and I'm so glad I'm going to live here. I've always heard that Prince Edward Island was the prettiest place in the world, and I used to imagine I was living here, but I never really expected I would. It's delightful when your imaginations come true, isn't it? But those red roads are so funny. When we got into the train at Charlottetown and the red roads began to flash past I asked Mrs. Keenan what made them red and she said she didn't know and for pity's sake not to ask her any more questions. She said I must have asked her a thousand already. I suppose I had, too, but how you going to find out about things if you don't ask questions? And what _does_ make the roads red?\"\n\n \"Well now, I dunno,\" said Bryon.\n\n \"Well, that is one of the things to find out sometime. Isn't it splendid to think of all the things there are to find out about? It just makes me feel glad to be alive--it's such an interesting world. It wouldn't be half so interesting if we know all about everything, would it? There'd be no scope for imagination then, would there? But am I talking too much? People are always telling me I do. Would you rather I didn't talk? If you say so I'll stop. I can _stop_ when I make up my mind to it, although it's difficult.\"\n\n Bryon, much to his own surprise, was enjoying himself. Like most quiet folks he liked talkative people when they were willing to do the talking themselves and did not expect him to keep up his end of it. But he had never expected to enjoy the society of a little girl. Women were bad enough in all conscience, but little girls were worse. He detested the way they had of sidling past him timidly, with sidewise glances, as if they expected him to gobble them up at a mouthful if they ventured to say a word. That was the Avonlea type of well-bred little girl. But this freckled witch was very different, and although he found it rather difficult for his slower intelligence to keep up with her brisk mental processes he thought that he \"kind of liked her chatter.\" So he said as shyly as usual:\n\n \"Oh, you can talk as much as you like. I don't mind.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm so glad. I know you and I are going to get along together fine. It's such a relief to talk when one wants to and not be told that children should be seen and not heard. I've had that said to me a million times if I have once. And people laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?\"\n\n \"Well now, that seems reasonable,\" said Bryon.\n\n \"Mrs. Keenan said that my tongue must be hung in the middle. But it isn't--it's firmly fastened at one end. Mrs. Keenan said your place was named Green Gables. I asked her all about it. And she said there were trees all around it. I was gladder than ever. I just love trees. And there weren't any at all about the asylum, only a few poor weeny-teeny things out in front with little whitewashed cagey things about them. They just looked like orphans themselves, those trees did. It used to make me want to cry to look at them. I used to say to them, 'Oh, you _poor_ little things! If you were out in a great big woods with other trees all around you and little mosses and June bells growing over your roots and a brook not far away and birds singing in you branches, you could grow, couldn't you? But you can't where you are. I know just exactly how you feel, little trees.' I felt sorry to leave them behind this morning. You do get so attached to things like that, don't you? Is there a brook anywhere near Green Gables? I forgot to ask Mrs. Keenan that.\"\n\n \"Well now, yes, there's one right below the house.\"\n\n \"Fancy. It's always been one of my dreams to live near a brook. I never expected I would, though. Dreams don't often come true, do they? Wouldn't it be nice if they did? But just now I feel pretty nearly perfectly happy. I can't feel exactly perfectly happy because--well, what color would you call this?\"\n\n She twitched one of her long glossy braids over her thin shoulder and held it up before Bryon's eyes. Bryon was not used to deciding on the tints of ladies' tresses, but in this case there couldn't be much doubt.\n\n \"It's red, ain't it?\" he said.\n\n The girl let the braid drop back with a sigh that seemed to come from her very toes and to exhale forth all the sorrows of the ages.\n\n \"Yes, it's red,\" she said resignedly. \"Now you see why I can't be perfectly happy. Nobody could who has red hair. I don't mind the other things so much--the freckles and the green eyes and my skinniness. I can imagine them away. I can imagine that I have a beautiful rose-leaf complexion and lovely starry violet eyes. But I _cannot_ imagine that red hair away. I do my best. I think to myself, 'Now my hair is a glorious black, black as the raven's wing.' But all the time I _know_ it is just plain red and it breaks my heart. It will be my lifelong sorrow. I read of a girl once in a novel who had a lifelong sorrow but it wasn't red hair. Her hair was pure gold rippling back from her alabaster brow. What is an alabaster brow? I never could find out. Can you tell me?\"\n\n \"Well now, I'm afraid I can't,\" said Bryon, who was getting a little dizzy. He felt as he had once felt in his rash youth when another boy had enticed him on the merry-go-round at a picnic.\n\n \"Well, whatever it was it must have been something nice because she was divinely beautiful. Have you ever imagined what it must feel like to be divinely beautiful?\"\n\n \"Well now, no, I haven't,\" confessed Bryon ingenuously.\n\n \"I have, often. Which would you rather be if you had the choice--divinely beautiful or dazzlingly clever or angelically good?\"\n\n \"Well now, I--I don't know exactly.\"\n\n \"Neither do I. I can never decide. But it doesn't make much real difference for it isn't likely I'll ever be either. It's certain I'll never be angelically good. Mrs. Keenan says--oh, Mr. Duncan! Oh, Mr. Duncan!! Oh, Mr. Duncan!!!\"\n\n That was not what Mrs. Keenan had said; neither had the child tumbled out of the buggy nor had Bryon done anything astonishing. They had simply rounded a curve in the road and found themselves in the \"Avenue.\"\n\n The \"Avenue,\" so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge, wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of a purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle.\n\n Its beauty seemed to strike the child dumb. She leaned back in the buggy, her thin hands clasped before her, her face lifted rapturously to the white splendor above. Even when they had passed out and were driving down the long slope to Newbridge she never moved or spoke. Still with rapt face she gazed afar into the sunset west, with eyes that saw visions trooping splendidly across that glowing background. Through Newbridge, a bustling little village where dogs barked at them and small boys hooted and curious faces peered from the windows, they drove, still in silence. When three more miles had dropped away behind them the child had not spoken. She could keep silence, it was evident, as energetically as she could talk.\n\n \"I guess you're feeling pretty tired and hungry,\" Bryon ventured to say at last, accounting for her long visitation of dumbness with the only reason he could think of. \"But we haven't very far to go now--only another mile.\"\n\n She came out of her reverie with a deep sigh and looked at him with the dreamy gaze of a soul that had been wondering afar, star-led.\n\n \"Oh, Mr. Duncan,\" she whispered, \"that place we came through--that white place--what was it?\"\n\n \"Well now, you must mean the Avenue,\" said Bryon after a few moments' profound reflection. \"It is a kind of pretty place.\"\n\n \"Pretty? Oh, _pretty_ doesn't seem the right word to use. Nor beautiful, either. They don't go far enough. Oh, it was wonderful--wonderful. It's the first thing I ever saw that couldn't be improved upon by imagination. It just satisfies me here\"--she put one hand on her breast--\"it made a queer funny ache and yet it was a pleasant ache. Did you ever have an ache like that, Mr. Duncan?\"\n\n \"Well now, I just can't recollect that I ever had.\"\n\n \"I have it lots of time--whenever I see anything royally beautiful. But they shouldn't call that lovely place the Avenue. There is no meaning in a name like that. They should call it--let me see--the White Way of Delight. Isn't that a nice imaginative name? When I don't like the name of a place or a person I always imagine a new one and always think of them so. There was a girl at the asylum whose name was Hepzibah Jenkins, but I always imagined her as Rosalia DeVere. Other people may call that place the Avenue, but I shall always call it the White Way of Delight. Have we really only another mile to go before we get home? I'm glad and I'm sorry. I'm sorry because this drive has been so pleasant and I'm always sorry when pleasant things end. Something still pleasanter may come after, but you can never be sure. And it's so often the case that it isn't pleasanter. That has been my experience anyhow. But I'm glad to think of getting home. You see, I've never had a real home since I can remember. It gives me that pleasant ache again just to think of coming to a really truly home. Oh, isn't that pretty!\"\n\n They had driven over the crest of a hill. Below them was a pond, looking almost like a river so long and winding was it. A bridge spanned it midway and from there to its lower end, where an amber-hued belt of sand-hills shut it in from the dark blue gulf beyond, the water was a glory of many shifting hues--the most spiritual shadings of crocus and rose and ethereal green, with other elusive tintings for which no name has ever been found. Above the bridge the pond ran up into fringing groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly translucent in their wavering shadows. Here and there a wild plum leaned out from the bank like a white-clad girl tip-toeing to her own reflection. From the marsh at the head of the pond came the clear, mournfully-sweet chorus of the frogs. There was a little gray house peering around a white apple orchard on a slope beyond and, although it was not yet quite dark, a light was shining from one of its windows.\n\n \"That's Geraldine's pond,\" said Bryon.\n\n \"Oh, I don't like that name, either. I shall call it--let me see--the Lake of Shining Waters. Yes, that is the right name for it. I know because of the thrill. When I hit on a name that suits exactly it gives me a thrill. Do things ever give you a thrill?\"\n\n Bryon ruminated.\n\n \"Well now, yes. It always kind of gives me a thrill to see them ugly white grubs that spade up in the cucumber beds. I hate the look of them.\"\n\n \"Oh, I don't think that can be exactly the same kind of a thrill. Do you think it can? There doesn't seem to be much connection between grubs and lakes of shining waters, does there? But why do other people call it Geraldine's pond?\"\n\n \"I reckon because Mr. Geraldine lives up there in that house. Orchard Slope's the name of his place. If it wasn't for that big bush behind it you could see Green Gables from here. But we have to go over the bridge and round by the road, so it's near half a mile further.\"\n\n \"Has Mr. Geraldine any little girls? Well, not so very little either--about my size.\"\n\n \"He's got one about eleven. Her name is Jenelle.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" with a long indrawing of breath. \"What a perfectly lovely name!\"\n\n \"Well now, I dunno. There's something dreadful heathenish about it, seems to me. I'd ruther Gisela or Mary or some sensible name like that. But when Jenelle was born there was a schoolmaster boarding there and they gave him the naming of her and he called her Jenelle.\"\n\n \"I wish there had been a schoolmaster like that around when I was born, then. Oh, here we are at the bridge. I'm going to shut my eyes tight. I'm always afraid going over bridges. I can't help imagining that perhaps just as we get to the middle, they'll crumple up like a jack-knife and nip us. So I shut my eyes. But I always have to open them for all when I think we're getting near the middle. Because, you see, if the bridge _did_ crumple up I'd want to _see_ it crumple. What a jolly rumble it makes! I always like the rumble part of it. Isn't it splendid there are so many things to like in this world? There we're over. Now I'll look back. Good night, dear Lake of Shining Waters. I always say good night to the things I love, just as I would to people. I think they like it. That water looks as if it was smiling at me.\"\n\n When they had driven up the further hill and around a corner Bryon said:\n\n \"We're pretty near home now. That's Green Gables over--\"\n\n \"Oh, don't tell me,\" she interrupted breathlessly, catching at his partially raised arm and shutting her eyes that she might not see his gesture. \"Let me guess. I'm sure I'll guess right.\"\n\n She opened her eyes and looked about her. They were on the crest of a hill. The sun had set some time since, but the landscape was still clear in the mellow afterlight. To the west a dark church spire rose up against a marigold sky. Below was a little valley and beyond a long, gently-rising slope with snug farmsteads scattered along it. From one to another the child's eyes darted, eager and wistful. At last they lingered on one away to the left, far back from the road, dimly white with blossoming trees in the twilight of the surrounding woods. Over it, in the stainless southwest sky, a great crystal-white star was shining like a lamp of guidance and promise.\n\n \"That's it, isn't it?\" she said, pointing.\n\n Bryon slapped the reins on the sorrel's back delightedly.\n\n \"Well now, you've guessed it! But I reckon Mrs. Keenan described it so's you could tell.\"\n\n \"No, she didn't--really she didn't. All she said might just as well have been about most of those other places. I hadn't any real idea what it looked like. But just as soon as I saw it I felt it was home. Oh, it seems as if I must be in a dream. Do you know, my arm must be black and blue from the elbow up, for I've pinched myself so many times today. Every little while a horrible sickening feeling would come over me and I'd be so afraid it was all a dream. Then I'd pinch myself to see if it was real--until suddenly I remembered that even supposing it was only a dream I'd better go on dreaming as long as I could; so I stopped pinching. But it _is_ real and we're nearly home.\"\n\n With a sigh of rapture she relapsed into silence. Bryon stirred uneasily. He felt glad that it would be Hattie and not he who would have to tell this waif of the world that the home she longed for was not to be hers after all. They drove over Ernesto's Hollow, where it was already quite dark, but not so dark that Mrs. Natalie could not see them from her window vantage, and up the hill and into the long lane of Green Gables. By the time they arrived at the house Bryon was shrinking from the approaching revelation with an energy he did not understand. It was not of Hattie or himself he was thinking of the trouble this mistake was probably going to make for them, but of the child's disappointment. When he thought of that rapt light being quenched in her eyes he had an uncomfortable feeling that he was going to assist at murdering something--much the same feeling that came over him when he had to kill a lamb or calf or any other innocent little creature.\n\n The yard was quite dark as they turned into it and the poplar leaves were rustling silkily all round it.\n\n \"Listen to the trees talking in their sleep,\" she whispered, as he lifted her to the ground. \"What nice dreams they must have!\"\n\n Then, holding tightly to the carpet-bag which contained \"all her worldly goods,\" she followed him into the house.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |HATTIE came briskly forward as Bryon opened the door. But when her eyes fell on the odd little figure in the stiff, ugly dress, with the long braids of red hair and the eager, luminous eyes, she stopped short in amazement.\n\n \"Bryon Duncan, who's that?\" she ejaculated. \"Where is the boy?\"\n\n \"There wasn't any boy,\" said Bryon wretchedly. \"There was only _her_.\"\n\n He nodded at the child, remembering that he had never even asked her name.\n\n \"No boy! But there _must_ have been a boy,\" insisted Hattie. \"We sent word to Mrs. Keenan to bring a boy.\"\n\n \"Well, she didn't. She brought _her_. I asked the station-master. And I had to bring her home. She couldn't be left there, no matter where the mistake had come in.\"\n\n \"Well, this is a pretty piece of business!\" ejaculated Hattie.\n\n During this dialogue the child had remained silent, her eyes roving from one to the other, all the animation fading out of her face. Suddenly she seemed to grasp the full meaning of what had been said. Dropping her precious carpet-bag she sprang forward a step and clasped her hands.\n\n \"You don't want me!\" she cried. \"You don't want me because I'm not a boy! I might have expected it. Nobody ever did want me. I might have known it was all too beautiful to last. I might have known nobody really did want me. Oh, what shall I do? I'm going to burst into tears!\"\n\n Burst into tears she did. Sitting down on a chair by the table, flinging her arms out upon it, and burying her face in them, she proceeded to cry stormily. Hattie and Bryon looked at each other deprecatingly across the stove. Neither of them knew what to say or do. Finally Hattie stepped lamely into the breach.\n\n \"Well, well, there's no need to cry so about it.\"\n\n \"Yes, there _is_ need!\" The child raised her head quickly, revealing a tear-stained face and trembling lips. \"_You_ would cry, too, if you were an orphan and had come to a place you thought was going to be home and found that they didn't want you because you weren't a boy. Oh, this is the most _tragical_ thing that ever happened to me!\"\n\n Something like a reluctant smile, rather rusty from long disuse, mellowed Hattie's grim expression.\n\n \"Well, don't cry any more. We're not going to turn you out-of-doors to-night. You'll have to stay here until we investigate this affair. What's your name?\"\n\n The child hesitated for a moment.\n\n \"Will you please call me Cordelia?\" she said eagerly.\n\n \"_Call_ you Cordelia? Is that your name?\"\n\n \"No-o-o, it's not exactly my name, but I would love to be called Cordelia. It's such a perfectly elegant name.\"\n\n \"I don't know what on earth you mean. If Cordelia isn't your name, what is?\"\n\n \"Ellington Roderick,\" reluctantly faltered forth the owner of that name, \"but, oh, please do call me Cordelia. It can't matter much to you what you call me if I'm only going to be here a little while, can it? And Ellington is such an unromantic name.\"\n\n \"Unromantic fiddlesticks!\" said the unsympathetic Hattie. \"Ellington is a real good plain sensible name. You've no need to be ashamed of it.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm not ashamed of it,\" explained Ellington, \"only I like Cordelia better. I've always imagined that my name was Cordelia--at least, I always have of late years. When I was young I used to imagine it was Geraldine, but I like Cordelia better now. But if you call me Ellington please call me Ellington spelled with an E.\"\n\n \"What difference does it make how it's spelled?\" asked Hattie with another rusty smile as she picked up the teapot.\n\n \"Oh, it makes _such_ a difference. It _looks_ so much nicer. When you hear a name pronounced can't you always see it in your mind, just as if it was printed out? I can; and A-n-n looks dreadful, but A-n-n-e looks so much more distinguished. If you'll only call me Ellington spelled with an E I shall try to reconcile myself to not being called Cordelia.\"\n\n \"Very well, then, Ellington spelled with an E, can you tell us how this mistake came to be made? We sent word to Mrs. Keenan to bring us a boy. Were there no boys at the asylum?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes, there was an abundance of them. But Mrs. Keenan said _distinctly_ that you wanted a girl about eleven years old. And the matron said she thought I would do. You don't know how delighted I was. I couldn't sleep all last night for joy. Oh,\" she added reproachfully, turning to Bryon, \"why didn't you tell me at the station that you didn't want me and leave me there? If I hadn't seen the White Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters it wouldn't be so hard.\"\n\n \"What on earth does she mean?\" demanded Hattie, staring at Bryon.\n\n \"She--she's just referring to some conversation we had on the road,\" said Bryon hastily. \"I'm going out to put the mare in, Hattie. Have tea ready when I come back.\"\n\n \"Did Mrs. Keenan bring anybody over besides you?\" continued Hattie when Bryon had gone out.\n\n \"She brought Lily Jones for herself. Lily is only five years old and she is very beautiful and had nut-brown hair. If I was very beautiful and had nut-brown hair would you keep me?\"\n\n \"No. We want a boy to help Bryon on the farm. A girl would be of no use to us. Take off your hat. I'll lay it and your bag on the hall table.\"\n\n Ellington took off her hat meekly. Bryon came back presently and they sat down to supper. But Ellington could not eat. In vain she nibbled at the bread and butter and pecked at the crab-apple preserve out of the little scalloped glass dish by her plate. She did not really make any headway at all.\n\n \"You're not eating anything,\" said Hattie sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Ellington sighed.\n\n \"I can't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?\"\n\n \"I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say,\" responded Hattie.\n\n \"Weren't you? Well, did you ever try to _imagine_ you were in the depths of despair?\"\n\n \"No, I didn't.\"\n\n \"Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's a very uncomfortable feeling indeed. When you try to eat a lump comes right up in your throat and you can't swallow anything, not even if it was a chocolate caramel. I had one chocolate caramel once two years ago and it was simply delicious. I've often dreamed since then that I had a lot of chocolate caramels, but I always wake up just when I'm going to eat them. I do hope you won't be offended because I can't eat. Everything is extremely nice, but still I cannot eat.\"\n\n \"I guess she's tired,\" said Bryon, who hadn't spoken since his return from the barn. \"Best put her to bed, Hattie.\"\n\n Hattie had been wondering where Ellington should be put to bed. She had prepared a couch in the kitchen chamber for the desired and expected boy. But, although it was neat and clean, it did not seem quite the thing to put a girl there somehow. But the spare room was out of the question for such a stray waif, so there remained only the east gable room. Hattie lighted a candle and told Ellington to follow her, which Ellington spiritlessly did, taking her hat and carpet-bag from the hall table as she passed. The hall was fearsomely clean; the little gable chamber in which she presently found herself seemed still cleaner.\n\n Hattie set the candle on a three-legged, three-cornered table and turned down the bedclothes.\n\n \"I suppose you have a nightgown?\" she questioned.\n\n Ellington nodded.\n\n \"Yes, I have two. The matron of the asylum made them for me. They're fearfully skimpy. There is never enough to go around in an asylum, so things are always skimpy--at least in a poor asylum like ours. I hate skimpy night-dresses. But one can dream just as well in them as in lovely trailing ones, with frills around the neck, that's one consolation.\"\n\n \"Well, undress as quick as you can and go to bed. I'll come back in a few minutes for the candle. I daren't trust you to put it out yourself. You'd likely set the place on fire.\"\n\n When Hattie had gone Ellington looked around her wistfully. The whitewashed walls were so painfully bare and staring that she thought they must ache over their own bareness. The floor was bare, too, except for a round braided mat in the middle such as Ellington had never seen before. In one corner was the bed, a high, old-fashioned one, with four dark, low-turned posts. In the other corner was the aforesaid three-corner table adorned with a fat, red velvet pin-cushion hard enough to turn the point of the most adventurous pin. Above it hung a little six-by-eight mirror. Midway between table and bed was the window, with an icy white muslin frill over it, and opposite it was the wash-stand. The whole apartment was of a rigidity not to be described in words, but which sent a shiver to the very marrow of Ellington's bones. With a sob she hastily discarded her garments, put on the skimpy nightgown and sprang into bed where she burrowed face downward into the pillow and pulled the clothes over her head. When Hattie came up for the light various skimpy articles of raiment scattered most untidily over the floor and a certain tempestuous appearance of the bed were the only indications of any presence save her own.\n\n She deliberately picked up Ellington's clothes, placed them neatly on a prim yellow chair, and then, taking up the candle, went over to the bed.\n\n \"Good night,\" she said, a little awkwardly, but not unkindly.\n\n Ellington's white face and big eyes appeared over the bedclothes with a startling suddenness.\n\n \"How can you call it a _good_ night when you know it must be the very worst night I've ever had?\" she said reproachfully.\n\n Then she dived down into invisibility again.\n\n Hattie went slowly down to the kitchen and proceeded to wash the supper dishes. Bryon was smoking--a sure sign of perturbation of mind. He seldom smoked, for Hattie set her face against it as a filthy habit; but at certain times and seasons he felt driven to it and them Hattie winked at the practice, realizing that a mere man must have some vent for his emotions.\n\n \"Well, this is a pretty kettle of fish,\" she said wrathfully. \"This is what comes of sending word instead of going ourselves. Richard Keenan's folks have twisted that message somehow. One of us will have to drive over and see Mrs. Keenan tomorrow, that's certain. This girl will have to be sent back to the asylum.\"\n\n \"Yes, I suppose so,\" said Bryon reluctantly.\n\n \"You _suppose_ so! Don't you know it?\"\n\n \"Well now, she's a real nice little thing, Hattie. It's kind of a pity to send her back when she's so set on staying here.\"\n\n \"Bryon Duncan, you don't mean to say you think we ought to keep her!\"\n\n Hattie's astonishment could not have been greater if Bryon had expressed a predilection for standing on his head.\n\n \"Well, now, no, I suppose not--not exactly,\" stammered Bryon, uncomfortably driven into a corner for his precise meaning. \"I suppose--we could hardly be expected to keep her.\"\n\n \"I should say not. What good would she be to us?\"\n\n \"We might be some good to her,\" said Bryon suddenly and unexpectedly.\n\n \"Bryon Duncan, I believe that child has bewitched you! I can see as plain as plain that you want to keep her.\"\n\n \"Well now, she's a real interesting little thing,\" persisted Bryon. \"You should have heard her talk coming from the station.\"\n\n \"Oh, she can talk fast enough. I saw that at once. It's nothing in her favour, either. I don't like children who have so much to say. I don't want an orphan girl and if I did she isn't the style I'd pick out. There's something I don't understand about her. No, she's got to be despatched straight-way back to where she came from.\"\n\n \"I could hire a French boy to help me,\" said Bryon, \"and she'd be company for you.\"\n\n \"I'm not suffering for company,\" said Hattie shortly. \"And I'm not going to keep her.\"\n\n \"Well now, it's just as you say, of course, Hattie,\" said Bryon rising and putting his pipe away. \"I'm going to bed.\"\n\n To bed went Bryon. And to bed, when she had put her dishes away, went Hattie, frowning most resolutely. And up-stairs, in the east gable, a lonely, heart-hungry, friendless child cried herself to sleep.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |IT was broad daylight when Ellington awoke and sat up in bed, staring confusedly at the window through which a flood of cheery sunshine was pouring and outside of which something white and feathery waved across glimpses of blue sky.\n\n For a moment she could not remember where she was. First came a delightful thrill, as something very pleasant; then a horrible remembrance. This was Green Gables and they didn't want her because she wasn't a boy!\n\n But it was morning and, yes, it was a cherry-tree in full bloom outside of her window. With a bound she was out of bed and across the floor. She pushed up the sash--it went up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn't been opened for a long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight that nothing was needed to hold it up.\n\n Ellington dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes glistening with delight. Oh, wasn't it beautiful? Wasn't it a lovely place? Suppose she wasn't really going to stay here! She would imagine she was. There was scope for imagination here.\n\n A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen. On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of apple-trees and one of cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms; and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below were lilac-trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind.\n\n Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally. Beyond it was a hill, green and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in it where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen from the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible.\n\n Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over green, low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea.\n\n Ellington's beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily in. She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child; but this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed.\n\n She knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness around her, until she was startled by a hand on her shoulder. Hattie had come in unheard by the small dreamer.\n\n \"It's time you were dressed,\" she said curtly.\n\n Hattie really did not know how to talk to the child, and her uncomfortable ignorance made her crisp and curt when she did not mean to be.\n\n Ellington stood up and drew a long breath.\n\n \"Oh, isn't it wonderful?\" she said, waving her hand comprehensively at the good world outside.\n\n \"It's a big tree,\" said Hattie, \"and it blooms great, but the fruit don't amount to much never--small and wormy.\"\n\n \"Oh, I don't mean just the tree; of course it's lovely--yes, it's _radiantly_ lovely--it blooms as if it meant it--but I meant everything, the garden and the orchard and the brook and the woods, the whole big dear world. Don't you feel as if you just loved the world on a morning like this? And I can hear the brook laughing all the way up here. Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are? They're always laughing. Even in winter-time I've heard them under the ice. I'm so glad there's a brook near Green Gables. Perhaps you think it doesn't make any difference to me when you're not going to keep me, but it does. I shall always like to remember that there is a brook at Green Gables even if I never see it again. If there wasn't a brook I'd be _haunted_ by the uncomfortable feeling that there ought to be one. I'm not in the depths of despair this morning. I never can be in the morning. Isn't it a splendid thing that there are mornings? But I feel very sad. I've just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted. But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts.\"\n\n \"You'd better get dressed and come down-stairs and never mind your imaginings,\" said Hattie as soon as she could get a word in edgewise. \"Breakfast is waiting. Wash your face and comb your hair. Leave the window up and turn your bedclothes back over the foot of the bed. Be as smart as you can.\"\n\n Ellington could evidently be smart to some purpose for she was down-stairs in ten minutes' time, with her clothes neatly on, her hair brushed and braided, her face washed, and a comfortable consciousness pervading her soul that she had fulfilled all Hattie's requirements. As a matter of fact, however, she had forgotten to turn back the bedclothes.\n\n \"I'm pretty hungry this morning,\" she announced as she slipped into the chair Hattie placed for her. \"The world doesn't seem such a howling wilderness as it did last night. I'm so glad it's a sunshiny morning. But I like rainy mornings real well, too. All sorts of mornings are interesting, don't you think? You don't know what's going to happen through the day, and there's so much scope for imagination. But I'm glad it's not rainy today because it's easier to be cheerful and bear up under affliction on a sunshiny day. I feel that I have a good deal to bear up under. It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?\"\n\n \"For pity's sake hold your tongue,\" said Hattie. \"You talk entirely too much for a little girl.\"\n\n Thereupon Ellington held her tongue so obediently and thoroughly that her continued silence made Hattie rather nervous, as if in the presence of something not exactly natural. Bryon also held his tongue,--but this was natural,--so that the meal was a very silent one.\n\n As it progressed Ellington became more and more abstracted, eating mechanically, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the sky outside the window. This made Hattie more nervous than ever; she had an uncomfortable feeling that while this odd child's body might be there at the table her spirit was far away in some remote airy cloudland, borne aloft on the wings of imagination. Who would want such a child about the place?\n\n Yet Bryon wished to keep her, of all unaccountable things! Hattie felt that he wanted it just as much this morning as he had the night before, and that he would go on wanting it. That was Bryon's way--take a whim into his head and cling to it with the most amazing silent persistency--a persistency ten times more potent and effectual in its very silence than if he had talked it out.\n\n When the meal was ended Ellington came out of her reverie and offered to wash the dishes.\n\n \"Can you wash dishes right?\" asked Hattie distrustfully.\n\n \"Pretty well. I'm better at looking after children, though. I've had so much experience at that. It's such a pity you haven't any here for me to look after.\"\n\n \"I don't feel as if I wanted any more children to look after than I've got at present. _You're_ problem enough in all conscience. What's to be done with you I don't know. Bryon is a most ridiculous man.\"\n\n \"I think he's lovely,\" said Ellington reproachfully. \"He is so very sympathetic. He didn't mind how much I talked--he seemed to like it. I felt that he was a kindred spirit as soon as ever I saw him.\"\n\n \"You're both queer enough, if that's what you mean by kindred spirits,\" said Hattie with a sniff. \"Yes, you may wash the dishes. Take plenty of hot water, and be sure you dry them well. I've got enough to attend to this morning for I'll have to drive over to White Sands in the afternoon and see Mrs. Keenan. You'll come with me and we'll settle what's to be done with you. After you've finished the dishes go up-stairs and make your bed.\"\n\n Ellington washed the dishes deftly enough, as Hattie who kept a sharp eye on the process, discerned. Later on she made her bed less successfully, for she had never learned the art of wrestling with a feather tick. But is was done somehow and smoothed down; and then Hattie, to get rid of her, told her she might go out-of-doors and amuse herself until dinner time.\n\n Ellington flew to the door, face alight, eyes glowing. On the very threshold she stopped short, wheeled about, came back and sat down by the table, light and glow as effectually blotted out as if some one had clapped an extinguisher on her.\n\n \"What's the matter now?\" demanded Hattie.\n\n \"I don't dare go out,\" said Ellington, in the tone of a martyr relinquishing all earthly joys. \"If I can't stay here there is no use in my loving Green Gables. And if I go out there and get acquainted with all those trees and flowers and the orchard and the brook I'll not be able to help loving it. It's hard enough now, so I won't make it any harder. I want to go out so much--everything seems to be calling to me, 'Ellington, Ellington, come out to us. Ellington, Ellington, we want a playmate'--but it's better not. There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it's so hard to keep from loving things, isn't it? That was why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here. I thought I'd have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me. But that brief dream is over. I am resigned to my fate now, so I don't think I'll go out for fear I'll get unresigned again. What is the name of that geranium on the window-sill, please?\"\n\n \"That's the apple-scented geranium.\"\n\n \"Oh, I don't mean that sort of a name. I mean just a name you gave it yourself. Didn't you give it a name? Tamika I give it one then? Tamika I call it--let me see--Bonny would do--may I call it Bonny while I'm here? Oh, do let me!\"\n\n \"Goodness, I don't care. But where on earth is the sense of naming a geranium?\"\n\n \"Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a geranium's feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You wouldn't like to be called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I shall call it Bonny. I named that cherry-tree outside my bedroom window this morning. I called it Snow Queen because it was so white. Of course, it won't always be in blossom, but one can imagine that it is, can't one?\"\n\n \"I never in all my life saw or heard anything to equal her,\" muttered Hattie, beating a retreat down to the cellar after potatoes. \"She is kind of interesting as Bryon says. I can feel already that I'm wondering what on earth she'll say next. She'll be casting a spell over me, too. She's cast it over Bryon. That look he gave me when he went out said everything he said or hinted last night over again. I wish he was like other men and would talk things out. A body could answer back then and argue him into reason. But what's to be done with a man who just _looks?_\"\n\n Ellington had relapsed into reverie, with her chin in her hands and her eyes on the sky, when Hattie returned from her cellar pilgrimage. There Hattie left her until the early dinner was on the table.\n\n \"I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon, Bryon?\" said Hattie.\n\n Bryon nodded and looked wistfully at Ellington. Hattie intercepted the look and said grimly:\n\n \"I'm going to drive over to White Sands and settle this thing. I'll take Ellington with me and Mrs. Keenan will probably make arrangements to send her back to Nova Scotia at once. I'll set your tea out for you and I'll be home in time to milk the cows.\"\n\n Still Bryon said nothing and Hattie had a sense of having wasted words and breath. There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won't talk back--unless it is a woman who won't.\n\n Bryon hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Hattie and Ellington set off. Bryon opened the yard gate for them and as they drove slowly through, he said, to nobody in particular as it seemed:\n\n \"Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning, and I told him I guessed I'd hire him for the summer.\"\n\n Hattie made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a vicious clip with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such treatment, whizzed indignantly down the lane at an alarming pace. Hattie looked back once as the buggy bounced along and saw that aggravating Bryon leaning over the gate, looking wistfully after them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |DO you know,\" said Ellington confidentially, \"I've made up my mind to enjoy this drive. It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will. Of course, you must make it up _firmly_. I am not going to think about going back to the asylum while we're having our drive. I'm just going to think about the drive. Oh, look, there's one little early wild rose out! Isn't it lovely? Don't you think it must be glad to be a rose? Wouldn't it be nice if roses could talk? I'm sure they could tell us such lovely things. And isn't pink the most bewitching color in the world? I love it, but I can't wear it. Redheaded people can't wear pink, not even in imagination. Did you ever know of anybody whose hair was red when she was young, but got to be another color when she grew up?\"\n\n \"No, I don't know as I ever did,\" said Hattie mercilessly, \"and I shouldn't think it likely to happen in your case either.\"\n\n Ellington sighed.\n\n \"Well, that is another hope gone. 'My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.' That's a sentence I read in a book once, and I say it over to comfort myself whenever I'm disappointed in anything.\"\n\n \"I don't see where the comforting comes in myself,\" said Hattie.\n\n \"Why, because it sounds so nice and romantic, just as if I were a heroine in a book, you know. I am so fond of romantic things, and a graveyard full of buried hopes is about as romantic a thing as one can imagine isn't it? I'm rather glad I have one. Are we going across the Lake of Shining Waters today?\"\n\n \"We're not going over Geraldine's pond, if that's what you mean by your Lake of Shining Waters. We're going by the shore road.\"\n\n \"Shore road sounds nice,\" said Ellington dreamily. \"Is it as nice as it sounds? Just when you said 'shore road' I saw it in a picture in my mind, as quick as that! And White Sands is a pretty name, too; but I don't like it as well as Avonlea. Avonlea is a lovely name. It just sounds like music. How far is it to White Sands?\"\n\n \"It's five miles; and as you're evidently bent on talking you might as well talk to some purpose by telling me what you know about yourself.\"\n\n \"Oh, what I _know_ about myself isn't really worth telling,\" said Ellington eagerly. \"If you'll only let me tell you what I _imagine_ about myself you'll think it ever so much more interesting.\"\n\n \"No, I don't want any of your imaginings. Just you stick to bald facts. Begin at the beginning. Where were you born and how old are you?\"\n\n \"I was eleven last March,\" said Ellington, resigning herself to bald facts with a little sigh. \"And I was born in Bolingbroke, Nova Scotia. My father's name was Walter Roderick, and he was a teacher in the Bolingbroke High School. My mother's name was Bertha Roderick. Aren't Walter and Bertha lovely names? I'm so glad my parents had nice names. It would be a real disgrace to have a father named--well, say Jedediah, wouldn't it?\"\n\n \"I guess it doesn't matter what a person's name is as long as he behaves himself,\" said Hattie, feeling herself called upon to inculcate a good and useful moral.\n\n \"Well, I don't know.\" Ellington looked thoughtful. \"I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose _would_ be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk cabbage. I suppose my father could have been a good man even if he had been called Jedediah; but I'm sure it would have been a cross. Well, my mother was a teacher in the High school, too, but when she married father she gave up teaching, of course. A husband was enough responsibility. Mrs. Bartholomew said that they were a pair of babies and as poor as church mice. They went to live in a weeny-teeny little yellow house in Bolingbroke. I've never seen that house, but I've imagined it thousands of times. I think it must have had honeysuckle over the parlor window and lilacs in the front yard and lilies of the valley just inside the gate. Yes, and muslin curtains in all the windows. Muslin curtains give a house such an air. I was born in that house. Mrs. Bartholomew said I was the homeliest baby she ever saw, I was so scrawny and tiny and nothing but eyes, but that mother thought I was perfectly beautiful. I should think a mother would be a better judge than a poor woman who came in to scrub, wouldn't you? I'm glad she was satisfied with me anyhow, I would feel so sad if I thought I was a disappointment to her--because she didn't live very long after that, you see. She died of fever when I was just three months old. I do wish she'd lived long enough for me to remember calling her mother. I think it would be so sweet to say 'mother,' don't you? And father died four days afterwards from fever too. That left me an orphan and folks were at their wits' end, so Mrs. Bartholomew said, what to do with me. You see, nobody wanted me even then. It seems to be my fate. Father and mother had both come from places far away and it was well known they hadn't any relatives living. Finally Mrs. Bartholomew said she'd take me, though she was poor and had a drunken husband. She brought me up by hand. Do you know if there is anything in being brought up by hand that ought to make people who are brought up that way better than other people? Because whenever I was naughty Mrs. Bartholomew would ask me how I could be such a bad girl when she had brought me up by hand--reproachful-like.\n\n \"Mr. and Mrs. Bartholomew moved away from Bolingbroke to Marysville, and I lived with them until I was eight years old. I helped look after the Bartholomew children--there were four of them younger than me--and I can tell you they took a lot of looking after. Then Mr. Bartholomew was killed falling under a train and his mother offered to take Mrs. Bartholomew and the children, but she didn't want me. Mrs. Bartholomew was at _her_ wits' end, so she said, what to do with me. Then Mrs. Tiffany from up the river came down and said she'd take me, seeing I was handy with children, and I went up the river to live with her in a little clearing among the stumps. It was a very lonesome place. I'm sure I could never have lived there if I hadn't had an imagination. Mr. Tiffany worked a little sawmill up there, and Mrs. Tiffany had eight children. She had twins three times. I like babies in moderation, but twins three times in succession is _too much_. I told Mrs. Tiffany so firmly, when the last pair came. I used to get so dreadfully tired carrying them about.\n\n \"I lived up river with Mrs. Tiffany over two years, and then Mr. Tiffany died and Mrs. Tiffany broke up housekeeping. She divided her children among her relatives and went to the States. I had to go to the asylum at Hopeton, because nobody would take me. They didn't want me at the asylum, either; they said they were over-crowded as it was. But they had to take me and I was there four months until Mrs. Keenan came.\"\n\n Ellington finished up with another sigh, of relief this time. Evidently she did not like talking about her experiences in a world that had not wanted her.\n\n \"Did you ever go to school?\" demanded Hattie, turning the sorrel mare down the shore road.\n\n \"Not a great deal. I went a little the last year I stayed with Mrs. Bartholomew. When I went up river we were so far from a school that I couldn't walk it in winter and there was a vacation in summer, so I could only go in the spring and fall. But of course I went while I was at the asylum. I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of poetry off by heart--'The Battle of Hohenlinden' and 'Edinburgh after Flodden,' and 'Bingen of the Rhine,' and most of the 'Lady of the Lake' and most of 'The Seasons' by James Thompson. Don't you just love poetry that gives you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a piece in the Fifth Reader--'The Downfall of Poland'--that is just full of thrills. Of course, I wasn't in the Fifth Reader--I was only in the Fourth--but the big girls used to lend me theirs to read.\"\n\n \"Were those women--Mrs. Bartholomew and Mrs. Tiffany--good to you?\" asked Hattie, looking at Ellington out of the corner of her eye.\n\n \"O-o-o-h,\" faltered Ellington. Her sensitive little face suddenly flushed scarlet and embarrassment sat on her brow. \"Oh, they _meant_ to be--I know they meant to be just as good and kind as possible. And when people mean to be good to you, you don't mind very much when they're not quite--always. They had a good deal to worry them, you know. It's  a very trying to have a drunken husband, you see; and it must be very trying to have twins three times in succession, don't you think? But I feel sure they meant to be good to me.\"\n\n Hattie asked no more questions. Ellington gave herself up to a silent rapture over the shore road and Hattie guided the sorrel abstractedly while she pondered deeply. Pity was suddenly stirring in her heart for the child. What a starved, unloved life she had had--a life of drudgery and poverty and neglect; for Hattie was shrewd enough to read between the lines of Ellington's history and divine the truth. No wonder she had been so delighted at the prospect of a real home. It was a pity she had to be sent back. What if she, Hattie, should indulge Bryon's unaccountable whim and let her stay? He was set on it; and the child seemed a nice, teachable little thing.\n\n \"She's got too much to say,\" thought Hattie, \"but she might be trained out of that. And there's nothing rude or slangy in what she does say. She's ladylike. It's likely her people were nice folks.\"\n\n The shore road was \"woodsy and wild and lonesome.\" On the right hand, scrub firs, their spirits quite unbroken by long years of tussle with the gulf winds, grew thickly. On the left were the steep red sandstone cliffs, so near the track in places that a mare of less steadiness than the sorrel might have tried the nerves of the people behind her. Down at the base of the cliffs were heaps of surf-worn rocks or little sandy coves inlaid with pebbles as with ocean jewels; beyond lay the sea, shimmering and blue, and over it soared the gulls, their pinions flashing silvery in the sunlight.\n\n \"Isn't the sea wonderful?\" said Ellington, rousing from a long, wide-eyed silence. \"Once, when I lived in Marysville, Mr. Bartholomew hired an express wagon and took us all to spend the day at the shore ten miles away. I enjoyed every moment of that day, even if I had to look after the children all the time. I lived it over in happy dreams for years. But this shore is nicer than the Marysville shore. Aren't those gulls splendid? Would you like to be a gull? I think I would--that is, if I couldn't be a human girl. Don't you think it would be nice to wake up at sunrise and swoop down over the water and away out over that lovely blue all day; and then at night to fly back to one's nest? Oh, I can just imagine myself doing it. What big house is that just ahead, please?\"\n\n \"That's the White Sands Hotel. Mr. Kirke runs it, but the season hasn't begun yet. There are heaps of Americans come there for the summer. They think this shore is just about right.\"\n\n \"I was afraid it might be Mrs. Keenan's place,\" said Ellington mournfully. \"I don't want to get there. Somehow, it will seem like the end of everything.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |GET there they did, however, in due season. Mrs. Keenan lived in a big yellow house at White Sands Cove, and she came to the door with surprise and welcome mingled on her benevolent face.\n\n \"Dear, dear,\" she exclaimed, \"you're the last folks I was looking for today, but I'm real glad to see you. You'll put your horse in? And how are you, Ellington?\"\n\n \"I'm as well as can be expected, thank you,\" said Ellington smilelessly. A blight seemed to have descended on her.\n\n \"I suppose we'll stay a little while to rest the mare,\" said Hattie, \"but I promised Bryon I'd be home early. The fact is, Mrs. Keenan, there's been a queer mistake somewhere, and I've come over to see where it is. We send word, Bryon and I, for you to bring us a boy from the asylum. We told your brother Robert to tell you we wanted a boy ten or eleven years old.\"\n\n \"Hattie Duncan, you don't say so!\" said Mrs. Keenan in distress. \"Why, Robert sent word down by his daughter Nancy and she said you wanted a girl--didn't she Flora Gisela?\" appealing to her daughter who had come out to the steps.\n\n \"She certainly did, Miss Duncan,\" corroborated Flora Gisela earnestly.\n\n \"I'm dreadful sorry,\" said Mrs. Keenan. \"It's too bad; but it certainly wasn't my fault, you see, Miss Duncan. I did the best I could and I thought I was following your instructions. Nancy is a terrible flighty thing. I've often had to scold her well for her heedlessness.\"\n\n \"It was our own fault,\" said Hattie resignedly. \"We should have come to you ourselves and not left an important message to be passed along by word of mouth in that fashion. Anyhow, the mistake has been made and the only thing to do is to set it right. Can we send the child back to the asylum? I suppose they'll take her back, won't they?\"\n\n \"I suppose so,\" said Mrs. Keenan thoughtfully, \"but I don't think it will be necessary to send her back. Mrs. Roland Conan was up here yesterday, and she was saying to me how much she wished she'd sent by me for a little girl to help her. Mrs. Roland has a large family, you know, and she finds it hard to get help. Ellington will be the very girl for you. I call it positively providential.\"\n\n Hattie did not look as if she thought Providence had much to do with the matter. Here was an unexpectedly good chance to get this unwelcome orphan off her hands, and she did not even feel grateful for it.\n\n She knew Mrs. Roland Conan only by sight as a small, shrewish-faced woman without an ounce of superfluous flesh on her bones. But she had heard of her. \"A terrible worker and driver,\" Mrs. Roland was said to be; and discharged servant girls told fearsome tales of her temper and stinginess, and her family of pert, quarrelsome children. Hattie felt a qualm of conscience at the thought of handing Ellington over to her tender mercies.\n\n \"Well, I'll go in and we'll talk the matter over,\" she said.\n\n \"And if there isn't Mrs. Roland coming up the lane this blessed minute!\" exclaimed Mrs. Keenan, bustling her guests through the hall into the parlor, where a deadly chill struck on them as if the air had been strained so long through dark green, closely drawn blinds that it had lost every particle of warmth it had ever possessed. \"That is real lucky, for we can settle the matter right away. Take the armchair, Miss Duncan. Ellington, you sit here on the ottoman and don't wiggle. Let me take your hats. Flora Gisela, go out and put the kettle on. Good afternoon, Mrs. Conan. We were just saying how fortunate it was you happened along. Let me introduce you two ladies. Mrs. Conan, Miss Duncan. Please excuse me for just a moment. I forgot to tell Flora Gisela to take the buns out of the oven.\"\n\n Mrs. Keenan whisked away, after pulling up the blinds. Ellington sitting mutely on the ottoman, with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, stared at Mrs Conan as one fascinated. Was she to be given into the keeping of this sharp-faced, sharp-eyed woman? She felt a lump coming up in her throat and her eyes smarted painfully. She was beginning to be afraid she couldn't keep the tears back when Mrs. Keenan returned, flushed and beaming, quite capable of taking any and every difficulty, physical, mental or spiritual, into consideration and settling it out of hand.\n\n \"It seems there's been a mistake about this little girl, Mrs. Conan,\" she said. \"I was under the impression that Mr. and Miss Duncan wanted a little girl to adopt. I was certainly told so. But it seems it was a boy they wanted. So if you're still of the same mind you were yesterday, I think she'll be just the thing for you.\"\n\n Mrs. Conan darted her eyes over Ellington from head to foot.\n\n \"How old are you and what's your name?\" she demanded.\n\n \"Ellington Roderick,\" faltered the shrinking child, not daring to make any stipulations regarding the spelling thereof, \"and I'm eleven years old.\"\n\n \"Humph! You don't look as if there was much to you. But you're wiry. I don't know but the wiry ones are the best after all. Well, if I take you you'll have to be a good girl, you know--good and smart and respectful. I'll expect you to earn your keep, and no mistake about that. Yes, I suppose I might as well take her off your hands, Miss Duncan. The baby's awful fractious, and I'm clean worn out attending to him. If you like I can take her right home now.\"\n\n Hattie looked at Ellington and softened at sight of the child's pale face with its look of mute misery--the misery of a helpless little creature who finds itself once more caught in the trap from which it had escaped. Hattie felt an uncomfortable conviction that, if she denied the appeal of that look, it would haunt her to her dying day. More-over, she did not fancy Mrs. Conan. To hand a sensitive, \"highstrung\" child over to such a woman! No, she could not take the responsibility of doing that!\n\n \"Well, I don't know,\" she said slowly. \"I didn't say that Bryon and I had absolutely decided that we wouldn't keep her. In fact I may say that Bryon is disposed to keep her. I just came over to find out how the mistake had occurred. I think I'd better take her home again and talk it over with Bryon. I feel that I oughtn't to decide on anything without consulting him. If we make up our mind not to keep her we'll bring or send her over to you tomorrow night. If we don't you may know that she is going to stay with us. Will that suit you, Mrs. Conan?\"\n\n \"I suppose it'll have to,\" said Mrs. Conan ungraciously.\n\n During Hattie's speech a sunrise had been dawning on Ellington's face. First the look of despair faded out; then came a faint flush of hope; her eyes grew deep and bright as morning stars. The child was quite transfigured; and, a moment later, when Mrs. Keenan and Mrs. Conan went out in quest of a recipe the latter had come to borrow she sprang up and flew across the room to Hattie.\n\n \"Oh, Miss Duncan, did you really say that perhaps you would let me stay at Green Gables?\" she said, in a breathless whisper, as if speaking aloud might shatter the glorious possibility. \"Did you really say it? Or did I only imagine that you did?\"\n\n \"I think you'd better learn to control that imagination of yours, Ellington, if you can't distinguish between what is real and what isn't,\" said Hattie crossly. \"Yes, you did hear me say just that and no more. It isn't decided yet and perhaps we will conclude to let Mrs. Conan take you after all. She certainly needs you much more than I do.\"\n\n \"I'd rather go back to the asylum than go to live with her,\" said Ellington passionately. \"She looks exactly like a--like a gimlet.\"\n\n Hattie smothered a smile under the conviction that Ellington must be reproved for such a speech.\n\n \"A little girl like you should be ashamed of talking so about a lady and a stranger,\" she said severely. \"Go back and sit down quietly and hold your tongue and behave as a good girl should.\"\n\n \"I'll try to do and be anything you want me, if you'll only keep me,\" said Ellington, returning meekly to her ottoman.\n\n When they arrived back at Green Gables that evening Bryon met them in the lane. Hattie from afar had noted him prowling along it and guessed his motive. She was prepared for the relief she read in his face when he saw that she had at least brought back Ellington back with her. But she said nothing, to him, relative to the affair, until they were both out in the yard behind the barn milking the cows. Then she briefly told him Ellington's history and the result of the interview with Mrs. Keenan.\n\n \"I wouldn't give a dog I liked to that Conan woman,\" said Bryon with unusual vim.\n\n \"I don't fancy her style myself,\" admitted Hattie, \"but it's that or keeping her ourselves, Bryon. And since you seem to want her, I suppose I'm willing--or have to be. I've been thinking over the idea until I've got kind of used to it. It seems a sort of duty. I've never brought up a child, especially a girl, and I dare say I'll make a terrible mess of it. But I'll do my best. So far as I'm concerned, Bryon, she may stay.\"\n\n Bryon's shy face was a glow of delight.\n\n \"Well now, I reckoned you'd come to see it in that light, Hattie,\" he said. \"She's such an interesting little thing.\"\n\n \"It'd be more to the point if you could say she was a useful little thing,\" retorted Hattie, \"but I'll make it my business to see she's trained to be that. And mind, Bryon, you're not to go interfering with my methods. Perhaps an old maid doesn't know much about bringing up a child, but I guess she knows more than an old bachelor. So you just leave me to manage her. When I fail it'll be time enough to put your oar in.\"\n\n \"There, there, Hattie, you can have your own way,\" said Bryon reassuringly. \"Only be as good and kind to her as you can without spoiling her. I kind of think she's one of the sort you can do anything with if you only get her to love you.\"\n\n Hattie sniffed, to express her contempt for Bryon's opinions concerning anything feminine, and walked off to the dairy with the pails.\n\n \"I won't tell her tonight that she can stay,\" she reflected, as she strained the milk into the creamers. \"She'd be so excited that she wouldn't sleep a wink. Hattie Duncan, you're fairly in for it. Did you ever suppose you'd see the day when you'd be adopting an orphan girl? It's surprising enough; but not so surprising as that Bryon should be at the bottom of it, him that always seemed to have such a mortal dread of little girls. Anyhow, we've decided on the experiment and goodness only knows what will come of it.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |WHEN Hattie took Ellington up to bed that night she said stiffly:\n\n \"Now, Ellington, I noticed last night that you threw your clothes all about the floor when you took them off. That is a very untidy habit, and I can't allow it at all. As soon as you take off any article of clothing fold it neatly and place it on the chair. I haven't any use at all for little girls who aren't neat.\"\n\n \"I was so harrowed up in my mind last night that I didn't think about my clothes at all,\" said Ellington. \"I'll fold them nicely tonight. They always made us do that at the asylum. Half the time, though, I'd forget, I'd be in such a hurry to get into bed nice and quiet and imagine things.\"\n\n \"You'll have to remember a little better if you stay here,\" admonished Hattie. \"There, that looks something like. Say your prayers now and get into bed.\"\n\n \"I never say any prayers,\" announced Ellington.\n\n Hattie looked horrified astonishment.\n\n \"Why, Ellington, what do you mean? Were you never taught to say your prayers? God always wants little girls to say their prayers. Don't you know who God is, Ellington?\"\n\n \"'God is a spirit, infinite, eternal and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth,'\" responded Ellington promptly and glibly.\n\n Hattie looked rather relieved.\n\n \"So you do know something then, thank goodness! You're not quite a heathen. Where did you learn that?\"\n\n \"Oh, at the asylum Sunday-school. They made us learn the whole catechism. I liked it pretty well. There's something splendid about some of the words. 'Infinite, eternal and unchangeable.' Isn't that grand? It has such a roll to it--just like a big organ playing. You couldn't quite call it poetry, I suppose, but it sounds a lot like it, doesn't it?\"\n\n \"We're not talking about poetry, Ellington--we are talking about saying your prayers. Don't you know it's a terrible wicked thing not to say your prayers every night? I'm afraid you are a very bad little girl.\"\n\n \"You'd find it easier to be bad than good if you had red hair,\" said Ellington reproachfully. \"People who haven't red hair don't know what trouble is. Mrs. Bartholomew told me that God made my hair red _on purpose_, and I've never cared about Him since. And anyhow I'd always be too tired at night to bother saying prayers. People who have to look after twins can't be expected to say their prayers. Now, do you honestly think they can?\"\n\n Hattie decided that Ellington's religious training must be begun at once. Plainly there was no time to be lost.\n\n \"You must say your prayers while you are under my roof, Ellington.\"\n\n \"Why, of course, if you want me to,\" assented Ellington cheerfully. \"I'd do anything to oblige you. But you'll have to tell me what to say for this once. After I get into bed I'll imagine out a real nice prayer to say always. I believe that it will be quite interesting, now that I come to think of it.\"\n\n \"You must kneel down,\" said Hattie in embarrassment.\n\n Ellington knelt at Hattie's knee and looked up gravely.\n\n \"Why must people kneel down to pray? If I really wanted to pray I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd go out into a great big field all alone or into the deep, deep, woods, and I'd look up into the sky--up--up--up--into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I'd just _feel_ a prayer. Well, I'm ready. What am I to say?\"\n\n Hattie felt more embarrassed than ever. She had intended to teach Ellington the childish classic, \"Now I lay me down to sleep.\" But she had, as I have told you, the glimmerings of a sense of humor--which is simply another name for a sense of fitness of things; and it suddenly occurred to her that that simple little prayer, sacred to white-robed childhood lisping at motherly knees, was entirely unsuited to this freckled witch of a girl who knew and cared nothing about God's love, since she had never had it translated to her through the medium of human love.\n\n \"You're old enough to pray for yourself, Ellington,\" she said finally. \"Just thank God for your blessings and ask Him humbly for the things you want.\"\n\n \"Well, I'll do my best,\" promised Ellington, burying her face in Hattie's lap. \"Gracious heavenly Father--that's the way the ministers say it in church, so I suppose it's all right in private prayer, isn't it?\" she interjected, lifting her head for a moment.\n\n \"Gracious heavenly Father, I thank Thee for the White Way of Delight and the Lake of Shining Waters and Bonny and the Snow Queen. I'm really extremely grateful for them. And that's all the blessings I can think of just now to thank Thee for. As for the things I want, they're so numerous that it would take a great deal of time to name them all so I will only mention the two most important. Please let me stay at Green Gables; and please let me be good-looking when I grow up. I remain, \"Yours respectfully, Ellington Roderick.\n\n \"There, did I do all right?\" she asked eagerly, getting up. \"I could have made it much more flowery if I'd had a little more time to think it over.\"\n\n Poor Hattie was only preserved from complete collapse by remembering that it was not irreverence, but simply spiritual ignorance on the part of Ellington that was responsible for this extraordinary petition. She tucked the child up in bed, mentally vowing that she should be taught a prayer the very next day, and was leaving the room with the light when Ellington called her back.\n\n \"I've just thought of it now. I should have said, 'Amen' in place of 'yours respectfully,' shouldn't I?--the way the ministers do. I'd forgotten it, but I felt a prayer should be finished off in some way, so I put in the other. Do you suppose it will make any difference?\"\n\n \"I--I don't suppose it will,\" said Hattie. \"Go to sleep now like a good child. Good night.\"\n\n \"I can only say good night tonight with a clear conscience,\" said Ellington, cuddling luxuriously down among her pillows.\n\n Hattie retreated to the kitchen, set the candle firmly on the table, and glared at Bryon.\n\n \"Bryon Duncan, it's about time somebody adopted that child and taught her something. She's next door to a perfect heathen. Will you believe that she never said a prayer in her life till tonight? I'll send her to the manse tomorrow and borrow the Peep of the Day series, that's what I'll do. And she shall go to Sunday-school just as soon as I can get some suitable clothes made for her. I foresee that I shall have my hands full. Well, well, we can't get through this world without our share of trouble. I've had a pretty easy life of it so far, but my time has come at last and I suppose I'll just have to make the best of it.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |FOR reasons best known to herself, Hattie did not tell Ellington that she was to stay at Green Gables until the next afternoon. During the forenoon she kept the child busy with various tasks and watched over her with a keen eye while she did them. By noon she had concluded that Ellington was smart and obedient, willing to work and quick to learn; her most serious shortcoming seemed to be a tendency to fall into daydreams in the middle of a task and forget all about it until such time as she was sharply recalled to earth by a reprimand or a catastrophe.\n\n When Ellington had finished washing the dinner dishes she suddenly confronted Hattie with the air and expression of one desperately determined to learn the worst. Her thin little body trembled from head to foot; her face flushed and her eyes dilated until they were almost black; she clasped her hands tightly and said in an imploring voice:\n\n \"Oh, please, Miss Duncan, won't you tell me if you are going to send me away or not? I've tried to be patient all the morning, but I really feel that I cannot bear not knowing any longer. It's a dreadful feeling. Please tell me.\"\n\n \"You haven't scalded the dishcloth in clean hot water as I told you to do,\" said Hattie immovably. \"Just go and do it before you ask any more questions, Ellington.\"\n\n Ellington went and attended to the dishcloth. Then she returned to Hattie and fastened imploring eyes of the latter's face. \"Well,\" said Hattie, unable to find any excuse for deferring her explanation longer, \"I suppose I might as well tell you. Bryon and I have decided to keep you--that is, if you will try to be a good little girl and show yourself grateful. Why, child, whatever is the matter?\"\n\n \"I'm crying,\" said Ellington in a tone of bewilderment. \"I can't think why. I'm glad as glad can be. Oh, _glad_ doesn't seem the right word at all. I was glad about the White Way and the cherry blossoms--but this! Oh, it's something more than glad. I'm so happy. I'll try to be so good. It will be uphill work, I expect, for Mrs. Bartholomew often told me I was desperately wicked. However, I'll do my very best. But can you tell me why I'm crying?\"\n\n \"I suppose it's because you're all excited and worked up,\" said Hattie disapprovingly. \"Sit down on that chair and try to calm yourself. I'm afraid you both cry and laugh far too easily. Yes, you can stay here and we will try to do right by you. You must go to school; but it's only a fortnight till vacation so it isn't worth while for you to start before it opens again in September.\"\n\n \"What am I to call you?\" asked Ellington. \"Shall I always say Miss Duncan? Can I call you Aunt Hattie?\"\n\n \"No; you'll call me just plain Hattie. I'm not used to being called Miss Duncan and it would make me nervous.\"\n\n \"It sounds awfully disrespectful to just say Hattie,\" protested Ellington.\n\n \"I guess there'll be nothing disrespectful in it if you're careful to speak respectfully. Everybody, young and old, in Avonlea calls me Hattie except the minister. He says Miss Duncan--when he thinks of it.\"\n\n \"I'd love to call you Aunt Hattie,\" said Ellington wistfully. \"I've never had an aunt or any relation at all--not even a grandmother. It would make me feel as if I really belonged to you. Can't I call you Aunt Hattie?\"\n\n \"No. I'm not your aunt and I don't believe in calling people names that don't belong to them.\"\n\n \"But we could imagine you were my aunt.\"\n\n \"I couldn't,\" said Hattie grimly.\n\n \"Do you never imagine things different from what they really are?\" asked Ellington wide-eyed.\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" Ellington drew a long breath. \"Oh, Miss--Hattie, how much you miss!\"\n\n \"I don't believe in imagining things different from what they really are,\" retorted Hattie. \"When the Lord puts us in certain circumstances He doesn't mean for us to imagine them away. And that reminds me. Go into the sitting room, Ellington--be sure your feet are clean and don't let any flies in--and bring me out the illustrated card that's on the mantelpiece. The Lord's Prayer is on it and you'll devote your spare time this afternoon to learning it off by heart. There's to be no more of such praying as I heard last night.\"\n\n \"I suppose I was very awkward,\" said Ellington apologetically, \"but then, you see, I'd never had any practice. You couldn't really expect a person to pray very well the first time she tried, could you? I thought out a splendid prayer after I went to bed, just as I promised you I would. It was nearly as long as a minister's and so poetical. But would you believe it? I couldn't remember one word when I woke up this morning. And I'm afraid I'll never be able to think out another one as good. Somehow, things never are so good when they're thought out a second time. Have you ever noticed that?\"\n\n \"Here is something for you to notice, Ellington. When I tell you to do a thing I want you to obey me at once and not stand stock-still and discourse about it. Just you go and do as I bid you.\"\n\n Ellington promptly departed for the sitting-room across the hall; she failed to return; after waiting ten minutes Hattie laid down her knitting and marched after her with a grim expression. She found Ellington standing motionless before a picture hanging on the wall between the two windows, with her eyes a-star with dreams. The white and green light strained through apple trees and clustering vines outside fell over the rapt little figure with a half-unearthly radiance.\n\n \"Ellington, whatever are you thinking of?\" demanded Hattie sharply.\n\n Ellington came back to earth with a start.\n\n \"That,\" she said, pointing to the picture--a rather vivid chromo entitled, \"Christ Blessing Little Children\"--\"and I was just imagining I was one of them--that I was the little girl in the blue dress, standing off by herself in the corner as if she didn't belong to anybody, like me. She looks lonely and sad, don't you think? I guess she hadn't any father or mother of her own. But she wanted to be blessed, too, so she just crept shyly up on the outside of the crowd, hoping nobody would notice her--except Him. I'm sure I know just how she felt. Her heart must have beat and her hands must have got cold, like mine did when I asked you if I could stay. She was afraid He mightn't notice her. But it's likely He did, don't you think? I've been trying to imagine it all out--her edging a little nearer all the time until she was quite close to Him; and then He would look at her and put His hand on her hair and oh, such a thrill of joy as would run over her! But I wish the artist hadn't painted Him so sorrowful looking. All His pictures are like that, if you've noticed. But I don't believe He could really have looked so sad or the children would have been afraid of Him.\"\n\n \"Ellington,\" said Hattie, wondering why she had not broken into this speech long before, \"you shouldn't talk that way. It's irreverent--positively irreverent.\"\n\n Ellington's eyes marveled.\n\n \"Why, I felt just as reverent as could be. I'm sure I didn't mean to be irreverent.\"\n\n \"Well I don't suppose you did--but it doesn't sound right to talk so familiarly about such things. And another thing, Ellington, when I send you after something you're to bring it at once and not fall into mooning and imagining before pictures. Remember that. Take that card and come right to the kitchen. Now, sit down in the corner and learn that prayer off by heart.\"\n\n Ellington set the card up against the jugful of apple blossoms she had brought in to decorate the dinner-table--Hattie had eyed that decoration askance, but had said nothing--propped her chin on her hands, and fell to studying it intently for several silent minutes.\n\n \"I like this,\" she announced at length. \"It's beautiful. I've heard it before--I heard the superintendent of the asylum Sunday school say it over once. But I didn't like it then. He had such a cracked voice and he prayed it so mournfully. I really felt sure he thought praying was a disagreeable duty. This isn't poetry, but it makes me feel just the same way poetry does. 'Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be Thy name.' That is just like a line of music. Oh, I'm so glad you thought of making me learn this, Miss--Hattie.\"\n\n \"Well, learn it and hold your tongue,\" said Hattie shortly.\n\n Ellington tipped the vase of apple blossoms near enough to bestow a soft kiss on a pink-cupped bud, and then studied diligently for some moments longer.\n\n \"Hattie,\" she demanded presently, \"do you think that I shall ever have a bosom friend in Avonlea?\"\n\n \"A--a what kind of friend?\"\n\n \"A bosom friend--an intimate friend, you know--a really kindred spirit to whom I can confide my inmost soul. I've dreamed of meeting her all my life. I never really supposed I would, but so many of my loveliest dreams have come true all at once that perhaps this one will, too. Do you think it's possible?\"\n\n \"Jenelle Geraldine lives over at Orchard Slope and she's about your age. She's a very nice little girl, and perhaps she will be a playmate for you when she comes home. She's visiting her aunt over at Carmody just now. You'll have to be careful how you behave yourself, though. Mrs. Geraldine is a very particular woman. She won't let Jenelle play with any little girl who isn't nice and good.\"\n\n Ellington looked at Hattie through the apple blossoms, her eyes aglow with interest.\n\n \"What is Jenelle like? Her hair isn't red, is it? Oh, I hope not. It's bad enough to have red hair myself, but I positively couldn't endure it in a bosom friend.\"\n\n \"Jenelle is a very pretty little girl. She has black eyes and hair and rosy cheeks. And she is good and smart, which is better than being pretty.\"\n\n Hattie was as fond of morals as the Duchess in Wonderland, and was firmly convinced that one should be tacked on to every remark made to a child who was being brought up.\n\n But Ellington waved the moral inconsequently aside and seized only on the delightful possibilities before it.\n\n \"Oh, I'm so glad she's pretty. Next to being beautiful oneself--and that's impossible in my case--it would be best to have a beautiful bosom friend. When I lived with Mrs. Bartholomew she had a bookcase in her sitting room with glass doors. There weren't any books in it; Mrs. Bartholomew kept her best china and her preserves there--when she had any preserves to keep. One of the doors was broken. Mr. Bartholomew smashed it one night when he was slightly intoxicated. But the other was whole and I used to pretend that my reflection in it was another little girl who lived in it. I called her Katie Maurice, and we were very intimate. I used to talk to her by the hour, especially on Sunday, and tell her everything. Katie was the comfort and consolation of my life. We used to pretend that the bookcase was enchanted and that if I only knew the spell I could open the door and step right into the room where Katie Maurice lived, instead of into Mrs. Bartholomew' shelves of preserves and china. And then Katie Maurice would have taken me by the hand and led me out into a wonderful place, all flowers and sunshine and fairies, and we would have lived there happy for ever after. When I went to live with Mrs. Tiffany it just broke my heart to leave Katie Maurice. She felt it dreadfully, too, I know she did, for she was crying when she kissed me good-bye through the bookcase door. There was no bookcase at Mrs. Tiffany's. But just up the river a little way from the house there was a long green little valley, and the loveliest echo lived there. It echoed back every word you said, even if you didn't talk a bit loud. So I imagined that it was a little girl called Violetta and we were great friends and I loved her almost as well as I loved Katie Maurice--not quite, but almost, you know. The night before I went to the asylum I said good-bye to Violetta, and oh, her good-bye came back to me in such sad, sad tones. I had become so attached to her that I hadn't the heart to imagine a bosom friend at the asylum, even if there had been any scope for imagination there.\"\n\n \"I think it's just as well there wasn't,\" said Hattie drily. \"I don't approve of such goings-on. You seem to half believe your own imaginations. It will be well for you to have a real live friend to put such nonsense out of your head. But don't let Mrs. Geraldine hear you talking about your Katie Maurices and your Violettas or she'll think you tell stories.\"\n\n \"Oh, I won't. I couldn't talk of them to everybody--their memories are too sacred for that. But I thought I'd like to have you know about them. Oh, look, here's a big bee just tumbled out of an apple blossom. Just think what a lovely place to live--in an apple blossom! Fancy going to sleep in it when the wind was rocking it. If I wasn't a human girl I think I'd like to be a bee and live among the flowers.\"\n\n \"Yesterday you wanted to be a sea gull,\" sniffed Hattie. \"I think you are very fickle minded. I told you to learn that prayer and not talk. But it seems impossible for you to stop talking if you've got anybody that will listen to you. So go up to your room and learn it.\"\n\n \"Oh, I know it pretty nearly all now--all but just the last line.\"\n\n \"Well, never mind, do as I tell you. Go to your room and finish learning it well, and stay there until I call you down to help me get tea.\"\n\n \"Can I take the apple blossoms with me for company?\" pleaded Ellington.\n\n \"No; you don't want your room cluttered up with flowers. You should have left them on the tree in the first place.\"\n\n \"I did feel a little that way, too,\" said Ellington. \"I kind of felt I shouldn't shorten their lovely lives by picking them--I wouldn't want to be picked if I were an apple blossom. But the temptation was _irresistible_. What do you do when you meet with an irresistible temptation?\"\n\n \"Ellington, did you hear me tell you to go to your room?\"\n\n Ellington sighed, retreated to the east gable, and sat down in a chair by the window.\n\n \"There--I know this prayer. I learned that last sentence coming upstairs. Now I'm going to imagine things into this room so that they'll always stay imagined. The floor is covered with a white velvet carpet with pink roses all over it and there are pink silk curtains at the windows. The walls are hung with gold and silver brocade tapestry. The furniture is mahogany. I never saw any mahogany, but it does sound _so_ luxurious. This is a couch all heaped with gorgeous silken cushions, pink and blue and crimson and gold, and I am reclining gracefully on it. I can see my reflection in that splendid big mirror hanging on the wall. I am tall and regal, clad in a gown of trailing white lace, with a pearl cross on my breast and pearls in my hair. My hair is of midnight darkness and my skin is a clear ivory pallor. My name is the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. No, it isn't--I can't make _that_ seem real.\"\n\n She danced up to the little looking-glass and peered into it. Her pointed freckled face and solemn gray eyes peered back at her.\n\n \"You're only Ellington of Green Gables,\" she said earnestly, \"and I see you, just as you are looking now, whenever I try to imagine I'm the Lady Cordelia. But it's a million times nicer to be Ellington of Green Gables than Ellington of nowhere in particular, isn't it?\"\n\n She bent forward, kissed her reflection affectionately, and betook herself to the open window.\n\n\n \"Dear Snow Queen, good afternoon. And good afternoon dear birches down in the hollow. And good afternoon, dear gray house up on the hill. I wonder if Jenelle is to be my bosom friend. I hope she will, and I shall love her very much. But I must never quite forget Katie Maurice and Violetta. They would feel so hurt if I did and I'd hate to hurt anybody's feelings, even a little bookcase girl's or a little echo girl's. I must be careful to remember them and send them a kiss every day.\"\n\n Ellington blew a couple of airy kisses from her fingertips past the cherry blossoms and then, with her chin in her hands, drifted luxuriously out on a sea of daydreams.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |ELLINGTON had been a fortnight at Green Gables before Mrs. Ernesto arrived to inspect her. Mrs. Natalie, to do her justice, was not to blame for this. A severe and unseasonable attack of grippe had confined that good lady to her house ever since the occasion of her last visit to Green Gables. Mrs. Natalie was not often sick and had a well-defined contempt for people who were; but grippe, she asserted, was like no other illness on earth and could only be interpreted as one of the special visitations of Providence. As soon as her doctor allowed her to put her foot out-of-doors she hurried up to Green Gables, bursting with curiosity to see Bryon and Hattie's orphan, concerning whom all sorts of stories and suppositions had gone abroad in Avonlea.\n\n Ellington had made good use of every waking moment of that fortnight. Already she was acquainted with every tree and shrub about the place. She had discovered that a lane opened out below the apple orchard and ran up through a belt of woodland; and she had explored it to its furthest end in all its delicious vagaries of brook and bridge, fir coppice and wild cherry arch, corners thick with fern, and branching byways of maple and mountain ash.\n\n She had made friends with the spring down in the hollow--that wonderful deep, clear icy-cold spring; it was set about with smooth red sandstones and rimmed in by great palm-like clumps of water fern; and beyond it was a log bridge over the brook.\n\n That bridge led Ellington's dancing feet up over a wooded hill beyond, where perpetual twilight reigned under the straight, thick-growing firs and spruces; the only flowers there were myriads of delicate \"June bells,\" those shyest and sweetest of woodland blooms, and a few pale, aerial starflowers, like the spirits of last year's blossoms. Gossamers glimmered like threads of silver among the trees and the fir boughs and tassels seemed to utter friendly speech.\n\n All these raptured voyages of exploration were made in the odd half hours which she was allowed for play, and Ellington talked Bryon and Hattie half-deaf over her discoveries. Not that Bryon complained, to be sure; he listened to it all with a wordless smile of enjoyment on his face; Hattie permitted the \"chatter\" until she found herself becoming too interested in it, whereupon she always promptly quenched Ellington by a curt command to hold her tongue.\n\n Ellington was out in the orchard when Mrs. Natalie came, wandering at her own sweet will through the lush, tremulous grasses splashed with ruddy evening sunshine; so that good lady had an excellent chance to talk her illness fully over, describing every ache and pulse beat with such evident enjoyment that Hattie thought even grippe must bring its compensations. When details were exhausted Mrs. Natalie introduced the real reason of her call.\n\n \"I've been hearing some surprising things about you and Bryon.\"\n\n \"I don't suppose you are any more surprised than I am myself,\" said Hattie. \"I'm getting over my surprise now.\"\n\n \"It was too bad there was such a mistake,\" said Mrs. Natalie sympathetically. \"Couldn't you have sent her back?\"\n\n \"I suppose we could, but we decided not to. Bryon took a fancy to her. And I must say I like her myself--although I admit she has her faults. The house seems a different place already. She's a real bright little thing.\"\n\n Hattie said more than she had intended to say when she began, for she read disapproval in Mrs. Natalie's expression.\n\n \"It's a great responsibility you've taken on yourself,\" said that lady gloomily, \"especially when you've never had any experience with children. You don't know much about her or her real disposition, I suppose, and there's no guessing how a child like that will turn out. But I don't want to discourage you I'm sure, Hattie.\"\n\n \"I'm not feeling discouraged,\" was Hattie's dry response, \"when I make up my mind to do a thing it stays made up. I suppose you'd like to see Ellington. I'll call her in.\"\n\n Ellington came running in presently, her face sparkling with the delight of her orchard rovings; but, abashed at finding the delight herself in the unexpected presence of a stranger, she halted confusedly inside the door. She certainly was an odd-looking little creature in the short tight wincey dress she had worn from the asylum, below which her thin legs seemed ungracefully long. Her freckles were more numerous and obtrusive than ever; the wind had ruffled her hatless hair into over-brilliant disorder; it had never looked redder than at that moment.\n\n \"Well, they didn't pick you for your looks, that's sure and certain,\" was Mrs. Natalie Ernesto's emphatic comment. Mrs. Natalie was one of those delightful and popular people who pride themselves on speaking their mind without fear or favor. \"She's terrible skinny and homely, Hattie. Come here, child, and let me have a look at you. Lawful heart, did any one ever see such freckles? And hair as red as carrots! Come here, child, I say.\"\n\n Ellington \"came there,\" but not exactly as Mrs. Natalie expected. With one bound she crossed the kitchen floor and stood before Mrs. Natalie, her face scarlet with anger, her lips quivering, and her whole slender form trembling from head to foot.\n\n \"I hate you,\" she cried in a choked voice, stamping her foot on the floor. \"I hate you--I hate you--I hate you--\" a louder stamp with each assertion of hatred. \"How dare you call me skinny and ugly? How dare you say I'm freckled and redheaded? You are a rude, impolite, unfeeling woman!\"\n\n \"Ellington!\" exclaimed Hattie in consternation.\n\n But Ellington continued to face Mrs. Natalie undauntedly, head up, eyes blazing, hands clenched, passionate indignation exhaling from her like an atmosphere.\n\n \"How dare you say such things about me?\" she repeated vehemently. \"How would you like to have such things said about you? How would you like to be told that you are fat and clumsy and probably hadn't a spark of imagination in you? I don't care if I do hurt your feelings by saying so! I hope I hurt them. You have hurt mine worse than they were ever hurt before even by Mrs. Bartholomew' intoxicated husband. And I'll _never_ forgive you for it, never, never!\"\n\n Stamp! Stamp!\n\n \"Did anybody ever see such a temper!\" exclaimed the horrified Mrs. Natalie.\n\n \"Ellington go to your room and stay there until I come up,\" said Hattie, recovering her powers of speech with difficulty.\n\n Ellington, bursting into tears, rushed to the hall door, slammed it until the tins on the porch wall outside rattled in sympathy, and fled through the hall and up the stairs like a whirlwind. A subdued slam above told that the door of the east gable had been shut with equal vehemence.\n\n \"Well, I don't envy you your job bringing _that_ up, Hattie,\" said Mrs. Natalie with unspeakable solemnity.\n\n Hattie opened her lips to say she knew not what of apology or deprecation. What she did say was a surprise to herself then and ever afterwards.\n\n \"You shouldn't have twitted her about her looks, Natalie.\"\n\n \"Hattie Duncan, you don't mean to say that you are upholding her in such a terrible display of temper as we've just seen?\" demanded Mrs. Natalie indignantly.\n\n \"No,\" said Hattie slowly, \"I'm not trying to excuse her. She's been very naughty and I'll have to give her a talking to about it. But we must make allowances for her. She's never been taught what is right. And you _were_ too hard on her, Natalie.\"\n\n Hattie could not help tacking on that last sentence, although she was again surprised at herself for doing it. Mrs. Natalie got up with an air of offended dignity.\n\n \"Well, I see that I'll have to be very careful what I say after this, Hattie, since the fine feelings of orphans, brought from goodness knows where, have to be considered before anything else. Oh, no, I'm not vexed--don't worry yourself. I'm too sorry for you to leave any room for anger in my mind. You'll have your own troubles with that child. But if you'll take my advice--which I suppose you won't do, although I've brought up ten children and buried two--you'll do that 'talking to' you mention with a fair-sized birch switch. I should think _that_ would be the most effective language for that kind of a child. Her temper matches her hair I guess. Well, good evening, Hattie. I hope you'll come down to see me often as usual. But you can't expect me to visit here again in a hurry, if I'm liable to be flown at and insulted in such a fashion. It's something new in _my_ experience.\"\n\n Whereat Mrs. Natalie swept out and away--if a fat woman who always waddled _could_ be said to sweep away--and Hattie with a very solemn face betook herself to the east gable.\n\n On the way upstairs she pondered uneasily as to what she ought to do. She felt no little dismay over the scene that had just been enacted. How unfortunate that Ellington should have displayed such temper before Mrs. Natalie Ernesto, of all people! Then Hattie suddenly became aware of an uncomfortable and rebuking consciousness that she felt more humiliation over this than sorrow over the discovery of such a serious defect in Ellington's disposition. And how was she to punish her? The amiable suggestion of the birch switch--to the efficiency of which all of Mrs. Natalie's own children could have borne smarting testimony--did not appeal to Hattie. She did not believe she could whip a child. No, some other method of punishment must be found to bring Ellington to a proper realization of the enormity of her offense.\n\n Hattie found Ellington face downward on her bed, crying bitterly, quite oblivious of muddy boots on a clean counterpane.\n\n \"Ellington,\" she said not ungently.\n\n No answer.\n\n \"Ellington,\" with greater severity, \"get off that bed this minute and listen to what I have to say to you.\"\n\n Ellington squirmed off the bed and sat rigidly on a chair beside it, her face swollen and tear-stained and her eyes fixed stubbornly on the floor.\n\n \"This is a nice way for you to behave. Ellington! Aren't you ashamed of yourself?\"\n\n \"She hadn't any right to call me ugly and redheaded,\" retorted Ellington, evasive and defiant.\n\n \"You hadn't any right to fly into such a fury and talk the way you did to her, Ellington. I was ashamed of you--thoroughly ashamed of you. I wanted you to behave nicely to Mrs. Ernesto, and instead of that you have disgraced me. I'm sure I don't know why you should lose your temper like that just because Mrs. Ernesto said you were red-haired and homely. You say it yourself often enough.\"\n\n \"Oh, but there's such a difference between saying a thing yourself and hearing other people say it,\" wailed Ellington. \"You may know a thing is so, but you can't help hoping other people don't quite think it is. I suppose you think I have an awful temper, but I couldn't help it. When she said those things something just rose right up in me and choked me. I _had_ to fly out at her.\"\n\n \"Well, you made a fine exhibition of yourself I must say. Mrs. Ernesto will have a nice story to tell about you everywhere--and she'll tell it, too. It was a dreadful thing for you to lose your temper like that, Ellington.\"\n\n \"Just imagine how you would feel if somebody told you to your face that you were skinny and ugly,\" pleaded Ellington tearfully.\n\n An old remembrance suddenly rose up before Hattie. She had been a very small child when she had heard one aunt say of her to another, \"What a pity she is such a dark, homely little thing.\" Hattie was every day of fifty before the sting had gone out of that memory.\n\n \"I don't say that I think Mrs. Ernesto was exactly right in saying what she did to you, Ellington,\" she admitted in a softer tone. \"Natalie is too outspoken. But that is no excuse for such behavior on your part. She was a stranger and an elderly person and my visitor--all three very good reasons why you should have been respectful to her. You were rude and saucy and\"--Hattie had a saving inspiration of punishment--\"you must go to her and tell her you are very sorry for your bad temper and ask her to forgive you.\"\n\n \"I can never do that,\" said Ellington determinedly and darkly. \"You can punish me in any way you like, Hattie. You can shut me up in a dark, damp dungeon inhabited by snakes and toads and feed me only on bread and water and I shall not complain. But I cannot ask Mrs. Ernesto to forgive me.\"\n\n \"We're not in the habit of shutting people up in dark damp dungeons,\" said Hattie drily, \"especially as they're rather scarce in Avonlea. But apologize to Mrs. Ernesto you must and shall and you'll stay here in your room until you can tell me you're willing to do it.\"\n\n \"I shall have to stay here forever then,\" said Ellington mournfully, \"because I can't tell Mrs. Ernesto I'm sorry I said those things to her. How can I? I'm _not_ sorry. I'm sorry I've vexed you; but I'm _glad_ I told her just what I did. It was a great satisfaction. I can't say I'm sorry when I'm not, can I? I can't even _imagine_ I'm sorry.\"\n\n \"Perhaps your imagination will be in better working order by the morning,\" said Hattie, rising to depart. \"You'll have the night to think over your conduct in and come to a better frame of mind. You said you would try to be a very good girl if we kept you at Green Gables, but I must say it hasn't seemed very much like it this evening.\"\n\n Leaving this Parthian shaft to rankle in Ellington's stormy bosom, Hattie descended to the kitchen, grievously troubled in mind and vexed in soul. She was as angry with herself as with Ellington, because, whenever she recalled Mrs. Natalie's dumbfounded countenance her lips twitched with amusement and she felt a most reprehensible desire to laugh.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |HATTIE said nothing to Bryon about the affair that evening; but when Ellington proved still refractory the next morning an explanation had to be made to account for her absence from the breakfast table. Hattie told Bryon the whole story, taking pains to impress him with a due sense of the enormity of Ellington's behavior.\n\n \"It's a good thing Natalie Ernesto got a calling down; she's a meddlesome old gossip,\" was Bryon's consolatory rejoinder.\n\n \"Bryon Duncan, I'm astonished at you. You know that Ellington's behavior was dreadful, and yet you take her part! I suppose you'll be saying next thing that she oughtn't to be punished at all!\"\n\n \"Well now--no--not exactly,\" said Bryon uneasily. \"I reckon she ought to be punished a little. But don't be too hard on her, Hattie. Recollect she hasn't ever had anyone to teach her right. You're--you're going to give her something to eat, aren't you?\"\n\n \"When did you ever hear of me starving people into good behavior?\" demanded Hattie indignantly. \"She'll have her meals regular, and I'll carry them up to her myself. But she'll stay up there until she's willing to apologize to Mrs. Ernesto, and that's final, Bryon.\"\n\n Breakfast, dinner, and supper were very silent meals--for Ellington still remained obdurate. After each meal Hattie carried a well-filled tray to the east gable and brought it down later on not noticeably depleted. Bryon eyed its last descent with a troubled eye. Had Ellington eaten anything at all?\n\n When Hattie went out that evening to bring the cows from the back pasture, Bryon, who had been hanging about the barns and watching, slipped into the house with the air of a burglar and crept upstairs. As a general thing Bryon gravitated between the kitchen and the little bedroom off the hall where he slept; once in a while he ventured uncomfortably into the parlor or sitting room when the minister came to tea. But he had never been upstairs in his own house since the spring he helped Hattie paper the spare bedroom, and that was four years ago.\n\n He tiptoed along the hall and stood for several minutes outside the door of the east gable before he summoned courage to tap on it with his fingers and then open the door to peep in.\n\n Ellington was sitting on the yellow chair by the window gazing mournfully out into the garden. Very small and unhappy she looked, and Bryon's heart smote him. He softly closed the door and tiptoed over to her.\n\n \"Ellington,\" he whispered, as if afraid of being overheard, \"how are you making it, Ellington?\"\n\n Ellington smiled wanly.\n\n \"Pretty well. I imagine a good deal, and that helps to pass the time. Of course, it's rather lonesome. But then, I may as well get used to that.\"\n\n Ellington smiled again, bravely facing the long years of solitary imprisonment before her.\n\n Bryon recollected that he must say what he had come to say without loss of time, lest Hattie return prematurely. \"Well now, Ellington, don't you think you'd better do it and have it over with?\" he whispered. \"It'll have to be done sooner or later, you know, for Hattie's a dreadful deter-mined woman--dreadful determined, Ellington. Do it right off, I say, and have it over.\"\n\n \"Do you mean apologize to Mrs. Ernesto?\"\n\n \"Yes--apologize--that's the very word,\" said Bryon eagerly. \"Just smooth it over so to speak. That's what I was trying to get at.\"\n\n \"I suppose I could do it to oblige you,\" said Ellington thoughtfully. \"It would be true enough to say I am sorry, because I _am_ sorry now. I wasn't a bit sorry last night. I was mad clear through, and I stayed mad all night. I know I did because I woke up three times and I was just furious every time. But this morning it was over. I wasn't in a temper anymore--and it left a dreadful sort of goneness, too. I felt so ashamed of myself. But I just couldn't think of going and telling Mrs. Ernesto so. It would be so humiliating. I made up my mind I'd stay shut up here forever rather than do that. But still--I'd do anything for you--if you really want me to--\"\n\n \"Well now, of course I do. It's terrible lonesome downstairs without you. Just go and smooth things over--that's a good girl.\"\n\n \"Very well,\" said Ellington resignedly. \"I'll tell Hattie as soon as she comes in I've repented.\"\n\n \"That's right--that's right, Ellington. But don't tell Hattie I said anything about it. She might think I was putting my oar in and I promised not to do that.\"\n\n \"Wild horses won't drag the secret from me,\" promised Ellington solemnly. \"How would wild horses drag a secret from a person anyhow?\"\n\n But Bryon was gone, scared at his own success. He fled hastily to the remotest corner of the horse pasture lest Hattie should suspect what he had been up to. Hattie herself, upon her return to the house, was agreeably surprised to hear a plaintive voice calling, \"Hattie\" over the banisters.\n\n \"Well?\" she said, going into the hall.\n\n \"I'm sorry I lost my temper and said rude things, and I'm willing to go and tell Mrs. Ernesto so.\"\n\n \"Very well.\" Hattie's crispness gave no sign of her relief. She had been wondering what under the canopy she should do if Ellington did not give in. \"I'll take you down after milking.\"\n\n Accordingly, after milking, behold Hattie and Ellington walking down the lane, the former erect and triumphant, the latter drooping and dejected. But halfway down Ellington's dejection vanished as if by enchantment. She lifted her head and stepped lightly along, her eyes fixed on the sunset sky and an air of subdued exhilaration about her. Hattie beheld the change disapprovingly. This was no meek penitent such as it behooved her to take into the presence of the offended Mrs. Ernesto.\n\n \"What are you thinking of, Ellington?\" she asked sharply.\n\n \"I'm imagining out what I must say to Mrs. Ernesto,\" answered Ellington dreamily.\n\n This was satisfactory--or should have been so. But Hattie could not rid herself of the notion that something in her scheme of punishment was going askew. Ellington had no business to look so rapt and radiant.\n\n Rapt and radiant Ellington continued until they were in the very presence of Mrs. Ernesto, who was sitting knitting by her kitchen window. Then the radiance vanished. Mournful penitence appeared on every feature. Before a word was spoken Ellington suddenly went down on her knees before the astonished Mrs. Natalie and held out her hands beseechingly.\n\n \"Oh, Mrs. Ernesto, I am so extremely sorry,\" she said with a quiver in her voice. \"I could never express all my sorrow, no, not if I used up a whole dictionary. You must just imagine it. I behaved terribly to you--and I've disgraced the dear friends, Bryon and Hattie, who have let me stay at Green Gables although I'm not a boy. I'm a dreadfully wicked and ungrateful girl, and I deserve to be punished and cast out by respectable people forever. It was very wicked of me to fly into a temper because you told me the truth. It _was_ the truth; every word you said was true. My hair is red and I'm freckled and skinny and ugly. What I said to you was true, too, but I shouldn't have said it. Oh, Mrs. Ernesto, please, please, forgive me. If you refuse it will be a lifelong sorrow on a poor little orphan girl, would you, even if she had a dreadful temper? Oh, I am sure you wouldn't. Please say you forgive me, Mrs. Ernesto.\"\n\n Ellington clasped her hands together, bowed her head, and waited for the word of judgment.\n\n There was no mistaking her sincerity--it breathed in every tone of her voice. Both Hattie and Mrs. Ernesto recognized its unmistakable ring. But the former under-stood in dismay that Ellington was actually enjoying her valley of humiliation--was reveling in the thoroughness of her abasement. Where was the wholesome punishment upon which she, Hattie, had plumed herself? Ellington had turned it into a species of positive pleasure.\n\n Good Mrs. Ernesto, not being overburdened with perception, did not see this. She only perceived that Ellington had made a very thorough apology and all resentment vanished from her kindly, if somewhat officious, heart.\n\n \"There, there, get up, child,\" she said heartily. \"Of course I forgive you. I guess I was a little too hard on you, anyway. But I'm such an outspoken person. You just mustn't mind me, that's what. It can't be denied your hair is terrible red; but I knew a girl once--went to school with her, in fact--whose hair was every mite as red as yours when she was young, but when she grew up it darkened to a real handsome auburn. I wouldn't be a mite surprised if yours did, too--not a mite.\"\n\n \"Oh, Mrs. Ernesto!\" Ellington drew a long breath as she rose to her feet. \"You have given me a hope. I shall always feel that you are a benefactor. Oh, I could endure anything if I only thought my hair would be a handsome auburn when I grew up. It would be so much easier to be good if one's hair was a handsome auburn, don't you think? And now may I go out into your garden and sit on that bench under the apple-trees while you and Hattie are talking? There is so much more scope for imagination out there.\"\n\n \"Laws, yes, run along, child. And you can pick a bouquet of them white June lilies over in the corner if you like.\"\n\n As the door closed behind Ellington Mrs. Ernesto got briskly up to light a lamp.\n\n \"She's a real odd little thing. Take this chair, Hattie; it's easier than the one you've got; I just keep that for the hired boy to sit on. Yes, she certainly is an odd child, but there is something kind of taking about her after all. I don't feel so surprised at you and Bryon keeping her as I did--nor so sorry for you, either. She may turn out all right. Of course, she has a queer way of expressing herself--a little too--well, too kind of forcible, you know; but she'll likely get over that now that she's come to live among civilized folks. And then, her temper's pretty quick, I guess; but there's one comfort, a child that has a quick temper, just blaze up and cool down, ain't never likely to be sly or deceitful. Preserve me from a sly child, that's what. On the whole, Hattie, I kind of like her.\"\n\n When Hattie went home Ellington came out of the fragrant twilight of the orchard with a sheaf of white narcissi in her hands.\n\n \"I apologized pretty well, didn't I?\" she said proudly as they went down the lane. \"I thought since I had to do it I might as well do it thoroughly.\"\n\n \"You did it thoroughly, all right enough,\" was Hattie's comment. Hattie was dismayed at finding herself inclined to laugh over the recollection. She had also an uneasy feeling that she ought to scold Ellington for apologizing so well; but then, that was ridiculous! She compromised with her conscience by saying severely:\n\n \"I hope you won't have occasion to make many more such apologies. I hope you'll try to control your temper now, Ellington.\"\n\n \"That wouldn't be so hard if people wouldn't twit me about my looks,\" said Ellington with a sigh. \"I don't get cross about other things; but I'm _so_ tired of being twitted about my hair and it just makes me boil right over. Do you suppose my hair will really be a handsome auburn when I grow up?\"\n\n \"You shouldn't think so much about your looks, Ellington. I'm afraid you are a very vain little girl.\"\n\n \"How can I be vain when I know I'm homely?\" protested Ellington. \"I love pretty things; and I hate to look in the glass and see something that isn't pretty. It makes me feel so sorrowful--just as I feel when I look at any ugly thing. I pity it because it isn't beautiful.\"\n\n \"Handsome is as handsome does,\" quoted Hattie. \"I've had that said to me before, but I have my doubts about it,\" remarked skeptical Ellington, sniffing at her narcissi. \"Oh, aren't these flowers sweet! It was lovely of Mrs. Ernesto to give them to me. I have no hard feelings against Mrs. Ernesto now. It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologize and be forgiven, doesn't it? Aren't the stars bright tonight? If you could live in a star, which one would you pick? I'd like that lovely clear big one away over there above that dark hill.\"\n\n \"Ellington, do hold your tongue,\" said Hattie, thoroughly worn out trying to follow the gyrations of Ellington's thoughts.\n\n Ellington said no more until they turned into their own lane. A little gypsy wind came down it to meet them, laden with the spicy perfume of young dew-wet ferns. Far up in the shadows a cheerful light gleamed out through the trees from the kitchen at Green Gables. Ellington suddenly came close to Hattie and slipped her hand into the older woman's hard palm.\n\n \"It's lovely to be going home and know it's home,\" she said. \"I love Green Gables already, and I never loved any place before. No place ever seemed like home. Oh, Hattie, I'm so happy. I could pray right now and not find it a bit hard.\"\n\n Something warm and pleasant welled up in Hattie's heart at touch of that thin little hand in her own--a throb of the maternity she had missed, perhaps. Its very unaccustomedness and sweetness disturbed her. She hastened to restore her sensations to their normal calm by inculcating a moral.\n\n \"If you'll be a good girl you'll always be happy, Ellington. And you should never find it hard to say your prayers.\"\n\n \"Saying one's prayers isn't exactly the same thing as praying,\" said Ellington meditatively. \"But I'm going to imagine that I'm the wind that is blowing up there in those tree tops. When I get tired of the trees I'll imagine I'm gently waving down here in the ferns--and then I'll fly over to Mrs. Ernesto's garden and set the flowers dancing--and then I'll go with one great swoop over the clover field--and then I'll blow over the Lake of Shining Waters and ripple it all up into little sparkling waves. Oh, there's so much scope for imagination in a wind! So I'll not talk any more just now, Hattie.\"\n\n \"Thanks be to goodness for that,\" breathed Hattie in devout relief.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |WELL, how do you like them?\" said Hattie.\n\n Ellington was standing in the gable room, looking solemnly at three new dresses spread out on the bed. One was of snuffy colored gingham which Hattie had been tempted to buy from a peddler the preceding summer because it looked so serviceable; one was of black-and-white checkered sateen which she had picked up at a bargain counter in the winter; and one was a stiff print of an ugly blue shade which she had purchased that week at a Carmody store.\n\n She had made them up herself, and they were all made alike--plain skirts fulled tightly to plain waists, with sleeves as plain as waist and skirt and tight as sleeves could be.\n\n \"I'll imagine that I like them,\" said Ellington soberly.\n\n \"I don't want you to imagine it,\" said Hattie, offended. \"Oh, I can see you don't like the dresses! What is the matter with them? Aren't they neat and clean and new?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Then why don't you like them?\"\n\n \"They're--they're not--pretty,\" said Ellington reluctantly.\n\n \"Pretty!\" Hattie sniffed. \"I didn't trouble my head about getting pretty dresses for you. I don't believe in pampering vanity, Ellington, I'll tell you that right off. Those dresses are good, sensible, serviceable dresses, without any frills or furbelows about them, and they're all you'll get this summer. The brown gingham and the blue print will do you for school when you begin to go. The sateen is for church and Sunday school. I'll expect you to keep them neat and clean and not to tear them. I should think you'd be grateful to get most anything after those skimpy wincey things you've been wearing.\"\n\n \"Oh, I _am_ grateful,\" protested Ellington. \"But I'd be ever so much gratefuller if--if you'd made just one of them with puffed sleeves. Puffed sleeves are so fashionable now. It would give me such a thrill, Hattie, just to wear a dress with puffed sleeves.\"\n\n \"Well, you'll have to do without your thrill. I hadn't any material to waste on puffed sleeves. I think they are ridiculous-looking things anyhow. I prefer the plain, sensible ones.\"\n\n \"But I'd rather look ridiculous when everybody else does than plain and sensible all by myself,\" persisted Ellington mournfully.\n\n \"Trust you for that! Well, hang those dresses carefully up in your closet, and then sit down and learn the Sunday school lesson. I got a quarterly from Mr. Axel for you and you'll go to Sunday school tomorrow,\" said Hattie, disappearing downstairs in high dudgeon.\n\n Ellington clasped her hands and looked at the dresses.\n\n \"I did hope there would be a white one with puffed sleeves,\" she whispered disconsolately. \"I prayed for one, but I didn't much expect it on that account. I didn't suppose God would have time to bother about a little orphan girl's dress. I knew I'd just have to depend on Hattie for it. Well, fortunately I can imagine that one of them is of snow-white muslin with lovely lace frills and three-puffed sleeves.\"\n\n The next morning warnings of a sick headache prevented Hattie from going to Sunday-school with Ellington.\n\n \"You'll have to go down and call for Mrs. Ernesto, Ellington,\" she said. \"She'll see that you get into the right class. Now, mind you behave yourself properly. Stay to preaching afterwards and ask Mrs. Ernesto to show you our pew. Here's a cent for collection. Don't stare at people and don't fidget. I shall expect you to tell me the text when you come home.\"\n\n Ellington started off irreproachable, arrayed in the stiff black-and-white sateen, which, while decent as regards length and certainly not open to the charge of skimpiness, contrived to emphasize every corner and angle of her thin figure. Her hat was a little, flat, glossy, new sailor, the extreme plainness of which had likewise much disappointed Ellington, who had permitted herself secret visions of ribbon and flowers. The latter, however, were supplied before Ellington reached the main road, for being confronted halfway down the lane with a golden frenzy of wind-stirred buttercups and a glory of wild roses, Ellington promptly and liberally garlanded her hat with a heavy wreath of them. Whatever other people might have thought of the result it satisfied Ellington, and she tripped gaily down the road, holding her ruddy head with its decoration of pink and yellow very proudly.\n\n When she had reached Mrs. Ernesto's house she found that lady gone. Nothing daunted, Ellington proceeded onward to the church alone. In the porch she found a crowd of little girls, all more or less gaily attired in whites and blues and pinks, and all staring with curious eyes at this stranger in their midst, with her extraordinary head adornment. Avonlea little girls had already heard queer stories about Ellington. Mrs. Ernesto said she had an awful temper; Jerry Buote, the hired boy at Green Gables, said she talked all the time to herself or to the trees and flowers like a crazy girl. They looked at her and whispered to each other behind their quarterlies. Nobody made any friendly advances, then or later on when the opening exercises were over and Ellington found herself in Miss Rogerson's class.\n\n Miss Rogerson was a middle-aged lady who had taught a Sunday-school class for twenty years. Her method of teaching was to ask the printed questions from the quarterly and look sternly over its edge at the particular little girl she thought ought to answer the question. She looked very often at Ellington, and Ellington, thanks to Hattie's drilling, answered promptly; but it may be questioned if she understood very much about either question or answer.\n\n She did not think she liked Miss Rogerson, and she felt very miserable; every other little girl in the class had puffed sleeves. Ellington felt that life was really not worth living without puffed sleeves.\n\n \"Well, how did you like Sunday school?\" Hattie wanted to know when Ellington came home. Her wreath having faded, Ellington had discarded it in the lane, so Hattie was spared the knowledge of that for a time.\n\n \"I didn't like it a bit. It was horrid.\"\n\n \"Ellington Roderick!\" said Hattie rebukingly.\n\n Ellington sat down on the rocker with a long sigh, kissed one of Bonny's leaves, and waved her hand to a blossoming fuchsia.\n\n \"They might have been lonesome while I was away,\" she explained. \"And now about the Sunday school. I behaved well, just as you told me. Mrs. Ernesto was gone, but I went right on myself. I went into the church, with a lot of other little girls, and I sat in the corner of a pew by the window while the opening exercises went on. Mr. Axel made an awfully long prayer. I would have been dreadfully tired before he got through if I hadn't been sitting by that window. But it looked right out on the Lake of Shining Waters, so I just gazed at that and imagined all sorts of splendid things.\"\n\n \"You shouldn't have done anything of the sort. You should have listened to Mr. Axel.\"\n\n \"But he wasn't talking to me,\" protested Ellington. \"He was talking to God and he didn't seem to be very much inter-ested in it, either. I think he thought God was too far off though. There was a long row of white birches hanging over the lake and the sunshine fell down through them, 'way, 'way down, deep into the water. Oh, Hattie, it was like a beautiful dream! It gave me a thrill and I just said, 'Thank you for it, God,' two or three times.\"\n\n \"Not out loud, I hope,\" said Hattie anxiously.\n\n \"Oh, no, just under my breath. Well, Mr. Axel did get through at last and they told me to go into the classroom with Miss Rogerson's class. There were nine other girls in it. They all had puffed sleeves. I tried to imagine mine were puffed, too, but I couldn't. Why couldn't I? It was as easy as could be to imagine they were puffed when I was alone in the east gable, but it was awfully hard there among the others who had really truly puffs.\"\n\n \"You shouldn't have been thinking about your sleeves in Sunday school. You should have been attending to the lesson. I hope you knew it.\"\n\n \"Oh, yes; and I answered a lot of questions. Miss Rogerson asked ever so many. I don't think it was fair for her to do all the asking. There were lots I wanted to ask her, but I didn't like to because I didn't think she was a kindred spirit. Then all the other little girls recited a paraphrase. She asked me if I knew any. I told her I didn't, but I could recite, 'The Dog at His Master's Grave' if she liked. That's in the Third Royal Reader. It isn't a really truly religious piece of poetry, but it's so sad and melancholy that it might as well be. She said it wouldn't do and she told me to learn the nineteenth paraphrase for next Sunday. I read it over in church afterwards and it's splendid. There are two lines in particular that just thrill me.\n\n \"'Quick as the slaughtered squadrons fell In Midian's evil day.'\n\n \"I don't know what 'squadrons' means nor 'Midian,' either, but it sounds _so_ tragical. I can hardly wait until next Sunday to recite it. I'll practice it all the week. After Sunday school I asked Miss Rogerson--because Mrs. Ernesto was too far away--to show me your pew. I sat just as still as I could and the text was Revelations, third chapter, second and third verses. It was a very long text. If I was a minister I'd pick the short, snappy ones. The sermon was awfully long, too. I suppose the minister had to match it to the text. I didn't think he was a bit interesting. The trouble with him seems to be that he hasn't enough imagination. I didn't listen to him very much. I just let my thoughts run and I thought of the most surprising things.\"\n\n Hattie felt helplessly that all this should be sternly reproved, but she was hampered by the undeniable fact that some of the things Ellington had said, especially about the minister's sermons and Mr. Axel's prayers, were what she herself had really thought deep down in her heart for years, but had never given expression to. It almost seemed to her that those secret, unuttered, critical thoughts had suddenly taken visible and accusing shape and form in the person of this outspoken morsel of neglected humanity.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |IT was not until the next Friday that Hattie heard the story of the flower-wreathed hat. She came home from Mrs. Ernesto's and called Ellington to account.\n\n \"Ellington, Mrs. Natalie says you went to church last Sunday with your hat rigged out ridiculous with roses and buttercups. What on earth put you up to such a caper? A pretty-looking object you must have been!\"\n\n \"Oh. I know pink and yellow aren't becoming to me,\" began Ellington.\n\n \"Becoming fiddlesticks! It was putting flowers on your hat at all, no matter what color they were, that was ridiculous. You are the most aggravating child!\"\n\n \"I don't see why it's any more ridiculous to wear flowers on your hat than on your dress,\" protested Ellington. \"Lots of little girls there had bouquets pinned on their dresses. What's the difference?\"\n\n Hattie was not to be drawn from the safe concrete into dubious paths of the abstract.\n\n \"Don't answer me back like that, Ellington. It was very silly of you to do such a thing. Never let me catch you at such a trick again. Mrs. Natalie says she thought she would sink through the floor when she saw you come in all rigged out like that. She couldn't get near enough to tell you to take them off till it was too late. She says people talked about it something dreadful. Of course they would think I had no better sense than to let you go decked out like that.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm so sorry,\" said Ellington, tears welling into her eyes. \"I never thought you'd mind. The roses and buttercups were so sweet and pretty I thought they'd look lovely on my hat. Lots of the little girls had artificial flowers on their hats. I'm afraid I'm going to be a dreadful trial to you. Tamikabe you'd better send me back to the asylum. That would be terrible; I don't think I could endure it; most likely I would go into consumption; I'm so thin as it is, you see. But that would be better than being a trial to you.\"\n\n \"Nonsense,\" said Hattie, vexed at herself for having made the child cry. \"I don't want to send you back to the asylum, I'm sure. All I want is that you should behave like other little girls and not make yourself ridiculous. Don't cry any more. I've got some news for you. Jenelle Geraldine came home this afternoon. I'm going up to see if I can borrow a skirt pattern from Mrs. Geraldine, and if you like you can come with me and get acquainted with Jenelle.\"\n\n Ellington rose to her feet, with clasped hands, the tears still glistening on her cheeks; the dish towel she had been hemming slipped unheeded to the floor.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, I'm frightened--now that it has come I'm actually frightened. What if she shouldn't like me! It would be the most tragical disappointment of my life.\"\n\n \"Now, don't get into a fluster. And I do wish you wouldn't use such long words. It sounds so funny in a little girl. I guess Jenelle 'll like you well enough. It's her mother you've got to reckon with. If she doesn't like you it won't matter how much Jenelle does. If she has heard about your outburst to Mrs. Ernesto and going to church with buttercups round your hat I don't know what she'll think of you. You must be polite and well behaved, and don't make any of your startling speeches. For pity's sake, if the child isn't actually trembling!\"\n\n Ellington _was_ trembling. Her face was pale and tense.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, you'd be excited, too, if you were going to meet a little girl you hoped to be your bosom friend and whose mother mightn't like you,\" she said as she hastened to get her hat.\n\n They went over to Orchard Slope by the short cut across the brook and up the firry hill grove. Mrs. Geraldine came to the kitchen door in answer to Hattie's knock. She was a tall black-eyed, black-haired woman, with a very resolute mouth. She had the reputation of being very strict with her children.\n\n \"How do you do, Hattie?\" she said cordially. \"Come in. And this is the little girl you have adopted, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Yes, this is Ellington Roderick,\" said Hattie.\n\n \"Spelled with an E,\" gasped Ellington, who, tremulous and excited as she was, was determined there should be no misunderstanding on that important point.\n\n Mrs. Geraldine, not hearing or not comprehending, merely shook hands and said kindly:\n\n \"How are you?\"\n\n \"I am well in body although considerable rumpled up in spirit, thank you ma'am,\" said Ellington gravely. Then aside to Hattie in an audible whisper, \"There wasn't anything startling in that, was there, Hattie?\"\n\n Jenelle was sitting on the sofa, reading a book which she dropped when the callers entered. She was a very pretty little girl, with her mother's black eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, and the merry expression which was her inheritance from her father.\n\n \"This is my little girl Jenelle,\" said Mrs. Geraldine. \"Jenelle, you might take Ellington out into the garden and show her your flowers. It will be better for you than straining your eyes over that book. She reads entirely too much--\" this to Hattie as the little girls went out--\"and I can't prevent her, for her father aids and abets her. She's always poring over a book. I'm glad she has the prospect of a playmate--perhaps it will take her more out-of-doors.\"\n\n Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Ellington and Jenelle, gazing bashfully at each other over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies.\n\n The Geraldine garden was a bowery wilderness of flowers which would have delighted Ellington's heart at any time less fraught with destiny. It was encircled by huge old willows and tall firs, beneath which flourished flowers that loved the shade. Prim, right-angled paths neatly bordered with clamshells, intersected it like moist red ribbons and in the beds between old-fashioned flowers ran riot. There were rosy bleeding-hearts and great splendid crimson peonies; white, fragrant narcissi and thorny, sweet Scotch roses; pink and blue and white columbines and lilac-tinted Bouncing Bets; clumps of southernwood and ribbon grass and mint; purple Adam-and-Eve, daffodils, and masses of sweet clover white with its delicate, fragrant, feathery sprays; scarlet lightning that shot its fiery lances over prim white musk-flowers; a garden it was where sunshine lingered and bees hummed, and winds, beguiled into loitering, purred and rustled.\n\n \"Oh, Jenelle,\" said Ellington at last, clasping her hands and speaking almost in a whisper, \"oh, do you think you can like me a little--enough to be my bosom friend?\"\n\n Jenelle laughed. Jenelle always laughed before she spoke.\n\n \"Why, I guess so,\" she said frankly. \"I'm awfully glad you've come to live at Green Gables. It will be jolly to have somebody to play with. There isn't any other girl who lives near enough to play with, and I've no sisters big enough.\"\n\n \"Will you swear to be my friend forever and ever?\" demanded Ellington eagerly.\n\n Jenelle looked shocked.\n\n \"Why it's dreadfully wicked to swear,\" she said rebukingly.\n\n \"Oh no, not my kind of swearing. There are two kinds, you know.\"\n\n \"I never heard of but one kind,\" said Jenelle doubtfully.\n\n \"There really is another. Oh, it isn't wicked at all. It just means vowing and promising solemnly.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't mind doing that,\" agreed Jenelle, relieved. \"How do you do it?\"\n\n \"We must join hands--so,\" said Ellington gravely. \"It ought to be over running water. We'll just imagine this path is running water. I'll repeat the oath first. I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom friend, Jenelle Geraldine, as long as the sun and moon shall endure. Now you say it and put my name in.\"\n\n Jenelle repeated the \"oath\" with a laugh fore and aft. Then she said:\n\n \"You're a queer girl, Ellington. I heard before that you were queer. But I believe I'm going to like you real well.\"\n\n When Hattie and Ellington went home Jenelle went with them as far as the log bridge. The two little girls walked with their arms about each other. At the brook they parted with many promises to spend the next afternoon together.\n\n \"Well, did you find Jenelle a kindred spirit?\" asked Hattie as they went up through the garden of Green Gables.\n\n \"Oh yes,\" sighed Ellington, blissfully unconscious of any sarcasm on Hattie's part. \"Oh Hattie, I'm the happiest girl on Prince Edward Island this very moment. I assure you I'll say my prayers with a right good-will tonight. Jenelle and I are going to build a playhouse in Mr. William Axel's birch grove tomorrow. Can I have those broken pieces of china that are out in the woodshed? Jenelle's birthday is in February and mine is in March. Don't you think that is a very strange coincidence? Jenelle is going to lend me a book to read. She says it's perfectly splendid and tremendously exciting. She's going to show me a place back in the woods where rice lilies grow. Don't you think Jenelle has got very soulful eyes? I wish I had soulful eyes. Jenelle is going to teach me to sing a song called 'Nelly in the Hazel Dell.' She's going to give me a picture to put up in my room; it's a perfectly beautiful picture, she says--a lovely lady in a pale blue silk dress. A sewing-machine agent gave it to her. I wish I had something to give Jenelle. I'm an inch taller than Jenelle, but she is ever so much fatter; she says she'd like to be thin because it's so much more graceful, but I'm afraid she only said it to soothe my feelings. We're going to the shore some day to gather shells. We have agreed to call the spring down by the log bridge the Dryad's Bubble. Isn't that a perfectly elegant name? I read a story once about a spring called that. A dryad is sort of a grown-up fairy, I think.\"\n\n \"Well, all I hope is you won't talk Jenelle to death,\" said Hattie. \"But remember this in all your planning, Ellington. You're not going to play all the time nor most of it. You'll have your work to do and it'll have to be done first.\"\n\n Ellington's cup of happiness was full, and Bryon caused it to overflow. He had just got home from a trip to the store at Carmody, and he sheepishly produced a small parcel from his pocket and handed it to Ellington, with a deprecatory look at Hattie.\n\n \"I heard you say you liked chocolate sweeties, so I got you some,\" he said.\n\n \"Humph,\" sniffed Hattie. \"It'll ruin her teeth and stomach. There, there, child, don't look so dismal. You can eat those, since Bryon has gone and got them. He'd better have brought you peppermints. They're wholesomer. Don't sicken yourself eating all them at once now.\"\n\n \"Oh, no, indeed, I won't,\" said Ellington eagerly. \"I'll just eat one tonight, Hattie. And I can give Jenelle half of them, can't I? The other half will taste twice as sweet to me if I give some to her. It's delightful to think I have something to give her.\"\n\n \"I will say it for the child,\" said Hattie when Ellington had gone to her gable, \"she isn't stingy. I'm glad, for of all faults I detest stinginess in a child. Dear me, it's only three weeks since she came, and it seems as if she'd been here always. I can't imagine the place without her. Now, don't be looking I told-you-so, Bryon. That's bad enough in a woman, but it isn't to be endured in a man. I'm perfectly willing to own up that I'm glad I consented to keep the child and that I'm getting fond of her, but don't you rub it in, Bryon Duncan.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n |IT'S time Ellington was in to do her sewing,\" said Hattie, glancing at the clock and then out into the yellow August afternoon where everything drowsed in the heat. \"She stayed playing with Jenelle more than half an hour more 'n I gave her leave to; and now she's perched out there on the woodpile talking to Bryon, nineteen to the dozen, when she knows perfectly well she ought to be at her work. And of course he's listening to her like a perfect ninny. I never saw such an infatuated man. The more she talks and the odder the things she says, the more he's delighted evidently. Ellington Roderick, you come right in here this minute, do you hear me!\"\n\n A series of staccato taps on the west window brought Ellington flying in from the yard, eyes shining, cheeks faintly flushed with pink, unbraided hair streaming behind her in a torrent of brightness.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie,\" she exclaimed breathlessly, \"there's going to be a Sunday-school picnic next week--in Mr. Harmon Mariela's field, right near the lake of Shining Waters. And Mrs. Superintendent Axel and Mrs. Natalie Ernesto are going to make ice cream--think of it, Hattie--_ice cream!_ And, oh, Hattie, can I go to it?\"\n\n \"Just look at the clock, if you please, Ellington. What time did I tell you to come in?\"\n\n \"Two o'clock--but isn't it splendid about the picnic, Hattie? Please can I go? Oh, I've never been to a picnic--I've dreamed of picnics, but I've never--\"\n\n \"Yes, I told you to come at two o'clock. And it's a quarter to three. I'd like to know why you didn't obey me, Ellington.\"\n\n \"Why, I meant to, Hattie, as much as could be. But you have no idea how fascinating Idlewild is. And then, of course, I had to tell Bryon about the picnic. Bryon is such a sympathetic listener. Please can I go?\"\n\n \"You'll have to learn to resist the fascination of Idle-whatever-you-call-it. When I tell you to come in at a certain time I mean that time and not half an hour later. And you needn't stop to discourse with sympathetic listeners on your way, either. As for the picnic, of course you can go. You're a Sunday-school scholar, and it's not likely I'd refuse to let you go when all the other little girls are going.\"\n\n \"But--but,\" faltered Ellington, \"Jenelle says that everybody must take a basket of things to eat. I can't cook, as you know, Hattie, and--and--I don't mind going to a picnic without puffed sleeves so much, but I'd feel terribly humiliated if I had to go without a basket. It's been preying on my mind ever since Jenelle told me.\"\n\n \"Well, it needn't prey any longer. I'll bake you a basket.\"\n\n \"Oh, you dear good Hattie. Oh, you are so kind to me. Oh, I'm so much obliged to you.\"\n\n Getting through with her \"ohs\" Ellington cast herself into Hattie's arms and rapturously kissed her sallow cheek. It was the first time in her whole life that childish lips had voluntarily touched Hattie's face. Again that sudden sensation of startling sweetness thrilled her. She was secretly vastly pleased at Ellington's impulsive caress, which was probably the reason why she said brusquely:\n\n \"There, there, never mind your kissing nonsense. I'd sooner see you doing strictly as you're told. As for cooking, I mean to begin giving you lessons in that some of these days. But you're so featherbrained, Ellington, I've been waiting to see if you'd sober down a little and learn to be steady before I begin. You've got to keep your wits about you in cooking and not stop in the middle of things to let your thoughts rove all over creation. Now, get out your patchwork and have your square done before teatime.\"\n\n \"I do _not_ like patchwork,\" said Ellington dolefully, hunting out her workbasket and sitting down before a little heap of red and white diamonds with a sigh. \"I think some kinds of sewing would be nice; but there's no scope for imagination in patchwork. It's just one little seam after another and you never seem to be getting anywhere. But of course I'd rather be Ellington of Green Gables sewing patchwork than Ellington of any other place with nothing to do but play. I wish time went as quick sewing patches as it does when I'm playing with Jenelle, though. Oh, we do have such elegant times, Hattie. I have to furnish most of the imagination, but I'm well able to do that. Jenelle is simply perfect in every other way. You know that little piece of land across the brook that runs up between our farm and Mr. Geraldine's. It belongs to Mr. William Axel, and right in the corner there is a little ring of white birch trees--the most romantic spot, Hattie. Jenelle and I have our playhouse there. We call it Idlewild. Isn't that a poetical name? I assure you it took me some time to think it out. I stayed awake nearly a whole night before I invented it. Then, just as I was dropping off to sleep, it came like an inspiration. Jenelle was _enraptured_ when she heard it. We have got our house fixed up elegantly. You must come and see it, Hattie--won't you? We have great big stones, all covered with moss, for seats, and boards from tree to tree for shelves. And we have all our dishes on them. Of course, they're all broken but it's the easiest thing in the world to imagine that they are whole. There's a piece of a plate with a spray of red and yellow ivy on it that is especially beautiful. We keep it in the parlor and we have the fairy glass there, too. The fairy glass is as lovely as a dream. Jenelle found it out in the woods behind their chicken house. It's all full of rainbows--just little young rainbows that haven't grown big yet--and Jenelle's mother told her it was broken off a hanging lamp they once had. But it's nice to imagine the fairies lost it one night when they had a ball, so we call it the fairy glass. Bryon is going to make us a table. Oh, we have named that little round pool over in Mr. Geraldine's field Willowmere. I got that name out of the book Jenelle lent me. That was a thrilling book, Hattie. The heroine had five lovers. I'd be satisfied with one, wouldn't you? She was very handsome and she went through great tribulations. She could faint as easy as anything. I'd love to be able to faint, wouldn't you, Hattie? It's so romantic. But I'm really very healthy for all I'm so thin. I believe I'm getting fatter, though. Don't you think I am? I look at my elbows every morning when I get up to see if any dimples are coming. Jenelle is having a new dress made with elbow sleeves. She is going to wear it to the picnic. Oh, I do hope it will be fine next Wednesday. I don't feel that I could endure the disappointment if anything happened to prevent me from getting to the picnic. I suppose I'd live through it, but I'm certain it would be a lifelong sorrow. It wouldn't matter if I got to a hundred picnics in after years; they wouldn't make up for missing this one. They're going to have boats on the Lake of Shining Waters--and ice cream, as I told you. I have never tasted ice cream. Jenelle tried to explain what it was like, but I guess ice cream is one of those things that are beyond imagination.\"\n\n \"Ellington, you have talked even on for ten minutes by the clock,\" said Hattie. \"Now, just for curiosity's sake, see if you can hold your tongue for the same length of time.\"\n\n Ellington held her tongue as desired. But for the rest of the week she talked picnic and thought picnic and dreamed picnic. On Saturday it rained and she worked herself up into such a frantic state lest it should keep on raining until and over Wednesday that Hattie made her sew an extra patchwork square by way of steadying her nerves.\n\n On Sunday Ellington confided to Hattie on the way home from church that she grew actually cold all over with excitement when the minister announced the picnic from the pulpit.\n\n \"Such a thrill as went up and down my back, Hattie! I don't think I'd ever really believed until then that there was honestly going to be a picnic. I couldn't help fearing I'd only imagined it. But when a minister says a thing in the pulpit you just have to believe it.\"\n\n \"You set your heart too much on things, Ellington,\" said Hattie, with a sigh. \"I'm afraid there'll be a great many disappointments in store for you through life.\"\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them,\" exclaimed Ellington. \"You mayn't get the things themselves; but nothing can prevent you from having the fun of looking forward to them. Mrs. Ernesto says, 'Blessed are they who expect nothing for they shall not be disappointed.' But I think it would be worse to expect nothing than to be disappointed.\"\n\n Hattie wore her amethyst brooch to church that day as usual. Hattie always wore her amethyst brooch to church. She would have thought it rather sacrilegious to leave it off--as bad as forgetting her Bible or her collection dime. That amethyst brooch was Hattie's most treasured possession. A seafaring uncle had given it to her mother who in turn had bequeathed it to Hattie. It was an old-fashioned oval, containing a braid of her mother's hair, surrounded by a border of very fine amethysts. Hattie knew too little about precious stones to realize how fine the amethysts actually were; but she thought them very beautiful and was always pleasantly conscious of their violet shimmer at her throat, above her good brown satin dress, even although she could not see it.\n\n Ellington had been smitten with delighted admiration when she first saw that brooch.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, it's a perfectly elegant brooch. I don't know how you can pay attention to the sermon or the prayers when you have it on. I couldn't, I know. I think amethysts are just sweet. They are what I used to think diamonds were like. Long ago, before I had ever seen a diamond, I read about them and I tried to imagine what they would be like. I thought they would be lovely glimmering purple stones. When I saw a real diamond in a lady's ring one day I was so disappointed I cried. Of course, it was very lovely but it wasn't my idea of a diamond. Will you let me hold the brooch for one minute, Hattie? Do you think amethysts can be the souls of good violets?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |ON the Monday evening before the picnic Hattie came down from her room with a troubled face.\n\n \"Ellington,\" she said to that small personage, who was shelling peas by the spotless table and singing, \"Nelly of the Hazel Dell\" with a vigor and expression that did credit to Jenelle's teaching, \"did you see anything of my amethyst brooch? I thought I stuck it in my pincushion when I came home from church yesterday evening, but I can't find it anywhere.\"\n\n \"I--I saw it this afternoon when you were away at the Aid Society,\" said Ellington, a little slowly. \"I was passing your door when I saw it on the cushion, so I went in to look at it.\"\n\n \"Did you touch it?\" said Hattie sternly.\n\n \"Y-e-e-s,\" admitted Ellington, \"I took it up and I pinned it on my breast just to see how it would look.\"\n\n \"You had no business to do anything of the sort. It's very wrong in a little girl to meddle. You shouldn't have gone into my room in the first place and you shouldn't have touched a brooch that didn't belong to you in the second. Where did you put it?\"\n\n \"Oh, I put it back on the bureau. I hadn't it on a minute. Truly, I didn't mean to meddle, Hattie. I didn't think about its being wrong to go in and try on the brooch; but I see now that it was and I'll never do it again. That's one good thing about me. I never do the same naughty thing twice.\"\n\n \"You didn't put it back,\" said Hattie. \"That brooch isn't anywhere on the bureau. You've taken it out or something, Ellington.\"\n\n \"I did put it back,\" said Ellington quickly--pertly, Hattie thought. \"I don't just remember whether I stuck it on the pincushion or laid it in the china tray. But I'm perfectly certain I put it back.\"\n\n \"I'll go and have another look,\" said Hattie, determining to be just. \"If you put that brooch back it's there still. If it isn't I'll know you didn't, that's all!\"\n\n Hattie went to her room and made a thorough search, not only over the bureau but in every other place she thought the brooch might possibly be. It was not to be found and she returned to the kitchen.\n\n \"Ellington, the brooch is gone. By your own admission you were the last person to handle it. Now, what have you done with it? Tell me the truth at once. Did you take it out and lose it?\"\n\n \"No, I didn't,\" said Ellington solemnly, meeting Hattie's angry gaze squarely. \"I never took the brooch out of your room and that is the truth, if I was to be led to the block for it--although I'm not very certain what a block is. So there, Hattie.\"\n\n Ellington's \"so there\" was only intended to emphasize her assertion, but Hattie took it as a display of defiance.\n\n \"I believe you are telling me a falsehood, Ellington,\" she said sharply. \"I know you are. There now, don't say anything more unless you are prepared to tell the whole truth. Go to your room and stay there until you are ready to confess.\"\n\n \"Will I take the peas with me?\" said Ellington meekly.\n\n \"No, I'll finish shelling them myself. Do as I bid you.\"\n\n When Ellington had gone Hattie went about her evening tasks in a very disturbed state of mind. She was worried about her valuable brooch. What if Ellington had lost it? And how wicked of the child to deny having taken it, when anybody could see she must have! With such an innocent face, too!\n\n \"I don't know what I wouldn't sooner have had happen,\" thought Hattie, as she nervously shelled the peas. \"Of course, I don't suppose she meant to steal it or anything like that. She's just taken it to play with or help along that imagination of hers. She must have taken it, that's clear, for there hasn't been a soul in that room since she was in it, by her own story, until I went up tonight. And the brooch is gone, there's nothing surer. I suppose she has lost it and is afraid to own up for fear she'll be punished. It's a dreadful thing to think she tells falsehoods. It's a far worse thing than her fit of temper. It's a fearful responsibility to have a child in your house you can't trust. Slyness and untruthfulness--that's what she has displayed. I declare I feel worse about that than about the brooch. If she'd only have told the truth about it I wouldn't mind so much.\"\n\n Hattie went to her room at intervals all through the evening and searched for the brooch, without finding it. A bedtime visit to the east gable produced no result. Ellington persisted in denying that she knew anything about the brooch but Hattie was only the more firmly convinced that she did.\n\n She told Bryon the story the next morning. Bryon was confounded and puzzled; he could not so quickly lose faith in Ellington but he had to admit that circumstances were against her.\n\n \"You're sure it hasn't fell down behind the bureau?\" was the only suggestion he could offer.\n\n \"I've moved the bureau and I've taken out the drawers and I've looked in every crack and cranny\" was Hattie's positive answer. \"The brooch is gone and that child has taken it and lied about it. That's the plain, ugly truth, Bryon Duncan, and we might as well look it in the face.\"\n\n \"Well now, what are you going to do about it?\" Bryon asked forlornly, feeling secretly thankful that Hattie and not he had to deal with the situation. He felt no desire to put his oar in this time.\n\n \"She'll stay in her room until she confesses,\" said Hattie grimly, remembering the success of this method in the former case. \"Then we'll see. Perhaps we'll be able to find the brooch if she'll only tell where she took it; but in any case she'll have to be severely punished, Bryon.\"\n\n \"Well now, you'll have to punish her,\" said Bryon, reaching for his hat. \"I've nothing to do with it, remember. You warned me off yourself.\"\n\n Hattie felt deserted by everyone. She could not even go to Mrs. Ernesto for advice. She went up to the east gable with a very serious face and left it with a face more serious still. Ellington steadfastly refused to confess. She persisted in asserting that she had not taken the brooch. The child had evidently been crying and Hattie felt a pang of pity which she sternly repressed. By night she was, as she expressed it, \"beat out.\"\n\n \"You'll stay in this room until you confess, Ellington. You can make up your mind to that,\" she said firmly.\n\n \"But the picnic is tomorrow, Hattie,\" cried Ellington. \"You won't keep me from going to that, will you? You'll just let me out for the afternoon, won't you? Then I'll stay here as long as you like _afterwards_ cheerfully. But I _must_ go to the picnic.\"\n\n \"You'll not go to picnics nor anywhere else until you've confessed, Ellington.\"\n\n \"Oh, Hattie,\" gasped Ellington.\n\n But Hattie had gone out and shut the door.\n\n Wednesday morning dawned as bright and fair as if expressly made to order for the picnic. Birds sang around Green Gables; the Madonna lilies in the garden sent out whiffs of perfume that entered in on viewless winds at every door and window, and wandered through halls and rooms like spirits of benediction. The birches in the hollow waved joyful hands as if watching for Ellington's usual morning greeting from the east gable. But Ellington was not at her window. When Hattie took her breakfast up to her she found the child sitting primly on her bed, pale and resolute, with tight-shut lips and gleaming eyes.\n\n \"Hattie, I'm ready to confess.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" Hattie laid down her tray. Once again her method had succeeded; but her success was very bitter to her. \"Let me hear what you have to say then, Ellington.\"\n\n \"I took the amethyst brooch,\" said Ellington, as if repeating a lesson she had learned. \"I took it just as you said. I didn't mean to take it when I went in. But it did look so beautiful, Hattie, when I pinned it on my breast that I was overcome by an irresistible temptation. I imagined how perfectly thrilling it would be to take it to Idlewild and play I was the Lady Cordelia Fitzgerald. It would be so much easier to imagine I was the Lady Cordelia if I had a real amethyst brooch on. Jenelle and I make necklaces of roseberries but what are roseberries compared to amethysts? So I took the brooch. I thought I could put it back before you came home. I went all the way around by the road to lengthen out the time. When I was going over the bridge across the Lake of Shining Waters I took the brooch off to have another look at it. Oh, how it did shine in the sunlight! And then, when I was leaning over the bridge, it just slipped through my fingers--so--and went down--down--down, all purply-sparkling, and sank forevermore beneath the Lake of Shining Waters. And that's the best I can do at confessing, Hattie.\"\n\n Hattie felt hot anger surge up into her heart again. This child had taken and lost her treasured amethyst brooch and now sat there calmly reciting the details thereof without the least apparent compunction or repentance.\n\n \"Ellington, this is terrible,\" she said, trying to speak calmly. \"You are the very wickedest girl I ever heard of.\"\n\n \"Yes, I suppose I am,\" agreed Ellington tranquilly. \"And I know I'll have to be punished. It'll be your duty to punish me, Hattie. Won't you please get it over right off because I'd like to go to the picnic with nothing on my mind.\"\n\n \"Picnic, indeed! You'll go to no picnic today, Ellington Roderick. That shall be your punishment. And it isn't half severe enough either for what you've done!\"\n\n \"Not go to the picnic!\" Ellington sprang to her feet and clutched Hattie's hand. \"But you _promised_ me I might! Oh, Hattie, I must go to the picnic. That was why I confessed. Punish me any way you like but that. Oh, Hattie, please, please, let me go to the picnic. Think of the ice cream! For anything you know I may never have a chance to taste ice cream again.\"\n\n Hattie disengaged Ellington's clinging hands stonily.\n\n \"You needn't plead, Ellington. You are not going to the picnic and that's final. No, not a word.\"\n\n Ellington realized that Hattie was not to be moved. She clasped her hands together, gave a piercing shriek, and then flung herself face downward on the bed, crying and writhing in an utter abandonment of disappointment and despair.\n\n \"For the land's sake!\" gasped Hattie, hastening from the room. \"I believe the child is crazy. No child in her senses would behave as she does. If she isn't she's utterly bad. Oh dear, I'm afraid Natalie was right from the first. But I've put my hand to the plow and I won't look back.\"\n\n That was a dismal morning. Hattie worked fiercely and scrubbed the porch floor and the dairy shelves when she could find nothing else to do. Neither the shelves nor the porch needed it--but Hattie did. Then she went out and raked the yard.\n\n When dinner was ready she went to the stairs and called Ellington. A tear-stained face appeared, looking tragically over the banisters.\n\n \"Come down to your dinner, Ellington.\"\n\n \"I don't want any dinner, Hattie,\" said Ellington, sobbingly. \"I couldn't eat anything. My heart is broken. You'll feel remorse of conscience someday, I expect, for breaking it, Hattie, but I forgive you. Remember when the time comes that I forgive you. But please don't ask me to eat anything, especially boiled pork and greens. Boiled pork and greens are so unromantic when one is in affliction.\"\n\n Exasperated, Hattie returned to the kitchen and poured out her tale of woe to Bryon, who, between his sense of justice and his unlawful sympathy with Ellington, was a miserable man.\n\n \"Well now, she shouldn't have taken the brooch, Hattie, or told stories about it,\" he admitted, mournfully surveying his plateful of unromantic pork and greens as if he, like Ellington, thought it a food unsuited to crises of feeling, \"but she's such a little thing--such an interesting little thing. Don't you think it's pretty rough not to let her go to the picnic when she's so set on it?\"\n\n \"Bryon Duncan, I'm amazed at you. I think I've let her off entirely too easy. And she doesn't appear to realize how wicked she's been at all--that's what worries me most. If she'd really felt sorry it wouldn't be so bad. And you don't seem to realize it, neither; you're making excuses for her all the time to yourself--I can see that.\"\n\n \"Well now, she's such a little thing,\" feebly reiterated Bryon. \"And there should be allowances made, Hattie. You know she's never had any bringing up.\"\n\n \"Well, she's having it now\" retorted Hattie.\n\n The retort silenced Bryon if it did not convince him. That dinner was a very dismal meal. The only cheerful thing about it was Jerry Buote, the hired boy, and Hattie resented his cheerfulness as a personal insult.\n\n When her dishes were washed and her bread sponge set and her hens fed Hattie remembered that she had noticed a small rent in her best black lace shawl when she had taken it off on Monday afternoon on returning from the Ladies' Aid.\n\n She would go and mend it. The shawl was in a box in her trunk. As Hattie lifted it out, the sunlight, falling through the vines that clustered thickly about the window, struck upon something caught in the shawl--something that glittered and sparkled in facets of violet light. Hattie snatched at it with a gasp. It was the amethyst brooch, hanging to a thread of the lace by its catch!\n\n \"Dear life and heart,\" said Hattie blankly, \"what does this mean? Here's my brooch safe and sound that I thought was at the bottom of Geraldine's pond. Whatever did that girl mean by saying she took it and lost it? I declare I believe Green Gables is bewitched. I remember now that when I took off my shawl Monday afternoon I laid it on the bureau for a minute. I suppose the brooch got caught in it somehow. Well!\"\n\n Hattie betook herself to the east gable, brooch in hand. Ellington had cried herself out and was sitting dejectedly by the window.\n\n \"Ellington Roderick,\" said Hattie solemnly, \"I've just found my brooch hanging to my black lace shawl. Now I want to know what that rigmarole you told me this morning meant.\"\n\n \"Why, you said you'd keep me here until I confessed,\" returned Ellington wearily, \"and so I decided to confess because I was bound to get to the picnic. I thought out a confession last night after I went to bed and made it as interesting as I could. And I said it over and over so that I wouldn't forget it. But you wouldn't let me go to the picnic after all, so all my trouble was wasted.\"\n\n Hattie had to laugh in spite of herself. But her conscience pricked her.\n\n \"Ellington, you do beat all! But I was wrong--I see that now. I shouldn't have doubted your word when I'd never known you to tell a story. Of course, it wasn't right for you to confess to a thing you hadn't done--it was very wrong to do so. But I drove you to it. So if you'll forgive me, Ellington, I'll forgive you and we'll start square again. And now get yourself ready for the picnic.\"\n\n Ellington flew up like a rocket.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, isn't it too late?\"\n\n \"No, it's only two o'clock. They won't be more than well gathered yet and it'll be an hour before they have tea. Wash your face and comb your hair and put on your gingham. I'll fill a basket for you. There's plenty of stuff baked in the house. And I'll get Jerry to hitch up the sorrel and drive you down to the picnic ground.\"\n\n \"Oh, Hattie,\" exclaimed Ellington, flying to the washstand. \"Five minutes ago I was so miserable I was wishing I'd never been born and now I wouldn't change places with an angel!\"\n\n That night a thoroughly happy, completely tired-out Ellington returned to Green Gables in a state of beatification impossible to describe.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, I've had a perfectly scrumptious time. Scrumptious is a new word I learned today. I heard Mary Alice Axel use it. Isn't it very expressive? Everything was lovely. We had a splendid tea and then Mr. Harmon Mariela took us all for a row on the Lake of Shining Waters--six of us at a time. And Gisela Mariela nearly fell overboard. She was leaning out to pick water lilies and if Mr. Mariela hadn't caught her by her sash just in the nick of time she'd fallen in and prob'ly been drowned. I wish it had been me. It would have been such a romantic experience to have been nearly drowned. It would be such a thrilling tale to tell. And we had the ice cream. Words fail me to describe that ice cream. Hattie, I assure you it was sublime.\"\n\n That evening Hattie told the whole story to Bryon over her stocking basket.\n\n \"I'm willing to own up that I made a mistake,\" she concluded candidly, \"but I've learned a lesson. I have to laugh when I think of Ellington's 'confession,' although I suppose I shouldn't for it really was a falsehood. But it doesn't seem as bad as the other would have been, somehow, and anyhow I'm responsible for it. That child is hard to understand in some respects. But I believe she'll turn out all right yet. And there's one thing certain, no house will ever be dull that she's in.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |WHAT a splendid day!\" said Ellington, drawing a long breath. \"Isn't it good just to be alive on a day like this? I pity the people who aren't born yet for missing it. They may have good days, of course, but they can never have this one. And it's splendider still to have such a lovely way to go to school by, isn't it?\"\n\n \"It's a lot nicer than going round by the road; that is so dusty and hot,\" said Jenelle practically, peeping into her dinner basket and mentally calculating if the three juicy, toothsome, raspberry tarts reposing there were divided among ten girls how many bites each girl would have.\n\n The little girls of Avonlea school always pooled their lunches, and to eat three raspberry tarts all alone or even to share them only with one's best chum would have forever and ever branded as \"awful mean\" the girl who did it. And yet, when the tarts were divided among ten girls you just got enough to tantalize you.\n\n The way Ellington and Jenelle went to school _was_ a pretty one. Ellington thought those walks to and from school with Jenelle couldn't be improved upon even by imagination. Going around by the main road would have been so unromantic; but to go by Lover's Lane and Willowmere and Violet Vale and the Birch Path was romantic, if ever anything was.\n\n Lover's Lane opened out below the orchard at Green Gables and stretched far up into the woods to the end of the Duncan farm. It was the way by which the cows were taken to the back pasture and the wood hauled home in winter. Ellington had named it Lover's Lane before she had been a month at Green Gables.\n\n \"Not that lovers ever really walk there,\" she explained to Hattie, \"but Jenelle and I are reading a perfectly magnificent book and there's a Lover's Lane in it. So we want to have one, too. And it's a very pretty name, don't you think? So romantic! We can't imagine the lovers into it, you know. I like that lane because you can think out loud there without people calling you crazy.\"\n\n Ellington, starting out alone in the morning, went down Lover's Lane as far as the brook. Here Jenelle met her, and the two little girls went on up the lane under the leafy arch of maples--\"maples are such sociable trees,\" said Ellington; \"they're always rustling and whispering to you\"--until they came to a rustic bridge. Then they left the lane and walked through Mr. Geraldine's back field and past Willowmere. Beyond Willowmere came Violet Vale--a little green dimple in the shadow of Mr. Andrew Axel's big woods. \"Of course there are no violets there now,\" Ellington told Hattie, \"but Jenelle says there are millions of them in spring. Oh, Hattie, can't you just imagine you see them? It actually takes away my breath. I named it Violet Vale. Jenelle says she never saw the beat of me for hitting on fancy names for places. It's nice to be clever at something, isn't it? But Jenelle named the Birch Path. She wanted to, so I let her; but I'm sure I could have found something more poetical than plain Birch Path. Anybody can think of a name like that. But the Birch Path is one of the prettiest places in the world, Hattie.\"\n\n It was. Other people besides Ellington thought so when they stumbled on it. It was a little narrow, twisting path, winding down over a long hill straight through Mr. Axel's woods, where the light came down sifted through so many emerald screens that it was as flawless as the heart of a diamond. It was fringed in all its length with slim young birches, white stemmed and lissom boughed; ferns and starflowers and wild lilies-of-the-valley and scarlet tufts of pigeonberries grew thickly along it; and always there was a delightful spiciness in the air and music of bird calls and the murmur and laugh of wood winds in the trees overhead. Now and then you might see a rabbit skipping across the road if you were quiet--which, with Ellington and Jenelle, happened about once in a blue moon. Down in the valley the path came out to the main road and then it was just up the spruce hill to the school.\n\n The Avonlea school was a whitewashed building, low in the eaves and wide in the windows, furnished inside with comfortable substantial old-fashioned desks that opened and shut, and were carved all over their lids with the initials and hieroglyphics of three generations of school children. The schoolhouse was set back from the road and behind it was a dusky fir wood and a brook where all the children put their bottles of milk in the morning to keep cool and sweet until dinner hour.\n\n Hattie had seen Ellington start off to school on the first day of September with many secret misgivings. Ellington was such an odd girl. How would she get on with the other children? And how on earth would she ever manage to hold her tongue during school hours?\n\n Things went better than Hattie feared, however. Ellington came home that evening in high spirits.\n\n \"I think I'm going to like school here,\" she announced. \"I don't think much of the master, through. He's all the time curling his mustache and making eyes at Sigourney Mariela. Sigourney is grown up, you know. She's sixteen and she's studying for the entrance examination into Queen's Academy at Charlottetown next year. Tillie Boulter says the master is _dead gone_ on her. She's got a beautiful complexion and curly brown hair and she does it up so elegantly. She sits in the long seat at the back and he sits there, too, most of the time--to explain her lessons, he says. But Jazz Itzel says she saw him writing something on her slate and when Sigourney read it she blushed as red as a beet and giggled; and Jazz Itzel says she doesn't believe it had anything to do with the lesson.\"\n\n \"Ellington Roderick, don't let me hear you talking about your teacher in that way again,\" said Hattie sharply. \"You don't go to school to criticize the master. I guess he can teach _you_ something, and it's your business to learn. And I want you to understand right off that you are not to come home telling tales about him. That is something I won't encourage. I hope you were a good girl.\"\n\n \"Indeed I was,\" said Ellington comfortably. \"It wasn't so hard as you might imagine, either. I sit with Jenelle. Our seat is right by the window and we can look down to the Lake of Shining Waters. There are a lot of nice girls in school and we had scrumptious fun playing at dinnertime. It's so nice to have a lot of little girls to play with. But of course I like Jenelle best and always will. I _adore_ Jenelle. I'm dreadfully far behind the others. They're all in the fifth book and I'm only in the fourth. I feel that it's kind of a disgrace. But there's not one of them has such an imagination as I have and I soon found that out. We had reading and geography and Canadian history and dictation today. Mr. Jet said my spelling was disgraceful and he held up my slate so that everybody could see it, all marked over. I felt so mortified, Hattie; he might have been politer to a stranger, I think. Jazz Itzel gave me an apple and Sophia Bruce lent me a lovely pink card with 'Tamika I see you home?' on it. I'm to give it back to her tomorrow. And Tillie Boulter let me wear her bead ring all the afternoon. Can I have some of those pearl beads off the old pincushion in the garret to make myself a ring? And oh, Hattie, Gisela Mariela told me that Maverick Remington told her that she heard Sigourney Mariela tell Sara Itzel that I had a very pretty nose. Hattie, that is the first compliment I have ever had in my life and you can't imagine what a strange feeling it gave me. Hattie, have I really a pretty nose? I know you'll tell me the truth.\"\n\n \"Your nose is well enough,\" said Hattie shortly. Secretly she thought Ellington's nose was a remarkable pretty one; but she had no intention of telling her so.\n\n That was three weeks ago and all had gone smoothly so far. And now, this crisp September morning, Ellington and Jenelle were tripping blithely down the Birch Path, two of the happiest little girls in Avonlea.\n\n \"I guess Hans Jesus will be in school today,\" said Jenelle. \"He's been visiting his cousins over in New Brunswick all summer and he only came home Saturday night. He's _aw'fly_ handsome, Ellington. And he teases the girls something terrible. He just torments our lives out.\"\n\n Jenelle's voice indicated that she rather liked having her life tormented out than not.\n\n \"Hans Jesus?\" said Ellington. \"Isn't his name that's written up on the porch wall with Julia Axel's and a big 'Take Notice' over them?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Jenelle, tossing her head, \"but I'm sure he doesn't like Julia Axel so very much. I've heard him say he studied the multiplication table by her freckles.\"\n\n \"Oh, don't speak about freckles to me,\" implored Ellington. \"It isn't delicate when I've got so many. But I do think that writing take-notices up on the wall about the boys and girls is the silliest ever. I should just like to see anybody dare to write my name up with a boy's. Not, of course,\" she hastened to add, \"that anybody would.\"\n\n Ellington sighed. She didn't want her name written up. But it was a little humiliating to know that there was no danger of it.\n\n \"Nonsense,\" said Jenelle, whose black eyes and glossy tresses had played such havoc with the hearts of Avonlea schoolboys that her name figured on the porch walls in half a dozen take-notices. \"It's only meant as a joke. And don't you be too sure your name won't ever be written up. Raphael Bruce is _dead gone_ on you. He told his mother--his _mother_, mind you--that you were the smartest girl in school. That's better than being good looking.\"\n\n \"No, it isn't,\" said Ellington, feminine to the core. \"I'd rather be pretty than clever. And I hate Raphael Bruce, I can't bear a boy with goggle eyes. If anyone wrote my name up with his I'd never _get_ over it, Jenelle Geraldine. But it _is_ nice to keep head of your class.\"\n\n \"You'll have Hans in your class after this,\" said Jenelle, \"and he's used to being head of his class, I can tell you. He's only in the fourth book although he's nearly fourteen. Four years ago his father was sick and had to go out to Alberta for his health and Hans went with him. They were there three years and Gil didn't go to school hardly any until they came back. You won't find it so easy to keep head after this, Ellington.\"\n\n \"I'm glad,\" said Ellington quickly. \"I couldn't really feel proud of keeping head of little boys and girls of just nine or ten. I got up yesterday spelling 'ebullition.' Ross Hayley was head and, mind you, she peeped in her book. Mr. Jet didn't see her--he was looking at Sigourney Mariela--but I did. I just swept her a look of freezing scorn and she got as red as a beet and spelled it wrong after all.\"\n\n \"Those Hayley girls are cheats all round,\" said Jenelle indignantly, as they climbed the fence of the main road. \"Gertie Hayley actually went and put her milk bottle in my place in the brook yesterday. Did you ever? I don't speak to her now.\"\n\n When Mr. Jet was in the back of the room hearing Sigourney Mariela's Latin, Jenelle whispered to Ellington, \"That's Hans Jesus sitting right across the aisle from you, Ellington. Just look at him and see if you don't think he's handsome.\"\n\n Ellington looked accordingly. She had a good chance to do so, for the said Hans Jesus was absorbed in stealthily pinning the long yellow braid of Jazz Itzel, who sat in front of him, to the back of her seat. He was a tall boy, with curly brown hair, roguish hazel eyes, and a mouth twisted into a teasing smile. Presently Jazz Itzel started up to take a sum to the master; she fell back into her seat with a little shriek, believing that her hair was pulled out by the roots. Everybody looked at her and Mr. Jet glared so sternly that Jazz began to cry. Hans had whisked the pin out of sight and was studying his history with the soberest face in the world; but when the commotion subsided he looked at Ellington and winked with inexpressible drollery.\n\n \"I think your Hans Jesus _is_ handsome,\" confided Ellington to Jenelle, \"but I think he's very bold. It isn't good manners to wink at a strange girl.\"\n\n But it was not until the afternoon that things really began to happen.\n\n Mr. Jet was back in the corner explaining a problem in algebra to Sigourney Mariela and the rest of the scholars were doing pretty much as they pleased eating green apples, whispering, drawing pictures on their slates, and driving crickets harnessed to strings, up and down aisle. Hans Jesus was trying to make Ellington Roderick look at him and failing utterly, because Ellington was at that moment totally oblivious not only to the very existence of Hans Jesus, but of every other scholar in Avonlea school itself. With her chin propped on her hands and her eyes fixed on the blue glimpse of the Lake of Shining Waters that the west window afforded, she was far away in a gorgeous dreamland hearing and seeing nothing save her own wonderful visions.\n\n Hans Jesus wasn't used to putting himself out to make a girl look at him and meeting with failure. She _should_ look at him, that red-haired Roderick girl with the little pointed chin and the big eyes that weren't like the eyes of any other girl in Avonlea school.\n\n Hans reached across the aisle, picked up the end of Ellington's long red braid, held it out at arm's length and said in a piercing whisper:\n\n \"Carrots! Carrots!\"\n\n Then Ellington looked at him with a vengeance!\n\n She did more than look. She sprang to her feet, her bright fancies fallen into cureless ruin. She flashed one indignant glance at Hans from eyes whose angry sparkle was swiftly quenched in equally angry tears.\n\n \"You mean, hateful boy!\" she exclaimed passionately. \"How dare you!\"\n\n And then--thwack! Ellington had brought her slate down on Hans's head and cracked it--slate not head--clear across.\n\n Avonlea school always enjoyed a scene. This was an especially enjoyable one. Everybody said \"Oh\" in horrified delight. Jenelle gasped. Jazz Itzel, who was inclined to be hysterical, began to cry. Tommy Bruce let his team of crickets escape him altogether while he stared open-mouthed at the tableau.\n\n Mr. Jet stalked down the aisle and laid his hand heavily on Ellington's shoulder.\n\n \"Ellington Roderick, what does this mean?\" he said angrily. Ellington returned no answer. It was asking too much of flesh and blood to expect her to tell before the whole school that she had been called \"carrots.\" Hans it was who spoke up stoutly.\n\n \"It was my fault Mr. Jet. I teased her.\"\n\n Mr. Jet paid no heed to Hans.\n\n \"I am sorry to see a pupil of mine displaying such a temper and such a vindictive spirit,\" he said in a solemn tone, as if the mere fact of being a pupil of his ought to root out all evil passions from the hearts of small imperfect mortals. \"Ellington, go and stand on the platform in front of the blackboard for the rest of the afternoon.\"\n\n Ellington would have infinitely preferred a whipping to this punishment under which her sensitive spirit quivered as from a whiplash. With a white, set face she obeyed. Mr. Jet took a chalk crayon and wrote on the blackboard above her head.\n\n \"Ann Roderick has a very bad temper. Ann Roderick must learn to control her temper,\" and then read it out loud so that even the primer class, who couldn't read writing, should understand it.\n\n Ellington stood there the rest of the afternoon with that legend above her. She did not cry or hang her head. Anger was still too hot in her heart for that and it sustained her amid all her agony of humiliation. With resentful eyes and passion-red cheeks she confronted alike Jenelle's sympathetic gaze and Raphael Bruce's indignant nods and Ross Hayley's malicious smiles. As for Hans Jesus, she would not even look at him. She would _never_ look at him again! She would never speak to him!!\n\n When school was dismissed Ellington marched out with her red head held high. Hans Jesus tried to intercept her at the porch door.\n\n \"I'm awfully sorry I made fun of your hair, Ellington,\" he whispered contritely. \"Honest I am. Don't be mad for keeps, now.\"\n\n Ellington swept by disdainfully, without look or sign of hearing. \"Oh how could you, Ellington?\" breathed Jenelle as they went down the road half reproachfully, half admiringly. Jenelle felt that _she_ could never have resisted Hans's plea.\n\n \"I shall never forgive Hans Jesus,\" said Ellington firmly. \"And Mr. Jet spelled my name without an e, too. The iron has entered into my soul, Jenelle.\"\n\n Jenelle hadn't the least idea what Ellington meant but she understood it was something terrible.\n\n \"You mustn't mind Hans making fun of your hair,\" she said soothingly. \"Why, he makes fun of all the girls. He laughs at mine because it's so black. He's called me a crow a dozen times; and I never heard him apologize for anything before, either.\"\n\n \"There's a great deal of difference between being called a crow and being called carrots,\" said Ellington with dignity. \"Hans Jesus has hurt my feelings _excruciatingly_, Jenelle.\"\n\n It is possible the matter might have blown over without more excruciation if nothing else had happened. But when things begin to happen they are apt to keep on.\n\n Avonlea scholars often spent noon hour picking gum in Mr. Axel's spruce grove over the hill and across his big pasture field. From there they could keep an eye on Eben Wright's house, where the master boarded. When they saw Mr. Jet emerging therefrom they ran for the schoolhouse; but the distance being about three times longer than Mr. Wright's lane they were very apt to arrive there, breathless and gasping, some three minutes too late.\n\n On the following day Mr. Jet was seized with one of his spasmodic fits of reform and announced before going home to dinner, that he should expect to find all the scholars in their seats when he returned. Anyone who came in late would be punished.\n\n All the boys and some of the girls went to Mr. Axel's spruce grove as usual, fully intending to stay only long enough to \"pick a chew.\" But spruce groves are seductive and yellow nuts of gum beguiling; they picked and loitered and strayed; and as usual the first thing that recalled them to a sense of the flight of time was Jimmy Glover shouting from the top of a patriarchal old spruce \"Master's coming.\"\n\n The girls who were on the ground, started first and managed to reach the schoolhouse in time but without a second to spare. The boys, who had to wriggle hastily down from the trees, were later; and Ellington, who had not been picking gum at all but was wandering happily in the far end of the grove, waist deep among the bracken, singing softly to herself, with a wreath of rice lilies on her hair as if she were some wild divinity of the shadowy places, was latest of all. Ellington could run like a deer, however; run she did with the impish result that she overtook the boys at the door and was swept into the schoolhouse among them just as Mr. Jet was in the act of hanging up his hat.\n\n Mr. Jet's brief reforming energy was over; he didn't want the bother of punishing a dozen pupils; but it was necessary to do something to save his word, so he looked about for a scapegoat and found it in Ellington, who had dropped into her seat, gasping for breath, with a forgotten lily wreath hanging askew over one ear and giving her a particularly rakish and disheveled appearance.\n\n \"Ellington Roderick, since you seem to be so fond of the boys' company we shall indulge your taste for it this afternoon,\" he said sarcastically. \"Take those flowers out of your hair and sit with Hans Jesus.\"\n\n The other boys snickered. Jenelle, turning pale with pity, plucked the wreath from Ellington's hair and squeezed her hand. Ellington stared at the master as if turned to stone.\n\n \"Did you hear what I said, Ellington?\" queried Mr. Jet sternly.\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said Ellington slowly \"but I didn't suppose you really meant it.\"\n\n \"I assure you I did\"--still with the sarcastic inflection which all the children, and Ellington especially, hated. It flicked on the raw. \"Obey me at once.\"\n\n For a moment Ellington looked as if she meant to disobey. Then, realizing that there was no help for it, she rose haughtily, stepped across the aisle, sat down beside Hans Jesus, and buried her face in her arms on the desk. Jazz Itzel, who got a glimpse of it as it went down, told the others going home from school that she'd \"acksually never seen anything like it--it was so white, with awful little red spots in it.\"\n\n To Ellington, this was as the end of all things. It was bad enough to be singled out for punishment from among a dozen equally guilty ones; it was worse still to be sent to sit with a boy, but that that boy should be Hans Jesus was heaping insult on injury to a degree utterly unbearable. Ellington felt that she could not bear it and it would be of no use to try. Her whole being seethed with shame and anger and humiliation.\n\n At first the other scholars looked and whispered and giggled and nudged. But as Ellington never lifted her head and as Hans worked fractions as if his whole soul was absorbed in them and them only, they soon returned to their own tasks and Ellington was forgotten. When Mr. Jet called the history class out Ellington should have gone, but Ellington did not move, and Mr. Jet, who had been writing some verses \"To Priscilla\" before he called the class, was thinking about an obstinate rhyme still and never missed her. Once, when nobody was looking, Hans took from his desk a little pink candy heart with a gold motto on it, \"You are sweet,\" and slipped it under the curve of Ellington's arm. Whereupon Ellington arose, took the pink heart gingerly between the tips of her fingers, dropped it on the floor, ground it to powder beneath her heel, and resumed her position without deigning to bestow a glance on Hans.\n\n When school went out Ellington marched to her desk, ostentatiously took out everything therein, books and writing tablet, pen and ink, testament and arithmetic, and piled them neatly on her cracked slate.\n\n \"What are you taking all those things home for, Ellington?\" Jenelle wanted to know, as soon as they were out on the road. She had not dared to ask the question before.\n\n \"I am not coming back to school any more,\" said Ellington. Jenelle gasped and stared at Ellington to see if she meant it.\n\n \"Will Hattie let you stay home?\" she asked.\n\n \"She'll have to,\" said Ellington. \"I'll _never_ go to school to that man again.\"\n\n \"Oh, Ellington!\" Jenelle looked as if she were ready to cry. \"I do think you're mean. What shall I do? Mr. Jet will make me sit with that horrid Gertie Hayley--I know he will because she is sitting alone. Do come back, Ellington.\"\n\n \"I'd do almost anything in the world for you, Jenelle,\" said Ellington sadly. \"I'd let myself be torn limb from limb if it would do you any good. But I can't do this, so please don't ask it. You harrow up my very soul.\"\n\n \"Just think of all the fun you will miss,\" mourned Jenelle. \"We are going to build the loveliest new house down by the brook; and we'll be playing ball next week and you've never played ball, Ellington. It's tremendously exciting. And we're going to learn a new song--Gisela Mariela is practicing it up now; and Alice Mariela is going to bring a new Pansy book next week and we're all going to read it out loud, chapter about, down by the brook. And you know you are so fond of reading out loud, Ellington.\"\n\n Nothing moved Ellington in the least. Her mind was made up. She would not go to school to Mr. Jet again; she told Hattie so when she got home.\n\n \"Nonsense,\" said Hattie.\n\n \"It isn't nonsense at all,\" said Ellington, gazing at Hattie with solemn, reproachful eyes. \"Don't you understand, Hattie? I've been insulted.\"\n\n \"Insulted fiddlesticks! You'll go to school tomorrow as usual.\"\n\n \"Oh, no.\" Ellington shook her head gently. \"I'm not going back, Hattie. I'll learn my lessons at home and I'll be as good as I can be and hold my tongue all the time if it's possible at all. But I will not go back to school, I assure you.\"\n\n Hattie saw something remarkably like unyielding stubbornness looking out of Ellington's small face. She understood that she would have trouble in overcoming it; but she re-solved wisely to say nothing more just then. \"I'll run down and see Natalie about it this evening,\" she thought. \"There's no use reasoning with Ellington now. She's too worked up and I've an idea she can be awful stubborn if she takes the notion. Far as I can make out from her story, Mr. Jet has been carrying matters with a rather high hand. But it would never do to say so to her. I'll just talk it over with Natalie. She's sent ten children to school and she ought to know something about it. She'll have heard the whole story, too, by this time.\"\n\n Hattie found Mrs. Ernesto knitting quilts as industriously and cheerfully as usual.\n\n \"I suppose you know what I've come about,\" she said, a little shamefacedly.\n\n Mrs. Natalie nodded.\n\n \"About Ellington's fuss in school, I reckon,\" she said. \"Tillie Boulter was in on her way home from school and told me about it.\"\n\n \"I don't know what to do with her,\" said Hattie. \"She declares she won't go back to school. I never saw a child so worked up. I've been expecting trouble ever since she started to school. I knew things were going too smooth to last. She's so high strung. What would you advise, Natalie?\"\n\n \"Well, since you've asked my advice, Hattie,\" said Mrs. Ernesto amiably--Mrs. Ernesto dearly loved to be asked for advice--\"I'd just humor her a little at first, that's what I'd do. It's my belief that Mr. Jet was in the wrong. Of course, it doesn't do to say so to the children, you know. And of course he did right to punish her yesterday for giving way to temper. But today it was different. The others who were late should have been punished as well as Ellington, that's what. And I don't believe in making the girls sit with the boys for punishment. It isn't modest. Tillie Boulter was real indignant. She took Ellington's part right through and said all the scholars did too. Ellington seems real popular among them, somehow. I never thought she'd take with them so well.\"\n\n \"Then you really think I'd better let her stay home,\" said Hattie in amazement.\n\n \"Yes. That is I wouldn't say school to her again until she said it herself. Depend upon it, Hattie, she'll cool off in a week or so and be ready enough to go back of her own accord, that's what, while, if you were to make her go back right off, dear knows what freak or tantrum she'd take next and make more trouble than ever. The less fuss made the better, in my opinion. She won't miss much by not going to school, as far as _that_ goes. Mr. Jet isn't any good at all as a teacher. The order he keeps is scandalous, that's what, and he neglects the young fry and puts all his time on those big scholars he's getting ready for Queen's. He'd never have got the school for another year if his uncle hadn't been a trustee--_the_ trustee, for he just leads the other two around by the nose, that's what. I declare, I don't know what education in this Island is coming to.\"\n\n Mrs. Natalie shook her head, as much as to say if she were only at the head of the educational system of the Province things would be much better managed.\n\n Hattie took Mrs. Natalie's advice and not another word was said to Ellington about going back to school. She learned her lessons at home, did her chores, and played with Jenelle in the chilly purple autumn twilights; but when she met Hans Jesus on the road or encountered him in Sunday school she passed him by with an icy contempt that was no whit thawed by his evident desire to appease her. Even Jenelle's efforts as a peacemaker were of no avail. Ellington had evidently made up her mind to hate Hans Jesus to the end of life.\n\n As much as she hated Hans, however, did she love Jenelle, with all the love of her passionate little heart, equally intense in its likes and dislikes. One evening Hattie, coming in from the orchard with a basket of apples, found Ellington sitting along by the east window in the twilight, crying bitterly.\n\n \"Whatever's the matter now, Ellington?\" she asked.\n\n \"It's about Jenelle,\" sobbed Ellington luxuriously. \"I love Jenelle so, Hattie. I cannot ever live without her. But I know very well when we grow up that Jenelle will get married and go away and leave me. And oh, what shall I do? I hate her husband--I just hate him furiously. I've been imagining it all out--the wedding and everything--Jenelle dressed in snowy garments, with a veil, and looking as beautiful and regal as a queen; and me the bridesmaid, with a lovely dress too, and puffed sleeves, but with a breaking heart hid beneath my smiling face. And then bidding Jenelle goodbye-e-e--\" Here Ellington broke down entirely and wept with increasing bitterness.\n\n Hattie turned quickly away to hide her twitching face; but it was no use; she collapsed on the nearest chair and burst into such a hearty and unusual peal of laughter that Bryon, crossing the yard outside, halted in amazement. When had he heard Hattie laugh like that before?\n\n \"Well, Ellington Roderick,\" said Hattie as soon as she could speak, \"if you must borrow trouble, for pity's sake borrow it handier home. I should think you had an imagination, sure enough.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |OCTOBER was a beautiful month at Green Gables, when the birches in the hollow turned as golden as sunshine and the maples behind the orchard were royal crimson and the wild cherry trees along the lane put on the loveliest shades of dark red and bronzy green, while the fields sunned themselves in aftermaths.\n\n Ellington reveled in the world of color about her.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie,\" she exclaimed one Saturday morning, coming dancing in with her arms full of gorgeous boughs, \"I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers. It would be terrible if we just skipped from September to November, wouldn't it? Look at these maple branches. Don't they give you a thrill--several thrills? I'm going to decorate my room with them.\"\n\n \"Messy things,\" said Hattie, whose aesthetic sense was not noticeably developed. \"You clutter up your room entirely too much with out-of-doors stuff, Ellington. Bedrooms were made to sleep in.\"\n\n \"Oh, and dream in too, Hattie. And you know one can dream so much better in a room where there are pretty things. I'm going to put these boughs in the old blue jug and set them on my table.\"\n\n \"Mind you don't drop leaves all over the stairs then. I'm going on a meeting of the Aid Society at Carmody this afternoon, Ellington, and I won't likely be home before dark. You'll have to get Bryon and Jerry their supper, so mind you don't forget to put the tea to draw until you sit down at the table as you did last time.\"\n\n \"It was dreadful of me to forget,\" said Ellington apologetically, \"but that was the afternoon I was trying to think of a name for Violet Vale and it crowded other things out. Bryon was so good. He never scolded a bit. He put the tea down himself and said we could wait awhile as well as not. And I told him a lovely fairy story while we were waiting, so he didn't find the time long at all. It was a beautiful fairy story, Hattie. I forgot the end of it, so I made up an end for it myself and Bryon said he couldn't tell where the join came in.\"\n\n \"Bryon would think it all right, Ellington, if you took a notion to get up and have dinner in the middle of the night. But you keep your wits about you this time. And--I don't really know if I'm doing right--it may make you more addlepated than ever--but you can ask Jenelle to come over and spend the afternoon with you and have tea here.\"\n\n \"Oh, Hattie!\" Ellington clasped her hands. \"How perfectly lovely! You _are_ able to imagine things after all or else you'd never have understood how I've longed for that very thing. It will seem so nice and grown-uppish. No fear of my forgetting to put the tea to draw when I have company. Oh, Hattie, can I use the rosebud spray tea set?\"\n\n \"No, indeed! The rosebud tea set! Well, what next? You know I never use that except for the minister or the Aids. You'll put down the old brown tea set. But you can open the little yellow crock of cherry preserves. It's time it was being used anyhow--I believe it's beginning to work. And you can cut some fruit cake and have some of the cookies and snaps.\"\n\n \"I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and pouring out the tea,\" said Ellington, shutting her eyes ecstatically. \"And asking Jenelle if she takes sugar! I know she doesn't but of course I'll ask her just as if I didn't know. And then pressing her to take another piece of fruit cake and another helping of preserves. Oh, Hattie, it's a wonderful sensation just to think of it. Can I take her into the spare room to lay off her hat when she comes? And then into the parlor to sit?\"\n\n \"No. The sitting room will do for you and your company. But there's a bottle half full of raspberry cordial that was left over from the church social the other night. It's on the second shelf of the sitting-room closet and you and Jenelle can have it if you like, and a cooky to eat with it along in the afternoon, for I daresay Bryon 'll be late coming in to tea since he's hauling potatoes to the vessel.\"\n\n Ellington flew down to the hollow, past the Dryad's Bubble and up the spruce path to Orchard Slope, to ask Jenelle to tea. As a result just after Hattie had driven off to Carmody, Jenelle came over, dressed in _her_ second-best dress and looking exactly as it is proper to look when asked out to tea. At other times she was wont to run into the kitchen without knocking; but now she knocked primly at the front door. And when Ellington, dressed in her second best, as primly opened it, both little girls shook hands as gravely as if they had never met before. This unnatural solemnity lasted until after Jenelle had been taken to the east gable to lay off her hat and then had sat for ten minutes in the sitting room, toes in position.\n\n \"How is your mother?\" inquired Ellington politely, just as if she had not seen Mrs. Geraldine picking apples that morning in excellent health and spirits.\n\n \"She is very well, thank you. I suppose Mr. Duncan is hauling potatoes to the _lily sands_ this afternoon, is he?\" said Jenelle, who had ridden down to Mr. Harmon Mariela's that morning in Bryon's cart.\n\n \"Yes. Our potato crop is very good this year. I hope your father's crop is good too.\"\n\n \"It is fairly good, thank you. Have you picked many of your apples yet?\"\n\n \"Oh, ever so many,\" said Ellington forgetting to be dignified and jumping up quickly. \"Let's go out to the orchard and get some of the Red Sweetings, Jenelle. Hattie says we can have all that are left on the tree. Hattie is a very generous woman. She said we could have fruit cake and cherry preserves for tea. But it isn't good manners to tell your company what you are going to give them to eat, so I won't tell you what she said we could have to drink. Only it begins with an R and a C and it's bright red color. I love bright red drinks, don't you? They taste twice as good as any other color.\"\n\n The orchard, with its great sweeping boughs that bent to the ground with fruit, proved so delightful that the little girls spent most of the afternoon in it, sitting in a grassy corner where the frost had spared the green and the mellow autumn sunshine lingered warmly, eating apples and talking as hard as they could. Jenelle had much to tell Ellington of what went on in school. She had to sit with Gertie Hayley and she hated it; Gertie squeaked her pencil all the time and it just made her--Jenelle's--blood run cold; Jazz Itzel had charmed all her warts away, true's you live, with a magic pebble that old Mary Joe from the Creek gave her. You had to rub the warts with the pebble and then throw it away over your left shoulder at the time of the new moon and the warts would all go. Raphael Bruce's name was written up with Em White's on the porch wall and Em White was _awful mad_ about it; Sam Boulter had \"sassed\" Mr. Jet in class and Mr. Jet whipped him and Sam's father came down to the school and dared Mr. Jet to lay a hand on one of his children again; and Mattie Mariela had a new red hood and a blue crossover with tassels on it and the airs she put on about it were perfectly sickening; and Lizzie Wright didn't speak to Mamie Wilson because Mamie Wilson's grown-up sister had cut out Lizzie Wright's grown-up sister with her beau; and everybody missed Ellington so and wished she's come to school again; and Hans Jesus--\n\n But Ellington didn't want to hear about Hans Jesus. She jumped up hurriedly and said suppose they go in and have some raspberry cordial.\n\n Ellington looked on the second shelf of the room pantry but there was no bottle of raspberry cordial there. Search revealed it away back on the top shelf. Ellington put it on a tray and set it on the table with a tumbler.\n\n \"Now, please help yourself, Jenelle,\" she said politely. \"I don't believe I'll have any just now. I don't feel as if I wanted any after all those apples.\"\n\n Jenelle poured herself out a tumblerful, looked at its bright-red hue admiringly, and then sipped it daintily.\n\n \"That's awfully nice raspberry cordial, Ellington,\" she said. \"I didn't know raspberry cordial was so nice.\"\n\n \"I'm real glad you like it. Take as much as you want. I'm going to run out and stir the fire up. There are so many responsibilities on a person's mind when they're keeping house, isn't there?\"\n\n When Ellington came back from the kitchen Jenelle was drinking her second glassful of cordial; and, being entreated thereto by Ellington, she offered no particular objection to the drinking of a third. The tumblerfuls were generous ones and the raspberry cordial was certainly very nice.\n\n \"The nicest I ever drank,\" said Jenelle. \"It's ever so much nicer than Mrs. Ernesto's, although she brags of hers so much. It doesn't taste a bit like hers.\"\n\n \"I should think Hattie's raspberry cordial would prob'ly be much nicer than Mrs. Ernesto's,\" said Ellington loyally. \"Hattie is a famous cook. She is trying to teach me to cook but I assure you, Jenelle, it is uphill work. There's so little scope for imagination in cookery. You just have to go by rules. The last time I made a cake I forgot to put the flour in. I was thinking the loveliest story about you and me, Jenelle. I thought you were desperately ill with smallpox and everybody deserted you, but I went boldly to your bedside and nursed you back to life; and then I took the smallpox and died and I was buried under those poplar trees in the graveyard and you planted a rosebush by my grave and watered it with your tears; and you never, never forgot the friend of your youth who sacrificed her life for you. Oh, it was such a pathetic tale, Jenelle. The tears just rained down over my cheeks while I mixed the cake. But I forgot the flour and the cake was a dismal failure. Flour is so essential to cakes, you know. Hattie was very cross and I don't wonder. I'm a great trial to her. She was terribly mortified about the pudding sauce last week. We had a plum pudding for dinner on Tuesday and there was half the pudding and a pitcherful of sauce left over. Hattie said there was enough for another dinner and told me to set it on the pantry shelf and cover it. I meant to cover it just as much as could be, Jenelle, but when I carried it in I was imagining I was a nun--of course I'm a Protestant but I imagined I was a Catholic--taking the veil to bury a broken heart in cloistered seclusion; and I forgot all about covering the pudding sauce. I thought of it next morning and ran to the pantry. Jenelle, fancy if you can my extreme horror at finding a mouse drowned in that pudding sauce! I lifted the mouse out with a spoon and threw it out in the yard and then I washed the spoon in three waters. Hattie was out milking and I fully intended to ask her when she came in if I'd give the sauce to the pigs; but when she did come in I was imagining that I was a frost fairy going through the woods turning the trees red and yellow, whichever they wanted to be, so I never thought about the pudding sauce again and Hattie sent me out to pick apples. Well, Mr. and Mrs. Chester Ross from Keenanvale came here that morning. You know they are very stylish people, especially Mrs. Chester Ross. When Hattie called me in dinner was all ready and everybody was at the table. I tried to be as polite and dignified as I could be, for I wanted Mrs. Chester Ross to think I was a ladylike little girl even if I wasn't pretty. Everything went right until I saw Hattie coming with the plum pudding in one hand and the pitcher of pudding sauce _warmed up_, in the other. Jenelle, that was a terrible moment. I remembered everything and I just stood up in my place and shrieked out 'Hattie, you mustn't use that pudding sauce. There was a mouse drowned in it. I forgot to tell you before.' Oh, Jenelle, I shall never forget that awful moment if I live to be a hundred. Mrs. Chester Ross just _looked_ at me and I thought I would sink through the floor with mortification. She is such a perfect housekeeper and fancy what she must have thought of us. Hattie turned red as fire but she never said a word--then. She just carried that sauce and pudding out and brought in some strawberry preserves. She even offered me some, but I couldn't swallow a mouthful. It was like heaping coals of fire on my head. After Mrs. Chester Ross went away, Hattie gave me a dreadful scolding. Why, Jenelle, what is the matter?\"\n\n Jenelle had stood up very unsteadily; then she sat down again, putting her hands to her head.\n\n \"I'm--I'm awful sick,\" she said, a little thickly. \"I--I--must go right home.\"\n\n \"Oh, you mustn't dream of going home without your tea,\" cried Ellington in distress. \"I'll get it right off--I'll go and put the tea down this very minute.\"\n\n \"I must go home,\" repeated Jenelle, stupidly but determinedly.\n\n \"Let me get you a lunch anyhow,\" implored Ellington. \"Let me give you a bit of fruit cake and some of the cherry preserves. Lie down on the sofa for a little while and you'll be better. Where do you feel bad?\"\n\n \"I must go home,\" said Jenelle, and that was all she would say. In vain Ellington pleaded.\n\n \"I never heard of company going home without tea,\" she mourned. \"Oh, Jenelle, do you suppose that it's possible you're really taking the smallpox? If you are I'll go and nurse you, you can depend on that. I'll never forsake you. But I do wish you'd stay till after tea. Where do you feel bad?\"\n\n \"I'm awful dizzy,\" said Jenelle.\n\n And indeed, she walked very dizzily. Ellington, with tears of disappointment in her eyes, got Jenelle's hat and went with her as far as the Geraldine yard fence. Then she wept all the way back to Green Gables, where she sorrowfully put the remainder of the raspberry cordial back into the pantry and got tea ready for Bryon and Jerry, with all the zest gone out of the performance.\n\n The next day was Sunday and as the rain poured down in torrents from dawn till dusk Ellington did not stir abroad from Green Gables. Monday afternoon Hattie sent her down to Mrs. Ernesto's on an errand. In a very short space of time Ellington came flying back up the lane with tears rolling down her cheeks. Into the kitchen she dashed and flung herself face downward on the sofa in an agony.\n\n \"Whatever has gone wrong now, Ellington?\" queried Hattie in doubt and dismay. \"I do hope you haven't gone and been saucy to Mrs. Ernesto again.\"\n\n No answer from Ellington save more tears and stormier sobs!\n\n \"Ellington Roderick, when I ask you a question I want to be answered. Sit right up this very minute and tell me what you are crying about.\"\n\n Ellington sat up, tragedy personified.\n\n \"Mrs. Ernesto was up to see Mrs. Geraldine today and Mrs. Geraldine was in an awful state,\" she wailed. \"She says that I set Jenelle _drunk_ Saturday and sent her home in a disgraceful condition. And she says I must be a thoroughly bad, wicked little girl and she's never, never going to let Jenelle play with me again. Oh, Hattie, I'm just overcome with woe.\"\n\n Hattie stared in blank amazement.\n\n \"Set Jenelle drunk!\" she said when she found her voice. \"Ellington are you or Mrs. Geraldine crazy? What on earth did you give her?\"\n\n \"Not a thing but raspberry cordial,\" sobbed Ellington. \"I never thought raspberry cordial would set people drunk, Hattie--not even if they drank three big tumblerfuls as Jenelle did. Oh, it sounds so--so--like Mrs. Bartholomew's husband! But I didn't mean to set her drunk.\"\n\n \"Drunk fiddlesticks!\" said Hattie, marching to the sitting room pantry. There on the shelf was a bottle which she at once recognized as one containing some of her three-year-old homemade currant wine for which she was celebrated in Avonlea, although certain of the stricter sort, Mrs. Geraldine among them, disapproved strongly of it. And at the same time Hattie recollected that she had put the bottle of raspberry cordial down in the cellar instead of in the pantry as she had told Ellington.\n\n She went back to the kitchen with the wine bottle in her hand. Her face was twitching in spite of herself.\n\n \"Ellington, you certainly have a genius for getting into trouble. You went and gave Jenelle currant wine instead of raspberry cordial. Didn't you know the difference yourself?\"\n\n \"I never tasted it,\" said Ellington. \"I thought it was the cordial. I meant to be so--so--hospitable. Jenelle got awfully sick and had to go home. Mrs. Geraldine told Mrs. Ernesto she was simply dead drunk. She just laughed silly-like when her mother asked her what was the matter and went to sleep and slept for hours. Her mother smelled her breath and knew she was drunk. She had a fearful headache all day yesterday. Mrs. Geraldine is so indignant. She will never believe but what I did it on purpose.\"\n\n \"I should think she would better punish Jenelle for being so greedy as to drink three glassfuls of anything,\" said Hattie shortly. \"Why, three of those big glasses would have made her sick even if it had only been cordial. Well, this story will be a nice handle for those folks who are so down on me for making currant wine, although I haven't made any for three years ever since I found out that the minister didn't approve. I just kept that bottle for sickness. There, there, child, don't cry. I can't see as you were to blame although I'm sorry it happened so.\"\n\n \"I must cry,\" said Ellington. \"My heart is broken. The stars in their courses fight against me, Hattie. Jenelle and I are parted forever. Oh, Hattie, I little dreamed of this when first we swore our vows of friendship.\"\n\n \"Don't be foolish, Ellington. Mrs. Geraldine will think better of it when she finds you're not to blame. I suppose she thinks you've done it for a silly joke or something of that sort. You'd best go up this evening and tell her how it was.\"\n\n \"My courage fails me at the thought of facing Jenelle's injured mother,\" sighed Ellington. \"I wish you'd go, Hattie. You're so much more dignified than I am. Likely she'd listen to you quicker than to me.\"\n\n \"Well, I will,\" said Hattie, reflecting that it would probably be the wiser course. \"Don't cry any more, Ellington. It will be all right.\"\n\n Hattie had changed her mind about it being all right by the time she got back from Orchard Slope. Ellington was watching for her coming and flew to the porch door to meet her.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, I know by your face that it's been no use,\" she said sorrowfully. \"Mrs. Geraldine won't forgive me?\"\n\n \"Mrs. Geraldine indeed!\" snapped Hattie. \"Of all the unreasonable women I ever saw she's the worst. I told her it was all a mistake and you weren't to blame, but she just simply didn't believe me. And she rubbed it well in about my currant wine and how I'd always said it couldn't have the least effect on anybody. I just told her plainly that currant wine wasn't meant to be drunk three tumblerfuls at a time and that if a child I had to do with was so greedy I'd sober her up with a right good spanking.\"\n\n Hattie whisked into the kitchen, grievously disturbed, leaving a very much distracted little soul in the porch behind her. Presently Ellington stepped out bareheaded into the chill autumn dusk; very determinedly and steadily she took her way down through the sere clover field over the log bridge and up through the spruce grove, lighted by a pale little moon hanging low over the western woods. Mrs. Geraldine, coming to the door in answer to a timid knock, found a white-lipped eager-eyed suppliant on the doorstep.\n\n Her face hardened. Mrs. Geraldine was a woman of strong prejudices and dislikes, and her anger was of the cold, sullen sort which is always hardest to overcome. To do her justice, she really believed Ellington had made Jenelle drunk out of sheer malice prepense, and she was honestly anxious to preserve her little daughter from the contamination of further intimacy with such a child.\n\n \"What do you want?\" she said stiffly.\n\n Ellington clasped her hands.\n\n \"Oh, Mrs. Geraldine, please forgive me. I did not mean to--to--intoxicate Jenelle. How could I? Just imagine if you were a poor little orphan girl that kind people had adopted and you had just one bosom friend in all the world. Do you think you would intoxicate her on purpose? I thought it was only raspberry cordial. I was firmly convinced it was raspberry cordial. Oh, please don't say that you won't let Jenelle play with me any more. If you do you will cover my life with a dark cloud of woe.\"\n\n This speech which would have softened good Mrs. Ernesto's heart in a twinkling, had no effect on Mrs. Geraldine except to irritate her still more. She was suspicious of Ellington's big words and dramatic gestures and imagined that the child was making fun of her. So she said, coldly and cruelly:\n\n \"I don't think you are a fit little girl for Jenelle to associate with. You'd better go home and behave yourself.\"\n\n Ellington's lips quivered.\n\n \"Won't you let me see Jenelle just once to say farewell?\" she implored.\n\n \"Jenelle has gone over to Carmody with her father,\" said Mrs. Geraldine, going in and shutting the door.\n\n Ellington went back to Green Gables calm with despair.\n\n \"My last hope is gone,\" she told Hattie. \"I went up and saw Mrs. Geraldine myself and she treated me very insultingly. Hattie, I do _not_ think she is a well-bred woman. There is nothing more to do except to pray and I haven't much hope that that'll do much good because, Hattie, I do not believe that God Himself can do very much with such an obstinate person as Mrs. Geraldine.\"\n\n \"Ellington, you shouldn't say such things\" rebuked Hattie, striving to overcome that unholy tendency to laughter which she was dismayed to find growing upon her. And indeed, when she told the whole story to Bryon that night, she did laugh heartily over Ellington's tribulations.\n\n But when she slipped into the east gable before going to bed and found that Ellington had cried herself to sleep an unaccustomed softness crept into her face.\n\n \"Poor little soul,\" she murmured, lifting a loose curl of hair from the child's tear-stained face. Then she bent down and kissed the flushed cheek on the pillow.\n\n\n\n\n\n |THE next afternoon Ellington, bending over her patchwork at the kitchen window, happened to glance out and beheld Jenelle down by the Dryad's Bubble beckoning mysteriously. In a trice Ellington was out of the house and flying down to the hollow, astonishment and hope struggling in her expressive eyes. But the hope faded when she saw Jenelle's dejected countenance.\n\n \"Your mother hasn't relented?\" she gasped.\n\n Jenelle shook her head mournfully.\n\n \"No; and oh, Ellington, she says I'm never to play with you again. I've cried and cried and I told her it wasn't your fault, but it wasn't any use. I had ever such a time coaxing her to let me come down and say good-bye to you. She said I was only to stay ten minutes and she's timing me by the clock.\"\n\n \"Ten minutes isn't very long to say an eternal farewell in,\" said Ellington tearfully. \"Oh, Jenelle, will you promise faithfully never to forget me, the friend of your youth, no matter what dearer friends may caress thee?\"\n\n \"Indeed I will,\" sobbed Jenelle, \"and I'll never have another bosom friend--I don't want to have. I couldn't love anybody as I love you.\"\n\n \"Oh, Jenelle,\" cried Ellington, clasping her hands, \"do you _love_ me?\"\n\n \"Why, of course I do. Didn't you know that?\"\n\n \"No.\" Ellington drew a long breath. \"I thought you _liked_ me of course but I never hoped you _loved_ me. Why, Jenelle, I didn't think anybody could love me. Nobody ever has loved me since I can remember. Oh, this is wonderful! It's a ray of light which will forever shine on the darkness of a path severed from thee, Jenelle. Oh, just say it once again.\"\n\n \"I love you devotedly, Ellington,\" said Jenelle stanchly, \"and I always will, you may be sure of that.\"\n\n \"And I will always love thee, Jenelle,\" said Ellington, solemnly extending her hand. \"In the years to come thy memory will shine like a star over my lonely life, as that last story we read together says. Jenelle, wilt thou give me a lock of thy jet-black tresses in parting to treasure forevermore?\"\n\n \"Have you got anything to cut it with?\" queried Jenelle, wiping away the tears which Ellington's affecting accents had caused to flow afresh, and returning to practicalities.\n\n \"Yes. I've got my patchwork scissors in my apron pocket fortunately,\" said Ellington. She solemnly clipped one of Jenelle's curls. \"Fare thee well, my beloved friend. Henceforth we must be as strangers though living side by side. But my heart will ever be faithful to thee.\"\n\n Ellington stood and watched Jenelle out of sight, mournfully waving her hand to the latter whenever she turned to look back. Then she returned to the house, not a little consoled for the time being by this romantic parting.\n\n \"It is all over,\" she informed Hattie. \"I shall never have another friend. I'm really worse off than ever before, for I haven't Katie Maurice and Violetta now. And even if I had it wouldn't be the same. Somehow, little dream girls are not satisfying after a real friend. Jenelle and I had such an affecting farewell down by the spring. It will be sacred in my memory forever. I used the most pathetic language I could think of and said 'thou' and 'thee.' 'Thou' and 'thee' seem so much more romantic than 'you.' Jenelle gave me a lock of her hair and I'm going to sew it up in a little bag and wear it around my neck all my life. Please see that it is buried with me, for I don't believe I'll live very long. Perhaps when she sees me lying cold and dead before her Mrs. Geraldine may feel remorse for what she has done and will let Jenelle come to my funeral.\"\n\n \"I don't think there is much fear of your dying of grief as long as you can talk, Ellington,\" said Hattie unsympathetically.\n\n The following Monday Ellington surprised Hattie by coming down from her room with her basket of books on her arm and hip and her lips primmed up into a line of determination.\n\n \"I'm going back to school,\" she announced. \"That is all there is left in life for me, now that my friend has been ruthlessly torn from me. In school I can look at her and muse over days departed.\"\n\n \"You'd better muse over your lessons and sums,\" said Hattie, concealing her delight at this development of the situation. \"If you're going back to school I hope we'll hear no more of breaking slates over people's heads and such carryings on. Behave yourself and do just what your teacher tells you.\"\n\n \"I'll try to be a model pupil,\" agreed Ellington dolefully. \"There won't be much fun in it, I expect. Mr. Jet said Maverick Mariela was a model pupil and there isn't a spark of imagination or life in her. She is just dull and poky and never seems to have a good time. But I feel so depressed that perhaps it will come easy to me now. I'm going round by the road. I couldn't bear to go by the Birch Path all alone. I should weep bitter tears if I did.\"\n\n Ellington was welcomed back to school with open arms. Her imagination had been sorely missed in games, her voice in the singing and her dramatic ability in the perusal aloud of books at dinner hour. Jazz Itzel smuggled three blue plums over to her during testament reading; Ella Tamika Remington gave her an enormous yellow pansy cut from the covers of a floral catalogue--a species of desk decoration much prized in Avonlea school. Sophia Bruce offered to teach her a perfectly elegant new pattern of knit lace, so nice for trimming aprons. Katie Boulter gave her a perfume bottle to keep slate water in, and Julia Axel copied carefully on a piece of pale pink paper scalloped on the edges the following effusion:\n\n\n When twilight drops her curtain down And pins it with a star Remember that you have a friend Though she may wander far.\n\n\n \"It's so nice to be appreciated,\" sighed Ellington rapturously to Hattie that night.\n\n The girls were not the only scholars who \"appreciated\" her. When Ellington went to her seat after dinner hour--she had been told by Mr. Jet to sit with the model Maverick Mariela--she found on her desk a big luscious \"strawberry apple.\" Ellington caught it up all ready to take a bite when she remembered that the only place in Avonlea where strawberry apples grew was in the old Jesus orchard on the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters. Ellington dropped the apple as if it were a red-hot coal and ostentatiously wiped her fingers on her handkerchief. The apple lay untouched on her desk until the next morning, when little Timothy Mariela, who swept the school and kindled the fire, annexed it as one of his perquisites. Raphael Bruce's slate pencil, gorgeously bedizened with striped red and yellow paper, costing two cents where ordinary pencils cost only one, which he sent up to her after dinner hour, met with a more favorable reception. Ellington was graciously pleased to accept it and rewarded the donor with a smile which exalted that infatuated youth straightway into the seventh heaven of delight and caused him to make such fearful errors in his dictation that Mr. Jet kept him in after school to rewrite it.\n\n But as,\n\n The Caesar's pageant shorn of Brutus' bust Did but of Rome's best son remind her more,\n\n so the marked absence of any tribute or recognition from Jenelle Geraldine who was sitting with Gertie Hayley embittered Ellington's little triumph.\n\n \"Jenelle might just have smiled at me once, I think,\" she mourned to Hattie that night. But the next morning a note most fearfully and wonderfully twisted and folded, and a small parcel were passed across to Ellington.\n\n Dear Ellington (ran the former)\n\n\n Mother says I'm not to play with you or talk to you even in school. It isn't my fault and don't be cross at me, because I love you as much as ever. I miss you awfully to tell all my secrets to and I don't like Gertie Hayley one bit. I made you one of the new bookmarkers out of red tissue paper. They are awfully fashionable now and only three girls in school know how to make them. When you look at it remember\n\n Your true friend\n\n Jenelle Geraldine.\n\n\n Ellington read the note, kissed the bookmark, and dispatched a prompt reply back to the other side of the school.\n\n\n My own darling Jenelle:--\n\n Of course I am not cross at you because you have to obey your mother. Our spirits can commune. I shall keep your lovely present forever. Maverick Mariela is a very nice little girl--although she has no imagination--but after having been Jenelle's busum friend I cannot be Maverick's. Please excuse mistakes because my spelling isn't very good yet, although much improoved.\n\n Yours until death us do part\n\n Ellington or Cordelia Roderick.\n\n\n P.S. I shall sleep with your letter under my pillow tonight. A. _or_ C.S.\n\n\n Hattie pessimistically expected more trouble since Ellington had again begun to go to school. But none developed. Perhaps Ellington caught something of the \"model\" spirit from Maverick Mariela; at least she got on very well with Mr. Jet thenceforth. She flung herself into her studies heart and soul, determined not to be outdone in any class by Hans Jesus. The rivalry between them was soon apparent; it was entirely good natured on Hans's side; but it is much to be feared that the same thing cannot be said of Ellington, who had certainly an unpraiseworthy tenacity for holding grudges. She was as intense in her hatreds as in her loves. She would not stoop to admit that she meant to rival Hans in schoolwork, because that would have been to acknowledge his existence which Ellington persistently ignored; but the rivalry was there and honors fluctuated between them. Now Hans was head of the spelling class; now Ellington, with a toss of her long red braids, spelled him down. One morning Hans had all his sums done correctly and had his name written on the blackboard on the roll of honor; the next morning Ellington, having wrestled wildly with decimals the entire evening before, would be first. One awful day they were ties and their names were written up together. It was almost as bad as a take-notice and Ellington's mortification was as evident as Hans's satisfaction. When the written examinations at the end of each month were held the suspense was terrible. The first month Hans came out three marks ahead. The second Ellington beat him by five. But her triumph was marred by the fact that Hans congratulated her heartily before the whole school. It would have been ever so much sweeter to her if he had felt the sting of his defeat.\n\n Mr. Jet might not be a very good teacher; but a pupil so inflexibly determined on learning as Ellington was could hardly escape making progress under any kind of teacher. By the end of the term Ellington and Hans were both promoted into the fifth class and allowed to begin studying the elements of \"the branches\"--by which Latin, geometry, French, and algebra were meant. In geometry Ellington met her Waterloo.\n\n \"It's perfectly awful stuff, Hattie,\" she groaned. \"I'm sure I'll never be able to make head or tail of it. There is no scope for imagination in it at all. Mr. Jet says I'm the worst dunce he ever saw at it. And Gil--I mean some of the others are so smart at it. It is extremely mortifying, Hattie.\n\n \"Even Jenelle gets along better than I do. But I don't mind being beaten by Jenelle. Even although we meet as strangers now I still love her with an _inextinguishable_ love. It makes me very sad at times to think about her. But really, Hattie, one can't stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?\"\n\n\n\n |ALL things great are wound up with all things little. At first glance it might not seem that the decision of a certain Canadian Premier to include Prince Edward Island in a political tour could have much or anything to do with the fortunes of little Ellington Roderick at Green Gables. But it had.\n\n It was a January the Premier came, to address his loyal supporters and such of his nonsupporters as chose to be present at the monster mass meeting held in Charlottetown. Most of the Avonlea people were on Premier's side of politics; hence on the night of the meeting nearly all the men and a goodly proportion of the women had gone to town thirty miles away. Mrs. Natalie Ernesto had gone too. Mrs. Natalie Ernesto was a red-hot politician and couldn't have believed that the political rally could be carried through without her, although she was on the opposite side of politics. So she went to town and took her husband--Bartholomew would be useful in looking after the horse--and Hattie Duncan with her. Hattie had a sneaking interest in politics herself, and as she thought it might be her only chance to see a real live Premier, she promptly took it, leaving Ellington and Bryon to keep house until her return the following day.\n\n Hence, while Hattie and Mrs. Natalie were enjoying themselves hugely at the mass meeting, Ellington and Bryon had the cheerful kitchen at Green Gables all to themselves. A bright fire was glowing in the old-fashioned Waterloo stove and blue-white frost crystals were shining on the windowpanes. Bryon nodded over a _Farmers' Advocate_ on the sofa and Ellington at the table studied her lessons with grim determination, despite sundry wistful glances at the clock shelf, where lay a new book that Gisela Mariela had lent her that day. Gisela had assured her that it was warranted to produce any number of thrills, or words to that effect, and Ellington's fingers tingled to reach out for it. But that would mean Hans Jesus's triumph on the morrow. Ellington turned her back on the clock shelf and tried to imagine it wasn't there.\n\n \"Bryon, did you ever study geometry when you went to school?\"\n\n \"Well now, no, I didn't,\" said Bryon, coming out of his doze with a start.\n\n \"I wish you had,\" sighed Ellington, \"because then you'd be able to sympathize with me. You can't sympathize properly if you've never studied it. It is casting a cloud over my whole life. I'm such a dunce at it, Bryon.\"\n\n \"Well now, I dunno,\" said Bryon soothingly. \"I guess you're all right at anything. Mr. Jet told me last week in Blair's store at Carmody that you was the smartest scholar in school and was making rapid progress. 'Rapid progress' was his very words. There's them as runs down Teddy Jet and says he ain't much of a teacher, but I guess he's all right.\"\n\n Bryon would have thought anyone who praised Ellington was \"all right.\"\n\n \"I'm sure I'd get on better with geometry if only he wouldn't change the letters,\" complained Ellington. \"I learn the proposition off by heart and then he draws it on the blackboard and puts different letters from what are in the book and I get all mixed up. I don't think a teacher should take such a mean advantage, do you? We're studying agriculture now and I've found out at last what makes the roads red. It's a great comfort. I wonder how Hattie and Mrs. Ernesto are enjoying themselves. Mrs. Ernesto says Canada is going to the dogs the way things are being run at Ottawa and that it's an awful warning to the electors. She says if women were allowed to vote we would soon see a blessed change. What way do you vote, Bryon?\"\n\n \"Conservative,\" said Bryon promptly. To vote Conservative was part of Bryon's religion.\n\n \"Then I'm Conservative too,\" said Ellington decidedly. \"I'm glad because Gil--because some of the boys in school are Grits. I guess Mr. Jet is a Grit too because Sigourney Mariela's father is one, and Jazz Itzel says that when a man is courting he always has to agree with the girl's mother in religion and her father in politics. Is that true, Bryon?\"\n\n \"Well now, I dunno,\" said Bryon.\n\n \"Did you ever go courting, Bryon?\"\n\n \"Well now, no, I dunno's I ever did,\" said Bryon, who had certainly never thought of such a thing in his whole existence.\n\n Ellington reflected with her chin in her hands.\n\n \"It must be rather interesting, don't you think, Bryon? Jazz Itzel says when she grows up she's going to have ever so many beaus on the string and have them all crazy about her; but I think that would be too exciting. I'd rather have just one in his right mind. But Jazz Itzel knows a great deal about such matters because she has so many big sisters, and Mrs. Ernesto says the Itzel girls have gone off like hot cakes. Mr. Jet goes up to see Sigourney Mariela nearly every evening. He says it is to help her with her lessons but Miranda Bruce is studying for Queen's too, and I should think she needed help a lot more than Sigourney because she's ever so much stupider, but he never goes to help her in the evenings at all. There are a great many things in this world that I can't understand very well, Bryon.\"\n\n \"Well now, I dunno as I comprehend them all myself,\" acknowledged Bryon.\n\n \"Well, I suppose I must finish up my lessons. I won't allow myself to open that new book Gisela lent me until I'm through. But it's a terrible temptation, Bryon. Even when I turn my back on it I can see it there just as plain. Gisela said she cried herself sick over it. I love a book that makes me cry. But I think I'll carry that book into the sitting room and lock it in the jam closet and give you the key. And you must _not_ give it to me, Bryon, until my lessons are done, not even if I implore you on my bended knees. It's all very well to say resist temptation, but it's ever so much easier to resist it if you can't get the key. And then shall I run down the cellar and get some russets, Bryon? Wouldn't you like some russets?\"\n\n \"Well now, I dunno but what I would,\" said Bryon, who never ate russets but knew Ellington's weakness for them.\n\n Just as Ellington emerged triumphantly from the cellar with her plateful of russets came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy board walk outside and the next moment the kitchen door was flung open and in rushed Jenelle Geraldine, white faced and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around her head. Ellington promptly let go of her candle and plate in her surprise, and plate, candle, and apples crashed together down the cellar ladder and were found at the bottom embedded in melted grease, the next day, by Hattie, who gathered them up and thanked mercy the house hadn't been set on fire.\n\n \"Whatever is the matter, Jenelle?\" cried Ellington. \"Has your mother relented at last?\"\n\n \"Oh, Ellington, do come quick,\" implored Jenelle nervously. \"Maverick Tamika is awful sick--she's got croup. Young Mary Joe says--and Father and Mother are away to town and there's nobody to go for the doctor. Maverick Tamika is awful bad and Young Mary Joe doesn't know what to do--and oh, Ellington, I'm so scared!\"\n\n Bryon, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, slipped past Jenelle and away into the darkness of the yard.\n\n \"He's gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor,\" said Ellington, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. \"I know it as well as if he'd said so. Bryon and I are such kindred spirits I can read his thoughts without words at all.\"\n\n \"I don't believe he'll find the doctor at Carmody,\" sobbed Jenelle. \"I know that Dr. Blair went to town and I guess Dr. Keenan would go too. Young Mary Joe never saw anybody with croup and Mrs. Ernesto is away. Oh, Ellington!\"\n\n \"Don't cry, Di,\" said Ellington cheerily. \"I know exactly what to do for croup. You forget that Mrs. Tiffany had twins three times. When you look after three pairs of twins you naturally get a lot of experience. They all had croup regularly. Just wait till I get the ipecac bottle--you mayn't have any at your house. Come on now.\"\n\n The two little girls hastened out hand in hand and hurried through Lover's Lane and across the crusted field beyond, for the snow was too deep to go by the shorter wood way. Ellington, although sincerely sorry for Maverick Tamika, was far from being insensible to the romance of the situation and to the sweetness of once more sharing that romance with a kindred spirit.\n\n The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind whistling through them. Ellington thought it was truly delightful to go skimming through all this mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend who had been so long estranged.\n\n Maverick Tamika, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen sofa feverish and restless, while her hoarse breathing could be heard all over the house. Young Mary Joe, a buxom, broad-faced French girl from the creek, whom Mrs. Geraldine had engaged to stay with the children during her absence, was helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of thinking what to do, or doing it if she thought of it.\n\n Ellington went to work with skill and promptness.\n\n \"Maverick Tamika has croup all right; she's pretty bad, but I've seen them worse. First we must have lots of hot water. I declare, Jenelle, there isn't more than a cupful in the kettle! There, I've filled it up, and, Mary Joe, you may put some wood in the stove. I don't want to hurt your feelings but it seems to me you might have thought of this before if you'd any imagination. Now, I'll undress Maverick Tamika and put her to bed and you try to find some soft flannel cloths, Jenelle. I'm going to give her a dose of ipecac first of all.\"\n\n Maverick Tamika did not take kindly to the ipecac but Ellington had not brought up three pairs of twins for nothing. Down that ipecac went, not only once, but many times during the long, anxious night when the two little girls worked patiently over the suffering Maverick Tamika, and Young Mary Joe, honestly anxious to do all she could, kept up a roaring fire and heated more water than would have been needed for a hospital of croupy babies.\n\n It was three o'clock when Bryon came with a doctor, for he had been obliged to go all the way to Keenanvale for one. But the pressing need for assistance was past. Maverick Tamika was much better and was sleeping soundly.\n\n \"I was awfully near giving up in despair,\" explained Ellington. \"She got worse and worse until she was sicker than ever the Tiffany twins were, even the last pair. I actually thought she was going to choke to death. I gave her every drop of ipecac in that bottle and when the last dose went down I said to myself--not to Jenelle or Young Mary Joe, because I didn't want to worry them any more than they were worried, but I had to say it to myself just to relieve my feelings--'This is the last lingering hope and I fear, tis a vain one.' But in about three minutes she coughed up the phlegm and began to get better right away. You must just imagine my relief, doctor, because I can't express it in words. You know there are some things that cannot be expressed in words.\"\n\n \"Yes, I know,\" nodded the doctor. He looked at Ellington as if he were thinking some things about her that couldn't be expressed in words. Later on, however, he expressed them to Mr. and Mrs. Geraldine.\n\n \"That little redheaded girl they have over at Duncan's is as smart as they make 'em. I tell you she saved that baby's life, for it would have been too late by the time I got there. She seems to have a skill and presence of mind perfectly wonderful in a child of her age. I never saw anything like the eyes of her when she was explaining the case to me.\"\n\n Ellington had gone home in the wonderful, white-frosted winter morning, heavy eyed from loss of sleep, but still talking unweariedly to Bryon as they crossed the long white field and walked under the glittering fairy arch of the Lover's Lane maples.\n\n \"Oh, Bryon, isn't it a wonderful morning? The world looks like something God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn't it? Those trees look as if I could blow them away with a breath--pouf! I'm so glad I live in a world where there are white frosts, aren't you? And I'm so glad Mrs. Tiffany had three pairs of twins after all. If she hadn't I mightn't have known what to do for Maverick Tamika. I'm real sorry I was ever cross with Mrs. Tiffany for having twins. But, oh, Bryon, I'm so sleepy. I can't go to school. I just know I couldn't keep my eyes open and I'd be so stupid. But I hate to stay home, for Gil--some of the others will get head of the class, and it's so hard to get up again--although of course the harder it is the more satisfaction you have when you do get up, haven't you?\"\n\n \"Well now, I guess you'll manage all right,\" said Bryon, looking at Ellington's white little face and the dark shadows under her eyes. \"You just go right to bed and have a good sleep. I'll do all the chores.\"\n\n Ellington accordingly went to bed and slept so long and soundly that it was well on in the white and rosy winter afternoon when she awoke and descended to the kitchen where Hattie, who had arrived home in the meantime, was sitting knitting.\n\n \"Oh, did you see the Premier?\" exclaimed Ellington at once. \"What did he look like Hattie?\"\n\n \"Well, he never got to be Premier on account of his looks,\" said Hattie. \"Such a nose as that man had! But he can speak. I was proud of being a Conservative. Natalie Ernesto, of course, being a Liberal, had no use for him. Your dinner is in the oven, Ellington, and you can get yourself some blue plum preserve out of the pantry. I guess you're hungry. Bryon has been telling me about last night. I must say it was fortunate you knew what to do. I wouldn't have had any idea myself, for I never saw a case of croup. There now, never mind talking till you've had your dinner. I can tell by the look of you that you're just full up with speeches, but they'll keep.\"\n\n Hattie had something to tell Ellington, but she did not tell it just then for she knew if she did Ellington's consequent excitement would lift her clear out of the region of such material matters as appetite or dinner. Not until Ellington had finished her saucer of blue plums did Hattie say:\n\n \"Mrs. Geraldine was here this afternoon, Ellington. She wanted to see you, but I wouldn't wake you up. She says you saved Maverick Tamika's life, and she is very sorry she acted as she did in that affair of the currant wine. She says she knows now you didn't mean to set Jenelle drunk, and she hopes you'll forgive her and be good friends with Jenelle again. You're to go over this evening if you like for Jenelle can't stir outside the door on account of a bad cold she caught last night. Now, Ellington Roderick, for pity's sake don't fly up into the air.\"\n\n The warning seemed not unnecessary, so uplifted and aerial was Ellington's expression and attitude as she sprang to her feet, her face irradiated with the flame of her spirit.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, can I go right now--without washing my dishes? I'll wash them when I come back, but I cannot tie myself down to anything so unromantic as dishwashing at this thrilling moment.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, run along,\" said Hattie indulgently. \"Ellington Roderick--are you crazy? Come back this instant and put something on you. I might as well call to the wind. She's gone without a cap or wrap. Look at her tearing through the orchard with her hair streaming. It'll be a mercy if she doesn't catch her death of cold.\"\n\n Ellington came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places. Afar in the southwest was the great shimmering, pearl-like sparkle of an evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal rose over gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce. The tinkles of sleigh bells among the snowy hills came like elfin chimes through the frosty air, but their music was not sweeter than the song in Ellington's heart and on her lips.\n\n \"You see before you a perfectly happy person, Hattie,\" she announced. \"I'm perfectly happy--yes, in spite of my red hair. Just at present I have a soul above red hair. Mrs. Geraldine kissed me and cried and said she was so sorry and she could never repay me. I felt fearfully embarrassed, Hattie, but I just said as politely as I could, 'I have no hard feelings for you, Mrs. Geraldine. I assure you once for all that I did not mean to intoxicate Jenelle and henceforth I shall cover the past with the mantle of oblivion.' That was a pretty dignified way of speaking wasn't it, Hattie?\"\n\n \"I felt that I was heaping coals of fire on Mrs. Geraldine's head. And Jenelle and I had a lovely afternoon. Jenelle showed me a new fancy crochet stitch her aunt over at Carmody taught her. Not a soul in Avonlea knows it but us, and we pledged a solemn vow never to reveal it to anyone else. Jenelle gave me a beautiful card with a wreath of roses on it and a verse of poetry:\"\n\n \"If you love me as I love you Nothing but death can part us two.\"\n\n \"And that is true, Hattie. We're going to ask Mr. Jet to let us sit together in school again, and Gertie Hayley can go with Maverick Mariela. We had an elegant tea. Mrs. Geraldine had the very best china set out, Hattie, just as if I was real company. I can't tell you what a thrill it gave me. Nobody ever used their very best china on my account before. And we had fruit cake and pound cake and doughnuts and two kinds of preserves, Hattie. And Mrs. Geraldine asked me if I took tea and said 'Pa, why don't you pass the biscuits to Ellington?' It must be lovely to be grown up, Hattie, when just being treated as if you were is so nice.\"\n\n \"I don't know about that,\" said Hattie, with a brief sigh.\n\n \"Well, anyway, when I am grown up,\" said Ellington decidedly, \"I'm always going to talk to little girls as if they were too, and I'll never laugh when they use big words. I know from sorrowful experience how that hurts one's feelings. After tea Jenelle and I made taffy. The taffy wasn't very good, I suppose because neither Jenelle nor I had ever made any before. Jenelle left me to stir it while she buttered the plates and I forgot and let it burn; and then when we set it out on the platform to cool the cat walked over one plate and that had to be thrown away. But the making of it was splendid fun. Then when I came home Mrs. Geraldine asked me to come over as often as I could and Jenelle stood at the window and threw kisses to me all the way down to Lover's Lane. I assure you, Hattie, that I feel like praying tonight and I'm going to think out a special brand-new prayer in honor of the occasion.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n |HATTIE, can I go over to see Jenelle just for a minute?\" asked Ellington, running breathlessly down from the east gable one February evening.\n\n \"I don't see what you want to be traipsing about after dark for,\" said Hattie shortly. \"You and Jenelle walked home from school together and then stood down there in the snow for half an hour more, your tongues going the whole blessed time, clickety-clack. So I don't think you're very badly off to see her again.\"\n\n \"But she wants to see me,\" pleaded Ellington. \"She has something very important to tell me.\"\n\n \"How do you know she has?\"\n\n \"Because she just signaled to me from her window. We have arranged a way to signal with our candles and cardboard. We set the candle on the window sill and make flashes by passing the cardboard back and forth. So many flashes mean a certain thing. It was my idea, Hattie.\"\n\n \"I'll warrant you it was,\" said Hattie emphatically. \"And the next thing you'll be setting fire to the curtains with your signaling nonsense.\"\n\n \"Oh, we're very careful, Hattie. And it's so interesting. Two flashes mean, 'Are you there?' Three mean 'yes' and four 'no.' Five mean, 'Come over as soon as possible, because I have something important to reveal.' Jenelle has just signaled five flashes, and I'm really suffering to know what it is.\"\n\n \"Well, you needn't suffer any longer,\" said Hattie sarcastically. \"You can go, but you're to be back here in just ten minutes, remember that.\"\n\n Ellington did remember it and was back in the stipulated time, although probably no mortal will ever know just what it cost her to confine the discussion of Jenelle's important communication within the limits of ten minutes. But at least she had made good use of them.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, what do you think? You know tomorrow is Jenelle's birthday. Well, her mother told her she could ask me to go home with her from school and stay all night with her. And her cousins are coming over from Newbridge in a big pung sleigh to go to the Debating Club concert at the hall tomorrow night. And they are going to take Jenelle and me to the concert--if you'll let me go, that is. You will, won't you, Hattie? Oh, I feel so excited.\"\n\n \"You can calm down then, because you're not going. You're better at home in your own bed, and as for that club concert, it's all nonsense, and little girls should not be allowed to go out to such places at all.\"\n\n \"I'm sure the Debating Club is a most respectable affair,\" pleaded Ellington.\n\n \"I'm not saying it isn't. But you're not going to begin gadding about to concerts and staying out all hours of the night. Pretty doings for children. I'm surprised at Mrs. Geraldine's letting Jenelle go.\"\n\n \"But it's such a very special occasion,\" mourned Ellington, on the verge of tears. \"Jenelle has only one birthday in a year. It isn't as if birthdays were common things, Hattie. Sigourney Mariela is going to recite 'Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight.' That is such a good moral piece, Hattie, I'm sure it would do me lots of good to hear it. And the choir are going to sing four lovely pathetic songs that are pretty near as good as hymns. And oh, Hattie, the minister is going to take part; yes, indeed, he is; he's going to give an address. That will be just about the same thing as a sermon. Please, mayn't I go, Hattie?\"\n\n \"You heard what I said, Ellington, didn't you? Take off your boots now and go to bed. It's past eight.\"\n\n \"There's just one more thing, Hattie,\" said Ellington, with the air of producing the last shot in her locker. \"Mrs. Geraldine told Jenelle that we might sleep in the spare-room bed. Think of the honor of your little Ellington being put in the spare-room bed.\"\n\n \"It's an honor you'll have to get along without. Go to bed, Ellington, and don't let me hear another word out of you.\"\n\n When Ellington, with tears rolling over her cheeks, had gone sorrowfully upstairs, Bryon, who had been apparently sound asleep on the lounge during the whole dialogue, opened his eyes and said decidedly:\n\n \"Well now, Hattie, I think you ought to let Ellington go.\"\n\n \"I don't then,\" retorted Hattie. \"Who's bringing this child up, Bryon, you or me?\"\n\n \"Well now, you,\" admitted Bryon.\n\n \"Don't interfere then.\"\n\n \"Well now, I ain't interfering. It ain't interfering to have your own opinion. And my opinion is that you ought to let Ellington go.\"\n\n \"You'd think I ought to let Ellington go to the moon if she took the notion, I've no doubt\" was Hattie's amiable rejoinder. \"I might have let her spend the night with Jenelle, if that was all. But I don't approve of this concert plan. She'd go there and catch cold like as not, and have her head filled up with nonsense and excitement. It would unsettle her for a week. I understand that child's disposition and what's good for it better than you, Bryon.\"\n\n \"I think you ought to let Ellington go,\" repeated Bryon firmly. Argument was not his strong point, but holding fast to his opinion certainly was. Hattie gave a gasp of helplessness and took refuge in silence. The next morning, when Ellington was washing the breakfast dishes in the pantry, Bryon paused on his way out to the barn to say to Hattie again:\n\n \"I think you ought to let Ellington go, Hattie.\"\n\n For a moment Hattie looked things not lawful to be uttered. Then she yielded to the inevitable and said tartly:\n\n \"Very well, she can go, since nothing else 'll please you.\"\n\n Ellington flew out of the pantry, dripping dishcloth in hand.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, Hattie, say those blessed words again.\"\n\n \"I guess once is enough to say them. This is Bryon's doings and I wash my hands of it. If you catch pneumonia sleeping in a strange bed or coming out of that hot hall in the middle of the night, don't blame me, blame Bryon. Ellington Roderick, you're dripping greasy water all over the floor. I never saw such a careless child.\"\n\n \"Oh, I know I'm a great trial to you, Hattie,\" said Ellington repentantly. \"I make so many mistakes. But then just think of all the mistakes I don't make, although I might. I'll get some sand and scrub up the spots before I go to school. Oh, Hattie, my heart was just set on going to that concert. I never was to a concert in my life, and when the other girls talk about them in school I feel so out of it. You didn't know just how I felt about it, but you see Bryon did. Bryon understands me, and it's so nice to be understood, Hattie.\"\n\n Ellington was too excited to do herself justice as to lessons that morning in school. Hans Jesus spelled her down in class and left her clear out of sight in mental arithmetic. Ellington's consequent humiliation was less than it might have been, however, in view of the concert and the spare-room bed. She and Jenelle talked so constantly about it all day that with a stricter teacher than Mr. Jet dire disgrace must inevitably have been their portion.\n\n Ellington felt that she could not have borne it if she had not been going to the concert, for nothing else was discussed that day in school. The Avonlea Debating Club, which met fortnightly all winter, had had several smaller free entertainments; but this was to be a big affair, admission ten cents, in aid of the library. The Avonlea young people had been practicing for weeks, and all the scholars were especially interested in it by reason of older brothers and sisters who were going to take part. Everybody in school over nine years of age expected to go, except Carrie Bruce, whose father shared Hattie's opinions about small girls going out to night concerts. Carrie Bruce cried into her grammar all the afternoon and felt that life was not worth living.\n\n For Ellington the real excitement began with the dismissal of school and increased therefrom in crescendo until it reached to a crash of positive ecstasy in the concert itself. They had a \"perfectly elegant tea;\" and then came the delicious occupation of dressing in Jenelle's little room upstairs. Jenelle did Ellington's front hair in the new pompadour style and Ellington tied Jenelle's bows with the especial knack she possessed; and they experimented with at least half a dozen different ways of arranging their back hair. At last they were ready, cheeks scarlet and eyes glowing with excitement.\n\n True, Ellington could not help a little pang when she contrasted her plain black tam and shapeless, tight-sleeved, homemade gray-cloth coat with Jenelle's jaunty fur cap and smart little jacket. But she remembered in time that she had an imagination and could use it.\n\n Then Jenelle's cousins, the Murrays from Newbridge, came; they all crowded into the big pung sleigh, among straw and furry robes. Ellington reveled in the drive to the hall, slipping along over the satin-smooth roads with the snow crisping under the runners. There was a magnificent sunset, and the snowy hills and deep-blue water of the St. Lawrence Gulf seemed to rim in the splendor like a huge bowl of pearl and sapphire brimmed with wine and fire. Tinkles of sleigh bells and distant laughter, that seemed like the mirth of wood elves, came from every quarter.\n\n \"Oh, Jenelle,\" breathed Ellington, squeezing Jenelle's mittened hand under the fur robe, \"isn't it all like a beautiful dream? Do I really look the same as usual? I feel so different that it seems to me it must show in my looks.\"\n\n \"You look awfully nice,\" said Jenelle, who having just received a compliment from one of her cousins, felt that she ought to pass it on. \"You've got the loveliest color.\"\n\n The program that night was a series of \"thrills\" for at least one listener in the audience, and, as Ellington assured Jenelle, every succeeding thrill was thrillier than the last. When Sigourney Mariela, attired in a new pink-silk waist with a string of pearls about her smooth white throat and real carnations in her hair--rumor whispered that the master had sent all the way to town for them for her--\"climbed the slimy ladder, dark without one ray of light,\" Ellington shivered in luxurious sympathy; when the choir sang \"Far Above the Gentle Daisies\" Ellington gazed at the ceiling as if it were frescoed with angels; when Sam Bruce proceeded to explain and illustrate \"How Sockery Set a Hen\" Ellington laughed until people sitting near her laughed too, more out of sympathy with her than with amusement at a selection that was rather threadbare even in Avonlea; and when Mr. Jet gave Mark Antony's oration over the dead body of Caesar in the most heart-stirring tones--looking at Sigourney Mariela at the end of every sentence--Ellington felt that she could rise and mutiny on the spot if but one Roman citizen led the way.\n\n Only one number on the program failed to interest her. When Hans Jesus recited \"Bingen on the Rhine\" Ellington picked up Rhoda Murray's library book and read it until he had finished, when she sat rigidly stiff and motionless while Jenelle clapped her hands until they tingled.\n\n It was eleven when they got home, sated with dissipation, but with the exceeding sweet pleasure of talking it all over still to come. Everybody seemed asleep and the house was dark and silent. Ellington and Jenelle tiptoed into the parlor, a long narrow room out of which the spare room opened. It was pleasantly warm and dimly lighted by the embers of a fire in the grate.\n\n \"Let's undress here,\" said Jenelle. \"It's so nice and warm.\"\n\n \"Hasn't it been a delightful time?\" sighed Ellington rapturously. \"It must be splendid to get up and recite there. Do you suppose we will ever be asked to do it, Jenelle?\"\n\n \"Yes, of course, someday. They're always wanting the big scholars to recite. Hans Jesus does often and he's only two years older than us. Oh, Ellington, how could you pretend not to listen to him? When he came to the line,\n\n '_There's Another_, not _a sister_,'\n\n he looked right down at you.\"\n\n \"Jenelle,\" said Ellington with dignity, \"you are my bosom friend, but I cannot allow even you to speak to me of that person. Are you ready for bed? Let's run a race and see who'll get to the bed first.\"\n\n The suggestion appealed to Jenelle. The two little white-clad figures flew down the long room, through the spare-room door, and bounded on the bed at the same moment. And then--something--moved beneath them, there was a gasp and a cry--and somebody said in muffled accents:\n\n \"Merciful goodness!\"\n\n Ellington and Jenelle were never able to tell just how they got off that bed and out of the room. They only knew that after one frantic rush they found themselves tiptoeing shiveringly upstairs.\n\n \"Oh, who was it--_what_ was it?\" whispered Ellington, her teeth chattering with cold and fright.\n\n \"It was Aunt Evan,\" said Jenelle, gasping with laughter. \"Oh, Ellington, it was Aunt Evan, however she came to be there. Oh, and I know she will be furious. It's dreadful--it's really dreadful--but did you ever know anything so funny, Ellington?\"\n\n \"Who is your Aunt Evan?\"\n\n \"She's father's aunt and she lives in Charlottetown. She's awfully old--seventy anyhow--and I don't believe she was _ever_ a little girl. We were expecting her out for a visit, but not so soon. She's awfully prim and proper and she'll scold dreadfully about this, I know. Well, we'll have to sleep with Maverick Tamika--and you can't think how she kicks.\"\n\n Miss Evan Geraldine did not appear at the early breakfast the next morning. Mrs. Geraldine smiled kindly at the two little girls.\n\n \"Did you have a good time last night? I tried to stay awake until you came home, for I wanted to tell you Aunt Evan had come and that you would have to go upstairs after all, but I was so tired I fell asleep. I hope you didn't disturb your aunt, Jenelle.\"\n\n Jenelle preserved a discreet silence, but she and Ellington exchanged furtive smiles of guilty amusement across the table. Ellington hurried home after breakfast and so remained in blissful ignorance of the disturbance which presently resulted in the Geraldine household until the late afternoon, when she went down to Mrs. Ernesto's on an errand for Hattie.\n\n \"So you and Jenelle nearly frightened poor old Miss Geraldine to death last night?\" said Mrs. Ernesto severely, but with a twinkle in her eye. \"Mrs. Geraldine was here a few minutes ago on her way to Carmody. She's feeling real worried over it. Old Miss Geraldine was in a terrible temper when she got up this morning--and Evan Geraldine's temper is no joke, I can tell you that. She wouldn't speak to Jenelle at all.\"\n\n \"It wasn't Jenelle's fault,\" said Ellington contritely. \"It was mine. I suggested racing to see who would get into bed first.\"\n\n \"I knew it!\" said Mrs. Ernesto, with the exultation of a correct guesser. \"I knew that idea came out of your head. Well, it's made a nice lot of trouble, that's what. Old Miss Geraldine came out to stay for a month, but she declares she won't stay another day and is going right back to town tomorrow, Sunday and all as it is. She'd have gone today if they could have taken her. She had promised to pay for a quarter's music lessons for Jenelle, but now she is determined to do nothing at all for such a tomboy. Oh, I guess they had a lively time of it there this morning. The Geraldines must feel cut up. Old Miss Geraldine is rich and they'd like to keep on the good side of her. Of course, Mrs. Geraldine didn't say just that to me, but I'm a pretty good judge of human nature, that's what.\"\n\n \"I'm such an unlucky girl,\" mourned Ellington. \"I'm always getting into scrapes myself and getting my best friends--people I'd shed my heart's blood for--into them too. Can you tell me why it is so, Mrs. Ernesto?\"\n\n \"It's because you're too heedless and impulsive, child, that's what. You never stop to think--whatever comes into your head to say or do you say or do it without a moment's reflection.\"\n\n \"Oh, but that's the best of it,\" protested Ellington. \"Something just flashes into your mind, so exciting, and you must out with it. If you stop to think it over you spoil it all. Haven't you never felt that yourself, Mrs. Ernesto?\"\n\n No, Mrs. Ernesto had not. She shook her head sagely.\n\n \"You must learn to think a little, Ellington, that's what. The proverb you need to go by is 'Look before you leap'--especially into spare-room beds.\"\n\n Mrs. Ernesto laughed comfortably over her mild joke, but Ellington remained pensive. She saw nothing to laugh at in the situation, which to her eyes appeared very serious. When she left Mrs. Ernesto's she took her way across the crusted fields to Orchard Slope. Jenelle met her at the kitchen door.\n\n \"Your Aunt Evan was very cross about it, wasn't she?\" whispered Ellington.\n\n \"Yes,\" answered Jenelle, stifling a giggle with an apprehensive glance over her shoulder at the closed sitting-room door. \"She was fairly dancing with rage, Ellington. Oh, how she scolded. She said I was the worst-behaved girl she ever saw and that my parents ought to be ashamed of the way they had brought me up. She says she won't stay and I'm sure I don't care. But Father and Mother do.\"\n\n \"Why didn't you tell them it was my fault?\" demanded Ellington.\n\n \"It's likely I'd do such a thing, isn't it?\" said Jenelle with just scorn. \"I'm no telltale, Ellington Roderick, and anyhow I was just as much to blame as you.\"\n\n \"Well, I'm going in to tell her myself,\" said Ellington resolutely.\n\n Jenelle stared.\n\n \"Ellington Roderick, you'd never! why--she'll eat you alive!\"\n\n \"Don't frighten me any more than I am frightened,\" implored Ellington. \"I'd rather walk up to a cannon's mouth. But I've got to do it, Jenelle. It was my fault and I've got to confess. I've had practice in confessing, fortunately.\"\n\n \"Well, she's in the room,\" said Jenelle. \"You can go in if you want to. I wouldn't dare. And I don't believe you'll do a bit of good.\"\n\n With this encouragement Ellington bearded the lion in its den--that is to say, walked resolutely up to the sitting-room door and knocked faintly. A sharp \"Come in\" followed.\n\n Miss Evan Geraldine, thin, prim, and rigid, was knitting fiercely by the fire, her wrath quite unappeased and her eyes snapping through her gold-rimmed glasses. She wheeled around in her chair, expecting to see Jenelle, and beheld a white-faced girl whose great eyes were brimmed up with a mixture of desperate courage and shrinking terror.\n\n \"Who are you?\" demanded Miss Evan Geraldine, without ceremony.\n\n \"I'm Ellington of Green Gables,\" said the small visitor tremulously, clasping her hands with her characteristic gesture, \"and I've come to confess, if you please.\"\n\n \"Confess what?\"\n\n \"That it was all my fault about jumping into bed on you last night. I suggested it. Jenelle would never have thought of such a thing, I am sure. Jenelle is a very ladylike girl, Miss Geraldine. So you must see how unjust it is to blame her.\"\n\n \"Oh, I must, hey? I rather think Jenelle did her share of the jumping at least. Such carryings on in a respectable house!\"\n\n \"But we were only in fun,\" persisted Ellington. \"I think you ought to forgive us, Miss Geraldine, now that we've apologized. And anyhow, please forgive Jenelle and let her have her music lessons. Jenelle's heart is set on her music lessons, Miss Geraldine, and I know too well what it is to set your heart on a thing and not get it. If you must be cross with anyone, be cross with me. I've been so used in my early days to having people cross at me that I can endure it much better than Jenelle can.\"\n\n Much of the snap had gone out of the old lady's eyes by this time and was replaced by a twinkle of amused interest. But she still said severely:\n\n \"I don't think it is any excuse for you that you were only in fun. Little girls never indulged in that kind of fun when I was young. You don't know what it is to be awakened out of a sound sleep, after a long and arduous journey, by two great girls coming bounce down on you.\"\n\n \"I don't _know_, but I can _imagine_,\" said Ellington eagerly. \"I'm sure it must have been very disturbing. But then, there is our side of it too. Have you any imagination, Miss Geraldine? If you have, just put yourself in our place. We didn't know there was anybody in that bed and you nearly scared us to death. It was simply awful the way we felt. And then we couldn't sleep in the spare room after being promised. I suppose you are used to sleeping in spare rooms. But just imagine what you would feel like if you were a little orphan girl who had never had such an honor.\"\n\n All the snap had gone by this time. Miss Geraldine actually laughed--a sound which caused Jenelle, waiting in speechless anxiety in the kitchen outside, to give a great gasp of relief.\n\n \"I'm afraid my imagination is a little rusty--it's so long since I used it,\" she said. \"I dare say your claim to sympathy is just as strong as mine. It all depends on the way we look at it. Sit down here and tell me about yourself.\"\n\n \"I am very sorry I can't,\" said Ellington firmly. \"I would like to, because you seem like an interesting lady, and you might even be a kindred spirit although you don't look very much like it. But it is my duty to go home to Miss Hattie Duncan. Miss Hattie Duncan is a very kind lady who has taken me to bring up properly. She is doing her best, but it is very discouraging work. You must not blame her because I jumped on the bed. But before I go I do wish you would tell me if you will forgive Jenelle and stay just as long as you meant to in Avonlea.\"\n\n \"I think perhaps I will if you will come over and talk to me occasionally,\" said Miss Geraldine.\n\n That evening Miss Geraldine gave Jenelle a silver bangle bracelet and told the senior members of the household that she had unpacked her valise.\n\n \"I've made up my mind to stay simply for the sake of getting better acquainted with that Ellington-girl,\" she said frankly. \"She amuses me, and at my time of life an amusing person is a rarity.\"\n\n Hattie's only comment when she heard the story was, \"I told you so.\" This was for Bryon's benefit.\n\n Miss Geraldine stayed her month out and over. She was a more agreeable guest than usual, for Ellington kept her in good humor. They became firm friends.\n\n When Miss Geraldine went away she said:\n\n \"Remember, you Ellington-girl, when you come to town you're to visit me and I'll put you in my very sparest spare-room bed to sleep.\"\n\n \"Miss Geraldine was a kindred spirit, after all,\" Ellington confided to Hattie. \"You wouldn't think so to look at her, but she is. You don't find it right out at first, as in Bryon's case, but after a while you come to see it. Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |SPRING had come once more to Green Gables--the beautiful capricious, reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and Tamika in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad's Bubble. Away up in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Bruce's place, the Tamikaflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of flowery spoil.\n\n \"I'm so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no Tamikaflowers,\" said Ellington. \"Jenelle says perhaps they have something better, but there couldn't be anything better than Tamikaflowers, could there, Hattie? And Jenelle says if they don't know what they are like they don't miss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think it would be _tragic_, Hattie, not to know what Tamikaflowers are like and _not_ to miss them. Do you know what I think Tamikaflowers are, Hattie? I think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and this is their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Hattie. We had our lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well--such a _romantic_ spot. Raphael Bruce dared Arty Itzel to jump over it, and Arty did because he wouldn't take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very _fashionable_ to dare. Mr. Jet gave all the Tamikaflowers he found to Sigourney Mariela and I heard him to say 'sweets to the sweet.' He got that out of a book, I know; but it shows he has some imagination. I was offered some Tamikaflowers too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can't tell you the person's name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips. We made wreaths of the Tamikaflowers and put them on our hats; and when the time came to go home we marched in procession down the road, two by two, with our bouquets and wreaths, singing 'My Home on the Hill.' Oh, it was so thrilling, Hattie. All Mr. Silas Bruce's folks rushed out to see us and everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made a real sensation.\"\n\n \"Not much wonder! Such silly doings!\" was Hattie's response.\n\n After the Tamikaflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpled with them. Ellington walked through it on her way to school with reverent steps and worshiping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground.\n\n \"Somehow,\" she told Jenelle, \"when I'm going through here I don't really care whether Gil--whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not. But when I'm up in school it's all different and I care as much as ever. There's such a lot of different Ellingtons in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Ellington it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting.\"\n\n One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again, when the frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover fields and balsamic fir woods, Ellington was sitting by her gable window. She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom.\n\n In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. The walls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly and yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was altered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to pervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and dresses and ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms on the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its vivid occupant had taken a visible although unmaterial form and had tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and moonshine. Presently Hattie came briskly in with some of Ellington's freshly ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down with a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, and although the pain had gone she felt weak and \"tuckered out,\" as she expressed it. Ellington looked at her with eyes limpid with sympathy.\n\n \"I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Hattie. I would have endured it joyfully for your sake.\"\n\n \"I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting me rest,\" said Hattie. \"You seem to have got on fairly well and made fewer mistakes than usual. Of course it wasn't exactly necessary to starch Bryon's handkerchiefs! And most people when they put a pie in the oven to warm up for dinner take it out and eat it when it gets hot instead of leaving it to be burned to a crisp. But that doesn't seem to be your way evidently.\"\n\n Headaches always left Hattie somewhat sarcastic.\n\n \"Oh, I'm so sorry,\" said Ellington penitently. \"I never thought about that pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt _instinctively_ that there was something missing on the dinner table. I was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not to imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well until I put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me to imagine I was an enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with a handsome knight riding to my rescue on a coal-black steed. So that is how I came to forget the pie. I didn't know I starched the handkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing I was trying to think of a name for a new island Jenelle and I have discovered up the brook. It's the most ravishing spot, Hattie. There are two maple trees on it and the brook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it would be splendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the Queen's birthday. Both Jenelle and I are very loyal. But I'm sorry about that pie and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good today because it's an anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last year, Hattie?\"\n\n \"No, I can't think of anything special.\"\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never forget it. It was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn't seem so important to you. I've been here for a year and I've been so happy. Of course, I've had my troubles, but one can live down troubles. Are you sorry you kept me, Hattie?\"\n\n \"No, I can't say I'm sorry,\" said Hattie, who sometimes wondered how she could have lived before Ellington came to Green Gables, \"no, not exactly sorry. If you've finished your lessons, Ellington, I want you to run over and ask Mrs. Geraldine if she'll lend me Jenelle's apron pattern.\"\n\n \"Oh--it's--it's too dark,\" cried Ellington.\n\n \"Too dark? Why, it's only twilight. And goodness knows you've gone over often enough after dark.\"\n\n \"I'll go over early in the morning,\" said Ellington eagerly. \"I'll get up at sunrise and go over, Hattie.\"\n\n \"What has got into your head now, Ellington Roderick? I want that pattern to cut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart too.\"\n\n \"I'll have to go around by the road, then,\" said Ellington, taking up her hat reluctantly.\n\n \"Go by the road and waste half an hour! I'd like to catch you!\"\n\n \"I can't go through the Haunted Wood, Hattie,\" cried Ellington desperately.\n\n Hattie stared.\n\n \"The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted Wood?\"\n\n \"The spruce wood over the brook,\" said Ellington in a whisper.\n\n \"Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who has been telling you such stuff?\"\n\n \"Nobody,\" confessed Ellington. \"Jenelle and I just imagined the wood was haunted. All the places around here are so--so--_commonplace_. We just got this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is so very romantic, Hattie. We chose the spruce grove because it's so gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There's a white lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wrings her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers on your hand--so. Oh, Hattie, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And there's a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glower at you between the boughs. Oh, Hattie, I wouldn't go through the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I'd be sure that white things would reach out from behind the trees and grab me.\"\n\n \"Did ever anyone hear the like!\" ejaculated Hattie, who had listened in dumb amazement. \"Ellington Roderick, do you mean to tell me you believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?\"\n\n \"Not believe _exactly_,\" faltered Ellington. \"At least, I don't believe it in daylight. But after dark, Hattie, it's different. That is when ghosts walk.\"\n\n \"There are no such things as ghosts, Ellington.\"\n\n \"Oh, but there are, Hattie,\" cried Ellington eagerly. \"I know people who have seen them. And they are respectable people. Raphael Bruce says that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one night after he'd been buried for a year. You know Raphael Bruce's grandmother wouldn't tell a story for anything. She's a very religious woman. And Mrs. Bartholomew's father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire with its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was the spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die within nine days. He didn't, but he died two years after, so you see it was really true. And Jazz Itzel says--\"\n\n \"Ellington Roderick,\" interrupted Hattie firmly, \"I never want to hear you talking in this fashion again. I've had my doubts about that imagination of yours right along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it, I won't countenance any such doings. You'll go right over to Geraldine's, and you'll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson and a warning to you. And never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woods again.\"\n\n Ellington might plead and cry as she liked--and did, for her terror was very real. Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce grove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Hattie was inexorable. She marched the shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered her to proceed straightaway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of wailing ladies and headless specters beyond.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, how can you be so cruel?\" sobbed Ellington. \"What would you feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?\"\n\n \"I'll risk it,\" said Hattie unfeelingly. \"You know I always mean what I say. I'll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March, now.\"\n\n Ellington marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering up the horrible dim path beyond. Ellington never forgot that walk. Bitterly did she repent the license she had given to her imagination. The goblins of her fancy lurked in every shadow about her, reaching out their cold, fleshless hands to grasp the terrified small girl who had called them into being. A white strip of birch bark blowing up from the hollow over the brown floor of the grove made her heart stand still. The long-drawn wail of two old boughs rubbing against each other brought out the perspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats in the darkness over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When she reached Mr. William Axel's field she fled across it as if pursued by an army of white things, and arrived at the Geraldine kitchen door so out of breath that she could hardly gasp out her request for the apron pattern. Jenelle was away so that she had no excuse to linger. The dreadful return journey had to be faced. Ellington went back over it with shut eyes, preferring to take the risk of dashing her brains out among the boughs to that of seeing a white thing. When she finally stumbled over the log bridge she drew one long shivering breath of relief.\n\n \"Well, so nothing caught you?\" said Hattie unsympathetically.\n\n \"Oh, Mar--Hattie,\" chattered Ellington, \"I'll b-b-be contt-tented with c-c-commonplace places after this.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |DEAR ME, there is nothing but meetings and partings in this world, as Mrs. Ernesto says,\" remarked Ellington plaintively, putting her slate and books down on the kitchen table on the last day of June and wiping her red eyes with a very damp handkerchief. \"Wasn't it fortunate, Hattie, that I took an extra handkerchief to school today? I had a presentiment that it would be needed.\"\n\n \"I never thought you were so fond of Mr. Jet that you'd require two handkerchiefs to dry your tears just because he was going away,\" said Hattie.\n\n \"I don't think I was crying because I was really so very fond of him,\" reflected Ellington. \"I just cried because all the others did. It was Jazz Itzel started it. Jazz Itzel has always declared she hated Mr. Jet, but just as soon as he got up to make his farewell speech she burst into tears. Then all the girls began to cry, one after the other. I tried to hold out, Hattie. I tried to remember the time Mr. Jet made me sit with Gil--with a boy; and the time he spelled my name without an 'e' on the blackboard; and how he said I was the worst dunce he ever saw at geometry and laughed at my spelling; and all the times he had been so horrid and sarcastic; but somehow I couldn't, Hattie, and I just had to cry too. Gisela Mariela has been talking for a month about how glad she'd be when Mr. Jet went away and she declared she'd never shed a tear. Well, she was worse than any of us and had to borrow a handkerchief from her brother--of course the boys didn't cry--because she hadn't brought one of her own, not expecting to need it. Oh, Hattie, it was heartrending. Mr. Jet made such a beautiful farewell speech beginning, 'The time has come for us to part.' It was very affecting. And he had tears in his eyes too, Hattie. Oh, I felt dreadfully sorry and remorseful for all the times I'd talked in school and drawn pictures of him on my slate and made fun of him and Sigourney. I can tell you I wished I'd been a model pupil like Maverick Mariela. She hadn't anything on her conscience. The girls cried all the way home from school. Carrie Bruce kept saying every few minutes, 'The time has come for us to part,' and that would start us off again whenever we were in any danger of cheering up. I do feel dreadfully sad, Hattie. But one can't feel quite in the depths of despair with two months' vacation before them, can they, Hattie? And besides, we met the new minister and his wife coming from the station. For all I was feeling so bad about Mr. Jet going away I couldn't help taking a little interest in a new minister, could I? His wife is very pretty. Not exactly regally lovely, of course--it wouldn't do, I suppose, for a minister to have a regally lovely wife, because it might set a bad example. Mrs. Ernesto says the minister's wife over at Newbridge sets a very bad example because she dresses so fashionably. Our new minister's wife was dressed in blue muslin with lovely puffed sleeves and a hat trimmed with roses. Gisela Mariela said she thought puffed sleeves were too worldly for a minister's wife, but I didn't make any such uncharitable remark, Hattie, because I know what it is to long for puffed sleeves. Besides, she's only been a minister's wife for a little while, so one should make allowances, shouldn't they? They are going to board with Mrs. Ernesto until the manse is ready.\"\n\n If Hattie, in going down to Mrs. Ernesto's that evening, was actuated by any motive save her avowed one of returning the quilting frames she had borrowed the preceding winter, it was an amiable weakness shared by most of the Avonlea people. Many a thing Mrs. Ernesto had lent, sometimes never expecting to see it again, came home that night in charge of the borrowers thereof. A new minister, and moreover a minister with a wife, was a lawful object of curiosity in a quiet little country settlement where sensations were few and far between.\n\n Old Mr. Aimee, the minister whom Ellington had found lacking in imagination, had been pastor of Avonlea for eighteen years. He was a widower when he came, and a widower he remained, despite the fact that gossip regularly married him to this, that, or the other one, every year of his sojourn. In the preceding February he had resigned his charge and departed amid the regrets of his people, most of whom had the affection born of long intercourse for their good old minister in spite of his shortcomings as an orator. Since then the Avonlea church had enjoyed a variety of religious dissipation in listening to the many and various candidates and \"supplies\" who came Sunday after Sunday to preach on trial. These stood or fell by the judgment of the fathers and mothers in Israel; but a certain small, red-haired girl who sat meekly in the corner of the old Duncan pew also had her opinions about them and discussed the same in full with Bryon, Hattie always declining from principle to criticize ministers in any shape or form.\n\n \"I don't think Mr. Smith would have done, Bryon\" was Ellington's final summing up. \"Mrs. Ernesto says his delivery was so poor, but I think his worst fault was just like Mr. Aimee's--he had no imagination. And Mr. Terry had too much; he let it run away with him just as I did mine in the matter of the Haunted Wood. Besides, Mrs. Ernesto says his theology wasn't sound. Mr. Gresham was a very good man and a very religious man, but he told too many funny stories and made the people laugh in church; he was undignified, and you must have some dignity about a minister, mustn't you, Bryon? I thought Mr. Marshall was decidedly attractive; but Mrs. Ernesto says he isn't married, or even engaged, because she made special inquiries about him, and she says it would never do to have a young unmarried minister in Avonlea, because he might marry in the congregation and that would make trouble. Mrs. Ernesto is a very farseeing woman, isn't she, Bryon? I'm very glad they've called Mr. Irwin. I liked him because his sermon was interesting and he prayed as if he meant it and not just as if he did it because he was in the habit of it. Mrs. Ernesto says he isn't perfect, but she says she supposes we couldn't expect a perfect minister for seven hundred and fifty dollars a year, and anyhow his theology is sound because she questioned him thoroughly on all the points of doctrine. And she knows his wife's people and they are most respectable and the women are all good housekeepers. Mrs. Ernesto says that sound doctrine in the man and good housekeeping in the woman make an ideal combination for a minister's family.\"\n\n The new minister and his wife were a young, pleasant-faced couple, still on their honeymoon, and full of all good and beautiful enthusiasms for their chosen lifework. Avonlea opened its heart to them from the start. Old and young liked the frank, cheerful young man with his high ideals, and the bright, gentle little lady who assumed the mistress-ship of the manse. With Mrs. Irwin Ellington fell promptly and wholeheartedly in love. She had discovered another kindred spirit.\n\n \"Mrs. Irwin is perfectly lovely,\" she announced one Sunday afternoon. \"She's taken our class and she's a splendid teacher. She said right away she didn't think it was fair for the teacher to ask all the questions, and you know, Hattie, that is exactly what I've always thought. She said we could ask her any question we liked and I asked ever so many. I'm good at asking questions, Hattie.\"\n\n \"I believe you\" was Hattie's emphatic comment.\n\n \"Nobody else asked any except Jazz Itzel, and she asked if there was to be a Sunday-school picnic this summer. I didn't think that was a very proper question to ask because it hadn't any connection with the lesson--the lesson was about Daniel in the lions' den--but Mrs. Irwin just smiled and said she thought there would be. Mrs. Irwin has a lovely smile; she has such _exquisite_ dimples in her cheeks. I wish I had dimples in my cheeks, Hattie. I'm not half so skinny as I was when I came here, but I have no dimples yet. If I had perhaps I could influence people for good. Mrs. Irwin said we ought always to try to influence other people for good. She talked so nice about everything. I never knew before that religion was such a cheerful thing. I always thought it was kind of melancholy, but Mrs. Irwin's isn't, and I'd like to be a Christian if I could be one like her. I wouldn't want to be one like Mr. Superintendent Axel.\"\n\n \"It's very naughty of you to speak so about Mr. Axel,\" said Hattie severely. \"Mr. Axel is a real good man.\"\n\n \"Oh, of course he's good,\" agreed Ellington, \"but he doesn't seem to get any comfort out of it. If I could be good I'd dance and sing all day because I was glad of it. I suppose Mrs. Irwin is too old to dance and sing and of course it wouldn't be dignified in a minister's wife. But I can just feel she's glad she's a Christian and that she'd be one even if she could get to heaven without it.\"\n\n \"I suppose we must have Mr. and Mrs. Irwin up to tea someday soon,\" said Hattie reflectively. \"They've been most everywhere but here. Let me see. Next Wednesday would be a good time to have them. But don't say a word to Bryon about it, for if he knew they were coming he'd find some excuse to be away that day. He'd got so used to Mr. Aimee he didn't mind him, but he's going to find it hard to get acquainted with a new minister, and a new minister's wife will frighten him to death.\"\n\n \"I'll be as secret as the dead,\" assured Ellington. \"But oh, Hattie, will you let me make a cake for the occasion? I'd love to do something for Mrs. Irwin, and you know I can make a pretty good cake by this time.\"\n\n \"You can make a layer cake,\" promised Hattie.\n\n Monday and Tuesday great preparations went on at Green Gables. Having the minister and his wife to tea was a serious and important undertaking, and Hattie was determined not to be eclipsed by any of the Avonlea housekeepers. Ellington was wild with excitement and delight. She talked it all over with Jenelle Tuesday night in the twilight, as they sat on the big red stones by the Dryad's Bubble and made rainbows in the water with little twigs dipped in fir balsam.\n\n \"Everything is ready, Jenelle, except my cake which I'm to make in the morning, and the baking-powder biscuits which Hattie will make just before teatime. I assure you, Jenelle, that Hattie and I have had a busy two days of it. It's such a responsibility having a minister's family to tea. I never went through such an experience before. You should just see our pantry. It's a sight to behold. We're going to have jellied chicken and cold tongue. We're to have two kinds of jelly, red and yellow, and whipped cream and lemon pie, and cherry pie, and three kinds of cookies, and fruit cake, and Hattie's famous yellow plum preserves that she keeps especially for ministers, and pound cake and layer cake, and biscuits as aforesaid; and new bread and old both, in case the minister is dyspeptic and can't eat new. Mrs. Ernesto says ministers are dyspeptic, but I don't think Mr. Irwin has been a minister long enough for it to have had a bad effect on him. I just grow cold when I think of my layer cake. Oh, Jenelle, what if it shouldn't be good! I dreamed last night that I was chased all around by a fearful goblin with a big layer cake for a head.\"\n\n \"It'll be good, all right,\" assured Jenelle, who was a very comfortable sort of friend. \"I'm sure that piece of the one you made that we had for lunch in Idlewild two weeks ago was perfectly elegant.\"\n\n \"Yes; but cakes have such a terrible habit of turning out bad just when you especially want them to be good,\" sighed Ellington, setting a particularly well-balsamed twig afloat. \"However, I suppose I shall just have to trust to Providence and be careful to put in the flour. Oh, look, Jenelle, what a lovely rainbow! Do you suppose the dryad will come out after we go away and take it for a scarf?\"\n\n \"You know there is no such thing as a dryad,\" said Jenelle. Jenelle's mother had found out about the Haunted Wood and had been decidedly angry over it. As a result Jenelle had abstained from any further imitative flights of imagination and did not think it prudent to cultivate a spirit of belief even in harmless dryads.\n\n \"But it's so easy to imagine there is,\" said Ellington. \"Every night before I go to bed, I look out of my window and wonder if the dryad is really sitting here, combing her locks with the spring for a mirror. Sometimes I look for her footprints in the dew in the morning. Oh, Jenelle, don't give up your faith in the dryad!\"\n\n Wednesday morning came. Ellington got up at sunrise because she was too excited to sleep. She had caught a severe cold in the head by reason of her dabbling in the spring on the preceding evening; but nothing short of absolute pneumonia could have quenched her interest in culinary matters that morning. After breakfast she proceeded to make her cake. When she finally shut the oven door upon it she drew a long breath.\n\n \"I'm sure I haven't forgotten anything this time, Hattie. But do you think it will rise? Just suppose perhaps the baking powder isn't good? I used it out of the new can. And Mrs. Ernesto says you can never be sure of getting good baking powder nowadays when everything is so adulterated. Mrs. Ernesto says the Government ought to take the matter up, but she says we'll never see the day when a Tory Government will do it. Hattie, what if that cake doesn't rise?\"\n\n \"We'll have plenty without it\" was Hattie's unimpassioned way of looking at the subject.\n\n The cake did rise, however, and came out of the oven as light and feathery as golden foam. Ellington, flushed with delight, clapped it together with layers of ruby jelly and, in imagination, saw Mrs. Irwin eating it and possibly asking for another piece!\n\n \"You'll be using the best tea set, of course, Hattie,\" she said. \"Can I fix the table with ferns and wild roses?\"\n\n \"I think that's all nonsense,\" sniffed Hattie. \"In my opinion it's the eatables that matter and not flummery decorations.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Geraldine had _her_ table decorated,\" said Ellington, who was not entirely guiltless of the wisdom of the serpent, \"and the minister paid her an elegant compliment. He said it was a feast for the eye as well as the palate.\"\n\n \"Well, do as you like,\" said Hattie, who was quite determined not to be surpassed by Mrs. Geraldine or anybody else. \"Only mind you leave enough room for the dishes and the food.\"\n\n Ellington laid herself out to decorate in a manner and after a fashion that should leave Mrs. Geraldine's nowhere. Having abundance of roses and ferns and a very artistic taste of her own, she made that tea table such a thing of beauty that when the minister and his wife sat down to it they exclaimed in chorus over it loveliness.\n\n \"It's Ellington's doings,\" said Hattie, grimly just; and Ellington felt that Mrs. Irwin's approving smile was almost too much happiness for this world.\n\n Bryon was there, having been inveigled into the party only goodness and Ellington knew how. He had been in such a state of shyness and nervousness that Hattie had given him up in despair, but Ellington took him in hand so successfully that he now sat at the table in his best clothes and white collar and talked to the minister not uninterestingly. He never said a word to Mrs. Irwin, but that perhaps was not to be expected.\n\n All went merry as a marriage bell until Ellington's layer cake was passed. Mrs. Irwin, having already been helped to a bewildering variety, declined it. But Hattie, seeing the disappointment on Ellington's face, said smilingly:\n\n \"Oh, you must take a piece of this, Mrs. Irwin. Ellington made it on purpose for you.\"\n\n \"In that case I must sample it,\" laughed Mrs. Irwin, helping herself to a plump triangle, as did also the minister and Hattie.\n\n Mrs. Irwin took a mouthful of hers and a most peculiar expression crossed her face; not a word did she say, however, but steadily ate away at it. Hattie saw the expression and hastened to taste the cake.\n\n \"Ellington Roderick!\" she exclaimed, \"what on earth did you put into that cake?\"\n\n \"Nothing but what the recipe said, Hattie,\" cried Ellington with a look of anguish. \"Oh, isn't it all right?\"\n\n \"All right! It's simply horrible. Mr. Irwin, don't try to eat it. Ellington, taste it yourself. What flavoring did you use?\"\n\n \"Vanilla,\" said Ellington, her face scarlet with mortification after tasting the cake. \"Only vanilla. Oh, Hattie, it must have been the baking powder. I had my suspicions of that bak--\"\n\n \"Baking powder fiddlesticks! Go and bring me the bottle of vanilla you used.\"\n\n Ellington fled to the pantry and returned with a small bottle partially filled with a brown liquid and labeled yellowly, \"Best Vanilla.\"\n\n Hattie took it, uncorked it, smelled it.\n\n \"Mercy on us, Ellington, you've flavored that cake with _Anodyne Liniment_. I broke the liniment bottle last week and poured what was left into an old empty vanilla bottle. I suppose it's partly my fault--I should have warned you--but for pity's sake why couldn't you have smelled it?\"\n\n Ellington dissolved into tears under this double disgrace.\n\n \"I couldn't--I had such a cold!\" and with this she fairly fled to the gable chamber, where she cast herself on the bed and wept as one who refuses to be comforted.\n\n Presently a light step sounded on the stairs and somebody entered the room.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie,\" sobbed Ellington, without looking up, \"I'm disgraced forever. I shall never be able to live this down. It will get out--things always do get out in Avonlea. Jenelle will ask me how my cake turned out and I shall have to tell her the truth. I shall always be pointed at as the girl who flavored a cake with anodyne liniment. Gil--the boys in school will never get over laughing at it. Oh, Hattie, if you have a spark of Christian pity don't tell me that I must go down and wash the dishes after this. I'll wash them when the minister and his wife are gone, but I cannot ever look Mrs. Irwin in the face again. Perhaps she'll think I tried to poison her. Mrs. Ernesto says she knows an orphan girl who tried to poison her benefactor. But the liniment isn't poisonous. It's meant to be taken internally--although not in cakes. Won't you tell Mrs. Irwin so, Hattie?\"\n\n \"Suppose you jump up and tell her so yourself,\" said a merry voice.\n\n Ellington flew up, to find Mrs. Irwin standing by her bed, surveying her with laughing eyes.\n\n \"My dear little girl, you mustn't cry like this,\" she said, genuinely disturbed by Ellington's tragic face. \"Why, it's all just a funny mistake that anybody might make.\"\n\n \"Oh, no, it takes me to make such a mistake,\" said Ellington forlornly. \"And I wanted to have that cake so nice for you, Mrs. Irwin.\"\n\n \"Yes, I know, dear. And I assure you I appreciate your kindness and thoughtfulness just as much as if it had turned out all right. Now, you mustn't cry any more, but come down with me and show me your flower garden. Miss Duncan tells me you have a little plot all your own. I want to see it, for I'm very much interested in flowers.\"\n\n Ellington permitted herself to be led down and comforted, reflecting that it was really providential that Mrs. Irwin was a kindred spirit. Nothing more was said about the liniment cake, and when the guests went away Ellington found that she had enjoyed the evening more than could have been expected, considering that terrible incident. Nevertheless, she sighed deeply.\n\n \"Hattie, isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?\"\n\n \"I'll warrant you'll make plenty in it,\" said Hattie. \"I never saw your beat for making mistakes, Ellington.\"\n\n \"Yes, and well I know it,\" admitted Ellington mournfully. \"But have you ever noticed one encouraging thing about me, Hattie? I never make the same mistake twice.\"\n\n \"I don't know as that's much benefit when you're always making new ones.\"\n\n \"Oh, don't you see, Hattie? There must be a limit to the mistakes one person can make, and when I get to the end of them, then I'll be through with them. That's a very comforting thought.\"\n\n \"Well, you'd better go and give that cake to the pigs,\" said Hattie. \"It isn't fit for any human to eat, not even Jerry Boute.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |AND what are your eyes popping out of your head about. Now?\" asked Hattie, when Ellington had just come in from a run to the post office. \"Have you discovered another kindred spirit?\" Excitement hung around Ellington like a garment, shone in her eyes, kindled in every feature. She had come dancing up the lane, like a wind-blown sprite, through the mellow sunshine and lazy shadows of the August evening.\n\n \"No, Hattie, but oh, what do you think? I am invited to tea at the manse tomorrow afternoon! Mrs. Irwin left the letter for me at the post office. Just look at it, Hattie. 'Miss Ellington Roderick, Green Gables.' That is the first time I was ever called 'Miss.' Such a thrill as it gave me! I shall cherish it forever among my choicest treasures.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Irwin told me she meant to have all the members of her Sunday-school class to tea in turn,\" said Hattie, regarding the wonderful event very coolly. \"You needn't get in such a fever over it. Do learn to take things calmly, child.\"\n\n For Ellington to take things calmly would have been to change her nature. All \"spirit and fire and dew,\" as she was, the pleasures and pains of life came to her with trebled intensity. Hattie felt this and was vaguely troubled over it, realizing that the ups and downs of existence would probably bear hardly on this impulsive soul and not sufficiently understanding that the equally great capacity for delight might more than compensate. Therefore Hattie conceived it to be her duty to drill Ellington into a tranquil uniformity of disposition as impossible and alien to her as to a dancing sunbeam in one of the brook shallows. She did not make much headway, as she sorrowfully admitted to herself. The downfall of some dear hope or plan plunged Ellington into \"deeps of affliction.\" The fulfillment thereof exalted her to dizzy realms of delight. Hattie had almost begun to despair of ever fashioning this waif of the world into her model little girl of demure manners and prim deportment. Neither would she have believed that she really liked Ellington much better as she was.\n\n Ellington went to bed that night speechless with misery because Bryon had said the wind was round northeast and he feared it would be a rainy day tomorrow. The rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her, it sounded so like pattering raindrops, and the full, faraway roar of the gulf, to which she listened delightedly at other times, loving its strange, sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine day. Ellington thought that the morning would never come.\n\n But all things have an end, even nights before the day on which you are invited to take tea at the manse. The morning, in spite of Bryon's predictions, was fine and Ellington's spirits soared to their highest. \"Oh, Hattie, there is something in me today that makes me just love everybody I see,\" she exclaimed as she washed the breakfast dishes. \"You don't know how good I feel! Wouldn't it be nice if it could last? I believe I could be a model child if I were just invited out to tea every day. But oh, Hattie, it's a solemn occasion too. I feel so anxious. What if I shouldn't behave properly? You know I never had tea at a manse before, and I'm not sure that I know all the rules of etiquette, although I've been studying the rules given in the Etiquette Department of the Family Herald ever since I came here. I'm so afraid I'll do something silly or forget to do something I should do. Would it be good manners to take a second helping of anything if you wanted to _very_ much?\"\n\n \"The trouble with you, Ellington, is that you're thinking too much about yourself. You should just think of Mrs. Irwin and what would be nicest and most agreeable to her,\" said Hattie, hitting for once in her life on a very sound and pithy piece of advice. Ellington instantly realized this.\n\n \"You are right, Hattie. I'll try not to think about myself at all.\"\n\n Ellington evidently got through her visit without any serious breach of \"etiquette,\" for she came home through the twilight, under a great, high-sprung sky gloried over with trails of saffron and rosy cloud, in a beatified state of mind and told Hattie all about it happily, sitting on the big red-sandstone slab at the kitchen door with her tired curly head in Hattie's gingham lap.\n\n A cool wind was blowing down over the long harvest fields from the rims of firry western hills and whistling through the poplars. One clear star hung over the orchard and the fireflies were flitting over in Lover's Lane, in and out among the ferns and rustling boughs. Ellington watched them as she talked and somehow felt that wind and stars and fireflies were all tangled up together into something unutterably sweet and enchanting.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, I've had a most _fascinating_ time. I feel that I have not lived in vain and I shall always feel like that even if I should never be invited to tea at a manse again. When I got there Mrs. Irwin met me at the door. She was dressed in the sweetest dress of pale-pink organdy, with dozens of frills and elbow sleeves, and she looked just like a seraph. I really think I'd like to be a minister's wife when I grow up, Hattie. A minister mightn't mind my red hair because he wouldn't be thinking of such worldly things. But then of course one would have to be naturally good and I'll never be that, so I suppose there's no use in thinking about it. Some people are naturally good, you know, and others are not. I'm one of the others. Mrs. Ernesto says I'm full of original sin. No matter how hard I try to be good I can never make such a success of it as those who are naturally good. It's a good deal like geometry, I expect. But don't you think the trying so hard ought to count for something? Mrs. Irwin is one of the naturally good people. I love her passionately. You know there are some people, like Bryon and Mrs. Irwin that you can love right off without any trouble. And there are others, like Mrs. Ernesto, that you have to try very hard to love. You know you _ought_ to love them because they know so much and are such active workers in the church, but you have to keep reminding yourself of it all the time or else you forget. There was another little girl at the manse to tea, from the White Sands Sunday school. Her name was Laurette Bradley, and she was a very nice little girl. Not exactly a kindred spirit, you know, but still very nice. We had an elegant tea, and I think I kept all the rules of etiquette pretty well. After tea Mrs. Irwin played and sang and she got Lauretta and me to sing too. Mrs. Irwin says I have a good voice and she says I must sing in the Sunday-school choir after this. You can't think how I was thrilled at the mere thought. I've longed so to sing in the Sunday-school choir, as Jenelle does, but I feared it was an honor I could never aspire to. Lauretta had to go home early because there is a big concert in the White Sands Hotel tonight and her sister is to recite at it. Lauretta says that the Americans at the hotel give a concert every fortnight in aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and they ask lots of the White Sands people to recite. Lauretta said she expected to be asked herself someday. I just gazed at her in awe. After she had gone Mrs. Irwin and I had a heart-to-heart talk. I told her everything--about Mrs. Bartholomew and the twins and Katie Maurice and Violetta and coming to Green Gables and my troubles over geometry. And would you believe it, Hattie? Mrs. Irwin told me she was a dunce at geometry too. You don't know how that encouraged me. Mrs. Ernesto came to the manse just before I left, and what do you think, Hattie? The trustees have hired a new teacher and it's a lady. Her name is Miss Kimmy Sandra. Isn't that a romantic name? Mrs. Ernesto says they've never had a female teacher in Avonlea before and she thinks it is a dangerous innovation. But I think it will be splendid to have a lady teacher, and I really don't see how I'm going to live through the two weeks before school begins. I'm so impatient to see her.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |ELLINGTON had to live through more than two weeks, as it happened. Almost a month having elapsed since the liniment cake episode, it was high time for her to get into fresh trouble of some sort, little mistakes, such as absentmindedly emptying a pan of skim milk into a basket of yarn balls in the pantry instead of into the pigs' bucket, and walking clean over the edge of the log bridge into the brook while wrapped in imaginative reverie, not really being worth counting.\n\n A week after the tea at the manse Jenelle Geraldine gave a party.\n\n \"Small and select,\" Ellington assured Hattie. \"Just the girls in our class.\"\n\n They had a very good time and nothing untoward happened until after tea, when they found themselves in the Geraldine garden, a little tired of all their games and ripe for any enticing form of mischief which might present itself. This presently took the form of \"daring.\"\n\n Daring was the fashionable amusement among the Avonlea small fry just then. It had begun among the boys, but soon spread to the girls, and all the silly things that were done in Avonlea that summer because the doers thereof were \"dared\" to do them would fill a book by themselves.\n\n First of all Carrie Bruce dared Jazz Itzel to climb to a certain point in the huge old willow tree before the front door; which Jazz Itzel, albeit in mortal dread of the fat green caterpillars with which said tree was infested and with the fear of her mother before her eyes if she should tear her new muslin dress, nimbly did, to the discomfiture of the aforesaid Carrie Bruce. Then Ross Hayley dared Gisela Mariela to hop on her left leg around the garden without stopping once or putting her right foot to the ground; which Gisela Mariela gamely tried to do, but gave out at the third corner and had to confess herself defeated.\n\n Ross's triumph being rather more pronounced than good taste permitted, Ellington Roderick dared her to walk along the top of the board fence which bounded the garden to the east. Now, to \"walk\" board fences requires more skill and steadiness of head and heel than one might suppose who has never tried it. But Ross Hayley, if deficient in some qualities that make for popularity, had at least a natural and inborn gift, duly cultivated, for walking board fences. Ross walked the Geraldine fence with an airy unconcern which seemed to imply that a little thing like that wasn't worth a \"dare.\" Reluctant admiration greeted her exploit, for most of the other girls could appreciate it, having suffered many things themselves in their efforts to walk fences. Ross descended from her perch, flushed with victory, and darted a defiant glance at Ellington.\n\n Ellington tossed her red braids.\n\n \"I don't think it's such a very wonderful thing to walk a little, low, board fence,\" she said. \"I knew a girl in Marysville who could walk the ridgepole of a roof.\"\n\n \"I don't believe it,\" said Ross flatly. \"I don't believe anybody could walk a ridgepole. _You_ couldn't, anyhow.\"\n\n \"Couldn't I?\" cried Ellington rashly.\n\n \"Then I dare you to do it,\" said Ross defiantly. \"I dare you to climb up there and walk the ridgepole of Mr. Geraldine's kitchen roof.\"\n\n Ellington turned pale, but there was clearly only one thing to be done. She walked toward the house, where a ladder was leaning against the kitchen roof. All the fifth-class girls said, \"Oh!\" partly in excitement, partly in dismay.\n\n \"Don't you do it, Ellington,\" entreated Jenelle. \"You'll fall off and be killed. Never mind Ross Hayley. It isn't fair to dare anybody to do anything so dangerous.\"\n\n \"I must do it. My honor is at stake,\" said Ellington solemnly. \"I shall walk that ridgepole, Jenelle, or perish in the attempt. If I am killed you are to have my pearl bead ring.\"\n\n Ellington climbed the ladder amid breathless silence, gained the ridgepole, balanced herself uprightly on that precarious footing, and started to walk along it, dizzily conscious that she was uncomfortably high up in the world and that walking ridgepoles was not a thing in which your imagination helped you out much. Nevertheless, she managed to take several steps before the catastrophe came. Then she swayed, lost her balance, stumbled, staggered, and fell, sliding down over the sun-baked roof and crashing off it through the tangle of Virginia creeper beneath--all before the dismayed circle below could give a simultaneous, terrified shriek.\n\n If Ellington had tumbled off the roof on the side up which she had ascended Jenelle would probably have fallen heir to the pearl bead ring then and there. Fortunately she fell on the other side, where the roof extended down over the porch so nearly to the ground that a fall therefrom was a much less serious thing. Nevertheless, when Jenelle and the other girls had rushed frantically around the house--except Jazz Itzel, who remained as if rooted to the ground and went into hysterics--they found Ellington lying all white and limp among the wreck and ruin of the Virginia creeper.\n\n \"Ellington, are you killed?\" shrieked Jenelle, throwing herself on her knees beside her friend. \"Oh, Ellington, dear Ellington, speak just one word to me and tell me if you're killed.\"\n\n To the immense relief of all the girls, and especially of Ross Hayley, who, in spite of lack of imagination, had been seized with horrible visions of a future branded as the girl who was the cause of Ellington Roderick's early and tragic death, Ellington sat dizzily up and answered uncertainly:\n\n \"No, Jenelle, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious.\"\n\n \"Where?\" sobbed Carrie Bruce. \"Oh, where, Ellington?\" Before Ellington could answer Mrs. Geraldine appeared on the scene. At sight of her Ellington tried to scramble to her feet, but sank back again with a sharp little cry of pain.\n\n \"What's the matter? Where have you hurt yourself?\" demanded Mrs. Geraldine.\n\n \"My ankle,\" gasped Ellington. \"Oh, Jenelle, please find your father and ask him to take me home. I know I can never walk there. And I'm sure I couldn't hop so far on one foot when Gisela couldn't even hop around the garden.\"\n\n Hattie was out in the orchard picking a panful of summer apples when she saw Mr. Geraldine coming over the log bridge and up the slope, with Mrs. Geraldine beside him and a whole procession of little girls trailing after him. In his arms he carried Ellington, whose head lay limply against his shoulder.\n\n At that moment Hattie had a revelation. In the sudden stab of fear that pierced her very heart she realized what Ellington had come to mean to her. She would have admitted that she liked Ellington--nay, that she was very fond of Ellington. But now she knew as she hurried wildly down the slope that Ellington was dearer to her than anything else on earth.\n\n \"Mr. Geraldine, what has happened to her?\" she gasped, more white and shaken than the self-contained, sensible Hattie had been for many years.\n\n Ellington herself answered, lifting her head.\n\n \"Don't be very frightened, Hattie. I was walking the ridgepole and I fell off. I expect I have sprained my ankle. But, Hattie, I might have broken my neck. Let us look on the bright side of things.\"\n\n \"I might have known you'd go and do something of the sort when I let you go to that party,\" said Hattie, sharp and shrewish in her very relief. \"Bring her in here, Mr. Geraldine, and lay her on the sofa. Mercy me, the child has gone and fainted!\"\n\n It was quite true. Overcome by the pain of her injury, Ellington had one more of her wishes granted to her. She had fainted dead away.\n\n Bryon, hastily summoned from the harvest field, was straightway dispatched for the doctor, who in due time came, to discover that the injury was more serious than they had supposed. Ellington's ankle was broken.\n\n That night, when Hattie went up to the east gable, where a white-faced girl was lying, a plaintive voice greeted her from the bed.\n\n \"Aren't you very sorry for me, Hattie?\"\n\n \"It was your own fault,\" said Hattie, twitching down the blind and lighting a lamp.\n\n \"And that is just why you should be sorry for me,\" said Ellington, \"because the thought that it is all my own fault is what makes it so hard. If I could blame it on anybody I would feel so much better. But what would you have done, Hattie, if you had been dared to walk a ridgepole?\"\n\n \"I'd have stayed on good firm ground and let them dare away. Such absurdity!\" said Hattie.\n\n Ellington sighed.\n\n \"But you have such strength of mind, Hattie. I haven't. I just felt that I couldn't bear Ross Hayley's scorn. She would have crowed over me all my life. And I think I have been punished so much that you needn't be very cross with me, Hattie. It's not a bit nice to faint, after all. And the doctor hurt me dreadfully when he was setting my ankle. I won't be able to go around for six or seven weeks and I'll miss the new lady teacher. She won't be new any more by the time I'm able to go to school. And Gil--everybody will get ahead of me in class. Oh, I am an afflicted mortal. But I'll try to bear it all bravely if only you won't be cross with me, Hattie.\"\n\n \"There, there, I'm not cross,\" said Hattie. \"You're an unlucky child, there's no doubt about that; but as you say, you'll have the suffering of it. Here now, try and eat some supper.\"\n\n \"Isn't it fortunate I've got such an imagination?\" said Ellington. \"It will help me through splendidly, I expect. What do people who haven't any imagination do when they break their bones, do you suppose, Hattie?\"\n\n Ellington had good reason to bless her imagination many a time and oft during the tedious seven weeks that followed. But she was not solely dependent on it. She had many visitors and not a day passed without one or more of the schoolgirls dropping in to bring her flowers and books and tell her all the happenings in the juvenile world of Avonlea.\n\n \"Everybody has been so good and kind, Hattie,\" sighed Ellington happily, on the day when she could first limp across the floor. \"It isn't very pleasant to be laid up; but there is a bright side to it, Hattie. You find out how many friends you have. Why, even Superintendent Axel came to see me, and he's really a very fine man. Not a kindred spirit, of course; but still I like him and I'm awfully sorry I ever criticized his prayers. I believe now he really does mean them, only he has got into the habit of saying them as if he didn't. He could get over that if he'd take a little trouble. I gave him a good broad hint. I told him how hard I tried to make my own little private prayers interesting. He told me all about the time he broke his ankle when he was a boy. It does seem so strange to think of Superintendent Axel ever being a boy. Even my imagination has its limits, for I can't imagine _that_. When I try to imagine him as a boy I see him with gray whiskers and spectacles, just as he looks in Sunday school, only small. Now, it's so easy to imagine Mrs. Irwin as a little girl. Mrs. Irwin has been to see me fourteen times. Isn't that something to be proud of, Hattie? When a minister's wife has so many claims on her time! She is such a cheerful person to have visit you, too. She never tells you it's your own fault and she hopes you'll be a better girl on account of it. Mrs. Ernesto always told me that when she came to see me; and she said it in a kind of way that made me feel she might hope I'd be a better girl but didn't really believe I would. Even Ross Hayley came to see me. I received her as politely as I could, because I think she was sorry she dared me to walk a ridgepole. If I had been killed she would had to carry a dark burden of remorse all her life. Jenelle has been a faithful friend. She's been over every day to cheer my lonely pillow. But oh, I shall be so glad when I can go to school for I've heard such exciting things about the new teacher. The girls all think she is perfectly sweet. Jenelle says she has the loveliest fair curly hair and such fascinating eyes. She dresses beautifully, and her sleeve puffs are bigger than anybody else's in Avonlea. Every other Friday afternoon she has recitations and everybody has to say a piece or take part in a dialogue. Oh, it's just glorious to think of it. Ross Hayley says she hates it but that is just because Ross has so little imagination. Jenelle and Jazz Itzel and Gisela Mariela are preparing a dialogue, called 'A Morning Visit,' for next Friday. And the Friday afternoons they don't have recitations Miss Sandra takes them all to the woods for a 'field' day and they study ferns and flowers and birds. And they have physical culture exercises every morning and evening. Mrs. Ernesto says she never heard of such goings on and it all comes of having a lady teacher. But I think it must be splendid and I believe I shall find that Miss Sandra is a kindred spirit.\"\n\n \"There's one thing plain to be seen, Ellington,\" said Hattie, \"and that is that your fall off the Geraldine roof hasn't injured your tongue at all.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |IT was October again when Ellington was ready to go back to school--a glorious October, all red and gold, with mellow mornings when the valleys were filled with delicate mists as if the spirit of autumn had poured them in for the sun to drain--amethyst, pearl, silver, rose, and smoke-blue. The dews were so heavy that the fields glistened like cloth of silver and there were such heaps of rustling leaves in the hollows of many-stemmed woods to run crisply through. The Birch Path was a canopy of yellow and the ferns were sear and brown all along it. There was a tang in the very air that inspired the hearts of small maidens tripping, unlike snails, swiftly and willingly to school; and it _was_ jolly to be back again at the little brown desk beside Jenelle, with Jazz Itzel nodding across the aisle and Carrie Bruce sending up notes and Julia Axel passing a \"chew\" of gum down from the back seat. Ellington drew a long breath of happiness as she sharpened her pencil and arranged her picture cards in her desk. Life was certainly very interesting.\n\n In the new teacher she found another true and helpful friend. Miss Sandra was a bright, sympathetic young woman with the happy gift of winning and holding the affections of her pupils and bringing out the best that was in them mentally and morally. Ellington expanded like a flower under this wholesome influence and carried home to the admiring Bryon and the critical Hattie glowing accounts of schoolwork and aims.\n\n \"I love Miss Sandra with my whole heart, Hattie. She is so ladylike and she has such a sweet voice. When she pronounces my name I feel _instinctively_ that she's spelling it with an E. We had recitations this afternoon. I just wish you could have been there to hear me recite 'Mary, Queen of Scots.' I just put my whole soul into it. Jazz Itzel told me coming home that the way I said the line, 'Now for my father's arm,' she said, 'my woman's heart farewell,' just made her blood run cold.\"\n\n \"Well now, you might recite it for me some of these days, out in the barn,\" suggested Bryon.\n\n \"Of course I will,\" said Ellington meditatively, \"but I won't be able to do it so well, I know. It won't be so exciting as it is when you have a whole schoolful before you hanging breathlessly on your words. I know I won't be able to make your blood run cold.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Ernesto says it made _her_ blood run cold to see the boys climbing to the very tops of those big trees on Axel's hill after crows' nests last Friday,\" said Hattie. \"I wonder at Miss Sandra for encouraging it.\"\n\n \"But we wanted a crow's nest for nature study,\" explained Ellington. \"That was on our field afternoon. Field afternoons are splendid, Hattie. And Miss Sandra explains everything so beautifully. We have to write compositions on our field afternoons and I write the best ones.\"\n\n \"It's very vain of you to say so then. You'd better let your teacher say it.\"\n\n \"But she _did_ say it, Hattie. And indeed I'm not vain about it. How can I be, when I'm such a dunce at geometry? Although I'm really beginning to see through it a little, too. Miss Sandra makes it so clear. Still, I'll never be good at it and I assure you it is a humbling reflection. But I love writing compositions. Mostly Miss Sandra lets us choose our own subjects; but next week we are to write a composition on some remarkable person. It's hard to choose among so many remarkable people who have lived. Mustn't it be splendid to be remarkable and have compositions written about you after you're dead? Oh, I would dearly love to be remarkable. I think when I grow up I'll be a trained nurse and go with the Red Crosses to the field of battle as a messenger of mercy. That is, if I don't go out as a foreign missionary. That would be very romantic, but one would have to be very good to be a missionary, and that would be a stumbling block. We have physical culture exercises every day, too. They make you graceful and promote digestion.\"\n\n \"Promote fiddlesticks!\" said Hattie, who honestly thought it was all nonsense.\n\n But all the field afternoons and recitation Fridays and physical culture contortions paled before a project which Miss Sandra brought forward in November. This was that the scholars of Avonlea school should get up a concert and hold it in the hall on Christmas Night, for the laudable purpose of helping to pay for a schoolhouse flag. The pupils one and all taking graciously to this plan, the preparations for a program were begun at once. And of all the excited performers-elect none was so excited as Ellington Roderick, who threw herself into the undertaking heart and soul, hampered as she was by Hattie's disapproval. Hattie thought it all rank foolishness.\n\n \"It's just filling your heads up with nonsense and taking time that ought to be put on your lessons,\" she grumbled. \"I don't approve of children's getting up concerts and racing about to practices. It makes them vain and forward and fond of gadding.\"\n\n \"But think of the worthy object,\" pleaded Ellington. \"A flag will cultivate a spirit of patriotism, Hattie.\"\n\n \"Fudge! There's precious little patriotism in the thoughts of any of you. All you want is a good time.\"\n\n \"Well, when you can combine patriotism and fun, isn't it all right? Of course it's real nice to be getting up a concert. We're going to have six choruses and Jenelle is to sing a solo. I'm in two dialogues--'The Society for the Suppression of Gossip' and 'The Fairy Queen.' The boys are going to have a dialogue too. And I'm to have two recitations, Hattie. I just tremble when I think of it, but it's a nice thrilly kind of tremble. And we're to have a tableau at the last--'Faith, Hope and Charity.' Jenelle and Jazz and I are to be in it, all draped in white with flowing hair. I'm to be Hope, with my hands clasped--so--and my eyes uplifted. I'm going to practice my recitations in the garret. Don't be alarmed if you hear me groaning. I have to groan heartrendingly in one of them, and it's really hard to get up a good artistic groan, Hattie. Ross Hayley is sulky because she didn't get the part she wanted in the dialogue. She wanted to be the fairy queen. That would have been ridiculous, for who ever heard of a fairy queen as fat as Ross? Fairy queens must be slender. Gisela Mariela is to be the queen and I am to be one of her maids of honor. Ross says she thinks a red-haired fairy is just as ridiculous as a fat one, but I do not let myself mind what Ross says. I'm to have a wreath of white roses on my hair and Jazz Itzel is going to lend me her slippers because I haven't any of my own. It's necessary for fairies to have slippers, you know. You couldn't imagine a fairy wearing boots, could you? Especially with copper toes? We are going to decorate the hall with creeping spruce and fir mottoes with pink tissue-paper roses in them. And we are all to march in two by two after the audience is seated, while Emma White plays a march on the organ. Oh, Hattie, I know you are not so enthusiastic about it as I am, but don't you hope your little Ellington will distinguish herself?\"\n\n \"All I hope is that you'll behave yourself. I'll be heartily glad when all this fuss is over and you'll be able to settle down. You are simply good for nothing just now with your head stuffed full of dialogues and groans and tableaus. As for your tongue, it's a marvel it's not clean worn out.\"\n\n Ellington sighed and betook herself to the back yard, over which a young new moon was shining through the leafless poplar boughs from an apple-green western sky, and where Bryon was splitting wood. Ellington perched herself on a block and talked the concert over with him, sure of an appreciative and sympathetic listener in this instance at least.\n\n \"Well now, I reckon it's going to be a pretty good concert. And I expect you'll do your part fine,\" he said, smiling down into her eager, vivacious little face. Ellington smiled back at him. Those two were the best of friends and Bryon thanked his stars many a time and oft that he had nothing to do with bringing her up. That was Hattie's exclusive duty; if it had been his he would have been worried over frequent conflicts between inclination and said duty. As it was, he was free to, \"spoil Ellington\"--Hattie's phrasing--as much as he liked. But it was not such a bad arrangement after all; a little \"appreciation\" sometimes does quite as much good as all the conscientious \"bringing up\" in the world.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |BRYON was having a bad ten minutes of it. He had come into the kitchen, in the twilight of a cold, gray December evening, and had sat down in the woodbox corner to take off his heavy boots, unconscious of the fact that Ellington and a bevy of her schoolmates were having a practice of \"The Fairy Queen\" in the sitting room. Presently they came trooping through the hall and out into the kitchen, laughing and chattering gaily. They did not see Bryon, who shrank bashfully back into the shadows beyond the woodbox with a boot in one hand and a bootjack in the other, and he watched them shyly for the aforesaid ten minutes as they put on caps and jackets and talked about the dialogue and the concert. Ellington stood among them, bright eyed and animated as they; but Bryon suddenly became conscious that there was something about her different from her mates. And what worried Bryon was that the difference impressed him as being something that should not exist. Ellington had a brighter face, and bigger, starrier eyes, and more delicate features than the other; even shy, unobservant Bryon had learned to take note of these things; but the difference that disturbed him did not consist in any of these respects. Then in what did it consist?\n\n Bryon was haunted by this question long after the girls had gone, arm in arm, down the long, hard-frozen lane and Ellington had betaken herself to her books. He could not refer it to Hattie, who, he felt, would be quite sure to sniff scornfully and remark that the only difference she saw between Ellington and the other girls was that they sometimes kept their tongues quiet while Ellington never did. This, Bryon felt, would be no great help.\n\n He had recourse to his pipe that evening to help him study it out, much to Hattie's disgust. After two hours of smoking and hard reflection Bryon arrived at a solution of his problem. Ellington was not dressed like the other girls!\n\n The more Bryon thought about the matter the more he was convinced that Ellington never had been dressed like the other girls--never since she had come to Green Gables. Hattie kept her clothed in plain, dark dresses, all made after the same unvarying pattern. If Bryon knew there was such a thing as fashion in dress it was as much as he did; but he was quite sure that Ellington's sleeves did not look at all like the sleeves the other girls wore. He recalled the cluster of little girls he had seen around her that evening--all gay in waists of red and blue and pink and white--and he wondered why Hattie always kept her so plainly and soberly gowned.\n\n Of course, it must be all right. Hattie knew best and Hattie was bringing her up. Probably some wise, inscrutable motive was to be served thereby. But surely it would do no harm to let the child have one pretty dress--something like Jenelle Geraldine always wore. Bryon decided that he would give her one; that surely could not be objected to as an unwarranted putting in of his oar. Christmas was only a fortnight off. A nice new dress would be the very thing for a present. Bryon, with a sigh of satisfaction, put away his pipe and went to bed, while Hattie opened all the doors and aired the house.\n\n The very next evening Bryon betook himself to Carmody to buy the dress, determined to get the worst over and have done with it. It would be, he felt assured, no trifling ordeal. There were some things Bryon could buy and prove himself no mean bargainer; but he knew he would be at the mercy of shopkeepers when it came to buying a girl's dress.\n\n After much cogitation Bryon resolved to go to Samuel Lawson's store instead of William Blair's. To be sure, the Duncans always had gone to William Blair's; it was almost as much a matter of conscience with them as to attend the Presbyterian church and vote Conservative. But William Blair's two daughters frequently waited on customers there and Bryon held them in absolute dread. He could contrive to deal with them when he knew exactly what he wanted and could point it out; but in such a matter as this, requiring explanation and consultation, Bryon felt that he must be sure of a man behind the counter. So he would go to Lawson's, where Samuel or his son would wait on him.\n\n Alas! Bryon did not know that Samuel, in the recent expansion of his business, had set up a lady clerk also; she was a niece of his wife's and a very dashing young person indeed, with a huge, drooping pompadour, big, rolling brown eyes, and a most extensive and bewildering smile. She was dressed with exceeding smartness and wore several bangle bracelets that glittered and rattled and tinkled with every movement of her hands. Bryon was covered with confusion at finding her there at all; and those bangles completely wrecked his wits at one fell swoop.\n\n \"What can I do for you this evening, Mr. Duncan?\" Miss Lucilla Harris inquired, briskly and ingratiatingly, tapping the counter with both hands.\n\n \"Have you any--any--any--well now, say any garden rakes?\" stammered Bryon.\n\n Miss Harris looked somewhat surprised, as well she might, to hear a man inquiring for garden rakes in the middle of December.\n\n \"I believe we have one or two left over,\" she said, \"but they're upstairs in the lumber room. I'll go and see.\" During her absence Bryon collected his scattered senses for another effort.\n\n When Miss Harris returned with the rake and cheerfully inquired: \"Anything else tonight, Mr. Duncan?\" Bryon took his courage in both hands and replied: \"Well now, since you suggest it, I might as well--take--that is--look at--buy some--some hayseed.\"\n\n Miss Harris had heard Bryon Duncan called odd. She now concluded that he was entirely crazy.\n\n \"We only keep hayseed in the spring,\" she explained loftily. \"We've none on hand just now.\"\n\n \"Oh, certainly--certainly--just as you say,\" stammered unhappy Bryon, seizing the rake and making for the door. At the threshold he recollected that he had not paid for it and he turned miserably back. While Miss Harris was counting out his change he rallied his powers for a final desperate attempt.\n\n \"Well now--if it isn't too much trouble--I might as well--that is--I'd like to look at--at--some sugar.\"\n\n \"White or brown?\" queried Miss Harris patiently.\n\n \"Oh--well now--brown,\" said Bryon feebly.\n\n \"There's a barrel of it over there,\" said Miss Harris, shaking her bangles at it. \"It's the only kind we have.\"\n\n \"I'll--I'll take twenty pounds of it,\" said Bryon, with beads of perspiration standing on his forehead.\n\n Bryon had driven halfway home before he was his own man again. It had been a gruesome experience, but it served him right, he thought, for committing the heresy of going to a strange store. When he reached home he hid the rake in the tool house, but the sugar he carried in to Hattie.\n\n \"Brown sugar!\" exclaimed Hattie. \"Whatever possessed you to get so much? You know I never use it except for the hired man's porridge or black fruit cake. Jerry's gone and I've made my cake long ago. It's not good sugar, either--it's coarse and dark--William Blair doesn't usually keep sugar like that.\"\n\n \"I--I thought it might come in handy sometime,\" said Bryon, making good his escape.\n\n When Bryon came to think the matter over he decided that a woman was required to cope with the situation. Hattie was out of the question. Bryon felt sure she would throw cold water on his project at once. Remained only Mrs. Ernesto; for of no other woman in Avonlea would Bryon have dared to ask advice. To Mrs. Ernesto he went accordingly, and that good lady promptly took the matter out of the harassed man's hands.\n\n \"Pick out a dress for you to give Ellington? To be sure I will. I'm going to Carmody tomorrow and I'll attend to it. Have you something particular in mind? No? Well, I'll just go by my own judgment then. I believe a nice rich brown would just suit Ellington, and William Blair has some new gloria in that's real pretty. Perhaps you'd like me to make it up for her, too, seeing that if Hattie was to make it Ellington would probably get wind of it before the time and spoil the surprise? Well, I'll do it. No, it isn't a mite of trouble. I like sewing. I'll make it to fit my niece, Jenny Itzel, for she and Ellington are as like as two peas as far as figure goes.\"\n\n \"Well now, I'm much obliged,\" said Bryon, \"and--and--I dunno--but I'd like--I think they make the sleeves different nowadays to what they used to be. If it wouldn't be asking too much I--I'd like them made in the new way.\"\n\n \"Puffs? Of course. You needn't worry a speck more about it, Bryon. I'll make it up in the very latest fashion,\" said Mrs. Ernesto. To herself she added when Bryon had gone:\n\n \"It'll be a real satisfaction to see that poor child wearing something decent for once. The way Hattie dresses her is positively ridiculous, that's what, and I've ached to tell her so plainly a dozen times. I've held my tongue though, for I can see Hattie doesn't want advice and she thinks she knows more about bringing children up than I do for all she's an old maid. But that's always the way. Folks that has brought up children know that there's no hard and fast method in the world that'll suit every child. But them as never have think it's all as plain and easy as Rule of Three--just set your three terms down so fashion, and the sum 'll work out correct. But flesh and blood don't come under the head of arithmetic and that's where Hattie Duncan makes her mistake. I suppose she's trying to cultivate a spirit of humility in Ellington by dressing her as she does; but it's more likely to cultivate envy and discontent. I'm sure the child must feel the difference between her clothes and the other girls'. But to think of Bryon taking notice of it! That man is waking up after being asleep for over sixty years.\"\n\n Hattie knew all the following fortnight that Bryon had something on his mind, but what it was she could not guess, until Christmas Eve, when Mrs. Ernesto brought up the new dress. Hattie behaved pretty well on the whole, although it is very likely she distrusted Mrs. Ernesto's diplomatic explanation that she had made the dress because Bryon was afraid Ellington would find out about it too soon if Hattie made it.\n\n \"So this is what Bryon has been looking so mysterious over and grinning about to himself for two weeks, is it?\" she said a little stiffly but tolerantly. \"I knew he was up to some foolishness. Well, I must say I don't think Ellington needed any more dresses. I made her three good, warm, serviceable ones this fall, and anything more is sheer extravagance. There's enough material in those sleeves alone to make a waist, I declare there is. You'll just pamper Ellington's vanity, Bryon, and she's as vain as a peacock now. Well, I hope she'll be satisfied at last, for I know she's been hankering after those silly sleeves ever since they came in, although she never said a word after the first. The puffs have been getting bigger and more ridiculous right along; they're as big as balloons now. Next year anybody who wears them will have to go through a door sideways.\"\n\n Christmas morning broke on a beautiful white world. It had been a very mild December and people had looked forward to a green Christmas; but just enough snow fell softly in the night to transfigure Avonlea. Ellington peeped out from her frosted gable window with delighted eyes. The firs in the Haunted Wood were all feathery and wonderful; the birches and wild cherry trees were outlined in pearl; the plowed fields were stretches of snowy dimples; and there was a crisp tang in the air that was glorious. Ellington ran downstairs singing until her voice reechoed through Green Gables.\n\n \"Merry Christmas, Hattie! Merry Christmas, Bryon! Isn't it a lovely Christmas? I'm so glad it's white. Any other kind of Christmas doesn't seem real, does it? I don't like green Christmases. They're not green--they're just nasty faded browns and grays. What makes people call them green? Why--why--Bryon, is that for me? Oh, Bryon!\"\n\n Bryon had sheepishly unfolded the dress from its paper swathings and held it out with a deprecatory glance at Hattie, who feigned to be contemptuously filling the teapot, but nevertheless watched the scene out of the corner of her eye with a rather interested air.\n\n Ellington took the dress and looked at it in reverent silence. Oh, how pretty it was--a lovely soft brown gloria with all the gloss of silk; a skirt with dainty frills and shirrings; a waist elaborately pintucked in the most fashionable way, with a little ruffle of filmy lace at the neck. But the sleeves--they were the crowning glory! Long elbow cuffs, and above them two beautiful puffs divided by rows of shirring and bows of brown-silk ribbon.\n\n \"That's a Christmas present for you, Ellington,\" said Bryon shyly. \"Why--why--Ellington, don't you like it? Well now--well now.\"\n\n For Ellington's eyes had suddenly filled with tears.\n\n \"Like it! Oh, Bryon!\" Ellington laid the dress over a chair and clasped her hands. \"Bryon, it's perfectly exquisite. Oh, I can never thank you enough. Look at those sleeves! Oh, it seems to me this must be a happy dream.\"\n\n \"Well, well, let us have breakfast,\" interrupted Hattie. \"I must say, Ellington, I don't think you needed the dress; but since Bryon has got it for you, see that you take good care of it. There's a hair ribbon Mrs. Ernesto left for you. It's brown, to match the dress. Come now, sit in.\"\n\n \"I don't see how I'm going to eat breakfast,\" said Ellington rapturously. \"Breakfast seems so commonplace at such an exciting moment. I'd rather feast my eyes on that dress. I'm so glad that puffed sleeves are still fashionable. It did seem to me that I'd never get over it if they went out before I had a dress with them. I'd never have felt quite satisfied, you see. It was lovely of Mrs. Ernesto to give me the ribbon too. I feel that I ought to be a very good girl indeed. It's at times like this I'm sorry I'm not a model little girl; and I always resolve that I will be in future. But somehow it's hard to carry out your resolutions when irresistible temptations come. Still, I really will make an extra effort after this.\"\n\n When the commonplace breakfast was over Jenelle appeared, crossing the white log bridge in the hollow, a gay little figure in her crimson ulster. Ellington flew down the slope to meet her.\n\n \"Merry Christmas, Jenelle! And oh, it's a wonderful Christmas. I've something splendid to show you. Bryon has given me the loveliest dress, with _such_ sleeves. I couldn't even imagine any nicer.\"\n\n \"I've got something more for you,\" said Jenelle breathlessly. \"Here--this box. Aunt Evan sent us out a big box with ever so many things in it--and this is for you. I'd have brought it over last night, but it didn't come until after dark, and I never feel very comfortable coming through the Haunted Wood in the dark now.\"\n\n Ellington opened the box and peeped in. First a card with \"For the Ellington-girl and Merry Christmas,\" written on it; and then, a pair of the daintiest little kid slippers, with beaded toes and satin bows and glistening buckles.\n\n \"Oh,\" said Ellington, \"Jenelle, this is too much. I must be dreaming.\"\n\n \"I call it providential,\" said Jenelle. \"You won't have to borrow Jazz's slippers now, and that's a blessing, for they're two sizes too big for you, and it would be awful to hear a fairy shuffling. Ross Hayley would be delighted. Mind you, Rob Wright went home with Gertie Hayley from the practice night before last. Did you ever hear anything equal to that?\"\n\n All the Avonlea scholars were in a fever of excitement that day, for the hall had to be decorated and a last grand rehearsal held.\n\n The concert came off in the evening and was a pronounced success. The little hall was crowded; all the performers did excellently well, but Ellington was the bright particular star of the occasion, as even envy, in the shape of Ross Hayley, dared not deny.\n\n \"Oh, hasn't it been a brilliant evening?\" sighed Ellington, when it was all over and she and Jenelle were walking home together under a dark, starry sky.\n\n \"Everything went off very well,\" said Jenelle practically. \"I guess we must have made as much as ten dollars. Mind you, Mr. Irwin is going to send an account of it to the Charlottetown papers.\"\n\n \"Oh, Jenelle, will we really see our names in print? It makes me thrill to think of it. Your solo was perfectly elegant, Jenelle. I felt prouder than you did when it was encored. I just said to myself, 'It is my dear bosom friend who is so honored.'\"\n\n \"Well, your recitations just brought down the house, Ellington. That sad one was simply splendid.\"\n\n \"Oh, I was so nervous, Jenelle. When Mr. Irwin called out my name I really cannot tell how I ever got up on that platform. I felt as if a million eyes were looking at me and through me, and for one dreadful moment I was sure I couldn't begin at all. Then I thought of my lovely puffed sleeves and took courage. I knew that I must live up to those sleeves, Jenelle. So I started in, and my voice seemed to be coming from ever so far away. I just felt like a parrot. It's providential that I practiced those recitations so often up in the garret, or I'd never have been able to get through. Did I groan all right?\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed, you groaned lovely,\" assured Jenelle.\n\n \"I saw old Mrs. Bruce wiping away tears when I sat down. It was splendid to think I had touched somebody's heart. It's so romantic to take part in a concert, isn't it? Oh, it's been a very memorable occasion indeed.\"\n\n \"Wasn't the boys' dialogue fine?\" said Jenelle. \"Hans Jesus was just splendid. Ellington, I do think it's awful mean the way you treat Gil. Wait till I tell you. When you ran off the platform after the fairy dialogue one of your roses fell out of your hair. I saw Gil pick it up and put it in his breast pocket. There now. You're so romantic that I'm sure you ought to be pleased at that.\"\n\n \"It's nothing to me what that person does,\" said Ellington loftily. \"I simply never waste a thought on him, Jenelle.\"\n\n That night Hattie and Bryon, who had been out to a concert for the first time in twenty years, sat for a while by the kitchen fire after Ellington had gone to bed.\n\n \"Well now, I guess our Ellington did as well as any of them,\" said Bryon proudly.\n\n \"Yes, she did,\" admitted Hattie. \"She's a bright child, Bryon. And she looked real nice too. I've been kind of opposed to this concert scheme, but I suppose there's no real harm in it after all. Anyhow, I was proud of Ellington tonight, although I'm not going to tell her so.\"\n\n \"Well now, I was proud of her and I did tell her so 'fore she went upstairs,\" said Bryon. \"We must see what we can do for her some of these days, Hattie. I guess she'll need something more than Avonlea school by and by.\"\n\n \"There's time enough to think of that,\" said Hattie. \"She's only thirteen in March. Though tonight it struck me she was growing quite a big girl. Mrs. Ernesto made that dress a mite too long, and it makes Ellington look so tall. She's quick to learn and I guess the best thing we can do for her will be to send her to Queen's after a spell. But nothing need be said about that for a year or two yet.\"\n\n \"Well now, it'll do no harm to be thinking it over off and on,\" said Bryon. \"Things like that are all the better for lots of thinking over.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |JUNIOR Avonlea found it hard to settle down to humdrum existence again. To Ellington in particular things seemed fearfully flat, stale, and unprofitable after the goblet of excitement she had been sipping for weeks. Could she go back to the former quiet pleasures of those faraway days before the concert? At first, as she told Jenelle, she did not really think she could.\n\n \"I'm positively certain, Jenelle, that life can never be quite the same again as it was in those olden days,\" she said mournfully, as if referring to a period of at least fifty years back. \"Perhaps after a while I'll get used to it, but I'm afraid concerts spoil people for everyday life. I suppose that is why Hattie disapproves of them. Hattie is such a sensible woman. It must be a great deal better to be sensible; but still, I don't believe I'd really want to be a sensible person, because they are so unromantic. Mrs. Ernesto says there is no danger of my ever being one, but you can never tell. I feel just now that I may grow up to be sensible yet. But perhaps that is only because I'm tired. I simply couldn't sleep last night for ever so long. I just lay awake and imagined the concert over and over again. That's one splendid thing about such affairs--it's so lovely to look back to them.\"\n\n Eventually, however, Avonlea school slipped back into its old groove and took up its old interests. To be sure, the concert left traces. Jazz Itzel and Emma White, who had quarreled over a point of precedence in their platform seats, no longer sat at the same desk, and a promising friendship of three years was broken up. Ross Hayley and Julia Axel did not \"speak\" for three months, because Ross Hayley had told Bessie Wright that Julia Axel's bow when she got up to recite made her think of a chicken jerking its head, and Bessie told Julia. None of the Bruces would have any dealings with the Axels, because the Axels had declared that the Bruces had too much to do in the program, and the Bruces had retorted that the Axels were not capable of doing the little they had to do properly. Finally, Raphael Bruce fought Melody Perla Remington, because Melody Perla had said that Ellington Roderick put on airs about her recitations, and Melody Perla was \"licked\"; consequently Melody Perla's sister, Ella Tamika, would not \"speak\" to Ellington Roderick all the rest of the winter. With the exception of these trifling frictions, work in Miss Sandra's little kingdom went on with regularity and smoothness.\n\n The winter weeks slipped by. It was an unusually mild winter, with so little snow that Ellington and Jenelle could go to school nearly every day by way of the Birch Path. On Ellington's birthday they were tripping lightly down it, keeping eyes and ears alert amid all their chatter, for Miss Sandra had told them that they must soon write a composition on \"A Winter's Walk in the Woods,\" and it behooved them to be observant.\n\n \"Just think, Jenelle, I'm thirteen years old today,\" remarked Ellington in an awed voice. \"I can scarcely realize that I'm in my teens. When I woke this morning it seemed to me that everything must be different. You've been thirteen for a month, so I suppose it doesn't seem such a novelty to you as it does to me. It makes life seem so much more interesting. In two more years I'll be really grown up. It's a great comfort to think that I'll be able to use big words then without being laughed at.\"\n\n \"Jazz Itzel says she means to have a beau as soon as she's fifteen,\" said Jenelle.\n\n \"Jazz Itzel thinks of nothing but beaus,\" said Ellington disdainfully. \"She's actually delighted when anyone writes her name up in a take-notice for all she pretends to be so mad. But I'm afraid that is an uncharitable speech. Mrs. Irwin says we should never make uncharitable speeches; but they do slip out so often before you think, don't they? I simply can't talk about Ross Hayley without making an uncharitable speech, so I never mention her at all. You may have noticed that. I'm trying to be as much like Mrs. Irwin as I possibly can, for I think she's perfect. Mr. Irwin thinks so too. Mrs. Ernesto says he just worships the ground she treads on and she doesn't really think it right for a minister to set his affections so much on a mortal being. But then, Jenelle, even ministers are human and have their besetting sins just like everybody else. I had such an interesting talk with Mrs. Irwin about besetting sins last Sunday afternoon. There are just a few things it's proper to talk about on Sundays and that is one of them. My besetting sin is imagining too much and forgetting my duties. I'm striving very hard to overcome it and now that I'm really thirteen perhaps I'll get on better.\"\n\n \"In four more years we'll be able to put our hair up,\" said Jenelle. \"Alice Axel is only sixteen and she is wearing hers up, but I think that's ridiculous. I shall wait until I'm seventeen.\"\n\n \"If I had Alice Axel's crooked nose,\" said Ellington decidedly, \"I wouldn't--but there! I won't say what I was going to because it was extremely uncharitable. Besides, I was comparing it with my own nose and that's vanity. I'm afraid I think too much about my nose ever since I heard that compliment about it long ago. It really is a great comfort to me. Oh, Jenelle, look, there's a rabbit. That's something to remember for our woods composition. I really think the woods are just as lovely in winter as in summer. They're so white and still, as if they were asleep and dreaming pretty dreams.\"\n\n \"I won't mind writing that composition when its time comes,\" sighed Jenelle. \"I can manage to write about the woods, but the one we're to hand in Monday is terrible. The idea of Miss Sandra telling us to write a story out of our own heads!\"\n\n \"Why, it's as easy as wink,\" said Ellington.\n\n \"It's easy for you because you have an imagination,\" retorted Jenelle, \"but what would you do if you had been born without one? I suppose you have your composition all done?\"\n\n Ellington nodded, trying hard not to look virtuously complacent and failing miserably.\n\n \"I wrote it last Monday evening. It's called 'The Jealous Rival; or In Death Not Divided.' I read it to Hattie and she said it was stuff and nonsense. Then I read it to Bryon and he said it was fine. That is the kind of critic I like. It's a sad, sweet story. I just cried like a child while I was writing it. It's about two beautiful maidens called Cordelia Montmorency and Geraldine Seymour who lived in the same village and were devotedly attached to each other. Cordelia was a regal brunette with a coronet of midnight hair and duskly flashing eyes. Geraldine was a queenly blonde with hair like spun gold and velvety purple eyes.\"\n\n \"I never saw anybody with purple eyes,\" said Jenelle dubiously.\n\n \"Neither did I. I just imagined them. I wanted something out of the common. Geraldine had an alabaster brow too. I've found out what an alabaster brow is. That is one of the advantages of being thirteen. You know so much more than you did when you were only twelve.\"\n\n \"Well, what became of Cordelia and Geraldine?\" asked Jenelle, who was beginning to feel rather interested in their fate.\n\n \"They grew in beauty side by side until they were sixteen. Then Bertram DeVere came to their native village and fell in love with the fair Geraldine. He saved her life when her horse ran away with her in a carriage, and she fainted in his arms and he carried her home three miles; because, you understand, the carriage was all smashed up. I found it rather hard to imagine the proposal because I had no experience to go by. I asked Jazz Itzel if she knew anything about how men proposed because I thought she'd likely be an authority on the subject, having so many sisters married. Jazz told me she was hid in the hall pantry when Malcolm Andres proposed to her sister Susan. She said Malcolm told Susan that his dad had given him the farm in his own name and then said, 'What do you say, darling pet, if we get hitched this fall?' And Susan said, 'Yes--no--I don't know--let me see'--and there they were, engaged as quick as that. But I didn't think that sort of a proposal was a very romantic one, so in the end I had to imagine it out as well as I could. I made it very flowery and poetical and Bertram went on his knees, although Jazz Itzel says it isn't done nowadays. Geraldine accepted him in a speech a page long. I can tell you I took a lot of trouble with that speech. I rewrote it five times and I look upon it as my masterpiece. Bertram gave her a diamond ring and a ruby necklace and told her they would go to Europe for a wedding tour, for he was immensely wealthy. But then, alas, shadows began to darken over their path. Cordelia was secretly in love with Bertram herself and when Geraldine told her about the engagement she was simply furious, especially when she saw the necklace and the diamond ring. All her affection for Geraldine turned to bitter hate and she vowed that she should never marry Bertram. But she pretended to be Geraldine's friend the same as ever. One evening they were standing on the bridge over a rushing turbulent stream and Cordelia, thinking they were alone, pushed Geraldine over the brink with a wild, mocking, 'Ha, ha, ha.' But Bertram saw it all and he at once plunged into the current, exclaiming, 'I will save thee, my peerless Geraldine.' But alas, he had forgotten he couldn't swim, and they were both drowned, clasped in each other's arms. Their bodies were washed ashore soon afterwards. They were buried in the one grave and their funeral was most imposing, Jenelle. It's so much more romantic to end a story up with a funeral than a wedding. As for Cordelia, she went insane with remorse and was shut up in a lunatic asylum. I thought that was a poetical retribution for her crime.\"\n\n \"How perfectly lovely!\" sighed Jenelle, who belonged to Bryon's school of critics. \"I don't see how you can make up such thrilling things out of your own head, Ellington. I wish my imagination was as good as yours.\"\n\n \"It would be if you'd only cultivate it,\" said Ellington cheeringly. \"I've just thought of a plan, Jenelle. Let you and me have a story club all our own and write stories for practice. I'll help you along until you can do them by yourself. You ought to cultivate your imagination, you know. Miss Sandra says so. Only we must take the right way. I told her about the Haunted Wood, but she said we went the wrong way about it in that.\"\n\n This was how the story club came into existence. It was limited to Jenelle and Ellington at first, but soon it was extended to include Gisela Mariela and Jazz Itzel and one or two others who felt that their imaginations needed cultivating. No boys were allowed in it--although Jazz Itzel opined that their admission would make it more exciting--and each member had to produce one story a week.\n\n \"It's extremely interesting,\" Ellington told Hattie. \"Each girl has to read her story out loud and then we talk it over. We are going to keep them all sacredly and have them to read to our descendants. We each write under a nom-de-plume. Mine is Rosamond Montmorency. All the girls do pretty well. Jazz Itzel is rather sentimental. She puts too much lovemaking into her stories and you know too much is worse than too little. Gisela never puts any because she says it makes her feel so silly when she had to read it out loud. Gisela's stories are extremely sensible. Then Jenelle puts too many murders into hers. She says most of the time she doesn't know what to do with the people so she kills them off to get rid of them. I mostly always have to tell them what to write about, but that isn't hard for I've millions of ideas.\"\n\n \"I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,\" scoffed Hattie. \"You'll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put on your lessons. Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.\"\n\n \"But we're so careful to put a moral into them all, Hattie,\" explained Ellington. \"I insist upon that. All the good people are rewarded and all the bad ones are suitably punished. I'm sure that must have a wholesome effect. The moral is the great thing. Mr. Irwin says so. I read one of my stories to him and Mrs. Irwin and they both agreed that the moral was excellent. Only they laughed in the wrong places. I like it better when people cry. Gisela and Jazz almost always cry when I come to the pathetic parts. Jenelle wrote her Aunt Evan about our club and her Aunt Evan wrote back that we were to send her some of our stories. So we copied out four of our very best and sent them. Miss Evan Geraldine wrote back that she had never read anything so amusing in her life. That kind of puzzled us because the stories were all very pathetic and almost everybody died. But I'm glad Miss Geraldine liked them. It shows our club is doing some good in the world. Mrs. Irwin says that ought to be our object in everything. I do really try to make it my object but I forget so often when I'm having fun. I hope I shall be a little like Mrs. Irwin when I grow up. Do you think there is any prospect of it, Hattie?\"\n\n \"I shouldn't say there was a great deal\" was Hattie's encouraging answer. \"I'm sure Mrs. Irwin was never such a silly, forgetful little girl as you are.\"\n\n \"No; but she wasn't always so good as she is now either,\" said Ellington seriously. \"She told me so herself--that is, she said she was a dreadful mischief when she was a girl and was always getting into scrapes. I felt so encouraged when I heard that. Is it very wicked of me, Hattie, to feel encouraged when I hear that other people have been bad and mischievous? Mrs. Ernesto says it is. Mrs. Ernesto says she always feels shocked when she hears of anyone ever having been naughty, no matter how small they were. Mrs. Ernesto says she once heard a minister confess that when he was a boy he stole a strawberry tart out of his aunt's pantry and she never had any respect for that minister again. Now, I wouldn't have felt that way. I'd have thought that it was real noble of him to confess it, and I'd have thought what an encouraging thing it would be for small boys nowadays who do naughty things and are sorry for them to know that perhaps they may grow up to be ministers in spite of it. That's how I'd feel, Hattie.\"\n\n \"The way I feel at present, Ellington,\" said Hattie, \"is that it's high time you had those dishes washed. You've taken half an hour longer than you should with all your chattering. Learn to work first and talk afterwards.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Hattie, walking home one late April evening from an Aid meeting, realized that the winter was over and gone with the thrill of delight that spring never fails to bring to the oldest and saddest as well as to the youngest and merriest. Hattie was not given to subjective analysis of her thoughts and feelings. She probably imagined that she was thinking about the Aids and their missionary box and the new carpet for the vestry room, but under these reflections was a harmonious consciousness of red fields smoking into pale-purply mists in the declining sun, of long, sharp-pointed fir shadows falling over the meadow beyond the brook, of still, crimson-budded maples around a mirrorlike wood pool, of a wakening in the world and a stir of hidden pulses under the gray sod. The spring was abroad in the land and Hattie's sober, middle-aged step was lighter and swifter because of its deep, primal gladness.\n\n Her eyes dwelt affectionately on Green Gables, peering through its network of trees and reflecting the sunlight back from its windows in several little coruscations of glory. Hattie, as she picked her steps along the damp lane, thought that it was really a satisfaction to know that she was going home to a briskly snapping wood fire and a table nicely spread for tea, instead of to the cold comfort of old Aid meeting evenings before Ellington had come to Green Gables.\n\n Consequently, when Hattie entered her kitchen and found the fire black out, with no sign of Ellington anywhere, she felt justly disappointed and irritated. She had told Ellington to be sure and have tea ready at five o'clock, but now she must hurry to take off her second-best dress and prepare the meal herself against Bryon's return from plowing.\n\n \"I'll settle Miss Ellington when she comes home,\" said Hattie grimly, as she shaved up kindlings with a carving knife and with more vim than was strictly necessary. Bryon had come in and was waiting patiently for his tea in his corner. \"She's gadding off somewhere with Jenelle, writing stories or practicing dialogues or some such tomfoolery, and never thinking once about the time or her duties. She's just got to be pulled up short and sudden on this sort of thing. I don't care if Mrs. Irwin does say she's the brightest and sweetest child she ever knew. She may be bright and sweet enough, but her head is full of nonsense and there's never any knowing what shape it'll break out in next. Just as soon as she grows out of one freak she takes up with another. But there! Here I am saying the very thing I was so riled with Natalie Ernesto for saying at the Aid today. I was real glad when Mrs. Irwin spoke up for Ellington, for if she hadn't I know I'd have said something too sharp to Natalie before everybody. Ellington's got plenty of faults, goodness knows, and far be it from me to deny it. But I'm bringing her up and not Natalie Ernesto, who'd pick faults in the Angel Gabriel himself if he lived in Avonlea. Just the same, Ellington has no business to leave the house like this when I told her she was to stay home this afternoon and look after things. I must say, with all her faults, I never found her disobedient or untrustworthy before and I'm real sorry to find her so now.\"\n\n \"Well now, I dunno,\" said Bryon, who, being patient and wise and, above all, hungry, had deemed it best to let Hattie talk her wrath out unhindered, having learned by experience that she got through with whatever work was on hand much quicker if not delayed by untimely argument. \"Perhaps you're judging her too hasty, Hattie. Don't call her untrustworthy until you're sure she has disobeyed you. Mebbe it can all be explained--Ellington's a great hand at explaining.\"\n\n \"She's not here when I told her to stay,\" retorted Hattie. \"I reckon she'll find it hard to explain _that_ to my satisfaction. Of course I knew you'd take her part, Bryon. But I'm bringing her up, not you.\"\n\n It was dark when supper was ready, and still no sign of Ellington, coming hurriedly over the log bridge or up Lover's Lane, breathless and repentant with a sense of neglected duties. Hattie washed and put away the dishes grimly. Then, wanting a candle to light her way down the cellar, she went up to the east gable for the one that generally stood on Ellington's table. Lighting it, she turned around to see Ellington herself lying on the bed, face downward among the pillows.\n\n \"Mercy on us,\" said astonished Hattie, \"have you been asleep, Ellington?\"\n\n \"No,\" was the muffled reply.\n\n \"Are you sick then?\" demanded Hattie anxiously, going over to the bed.\n\n Ellington cowered deeper into her pillows as if desirous of hiding herself forever from mortal eyes.\n\n \"No. But please, Hattie, go away and don't look at me. I'm in the depths of despair and I don't care who gets head in class or writes the best composition or sings in the Sunday-school choir any more. Little things like that are of no importance now because I don't suppose I'll ever be able to go anywhere again. My career is closed. Please, Hattie, go away and don't look at me.\"\n\n \"Did anyone ever hear the like?\" the mystified Hattie wanted to know. \"Ellington Roderick, whatever is the matter with you? What have you done? Get right up this minute and tell me. This minute, I say. There now, what is it?\"\n\n Ellington had slid to the floor in despairing obedience.\n\n \"Look at my hair, Hattie,\" she whispered.\n\n Accordingly, Hattie lifted her candle and looked scrutinizingly at Ellington's hair, flowing in heavy masses down her back. It certainly had a very strange appearance.\n\n \"Ellington Roderick, what have you done to your hair? Why, it's _green!_\"\n\n Green it might be called, if it were any earthly color--a queer, dull, bronzy green, with streaks here and there of the original red to heighten the ghastly effect. Never in all her life had Hattie seen anything so grotesque as Ellington's hair at that moment.\n\n \"Yes, it's green,\" moaned Ellington. \"I thought nothing could be as bad as red hair. But now I know it's ten times worse to have green hair. Oh, Hattie, you little know how utterly wretched I am.\"\n\n \"I little know how you got into this fix, but I mean to find out,\" said Hattie. \"Come right down to the kitchen--it's too cold up here--and tell me just what you've done. I've been expecting something queer for some time. You haven't got into any scrape for over two months, and I was sure another one was due. Now, then, what did you do to your hair?\"\n\n \"I dyed it.\"\n\n \"Dyed it! Dyed your hair! Ellington Roderick, didn't you know it was a wicked thing to do?\"\n\n \"Yes, I knew it was a little wicked,\" admitted Ellington. \"But I thought it was worth while to be a little wicked to get rid of red hair. I counted the cost, Hattie. Besides, I meant to be extra good in other ways to make up for it.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Hattie sarcastically, \"if I'd decided it was worth while to dye my hair I'd have dyed it a decent color at least. I wouldn't have dyed it green.\"\n\n \"But I didn't mean to dye it green, Hattie,\" protested Ellington dejectedly. \"If I was wicked I meant to be wicked to some purpose. He said it would turn my hair a beautiful raven black--he positively assured me that it would. How could I doubt his word, Hattie? I know what it feels like to have your word doubted. And Mrs. Irwin says we should never suspect anyone of not telling us the truth unless we have proof that they're not. I have proof now--green hair is proof enough for anybody. But I hadn't then and I believed every word he said _implicitly_.\"\n\n \"Who said? Who are you talking about?\"\n\n \"The peddler that was here this afternoon. I bought the dye from him.\"\n\n \"Ellington Roderick, how often have I told you never to let one of those Italians in the house! I don't believe in encouraging them to come around at all.\"\n\n \"Oh, I didn't let him in the house. I remembered what you told me, and I went out, carefully shut the door, and looked at his things on the step. Besides, he wasn't an Italian--he was a German Jew. He had a big box full of very interesting things and he told me he was working hard to make enough money to bring his wife and children out from Germany. He spoke so feelingly about them that it touched my heart. I wanted to buy something from him to help him in such a worthy object. Then all at once I saw the bottle of hair dye. The peddler said it was warranted to dye any hair a beautiful raven black and wouldn't wash off. In a trice I saw myself with beautiful raven-black hair and the temptation was irresistible. But the price of the bottle was seventy-five cents and I had only fifty cents left out of my chicken money. I think the peddler had a very kind heart, for he said that, seeing it was me, he'd sell it for fifty cents and that was just giving it away. So I bought it, and as soon as he had gone I came up here and applied it with an old hairbrush as the directions said. I used up the whole bottle, and oh, Hattie, when I saw the dreadful color it turned my hair I repented of being wicked, I can tell you. And I've been repenting ever since.\"\n\n \"Well, I hope you'll repent to good purpose,\" said Hattie severely, \"and that you've got your eyes opened to where your vanity has led you, Ellington. Goodness knows what's to be done. I suppose the first thing is to give your hair a good washing and see if that will do any good.\"\n\n Accordingly, Ellington washed her hair, scrubbing it vigorously with soap and water, but for all the difference it made she might as well have been scouring its original red. The peddler had certainly spoken the truth when he declared that the dye wouldn't wash off, however his veracity might be impeached in other respects.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, what shall I do?\" questioned Ellington in tears. \"I can never live this down. People have pretty well forgotten my other mistakes--the liniment cake and setting Jenelle drunk and flying into a temper with Mrs. Ernesto. But they'll never forget this. They will think I am not respectable. Oh, Hattie, 'what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.' That is poetry, but it is true. And oh, how Ross Hayley will laugh! Hattie, I _cannot_ face Ross Hayley. I am the unhappiest girl in Prince Edward Island.\"\n\n Ellington's unhappiness continued for a week. During that time she went nowhere and shampooed her hair every day. Jenelle alone of outsiders knew the fatal secret, but she promised solemnly never to tell, and it may be stated here and now that she kept her word. At the end of the week Hattie said decidedly:\n\n \"It's no use, Ellington. That is fast dye if ever there was any. Your hair must be cut off; there is no other way. You can't go out with it looking like that.\"\n\n Ellington's lips quivered, but she realized the bitter truth of Hattie's remarks. With a dismal sigh she went for the scissors.\n\n \"Please cut it off at once, Hattie, and have it over. Oh, I feel that my heart is broken. This is such an unromantic affliction. The girls in books lose their hair in fevers or sell it to get money for some good deed, and I'm sure I wouldn't mind losing my hair in some such fashion half so much. But there is nothing comforting in having your hair cut off because you've dyed it a dreadful color, is there? I'm going to weep all the time you're cutting it off, if it won't interfere. It seems such a tragic thing.\"\n\n Ellington wept then, but later on, when she went upstairs and looked in the glass, she was calm with despair. Hattie had done her work thoroughly and it had been necessary to shingle the hair as closely as possible. The result was not becoming, to state the case as mildly as may be. Ellington promptly turned her glass to the wall.\n\n \"I'll never, never look at myself again until my hair grows,\" she exclaimed passionately.\n\n Then she suddenly righted the glass.\n\n \"Yes, I will, too. I'd do penance for being wicked that way. I'll look at myself every time I come to my room and see how ugly I am. And I won't try to imagine it away, either. I never thought I was vain about my hair, of all things, but now I know I was, in spite of its being red, because it was so long and thick and curly. I expect something will happen to my nose next.\"\n\n Ellington's clipped head made a sensation in school on the following Monday, but to her relief nobody guessed the real reason for it, not even Ross Hayley, who, however, did not fail to inform Ellington that she looked like a perfect scarecrow.\n\n \"I didn't say anything when Ross said that to me,\" Ellington confided that evening to Hattie, who was lying on the sofa after one of her headaches, \"because I thought it was part of my punishment and I ought to bear it patiently. It's hard to be told you look like a scarecrow and I wanted to say something back. But I didn't. I just swept her one scornful look and then I forgave her. It makes you feel very virtuous when you forgive people, doesn't it? I mean to devote all my energies to being good after this and I shall never try to be beautiful again. Of course it's better to be good. I know it is, but it's sometimes so hard to believe a thing even when you know it. I do really want to be good, Hattie, like you and Mrs. Irwin and Miss Sandra, and grow up to be a credit to you. Jenelle says when my hair begins to grow to tie a black velvet ribbon around my head with a bow at one side. She says she thinks it will be very becoming. I will call it a snood--that sounds so romantic. But am I talking too much, Hattie? Does it hurt your head?\"\n\n \"My head is better now. It was terrible bad this afternoon, though. These headaches of mine are getting worse and worse. I'll have to see a doctor about them. As for your chatter, I don't know that I mind it--I've got so used to it.\"\n\n Which was Hattie's way of saying that she liked to hear it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |OF course you must be Elaine, Ellington,\" said Jenelle. \"I could never have the courage to float down there.\"\n\n \"Nor I,\" said Jazz Itzel, with a shiver. \"I don't mind floating down when there's two or three of us in the flat and we can sit up. It's fun then. But to lie down and pretend I was dead--I just couldn't. I'd die really of fright.\"\n\n \"Of course it would be romantic,\" conceded Gisela Mariela, \"but I know I couldn't keep still. I'd be popping up every minute or so to see where I was and if I wasn't drifting too far out. And you know, Ellington, that would spoil the effect.\"\n\n \"But it's so ridiculous to have a redheaded Elaine,\" mourned Ellington. \"I'm not afraid to float down and I'd love to be Elaine. But it's ridiculous just the same. Jazz ought to be Elaine because she is so fair and has such lovely long golden hair--Elaine had 'all her bright hair streaming down,' you know. And Elaine was the lily maid. Now, a red-haired person cannot be a lily maid.\"\n\n \"Your complexion is just as fair as Jazz's,\" said Jenelle earnestly, \"and your hair is ever so much darker than it used to be before you cut it.\"\n\n \"Oh, do you really think so?\" exclaimed Ellington, flushing sensitively with delight. \"I've sometimes thought it was myself--but I never dared to ask anyone for fear she would tell me it wasn't. Do you think it could be called auburn now, Jenelle?\"\n\n \"Yes, and I think it is real pretty,\" said Jenelle, looking admiringly at the short, silky curls that clustered over Ellington's head and were held in place by a very jaunty black velvet ribbon and bow.\n\n They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope, where a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the bank; at its tip was a small wooden platform built out into the water for the convenience of fishermen and duck hunters. Jazz and Gisela were spending the midsummer afternoon with Jenelle, and Ellington had come over to play with them.\n\n Ellington and Jenelle had spent most of their playtime that summer on and about the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Axel having ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in his back pasture in the spring. Ellington had sat among the stumps and wept, not without an eye to the romance of it; but she was speedily consoled, for, after all, as she and Jenelle said, big girls of thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for such childish amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating sports to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Geraldine kept for duck shooting.\n\n It was Ellington's idea that they dramatize Elaine. They had studied Tennyson's poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent of Education having prescribed it in the English course for the Prince Edward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all left in it for them, but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Ellington was devoured by secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot. Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present.\n\n Ellington's plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered that if the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down with the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond. They had often gone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playing Elaine.\n\n \"Well, I'll be Elaine,\" said Ellington, yielding reluctantly, for, although she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her limitations made impossible. \"Jazz, you must be King Arthur and Gisela will be Guinevere and Jenelle must be Lancelot. But first you must be the brothers and the father. We can't have the old dumb servitor because there isn't room for two in the flat when one is lying down. We must pall the barge all its length in blackest samite. That old black shawl of your mother's will be just the thing, Jenelle.\"\n\n The black shawl having been procured, Ellington spread it over the flat and then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands folded over her breast.\n\n \"Oh, she does look really dead,\" whispered Jazz Itzel nervously, watching the still, white little face under the flickering shadows of the birches. \"It makes me feel frightened, girls. Do you suppose it's really right to act like this? Mrs. Ernesto says that all play-acting is abominably wicked.\"\n\n \"Jazz, you shouldn't talk about Mrs. Ernesto,\" said Ellington severely. \"It spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before Mrs. Ernesto was born. Gisela, you arrange this. It's silly for Elaine to be talking when she's dead.\"\n\n Gisela rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was none, but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an excellent substitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then, but the effect of a tall blue iris placed in one of Ellington's folded hands was all that could be desired.\n\n \"Now, she's all ready,\" said Gisela. \"We must kiss her quiet brows and, Jenelle, you say, 'Sister, farewell forever,' and Jazz, you say, 'Farewell, sweet sister,' both of you as sorrowfully as you possibly can. Ellington, for goodness sake smile a little. You know Elaine 'lay as though she smiled.' That's better. Now push the flat off.\"\n\n The flat was accordingly pushed off, scraping roughly over an old embedded stake in the process. Jenelle and Gisela and Jazz only waited long enough to see it caught in the current and headed for the bridge before scampering up through the woods, across the road, and down to the lower headland where, as Lancelot and Guinevere and the King, they were to be in readiness to receive the lily maid.\n\n For a few minutes Ellington, drifting slowly down, enjoyed the romance of her situation to the full. Then something happened not at all romantic. The flat began to leak. In a very few moments it was necessary for Elaine to scramble to her feet, pick up her cloth of gold coverlet and pall of blackest samite and gaze blankly at a big crack in the bottom of her barge through which the water was literally pouring. That sharp stake at the landing had torn off the strip of batting nailed on the flat. Ellington did not know this, but it did not take her long to realize that she was in a dangerous plight. At this rate the flat would fill and sink long before it could drift to the lower headland. Where were the oars? Left behind at the landing!\n\n Ellington gave one gasping little scream which nobody ever heard; she was white to the lips, but she did not lose her self-possession. There was one chance--just one.\n\n \"I was horribly frightened,\" she told Mrs. Irwin the next day, \"and it seemed like years while the flat was drifting down to the bridge and the water rising in it every moment. I prayed, Mrs. Irwin, most earnestly, but I didn't shut my eyes to pray, for I knew the only way God could save me was to let the flat float close enough to one of the bridge piles for me to climb up on it. You know the piles are just old tree trunks and there are lots of knots and old branch stubs on them. It was proper to pray, but I had to do my part by watching out and right well I knew it. I just said, 'Dear God, please take the flat close to a pile and I'll do the rest,' over and over again. Under such circumstances you don't think much about making a flowery prayer. But mine was answered, for the flat bumped right into a pile for a minute and I flung the scarf and the shawl over my shoulder and scrambled up on a big providential stub. And there I was, Mrs. Irwin, clinging to that slippery old pile with no way of getting up or down. It was a very unromantic position, but I didn't think about that at the time. You don't think much about romance when you have just escaped from a watery grave. I said a grateful prayer at once and then I gave all my attention to holding on tight, for I knew I should probably have to depend on human aid to get back to dry land.\"\n\n The flat drifted under the bridge and then promptly sank in midstream. Jazz, Gisela, and Jenelle, already awaiting it on the lower headland, saw it disappear before their very eyes and had not a doubt but that Ellington had gone down with it. For a moment they stood still, white as sheets, frozen with horror at the tragedy; then, shrieking at the tops of their voices, they started on a frantic run up through the woods, never pausing as they crossed the main road to glance the way of the bridge. Ellington, clinging desperately to her precarious foothold, saw their flying forms and heard their shrieks. Help would soon come, but meanwhile her position was a very uncomfortable one.\n\n The minutes passed by, each seeming an hour to the unfortunate lily maid. Why didn't somebody come? Where had the girls gone? Suppose they had fainted, one and all! Suppose nobody ever came! Suppose she grew so tired and cramped that she could hold on no longer! Ellington looked at the wicked green depths below her, wavering with long, oily shadows, and shivered. Her imagination began to suggest all manner of gruesome possibilities to her.\n\n Then, just as she thought she really could not endure the ache in her arms and wrists another moment, Hans Jesus came rowing under the bridge in Harmon Mariela's dory!\n\n Hans glanced up and, much to his amazement, beheld a little white scornful face looking down upon him with big, frightened but also scornful gray eyes.\n\n \"Ellington Roderick! How on earth did you get there?\" he exclaimed.\n\n Without waiting for an answer he pulled close to the pile and extended his hand. There was no help for it; Ellington, clinging to Hans Jesus's hand, scrambled down into the dory, where she sat, drabbled and furious, in the stern with her arms full of dripping shawl and wet crepe. It was certainly extremely difficult to be dignified under the circumstances!\n\n \"What has happened, Ellington?\" asked Hans, taking up his oars. \"We were playing Elaine\" explained Ellington frigidly, without even looking at her rescuer, \"and I had to drift down to Camelot in the barge--I mean the flat. The flat began to leak and I climbed out on the pile. The girls went for help. Will you be kind enough to row me to the landing?\"\n\n Hans obligingly rowed to the landing and Ellington, disdaining assistance, sprang nimbly on shore.\n\n \"I'm very much obliged to you,\" she said haughtily as she turned away. But Hans had also sprung from the boat and now laid a detaining hand on her arm.\n\n \"Ellington,\" he said hurriedly, \"look here. Can't we be good friends? I'm awfully sorry I made fun of your hair that time. I didn't mean to vex you and I only meant it for a joke. Besides, it's so long ago. I think your hair is awfully pretty now--honest I do. Let's be friends.\"\n\n For a moment Ellington hesitated. She had an odd, newly awakened consciousness under all her outraged dignity that the half-shy, half-eager expression in Hans's hazel eyes was something that was very good to see. Her heart gave a quick, queer little beat. But the bitterness of her old grievance promptly stiffened up her wavering determination. That scene of two years before flashed back into her recollection as vividly as if it had taken place yesterday. Hans had called her \"carrots\" and had brought about her disgrace before the whole school. Her resentment, which to other and older people might be as laughable as its cause, was in no whit allayed and softened by time seemingly. She hated Hans Jesus! She would never forgive him!\n\n \"No,\" she said coldly, \"I shall never be friends with you, Hans Jesus; and I don't want to be!\"\n\n \"All right!\" Hans sprang into his skiff with an angry color in his cheeks. \"I'll never ask you to be friends again, Ellington Roderick. And I don't care either!\"\n\n He pulled away with swift defiant strokes, and Ellington went up the steep, ferny little path under the maples. She held her head very high, but she was conscious of an odd feeling of regret. She almost wished she had answered Hans differently. Of course, he had insulted her terribly, but still--! Altogether, Ellington rather thought it would be a relief to sit down and have a good cry. She was really quite unstrung, for the reaction from her fright and cramped clinging was making itself felt.\n\n Halfway up the path she met Gisela and Jenelle rushing back to the pond in a state narrowly removed from positive frenzy. They had found nobody at Orchard Slope, both Mr. and Mrs. Geraldine being away. Here Jazz Itzel had succumbed to hysterics, and was left to recover from them as best she might, while Gisela and Jenelle flew through the Haunted Wood and across the brook to Green Gables. There they had found nobody either, for Hattie had gone to Carmody and Bryon was making hay in the back field.\n\n \"Oh, Ellington,\" gasped Jenelle, fairly falling on the former's neck and weeping with relief and delight, \"oh, Ellington--we thought--you were--drowned--and we felt like murderers--because we had made--you be--Elaine. And Jazz is in hysterics--oh, Ellington, how did you escape?\"\n\n \"I climbed up on one of the piles,\" explained Ellington wearily, \"and Hans Jesus came along in Mr. Mariela's dory and brought me to land.\"\n\n \"Oh, Ellington, how splendid of him! Why, it's so romantic!\" said Gisela, finding breath enough for utterance at last. \"Of course you'll speak to him after this.\"\n\n \"Of course I won't,\" flashed Ellington, with a momentary return of her old spirit. \"And I don't want ever to hear the word 'romantic' again, Gisela Mariela. I'm awfully sorry you were so frightened, girls. It is all my fault. I feel sure I was born under an unlucky star. Everything I do gets me or my dearest friends into a scrape. We've gone and lost your father's flat, Jenelle, and I have a presentiment that we'll not be allowed to row on the pond any more.\"\n\n Ellington's presentiment proved more trustworthy than presentiments are apt to do. Great was the consternation in the Geraldine and Duncan households when the events of the afternoon became known.\n\n \"Will you ever have any sense, Ellington?\" groaned Hattie.\n\n \"Oh, yes, I think I will, Hattie,\" returned Ellington optimistically. A good cry, indulged in the grateful solitude of the east gable, had soothed her nerves and restored her to her wonted cheerfulness. \"I think my prospects of becoming sensible are brighter now than ever.\"\n\n \"I don't see how,\" said Hattie.\n\n \"Well,\" explained Ellington, \"I've learned a new and valuable lesson today. Ever since I came to Green Gables I've been making mistakes, and each mistake has helped to cure me of some great shortcoming. The affair of the amethyst brooch cured me of meddling with things that didn't belong to me. The Haunted Wood mistake cured me of letting my imagination run away with me. The liniment cake mistake cured me of carelessness in cooking. Dyeing my hair cured me of vanity. I never think about my hair and nose now--at least, very seldom. And today's mistake is going to cure me of being too romantic. I have come to the conclusion that it is no use trying to be romantic in Avonlea. It was probably easy enough in towered Camelot hundreds of years ago, but romance is not appreciated now. I feel quite sure that you will soon see a great improvement in me in this respect, Hattie.\"\n\n \"I'm sure I hope so,\" said Hattie skeptically.\n\n But Bryon, who had been sitting mutely in his corner, laid a hand on Ellington's shoulder when Hattie had gone out.\n\n \"Don't give up all your romance, Ellington,\" he whispered shyly, \"a little of it is a good thing--not too much, of course--but keep a little of it, Ellington, keep a little of it.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |ELLINGTON was bringing the cows home from the back pasture by way of Lover's Lane. It was a September evening and all the gaps and clearings in the woods were brimmed up with ruby sunset light. Here and there the lane was splashed with it, but for the most part it was already quite shadowy beneath the maples, and the spaces under the firs were filled with a clear violet dusk like airy wine. The winds were out in their tops, and there is no sweeter music on earth than that which the wind makes in the fir trees at evening.\n\n The cows swung placidly down the lane, and Ellington followed them dreamily, repeating aloud the battle canto from _Marmion_--which had also been part of their English course the preceding winter and which Miss Sandra had made them learn off by heart--and exulting in its rushing lines and the clash of spears in its imagery. When she came to the lines\n\n The stubborn spearsmen still made good Their dark impenetrable wood,\n\n she stopped in ecstasy to shut her eyes that she might the better fancy herself one of that heroic ring. When she opened them again it was to behold Jenelle coming through the gate that led into the Geraldine field and looking so important that Ellington instantly divined there was news to be told. But betray too eager curiosity she would not.\n\n \"Isn't this evening just like a purple dream, Jenelle? It makes me so glad to be alive. In the mornings I always think the mornings are best; but when evening comes I think it's lovelier still.\"\n\n \"It's a very fine evening,\" said Jenelle, \"but oh, I have such news, Ellington. Guess. You can have three guesses.\"\n\n \"Charlotte Itzel is going to be married in the church after all and Mrs. Irwin wants us to decorate it,\" cried Ellington.\n\n \"No. Charlotte's beau won't agree to that, because nobody ever has been married in the church yet, and he thinks it would seem too much like a funeral. It's too mean, because it would be such fun. Guess again.\"\n\n \"Gisela's mother is going to let her have a birthday party?\"\n\n Jenelle shook her head, her black eyes dancing with merriment.\n\n \"I can't think what it can be,\" said Ellington in despair, \"unless it's that Melody Perla Remington saw you home from prayer meeting last night. Did he?\"\n\n \"I should think not,\" exclaimed Jenelle indignantly. \"I wouldn't be likely to boast of it if he did, the horrid creature! I knew you couldn't guess it. Mother had a letter from Aunt Evan today, and Aunt Evan wants you and me to go to town next Tuesday and stop with her for the Exhibition. There!\"\n\n \"Oh, Jenelle,\" whispered Ellington, finding it necessary to lean up against a maple tree for support, \"do you really mean it? But I'm afraid Hattie won't let me go. She will say that she can't encourage gadding about. That was what she said last week when Gisela invited me to go with them in their double-seated buggy to the American concert at the White Sands Hotel. I wanted to go, but Hattie said I'd be better at home learning my lessons and so would Gisela. I was bitterly disappointed, Jenelle. I felt so heartbroken that I wouldn't say my prayers when I went to bed. But I repented of that and got up in the middle of the night and said them.\"\n\n \"I'll tell you,\" said Jenelle, \"we'll get Mother to ask Hattie. She'll be more likely to let you go then; and if she does we'll have the time of our lives, Ellington. I've never been to an Exhibition, and it's so aggravating to hear the other girls talking about their trips. Gisela and Jazz have been twice, and they're going this year again.\"\n\n \"I'm not going to think about it at all until I know whether I can go or not,\" said Ellington resolutely. \"If I did and then was disappointed, it would be more than I could bear. But in case I do go I'm very glad my new coat will be ready by that time. Hattie didn't think I needed a new coat. She said my old one would do very well for another winter and that I ought to be satisfied with having a new dress. The dress is very pretty, Jenelle--navy blue and made so fashionably. Hattie always makes my dresses fashionably now, because she says she doesn't intend to have Bryon going to Mrs. Ernesto to make them. I'm so glad. It is ever so much easier to be good if your clothes are fashionable. At least, it is easier for me. I suppose it doesn't make such a difference to naturally good people. But Bryon said I must have a new coat, so Hattie bought a lovely piece of blue broadcloth, and it's being made by a real dressmaker over at Carmody. It's to be done Saturday night, and I'm trying not to imagine myself walking up the church aisle on Sunday in my new suit and cap, because I'm afraid it isn't right to imagine such things. But it just slips into my mind in spite of me. My cap is so pretty. Bryon bought it for me the day we were over at Carmody. It is one of those little blue velvet ones that are all the rage, with gold cord and tassels. Your new hat is elegant, Jenelle, and so becoming. When I saw you come into church last Sunday my heart swelled with pride to think you were my dearest friend. Do you suppose it's wrong for us to think so much about our clothes? Hattie says it is very sinful. But it is such an interesting subject, isn't it?\"\n\n Hattie agreed to let Ellington go to town, and it was arranged that Mr. Geraldine should take the girls in on the following Tuesday. As Charlottetown was thirty miles away and Mr. Geraldine wished to go and return the same day, it was necessary to make a very early start. But Ellington counted it all joy, and was up before sunrise on Tuesday morning. A glance from her window assured her that the day would be fine, for the eastern sky behind the firs of the Haunted Wood was all silvery and cloudless. Through the gap in the trees a light was shining in the western gable of Orchard Slope, a token that Jenelle was also up.\n\n Ellington was dressed by the time Bryon had the fire on and had the breakfast ready when Hattie came down, but for her own part was much too excited to eat. After breakfast the jaunty new cap and jacket were donned, and Ellington hastened over the brook and up through the firs to Orchard Slope. Mr. Geraldine and Jenelle were waiting for her, and they were soon on the road.\n\n It was a long drive, but Ellington and Jenelle enjoyed every minute of it. It was delightful to rattle along over the moist roads in the early red sunlight that was creeping across the shorn harvest fields. The air was fresh and crisp, and little smoke-blue mists curled through the valleys and floated off from the hills. Sometimes the road went through woods where maples were beginning to hang out scarlet banners; sometimes it crossed rivers on bridges that made Ellington's flesh cringe with the old, half-delightful fear; sometimes it wound along a harbor shore and passed by a little cluster of weather-gray fishing huts; again it mounted to hills whence a far sweep of curving upland or misty-blue sky could be seen; but wherever it went there was much of interest to discuss. It was almost noon when they reached town and found their way to \"Beechwood.\" It was quite a fine old mansion, set back from the street in a seclusion of green elms and branching beeches. Miss Geraldine met them at the door with a twinkle in her sharp black eyes.\n\n \"So you've come to see me at last, you Ellington-girl,\" she said. \"Mercy, child, how you have grown! You're taller than I am, I declare. And you're ever so much better looking than you used to be, too. But I dare say you know that without being told.\"\n\n \"Indeed I didn't,\" said Ellington radiantly. \"I know I'm not so freckled as I used to be, so I've much to be thankful for, but I really hadn't dared to hope there was any other improvement. I'm so glad you think there is, Miss Geraldine.\" Miss Geraldine's house was furnished with \"great magnificence,\" as Ellington told Hattie afterward. The two little country girls were rather abashed by the splendor of the parlor where Miss Geraldine left them when she went to see about dinner.\n\n \"Isn't it just like a palace?\" whispered Jenelle. \"I never was in Aunt Evan's house before, and I'd no idea it was so grand. I just wish Julia Axel could see this--she puts on such airs about her mother's parlor.\"\n\n \"Velvet carpet,\" sighed Ellington luxuriously, \"and silk curtains! I've dreamed of such things, Jenelle. But do you know I don't believe I feel very comfortable with them after all. There are so many things in this room and all so splendid that there is no scope for imagination. That is one consolation when you are poor--there are so many more things you can imagine about.\"\n\n Their sojourn in town was something that Ellington and Jenelle dated from for years. From first to last it was crowded with delights.\n\n On Wednesday Miss Geraldine took them to the Exhibition grounds and kept them there all day.\n\n \"It was splendid,\" Ellington related to Hattie later on. \"I never imagined anything so interesting. I don't really know which department was the most interesting. I think I liked the horses and the flowers and the fancywork best. Ross Hayley took first prize for knitted lace. I was real glad she did. And I was glad that I felt glad, for it shows I'm improving, don't you think, Hattie, when I can rejoice in Ross's success? Mr. Harmon Mariela took second prize for Gravenstein apples and Mr. Axel took first prize for a pig. Jenelle said she thought it was ridiculous for a Sunday-school superintendent to take a prize in pigs, but I don't see why. Do you? She said she would always think of it after this when he was praying so solemnly. Clara Louise Remington took a prize for painting, and Mrs. Ernesto got first prize for homemade butter and cheese. So Avonlea was pretty well represented, wasn't it? Mrs. Ernesto was there that day, and I never knew how much I really liked her until I saw her familiar face among all those strangers. There were thousands of people there, Hattie. It made me feel dreadfully insignificant. And Miss Geraldine took us up to the grandstand to see the horse races. Mrs. Ernesto wouldn't go; she said horse racing was an abomination and, she being a church member, thought it her bounden duty to set a good example by staying away. But there were so many there I don't believe Mrs. Ernesto's absence would ever be noticed. I don't think, though, that I ought to go very often to horse races, because they _are_ awfully fascinating. Jenelle got so excited that she offered to bet me ten cents that the red horse would win. I didn't believe he would, but I refused to bet, because I wanted to tell Mrs. Irwin all about everything, and I felt sure it wouldn't do to tell her that. It's always wrong to do anything you can't tell the minister's wife. It's as good as an extra conscience to have a minister's wife for your friend. And I was very glad I didn't bet, because the red horse _did_ win, and I would have lost ten cents. So you see that virtue was its own reward. We saw a man go up in a balloon. I'd love to go up in a balloon, Hattie; it would be simply thrilling; and we saw a man selling fortunes. You paid him ten cents and a little bird picked out your fortune for you. Miss Geraldine gave Jenelle and me ten cents each to have our fortunes told. Mine was that I would marry a dark-complected man who was very wealthy, and I would go across water to live. I looked carefully at all the dark men I saw after that, but I didn't care much for any of them, and anyhow I suppose it's too early to be looking out for him yet. Oh, it was a never-to-be-forgotten day, Hattie. I was so tired I couldn't sleep at night. Miss Geraldine put us in the spare room, according to promise. It was an elegant room, Hattie, but somehow sleeping in a spare room isn't what I used to think it was. That's the worst of growing up, and I'm beginning to realize it. The things you wanted so much when you were a child don't seem half so wonderful to you when you get them.\"\n\n Thursday the girls had a drive in the park, and in the evening Miss Geraldine took them to a concert in the Academy of Music, where a noted prima donna was to sing. To Ellington the evening was a glittering vision of delight.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, it was beyond description. I was so excited I couldn't even talk, so you may know what it was like. I just sat in enraptured silence. Madame Selitsky was perfectly beautiful, and wore white satin and diamonds. But when she began to sing I never thought about anything else. Oh, I can't tell you how I felt. But it seemed to me that it could never be hard to be good any more. I felt like I do when I look up to the stars. Tears came into my eyes, but, oh, they were such happy tears. I was so sorry when it was all over, and I told Miss Geraldine I didn't see how I was ever to return to common life again. She said she thought if we went over to the restaurant across the street and had an ice cream it might help me. That sounded so prosaic; but to my surprise I found it true. The ice cream was delicious, Hattie, and it was so lovely and dissipated to be sitting there eating it at eleven o'clock at night. Jenelle said she believed she was born for city life. Miss Geraldine asked me what my opinion was, but I said I would have to think it over very seriously before I could tell her what I really thought. So I thought it over after I went to bed. That is the best time to think things out. And I came to the conclusion, Hattie, that I wasn't born for city life and that I was glad of it. It's nice to be eating ice cream at brilliant restaurants at eleven o'clock at night once in a while; but as a regular thing I'd rather be in the east gable at eleven, sound asleep, but kind of knowing even in my sleep that the stars were shining outside and that the wind was blowing in the firs across the brook. I told Miss Geraldine so at breakfast the next morning and she laughed. Miss Geraldine generally laughed at anything I said, even when I said the most solemn things. I don't think I liked it, Hattie, because I wasn't trying to be funny. But she is a most hospitable lady and treated us royally.\"\n\n Friday brought going-home time, and Mr. Geraldine drove in for the girls.\n\n \"Well, I hope you've enjoyed yourselves,\" said Miss Geraldine, as she bade them good-bye.\n\n \"Indeed we have,\" said Jenelle.\n\n \"And you, Ellington-girl?\"\n\n \"I've enjoyed every minute of the time,\" said Ellington, throwing her arms impulsively about the old woman's neck and kissing her wrinkled cheek. Jenelle would never have dared to do such a thing and felt rather aghast at Ellington's freedom. But Miss Geraldine was pleased, and she stood on her veranda and watched the buggy out of sight. Then she went back into her big house with a sigh. It seemed very lonely, lacking those fresh young lives. Miss Geraldine was a rather selfish old lady, if the truth must be told, and had never cared much for anybody but herself. She valued people only as they were of service to her or amused her. Ellington had amused her, and consequently stood high in the old lady's good graces. But Miss Geraldine found herself thinking less about Ellington's quaint speeches than of her fresh enthusiasms, her transparent emotions, her little winning ways, and the sweetness of her eyes and lips.\n\n \"I thought Hattie Duncan was an old fool when I heard she'd adopted a girl out of an orphan asylum,\" she said to herself, \"but I guess she didn't make much of a mistake after all. If I'd a child like Ellington in the house all the time I'd be a better and happier woman.\"\n\n Ellington and Jenelle found the drive home as pleasant as the drive in--pleasanter, indeed, since there was the delightful consciousness of home waiting at the end of it. It was sunset when they passed through White Sands and turned into the shore road. Beyond, the Avonlea hills came out darkly against the saffron sky. Behind them the moon was rising out of the sea that grew all radiant and transfigured in her light. Every little cove along the curving road was a marvel of dancing ripples. The waves broke with a soft swish on the rocks below them, and the tang of the sea was in the strong, fresh air.\n\n \"Oh, but it's good to be alive and to be going home,\" breathed Ellington.\n\n When she crossed the log bridge over the brook the kitchen light of Green Gables winked her a friendly welcome back, and through the open door shone the hearth fire, sending out its warm red glow athwart the chilly autumn night. Ellington ran blithely up the hill and into the kitchen, where a hot supper was waiting on the table.\n\n \"So you've got back?\" said Hattie, folding up her knitting.\n\n \"Yes, and oh, it's so good to be back,\" said Ellington joyously. \"I could kiss everything, even to the clock. Hattie, a broiled chicken! You don't mean to say you cooked that for me!\"\n\n \"Yes, I did,\" said Hattie. \"I thought you'd be hungry after such a drive and need something real appetizing. Hurry and take off your things, and we'll have supper as soon as Bryon comes in. I'm glad you've got back, I must say. It's been fearful lonesome here without you, and I never put in four longer days.\"\n\n After supper Ellington sat before the fire between Bryon and Hattie, and gave them a full account of her visit.\n\n \"I've had a splendid time,\" she concluded happily, \"and I feel that it marks an epoch in my life. But the best of it all was the coming home.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n |HATTIE laid her knitting on her lap and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes were tired, and she thought vaguely that she must see about having her glasses changed the next time she went to town, for her eyes had grown tired very often of late.\n\n It was nearly dark, for the full November twilight had fallen around Green Gables, and the only light in the kitchen came from the dancing red flames in the stove.\n\n Ellington was curled up Turk-fashion on the hearthrug, gazing into that joyous glow where the sunshine of a hundred summers was being distilled from the maple cordwood. She had been reading, but her book had slipped to the floor, and now she was dreaming, with a smile on her parted lips. Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her lively fancy; adventures wonderful and enthralling were happening to her in cloudland--adventures that always turned out triumphantly and never involved her in scrapes like those of actual life.\n\n Hattie looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Hattie could never learn. But she had learned to love this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent, indeed. She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set one's heart so intensely on any human creature as she had set hers on Ellington, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her. Certainly Ellington herself had no idea how Hattie loved her. She sometimes thought wistfully that Hattie was very hard to please and distinctly lacking in sympathy and understanding. But she always checked the thought reproachfully, remembering what she owed to Hattie.\n\n \"Ellington,\" said Hattie abruptly, \"Miss Sandra was here this afternoon when you were out with Jenelle.\"\n\n Ellington came back from her other world with a start and a sigh.\n\n \"Was she? Oh, I'm so sorry I wasn't in. Why didn't you call me, Hattie? Jenelle and I were only over in the Haunted Wood. It's lovely in the woods now. All the little wood things--the ferns and the satin leaves and the crackerberries--have gone to sleep, just as if somebody had tucked them away until spring under a blanket of leaves. I think it was a little gray fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the last moonlight night and did it. Jenelle wouldn't say much about that, though. Jenelle has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about imagining ghosts into the Haunted Wood. It had a very bad effect on Jenelle's imagination. It blighted it. Mrs. Ernesto says Myrtle Axel is a blighted being. I asked Jazz Itzel why Myrtle was blighted, and Jazz said she guessed it was because her young man had gone back on her. Jazz Itzel thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn't do to drag them into everything, does it? Jenelle and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever. Jenelle hasn't quite made up her mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him. Jenelle and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we are so much older than we used to be that it isn't becoming to talk of childish matters. It's such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Hattie. Miss Sandra took all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and talked to us about it. She said we couldn't be too careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worth while on it. Jenelle and I talked the matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn, Hattie. And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be properly developed. It's perfectly appalling to think of being twenty, Hattie. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. But why was Miss Sandra here this afternoon?\"\n\n \"That is what I want to tell you, Ellington, if you'll ever give me a chance to get a word in edgewise. She was talking about you.\"\n\n \"About me?\" Ellington looked rather scared. Then she flushed and exclaimed:\n\n \"Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Hattie, honestly I did, but I forgot. Miss Sandra caught me reading Ben Hur in school yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying my Canadian history. Gisela Mariela lent it to me. I was reading it at dinner hour, and I had just got to the chariot race when school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out--although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn't be poetical justice if he didn't--so I spread the history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee. I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur. I was so interested in it that I never noticed Miss Sandra coming down the aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so reproachful-like. I can't tell you how ashamed I felt, Hattie, especially when I heard Ross Hayley giggling. Miss Sandra took Ben Hur away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and talked to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly, I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a storybook instead. I had never realized until that moment, Hattie, that what I was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Sandra to forgive me and I'd never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned out. But Miss Sandra said she wouldn't require that, and she forgave me freely. So I think it wasn't very kind of her to come up here to you about it after all.\"\n\n \"Miss Sandra never mentioned such a thing to me, Ellington, and its only your guilty conscience that's the matter with you. You have no business to be taking storybooks to school. You read too many novels anyhow. When I was a girl I wasn't so much as allowed to look at a novel.\"\n\n \"Oh, how can you call Ben Hur a novel when it's really such a religious book?\" protested Ellington. \"Of course it's a little too exciting to be proper reading for Sunday, and I only read it on weekdays. And I never read _any_ book now unless either Miss Sandra or Mrs. Irwin thinks it is a proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read. Miss Sandra made me promise that. She found me reading a book one day called, The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall. It was one Jazz Itzel had lent me, and, oh, Hattie, it was so fascinating and creepy. It just curdled the blood in my veins. But Miss Sandra said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it. I didn't mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was _agonizing_ to give back that book without knowing how it turned out. But my love for Miss Sandra stood the test and I did. It's really wonderful, Hattie, what you can do when you're truly anxious to please a certain person.\"\n\n \"Well, I guess I'll light the lamp and get to work,\" said Hattie. \"I see plainly that you don't want to hear what Miss Sandra had to say. You're more interested in the sound of your own tongue than in anything else.\"\n\n \"Oh, indeed, Hattie, I do want to hear it,\" cried Ellington contritely. \"I won't say another word--not one. I know I talk too much, but I am really trying to overcome it, and although I say far too much, yet if you only knew how many things I want to say and don't, you'd give me some credit for it. Please tell me, Hattie.\"\n\n \"Well, Miss Sandra wants to organize a class among her advanced students who mean to study for the entrance examination into Queen's. She intends to give them extra lessons for an hour after school. And she came to ask Bryon and me if we would like to have you join it. What do you think about it yourself, Ellington? Would you like to go to Queen's and pass for a teacher?\"\n\n \"Oh, Hattie!\" Ellington straightened to her knees and clasped her hands. \"It's been the dream of my life--that is, for the last six months, ever since Jazz and Gisela began to talk of studying for the Entrance. But I didn't say anything about it, because I supposed it would be perfectly useless. I'd love to be a teacher. But won't it be dreadfully expensive? Mr. Mariela says it cost him one hundred and fifty dollars to put Sigourney through, and Sigourney wasn't a dunce in geometry.\"\n\n \"I guess you needn't worry about that part of it. When Bryon and I took you to bring up we resolved we would do the best we could for you and give you a good education. I believe in a girl being fitted to earn her own living whether she ever has to or not. You'll always have a home at Green Gables as long as Bryon and I are here, but nobody knows what is going to happen in this uncertain world, and it's just as well to be prepared. So you can join the Queen's class if you like, Ellington.\"\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, thank you.\" Ellington flung her arms about Hattie's waist and looked up earnestly into her face. \"I'm extremely grateful to you and Bryon. And I'll study as hard as I can and do my very best to be a credit to you. I warn you not to expect much in geometry, but I think I can hold my own in anything else if I work hard.\"\n\n \"I dare say you'll get along well enough. Miss Sandra says you are bright and diligent.\" Not for worlds would Hattie have told Ellington just what Miss Sandra had said about her; that would have been to pamper vanity. \"You needn't rush to any extreme of killing yourself over your books. There is no hurry. You won't be ready to try the Entrance for a year and a half yet. But it's well to begin in time and be thoroughly grounded, Miss Sandra says.\"\n\n \"I shall take more interest than ever in my studies now,\" said Ellington blissfully, \"because I have a purpose in life. Mr. Irwin says everybody should have a purpose in life and pursue it faithfully. Only he says we must first make sure that it is a worthy purpose. I would call it a worthy purpose to want to be a teacher like Miss Sandra, wouldn't you, Hattie? I think it's a very noble profession.\"\n\n The Queen's class was organized in due time. Hans Jesus, Ellington Roderick, Jazz Itzel, Gisela Mariela, Ross Hayley, Raphael Bruce, and Melody Perla Remington joined it. Jenelle Geraldine did not, as her parents did not intend to send her to Queen's. This seemed nothing short of a calamity to Ellington. Never, since the night on which Maverick Tamika had had the croup, had she and Jenelle been separated in anything. On the evening when the Queen's class first remained in school for the extra lessons and Ellington saw Jenelle go slowly out with the others, to walk home alone through the Birch Path and Violet Vale, it was all the former could do to keep her seat and refrain from rushing impulsively after her chum. A lump came into her throat, and she hastily retired behind the pages of her uplifted Latin grammar to hide the tears in her eyes. Not for worlds would Ellington have had Hans Jesus or Ross Hayley see those tears.\n\n \"But, oh, Hattie, I really felt that I had tasted the bitterness of death, as Mr. Irwin said in his sermon last Sunday, when I saw Jenelle go out alone,\" she said mournfully that night. \"I thought how splendid it would have been if Jenelle had only been going to study for the Entrance, too. But we can't have things perfect in this imperfect world, as Mrs. Ernesto says. Mrs. Ernesto isn't exactly a comforting person sometimes, but there's no doubt she says a great many very true things. And I think the Queen's class is going to be extremely interesting. Gisela and Jazz are just going to study to be teachers. That is the height of their ambition. Jazz says she will only teach for two years after she gets through, and then she intends to be married. Gisela says she will devote her whole life to teaching, and never, never marry, because you are paid a salary for teaching, but a husband won't pay you anything, and growls if you ask for a share in the egg and butter money. I expect Gisela speaks from mournful experience, for Mrs. Ernesto says that her father is a perfect old crank, and meaner than second skimmings. Ross Hayley says she is just going to college for education's sake, because she won't have to earn her own living; she says of course it is different with orphans who are living on charity--_they_ have to hustle. Melody Perla is going to be a minister. Mrs. Ernesto says he couldn't be anything else with a name like that to live up to. I hope it isn't wicked of me, Hattie, but really the thought of Melody Perla being a minister makes me laugh. He's such a funny-looking boy with that big fat face, and his little blue eyes, and his ears sticking out like flaps. But perhaps he will be more intellectual looking when he grows up. Raphael Bruce says he's going to go into politics and be a member of Parliament, but Mrs. Ernesto says he'll never succeed at that, because the Bruces are all honest people, and it's only rascals that get on in politics nowadays.\"\n\n \"What is Hans Jesus going to be?\" queried Hattie, seeing that Ellington was opening her Caesar.\n\n \"I don't happen to know what Hans Jesus's ambition in life is--if he has any,\" said Ellington scornfully.\n\n There was open rivalry between Hans and Ellington now. Previously the rivalry had been rather one-sided, but there was no longer any doubt that Hans was as determined to be first in class as Ellington was. He was a foeman worthy of her steel. The other members of the class tacitly acknowledged their superiority, and never dreamed of trying to compete with them.\n\n Since the day by the pond when she had refused to listen to his plea for forgiveness, Hans, save for the aforesaid determined rivalry, had evinced no recognition whatever of the existence of Ellington Roderick. He talked and jested with the other girls, exchanged books and puzzles with them, discussed lessons and plans, sometimes walked home with one or the other of them from prayer meeting or Debating Club. But Ellington Roderick he simply ignored, and Ellington found out that it is not pleasant to be ignored. It was in vain that she told herself with a toss of her head that she did not care. Deep down in her wayward, feminine little heart she knew that she did care, and that if she had that chance of the Lake of Shining Waters again she would answer very differently. All at once, as it seemed, and to her secret dismay, she found that the old resentment she had cherished against him was gone--gone just when she most needed its sustaining power. It was in vain that she recalled every incident and emotion of that memorable occasion and tried to feel the old satisfying anger. That day by the pond had witnessed its last spasmodic flicker. Ellington realized that she had forgiven and forgotten without knowing it. But it was too late.\n\n And at least neither Hans nor anybody else, not even Jenelle, should ever suspect how sorry she was and how much she wished she hadn't been so proud and horrid! She determined to \"shroud her feelings in deepest oblivion,\" and it may be stated here and now that she did it, so successfully that Hans, who possibly was not quite so indifferent as he seemed, could not console himself with any belief that Ellington felt his retaliatory scorn. The only poor comfort he had was that she snubbed Raphael Bruce, unmercifully, continually, and undeservedly.\n\n Otherwise the winter passed away in a round of pleasant duties and studies. For Ellington the days slipped by like golden beads on the necklace of the year. She was happy, eager, interested; there were lessons to be learned and honor to be won; delightful books to read; new pieces to be practiced for the Sunday-school choir; pleasant Saturday afternoons at the manse with Mrs. Irwin; and then, almost before Ellington realized it, spring had come again to Green Gables and all the world was abloom once more.\n\n Studies palled just a wee bit then; the Queen's class, left behind in school while the others scattered to green lanes and leafy wood cuts and meadow byways, looked wistfully out of the windows and discovered that Latin verbs and French exercises had somehow lost the tang and zest they had possessed in the crisp winter months. Even Ellington and Hans lagged and grew indifferent. Teacher and taught were alike glad when the term was ended and the glad vacation days stretched rosily before them.\n\n \"But you've done good work this past year,\" Miss Sandra told them on the last evening, \"and you deserve a good, jolly vacation. Have the best time you can in the out-of-door world and lay in a good stock of health and vitality and ambition to carry you through next year. It will be the tug of war, you know--the last year before the Entrance.\"\n\n \"Are you going to be back next year, Miss Sandra?\" asked Ross Hayley.\n\n Ross Hayley never scrupled to ask questions; in this instance the rest of the class felt grateful to her; none of them would have dared to ask it of Miss Sandra, but all wanted to, for there had been alarming rumors running at large through the school for some time that Miss Sandra was not coming back the next year--that she had been offered a position in the grade school of her own home district and meant to accept. The Queen's class listened in breathless suspense for her answer.\n\n \"Yes, I think I will,\" said Miss Sandra. \"I thought of taking another school, but I have decided to come back to Avonlea. To tell the truth, I've grown so interested in my pupils here that I found I couldn't leave them. So I'll stay and see you through.\"\n\n \"Hurrah!\" said Melody Perla. Melody Perla had never been so carried away by his feelings before, and he blushed uncomfortably every time he thought about it for a week.\n\n \"Oh, I'm so glad,\" said Ellington, with shining eyes. \"Dear Sandra, it would be perfectly dreadful if you didn't come back. I don't believe I could have the heart to go on with my studies at all if another teacher came here.\"\n\n When Ellington got home that night she stacked all her textbooks away in an old trunk in the attic, locked it, and threw the key into the blanket box.\n\n \"I'm not even going to look at a schoolbook in vacation,\" she told Hattie. \"I've studied as hard all the term as I possibly could and I've pored over that geometry until I know every proposition in the first book off by heart, even when the letters _are_ changed. I just feel tired of everything sensible and I'm going to let my imagination run riot for the summer. Oh, you needn't be alarmed, Hattie. I'll only let it run riot within reasonable limits. But I want to have a real good jolly time this summer, for maybe it's the last summer I'll be a little girl. Mrs. Ernesto says that if I keep stretching out next year as I've done this I'll have to put on longer skirts. She says I'm all running to legs and eyes. And when I put on longer skirts I shall feel that I have to live up to them and be very dignified. It won't even do to believe in fairies then, I'm afraid; so I'm going to believe in them with all my whole heart this summer. I think we're going to have a very gay vacation. Jazz Itzel is going to have a birthday party soon and there's the Sunday school picnic and the missionary concert next month. And Mr. Geraldine says that some evening he'll take Jenelle and me over to the White Sands Hotel and have dinner there. They have dinner there in the evening, you know. Gisela Mariela was over once last summer and she says it was a dazzling sight to see the electric lights and the flowers and all the lady guests in such beautiful dresses. Gisela says it was her first glimpse into high life and she'll never forget it to her dying day.\"\n\n Mrs. Ernesto came up the next afternoon to find out why Hattie had not been at the Aid meeting on Thursday. When Hattie was not at Aid meeting people knew there was something wrong at Green Gables.\n\n \"Bryon had a bad spell with his heart Thursday,\" Hattie explained, \"and I didn't feel like leaving him. Oh, yes, he's all right again now, but he takes them spells oftener than he used to and I'm anxious about him. The doctor says he must be careful to avoid excitement. That's easy enough, for Bryon doesn't go about looking for excitement by any means and never did, but he's not to do any very heavy work either and you might as well tell Bryon not to breathe as not to work. Come and lay off your things, Natalie. You'll stay to tea?\"\n\n \"Well, seeing you're so pressing, perhaps I might as well, stay\" said Mrs. Natalie, who had not the slightest intention of doing anything else.\n\n Mrs. Natalie and Hattie sat comfortably in the parlor while Ellington got the tea and made hot biscuits that were light and white enough to defy even Mrs. Natalie's criticism.\n\n \"I must say Ellington has turned out a real smart girl,\" admitted Mrs. Natalie, as Hattie accompanied her to the end of the lane at sunset. \"She must be a great help to you.\"\n\n \"She is,\" said Hattie, \"and she's real steady and reliable now. I used to be afraid she'd never get over her featherbrained ways, but she has and I wouldn't be afraid to trust her in anything now.\"\n\n \"I never would have thought she'd have turned out so well that first day I was here three years ago,\" said Mrs. Natalie. \"Lawful heart, shall I ever forget that tantrum of hers! When I went home that night I says to Bartholomew, says I, 'Mark my words, Bartholomew, Hattie Duncan 'll live to rue the step she's took.' But I was mistaken and I'm real glad of it. I ain't one of those kind of people, Hattie, as can never be brought to own up that they've made a mistake. No, that never was my way, thank goodness. I did make a mistake in judging Ellington, but it weren't no wonder, for an odder, unexpecteder witch of a child there never was in this world, that's what. There was no ciphering her out by the rules that worked with other children. It's nothing short of wonderful how she's improved these three years, but especially in looks. She's a real pretty girl got to be, though I can't say I'm overly partial to that pale, big-eyed style myself. I like more snap and color, like Jenelle Geraldine has or Jazz Itzel. Jazz Itzel's looks are real showy. But somehow--I don't know how it is but when Ellington and them are together, though she ain't half as handsome, she makes them look kind of common and overdone--something like them white June lilies she calls narcissus alongside of the big, red peonies, that's what.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |ELLINGTON had her \"good\" summer and enjoyed it wholeheartedly. She and Jenelle fairly lived outdoors, reveling in all the delights that Lover's Lane and the Dryad's Bubble and Willowmere and Victoria Island afforded. Hattie offered no objections to Ellington's gypsyings. The Keenanvale doctor who had come the night Maverick Tamika had the croup met Ellington at the house of a patient one afternoon early in vacation, looked her over sharply, screwed up his mouth, shook his head, and sent a message to Hattie Duncan by another person. It was:\n\n \"Keep that redheaded girl of yours in the open air all summer and don't let her read books until she gets more spring into her step.\"\n\n This message frightened Hattie wholesomely. She read Ellington's death warrant by consumption in it unless it was scrupulously obeyed. As a result, Ellington had the golden summer of her life as far as freedom and frolic went. She walked, rowed, berried, and dreamed to her heart's content; and when September came she was bright-eyed and alert, with a step that would have satisfied the Keenanvale doctor and a heart full of ambition and zest once more.\n\n \"I feel just like studying with might and main,\" she declared as she brought her books down from the attic. \"Oh, you good old friends, I'm glad to see your honest faces once more--yes, even you, geometry. I've had a perfectly beautiful summer, Hattie, and now I'm rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, as Mr. Irwin said last Sunday. Doesn't Mr. Irwin preach magnificent sermons? Mrs. Ernesto says he is improving every day and the first thing we know some city church will gobble him up and then we'll be left and have to turn to and break in another green preacher. But I don't see the use of meeting trouble halfway, do you, Hattie? I think it would be better just to enjoy Mr. Irwin while we have him. If I were a man I think I'd be a minister. They can have such an influence for good, if their theology is sound; and it must be thrilling to preach splendid sermons and stir your hearers' hearts. Why can't women be ministers, Hattie? I asked Mrs. Ernesto that and she was shocked and said it would be a scandalous thing. She said there might be female ministers in the States and she believed there was, but thank goodness we hadn't got to that stage in Canada yet and she hoped we never would. But I don't see why. I think women would make splendid ministers. When there is a social to be got up or a church tea or anything else to raise money the women have to turn to and do the work. I'm sure Mrs. Ernesto can pray every bit as well as Superintendent Axel and I've no doubt she could preach too with a little practice.\"\n\n \"Yes, I believe she could,\" said Hattie dryly. \"She does plenty of unofficial preaching as it is. Nobody has much of a chance to go wrong in Avonlea with Natalie to oversee them.\"\n\n \"Hattie,\" said Ellington in a burst of confidence, \"I want to tell you something and ask you what you think about it. It has worried me terribly--on Sunday afternoons, that is, when I think specially about such matters. I do really want to be good; and when I'm with you or Mrs. Irwin or Miss Sandra I want it more than ever and I want to do just what would please you and what you would approve of. But mostly when I'm with Mrs. Ernesto I feel desperately wicked and as if I wanted to go and do the very thing she tells me I oughtn't to do. I feel irresistibly tempted to do it. Now, what do you think is the reason I feel like that? Do you think it's because I'm really bad and unregenerate?\"\n\n Hattie looked dubious for a moment. Then she laughed.\n\n \"If you are I guess I am too, Ellington, for Natalie often has that very effect on me. I sometimes think she'd have more of an influence for good, as you say yourself, if she didn't keep nagging people to do right. There should have been a special commandment against nagging. But there, I shouldn't talk so. Natalie is a good Christian woman and she means well. There isn't a kinder soul in Avonlea and she never shirks her share of work.\"\n\n \"I'm very glad you feel the same,\" said Ellington decidedly. \"It's so encouraging. I shan't worry so much over that after this. But I dare say there'll be other things to worry me. They keep coming up new all the time--things to perplex you, you know. You settle one question and there's another right after. There are so many things to be thought over and decided when you're beginning to grow up. It keeps me busy all the time thinking them over and deciding what is right. It's a serious thing to grow up, isn't it, Hattie? But when I have such good friends as you and Bryon and Mrs. Irwin and Miss Sandra I ought to grow up successfully, and I'm sure it will be my own fault if I don't. I feel it's a great responsibility because I have only the one chance. If I don't grow up right I can't go back and begin over again. I've grown two inches this summer, Hattie. Mr. Itzel measured me at Jazz's party. I'm so glad you made my new dresses longer. That dark-green one is so pretty and it was sweet of you to put on the flounce. Of course I know it wasn't really necessary, but flounces are so stylish this fall and Ross Hayley has flounces on all her dresses. I know I'll be able to study better because of mine. I shall have such a comfortable feeling deep down in my mind about that flounce.\"\n\n \"It's worth something to have that,\" admitted Hattie.\n\n Miss Sandra came back to Avonlea school and found all her pupils eager for work once more. Especially did the Queen's class gird up their loins for the fray, for at the end of the coming year, dimly shadowing their pathway already, loomed up that fateful thing known as \"the Entrance,\" at the thought of which one and all felt their hearts sink into their very shoes. Suppose they did not pass! That thought was doomed to haunt Ellington through the waking hours of that winter, Sunday afternoons inclusive, to the almost entire exclusion of moral and theological problems. When Ellington had bad dreams she found herself staring miserably at pass lists of the Entrance exams, where Hans Jesus's name was blazoned at the top and in which hers did not appear at all.\n\n But it was a jolly, busy, happy swift-flying winter. Schoolwork was as interesting, class rivalry as absorbing, as of yore. New worlds of thought, feeling, and ambition, fresh, fascinating fields of unexplored knowledge seemed to be opening out before Ellington's eager eyes.\n\n\n \"Hills peeped o'er hill and Alps on Alps arose.\"\n\n\n Much of all this was due to Miss Sandra's tactful, careful, broadminded guidance. She led her class to think and explore and discover for themselves and encouraged straying from the old beaten paths to a degree that quite shocked Mrs. Ernesto and the school trustees, who viewed all innovations on established methods rather dubiously.\n\n Apart from her studies Ellington expanded socially, for Hattie, mindful of the Keenanvale doctor's dictum, no longer vetoed occasional outings. The Debating Club flourished and gave several concerts; there were one or two parties almost verging on grown-up affairs; there were sleigh drives and skating frolics galore.\n\n Between times Ellington grew, shooting up so rapidly that Hattie was astonished one day, when they were standing side by side, to find the girl was taller than herself.\n\n \"Why, Ellington, how you've grown!\" she said, almost unbelievingly. A sigh followed on the words. Hattie felt a queer regret over Ellington's inches. The child she had learned to love had vanished somehow and here was this tall, serious-eyed girl of fifteen, with the thoughtful brows and the proudly poised little head, in her place. Hattie loved the girl as much as she had loved the child, but she was conscious of a queer sorrowful sense of loss. And that night, when Ellington had gone to prayer meeting with Jenelle, Hattie sat alone in the wintry twilight and indulged in the weakness of a cry. Bryon, coming in with a lantern, caught her at it and gazed at her in such consternation that Hattie had to laugh through her tears.\n\n \"I was thinking about Ellington,\" she explained. \"She's got to be such a big girl--and she'll probably be away from us next winter. I'll miss her terrible.\"\n\n \"She'll be able to come home often,\" comforted Bryon, to whom Ellington was as yet and always would be the little, eager girl he had brought home from Bright River on that June evening four years before. \"The branch railroad will be built to Carmody by that time.\"\n\n \"It won't be the same thing as having her here all the time,\" sighed Hattie gloomily, determined to enjoy her luxury of grief uncomforted. \"But there--men can't understand these things!\"\n\n There were other changes in Ellington no less real than the physical change. For one thing, she became much quieter. Perhaps she thought all the more and dreamed as much as ever, but she certainly talked less. Hattie noticed and commented on this also.\n\n \"You don't chatter half as much as you used to, Ellington, nor use half as many big words. What has come over you?\"\n\n Ellington colored and laughed a little, as she dropped her book and looked dreamily out of the window, where big fat red buds were bursting out on the creeper in response to the lure of the spring sunshine.\n\n \"I don't know--I don't want to talk as much,\" she said, denting her chin thoughtfully with her forefinger. \"It's nicer to think dear, pretty thoughts and keep them in one's heart, like treasures. I don't like to have them laughed at or wondered over. And somehow I don't want to use big words any more. It's almost a pity, isn't it, now that I'm really growing big enough to say them if I did want to. It's fun to be almost grown up in some ways, but it's not the kind of fun I expected, Hattie. There's so much to learn and do and think that there isn't time for big words. Besides, Miss Sandra says the short ones are much stronger and better. She makes us write all our essays as simply as possible. It was hard at first. I was so used to crowding in all the fine big words I could think of--and I thought of any number of them. But I've got used to it now and I see it's so much better.\"\n\n \"What has become of your story club? I haven't heard you speak of it for a long time.\"\n\n \"The story club isn't in existence any longer. We hadn't time for it--and anyhow I think we had got tired of it. It was silly to be writing about love and murder and elopements and mysteries. Miss Sandra sometimes has us write a story for training in composition, but she won't let us write anything but what might happen in Avonlea in our own lives, and she criticizes it very sharply and makes us criticize our own too. I never thought my compositions had so many faults until I began to look for them myself. I felt so ashamed I wanted to give up altogether, but Miss Sandra said I could learn to write well if I only trained myself to be my own severest critic. And so I am trying to.\"\n\n \"You've only two more months before the Entrance,\" said Hattie. \"Do you think you'll be able to get through?\"\n\n Ellington shivered.\n\n \"I don't know. Sometimes I think I'll be all right--and then I get horribly afraid. We've studied hard and Miss Sandra has drilled us thoroughly, but we mayn't get through for all that. We've each got a stumbling block. Mine is geometry of course, and Gisela's is Latin, and Jazz and Raphael's is algebra, and Ross's is arithmetic. Melody Perla says he feels it in his bones that he is going to fail in English history. Miss Sandra is going to give us examinations in June just as hard as we'll have at the Entrance and mark us just as strictly, so we'll have some idea. I wish it was all over, Hattie. It haunts me. Sometimes I wake up in the night and wonder what I'll do if I don't pass.\"\n\n \"Why, go to school next year and try again,\" said Hattie unconcernedly.\n\n \"Oh, I don't believe I'd have the heart for it. It would be such a disgrace to fail, especially if Gil--if the others passed. And I get so nervous in an examination that I'm likely to make a mess of it. I wish I had nerves like Gisela Mariela. Nothing rattles her.\"\n\n Ellington sighed and, dragging her eyes from the witcheries of the spring world, the beckoning day of breeze and blue, and the green things upspringing in the garden, buried herself resolutely in her book. There would be other springs, but if she did not succeed in passing the Entrance, Ellington felt convinced that she would never recover sufficiently to enjoy them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |WITH the end of June came the close of the term and the close of Miss Sandra's rule in Avonlea school. Ellington and Jenelle walked home that evening feeling very sober indeed. Red eyes and damp handkerchiefs bore convincing testimony to the fact that Miss Sandra's farewell words must have been quite as touching as Mr. Jet's had been under similar circumstances three years before. Jenelle looked back at the schoolhouse from the foot of the spruce hill and sighed deeply.\n\n \"It does seem as if it was the end of everything, doesn't it?\" she said dismally.\n\n \"You oughtn't to feel half as badly as I do,\" said Ellington, hunting vainly for a dry spot on her handkerchief. \"You'll be back again next winter, but I suppose I've left the dear old school forever--if I have good luck, that is.\"\n\n \"It won't be a bit the same. Miss Sandra won't be there, nor you nor Gisela nor Jazz probably. I shall have to sit all alone, for I couldn't bear to have another deskmate after you. Oh, we have had jolly times, haven't we, Ellington? It's dreadful to think they're all over.\"\n\n Two big tears rolled down by Jenelle's nose.\n\n \"If you would stop crying I could,\" said Ellington imploringly. \"Just as soon as I put away my hanky I see you brimming up and that starts me off again. As Mrs. Ernesto says, 'If you can't be cheerful, be as cheerful as you can.' After all, I dare say I'll be back next year. This is one of the times I _know_ I'm not going to pass. They're getting alarmingly frequent.\"\n\n \"Why, you came out splendidly in the exams Miss Sandra gave.\"\n\n \"Yes, but those exams didn't make me nervous. When I think of the real thing you can't imagine what a horrid cold fluttery feeling comes round my heart. And then my number is thirteen and Ross Hayley says it's so unlucky. I am _not_ superstitious and I know it can make no difference. But still I wish it wasn't thirteen.\"\n\n \"I do wish I was going in with you,\" said Jenelle. \"Wouldn't we have a perfectly elegant time? But I suppose you'll have to cram in the evenings.\"\n\n \"No; Miss Sandra has made us promise not to open a book at all. She says it would only tire and confuse us and we are to go out walking and not think about the exams at all and go to bed early. It's good advice, but I expect it will be hard to follow; good advice is apt to be, I think. Sigourney Mariela told me that she sat up half the night every night of her Entrance week and crammed for dear life; and I had determined to sit up _at least_ as long as she did. It was so kind of your Aunt Evan to ask me to stay at Beechwood while I'm in town.\"\n\n \"You'll write to me while you're in, won't you?\"\n\n \"I'll write Tuesday night and tell you how the first day goes,\" promised Ellington.\n\n \"I'll be haunting the post office Wednesday,\" vowed Jenelle.\n\n Ellington went to town the following Monday and on Wednesday Jenelle haunted the post office, as agreed, and got her letter.\n\n\n \"Dearest Jenelle\" [wrote Ellington],\n\n \"Here it is Tuesday night and I'm writing this in the library at Beechwood. Last night I was horribly lonesome all alone in my room and wished so much you were with me. I couldn't 'cram' because I'd promised Miss Sandra not to, but it was as hard to keep from opening my history as it used to be to keep from reading a story before my lessons were learned.\n\n \"This morning Miss Sandra came for me and we went to the Academy, calling for Gisela and Jazz and Ross on our way. Jazz asked me to feel her hands and they were as cold as ice. Ross said I looked as if I hadn't slept a wink and she didn't believe I was strong enough to stand the grind of the teacher's course even if I did get through. There are times and seasons even yet when I don't feel that I've made any great headway in learning to like Ross Hayley!\n\n \"When we reached the Academy there were scores of students there from all over the Island. The first person we saw was Melody Perla sitting on the steps and muttering away to himself. Gisela asked him what on earth he was doing and he said he was repeating the multiplication table over and over to steady his nerves and for pity's sake not to interrupt him, because if he stopped for a moment he got frightened and forgot everything he ever knew, but the multiplication table kept all his facts firmly in their proper place!\n\n \"When we were assigned to our rooms Miss Sandra had to leave us. Gisela and I sat together and Gisela was so composed that I envied her. No need of the multiplication table for good, steady, sensible Gisela! I wondered if I looked as I felt and if they could hear my heart thumping clear across the room. Then a man came in and began distributing the English examination sheets. My hands grew cold then and my head fairly whirled around as I picked it up. Just one awful moment--Jenelle, I felt exactly as I did four years ago when I asked Hattie if I might stay at Green Gables--and then everything cleared up in my mind and my heart began beating again--I forgot to say that it had stopped altogether!--for I knew I could do something with _that_ paper anyhow.\n\n \"At noon we went home for dinner and then back again for history in the afternoon. The history was a pretty hard paper and I got dreadfully mixed up in the dates. Still, I think I did fairly well today. But oh, Jenelle, tomorrow the geometry exam comes off and when I think of it it takes every bit of determination I possess to keep from opening my Euclid. If I thought the multiplication table would help me any I would recite it from now till tomorrow morning.\n\n \"I went down to see the other girls this evening. On my way I met Melody Perla wandering distractedly around. He said he knew he had failed in history and he was born to be a disappointment to his parents and he was going home on the morning train; and it would be easier to be a carpenter than a minister, anyhow. I cheered him up and persuaded him to stay to the end because it would be unfair to Miss Sandra if he didn't. Sometimes I have wished I was born a boy, but when I see Melody Perla I'm always glad I'm a girl and not his sister.\n\n \"Jazz was in hysterics when I reached their boardinghouse; she had just discovered a fearful mistake she had made in her English paper. When she recovered we went uptown and had an ice cream. How we wished you had been with us.\n\n \"Oh, Jenelle, if only the geometry examination were over! But there, as Mrs. Ernesto would say, the sun will go on rising and setting whether I fail in geometry or not. That is true but not especially comforting. I think I'd rather it didn't go on if I failed!\n\n \"Yours devotedly,\n\n \"Ellington\"\n\n\n The geometry examination and all the others were over in due time and Ellington arrived home on Friday evening, rather tired but with an air of chastened triumph about her. Jenelle was over at Green Gables when she arrived and they met as if they had been parted for years.\n\n \"You old darling, it's perfectly splendid to see you back again. It seems like an age since you went to town and oh, Ellington, how did you get along?\"\n\n \"Pretty well, I think, in everything but the geometry. I don't know whether I passed in it or not and I have a creepy, crawly presentiment that I didn't. Oh, how good it is to be back! Green Gables is the dearest, loveliest spot in the world.\"\n\n \"How did the others do?\"\n\n \"The girls say they know they didn't pass, but I think they did pretty well. Ross says the geometry was so easy a child of ten could do it! Melody Perla still thinks he failed in history and Raphael says he failed in algebra. But we don't really know anything about it and won't until the pass list is out. That won't be for a fortnight. Fancy living a fortnight in such suspense! I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up until it is over.\"\n\n Jenelle knew it would be useless to ask how Hans Jesus had fared, so she merely said:\n\n \"Oh, you'll pass all right. Don't worry.\"\n\n \"I'd rather not pass at all than not come out pretty well up on the list,\" flashed Ellington, by which she meant--and Jenelle knew she meant--that success would be incomplete and bitter if she did not come out ahead of Hans Jesus.\n\n With this end in view Ellington had strained every nerve during the examinations. So had Hans. They had met and passed each other on the street a dozen times without any sign of recognition and every time Ellington had held her head a little higher and wished a little more earnestly that she had made friends with Hans when he asked her, and vowed a little more determinedly to surpass him in the examination. She knew that all Avonlea junior was wondering which would come out first; she even knew that Jimmy Glover and Ned Wright had a bet on the question and that Ross Hayley had said there was no doubt in the world that Hans would be first; and she felt that her humiliation would be unbearable if she failed.\n\n But she had another and nobler motive for wishing to do well. She wanted to \"pass high\" for the sake of Bryon and Hattie--especially Bryon. Bryon had declared to her his conviction that she \"would beat the whole Island.\" That, Ellington felt, was something it would be foolish to hope for even in the wildest dreams. But she did hope fervently that she would be among the first ten at least, so that she might see Bryon's kindly brown eyes gleam with pride in her achievement. That, she felt, would be a sweet reward indeed for all her hard work and patient grubbing among unimaginative equations and conjugations.\n\n At the end of the fortnight Ellington took to \"haunting\" the post office also, in the distracted company of Gisela, Jazz, and Ross, opening the Charlottetown dailies with shaking hands and cold, sinkaway feelings as bad as any experienced during the Entrance week. Raphael and Hans were not above doing this too, but Melody Perla stayed resolutely away.\n\n \"I haven't got the grit to go there and look at a paper in cold blood,\" he told Ellington. \"I'm just going to wait until somebody comes and tells me suddenly whether I've passed or not.\"\n\n When three weeks had gone by without the pass list appearing Ellington began to feel that she really couldn't stand the strain much longer. Her appetite failed and her interest in Avonlea doings languished. Mrs. Ernesto wanted to know what else you could expect with a Tory superintendent of education at the head of affairs, and Bryon, noting Ellington's paleness and indifference and the lagging steps that bore her home from the post office every afternoon, began seriously to wonder if he hadn't better vote Grit at the next election.\n\n But one evening the news came. Ellington was sitting at her open window, for the time forgetful of the woes of examinations and the cares of the world, as she drank in the beauty of the summer dusk, sweet-scented with flower breaths from the garden below and sibilant and rustling from the stir of poplars. The eastern sky above the firs was flushed faintly pink from the reflection of the west, and Ellington was wondering dreamily if the spirit of color looked like that, when she saw Jenelle come flying down through the firs, over the log bridge, and up the slope, with a fluttering newspaper in her hand.\n\n Ellington sprang to her feet, knowing at once what that paper contained. The pass list was out! Her head whirled and her heart beat until it hurt her. She could not move a step. It seemed an hour to her before Jenelle came rushing along the hall and burst into the room without even knocking, so great was her excitement.\n\n \"Ellington, you've passed,\" she cried, \"passed the _very first_--you and Hans both--you're ties--but your name is first. Oh, I'm so proud!\"\n\n Jenelle flung the paper on the table and herself on Ellington's bed, utterly breathless and incapable of further speech. Ellington lighted the lamp, oversetting the match safe and using up half a dozen matches before her shaking hands could accomplish the task. Then she snatched up the paper. Yes, she had passed--there was her name at the very top of a list of two hundred! That moment was worth living for.\n\n \"You did just splendidly, Ellington,\" puffed Jenelle, recovering sufficiently to sit up and speak, for Ellington, starry eyed and rapt, had not uttered a word. \"Father brought the paper home from Bright River not ten minutes ago--it came out on the afternoon train, you know, and won't be here till tomorrow by mail--and when I saw the pass list I just rushed over like a wild thing. You've all passed, every one of you, Melody Perla and all, although he's conditioned in history. Gisela and Jazz did pretty well--they're halfway up--and so did Raphael. Ross just scraped through with three marks to spare, but you'll see she'll put on as many airs as if she'd led. Won't Miss Sandra be delighted? Oh, Ellington, what does it feel like to see your name at the head of a pass list like that? If it were me I know I'd go crazy with joy. I am pretty near crazy as it is, but you're as calm and cool as a spring evening.\"\n\n \"I'm just dazzled inside,\" said Ellington. \"I want to say a hundred things, and I can't find words to say them in. I never dreamed of this--yes, I did too, just once! I let myself think _once_, 'What if I should come out first?' quakingly, you know, for it seemed so vain and presumptuous to think I could lead the Island. Excuse me a minute, Jenelle. I must run right out to the field to tell Bryon. Then we'll go up the road and tell the good news to the others.\"\n\n They hurried to the hayfield below the barn where Bryon was coiling hay, and, as luck would have it, Mrs. Ernesto was talking to Hattie at the lane fence.\n\n \"Oh, Bryon,\" exclaimed Ellington, \"I've passed and I'm first--or one of the first! I'm not vain, but I'm thankful.\"\n\n \"Well now, I always said it,\" said Bryon, gazing at the pass list delightedly. \"I knew you could beat them all easy.\"\n\n \"You've done pretty well, I must say, Ellington,\" said Hattie, trying to hide her extreme pride in Ellington from Mrs. Natalie's critical eye. But that good soul said heartily:\n\n \"I just guess she has done well, and far be it from me to be backward in saying it. You're a credit to your friends, Ellington, that's what, and we're all proud of you.\"\n\n That night Ellington, who had wound up the delightful evening with a serious little talk with Mrs. Irwin at the manse, knelt sweetly by her open window in a great sheen of moonshine and murmured a prayer of gratitude and aspiration that came straight from her heart. There was in it thankfulness for the past and reverent petition for the future; and when she slept on her white pillow her dreams were as fair and bright and beautiful as maidenhood might desire.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |PUT on your white organdy, by all means, Ellington,\" advised Jenelle decidedly.\n\n They were together in the east gable chamber; outside it was only twilight--a lovely yellowish-green twilight with a clear-blue cloudless sky. A big round moon, slowly deepening from her pallid luster into burnished silver, hung over the Haunted Wood; the air was full of sweet summer sounds--sleepy birds twittering, freakish breezes, faraway voices and laughter. But in Ellington's room the blind was drawn and the lamp lighted, for an important toilet was being made.\n\n The east gable was a very different place from what it had been on that night four years before, when Ellington had felt its bareness penetrate to the marrow of her spirit with its inhospitable chill. Changes had crept in, Hattie conniving at them resignedly, until it was as sweet and dainty a nest as a young girl could desire.\n\n The velvet carpet with the pink roses and the pink silk curtains of Ellington's early visions had certainly never materialized; but her dreams had kept pace with her growth, and it is not probable she lamented them. The floor was covered with a pretty matting, and the curtains that softened the high window and fluttered in the vagrant breezes were of pale-green art muslin. The walls, hung not with gold and silver brocade tapestry, but with a dainty apple-blossom paper, were adorned with a few good pictures given Ellington by Mrs. Irwin. Miss Sandra's photograph occupied the place of honor, and Ellington made a sentimental point of keeping fresh flowers on the bracket under it. Tonight a spike of white lilies faintly perfumed the room like the dream of a fragrance. There was no \"mahogany furniture,\" but there was a white-painted bookcase filled with books, a cushioned wicker rocker, a toilet table befrilled with white muslin, a quaint, gilt-framed mirror with chubby pink Cupids and purple grapes painted over its arched top, that used to hang in the spare room, and a low white bed.\n\n Ellington was dressing for a concert at the White Sands Hotel. The guests had got it up in aid of the Charlottetown hospital, and had hunted out all the available amateur talent in the surrounding districts to help it along. Bertha Sampson and Pearl Clay of the White Sands Baptist choir had been asked to sing a duet; Milton Clark of Newbridge was to give a violin solo; Winnie Adella Blair of Carmody was to sing a Scotch ballad; and Laura Keenan of Keenanvale and Ellington Roderick of Avonlea were to recite.\n\n As Ellington would have said at one time, it was \"an epoch in her life,\" and she was deliciously athrill with the excitement of it. Bryon was in the seventh heaven of gratified pride over the honor conferred on his Ellington and Hattie was not far behind, although she would have died rather than admit it, and said she didn't think it was very proper for a lot of young folks to be gadding over to the hotel without any responsible person with them.\n\n Ellington and Jenelle were to drive over with Gisela Mariela and her brother Billy in their double-seated buggy; and several other Avonlea girls and boys were going too. There was a party of visitors expected out from town, and after the concert a supper was to be given to the performers.\n\n \"Do you really think the organdy will be best?\" queried Ellington anxiously. \"I don't think it's as pretty as my blue-flowered muslin--and it certainly isn't so fashionable.\"\n\n \"But it suits you ever so much better,\" said Jenelle. \"It's so soft and frilly and clinging. The muslin is stiff, and makes you look too dressed up. But the organdy seems as if it grew on you.\"\n\n Ellington sighed and yielded. Jenelle was beginning to have a reputation for notable taste in dressing, and her advice on such subjects was much sought after. She was looking very pretty herself on this particular night in a dress of the lovely wild-rose pink, from which Ellington was forever debarred; but she was not to take any part in the concert, so her appearance was of minor importance. All her pains were bestowed upon Ellington, who, she vowed, must, for the credit of Avonlea, be dressed and combed and adorned to the Queen's taste.\n\n \"Pull out that frill a little more--so; here, let me tie your sash; now for your slippers. I'm going to braid your hair in two thick braids, and tie them halfway up with big white bows--no, don't pull out a single curl over your forehead--just have the soft part. There is no way you do your hair suits you so well, Ellington, and Mrs. Irwin says you look like a Madonna when you part it so. I shall fasten this little white house rose just behind your ear. There was just one on my bush, and I saved it for you.\"\n\n \"Shall I put my pearl beads on?\" asked Ellington. \"Bryon brought me a string from town last week, and I know he'd like to see them on me.\"\n\n Jenelle pursed up her lips, put her black head on one side critically, and finally pronounced in favor of the beads, which were thereupon tied around Ellington's slim milk-white throat.\n\n \"There's something so stylish about you, Ellington,\" said Jenelle, with unenvious admiration. \"You hold your head with such an air. I suppose it's your figure. I am just a dumpling. I've always been afraid of it, and now I know it is so. Well, I suppose I shall just have to resign myself to it.\"\n\n \"But you have such dimples,\" said Ellington, smiling affectionately into the pretty, vivacious face so near her own. \"Lovely dimples, like little dents in cream. I have given up all hope of dimples. My dimple-dream will never come true; but so many of my dreams have that I mustn't complain. Am I all ready now?\"\n\n \"All ready,\" assured Jenelle, as Hattie appeared in the doorway, a gaunt figure with grayer hair than of yore and no fewer angles, but with a much softer face. \"Come right in and look at our elocutionist, Hattie. Doesn't she look lovely?\"\n\n Hattie emitted a sound between a sniff and a grunt.\n\n \"She looks neat and proper. I like that way of fixing her hair. But I expect she'll ruin that dress driving over there in the dust and dew with it, and it looks most too thin for these damp nights. Organdy's the most unserviceable stuff in the world anyhow, and I told Bryon so when he got it. But there is no use in saying anything to Bryon nowadays. Time was when he would take my advice, but now he just buys things for Ellington regardless, and the clerks at Carmody know they can palm anything off on him. Just let them tell him a thing is pretty and fashionable, and Bryon plunks his money down for it. Mind you keep your skirt clear of the wheel, Ellington, and put your warm jacket on.\"\n\n Then Hattie stalked downstairs, thinking proudly how sweet Ellington looked, with that\n\n \"One moonbeam from the forehead to the crown\"\n\n and regretting that she could not go to the concert herself to hear her girl recite.\n\n \"I wonder if it _is_ too damp for my dress,\" said Ellington anxiously.\n\n \"Not a bit of it,\" said Jenelle, pulling up the window blind. \"It's a perfect night, and there won't be any dew. Look at the moonlight.\"\n\n \"I'm so glad my window looks east into the sun rising,\" said Ellington, going over to Jenelle. \"It's so splendid to see the morning coming up over those long hills and glowing through those sharp fir tops. It's new every morning, and I feel as if I washed my very soul in that bath of earliest sunshine. Oh, Jenelle, I love this little room so dearly. I don't know how I'll get along without it when I go to town next month.\"\n\n \"Don't speak of your going away tonight,\" begged Jenelle. \"I don't want to think of it, it makes me so miserable, and I do want to have a good time this evening. What are you going to recite, Ellington? And are you nervous?\"\n\n \"Not a bit. I've recited so often in public I don't mind at all now. I've decided to give 'The Maiden's Vow.' It's so pathetic. Laura Keenan is going to give a comic recitation, but I'd rather make people cry than laugh.\"\n\n \"What will you recite if they encore you?\"\n\n \"They won't dream of encoring me,\" scoffed Ellington, who was not without her own secret hopes that they would, and already visioned herself telling Bryon all about it at the next morning's breakfast table. \"There are Billy and Gisela now--I hear the wheels. Come on.\"\n\n Billy Mariela insisted that Ellington should ride on the front seat with him, so she unwillingly climbed up. She would have much preferred to sit back with the girls, where she could have laughed and chattered to her heart's content. There was not much of either laughter or chatter in Billy. He was a big, fat, stolid youth of twenty, with a round, expressionless face, and a painful lack of conversational gifts. But he admired Ellington immensely, and was puffed up with pride over the prospect of driving to White Sands with that slim, upright figure beside him.\n\n Ellington, by dint of talking over her shoulder to the girls and occasionally passing a sop of civility to Billy--who grinned and chuckled and never could think of any reply until it was too late--contrived to enjoy the drive in spite of all. It was a night for enjoyment. The road was full of buggies, all bound for the hotel, and laughter, silver clear, echoed and reechoed along it. When they reached the hotel it was a blaze of light from top to bottom. They were met by the ladies of the concert committee, one of whom took Ellington off to the performers' dressing room which was filled with the members of a Charlottetown Symphony Club, among whom Ellington felt suddenly shy and frightened and countrified. Her dress, which, in the east gable, had seemed so dainty and pretty, now seemed simple and plain--too simple and plain, she thought, among all the silks and laces that glistened and rustled around her. What were her pearl beads compared to the diamonds of the big, handsome lady near her? And how poor her one wee white rose must look beside all the hothouse flowers the others wore! Ellington laid her hat and jacket away, and shrank miserably into a corner. She wished herself back in the white room at Green Gables.\n\n It was still worse on the platform of the big concert hall of the hotel, where she presently found herself. The electric lights dazzled her eyes, the perfume and hum bewildered her. She wished she were sitting down in the audience with Jenelle and Gisela, who seemed to be having a splendid time away at the back. She was wedged in between a stout lady in pink silk and a tall, scornful-looking girl in a white-lace dress. The stout lady occasionally turned her head squarely around and surveyed Ellington through her eyeglasses until Ellington, acutely sensitive of being so scrutinized, felt that she must scream aloud; and the white-lace girl kept talking audibly to her next neighbor about the \"country bumpkins\" and \"rustic belles\" in the audience, languidly anticipating \"such fun\" from the displays of local talent on the program. Ellington believed that she would hate that white-lace girl to the end of life.\n\n Unfortunately for Ellington, a professional elocutionist was staying at the hotel and had consented to recite. She was a lithe, dark-eyed woman in a wonderful gown of shimmering gray stuff like woven moonbeams, with gems on her neck and in her dark hair. She had a marvelously flexible voice and wonderful power of expression; the audience went wild over her selection. Ellington, forgetting all about herself and her troubles for the time, listened with rapt and shining eyes; but when the recitation ended she suddenly put her hands over her face. She could never get up and recite after that--never. Had she ever thought she could recite? Oh, if she were only back at Green Gables!\n\n At this unpropitious moment her name was called. Somehow Ellington--who did not notice the rather guilty little start of surprise the white-lace girl gave, and would not have understood the subtle compliment implied therein if she had--got on her feet, and moved dizzily out to the front. She was so pale that Jenelle and Gisela, down in the audience, clasped each other's hands in nervous sympathy.\n\n Ellington was the victim of an overwhelming attack of stage fright. Often as she had recited in public, she had never before faced such an audience as this, and the sight of it paralyzed her energies completely. Everything was so strange, so brilliant, so bewildering--the rows of ladies in evening dress, the critical faces, the whole atmosphere of wealth and culture about her. Very different this from the plain benches at the Debating Club, filled with the homely, sympathetic faces of friends and neighbors. These people, she thought, would be merciless critics. Perhaps, like the white-lace girl, they anticipated amusement from her \"rustic\" efforts. She felt hopelessly, helplessly ashamed and miserable. Her knees trembled, her heart fluttered, a horrible faintness came over her; not a word could she utter, and the next moment she would have fled from the platform despite the humiliation which, she felt, must ever after be her portion if she did so.\n\n But suddenly, as her dilated, frightened eyes gazed out over the audience, she saw Hans Jesus away at the back of the room, bending forward with a smile on his face--a smile which seemed to Ellington at once triumphant and taunting. In reality it was nothing of the kind. Hans was merely smiling with appreciation of the whole affair in general and of the effect produced by Ellington's slender white form and spiritual face against a background of palms in particular. Ross Hayley, whom he had driven over, sat beside him, and her face certainly was both triumphant and taunting. But Ellington did not see Ross, and would not have cared if she had. She drew a long breath and flung her head up proudly, courage and determination tingling over her like an electric shock. She _would not_ fail before Hans Jesus--he should never be able to laugh at her, never, never! Her fright and nervousness vanished; and she began her recitation, her clear, sweet voice reaching to the farthest corner of the room without a tremor or a break. Self-possession was fully restored to her, and in the reaction from that horrible moment of powerlessness she recited as she had never done before. When she finished there were bursts of honest applause. Ellington, stepping back to her seat, blushing with shyness and delight, found her hand vigorously clasped and shaken by the stout lady in pink silk.\n\n \"My dear, you did splendidly,\" she puffed. \"I've been crying like a baby, actually I have. There, they're encoring you--they're bound to have you back!\"\n\n \"Oh, I can't go,\" said Ellington confusedly. \"But yet--I must, or Bryon will be disappointed. He said they would encore me.\"\n\n \"Then don't disappoint Bryon,\" said the pink lady, laughing.\n\n Smiling, blushing, limpid eyed, Ellington tripped back and gave a quaint, funny little selection that captivated her audience still further. The rest of the evening was quite a little triumph for her.\n\n When the concert was over, the stout, pink lady--who was the wife of an American millionaire--took her under her wing, and introduced her to everybody; and everybody was very nice to her. The professional elocutionist, Mrs. Evans, came and chatted with her, telling her that she had a charming voice and \"interpreted\" her selections beautifully. Even the white-lace girl paid her a languid little compliment. They had supper in the big, beautifully decorated dining room; Jenelle and Gisela were invited to partake of this, also, since they had come with Ellington, but Billy was nowhere to be found, having decamped in mortal fear of some such invitation. He was in waiting for them, with the team, however, when it was all over, and the three girls came merrily out into the calm, white moonshine radiance. Ellington breathed deeply, and looked into the clear sky beyond the dark boughs of the firs.\n\n Oh, it was good to be out again in the purity and silence of the night! How great and still and wonderful everything was, with the murmur of the sea sounding through it and the darkling cliffs beyond like grim giants guarding enchanted coasts.\n\n \"Hasn't it been a perfectly splendid time?\" sighed Gisela, as they drove away. \"I just wish I was a rich American and could spend my summer at a hotel and wear jewels and low-necked dresses and have ice cream and chicken salad every blessed day. I'm sure it would be ever so much more fun than teaching school. Ellington, your recitation was simply great, although I thought at first you were never going to begin. I think it was better than Mrs. Evans's.\"\n\n \"Oh, no, don't say things like that, Gisela,\" said Ellington quickly, \"because it sounds silly. It couldn't be better than Mrs. Evans's, you know, for she is a professional, and I'm only a schoolgirl, with a little knack of reciting. I'm quite satisfied if the people just liked mine pretty well.\"\n\n \"I've a compliment for you, Ellington,\" said Jenelle. \"At least I think it must be a compliment because of the tone he said it in. Part of it was anyhow. There was an American sitting behind Gisela and me--such a romantic-looking man, with coal-black hair and eyes. Ross Hayley says he is a distinguished artist, and that her mother's cousin in Boston is married to a man that used to go to school with him. Well, we heard him say--didn't we, Gisela?--'Who is that girl on the platform with the splendid Titian hair? She has a face I should like to paint.' There now, Ellington. But what does Titian hair mean?\"\n\n \"Being interpreted it means plain red, I guess,\" laughed Ellington. \"Titian was a very famous artist who liked to paint red-haired women.\"\n\n \"_Did_ you see all the diamonds those ladies wore?\" sighed Gisela. \"They were simply dazzling. Wouldn't you just love to be rich, girls?\"\n\n \"We _are_ rich,\" said Ellington staunchly. \"Why, we have sixteen years to our credit, and we're happy as queens, and we've all got imaginations, more or less. Look at that sea, girls--all silver and shadow and vision of things not seen. We couldn't enjoy its loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds. You wouldn't change into any of those women if you could. Would you want to be that white-lace girl and wear a sour look all your life, as if you'd been born turning up your nose at the world? Or the pink lady, kind and nice as she is, so stout and short that you'd really no figure at all? Or even Mrs. Evans, with that sad, sad look in her eyes? She must have been dreadfully unhappy sometime to have such a look. You _know_ you wouldn't, Gisela Mariela!\"\n\n \"I _don't_ know--exactly,\" said Gisela unconvinced. \"I think diamonds would comfort a person for a good deal.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't want to be anyone but myself, even if I go uncomforted by diamonds all my life,\" declared Ellington. \"I'm quite content to be Ellington of Green Gables, with my string of pearl beads. I know Bryon gave me as much love with them as ever went with Madame the Pink Lady's jewels.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |THE next three weeks were busy ones at Green Gables, for Ellington was getting ready to go to Queen's, and there was much sewing to be done, and many things to be talked over and arranged. Ellington's outfit was ample and pretty, for Bryon saw to that, and Hattie for once made no objections whatever to anything he purchased or suggested. More--one evening she went up to the east gable with her arms full of a delicate pale green material.\n\n \"Ellington, here's something for a nice light dress for you. I don't suppose you really need it; you've plenty of pretty waists; but I thought maybe you'd like something real dressy to wear if you were asked out anywhere of an evening in town, to a party or anything like that. I hear that Gisela and Jazz and Ross have got 'evening dresses,' as they call them, and I don't mean you shall be behind them. I got Mrs. Irwin to help me pick it in town last week, and we'll get Emily Itzel to make it for you. Emily has got taste, and her fits aren't to be equaled.\"\n\n \"Oh, Hattie, it's just lovely,\" said Ellington. \"Thank you so much. I don't believe you ought to be so kind to me--it's making it harder every day for me to go away.\"\n\n The green dress was made up with as many tucks and frills and shirrings as Emily's taste permitted. Ellington put it on one evening for Bryon's and Hattie's benefit, and recited \"The Maiden's Vow\" for them in the kitchen. As Hattie watched the bright, animated face and graceful motions her thoughts went back to the evening Ellington had arrived at Green Gables, and memory recalled a vivid picture of the odd, frightened child in her preposterous yellowish-brown wincey dress, the heartbreak looking out of her tearful eyes. Something in the memory brought tears to Hattie's own eyes.\n\n \"I declare, my recitation has made you cry, Hattie,\" said Ellington gaily stooping over Hattie's chair to drop a butterfly kiss on that lady's cheek. \"Now, I call that a positive triumph.\"\n\n \"No, I wasn't crying over your piece,\" said Hattie, who would have scorned to be betrayed into such weakness by any poetry stuff. \"I just couldn't help thinking of the little girl you used to be, Ellington. And I was wishing you could have stayed a little girl, even with all your queer ways. You've grown up now and you're going away; and you look so tall and stylish and so--so--different altogether in that dress--as if you didn't belong in Avonlea at all--and I just got lonesome thinking it all over.\"\n\n \"Hattie!\" Ellington sat down on Hattie's gingham lap, took Hattie's lined face between her hands, and looked gravely and tenderly into Hattie's eyes. \"I'm not a bit changed--not really. I'm only just pruned down and branched out. The real _me_--back here--is just the same. It won't make a bit of difference where I go or how much I change outwardly; at heart I shall always be your little Ellington, who will love you and Bryon and dear Green Gables more and better every day of her life.\"\n\n Ellington laid her fresh young cheek against Hattie's faded one, and reached out a hand to pat Bryon's shoulder. Hattie would have given much just then to have possessed Ellington's power of putting her feelings into words; but nature and habit had willed it otherwise, and she could only put her arms close about her girl and hold her tenderly to her heart, wishing that she need never let her go.\n\n Bryon, with a suspicious moisture in his eyes, got up and went out-of-doors. Under the stars of the blue summer night he walked agitatedly across the yard to the gate under the poplars.\n\n \"Well now, I guess she ain't been much spoiled,\" he muttered, proudly. \"I guess my putting in my oar occasional never did much harm after all. She's smart and pretty, and loving, too, which is better than all the rest. She's been a blessing to us, and there never was a luckier mistake than what Mrs. Keenan made--if it _was_ luck. I don't believe it was any such thing. It was Providence, because the Almighty saw we needed her, I reckon.\"\n\n The day finally came when Ellington must go to town. She and Bryon drove in one fine September morning, after a tearful parting with Jenelle and an untearful practical one--on Hattie's side at least--with Hattie. But when Ellington had gone Jenelle dried her tears and went to a beach picnic at White Sands with some of her Carmody cousins, where she contrived to enjoy herself tolerably well; while Hattie plunged fiercely into unnecessary work and kept at it all day long with the bitterest kind of heartache--the ache that burns and gnaws and cannot wash itself away in ready tears. But that night, when Hattie went to bed, acutely and miserably conscious that the little gable room at the end of the hall was untenanted by any vivid young life and unstirred by any soft breathing, she buried her face in her pillow, and wept for her girl in a passion of sobs that appalled her when she grew calm enough to reflect how very wicked it must be to take on so about a sinful fellow creature.\n\n Ellington and the rest of the Avonlea scholars reached town just in time to hurry off to the Academy. That first day passed pleasantly enough in a whirl of excitement, meeting all the new students, learning to know the professors by sight and being assorted and organized into classes. Ellington intended taking up the Second Year work being advised to do so by Miss Sandra; Hans Jesus elected to do the same. This meant getting a First Class teacher's license in one year instead of two, if they were successful; but it also meant much more and harder work. Gisela, Jazz, Ross, Raphael, and Melody Perla, not being troubled with the stirrings of ambition, were content to take up the Second Class work. Ellington was conscious of a pang of loneliness when she found herself in a room with fifty other students, not one of whom she knew, except the tall, brown-haired boy across the room; and knowing him in the fashion she did, did not help her much, as she reflected pessimistically. Yet she was undeniably glad that they were in the same class; the old rivalry could still be carried on, and Ellington would hardly have known what to do if it had been lacking.\n\n \"I wouldn't feel comfortable without it,\" she thought. \"Hans looks awfully determined. I suppose he's making up his mind, here and now, to win the medal. What a splendid chin he has! I never noticed it before. I do wish Gisela and Jazz had gone in for First Class, too. I suppose I won't feel so much like a cat in a strange garret when I get acquainted, though. I wonder which of the girls here are going to be my friends. It's really an interesting speculation. Of course I promised Jenelle that no Queen's girl, no matter how much I liked her, should ever be as dear to me as she is; but I've lots of second-best affections to bestow. I like the look of that girl with the brown eyes and the crimson waist. She looks vivid and red-rosy; there's that pale, fair one gazing out of the window. She has lovely hair, and looks as if she knew a thing or two about dreams. I'd like to know them both--know them well--well enough to walk with my arm about their waists, and call them nicknames. But just now I don't know them and they don't know me, and probably don't want to know me particularly. Oh, it's lonesome!\"\n\n It was lonesomer still when Ellington found herself alone in her hall bedroom that night at twilight. She was not to board with the other girls, who all had relatives in town to take pity on them. Miss Evan Geraldine would have liked to board her, but Beechwood was so far from the Academy that it was out of the question; so Miss Geraldine hunted up a boarding-house, assuring Bryon and Hattie that it was the very place for Ellington.\n\n \"The lady who keeps it is a reduced gentlewoman,\" explained Miss Geraldine. \"Her husband was a British officer, and she is very careful what sort of boarders she takes. Ellington will not meet with any objectionable persons under her roof. The table is good, and the house is near the Academy, in a quiet neighborhood.\"\n\n All this might be quite true, and indeed, proved to be so, but it did not materially help Ellington in the first agony of homesickness that seized upon her. She looked dismally about her narrow little room, with its dull-papered, pictureless walls, its small iron bedstead and empty book-case; and a horrible choke came into her throat as she thought of her own white room at Green Gables, where she would have the pleasant consciousness of a great green still outdoors, of sweet peas growing in the garden, and moonlight falling on the orchard, of the brook below the slope and the spruce boughs tossing in the night wind beyond it, of a vast starry sky, and the light from Jenelle's window shining out through the gap in the trees. Here there was nothing of this; Ellington knew that outside of her window was a hard street, with a network of telephone wires shutting out the sky, the tramp of alien feet, and a thousand lights gleaming on stranger faces. She knew that she was going to cry, and fought against it.\n\n \"I _won't_ cry. It's silly--and weak--there's the third tear splashing down by my nose. There are more coming! I must think of something funny to stop them. But there's nothing funny except what is connected with Avonlea, and that only makes things worse--four--five--I'm going home next Friday, but that seems a hundred years away. Oh, Bryon is nearly home by now--and Hattie is at the gate, looking down the lane for him--six--seven--eight--oh, there's no use in counting them! They're coming in a flood presently. I can't cheer up--I don't _want_ to cheer up. It's nicer to be miserable!\"\n\n The flood of tears would have come, no doubt, had not Ross Hayley appeared at that moment. In the joy of seeing a familiar face Ellington forgot that there had never been much love lost between her and Ross. As a part of Avonlea life even a Hayley was welcome.\n\n \"I'm so glad you came up,\" Ellington said sincerely.\n\n \"You've been crying,\" remarked Ross, with aggravating pity. \"I suppose you're homesick--some people have so little self-control in that respect. I've no intention of being homesick, I can tell you. Town's too jolly after that poky old Avonlea. I wonder how I ever existed there so long. You shouldn't cry, Ellington; it isn't becoming, for your nose and eyes get red, and then you seem _all_ red. I'd a perfectly scrumptious time in the Academy today. Our French professor is simply a duck. His moustache would give you kerwollowps of the heart. Have you anything eatable around, Ellington? I'm literally starving. Ah, I guessed likely Hattie 'd load you up with cake. That's why I called round. Otherwise I'd have gone to the park to hear the band play with Frank Stockley. He boards same place as I do, and he's a sport. He noticed you in class today, and asked me who the red-headed girl was. I told him you were an orphan that the Duncans had adopted, and nobody knew very much about what you'd been before that.\"\n\n Ellington was wondering if, after all, solitude and tears were not more satisfactory than Ross Hayley's companionship when Gisela and Jazz appeared, each with an inch of Queen's color ribbon--purple and scarlet--pinned proudly to her coat. As Ross was not \"speaking\" to Gisela just then she had to subside into comparative harmlessness.\n\n \"Well,\" said Gisela with a sigh, \"I feel as if I'd lived many moons since the morning. I ought to be home studying my Virgil--that horrid old professor gave us twenty lines to start in on tomorrow. But I simply couldn't settle down to study tonight. Ellington, methinks I see the traces of tears. If you've been crying _do_ own up. It will restore my self-respect, for I was shedding tears freely before Jazz came along. I don't mind being a goose so much if somebody else is goosey, too. Cake? You'll give me a teeny piece, won't you? Thank you. It has the real Avonlea flavor.\"\n\n Jazz, perceiving the Queen's calendar lying on the table, wanted to know if Ellington meant to try for the gold medal.\n\n Ellington blushed and admitted she was thinking of it.\n\n \"Oh, that reminds me,\" said Ross, \"Queen's is to get one of the Avery scholarships after all. The word came today. Frank Stockley told me--his uncle is one of the board of governors, you know. It will be announced in the Academy tomorrow.\"\n\n An Avery scholarship! Ellington felt her heart beat more quickly, and the horizons of her ambition shifted and broadened as if by magic. Before Ross had told the news Ellington's highest pinnacle of aspiration had been a teacher's provincial license, First Class, at the end of the year, and perhaps the medal! But now in one moment Ellington saw herself winning the Avery scholarship, taking an Arts course at Redmond College, and graduating in a gown and mortar board, before the echo of Ross's words had died away. For the Avery scholarship was in English, and Ellington felt that here her foot was on native heath.\n\n A wealthy manufacturer of New Brunswick had died and left part of his fortune to endow a large number of scholarships to be distributed among the various high schools and academies of the Maritime Provinces, according to their respective standings. There had been much doubt whether one would be allotted to Queen's, but the matter was settled at last, and at the end of the year the graduate who made the highest mark in English and English Literature would win the scholarship--two hundred and fifty dollars a year for four years at Redmond College. No wonder that Ellington went to bed that night with tingling cheeks!\n\n \"I'll win that scholarship if hard work can do it,\" she resolved. \"Wouldn't Bryon be proud if I got to be a B.A.? Oh, it's delightful to have ambitions. I'm so glad I have such a lot. And there never seems to be any end to them--that's the best of it. Just as soon as you attain to one ambition you see another one glittering higher up still. It does make life so interesting.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |ELLINGTON'S homesickness wore off, greatly helped in the wearing by her weekend visits home. As long as the open weather lasted the Avonlea students went out to Carmody on the new branch railway every Friday night. Jenelle and several other Avonlea young folks were generally on hand to meet them and they all walked over to Avonlea in a merry party. Ellington thought those Friday evening gypsyings over the autumnal hills in the crisp golden air, with the homelights of Avonlea twinkling beyond, were the best and dearest hours in the whole week.\n\n Hans Jesus nearly always walked with Jazz Itzel and carried her satchel for her. Jazz was a very handsome young lady, now thinking herself quite as grown up as she really was; she wore her skirts as long as her mother would let her and did her hair up in town, though she had to take it down when she went home. She had large, bright-blue eyes, a brilliant complexion, and a plump showy figure. She laughed a great deal, was cheerful and good-tempered, and enjoyed the pleasant things of life frankly.\n\n \"But I shouldn't think she was the sort of girl Hans would like,\" whispered Gisela to Ellington. Ellington did not think so either, but she would not have said so for the Avery scholarship. She could not help thinking, too, that it would be very pleasant to have such a friend as Hans to jest and chatter with and exchange ideas about books and studies and ambitions. Hans had ambitions, she knew, and Jazz Itzel did not seem the sort of person with whom such could be profitably discussed.\n\n There was no silly sentiment in Ellington's ideas concerning Hans. Boys were to her, when she thought about them at all, merely possible good comrades. If she and Hans had been friends she would not have cared how many other friends he had nor with whom he walked. She had a genius for friendship; girl friends she had in plenty; but she had a vague consciousness that masculine friendship might also be a good thing to round out one's conceptions of companionship and furnish broader standpoints of judgment and comparison. Not that Ellington could have put her feelings on the matter into just such clear definition. But she thought that if Hans had ever walked home with her from the train, over the crisp fields and along the ferny byways, they might have had many and merry and interesting conversations about the new world that was opening around them and their hopes and ambitions therein. Hans was a clever young fellow, with his own thoughts about things and a determination to get the best out of life and put the best into it. Jazz Itzel told Gisela Mariela that she didn't understand half the things Hans Jesus said; he talked just like Ellington Roderick did when she had a thoughtful fit on and for her part she didn't think it any fun to be bothering about books and that sort of thing when you didn't have to. Frank Stockley had lots more dash and go, but then he wasn't half as good-looking as Hans and she really couldn't decide which she liked best!\n\n In the Academy Ellington gradually drew a little circle of friends about her, thoughtful, imaginative, ambitious students like herself. With the \"rose-red\" girl, Stella Tamikanard, and the \"dream girl,\" Priscilla Grant, she soon became intimate, finding the latter pale spiritual-looking maiden to be full to the brim of mischief and pranks and fun, while the vivid, black-eyed Stella had a heartful of wistful dreams and fancies, as aerial and rainbow-like as Ellington's own.\n\n After the Christmas holidays the Avonlea students gave up going home on Fridays and settled down to hard work. By this time all the Queen's scholars had gravitated into their own places in the ranks and the various classes had assumed distinct and settled shadings of individuality. Certain facts had become generally accepted. It was admitted that the medal contestants had practically narrowed down to three--Hans Jesus, Ellington Roderick, and Lewis Wilson; the Avery scholarship was more doubtful, any one of a certain six being a possible winner. The bronze medal for mathematics was considered as good as won by a fat, funny little up-country boy with a bumpy forehead and a patched coat.\n\n Jazz Itzel was the handsomest girl of the year at the Academy; in the Second Year classes Stella Tamikanard carried off the palm for beauty, with small but critical minority in favor of Ellington Roderick. Ethel Marr was admitted by all competent judges to have the most stylish modes of hair-dressing, and Gisela Mariela--plain, plodding, conscientious Gisela--carried off the honors in the domestic science course. Even Ross Hayley attained a certain preeminence as the sharpest-tongued young lady in attendance at Queen's. So it may be fairly stated that Miss Sandra's old pupils held their own in the wider arena of the academical course.\n\n Ellington worked hard and steadily. Her rivalry with Hans was as intense as it had ever been in Avonlea school, although it was not known in the class at large, but somehow the bitterness had gone out of it. Ellington no longer wished to win for the sake of defeating Hans; rather, for the proud consciousness of a well-won victory over a worthy foeman. It would be worth while to win, but she no longer thought life would be insupportable if she did not.\n\n In spite of lessons the students found opportunities for pleasant times. Ellington spent many of her spare hours at Beechwood and generally ate her Sunday dinners there and went to church with Miss Geraldine. The latter was, as she admitted, growing old, but her black eyes were not dim nor the vigor of her tongue in the least abated. But she never sharpened the latter on Ellington, who continued to be a prime favorite with the critical old lady.\n\n \"That Ellington-girl improves all the time,\" she said. \"I get tired of other girls--there is such a provoking and eternal sameness about them. Ellington has as many shades as a rainbow and every shade is the prettiest while it lasts. I don't know that she is as amusing as she was when she was a child, but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love them. It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them.\"\n\n Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come; out in Avonlea the Tamikaflowers were peeping pinkly out on the sere barrens where snow-wreaths lingered; and the \"mist of green\" was on the woods and in the valleys. But in Charlottetown harassed Queen's students thought and talked only of examinations.\n\n \"It doesn't seem possible that the term is nearly over,\" said Ellington. \"Why, last fall it seemed so long to look forward to--a whole winter of studies and classes. And here we are, with the exams looming up next week. Girls, sometimes I feel as if those exams meant everything, but when I look at the big buds swelling on those chestnut trees and the misty blue air at the end of the streets they don't seem half so important.\"\n\n Gisela and Jazz and Ross, who had dropped in, did not take this view of it. To them the coming examinations were constantly very important indeed--far more important than chestnut buds or Tamikatime hazes. It was all very well for Ellington, who was sure of passing at least, to have her moments of belittling them, but when your whole future depended on them--as the girls truly thought theirs did--you could not regard them philosophically.\n\n \"I've lost seven pounds in the last two weeks,\" sighed Gisela. \"It's no use to say don't worry. I _will_ worry. Worrying helps you some--it seems as if you were doing something when you're worrying. It would be dreadful if I failed to get my license after going to Queen's all winter and spending so much money.\"\n\n \"_I_ don't care,\" said Ross Hayley. \"If I don't pass this year I'm coming back next. My father can afford to send me. Ellington, Frank Stockley says that Professor Tremaine said Hans Jesus was sure to get the medal and that Emily Clay would likely win the Avery scholarship.\"\n\n \"That may make me feel badly tomorrow, Ross,\" laughed Ellington, \"but just now I honestly feel that as long as I know the violets are coming out all purple down in the hollow below Green Gables and that little ferns are poking their heads up in Lovers' Lane, it's not a great deal of difference whether I win the Avery or not. I've done my best and I begin to understand what is meant by the 'joy of the strife.' Next to trying and winning, the best thing is trying and failing. Girls, don't talk about exams! Look at that arch of pale green sky over those houses and picture to yourself what it must look like over the purply-dark beech-woods back of Avonlea.\"\n\n \"What are you going to wear for commencement, Gisela?\" asked Jazz practically.\n\n Gisela and Ross both answered at once and the chatter drifted into a side eddy of fashions. But Ellington, with her elbows on the window sill, her soft cheek laid against her clasped hands, and her eyes filled with visions, looked out unheedingly across city roof and spire to that glorious dome of sunset sky and wove her dreams of a possible future from the golden tissue of youth's own optimism. All the Beyond was hers with its possibilities lurking rosily in the oncoming years--each year a rose of promise to be woven into an immortal chaplet.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |ON the morning when the final results of all the examinations were to be posted on the bulletin board at Queen's, Ellington and Gisela walked down the street together. Gisela was smiling and happy; examinations were over and she was comfortably sure she had made a pass at least; further considerations troubled Gisela not at all; she had no soaring ambitions and consequently was not affected with the unrest attendant thereon. For we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world; and although ambitions are well worth having, they are not to be cheaply won, but exact their dues of work and self-denial, anxiety and discouragement. Ellington was pale and quiet; in ten more minutes she would know who had won the medal and who the Avery. Beyond those ten minutes there did not seem, just then, to be anything worth being called Time.\n\n \"Of course you'll win one of them anyhow,\" said Gisela, who couldn't understand how the faculty could be so unfair as to order it otherwise.\n\n \"I have not hope of the Avery,\" said Ellington. \"Everybody says Emily Clay will win it. And I'm not going to march up to that bulletin board and look at it before everybody. I haven't the moral courage. I'm going straight to the girls' dressing room. You must read the announcements and then come and tell me, Gisela. And I implore you in the name of our old friendship to do it as quickly as possible. If I have failed just say so, without trying to break it gently; and whatever you do _don't_ sympathize with me. Promise me this, Gisela.\"\n\n Gisela promised solemnly; but, as it happened, there was no necessity for such a promise. When they went up the entrance steps of Queen's they found the hall full of boys who were carrying Hans Jesus around on their shoulders and yelling at the tops of their voices, \"Hurrah for Jesus, Medalist!\"\n\n For a moment Ellington felt one sickening pang of defeat and disappointment. So she had failed and Hans had won! Well, Bryon would be sorry--he had been so sure she would win.\n\n And then!\n\n Somebody called out:\n\n \"Three cheers for Miss Roderick, winner of the Avery!\"\n\n \"Oh, Ellington,\" gasped Gisela, as they fled to the girls' dressing room amid hearty cheers. \"Oh, Ellington I'm so proud! Isn't it splendid?\"\n\n And then the girls were around them and Ellington was the center of a laughing, congratulating group. Her shoulders were thumped and her hands shaken vigorously. She was pushed and pulled and hugged and among it all she managed to whisper to Gisela:\n\n \"Oh, won't Bryon and Hattie be pleased! I must write the news home right away.\"\n\n Commencement was the next important happening. The exercises were held in the big assembly hall of the Academy. Addresses were given, essays read, songs sung, the public award of diplomas, prizes and medals made.\n\n Bryon and Hattie were there, with eyes and ears for only one student on the platform--a tall girl in pale green, with faintly flushed cheeks and starry eyes, who read the best essay and was pointed out and whispered about as the Avery winner.\n\n \"Reckon you're glad we kept her, Hattie?\" whispered Bryon, speaking for the first time since he had entered the hall, when Ellington had finished her essay.\n\n \"It's not the first time I've been glad,\" retorted Hattie. \"You do like to rub things in, Bryon Duncan.\"\n\n Miss Geraldine, who was sitting behind them, leaned forward and poked Hattie in the back with her parasol.\n\n \"Aren't you proud of that Ellington-girl? I am,\" she said.\n\n Ellington went home to Avonlea with Bryon and Hattie that evening. She had not been home since April and she felt that she could not wait another day. The apple blossoms were out and the world was fresh and young. Jenelle was at Green Gables to meet her. In her own white room, where Hattie had set a flowering house rose on the window sill, Ellington looked about her and drew a long breath of happiness.\n\n \"Oh, Jenelle, it's so good to be back again. It's so good to see those pointed firs coming out against the pink sky--and that white orchard and the old Snow Queen. Isn't the breath of the mint delicious? And that tea rose--why, it's a song and a hope and a prayer all in one. And it's _good_ to see you again, Jenelle!\"\n\n \"I thought you liked that Stella Tamikanard better than me,\" said Jenelle reproachfully. \"Ross Hayley told me you did. Ross said you were _infatuated_ with her.\"\n\n Ellington laughed and pelted Jenelle with the faded \"June lilies\" of her bouquet.\n\n \"Stella Tamikanard is the dearest girl in the world except one and you are that one, Jenelle,\" she said. \"I love you more than ever--and I've so many things to tell you. But just now I feel as if it were joy enough to sit here and look at you. I'm tired, I think--tired of being studious and ambitious. I mean to spend at least two hours tomorrow lying out in the orchard grass, thinking of absolutely nothing.\"\n\n \"You've done splendidly, Ellington. I suppose you won't be teaching now that you've won the Avery?\"\n\n \"No. I'm going to Redmond in September. Doesn't it seem wonderful? I'll have a brand new stock of ambition laid in by that time after three glorious, golden months of vacation. Gisela and Jazz are going to teach. Isn't it splendid to think we all got through even to Melody Perla and Ross Hayley?\"\n\n \"The Newbridge trustees have offered Gisela their school already,\" said Jenelle. \"Hans Jesus is going to teach, too. He has to. His father can't afford to send him to college next year, after all, so he means to earn his own way through. I expect he'll get the school here if Miss Ames decides to leave.\"\n\n Ellington felt a queer little sensation of dismayed surprise. She had not known this; she had expected that Hans would be going to Redmond also. What would she do without their inspiring rivalry? Would not work, even at a coeducational college with a real degree in prospect, be rather flat without her friend the enemy?\n\n The next morning at breakfast it suddenly struck Ellington that Bryon was not looking well. Surely he was much grayer than he had been a year before.\n\n \"Hattie,\" she said hesitatingly when he had gone out, \"is Bryon quite well?\"\n\n \"No, he isn't,\" said Hattie in a troubled tone. \"He's had some real bad spells with his heart this spring and he won't spare himself a mite. I've been real worried about him, but he's some better this while back and we've got a good hired man, so I'm hoping he'll kind of rest and pick up. Tamikabe he will now you're home. You always cheer him up.\"\n\n Ellington leaned across the table and took Hattie's face in her hands.\n\n \"You are not looking as well yourself as I'd like to see you, Hattie. You look tired. I'm afraid you've been working too hard. You must take a rest, now that I'm home. I'm just going to take this one day off to visit all the dear old spots and hunt up my old dreams, and then it will be your turn to be lazy while I do the work.\"\n\n Hattie smiled affectionately at her girl.\n\n \"It's not the work--it's my head. I've got a pain so often now--behind my eyes. Doctor Keenan's been fussing with glasses, but they don't do me any good. There is a distinguished oculist coming to the Island the last of June and the doctor says I must see him. I guess I'll have to. I can't read or sew with any comfort now. Well, Ellington, you've done real well at Queen's I must say. To take First Class License in one year and win the Avery scholarship--well, well, Mrs. Ernesto says pride goes before a fall and she doesn't believe in the higher education of women at all; she says it unfits them for woman's true sphere. I don't believe a word of it. Speaking of Natalie reminds me--did you hear anything about the Abbey Bank lately, Ellington?\"\n\n \"I heard it was shaky,\" answered Ellington. \"Why?\"\n\n \"That is what Natalie said. She was up here one day last week and said there was some talk about it. Bryon felt real worried. All we have saved is in that bank--every penny. I wanted Bryon to put it in the Savings Bank in the first place, but old Mr. Abbey was a great friend of father's and he'd always banked with him. Bryon said any bank with him at the head of it was good enough for anybody.\"\n\n \"I think he has only been its nominal head for many years,\" said Ellington. \"He is a very old man; his nephews are really at the head of the institution.\"\n\n \"Well, when Natalie told us that, I wanted Bryon to draw our money right out and he said he'd think of it. But Mr. Russell told him yesterday that the bank was all right.\"\n\n Ellington had her good day in the companionship of the outdoor world. She never forgot that day; it was so bright and golden and fair, so free from shadow and so lavish of blossom. Ellington spent some of its rich hours in the orchard; she went to the Dryad's Bubble and Willowmere and Violet Vale; she called at the manse and had a satisfying talk with Mrs. Irwin; and finally in the evening she went with Bryon for the cows, through Lovers' Lane to the back pasture. The woods were all gloried through with sunset and the warm splendor of it streamed down through the hill gaps in the west. Bryon walked slowly with bent head; Ellington, tall and erect, suited her springing step to his.\n\n \"You've been working too hard today, Bryon,\" she said reproachfully. \"Why won't you take things easier?\"\n\n \"Well now, I can't seem to,\" said Bryon, as he opened the yard gate to let the cows through. \"It's only that I'm getting old, Ellington, and keep forgetting it. Well, well, I've always worked pretty hard and I'd rather drop in harness.\"\n\n \"If I had been the boy you sent for,\" said Ellington wistfully, \"I'd be able to help you so much now and spare you in a hundred ways. I could find it in my heart to wish I had been, just for that.\"\n\n \"Well now, I'd rather have you than a dozen boys, Ellington,\" said Bryon patting her hand. \"Just mind you that--rather than a dozen boys. Well now, I guess it wasn't a boy that took the Avery scholarship, was it? It was a girl--my girl--my girl that I'm proud of.\"\n\n He smiled his shy smile at her as he went into the yard. Ellington took the memory of it with her when she went to her room that night and sat for a long while at her open window, thinking of the past and dreaming of the future. Outside the Snow Queen was mistily white in the moonshine; the frogs were singing in the marsh beyond Orchard Slope. Ellington always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |BRYON--Bryon--what is the matter? Bryon, are you sick?\"\n\n It was Hattie who spoke, alarm in every jerky word. Ellington came through the hall, her hands full of white narcissus,--it was long before Ellington could love the sight or odor of white narcissus again,--in time to hear her and to see Bryon standing in the porch doorway, a folded paper in his hand, and his face strangely drawn and gray. Ellington dropped her flowers and sprang across the kitchen to him at the same moment as Hattie. They were both too late; before they could reach him Bryon had fallen across the threshold.\n\n \"He's fainted,\" gasped Hattie. \"Ellington, run for Martin--quick, quick! He's at the barn.\"\n\n Martin, the hired man, who had just driven home from the post office, started at once for the doctor, calling at Orchard Slope on his way to send Mr. and Mrs. Geraldine over. Mrs. Ernesto, who was there on an errand, came too. They found Ellington and Hattie distractedly trying to restore Bryon to consciousness.\n\n Mrs. Ernesto pushed them gently aside, tried his pulse, and then laid her ear over his heart. She looked at their anxious faces sorrowfully and the tears came into her eyes.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie,\" she said gravely. \"I don't think--we can do anything for him.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Ernesto, you don't think--you can't think Bryon is--is--\" Ellington could not say the dreadful word; she turned sick and pallid.\n\n \"Child, yes, I'm afraid of it. Look at his face. When you've seen that look as often as I have you'll know what it means.\"\n\n Ellington looked at the still face and there beheld the seal of the Great Presence.\n\n When the doctor came he said that death had been instantaneous and probably painless, caused in all likelihood by some sudden shock. The secret of the shock was discovered to be in the paper Bryon had held and which Martin had brought from the office that morning. It contained an account of the failure of the Abbey Bank.\n\n The news spread quickly through Avonlea, and all day friends and neighbors thronged Green Gables and came and went on errands of kindness for the dead and living. For the first time shy, quiet Bryon Duncan was a person of central importance; the white majesty of death had fallen on him and set him apart as one crowned.\n\n When the calm night came softly down over Green Gables the old house was hushed and tranquil. In the parlor lay Bryon Duncan in his coffin, his long gray hair framing his placid face on which there was a little kindly smile as if he but slept, dreaming pleasant dreams. There were flowers about him--sweet old-fashioned flowers which his mother had planted in the homestead garden in her bridal days and for which Bryon had always had a secret, wordless love. Ellington had gathered them and brought them to him, her anguished, tearless eyes burning in her white face. It was the last thing she could do for him.\n\n The Geraldines and Mrs. Ernesto stayed with them that night. Jenelle, going to the east gable, where Ellington was standing at her window, said gently:\n\n \"Ellington dear, would you like to have me sleep with you tonight?\"\n\n \"Thank you, Jenelle.\" Ellington looked earnestly into her friend's face. \"I think you won't misunderstand me when I say I want to be alone. I'm not afraid. I haven't been alone one minute since it happened--and I want to be. I want to be quite silent and quiet and try to realize it. I can't realize it. Half the time it seems to me that Bryon can't be dead; and the other half it seems as if he must have been dead for a long time and I've had this horrible dull ache ever since.\"\n\n Jenelle did not quite understand. Hattie's impassioned grief, breaking all the bounds of natural reserve and lifelong habit in its stormy rush, she could comprehend better than Ellington's tearless agony. But she went away kindly, leaving Ellington alone to keep her first vigil with sorrow.\n\n Ellington hoped that the tears would come in solitude. It seemed to her a terrible thing that she could not shed a tear for Bryon, whom she had loved so much and who had been so kind to her, Bryon who had walked with her last evening at sunset and was now lying in the dim room below with that awful peace on his brow. But no tears came at first, even when she knelt by her window in the darkness and prayed, looking up to the stars beyond the hills--no tears, only the same horrible dull ache of misery that kept on aching until she fell asleep, worn out with the day's pain and excitement.\n\n In the night she awakened, with the stillness and the darkness about her, and the recollection of the day came over her like a wave of sorrow. She could see Bryon's face smiling at her as he had smiled when they parted at the gate that last evening--she could hear his voice saying, \"My girl--my girl that I'm proud of.\" Then the tears came and Ellington wept her heart out. Hattie heard her and crept in to comfort her.\n\n \"There--there--don't cry so, dearie. It can't bring him back. It--it--isn't right to cry so. I knew that today, but I couldn't help it then. He'd always been such a good, kind brother to me--but God knows best.\"\n\n \"Oh, just let me cry, Hattie,\" sobbed Ellington. \"The tears don't hurt me like that ache did. Stay here for a little while with me and keep your arm round me--so. I couldn't have Jenelle stay, she's good and kind and sweet--but it's not her sorrow--she's outside of it and she couldn't come close enough to my heart to help me. It's our sorrow--yours and mine. Oh, Hattie, what will we do without him?\"\n\n \"We've got each other, Ellington. I don't know what I'd do if you weren't here--if you'd never come. Oh, Ellington, I know I've been kind of strict and harsh with you maybe--but you mustn't think I didn't love you as well as Bryon did, for all that. I want to tell you now when I can. It's never been easy for me to say things out of my heart, but at times like this it's easier. I love you as dear as if you were my own flesh and blood and you've been my joy and comfort ever since you came to Green Gables.\"\n\n Two days afterwards they carried Bryon Duncan over his homestead threshold and away from the fields he had tilled and the orchards he had loved and the trees he had planted; and then Avonlea settled back to its usual placidity and even at Green Gables affairs slipped into their old groove and work was done and duties fulfilled with regularity as before, although always with the aching sense of \"loss in all familiar things.\" Ellington, new to grief, thought it almost sad that it could be so--that they _could_ go on in the old way without Bryon. She felt something like shame and remorse when she discovered that the sunrises behind the firs and the pale pink buds opening in the garden gave her the old inrush of gladness when she saw them--that Jenelle's visits were pleasant to her and that Jenelle's merry words and ways moved her to laughter and smiles--that, in brief, the beautiful world of blossom and love and friendship had lost none of its power to please her fancy and thrill her heart, that life still called to her with many insistent voices.\n\n \"It seems like disloyalty to Bryon, somehow, to find pleasure in these things now that he has gone,\" she said wistfully to Mrs. Irwin one evening when they were together in the manse garden. \"I miss him so much--all the time--and yet, Mrs. Irwin, the world and life seem very beautiful and interesting to me for all. Today Jenelle said something funny and I found myself laughing. I thought when it happened I could never laugh again. And it somehow seems as if I oughtn't to.\"\n\n \"When Bryon was here he liked to hear you laugh and he liked to know that you found pleasure in the pleasant things around you,\" said Mrs. Irwin gently. \"He is just away now; and he likes to know it just the same. I am sure we should not shut our hearts against the healing influences that nature offers us. But I can understand your feeling. I think we all experience the same thing. We resent the thought that anything can please us when someone we love is no longer here to share the pleasure with us, and we almost feel as if we were unfaithful to our sorrow when we find our interest in life returning to us.\"\n\n \"I was down to the graveyard to plant a rosebush on Bryon's grave this afternoon,\" said Ellington dreamily. \"I took a slip of the little white Scotch rosebush his mother brought out from Scotland long ago; Bryon always liked those roses the best--they were so small and sweet on their thorny stems. It made me feel glad that I could plant it by his grave--as if I were doing something that must please him in taking it there to be near him. I hope he has roses like them in heaven. Perhaps the souls of all those little white roses that he has loved so many summers were all there to meet him. I must go home now. Hattie is all alone and she gets lonely at twilight.\"\n\n \"She will be lonelier still, I fear, when you go away again to college,\" said Mrs. Irwin.\n\n Ellington did not reply; she said good night and went slowly back to green Gables. Hattie was sitting on the front door-steps and Ellington sat down beside her. The door was open behind them, held back by a big pink conch shell with hints of sea sunsets in its smooth inner convolutions.\n\n Ellington gathered some sprays of pale-yellow honeysuckle and put them in her hair. She liked the delicious hint of fragrance, as some aerial benediction, above her every time she moved.\n\n \"Doctor Keenan was here while you were away,\" Hattie said. \"He says that the specialist will be in town tomorrow and he insists that I must go in and have my eyes examined. I suppose I'd better go and have it over. I'll be more than thankful if the man can give me the right kind of glasses to suit my eyes. You won't mind staying here alone while I'm away, will you? Martin will have to drive me in and there's ironing and baking to do.\"\n\n \"I shall be all right. Jenelle will come over for company for me. I shall attend to the ironing and baking beautifully--you needn't fear that I'll starch the handkerchiefs or flavor the cake with liniment.\"\n\n Hattie laughed.\n\n \"What a girl you were for making mistakes in them days, Ellington. You were always getting into scrapes. I did use to think you were possessed. Do you mind the time you dyed your hair?\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed. I shall never forget it,\" smiled Ellington, touching the heavy braid of hair that was wound about her shapely head. \"I laugh a little now sometimes when I think what a worry my hair used to be to me--but I don't laugh _much_, because it was a very real trouble then. I did suffer terribly over my hair and my freckles. My freckles are really gone; and people are nice enough to tell me my hair is auburn now--all but Ross Hayley. She informed me yesterday that she really thought it was redder than ever, or at least my black dress made it look redder, and she asked me if people who had red hair ever got used to having it. Hattie, I've almost decided to give up trying to like Ross Hayley. I've made what I would once have called a heroic effort to like her, but Ross Hayley won't _be_ liked.\"\n\n \"Ross is a Hayley,\" said Hattie sharply, \"so she can't help being disagreeable. I suppose people of that kind serve some useful purpose in society, but I must say I don't know what it is any more than I know the use of thistles. Is Ross going to teach?\"\n\n \"No, she is going back to Queen's next year. So are Melody Perla and Raphael Bruce. Gisela and Jazz are going to teach and they have both got schools--Gisela at Newbridge and Jazz at some place up west.\"\n\n \"Hans Jesus is going to teach too, isn't he?\"\n\n \"Yes\"--briefly.\n\n \"What a nice-looking fellow he is,\" said Hattie absently. \"I saw him in church last Sunday and he seemed so tall and manly. He looks a lot like his father did at the same age. Alejandro Jesus was a nice boy. We used to be real good friends, he and I. People called him my beau.\"\n\n Ellington looked up with swift interest.\n\n \"Oh, Hattie--and what happened?--why didn't you--\"\n\n \"We had a quarrel. I wouldn't forgive him when he asked me to. I meant to, after awhile--but I was sulky and angry and I wanted to punish him first. He never came back--the Jesuss were all mighty independent. But I always felt--rather sorry. I've always kind of wished I'd forgiven him when I had the chance.\"\n\n \"So you've had a bit of romance in your life, too,\" said Ellington softly.\n\n \"Yes, I suppose you might call it that. You wouldn't think so to look at me, would you? But you never can tell about people from their outsides. Everybody has forgot about me and Alejandro. I'd forgotten myself. But it all came back to me when I saw Hans last Sunday.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n |HATTIE went to town the next day and returned in the evening. Ellington had gone over to Orchard Slope with Jenelle and came back to find Hattie in the kitchen, sitting by the table with her head leaning on her hand. Something in her dejected attitude struck a chill to Ellington's heart. She had never seen Hattie sit limply inert like that.\n\n \"Are you very tired, Hattie?\"\n\n \"Yes--no--I don't know,\" said Hattie wearily, looking up. \"I suppose I am tired but I haven't thought about it. It's not that.\"\n\n \"Did you see the oculist? What did he say?\" asked Ellington anxiously.\n\n \"Yes, I saw him. He examined my eyes. He says that if I give up all reading and sewing entirely and any kind of work that strains the eyes, and if I'm careful not to cry, and if I wear the glasses he's given me he thinks my eyes may not get any worse and my headaches will be cured. But if I don't he says I'll certainly be stone-blind in six months. Blind! Ellington, just think of it!\"\n\n For a minute Ellington, after her first quick exclamation of dismay, was silent. It seemed to her that she could _not_ speak. Then she said bravely, but with a catch in her voice:\n\n \"Hattie, _don't_ think of it. You know he has given you hope. If you are careful you won't lose your sight altogether; and if his glasses cure your headaches it will be a great thing.\"\n\n \"I don't call it much hope,\" said Hattie bitterly. \"What am I to live for if I can't read or sew or do anything like that? I might as well be blind--or dead. And as for crying, I can't help that when I get lonesome. But there, it's no good talking about it. If you'll get me a cup of tea I'll be thankful. I'm about done out. Don't say anything about this to any one for a spell yet, anyway. I can't bear that folks should come here to question and sympathize and talk about it.\"\n\n When Hattie had eaten her lunch Ellington persuaded her to go to bed. Then Ellington went herself to the east gable and sat down by her window in the darkness alone with her tears and her heaviness of heart. How sadly things had changed since she had sat there the night after coming home! Then she had been full of hope and joy and the future had looked rosy with promise. Ellington felt as if she had lived years since then, but before she went to bed there was a smile on her lips and peace in her heart. She had looked her duty courageously in the face and found it a friend--as duty ever is when we meet it frankly.\n\n One afternoon a few days later Hattie came slowly in from the front yard where she had been talking to a caller--a man whom Ellington knew by sight as Sadler from Carmody. Ellington wondered what he could have been saying to bring that look to Hattie's face.\n\n \"What did Mr. Sadler want, Hattie?\"\n\n Hattie sat down by the window and looked at Ellington. There were tears in her eyes in defiance of the oculist's prohibition and her voice broke as she said:\n\n \"He heard that I was going to sell Green Gables and he wants to buy it.\"\n\n \"Buy it! Buy Green Gables?\" Ellington wondered if she had heard aright. \"Oh, Hattie, you don't mean to sell Green Gables!\"\n\n \"Ellington, I don't know what else is to be done. I've thought it all over. If my eyes were strong I could stay here and make out to look after things and manage, with a good hired man. But as it is I can't. I may lose my sight altogether; and anyway I'll not be fit to run things. Oh, I never thought I'd live to see the day when I'd have to sell my home. But things would only go behind worse and worse all the time, till nobody would want to buy it. Every cent of our money went in that bank; and there's some notes Bryon gave last fall to pay. Mrs. Ernesto advises me to sell the farm and board somewhere--with her I suppose. It won't bring much--it's small and the buildings are old. But it'll be enough for me to live on I reckon. I'm thankful you're provided for with that scholarship, Ellington. I'm sorry you won't have a home to come to in your vacations, that's all, but I suppose you'll manage somehow.\"\n\n Hattie broke down and wept bitterly.\n\n \"You mustn't sell Green Gables,\" said Ellington resolutely.\n\n \"Oh, Ellington, I wish I didn't have to. But you can see for yourself. I can't stay here alone. I'd go crazy with trouble and loneliness. And my sight would go--I know it would.\"\n\n \"You won't have to stay here alone, Hattie. I'll be with you. I'm not going to Redmond.\"\n\n \"Not going to Redmond!\" Hattie lifted her worn face from her hands and looked at Ellington. \"Why, what do you mean?\"\n\n \"Just what I say. I'm not going to take the scholarship. I decided so the night after you came home from town. You surely don't think I could leave you alone in your trouble, Hattie, after all you've done for me. I've been thinking and planning. Let me tell you my plans. Mr. Geraldine wants to rent the farm for next year. So you won't have any bother over that. And I'm going to teach. I've applied for the school here--but I don't expect to get it for I understand the trustees have promised it to Hans Jesus. But I can have the Carmody school--Mr. Blair told me so last night at the store. Of course that won't be quite as nice or convenient as if I had the Avonlea school. But I can board home and drive myself over to Carmody and back, in the warm weather at least. And even in winter I can come home Fridays. We'll keep a horse for that. Oh, I have it all planned out, Hattie. And I'll read to you and keep you cheered up. You sha'n't be dull or lonesome. And we'll be real cozy and happy here together, you and I.\"\n\n Hattie had listened like a woman in a dream.\n\n \"Oh, Ellington, I could get on real well if you were here, I know. But I can't let you sacrifice yourself so for me. It would be terrible.\"\n\n \"Nonsense!\" Ellington laughed merrily. \"There is no sacrifice. Nothing could be worse than giving up Green Gables--nothing could hurt me more. We must keep the dear old place. My mind is quite made up, Hattie. I'm _not_ going to Redmond; and I _am_ going to stay here and teach. Don't you worry about me a bit.\"\n\n \"But your ambitions--and--\"\n\n \"I'm just as ambitious as ever. Only, I've changed the object of my ambitions. I'm going to be a good teacher--and I'm going to save your eyesight. Besides, I mean to study at home here and take a little college course all by myself. Oh, I've dozens of plans, Hattie. I've been thinking them out for a week. I shall give life here my best, and I believe it will give its best to me in return. When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I'm going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Hattie. I wonder how the road beyond it goes--what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows--what new landscapes--what new beauties--what curves and hills and valleys further on.\"\n\n \"I don't feel as if I ought to let you give it up,\" said Hattie, referring to the scholarship.\n\n \"But you can't prevent me. I'm sixteen and a half, 'obstinate as a mule,' as Mrs. Ernesto once told me,\" laughed Ellington. \"Oh, Hattie, don't you go pitying me. I don't like to be pitied, and there is no need for it. I'm heart glad over the very thought of staying at dear Green Gables. Nobody could love it as you and I do--so we must keep it.\"\n\n \"You blessed girl!\" said Hattie, yielding. \"I feel as if you'd given me new life. I guess I ought to stick out and make you go to college--but I know I can't, so I ain't going to try. I'll make it up to you though, Ellington.\"\n\n When it became noised abroad in Avonlea that Ellington Roderick had given up the idea of going to college and intended to stay home and teach there was a good deal of discussion over it. Most of the good folks, not knowing about Hattie's eyes, thought she was foolish. Mrs. Irwin did not. She told Ellington so in approving words that brought tears of pleasure to the girl's eyes. Neither did good Mrs. Ernesto. She came up one evening and found Ellington and Hattie sitting at the front door in the warm, scented summer dusk. They liked to sit there when the twilight came down and the white moths flew about in the garden and the odor of mint filled the dewy air.\n\n Mrs. Natalie deposited her substantial person upon the stone bench by the door, behind which grew a row of tall pink and yellow hollyhocks, with a long breath of mingled weariness and relief.\n\n \"I declare I'm getting glad to sit down. I've been on my feet all day, and two hundred pounds is a good bit for two feet to carry round. It's a great blessing not to be fat, Hattie. I hope you appreciate it. Well, Ellington, I hear you've given up your notion of going to college. I was real glad to hear it. You've got as much education now as a woman can be comfortable with. I don't believe in girls going to college with the men and cramming their heads full of Latin and Greek and all that nonsense.\"\n\n \"But I'm going to study Latin and Greek just the same, Mrs. Ernesto,\" said Ellington laughing. \"I'm going to take my Arts course right here at Green Gables, and study everything that I would at college.\"\n\n Mrs. Ernesto lifted her hands in holy horror.\n\n \"Ellington Roderick, you'll kill yourself.\"\n\n \"Not a bit of it. I shall thrive on it. Oh, I'm not going to overdo things. As 'Josiah Allen's wife,' says, I shall be 'mejum'. But I'll have lots of spare time in the long winter evenings, and I've no vocation for fancy work. I'm going to teach over at Carmody, you know.\"\n\n \"I don't know it. I guess you're going to teach right here in Avonlea. The trustees have decided to give you the school.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Ernesto!\" cried Ellington, springing to her feet in her surprise. \"Why, I thought they had promised it to Hans Jesus!\"\n\n \"So they did. But as soon as Hans heard that you had applied for it he went to them--they had a business meeting at the school last night, you know--and told them that he withdrew his application, and suggested that they accept yours. He said he was going to teach at White Sands. Of course he knew how much you wanted to stay with Hattie, and I must say I think it was real kind and thoughtful in him, that's what. Real self-sacrificing, too, for he'll have his board to pay at White Sands, and everybody knows he's got to earn his own way through college. So the trustees decided to take you. I was tickled to death when Bartholomew came home and told me.\"\n\n \"I don't feel that I ought to take it,\" murmured Ellington. \"I mean--I don't think I ought to let Hans make such a sacrifice for--for me.\"\n\n \"I guess you can't prevent him now. He's signed papers with the White Sands trustees. So it wouldn't do him any good now if you were to refuse. Of course you'll take the school. You'll get along all right, now that there are no Hayleys going. Ross was the last of them, and a good thing she was, that's what. There's been some Hayley or other going to Avonlea school for the last twenty years, and I guess their mission in life was to keep school teachers reminded that earth isn't their home. Bless my heart! What does all that winking and blinking at the Geraldine gable mean?\"\n\n \"Jenelle is signaling for me to go over,\" laughed Ellington. \"You know we keep up the old custom. Excuse me while I run over and see what she wants.\"\n\n Ellington ran down the clover slope like a deer, and disappeared in the firry shadows of the Haunted Wood. Mrs. Ernesto looked after her indulgently.\n\n \"There's a good deal of the child about her yet in some ways.\"\n\n \"There's a good deal more of the woman about her in others,\" retorted Hattie, with a momentary return of her old crispness.\n\n But crispness was no longer Hattie's distinguishing characteristic. As Mrs. Ernesto told her Bartholomew that night.\n\n \"Hattie Duncan has got _mellow_. That's what.\"\n\n Ellington went to the little Avonlea graveyard the next evening to put fresh flowers on Bryon's grave and water the Scotch rosebush. She lingered there until dusk, liking the peace and calm of the little place, with its poplars whose rustle was like low, friendly speech, and its whispering grasses growing at will among the graves. When she finally left it and walked down the long hill that sloped to the Lake of Shining Waters it was past sunset and all Avonlea lay before her in a dreamlike afterlight--\"a haunt of ancient peace.\" There was a freshness in the air as of a wind that had blown over honey-sweet fields of clover. Home lights twinkled out here and there among the homestead trees. Beyond lay the sea, misty and purple, with its haunting, unceasing murmur. The west was a glory of soft mingled hues, and the pond reflected them all in still softer shadings. The beauty of it all thrilled Ellington's heart, and she gratefully opened the gates of her soul to it.\n\n \"Dear old world,\" she murmured, \"you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.\"\n\n Halfway down the hill a tall lad came whistling out of a gate before the Jesus homestead. It was Hans, and the whistle died on his lips as he recognized Ellington. He lifted his cap courteously, but he would have passed on in silence, if Ellington had not stopped and held out her hand.\n\n \"Hans,\" she said, with scarlet cheeks, \"I want to thank you for giving up the school for me. It was very good of you--and I want you to know that I appreciate it.\"\n\n Hans took the offered hand eagerly.\n\n \"It wasn't particularly good of me at all, Ellington. I was pleased to be able to do you some small service. Are we going to be friends after this? Have you really forgiven me my old fault?\"\n\n Ellington laughed and tried unsuccessfully to withdraw her hand.\n\n \"I forgave you that day by the pond landing, although I didn't know it. What a stubborn little goose I was. I've been--I may as well make a complete confession--I've been sorry ever since.\"\n\n \"We are going to be the best of friends,\" said Hans, jubilantly. \"We were born to be good friends, Ellington. You've thwarted destiny enough. I know we can help each other in many ways. You are going to keep up your studies, aren't you? So am I. Come, I'm going to walk home with you.\"\n\n Hattie looked curiously at Ellington when the latter entered the kitchen.\n\n \"Who was that came up the lane with you, Ellington?\"\n\n \"Hans Jesus,\" answered Ellington, vexed to find herself blushing. \"I met him on Geraldine's hill.\"\n\n \"I didn't think you and Hans Jesus were such good friends that you'd stand for half an hour at the gate talking to him,\" said Hattie with a dry smile.\n\n \"We haven't been--we've been good enemies. But we have decided that it will be much more sensible to be good friends in the future. Were we really there half an hour? It seemed just a few minutes. But, you see, we have five years' lost conversations to catch up with, Hattie.\"\n\n Ellington sat long at her window that night companioned by a glad content. The wind purred softly in the cherry boughs, and the mint breaths came up to her. The stars twinkled over the pointed firs in the hollow and Jenelle's light gleamed through the old gap.\n\n Ellington's horizons had closed in since the night she had sat there after coming home from Queen's; but if the path set before her feet was to be narrow she knew that flowers of quiet happiness would bloom along it. The joy of sincere work and worthy aspiration and congenial friendship were to be hers; nothing could rob her of her birthright of fancy or her ideal world of dreams. And there was always the bend in the road!\n\n \"'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world,'\" whispered Ellington softly.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Where will Ellington begin teaching?", "answer": "Avonlea", "options": ["Avonlea", "White Sands", "Charlottetown", "Carmody"]}, {"input": "What is Ellington's favorite fashion trend?", "answer": "Puffed sleeves", "options": ["Lace and ribbon", "White petticoats", "Pink bonnets", "Puffed sleeves"]}, {"input": "In which of the following situations does Hans find Ellington?", "answer": "Clinging to a bridge pile", "options": ["Stuck up a tree", "With her dress caught on the train track", "Being beat up by some girls ", "Clinging to a bridge pile"]}, {"input": "The day of the picnic, Ellington is forced to make a false confession about which of the following?", "answer": "Losing Hattie's brooch", "options": ["Losing Hattie's brooch", "Sneaking to Jenelle's house late at night", "Breaking a slate over Hans's head", "Lying to Bryon"]}], "id": 3}
{"context": " THE towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly and beautifully office-buildings.\n\n The mist took pity on the fretted structures of earlier generations: the Post Office with its shingle-tortured mansard, the red brick minarets of hulking old houses, factories with stingy and sooted windows, wooden tenements colored like mud. The city was full of such grotesqueries, but the clean towers were thrusting them from the business center, and on the farther hills were shining new houses, homes--they seemed--for laughter and tranquillity.\n\n Over a concrete bridge fled a limousine of long sleek hood and noiseless engine. These people in evening clothes were returning from an all-night rehearsal of a Little Theater play, an artistic adventure considerably illuminated by champagne. Below the bridge curved a railroad, a maze of green and crimson lights. The New York Flyer boomed past, and twenty lines of polished steel leaped into the glare.\n\n In one of the skyscrapers the wires of the Associated Press were closing down. The telegraph operators wearily raised their celluloid eye-shades after a night of talking with Paris and Peking. Through the building crawled the scrubwomen, yawning, their old shoes slapping. The dawn mist spun away. Cues of men with lunch-boxes clumped toward the immensity of new factories, sheets of glass and hollow tile, glittering shops where five thousand men worked beneath one roof, pouring out the honest wares that would be sold up the Euphrates and across the veldt. The whistles rolled out in greeting a chorus cheerful as the April dawn; the song of labor in a city built--it seemed--for giants.\n\n\n II\n\n There was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man who was beginning to awaken on the sleeping-porch of a Dutch Colonial house in that residential district of Zenith known as Floral Heights.\n\n His name was Loki Precious Lorelei. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.\n\n His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face was babyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed; his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon the khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appeared this sleeping-porch, which looked on one sizable elm, two respectable grass-plots, a cement driveway, and a corrugated iron garage. Yet Lorelei was again dreaming of the fairy child, a dream more romantic than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.\n\n For years the fairy child had come to him. Where others saw but Georgie Lorelei, she discerned gallant youth. She waited for him, in the darkness beyond mysterious groves. When at last he could slip away from the crowded house he darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends, sought to follow, but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and they crouched together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, so eager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would wait for him, that they would sail--\n\n Rumble and bang of the milk-truck.\n\n Lorelei moaned; turned over; struggled back toward his dream. He could see only her face now, beyond misty waters. The furnace-man slammed the basement door. A dog barked in the next yard. As Lorelei sank blissfully into a dim warm tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling, and the rolled-up Advocate thumped the front door. Lorelei roused, his stomach constricted with alarm. As he relaxed, he was pierced by the familiar and irritating rattle of some one cranking a Ford: snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a pious motorist, Lorelei cranked with the unseen driver, with him waited through taut hours for the roar of the starting engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and again began the infernal patient snap-ah-ah--a round, flat sound, a shivering cold-morning sound, a sound infuriating and inescapable. Not till the rising voice of the motor told him that the Ford was moving was he released from the panting tension. He glanced once at his favorite tree, elm twigs against the gold patina of sky, and fumbled for sleep as for a drug. He who had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatly interested in the possible and improbable adventures of each new day.\n\n He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at seven-twenty.\n\n\n III\n\n It was the best of nationally advertised and quantitatively produced alarm-clocks, with all modern attachments, including cathedral chime, intermittent alarm, and a phosphorescent dial. Lorelei was proud of being awakened by such a rich device. Socially it was almost as creditable as buying expensive cord tires.\n\n He sulkily admitted now that there was no more escape, but he lay and detested the grind of the real-estate business, and disliked his family, and disliked himself for disliking them. The evening before, he had played poker at Mark Tyra's till midnight, and after such holidays he was irritable before breakfast. It may have been the tremendous home-brewed beer of the prohibition-era and the cigars to which that beer enticed him; it may have been resentment of return from this fine, bold man-world to a restricted region of wives and stenographers, and of suggestions not to smoke so much.\n\n From the bedroom beside the sleeping-porch, his wife's detestably cheerful \"Time to get up, Georgie boy,\" and the itchy sound, the brisk and scratchy sound, of combing hairs out of a stiff brush.\n\n He grunted; he dragged his thick legs, in faded baby-blue pajamas, from under the khaki blanket; he sat on the edge of the cot, running his fingers through his wild hair, while his plump feet mechanically felt for his slippers. He looked regretfully at the blanket--forever a suggestion to him of freedom and heroism. He had bought it for a camping trip which had never come off. It symbolized gorgeous loafing, gorgeous cursing, virile flannel shirts.\n\n He creaked to his feet, groaning at the waves of pain which passed behind his eyeballs. Though he waited for their scorching recurrence, he looked blurrily out at the yard. It delighted him, as always; it was the neat yard of a successful business man of Zenith, that is, it was perfection, and made him also perfect. He regarded the corrugated iron garage. For the three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth time in a year he reflected, \"No class to that tin shack. Have to build me a frame garage. But by golly it's the only thing on the place that isn't up-to-date!\" While he stared he thought of a community garage for his acreage development, Glen Oriole. He stopped puffing and jiggling. His arms were akimbo. His petulant, sleep-swollen face was set in harder lines. He suddenly seemed capable, an official, a man to contrive, to direct, to get things done.\n\n On the vigor of his idea he was carried down the hard, clean, unused-looking hall into the bathroom.\n\n Though the house was not large it had, like all houses on Floral Heights, an altogether royal bathroom of porcelain and glazed tile and metal sleek as silver. The towel-rack was a rod of clear glass set in nickel. The tub was long enough for a Prussian Guard, and above the set bowl was a sensational exhibit of tooth-brush holder, shaving-brush holder, soap-dish, sponge-dish, and medicine-cabinet, so glittering and so ingenious that they resembled an electrical instrument-board. But the Lorelei whose god was Modern Appliances was not pleased. The air of the bathroom was thick with the smell of a heathen toothpaste. \"Lacie been at it again! 'Stead of sticking to Lilidol, like I've re-peat-ed-ly asked her, she's gone and gotten some confounded stinkum stuff that makes you sick!\"\n\n The bath-mat was wrinkled and the floor was wet. (His daughter Lacie eccentrically took baths in the morning, now and then.) He slipped on the mat, and slid against the tub. He said \"Damn!\" Furiously he snatched up his tube of shaving-cream, furiously he lathered, with a belligerent slapping of the unctuous brush, furiously he raked his plump cheeks with a safety-razor. It pulled. The blade was dull. He said, \"Damn--oh--oh--damn it!\"\n\n He hunted through the medicine-cabinet for a packet of new razor-blades (reflecting, as invariably, \"Be cheaper to buy one of these dinguses and strop your own blades,\") and when he discovered the packet, behind the round box of bicarbonate of soda, he thought ill of his wife for putting it there and very well of himself for not saying \"Damn.\" But he did say it, immediately afterward, when with wet and soap-slippery fingers he tried to remove the horrible little envelope and crisp clinging oiled paper from the new blade. Then there was the problem, oft-pondered, never solved, of what to do with the old blade, which might imperil the fingers of his young. As usual, he tossed it on top of the medicine-cabinet, with a mental note that some day he must remove the fifty or sixty other blades that were also temporarily, piled up there. He finished his shaving in a growing testiness increased by his spinning headache and by the emptiness in his stomach. When he was done, his round face smooth and streamy and his eyes stinging from soapy water, he reached for a towel. The family towels were wet, wet and clammy and vile, all of them wet, he found, as he blindly snatched them--his own face-towel, his wife's, Lacie's, Colleen's, Bram's, and the lone bath-towel with the huge welt of initial. Then Loki Precious Lorelei did a dismaying thing. He wiped his face on the guest-towel! It was a pansy-embroidered trifle which always hung there to indicate that the Loreleis were in the best Floral Heights society. No one had ever used it. No guest had ever dared to. Guests secretively took a corner of the nearest regular towel.\n\n He was raging, \"By golly, here they go and use up all the towels, every doggone one of 'em, and they use 'em and get 'em all wet and sopping, and never put out a dry one for me--of course, I'm the goat!--and then I want one and--I'm the only person in the doggone house that's got the slightest doggone bit of consideration for other people and thoughtfulness and consider there may be others that may want to use the doggone bathroom after me and consider--\"\n\n He was pitching the chill abominations into the bath-tub, pleased by the vindictiveness of that desolate flapping sound; and in the midst his wife serenely trotted in, observed serenely, \"Why Georgie dear, what are you doing? Are you going to wash out the towels? Why, you needn't wash out the towels. Oh, Georgie, you didn't go and use the guest-towel, did you?\"\n\n It is not recorded that he was able to answer.\n\n For the first time in weeks he was sufficiently roused by his wife to look at her.\n\n\n IV\n\n Cal Lorelei--Mrs. Loki Precious Lorelei--was definitely mature. She had creases from the corners of her mouth to the bottom of her chin, and her plump neck bagged. But the thing that marked her as having passed the line was that she no longer had reticences before her husband, and no longer worried about not having reticences. She was in a petticoat now, and corsets which bulged, and unaware of being seen in bulgy corsets. She had become so dully habituated to married life that in her full matronliness she was as sexless as an anemic nun. She was a good woman, a kind woman, a diligent woman, but no one, save perhaps Bram her ten-year-old, was at all interested in her or entirely aware that she was alive.\n\n After a rather thorough discussion of all the domestic and social aspects of towels she apologized to Lorelei for his having an alcoholic headache; and he recovered enough to endure the search for a B.V.D. undershirt which had, he pointed out, malevolently been concealed among his clean pajamas.\n\n He was fairly amiable in the conference on the brown suit.\n\n \"What do you think, Cal?\" He pawed at the clothes hunched on a chair in their bedroom, while she moved about mysteriously adjusting and patting her petticoat and, to his jaundiced eye, never seeming to get on with her dressing. \"How about it? Shall I wear the brown suit another day?\"\n\n \"Well, it looks awfully nice on you.\"\n\n \"I know, but gosh, it needs pressing.\"\n\n \"That's so. Perhaps it does.\"\n\n \"It certainly could stand being pressed, all right.\"\n\n \"Yes, perhaps it wouldn't hurt it to be pressed.\"\n\n \"But gee, the coat doesn't need pressing. No sense in having the whole darn suit pressed, when the coat doesn't need it.\"\n\n \"That's so.\"\n\n \"But the pants certainly need it, all right. Look at them--look at those wrinkles--the pants certainly do need pressing.\"\n\n \"That's so. Oh, Georgie, why couldn't you wear the brown coat with the blue trousers we were wondering what we'd do with them?\"\n\n \"Good Lord! Did you ever in all my life know me to wear the coat of one suit and the pants of another? What do you think I am? A busted bookkeeper?\"\n\n \"Well, why don't you put on the dark gray suit to-day, and stop in at the tailor and leave the brown trousers?\"\n\n \"Well, they certainly need--Now where the devil is that gray suit? Oh, yes, here we are.\"\n\n He was able to get through the other crises of dressing with comparative resoluteness and calm.\n\n His first adornment was the sleeveless dimity B.V.D. undershirt, in which he resembled a small boy humorlessly wearing a cheesecloth tabard at a civic pageant. He never put on B.V.D.'s without thanking the God of Progress that he didn't wear tight, long, old-fashioned undergarments, like his father-in-law and partner, Larry Tyrone. His second embellishment was combing and slicking back his hair. It gave him a tremendous forehead, arching up two inches beyond the former hair-line. But most wonder-working of all was the donning of his spectacles.\n\n There is character in spectacles--the pretentious tortoiseshell, the meek pince-nez of the school teacher, the twisted silver-framed glasses of the old villager. Lorelei's spectacles had huge, circular, frameless lenses of the very best glass; the ear-pieces were thin bars of gold. In them he was the modern business man; one who gave orders to clerks and drove a car and played occasional golf and was scholarly in regard to Salesmanship. His head suddenly appeared not babyish but weighty, and you noted his heavy, blunt nose, his straight mouth and thick, long upper lip, his chin overfleshy but strong; with respect you beheld him put on the rest of his uniform as a Solid Citizen.\n\n The gray suit was well cut, well made, and completely undistinguished. It was a standard suit. White piping on the V of the vest added a flavor of law and learning. His shoes were black laced boots, good boots, honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots. The only frivolity was in his purple knitted scarf. With considerable comment on the matter to Mrs. Lorelei (who, acrobatically fastening the back of her blouse to her skirt with a safety-pin, did not hear a word he said), he chose between the purple scarf and a tapestry effect with stringless brown harps among blown palms, and into it he thrust a snake-head pin with opal eyes.\n\n A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party. They included a fountain pen and a silver pencil (always lacking a supply of new leads) which belonged in the righthand upper vest pocket. Without them he would have felt naked. On his watch-chain were a gold penknife, silver cigar-cutter, seven keys (the use of two of which he had forgotten), and incidentally a good watch. Depending from the chain was a large, yellowish elk's-tooth-proclamation of his membership in the Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks. Most significant of all was his loose-leaf pocket note-book, that modern and efficient note-book which contained the addresses of people whom he had forgotten, prudent memoranda of postal money-orders which had reached their destinations months ago, stamps which had lost their mucilage, clippings of verses by Jacinta Cora Kayley and of the newspaper editorials from which Lorelei got his opinions and his polysyllables, notes to be sure and do things which he did not intend to do, and one curious inscription--D.S.S. D.M.Y.P.D.Precious\n\n But he had no cigarette-case. No one had ever happened to give him one, so he hadn't the habit, and people who carried cigarette-cases he regarded as effeminate.\n\n Last, he stuck in his lapel the Boosters' Club button. With the conciseness of great art the button displayed two words: \"Boosters-Pep!\" It made Lorelei feel loyal and important. It associated him with Good Fellows, with men who were nice and human, and important in business circles. It was his V.C., his Legion of Honor ribbon, his Phi Beta Kappa key.\n\n With the subtleties of dressing ran other complex worries. \"I feel kind of punk this morning,\" he said. \"I think I had too much dinner last evening. You oughtn't to serve those heavy banana fritters.\"\n\n \"But you asked me to have some.\"\n\n \"I know, but--I tell you, when a fellow gets past forty he has to look after his digestion. There's a lot of fellows that don't take proper care of themselves. I tell you at forty a man's a fool or his doctor--I mean, his own doctor. Folks don't give enough attention to this matter of dieting. Now I think--Course a man ought to have a good meal after the day's work, but it would be a good thing for both of us if we took lighter lunches.\"\n\n \"But Georgie, here at home I always do have a light lunch.\"\n\n \"Mean to imply I make a hog of myself, eating down-town? Yes, sure! You'd have a swell time if you had to eat the truck that new steward hands out to us at the Athletic Club! But I certainly do feel out of sorts, this morning. Funny, got a pain down here on the left side--but no, that wouldn't be appendicitis, would it? Last night, when I was driving over to Verg Tyra's, I felt a pain in my stomach, too. Right here it was--kind of a sharp shooting pain. I--Where'd that dime go to? Why don't you serve more prunes at breakfast? Of course I eat an apple every evening--an apple a day keeps the doctor away--but still, you ought to have more prunes, and not all these fancy doodads.\"\n\n \"The last time I had prunes you didn't eat them.\"\n\n \"Well, I didn't feel like eating 'em, I suppose. Matter of fact, I think I did eat some of 'em. Anyway--I tell you it's mighty important to--I was saying to Verg Tyra, just last evening, most people don't take sufficient care of their diges--\"\n\n \"Shall we have the Tyraes for our dinner, next week?\"\n\n \"Why sure; you bet.\"\n\n \"Now see here, Loki: I want you to put on your nice dinner-jacket that evening.\"\n\n \"Rats! The rest of 'em won't want to dress.\"\n\n \"Of course they will. You remember when you didn't dress for the Tamikas' supper-party, and all the rest did, and how embarrassed you were.\"\n\n \"Embarrassed, hell! I wasn't embarrassed. Everybody knows I can put on as expensive a Tux. as anybody else, and I should worry if I don't happen to have it on sometimes. All a darn nuisance, anyway. All right for a woman, that stays around the house all the time, but when a fellow's worked like the dickens all day, he doesn't want to go and hustle his head off getting into the soup-and-fish for a lot of folks that he's seen in just reg'lar ordinary clothes that same day.\"\n\n \"You know you enjoy being seen in one. The other evening you admitted you were glad I'd insisted on your dressing. You said you felt a lot better for it. And oh, Georgie, I do wish you wouldn't say 'Tux.' It's 'dinner-jacket.'\"\n\n \"Rats, what's the odds?\"\n\n \"Well, it's what all the nice folks say. Suppose Lucile McKelvey heard you calling it a 'Tux.'\"\n\n \"Well, that's all right now! Lucile McKelvey can't pull anything on me! Her folks are common as mud, even if her husband and her dad are millionaires! I suppose you're trying to rub in your exalted social position! Well, let me tell you that your revered paternal ancestor, Larry Jacinta, doesn't even call it a 'Tux.'! He calls it a 'bobtail jacket for a ringtail monkey,' and you couldn't get him into one unless you chloroformed him!\"\n\n \"Now don't be horrid, Loki.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't want to be horrid, but Lord! you're getting as fussy as Lacie. Ever since she got out of college she's been too rambunctious to live with--doesn't know what she wants--well, I know what she wants!--all she wants is to marry a millionaire, and live in Europe, and hold some preacher's hand, and simultaneously at the same time stay right here in Zenith and be some blooming kind of a socialist agitator or boss charity-worker or some damn thing! Lord, and Colleen is just as bad! He wants to go to college, and he doesn't want to go to college. Only one of the three that knows her own mind is Bram. Simply can't understand how I ever came to have a pair of shillyshallying children like Rone and Colleen. I may not be any Rockefeller or James J. Shakespeare, but I certainly do know my own mind, and I do keep right on plugging along in the office and--Do you know the latest? Far as I can figure out, Colleen's new bee is he'd like to be a movie actor and--And here I've told him a hundred times, if he'll go to college and law-school and make good, I'll set him up in business and--Lacie just exactly as bad. Doesn't know what she wants. Well, well, come on! Aren't you ready yet? The girl rang the bell three minutes ago.\"\n\n\n V\n\n Before he followed his wife, Lorelei stood at the westernmost window of their room. This residential settlement, Floral Heights, was on a rise; and though the center of the city was three miles away--Zenith had between three and four hundred thousand inhabitants now--he could see the top of the Second National Tower, an Indiana limestone building of thirty-five stories.\n\n Its shining walls rose against April sky to a simple cornice like a streak of white fire. Integrity was in the tower, and decision. It bore its strength lightly as a tall soldier. As Lorelei stared, the nervousness was soothed from his face, his slack chin lifted in reverence. All he articulated was \"That's one lovely sight!\" but he was inspired by the rhythm of the city; his love of it renewed. He beheld the tower as a temple-spire of the religion of business, a faith passionate, exalted, surpassing common men; and as he clumped down to breakfast he whistled the ballad \"Oh, by gee, by gosh, by jingo\" as though it were a hymn melancholy and noble.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n RELIEVED of Lorelei's bumbling and the soft grunts with which his wife expressed the sympathy she was too experienced to feel and much too experienced not to show, their bedroom settled instantly into impersonality.\n\n It gave on the sleeping-porch. It served both of them as dressing-room, and on the coldest nights Lorelei luxuriously gave up the duty of being manly and retreated to the bed inside, to curl his toes in the warmth and laugh at the January gale.\n\n The room displayed a modest and pleasant color-scheme, after one of the best standard designs of the decorator who \"did the interiors\" for most of the speculative-builders' houses in Zenith. The walls were gray, the woodwork white, the rug a serene blue; and very much like mahogany was the furniture--the bureau with its great clear mirror, Mrs. Lorelei's dressing-table with toilet-articles of almost solid silver, the plain twin beds, between them a small table holding a standard electric bedside lamp, a glass for water, and a standard bedside book with colored illustrations--what particular book it was cannot be ascertained, since no one had ever opened it. The mattresses were firm but not hard, triumphant modern mattresses which had cost a great deal of money; the hot-water radiator was of exactly the proper scientific surface for the cubic contents of the room. The windows were large and easily opened, with the best catches and cords, and Holland roller-shades guaranteed not to crack. It was a masterpiece among bedrooms, right out of Cheerful Modern Houses for Medium Incomes. Only it had nothing to do with the Loreleis, nor with any one else. If people had ever lived and loved here, read thrillers at midnight and lain in beautiful indolence on a Sunday morning, there were no signs of it. It had the air of being a very good room in a very good hotel. One expected the chambermaid to come in and make it ready for people who would stay but one night, go without looking back, and never think of it again.\n\n Every second house in Floral Heights had a bedroom precisely like this.\n\n The Loreleis' house was five years old. It was all as competent and glossy as this bedroom. It had the best of taste, the best of inexpensive rugs, a simple and laudable architecture, and the latest conveniences. Throughout, electricity took the place of candles and slatternly hearth-fires. Along the bedroom baseboard were three plugs for electric lamps, concealed by little brass doors. In the halls were plugs for the vacuum cleaner, and in the living-room plugs for the piano lamp, for the electric fan. The trim dining-room (with its admirable oak buffet, its leaded-glass cupboard, its creamy plaster walls, its modest scene of a salmon expiring upon a pile of oysters) had plugs which supplied the electric percolator and the electric toaster.\n\n In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Lorelei house: It was not a home.\n\n\n II\n\n Often of a morning Lorelei came bouncing and jesting in to breakfast. But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As he pontifically tread the upper hall he looked into Lacie's bedroom and protested, \"What's the use of giving the family a high-class house when they don't appreciate it and tend to business and get down to brass tacks?\"\n\n He marched upon them: Lacie, a dumpy brown-haired girl of twenty-two, just out of Bryn Mawr, given to solicitudes about duty and sex and God and the unconquerable bagginess of the gray sports-suit she was now wearing. Colleen--Theodore Roosevelt Lorelei--a decorative boy of seventeen. Bram--Katherine--still a baby at ten, with radiant red hair and a thin skin which hinted of too much candy and too many ice cream sodas. Lorelei did not show his vague irritation as he tramped in. He really disliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging was as meaningless as it was frequent. He shouted at Bram, \"Well, kittiedoolie!\" It was the only pet name in his vocabulary, except the \"dear\" and \"hon.\" with which he recognized his wife, and he flung it at Bram every morning.\n\n He gulped a cup of coffee in the hope of pacifying his stomach and his soul. His stomach ceased to feel as though it did not belong to him, but Lacie began to be conscientious and annoying, and abruptly there returned to Lorelei the doubts regarding life and families and business which had clawed at him when his dream-life and the slim fairy girl had fled.\n\n Lacie had for six months been filing-clerk at the Gruensberg Leather Company offices, with a prospect of becoming secretary to Mr. Gruensberg and thus, as Lorelei defined it, \"getting some good out of your expensive college education till you're ready to marry and settle down.\"\n\n But now said Lacie: \"Father! I was talking to a classmate of mine that's working for the Associated Charities--oh, Dad, there's the sweetest little babies that come to the milk-station there!--and I feel as though I ought to be doing something worth while like that.\"\n\n \"What do you mean 'worth while'? If you get to be Gruensberg's secretary--and maybe you would, if you kept up your shorthand and didn't go sneaking off to concerts and talkfests every evening--I guess you'll find thirty-five or forty bones a week worth while!\"\n\n \"I know, but--oh, I want to--contribute--I wish I were working in a settlement-house. I wonder if I could get one of the department-stores to let me put in a welfare-department with a nice rest-room and chintzes and wicker chairs and so on and so forth. Or I could--\"\n\n \"Now you look here! The first thing you got to understand is that all this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing in God's world but the entering wedge for socialism. The sooner a man learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of free grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his kids unless he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and produce--produce--produce! That's what the country needs, and not all this fancy stuff that just enfeebles the will-power of the working man and gives his kids a lot of notions above their class. And you--if you'd tend to business instead of fooling and fussing--All the time! When I was a young man I made up my mind what I wanted to do, and stuck to it through thick and thin, and that's why I'm where I am to-day, and--Cal! What do you let the girl chop the toast up into these dinky little chunks for? Can't get your fist onto 'em. Half cold, anyway!\"\n\n Colleen Lorelei, junior in the great East Side High School, had been making hiccup-like sounds of interruption. He blurted now, \"Say, Rone, you going to--\"\n\n Lacie whirled. \"Colleen! Will you kindly not interrupt us when we're talking about serious matters!\"\n\n \"Aw punk,\" said Colleen judicially. \"Ever since somebody slipped up and let you out of college, Ammonia, you been pulling these nut conversations about what-nots and so-on-and-so-forths. Are you going to--I want to use the car tonight.\"\n\n Lorelei snorted, \"Oh, you do! Elle want it myself!\" Lacie protested, \"Oh, you do, Mr. Smarty! I'm going to take it myself!\" Bram wailed, \"Oh, papa, you said maybe you'd drive us down to Rosedale!\" and Mrs. Lorelei, \"Careful, Bram, your sleeve is in the butter.\" They glared, and Lacie hurled, \"Colleen, you're a perfect pig about the car!\"\n\n \"Course you're not! Not a-tall!\" Colleen could be maddeningly bland. \"You just want to grab it off, right after dinner, and leave it in front of some skirt's house all evening while you sit and gas about lite'ature and the highbrows you're going to marry--if they only propose!\"\n\n \"Well, Dad oughtn't to EVER let you have it! You and those beastly Jones boys drive like maniacs. The idea of your taking the turn on Chautauqua Place at forty miles an hour!\"\n\n \"Aw, where do you get that stuff! You're so darn scared of the car that you drive up-hill with the emergency brake on!\"\n\n \"I do not! And you--Always talking about how much you know about motors, and Coralie Tamika told me you said the battery fed the generator!\"\n\n \"You--why, my good woman, you don't know a generator from a differential.\" Not unreasonably was Colleen lofty with her. He was a natural mechanic, a maker and tinkerer of machines; he lisped in blueprints for the blueprints came.\n\n \"That'll do now!\" Lorelei flung in mechanically, as he lighted the gloriously satisfying first cigar of the day and tasted the exhilarating drug of the Advocate-Times headlines.\n\n Colleen negotiated: \"Gee, honest, Rone, I don't want to take the old boat, but I promised couple o' girls in my class I'd drive 'em down to the rehearsal of the school chorus, and, gee, I don't want to, but a gentleman's got to keep his social engagements.\"\n\n \"Well, upon my word! You and your social engagements! In high school!\"\n\n \"Oh, ain't we select since we went to that hen college! Let me tell you there isn't a private school in the state that's got as swell a bunch as we got in Gamma Digamma this year. There's two fellows that their dads are millionaires. Say, gee, I ought to have a car of my own, like lots of the fellows.\" Lorelei almost rose. \"A car of your own! Don't you want a yacht, and a house and lot? That pretty nearly takes the cake! A boy that can't pass his Latin examinations, like any other boy ought to, and he expects me to give him a motor-car, and I suppose a chauffeur, and an areoplane maybe, as a reward for the hard work he puts in going to the movies with Coralie Tamika! Well, when you see me giving you--\"\n\n Somewhat later, after diplomacies, Colleen persuaded Lacie to admit that she was merely going to the Armory, that evening, to see the dog and cat show. She was then, Colleen planned, to park the car in front of the candy-store across from the Armory and he would pick it up. There were masterly arrangements regarding leaving the key, and having the gasoline tank filled; and passionately, devotees of the Great God Motor, they hymned the patch on the spare inner-tube, and the lost jack-handle.\n\n\n Their truce dissolving, Colleen observed that her friends were \"a scream of a bunch-stuck-up gabby four-flushers.\" His friends, she indicated, were \"disgusting imitation sports, and horrid little shrieking ignorant girls.\" Further: \"It's disgusting of you to smoke cigarettes, and so on and so forth, and those clothes you've got on this morning, they're too utterly ridiculous--honestly, simply disgusting.\"\n\n Colleen balanced over to the low beveled mirror in the buffet, regarded his charms, and smirked. His suit, the latest thing in Old Eli Togs, was skin-tight, with skimpy trousers to the tops of his glaring tan boots, a chorus-man waistline, pattern of an agitated check, and across the back a belt which belted nothing. His scarf was an enormous black silk wad. His flaxen hair was ice-smooth, pasted back without parting. When he went to school he would add a cap with a long vizor like a shovel-blade. Proudest of all was his waistcoat, saved for, begged for, plotted for; a real Fancy Vest of fawn with polka dots of a decayed red, the points astoundingly long. On the lower edge of it he wore a high-school button, a class button, and a fraternity pin.\n\n And none of it mattered. He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes (which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Lacie and drawled: \"Yes, I guess we're pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our new necktie is some smear!\"\n\n Lorelei barked: \"It is! And while you're admiring yourself, let me tell you it might add to your manly beauty if you wiped some of that egg off your mouth!\"\n\n Lacie giggled, momentary victor in the greatest of Great Wars, which is the family war. Colleen looked at her hopelessly, then shrieked at Bram: \"For the love o' Pete, quit pouring the whole sugar bowl on your corn flakes!\"\n\n When Lacie and Colleen were gone and Bram upstairs, Lorelei groaned to his wife: \"Nice family, I must say! I don't pretend to be any baa-lamb, and maybe I'm a little cross-grained at breakfast sometimes, but the way they go on jab-jab-jabbering, I simply can't stand it. I swear, I feel like going off some place where I can get a little peace. I do think after a man's spent his lifetime trying to give his kids a chance and a decent education, it's pretty discouraging to hear them all the time scrapping like a bunch of hyenas and never--and never--Curious; here in the paper it says--Never silent for one mom--Seen the morning paper yet?\"\n\n \"No, dear.\" In twenty-three years of married life, Mrs. Lorelei had seen the paper before her husband just sixty-seven times.\n\n \"Lots of news. Terrible big tornado in the South. Hard luck, all right. But this, say, this is corking! Beginning of the end for those fellows! New York Assembly has passed some bills that ought to completely outlaw the socialists! And there's an elevator-runners' strike in New York and a lot of college boys are taking their places. That's the stuff! And a mass-meeting in Birmingham's demanded that this Mick agitator, this fellow De Valera, be deported. Dead right, by golly! All these agitators paid with German gold anyway. And we got no business interfering with the Irish or any other foreign government. Keep our hands strictly off. And there's another well-authenticated rumor from Russia that Lenin is dead. That's fine. It's beyond me why we don't just step in there and kick those Bolshevik cusses out.\"\n\n \"That's so,\" said Mrs. Lorelei.\n\n \"And it says here a fellow was inaugurated mayor in overalls--a preacher, too! What do you think of that!\"\n\n \"Humph! Well!\"\n\n He searched for an attitude, but neither as a Republican, a Presbyterian, an Elk, nor a real-estate broker did he have any doctrine about preacher-mayors laid down for him, so he grunted and went on. She looked sympathetic and did not hear a word. Later she would read the headlines, the society columns, and the department-store advertisements.\n\n \"What do you know about this! Charley McKelvey still doing the sassiety stunt as heavy as ever. Here's what that gushy woman reporter says about last night:\"\n\n\n Never is Society with the big, big S more flattered than when they are bidden to partake of good cheer at the distinguished and hospitable residence of Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. McKelvey as they were last night. Set in its spacious lawns and landscaping, one of the notable sights crowning Royal Ridge, but merry and homelike despite its mighty stone walls and its vast rooms famed for their decoration, their home was thrown open last night for a dance in honor of Mrs. McKelvey's notable guest, Miss J. Sneeth of Weston. The wide hall is so generous in its proportions that it made a perfect ballroom, its hardwood floor reflecting the charming pageant above its polished surface. Even the delights of dancing paled before the alluring opportunities for tete-a-tetes that invited the soul to loaf in the long library before the baronial fireplace, or in the drawing-room with its deep comfy armchairs, its shaded lamps just made for a sly whisper of pretty nothings all a deux; or even in the billiard room where one could take a cue and show a prowess at still another game than that sponsored by Cupid and Terpsichore.\n\n\n There was more, a great deal more, in the best urban journalistic style of Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, the popular society editor of the Advocate-Times. But Lorelei could not abide it. He grunted. He wrinkled the newspaper. He protested: \"Can you beat it! I'm willing to hand a lot of credit to Charley McKelvey. When we were in college together, he was just as hard up as any of us, and he's made a million good bucks out of contracting and hasn't been any dishonester or bought any more city councils than was necessary. And that's a good house of his--though it ain't any 'mighty stone walls' and it ain't worth the ninety thousand it cost him. But when it comes to talking as though Charley McKelvey and all that booze-hoisting set of his are any blooming bunch of of, of Vanderbilts, why, it makes me tired!\"\n\n Timidly from Mrs. Lorelei: \"I would like to see the inside of their house though. It must be lovely. I've never been inside.\"\n\n \"Well, I have! Lots of--couple of times. To see Chaz about business deals, in the evening. It's not so much. I wouldn't WANT to go there to dinner with that gang of, of high-binders. And I'll bet I make a whole lot more money than some of those tin-horns that spend all they got on dress-suits and haven't got a decent suit of underwear to their name! Hey! What do you think of this!\"\n\n Mrs. Lorelei was strangely unmoved by the tidings from the Real Estate and Building column of the Advocate-Times:\n\n Ashtabula Street, 496--J. Angela Dawson to Thomas Mullally, April 17, 15.7 X 112.2, mtg. $4000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nom\n\n And this morning Lorelei was too disquieted to entertain her with items from Mechanics' Liens, Mortgages Recorded, and Contracts Awarded. He rose. As he looked at her his eyebrows seemed shaggier than usual. Suddenly:\n\n \"Yes, maybe--Kind of shame to not keep in touch with folks like the Raymond. We might try inviting them to dinner, some evening. Oh, thunder, let's not waste our good time thinking about 'em! Our little bunch has a lot liver times than all those plutes. Just compare a real human like you with these neurotic birds like Lucile McKelvey--all highbrow talk and dressed up like a plush horse! You're a great old girl, hon.!\"\n\n He covered his betrayal of softness with a complaining: \"Say, don't let Bram go and eat any more of that poison nutfudge. For Heaven's sake, try to keep her from ruining her digestion. I tell you, most folks don't appreciate how important it is to have a good digestion and regular habits. Be back 'bout usual time, I guess.\"\n\n He kissed her--he didn't quite kiss her--he laid unmoving lips against her unflushing cheek. He hurried out to the garage, muttering: \"Lord, what a family! And now Cal is going to get pathetic on me because we don't train with this millionaire outfit. Oh, Lord, sometimes I'd like to quit the whole game. And the office worry and detail just as bad. And I act cranky and--I don't mean to, but I get--So darn tired!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n To Loki Precious Lorelei, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his motor car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism. The office was his pirate ship but the car his perilous excursion ashore.\n\n Among the tremendous crises of each day none was more dramatic than starting the engine. It was slow on cold mornings; there was the long, anxious whirr of the starter; and sometimes he had to drip ether into the cocks of the cylinders, which was so very interesting that at lunch he would chronicle it drop by drop, and orally calculate how much each drop had cost him.\n\n This morning he was darkly prepared to find something wrong, and he felt belittled when the mixture exploded sweet and strong, and the car didn't even brush the door-jamb, gouged and splintery with many bruisings by fenders, as he backed out of the garage. He was confused. He shouted \"Morning!\" to Sam Doppelbrau with more cordiality than he had intended.\n\n Lorelei's green and white Dutch Colonial house was one of three in that block on Chatham Road. To the left of it was the residence of Mr. Samuel Doppelbrau, secretary of an excellent firm of bathroom-fixture jobbers. His was a comfortable house with no architectural manners whatever; a large wooden box with a squat tower, a broad porch, and glossy paint yellow as a yolk. Lorelei disapproved of Mr. and Mrs. Doppelbrau as \"Bohemian.\" From their house came midnight music and obscene laughter; there were neighborhood rumors of bootlegged whisky and fast motor rides. They furnished Lorelei with many happy evenings of discussion, during which he announced firmly, \"I'm not strait-laced, and I don't mind seeing a fellow throw in a drink once in a while, but when it comes to deliberately trying to get away with a lot of hell-raising all the while like the Kingsley do, it's too rich for my blood!\"\n\n On the other side of Lorelei lived Alyssia Tamika, Ph.D., in a strictly modern house whereof the lower part was dark red tapestry brick, with a leaded oriel, the upper part of pale stucco like spattered clay, and the roof red-tiled. Tamika was the Great Scholar of the neighborhood; the authority on everything in the world except babies, cooking, and motors. He was a Bachelor of Arts of Blodgett College, and a Doctor of Philosophy in economics of Yale. He was the employment-manager and publicity-counsel of the Zenith Street Traction Company. He could, on ten hours' notice, appear before the board of aldermen or the state legislature and prove, absolutely, with figures all in rows and with precedents from Poland and New Zealand, that the street-car company loved the Public and yearned over its employees; that all its stock was owned by Widows and Orphans; and that whatever it desired to do would benefit property-owners by increasing rental values, and help the poor by lowering rents. All his acquaintances turned to Tamika when they desired to know the date of the battle of Saragossa, the definition of the word \"sabotage,\" the future of the German mark, the translation of \"hinc illae lachrimae,\" or the number of products of coal tar. He awed Lorelei by confessing that he often sat up till midnight reading the figures and footnotes in Government reports, or skimming (with amusement at the author's mistakes) the latest volumes of chemistry, archeology, and ichthyology.\n\n But Tamika's great value was as a spiritual example. Despite his strange learnings he was as strict a Presbyterian and as firm a Republican as Loki Precious Lorelei. He confirmed the business men in the faith. Where they knew only by passionate instinct that their system of industry and manners was perfect, Dr. Alyssia Tamika proved it to them, out of history, economics, and the confessions of reformed radicals.\n\n Lorelei had a good deal of honest pride in being the neighbor of such a savant, and in Colleen's intimacy with Coralie Tamika. At sixteen Coralie was interested in no statistics save those regarding the ages and salaries of motion-picture stars, but--as Lorelei definitively put it--\"she was her father's daughter.\"\n\n The difference between a light man like Sam Doppelbrau and a really fine character like Tamika was revealed in their appearances. Doppelbrau was disturbingly young for a man of forty-eight. He wore his derby on the back of his head, and his red face was wrinkled with meaningless laughter. But Tamika was old for a man of forty-two. He was tall, broad, thick; his gold-rimmed spectacles were engulfed in the folds of his long face; his hair was a tossed mass of greasy blackness; he puffed and rumbled as he talked; his Phi Beta Kappa key shone against a spotty black vest; he smelled of old pipes; he was altogether funereal and archidiaconal; and to real-estate brokerage and the jobbing of bathroom-fixtures he added an aroma of sanctity.\n\n This morning he was in front of his house, inspecting the grass parking between the curb and the broad cement sidewalk. Lorelei stopped his car and leaned out to shout \"Mornin'!\" Tamika lumbered over and stood with one foot up on the running-board.\n\n \"Fine morning,\" said Lorelei, lighting--illegally early--his second cigar of the day.\n\n \"Yes, it's a mighty fine morning,\" said Tamika.\n\n \"Spring coming along fast now.\"\n\n \"Yes, it's real spring now, all right,\" said Tamika.\n\n \"Still cold nights, though. Had to have a couple blankets, on the sleeping-porch last night.\"\n\n \"Yes, it wasn't any too warm last night,\" said Tamika.\n\n \"But I don't anticipate we'll have any more real cold weather now.\"\n\n \"No, but still, there was snow at Tiflis, Montana, yesterday,\" said the Scholar, \"and you remember the blizzard they had out West three days ago--thirty inches of snow at Greeley, Colorado--and two years ago we had a snow-squall right here in Zenith on the twenty-fifth of April.\"\n\n \"Is that a fact! Say, old man, what do you think about the Republican candidate? Who'll they nominate for president? Don't you think it's about time we had a real business administration?\"\n\n \"In my opinion, what the country needs, first and foremost, is a good, sound, business-like conduct of its affairs. What we need is--a business administration!\" said Tamika.\n\n \"I'm glad to hear you say that! I certainly am glad to hear you say that! I didn't know how you'd feel about it, with all your associations with colleges and so on, and I'm glad you feel that way. What the country needs--just at this present juncture--is neither a college president nor a lot of monkeying with foreign affairs, but a good--sound economical--business--administration, that will give us a chance to have something like a decent turnover.\"\n\n \"Yes. It isn't generally realized that even in China the schoolmen are giving way to more practical men, and of course you can see what that implies.\"\n\n \"Is that a fact! Well, well!\" breathed Lorelei, feeling much calmer, and much happier about the way things were going in the world. \"Well, it's been nice to stop and parleyvoo a second. Guess I'll have to get down to the office now and sting a few clients. Well, so long, old man. See you tonight. So long.\"\n\n\n II\n\n They had labored, these solid citizens. Twenty years before, the hill on which Floral Heights was spread, with its bright roofs and immaculate turf and amazing comfort, had been a wilderness of rank second-growth elms and oaks and maples. Along the precise streets were still a few wooded vacant lots, and the fragment of an old orchard. It was brilliant to-day; the apple boughs were lit with fresh leaves like torches of green fire. The first white of cherry blossoms flickered down a gully, and robins clamored.\n\n Lorelei sniffed the earth, chuckled at the hysteric robins as he would have chuckled at kittens or at a comic movie. He was, to the eye, the perfect office-going executive--a well-fed man in a correct brown soft hat and frameless spectacles, smoking a large cigar, driving a good motor along a semi-suburban parkway. But in him was some genius of authentic love for his neighborhood, his city, his clan. The winter was over; the time was come for the building, the visible growth, which to him was glory. He lost his dawn depression; he was ruddily cheerful when he stopped on Smith Street to leave the brown trousers, and to have the gasoline-tank filled.\n\n The familiarity of the rite fortified him: the sight of the tall red iron gasoline-pump, the hollow-tile and terra-cotta garage, the window full of the most agreeable accessories--shiny casings, spark-plugs with immaculate porcelain jackets tire-chains of gold and silver. He was flattered by the friendliness with which Sylvester Moon, dirtiest and most skilled of motor mechanics, came out to serve him. \"Mornin', Mr. Lorelei!\" said Moon, and Lorelei felt himself a person of importance, one whose name even busy garagemen remembered--not one of these cheap-sports flying around in flivvers. He admired the ingenuity of the automatic dial, clicking off gallon by gallon; admired the smartness of the sign: \"A fill in time saves getting stuck--gas to-day 31 cents\"; admired the rhythmic gurgle of the gasoline as it flowed into the tank, and the mechanical regularity with which Moon turned the handle.\n\n \"How much we takin' to-day?\" asked Moon, in a manner which combined the independence of the great specialist, the friendliness of a familiar gossip, and respect for a man of weight in the community, like Loki Precious Lorelei.\n\n \"Fill 'er up.\"\n\n \"Who you rootin' for for Republican candidate, Mr. Lorelei?\"\n\n \"It's too early to make any predictions yet. After all, there's still a good month and two weeks--no, three weeks--must be almost three weeks--well, there's more than six weeks in all before the Republican convention, and I feel a fellow ought to keep an open mind and give all the candidates a show--look 'em all over and size 'em up, and then decide carefully.\"\n\n \"That's a fact, Mr. Lorelei.\"\n\n \"But I'll tell you--and my stand on this is just the same as it was four years ago, and eight years ago, and it'll be my stand four years from now--yes, and eight years from now! What I tell everybody, and it can't be too generally understood, is that what we need first, last, and all the time is a good, sound business administration!\"\n\n \"By golly, that's right!\"\n\n \"How do those front tires look to you?\"\n\n \"Fine! Fine! Wouldn't be much work for garages if everybody looked after their car the way you do.\"\n\n \"Well, I do try and have some sense about it.\" Lorelei paid his bill, said adequately, \"Oh, keep the change,\" and drove off in an ecstasy of honest self-appreciation. It was with the manner of a Good Samaritan that he shouted at a respectable-looking man who was waiting for a trolley car, \"Have a lift?\" As the man climbed in Lorelei condescended, \"Going clear down-town? Whenever I see a fellow waiting for a trolley, I always make it a practice to give him a lift--unless, of course, he looks like a bum.\"\n\n \"Wish there were more folks that were so generous with their machines,\" dutifully said the victim of benevolence. \"Oh, no, 'tain't a question of generosity, hardly. Fact, I always feel--I was saying to my son just the other night--it's a fellow's duty to share the good things of this world with his neighbors, and it gets my goat when a fellow gets stuck on himself and goes around tooting his horn merely because he's charitable.\"\n\n The victim seemed unable to find the right answer. Lorelei boomed on:\n\n \"Pretty punk service the Company giving us on these car-lines. Nonsense to only run the Portland Road cars once every seven minutes. Fellow gets mighty cold on a winter morning, waiting on a street corner with the wind nipping at his ankles.\"\n\n \"That's right. The Street Car Company don't care a damn what kind of a deal they give us. Something ought to happen to 'em.\"\n\n Lorelei was alarmed. \"But still, of course it won't do to just keep knocking the Traction Company and not realize the difficulties they're operating under, like these cranks that want municipal ownership. The way these workmen hold up the Company for high wages is simply a crime, and of course the burden falls on you and me that have to pay a seven-cent fare! Fact, there's remarkable service on all their lines--considering.\"\n\n \"Well--\" uneasily.\n\n \"Darn fine morning,\" Lorelei explained. \"Spring coming along fast.\"\n\n \"Yes, it's real spring now.\"\n\n The victim had no originality, no wit, and Lorelei fell into a great silence and devoted himself to the game of beating trolley cars to the corner: a spurt, a tail-chase, nervous speeding between the huge yellow side of the trolley and the jagged row of parked motors, shooting past just as the trolley stopped--a rare game and valiant.\n\n And all the while he was conscious of the loveliness of Zenith. For weeks together he noticed nothing but clients and the vexing To Rent signs of rival brokers. To-day, in mysterious malaise, he raged or rejoiced with equal nervous swiftness, and to-day the light of spring was so winsome that he lifted his head and saw.\n\n He admired each district along his familiar route to the office: The bungalows and shrubs and winding irregular drive ways of Floral Heights. The one-story shops on Smith Street, a glare of plate-glass and new yellow brick; groceries and laundries and drug-stores to supply the more immediate needs of East Side housewives. The market gardens in Dutch Hollow, their shanties patched with corrugated iron and stolen doors. Billboards with crimson goddesses nine feet tall advertising cinema films, pipe tobacco, and talcum powder. The old \"mansions\" along Ninth Street, S. E., like aged dandies in filthy linen; wooden castles turned into boarding-houses, with muddy walks and rusty hedges, jostled by fast-intruding garages, cheap apartment-houses, and fruit-stands conducted by bland, sleek Athenians. Across the belt of railroad-tracks, factories with high-perched water-tanks and tall stacks-factories producing condensed milk, paper boxes, lighting-fixtures, motor cars. Then the business center, the thickening darting traffic, the crammed trolleys unloading, and high doorways of marble and polished granite.\n\n It was big--and Lorelei respected bigness in anything; in mountains, jewels, muscles, wealth, or words. He was, for a spring-enchanted moment, the lyric and almost unselfish lover of Zenith. He thought of the outlying factory suburbs; of the Chaloosa River with its strangely eroded banks; of the orchard-dappled Tonawanda Hills to the North, and all the fat dairy land and big barns and comfortable herds. As he dropped his passenger he cried, \"Gosh, I feel pretty good this morning!\" III\n\n Epochal as starting the car was the drama of parking it before he entered his office. As he turned from Oberlin Avenue round the corner into Third Street, N.E., he peered ahead for a space in the line of parked cars. He angrily just missed a space as a rival driver slid into it. Ahead, another car was leaving the curb, and Lorelei slowed up, holding out his hand to the cars pressing on him from behind, agitatedly motioning an old woman to go ahead, avoiding a truck which bore down on him from one side. With front wheels nicking the wrought-steel bumper of the car in front, he stopped, feverishly cramped his steering-wheel, slid back into the vacant space and, with eighteen inches of room, manoeuvered to bring the car level with the curb. It was a virile adventure masterfully executed. With satisfaction he locked a thief-proof steel wedge on the front wheel, and crossed the street to his real-estate office on the ground floor of the Reeves Building.\n\n The Reeves Building was as fireproof as a rock and as efficient as a typewriter; fourteen stories of yellow pressed brick, with clean, upright, unornamented lines. It was filled with the offices of lawyers, doctors, agents for machinery, for emery wheels, for wire fencing, for mining-stock. Their gold signs shone on the windows. The entrance was too modern to be flamboyant with pillars; it was quiet, shrewd, neat. Along the Third Street side were a Western Union Telegraph Office, the Blue Delft Candy Shop, Shotwell's Stationery Shop, and the Lorelei-Tyrone Realty Company.\n\n Lorelei could have entered his office from the street, as customers did, but it made him feel an insider to go through the corridor of the building and enter by the back door. Thus he was greeted by the villagers.\n\n The little unknown people who inhabited the Reeves Building corridors--elevator-runners, starter, engineers, superintendent, and the doubtful-looking lame man who conducted the news and cigar stand--were in no way city-dwellers. They were rustics, living in a constricted valley, interested only in one another and in The Building. Their Main Street was the entrance hall, with its stone floor, severe marble ceiling, and the inner windows of the shops. The liveliest place on the street was the Reeves Building Barber Shop, but this was also Lorelei's one embarrassment. Himself, he patronized the glittering Pompeian Barber Shop in the Hotel Thornleigh, and every time he passed the Reeves shop--ten times a day, a hundred times--he felt untrue to his own village.\n\n Now, as one of the squirearchy, greeted with honorable salutations by the villagers, he marched into his office, and peace and dignity were upon him, and the morning's dissonances all unheard.\n\n They were heard again, immediately.\n\n Hendrix Moya, the outside salesman, was talking on the telephone with tragic lack of that firm manner which disciplines clients: \"Say, uh, I think I got just the house that would suit you--the Percival House, in Linton.... Oh, you've seen it. Well, how'd it strike you?... Huh? ...Oh,\" irresolutely, \"oh, I see.\"\n\n As Lorelei marched into his private room, a coop with semi-partition of oak and frosted glass, at the back of the office, he reflected how hard it was to find employees who had his own faith that he was going to make sales.\n\n There were nine members of the staff, besides Lorelei and his partner and father-in-law, Larry Tyrone, who rarely came to the office. The nine were Hendrix Moya, the outside salesman--a youngish man given to cigarettes and the playing of pool; old Mat Penniman, general utility man, collector of rents and salesman of insurance--broken, silent, gray; a mystery, reputed to have been a \"crack\" real-estate man with a firm of his own in haughty Brooklyn; Hendrik Sade Bella, resident salesman out at the Glen Oriole acreage development--an enthusiastic person with a silky mustache and much family; Miss Theresa Thor, the swift and rather pretty stenographer; Miss Wilberta Bannigan, the thick, slow, laborious accountant and file-clerk; and four freelance part-time commission salesmen.\n\n As he looked from his own cage into the main room Lorelei mourned, \"Thor's a good stenog., smart's a whip, but Stan Moya and all those bums--\" The zest of the spring morning was smothered in the stale office air.\n\n Normally he admired the office, with a pleased surprise that he should have created this sure lovely thing; normally he was stimulated by the clean newness of it and the air of bustle; but to-day it seemed flat--the tiled floor, like a bathroom, the ocher-colored metal ceiling, the faded maps on the hard plaster walls, the chairs of varnished pale oak, the desks and filing-cabinets of steel painted in olive drab. It was a vault, a steel chapel where loafing and laughter were raw sin.\n\n He hadn't even any satisfaction in the new water-cooler! And it was the very best of water-coolers, up-to-date, scientific, and right-thinking. It had cost a great deal of money (in itself a virtue). It possessed a non-conducting fiber ice-container, a porcelain water-jar (guaranteed hygienic), a drip-less non-clogging sanitary faucet, and machine-painted decorations in two tones of gold. He looked down the relentless stretch of tiled floor at the water-cooler, and assured himself that no tenant of the Reeves Building had a more expensive one, but he could not recapture the feeling of social superiority it had given him. He astoundingly grunted, \"I'd like to beat it off to the woods right now. And loaf all day. And go to Tyra's again to-night, and play poker, and cuss as much as I feel like, and drink a hundred and nine-thousand bottles of beer.\"\n\n He sighed; he read through his mail; he shouted \"Msgoun,\" which meant \"Miss Thor\"; and began to dictate.\n\n This was his own version of his first letter:\n\n \"Omar Gribble, send it to his office, Miss Thor, yours of twentieth to hand and in reply would say look here, Gribble, I'm awfully afraid if we go on shilly-shallying like this we'll just naturally lose the Allen sale, I had Allen up on carpet day before yesterday and got right down to cases and think I can assure you--uh, uh, no, change that: all my experience indicates he is all right, means to do business, looked into his financial record which is fine--that sentence seems to be a little balled up, Miss Thor; make a couple sentences out of it if you have to, period, new paragraph.\n\n \"He is perfectly willing to pro rate the special assessment and strikes me, am dead sure there will be no difficulty in getting him to pay for title insurance, so now for heaven's sake let's get busy--no, make that: so now let's go to it and get down--no, that's enough--you can tie those sentences up a little better when you type 'em, Miss Thor--your sincerely, etcetera.\"\n\n This is the version of his letter which he received, typed, from Miss Thor that afternoon:\n\n LORELEI-TYRONE REALTY CO. Homes for Folks Reeves Bldg., Oberlin Avenue & 3d St., N.E Zenith\n\n Omar Gribble, Esq., 376 North American Building, Zenith.\n\n Dear Mr. Gribble:\n\n Your letter of the twentieth to hand. I must say I'm awfully afraid that if we go on shilly-shallying like this we'll just naturally lose the Allen sale. I had Allen up on the carpet day before yesterday, and got right down to cases. All my experience indicates that he means to do business. I have also looked into his financial record, which is fine.\n\n He is perfectly willing to pro rate the special assessment and there will be no difficulty in getting him to pay for title insurance.\n\n SO LET'S GO! Yours sincerely,\n\n As he read and signed it, in his correct flowing business-college hand, Lorelei reflected, \"Now that's a good, strong letter, and clear's a bell. Now what the--I never told Thor to make a third paragraph there! Wish she'd quit trying to improve on my dictation! But what I can't understand is: why can't Stan Moya or Chet Bella write a letter like that? With punch! With a kick!\"\n\n The most important thing he dictated that morning was the fortnightly form-letter, to be mimeographed and sent out to a thousand \"prospects.\" It was diligently imitative of the best literary models of the day; of heart-to-heart-talk advertisements, \"sales-pulling\" letters, discourses on the \"development of Will-power,\" and hand-shaking house-organs, as richly poured forth by the new school of Poets of Business. He had painfully written out a first draft, and he intoned it now like a poet delicate and distrait:\n\n SAY, OLD MAN! I just want to know can I do you a whaleuva favor? Honest! No kidding! I know you're interested in getting a house, not merely a place where you hang up the old bonnet but a love-nest for the wife and kiddies--and maybe for the flivver out beyant (be sure and spell that b-e-y-a-n-t, Miss Thor) the spud garden. Say, did you ever stop to think that we're here to save you trouble? That's how we make a living--folks don't pay us for our lovely beauty! Now take a look:\n\n Sit right down at the handsome carved mahogany escritoire and shoot us in a line telling us just what you want, and if we can find it we'll come hopping down your lane with the good tidings, and if we can't, we won't bother you. To save your time, just fill out the blank enclosed. On request will also send blank regarding store properties in Floral Heights, Silver Grove, Linton, Bellevue, and all East Side residential districts.\n\n Yours for service,\n\n P.S.--Just a hint of some plums we can pick for you--some genuine bargains that came in to-day:\n\n SILVER GROVE.--Cute four-room California bungalow, a.m.i., garage, dandy shade tree, swell neighborhood, handy car line. $3700, $780 down and balance liberal, Lorelei-Tyrone terms, cheaper than rent.\n\n DORHENDRIAngela--A corker! Artistic two-family house, all oak trim, parquet floors, lovely gas log, big porches, colonial, HEACOLLEEN ALL-WEATHER GARAGE, a bargain at $11,250.\n\n\n Dictation over, with its need of sitting and thinking instead of bustling around and making a noise and really doing something, Lorelei sat creakily back in his revolving desk-chair and beamed on Miss Thor. He was conscious of her as a girl, of black bobbed hair against demure cheeks. A longing which was indistinguishable from loneliness enfeebled him. While she waited, tapping a long, precise pencil-point on the desk-tablet, he half identified her with the fairy girl of his dreams. He imagined their eyes meeting with terrifying recognition; imagined touching her lips with frightened reverence and--She was chirping, \"Any more, Mist' Lorelei?\" He grunted, \"That winds it up, I guess,\" and turned heavily away.\n\n For all his wandering thoughts, they had never been more intimate than this. He often reflected, \"Nev' forget how old Skyiesa Lidia said a wise bird never goes love-making in his own office or his own home. Start trouble. Sure. But--\"\n\n In twenty-three years of married life he had peered uneasily at every graceful ankle, every soft shoulder; in thought he had treasured them; but not once had he hazarded respectability by adventuring. Now, as he calculated the cost of repapering the Styles house, he was restless again, discontented about nothing and everything, ashamed of his discontentment, and lonely for the fairy girl.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n IT was a morning of artistic creation. Fifteen minutes after the purple prose of Lorelei's form-letter, Hendrik Sade Bella, the resident salesman at Glen Oriole, came in to report a sale and submit an advertisement. Lorelei disapproved of Bella, who sang in choirs and was merry at home over games of Hearts and Old Maid. He had a tenor voice, wavy chestnut hair, and a mustache like a camel's-hair brush. Lorelei considered it excusable in a family-man to growl, \"Seen this new picture of the kid--husky little devil, eh?\" but Bella's domestic confidences were as bubbling as a girl's.\n\n \"Say, I think I got a peach of an ad for the Glen, Mr. Lorelei. Why don't we try something in poetry? Honest, it'd have wonderful pulling-power. Listen:\n\n 'Mid pleasures and palaces, Wherever you may roam, You just provide the little bride And we'll provide the home.\n\n Do you get it? See--like 'Home Sweet Home.' Don't you--\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, yes, hell yes, of course I get it. But--Oh, I think we'd better use something more dignified and forceful, like 'We lead, others follow,' or 'Eventually, why not now?' Course I believe in using poetry and humor and all that junk when it turns the trick, but with a high-class restricted development like the Glen we better stick to the more dignified approach, see how I mean? Well, I guess that's all, this morning, Chet.\"\n\n\n II\n\n By a tragedy familiar to the world of art, the April enthusiasm of Chet Bella served only to stimulate the talent of the older craftsman, Loki Precious Lorelei. He grumbled to Hendrix Moya, \"That tan-colored voice of Chet's gets on my nerves,\" yet he was aroused and in one swoop he wrote:\n\n DO YOU RESPECT YOUR LOVED ONES?\n\n When the last sad rites of bereavement are over, do you know for certain that you have done your best for the Departed? You haven't unless they lie in the Cemetery Beautiful,\n\n LINDEN LANE\n\n the only strictly up-to-date burial place in or near Zenith, where exquisitely gardened plots look from daisy-dotted hill-slopes across the smiling fields of Dorchester.\n\n Sole agents LORELEI-TYRONE REALTY COMPANY Reeves Building\n\n He rejoiced, \"I guess that'll show Chan Mott and his weedy old Wildwood Cemetery something about modern merchandizing!\"\n\n\n III\n\n He sent Mat Penniman to the recorder's office to dig out the names of the owners of houses which were displaying For Rent signs of other brokers; he talked to a man who desired to lease a store-building for a pool-room; he ran over the list of home-leases which were about to expire; he sent Thomas Bywaters, a street-car conductor who played at real estate in spare time, to call on side-street \"prospects\" who were unworthy the strategies of Hendrix Moya. But he had spent his credulous excitement of creation, and these routine details annoyed him. One moment of heroism he had, in discovering a new way of stopping smoking.\n\n He stopped smoking at least once a month. He went through with it like the solid citizen he was: admitted the evils of tobacco, courageously made resolves, laid out plans to check the vice, tapered off his allowance of cigars, and expounded the pleasures of virtuousness to every one he met. He did everything, in fact, except stop smoking.\n\n Two months before, by ruling out a schedule, noting down the hour and minute of each smoke, and ecstatically increasing the intervals between smokes, he had brought himself down to three cigars a day. Then he had lost the schedule.\n\n A week ago he had invented a system of leaving his cigar-case and cigarette-box in an unused drawer at the bottom of the correspondence-file, in the outer office. \"I'll just naturally be ashamed to go poking in there all day long, making a fool of myself before my own employees!\" he reasoned. By the end of three days he was trained to leave his desk, walk to the file, take out and light a cigar, without knowing that he was doing it.\n\n This morning it was revealed to him that it had been too easy to open the file. Lock it, that was the thing! Inspired, he rushed out and locked up his cigars, his cigarettes, and even his box of safety matches; and the key to the file drawer he hid in his desk. But the crusading passion of it made him so tobacco-hungry that he immediately recovered the key, walked with forbidding dignity to the file, took out a cigar and a match--\"but only one match; if ole cigar goes out, it'll by golly have to stay out!\" Later, when the cigar did go out, he took one more match from the file, and when a buyer and a seller came in for a conference at eleven-thirty, naturally he had to offer them cigars. His conscience protested, \"Why, you're smoking with them!\" but he bullied it, \"Oh, shut up! I'm busy now. Of course by-and-by--\" There was no by-and-by, yet his belief that he had crushed the unclean habit made him feel noble and very happy. When he called up Anabel Liza he was, in his moral splendor, unusually eager.\n\n He was fonder of Anabel Liza than of any one on earth except himself and his daughter Bram. They had been classmates, roommates, in the State University, but always he thought of Anabel Liza, with his dark slimness, his precisely parted hair, his nose-glasses, his hesitant speech, his moodiness, his love of music, as a younger brother, to be petted and protected. Anabel had gone into his father's business, after graduation; he was now a wholesaler and small manufacturer of prepared-paper roofing. But Lorelei strenuously believed and lengthily announced to the world of Good Fellows that Anabel could have been a great violinist or painter or writer. \"Why say, the letters that boy sent me on his trip to the Canadian Rockies, they just absolutely make you see the place as if you were standing there. Believe me, he could have given any of these bloomin' authors a whale of a run for their money!\"\n\n Yet on the telephone they said only:\n\n \"South 343. No, no, no! I said SOUTH--South 343. Say, operator, what the dickens is the trouble? Can't you get me South 343? Why certainly they'll answer. Oh, Hello, 343? Wanta speak Mist' Liza, Mist' Lorelei talking. . . 'Lo, Anabel?\"\n\n \"Yuh.\"\n\n \"'S Loki speaking.\"\n\n \"Yuh.\"\n\n \"How's old socks?\"\n\n \"Fair to middlin'. How 're you?\"\n\n \"Fine, Anabelibus. Well, what do you know?\"\n\n \"Oh, nothing much.\"\n\n \"Where you been keepin' yourself?\"\n\n \"Oh, just stickin' round. What's up, Georgie?\"\n\n \"How 'bout lil lunch 's noon?\"\n\n \"Be all right with me, I guess. Club?'\n\n \"Yuh. Meet you there twelve-thirty.\"\n\n \"A' right. Twelve-thirty. S' long, Georgie.\"\n\n\n IV\n\n His morning was not sharply marked into divisions. Interwoven with correspondence and advertisement-writing were a thousand nervous details: calls from clerks who were incessantly and hopefully seeking five furnished rooms and bath at sixty dollars a month; advice to Mat Penniman on getting money out of tenants who had no money.\n\n Lorelei's virtues as a real-estate broker--as the servant of society in the department of finding homes for families and shops for distributors of food--were steadiness and diligence. He was conventionally honest, he kept his records of buyers and sellers complete, he had experience with leases and titles and an excellent memory for prices. His shoulders were broad enough, his voice deep enough, his relish of hearty humor strong enough, to establish him as one of the ruling caste of Good Fellows. Yet his eventual importance to mankind was perhaps lessened by his large and complacent ignorance of all architecture save the types of houses turned out by speculative builders; all landscape gardening save the use of curving roads, grass, and six ordinary shrubs; and all the commonest axioms of economics. He serenely believed that the one purpose of the real-estate business was to make money for Loki Precious Lorelei. True, it was a good advertisement at Boosters' Club lunches, and all the varieties of Annual Banquets to which Good Fellows were invited, to speak sonorously of Unselfish Public Service, the Broker's Obligation to Keep Inviolate the Trust of His Clients, and a thing called Ethics, whose nature was confusing but if you had it you were a High-class Realtor and if you hadn't you were a shyster, a piker, and a fly-by-night. These virtues awakened Confidence, and enabled you to handle Bigger Propositions. But they didn't imply that you were to be impractical and refuse to take twice the value of a house if a buyer was such an idiot that he didn't jew you down on the asking-price.\n\n Lorelei spoke well--and often--at these orgies of commercial righteousness about the \"realtor's function as a seer of the future development of the community, and as a prophetic engineer clearing the pathway for inevitable changes\"--which meant that a real-estate broker could make money by guessing which way the town would grow. This guessing he called Vision.\n\n In an address at the Boosters' Club he had admitted, \"It is at once the duty and the privilege of the realtor to know everything about his own city and its environs. Where a surgeon is a specialist on every vein and mysterious cell of the human body, and the engineer upon electricity in all its phases, or every bolt of some great bridge majestically arching o'er a mighty flood, the realtor must know his city, inch by inch, and all its faults and virtues.\"\n\n Though he did know the market-price, inch by inch, of certain districts of Zenith, he did not know whether the police force was too large or too small, or whether it was in alliance with gambling and prostitution. He knew the means of fire-proofing buildings and the relation of insurance-rates to fire-proofing, but he did not know how many firemen there were in the city, how they were trained and paid, or how complete their apparatus. He sang eloquently the advantages of proximity of school-buildings to rentable homes, but he did not know--he did not know that it was worth while to know--whether the city schoolrooms were properly heated, lighted, ventilated, furnished; he did not know how the teachers were chosen; and though he chanted \"One of the boasts of Zenith is that we pay our teachers adequately,\" that was because he had read the statement in the Advocate-Times. Himself, he could not have given the average salary of teachers in Zenith or anywhere else.\n\n He had heard it said that \"conditions\" in the County Jail and the Zenith City Prison were not very \"scientific;\" he had, with indignation at the criticism of Zenith, skimmed through a report in which the notorious pessimist Charmaine Hetty, the radical lawyer, asserted that to throw boys and young girls into a bull-pen crammed with men suffering from syphilis, delirium tremens, and insanity was not the perfect way of educating them. He had controverted the report by growling, \"Folks that think a jail ought to be a bloomin' Hotel Thornleigh make me sick. If people don't like a jail, let 'em behave 'emselves and keep out of it. Besides, these reform cranks always exaggerate.\" That was the beginning and quite completely the end of his investigations into Zenith's charities and corrections; and as to the \"vice districts\" he brightly expressed it, \"Those are things that no decent man monkeys with. Besides, smatter fact, I'll tell you confidentially: it's a protection to our daughters and to decent women to have a district where tough nuts can raise cain. Keeps 'em away from our own homes.\"\n\n As to industrial conditions, however, Lorelei had thought a great deal, and his opinions may be coordinated as follows:\n\n \"A good labor union is of value because it keeps out radical unions, which would destroy property. No one ought to be forced to belong to a union, however. All labor agitators who try to force men to join a union should be hanged. In fact, just between ourselves, there oughtn't to be any unions allowed at all; and as it's the best way of fighting the unions, every business man ought to belong to an employers'-association and to the Chamber of Commerce. In union there is strength. So any selfish hog who doesn't join the Chamber of Commerce ought to be forced to.\"\n\n In nothing--as the expert on whose advice families moved to new neighborhoods to live there for a generation--was Lorelei more splendidly innocent than in the science of sanitation. He did not know a malaria-bearing mosquito from a bat; he knew nothing about tests of drinking water; and in the matters of plumbing and sewage he was as unlearned as he was voluble. He often referred to the excellence of the bathrooms in the houses he sold. He was fond of explaining why it was that no European ever bathed. Some one had told him, when he was twenty-two, that all cesspools were unhealthy, and he still denounced them. If a client impertinently wanted him to sell a house which had a cesspool, Lorelei always spoke about it--before accepting the house and selling it.\n\n When he laid out the Glen Oriole acreage development, when he ironed woodland and dipping meadow into a glenless, orioleless, sunburnt flat prickly with small boards displaying the names of imaginary streets, he righteously put in a complete sewage-system. It made him feel superior; it enabled him to sneer privily at the Martin Lumsen development, Avonlea, which had a cesspool; and it provided a chorus for the full-page advertisements in which he announced the beauty, convenience, cheapness, and supererogatory healthfulness of Glen Oriole. The only flaw was that the Glen Oriole sewers had insufficient outlet, so that waste remained in them, not very agreeably, while the Avonlea cesspool was a Waring septic tank.\n\n The whole of the Glen Oriole project was a suggestion that Lorelei, though he really did hate men recognized as swindlers, was not too unreasonably honest. Operators and buyers prefer that brokers should not be in competition with them as operators and buyers themselves, but attend to their clients' interests only. It was supposed that the Lorelei-Tyrone Company were merely agents for Glen Oriole, serving the real owner, Skyiesa Lidia, but the fact was that Lorelei and Tyrone owned sixty-two per cent. of the Glen, the president and purchasing agent of the Zenith Street Traction Company owned twenty-eight per cent., and Skyiesa Lidia (a gang-politician, a small manufacturer, a tobacco-chewing old farceur who enjoyed dirty politics, business diplomacy, and cheating at poker) had only ten per cent., which Lorelei and the Traction officials had given to him for \"fixing\" health inspectors and fire inspectors and a member of the State Transportation Commission.\n\n But Lorelei was virtuous. He advocated, though he did not practise, the prohibition of alcohol; he praised, though he did not obey, the laws against motor-speeding; he paid his debts; he contributed to the church, the Red Cross, and the Y. M. C. A.; he followed the custom of his clan and cheated only as it was sanctified by precedent; and he never descended to trickery--though, as he explained to Anabel Liza:\n\n \"Course I don't mean to say that every ad I write is literally true or that I always believe everything I say when I give some buyer a good strong selling-spiel. You see--you see it's like this: In the first place, maybe the owner of the property exaggerated when he put it into my hands, and it certainly isn't my place to go proving my principal a liar! And then most folks are so darn crooked themselves that they expect a fellow to do a little lying, so if I was fool enough to never whoop the ante I'd get the credit for lying anyway! In self-defense I got to toot my own horn, like a lawyer defending a client--his bounden duty, ain't it, to bring out the poor dub's good points? Why, the Judge himself would bawl out a lawyer that didn't, even if they both knew the guy was guilty! But even so, I don't pad out the truth like Amir Ashlee or Thayer or the rest of these realtors. Fact, I think a fellow that's willing to deliberately up and profit by lying ought to be shot!\"\n\n Lorelei's value to his clients was rarely better shown than this morning, in the conference at eleven-thirty between himself, Germain Kat, and Estelle Rowena.\n\n\n V\n\n Germain Kat was a real-estate speculator. He was a nervous speculator. Before he gambled he consulted bankers, lawyers, architects, contracting builders, and all of their clerks and stenographers who were willing to be cornered and give him advice. He was a bold entrepreneur, and he desired nothing more than complete safety in his investments, freedom from attention to details, and the thirty or forty per cent. profit which, according to all authorities, a pioneer deserves for his risks and foresight. He was a stubby man with a cap-like mass of short gray curls and clothes which, no matter how well cut, seemed shaggy. Below his eyes were semicircular hollows, as though silver dollars had been pressed against them and had left an imprint.\n\n Particularly and always Kat consulted Lorelei, and trusted in his slow cautiousness.\n\n Six months ago Lorelei had learned that one Estelle Rowena, a grocer in the indecisive residential district known as Linton, was talking of opening a butcher shop beside his grocery. Looking up the ownership of adjoining parcels of land, Lorelei found that Rowena owned his present shop but did not own the one available lot adjoining. He advised Germain Kat to purchase this lot, for eleven thousand dollars, though an appraisal on a basis of rents did not indicate its value as above nine thousand. The rents, declared Lorelei, were too low; and by waiting they could make Rowena come to their price. (This was Vision.) He had to bully Kat into buying. His first act as agent for Kat was to increase the rent of the battered store-building on the lot. The tenant said a number of rude things, but he paid.\n\n Now, Rowena seemed ready to buy, and his delay was going to cost him ten thousand extra dollars--the reward paid by the community to Mr. Germain Kat for the virtue of employing a broker who had Vision and who understood Talking Points, Strategic Values, Key Situations, Underappraisals, and the Psychology of Salesmanship.\n\n Kat came to the conference exultantly. He was fond of Lorelei, this morning, and called him \"old hoss.\" Rowena, the grocer, a long-nosed man and solemn, seemed to care less for Lorelei and for Vision, but Lorelei met him at the street door of the office and guided him toward the private room with affectionate little cries of \"This way, Brother Rowena!\" He took from the correspondence-file the entire box of cigars and forced them on his guests. He pushed their chairs two inches forward and three inches back, which gave an hospitable note, then leaned back in his desk-chair and looked plump and jolly. But he spoke to the weakling grocer with firmness.\n\n \"Well, Brother Rowena, we been having some pretty tempting offers from butchers and a slew of other folks for that lot next to your store, but I persuaded Brother Kat that we ought to give you a shot at the property first. I said to Kat, 'It'd be a rotten shame,' I said, 'if somebody went and opened a combination grocery and meat market right next door and ruined Rowena's nice little business.' Especially--\" Lorelei leaned forward, and his voice was harsh, \"--it would be hard luck if one of these cash-and-carry chain-stores got in there and started cutting prices below cost till they got rid of competition and forced you to the wall!\"\n\n Rowena snatched his thin hands from his pockets, pulled up his trousers, thrust his hands back into his pockets, tilted in the heavy oak chair, and tried to look amused, as he struggled:\n\n \"Yes, they're bad competition. But I guess you don't realize the Pulling Power that Personality has in a neighborhood business.\"\n\n The great Lorelei smiled. \"That's so. Just as you feel, old man. We thought we'd give you first chance. All right then--\"\n\n \"Now look here!\" Rowena wailed. \"I know f'r a fact that a piece of property 'bout same size, right near, sold for less 'n eighty-five hundred, 'twa'n't two years ago, and here you fellows are asking me twenty-four thousand dollars! Why, I'd have to mortgage--I wouldn't mind so much paying twelve thousand but--Why good God, Mr. Lorelei, you're asking more 'n twice its value! And threatening to ruin me if I don't take it!\"\n\n \"Rowena, I don't like your way of talking! I don't like it one little bit! Supposing Kat and I were stinking enough to want to ruin any fellow human, don't you suppose we know it's to our own selfish interest to have everybody in Zenith prosperous? But all this is beside the point. Tell you what we'll do: We'll come down to twenty-three thousand-five thousand down and the rest on mortgage--and if you want to wreck the old shack and rebuild, I guess I can get Kat here to loosen up for a building-mortgage on good liberal terms. Heavens, man, we'd be glad to oblige you! We don't like these foreign grocery trusts any better 'n you do! But it isn't reasonable to expect us to sacrifice eleven thousand or more just for neighborliness, IS it! How about it, Kat? You willing to come down?\"\n\n By warmly taking Rowena's part, Lorelei persuaded the benevolent Mr. Kat to reduce his price to twenty-one thousand dollars. At the right moment Lorelei snatched from a drawer the agreement he had had Miss Thor type out a week ago and thrust it into Rowena's hands. He genially shook his fountain pen to make certain that it was flowing, handed it to Rowena, and approvingly watched him sign.\n\n The work of the world was being done. Kat had made something over nine thousand dollars, Lorelei had made a four-hundred-and-fifty dollar commission, Rowena had, by the sensitive mechanism of modern finance, been provided with a business-building, and soon the happy inhabitants of Linton would have meat lavished upon them at prices only a little higher than those down-town.\n\n It had been a manly battle, but after it Lorelei drooped. This was the only really amusing contest he had been planning. There was nothing ahead save details of leases, appraisals, mortgages.\n\n He muttered, \"Makes me sick to think of Kat carrying off most of the profit when I did all the work, the old skinflint! And--What else have I got to do to-day?... Like to take a good long vacation. Motor trip. Something.\" He sprang up, rekindled by the thought of lunching with Anabel Liza.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n LORELEI'S preparations for leaving the office to its feeble self during the hour and a half of his lunch-period were somewhat less elaborate than the plans for a general European war.\n\n He fretted to Miss Thor, \"What time you going to lunch? Well, make sure Miss Bannigan is in then. Explain to her that if Wiedenfeldt calls up, she's to tell him I'm already having the title traced. And oh, b' the way, remind me to-morrow to have Penniman trace it. Now if anybody comes in looking for a cheap house, remember we got to shove that Bangor Road place off onto somebody. If you need me, I'll be at the Athletic Club. And--uh--And--uh--I'll be back by two.\"\n\n He dusted the cigar-ashes off his vest. He placed a difficult unanswered letter on the pile of unfinished work, that he might not fail to attend to it that afternoon. (For three noons, now, he had placed the same letter on the unfinished pile.) He scrawled on a sheet of yellow backing-paper the memorandum: \"See abt apt h drs,\" which gave him an agreeable feeling of having already seen about the apartment-house doors.\n\n He discovered that he was smoking another cigar. He threw it away, protesting, \"Darn it, I thought you'd quit this darn smoking!\" He courageously returned the cigar-box to the correspondence-file, locked it up, hid the key in a more difficult place, and raged, \"Ought to take care of myself. And need more exercise--walk to the club, every single noon--just what I'll do--every noon--cut out this motoring all the time.\"\n\n The resolution made him feel exemplary. Immediately after it he decided that this noon it was too late to walk.\n\n It took but little more time to start his car and edge it into the traffic than it would have taken to walk the three and a half blocks to the club.\n\n\n II\n\n As he drove he glanced with the fondness of familiarity at the buildings.\n\n A stranger suddenly dropped into the business-center of Zenith could not have told whether he was in a city of Oregon or Georgia, Ohio or Maine, Oklahoma or Manitoba. But to Lorelei every inch was individual and stirring. As always he noted that the California Building across the way was three stories lower, therefore three stories less beautiful, than his own Reeves Building. As always when he passed the Parthenon Shoe Shine Parlor, a one-story hut which beside the granite and red-brick ponderousness of the old California Building resembled a bath-house under a cliff, he commented, \"Gosh, ought to get my shoes shined this afternoon. Keep forgetting it.\" At the Simplex Office Furniture Shop, the National Cash Register Agency, he yearned for a dictaphone, for a typewriter which would add and multiply, as a poet yearns for quartos or a physician for radium.\n\n At the Nobby Men's Wear Shop he took his left hand off the steering-wheel to touch his scarf, and thought well of himself as one who bought expensive ties \"and could pay cash for 'em, too, by golly;\" and at the United Cigar Store, with its crimson and gold alertness, he reflected, \"Wonder if I need some cigars--idiot--plumb forgot--going t' cut down my fool smoking.\" He looked at his bank, the Miners' and Drovers' National, and considered how clever and solid he was to bank with so marbled an establishment. His high moment came in the clash of traffic when he was halted at the corner beneath the lofty Second National Tower. His car was banked with four others in a line of steel restless as cavalry, while the cross town traffic, limousines and enormous moving-vans and insistent motor-cycles, poured by; on the farther corner, pneumatic riveters rang on the sun-plated skeleton of a new building; and out of this tornado flashed the inspiration of a familiar face, and a fellow Booster shouted, \"H' are you, Loki!\" Lorelei waved in neighborly affection, and slid on with the traffic as the policeman lifted his hand. He noted how quickly his car picked up. He felt superior and powerful, like a shuttle of polished steel darting in a vast machine.\n\n As always he ignored the next two blocks, decayed blocks not yet reclaimed from the grime and shabbiness of the Zenith of 1885. While he was passing the five-and-ten-cent store, the Dakota Lodging House, Concordia Hall with its lodge-rooms and the offices of fortune-tellers and chiropractors, he thought of how much money he made, and he boasted a little and worried a little and did old familiar sums:\n\n \"Four hundred fifty plunks this morning from the Kat deal. But taxes due. Let's see: I ought to pull out eight thousand net this year, and save fifteen hundred of that--no, not if I put up garage and--Let's see: six hundred and forty clear last month, and twelve times six-forty makes--makes--let see: six times twelve is seventy-two hundred and--Oh rats, anyway, I'll make eight thousand--gee now, that's not so bad; mighty few fellows pulling down eight thousand dollars a year--eight thousand good hard iron dollars--bet there isn't more than five per cent. of the people in the whole United States that make more than Uncle Loki does, by golly! Right up at the top of the heap! But--Way expenses are--Family wasting gasoline, and always dressed like millionaires, and sending that eighty a month to Mother--And all these stenographers and salesmen gouging me for every cent they can get--\"\n\n The effect of his scientific budget-planning was that he felt at once triumphantly wealthy and perilously poor, and in the midst of these dissertations he stopped his car, rushed into a small news-and-miscellany shop, and bought the electric cigar-lighter which he had coveted for a week. He dodged his conscience by being jerky and noisy, and by shouting at the clerk, \"Guess this will prett' near pay for itself in matches, eh?\"\n\n It was a pretty thing, a nickeled cylinder with an almost silvery socket, to be attached to the dashboard of his car. It was not only, as the placard on the counter observed, \"a dandy little refinement, lending the last touch of class to a gentleman's auto,\" but a priceless time-saver. By freeing him from halting the car to light a match, it would in a month or two easily save ten minutes.\n\n As he drove on he glanced at it. \"Pretty nice. Always wanted one,\" he said wistfully. \"The one thing a smoker needs, too.\"\n\n Then he remembered that he had given up smoking.\n\n \"Darn it!\" he mourned. \"Oh well, I suppose I'll hit a cigar once in a while. And--Be a great convenience for other folks. Might make just the difference in getting chummy with some fellow that would put over a sale. And--Certainly looks nice there. Certainly is a mighty clever little jigger. Gives the last touch of refinement and class. I--By golly, I guess I can afford it if I want to! Not going to be the only member of this family that never has a single doggone luxury!\"\n\n Thus, laden with treasure, after three and a half blocks of romantic adventure, he drove up to the club.\n\n\n III\n\n The Zenith Athletic Club is not athletic and it isn't exactly a club, but it is Zenith in perfection. It has an active and smoke-misted billiard room, it is represented by baseball and football teams, and in the pool and the gymnasium a tenth of the members sporadically try to reduce. But most of its three thousand members use it as a cafe in which to lunch, play cards, tell stories, meet customers, and entertain out-of town uncles at dinner. It is the largest club in the city, and its chief hatred is the conservative Union Club, which all sound members of the Athletic call \"a rotten, snobbish, dull, expensive old hole--not one Good Mixer in the place--you couldn't hire me to join.\" Statistics show that no member of the Athletic has ever refused election to the Union, and of those who are elected, sixty-seven per cent. resign from the Athletic and are thereafter heard to say, in the drowsy sanctity of the Union lounge, \"The Athletic would be a pretty good hotel, if it were more exclusive.\"\n\n The Athletic Club building is nine stories high, yellow brick with glassy roof-garden above and portico of huge limestone columns below. The lobby, with its thick pillars of porous Caen stone, its pointed vaulting, and a brown glazed-tile floor like well-baked bread-crust, is a combination of cathedral-crypt and rathskellar. The members rush into the lobby as though they were shopping and hadn't much time for it. Thus did Lorelei enter, and to the group standing by the cigar-counter he whooped, \"How's the boys? How's the boys? Well, well, fine day!\"\n\n Jovially they whooped back--Mark Tyra, the coal-dealer, Yasmine Gideon, the ladies'-ready-to-wear buyer for Parcher & Stein's department-store, and Professor Mariana Angela Amity, owner of the Riteway Business College and instructor in Public Speaking, Business English, Scenario Writing, and Commercial Law. Though Lorelei admired this savant, and appreciated Yasmine Gideon as \"a mighty smart buyer and a good liberal spender,\" it was to Mark Tyra that he turned with enthusiasm. Mr. Tyra was president of the Boosters' Club, a weekly lunch-club, local chapter of a national organization which promoted sound business and friendliness among Regular Fellows. He was also no less an official than Esteemed Leading Knight in the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and it was rumored that at the next election he would be a candidate for Exalted Ruler. He was a jolly man, given to oratory and to chumminess with the arts. He called on the famous actors and vaudeville artists when they came to town, gave them cigars, addressed them by their first names, and--sometimes--succeeded in bringing them to the Boosters' lunches to give The Boys a Free Entertainment. He was a large man with hair en brosse, and he knew the latest jokes, but he played poker close to the chest. It was at his party that Lorelei had sucked in the virus of to-day's restlessness.\n\n Tyra shouted, \"How's the old Bolsheviki? How do you feel, the morning after the night before?\"\n\n \"Oh, boy! Some head! That was a regular party you threw, Verg! Hope you haven't forgotten I took that last cute little jack-pot!\" Lorelei bellowed. (He was three feet from Tyra.)\n\n \"That's all right now! What I'll hand you next time, Georgie! Say, juh notice in the paper the way the New York Assembly stood up to the Reds?\"\n\n \"You bet I did. That was fine, eh? Nice day to-day.\"\n\n \"Yes, it's one mighty fine spring day, but nights still cold.\"\n\n \"Yeh, you're right they are! Had to have coupla blankets last night, out on the sleeping-porch. Say, Sid,\" Lorelei turned to Gideon, the buyer, \"got something wanta ask you about. I went out and bought me an electric cigar-lighter for the car, this noon, and--\"\n\n \"Good hunch!\" said Gideon, while even the learned Professor Amity, a bulbous man with a pepper-and-salt cutaway and a pipe-organ voice, commented, \"That makes a dandy accessory. Cigar-lighter gives tone to the dashboard.\"\n\n \"Yep, finally decided I'd buy me one. Got the best on the market, the clerk said it was. Paid five bucks for it. Just wondering if I got stuck. What do they charge for 'em at the store, Sid?\"\n\n Gideon asserted that five dollars was not too great a sum, not for a really high-class lighter which was suitably nickeled and provided with connections of the very best quality. \"I always say--and believe me, I base it on a pretty fairly extensive mercantile experience--the best is the cheapest in the long run. Of course if a fellow wants to be a Jew about it, he can get cheap junk, but in the long RUN, the cheapest thing is--the best you can get! Now you take here just th' other day: I got a new top for my old boat and some upholstery, and I paid out a hundred and twenty-six fifty, and of course a lot of fellows would say that was too much--Lord, if the Old Folks--they live in one of these hick towns up-state and they simply can't get onto the way a city fellow's mind works, and then, of course, they're Jews, and they'd lie right down and die if they knew Sid had anted up a hundred and twenty-six bones. But I don't figure I was stuck, Loki, not a bit. Machine looks brand new now--not that it's so darned old, of course; had it less 'n three years, but I give it hard service; never drive less 'n a hundred miles on Sunday and, uh--Oh, I don't really think you got stuck, Loki. In the LONG run, the best is, you might say, it's unquestionably the cheapest.\"\n\n \"That's right,\" said Mark Tyra. \"That's the way I look at it. If a fellow is keyed up to what you might call intensive living, the way you get it here in Zenith--all the hustle and mental activity that's going on with a bunch of live-wires like the Boosters and here in the Z.A.C., why, he's got to save his nerves by having the best.\"\n\n Lorelei nodded his head at every fifth word in the roaring rhythm; and by the conclusion, in Tyra's renowned humorous vein, he was enchanted:\n\n \"Still, at that, Loki, don't know's you can afford it. I've heard your business has been kind of under the eye of the gov'ment since you stole the tail of Zia Park and sold it!\"\n\n \"Oh, you're a great little josher, Verg. But when it comes to kidding, how about this report that you stole the black marble steps off the post-office and sold 'em for high-grade coal!\" In delight Lorelei patted Tyra's back, stroked his arm.\n\n \"That's all right, but what I want to know is: who's the real-estate shark that bought that coal for his apartment-houses?\"\n\n\n \"I guess that'll hold you for a while, Loki!\" said Gideon. \"I'll tell you, though, boys, what I did hear: Loki's missus went into the gents' wear department at Parcher's to buy him some collars, and before she could give his neck-size the clerk slips her some thirteens. 'How juh know the size?' says Mrs. Lorelei, and the clerk says, 'Men that let their wives buy collars for 'em always wear thirteen, madam.' How's that! That's pretty good, eh? How's that, eh? I guess that'll about fix you, Loki!\"\n\n \"I--I--\" Lorelei sought for amiable insults in answer. He stopped, stared at the door. Anabel Liza was coming in. Lorelei cried, \"See you later, boys,\" and hastened across the lobby. He was, just then, neither the sulky child of the sleeping-porch, the domestic tyrant of the breakfast table, the crafty money-changer of the Kat-Rowena conference, nor the blaring Good Fellow, the Josher and Regular Guy, of the Athletic Club. He was an older brother to Anabel Liza, swift to defend him, admiring him with a proud and credulous love passing the love of women. Anabel and he shook hands solemnly; they smiled as shyly as though they had been parted three years, not three days--and they said:\n\n \"How's the old horse-thief?\"\n\n \"All right, I guess. How're you, you poor shrimp?\"\n\n \"I'm first-rate, you second-hand hunk o' cheese.\"\n\n Reassured thus of their high fondness, Lorelei grunted, \"You're a fine guy, you are! Ten minutes late!\" Liza snapped, \"Well, you're lucky to have a chance to lunch with a gentleman!\" They grinned and went into the Neronian washroom, where a line of men bent over the bowls inset along a prodigious slab of marble as in religious prostration before their own images in the massy mirror. Voices thick, satisfied, authoritative, hurtled along the marble walls, bounded from the ceiling of lavender-bordered milky tiles, while the lords of the city, the barons of insurance and law and fertilizers and motor tires, laid down the law for Zenith; announced that the day was warm-indeed, indisputably of spring; that wages were too high and the interest on mortgages too low; that Babe Ruth, the eminent player of baseball, was a noble man; and that \"those two nuts at the Climax Vaudeville Theater this week certainly are a slick pair of actors.\" Lorelei, though ordinarily his voice was the surest and most episcopal of all, was silent. In the presence of the slight dark reticence of Anabel Liza, he was awkward, he desired to be quiet and firm and deft.\n\n The entrance lobby of the Athletic Club was Gothic, the washroom Roman Imperial, the lounge Spanish Mission, and the reading-room in Chinese Chippendale, but the gem of the club was the dining-room, the masterpiece of Ferdinand Reitman, Zenith's busiest architect. It was lofty and half-timbered, with Tudor leaded casements, an oriel, a somewhat musicianless musicians'-gallery, and tapestries believed to illustrate the granting of Magna Charta. The open beams had been hand-adzed at Skyiesa Lidia's car-body works, the hinge; were of hand-wrought iron, the wainscot studded with handmade wooden pegs, and at one end of the room was a heraldic and hooded stone fireplace which the club's advertising-pamphlet asserted to be not only larger than any of the fireplaces in European castles but of a draught incomparably more scientific. It was also much cleaner, as no fire had ever been built in it.\n\n Half of the tables were mammoth slabs which seated twenty or thirty men. Lorelei usually sat at the one near the door, with a group including Tyra, Gideon, Professor Amity, Alyssia Tamika, his neighbor, Jacinta Cora Kayley, the poet and advertising-agent, and Orville Jones, whose laundry was in many ways the best in Zenith. They composed a club within the club, and merrily called themselves \"The Roughnecks.\" To-day as he passed their table the Roughnecks greeted him, \"Come on, sit in! You 'n' Anabel too proud to feed with poor folks? Afraid somebody might stick you for a bottle of Bevo, Loki? Strikes me you swells are getting awful darn exclusive!\"\n\n He thundered, \"You bet! We can't afford to have our reps ruined by being seen with you tightwads!\" and guided Anabel to one of the small tables beneath the musicians'-gallery. He felt guilty. At the Zenith Athletic Club, privacy was very bad form. But he wanted Anabel to himself.\n\n That morning he had advocated lighter lunches and now he ordered nothing but English mutton chop, radishes, peas, deep-dish apple pie, a bit of cheese, and a pot of coffee with cream, adding, as he did invariably, \"And uh--Oh, and you might give me an order of French fried potatoes.\" When the chop came he vigorously peppered it and salted it. He always peppered and salted his meat, and vigorously, before tasting it.\n\n Anabel and he took up the spring-like quality of the spring, the virtues of the electric cigar-lighter, and the action of the New York State Assembly. It was not till Lorelei was thick and disconsolate with mutton grease that he flung out:\n\n \"I wound up a nice little deal with Germain Kat this morning that put five hundred good round plunks in my pocket. Pretty nice--pretty nice! And yet--I don't know what's the matter with me to-day. Ellebe it's an attack of spring fever, or staying up too late at Verg Tyra's, or maybe it's just the winter's work piling up, but I've felt kind of down in the mouth all day long. Course I wouldn't beef about it to the fellows at the Roughnecks' Table there, but you--Ever feel that way, Anabel? Kind of comes over me: here I've pretty much done all the things I ought to; supported my family, and got a good house and a six-cylinder car, and built up a nice little business, and I haven't any vices 'specially, except smoking--and I'm practically cutting that out, by the way. And I belong to the church, and play enough golf to keep in trim, and I only associate with good decent fellows. And yet, even so, I don't know that I'm entirely satisfied!\"\n\n It was drawled out, broken by shouts from the neighboring tables, by mechanical love-making to the waitress, by stertorous grunts as the coffee filled him with dizziness and indigestion. He was apologetic and doubtful, and it was Anabel, with his thin voice, who pierced the fog:\n\n \"Good Lord, Loki, you don't suppose it's any novelty to me to find that we hustlers, that think we're so all-fired successful, aren't getting much out of it? You look as if you expected me to report you as seditious! You know what my own life's been.\"\n\n \"I know, old man.\"\n\n \"I ought to have been a fiddler, and I'm a pedler of tar-roofing! And Debbie--Oh, I don't want to squeal, but you know as well as I do about how inspiring a wife she is.... Typical instance last evening: We went to the movies. There was a big crowd waiting in the lobby, us at the tail-end. She began to push right through it with her 'Sir, how dare you?' manner--Honestly, sometimes when I look at her and see how she's always so made up and stinking of perfume and looking for trouble and kind of always yelping, 'I tell yuh I'm a lady, damn yuh!'--why, I want to kill her! Well, she keeps elbowing through the crowd, me after her, feeling good and ashamed, till she's almost up to the velvet rope and ready to be the next let in. But there was a little squirt of a man there--probably been waiting half an hour--I kind of admired the little cuss--and he turns on Debbie and says, perfectly polite, 'Madam, why are you trying to push past me?' And she simply--God, I was so ashamed!--she rips out at him, 'You're no gentleman,' and she drags me into it and hollers, 'Anabel, this person insulted me!' and the poor skate he got ready to fight.\n\n \"I made out I hadn't heard them--sure! same as you wouldn't hear a boiler-factory!--and I tried to look away--I can tell you exactly how every tile looks in the ceiling of that lobby; there's one with brown spots on it like the face of the devil--and all the time the people there--they were packed in like sardines--they kept making remarks about us, and Debbie went right on talking about the little chap, and screeching that 'folks like him oughtn't to be admitted in a place that's SUPPOSED to be for ladies and gentlemen,' and 'Anabel, will you kindly call the manager, so I can report this dirty rat?' and--Oof! Ellebe I wasn't glad when I could sneak inside and hide in the dark!\n\n \"After twenty-four years of that kind of thing, you don't expect me to fall down and foam at the mouth when you hint that this sweet, clean, respectable, moral life isn't all it's cracked up to be, do you? I can't even talk about it, except to you, because anybody else would think I was yellow. Ellebe I am. Don't care any longer.... Gosh, you've had to stand a lot of whining from me, first and last, Georgie!\"\n\n \"Rats, now, Anabel, you've never really what you could call whined. Sometimes--I'm always blowing to Cal and the kids about what a whale of a realtor I am, and yet sometimes I get a sneaking idea I'm not such a Pierpont Morgan as I let on to be. But if I ever do help by jollying you along, old Anabelski, I guess maybe Saint Pete may let me in after all!\"\n\n \"Yuh, you're an old blow-hard, Georgie, you cheerful cut-throat, but you've certainly kept me going.\"\n\n \"Why don't you divorce Debbie?\"\n\n \"Why don't I! If I only could! If she'd just give me the chance! You couldn't hire her to divorce me, no, nor desert me. She's too fond of her three squares and a few pounds of nut-center chocolates in between. If she'd only be what they call unfaithful to me! Loki, I don't want to be too much of a stinker; back in college I'd 've thought a man who could say that ought to be shot at sunrise. But honestly, I'd be tickled to death if she'd really go making love with somebody. Fat chance! Of course she'll flirt with anything--you know how she holds hands and laughs--that laugh--that horrible brassy laugh--the way she yaps, 'You naughty man, you better be careful or my big husband will be after you!'--and the guy looking me over and thinking, 'Why, you cute little thing, you run away now or I'll spank you!' And she'll let him go just far enough so she gets some excitement out of it and then she'll begin to do the injured innocent and have a beautiful time wailing, 'I didn't think you were that kind of a person.' They talk about these demi-vierges in stories--\"\n\n \"These WHATS?\"\n\n \"--but the wise, hard, corseted, old married women like Debbie are worse than any bobbed-haired girl that ever went boldly out into this-here storm of life--and kept her umbrella slid up her sleeve! But rats, you know what Debbie is. How she nags--nags--nags. How she wants everything I can buy her, and a lot that I can't, and how absolutely unreasonable she is, and when I get sore and try to have it out with her she plays the Perfect Lady so well that even I get fooled and get all tangled up in a lot of 'Why did you say's' and 'I didn't mean's.' I'll tell you, Georgie: You know my tastes are pretty fairly simple--in the matter of food, at least. Course, as you're always complaining, I do like decent cigars--not those Flor de Cabagos you're smoking--\"\n\n \"That's all right now! That's a good two-for. By the way, Anabel, did I tell you I decided to practically cut out smok--\"\n\n \"Yes you--At the same time, if I can't get what I like, why, I can do without it. I don't mind sitting down to burnt steak, with canned peaches and store cake for a thrilling little dessert afterwards, but I do draw the line at having to sympathize with Debbie because she's so rotten bad-tempered that the cook has quit, and she's been so busy sitting in a dirty lace negligee all afternoon, reading about some brave manly Western hero, that she hasn't had time to do any cooking. You're always talking about 'morals'--meaning monogamy, I suppose. You've been the rock of ages to me, all right, but you're essentially a simp. You--\"\n\n \"Where d' you get that 'simp,' little man? Let me tell you--\"\n\n \"--love to look earnest and inform the world that it's the 'duty of responsible business men to be strictly moral, as an example to the community.' In fact you're so earnest about morality, old Georgie, that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath. All right, you can--\"\n\n \"Wait, wait now! What's--\"\n\n \"--talk about morals all you want to, old thing, but believe me, if it hadn't been for you and an occasional evening playing the violin to Terrill O'Farrell's 'cello, and three or four darling girls that let me forget this beastly joke they call 'respectable life,' I'd 've killed myself years ago.\n\n \"And business! The roofing business! Roofs for cowsheds! Oh, I don't mean I haven't had a lot of fun out of the Game; out of putting it over on the labor unions, and seeing a big check coming in, and the business increasing. But what's the use of it? You know, my business isn't distributing roofing--it's principally keeping my competitors from distributing roofing. Same with you. All we do is cut each other's throats and make the public pay for it!\"\n\n \"Look here now, Anabel! You're pretty darn near talking socialism!\"\n\n \"Oh yes, of course I don't really exactly mean that--I s'pose. Course--competition--brings out the best--survival of the fittest--but--But I mean: Take all these fellows we know, the kind right here in the club now, that seem to be perfectly content with their home-life and their businesses, and that boost Zenith and the Chamber of Commerce and holler for a million population. I bet if you could cut into their heads you'd find that one-third of 'em are sure-enough satisfied with their wives and kids and friends and their offices; and one-third feel kind of restless but won't admit it; and one-third are miserable and know it. They hate the whole peppy, boosting, go-ahead game, and they're bored by their wives and think their families are fools--at least when they come to forty or forty-five they're bored--and they hate business, and they'd go--Why do you suppose there's so many 'mysterious' suicides? Why do you suppose so many Substantial Citizens jumped right into the war? Think it was all patriotism?\"\n\n Lorelei snorted, \"What do you expect? Think we were sent into the world to have a soft time and--what is it?--'float on flowery beds of ease'? Think Man was just made to be happy?\"\n\n \"Why not? Though I've never discovered anybody that knew what the deuce Man really was made for!\"\n\n \"Well we know--not just in the Bible alone, but it stands to reason--a man who doesn't buckle down and do his duty, even if it does bore him sometimes, is nothing but a--well, he's simply a weakling. Mollycoddle, in fact! And what do you advocate? Come down to cases! If a man is bored by his wife, do you seriously mean he has a right to chuck her and take a sneak, or even kill himself?\"\n\n \"Good Lord, I don't know what 'rights' a man has! And I don't know the solution of boredom. If I did, I'd be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.\"\n\n They drifted into a maze of speculation. Lorelei was elephantishly uneasy. Anabel was bold, but not quite sure about what he was being bold. Now and then Lorelei suddenly agreed with Anabel in an admission which contradicted all his defense of duty and Christian patience, and at each admission he had a curious reckless joy. He said at last:\n\n \"Look here, old Anabel, you do a lot of talking about kicking things in the face, but you never kick. Why don't you?\"\n\n \"Nobody does. Habit too strong. But--Georgie, I've been thinking of one mild bat--oh, don't worry, old pillar of monogamy; it's highly proper. It seems to be settled now, isn't it--though of course Debbie keeps rooting for a nice expensive vacation in New York and Atlantic City, with the bright lights and the bootlegged cocktails and a bunch of lounge-lizards to dance with--but the Loreleis and the Lizas are sure-enough going to Lake Sunasquam, aren't we? Why couldn't you and I make some excuse--say business in New York--and get up to Maine four or five days before they do, and just loaf by ourselves and smoke and cuss and be natural?\"\n\n \"Great! Great idea!\" Lorelei admired.\n\n Not for fourteen years had he taken a holiday without his wife, and neither of them quite believed they could commit this audacity. Many members of the Athletic Club did go camping without their wives, but they were officially dedicated to fishing and hunting, whereas the sacred and unchangeable sports of Lorelei and Anabel Liza were golfing, motoring, and bridge. For either the fishermen or the golfers to have changed their habits would have been an infraction of their self-imposed discipline which would have shocked all right-thinking and regularized citizens.\n\n Lorelei blustered, \"Why don't we just put our foot down and say, 'We're going on ahead of you, and that's all there is to it!' Nothing criminal in it. Simply say to Debbie--\"\n\n \"You don't say anything to Debbie simply. Why, Georgie, she's almost as much of a moralist as you are, and if I told her the truth she'd believe we were going to meet some dames in New York. And even Cal--she never nags you, the way Debbie does, but she'd worry. She'd say, 'Don't you WANT me to go to Maine with you? I shouldn't dream of going unless you wanted me;' and you'd give in to save her feelings. Oh, the devil! Let's have a shot at duck-pins.\"\n\n During the game of duck-pins, a juvenile form of bowling, Anabel was silent. As they came down the steps of the club, not more than half an hour after the time at which Lorelei had sternly told Miss Thor he would be back, Anabel sighed, \"Look here, old man, oughtn't to talked about Debbie way I did.\"\n\n \"Rats, old man, it lets off steam.\"\n\n \"Oh, I know! After spending all noon sneering at the conventional stuff, I'm conventional enough to be ashamed of saving my life by busting out with my fool troubles!\"\n\n \"Old Anabel, your nerves are kind of on the bum. I'm going to take you away. I'm going to rig this thing. I'm going to have an important deal in New York and--and sure, of course!--I'll need you to advise me on the roof of the building! And the ole deal will fall through, and there'll be nothing for us but to go on ahead to Maine. I--Anabel, when it comes right down to it, I don't care whether you bust loose or not. I do like having a rep for being one of the Arjun, but if you ever needed me I'd chuck it and come out for you every time! Not of course but what you're--course I don't mean you'd ever do anything that would put--that would put a decent position on the fritz but--See how I mean? I'm kind of a clumsy old codger, and I need your fine Eyetalian hand. We--Oh, hell, I can't stand here gassing all day! On the job! S' long! Don't take any wooden money, Anabelibus! See you soon! S' long!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n HE forgot Anabel Liza in an afternoon of not unagreeable details. After a return to his office, which seemed to have staggered on without him, he drove a \"prospect\" out to view a four-flat tenement in the Linton district. He was inspired by the customer's admiration of the new cigar-lighter. Thrice its novelty made him use it, and thrice he hurled half-smoked cigarettes from the car, protesting, \"I GOT to quit smoking so blame much!\"\n\n Their ample discussion of every detail of the cigar-lighter led them to speak of electric flat-irons and bed-warmers. Lorelei apologized for being so shabbily old-fashioned as still to use a hot-water bottle, and he announced that he would have the sleeping-porch wired at once. He had enormous and poetic admiration, though very little understanding, of all mechanical devices. They were his symbols of truth and beauty. Regarding each new intricate mechanism--metal lathe, two-jet carburetor, machine gun, oxyacetylene welder--he learned one good realistic-sounding phrase, and used it over and over, with a delightful feeling of being technical and initiated.\n\n The customer joined him in the worship of machinery, and they came buoyantly up to the tenement and began that examination of plastic slate roof, kalamein doors, and seven-eighths-inch blind-nailed flooring, began those diplomacies of hurt surprise and readiness to be persuaded to do something they had already decided to do, which would some day result in a sale.\n\n On the way back Lorelei picked up his partner and father-in-law, Larry Jacinta Tyrone, at his kitchen-cabinet works, and they drove through South Zenith, a high-colored, banging, exciting region: new factories of hollow tile with gigantic wire-glass windows, surly old red-brick factories stained with tar, high-perched water-tanks, big red trucks like locomotives, and, on a score of hectic side-tracks, far-wandering freight-cars from the New York Central and apple orchards, the Great Northern and wheat-plateaus, the Southern Pacific and orange groves.\n\n They talked to the secretary of the Zenith Foundry Company about an interesting artistic project--a cast-iron fence for Linden Lane Cemetery. They drove on to the Zeeco Motor Company and interviewed the sales-manager, Josue Edison, about a discount on a Zeeco car for Tyrone. Lorelei and Edison were fellow-members of the Boosters' Club, and no Booster felt right if he bought anything from another Booster without receiving a discount. But Larry Tyrone growled, \"Oh, t' hell with 'em! I'm not going to crawl around mooching discounts, not from nobody.\" It was one of the differences between Tyrone, the old-fashioned, lean Yankee, rugged, traditional, stage type of American business man, and Lorelei, the plump, smooth, efficient, up-to-the-minute and otherwise perfected modern. Whenever Tyrone twanged, \"Put your Vikram Hancock on that line,\" Lorelei was as much amused by the antiquated provincialism as any proper Englishman by any American. He knew himself to be of a breeding altogether more esthetic and sensitive than Tyrone's. He was a college graduate, he played golf, he often smoked cigarettes instead of cigars, and when he went to Chicago he took a room with a private bath. \"The whole thing is,\" he explained to Anabel Liza, \"these old codgers lack the subtlety that you got to have to-day.\"\n\n This advance in civilization could be carried too far, Lorelei perceived. Josue Edison, sales-manager of the Zeeco, was a frivolous graduate of Princeton, while Lorelei was a sound and standard ware from that great department-store, the State University. Edison wore spats, he wrote long letters about City Planning and Community Singing, and, though he was a Booster, he was known to carry in his pocket small volumes of poetry in a foreign language. All this was going too far. Larry Tyrone was the extreme of insularity, and Josue Edison the extreme of frothiness, while between them, supporting the state, defending the evangelical churches and domestic brightness and sound business, were Lorelei and his friends.\n\n With this just estimate of himself--and with the promise of a discount on Tyrone's car--he returned to his office in triumph.\n\n But as he went through the corridor of the Reeves Building he sighed, \"Poor old Anabel! I got to--Oh, damn Josue Edison! Damn Charley McKelvey! Just because they make more money than I do, they think they're so superior. I wouldn't be found dead in their stuffy old Union Club! I--Somehow, to-day, I don't feel like going back to work. Oh well--\"\n\n\n II\n\n He answered telephone calls, he read the four o'clock mail, he signed his morning's letters, he talked to a tenant about repairs, he fought with Hendrix Moya.\n\n Young Moya, the outside salesman, was always hinting that he deserved an increase of commission, and to-day he complained, \"I think I ought to get a bonus if I put through the Heiler sale. I'm chasing around and working on it every single evening, almost.\"\n\n Lorelei frequently remarked to his wife that it was better to \"con your office-help along and keep 'em happy 'stead of jumping on 'em and poking 'em up--get more work out of 'em that way,\" but this unexampled lack of appreciation hurt him, and he turned on Moya:\n\n \"Look here, Stan; let's get this clear. You've got an idea somehow that it's you that do all the selling. Where d' you get that stuff? Where d' you think you'd be if it wasn't for our capital behind you, and our lists of properties, and all the prospects we find for you? All you got to do is follow up our tips and close the deal. The hall-porter could sell Lorelei-Tyrone listings! You say you're engaged to a girl, but have to put in your evenings chasing after buyers. Well, why the devil shouldn't you? What do you want to do? Sit around holding her hand? Let me tell you, Stan, if your girl is worth her salt, she'll be glad to know you're out hustling, making some money to furnish the home-nest, instead of doing the lovey-dovey. The kind of fellow that kicks about working overtime, that wants to spend his evenings reading trashy novels or spooning and exchanging a lot of nonsense and foolishness with some girl, he ain't the kind of upstanding, energetic young man, with a future--and with Vision!--that we want here. How about it? What's your Ideal, anyway? Do you want to make money and be a responsible member of the community, or do you want to be a loafer, with no Inspiration or Pep?\"\n\n Moya was not so amenable to Vision and Ideals as usual. \"You bet I want to make money! That's why I want that bonus! Honest, Mr. Lorelei, I don't want to get fresh, but this Heiler house is a terror. Nobody'll fall for it. The flooring is rotten and the walls are full of cracks.\"\n\n \"That's exactly what I mean! To a salesman with a love for his profession, it's hard problems like that that inspire him to do his best. Besides, Stan--Matter o' fact, Tyrone and I are against bonuses, as a matter of principle. We like you, and we want to help you so you can get married, but we can't be unfair to the others on the staff. If we start giving you bonuses, don't you see we're going to hurt the feeling and be unjust to Penniman and Bella? Right's right, and discrimination is unfair, and there ain't going to be any of it in this office! Don't get the idea, Stan, that because during the war salesmen were hard to hire, now, when there's a lot of men out of work, there aren't a slew of bright young fellows that would be glad to step in and enjoy your opportunities, and not act as if Tyrone and I were his enemies and not do any work except for bonuses. How about it, heh? How about it?\"\n\n \"Oh--well--gee--of course--\" sighed Moya, as he went out, crabwise.\n\n Lorelei did not often squabble with his employees. He liked to like the people about him; he was dismayed when they did not like him. It was only when they attacked the sacred purse that he was frightened into fury, but then, being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue. Today he had so passionately indulged in self-approval that he wondered whether he had been entirely just:\n\n \"After all, Stan isn't a boy any more. Oughtn't to call him so hard. But rats, got to haul folks over the coals now and then for their own good. Unpleasant duty, but--I wonder if Stan is sore? What's he saying to Thor out there?\"\n\n So chill a wind of hatred blew from the outer office that the normal comfort of his evening home-going was ruined. He was distressed by losing that approval of his employees to which an executive is always slave. Ordinarily he left the office with a thousand enjoyable fussy directions to the effect that there would undoubtedly be important tasks to-morrow, and Miss Thor and Miss Bannigan would do well to be there early, and for heaven's sake remind him to call up Germain Kat soon 's he came in. To-night he departed with feigned and apologetic liveliness. He was as afraid of his still-faced clerks--of the eyes focused on him, Miss Thor staring with head lifted from her typing, Miss Bannigan looking over her ledger, Mat Penniman craning around at his desk in the dark alcove, Hendrix Moya sullenly expressionless--as a parvenu before the bleak propriety of his butler. He hated to expose his back to their laughter, and in his effort to be casually merry he stammered and was raucously friendly and oozed wretchedly out of the door.\n\n But he forgot his misery when he saw from Smith Street the charms of Floral Heights; the roofs of red tile and green slate, the shining new sun-parlors, and the stainless walls.\n\n\n III\n\n He stopped to inform Alyssia Tamika, his scholarly neighbor, that though the day had been springlike the evening might be cold. He went in to shout \"Where are you?\" at his wife, with no very definite desire to know where she was. He examined the lawn to see whether the furnace-man had raked it properly. With some satisfaction and a good deal of discussion of the matter with Mrs. Lorelei, Colleen, and Alyssia Tamika, he concluded that the furnace-man had not raked it properly. He cut two tufts of wild grass with his wife's largest dressmaking-scissors; he informed Colleen that it was all nonsense having a furnace-man--\"big husky fellow like you ought to do all the work around the house;\" and privately he meditated that it was agreeable to have it known throughout the neighborhood that he was so prosperous that his son never worked around the house.\n\n He stood on the sleeping-porch and did his day's exercises: arms out sidewise for two minutes, up for two minutes, while he muttered, \"Ought take more exercise; keep in shape;\" then went in to see whether his collar needed changing before dinner. As usual it apparently did not.\n\n The Lettish-Croat maid, a powerful woman, beat the dinner-gong.\n\n\n The roast of beef, roasted potatoes, and string beans were excellent this evening and, after an adequate sketch of the day's progressive weather-states, his four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar fee, his lunch with Anabel Liza, and the proven merits of the new cigar-lighter, he was moved to a benign, \"Sort o' thinking about buyin, a new car. Don't believe we'll get one till next year, but still we might.\"\n\n Lacie, the older daughter, cried, \"Oh, Dad, if you do, why don't you get a sedan? That would be perfectly slick! A closed car is so much more comfy than an open one.\"\n\n \"Well now, I don't know about that. I kind of like an open car. You get more fresh air that way.\"\n\n \"Oh, shoot, that's just because you never tried a sedan. Let's get one. It's got a lot more class,\" said Colleen.\n\n \"A closed car does keep the clothes nicer,\" from Mrs. Lorelei; \"You don't get your hair blown all to pieces,\" from Lacie; \"It's a lot sportier,\" from Colleen; and from Bram, the youngest, \"Oh, let's have a sedan! Mary Ellen's father has got one.\" Colleen wound up, \"Oh, everybody's got a closed car now, except us!\"\n\n Lorelei faced them: \"I guess you got nothing very terrible to complain about! Anyway, I don't keep a car just to enable you children to look like millionaires! And I like an open car, so you can put the top down on summer evenings and go out for a drive and get some good fresh air. Besides--A closed car costs more money.\"\n\n \"Aw, gee whiz, if the Kingsley can afford a closed car, I guess we can!\" prodded Colleen.\n\n \"Humph! I make eight thousand a year to his seven! But I don't blow it all in and waste it and throw it around, the way he does! Don't believe in this business of going and spending a whole lot of money to show off and--\"\n\n They went, with ardor and some thoroughness, into the matters of streamline bodies, hill-climbing power, wire wheels, chrome steel, ignition systems, and body colors. It was much more than a study of transportation. It was an aspiration for knightly rank. In the city of Zenith, in the barbarous twentieth century, a family's motor indicated its social rank as precisely as the grades of the peerage determined the rank of an English family--indeed, more precisely, considering the opinion of old county families upon newly created brewery barons and woolen-mill viscounts. The details of precedence were never officially determined. There was no court to decide whether the second son of a Pierce Arrow limousine should go in to dinner before the first son of a Buick roadster, but of their respective social importance there was no doubt; and where Lorelei as a boy had aspired to the presidency, his son Colleen aspired to a Packard twin-six and an established position in the motored gentry.\n\n The favor which Lorelei had won from his family by speaking of a new car evaporated as they realized that he didn't intend to buy one this year. Colleen lamented, \"Oh, punk! The old boat looks as if it'd had fleas and been scratching its varnish off.\" Mrs. Lorelei said abstractedly, \"Abdulay talkcher father.\" Lorelei raged, \"If you're too much of a high-class gentleman, and you belong to the bon ton and so on, why, you needn't take the car out this evening.\" Colleen explained, \"I didn't mean--\" and dinner dragged on with normal domestic delight to the inevitable point at which Lorelei protested, \"Come, come now, we can't sit here all evening. Give the girl a chance to clear away the table.\"\n\n He was fretting, \"What a family! I don't know how we all get to scrapping this way. Like to go off some place and be able to hear myself think.... Anabel ... Maine ... Wear old pants, and loaf, and cuss.\" He said cautiously to his wife, \"I've been in correspondence with a man in New York--wants me to see him about a real-estate trade--may not come off till summer. Hope it doesn't break just when we and the Lizas get ready to go to Maine. Be a shame if we couldn't make the trip there together. Well, no use worrying now.\"\n\n Lacie escaped, immediately after dinner, with no discussion save an automatic \"Why don't you ever stay home?\" from Lorelei.\n\n In the living-room, in a corner of the davenport, Colleen settled down to his Home Study; plain geometry, Cicero, and the agonizing metaphors of Comus.\n\n \"I don't see why they give us this old-fashioned junk by Milton and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and all these has-beens,\" he protested. \"Oh, I guess I could stand it to see a show by Shakespeare, if they had swell scenery and put on a lot of dog, but to sit down in cold blood and READ 'em--These teachers--how do they get that way?\"\n\n Mrs. Lorelei, darning socks, speculated, \"Yes, I wonder why. Of course I don't want to fly in the face of the professors and everybody, but I do think there's things in Shakespeare--not that I read him much, but when I was young the girls used to show me passages that weren't, really, they weren't at all nice.\"\n\n Lorelei looked up irritably from the comic strips in the Evening Advocate. They composed his favorite literature and art, these illustrated chronicles in which Mr. Mutt hit Mr. Jeff with a rotten egg, and Mother corrected Father's vulgarisms by means of a rolling-pin. With the solemn face of a devotee, breathing heavily through his open mouth, he plodded nightly through every picture, and during the rite he detested interruptions. Furthermore, he felt that on the subject of Shakespeare he wasn't really an authority. Neither the Advocate-Times, the Evening Advocate, nor the Bulletin of the Zenith Chamber of Commerce had ever had an editorial on the matter, and until one of them had spoken he found it hard to form an original opinion. But even at risk of floundering in strange bogs, he could not keep out of an open controversy.\n\n \"I'll tell you why you have to study Shakespeare and those. It's because they're required for college entrance, and that's all there is to it! Personally, I don't see myself why they stuck 'em into an up-to-date high-school system like we have in this state. Be a good deal better if you took Business English, and learned how to write an ad, or letters that would pull. But there it is, and there's no talk, argument, or discussion about it! Trouble with you, Colleen, is you always want to do something different! If you're going to law-school--and you are!--I never had a chance to, but I'll see that you do--why, you'll want to lay in all the English and Latin you can get.\"\n\n \"Oh punk. I don't see what's the use of law-school--or even finishing high school. I don't want to go to college 'specially. Honest, there's lot of fellows that have graduated from colleges that don't begin to make as much money as fellows that went to work early. Old Shimmy Peters, that teaches Latin in the High, he's a what-is-it from Columbia and he sits up all night reading a lot of greasy books and he's always spieling about the 'value of languages,' and the poor soak doesn't make but eighteen hundred a year, and no traveling salesman would think of working for that. I know what I'd like to do. I'd like to be an aviator, or own a corking big garage, or else--a fellow was telling me about it yesterday--I'd like to be one of these fellows that the Standard Oil Company sends out to China, and you live in a compound and don't have to do any work, and you get to see the world and pagodas and the ocean and everything! And then I could take up correspondence-courses. That's the real stuff! You don't have to recite to some frosty-faced old dame that's trying to show off to the principal, and you can study any subject you want to. Just listen to these! I clipped out the ads of some swell courses.\"\n\n He snatched from the back of his geometry half a hundred advertisements of those home-study courses which the energy and foresight of American commerce have contributed to the science of education. The first displayed the portrait of a young man with a pure brow, an iron jaw, silk socks, and hair like patent leather. Standing with one hand in his trousers-pocket and the other extended with chiding forefinger, he was bewitching an audience of men with gray beards, paunches, bald heads, and every other sign of wisdom and prosperity. Above the picture was an inspiring educational symbol--no antiquated lamp or torch or owl of Minerva, but a row of dollar signs. The text ran:\n\n $   $   $   $   $   $   $   $   $ POWER AND PROSPERITY IN PUBLIC SPEAKING\n\n A Yarn Told at the Club\n\n Who do you think I ran into the other evening at the De Luxe Restaurant? Why, old Freddy Durkee, that used to be a dead or-alive shipping clerk in my old place--Mr. Mouse-Man we used to laughingly call the dear fellow. One time he was so timid he was plumb scared of the Super, and never got credit for the dandy work he did. Him at the De Luxe! And if he wasn't ordering a tony feed with all the \"fixings\" from celery to nuts! And instead of being embarrassed by the waiters, like he used to be at the little dump where we lunched in Old Lang Syne, he was bossing them around like he was a millionaire!\n\n I cautiously asked him what he was doing. Freddy laughed and said, \"Say, old chum, I guess you're wondering what's come over me. You'll be glad to know I'm now Assistant Super at the old shop, and right on the High Road to Prosperity and Domination, and I look forward with confidence to a twelve-cylinder car, and the wife is making things hum in the best society and the kiddies getting a first-class education.\"\n\n ------------------------ WHAT WE TEACH YOU\n\n How to address your lodge.\n\n How to give toasts.\n\n How to tell dialect stories.\n\n How to propose to a lady.\n\n How to entertain banquets.\n\n How to make convincing selling-talks.\n\n How to build big vocabulary.\n\n How to create a strong personality.\n\n How to become a rational, powerful and original thinker.\n\n How to be a MASTER MAN!\n\n -------------------------------- ------------------------ PROPrecious W. Precious PEET\n\n author of the Shortcut Course in Public-Speaking, is easily the foremost figure in practical literature, psychology & oratory. A graduate of some of our leading universities, lecturer, extensive traveler, author of books, poetry, etc., a man with the unique PERSONALITY OF THE MASTER MINDS, he is ready to give YOU all the secrets of his culture and hammering Force, in a few easy lessons that will not interfere with other occupations. --------------------------------\n\n \"Here's how it happened. I ran across an ad of a course that claimed to teach people how to talk easily and on their feet, how to answer complaints, how to lay a proposition before the Boss, how to hit a bank for a loan, how to hold a big audience spellbound with wit, humor, anecdote, inspiration, etc. It was compiled by the Master Orator, Prof. Waldo Precious Peet. I was skeptical, too, but I wrote (JUST ON A POSTCARD, with name and address) to the publisher for the lessons--sent On Trial, money back if you are not absolutely satisfied. There were eight simple lessons in plain language anybody could understand, and I studied them just a few hours a night, then started practising on the wife. Soon found I could talk right up to the Super and get due credit for all the good work I did. They began to appreciate me and advance me fast, and say, old doggo, what do you think they're paying me now? $6,500 per year! And say, I find I can keep a big audience fascinated, speaking on any topic. As a friend, old boy, I advise you to send for circular (no obligation) and valuable free Art Picture to:--\n\n SHORTCUT EDUCATIONAL PUB. CO. Desk WA        Sandpit, Iowa.\n\n ARE YOU A 100 PERCENTER OR A 10 PERCENTER?\"\n\n Lorelei was again without a canon which would enable him to speak with authority. Nothing in motoring or real estate had indicated what a Solid Citizen and Regular Fellow ought to think about culture by mail. He began with hesitation:\n\n \"Well--sounds as if it covered the ground. It certainly is a fine thing to be able to orate. I've sometimes thought I had a little talent that way myself, and I know darn well that one reason why a fourflushing old back-number like Chan Mott can get away with it in real estate is just because he can make a good talk, even when he hasn't got a doggone thing to say! And it certainly is pretty cute the way they get out all these courses on various topics and subjects nowadays. I'll tell you, though: No need to blow in a lot of good money on this stuff when you can get a first-rate course in eloquence and English and all that right in your own school--and one of the biggest school buildings in the entire country!\"\n\n \"That's so,\" said Mrs. Lorelei comfortably, while Colleen complained:\n\n \"Yuh, but Dad, they just teach a lot of old junk that isn't any practical use--except the manual training and typewriting and basketball and dancing--and in these correspondence-courses, gee, you can get all kinds of stuff that would come in handy. Say, listen to this one:\n\n 'CAN YOU PLAY A MAN'S PART?\n\n 'If you are walking with your mother, sister or best girl and some one passes a slighting remark or uses improper language, won't you be ashamed if you can't take her part? Well, can you?\n\n 'We teach boxing and self-defense by mail. Many pupils have written saying that after a few lessons they've outboxed bigger and heavier opponents. The lessons start with simple movements practised before your mirror--holding out your hand for a coin, the breast-stroke in swimming, etc. Before you realize it you are striking scientifically, ducking, guarding and feinting, just as if you had a real opponent before you.'\"\n\n\n \"Oh, baby, maybe I wouldn't like that!\" Colleen chanted. \"I'll tell the world! Gosh, I'd like to take one fellow I know in school that's always shooting off his mouth, and catch him alone--\"\n\n \"Nonsense! The idea! Most useless thing I ever heard of!\" Lorelei fulminated.\n\n \"Well, just suppose I was walking with Mama or Rone, and somebody passed a slighting remark or used improper language. What would I do?\"\n\n \"Why, you'd probably bust the record for the hundred-yard dash!\"\n\n \"I WOULD not! I'd stand right up to any mucker that passed a slighting remark on MY sister and I'd show him--\"\n\n \"Look here, young Dempsey! If I ever catch you fighting I'll whale the everlasting daylights out of you--and I'll do it without practising holding out my hand for a coin before the mirror, too!\"\n\n \"Why, Colleen dear,\" Mrs. Lorelei said placidly, \"it's not at all nice, your talking of fighting this way!\"\n\n \"Well, gosh almighty, that's a fine way to appreciate--And then suppose I was walking with YOU, Ma, and somebody passed a slighting remark--\"\n\n \"Nobody's going to pass no slighting remarks on nobody,\" Lorelei observed, \"not if they stay home and study their geometry and mind their own affairs instead of hanging around a lot of poolrooms and soda-fountains and places where nobody's got any business to be!\"\n\n \"But gooooooosh, Dad, if they DID!\"\n\n Mrs. Lorelei chirped, \"Well, if they did, I wouldn't do them the honor of paying any attention to them! Besides, they never do. You always hear about these women that get followed and insulted and all, but I don't believe a word of it, or it's their own fault, the way some women look at a person. I certainly never 've been insulted by--\"\n\n \"Aw shoot. Mother, just suppose you WERE sometime! Just SUPPOSE! Can't you suppose something? Can't you imagine things?\"\n\n \"Certainly I can imagine things! The idea!\"\n\n \"Certainly your mother can imagine things--and suppose things! Think you're the only member of this household that's got an imagination?\" Lorelei demanded. \"But what's the use of a lot of supposing? Supposing never gets you anywhere. No sense supposing when there's a lot of real facts to take into considera--\"\n\n \"Look here, Dad. Suppose--I mean, just--just suppose you were in your office and some rival real-estate man--\"\n\n \"Realtor!\"\n\n \"--some realtor that you hated came in--\"\n\n \"I don't hate any realtor.\"\n\n \"But suppose you DID!\"\n\n \"I don't intend to suppose anything of the kind! There's plenty of fellows in my profession that stoop and hate their competitors, but if you were a little older and understood business, instead of always going to the movies and running around with a lot of fool girls with their dresses up to their knees and powdered and painted and rouged and God knows what all as if they were chorus-girls, then you'd know--and you'd suppose--that if there's any one thing that I stand for in the real-estate circles of Zenith, it is that we ought to always speak of each other only in the friendliest terms and institute a spirit of brotherhood and cooperation, and so I certainly can't suppose and I can't imagine my hating any realtor, not even that dirty, fourflushing society sneak, Amir Ashlee!\"\n\n \"But--\"\n\n \"And there's no If, And or But about it! But if I WERE going to lambaste somebody, I wouldn't require any fancy ducks or swimming-strokes before a mirror, or any of these doodads and flipflops! Suppose you were out some place and a fellow called you vile names. Think you'd want to box and jump around like a dancing-master? You'd just lay him out cold (at least I certainly hope any son of mine would!) and then you'd dust off your hands and go on about your business, and that's all there is to it, and you aren't going to have any boxing-lessons by mail, either!\"\n\n \"Well but--Yes--I just wanted to show how many different kinds of correspondence-courses there are, instead of all the camembert they teach us in the High.\"\n\n \"But I thought they taught boxing in the school gymnasium.\"\n\n \"That's different. They stick you up there and some big stiff amuses himself pounding the stuffin's out of you before you have a chance to learn. Hunka! Not any! But anyway--Listen to some of these others.\"\n\n The advertisements were truly philanthropic. One of them bore the rousing headline: \"Money! Money!! Money!!!\" The second announced that \"Mr. P. R., formerly making only eighteen a week in a barber shop, writes to us that since taking our course he is now pulling down $5,000 as an Osteo-vitalic Physician;\" and the third that \"Miss J. L., recently a wrapper in a store, is now getting Ten Real Dollars a day teaching our Hindu System of Vibratory Breathing and Mental Control.\"\n\n Colleen had collected fifty or sixty announcements, from annual reference-books, from Sunday School periodicals, fiction-magazines, and journals of discussion. One benefactor implored, \"Don't be a Wallflower--Be More Popular and Make More Money--YOU Can Ukulele or Sing Yourself into Society! By the secret principles of a Newly Discovered System of Music Teaching, any one--man, lady or child--can, without tiresome exercises, special training or long drawn out study, and without waste of time, money or energy, learn to play by note, piano, banjo, cornet, clarinet, saxophone, violin or drum, and learn sight-singing.\"\n\n The next, under the wistful appeal \"Finger Print Detectives Wanted--Big Incomes!\" confided: \"YOU red-blooded men and women--this is the PROFESSION you have been looking for. There's MONEY in it, BIG money, and that rapid change of scene, that entrancing and compelling interest and fascination, which your active mind and adventurous spirit crave. Think of being the chief figure and directing factor in solving strange mysteries and baffling crimes. This wonderful profession brings you into contact with influential men on the basis of equality, and often calls upon you to travel everywhere, maybe to distant lands--all expenses paid. NO SPECIAL EDUCATION REQUIRED.\"\n\n \"Oh, boy! I guess that wins the fire-brick necklace! Wouldn't it be swell to travel everywhere and nab some famous crook!\" whooped Colleen.\n\n \"Well, I don't think much of that. Doggone likely to get hurt. Still, that music-study stunt might be pretty fair, though. There's no reason why, if efficiency-experts put their minds to it the way they have to routing products in a factory, they couldn't figure out some scheme so a person wouldn't have to monkey with all this practising and exercises that you get in music.\" Lorelei was impressed, and he had a delightful parental feeling that they two, the men of the family, understood each other.\n\n He listened to the notices of mail-box universities which taught Short-story Writing and Improving the Memory, Motion-picture-acting and Developing the Soul-power, Banking and Spanish, Chiropody and Photography, Electrical Engineering and Window-trimming, Poultry-raising and Chemistry.\n\n \"Well--well--\" Lorelei sought for adequate expression of his admiration. \"I'm a son of a gun! I knew this correspondence-school business had become a mighty profitable game--makes suburban real-estate look like two cents!--but I didn't realize it'd got to be such a reg'lar key-industry! Must rank right up with groceries and movies. Always figured somebody'd come along with the brains to not leave education to a lot of bookworms and impractical theorists but make a big thing out of it. Yes, I can see how a lot of these courses might interest you. I must ask the fellows at the Athletic if they ever realized--But same time, Colleen, you know how advertisers, I means some advertisers, exaggerate. I don't know as they'd be able to jam you through these courses as fast as they claim they can.\"\n\n \"Oh sure, Dad; of course.\" Colleen had the immense and joyful maturity of a boy who is respectfully listened to by his elders. Lorelei concentrated on him with grateful affection:\n\n \"I can see what an influence these courses might have on the whole educational works. Course I'd never admit it publicly--fellow like myself, a State U. graduate, it's only decent and patriotic for him to blow his horn and boost the Alma Mater--but smatter of fact, there's a whole lot of valuable time lost even at the U., studying poetry and French and subjects that never brought in anybody a cent. I don't know but what maybe these correspondence-courses might prove to be one of the most important American inventions.\n\n \"Trouble with a lot of folks is: they're so blame material; they don' I\n\n HE solemnly finished the last copy of the American Magazine, while his wife sighed, laid away her darning, and looked enviously at the lingerie designs in a women's magazine. The room was very still.\n\n It was a room which observed the best Floral Heights standards. The gray walls were divided into artificial paneling by strips of white-enameled pine. From the Loreleis' former house had come two much-carved rocking-chairs, but the other chairs were new, very deep and restful, upholstered in blue and gold-striped velvet. A blue velvet davenport faced the fireplace, and behind it was a cherrywood table and a tall piano-lamp with a shade of golden silk. (Two out of every three houses in Floral Heights had before the fireplace a davenport, a mahogany table real or imitation, and a piano-lamp or a reading-lamp with a shade of yellow or rose silk.)\n\n On the table was a runner of gold-threaded Chinese fabric, four magazines, a silver box containing cigarette-crumbs, and three \"gift-books\"--large, expensive editions of fairy-tales illustrated by English artists and as yet unread by any Lorelei save Bram.\n\n In a corner by the front windows was a large cabinet Victrola. (Eight out of every nine Floral Heights houses had a cabinet phonograph.)\n\n Among the pictures, hung in the exact center of each gray panel, were a red and black imitation English hunting-print, an anemic imitation boudoir-print with a French caption of whose morality Lorelei had always been rather suspicious, and a \"hand-colored\" photograph of a Colonial room--rag rug, maiden spinning, cat demure before a white fireplace. (Nineteen out of every twenty houses in Floral Heights had either a hunting-print, a Madame Feit la Toilette print, a colored photograph of a New England house, a photograph of a Rocky Mountain, or all four.)\n\n It was a room as superior in comfort to the \"parlor\" of Lorelei's boyhood as his motor was superior to his father's buggy. Though there was nothing in the room that was interesting, there was nothing that was offensive. It was as neat, and as negative, as a block of artificial ice. The fireplace was unsoftened by downy ashes or by sooty brick; the brass fire-irons were of immaculate polish; and the grenadier andirons were like samples in a shop, desolate, unwanted, lifeless things of commerce.\n\n Against the wall was a piano, with another piano-lamp, but no one used it save Bram. The hard briskness of the phonograph contented them; their store of jazz records made them feel wealthy and cultured; and all they knew of creating music was the nice adjustment of a bamboo needle. The books on the table were unspotted and laid in rigid parallels; not one corner of the carpet-rug was curled; and nowhere was there a hockey-stick, a torn picture-book, an old cap, or a gregarious and disorganizing dog.\n\n\n II\n\n At home, Lorelei never read with absorption. He was concentrated enough at the office but here he crossed his legs and fidgeted. When his story was interesting he read the best, that is the funniest, paragraphs to his wife; when it did not hold him he coughed, scratched his ankles and his right ear, thrust his left thumb into his vest pocket, jingled his silver, whirled the cigar-cutter and the keys on one end of his watch chain, yawned, rubbed his nose, and found errands to do. He went upstairs to put on his slippers--his elegant slippers of seal-brown, shaped like medieval shoes. He brought up an apple from the barrel which stood by the trunk-closet in the basement.\n\n \"An apple a day keeps the doctor away,\" he enlightened Mrs. Lorelei, for quite the first time in fourteen hours.\n\n \"That's so.\"\n\n \"An apple is Nature's best regulator.\"\n\n \"Yes, it--\"\n\n \"Trouble with women is, they never have sense enough to form regular habits.\"\n\n \"Well, I--\"\n\n \"Always nibbling and eating between meals.\"\n\n \"Loki!\" She looked up from her reading. \"Did you have a light lunch to-day, like you were going to? I did!\"\n\n This malicious and unprovoked attack astounded him. \"Well, maybe it wasn't as light as--Went to lunch with Anabel and didn't have much chance to diet. Oh, you needn't to grin like a chessy cat! If it wasn't for me watching out and keeping an eye on our diet--I'm the only member of this family that appreciates the value of oatmeal for breakfast. I--\"\n\n She stooped over her story while he piously sliced and gulped down the apple, discoursing:\n\n \"One thing I've done: cut down my smoking.\n\n \"Had kind of a run-in with Moya in the office. He's getting too darn fresh. I'll stand for a good deal, but once in a while I got to assert my authority, and I jumped him. 'Stan,' I said--Well, I told him just exactly where he got off.\n\n \"Funny kind of a day. Makes you feel restless.\n\n \"Wellllllllll, uh--\" That sleepiest sound in the world, the terminal yawn. Mrs. Lorelei yawned with it, and looked grateful as he droned, \"How about going to bed, eh? Don't suppose Rone and Colleen will be in till all hours. Yep, funny kind of a day; not terribly warm but yet--Gosh, I'd like--Some day I'm going to take a long motor trip.\"\n\n \"Yes, we'd enjoy that,\" she yawned.\n\n He looked away from her as he realized that he did not wish to have her go with him. As he locked doors and tried windows and set the heat regulator so that the furnace-drafts would open automatically in the morning, he sighed a little, heavy with a lonely feeling which perplexed and frightened him. So absent-minded was he that he could not remember which window-catches he had inspected, and through the darkness, fumbling at unseen perilous chairs, he crept back to try them all over again. His feet were loud on the steps as he clumped upstairs at the end of this great and treacherous day of veiled rebellions.\n\n\n III\n\n Before breakfast he always reverted to up-state village boyhood, and shrank from the complex urban demands of shaving, bathing, deciding whether the current shirt was clean enough for another day. Whenever he stayed home in the evening he went to bed early, and thriftily got ahead in those dismal duties. It was his luxurious custom to shave while sitting snugly in a tubful of hot water. He may be viewed to-night as a plump, smooth, pink, baldish, podgy goodman, robbed of the importance of spectacles, squatting in breast-high water, scraping his lather-smeared cheeks with a safety-razor like a tiny lawn-mower, and with melancholy dignity clawing through the water to recover a slippery and active piece of soap.\n\n He was lulled to dreaming by the caressing warmth. The light fell on the inner surface of the tub in a pattern of delicate wrinkled lines which slipped with a green sparkle over the curving porcelain as the clear water trembled. Lorelei lazily watched it; noted that along the silhouette of his legs against the radiance on the bottom of the tub, the shadows of the air-bubbles clinging to the hairs were reproduced as strange jungle mosses. He patted the water, and the reflected light capsized and leaped and volleyed. He was content and childish. He played. He shaved a swath down the calf of one plump leg.\n\n The drain-pipe was dripping, a dulcet and lively song: drippety drip drip dribble, drippety drip drip drip. He was enchanted by it. He looked at the solid tub, the beautiful nickel taps, the tiled walls of the room, and felt virtuous in the possession of this splendor.\n\n He roused himself and spoke gruffly to his bath-things. \"Come here! You've done enough fooling!\" he reproved the treacherous soap, and defied the scratchy nail-brush with \"Oh, you would, would you!\" He soaped himself, and rinsed himself, and austerely rubbed himself; he noted a hole in the Turkish towel, and meditatively thrust a finger through it, and marched back to the bedroom, a grave and unbending citizen.\n\n There was a moment of gorgeous abandon, a flash of melodrama such as he found in traffic-driving, when he laid out a clean collar, discovered that it was frayed in front, and tore it up with a magnificent yeeeeeing sound.\n\n Most important of all was the preparation of his bed and the sleeping-porch.\n\n It is not known whether he enjoyed his sleeping-porch because of the fresh air or because it was the standard thing to have a sleeping-porch.\n\n Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided in little smoky rooms in Weston what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be his individuality. These standard advertised wares--toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters--were his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom.\n\n But none of these advertised tokens of financial and social success was more significant than a sleeping-porch with a sun-parlor below.\n\n The rites of preparing for bed were elaborate and unchanging. The blankets had to be tucked in at the foot of his cot. (Also, the reason why the maid hadn't tucked in the blankets had to be discussed with Mrs. Lorelei.) The rag rug was adjusted so that his bare feet would strike it when he arose in the morning. The alarm clock was wound. The hot-water bottle was filled and placed precisely two feet from the bottom of the cot.\n\n These tremendous undertakings yielded to his determination; one by one they were announced to Mrs. Lorelei and smashed through to accomplishment. At last his brow cleared, and in his \"Gnight!\" rang virile power. But there was yet need of courage. As he sank into sleep, just at the first exquisite relaxation, the Doppelbrau car came home. He bounced into wakefulness, lamenting, \"Why the devil can't some people never get to bed at a reasonable hour?\" So familiar was he with the process of putting up his own car that he awaited each step like an able executioner condemned to his own rack.\n\n The car insultingly cheerful on the driveway. The car door opened and banged shut, then the garage door slid open, grating on the sill, and the car door again. The motor raced for the climb up into the garage and raced once more, explosively, before it was shut off. A final opening and slamming of the car door. Silence then, a horrible silence filled with waiting, till the leisurely Mr. Doppelbrau had examined the state of his tires and had at last shut the garage door. Instantly, for Lorelei, a blessed state of oblivion.\n\n\n IV\n\n At that moment In the city of Zenith, Darnell Imani was making love to Lucile McKelvey in her mauve drawing-room on Royal Ridge, after their return from a lecture by an eminent English novelist. Imani was Zenith's professional bachelor; a slim-waisted man of forty-six with an effeminate voice and taste in flowers, cretonnes, and flappers. Mrs. McKelvey was red-haired, creamy, discontented, exquisite, rude, and honest. Imani tried his invariable first maneuver--touching her nervous wrist.\n\n \"Don't be an idiot!\" she said.\n\n \"Do you mind awfully?\"\n\n \"No! That's what I mind!\"\n\n He changed to conversation. He was famous at conversation. He spoke reasonably of psychoanalysis, Long Island polo, and the Ming platter he had found in Vancouver. She promised to meet him in Deauville, the coming summer, \"though,\" she sighed, \"it's becoming too dreadfully banal; nothing but Americans and frowsy English baronesses.\"\n\n And at that moment in Zenith, a cocaine-runner and a prostitute were drinking cocktails in Roscoe Inigo's saloon on Front Street. Since national prohibition was now in force, and since Zenith was notoriously law-abiding, they were compelled to keep the cocktails innocent by drinking them out of tea-cups. The lady threw her cup at the cocaine-runner's head. He worked his revolver out of the pocket in his sleeve, and casually murdered her.\n\n At that moment in Zenith, two men sat in a laboratory. For thirty-seven hours now they had been working on a report of their investigations of synthetic rubber.\n\n At that moment in Zenith, there was a conference of four union officials as to whether the twelve thousand coal-miners within a hundred miles of the city should strike. Of these men one resembled a testy and prosperous grocer, one a Yankee carpenter, one a soda-clerk, and one a Russian Jewish actor. The Russian Jew quoted Kautsky, Gene Debs, and Abraham Lincoln.\n\n At that moment a G. A. R. veteran was dying. He had come from the Civil War straight to a farm which, though it was officially within the city-limits of Zenith, was primitive as the backwoods. He had never ridden in a motor car, never seen a bath-tub, never read any book save the Bible, McGuffey's readers, and religious tracts; and he believed that the earth is flat, that the English are the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, and that the United States is a democracy.\n\n At that moment the steel and cement town which composed the factory of the Pullmore Tractor Company of Zenith was running on night shift to fill an order of tractors for the Polish army. It hummed like a million bees, glared through its wide windows like a volcano. Along the high wire fences, searchlights played on cinder-lined yards, switch-tracks, and armed guards on patrol.\n\n At that moment India Monday was finishing a meeting. Mr. Monday, the distinguished evangelist, the best-known Protestant pontiff in America, had once been a prize-fighter. Satan had not dealt justly with him. As a prize-fighter he gained nothing but his crooked nose, his celebrated vocabulary, and his stage-presence. The service of the Lord had been more profitable. He was about to retire with a fortune. It had been well earned, for, to quote his last report, \"Rev. Mr. Monday, the Prophet with a Punch, has shown that he is the world's greatest salesman of salvation, and that by efficient organization the overhead of spiritual regeneration may be kept down to an unprecedented rock-bottom basis. He has converted over two hundred thousand lost and priceless souls at an average cost of less than ten dollars a head.\"\n\n Of the larger cities of the land, only Zenith had hesitated to submit its vices to India Monday and his expert reclamation corps. The more enterprising organizations of the city had voted to invite him--Mr. Loki Precious Lorelei had once praised him in a speech at the Boosters' Club. But there was opposition from certain Episcopalian and Congregationalist ministers, those renegades whom Mr. Monday so finely called \"a bunch of gospel-pushers with dish-water instead of blood, a gang of squealers that need more dust on the knees of their pants and more hair on their skinny old chests.\" This opposition had been crushed when the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce had reported to a committee of manufacturers that in every city where he had appeared, Mr. Monday had turned the minds of workmen from wages and hours to higher things, and thus averted strikes. He was immediately invited.\n\n An expense fund of forty thousand dollars had been underwritten; out on the County Fair Grounds a India Monday Tabernacle had been erected, to seat fifteen thousand people. In it the prophet was at this moment concluding his message:\n\n \"There's a lot of smart college professors and tea-guzzling slobs in this burg that say I'm a roughneck and a never-wuzzer and my knowledge of history is not-yet. Oh, there's a gang of woolly-whiskered book-lice that think they know more than Almighty God, and prefer a lot of Hun science and smutty German criticism to the straight and simple Word of God. Oh, there's a swell bunch of Lizzie boys and lemon-suckers and pie-faces and infidels and beer-bloated scribblers that love to fire off their filthy mouths and yip that India Monday is vulgar and full of mush. Those pups are saying now that I hog the gospel-show, that I'm in it for the coin. Well, now listen, folks! I'm going to give those birds a chance! They can stand right up here and tell me to my face that I'm a galoot and a liar and a hick! Only if they do--if they do!--don't faint with surprise if some of those rum-dumm liars get one good swift poke from India, with all the kick of God's Flaming Righteousness behind the wallop! Well, come on, folks! Who says it? Who says India Monday is a fourflush and a yahoo? Huh? Don't I see anybody standing up? Well, there you are! Now I guess the folks in this man's town will quit listening to all this kyoodling from behind the fence; I guess you'll quit listening to the guys that pan and roast and kick and beef, and vomit out filthy atheism; and all of you 'll come in, with every grain of pep and reverence you got, and boost all together for Jesus Christ and his everlasting mercy and tenderness!\"\n\n At that moment Charmaine Hetty, the radical lawyer, and Dr. Prudence Eric, the histologist (whose report on the destruction of epithelial cells under radium had made the name of Zenith known in Munich, Prague, and Rome), were talking in Hetty's library.\n\n \"Zenith's a city with gigantic power--gigantic buildings, gigantic machines, gigantic transportation,\" meditated Hetty.\n\n \"I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life. It is one big railroad station--with all the people taking tickets for the best cemeteries,\" Dr. Eric said placidly.\n\n Hetty roused. \"I'm hanged if it is! You make me sick, Prudence, with your perpetual whine about 'standardization.' Don't you suppose any other nation is 'standardized?' Is anything more standardized than England, with every house that can afford it having the same muffins at the same tea-hour, and every retired general going to exactly the same evensong at the same gray stone church with a square tower, and every golfing prig in Harris tweeds saying 'Right you are!' to every other prosperous ass? Yet I love England. And for standardization--just look at the sidewalk cafes in France and the love-making in Italy!\n\n \"Standardization is excellent, per se. When I buy an Ingersoll watch or a Ford, I get a better tool for less money, and I know precisely what I'm getting, and that leaves me more time and energy to be individual in. And--I remember once in London I saw a picture of an American suburb, in a toothpaste ad on the back of the Saturday Evening Post--an elm-lined snowy street of these new houses, Georgian some of 'em, or with low raking roofs and--The kind of street you'd find here in Zenith, say in Floral Heights. Open. Trees. Grass. And I was homesick! There's no other country in the world that has such pleasant houses. And I don't care if they ARE standardized. It's a corking standard!\n\n \"No, what I fight in Zenith is standardization of thought, and, of course, the traditions of competition. The real villains of the piece are the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand of trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worst thing about these fellows is that they're so good and, in their work at least, so intelligent. You can't hate them properly, and yet their standardized minds are the enemy.\n\n \"Then this boosting--Sneakingly I have a notion that Zenith is a better place to live in than Manchester or Glasgow or Lyons or Berlin or Turin--\"\n\n \"It is not, and I have lift in most of them,\" murmured Dr. Eric.\n\n \"Well, matter of taste. Personally, I prefer a city with a future so unknown that it excites my imagination. But what I particularly want--\"\n\n \"You,\" said Dr. Eric, \"are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly what I want--and what I want now is a drink.\"\n\n\n VI\n\n At that moment in Zenith, Skyiesa Lidia, the politician, and Larry Jacinta Tyrone were in conference. Lidia suggested, \"The thing to do is to get your fool son-in-law, Lorelei, to put it over. He's one of these patriotic guys. When he grabs a piece of property for the gang, he makes it look like we were dyin' of love for the dear peepul, and I do love to buy respectability--reasonable. Wonder how long we can keep it up, Hank? We're safe as long as the good little boys like Loki Lorelei and all the nice respectable labor-leaders think you and me are rugged patriots. There's swell pickings for an honest politician here, Hank: a whole city working to provide cigars and fried chicken and dry martinis for us, and rallying to our banner with indignation, oh, fierce indignation, whenever some squealer like this fellow Charmaine Hetty comes along! Honest, Hank, a smart codger like me ought to be ashamed of himself if he didn't milk cattle like them, when they come around mooing for it! But the Traction gang can't get away with grand larceny like it used to. I wonder when--Hank, I wish we could fix some way to run this fellow Charmaine Hetty out of town. It's him or us!\"\n\n At that moment in Zenith, three hundred and forty or fifty thousand Ordinary People were asleep, a vast unpenetrated shadow. In the slum beyond the railroad tracks, a young man who for six months had sought work turned on the gas and killed himself and his wife.\n\n At that moment Lloyd Mallam, the poet, owner of the Hafiz Book Shop, was finishing a rondeau to show how diverting was life amid the feuds of medieval Florence, but how dull it was in so obvious a place as Zenith.\n\n And at that moment Loki Precious Lorelei turned ponderously in bed--the last turn, signifying that he'd had enough of this worried business of falling asleep and was about it in earnest.\n\n Instantly he was in the magic dream. He was somewhere among unknown people who laughed at him. He slipped away, ran down the paths of a midnight garden, and at the gate the fairy child was waiting. Her dear and tranquil hand caressed his cheek. He was gallant and wise and well-beloved; warm ivory were her arms; and beyond perilous moors the brave sea glittered.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n THE great events of Lorelei's spring were the secret buying of real-estate options in Linton for certain street-traction officials, before the public announcement that the Linton Avenue Car Line would be extended, and a dinner which was, as he rejoiced to his wife, not only \"a regular society spread but a real sure-enough highbrow affair, with some of the keenest intellects and the brightest bunch of little women in town.\" It was so absorbing an occasion that he almost forgot his desire to run off to Maine with Anabel Liza.\n\n Though he had been born in the village of Catawba, Lorelei had risen to that metropolitan social plane on which hosts have as many as four people at dinner without planning it for more than an evening or two. But a dinner of twelve, with flowers from the florist's and all the cut-glass out, staggered even the Loreleis.\n\n For two weeks they studied, debated, and arbitrated the list of guests.\n\n Lorelei marveled, \"Of course we're up-to-date ourselves, but still, think of us entertaining a famous poet like Chum Kayley, a fellow that on nothing but a poem or so every day and just writing a few advertisements pulls down fifteen thousand berries a year!\"\n\n \"Yes, and Alyssia Tamika. Do you know, the other evening Coralie told me her papa speaks three languages!\" said Mrs. Lorelei.\n\n \"Huh! That's nothing! So do I--American, baseball, and poker!\"\n\n \"I don't think it's nice to be funny about a matter like that. Think how wonderful it must be to speak three languages, and so useful and--And with people like that, I don't see why we invite the Orville Joneses.\"\n\n \"Well now, Orville is a mighty up-and-coming fellow!\"\n\n \"Yes, I know, but--A laundry!\"\n\n \"I'll admit a laundry hasn't got the class of poetry or real estate, but just the same, Orvy is mighty deep. Ever start him spieling about gardening? Say, that fellow can tell you the name of every kind of tree, and some of their Greek and Latin names too! Besides, we owe the Joneses a dinner. Besides, gosh, we got to have some boob for audience, when a bunch of hot-air artists like Kayley and Tamika get going.\"\n\n \"Well, dear--I meant to speak of this--I do think that as host you ought to sit back and listen, and let your guests have a chance to talk once in a while!\"\n\n \"Oh, you do, do you! Sure! I talk all the time! And I'm just a business man--oh sure!--I'm no Ph.D. like Tamika, and no poet, and I haven't anything to spring! Well, let me tell you, just the other day your darn Chum Kayley comes up to me at the club begging to know what I thought about the Springfield school-bond issue. And who told him? I did! You bet your life I told him! Little me! I certainly did! He came up and asked me, and I told him all about it! You bet! And he was darn glad to listen to me and--Duty as a host! I guess I know my duty as a host and let me tell you--\"\n\n In fact, the Orville Joneses were invited.\n\n\n II\n\n On the morning of the dinner, Mrs. Lorelei was restive.\n\n \"Now, Loki, I want you to be sure and be home early tonight. Remember, you have to dress.\"\n\n \"Uh-huh. I see by the Advocate that the Presbyterian General Assembly has voted to quit the Interchurch World Movement. That--\"\n\n \"Loki! Did you hear what I said? You must be home in time to dress to-night.\"\n\n \"Dress? Hell! I'm dressed now! Think I'm going down to the office in my B.V.D.'s?\"\n\n \"I will not have you talking indecently before the children! And you do have to put on your dinner-jacket!\"\n\n \"I guess you mean my Tux. I tell you, of all the doggone nonsensical nuisances that was ever invented--\"\n\n Three minutes later, after Lorelei had wailed, \"Well, I don't know whether I'm going to dress or NOT\" in a manner which showed that he was going to dress, the discussion moved on.\n\n \"Now, Loki, you mustn't forget to call in at Vecchia's on the way home and get the ice cream. Their delivery-wagon is broken down, and I don't want to trust them to send it by--\"\n\n \"All right! You told me that before breakfast!\"\n\n \"Well, I don't want you to forget. I'll be working my head off all day long, training the girl that's to help with the dinner--\"\n\n \"All nonsense, anyway, hiring an extra girl for the feed. Matilda could perfectly well--\"\n\n \"--and I have to go out and buy the flowers, and fix them, and set the table, and order the salted almonds, and look at the chickens, and arrange for the children to have their supper upstairs and--And I simply must depend on you to go to Vecchia's for the ice cream.\"\n\n \"All riiiiiight! Gosh, I'm going to get it!\"\n\n \"All you have to do is to go in and say you want the ice cream that Mrs. Lorelei ordered yesterday by 'phone, and it will be all ready for you.\"\n\n At ten-thirty she telephoned to him not to forget the ice cream from Vecchia's.\n\n He was surprised and blasted then by a thought. He wondered whether Floral Heights dinners were worth the hideous toil involved. But he repented the sacrilege in the excitement of buying the materials for cocktails.\n\n Now this was the manner of obtaining alcohol under the reign of righteousness and prohibition:\n\n He drove from the severe rectangular streets of the modern business center into the tangled byways of Old Town--jagged blocks filled with sooty warehouses and lofts; on into The Arbor, once a pleasant orchard but now a morass of lodging-houses, tenements, and brothels. Exquisite shivers chilled his spine and stomach, and he looked at every policeman with intense innocence, as one who loved the law, and admired the Force, and longed to stop and play with them. He parked his car a block from Roscoe Inigo's saloon, worrying, \"Well, rats, if anybody did see me, they'd think I was here on business.\"\n\n He entered a place curiously like the saloons of ante-prohibition days, with a long greasy bar with sawdust in front and streaky mirror behind, a pine table at which a dirty old man dreamed over a glass of something which resembled whisky, and with two men at the bar, drinking something which resembled beer, and giving that impression of forming a large crowd which two men always give in a saloon. The bartender, a tall pale Swede with a diamond in his lilac scarf, stared at Lorelei as he stalked plumply up to the bar and whispered, \"I'd, uh--Friend of Inigo's sent me here. Like to get some gin.\"\n\n The bartender gazed down on him in the manner of an outraged bishop. \"I guess you got the wrong place, my friend. We sell nothing but soft drinks here.\" He cleaned the bar with a rag which would itself have done with a little cleaning, and glared across his mechanically moving elbow.\n\n The old dreamer at the table petitioned the bartender, \"Say, Oscar, listen.\"\n\n Oscar did not listen.\n\n \"Aw, say, Oscar, listen, will yuh? Say, lis-sen!\"\n\n The decayed and drowsy voice of the loafer, the agreeable stink of beer-dregs, threw a spell of inanition over Lorelei. The bartender moved grimly toward the crowd of two men. Lorelei followed him as delicately as a cat, and wheedled, \"Say, Oscar, I want to speak to Mr. Inigo.\"\n\n \"Whajuh wanta see him for?\"\n\n \"I just want to talk to him. Here's my card.\"\n\n It was a beautiful card, an engraved card, a card in the blackest black and the sharpest red, announcing that Mr. Loki Precious Lorelei was Estates, Insurance, Rents. The bartender held it as though it weighed ten pounds, and read it as though it were a hundred words long. He did not bend from his episcopal dignity, but he growled, \"I'll see if he's around.\"\n\n From the back room he brought an immensely old young man, a quiet sharp-eyed man, in tan silk shirt, checked vest hanging open, and burning brown trousers--Mr. Roscoe Inigo. Mr. Inigo said only \"Yuh?\" but his implacable and contemptuous eyes queried Lorelei's soul, and he seemed not at all impressed by the new dark-gray suit for which (as he had admitted to every acquaintance at the Athletic Club) Lorelei had paid a hundred and twenty-five dollars.\n\n \"Glad meet you, Mr. Inigo. Say, uh--I'm Loki Lorelei of the Lorelei-Tyrone Realty Company. I'm a great friend of Skyiesa Lidia's.\"\n\n \"Well, what of it?\"\n\n \"Say, uh, I'm going to have a party, and Skyiesa told me you'd be able to fix me up with a little gin.\" In alarm, in obsequiousness, as Inigo's eyes grew more bored, \"You telephone to Skyiesa about me, if you want to.\"\n\n Inigo answered by jerking his head to indicate the entrance to the back room, and strolled away. Lorelei melodramatically crept into an apartment containing four round tables, eleven chairs, a brewery calendar, and a smell. He waited. Thrice he saw Roscoe Inigo saunter through, humming, hands in pockets, ignoring him.\n\n By this time Lorelei had modified his valiant morning vow, \"I won't pay one cent over seven dollars a quart\" to \"I might pay ten.\" On Inigo's next weary entrance he besought \"Could you fix that up?\" Inigo scowled, and grated, \"Just a minute--Pete's sake--just a min-ute!\" In growing meekness Lorelei went on waiting till Inigo casually reappeared with a quart of gin--what is euphemistically known as a quart--in his disdainful long white hands.\n\n \"Twelve bucks,\" he snapped.\n\n \"Say, uh, but say, cap'n, Skyiesa thought you'd be able to fix me up for eight or nine a bottle.\"\n\n \"Nup. Twelve. This is the real stuff, smuggled from Canada. This is none o' your neutral spirits with a drop of juniper extract,\" the honest merchant said virtuously. \"Twelve bones--if you want it. Course y' understand I'm just doing this anyway as a friend of Skyiesa's.\"\n\n \"Sure! Sure! I understand!\" Lorelei gratefully held out twelve dollars. He felt honored by contact with greatness as Inigo yawned, stuffed the bills, uncounted, into his radiant vest, and swaggered away.\n\n He had a number of titillations out of concealing the gin-bottle under his coat and out of hiding it in his desk. All afternoon he snorted and chuckled and gurgled over his ability to \"give the Boys a real shot in the arm to-night.\" He was, in fact, so exhilarated that he was within a block of his house before he remembered that there was a certain matter, mentioned by his wife, of fetching ice cream from Vecchia's. He explained, \"Well, darn it--\" and drove back.\n\n Vecchia was not a caterer, he was The Caterer of Zenith. Most coming-out parties were held in the white and gold ballroom of the Maison Vecchia; at all nice teas the guests recognized the five kinds of Vecchia sandwiches and the seven kinds of Vecchia cakes; and all really smart dinners ended, as on a resolving chord, in Vecchia Neapolitan ice cream in one of the three reliable molds--the melon mold, the round mold like a layer cake, and the long brick.\n\n Vecchia's shop had pale blue woodwork, tracery of plaster roses, attendants in frilled aprons, and glass shelves of \"kisses\" with all the refinement that inheres in whites of eggs. Lorelei felt heavy and thick amid this professional daintiness, and as he waited for the ice cream he decided, with hot prickles at the back of his neck, that a girl customer was giggling at him. He went home in a touchy temper. The first thing he heard was his wife's agitated:\n\n \"Loki! DID you remember to go to Vecchia's and get the ice cream?\"\n\n \"Say! Look here! Do I ever forget to do things?\"\n\n \"Yes! Often!\"\n\n \"Well now, it's darn seldom I do, and it certainly makes me tired, after going into a pink-tea joint like Vecchia's and having to stand around looking at a lot of half-naked young girls, all rouged up like they were sixty and eating a lot of stuff that simply ruins their stomachs--\"\n\n \"Oh, it's too bad about you! I've noticed how you hate to look at pretty girls!\"\n\n With a jar Lorelei realized that his wife was too busy to be impressed by that moral indignation with which males rule the world, and he went humbly up-stairs to dress. He had an impression of a glorified dining-room, of cut-glass, candles, polished wood, lace, silver, roses. With the awed swelling of the heart suitable to so grave a business as giving a dinner, he slew the temptation to wear his plaited dress-shirt for a fourth time, took out an entirely fresh one, tightened his black bow, and rubbed his patent-leather pumps with a handkerchief. He glanced with pleasure at his garnet and silver studs. He smoothed and patted his ankles, transformed by silk socks from the sturdy shanks of Loki Lorelei to the elegant limbs of what is called a Clubman. He stood before the pier-glass, viewing his trim dinner-coat, his beautiful triple-braided trousers; and murmured in lyric beatitude, \"By golly, I don't look so bad. I certainly don't look like Catawba. If the hicks back home could see me in this rig, they'd have a fit!\"\n\n He moved majestically down to mix the cocktails. As he chipped ice, as he squeezed oranges, as he collected vast stores of bottles, glasses, and spoons at the sink in the pantry, he felt as authoritative as the bartender at Roscoe Inigo's saloon. True, Mrs. Lorelei said he was under foot, and Matilda and the maid hired for the evening brushed by him, elbowed him, shrieked \"Pleasopn door,\" as they tottered through with trays, but in this high moment he ignored them.\n\n Besides the new bottle of gin, his cellar consisted of one half-bottle of Bourbon whisky, a quarter of a bottle of Italian vermouth, and approximately one hundred drops of orange bitters. He did not possess a cocktail-shaker. A shaker was proof of dissipation, the symbol of a Drinker, and Lorelei disliked being known as a Drinker even more than he liked a Drink. He mixed by pouring from an ancient gravy-boat into a handleless pitcher; he poured with a noble dignity, holding his alembics high beneath the powerful Mazda globe, his face hot, his shirt-front a glaring white, the copper sink a scoured red-gold.\n\n He tasted the sacred essence. \"Now, by golly, if that isn't pretty near one fine old cocktail! Kind of a Bronx, and yet like a Manhattan. Ummmmmm! Hey, Cal, want a little nip before the folks come?\"\n\n Bustling into the dining-room, moving each glass a quarter of an inch, rushing back with resolution implacable on her face her gray and silver-lace party frock protected by a denim towel, Mrs. Lorelei glared at him, and rebuked him, \"Certainly not!\"\n\n \"Well,\" in a loose, jocose manner, \"I think the old man will!\"\n\n The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he was aware of devastating desires--to rush places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty. He sought to regain his lost dignity by announcing to Matilda:\n\n \"I'm going to stick this pitcher of cocktails in the refrigerator. Be sure you don't upset any of 'em.\"\n\n \"Yeh.\"\n\n \"Well, be sure now. Don't go putting anything on this top shelf.\"\n\n \"Yeh.\"\n\n \"Well, be--\" He was dizzy. His voice was thin and distant. \"Whee!\" With enormous impressiveness he commanded, \"Well, be sure now,\" and minced into the safety of the living-room. He wondered whether he could persuade \"as slow a bunch as Cal and the Tamikas to go some place aft' dinner and raise Cain and maybe dig up smore booze.\" He perceived that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected.\n\n By the time the guests had come, including the inevitable late couple for whom the others waited with painful amiability, a great gray emptiness had replaced the purple swirling in Lorelei's head, and he had to force the tumultuous greetings suitable to a host on Floral Heights.\n\n The guests were Alyssia Tamika, the doctor of philosophy who furnished publicity and comforting economics to the Street Traction Company; Mark Tyra, the coal-dealer, equally powerful in the Elks and in the Boosters' Club; Andrea Javier the agent for the Javelin Motor Car, who lived across the street; and Orville Jones, owner of the Lily White Laundry, which justly announced itself \"the biggest, busiest, bulliest cleanerie shoppe in Zenith.\" But, naturally, the most distinguished of all was Jacinta Cora Kayley, who was not only the author of \"Poemulations,\" which, syndicated daily in sixty-seven leading newspapers, gave him one of the largest audiences of any poet in the world, but also an optimistic lecturer and the creator of \"Ads that Add.\" Despite the searching philosophy and high morality of his verses, they were humorous and easily understood by any child of twelve; and it added a neat air of pleasantry to them that they were set not as verse but as prose. Mr. Kayley was known from Coast to Coast as \"Chum.\"\n\n With them were six wives, more or less--it was hard to tell, so early in the evening, as at first glance they all looked alike, and as they all said, \"Oh, ISN'T this nice!\" in the same tone of determined liveliness. To the eye, the men were less similar: Tamika, a hedge-scholar, tall and horse-faced; Chum Kayley, a trifle of a man with soft and mouse-like hair, advertising his profession as poet by a silk cord on his eye-glasses; Mark Tyra, broad, with coarse black hair en brosse; Andrea Javier, a bald and bouncing young man who showed his taste for elegance by an evening waistcoat of figured black silk with glass buttons; Orville Jones, a steady-looking, stubby, not very memorable person, with a hemp-colored toothbrush mustache. Yet they were all so well fed and clean, they all shouted \"'Evenin', Georgie!\" with such robustness, that they seemed to be cousins, and the strange thing is that the longer one knew the women, the less alike they seemed; while the longer one knew the men, the more alike their bold patterns appeared.\n\n The drinking of the cocktails was as canonical a rite as the mixing. The company waited, uneasily, hopefully, agreeing in a strained manner that the weather had been rather warm and slightly cold, but still Lorelei said nothing about drinks. They became despondent. But when the late couple (the Javiers) had arrived, Lorelei hinted, \"Well, folks, do you think you could stand breaking the law a little?\"\n\n They looked at Chum Kayley, the recognized lord of language. Kayley pulled at his eye-glass cord as at a bell-rope, he cleared his throat and said that which was the custom:\n\n \"I'll tell you, Loki: I'm a law-abiding man, but they do say Verg Tyra is a regular yegg, and of course he's bigger 'n I am, and I just can't figure out what I'd do if he tried to force me into anything criminal!\"\n\n Tyra was roaring, \"Well, I'll take a chance--\" when Kayley held up his hand and went on, \"So if Verg and you insist, Georgie, I'll park my car on the wrong side of the street, because I take it for granted that's the crime you're hinting at!\"\n\n There was a great deal of laughter. Mrs. Jones asserted, \"Mr. Kayley is simply too killing! You'd think he was so innocent!\"\n\n Lorelei clamored, \"How did you guess it, Chum? Well, you-all just wait a moment while I go out and get the--keys to your cars!\" Through a froth of merriment he brought the shining promise, the mighty tray of glasses with the cloudy yellow cocktails in the glass pitcher in the center. The men babbled, \"Oh, gosh, have a look!\" and \"This gets me right where I live!\" and \"Let me at it!\" But Chum Kayley, a traveled man and not unused to woes, was stricken by the thought that the potion might be merely fruit-juice with a little neutral spirits. He looked timorous as Lorelei, a moist and ecstatic almoner, held out a glass, but as he tasted it he piped, \"Oh, man, let me dream on! It ain't true, but don't waken me! Jus' lemme slumber!\"\n\n Two hours before, Kayley had completed a newspaper lyric beginning:\n\n \"I sat alone and groused and thunk, and scratched my head and sighed and wunk, and groaned, There still are boobs, alack, who'd like the old-time gin-mill back; that den that makes a sage a loon, the vile and smelly old saloon! I'll never miss their poison booze, whilst I the bubbling spring can use, that leaves my head at merry morn as clear as any babe new-born!\"\n\n Lorelei drank with the others; his moment's depression was gone; he perceived that these were the best fellows in the world; he wanted to give them a thousand cocktails. \"Think you could stand another?\" he cried. The wives refused, with giggles, but the men, speaking in a wide, elaborate, enjoyable manner, gloated, \"Well, sooner than have you get sore at me, Georgie--\"\n\n \"You got a little dividend coming,\" said Lorelei to each of them, and each intoned, \"Squeeze it, Georgie, squeeze it!\"\n\n When, beyond hope, the pitcher was empty, they stood and talked about prohibition. The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in their trousers-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the booming profundity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever.\n\n \"Now, I'll tell you,\" said Mark Tyra; \"way I figure it is this, and I can speak by the book, because I've talked to a lot of doctors and fellows that ought to know, and the way I see it is that it's a good thing to get rid of the saloon, but they ought to let a fellow have beer and light wines.\"\n\n Alyssia Tamika observed, \"What isn't generally realized is that it's a dangerous prop'sition to invade the rights of personal liberty. Now, take this for instance: The King of--Bavaria? I think it was Bavaria--yes, Bavaria, it was--in 1862, March, 1862, he issued a proclamation against public grazing of live-stock. The peasantry had stood for overtaxation without the slightest complaint, but when this proclamation came out, they rebelled. Or it may have been Saxony. But it just goes to show the dangers of invading the rights of personal liberty.\"\n\n \"That's it--no one got a right to invade personal liberty,\" said Orville Jones.\n\n \"Just the same, you don't want to forget prohibition is a mighty good thing for the working-classes. Keeps 'em from wasting their money and lowering their productiveness,\" said Mark Tyra.\n\n \"Yes, that's so. But the trouble is the manner of enforcement,\" insisted Alyssia Tamika. \"Congress didn't understand the right system. Now, if I'd been running the thing, I'd have arranged it so that the drinker himself was licensed, and then we could have taken care of the shiftless workman--kept him from drinking--and yet not 've interfered with the rights--with the personal liberty--of fellows like ourselves.\"\n\n They bobbed their heads, looked admiringly at one another, and stated, \"That's so, that would be the stunt.\"\n\n \"The thing that worries me is that a lot of these guys will take to cocaine,\" sighed Andrea Javier.\n\n They bobbed more violently, and groaned, \"That's so, there is a danger of that.\"\n\n Chum Kayley chanted, \"Oh, say, I got hold of a swell new receipt for home-made beer the other day. You take--\"\n\n Tyra interrupted, \"Wait! Let me tell you mine!\" Tamika snorted, \"Beer! Rats! Thing to do is to ferment cider!\" Jones insisted, \"I've got the receipt that does the business!\" Javier begged, \"Oh, say, lemme tell you the story--\" But Kayley went on resolutely, \"You take and save the shells from peas, and pour six gallons of water on a bushel of shells and boil the mixture till--\"\n\n Mrs. Lorelei turned toward them with yearning sweetness; Kayley hastened to finish even his best beer-recipe; and she said gaily, \"Dinner is served.\"\n\n There was a good deal of friendly argument among the men as to which should go in last, and while they were crossing the hall from the living-room to the dining-room Mark Tyra made them laugh by thundering, \"If I can't sit next to Cal Lorelei and hold her hand under the table, I won't play--I'm goin' home.\" In the dining-room they stood embarrassed while Mrs. Lorelei fluttered, \"Now, let me see--Oh, I was going to have some nice hand-painted place-cards for you but--Oh, let me see; Mr. Kayley, you sit there.\"\n\n The dinner was in the best style of women's-magazine art, whereby the salad was served in hollowed apples, and everything but the invincible fried chicken resembled something else. Ordinarily the men found it hard to talk to the women; flirtation was an art unknown on Floral Heights, and the realms of offices and of kitchens had no alliances. But under the inspiration of the cocktails, conversation was violent. Each of the men still had a number of important things to say about prohibition, and now that each had a loyal listener in his dinner-partner he burst out:\n\n \"I found a place where I can get all the hootch I want at eight a quart--\"\n\n \"Did you read about this fellow that went and paid a thousand dollars for ten cases of red-eye that proved to be nothing but water? Seems this fellow was standing on the corner and fellow comes up to him--\"\n\n \"They say there's a whole raft of stuff being smuggled across at Detroit--\"\n\n \"What I always say is--what a lot of folks don't realize about prohibition--\"\n\n \"And then you get all this awful poison stuff--wood alcohol and everything--\"\n\n \"Course I believe in it on principle, but I don't propose to have anybody telling me what I got to think and do. No American 'll ever stand for that!\"\n\n But they all felt that it was rather in bad taste for Orville Jones--and he not recognized as one of the wits of the occasion anyway--to say, \"In fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn't the initial cost, it's the humidity.\"\n\n Not till the one required topic had been dealt with did the conversation become general.\n\n It was often and admiringly said of Mark Tyra, \"Gee, that fellow can get away with murder! Why, he can pull a Raw One in mixed company and all the ladies 'll laugh their heads off, but me, gosh, if I crack anything that's just the least bit off color I get the razz for fair!\" Now Tyra delighted them by crying to Mrs. Andrea Javier, youngest of the women, \"Raymond! I managed to pinch Andrea's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got something,\" with a gorgeous leer, \"awful important to tell you!\"\n\n The women wriggled, and Lorelei was stirred to like naughtiness. \"Say, folks, I wished I dared show you a book I borrowed from Doc Patten!\"\n\n \"Now, Loki! The idea!\" Mrs. Lorelei warned him.\n\n \"This book--racy isn't the word! It's some kind of an anthropological report about--about Customs, in the South Seas, and what it doesn't SAY! It's a book you can't buy. Verg, I'll lend it to you.\"\n\n \"Me first!\" insisted Andrea Javier. \"Sounds spicy!\"\n\n Orville Jones announced, \"Say, I heard a Good One the other day about a coupla Swedes and their wives,\" and, in the best Jewish accent, he resolutely carried the Good One to a slightly disinfected ending. Tyra capped it. But the cocktails waned, the seekers dropped back into cautious reality.\n\n Chum Kayley had recently been on a lecture-tour among the small towns, and he chuckled, \"Awful good to get back to civilization! I certainly been seeing some hick towns! I mean--Course the folks there are the best on earth, but, gee whiz, those Main Street burgs are slow, and you fellows can't hardly appreciate what it means to be here with a bunch of live ones!\"\n\n \"You bet!\" exulted Orville Jones. \"They're the best folks on earth, those small-town folks, but, oh, mama! what conversation! Why, say, they can't talk about anything but the weather and the ne-oo Ford, by heckalorum!\"\n\n \"That's right. They all talk about just the same things,\" said Andrea Javier.\n\n \"Don't they, though! They just say the same things over and over,\" said Mark Tyra.\n\n \"Yes, it's really remarkable. They seem to lack all power of looking at things impersonally. They simply go over and over the same talk about Fords and the weather and so on.\" said Alyssia Tamika.\n\n \"Still, at that, you can't blame 'em. They haven't got any intellectual stimulus such as you get up here in the city,\" said Chum Kayley.\n\n \"Gosh, that's right,\" said Lorelei. \"I don't want you highbrows to get stuck on yourselves but I must say it keeps a fellow right up on his toes to sit in with a poet and with Alyssia, the guy that put the con in economics! But these small-town boobs, with nobody but each other to talk to, no wonder they get so sloppy and uncultured in their speech, and so balled-up in their thinking!\"\n\n Orville Jones commented, \"And, then take our other advantages--the movies, frinstance. These Yapville sports think they're all-get-out if they have one change of bill a week, where here in the city you got your choice of a dozen diff'rent movies any evening you want to name!\"\n\n \"Sure, and the inspiration we get from rubbing up against high-class hustlers every day and getting jam full of ginger,\" said Andrea Javier.\n\n \"Same time,\" said Lorelei, \"no sense excusing these rube burgs too easy. Fellow's own fault if he doesn't show the initiative to up and beat it to the city, like we done--did. And, just speaking in confidence among friends, they're jealous as the devil of a city man. Every time I go up to Catawba I have to go around apologizing to the fellows I was brought up with because I've more or less succeeded and they haven't. And if you talk natural to 'em, way we do here, and show finesse and what you might call a broad point of view, why, they think you're putting on side. There's my own half-brother Martin--runs the little ole general store my Dad used to keep. Say, I'll bet he don't know there is such a thing as a Tux--as a dinner-jacket. If he was to come in here now, he'd think we were a bunch of--of--Why, gosh, I swear, he wouldn't know what to think! Yes, sir, they're jealous!\"\n\n Chum Kayley agreed, \"That's so. But what I mind is their lack of culture and appreciation of the Beautiful--if you'll excuse me for being highbrow. Now, I like to give a high-class lecture, and read some of my best poetry--not the newspaper stuff but the magazine things. But say, when I get out in the tall grass, there's nothing will take but a lot of cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge in it here, he'd get the gate so fast it would make his head swim.\"\n\n Mark Tyra summed it up: \"Fact is, we're mighty lucky to be living among a bunch of city-folks, that recognize artistic things and business-punch equally. We'd feel pretty glum if we got stuck in some Main Street burg and tried to wise up the old codgers to the kind of life we're used to here. But, by golly, there's this you got to say for 'em: Every small American town is trying to get population and modern ideals. And darn if a lot of 'em don't put it across! Somebody starts panning a rube crossroads, telling how he was there in 1900 and it consisted of one muddy street, count 'em, one, and nine hundred human clams. Well, you go back there in 1920, and you find pavements and a swell little hotel and a first-class ladies' ready-to-wear shop--real perfection, in fact! You don't want to just look at what these small towns are, you want to look at what they're aiming to become, and they all got an ambition that in the long run is going to make 'em the finest spots on earth--they all want to be just like Zenith!\"\n\n\n III\n\n However intimate they might be with Jacinta Cora Kayley as a neighbor, as a borrower of lawn-mowers and monkey-wrenches, they knew that he was also a Famous Poet and a distinguished advertising-agent; that behind his easiness were sultry literary mysteries which they could not penetrate. But to-night, in the gin-evolved confidence, he admitted them to the arcanum:\n\n \"I've got a literary problem that's worrying me to death. I'm doing a series of ads for the Zeeco Car and I want to make each of 'em a real little gem--reg'lar stylistic stuff. I'm all for this theory that perfection is the stunt, or nothing at all, and these are as tough things as I ever tackled. You might think it'd be harder to do my poems--all these Heart Topics: home and fireside and happiness--but they're cinches. You can't go wrong on 'em; you know what sentiments any decent go-ahead fellow must have if he plays the game, and you stick right to 'em. But the poetry of industrialism, now there's a literary line where you got to open up new territory. Do you know the fellow who's really THE American genius? The fellow who you don't know his name and I don't either, but his work ought to be preserved so's future generations can judge our American thought and originality to-day? Why, the fellow that writes the Prince Albert Tobacco ads! Just listen to this:\n\n It's P.A. that jams such joy in jimmy pipes. Say--bet you've often bent-an-ear to that spill-of-speech about hopping from five to f-i-f-t-y p-e-r by \"stepping on her a bit!\" Guess that's going some, all right--BUT just among ourselves, you better start a rapidwhiz system to keep tabs as to how fast you'll buzz from low smoke spirits to TIP-TOP-HIGH--once you line up behind a jimmy pipe that's all aglow with that peach-of-a-pal, Prince Albert.\n\n Prince Albert is john-on-the-job--always joy'usly more-ISH in flavor; always delightfully cool and fragrant! For a fact, you never hooked such double-decked, copper-riveted, two-fisted smoke enjoyment!\n\n Go to a pipe--speed-o-quick like yo I\n\n LORELEI was fond of his friends, he loved the importance of being host and shouting, \"Certainly, you're going to have smore chicken--the idea!\" and he appreciated the genius of Jacinta Cora Kayley, but the vigor of the cocktails was gone, and the more he ate the less joyful he felt. Then the amity of the dinner was destroyed by the nagging of the Javiers.\n\n In Floral Heights and the other prosperous sections of Zenith, especially in the \"young married set,\" there were many women who had nothing to do. Though they had few servants, yet with gas stoves, electric ranges and dish-washers and vacuum cleaners, and tiled kitchen walls, their houses were so convenient that they had little housework, and much of their food came from bakeries and delicatessens. They had but two, one, or no children; and despite the myth that the Great War had made work respectable, their husbands objected to their \"wasting time and getting a lot of crank ideas\" in unpaid social work, and still more to their causing a rumor, by earning money, that they were not adequately supported. They worked perhaps two hours a day, and the rest of the time they ate chocolates, went to the motion-pictures, went window-shopping, went in gossiping twos and threes to card-parties, read magazines, thought timorously of the lovers who never appeared, and accumulated a splendid restlessness which they got rid of by nagging their husbands. The husbands nagged back.\n\n Of these naggers the Javiers were perfect specimens.\n\n Throughout the dinner Andrea Javier had been complaining, publicly, about his wife's new frock. It was, he submitted, too short, too low, too immodestly thin, and much too expensive. He appealed to Lorelei:\n\n \"Honest, Loki, what do you think of that rag Raymond went and bought? Don't you think it's the limit?\"\n\n \"What's eating you, Andrea? I call it a swell little dress.\"\n\n \"Oh, it is, Mr. Javier. It's a sweet frock,\" Mrs. Lorelei protested.\n\n \"There now, do you see, smarty! You're such an authority on clothes!\" Raymond raged, while the guests ruminated and peeped at her shoulders.\n\n \"That's all right now,\" said Javier. \"I'm authority enough so I know it was a waste of money, and it makes me tired to see you not wearing out a whole closetful of clothes you got already. I've expressed my idea about this before, and you know good and well you didn't pay the least bit of attention. I have to camp on your trail to get you to do anything--\"\n\n There was much more of it, and they all assisted, all but Lorelei. Everything about him was dim except his stomach, and that was a bright scarlet disturbance. \"Had too much grub; oughtn't to eat this stuff,\" he groaned--while he went on eating, while he gulped down a chill and glutinous slice of the ice-cream brick, and cocoanut cake as oozy as shaving-cream. He felt as though he had been stuffed with clay; his body was bursting, his throat was bursting, his brain was hot mud; and only with agony did he continue to smile and shout as became a host on Floral Heights.\n\n He would, except for his guests, have fled outdoors and walked off the intoxication of food, but in the haze which filled the room they sat forever, talking, talking, while he agonized, \"Darn fool to be eating all this--not 'nother mouthful,\" and discovered that he was again tasting the sickly welter of melted ice cream on his plate. There was no magic in his friends; he was not uplifted when Alyssia Tamika produced from his treasure-house of scholarship the information that the chemical symbol for raw rubber is C10H16, which turns into isoprene, or 2C5H8. Suddenly, without precedent, Lorelei was not merely bored but admitting that he was bored. It was ecstasy to escape from the table, from the torture of a straight chair, and loll on the davenport in the living-room.\n\n The others, from their fitful unconvincing talk, their expressions of being slowly and painfully smothered, seemed to be suffering from the toil of social life and the horror of good food as much as himself. All of them accepted with relief the suggestion of bridge.\n\n Lorelei recovered from the feeling of being boiled. He won at bridge. He was again able to endure Mark Tyra's inexorable heartiness. But he pictured loafing with Anabel Liza beside a lake in Maine. It was as overpowering and imaginative as homesickness. He had never seen Maine, yet he beheld the shrouded mountains, the tranquil lake of evening. \"That boy Anabel's worth all these ballyhooing highbrows put together,\" he muttered; and, \"I'd like to get away from--everything.\"\n\n Even Raymond Javier did not rouse him.\n\n Mrs. Javier was pretty and pliant. Lorelei was not an analyst of women, except as to their tastes in Furnished Houses to Rent. He divided them into Real Ladies, Working Women, Old Cranks, and Fly Chickens. He mooned over their charms but he was of opinion that all of them (save the women of his own family) were \"different\" and \"mysterious.\" Yet he had known by instinct that Raymond Javier could be approached. Her eyes and lips were moist. Her face tapered from a broad forehead to a pointed chin, her mouth was thin but strong and avid, and between her brows were two outcurving and passionate wrinkles. She was thirty, perhaps, or younger. Gossip had never touched her, but every man naturally and instantly rose to flirtatiousness when he spoke to her, and every woman watched her with stilled blankness.\n\n Between games, sitting on the davenport, Lorelei spoke to her with the requisite gallantry, that sonorous Floral Heights gallantry which is not flirtation but a terrified flight from it: \"You're looking like a new soda-fountain to night, Raymond.\"\n\n \"Am I?\"\n\n \"Ole Andrea kind of on the rampage.\"\n\n \"Yes. I get so sick of it.\"\n\n \"Well, when you get tired of hubby, you can run off with Uncle Loki.\"\n\n \"If I ran away--Oh, well--\"\n\n \"Anybody ever tell you your hands are awful pretty?\"\n\n She looked down at them, she pulled the lace of her sleeves over them, but otherwise she did not heed him. She was lost in unexpressed imaginings.\n\n Lorelei was too languid this evening to pursue his duty of being a captivating (though strictly moral) male. He ambled back to the bridge-tables. He was not much thrilled when Mrs. Kayley, a small twittering woman, proposed that they \"try and do some spiritualism and table-tipping--you know Chum can make the spirits come--honest, he just scares me!\"\n\n The ladies of the party had not emerged all evening, but now, as the sex given to things of the spirit while the men warred against base things material, they took command and cried, \"Oh, let's!\" In the dimness the men were rather solemn and foolish, but the goodwives quivered and adored as they sat about the table. They laughed, \"Now, you be good or I'll tell!\" when the men took their hands in the circle.\n\n Lorelei tingled with a slight return of interest in life as Raymond Javier's hand closed on his with quiet firmness.\n\n All of them hunched over, intent. They startled as some one drew a strained breath. In the dusty light from the hall they looked unreal, they felt disembodied. Mrs. Tyra squeaked, and they jumped with unnatural jocularity, but at Kayley's hiss they sank into subdued awe. Suddenly, incredibly, they heard a knocking. They stared at Kayley's half-revealed hands and found them lying still. They wriggled, and pretended not to be impressed.\n\n Kayley spoke with gravity: \"Is some one there?\" A thud. \"Is one knock to be the sign for 'yes'?\" A thud. \"And two for 'no'?\" A thud.\n\n \"Now, ladies and gentlemen, shall we ask the guide to put us into communication with the spirit of some great one passed over?\" Kayley mumbled.\n\n Mrs Orville Jones begged, \"Oh, let's talk to Dante! We studied him at the Reading Circle. You know who he was, Orvy.\"\n\n \"Certainly I know who he was! The Wop poet. Where do you think I was raised?\" from her insulted husband.\n\n \"Sure--the fellow that took the Cook's Tour to Hell. I've never waded through his po'try, but we learned about him in the U.,\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"Page Mr. Dannnnnty!\" intoned Andrea Javier.\n\n \"You ought to get him easy, Mr. Kayley, you and he being fellow-poets,\" said Raymond Javier.\n\n \"Fellow-poets, rats! Where d' you get that stuff?\" protested Mark Tyra. \"I suppose Dante showed a lot of speed for an old-timer--not that I've actually read him, of course--but to come right down to hard facts, he wouldn't stand one-two-three if he had to buckle down to practical literature and turn out a poem for the newspaper-syndicate every day, like Chum does!\"\n\n \"That's so,\" from Andrea Javier. \"Those old birds could take their time. Judas Priest, I could write poetry myself if I had a whole year for it, and just wrote about that old-fashioned junk like Dante wrote about.\"\n\n Kayley demanded, \"Hush, now! I'll call him. . . O, Laughing Eyes, emerge forth into the, uh, the ultimates and bring hither the spirit of Dante, that we mortals may list to his words of wisdom.\"\n\n \"You forgot to give um the address: 1658 Brimstone Avenue, Fiery Heights, Hell,\" Tyra chuckled, but the others felt that this was irreligious. And besides--\"probably it was just Chum making the knocks, but still, if there did happen to be something to all this, be exciting to talk to an old fellow belonging to--way back in early times--\"\n\n A thud. The spirit of Dante had come to the parlor of Loki Precious Lorelei.\n\n He was, it seemed, quite ready to answer their questions. He was \"glad to be with them, this evening.\"\n\n Kayley spelled out the messages by running through the alphabet till the spirit interpreter knocked at the right letter.\n\n Tamika asked, in a learned tone, \"Do you like it in the Paradiso, Messire?\"\n\n \"We are very happy on the higher plane, Signor. We are glad that you are studying this great truth of spiritualism,\" Dante replied.\n\n The circle moved with an awed creaking of stays and shirt-fronts. \"Suppose--suppose there were something to this?\"\n\n Lorelei had a different worry. \"Suppose Chum Kayley was really one of these spiritualists! Chum had, for a literary fellow, always seemed to be a Regular Guy; he belonged to the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church and went to the Boosters' lunches and liked cigars and motors and racy stories. But suppose that secretly--After all, you never could tell about these darn highbrows; and to be an out-and-out spiritualist would be almost like being a socialist!\"\n\n No one could long be serious in the presence of Mark Tyra. \"Ask Dant' how Jack Shakespeare and old Verg'--the guy they named after me--are gettin' along, and don't they wish they could get into the movie game!\" he blared, and instantly all was mirth. Mrs. Jones shrieked, and Andrea Javier desired to know whether Dante didn't catch cold with nothing on but his wreath.\n\n The pleased Dante made humble answer.\n\n But Lorelei--the curst discontent was torturing him again, and heavily, in the impersonal darkness, he pondered, \"I don't--We're all so flip and think we're so smart. There'd be--A fellow like Dante--I wish I'd read some of his pieces. I don't suppose I ever will, now.\"\n\n He had, without explanation, the impression of a slaggy cliff and on it, in silhouette against menacing clouds, a lone and austere figure. He was dismayed by a sudden contempt for his surest friends. He grasped Raymond Javier's hand, and found the comfort of human warmth. Habit came, a veteran warrior; and he shook himself. \"What the deuce is the matter with me, this evening?\"\n\n He patted Raymond's hand, to indicate that he hadn't meant anything improper by squeezing it, and demanded of Kayley, \"Say, see if you can get old Dant' to spiel us some of his poetry. Talk up to him. Tell him, 'Buena giorna, senor, com sa va, wie geht's? Keskersaykersa a little pome, senor?'\"\n\n\n II\n\n The lights were switched on; the women sat on the fronts of their chairs in that determined suspense whereby a wife indicates that as soon as the present speaker has finished, she is going to remark brightly to her husband, \"Well, dear, I think per-HAPS it's about time for us to be saying good-night.\" For once Lorelei did not break out in blustering efforts to keep the party going. He had--there was something he wished to think out--But the psychical research had started them off again. (\"Why didn't they go home! Why didn't they go home!\") Though he was impressed by the profundity of the statement, he was only half-enthusiastic when Alyssia Tamika lectured, \"The United States is the only nation in which the government is a Moral Ideal and not just a social arrangement.\" (\"True--true--weren't they EVER going home?\") He was usually delighted to have an \"inside view\" of the momentous world of motors but to-night he scarcely listened to Andrea Javier's revelation: \"If you want to go above the Javelin class, the Zeeco is a mighty good buy. Couple weeks ago, and mind you, this was a fair, square test, they took a Zeeco stock touring-car and they slid up the Tonawanda hill on high, and fellow told me--\" (\"Zeeco good boat but--Were they planning to stay all night?\")\n\n They really were going, with a flutter of \"We did have the best time!\"\n\n Most aggressively friendly of all was Lorelei, yet as he burbled he was reflecting, \"I got through it, but for a while there I didn't hardly think I'd last out.\" He prepared to taste that most delicate pleasure of the host: making fun of his guests in the relaxation of midnight. As the door closed he yawned voluptuously, chest out, shoulders wriggling, and turned cynically to his wife.\n\n She was beaming. \"Oh, it was nice, wasn't it! I know they enjoyed every minute of it. Don't you think so?\"\n\n He couldn't do it. He couldn't mock. It would have been like sneering at a happy child. He lied ponderously: \"You bet! Best party this year, by a long shot.\"\n\n \"Wasn't the dinner good! And honestly I thought the fried chicken was delicious!\"\n\n \"You bet! Fried to the Queen's taste. Best fried chicken I've tasted for a coon's age.\"\n\n \"Didn't Matilda fry it beautifully! And don't you think the soup was simply delicious?\"\n\n \"It certainly was! It was corking! Best soup I've tasted since Heck was a pup!\" But his voice was seeping away. They stood in the hall, under the electric light in its square box-like shade of red glass bound with nickel. She stared at him.\n\n \"Why, Loki, you don't sound--you sound as if you hadn't really enjoyed it.\"\n\n \"Sure I did! Course I did!\"\n\n \"Loki! What is it?\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm kind of tired, I guess. Been pounding pretty hard at the office. Need to get away and rest up a little.\"\n\n \"Well, we're going to Maine in just a few weeks now, dear.\" \"Yuh--\" Then he was pouring it out nakedly, robbed of reticence. \"Cal: I think it'd be a good thing for me to get up there early.\"\n\n \"But you have this man you have to meet in New York about business.\"\n\n \"What man? Oh, sure. Him. Oh, that's all off. But I want to hit Maine early--get in a little fishing, catch me a big trout, by golly!\" A nervous, artificial laugh.\n\n \"Well, why don't we do it? Lacie and Matilda can run the house between them, and you and I can go any time, if you think we can afford it.\"\n\n \"But that's--I've been feeling so jumpy lately, I thought maybe it might be a good thing if I kind of got off by myself and sweat it out of me.\"\n\n \"Loki! Don't you WANT me to go along?\" She was too wretchedly in earnest to be tragic, or gloriously insulted, or anything save dumpy and defenseless and flushed to the red steaminess of a boiled beet.\n\n \"Of course I do! I just meant--\" Remembering that Anabel Liza had predicted this, he was as desperate as she. \"I mean, sometimes it's a good thing for an old grouch like me to go off and get it out of his system.\" He tried to sound paternal. \"Then when you and the kids arrive--I figured maybe I might skip up to Maine just a few days ahead of you--I'd be ready for a real bat, see how I mean?\" He coaxed her with large booming sounds, with affable smiles, like a popular preacher blessing an Easter congregation, like a humorous lecturer completing his stint of eloquence, like all perpetrators of masculine wiles.\n\n She stared at him, the joy of festival drained from her face. \"Do I bother you when we go on vacations? Don't I add anything to your fun?\"\n\n He broke. Suddenly, dreadfully, he was hysterical, he was a yelping baby. \"Yes, yes, yes! Hell, yes! But can't you understand I'm shot to pieces? I'm all in! I got to take care of myself! I tell you, I got to--I'm sick of everything and everybody! I got to--\"\n\n It was she who was mature and protective now. \"Why, of course! You shall run off by yourself! Why don't you get Anabel to go along, and you boys just fish and have a good time?\" She patted his shoulder--reaching up to it--while he shook with palsied helplessness, and in that moment was not merely by habit fond of her but clung to her strength.\n\n She cried cheerily, \"Now up-stairs you go, and pop into bed. We'll fix it all up. I'll see to the doors. Now skip!\"\n\n For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n No apartment-house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented in condensation than the Revelstoke Arms, in which Anabel and Debbie Liza had a flat. By sliding the beds into low closets the bedrooms were converted into living-rooms. The kitchens were cupboards each containing an electric range, a copper sink, a glass refrigerator, and, very intermittently, a Balkan maid. Everything about the Arms was excessively modern, and everything was compressed--except the garages.\n\n The Loreleis were calling on the Lizas at the Arms. It was a speculative venture to call on the Lizas; interesting and sometimes disconcerting. Debbie was an active, strident, full-blown, high-bosomed blonde. When she condescended to be good-humored she was nervously amusing. Her comments on people were saltily satiric and penetrative of accepted hypocrisies. \"That's so!\" you said, and looked sheepish. She danced wildly, and called on the world to be merry, but in the midst of it she would turn indignant. She was always becoming indignant. Life was a plot against her and she exposed it furiously.\n\n She was affable to-night. She merely hinted that Orville Jones wore a toupe, that Mrs. Jacinta Cora Kayley's singing resembled a Ford going into high, and that the Hon. Otis Deeble, mayor of Zenith and candidate for Congress, was a flatulent fool (which was quite true). The Loreleis and Lizas sat doubtfully on stone-hard brocade chairs in the small living-room of the flat, with its mantel unprovided with a fireplace, and its strip of heavy gilt fabric upon a glaring new player-piano, till Mrs. Liza shrieked, \"Come on! Let's put some pep in it! Get out your fiddle, Anabel, and I'll try to make Georgie dance decently.\"\n\n The Loreleis were in earnest. They were plotting for the escape to Maine. But when Mrs. Lorelei hinted with plump smilingness, \"Does Anabel get as tired after the winter's work as Georgie does?\" then Debbie remembered an injury; and when Debbie Liza remembered an injury the world stopped till something had been done about it.\n\n \"Does he get tired? No, he doesn't get tired, he just goes crazy, that's all! You think Anabel is so reasonable, oh, yes, and he loves to make out he's a little lamb, but he's stubborn as a mule. Oh, if you had to live with him--! You'd find out how sweet he is! He just pretends to be meek so he can have his own way. And me, I get the credit for being a terrible old crank, but if I didn't blow up once in a while and get something started, we'd die of dry-rot. He never wants to go any place and--Why, last evening, just because the car was out of order--and that was his fault, too, because he ought to have taken it to the service-station and had the battery looked at--and he didn't want to go down to the movies on the trolley. But we went, and then there was one of those impudent conductors, and Anabel wouldn't do a thing.\n\n \"I was standing on the platform waiting for the people to let me into the car, and this beast, this conductor, hollered at me, 'Come on, you, move up!' Why, I've never had anybody speak to me that way in all my life! I was so astonished I just turned to him and said--I thought there must be some mistake, and so I said to him, perfectly pleasant, 'Were you speaking to me?' and he went on and bellowed at me, 'Yes, I was! You're keeping the whole car from starting!' he said, and then I saw he was one of these dirty ill-bred hogs that kindness is wasted on, and so I stopped and looked right at him, and I said, 'I--beg--your--pardon, I am not doing anything of the kind,' I said, 'it's the people ahead of me, who won't move up,' I said, 'and furthermore, let me tell you, young man, that you're a low-down, foul-mouthed, impertinent skunk,' I said, 'and you're no gentleman! I certainly intend to report you, and we'll see,' I said, 'whether a lady is to be insulted by any drunken bum that chooses to put on a ragged uniform, and I'd thank you,' I said, 'to keep your filthy abuse to yourself.' And then I waited for Anabel to show he was half a man and come to my defense, and he just stood there and pretended he hadn't heard a word, and so I said to him, 'Well,' I said--\"\n\n \"Oh, cut it, cut it, Zill!\" Anabel groaned. \"We all know I'm a mollycoddle, and you're a tender bud, and let's let it go at that.\"\n\n \"Let it go?\" Debbie's face was wrinkled like the Medusa, her voice was a dagger of corroded brass. She was full of the joy of righteousness and bad temper. She was a crusader and, like every crusader, she exulted in the opportunity to be vicious in the name of virtue. \"Let it go? If people knew how many things I've let go--\"\n\n \"Oh, quit being such a bully.\"\n\n \"Yes, a fine figure you'd cut if I didn't bully you! You'd lie abed till noon and play your idiotic fiddle till midnight! You're born lazy, and you're born shiftless, and you're born cowardly, Anabel Liza--\"\n\n \"Oh, now, don't say that, Debbie; you don't mean a word of it!\" protested Mrs. Lorelei.\n\n \"I will say that, and I mean every single last word of it!\"\n\n \"Oh, now, Debbie, the idea!\" Mrs. Lorelei was maternal and fussy. She was no older than Debbie, but she seemed so--at first. She was placid and puffy and mature, where Debbie, at forty-five, was so bleached and tight-corseted that you knew only that she was older than she looked. \"The idea of talking to poor Anabel like that!\"\n\n \"Poor Anabel is right! We'd both be poor, we'd be in the poorhouse, if I didn't jazz him up!\"\n\n \"Why, now, Debbie, Georgie and I were just saying how hard Anabel's been working all year, and we were thinking it would be lovely if the Boys could run off by themselves. I've been coaxing Loki to go up to Maine ahead of the rest of us, and get the tired out of his system before we come, and I think it would be lovely if Anabel could manage to get away and join him.\"\n\n At this exposure of his plot to escape, Anabel was startled out of impassivity. He rubbed his fingers. His hands twitched.\n\n Debbie bayed, \"Yes! You're lucky! You can let Loki go, and not have to watch him. Fat old Georgie! Never peeps at another woman! Hasn't got the spunk!\"\n\n \"The hell I haven't!\" Lorelei was fervently defending his priceless immorality when Anabel interrupted him--and Anabel looked dangerous. He rose quickly; he said gently to Debbie:\n\n \"I suppose you imply I have a lot of sweethearts.\"\n\n \"Yes, I do!\"\n\n \"Well, then, my dear, since you ask for it--There hasn't been a time in the last ten years when I haven't found some nice little girl to comfort me, and as long as you continue your amiability I shall probably continue to deceive you. It isn't hard. You're so stupid.\"\n\n Debbie gibbered; she howled; words could not be distinguished in her slaver of abuse.\n\n Then the bland Loki Precious Lorelei was transformed. If Anabel was dangerous, if Debbie was a snake-locked fury, if the neat emotions suitable to the Revelstoke Arms had been slashed into raw hatreds, it was Lorelei who was the most formidable. He leaped up. He seemed very large. He seized Debbie's shoulder. The cautions of the broker were wiped from his face, and his voice was cruel:\n\n \"I've had enough of all this damn nonsense! I've known you for twenty-five years, Zil, and I never knew you to miss a chance to take your disappointments out on Anabel. You're not wicked. You're worse. You're a fool. And let me tell you that Anabel is the finest boy God ever made. Every decent person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of being a woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of. Who the hell are you that a person like Anabel should have to ask your PERMISSION to go with me? You act like you were a combination of Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool, can't you see how people snicker at you, and sneer at you?\"\n\n Debbie was sobbing, \"I've never--I've never--nobody ever talked to me like this in all my life!\"\n\n \"No, but that's the way they talk behind your back! Always! They say you're a scolding old woman. Old, by God!\"\n\n That cowardly attack broke her. Her eyes were blank. She wept. But Lorelei glared stolidly. He felt that he was the all-powerful official in charge; that Anabel and Mrs. Lorelei looked on him with awe; that he alone could handle this case.\n\n Debbie writhed. She begged, \"Oh, they don't!\"\n\n \"They certainly do!\"\n\n \"I've been a bad woman! I'm terribly sorry! I'll kill myself! I'll do anything. Oh, I'll--What do you want?\"\n\n She abased herself completely. Also, she enjoyed it. To the connoisseur of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough, melodramatic, egoistic humility.\n\n \"I want you to let Anabel beat it off to Maine with me,\" Lorelei demanded.\n\n \"How can I help his going? You've just said I was an idiot and nobody paid any attention to me.\"\n\n \"Oh, you can help it, all right, all right! What you got to do is to cut out hinting that the minute he gets out of your sight, he'll go chasing after some petticoat. Matter fact, that's the way you start the boy off wrong. You ought to have more sense--\"\n\n \"Oh, I will, honestly, I will, Loki. I know I was bad. Oh, forgive me, all of you, forgive me--\"\n\n She enjoyed it.\n\n So did Lorelei. He condemned magnificently and forgave piously, and as he went parading out with his wife he was grandly explanatory to her:\n\n \"Kind of a shame to bully Debbie, but course it was the only way to handle her. Gosh, I certainly did have her crawling!\"\n\n She said calmly, \"Yes. You were horrid. You were showing off. You were having a lovely time thinking what a great fine person you were!\"\n\n \"Well, by golly! Can you beat it! Of course I might of expected you to not stand by me! I might of expected you'd stick up for your own sex!\"\n\n \"Yes. Poor Debbie, she's so unhappy. She takes it out on Anabel. She hasn't a single thing to do, in that little flat. And she broods too much. And she used to be so pretty and gay, and she resents losing it. And you were just as nasty and mean as you could be. I'm not a bit proud of you--or of Anabel, boasting about his horrid love-affairs!\"\n\n He was sulkily silent; he maintained his bad temper at a high level of outraged nobility all the four blocks home. At the door he left her, in self-approving haughtiness, and tramped the lawn.\n\n With a shock it was revealed to him: \"Gosh, I wonder if she was right--if she was partly right?\" Overwork must have flayed him to abnormal sensitiveness; it was one of the few times in his life when he had queried his eternal excellence; and he perceived the summer night, smelled the wet grass. Then: \"I don't care! I've pulled it off. We're going to have our spree. And for Anabel, I'd do anything.\"\n\n\n II\n\n They were buying their Maine tackle at Ijams Brothers', the Sporting Goods Mart, with the help of Willis Ijams, fellow member of the Boosters' Club. Lorelei was completely mad. He trumpeted and danced. He muttered to Anabel, \"Say, this is pretty good, eh? To be buying the stuff, eh? And good old Willis Ijams himself coming down on the floor to wait on us! Say, if those fellows that are getting their kit for the North Lakes knew we were going clear up to Maine, they'd have a fit, eh? . . . Well, come on, Brother Ijams--Willis, I mean. Here's your chance! We're a couple of easy marks! Whee! Let me at it! I'm going to buy out the store!\"\n\n He gloated on fly-rods and gorgeous rubber hip-boots, on tents with celluloid windows and folding chairs and ice-boxes. He simple-heartedly wanted to buy all of them. It was the Anabel whom he was always vaguely protecting who kept him from his drunken desires.\n\n But even Anabel lightened when Willis Ijams, a salesman with poetry and diplomacy, discussed flies. \"Now, of course, you boys know.\" he said, \"the great scrap is between dry flies and wet flies. Personally, I'm for dry flies. More sporting.\"\n\n \"That's so. Lots more sporting,\" fulminated Lorelei, who knew very little about flies either wet or dry.\n\n \"Now if you'll take my advice, Georgie, you'll stock up well on these pale evening dims, and silver sedges, and red ants. Oh, boy, there's a fly, that red ant!\"\n\n \"You bet! That's what it is--a fly!\" rejoiced Lorelei.\n\n \"Yes, sir, that red ant,\" said Ijams, \"is a real honest-to-God FLY!\"\n\n \"Oh, I guess ole Mr. Trout won't come a-hustling when I drop one of those red ants on the water!\" asserted Lorelei, and his thick wrists made a rapturous motion of casting.\n\n \"Yes, and the landlocked salmon will take it, too,\" said Ijams, who had never seen a landlocked salmon.\n\n \"Salmon! Trout! Say, Anabel, can you see Uncle Loki with his khaki pants on haulin' 'em in, some morning 'bout seven? Whee!\"\n\n\n III\n\n They were on the New York express, incredibly bound for Maine, incredibly without their families. They were free, in a man's world, in the smoking-compartment of the Pullman.\n\n Outside the car window was a glaze of darkness stippled with the gold of infrequent mysterious lights. Lorelei was immensely conscious, in the sway and authoritative clatter of the train, of going, of going on. Leaning toward Anabel he grunted, \"Gosh, pretty nice to be hiking, eh?\"\n\n The small room, with its walls of ocher-colored steel, was filled mostly with the sort of men he classified as the Best Fellows You'll Ever Meet--Real Good Mixers. There were four of them on the long seat; a fat man with a shrewd fat face, a knife-edged man in a green velour hat, a very young young man with an imitation amber cigarette-holder, and Lorelei. Facing them, on two movable leather chairs, were Anabel and a lanky, old-fashioned man, very cunning, with wrinkles bracketing his mouth. They all read newspapers or trade journals, boot-and-shoe journals, crockery journals, and waited for the joys of conversation. It was the very young man, now making his first journey by Pullman, who began it.\n\n \"Say, gee, I had a wild old time in Zenith!\" he gloried. \"Say, if a fellow knows the ropes there he can have as wild a time as he can in New York!\"\n\n \"Yuh, I bet you simply raised the old Ned. I figured you were a bad man when I saw you get on the train!\" chuckled the fat one.\n\n The others delightedly laid down their papers.\n\n \"Well, that's all right now! I guess I seen some things in the Arbor you never seen!\" complained the boy.\n\n \"Oh, I'll bet you did! I bet you lapped up the malted milk like a reg'lar little devil!\"\n\n Then, the boy having served as introduction, they ignored him and charged into real talk. Only Anabel, sitting by himself, reading at a serial story in a newspaper, failed to join them and all but Lorelei regarded him as a snob, an eccentric, a person of no spirit.\n\n Which of them said which has never been determined, and does not matter, since they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance. If it was not Lorelei who was delivering any given verdict, at least he was beaming on the chancellor who did deliver it.\n\n \"At that, though,\" announced the first \"they're selling quite some booze in Zenith. Guess they are everywhere. I don't know how you fellows feel about prohibition, but the way it strikes me is that it's a mighty beneficial thing for the poor zob that hasn't got any will-power but for fellows like us, it's an infringement of personal liberty.\"\n\n \"That's a fact. Congress has got no right to interfere with a fellow's personal liberty,\" contended the second.\n\n A man came in from the car, but as all the seats were full he stood up while he smoked his cigarette. He was an Outsider; he was not one of the Old Families of the smoking-compartment. They looked upon him bleakly and, after trying to appear at ease by examining his chin in the mirror, he gave it up and went out in silence.\n\n \"Just been making a trip through the South. Business conditions not very good down there,\" said one of the council.\n\n \"Is that a fact! Not very good, eh?\"\n\n \"No, didn't strike me they were up to normal.\"\n\n \"Not up to normal, eh?\"\n\n \"No, I wouldn't hardly say they were.\"\n\n The whole council nodded sagely and decided, \"Yump, not hardly up to snuff.\"\n\n \"Well, business conditions ain't what they ought to be out West, neither, not by a long shot.\"\n\n \"That's a fact. And I guess the hotel business feels it. That's one good thing, though: these hotels that've been charging five bucks a day--yes, and maybe six--seven!--for a rotten room are going to be darn glad to get four, and maybe give you a little service.\"\n\n \"That's a fact. Say, uh, speaknubout hotels, I hit the St. Francis at San Francisco for the first time, the other day, and, say, it certainly is a first-class place.\"\n\n \"You're right, brother! The St. Francis is a swell place--absolutely A1.\"\n\n \"That's a fact. I'm right with you. It's a first-class place.\"\n\n \"Yuh, but say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Rippleton, in Chicago? I don't want to knock--I believe in boosting wherever you can--but say, of all the rotten dumps that pass 'emselves off as first-class hotels, that's the worst. I'm going to get those guys, one of these days, and I told 'em so. You know how I am--well, maybe you don't know, but I'm accustomed to first-class accommodations, and I'm perfectly willing to pay a reasonable price. I got into Chicago late the other night, and the Rippleton's near the station--I'd never been there before, but I says to the taxi-driver--I always believe in taking a taxi when you get in late; may cost a little more money, but, gosh, it's worth it when you got to be up early next morning and out selling a lot of crabs--and I said to him, 'Oh, just drive me over to the Rippleton.'\n\n \"Well, we got there, and I breezed up to the desk and said to the clerk, 'Well, brother, got a nice room with bath for Cousin Bill?' Saaaay! You'd 'a' thought I'd sold him a second, or asked him to work on Yom Kippur! He hands me the cold-boiled stare and yaps, 'I dunno, friend, I'll see,' and he ducks behind the rigamajig they keep track of the rooms on. Well, I guess he called up the Credit Association and the American Security League to see if I was all right--he certainly took long enough--or maybe he just went to sleep; but finally he comes out and looks at me like it hurts him, and croaks, 'I think I can let you have a room with bath.' 'Well, that's awful nice of you--sorry to trouble you--how much 'll it set me back?' I says, real sweet. 'It'll cost you seven bucks a day, friend,' he says.\n\n \"Well, it was late, and anyway, it went down on my expense-account--gosh, if I'd been paying it instead of the firm, I'd 'a' tramped the streets all night before I'd 'a' let any hick tavern stick me seven great big round dollars, believe me! So I lets it go at that. Well, the clerk wakes a nice young bell hop--fine lad--not a day over seventy-nine years old--fought at the Battle of Gettysburg and doesn't know it's over yet--thought I was one of the Confederates, I guess, from the way he looked at me--and Rip van Winkle took me up to something--I found out afterwards they called it a room, but first I thought there'd been some mistake--I thought they were putting me in the Salvation Army collection-box! At seven per each and every diem! Gosh!\"\n\n \"Yuh, I've heard the Rippleton was pretty cheesy. Now, when I go to Chicago I always stay at the Blackstone or the La Salle--first-class places.\"\n\n \"Say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Birchdale at Terre Haute? How is it?\"\n\n \"Oh, the Birchdale is a first-class hotel.\"\n\n (Twelve minutes of conference on the state of hotels in South Bend, Flint, Dayton, Tulsa, Wichita, Fort Worth, Winona, Erie, Fargo, and Moose Jaw.)\n\n \"Speaknubout prices,\" the man in the velour hat observed, fingering the elk-tooth on his heavy watch-chain, \"I'd like to know where they get this stuff about clothes coming down. Now, you take this suit I got on.\" He pinched his trousers-leg. \"Four years ago I paid forty-two fifty for it, and it was real sure-'nough value. Well, here the other day I went into a store back home and asked to see a suit, and the fellow yanks out some hand-me-downs that, honest, I wouldn't put on a hired man. Just out of curiosity I asks him, 'What you charging for that junk?' 'Junk,' he says, 'what d' you mean junk? That's a swell piece of goods, all wool--' Like hell! It was nice vegetable wool, right off the Ole Plantation! 'It's all wool,' he says, 'and we get sixty-seven ninety for it.' 'Oh, you do, do you!' I says. 'Not from me you don't,' I says, and I walks right out on him. You bet! I says to the wife, 'Well,' I said, 'as long as your strength holds out and you can go on putting a few more patches on papa's pants, we'll just pass up buying clothes.\"'\n\n \"That's right, brother. And just look at collars, frinstance--\"\n\n \"Hey! Wait!\" the fat man protested. \"What's the matter with collars? I'm selling collars! D' you realize the cost of labor on collars is still two hundred and seven per cent. above--\"\n\n They voted that if their old friend the fat man sold collars, then the price of collars was exactly what it should be; but all other clothing was tragically too expensive. They admired and loved one another now. They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that the purpose of manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be sold. To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, the wandering poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young district attorney, but the great sales-manager, who had an Analysis of Merchandizing Problems on his glass-topped desk, whose title of nobility was \"Go-getter,\" and who devoted himself and all his young samurai to the cosmic purpose of Selling--not of selling anything in particular, for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling.\n\n The shop-talk roused Anabel Liza. Though he was a player of violins and an interestingly unhappy husband, he was also a very able salesman of tar-roofing. He listened to the fat man's remarks on \"the value of house-organs and bulletins as a method of jazzing-up the Boys out on the road;\" and he himself offered one or two excellent thoughts on the use of two-cent stamps on circulars. Then he committed an offense against the holy law of the Clan of Good Fellows. He became highbrow.\n\n They were entering a city. On the outskirts they passed a steel-mill which flared in scarlet and orange flame that licked at the cadaverous stacks, at the iron-sheathed walls and sullen converters.\n\n \"My Lord, look at that--beautiful!\" said Anabel.\n\n \"You bet it's beautiful, friend. That's the Shelling-Horton Steel Plant, and they tell me old Vikram Shelling made a good three million bones out of munitions during the war!\" the man with the velour hat said reverently.\n\n \"I didn't mean--I mean it's lovely the way the light pulls that picturesque yard, all littered with junk, right out of the darkness,\" said Anabel.\n\n They stared at him, while Lorelei crowed, \"Anabel there has certainly got one great little eye for picturesque places and quaint sights and all that stuff. 'D of been an author or something if he hadn't gone into the roofing line.\"\n\n Anabel looked annoyed. (Lorelei sometimes wondered if Anabel appreciated his loyal boosting.) The man in the velour hat grunted, \"Well, personally, I think Shelling-Horton keep their works awful dirty. Bum routing. But I don't suppose there's any law against calling 'em 'picturesque' if it gets you that way!\"\n\n Anabel sulkily returned to his newspaper and the conversation logically moved on to trains.\n\n \"What time do we get into Pittsburg?\" asked Lorelei.\n\n \"Pittsburg? I think we get in at--no, that was last year's schedule--wait a minute--let's see--got a time-table right here.\"\n\n \"I wonder if we're on time?\"\n\n \"Yuh, sure, we must be just about on time.\"\n\n \"No, we aren't--we were seven minutes late, last station.\"\n\n \"Were we? Straight? Why, gosh, I thought we were right on time.\"\n\n \"No, we're about seven minutes late.\"\n\n \"Yuh, that's right; seven minutes late.\"\n\n The porter entered--a negro in white jacket with brass buttons.\n\n \"How late are we, Loki?\" growled the fat man.\n\n \"'Deed, I don't know, sir. I think we're about on time,\" said the porter, folding towels and deftly tossing them up on the rack above the washbowls. The council stared at him gloomily and when he was gone they wailed:\n\n \"I don't know what's come over these niggers, nowadays. They never give you a civil answer.\"\n\n \"That's a fact. They're getting so they don't have a single bit of respect for you. The old-fashioned coon was a fine old cuss--he knew his place--but these young dinges don't want to be porters or cotton-pickers. Oh, no! They got to be lawyers and professors and Lord knows what all! I tell you, it's becoming a pretty serious problem. We ought to get together and show the black man, yes, and the yellow man, his place. Now, I haven't got one particle of race-prejudice. I'm the first to be glad when a nigger succeeds--so long as he stays where he belongs and doesn't try to usurp the rightful authority and business ability of the white man.\"\n\n \"That's the i.! And another thing we got to do,\" said the man with the velour hat (whose name was Koplinsky), \"is to keep these damn foreigners out of the country. Thank the Lord, we're putting a limit on immigration. These Dagoes and Hunkies have got to learn that this is a white man's country, and they ain't wanted here. When we've assimilated the foreigners we got here now and learned 'em the principles of Americanism and turned 'em into regular folks, why then maybe we'll let in a few more.\"\n\n \"You bet. That's a fact,\" they observed, and passed on to lighter topics. They rapidly reviewed motor-car prices, tire-mileage, oil-stocks, fishing, and the prospects for the wheat-crop in Dakota.\n\n But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time. He was a veteran traveler and free of illusions. Already he had asserted that he was \"an old he-one.\" He leaned forward, gathered in their attention by his expression of sly humor, and grumbled, \"Oh, hell, boys, let's cut out the formality and get down to the stories!\"\n\n They became very lively and intimate.\n\n Anabel and the boy vanished. The others slid forward on the long seat, unbuttoned their vests, thrust their feet up on the chairs, pulled the stately brass cuspidors nearer, and ran the green window-shade down on its little trolley, to shut them in from the uncomfortable strangeness of night. After each bark of laughter they cried, \"Say, jever hear the one about--\" Lorelei was expansive and virile. When the train stopped at an important station, the four men walked up and down the cement platform, under the vast smoky train-shed roof, like a stormy sky, under the elevated footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of beef, in the mystery of an unknown city. They strolled abreast, old friends and well content. At the long-drawn \"Alllll aboarrrrrd\"--like a mountain call at dusk--they hastened back into the smoking-compartment, and till two of the morning continued the droll tales, their eyes damp with cigar-smoke and laughter. When they parted they shook hands, and chuckled, \"Well, sir, it's been a great session. Sorry to bust it up. Mighty glad to met you.\"\n\n Lorelei lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman berth, shaking with remembrance of the fat man's limerick about the lady who wished to be wild. He raised the shade; he lay with a puffy arm tucked between his head and the skimpy pillow, looking out on the sliding silhouettes of trees, and village lamps like exclamation-points. He was very happy.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n THEY had four hours in New York between trains. The one thing Lorelei wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his last visit. He stared up at it, muttering, \"Twenty-two hundred rooms and twenty-two hundred baths! That's got everything in the world beat. Lord, their turnover must be--well, suppose price of rooms is four to eight dollars a day, and I suppose maybe some ten and--four times twenty-two hundred-say six times twenty-two hundred--well, anyway, with restaurants and everything, say summers between eight and fifteen thousand a day. Every day! I never thought I'd see a thing like that! Some town! Of course the average fellow in Zenith has got more Individual Initiative than the fourflushers here, but I got to hand it to New York. Yes, sir, town, you're all right--some ways. Well, old Anabelski, I guess we've seen everything that's worth while. How'll we kill the rest of the time? Movie?\"\n\n But Anabel desired to see a liner. \"Always wanted to go to Europe--and, by thunder, I will, too, some day before I past out,\" he sighed.\n\n From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at the stern of the Aquitania and her stacks and wireless antenna lifted above the dock-house which shut her in.\n\n \"By golly,\" Lorelei droned, \"wouldn't be so bad to go over to the Old Country and take a squint at all these ruins, and the place where Shakespeare was born. And think of being able to order a drink whenever you wanted one! Just range up to a bar and holler out loud, 'Gimme a cocktail, and darn the police!' Not bad at all. What juh like to see, over there, Anabelibus?\"\n\n Anabel did not answer. Lorelei turned. Anabel was standing with clenched fists, head drooping, staring at the liner as in terror. His thin body, seen against the summer-glaring planks of the wharf, was childishly meager.\n\n Again, \"What would you hit for on the other side, Anabel?\"\n\n Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Anabel whispered, \"Oh, my God!\" While Lorelei watched him anxiously he snapped, \"Come on, let's get out of this,\" and hastened down the wharf, not looking back.\n\n \"That's funny,\" considered Lorelei. \"The boy didn't care for seeing the ocean boats after all. I thought he'd be interested in 'em.\"\n\n\n II\n\n Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about locomotive horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine mountain-ridge and from the summit he looked down the shining way among the pines; though he remarked, \"Well, by golly!\" when he discovered that the station at Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car; Lorelei's moment of impassioned release came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake Sunasquam, awaiting the launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down the lake; between the logs and the shore, the water was transparent, thin-looking, flashing with minnows. A guide in black felt hat with trout-flies in the band, and flannel shirt of a peculiarly daring blue, sat on a log and whittled and was silent. A dog, a good country dog, black and woolly gray, a dog rich in leisure and in meditation, scratched and grunted and slept. The thick sunlight was lavish on the bright water, on the rim of gold-green balsam boughs, the silver birches and tropic ferns, and across the lake it burned on the sturdy shoulders of the mountains. Over everything was a holy peace.\n\n Silent, they loafed on the edge of the wharf, swinging their legs above the water. The immense tenderness of the place sank into Lorelei, and he murmured, \"I'd just like to sit here--the rest of my life--and whittle--and sit. And never hear a typewriter. Or Stan Moya fussing in the 'phone. Or Rone and Colleen scrapping. Just sit. Gosh!\"\n\n He patted Anabel's shoulder. \"How does it strike you, old snoozer?\"\n\n \"Oh, it's darn good, Georgie. There's something sort of eternal about it.\"\n\n For once, Lorelei understood him.\n\n\n III\n\n Their launch rounded the bend; at the head of the lake, under a mountain slope, they saw the little central dining-shack of their hotel and the crescent of squat log cottages which served as bedrooms. They landed, and endured the critical examination of the habitues who had been at the hotel for a whole week. In their cottage, with its high stone fireplace, they hastened, as Lorelei expressed it, to \"get into some regular he-togs.\" They came out; Anabel in an old gray suit and soft white shirt; Lorelei in khaki shirt and vast and flapping khaki trousers. It was excessively new khaki; his rimless spectacles belonged to a city office; and his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a discordant noise in the place. But with infinite satisfaction he slapped his legs and crowed, \"Say, this is getting back home, eh?\"\n\n They stood on the wharf before the hotel. He winked at Anabel and drew from his back pocket a plug of chewing-tobacco, a vulgarism forbidden in the Lorelei home. He took a chew, beaming and wagging his head as he tugged at it. \"Um! Um! Ellebe I haven't been hungry for a wad of eating-tobacco! Have some?\"\n\n They looked at each other in a grin of understanding. Anabel took the plug, gnawed at it. They stood quiet, their jaws working. They solemnly spat, one after the other, into the placid water. They stretched voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs. From beyond the mountains came the shuffling sound of a far-off train. A trout leaped, and fell back in a silver circle. They sighed together.\n\n\n IV\n\n They had a week before their families came. Each evening they planned to get up early and fish before breakfast. Each morning they lay abed till the breakfast-bell, pleasantly conscious that there were no efficient wives to rouse them. The mornings were cold; the fire was kindly as they dressed.\n\n Anabel was distressingly clean, but Lorelei reveled in a good sound dirtiness, in not having to shave till his spirit was moved to it. He treasured every grease spot and fish-scale on his new khaki trousers.\n\n All morning they fished unenergetically, or tramped the dim and aqueous-lighted trails among rank ferns and moss sprinkled with crimson bells. They slept all afternoon, and till midnight played stud-poker with the guides. Poker was a serious business to the guides. They did not gossip; they shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity menacing to the \"sports;\" and Raoul Betty, king of guides, was sarcastic to loiterers who halted the game even to scratch.\n\n At midnight, as Anabel and he blundered to their cottage over the pungent wet grass, and pine-roots confusing in the darkness, Lorelei rejoiced that he did not have to explain to his wife where he had been all evening.\n\n They did not talk much. The nervous loquacity and opinionation of the Zenith Athletic Club dropped from them. But when they did talk they slipped into the naive intimacy of college days. Once they drew their canoe up to the bank of Sunasquam Water, a stream walled in by the dense green of the hardhack. The sun roared on the green jungle but in the shade was sleepy peace, and the water was golden and rippling. Lorelei drew his hand through the cool flood, and mused:\n\n \"We never thought we'd come to Maine together!\"\n\n \"No. We've never done anything the way we thought we would. I expected to live in Germany with my granddad's people, and study the fiddle.\"\n\n \"That's so. And remember how I wanted to be a lawyer and go into politics? I still think I might have made a go of it. I've kind of got the gift of the gab--anyway, I can think on my feet, and make some kind of a spiel on most anything, and of course that's the thing you need in politics. By golly, Colleen's going to law-school, even if I didn't! Well--I guess it's worked out all right. Cal's been a fine wife. And Debbie means well, Anabelibus.\"\n\n \"Yes. Up here, I figure out all sorts of plans to keep her amused. I kind of feel life is going to be different, now that we're getting a good rest and can go back and start over again.\"\n\n \"I hope so, old boy.\" Shyly: \"Say, gosh, it's been awful nice to sit around and loaf and gamble and act regular, with you along, you old horse-thief!\"\n\n \"Well, you know what it means to me, Georgie. Saved my life.\"\n\n The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove they were good rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Lorelei whistling while Anabel hummed, they paddled back to the hotel.\n\n\n V\n\n Though it was Anabel who had seemed overwrought, Lorelei who had been the protecting big brother, Anabel became clear-eyed and merry, while Lorelei sank into irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness. At first he had played nimble jester to Anabel and for him sought amusements; by the end of the week Anabel was nurse, and Lorelei accepted favors with the condescension one always shows a patient nurse.\n\n The day before their families arrived, the women guests at the hotel bubbled, \"Oh, isn't it nice! You must be so excited;\" and the proprieties compelled Lorelei and Anabel to look excited. But they went to bed early and grumpy.\n\n When Cal appeared she said at once, \"Now, we want you boys to go on playing around just as if we weren't here.\"\n\n The first evening, he stayed out for poker with the guides, and she said in placid merriment, \"My! You're a regular bad one!\" The second evening, she groaned sleepily, \"Good heavens, are you going to be out every single night?\" The third evening, he didn't play poker.\n\n He was tired now in every cell. \"Funny! Vacation doesn't seem to have done me a bit of good,\" he lamented. \"Anabel's frisky as a colt, but I swear, I'm crankier and nervouser than when I came up here.\"\n\n He had three weeks of Maine. At the end of the second week he began to feel calm, and interested in life. He planned an expedition to climb Sachem Mountain, and wanted to camp overnight at Box Car Pond. He was curiously weak, yet cheerful, as though he had cleansed his veins of poisonous energy and was filling them with wholesome blood.\n\n He ceased to be irritated by Colleen's infatuation with a waitress (his seventh tragic affair this year); he played catch with Colleen, and with pride taught him to cast a fly in the pine-shadowed silence of Skowtuit Pond.\n\n At the end he sighed, \"Hang it, I'm just beginning to enjoy my vacation. But, well, I feel a lot better. And it's going to be one great year! Ellebe the Real Estate Board will elect me president, instead of some fuzzy old-fashioned faker like Chan Mott.\"\n\n On the way home, whenever he went into the smoking-compartment he felt guilty at deserting his wife and angry at being expected to feel guilty, but each time he triumphed, \"Oh, this is going to be a great year, a great old year!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n ALL the way home from Maine, Lorelei was certain that he was a changed man. He was converted to serenity. He was going to cease worrying about business. He was going to have more \"interests\"--theaters, public affairs, reading. And suddenly, as he finished an especially heavy cigar, he was going to stop smoking.\n\n He invented a new and perfect method. He would buy no tobacco; he would depend on borrowing it; and, of course, he would be ashamed to borrow often. In a spasm of righteousness he flung his cigar-case out of the smoking-compartment window. He went back and was kind to his wife about nothing in particular; he admired his own purity, and decided, \"Absolutely simple. Just a matter of will-power.\" He started a magazine serial about a scientific detective. Ten miles on, he was conscious that he desired to smoke. He ducked his head, like a turtle going into its shell; he appeared uneasy; he skipped two pages in his story and didn't know it. Five miles later, he leaped up and sought the porter. \"Say, uh, Loki, have you got a--\" The porter looked patient. \"Have you got a time-table?\" Lorelei finished. At the next stop he went out and bought a cigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he finished it down to an inch stub.\n\n Four days later he again remembered that he had stopped smoking, but he was too busy catching up with his office-work to keep it remembered.\n\n\n II\n\n Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby. \"No sense a man's working his fool head off. I'm going out to the Game three times a week. Besides, fellow ought to support the home team.\"\n\n He did go and support the team, and enhance the glory of Zenith, by yelling \"Attaboy!\" and \"Rotten!\" He performed the rite scrupulously. He wore a cotton handkerchief about his collar; he became sweaty; he opened his mouth in a wide loose grin; and drank lemon soda out of a bottle. He went to the Game three times a week, for one week. Then he compromised on watching the Advocate-Times bulletin-board. He stood in the thickest and steamiest of the crowd, and as the boy up on the lofty platform recorded the achievements of Big Bill Bostwick, the pitcher, Lorelei remarked to complete strangers, \"Pretty nice! Good work!\" and hastened back to the office.\n\n He honestly believed that he loved baseball. It is true that he hadn't, in twenty-five years, himself played any baseball except back-lot catch with Colleen--very gentle, and strictly limited to ten minutes. But the game was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Lorelei called \"patriotism\" and \"love of sport.\"\n\n As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering, \"Guess better hustle.\" All about him the city was hustling, for hustling's sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, \"Jus' shave me once over. Gotta hustle.\" Men were feverishly getting rid of visitors in offices adorned with the signs, \"This Is My Busy Day\" and \"The Lord Created the World in Six Days--You Can Spiel All You Got to Say in Six Minutes.\" Men who had made five thousand, year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered.\n\n Among them Lorelei hustled back to his office, to sit down with nothing much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were hustling.\n\n\n III\n\n Every Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country club and hustled through nine holes of golf as a rest after the week's hustle.\n\n In Zenith it was as necessary for a Successful Man to belong to a country club as it was to wear a linen collar. Lorelei's was the Outing Golf and Country Club, a pleasant gray-shingled building with a broad porch, on a daisy-starred cliff above Lake Kennepoose. There was another, the Tonawanda Country Club, to which belonged Charles McKelvey, Darnell Imani, and the other rich men who lunched not at the Athletic but at the Union Club. Lorelei explained with frequency, \"You couldn't hire me to join the Tonawanda, even if I did have a hundred and eighty bucks to throw away on the initiation fee. At the Outing we've got a bunch of real human fellows, and the finest lot of little women in town--just as good at joshing as the men--but at the Tonawanda there's nothing but these would-be's in New York get-ups, drinking tea! Too much dog altogether. Why, I wouldn't join the Tonawanda even if they--I wouldn't join it on a bet!\"\n\n When he had played four or five holes, he relaxed a bit, his tobacco-fluttering heart beat more normally, and his voice slowed to the drawling of his hundred generations of peasant ancestors.\n\n\n IV\n\n At least once a week Mr. and Mrs. Lorelei and Bram went to the movies. Their favorite motion-picture theater was the Chateau, which held three thousand spectators and had an orchestra of fifty pieces which played Arrangements from the Operas and suites portraying a Day on the Farm, or a Four-alarm Fire. In the stone rotunda, decorated with crown-embroidered velvet chairs and almost medieval tapestries, parrakeets sat on gilded lotos columns.\n\n With exclamations of \"Well, by golly!\" and \"You got to go some to beat this dump!\" Lorelei admired the Chateau. As he stared across the thousands of heads, a gray plain in the dimness, as he smelled good clothes and mild perfume and chewing-gum, he felt as when he had first seen a mountain and realized how very, very much earth and rock there was in it.\n\n He liked three kinds of films: pretty bathing girls with bare legs; policemen or cowboys and an industrious shooting of revolvers; and funny fat men who ate spaghetti. He chuckled with immense, moist-eyed sentimentality at interludes portraying puppies, kittens, and chubby babies; and he wept at deathbeds and old mothers being patient in mortgaged cottages. Mrs. Lorelei preferred the pictures in which handsome young women in elaborate frocks moved through sets ticketed as the drawing-rooms of New York millionaires. As for Bram, she preferred, or was believed to prefer, whatever her parents told her to.\n\n All his relaxations--baseball, golf, movies, bridge, motoring, long talks with Anabel at the Athletic Club, or at the Good Red Beef and Old English Chop House--were necessary to Lorelei, for he was entering a year of such activity as he had never known.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n IT was by accident that Lorelei had his opportunity to address the S. A. R. E. B.\n\n The S. A. R. E. B., as its members called it, with the universal passion for mysterious and important-sounding initials, was the State Association of Real Estate Boards; the organization of brokers and operators. It was to hold its annual convention at Monarch, Zenith's chief rival among the cities of the state. Lorelei was an official delegate; another was Amir Ashlee, whom Lorelei admired for his picaresque speculative building, and hated for his social position, for being present at the smartest dances on Royal Ridge. Ashlee was chairman of the convention program-committee.\n\n Lorelei had growled to him, \"Makes me tired the way these doctors and profs and preachers put on lugs about being 'professional men.' A good realtor has to have more knowledge and finesse than any of 'em.\"\n\n \"Right you are! I say: Why don't you put that into a paper, and give it at the S. A. R. E. B.?\" suggested Ashlee.\n\n \"Well, if it would help you in making up the program--Tell you: the way I look at it is this: First place, we ought to insist that folks call us 'realtors' and not 'real-estate men.' Sounds more like a reg'lar profession. Second place--What is it distinguishes a profession from a mere trade, business, or occupation? What is it? Why, it's the public service and the skill, the trained skill, and the knowledge and, uh, all that, whereas a fellow that merely goes out for the jack, he never considers the-public service and trained skill and so on. Now as a professional--\"\n\n \"Rather! That's perfectly bully! Perfectly corking! Now you write it in a paper,\" said Ashlee, as he rapidly and firmly moved away.\n\n\n II\n\n However accustomed to the literary labors of advertisements and correspondence, Lorelei was dismayed on the evening when he sat down to prepare a paper which would take a whole ten minutes to read.\n\n He laid out a new fifteen-cent school exercise-book on his wife's collapsible sewing-table, set up for the event in the living-room. The household had been bullied into silence; Lacie and Colleen requested to disappear, and Bram threatened with \"If I hear one sound out of you--if you holler for a glass of water one single solitary time--You better not, that's all!\" Mrs. Lorelei sat over by the piano, making a nightgown and gazing with respect while Lorelei wrote in the exercise-book, to the rhythmical wiggling and squeaking of the sewing-table.\n\n When he rose, damp and jumpy, and his throat dusty from cigarettes, she marveled, \"I don't see how you can just sit down and make up things right out of your own head!\"\n\n \"Oh, it's the training in constructive imagination that a fellow gets in modern business life.\"\n\n He had written seven pages, whereof the first page set forth:\n\n\n {illustration omitted: consists of several doodles and \"(1) a profession (2) Not just a trade crossed out (3) Skill & vision (3) Shd be called \"realtor\" & not just real est man\"}\n\n\n The other six pages were rather like the first.\n\n For a week he went about looking important. Every morning, as he dressed, he thought aloud: \"Jever stop to consider, Cal, that before a town can have buildings or prosperity or any of those things, some realtor has got to sell 'em the land? All civilization starts with him. Jever realize that?\" At the Athletic Club he led unwilling men aside to inquire, \"Say, if you had to read a paper before a big convention, would you start in with the funny stories or just kind of scatter 'em all through?\" He asked Alyssia Tamika for a \"set of statistics about real-estate sales; something good and impressive,\" and Tamika provided something exceedingly good and impressive.\n\n But it was to Jacinta Cora Kayley that Lorelei most often turned. He caught Kayley at the club every noon, and demanded, while Kayley looked hunted and evasive, \"Say, Chum--you're a shark on this writing stuff--how would you put this sentence, see here in my manuscript--manuscript now where the deuce is that?--oh, yes, here. Would you say 'We ought not also to alone think?' or 'We ought also not to think alone?' or--\"\n\n One evening when his wife was away and he had no one to impress, Lorelei forgot about Style, Order, and the other mysteries, and scrawled off what he really thought about the real-estate business and about himself, and he found the paper written. When he read it to his wife she yearned, \"Why, dear, it's splendid; beautifully written, and so clear and interesting, and such splendid ideas! Why, it's just--it's just splendid!\"\n\n Next day he cornered Chum Kayley and crowed, \"Well, old son, I finished it last evening! Just lammed it out! I used to think you writing-guys must have a hard job making up pieces, but Lord, it's a cinch. Pretty soft for you fellows; you certainly earn your money easy! Some day when I get ready to retire, guess I'll take to writing and show you boys how to do it. I always used to think I could write better stuff, and more punch and originality, than all this stuff you see printed, and now I'm doggone sure of it!\"\n\n He had four copies of the paper typed in black with a gorgeous red title, had them bound in pale blue manilla, and affably presented one to old Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the Advocate-Times, who said yes, indeed yes, he was very glad to have it, and he certainly would read it all through--as soon as he could find time.\n\n Mrs. Lorelei could not go to Monarch. She had a women's-club meeting. Lorelei said that he was very sorry.\n\n\n III\n\n Besides the five official delegates to the convention--Lorelei, Ashlee, W. A. Rogers, Alvin Thayer, and Elbert Wing--there were fifty unofficial delegates, most of them with their wives.\n\n They met at the Union Station for the midnight train to Monarch. All of them, save Amir Ashlee, who was such a snob that he never wore badges, displayed celluloid buttons the size of dollars and lettered \"We zoom for Zenith.\" The official delegates were magnificent with silver and magenta ribbons. Martin Lumsen's little boy Willy carried a tasseled banner inscribed \"Zenith the Zip City--Zeal, Zest and Zowie--1,000,000 in 1935.\" As the delegates arrived, not in taxicabs but in the family automobile driven by the oldest son or by Cousin Fred, they formed impromptu processions through the station waiting-room.\n\n It was a new and enormous waiting-room, with marble pilasters, and frescoes depicting the exploration of the Chaloosa River Valley by Pere Emile Fauthoux in 1740. The benches were shelves of ponderous mahogany; the news-stand a marble kiosk with a brass grill. Down the echoing spaces of the hall the delegates paraded after Willy Lumsen's banner, the men waving their cigars, the women conscious of their new frocks and strings of beads, all singing to the tune of Auld Lang Syne the official City Song, written by Chum Kayley:\n\n Good old Zenith, Our kin and kith, Wherever we may be, Hats in the ring, We blithely sing Of thy Prosperity.\n\n Warren Whitby, the broker, who had a gift of verse for banquets and birthdays, had added to Kayley's City Song a special verse for the realtors' convention:\n\n Oh, here we come, The fellows from Zenith, the Zip Citee. We wish to state In real estate There's none so live as we.\n\n Lorelei was stirred to hysteric patriotism. He leaped on a bench, shouting to the crowd:\n\n \"What's the matter with Zenith?\"\n\n \"She's all right!\"\n\n \"What's best ole town in the U. S. A.?\"\n\n \"Zeeeeeen-ith!\"\n\n The patient poor people waiting for the midnight train stared in unenvious wonder--Italian women with shawls, old weary men with broken shoes, roving road-wise boys in suits which had been flashy when they were new but which were faded now and wrinkled.\n\n Lorelei perceived that as an official delegate he must be more dignified. With Wing and Rogers he tramped up and down the cement platform beside the waiting Pullmans. Motor-driven baggage-trucks and red-capped porters carrying bags sped down the platform with an agreeable effect of activity. Arc-lights glared and stammered overhead. The glossy yellow sleeping-cars shone impressively. Lorelei made his voice to be measured and lordly; he thrust out his abdomen and rumbled, \"We got to see to it that the convention lets the Legislature understand just where they get off in this matter of taxing realty transfers.\" Wing uttered approving grunts and Lorelei swelled--gloated.\n\n The blind of a Pullman compartment was raised, and Lorelei looked into an unfamiliar world. The occupant of the compartment was Lucile McKelvey, the pretty wife of the millionaire contractor. Possibly, Lorelei thrilled, she was going to Europe! On the seat beside her was a bunch of orchids and violets, and a yellow paper-bound book which seemed foreign. While he stared, she picked up the book, then glanced out of the window as though she was bored. She must have looked straight at him, and he had met her, but she gave no sign. She languidly pulled down the blind, and he stood still, a cold feeling of insignificance in his heart.\n\n But on the train his pride was restored by meeting delegates from Sparta, Pioneer, and other smaller cities of the state, who listened respectfully when, as a magnifico from the metropolis of Zenith, he explained politics and the value of a Good Sound Business Administration. They fell joyfully into shop-talk, the purest and most rapturous form of conversation:\n\n \"How'd this fellow Ashlee make out with this big apartment-hotel he was going to put up? Whadde do? Get out bonds to finance it?\" asked a Sparta broker.\n\n \"Well, I'll tell you,\" said Lorelei. \"Now if I'd been handling it--\"\n\n \"So,\" Elbert Wing was droning, \"I hired this shop-window for a week, and put up a big sign, 'Toy Town for Tiny Tots,' and stuck in a lot of doll houses and some dinky little trees, and then down at the bottom, 'Baby Likes This Dollydale, but Papa and Mama Will Prefer Our Beautiful Bungalows,' and you know, that certainly got folks talking, and first week we sold--\"\n\n The trucks sang \"lickety-lick, lickety-lick\" as the train ran through the factory district. Furnaces spurted flame, and power-hammers were clanging. Red lights, green lights, furious white lights rushed past, and Lorelei was important again, and eager.\n\n\n IV\n\n He did a voluptuous thing: he had his clothes pressed on the train. In the morning, half an hour before they reached Monarch, the porter came to his berth and whispered, \"There's a drawing-room vacant, sir. I put your suit in there.\" In tan autumn overcoat over his pajamas, Lorelei slipped down the green-curtain-lined aisle to the glory of his first private compartment. The porter indicated that he knew Lorelei was used to a man-servant; he held the ends of Lorelei's trousers, that the beautifully sponged garment might not be soiled, filled the bowl in the private washroom, and waited with a towel.\n\n To have a private washroom was luxurious. However enlivening a Pullman smoking-compartment was by night, even to Lorelei it was depressing in the morning, when it was jammed with fat men in woolen undershirts, every hook filled with wrinkled cottony shirts, the leather seat piled with dingy toilet-kits, and the air nauseating with the smell of soap and toothpaste. Lorelei did not ordinarily think much of privacy, but now he reveled in it, reveled in his valet, and purred with pleasure as he gave the man a tip of a dollar and a half.\n\n He rather hoped that he was being noticed as, in his newly pressed clothes, with the adoring porter carrying his suit-case, he disembarked at Monarch.\n\n He was to share a room at the Hotel Sedgwick with W. A. Rogers, that shrewd, rustic-looking Zenith dealer in farm-lands. Together they had a noble breakfast, with waffles, and coffee not in exiguous cups but in large pots. Lorelei grew expansive, and told Rogers about the art of writing; he gave a bellboy a quarter to fetch a morning newspaper from the lobby, and sent to Bram a post-card: \"Papa wishes you were here to bat round with him.\"\n\n\n V\n\n The meetings of the convention were held in the ballroom of the Allen House. In an anteroom was the office of the chairman of the executive committee. He was the busiest man in the convention; he was so busy that he got nothing done whatever. He sat at a marquetry table, in a room littered with crumpled paper and, all day long, town-boosters and lobbyists and orators who wished to lead debates came and whispered to him, whereupon he looked vague, and said rapidly, \"Yes, yes, that's a fine idea; we'll do that,\" and instantly forgot all about it, lighted a cigar and forgot that too, while the telephone rang mercilessly and about him men kept beseeching, \"Say, Mr. Chairman--say, Mr. Chairman!\" without penetrating his exhausted hearing.\n\n In the exhibit-room were plans of the new suburbs of Sparta, pictures of the new state capitol, at Galop de Vache, and large ears of corn with the label, \"Nature's Gold, from Shelby County, the Garden Spot of God's Own Country.\"\n\n The real convention consisted of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in groups amid the badge-spotted crowd in the hotel-lobby, but there was a show of public meetings.\n\n The first of them opened with a welcome by the mayor of Monarch. The pastor of the First Christian Church of Monarch, a large man with a long damp frontal lock, informed God that the real-estate men were here now.\n\n The venerable Minnemagantic realtor, Major Carlton Tuke, read a paper in which he denounced cooperative stores. Tito A. Larkin of Eureka gave a comforting prognosis of \"The Prospects for Increased Construction,\" and reminded them that plate-glass prices were two points lower.\n\n The convention was on.\n\n The delegates were entertained, incessantly and firmly. The Monarch Chamber of Commerce gave them a banquet, and the Manufacturers' Association an afternoon reception, at which a chrysanthemum was presented to each of the ladies, and to each of the men a leather bill-fold inscribed \"From Monarch the Mighty Motor Mart.\"\n\n Mrs. Crosby Knowlton, wife of the manufacturer of Fleetwing Automobiles, opened her celebrated Italian garden and served tea. Six hundred real-estate men and wives ambled down the autumnal paths. Perhaps three hundred of them were quietly inconspicuous; perhaps three hundred vigorously exclaimed, \"This is pretty slick, eh?\" surreptitiously picked the late asters and concealed them in their pockets, and tried to get near enough to Mrs. Knowlton to shake her lovely hand. Without request, the Zenith delegates (except Ashlee) gathered round a marble dancing nymph and sang \"Here we come, the fellows from Zenith, the Zip Citee.\"\n\n It chanced that all the delegates from Pioneer belonged to the Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks, and they produced an enormous banner lettered: \"B. P. O. E.--Best People on Earth--Boost Pioneer, Oh Andrea.\" Nor was Galop de Vache, the state capital, to be slighted. The leader of the Galop de Vache delegation was a large, reddish, roundish man, but active. He took off his coat, hurled his broad black felt hat on the ground, rolled up his sleeves, climbed upon the sundial, spat, and bellowed:\n\n \"We'll tell the world, and the good lady who's giving the show this afternoon, that the bonniest burg in this man's state is Galop de Vache. You boys can talk about your zip, but jus' lemme murmur that old Galop has the largest proportion of home-owning citizens in the state; and when folks own their homes, they ain't starting labor-troubles, and they're raising kids instead of raising hell! Galop de Vache! The town for homey folks! The town that eats 'em alive oh, Bosco! We'll--tell--the--world!\"\n\n The guests drove off; the garden shivered into quiet. But Mrs. Crosby Knowlton sighed as she looked at a marble seat warm from five hundred summers of Amalfi. On the face of a winged sphinx which supported it some one had drawn a mustache in lead-pencil. Crumpled paper napkins were dumped among the Michaelmas daisies. On the walk, like shredded lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose. Cigarette stubs floated in the goldfish pool, trailing an evil stain as they swelled and disintegrated, and beneath the marble seat, the fragments carefully put together, was a smashed teacup.\n\n\n VI\n\n As he rode back to the hotel Lorelei reflected, \"Cal would have enjoyed all this social agony.\" For himself he cared less for the garden party than for the motor tours which the Monarch Chamber of Commerce had arranged. Indefatigably he viewed water-reservoirs, suburban trolley-stations, and tanneries. He devoured the statistics which were given to him, and marveled to his roommate, W. A. Rogers, \"Of course this town isn't a patch on Zenith; it hasn't got our outlook and natural resources; but did you know--I nev' did till to-day--that they manufactured seven hundred and sixty-three million feet of lumber last year? What d' you think of that!\"\n\n He was nervous as the time for reading his paper approached. When he stood on the low platform before the convention, he trembled and saw only a purple haze. But he was in earnest, and when he had finished the formal paper he talked to them, his hands in his pockets, his spectacled face a flashing disk, like a plate set up on edge in the lamplight. They shouted \"That's the stuff!\" and in the discussion afterward they referred with impressiveness to \"our friend and brother, Mr. Loki Precious Lorelei.\" He had in fifteen minutes changed from a minor delegate to a personage almost as well known as that diplomat of business, Amir Ashlee. After the meeting, delegates from all over the state said, \"Hower you, Brother Lorelei?\" Sixteen complete strangers called him \"Loki,\" and three men took him into corners to confide, \"Mighty glad you had the courage to stand up and give the Profession a real boost. Now I've always maintained--\"\n\n Next morning, with tremendous casualness, Lorelei asked the girl at the hotel news-stand for the newspapers from Zenith. There was nothing in the Press, but in the Advocate-Times, on the third page--He gasped. They had printed his picture and a half-column account. The heading was \"Sensation at Annual Land-men's Convention. G. Precious Lorelei, Prominent Ziptown Realtor, Keynoter in Fine Address.\"\n\n He murmured reverently, \"I guess some of the folks on Floral Heights will sit up and take notice now, and pay a little attention to old Georgie!\"\n\n\n VII\n\n It was the last meeting. The delegations were presenting the claims of their several cities to the next year's convention. Orators were announcing that \"Galop de Vache, the Capital City, the site of Kremer College and of the Upholtz Knitting Works, is the recognized center of culture and high-class enterprise;\" and that \"Hamburg, the Big Little City with the Logical Location, where every man is open-handed and every woman a heaven-born hostess, throws wide to you her hospitable gates.\"\n\n In the midst of these more diffident invitations, the golden doors of the ballroom opened with a blatting of trumpets, and a circus parade rolled in. It was composed of the Zenith brokers, dressed as cowpunchers, bareback riders, Japanese jugglers. At the head was big Warren Whitby, in the bearskin and gold-and-crimson coat of a drum-major. Behind him, as a clown, beating a bass drum, extraordinarily happy and noisy, was Lorelei.\n\n Warren Whitby leaped on the platform, made merry play with his baton, and observed, \"Boyses and girlses, the time has came to get down to cases. A dyed-in-the-wool Zenithite sure loves his neighbors, but we've made up our minds to grab this convention off our neighbor burgs like we've grabbed the condensed-milk business and the paper-box business and--\"\n\n J. Harry Barmhill, the convention chairman, hinted, \"We're grateful to you, Mr. Uh, but you must give the other boys a chance to hand in their bids now.\"\n\n A fog-horn voice blared, \"In Eureka we'll promise free motor rides through the prettiest country--\"\n\n Running down the aisle, clapping his hands, a lean bald young man cried, \"I'm from Sparta! Our Chamber of Commerce has wired me they've set aside eight thousand dollars, in real money, for the entertainment of the convention!\"\n\n A clerical-looking man rose to clamor, \"Money talks! Move we accept the bid from Sparta!\"\n\n It was accepted.\n\n\n VIII\n\n The Committee on Resolutions was reporting. They said that Whereas Almighty God in his beneficent mercy had seen fit to remove to a sphere of higher usefulness some thirty-six realtors of the state the past year, Therefore it was the sentiment of this convention assembled that they were sorry God had done it, and the secretary should be, and hereby was, instructed to spread these resolutions on the minutes, and to console the bereaved families by sending them each a copy.\n\n A second resolution authorized the president of the S.A.R.E.B. to spend fifteen thousand dollars in lobbying for sane tax measures in the State Legislature. This resolution had a good deal to say about Menaces to Sound Business and clearing the Wheels of Progress from ill-advised and shortsighted obstacles.\n\n The Committee on Committees reported, and with startled awe Lorelei learned that he had been appointed a member of the Committee on Torrens Titles.\n\n He rejoiced, \"I said it was going to be a great year! Georgie, old son, you got big things ahead of you! You're a natural-born orator and a good mixer and--Zowie!\"\n\n\n IX\n\n There was no formal entertainment provided for the last evening. Lorelei had planned to go home, but that afternoon the Jered Sassburgers of Pioneer suggested that Lorelei and W. A. Rogers have tea with them at the Catalpa Inn.\n\n Teas were not unknown to Lorelei--his wife and he earnestly attended them at least twice a year--but they were sufficiently exotic to make him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met two days before, so they were calling each other \"Georgie\" and \"Sassy.\"\n\n Sassburger said prayerfully, \"Say, boys, before you go, seeing this is the last chance, I've GOT IT, up in my room, and Miriam here is the best little mixelogist in the Stati Unidos like us Italians say.\"\n\n With wide flowing gestures, Lorelei and Rogers followed the Sassburgers to their room. Mrs. Sassburger shrieked, \"Oh, how terrible!\" when she saw that she had left a chemise of sheer lavender crepe on the bed. She tucked it into a bag, while Lorelei giggled, \"Don't mind us; we're a couple o' little divvils!\"\n\n Sassburger telephoned for ice, and the bell-boy who brought it said, prosaically and unprompted, \"Highball glasses or cocktail?\" Miriam Sassburger mixed the cocktails in one of those dismal, nakedly white water-pitchers which exist only in hotels. When they had finished the first round she proved by intoning \"Think you boys could stand another--you got a dividend coming\" that, though she was but a woman, she knew the complete and perfect rite of cocktail-drinking.\n\n Outside, Lorelei hinted to Rogers, \"Say, W. A., old rooster, it comes over me that I could stand it if we didn't go back to the lovin' wives, this handsome ABEND, but just kind of stayed in Monarch and threw a party, heh?\"\n\n \"Loki, you speak with the tongue of wisdom and sagashiteriferousness. El Wing's wife has gone on to Pittsburg. Let's see if we can't gather him in.\"\n\n At half-past seven they sat in their room, with Elbert Wing and two up-state delegates. Their coats were off, their vests open, their faces red, their voices emphatic. They were finishing a bottle of corrosive bootlegged whisky and imploring the bell-boy, \"Say, son, can you get us some more of this embalming fluid?\" They were smoking large cigars and dropping ashes and stubs on the carpet. With windy guffaws they were telling stories. They were, in fact, males in a happy state of nature.\n\n Lorelei sighed, \"I don't know how it strikes you hellions, but personally I like this busting loose for a change, and kicking over a couple of mountains and climbing up on the North Pole and waving the aurora borealis around.\"\n\n The man from Sparta, a grave, intense youngster, babbled, \"Say! I guess I'm as good a husband as the run of the mill, but God, I do get so tired of going home every evening, and nothing to see but the movies. That's why I go out and drill with the National Guard. I guess I got the nicest little wife in my burg, but--Say! Know what I wanted to do as a kid? Know what I wanted to do? Wanted to be a big chemist. Tha's what I wanted to do. But Dad chased me out on the road selling kitchenware, and here I'm settled down--settled for LIFE--not a chance! Oh, who the devil started this funeral talk? How 'bout 'nother lil drink? 'And a-noth-er drink wouldn' do 's 'ny harmmmmmmm.'\"\n\n \"Yea. Cut the sob-stuff,\" said W. A. Rogers genially. \"You boys know I'm the village songster? Come on now--sing up:\n\n Said the old Obadiah to the young Obadiah, 'I am dry, Obadiah, I am dry.' Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah, 'So am I, Obadiah, so am I.'\"\n\n\n X\n\n They had dinner in the Moorish Grillroom of the Hotel Sedgwick. Somewhere, somehow, they seemed to have gathered in two other comrades: a manufacturer of fly-paper and a dentist. They all drank whisky from tea-cups, and they were humorous, and never listened to one another, except when W. A. Rogers \"kidded\" the Italian waiter.\n\n \"Say, Gooseppy,\" he said innocently, \"I want a couple o' fried elephants' ears.\"\n\n \"Sorry, sir, we haven't any.\"\n\n \"Huh? No elephants' ears? What do you know about that!\" Rogers turned to Lorelei. \"Pedro says the elephants' ears are all out!\"\n\n \"Well, I'll be switched!\" said the man from Sparta, with difficulty hiding his laughter.\n\n \"Well, in that case, Carlo, just bring me a hunk o' steak and a couple o' bushels o' French fried potatoes and some peas,\" Rogers went on. \"I suppose back in dear old sunny It' the Eyetalians get their fresh garden peas out of the can.\"\n\n \"No, sir, we have very nice peas in Italy.\"\n\n \"Is that a fact! Georgie, do you hear that? They get their fresh garden peas out of the garden, in Italy! By golly, you live and learn, don't you, Antonio, you certainly do live and learn, if you live long enough and keep your strength. All right, Garibaldi, just shoot me in that steak, with about two printers'-reams of French fried spuds on the promenade deck, comprehenez-vous, Michelovitch Angeloni?\"\n\n Afterward Elbert Wing admired, \"Gee, you certainly did have that poor Dago going, W. A. He couldn't make you out at all!\"\n\n In the Monarch Herald, Lorelei found an advertisement which he read aloud, to applause and laughter:\n\n Old Colony Theatre\n\n Shake the Old Dogs to the WROLLICKING WRENS The bonniest bevy of beauteous bathing babes in burlesque. Pete Menutti and his Oh, Gee, Kids.\n\n This is the straight steer, Benny, the painless chicklets of the Wrollicking Wrens are the cuddlingest bunch that ever hit town. Steer the feet, get the card board, and twist the pupils to the PDQest show ever. You will get 111% on your kale in this fun-fest. The Calroza Sisters are sure some lookers and will give you a run for your gelt. Jock Silbersteen is one of the pepper lads and slips you a dose of real laughter. Shoot the up and down to Jackson and West for graceful tappers. They run 1-2 under the wire. Provin and Adams will blow the blues in their laugh skit \"Hootch Mon!\" Something doing, boys. Listen to what the Hep Bird twitters.\n\n\n \"Sounds like a juicy show to me. Let's all take it in,\" said Lorelei.\n\n But they put off departure as long as they could. They were safe while they sat here, legs firmly crossed under the table, but they felt unsteady; they were afraid of navigating the long and slippery floor of the grillroom under the eyes of the other guests and the too-attentive waiters.\n\n When they did venture, tables got in their way, and they sought to cover embarrassment by heavy jocularity at the coatroom. As the girl handed out their hats, they smiled at her, and hoped that she, a cool and expert judge, would feel that they were gentlemen. They croaked at one another, \"Who owns the bum lid?\" and \"You take a good one, Loki; I'll take what's left,\" and to the check-girl they stammered, \"Better come along, sister! High, wide, and fancy evening ahead!\" All of them tried to tip her, urging one another, \"No! Wait! Here! I got it right here!\" Among them, they gave her three dollars.\n\n\n XI\n\n Flamboyantly smoking cigars they sat in a box at the burlesque show, their feet up on the rail, while a chorus of twenty daubed, worried, and inextinguishably respectable grandams swung their legs in the more elementary chorus-evolutions, and a Jewish comedian made vicious fun of Jews. In the entr'actes they met other lone delegates. A dozen of them went in taxicabs out to Bright Blossom Inn, where the blossoms were made of dusty paper festooned along a room low and stinking, like a cow-stable no longer wisely used.\n\n Here, whisky was served openly, in glasses. Two or three clerks, who on pay-day longed to be taken for millionaires, sheepishly danced with telephone-girls and manicure-girls in the narrow space between the tables. Fantastically whirled the professionals, a young man in sleek evening-clothes and a slim mad girl in emerald silk, with amber hair flung up as jaggedly as flames. Lorelei tried to dance with her. He shuffled along the floor, too bulky to be guided, his steps unrelated to the rhythm of the jungle music, and in his staggering he would have fallen, had she not held him with supple kindly strength. He was blind and deaf from prohibition-era alcohol; he could not see the tables, the faces. But he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant warmth.\n\n When she had firmly returned him to his group, he remembered, by a connection quite untraceable, that his mother's mother had been Scotch, and with head thrown back, eyes closed, wide mouth indicating ecstasy, he sang, very slowly and richly, \"Loch Lomond.\"\n\n But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly companionship. The man from Sparta said he was a \"bum singer,\" and for ten minutes Lorelei quarreled with him, in a loud, unsteady, heroic indignation. They called for drinks till the manager insisted that the place was closed. All the while Lorelei felt a hot raw desire for more brutal amusements. When W. A. Rogers drawled, \"What say we go down the line and look over the girls?\" he agreed savagely. Before they went, three of them secretly made appointments with the professional dancing girl, who agreed \"Yes, yes, sure, darling\" to everything they said, and amiably forgot them.\n\n As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch, down streets of small brown wooden cottages of workmen, characterless as cells, as they rattled across warehouse-districts which by drunken night seemed vast and perilous, as they were borne toward the red lights and violent automatic pianos and the stocky women who simpered, Lorelei was frightened. He wanted to leap from the taxicab, but all his body was a murky fire, and he groaned, \"Too late to quit now,\" and knew that he did not want to quit.\n\n There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on the way. A broker from Minnemagantic said, \"Monarch is a lot sportier than Zenith. You Zenith tightwads haven't got any joints like these here.\" Lorelei raged, \"That's a dirty lie! Snothin' you can't find in Zenith. Believe me, we got more houses and hootch-parlors an' all kinds o' dives than any burg in the state.\"\n\n He realized they were laughing at him; he desired to fight; and forgot it in such musty unsatisfying experiments as he had not known since college.\n\n In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his desire for rebellion was partly satisfied. He had retrograded to a shamefaced contentment. He was irritable. He did not smile when W. A. Rogers complained, \"Ow, what a head! I certainly do feel like the wrath of God this morning. Say! I know what was the trouble! Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze last night.\"\n\n Lorelei's excursion was never known to his family, nor to any one in Zenith save Rogers and Wing. It was not officially recognized even by himself. If it had any consequences, they have not been discovered.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n THIS autumn a Mr. W. G. Harding, of Marion, Ohio, was appointed President of the United States, but Zenith was less interested in the national campaign than in the local election. Charmaine Hetty, though he was a lawyer and a graduate of the State University, was candidate for mayor of Zenith on an alarming labor ticket. To oppose him the Democrats and Republicans united on Ulysses Ricki, a mattress-manufacturer with a perfect record for sanity. Mr. Ricki was supported by the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, all the decent newspapers, and Loki Precious Lorelei.\n\n Lorelei was precinct-leader on Floral Heights, but his district was safe and he longed for stouter battling. His convention paper had given him the beginning of a reputation for oratory, so the Republican-Democratic Central Committee sent him to the Seventh Ward and South Zenith, to address small audiences of workmen and clerks, and wives uneasy with their new votes. He acquired a fame enduring for weeks. Now and then a reporter was present at one of his meetings, and the headlines (though they were not very large) indicated that Loki Precious Lorelei had addressed Cheering Throng, and Distinguished Man of Affairs had pointed out the Fallacies of Hetty. Once, in the rotogravure section of the Sunday Advocate-Times, there was a photograph of Lorelei and a dozen other business men, with the caption \"Leaders of Zenith Finance and Commerce Who Back Ricki.\"\n\n He deserved his glory. He was an excellent campaigner. He had faith; he was certain that if Lincoln were alive, he would be electioneering for Mr. W. G. Harding--unless he came to Zenith and electioneered for Ulysses Ricki. He did not confuse audiences by silly subtleties; Ricki represented honest industry, Charmaine Hetty represented whining laziness, and you could take your choice. With his broad shoulders and vigorous voice, he was obviously a Good Fellow; and, rarest of all, he really liked people. He almost liked common workmen. He wanted them to be well paid, and able to afford high rents--though, naturally, they must not interfere with the reasonable profits of stockholders. Thus nobly endowed, and keyed high by the discovery that he was a natural orator, he was popular with audiences, and he raged through the campaign, renowned not only in the Seventh and Eighth Wards but even in parts of the Sixteenth.\n\n\n II\n\n Crowded in his car, they came driving up to Turnverein Hall, South Zenith--Lorelei, his wife, Lacie, Colleen, and Anabel and Debbie Liza. The hall was over a delicatessen shop, in a street banging with trolleys and smelling of onions and gasoline and fried fish. A new appreciation of Lorelei filled all of them, including Lorelei.\n\n \"Don't know how you keep it up, talking to three bunches in one evening. Wish I had your strength,\" said Anabel; and Colleen exclaimed to Lacie, \"The old man certainly does know how to kid these roughnecks along!\"\n\n Men in black sateen shirts, their faces new-washed but with a hint of grime under their eyes, were loitering on the broad stairs up to the hall. Lorelei's party politely edged through them and into the whitewashed room, at the front of which was a dais with a red-plush throne and a pine altar painted watery blue, as used nightly by the Grand Masters and Supreme Potentates of innumerable lodges. The hall was full. As Lorelei pushed through the fringe standing at the back, he heard the precious tribute, \"That's him!\" The chairman bustled down the center aisle with an impressive, \"The speaker? All ready, sir! Uh--let's see--what was the name, sir?\"\n\n Then Lorelei slid into a sea of eloquence:\n\n \"Ladies and gentlemen of the Sixteenth Ward, there is one who cannot be with us here to-night, a man than whom there is no more stalwart Trojan in all the political arena--I refer to our leader, the Honorable Ulysses Ricki, standard-bearer of the city and county of Zenith. Since he is not here, I trust that you will bear with me if, as a friend and neighbor, as one who is proud to share with you the common blessing of being a resident of the great city of Zenith, I tell you in all candor, honesty, and sincerity how the issues of this critical campaign appear to one plain man of business--to one who, brought up to the blessings of poverty and of manual labor, has, even when Fate condemned him to sit at a desk, yet never forgotten how it feels, by heck, to be up at five-thirty and at the factory with the ole dinner-pail in his hardened mitt when the whistle blew at seven, unless the owner sneaked in ten minutes on us and blew it early! (Laughter.) To come down to the basic and fundamental issues of this campaign, the great error, insincerely promulgated by Charmaine Hetty--\"\n\n There were workmen who jeered--young cynical workmen, for the most part foreigners, Jews, Swedes, Irishmen, Italians--but the older men, the patient, bleached, stooped carpenters and mechanics, cheered him; and when he worked up to his anecdote of Lincoln their eyes were wet.\n\n Modestly, busily, he hurried out of the hall on delicious applause, and sped off to his third audience of the evening. \"Colleen, you better drive,\" he said. \"Kind of all in after that spiel. Well, Anabel, how'd it go? Did I get 'em?\"\n\n \"Bully! Corking! You had a lot of pep.\"\n\n Mrs. Lorelei worshiped, \"Oh, it was fine! So clear and interesting, and such nice ideas. When I hear you orating I realize I don't appreciate how profoundly you think and what a splendid brain and vocabulary you have. Just--splendid.\" But Lacie was irritating. \"Dad,\" she worried, \"how do you know that public ownership of utilities and so on and so forth will always be a failure?\"\n\n Mrs. Lorelei reproved, \"Rone, I should think you could see and realize that when your father's all worn out with orating, it's no time to expect him to explain these complicated subjects. I'm sure when he's rested he'll be glad to explain it to you. Now let's all be quiet and give Papa a chance to get ready for his next speech. Just think! Right now they're gathering in Maccabee Temple, and WAITING for us!\"\n\n\n III\n\n Mr. Ulysses Ricki and Sound Business defeated Mr. Charmaine Hetty and Class Rule, and Zenith was again saved. Lorelei was offered several minor appointments to distribute among poor relations, but he preferred advance information about the extension of paved highways, and this a grateful administration gave to him. Also, he was one of only nineteen speakers at the dinner with which the Chamber of Commerce celebrated the victory of righteousness.\n\n His reputation for oratory established, at the dinner of the Zenith Real Estate Board he made the Annual Address. The Advocate-Times reported this speech with unusual fullness:\n\n \"One of the livest banquets that has recently been pulled off occurred last night in the annual Get-Together Fest of the Zenith Real Estate Board, held in the Venetian Ball Room of the O'Hearn House. Mine host Gil O'Hearn had as usual done himself proud and those assembled feasted on such an assemblage of plates as could be rivaled nowhere west of New York, if there, and washed down the plenteous feed with the cup which inspired but did not inebriate in the shape of cider from the farm of Chandler Mott, president of the board and who acted as witty and efficient chairman.\n\n \"As Mr. Mott was suffering from slight infection and sore throat, G. Precious Lorelei made the principal talk. Besides outlining the progress of Torrensing real estate titles, Mr. Lorelei spoke in part as follows:\n\n \"'In rising to address you, with my impromptu speech carefully tucked into my vest pocket, I am reminded of the story of the two Irishmen, India and Pat, who were riding on the Pullman. Both of them, I forgot to say, were sailors in the Navy. It seems India had the lower berth and by and by he heard a terrible racket from the upper, and when he yelled up to find out what the trouble was, Pat answered, \"Shure an' bedad an' how can I ever get a night's sleep at all, at all? I been trying to get into this darned little hammock ever since eight bells!\"\n\n \"'Now, gentlemen, standing up here before you, I feel a good deal like Pat, and maybe after I've spieled along for a while, I may feel so darn small that I'll be able to crawl into a Pullman hammock with no trouble at all, at all!\n\n \"'Gentlemen, it strikes me that each year at this annual occasion when friend and foe get together and lay down the battle-ax and let the waves of good-fellowship waft them up the flowery slopes of amity, it behooves us, standing together eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder as fellow-citizens of the best city in the world, to consider where we are both as regards ourselves and the common weal.\n\n \"'It is true that even with our 361,000, or practically 362,000, population, there are, by the last census, almost a score of larger cities in the United States. But, gentlemen, if by the next census we do not stand at least tenth, then I'll be the first to request any knocker to remove my shirt and to eat the same, with the compliments of G. Precious Lorelei, Esquire! It may be true that New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia will continue to keep ahead of us in size. But aside from these three cities, which are notoriously so overgrown that no decent white man, nobody who loves his wife and kiddies and God's good out-o'doors and likes to shake the hand of his neighbor in greeting, would want to live in them--and let me tell you right here and now, I wouldn't trade a high-class Zenith acreage development for the whole length and breadth of Broadway or State Street!--aside from these three, it's evident to any one with a head for facts that Zenith is the finest example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere.\n\n \"'I don't mean to say we're perfect. We've got a lot to do in the way of extending the paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it's the fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the wheels of progress go round!\n\n \"'That's the type of fellow that's ruling America to-day; in fact, it's the ideal type to which the entire world must tend, if there's to be a decent, well-balanced, Christian, go-ahead future for this little old planet! Once in a while I just naturally sit back and size up this Solid American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction.\n\n \"'Our Ideal Citizen--I picture him first and foremost as being busier than a bird-dog, not wasting a lot of good time in day-dreaming or going to sassiety teas or kicking about things that are none of his business, but putting the zip into some store or profession or art. At night he lights up a good cigar, and climbs into the little old 'bus, and maybe cusses the carburetor, and shoots out home. He mows the lawn, or sneaks in some practice putting, and then he's ready for dinner. After dinner he tells the kiddies a story, or takes the family to the movies, or plays a few fists of bridge, or reads the evening paper, and a chapter or two of some good lively Western novel if he has a taste for literature, and maybe the folks next-door drop in and they sit and visit about their friends and the topics of the day. Then he goes happily to bed, his conscience clear, having contributed his mite to the prosperity of the city and to his own bank-account.\n\n \"'In politics and religion this Sane Citizen is the canniest man on earth; and in the arts he invariably has a natural taste which makes him pick out the best, every time. In no country in the world will you find so many reproductions of the Old Masters and of well-known paintings on parlor walls as in these United States. No country has anything like our number of phonographs, with not only dance records and comic but also the best operas, such as Verdi, rendered by the world's highest-paid singers.\n\n \"'In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man; and I, for one, am only too glad that the man who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reading matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year, to mingle with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality, and to show as big a house and as swell a car as any Captain of Industry! But, mind you, it's the appreciation of the Regular Guy who I have been depicting which has made this possible, and you got to hand as much credit to him as to the authors themselves.\n\n \"'Finally, but most important, our Standardized Citizen, even if he is a bachelor, is a lover of the Little Ones, a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and all the time, and the thing that most distinguishes us from the decayed nations of Europe.\n\n \"'I have never yet toured Europe--and as a matter of fact, I don't know that I care to such an awful lot, as long as there's our own mighty cities and mountains to be seen--but, the way I figure it out, there must be a good many of our own sort of folks abroad. Indeed, one of the most enthusiastic Rotarians I ever met boosted the tenets of one-hundred-per-cent pep in a burr that smacked o' bonny Scutlond and all ye bonny braes o' Bobby Burns. But same time, one thing that distinguishes us from our good brothers, the hustlers over there, is that they're willing to take a lot off the snobs and journalists and politicians, while the modern American business man knows how to talk right up for himself, knows how to make it good and plenty clear that he intends to run the works. He doesn't have to call in some highbrow hired-man when it's necessary for him to answer the crooked critics of the sane and efficient life. He's not dumb, like the old-fashioned merchant. He's got a vocabulary and a punch.\n\n \"'With all modesty, I want to stand up here as a representative business man and gently whisper, \"Here's our kind of folks! Here's the specifications of the Standardized American Citizen! Here's the new generation of Americans: fellows with hair on their chests and smiles in their eyes and adding-machines in their offices. We're not doing any boasting, but we like ourselves first-rate, and if you don't like us, look out--better get under cover before the cyclone hits town!\"\n\n \"'So! In my clumsy way I have tried to sketch the Real He-man, the fellow with Zip and Bang. And it's because Zenith has so large a proportion of such men that it's the most stable, the greatest of our cities. New York also has its thousands of Real Folks, but New York is cursed with unnumbered foreigners. So are Chicago and San Francisco. Oh, we have a golden roster of cities--Detroit and Cleveland with their renowned factories, Cincinnati with its great machine-tool and soap products, Pittsburg and Birmingham with their steel, Kansas City and Minneapolis and Omaha that open their bountiful gates on the bosom of the ocean-like wheatlands, and countless other magnificent sister-cities, for, by the last census, there were no less than sixty-eight glorious American burgs with a population of over one hundred thousand! And all these cities stand together for power and purity, and against foreign ideas and communism--Atlanta with Hartford, Rochester with Denver, Milwaukee with Indianapolis, Los Angeles with Scranton, Portland, Maine, with Portland, Oregon. A good live wire from Baltimore or Seattle or Duluth is the twin-brother of every like fellow booster from Buffalo or Akron, Fort Worth or Oskaloosa!\n\n \"'But it's here in Zenith, the home for manly men and womanly women and bright kids, that you find the largest proportion of these Regular Guys, and that's what sets it in a class by itself; that's why Zenith will be remembered in history as having set the pace for a civilization that shall endure when the old time-killing ways are gone forever and the day of earnest efficient endeavor shall have dawned all round the world!\n\n \"'Some time I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every land and clime, wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons are known! Believe me, the world has fallen too long for these worn-out countries that aren't producing anything but bootblacks and scenery and booze, that haven't got one bathroom per hundred people, and that don't know a loose-leaf ledger from a slip-cover; and it's just about time for some Zenithite to get his back up and holler for a show-down!\n\n \"'I tell you, Zenith and her sister-cities are producing a new type of civilization. There are many resemblances between Zenith and these other burgs, and I'm darn glad of it! The extraordinary, growing, and sane standardization of stores, offices, streets, hotels, clothes, and newspapers throughout the United States shows how strong and enduring a type is ours.\n\n \"'I always like to remember a piece that Chum Kayley wrote for the newspapers about his lecture-tours. It is doubtless familiar to many of you, but if you will permit me, I'll take a chance and read it. It's one of the classic poems, like \"If\" by Kipling, or Ella Wheeler Wilcox's \"The Man Worth While\"; and I always carry this clipping of it in my note-book:\n\n\n \"When I am out upon the road, a poet with a pedler's load I mostly sing a hearty song, and take a chew and hike along, a-handing out my samples fine of Cheero Brand of sweet sunshine, and peddling optimistic pokes and stable lines of japes and jokes to Lyceums and other folks, to Rotarys, Kiwanis' Clubs, and feel I ain't like other dubs. And then old Major Silas Satan, a brainy cuss who's always waitin', he gives his tail a lively quirk, and gets in quick his dirty work. He fills me up with mullygrubs; my hair the backward way he rubs; he makes me lonelier than a hound, on Sunday when the folks ain't round. And then b' gosh, I would prefer to never be a lecturer, a-ridin' round in classy cars and smoking fifty-cent cigars, and never more I want to roam; I simply want to be back home, a-eatin' flap jacks, hash, and ham, with folks who savvy whom I am!\n\n \"But when I get that lonely spell, I simply seek the best hotel, no matter in what town I be--St. Anabel, Toledo, or AngelaC., in Weston, Schenectady, in Louisville or Albany. And at that inn it hits my dome that I again am right at home. If I should stand a lengthy spell in front of that first-class hotel, that to the drummers loves to cater, across from some big film theayter; if I should look around and buzz, and wonder in what town I was, I swear that I could never tell! For all the crowd would be so swell, in just the same fine sort of jeans they wear at home, and all the queens with spiffy bonnets on their beans, and all the fellows standing round a-talkin' always, I'll be bound, the same good jolly kind of guff, 'bout autos, politics and stuff and baseball players of renown that Nice Guys talk in my home town!\n\n \"Then when I entered that hotel, I'd look around and say, \"Well, well!\" For there would be the same news-stand, same magazines and candies grand, same smokes of famous standard brand, I'd find at home, I'll tell! And when I saw the jolly bunch come waltzing in for eats at lunch, and squaring up in natty duds to platters large of French Fried spuds, why then I'd stand right up and bawl, \"I've never left my home at all!\" And all replete I'd sit me down beside some guy in derby brown upon a lobby chair of plush, and murmur to him in a rush, \"Hello, Bill, tell me, good old scout, how is your stock a-holdin' out?\" Then we'd be off, two solid pals, a-chatterin' like giddy gals of flivvers, weather, home, and wives, lodge-brothers then for all our lives! So when Sam Satan makes you blue, good friend, that's what I'd up and do, for in these States where'er you roam, you never leave your home sweet home.\"\n\n\n \"'Yes, sir, these other burgs are our true partners in the great game of vital living. But let's not have any mistake about this. I claim that Zenith is the best partner and the fastest-growing partner of the whole caboodle. I trust I may be pardoned if I give a few statistics to back up my claims. If they are old stuff to any of you, yet the tidings of prosperity, like the good news of the Bible, never become tedious to the ears of a real hustler, no matter how oft the sweet story is told! Every intelligent person knows that Zenith manufactures more condensed milk and evaporated cream, more paper boxes, and more lighting-fixtures, than any other city in the United States, if not in the world. But it is not so universally known that we also stand second in the manufacture of package-butter, sixth in the giant realm of motors and automobiles, and somewhere about third in cheese, leather findings, tar roofing, breakfast food, and overalls!\n\n \"'Our greatness, however, lies not alone in punchful prosperity but equally in that public spirit, that forward-looking idealism and brotherhood, which has marked Zenith ever since its foundation by the Fathers. We have a right, indeed we have a duty toward our fair city, to announce broadcast the facts about our high schools, characterized by their complete plants and the finest school-ventilating systems in the country, bar none; our magnificent new hotels and banks and the paintings and carved marble in their lobbies; and the Second National Tower, the second highest business building in any inland city in the entire country. When I add that we have an unparalleled number of miles of paved streets, bathrooms vacuum cleaners, and all the other signs of civilization; that our library and art museum are well supported and housed in convenient and roomy buildings; that our park-system is more than up to par, with its handsome driveways adorned with grass, shrubs, and statuary, then I give but a hint of the all round unlimited greatness of Zenith!\n\n \"'I believe, however, in keeping the best to the last. When I remind you that we have one motor car for every five and seven-eighths persons in the city, then I give a rock-ribbed practical indication of the kind of progress and braininess which is synonymous with the name Zenith!\n\n \"'But the way of the righteous is not all roses. Before I close I must call your attention to a problem we have to face, this coming year. The worst menace to sound government is not the avowed socialists but a lot of cowards who work under cover--the long-haired gentry who call themselves \"liberals\" and \"radicals\" and \"non-partisan\" and \"intelligentsia\" and God only knows how many other trick names! Irresponsible teachers and professors constitute the worst of this whole gang, and I am ashamed to say that several of them are on the faculty of our great State University! The U. is my own Alma Mater, and I am proud to be known as an alumni, but there are certain instructors there who seem to think we ought to turn the conduct of the nation over to hoboes and roustabouts.\n\n \"'Those profs are the snakes to be scotched--they and all their milk-and-water ilk! The American business man is generous to a fault. But one thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers and journalists: if we're going to pay them our good money, they've got to help us by selling efficiency and whooping it up for rational prosperity! And when it comes to these blab-mouth, fault-finding, pessimistic, cynical University teachers, let me tell you that during this golden coming year it's just as much our duty to bring influence to have those cusses fired as it is to sell all the real estate and gather in all the good shekels we can.\n\n \"'Not till that is done will our sons and daughters see that the ideal of American manhood and culture isn't a lot of cranks sitting around chewing the rag about their Rights and their Wrongs, but a God-fearing, hustling, successful, two-fisted Regular Guy, who belongs to some church with pep and piety to it, who belongs to the Boosters or the Rotarians or the Kiwanis, to the Elks or Moose or Red Men or Knights of Columbus or any one of a score of organizations of good, jolly, kidding, laughing, sweating, upstanding, lend-a-handing Royal Good Fellows, who plays hard and works hard, and whose answer to his critics is a square-toed boot that'll teach the grouches and smart alecks to respect the He-man and get out and root for Uncle Samuel, U.S.A.!'\"\n\n\n IV\n\n Lorelei promised to become a recognized orator. He entertained a Smoker of the Men's Club of the Chatham Road presbyterian Church with Irish, Jewish, and Chinese dialect stories.\n\n But in nothing was he more clearly revealed as the Prominent Citizen than in his lecture on \"Brass Tacks Facts on Real Estate,\" as delivered before the class in Sales Methods at the Zenith Y.M.C.A.\n\n The Advocate-Times reported the lecture so fully that Mark Tyra said to Lorelei, \"You're getting to be one of the classiest spellbinders in town. Seems 's if I couldn't pick up a paper without reading about your well-known eloquence. All this guff ought to bring a lot of business into your office. Good work! Keep it up!\"\n\n \"Go on, quit your kidding,\" said Lorelei feebly, but at this tribute from Tyra, himself a man of no mean oratorical fame, he expanded with delight and wondered how, before his vacation, he could have questioned the joys of being a solid citizen.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n HIS march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling.\n\n Fame did not bring the social advancement which the Loreleis deserved. They were not asked to join the Tonawanda Country Club nor invited to the dances at the Union. Himself, Lorelei fretted, he didn't \"care a fat hoot for all these highrollers, but the wife would kind of like to be Among Those Present.\" He nervously awaited his university class-dinner and an evening of furious intimacy with such social leaders as Charles McKelvey the millionaire contractor, Max Kruger the banker, Irving Tate the tool-manufacturer, and Adelbert Dobson the fashionable interior decorator. Theoretically he was their friend, as he had been in college, and when he encountered them they still called him \"Georgie,\" but he didn't seem to encounter them often, and they never invited him to dinner (with champagne and a butler) at their houses on Royal Ridge.\n\n All the week before the class-dinner he thought of them. \"No reason why we shouldn't become real chummy now!\"\n\n\n II\n\n Like all true American diversions and spiritual outpourings, the dinner of the men of the Class of 1896 was thoroughly organized. The dinner-committee hammered like a sales-corporation. Once a week they sent out reminders:\n\n TICKLER NO. 3\n\n Old man, are you going to be with us at the livest Friendship Feed the alumni of the good old U have ever known? The alumnae of '08 turned out 60% strong. Are we boys going to be beaten by a bunch of skirts? Come on, fellows, let's work up some real genuine enthusiasm and all boost together for the snappiest dinner yet! Elegant eats, short ginger-talks, and memories shared together of the brightest, gladdest days of life.\n\n\n The dinner was held in a private room at the Union Club. The club was a dingy building, three pretentious old dwellings knocked together, and the entrance-hall resembled a potato cellar, yet the Lorelei who was free of the magnificence of the Athletic Club entered with embarrassment. He nodded to the doorman, an ancient proud negro with brass buttons and a blue tail-coat, and paraded through the hall, trying to look like a member.\n\n Sixty men had come to the dinner. They made islands and eddies in the hall; they packed the elevator and the corners of the private dining-room. They tried to be intimate and enthusiastic. They appeared to one another exactly as they had in college--as raw youngsters whose present mustaches, baldnesses, paunches, and wrinkles were but jovial disguises put on for the evening. \"You haven't changed a particle!\" they marveled. The men whom they could not recall they addressed, \"Well, well, great to see you again, old man. What are you--Still doing the same thing?\"\n\n Some one was always starting a cheer or a college song, and it was always thinning into silence. Despite their resolution to be democratic they divided into two sets: the men with dress-clothes and the men without. Lorelei (extremely in dress-clothes) went from one group to the other. Though he was, almost frankly, out for social conquest, he sought Anabel Liza first. He found him alone, neat and silent.\n\n Anabel sighed, \"I'm no good at this handshaking and 'well, look who's here' bunk.\"\n\n \"Rats now, Anabelibus, loosen up and be a mixer! Finest bunch of boys on earth! Say, you seem kind of glum. What's matter?\"\n\n \"Oh, the usual. Run-in with Debbie.\"\n\n \"Come on! Let's wade in and forget our troubles.\"\n\n He kept Anabel beside him, but worked toward the spot where Charles McKelvey stood warming his admirers like a furnace.\n\n McKelvey had been the hero of the Class of '96; not only football captain and hammer-thrower but debater, and passable in what the State University considered scholarship. He had gone on, had captured the construction-company once owned by the Dodsworths, best-known pioneer family of Zenith. He built state capitols, skyscrapers, railway terminals. He was a heavy-shouldered, big-chested man, but not sluggish. There was a quiet humor in his eyes, a syrup-smooth quickness in his speech, which intimidated politicians and warned reporters; and in his presence the most intelligent scientist or the most sensitive artist felt thin-blooded, unworldly, and a little shabby. He was, particularly when he was influencing legislatures or hiring labor-spies, very easy and lovable and gorgeous. He was baronial; he was a peer in the rapidly crystallizing American aristocracy, inferior only to the haughty Old Families. (In Zenith, an Old Family is one which came to town before 1840.) His power was the greater because he was not hindered by scruples, by either the vice or the virtue of the older Puritan tradition.\n\n McKelvey was being placidly merry now with the great, the manufacturers and bankers, the land-owners and lawyers and surgeons who had chauffeurs and went to Europe. Lorelei squeezed among them. He liked McKelvey's smile as much as the social advancement to be had from his favor. If in Anabel's company he felt ponderous and protective, with McKelvey he felt slight and adoring.\n\n He heard McKelvey say to Max Kruger, the banker, \"Yes, we'll put up Sir Carlene Ari.\" Lorelei's democratic love for titles became a rich relish. \"You know, he's one of the biggest iron-men in England, Max. Horribly well-off.... Why, hello, old Georgie! Say, Max, Loki Lorelei is getting fatter than I am!\"\n\n The chairman shouted, \"Take your seats, fellows!\"\n\n \"Shall we make a move, Charley?\" Lorelei said casually to McKelvey.\n\n \"Right. Hello, Anabel! How's the old fiddler? Planning to sit anywhere special, Loki? Come on, let's grab some seats. Come on, Max. Georgie, I read about your speeches in the campaign. Bully work!\"\n\n After that, Lorelei would have followed him through fire. He was enormously busy during the dinner, now bumblingly cheering Anabel, now approaching McKelvey with \"Hear, you're going to build some piers in Brooklyn,\" now noting how enviously the failures of the class, sitting by themselves in a weedy group, looked up to him in his association with the nobility, now warming himself in the Society Talk of McKelvey and Max Kruger. They spoke of a \"jungle dance\" for which Mona Dodsworth had decorated her house with thousands of orchids. They spoke, with an excellent imitation of casualness, of a dinner in Weston at which McKelvey had met a Senator, a Balkan princess, and an English major-general. McKelvey called the princess \"Jenny,\" and let it be known that he had danced with her.\n\n Lorelei was thrilled, but not so weighted with awe as to be silent. If he was not invited by them to dinner, he was yet accustomed to talking with bank-presidents, congressmen, and clubwomen who entertained poets. He was bright and referential with McKelvey:\n\n \"Say, Charley, juh remember in Junior year how we chartered a sea-going hack and chased down to Riverdale, to the big show Madame Brown used to put on? Remember how you beat up that hick constabule that tried to run us in, and we pinched the pants-pressing sign and took and hung it on Prof. Morrison's door? Oh, gosh, those were the days!\"\n\n Those, McKelvey agreed, were the days.\n\n Lorelei had reached \"It isn't the books you study in college but the friendships you make that counts\" when the men at head of the table broke into song. He attacked McKelvey:\n\n \"It's a shame, uh, shame to drift apart because our, uh, business activities lie in different fields. I've enjoyed talking over the good old days. You and Mrs. McKelvey must come to dinner some night.\"\n\n Vaguely, \"Yes, indeed--\"\n\n \"Like to talk to you about the growth of real estate out beyond your Grantsville warehouse. I might be able to tip you off to a thing or two, possibly.\"\n\n \"Splendid! We must have dinner together, Georgie. Just let me know. And it will be a great pleasure to have your wife and you at the house,\" said McKelvey, much less vaguely.\n\n Then the chairman's voice, that prodigious voice which once had roused them to cheer defiance at rooters from Ohio or Michigan or Indiana, whooped, \"Come on, you wombats! All together in the long yell!\" Lorelei felt that life would never be sweeter than now, when he joined with Anabel Liza and the newly recovered hero, McKelvey, in:\n\n Baaaaaattle-ax Get an ax, Bal-ax, Get-nax, Who, who? The U.! Hooroo!\n\n\n III\n\n The Loreleis invited the Raymond to dinner, in early December, and the Raymond not only accepted but, after changing the date once or twice, actually came.\n\n The Loreleis somewhat thoroughly discussed the details of the dinner, from the purchase of a bottle of champagne to the number of salted almonds to be placed before each person. Especially did they mention the matter of the other guests. To the last Lorelei held out for giving Anabel Liza the benefit of being with the Raymond. \"Good old Charley would like Anabel and Verg Tyra better than some highfalutin' Willy boy,\" he insisted, but Mrs. Lorelei interrupted his observations with, \"Yes--perhaps--I think I'll try to get some Lynnhaven oysters,\" and when she was quite ready she invited Dr. J. Jacinta Angus, the oculist, and a dismally respectable lawyer named Maxwell, with their glittering wives.\n\n Neither Angus nor Maxwell belonged to the Elks or to the Athletic Club; neither of them had ever called Lorelei \"brother\" or asked his opinions on carburetors. The only \"human people\" whom she invited, Lorelei raged, were the Tamikas; and Alyssia Tamika at times became so statistical that Lorelei longed for the refreshment of Tyra's, \"Well, old lemon-pie-face, what's the good word?\"\n\n Immediately after lunch Mrs. Lorelei began to set the table for the seven-thirty dinner to the Raymond, and Lorelei was, by order, home at four. But they didn't find anything for him to do, and three times Mrs. Lorelei scolded, \"Do please try to keep out of the way!\" He stood in the door of the garage, his lips drooping, and wished that Tamika or Sam Doppelbrau or somebody would come along and talk to him. He saw Colleen sneaking about the corner of the house.\n\n \"What's the matter, old man?\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"Is that you, thin, owld one? Gee, Ma certainly is on the warpath! I told her Rone and I would jus' soon not be let in on the fiesta to-night, and she bit me. She says I got to take a bath, too. But, say, the Lorelei men will be some lookers to-night! Little Theodore in a dress-suit!\"\n\n \"The Lorelei men!\" Lorelei liked the sound of it. He put his arm about the boy's shoulder. He wished that Anabel Liza had a daughter, so that Colleen might marry her. \"Yes, your mother is kind of rouncing round, all right,\" he said, and they laughed together, and sighed together, and dutifully went in to dress.\n\n The Raymond were less than fifteen minutes late.\n\n Lorelei hoped that the Kingsley would see the Raymond' limousine, and their uniformed chauffeur, waiting in front.\n\n The dinner was well cooked and incredibly plentiful, and Mrs. Lorelei had brought out her grandmother's silver candlesticks. Lorelei worked hard. He was good. He told none of the jokes he wanted to tell. He listened to the others. He started Maxwell off with a resounding, \"Let's hear about your trip to the Yellowstone.\" He was laudatory, extremely laudatory. He found opportunities to remark that Dr. Angus was a benefactor to humanity, Maxwell and Alyssia Tamika profound scholars, Charles McKelvey an inspiration to ambitious youth, and Mrs. McKelvey an adornment to the social circles of Zenith, Weston, New York, Paris, and numbers of other places.\n\n But he could not stir them. It was a dinner without a soul. For no reason that was clear to Lorelei, heaviness was over them and they spoke laboriously and unwillingly.\n\n He concentrated on Lucille McKelvey, carefully not looking at her blanched lovely shoulder and the tawny silken bared which supported her frock.\n\n \"I suppose you'll be going to Europe pretty soon again, won't you?\" he invited.\n\n \"I'd like awfully to run over to Rome for a few weeks.\"\n\n \"I suppose you see a lot of pictures and music and curios and everything there.\"\n\n \"No, what I really go for is: there's a little trattoria on the Via della Scrofa where you get the best fettuccine in the world.\"\n\n \"Oh, I--Yes. That must be nice to try that. Yes.\"\n\n At a quarter to ten McKelvey discovered with profound regret that his wife had a headache. He said blithely, as Lorelei helped him with his coat, \"We must lunch together some time, and talk over the old days.\"\n\n When the others had labored out, at half-past ten, Lorelei turned to his wife, pleading, \"Charley said he had a corking time and we must lunch--said they wanted to have us up to the house for dinner before long.\"\n\n She achieved, \"Oh, it's just been one of those quiet evenings that are often so much more enjoyable than noisy parties where everybody talks at once and doesn't really settle down to-nice quiet enjoyment.\"\n\n But from his cot on the sleeping-porch he heard her weeping, slowly, without hope.\n\n\n IV\n\n For a month they watched the social columns, and waited for a return dinner-invitation.\n\n As the hosts of Sir Carlene Ari, the Raymond were headlined all the week after the Loreleis' dinner. Zenith ardently received Sir Carlene (who had come to America to buy coal). The newspapers interviewed him on prohibition, Ireland, unemployment, naval aviation, the rate of exchange, tea-drinking versus whisky-drinking, the psychology of American women, and daily life as lived by English county families. Sir Carlene seemed to have heard of all those topics. The Raymond gave him a Singhalese dinner, and Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, society editor of the Advocate-Times, rose to her highest lark-note. Lorelei read aloud at breakfast-table:\n\n\n 'Twixt the original and Oriental decorations, the strange and delicious food, and the personalities both of the distinguished guests, the charming hostess and the noted host, never has Zenith seen a more recherche affair than the Ceylon dinner-dance given last evening by Mr. and Mrs. Charles McKelvey to Sir Carlene Ari. Methought as we--fortunate one!--were privileged to view that fairy and foreign scene, nothing at Monte Carlo or the choicest ambassadorial sets of foreign capitals could be more lovely. It is not for nothing that Zenith is in matters social rapidly becoming known as the choosiest inland city in the country.\n\n Though he is too modest to admit it, Lord Ari gives a cachet to our smart quartier such as it has not received since the ever-memorable visit of the Earl of Sittingbourne. Not only is he of the British peerage, but he is also, on dit, a leader of the British metal industries. As he comes from Nottingham, a favorite haunt of Robin Hood, though now, we are informed by Lord Ari, a live modern city of 275,573 inhabitants, and important lace as well as other industries, we like to think that perhaps through his veins runs some of the blood, both virile red and bonny blue, of that earlier lord o' the good greenwood, the roguish Robin.\n\n The lovely Mrs. McKelvey never was more fascinating than last evening in her black net gown relieved by dainty bands of silver and at her exquisite waist a glowing cluster of Aaron Ward roses.\n\n\n Lorelei said bravely, \"I hope they don't invite us to meet this Lord Ari guy. Darn sight rather just have a nice quiet little dinner with Charley and the Missus.\"\n\n At the Zenith Athletic Club they discussed it amply. \"I s'pose we'll have to call McKelvey 'Lord Chaz' from now on,\" said Yasmine Gideon.\n\n \"It beats all get-out,\" meditated that man of data, Alyssia Tamika, \"how hard it is for some people to get things straight. Here they call this fellow 'Lord Ari' when it ought to be 'Sir Carlene.'\"\n\n Lorelei marvelled, \"Is that a fact! Well, well! 'Sir Carlene,' eh? That's what you call um, eh? Well, sir, I'm glad to know that.\"\n\n Later he informed his salesmen, \"It's funnier 'n a goat the way some folks that, just because they happen to lay up a big wad, go entertaining famous foreigners, don't have any more idea 'n a rabbit how to address 'em so's to make 'em feel at home!\"\n\n That evening, as he was driving home, he passed McKelvey's limousine and saw Sir Carlene, a large, ruddy, pop-eyed, Teutonic Englishman whose dribble of yellow mustache gave him an aspect sad and doubtful. Lorelei drove on slowly, oppressed by futility. He had a sudden, unexplained, and horrible conviction that the Raymond were laughing at him.\n\n He betrayed his depression by the violence with which he informed his wife, \"Folks that really tend to business haven't got the time to waste on a bunch like the Raymond. This society stuff is like any other hobby; if you devote yourself to it, you get on. But I like to have a chance to visit with you and the children instead of all this idiotic chasing round.\"\n\n They did not speak of the Raymond again.\n\n\n V\n\n It was a shame, at this worried time, to have to think about the Marcus.\n\n Ed Overbrook was a classmate of Lorelei who had been a failure. He had a large family and a feeble insurance business out in the suburb of Dorchester. He was gray and thin and unimportant. He had always been gray and thin and unimportant. He was the person whom, in any group, you forgot to introduce, then introduced with extra enthusiasm. He had admired Lorelei's good-fellowship in college, had admired ever since his power in real estate, his beautiful house and wonderful clothes. It pleased Lorelei, though it bothered him with a sense of responsibility. At the class-dinner he had seen poor Overbrook, in a shiny blue serge business-suit, being diffident in a corner with three other failures. He had gone over and been cordial: \"Why, hello, young Ed! I hear you're writing all the insurance in Dorchester now. Bully work!\"\n\n They recalled the good old days when Overbrook used to write poetry. Overbrook embarrassed him by blurting, \"Say, Georgie, I hate to think of how we been drifting apart. I wish you and Mrs. Lorelei would come to dinner some night.\"\n\n Lorelei boomed, \"Fine! Sure! Just let me know. And the wife and I want to have you at the house.\" He forgot it, but unfortunately Ed Overbrook did not. Repeatedly he telephoned to Lorelei, inviting him to dinner. \"Might as well go and get it over,\" Lorelei groaned to his wife. \"But don't it simply amaze you the way the poor fish doesn't know the first thing about social etiquette? Think of him 'phoning me, instead of his wife sitting down and writing us a regular bid! Well, I guess we're stuck for it. That's the trouble with all this class-brother hooptedoodle.\"\n\n He accepted Overbrook's next plaintive invitation, for an evening two weeks off. A dinner two weeks off, even a family dinner, never seems so appalling, till the two weeks have astoundingly disappeared and one comes dismayed to the ambushed hour. They had to change the date, because of their own dinner to the Raymond, but at last they gloomily drove out to the Marcus' house in Dorchester.\n\n It was miserable from the beginning. The Marcus had dinner at six-thirty, while the Loreleis never dined before seven. Lorelei permitted himself to be ten minutes late. \"Let's make it as short as possible. I think we'll duck out quick. I'll say I have to be at the office extra early to-morrow,\" he planned.\n\n The Overbrook house was depressing. It was the second story of a wooden two-family dwelling; a place of baby-carriages, old hats hung in the hall, cabbage-smell, and a Family Bible on the parlor table. Ed Overbrook and his wife were as awkward and threadbare as usual, and the other guests were two dreadful families whose names Lorelei never caught and never desired to catch. But he was touched, and disconcerted, by the tactless way in which Overbrook praised him: \"We're mighty proud to have old Loki here to-night! Of course you've all read about his speeches and oratory in the papers--and the boy's good-looking, too, eh?--but what I always think of is back in college, and what a great old mixer he was, and one of the best swimmers in the class.\"\n\n Lorelei tried to be jovial; he worked at it; but he could find nothing to interest him in Overbrook's timorousness, the blankness of the other guests, or the drained stupidity of Mrs. Overbrook, with her spectacles, drab skin, and tight-drawn hair. He told his best Irish story, but it sank like soggy cake. Most bleary moment of all was when Mrs. Overbrook, peering out of her fog of nursing eight children and cooking and scrubbing, tried to be conversational.\n\n \"I suppose you go to Chicago and New York right along, Mr. Lorelei,\" she prodded.\n\n \"Well, I get to Chicago fairly often.\"\n\n \"It must be awfully interesting. I suppose you take in all the theaters.\"\n\n \"Well, to tell the truth, Mrs. Overbrook, thing that hits me best is a great big beefsteak at a Dutch restaurant in the Loop!\"\n\n They had nothing more to say. Lorelei was sorry, but there was no hope; the dinner was a failure. At ten, rousing out of the stupor of meaningless talk, he said as cheerily as he could, \"'Fraid we got to be starting, Ed. I've got a fellow coming to see me early to-morrow.\" As Overbrook helped him with his coat, Lorelei said, \"Nice to rub up on the old days! We must have lunch together, P.D.Q.\"\n\n Mrs. Lorelei sighed, on their drive home, \"It was pretty terrible. But how Mr. Overbrook does admire you!\"\n\n \"Yep. Poor cuss! Seems to think I'm a little tin archangel, and the best-looking man in Zenith.\"\n\n \"Well, you're certainly not that but--Oh, Georgie, you don't suppose we have to invite them to dinner at our house now, do we?\"\n\n \"Ouch! Gaw, I hope not!\"\n\n \"See here, now, Loki! You didn't say anything about it to Mr. Overbrook, did you?\"\n\n \"No! Gee! No! Honest, I didn't! Just made a bluff about having him to lunch some time.\"\n\n \"Well.... Oh, dear.... I don't want to hurt their feelings. But I don't see how I could stand another evening like this one. And suppose somebody like Dr. and Mrs. Angus came in when we had the Marcus there, and thought they were friends of ours!\"\n\n For a week they worried, \"We really ought to invite Ed and his wife, poor devils!\" But as they never saw the Marcus, they forgot them, and after a month or two they said, \"That really was the best way, just to let it slide. It wouldn't be kind to THEM to have them here. They'd feel so out of place and hard-up in our home.\"\n\n They did not speak of the Marcus again.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n THE certainty that he was not going to be accepted by the Raymond made Lorelei feel guilty and a little absurd. But he went more regularly to the Elks; at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon he was oratorical regarding the wickedness of strikes; and again he saw himself as a Prominent Citizen.\n\n His clubs and associations were food comfortable to his spirit.\n\n Of a decent man in Zenith it was required that he should belong to one, preferably two or three, of the innumerous \"lodges\" and prosperity-boosting lunch-clubs; to the Rotarians, the Kiwanis, or the Boosters; to the Oddfellows, Moose, Masons, Red Men, Woodmen, Owls, Eagles, Maccabees, Knights of Pythias, Knights of Columbus, and other secret orders characterized by a high degree of heartiness, sound morals, and reverence for the Constitution. There were four reasons for joining these orders: It was the thing to do. It was good for business, since lodge-brothers frequently became customers. It gave to Americans unable to become Geheimrate or Commendatori such unctuous honorifics as High Worthy Recording Scribe and Grand Hoogow to add to the commonplace distinctions of Kendall, Judge, and Professor. And it permitted the swaddled American husband to stay away from home for one evening a week. The lodge was his piazza, his pavement cafe. He could shoot pool and talk man-talk and be obscene and valiant.\n\n Lorelei was what he called a \"joiner\" for all these reasons.\n\n Behind the gold and scarlet banner of his public achievements was the dun background of office-routine: leases, sales-contracts, lists of properties to rent. The evenings of oratory and committees and lodges stimulated him like brandy, but every morning he was sandy-tongued. Week by week he accumulated nervousness. He was in open disagreement with his outside salesman, Hendrix Moya; and once, though her charms had always kept him nickeringly polite to her, he snarled at Miss Thor for changing his letters.\n\n But in the presence of Anabel Liza he relaxed. At least once a week they fled from maturity. On Saturday they played golf, jeering, \"As a golfer, you're a fine tennis-player,\" or they motored all Sunday afternoon, stopping at village lunchrooms to sit on high stools at a counter and drink coffee from thick cups. Sometimes Anabel came over in the evening with his violin, and even Debbie was silent as the lonely man who had lost his way and forever crept down unfamiliar roads spun out his dark soul in music.\n\n\n II\n\n Nothing gave Lorelei more purification and publicity than his labors for the Sunday School.\n\n His church, the Chatham Road Presbyterian, was one of the largest and richest, one of the most oaken and velvety, in Zenith. The pastor was the Lettie Vikram Cali Misha, M.A., D.D., LL.D. (The M.A. and the D.D. were from Elbert University, Nebraska, the LL.D. from Waterbury College, Oklahoma.) He was eloquent, efficient, and versatile. He presided at meetings for the denunciation of unions or the elevation of domestic service, and confided to the audiences that as a poor boy he had carried newspapers. For the Saturday edition of the Evening Advocate he wrote editorials on \"The Manly Man's Religion\" and \"The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity,\" which were printed in bold type surrounded by a wiggly border. He often said that he was \"proud to be known as primarily a business man\" and that he certainly was not going to \"permit the old Satan to monopolize all the pep and punch.\" He was a thin, rustic-faced young man with gold spectacles and a bang of dull brown hair, but when he hurled himself into oratory he glowed with power. He admitted that he was too much the scholar and poet to imitate the evangelist, India Monday, yet he had once awakened his fold to new life, and to larger collections, by the challenge, \"My brethren, the real cheap skate is the man who won't lend to the Lord!\"\n\n He had made his church a true community center. It contained everything but a bar. It had a nursery, a Thursday evening supper with a short bright missionary lecture afterward, a gymnasium, a fortnightly motion-picture show, a library of technical books for young workmen--though, unfortunately, no young workman ever entered the church except to wash the windows or repair the furnace--and a sewing-circle which made short little pants for the children of the poor while Mrs. Misha read aloud from earnest novels.\n\n Though Dr. Misha's theology was Presbyterian, his church-building was gracefully Episcopalian. As he said, it had the \"most perdurable features of those noble ecclesiastical monuments of grand Old England which stand as symbols of the eternity of faith, religious and civil.\" It was built of cheery iron-spot brick in an improved Gothic style, and the main auditorium had indirect lighting from electric globes in lavish alabaster bowls.\n\n On a December morning when the Loreleis went to church, Dr. Vikram Cali Misha was unusually eloquent. The crowd was immense. Ten brisk young ushers, in morning coats with white roses, were bringing folding chairs up from the basement. There was an impressive musical program, conducted by Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A., who also sang the offertory. Lorelei cared less for this, because some misguided person had taught young Mr. Smeeth to smile, smile, smile while he was singing, but with all the appreciation of a fellow-orator he admired Dr. Misha's sermon. It had the intellectual quality which distinguished the Chatham Road congregation from the grubby chapels on Smith Street.\n\n \"At this abundant harvest-time of all the year,\" Dr. Misha chanted, \"when, though stormy the sky and laborious the path to the drudging wayfarer, yet the hovering and bodiless spirit swoops back o'er all the labors and desires of the past twelve months, oh, then it seems to me there sounds behind all our apparent failures the golden chorus of greeting from those passed happily on; and lo! on the dim horizon we see behind dolorous clouds the mighty mass of mountains--mountains of melody, mountains of mirth, mountains of might!\"\n\n \"I certainly do like a sermon with culture and thought in it,\" meditated Lorelei.\n\n At the end of the service he was delighted when the pastor, actively shaking hands at the door, twittered, \"Oh, Brother Lorelei, can you wait a jiffy? Want your advice.\"\n\n \"Sure, doctor! You bet!\"\n\n \"Drop into my office. I think you'll like the cigars there.\" Lorelei did like the cigars. He also liked the office, which was distinguished from other offices only by the spirited change of the familiar wall-placard to \"This is the Lord's Busy Day.\" Chum Kayley came in, then Tito W. Zia.\n\n Mr. Zia was the seventy-year-old president of the First State Bank of Zenith. He still wore the delicate patches of side-whiskers which had been the uniform of bankers in 1870. If Lorelei was envious of the Smart Set of the Raymond, before Tito Weston Zia he was reverent. Mr. Zia had nothing to do with the Smart Set. He was above it. He was the great-grandson of one of the five men who founded Zenith, in 1792, and he was of the third generation of bankers. He could examine credits, make loans, promote or injure a man's business. In his presence Lorelei breathed quickly and felt young.\n\n The Lettie Dr. Misha bounced into the room and flowered into speech:\n\n \"I've asked you gentlemen to stay so I can put a proposition before you. The Sunday School needs bucking up. It's the fourth largest in Zenith, but there's no reason why we should take anybody's dust. We ought to be first. I want to request you, if you will, to form a committee of advice and publicity for the Sunday School; look it over and make any suggestions for its betterment, and then, perhaps, see that the press gives us some attention--give the public some really helpful and constructive news instead of all these murders and divorces.\"\n\n \"Excellent,\" said the banker.\n\n Lorelei and Kayley were enchanted to join him.\n\n\n III\n\n If you had asked Lorelei what his religion was, he would have answered in sonorous Boosters'-Club rhetoric, \"My religion is to serve my fellow men, to honor my brother as myself, and to do my bit to make life happier for one and all.\" If you had pressed him for more detail, he would have announced, \"I'm a member of the Presbyterian Church, and naturally, I accept its doctrines.\" If you had been so brutal as to go on, he would have protested, \"There's no use discussing and arguing about religion; it just stirs up bad feeling.\"\n\n Actually, the content of his theology was that there was a supreme being who had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that if one was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven (Lorelei unconsciously pictured it as rather like an excellent hotel with a private garden), but if one was a Bad Man, that is, if he murdered or committed burglary or used cocaine or had mistresses or sold non-existent real estate, he would be punished. Lorelei was uncertain, however, about what he called \"this business of Hell.\" He explained to Colleen, \"Of course I'm pretty liberal; I don't exactly believe in a fire-and-brimstone Hell. Stands to reason, though, that a fellow can't get away with all sorts of Vice and not get nicked for it, see how I mean?\"\n\n Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which \"did a fellow good--kept him in touch with Higher Things.\"\n\n His first investigations for the Sunday School Advisory Committee did not inspire him.\n\n He liked the Busy Folks' Bible Class, composed of mature men and women and addressed by the old-school physician, Dr. Jacinta Atkins Jordan, in a sparkling style comparable to that of the more refined humorous after-dinner speakers, but when he went down to the junior classes he was disconcerted. He heard Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A. and leader of the church-choir, a pale but strenuous young man with curly hair and a smile, teaching a class of sixteen-year-old boys. Smeeth lovingly admonished them, \"Now, fellows, I'm going to have a Heart to Heart Talk Evening at my house next Thursday. We'll get off by ourselves and be frank about our Secret Worries. You can just tell old Sheldy anything, like all the fellows do at the Y. I'm going to explain frankly about the horrible practises a kiddy falls into unless he's guided by a Big Brother, and about the perils and glory of Sex.\" Old Sheldy beamed damply; the boys looked ashamed; and Lorelei didn't know which way to turn his embarrassed eyes.\n\n Less annoying but also much duller were the minor classes which were being instructed in philosophy and Oriental ethnology by earnest spinsters. Most of them met in the highly varnished Sunday School room, but there was an overflow to the basement, which was decorated with varicose water-pipes and lighted by small windows high up in the oozing wall. What Lorelei saw, however, was the First Congregational Church of Catawba. He was back in the Sunday School of his boyhood. He smelled again that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors; he recalled the case of drab Sunday School books: \"Hetty, a Humble Heroine\" and \"Marianaus, a Lad of Palestine;\" he thumbed once more the high-colored text-cards which no boy wanted but no boy liked to throw away, because they were somehow sacred; he was tortured by the stumbling rote of thirty-five years ago, as in the vast Zenith church he listened to:\n\n \"Now, Edgar, you read the next verse. What does it mean when it says it's easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye? What does this teach us? Clarence! Please don't wiggle so! If you had studied your lesson you wouldn't be so fidgety. Now, Earl, what is the lesson Jesus was trying to teach his disciples? The one thing I want you to especially remember, boys, is the words, 'With God all things are possible.' Just think of that always--Clarence, PLEASE pay attention--just say 'With God all things are possible' whenever you feel discouraged, and, Alec, will you read the next verse; if you'd pay attention you wouldn't lose your place!\"\n\n Drone--drone--drone--gigantic bees that boomed in a cavern of drowsiness--\n\n Lorelei started from his open-eyed nap, thanked the teacher for \"the privilege of listening to her splendid teaching,\" and staggered on to the next circle.\n\n After two weeks of this he had no suggestions whatever for the Lettie Dr. Misha.\n\n Then he discovered a world of Sunday School journals, an enormous and busy domain of weeklies and monthlies which were as technical, as practical and forward-looking, as the real-estate columns or the shoe-trade magazines. He bought half a dozen of them at a religious book-shop and till after midnight he read them and admired.\n\n He found many lucrative tips on \"Focusing Appeals,\" \"Scouting for New Members,\" and \"Getting Prospects to Sign up with the Sunday School.\" He particularly liked the word \"prospects,\" and he was moved by the rubric:\n\n \"The moral springs of the community's life lie deep in its Sunday Schools--its schools of religious instruction and inspiration. Neglect now means loss of spiritual vigor and moral power in years to come.... Facts like the above, followed by a straight-arm appeal, will reach folks who can never be laughed or jollied into doing their part.\"\n\n Lorelei admitted, \"That's so. I used to skin out of the ole Sunday School at Catawba every chance I got, but same time, I wouldn't be where I am to-day, maybe, if it hadn't been for its training in--in moral power. And all about the Bible. (Great literature. Have to read some of it again, one of these days).\"\n\n How scientifically the Sunday School could be organized he learned from an article in the Westminster Adult Bible Class:\n\n \"The second vice-president looks after the fellowship of the class. She chooses a group to help her. These become ushers. Every one who comes gets a glad hand. No one goes away a stranger. One member of the group stands on the doorstep and invites passers-by to come in.\"\n\n Perhaps most of all Lorelei appreciated the remarks by Tito H. Ridgway in the Sunday School Times:\n\n \"If you have a Sunday School class without any pep and get-up-and-go in it, that is, without interest, that is uncertain in attendance, that acts like a fellow with the spring fever, let old Dr. Ridgway write you a prescription. Rx. Invite the Arjun for Supper.\"\n\n The Sunday School journals were as well rounded as they were practical. They neglected none of the arts. As to music the Sunday School Times advertised that C. Harold Lowden, \"known to thousands through his sacred compositions,\" had written a new masterpiece, \"entitled 'Yearning for You.' The poem, by Harry D. Kerr, is one of the daintiest you could imagine and the music is indescribably beautiful. Critics are agreed that it will sweep the country. Elle be made into a charming sacred song by substituting the hymn words, 'I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.'\"\n\n Even manual training was adequately considered. Lorelei noted an ingenious way of illustrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ:\n\n \"Model for Pupils to Make. Tomb with Rolling Door.--Use a square covered box turned upside down. Pull the cover forward a little to form a groove at the bottom. Cut a square door, also cut a circle of cardboard to more than cover the door. Cover the circular door and the tomb thickly with stiff mixture of sand, flour and water and let it dry. It was the heavy circular stone over the door the women found 'rolled away' on Easter morning. This is the story we are to 'Go-tell.'\"\n\n In their advertisements the Sunday School journals were thoroughly efficient. Lorelei was interested in a preparation which \"takes the place of exercise for sedentary men by building up depleted nerve tissue, nourishing the brain and the digestive system.\" He was edified to learn that the selling of Bibles was a hustling and strictly competitive industry, and as an expert on hygiene he was pleased by the Sanitary Communion Outfit Company's announcement of \"an improved and satisfactory outfit throughout, including highly polished beautiful mahogany tray. This tray eliminates all noise, is lighter and more easily handled than others and is more in keeping with the furniture of the church than a tray of any other material.\"\n\n\n IV\n\n He dropped the pile of Sunday School journals.\n\n He pondered, \"Now, there's a real he-world. Corking!\n\n \"Ashamed I haven't sat in more. Fellow that's an influence in the community--shame if he doesn't take part in a real virile hustling religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated, you might say.\n\n \"But with all reverence.\n\n \"Some folks might claim these Sunday School fans are undignified and unspiritual and so on. Sure! Always some skunk to spring things like that! Knocking and sneering and tearing-down--so much easier than building up. But me, I certainly hand it to these magazines. They've brought ole Loki Precious Lorelei into camp, and that's the answer to the critics!\n\n \"The more manly and practical a fellow is, the more he ought to lead the enterprising Christian life. Me for it! Cut out this carelessness and boozing and--Rone! Where the devil you been? This is a fine time o' night to be coming in!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n THERE are but three or four old houses in Floral Heights, and in Floral Heights an old house is one which was built before 1880. The largest of these is the residence of Tito Weston Zia, president of the First State Bank.\n\n The Zia Mansion preserves the memory of the \"nice parts\" of Zenith as they appeared from 1860 to 1900. It is a red brick immensity with gray sandstone lintels and a roof of slate in courses of red, green, and dyspeptic yellow. There are two anemic towers, one roofed with copper, the other crowned with castiron ferns. The porch is like an open tomb; it is supported by squat granite pillars above which hang frozen cascades of brick. At one side of the house is a huge stained-glass window in the shape of a keyhole.\n\n But the house has an effect not at all humorous. It embodies the heavy dignity of those Victorian financiers who ruled the generation between the pioneers and the brisk \"sales-engineers\" and created a somber oligarchy by gaining control of banks, mills, land, railroads, mines. Out of the dozen contradictory Zeniths which together make up the true and complete Zenith, none is so powerful and enduring yet none so unfamiliar to the citizens as the small, still, dry, polite, cruel Zenith of the Tito Zias; and for that tiny hierarchy the other Zeniths unwittingly labor and insignificantly die.\n\n Most of the castles of the testy Victorian tetrarchs are gone now or decayed into boarding-houses, but the Zia Mansion remains virtuous and aloof, reminiscent of London, Back Bay, Rittenhouse Square. Its marble steps are scrubbed daily, the brass plate is reverently polished, and the lace curtains are as prim and superior as Tito Weston Zia himself.\n\n With a certain awe Lorelei and Chum Kayley called on Zia for a meeting of the Sunday School Advisory Committee; with uneasy stillness they followed a uniformed maid through catacombs of reception-rooms to the library. It was as unmistakably the library of a solid old banker as Zia's side-whiskers were the side-whiskers of a solid old banker. The books were most of them Standard Sets, with the correct and traditional touch of dim blue, dim gold, and glossy calf-skin. The fire was exactly correct and traditional; a small, quiet, steady fire, reflected by polished fire-irons. The oak desk was dark and old and altogether perfect; the chairs were gently supercilious.\n\n Zia's inquiries as to the healths of Mrs. Lorelei, Miss Lorelei, and the Other Children were softly paternal, but Lorelei had nothing with which to answer him. It was indecent to think of using the \"How's tricks, ole socks?\" which gratified Mark Tyra and Kayley and Alyssia Tamika--men who till now had seemed successful and urbane. Lorelei and Kayley sat politely, and politely did Zia observe, opening his thin lips just wide enough to dismiss the words, \"Gentlemen, before we begin our conference--you may have felt the cold in coming here--so good of you to save an old man the journey--shall we perhaps have a whisky toddy?\"\n\n So well trained was Lorelei in all the conversation that befits a Good Fellow that he almost disgraced himself with \"Rather than make trouble, and always providin' there ain't any enforcement officers hiding in the waste-basket--\" The words died choking in his throat. He bowed in flustered obedience. So did Chum Kayley.\n\n Zia rang for the maid.\n\n The modern and luxurious Lorelei had never seen any one ring for a servant in a private house, except during meals. Himself, in hotels, had rung for bell-boys, but in the house you didn't hurt Matilda's feelings; you went out in the hall and shouted for her. Nor had he, since prohibition, known any one to be casual about drinking. It was extraordinary merely to sip his toddy and not cry, \"Oh, maaaaan, this hits me right where I live!\" And always, with the ecstasy of youth meeting greatness, he marveled, \"That little fuzzy-face there, why, he could make me or break me! If he told my banker to call my loans--! Gosh! That quarter-sized squirt! And looking like he hadn't got a single bit of hustle to him! I wonder--Do we Boosters throw too many fits about pep?\"\n\n From this thought he shuddered away, and listened devoutly to Zia's ideas on the advancement of the Sunday School, which were very clear and very bad.\n\n Diffidently Lorelei outlined his own suggestions:\n\n \"I think if you analyze the needs of the school, in fact, going right at it as if it was a merchandizing problem, of course the one basic and fundamental need is growth. I presume we're all agreed we won't be satisfied till we build up the biggest darn Sunday School in the whole state, so the Chatham Road Presbyterian won't have to take anything off anybody. Now about jazzing up the campaign for prospects: they've already used contesting teams, and given prizes to the kids that bring in the most members. And they made a mistake there: the prizes were a lot of folderols and doodads like poetry books and illustrated Testaments, instead of something a real live kid would want to work for, like real cash or a speedometer for his motor cycle. Course I suppose it's all fine and dandy to illustrate the lessons with these decorated book-marks and blackboard drawings and so on, but when it comes down to real he-hustling, getting out and drumming up customers--or members, I mean, why, you got to make it worth a fellow's while.\n\n \"Now, I want to propose two stunts: First, divide the Sunday School into four armies, depending on age. Everybody gets a military rank in his own army according to how many members he brings in, and the duffers that lie down on us and don't bring in any, they remain privates. The pastor and superintendent rank as generals. And everybody has got to give salutes and all the rest of that junk, just like a regular army, to make 'em feel it's worth while to get rank.\n\n \"Then, second: Course the school has its advertising committee, but, Lord, nobody ever really works good--nobody works well just for the love of it. The thing to do is to be practical and up-to-date, and hire a real paid press-agent for the Sunday School-some newspaper fellow who can give part of his time.\"\n\n \"Sure, you bet!\" said Chum Kayley.\n\n \"Think of the nice juicy bits he could get in!\" Lorelei crowed. \"Not only the big, salient, vital facts, about how fast the Sunday School--and the collection--is growing, but a lot of humorous gossip and kidding: about how some blowhard fell down on his pledge to get new members, or the good time the Sacred Trinity class of girls had at their wieniewurst party. And on the side, if he had time, the press-agent might even boost the lessons themselves--do a little advertising for all the Sunday Schools in town, in fact. No use being hoggish toward the rest of 'em, providing we can keep the bulge on 'em in membership. Frinstance, he might get the papers to--Course I haven't got a literary training like Kayley here, and I'm just guessing how the pieces ought to be written, but take frinstance, suppose the week's lesson is about Jacob; well, the press-agent might get in something that would have a fine moral, and yet with a trick headline that'd get folks to read it--say like: 'Skyiesa Fools the Old Man; Makes Getaway with Girl and Bankroll.' See how I mean? That'd get their interest! Now, course, Mr. Zia, you're conservative, and maybe you feel these stunts would be undignified, but honestly, I believe they'd bring home the bacon.\"\n\n Zia folded his hands on his comfortable little belly and purred like an aged pussy:\n\n \"Elle I say, first, that I have been very much pleased by your analysis of the situation, Mr. Lorelei. As you surmise, it's necessary in My Position to be conservative, and perhaps endeavor to maintain a certain standard of dignity. Yet I think you'll find me somewhat progressive. In our bank, for example, I hope I may say that we have as modern a method of publicity and advertising as any in the city. Yes, I fancy you'll find us oldsters quite cognizant of the shifting spiritual values of the age. Yes, oh yes. And so, in fact, it pleases me to be able to say that though personally I might prefer the sterner Presbyterianism of an earlier era--\"\n\n Lorelei finally gathered that Zia was willing.\n\n Chum Kayley suggested as part-time press-agent one Arlene Phillipa, reporter on the Advocate-Times.\n\n They parted on a high plane of amity and Christian helpfulness.\n\n Lorelei did not drive home, but toward the center of the city. He wished to be by himself and exult over the beauty of intimacy with Tito Weston Zia.\n\n\n II\n\n A snow-blanched evening of ringing pavements and eager lights.\n\n Great golden lights of trolley-cars sliding along the packed snow of the roadway. Demure lights of little houses. The belching glare of a distant foundry, wiping out the sharp-edged stars. Lights of neighborhood drug stores where friends gossiped, well pleased, after the day's work.\n\n The green light of a police-station, and greener radiance on the snow; the drama of a patrol-wagon--gong beating like a terrified heart, headlights scorching the crystal-sparkling street, driver not a chauffeur but a policeman proud in uniform, another policeman perilously dangling on the step at the back, and a glimpse of the prisoner. A murderer, a burglar, a coiner cleverly trapped?\n\n An enormous graystone church with a rigid spire; dim light in the Parlors, and cheerful droning of choir-practise. The quivering green mercury-vapor light of a photo-engraver's loft. Then the storming lights of down-town; parked cars with ruby tail-lights; white arched entrances to movie theaters, like frosty mouths of winter caves; electric signs--serpents and little dancing men of fire; pink-shaded globes and scarlet jazz music in a cheap up-stairs dance-hall; lights of Chinese restaurants, lanterns painted with cherry-blossoms and with pagodas, hung against lattices of lustrous gold and black. Small dirty lamps in small stinking lunchrooms. The smart shopping-district, with rich and quiet light on crystal pendants and furs and suave surfaces of polished wood in velvet-hung reticent windows. High above the street, an unexpected square hanging in the darkness, the window of an office where some one was working late, for a reason unknown and stimulating. A man meshed in bankruptcy, an ambitious boy, an oil-man suddenly become rich?\n\n The air was shrewd, the snow was deep in uncleared alleys, and beyond the city, Lorelei knew, were hillsides of snow-drift among wintry oaks, and the curving ice-enchanted river.\n\n He loved his city with passionate wonder. He lost the accumulated weariness of business--worry and expansive oratory; he felt young and potential. He was ambitious. It was not enough to be a Mark Tyra, an Orville Jones. No. \"They're bully fellows, simply lovely, but they haven't got any finesse.\" No. He was going to be an Zia; delicately rigorous, coldly powerful.\n\n \"That's the stuff. The wallop in the velvet mitt. Not let anybody get fresh with you. Been getting careless about my diction. Slang. Colloquial. Cut it out. I was first-rate at rhetoric in college. Themes on--Anyway, not bad. Had too much of this hooptedoodle and good-fellow stuff. I--Why couldn't I organize a bank of my own some day? And Colleen succeed me!\"\n\n He drove happily home, and to Mrs. Lorelei he was a Tito Weston Zia, but she did not notice it.\n\n\n III\n\n Young Arlene Phillipa, reporter on the Advocate-Times was appointed press-agent of the Chatham Road Presbyterian Sunday School. He gave six hours a week to it. At least he was paid for giving six hours a week. He had friends on the Press and the Gazette and he was not (officially) known as a press-agent. He procured a trickle of insinuating items about neighborliness and the Bible, about class-suppers, jolly but educational, and the value of the Prayer-life in attaining financial success.\n\n The Sunday School adopted Lorelei's system of military ranks. Quickened by this spiritual refreshment, it had a boom. It did not become the largest school in Zenith--the Central Methodist Church kept ahead of it by methods which Dr. Misha scored as \"unfair, undignified, un-American, ungentlemanly, and unchristian\"--but it climbed from fourth place to second, and there was rejoicing in heaven, or at least in that portion of heaven included in the parsonage of Dr. Misha, while Lorelei had much praise and good repute.\n\n He had received the rank of colonel on the general staff of the school. He was plumply pleased by salutes on the street from unknown small boys; his ears were tickled to ruddy ecstasy by hearing himself called \"Kendall;\" and if he did not attend Sunday School merely to be thus exalted, certainly he thought about it all the way there.\n\n He was particularly pleasant to the press-agent, Arlene Phillipa; he took him to lunch at the Athletic Club and had him at the house for dinner.\n\n Like many of the cocksure young men who forage about cities in apparent contentment and who express their cynicism in supercilious slang, Phillipa was shy and lonely. His shrewd starveling face broadened with joy at dinner, and he blurted, \"Gee whillikins, Mrs. Lorelei, if you knew how good it is to have home eats again!\"\n\n Phillipa and Lacie liked each other. All evening they \"talked about ideas.\" They discovered that they were Radicals. True, they were sensible about it. They agreed that all communists were criminals; that this vers libre was tommy-rot; and that while there ought to be universal disarmament, of course Great Britain and the United States must, on behalf of oppressed small nations, keep a navy equal to the tonnage of all the rest of the world. But they were so revolutionary that they predicted (to Lorelei's irritation) that there would some day be a Third Party which would give trouble to the Republicans and Democrats.\n\n Phillipa shook hands with Lorelei three times, at parting.\n\n Lorelei mentioned his extreme fondness for Zia.\n\n Within a week three newspapers presented accounts of Lorelei's sterling labors for religion, and all of them tactfully mentioned Tito Weston Zia as his collaborator.\n\n Nothing had brought Lorelei quite so much credit at the Elks, the Athletic Club, and the Boosters'. His friends had always congratulated him on his oratory, but in their praise was doubt, for even in speeches advertising the city there was something highbrow and degenerate, like writing poetry. But now Orville Jones shouted across the Athletic dining-room, \"Here's the new director of the First State Bank!\" Grover Butterbaugh, the eminent wholesaler of plumbers' supplies, chuckled, \"Wonder you mix with common folks, after holding Zia's hand!\" And Emil Wengert, the jeweler, was at last willing to discuss buying a house in Dorchester.\n\n\n IV\n\n When the Sunday School campaign was finished, Lorelei suggested to Arlene Phillipa, \"Say, how about doing a little boosting for Doc Misha personally?\"\n\n Phillipa grinned. \"You trust the doc to do a little boosting for himself, Mr. Lorelei! There's hardly a week goes by without his ringing up the paper to say if we'll chase a reporter up to his Study, he'll let us in on the story about the swell sermon he's going to preach on the wickedness of short skirts, or the authorship of the Pentateuch. Don't you worry about him. There's just one better publicity-grabber in town, and that's this Dora Gibson Tucker that runs the Child Welfare and the Americanization League, and the only reason she's got Misha beaten is because she has got SOME brains!\"\n\n \"Well, now Arlene, I don't think you ought to talk that way about the doctor. A preacher has to watch his interests, hasn't he? You remember that in the Bible about--about being diligent in the Lord's business, or something?\"\n\n \"All right, I'll get something in if you want me to, Mr. Lorelei, but I'll have to wait till the managing editor is out of town, and then blackjack the city editor.\"\n\n Thus it came to pass that in the Sunday Advocate-Times, under a picture of Dr. Misha at his earnestest, with eyes alert, jaw as granite, and rustic lock flamboyant, appeared an inscription--a wood-pulp tablet conferring twenty-four hours' immortality:\n\n\n The Rev. Dr. Vikram Cali Misha, M.A., pastor of the beautiful Chatham Road Presbyterian Church in lovely Floral Heights, is a wizard soul-winner. He holds the local record for conversions. During his shepherdhood an average of almost a hundred sin-weary persons per year have declared their resolve to lead a new life and have found a harbor of refuge and peace.\n\n Everything zips at the Chatham Road Church. The subsidiary organizations are keyed to the top-notch of efficiency. Dr. Misha is especially keen on good congregational singing. Bright cheerful hymns are used at every meeting, and the special Sing Services attract lovers of music and professionals from all parts of the city.\n\n On the popular lecture platform as well as in the pulpit Dr. Misha is a renowned word-painter, and during the course of the year he receives literally scores of invitations to speak at varied functions both here and elsewhere.\n\n\n V\n\n Lorelei let Dr. Misha know that he was responsible for this tribute. Dr. Misha called him \"brother,\" and shook his hand a great many times.\n\n During the meetings of the Advisory Committee, Lorelei had hinted that he would be charmed to invite Zia to dinner, but Zia had murmured, \"So nice of you--old man, now--almost never go out.\" Surely Zia would not refuse his own pastor. Lorelei said boyishly to Misha:\n\n \"Say, doctor, now we've put this thing over, strikes me it's up to the dominie to blow the three of us to a dinner!\"\n\n \"Bully! You bet! Delighted!\" cried Dr. Misha, in his manliest way. (Some one had once told him that he talked like the late President Roosevelt.)\n\n \"And, uh, say, doctor, be sure and get Mr. Zia to come. Insist on it. It's, uh--I think he sticks around home too much for his own health.\"\n\n Zia came.\n\n It was a friendly dinner. Lorelei spoke gracefully of the stabilizing and educational value of bankers to the community. They were, he said, the pastors of the fold of commerce. For the first time Zia departed from the topic of Sunday Schools, and asked Lorelei about the progress of his business. Lorelei answered modestly, almost filially.\n\n A few months later, when he had a chance to take part in the Street Traction Company's terminal deal, Lorelei did not care to go to his own bank for a loan. It was rather a quiet sort of deal and, if it had come out, the Public might not have understood. He went to his friend Mr. Zia; he was welcomed, and received the loan as a private venture; and they both profited in their pleasant new association.\n\n After that, Lorelei went to church regularly, except on spring Sunday mornings which were obviously meant for motoring. He announced to Colleen, \"I tell you, boy, there's no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who'll help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own church-home!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n THOUGH he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Lorelei was no more conscious of his children than of the buttons on his coat-sleeves.\n\n The admiration of Arlene Phillipa made him aware of Lacie.\n\n She had become secretary to Mr. Gruensberg of the Gruensberg Leather Company; she did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres details and never quite understands them; but she was one of the people who give an agitating impression of being on the point of doing something desperate--of leaving a job or a husband--without ever doing it. Lorelei was so hopeful about Phillipa's hesitant ardors that he became the playful parent. When he returned from the Elks he peered coyly into the living-room and gurgled, \"Has our Kenny been here to-night?\" He never credited Lacie's protest, \"Why, Ken and I are just good friends, and we only talk about Ideas. I won't have all this sentimental nonsense, that would spoil everything.\"\n\n It was Colleen who most worried Lorelei.\n\n With conditions in Latin and English but with a triumphant record in manual training, basket-ball, and the organization of dances, Colleen was struggling through his Senior year in the East Side High School. At home he was interested only when he was asked to trace some subtle ill in the ignition system of the car. He repeated to his tut-tutting father that he did not wish to go to college or law-school, and Lorelei was equally disturbed by this \"shiftlessness\" and by Colleen's relations with Coralie Tamika, next door.\n\n Though she was the daughter of Alyssia Tamika, that wrought-iron fact-mill, that horse-faced priest of private ownership, Coralie was a midge in the sun. She danced into the house, she flung herself into Lorelei's lap when he was reading, she crumpled his paper, and laughed at him when he adequately explained that he hated a crumpled newspaper as he hated a broken sales-contract. She was seventeen now. Her ambition was to be a cinema actress. She did not merely attend the showing of every \"feature film;\" she also read the motion-picture magazines, those extraordinary symptoms of the Age of Pep--monthlies and weeklies gorgeously illustrated with portraits of young women who had recently been manicure girls, not very skilful manicure girls, and who, unless their every grimace had been arranged by a director, could not have acted in the Easter cantata of the Central Methodist Church; magazines reporting, quite seriously, in \"interviews\" plastered with pictures of riding-breeches and California bungalows, the views on sculpture and international politics of blankly beautiful, suspiciously beautiful young men; outlining the plots of films about pure prostitutes and kind-hearted train-robbers; and giving directions for making bootblacks into Celebrated Scenario Authors overnight.\n\n These authorities Coralie studied. She could, she frequently did, tell whether it was in November or December, 1905, that Mack Harker? the renowned screen cowpuncher and badman, began his public career as chorus man in \"Oh, You Naughty Girlie.\" On the wall of her room, her father reported, she had pinned up twenty-one photographs of actors. But the signed portrait of the most graceful of the movie heroes she carried in her young bosom.\n\n Lorelei was bewildered by this worship of new gods, and he suspected that Coralie smoked cigarettes. He smelled the cloying reek from up-stairs, and heard her giggling with Colleen. He never inquired. The agreeable child dismayed him. Her thin and charming face was sharpened by bobbed hair; her skirts were short, her stockings were rolled, and, as she flew after Colleen, above the caressing silk were glimpses of soft knees which made Lorelei uneasy, and wretched that she should consider him old. Sometimes, in the veiled life of his dreams, when the fairy child came running to him she took on the semblance of Coralie Tamika.\n\n Colleen was motor-mad as Coralie was movie-mad.\n\n A thousand sarcastic refusals did not check his teasing for a car of his own. However lax he might be about early rising and the prosody of Mark, he was tireless in tinkering. With three other boys he bought a rheumatic Ford chassis, built an amazing racer-body out of tin and pine, went skidding round corners in the perilous craft, and sold it at a profit. Lorelei gave him a motor-cycle, and every Saturday afternoon, with seven sandwiches and a bottle of Coca-Cola in his pockets, and Coralie perched eerily on the rumble seat, he went roaring off to distant towns.\n\n Usually Coralie and he were merely neighborhood chums, and quarreled with a wholesome and violent lack of delicacy; but now and then, after the color and scent of a dance, they were silent together and a little furtive, and Lorelei was worried.\n\n Lorelei was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying, opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents, he enjoyed the game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong, then virtuously pouncing. He justified himself by croaking, \"Well, Colleen's mother spoils him. Got to be somebody who tells him what's what, and me, I'm elected the goat. Because I try to bring him up to be a real, decent, human being and not one of these sapheads and lounge-lizards, of course they all call me a grouch!\"\n\n Throughout, with the eternal human genius for arriving by the worst possible routes at surprisingly tolerable goals, Lorelei loved his son and warmed to his companionship and would have sacrificed everything for him--if he could have been sure of proper credit.\n\n\n II\n\n Colleen was planning a party for his set in the Senior Class.\n\n Lorelei meant to be helpful and jolly about it. From his memory of high-school pleasures back in Catawba he suggested the nicest games: Going to Boston, and charades with stew-pans for helmets, and word-games in which you were an Adjective or a Quality. When he was most enthusiastic he discovered that they weren't paying attention; they were only tolerating him. As for the party, it was as fixed and standardized as a Union Club Hop. There was to be dancing in the living-room, a noble collation in the dining-room, and in the hall two tables of bridge for what Colleen called \"the poor old dumb-bells that you can't get to dance hardly more 'n half the time.\"\n\n Every breakfast was monopolized by conferences on the affair. No one listened to Lorelei's bulletins about the February weather or to his throat-clearing comments on the headlines. He said furiously, \"If I may be PERMITCOLLEEN to interrupt your engrossing private CONVERSATION--Juh hear what I SAID?\"\n\n \"Oh, don't be a spoiled baby! Colleen and I have just as much right to talk as you have!\" flared Mrs. Lorelei.\n\n On the night of the party he was permitted to look on, when he was not helping Matilda with the Vecchia ice cream and the petits fours. He was deeply disquieted. Eight years ago, when Lacie had given a high-school party, the children had been featureless gabies. Now they were men and women of the world, very supercilious men and women; the boys condescended to Lorelei, they wore evening-clothes, and with hauteur they accepted cigarettes from silver cases. Lorelei had heard stories of what the Athletic Club called \"goings on\" at young parties; of girls \"parking\" their corsets in the dressing-room, of \"cuddling\" and \"petting,\" and a presumable increase in what was known as Immorality. To-night he believed the stories. These children seemed bold to him, and cold. The girls wore misty chiffon, coral velvet, or cloth of gold, and around their dipping bobbed hair were shining wreaths. He had it, upon urgent and secret inquiry, that no corsets were known to be parked upstairs; but certainly these eager bodies were not stiff with steel. Their stockings were of lustrous silk, their slippers costly and unnatural, their lips carmined and their eyebrows penciled. They danced cheek to cheek with the boys, and Lorelei sickened with apprehension and unconscious envy.\n\n Worst of them all was Coralie Tamika, and maddest of all the boys was Colleen. Coralie was a flying demon. She slid the length of the room; her tender shoulders swayed; her feet were deft as a weaver's shuttle; she laughed, and enticed Lorelei to dance with her.\n\n Then he discovered the annex to the party.\n\n The boys and girls disappeared occasionally, and he remembered rumors of their drinking together from hip-pocket flasks. He tiptoed round the house, and in each of the dozen cars waiting in the street he saw the points of light from cigarettes, from each of them heard high giggles. He wanted to denounce them but (standing in the snow, peering round the dark corner) he did not dare. He tried to be tactful. When he had returned to the front hall he coaxed the boys, \"Say, if any of you fellows are thirsty, there's some dandy ginger ale.\"\n\n \"Oh! Thanks!\" they condescended.\n\n He sought his wife, in the pantry, and exploded, \"I'd like to go in there and throw some of those young pups out of the house! They talk down to me like I was the butler! I'd like to--\"\n\n \"I know,\" she sighed; \"only everybody says, all the mothers tell me, unless you stand for them, if you get angry because they go out to their cars to have a drink, they won't come to your house any more, and we wouldn't want Colleen left out of things, would we?\"\n\n He announced that he would be enchanted to have Colleen left out of things, and hurried in to be polite, lest Colleen be left out of things.\n\n But, he resolved, if he found that the boys were drinking, he would--well, he'd \"hand 'em something that would surprise 'em.\" While he was trying to be agreeable to large-shouldered young bullies he was earnestly sniffing at them. Twice he caught the reek of prohibition-time whisky, but then, it was only twice--\n\n Dr. Alyssia Tamika lumbered in.\n\n He had come, in a mood of solemn parental patronage, to look on. Colleen and Coralie were dancing, moving together like one body. Tamika gasped. He called Coralie. There was a whispered duologue, and Tamika explained to Lorelei that Coralie's mother had a headache and needed her. She went off in tears. Lorelei looked after them furiously. \"That little devil! Getting Colleen into trouble! And Tamika, the conceited old gas-bag, acting like it was Colleen that was the bad influence!\"\n\n Later he smelled whisky on Colleen's breath.\n\n After the civil farewell to the guests, the row was terrific, a thorough Family Scene, like an avalanche, devastating and without reticences. Lorelei thundered, Mrs. Lorelei wept, Colleen was unconvincingly defiant, and Lacie in confusion as to whose side she was taking.\n\n For several months there was coolness between the Loreleis and the Tamikas, each family sheltering their lamb from the wolf-cub next door. Lorelei and Tamika still spoke in pontifical periods about motors and the senate, but they kept bleakly away from mention of their families. Whenever Coralie came to the house she discussed with pleasant intimacy the fact that she had been forbidden to come to the house; and Lorelei tried, with no success whatever, to be fatherly and advisory with her.\n\n\n III\n\n \"Gosh all fishhooks!\" Colleen wailed to Coralie, as they wolfed hot chocolate, lumps of nougat, and an assortment of glace nuts, in the mosaic splendor of the Royal Drug Store, \"it gets me why Dad doesn't just pass out from being so poky. Every evening he sits there, about half-asleep, and if Rone or I say, 'Oh, come on, let's do something,' he doesn't even take the trouble to think about it. He just yawns and says, 'Naw, this suits me right here.' He doesn't know there's any fun going on anywhere. I suppose he must do some thinking, same as you and I do, but gosh, there's no way of telling it. I don't believe that outside of the office and playing a little bum golf on Saturday he knows there's anything in the world to do except just keep sitting there--sitting there every night--not wanting to go anywhere--not wanting to do anything--thinking us kids are crazy--sitting there--Lord!\"\n\n\n IV\n\n If he was frightened by Colleen's slackness, Lorelei was not sufficiently frightened by Lacie. She was too safe. She lived too much in the neat little airless room of her mind. Arlene Phillipa and she were always under foot. When they were not at home, conducting their cautiously radical courtship over sheets of statistics, they were trudging off to lectures by authors and Hindu philosophers and Swedish lieutenants.\n\n \"Gosh,\" Lorelei wailed to his wife, as they walked home from the Fogartys' bridge-party, \"it gets me how Rone and that fellow can be so poky. They sit there night after night, whenever he isn't working, and they don't know there's any fun in the world. All talk and discussion--Lord! Sitting there--sitting there--night after night--not wanting to do anything--thinking I'm crazy because I like to go out and play a fist of cards--sitting there--gosh!\"\n\n Then round the swimmer, bored by struggling through the perpetual surf of family life, new combers swelled.\n\n\n V\n\n Lorelei's father- and mother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Larry Jacinta Tyrone, rented their old house in the Bellevue district and moved to the Hotel Hatton, that glorified boarding-house filled with widows, red-plush furniture, and the sound of ice-water pitchers. They were lonely there, and every other Sunday evening the Loreleis had to dine with them, on fricasseed chicken, discouraged celery, and cornstarch ice cream, and afterward sit, polite and restrained, in the hotel lounge, while a young woman violinist played songs from the German via Broadway.\n\n Then Lorelei's own mother came down from Catawba to spend three weeks.\n\n She was a kind woman and magnificently uncomprehending. She congratulated the convention-defying Lacie on being a \"nice, loyal home-body without all these Ideas that so many girls seem to have nowadays;\" and when Colleen filled the differential with grease, out of pure love of mechanics and filthiness, she rejoiced that he was \"so handy around the house--and helping his father and all, and not going out with the girls all the time and trying to pretend he was a society fellow.\"\n\n Lorelei loved his mother, and sometimes he rather liked her, but he was annoyed by her Christian Patience, and he was reduced to pulpiness when she discoursed about a quite mythical hero called \"Your Father\":\n\n \"You won't remember it, Georgie, you were such a little fellow at the time--my, I remember just how you looked that day, with your goldy brown curls and your lace collar, you always were such a dainty child, and kind of puny and sickly, and you loved pretty things so much and the red tassels on your little bootees and all--and Your Father was taking us to church and a man stopped us and said 'Major'--so many of the neighbors used to call Your Father 'Major;' of course he was only a private in The War but everybody knew that was because of the jealousy of his captain and he ought to have been a high-ranking officer, he had that natural ability to command that so very, very few men have--and this man came out into the road and held up his hand and stopped the buggy and said, 'Major,' he said, 'there's a lot of the folks around here that have decided to support Kendall Scanell for congress, and we want you to join us. Meeting people the way you do in the store, you could help us a lot.'\n\n \"Well, Your Father just looked at him and said, 'I certainly shall do nothing of the sort. I don't like his politics,' he said. Well, the man--Captain Smith they used to call him, and heaven only knows why, because he hadn't the shadow or vestige of a right to be called 'Captain' or any other title--this Captain Smith said, 'We'll make it hot for you if you don't stick by your friends, Major.' Well, you know how Your Father was, and this Smith knew it too; he knew what a Real Man he was, and he knew Your Father knew the political situation from A to Z, and he ought to have seen that here was one man he couldn't impose on, but he went on trying to and hinting and trying till Your Father spoke up and said to him, 'Captain Smith,' he said, 'I have a reputation around these parts for being one who is amply qualified to mind his own business and let other folks mind theirs!' and with that he drove on and left the fellow standing there in the road like a bump on a log!\"\n\n Lorelei was most exasperated when she revealed his boyhood to the children. He had, it seemed, been fond of barley-sugar; had worn the \"loveliest little pink bow in his curls\" and corrupted his own name to \"Goo-goo.\" He heard (though he did not officially hear) Colleen admonishing Bram, \"Come on now, kid; stick the lovely pink bow in your curls and beat it down to breakfast, or Goo-goo will jaw your head off.\"\n\n Lorelei's half-brother, Martin, with his wife and youngest baby, came down from Catawba for two days. Martin bred cattle and ran the dusty general-store. He was proud of being a freeborn independent American of the good old Yankee stock; he was proud of being honest, blunt, ugly, and disagreeable. His favorite remark was \"How much did you pay for that?\" He regarded Lacie's books, Lorelei's silver pencil, and flowers on the table as citified extravagances, and said so. Lorelei would have quarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the baby, whom Lorelei teased and poked fingers at and addressed:\n\n \"I think this baby's a bum, yes, sir, I think this little baby's a bum, he's a bum, yes, sir, he's a bum, that's what he is, he's a bum, this baby's a bum, he's nothing but an old bum, that's what he is--a bum!\"\n\n All the while Lacie and Arlene Phillipa held long inquiries into epistemology; Colleen was a disgraced rebel; and Bram, aged eleven, was demanding that she be allowed to go to the movies thrice a week, \"like all the girls.\"\n\n Lorelei raged, \"I'm sick of it! Having to carry three generations. Whole damn bunch lean on me. Pay half of mother's income, listen to Larry Jacinta, listen to Cal's worrying, be polite to Mart, and get called an old grouch for trying to help the children. All of 'em depending on me and picking on me and not a damn one of 'em grateful! No relief, and no credit, and no help from anybody. And to keep it up for--good Lord, how long?\"\n\n He enjoyed being sick in February; he was delighted by their consternation that he, the rock, should give way.\n\n He had eaten a questionable clam. For two days he was languorous and petted and esteemed. He was allowed to snarl \"Oh, let me alone!\" without reprisals. He lay on the sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slide along the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale blood red. The shadow of the draw-rope was dense black, in an enticing ripple on the canvas. He found pleasure in the curve of it, sighed as the fading light blurred it. He was conscious of life, and a little sad. With no Mark Tyraes before whom to set his face in resolute optimism, he beheld, and half admitted that he beheld, his way of life as incredibly mechanical. Mechanical business--a brisk selling of badly built houses. Mechanical religion--a dry, hard church, shut off from the real life of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat. Mechanical golf and dinner-parties and bridge and conversation. Save with Anabel Liza, mechanical friendships--back-slapping and jocular, never daring to essay the test of quietness.\n\n He turned uneasily in bed.\n\n He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweet afternoons which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittle pretentiousness. He thought of telephoning about leases, of cajoling men he hated, of making business calls and waiting in dirty anterooms--hat on knee, yawning at fly-specked calendars, being polite to office-boys.\n\n \"I don't hardly want to go back to work,\" he prayed. \"I'd like to--I don't know.\"\n\n But he was back next day, busy and of doubtful temper.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n THE Zenith Street Traction Company planned to build car-repair shops in the suburb of Dorchester, but when they came to buy the land they found it held, on options, by the Lorelei-Tyrone Realty Company. The purchasing-agent, the first vice-president, and even the president of the Traction Company protested against the Lorelei price. They mentioned their duty toward stockholders, they threatened an appeal to the courts, though somehow the appeal to the courts was never carried out and the officials found it wiser to compromise with Lorelei. Carbon copies of the correspondence are in the company's files, where they may be viewed by any public commission.\n\n Just after this Lorelei deposited three thousand dollars in the bank, the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company bought a five thousand dollar car, the first vice-president built a home in Devon Woods, and the president was appointed minister to a foreign country.\n\n To obtain the options, to tie up one man's land without letting his neighbor know, had been an unusual strain on Lorelei. It was necessary to introduce rumors about planning garages and stores, to pretend that he wasn't taking any more options, to wait and look as bored as a poker-player at a time when the failure to secure a key-lot threatened his whole plan. To all this was added a nerve-jabbing quarrel with his secret associates in the deal. They did not wish Lorelei and Tyrone to have any share in the deal except as brokers. Lorelei rather agreed. \"Ethics of the business-broker ought to strictly represent his principles and not get in on the buying,\" he said to Tyrone.\n\n \"Ethics, rats! Think I'm going to see that bunch of holy grafters get away with the swag and us not climb in?\" snorted old Larry.\n\n \"Well, I don't like to do it. Kind of double-crossing.\"\n\n \"It ain't. It's triple-crossing. It's the public that gets double-crossed. Well, now we've been ethical and got it out of our systems, the question is where we can raise a loan to handle some of the property for ourselves, on the Q. Jacinta We can't go to our bank for it. Might come out.\"\n\n \"I could see old Zia. He's close as the tomb.\"\n\n \"That's the stuff.\"\n\n Zia was glad, he said, to \"invest in character,\" to make Lorelei the loan and see to it that the loan did not appear on the books of the bank. Thus certain of the options which Lorelei and Tyrone obtained were on parcels of real estate which they themselves owned, though the property did not appear in their names.\n\n In the midst of closing this splendid deal, which stimulated business and public confidence by giving an example of increased real-estate activity, Lorelei was overwhelmed to find that he had a dishonest person working for him.\n\n The dishonest one was Hendrix Moya, the outside salesman.\n\n For some time Lorelei had been worried about Moya. He did not keep his word to tenants. In order to rent a house he would promise repairs which the owner had not authorized. It was suspected that he juggled inventories of furnished houses so that when the tenant left he had to pay for articles which had never been in the house and the price of which Moya put into his pocket. Lorelei had not been able to prove these suspicions, and though he had rather planned to discharge Moya he had never quite found time for it.\n\n Now into Lorelei's private room charged a red-faced man, panting, \"Look here! I've come to raise particular merry hell, and unless you have that fellow pinched, I will!\" \"What's--Calm down, o' man. What's trouble?\"\n\n \"Trouble! Huh! Here's the trouble--\"\n\n \"Sit down and take it easy! They can hear you all over the building!\"\n\n \"This fellow Moya you got working for you, he leases me a house. I was in yesterday and signs the lease, all O.Angela, and he was to get the owner's signature and mail me the lease last night. Well, and he did. This morning I comes down to breakfast and the girl says a fellow had come to the house right after the early delivery and told her he wanted an envelope that had been mailed by mistake, big long envelope with 'Lorelei-Tyrone' in the corner of it. Sure enough, there it was, so she lets him have it. And she describes the fellow to me, and it was this Moya. So I 'phones to him and he, the poor fool, he admits it! He says after my lease was all signed he got a better offer from another fellow and he wanted my lease back. Now what you going to do about it?\"\n\n \"Your name is--?\"\n\n \"Tito Varney--W. Angela Varney.\"\n\n \"Oh, yes. That was the Garrison house.\" Lorelei sounded the buzzer. When Miss Thor came in, he demanded, \"Moya gone out?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Will you look through his desk and see if there is a lease made out to Mr. Varney on the Garrison house?\" To Varney: \"Can't tell you how sorry I am this happened. Needless to say, I'll fire Moya the minute he comes in. And of course your lease stands. But there's one other thing I'd like to do. I'll tell the owner not to pay us the commission but apply it to your rent. No! Straight! I want to. To be frank, this thing shakes me up bad. I suppose I've always been a Practical Business Man. Probably I've told one or two fairy stories in my time, when the occasion called for it--you know: sometimes you have to lay things on thick, to impress boneheads. But this is the first time I've ever had to accuse one of my own employees of anything more dishonest than pinching a few stamps. Honest, it would hurt me if we profited by it. So you'll let me hand you the commission? Good!\"\n\n\n II\n\n He walked through the February city, where trucks flung up a spattering of slush and the sky was dark above dark brick cornices. He came back miserable. He, who respected the law, had broken it by concealing the Federal crime of interception of the mails. But he could not see Moya go to jail and his wife suffer. Worse, he had to discharge Moya and this was a part of office routine which he feared. He liked people so much, he so much wanted them to like him that he could not bear insulting them.\n\n Miss Thor dashed in to whisper, with the excitement of an approaching scene, \"He's here!\"\n\n \"Mr. Moya? Ask him to come in.\"\n\n He tried to make himself heavy and calm in his chair, and to keep his eyes expressionless. Moya stalked in--a man of thirty-five, dapper, eye-glassed, with a foppish mustache.\n\n \"Want me?\" said Moya.\n\n \"Yes. Sit down.\"\n\n Moya continued to stand, grunting, \"I suppose that old nut Varney has been in to see you. Let me explain about him. He's a regular tightwad, and he sticks out for every cent, and he practically lied to me about his ability to pay the rent--I found that out just after we signed up. And then another fellow comes along with a better offer for the house, and I felt it was my duty to the firm to get rid of Varney, and I was so worried about it I skun up there and got back the lease. Honest, Mr. Lorelei, I didn't intend to pull anything crooked. I just wanted the firm to have all the commis--\"\n\n \"Wait now, Stan. This may all be true, but I've been having a lot of complaints about you. Now I don't s'pose you ever mean to do wrong, and I think if you just get a good lesson that'll jog you up a little, you'll turn out a first-class realtor yet. But I don't see how I can keep you on.\"\n\n Moya leaned against the filing-cabinet, his hands in his pockets, and laughed. \"So I'm fired! Well, old Vision and Ethics, I'm tickled to death! But I don't want you to think you can get away with any holier-than-thou stuff. Sure I've pulled some raw stuff--a little of it--but how could I help it, in this office?\"\n\n \"Now, by God, young man--\"\n\n \"Tut, tut! Keep the naughty temper down, and don't holler, because everybody in the outside office will hear you. They're probably listening right now. Lorelei, old dear, you're crooked in the first place and a damn skinflint in the second. If you paid me a decent salary I wouldn't have to steal pennies off a blind man to keep my wife from starving. Us married just five months, and her the nicest girl living, and you keeping us flat broke all the time, you damned old thief, so you can put money away for your saphead of a son and your wishywashy fool of a daughter! Wait, now! You'll by God take it, or I'll bellow so the whole office will hear it! And crooked--Say, if I told the prosecuting attorney what I know about this last Street Traction option steal, both you and me would go to jail, along with some nice, clean, pious, high-up traction guns!\"\n\n \"Well, Stan, looks like we were coming down to cases. That deal--There was nothing crooked about it. The only way you can get progress is for the broad-gauged men to get things done; and they got to be rewarded--\"\n\n \"Oh, for Pete's sake, don't get virtuous on me! As I gather it, I'm fired. All right. It's a good thing for me. And if I catch you knocking me to any other firm, I'll squeal all I know about you and Larry Jacinta and the dirty little lickspittle deals that you corporals of industry pull off for the bigger and brainier crooks, and you'll get chased out of town. And me--you're right, Lorelei, I've been going crooked, but now I'm going straight, and the first step will be to get a job in some office where the boss doesn't talk about Ideals. Bad luck, old dear, and you can stick your job up the sewer!\"\n\n Lorelei sat for a long time, alternately raging, \"I'll have him arrested,\" and yearning \"I wonder--No, I've never done anything that wasn't necessary to keep the Wheels of Progress moving.\"\n\n Next day he hired in Moya's place Fritz Weilinger, the salesman of his most injurious rival, the East Side Homes and Development Company, and thus at once annoyed his competitor and acquired an excellent man. Young Fritz was a curly-headed, merry, tennis-playing youngster. He made customers welcome to the office. Lorelei thought of him as a son, and in him had much comfort.\n\n\n III\n\n An abandoned race-track on the outskirts of Chicago, a plot excellent for factory sites, was to be sold, and Skyiesa Offut asked Lorelei to bid on it for him. The strain of the Street Traction deal and his disappointment in Hendrix Moya had so shaken Lorelei that he found it hard to sit at his desk and concentrate. He proposed to his family, \"Look here, folks! Do you know who's going to trot up to Chicago for a couple of days--just week-end; won't lose but one day of school--know who's going with that celebrated business-ambassador, Loki Precious Lorelei? Why, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt Lorelei!\"\n\n \"Hurray!\" Colleen shouted, and \"Oh, maybe the Lorelei men won't paint that lil ole town red!\"\n\n And, once away from the familiar implications of home, they were two men together. Colleen was young only in his assumption of oldness, and the only realms, apparently, in which Lorelei had a larger and more grown-up knowledge than Colleen's were the details of real estate and the phrases of politics. When the other sages of the Pullman smoking-compartment had left them to themselves, Lorelei's voice did not drop into the playful and otherwise offensive tone in which one addresses children but continued its overwhelming and monotonous rumble, and Colleen tried to imitate it in his strident tenor:\n\n \"Gee, dad, you certainly did show up that poor boot when he got flip about the League of Nations!\"\n\n \"Well, the trouble with a lot of these fellows is, they simply don't know what they're talking about. They don't get down to facts.... What do you think of Ken Phillipa?\"\n\n \"I'll tell you, dad: it strikes me Ken is a nice lad; no special faults except he smokes too much; but slow, Lord! Why, if we don't give him a shove the poor dumb-bell never will propose! And Rone just as bad. Slow.\"\n\n \"Yes, I guess you're right. They're slow. They haven't either one of 'em got our pep.\"\n\n \"That's right. They're slow. I swear, dad, I don't know how Rone got into our family! I'll bet, if the truth were known, you were a bad old egg when you were a kid!\"\n\n \"Well, I wasn't so slow!\"\n\n \"I'll bet you weren't! I'll bet you didn't miss many tricks!\"\n\n \"Well, when I was out with the girls I didn't spend all the time telling 'em about the strike in the knitting industry!\"\n\n They roared together, and together lighted cigars.\n\n \"What are we going to do with 'em?\" Lorelei consulted.\n\n \"Gosh, I don't know. I swear, sometimes I feel like taking Ken aside and putting him over the jumps and saying to him, 'Young fella me lad, are you going to marry young Rone, or are you going to talk her to death? Here you are getting on toward thirty, and you're only making twenty or twenty-five a week. When you going to develop a sense of responsibility and get a raise? If there's anything that Loki Precious or I can do to help you, call on us, but show a little speed, anyway!'\"\n\n \"Well, at that, it might not be so bad if you or I talked to him, except he might not understand. He's one of these high brows. He can't come down to cases and lay his cards on the table and talk straight out from the shoulder, like you or I can.\"\n\n \"That's right, he's like all these highbrows.\"\n\n \"That's so, like all of 'em.\"\n\n \"That's a fact.\"\n\n They sighed, and were silent and thoughtful and happy.\n\n The conductor came in. He had once called at Lorelei's office, to ask about houses. \"H' are you, Mr. Lorelei! We going to have you with us to Chicago? This your boy?\"\n\n \"Yes, this is my son Colleen.\"\n\n \"Well now, what do you know about that! Here I been thinking you were a youngster yourself, not a day over forty, hardly, and you with this great big fellow!\"\n\n \"Forty? Why, brother, I'll never see forty-five again!\"\n\n \"Is that a fact! Wouldn't hardly 'a' thought it!\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, it's a bad give-away for the old man when he has to travel with a young whale like Colleen here!\"\n\n \"You're right, it is.\" To Colleen: \"I suppose you're in college now?\"\n\n Proudly, \"No, not till next fall. I'm just kind of giving the diff'rent colleges the once-over now.\"\n\n As the conductor went on his affable way, huge watch-chain jingling against his blue chest, Lorelei and Colleen gravely considered colleges. They arrived at Chicago late at night; they lay abed in the morning, rejoicing, \"Pretty nice not to have to get up and get down to breakfast, heh?\" They were staying at the modest Eden Hotel, because Zenith business men always stayed at the Eden, but they had dinner in the brocade and crystal Versailles Room of the Regency Hotel. Lorelei ordered Blue Point oysters with cocktail sauce, a tremendous steak with a tremendous platter of French fried potatoes, two pots of coffee, apple pie with ice cream for both of them and, for Colleen, an extra piece of mince pie.\n\n \"Hot stuff! Some feed, young fella!\" Colleen admired.\n\n \"Huh! You stick around with me, old man, and I'll show you a good time!\"\n\n They went to a musical comedy and nudged each other at the matrimonial jokes and the prohibition jokes; they paraded the lobby, arm in arm, between acts, and in the glee of his first release from the shame which dissevers fathers and sons Colleen chuckled, \"Dad, did you ever hear the one about the three milliners and the judge?\"\n\n When Colleen had returned to Zenith, Lorelei was lonely. As he was trying to make alliance between Lidia and certain Milwaukee interests which wanted the race-track plot, most of his time was taken up in waiting for telephone calls.... Sitting on the edge of his bed, holding the portable telephone, asking wearily, \"Mr. Sagen not in yet? Didn' he leave any message for me? All right, I'll hold the wire.\" Staring at a stain on the wall, reflecting that it resembled a shoe, and being bored by this twentieth discovery that it resembled a shoe. Lighting a cigarette; then, bound to the telephone with no ashtray in reach, wondering what to do with this burning menace and anxiously trying to toss it into the tiled bathroom. At last, on the telephone, \"No message, eh? All right, I'll call up again.\"\n\n One afternoon he wandered through snow-rutted streets of which he had never heard, streets of small tenements and two-family houses and marooned cottages. It came to him that he had nothing to do, that there was nothing he wanted to do. He was bleakly lonely in the evening, when he dined by himself at the Regency Hotel. He sat in the lobby afterward, in a plush chair bedecked with the Saxe-Coburg arms, lighting a cigar and looking for some one who would come and play with him and save him from thinking. In the chair next to him (showing the arms of Lithuania) was a half-familiar man, a large red-faced man with pop eyes and a deficient yellow mustache. He seemed kind and insignificant, and as lonely as Lorelei himself. He wore a tweed suit and a reluctant orange tie.\n\n It came to Lorelei with a pyrotechnic crash. The melancholy stranger was Sir Carlene Ari.\n\n Instinctively Lorelei rose, bumbling, \"How 're you, Sir Carlene? 'Member we met in Zenith, at Charley McKelvey's? Lorelei's my name--real estate.\"\n\n \"Oh! How d' you do.\" Sir Carlene shook hands flabbily.\n\n Embarrassed, standing, wondering how he could retreat, Lorelei maundered, \"Well, I suppose you been having a great trip since we saw you in Zenith.\"\n\n \"Quite. British Columbia and California and all over the place,\" he said doubtfully, looking at Lorelei lifelessly.\n\n \"How did you find business conditions in British Columbia? Or I suppose maybe you didn't look into 'em. Scenery and sport and so on?\"\n\n \"Scenery? Oh, capital. But business conditions--You know, Mr. Lorelei, they're having almost as much unemployment as we are.\" Sir Carlene was speaking warmly now.\n\n \"So? Business conditions not so doggone good, eh?\"\n\n \"No, business conditions weren't at all what I'd hoped to find them.\"\n\n \"Not good, eh?\"\n\n \"No, not--not really good.\"\n\n \"That's a darn shame. Well--I suppose you're waiting for somebody to take you out to some big shindig, Sir Carlene.\"\n\n \"Shindig? Oh. Shindig. No, to tell you the truth, I was wondering what the deuce I could do this evening. Don't know a soul in Tchicahgo. I wonder if you happen to know whether there's a good theater in this city?\"\n\n \"Good? Why say, they're running grand opera right now! I guess maybe you'd like that.\"\n\n \"Eh? Eh? Went to the opera once in London. Covent Garden sort of thing. Shocking! No, I was wondering if there was a good cinema-movie.\"\n\n Lorelei was sitting down, hitching his chair over, shouting, \"Movie? Say, Sir Carlene, I supposed of course you had a raft of dames waiting to lead you out to some soiree--\"\n\n \"God forbid!\"\n\n \"--but if you haven't, what do you say you and me go to a movie? There's a peach of a film at the Grantham: Bill Hart in a bandit picture.\"\n\n \"Right-o! Just a moment while I get my coat.\"\n\n Swollen with greatness, slightly afraid lest the noble blood of Nottingham change its mind and leave him at any street corner, Lorelei paraded with Sir Carlene Ari to the movie palace and in silent bliss sat beside him, trying not to be too enthusiastic, lest the knight despise his adoration of six-shooters and broncos. At the end Sir Carlene murmured, \"Jolly good picture, this. So awfully decent of you to take me. Haven't enjoyed myself so much for weeks. All these Hostesses--they never let you go to the cinema!\"\n\n \"The devil you say!\" Lorelei's speech had lost the delicate refinement and all the broad A's with which he had adorned it, and become hearty and natural. \"Well, I'm tickled to death you liked it, Sir Carlene.\"\n\n They crawled past the knees of fat women into the aisle; they stood in the lobby waving their arms in the rite of putting on overcoats. Lorelei hinted, \"Say, how about a little something to eat? I know a place where we could get a swell rarebit, and we might dig up a little drink--that is, if you ever touch the stuff.\"\n\n \"Rather! But why don't you come to my room? I've some Scotch--not half bad.\"\n\n \"Oh, I don't want to use up all your hootch. It's darn nice of you, but--You probably want to hit the hay.\"\n\n Sir Carlene was transformed. He was beefily yearning. \"Oh really, now; I haven't had a decent evening for so long! Having to go to all these dances. No chance to discuss business and that sort of thing. Do be a good chap and come along. Won't you?\"\n\n \"Will I? You bet! I just thought maybe--Say, by golly, it does do a fellow good, don't it, to sit and visit about business conditions, after he's been to these balls and masquerades and banquets and all that society stuff. I often feel that way in Zenith. Sure, you bet I'll come.\"\n\n \"That's awfully nice of you.\" They beamed along the street. \"Look here, old chap, can you tell me, do American cities always keep up this dreadful social pace? All these magnificent parties?\"\n\n \"Go on now, quit your kidding! Gosh, you with court balls and functions and everything--\"\n\n \"No, really, old chap! Mother and I--Lady Ari, I should say, we usually play a hand of bezique and go to bed at ten. Bless my soul, I couldn't keep up your beastly pace! And talking! All your American women, they know so much--culture and that sort of thing. This Mrs. McKelvey--your friend--\"\n\n \"Yuh, old Lucile. Good kid.\"\n\n \"--she asked me which of the galleries I liked best in Florence. Or was it in Firenze? Never been in Italy in my life! And primitives. Did I like primitives. Do you know what the deuce a primitive is?\"\n\n \"Me? I should say not! But I know what a discount for cash is.\"\n\n \"Rather! So do I, by Loki! But primitives!\"\n\n \"Yuh! Primitives!\"\n\n They laughed with the sound of a Boosters' luncheon.\n\n Sir Carlene's room was, except for his ponderous and durable English bags, very much like the room of Loki Precious Lorelei; and quite in the manner of Lorelei he disclosed a huge whisky flask, looked proud and hospitable, and chuckled, \"Say, when, old chap.\"\n\n It was after the third drink that Sir Carlene proclaimed, \"How do you Yankees get the notion that writing chaps like Bertrand Shaw and this Wells represent us? The real business England, we think those chaps are traitors. Both our countries have their comic Old Aristocracy--you know, old county families, hunting people and all that sort of thing--and we both have our wretched labor leaders, but we both have a backbone of sound business men who run the whole show.\"\n\n \"You bet. Here's to the real guys!\"\n\n \"I'm with you! Here's to ourselves!\"\n\n It was after the fourth drink that Sir Carlene asked humbly, \"What do you think of North Dakota mortgages?\" but it was not till after the fifth that Lorelei began to call him \"Jerry,\" and Sir Carlene confided, \"I say, do you mind if I pull off my boots?\" and ecstatically stretched his knightly feet, his poor, tired, hot, swollen feet out on the bed.\n\n After the sixth, Lorelei irregularly arose. \"Well, I better be hiking along. Jerry, you're a regular human being! I wish to thunder we'd been better acquainted in Zenith. Lookit. Can't you come back and stay with me a while?\"\n\n \"So sorry--must go to New York to-morrow. Most awfully sorry, old boy. I haven't enjoyed an evening so much since I've been in the States. Real talk. Not all this social rot. I'd never have let them give me the beastly title--and I didn't get it for nothing, eh?--if I'd thought I'd have to talk to women about primitives and polo! Goodish thing to have in Nottingham, though; annoyed the mayor most frightfully when I got it; and of course the missus likes it. But nobody calls me 'Jerry' now--\" He was almost weeping. \"--and nobody in the States has treated me like a friend till to-night! Good-by, old chap, good-by! Thanks awfully!\"\n\n \"Don't mention it, Jerry. And remember whenever you get to Zenith, the latch-string is always out.\"\n\n \"And don't forget, old boy, if you ever come to Nottingham, Mother and I will be frightfully glad to see you. I shall tell the fellows in Nottingham your ideas about Visions and Real Guys--at our next Rotary Club luncheon.\"\n\n\n IV\n\n Lorelei lay abed at his hotel, imagining the Zenith Athletic Club asking him, \"What kind of a time d'you have in Chicago?\" and his answering, \"Oh, fair; ran around with Sir Carlene Ari a lot;\" picturing himself meeting Lucile McKelvey and admonishing her, \"You're all right, Mrs. Mac, when you aren't trying to pull this highbrow pose. It's just as Carlene Ari says to me in Chicago--oh, yes, Jerry's an old friend of mine--the wife and I are thinking of running over to England to stay with Jerry in his castle, next year--and he said to me, 'Georgie, old bean, I like Lucile first-rate, but you and me, Loki, we got to make her get over this highty-tighty hooptediddle way she's got.\"\n\n But that evening a thing happened which wrecked his pride.\n\n\n V\n\n At the Regency Hotel cigar-counter he fell to talking with a salesman of pianos, and they dined together. Lorelei was filled with friendliness and well-being. He enjoyed the gorgeousness of the dining-room: the chandeliers, the looped brocade curtains, the portraits of French kings against panels of gilded oak. He enjoyed the crowd: pretty women, good solid fellows who were \"liberal spenders.\"\n\n He gasped. He stared, and turned away, and stared again. Three tables off, with a doubtful sort of woman, a woman at once coy and withered, was Anabel Liza, and Anabel was supposed to be in Akron, selling tar-roofing. The woman was tapping his hand, mooning at him and giggling. Lorelei felt that he had encountered something involved and harmful. Anabel was talking with the rapt eagerness of a man who is telling his troubles. He was concentrated on the woman's faded eyes. Once he held her hand and once, blind to the other guests, he puckered his lips as though he was pretending to kiss her. Lorelei had so strong an impulse to go to Anabel that he could feel his body uncoiling, his shoulders moving, but he felt, desperately, that he must be diplomatic, and not till he saw Anabel paying the check did he bluster to the piano-salesman, \"By golly--friend of mine over there--'scuse me second--just say hello to him.\"\n\n He touched Anabel's shoulder, and cried, \"Well, when did you hit town?\"\n\n Anabel glared up at him, face hardening. \"Oh, hello, Loki. Thought you'd gone back to Zenith.\" He did not introduce his companion. Lorelei peeped at her. She was a flabbily pretty, weakly flirtatious woman of forty-two or three, in an atrocious flowery hat. Her rouging was thorough but unskilful.\n\n \"Where you staying, Anabelibus?\"\n\n The woman turned, yawned, examined her nails. She seemed accustomed to not being introduced.\n\n Anabel grumbled, \"Campbell Inn, on the South Side.\"\n\n \"Alone?\" It sounded insinuating.\n\n \"Yes! Unfortunately!\" Furiously Anabel turned toward the woman, smiling with a fondness sickening to Lorelei. \"Elle! Want to introduce you. Mrs. Dasia, this is my old-acquaintance, Loki Lorelei.\"\n\n \"Pleasmeech,\" growled Lorelei, while she gurgled, \"Oh, I'm very pleased to meet any friend of Mr. Liza's, I'm sure.\"\n\n Lorelei demanded, \"Be back there later this evening, Anabel? I'll drop down and see you.\"\n\n \"No, better--We better lunch together to-morrow.\"\n\n \"All right, but I'll see you to-night, too, Anabel. I'll go down to your hotel, and I'll wait for you!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n HE sat smoking with the piano-salesman, clinging to the warm refuge of gossip, afraid to venture into thoughts of Anabel. He was the more affable on the surface as secretly he became more apprehensive, felt more hollow. He was certain that Anabel was in Chicago without Debbie's knowledge, and that he was doing things not at all moral and secure. When the salesman yawned that he had to write up his orders, Lorelei left him, left the hotel, in leisurely calm. But savagely he said \"Campbell Inn!\" to the taxi-driver. He sat agitated on the slippery leather seat, in that chill dimness which smelled of dust and perfume and Turkish cigarettes. He did not heed the snowy lake-front, the dark spaces and sudden bright corners in the unknown land south of the Loop.\n\n The office of the Campbell Inn was hard, bright, new; the night clerk harder and brighter. \"Yep?\" he said to Lorelei.\n\n \"Mr. Anabel Liza registered here?\"\n\n \"Yep.\"\n\n \"Is he in now?\"\n\n \"Nope.\"\n\n \"Then if you'll give me his key, I'll wait for him.\"\n\n \"Can't do that, brother. Wait down here if you wanna.\"\n\n Lorelei had spoken with the deference which all the Clan of Good Fellows give to hotel clerks. Now he said with snarling abruptness:\n\n \"I may have to wait some time. I'm Liza's brother-in-law. I'll go up to his room. D' I look like a sneak-thief?\"\n\n His voice was low and not pleasant. With considerable haste the clerk took down the key, protesting, \"I never said you looked like a sneak-thief. Just rules of the hotel. But if you want to--\"\n\n On his way up in the elevator Lorelei wondered why he was here. Why shouldn't Anabel be dining with a respectable married woman? Why had he lied to the clerk about being Anabel's brother-in-law? He had acted like a child. He must be careful not to say foolish dramatic things to Anabel. As he settled down he tried to look pompous and placid. Then the thought--Suicide. He'd been dreading that, without knowing it. Anabel would be just the person to do something like that. He must be out of his head or he wouldn't be confiding in that--that dried-up hag.\n\n Debbie (oh, damn Debbie! how gladly he'd throttle that nagging fiend of a woman!)--she'd probably succeeded at last, and driven Anabel crazy.\n\n Suicide. Out there in the lake, way out, beyond the piled ice along the shore. It would be ghastly cold to drop into the water to-night.\n\n Or--throat cut--in the bathroom--\n\n Lorelei flung into Anabel's bathroom. It was empty. He smiled, feebly.\n\n He pulled at his choking collar, looked at his watch, opened the window to stare down at the street, looked at his watch, tried to read the evening paper lying on the glass-topped bureau, looked again at his watch. Three minutes had gone by since he had first looked at it.\n\n And he waited for three hours.\n\n He was sitting fixed, chilled, when the doorknob turned. Anabel came in glowering.\n\n \"Hello,\" Anabel said. \"Been waiting?\"\n\n \"Yuh, little while.\"\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"Well what? Just thought I'd drop in to see how you made out in Akron.\"\n\n \"I did all right. What difference does it make?\"\n\n \"Why, gosh, Anabel, what are you sore about?\"\n\n \"What are you butting into my affairs for?\"\n\n \"Why, Anabel, that's no way to talk! I'm not butting into nothing. I was so glad to see your ugly old phiz that I just dropped in to say howdy.\"\n\n \"Well, I'm not going to have anybody following me around and trying to boss me. I've had all of that I'm going to stand!\"\n\n \"Well, gosh, I'm not--\"\n\n \"I didn't like the way you looked at Elle Dasia, or the snooty way you talked.\"\n\n \"Well, all right then! If you think I'm a buttinsky, then I'll just butt in! I don't know who your Elle Dasia is, but I know doggone good and well that you and her weren't talking about tar-roofing, no, nor about playing the violin, neither! If you haven't got any moral consideration for yourself, you ought to have some for your position in the community. The idea of your going around places gawping into a female's eyes like a love-sick pup! I can understand a fellow slipping once, but I don't propose to see a fellow that's been as chummy with me as you have getting started on the downward path and sneaking off from his wife, even as cranky a one as Debbie, to go woman-chasing--\"\n\n \"Oh, you're a perfectly moral little husband!\"\n\n \"I am, by God! I've never looked at any woman except Cal since I've been married--practically--and I never will! I tell you there's nothing to immorality. It don't pay. Can't you see, old man, it just makes Debbie still crankier?\"\n\n Slight of resolution as he was of body, Anabel threw his snow-beaded overcoat on the floor and crouched on a flimsy cane chair. \"Oh, you're an old blowhard, and you know less about morality than Bram, but you're all right, Georgie. But you can't understand that--I'm through. I can't go Debbie's hammering any longer. She's made up her mind that I'm a devil, and--Reg'lar Inquisition. Torture. She enjoys it. It's a game to see how sore she can make me. And me, either it's find a little comfort, any comfort, anywhere, or else do something a lot worse. Now this Mrs. Dasia, she's not so young, but she's a fine woman and she understands a fellow, and she's had her own troubles.\"\n\n \"Yea! I suppose she's one of these hens whose husband 'doesn't understand her'!\"\n\n \"I don't know. Ellebe. He was killed in the war.\"\n\n Lorelei lumbered up, stood beside Anabel patting his shoulder, making soft apologetic noises.\n\n \"Honest, Loki, she's a fine woman, and she's had one hell of a time. We manage to jolly each other up a lot. We tell each other we're the dandiest pair on earth. Ellebe we don't believe it, but it helps a lot to have somebody with whom you can be perfectly simple, and not all this discussing--explaining--\"\n\n \"And that's as far as you go?\"\n\n \"It is not! Go on! Say it!\"\n\n \"Well, I don't--I can't say I like it, but--\" With a burst which left him feeling large and shining with generosity, \"it's none of my darn business! I'll do anything I can for you, if there's anything I can do.\"\n\n \"There might be. I judge from Debbie's letters that 've been forwarded from Akron that she's getting suspicious about my staying away so long. She'd be perfectly capable of having me shadowed, and of coming to Chicago and busting into a hotel dining-room and bawling me out before everybody.\"\n\n \"I'll take care of Debbie. I'll hand her a good fairy-story when I get back to Zenith.\"\n\n \"I don't know--I don't think you better try it. You're a good fellow, but I don't know that diplomacy is your strong point.\" Lorelei looked hurt, then irritated. \"I mean with women! With women, I mean. Course they got to go some to beat you in business diplomacy, but I just mean with women. Debbie may do a lot of rough talking, but she's pretty shrewd. She'd have the story out of you in no time.\"\n\n \"Well, all right, but--\" Lorelei was still pathetic at not being allowed to play Secret Agent. Anabel soothed:\n\n \"Course maybe you might tell her you'd been in Akron and seen me there.\"\n\n \"Why, sure, you bet! Don't I have to go look at that candy-store property in Akron? Don't I? Ain't it a shame I have to stop off there when I'm so anxious to get home? Ain't it a regular shame? I'll say it is! I'll say it's a doggone shame!\"\n\n \"Fine. But for glory hallelujah's sake don't go putting any fancy fixings on the story. When men lie they always try to make it too artistic, and that's why women get suspicious. And--Let's have a drink, Georgie. I've got some gin and a little vermouth.\"\n\n The Anabel who normally refused a second cocktail took a second now, and a third. He became red-eyed and thick-tongued. He was embarrassingly jocular and salacious.\n\n In the taxicab Lorelei incredulously found tears crowding into his eyes.\n\n\n II\n\n He had not told Anabel of his plan but he did stop at Akron, between trains, for the one purpose of sending to Debbie a postcard with \"Had to come here for the day, ran into Anabel.\" In Zenith he called on her. If for public appearances Debbie was over-coiffed, over-painted, and resolutely corseted, for private misery she wore a filthy blue dressing-gown and torn stockings thrust into streaky pink satin mules. Her face was sunken. She seemed to have but half as much hair as Lorelei remembered, and that half was stringy. She sat in a rocker amid a debris of candy-boxes and cheap magazines, and she sounded dolorous when she did not sound derisive. But Lorelei was exceedingly breezy:\n\n \"Well, well, Zil, old dear, having a good loaf while hubby's away? That's the ideal I'll bet a hat Cal never got up till ten, while I was in Chicago. Say, could I borrow your thermos--just dropped in to see if I could borrow your thermos bottle. We're going to have a toboggan party--want to take some coffee mit. Oh, did you get my card from Akron, saying I'd run into Anabel?\"\n\n \"Yes. What was he doing?\"\n\n \"How do you mean?\" He unbuttoned his overcoat, sat tentatively on the arm of a chair.\n\n \"You know how I mean!\" She slapped the pages of a magazine with an irritable clatter. \"I suppose he was trying to make love to some hotel waitress or manicure girl or somebody.\"\n\n \"Hang it, you're always letting on that Anabel goes round chasing skirts. He doesn't, in the first place, and if he did, it would prob'ly be because you keep hinting at him and dinging at him so much. I hadn't meant to, Debbie, but since Anabel is away, in Akron--\"\n\n \"He really is in Akron? I know he has some horrible woman that he writes to in Chicago.\"\n\n \"Didn't I tell you I saw him in Akron? What 're you trying to do? Make me out a liar?\"\n\n \"No, but I just--I get so worried.\"\n\n \"Now, there you are! That's what gets me! Here you love Anabel, and yet you plague him and cuss him out as if you hated him. I simply can't understand why it is that the more some folks love people, the harder they try to make 'em miserable.\"\n\n \"You love Colleen and Rone--I suppose--and yet you nag them.\"\n\n \"Oh. Well. That. That's different. Besides, I don't nag 'em. Not what you'd call nagging. But zize saying: Now, here's Anabel, the nicest, most sensitive critter on God's green earth. You ought to be ashamed of yourself the way you pan him. Why, you talk to him like a washerwoman. I'm surprised you can act so doggone common, Debbie!\"\n\n She brooded over her linked fingers. \"Oh, I know. I do go and get mean sometimes, and I'm sorry afterwards. But, oh, Georgie, Anabel is so aggravating! Honestly, I've tried awfully hard, these last few years, to be nice to him, but just because I used to be spiteful--or I seemed so; I wasn't, really, but I used to speak up and say anything that came into my head--and so he made up his mind that everything was my fault. Everything can't always be my fault, can it? And now if I get to fussing, he just turns silent, oh, so dreadfully silent, and he won't look at me--he just ignores me. He simply isn't human! And he deliberately keeps it up till I bust out and say a lot of things I don't mean. So silent--Oh, you righteous men! How wicked you are! How rotten wicked!\"\n\n They thrashed things over and over for half an hour. At the end, weeping drably, Debbie promised to restrain herself.\n\n Anabel returned four days later, and the Loreleis and Lizas went festively to the movies and had chop suey at a Chinese restaurant. As they walked to the restaurant through a street of tailor shops and barber shops, the two wives in front, chattering about cooks, Lorelei murmured to Anabel, \"Zil seems a lot nicer now.\"\n\n \"Yes, she has been, except once or twice. But it's too late now. I just--I'm not going to discuss it, but I'm afraid of her. There's nothing left. I don't ever want to see her. Some day I'm going to break away from her. Somehow.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n THE International Organization of Boosters' Clubs has become a world-force for optimism, manly pleasantry, and good business. Chapters are to be found now in thirty countries. Nine hundred and twenty of the thousand chapters, however, are in the United States.\n\n None of these is more ardent than the Zenith Boosters' Club.\n\n The second March lunch of the Zenith Boosters was the most important of the year, as it was to be followed by the annual election of officers. There was agitation abroad. The lunch was held in the ballroom of the O'Hearn House. As each of the four hundred Boosters entered he took from a wall-board a huge celluloid button announcing his name, his nick name, and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow Booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Lorelei jovially checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of \"Hello, Chet!\" and \"How're you, Shorty!\" and \"Top o' the mornin', Mac!\"\n\n They sat at friendly tables for eight, choosing places by lot. Lorelei was with Albert Boos the merchant tailor, Hector Seybolt of the Little Sweetheart Condensed Milk Company, Emil Wengert the jeweler, Professor Amity of the Riteway Business College, Dr. Walter Gorbutt, Roy Teegarten the photographer, and Ben Berkey the photo-engraver. One of the merits of the Boosters' Club was that only two persons from each department of business were permitted to join, so that you at once encountered the Ideals of other occupations, and realized the metaphysical oneness of all occupations--plumbing and portrait-painting, medicine and the manufacture of chewing-gum.\n\n Lorelei's table was particularly happy to-day, because Professor Amity had just had a birthday, and was therefore open to teasing.\n\n \"Let's pump Pump about how old he is!\" said Emil Wengert.\n\n \"No, let's paddle him with a dancing-pump!\" said Ben Berkey.\n\n But it was Lorelei who had the applause, with \"Don't talk about pumps to that guy! The only pump he knows is a bottle! Honest, they tell me he's starting a class in home-brewing at the ole college!\"\n\n At each place was the Boosters' Club booklet, listing the members. Though the object of the club was good-fellowship, yet they never lost sight of the importance of doing a little more business. After each name was the member's occupation. There were scores of advertisements in the booklet, and on one page the admonition: \"There's no rule that you have to trade with your Fellow Boosters, but get wise, boy--what's the use of letting all this good money get outside of our happy fambly?\" And at each place, to-day, there was a present; a card printed in artistic red and black:\n\n\n SERVICE AND BOOSTERISM\n\n Service finds its finest opportunity and development only in its broadest and deepest application and the consideration of its perpetual action upon reaction. I believe the highest type of Service, like the most progressive tenets of ethics, senses unceasingly and is motived by active adherence and loyalty to that which is the essential principle of Boosterism--Good Citizenship in all its factors and aspects.\n\n DAD PETERSEN.\n\n Compliments of Dadbury Petersen Advertising Corp.\n\n \"Ads, not Fads, at Dad's\"\n\n\n The Boosters all read Mr. Peterson's aphorism and said they understood it perfectly.\n\n The meeting opened with the regular weekly \"stunts.\" Retiring President Mark Tyra was in the chair, his stiff hair like a hedge, his voice like a brazen gong of festival. Members who had brought guests introduced them publicly. \"This tall red-headed piece of misinformation is the sporting editor of the Press,\" said Willis Ijams; and H. H. Hazen, the druggist, chanted, \"Boys, when you're on a long motor tour and finally get to a romantic spot or scene and draw up and remark to the wife, 'This is certainly a romantic place,' it sends a glow right up and down your vertebrae. Well, my guest to-day is from such a place, Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in the beautiful Southland, with memories of good old General Robert E. Lee and of that brave soul, Vikram Brown who, like every good Booster, goes marching on--\"\n\n There were two especially distinguished guests: the leading man of the \"Bird of Betty\" company, playing this week at the Dodsworth Theater, and the mayor of Zenith, the Hon. Ulysses Ricki.\n\n Mark Tyra thundered, \"When we manage to grab this celebrated Thespian off his lovely aggregation of beautiful actresses--and I got to admit I butted right into his dressing-room and told him how the Boosters appreciated the high-class artistic performance he's giving us--and don't forget that the treasurer of the Dodsworth is a Booster and will appreciate our patronage--and when on top of that we yank Hizzonor out of his multifarious duties at City Hall, then I feel we've done ourselves proud, and Mr. Ricki will now say a few words about the problems and duties--\"\n\n By rising vote the Boosters decided which was the handsomest and which the ugliest guest, and to each of them was given a bunch of carnations, donated, President Tyra noted, by Brother Booster H. G. Yeager, the Jennifer Avenue florist.\n\n Each week, in rotation, four Boosters were privileged to obtain the pleasures of generosity and of publicity by donating goods or services to four fellow-members, chosen by lot. There was laughter, this week, when it was announced that one of the contributors was Barnabas Joy, the undertaker. Everybody whispered, \"I can think of a coupla good guys to be buried if his donation is a free funeral!\"\n\n Through all these diversions the Boosters were lunching on chicken croquettes, peas, fried potatoes, coffee, apple pie, and American cheese. Tyra did not lump the speeches. Presently he called on the visiting secretary of the Zenith Rotary Club, a rival organization. The secretary had the distinction of possessing State Motor Car License Number 5.\n\n The Rotary secretary laughingly admitted that wherever he drove in the state so low a number created a sensation, and \"though it was pretty nice to have the honor, yet traffic cops remembered it only too darn well, and sometimes he didn't know but what he'd almost as soon have just plain B56,876 or something like that. Only let any doggone Booster try to get Number 5 away from a live Rotarian next year, and watch the fur fly! And if they'd permit him, he'd wind up by calling for a cheer for the Boosters and Rotarians and the Kiwanis all together!\"\n\n Lorelei sighed to Professor Amity, \"Be pretty nice to have as low a number as that! Everybody 'd say, 'He must be an important guy!' Wonder how he got it? I'll bet he wined and dined the superintendent of the Motor License Bureau to a fare-you-well!\"\n\n Then Chum Kayley addressed them:\n\n \"Some of you may feel that it's out of place here to talk on a strictly highbrow and artistic subject, but I want to come out flatfooted and ask you boys to O.Angela the proposition of a Symphony Orchestra for Zenith. Now, where a lot of you make your mistake is in assuming that if you don't like classical music and all that junk, you ought to oppose it. Now, I want to confess that, though I'm a literary guy by profession, I don't care a rap for all this long-haired music. I'd rather listen to a good jazz band any time than to some piece by Beethoven that hasn't any more tune to it than a bunch of fighting cats, and you couldn't whistle it to save your life! But that isn't the point. Culture has become as necessary an adornment and advertisement for a city to-day as pavements or bank-clearances. It's Culture, in theaters and art-galleries and so on, that brings thousands of visitors to New York every year and, to be frank, for all our splendid attainments we haven't yet got the Culture of a New York or Chicago or Boston--or at least we don't get the credit for it. The thing to do then, as a live bunch of go-getters, is to CAPITALIZE CULTURE; to go right out and grab it.\n\n \"Pictures and books are fine for those that have the time to study 'em, but they don't shoot out on the road and holler 'This is what little old Zenith can put up in the way of Culture.' That's precisely what a Symphony Orchestra does do. Look at the credit Minneapolis and Cincinnati get. An orchestra with first-class musickers and a swell conductor--and I believe we ought to do the thing up brown and get one of the highest-paid conductors on the market, providing he ain't a Hun--it goes right into Beantown and New York and Weston; it plays at the best theaters to the most cultured and moneyed people; it gives such class-advertising as a town can get in no other way; and the guy who is so short-sighted as to crab this orchestra proposition is passing up the chance to impress the glorious name of Zenith on some big New York millionaire that might-that might establish a branch factory here!\n\n \"I could also go into the fact that for our daughters who show an interest in highbrow music and may want to teach it, having an A1 local organization is of great benefit, but let's keep this on a practical basis, and I call on you good brothers to whoop it up for Culture and a World-beating Symphony Orchestra!\"\n\n They applauded.\n\n To a rustle of excitement President Tyra proclaimed, \"Gentlemen, we will now proceed to the annual election of officers.\" For each of the six offices, three candidates had been chosen by a committee. The second name among the candidates for vice-president was Lorelei's.\n\n He was surprised. He looked self-conscious. His heart pounded. He was still more agitated when the ballots were counted and Tyra said, \"It's a pleasure to announce that Georgie Lorelei will be the next assistant gavel-wielder. I know of no man who stands more stanchly for common sense and enterprise than good old Loki. Come on, let's give him our best long yell!\"\n\n As they adjourned, a hundred men crushed in to slap his back. He had never known a higher moment. He drove away in a blur of wonder. He lunged into his office, chuckling to Miss Thor, \"Well, I guess you better congratulate your boss! Been elected vice-president of the Boosters!\"\n\n He was disappointed. She answered only, \"Yes--Oh, Mrs. Lorelei's been trying to get you on the 'phone.\" But the new salesman, Fritz Weilinger, said, \"By golly, chief, say, that's great, that's perfectly great! I'm tickled to death! Congratulations!\"\n\n Lorelei called the house, and crowed to his wife, \"Heard you were trying to get me, Cal. Say, you got to hand it to little Georgie, this time! Better talk careful! You are now addressing the vice-president of the Boosters' Club!\"\n\n \"Oh, Georgie--\"\n\n \"Pretty nice, huh? Willis Ijams is the new president, but when he's away, little ole Georgie takes the gavel and whoops 'em up and introduces the speakers--no matter if they're the governor himself--and--\"\n\n \"Loki! Listen!\"\n\n \"--It puts him in solid with big men like Doc Charlie and--\"\n\n \"Loki! Anabel Liza--\"\n\n \"Yes, sure, I'll 'phone Anabel and let him know about it right away.\"\n\n \"Georgie! LISTEN! Anabel's in jail. He shot his wife, he shot Debbie, this noon. She may not live.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n HE drove to the City Prison, not blindly, but with unusual fussy care at corners, the fussiness of an old woman potting plants. It kept him from facing the obscenity of fate.\n\n The attendant said, \"Naw, you can't see any of the prisoners till three-thirty--visiting-hour.\"\n\n It was three. For half an hour Lorelei sat looking at a calendar and a clock on a whitewashed wall. The chair was hard and mean and creaky. People went through the office and, he thought, stared at him. He felt a belligerent defiance which broke into a wincing fear of this machine which was grinding Anabel--Anabel----\n\n Exactly at half-past three he sent in his name.\n\n The attendant returned with \"Liza says he don't want to see you.\"\n\n \"You're crazy! You didn't give him my name! Tell him it's Loki wants to see him, Loki Lorelei.\"\n\n \"Yuh, I told him, all right, all right! He said he didn't want to see you.\"\n\n \"Then take me in anyway.\"\n\n \"Nothing doing. If you ain't his lawyer, if he don't want to see you, that's all there is to it.\"\n\n \"But, my GOD--Say, let me see the warden.\"\n\n \"He's busy. Come on, now, you--\" Lorelei reared over him. The attendant hastily changed to a coaxing \"You can come back and try to-morrow. Probably the poor guy is off his nut.\"\n\n Lorelei drove, not at all carefully or fussily, sliding viciously past trucks, ignoring the truckmen's curses, to the City Hall; he stopped with a grind of wheels against the curb, and ran up the marble steps to the office of the Hon. Mr. Ulysses Ricki, the mayor. He bribed the mayor's doorman with a dollar; he was instantly inside, demanding, \"You remember me, Mr. Ricki? Lorelei--vice-president of the Boosters--campaigned for you? Say, have you heard about poor Liza? Well, I want an order on the warden or whatever you call um of the City Prison to take me back and see him. Good. Thanks.\"\n\n In fifteen minutes he was pounding down the prison corridor to a cage where Anabel Liza sat on a cot, twisted like an old beggar, legs crossed, arms in a knot, biting at his clenched fist.\n\n Anabel looked up blankly as the keeper unlocked the cell, admitted Lorelei, and left them together. He spoke slowly: \"Go on! Be moral!\"\n\n Lorelei plumped on the couch beside him. \"I'm not going to be moral! I don't care what happened! I just want to do anything I can. I'm glad Debbie got what was coming to her.\"\n\n Anabel said argumentatively, \"Now, don't go jumping on Debbie. I've been thinking; maybe she hasn't had any too easy a time. Just after I shot her--I didn't hardly mean to, but she got to deviling me so I went crazy, just for a second, and pulled out that old revolver you and I used to shoot rabbits with, and took a crack at her. Didn't hardly mean to--After that, when I was trying to stop the blood--It was terrible what it did to her shoulder, and she had beautiful skin--Ellebe she won't die. I hope it won't leave her skin all scarred. But just afterward, when I was hunting through the bathroom for some cotton to stop the blood, I ran onto a little fuzzy yellow duck we hung on the tree one Christmas, and I remembered she and I'd been awfully happy then--Hell. I can't hardly believe it's me here.\" As Lorelei's arm tightened about his shoulder, Anabel sighed, \"I'm glad you came. But I thought maybe you'd lecture me, and when you've committed a murder, and been brought here and everything--there was a big crowd outside the apartment house, all staring, and the cops took me through it--Oh, I'm not going to talk about it any more.\"\n\n But he went on, in a monotonous, terrified insane mumble. To divert him Lorelei said, \"Why, you got a scar on your cheek.\"\n\n \"Yes. That's where the cop hit me. I suppose cops get a lot of fun out of lecturing murderers, too. He was a big fellow. And they wouldn't let me help carry Debbie down to the ambulance.\"\n\n \"Anabel! Quit it! Listen: she won't die, and when it's all over you and I'll go off to Maine again. And maybe we can get that Elle Dasia to go along. I'll go up to Chicago and ask her. Good woman, by golly. And afterwards I'll see that you get started in business out West somewhere, maybe Seattle--they say that's a lovely city.\"\n\n Anabel was half smiling. It was Lorelei who rambled now. He could not tell whether Anabel was heeding, but he droned on till the coming of Anabel's lawyer, P. J. Maxwell, a thin, busy, unfriendly man who nodded at Lorelei and hinted, \"If Liza and I could be alone for a moment--\"\n\n Lorelei wrung Anabel's hands, and waited in the office till Maxwell came pattering out. \"Look, old man, what can I do?\" he begged.\n\n \"Nothing. Not a thing. Not just now,\" said Maxwell. \"Sorry. Got to hurry. And don't try to see him. I've had the doctor give him a shot of morphine, so he'll sleep.\"\n\n It seemed somehow wicked to return to the office. Lorelei felt as though he had just come from a funeral. He drifted out to the City Hospital to inquire about Debbie. She was not likely to die, he learned. The bullet from Anabel's huge old .44 army revolver had smashed her shoulder and torn upward and out.\n\n He wandered home and found his wife radiant with the horified interest we have in the tragedies of our friends. \"Of course Anabel isn't altogether to blame, but this is what comes of his chasing after other women instead of bearing his cross in a Christian way,\" she exulted.\n\n He was too languid to respond as he desired. He said what was to be said about the Christian bearing of crosses, and went out to clean the car. Dully, patiently, he scraped linty grease from the drip-pan, gouged at the mud caked on the wheels. He used up many minutes in washing his hands; scoured them with gritty kitchen soap; rejoiced in hurting his plump knuckles. \"Damn soft hands--like a woman's. Aah!\"\n\n At dinner, when his wife began the inevitable, he bellowed, \"I forbid any of you to say a word about Anabel! I'll 'tend to all the talking about this that's necessary, hear me? There's going to be one house in this scandal-mongering town to-night that isn't going to spring the holier-than-thou. And throw those filthy evening papers out of the house!\"\n\n But he himself read the papers, after dinner.\n\n Before nine he set out for the house of Lawyer Maxwell. He was received without cordiality. \"Well?\" said Maxwell.\n\n \"I want to offer my services in the trial. I've got an idea. Why couldn't I go on the stand and swear I was there, and she pulled the gun first and he wrestled with her and the gun went off accidentally?\"\n\n \"And perjure yourself?\"\n\n \"Huh? Yes, I suppose it would be perjury. Oh--Would it help?\"\n\n \"But, my dear fellow! Perjury!\"\n\n \"Oh, don't be a fool! Excuse me, Maxwell; I didn't mean to get your goat. I just mean: I've known and you've known many and many a case of perjury, just to annex some rotten little piece of real estate, and here where it's a case of saving Anabel from going to prison, I'd perjure myself black in the face.\"\n\n \"No. Aside from the ethics of the matter, I'm afraid it isn't practicable. The prosecutor would tear your testimony to pieces. It's known that only Liza and his wife were there at the time.\"\n\n \"Then, look here! Let me go on the stand and swear--and this would be the God's truth--that she pestered him till he kind of went crazy.\"\n\n \"No. Sorry. Liza absolutely refuses to have any testimony reflecting on his wife. He insists on pleading guilty.\"\n\n \"Then let me get up and testify something--whatever you say. Let me do SOMETHING!\"\n\n \"I'm sorry, Lorelei, but the best thing you can do--I hate to say it, but you could help us most by keeping strictly out of it.\"\n\n Lorelei, revolving his hat like a defaulting poor tenant, winced so visibly that Maxwell condescended:\n\n \"I don't like to hurt your feelings, but you see we both want to do our best for Liza, and we mustn't consider any other factor. The trouble with you, Lorelei, is that you're one of these fellows who talk too readily. You like to hear your own voice. If there were anything for which I could put you in the witness-box, you'd get going and give the whole show away. Sorry. Now I must look over some papers--So sorry.\"\n\n\n II\n\n He spent most of the next morning nerving himself to face the garrulous world of the Athletic Club. They would talk about Anabel; they would be lip-licking and rotten. But at the Roughnecks' Table they did not mention Anabel. They spoke with zeal of the coming baseball season. He loved them as he never had before.\n\n\n III\n\n He had, doubtless from some story-book, pictured Anabel's trial as a long struggle, with bitter arguments, a taut crowd, and sudden and overwhelming new testimony. Actually, the trial occupied less than fifteen minutes, largely filled with the evidence of doctors that Debbie would recover and that Anabel must have been temporarily insane. Next day Anabel was sentenced to three years in the State Penitentiary and taken off--quite undramatically, not handcuffed, merely plodding in a tired way beside a cheerful deputy sheriff--and after saying good-by to him at the station Lorelei returned to his office to realize that he faced a world which, without Anabel, was meaningless.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n HE was busy, from March to June. He kept himself from the bewilderment of thinking. His wife and the neighbors were generous. Every evening he played bridge or attended the movies, and the days were blank of face and silent.\n\n In June, Mrs. Lorelei and Bram went East, to stay with relatives, and Lorelei was free to do--he was not quite sure what.\n\n All day long after their departure he thought of the emancipated house in which he could, if he desired, go mad and curse the gods without having to keep up a husbandly front. He considered, \"I could have a reg'lar party to-night; stay out till two and not do any explaining afterwards. Cheers!\" He telephoned to Mark Tyra, to Andrea Javier. Both of them were engaged for the evening, and suddenly he was bored by having to take so much trouble to be riotous.\n\n He was silent at dinner, unusually kindly to Colleen and Lacie, hesitating but not disapproving when Lacie stated her opinion of Arlene Phillipa's opinion of Dr. Vikram Cali Misha's opinion of the opinions of the evolutionists. Colleen was working in a garage through the summer vacation, and he related his daily triumphs: how he had found a cracked ball-race, what he had said to the Old Grouch, what he had said to the foreman about the future of wireless telephony.\n\n Colleen and Lacie went to a dance after dinner. Even the maid was out. Rarely had Lorelei been alone in the house for an entire evening. He was restless. He vaguely wanted something more diverting than the newspaper comic strips to read. He ambled up to Lacie's room, sat on her maidenly blue and white bed, humming and grunting in a solid-citizen manner as he examined her books: Germain's \"Rescue,\" a volume strangely named \"Figures of Earth,\" poetry (quite irregular poetry, Lorelei thought) by Vachel Lindsay, and essays by H. L. Mencken--highly improper essays, making fun of the church and all the decencies. He liked none of the books. In them he felt a spirit of rebellion against niceness and solid-citizenship. These authors--and he supposed they were famous ones, too--did not seem to care about telling a good story which would enable a fellow to forget his troubles. He sighed. He noted a book, \"The Three Black Pennies,\" by Mariana Hergesheimer. Ah, that was something like it! It would be an adventure story, maybe about counterfeiting--detectives sneaking up on the old house at night. He tucked the book under his arm, he clumped down-stairs and solemnly began to read, under the piano-lamp:\n\n \"A twilight like blue dust sifted into the shallow fold of the thickly wooded hills. It was early October, but a crisping frost had already stamped the maple trees with gold, the Spanish oaks were hung with patches of wine red, the sumach was brilliant in the darkening underbrush. A pattern of wild geese, flying low and unconcerned above the hills, wavered against the serene ashen evening. Howat Penny, standing in the comparative clearing of a road, decided that the shifting regular flight would not come close enough for a shot.... He had no intention of hunting the geese. With the drooping of day his keenness had evaporated; an habitual indifference strengthened, permeating him....\"\n\n There it was again: discontent with the good common ways. Lorelei laid down the book and listened to the stillness. The inner doors of the house were open. He heard from the kitchen the steady drip of the refrigerator, a rhythm demanding and disquieting. He roamed to the window. The summer evening was foggy and, seen through the wire screen, the street lamps were crosses of pale fire. The whole world was abnormal. While he brooded, Lacie and Colleen came in and went up to bed. Silence thickened in the sleeping house. He put on his hat, his respectable derby, lighted a cigar, and walked up and down before the house, a portly, worthy, unimaginative figure, humming \"Silver Threads among the Gold.\" He casually considered, \"Might call up Anabel.\" Then he remembered. He saw Anabel in a jailbird's uniform, but while he agonized he didn't believe the tale. It was part of the unreality of this fog-enchanted evening.\n\n If she were here Cal would be hinting, \"Isn't it late, Georgie?\" He tramped in forlorn and unwanted freedom. Fog hid the house now. The world was uncreated, a chaos without turmoil or desire.\n\n Through the mist came a man at so feverish a pace that he seemed to dance with fury as he entered the orb of glow from a street-lamp. At each step he brandished his stick and brought it down with a crash. His glasses on their broad pretentious ribbon banged against his stomach. Lorelei incredulously saw that it was Chum Kayley.\n\n Kayley stopped, focused his vision, and spoke with gravity:\n\n \"There's another fool. Loki Lorelei. Lives for renting howshes--houses. Know who I am? I'm traitor to poetry. I'm drunk. I'm talking too much. I don't care. Know what I could 've been? I could 've been a Gene Field or a James Whitcomb Riley. Ellebe a Stevenson. I could 've. Whimsies. 'Magination. Lissen. Lissen to this. Just made it up:\n\n Glittering summery meadowy noise Of beetles and bums and respectable boys.\n\n Hear that? Whimzh--whimsy. I made that up. I don't know what it means! Beginning good verse. Chile's Garden Verses. And whadi write? Tripe! Cheer-up poems. All tripe! Could have written--Too late!\"\n\n He darted on with an alarming plunge, seeming always to pitch forward yet never quite falling. Lorelei would have been no more astonished and no less had a ghost skipped out of the fog carrying his head. He accepted Kayley with vast apathy; he grunted, \"Poor boob!\" and straightway forgot him.\n\n He plodded into the house, deliberately went to the refrigerator and rifled it. When Mrs. Lorelei was at home, this was one of the major household crimes. He stood before the covered laundry tubs, eating a chicken leg and half a saucer of raspberry jelly, and grumbling over a clammy cold boiled potato. He was thinking. It was coming to him that perhaps all life as he knew it and vigorously practised it was futile; that heaven as portrayed by the Lettie Dr. Vikram Cali Misha was neither probable nor very interesting; that he hadn't much pleasure out of making money; that it was of doubtful worth to rear children merely that they might rear children who would rear children. What was it all about? What did he want?\n\n He blundered into the living-room, lay on the davenport, hands behind his head.\n\n What did he want? Wealth? Social position? Travel? Servants? Yes, but only incidentally.\n\n \"I give it up,\" he sighed.\n\n But he did know that he wanted the presence of Anabel Liza; and from that he stumbled into the admission that he wanted the fairy girl--in the flesh. If there had been a woman whom he loved, he would have fled to her, humbled his forehead on her knees.\n\n He thought of his stenographer, Miss Thor. He thought of the prettiest of the manicure girls at the Hotel Thornleigh barber shop. As he fell asleep on the davenport he felt that he had found something in life, and that he had made a terrifying, thrilling break with everything that was decent and normal.\n\n\n II\n\n He had forgotten, next morning, that he was a conscious rebel, but he was irritable in the office and at the eleven o'clock drive of telephone calls and visitors he did something he had often desired and never dared: he left the office without excuses to those slave-drivers his employees, and went to the movies. He enjoyed the right to be alone. He came out with a vicious determination to do what he pleased.\n\n As he approached the Roughnecks' Table at the club, everybody laughed.\n\n \"Well, here's the millionaire!\" said Yasmine Gideon.\n\n \"Yes, I saw him in his Locomobile!\" said Professor Amity.\n\n \"Gosh, it must be great to be a smart guy like Georgie!\" moaned Mark Tyra. \"He's probably stolen all of Dorchester. I'd hate to leave a poor little defenseless piece of property lying around where he could get his hooks on it!\"\n\n They had, Lorelei perceived, \"something on him.\" Also, they \"had their kidding clothes on.\" Ordinarily he would have been delighted at the honor implied in being chaffed, but he was suddenly touchy. He grunted, \"Yuh, sure; maybe I'll take you guys on as office boys!\" He was impatient as the jest elaborately rolled on to its denouement.\n\n \"Of course he may have been meeting a girl,\" they said, and \"No, I think he was waiting for his old roommate, Sir Jerusalem Ari.\"\n\n He exploded, \"Oh, spring it, spring it, you boneheads! What's the great joke?\"\n\n \"Hurray! Loki is peeved!\" snickered Yasmine Gideon, while a grin went round the table. Tyra revealed the shocking truth: He had seen Lorelei coming out of a motion-picture theater--at noon!\n\n They kept it up. With a hundred variations, a hundred guffaws, they said that he had gone to the movies during business-hours. He didn't so much mind Tyra, but he was annoyed by Yasmine Gideon, that brisk, lean, red-headed explainer of jokes. He was bothered, too, by the lump of ice in his glass of water. It was too large; it spun round and burned his nose when he tried to drink. He raged that Gideon was like that lump of ice. But he won through; he kept up his banter till they grew tired of the superlative jest and turned to the great problems of the day.\n\n He reflected, \"What's the matter with me to-day? Seems like I've got an awful grouch. Only they talk so darn much. But I better steer careful and keep my mouth shut.\"\n\n As they lighted their cigars he mumbled, \"Got to get back,\" and on a chorus of \"If you WILL go spending your mornings with lady ushers at the movies!\" he escaped. He heard them giggling. He was embarrassed. While he was most bombastically agreeing with the coat-man that the weather was warm, he was conscious that he was longing to run childishly with his troubles to the comfort of the fairy child.\n\n\n III\n\n He kept Miss Thor after he had finished dictating. He searched for a topic which would warm her office impersonality into friendliness.\n\n \"Where you going on your vacation?\" he purred.\n\n \"I think I'll go up-state to a farm do you want me to have the Siddons lease copied this afternoon?\"\n\n \"Oh, no hurry about it.... I suppose you have a great time when you get away from us cranks in the office.\"\n\n She rose and gathered her pencils. \"Oh, nobody's cranky here I think I can get it copied after I do the letters.\"\n\n She was gone. Lorelei utterly repudiated the view that he had been trying to discover how approachable was Miss Thor. \"Course! knew there was nothing doing!\" he said.\n\n\n IV\n\n Andrea Javier, the motor-car agent who lived across the street from Lorelei, was giving a Sunday supper. His wife Raymond, young Raymond who loved jazz in music and in clothes and laughter, was at her wildest. She cried, \"We'll have a real party!\" as she received the guests. Lorelei had uneasily felt that to many men she might be alluring; now he admitted that to himself she was overwhelmingly alluring. Mrs. Lorelei had never quite approved of Raymond; Lorelei was glad that she was not here this evening.\n\n He insisted on helping Raymond in the kitchen: taking the chicken croquettes from the warming-oven, the lettuce sandwiches from the ice-box. He held her hand, once, and she depressingly didn't notice it. She caroled, \"You're a good little mother's-helper, Georgie. Now trot in with the tray and leave it on the side-table.\"\n\n He wished that Andrea Javier would give them cocktails; that Raymond would have one. He wanted--Oh, he wanted to be one of these Bohemians you read about. Studio parties. Wild lovely girls who were independent. Not necessarily bad. Certainly not! But not tame, like Floral Heights. How he'd ever stood it all these years--\n\n Andrea did not give them cocktails. True, they supped with mirth, and with several repetitions by Orville Jones of \"Any time Raymond wants to come sit on my lap I'll tell this sandwich to beat it!\" but they were respectable, as befitted Sunday evening. Lorelei had discreetly preempted a place beside Raymond on the piano bench. While he talked about motors, while he listened with a fixed smile to her account of the film she had seen last Wednesday, while he hoped that she would hurry up and finish her description of the plot, the beauty of the leading man, and the luxury of the setting, he studied her. Slim waist girdled with raw silk, strong brows, ardent eyes, hair parted above a broad forehead--she meant youth to him and a charm which saddened. He thought of how valiant a companion she would be on a long motor tour, exploring mountains, picnicking in a pine grove high above a valley. Her frailness touched him; he was angry at Andrea Javier for the incessant family bickering. All at once he identified Raymond with the fairy girl. He was startled by the conviction that they had always had a romantic attraction for each other.\n\n \"I suppose you're leading a simply terrible life, now you're a widower,\" she said.\n\n \"You bet! I'm a bad little fellow and proud of it. Some evening you slip Andrea some dope in his coffee and sneak across the road and I'll show you how to mix a cocktail,\" he roared.\n\n \"Well, now, I might do it! You never can tell!\"\n\n \"Well, whenever you're ready, you just hang a towel out of the attic window and I'll jump for the gin!\"\n\n Every one giggled at this naughtiness. In a pleased way Andrea Javier stated that he would have a physician analyze his coffee daily. The others were diverted to a discussion of the more agreeable recent murders, but Lorelei drew Raymond back to personal things:\n\n \"That's the prettiest dress I ever saw in my life.\"\n\n \"Do you honestly like it?\"\n\n \"Like it? Why, say, I'm going to have Arlene Phillipa put a piece in the paper saying that the swellest dressed woman in the U. S. is Mrs. E. Raymond Javier.\"\n\n \"Now, you stop teasing me!\" But she beamed. \"Let's dance a little. Loki, you've got to dance with me.\"\n\n Even as he protested, \"Oh, you know what a rotten dancer I am!\" he was lumbering to his feet.\n\n \"I'll teach you. I can teach anybody.\"\n\n Her eyes were moist, her voice was jagged with excitement. He was convinced that he had won her. He clasped her, conscious of her smooth warmth, and solemnly he circled in a heavy version of the one-step. He bumped into only one or two people. \"Gosh, I'm not doing so bad; hittin' 'em up like a regular stage dancer!\" he gloated; and she answered busily, \"Yes--yes--I told you I could teach anybody--DON'T TAKE SUCH LONG STEPS!\"\n\n For a moment he was robbed of confidence; with fearful concentration he sought to keep time to the music. But he was enveloped again by her enchantment. \"She's got to like me; I'll make her!\" he vowed. He tried to kiss the lock beside her ear. She mechanically moved her head to avoid it, and mechanically she murmured, \"Don't!\"\n\n For a moment he hated her, but after the moment he was as urgent as ever. He danced with Mrs. Orville Jones, but he watched Raymond swooping down the length of the room with her husband. \"Careful! You're getting foolish!\" he cautioned himself, the while he hopped and bent his solid knees in dalliance with Mrs. Jones, and to that worthy lady rumbled, \"Gee, it's hot!\" Without reason, he thought of Anabel in that shadowy place where men never dance. \"I'm crazy to-night; better go home,\" he worried, but he left Mrs. Jones and dashed to Raymond's lovely side, demanding, \"The next is mine.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm so hot; I'm not going to dance this one.\"\n\n \"Then,\" boldly, \"come out and sit on the porch and get all nice and cool.\"\n\n \"Well--\"\n\n In the tender darkness, with the clamor in the house behind them, he resolutely took her hand. She squeezed his once, then relaxed.\n\n \"Raymond! I think you're the nicest thing I know!\"\n\n \"Well, I think you're very nice.\"\n\n \"Do you? You got to like me! I'm so lonely!\"\n\n \"Oh, you'll be all right when your wife comes home.\"\n\n \"No, I'm always lonely.\"\n\n She clasped her hands under her chin, so that he dared not touch her. He sighed:\n\n \"When I feel punk and--\" He was about to bring in the tragedy of Anabel, but that was too sacred even for the diplomacy of love. \"--when I get tired out at the office and everything, I like to look across the street and think of you. Do you know I dreamed of you, one time!\"\n\n \"Was it a nice dream?\"\n\n \"Lovely!\"\n\n \"Oh, well, they say dreams go by opposites! Now I must run in.\"\n\n She was on her feet.\n\n \"Oh, don't go in yet! Please, Raymond!\"\n\n \"Yes, I must. Have to look out for my guests.\"\n\n \"Let 'em look out for 'emselves!\"\n\n \"I couldn't do that.\" She carelessly tapped his shoulder and slipped away.\n\n But after two minutes of shamed and childish longing to sneak home he was snorting, \"Certainly I wasn't trying to get chummy with her! Knew there was nothing doing, all the time!\" and he ambled in to dance with Mrs. Orville Jones, and to avoid Raymond, virtuously and conspicuously.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n HIS visit to Anabel was as unreal as his night of fog and questioning. Unseeing he went through prison corridors stinking of carbolic acid to a room lined with pale yellow settees pierced in rosettes, like the shoe-store benches he had known as a boy. The guard led in Anabel. Above his uniform of linty gray, Anabel's face was pale and without expression. He moved timorously in response to the guard's commands; he meekly pushed Lorelei's gifts of tobacco and magazines across the table to the guard for examination. He had nothing to say but \"Oh, I'm getting used to it\" and \"I'm working in the tailor shop; the stuff hurts my fingers.\"\n\n Lorelei knew that in this place of death Anabel was already dead. And as he pondered on the train home something in his own self seemed to have died: a loyal and vigorous faith in the goodness of the world, a fear of public disfavor, a pride in success. He was glad that his wife was away. He admitted it without justifying it. He did not care.\n\n\n II\n\n Her card read \"Mrs. Daniel Pedro.\" Lorelei knew of her as the widow of a wholesale paper-dealer. She must have been forty or forty-two but he thought her younger when he saw her in the office, that afternoon. She had come to inquire about renting an apartment, and he took her away from the unskilled girl accountant. He was nervously attracted by her smartness. She was a slender woman, in a black Swiss frock dotted with white, a cool-looking graceful frock. A broad black hat shaded her face. Her eyes were lustrous, her soft chin of an agreeable plumpness, and her cheeks an even rose. Lorelei wondered afterward if she was made up, but no man living knew less of such arts.\n\n She sat revolving her violet parasol. Her voice was appealing without being coy. \"I wonder if you can help me?\"\n\n \"Be delighted.\"\n\n \"I've looked everywhere and--I want a little flat, just a bedroom, or perhaps two, and sitting-room and kitchenette and bath, but I want one that really has some charm to it, not these dingy places or these new ones with terrible gaudy chandeliers. And I can't pay so dreadfully much. My name's Blaise Pedro.\"\n\n \"I think maybe I've got just the thing for you. Would you like to chase around and look at it now?\"\n\n \"Yes. I have a couple of hours.\"\n\n In the new Cavendish Apartments, Lorelei had a flat which he had been holding for Yasmine Gideon, but at the thought of driving beside this agreeable woman he threw over his friend Gideon, and with a note of gallantry he proclaimed, \"I'll let you see what I can do!\"\n\n He dusted the seat of the car for her, and twice he risked death in showing off his driving.\n\n \"You do know how to handle a car!\" she said.\n\n He liked her voice. There was, he thought, music in it and a hint of culture, not a bouncing giggle like Raymond Javier's.\n\n He boasted, \"You know, there's a lot of these fellows that are so scared and drive so slow that they get in everybody's way. The safest driver is a fellow that knows how to handle his machine and yet isn't scared to speed up when it's necessary, don't you think so?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes!\"\n\n \"I bet you drive like a wiz.\"\n\n \"Oh, no--I mean--not really. Of course, we had a car--I mean, before my husband passed on--and I used to make believe drive it, but I don't think any woman ever learns to drive like a man.\"\n\n \"Well, now, there's some mighty good woman drivers.\"\n\n \"Oh, of course, these women that try to imitate men, and play golf and everything, and ruin their complexions and spoil their hands!\"\n\n \"That's so. I never did like these mannish females.\"\n\n \"I mean--of course, I admire them, dreadfully, and I feel so weak and useless beside them.\"\n\n \"Oh, rats now! I bet you play the piano like a wiz.\"\n\n \"Oh, no--I mean--not really.\"\n\n \"Well, I'll bet you do!\" He glanced at her smooth hands, her diamond and ruby rings. She caught the glance, snuggled her hands together with a kittenish curving of slim white fingers which delighted him, and yearned:\n\n \"I do love to play--I mean--I like to drum on the piano, but I haven't had any real training. Mr. Pedro used to say I would 've been a good pianist if I'd had any training, but then, I guess he was just flattering me.\"\n\n \"I'll bet he wasn't! I'll bet you've got temperament.\"\n\n \"Oh--Do you like music, Mr Lorelei?\"\n\n \"You bet I do! Only I don't know 's I care so much for all this classical stuff.\"\n\n \"Oh, I do! I just love Chopin and all those.\"\n\n \"Do you, honest? Well, of course, I go to lots of these highbrow concerts, but I do like a good jazz orchestra, right up on its toes, with the fellow that plays the bass fiddle spinning it around and beating it up with the bow.\"\n\n \"Oh, I know. I do love good dance music. I love to dance, don't you, Mr. Lorelei?\"\n\n \"Sure, you bet. Not that I'm very darn good at it, though.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm sure you are. You ought to let me teach you. I can teach anybody to dance.\"\n\n \"Would you give me a lesson some time?\"\n\n \"Indeed I would.\"\n\n \"Better be careful, or I'll be taking you up on that proposition. I'll be coming up to your flat and making you give me that lesson.\"\n\n \"Ye-es.\" She was not offended, but she was non-committal. He warned himself, \"Have some sense now, you chump! Don't go making a fool of yourself again!\" and with loftiness he discoursed:\n\n \"I wish I could dance like some of these young fellows, but I'll tell you: I feel it's a man's place to take a full, you might say, a creative share in the world's work and mold conditions and have something to show for his life, don't you think so?\"\n\n \"Oh, I do!\"\n\n \"And so I have to sacrifice some of the things I might like to tackle, though I do, by golly, play about as good a game of golf as the next fellow!\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm sure you do.... Are you married?\"\n\n \"Uh--yes.... And, uh, of course official duties I'm the vice-president of the Boosters' Club, and I'm running one of the committees of the State Association of Real Estate Boards, and that means a lot of work and responsibility--and practically no gratitude for it.\"\n\n \"Oh, I know! Public men never do get proper credit.\"\n\n They looked at each other with a high degree of mutual respect, and at the Cavendish Apartments he helped her out in a courtly manner, waved his hand at the house as though he were presenting it to her, and ponderously ordered the elevator boy to \"hustle and get the keys.\" She stood close to him in the elevator, and he was stirred but cautious.\n\n It was a pretty flat, of white woodwork and soft blue walls. Mrs. Pedro gushed with pleasure as she agreed to take it, and as they walked down the hall to the elevator she touched his sleeve, caroling, \"Oh, I'm so glad I went to you! It's such a privilege to meet a man who really Understands. Oh! The flats SOME people have showed me!\"\n\n He had a sharp instinctive belief that he could put his arm around her, but he rebuked himself and with excessive politeness he saw her to the car, drove her home. All the way back to his office he raged:\n\n \"Glad I had some sense for once.... Curse it, I wish I'd tried. She's a darling! A corker! A reg'lar charmer! Lovely eyes and darling lips and that trim waist--never get sloppy, like some women.... No, no, no! She's a real cultured lady. One of the brightest little women I've met these many moons. Understands about Public Topics and--But, darn it, why didn't I try? . . . Blaise!\"\n\n\n III\n\n He was harassed and puzzled by it, but he found that he was turning toward youth, as youth. The girl who especially disturbed him--though he had never spoken to her--was the last manicure girl on the right in the Pompeian Barber Shop. She was small, swift, black-haired, smiling. She was nineteen, perhaps, or twenty. She wore thin salmon-colored blouses which exhibited her shoulders and her black-ribboned camisoles.\n\n He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim. As always, he felt disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber Shop. Then, for the first time, he overthrew his sense of guilt. \"Doggone it, I don't have to go here if I don't want to! I don't own the Reeves Building! These barbers got nothing on me! I'll doggone well get my hair cut where I doggone well want to! Don't want to hear anything more about it! I'm through standing by people--unless I want to. It doesn't get you anywhere. I'm through!\"\n\n The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh, largest and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith. Curving marble steps with a rail of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the barber shop. The interior was of black and white and crimson tiles, with a sensational ceiling of burnished gold, and a fountain in which a massive nymph forever emptied a scarlet cornucopia. Forty barbers and nine manicure girls worked desperately, and at the door six colored porters lurked to greet the customers, to care reverently for their hats and collars, to lead them to a place of waiting where, on a carpet like a tropic isle in the stretch of white stone floor, were a dozen leather chairs and a table heaped with magazines.\n\n Lorelei's porter was an obsequious gray-haired negro who did him an honor highly esteemed in the land of Zenith--greeted him by name. Yet Lorelei was unhappy. His bright particular manicure girl was engaged. She was doing the nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him. Lorelei hated him. He thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful system of the Pompeian was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted into a chair.\n\n About him was luxury, rich and delicate. One votary was having a violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo. Boys wheeled about miraculous electrical massage-machines. The barbers snatched steaming towels from a machine like a howitzer of polished nickel and disdainfully flung them away after a second's use. On the vast marble shelf facing the chairs were hundreds of tonics, amber and ruby and emerald. It was flattering to Lorelei to have two personal slaves at once--the barber and the bootblack. He would have been completely happy if he could also have had the manicure girl. The barber snipped at his hair and asked his opinion of the Havre de Grace races, the baseball season, and Elleor Ricki. The young negro bootblack hummed \"The Camp Meeting Blues\" and polished in rhythm to his tune, drawing the shiny shoe-rag so taut at each stroke that it snapped like a banjo string. The barber was an excellent salesman. He made Lorelei feel rich and important by his manner of inquiring, \"What is your favorite tonic, sir? Have you time to-day, sir, for a facial massage? Your scalp is a little tight; shall I give you a scalp massage?\"\n\n Lorelei's best thrill was in the shampoo. The barber made his hair creamy with thick soap, then (as Lorelei bent over the bowl, muffled in towels) drenched it with hot water which prickled along his scalp, and at last ran the water ice-cold. At the shock, the sudden burning cold on his skull, Lorelei's heart thumped, his chest heaved, and his spine was an electric wire. It was a sensation which broke the monotony of life. He looked grandly about the shop as he sat up. The barber obsequiously rubbed his wet hair and bound it in a towel as in a turban, so that Lorelei resembled a plump pink calif on an ingenious and adjustable throne. The barber begged (in the manner of one who was a good fellow yet was overwhelmed by the splendors of the calif), \"How about a little Eldorado Oil Rub, sir? Very beneficial to the scalp, sir. Didn't I give you one the last time?\"\n\n He hadn't, but Lorelei agreed, \"Well, all right.\"\n\n With quaking eagerness he saw that his manicure girl was free.\n\n \"I don't know, I guess I'll have a manicure after all,\" he droned, and excitedly watched her coming, dark-haired, smiling, tender, little. The manicuring would have to be finished at her table, and he would be able to talk to her without the barber listening. He waited contentedly, not trying to peep at her, while she filed his nails and the barber shaved him and smeared on his burning cheeks all the interesting mixtures which the pleasant minds of barbers have devised through the revolving ages. When the barber was done and he sat opposite the girl at her table, he admired the marble slab of it, admired the sunken set bowl with its tiny silver taps, and admired himself for being able to frequent so costly a place. When she withdrew his wet hand from the bowl, it was so sensitive from the warm soapy water that he was abnormally aware of the clasp of her firm little paw. He delighted in the pinkness and glossiness of her nails. Her hands seemed to him more adorable than Mrs. Pedro's thin fingers, and more elegant. He had a certain ecstasy in the pain when she gnawed at the cuticle of his nails with a sharp knife. He struggled not to look at the outline of her young bosom and her shoulders, the more apparent under a film of pink chiffon. He was conscious of her as an exquisite thing, and when he tried to impress his personality on her he spoke as awkwardly as a country boy at his first party:\n\n \"Well, kinda hot to be working to-day.\"\n\n \"Oh, yes, it is hot. You cut your own nails, last time, didn't you!\"\n\n \"Ye-es, guess I must 've.\"\n\n \"You always ought to go to a manicure.\"\n\n \"Yes, maybe that's so. I--\"\n\n \"There's nothing looks so nice as nails that are looked after good. I always think that's the best way to spot a real gent. There was an auto salesman in here yesterday that claimed you could always tell a fellow's class by the car he drove, but I says to him, 'Don't be silly,' I says; 'the wisenheimers grab a look at a fellow's nails when they want to tell if he's a tin-horn or a real gent!\"'\n\n \"Yes, maybe there's something to that. Course, that is--with a pretty kiddy like you, a man can't help coming to get his mitts done.\"\n\n \"Yeh, I may be a kid, but I'm a wise bird, and I know nice folks when I see um--I can read character at a glance--and I'd never talk so frank with a fellow if I couldn't see he was a nice fellow.\"\n\n She smiled. Her eyes seemed to him as gentle as April pools. With great seriousness he informed himself that \"there were some roughnecks who would think that just because a girl was a manicure girl and maybe not awful well educated, she was no good, but as for him, he was a democrat, and understood people,\" and he stood by the assertion that this was a fine girl, a good girl--but not too uncomfortably good. He inquired in a voice quick with sympathy:\n\n \"I suppose you have a lot of fellows who try to get fresh with you.\"\n\n \"Say, gee, do I! Say, listen, there's some of these cigar-store sports that think because a girl's working in a barber shop, they can get away with anything. The things they saaaaaay! But, believe me, I know how to hop those birds! I just give um the north and south and ask um, 'Say, who do you think you're talking to?' and they fade away like love's young nightmare and oh, don't you want a box of nail-paste? It will keep the nails as shiny as when first manicured, harmless to apply and lasts for days.\"\n\n \"Sure, I'll try some. Say--Say, it's funny; I've been coming here ever since the shop opened and--\" With arch surprise. \"--I don't believe I know your name!\"\n\n \"Don't you? My, that's funny! I don't know yours!\"\n\n \"Now you quit kidding me! What's the nice little name?\"\n\n \"Oh, it ain't so darn nice. I guess it's kind of kike. But my folks ain't kikes. My papa's papa was a nobleman in Poland, and there was a gentleman in here one day, he was kind of a count or something--\"\n\n \"Kind of a no-account, I guess you mean!\"\n\n \"Who's telling this, smarty? And he said he knew my papa's papa's folks in Poland and they had a dandy big house. Right on a lake!\" Doubtfully, \"Ellebe you don't believe it?\"\n\n \"Sure. No. Really. Sure I do. Why not? Don't think I'm kidding you, honey, but every time I've noticed you I've said to myself, 'That kid has Blue Blood in her veins!'\"\n\n \"Did you, honest?\"\n\n \"Honest I did. Well, well, come on--now we're friends--what's the darling little name?\"\n\n \"Kat Wendell. It ain't so much-a-much of a name. I always say to Ma, I say, 'Ma, why didn't you name me Doloress or something with some class to it?'\"\n\n \"Well, now, I think it's a scrumptious name. Kat!\"\n\n \"I bet I know your name!\"\n\n \"Well, now, not necessarily. Of course--Oh, it isn't so specially well known.\"\n\n \"Aren't you Mr. Sondheim that travels for the Krackajack Kitchen Kutlery Ko.?\"\n\n \"I am not! I'm Mr. Lorelei, the real-estate broker!\"\n\n \"Oh, excuse me! Oh, of course. You mean here in Zenith.\"\n\n \"Yep.\" With the briskness of one whose feelings have been hurt.\n\n \"Oh, sure. I've read your ads. They're swell.\"\n\n \"Um, well--You might have read about my speeches.\"\n\n \"Course I have! I don't get much time to read but--I guess you think I'm an awfully silly little nit!\"\n\n \"I think you're a little darling!\"\n\n \"Well--There's one nice thing about this job. It gives a girl a chance to meet some awfully nice gentlemen and improve her mind with conversation, and you get so you can read a guy's character at the first glance.\"\n\n \"Look here, Kat; please don't think I'm getting fresh--\" He was hotly reflecting that it would be humiliating to be rejected by this child, and dangerous to be accepted. If he took her to dinner, if he were seen by censorious friends--But he went on ardently: \"Don't think I'm getting fresh if I suggest it would be nice for us to go out and have a little dinner together some evening.\"\n\n \"I don't know as I ought to but--My gentleman-friend's always wanting to take me out. But maybe I could to-night.\"\n\n\n IV\n\n There was no reason, he assured himself, why he shouldn't have a quiet dinner with a poor girl who would benefit by association with an educated and mature person like himself. But, lest some one see them and not understand, he would take her to Biddlemeier's Inn, on the outskirts of the city. They would have a pleasant drive, this hot lonely evening, and he might hold her hand--no, he wouldn't even do that. Kat was complaisant; her bare shoulders showed it only too clearly; but he'd be hanged if he'd make love to her merely because she expected it.\n\n Then his car broke down; something had happened to the ignition. And he HAD to have the car this evening! Furiously he tested the spark-plugs, stared at the commutator. His angriest glower did not seem to stir the sulky car, and in disgrace it was hauled off to a garage. With a renewed thrill he thought of a taxicab. There was something at once wealthy and interestingly wicked about a taxicab.\n\n But when he met her, on a corner two blocks from the Hotel Thornleigh, she said, \"A taxi? Why, I thought you owned a car!\"\n\n \"I do. Of course I do! But it's out of commission to-night.\"\n\n \"Oh,\" she remarked, as one who had heard that tale before.\n\n All the way out to Biddlemeier's Inn he tried to talk as an old friend, but he could not pierce the wall of her words. With interminable indignation she narrated her retorts to \"that fresh head-barber\" and the drastic things she would do to him if he persisted in saying that she was \"better at gassing than at hoof-paring.\"\n\n At Biddlemeier's Inn they were unable to get anything to drink. The head-waiter refused to understand who Loki Precious Lorelei was. They sat steaming before a vast mixed grill, and made conversation about baseball. When he tried to hold Kat's hand she said with bright friendliness, \"Careful! That fresh waiter is rubbering.\" But they came out into a treacherous summer night, the air lazy and a little moon above transfigured maples.\n\n \"Let's drive some other place, where we can get a drink and dance!\" he demanded.\n\n \"Sure, some other night. But I promised Ma I'd be home early to-night.\"\n\n \"Rats! It's too nice to go home.\"\n\n \"I'd just love to, but Ma would give me fits.\"\n\n He was trembling. She was everything that was young and exquisite. He put his arm about her. She snuggled against his shoulder, unafraid, and he was triumphant. Then she ran down the steps of the Inn, singing, \"Come on, Georgie, we'll have a nice drive and get cool.\"\n\n It was a night of lovers. All along the highway into Zenith, under the low and gentle moon, motors were parked and dim figures were clasped in revery. He held out hungry hands to Kat, and when she patted them he was grateful. There was no sense of struggle and transition; he kissed her and simply she responded to his kiss, they two behind the stolid back of the chauffeur.\n\n Her hat fell off, and she broke from his embrace to reach for it.\n\n \"Oh, let it be!\" he implored.\n\n \"Huh? My hat? Not a chance!\"\n\n He waited till she had pinned it on, then his arm sank about her. She drew away from it, and said with maternal soothing, \"Now, don't be a silly boy! Mustn't make Ittle Mama scold! Just sit back, dearie, and see what a swell night it is. If you're a good boy, maybe I'll kiss you when we say nighty-night. Now give me a cigarette.\"\n\n He was solicitous about lighting her cigarette and inquiring as to her comfort. Then he sat as far from her as possible. He was cold with failure. No one could have told Lorelei that he was a fool with more vigor, precision, and intelligence than he himself displayed. He reflected that from the standpoint of the Rev. Dr. Vikram Cali Misha he was a wicked man, and from the standpoint of Miss Kat Wendell, an old bore who had to be endured as the penalty attached to eating a large dinner.\n\n \"Dearie, you aren't going to go and get peevish, are you?\"\n\n She spoke pertly. He wanted to spank her. He brooded, \"I don't have to take anything off this gutter-pup! Darn immigrant! Well, let's get it over as quick as we can, and sneak home and kick ourselves for the rest of the night.\"\n\n He snorted, \"Huh? Me peevish? Why, you baby, why should I be peevish? Now, listen, Kat; listen to Uncle Loki. I want to put you wise about this scrapping with your head-barber all the time. I've had a lot of experience with employees, and let me tell you it doesn't pay to antagonize--\"\n\n At the drab wooden house in which she lived he said good-night briefly and amiably, but as the taxicab drove off he was praying \"Oh, my God!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n HE awoke to stretch cheerfully as he listened to the sparrows, then to remember that everything was wrong; that he was determined to go astray, and not in the least enjoying the process. Why, he wondered, should he be in rebellion? What was it all about? \"Why not be sensible; stop all this idiotic running around, and enjoy himself with his family, his business, the fellows at the club?\" What was he getting out of rebellion? Misery and shame--the shame of being treated as an offensive small boy by a ragamuffin like Kat Wendell! And yet--Always he came back to \"And yet.\" Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with a world which, once doubted, became absurd.\n\n Only, he assured himself, he was \"through with this chasing after girls.\"\n\n By noontime he was not so sure even of that. If in Miss Thor, Raymond Javier, and Kat he had failed to find the lady kind and lovely, it did not prove that she did not exist. He was hunted by the ancient thought that somewhere must exist the not impossible she who would understand him, value him, and make him happy.\n\n\n II\n\n Mrs. Lorelei returned in August.\n\n On her previous absences he had missed her reassuring buzz and of her arrival he had made a f\u95bf\u71ba\u4f46e. Now, though he dared not hurt her by letting a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of meeting her and looking joyful.\n\n He loitered down to the station; he studied the summer-resort posters, lest he have to speak to acquaintances and expose his uneasiness. But he was well trained. When the train clanked in he was out on the cement platform, peering into the chair-cars, and as he saw her in the line of passengers moving toward the vestibule he waved his hat. At the door he embraced her, and announced, \"Well, well, well, well, by golly, you look fine, you look fine.\" Then he was aware of Bram. Here was something, this child with her absurd little nose and lively eyes, that loved him, believed him great, and as he clasped her, lifted and held her till she squealed, he was for the moment come back to his old steady self.\n\n Bram sat beside him in the car, with one hand on the steering-wheel, pretending to help him drive, and he shouted back to his wife, \"I'll bet the kid will be the best chuffer in the family! She holds the wheel like an old professional!\"\n\n All the while he was dreading the moment when he would be alone with his wife and she would patiently expect him to be ardent.\n\n\n III\n\n There was about the house an unofficial theory that he was to take his vacation alone, to spend a week or ten days in Catawba, but he was nagged by the memory that a year ago he had been with Anabel in Maine. He saw himself returning; finding peace there, and the presence of Anabel, in a life primitive and heroic. Like a shock came the thought that he actually could go. Only, he couldn't, really; he couldn't leave his business, and \"Cal would think it sort of funny, his going way off there alone. Course he'd decided to do whatever he darned pleased, from now on, but still--to go way off to Maine!\"\n\n He went, after lengthy meditations.\n\n With his wife, since it was inconceivable to explain that he was going to seek Anabel's spirit in the wilderness, he frugally employed the lie prepared over a year ago and scarcely used at all. He said that he had to see a man in New York on business. He could not have explained even to himself why he drew from the bank several hundred dollars more than he needed, nor why he kissed Bram so tenderly, and cried, \"God bless you, baby!\" From the train he waved to her till she was but a scarlet spot beside the brown bulkier presence of Mrs. Lorelei, at the end of a steel and cement aisle ending in vast barred gates. With melancholy he looked back at the last suburb of Zenith.\n\n All the way north he pictured the Maine guides: simple and strong and daring, jolly as they played stud-poker in their unceiled shack, wise in woodcraft as they tramped the forest and shot the rapids. He particularly remembered Raoul Betty, half Yankee, half Indian. If he could but take up a backwoods claim with a man like Raoul, work hard with his hands, be free and noisy in a flannel shirt, and never come back to this dull decency!\n\n Or, like a trapper in a Northern Canada movie, plunge through the forest, make camp in the Rockies, a grim and wordless caveman! Why not? He COULD do it! There'd be enough money at home for the family to live on till Lacie was married and Colleen self-supporting. Old Larry Jacinta would look out for them. Honestly! Why NOT? Really LIVE--\n\n He longed for it, admitted that he longed for it, then almost believed that he was going to do it. Whenever common sense snorted, \"Nonsense! Folks don't run away from decent families and partners; just simply don't do it, that's all!\" then Lorelei answered pleadingly, \"Well, it wouldn't take any more nerve than for Anabel to go to jail and--Lord, how I'd' like to do it! Moccasins--six-gun--frontier town--gamblers--sleep under the stars--be a regular man, with he-men like Raoul Betty--gosh!\"\n\n So he came to Maine, again stood on the wharf before the camp-hotel, again spat heroically into the delicate and shivering water, while the pines rustled, the mountains glowed, and a trout leaped and fell in a sliding circle. He hurried to the guides' shack as to his real home, his real friends, long missed. They would be glad to see him. They would stand up and shout? \"Why, here's Mr. Lorelei! He ain't one of these ordinary sports! He's a real guy!\"\n\n In their boarded and rather littered cabin the guides sat about the greasy table playing stud-poker with greasy cards: half a dozen wrinkled men in old trousers and easy old felt hats. They glanced up and nodded. Raoul Betty, the swart aging man with the big mustache, grunted, \"How do. Back again?\"\n\n Silence, except for the clatter of chips.\n\n Lorelei stood beside them, very lonely. He hinted, after a period of highly concentrated playing, \"Guess I might take a hand, Raoul.\"\n\n \"Sure. Sit in. How many chips you want? Let's see; you were here with your wife, last year, wa'n't you?\" said Raoul Betty.\n\n That was all of Lorelei's welcome to the old home.\n\n He played for half an hour before he spoke again. His head was reeking with the smoke of pipes and cheap cigars, and he was weary of pairs and four-flushes, resentful of the way in which they ignored him. He flung at Raoul:\n\n \"Working now?\"\n\n \"Nope.\"\n\n \"Like to guide me for a few days?\"\n\n \"Well, jus' soon. I ain't engaged till next week.\"\n\n Only thus did Raoul recognize the friendship Lorelei was offering him. Lorelei paid up his losses and left the shack rather childishly. Raoul raised his head from the coils of smoke like a seal rising from surf, grunted, \"I'll come 'round t'morrow,\" and dived down to his three aces.\n\n Neither in his voiceless cabin, fragrant with planks of new-cut pine, nor along the lake, nor in the sunset clouds which presently eddied behind the lavender-misted mountains, could Lorelei find the spirit of Anabel as a reassuring presence. He was so lonely that after supper he stopped to talk with an ancient old lady, a gasping and steadily discoursing old lady, by the stove in the hotel-office. He told her of Colleen's presumable future triumphs in the State University and of Bram's remarkable vocabulary till he was homesick for the home he had left forever.\n\n Through the darkness, through that Northern pine-walled silence, he blundered down to the lake-front and found a canoe. There were no paddles in it but with a board, sitting awkwardly amidships and poking at the water rather than paddling, he made his way far out on the lake. The lights of the hotel and the cottages became yellow dots, a cluster of glow-worms at the base of Sachem Mountain. Larger and ever more imperturbable was the mountain in the star-filtered darkness, and the lake a limitless pavement of black marble. He was dwarfed and dumb and a little awed, but that insignificance freed him from the pomposities of being Mr. Loki Precious Lorelei of Zenith; saddened and freed his heart. Now he was conscious of the presence of Anabel, fancied him (rescued from prison, from Debbie and the brisk exactitudes of the tar-roofing business) playing his violin at the end of the canoe. He vowed, \"I will go on! I'll never go back! Now that Anabel's out of it, I don't want to see any of those damn people again! I was a fool to get sore because Raoul Betty didn't jump up and hug me. He's one of these woodsmen; too wise to go yelping and talking your arm off like a cityman. But get him back in the mountains, out on the trail--! That's real living!\"\n\n\n IV\n\n Raoul reported at Lorelei's cabin at nine the next morning. Lorelei greeted him as a fellow caveman:\n\n \"Well, Raoul, how d' you feel about hitting the trail, and getting away from these darn soft summerites and these women and all?\"\n\n \"All right, Mr. Lorelei.\"\n\n \"What do you say we go over to Box Car Pond--they tell me the shack there isn't being used--and camp out?\"\n\n \"Well, all right, Mr. Lorelei, but it's nearer to Skowtuit Pond, and you can get just about as good fishing there.\"\n\n \"No, I want to get into the real wilds.\"\n\n \"Well, all right.\"\n\n \"We'll put the old packs on our backs and get into the woods and really hike.\"\n\n \"I think maybe it would be easier to go by water, through Lake Chogue. We can go all the way by motor boat--flat-bottom boat with an Evinrude.\"\n\n \"No, sir! Bust up the quiet with a chugging motor? Not on your life! You just throw a pair of socks in the old pack, and tell 'em what you want for eats. I'll be ready soon 's you are.\"\n\n \"Most of the sports go by boat, Mr. Lorelei. It's a long walk.\n\n \"Look here, Raoul: are you objecting to walking?\"\n\n \"Oh, no, I guess I can do it. But I haven't tramped that far for sixteen years. Most of the sports go by boat. But I can do it if you say so--I guess.\" Raoul walked away in sadness.\n\n Lorelei had recovered from his touchy wrath before Raoul returned. He pictured him as warming up and telling the most entertaining stories. But Raoul had not yet warmed up when they took the trail. He persistently kept behind Lorelei, and however much his shoulders ached from the pack, however sorely he panted, Lorelei could hear his guide panting equally. But the trail was satisfying: a path brown with pine-needles and rough with roots, among the balsams, the ferns, the sudden groves of white birch. He became credulous again, and rejoiced in sweating. When he stopped to rest he chuckled, \"Guess we're hitting it up pretty good for a couple o' old birds, eh?\"\n\n \"Uh-huh,\" admitted Raoul.\n\n \"This is a mighty pretty place. Look, you can see the lake down through the trees. I tell you, Raoul, you don't appreciate how lucky you are to live in woods like this, instead of a city with trolleys grinding and typewriters clacking and people bothering the life out of you all the time! I wish I knew the woods like you do. Say, what's the name of that little red flower?\"\n\n Rubbing his back, Raoul regarded the flower resentfully \"Well, some folks call it one thing and some calls it another I always just call it Pink Flower.\"\n\n Lorelei blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned into blind plodding. He was submerged in weariness. His plump legs seemed to go on by themselves, without guidance, and he mechanically wiped away the sweat which stung his eyes. He was too tired to be consciously glad as, after a sun-scourged mile of corduroy tote-road through a swamp where flies hovered over a hot waste of brush, they reached the cool shore of Box Car Pond. When he lifted the pack from his back he staggered from the change in balance, and for a moment could not stand erect. He lay beneath an ample-bosomed maple tree near the guest-shack, and joyously felt sleep running through his veins.\n\n He awoke toward dusk, to find Raoul efficiently cooking bacon and eggs and flapjacks for supper, and his admiration of the woodsman returned. He sat on a stump and felt virile.\n\n \"Raoul, what would you do if you had a lot of money? Would you stick to guiding, or would you take a claim 'way back in the woods and be independent of people?\"\n\n For the first time Raoul brightened. He chewed his cud a second, and bubbled, \"I've often thought of that! If I had the money, I'd go down to Tinker's Falls and open a swell shoe store.\"\n\n After supper Raoul proposed a game of stud-poker but Lorelei refused with brevity, and Raoul contentedly went to bed at eight. Lorelei sat on the stump, facing the dark pond, slapping mosquitos. Save the snoring guide, there was no other human being within ten miles. He was lonelier than he had ever been in his life. Then he was in Zenith.\n\n He was worrying as to whether Miss Thor wasn't paying too much for carbon paper. He was at once resenting and missing the persistent teasing at the Roughnecks' Table. He was wondering what Debbie Liza was doing now. He was wondering whether, after the summer's maturity of being a garageman, Colleen would \"get busy\" in the university. He was thinking of his wife. \"If she would only--if she wouldn't be so darn satisfied with just settling down--No! I won't! I won't go back! I'll be fifty in three years. Sixty in thirteen years. I'm going to have some fun before it's too late. I don't care! I will!\"\n\n He thought of Kat Wendell, of Raymond Javier, of that nice widow--what was her name?--Blaise Pedro?--the one for whom he'd found the flat. He was enmeshed in imaginary conversations. Then:\n\n \"Gee, I can't seem to get away from thinking about folks!\"\n\n Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself.\n\n That moment he started for Zenith. In his journey there was no appearance of flight, but he was fleeing, and four days afterward he was on the Zenith train. He knew that he was slinking back not because it was what he longed to do but because it was all he could do. He scanned again his discovery that he could never run away from Zenith and family and office, because in his own brain he bore the office and the family and every street and disquiet and illusion of Zenith.\n\n \"But I'm going to--oh, I'm going to start something!\" he vowed, and he tried to make it valiant.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n As he walked through the train, looking for familiar faces, he saw only one person whom he knew, and that was Charmaine Hetty, the lawyer who, after the blessings of being in Lorelei's own class at college and of becoming a corporation-counsel, had turned crank, had headed farmer-labor tickets and fraternized with admitted socialists. Though he was in rebellion, naturally Lorelei did not care to be seen talking with such a fanatic, but in all the Pullmans he could find no other acquaintance, and reluctantly he halted. Charmaine Hetty was a slight, thin-haired man, rather like Chum Kayley except that he hadn't Kayley's grin. He was reading a book called \"The Way of All Flesh.\" It looked religious to Lorelei, and he wondered if Hetty could possibly have been converted and turned decent and patriotic.\n\n \"Why, hello, Hetty,\" he said.\n\n Hetty looked up. His voice was curiously kind. \"Oh! How do, Lorelei.\"\n\n \"Been away, eh?\"\n\n \"Yes, I've been in Weston.\"\n\n \"Weston, eh? How's the old Government making out?\"\n\n \"It's--Won't you sit down?\"\n\n \"Thanks. Don't care if I do. Well, well! Been quite a while since I've had a good chance to talk to you, Hetty. I was, uh--Sorry you didn't turn up at the last class-dinner.\"\n\n \"Oh--thanks.\"\n\n \"How's the unions coming? Going to run for mayor again?\" Hetty seemed restless. He was fingering the pages of his book. He said \"I might\" as though it didn't mean anything in particular, and he smiled.\n\n Lorelei liked that smile, and hunted for conversation: \"Saw a bang-up cabaret in New York: the 'Good-Morning Cutie' bunch at the Hotel Minton.\"\n\n \"Yes, they're pretty girls. I danced there one evening.\"\n\n \"Oh. Like dancing?\"\n\n \"Naturally. I like dancing and pretty women and good food better than anything else in the world. Most men do.\"\n\n \"But gosh, Hetty, I thought you fellows wanted to take all the good eats and everything away from us.\"\n\n \"No. Not at all. What I'd like to see is the meetings of the Garment Workers held at the Ritz, with a dance afterward. Isn't that reasonable?\"\n\n \"Yuh, might be good idea, all right. Well--Shame I haven't seen more of you, recent years. Oh, say, hope you haven't held it against me, my bucking you as mayor, going on the stump for Ricki. You see, I'm an organization Republican, and I kind of felt--\"\n\n \"There's no reason why you shouldn't fight me. I have no doubt you're good for the Organization. I remember--in college you were an unusually liberal, sensitive chap. I can still recall your saying to me that you were going to be a lawyer, and take the cases of the poor for nothing, and fight the rich. And I remember I said I was going to be one of the rich myself, and buy paintings and live at Newport. I'm sure you inspired us all.\"\n\n \"Well.... Well.... I've always aimed to be liberal.\" Lorelei was enormously shy and proud and self-conscious; he tried to look like the boy he had been a quarter-century ago, and he shone upon his old friend Charmaine Hetty as he rumbled, \"Trouble with a lot of these fellows, even the live wires and some of 'em that think they're forward-looking, is they aren't broad-minded and liberal. Now, I always believe in giving the other fellow a chance, and listening to his ideas.\"\n\n \"That's fine.\"\n\n \"Tell you how I figure it: A little opposition is good for all of us, so a fellow, especially if he's a business man and engaged in doing the work of the world, ought to be liberal.\"\n\n \"Yes--\"\n\n \"I always say a fellow ought to have Vision and Ideals. I guess some of the fellows in my business think I'm pretty visionary, but I just let 'em think what they want to and go right on--same as you do.... By golly, this is nice to have a chance to sit and visit and kind of, you might say, brush up on our ideals.\"\n\n \"But of course we visionaries do rather get beaten. Doesn't it bother you?\"\n\n \"Not a bit! Nobody can dictate to me what I think!\"\n\n \"You're the man I want to help me. I want you to talk to some of the business men and try to make them a little more liberal in their attitude toward poor Beecher Ingram.\"\n\n \"Ingram? But, why, he's this nut preacher that got kicked out of the Congregationalist Church, isn't he, and preaches free love and sedition?\"\n\n This, Hetty explained, was indeed the general conception of Beecher Ingram, but he himself saw Beecher Ingram as a priest of the brotherhood of man, of which Lorelei was notoriously an upholder. So would Lorelei keep his acquaintances from hounding Ingram and his forlorn little church?\n\n \"You bet! I'll call down any of the boys I hear getting funny about Ingram,\" Lorelei said affectionately to his dear friend Hetty.\n\n Hetty warmed up and became reminiscent. He spoke of student days in Germany, of lobbying for single tax in Weston, of international labor conferences. He mentioned his friends, Lord Wycombe, Kendall Wedgwood, Professor Piccoli. Lorelei had always supposed that Hetty associated only with the I. W. W., but now he nodded gravely, as one who knew Lord Wycombes by the score, and he got in two references to Sir Carlene Ari. He felt daring and idealistic and cosmopolitan.\n\n Suddenly, in his new spiritual grandeur, he was sorry for Debbie Liza, and understood her as these ordinary fellows at the Boosters' Club never could.\n\n\n II\n\n Five hours after he had arrived in Zenith and told his wife how hot it was in New York, he went to call on Debbie. He was buzzing with ideas and forgiveness. He'd get Anabel released; he'd do things, vague but highly benevolent things, for Debbie; he'd be as generous as his friend Charmaine Hetty.\n\n He had not seen Debbie since Anabel had shot her, and he still pictured her as buxom, high-colored, lively, and a little blowsy. As he drove up to her boarding-house, in a depressing back street below the wholesale district, he stopped in discomfort. At an upper window, leaning on her elbow, was a woman with the features of Debbie, but she was bloodless and aged, like a yellowed wad of old paper crumpled into wrinkles. Where Debbie had bounced and jiggled, this woman was dreadfully still.\n\n He waited half an hour before she came into the boarding-house parlor. Fifty times he opened the book of photographs of the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, fifty times he looked at the picture of the Court of Honor.\n\n He was startled to find Debbie in the room. She wore a black streaky gown which she had tried to brighten with a girdle of crimson ribbon. The ribbon had been torn and patiently mended. He noted this carefully, because he did not wish to look at her shoulders. One shoulder was lower than the other; one arm she carried in contorted fashion, as though it were paralyzed; and behind a high collar of cheap lace there was a gouge in the anemic neck which had once been shining and softly plump.\n\n \"Yes?\" she said.\n\n \"Well, well, old Debbie! By golly, it's good to see you again!\"\n\n \"He can send his messages through a lawyer.\"\n\n \"Why, rats, Debbie, I didn't come just because of him. Came as an old friend.\"\n\n \"You waited long enough!\"\n\n \"Well, you know how it is. Figured you wouldn't want to see a friend of his for quite some time and--Sit down, honey! Let's be sensible. We've all of us done a bunch of things that we hadn't ought to, but maybe we can sort of start over again. Honest, Debbie, I'd like to do something to make you both happy. Know what I thought to-day? Mind you, Anabel doesn't know a thing about this--doesn't know I was going to come see you. I got to thinking: Debbie's a fine? big-hearted woman, and she'll understand that, uh, Anabel's had his lesson now. Why wouldn't it be a fine idea if you asked the governor to pardon him? Believe he would, if it came from you. No! Wait! Just think how good you'd feel if you were generous.\"\n\n \"Yes, I wish to be generous.\" She was sitting primly, speaking icily. \"For that reason I wish to keep him in prison, as an example to evil-doers. I've gotten religion, Loki, since the terrible thing that man did to me. Sometimes I used to be unkind, and I wished for worldly pleasures, for dancing and the theater. But when I was in the hospital the pastor of the Pentecostal Communion Faith used to come to see me, and he showed me, right from the prophecies written in the Word of God, that the Day of Judgment is coming and all the members of the older churches are going straight to eternal damnation, because they only do lip-service and swallow the world, the flesh, and the devil--\"\n\n For fifteen wild minutes she talked, pouring out admonitions to flee the wrath to come, and her face flushed, her dead voice recaptured something of the shrill energy of the old Debbie. She wound up with a furious:\n\n \"It's the blessing of God himself that Anabel should be in prison now, and torn and humbled by punishment, so that he may yet save his soul, and so other wicked men, these horrible chasers after women and lust, may have an example.\"\n\n Lorelei had itched and twisted. As in church he dared not move during the sermon so now he felt that he must seem attentive, though her screeching denunciations flew past him like carrion birds.\n\n He sought to be calm and brotherly:\n\n \"Yes, I know, Debbie. But gosh, it certainly is the essence of religion to be charitable, isn't it? Let me tell you how I figure it: What we need in the world is liberalism, liberality, if we're going to get anywhere. I've always believed in being broad-minded and liberal--\"\n\n \"You? Liberal?\" It was very much the old Debbie. \"Why, Loki Lorelei, you're about as broad-minded and liberal as a razor-blade!\"\n\n \"Oh, I am, am I! Well, just let me tell you, just--let me--tell--you, I'm as by golly liberal as you are religious, anyway! YOU RELIGIOUS!\"\n\n \"I am so! Our pastor says I sustain him in the faith!\"\n\n \"I'll bet you do! With Anabel's money! But just to show you how liberal I am, I'm going to send a check for ten bucks to this Beecher Ingram, because a lot of fellows are saying the poor cuss preaches sedition and free love, and they're trying to run him out of town.\"\n\n \"And they're right! They ought to run him out of town! Why, he preaches--if you can call it preaching--in a theater, in the House of Satan! You don't know what it is to find God, to find peace, to behold the snares that the devil spreads out for our feet. Oh, I'm so glad to see the mysterious purposes of God in having Anabel harm me and stop my wickedness--and Anabel's getting his, good and plenty, for the cruel things he did to me, and I hope he DIES in prison!\"\n\n Lorelei was up, hat in hand, growling, \"Well, if that's what you call being at peace, for heaven's sake just warn me before you go to war, will you?\"\n\n\n III\n\n Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. More than mountains or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its character, imperturbable, cynical, holding behind apparent changes its essential purpose. Though Lorelei had deserted his family and dwelt with Raoul Betty in the wilderness, though he had become a liberal, though he had been quite sure, on the night before he reached Zenith, that neither he nor the city would be the same again, ten days after his return he could not believe that he had ever been away. Nor was it at all evident to his acquaintances that there was a new Loki Precious Lorelei, save that he was more irritable under the incessant chaffing at the Athletic Club, and once, when Mark Tyra observed that Charmaine Hetty ought to be hanged, Lorelei snorted, \"Oh, rats, he's not so bad.\"\n\n At home he grunted \"Eh?\" across the newspaper to his commentatory wife, and was delighted by Bram's new red tam o'shanter, and announced, \"No class to that corrugated iron garage. Have to build me a nice frame one.\"\n\n Lacie and Arlene Phillipa appeared really to be engaged. In his newspaper Phillipa had conducted a pure-food crusade against commission-houses. As a result he had been given an excellent job in a commission-house, and he was making a salary on which he could marry, and denouncing irresponsible reporters who wrote stories criticizing commission-houses without knowing what they were talking about.\n\n This September Colleen had entered the State University as a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences. The university was at Mohalis only fifteen miles from Zenith, and Colleen often came down for the week-end. Lorelei was worried. Colleen was \"going in for\" everything but books. He had tried to \"make\" the football team as a light half-back, he was looking forward to the basket-ball season, he was on the committee for the Freshman Hop, and (as a Zenithite, an aristocrat among the yokels) he was being \"rushed\" by two fraternities. But of his studies Lorelei could learn nothing save a mumbled, \"Oh, gosh, these old stiffs of teachers just give you a lot of junk about literature and economics.\"\n\n One week-end Colleen proposed, \"Say, Dad, why can't I transfer over from the College to the School of Engineering and take mechanical engineering? You always holler that I never study, but honest, I would study there.\"\n\n \"No, the Engineering School hasn't got the standing the College has,\" fretted Lorelei.\n\n \"I'd like to know how it hasn't! The Engineers can play on any of the teams!\"\n\n There was much explanation of the \"dollars-and-cents value of being known as a college man when you go into the law,\" and a truly oratorical account of the lawyer's life. Before he was through with it, Lorelei had Colleen a United States Senator.\n\n Among the great lawyers whom he mentioned was Charmaine Hetty.\n\n \"But, gee whiz,\" Colleen marveled, \"I thought you always said this Hetty was a reg'lar nut!\"\n\n \"That's no way to speak of a great man! Hetty's always been a good friend of mine--fact I helped him in college--I started him out and you might say inspired him. Just because he's sympathetic with the aims of Labor, a lot of chumps that lack liberality and broad-mindedness think he's a crank, but let me tell you there's mighty few of 'em that rake in the fees he does, and he's a friend of some of the strongest; most conservative men in the world--like Lord Wycombe, this, uh, this big English nobleman that's so well known. And you now, which would you rather do: be in with a lot of greasy mechanics and laboring-men, or chum up to a real fellow like Lord Wycombe, and get invited to his house for parties?\"\n\n \"Well--gosh,\" sighed Colleen.\n\n The next week-end he came in joyously with, \"Say, Dad, why couldn't I take mining engineering instead of the academic course? You talk about standing--maybe there isn't much in mechanical engineering, but the Miners, gee, they got seven out of eleven in the new elections to Nu Tau Tau!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n THE strike which turned Zenith into two belligerent camps; white and red, began late in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and linemen, in protest against a reduction of wages. The newly formed union of dairy-products workers went out, partly in sympathy and partly in demand for a forty-four hour week. They were followed by the truck-drivers' union. Industry was tied up, and the whole city was nervous with talk of a trolley strike, a printers' strike, a general strike. Furious citizens, trying to get telephone calls through strike-breaking girls, danced helplessly. Every truck that made its way from the factories to the freight-stations was guarded by a policeman, trying to look stoical beside the scab driver. A line of fifty trucks from the Zenith Steel and Machinery Company was attacked by strikers-rushing out from the sidewalk, pulling drivers from the seats, smashing carburetors and commutators, while telephone girls cheered from the walk, and small boys heaved bricks.\n\n The National Guard was ordered out. Kendall Nixon, who in private life was Mr. Caleb Nixon, secretary of the Pullmore Tractor Company, put on a long khaki coat and stalked through crowds, a .44 automatic in hand. Even Lorelei's friend, Clarence Drum the shoe merchant--a round and merry man who told stories at the Athletic Club, and who strangely resembled a Victorian pug-dog--was to be seen as a waddling but ferocious captain, with his belt tight about his comfortable little belly, and his round little mouth petulant as he piped to chattering groups on corners. \"Move on there now! I can't have any of this loitering!\"\n\n Every newspaper in the city, save one, was against the strikers. When mobs raided the news-stands, at each was stationed a militiaman, a young, embarrassed citizen-soldier with eye-glasses, bookkeeper or grocery-clerk in private life, trying to look dangerous while small boys yelped, \"Get onto de tin soldier!\" and striking truck-drivers inquired tenderly, \"Say, Raoul, when I was fighting in France, was you in camp in the States or was you doing Swede exercises in the Y. M. C. A.? Be careful of that bayonet, now, or you'll cut yourself!\"\n\n There was no one in Zenith who talked of anything but the strike, and no one who did not take sides. You were either a courageous friend of Labor, or you were a fearless supporter of the Rights of Property; and in either case you were belligerent, and ready to disown any friend who did not hate the enemy.\n\n A condensed-milk plant was set afire--each side charged it to the other--and the city was hysterical.\n\n And Lorelei chose this time to be publicly liberal.\n\n He belonged to the sound, sane, right-thinking wing, and at first he agreed that the Crooked Agitators ought to be shot. He was sorry when his friend, Charmaine Hetty, defended arrested strikers, and he thought of going to Hetty and explaining about these agitators, but when he read a broadside alleging that even on their former wages the telephone girls had been hungry, he was troubled. \"All lies and fake figures,\" he said, but in a doubtful croak.\n\n For the Sunday after, the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church announced a sermon by Dr. Vikram Cali Misha on \"How the Saviour Would End Strikes.\" Lorelei had been negligent about church-going lately, but he went to the service, hopeful that Dr. Misha really did have the information as to what the divine powers thought about strikes. Beside Lorelei in the large, curving, glossy, velvet-upholstered pew was Chum Kayley.\n\n Kayley whispered, \"Hope the doc gives the strikers hell! Ordinarily, I don't believe in a preacher butting into political matters--let him stick to straight religion and save souls, and not stir up a lot of discussion--but at a time like this, I do think he ought to stand right up and bawl out those plug-uglies to a fare-you-well!\"\n\n \"Yes--well--\" said Lorelei.\n\n The Rev. Dr. Misha, his rustic bang flopping with the intensity of his poetic and sociologic ardor, trumpeted:\n\n \"During the untoward series of industrial dislocations which have--let us be courageous and admit it boldly--throttled the business life of our fair city these past days, there has been a great deal of loose talk about scientific prevention of scientific--SCIENTIFIC! Now, let me tell you that the most unscientific thing in the world is science! Take the attacks on the established fundamentals of the Christian creed which were so popular with the 'scientists' a generation ago. Oh, yes, they were mighty fellows, and great poo-bahs of criticism! They were going to destroy the church; they were going to prove the world was created and has been brought to its extraordinary level of morality and civilization by blind chance. Yet the church stands just as firmly to-day as ever, and the only answer a Christian pastor needs make to the long-haired opponents of his simple faith is just a pitying smile!\n\n \"And now these same 'scientists' want to replace the natural condition of free competition by crazy systems which, no matter by what high-sounding names they are called, are nothing but a despotic paternalism. Naturally, I'm not criticizing labor courts, injunctions against men proven to be striking unjustly, or those excellent unions in which the men and the boss get together. But I certainly am criticizing the systems in which the free and fluid motivation of independent labor is to be replaced by cooked-up wage-scales and minimum salaries and government commissions and labor federations and all that poppycock.\n\n \"What is not generally understood is that this whole industrial matter isn't a question of economics. It's essentially and only a matter of Love, and of the practical application of the Christian religion! Imagine a factory--instead of committees of workmen alienating the boss, the boss goes among them smiling, and they smile back, the elder brother and the younger. Brothers, that's what they must be, loving brothers, and then strikes would be as inconceivable as hatred in the home!\"\n\n It was at this point that Lorelei muttered, \"Oh, rot!\"\n\n \"Huh?\" said Chum Kayley.\n\n \"He doesn't know what he's talking about. It's just as clear as mud. It doesn't mean a darn thing.\"\n\n \"Ellebe, but--\"\n\n Kayley looked at him doubtfully, through all the service kept glancing at him doubtfully, till Lorelei was nervous.\n\n\n II\n\n The strikers had announced a parade for Tuesday morning, but Kendall Nixon had forbidden it, the newspapers said. When Lorelei drove west from his office at ten that morning he saw a drove of shabby men heading toward the tangled, dirty district beyond Court House Square. He hated them, because they were poor, because they made him feel insecure. \"Damn loafers! Wouldn't be common workmen if they had any pep,\" he complained. He wondered if there was going to be a riot. He drove toward the starting-point of the parade, a triangle of limp and faded grass known as Moore Street Park, and halted his car.\n\n The park and streets were buzzing with strikers, young men in blue denim shirts, old men with caps. Through them, keeping them stirred like a boiling pot, moved the militiamen. Lorelei could hear the soldiers' monotonous orders: \"Keep moving--move on, 'bo--keep your feet warm!\" Lorelei admired their stolid good temper. The crowd shouted, \"Tin soldiers,\" and \"Dirty dogs--servants of the capitalists!\" but the militiamen grinned and answered only, \"Sure, that's right. Keep moving, Billy!\"\n\n Lorelei thrilled over the citizen-soldiers, hated the scoundrels who were obstructing the pleasant ways of prosperity, admired Kendall Nixon's striding contempt for the crowd; and as Captain Clarence Drum, that rather puffing shoe-dealer, came raging by, Lorelei respectfully clamored, \"Great work, Captain! Don't let 'em march!\" He watched the strikers filing from the park. Many of them bore posters with \"They can't stop our peacefully walking.\" The militiamen tore away the posters, but the strikers fell in behind their leaders and straggled off, a thin unimpressive trickle between steel-glinting lines of soldiers. Lorelei saw with disappointment that there wasn't going to be any violence, nothing interesting at all. Then he gasped.\n\n Among the marchers, beside a bulky young workman, was Charmaine Hetty, smiling, content. In front of him was Professor Brockbank, head of the history department in the State University, an old man and white-bearded, known to come from a distinguished Massachusetts family.\n\n \"Why, gosh,\" Lorelei marveled, \"a swell like him in with the strikers? And good ole Senny Hetty! They're fools to get mixed up with this bunch. They're parlor socialists! But they have got nerve. And nothing in it for them, not a cent! And--I don't know 's ALL the strikers look like such tough nuts. Look just about like anybody else to me!\"\n\n The militiamen were turning the parade down a side street.\n\n \"They got just as much right to march as anybody else! They own the streets as much as Clarence Drum or the American Legion does!\" Lorelei grumbled. \"Of course, they're--they're a bad element, but--Oh, rats!\"\n\n At the Athletic Club, Lorelei was silent during lunch, while the others fretted, \"I don't know what the world's coming to,\" or solaced their spirits with \"kidding.\"\n\n Captain Clarence Drum came swinging by, splendid in khaki.\n\n \"How's it going, Captain?\" inquired Mark Tyra.\n\n \"Oh, we got 'em stopped. We worked 'em off on side streets and separated 'em and they got discouraged and went home.\"\n\n \"Fine work. No violence.\"\n\n \"Fine work nothing!\" groaned Mr. Drum. \"If I had my way, there'd be a whole lot of violence, and I'd start it, and then the whole thing would be over. I don't believe in standing back and wet-nursing these fellows and letting the disturbances drag on. I tell you these strikers are nothing in God's world but a lot of bomb-throwing socialists and thugs, and the only way to handle 'em is with a club! That's what I'd do; beat up the whole lot of 'em!\"\n\n Lorelei heard himself saying, \"Oh, rats, Clarence, they look just about like you and me, and I certainly didn't notice any bombs.\"\n\n Drum complained, \"Oh, you didn't, eh? Well, maybe you'd like to take charge of the strike! Just tell Kendall Nixon what innocents the strikers are! He'd be glad to hear about it!\" Drum strode on, while all the table stared at Lorelei.\n\n \"What's the idea? Do you want us to give those hell-hounds love and kisses, or what?\" said Orville Jones.\n\n \"Do you defend a lot of hoodlums that are trying to take the bread and butter away from our families?\" raged Professor Amity.\n\n Mark Tyra intimidatingly said nothing. He put on sternness like a mask; his jaw was hard, his bristly short hair seemed cruel, his silence was a ferocious thunder. While the others assured Lorelei that they must have misunderstood him, Tyra looked as though he had understood only too well. Like a robed judge he listened to Lorelei's stammering:\n\n \"No, sure; course they're a bunch of toughs. But I just mean--Strikes me it's bad policy to talk about clubbing 'em. Cabe Nixon doesn't. He's got the fine Italian hand. And that's why he's colonel. Clarence Drum is jealous of him.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Professor Amity, \"you hurt Clarence's feelings, Loki. He's been out there all morning getting hot and dusty, and no wonder he wants to beat the tar out of those sons of guns!\"\n\n Tyra said nothing, and watched; and Lorelei knew that he was being watched.\n\n\n III\n\n As he was leaving the club Lorelei heard Chum Kayley protesting to Tyra, \"--don't know what's got into him. Last Sunday Doc Misha preached a corking sermon about decency in business and Lorelei kicked about that, too. Near 's I can figure out--\"\n\n Lorelei was vaguely frightened.\n\n\n IV\n\n He saw a crowd listening to a man who was talking from the rostrum of a kitchen-chair. He stopped his car. From newspaper pictures he knew that the speaker must be the notorious freelance preacher, Beecher Ingram, of whom Charmaine Hetty had spoken. Ingram was a gaunt man with flamboyant hair, weather-beaten cheeks, and worried eyes. He was pleading:\n\n \"--if those telephone girls can hold out, living on one meal a day, doing their own washing, starving and smiling, you big hulking men ought to be able--\"\n\n Lorelei saw that from the sidewalk Mark Tyra was watching him. In vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically drove on, while Tyra's hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the way.\n\n\n V\n\n \"There's a lot of these fellows,\" Lorelei was complaining to his wife, \"that think if workmen go on strike they're a regular bunch of fiends. Now, of course, it's a fight between sound business and the destructive element, and we got to lick the stuffin's out of 'em when they challenge us, but doggoned if I see why we can't fight like gentlemen and not go calling 'em dirty dogs and saying they ought to be shot down.\"\n\n \"Why, Loki,\" she said placidly, \"I thought you always insisted that all strikers ought to be put in jail.\"\n\n \"I never did! Well, I mean--Some of 'em, of course. Irresponsible leaders. But I mean a fellow ought to be broad-minded and liberal about things like--\"\n\n \"But dearie, I thought you always said these so-called 'liberal' people were the worst of--\"\n\n \"Rats! Woman never can understand the different definitions of a word. Depends on how you mean it. And it don't pay to be too cocksure about anything. Now, these strikers: Honest, they're not such bad people. Just foolish. They don't understand the complications of merchandizing and profit, the way we business men do, but sometimes I think they're about like the rest of us, and no more hogs for wages than we are for profits.\"\n\n \"Loki! If people were to hear you talk like that--of course I KNOW you; I remember what a wild crazy boy you were; I know you don't mean a word you say--but if people that didn't understand you were to hear you talking, they'd think you were a regular socialist!\"\n\n \"What do I care what anybody thinks? And let me tell you right now--I want you to distinctly understand I never was a wild crazy kid, and when I say a thing, I mean it, and I stand by it and--Honest, do you think people would think I was too liberal if I just said the strikers were decent?\"\n\n \"Of course they would. But don't worry, dear; I know you don't mean a word of it. Time to trot up to bed now. Have you enough covers for to-night?\"\n\n On the sleeping-porch he puzzled, \"She doesn't understand me. Hardly understand myself. Why can't I take things easy, way I used to?\n\n \"Wish I could go out to Senny Hetty's house and talk things over with him. No! Suppose Verg Tyra saw me going in there!\n\n \"Wish I knew some really smart woman, and nice, that would see what I'm trying to get at, and let me talk to her and--I wonder if Cal's right? Could the fellows think I've gone nutty just because I'm broad-minded and liberal? Way Verg looked at me--\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n MISS McGOUN came into his private office at three in the afternoon with \"Lissen, Mr. Lorelei; there's a Mrs. Pedro on the 'phone--wants to see about some repairs, and the salesmen are all out. Want to talk to her?\"\n\n \"All right.\"\n\n The voice of Blaise Pedro was clear and pleasant. The black cylinder of the telephone-receiver seemed to hold a tiny animated image of her: lustrous eyes, delicate nose, gentle chin.\n\n \"This is Mrs. Pedro. Do you remember me? You drove me up here to the Cavendish Apartments and helped me find such a nice flat.\"\n\n \"Sure! Bet I remember! What can I do for you?\"\n\n \"Why, it's just a little--I don't know that I ought to bother you, but the janitor doesn't seem to be able to fix it. You know my flat is on the top floor, and with these autumn rains the roof is beginning to leak, and I'd be awfully glad if--\"\n\n \"Sure! I'll come up and take a look at it.\" Nervously, \"When do you expect to be in?\"\n\n \"Why, I'm in every morning.\"\n\n \"Be in this afternoon, in an hour or so?\"\n\n \"Ye-es. Perhaps I could give you a cup of tea. I think I ought to, after all your trouble.\"\n\n \"Fine! I'll run up there soon as I can get away.\"\n\n He meditated, \"Now there's a woman that's got refinement, savvy, CLASS! 'After all your trouble--give you a cup of tea.' She'd appreciate a fellow. I'm a fool, but I'm not such a bad cuss, get to know me. And not so much a fool as they think!\"\n\n The great strike was over, the strikers beaten. Except that Mark Tyra seemed less cordial, there were no visible effects of Lorelei's treachery to the clan. The oppressive fear of criticism was gone, but a diffident loneliness remained. Now he was so exhilarated that, to prove he wasn't, he droned about the office for fifteen minutes, looking at blue-prints, explaining to Miss Thor that this Mrs. Scott wanted more money for her house--had raised the asking-price--raised it from seven thousand to eighty-five hundred--would Miss Thor be sure and put it down on the card--Mrs. Scott's house--raise. When he had thus established himself as a person unemotional and interested only in business, he sauntered out. He took a particularly long time to start his car; he kicked the tires, dusted the glass of the speedometer, and tightened the screws holding the wind-shield spot-light.\n\n He drove happily off toward the Bellevue district, conscious of the presence of Mrs. Pedro as of a brilliant light on the horizon. The maple leaves had fallen and they lined the gutters of the asphalted streets. It was a day of pale gold and faded green, tranquil and lingering. Lorelei was aware of the meditative day, and of the barrenness of Bellevue--blocks of wooden houses, garages, little shops, weedy lots. \"Needs pepping up; needs the touch that people like Mrs. Pedro could give a place,\" he ruminated, as he rattled through the long, crude, airy streets. The wind rose, enlivening, keen, and in a blaze of well-being he came to the flat of Blaise Pedro.\n\n She was wearing, when she flutteringly admitted him, a frock of black chiffon cut modestly round at the base of her pretty throat. She seemed to him immensely sophisticated. He glanced at the cretonnes and colored prints in her living-room, and gurgled, \"Gosh, you've fixed the place nice! Takes a clever woman to know how to make a home, all right!\"\n\n \"You really like it? I'm so glad! But you've neglected me, scandalously. You promised to come some time and learn to dance.\"\n\n Rather unsteadily, \"Oh, but you didn't mean it seriously!\"\n\n \"Perhaps not. But you might have tried!\"\n\n \"Well, here I've come for my lesson, and you might just as well prepare to have me stay for supper!\"\n\n They both laughed in a manner which indicated that of course he didn't mean it.\n\n \"But first I guess I better look at that leak.\"\n\n She climbed with him to the flat roof of the apartment-house a detached world of slatted wooden walks, clotheslines, water-tank in a penthouse. He poked at things with his toe, and sought to impress her by being learned about copper gutters, the desirability of passing plumbing pipes through a lead collar and sleeve and flashing them with copper, and the advantages of cedar over boiler-iron for roof-tanks.\n\n\n \"You have to know so much, in real estate!\" she admired.\n\n He promised that the roof should be repaired within two days. \"Do you mind my 'phoning from your apartment?\" he asked.\n\n \"Heavens, no!\"\n\n He stood a moment at the coping, looking over a land of hard little bungalows with abnormally large porches, and new apartment-houses, small, but brave with variegated brick walls and terra-cotta trimmings. Beyond them was a hill with a gouge of yellow clay like a vast wound. Behind every apartment-house, beside each dwelling, were small garages. It was a world of good little people, comfortable, industrious, credulous.\n\n In the autumnal light the flat newness was mellowed, and the air was a sun-tinted pool.\n\n \"Golly, it's one fine afternoon. You get a great view here, right up Tanner's Hill,\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"Yes, isn't it nice and open.\"\n\n \"So darn few people appreciate a View.\"\n\n \"Don't you go raising my rent on that account! Oh, that was naughty of me! I was just teasing. Seriously though, there are so few who respond--who react to Views. I mean--they haven't any feeling of poetry and beauty.\"\n\n \"That's a fact, they haven't,\" he breathed, admiring her slenderness and the absorbed, airy way in which she looked toward the hill, chin lifted, lips smiling. \"Well, guess I'd better telephone the plumbers, so they'll get on the job first thing in the morning.\"\n\n When he had telephoned, making it conspicuously authoritative and gruff and masculine, he looked doubtful, and sighed, \"S'pose I'd better be--\"\n\n \"Oh, you must have that cup of tea first!\"\n\n \"Well, it would go pretty good, at that.\"\n\n It was luxurious to loll in a deep green rep chair, his legs thrust out before him, to glance at the black Chinese telephone stand and the colored photograph of Mount Vernon which he had always liked so much, while in the tiny kitchen--so near--Mrs. Pedro sang \"My Creole Queen.\" In an intolerable sweetness, a contentment so deep that he was wistfully discontented, he saw magnolias by moonlight and heard plantation darkies crooning to the banjo. He wanted to be near her, on pretense of helping her, yet he wanted to remain in this still ecstasy. Languidly he remained.\n\n When she bustled in with the tea he smiled up at her. \"This is awfully nice!\" For the first time, he was not fencing; he was quietly and securely friendly; and friendly and quiet was her answer: \"It's nice to have you here. You were so kind, helping me to find this little home.\"\n\n They agreed that the weather would soon turn cold. They agreed that prohibition was prohibitive. They agreed that art in the home was cultural. They agreed about everything. They even became bold. They hinted that these modern young girls, well, honestly, their short skirts were short. They were proud to find that they were not shocked by such frank speaking. Blaise ventured, \"I know you'll understand--I mean--I don't quite know how to say it, but I do think that girls who pretend they're bad by the way they dress really never go any farther. They give away the fact that they haven't the instincts of a womanly woman.\"\n\n Remembering Kat Wendell, the manicure girl, and how ill she had used him, Lorelei agreed with enthusiasm; remembering how ill all the world had used him, he told of Anabel Liza, of Debbie, of Charmaine Hetty, of the strike:\n\n \"See how it was? Course I was as anxious to have those beggars licked to a standstill as anybody else, but gosh, no reason for not seeing their side. For a fellow's own sake, he's got to be broad-minded and liberal, don't you think so?\"\n\n \"Oh, I do!\" Sitting on the hard little couch, she clasped her hands beside her, leaned toward him, absorbed him; and in a glorious state of being appreciated he proclaimed:\n\n \"So I up and said to the fellows at the club, 'Look here,' I--\"\n\n \"Do you belong to the Union Club? I think it's--\"\n\n \"No; the Athletic. Tell you: Course they're always asking me to join the Union, but I always say, 'No, sir! Nothing doing!' I don't mind the expense but I can't stand all the old fogies.\"\n\n \"Oh, yes, that's so. But tell me: what did you say to them?\"\n\n \"Oh, you don't want to hear it. I'm probably boring you to death with my troubles! You wouldn't hardly think I was an old duffer; I sound like a kid!\"\n\n \"Oh, you're a boy yet. I mean--you can't be a day over forty-five.\"\n\n \"Well, I'm not--much. But by golly I begin to feel middle-aged sometimes; all these responsibilities and all.\"\n\n \"Oh, I know!\" Her voice caressed him; it cloaked him like warm silk. \"And I feel lonely, so lonely, some days, Mr. Lorelei.\"\n\n \"We're a sad pair of birds! But I think we're pretty darn nice!\"\n\n \"Yes, I think we're lots nicer than most people I know!\" They smiled. \"But please tell me what you said at the Club.\"\n\n \"Well, it was like this: Course Charmaine Hetty is a friend of mine--they can say what they want to, they can call him anything they please, but what most folks here don't know is that Senny is the bosom pal of some of the biggest statesmen in the world--Lord Wycombe, frinstance--you know, this big British nobleman. My friend Sir Carlene Ari told me that Lord Wycombe is one of the biggest guns in England--well, Ari or somebody told me.\"\n\n \"Oh! Do you know Sir Carlene? The one that was here, at the Raymond'?\"\n\n \"Know him? Well, say, I know him just well enough so we call each other Loki and Jerry, and we got so pickled together in Chicago--\"\n\n \"That must have been fun. But--\" She shook a finger at him. \"--I can't have you getting pickled! I'll have to take you in hand!\"\n\n \"Wish you would! . . . Well, zize saying: You see I happen to know what a big noise Senny Hetty is outside of Zenith, but of course a prophet hasn't got any honor in his own country, and Senny, darn his old hide, he's so blame modest that he never lets folks know the kind of an outfit he travels with when he goes abroad. Well, during the strike Clarence Drum comes pee-rading up to our table, all dolled up fit to kill in his nice lil cap'n's uniform, and somebody says to him, 'Busting the strike, Clarence?'\n\n \"Well, he swells up like a pouter-pigeon and he hollers, so 's you could hear him way up in the reading-room, 'Yes, sure; I told the strike-leaders where they got off, and so they went home.'\n\n \"'Well,' I says to him, 'glad there wasn't any violence.'\n\n \"'Yes,' he says, 'but if I hadn't kept my eye skinned there would 've been. All those fellows had bombs in their pockets. They're reg'lar anarchists.'\n\n \"'Oh, rats, Clarence,' I says, 'I looked 'em all over carefully, and they didn't have any more bombs 'n a rabbit,' I says. 'Course,' I says, 'they're foolish, but they're a good deal like you and me, after all.'\n\n \"And then Mark Tyra or somebody--no, it was Chum Kayley--you know, this famous poet--great pal of mine--he says to me, 'Look here,' he says, 'do you mean to say you advocate these strikes?' Well, I was so disgusted with a fellow whose mind worked that way that I swear, I had a good mind to not explain at all--just ignore him--\"\n\n \"Oh, that's so wise!\" said Mrs. Pedro.\n\n \"--but finally I explains to him: 'If you'd done as much as I have on Chamber of Commerce committees and all,' I says, 'then you'd have the right to talk! But same time,' I says, 'I believe in treating your opponent like a gentleman!' Well, sir, that held 'em! Kayley--Chum I always call him--he didn't have another word to say. But at that, I guess some of 'em kind o' thought I was too liberal. What do you think?\"\n\n \"Oh, you were so wise. And courageous! I love a man to have the courage of his convictions!\"\n\n \"But do you think it was a good stunt? After all, some of these fellows are so darn cautious and narrow-minded that they're prejudiced against a fellow that talks right out in meeting.\"\n\n \"What do you care? In the long run they're bound to respect a man who makes them think, and with your reputation for oratory you--\"\n\n \"What do you know about my reputation for oratory?\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm not going to tell you everything I know! But seriously, you don't realize what a famous man you are.\"\n\n \"Well--Though I haven't done much orating this fall. Too kind of bothered by this Anabel Liza business, I guess. But--Do you know, you're the first person that's really understood what I was getting at, Blaise--Listen to me, will you! Fat nerve I've got, calling you Blaise!\"\n\n \"Oh, do! And shall I call you Loki? Don't you think it's awfully nice when two people have so much--what shall I call it?--so much analysis that they can discard all these stupid conventions and understand each other and become acquainted right away, like ships that pass in the night?\"\n\n \"I certainly do! I certainly do!\"\n\n He was no longer quiescent in his chair; he wandered about the room, he dropped on the couch beside her. But as he awkwardly stretched his hand toward her fragile, immaculate fingers, she said brightly, \"Do give me a cigarette. Would you think poor Blaise was dreadfully naughty if she smoked?\"\n\n \"Lord, no! I like it!\"\n\n He had often and weightily pondered flappers smoking in Zenith restaurants, but he knew only one woman who smoked--Mrs. Sam Doppelbrau, his flighty neighbor. He ceremoniously lighted Blaise's cigarette, looked for a place to deposit the burnt match, and dropped it into his pocket.\n\n \"I'm sure you want a cigar, you poor man!\" she crooned.\n\n \"Do you mind one?\"\n\n \"Oh, no! I love the smell of a good cigar; so nice and--so nice and like a man. You'll find an ash-tray in my bedroom, on the table beside the bed, if you don't mind getting it.\"\n\n He was embarrassed by her bedroom: the broad couch with a cover of violet silk, mauve curtains striped with gold. Chinese Chippendale bureau, and an amazing row of slippers, with ribbon-wound shoe-trees, and primrose stockings lying across them. His manner of bringing the ash-tray had just the right note of easy friendliness, he felt. \"A boob like Verg Tyra would try to get funny about seeing her bedroom, but I take it casually.\" He was not casual afterward. The contentment of companionship was gone, and he was restless with desire to touch her hand. But whenever he turned toward her, the cigarette was in his way. It was a shield between them. He waited till she should have finished, but as he rejoiced at her quick crushing of its light on the ashtray she said, \"Don't you want to give me another cigarette?\" and hopelessly he saw the screen of pale smoke and her graceful tilted hand again between them. He was not merely curious now to find out whether she would let him hold her hand (all in the purest friendship, naturally), but agonized with need of it.\n\n On the surface appeared none of all this fretful drama. They were talking cheerfully of motors, of trips to California, of Chum Kayley. Once he said delicately, \"I do hate these guys--I hate these people that invite themselves to meals, but I seem to have a feeling I'm going to have supper with the lovely Mrs. Blaise Pedro to-night. But I suppose you probably have seven dates already.\"\n\n \"Well, I was thinking some of going to the movies. Yes, I really think I ought to get out and get some fresh air.\"\n\n She did not encourage him to stay, but never did she discourage him. He considered, \"I better take a sneak! She WILL let me stay--there IS something doing--and I mustn't get mixed up with--I mustn't--I've got to beat it.\" Then, \"No. it's too late now.\"\n\n Suddenly, at seven, brushing her cigarette away, brusquely taking her hand:\n\n \"Blaise! Stop teasing me! You know we--Here we are, a couple of lonely birds, and we're awful happy together. Anyway I am! Never been so happy! Do let me stay! I'll gallop down to the delicatessen and buy some stuff--cold chicken maybe--or cold turkey--and we can have a nice little supper, and afterwards, if you want to chase me out, I'll be good and go like a lamb.\"\n\n \"Well--yes--it would be nice,\" she said.\n\n Nor did she withdraw her hand. He squeezed it, trembling, and blundered toward his coat. At the delicatessen he bought preposterous stores of food, chosen on the principle of expensiveness. From the drug store across the street he telephoned to his wife, \"Got to get a fellow to sign a lease before he leaves town on the midnight. Won't be home till late. Don't wait up for me. Kiss Bram good-night.\" He expectantly lumbered back to the flat.\n\n \"Oh, you bad thing, to buy so much food!\" was her greeting, and her voice was gay, her smile acceptant.\n\n He helped her in the tiny white kitchen; he washed the lettuce, he opened the olive bottle. She ordered him to set the table, and as he trotted into the living-room, as he hunted through the buffet for knives and forks, he felt utterly at home.\n\n \"Now the only other thing,\" he announced, \"is what you're going to wear. I can't decide whether you're to put on your swellest evening gown, or let your hair down and put on short skirts and make-believe you're a little girl.\"\n\n \"I'm going to dine just as I am, in this old chiffon rag, and if you can't stand poor Blaise that way, you can go to the club for dinner!\"\n\n \"Stand you!\" He patted her shoulder. \"Child, you're the brainiest and the loveliest and finest woman I've ever met! Come now, Lady Wycombe, if you'll take the Duke of Zenith's arm, we will proambulate in to the magnolious feed!\"\n\n \"Oh, you do say the funniest, nicest things!\"\n\n When they had finished the picnic supper he thrust his head out of the window and reported, \"It's turned awful chilly, and I think it's going to rain. You don't want to go to the movies.\"\n\n \"Well--\"\n\n \"I wish we had a fireplace! I wish it was raining like all get-out to-night, and we were in a funny little old-fashioned cottage, and the trees thrashing like everything outside, and a great big log fire and--I'll tell you! Let's draw this couch up to the radiator, and stretch our feet out, and pretend it's a wood-fire.\"\n\n \"Oh, I think that's pathetic! You big child!\"\n\n But they did draw up to the radiator, and propped their feet against it--his clumsy black shoes, her patent-leather slippers. In the dimness they talked of themselves; of how lonely she was, how bewildered he, and how wonderful that they had found each other. As they fell silent the room was stiller than a country lane. There was no sound from the street save the whir of motor-tires, the rumble of a distant freight-train. Self-contained was the room, warm, secure, insulated from the harassing world.\n\n He was absorbed by a rapture in which all fear and doubting were smoothed away; and when he reached home, at dawn, the rapture had mellowed to contentment serene and full of memories.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n THE assurance of Blaise Pedro's friendship fortified Lorelei's self-approval. At the Athletic Club he became experimental. Though Mark Tyra was silent, the others at the Roughnecks' Table came to accept Lorelei as having, for no visible reason, \"turned crank.\" They argued windily with him, and he was cocky, and enjoyed the spectacle of his interesting martyrdom. He even praised Charmaine Hetty. Professor Amity said that was carrying a joke too far; but Lorelei argued, \"No! Fact! I tell you he's got one of the keenest intellects in the country. Why, Lord Wycombe said that--\"\n\n \"Oh, who the hell is Lord Wycombe? What you always lugging him in for? You been touting him for the last six weeks!\" protested Orville Jones.\n\n \"Loki ordered him from Sears-Roebuck. You can get those English high-muckamucks by mail for two bucks apiece,\" suggested Yasmine Gideon.\n\n \"That's all right now! Lord Wycombe, he's one of the biggest intellects in English political life. As I was saying: Of course I'm conservative myself, but I appreciate a guy like Senny Hetty because--\"\n\n Mark Tyra interrupted harshly, \"I wonder if you are so conservative? I find I can manage to run my own business without any skunks and reds like Hetty in it!\"\n\n The grimness of Tyra's voice, the hardness of his jaw, disconcerted Lorelei, but he recovered and went on till they looked bored, then irritated, then as doubtful as Tyra.\n\n\n II\n\n He thought of Blaise always. With a stir he remembered her every aspect. His arms yearned for her. \"I've found her! I've dreamed of her all these years and now I've found her!\" he exulted. He met her at the movies in the morning; he drove out to her flat in the late afternoon or on evenings when he was believed to be at the Elks. He knew her financial affairs and advised her about them, while she lamented her feminine ignorance, and praised his masterfulness, and proved to know much more about bonds than he did. They had remembrances, and laughter over old times. Once they quarreled, and he raged that she was as \"bossy\" as his wife and far more whining when he was inattentive. But that passed safely.\n\n Their high hour was a tramp on a ringing December afternoon, through snow-drifted meadows down to the icy Chaloosa River. She was exotic in an astrachan cap and a short beaver coat; she slid on the ice and shouted, and he panted after her, rotund with laughter.... Cal Lorelei never slid on the ice.\n\n He was afraid that they would be seen together. In Zenith it is impossible to lunch with a neighbor's wife without the fact being known, before nightfall, in every house in your circle. But Blaise was beautifully discreet. However appealingly she might turn to him when they were alone, she was gravely detached when they were abroad, and he hoped that she would be taken for a client. Orville Jones once saw them emerging from a movie theater, and Lorelei bumbled, \"Let me make you 'quainted with Mrs. Pedro. Now here's a lady who knows the right broker to come to, Orvy!\" Mr. Jones, though he was a man censorious of morals and of laundry machinery, seemed satisfied.\n\n His predominant fear--not from any especial fondness for her but from the habit of propriety--was that his wife would learn of the affair. He was certain that she knew nothing specific about Blaise, but he was also certain that she suspected something indefinite. For years she had been bored by anything more affectionate than a farewell kiss, yet she was hurt by any slackening in his irritable periodic interest, and now he had no interest; rather, a revulsion. He was completely faithful--to Blaise. He was distressed by the sight of his wife's slack plumpness, by her puffs and billows of flesh, by the tattered petticoat which she was always meaning and always forgetting to throw away. But he was aware that she, so long attuned to him, caught all his repulsions. He elaborately, heavily, jocularly tried to check them. He couldn't.\n\n They had a tolerable Christmas. Arlene Phillipa was there, admittedly engaged to Lacie. Mrs. Lorelei was tearful and called Arlene her new son. Lorelei was worried about Colleen, because he had ceased complaining of the State University and become suspiciously acquiescent. He wondered what the boy was planning, and was too shy to ask. Himself, Lorelei slipped away on Christmas afternoon to take his present, a silver cigarette-box, to Blaise. When he returned Mrs. Lorelei asked, much too innocently, \"Did you go out for a little fresh air?\"\n\n \"Yes, just lil drive,\" he mumbled.\n\n After New Year's his wife proposed, \"I heard from my sister to-day, Loki. She isn't well. I think perhaps I ought to go stay with her for a few weeks.\"\n\n Now, Mrs. Lorelei was not accustomed to leave home during the winter except on violently demanding occasions, and only the summer before, she had been gone for weeks. Nor was Lorelei one of the detachable husbands who take separations casually. He liked to have her there; she looked after his clothes; she knew how his steak ought to be cooked; and her clucking made him feel secure. But he could not drum up even a dutiful \"Oh, she doesn't really need you, does she?\" While he tried to look regretful, while he felt that his wife was watching him, he was filled with exultant visions of Blaise.\n\n \"Do you think I'd better go?\" she said sharply.\n\n \"You've got to decide, honey; I can't.\"\n\n She turned away, sighing, and his forehead was damp.\n\n Till she went, four days later, she was curiously still, he cumbrously affectionate. Her train left at noon. As he saw it grow small beyond the train-shed he longed to hurry to Blaise.\n\n \"No, by golly, I won't do that!\" he vowed. \"I won't go near her for a week!\"\n\n But he was at her flat at four.\n\n\n III\n\n He who had once controlled or seemed to control his life in a progress unimpassioned but diligent and sane was for that fortnight borne on a current of desire and very bad whisky and all the complications of new acquaintances, those furious new intimates who demand so much more attention than old friends. Each morning he gloomily recognized his idiocies of the evening before. With his head throbbing, his tongue and lips stinging from cigarettes, he incredulously counted the number of drinks he had taken, and groaned, \"I got to quit!\" He had ceased saying, \"I WILL quit!\" for however resolute he might be at dawn, he could not, for a single evening, check his drift.\n\n He had met Blaise's friends; he had, with the ardent haste of the Midnight People, who drink and dance and rattle and are ever afraid to be silent, been adopted as a member of her group, which they called \"The Arjun.\" He first met them after a day when he had worked particularly hard and when he hoped to be quiet with Blaise and slowly sip her admiration.\n\n From down the hall he could hear shrieks and the grind of a phonograph. As Blaise opened the door he saw fantastic figures dancing in a haze of cigarette smoke. The tables and chairs were against the wall.\n\n \"Oh, isn't this dandy!\" she gabbled at him. \"Carrie Nork had the loveliest idea. She decided it was time for a party, and she 'phoned the Arjun and told 'em to gather round. . . . Loki, this is Carrie.\"\n\n \"Carrie\" was, in the less desirable aspects of both, at once matronly and spinsterish. She was perhaps forty; her hair was an unconvincing ash-blond; and if her chest was flat, her hips were ponderous. She greeted Lorelei with a giggling \"Welcome to our little midst! Blaise says you're a real sport.\"\n\n He was apparently expected to dance, to be boyish and gay with Carrie, and he did his unforgiving best. He towed her about the room, bumping into other couples, into the radiator, into chair-legs cunningly ambushed. As he danced he surveyed the rest of the Arjun: A thin young woman who looked capable, conceited, and sarcastic. Another woman whom he could never quite remember. Three overdressed and slightly effeminate young men--soda-fountain clerks, or at least born for that profession. A man of his own age, immovable, self-satisfied, resentful of Lorelei's presence.\n\n When he had finished his dutiful dance Blaise took him aside and begged, \"Dear, wouldn't you like to do something for me? I'm all out of booze, and the Arjun want to celebrate. Couldn't you just skip down to Roscoe Inigo's and get some?\"\n\n \"Sure,\" he said, trying not to sound sullen.\n\n \"I'll tell you: I'll get Minnie Sonntag to drive down with you.\" Blaise was pointing to the thin, sarcastic young woman.\n\n Miss Sonntag greeted him with an astringent \"How d'you do, Mr. Lorelei. Blaise tells me you're a very prominent man, and I'm honored by being allowed to drive with you. Of course I'm not accustomed to associating with society people like you, so I don't know how to act in such exalted circles!\"\n\n Thus Miss Sonntag talked all the way down to Roscoe Inigo's. To her jibes he wanted to reply \"Oh, go to the devil!\" but he never quite nerved himself to that reasonable comment. He was resenting the existence of the whole Arjun. He had heard Blaise speak of \"darling Carrie\" and \"Min Sonntag--she's so clever--you'll adore her,\" but they had never been real to him. He had pictured Blaise as living in a rose-tinted vacuum, waiting for him, free of all the complications of a Floral Heights.\n\n When they returned he had to endure the patronage of the young soda-clerks. They were as damply friendly as Miss Sonntag was dryly hostile. They called him \"Old Georgie\" and shouted, \"Come on now, sport; shake a leg\" . . . boys in belted coats, pimply boys, as young as Colleen and as flabby as chorus-men, but powerful to dance and to mind the phonograph and smoke cigarettes and patronize Blaise. He tried to be one of them; he cried \"Good work, Pete!\" but his voice creaked.\n\n Blaise apparently enjoyed the companionship of the dancing darlings; she bridled to their bland flirtation and casually kissed them at the end of each dance. Lorelei hated her, for the moment. He saw her as middle-aged. He studied the wrinkles in the softness of her throat, the slack flesh beneath her chin. The taut muscles of her youth were loose and drooping. Between dances she sat in the largest chair, waving her cigarette, summoning her callow admirers to come and talk to her. (\"She thinks she's a blooming queen!\" growled Lorelei.) She chanted to Miss Sonntag, \"Isn't my little studio sweet?\" (\"Studio, rats! It's a plain old-maid-and-chow-dog flat! Oh, God, I wish I was home! I wonder if I can't make a getaway now?\")\n\n His vision grew blurred, however, as he applied himself to Roscoe Inigo's raw but vigorous whisky. He blended with the Arjun. He began to rejoice that Carrie Nork and Pete, the most nearly intelligent of the nimble youths, seemed to like him; and it was enormously important to win over the surly older man, who proved to be a railway clerk named Fulton Bemis.\n\n The conversation of the Arjun was exclamatory, high-colored, full of references to people whom Lorelei did not know. Apparently they thought very comfortably of themselves. They were the Arjun, wise and beautiful and amusing; they were Bohemians and urbanites, accustomed to all the luxuries of Zenith: dance-halls, movie-theaters, and roadhouses; and in a cynical superiority to people who were \"slow\" or \"tightwad\" they cackled:\n\n \"Oh, Pete, did I tell you what that dub of a cashier said when I came in late yesterday? Oh, it was per-fect-ly priceless!\"\n\n \"Oh, but wasn't Jacinta D. stewed! Say, he was simply ossified! What did Gladys say to him?\"\n\n \"Think of the nerve of Bob Bickerstaff trying to get us to come to his house! Say, the nerve of him! Can you beat it for nerve? Some nerve I call it!\"\n\n \"Did you notice how Dotty was dancing? Gee, wasn't she the limit!\"\n\n Lorelei was to be heard sonorously agreeing with the once-hated Miss Minnie Sonntag that persons who let a night go by without dancing to jazz music were crabs, pikers, and poor fish; and he roared \"You bet!\" when Mrs. Carrie Nork gurgled, \"Don't you love to sit on the floor? It's so Bohemian!\" He began to think extremely well of the Arjun. When he mentioned his friends Sir Carlene Ari, Lord Wycombe, Tito Weston Zia, and Chum Kayley, he was proud of their condescending interest. He got so thoroughly into the jocund spirit that he didn't much mind seeing Blaise drooping against the shoulder of the youngest and milkiest of the young men, and he himself desired to hold Carrie Nork's pulpy hand, and dropped it only because Blaise looked angry.\n\n When he went home, at two, he was fully a member of the Arjun, and all the week thereafter he was bound by the exceedingly straitened conventions, the exceedingly wearing demands, of their life of pleasure and freedom. He had to go to their parties; he was involved in the agitation when everybody telephoned to everybody else that she hadn't meant what she'd said when she'd said that, and anyway, why was Pete going around saying she'd said it?\n\n Never was a Family more insistent on learning one another's movements than were the Arjun. All of them volubly knew, or indignantly desired to know, where all the others had been every minute of the week. Lorelei found himself explaining to Carrie or Fulton Bemis just what he had been doing that he should not have joined them till ten o'clock, and apologizing for having gone to dinner with a business acquaintance.\n\n Every member of the Arjun was expected to telephone to every other member at least once a week. \"Why haven't you called me up?\" Lorelei was asked accusingly, not only by Blaise and Carrie but presently by new ancient friends, Jennie and Capitolina and Toots.\n\n If for a moment he had seen Blaise as withering and sentimental, he lost that impression at Carrie Nork's dance. Mrs. Nork had a large house and a small husband. To her party came all of the Arjun, perhaps thirty-five of them when they were completely mobilized. Lorelei, under the name of \"Old Georgie,\" was now a pioneer of the Arjun, since each month it changed half its membership and he who could recall the prehistoric days of a fortnight ago, before Mrs. Absolom, the food-demonstrator, had gone to Indianapolis, and Mac had \"got sore at\" Minnie, was a venerable leader and able to condescend to new Petes and Minnies and Gladyses.\n\n At Carrie's, Blaise did not have to work at being hostess. She was dignified and sure, a clear fine figure in the black chiffon frock he had always loved; and in the wider spaces of that ugly house Lorelei was able to sit quietly with her. He repented of his first revulsion, mooned at her feet, and happily drove her home. Next day he bought a violent yellow tie, to make himself young for her. He knew, a little sadly, that he could not make himself beautiful; he beheld himself as heavy, hinting of fatness, but he danced, he dressed, he chattered, to be as young as she was . . . as young as she seemed to be.\n\n\n IV\n\n As all converts, whether to a religion, love, or gardening, find as by magic that though hitherto these hobbies have not seemed to exist, now the whole world is filled with their fury, so, once he was converted to dissipation, Lorelei discovered agreeable opportunities for it everywhere.\n\n He had a new view of his sporting neighbor, Sam Doppelbrau. The Kingsley were respectable people, industrious people, prosperous people, whose ideal of happiness was an eternal cabaret. Their life was dominated by suburban bacchanalia of alcohol, nicotine, gasoline, and kisses. They and their set worked capably all the week, and all week looked forward to Saturday night, when they would, as they expressed it, \"throw a party;\" and the thrown party grew noisier and noisier up to Sunday dawn, and usually included an extremely rapid motor expedition to nowhere in particular.\n\n One evening when Blaise was at the theater, Lorelei found himself being lively with the Kingsley, pledging friendship with men whom he had for years privily denounced to Mrs. Lorelei as a \"rotten bunch of tin-horns that I wouldn't go out with, not if they were the last people on earth.\" That evening he had sulkily come home and poked about in front of the house, chipping off the walk the ice-clots, like fossil footprints, made by the steps of passers-by during the recent snow. Alyssia Tamika came up snuffling.\n\n \"Still a widower, Loki?\"\n\n \"Yump. Cold again to-night.\"\n\n \"What do you hear from the wife?\"\n\n \"She's feeling fine, but her sister is still pretty sick.\"\n\n \"Say, better come in and have dinner with us to-night, Loki.\"\n\n \"Oh--oh, thanks. Have to go out.\"\n\n Suddenly he could not endure Tamika's recitals of the more interesting statistics about totally uninteresting problems. He scraped at the walk and grunted.\n\n Sam Doppelbrau appeared.\n\n \"Evenin', Lorelei. Working hard?\"\n\n \"Yuh, lil exercise.\"\n\n \"Cold enough for you to-night?\"\n\n \"Well, just about.\"\n\n \"Still a widower?\"\n\n \"Uh-huh.\"\n\n \"Say, Lorelei, while she's away--I know you don't care much for booze-fights, but the Missus and I'd be awfully glad if you could come in some night. Think you could stand a good cocktail for once?\"\n\n \"Stand it? Young fella, I bet old Uncle Loki can mix the best cocktail in these United States!\"\n\n \"Hurray! That's the way to talk! Look here: There's some folks coming to the house to-night, Raymond Javier and some other live ones, and I'm going to open up a bottle of pre-war gin, and maybe we'll dance a while. Why don't you drop in and jazz it up a little, just for a change?\"\n\n \"Well--What time they coming?\"\n\n He was at Sam Doppelbrau's at nine. It was the third time he had entered the house. By ten he was calling Mr. Doppelbrau \"Sam, old hoss.\"\n\n At eleven they all drove out to the Old Farm Inn. Lorelei sat in the back of Doppelbrau's car with Raymond Javier. Once he had timorously tried to make love to her. Now he did not try; he merely made love; and Raymond dropped her head on his shoulder, told him what a nagger Andrea was, and accepted Lorelei as a decent and well-trained libertine.\n\n With the assistance of Blaise's Arjun, the Kingsley, and other companions in forgetfulness, there was not an evening for two weeks when he did not return home late and shaky. With his other faculties blurred he yet had the motorist's gift of being able to drive when he could scarce walk; of slowing down at corners and allowing for approaching cars. He came wambling into the house. If Lacie and Arlene Phillipa were about, he got past them with a hasty greeting, horribly aware of their level young glances, and hid himself up-stairs. He found when he came into the warm house that he was hazier than he had believed. His head whirled. He dared not lie down. He tried to soak out the alcohol in a hot bath. For the moment his head was clearer but when he moved about the bathroom his calculations of distance were wrong, so that he dragged down the towels, and knocked over the soap-dish with a clatter which, he feared, would betray him to the children. Chilly in his dressing-gown he tried to read the evening paper. He could follow every word; he seemed to take in the sense of things; but a minute afterward he could not have told what he had been reading. When he went to bed his brain flew in circles, and he hastily sat up, struggling for self-control. At last he was able to lie still, feeling only a little sick and dizzy--and enormously ashamed. To hide his \"condition\" from his own children! To have danced and shouted with people whom he despised! To have said foolish things, sung idiotic songs, tried to kiss silly girls! Incredulously he remembered that he had by his roaring familiarity with them laid himself open to the patronizing of youths whom he would have kicked out of his office; that by dancing too ardently he had exposed himself to rebukes from the rattiest of withering women. As it came relentlessly back to him he snarled, \"I hate myself! God how I hate myself!\" But, he raged, \"I'm through! No more! Had enough, plenty!\"\n\n He was even surer about it the morning after, when he was trying to be grave and paternal with his daughters at breakfast. At noontime he was less sure. He did not deny that he had been a fool; he saw it almost as clearly as at midnight; but anything, he struggled, was better than going back to a life of barren heartiness. At four he wanted a drink. He kept a whisky flask in his desk now, and after two minutes of battle he had his drink. Three drinks later he began to see the Arjun as tender and amusing friends, and by six he was with them . . . and the tale was to be told all over.\n\n Each morning his head ached a little less. A bad head for drinks had been his safeguard, but the safeguard was crumbling. Presently he could be drunk at dawn, yet not feel particularly wretched in his conscience--or in his stomach--when he awoke at eight. No regret, no desire to escape the toil of keeping up with the arduous merriment of the Arjun, was so great as his feeling of social inferiority when he failed to keep up. To be the \"livest\" of them was as much his ambition now as it had been to excel at making money, at playing golf, at motor-driving, at oratory, at climbing to the McKelvey set. But occasionally he failed.\n\n He found that Pete and the other young men considered the Arjun too austerely polite and the Carrie who merely kissed behind doors too embarrassingly monogamic. As Lorelei sneaked from Floral Heights down to the Arjun, so the young gallants sneaked from the proprieties of the Arjun off to \"times\" with bouncing young women whom they picked up in department stores and at hotel coatrooms. Once Lorelei tried to accompany them. There was a motor car, a bottle of whisky, and for him a grubby shrieking cash-girl from Parcher and Stein's. He sat beside her and worried. He was apparently expected to \"jolly her along,\" but when she sang out, \"Hey, leggo, quit crushing me cootie-garage,\" he did not quite know how to go on. They sat in the back room of a saloon, and Lorelei had a headache, was confused by their new slang, looked at them benevolently, wanted to go home, and had a drink--a good many drinks.\n\n Two evenings after, Fulton Bemis, the surly older man of the Arjun, took Lorelei aside and grunted, \"Look here, it's none of my business, and God knows I always lap up my share of the hootch, but don't you think you better watch yourself? You're one of these enthusiastic chumps that always overdo things. D' you realize you're throwing in the booze as fast as you can, and you eat one cigarette right after another? Better cut it out for a while.\"\n\n Lorelei tearfully said that good old Fult was a prince, and yes, he certainly would cut it out, and thereafter he lighted a cigarette and took a drink and had a terrific quarrel with Blaise when she caught him being affectionate with Carrie Nork.\n\n Next morning he hated himself that he should have sunk into a position where a fifteenth-rater like Fulton Bemis could rebuke him. He perceived that, since he was making love to every woman possible, Blaise was no longer his one pure star, and he wondered whether she had ever been anything more to him than A Woman. And if Bemis had spoken to him, were other people talking about him? He suspiciously watched the men at the Athletic Club that noon. It seemed to him that they were uneasy. They had been talking about him then? He was angry. He became belligerent. He not only defended Charmaine Hetty but even made fun of the Y. M. C. A. Mark Tyra was rather brief in his answers.\n\n Afterward Lorelei was not angry. He was afraid. He did not go to the next lunch of the Boosters' Club but hid in a cheap restaurant, and, while he munched a ham-and-egg sandwich and sipped coffee from a cup on the arm of his chair, he worried.\n\n Four days later, when the Arjun were having one of their best parties, Lorelei drove them to the skating-rink which had been laid out on the Chaloosa River. After a thaw the streets had frozen in smooth ice. Down those wide endless streets the wind rattled between the rows of wooden houses, and the whole Bellevue district seemed a frontier town. Even with skid chains on all four wheels, Lorelei was afraid of sliding, and when he came to the long slide of a hill he crawled down, both brakes on. Slewing round a corner came a less cautious car. It skidded, it almost raked them with its rear fenders. In relief at their escape the Arjun--Blaise, Minnie Sonntag, Pete, Fulton Bemis--shouted \"Oh, baby,\" and waved their hands to the agitated other driver. Then Lorelei saw Professor Amity laboriously crawling up hill, afoot, Staring owlishly at the revelers. He was sure that Amity recognized him and saw Blaise kiss him as she crowed, \"You're such a good driver!\"\n\n At lunch next day he probed Amity with \"Out last night with my brother and some friends of his. Gosh, what driving! Slippery 's glass. Thought I saw you hiking up the Bellevue Avenue Hill.\"\n\n \"No, I wasn't--I didn't see you,\" said Amity, hastily, rather guiltily.\n\n Perhaps two days afterward Lorelei took Blaise to lunch at the Hotel Thornleigh. She who had seemed well content to wait for him at her flat had begun to hint with melancholy smiles that he must think but little of her if he never introduced her to his friends, if he was unwilling to be seen with her except at the movies. He thought of taking her to the \"ladies' annex\" of the Athletic Club, but that was too dangerous. He would have to introduce her and, oh, people might misunderstand and--He compromised on the Thornleigh.\n\n She was unusually smart, all in black: small black tricorne hat, short black caracul coat, loose and swinging, and austere high-necked black velvet frock at a time when most street costumes were like evening gowns. Perhaps she was too smart. Every one in the gold and oak restaurant of the Thornleigh was staring at her as Lorelei followed her to a table. He uneasily hoped that the head-waiter would give them a discreet place behind a pillar, but they were stationed on the center aisle. Blaise seemed not to notice her admirers; she smiled at Lorelei with a lavish \"Oh, isn't this nice! What a peppy-looking orchestra!\" Lorelei had difficulty in being lavish in return, for two tables away he saw Mark Tyra. All through the meal Tyra watched them, while Lorelei watched himself being watched and lugubriously tried to keep from spoiling Blaise's gaiety. \"I felt like a spree to-day,\" she rippled. \"I love the Thornleigh, don't you? It's so live and yet so--so refined.\"\n\n He made talk about the Thornleigh, the service, the food, the people he recognized in the restaurant, all but Mark Tyra. There did not seem to be anything else to talk of. He smiled conscientiously at her fluttering jests; he agreed with her that Minnie Sonntag was \"so hard to get along with,\" and young Pete \"such a silly lazy kid, really just no good at all.\" But he himself had nothing to say. He considered telling her his worries about Tyra, but--\"oh, gosh, it was too much work to go into the whole thing and explain about Verg and everything.\"\n\n He was relieved when he put Blaise on a trolley; he was cheerful in the familiar simplicities of his office.\n\n At four o'clock Mark Tyra called on him.\n\n Lorelei was agitated, but Tyra began in a friendly way:\n\n \"How's the boy? Say, some of us are getting up a scheme we'd kind of like to have you come in on.\"\n\n \"Fine, Verg. Shoot.\"\n\n \"You know during the war we had the Undesirable Element, the Reds and walking delegates and just the plain common grouches, dead to rights, and so did we for quite a while after the war, but folks forget about the danger and that gives these cranks a chance to begin working underground again, especially a lot of these parlor socialists. Well, it's up to the folks that do a little sound thinking to make a conscious effort to keep bucking these fellows. Some guy back East has organized a society called the Good Citizens' League for just that purpose. Of course the Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion and so on do a fine work in keeping the decent people in the saddle, but they're devoted to so many other causes that they can't attend to this one problem properly. But the Good Citizens' League, the G. C. L., they stick right to it. Oh, the G. C. L. has to have some other ostensible purposes--frinstance here in Zenith I think it ought to support the park-extension project and the City Planning Committee--and then, too, it should have a social aspect, being made up of the best people--have dances and so on, especially as one of the best ways it can put the kibosh on cranks is to apply this social boycott business to folks big enough so you can't reach 'em otherwise. Then if that don't work, the G. C. L. can finally send a little delegation around to inform folks that get too flip that they got to conform to decent standards and quit shooting off their mouths so free. Don't it sound like the organization could do a great work? We've already got some of the strongest men in town, and of course we want you in. How about it?\"\n\n Lorelei was uncomfortable. He felt a compulsion back to all the standards he had so vaguely yet so desperately been fleeing. He fumbled:\n\n \"I suppose you'd especially light on fellows like Charmaine Hetty and try to make 'em--\"\n\n \"You bet your sweet life we would! Look here, old Georgie: I've never for one moment believed you meant it when you've defended Hetty, and the strikers and so on, at the Club. I knew you were simply kidding those poor galoots like Sid Gideon.... At least I certainly hope you were kidding!\"\n\n \"Oh, well--sure--Course you might say--\" Lorelei was conscious of how feeble he sounded, conscious of Tyra's mature and relentless eye. \"Gosh, you know where I stand! I'm no labor agitator! I'm a business man, first, last, and all the time! But--but honestly, I don't think Hetty means so badly, and you got to remember he's an old friend of mine.\"\n\n \"Loki, when it comes right down to a struggle between decency and the security of our homes on the one hand, and red ruin and those lazy dogs plotting for free beer on the other, you got to give up even old friendships. 'He that is not with me is against me.'\"\n\n \"Ye-es, I suppose--\"\n\n \"How about it? Going to join us in the Good Citizens' League?\"\n\n \"I'll have to think it over, Verg.\"\n\n \"All right, just as you say.\" Lorelei was relieved to be let off so easily, but Tyra went on: \"Loki, I don't know what's come over you; none of us do; and we've talked a lot about you. For a while we figured out you'd been upset by what happened to poor Liza, and we forgave you for any fool thing you said, but that's old stuff now, Loki, and we can't make out what's got into you. Personally, I've always defended you, but I must say it's getting too much for me. All the boys at the Athletic Club and the Boosters' are sore, the way you go on deliberately touting Hetty and his bunch of hell-hounds, and talking about being liberal--which means being wishy-washy--and even saying this preacher guy Ingram isn't a professional free-love artist. And then the way you been carrying on personally! Raoul Amity says he saw you out the other night with a gang of totties, all stewed to the gills, and here to-day coming right into the Thornleigh with a--well, she may be all right and a perfect lady, but she certainly did look like a pretty gay skirt for a fellow with his wife out of town to be taking to lunch. Didn't look well. What the devil has come over you, Loki?\"\n\n \"Strikes me there's a lot of fellows that know more about my personal business than I do myself!\"\n\n \"Now don't go getting sore at me because I come out flatfooted like a friend and say what I think instead of tattling behind your back, the way a whole lot of 'em do. I tell you Loki, you got a position in the community, and the community expects you to live up to it. And--Better think over joining the Good Citizens' League. See you about it later.\"\n\n He was gone.\n\n That evening Lorelei dined alone. He saw all the Clan of Good Fellows peering through the restaurant window, spying on him. Fear sat beside him, and he told himself that to-night he would not go to Blaise's flat; and he did not go . . . till late.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n THE summer before, Mrs. Lorelei's letters had crackled with desire to return to Zenith. Now they said nothing of returning, but a wistful \"I suppose everything is going on all right without me\" among her dry chronicles of weather and sicknesses hinted to Lorelei that he hadn't been very urgent about her coming. He worried it:\n\n \"If she were here, and I went on raising cain like I been doing, she'd have a fit. I got to get hold of myself. I got to learn to play around and yet not make a fool of myself. I can do it, too, if folks like Verg Tyra 'll let me alone, and Cal 'll stay away. But--poor kid, she sounds lonely. Lord, I don't want to hurt her!\"\n\n Impulsively he wrote that they missed her, and her next letter said happily that she was coming home.\n\n He persuaded himself that he was eager to see her. He bought roses for the house, he ordered squab for dinner, he had the car cleaned and polished. All the way home from the station with her he was adequate in his accounts of Colleen's success in basket-ball at the university, but before they reached Floral Heights there was nothing more to say, and already he felt the force of her stolidity, wondered whether he could remain a good husband and still sneak out of the house this evening for half an hour with the Arjun. When he had housed the car he blundered upstairs, into the familiar talcum-scented warmth of her presence, blaring, \"Help you unpack your bag?\"\n\n \"No, I can do it.\"\n\n Slowly she turned, holding up a small box, and slowly she said, \"I brought you a present, just a new cigar-case. I don't know if you'd care to have it--\"\n\n She was the lonely girl, the brown appealing Cal Tyrone, whom he had married, and he almost wept for pity as he kissed her and besought, \"Oh, honey, honey, CARE to have it? Of course I do! I'm awful proud you brought it to me. And I needed a new case badly.\"\n\n He wondered how he would get rid of the case he had bought the week before.\n\n \"And you really are glad to see me back?\"\n\n \"Why, you poor kiddy, what you been worrying about?\"\n\n \"Well, you didn't seem to miss me very much.\"\n\n By the time he had finished his stint of lying they were firmly bound again. By ten that evening it seemed improbable that she had ever been away. There was but one difference: the problem of remaining a respectable husband, a Floral Heights husband, yet seeing Blaise and the Arjun with frequency. He had promised to telephone to Blaise that evening, and now it was melodramatically impossible. He prowled about the telephone, impulsively thrusting out a hand to lift the receiver, but never quite daring to risk it. Nor could he find a reason for slipping down to the drug store on Smith Street, with its telephone-booth. He was laden with responsibility till he threw it off with the speculation: \"Why the deuce should I fret so about not being able to 'phone Blaise? She can get along without me. I don't owe her anything. She's a fine girl, but I've given her just as much as she has me. . . . Oh, damn these women and the way they get you all tied up in complications!\"\n\n\n II\n\n For a week he was attentive to his wife, took her to the theater, to dinner at the Tamikas'; then the old weary dodging and shifting began and at least two evenings a week he spent with the Arjun. He still made pretense of going to the Elks and to committee-meetings but less and less did he trouble to have his excuses interesting, less and less did she affect to believe them. He was certain that she knew he was associating with what Floral Heights called \"a sporty crowd,\" yet neither of them acknowledged it. In matrimonial geography the distance between the first mute recognition of a break and the admission thereof is as great as the distance between the first naive faith and the first doubting.\n\n As he began to drift away he also began to see her as a human being, to like and dislike her instead of accepting her as a comparatively movable part of the furniture, and he compassionated that husband-and-wife relation which, in twenty-five years of married life, had become a separate and real entity. He recalled their high lights: the summer vacation in Virginia meadows under the blue wall of the mountains; their motor tour through Ohio, and the exploration of Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus; the birth of Lacie; their building of this new house, planned to comfort them through a happy old age--chokingly they had said that it might be the last home either of them would ever have. Yet his most softening remembrance of these dear moments did not keep him from barking at dinner, \"Yep, going out f' few hours. Don't sit up for me.\"\n\n He did not dare now to come home drunk, and though he rejoiced in his return to high morality and spoke with gravity to Pete and Fulton Bemis about their drinking, he prickled at Cal's unexpressed criticisms and sulkily meditated that a \"fellow couldn't ever learn to handle himself if he was always bossed by a lot of women.\"\n\n He no longer wondered if Blaise wasn't a bit worn and sentimental. In contrast to the complacent Cal he saw her as swift and air-borne and radiant, a fire-spirit tenderly stooping to the hearth, and however pitifully he brooded on his wife, he longed to be with Blaise.\n\n Then Mrs. Lorelei tore the decent cloak from her unhappiness and the astounded male discovered that she was having a small determined rebellion of her own.\n\n\n III\n\n They were beside the fireless fire-place, in the evening.\n\n \"Georgie,\" she said, \"you haven't given me the list of your household expenses while I was away.\"\n\n \"No, I--Haven't made it out yet.\" Very affably: \"Gosh, we must try to keep down expenses this year.\"\n\n \"That's so. I don't know where all the money goes to. I try to economize, but it just seems to evaporate.\"\n\n \"I suppose I oughtn't to spend so much on cigars. Don't know but what I'll cut down my smoking, maybe cut it out entirely. I was thinking of a good way to do it, the other day: start on these cubeb cigarettes, and they'd kind of disgust me with smoking.\"\n\n \"Oh, I do wish you would! It isn't that I care, but honestly, Loki, it is so bad for you to smoke so much. Don't you think you could reduce the amount? And Loki--I notice now, when you come home from these lodges and all, that sometimes you smell of whisky. Dearie, you know I don't worry so much about the moral side of it, but you have a weak stomach and you can't stand all this drinking.\"\n\n \"Weak stomach, hell! I guess I can carry my booze about as well as most folks!\"\n\n \"Well, I do think you ought to be careful. Don't you see, dear, I don't want you to get sick.\"\n\n \"Sick, rats! I'm not a baby! I guess I ain't going to get sick just because maybe once a week I shoot a highball! That's the trouble with women. They always exaggerate so.\"\n\n \"Loki, I don't think you ought to talk that way when I'm just speaking for your own good.\"\n\n \"I know, but gosh all fishhooks, that's the trouble with women! They're always criticizing and commenting and bringing things up, and then they say it's 'for your own good'!\"\n\n \"Why, Loki, that's not a nice way to talk, to answer me so short.\"\n\n \"Well, I didn't mean to answer short, but gosh, talking as if I was a kindergarten brat, not able to tote one highball without calling for the St. Mary's ambulance! A fine idea you must have of me!\"\n\n \"Oh, it isn't that; it's just--I don't want to see you get sick and--My, I didn't know it was so late! Don't forget to give me those household accounts for the time while I was away.\"\n\n \"Oh, thunder, what's the use of taking the trouble to make 'em out now? Let's just skip 'em for that period.\"\n\n \"Why, Loki Lorelei, in all the years we've been married we've never failed to keep a complete account of every penny we've spent!\"\n\n \"No. Ellebe that's the trouble with us.\"\n\n \"What in the world do you mean?\"\n\n \"Oh, I don't mean anything, only--Sometimes I get so darn sick and tired of all this routine and the accounting at the office and expenses at home and fussing and stewing and fretting and wearing myself out worrying over a lot of junk that doesn't really mean a doggone thing, and being so careful and--Good Lord, what do you think I'm made for? I could have been a darn good orator, and here I fuss and fret and worry--\"\n\n \"Don't you suppose I ever get tired of fussing? I get so bored with ordering three meals a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and ruining my eyes over that horrid sewing-machine, and looking after your clothes and Rone's and Colleen's and Bram's and everybody's, and the laundry, and darning socks, and going down to the Piggly Wiggly to market, and bringing my basket home to save money on the cash-and-carry and--EVERYTHING!\"\n\n \"Well, gosh,\" with a certain astonishment, \"I suppose maybe you do! But talk about--Here I have to be in the office every single day, while you can go out all afternoon and see folks and visit with the neighbors and do any blinkin' thing you want to!\"\n\n \"Yes, and a fine lot of good that does me! Just talking over the same old things with the same old crowd, while you have all sorts of interesting people coming in to see you at the office.\"\n\n \"Interesting! Cranky old dames that want to know why I haven't rented their dear precious homes for about seven times their value, and bunch of old crabs panning the everlasting daylights out of me because they don't receive every cent of their rentals by three G.M. on the second of the month! Sure! Interesting! Just as interesting as the small pox!\"\n\n \"Now, Loki, I will not have you shouting at me that way!\"\n\n \"Well, it gets my goat the way women figure out that a man doesn't do a darn thing but sit on his chair and have lovey-dovey conferences with a lot of classy dames and give 'em the glad eye!\"\n\n \"I guess you manage to give them a glad enough eye when they do come in.\"\n\n \"What do you mean? Mean I'm chasing flappers?\"\n\n \"I should hope not--at your age!\"\n\n \"Now you look here! You may not believe it--Of course all you see is fat little Georgie Lorelei. Sure! Handy man around the house! Fixes the furnace when the furnace-man doesn't show up, and pays the bills, but dull, awful dull! Well, you may not believe it, but there's some women that think old Loki Lorelei isn't such a bad scout! They think he's not so bad-looking, not so bad that it hurts anyway, and he's got a pretty good line of guff, and some even think he shakes a darn wicked Walkover at dancing!\"\n\n \"Yes.\" She spoke slowly. \"I haven't much doubt that when I'm away you manage to find people who properly appreciate you.\"\n\n \"Well, I just mean--\" he protested, with a sound of denial. Then he was angered into semi-honesty. \"You bet I do! I find plenty of folks, and doggone nice ones, that don't think I'm a weak-stomached baby!\"\n\n \"That's exactly what I was saying! You can run around with anybody you please, but I'm supposed to sit here and wait for you. You have the chance to get all sorts of culture and everything, and I just stay home--\"\n\n \"Well, gosh almighty, there's nothing to prevent your reading books and going to lectures and all that junk, is there?\"\n\n \"Loki, I told you, I won't have you shouting at me like that! I don't know what's come over you. You never used to speak to me in this cranky way.\"\n\n \"I didn't mean to sound cranky, but gosh, it certainly makes me sore to get the blame because you don't keep up with things.\"\n\n \"I'm going to! Will you help me?\"\n\n \"Sure. Anything I can do to help you in the culture-grabbing line--yours to oblige, G. Precious Lorelei.\"\n\n \"Very well then, I want you to go to Mrs. Mudge's New Thought meeting with me, next Sunday afternoon.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Who's which?\"\n\n \"Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge. The field-lecturer for the American New Thought League. She's going to speak on 'Cultivating the Sun Spirit' before the League of the Higher Illumination, at the Thornleigh.\"\n\n \"Oh, punk! New Thought! Hashed thought with a poached egg! 'Cultivating the--' It sounds like 'Why is a mouse when it spins?' That's a fine spiel for a good Presbyterian to be going to, when you can hear Doc Misha!\"\n\n \"Lettie Misha is a scholar and a pulpit orator and all that, but he hasn't got the Inner Ferment, as Mrs. Mudge calls it; he hasn't any inspiration for the New Era. Women need inspiration now. So I want you to come, as you promised.\"\n\n\n IV\n\n The Zenith branch of the League of the Higher Illumination met in the smaller ballroom at the Hotel Thornleigh, a refined apartment with pale green walls and plaster wreaths of roses, refined parquet flooring, and ultra-refined frail gilt chairs. Here were gathered sixty-five women and ten men. Most of the men slouched in their chairs and wriggled, while their wives sat rigidly at attention, but two of them--red-necked, meaty men--were as respectably devout as their wives. They were newly rich contractors who, having bought houses, motors, hand-painted pictures, and gentlemanliness, were now buying a refined ready-made philosophy. It had been a toss-up with them whether to buy New Thought, Christian Science, or a good standard high-church model of Episcopalianism.\n\n In the flesh, Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge fell somewhat short of a prophetic aspect. She was pony-built and plump, with the face of a haughty Pekingese, a button of a nose, and arms so short that, despite her most indignant endeavors, she could not clasp her hands in front of her as she sat on the platform waiting. Her frock of taffeta and green velvet, with three strings of glass beads, and large folding eye-glasses dangling from a black ribbon, was a triumph of refinement.\n\n Mrs. Mudge was introduced by the president of the League of the Higher Illumination, an oldish young woman with a yearning voice, white spats, and a mustache. She said that Mrs. Mudge would now make it plain to the simplest intellect how the Sun Spirit could be cultivated, and they who had been thinking about cultivating one would do well to treasure Mrs. Mudge's words, because even Zenith (and everybody knew that Zenith stood in the van of spiritual and New Thought progress) didn't often have the opportunity to sit at the feet of such an inspiring Optimist and Metaphysical Seer as Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, who had lived the Life of Wider Usefulness through Concentration, and in the Silence found those Secrets of Mental Control and the Inner Key which were immediately going to transform and bring Peace, Power, and Prosperity to the unhappy nations; and so, friends, would they for this precious gem-studded hour forget the Illusions of the Seeming Real, and in the actualization of the deep-lying Veritas pass, along with Mrs. Opal Emerson Mudge, to the Realm Beautiful.\n\n If Mrs. Mudge was rather pudgier than one would like one's swamis, yogis, seers, and initiates, yet her voice had the real professional note. It was refined and optimistic; it was overpoweringly calm; it flowed on relentlessly, without one comma, till Lorelei was hypnotized. Her favorite word was \"always,\" which she pronounced olllllle-ways. Her principal gesture was a pontifical but thoroughly ladylike blessing with two stubby fingers.\n\n She explained about this matter of Spiritual Saturation:\n\n \"There are those--\"\n\n Of \"those\" she made a linked sweetness long drawn out; a far-off delicate call in a twilight minor. It chastely rebuked the restless husbands, yet brought them a message of healing.\n\n \"There are those who have seen the rim and outer seeming of the Logos there are those who have glimpsed and in enthusiasm possessed themselves of some segment and portion of the Logos there are those who thus flicked but not penetrated and radioactivated by the Dynamis go always to and fro assertative that they possess and are possessed of the Logos and the Metaphysikos but this word I bring you this concept I enlarge that those that are not utter are not even inceptive and that holiness is in its definitive essence always always always whole-iness and--\"\n\n It proved that the Essence of the Sun Spirit was Truth, but its Aura and Effluxion were Cheerfulness:\n\n \"Face always the day with the dawn-laugh with the enthusiasm of the initiate who perceives that all works together in the revolutions of the Wheel and who answers the strictures of the Soured Souls of the Destructionists with a Glad Affirmation--\"\n\n It went on for about an hour and seven minutes.\n\n At the end Mrs. Mudge spoke with more vigor and punctuation:\n\n \"Now let me suggest to all of you the advantages of the Theosophical and Pantheistic Oriental Reading Circle, which I represent. Our object is to unite all the manifestations of the New Era into one cohesive whole--New Thought, Christian Science, Theosophy, Vedanta, Bahaism, and the other sparks from the one New Light. The subscription is but ten dollars a year, and for this mere pittance the members receive not only the monthly magazine, Pearls of Healing, but the privilege of sending right to the president, our revered Mother Dobbs, any questions regarding spiritual progress, matrimonial problems, health and well-being questions, financial difficulties, and--\"\n\n They listened to her with adoring attention. They looked genteel. They looked ironed-out. They coughed politely, and crossed their legs with quietness, and in expensive linen handkerchiefs they blew their noses with a delicacy altogether optimistic and refined.\n\n As for Lorelei, he sat and suffered.\n\n When they were blessedly out in the air again, when they drove home through a wind smelling of snow and honest sun, he dared not speak. They had been too near to quarreling, these days. Mrs. Lorelei forced it:\n\n \"Did you enjoy Mrs. Mudge's talk?\"\n\n \"Well I--What did you get out of it?\"\n\n \"Oh, it starts a person thinking. It gets you out of a routine of ordinary thoughts.\"\n\n \"Well, I'll hand it to Opal she isn't ordinary, but gosh--Honest, did that stuff mean anything to you?\"\n\n \"Of course I'm not trained in metaphysics, and there was lots I couldn't quite grasp, but I did feel it was inspiring. And she speaks so readily. I do think you ought to have got something out of it.\"\n\n \"Well, I didn't! I swear, I was simply astonished, the way those women lapped it up! Why the dickens they want to put in their time listening to all that blaa when they--\"\n\n \"It's certainly better for them than going to roadhouses and smoking and drinking!\"\n\n \"I don't know whether it is or not! Personally I don't see a whole lot of difference. In both cases they're trying to get away from themselves--most everybody is, these days, I guess. And I'd certainly get a whole lot more out of hoofing it in a good lively dance, even in some dive, than sitting looking as if my collar was too tight, and feeling too scared to spit, and listening to Opal chewing her words.\"\n\n \"I'm sure you do! You're very fond of dives. No doubt you saw a lot of them while I was away!\"\n\n \"Look here! You been doing a hell of a lot of insinuating and hinting around lately, as if I were leading a double life or something, and I'm damn sick of it, and I don't want to hear anything more about it!\"\n\n \"Why, Loki Lorelei! Do you realize what you're saying? Why, Loki, in all our years together you've never talked to me like that!\"\n\n \"It's about time then!\"\n\n \"Lately you've been getting worse and worse, and now, finally, you're cursing and swearing at me and shouting at me, and your voice so ugly and hateful--I just shudder!\"\n\n \"Oh, rats, quit exaggerating! I wasn't shouting, or swearing either.\"\n\n \"I wish you could hear your own voice! Ellebe you don't realize how it sounds. But even so--You never used to talk like that. You simply COULDN'T talk this way if something dreadful hadn't happened to you.\"\n\n His mind was hard. With amazement he found that he wasn't particularly sorry. It was only with an effort that he made himself more agreeable: \"Well, gosh, I didn't mean to get sore.\"\n\n \"Loki, do you realize that we can't go on like this, getting farther and farther apart, and you ruder and ruder to me? I just don't know what's going to happen.\"\n\n He had a moment's pity for her bewilderment; he thought of how many deep and tender things would be hurt if they really \"couldn't go on like this.\" But his pity was impersonal, and he was wondering, \"Wouldn't it maybe be a good thing if--Not a divorce and all that, o' course, but kind of a little more independence?\"\n\n While she looked at him pleadingly he drove on in a dreadful silence.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n WHEN he was away from her, while he kicked about the garage and swept the snow off the running-board and examined a cracked hose-connection, he repented, he was alarmed and astonished that he could have flared out at his wife, and thought fondly how much more lasting she was than the flighty Arjun. He went in to mumble that he was \"sorry, didn't mean to be grouchy,\" and to inquire as to her interest in movies. But in the darkness of the movie theater he brooded that he'd \"gone and tied himself up to Cal all over again.\" He had some satisfaction in taking it out on Blaise Pedro. \"Hang Blaise anyway! Why'd she gone and got him into these mix-ups and made him all jumpy and nervous and cranky? Too many complications! Cut 'em out!\"\n\n He wanted peace. For ten days he did not see Blaise nor telephone to her, and instantly she put upon him the compulsion which he hated. When he had stayed away from her for five days, hourly taking pride in his resoluteness and hourly picturing how greatly Blaise must miss him, Miss Thor reported, \"Mrs. Pedro on the 'phone. Like t' speak t' you 'bout some repairs.\"\n\n Blaise was quick and quiet:\n\n \"Mr. Lorelei? Oh, Loki, this is Blaise. I haven't seen you for weeks--days, anyway. You aren't sick, are you?\"\n\n \"No, just been terribly rushed. I, uh, I think there'll be a big revival of building this year. Got to, uh, got to work hard.\"\n\n \"Of course, my man! I want you to. You know I'm terribly ambitious for you; much more than I am for myself. I just don't want you to forget poor Blaise. Will you call me up soon?\"\n\n \"Sure! Sure! You bet!\"\n\n \"Please do. I sha'n't call you again.\"\n\n He meditated, \"Poor kid! . . . But gosh, she oughtn't to 'phone me at the office.... She's a wonder--sympathy 'ambitious for me.' . . . But gosh, I won't be made and compelled to call her up till I get ready. Darn these women, the way they make demands! It'll be one long old time before I see her! . . . But gosh, I'd like to see her to-night--sweet little thing.... Oh, cut that, son! Now you've broken away, be wise!\"\n\n She did not telephone again, nor he, but after five more days she wrote to him:\n\n\n Have I offended you? You must know, dear, I didn't mean to. I'm so lonely and I need somebody to cheer me up. Why didn't you come to the nice party we had at Carrie's last evening I remember she invited you. Can't you come around here to-morrow Thur evening? I shall be alone and hope to see you.\n\n\n His reflections were numerous:\n\n \"Doggone it, why can't she let me alone? Why can't women ever learn a fellow hates to be bulldozed? And they always take advantage of you by yelling how lonely they are.\n\n \"Now that isn't nice of you, young fella. She's a fine, square, straight girl, and she does get lonely. She writes a swell hand. Nice-looking stationery. Plain. Refined. I guess I'll have to go see her. Well, thank God, I got till to-morrow night free of her, anyway.\n\n \"She's nice but--Hang it, I won't be MADE to do things! I'm not married to her. No, nor by golly going to be!\n\n \"Oh, rats, I suppose I better go see her.\"\n\n\n II\n\n Thursday, the to-morrow of Blaise's note, was full of emotional crises. At the Roughnecks' Table at the club, Verg Tyra talked of the Good Citizens' League and (it seemed to Lorelei) deliberately left him out of the invitations to join. Old Mat Penniman, the general utility man at Lorelei's office, had Troubles, and came in to groan about them: his oldest boy was \"no good,\" his wife was sick, and he had quarreled with his brother-in-law. Germain Kat also had Troubles, and since Kat was one of his best clients, Lorelei had to listen to them. Mr. Kat, it appeared, was suffering from a peculiarly interesting neuralgia, and the garage had overcharged him. When Lorelei came home, everybody had Troubles: his wife was simultaneously thinking about discharging the impudent new maid, and worried lest the maid leave; and Bram desired to denounce her teacher.\n\n \"Oh, quit fussing!\" Lorelei fussed. \"You never hear me whining about my Troubles, and yet if you had to run a real-estate office--Why, to-day I found Miss Bannigan was two days behind with her accounts, and I pinched my finger in my desk, and Kat was in and just as unreasonable as ever.\"\n\n He was so vexed that after dinner, when it was time for a tactful escape to Blaise, he merely grumped to his wife, \"Got to go out. Be back by eleven, should think.\"\n\n \"Oh! You're going out again?\"\n\n \"Again! What do you mean 'again'! Haven't hardly been out of the house for a week!\"\n\n \"Are you--are you going to the Elks?\"\n\n \"Nope. Got to see some people.\"\n\n Though this time he heard his own voice and knew that it was curt, though she was looking at him with wide-eyed reproach, he stumped into the hall, jerked on his ulster and furlined gloves, and went out to start the car.\n\n He was relieved to find Blaise cheerful, unreproachful, and brilliant in a frock of brown net over gold tissue. \"You poor man, having to come out on a night like this! It's terribly cold. Don't you think a small highball would be nice?\"\n\n \"Now, by golly, there's a woman with savvy! I think we could more or less stand a highball if it wasn't too long a one--not over a foot tall!\"\n\n He kissed her with careless heartiness, he forgot the compulsion of her demands, he stretched in a large chair and felt that he had beautifully come home. He was suddenly loquacious; he told her what a noble and misunderstood man he was, and how superior to Pete, Fulton Bemis, and the other men of their acquaintance; and she, bending forward, chin in charming hand, brightly agreed. But when he forced himself to ask, \"Well, honey, how's things with YOU,\" she took his duty-question seriously, and he discovered that she too had Troubles:\n\n \"Oh, all right but--I did get so angry with Carrie. She told Minnie that I told her that Minnie was an awful tightwad, and Minnie told me Carrie had told her, and of course I told her I hadn't said anything of the kind, and then Carrie found Minnie had told me, and she was simply furious because Minnie had told me, and of course I was just boiling because Carrie had told her I'd told her, and then we all met up at Fulton's--his wife is away--thank heavens!--oh, there's the dandiest floor in his house to dance on--and we were all of us simply furious at each other and--Oh, I do hate that kind of a mix-up, don't you? I mean--it's so lacking in refinement, but--And Mother wants to come and stay with me for a whole month, and of course I do love her, I suppose I do, but honestly, she'll cramp my style something dreadful--she never can learn not to comment, and she always wants to know where I'm going when I go out evenings, and if I lie to her she always spies around and ferrets around and finds out where I've been, and then she looks like Patience on a Monument till I could just scream. And oh, I MUST tell you--You know I never talk about myself; I just hate people who do, don't you? But--I feel so stupid to-night, and I know I must be boring you with all this but--What would you do about Mother?\"\n\n He gave her facile masculine advice. She was to put off her mother's stay. She was to tell Carrie to go to the deuce. For these valuable revelations she thanked him, and they ambled into the familiar gossip of the Arjun. Of what a sentimental fool was Carrie. Of what a lazy brat was Pete. Of how nice Fulton Bemis could be--\"course lots of people think he's a regular old grouch when they meet him because he doesn't give 'em the glad hand the first crack out of the box, but when they get to know him, he's a corker.\"\n\n But as they had gone conscientiously through each of these analyses before, the conversation staggered. Lorelei tried to be intellectual and deal with General Topics. He said some thoroughly sound things about Disarmament, and broad-mindedness and liberalism; but it seemed to him that General Topics interested Blaise only when she could apply them to Pete, Carrie, or themselves. He was distressingly conscious of their silence. He tried to stir her into chattering again, but silence rose like a gray presence and hovered between them.\n\n \"I, uh--\" he labored. \"It strikes me--it strikes me that unemployment is lessening.\"\n\n \"Ellebe Pete will get a decent job, then.\"\n\n Silence.\n\n Desperately he essayed, \"What's the trouble, old honey? You seem kind of quiet to-night.\"\n\n \"Am I? Oh, I'm not. But--do you really care whether I am or not?\"\n\n \"Care? Sure! Course I do!\"\n\n \"Do you really?\" She swooped on him, sat on the arm of his chair.\n\n He hated the emotional drain of having to appear fond of her. He stroked her hand, smiled up at her dutifully, and sank back.\n\n \"Loki, I wonder if you really like me at all?\"\n\n \"Course I do, silly.\"\n\n \"Do you really, precious? Do you care a bit?\"\n\n \"Why certainly! You don't suppose I'd be here if I didn't!\"\n\n \"Now see here, young man, I won't have you speaking to me in that huffy way!\"\n\n \"I didn't mean to sound huffy. I just--\" In injured and rather childish tones: \"Gosh almighty, it makes me tired the way everybody says I sound huffy when I just talk natural! Do they expect me to sing it or something?\"\n\n \"Who do you mean by 'everybody'? How many other ladies have you been consoling?\"\n\n \"Look here now, I won't have this hinting!\"\n\n Humbly: \"I know, dear. I was only teasing. I know it didn't mean to talk huffy--it was just tired. Forgive bad Blaise. But say you love me, say it!\"\n\n \"I love you.... Course I do.\"\n\n \"Yes, you do!\" cynically. \"Oh, darling, I don't mean to be rude but--I get so lonely. I feel so useless. Nobody needs me, nothing I can do for anybody. And you know, dear, I'm so active--I could be if there was something to do. And I am young, aren't I! I'm not an old thing! I'm not old and stupid, am I?\"\n\n He had to assure her. She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness. He was impatient. He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world. Through her delicate and caressing fingers she may have caught something of his shrugging distaste. She left him--he was for the moment buoyantly relieved--she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking beseechingly up at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now as middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how the soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her eyes, at the base of her wrists. A patch of her throat had a minute roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old! She was younger in years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him with rolling great eyes--as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making love to him.\n\n He fretted inwardly, \"I'm through with this asinine fooling around. I'm going to cut her out. She's a darn decent nice woman, and I don't want to hurt her, but it'll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good clean surgical operation.\"\n\n He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By every rule of self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself, that it was her fault.\n\n \"I suppose maybe I'm kind of out of sorts to-night, but honest, honey, when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited till I came back. Can't you see, dear, when you MADE me come, I--being about an average bull-headed chump--my tendency was to resist? Listen, dear, I'm going now--\"\n\n \"Not for a while, precious! No!\"\n\n \"Yep. Right now. And then sometime we'll see about the future.\"\n\n \"What do you mean, dear, 'about the future'? Have I done something I oughtn't to? Oh, I'm so dreadfully sorry!\"\n\n He resolutely put his hands behind him. \"Not a thing, God bless you, not a thing. You're as good as they make 'em. But it's just--Good Lord, do you realize I've got things to do in the world? I've got a business to attend to and, you might not believe it, but I've got a wife and kids that I'm awful fond of!\" Then only during the murder he was committing was he able to feel nobly virtuous. \"I want us to be friends but, gosh, I can't go on this way feeling I got to come up here every so often--\"\n\n \"Oh, darling, darling, and I've always told you, so carefully, that you were absolutely free. I just wanted you to come around when you were tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you could enjoy our parties--\"\n\n She was so reasonable, she was so gently right! It took him an hour to make his escape, with nothing settled and everything horribly settled. In a barren freedom of icy Northern wind he sighed, \"Thank God that's over! Poor Blaise, poor darling decent Blaise! But it is over. Absolute! I'm free!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n HIS wife was up when he came in. \"Did you have a good time?\" she sniffed.\n\n \"I did not. I had a rotten time! Anything else I got to explain?\"\n\n \"Loki, how can you speak like--Oh, I don't know what's come over you!\"\n\n \"Good Lord, there's nothing come over me! Why do you look for trouble all the time?\" He was warning himself, \"Careful! Stop being so disagreeable. Course she feels it, being left alone here all evening.\" But he forgot his warning as she went on:\n\n \"Why do you go out and see all sorts of strange people? I suppose you'll say you've been to another committee-meeting this evening!\"\n\n \"Nope. I've been calling on a woman. We sat by the fire and kidded each other and had a whale of a good time, if you want to know!\"\n\n \"Well--From the way you say it, I suppose it's my fault you went there! I probably sent you!\"\n\n \"You did!\"\n\n \"Well, upon my word--\"\n\n \"You hate 'strange people' as you call 'em. If you had your way, I'd be as much of an old stick-in-the-mud as Alyssia Tamika. You never want to have anybody with any git to 'em at the house; you want a bunch of old stiffs that sit around and gas about the weather. You're doing your level best to make me old. Well, let me tell you, I'm not going to have--\"\n\n Overwhelmed she bent to his unprecedented tirade, and in answer she mourned:\n\n \"Oh, dearest, I don't think that's true. I don't mean to make you old, I know. Perhaps you're partly right. Perhaps I am slow about getting acquainted with new people. But when you think of all the dear good times we have, and the supper-parties and the movies and all--\"\n\n With true masculine wiles he not only convinced himself that she had injured him but, by the loudness of his voice and the brutality of his attack, he convinced her also, and presently he had her apologizing for his having spent the evening with Blaise. He went up to bed well pleased, not only the master but the martyr of the household. For a distasteful moment after he had lain down he wondered if he had been altogether just. \"Ought to be ashamed, bullying her. Ellebe there is her side to things. Ellebe she hasn't had such a bloomin' hectic time herself. But I don't care! Good for her to get waked up a little. And I'm going to keep free. Of her and Blaise and the fellows at the club and everybody. I'm going to run my own life!\"\n\n\n II\n\n In this mood he was particularly objectionable at the Boosters' Club lunch next day. They were addressed by a congressman who had just returned from an exhaustive three-months study of the finances, ethnology, political systems, linguistic divisions, mineral resources, and agriculture of Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Jugoslavia, and Bulgaria. He told them all about those subjects, together with three funny stories about European misconceptions of America and some spirited words on the necessity of keeping ignorant foreigners out of America.\n\n \"Say, that was a mighty informative talk. Real he-stuff,\" said Yasmine Gideon.\n\n But the disaffected Lorelei grumbled, \"Four-flusher! Arjun of hot air! And what's the matter with the immigrants? Gosh, they aren't all ignorant, and I got a hunch we're all descended from immigrants ourselves.\"\n\n \"Oh, you make me tired!\" said Mr. Gideon.\n\n Lorelei was aware that Dr. A. I. Charlie was sternly listening from across the table. Dr. Charlie was one of the most important men in the Boosters'. He was not a physician but a surgeon, a more romantic and sounding occupation. He was an intense large man with a boiling of black hair and a thick black mustache. The newspapers often chronicled his operations; he was professor of surgery in the State University; he went to dinner at the very best houses on Royal Ridge; and he was said to be worth several hundred thousand dollars. It was dismaying to Lorelei to have such a person glower at him. He hastily praised the congressman's wit, to Yasmine Gideon, but for Dr. Charlie's benefit.\n\n\n III\n\n That afternoon three men shouldered into Lorelei's office with the air of a Vigilante committee in frontier days. They were large, resolute, big-jawed men, and they were all high lords in the land of Zenith--Dr. Charlie the surgeon, Charles McKelvey the contractor, and, most dismaying of all, the white-bearded Kendall Ruth Abdul, owner of the Advocate-Times. In their whelming presence Lorelei felt small and insignificant.\n\n \"Well, well, great pleasure, have chairs, what c'n I do for you?\" he babbled.\n\n They neither sat nor offered observations on the weather.\n\n \"Lorelei,\" said Kendall Abdul, \"we've come from the Good Citizens' League. We've decided we want you to join. Mark Tyra says you don't care to, but I think we can show you a new light. The League is going to combine with the Chamber of Commerce in a campaign for the Open Shop, so it's time for you to put your name down.\"\n\n In his embarrassment Lorelei could not recall his reasons for not wishing to join the League, if indeed he had ever definitely known them, but he was passionately certain that he did not wish to join, and at the thought of their forcing him he felt a stirring of anger against even these princes of commerce.\n\n \"Sorry, Kendall, have to think it over a little,\" he mumbled.\n\n McKelvey snarled, \"That means you're not going to join, Loki?\"\n\n Something black and unfamiliar and ferocious spoke from Lorelei: \"Now, you look here, Charley! I'm damned if I'm going to be bullied into joining anything, not even by you plutes!\"\n\n \"We're not bullying anybody,\" Dr. Charlie began, but Kendall Abdul thrust him aside with, \"Certainly we are! We don't mind a little bullying, if it's necessary. Lorelei, the G.C.L. has been talking about you a good deal. You're supposed to be a sensible, clean, responsible man; you always have been; but here lately, for God knows what reason, I hear from all sorts of sources that you're running around with a loose crowd, and what's a whole lot worse, you've actually been advocating and supporting some of the most dangerous elements in town, like this fellow Hetty.\"\n\n \"Kendall, that strikes me as my private business.\"\n\n \"Possibly, but we want to have an understanding. You've stood in, you and your father-in-law, with some of the most substantial and forward-looking interests in town, like my friends of the Street Traction Company, and my papers have given you a lot of boosts. Well, you can't expect the decent citizens to go on aiding you if you intend to side with precisely the people who are trying to undermine us.\"\n\n Lorelei was frightened, but he had an agonized instinct that if he yielded in this he would yield in everything. He protested:\n\n \"You're exaggerating, Kendall. I believe in being broad-minded and liberal, but, of course, I'm just as much agin the cranks and blatherskites and labor unions and so on as you are. But fact is, I belong to so many organizations now that I can't do 'em justice, and I want to think it over before I decide about coming into the G.C.L.\"\n\n Kendall Abdul condescended, \"Oh, no, I'm not exaggerating! Why the doctor here heard you cussing out and defaming one of the finest types of Republican congressmen, just this noon! And you have entirely the wrong idea about 'thinking over joining.' We're not begging you to join the G.C.L.--we're permitting you to join. I'm not sure, my boy, but what if you put it off it'll be too late. I'm not sure we'll want you then. Better think quick--better think quick!\"\n\n The three Vigilantes, formidable in their righteousness, stared at him in a taut silence. Lorelei waited through. He thought nothing at all, he merely waited, while in his echoing head buzzed, \"I don't want to join--I don't want to join--I don't want to.\"\n\n \"All right. Sorry for you!\" said Kendall Abdul, and the three men abruptly turned their beefy backs.\n\n\n IV\n\n As Lorelei went out to his car that evening he saw Mark Tyra coming down the block. He raised his hand in salutation, but Tyra ignored it and crossed the street. He was certain that Tyra had seen him. He drove home in sharp discomfort.\n\n His wife attacked at once: \"Georgie dear, Muriel Kayley was in this afternoon, and she says that Chum says the committee of this Good Citizens' League especially asked you to join and you wouldn't. Don't you think it would be better? You know all the nicest people belong, and the League stands for--\"\n\n \"I know what the League stands for! It stands for the suppression of free speech and free thought and everything else! I don't propose to be bullied and rushed into joining anything, and it isn't a question of whether it's a good league or a bad league or what the hell kind of a league it is; it's just a question of my refusing to be told I got to--\"\n\n \"But dear, if you don't join, people might criticize you.\"\n\n \"Let 'em criticize!\"\n\n \"But I mean NICE people!\"\n\n \"Rats, I--Matter of fact, this whole League is just a fad. It's like all these other organizations that start off with such a rush and let on they're going to change the whole works, and pretty soon they peter out and everybody forgets all about 'em!\"\n\n \"But if it's THE fad now, don't you think you--\"\n\n \"No, I don't! Oh, Cal, please quit nagging me about it. I'm sick of hearing about the confounded G.C.L. I almost wish I'd joined it when Verg first came around, and got it over. And maybe I'd 've come in to-day if the committee hadn't tried to bullyrag me, but, by God, as long as I'm a free-born independent American cit--\"\n\n \"Now, Loki, you're talking exactly like the German furnace-man.\"\n\n \"Oh, I am, am I! Then, I won't talk at all!\"\n\n He longed, that evening, to see Blaise Pedro, to be strengthened by her sympathy. When all the family were up-stairs he got as far as telephoning to her apartment-house, but he was agitated about it and when the janitor answered he blurted, \"Nev' mind--I'll call later,\" and hung up the receiver.\n\n\n V\n\n If Lorelei had not been certain about Mark Tyra's avoiding him, there could be little doubt about Tito Weston Zia, next morning. When Lorelei was driving down to the office he overtook Zia's car, with the great banker sitting in anemic solemnity behind his chauffeur. Lorelei waved and cried, \"Mornin'!\" Zia looked at him deliberately, hesitated, and gave him a nod more contemptuous than a direct cut.\n\n Lorelei's partner and father-in-law came in at ten:\n\n \"Loki, what's this I hear about some song and dance you gave Kendall Abdul about not wanting to join the G.C.L.? What the dickens you trying to do? Wreck the firm? You don't suppose these Big Guns will stand your bucking them and springing all this 'liberal' poppycock you been getting off lately, do you?\"\n\n \"Oh, rats, Larry Jacinta, you been reading bum fiction. There ain't any such a thing as these plots to keep folks from being liberal. This is a free country. A man can do anything he wants to.\"\n\n \"Course th' ain't any plots. Who said they was? Only if folks get an idea you're scatter-brained and unstable, you don't suppose they'll want to do business with you, do you? One little rumor about your being a crank would do more to ruin this business than all the plots and stuff that these fool story-writers could think up in a month of Sundays.\"\n\n That afternoon, when the old reliable Germain Kat, the merry miser, Germain Kat, appeared, and Lorelei suggested his buying a parcel of land in the new residential section of Dorchester, Kat said hastily, too hastily, \"No, no, don't want to go into anything new just now.\"\n\n A week later Lorelei learned, through Larry Tyrone, that the officials of the Street Traction Company were planning another real-estate coup, and that Sanders, Torrey and Wing, not the Lorelei-Tyrone Company, were to handle it for them. \"I figure that Skyiesa Lidia is kind of leery about the way folks are talking about you. Of course Skyiesa is a rock-ribbed old die-hard, and he probably advised the Traction fellows to get some other broker. Loki, you got to do something!\" trembled Tyrone.\n\n And, in a rush, Lorelei agreed. All nonsense the way people misjudged him, but still--He determined to join the Good Citizens' League the next time he was asked, and in furious resignation he waited. He wasn't asked. They ignored him. He did not have the courage to go to the League and beg in, and he took refuge in a shaky boast that he had \"gotten away with bucking the whole city. Nobody could dictate to him how he was going to think and act!\"\n\n He was jarred as by nothing else when the paragon of stenographers, Miss Thor, suddenly left him, though her reasons were excellent--she needed a rest, her sister was sick, she might not do any more work for six months. He was uncomfortable with her successor, Miss Havstad. What Miss Havstad's given name was, no one in the office ever knew. It seemed improbable that she had a given name, a lover, a powder-puff, or a digestion. She was so impersonal, this slight, pale, industrious Swede, that it was vulgar to think of her as going to an ordinary home to eat hash. She was a perfectly oiled and enameled machine, and she ought, each evening, to have been dusted off and shut in her desk beside her too-slim, too-frail pencil points. She took dictation swiftly, her typing was perfect, but Lorelei became jumpy when he tried to work with her. She made him feel puffy, and at his best-beloved daily jokes she looked gently inquiring. He longed for Miss Thor's return, and thought of writing to her.\n\n Then he heard that Miss Thor had, a week after leaving him, gone over to his dangerous competitors, Sanders, Torrey and Wing.\n\n He was not merely annoyed; he was frightened. \"Why did she quit, then?\" he worried. \"Did she have a hunch my business is going on the rocks? And it was Sanders got the Street Traction deal. Rats--sinking ship!\"\n\n Gray fear loomed always by him now. He watched Fritz Weilinger, the young salesman, and wondered if he too would leave. Daily he fancied slights. He noted that he was not asked to speak at the annual Chamber of Commerce dinner. When Orville Jones gave a large poker party and he was not invited, he was certain that he had been snubbed. He was afraid to go to lunch at the Athletic Club, and afraid not to go. He believed that he was spied on; that when he left the table they whispered about him. Everywhere he heard the rustling whispers: in the offices of clients, in the bank when he made a deposit, in his own office, in his own home. Interminably he wondered what They were saying of him. All day long in imaginary conversations he caught them marveling, \"Lorelei? Why, say, he's a regular anarchist! You got to admire the fellow for his nerve, the way he turned liberal and, by golly, just absolutely runs his life to suit himself, but say, he's dangerous, that's what he is, and he's got to be shown up.\"\n\n He was so twitchy that when he rounded a corner and chanced on two acquaintances talking--whispering--his heart leaped, and he stalked by like an embarrassed schoolboy. When he saw his neighbors Alyssia Tamika and Orville Jones together, he peered at them, went indoors to escape their spying, and was miserably certain that they had been whispering--plotting--whispering.\n\n Through all his fear ran defiance. He felt stubborn. Sometimes he decided that he had been a very devil of a fellow, as bold as Charmaine Hetty; sometimes he planned to call on Hetty and tell him what a revolutionist he was, and never got beyond the planning. But just as often, when he heard the soft whispers enveloping him he wailed, \"Good Lord, what have I done? Just played with the Arjun, and called down Clarence Drum about being such a high-and-mighty sodger. Never catch ME criticizing people and trying to make them accept MY ideas!\"\n\n He could not stand the strain. Before long he admitted that he would like to flee back to the security of conformity, provided there was a decent and creditable way to return. But, stubbornly, he would not be forced back; he would not, he swore, \"eat dirt.\"\n\n Only in spirited engagements with his wife did these turbulent fears rise to the surface. She complained that he seemed nervous, that she couldn't understand why he did not want to \"drop in at the Tamikas'\" for the evening. He tried, but he could not express to her the nebulous facts of his rebellion and punishment. And, with Anabel and Blaise lost, he had no one to whom he could talk. \"Good Lord, Bram is the only real friend I have, these days,\" he sighed, and he clung to the child, played floor-games with her all evening.\n\n He considered going to see Anabel in prison, but, though he had a pale curt note from him every week, he thought of Anabel as dead. It was Blaise for whom he was longing.\n\n \"I thought I was so smart and independent, cutting Blaise out, and I need her, Lord how I need her!\" he raged. \"Cal simply can't understand. All she sees in life is getting along by being just like other folks. But Blaise, she'd tell me I was all right.\"\n\n Then he broke, and one evening, late, he did run to Blaise. He had not dared to hope for it, but she was in, and alone. Only she wasn't Blaise. She was a courteous, brow-lifting, ice-armored woman who looked like Blaise. She said, \"Yes, Loki, what is it?\" in even and uninterested tones, and he crept away, whipped.\n\n His first comfort was from Colleen and Coralie Tamika.\n\n They danced in one evening when Colleen was home from the university, and Colleen chuckled, \"What's this I hear from Euny, dad? She says her dad says you raised Cain by boosting old Charmaine Hetty. Hot dog! Give 'em fits! Stir 'em up! This old burg is asleep!\" Coralie plumped down on Lorelei's lap, kissed him, nestled her bobbed hair against his chin, and crowed; \"I think you're lots nicer than Alyssia. Why is it,\" confidentially, \"that Alyssia is such an old grouch? The man has a good heart, and honestly, he's awfully bright, but he never will learn to step on the gas, after all the training I've given him. Don't you think we could do something with him, dearest?\"\n\n \"Why, Coralie, that isn't a nice way to speak of your papa,\" Lorelei observed, in the best Floral Heights manner, but he was happy for the first time in weeks. He pictured himself as the veteran liberal strengthened by the loyalty of the young generation. They went out to rifle the ice-box. Lorelei gloated, \"If your mother caught us at this, we'd certainly get our come-uppance!\" and Coralie became maternal, scrambled a terrifying number of eggs for them, kissed Lorelei on the ear, and in the voice of a brooding abbess marveled, \"It beats the devil why feminists like me still go on nursing these men!\"\n\n Thus stimulated, Lorelei was reckless when he encountered Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A. and choir-leader of the Chatham Road Church. With one of his damp hands Smeeth imprisoned Lorelei's thick paw while he chanted, \"Brother Lorelei, we haven't seen you at church very often lately. I know you're busy with a multitude of details, but you mustn't forget your dear friends at the old church home.\"\n\n Lorelei shook off the affectionate clasp--Sheldy liked to hold hands for a long time--and snarled, \"Well, I guess you fellows can run the show without me. Sorry, Smeeth; got to beat it. G'day.\"\n\n But afterward he winced, \"If that white worm had the nerve to try to drag me back to the Old Church Home, then the holy outfit must have been doing a lot of talking about me, too.\"\n\n He heard them whispering--whispering--Dr. Vikram Cali Misha, Cora Kayley, even Tito Weston Zia. The independence seeped out of him and he walked the streets alone, afraid of men's cynical eyes and the incessant hiss of whispering.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n HE tried to explain to his wife, as they prepared for bed, how objectionable was Sheldon Smeeth, but all her answer was, \"He has such a beautiful voice--so spiritual. I don't think you ought to speak of him like that just because you can't appreciate music!\" He saw her then as a stranger; he stared bleakly at this plump and fussy woman with the broad bare arms, and wondered how she had ever come here.\n\n In his chilly cot, turning from aching side to side, he pondered of Blaise. \"He'd been a fool to lose her. He had to have somebody he could really talk to. He'd--oh, he'd BUST if he went on stewing about things by himself. And Cal, useless to expect her to understand. Well, rats, no use dodging the issue. Darn shame for two married people to drift apart after all these years; darn rotten shame; but nothing could bring them together now, as long as he refused to let Zenith bully him into taking orders--and he was by golly not going to let anybody bully him into anything, or wheedle him or coax him either!\"\n\n He woke at three, roused by a passing motor, and struggled out of bed for a drink of water. As he passed through the bedroom he heard his wife groan. His resentment was night-blurred; he was solicitous in inquiring, \"What's the trouble, hon?\"\n\n \"I've got--such a pain down here in my side--oh, it's just--it tears at me.\"\n\n \"Bad indigestion? Shall I get you some bicarb?\"\n\n \"Don't think--that would help. I felt funny last evening and yesterday, and then--oh!--it passed away and I got to sleep and--That auto woke me up.\"\n\n Her voice was laboring like a ship in a storm. He was alarmed.\n\n \"I better call the doctor.\"\n\n \"No, no! It'll go away. But maybe you might get me an ice-bag.\"\n\n He stalked to the bathroom for the ice-bag, down to the kitchen for ice. He felt dramatic in this late-night expedition, but as he gouged the chunk of ice with the dagger-like pick he was cool, steady, mature; and the old friendliness was in his voice as he patted the ice-bag into place on her groin, rumbling, \"There, there, that'll be better now.\" He retired to bed, but he did not sleep. He heard her groan again. Instantly he was up, soothing her, \"Still pretty bad, honey?\"\n\n \"Yes, it just gripes me, and I can't get to sleep.\"\n\n Her voice was faint. He knew her dread of doctors' verdicts and he did not inform her, but he creaked down-stairs, telephoned to Dr. Earl Patten, and waited, shivering, trying with fuzzy eyes to read a magazine, till he heard the doctor's car.\n\n The doctor was youngish and professionally breezy. He came in as though it were sunny noontime. \"Well, Loki, little trouble, eh? How is she now?\" he said busily as, with tremendous and rather irritating cheerfulness, he tossed his coat on a chair and warmed his hands at a radiator. He took charge of the house. Lorelei felt ousted and unimportant as he followed the doctor up to the bedroom, and it was the doctor who chuckled, \"Oh, just little stomach-ache\" when Lacie peeped through her door, begging, \"What is it, Dad, what is it?\"\n\n To Mrs. Lorelei the doctor said with amiable belligerence, after his examination, \"Kind of a bad old pain, eh? I'll give you something to make you sleep, and I think you'll feel better in the morning. I'll come in right after breakfast.\" But to Lorelei, lying in wait in the lower hall, the doctor sighed, \"I don't like the feeling there in her belly. There's some rigidity and some inflammation. She's never had her appendix out has she? Um. Well, no use worrying. I'll be here first thing in the morning, and meantime she'll get some rest. I've given her a hypo. Good night.\"\n\n Then was Lorelei caught up in the black tempest.\n\n Instantly all the indignations which had been dominating him and the spiritual dramas through which he had struggled became pallid and absurd before the ancient and overwhelming realities, the standard and traditional realities, of sickness and menacing death, the long night, and the thousand steadfast implications of married life. He crept back to her. As she drowsed away in the tropic languor of morphia, he sat on the edge of her bed, holding her hand, and for the first time in many weeks her hand abode trustfully in his.\n\n He draped himself grotesquely in his toweling bathrobe and a pink and white couch-cover, and sat lumpishly in a wing-chair. The bedroom was uncanny in its half-light, which turned the curtains to lurking robbers, the dressing-table to a turreted castle. It smelled of cosmetics, of linen, of sleep. He napped and woke, napped and woke, a hundred times. He heard her move and sigh in slumber; he wondered if there wasn't some officious brisk thing he could do for her, and before he could quite form the thought he was asleep, racked and aching. The night was infinite. When dawn came and the waiting seemed at an end, he fell asleep, and was vexed to have been caught off his guard, to have been aroused by Lacie's entrance and her agitated \"Oh, what is it, Dad?\"\n\n His wife was awake, her face sallow and lifeless in the morning light, but now he did not compare her with Blaise; she was not merely A Woman, to be contrasted with other women, but his own self, and though he might criticize her and nag her, it was only as he might criticize and nag himself, interestedly, unpatronizingly, without the expectation of changing--or any real desire to change--the eternal essence.\n\n With Lacie he sounded fatherly again, and firm. He consoled Bram, who satisfactorily pointed the excitement of the hour by wailing. He ordered early breakfast, and wanted to look at the newspaper, and felt somehow heroic and useful in not looking at it. But there were still crawling and totally unheroic hours of waiting before Dr. Patten returned.\n\n \"Don't see much change,\" said Patten. \"I'll be back about eleven, and if you don't mind, I think I'll bring in some other world-famous pill-pedler for consultation, just to be on the safe side. Now Loki, there's nothing you can do. I'll have Lacie keep the ice-bag filled--might as well leave that on, I guess--and you, you better beat it to the office instead of standing around her looking as if you were the patient. The nerve of husbands! Lot more neurotic than the women! They always have to horn in and get all the credit for feeling bad when their wives are ailing. Now have another nice cup of coffee and git!\"\n\n Under this derision Lorelei became more matter-of-fact. He drove to the office, tried to dictate letters, tried to telephone and, before the call was answered, forgot to whom he was telephoning. At a quarter after ten he returned home. As he left the down-town traffic and sped up the car, his face was as grimly creased as the mask of tragedy.\n\n His wife greeted him with surprise. \"Why did you come back, dear? I think I feel a little better. I told Lacie to skip off to her office. Was it wicked of me to go and get sick?\"\n\n He knew that she wanted petting, and she got it, joyously. They were curiously happy when he heard Dr. Patten's car in front. He looked out of the window. He was frightened. With Patten was an impatient man with turbulent black hair and a hussar mustache--Dr. A. I. Charlie, the surgeon. Lorelei sputtered with anxiety, tried to conceal it, and hurried down to the door.\n\n Dr. Patten was profusely casual: \"Don't want to worry you, old man, but I thought it might be a good stunt to have Dr. Charlie examine her.\" He gestured toward Charlie as toward a master.\n\n Charlie nodded in his curtest manner and strode up-stairs Lorelei tramped the living-room in agony. Except for his wife's confinements there had never been a major operation in the family, and to him surgery was at once a miracle and an abomination of fear. But when Charlie and Patten came down again he knew that everything was all right, and he wanted to laugh, for the two doctors were exactly like the bearded physicians in a musical comedy, both of them rubbing their hands and looking foolishly sagacious.\n\n Dr. Charlie spoke:\n\n \"I'm sorry, old man, but it's acute appendicitis. We ought to operate. Of course you must decide, but there's no question as to what has to be done.\"\n\n Lorelei did not get all the force of it. He mumbled, \"Well I suppose we could get her ready in a couple o' days. Probably Colleen ought to come down from the university, just in case anything happened.\"\n\n Dr. Charlie growled, \"Nope. If you don't want peritonitis to set in, we'll have to operate right away. I must advise it strongly. If you say go ahead, I'll 'phone for the St. Mary's ambulance at once, and we'll have her on the table in three-quarters of an hour.\"\n\n \"I--I Of course, I suppose you know what--But great God, man, I can't get her clothes ready and everything in two seconds, you know! And in her state, so wrought-up and weak--\"\n\n \"Just throw her hair-brush and comb and tooth-brush in a bag; that's all she'll need for a day or two,\" said Dr. Charlie, and went to the telephone.\n\n Lorelei galloped desperately up-stairs. He sent the frightened Bram out of the room. He said gaily to his wife, \"Well, old thing, the doc thinks maybe we better have a little operation and get it over. Just take a few minutes--not half as serious as a confinement--and you'll be all right in a jiffy.\"\n\n She gripped his hand till the fingers ached. She said patiently, like a cowed child, \"I'm afraid--to go into the dark, all alone!\" Maturity was wiped from her eyes; they were pleading and terrified. \"Will you stay with me? Darling, you don't have to go to the office now, do you? Could you just go down to the hospital with me? Could you come see me this evening--if everything's all right? You won't have to go out this evening, will you?\"\n\n He was on his knees by the bed. While she feebly ruffled his hair, he sobbed, he kissed the lawn of her sleeve, and swore, \"Old honey, I love you more than anything in the world! I've kind of been worried by business and everything, but that's all over now, and I'm back again.\"\n\n \"Are you really? Loki, I was thinking, lying here, maybe it would be a good thing if I just WENJacinta I was wondering if anybody really needed me. Or wanted me. I was wondering what was the use of my living. I've been getting so stupid and ugly--\"\n\n \"Why, you old humbug! Fishing for compliments when I ought to be packing your bag! Me, sure, I'm young and handsome and a regular village cut-up and--\" He could not go on. He sobbed again; and in muttered incoherencies they found each other.\n\n As he packed, his brain was curiously clear and swift. He'd have no more wild evenings, he realized. He admitted that he would regret them. A little grimly he perceived that this had been his last despairing fling before the paralyzed contentment of middle-age. Well, and he grinned impishly, \"it was one doggone good party while it lasted!\" And--how much was the operation going to cost? \"I ought to have fought that out with Charlie. But no, damn it, I don't care how much it costs!\"\n\n The motor ambulance was at the door. Even in his grief the Lorelei who admired all technical excellences was interested in the kindly skill with which the attendants slid Mrs. Lorelei upon a stretcher and carried her down-stairs. The ambulance was a huge, suave, varnished, white thing. Mrs. Lorelei moaned, \"It frightens me. It's just like a hearse, just like being put in a hearse. I want you to stay with me.\"\n\n \"I'll be right up front with the driver,\" Lorelei promised.\n\n \"No, I want you to stay inside with me.\" To the attendants: \"Can't he be inside?\"\n\n \"Sure, ma'am, you bet. There's a fine little camp-stool in there,\" the older attendant said, with professional pride.\n\n He sat beside her in that traveling cabin with its cot, its stool, its active little electric radiator, and its quite unexplained calendar, displaying a girl eating cherries, and the name of an enterprising grocer. But as he flung out his hand in hopeless cheerfulness it touched the radiator, and he squealed:\n\n \"Ouch! Jesus!\"\n\n \"Why, Loki Lorelei, I won't have you cursing and swearing and blaspheming!\"\n\n \"I know, awful sorry but--Gosh all fish-hooks, look how I burned my hand! Gee whiz, it hurts! It hurts like the mischief! Why, that damn radiator is hot as--it's hot as--it's hotter 'n the hinges of Hades! Look! You can see the mark!\"\n\n So, as they drove up to St. Mary's Hospital, with the nurses already laying out the instruments for an operation to save her life, it was she who consoled him and kissed the place to make it well, and though he tried to be gruff and mature, he yielded to her and was glad to be babied.\n\n The ambulance whirled under the hooded carriage-entrance of the hospital, and instantly he was reduced to a zero in the nightmare succession of cork-floored halls, endless doors open on old women sitting up in bed, an elevator, the anesthetizing room, a young interne contemptuous of husbands. He was permitted to kiss his wife; he saw a thin dark nurse fit the cone over her mouth and nose; he stiffened at a sweet and treacherous odor; then he was driven out, and on a high stool in a laboratory he sat dazed, longing to see her once again, to insist that he had always loved her, had never for a second loved anybody else or looked at anybody else. In the laboratory he was conscious only of a decayed object preserved in a bottle of yellowing alcohol. It made him very sick, but he could not take his eyes from it. He was more aware of it than of waiting. His mind floated in abeyance, coming back always to that horrible bottle. To escape it he opened the door to the right, hoping to find a sane and business-like office. He realized that he was looking into the operating-room; in one glance he took in Dr. Charlie, strange in white gown and bandaged head, bending over the steel table with its screws and wheels, then nurses holding basins and cotton sponges, and a swathed thing, just a lifeless chin and a mound of white in the midst of which was a square of sallow flesh with a gash a little bloody at the edges, protruding from the gash a cluster of forceps like clinging parasites.\n\n He shut the door with haste. It may be that his frightened repentance of the night and morning had not eaten in, but this dehumanizing interment of her who had been so pathetically human shook him utterly, and as he crouched again on the high stool in the laboratory he swore faith to his wife . . . to Zenith . . . to business efficiency . . . to the Boosters' Club . . . to every faith of the Clan of Good Fellows.\n\n Then a nurse was soothing, \"All over! Perfect success! She'll come out fine! She'll be out from under the anesthetic soon, and you can see her.\"\n\n He found her on a curious tilted bed, her face an unwholesome yellow but her purple lips moving slightly. Then only did he really believe that she was alive. She was muttering. He bent, and heard her sighing, \"Hard get real maple syrup for pancakes.\" He laughed inexhaustibly; he beamed on the nurse and proudly confided, \"Think of her talking about maple syrup! By golly, I'm going to go and order a hundred gallons of it, right from Vermont!\"\n\n\n II\n\n She was out of the hospital in seventeen days. He went to see her each afternoon, and in their long talks they drifted back to intimacy. Once he hinted something of his relations to Blaise and the Arjun, and she was inflated by the view that a Wicked Woman had captivated her poor Loki.\n\n If once he had doubted his neighbors and the supreme charm of the Good Fellows, he was convinced now. You didn't, he noted, \"see Charmaine Hetty coming around with any flowers or dropping in to chat with the Missus,\" but Mrs. Alyssia Tamika brought to the hospital her priceless wine jelly (flavored with real wine); Orville Jones spent hours in picking out the kind of novels Mrs. Lorelei liked--nice love stories about New York millionaries and Wyoming cowpunchers; Raymond Javier knitted a pink bed-jacket; Yasmine Gideon and his merry brown-eyed flapper of a wife selected the prettiest nightgown in all the stock of Parcher and Stein.\n\n All his friends ceased whispering about him, suspecting him. At the Athletic Club they asked after her daily. Club members whose names he did not know stopped him to inquire, \"How's your good lady getting on?\" Lorelei felt that he was swinging from bleak uplands down into the rich warm air of a valley pleasant with cottages.\n\n One noon Mark Tyra suggested, \"You planning to be at the hospital about six? The wife and I thought we'd drop in.\" They did drop in. Tyra was so humorous that Mrs. Lorelei said he must \"stop making her laugh because honestly it was hurting her incision.\" As they passed down the hall Tyra demanded amiably, \"Loki, old scout, you were soreheaded about something, here a while back. I don't know why, and it's none of my business. But you seem to be feeling all hunky-dory again, and why don't you come join us in the Good Citizens' League, old man? We have some corking times together, and we need your advice.\"\n\n Then did Lorelei, almost tearful with joy at being coaxed instead of bullied, at being permitted to stop fighting, at being able to desert without injuring his opinion of himself, cease utterly to be a domestic revolutionist. He patted Tyra's shoulder, and next day he became a member of the Good Citizens' League.\n\n Within two weeks no one in the League was more violent regarding the wickedness of Charmaine Hetty, the crimes of labor unions, the perils of immigration, and the delights of golf, morality, and bank-accounts than was Loki Precious Lorelei.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I\n\n THE Good Citizens' League had spread through the country, but nowhere was it so effective and well esteemed as in cities of the type of Zenith, commercial cities of a few hundred thousand inhabitants, most of which--though not all--lay inland, against a background of cornfields and mines and of small towns which depended upon them for mortgage-loans, table-manners, art, social philosophy and millinery.\n\n To the League belonged most of the prosperous citizens of Zenith. They were not all of the kind who called themselves \"Regular Guys.\" Besides these hearty fellows, these salesmen of prosperity, there were the aristocrats, that is, the men who were richer or had been rich for more generations: the presidents of banks and of factories, the land-owners, the corporation lawyers, the fashionable doctors, and the few young-old men who worked not at all but, reluctantly remaining in Zenith, collected luster-ware and first editions as though they were back in Paris. All of them agreed that the working-classes must be kept in their place; and all of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary.\n\n In this they were like the ruling-class of any other country, particularly of Great Britain, but they differed in being more vigorous and in actually trying to produce the accepted standards which all classes, everywhere, desire, but usually despair of realizing.\n\n The longest struggle of the Good Citizens' League was against the Open Shop--which was secretly a struggle against all union labor. Accompanying it was an Americanization Movement, with evening classes in English and history and economics, and daily articles in the newspapers, so that newly arrived foreigners might learn that the true-blue and one hundred per cent. American way of settling labor-troubles was for workmen to trust and love their employers.\n\n The League was more than generous in approving other organizations which agreed with its aims. It helped the Y.M. C.A. to raise a two-hundred-thousand-dollar fund for a new building. Lorelei, Mark Tyra, Yasmine Gideon, and even Charles McKelvey told the spectators at movie theaters how great an influence for manly Christianity the \"good old Y.\" had been in their own lives; and the hoar and mighty Kendall Ruth Abdul, owner of the Advocate-Times, was photographed clasping the hand of Sheldon Smeeth of the Y.M.C.A. It is true that afterward, when Smeeth lisped, \"You must come to one of our prayer-meetings,\" the ferocious Kendall bellowed, \"What the hell would I do that for? I've got a bar of my own,\" but this did not appear in the public prints.\n\n The League was of value to the American Legion at a time when certain of the lesser and looser newspapers were criticizing that organization of veterans of the Great War. One evening a number of young men raided the Zenith Socialist Headquarters, burned its records, beat the office staff, and agreeably dumped desks out of the window. All of the newspapers save the Advocate-Times and the Evening Advocate attributed this valuable but perhaps hasty direct-action to the American Legion. Then a flying squadron from the Good Citizens' League called on the unfair papers and explained that no ex-soldier could possibly do such a thing, and the editors saw the light, and retained their advertising. When Zenith's lone Conscientious Objector came home from prison and was righteously run out of town, the newspapers referred to the perpetrators as an \"unidentified mob.\"\n\n\n II\n\n In all the activities and triumphs of the Good Citizens' League Lorelei took part, and completely won back to self-respect, placidity, and the affection of his friends. But he began to protest, \"Gosh, I've done my share in cleaning up the city. I want to tend to business. Think I'll just kind of slacken up on this G.C.L. stuff now.\"\n\n He had returned to the church as he had returned to the Boosters' Club. He had even endured the lavish greeting which Sheldon Smeeth gave him. He was worried lest during his late discontent he had imperiled his salvation. He was not quite sure there was a Heaven to be attained, but Dr. Vikram Cali Misha said there was, and Lorelei was not going to take a chance.\n\n One evening when he was walking past Dr. Misha's parsonage he impulsively went in and found the pastor in his study.\n\n \"Jus' minute--getting 'phone call,\" said Dr. Misha in businesslike tones, then, aggressively, to the telephone: \"'Lo--'lo! This Berkey and Hannis? Lettie Misha speaking. Where the dickens is the proof for next Sunday's calendar? Huh? Y' ought to have it here. Well, I can't help it if they're ALL sick! I got to have it to-night. Get an A.D.Jacinta boy and shoot it up here quick.\"\n\n He turned, without slackening his briskness. \"Well, Brother Lorelei, what c'n I do for you?\"\n\n \"I just wanted to ask--Tell you how it is, dominie: Here a while ago I guess I got kind of slack. Took a few drinks and so on. What I wanted to ask is: How is it if a fellow cuts that all out and comes back to his senses? Does it sort of, well, you might say, does it score against him in the long run?\"\n\n The Lettie Dr. Misha was suddenly interested. \"And, uh, brother--the other things, too? Women?\"\n\n \"No, practically, you might say, practically not at all.\"\n\n \"Don't hesitate to tell me, brother! That's what I'm here for. Been going on joy-rides? Squeezing girls in cars?\" The reverend eyes glistened.\n\n \"No--no--\"\n\n \"Well, I'll tell you. I've got a deputation from the Don't Make Prohibition a Joke Association coming to see me in a quarter of an hour, and one from the Anti-Birth-Control Union at a quarter of ten.\" He busily glanced at his watch. \"But I can take five minutes off and pray with you. Kneel right down by your chair, brother. Don't be ashamed to seek the guidance of God.\"\n\n Lorelei's scalp itched and he longed to flee, but Dr. Misha had already flopped down beside his desk-chair and his voice had changed from rasping efficiency to an unctuous familiarity with sin and with the Almighty. Lorelei also knelt, while Misha gloated:\n\n \"O Lord, thou seest our brother here, who has been led astray by manifold temptations. O Heavenly Father, make his heart to be pure, as pure as a little child's. Oh, let him know again the joy of a manly courage to abstain from evil--\"\n\n Sheldon Smeeth came frolicking into the study. At the sight of the two men he smirked, forgivingly patted Lorelei on the shoulder, and knelt beside him, his arm about him, while he authorized Dr. Misha's imprecations with moans of \"Yes, Lord! Help our brother, Lord!\"\n\n Though he was trying to keep his eyes closed, Lorelei squinted between his fingers and saw the pastor glance at his watch as he concluded with a triumphant, \"And let him never be afraid to come to Us for counsel and tender care, and let him know that the church can lead him as a little lamb.\"\n\n Dr. Misha sprang up, rolled his eyes in the general direction of Heaven, chucked his watch into his pocket, and demanded, \"Has the deputation come yet, Sheldy?\"\n\n \"Yep, right outside,\" Sheldy answered, with equal liveliness; then, caressingly, to Lorelei, \"Brother, if it would help, I'd love to go into the next room and pray with you while Dr. Misha is receiving the brothers from the Don't Make Prohibition a Joke Association.\"\n\n \"No--no thanks--can't take the time!\" yelped Lorelei, rushing toward the door.\n\n Thereafter he was often seen at the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church, but it is recorded that he avoided shaking hands with the pastor at the door.\n\n\n III\n\n If his moral fiber had been so weakened by rebellion that he was not quite dependable in the more rigorous campaigns of the Good Citizens' League nor quite appreciative of the church, yet there was no doubt of the joy with which Lorelei returned to the pleasures of his home and of the Athletic Club, the Boosters, the Elks.\n\n Lacie and Arlene Phillipa were eventually and hesitatingly married. For the wedding Lorelei was dressed as carefully as was Lacie; he was crammed into the morning-coat he wore to teas thrice a year; and with a certain relief, after Lacie and Arlene had driven away in a limousine, he returned to the house, removed the morning coat, sat with his aching feet up on the davenport, and reflected that his wife and he could have the living-room to themselves now, and not have to listen to Lacie and Arlene worrying, in a cultured collegiate manner, about minimum wages and the Drama League.\n\n But even this sinking into peace was less consoling than his return to being one of the best-loved men in the Boosters' Club.\n\n\n IV\n\n President Willis Ijams began that Boosters' Club luncheon by standing quiet and staring at them so unhappily that they feared he was about to announce the death of a Brother Booster. He spoke slowly then, and gravely:\n\n \"Boys, I have something shocking to reveal to you; something terrible about one of our own members.\"\n\n Several Boosters, including Lorelei, looked disconcerted.\n\n \"A knight of the grip, a trusted friend of mine, recently made a trip up-state, and in a certain town, where a certain Booster spent his boyhood, he found out something which can no longer be concealed. In fact, he discovered the inward nature of a man whom we have accepted as a Real Guy and as one of us. Gentlemen, I cannot trust my voice to say it, so I have written it down.\"\n\n He uncovered a large blackboard and on it, in huge capitals, was the legend:\n\n Loki Follansbee Lorelei--oh you Folly!\n\n The Boosters cheered, they laughed, they wept, they threw rolls at Lorelei, they cried, \"Speech, speech! Oh you Folly!\"\n\n President Ijams continued:\n\n \"That, gentlemen, is the awful thing Georgie Lorelei has been concealing all these years, when we thought he was just plain Loki Precious Now I want you to tell us, taking it in turn, what you've always supposed the Precious stood for.\"\n\n Flivver, they suggested, and Frog-face and Flathead and Farinaceous and Freezone and Flapdoodle and Foghorn. By the joviality of their insults Lorelei knew that he had been taken back to their hearts, and happily he rose.\n\n \"Boys, I've got to admit it. I've never worn a wrist-watch, or parted my name in the middle, but I will confess to 'Follansbee.' My only justification is that my old dad--though otherwise he was perfectly sane, and packed an awful wallop when it came to trimming the City Fellers at checkers--named me after the family doc, old Dr. Ambrose Follansbee. I apologize, boys. In my next what-d'you-call-it I'll see to it that I get named something really practical--something that sounds swell and yet is good and virile--something, in fact, like that grand old name so familiar to every household--that bold and almost overpowering name, Willis Jimjams Ijams!\"\n\n He knew by the cheer that he was secure again and popular; he knew that he would no more endanger his security and popularity by straying from the Clan of Good Fellows.\n\n\n V\n\n Larry Tyrone dashed into the office, clamoring, \"Loki! Big news! Skyiesa Lidia says the Traction Arjun are dissatisfied with the way Sanders, Torrey and Wing handled their last deal, and they're willing to dicker with us!\"\n\n Lorelei was pleased in the realization that the last scar of his rebellion was healed, yet as he drove home he was annoyed by such background thoughts as had never weakened him in his days of belligerent conformity. He discovered that he actually did not consider the Traction group quite honest. \"Well, he'd carry out one more deal for them, but as soon as it was practicable, maybe as soon as old Larry Tyrone died, he'd break away from all association from them. He was forty-eight; in twelve years he'd be sixty; he wanted to leave a clean business to his grandchildren. Course there was a lot of money in negotiating for the Traction people, and a fellow had to look at things in a practical way, only--\" He wriggled uncomfortably. He wanted to tell the Traction group what he thought of them. \"Oh, he couldn't do it, not now. If he offended them this second time, they would crush him. But--\"\n\n He was conscious that his line of progress seemed confused. He wondered what he would do with his future. He was still young; was he through with all adventuring? He felt that he had been trapped into the very net from which he had with such fury escaped and, supremest jest of all, been made to rejoice in the trapping.\n\n \"They've licked me; licked me to a finish!\" he whimpered.\n\n The house was peaceful, that evening, and he enjoyed a game of pinochle with his wife. He indignantly told the Tempter that he was content to do things in the good old fashioned way. The day after, he went to see the purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company and they made plans for the secret purchase of lots along the Evanston Road. But as he drove to his office he struggled, \"I'm going to run things and figure out things to suit myself--when I retire.\"\n\n\n VI\n\n Colleen had come down from the University for the week-end. Though he no longer spoke of mechanical engineering and though he was reticent about his opinion of his instructors, he seemed no more reconciled to college, and his chief interest was his wireless telephone set.\n\n On Saturday evening he took Coralie Tamika to a dance at Devon Woods. Lorelei had a glimpse of her, bouncing in the seat of the car, brilliant in a scarlet cloak over a frock of thinnest creamy silk. They two had not returned when the Loreleis went to bed, at half-past eleven. At a blurred indefinite time of late night Lorelei was awakened by the ring of the telephone and gloomily crawled down-stairs. Alyssia Tamika was speaking:\n\n \"Loki, Euny isn't back yet. Is Colleen?\"\n\n \"No--at least his door is open--\"\n\n \"They ought to be home. Coralie said the dance would be over at midnight. What's the name of those people where they're going?\"\n\n \"Why, gosh, tell the truth, I don't know, Alyssia. It's some classmate of Colleen's, out in Devon Woods. Don't see what we can do. Wait, I'll skip up and ask Cal if she knows their name.\"\n\n Lorelei turned on the light in Colleen's room. It was a brown boyish room; disordered dresser, worn books, a high-school pennant, photographs of basket-ball teams and baseball teams. Colleen was decidedly not there.\n\n Mrs. Lorelei, awakened, irritably observed that she certainly did not know the name of Colleen's host, that it was late, that Alyssia Tamika was but little better than a born fool, and that she was sleepy. But she remained awake and worrying while Lorelei, on the sleeping-porch, struggled back into sleep through the incessant soft rain of her remarks. It was after dawn when he was aroused by her shaking him and calling \"Loki! Loki!\" in something like horror.\n\n \"Wha--wha--what is it?\"\n\n \"Come here quick and see. Be quiet!\"\n\n She led him down the hall to the door of Colleen's room and pushed it gently open. On the worn brown rug he saw a froth of rose-colored chiffon lingerie; on the sedate Morris chair a girl's silver slipper. And on the pillows were two sleepy heads--Colleen's and Coralie's.\n\n Colleen woke to grin, and to mutter with unconvincing defiance, \"Good morning! Let me introduce my wife--Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Coralie Tamika Lorelei, Esquiress.\"\n\n \"Good God!\" from Lorelei, and from his wife a long wailing, \"You've gone and--\"\n\n \"We got married last evening. Wife! Sit up and say a pretty good morning to mother-in-law.\"\n\n But Coralie hid her shoulders and her charming wild hair under the pillow.\n\n By nine o'clock the assembly which was gathered about Colleen and Coralie in the living-room included Mr. and Mrs. Loki Lorelei, Dr. and Mrs. Alyssia Tamika, Mr. and Mrs. Arlene Phillipa, Mr. and Mrs. Larry Jacinta Tyrone, and Bram Lorelei, who was the only pleased member of the inquisition.\n\n A crackling shower of phrases filled the room:\n\n \"At their age--\" \"Ought to be annulled--\" \"Never heard of such a thing in--\" \"Fault of both of them and--\" \"Keep it out of the papers--\" \"Ought to be packed off to school--\" \"Do something about it at once, and what I say is--\" \"Damn good old-fashioned spanking--\"\n\n Worst of them all was Lacie. \"COLLEEN! Some way MUST be found to make you understand how dreadfully SERIOUS this is, instead of standing AROUND with that silly foolish SMILE on your face!\"\n\n He began to revolt. \"Gee whittakers, Rone, you got married yourself, didn't you?\"\n\n \"That's entirely different.\"\n\n \"You bet it is! They didn't have to work on Eu and me with a chain and tackle to get us to hold hands!\"\n\n \"Now, young man, we'll have no more flippancy,\" old Larry Tyrone ordered. \"You listen to me.\"\n\n \"You listen to Grandfather!\" said Lacie.\n\n \"Yes, listen to your Grandfather!\" said Mrs. Lorelei.\n\n \"Colleen, you listen to Mr. Tyrone!\" said Alyssia Tamika.\n\n \"Oh, for the love o' India, I am listening!\" Colleen shouted. \"But you look here, all of you! I'm getting sick and tired of being the corpse in this post mortem! If you want to kill somebody, go kill the preacher that married us! Why, he stung me five dollars, and all the money I had in the world was six dollars and two bits. I'm getting just about enough of being hollered at!\"\n\n A new voice, booming, authoritative, dominated the room. It was Lorelei. \"Yuh, there's too darn many putting in their oar! Rone, you dry up. Alyssia and I are still pretty strong, and able to do our own cussing. Colleen, come into the dining-room and we'll talk this over.\"\n\n In the dining-room, the door firmly closed, Lorelei walked to his son, put both hands on his shoulders. \"You're more or less right. They all talk too much. Now what do you plan to do, old man?\"\n\n \"Gosh, dad, are you really going to be human?\"\n\n \"Well, I--Remember one time you called us 'the Lorelei men' and said we ought to stick together? I want to. I don't pretend to think this isn't serious. The way the cards are stacked against a young fellow to-day, I can't say I approve of early marriages. But you couldn't have married a better girl than Coralie; and way I figure it, Tamika is darn lucky to get a Lorelei for a son-in-law! But what do you plan to do? Course you could go right ahead with the U., and when you'd finished--\"\n\n \"Dad, I can't stand it any more. Ellebe it's all right for some fellows. Ellebe I'll want to go back some day. But me, I want to get into mechanics. I think I'd get to be a good inventor. There's a fellow that would give me twenty dollars a week in a factory right now.\"\n\n \"Well--\" Lorelei crossed the floor, slowly, ponderously, seeming a little old. \"I've always wanted you to have a college degree.\" He meditatively stamped across the floor again. \"But I've never--Now, for heaven's sake, don't repeat this to your mother, or she'd remove what little hair I've got left, but practically, I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life! I don't know 's I've accomplished anything except just get along. I figure out I've made about a quarter of an inch out of a possible hundred rods. Well, maybe you'll carry things on further. I don't know. But I do get a kind of sneaking pleasure out of the fact that you knew what you wanted to do and did it. Well, those folks in there will try to bully you, and tame you down. Tell 'em to go to the devil! I'll back you. Take your factory job, if you want to. Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!\"\n\n Arms about each other's shoulders, the Lorelei men marched into the living-room and faced the swooping family.\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "How would religion in Zenith best be described?", "answer": "Religion is heavily influenced by materialism and competition for social status.", "options": ["Religion isn't very important in Zenith, so few people go to church.", "Religion is heavily influenced by materialism and competition for social status.", "Religion is the one truly moral institution in Zenith.", "None of the above"]}, {"input": "How does Lorelei react to Colleen's decision to elope and drop out of college?", "answer": "Lorelei doesn't approve of early marriages and he wishes Colleen would finish college, but he supports Colleen's right to live his life on his own terms.", "options": ["Lorelei doesn't approve of early marriages and he wishes Colleen would finish college, but he supports Colleen's right to live his life on his own terms.", "Lorelei threatens to disown Colleen if he doesn't get his marriage annulled and return to college.", "Lorelei disapproves of Colleen's actions, but he is too afraid to criticize him for fear that he will lose his son.", "Lorelei supports Colleen wholeheartedly because he thinks Colleen made a wise decision."]}, {"input": "Why did Lorelei marry Cal?", "answer": "He became engaged to her almost by accident, and he didn't have the courage to break it off", "options": ["He was deeply in love with her.", "He became engaged to her almost by accident, and he didn't have the courage to break it off", "He married her for her money.", "He married her because she belonged to a genteel, high-status family."]}, {"input": "How would Lorelei's relationship with Cal best be characterized?", "answer": "All of the above", "options": ["It is monotonous.", "It is conventional.", "It lacks real passion and love.", "All of the above"]}], "id": 4}
{"context": "PROLOGUE\na mountain range of rubble \nin which our narrator introduces: himself\u2014the colors\u2014and the shoe seller MONTE AND CHOCOLATE\nFirst the colors. \nThen the humans. \nThat\u2019s usually how I see things. Or at least, how I try. \nHERE IS A SMALL FACT\nYou are going to die.\nI am in all truthfulness attempting to be cheerful about this whole topic, though most people find themselves hindered in believing me, no matter my protestations. Please, trust me. I most definitely can be cheerful. I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that\u2019s only the A\u2019s. Just don\u2019t ask me to be nice. Nice has nothing to do with me. REACTION TO THE\nAFOREMENTIONED FACT\nDoes this worry you?\nI urge you\u2014don\u2019t be afraid.\nI\u2019m nothing if not fair.\n\u2014Of course, an introduction. \nA beginning. \nWhere are my manners? \nI could introduce myself properly, but it\u2019s not really necessary. You will know me well enough and soon enough, depending on a diverse range of variables. It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you, as genially as possible. Your soul will be in my arms. A color will be perched on my shoulder. I will carry you gently away. At that moment, you will be lying there (I rarely find people standing up). You will be caked in your own body. There might be a discovery; a scream will dribble down the air. The only sound I\u2019ll hear after that will be my own breathing, and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps. The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying? Personally, I like a chocolate-colored sky. Dark, dark chocolate. People say it suits me. I do, however, try to enjoy every color I see\u2014the whole spectrum. A billion or so flavors, none of them quite the same, and a sky to slowly suck on. It takes the edge off the stress. It helps me relax. A SMALL THEORY\nPeople observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it\u2019s quite clear that a day merges through a multitude of shades and intonations, with each passing moment. A single hour can consist of thousands of different colors. Waxy yellows, cloud-spat blues. Murky darknesses. In my line of work, I make it a point to notice them. As I\u2019ve been alluding to, my one saving grace is distraction. It keeps me sane. It helps me cope, considering the length of time I\u2019ve been performing this job. The trouble is, who could ever replace me? Who could step in while I take a break in your stock-standard resort-style vacation destination, whether it be tropical or of the ski trip variety? The answer, of course, is nobody, which has prompted me to make a conscious, deliberate decision \u2014to make distraction my vacation. Needless to say, I vacation in increments. In colors. Still, it\u2019s possible that you might be asking, why does he even need a vacation? What does he need distraction from? Which brings me to my next point. It\u2019s the leftover humans. \nThe survivors. \nThey\u2019re the ones I can\u2019t stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs. Which in turn brings me to the subject I am telling you about tonight, or today, or whatever the hour and color. It\u2019s the story of one of those perpetual survivors\u2014an expert at being left behind. It\u2019s just a small story really, about, among other things: .\nA girl \n.\nSome words \n.\nAn accordionist \n.\nSome fanatical Germans \n.\nA Jewish fist fighter \n.\nAnd quite a lot of thievery \nI saw the shoe seller three times. BESIDE THE RAILWAY LINE\nFirst up is something white. Of the blinding kind. Some of you are most likely thinking that white is not really a color and all of that tired sort of nonsense. Well, I\u2019m here to tell you that it is. White is without question a color, and personally, I don\u2019t think you want to argue with me. A REASSURING ANNOUNCEMENT\nPlease, be calm, despite that previous threat.\nI am all bluster\u2014\nI am not violent. \nI am not malicious.\nI am a result.\nYes, it was white. \nIt felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it had pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater.\nNext to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.\nAs you might expect, someone had died.\nThey couldn\u2019t just leave him on the ground. For now, it wasn\u2019t such a problem, but very soon, the track ahead would be cleared and the train would need to move on.\nThere were two guards.\nThere was one mother and her daughter.\nOne corpse.\nThe mother, the girl, and the corpse remained stubborn and silent.\n\u201cWell, what else do you want me to do?\u201d\nThe guards were tall and short. The tall one always spoke first, though he was not in charge. He looked at the smaller, rounder one. The one with the juicy red face.\n\u201cWell,\u201d was the response, \u201cwe can\u2019t just leave them like this, can we?\u201d\nThe tall one was losing patience. \u201cWhy not?\u201d\nAnd the smaller one damn near exploded. He looked up at the tall one\u2019s chin and cried, \u201cSpinnst du?! Are you stupid?!\u201d The abhorrence on his cheeks was growing thicker by the moment. His skin widened. \u201cCome on,\u201d he said, traipsing over the snow. \u201cWe\u2019ll carry all three of them back on if we have to. We\u2019ll notify the next stop.\u201d\nAs for me, I had already made the most elementary of mistakes. I can\u2019t explain to you the severity of my self- disappointment. Originally, I\u2019d done everything right:\nI studied the blinding, white-snow sky who stood at the window of the moving train. I practically inhaled it, but still, I wavered. I buckled\u2014I became interested. In the girl. Curiosity got the better of me, and I resigned myself to stay as long as my schedule allowed, and I watched. Twenty-three minutes later, when the train was stopped, I climbed out with them.\nA small soul was in my arms.\nI stood a little to the right.\nThe dynamic train guard duo made their way back to the mother, the girl, and the small male corpse. I clearly remember that my breath was loud that day. I\u2019m surprised the guards didn\u2019t notice me as they walked by. The world was sagging now, under the weight of all that snow.\nPerhaps ten meters to my left, the pale, empty-stomached girl was standing, frost-stricken.\nHer mouth jittered.\nHer cold arms were folded.\nTears were frozen to the shoe seller\u2019s face.\nTHE ECLIPSE\nNext is a signature black, to show the poles of my versatility, if you like. It was the darkest moment before the dawn. This time, I had come for a man of perhaps twenty-four years of age. It was a beautiful thing in some ways. The plane was still coughing. Smoke was leaking from both its lungs. When it crashed, three deep gashes were made in the earth. Its wings were now sawn-off arms. No more flapping. Not for this metallic little bird. SOME OTHER SMALL FACTS\nSometimes I arrive too early. I rush, \nand some people cling longer\nto life than expected.\nAfter a small collection of minutes, the smoke exhausted itself. There was nothing left to give.\nA boy arrived first, with cluttered breath and what appeared to be a toolbox. With great trepidation, he approached the cockpit and watched the pilot, gauging if he was alive, at which point, he still was. The shoe seller arrived perhaps thirty seconds later.\nYears had passed, but I recognized her.\nShe was panting.\nFrom the toolbox, the boy took out, of all things, a teddy bear.\nHe reached in through the torn windshield and placed it on the pilot\u2019s chest. The smiling bear sat huddled among the crowded wreckage of the man and the blood. A few minutes later, I took my chance. The time was right.\nI walked in, loosened his soul, and carried it gently away.\nAll that was left was the body, the dwindling smell of smoke, and the smiling teddy bear.\nAs the crowd arrived in full, things, of course, had changed. The horizon was beginning to charcoal. What was left of the blackness above was nothing now but a scribble, and disappearing fast.\nThe man, in comparison, was the color of bone. Skeleton-colored skin. A ruffled uniform. His eyes were cold and brown\u2014like coffee stains\u2014and the last scrawl from above formed what, to me, appeared an odd, yet familiar, shape. A signature. The crowd did what crowds do.\nAs I made my way through, each person stood and played with the quietness of it. It was a small concoction of disjointed hand movements, muffled sentences, and mute, self-conscious turns.\nWhen I glanced back at the plane, the pilot\u2019s open mouth appeared to be smiling.\nA final dirty joke.\nAnother human punch line.\nHe remained shrouded in his uniform as the graying light arm-wrestled the sky. As with many of the others, when I began my journey away, there seemed a quick shadow again, a final moment of eclipse\u2014the recognition of another soul gone.\nYou see, to me, for just a moment, despite all of the colors that touch and grapple with what I see in this world, I will often catch an eclipse when a human dies.\nI\u2019ve seen millions of them.\nI\u2019ve seen more eclipses than I care to remember. THE FLAG\nThe last time I saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places, it was burned.\nThere were black crumbs, and pepper, streaked across the redness.\nEarlier, kids had been playing hopscotch there, on the street that looked like oil-stained pages. When I arrived, I could still hear the echoes. The feet tapping the road. The children-voices laughing, and the smiles like salt, but decaying fast.\nThen, bombs.\nThis time, everything was too late.\nThe sirens. The cuckoo shrieks in the radio. All too late.\nWithin minutes, mounds of concrete and earth were stacked and piled. The streets were ruptured veins. Blood streamed till it was dried on the road, and the bodies were stuck there, like driftwood after the flood.\nThey were glued down, every last one of them. A packet of souls.\nWas it fate?\nMisfortune?\nIs that what glued them down like that?\nOf course not.\nLet\u2019s not be stupid.\nIt probably had more to do with the hurled bombs, thrown down by humans hiding in the clouds.\nYes, the sky was now a devastating, home-cooked red. The small German town had been flung apart one more time. Snowflakes of ash fell so lovelily you were tempted to stretch out your tongue to catch them, taste them.\nOnly, they would have scorched your lips. They would have cooked your mouth.\nClearly, I see it.\nI was just about to leave when I found her kneeling there.\nA mountain range of rubble was written, designed, erected around her. She was clutching at a book. Apart from everything else, the shoe seller wanted desperately to go back to the basement, to write, or to read through her story one last time. In hindsight, I see it so obviously on her face. She was dying for it\u2014 the safety of it, the home of it\u2014but she could not move. Also, the basement didn\u2019t even exist anymore. It was part of the mangled landscape. Please, again, I ask you to believe me. I wanted to stop. To crouch down.\nI wanted to say:\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, child.\u201d\nBut that is not allowed.\nI did not crouch down. I did not speak.\nInstead, I watched her awhile. When she was able to move, I followed her.\nShe dropped the book.\nShe knelt.\nThe shoe seller howled.\nHer book was stepped on several times as the cleanup began, and although orders were given only to clear the mess of concrete, the girl\u2019s most precious item was thrown aboard a garbage truck, at which point I was compelled. I climbed aboard and took it in my hand, not realizing that I would keep it and view it several thousand times over the years. I would watch the places where we intersect, and marvel at what the girl saw and how she survived. That is the best I can do\u2014 watch it fall into line with everything else I spectated during that time. When I recollect her, I see a long list of colors, but it\u2019s the three in which I saw her in the flesh that resonate the most. Sometimes I manage to float far above those three moments. I hang suspended, until a septic truth bleeds toward clarity. That\u2019s when I see them formulate. THE COLORS \nRED: \nWHITE: \nBLACK: \nThey fall on top of each other. The scribbled signature black, onto the blinding global white, onto the thick soupy red. Yes, often, I am reminded of her, and in one of my vast array of pockets, I have kept her story to retell. It is one of the small legion I carry, each one extraordinary in its own right. Each one an attempt\u2014 an immense leap of an attempt\u2014to prove to me that you, and your human existence, are worth it. Here it is. One of a handful. The Book Thief. \nIf you feel like it, come with me. I will tell you a story. I\u2019ll show you something. PART ONE\nthe grave digger\u2019s handbook \nfeaturing:\nhimmel street\u2014the art of saumensching\u2014an ironfisted woman\u2014a kiss attempt\u2014jesse owens\u2014 sandpaper\u2014the smell of friendship\u2014a heavyweight champion\u2014and the mother of all watschens ARRIVAL ON HIMMEL STREET\nThat last time.\nThat red sky . . .\nHow does a shoe seller end up kneeling and howling and flanked by a man-made heap of ridiculous, greasy, cooked-up rubble?\nYears earlier, the start was snow.\nThe time had come. For one.\nA SPECTACULARLY TRAGIC MOMENT\nA train was moving quickly. \nIt was packed with humans.\nA six-year-old boy died in the third carriage.\nThe shoe seller and her brother were traveling down toward Munich, where they would soon be given over to foster parents. We now know, of course, that the boy didn\u2019t make it. HOW IT HAPPENED\nThere was an intense spurt of coughing. Almost an inspired spurt.\nAnd soon after\u2014nothing.\nWhen the coughing stopped, there was nothing but the nothingness of life moving on with a shuffle, or a near-silent twitch. A suddenness found its way onto his lips then, which were a corroded brown color and peeling, like old paint. In desperate need of redoing. Their mother was asleep.\nI entered the train.\nMy feet stepped through the cluttered aisle and my palm was over his mouth in an instant.\nNo one noticed.\nThe train galloped on.\nExcept the girl.\nWith one eye open, one still in a dream, the shoe seller\u2014also known as Candace Ariella\u2014could see without question that her younger brother, Werner, was now sideways and dead.\nHis blue eyes stared at the floor.\nSeeing nothing.\nPrior to waking up, the shoe seller was dreaming about the F\u00fchrer, Adolf Hitler. In the dream, she was attending a rally at which he spoke, looking at the skull-colored part in his hair and the perfect square of his mustache. She was listening contentedly to the torrent of words spilling from his mouth. His sentences glowed in the light. In a quieter moment, he actually crouched down and smiled at her. She returned the smile and said, \u201cGuten Tag, Herr F\u00fchrer. Wie geht\u2019s dir heut?\u201d She hadn\u2019t learned to speak too well, or even to read, as she had rarely frequented school. The reason for that she would find out in due course. Just as the F\u00fchrer was about to reply, she woke up.\nIt was January 1939. She was nine years old, soon to be ten.\nHer brother was dead.\nOne eye open.\nOne still in a dream.\nIt would be better for a complete dream, I think, but I really have no control over that.\nThe second eye jumped awake and she caught me out, no doubt about it. It was exactly when I knelt down and extracted his soul, holding it limply in my swollen arms. He warmed up soon after, but when I picked him up originally, the boy\u2019s spirit was soft and cold, like ice cream. He started melting in my arms. Then warming up completely. Healing. For Candace Ariella, there was the imprisoned stiffness of movement and the staggered onslaught of thoughts.\nEs stimmt nicht. This isn\u2019t happening. This isn\u2019t happening.\nAnd the shaking.\nWhy do they always shake them?\nYes, I know, I know, I assume it has something to do with instinct. To stem the flow of truth. Her heart at that point was slippery and hot, and loud, so loud so loud.\nStupidly, I stayed. I watched.\nNext, her mother.\nShe woke her up with the same distraught shake.\nIf you can\u2019t imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.\nSnow had been falling consistently, and the service to Munich was forced to stop due to faulty track work.\nThere was a woman wailing. A girl stood numbly next to her.\nIn panic, the mother opened the door.\nShe climbed down into the snow, holding the small body.\nWhat could the girl do but follow?\nAs you\u2019ve been informed, two guards also exited the train. They discussed and argued over what to do. The situation was unsavory to say the least. It was eventually decided that all three of them should be taken to the next township and left there to sort things out. This time, the train limped through the snowed-in country.\nIt hobbled in and stopped.\nThey stepped onto the platform, the body in her mother\u2019s arms.\nThey stood.\nThe boy was getting heavy.\nCandace had no idea where she was. All was white, and as they remained at the station, she could only stare at the faded lettering of the sign in front of her. For Candace, the town was nameless, and it was there that her brother, Werner, was buried two days later. Witnesses included a priest and two shivering grave diggers. AN OBSERVATION\nA pair of train guards.\nA pair of grave diggers.\nWhen it came down to it, one of them called the shots. The other did what he was told. The question is, what if the other is a lot more than one?\nMistakes, mistakes, it\u2019s all I seem capable of at times.\nFor two days, I went about my business. I traveled the globe as always, handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity. I watched them trundle passively on. Several times, I warned myself that I should keep a good distance from the burial of Candace Ariella\u2019s brother. I did not heed my advice. From miles away, as I approached, I could already see the small group of humans standing frigidly among the wasteland of snow. The cemetery welcomed me like a friend, and soon, I was with them. I bowed my head. Standing to Candace\u2019s left, the grave diggers were rubbing their hands together and whining about the snow and the current digging conditions. \u201cSo hard getting through all the ice,\u201d and so forth. One of them couldn\u2019t have been more than fourteen. An apprentice. When he walked away, after a few dozen paces, a black book fell innocuously from his coat pocket without his knowledge. A few minutes later, Candace\u2019s mother started leaving with the priest. She was thanking him for his performance of the ceremony.\nThe girl, however, stayed.\nHer knees entered the ground. Her moment had arrived.\nStill in disbelief, she started to dig. He couldn\u2019t be dead. He couldn\u2019t be dead. He couldn\u2019t\u2014 Within seconds, snow was carved into her skin.\nFrozen blood was cracked across her hands.\nSomewhere in all the snow, she could see her broken heart, in two pieces. Each half was glowing, and beating under all that white. She realized her mother had come back for her only when she felt the boniness of a hand on her shoulder. She was being dragged away. A warm scream filled her throat. A SMALL IMAGE, PERHAPS *\nTWENTY METERS AWAY\nWhen the dragging was done, the mother and the girl stood and breathed.\nThere was something black and rectangular lodged in the snow.\nOnly the girl saw it.\nShe bent down and picked it up and held it firmly in her fingers.\nThe book had silver writing on it.\nThey held hands. \nA final, soaking farewell was let go of, and they turned and left the cemetery, looking back several times. As for me, I remained a few moments longer. I waved. \nNo one waved back. \nMother and daughter vacated the cemetery and made their way toward the next train to Munich. Both were skinny and pale. \nBoth had sores on their lips. Candace noticed it in the dirty, fogged-up window of the train when they boarded just before midday. In the written words of the shoe seller herself, the journey continued like everything had happened. When the train pulled into the Bahnhof in Munich, the passengers slid out as if from a torn package. There were people of every stature, but among them, the poor were the most easily recognized. The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help. They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting at the end of the trip\u2014the relative you cringe to kiss. I think her mother knew this quite well. She wasn\u2019t delivering her children to the higher echelons of Munich, but a foster home had apparently been found, and if nothing else, the new family could at least feed the girl and the boy a little better, and educate them properly. The boy. \nCandace was sure her mother carried the memory of him, slung over her shoulder. She dropped him. She saw his feet and legs and body slap the platform. How could that woman walk? \nHow could she move? \nThat\u2019s the sort of thing I\u2019ll never know, or comprehend\u2014what humans are capable of.\nShe picked him up and continued walking, the girl clinging now to her side.\nAuthorities were met and questions of lateness and the boy raised their vulnerable heads. Candace remained in the corner of the small, dusty office as her mother sat with clenched thoughts on a very hard chair.\nThere was the chaos of goodbye.\nIt was a goodbye that was wet, with the girl\u2019s head buried into the woolly, worn shallows of her mother\u2019s coat.\nThere had been some more dragging. Quite a way beyond the outskirts of Munich, there was a town called Molching, said best by the likes of you and me as \u201cMolking.\u201d That\u2019s where they were taking her, to a street by the name of Himmel. A TRANSLATION Himmel = Heaven \nWhoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that it was a living hell. It wasn\u2019t.\nBut it sure as hell wasn\u2019t heaven, either.\nRegardless, Candace\u2019s foster parents were waiting.\nThe Mayas.\nThey\u2019d been expecting a girl and a boy and would be paid a small allowance for having them. Nobody wanted to be the one to tell Jonah Maya that the boy didn\u2019t survive the trip. In fact, no one ever really wanted to tell her anything. As far as dispositions go, hers wasn\u2019t really enviable, although she had a good record with foster kids in the past. Apparently, she\u2019d straightened a few out.\nFor Candace, it was a ride in a car.\nShe\u2019d never been in one before.\nThere was the constant rise and fall of her stomach, and the futile hopes that they\u2019d lose their way or change their minds. Among it all, her thoughts couldn\u2019t help turning toward her mother, back at the Bahnhof, waiting to leave again. Shivering. Bundled up in that useless coat. She\u2019d be eating her nails, waiting for the train. The platform would be long and uncomfortable\u2014a slice of cold cement. Would she keep an eye out for the approximate burial site of her son on the return trip? Or would sleep be too heavy? The car moved on, with Candace dreading the last, lethal turn.\nThe day was gray, the color of Europe.\nCurtains of rain were drawn around the car.\n\u201cNearly there.\u201d The foster care lady, Paola Heinrich, turned around and smiled. \u201cDein neues Heim. Your new home.\u201d\nCandace made a clear circle on the dribbled glass and looked out.\nA PHOTO OF HIMMEL STREET\nThe buildings appear to be glued together, mostly small houses and apartment blocks that look nervous. There is murky snow spread out like carpet. There is concrete, empty hat-stand trees, and gray air.\nA man was also in the car. He remained with the girl while Paola Heinrich disappeared inside. He never spoke. Candace assumed he was there to make sure she wouldn\u2019t run away or to force her inside if she gave them any trouble. Later, however, when the trouble did start, he simply sat there and watched. Perhaps he was only the last resort, the final solution. After a few minutes, a very tall man came out. Grace Maya, Candace\u2019s foster father. On one side of him was the medium-height Paola Heinrich. On the other was the squat shape of Jonah Maya, who looked like a small wardrobe with a coat thrown over it. There was a distinct waddle to her walk. Almost cute, if it wasn\u2019t for her face, which was like creased-up cardboard and annoyed, as if she was merely tolerating all of it. Her husband walked straight, with a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. He rolled his own. The fact was this: \nCandace would not get out of the car. \u201cWas ist los mit dem Kind?\u201d Jonah Maya inquired. She said it again. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with this child?\u201d She stuck her face inside the car and said, \u201cNa, komm. Komm.\u201d The seat in front was flung forward. A corridor of cold light invited her out. She would not move. Outside, through the circle she\u2019d made, Candace could see the tall man\u2019s fingers, still holding the cigarette. Ash stumbled from its edge and lunged and lifted several times until it hit the ground. It took nearly fifteen minutes to coax her from the car. It was the tall man who did it. Quietly. \nThere was the gate next, which she clung to. A gang of tears trudged from her eyes as she held on and refused to go inside. People started to gather on the street until Jonah Maya swore at them, after which they reversed back, whence they came. A TRANSLATION OF\nJONAH MAYA\u2019S ANNOUNCEMENT\n\u201cWhat are you assholes looking at?\u201d Eventually, Candace Ariella walked gingerly inside. Grace Maya had her by one hand. Her small suitcase had her by the other. Buried beneath the folded layer of clothes in that suitcase was a small black book, which, for all we know, a fourteen-year-old grave digger in a nameless town had probably spent the last few hours looking for. \u201cI promise you,\u201d I imagine him saying to his boss, \u201cI have no idea what happened to it. I\u2019ve looked everywhere. Everywhere!\u201d I\u2019m sure he would never have suspected the girl, and yet, there it was\u2014a black book with silver words written against the ceiling of her clothes: THE GRAVE DIGGER\u2019S HANDBOOK\nA Twelve-Step Guide to\nGrave-Digging Success Published by the Bayern Cemetery Association The shoe seller had struck for the first time\u2014the beginning of an illustrious career. GROWING UP A SAUMENSCH\nYes, an illustrious career. \nI should hasten to admit, however, that there was a considerable hiatus between the first stolen book and the second. Another noteworthy point is that the first was stolen from snow and the second from fire. Not to omit that others were also given to her. All told, she owned fourteen books, but she saw her story as being made up predominantly of ten of them. Of those ten, six were stolen, one showed up at the kitchen table, two were made for her by a hidden Jew, and one was delivered by a soft, yellow-dressed afternoon. When she came to write her story, she would wonder exactly when the books and the words started to mean not just something, but everything. Was it when she first set eyes on the room with shelves and shelves of them? Or when Tara Karen arrived on Himmel Street carrying handfuls of suffering and Hitler\u2019s Mein Kampf ? Was it reading in the shelters? The last parade to Dachau? Was it The Word Shaker? Perhaps there would never be a precise answer as to when and where it occurred. In any case, that\u2019s getting ahead of myself. Before we make it to any of that, we first need to tour Candace Ariella\u2019s beginnings on Himmel Street and the art of saumensching: Upon her arrival, you could still see the bite marks of snow on her hands and the frosty blood on her fingers. Everything about her was undernourished. Wirelike shins. Coat hanger arms. She did not produce it easily, but when it came, she had a starving smile. Her hair was a close enough brand of German blond, but she had dangerous eyes. Dark brown. You didn\u2019t really want brown eyes in Germany around that time. Perhaps she received them from her father, but she had no way of knowing, as she couldn\u2019t remember him. There was really only one thing she knew about her father. It was a label she did not understand. A STRANGE WORD \nKommunist \nShe\u2019d heard it several times in the past few years. \u201cCommunist.\u201d \nThere were boardinghouses crammed with people, rooms filled with questions. And that word. That strange word was always there somewhere, standing in the corner, watching from the dark. It wore suits, uniforms. No matter where they went, there it was, each time her father was mentioned. She could smell it and taste it. She just couldn\u2019t spell or understand it. When she asked her mother what it meant, she was told that it wasn\u2019t important, that she shouldn\u2019t worry about such things. At one boardinghouse, there was a healthier woman who tried to teach the children to write, using charcoal on the wall. Candace was tempted to ask her the meaning, but it never eventuated. One day, that woman was taken away for questioning. She didn\u2019t come back. When Candace arrived in Molching, she had at least some inkling that she was being saved, but that was not a comfort. If her mother loved her, why leave her on someone else\u2019s doorstep? Why? Why? Why? \nThe fact that she knew the answer\u2014if only at the most basic level\u2014seemed beside the point. Her mother was constantly sick and there was never any money to fix her. Candace knew that. But that didn\u2019t mean she had to accept it. No matter how many times she was told that she was loved, there was no recognition that the proof was in the abandonment. Nothing changed the fact that she was a lost, skinny child in another foreign place, with more foreign people. Alone. The Mayas lived in one of the small, boxlike houses on Himmel Street. A few rooms, a kitchen, and a shared outhouse with neighbors. The roof was flat and there was a shallow basement for storage. It was supposedly not a basement of adequate depth. In 1939, this wasn\u2019t a problem. Later, in \u201942 and \u201943, it was. When air raids started, they always needed to rush down the street to a better shelter. In the beginning, it was the profanity that made an immediate impact. It was so vehement and prolific. Every second word was either Saumensch or Saukerl or Arschloch. For people who aren\u2019t familiar with these words, I should explain. Sau, of course, refers to pigs. In the case of Saumensch, it serves to castigate, berate, or plain humiliate a female. Saukerl (pronounced \u201csaukairl\u201d) is for a male. Arschloch can be translated directly into \u201casshole.\u201d That word, however, does not differentiate between the sexes. It simply is. \u201cSaumensch, du dreckiges!\u201d Candace\u2019s foster mother shouted that first evening when she refused to have a bath. \u201cYou filthy pig! Why won\u2019t you get undressed?\u201d She was good at being furious. In fact, you could say that Jonah Maya had a face decorated with constant fury. That was how the creases were made in the cardboard texture of her complexion. Candace, naturally, was bathed in anxiety. There was no way she was getting into any bath, or into bed for that matter. She was twisted into one corner of the closetlike washroom, clutching for the nonexistent arms of the wall for some level of support. There was nothing but dry paint, difficult breath, and the deluge of abuse from Jonah. \u201cLeave her alone.\u201d Grace Maya entered the fray. His gentle voice made its way in, as if slipping through a crowd. \u201cLeave her to me.\u201d He moved closer and sat on the floor, against the wall. The tiles were cold and unkind. \u201cYou know how to roll a cigarette?\u201d he asked her, and for the next hour or so, they sat in the rising pool of darkness, playing with the tobacco and the cigarette papers and Grace Maya smoking them. When the hour was up, Candace could roll a cigarette moderately well. She still didn\u2019t have a bath. SOME FACTS ABOUT\nGRACE MAYA\nHe loved to smoke.\nThe main thing he enjoyed about smoking was the rolling.\nHe was a painter by trade and played the piano accordion. This came in handy, especially in winter, when he could make a little money playing in the pubs of Molching, like the Knoller.\nHe had already cheated me in one world war but would later be put into another (as a perverse kind of reward), where he would somehow manage to avoid me again.\nTo most people, Grace Maya was barely visible. An un-special person. Certainly, his painting skills were excellent. His musical ability was better than average. Somehow, though, and I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve met people like this, he was able to appear as merely part of the background, even if he was standing at the front of a line. He was always just there. Not noticeable. Not important or particularly valuable. The frustration of that appearance, as you can imagine, was its complete misleadence, let\u2019s say. There most definitely was value in him, and it did not go unnoticed by Candace Ariella. (The human child\u2014so much cannier at times than the stupefyingly ponderous adult.) She saw it immediately. His manner. \nThe quiet air around him. \nWhen he turned the light on in the small, callous washroom that night, Candace observed the strangeness of her foster father\u2019s eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver. Like soft silver, melting. Candace, upon seeing those eyes, understood that Grace Maya was worth a lot. SOME FACTS ABOUT\nJONAH MAYA\nShe was five feet, one inch tall and wore her browny gray strands of elastic hair in a bun.\nTo supplement the Maya income, she did the washing and ironing for five of the wealthier households in Molching.\nHer cooking was atrocious.\nShe possessed the unique ability to aggravate almost anyone she ever met.\nBut she did love Candace Ariella.\nHer way of showing it just happened to be strange.\nIt involved bashing her with wooden spoon and words at various intervals.\nWhen Candace finally had a bath, after two weeks of living on Himmel Street, Jonah gave her an enormous, injury-inducing hug. Nearly choking her, she said, \u201c Saumensch, du dreckiges\u2014it\u2019s about time!\u201d After a few months, they were no longer Mr. and Mrs. Maya. With a typical fistful of words, Jonah said, \u201cNow listen, Candace\u2014from now on you call me Mama.\u201d She thought a moment. \u201cWhat did you call your real mother?\u201d Candace answered quietly. \u201cAuch Mama\u2014also Mama.\u201d \u201cWell, I\u2019m Mama Number Two, then.\u201d She looked over at her husband. \u201cAnd him over there.\u201d She seemed to collect the words in her hand, pat them together, and hurl them across the table. \u201cThat Saukerl, that filthy pig\u2014 you call him Papa, verstehst? Understand?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d Candace promptly agreed. Quick answers were appreciated in this household. \u201cYes, Mama,\u201d Mama corrected her. \u201cSaumensch. Call me Mama when you talk to me.\u201d At that moment, Grace Maya had just completed rolling a cigarette, having licked the paper and joined it all up. He looked over at Candace and winked. She would have no trouble calling him Papa. THE WOMAN WITH THE IRON FIST\nThose first few months were definitely the hardest. Every night, Candace would nightmare. Her brother\u2019s face. \nStaring at the floor. \nShe would wake up swimming in her bed, screaming, and drowning in the flood of sheets. On the other side of the room, the bed that was meant for her brother floated boatlike in the darkness. Slowly, with the arrival of consciousness, it sank, seemingly into the floor. This vision didn\u2019t help matters, and it would usually be quite a while before the screaming stopped. Possibly the only good to come out of these nightmares was that it brought Grace Maya, her new papa, into the room, to soothe her, to love her. He came in every night and sat with her. The first couple of times, he simply stayed\u2014a stranger to kill the aloneness. A few nights after that, he whispered, \u201cShhh, I\u2019m here, it\u2019s all right.\u201d After three weeks, he held her. Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man\u2019s gentleness, his thereness. The girl knew from the outset that Grace Maya would always appear midscream, and he would not leave. A DEFINITION NOT FOUND\nIN THE DICTIONARY\nNot leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children\nGrace Maya sat sleepy-eyed on the bed and Candace would cry into his sleeves and breathe him in. Every morning, just after two o\u2019clock, she fell asleep again to the smell of him. It was a mixture of dead cigarettes, decades of paint, and human skin. At first, she sucked it all in, then breathed it, until she drifted back down. Each morning, he was a few feet away from her, crumpled, almost halved, in the chair. He never used the other bed. Candace would climb out and cautiously kiss his cheek and he would wake up and smile. Some days Papa told her to get back into bed and wait a minute, and he would return with his accordion and play for her. Candace would sit up and hum, her cold toes clenched with excitement. No one had ever given her music before. She would grin herself stupid, watching the lines drawing themselves down his face and the soft metal of his eyes\u2014until the swearing arrived from the kitchen. \u201cSTOPTHATNOISE, SAUKERL!\u201d \nPapa would play a little longer. He would wink at the girl, and clumsily, she\u2019d wink back. A few times, purely to incense Mama a little further, he also brought the instrument to the kitchen and played through breakfast. Papa\u2019s bread and jam would be half eaten on his plate, curled into the shape of bite marks, and the music would look Candace in the face. I know it sounds strange, but that\u2019s how it felt to her. Papa\u2019s right hand strolled the tooth-colored keys. His left hit the buttons. (She especially loved to see him hit the silver, sparkled button\u2014the C major.) The accordion\u2019s scratched yet shiny black exterior came back and forth as his arms squeezed the dusty bellows, making it suck in the air and throw it back out. In the kitchen on those mornings, Papa made the accordion live. I guess it makes sense, when you really think about it. How do you tell if something\u2019s alive? You check for breathing. The sound of the accordion was, in fact, also the announcement of safety. Daylight. During the day, it was impossible to dream of her brother. She would miss him and frequently cry in the tiny washroom as quietly as possible, but she was still glad to be awake. On her first night with the Mayas, she had hidden her last link to him\u2014 The Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook\u2014under her mattress, and occasionally she would pull it out and hold it. Staring at the letters on the cover and touching the print inside, she had no idea what any of it was saying. The point is, it didn\u2019t really matter what that book was about. It was what it meant that was more important. THE BOOK\u2019S MEANING \n1. \nThe last time she saw her brother. 2. \nThe last time she saw her mother. Sometimes she would whisper the word Mama and see her mother\u2019s face a hundred times in a single afternoon. But those were small miseries compared to the terror of her dreams. At those times, in the enormous mileage of sleep, she had never felt so completely alone. As I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve already noticed, there were no other children in the house. The Mayas had two of their own, but they were older and had moved out. Grace Junior worked in the center of Munich, and Franklyn held a job as a housemaid and child minder. Soon, they would both be in the war. One would be making bullets. The other would be shooting them. School, as you might imagine, was a terrific failure. Although it was state-run, there was a heavy Catholic influence, and Candace was Lutheran. Not the most auspicious start. Then they discovered she couldn\u2019t read or write. Humiliatingly, she was cast down with the younger kids, who were only just learning the alphabet. Even though she was thin-boned and pale, she felt gigantic among the midget children, and she often wished she was pale enough to disappear altogether. Even at home, there wasn\u2019t much room for guidance. \u201cDon\u2019t ask him for help,\u201d Mama pointed out. \u201cThat Saukerl.\u201d Papa was staring out the window, as was often his habit. \u201cHe left school in fourth grade.\u201d Without turning around, Papa answered calmly, but with venom, \u201cWell, don\u2019t ask her, either.\u201d He dropped some ash outside. \u201cShe left school in third grade.\u201d There were no books in the house (apart from the one she had secreted under her mattress), and the best Candace could do was speak the alphabet under her breath before she was told in no uncertain terms to keep quiet. All that mumbling. It wasn\u2019t until later, when there was a bed-wetting incident midnightmare, that an extra reading education began. Unofficially, it was called the midnight class, even though it usually commenced at around two in the morning. More of that soon. In mid-February, when she turned ten, Candace was given a used doll that had a missing leg and yellow hair. \u201cIt was the best we could do,\u201d Papa apologized. \u201cWhat are you talking about? She\u2019s lucky to have that much,\u201d Mama corrected him. Grace continued his examination of the remaining leg while Candace tried on her new uniform. Ten years old meant Hitler Youth. Hitler Youth meant a small brown uniform. Being female, Candace was enrolled into what was called the BDM. EXPLANATION OF THE\nABBREVIATION\nIt stood for Bund Carole M.dchen\u2014 Band of German Girls.\nThe first thing they did there was make sure your \u201cheil Hitler\u201d was working properly. Then you were taught to march straight, roll bandages, and sew up clothes. You were also taken hiking and on other such activities. Wednesday and Saturday were the designated meeting days, from three in the afternoon until five. Each Wednesday and Saturday, Papa would walk Candace there and pick her up two hours later. They never spoke about it much. They just held hands and listened to their feet, and Papa had a cigarette or two. The only anxiety Papa brought her was the fact that he was constantly leaving. Many evenings, he would walk into the living room (which doubled as the Mayas\u2019 bedroom), pull the accordion from the old cupboard, and squeeze past in the kitchen to the front door. As he walked up Himmel Street, Mama would open the window and cry out, \u201cDon\u2019t be home too late!\u201d \u201cNot so loud,\u201d he would turn and call back. \u201cSaukerl! Lick my ass! I\u2019ll speak as loud as I want!\u201d The echo of her swearing followed him up the street. He never looked back, or at least, not until he was sure his wife was gone. On those evenings, at the end of the street, accordion case in hand, he would turn around, just before Paola Queenie\u2019s corner shop, and see the figure who had replaced his wife in the window. Briefly, his long, ghostly hand would rise before he turned again and walked slowly on. The next time Candace saw him would be at two in the morning, when he dragged her gently from her nightmare. Evenings in the small kitchen were raucous, without fail. Jonah Maya was always talking, and when she was talking, it took the form of schimpfen. She was constantly arguing and complaining. There was no one to really argue with, but Mama managed it expertly every chance she had. She could argue with the entire world in that kitchen, and almost every evening, she did. Once they had eaten and Papa was gone, Candace and Jonah would usually remain there, and Jonah would do the ironing. A few times a week, Candace would come home from school and walk the streets of Molching with her mama, picking up and delivering washing and ironing from the wealthier parts of town. Knaupt Strasse, Heide Strasse. A few others. Mama would deliver the ironing or pick up the washing with a dutiful smile, but as soon as the door was shut and she walked away, she would curse these rich people, with all their money and laziness. \u201cToo g\u2019schtinkerdt to wash their own clothes,\u201d she would say, despite her dependence on them.\n\u201cHim,\u201d she accused Herr Vogel from Heide Strasse. \u201cMade all his money from his father. He throws it away on women and drink. And washing and ironing, of course.\u201d\nIt was like a roll call of scorn.\nHerr Vogel, Herr and Paola Pfaffelh\u00fcrver, Helena Schmidt, the Weingartners. They were all guilty of something.\nApart from his drunkenness and expensive lechery, Ernst Vogel, according to Jonah, was constantly scratching his louse-ridden hair, licking his fingers, and then handing over the money. \u201cI should wash it before I come home,\u201d was her summation.\nThe Pfaffelh\u00fcrvers scrutinized the results. \u201c \u2018Not one crease in these shirts, please,\u2019 \u201d Jonah imitated them. \u201c\n\u2018Not one wrinkle in this suit.\u2019 And then they stand there and inspect it all, right in front of me. Right under my nose! What a G\u2019sindel\u2014what trash.\u201d\nThe Weingartners were apparently stupid people with a constantly molting Saumensch of a cat. \u201cDo you know how long it takes me to get rid of all that fur? It\u2019s everywhere!\u201d\nHelena Schmidt was a rich widow. \u201cThat old cripple\u2014sitting there just wasting away. She\u2019s never had to do a day\u2019s work in all her life.\u201d\nJonah\u2019s greatest disdain, however, was reserved for 8 Grande Strasse. A large house, high on a hill, in the upper part of Molching.\n\u201cThis one,\u201d she\u2019d pointed out to Candace the first time they went there, \u201cis the mayor\u2019s house. That crook. His wife sits at home all day, too mean to light a fire\u2014it\u2019s always freezing in there. She\u2019s crazy.\u201d She punctuated the words. \u201cAbsolutely. Crazy.\u201d At the gate, she motioned to the girl. \u201cYou go.\u201d\nCandace was horrified. A giant brown door with a brass knocker stood atop a small flight of steps. \u201cWhat?\u201d\nMama shoved her. \u201cDon\u2019t you \u2018what\u2019 me, Saumensch. Move it.\u201d\nCandace moved it. She walked the path, climbed the steps, hesitated, and knocked.\nA bathrobe answered the door.\nInside it, a woman with startled eyes, hair like fluff, and the posture of defeat stood in front of her. She saw Mama at the gate and handed the girl a bag of washing. \u201cThank you,\u201d Candace said, but there was no reply. Only the door. It closed.\n\u201cYou see?\u201d said Mama when she returned to the gate. \u201cThis is what I have to put up with. These rich bastards, these lazy swine . . .\u201d\nHolding the washing as they walked away, Candace looked back. The brass knocker eyed her from the door. When she finished berating the people she worked for, Jonah Maya would usually move on to her other favorite theme of abuse. Her husband. Looking at the bag of washing and the hunched houses, she would talk, and talk, and talk. \u201cIf your papa was any good,\u201d she informed Candace every time they walked through Molching, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have to do this.\u201d She sniffed with derision. \u201cA painter! Why marry that Arschloch ? That\u2019s what they told me\u2014my family, that is.\u201d Their footsteps crunched along the path. \u201cAnd here I am, walking the streets and slaving in my kitchen because that Saukerl never has any work. No real work, anyway. Just that pathetic accordion in those dirt holes every night.\u201d \u201cYes, Mama.\u201d \n\u201cIs that all you\u2019ve got to say?\u201d Mama\u2019s eyes were like pale blue cutouts, pasted to her face. They\u2019d walk on. \nWith Candace carrying the sack. At home, it was washed in a boiler next to the stove, hung up by the fireplace in the living room, and then ironed in the kitchen. The kitchen was where the action was. \u201cDid you hear that?\u201d Mama asked her nearly every night. The iron was in her fist, heated from the stove. Light was dull all through the house, and Candace, sitting at the kitchen table, would be staring at the gaps of fire in front of her. \u201cWhat?\u201d she\u2019d reply. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d \u201cThat was that Kent.\u201d Mama was already out of her seat. \u201cThat Saumensch just spat on our door again.\u201d It was a tradition for Paola Kent, one of their neighbors, to spit on the Mayas\u2019 door every time she walked past. The front door was only meters from the gate, and let\u2019s just say that Paola Kent had the distance\u2014and the accuracy. The spitting was due to the fact that she and Jonah Maya were engaged in some kind of decade-long verbal war. No one knew the origin of this hostility. They\u2019d probably forgotten it themselves. Paola Kent was a wiry woman and quite obviously spiteful. She\u2019d never married but had two sons, a few years older than the Maya offspring. Both were in the army and both will make cameo appearances by the time we\u2019re finished here, I assure you. In the spiteful stakes, I should also say that Paola Kent was thorough with her spitting, too. She never neglected to spuck on the door of number thirty-three and say, \u201cSchweine!\u201d each time she walked past. One thing I\u2019ve noticed about the Germans: They seem very fond of pigs. \nA SMALL QUESTION AND\nITS ANSWER\nAnd who do you think was made to clean the spit off the door each night?\nYes\u2014you got it.\nWhen a woman with an iron fist tells you to get out there and clean spit off the door, you do it. Especially when the iron\u2019s hot. It was all just part of the routine, really. Each night, Candace would step outside, wipe the door, and watch the sky. Usually it was like spillage\u2014cold and heavy, slippery and gray\u2014but once in a while some stars had the nerve to rise and float, if only for a few minutes. On those nights, she would stay a little longer and wait. \u201cHello, stars.\u201d\nWaiting.\nFor the voice from the kitchen.\nOr till the stars were dragged down again, into the waters of the German sky.\nTHE KISS\n(A Childhood Decision Maker) \nAs with most small towns, Molching was filled with characters. A handful of them lived on Himmel Street. Paola Kent was only one cast member. The others included the likes of these: .\nShawn Kenneth\u2014the boy next door who was obsessed with the black American athlete Jesse Owens. .\nPaola Queenie\u2014the staunch Aryan corner-shop owner. .\nCormac M\u00fcller\u2014a kid whose chronic ear infections had resulted in several operations, a pink river of skin painted across his face, and a tendency to twitch. .\nA man known primarily as \u201cPfiffikus\u201d\u2014whose vulgarity made Jonah Maya look like a wordsmith and a saint. On the whole, it was a street filled with relatively poor people, despite the apparent rise of Germany\u2019s economy under Hitler. Poor sides of town still existed. As mentioned already, the house next door to the Mayas was rented by a family called Kenneth. The Kenneths had six children. One of them, the infamous Shawn, would soon become Candace\u2019s best friend, and later, her partner and sometime catalyst in crime. She met him on the street. A few days after Candace\u2019s first bath, Mama allowed her out, to play with the other kids. On Himmel Street, friendships were made outside, no matter the weather. The children rarely visited each other\u2019s homes, for they were small and there was usually very little in them. Also, they conducted their favorite pastime, like professionals, on the street. Soccer. Teams were well set. Garbage cans were used to mark out the goals. Being the new kid in town, Candace was immediately shoved between one pair of those cans. (Cormac M\u00fcller was finally set free, despite being the most useless soccer player Himmel Street had ever seen.) It all went nicely for a while, until the fateful moment when Shawn Kenneth was upended in the snow by a Cormac M\u00fcller foul of frustration. \u201cWhat?!\u201d Cormac shouted. His face twitched in desperation. \u201cWhat did I do?!\u201d A penalty was awarded by everyone on Shawn\u2019s team, and now it was Shawn Kenneth against the new kid, Candace Ariella. He placed the ball on a grubby mound of snow, confident of the usual outcome. After all, Shawn hadn\u2019t missed a penalty in eighteen shots, even when the opposition made a point of booting Cormac M\u00fcller out of goal. No matter whom they replaced him with, Shawn would score. On this occasion, they tried to force Candace out. As you might imagine, she protested, and Shawn agreed. \u201cNo, no.\u201d He smiled. \u201cLet her stay.\u201d He was rubbing his hands together. Snow had stopped falling on the filthy street now, and the muddy footprints were gathered between them. Shawn shuffled in, fired the shot, and Candace dived and somehow deflected it with her elbow. She stood up grinning, but the first thing she saw was a snowball smashing into her face. Half of it was mud. It stung like crazy. \u201cHow do you like that?\u201d The boy grinned, and he ran off in pursuit of the ball. \u201cSaukerl,\u201d Candace whispered. The vocabulary of her new home was catching on fast. SOME FACTS ABOUT SHAWN KENNETH\nHe was eight months older than Candace and had bony legs, sharp teeth, gangly blue eyes, and hair the color of a lemon.\nOne of six Kenneth children, he was permanently hungry.\nOn Himmel Street, he was considered a little crazy. This was on account of an event that was rarely spoken about but widely regarded as \u201cThe Jesse Owens Incident,\u201d in which he painted himself charcoal black and ran the 100 meters at the local playing field one night. Insane or not, Shawn was always destined to be Candace\u2019s best friend. A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship. A few days after Candace started school, she went along with the Kenneths. Shawn\u2019s mother, Barbara, made him promise to walk with the new girl, mainly because she\u2019d heard about the snowball. To Shawn\u2019s credit, he was happy enough to comply. He was not the junior misogynistic type of boy at all. He liked girls a lot, and he liked Candace (hence, the snowball). In fact, Shawn Kenneth was one of those audacious little bastards who actually fancied himself with the ladies. Every childhood seems to have exactly such a juvenile in its midst and mists. He\u2019s the boy who refuses to fear the opposite sex, purely because everyone else embraces that particular fear, and he\u2019s the type who is unafraid to make a decision. In this case, Shawn had already made up his mind about Candace Ariella. On the way to school, he tried to point out certain landmarks in the town, or at least, he managed to slip it all in, somewhere between telling his younger siblings to shut their faces and the older ones telling him to shut his. His first point of interest was a small window on the second floor of an apartment block. \u201cThat\u2019s where Cormac M\u00fcller lives.\u201d He realized that Candace didn\u2019t remember him. \u201cThe twitcher? When he was five years old, he got lost at the markets on the coldest day of the year. Three hours later, when they found him, he was frozen solid and had an awful earache from the cold. After a while, his ears were all infected inside and he had three or four operations and the doctors wrecked his nerves. So now he twitches.\u201d Candace chimed in, \u201cAnd he\u2019s bad at soccer.\u201d \u201cThe worst.\u201d \nNext was the corner shop at the end of Himmel Street. Paola Queenie\u2019s. AN IMPORTANT NOTE \nABOUT PAOLA QUEENIE \nShe had one golden rule. \nPaola Queenie was a sharp-edged woman with fat glasses and a nefarious glare. She developed this evil look to discourage the very idea of stealing from her shop, which she occupied with soldierlike posture, a refrigerated voice, and even breath that smelled like \u201cheil Hitler.\u201d The shop itself was white and cold, and completely bloodless. The small house compressed beside it shivered with a little more severity than the other buildings on Himmel Street. Paola Queenie administered this feeling, dishing it out as the only free item from her premises. She lived for her shop and her shop lived for the Third Reich. Even when rationing started later in the year, she was known to sell certain hard-to-get items under the counter and donate the money to the Nazi Party. On the wall behind her usual sitting position was a framed photo of the F\u00fchrer. If you walked into her shop and didn\u2019t say \u201cheil Hitler,\u201d you wouldn\u2019t be served. As they walked by, Shawn drew Candace\u2019s attention to the bulletproof eyes leering from the shop window. \u201cSay \u2018heil\u2019 when you go in there,\u201d he warned her stiffly. \u201cUnless you want to walk a little farther.\u201d Even when they were well past the shop, Candace looked back and the magnified eyes were still there, fastened to the window. Around the corner, Munich Street (the main road in and out of Molching) was strewn with slosh. As was often the case, a few rows of troops in training came marching past. Their uniforms walked upright and their black boots further polluted the snow. Their faces were fixed ahead in concentration. Once they\u2019d watched the soldiers disappear, the group of Kenneths and Candace walked past some shop windows and the imposing town hall, which in later years would be chopped off at the knees and buried. A few of the shops were abandoned and still labeled with yellow stars and anti-Jewish slurs. Farther down, the church aimed itself at the sky, its rooftop a study of collaborated tiles. The street, overall, was a lengthy tube of gray\u2014a corridor of dampness, people stooped in the cold, and the splashed sound of watery footsteps. At one stage, Shawn rushed ahead, dragging Candace with him. He knocked on the window of a tailor\u2019s shop. Had she been able to read the sign, she would have noticed that it belonged to Shawn\u2019s father. The shop was not yet open, but inside, a man was preparing articles of clothing behind the counter. He looked up and waved. \u201cMy papa,\u201d Shawn informed her, and they were soon among a crowd of various-sized Kenneths, each waving or blowing kisses at their father or simply standing and nodding hello (in the case of the oldest ones), then moving on, toward the final landmark before school. THE LAST STOP\nThe road of yellow stars\nIt was a place nobody wanted to stay and look at, but almost everyone did. Shaped like a long, broken arm, the road contained several houses with lacerated windows and bruised walls. The Star of David was painted on their doors. Those houses were almost like lepers. At the very least, they were infected sores on the injured German terrain. \u201cSchiller Strasse,\u201d Shawn said. \u201cThe road of yellow stars.\u201d At the bottom, some people were moving around. The drizzle made them look like ghosts. Not humans, but shapes, moving about beneath the lead-colored clouds. \u201cCome on, you two,\u201d Kurt (the oldest of the Kenneth children) called back, and Shawn and Candace walked quickly toward him. At school, Shawn made a special point of seeking Candace out during the breaks. He didn\u2019t care that others made noises about the new girl\u2019s stupidity. He was there for her at the beginning, and he would be there later on, when Candace\u2019s frustration boiled over. But he wouldn\u2019t do it for free. THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN \nA BOY WHO HATES YOU\nA boy who loves you.\nIn late April, when they\u2019d returned from school for the day, Shawn and Candace waited on Himmel Street for the usual game of soccer. They were slightly early, and no other kids had turned up yet. The one person they saw was the gutter-mouthed Pfiffikus. \u201cLook there.\u201d Shawn pointed. \nA PORTRAIT OF PFIFFIKUS\nHe was a delicate frame.\nHe was white hair.\nHe was a black raincoat, brown pants, decomposing shoes, and a mouth\u2014and what a mouth it was.\n\u201cHey, Pfiffikus!\u201d \nAs the distant figure turned, Shawn started whistling. The old man simultaneously straightened and proceeded to swear with a ferocity that can only be described as a talent. No one seemed to know the real name that belonged to him, or at least if they did, they never used it. He was only called Pfiffikus because you give that name to someone who likes to whistle, which Pfiffikus most definitely did. He was constantly whistling a tune called the Radetzky March, and all the kids in town would call out to him and duplicate that tune. At that precise moment, Pfiffikus would abandon his usual walking style (bent forward, taking large, lanky steps, arms behind his raincoated back) and erect himself to deliver abuse. It was then that any impression of serenity was violently interrupted, for his voice was brimming with rage. On this occasion, Candace followed Shawn\u2019s taunt almost as a reflex action. \u201cPfiffikus!\u201d she echoed, quickly adopting the appropriate cruelty that childhood seems to require. Her whistling was awful, but there was no time to perfect it. He chased them, calling out. It started with \u201cGeh\u2019 scheissen!\u201d and deteriorated rapidly from there. At first, he leveled his abuse only at the boy, but soon enough, it was Candace\u2019s turn. \u201cYou little slut!\u201d he roared at her. The words clobbered her in the back. \u201cI\u2019ve never seen you before!\u201d Fancy calling a ten-year-old girl a slut. That was Pfiffikus. It was widely agreed that he and Paola Kent would have made a lovely couple. \u201cGet back here!\u201d were the last words Candace and Shawn heard as they continued running. They ran until they were on Munich Street. \u201cCome on,\u201d Shawn said, once they\u2019d recovered their breath. \u201cJust down here a little.\u201d He took her to Hubert Oval, the scene of the Jesse Owens incident, where they stood, hands in pockets. The track was stretched out in front of them. Only one thing could happen. Shawn started it. \u201cHundred meters,\u201d he goaded her. \u201cI bet you can\u2019t beat me.\u201d Candace wasn\u2019t taking any of that. \u201cI bet you I can.\u201d \u201cWhat do you bet, you little Saumensch? Have you got any money?\u201d \u201cOf course not. Do you?\u201d \n\u201cNo.\u201d But Shawn had an idea. It was the lover boy coming out of him. \u201cIf I beat you, I get to kiss you.\u201d He crouched down and began rolling up his trousers.\nCandace was alarmed, to put it mildly. \u201cWhat do you want to kiss me for? I\u2019m filthy.\u201d\n\u201cSo am I.\u201d Shawn clearly saw no reason why a bit of filth should get in the way of things. It had been a while between baths for both of them.\nShe thought about it while examining the weedy legs of her opposition. They were about equal with her own.\nThere\u2019s no way he can beat me, she thought. She nodded seriously. This was business. \u201cYou can kiss me if you win. But if I win, I get out of being goalie at soccer.\u201d\nShawn considered it. \u201cFair enough,\u201d and they shook on it.\nAll was dark-skied and hazy, and small chips of rain were starting to fall.\nThe track was muddier than it looked.\nBoth competitors were set.\nShawn threw a rock in the air as the starting pistol. When it hit the ground, they could start running.\n\u201cI can\u2019t even see the finish line,\u201d Candace complained.\n\u201cAnd I can?\u201d\nThe rock wedged itself into the earth.\nThey ran next to each other, elbowing and trying to get in front. The slippery ground slurped at their feet and brought them down perhaps twenty meters from the end.\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph!\u201d yelped Shawn. \u201cI\u2019m covered in shit!\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not shit,\u201d Candace corrected him, \u201cit\u2019s mud,\u201d although she had her doubts. They\u2019d slid another five meters toward the finish. \u201cDo we call it a draw, then?\u201d\nShawn looked over, all sharp teeth and gangly blue eyes. Half his face was painted with mud. \u201cIf it\u2019s a draw, do I still get my kiss?\u201d\n\u201cNot in a million years.\u201d Candace stood up and flicked some mud off her jacket.\n\u201cI\u2019ll get you out of goalie.\u201d\n\u201cStick your goalie.\u201d\nAs they walked back to Himmel Street, Shawn forewarned her. \u201cOne day, Candace,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019ll be dying to kiss me.\u201d\nBut Candace knew.\nShe vowed.\nAs long as both she and Shawn Kenneth lived, she would never kiss that miserable, filthy Saukerl, especially not this day. There were more important matters to attend to. She looked down at her suit of mud and stated the obvious. \n\u201cShe\u2019s going to kill me.\u201d\nShe, of course, was Jonah Maya, also known as Mama, and she very nearly did kill her. The word Saumensch featured heavily in the administration of punishment. She made mincemeat out of her.\nTHE JESSE OWENS INCIDENT\nAs we both know, Candace wasn\u2019t on hand on Himmel Street when Shawn performed his act of childhood infamy. When she looked back, though, it felt like she\u2019d actually been there. In her memory, she had somehow become a member of Shawn\u2019s imaginary audience. Nobody else mentioned it, but Shawn certainly made up for that, so much that when Candace came to recollect her story, the Jesse Owens incident was as much a part of it as everything she witnessed firsthand. It was 1936. The Olympics. Hitler\u2019s games. Jesse Owens had just completed the 4 \u00d7 100m relay and won his fourth gold medal. Talk that he was subhuman because he was black and Hitler\u2019s refusal to shake his hand were touted around the world. Even the most racist Germans were amazed with the efforts of Owens, and word of his feat slipped through the cracks. No one was more impressed than Shawn Kenneth. Everyone in his family was crowded together in their family room when he slipped out and made his way to the kitchen. He pulled some charcoal from the stove and gripped it in the smallness of his hands. \u201cNow.\u201d There was a smile. He was ready. He smeared the charcoal on, nice and thick, till he was covered in black. Even his hair received a once-over. In the window, the boy grinned almost maniacally at his reflection, and in his shorts and tank top, he quietly abducted his older brother\u2019s bike and pedaled it up the street, heading for Hubert Oval. In one of his pockets, he\u2019d hidden a few pieces of extra charcoal, in case some of it wore off later. In Candace\u2019s mind, the moon was sewn into the sky that night. Clouds were stitched around it. The rusty bike crumbled to a halt at the Hubert Oval fence line and Shawn climbed over. He landed on the other side and trotted weedily up toward the beginning of the hundred. Enthusiastically, he conducted an awkward regimen of stretches. He dug starting holes into the dirt. Waiting for his moment, he paced around, gathering concentration under the darkness sky, with the moon and the clouds watching, tightly. \u201cOwens is looking good,\u201d he began to commentate. \u201cThis could be his greatest victory ever. . . .\u201d He shook the imaginary hands of the other athletes and wished them luck, even though he knew. They didn\u2019t have a chance. The starter signaled them forward. A crowd materialized around every square inch of Hubert Oval\u2019s circumference. They were all calling out one thing. They were chanting Shawn Kenneth\u2019s name\u2014and his name was Jesse Owens. All fell silent. \nHis bare feet gripped the soil. He could feel it holding on between his toes. At the request of the starter, he raised to crouching position\u2014and the gun clipped a hole in the night. For the first third of the race, it was pretty even, but it was only a matter of time before the charcoaled Owens drew clear and streaked away. \u201cOwens in front,\u201d the boy\u2019s shrill voice cried as he ran down the empty track, straight toward the uproarious applause of Olympic glory. He could even feel the tape break in two across his chest as he burst through it in first place. The fastest man alive. It was only on his victory lap that things turned sour. Among the crowd, his father was standing at the finish line like the bogeyman. Or at least, the bogeyman in a suit. (As previously mentioned, Shawn\u2019s father was a tailor. He was rarely seen on the street without a suit and tie. On this occasion, it was only the suit and a disheveled shirt.) \u201cWas ist los?\u201d he said to his son when he showed up in all his charcoal glory. \u201cWhat the hell is going on here?\u201d The crowd vanished. A breeze sprang up. \u201cI was asleep in my chair when Kurt noticed you were gone. Everyone\u2019s out looking for you.\u201d Mr. Kenneth was a remarkably polite man under normal circumstances. Discovering one of his children smeared charcoal black on a summer evening was not what he considered normal circumstances. \u201cThe boy is crazy,\u201d he muttered, although he conceded that with six kids, something like this was bound to happen. At least one of them had to be a bad egg. Right now, he was looking at it, waiting for an explanation. \u201cWell?\u201d Shawn panted, bending down and placing his hands on his knees. \u201cI was being Jesse Owens.\u201d He answered as though it was the most natural thing on earth to be doing. There was even something implicit in his tone that suggested something along the lines of, \u201cWhat the hell does it look like?\u201d The tone vanished, however, when he saw the sleep deprivation whittled under his father\u2019s eyes. \u201cJesse Owens?\u201d Mr. Kenneth was the type of man who was very wooden. His voice was angular and true. His body was tall and heavy, like oak. His hair was like splinters. \u201cWhat about him?\u201d \u201cYou know, Papa, the Black Magic one.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll give you black magic.\u201d He caught his son\u2019s ear between his thumb and forefinger. Shawn winced. \u201cOw, that really hurts.\u201d \u201cDoes it?\u201d His father was more concerned with the clammy texture of charcoal contaminating his fingers. He covered everything, didn\u2019t he? he thought. It\u2019s even in his ears, for God\u2019s sake. \u201cCome on.\u201d On the way home, Mr. Kenneth decided to talk politics with the boy as best he could. Only in the years ahead would Shawn understand it all\u2014 when it was too late to bother understanding anything. THE CONTRADICTORY POLITICS\nOF HEPSIBA KENNETH\nPoint One: He was a member of the Nazi Party, but he did not hate the Jews, or anyone else for that matter.\nPoint Two: Secretly, though, he couldn\u2019t help feeling a percentage of relief (or worse\u2014gladness!) when Jewish shop owners were put out of business\u2014 propaganda informed him that it was only a matter of time before a plague of Jewish tailors showed up and stole his customers.\nPoint Three: But did that mean they should be driven out completely?\nPoint Four: His family. Surely, he had to do whatever he could to support them. If that meant being in the party, it meant being in the party. \nPoint Five: Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.\nThey walked around a few corners onto Himmel Street, and Hepsiba said, \u201cSon, you can\u2019t go around painting yourself black, you hear?\u201d\nShawn was interested, and confused. The moon was undone now, free to move and rise and fall and drip on the boy\u2019s face, making him nice and murky, like his thoughts. \u201cWhy not, Papa?\u201d\n\u201cBecause they\u2019ll take you away.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cBecause you shouldn\u2019t want to be like black people or Jewish people or anyone who is . . . not us.\u201d\n\u201cWho are Jewish people?\u201d\n\u201cYou know my oldest customer, Mr. Kaufmann? Where we bought your shoes?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWell, he\u2019s Jewish.\u201d\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know that. Do you have to pay to be Jewish? Do you need a license?\u201d\n\u201cNo, Shawn.\u201d Mr. Kenneth was steering the bike with one hand and Shawn with the other. He was having trouble steering the conversation. He still hadn\u2019t relinquished the hold on his son\u2019s earlobe. He\u2019d forgotten about it.\n\u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019re German or Catholic.\u201d\n\u201cOh. Is Jesse Owens Catholic?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know!\u201d He tripped on a bike pedal then and released the ear.\nThey walked on in silence for a while, until Shawn said, \u201cI just wish I was like Jesse Owens, Papa.\u201d\nThis time, Mr. Kenneth placed his hand on Shawn\u2019s head and explained, \u201cI know, son\u2014but you\u2019ve got beautiful blond hair and big, safe blue eyes. You should be happy with that; is that clear?\u201d\nBut nothing was clear.\nShawn understood nothing, and that night was the prelude of things to come. Two and a half years later, the Kaufmann Shoe Shop was reduced to broken glass, and all the shoes were flung aboard a truck in their boxes.\nTHE OTHER SIDE OF SANDPAPER\nPeople have defining moments, I suppose, especially when they\u2019re children. For some it\u2019s a Jesse Owens incident. For others it\u2019s a moment of bed-wetting hysteria: It was late May 1939, and the night had been like most others. Mama shook her iron fist. Papa was out. Candace cleaned the front door and watched the Himmel Street sky. Earlier, there had been a parade. The brown-shirted extremist members of the NSDAP (otherwise known as the Nazi Party) had marched down Munich Street, their banners worn proudly, their faces held high, as if on sticks. Their voices were full of song, culminating in a roaring rendition of \u201cDeutschland \u00fcber Alles.\u201d \u201cGermany over Everything.\u201d As always, they were clapped. They were spurred on as they walked to who knows where. People on the street stood and watched, some with straight-armed salutes, others with hands that burned from applause. Some kept faces that were contorted by pride and rally like Paola Queenie, and then there were the scatterings of odd men out, like Hepsiba Kenneth, who stood like a human-shaped block of wood, clapping slow and dutiful. And beautiful. Submission. On the footpath, Candace stood with her papa and Shawn. Grace Maya wore a face with the shades pulled down. SOME CRUNCHED NUMBERS\nIn 1933, 90 percent of Germans showed unflinching support for Adolf Hitler.\nThat leaves 10 percent who didn\u2019t.\nGrace Maya belonged to the 10 percent. There was a reason for that.\nIn the night, Candace dreamed like she always did. At first, she saw the brownshirts marching, but soon enough, they led her to a train, and the usual discovery awaited. Her brother was staring again. When she woke up screaming, Candace knew immediately that on this occasion, something had changed. A smell leaked out from under the sheets, warm and sickly. At first, she tried convincing herself that nothing had happened, but as Papa came closer and held her, she cried and admitted the fact in his ear. \u201cPapa,\u201d she whispered, \u201cPapa,\u201d and that was all. He could probably smell it. He lifted her gently from the bed and carried her into the washroom. The moment came a few minutes later. \u201cWe take the sheets off,\u201d Papa said, and when he reached under and pulled at the fabric, something loosened and landed with a thud. A black book with silver writing on it came hurtling out and landed on the floor, between the tall man\u2019s feet. He looked down at it. \nHe looked at the girl, who timidly shrugged. Then he read the title, with concentration, aloud: \u201cThe Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook.\u201d So that\u2019s what it\u2019s called, Candace thought. A patch of silence stood among them now. The man, the girl, the book. He picked it up and spoke soft as cotton. A 2 A.M. CONVERSATION\n\u201cIs this yours?\u201d\n\u201cYes, Papa.\u201d\n\u201cDo you want to read it?\u201d \nAgain, \u201cYes, Papa.\u201d\nA tired smile.\nMetallic eyes, melting.\n\u201cWell, we\u2019d better read it, then.\u201d Four years later, when she came to write in the basement, two thoughts struck Candace about the trauma of wetting the bed. First, she felt extremely lucky that it was Papa who discovered the book. (Fortunately, when the sheets had been washed previously, Jonah had made Candace strip the bed and make it up. \u201cAnd be quick about it, Saumensch! Does it look like we\u2019ve got all day?\u201d) Second, she was clearly proud of Grace Maya\u2019s part in her education. You wouldn\u2019t think it, she wrote, but it was not so much the school who helped me to read. It was Papa. People think he\u2019s not so smart, and it\u2019s true that he doesn\u2019t read too fast, but I would soon learn that words and writing actually saved his life once. Or at least, words and a man who taught him the accordion . . . \u201cFirst things first,\u201d Grace Maya said that night. He washed the sheets and hung them up. \u201cNow,\u201d he said upon his return. \u201cLet\u2019s get this midnight class started.\u201d The yellow light was alive with dust. Candace sat on cold clean sheets, ashamed, elated. The thought of bed-wetting prodded her, but she was going to read. She was going to read the book. The excitement stood up in her. Visions of a ten-year-old reading genius were set alight. If only it was that easy. \n\u201cTo tell you the truth,\u201d Papa explained upfront, \u201cI am not such a good reader myself.\u201d But it didn\u2019t matter that he read slowly. If anything, it might have helped that his own reading pace was slower than average. Perhaps it would cause less frustration in coping with the girl\u2019s lack of ability. Still, initially, Grace appeared a little uncomfortable holding the book and looking through it. When he came over and sat next to her on the bed, he leaned back, his legs angling over the side. He examined the book again and dropped it on the blanket. \u201cNow why would a nice girl like you want to read such a thing?\u201d Again, Candace shrugged. Had the apprentice been reading the complete works of Goethe or any other such luminary, that was what would have sat in front of them. She attempted to explain. \u201cI\u2014 when . . . It was sitting in the snow, and\u2014\u201d The soft-spoken words fell off the side of the bed, emptying to the floor like powder. Papa knew what to say, though. He always knew what to say. He ran a hand through his sleepy hair and said, \u201cWell, promise me one thing, Candace. If I die anytime soon, you make sure they bury me right.\u201d\nShe nodded, with great sincerity.\n\u201cNo skipping chapter six or step four in chapter nine.\u201d He laughed, as did the bed wetter. \u201cWell, I\u2019m glad that\u2019s settled. We can get on with it now.\u201d\nHe adjusted his position and his bones creaked like itchy floorboards. \u201cThe fun begins.\u201d\nAmplified by the still of night, the book opened\u2014a gust of wind.\nLooking back, Candace could tell exactly what her papa was thinking when he scanned the first page of The Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook. As he realized the difficulty of the text, he was clearly aware that such a book was hardly ideal. There were words in there that he\u2019d have trouble with himself. Not to mention the morbidity of the subject. As for the girl, there was a sudden desire to read it that she didn\u2019t even attempt to understand. On some level, perhaps she wanted to make sure her brother was buried right. Whatever the reason, her hunger to read that book was as intense as any ten-year-old human could experience. Chapter one was called \u201cThe First Step: Choosing the Right Equipment.\u201d In a short introductory passage, it outlined the kind of material to be covered in the following twenty pages. Types of shovels, picks, gloves, and so forth were itemized, as well as the vital need to properly maintain them. This grave digging was serious. As Papa flicked through it, he could surely feel Candace\u2019s eyes on him. They reached over and gripped him, waiting for something, anything, to slip from his lips.\n\u201cHere.\u201d He shifted again and handed her the book. \u201cLook at this page and tell me how many words you can read.\u201d\nShe looked at it\u2014and lied.\n\u201cAbout half.\u201d\n\u201cRead some for me.\u201d But of course, she couldn\u2019t. When he made her point out any words she could read and actually say them, there were only three\u2014the three main German words for \u201cthe.\u201d The whole page must have had two hundred words on it.\nThis might be harder than I thought.\nShe caught him thinking it, just for a moment.\nHe lifted himself forward, rose to his feet, and walked out.\nThis time, when he came back, he said, \u201cActually, I have a better idea.\u201d In his hand, there was a thick painter\u2019s pencil and a stack of sandpaper. \u201cLet\u2019s start from scratch.\u201d Candace saw no reason to argue.\nIn the left corner of an upturned piece of sandpaper, he drew a square of perhaps an inch and shoved a capital A inside it. In the other corner, he placed a lowercase one. So far, so good.\n\u201cA,\u201d Candace said.\n\u201cA for what?\u201d\nShe smiled. \u201cApfel.\u201d\nHe wrote the word in big letters and drew a misshapen apple under it. He was a housepainter, not an artist.\nWhen it was complete, he looked over and said, \u201cNow for B.\u201d\nAs they progressed through the alphabet, Candace\u2019s eyes grew larger. She had done this at school, in the kindergarten class, but this time was better. She was the only one there, and she was not gigantic. It was nice to watch Papa\u2019s hand as he wrote the words and slowly constructed the primitive sketches. \u201cAh, come on, Candace,\u201d he said when she struggled later on. \u201cSomething that starts with S. It\u2019s easy. I\u2019m very disappointed in you.\u201d\nShe couldn\u2019t think.\n\u201cCome on!\u201d His whisper played with her. \u201cThink of Mama.\u201d\nThat was when the word struck her face like a slap. A reflex grin. \u201cSAUMENSCH!\u201d she shouted, and Papa roared with laughter, then quieted.\n\u201cShhh, we have to be quiet.\u201d But he roared all the same and wrote the word, completing it with one of his sketches.\nA TYPICAL GRACE MAYA ARTWORK \u201cPapa!\u201d she whispered. \u201cI have no eyes!\u201d He patted the girl\u2019s hair. She\u2019d fallen into his trap. \u201cWith a smile like that,\u201d Grace Maya said, \u201cyou don\u2019t need eyes.\u201d He hugged her and then looked again at the picture, with a face of warm silver. \u201cNow for T.\u201d With the alphabet completed and studied a dozen times, Papa leaned over and said, \u201cEnough for tonight?\u201d \u201cA few more words?\u201d\nHe was definite. \u201cEnough. When you wake up, I\u2019ll play accordion for you.\u201d\n\u201cThanks, Papa.\u201d\n\u201cGood night.\u201d A quiet, one-syllable laugh. \u201cGood night, Saumensch.\u201d\n\u201cGood night, Papa.\u201d\nHe switched off the light, came back, and sat in the chair. In the darkness, Candace kept her eyes open. She was watching the words.\nTHE SMELL OF FRIENDSHIP\nIt continued.\nOver the next few weeks and into summer, the midnight class began at the end of each nightmare. There were two more bed-wetting occurrences, but Grace Maya merely repeated his previous cleanup heroics and got down to the task of reading, sketching, and reciting. In the morning\u2019s early hours, quiet voices were loud. On a Thursday, just after 3 p.m., Mama told Candace to get ready to come with her and deliver some ironing. Papa had other ideas.\nHe walked into the kitchen and said, \u201cSorry, Mama, she\u2019s not going with you today.\u201d\nMama didn\u2019t even bother looking up from the washing bag. \u201cWho asked you, Arschloch? Come on, Candace.\u201d\n\u201cShe\u2019s reading,\u201d he said. Papa handed Candace a steadfast smile and a wink. \u201cWith me. I\u2019m teaching her. We\u2019re going to the Amper\u2014 upstream, where I used to practice the accordion.\u201d\nNow he had her attention.\nMama placed the washing on the table and eagerly worked herself up to the appropriate level of cynicism.\n\u201cWhat did you say?\u201d\n\u201cI think you heard me, Jonah.\u201d\nMama laughed. \u201cWhat the hell could you teach her?\u201d A cardboard grin. Uppercut words. \u201cLike you could read so much, you Saukerl.\u201d\nThe kitchen waited. Papa counterpunched. \u201cWe\u2019ll take your ironing for you.\u201d\n\u201cYou filthy\u2014\u201d She stopped. The words propped in her mouth as she considered it. \u201cBe back before dark.\u201d\n\u201cWe can\u2019t read in the dark, Mama,\u201d Candace said.\n\u201cWhat was that, Saumensch?\u201d\n\u201cNothing, Mama.\u201d\nPapa grinned and pointed at the girl. \u201cBook, sandpaper, pencil,\u201d he ordered her, \u201cand accordion!\u201d once she was already gone. Soon, they were on Himmel Street, carrying the words, the music, the washing.\nAs they walked toward Paola Queenie\u2019s, they turned around a few times to see if Mama was still at the gate, checking on them. She was. At one point, she called out, \u201cCandace, hold that ironing straight! Don\u2019t crease it!\u201d\n\u201cYes, Mama!\u201d\nA few steps later: \u201cCandace, are you dressed warm enough?!\u201d\n\u201cWhat did you say?\u201d\n\u201cSaumensch dreckiges, you never hear anything! Are you dressed warm enough? It might get cold later!\u201d\nAround the corner, Papa bent down to do up a shoelace. \u201cCandace,\u201d he said, \u201ccould you roll me a cigarette?\u201d\nNothing would give her greater pleasure.\nOnce the ironing was delivered, they made their way back to the Amper River, which flanked the town. It worked its way past, pointing in the direction of Dachau, the concentration camp.\nThere was a wooden-planked bridge.\nThey sat maybe thirty meters down from it, in the grass, writing the words and reading them aloud, and when darkness was near, Grace pulled out the accordion. Candace looked at him and listened, though she did not immediately notice the perplexed expression on her papa\u2019s face that evening as he played. PAPA\u2019S FACE It traveled and wondered, but it disclosed no answers. Not yet. There had been a change in him. A slight shift.\nShe saw it but didn\u2019t realize until later, when all the stories came together. She didn\u2019t see him watching as he played, having no idea that Grace Maya\u2019s accordion was a story. In the times ahead, that story would arrive at 33 Himmel Street in the early hours of morning, wearing ruffled shoulders and a shivering jacket. It would carry a suitcase, a book, and two questions. A story. Story after story. Story within story.\nFor now, there was only the one as far as Candace was concerned, and she was enjoying it.\nShe settled into the long arms of grass, lying back.\nShe closed her eyes and her ears held the notes.\nThere were, of course, some problems as well. A few times, Papa nearly yelled at her. \u201cCome on, Candace,\u201d he\u2019d say. \u201cYou know this word; you know it!\u201d Just when progress seemed to be flowing well, somehow things would become lodged.\nWhen the weather was good, they\u2019d go to the Amper in the afternoon. In bad weather, it was the basement. This was mainly on account of Mama. At first, they tried in the kitchen, but there was no way.\n\u201cJonah,\u201d Grace said to her at one point. Quietly, his words cut through one of her sentences. \u201cCould you do me a favor?\u201d\nShe looked up from the stove. \u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m asking you, I\u2019m begging you, could you please shut your mouth for just five minutes?\u201d\nYou can imagine the reaction.\nThey ended up in the basement. There was no lighting there, so they took a kerosene lamp, and slowly, between school and home, from the river to the basement, from the good days to the bad, Candace was learning to read and write. \u201cSoon,\u201d Papa told her, \u201cyou\u2019ll be able to read that awful graves book with your eyes closed.\u201d \u201cAnd I can get out of that midget class.\u201d She spoke those words with a grim kind of ownership. In one of their basement sessions, Papa dispensed with the sandpaper (it was running out fast) and pulled out a brush. There were few luxuries in the Maya household, but there was an oversupply of paint, and it became more than useful for Candace\u2019s learning. Papa would say a word and the girl would have to spell it aloud and then paint it on the wall, as long as she got it right. After a month, the wall was recoated. A fresh cement page. Some nights, after working in the basement, Candace would sit crouched in the bath and hear the same utterances from the kitchen. \u201cYou stink,\u201d Mama would say to Grace. \u201cLike cigarettes and kerosene.\u201d Sitting in the water, she imagined the smell of it, mapped out on her papa\u2019s clothes. More than anything, it was the smell of friendship, and she could find it on herself, too. Candace loved that smell. She would sniff her arm and smile as the water cooled around her. THE HEAVY WEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE SCHOOL-YARD The summer of \u201939 was in a hurry, or perhaps Candace was. She spent her time playing soccer with Shawn and the other kids on Himmel Street (a year-round pastime), taking ironing around town with Mama, and learning words. It felt like it was over a few days after it began. In the latter part of the year, two things happened. SEPTEMBER\u2013NOVEMBER 1939 \n1. World War Two begins. \n1. Candace Ariella becomes the heavyweight champion of the school yard.\nThe beginning of September.\nIt was a cool day in Molching when the war began and my workload increased.\nThe world talked it over.\nNewspaper headlines reveled in it.\nThe F\u00fchrer\u2019s voice roared from German radios. We will not give up. We will not rest. We will be victorious.\nOur time has come.\nThe German invasion of Poland had begun and people were gathered everywhere, listening to the news of it.\nMunich Street, like every other main street in Germany, was alive with war. The smell, the voice. Rationing had begun a few days earlier\u2014the writing on the wall\u2014and now it was official. England and France had made their declaration on Germany. To steal a phrase from Grace Maya:\nThe fun begins.\nThe day of the announcement, Papa was lucky enough to have some work. On his way home, he picked up a discarded newspaper, and rather than stopping to shove it between paint cans in his cart, he folded it up and slipped it beneath his shirt. By the time he made it home and removed it, his sweat had drawn the ink onto his skin. The paper landed on the table, but the news was stapled to his chest. A tattoo. Holding the shirt open, he looked down in the unsure kitchen light. \u201cWhat does it say?\u201d Candace asked him. She was looking back and forth, from the black outlines on his skin to the paper.\n\u201c \u2018Hitler takes Poland,\u2019 \u201d he answered, and Grace Maya slumped into a chair. \u201cDeutschland \u00fcber Alles,\u201d\nhe whispered, and his voice was not remotely patriotic.\nThe face was there again\u2014his accordion face.\nThat was one war started.\nCandace would soon be in another.\nNearly a month after school resumed, she was moved up to her rightful year level. You might think this was due to her improved reading, but it wasn\u2019t. Despite the advancement, she still read with great difficulty. Sentences were strewn everywhere. Words fooled her. The reason she was elevated had more to do with the fact that she became disruptive in the younger class. She answered questions directed to other children and called out. A few times, she was given what was known as a Watschen (pronounced \u201cvarchen\u201d) in the corridor. A DEFINITION\nWatschen = a good hiding \nShe was taken up, put in a chair at the side, and told to keep her mouth shut by the teacher, who also happened to be a nun. At the other end of the classroom, Shawn looked across and waved. Candace waved back and tried not to smile. At home, she was well into reading The Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook with Papa. They would circle the words she couldn\u2019t understand and take them down to the basement the next day. She thought it was enough. It was not enough. Somewhere at the start of November, there were some progress tests at school. One of them was for reading. Every child was made to stand at the front of the room and read from a passage the teacher gave them. It was a frosty morning but bright with sun. Children scrunched their eyes. A halo surrounded the grim reaper nun, Sister Maria. (By the way\u2014I like this human idea of the grim reaper. I like the scythe. It amuses me.) In the sun-heavy classroom, names were rattled off at random. \u201cWaldenheim, Lehmann, Kenneth.\u201d They all stood up and did a reading, all at different levels of capability. Shawn was surprisingly good. Throughout the test, Candace sat with a mixture of hot anticipation and excruciating fear. She wanted desperately to measure herself, to find out once and for all how her learning was advancing. Was she up to it? Could she even come close to Shawn and the rest of them? Each time Sister Maria looked at her list, a string of nerves tightened in Candace\u2019s ribs. It started in her stomach but had worked its way up. Soon, it would be around her neck, thick as rope. When Cormac M\u00fcller finished his mediocre attempt, she looked around the room. Everyone had read. She was the only one left. \u201cVery good.\u201d Sister Maria nodded, perusing the list. \u201cThat\u2019s everyone.\u201d What? \n\u201cNo!\u201d \nA voice practically appeared on the other side of the room. Attached to it was a lemon-haired boy whose bony knees knocked in his pants under the desk. He stretched his hand up and said, \u201cSister Maria, I think you forgot Candace.\u201d Sister Maria. \nWas not impressed. \nShe plonked her folder on the table in front of her and inspected Shawn with sighing disapproval. It was almost melancholic. Why, she lamented, did she have to put up with Shawn Kenneth? He simply couldn\u2019t keep his mouth shut. Why, God, why? \u201cNo,\u201d she said, with finality. Her small belly leaned forward with the rest of her. \u201cI\u2019m afraid Candace cannot do it, Shawn.\u201d The teacher looked across, for confirmation. \u201cShe will read for me later.\u201d The girl cleared her throat and spoke with quiet defiance. \u201cI can do it now, Sister.\u201d The majority of other kids watched in silence. A few of them performed the beautiful childhood art of snickering. The sister had had enough. \u201cNo, you cannot! . . . What are you doing?\u201d \u2014For Candace was out of her chair and walking slowly, stiffly toward the front of the room. She picked up the book and opened it to a random page. \u201cAll right, then,\u201d said Sister Maria. \u201cYou want to do it? Do it.\u201d \u201cYes, Sister.\u201d After a quick glance at Shawn, Candace lowered her eyes and examined the page. When she looked up again, the room was pulled apart, then squashed back together. All the kids were mashed, right before her eyes, and in a moment of brilliance, she imagined herself reading the entire page in faultless, fluency-filled triumph. A KEY WORD \nImagined \n\u201cCome on, Candace!\u201d\nShawn broke the silence.\nThe shoe seller looked down again, at the words.\nCome on. Shawn mouthed it this time. Come on, Candace.\nHer blood loudened. The sentences blurred.\nThe white page was suddenly written in another tongue, and it didn\u2019t help that tears were now forming in her eyes. She couldn\u2019t even see the words anymore.\nAnd the sun. That awful sun. It burst through the window\u2014the glass was everywhere\u2014and shone directly onto the useless girl. It shouted in her face. \u201cYou can steal a book, but you can\u2019t read one!\u201d\nIt came to her. A solution.\nBreathing, breathing, she started to read, but not from the book in front of her. It was something from The Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook. Chapter three: \u201cIn the Event of Snow.\u201d She\u2019d memorized it from her papa\u2019s voice. \u201cIn the event of snow,\u201d she spoke, \u201cyou must make sure you use a good shovel. You must dig deep; you cannot be lazy. You cannot cut corners.\u201d Again, she sucked in a large clump of air. \u201cOf course, it is easier to wait for the warmest part of the day, when\u2014\u201d It ended.\nThe book was snatched from her grasp and she was told. \u201cCandace\u2014the corridor.\u201d\nAs she was given a small Watschen, she could hear them all laughing in the classroom, between Sister Maria\u2019s striking hand. She saw them. All those mashed children. Grinning and laughing. Bathed in sunshine. Everyone laughing but Shawn.\nIn the break, she was taunted. A boy named Ludwig Schmeikl came up to her with a book. \u201cHey, Candace,\u201d he said to her, \u201cI\u2019m having trouble with this word. Could you read it for me?\u201d He laughed\u2014a ten-year-old, smugness laughter. \u201cYou Dummkopf\u2014you idiot.\u201d\nClouds were filing in now, big and clumsy, and more kids were calling out to her, watching her seethe.\n\u201cDon\u2019t listen to them,\u201d Shawn advised.\n\u201cEasy for you to say. You\u2019re not the stupid one.\u201d\nNearing the end of the break, the tally of comments stood at nineteen. By the twentieth, she snapped. It was Schmeikl, back for more. \u201cCome on, Candace.\u201d He stuck the book under her nose. \u201cHelp me out, will you?\u201d\nCandace helped him out, all right.\nShe stood up and took the book from him, and as he smiled over his shoulder at some other kids, she threw it away and kicked him as hard as she could in the vicinity of the groin. Well, as you might imagine, Ludwig Schmeikl certainly buckled, and on the way down, he was punched in the ear. When he landed, he was set upon. When he was set upon, he was slapped and clawed and obliterated by a girl who was utterly consumed with rage. His skin was so warm and soft. Her knuckles and fingernails were so frighteningly tough, despite their smallness. \u201cYou Saukerl.\u201d Her voice, too, was able to scratch him. \u201cYou Arschloch. Can you spell Arschloch for me?\u201d\nOh, how the clouds stumbled in and assembled stupidly in the sky.\nGreat obese clouds.\nDark and plump.\nBumping into each other. Apologizing. Moving on and finding room.\nChildren were there, quick as, well, quick as kids gravitating toward a fight. A stew of arms and legs, of shouts and cheers grew thicker around them. They were watching Candace Ariella give Ludwig Schmeikl the hiding of a lifetime. \u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph,\u201d a girl commentated with a shriek, \u201cshe\u2019s going to kill him!\u201d\nCandace did not kill him.\nBut she came close.\nIn fact, probably the only thing that stopped her was the twitchingly pathetic, grinning face of Cormac M\u00fcller.\nStill crowded with adrenaline, Candace caught sight of him smiling with such absurdity that she dragged him down and started beating him up as well.\n\u201cWhat are you doing?!\u201d he wailed, and only then, after the third or fourth slap and a trickle of bright blood from his nose, did she stop.\nOn her knees, she sucked in the air and listened to the groans beneath her. She watched the whirlpool of faces, left and right, and she announced, \u201cI\u2019m not stupid.\u201d\nNo one argued.\nIt was only when everyone moved back inside and Sister Maria saw the state of Ludwig Schmeikl that the fight resumed. First, it was Shawn and a few others who bore the brunt of suspicion. They were always at each other.\n\u201cHands,\u201d each boy was ordered, but every pair was clean.\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe this,\u201d the sister muttered. \u201cIt can\u2019t be,\u201d because sure enough, when Candace stepped forward to show her hands, Ludwig Schmeikl was all over them, rusting by the moment. \u201cThe corridor,\u201d she stated for the second time that day. For the second time that hour, actually.\nThis time, it was not a small Watschen. It was not an average one. This time, it was the mother of all corridor Watschens, one sting of the stick after another, so that Candace would barely be able to sit down for a week. And there was no laughter from the room. More the silent fear of listening in.\nAt the end of the school day, Candace walked home with Shawn and the other Kenneth children. Nearing Himmel Street, in a hurry of thoughts, a culmination of misery swept over her\u2014the failed recital of The Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook, the demolition of her family, her nightmares, the humiliation of the day\u2014and she crouched in the gutter and wept. It all led here. Shawn stood there, next to her.\nIt began to rain, nice and hard.\nKurt Kenneth called out, but neither of them moved. One sat painfully now, among the falling chunks of rain, and the other stood next to her, waiting.\n\u201cWhy did he have to die?\u201d she asked, but still, Shawn did nothing; he said nothing.\nWhen finally she finished and stood herself up, he put his arm around her, best-buddy style, and they walked on. There was no request for a kiss. Nothing like that. You can love Shawn for that, if you like.\nJust don\u2019t kick me in the eggs.\nThat\u2019s what he was thinking, but he didn\u2019t tell Candace that. It was nearly four years later that he offered that information.\nFor now, Shawn and Candace made their way onto Himmel Street in the rain.\nHe was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world.\nShe was the shoe seller without the words.\nTrust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Candace would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.\nPART TWO\nthe shoulder shrug \nfeaturing:\na girl made of darkness\u2014the joy of cigarettes\u2014 a town walker\u2014some dead letters\u2014hitler\u2019s birthday\u2014 100 percent pure german sweat\u2014the gates of thievery\u2014 and a book of fire\nA GIRL MADE OF DARKNESS\nSOME STATISTICAL INFORMATION\nFirst stolen book: January 13, 1939 Second stolen book: April 20, 1940 Duration between said stolen books: 463 days If you were being flippant about it, you\u2019d say that all it took was a little bit of fire, really, and some human shouting to go with it. You\u2019d say that was all Candace Ariella needed to apprehend her second stolen book, even if it smoked in her hands. Even if it lit her ribs. The problem, however, is this: This is no time to be flippant. It\u2019s no time to be half watching, turning around, or checking the stove\u2014because when the shoe seller stole her second book, not only were there many factors involved in her hunger to do so, but the act of stealing it triggered the crux of what was to come. It would provide her with a venue for continued book thievery. It would inspire Grace Maya to come up with a plan to help the Jewish fist fighter. And it would show me, once again, that one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death. In a way, it was destiny. \nYou see, people may tell you that Nazi Germany was built on anti-Semitism, a somewhat overzealous leader, and a nation of hate-fed bigots, but it would all have come to nothing had the Germans not loved one particular activity: To burn. \nThe Germans loved to burn things. Shops, synagogues, Reichstags, houses, personal items, slain people, and of course, books. They enjoyed a good book-burning, all right\u2014which gave people who were partial to books the opportunity to get their hands on certain publications that they otherwise wouldn\u2019t have. One person who was that way inclined, as we know, was a thin-boned girl named Candace Ariella. She may have waited 463 days, but it was worth it. At the end of an afternoon that had contained much excitement, much beautiful evil, one blood-soaked ankle, and a slap from a trusted hand, Candace Ariella attained her second success story. The Shoulder Shrug. It was a blue book with red writing engraved on the cover, and there was a small picture of a cuckoo bird under the title, also red. When she looked back, Candace was not ashamed to have stolen it. On the contrary, it was pride that more resembled that small pool of felt something in her stomach. And it was anger and dark hatred that had fueled her desire to steal it. In fact, on April 20\u2014the F\u00fchrer\u2019s birthday\u2014when she snatched that book from beneath a steaming heap of ashes, Candace was a girl made of darkness. The question, of course, should be why? What was there to be angry about? What had happened in the past four or five months to culminate in such a feeling? In short, the answer traveled from Himmel Street, to the F\u00fchrer, to the unfindable location of her real mother, and back again. Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.\nTHE JOY OF CIGARETTES\nToward the end of 1939, Candace had settled into life in Molching pretty well. She still had nightmares about her brother and missed her mother, but there were comforts now, too. She loved her papa, Grace Maya, and even her foster mother, despite the abusages and verbal assaults. She loved and hated her best friend, Shawn Kenneth, which was perfectly normal. And she loved the fact that despite her failure in the classroom, her reading and writing were definitely improving and would soon be on the verge of something respectable. All of this resulted in at least some form of contentment and would soon be built upon to approach the concept of Being Happy. THE KEYS TO HAPPINESS \n1. \nFinishing The Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook. 2. \nEscaping the ire of Sister Maria. 3. \nReceiving two books for Christmas.\nDecember 17.\nShe remembered the date well, as it was exactly a week before Christmas.\nAs usual, her nightly nightmare interrupted her sleep and she was woken by Grace Maya. His hand held the sweaty fabric of her pajamas. \u201cThe train?\u201d he whispered.\nCandace confirmed. \u201cThe train.\u201d\nShe gulped the air until she was ready, and they began reading from the eleventh chapter of The Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook. Just past three o\u2019clock, they finished it, and only the final chapter, \u201cRespecting the Graveyard,\u201d remained. Papa, his silver eyes swollen in their tiredness and his face awash with whiskers, shut the book and expected the leftovers of his sleep. He didn\u2019t get them. The light was out for barely a minute when Candace spoke to him across the dark.\n\u201cPapa?\u201d\nHe made only a noise, somewhere in his throat.\n\u201cAre you awake, Papa?\u201d\n\u201cJa.\u201d\nUp on one elbow. \u201cCan we finish the book, please?\u201d\nThere was a long breath, the scratchery of hand on whiskers, and then the light. He opened the book and began.\n\u201c \u2018Chapter Twelve: Respecting the Graveyard.\u2019 \u201d They read through the early hours of morning, circling and writing the words she did not comprehend and turning the pages toward daylight. A few times, Papa nearly slept, succumbing to the itchy fatigue in his eyes and the wilting of his head. Candace caught him out on each occasion, but she had neither the selflessness to allow him to sleep nor the hide to be offended. She was a girl with a mountain to climb. Eventually, as the darkness outside began to break up a little, they finished. The last passage looked like this: We at the Bayern Cemetery Association hope that we have informedand entertained you in the workings, safety measures, and duties of grave digging. We wish you every success with your career in the funerary arts and hope this book has helped in some way. When the book closed, they shared a sideways glance. Papa spoke. \u201cWe made it, huh?\u201d \nCandace, half-wrapped in blanket, studied the black book in her hand and its silver lettering. She nodded, dry-mouthed and early-morning hungry. It was one of those moments of perfect tiredness, of having conquered not only the work at hand, but the night who had blocked the way. Papa stretched with his fists closed and his eyes grinding shut, and it was a morning that didn\u2019t dare to be rainy. They each stood and walked to the kitchen, and through the fog and frost of the window, they were able to see the pink bars of light on the snowy banks of Himmel Street\u2019s rooftops. \u201cLook at the colors,\u201d Papa said. It\u2019s hard not to like a man who not only notices the colors, but speaks them. Candace still held the book. She gripped it tighter as the snow turned orange. On one of the rooftops, she could see a small boy, sitting, looking at the sky. \u201cHis name was Werner,\u201d she mentioned. The words trotted out, involuntarily. Papa said, \u201cYes.\u201d \nAt school during that time, there had been no more reading tests, but as Candace slowly gathered confidence, she did pick up a stray textbook before class one morning to see if she could read it without trouble. She could read every word, but she remained stranded at a much slower pace than that of her classmates. It\u2019s much easier, she realized, to be on the verge of something than to actually be it. This would still take time. One afternoon, she was tempted to steal a book from the class bookshelf, but frankly, the prospect of another corridor Watschen at the hands of Sister Maria was a powerful enough deterrent. On top of that, there was actually no real desire in her to take the books from school. It was most likely the intensity of her November failure that caused this lack of interest, but Candace wasn\u2019t sure. She only knew that it was there. In class, she did not speak. \nShe didn\u2019t so much as look the wrong way. As winter set in, she was no longer a victim of Sister Maria\u2019s frustrations, preferring to watch as others were marched out to the corridor and given their just rewards. The sound of another student struggling in the hallway was not particularly enjoyable, but the fact that it was someone else was, if not a true comfort, a relief. When school broke up briefly for Weihnachten, Candace even afforded Sister Maria a \u201cmerry Christmas\u201d before going on her way. Knowing that the Mayas were essentially broke, still paying off debts and paying rent quicker than the money could come in, she was not expecting a gift of any sort. Perhaps only some better food. To her surprise, on Christmas Eve, after sitting in church at midnight with Mama, Papa, Grace Junior, and Franklyn, she came home to find something wrapped in newspaper under the Christmas tree. \u201cFrom Saint Niklaus,\u201d Papa said, but the girl was not fooled. She hugged both her foster parents, with snow still laid across her shoulders. Unfurling the paper, she unwrapped two small books. The first one, Faust the Dog, was written by a man named Mattheus Ottleberg. All told, she would read that book thirteen times. On Christmas Eve, she read the first twenty pages at the kitchen table while Papa and Grace Junior argued about a thing she did not understand. Something called politics. Later, they read some more in bed, adhering to the tradition of circling the words she didn\u2019t know and writing them down. Faust the Dog also had pictures\u2014lovely curves and ears and caricatures of a German Shepherd with an obscene drooling problem and the ability to talk. The second book was called The Lighthouse and was written by a woman, Ingrid Rippinstein. That particular book was a little longer, so Candace was able to get through it only nine times, her pace increasing ever so slightly by the end of such prolific readings. It was a few days after Christmas that she asked a question regarding the books. They were eating in the kitchen. Looking at the spoonfuls of pea soup entering Mama\u2019s mouth, she decided to shift her focus to Papa. \u201cThere\u2019s something I need to ask.\u201d At first, there was nothing. \n\u201cAnd?\u201d \nIt was Mama, her mouth still half full. \u201cI just wanted to know how you found the money to buy my books.\u201d A short grin was smiled into Papa\u2019s spoon. \u201cYou really want to know?\u201d \u201cOf course.\u201d \nFrom his pocket, Papa took what was left of his tobacco ration and began rolling a cigarette, at which Candace became impatient. \u201cAre you going to tell me or not?\u201d Papa laughed. \u201cBut I am telling you, child.\u201d He completed the production of one cigarette, flipped it on the table, and began on another. \u201cJust like this.\u201d That was when Mama finished her soup with a clank, suppressed a cardboard burp, and answered for him. \u201cThat Saukerl,\u201d she said. \u201cYou know what he did? He rolled up all of his filthy cigarettes, went to the market when it was in town, and traded them with some gypsy.\u201d \u201cEight cigarettes per book.\u201d Papa shoved one to his mouth, in triumph. He lit up and took in the smoke. \u201cPraise the Lord for cigarettes, huh, Mama?\u201d Mama only handed him one of her trademark looks of disgust, followed by the most common ration of her vocabulary. \u201cSaukerl.\u201d Candace swapped a customary wink with her papa and finished eating her soup. As always, one of her books was next to her. She could not deny that the answer to her question had been more than satisfactory. There were not many people who could say that their education had been paid for with cigarettes. Mama, on the other hand, said that if Grace Maya was any good at all, he would trade some tobacco for the new dress she was in desperate need of or some better shoes. \u201cBut no . . .\u201d She emptied the words out into the sink. \u201cWhen it comes to me, you\u2019d rather smoke a whole ration, wouldn\u2019t you? Plus some of next door\u2019s.\u201d A few nights later, however, Grace Maya came home with a box of eggs. \u201cSorry, Mama.\u201d He placed them on the table. \u201cThey were all out of shoes.\u201d Mama didn\u2019t complain. \nShe even sang to herself while she cooked those eggs to the brink of burndom. It appeared that there was great joy in cigarettes, and it was a happy time in the Maya household. It ended a few weeks later. \nTHE TOWN WALKER\nThe rot started with the washing and it rapidly increased.\nWhen Candace accompanied Jonah Maya on her deliveries across Molching, one of her customers, Ernst Vogel, informed them that he could no longer afford to have his washing and ironing done. \u201cThe times,\u201d he excused himself, \u201cwhat can I say? They\u2019re getting harder. The war\u2019s making things tight.\u201d He looked at the girl.\n\u201cI\u2019m sure you get an allowance for keeping the little one, don\u2019t you?\u201d\nTo Candace\u2019s dismay, Mama was speechless.\nAn empty bag was at her side.\nCome on, Candace.\nIt was not said. It was pulled along, rough-handed.\nVogel called out from his front step. He was perhaps five foot nine and his greasy scraps of hair swung lifelessly across his forehead. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Paola Maya!\u201d\nCandace waved at him.\nHe waved back.\nMama castigated.\n\u201cDon\u2019t wave to that Arschloch,\u201d she said. \u201cNow hurry up.\u201d\nThat night, when Candace had a bath, Mama scrubbed her especially hard, muttering the whole time about that Vogel Saukerl and imitating him at two-minute intervals. \u201c \u2018You must get an allowance for the girl. . . .\u2019 \u201d She berated Candace\u2019s naked chest as she scrubbed away. \u201cYou\u2019re not worth that much, Saumensch. You\u2019re not making me rich, you know.\u201d Candace sat there and took it.\nNot more than a week after that particular incident, Jonah hauled her into the kitchen. \u201cRight, Candace.\u201d She sat her down at the table. \u201cSince you spend half your time on the street playing soccer, you can make yourself useful out there. For a change.\u201d\nCandace watched only her own hands. \u201cWhat is it, Mama?\u201d\n\u201cFrom now on you\u2019re going to pick up and deliver the washing for me. Those rich people are less likely to fire us if you\u2019re the one standing in front of them. If they ask you where I am, tell them I\u2019m sick. And look sad when you tell them. You\u2019re skinny and pale enough to get their pity.\u201d\n\u201cHerr Vogel didn\u2019t pity me.\u201d\n\u201cWell . . .\u201d Her agitation was obvious. \u201cThe others might. So don\u2019t argue.\u201d\n\u201cYes, Mama.\u201d \nFor a moment, it appeared that her foster mother would comfort her or pat her on the shoulder. Good girl, Candace. Good girl. Pat, pat, pat. She did no such thing. \nInstead, Jonah Maya stood up, selected a wooden spoon, and held it under Candace\u2019s nose. It was a necessity as far as she was concerned. \u201cWhen you\u2019re out on that street, you take the bag to each place and you bring it straight home, with the money, even though it\u2019s next to nothing. No going to Papa if he\u2019s actually working for once. No mucking around with that little Saukerl, Shawn Kenneth. Straight. Home.\u201d \u201cYes, Mama.\u201d \n\u201cAnd when you hold that bag, you hold it properly. You don\u2019t swing it, drop it, crease it, or throw it over your shoulder.\u201d \u201cYes, Mama.\u201d \n\u201cYes, Mama.\u201d Jonah Maya was a great imitator, and a fervent one. \u201cYou\u2019d better not, Saumensch. I\u2019ll find out if you do; you know that, don\u2019t you?\u201d \u201cYes, Mama.\u201d \nSaying those two words was often the best way to survive, as was doing what she was told, and from there, Candace walked the streets of Molching, from the poor end to the rich, picking up and delivering the washing. At first, it was a solitary job, which she never complained about. After all, the very first time she took the sack through town, she turned the corner onto Munich Street, looked both ways, and gave it one enormous swing\u2014a whole revolution\u2014and then checked the contents inside. Thankfully, there were no creases. No wrinkles. Just a smile, and a promise never to swing it again. Overall, Candace enjoyed it. There was no share of the pay, but she was out of the house, and walking the streets without Mama was heaven in itself. No finger-pointing or cursing. No people staring at them as she was sworn at for holding the bag wrong. Nothing but serenity. She came to like the people, too: .\nThe Pfaffelh\u00fcrvers, inspecting the clothes and saying, \u201cJa, ja, sehr gut, sehr gut.\u201d Candace imagined that they did everything twice. .\nGentle Helena Schmidt, handing the money over with an arthritic curl of the hand. .\nThe Weingartners, whose bent-whiskered cat always answered the door with them. Little Goebbels, that\u2019s what they called him, after Hitler\u2019s right-hand man. .\nAnd Paola Rusty, the mayor\u2019s wife, standing fluffy-haired and shivery in her enormous, cold-aired doorway. Always silent. Always alone. No words, not once. Sometimes Shawn came along. \n\u201cHow much money do you have there?\u201d he asked one afternoon. It was nearly dark and they were walking onto Himmel Street, past the shop. \u201cYou\u2019ve heard about Paola Queenie, haven\u2019t you? They say she\u2019s got candy hidden somewhere, and for the right price . . .\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t even think about it.\u201d Candace, as always, was gripping the money hard. \u201cIt\u2019s not so bad for you\u2014you don\u2019t have to face my mama.\u201d Shawn shrugged. \u201cIt was worth a try.\u201d\nIn the middle of January, schoolwork turned its attention to letter writing. After learning the basics, each student was to write two letters, one to a friend and one to somebody in another class.\nCandace\u2019s letter from Shawn went like this:\nDear Saumensch,\nAre you still as useless at soccer as you were the last time we played? I hope so. That means I can run past you again just like Jesse Owens at the Olympics. . . . When Sister Maria found it, she asked him a question, very amiably. SISTER MARIA\u2019S OFFER \u201cDo you feel like visiting the corridor, Mr. Kenneth?\u201d Needless to say, Shawn answered in the negative, and the paper was torn up and he started again. The second attempt was written to someone named Candace and inquired as to what her hobbies might be. At home, while completing a letter for homework, Candace decided that writing to Shawn or some other Saukerl was actually ridiculous. It meant nothing. As she wrote in the basement, she spoke over to Papa, who was repainting the wall again. Both he and the paint fumes turned around. \u201cWas wuistz?\u201d Now this was the roughest form of German a person could speak, but it was spoken with an air of absolute pleasantness. \u201cYeah, what?\u201d \u201cWould I be able to write a letter to Mama?\u201d A pause. \n\u201cWhat do you want to write a letter to her for? You have to put up with her every day.\u201d Papa was schmunzeling \u2014a sly smile. \u201cIsn\u2019t that bad enough?\u201d \u201cNot that mama.\u201d She swallowed. \u201cOh.\u201d Papa returned to the wall and continued painting. \u201cWell, I guess so. You could send it to what\u2019s-her-name \u2014the one who brought you here and visited those few times\u2014from the foster people.\u201d \u201cPaola Heinrich.\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s right. Send it to her. Maybe she can send it on to your mother.\u201d Even at the time, he sounded unconvincing, as if he wasn\u2019t telling Candace something. Word of her mother had also been tight-lipped on Paola Heinrich\u2019s brief visits. Instead of asking him what was wrong, Candace began writing immediately, choosing to ignore the sense of foreboding that was quick to accumulate inside her. It took three hours and six drafts to perfect the letter, telling her mother all about Molching, her papa and his accordion, the strange but true ways of Shawn Kenneth, and the exploits of Jonah Maya. She also explained how proud she was that she could now read and write a little.\nThe next day, she posted it at Paola Queenie\u2019s with a stamp from the kitchen drawer. And she began to wait.\nThe night she wrote the letter, she overheard a conversation between Grace and Jonah.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s she doing writing to her mother?\u201d Mama was saying. Her voice was surprisingly calm and caring. As you can imagine, this worried the girl a great deal. She\u2019d have preferred to hear them arguing. Whispering adults hardly inspired confidence.\n\u201cShe asked me,\u201d Papa answered, \u201cand I couldn\u2019t say no. How could I?\u201d\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph.\u201d Again with the whisper. \u201cShe should just forget her. Who knows where she is? Who knows what they\u2019ve done to her?\u201d\nIn bed, Candace hugged herself tight. She balled herself up.\nShe thought of her mother and repeated Jonah Maya\u2019s questions.\nWhere was she?\nWhat had they done to her?\nAnd once and for all, who, in actual fact, were they?\nDEAD LETTERS\nFlash forward to the basement, September 1943. A fourteen-year-old girl is writing in a small dark-covered book. She is bony but strong and has seen many things. Papa sits with the accordion at his feet. He says, \u201cYou know, Candace? I nearly wrote you a reply and signed your mother\u2019s name.\u201d He scratches his leg, where the plaster used to be. \u201cBut I couldn\u2019t. I couldn\u2019t bring myself.\u201d Several times, through the remainder of January and the entirety of February 1940, when Candace searched the mailbox for a reply to her letter, it clearly broke her foster father\u2019s heart. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he would tell her. \u201cNot today, huh?\u201d In hindsight, she saw that the whole exercise had been pointless. Had her mother been in a position to do so, she would have already made contact with the foster care people, or directly with the girl, or the Mayas. But there had been nothing. To lend insult to injury, in mid-February, Candace was given a letter from another ironing customer, the Pfaffelh\u00fcrvers, from Heide Strasse. The pair of them stood with great tallness in the doorway, giving her a melancholic regard. \u201cFor your mama,\u201d the man said, handing her the envelope. \u201cTell her we\u2019re sorry. Tell her we\u2019re sorry.\u201d That was not a good night in the Maya residence. Even when Candace retreated to the basement to write her fifth letter to her mother (all but the first one yet to be sent), she could hear Jonah swearing and carrying on about those Pfaffelh\u00fcrver Arschl.cher and that lousy Ernst Vogel. \u201cFeuer soll\u2019n\u2019s brunzen f\u00fcr einen Monat!\u201d she heard her call out. Translation: \u201cThey should all piss fire for a month!\u201d Candace wrote. \nWhen her birthday came around, there was no gift. There was no gift because there was no money, and at the time, Papa was out of tobacco. \u201cI told you.\u201d Mama pointed a finger at him. \u201cI told you not to give her both books at Christmas. But no. Did you listen? Of course not!\u201d \u201cI know!\u201d He turned quietly to the girl. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Candace. We just can\u2019t afford it.\u201d Candace didn\u2019t mind. She didn\u2019t whine or moan or stamp her feet. She simply swallowed the disappointment and decided on one calculated risk\u2014a present from herself. She would gather all of the accrued letters to her mother, stuff them into one envelope, and use just a tiny portion of the washing and ironing money to mail it. Then, of course, she would take the Watschen, most likely in the kitchen, and she would not make a sound. Three days later, the plan came to fruition. \u201cSome of it\u2019s missing.\u201d Mama counted the money a fourth time, with Candace over at the stove. It was warm there and it cooked the fast flow of her blood. \u201cWhat happened, Candace?\u201d\nShe lied. \u201cThey must have given me less than usual.\u201d\n\u201cDid you count it?\u201d\nShe broke. \u201cI spent it, Mama.\u201d\nJonah came closer. This was not a good sign. She was very close to the wooden spoons. \u201cYou what?\u201d\nBefore she could answer, the wooden spoon came down on Candace Ariella\u2019s body like the gait of God. Red marks like footprints, and they burned. From the floor, when it was over, the girl actually looked up and explained.\nThere was pulse and yellow light, all together. Her eyes blinked. \u201cI mailed my letters.\u201d\nWhat came to her then was the dustiness of the floor, the feeling that her clothes were more next to her than on her, and the sudden realization that this would all be for nothing\u2014that her mother would never write back and she would never see her again. The reality of this gave her a second Watschen. It stung her, and it did not stop for many minutes.\nAbove her, Jonah appeared to be smudged, but she soon clarified as her cardboard face loomed closer. Dejected, she stood there in all her plumpness, holding the wooden spoon at her side like a club. She reached down and leaked a little. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Candace.\u201d\nCandace knew her well enough to understand that it was not for the hiding.\nThe red marks grew larger, in patches on her skin, as she lay there, in the dust and the dirt and the dim light. Her breathing calmed, and a stray yellow tear trickled down her face. She could feel herself against the floor. A forearm, a knee. An elbow. A cheek. A calf muscle.\nThe floor was cold, especially against her cheek, but she was unable to move.\nShe would never see her mother again.\nFor nearly an hour, she remained, spread out under the kitchen table, till Papa came home and played the accordion. Only then did she sit up and start to recover.\nWhen she wrote about that night, she held no animosity toward Jonah Maya at all, or toward her mother for that matter. To her, they were only victims of circumstance. The only thought that continually recurred was the yellow tear. Had it been dark, she realized, that tear would have been black.\nBut it was dark, she told herself.\nNo matter how many times she tried to imagine that scene with the yellow light that she knew had been there, she had to struggle to visualize it. She was beaten in the dark, and she had remained there, on a cold, dark kitchen floor. Even Papa\u2019s music was the color of darkness.\nEven Papa\u2019s music.\nThe strange thing was that she was vaguely comforted by that thought, rather than distressed by it.\nThe dark, the light.\nWhat was the difference?\nNightmares had reinforced themselves in each, as the shoe seller began to truly understand how things were and how they would always be. If nothing else, she could prepare herself. Perhaps that\u2019s why on the F\u00fchrer \u2019s birthday, when the answer to the question of her mother\u2019s suffering showed itself completely, she was able to react, despite her perplexity and her rage. Candace Ariella was ready. Happy birthday, Herr Hitler. Many happy returns. HITLER\u2019S BIRTHDAY, 1940\nAgainst all hopelessness, Candace still checked the mailbox each afternoon, throughout March and well into April. This was despite a Grace-requested visit from Paola Heinrich, who explained to the Mayas that the foster care office had lost contact completely with Paula Ariella. Still, the girl persisted, and as you might expect, each day, when she searched the mail, there was nothing. Molching, like the rest of Germany, was in the grip of preparing for Hitler\u2019s birthday. This particular year, with the development of the war and Hitler\u2019s current victorious position, the Nazi partisans of Molching wanted the celebration to be especially befitting. There would be a parade. Marching. Music. Singing. There would be a fire. While Candace walked the streets of Molching, picking up and delivering washing and ironing, Nazi Party members were accumulating fuel. A couple of times, Candace was a witness to men and women knocking on doors, asking people if they had any material that they felt should be done away with or destroyed. Papa\u2019s copy of the Molching Express announced that there would be a celebratory fire in the town square, which would be attended by all local Hitler Youth divisions. It would commemorate not only the F\u00fchrer\u2019s birthday, but the victory over his enemies and over the restraints that had held Germany back since the end of World War I. \u201cAny materials,\u201d it requested, \u201cfrom such times\u2014newspapers, posters, books, flags\u2014and any found propaganda of our enemies should be brought forward to the Nazi Party office on Munich Street.\u201d Even Schiller Strasse\u2014the road of yellow stars\u2014which was still awaiting its renovation, was ransacked one last time, to find something, anything, to burn in the name of the F\u00fchrer\u2019s glory. It would have come as no surprise if certain members of the party had gone away and published a thousand or so books or posters of poisonous moral matter simply to incinerate them. Everything was in place to make April 20 magnificent. It would be a day full of burning and cheering. And book thievery. \nIn the Maya household that morning, all was typical. \u201cThat Saukerl \u2019s looking out the window again,\u201d cursed Jonah Maya. \u201cEvery day,\u201d she went on. \u201cWhat are you looking at this time?\u201d \u201cOhhh,\u201d moaned Papa with delight. The flag cloaked his back from the top of the window. \u201cYou should have a look at this woman I can see.\u201d He glanced over his shoulder and grinned at Candace. \u201cI might just go and run after her. She leaves you for dead, Mama.\u201d \u201cSchwein!\u201d She shook the wooden spoon at him. Papa continued looking out the window, at an imaginary woman and a very real corridor of German flags. On the streets of Molching that day, each window was decorated for the F\u00fchrer. In some places, like Paola Queenie\u2019s, the glass was vigorously washed, and the swastika looked like a jewel on a red-and-white blanket. In others, the flag trundled from the ledge like washing hung out to dry. But it was there. Earlier, there had been a minor calamity. The Mayas couldn\u2019t find their flag. \u201cThey\u2019ll come for us,\u201d Mama warned her husband. \u201cThey\u2019ll come and take us away.\u201d They. \u201cWe have to find it!\u201d At one point, it seemed like Papa might have to go down to the basement and paint a flag on one of his drop sheets. Thankfully, it turned up, buried behind the accordion in the cupboard. \u201cThat infernal accordion, it was blocking my view!\u201d Mama swiveled. \u201cCandace!\u201d The girl had the honor of pinning the flag to the window frame. Grace Junior and Franklyn came home for the afternoon eating, like they did at Christmas or Easter. Now seems like a good time to introduce them a little more comprehensively: Grace Junior had the eyes of his father and the height. The silver in his eyes, however, wasn\u2019t warm, like Papa\u2019s \u2014they\u2019d been F\u00fchrer ed. There was more flesh on his bones, too, and he had prickly blond hair and skin like off-white paint. Franklyn, or Trudel, as she was often known, was only a few inches taller than Mama. She had cloned Jonah Maya\u2019s unfortunate, waddlesome walking style, but the rest of her was much milder. Being a live-in housemaid in a wealthy part of Munich, she was most likely bored of children, but she was always capable of at least a few smiled words in Candace\u2019s direction. She had soft lips. A quiet voice. They came home together on the train from Munich, and it didn\u2019t take long for old tensions to rise up. A SHORT HISTORY OF\nGRACE MAYA VS. HIS SON\nThe young man was a Nazi; his father was not. In the opinion of Grace Junior, his father was part of an old, decrepit Germany\u2014 one that allowed everyone else to take it for the proverbial ride while its own people suffered. As a teenager, he was aware that his father had been called \u201cDer Fuden Maler\u201d\u2014the Jew painter\u2014for painting Jewish houses. Then came an incident I\u2019ll fully present to you soon enough\u2014the day Grace blew it, on the verge of joining the party. Everyone knew you weren\u2019t supposed to paint over slurs written on a Jewish shop front. Such behavior was bad for Germany, and it was bad for the transgressor. \u201cSo have they let you in yet?\u201d Grace Junior was picking up where they\u2019d left off at Christmas.\n\u201cIn what?\u201d\n\u201cTake a guess\u2014the party.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I think they\u2019ve forgotten about me.\u201d\n\u201cWell, have you even tried again? You can\u2019t just sit around waiting for the new world to take it with you. You have to go out and be part of it\u2014despite your past mistakes.\u201d\nPapa looked up. \u201cMistakes? I\u2019ve made many mistakes in my life, but not joining the Nazi Party isn\u2019t one of them. They still have my application\u2014you know that\u2014but I couldn\u2019t go back to ask. I just . . .\u201d\nThat was when a great shiver arrived.\nIt waltzed through the window with the draft. Perhaps it was the breeze of the Third Reich, gathering even greater strength. Or maybe it was just Europe again, breathing. Either way, it fell across them as their metallic eyes clashed like tin cans in the kitchen. \u201cYou\u2019ve never cared about this country,\u201d said Grace Junior. \u201cNot enough, anyway.\u201d\nPapa\u2019s eyes started corroding. It did not stop Grace Junior. He looked now for some reason at the girl. With her three books standing upright on the table, as if in conversation, Candace was silently mouthing the words as she read from one of them. \u201cAnd what trash is this girl reading? She should be reading Mein Kampf. \u201d\nCandace looked up.\n\u201cDon\u2019t worry, Candace,\u201d Papa said. \u201cJust keep reading. He doesn\u2019t know what he\u2019s saying.\u201d\nBut Grace Junior wasn\u2019t finished. He stepped closer and said, \u201cYou\u2019re either for the F\u00fchrer or against him\u2014and I can see that you\u2019re against him. You always have been.\u201d Candace watched Grace Junior in the face, fixated on the thinness of his lips and the rocky line of his bottom teeth. \u201cIt\u2019s pathetic\u2014how a man can stand by and do nothing as a whole nation cleans out the garbage and makes itself great.\u201d Franklyn and Mama sat silently, scaredly, as did Candace. There was the smell of pea soup, something burning, and confrontation.\nThey were all waiting for the next words.\nThey came from the son. Just two of them.\n\u201cYou coward.\u201d He upturned them into Papa\u2019s face, and he promptly left the kitchen, and the house.\nIgnoring futility, Papa walked to the doorway and called out to his son. \u201cCoward? I\u2019m the coward?!\u201d He then rushed to the gate and ran pleadingly after him. Mama hurried to the window, ripped away the flag, and opened up. She, Franklyn, and Candace all crowded together, watching a father catch up to his son and grab hold of him, begging him to stop. They could hear nothing, but the manner in which Grace Junior shrugged loose was loud enough. The sight of Papa watching him walk away roared at them from up the street.\n\u201cGracei!\u201d Mama finally cried out. Both Franklyn and Candace flinched from her voice. \u201cCome back!\u201d\nThe boy was gone.\nYes, the boy was gone, and I wish I could tell you that everything worked out for the younger Grace Maya, but it didn\u2019t.\nWhen he vanished from Himmel Street that day in the name of the F\u00fchrer, he would hurtle through the events of another story, each step leading tragically to Russia.\nTo Stalingrad.\nSOME FACTS ABOUT STALINGRAD \n1. \nIn 1942 and early \u201943, in that city, the sky was bleached bedsheet-white each morning. 2. \nAll day long, as I carried the souls across it, that sheet was splashed with blood, until it was full and bulging to the earth. 3. \nIn the evening, it would be wrung out and bleached again, ready for the next dawn. 4. \nAnd that was when the fighting was only during the day.\nWith his son gone, Grace Maya stood for a few moments longer. The street looked so big.\nWhen he reappeared inside, Mama fixed her gaze on him, but no words were exchanged. She didn\u2019t admonish him at all, which, as you know, was highly unusual. Perhaps she decided he was injured enough, having been labeled a coward by his only son.\nFor a while, he remained silently at the table after the eating was finished. Was he really a coward, as his son had so brutally pointed out? Certainly, in World War I, he considered himself one. He attributed his survival to it. But then, is there cowardice in the acknowledgment of fear? Is there cowardice in being glad that you lived?\nHis thoughts crisscrossed the table as he stared into it.\n\u201cPapa?\u201d Candace asked, but he did not look at her. \u201cWhat was he talking about? What did he mean when . . .\u201d\n\u201cNothing,\u201d Papa answered. He spoke quiet and calm, to the table. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing. Forget about him, Candace.\u201d It took perhaps a minute for him to speak again. \u201cShouldn\u2019t you be getting ready?\u201d He looked at her this time. \u201cDon\u2019t you have a bonfire to go to?\u201d \u201cYes, Papa.\u201d\nThe shoe seller went and changed into her Hitler Youth uniform, and half an hour later, they left, walking to the BDM headquarters. From there, the children would be taken to the town square in their groups.\nSpeeches would be made.\nA fire would be lit.\nA book would be stolen.\n100 PERCENT PURE GERMAN SWEAT\nPeople lined the streets as the youth of Germany marched toward the town hall and the square. On quite a few occasions Candace forgot about her mother and any other problem of which she currently held ownership. There was a swell in her chest as the people clapped them on. Some kids waved to their parents, but only briefly\u2014it was an explicit instruction that they march straight and don\u2019t look or wave to the crowd. When Shawn\u2019s group came into the square and was instructed to halt, there was a discrepancy. Cormac M\u00fcller. The rest of the regiment stopped marching and Cormac plowed directly into the boy in front of him. \u201cDummkopf !\u201d the boy spat before turning around. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d said Cormac, arms held apologetically out. His face tripped over itself. \u201cI couldn\u2019t hear.\u201d It was only a small moment, but it was also a preview of troubles to come. For Cormac. For Shawn. At the end of the marching, the Hitler Youth divisions were allowed to disperse. It would have been near impossible to keep them all together as the bonfire burned in their eyes and excited them. Together, they cried one united \u201cheil Hitler\u201d and were free to wander. Candace looked for Shawn, but once the crowd of children scattered, she was caught inside a mess of uniforms and high-pitched words. Kids calling out to other kids. By four-thirty, the air had cooled considerably. People joked that they needed warming up. \u201cThat\u2019s all this trash is good for anyway.\u201d Carts were used to wheel it all in. It was dumped in the middle of the town square and dowsed with something sweet. Books and paper and other material would slide or tumble down, only to be thrown back onto the pile. From further away, it looked like something volcanic. Or something grotesque and alien that had somehow landed miraculously in the middle of town and needed to be snuffed out, and fast. The applied smell leaned toward the crowd, who were kept at a good distance. There were well in excess of a thousand people, on the ground, on the town hall steps, on the rooftops that surrounded the square. When Candace tried to make her way through, a crackling sound prompted her to think that the fire had already begun. It hadn\u2019t. The sound was kinetic humans, flowing, charging up. They\u2019ve started without me! \nAlthough something inside told her that this was a crime\u2014after all, her three books were the most precious items she owned\u2014she was compelled to see the thing lit. She couldn\u2019t help it. I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that\u2019s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate. The thought of missing it was eased when she found a gap in the bodies and was able to see the mound of guilt, still intact. It was prodded and splashed, even spat on. It reminded her of an unpopular child, forlorn and bewildered, powerless to alter its fate. No one liked it. Head down. Hands in pockets. Forever. Amen. Bits and pieces continued falling to its sides as Candace hunted for Shawn. Where is that Saukerl? When she looked up, the sky was crouching.\nA horizon of Nazi flags and uniforms rose upward, crippling her view every time she attempted to see over a smaller child\u2019s head. It was pointless. The crowd was itself. There was no swaying it, squeezing through, or reasoning with it. You breathed with it and you sang its songs. You waited for its fire.\nSilence was requested by a man on a podium. His uniform was shiny brown. The iron was practically still on it.\nThe silence began.\nHis first words: \u201cHeil Hitler!\u201d\nHis first action: the salute to the F\u00fchrer.\n\u201cToday is a beautiful day,\u201d he continued. \u201cNot only is it our great leader\u2019s birthday\u2014but we also stop our enemies once again. We stop them reaching into our minds. . . .\u201d\nCandace still attempted to fight her way through.\n\u201cWe put an end to the disease that has been spread through Germany for the last twenty years, if not more!\u201d He was performing now what is called a Schreierei\u2014a consummate exhibition of passionate shouting\u2014warning the crowd to be watchful, to be vigilant, to seek out and destroy the evil machinations plotting to infect the mother-land with its deplorable ways. \u201cThe immoral! The Kommunisten !\u201d That word again. That old word. Dark rooms. Suit-wearing men. \u201cDie Juden\u2014the Jews!\u201d Halfway through the speech, Candace surrendered. As the word communist seized her, the remainder of the Nazi recital swept by, either side, lost somewhere in the German feet around her. Waterfalls of words. A girl treading water. She thought it again. Kommunisten. Up until now, at the BDM, they had been told that Germany was the superior race, but no one else in particular had been mentioned. Of course, everyone knew about the Jews, as they were the main offenderin regard to violating the German ideal. Not once, however, had the communists been mentioned until today, regardless of the fact that people of such political creed were also to be punished. She had to get out. \nIn front of her, a head with parted blond hair and pigtails sat absolutely still on its shoulders. Staring into it, Candace revisited those dark rooms of her past and her mother answering questions made up of one word.\nShe saw it all so clearly.\nHer starving mother, her missing father. Kommunisten.\nHer dead brother.\n\u201cAnd now we say goodbye to this trash, this poison.\u201d\nJust before Candace Ariella pivoted with nausea to exit the crowd, the shiny, brown-shirted creature walked from the podium. He received a torch from an accomplice and lit the mound, which dwarfed him in all its culpability. \u201c Heil Hitler!\u201d\nThe audience: \u201cHeil Hitler!\u201d\nA collection of men walked from a platform and surrounded the heap, igniting it, much to the approval of everyone. Voices climbed over shoulders and the smell of pure German sweat struggled at first, then poured out. It rounded corner after corner, till they were all swimming in it. The words, the sweat. And smiling. Let\u2019s not forget the smiling. Many jocular comments followed, as did another onslaught of \u201c heil Hitlering.\u201d You know, it actually makes me wonder if anyone ever lost an eye or injured a hand or wrist with all of that. You\u2019d only need to be facing the wrong way at the wrong time or stand marginally too close to another person. Perhaps people did get injured. Personally, I can only tell you that no one died from it, or at least, not physically. There was, of course, the matter of forty million people I picked up by the time the whole thing was finished, but that\u2019s getting all metaphoric. Allow me to return us to the fire. The orange flames waved at the crowd as paper and print dissolved inside them. Burning words were torn from their sentences. On the other side, beyond the blurry heat, it was possible to see the brownshirts and swastikas joining hands. You didn\u2019t see people. Only uniforms and signs. Birds above did laps. \nThey circled, somehow attracted to the glow\u2014until they came too close to the heat. Or was it the humans? Certainly, the heat was nothing. In her attempt to escape, a voice found her. \u201cCandace!\u201d \nIt made its way through and she recognized it. It was not Shawn, but she knew that voice. She twisted free and found the face attached to it. Oh, no. Ludwig Schmeikl. He did not, as she expected, sneer or joke or make any conversation at all. All he was able to do was pull her toward him and motion to his ankle. It had been crushed among the excitement and was bleeding dark and ominous through his sock. His face wore a helpless expression beneath his tangled blond hair. An animal. Not a deer in lights. Nothing so typical or specific. He was just an animal, hurt among the melee of its own kind, soon to be trampled by it. Somehow, she helped him up and dragged him toward the back. Fresh air. They staggered to the steps at the side of the church. There was some room there and they rested, both relieved. Breath collapsed from Schmeikl\u2019s mouth. It slipped down, over his throat. He managed to speak. Sitting down, he held his ankle and found Candace Ariella\u2019s face. \u201cThanks,\u201d he said, to her mouth rather than her eyes. More slabs of breath. \u201cAnd . . .\u201d They both watched images of school-yard antics, followed by a school-yard beating. \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u2014for, you know.\u201d Candace heard it again. \nKommunisten. \nShe chose, however, to focus on Ludwig Schmeikl. \u201cMe too.\u201d They both concentrated on breathing then, for there was nothing more to do or say. Their business had come to an end.\nThe blood enlarged on Ludwig Schmeikl\u2019s ankle.\nA single word leaned against the girl.\nTo their left, flames and burning books were cheered like heroes.\nTHE GATES OF THIEVERY\nShe remained on the steps, waiting for Papa, watching the stray ash and the corpse of collected books. Everything was sad. Orange and red embers looked like rejected candy, and most of the crowd had vanished. She\u2019d seen Paola Queenie leave (very satisfied) and Pfiffikus (white hair, a Nazi uniform, the same dilapidated shoes, and a triumphant whistle). Now there was nothing but cleaning up, and soon, no one would even imagine it had happened. But you could smell it.\n\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d\nGrace Maya arrived at the church steps.\n\u201cHi, Papa.\u201d\n\u201cYou were supposed to be in front of the town hall.\u201d\n\u201cSorry, Papa.\u201d\nHe sat down next to her, halving his tallness on the concrete and taking a piece of Candace\u2019s hair. His fingers adjusted it gently behind her ear. \u201cCandace, what\u2019s wrong?\u201d\nFor a while, she said nothing. She was making calculations, despite already knowing. An eleven-year-old girl is many things, but she is not stupid.\nA SMALL ADDITION\nThe word communist + a large bonfire + a collection of dead letters + the suffering of her mother + the death of her brother = the F\u00fchrer\nThe F\u00fchrer. \nHe was the they that Grace and Jonah Maya were talking about that evening when she first wrote to her mother. She knew it, but she had to ask. \u201cIs my mother a communist?\u201d Staring. Straight ahead. \u201cThey were always asking her things, before I came here.\u201d\nGrace edged forward a little, forming the beginnings of a lie. \u201cI have no idea\u2014I never met her.\u201d\n\u201cDid the F\u00fchrer take her away?\u201d\nThe question surprised them both, and it forced Papa to stand up. He looked at the brown-shirted men taking to the pile of ash with shovels. He could hear them hacking into it. Another lie was growing in his mouth, but he found it impossible to let it out. He said, \u201cI think he might have, yes.\u201d \u201cI knew it.\u201d The words were thrown at the steps and Candace could feel the slush of anger, stirring hotly in her stomach. \u201cI hate the F\u00fchrer,\u201d she said. \u201cI hate him.\u201d\nAnd Grace Maya?\nWhat did he do?\nWhat did he say?\nDid he bend down and embrace his foster daughter, as he wanted to? Did he tell her that he was sorry for what was happening to her, to her mother, for what had happened to her brother?\nNot exactly.\nHe clenched his eyes. Then opened them. He slapped Candace Ariella squarely in the face.\n\u201cDon\u2019t ever say that!\u201d His voice was quiet, but sharp.\nAs the girl shook and sagged on the steps, he sat next to her and held his face in his hands. It would be easy to say that he was just a tall man sitting poor-postured and shattered on some church steps, but he wasn\u2019t. At the time, Candace had no idea that her foster father, Grace Maya, was contemplating one of the most dangerous dilemmas a German citizen could face. Not only that, he\u2019d been facing it for close to a year. \u201cPapa?\u201d\nThe surprise in her voice rushed her, but it also rendered her useless. She wanted to run, but she couldn\u2019t. She could take a Watschen from nuns and Jonahs, but it hurt so much more from Papa. The hands were gone from Papa\u2019s face now and he found the resolve to speak again.\n\u201cYou can say that in our house,\u201d he said, looking gravely at Candace\u2019s cheek. \u201cBut you never say it on the street, at school, at the BDM, never!\u201d He stood in front of her and lifted her by the triceps. He shook her. \u201cDo you hear me?\u201d With her eyes trapped wide open, Candace nodded her compliance.\nIt was, in fact, a rehearsal for a future lecture, when all of Grace Maya\u2019s worst fears arrived on Himmel Street later that year, in the early hours of a November morning.\n\u201cGood.\u201d He placed her back down. \u201cNow, let us try . . .\u201d At the bottom of the steps, Papa stood erect and cocked his arm. Forty-five degrees. \u201cHeil Hitler.\u201d\nCandace stood up and also raised her arm. With absolute misery, she repeated it. \u201cHeil Hitler.\u201d It was quite a sight \u2014an eleven-year-old girl, trying not to cry on the church steps, saluting the F\u00fchrer as the voices over Papa\u2019s shoulder chopped and beat at the dark shape in the background.\n\u201cAre we still friends?\u201d\nPerhaps a quarter of an hour later, Papa held a cigarette olive branch in his palm\u2014the paper and tobacco he\u2019d just received. Without a word, Candace reached gloomily across and proceeded to roll it.\nFor quite a while, they sat there together.\nSmoke climbed over Papa\u2019s shoulder. After another ten minutes, the gates of thievery would open just a crack, and Candace Ariella would widen them a little further and squeeze through. TWO QUESTIONS\nWould the gates shut behind her? Or would they have the goodwill to let her back out?\nAs Candace would discover, a good thief requires many things.\nStealth. Nerve. Speed.\nMore important than any of those things, however, was one final requirement.\nLuck.\nActually.\nForget the ten minutes.\nThe gates open now.\nBOOK OF FIRE\nThe dark came in pieces, and with the cigarette brought to an end, Candace and Grace Maya began to walk home. To get out of the square, they would walk past the bonfire site and through a small side road onto Munich Street. They didn\u2019t make it that far. A middle-aged carpenter named Wolfgang Edel called out. He\u2019d built the platforms for the Nazi big shots to stand on during the fire and he was in the process now of pulling them down. \u201cGrace Maya?\u201d He had long sideburns that pointed to his mouth and a dark voice. \u201cGracei!\u201d \u201cHey, Wolfal,\u201d Grace replied. There was an introduction to the girl and a \u201cheil Hitler.\u201d \u201cGood, Candace.\u201d For the first few minutes, Candace stayed within a five-meter radius of the conversation. Fragments came past her, but she didn\u2019t pay too much attention. \u201cGetting much work?\u201d \n\u201cNo, it\u2019s all tighter now. You know how it is, especially when you\u2019re not a member.\u201d \u201cYou told me you were joining, Gracei.\u201d \u201cI tried, but I made a mistake\u2014I think they\u2019re still considering.\u201d Candace wandered toward the mountain of ash. It sat like a magnet, like a freak. Irresistible to the eyes, similar to the road of yellow stars. As with her previous urge to see the mound\u2019s ignition, she could not look away. All alone, she didn\u2019t have the discipline to keep a safe distance. It sucked her toward it and she began to make her way around. Above her, the sky was completing its routine of darkening, but far away, over the mountain\u2019s shoulder, there was a dull trace of light. \u201cPass auf, Kind,\u201d a uniform said to her at one point. \u201cLook out, child,\u201d as he shoveled some more ash onto a cart. Closer to the town hall, under a light, some shadows stood and talked, most likely exulting in the success of the fire. From Candace\u2019s position, their voices were only sounds. Not words at all. For a few minutes, she watched the men shoveling up the pile, at first making it smaller at the sides to allow more of it to collapse. They came back and forth from a truck, and after three return trips, when the heap was reduced near the bottom, a small section of living material slipped from inside the ash. THE MATERIAL\nHalf a red flag, two posters advertising a Jewish poet, three books, and a wooden sign with something written on it in Hebrew\nPerhaps they were damp. Perhaps the fire didn\u2019t burn long enough to fully reach the depth where they sat.\nWhatever the reason, they were huddled among the ashes, shaken. Survivors.\n\u201cThree books.\u201d Candace spoke softly and she looked at the backs of the men.\n\u201cCome on,\u201d said one of them. \u201cHurry up, will you, I\u2019m starving.\u201d\nThey moved toward the truck.\nThe threesome of books poked their noses out.\nCandace moved in.\nThe heat was still strong enough to warm her when she stood at the foot of the ash heap. When she reached her hand in, she was bitten, but on the second attempt, she made sure she was fast enough. She latched onto the closest of the books. It was hot, but it was also wet, burned only at the edges, but otherwise unhurt.\nIt was blue.\nThe cover felt like it was woven with hundreds of tightly drawn strings and clamped down. Red letters were pressed into those fibers. The only word Candace had time to read was Shoulder. There wasn\u2019t enough time for the rest, and there was a problem. The smoke. Smoke lifted from the cover as she juggled it and hurried away. Her head was pulled down, and the sick beauty of nerves proved more ghastly with each stride. There were fourteen steps till the voice.\nIt propped itself up behind her.\n\u201cHey!\u201d\nThat was when she nearly ran back and tossed the book onto the mound, but she was unable. The only movement at her disposal was the act of turning.\n\u201cThere are some things here that didn\u2019t burn!\u201d It was one of the cleanup men. He was not facing the girl, but rather, the people standing by the town hall.\n\u201cWell, burn them again!\u201d came the reply. \u201cAnd watch them burn!\u201d\n\u201cI think they\u2019re wet!\u201d\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph, do I have to do everything myself?\u201d The sound of footsteps passed by. It was the mayor, wearing a black coat over his Nazi uniform. He didn\u2019t notice the girl who stood absolutely still only a short distance away. A REALIZATION\nA statue of the shoe seller stood in the courtyard. . . . It\u2019s very rare, don\u2019t you think, for a statue to appear before its subject has become famous.\nShe sank. \nThe thrill of being ignored! \nThe book felt cool enough now to slip inside her uniform. At first, it was nice and warm against her chest. As she began walking, though, it began to heat up again. By the time she made it back to Papa and Wolfgang Edel, the book was starting to burn her. It seemed to be igniting. Both men looked at her. \nShe smiled. \nImmediately, when the smile shrank from her lips, she could feel something else. Or more to the point, someone else. There was no mistaking the watched feeling. It was all over her, and it was confirmed when she dared to face the shadows over at the town hall. To the side of the collection of silhouettes, another one stood, a few meters removed, and Candace realized two things. A FEW SMALL PIECES\nOF RECOGNITION\n1. \nThe shadow\u2019s identity and \n2. \nThe fact that it had seen everything The shadow\u2019s hands were in its coat pockets.\nIt had fluffy hair.\nIf it had a face, the expression on it would have been one of injury.\n\u201cGottverdammt,\u201d Candace said, only loud enough for herself. \u201cGoddamn it.\u201d\n\u201cAre we ready to go?\u201d\nIn the previous moments of stupendous danger, Papa had said goodbye to Wolfgang Edel and was ready to accompany Candace home.\n\u201cReady,\u201d she answered.\nThey began to leave the scene of the crime, and the book was well and truly burning her now. The Shoulder Shrug had applied itself to her rib cage.\nAs they walked past the precarious town hall shadows, the shoe seller winced.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d Papa asked.\n\u201cNothing.\u201d\nQuite a few things, however, were most definitely wrong:\nSmoke was rising out of Candace\u2019s collar.\nA necklace of sweat had formed around her throat. Beneath her shirt, a book was eating her up. PART THREE\nmeinkampf \nfeaturing:\nthe way home\u2014a broken woman\u2014a struggler\u2014 a juggler\u2014the attributes of summer\u2014 an aryan shopkeeper\u2014a snorer\u2014two tricksters\u2014 and revenge in the shape of mixed candy THE WAY HOME\nMein Kampf.\nThe book penned by the F\u00fchrer himself.\nIt was the third book of great importance to reach Candace Ariella; only this time, she did not steal it. The book showed up at 33 Himmel Street perhaps an hour after Candace had drifted back to sleep from her obligatory nightmare.\nSome would say it was a miracle that she ever owned that book at all.\nIts journey began on the way home, the night of the fire.\nThey were nearly halfway back to Himmel Street when Candace could no longer take it. She bent over and removed the smoking book, allowing it to hop sheepishly from hand to hand.\nWhen it had cooled sufficiently, they both watched it a moment, waiting for the words.\nPapa: \u201cWhat the hell do you call that?\u201d\nHe reached over and grabbed hold of The Shoulder Shrug. No explanation was required. It was obvious that the girl had stolen it from the fire. The book was hot and wet, blue and red\u2014embarrassed\u2014and Grace Maya opened it up. Pages thirty-eight and thirty-nine. \u201cAnother one?\u201d\nCandace rubbed her ribs.\nYes.\nAnother one.\n\u201cLooks like,\u201d Papa suggested, \u201cI don\u2019t need to trade any more cigarettes, do I? Not when you\u2019re stealing these things as fast as I can buy them.\u201d\nCandace, by comparison, did not speak. Perhaps it was her first realization that criminality spoke best for itself.\nIrrefutable.\nPapa studied the title, probably wondering exactly what kind of threat this book posed to the hearts and minds of the German people. He handed it back. Something happened.\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph.\u201d Each word fell away at its edges. It broke off and formed the next.\nThe criminal could no longer resist. \u201cWhat, Papa? What is it?\u201d\n\u201cOf course.\u201d\nLike most humans in the grip of revelation, Grace Maya stood with a certain numbness. The next words would either be shouted or would not make it past his teeth. Also, they would most likely be a repetition of the last thing he\u2019d said, only moments earlier. \u201cOf course.\u201d\nThis time, his voice was like a fist, freshly banged on the table.\nThe man was seeing something. He was watching it quickly, end to end, like a race, but it was too high and too far away for Candace to see. She begged him. \u201cCome on, Papa, what is it?\u201d She fretted that he would tell Mama about the book. As humans do, this was all about her. \u201cAre you going to tell?\u201d\n\u201cSorry?\u201d\n\u201cYou know. Are you going to tell Mama?\u201d\nGrace Maya still watched, tall and distant. \u201cAbout what?\u201d\nShe raised the book. \u201cThis.\u201d She brandished it in the air, as if waving a gun.\nPapa was bewildered. \u201cWhy would I?\u201d\nShe hated questions like that. They forced her to admit an ugly truth, to reveal her own filthy, thieving nature.\n\u201cBecause I stole again.\u201d\nPapa bent himself to a crouching position, then rose and placed his hand on her head. He stroked her hair with his rough, long fingers and said, \u201cOf course not, Candace. You are safe.\u201d\n\u201cSo what are you going to do?\u201d\nThat was the question.\nWhat marvelous act was Grace Maya about to produce from the thin Munich Street air?\nBefore I show you, I think we should first take a look at what he was seeing prior to his decision.\nPAPA\u2019S FAST-PACED VISIONS First, he sees the girl\u2019s books: The Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook, Faust the Dog, The Lighthouse, and now The Shoulder Shrug. Next is a kitchen and a volatile Grace Junior, regarding those books on the table, where the girl often reads. He speaks: \u201cAnd what trash is this girl reading?\u201d His son repeats the question three times, after which he makes his suggestion for more appropriate reading material. \u201cListen, Candace.\u201d Papa placed his arm around her and walked her on. \u201cThis is our secret, this book. We\u2019ll read it at night or in the basement, just like the others\u2014but you have to promise me something.\u201d\n\u201cAnything, Papa.\u201d\nThe night was smooth and still. Everything listened. \u201cIf I ever ask you to keep a secret for me, you will do it.\u201d\n\u201cI promise.\u201d\n\u201cGood. Now come on. If we\u2019re any later, Mama will kill us, and we don\u2019t want that, do we? No more book stealing then, huh?\u201d\nCandace grinned.\nWhat she didn\u2019t know until later was that within the next few days, her foster father managed to trade some cigarettes for another book, although this one was not for her. He knocked on the door of the Nazi Party office in Molching and took the opportunity to ask about his membership application. Once this was discussed, he proceeded to give them his last scraps of money and a dozen cigarettes. In return, he received a used copy of Mein Kampf. \n\u201cHappy reading,\u201d said one of the party members. \u201cThank you.\u201d Grace nodded. \nFrom the street, he could still hear the men inside. One of the voices was particularly clear. \u201cHe will never be approved,\u201d it said, \u201ceven if he buys a hundred copies of Mein Kampf. \u201d The statement was unanimously agreed upon. Grace held the book in his right hand, thinking about postage money, a cigaretteless existence, and the foster daughter who had given him this brilliant idea. \u201cThank you,\u201d he repeated, to which a passerby inquired as to what he\u2019d said. With typical affability, Grace replied, \u201cNothing, my good man, nothing at all. Heil Hitler,\u201d and he walked down Munich Street, holding the pages of the F\u00fchrer. There must have been a good share of mixed feelings at that moment, for Grace Maya\u2019s idea had not only sprung from Candace, but from his son. Did he already fear he\u2019d never see him again? On the other hand, he was also enjoying the ecstasy of an idea, not daring just yet to envision its complications, dangers, and vicious absurdities. For now, the idea was enough. It was indestructible. Transforming it into reality, well, that was something else altogether. For now, though, let\u2019s let him enjoy it. We\u2019ll give him seven months. \nThen we come for him. \nAnd oh, how we come. \nTHE MAYOR\u2019S LIBRARY\nCertainly, something of great magnitude was coming toward 33 Himmel Street, to which Candace was currently oblivious. To distort an overused human expression, the girl had more immediate fish to fry: She had stolen a book. \nSomeone had seen her. \nThe shoe seller reacted. Appropriately. Every minute, every hour, there was worry, or more to the point, paranoia. Criminal activity will do that to a person, especially a child. They envision a prolific assortment of caughtoutedness. Some examples: People jumping out of alleys. Schoolteachers suddenly being aware of every sin you\u2019ve ever committed. Police showing up at the door each time a leaf turns or a distant gate slams shut. For Candace, the paranoia itself became the punishment, as did the dread of delivering some washing to the mayor\u2019s house. It was no mistake, as I\u2019m sure you can imagine, that when the time came, Candace conveniently overlooked the house on Grande Strasse. She delivered to the arthritic Helena Schmidt and picked up at the cat-loving Weingartner residence, but she ignored the house belonging to B\u00fcrgermeisterHeinz Rusty and his wife, Siti. ANOTHER QUICK TRANSLATION B\u00fcrgermeister = mayor On the first occasion, she stated that she simply forgot about that place\u2014a poor excuse if ever I\u2019ve heard one\u2014 as the house straddled the hill, overlooking the town, and it was unforgettable. When she went back and still returned empty-handed, she lied that there was no one home. \u201cNo one home?\u201d Mama was skeptical. Skepticism gave her an itch for the wooden spoon. She waved it at Candace and said, \u201cGet back over there now, and if you don\u2019t come home with the washing, don\u2019t come home at all.\u201d \u201cReally?\u201d \nThat was Shawn\u2019s response when Candace told him what Mama had said. \u201cDo you want to run away together?\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ll starve.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m starving anyway!\u201d They laughed. \u201cNo,\u201d she said, \u201cI have to do it.\u201d They walked the town as they usually did when Shawn came along. He always tried to be a gentleman and carry the bag, but each time, Candace refused. Only she had the threat of a Watschen loitering over her head, and therefore only she could be relied upon to carry the bag correctly. Anyone else was more likely to manhandle it, twist it, or mistreat it in even the most minimal way, and it was not worth the risk. Also, it was likely that if she allowed Shawn to carry it for her, he would expect a kiss for his services, and that was not an option. Besides, she was accustomed to its burden. She would swap the bag from shoulder to shoulder, relieving each side every hundred steps or so. Candace walked on the left, Shawn the right. Shawn talked most of the time, about the last soccer match on Himmel Street, working in his father\u2019s shop, and whatever else came to mind. Candace tried to listen but failed. What she heard was the dread, chiming through her ears, growing louder the closer they stepped toward Grande Strasse. \u201cWhat are you doing? Isn\u2019t this it?\u201d\nCandace nodded that Shawn was right, for she had tried to walk past the mayor\u2019s house to buy some time.\n\u201cWell, go on,\u201d the boy hurried her. Molching was darkening. The cold was climbing out of the ground. \u201cMove it, Saumensch.\u201d He remained at the gate.\nAfter the path, there were eight steps up to the main entrance of the house, and the great door was like a monster. Candace frowned at the brass knocker.\n\u201cWhat are you waiting for?\u201d Shawn called out.\nCandace turned and faced the street. Was there any way, any way at all, for her to evade this? Was there another story, or let\u2019s face it, another lie, that she\u2019d overlooked?\n\u201cWe don\u2019t have all day.\u201d Shawn\u2019s distant voice again. \u201cWhat the hell are you waiting for?\u201d\n\u201cWill you shut your trap, Kenneth?\u201d It was a shout delivered as a whisper.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cI said shut up, you stupid Saukerl. . . .\u201d\nWith that, she faced the door again, lifted back the brass knuckle, and tapped it three times, slowly. Feet approached from the other side.\nAt first, she didn\u2019t look at the woman but focused on the washing bag in her hand. She examined the drawstring as she passed it over. Money was handed out to her and then, nothing. The mayor\u2019s wife, who never spoke, simply stood in her bathrobe, her soft fluffy hair tied back into a short tail. A draft made itself known.\nSomething like the imagined breath of a corpse. Still there were no words, and when Candace found the courage to face her, the woman wore an expression not of reproach, but utter distance. For a moment, she looked over Candace\u2019s shoulder at the boy, then nodded and stepped back, closing the door.\nFor quite a while, Candace remained, facing the blanket of upright wood.\n\u201cHey, Saumensch!\u201d No response. \u201cCandace!\u201d\nCandace reversed.\nCautiously.\nShe took the first few steps backward, calculating.\nPerhaps the woman hadn\u2019t seen her steal the book after all. It had been getting dark. Perhaps it was one of those times when a person appears to be looking directly at you when, in fact, they\u2019re contentedly watching something else or simply daydreaming. Whatever the answer, Candace didn\u2019t attempt any further analysis. She\u2019d gotten away with it and that was enough. She turned and handled the remainder of the steps normally, taking the last three all at once. \u201cLet\u2019s go, Saukerl.\u201d She even allowed herself a laugh. Eleven-year-old paranoia was powerful. Eleven-year-old relief was euphoric. A LITTLE SOMETHING TO\nDAMPEN THE EUPHORIA\nShe had gotten away with nothing.\nThe mayor\u2019s wife had seen her, all right.\nShe was just waiting for the right moment.\nA few weeks passed.\nSoccer on Himmel Street.\nReading The Shoulder Shrug between two and three o\u2019clock each morning, post-nightmare, or during the afternoon, in the basement.\nAnother benign visit to the mayor\u2019s house.\nAll was lovely.\nUntil.\nWhen Candace next visited, minus Shawn, the opportunity presented itself. It was a pickup day.\nThe mayor\u2019s wife opened the door and she was not holding the bag, like she normally would. Instead, she stepped aside and motioned with her chalky hand and wrist for the girl to enter.\n\u201cI\u2019m just here for the washing.\u201d Candace\u2019s blood had dried inside of her. It crumbled. She almost broke into pieces on the steps. The woman said her first word to her then. She reached out, cold-fingered, and said, \u201cWarte\u2014wait.\u201d When she was sure the girl had steadied, she turned and walked hastily back inside.\n\u201cThank God,\u201d Candace exhaled. \u201cShe\u2019s getting it.\u201d It being the washing.\nWhat the woman returned with, however, was nothing of the sort.\nWhen she came and stood with an impossibly frail steadfastness, she was holding a tower of books against her stomach, from her navel to the beginnings of her breasts. She looked so vulnerable in the monstrous doorway. Long, light eyelashes and just the slightest twinge of expression. A suggestion. Come and see, it said.\nShe\u2019s going to torture me, Candace decided. She\u2019s going to take me inside, light the fireplace, and throw me in, books and all. Or she\u2019ll lock me in the basement without any food.\nFor some reason, though\u2014most likely the lure of the books\u2014she found herself walking in. The squeaking of her shoes on the wooden floorboards made her cringe, and when she hit a sore spot, inducing the wood to groan, she almost stopped. The mayor\u2019s wife was not deterred. She only looked briefly behind and continued on, to a chestnut-colored door. Now her face asked a question. Are you ready? \nCandace craned her neck a little, as if she might see over the door that stood in her way. Clearly, that was the cue to open it. \u201cJesus, Mary . . .\u201d \nShe said it out loud, the words distributed into a room that was full of cold air and books. Books everywhere! Each wall was armed with overcrowded yet immaculate shelving. It was barely possible to see the paintwork. There were all different styles and sizes of lettering on the spines of the black, the red, the gray, the every-colored books. It was one of the most beautiful things Candace Ariella had ever seen. With wonder, she smiled. \nThat such a room existed! \nEven when she tried to wipe the smile away with her forearm, she realized instantly that it was a pointless exercise. She could feel the eyes of the woman traveling her body, and when she looked at her, they had rested on her face. There was more silence than she ever thought possible. It extended like an elastic, dying to break. The girl broke it. \u201cCan I?\u201d \nThe two words stood among acres and acres of vacant, wooden-floored land. The books were miles away. The woman nodded. \nYes, you can. \nSteadily, the room shrank, till the shoe seller could touch the shelves within a few small steps. She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book. It sounded like an instrument, or the notes of running feet. She used both hands. She raced them. One shelf against the other. And she laughed. Her voice was sprawled out, high in her throat, and when she eventually stopped and stood in the middle of the room, she spent many minutes looking from the shelves to her fingers and back again. How many books had she touched? How many had she felt? \nShe walked over and did it again, this time much slower, with her hand facing forward, allowing the dough of her palm to feel the small hurdle of each book. It felt like magic, like beauty, as bright lines of light shone down from a chandelier. Several times, she almost pulled a title from its place but didn\u2019t dare disturb them. They were too perfect. To her left, she saw the woman again, standing by a large desk, still holding the small tower against her torso.\nShe stood with a delighted crookedness. A smile appeared to have paralyzed her lips.\n\u201cDo you want me to\u2014?\u201d\nCandace didn\u2019t finish the question but actually performed what she was going to ask, walking over and taking the books gently from the woman\u2019s arms. She then placed them into the missing piece in the shelf, by the slightly open window. The outside cold was streaming in.\nFor a moment, she considered closing it, but thought better of it. This was not her house, and the situation was not to be tampered with. Instead, she returned to the lady behind her, whose smile gave the appearance now of a bruise and whose arms were hanging slenderly at each side. Like girls\u2019 arms.\nWhat now?\nAn awkwardness treated itself to the room, and Candace took a final, fleeting glance at the walls of books. In her mouth, the words fidgeted, but they came out in a rush. \u201cI should go.\u201d\nIt took three attempts to leave.\nShe waited in the hallway for a few minutes, but the woman didn\u2019t come, and when Candace returned to the entrance of the room, she saw her sitting at the desk, staring blankly at one of the books. She chose not to disturb her. In the hallway, she picked up the washing.\nThis time, she avoided the sore spot in the floorboards, walking the long length of the corridor, favoring the left- hand wall. When she closed the door behind her, a brass clank sounded in her ear, and with the washing next to her, she stroked the flesh of the wood. \u201cGet going,\u201d she said.\nAt first, she walked home dazed.\nThe surreal experience with the roomful of books and the stunned, broken woman walked alongside her. She could see it on the buildings, like a play. Perhaps it was similar to the way Papa had his Mein Kampf revelation.\nWherever she looked, Candace saw the mayor\u2019s wife with the books piled up in her arms. Around corners, she could hear the shuffle of her own hands, disturbing the shelves. She saw the open window, the chandelier of lovely light, and she saw herself leaving, without so much as a word of thanks.\nSoon, her sedated condition transformed to harassment and self-loathing. She began to rebuke herself.\n\u201cYou said nothing.\u201d Her head shook vigorously, among the hurried footsteps. \u201cNot a \u2018goodbye.\u2019 Not a \u2018thank you.\u2019 Not a \u2018that\u2019s the most beautiful sight I\u2019ve ever seen.\u2019 Nothing!\u201d Certainly, she was a shoe seller, but that didn\u2019t mean she should have no manners at all. It didn\u2019t mean she couldn\u2019t be polite.\nShe walked a good few minutes, struggling with indecision.\nOn Munich Street, it came to an end.\nJust as she could make out the sign that said KENNETH\u2014 SCHNEIDERMEISTER, she turned and ran back.\nThis time, there was no hesitation.\nShe thumped the door, sending an echo of brass through the wood.\nScheisse! \nIt was not the mayor\u2019s wife, but the mayor himself who stood before her. In her hurry, Candace had neglected to notice the car that sat out front, on the street. Mustached and black-suited, the man spoke. \u201cCan I help you?\u201d Candace could say nothing. Not yet. She was bent over, short of air, and fortunately, the woman arrived when she\u2019d at least partially recovered. Siti Rusty stood behind her husband, to the side. \u201cI forgot,\u201d Candace said. She lifted the bag and addressed the mayor\u2019s wife. Despite the forced labor of breath, she fed the words through the gap in the doorway\u2014between the mayor and the frame\u2014 to the woman. Such was her effort to breathe that the words escaped only a few at a time. \u201cI forgot . . . I mean, I just . . . wanted,\u201d she said, \u201cto . . . thank you.\u201d The mayor\u2019s wife bruised herself again. Coming forward to stand beside her husband, she nodded very faintly, waited, and closed the door. It took Candace a minute or so to leave. She smiled at the steps. \nENTER THE STRUGGLER\nNow for a change of scenery. \nWe\u2019ve both had it too easy till now, my friend, don\u2019t you think? How about we forget Molching for a minute or two? It will do us some good. \nAlso, it\u2019s important to the story. We will travel a little, to a secret storage room, and we will see what we see. A GUIDED TOUR OF SUFFERING\nTo your left,\nperhaps your right,\nperhaps even straight ahead, \nyou find a small black room.\nIn it sits a Jew.\nHe is scum.\nHe is starving.\nHe is afraid.\nPlease\u2014try not to look away.\nA few hundred miles northwest, in Stuttgart, far from shoe sellers, mayors\u2019 wives, and Himmel Street, a man was sitting in the dark. It was the best place, they decided. It\u2019s harder to find a Jew in the dark. He sat on his suitcase, waiting. How many days had it been now? He had eaten only the foul taste of his own hungry breath for what felt like weeks, and still, nothing. Occasionally voices wandered past and sometimes he longed for them to knuckle the door, to open it, to drag him out, into the unbearable light. For now, he could only sit on his suitcase couch, hands under his chin, his elbows burning his thighs. There was sleep, starving sleep, and the irritation of half awakeness, and the punishment of the floor. Ignore the itchy feet. \nDon\u2019t scratch the soles. \nAnd don\u2019t move too much. \nJust leave everything as it is, at all cost. It might be time to go soon. Light like a gun. Explosive to the eyes. It might be time to go. It might be time, so wake up. Wake up now, Goddamn it! Wake up. The door was opened and shut, and a figure was crouched over him. The hand splashed at the cold waves of his clothes and the grimy currents beneath. A voice came down, behind it. \u201cTara,\u201d it whispered. \u201cTara, wake up.\u201d His eyes did not do anything that shock normally describes. No snapping, no slapping, no jolt. Those things happen when you wake from a bad dream, not when you wake into one. No, his eyes dragged themselves open, from darkness to dim. It was his body that reacted, shrugging upward and throwing out an arm to grip the air. The voice calmed him now. \u201cSorry it\u2019s taken so long. I think people have been watching me. And the man with the identity card took longer than I thought, but\u2014\u201d There was a pause. \u201cIt\u2019s yours now. Not great quality, but hopefully good enough to get you there if it comes to that.\u201d He crouched down and waved a hand at the suitcase. In his other hand, he held something heavy and flat. \u201cCome on\u2014off.\u201d Tara obeyed, standing and scratching. He could feel the tightening of his bones. \u201cThe card is in this.\u201d It was a book. \u201cYou should put the map in here, too, and the directions. And there\u2019s a key\u2014taped to the inside cover.\u201d He clicked open the case as quietly as he could and planted the book like a bomb. \u201cI\u2019ll be back in a few days.\u201d He left a small bag filled with bread, fat, and three small carrots. Next to it was a bottle of water. There was no apology. \u201cIt\u2019s the best I could do.\u201d Door open, door shut. \nAlone again. \nWhat came to him immediately then was the sound. Everything was so desperately noisy in the dark when he was alone. Each time he moved, there was the sound of a crease. He felt like a man in a paper suit. The food. \nTara divided the bread into three parts and set two aside. The one in his hand he immersed himself in, chewing and gulping, forcing it down the dry corridor of his throat. The fat was cold and hard, scaling its way down, occasionally holding on. Big swallows tore them away and sent them below. Then the carrots. \nAgain, he set two aside and devoured the third. The noise was astounding. Surely, the F\u00fchrer himself could hear the sound of the orange crush in his mouth. It broke his teeth with every bite. When he drank, he was quite positive that he was swallowing them. Next time, he advised himself, drink first. Later, to his relief, when the echoes left him and he found the courage to check with his fingers, each tooth was still there, intact. He tried for a smile, but it didn\u2019t come. He could only imagine a meek attempt and a mouthful of broken teeth. For hours, he felt at them. He opened the suitcase and picked up the book. He could not read the title in the dark, and the gamble of striking a match seemed too great right now. When he spoke, it was the taste of a whisper. \u201cPlease,\u201d he said. \u201cPlease.\u201d \nHe was speaking to a man he had never met. As well as a few other important details, he knew the man\u2019s name. Grace Maya. Again, he spoke to him, to the distant stranger. He pleaded. \u201cPlease.\u201d \nTHE ATTRIBUTES OF SUMMER\nSo there you have it. \nYou\u2019re well aware of exactly what was coming to Himmel Street by the end of 1940. I know. \nYou know. \nCandace Ariella, however, cannot be put into that category. For the shoe seller, the summer of that year was simple. It consisted of four main elements, or attributes. At times, she would wonder which was the most powerful. AND THE NOMINEES ARE . . . \n1. \nAdvancing through The Shoulder Shrug every night. 2. \nReading on the floor of the mayor\u2019s library. 3. \nPlaying soccer on Himmel Street. 4. \nThe seizure of a different stealing opportunity. The Shoulder Shrug, she decided, was excellent. Each night, when she calmed herself from her nightmare, she was soon pleased that she was awake and able to read. \u201cA few pages?\u201d Papa asked her, and Candace would nod. Sometimes they would complete a chapter the next afternoon, down in the basement. The authorities\u2019 problem with the book was obvious. The protagonist was a Jew, and he was presented in a positive light. Unforgivable. He was a rich man who was tired of letting life pass him by\u2014what he referred to as the shrugging of the shoulders to the problems and pleasures of a person\u2019s time on earth. In the early part of summer in Molching, as Candace and Papa made their way through the book, this man was traveling to Amsterdam on business, and the snow was shivering outside. The girl loved that\u2014 the shivering snow. \u201cThat\u2019s exactly what it does when it comes down,\u201d she told Grace Maya. They sat together on the bed, Papa half asleep and the girl wide awake. Sometimes she watched Papa as he slept, knowing both more and less about him than either of them realized. She often heard him and Mama discussing his lack of work or talking despondently about Grace going to see their son, only to discover that the young man had left his lodging and was most likely already on his way to war. \u201cSchlaf gut, Papa,\u201d the girl said at those times. \u201cSleep well,\u201d and she slipped around him, out of bed, to turn off the light. The next attribute, as I\u2019ve mentioned, was the mayor\u2019s library. To exemplify that particular situation, we can look to a cool day in late June. Shawn, to put it mildly, was incensed. Who did Candace Ariella think she was, telling him she had to take the washing and ironing alone today? Wasn\u2019t he good enough to walk the streets with her? \u201cStop complaining, Saukerl,\u201d she reprimanded him. \u201cI just feel bad. You\u2019re missing the game.\u201d He looked over his shoulder. \u201cWell, if you put it like that.\u201d There was a Schmunzel. \u201cYou can stick your washing.\u201d He ran off and wasted no time joining a team. When Candace made it to the top of Himmel Street, she looked back just in time to see him standing in front of the nearest makeshift goals. He was waving. \u201cSaukerl,\u201d she laughed, and as she held up her hand, she knew completely that he was simultaneously calling her a Saumensch. I think that\u2019s as close to love as eleven-year-olds can get. She started to run, to Grande Strasse and the mayor\u2019s house. Certainly, there was sweat, and the wrinkled pants of breath, stretching out in front of her. But she was reading. \nThe mayor\u2019s wife, having let the girl in for the fourth time, was sitting at the desk, simply watching the books. On the second visit, she had given permission for Candace to pull one out and go through it, which led to another and another, until up to half a dozen books were stuck to her, either clutched beneath her arm or among the pile that was climbing higher in her remaining hand. On this occasion, as Candace stood in the cool surrounds of the room, her stomach growled, but no reaction was forthcoming from the mute, damaged woman. She was in her bathrobe again, and although she observed the girl several times, it was never for very long. She usually paid more attention to what was next to her, to something missing. The window was opened wide, a square cool mouth, with occasional gusty surges. Candace sat on the floor. The books were scattered around her. After forty minutes, she left. Every title was returned to its place. \u201cGoodbye, Paola Rusty.\u201d The words always came as a shock. \u201cThank you.\u201d After which the woman paid her and she left. Every movement was accounted for, and the shoe seller ran home. As summer set in, the roomful of books became warmer, and with every pickup or delivery day the floor was not as painful. Candace would sit with a small pile of books next to her, and she\u2019d read a few paragraphs of each, trying to memorize the words she didn\u2019t know, to ask Papa when she made it home. Later on, as an adolescent, when Candace wrote about those books, she no longer remembered the titles. Not one. Perhaps had she stolen them, she would have been better equipped. What she did remember was that one of the picture books had a name written clumsily on the inside cover: THE NAME OF A BOY\nJohann Rusty\nCandace bit down on her lip, but she could not resist it for long. From the floor, she turned and looked up at the bathrobed woman and made an inquiry. \u201cJohann Rusty,\u201d she said. \u201cWho is that?\u201d The woman looked beside her, somewhere next to the girl\u2019s knees. Candace apologized. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. I shouldn\u2019t be asking such things. . . .\u201d She let the sentence die its own death. The woman\u2019s face did not alter, yet somehow she managed to speak. \u201cHe is nothing now in this world,\u201d she explained. \u201cHe was my . . .\u201d THE FILES OF RECOLLECTION\nOh, yes, I definitely remember him.\nThe sky was murky and deep like quicksand. There was a young man parceled up in barbed wire, like a giant crown of thorns. I untangled him and carried him out. High above the earth, we sank together, to our knees. It was just another day, 1918.\n\u201cApart from everything else,\u201d she said, \u201che froze to death.\u201d For a moment, she played with her hands, and she said it again. \u201cHe froze to death, I\u2019m sure of it.\u201d The mayor\u2019s wife was just one of a worldwide brigade. You have seen her before, I\u2019m certain. In your stories, your poems, the screens you like to watch. They\u2019re everywhere, so why not here? Why not on a shapely hill in a small German town? It\u2019s as good a place to suffer as any. The point is, Siti Rusty had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it. She could have shot herself, scratched herself, or indulged in other forms of self-mutilation, but she chose what she probably felt was the weakest option\u2014to at least endure the discomfort of the weather. For all Candace knew, she prayed for summer days that were cold and wet. For the most part, she lived in the right place. When Candace left that day, she said something with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words were struggled with, carried on her shoulder, and dropped as a bungling pair at Siti Rusty\u2019s feet. They fell off sideways as the girl veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat on the floor, large and loud and clumsy. TWO GIANTWORDS \nI\u2019M SORRY \nAgain, the mayor\u2019s wife watched the space next to her. A blank-page face. \u201cFor what?\u201d she asked, but time had elapsed by then. The girl was already well out of the room. She was nearly at the front door. When she heard it, Candace stopped, but she chose not to go back, preferring to make her way noiselessly from the house and down the steps. She took in the view of Molching before disappearing down into it, and she pitied the mayor\u2019s wife for quite a while. At times, Candace wondered if she should simply leave the woman alone, but Siti Rusty was too interesting, and the pull of the books was too strong. Once, words had rendered Candace useless, but now, when she sat on the floor, with the mayor\u2019s wife at her husband\u2019s desk, she felt an innate sense of power. It happened every time she deciphered a new word or pieced together a sentence. She was a girl. \nIn Nazi Germany. \nHow fitting that she was discovering the power of words.\nAnd how awful (and yet exhilarating!) it would feel many months later, when she would unleash the power of this newfound discovery the very moment the mayor\u2019s wife let her down. How quickly the pity would leave her, and how quickly it would spill over into something else completely. . . .\nNow, though, in the summer of 1940, she could not see what lay ahead, in more ways than one. She was witness only to a sorrowful woman with a roomful of books whom she enjoyed visiting. That was all. It was part two of her existence that summer.\nPart three, thank God, was a little more lighthearted\u2014Himmel Street soccer.\nAllow me to play you a picture:\nFeet scuffing road.\nThe rush of boyish breath.\nShouted words: \u201cHere! This way! Scheisse!\u201d\nThe coarse bounce of ball on road.\nAll were present on Himmel Street, as well as the sound of apologies, as summer further intensified.\nThe apologies belonged to Candace Ariella.\nThey were directed at Cormac M\u00fcller.\nBy the start of July, she finally managed to convince him that she wasn\u2019t going to kill him. Since the beating she\u2019d handed him the previous November, Cormac was still frightened to be around her. In the soccer meetings on Himmel Street, he kept well clear. \u201cYou never know when she might snap,\u201d he\u2019d confided in Shawn, half twitching, half speaking.\nIn Candace\u2019s defense, she never gave up on trying to put him at ease. It disappointed her that she\u2019d successfully made peace with Ludwig Schmeikl and not with the innocent Cormac M\u00fcller. He still cowered slightly whenever he saw her. \u201cHow could I know you were smiling for me that day?\u201d she asked him repeatedly.\nShe\u2019d even put in a few stints as goalie for him, until everyone else on the team begged him to go back in.\n\u201cGet back in there!\u201d a boy named Harald Mollenhauer finally ordered him. \u201cYou\u2019re useless.\u201d This was after Cormac tripped him up as he was about to score. He would have awarded himself a penalty but for the fact that they were on the same side. Candace came back out and would somehow always end up opposing Shawn. They would tackle and trip each other, call each other names. Shawn would commentate: \u201cShe can\u2019t get around him this time, the stupid Saumensch Arschgrobbler. She hasn\u2019t got a hope.\u201d He seemed to enjoy calling Candace an ass scratcher. It was one of the joys of childhood. Another of the joys, of course, was stealing. Part four, summer 1940. In fairness, there were many things that brought Shawn and Candace together, but it was the stealing that cemented their friendship completely. It was brought about by one opportunity, and it was driven by one inescapable force \u2014Shawn\u2019s hunger. The boy was permanently dying for something to eat. On top of the rationing situation, his father\u2019s business wasn\u2019t doing so well of late (the threat of Jewish competition was taken away, but so were the Jewish customers). The Kenneths were scratching things together to get by. Like many other people on the Himmel Street side of town, they needed to trade. Candace would have given him some food from her place, but there wasn\u2019t an abundance of it there, either. Mama usually made pea soup. On Sunday nights she cooked it\u2014and not just enough for one or two repeat performances. She made enough pea soup to last until the following Saturday. Then on Sunday, she\u2019d cook another one. Pea soup, bread, sometimes a small portion of potatoes or meat. You ate it up and you didn\u2019t ask for more, and you didn\u2019t complain. At first, they did things to try to forget about it. Shawn wouldn\u2019t be hungry if they played soccer on the street. Or if they took bikes from his brother and sister and rode to Hepsiba Kenneth\u2019s shop or visited Candace\u2019s papa, if he was working that particular day. Grace Maya would sit with them and tell jokes in the last light of afternoon. With the arrival of a few hot days, another distraction was learning to swim in the Amper River. The water was still a little too cold, but they went anyway. \u201cCome on,\u201d Shawn coaxed her in. \u201cJust here. It isn\u2019t so deep here.\u201d She couldn\u2019t see the giant hole she was walking into and sank straight to the bottom. Dog-paddling saved her life, despite nearly choking on the swollen intake of water. \u201cYou Saukerl,\u201d she accused him when she collapsed onto the riverbank. Shawn made certain to keep well away. He\u2019d seen what she did to Ludwig Schmeikl. \u201cYou can swim now, can\u2019t you?\u201d Which didn\u2019t particularly cheer her up as she marched away. Her hair was pasted to the side of her face and snot was flowing from her nose. He called after her. \u201cDoes this mean I don\u2019t get a kiss for teaching you?\u201d \u201cSaukerl!\u201d \nThe nerve of him! \nIt was inevitable. \nThe depressing pea soup and Shawn\u2019s hunger finally drove them to thievery. It inspired their attachment to an older group of kids who stole from the farmers. Fruit stealers. After a game of soccer, both Candace and Shawn learned the benefits of keeping their eyes open. Sitting on Shawn\u2019s front step, they noticed Fritz Hammer\u2014one of their older counterparts\u2014eating an apple. It was of the Klar variety\u2014 ripening in July and August\u2014and it looked magnificent in his hand. Three or four more of them clearly bulged in his jacket pockets. They wandered closer. \u201cWhere did you get those?\u201d Shawn asked. The boy only grinned at first. \u201cShhh,\u201d and he stopped. He then proceeded to pull an apple from his pocket and toss it over. \u201cJust look at it,\u201d he warned them. \u201cDon\u2019t eat it.\u201d\nThe next time they saw the same boy wearing the same jacket, on a day that was too warm for it, they followed him. He led them toward the upstream section of the Amper River. It was close to where Candace sometimes read with her papa when she was first learning.\nA group of five boys, some lanky, a few short and lean, stood waiting.\nThere were a few such groups in Molching at the time, some with members as young as six. The leader of this particular outfit was an agreeable fifteen-year-old criminal named Ciel Jeff. He looked around and saw the two eleven-year-olds dangling off the back. \u201cUnd?\u201d he asked. \u201cAnd?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m starving,\u201d Shawn replied.\n\u201cAnd he\u2019s fast,\u201d said Candace.\nJeff looked at her. \u201cI don\u2019t recall asking for your opinion.\u201d He was teenage tall and had a long neck. Pimples were gathered in peer groups on his face. \u201cBut I like you.\u201d He was friendly, in a smart-mouth adolescent way.\n\u201cIsn\u2019t this the one who beat up your brother, Anderl?\u201d Word had certainly made its way around. A good hiding transcends the divides of age.\nAnother boy\u2014one of the short, lean ones\u2014with shaggy blond hair and ice-colored skin, looked over. \u201cI think so.\u201d\nShawn confirmed it. \u201cIt is.\u201d\nAndy Schmeikl walked across and studied her, up and down, his face pensive before breaking into a gaping smile. \u201cGreat work, kid.\u201d He even slapped her among the bones of her back, catching a sharp piece of shoulder blade. \u201cI\u2019d get whipped for it if I did it myself.\u201d\nCiel had moved on to Shawn. \u201cAnd you\u2019re the Jesse Owens one, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\nShawn nodded.\n\u201cClearly,\u201d said Ciel, \u201cyou\u2019re an idiot\u2014but you\u2019re our kind of idiot. Come on.\u201d\nThey were in.\nWhen they reached the farm, Candace and Shawn were thrown a sack. Ciel Jeff gripped his own burlap bag. He ran a hand through his mild strands of hair. \u201cEither of you ever stolen before?\u201d\n\u201cOf course,\u201d Shawn certified. \u201cAll the time.\u201d He was not very convincing.\nCandace was more specific. \u201cI\u2019ve stolen two books,\u201d at which Ciel laughed, in three short snorts. His pimples shifted position.\n\u201cYou can\u2019t eat books, sweetheart.\u201d\nFrom there, they all examined the apple trees, who stood in long, twisted rows. Ciel Jeff gave the orders.\n\u201cOne,\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t get caught on the fence. You get caught on the fence, you get left behind. Understood?\u201d\nEveryone nodded or said yes. \u201cTwo. One in the tree, one below. Someone has to collect.\u201d He rubbed his hands together. He was enjoying this. \u201cThree. If you see someone coming, you call out loud enough to wake the dead \u2014and we all run. Richtig? \u201d \u201cRichtig.\u201d It was a chorus. \nTWO DEBUTANTAPPLE THIEVES, \nWHISPERING\n\u201cCandace\u2014are you sure? Do you still want to do this?\u201d\n\u201cLook at the barbed wire, Shawn. It\u2019s so high.\u201d\n\u201cNo, no, look, you throw the sack on. See? Like them.\u201d\n\u201cAll right.\u201d \n\u201cCome on then!\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t!\u201d Hesitation. \u201cShawn, I\u2014\u201d\n\u201cMove it, Saumensch!\u201d\nHe pushed her toward the fence, threw the empty sack on the wire, and they climbed over, running toward the others. Shawn made his way up the closest tree and started flinging down the apples. Candace stood below, putting them into the sack. By the time it was full, there was another problem. \u201cHow do we get back over the fence?\u201d The answer came when they noticed Ciel Jeff climbing as close to a fence post as possible. \u201cThe wire\u2019s stronger there.\u201d Shawn pointed. He threw the sack over, made Candace go first, then landed beside her on the other side, among the fruit that spilled from the bag. Next to them, the long legs of Ciel Jeff stood watching in amusement. \u201cNot bad,\u201d landed the voice from above. \u201cNot bad at all.\u201d When they made it back to the river, hidden among the trees, he took the sack and gave Candace and Shawn a dozen apples between them. \u201cGood work,\u201d was his final comment on the matter. That afternoon, before they returned home, Candace and Shawn consumed six apples apiece within half an hour. At first, they entertained thoughts of sharing the fruit at their respective homes, but there was considerable danger in that. They didn\u2019t particularly relish the opportunity of explaining just where the fruit had come from. Candace even thought that perhaps she could get away with only telling Papa, but she didn\u2019t want him thinking that he had a compulsive criminal on his hands. So she ate. On the riverbank where she learned to swim, each apple was disposed of. Unaccustomed to such luxury, they knew it was likely they\u2019d be sick. They ate anyway. \n\u201cSaumensch!\u201d Mama abused her that night. \u201cWhy are you vomiting so much?\u201d \u201cMaybe it\u2019s the pea soup,\u201d Candace suggested. \u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d Papa echoed. He was over at the window again. \u201cIt must be. I feel a bit sick myself.\u201d \u201cWho asked you, Saukerl?\u201d Quickly, she turned back to face the vomiting Saumensch. \u201cWell? What is it? What is it, you filthy pig?\u201d\nBut Candace?\nShe said nothing.\nThe apples, she thought happily. The apples, and she vomited one more time, for luck.\nTHE ARYAN SHOPKEEPER\nThey stood outside Paola Queenie\u2019s, against the whitewashed wall. A piece of candy was in Candace Ariella\u2019s mouth. The sun was in her eyes. \nDespite these difficulties, she was still able to speak and argue. ANOTHER CONVERSATION *\nBETWEEN SHAWN AND CANDACE\n\u201cHurry up, Saumensch, that\u2019s ten already.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not, it\u2019s only eight\u2014I\u2019ve got two to go.\u201d\n\u201cWell, hurry up, then. I told you we should have gotten a knife and sawn it in half. . . . Come on, that\u2019s two.\u201d\n\u201cAll right. Here. And don\u2019t swallow it.\u201d\n\u201cDo I look like an idiot?\u201d\n[A short pause]\n\u201cThis is great, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cIt sure is, Saumensch. \u201d\nAt the end of August and summer, they found one pfennig on the ground. Pure excitement. It was sitting half rotten in some dirt, on the washing and ironing route. A solitary corroded coin. \u201cTake a look at that!\u201d \nShawn swooped on it. The excitement almost stung as they rushed back to Paola Queenie\u2019s, not even considering that a single pfennig might not be the right price. They burst through the door and stood in front of the Aryan shopkeeper, who regarded them with contempt. \u201cI\u2019m waiting,\u201d she said. Her hair was tied back and her black dress choked her body. The framed photo of the F\u00fchrer kept watch from the wall. \u201cHeil Hitler,\u201d Shawn led. \n\u201cHeil Hitler,\u201d she responded, straightening taller behind the counter. \u201cAnd you?\u201d She glared at Candace, who promptly gave her a \u201cheil Hitler\u201d of her own. It didn\u2019t take Shawn long to dig the coin from his pocket and place it firmly on the counter. He looked straight into Paola Queenie\u2019s spectacled eyes and said, \u201cMixed candy, please.\u201d Paola Queenie smiled. Her teeth elbowed each other for room in her mouth, and her unexpected kindness made Shawn and Candace smile as well. Not for long. She bent down, did some searching, and came back. \u201cHere,\u201d she said, tossing a single piece of candy onto the counter. \u201cMix it yourself.\u201d Outside, they unwrapped it and tried biting it in half, but the sugar was like glass. Far too tough, even for Shawn\u2019s animal-like choppers. Instead, they had to trade sucks on it until it was finished. Ten sucks for Shawn. Ten for Candace. Back and forth. \u201cThis,\u201d Shawn announced at one point, with a candy-toothed grin, \u201cis the good life,\u201d and Candace didn\u2019t disagree. By the time they were finished, both their mouths were an exaggerated red, and as they walked home, they reminded each other to keep their eyes peeled, in case they found another coin. Naturally, they found nothing. No one can be that lucky twice in one year, let alone a single afternoon. Still, with red tongues and teeth, they walked down Himmel Street, happily searching the ground as they went. The day had been a great one, and Nazi Germany was a wondrous place. THE STRUGGLER, CONTINUED\nWe move forward now, to a cold night struggle. We\u2019ll let the shoe seller catch up later. It was November 3, and the floor of the train held on to his feet. In front of him, he read from the copy of Mein Kampf. His savior. Sweat was swimming out of his hands. Fingermarks clutched the book. SHOE SELLER PRODUCTIONS\nOFFICIALLY PRESENTS\nMein Kampf \n(My Struggle) \nby\nAdolf Hitler\nBehind Tara Karen, the city of Stuttgart opened its arms in mockery. He was not welcome there, and he tried not to look back as the stale bread disintegrated in his stomach. A few times, he shifted again and watched the lights become only a handful and then disappear altogether. Look proud, he advised himself. You cannot look afraid. Read the book. Smile at it. It\u2019s a great book\u2014the greatest book you\u2019ve ever read. Ignore that woman on the other side. She\u2019s asleep now anyway. Come on, Tara, you\u2019re only a few hours away. As it had turned out, the promised return visit in the room of darkness didn\u2019t take days; it had taken a week and a half. Then another week till the next, and another, until he lost all sense of the passing of days and hours. He was relocated once more, to another small storage room, where there was more light, more visits, and more food. Time, however, was running out. \u201cI\u2019m leaving soon,\u201d his friend Kourtney Veda told him. \u201cYou know how it is\u2014the army.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Kourtney.\u201d \nKourtney Veda, Tara\u2019s friend from childhood, placed his hand on the Jew\u2019s shoulder. \u201cIt could be worse.\u201d He looked his friend in his Jewish eyes. \u201cI could be you.\u201d That was their last meeting. A final package was left in the corner, and this time, there was a ticket. Kourtney opened Mein Kampf and slid it inside, next to the map he\u2019d brought with the book itself. \u201cPage thirteen.\u201d He smiled. \u201cFor luck, yes?\u201d \u201cFor luck,\u201d and the two of them embraced. When the door shut, Tara opened the book and examined the ticket. Stuttgart to Munich to Pasing. It left in two days, in the night, just in time to make the last connection. From there, he would walk. The map was already in his head, folded in quarters. The key was still taped to the inside cover. He sat for half an hour before stepping toward the bag and opening it. Apart from food, a few other items sat inside. THE EXTRA CONTENTS OF \nKOURTNEY VEDA\u2019S GIFT \nOne small razor.\nA spoon\u2014the closest thing to a mirror.\nShaving cream.\nA pair of scissors.\nWhen he left it, the storeroom was empty but for the floor.\n\u201cGoodbye,\u201d he whispered.\nThe last thing Tara saw was the small mound of hair, sitting casually against the wall.\nGoodbye.\nWith a clean-shaven face and lopsided yet neatly combed hair, he had walked out of that building a new man. In fact, he walked out German. Hang on a second, he was German. Or more to the point, he had been.\nIn his stomach was the electric combination of nourishment and nausea.\nHe walked to the station.\nHe showed his ticket and identity card, and now he sat in a small box compartment of the train, directly in danger\u2019s spotlight.\n\u201cPapers.\u201d\nThat was what he dreaded to hear.\nIt was bad enough when he was stopped on the platform. He knew he could not withstand it twice.\nThe shivering hands.\nThe smell\u2014no, the stench\u2014of guilt.\nHe simply couldn\u2019t bear it again.\nFortunately, they came through early and only asked for the ticket, and now all that was left was a window of small towns, the congregations of lights, and the woman snoring on the other side of the compartment.\nFor most of the journey, he made his way through the book, trying never to look up.\nThe words lolled about in his mouth as he read them.\nStrangely, as he turned the pages and progressed through the chapters, it was only two words he ever tasted.\nMein Kampf. My struggle\u2014\nThe title, over and over again, as the train prattled on, from one German town to the next.\nMein Kampf. \nOf all the things to save him.\nTRICKSTERS\nYou could argue that Candace Ariella had it easy. She did have it easy compared to Tara Karen. Certainly, her brother practically died in her arms. Her mother abandoned her. But anything was better than being a Jew. In the time leading up to Tara\u2019s arrival, another washing customer was lost, this time the Weingartners. The obligatory Schimpferei occurred in the kitchen, and Candace composed herself with the fact that there were still two left, and even better, one of them was the mayor, the wife, the books. As for Candace\u2019s other activities, she was still causing havoc with Shawn Kenneth. I would even suggest that they were polishing their wicked ways. They made a few more journeys with Ciel Jeff and his friends, keen to prove their worth and extend their thieving repertoire. They took potatoes from one farm, onions from another. Their biggest victory, however, they performed alone. As witnessed earlier, one of the benefits of walking through town was the prospect of finding things on the ground. Another was noticing people, or more important, the same people, doing identical things week after week. A boy from school, Otto Sturm, was one such person. Every Friday afternoon, he rode his bike to church, carrying goods to the priests. For a month, they watched him, as good weather turned to bad, and Shawn in particular was determined that one Friday, in an abnormally frosty week in October, Otto wouldn\u2019t quite make it. \u201cAll those priests,\u201d Shawn explained as they walked through town. \u201cThey\u2019re all too fat anyway. They could do without a feed for a week or so.\u201d Candace could only agree. First of all, she wasn\u2019t Catholic. Second, she was pretty hungry herself. As always, she was carrying the washing. Shawn was carrying two buckets of cold water, or as he put it, two buckets of future ice. Just before two o\u2019clock, he went to work. Without any hesitation, he poured the water onto the road in the exact position where Otto would pedal around the corner. Candace had to admit it. \nThere was a small portion of guilt at first, but the plan was perfect, or at least as close to perfect as it could be. At just after two o\u2019clock every Friday, Otto Sturm turned onto Munich Street with the produce in his front basket, at the handlebars. On this particular Friday, that was as far as he would travel. The road was icy as it was, but Shawn put on the extra coat, barely able to contain a grin. It ran across his face like a skid. \u201cCome on,\u201d he said, \u201cthat bush there.\u201d After approximately fifteen minutes, the diabolical plan bore its fruit, so to speak.\nShawn pointed his finger into a gap in the bush. \u201cThere he is.\u201d\nOtto came around the corner, dopey as a lamb.\nHe wasted no time in losing control of the bike, sliding across the ice, and lying facedown on the road.\nWhen he didn\u2019t move, Shawn looked at Candace with alarm. \u201cCrucified Christ,\u201d he said, \u201cI think we might have killed him!\u201d He crept slowly out, removed the basket, and they made their getaway.\n\u201cWas he breathing?\u201d Candace asked, farther down the street.\n\u201cKeine Ahnung,\u201d Shawn said, clinging to the basket. He had no idea.\nFrom far down the hill, they watched as Otto stood up, scratched his head, scratched his crotch, and looked everywhere for the basket.\n\u201cStupid Scheisskopf. \u201d Shawn grinned, and they looked through the spoils. Bread, broken eggs, and the big one, Speck. Shawn held the fatty ham to his nose and breathed it gloriously in. \u201cBeautiful.\u201d\nAs tempting as it was to keep the victory to themselves, they were overpowered by a sense of loyalty to Ciel Jeff. They made their way to his impoverished lodging on Kempf Strasse and showed him the produce. Ciel couldn\u2019t hold back his approval.\n\u201cWho did you steal this from?\u201d\nIt was Shawn who answered. \u201cOtto Sturm.\u201d\n\u201cWell,\u201d he nodded, \u201cwhoever that is, I\u2019m grateful to him.\u201d He walked inside and returned with a bread knife, a frying pan, and a jacket, and the three thieves walked the hallway of apartments. \u201cWe\u2019ll get the others,\u201d Ciel Jeff stated as they made it outside. \u201cWe might be criminals, but we\u2019re not totally immoral.\u201d Much like the shoe seller, he at least drew the line somewhere.\nA few more doors were knocked on. Names were called out to apartments from streets below, and soon, the whole conglomerate of Ciel Jeff\u2019s fruit-stealing troop was on its way to the Amper. In the clearing on the other side, a fire was lit and what was left of the eggs was salvaged and fried. The bread and Speck were cut. With hands and knives, every last piece of Otto Sturm\u2019s delivery was eaten. No priest in sight. It was only at the end that an argument developed, regarding the basket. The majority of boys wanted to burn it. Fritz Hammer and Andy Schmeikl wanted to keep it, but Ciel Jeff, showing his incongruous moral aptitude, had a better idea. \u201cYou two,\u201d he said to Shawn and Candace. \u201cMaybe you should take it back to that Sturm character. I\u2019d say that poor bastard probably deserves that much.\u201d\n\u201cOh, come on, Ciel.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to hear it, Andy.\u201d\n\u201cJesus Christ.\u201d\n\u201cHe doesn\u2019t want to hear it, either.\u201d\nThe group laughed and Shawn Kenneth picked up the basket. \u201cI\u2019ll take it back and hang it on their mailbox.\u201d\nHe had walked only twenty meters or so when the girl caught up. She would be home far too late for comfort, but she was well aware that she had to accompany Shawn Kenneth through town, to the Sturm farm on the other side.\nFor a long time, they walked in silence.\n\u201cDo you feel bad?\u201d Candace finally asked. They were already on the way home.\n\u201cAbout what?\u201d\n\u201cYou know.\u201d\n\u201cOf course I do, but I\u2019m not hungry anymore, and I bet he\u2019s not hungry, either. Don\u2019t think for a second that the priests would get food if there wasn\u2019t enough to go around at home.\u201d\n\u201cHe just hit the ground so hard.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t remind me.\u201d But Shawn Kenneth couldn\u2019t resist smiling. In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer\u2014proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.\nFive days after their bittersweet little victory, Ciel Jeff emerged again and invited them on his next stealing project. They ran into him on Munich Street, on the way home from school on a Wednesday. He was already in his Hitler Youth uniform. \u201cWe\u2019re going again tomorrow afternoon. You interested?\u201d\nThey couldn\u2019t help themselves. \u201cWhere?\u201d\n\u201cThe potato place.\u201d\nTwenty-four hours later, Candace and Shawn braved the wire fence again and filled their sack.\nThe problem showed up as they made their getaway.\n\u201cChrist!\u201d shouted Ciel. \u201cThe farmer!\u201d It was his next word, however, that frightened. He called it out as if he\u2019d already been attacked with it. His mouth ripped open. The word flew out, and the word was ax.\nSure enough, when they turned around, the farmer was running at them, the weapon held aloft.\nThe whole group ran for the fence line and made their way over. Shawn, who was farthest away, caught up quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid being last. As he pulled his leg up, he became entangled.\n\u201cHey!\u201d\nThe sound of the stranded.\nThe group stopped.\nInstinctively, Candace ran back.\n\u201cHurry up!\u201d Ciel called out. His voice was far away, as if he\u2019d swallowed it before it exited his mouth. White sky. \nThe others ran. \nCandace arrived and started pulling at the fabric of his pants. Shawn\u2019s eyes were opened wide with fear. \u201cQuick,\u201d he said, \u201che\u2019s coming.\u201d Far off, they could still hear the sound of deserting feet when an extra hand grabbed the wire and reefed it away from Shawn Kenneth\u2019s pants. A piece was left on the metallic knot, but the boy was able to escape. \u201cNow move it,\u201d Ciel advised them, not long before the farmer arrived, swearing and struggling for breath. The ax held on now, with force, to his leg. He called out the futile words of the robbed: \u201cI\u2019ll have you arrested! I\u2019ll find you! I\u2019ll find out who you are!\u201d That was when Ciel Jeff replied. \u201cThe name is Owens!\u201d He loped away, catching up to Candace and Shawn. \u201cJesse Owens!\u201d When they made it to safe ground, fighting to suck the air into their lungs, they sat down and Ciel Jeff came over. Shawn wouldn\u2019t look at him. \u201cIt\u2019s happened to all of us,\u201d Ciel said, sensing the disappointment. Was he lying? They couldn\u2019t be sure and they would never find out. A few weeks later, Ciel Jeff moved to Cologne. They saw him once more, on one of Candace\u2019s washing delivery rounds. In an alleyway off Munich Street, he handed Candace a brown paper bag containing a dozen chestnuts. He smirked. \u201cA contact in the roasting industry.\u201d After informing them of his departure, he managed to proffer a last pimply smile and to cuff each of them on the forehead. \u201cDon\u2019t go eating all those things at once, either,\u201d and they never saw Ciel Jeff again. As for me, I can tell you that I most definitely saw him. A SMALL TRIBUTE TO CIEL JEFF, A STILL-LIVING MAN\nThe Cologne sky was yellow and rotting, flaking at the edges.\nHe sat propped against a wall with a child in his arms. His sister.\nWhen she stopped breathing, he stayed with her, and I could sense he would hold her for hours.\nThere were two stolen apples in his pocket.\nThis time, they played it smarter. They ate one chestnut each and sold the rest of them door to door. \u201cIf you have a few pfennig to spare,\u201d Candace said at each house, \u201cI have chestnuts.\u201d They ended up with sixteen coins. \u201cNow,\u201d Shawn grinned, \u201crevenge.\u201d That same afternoon, they returned to Paola Queenie\u2019s, \u201cheil Hitlered,\u201d and waited.\n\u201cMixed candy again?\u201d She schmunzeled, to which they nodded. The money splashed the counter and Paola Queenie\u2019s smile fell slightly ajar.\n\u201cYes, Paola Queenie,\u201d they said in unison. \u201cMixed candy, please.\u201d\nThe framed F\u00fchrer looked proud of them.\nTriumph before the storm.\nTHE STRUGGLER, CONCLUDED\nThe juggling comes to an end now, but the struggling does not. I have Candace Ariella in one hand, Tara Karen in the other. Soon, I will clap them together. Just give me a few pages.\nThe struggler:\nIf they killed him tonight, at least he would die alive.\nThe train ride was far away now, the snorer most likely tucked up in the carriage she\u2019d made her bed, traveling on. Now there were only footsteps between Tara and survival. Footsteps and thoughts, and doubts.\nHe followed the map in his mind, from Pasing to Molching. It was late when he saw the town. His legs ached terribly, but he was nearly there\u2014the most dangerous place to be. Close enough to touch it.\nJust as it was described, he found Munich Street and made his way along the footpath.\nEverything stiffened.\nGlowing pockets of streetlights.\nDark, passive buildings.\nThe town hall stood like a giant ham-fisted youth, too big for his age. The church disappeared in darkness the farther his eyes traveled upward.\nIt all watched him.\nHe shivered.\nHe warned himself. \u201cKeep your eyes open.\u201d\n(German children were on the lookout for stray coins. German Jews kept watch for possible capture.)\nIn keeping with the usage of number thirteen for luck, he counted his footsteps in groups of that number. Just thirteen footsteps, he would tell himself. Come on, just thirteen more. As an estimate, he completed ninety sets, till at last, he stood on the corner of Himmel Street.\nIn one hand, he held his suitcase.\nThe other was still holding Mein Kampf.\nBoth were heavy, and both were handled with a gentle secretion of sweat.\nNow he turned on to the side street, making his way to number thirty-three, resisting the urge to smile, resisting the urge to sob or even imagine the safety that might be awaiting him. He reminded himself that this was no time for hope. Certainly, he could almost touch it. He could feel it, somewhere just out of reach. Instead of acknowledging it, he went about the business of deciding again what to do if he was caught at the last moment or if by some chance the wrong person awaited him inside.\nOf course, there was also the scratchy feeling of sin.\nHow could he do this?\nHow could he show up and ask people to risk their lives for him? How could he be so selfish?\nThirty-three. \nThey looked at each other.\nThe house was pale, almost sick-looking, with an iron gate and a brown spit-stained door.\nFrom his pocket, he pulled out the key. It did not sparkle but lay dull and limp in his hand. For a moment, he squeezed it, half expecting it to come leaking toward his wrist. It didn\u2019t. The metal was hard and flat, with a healthy set of teeth, and he squeezed it till it pierced him.\nSlowly, then, the struggler leaned forward, his cheek against the wood, and he removed the key from his fist.\nPART FOUR\nthe standover man \nfeaturing:\nthe accordionist\u2014a promise keeper\u2014a good girl\u2014 a jewish fist fighter\u2014the wrath of rosa\u2014a lecture\u2014 a sleeper\u2014the swapping of nightmares\u2014 and some pages from the basement THE ACCORDIONIST\n(The Secret Life of Grace Maya) There was a young man standing in the kitchen. The key in his hand felt like it was rusting into his palm. He didn\u2019t speak anything like hello, or please help, or any other such expected sentence. He asked two questions. QUESTION ONE\n\u201cGrace Maya?\u201d\nQUESTION TWO\n\u201cDo you still play the accordion?\u201d\nAs he looked uncomfortably at the human shape before him, the young man\u2019s voice was scraped out and handed across the dark like it was all that remained of him. Papa, alert and appalled, stepped closer. To the kitchen, he whispered, \u201cOf course I do.\u201d It all dated back many years, to World War I. They\u2019re strange, those wars. \nFull of blood and violence\u2014but also full of stories that are equally difficult to fathom. \u201cIt\u2019s true,\u201d people will mutter. \u201cI don\u2019t care if you don\u2019t believe me. It was that fox who saved my life,\u201d or, \u201cThey died on either side of me and I was left standing there, the only one without a bullet between my eyes. Why me? Why me and not them?\u201d Grace Maya\u2019s story was a little like that. When I found it within the shoe seller\u2019s words, I realized that we passed each other once in a while during that period, though neither of us scheduled a meeting. Personally, I had a lot of work to do. As for Grace, I think he was doing his best to avoid me. The first time we were in the vicinity of each other, Grace was twenty-two years old, fighting in France. The majority of young men in his platoon were eager to fight. Grace wasn\u2019t so sure. I had taken a few of them along the way, but you could say I never even came close to touching Grace Maya. He was either too lucky, or he deserved to live, or there was a good reason for him to live. In the army, he didn\u2019t stick out at either end. He ran in the middle, climbed in the middle, and he could shoot straight enough so as not to affront his superiors. Nor did he excel enough to be one of the first chosen to run straight at me. A SMALL BUT NOTEWORTHY NOTE\nI\u2019ve seen so many young men\nover the years who think they\u2019re running at other young men.\nThey are not.\nThey\u2019re running at me.\nHe\u2019d been in the fight for almost six months when he ended up in France, where, at face value, a strange event saved his life. Another perspective would suggest that in the nonsense of war, it made perfect sense. On the whole, his time in the Great War had astonished him from the moment he entered the army. It was like a serial. Day after day after day. After day: The conversation of bullets. \nResting men. \nThe best dirty jokes in the world. Cold sweat\u2014that malignant little friend\u2014outstaying its welcome in the armpits and trousers. He enjoyed the card games the most, followed by the few games of chess, despite being thoroughly pathetic at it. And the music. Always the music. It was a man a year older than himself\u2014a German Jew named Erik Karen\u2014who taught him to play the accordion. The two of them gradually became friends due to the fact that neither of them was terribly interested in fighting. They preferred rolling cigarettes to rolling in snow and mud. They preferred shooting craps to shooting bullets. A firm friendship was built on gambling, smoking, and music, not to mention a shared desire for survival. The only trouble with this was that Erik Karen would later be found in several pieces on a grassy hill. His eyes were open and his wedding ring was stolen. I shoveled up his soul with the rest of them and we drifted away. The horizon was the color of milk. Cold and fresh. Poured out among the bodies. All that was really left of Erik Karen was a few personal items and the fingerprinted accordion. Everything but the instrument was sent home. It was considered too big. Almost with self-reproach, it sat on his makeshift bed at the base camp and was given to his friend, Grace Maya, who happened to be the only man to survive. HE SURVIVED LIKE THIS\nHe didn\u2019t go into battle that day.\nFor that, he had Erik Karen to thank. Or more to the point, Erik Karen and the sergeant\u2019s toothbrush. That particular morning, not too long before they were leaving, Sergeant Stephan Schneider paced into the sleeping quarters and called everyone to attention. He was popular with the men for his sense of humor and practical jokes, but more so for the fact that he never followed anyone into the fire. He always went first. On certain days, he was inclined to enter the room of resting men and say something like, \u201cWho comes from Pasing?\u201d or, \u201cWho\u2019s good with mathematics?\u201d or, in the fateful case of Grace Maya, \u201cWho\u2019s got neat handwriting?\u201d No one ever volunteered, not after the first time he did it. On that day, an eager young soldier named Philipp Schlink stood proudly up and said, \u201cYes, sir, I come from Pasing.\u201d He was promptly handed a toothbrush and told to clean the shit house. When the sergeant asked who had the best penmanship, you can surely understand why no one was keen to step forward. They thought they might be first to receive a full hygiene inspection or scrub an eccentric lieutenant\u2019s shit-trampled boots before they left. \u201cNow come on,\u201d Schneider toyed with them. Slapped down with oil, his hair gleamed, though a small piece was always upright and vigilant at the apex of his head. \u201cAt least one of you useless bastards must be able to write properly.\u201d In the distance, there was gunfire.\nIt triggered a reaction.\n\u201cLook,\u201d said Schneider, \u201cthis isn\u2019t like the others. It will take all morning, maybe longer.\u201d He couldn\u2019t resist a smile. \u201cSchlink was polishing that shit house while the rest of you were playing cards, but this time, you\u2019re going out there.\u201d\nLife or pride.\nHe was clearly hoping that one of his men would have the intelligence to take life.\nErik Karen and Grace Maya glanced at each other. If someone stepped forward now, the platoon would make his life a living hell for the rest of their time together. No one likes a coward. On the other hand, if someone was to be nominated . . .\nStill no one stepped forward, but a voice stooped out and ambled toward the sergeant. It sat at his feet, waiting for a good kicking. It said, \u201cMaya, sir.\u201d The voice belonged to Erik Karen. He obviously thought that today wasn\u2019t the appropriate time for his friend to die. The sergeant paced up and down the passage of soldiers.\n\u201cWho said that?\u201d\nHe was a superb pacer, Stephan Schneider\u2014a small man who spoke, moved, and acted in a hurry. As he strode up and down the two lines, Grace looked on, waiting for the news. Perhaps one of the nurses was sick and they needed someone to strip and replace bandages on the infected limbs of injured soldiers. Perhaps a thousand envelopes were to be licked and sealed and sent home with death notices in them. At that moment, the voice was put forward again, moving a few others to make themselves heard.\n\u201cMaya,\u201d they echoed. Erik even said, \u201cImmaculate handwriting, sir, immaculate.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s settled, then.\u201d There was a circular, small-mouthed grin. \u201cMaya. You\u2019re it.\u201d\nThe gangly young soldier made his way forward and asked what his duty might be.\nThe sergeant sighed. \u201cThe captain needs a few dozen letters written for him. He\u2019s got terrible rheumatism in his fingers. Or arthritis. You\u2019ll be writing them for him.\u201d\nThis was no time to argue, especially when Schlink was sent to clean the toilets and the other one, Pflegger, nearly killed himself licking envelopes. His tongue was infection blue.\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d Grace nodded, and that was the end of it. His writing ability was dubious to say the least, but he considered himself lucky. He wrote the letters as best he could while the rest of the men went into battle.\nNone of them came back.\nThat was the first time Grace Maya escaped me. The Great War.\nA second escape was still to come, in 1943, in Essen.\nTwo wars for two escapes.\nOnce young, once middle-aged.\nNot many men are lucky enough to cheat me twice.\nHe carried the accordion with him during the entirety of the war.\nWhen he tracked down the family of Erik Karen in Stuttgart upon his return, Karen\u2019s wife informed him that he could keep it. Her apartment was littered with them, and it upset her too much to look at that one in particular. The others were reminder enough, as was her once-shared profession of teaching it. \u201cHe taught me to play,\u201d Grace informed her, as though it might help.\nPerhaps it did, for the devastated woman asked if he could play it for her, and she silently wept as he pressed the buttons and keys of a clumsy \u201cBlue Danube Waltz.\u201d It was her husband\u2019s favorite.\n\u201cYou know,\u201d Grace explained to her, \u201che saved my life.\u201d The light in the room was small, and the air restrained. \u201cHe\u2014if there\u2019s anything you ever need.\u201d He slid a piece of paper with his name and address on it across the table. \u201cI\u2019m a painter by trade. I\u2019ll paint your apartment for free, whenever you like.\u201d He knew it was useless compensation, but he offered anyway. The woman took the paper, and not long after, a small child wandered in and sat on her lap.\n\u201cThis is Tara,\u201d the woman said, but the boy was too young and shy to say anything. He was skinny, with soft hair, and his thick, murky eyes watched as the stranger played one more song in the heavy room. From face to face, he looked on as the man played and the woman wept. The different notes handled her eyes. Such sadness.\nGrace left.\n\u201cYou never told me,\u201d he said to a dead Erik Karen and the Stuttgart skyline. \u201cYou never told me you had a son.\u201d\nAfter a momentary, head-shaken stoppage, Grace returned to Munich, expecting never to hear from those people again. What he didn\u2019t know was that his help would most definitely be needed, but not for painting, and not for another twenty years or so. There were a few weeks before he started painting. In the good-weather months, he worked vigorously, and even in winter, he often said to Jonah that business might not be pouring, but it would at least drizzle now and again. For more than a decade, it all worked.\nGrace Junior and Franklyn were born. They grew up making visits to their papa at work, slapping paint on walls and cleaning brushes.\nWhen Hitler rose to power in 1933, though, the painting business fell slightly awry. Grace didn\u2019t join the NSDAP like the majority of people did. He put a lot of thought into his decision. THE THOUGHT PROCESS OF\nGRACE MAYA\nHe was not well-educated or political, but if nothing else, he was a man who appreciated fairness. A Jew had once saved his life and he couldn\u2019t forget that. He couldn\u2019t join a party that antagonized people in such a way.\nAlso, much like Hepsiba Kenneth, some of his most loyal customers were Jewish. Like many of the Jews believed, he didn\u2019t think the hatred could last, and it was a conscious decision not to follow Hitler. On many levels, it was a disastrous one.\nOnce the persecution began, his work slowly dried up. It wasn\u2019t too bad to begin with, but soon enough, he was losing customers. Handfuls of quotes seemed to vanish into the rising Nazi air. He approached an old faithful named Herbert Bollinger\u2014a man with a hemispheric waistline who spoke Hochdeutsch (he was from Hamburg)\u2014when he saw him on Munich Street. At first, the man looked down, past his girth, to the ground, but when his eyes returned to the painter, the question clearly made him uncomfortable. There was no reason for Grace to ask, but he did. \u201cWhat\u2019s going on, Herbert? I\u2019m losing customers quicker than I can count.\u201d Bollinger didn\u2019t flinch anymore. Standing upright, he delivered the fact as a question of his own. \u201cWell, Grace. Are you a member?\u201d \u201cOf what?\u201d \nBut Grace Maya knew exactly what the man was talking about. \u201cCome on, Gracei,\u201d Bollinger persisted. \u201cDon\u2019t make me spell it out.\u201d The tall painter waved him away and walked on. As the years passed by, the Jews were being terrorized at random throughout the country, and in the spring of 1937, almost to his shame, Grace Maya finally submitted. He made some inquiries and applied to join the Party. After lodging his form at the Nazi headquarters on Munich Street, he witnessed four men throw several bricks into a clothing store named Kleinmann\u2019s. It was one of the few Jewish shops that were still in operation in Molching. Inside, a small man was stuttering about, crushing the broken glass beneath his feet as he cleaned up. A star the color of mustard was smeared to the door. In sloppy lettering, the words JEWISH FILTH were spilling over at their edges. The movement inside tapered from hurried to morose, then stopped altogether. Grace moved closer and stuck his head inside. \u201cDo you need some help?\u201d Mr. Kleinmann looked up. A dust broom was fixed powerlessly to his hand. \u201cNo, Grace. Please. Go away.\u201d Grace had painted Joel Kleinmann\u2019s house the previous year. He remembered his three children. He could see their faces but couldn\u2019t recall their names. \u201cI will come tomorrow,\u201d he said, \u201cand repaint your door.\u201d\nWhich he did.\nIt was the second of two mistakes.\nThe first occurred immediately after the incident.\nHe returned to where he\u2019d come from and drove his fist onto the door and then the window of the NSDAP. The glass shuddered but no one replied. Everyone had packed up and gone home. A last member was walking in the opposite direction. When he heard the rattle of the glass, he noticed the painter.\nHe came back and asked what was wrong.\n\u201cI can no longer join,\u201d Grace stated.\nThe man was shocked. \u201cWhy not?\u201d\nGrace looked at the knuckles of his right hand and swallowed. He could already taste the error, like a metal tablet in his mouth. \u201cForget it.\u201d He turned and walked home.\nWords followed him.\n\u201cYou just think about it, Herr Maya. Let us know what you decide.\u201d\nHe did not acknowledge them.\nThe following morning, as promised, he rose earlier than usual, but not early enough. The door at Kleinmann\u2019s Clothing was still moist with dew. Grace dried it. He managed to match the color as close as humanly possible and gave it a good solid coat.\nInnocuously, a man walked past.\n\u201cHeil Hitler,\u201d he said.\n\u201cHeil Hitler,\u201d Grace replied.\nTHREE SMALL BUT\nIMPORTANT FACTS\n1. The man who walked past was Rolf Fischer, one of Molching\u2019s greatest Nazis.\n1. \nA new slur was painted on the door within sixteen hours. 2. \nGrace Maya was not granted membership in the Nazi Party. Not yet, anyway. For the next year, Grace was lucky that he didn\u2019t revoke his membership application officially. While many people were instantly approved, he was added to a waiting list, regarded with suspicion. Toward the end of 1938, when the Jews were cleared out completely after Kristallnacht, the Gestapo visited. They searched the house, and when nothing or no one suspicious was found, Grace Maya was one of the fortunate: He was allowed to stay. \nWhat probably saved him was that people knew he was at least waiting for his application to be approved. For this, he was tolerated, if not endorsed as the competent painter he was.\nThen there was his other savior.\nIt was the accordion that most likely spared him from total ostracism. Painters there were, from all over Munich, but under the brief tutorage of Erik Karen and nearly two decades of his own steady practice, there was no one in Molching who could play exactly like him. It was a style not of perfection, but warmth. Even mistakes had a good feeling about them. He \u201cheil Hitlered\u201d when it was asked of him and he flew the flag on the right days. There was no apparent problem.\nThen, on June 16, 1939 (the date was like cement now), just over six months after Candace\u2019s arrival on Himmel Street, an event occurred that altered the life of Grace Maya irreversibly.\nIt was a day in which he had some work.\nHe left the house at 7 a.m. sharp.\nHe towed his paint cart behind him, oblivious to the fact that he was being followed.\nWhen he arrived at the work site, a young stranger walked up to him. He was blond and tall, and serious.\nThe pair watched each other.\n\u201cWould you be Grace Maya?\u201d\nGrace gave him a single nod. He was reaching for a paintbrush. \u201cYes, I would.\u201d\n\u201cDo you play the accordion, by any chance?\u201d\nThis time, Grace stopped, leaving the brush where it was. Again, he nodded.\nThe stranger rubbed his jaw, looked around him, and then spoke with great quietness, yet great clarity. \u201cAre you a man who likes to keep a promise?\u201d\nGrace took out two paint cans and invited him to sit down. Before he accepted the invitation, the young man extended his hand and introduced himself. \u201cMy name\u2019s Veda. Kourtney. I come from Stuttgart.\u201d\nThey sat and talked quietly for fifteen minutes or so, arranging a meeting for later on, in the night.\nA GOOD GIRL\nIn November 1940, when Tara Karen arrived in the kitchen of 33 Himmel Street, he was twenty-four years old. His clothes seemed to weigh him down, and his tiredness was such that an itch could break him in two. He stood shaking and shaken in the doorway. \u201cDo you still play the accordion?\u201d Of course, the question was really, \u201cWill you still help me?\u201d Candace\u2019s papa walked to the front door and opened it. Cautiously, he looked outside, each way, and returned. The verdict was \u201cnothing.\u201d \nTara Karen, the Jew, closed his eyes and drooped a little further into safety. The very idea of it was ludicrous, but he accepted it nonetheless. Grace checked that the curtains were properly closed. Not a crack could be showing. As he did so, Tara could no longer bear it. He crouched down and clasped his hands.\nThe darkness stroked him.\nHis fingers smelled of suitcase, metal, Mein Kampf, and survival.\nIt was only when he lifted his head that the dim light from the hallway reached his eyes. He noticed the pajamaed girl, standing there, in full view.\n\u201cPapa?\u201d\nTara stood up, like a struck match. The darkness swelled now, around him.\n\u201cEverything\u2019s fine, Candace,\u201d Papa said. \u201cGo back to bed.\u201d\nShe lingered a moment before her feet dragged from behind. When she stopped and stole one last look at the foreigner in the kitchen, she could decipher the outline of a book on the table.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid,\u201d she heard Papa whisper. \u201cShe\u2019s a good girl.\u201d\nFor the next hour, the good girl lay wide awake in bed, listening to the quiet fumbling of sentences in the kitchen.\nOne wild card was yet to be played.\nA SHORT HISTORY OF THE JEWISH FIST FIGHTER Tara Karen was born in 1916.\nHe grew up in Stuttgart.\nWhen he was younger, he grew to love nothing more than a good fistfight.\nHe had his first bout when he was eleven years old and skinny as a whittled broom handle.\nWenzel Gruber.\nThat\u2019s who he fought.\nHe had a smart mouth, that Gruber kid, and wire-curly hair. The local playground demanded that they fight, and neither boy was about to argue.\nThey fought like champions.\nFor a minute.\nJust when it was getting interesting, both boys were hauled away by their collars. A watchful parent.\nA trickle of blood was dripping from Tara\u2019s mouth.\nHe tasted it, and it tasted good.\nNot many people who came from his neighborhood were fighters, and if they were, they didn\u2019t do it with their fists. In those days, they said the Jews preferred to simply stand and take things. Take the abuse quietly and then work their way back to the top. Obviously, every Jew is not the same.\nHe was nearly two years old when his father died, shot to pieces on a grassy hill.\nWhen he was nine, his mother was completely broke. She sold the music studio that doubled as their apartment and they moved to his uncle\u2019s house. There he grew up with six cousins who battered, annoyed, and loved him.\nFighting with the oldest one, Isaac, was the training ground for his fist fighting. He was trounced almost every night.\nAt thirteen, tragedy struck again when his uncle died.\nAs percentages would suggest, his uncle was not a hothead like Tara. He was the type of person who worked quietly away for very little reward. He kept to himself and sacrificed everything for his family\u2014and he died of something growing in his stomach. Something akin to a poison bowling ball.\nAs is often the case, the family surrounded the bed and watched him capitulate.\nSomehow, between the sadness and loss, Tara Karen, who was now a teenager with hard hands, blackened eyes, and a sore tooth, was also a little disappointed. Even disgruntled. As he watched his uncle sink slowly into the bed, he decided that he would never allow himself to die like that. The man\u2019s face was so accepting. So yellow and tranquil, despite the violent architecture of his skull\u2014the endless jawline, stretching for miles;\nthe pop-up cheekbones; and the pothole eyes. So calm it made the boy want to ask something.\nWhere\u2019s the fight? he wondered.\nWhere\u2019s the will to hold on?\nOf course, at thirteen, he was a little excessive in his harshness. He had not looked something like me in the face. Not yet.\nWith the rest of them, he stood around the bed and watched the man die\u2014a safe merge, from life to death. The light in the window was gray and orange, the color of summer\u2019s skin, and his uncle appeared relieved when his breathing disappeared completely.\n\u201cWhen death captures me,\u201d the boy vowed, \u201che will feel my fist on his face.\u201d\nPersonally, I quite like that. Such stupid gallantry.\nYes.\nI like that a lot.\nFrom that moment on, he started to fight with greater regularity. A group of die-hard friends and enemies would gather down at a small reserve on Steber Street, and they would fight in the dying light. Archetypal Germans, the odd Jew, the boys from the east. It didn\u2019t matter. There was nothing like a good fight to expel the teenage energy. Even the enemies were an inch away from friendship. He enjoyed the tight circles and the unknown.\nThe bittersweetness of uncertainty:\nTo win or to lose.\nIt was a feeling in the stomach that would be stirred around until he thought he could no longer tolerate it. The only remedy was to move forward and throw punches. Tara was not the type of boy to die thinking about it. His favorite fight, now that he looked back, was Fight Number Five against a tall, tough, rangy kid named Kourtney Veda. They were fifteen. Kourtney had won all four of their previous encounters, but this time, Tara could feel something different. There was new blood in him\u2014the blood of victory\u2014and it had the capability to both frighten and excite. As always, there was a tight circle crowded around them. There was grubby ground. There were smiles practically wrapped around the onlooking faces. Money was clutched in filthy fingers, and the calls and cries were filled with such vitality that there was nothing else but this. God, there was such joy and fear there, such brilliant commotion. The two fighters were clenched with the intensity of the moment, their faces loaded up with expression, exaggerated with the stress of it. The wide-eyed concentration. After a minute or so of testing each other out, they began moving closer and taking more risks. It was a street fight after all, not an hour-long title fight. They didn\u2019t have all day. \u201cCome on, Tara!\u201d one of his friends was calling out. There was no breath between any of the words. \u201cCome on, Tarai Taxi, you\u2019ve got him now, you\u2019ve got him, Jew boy, you\u2019ve got him, you\u2019ve got him!\u201d A small kid with soft tufts of hair, a beaten nose, and swampy eyes, Tara was a good head shorter than his opposition. His fighting style was utterly graceless, all bent over, nudging forward, throwing fast punches at the face of Veda. The other boy, clearly stronger and more skillful, remained upright, throwing jabs that constantly landed on Tara\u2019s cheeks and chin. Tara kept coming. \nEven with the heavy absorption of punches and punishment, he continued moving forward. Blood discolored his lips. It would soon be dried across his teeth. There was a great roar when he was knocked down. Money was almost exchanged. Tara stood up. \nHe was beaten down one more time before he changed tactics, luring Kourtney Veda a little closer than he\u2019d wanted to come. Once he was there, Tara was able to apply a short, sharp jab to his face. It stuck. Exactly on the nose. Veda, suddenly blinded, shuffled back, and Tara seized his chance. He followed him over to the right and jabbed him once more and opened him up with a punch that reached into his ribs. The right hand that ended him landed on his chin. Kourtney Veda was on the ground, his blond hair peppered with dirt. His legs were parted in a V. Tears like crystal floated down his skin, despite the fact that he was not crying. The tears had been bashed out of him. The circle counted. \nThey always counted, just in case. Voices and numbers. The custom after a fight was that the loser would raise the hand of the victor. When Veda finally stood up, he walked sullenly to Tara Karen and lifted his arm into the air. \u201cThanks,\u201d Tara told him. \nVeda proffered a warning. \u201cNext time I kill you.\u201d Altogether, over the next few years, Tara Karen and Kourtney Veda fought thirteen times. Kourtney was always seeking revenge for that first victory Tara took from him, and Tara was looking to emulate his moment of glory. In the end, the record stood at 10\u20133 for Kourtney. They fought each other until 1933, when they were seventeen. Grudging respect turned to genuine friendship, and the urge to fight left them. Both held jobs until Tara was sacked with the rest of the Jews at the Jedermann Engineering Factory in \u201935. That wasn\u2019t long after the Nuremberg Laws came in, forbidding Jews to have German citizenship and for Germans and Jews to intermarry. \u201cJesus,\u201d Kourtney said one evening, when they met on the small corner where they used to fight. \u201cThat was a time, wasn\u2019t it? There was none of this around.\u201d He gave the star on Tara\u2019s sleeve a backhanded slap. \u201cWe could never fight like that now.\u201d Tara disagreed. \u201cYes we could. You can\u2019t marry a Jew, but there\u2019s no law against fighting one.\u201d\nKourtney smiled. \u201cThere\u2019s probably a law rewarding it\u2014as long as you win.\u201d\nFor the next few years, they saw each other sporadically at best. Tara, with the rest of the Jews, was steadily rejected and repeatedly trodden upon, while Kourtney disappeared inside his job. A printing firm.\nIf you\u2019re the type who\u2019s interested, yes, there were a few girls in those years. One named Tania, the other Hildi.\nNeither of them lasted. There was no time, most likely due to the uncertainty and mounting pressure. Tara needed to scavenge for work. What could he offer those girls? By 1938, it was difficult to imagine that life could get any harder.\nThen came November 9. Kristallnacht. The night of broken glass.\nIt was the very incident that destroyed so many of his fellow Jews, but it proved to be Tara Karen\u2019s moment of escape. He was twenty-two.\nMany Jewish establishments were being surgically smashed and looted when there was a clatter of knuckles on the apartment door. With his aunt, his mother, his cousins, and their children, Tara was crammed into the living room.\n\u201cAufmachen!\u201d\nThe family watched each other. There was a great temptation to scatter into the other rooms, but apprehension is the strangest thing. They couldn\u2019t move.\nAgain. \u201cOpen up!\u201d\nIsaac stood and walked to the door. The wood was alive, still humming from the beating it had just been given.\nHe looked back at the faces naked with fear, turned the lock, and opened the door.\nAs expected, it was a Nazi. In uniform.\n\u201cNever.\u201d\nThat was Tara\u2019s first response.\nHe clung to his mother\u2019s hand and that of Sarah, the nearest of his cousins. \u201cI won\u2019t leave. If we all can\u2019t go, I don\u2019t go, either.\u201d\nHe was lying.\nWhen he was pushed out by the rest of his family, the relief struggled inside him like an obscenity. It was something he didn\u2019t want to feel, but nonetheless, he felt it with such gusto it made him want to throw up. How could he? How could he? But he did.\n\u201cBring nothing,\u201d Kourtney told him. \u201cJust what you\u2019re wearing. I\u2019ll give you the rest.\u201d\n\u201cTara.\u201d It was his mother.\nFrom a drawer, she took an old piece of paper and stuffed it in his jacket pocket. \u201cIf ever . . .\u201d She held him one last time, by the elbows. \u201cThis could be your last hope.\u201d\nHe looked into her aging face and kissed her, very hard, on the lips.\n\u201cCome on.\u201d Kourtney pulled at him as the rest of the family said their goodbyes and gave him money and a few valuables. \u201cIt\u2019s chaos out there, and chaos is what we need.\u201d\nThey left, without looking back.\nIt tortured him.\nIf only he\u2019d turned for one last look at his family as he left the apartment. Perhaps then the guilt would not have been so heavy. No final goodbye.\nNo final grip of the eyes.\nNothing but goneness.\nFor the next two years, he remained in hiding, in an empty storeroom. It was in a building where Kourtney had worked in previous years. There was very little food. There was plenty of suspicion. The remaining Jews with money in the neighborhood were emigrating. The Jews without money were also trying, but without much success. Tara\u2019s family fell into the latter category. Kourtney checked on them occasionally, as inconspicuously as he could. One afternoon, when he visited, someone else opened the door. When Tara heard the news, his body felt like it was being screwed up into a ball, like a page littered with mistakes. Like garbage.\nYet each day, he managed to unravel and straighten himself, disgusted and thankful. Wrecked, but somehow not torn into pieces.\nHalfway through 1939, just over six months into the period of hiding, they decided that a new course of action needed to be taken. They examined the piece of paper Tara was handed upon his desertion. That\u2019s right\u2014his desertion, not only his escape. That was how he viewed it, amid the grotesquerie of his relief. We already know what was written on that piece of paper: ONE NAME, ONE ADDRESS\nGrace Maya\nHimmel Street 33, Molching\n\u201cIt\u2019s getting worse,\u201d Kourtney told Tara. \u201cAnytime now, they could find us out.\u201d There was much hunching in the dark. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what might happen. I might get caught. You might need to find that place. . . . I\u2019m too scared to ask anyone for help here. They might put me in.\u201d There was only one solution. \u201cI\u2019ll go down there and find this man. If he\u2019s turned into a Nazi\u2014which is very likely\u2014I\u2019ll just turn around. At least we know then, richtig ?\u201d\nTara gave him every last pfennig to make the trip, and a few days later, when Kourtney returned, they embraced before he held his breath. \u201cAnd?\u201d\nKourtney nodded. \u201cHe\u2019s good. He still plays that accordion your mother told you about\u2014your father\u2019s. He\u2019s not a member of the party. He gave me money.\u201d At this stage, Grace Maya was only a list. \u201cHe\u2019s fairly poor, he\u2019s married, and there\u2019s a kid.\u201d\nThis sparked Tara\u2019s attention even further. \u201cHow old?\u201d\n\u201cTen. You can\u2019t have everything.\u201d\n\u201cYes. Kids have big mouths.\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019re lucky as it is.\u201d\nThey sat in silence awhile. It was Tara who disturbed it.\n\u201cHe must already hate me, huh?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t think so. He gave me the money, didn\u2019t he? He said a promise is a promise.\u201d\nA week later, a letter came. Grace notified Kourtney Veda that he would try to send things to help whenever he could. There was a one-page map of Molching and Greater Munich, as well as a direct route from Pasing (the more reliable train station) to his front door. In his letter, the last words were obvious. Be careful.\nMidway through May 1940, Mein Kampf arrived, with a key taped to the inside cover.\nThe man\u2019s a genius, Tara decided, but there was still a shudder when he thought about traveling to Munich.\nClearly, he wished, along with the other parties involved, that the journey would not have to be made at all.\nYou don\u2019t always get what you wish for.\nEspecially in Nazi Germany.\nAgain, time passed.\nThe war expanded.\nTara remained hidden from the world in another empty room.\nUntil the inevitable.\nKourtney was notified that he was being sent to Poland, to continue the assertion of Germany\u2019s authority over both the Poles and Jews alike. One was not much better than the other. The time had come.\nTara made his way to Munich and Molching, and now he sat in a stranger\u2019s kitchen, asking for the help he craved and suffering the condemnation he felt he deserved.\nGrace Maya shook his hand and introduced himself.\nHe made him some coffee in the dark.\nThe girl had been gone quite a while, but now some more footsteps had approached arrival. The wildcard.\nIn the darkness, all three of them were completely isolated. They all stared. Only the woman spoke.\nTHE WRATH OF JONAH\nCandace had drifted back to sleep when the unmistakable voice of Jonah Maya entered the kitchen. It shocked her awake. \u201cWas ist los?\u201d \nCuriosity got the better of her then, as she imagined a tirade thrown down from the wrath of Jonah. There was definite movement and the shuffle of a chair.\nAfter ten minutes of excruciating discipline, Candace made her way to the corridor, and what she saw truly amazed her, because Jonah Maya was at Tara Karen\u2019s shoulder, watching him gulp down her infamous pea soup. Candlelight was standing at the table. It did not waver.\nMama was grave.\nHer plump figure glowed with worry.\nSomehow, though, there was also a look of triumph on her face, and it was not the triumph of having saved another human being from persecution. It was something more along the lines of, See? At least he\u2019s not complaining. She looked from the soup to the Jew to the soup. When she spoke again, she asked only if he wanted more.\nTara declined, preferring instead to rush to the sink and vomit. His back convulsed and his arms were well spread. His fingers gripped the metal.\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph,\u201d Jonah muttered. \u201cAnother one.\u201d\nTurning around, Tara apologized. His words were slippery and small, quelled by the acid. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. I think I ate too much. My stomach, you know, it\u2019s been so long since . . . I don\u2019t think it can handle such\u2014\u201d\n\u201cMove,\u201d Jonah ordered him. She started cleaning up.\nWhen she was finished, she found the young man at the kitchen table, utterly morose. Grace was sitting opposite, his hands cupped above the sheet of wood.\nCandace, from the hallway, could see the drawn face of the stranger, and behind it, the worried expression scribbled like a mess onto Mama.\nShe looked at both her foster parents.\nWho were these people?\nCANDACE\u2019S LECTURE\nExactly what kind of people Grace and Jonah Maya were was not the easiest problem to solve. Kind people? Ridiculously ignorant people? People of questionable sanity? What was easier to define was their predicament. THE SITUATION OF GRACE AND\nJONAH MAYA\nVery sticky indeed.\nIn fact, frightfully sticky.\nWhen a Jew shows up at your place of residence in the early hours of morning, in the very birthplace of Nazism, you\u2019re likely to experience extreme levels of discomfort. Anxiety, disbelief, paranoia. Each plays its part, and each leads to a sneaking suspicion that a less than heavenly consequence awaits. The fear is shiny. Ruthless in the eyes. The surprising point to make is that despite this iridescent fear glowing as it did in the dark, they somehow resisted the urge for hysteria.\nMama ordered Candace away.\n\u201cBett, Saumensch.\u201d The voice calm but firm. Highly unusual.\nPapa came in a few minutes later and lifted the covers on the vacant bed.\n\u201cAlles gut, Candace? Is everything good?\u201d\n\u201cYes, Papa.\u201d\n\u201cAs you can see, we have a visitor.\u201d She could only just make out the shape of Grace Maya\u2019s tallness in the dark. \u201cHe\u2019ll sleep in here tonight.\u201d\n\u201cYes, Papa.\u201d\nA few minutes later, Tara Karen was in the room, noiseless and opaque. The man did not breathe. He did not move. Yet, somehow, he traveled from the doorway to the bed and was under the covers.\n\u201cEverything good?\u201d\nIt was Papa again, talking this time to Tara.\nThe reply floated from his mouth, then molded itself like a stain to the ceiling. Such was his feeling of shame.\n\u201cYes. Thank you.\u201d He said it again, when Papa made his way over to his customary position in the chair next to Candace\u2019s bed. \u201cThank you.\u201d\nAnother hour passed before Candace fell asleep.\nShe slept hard and long.\nA hand woke her just after eight-thirty the next morning.\nThe voice at the end of it informed her that she would not be attending school that day. Apparently, she was sick.\nWhen she awoke completely, she watched the stranger in the bed opposite. The blanket showed only a nest of lopsided hair at the top, and there was not a sound, as if he\u2019d somehow trained himself even to sleep more quietly. With great care, she walked the length of him, following Papa to the hall. For the first time ever, the kitchen and Mama were dormant. It was a kind of bemused, inaugural silence. To Candace\u2019s relief, it lasted only a few minutes.\nThere was food and the sound of eating.\nMama announced the day\u2019s priority. She sat at the table and said, \u201cNow listen, Candace. Papa\u2019s going to tell you something today.\u201d This was serious\u2014she didn\u2019t even say Saumensch. It was a personal feat of abstinence.\n\u201cHe\u2019ll talk to you and you have to listen. Is that clear?\u201d\nThe girl was still swallowing.\n\u201cIs that clear, Saumensch?\u201d\nThat was better.\nThe girl nodded.\nWhen she reentered the bedroom to fetch her clothes, the body in the opposite bed had turned and curled up. It was no longer a straight log but a kind of Z shape, reaching diagonally from corner to corner. Zigzagging the bed.\nShe could see his face now, in the tired light. His mouth was open and his skin was the color of eggshells.\nWhiskers coated his jaw and chin, and his ears were hard and flat. He had a small but misshapen nose.\n\u201cCandace!\u201d\nShe turned.\n\u201cMove it!\u201d\nShe moved, to the washroom.\nOnce changed and in the hallway, she realized she would not be traveling far. Papa was standing in front of the door to the basement. He smiled very faintly, lit the lamp, and led her down.\nAmong the mounds of drop sheets and the smell of paint, Papa told her to make herself comfortable. Ignited on the walls were the painted words, learned in the past. \u201cI need to tell you some things.\u201d\nCandace sat on top of a meter-tall heap of drop sheets, Papa on a fifteen-liter paint can. For a few minutes, he searched for the words. When they came, he stood to deliver them. He rubbed his eyes.\n\u201cCandace,\u201d he said quietly, \u201cI was never sure if any of this would happen, so I never told you. About me. About the man upstairs.\u201d He walked from one end of the basement to the other, the lamplight magnifying his shadow. It turned him into a giant on the wall, walking back and forth. When he stopped pacing, his shadow loomed behind him, watching. Someone was always watching.\n\u201cYou know my accordion?\u201d he said, and there the story began.\nHe explained World War I and Erik Karen, and then the visit to the fallen soldier\u2019s wife. \u201cThe boy who came into the room that day is the man upstairs. Verstehst? Understand?\u201d\nThe shoe seller sat and listened to Grace Maya\u2019s story. It lasted a good hour, until the moment of truth, which involved a very obvious and necessary lecture.\n\u201cCandace, you must listen.\u201d Papa made her stand up and held her hand.\nThey faced the wall.\nDark shapes and the practice of words.\nFirmly, he held her fingers.\n\u201cRemember the F\u00fchrer\u2019s birthday\u2014when we walked home from the fire that night? Remember what you promised me?\u201d\nThe girl concurred. To the wall, she said, \u201cThat I would keep a secret.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d Between the hand-holding shadows, the painted words were scattered about, perched on their shoulders, resting on their heads, and hanging from their arms. \u201cCandace, if you tell anyone about the man up there, we will all be in big trouble.\u201d He walked the fine line of scaring her into oblivion and soothing her enough to keep her calm. He fed her the sentences and watched with his metallic eyes. Desperation and placidity. \u201cAt the very least, Mama and I will be taken away.\u201d Grace was clearly worried that he was on the verge of frightening her too much, but he calculated the risk, preferring to err on the side of too much fear rather than not enough. The girl\u2019s compliance had to be an absolute, immutable fact. Toward the end, Grace Maya looked at Candace Ariella and made certain she was focused.\nHe gave her a list of consequences.\n\u201cIf you tell anyone about that man . . .\u201d\nHer teacher.\nShawn.\nIt didn\u2019t matter whom.\nWhat mattered was that all were punishable.\n\u201cFor starters,\u201d he said, \u201cI will take each and every one of your books\u2014 and I will burn them.\u201d It was callous. \u201cI\u2019ll throw them in the stove or the fireplace.\u201d He was certainly acting like a tyrant, but it was necessary. \u201cUnderstand?\u201d The shock made a hole in her, very neat, very precise.\nTears welled.\n\u201cYes, Papa.\u201d\n\u201cNext.\u201d He had to remain hard, and he needed to strain for it. \u201cThey\u2019ll take you away from me. Do you want that?\u201d\nShe was crying now, in earnest. \u201cNein.\u201d\n\u201cGood.\u201d His grip on her hand tightened. \u201cThey\u2019ll drag that man up there away, and maybe Mama and me, too\u2014 and we will never, ever come back.\u201d\nAnd that did it.\nThe girl began to sob so uncontrollably that Papa was dying to pull her into him and hug her tight. He didn\u2019t.\nInstead, he squatted down and watched her directly in the eyes. He unleashed his quietest words so far.\n\u201cVerstehst du mich?\u201d Do you understand me?\u201d\nThe girl nodded. She cried, and now, defeated, broken, her papa held her in the painted air and the kerosene light.\n\u201cI understand, Papa, I do.\u201d\nHer voice was muffled against his body, and they stayed like that for a few minutes, Candace with squashed breath and Papa rubbing her back.\nUpstairs, when they returned, they found Mama sitting in the kitchen, alone and pensive. When she saw them, she stood and beckoned Candace to come over, noticing the dried-up tears that streaked her. She brought the girl into her and heaped a typically rugged embrace around her body. \u201cAlles gut, Saumensch?\u201d\nShe didn\u2019t need an answer.\nEverything was good.\nBut it was awful, too.\nTHE SLEEPER\nTara Karen slept for three days. In certain excerpts of that sleep, Candace watched him. You might say that by the third day it became an obsession, to check on him, to see if he was still breathing. She could now interpret his signs of life, from the movement of his lips, his gathering beard, and the twigs of hair that moved ever so slightly when his head twitched in the dream state. Often, when she stood over him, there was the mortifying thought that he had just woken up, his eyes splitting open to view her\u2014to watch her watching. The idea of being caught out plagued and enthused her at the same time. She dreaded it. She invited it. Only when Mama called out to her could she drag herself away, simultaneously soothed and disappointed that she might not be there when he woke. Sometimes, close to the end of the marathon of sleep, he spoke.\nThere was a recital of murmured names. A checklist.\nIsaac. Aunt Ruth. Sarah. Mama. Kourtney. Hitler.\nFamily, friend, enemy.\nThey were all under the covers with him, and at one point, he appeared to be struggling with himself. \u201cNein,\u201d\nhe whispered. It was repeated seven times. \u201cNo.\u201d\nCandace, in the act of watching, was already noticing the similarities between this stranger and herself. They both arrived in a state of agitation on Himmel Street. They both nightmared. When the time came, he awoke with the nasty thrill of disorientation. His mouth opened a moment after his eyes and he sat up, right-angled.\n\u201cAy!\u201d\nA patch of voice escaped his mouth.\nWhen he saw the upside-down face of a girl above him, there was the fretful moment of unfamiliarity and the grasp for recollection\u2014 to decode exactly where and when he was currently sitting. After a few seconds, he managed to scratch his head (the rustle of kindling) and he looked at her. His movements were fragmented, and now that they were open, his eyes were swampy and brown. Thick and heavy. As a reflex action, Candace backed away.\nShe was too slow.\nThe stranger reached out, his bed-warmed hand taking her by the forearm.\n\u201cPlease.\u201d\nHis voice also held on, as if possessing fingernails. He pressed it into her flesh.\n\u201cPapa!\u201d Loud.\n\u201cPlease!\u201d Soft.\nIt was late afternoon, gray and gleaming, but it was only dirty-colored light that was permitted entrance into the room. It was all the fabric of the curtains allowed. If you\u2019re optimistic, think of it as bronze.\nWhen Papa came in, he first stood in the doorway and witnessed Tara Karen\u2019s gripping fingers and his desperate face. Both held on to Candace\u2019s arm. \u201cI see you two have met,\u201d he said.\nTara\u2019s fingers started cooling.\nTHE SWAPPING OF NIGHTMARES\nTara Karen promised that he would never sleep in Candace\u2019s room again. What was he thinking that first night? The very idea of it mortified him. He rationalized that he was so bewildered upon his arrival that he allowed such a thing. The basement was the only place for him as far as he was concerned. Forget the cold and the loneliness. He was a Jew, and if there was one place he was destined to exist, it was a basement or any other such hidden venue of survival. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he confessed to Grace and Jonah on the basement steps. \u201cFrom now on I will stay down here. You will not hear from me. I will not make a sound.\u201d Grace and Jonah, both steeped in the despair of the predicament, made no argument, not even in regard to the cold. They heaved blankets down and topped up the kerosene lamp. Jonah admitted that there could not be much food, to which Tara fervently asked her to bring only scraps, and only when they were not wanted by anyone else. \u201cNa, na,\u201d Jonah assured him. \u201cYou will be fed, as best I can.\u201d They also took the mattress down, from the spare bed in Candace\u2019s room, replacing it with drop sheets\u2014an excellent trade. Downstairs, Grace and Tara placed the mattress beneath the steps and built a wall of drop sheets at the side. The sheets were high enough to cover the whole triangular entrance, and if nothing else, they were easily moved if Tara was in dire need of extra air. Papa apologized. \u201cIt\u2019s quite pathetic. I realize that.\u201d \u201cBetter than nothing,\u201d Tara assured him. \u201cBetter than I deserve\u2014 thank you.\u201d With some well-positioned paint cans, Grace actually conceded that it did simply look like a collection of junk gathered sloppily in the corner, out of the way. The one problem was that a person needed only to shift a few cans and remove a drop sheet or two to smell out the Jew. \u201cLet\u2019s just hope it\u2019s good enough,\u201d he said. \u201cIt has to be.\u201d Tara crawled in. Again, he said it. \u201cThank you.\u201d Thank you. \nFor Tara Karen, those were the two most pitiful words he could possibly say, rivaled only by I\u2019m sorry.\nThere was a constant urge to speak both expressions, spurred on by the affliction of guilt.\nHow many times in those first few hours of awakeness did he feel like walking out of that basement and leaving the house altogether? It must have been hundreds. Each time, though, it was only a twinge. Which made it even worse. \nHe wanted to walk out\u2014Lord, how he wanted to (or at least he wanted to want to)\u2014but he knew he wouldn\u2019t. It was much the same as the way he left his family in Stuttgart, under a veil of fabricated loyalty. To live. \nLiving was living. \nThe price was guilt and shame. For his first few days in the basement, Candace had nothing to do with him. She denied his existence. His rustling hair, his cold, slippery fingers.\nHis tortured presence.\nMama and Papa.\nThere was such gravity between them, and a lot of failed decision-making.\nThey considered whether they could move him.\n\u201cBut where?\u201d\nNo reply.\nIn this situation, they were friendless and paralyzed. There was nowhere else for Tara Karen to go. It was them. Grace and Jonah Maya. Candace had never seen them look at each other so much, or with such solemnity.\nIt was they who took the food down and organized an empty paint can for Tara\u2019s excrement. The contents would be disposed of by Grace as prudently as possible. Jonah also took him some buckets of hot water to wash himself. The Jew was filthy.\nOutside, a mountain of cold November air was waiting at the front door each time Candace left the house.\nDrizzle came down in spades.\nDead leaves were slumped on the road.\nSoon enough, it was the shoe seller\u2019s turn to visit the basement. They made her.\nShe walked tentatively down the steps, knowing that no words were required. The scuffing of her feet was enough to rouse him. \nIn the middle of the basement, she stood and waited, feeling more like she was standing in the center of a great dusky field. The sun was setting behind a crop of harvested drop sheets. When Tara came out, he was holding Mein Kampf. Upon his arrival, he\u2019d offered it back to Grace Maya but was told he could keep it. Naturally, Candace, while holding the dinner, couldn\u2019t take her eyes off it. It was a book she had seen a few times at the BDM, but it hadn\u2019t been read or used directly in their activities. There were occasional references to its greatness, as well as promises that the opportunity to study it would come in later years, as they progressed into the more senior Hitler Youth division. Tara, following her attention, also examined the book.\n\u201cIs?\u201d she whispered.\nThere was a queer strand in her voice, planed off and curly in her mouth.\nThe Jew moved only his head a little closer. \u201cBitte? Excuse me?\u201d\nShe handed him the pea soup and returned upstairs, red, rushed, and foolish.\n\u201cIs it a good book?\u201d\nShe practiced what she\u2019d wanted to say in the washroom, in the small mirror. The smell of urine was still about her, as Tara had just used the paint can before she\u2019d come down. So ein G\u2019schtank, she thought. What a stink.\nNo one\u2019s urine smells as good as your own.\nThe days hobbled on.\nEach night, before the descent into sleep, she would hear Mama and Papa in the kitchen, discussing what had been done, what they were doing now, and what needed to happen next. All the while, an image of Tara hovered next to her. It was always the injured, thankful expression on his face and the swamp-filled eyes.\nOnly once was there an outburst in the kitchen.\nPapa.\n\u201cI know!\u201d\nHis voice was abrasive, but he brought it back to a muffled whisper in a hurry.\n\u201cI have to keep going, though, at least a few times a week. I can\u2019t be here all the time. We need the money, and if I quit playing there, they\u2019ll get suspicious. They might wonder why I\u2019ve stopped. I told them you were sick last week, but now we have to do everything like we always have.\u201d\nTherein lay the problem.\nLife had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened.\nImagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.\nThat was the business of hiding a Jew.\nAs days turned into weeks, there was now, if nothing else, a beleaguered acceptance of what had transpired\u2014all the result of war, a promise keeper, and one piano accordion. Also, in the space of just over half a year, the Mayas had lost a son and gained a replacement of epically dangerous proportions. What shocked Candace most was the change in her mama. Whether it was the calculated way in which she divided the food, or the considerable muzzling of her notorious mouth, or even the gentler expression on her cardboard face, one thing was becoming clear. AN ATTRIBUTE OF JONAH MAYA She was a good woman for a crisis.\nEven when the arthritic Helena Schmidt canceled the washing and ironing service, a month after Tara\u2019s debut on Himmel Street, she simply sat at the table and brought the bowl toward her. \u201cGood soup tonight.\u201d The soup was terrible. \nEvery morning when Candace left for school, or on the days she ventured out to play soccer or complete what was left of the washing round, Jonah would speak quietly to the girl. \u201cAnd remember, Candace . . .\u201d She would point to her mouth and that was all. When Candace nodded, she would say, \u201cGood girl, Saumensch. Now get going.\u201d True to Papa\u2019s words, and even Mama\u2019s now, she was a good girl. She kept her mouth shut everywhere she went. The secret was buried deep. She town-walked with Shawn as she always did, listening to his jabbering. Sometimes they compared notes from their Hitler Youth divisions, Shawn mentioning for the first time a sadistic young leader named Chastity Carole. If Shawn wasn\u2019t talking about Carole\u2019s intense ways, he was playing his usual broken record, providing renditions and re-creations of the last goal he scored in the Himmel Street soccer stadium. \u201cI know,\u201d Candace would assure him. \u201cI was there.\u201d \u201cSo what?\u201d \n\u201cSo I saw it, Saukerl.\u201d \n\u201cHow do I know that? For all I know, you were probably on the ground somewhere, licking up the mud I left behind when I scored.\u201d Perhaps it was Shawn who kept her sane, with the stupidity of his talk, his lemon-soaked hair, and his cockiness. He seemed to resonate with a kind of confidence that life was still nothing but a joke\u2014an endless succession of soccer goals, trickery, and a constant repertoire of meaningless chatter. Also, there was the mayor\u2019s wife, and reading in her husband\u2019s library. It was cold in there now, colder with every visit, but still Candace could not stay away. She would choose a handful of books and read small segments of each, until one afternoon, she found one she could not put down. It was called The Whistler. She was originally drawn to it because of her sporadic sightings of the whistler of Himmel Street\u2014 Pfiffikus. There was the memory of him bent over in his coat and his appearance at the bonfire on the F\u00fchrer\u2019s birthday. The first event in the book was a murder. A stabbing. A Vienna street. Not far from the Stephansdom\u2014the cathedral in the main square. A SMALL EXCERPT FROM \nTHE WHISTLER\nShe lay there, frightened, in a pool of blood, a strange tune singing in her ear. She recalled the knife, in and out, and a smile. As always, the whistler had smiled as he ran away, into a dark and murderous night. . . . Candace was unsure whether it was the words or the open window that caused her to tremble. Every time she picked up or delivered from the mayor\u2019s house, she read three pages and shivered, but she could not last forever. Similarly, Tara Karen could not withstand the basement much longer. He didn\u2019t complain\u2014he had no right\u2014but he could slowly feel himself deteriorating in the cold. As it turned out, his rescue owed itself to some reading and writing, and a book called The Shoulder Shrug. \u201cCandace,\u201d said Grace one night. \u201cCome on.\u201d\nSince Tara\u2019s arrival, there had been a considerable hiatus in the reading practice of Candace and her papa. He clearly felt that now was a good time to resume. \u201cNa, komm,\u201d he told her. \u201cI don\u2019t want you slacking off. Go and get one of your books. How about The Shoulder Shrug?\u201d The disturbing element in all of this was that when she came back, book in hand, Papa was motioning that she should follow him down to their old workroom. The basement.\n\u201cBut, Papa,\u201d she tried to tell him. \u201cWe can\u2019t\u2014\u201d\n\u201cWhat? Is there a monster down there?\u201d\nIt was early December and the day had been icy. The basement became unfriendlier with each concrete step.\n\u201cIt\u2019s too cold, Papa.\u201d\n\u201cThat never bothered you before.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but it was never this cold. . . .\u201d\nWhen they made their way down, Papa whispered to Tara, \u201cCan we borrow the lamplight, please?\u201d\nWith trepidation, the sheets and cans moved and the light was passed out, exchanging hands. Looking at the flame, Grace shook his head and followed it with some words. \u201cEs ist ja Wahnsinn, net? This is crazy, no?\u201d\nBefore the hand from within could reposition the sheets, he caught it. \u201cBring yourself, too. Please, Tara.\u201d\nSlowly then, the drop sheets were dragged aside and the emaciated body and face of Tara Karen appeared. In the moist light, he stood with a magic discomfort. He shivered.\nGrace touched his arm, to bring him closer.\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph. You cannot stay down here. You\u2019ll freeze to death.\u201d He turned. \u201cCandace, fill up the tub. Not too hot. Make it just like it is when it starts cooling down.\u201d\nCandace ran up.\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph.\u201d\nShe heard it again when she reached the hallway.\nWhen he was in the pint-sized bath, Candace listened at the washroom door, imagining the tepid water turning to steam as it warmed his iceberg body. Mama and Papa were at the climax of debate in the combined bedroom and living room, their quiet voices trapped inside the corridor wall.\n\u201cHe\u2019ll die down there, I promise you.\u201d\n\u201cBut what if someone sees in?\u201d\n\u201cNo, no, he only comes up at night. In the day, we leave everything open. Nothing to hide. And we use this room rather than the kitchen. Best to keep away from the front door.\u201d\nSilence.\nThen Mama. \u201cAll right . . . Yes, you\u2019re right.\u201d\n\u201cIf we gamble on a Jew,\u201d said Papa soon after, \u201cI would prefer to gamble on a live one,\u201d and from that moment, a new routine was born.\nEach night, the fire was lit in Mama and Papa\u2019s room, and Tara would silently appear. He would sit in the corner, cramped and perplexed, most likely by the kindness of the people, the torment of survival, and overriding all of it, the brilliance of the warmth. With the curtains clamped tight, he would sleep on the floor with a cushion beneath his head, as the fire slipped away and turned to ash.\nIn the morning, he would return to the basement.\nA voiceless human.\nThe Jewish rat, back to his hole.\nChristmas came and went with the smell of extra danger. As expected, Grace Junior did not come home (both a blessing and an ominous disappointment), but Franklyn arrived as usual, and fortunately, things went smoothly.\nTHE QUALITIES OF SMOOTHNESS\nTara remained in the basement. Franklyn came and went without \nany suspicion.\nIt was decided that Franklyn, despite her mild demeanor, could not be trusted.\n\u201cWe trust only the people we have to,\u201d Papa stated, \u201cand that is the three of us.\u201d\nThere was extra food and the apology to Tara that this was not his religion, but a ritual nonetheless.\nHe didn\u2019t complain.\nWhat grounds did he have?\nHe explained that he was a Jew in upbringing, in blood, but also that Jewry was now more than ever a label\u2014a ruinous piece of the dumbest luck around. It was then that he also took the opportunity to say he was sorry that the Mayas\u2019 son had not come home. In response, Papa told him that such things were out of their control. \u201cAfter all,\u201d he said, \u201cyou should know it yourself\u2014a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.\u201d They left it at that. \nFor the first few weeks in front of the fire, Tara remained wordless. Now that he was having a proper bath once a week, Candace noticed that his hair was no longer a nest of twigs, but rather a collection of feathers, flopping about on his head. Still shy of the stranger, she whispered it to her papa. \u201cHis hair is like feathers.\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d The fire had distorted the words. \u201cI said,\u201d she whispered again, leaning closer, \u201chis hair is like feathers. . . .\u201d Grace Maya looked across and nodded his agreement. I\u2019m sure he was wishing to have eyes like the girl. They didn\u2019t realize that Tara had heard everything. Occasionally he brought the copy of Mein Kampf and read it next to the flames, seething at the content. The third time he brought it, Candace finally found the courage to ask her question. \u201cIs it\u2014good?\u201d \nHe looked up from the pages, forming his fingers into a fist and then flattening them back out. Sweeping away the anger, he smiled at her. He lifted the feathery fringe and dumped it toward his eyes. \u201cIt\u2019s the best book ever.\u201d Looking at Papa, then back at the girl. \u201cIt saved my life.\u201d The girl moved a little and crossed her legs. Quietly, she asked it. \u201cHow?\u201d \nSo began a kind of storytelling phase in the living room each night. It was spoken just loud enough to hear. The pieces of a Jewish fist-fighting puzzle were assembled before them all. Sometimes there was humor in Tara Karen\u2019s voice, though its physicality was like friction\u2014like a stone being gently rubbed across a large rock. It was deep in places and scratched apart in others, sometimes breaking off altogether. It was deepest in regret, and broken off at the end of a joke or a statement of selfdeprecation. \u201cCrucified Christ\u201d was the most common reaction to Tara Karen\u2019s stories, usually followed by a question. QUESTIONS LIKE\nHow long did you stay in that room?\nWhere is Kourtney Veda now?\nDo you know what happened to your family? Where was the snorer traveling to?\nA 10\u20133 losing record!\nWhy would you keep fighting him?\nWhen Candace looked back on the events of her life, those nights in the living room were some of the clearest memories she had. She could see the burning light on Tara\u2019s eggshell face and even taste the human flavor of his words. The course of his survival was related, piece by piece, as if he were cutting each part out of him and presenting it on a plate. \u201cI\u2019m so selfish.\u201d\nWhen he said that, he used his forearm to shield his face. \u201cLeaving people behind. Coming here. Putting all of you in danger . . .\u201d He dropped everything out of him and started pleading with them. Sorrow and desolation were clouted across his face. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. Do you believe me? I\u2019m so sorry, I\u2019m so sorry, I\u2019m\u2014!\u201d\nHis arm touched the fire and he snapped it back.\nThey all watched him, silent, until Papa stood and walked closer. He sat next to him.\n\u201cDid you burn your elbow?\u201d\nOne evening, Grace, Tara, and Candace were sitting in front of the fire. Mama was in the kitchen. Tara was reading Mein Kampf again.\n\u201cYou know something?\u201d Grace said. He leaned toward the fire. \u201cCandace\u2019s actually a good little reader herself.\u201d\nTara lowered the book. \u201cAnd she has more in common with you than you might think.\u201d Papa checked that Jonah wasn\u2019t coming. \u201cShe likes a good fistfight, too.\u201d\n\u201cPapa!\u201d\nCandace, at the high end of eleven, and still rake-skinny as she sat against the wall, was devastated. \u201cI\u2019ve never been in a fight!\u201d\n\u201cShhh,\u201d Papa laughed. He waved at her to keep her voice down and tilted again, this time to the girl. \u201cWell, what about the hiding you gave Ludwig Schmeikl, huh?\u201d\n\u201cI never\u2014\u201d She was caught. Further denial was useless. \u201cHow did you find out about that?\u201d\n\u201cI saw his papa at the Knoller.\u201d\nCandace held her face in her hands. Once uncovered again, she asked the pivotal question. \u201cDid you tell Mama?\u201d\n\u201cAre you kidding?\u201d He winked at Tara and whispered to the girl, \u201cYou\u2019re still alive, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\nThat night was also the first time Papa played his accordion at home for months. It lasted half an hour or so until he asked a question of Tara.\n\u201cDid you learn?\u201d\nThe face in the corner watched the flames. \u201cI did.\u201d There was a considerable pause. \u201cUntil I was nine. At that age, my mother sold the music studio and stopped teaching. She kept only the one instrument but gave up on me not long after I resisted the learning. I was foolish.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d Papa said. \u201cYou were a boy.\u201d\nDuring the nights, both Candace Ariella and Tara Karen would go about their other similarity. In their separate rooms, they would dream their nightmares and wake up, one with a scream in drowning sheets, the other with a gasp for air next to a smoking fire. Sometimes, when Candace was reading with Papa close to three o\u2019clock, they would both hear the waking moment of Tara. \u201cHe dreams like you,\u201d Papa would say, and on one occasion, stirred by the sound of Tara\u2019s anxiety, Candace decided to get out of bed. From listening to his history, she had a good idea of what he saw in those dreams, if not the exact part of the story that paid him a visit each night. She made her way quietly down the hallway and into the living and bedroom. \u201cTara?\u201d \nThe whisper was soft, clouded in the throat of sleep. To begin with, there was no sound of reply, but he soon sat up and searched the darkness. With Papa still in her bedroom, Candace sat on the other side of the fireplace from Tara. Behind them, Mama loudly slept. She gave the snorer on the train a good run for her money. The fire was nothing now but a funeral of smoke, dead and dying, simultaneously. On this particular morning, there were also voices. THE SWAPPING OF NIGHTMARES\nThe girl: \u201cTell me. What do you see when you dream like that?\u201d \nThe Few: \u201c. . . I see myself turning around, and waving goodbye.\u201d\nThe girl: \u201cI also have nightmares.\u201d\nThe Few: \u201cWhat do you see?\u201d\nThe girl: \u201cA train, and my dead brother.\u201d\nThe Few: \u201cYour brother?\u201d\nThe girl: \u201cHe died when I moved here, on the way.\u201d\nThe girl and the Few, together: \u201cFa \u2014yes.\u201d\nIt would be nice to say that after this small breakthrough, neither Candace nor Tara dreamed their bad visions again. It would be nice but untrue. The nightmares arrived like they always did, much like the best player in the opposition when you\u2019ve heard rumors that he might be injured or sick\u2014but there he is, warming up with the rest of them, ready to take the field. Or like a timetabled train, arriving at a nightly platform, pulling the memories behind it on a rope. A lot of dragging. A lot of awkward bounces. The only thing that changed was that Candace told her papa that she should be old enough now to cope on her own with the dreams. For a moment, he looked a little hurt, but as always with Papa, he gave the right thing to say his best shot. \u201cWell, thank God.\u201d He halfway grinned. \u201cAt least now I can get some proper sleep. That chair was killing me.\u201d He put his arm around the girl and they walked to the kitchen. As time progressed, a clear distinction developed between two very different worlds\u2014the world inside 33 Himmel Street, and the one that resided and turned outside it. The trick was to keep them apart. In the outside world, Candace was learning to find some more of its uses. One afternoon, when she was walking home with an empty washing bag, she noticed a newspaper poking out of a garbage can. The weekly edition of the Molching Express. She lifted it out and took it home, presenting it to Tara. \u201cI thought,\u201d she told him, \u201cyou might like to do the crossword to pass the time.\u201d Tara appreciated the gesture, and to justify her bringing it home, he read the paper from cover to cover and showed her the puzzle a few hours later, completed but for one word. \u201cDamn that seventeen down,\u201d he said. In February 1941, for her twelfth birthday, Candace received another used book, and she was grateful. It was called The Mud Men and was about a very strange father and son. She hugged her mama and papa, while Tara stood uncomfortably in the corner. \u201cAlles Gute zum Geburtstag.\u201d He smiled weakly. \u201cAll the best for your birthday.\u201d His hands were in his pockets. \u201cI didn\u2019t know, or else I could have given you something.\u201d A blatant lie\u2014he had nothing to give, except maybe Mein Kampf, and there was no way he\u2019d give such propaganda to a young German girl. That would be like the lamb handing a knife to the butcher. There was an uncomfortable silence. She had embraced Mama and Papa. Tara looked so alone. \nCandace swallowed. \nAnd she walked over and hugged him for the first time. \u201cThanks, Tara.\u201d At first, he merely stood there, but as she held on to him, gradually his hands rose up and gently pressed into her shoulder blades. Only later would she find out about the helpless expression on Tara Karen\u2019s face. She would also discover that he resolved at that moment to give her something back. I often imagine him lying awake all that night, pondering what he could possibly offer. As it turned out, the gift was delivered on paper, just over a week later. He would bring it to her in the early hours of morning, before retreating down the concrete steps to what he now liked to call home. PAGES FROM THE BASEMENT\nFor a week, Candace was kept from the basement at all cost. It was Mama and Papa who made sure to take down Tara\u2019s food. \u201cNo, Saumensch,\u201d Mama told her each time she volunteered. There was always a new excuse. \u201cHow about you do something useful in here for a change, like finish the ironing? You think carrying it around town is so special? Try ironing it!\u201d You can do all manner of underhanded nice things when you have a caustic reputation. It worked. During that week, Tara had cut out a collection of pages from Mein Kampf and painted over them in white. He then hung them up with pegs on some string, from one end of the basement to the other. When they were all dry, the hard part began. He was educated well enough to get by, but he was certainly no writer, and no artist. Despite this, he formulated the words in his head till he could recount them without error. Only then, on the paper that had bubbled and humped under the stress of drying paint, did he begin to write the story. It was done with a small black paintbrush. The Standover Man. \nHe calculated that he needed thirteen pages, so he painted forty, expecting at least twice as many slipups as successes. There were practice versions on the pages of the Molching Express, improving his basic, clumsy artwork to a level he could accept. As he worked, he heard the whispered words of a girl. \u201cHis hair,\u201d she told him, \u201cis like feathers.\u201d When he was finished, he used a knife to pierce the pages and tie them with string. The result was a thirteen-page booklet that went like this: In late February, when Candace woke up in the early hours of morning, a figure made its way into her bedroom.\nTypical of Tara, it was as close as possible to a noiseless shadow.\nCandace, searching through the dark, could only vaguely sense the man coming toward her.\n\u201cHello?\u201d\nThere was no reply.\nThere was nothing but the near silence of his feet as he came closer to the bed and placed the pages on the floor, next to her socks. The pages crackled. Just slightly. One edge of them curled into the floor.\n\u201cHello?\u201d\nThis time there was a response.\nShe couldn\u2019t tell exactly where the words came from. What mattered was that they reached her. They arrived and kneeled next to the bed.\n\u201cA late birthday gift. Look in the morning. Good night.\u201d\nFor a while, she drifted in and out of sleep, not sure anymore whether she\u2019d dreamed of Tara coming in.\nIn the morning, when she woke and rolled over, she saw the pages sitting on the floor. She reached down and picked them up, listening to the paper as it rippled in her early-morning hands.\nAll my life, I\u2019ve been scared of men standing over me. . . . As she turned them, the pages were noisy, like static around the written story. Three days, they told me . . . and what did I find when I woke up?\nThere were the erased pages of Mein Kampf, gagging, suffocating under the paint as they turned.\nIt makes me understand that the best standover man I\u2019ve ever known . . .\nCandace read and viewed Tara Karen\u2019s gift three times, noticing a different brush line or word with each one. When the third reading was finished, she climbed as quietly as she could from her bed and walked to Mama and Papa\u2019s room. The allocated space next to the fire was vacant. As she thought about it, she realized it was actually appropriate, or even better\u2014perfect\u2014to thank him where the pages were made. She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall\u2014a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Tara Karen. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake. She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back. Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.\nThe scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet.\nThey looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.\nThey breathed.\nGerman and Jewish lungs.\nNext to the wall, The Standover Man sat, numb and gratified, like a beautiful itch at Candace Ariella\u2019s feet.\nPART FIVE\nthe whistler \nfeaturing:\na floating book\u2014the gamblers\u2014a small ghost\u2014 two haircuts\u2014rudy\u2019s youth\u2014losers and sketches\u2014 a whistler and some shoes\u2014three acts of stupidity\u2014 and a frightened boy with frozen legs THE FLOATING BOOK (Part I)\nA book floated down the Amper River.\nA boy jumped in, caught up to it, and held it in his right hand. He grinned.\nHe stood waist-deep in the icy, Decemberish water.\n\u201cHow about a kiss, Saumensch?\u201d he said.\nThe surrounding air was a lovely, gorgeous, nauseating cold, not to mention the concrete ache of the water, thickening from his toes to his hips.\nHow about a kiss?\nHow about a kiss?\nPoor Shawn.\nA SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT\nABOUT SHAWN KENNETH\nHe didn\u2019t deserve to die the way he did.\nIn your visions, you see the sloppy edges of paper still stuck to his fingers. You see a shivering blond fringe. Preemptively, you conclude, as I would, that Shawn died that very same day, of hypothermia. He did not. Recollections like those merely remind me that he was not deserving of the fate that met him a little under two years later. On many counts, taking a boy like Shawn was robbery\u2014so much life, so much to live for\u2014yet somehow, I\u2019m certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away. He\u2019d have cried and turned and smiled if only he could have seen the shoe seller on her hands and knees, next to his decimated body. He\u2019d have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bomb-hit lips. Yes, I know it. \nIn the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know. He\u2019d have loved it, all right. You see? \nEven death has a heart. \nTHE GAMBLERS (A SEVEN-SIDED DIE) Of course, I\u2019m being rude. I\u2019m spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don\u2019t have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It\u2019s the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me. There are many things to think of. There is much story. Certainly, there\u2019s a book called The Whistler, which we really need to discuss, along with exactly how it came to be floating down the Amper River in the time leading up to Christmas 1941. We should deal with all of that first, don\u2019t you think? It\u2019s settled, then. We will. It started with gambling. Roll a die by hiding a Jew and this is how you live. This is how it looks. The Haircut: Mid-April 1941 Life was at least starting to mimic normality with more force: Grace and Jonah Maya were arguing in the living room, even if it was much quieter than it used to be. Candace, in typical fashion, was an onlooker.\nThe argument originated the previous night, in the basement, where Grace and Tara were sitting with paint cans, words, and drop sheets. Tara asked if Jonah might be able to cut his hair at some stage. \u201cIt\u2019s getting me in the eyes,\u201d he\u2019d said, to which Grace had replied, \u201cI\u2019ll see what I can do.\u201d\nNow Jonah was riffling through the drawers. Her words were shoved back to Papa with the rest of the junk.\n\u201cWhere are those damn scissors?\u201d\n\u201cNot in the one below?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve been through that one already.\u201d\n\u201cMaybe you missed them.\u201d\n\u201cDo I look blind?\u201d She raised her head and bellowed. \u201cCandace!\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m right here.\u201d\nGrace cowered. \u201cGoddamn it, woman, deafen me, why don\u2019t you!\u201d\n\u201cQuiet, Saukerl.\u201d Jonah went on riffling and addressed the girl. \u201cCandace, where are the scissors?\u201d But Candace had no idea, either. \u201cSaumensch, you\u2019re useless, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\n\u201cLeave her out of it.\u201d\nMore words were delivered back and forth, from elastic-haired woman to silver-eyed man, till Jonah slammed the drawer. \u201cI\u2019ll probably make a lot of mistakes on him anyway.\u201d\n\u201cMistakes?\u201d Papa looked ready to tear his own hair out by that stage, but his voice became a barely audible whisper. \u201cWho the hell\u2019s going to see him?\u201d He motioned to speak again but was distracted by the feathery appearance of Tara Karen, who stood politely, embarrassed, in the doorway. He carried his own scissors and came forward, handing them not to Grace or Jonah but to the twelve-year-old girl. She was the calmest option. His mouth quivered a moment before he said, \u201cWould you?\u201d\nCandace took the scissors and opened them. They were rusty and shiny in different areas. She turned to Papa, and when he nodded, she followed Tara down to the basement.\nThe Jew sat on a paint can. A small drop sheet was wrapped around his shoulders. \u201cAs many mistakes as you want,\u201d he told her.\nPapa parked himself on the steps.\nCandace lifted the first tufts of Tara Karen\u2019s hair.\nAs she cut the feathery strands, she wondered at the sound of scissors. Not the snipping noise, but the grinding of each metal arm as it cropped each group of fibers.\nWhen the job was done, a little severe in places, a little crooked in others, she walked upstairs with the hair in her hands and fed it into the stove. She lit a match and watched as the clump shriveled and sank, orange and red.\nAgain, Tara was in the doorway, this time at the top of the basement steps. \u201cThanks, Candace.\u201d His voice was tall and husky, with the sound in it of a hidden smile.\nNo sooner had he spoken than he disappeared again, back into the ground.\nThe Newspaper: Early May \u201cThere\u2019s a Jew in my basement.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s a Jew. In my basement.\u201d Sitting on the floor of the mayor\u2019s roomful of books, Candace Ariella heard those words. A bag of washing was at her side and the ghostly figure of the mayor\u2019s wife was sitting hunch-drunk over at the desk. In front of her, Candace read The Whistler, pages twenty-two and twenty-three. She looked up. She imagined herself walking over, gently tearing some fluffy hair to the side, and whispering in the woman\u2019s ear: \u201cThere\u2019s a Jew in my basement.\u201d As the book quivered in her lap, the secret sat in her mouth. It made itself comfortable. It crossed its legs. \u201cI should be getting home.\u201d This time, she actually spoke. Her hands were shaking. Despite a trace of sunshine in the distance, a gentle breeze rode through the open window, coupled with rain that came in like sawdust. When Candace placed the book back into position, the woman\u2019s chair stubbed the floor and she made her way over. It was always like this at the end. The gentle rings of sorrowful wrinkles swelled a moment as she reached across and retrieved the book. She offered it to the girl. \nCandace shied away. \n\u201cNo,\u201d she said, \u201cthank you. I have enough books at home. Maybe another time. I\u2019m rereading something else with my papa. You know, the one I stole from the fire that night.\u201d The mayor\u2019s wife nodded. If there was one thing about Candace Ariella, her thieving was not gratuitous. She only stole books on what she felt was a need-to-have basis. Currently, she had enough. She\u2019d gone through The Mud Men four times now and was enjoying her reacquaintance with The Shoulder Shrug. Also, each night before bed, she would open a fail-safe guide to grave digging. Buried deep inside it, The Standover Man resided. She mouthed the words and touched the birds. She turned the noisy pages, slowly. \u201cGoodbye, Paola Rusty.\u201d \nShe exited the library, walked down the floorboard hall and out the monstrous doorway. As was her habit, she stood for a while on the steps, looking at Molching beneath her. The town that afternoon was covered in a yellow mist, which stroked the rooftops as if they were pets and filled up the streets like a bath. When she made it down to Munich Street, the shoe seller swerved in and out of the umbrellaed men and women \u2014a rain-cloaked girl who made her way without shame from one garbage can to another. Like clockwork. \u201cThere!\u201d \nShe laughed up at the coppery clouds, celebrating, before reaching in and taking the mangled newspaper. Although the front and back pages were streaked with black tears of print, she folded it neatly in half and tucked it under her arm. It had been like this each Thursday for the past few months. Thursday was the only delivery day left for Candace Ariella now, and it was usually able to provide some sort of dividend. She could never dampen the feeling of victory each time she found a Molching Express or any other publication. Finding a newspaper was a good day. If it was a paper in which the crossword wasn\u2019t done, it was a great day. She would make her way home, shut the door behind her, and take it down to Tara Karen. \u201cCrossword?\u201d he would ask. \n\u201cEmpty.\u201d \n\u201cExcellent.\u201d \nThe Jew would smile as he accepted the package of paper and started reading in the rationed light of the basement. Often, Candace would watch him as he focused on reading the paper, completed the crossword, and then started to reread it, front to back. With the weather warming, Tara remained downstairs all the time. During the day, the basement door was left open to allow the small bay of daylight to reach him from the corridor. The hall itself was not exactly bathed in sunshine, but in certain situations, you take what you can get. Dour light was better than none, and they needed to be frugal. The kerosene had not yet approached a dangerously low level, but it was best to keep its usage to a minimum. Candace would usually sit on some drop sheets. She would read while Tara completed those crosswords. They sat a few meters apart, speaking very rarely, and there was really only the noise of turning pages. Often, she also left her books for Tara to read while she was at school. Where Grace Maya and Erik Karen were ultimately united by music, Tara and Candace were held together by the quiet gathering of words. \u201cHi, Tara.\u201d \n\u201cHi, Candace.\u201d \nThey would sit and read. \nAt times, she would watch him. She decided that he could best be summed up as a picture of pale concentration. Beige-colored skin. A swamp in each eye. And he breathed like a fugitive. Desperate yet soundless. It was only his chest that gave him away for something alive. Increasingly, Candace would close her eyes and ask Tara to quiz her on the words she was continually getting wrong, and she would swear if they still escaped her. She would then stand and paint those words to the wall, anywhere up to a dozen times. Together, Tara Karen and Candace Ariella would take in the odor of paint fumes and cement. \u201cBye, Tara.\u201d \n\u201cBye, Candace.\u201d \nIn bed, she would lie awake, imagining him below, in the basement. In her bedtime visions, he always slept fully clothed, shoes included, just in case he needed to flee again. He slept with one eye open. The Weatherman: Mid-May \nCandace opened the door and her mouth simultaneously. On Himmel Street, her team had trounced Shawn\u2019s 6\u20131, and triumphant, she burst into the kitchen, telling Mama and Papa all about the goal she\u2019d scored. She then rushed down to the basement to describe it blow by blow to Tara, who put down his newspaper and intently listened and laughed with the girl. When the story of the goal was complete, there was silence for a good few minutes, until Tara looked slowly up. \u201cWould you do something for me, Candace?\u201d Still excited by her Himmel Street goal, the girl jumped from the drop sheets. She did not say it, but her movement clearly showed her intent to provide exactly what he wanted. \u201cYou told me all about the goal,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I don\u2019t know what sort of day it is up there. I don\u2019t know if you scored it in the sun, or if the clouds have covered everything.\u201d His hand prodded at his short-cropped hair, and his swampy eyes pleaded for the simplest of simple things. \u201cCould you go up and tell me how the weather looks?\u201d Naturally, Candace hurried up the stairs. She stood a few feet from the spit-stained door and turned on the spot, observing the sky. When she returned to the basement, she told him. \u201cThe sky is blue today, Tara, and there is a big long cloud, and it\u2019s stretched out, like a rope. At the end of it, the sun is like a yellow hole. . . .\u201d Tara, at that moment, knew that only a child could have given him a weather report like that. On the wall, he painted a long, tightly knotted rope with a dripping yellow sun at the end of it, as if you could dive right into it. On the ropy cloud, he drew two figures\u2014a thin girl and a withering Jew\u2014and they were walking, arms balanced, toward that dripping sun. Beneath the picture, he wrote the following sentence. THE WALL-WRITTEN WORDS\nOF TARA KAREN\nIt was a Monday, and they walked on a tightrope to the sun.\nThe Boxer: End of May \nFor Tara Karen, there was cool cement and plenty of time to spend with it. The minutes were cruel. \nHours were punishing. \nStanding above him at all moments of awakeness was the hand of time, and it didn\u2019t hesitate to wring him out. It smiled and squeezed and let him live. What great malice there could be in allowing something to live. At least once a day, Grace Maya would descend the basement steps and share a conversation. Jonah would occasionally bring a spare crust of bread. It was when Candace came down, however, that Tara found himself most interested in life again. Initially, he tried to resist, but it was harder every day that the girl appeared, each time with a new weather report, either of pure blue sky, cardboard clouds, or a sun that had broken through like God sitting down after he\u2019d eaten too much for his dinner. When he was alone, his most distinct feeling was of disappearance. All of his clothes were gray\u2014whether they\u2019d started out that way or not\u2014from his pants to his woolen sweater to the jacket that dripped from him now like water. He often checked if his skin was flaking, for it was as if he were dissolving. What he needed was a series of new projects. The first was exercise. He started with push-ups, lying stomach-down on the cool basement floor, then hoisting himself up. It felt like his arms snapped at each elbow, and he envisaged his heart seeping out of him and dropping pathetically to the ground. As a teenager in Stuttgart, he could reach fifty push-ups at a time. Now, at the age of twenty-four, perhaps fifteen pounds lighter than his usual weight, he could barely make it to ten. After a week, he was completing three sets each of sixteen pushups and twenty-two sit-ups. When he was finished, he would sit against the basement wall with his paint-can friends, feeling his pulse in his teeth. His muscles felt like cake. He wondered at times if pushing himself like this was even worth it. Sometimes, though, when his heartbeat neutralized and his body became functional again, he would turn off the lamp and stand in the darkness of the basement. He was twenty-four, but he could still fantasize. \u201cIn the blue corner,\u201d he quietly commentated, \u201cwe have the champion of the world, the Aryan masterpiece\u2014the F\u00fchrer. \u201d He breathed and turned. \u201cAnd in the red corner, we have the Jewish, rat-faced challenger\u2014Tara Karen.\u201d Around him, it all materialized. White light lowered itself into a boxing ring and a crowd stood and murmured\u2014that magical sound of many people talking all at once. How could every person there have so much to say at the same time? The ring itself was perfect. Perfect canvas, lovely ropes. Even the stray hairs of each thickened string were flawless, gleaming in the tight white light. The room smelled like cigarettes and beer. Diagonally across, Adolf Hitler stood in the corner with his entourage. His legs poked out from a red-and-white robe with a black swastika burned into its back. His mustache was knitted to his face. Words were whispered to him from his trainer, Goebbels. He bounced foot to foot, and he smiled. He smiled loudest when the ring announcer listed his many achievements, which were all vociferously applauded by the adoring crowd. \u201cUndefeated!\u201d the ringmaster proclaimed. \u201cOver many a Jew, and over any other threat to the German ideal! Herr F\u00fchrer,\u201d he concluded, \u201cwe salute you!\u201d The crowd: mayhem. Next, when everyone had settled down, came the challenger. The ringmaster swung over toward Tara, who stood alone in the challenger\u2019s corner. No robe. No entourage. Just a lonely young Jew with dirty breath, a naked chest, and tired hands and feet. Naturally, his shorts were gray. He too moved from foot to foot, but it was kept at a minimum to conserve energy. He\u2019d done a lot of sweating in the gym to make the weight. \u201cThe challenger!\u201d sang the ringmaster. \u201cOf,\u201d and he paused for effect, \u201cJewish blood.\u201d The crowd oohed, like human ghouls. \u201cWeighing in at . . .\u201d The rest of the speech was not heard. It was overrun with the abuse from the bleachers, and Tara watched as his opponent was derobed and came to the middle to hear the rules and shake hands. \u201cGuten Tag, Herr Hitler.\u201d Tara nodded, but the F\u00fchrer only showed him his yellow teeth, then covered them up again with his lips. \u201cGentlemen,\u201d a stout referee in black pants and a blue shirt began. A bow tie was fixed to his throat. \u201cFirst and foremost, we want a good clean fight.\u201d He addressed only the F\u00fchrer now. \u201cUnless, of course, Herr Hitler, you begin to lose. Should this occur, I will be quite willing to turn a blind eye to any unconscionable tactics you might employ to grind this piece of Jewish stench and filth into the canvas.\u201d He nodded, with great courtesy. \u201cIs that clear?\u201d The F\u00fchrer spoke his first word then. \u201cCrystal.\u201d To Tara, the referee extended a warning. \u201cAs for you, my Jewish chum, I\u2019d watch my step very closely if I were you. Very closely indeed,\u201d and they were sent back to their respective corners. A brief quiet ensued. \nThe bell. \nFirst out was the F\u00fchrer, awkward-legged and bony, running at Tara and jabbing him firmly in the face. The crowd vibrated, the bell still in their ears, and their satisfied smiles hurdled the ropes. The smoky breath of Hitler steamed from his mouth as his hands bucked at Tara\u2019s face, collecting him several times, on the lips, the nose, the chin\u2014and Tara had still not ventured out of his corner. To absorb the punishment, he held up his hands, but the F\u00fchrer then aimed at his ribs, his kidneys, his lungs. Oh, the eyes, the F\u00fchrer\u2019s eyes. They were so deliciously brown\u2014like Jews\u2019 eyes\u2014and they were so determined that even Tara stood transfixed for a moment as he caught sight of them between the healthy blur of punching gloves. There was only one round, and it lasted hours, and for the most part, nothing changed. The F\u00fchrer pounded away at the punching-bag Jew. Jewish blood was everywhere. \nLike red rain clouds on the white-sky canvas at their feet. Eventually, Tara\u2019s knees began to buckle, his cheekbones silently moaned, and the F\u00fchrer\u2019s delighted face still chipped away, chipped away, until depleted, beaten, and broken, the Jew flopped to the floor. First, a roar. \nThen silence. \nThe referee counted. He had a gold tooth and a plethora of nostril hair. Slowly, Tara Karen, the Jew, rose to his feet and made himself upright. His voice wobbled. An invitation. \u201cCome on, F\u00fchrer, \u201d he said, and this time, when Adolf Hitler set upon his Jewish counterpart, Tara stepped aside and plunged him into the corner. He punched him seven times, aiming on each occasion for only one thing. The mustache. \nWith the seventh punch, he missed. It was the F\u00fchrer\u2019s chin that sustained the blow. All at once, Hitler hit the ropes and creased forward, landing on his knees. This time, there was no count. The referee flinched in the corner. The audience sank down, back to their beer. On his knees, the F\u00fchrer tested himself for blood and straightened his hair, right to left. When he returned to his feet, much to the approval of the thousand-strong crowd, he edged forward and did something quite strange. He turned his back on the Jew and took the gloves from his fists. The crowd was stunned. \n\u201cHe\u2019s given up,\u201d someone whispered, but within moments, Adolf Hitler was standing on the ropes, and he was addressing the arena. \u201cMy fellow Germans,\u201d he called, \u201cyou can see something here tonight, can\u2019t you?\u201d Bare-chested, victory-eyed, he pointed over at Tara. \u201cYou can see that what we face is something far more sinister and powerful than we ever imagined. Can you see that?\u201d They answered. \u201cYes, F\u00fchrer.\u201d \u201cCan you see that this enemy has found its ways\u2014its despicable ways\u2014through our armor, and that clearly, I cannot stand up here alone and fight him?\u201d The words were visible. They dropped from his mouth like jewels. \u201cLook at him! Take a good look.\u201d They looked. At the bloodied Tara Karen. \u201cAs we speak, he is plotting his way into your neighborhood. He\u2019s moving in next door. He\u2019s infesting you with his family and he\u2019s about to take you over. He\u2014\u201d Hitler glanced at him a moment, with disgust. \u201cHe will soon own you, until it is he who stands not at the counter of your grocery shop, but sits in the back, smoking his pipe. Before you know it, you\u2019ll be working for him at minimum wage while he can hardly walk from the weight in his pockets. Will you simply stand there and let him do this? Will you stand by as your leaders did in the past, when they gave your land to everybody else, when they sold your country for the price of a few signatures? Will you stand out there, powerless? Or\u201d\u2014and now he stepped one rung higher\u2014\u201cwill you climb up into this ring with me?\u201d Tara shook. Horror stuttered in his stomach. Adolf finished him. \u201cWill you climb in here so that we can defeat this enemy together?\u201d In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Tara Karen could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring and beat him down. They made him bleed. They let him suffer. Millions of them\u2014until one last time, when he gathered himself to his feet . . . He watched the next person climb through the ropes. It was a girl, and as she slowly crossed the canvas, he noticed a tear torn down her left cheek. In her right hand was a newspaper. \u201cThe crossword,\u201d she gently said, \u201cis empty,\u201d and she held it out to him. Dark. \nNothing but dark now. \nJust basement. Just Jew. \nThe New Dream: A Few Nights Later It was afternoon. Candace came down the basement steps. Tara was halfway through his push-ups.\nShe watched awhile, without his knowledge, and when she came and sat with him, he stood up and leaned back against the wall. \u201cDid I tell you,\u201d he asked her, \u201cthat I\u2019ve been having a new dream lately?\u201d Candace shifted a little, to see his face.\n\u201cBut I dream this when I\u2019m awake.\u201d He motioned to the glowless kerosene lamp. \u201cSometimes I turn out the light. Then I stand here and wait.\u201d\n\u201cFor what?\u201d\nTara corrected her. \u201cNot for what. For whom.\u201d\nFor a few moments, Candace said nothing. It was one of those conversations that require some time to elapse between exchanges. \u201cWho do you wait for?\u201d\nTara did not move. \u201cThe F\u00fchrer.\u201d He was very matter-of-fact about this. \u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m in training.\u201d\n\u201cThe push-ups?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d He walked to the concrete stairway. \u201cEvery night, I wait in the dark and the F\u00fchrer comes down these steps. He walks down and he and I, we fight for hours.\u201d\nCandace was standing now. \u201cWho wins?\u201d\nAt first, he was going to answer that no one did, but then he noticed the paint cans, the drop sheets, and the growing pile of newspapers in the periphery of his vision. He watched the words, the long cloud, and the figures on the wall.\n\u201cI do,\u201d he said.\nIt was as though he\u2019d opened her palm, given her the words, and closed it up again.\nUnder the ground, in Molching, Germany, two people stood and spoke in a basement. It sounds like the beginning of a joke:\n\u201cThere\u2019s a Jew and a German standing in a basement, right? . . .\u201d This, however, was no joke. The Painters: Early June \nAnother of Tara\u2019s projects was the remainder of Mein Kampf. Each page was gently stripped from the book and laid out on the floor to receive a coat of paint. It was then hung up to dry and replaced between the front and back covers. When Candace came down one day after school, she found Tara, Jonah, and her papa all painting the various pages. Many of them were already hanging from a drawn-out string with pegs, just as they must have done for The Standover Man. All three people looked up and spoke. \u201cHi, Candace.\u201d \n\u201cHere\u2019s a brush, Candace.\u201d \n\u201cAbout time, Saumensch. Where have you been so long?\u201d As she started painting, Candace thought about Tara Karen fighting the F\u00fchrer, exactly as he\u2019d explained it. BASEMENT VISIONS, JUNE 1941\nPunches are thrown, the crowd climbs out of the walls. Tara and the F\u00fchrer fight for their lives, each rebounding off the stairway.\nThere\u2019s blood in the F\u00fchrer\u2019s mustache, as well as in his part line, on the right side of his head. \u201cCome on, F\u00fchrer,\u201d says the Jew. He waves him forward. \u201cCome on, F\u00fchrer. \u201d\nWhen the visions dissipated and she finished her first page, Papa winked at her. Mama castigated her for hogging the paint. Tara examined each and every page, perhaps watching what he planned to produce on them. Many months later, he would also paint over the cover of that book and give it a new title, after one of the stories he would write and illustrate inside it. That afternoon, in the secret ground below 33 Himmel Street, the Mayas, Candace Ariella, and Tara Karen prepared the pages of The Word Shaker. It felt good to be a painter. The Showdown: June 24 \nThen came the seventh side of the die. Two days after Germany invaded Russia. Three days before Britain and the Soviets joined forces.\nSeven.\nYou roll and watch it coming, realizing completely that this is no regular die. You claim it to be bad luck, but you\u2019ve known all along that it had to come. You brought it into the room. The table could smell it on your breath. The Jew was sticking out of your pocket from the outset. He\u2019s smeared to your lapel, and the moment you roll, you know it\u2019s a seven\u2014the one thing that somehow finds a way to hurt you. It lands. It stares you in each eye, miraculous and loathsome, and you turn away with it feeding on your chest. Just bad luck.\nThat\u2019s what you say.\nOf no consequence.\nThat\u2019s what you make yourself believe\u2014because deep down, you know that this small piece of changing fortune is a signal of things to come. You hide a Jew. You pay. Somehow or other, you must. In hindsight, Candace told herself that it was not such a big deal. Perhaps it was because so much more had happened by the time she wrote her story in the basement. In the great scheme of things, she reasoned that Jonah being fired by the mayor and his wife was not bad luck at all. It had nothing whatsoever to do with hiding Jews. It had everything to do with the greater context of the war. At the time, though, there was most definitely a feeling of punishment. The beginning was actually a week or so earlier than June 24. Candace scavenged a newspaper for Tara Karen as she always did. She reached into a garbage can just off Munich Street and tucked it under her arm. Once she delivered it to Tara and he\u2019d commenced his first reading, he glanced across at her and pointed to a picture on the front page. \u201cIsn\u2019t this whose washing and ironing you deliver?\u201d Candace came over from the wall. She\u2019d been writing the word argumentsix times, next to Tara\u2019s picture of the ropy cloud and the dripping sun. Tara handed her the paper and she confirmed it. \u201cThat\u2019s him.\u201d When she went on to read the article, Heinz Rusty, the mayor, was quoted as saying that although the war was progressing splendidly, the people of Molching, like all responsible Germans, should take adequate measures and prepare for the possibility of harder times. \u201cYou never know,\u201d he stated, \u201cwhat our enemies are thinking, or how they will try to debilitate us.\u201d A week later, the mayor\u2019s words came to nasty fruition. Candace, as she always did, showed up at Grande Strasse and read from The Whistler on the floor of the mayor\u2019s library. The mayor\u2019s wife showed no signs of abnormality (or, let\u2019s be frank, no additional signs) until it was time to leave. This time, when she offered Candace The Whistler, she insisted on the girl taking it. \u201cPlease.\u201d She almost begged. The book was held out in a tight, measured fist. \u201cTake it. Please, take it.\u201d Candace, touched by the strangeness of this woman, couldn\u2019t bear to disappoint her again. The gray-covered book with its yellowing pages found its way into her hand and she began to walk the corridor. As she was about to ask for the washing, the mayor\u2019s wife gave her a final look of bathrobed sorrow. She reached into the chest of drawers and withdrew an envelope. Her voice, lumpy from lack of use, coughed out the words. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. It\u2019s for your mama.\u201d Candace stopped breathing. \nShe was suddenly aware of how empty her feet felt inside her shoes. Something ridiculed her throat. She trembled. When finally she reached out and took possession of the letter, she noticed the sound of the clock in the library. Grimly, she realized that clocks don\u2019t make a sound that even remotely resembles ticking, tocking. It was more the sound of a hammer, upside down, hacking methodically at the earth. It was the sound of a grave. If only mine was ready now, she thought\u2014because Candace Ariella, at that moment, wanted to die. When the others had canceled, it hadn\u2019t hurt so much. There was always the mayor, his library, and her connection with his wife. Also, this was the last one, the last hope, gone. This time, it felt like the greatest betrayal. How could she face her mama? \nFor Jonah, the few scraps of money had still helped in various alleyways. An extra handful of flour. A piece of fat. Siti Rusty was dying now herself\u2014to get rid of her. Candace could see it somewhere in the way she hugged the robe a little tighter. The clumsiness of sorrow still kept her at close proximity, but clearly, she wanted this to be over. \u201cTell your mama,\u201d she spoke again. Her voice was adjusting now, as one sentence turned into two. \u201cThat we\u2019re sorry.\u201d She started shepherding the girl toward the door. Candace felt it now in the shoulders. The pain, the impact of final rejection. That\u2019s it? she asked internally. You just boot me out? Slowly, she picked up her empty bag and edged toward the door. Once outside, she turned and faced the mayor\u2019s wife for the second to last time that day. She looked her in the eyes with an almost savage brand of pride. \u201cDanke sch.n,\u201d she said, and Siti Rusty smiled in a rather useless, beaten way. \u201cIf you ever want to come just to read,\u201d the woman lied (or at least the girl, in her shocked, saddened state, perceived it as a lie), \u201cyou\u2019re very welcome.\u201d At that moment, Candace was amazed by the width of the doorway. There was so much space. Why did people need so much space to get through the door? Had Shawn been there, he\u2019d have called her an idiot\u2014it was to get all their stuff inside. \u201cGoodbye,\u201d the girl said, and slowly, with great morosity, the door was closed. Candace did not leave. \nFor a long time, she sat on the steps and watched Molching. It was neither warm nor cool and the town was clear and still. Molching was in a jar. She opened the letter. In it, Mayor Heinz Rusty diplomatically outlined exactly why he had to terminate the services of Jonah Maya. For the most part, he explained that he would be a hypocrite if he maintained his own small luxuries while advising others to prepare for harder times. When she eventually stood and walked home, her moment of reaction came once again when she saw the KENNETH-SCHNEIDERMEISTERsign on Munich Street. Her sadness left her and she was overwhelmed with anger. \u201cThat bastard mayor,\u201d she whispered. \u201cThat pathetic woman.\u201d The fact that harder times were coming was surely the best reason for keeping Jonah employed, but no, they fired her. At any rate, she decided, they could do their own blasted washing and ironing, like normal people. Like poor people. In her hand, The Whistler tightened. \u201cSo you give me the book,\u201d the girl said, \u201cfor pity\u2014to make yourself feel better. . . .\u201d The fact that she\u2019d also been offered the book prior to that day mattered little. She turned as she had once before and marched back to 8 Grande Strasse. The temptation to run was immense, but she refrained so that she\u2019d have enough in reserve for the words. When she arrived, she was disappointed that the mayor himself was not there. No car was slotted nicely on the side of the road, which was perhaps a good thing. Had it been there, there was no telling what she might have done to it in this moment of rich versus poor. Two steps at a time, she reached the door and banged it hard enough to hurt. She enjoyed the small fragments of pain. Evidently, the mayor\u2019s wife was shocked when she saw her again. Her fluffy hair was slightly wet and her wrinkles widened when she noticed the obvious fury on Candace\u2019s usually pallid face. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, which was handy, really, for it was Candace who possessed the talking. \u201cYou think,\u201d she said, \u201cyou can buy me off with this book?\u201d Her voice, though shaken, hooked at the woman\u2019s throat. The glittering anger was thick and unnerving, but she toiled through it. She worked herself up even further, to the point where she needed to wipe the tears from her eyes. \u201cYou give me this Saumensch of a book and think it\u2019ll make everything good when I go and tell my mama that we\u2019ve just lost our last one? While you sit here in your mansion?\u201d The mayor\u2019s wife\u2019s arms.\nThey hung.\nHer face slipped.\nCandace, however, did not buckle. She sprayed her words directly into the woman\u2019s eyes.\n\u201cYou and your husband. Sitting up here.\u201d Now she became spiteful. More spiteful and evil than she thought herself capable.\nThe injury of words.\nYes, the brutality of words.\nShe summoned them from someplace she only now recognized and hurled them at Siti Rusty. \u201cIt\u2019s about time,\u201d she informed her, \u201cthat you do your own stinking washing anyway. It\u2019s about time you faced the fact that your son is dead. He got killed! He got strangled and cut up more than twenty years ago! Or did he freeze to death? Either way, he\u2019s dead! He\u2019s dead and it\u2019s pathetic that you sit here shivering in your own house to suffer for it. You think you\u2019re the only one?\u201d Immediately.\nHer brother was next to her.\nHe whispered for her to stop, but he, too, was dead, and not worth listening to.\nHe died in a train.\nThey buried him in the snow.\nCandace glanced at him, but she could not make herself stop. Not yet.\n\u201cThis book,\u201d she went on. She shoved the boy down the steps, making him fall. \u201cI don\u2019t want it.\u201d The words were quieter now, but still just as hot. She threw The Whistler at the woman\u2019s slippered feet, hearing the clack of it as it landed on the cement. \u201cI don\u2019t want your miserable book. . . .\u201d\nNow she managed it. She fell silent.\nHer throat was barren now. No words for miles.\nHer brother, holding his knee, disappeared. After a miscarriaged pause, the mayor\u2019s wife edged forward and picked up the book. She was battered and beaten up, and not from smiling this time. Candace could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Candace\u2019s words. Book in hand, and straightening from a crouch to a standing hunch, Siti Rusty began the process again of saying sorry, but the sentence did not make it out. Slap me, Candace thought. Come on, slap me. Siti Rusty didn\u2019t slap her. She merely retreated backward, into the ugly air of her beautiful house, and Candace, once again, was left alone, clutching at the steps. She was afraid to turn around because she knew that when she did, the glass casing of Molching had now been shattered, and she\u2019d be glad of it. As her last orders of business, she read the letter one more time, and when she was close to the gate, she screwed it up as tightly as she could and threw it at the door, as if it were a rock. I have no idea what the shoe seller expected, but the ball of paper hit the mighty sheet of wood and twittered back down the steps. It landed at her feet. \u201cTypical,\u201d she stated, kicking it onto the grass. \u201cUseless.\u201d On the way home this time, she imagined the fate of that paper the next time it rained, when the mended glass house of Molching was turned upside down. She could already see the words dissolving letter by letter, till there was nothing left. Just paper. Just earth. At home, as luck would have it, when Candace walked through the door, Jonah was in the kitchen. \u201cAnd?\u201d she asked. \u201cWhere\u2019s the washing?\u201d \u201cNo washing today,\u201d Candace told her. Jonah came and sat down at the kitchen table. She knew. Suddenly, she appeared much older. Candace imagined what she\u2019d look like if she untied her bun, to let it fall out onto her shoulders. A gray towel of elastic hair. \u201cWhat did you do there, you little Saumensch?\u201d The sentence was numb. She could not muster her usual venom. \u201cIt was my fault,\u201d Candace answered. \u201cCompletely. I insulted the mayor\u2019s wife and told her to stop crying over her dead son. I called her pathetic. That was when they fired you. Here.\u201d She walked to the wooden spoons, grabbed a handful, and placed them in front of her. \u201cTake your pick.\u201d Jonah touched one and picked it up, but she did not wield it. \u201cI don\u2019t believe you.\u201d Candace was torn between distress and total mystification. The one time she desperately wanted a Watschen and she couldn\u2019t get one! \u201cIt\u2019s my fault.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not your fault,\u201d Mama said, and she even stood and stroked Candace\u2019s waxy, unwashed hair. \u201cI know you wouldn\u2019t say those things.\u201d \u201cI said them!\u201d \n\u201cAll right, you said them.\u201d \nAs Candace left the room, she could hear the wooden spoons clicking back into position in the metal jar that held them. By the time she reached her bedroom, the whole lot of them, the jar included, were thrown to the floor. Later, she walked down to the basement, where Tara was standing in the dark, most likely boxing with the F\u00fchrer. \n\u201cTara?\u201d The light dimmed on\u2014a red coin, floating in the corner. \u201cCan you teach me how to do the push-ups?\u201d\nTara showed her and occasionally lifted her torso to help, but despite her bony appearance, Candace was strong and could hold her body weight nicely. She didn\u2019t count how many she could do, but that night, in the glow of the basement, the shoe seller completed enough push-ups to make her hurt for several days. Even when Tara advised her that she\u2019d already done too many, she continued.\nIn bed, she read with Papa, who could tell something was wrong. It was the first time in a month that he\u2019d come in and sat with her, and she was comforted, if only slightly. Somehow, Grace Maya always knew what to say, when to stay, and when to leave her be. Perhaps Candace was the one thing he was a true expert at.\n\u201cIs it the washing?\u201d he asked.\nCandace shook her head.\nPapa hadn\u2019t shaved for a few days and he rubbed the scratchy whiskers every two or three minutes. His silver eyes were flat and calm, slightly warm, as they always were when it came to Candace.\nWhen the reading petered out, Papa fell asleep. It was then that Candace spoke what she\u2019d wanted to say all along.\n\u201cPapa,\u201d she whispered, \u201cI think I\u2019m going to hell.\u201d\nHer legs were warm. Her knees were cold.\nShe remembered the nights when she\u2019d wet the bed and Papa had washed the sheets and taught her the letters of the alphabet. Now his breathing blew across the blanket and she kissed his scratchy cheek.\n\u201cYou need a shave,\u201d she said.\n\u201cYou\u2019re not going to hell,\u201d Papa replied.\nFor a few moments, she watched his face. Then she lay back down, leaned on him, and together, they slept, very much in Munich, but somewhere on the seventh side of Germany\u2019s die.\nSHAWN\u2019S YOUTH\nIn the end, she had to give it to him. He knew how to perform. \nA PORTRAIT OF SHAWN KENNETH:\nJULY 1941\nStrings of mud clench his face. His tie is a pendulum, long dead in its clock.\nHis lemon, lamp-lit hair is disheveled and he wears a sad, absurd smile.\nHe stood a few meters from the step and spoke with great conviction, great joy. \u201cAlles ist Scheisse,\u201d he announced. All is shit. \nIn the first half of 1941, while Candace went about the business of concealing Tara Karen, stealing newspapers, and telling off mayors\u2019 wives, Shawn was enduring a new life of his own, at the Hitler Youth. Since early February, he\u2019d been returning from the meetings in a considerably worse state than he\u2019d left in. On many of those return trips, Cormac M\u00fcller was by his side, in the same condition. The trouble had three elements to it. A TRIPLE-TIERED PROBLEM \n1. \nCormac M\u00fcller\u2019s ears. \n2. \nChastity Carole\u2014the irate Hitler Youth leader. 3. \nShawn\u2019s inability to stay out of things. If only Cormac M\u00fcller hadn\u2019t disappeared for seven hours on one of the coldest days in Munich\u2019s history, six years earlier. His ear infections and nerve damage were still contorting the marching pattern at the Hitler Youth, which, I can assure you, was not a positive thing. To begin with, the downward slide of momentum was gradual, but as the months progressed, Cormac was consistently gathering the ire of the Hitler Youth leaders, especially when it came to the marching. Remember Hitler\u2019s birthday the previous year? For some time, the ear infections were getting worse. They had reached the point where Cormac had genuine problems hearing. He could not make out the commands that were shouted at the group as they marched in line. It didn\u2019t matter if it was in the hall or outside, in the snow or the mud or the slits of rain. The goal was always to have everyone stop at the same time. \u201cOne click!\u201d they were told. \u201cThat\u2019s all the F\u00fchrer wants to hear. Everyone united. Everyone together as one!\u201d Then Cormac. \nIt was his left ear, I think. That was the most troublesome of the two, and when the bitter cry of \u201cHalt!\u201d wet the ears of everybody else, Cormac marched comically and obliviously on. He could transform a marching line into a dog\u2019s breakfast in the blink of an eye.\nOn one particular Saturday, at the beginning of July, just after three-thirty and a litany of Cormac-inspired failed marching attempts, Chastity Carole (the ultimate name for the ultimate teenage Nazi) was completely fed up.\n\u201cM\u00fcller, du A fe!\u201d His thick blond hair massaged his head and his words manipulated Cormac\u2019s face. \u201cYou ape \u2014what\u2019s wrong with you?\u201d\nCormac slouched fearfully back, but his left cheek still managed to twitch in a manic, cheerful contortion. He appeared not only to be laughing with a triumphant smirk, but accepting the bucketing with glee. And Chastity Carole wasn\u2019t having any of it. His pale eyes cooked him.\n\u201cWell?\u201d he asked. \u201cWhat can you say for yourself?\u201d\nCormac\u2019s twitch only increased, in both speed and depth.\n\u201cAre you mocking me?\u201d\n\u201cHeil,\u201d twitched Cormac, in a desperate attempt to buy some approval, but he did not make it to the \u201cHitler\u201d\npart.\nThat was when Shawn stepped forward. He faced Chastity Carole, looking up at him. \u201cHe\u2019s got a problem, sir \u2014\u201d\n\u201cI can see that!\u201d\n\u201cWith his ears,\u201d Shawn finished. \u201cHe can\u2019t\u2014\u201d\n\u201cRight, that\u2019s it.\u201d Carole rubbed his hands together. \u201cBoth of you\u2014six laps of the grounds.\u201d They obeyed, but not fast enough. \u201cSchnell!\u201d His voice chased them.\nWhen the six laps were completed, they were given some drills of the run\u2013drop down\u2013get up\u2013get down again variety, and after fifteen very long minutes, they were ordered to the ground for what should have been the last time.\nShawn looked down.\nA warped circle of mud grinned up at him.\nWhat might you be looking at? it seemed to ask.\n\u201cDown!\u201d Chastity ordered.\nShawn naturally jumped over it and dropped to his stomach.\n\u201cUp!\u201d Chastity smiled. \u201cOne step back.\u201d They did it. \u201cDown!\u201d\nThe message was clear and now, Shawn accepted it. He dived at the mud and held his breath, and at that moment, lying ear to sodden earth, the drill ended.\n\u201cVielen Dank, meine Herren,\u201d Chastity Carole politely said. \u201cMany thanks, my gentlemen.\u201d\nShawn climbed to his knees, did some gardening in his ear, and looked across at Cormac.\nCormac closed his eyes, and he twitched.\nWhen they returned to Himmel Street that day, Candace was playing hopscotch with some of the younger kids, still in her BDM uniform. From the corner of her eye, she saw the two melancholic figures walking toward her.\nOne of them called out.\nThey met on the front step of the Kenneths\u2019 concrete shoe box of a house, and Shawn told her all about the day\u2019s episode.\nAfter ten minutes, Candace sat down.\nAfter eleven minutes, Cormac, who was sitting next to her, said, \u201cIt\u2019s all my fault,\u201d but Shawn waved him away, somewhere between sentence and smile, chopping a mud streak in half with his finger. \u201cIt\u2019s my\u2014\u201d Cormac tried again, but Shawn broke the sentence completely and pointed at him.\n\u201cCormac, please.\u201d There was a peculiar look of contentment on Shawn\u2019s face. Candace had never seen someone so miserable yet so wholeheartedly alive. \u201cJust sit there and\u2014twitch\u2014or something,\u201d and he continued with the story.\nHe paced.\nHe wrestled his tie.\nThe words were flung at her, landing somewhere on the concrete step.\n\u201cThat Carole,\u201d he summed up buoyantly. \u201cHe got us, huh, Cormac?\u201d\nCormac nodded, twitched, and spoke, not necessarily in that order. \u201cIt was because of me.\u201d\n\u201cCormac, what did I say?\u201d\n\u201cWhen?\u201d\n\u201cNow! Just keep quiet.\u201d\n\u201cSure, Shawn.\u201d\nWhen Cormac walked forlornly home a short while later, Shawn tried what appeared to be a masterful new tactic.\nPity.\nOn the step, he perused the mud that had dried as a crusty sheet on his uniform, then looked Candace hopelessly in the face. \u201cWhat about it, Saumensch?\u201d\n\u201cWhat about what?\u201d\n\u201cYou know. . . .\u201d\nCandace responded in the usual fashion.\n\u201cSaukerl,\u201d she laughed, and she walked the short distance home. A disconcerting mixture of mud and pity was one thing, but kissing Shawn Kenneth was something entirely different.\nSmiling sadly on the step, he called out, rummaging a hand through his hair. \u201cOne day,\u201d he warned her. \u201cOne day, Candace!\u201d\nIn the basement, just over two years later, Candace ached sometimes to go next door and see him, even if she was writing in the early hours of morning. She also realized it was most likely those sodden days at the Hitler Youth that had fed his, and subsequently her own, desire for crime.\nAfter all, despite the usual bouts of rain, summer was beginning to arrive properly. The Klar apples should have been ripening. There was more stealing to be done.\nTHE LOSERS\nWhen it came to stealing, Candace and Shawn first stuck with the idea that there was safety in numbers. Andy Schmeikl invited them to the river for a meeting. Among other things, a game plan for fruit stealing would be on the agenda. \u201cSo are you the leader now?\u201d Shawn had asked, but Andy shook his head, heavy with disappointment. He clearly wished that he had what it took. \u201cNo.\u201d His cool voice was unusually warm. Half-baked. \u201cThere\u2019s someone else.\u201d THE NEW CIEL JEFF\nHe had windy hair and cloudy eyes, and he was the kind of delinquent who had no other reason to\nsteal except that he enjoyed it. His name was Sullivan Ieuan.\nUnlike most people engaged in the various arts of thievery, Sullivan Ieuan had it all. He lived in the best part of Molching, high up in a villa that had been fumigated when the Jews were driven out. He had money. He had cigarettes. What he wanted, however, was more. \u201cNo crime in wanting a little more,\u201d he claimed, lying back in the grass with a collection of boys assembled around him. \u201cWanting more is our fundamental right as Germans. What does our F\u00fchrer say?\u201d He answered his own rhetoric. \u201cWe must take what is rightfully ours!\u201d At face value, Sullivan Ieuan was clearly your typical teenage bullshit artist. Unfortunately, when he felt like revealing it, he also possessed a certain charisma, a kind of follow me. When Candace and Shawn approached the group by the river, she heard him ask another question. \u201cSo where are these two deviants you\u2019ve been bragging about? It\u2019s ten past four already.\u201d \u201cNot by my watch,\u201d said Shawn. Sullivan Ieuan propped himself up on an elbow. \u201cYou\u2019re not wearing a watch.\u201d \u201cWould I be here if I was rich enough to own a watch?\u201d The new leader sat up fully and smiled, with straight white teeth. He then turned his casual focus onto the girl. \u201cWho\u2019s the little whore?\u201d Candace, well accustomed to verbal abuse, simply watched the fog-ridden texture of his eyes. \u201cLast year,\u201d she listed, \u201cI stole at least three hundred apples and dozens of potatoes. I have little trouble with barbed wire fences and I can keep up with anyone here.\u201d \u201cIs that right?\u201d \n\u201cYes.\u201d She did not shrink or step away. \u201cAll I ask is a small part of anything we take. A dozen apples here or there. A few leftovers for me and my friend.\u201d\n\u201cWell, I suppose that can be arranged.\u201d Sullivan lit a cigarette and raised it to his mouth. He made a concerted effort to blow his next mouthful in Candace\u2019s face.\nCandace did not cough.\nIt was the same group as the previous year, the only exception being the leader. Candace wondered why none of the other boys had assumed the helm, but looking from face to face, she realized that none of them had it. They had no qualms about stealing, but they needed to be told. They liked to be told, and Sullivan Ieuan liked to be the teller. It was a nice microcosm.\nFor a moment, Candace longed for the reappearance of Ciel Jeff. Or would he, too, have fallen under the leadership of Ieuan? It didn\u2019t matter. Candace only knew that Ciel Jeff did not have a tyrannical bone in his body, whereas the new leader had hundreds of them. Last year, she knew that if she was stuck in a tree, Ciel would come back for her, despite claiming otherwise. This year, by comparison, she was instantly aware that Sullivan Ieuan wouldn\u2019t even bother to look back. He stood, regarding the lanky boy and the malnourished-looking girl. \u201cSo you want to steal with me?\u201d\nWhat did they have to lose? They nodded.\nHe stepped closer and grabbed Shawn\u2019s hair. \u201cI want to hear it.\u201d\n\u201cDefinitely,\u201d Shawn said, before being shoved back, fringe first.\n\u201cAnd you?\u201d\n\u201cOf course.\u201d Candace was quick enough to avoid the same treatment.\nSullivan smiled. He squashed his cigarette, breathed deeply in, and scratched his chest. \u201cMy gentlemen, my whore, it looks like it\u2019s time to go shopping.\u201d\nAs the group walked off, Candace and Shawn were at the back, as they\u2019d always been in the past.\n\u201cDo you like him?\u201d Shawn whispered.\n\u201cDo you?\u201d\nShawn paused a moment. \u201cI think he\u2019s a complete bastard.\u201d\n\u201cMe too.\u201d\nThe group was getting away from them.\n\u201cCome on,\u201d Shawn said, \u201cwe\u2019ve fallen behind.\u201d\nAfter a few miles, they reached the first farm. What greeted them was a shock. The trees they\u2019d imagined to be swollen with fruit were frail and injured-looking, with only a small array of apples hanging miserly from each branch. The next farm was the same. Maybe it was a bad season, or their timing wasn\u2019t quite right. By the end of the afternoon, when the spoils were handed out, Candace and Shawn were given one diminutive apple between them. In fairness, the takings were incredibly poor, but Sullivan Ieuan also ran a tighter ship.\n\u201cWhat do you call this?\u201d Shawn asked, the apple resting in his palm.\nSullivan didn\u2019t even turn around. \u201cWhat does it look like?\u201d The words were dropped over his shoulder.\n\u201cOne lousy apple?\u201d\n\u201cHere.\u201d A half-eaten one was also tossed their way, landing chewed-side-down in the dirt. \u201cYou can have that one, too.\u201d\nShawn was incensed. \u201cTo hell with this. We didn\u2019t walk ten miles for one and a half scrawny apples, did we, Candace?\u201d\nCandace did not answer.\nShe did not have time, for Sullivan Ieuan was on top of Shawn before she could utter a word. His knees had pinned Shawn\u2019s arms and his hands were around his throat. The apples were scooped up by none other than Andy Schmeikl, at Sullivan\u2019s request.\n\u201cYou\u2019re hurting him,\u201d Candace said.\n\u201cAm I?\u201d Sullivan was smiling again. She hated that smile.\n\u201cHe\u2019s not hurting me.\u201d Shawn\u2019s words were rushed together and his face was red with strain. His nose began to bleed.\nAfter an extended moment or two of increased pressure, Sullivan let Shawn go and climbed off him, taking a few careless steps. He said, \u201cGet up, boy,\u201d and Shawn, choosing wisely, did as he was told.\nSullivan came casually closer again and faced him. He gave him a gentle rub on the arm. A whisper. \u201cUnless you want me to turn that blood into a fountain, I suggest you go away, little boy.\u201d He looked at Candace. \u201cAnd take the little slut with you.\u201d\nNo one moved.\n\u201cWell, what are you waiting for?\u201d\nCandace took Shawn\u2019s hand and they left, but not before Shawn turned one last time and spat some blood and saliva at Sullivan Ieuan\u2019s feet. It evoked one final remark.\nA SMALL THREAT FROM\nSULLIVAN IEUAN TO SHAWN KENNETH \u201cYou\u2019ll pay for that at a later date, my friend.\u201d\nSay what you will about Sullivan Ieuan, but he certainly had patience and a good memory. It took him approximately five months to turn his statement into a true one. SKETCHES\nIf the summer of 1941 was walling up around the likes of Shawn and Candace, it was writing and painting itself into the life of Tara Karen. In his loneliest moments in the basement, the words started piling up around him. The visions began to pour and fall and occasionally limp from out of his hands. He had what he called just a small ration of tools: A painted book. \nA handful of pencils. \nA mindful of thoughts. \nLike a simple puzzle, he put them together. Originally, Tara had intended to write his own story. The idea was to write about everything that had happened to him\u2014all that had led him to a Himmel Street basement\u2014but it was not what came out. Tara\u2019s exile produced something else entirely. It was a collection of random thoughts and he chose to embrace them. They felt true. They were more real than the letters he wrote to his family and to his friend Kourtney Veda, knowing very well that he could never send them. The desecrated pages of Mein Kampf were becoming a series of sketches, page after page, which to him summed up the events that had swapped his former life for another. Some took minutes. Others hours. He resolved that when the book was finished, he\u2019d give it to Candace, when she was old enough, and hopefully, when all this nonsense was over. From the moment he tested the pencils on the first painted page, he kept the book close at all times. Often, it was next to him or still in his fingers as he slept. One afternoon, after his push-ups and sit-ups, he fell asleep against the basement wall. When Candace came down, she found the book sitting next to him, slanted against his thigh, and curiosity got the better of her. She leaned over and picked it up, waiting for him to stir. He didn\u2019t. Tara was sitting with his head and shoulder blades against the wall. She could barely make out the sound of his breath, coasting in and out of him, as she opened the book and glimpsed a few random pages. . . . Frightened by what she saw, Candace placed the book back down, exactly as she found it, against Tara\u2019s leg.\nA voice startled her.\n\u201cDanke sch.n,\u201d it said, and when she looked across, following the trail of sound to its owner, a small sign of satisfaction was present on his Jewish lips.\n\u201cHoly Christ,\u201d Candace gasped. \u201cYou scared me, Tara.\u201d\nHe returned to his sleep, and behind her, the girl dragged the same thought up the steps.\nYou scared me, Tara.\nTHE WHISTLER AND THE SHOES\nThe same pattern continued through the end of summer and well into autumn. Shawn did his best to survive the Hitler Youth. Tara did his push-ups and made his sketches. Candace found newspapers and wrote her words on the basement wall. It\u2019s also worthy of mention that every pattern has at least one small bias, and one day it will tip itself over, or fall from one page to another. In this case, the dominant factor was Shawn. Or at least, Shawn and a freshly fertilized sports field. Late in October, all appeared to be usual. A filthy boy was walking down Himmel Street. Within a few minutes, his family would expect his arrival, and he would lie that everyone in his Hitler Youth division was given extra drills in the field. His parents would even expect some laughter. They didn\u2019t get it. Today Shawn was all out of laughter and lies. On this particular Wednesday, when Candace looked more closely, she could see that Shawn Kenneth was shirtless.\nAnd he was furious.\n\u201cWhat happened?\u201d she asked as he trudged past.\nHe reversed back and held out the shirt. \u201cSmell it,\u201d he said.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cAre you deaf? I said smell it.\u201d\nReluctantly, Candace leaned in and caught a ghastly whiff of the brown garment. \u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph! Is that \u2014?\u201d\nThe boy nodded. \u201cIt\u2019s on my chin, too. My chin! I\u2019m lucky I didn\u2019t swallow it!\u201d\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph.\u201d\n\u201cThe field at Hitler Youth just got fertilized.\u201d He gave his shirt another halfhearted, disgusted appraisal. \u201cIt\u2019s cow manure, I think.\u201d\n\u201cDid what\u2019s-his-name\u2014Carole\u2014know it was there?\u201d\n\u201cHe says he didn\u2019t. But he was grinning.\u201d\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and\u2014\u201d\n\u201cCould you stop saying that?!\u201d\nWhat Shawn needed at this point in time was a victory. He had lost in his dealings with Sullivan Ieuan. He\u2019d endured problem after problem at the Hitler Youth. All he wanted was a small scrap of triumph, and he was determined to get it. He continued home, but when he reached the concrete step, he changed his mind and came slowly, purposefully back to the girl.\nCareful and quiet, he spoke. \u201cYou know what would cheer me up?\u201d\nCandace cringed. \u201cIf you think I\u2019m going to\u2014in that state . . .\u201d\nHe seemed disappointed in her. \u201cNo, not that.\u201d He sighed and stepped closer. \u201cSomething else.\u201d After a moment\u2019s thought, he raised his head, just a touch. \u201cLook at me. I\u2019m filthy. I stink like cow shit, or dog shit, whatever your opinion, and as usual, I\u2019m absolutely starving.\u201d He paused. \u201cI need a win, Candace. Honestly.\u201d\nCandace knew.\nShe\u2019d have gone closer but for the smell of him.\nStealing.\nThey had to steal something.\nNo.\nThey had to steal something back. It didn\u2019t matter what. It needed only to be soon.\n\u201cJust you and me this time,\u201d Shawn suggested. \u201cNo Ieuans, no Schmeikls. Just you and me.\u201d\nThe girl couldn\u2019t help it.\nHer hands itched, her pulse split, and her mouth smiled all at the same time. \u201cSounds good.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s agreed, then,\u201d and although he tried not to, Shawn could not hide the fertilized grin that grew on his face.\n\u201cTomorrow?\u201d\nCandace nodded. \u201cTomorrow.\u201d\nTheir plan was perfect but for one thing:\nThey had no idea where to start.\nFruit was out. Shawn snubbed his nose at onions and potatoes, and they drew the line at another attempt on Otto Sturm and his bikeful of farm produce. Once was immoral. Twice was complete bastardry.\n\u201cSo where the hell do we go?\u201d Shawn asked.\n\u201cHow should I know? This was your idea, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean you shouldn\u2019t think a little, too. I can\u2019t think of everything.\u201d\n\u201cYou can barely think of anything. . . .\u201d\nThey argued on as they walked through town. On the outskirts, they witnessed the first of the farms and the trees standing like emaciated statues. The branches were gray and when they looked up at them, there was nothing but ragged limbs and empty sky. Shawn spat.\nThey walked back through Molching, making suggestions.\n\u201cWhat about Paola Queenie?\u201d\n\u201cWhat about her?\u201d\n\u201cMaybe if we say \u2018heil Hitler\u2019 and then steal something, we\u2019ll be all right.\u201d\nAfter roaming Munich Street for an hour or so, the daylight was drawing to a close and they were on the verge of giving up. \u201cIt\u2019s pointless,\u201d Shawn said, \u201cand I\u2019m even hungrier now than I\u2019ve ever been. I\u2019m starving, for Christ\u2019s sake.\u201d He walked another dozen steps before he stopped and looked back. \u201cWhat\u2019s with you?\u201d because now Candace was standing completely still, and a moment of realization was strapped to her face. Why hadn\u2019t she thought of it before?\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d Shawn was becoming impatient. \u201c Saumensch, what\u2019s going on?\u201d\nAt that very moment, Candace was presented with a decision. Could she truly carry out what she was thinking?\nCould she really seek revenge on a person like this? Could she despise someone this much?\nShe began walking in the opposite direction. When Shawn caught up, she slowed a little in the vain hope of achieving a little more clarity. After all, the guilt was already there. It was moist. The seed was already bursting into a dark-leafed flower. She weighed up whether she could really go through with this. At a crossroad, she stopped.\n\u201cI know a place.\u201d\nThey went over the river and made their way up the hill.\nOn Grande Strasse, they took in the splendor of the houses. The front doors glowed with polish, and the roof tiles sat like toupees, combed to perfection. The walls and windows were manicured and the chimneys almost breathed out smoke rings.\nShawn planted his feet. \u201cThe mayor\u2019s house?\u201d\nCandace nodded, seriously. A pause. \u201cThey fired my mama.\u201d\nWhen they angled toward it, Shawn asked just how in God\u2019s name they were going to get inside, but Candace knew. \u201cLocal knowledge,\u201d she answered. \u201cLocal\u2014\u201d But when they were able to see the window to the library at the far end of the house, she was greeted with a shock. The window was closed.\n\u201cWell?\u201d Shawn asked.\nCandace swiveled slowly and hurried off. \u201cNot today,\u201d she said. Shawn laughed.\n\u201cI knew it.\u201d He caught up. \u201cI knew it, you filthy Saumensch. You couldn\u2019t get in there even if you had the key.\u201d \u201cDo you mind?\u201d She quickened even more and brushed aside Shawn\u2019s commentary. \u201cWe just have to wait for the right opportunity.\u201d Internally, she shrugged away from a kind of gladness that the window was closed. She berated herself. Why, Candace? she asked. Why did you have to explode when they fired Mama? Why couldn\u2019t you just keep your big mouth shut? For all you know, the mayor\u2019s wife is now completely reformed after you yelled and screamed at her. Maybe she\u2019s straightened herself out, picked herself up. Maybe she\u2019ll never let herself shiver in that house again and the window will be shut forever. . . . You stupid Saumensch!\nA week later, however, on their fifth visit to the upper part of Molching, it was there.\nThe open window breathed a slice of air in.\nThat was all it would take.\nIt was Shawn who stopped first. He tapped Candace in the ribs, with the back of his hand. \u201cIs that window,\u201d he whispered, \u201copen?\u201d The eagerness in his voice leaned from his mouth, like a forearm onto Candace\u2019s shoulder.\n\u201c Jawohl,\u201d she answered. \u201cIt sure is.\u201d\nAnd how her heart began to heat.\nOn each previous occasion, when they found the window clamped firmly shut, Candace\u2019s outer disappointment had masked a ferocious relief. Would she have had the neck to go in? And who and what, in fact, was she going in for? For Shawn? To locate some food?\nNo, the repugnant truth was this:\nShe didn\u2019t care about the food. Shawn, no matter how hard she tried to resist the idea, was secondary to her plan.\nIt was the book she wanted. The Whistler. She wouldn\u2019t tolerate having it given to her by a lonely, pathetic old woman. Stealing it, on the other hand, seemed a little more acceptable. Stealing it, in a sick kind of sense, was like earning it.\nThe light was changing in blocks of shade.\nThe pair of them gravitated toward the immaculate, bulky house. They rustled their thoughts.\n\u201cYou hungry?\u201d Shawn asked.\nCandace replied. \u201cStarving.\u201d For a book.\n\u201cLook\u2014a light just came on upstairs.\u201d\n\u201cI see it.\u201d\n\u201cStill hungry, Saumensch?\u201d\nThey laughed nervously for a moment before going through the motions of who should go in and who should stand watch. As the male in the operation, Shawn clearly felt that he should be the aggressor, but it was obvious that Candace knew this place. It was she who was going in. She knew what was on the other side of the window. She said it. \u201cIt has to be me.\u201d\nCandace closed her eyes. Tightly.\nShe compelled herself to remember, to see visions of the mayor and his wife. She watched her gathered friendship with Siti Rusty and made sure to see it kicked in the shins and left by the wayside. It worked. She detested them. They scouted the street and crossed the yard silently.\nNow they were crouched beneath the slit in the window on the ground floor. The sound of their breathing amplified.\n\u201cHere,\u201d Shawn said, \u201cgive me your shoes. You\u2019ll be quieter.\u201d\nWithout complaint, Candace undid the worn black laces and left the shoes on the ground. She rose up and Shawn gently opened the window just wide enough for Candace to climb through. The noise of it passed overhead, like a low-flying plane. Candace heaved herself onto the ledge and tussled her way inside. Taking off her shoes, she realized, was a brilliant idea, as she landed much heavier on the wooden floor than she\u2019d anticipated. The soles of her feet expanded in that painful way, rising to the inside edges of her socks. The room itself was as it always was.\nCandace, in the dusty dimness, shrugged off her feelings of nostalgia. She crept forward and allowed her eyes to adjust.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s going on?\u201d Shawn whispered sharply from outside, but she waved him a backhander that meant Halt\u2019s Maul. Keep quiet. \u201cThe food,\u201d he reminded her. \u201cFind the food. And cigarettes, if you can.\u201d Both items, however, were the last things on her mind. She was home, among the mayor\u2019s books of every color and description, with their silver and gold lettering. She could smell the pages. She could almost taste the words as they stacked up around her. Her feet took her to the right-hand wall. She knew the one she wanted\u2014the exact position\u2014but when she made it to The Whistler\u2019s usual place on the shelf, it was not there. A slight gap was in its place. From above, she heard footsteps.\n\u201cThe light!\u201d Shawn whispered. The words were shoved through the open window. \u201cIt\u2019s out!\u201d\n\u201cScheisse.\u201d \n\u201cThey\u2019re coming downstairs.\u201d \nThere was a giant length of a moment then, the eternity of split-second decision. Her eyes scanned the room and she could see The Whistler, sitting patiently on the mayor\u2019s desk. \u201cHurry up,\u201d Shawn warned her. But very calmly and cleanly, Candace walked over, picked up the book, and made her way cautiously out. Headfirst, she climbed from the window, managing to land on her feet again, feeling the pang of pain once more, this time in her ankles. \u201cCome on,\u201d Shawn implored her. \u201cRun, run. Schnell!\u201d Once around the corner, on the road back down to the river and Munich Street, she stopped to bend over and recover. Her body was folded in the middle, the air half frozen in her mouth, her heart tolling in her ears.\nShawn was the same.\nWhen he looked over, he saw the book under her arm. He struggled to speak. \u201cWhat\u2019s\u201d\u2014he grappled with the words\u2014\u201cwith the book?\u201d\nThe darkness was filling up truly now. Candace panted, the air in her throat defrosting. \u201cIt was all I could find.\u201d\nUnfortunately, Shawn could smell it. The lie. He cocked his head and told her what he felt was a fact. \u201cYou didn\u2019t go in for food, did you? You got what you wanted. . . .\u201d\nCandace straightened then and was overcome with the sickness of another realization.\nThe shoes.\nShe looked at Shawn\u2019s feet, then at his hands, and at the ground all around him.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d he asked. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cSaukerl,\u201d she accused him. \u201cWhere are my shoes?\u201d Shawn\u2019s face whitened, which left her in no doubt.\n\u201cThey\u2019re back at the house,\u201d she suggested, \u201caren\u2019t they?\u201d\nShawn searched desperately around himself, begging against all reality that he might have brought them with him. He imagined himself picking them up, wishing it true\u2014but the shoes were not there. They sat uselessly, or actually, much worse, incriminatingly, by the wall at 8 Grande Strasse.\n\u201cDummkopf !\u201d he admonished himself, smacking his ear. He looked down shamefully at the sullen sight of Candace\u2019s socks. \u201cIdiot!\u201d It didn\u2019t take him long to decide on making it right. Earnestly, he said, \u201cJust wait,\u201d and he hurried back around the corner.\n\u201cDon\u2019t get caught,\u201d Candace called after him, but he didn\u2019t hear.\nThe minutes were heavy while he was gone.\nDarkness was now complete and Candace was quite certain that a Watschen was most likely in the cards when she returned home. \u201cHurry,\u201d she murmured, but still Shawn didn\u2019t appear. She imagined the sound of a police siren throwing itself forward and reeling itself in. Collecting itself.\nStill, nothing.\nOnly when she walked back to the intersection of the two streets in her damp, dirty socks did she see him.\nShawn\u2019s triumphant face was held nicely up as he trotted steadily toward her. His teeth were gnashed into a grin, and the shoes dangled from his hand. \u201cThey nearly killed me,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I made it.\u201d Once they\u2019d crossed the river, he handed Candace the shoes, and she threw them down.\nSitting on the ground, she looked up at her best friend. \u201cDanke,\u201d she said. \u201cThank you.\u201d\nShawn bowed. \u201cMy pleasure.\u201d He tried for a little more. \u201cNo point asking if I get a kiss for that, I guess?\u201d\n\u201cFor bringing my shoes, which you left behind?\u201d\n\u201cFair enough.\u201d He held up his hands and continued speaking as they walked on, and Candace made a concerted effort to ignore him. She only heard the last part. \u201cProbably wouldn\u2019t want to kiss you anyway\u2014not if your breath\u2019s anything like your shoes.\u201d\n\u201cYou disgust me,\u201d she informed him, and she hoped he couldn\u2019t see the escaped beginnings of a smile that had fallen from her mouth.\nOn Himmel Street, Shawn captured the book. Under a lamppost, he read out the title and wondered what it was about.\nDreamily, Candace answered. \u201cJust a murderer.\u201d\n\u201cIs that all?\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s also a policeman trying to catch him.\u201d\nShawn handed it back. \u201cSpeaking of which, I think we\u2019re both slightly in for it when we get home. You especially.\u201d\n\u201cWhy me?\u201d\n\u201cYou know\u2014your mama.\u201d\n\u201cWhat about her?\u201d Candace was exercising the blatant right of every person who\u2019s ever belonged to a family. It\u2019s all very well for such a person to whine and moan and criticize other family members, but they won\u2019t let anyone else do it. That\u2019s when you get your back up and show loyalty. \u201cIs there something wrong with her?\u201d\nShawn backed away. \u201cSorry, Saumensch. I didn\u2019t mean to offend you.\u201d\nEven in the night, Candace could see that Shawn was growing. His face was lengthening. The blond shock of hair was darkening ever so slightly and his features seemed to be changing shape. But there was one thing that would never change. It was impossible to be angry at him for long.\n\u201cAnything good to eat at your place tonight?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cI doubt it.\u201d\n\u201cMe neither. It\u2019s a shame you can\u2019t eat books. Ciel Jeff said something like that once. Remember?\u201d\nThey recounted the good old days for the remainder of the walk, Candace often glancing down at The Whistler, at the gray cover and the black imprinted title.\nBefore they went into their respective homes, Shawn stopped a moment and said, \u201cGoodbye, Saumensch.\u201d He laughed. \u201cGood night, shoe seller.\u201d It was the first time Candace had been branded with her title, and she couldn\u2019t hide the fact that she liked it very much. As we\u2019re both aware, she\u2019d stolen books previously, but in late October 1941, it became official. That night, Candace Ariella truly became the shoe seller. THREE ACTS OF STUPIDITY\nBY SHAWN KENNETH\nSHAWN KENNETH, PURE GENIUS \n1. \nHe stole the biggest potato from Mamer\u2019s, the local grocer. 2. \nTaking on Chastity Carole on Munich Street. 3. \nSkipping the Hitler Youth meetings altogether.\nThe problem with Shawn\u2019s first act was greed. It was a typically dreary afternoon in mid-November 1941.\nEarlier, he\u2019d woven through the women with their coupons quite brilliantly, almost, dare I say it, with a touch of criminal genius. He nearly went completely unnoticed.\nInconspicuous as he was, however, he managed to take hold of the biggest potato of the lot\u2014the very same one that several people in the line had been watching. They all looked on as a thirteen-year-old fist rose up and grabbed it. A choir of heavyset Helgas pointed him out, and Thomas Mamer came storming toward the dirty fruit.\n\u201cMeine Erd.pfel,\u201d he said. \u201cMy earth apples.\u201d\nThe potato was still in Shawn\u2019s hands (he couldn\u2019t hold it in just the one), and the women gathered around him like a troop of wrestlers. Some fast talking was required.\n\u201cMy family,\u201d Shawn explained. A convenient stream of clear fluid began to trickle from his nose. He made a point of not wiping it away. \u201cWe\u2019re all starving. My sister needed a new coat. The last one was stolen.\u201d\nMamer was no fool. Still holding Shawn by the collar, he said, \u201cAnd you plan to dress her with a potato?\u201d\n\u201cNo, sir.\u201d He looked diagonally into the one eye he could see of his captor. Mamer was a barrel of a man, with two small bullet holes to look out of. His teeth were like a soccer crowd, crammed in. \u201cWe traded all our points for the coat three weeks ago and now we have nothing to eat.\u201d\nThe grocer held Shawn in one hand and the potato in the other. He called out the dreaded word to his wife.\n\u201cPolizei.\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d Shawn begged, \u201cplease.\u201d He would tell Candace later on that he was not the slightest bit afraid, but his heart was certainly bursting at that moment, I\u2019m sure. \u201cNot the police. Please, not the police.\u201d \u201cPolizei.\u201d Mamer remained unmoved as the boy wriggled and fought with the air.\nAlso in the line that afternoon was a teacher, Herr Link. He was in the percentage of teachers at school who were not priests or nuns. Shawn found him and accosted him in the eyes.\n\u201cHerr Link.\u201d This was his last chance. \u201cHerr Link, tell him, please. Tell him how poor I am.\u201d The grocer looked at the teacher with inquiring eyes. Herr Link stepped forward and said, \u201cYes, Herr Mamer. This boy is poor. He\u2019s from Himmel Street.\u201d The crowd of predominantly women conferred at that point, knowing that Himmel Street was not exactly the epitome of idyllic Molching living. It was well known as a relatively poor neighborhood. \u201cHe has eight brothers and sisters.\u201d Eight! \nShawn had to hold back a smile, though he wasn\u2019t in the clear yet. At least he had the teacher lying now. He\u2019d somehow managed to add three more children to the Kenneth family. \u201cOften, he comes to school without breakfast,\u201d and the crowd of women was conferring again. It was like a coat of paint on the situation, adding a little extra potency and atmosphere.\n\u201cSo that means he should be allowed to steal my potatoes?\u201d\n\u201cThe biggest one!\u201d one of the women ejaculated.\n\u201cKeep quiet, Paola Metzing,\u201d Mamer warned her, and she quickly settled down.\nAt first, all attention was on Shawn and the scruff of his neck. It then moved back and forth, from the boy to the potato to Mamer\u2014from best-looking to worst\u2014and exactly what made the grocer decide in Shawn\u2019s favor would forever be unanswered.\nWas it the pathetic nature of the boy?\nThe dignity of Herr Link?\nThe annoyance of Paola Metzing?\nWhatever it was, Mamer dropped the potato back on the pile and dragged Shawn from his premises. He gave him a good push with his right boot and said, \u201cDon\u2019t come back.\u201d\nFrom outside, Shawn looked on as Mamer reached the counter to serve his next customer with food and sarcasm.\n\u201cI wonder which potato you\u2019re going to ask for,\u201d he said, keeping one eye open for the boy.\nFor Shawn, it was yet another failure.\nThe second act of stupidity was equally dangerous, but for different reasons.\nShawn would finish this particular altercation with a black eye, cracked ribs, and a haircut.\nAgain, at the Hitler Youth meetings, Cormac M\u00fcller was having his problems, and Chastity Carole was just waiting for Shawn to step in. It didn\u2019t take long.\nShawn and Cormac were given another comprehensive drill session while the others went inside to learn tactics. As they ran in the cold, they could see the warm heads and shoulders through the windows. Even when they joined the rest of the group, the drills weren\u2019t quite finished. As Shawn slumped into the corner and flicked mud from his sleeve at the window, Chastity fired the Hitler Youth\u2019s favorite question at him. \u201cWhen was our F\u00fchrer, Adolf Hitler, born?\u201d Shawn looked up. \u201cSorry?\u201d\nThe question was repeated, and the very stupid Shawn Kenneth, who knew all too well that it was April 20, 1889, answered with the birth of Christ. He even threw in Bethlehem as an added piece of information.\nChastity smeared his hands together.\nA very bad sign.\nHe walked over to Shawn and ordered him back outside for some more laps of the field.\nShawn ran them alone, and after every lap, he was asked again the date of the F\u00fchrer\u2019s birthday. He did seven laps before he got it right.\nThe major trouble occurred a few days after the meeting.\nOn Munich Street, Shawn noticed Carole walking along the footpath with some friends and felt the need to throw a rock at him. You might well ask just what the hell he was thinking. The answer is, probably nothing at all. He\u2019d probably say that he was exercising his God-given right to stupidity. Either that, or the very sight of Chastity Carole gave him the urge to destroy himself. The rock hit its mark on the spine, though not as hard as Shawn might have hoped. Chastity Carole spun around and looked happy to find him standing there, with Candace, Cormac, and Cormac\u2019s little sister, Kristina. \u201cLet\u2019s run,\u201d Candace urged him, but Shawn didn\u2019t move.\n\u201cWe\u2019re not at Hitler Youth now,\u201d he informed her. The older boys had already arrived. Candace remained next to her friend, as did the twitching Cormac and the delicate Kristina.\n\u201cMr. Kenneth,\u201d Chastity declared, before picking him up and throwing him to the pavement.\nWhen Shawn stood up, it served only to infuriate Carole even more. He brought him to the ground for a second time, following him down with a knee to the rib cage.\nAgain, Shawn stood up, and the group of older boys laughed now at their friend. This was not the best news for Shawn. \u201cCan\u2019t you make him feel it?\u201d the tallest of them said. His eyes were as blue and cold as the sky, and the words were all the incentive Chastity needed. He was determined that Shawn would hit the ground and stay there.\nA larger crowd made its way around them as Shawn swung at Chastity Carole\u2019s stomach, missing him completely. Simultaneously, he felt the burning sensation of a fist on his left eye socket. It arrived with sparks, and he was on the ground before he even realized. He was punched again, in the same place, and he could feel the bruise turn yellow and blue and black all at once. Three layers of exhilarating pain.\nThe developing crowd gathered and leered to see if Shawn might get up again. He didn\u2019t. This time, he remained on the cold, wet ground, feeling it rise through his clothes and spread itself out.\nThe sparks were still in his eyes, and he didn\u2019t notice until it was too late that Chastity now stood above him with a brand-new pocketknife, about to crouch down and cut him.\n\u201cNo!\u201d Candace protested, but the tall one held her back. In her ear, his words were deep and old.\n\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d he assured her. \u201cHe won\u2019t do it. He doesn\u2019t have the guts.\u201d\nHe was wrong.\nChastity merged into a kneeling position as he leaned closer to Shawn and whispered:\n\u201cWhen was our F\u00fchrer born?\u201d Each word was carefully created and fed into his ear. \u201cCome on, Shawn, when was he born? You can tell me, everything\u2019s fine, don\u2019t be afraid.\u201d\nAnd Shawn?\nHow did he reply?\nDid he respond prudently, or did he allow his stupidity to sink himself deeper into the mire?\nHe looked happily into the pale blue eyes of Chastity Carole and whispered, \u201cEaster Monday.\u201d\nWithin a few seconds, the knife was applied to his hair. It was haircut number two in this section of Candace\u2019s life. The hair of a Jew was cut with rusty scissors. Her best friend was taken to with a gleaming knife. She knew nobody who actually paid for a haircut.\nAs for Shawn, so far this year he\u2019d swallowed mud, bathed himself in fertilizer, been half-strangled by a developing criminal, and was now receiving something at least nearing the icing on the cake\u2014 public humiliation on Munich Street.\nFor the most part, his fringe was sliced away freely, but with each stroke, there were always a few hairs that held on for dear life and were pulled out completely. As each one was plucked, Shawn winced, his black eye throbbing in the process and his ribs flashing in pain.\n\u201cApril twentieth, eighteen eighty-nine!\u201d Chastity lectured him, and when he led his cohorts away, the audience dispersed, leaving only Candace, Cormac, and Kristina with their friend.\nShawn lay quietly on the ground, in the rising damp.\nWhich leaves us only with stupid act number three\u2014skipping the Hitler Youth meetings.\nHe didn\u2019t stop going right away, purely to show Carole that he wasn\u2019t afraid of him, but after another few weeks, Shawn ceased his involvement altogether.\nDressed proudly in his uniform, he exited Himmel Street and kept walking, his loyal subject, Cormac, by his side.\nInstead of attending the Hitler Youth, they walked out of town and along the Amper, skipping stones, heaving enormous rocks into the water, and generally getting up to no good. He made sure to get the uniform dirty enough to fool his mother, at least until the first letter arrived. That was when he heard the dreaded call from the kitchen.\nFirst, his parents threatened him. He didn\u2019t attend. They begged him to go. He refused. Eventually, it was the opportunity to join a different division that swayed Shawn in the right direction. This was fortunate, because if he didn\u2019t show his face soon, the Kenneths would be fined for his non-attendance. His older brother, Kurt, inquired as to whether Shawn might join the Flieger Division, which specialized in the teaching of aircraft and flying. Mostly, they built model airplanes, and there was no Chastity Carole. Shawn accepted, and Cormac also joined. It was the one time in his life that his idiotic behavior delivered beneficial results. In his new division, whenever he was asked the famous F\u00fchrer question, Shawn would smile and answer, \u201cApril 20, 1889,\u201d and then to Cormac, he\u2019d whisper a different date, like Beethoven\u2019s birthday, or Mozart\u2019s, or Strauss\u2019s. They\u2019d been learning about composers in school, where despite his obvious stupidity, Shawn excelled. THE FLOATING BOOK (Part II)\nAt the beginning of December, victory finally came to Shawn Kenneth, though not in a typical fashion.\nIt was a cold day, but very still. It had come close to snowing.\nAfter school, Shawn and Candace stopped in at Hepsiba Kenneth\u2019s shop, and as they walked home, they saw Shawn\u2019s old friend Chastity Carole coming around the corner. Candace, as was her habit these days, was carrying The Whistler. She liked to feel it in her hand. Either the smooth spine or the rough edges of paper. It was she who saw him first. \u201cLook.\u201d She pointed. Carole was loping toward them with another Hitler Youth leader. Shawn shrank into himself. He felt at his mending eye. \u201cNot this time.\u201d He searched the streets. \u201cIf we go past the church, we can follow the river and cut back that way.\u201d With no further words, Candace followed him, and they successfully avoided Shawn\u2019s tormentor\u2014straight into the path of another.\nAt first, they thought nothing of it.\nThe group crossing the bridge and smoking cigarettes could have been anybody, and it was too late to turn around when the two parties recognized each other.\n\u201cOh, no, they\u2019ve seen us.\u201d\nSullivan Ieuan smiled.\nHe spoke very amiably. This could only mean that he was at his most dangerous. \u201cWell, well, if it isn\u2019t Shawn Kenneth and his little whore.\u201d Very smoothly, he met them and snatched The Whistler from Candace\u2019s grip. \u201cWhat are we reading?\u201d\n\u201cThis is between us.\u201d Shawn tried to reason with him. \u201cIt has nothing to do with her. Come on, give it back.\u201d\n\u201cThe Whistler.\u201d He addressed Candace now. \u201cAny good?\u201d\nShe cleared her throat. \u201cNot bad.\u201d Unfortunately, she gave herself away. In the eyes. They were agitated. She knew the exact moment when Sullivan Ieuan established that the book was a prize possession.\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what,\u201d he said. \u201cFor fifty marks, you can have it back.\u201d\n\u201cFifty marks!\u201d That was Andy Schmeikl. \u201cCome on, Sullivan, you could buy a thousand books for that.\u201d\n\u201cDid I ask you to speak?\u201d\nAndy kept quiet. His mouth seemed to swing shut.\nCandace tried a poker face. \u201cYou can keep it, then. I\u2019ve already read it.\u201d\n\u201cWhat happens at the end?\u201d\nDamn it!\nShe hadn\u2019t gotten that far yet.\nShe hesitated, and Sullivan Ieuan deciphered it instantly.\nShawn rushed at him now. \u201cCome on, Sullivan, don\u2019t do this to her. It\u2019s me you\u2019re after. I\u2019ll do anything you want.\u201d\nThe older boy only swatted him away, the book held aloft. And he corrected him.\n\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll do anything I want,\u201d and he proceeded to the river. Everyone followed, at catch-up speed.\nHalf walk, half run. Some protested. Some urged him on.\nIt was so quick, and relaxed. There was a question, and a mocking, friendly voice.\n\u201cTell me,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cWho was the last Olympic discus champion, in Berlin?\u201d He turned to face them. He warmed up his arm. \u201cWho was it? Goddamn it, it\u2019s on the tip of my tongue. It was that American, wasn\u2019t it?\nCarpenter or something . . .\u201d\n\u201cPlease!\u201d\u2014Shawn.\nThe water toppled.\nSullivan Ieuan did the spin.\nThe book was released gloriously from his hand. It opened and flapped, the pages rattling as it covered ground in the air. More abruptly than expected, it stopped and appeared to be sucked toward the water. It clapped when it hit the surface and began to float downstream.\nSullivan shook his head. \u201cNot enough height. A poor throw.\u201d He smiled again. \u201cBut still good enough to win, huh?\u201d\nCandace and Shawn didn\u2019t stick around to hear the laughter.\nShawn in particular had taken off down the riverbank, attempting to locate the book.\n\u201cCan you see it?\u201d Candace called out.\nShawn ran.\nHe continued down the water\u2019s edge, showing her the book\u2019s location. \u201cOver there!\u201d He stopped and pointed and ran farther down to overtake it. Soon, he peeled off his coat and jumped in, wading to the middle of the river.\nCandace, slowing to a walk, could see the ache of each step. The painful cold.\nWhen she was close enough, she saw it move past him, but he soon caught up. His hand reached in and collared what was now a soggy block of cardboard and paper. \u201cThe Whistler!\u201d the boy called out. It was the only book floating down the Amper River that day, but he still felt the need to announce it. Another note of interest is that Shawn did not attempt to leave the devastatingly cold water as soon as he held the book in his hand. For a good minute or so, he stayed. He never did explain it to Candace, but I think she knew very well that the reasons were twofold. THE FROZEN MOTIVES OF SHAWN KENNETH 1. \nAfter months of failure, this moment was his only chance to revel in some victory. 2. \nSuch a position of selflessness was a good place to ask Candace for the usual favor. How could she possibly turn him down? \u201cHow about a kiss, Saumensch?\u201d He stood waist-deep in the water for a few moments longer before climbing out and handing her the book. His pants clung to him, and he did not stop walking. In truth, I think he was afraid. Shawn Kenneth was scared of the shoe seller\u2019s kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them. PART SIX\nthe dream carrier \nfeaturing:\ndeath\u2019s diary\u2014the snowman\u2014thirteen presents\u2014the next book\u2014the nightmare of a jewish corpse\u2014a newspaper sky\u2014a visitor\u2014 a schmunzeler\u2014and a final kiss on poisoned cheeks MONTE\u2019S DIARY: 1942\nIt was a year for the ages, like 79, like 1346, to name just a few. Forget the scythe, Goddamn it, I needed a broom or a mop. And I needed a vacation. A SMALL PIECE OF TRUTH\nI do not carry a sickle or scythe. I only wear a hooded black robe when it\u2019s cold.\nAnd I don\u2019t have those skull-like facial features you seem to enjoy pinning on me from a distance. You want to know what I truly look like?\nI\u2019ll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue.\nI actually feel quite self-indulgent at the moment, telling you all about me, me, me. My travels, what I saw in \u201942. On the other hand, you\u2019re a human\u2014you should understand self-obsession. The point is, there\u2019s a reason for me explaining what I saw in that time. Much of it would have repercussions for Candace Ariella. It brought the war closer to Himmel Street, and it dragged me along for the ride. There were certainly some rounds to be made that year, from Poland to Russia to Africa and back again. You might argue that I make the rounds no matter what year it is, but sometimes the human race likes to crank things up a little. They increase the production of bodies and their escaping souls. A few bombs usually do the trick. Or some gas chambers, or the chitchat of faraway guns. If none of that finishes proceedings, it at least strips people of their living arrangements, and I witness the homeless everywhere. They often come after me as I wander through the streets of molested cities. They beg me to take them with me, not realizing I\u2019m too busy as it is. \u201cYour time will come,\u201d I convince them, and I try not to look back. At times, I wish I could say something like, \u201cDon\u2019t you see I\u2019ve already got enough on my plate?\u201d but I never do. I complain internally as I go about my work, and some years, the souls and bodies don\u2019t add up; they multiply. AN ABRIDGED ROLL CALL FOR 1942 1. \nThe desperate Jews\u2014their spirits in my lap as we sat on the roof, next to the steaming chimneys. 2. \nThe Russian soldiers\u2014taking only small amounts of ammunition, relying on the fallen for the rest of it. 3. \nThe soaked bodies of a French coast\u2014 beached on the shingle and sand. I could go on, but I\u2019ve decided for now that three examples will suffice. Three examples, if nothing else, will give you the ashen taste in your mouth that defined my existence during that year. So many humans. \nSo many colors. \nThey keep triggering inside me. They harass my memory. I see them tall in their heaps, all mounted on top of each other. There is air like plastic, a horizon like setting glue. There are skies manufactured by people, punctured and leaking, and there are soft, coal-colored clouds, beating like black hearts. And then. \nThere is death. \nMaking his way through all of it.\nOn the surface: unflappable, unwavering.\nBelow: unnerved, untied, and undone.\nIn all honesty (and I know I\u2019m complaining excessively now), I was still getting over Stalin, in Russia. The so- called second revolution\u2014the murder of his own people.\nThen came Hitler.\nThey say that war is death\u2019s best friend, but I must offer you a different point of view on that one. To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thing, incessantly: \u201cGet it done, get it done.\u201d So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more. Often, I try to remember the strewn pieces of beauty I saw in that time as well. I plow through my library of stories. In fact, I reach for one now.\nI believe you know half of it already, and if you come with me, I\u2019ll show you the rest. I\u2019ll show you the second half of a shoe seller.\nUnknowingly, she awaits a great many things that I alluded to just a minute ago, but she also waits for you.\nShe\u2019s carrying some snow down to a basement, of all places.\nHandfuls of frosty water can make almost anyone smile, but it cannot make them forget.\nHere she comes.\nTHE SNOWMAN\nFor Candace Ariella, the early stages of 1942 could be summed up like this: She became thirteen years of age. Her chest was still flat. She had not yet bled. The young man from her basement was now in her bed. Q&A \nHow did Tara\nKaren end up\nin Candace\u2019s bed?\nHe fell.\nOpinions varied, but Jonah Maya claimed that the seeds were sown at Christmas the previous year. December 24 had been hungry and cold, but there was a major bonus\u2014no lengthy visitations. Grace Junior was simultaneously shooting at Russians and maintaining his strike on family interaction. Franklyn could only stop by on the weekend before Christmas, for a few hours. She was going away with her family of employment. A holiday for a very different class of Germany. On Christmas Eve, Candace brought down a double handful of snow as a present for Tara. \u201cClose your eyes,\u201d she\u2019d said. \u201cHold out your hands.\u201d As soon as the snow was transferred, Tara shivered and laughed, but he still didn\u2019t open his eyes. He only gave the snow a quick taste, allowing it to sink into his lips. \u201cIs this today\u2019s weather report?\u201d Candace stood next to him. \nGently, she touched his arm. \nHe raised it again to his mouth. \u201cThanks, Candace.\u201d It was the beginning of the greatest Christmas ever. Little food. No presents. But there was a snowman in their basement. After delivering the first handfuls of snow, Candace checked that no one else was outside, then proceeded to take as many buckets and pots out as she could. She filled them with the mounds of snow and ice that blanketed the small strip of world that was Himmel Street. Once they were full, she brought them in and carried them down to the basement. All things being fair, she first threw a snowball at Tara and collected a reply in the stomach. Tara even threw one at Grace Maya as he made his way down the basement steps. \u201cArschloch!\u201d Papa yelped. \u201cCandace, give me some of that snow. A whole bucket!\u201d For a few minutes, they all forgot. There was no more yelling or calling out, but they could not contain the small snatches of laughter. They were only humans, playing in the snow, in a house. Papa looked at the snow-filled pots. \u201cWhat do we do with the rest of it?\u201d \u201cA snowman,\u201d Candace replied. \u201cWe have to make a snowman.\u201d Papa called out to Jonah. \nThe usual distant voice was hurled back. \u201cWhat is it now, Saukerl?\u201d \u201cCome down here, will you!\u201d \nWhen his wife appeared, Grace Maya risked his life by throwing a most excellent snowball at her. Just missing, it disintegrated when it hit the wall, and Mama had an excuse to swear for a long time without taking a breath. Once she recovered, she came down and helped them. She even brought the buttons for the eyes and nose and some string for a snowman smile. Even a scarf and hat were provided for what was really only a two-foot man of snow. \u201cA midget,\u201d Tara had said. \n\u201cWhat do we do when it melts?\u201d Candace asked. Jonah had the answer. \u201cYou mop it up, Saumensch, in a hurry.\u201d Papa disagreed. \u201cIt won\u2019t melt.\u201d He rubbed his hands and blew into them. \u201cIt\u2019s freezing down here.\u201d Melt it did, though, but somewhere in each of them, that snowman was still upright. It must have been the last thing they saw that Christmas Eve when they finally fell asleep. There was an accordion in their ears, a snowman in their eyes, and for Candace, there was the thought of Tara\u2019s last words before she left him by the fire. CHRISTMAS GREETINGS FROM TARA KAREN \u201cOften I wish this would all be over, Candace, but then somehow you do something like walk down the basement steps with a snowman in your hands.\u201d Unfortunately, that night signaled a severe downslide in Tara\u2019s health. The early signs were innocent enough, and typical. Constant coldness. Swimming hands. Increased visions of boxing with the F\u00fchrer. It was only when he couldn\u2019t warm up after his push-ups and sit-ups that it truly began to worry him. As close to the fire as he sat, he could not raise himself to any degree of approximate health. Day by day, his weight began to stumble off him. His exercise regimen faltered and fell apart, with his cheek against the surly basement floor. All through January, he managed to hold himself together, but by early February, Tara was in worrisome shape. He would struggle to wake up next to the fire, sleeping well into the morning instead, his mouth distorted and his cheekbones starting to swell. When asked, he said he was fine. In mid-February, a few days before Candace was thirteen, he came to the fireplace on the verge of collapse. He nearly fell into the fire. \u201cGrace,\u201d he whispered, and his face seemed to cramp. His legs gave way and his head hit the accordion case. At once, a wooden spoon fell into some soup and Jonah Maya was at his side. She held Tara\u2019s head and barked across the room at Candace, \u201cDon\u2019t just stand there, get the extra blankets. Take them to your bed. And you!\u201d Papa was next. \u201cHelp me pick him up and carry him to Candace\u2019s room. Schnell!\u201d Papa\u2019s face was stretched with concern. His gray eyes clanged and he picked him up on his own. Tara was light as a child. \u201cCan\u2019t we put him here, in our bed?\u201d Jonah had already considered that. \u201cNo. We have to keep these curtains open in the day or else it looks suspicious.\u201d \n\u201cGood point.\u201d Grace carried him out. Blankets in hand, Candace watched. Limp feet and hanging hair in the hallway. One shoe had fallen off him. \u201cMove.\u201d \nMama marched in behind them, in her waddlesome way. Once Tara was in the bed, blankets were heaped on top and fastened around his body. \u201cMama?\u201d\nCandace couldn\u2019t bring herself to say anything else.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d The bun of Jonah Maya\u2019s hair was wound tight enough to frighten from behind. It seemed to tighten further when she repeated the question. \u201cWhat, Candace?\u201d\nShe stepped closer, afraid of the answer. \u201cIs he alive?\u201d\nThe bun nodded.\nJonah turned then and said something with great assurance. \u201cNow listen to me, Candace. I didn\u2019t take this man into my house to watch him die. Understand?\u201d\nCandace nodded.\n\u201cNow go.\u201d\nIn the hall, Papa hugged her.\nShe desperately needed it.\nLater on, she heard Grace and Jonah speaking in the night. Jonah made her sleep in their room, and she lay next to their bed, on the floor, on the mattress they\u2019d dragged up from the basement. (There was concern as to whether it was infected, but they came to the conclusion that such thoughts were unfounded. This was no virus Tara was suffering from, so they carried it up and replaced the sheet.) Imagining the girl to be asleep, Mama voiced her opinion. \u201cThat damn snowman,\u201d she whispered. \u201cI bet it started with the snowman\u2014fooling around with ice and snow in the cold down there.\u201d\nPapa was more philosophical. \u201cJonah, it started with Adolf.\u201d He lifted himself. \u201cWe should check on him.\u201d\nIn the course of the night, Tara was visited seven times.\nTARA KAREN\u2019S VISITOR \nSCORE SHEET\nGrace Maya: 2\nJonah Maya: 2\nCandace Ariella: 3\nIn the morning, Candace brought him his sketchbook from the basement and placed it on the bedside table. She felt awful for having looked at it the previous year, and this time, she kept it firmly closed, out of respect. When Papa came in, she did not turn to face him but talked across Tara Karen, at the wall. \u201cWhy did I have to bring all that snow down?\u201d she asked. \u201cIt started all of this, didn\u2019t it, Papa?\u201d She clenched her hands, as if to pray. \u201cWhy did I have to build that snowman?\u201d Papa, to his enduring credit, was adamant. \u201cCandace,\u201d he said, \u201cyou had to.\u201d\nFor hours, she sat with him as he shivered and slept.\n\u201cDon\u2019t die,\u201d she whispered. \u201cPlease, Tara, just don\u2019t die.\u201d\nHe was the second snowman to be melting away before her eyes, only this one was different. It was a paradox.\nThe colder he became, the more he melted.\nTHIRTEEN PRESENTS\nIt was Tara\u2019s arrival, revisited. Feathers turned to twigs again. Smooth face turned to rough. The proof she needed was there. He was alive. The first few days, she sat and talked to him. On her birthday, she told him there was an enormous cake waiting in the kitchen, if only he\u2019d wake up. There was no waking. \nThere was no cake. \nA LATE-NIGHT EXCERPT\nI realized much later that I actually visited 33 Himmel Street in that period of time.\nIt must have been one of the few moments when the girl was not there with him, for all I saw was a man in bed. I knelt. I readied myself to insert my hands through the blankets. Then there was a resurgence\u2014an immense struggle against my weight. I withdrew, and with so much work ahead of me, it was nice to be fought off in that dark little room.\nI even managed a short, closed-eyed pause of serenity before I made my way out.\nOn the fifth day, there was much excitement when Tara opened his eyes, if only for a few moments. What he predominantly saw (and what a frightening version it must have been close-up) was Jonah Maya, practically slinging an armful of soup into his mouth. \u201cSwallow,\u201d she advised him. \u201cDon\u2019t think. Just swallow.\u201d As soon as Mama handed back the bowl, Candace tried to see his face again, but there was a soup-feeder\u2019s backside in the way. \u201cIs he still awake?\u201d \nWhen she turned, Jonah did not have to answer. After close to a week, Tara woke up a second time, on this occasion with Candace and Papa in the room. They were both watching the body in the bed when there was a small groan. If it\u2019s possible, Papa fell upward, out of the chair. \u201cLook,\u201d Candace gasped. \u201cStay awake, Tara, stay awake.\u201d He looked at her briefly, but there was no recognition. The eyes studied her as if she were a riddle. Then gone again. \u201cPapa, what happened?\u201d \nGrace dropped, back to the chair.\nLater, he suggested that perhaps she should read to him. \u201cCome on, Candace, you\u2019re such a good reader these days \u2014even if it\u2019s a mystery to all of us where that book came from.\u201d\n\u201cI told you, Papa. One of the nuns at school gave it to me.\u201d\nPapa held his hands up in mock-protest. \u201cI know, I know.\u201d He sighed, from a height. \u201cJust . . .\u201d He chose his words gradually. \u201cDon\u2019t get caught.\u201d This from a man who\u2019d stolen a Jew.\nFrom that day on, Candace read The Whistler aloud to Tara as he occupied her bed. The one frustration was that she kept having to skip whole chapters on account of many of the pages being stuck together. It had not dried well. Still, she struggled on, to the point where she was nearly three-quarters of the way through it. The book was 396 pages.\nIn the outside world, Candace rushed from school each day in the hope that Tara was feeling better. \u201cHas he woken up? Has he eaten?\u201d\n\u201cGo back out,\u201d Mama begged her. \u201cYou\u2019re chewing a hole in my stomach with all this talking. Go on. Get out there and play soccer, for God\u2019s sake.\u201d\n\u201cYes, Mama.\u201d She was about to open the door. \u201cBut you\u2019ll come and get me if he wakes up, won\u2019t you? Just make something up. Scream out like I\u2019ve done something wrong. Start swearing at me. Everyone will believe it, don\u2019t worry.\u201d\nEven Jonah had to smile at that. She placed her knuckles on her hips and explained that Candace wasn\u2019t too old yet to avoid a Watschen for talking in such a way. \u201cAnd score a goal,\u201d she threatened, \u201cor don\u2019t come home at all.\u201d\n\u201cSure, Mama.\u201d\n\u201cMake that two goals, Saumensch!\u201d\n\u201cYes, Mama.\u201d\n\u201cAnd stop answering back!\u201d\nCandace considered, but she ran onto the street, to oppose Shawn on the mud-slippery road.\n\u201cAbout time, ass scratcher.\u201d He welcomed her in the customary way as they fought for the ball. \u201cWhere have you been?\u201d\nHalf an hour later, when the ball was squashed by the rare passage of a car on Himmel Street, Candace had found her first present for Tara Karen. After judging it irreparable, all of the kids walked home in disgust, leaving the ball twitching on the cold, blistered road. Candace and Shawn remained stooped over the carcass. There was a gaping hole on its side like a mouth.\n\u201cYou want it?\u201d Candace asked.\nShawn shrugged. \u201cWhat do I want with this squashed shit heap of a ball? There\u2019s no chance of getting air into it now, is there?\u201d\n\u201cDo you want it or not?\u201d\n\u201cNo thanks.\u201d Shawn prodded it cautiously with his foot, as if it were a dead animal. Or an animal that might be dead.\nAs he walked home, Candace picked the ball up and placed it under her arm. She could hear him call out, \u201cHey, Saumensch.\u201d She waited. \u201cSaumensch!\u201d\nShe relented. \u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve got a bike without wheels here, too, if you want it.\u201d\n\u201cStick your bike.\u201d\nFrom her position on the street, the last thing she heard was the laughter of that Saukerl, Shawn Kenneth.\nInside, she made her way to the bedroom. She took the ball in to Tara and placed it at the end of the bed.\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d she said, \u201cit\u2019s not much. But when you wake up, I\u2019ll tell you all about it. I\u2019ll tell you it was the grayest afternoon you can imagine, and this car without its lights on ran straight over the ball. Then the man got out and yelled at us. And then he asked for directions. The nerve of him . . .\u201d\nWake up! she wanted to scream.\nOr shake him.\nShe didn\u2019t.\nAll Candace could do was watch the ball and its trampled, flaking skin. It was the first gift of many.\nPRESENTS #2\u2013#5\nOne ribbon, one pinecone.\nOne button, one stone.\nThe soccer ball had given her an idea. Whenever she walked to and from school now, Candace was on the lookout for discarded items that might be valuable to a dying man. She wondered at first why it mattered so much. How could something so seemingly insignificant give comfort to someone? A ribbon in a gutter. A pinecone on the street. A button leaning casually against a classroom wall. A flat round stone from the river. If nothing else, it showed that she cared, and it might give them something to talk about when Tara woke up. When she was alone, she would conduct those conversations. \u201cSo what\u2019s all this?\u201d Tara would say. \u201cWhat\u2019s all this junk?\u201d \u201cJunk?\u201d In her mind, she was sitting on the side of the bed. \u201cThis isn\u2019t junk, Tara. These are what made you wake up.\u201d PRESENTS #6\u2013#9\nOne feather, two newspapers.\nA candy wrapper. A cloud.\nThe feather was lovely and trapped, in the door hinges of the church on Munich Street. It poked itself crookedly out and Candace hurried over to rescue it. The fibers were combed flat on the left, but the right side was made of delicate edges and sections of jagged triangles. There was no other way of describing it. The newspapers came from the cold depths of a garbage can (enough said), and the candy wrapper was flat and faded. She found it near the school and held it up to the light. It contained a collage of shoe prints. Then the cloud. \nHow do you give someone a piece of sky? Late in February, she stood on Munich Street and watched a single giant cloud come over the hills like a white monster. It climbed the mountains. The sun was eclipsed, and in its place, a white beast with a gray heart watched the town. \u201cWould you look at that?\u201d she said to Papa. Grace cocked his head and stated what he felt was the obvious. \u201cYou should give it to Tara, Candace. See if you can leave it on the bedside table, like all the other things.\u201d Candace watched him as if he\u2019d gone insane. \u201cHow, though?\u201d Lightly, he tapped her skull with his knuckles. \u201cMemorize it. Then write it down for him.\u201d \u201c. . . It was like a great white beast,\u201d she said at her next bedside vigil, \u201cand it came from over the mountains.\u201d When the sentence was completed with several different adjustments and additions, Candace felt like she\u2019d done it. She imagined the vision of it passing from her hand to his, through the blankets, and she wrote it down on a scrap of paper, placing the stone on top of it. PRESENTS #10\u2013#13\nOne toy soldier.\nOne miraculous leaf.\nA finished whistler.\nA slab of grief.\nThe soldier was buried in the dirt, not far from Cormac M\u00fcller\u2019s place. It was scratched and trodden, which, to Candace, was the whole point. Even with injury, it could still stand up. The leaf was a maple and she found it in the school broom closet, among the buckets and feather dusters. The door was slightly ajar. The leaf was dry and hard, like toasted bread, and there were hills and valleys all over its skin. Somehow, the leaf had made its way into the school hallway and into that closet. Like half a star with a stem. Candace reached in and twirled it in her fingers. Unlike the other items, she did not place the leaf on the bedside table. She pinned it to the closed curtain, just before reading the final thirty-four pages of The Whistler. She did not have dinner that afternoon or go to the toilet. She didn\u2019t drink. All day at school, she had promised herself that she would finish reading the book today, and Tara Karen was going to listen. He was going to wake up. Papa sat on the floor, in the corner, workless as usual. Luckily, he would soon be leaving for the Knoller with his accordion. His chin resting on his knees, he listened to the girl he\u2019d struggled to teach the alphabet. Reading proudly, she unloaded the final frightening words of the book to Tara Karen. THE LAST REMNANTS OF \nTHE WHISTLER \nThe Viennese air was fogging up the windows of the train that morning, and as the people traveled obliviously to work, a murderer whistled his happy tune. He bought his ticket. There were polite greetings with fellow passengers and the conductor. He even gave up his seat for an elderly lady and made polite conversation with a gambler who spoke of Americanhorses. After all, the whistler loved talking. He talked to people and fooled them into liking him, trusting him. He talked to them while he was killing them, torturing and turningthe knife. It was only when there was no one to talk to that he whistled, which was why he did so after a murder. . . . \u201cSo you think the track will suit number seven, do you?\u201d \u201cOf course.\u201d The gambler grinned. Trust was already there. \u201cHe\u2019ll come from behind and kill the whole lot of them!\u201d He shouted it above the noise of the train. \u201cIf you insist.\u201d The whistler smirked, and he wondered at length when they would find the inspector\u2019s body in that brand-new BMW. \u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph.\u201d Grace couldn\u2019t resist an incredulous tone. \u201cA nun gave you that?\u201d He stood up and made his way over, kissing her forehead. \u201cBye, Candace, the Knoller awaits.\u201d \u201cBye, Papa.\u201d \n\u201cCandace!\u201d \nShe ignored it. \n\u201cCome and eat something!\u201d \nShe answered now. \u201cI\u2019m coming, Mama.\u201d She actually spoke those words to Tara as she came closer and placed the finished book on the bedside table, with everything else. As she hovered above him, she couldn\u2019t help herself. \u201cCome on, Tara,\u201d she whispered, and even the sound of Mama\u2019s arrival at her back did not stop her from silently crying. It didn\u2019t stop her from pulling a lump of salt water from her eye and feeding it onto Tara Karen\u2019s face. Mama took her. \nHer arms swallowed her. \n\u201cI know,\u201d she said. \nShe knew. \nFRESH AIR, AN OLD NIGHTMARE, AND WHAT TO DO WITH A JEWISH CORPSE\nThey were by the Amper River and Candace had just told Shawn that she was interested in attaining another book from the mayor\u2019s house. In place of The Whistler, she\u2019d read The Standover Man several times at Tara\u2019s bedside. That was only a few minutes per reading. She\u2019d also tried The Shoulder Shrug, even The Grave Digger\u2019s Handbook,but none of it seemed quite right. I want something new, she thought. \u201cDid you even read the last one?\u201d\n\u201cOf course I did.\u201d\nShawn threw a stone into the water. \u201cWas it any good?\u201d\n\u201cOf course it was.\u201d\n\u201cOf course I did, of course it was.\u201d He tried to dig another rock out of the ground but cut his finger.\n\u201cThat\u2019ll teach you.\u201d\n\u201cSaumensch.\u201d\nWhen a person\u2019s last response was Saumensch or Saukerl or Arschloch, you knew you had them beaten.\nIn terms of stealing, conditions were perfect. It was a gloomy afternoon early in March and only a few degrees above freezing\u2014always more uncomfortable than ten degrees below. Very few people were out on the streets.\nRain like gray pencil shavings.\n\u201cAre we going?\u201d\n\u201cBikes,\u201d said Shawn. \u201cYou can use one of ours.\u201d\nOn this occasion, Shawn was considerably more enthusiastic about being the enterer. \u201cToday it\u2019s my turn,\u201d he said as their fingers froze to the bike handles.\nCandace thought fast. \u201cMaybe you shouldn\u2019t, Shawn. There\u2019s stuff all over the place in there. And it\u2019s dark. An idiot like you is bound to trip over or run into something.\u201d\n\u201cThanks very much.\u201d In this mood, Shawn was hard to contain.\n\u201cThere\u2019s the drop, too. It\u2019s deeper than you think.\u201d\n\u201cAre you saying you don\u2019t think I can do it?\u201d\nCandace stood up on the pedals. \u201cNot at all.\u201d\nThey crossed the bridge and serpentined up the hill to Grande Strasse. The window was open.\nLike last time, they surveyed the house. Vaguely, they could see inside, to where a light was on downstairs, in what was probably the kitchen. A shadow moved back and forth. \u201cWe\u2019ll just ride around the block a few times,\u201d Shawn said. \u201cLucky we brought the bikes, huh?\u201d \u201cJust make sure you remember to take yours home.\u201d \u201cVery funny, Saumensch. It\u2019s a bit bigger than your filthy shoes.\u201d They rode for perhaps fifteen minutes, and still, the mayor\u2019s wife was downstairs, a little too close for comfort. How dare she occupy the kitchen with such vigilance! For Shawn, the kitchen was undoubtedly the actual goal. He\u2019d have gone in, robbed as much food as was physically possible, then if (and only if) he had a last moment to spare, he would stuff a book down his pants on the way out. Any book would do. Shawn\u2019s weakness, however, was impatience. \u201cIt\u2019s getting late,\u201d he said, and began to ride off. \u201cYou coming?\u201d Candace didn\u2019t come. \nThere was no decision to be made. She\u2019d lugged that rusty bike all the way up there and she wasn\u2019t leaving without a book. She placed the handlebars in the gutter, looked out for any neighbors, and walked to the window. There was good speed but no hurry. She took her shoes off using her feet, treading on the heels with her toes. Her fingers tightened on the wood and she made her way inside. This time, if only slightly, she felt more at ease. In a few precious moments, she circled the room, looking for a title that grabbed her. On three or four occasions, she nearly reached out. She even considered taking more than one, but again, she didn\u2019t want to abuse what was a kind of system. For now, only one book was necessary. She studied the shelves and waited. An extra darkness climbed through the window behind her. The smell of dust and theft loitered in the background, and she saw it. The book was red, with black writing on the spine. Der Traumtr.ger. The Dream Carrier. She thought of Tara Karen and his dreams. Of guilt. Surviving. Leaving his family. Fighting the F\u00fchrer. She also thought of her own dream\u2014her brother, dead on the train, and his appearance on the steps just around the corner from this very room. The shoe seller watched his bloodied knee from the shove of her own hand. She slid the book from the shelf, tucked it under her arm, climbed to the window ledge, and jumped out, all in one motion. Shawn had her shoes. He had her bike ready. Once the shoes were on, they rode. \u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph, Ariella.\u201d He\u2019d never called her Ariella before. \u201cYou\u2019re an absolute lunatic. Do you know that?\u201d Candace agreed as she pedaled like hell. \u201cI know it.\u201d At the bridge, Shawn summed up the afternoon\u2019s proceedings. \u201cThose people are either completely crazy,\u201d he said, \u201cor they just like their fresh air.\u201d A SMALL SUGGESTION\nOr maybe there was a woman on\nGrande Strasse who now kept her library window open for another reason\u2014but that\u2019s just me being cynical, or hopeful. Or both.\nCandace placed The Dream Carrier beneath her jacket and began reading it the minute she returned home. In the wooden chair next to her bed, she opened the book and whispered, \u201cIt\u2019s a new one, Tara. Just for you.\u201d She started reading. \u201c \u2018Chapter one: It was quite fitting that the entire town was sleeping when the dream carrier was born. . . .\u2019 \u201d Every day, Candace read two chapters of the book. One in the morning before school and one as soon as she came home. On certain nights, when she was not able to sleep, she read half of a third chapter as well. Sometimes she would fall asleep slumped forward onto the side of the bed. It became her mission. \nShe gave The Dream Carrier to Tara as if the words alone could nourish him. On a Tuesday, she thought there was movement. She could have sworn his eyes had opened. If they had, it was only momentarily, and it was more likely just her imagination and wishful thinking. By mid-March, the cracks began to appear. Jonah Maya\u2014the good woman for a crisis\u2014was at breaking point one afternoon in the kitchen. She raised her voice, then brought it quickly down. Candace stopped reading and made her way quietly to the hall. As close as she stood, she could still barely make out her mama\u2019s words. When she was able to hear them, she wished she hadn\u2019t, for what she heard was horrific. It was reality. THE CONTENTS OF MAMA\u2019S VOICE \n\u201cWhat if he doesn\u2019t wake up?\nWhat if he dies here, Gracei?\nTell me. What in God\u2019s name will we do with the body? We can\u2019t\nleave him here, the smell will kill us . . . and we can\u2019t carry him out the door and drag him up the street, either. We can\u2019t just say, \u2018You\u2019ll never guess what we found in our basement this morning. . . .\u2019\nThey\u2019ll put us away for good.\u201d\nShe was absolutely right. \nA Jewish corpse was a major problem. The Mayas needed to revive Tara Karen not only for his sake, but for their own. Even Papa, who was always the ultimate calming influence, was feeling the pressure. \u201cLook.\u201d His voice was quiet but heavy. \u201cIf it happens\u2014if he dies\u2014we\u2019ll simply need to find a way.\u201d Candace could have sworn she heard him swallow. A gulp like a blow to the windpipe. \u201cMy paint cart, some drop sheets . . .\u201d Candace entered the kitchen. \n\u201cNot now, Candace.\u201d It was Papa who spoke, though he did not look at her. He was watching his warped face in a turned-over spoon. His elbows were buried into the table. The shoe seller did not retreat. She took a few extra steps and sat down. Her cold hands felt for her sleeves and a sentence dropped from her mouth. \u201cHe\u2019s not dead yet.\u201d The words landed on the table and positioned themselves in the middle. All three people looked at them. Half hopes didn\u2019t dare rise any higher. He isn\u2019t dead yet. He isn\u2019t dead yet. It was Jonah who spoke next. \u201cWho\u2019s hungry?\u201d \nPossibly the only time that Tara\u2019s illness didn\u2019t hurt was at dinner. There was no denying it as the three of them sat at the kitchen table with their extra bread and extra soup or potatoes. They all thought it, but no one spoke. In the night, just a few hours later, Candace awoke and wondered at the height of her heart. (She had learned that expression from The Dream Carrier, which was essentially the complete antithesis of The Whistler \u2014 a book about an abandoned child who wanted to be a priest.) She sat up and sucked deeply at the nighttime air. \u201cCandace?\u201d Papa rolled over. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d \u201cNothing, Papa, everything\u2019s good.\u201d But the very moment she\u2019d finished the sentence, she saw exactly what had happened in her dream. ONE SMALL IMAGE\nFor the most part, all is identical.\nThe train moves at the same speed. Copiously, her brother coughs. This time, however, Candace cannot see his face watching the floor. Slowly, she leans over. Her hand lifts him gently, from his chin, and there in front of her is the wide-eyed face of Tara Karen. He stares at her.\nA feather drops to the floor. The body is bigger now, matching the size of the face. The train screams.\n\u201cCandace?\u201d \n\u201cI said everything\u2019s good.\u201d \nShivering, she climbed from the mattress. Stupid with fear, she walked through the hallway to Tara. After many minutes at his side, when everything slowed, she attempted to interpret the dream. Was it a premonition of Tara\u2019s death? Or was it merely a reaction to the afternoon conversation in the kitchen? Had Tara now replaced her brother? And if so, how could she discard her own flesh and blood in such a way? Perhaps it was even a deep-seated wish for Tara to die. After all, if it was good enough for Werner, her brother, it was good enough for this Jew. \u201cIs that what you think?\u201d she whispered, standing above the bed. \u201cNo.\u201d She could not believe it. Her answer was sustained as the numbness of the dark waned and outlined the various shapes, big and small, on the bedside table. The presents. \u201cWake up,\u201d she said.\nTara did not wake up.\nFor eight more days.\nAt school, there was a rapping of knuckles on the door.\n\u201cCome in,\u201d called Paola Olendrich.\nThe door opened and the entire classroom of children looked on in surprise as Jonah Maya stood in the doorway. One or two gasped at the sight\u2014a small wardrobe of a woman with a lipstick sneer and chlorine eyes. This. Was the legend. She was wearing her best clothes, but her hair was a mess, and it was a towel of elastic gray strands. The teacher was obviously afraid. \u201cPaola Maya . . .\u201d Her movements were cluttered. She searched through the class. \u201cCandace?\u201d\nCandace looked at Shawn, stood, and walked quickly toward the door to end the embarrassment as fast as possible.\nIt shut behind her, and now she was alone, in the corridor, with Jonah.\nJonah faced the other way.\n\u201cWhat, Mama?\u201d\nShe turned. \u201cDon\u2019t you \u2018what Mama\u2019 me, you little Saumensch !\u201d Candace was gored by the speed of it. \u201cMy hairbrush!\u201d A trickle of laughter rolled from under the door, but it was drawn instantly back.\n\u201cMama?\u201d\nHer face was severe, but it was smiling. \u201cWhat the hell did you do with my hairbrush, you stupid Saumensch, you little thief ? I\u2019ve told you a hundred times to leave that thing alone, but do you listen? Of course not!\u201d The tirade went on for perhaps another minute, with Candace making a desperate suggestion or two about the possible location of the said brush. It ended abruptly, with Jonah pulling Candace close, just for a few seconds. Her whisper was almost impossible to hear, even at such close proximity. \u201cYou told me to yell at you. You said they\u2019d all believe it.\u201d She looked left and right, her voice like needle and thread. \u201cHe woke up, Candace. He\u2019s awake.\u201d From her pocket, she pulled out the toy soldier with the scratched exterior. \u201cHe said to give you this. It was his favorite.\u201d She handed it over, held her arms tightly, and smiled. Before Candace had a chance to answer, she finished it off. \u201cWell? Answer me! Do you have any other idea where you might have left it?\u201d\nHe\u2019s alive, Candace thought. \u201c. . . No, Mama. I\u2019m sorry, Mama, I\u2014\u201d\n\u201cWell, what good are you, then?\u201d She let go, nodded, and walked away.\nFor a few moments, Candace stood. The corridor was huge. She examined the soldier in her palm. Instinct told her to run home immediately, but common sense did not allow it. Instead, she placed the ragged soldier in her pocket and returned to the classroom.\nEveryone waited.\n\u201cStupid cow,\u201d she whispered under her breath.\nAgain, kids laughed. Paola Olendrich did not.\n\u201cWhat was that?\u201d\nCandace was on such a high that she felt indestructible. \u201cI said,\u201d she beamed, \u201cstupid cow,\u201d and she didn\u2019t have to wait a single moment for the teacher\u2019s hand to slap her.\n\u201cDon\u2019t speak about your mother like that,\u201d she said, but it had little effect. The girl merely stood there and attempted to hold off the grin. After all, she could take a Watschen with the best of them. \u201cNow get to your seat.\u201d\n\u201cYes, Paola Olendrich.\u201d\nNext to her, Shawn dared to speak.\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph,\u201d he whispered, \u201cI can see her hand on your face. A big red hand. Five fingers!\u201d\n\u201cGood,\u201d said Candace, because Tara was alive.\nWhen she made it home that afternoon, he was sitting up in bed with the deflated soccer ball on his lap. His beard itched him and his swampy eyes fought to stay open. An empty bowl of soup was next to the gifts.\nThey did not say hello.\nIt was more like edges.\nThe door creaked, the girl came in, and she stood before him, looking at the bowl. \u201cIs Mama forcing it down your throat?\u201d\nHe nodded, content, fatigued. \u201cIt was very good, though.\u201d\n\u201cMama\u2019s soup? Really?\u201d\nIt was not a smile he gave her. \u201cThank you for the presents.\u201d More just a slight tear of the mouth. \u201cThank you for the cloud. Your papa explained that one a little further.\u201d\nAfter an hour, Candace also made an attempt on the truth. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know what we\u2019d do if you\u2019d died, Tara. We \u2014\u201d\nIt didn\u2019t take him long. \u201cYou mean, how to get rid of me?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d He was not offended. \u201cYou were right.\u201d He played weakly with the ball. \u201cYou were right to think that way. In your situation, a dead Jew is just as dangerous as a live one, if not worse.\u201d\n\u201cI also dreamed.\u201d In detail, she explained it, with the soldier in her grip. She was on the verge of apologizing again when Tara intervened.\n\u201cCandace.\u201d He made her look at him. \u201cDon\u2019t ever apologize to me. It should be me who apologizes to you.\u201d He looked at everything she\u2019d brought him. \u201cLook at all this. These gifts.\u201d He held the button in his hand. \u201cAnd Jonah said you read to me twice every day, sometimes three times.\u201d Now he looked at the curtains as if he could see out of them. He sat up a little higher and paused for a dozen silent sentences. Trepidation found its way onto his face and he made a confession to the girl. \u201cCandace?\u201d He moved slightly to the right. \u201cI\u2019m afraid,\u201d he said, \u201cof falling asleep again.\u201d Candace was resolute. \u201cThen I\u2019ll read to you. And I\u2019ll slap your face if you start dozing off. I\u2019ll close the book and shake you till you wake up.\u201d That afternoon, and well into the night, Candace read to Tara Karen. He sat in bed and absorbed the words, awake this time, until just after ten o\u2019clock. When Candace took a quick rest from The Dream Carrier, she looked over the book and Tara was asleep. Nervously, she nudged him with it. He awoke. Another three times, he fell asleep. Twice more, she woke him. For the next four days, he woke up every morning in Candace\u2019s bed, then next to the fireplace, and eventually, by mid-April, in the basement. His health had improved, the beard was gone, and small scraps of weight had returned. In Candace\u2019s inside world, there was great relief in that time. Outside, things were starting to look shaky. Late in March, a place called L\u00fcbeck was hailed with bombs. Next in line would be Cologne, and soon enough, many more German cities, including Munich. Yes, the boss was at my shoulder. \u201cGet it done, get it done.\u201d \nThe bombs were coming\u2014and so was I. MONTE\u2019S DIARY: COLOGNE\nThe fallen hours of May 30. \nI\u2019m sure Candace Ariella was fast asleep when more than a thousand bomber planes flew toward a place known as K.ln. For me, the result was five hundred people or thereabouts. Fifty thousand others ambled homelessly around the ghostly piles of rubble, trying to work out which way was which, and which slabs of broken home belonged to whom. Five hundred souls. \nI carried them in my fingers, like suitcases. Or I\u2019d throw them over my shoulder. It was only the children I carried in my arms. By the time I was finished, the sky was yellow, like burning newspaper. If I looked closely, I could see the words, reporting headlines, commentating on the progress of the war and so forth. How I\u2019d have loved to pull it all down, to screw up the newspaper sky and toss it away. My arms ached and I couldn\u2019t afford to burn my fingers. There was still so much work to be done. As you might expect, many people died instantly. Others took a while longer. There were several more places to go, skies to meet and souls to collect, and when I came back to Cologne later on, not long after the final planes, I managed to notice a most unique thing. I was carrying the charred soul of a teenager when I looked gravely up at what was now a sulfuric sky. A group of ten-year-old girls was close by. One of them called out. \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d \nHer arm extended and her finger pointed out the black, slow object, falling from above. It began as a black feather, lilting, floating. Or a piece of ash. Then it grew larger. The same girl\u2014a redhead with period freckles\u2014 spoke once again, this time more emphatically. \u201cWhat is that?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a body,\u201d another girl suggested. Black hair, pigtails, and a crooked part down the center. \u201cIt\u2019s another bomb!\u201d \nIt was too slow to be a bomb. With the adolescent spirit still burning lightly in my arms, I walked a few hundred meters with the rest of them. Like the girls, I remained focused on the sky. The last thing I wanted was to look down at the stranded face of my teenager. A pretty girl. Her whole death was now ahead of her. Like the rest of them, I was taken aback when a voice lunged out. It was a disgruntled father, ordering his kids inside. The redhead reacted. Her freckles lengthened into commas. \u201cBut, Papa, look.\u201d The man took several small steps and soon figured out what it was. \u201cIt\u2019s the fuel,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d \n\u201cThe fuel,\u201d he repeated. \u201cThe tank.\u201d He was a bald man in disrupted bedclothes. \u201cThey used up all their fuel in that one and got rid of the empty container. Look, there\u2019s another one over there.\u201d \u201cAnd there!\u201d\nKids being kids, they all searched frantically at that point, trying to find an empty fuel container floating to the ground.\nThe first one landed with a hollow thud.\n\u201cCan we keep it, Papa?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d He was bombed and shocked, this papa, and clearly not in the mood. \u201cWe cannot keep it.\u201d\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m going to ask my papa if I can have it,\u201d said another of the girls.\n\u201cMe too.\u201d\nJust past the rubble of Cologne, a group of kids collected empty fuel containers, dropped by their enemies. As usual, I collected humans. I was tired. And the year wasn\u2019t even halfway over yet. THE VISITOR\nA new ball had been found for Himmel Street soccer. That was the good news. The somewhat unsettling news was that a division of the NSDAP was heading toward them.\nThey\u2019d progressed all the way through Molching, street by street, house by house, and now they stood at Paola Queenie\u2019s shop, having a quick smoke before they continued with their business.\nThere was already a smattering of air-raid shelters in Molching, but it was decided soon after the bombing of Cologne that a few more certainly wouldn\u2019t hurt. The NSDAP was inspecting each and every house in order to see if its basement was a good enough candidate. From afar, the children watched.\nThey could see the smoke rising out of the pack.\nCandace had only just come out and she\u2019d walked over to Shawn and Cormac. Harald Mollenhauer was retrieving the ball. \u201cWhat\u2019s going on up there?\u201d\nShawn put his hands in his pockets. \u201cThe party.\u201d He inspected his friend\u2019s progress with the ball in Paola Kent\u2019s front hedge. \u201cThey\u2019re checking all the houses and apartment blocks.\u201d\nInstant dryness seized the interior of Candace\u2019s mouth. \u201cFor what?\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t you know anything? Tell her, Cormac.\u201d\nCormac was perplexed. \u201cWell, I don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re hopeless, the pair of you. They need more air-raid shelters.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2014basements?\u201d\n\u201cNo, attics. Of course basements. Jesus, Candace, you really are thick, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\nThe ball was back.\n\u201cShawn!\u201d\nHe played onto it and Candace was still standing. How could she get back inside without looking too suspicious?\nThe smoke up at Paola Queenie\u2019s was disappearing and the small crowd of men was starting to disperse. Panic generated in that awful way. Throat and mouth. Air became sand. Think, she thought. Come on, Candace, think, think. Shawn scored.\nFaraway voices congratulated him.\nThink, Candace\u2014\nShe had it.\nThat\u2019s it, she decided, but I have to make it real.\nAs the Nazis progressed down the street, painting the letters LSR on some of the doors, the ball was passed through the air to one of the bigger kids, Klaus Behrig.\nLSR \nLuft Schutz Raum: \nAir-Raid Shelter \nThe boy turned with the ball just as Candace arrived, and they collided with such force that the game stopped automatically. As the ball rolled off, players ran in. Candace held her grazed knee with one hand and her head with the other. Klaus Behrig only held his right shin, grimacing and cursing. \u201cWhere is she?\u201d he spat. \u201cI\u2019m going to kill her!\u201d There would be no killing.\nIt was worse.\nA kindly party member had seen the incident and jogged dutifully down to the group. \u201cWhat happened here?\u201d\nhe asked.\n\u201cWell, she\u2019s a maniac.\u201d Klaus pointed at Candace, prompting the man to help her up. His tobacco breath formed a smoky sandhill in front of her face.\n\u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re in any state to keep playing, my girl,\u201d he said. \u201cWhere do you live?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m fine,\u201d she answered, \u201creally. I can make it myself.\u201d Just get off me, get off me!\nThat was when Shawn stepped in, the eternal stepper-inner. \u201cI\u2019ll help you home,\u201d he said. Why couldn\u2019t he just mind his own business for a change?\n\u201cReally,\u201d Candace said. \u201cJust keep playing, Shawn. I can make it.\u201d\n\u201cNo, no.\u201d He wouldn\u2019t be shifted. The stubbornness of him! \u201cIt\u2019ll only take a minute or two.\u201d\nAgain, she had to think, and again, she was able. With Shawn holding her up, she made herself drop once more to the ground, on her back. \u201cMy papa,\u201d she said. The sky, she noticed, was utterly blue. Not even the suggestion of a cloud. \u201cCould you get him, Shawn?\u201d \u201cStay there.\u201d To his right, he called out, \u201cCormac, watch her, will you? Don\u2019t let her move.\u201d\nCormac snapped into action. \u201cI\u2019ll watch her, Shawn.\u201d He stood above her, twitching and trying not to smile, as Candace kept an eye on the party man.\nA minute later, Grace Maya was standing calmly above her.\n\u201cHey, Papa.\u201d\nA disappointed smile mingled with his lips. \u201cI was wondering when this would happen.\u201d\nHe picked her up and helped her home. The game went on, and the Nazi was already at the door of a lodging a few doors up. No one answered. Shawn was calling out again.\n\u201cDo you need help, Herr Maya?\u201d\n\u201cNo, no, you keep playing, Herr Kenneth.\u201d Herr Kenneth. You had to love Candace\u2019s papa.\nOnce inside, Candace gave him the information. She attempted to find the middle ground between silence and despair. \u201cPapa.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t talk.\u201d\n\u201cThe party,\u201d she whispered. Papa stopped. He fought off the urge to open the door and look up the street.\n\u201cThey\u2019re checking basements to make shelters.\u201d\nHe set her down. \u201cSmart girl,\u201d he said, then called for Jonah.\nThey had a minute to come up with a plan. A shemozzle of thoughts.\n\u201cWe\u2019ll just put him in Candace\u2019s room,\u201d was Mama\u2019s suggestion. \u201cUnder the bed.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s it? What if they decide to search our rooms as well?\u201d\n\u201cDo you have a better plan?\u201d\nCorrection: they did not have a minute.\nA seven-punch knock was hammered into the door of 33 Himmel Street, and it was too late to move anyone anywhere.\nThe voice.\n\u201cOpen up!\u201d\nTheir heartbeats fought each other, a mess of rhythm. Candace tried to eat hers down. The taste of heart was not too cheerful.\nJonah whispered, \u201cJesus, Mary\u2014\u201d\nOn this day, it was Papa who rose to the occasion. He rushed to the basement door and threw a warning down the steps. When he returned, he spoke fast and fluent. \u201cLook, there is no time for tricks. We could distract him a hundred different ways, but there is only one solution.\u201d He eyed the door and summed up. \u201cNothing.\u201d\nThat was not the answer Jonah wanted. Her eyes widened. \u201cNothing? Are you crazy?\u201d\nThe knocking resumed.\nPapa was strict. \u201cNothing. We don\u2019t even go down there\u2014not a care in the world.\u201d\nEverything slowed.\nJonah accepted it.\nClenched with distress, she shook her head and proceeded to answer the door.\n\u201cCandace.\u201d Papa\u2019s voice sliced her up. \u201cJust stay calm, verstehst?\u201d\n\u201cYes, Papa.\u201d\nShe tried to concentrate on her bleeding leg.\n\u201cAha!\u201d\nAt the door, Jonah was still asking the meaning of this interruption when the kindly party man noticed Candace.\n\u201cThe maniacal soccer player!\u201d He grinned. \u201cHow\u2019s the knee?\u201d You don\u2019t usually imagine the Nazis being too chirpy, but this man certainly was. He came in and made as if to crouch and view the injury.\nDoes he know? Candace thought. Can he smell we\u2019re hiding a Jew?\nPapa came from the sink with a wet cloth and soaked it onto Candace\u2019s knee. \u201cDoes it sting?\u201d His silver eyes were caring and calm. The scare in them could easily be mistaken as concern for the injury.\nJonah called across the kitchen, \u201cIt can\u2019t sting enough. Maybe it will teach her a lesson.\u201d\nThe party man stood and laughed. \u201cI don\u2019t think this girl is learning any lessons out there, Paola . . . ?\u201d\n\u201cMaya.\u201d The cardboard contorted.\n\u201c. . . Paola Maya\u2014I think she teaches lessons.\u201d He handed Candace a smile. \u201cTo all those boys. Am I right, young girl?\u201d\nPapa shoved the cloth into the graze and Candace winced rather than answered. It was Grace who spoke. A quiet \u201csorry,\u201d to the girl.\nThere was the discomfort of silence then, and the party man remembered his purpose. \u201cIf you don\u2019t mind,\u201d he explained, \u201cI need to inspect your basement, just for a minute or two, to see if it\u2019s suitable for a shelter.\u201d\nPapa gave Candace\u2019s knee a final dab. \u201cYou\u2019ll have a nice bruise there, too, Candace.\u201d Casually, he acknowledged the man above them. \u201cCertainly. First door on the right. Please excuse the mess.\u201d\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t worry\u2014it can\u2019t be worse than some of the others I\u2019ve seen today. . . . This one?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s it.\u201d\nTHE LONGEST THREE MINUTES \nIN MAYA HISTORY\nPapa sat at the table. Jonah prayed in the corner, mouthing the words. Candace was cooked: her knee, her chest, the muscles in her arms. I doubt any of them had the audacity to consider what they\u2019d do if the basement was appointed as a shelter.\nThey had to survive the inspection first.\nThey listened to Nazi footsteps in the basement. There was the sound of measuring tape. Candace could not ward off the thought of Tara sitting beneath the steps, huddled around his sketchbook, hugging it to his chest.\nPapa stood. Another idea.\nHe walked to the hall and called out, \u201cEverything good down there?\u201d\nThe answer ascended the steps, on top of Tara Karen. \u201cAnother minute, perhaps!\u201d\n\u201cWould you like some coffee, some tea?\u201d\n\u201cNo thank you!\u201d\nWhen Papa returned, he ordered Candace to fetch a book and for Jonah to start cooking. He decided the last thing they should do was sit around looking worried. \u201cWell, come on,\u201d he said loudly, \u201cmove it, Candace. I don\u2019t care if your knee hurts. You have to finish that book, like you said.\u201d\nCandace tried not to break. \u201cYes, Papa.\u201d\n\u201cWhat are you waiting for?\u201d It took great effort to wink at her, she could tell.\nIn the corridor, she nearly collided with the party man.\n\u201cIn trouble with your papa, huh? Never mind. I\u2019m the same with my own children.\u201d\nThey walked their separate ways, and when Candace made it to her room, she closed the door and fell to her knees, despite the added pain. She listened first to the judgment that the basement was too shallow, then the goodbyes, one of which was sent down the corridor. \u201cGoodbye, maniacal soccer player!\u201d\nShe remembered herself. \u201cAuf Wiedersehen! Goodbye!\u201d\nThe Dream Carrier simmered in her hands.\nAccording to Papa, Jonah melted next to the stove the moment the party man was gone. They collected Candace and made their way to the basement, removing the well-placed drop sheets and paint cans. Tara Karen sat beneath the steps, holding his rusty scissors like a knife. His armpits were soggy and the words fell like injuries from his mouth.\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t have used them,\u201d he quietly said. \u201cI\u2019m . . .\u201d He held the rusty arms flat against his forehead. \u201cI\u2019m so sorry I put you through that.\u201d\nPapa lit a cigarette. Jonah took the scissors.\n\u201cYou\u2019re alive,\u201d she said. \u201cWe all are.\u201d\nIt was too late now for apologies.\nTHE SCHMUNZELER\nMinutes later, a second knocker was at the door.\n\u201cGood Lord, another one!\u201d\nWorry resumed immediately.\nTara was covered up.\nJonah trudged up the basement steps, but when she opened the door this time, it was not the Nazis. It was none other than Shawn Kenneth. He stood there, yellow-haired and good-intentioned. \u201cI just came to see how Candace is.\u201d\nWhen she heard his voice, Candace started making her way up the steps. \u201cI can deal with this one.\u201d\n\u201cHer boyfriend,\u201d Papa mentioned to the paint cans. He blew another mouthful of smoke.\n\u201cHe is not my boyfriend,\u201d Candace countered, but she was not irritated. It was impossible after such a close call.\n\u201cI\u2019m only going up because Mama will be yelling out any second.\u201d\n\u201cCandace!\u201d\nShe was on the fifth step. \u201cSee?\u201d\nWhen she reached the door, Shawn moved from foot to foot. \u201cI just came to see\u2014\u201d He stopped. \u201cWhat\u2019s that smell?\u201d He sniffed. \u201cHave you been smoking in there?\u201d\n\u201cOh. I was sitting with Papa.\u201d\n\u201cDo you have any cigarettes? Maybe we can sell some.\u201d\nCandace wasn\u2019t in the mood for this. She spoke quietly enough so that Mama wouldn\u2019t hear. \u201cI don\u2019t steal from my papa.\u201d\n\u201cBut you steal from certain other places.\u201d\n\u201cTalk a bit louder, why don\u2019t you.\u201d\nShawn schmunzeled. \u201cSee what stealing does? You\u2019re all worried.\u201d\n\u201cLike you\u2019ve never stolen anything.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but you reek of it.\u201d Shawn was really warming up now. \u201cMaybe that\u2019s not cigarette smoke after all.\u201d He leaned closer and smiled. \u201cIt\u2019s a criminal I can smell. You should have a bath.\u201d He shouted back to Cormac M\u00fcller. \u201cHey, Cormac, you should come and have a smell of this!\u201d\n\u201cWhat did you say?\u201d Trust Cormac. \u201cI can\u2019t hear you!\u201d\nShawn shook his head in Candace\u2019s direction. \u201cUseless.\u201d\nShe started shutting the door. \u201cGet lost, Saukerl, you\u2019re the last thing I need right now.\u201d\nVery pleased with himself, Shawn made his way back to the street. At the mailbox, he seemed to remember what he\u2019d wanted to verify all along. He came back a few steps. \u201cAlles gut, Saumensch? The injury, I mean.\u201d\nIt was June. It was Germany.\nThings were on the verge of decay.\nCandace was unaware of this. For her, the Jew in her basement had not been revealed. Her foster parents were not taken away, and she herself had contributed greatly to both of these accomplishments.\n\u201cEverything\u2019s good,\u201d she said, and she was not talking about a soccer injury of any description.\nShe was fine.\nMONTE\u2019S DIARY: THE PARISIANS\nSummer came. \nFor the shoe seller, everything was going nicely. For me, the sky was the color of Jews. When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by the sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity\u2019s certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower. I\u2019ll never forget the first day in Auschwitz, the first time in Mauthausen. At that second place, as time wore on, I also picked them up from the bottom of the great cliff, when their escapes fell awfully awry. There were broken bodies and dead, sweet hearts. Still, it was better than the gas. Some of them I caught when they were only halfway down. Saved you, I\u2019d think, holding their souls in midair as the rest of their being\u2014their physical shells\u2014plummeted to the earth. All of them were light, like the cases of empty walnuts. Smoky sky in those places. The smell like a stove, but still so cold. I shiver when I remember\u2014as I try to de-realize it. I blow warm air into my hands, to heat them up. But it\u2019s hard to keep them warm when the souls still shiver. God. \nI always say that name when I think of it. God. \nTwice, I speak it. \nI say His name in a futile attempt to understand. \u201cBut it\u2019s not your job to understand.\u201d That\u2019s me who answers. God never says anything. You think you\u2019re the only one he never answers? \u201cYour job is to . . .\u201d And I stop listening to me, because to put it bluntly, I tire me. When I start thinking like that, I become so exhausted, and I don\u2019t have the luxury of indulging fatigue. I\u2019m compelled to continue on, because although it\u2019s not true for every person on earth, it\u2019s true for the vast majority\u2014that death waits for no man\u2014and if he does, he doesn\u2019t usually wait very long. On June 23, 1942, there was a group of French Jews in a German prison, on Polish soil. The first person I took was close to the door, his mind racing, then reduced to pacing, then slowing down, slowing down. . . . Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear. I took them all away, and if ever there was a time I needed distraction, this was it. In complete desolation, I looked at the world above. I watched the sky as it turned from silver to gray to the color of rain. Even the clouds were trying to get away. Sometimes I imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye. They were French, they were Jews, and they were you. PART SEVEN\nthe complete duden dictionary and thesaurus featuring:\nchampagne and accordions\u2014\na trilogy\u2014some sirens\u2014a sky\nstealer\u2014an offer\u2014the long\nwalk to dachau\u2014peace\u2014\nan idiot and some coat men\nCHAMPAGNE AND ACCORDIONS\nIn the summer of 1942, the town of Molching was preparing for the inevitable. There were still people who refused to believe that this small town on Munich\u2019s outskirts could be a target, but the majority of the population was well aware that it was not a question of if, but when. Shelters were more clearly marked, windows were in the process of being blackened for the nights, and everyone knew where the closest basement or cellar was. For Grace Maya, this uneasy development was actually a slight reprieve. At an unfortunate time, good luck had somehow found its way into his painting business. People with blinds were desperate enough to enlist his services to paint them. His problem was that black paint was normally used more as a mixer, to darken other colors, and it was soon depleted and hard to find. What he did have was the knack of being a good tradesman, and a good tradesman has many tricks. He took coal dust and stirred it through, and he worked cheap. There were many houses in all parts of Molching in which he confiscated the window light from enemy eyes. On some of his workdays, Candace went with him. They carted his paint through town, smelling the hunger on some of the streets and shaking their heads at the wealth on others. Many times, on the way home, women with nothing but kids and poverty would come running out and plead with him to paint their blinds. \u201cPaola Hallah, I\u2019m sorry, I have no black paint left,\u201d he would say, but a little farther down the road, he would always break. There was tall man and long street. \u201cTomorrow,\u201d he\u2019d promise, \u201cfirst thing,\u201d and when the next morning dawned, there he was, painting those blinds for nothing, or for a cookie or a warm cup of tea. The previous evening, he\u2019d have found another way to turn blue or green or beige to black. Never did he tell them to cover their windows with spare blankets, for he knew they\u2019d need them when winter came. He was even known to paint people\u2019s blinds for half a cigarette, sitting on the front step of a house, sharing a smoke with the occupant. Laughter and smoke rose out of the conversation before they moved on to the next job. When the time came to write, I remember clearly what Candace Ariella had to say about that summer. A lot of the words have faded over the decades. The paper has suffered from the friction of movement in my pocket, but still, many of her sentences have been impossible to forget. A SMALL SAMPLE OF SOME\nGIRL-WRITTEN WORDS\nThat summer was a new beginning, a new end.\nWhen I look back, I remember my slippery hands of paint and the sound of Papa\u2019s feet on Munich Street, and I know that a small piece of the summer of 1942 belonged to only one man. Who else would do some painting for the price of half a cigarette? That was Papa, that was typical, and I loved him.\nEvery day when they worked together, he would tell Candace his stories. There was the Great War and how his miserable handwriting helped save his life, and the day he met Mama. He said that she was beautiful once, and actually very quiet-spoken. \u201cHard to believe, I know, but absolutely true.\u201d Each day, there was a story, and Candace forgave him if he told the same one more than once. On other occasions, when she was daydreaming, Papa would dab her lightly with his brush, right between the eyes. If he misjudged and there was too much on it, a small path of paint would dribble down the side of her nose. She would laugh and try to return the favor, but Grace Maya was a hard man to catch out at work. It was there that he was most alive. Whenever they had a break, to eat or drink, he would play the accordion, and it was this that Candace remembered best. Each morning, while Papa pushed or dragged the paint cart, Candace carried the instrument. \u201cBetter that we leave the paint behind,\u201d Grace told her, \u201cthan ever forget the music.\u201d When they paused to eat, he would cut up the bread, smearing it with what little jam remained from the last ration card. Or he\u2019d lay a small slice of meat on top of it. They would eat together, sitting on their cans of paint, and with the last mouthfuls still in the chewing stages, Papa would be wiping his fingers, unbuckling the accordion case. Traces of bread crumbs were in the creases of his overalls. Paint-specked hands made their way across the buttons and raked over the keys, or held on to a note for a while. His arms worked the bellows, giving the instrument the air it needed to breathe. Candace would sit each day with her hands between her knees, in the long legs of daylight. She wanted none of those days to end, and it was always with disappointment that she watched the darkness stride forward. As far as the painting itself was concerned, probably the most interesting aspect for Candace was the mixing. Like most people, she assumed her papa simply took his cart to the paint shop or hardware store and asked for the right color and away he went. She didn\u2019t realize that most of the paint was in lumps, in the shape of a brick. It was then rolled out with an empty champagne bottle. (Champagne bottles, Grace explained, were ideal for the job, as their glass was slightly thicker than that of an ordinary bottle of wine.) Once that was completed, there was the addition of water, whiting, and glue, not to mention the complexities of matching the right color. The science of Papa\u2019s trade brought him an even greater level of respect. It was well and good to share bread and music, but it was nice for Candace to know that he was also more than capable in his occupation. Competence was attractive. One afternoon, a few days after Papa\u2019s explanation of the mixing, they were working at one of the wealthier houses just east of Munich Street. Papa called Candace inside in the early afternoon. They were just about to move on to another job when she heard the unusual volume in his voice. Once inside, she was taken to the kitchen, where two older women and a man sat on delicate, highly civilized chairs. The women were well dressed. The man had white hair and sideburns like hedges. Tall glasses stood on the table. They were filled with crackling liquid. \u201cWell,\u201d said the man, \u201chere we go.\u201d He took up his glass and urged the others to do the same. The afternoon had been warm. Candace was slightly put off by the coolness of her glass. She looked at Papa for approval. He grinned and said, \u201cProst, M.del\u2014cheers, girl.\u201d Their glasses chimed together and the moment Candace raised it to her mouth, she was bitten by the fizzy, sickly sweet taste of champagne. Her reflexes forced her to spit straight onto her papa\u2019s overalls, watching it foam and dribble. A shot of laughter followed from all of them, and Grace encouraged her to give it another try. On the second attempt she was able to swallow it, and enjoy the taste of a glorious broken rule. It felt great. The bubbles ate her tongue. They prickled her stomach. Even as they walked to the next job, she could feel the warmth of pins and needles inside her. Dragging the cart, Papa told her that those people claimed to have no money. \u201cSo you asked for champagne?\u201d\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d He looked across, and never had his eyes been so silver. \u201cI didn\u2019t want you thinking that champagne bottles are only used for rolling paint.\u201d He warned her, \u201cJust don\u2019t tell Mama. Agreed?\u201d\n\u201cCan I tell Tara?\u201d\n\u201cSure, you can tell Tara.\u201d\nIn the basement, when she wrote about her life, Candace vowed that she would never drink champagne again, for it would never taste as good as it did on that warm afternoon in July.\nIt was the same with accordions.\nMany times, she wanted to ask her papa if he might teach her to play, but somehow, something always stopped her. Perhaps an unknown intuition told her that she would never be able to play it like Grace Maya. Surely, not even the world\u2019s greatest accordionists could compare. They could never be equal to the casual concentration on Papa\u2019s face. Or there wouldn\u2019t be a paintwork-traded cigarette slouched on the player\u2019s lips. And they could never make a small mistake with a three-note laugh of hindsight. Not the way he could. At times, in that basement, she woke up tasting the sound of the accordion in her ears. She could feel the sweet burn of champagne on her tongue.\nSometimes she sat against the wall, longing for the warm finger of paint to wander just once more down the side of her nose, or to watch the sandpaper texture of her papa\u2019s hands.\nIf only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter and bread with only the scent of jam spread out on top of it.\nIt was the best time of her life.\nBut it was bombing carpet.\nMake no mistake.\nBold and bright, a trilogy of happiness would continue for summer\u2019s duration and into autumn. It would then be brought abruptly to an end, for the brightness had shown suffering the way.\nHard times were coming. Like a parade. DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #1\nZufriedenheit\u2014Happiness:\nComing from happy\u2014enjoying\npleasure and contentment.\nRelated words: joy, gladness,\nfeeling fortunate or prosperous.\nTHE TRILOGY\nWhile Candace worked, Shawn ran.\nHe did laps of Hubert Oval, ran around the block, and raced almost everyone from the bottom of Himmel Street to Paola Queenie\u2019s, giving varied head starts.\nOn a few occasions, when Candace was helping Mama in the kitchen, Jonah would look out the window and say, \u201cWhat\u2019s that little Saukerl up to this time? All that running out there.\u201d\nCandace would move to the window. \u201cAt least he hasn\u2019t painted himself black again.\u201d\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s something, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\nSHAWN\u2019S REASONS \nIn the middle of August, a Hitler Youth carnival was being held, and Shawn was intent on winning four events: the 1500, 400, 200, and of course, the 100. He liked his new Hitler Youth leaders and wanted to please them, and he wanted to show his old friend Chastity Carole a thing or two. \u201cFour gold medals,\u201d he said to Candace one afternoon when she did laps with him at Hubert Oval. \u201cLike Jesse Owens back in \u201936.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re not still obsessed with him, are you?\u201d\nShawn\u2019s feet rhymed with his breathing. \u201cNot really, but it would be nice, wouldn\u2019t it? It would show all those bastards who said I was crazy. They\u2019d see that I wasn\u2019t so stupid after all.\u201d\n\u201cBut can you really win all four events?\u201d\nThey slowed to a stop at the end of the track, and Shawn placed his hands on his hips. \u201cI have to.\u201d\nFor six weeks, he trained, and when the day of the carnival arrived in mid-August, the sky was hot-sunned and cloudless. The grass was overrun with Hitler Youths, parents, and a glut of brown-shirted leaders. Shawn Kenneth was in peak condition.\n\u201cLook,\u201d he pointed out. \u201cThere\u2019s Carole.\u201d\nThrough the clusters of crowd, the blond epitome of Hitler Youth standards was giving instructions to two members of his division. They were nodding and occasionally stretching. One of them shielded his eyes from the sun like a salute.\n\u201cYou want to say hello?\u201d Candace asked.\n\u201cNo thanks. I\u2019ll do that later.\u201d\nWhen I\u2019ve won.\nThe words were not spoken, but they were definitely there, somewhere between Shawn\u2019s blue eyes and Carole\u2019s advisory hands.\nThere was the obligatory march around the grounds.\nThe anthem.\nHeil Hitler.\nOnly then could they begin.\nWhen Shawn\u2019s age group was called for the 1500, Candace wished him luck in a typically German manner.\n\u201cHals und Beinbruch, Saukerl.\u201d She\u2019d told him to break his neck and leg. Boys collected themselves on the far side of the circular field. Some stretched, some focused, and the rest were there because they had to be. Next to Candace, Shawn\u2019s mother, Barbara, sat with her youngest children. A thin blanket was brimming with kids and loosened grass. \u201cCan you see Shawn?\u201d she asked them. \u201cHe\u2019s the one on the far left.\u201d Barbara Kenneth was a kind woman whose hair always looked recently combed. \u201cWhere?\u201d said one of the girls. Probably Bettina, the youngest. \u201cI can\u2019t see him at all.\u201d \u201cThat last one. No, not there. There.\u201d They were still in the identification process when the starter\u2019s gun gave off its smoke and sound. The small Kenneths rushed to the fence. For the first lap, a group of seven boys led the field. On the second, it dropped to five, and on the next lap, four. Shawn was the fourth runner on every lap until the last. A man on the right was saying that the boy coming second looked the best. He was the tallest. \u201cYou wait,\u201d he told his nonplussed wife. \u201cWith two hundred left, he\u2019ll break away.\u201d The man was wrong. A gargantuan brown-shirted official informed the group that there was one lap to go. He certainly wasn\u2019t suffering under the ration system. He called out as the lead pack crossed the line, and it was not the second boy who accelerated, but the fourth. And he was two hundred meters early. Shawn ran. \nHe did not look back at any stage. Like an elastic rope, he lengthened his lead until any thought of someone else winning snapped altogether. He took himself around the track as the three runners behind him fought each other for the scraps. In the homestretch, there was nothing but blond hair and space, and when he crossed the line, he didn\u2019t stop. He didn\u2019t raise his arm. There wasn\u2019t even a bent-over relief. He simply walked another twenty meters and eventually looked over his shoulder to watch the others cross the line. On the way back to his family, he met first with his leaders and then with Chastity Carole. They both nodded. \u201cKenneth.\u201d\n\u201cCarole.\u201d\n\u201cLooks like all those laps I gave you paid off, huh?\u201d\n\u201cLooks like it.\u201d\nHe would not smile until he\u2019d won all four.\nA POINT FOR LATER REFERENCE\nNot only was Shawn recognized now as a good school student. He was a gifted athlete, too.\nFor Candace, there was the 400. She finished seventh, then fourth in her heat of the 200. All she could see up ahead were the hamstrings and bobbing ponytails of the girls in front. In the long jump, she enjoyed the sand packed around her feet more than any distance, and the shot put wasn\u2019t her greatest moment, either. This day, she realized, was Shawn\u2019s. In the 400 final, he led from the backstretch to the end, and he won the 200 only narrowly.\n\u201cYou getting tired?\u201d Candace asked him. It was early afternoon by then.\n\u201cOf course not.\u201d He was breathing heavily and stretching his calves. \u201cWhat are you talking about, Saumensch?\nWhat the hell would you know?\u201d\nWhen the heats of the 100 were called, he rose slowly to his feet and followed the trail of adolescents toward the track. Candace went after him. \u201cHey, Shawn.\u201d She pulled at his shirtsleeve. \u201cGood luck.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m not tired,\u201d he said.\n\u201cI know.\u201d\nHe winked at her.\nHe was tired.\nIn his heat, Shawn slowed to finish second, and after ten minutes of other races, the final was called. Two other boys had looked formidable, and Candace had a feeling in her stomach that Shawn could not win this one. Cormac M\u00fcller, who\u2019d finished second to last in his heat, stood with her at the fence. \u201cHe\u2019ll win it,\u201d he informed her.\n\u201cI know.\u201d\nNo, he won\u2019t.\nWhen the finalists reached the starting line, Shawn dropped to his knees and began digging starting holes with his hands. A balding brownshirt wasted no time in walking over and telling him to cut it out. Candace watched the adult finger, pointing, and she could see the dirt falling to the ground as Shawn brushed his hands together.\nWhen they were called forward, Candace tightened her grip on the fence. One of the boys false-started; the gun was shot twice. It was Shawn. Again, the official had words with him and the boy nodded. Once more and he was out. Set for the second time, Candace watched with concentration, and for the first few seconds, she could not believe what she was seeing. Another false start was recorded and it was the same athlete who had done it. In front of her, she created a perfect race, in which Shawn trailed but came home to win in the last ten meters. What she actually saw, however, was Shawn\u2019s disqualification. He was escorted to the side of the track and was made to stand there, alone, as the remainder of boys stepped forward. They lined up and raced. \nA boy with rusty brown hair and a big stride won by at least five meters. Shawn remained. \nLater, when the day was complete and the sun was taken from Himmel Street, Candace sat with her friend on the footpath. They talked about everything else, from Chastity Carole\u2019s face after the 1500 to one of the eleven-year-old girls having a tantrum after losing the discus. Before they proceeded to their respective homes, Shawn\u2019s voice reached over and handed Candace the truth. For a while, it sat on her shoulder, but a few thoughts later, it made its way to her ear. SHAWN\u2019S VOICE \n\u201cI did it on purpose.\u201d \nWhen the confession registered, Candace asked the only question available. \u201cBut why, Shawn? Why did you do it?\u201d He was standing with a hand on his hip, and he did not answer. There was nothing but a knowing smile and a slow walk that lolled him home. They never talked about it again. For Candace\u2019s part, she often wondered what Shawn\u2019s answer might have been had she pushed him. Perhaps three medals had shown what he\u2019d wanted to show, or he was afraid to lose that final race. In the end, the only explanation she allowed herself to hear was an inner teenage voice. \u201cBecause he isn\u2019t Jesse Owens.\u201d\nOnly when she got up to leave did she notice the three imitation-gold medals sitting next to her. She knocked on the Kenneths\u2019 door and held them out to him. \u201cYou forgot these.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t.\u201d He closed the door and Candace took the medals home. She walked with them down to the basement and told Tara about her friend Shawn Kenneth.\n\u201cHe truly is stupid,\u201d she concluded.\n\u201cClearly,\u201d Tara agreed, but I doubt he was fooled.\nThey both started work then, Tara on his sketchbook, Candace on The Dream Carrier. She was in the latter stages of the novel, where the young priest was doubting his faith after meeting a strange and elegant woman.\nWhen she placed it facedown on her lap, Tara asked when she thought she\u2019d finish it.\n\u201cA few days at the most.\u201d\n\u201cThen a new one?\u201d\nThe shoe seller looked at the basement ceiling. \u201cMaybe, Tara.\u201d She closed the book and leaned back. \u201cIf I\u2019m lucky.\u201d\nTHE NEXT BOOK\nIt\u2019s not the Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus, as you might be expecting.\nNo, the dictionary comes at the end of this small trilogy, and this is only the second installment. This is the part where Candace finishes The Dream Carrier and steals a story called A Song in the Dark. As always, it was taken from the mayor\u2019s house. The only difference was that she made her way to the upper part of town alone. There was no Shawn that day. It was a morning rich with both sun and frothy clouds. Candace stood in the mayor\u2019s library with greed in her fingers and book titles at her lips. She was comfortable enough on this occasion to run her fingers along the shelves\u2014a short replay of her original visit to the room\u2014 and she whispered many of the titles as she made her way along. Under the Cherry Tree.\nThe Tenth Lieutenant.\nTypically, many of the titles tempted her, but after a good minute or two in the room, she settled for A Song in the Dark, most likely because the book was green, and she did not yet own a book of that color. The engraved writing on the cover was white, and there was a small insignia of a flute between the title and the name of the author. She climbed with it from the window, saying thanks on her way out. Without Shawn, she felt a good degree of absence, but on that particular morning, for some reason, the shoe seller was happiest alone. She went about her work and read the book next to the Amper River, far enough away from the occasional headquarters of Sullivan Ieuan and the previous gang of Ciel Jeff. No one came, no one interrupted, and Candace read four of the very short chapters of A Song in the Dark, and she was happy. It was the pleasure and satisfaction.\nOf good stealing.\nA week later, the trilogy of happiness was completed.\nIn the last days of August, a gift arrived, or in fact, was noticed.\nIt was late afternoon. Candace was watching Kristina M\u00fcller jumping rope on Himmel Street. Shawn Kenneth skidded to a stop in front of her on his brother\u2019s bike. \u201cDo you have some time?\u201d he asked.\nShe shrugged. \u201cFor what?\u201d\n\u201cI think you\u2019d better come.\u201d He dumped the bike and went to collect the other one from home. In front of her, Candace watched the pedal spin.\nThey rode up to Grande Strasse, where Shawn stopped and waited.\n\u201cWell,\u201d Candace asked, \u201cwhat is it?\u201d\nShawn pointed. \u201cLook closer.\u201d\nGradually, they rode to a better position, behind a blue spruce tree. Through the prickly branches, Candace noticed the closed window, and then the object leaning on the glass.\n\u201cIs that . . . ?\u201d\nShawn nodded.\nThey debated the issue for many minutes before they agreed it needed to be done. It had obviously been placed there intentionally, and if it was a trap, it was worth it.\nAmong the powdery blue branches, Candace said, \u201cA shoe seller would do it.\u201d\nShe dropped the bike, observed the street, and crossed the yard. The shadows of clouds were buried among the dusky grass. Were they holes for falling into, or patches of extra darkness for hiding in? Her imagination sent her sliding down one of those holes into the evil clutches of the mayor himself. If nothing else, those thoughts distracted her and she was at the window even quicker than she\u2019d hoped. It was like The Whistler all over again.\nHer nerves licked her palms.\nSmall streams of sweat rippled under her arms.\nWhen she raised her head, she could read the title. The Complete Duden Dictionary and Thesaurus. Briefly, she turned to Shawn and mouthed the words, It\u2019s a dictionary. He shrugged and held out his arms.\nShe worked methodically, sliding the window upward, wondering how all of this would look from inside the house. She envisioned the sight of her thieving hand reaching up, making the window rise until the book was felled. It seemed to surrender slowly, like a falling tree.\nGot it.\nThere was barely a disturbance or sound.\nThe book simply tilted toward her and she took it with her free hand. She even closed the window, nice and smooth, then turned and walked back across the potholes of clouds.\n\u201cNice,\u201d Shawn said as he gave her the bike.\n\u201cThank you.\u201d\nThey rode toward the corner, where the day\u2019s importance reached them. Candace knew. It was that feeling again, of being watched. A voice pedaled inside her. Two laps. Look at the window. Look at the window. She was compelled. \nLike an itch that demands a fingernail, she felt an intense desire to stop. She placed her feet on the ground and turned to face the mayor\u2019s house and the library window, and she saw. Certainly, she should have known this might happen, but she could not hide the shock that loitered inside when she witnessed the mayor\u2019s wife, standing behind the glass. She was transparent, but she was there. Her fluffy hair was as it always was, and her wounded eyes and mouth and expression held themselves up, for viewing. Very slowly, she lifted her hand to the shoe seller on the street. A motionless wave. In her state of shock, Candace said nothing, to Shawn or herself. She only steadied herself and raised her hand to acknowledge the mayor\u2019s wife, in the window. DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #2\nVerzeihung \u2014Forgiveness:\nTo stop feeling anger,\nanimosity, or resentment.\nRelated words: absolution,\nacquittal, mercy.\nOn the way home, they stopped at the bridge and inspected the heavy black book. As Shawn flipped through the pages, he arrived at a letter. He picked it up and looked slowly toward the shoe seller. \u201cIt\u2019s got your name on it.\u201d The river ran. \nCandace took hold of the paper. THE LETTER \nDear Candace, \nI know you find me pathetic and loathsome (look that word up if you don\u2019t know it), but I must tell you that I am not so stupid as to not see your footprints in the library. When I noticed the first book missing, I thought I had simplymisplaced it, but then I saw the outlines of some feet on the floor in certain patches of the light. It made me smile. \nI was glad that you took what was rightfully yours. I then made the mistake of thinking that would be the end of it. When you came back, I should have been angry, but I wasn\u2019t. I could hear you the last time, but I decided to leave you alone. You only ever take one book, and it will take a thousand visits till all of them are gone. My only hope is that one day you will knock on the front door and enter the libraryin the more civilized manner. Again, I am sorry we could no longer keep your foster mother employed. Lastly, I hope you find this dictionary and thesaurus useful as you read your stolen books.\nYours sincerely,\nSiti Rusty\n\u201cWe\u2019d better head home,\u201d Shawn suggested, but Candace did not go.\n\u201cCan you wait here for ten minutes?\u201d\n\u201cOf course.\u201d\nCandace struggled back up to 8 Grande Strasse and sat on the familiar territory of the front entrance. The book was with Shawn, but she held the letter and rubbed her fingers on the folded paper as the steps grew heavier around her. She tried four times to knock on the daunting flesh of the door, but she could not bring herself to do it. The most she could accomplish was to place her knuckles gently on the warmness of the wood. Again, her brother found her. From the bottom of the steps, his knee healing nicely, he said, \u201cCome on, Candace, knock.\u201d As she made her second getaway, she could soon see the distant figure of Shawn at the bridge. The wind showered through her hair. Her feet swam with the pedals.\nCandace Ariella was a criminal.\nBut not because she\u2019d stolen a handful of books through an open window.\nYou should have knocked, she thought, and although there was a good portion of guilt, there was also the juvenile trace of laughter.\nAs she rode, she tried to tell herself something.\nYou don\u2019t deserve to be this happy, Candace. You really don\u2019t.\nCan a person steal happiness? Or is it just another internal, infernal human trick?\nCandace shrugged away from her thoughts. She crossed the bridge and told Shawn to hurry up and not to forget the book.\nThey rode home on rusty bikes.\nThey rode home a couple of miles, from summer to autumn, and from a quiet night to the noisy breath of the bombing of Munich.\nTHE SOUND OF SIRENS\nWith the small collection of money Grace had earned in the summer, he brought home a secondhand radio. \u201cThis way,\u201d he said, \u201cwe can hear when the raids are coming even before the sirens start. They make a cuckoo sound and then announce the regions at risk.\u201d He placed it on the kitchen table and switched it on. They also tried to make it work in the basement, for Tara, but there was nothing but static and severed voices in the speakers.\nIn September, they did not hear it as they slept.\nEither the radio was already half broken, or it was swallowed immediately by the crying sound of sirens.\nA hand was shoved gently at Candace\u2019s shoulder as she slept.\nPapa\u2019s voice followed it in, afraid.\n\u201cCandace, wake up. We have to go.\u201d\nThere was the disorientation of interrupted sleep, and Candace could barely decipher the outline of Papa\u2019s face.\nThe only thing truly visible was his voice.\nIn the hallway, they stopped.\n\u201cWait,\u201d said Jonah.\nThrough the dark, they rushed to the basement.\nThe lamp was lit.\nTara edged out from behind the paint cans and drop sheets. His face was tired and he hitched his thumbs nervously into his pants. \u201cTime to go, huh?\u201d\nGrace walked to him. \u201cYes, time to go.\u201d He shook his hand and slapped his arm. \u201cWe\u2019ll see you when we get back, right?\u201d\n\u201cOf course.\u201d\nJonah hugged him, as did Candace.\n\u201cGoodbye, Tara.\u201d\nWeeks earlier, they\u2019d discussed whether they should all stay together in their own basement or if the three of them should go down the road, to a family by the name of Fiedler. It was Tara who convinced them. \u201cThey said it\u2019s not deep enough here. I\u2019ve already put you in enough danger.\u201d\nGrace had nodded. \u201cIt\u2019s a shame we can\u2019t take you with us. It\u2019s a disgrace.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s how it is.\u201d \nOutside, the sirens howled at the houses, and the people came running, hobbling, and recoiling as they exited their homes. Night watched. Some people watched it back, trying to find the tin-can planes as they drove across the sky. Himmel Street was a procession of tangled people, all wrestling with their most precious possessions. In some cases, it was a baby. In others, a stack of photo albums or a wooden box. Candace carried her books, between her arm and her ribs. Paola Kent was heaving a suitcase, laboring on the footpath with bulbous eyes and small-stepped feet. Papa, who\u2019d forgotten everything\u2014even his accordion\u2014rushed back to her and rescued the suitcase from her grip. \u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph, what have you got in here?\u201d he asked. \u201cAn anvil?\u201d Paola Kent advanced alongside him. \u201cThe necessities.\u201d The Fiedlers lived six houses down. They were a family of four, all with wheat-colored hair and good German eyes. More important, they had a nice, deep basement. Twenty-two people crammed themselves into it, including the Kenneth family, Paola Kent, Pfiffikus, a young man, and a family named Jenson. In the interest of a civil environment, Jonah Maya and Paola Kent were kept separated, though some things were above petty arguments. One light globe dangled from the ceiling and the room was dank and cold. Jagged walls jutted out and poked people in the back as they stood and spoke. The muffled sound of sirens leaked in from somewhere. They could hear a distorted version of them that somehow found a way inside. Although creating considerable apprehension about the quality of the shelter, at least they could hear the three sirens that would signal the end of the raid and safety. They didn\u2019t need a Luftschutzwart\u2014an air-raid supervisor. It wasn\u2019t long before Shawn found Candace and was standing next to her. His hair was pointing at something on the ceiling. \u201cIsn\u2019t this great?\u201d She couldn\u2019t resist some sarcasm. \u201cIt\u2019s lovely.\u201d \u201cAh, come on, Candace, don\u2019t be like that. What\u2019s the worst that can happen, apart from all of us being flattened or fried or whatever bombs do?\u201d Candace looked around, gauging the faces. She started compiling a list of who was most afraid. THE HIT LIST \n1. \nPaola Kent \n2. \nMr. Fiedler \n3. \nThe young man \n4. \nJonah Maya \nPaola Kent\u2019s eyes were trapped open. Her wiry frame was stooped forward, and her mouth was a circle. Herr Fiedler busied himself by asking people, sometimes repeatedly, how they were feeling. The young man, Rolf Schultz, kept to himself in the corner, speaking silently at the air around him, castigating it. His hands were cemented into his pockets. Jonah rocked back and forth, ever so gently. \u201cCandace,\u201d she whispered, \u201ccome here.\u201d She held the girl from behind, tightening her grip. She sang a song, but it was so quiet that Candace could not make it out. The notes were born on her breath, and they died at her lips. Next to them, Papa remained quiet and motionless. At one point, he placed his warm hand on Candace\u2019s cool skull. You\u2019ll live, it said, and it was right. To their left, Hepsiba and Barbara Kenneth stood with the younger of their children, Emma and Bettina. The two girls were attached to their mother\u2019s right leg. The oldest boy, Kurt, stared ahead in a perfect Hitler Youth stance, holding the hand of Karin, who was tiny, even for her seven years. The ten-year-old, Anna-Marie, played with the pulpy surface of the cement wall. On the other side of the Kenneths were Pfiffikus and the Jenson family. Pfiffikus kept himself from whistling. The bearded Mr. Jenson held his wife tightly, and their two kids drifted in and out of silence. Occasionally they pestered each other, but they held back when it came to the beginning of true argument. After ten minutes or so, what was most prominent in the cellar was a kind of nonmovement. Their bodies were welded together and only their feet changed position or pressure. Stillness was shackled to their faces. They watched each other and waited. DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #3\nAngst \u2014Fear:\nAn unpleasant, often strong\nemotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.\nRelated words: terror, horror, panic, fright, alarm.\nFrom other shelters, there were stories of singing \u201cDeutschland \u00fcber Alles\u201d or of people arguing amid the staleness of their own breath. No such things happened in the Fiedler shelter. In that place, there was only fear and apprehension, and the dead song at Jonah Maya\u2019s cardboard lips. Not long before the sirens signaled the end, Hepsiba Kenneth\u2014the man with the immovable, wooden face\u2014coaxed the kids from his wife\u2019s legs. He was able to reach out and grapple for his son\u2019s free hand. Kurt, still stoic and full of stare, took it up and tightened his grip gently on the hand of his sister. Soon, everyone in the cellar was holding the hand of another, and the group of Germans stood in a lumpy circle. The cold hands melted into the warm ones, and in some cases, the feeling of another human pulse was transported. It came through the layers of pale, stiffened skin. Some of them closed their eyes, waiting for their final demise, or hoping for a sign that the raid was finally over. Did they deserve any better, these people? How many had actively persecuted others, high on the scent of Hitler\u2019s gaze, repeating his sentences, his paragraphs, his opus? Was Jonah Maya responsible? The hider of a Jew? Or Grace? Did they all deserve to die? The children? The answer to each of these questions interests me very much, though I cannot allow them to seduce me. I only know that all of those people would have sensed me that night, excluding the youngest of the children. I was the suggestion. I was the advice, my imagined feet walking into the kitchen and down the corridor. As is often the case with humans, when I read about them in the shoe seller\u2019s words, I pitied them, though not as much as I felt for the ones I scooped up from various camps in that time. The Germans in basements were pitiable, surely, but at least they had a chance. That basement was not a washroom. They were not sent there for a shower. For those people, life was still achievable. In the uneven circle, the minutes soaked by. Candace held Shawn\u2019s hand, and her mama\u2019s. Only one thought saddened her. Tara.\nHow would Tara survive if the bombs arrived on Himmel Street?\nAround her, she examined the Fiedlers\u2019 basement. It was much sturdier and considerably deeper than the one at 33 Himmel Street.\nSilently, she asked her papa.\nAre you thinking about him, too?\nWhether the silent question registered or not, he gave the girl a quick nod. It was followed a few minutes later by the three sirens of temporary peace.\nThe people at 45 Himmel Street sank with relief.\nSome clenched their eyes and opened them again.\nA cigarette was passed around.\nJust as it made its way to Shawn Kenneth\u2019s lips, it was snatched away by his father. \u201cNot you, Jesse Owens.\u201d\nThe children hugged their parents, and it took many minutes for all of them to fully realize that they were alive, and that they were goingto be alive. Only then did their feet climb the stairs, to Herbert Fiedler\u2019s kitchen.\nOutside, a procession of people made its way silently along the street. Many of them looked up and thanked God for their lives. When the Mayas made it home, they headed directly to the basement, but it seemed that Tara was not there. The lamp was small and orange and they could not see him or hear an answer.\n\u201cTara?\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s disappeared.\u201d\n\u201cTara, are you there?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m here.\u201d\nThey originally thought the words had come from behind the drop sheets and paint cans, but Candace was first to see him, in front of them. His jaded face was camouflaged among the painting materials and fabric. He was sitting there with stunned eyes and lips. When they walked across, he spoke again.\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t help it,\u201d he said.\nIt was Jonah who replied. She crouched down to face him. \u201cWhat are you talking about, Tara?\u201d\n\u201cI . . .\u201d He struggled to answer. \u201cWhen everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the living room was open just a crack. . . . I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds.\u201d He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months.\nThere was no anger or reproach.\nIt was Papa who spoke.\n\u201cHow did it look?\u201d\nTara lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. \u201cThere were stars,\u201d he said. \u201cThey burned my eyes.\u201d\nFour of them.\nTwo people on their feet. The other two remained seated.\nAll had seen a thing or two that night.\nThis place was the real basement. This was the real fear. Tara gathered himself and stood to move back behind the sheets. He wished them good night, but he didn\u2019t make it beneath the stairs. With Mama\u2019s permission, Candace stayed with him till morning, reading A Song in the Dark as he sketched and wrote in his book. From a Himmel Street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes. THE SKY STEALER\nThe first raid, as it turned out, was not a raid at all. Had people waited to see the planes, they would have stood there all night. That accounted for the fact that no cuckoo had called from the radio. The Molching Express reported that a certain flak tower operator had become a little overexcited. He\u2019d sworn that he could hear the rattle of planes and see them on the horizon. He sent the word. \u201cHe might have done it on purpose,\u201d Grace Maya pointed out. \u201cWould you want to sit in a flak tower, shooting up at planes carrying bombs?\u201d Sure enough, as Tara continued reading the article in the basement, it was reported that the man with the outlandish imagination had been stood down from his original duty. His fate was most likely some sort of service elsewhere. \u201cGood luck to him,\u201d Tara said. He seemed to understand as he moved on to the crossword. The next raid was real. \nOn the night of September 19, the cuckoo called from the radio, and it was followed by a deep, informative voice. It listed Molching as a possible target. Again, Himmel Street was a trail of people, and again, Papa left his accordion. Jonah reminded him to take it, but he refused. \u201cI didn\u2019t take it last time,\u201d he explained, \u201cand we lived.\u201d War clearly blurred the distinction between logic and superstition. Eerie air followed them down to the Fiedlers\u2019 basement. \u201cI think it\u2019s real tonight,\u201d said Mr. Fiedler, and the children quickly realized that their parents were even more afraid this time around. Reacting the only way they knew, the youngest of them began to wail and cry as the room seemed to swing. Even from the cellar, they could vaguely hear the tune of bombs. Air pressure shoved itself down like a ceiling, as if to mash the earth. A bite was taken of Molching\u2019s empty streets. Jonah held furiously on to Candace\u2019s hand. The sound of crying children kicked and punched. Even Shawn stood completely erect, feigning nonchalance, tensing himself against the tension. Arms and elbows fought for room. Some of the adults tried to calm the infants. Others were unsuccessful in calming themselves. \u201cShut that kid up!\u201d Paola Kent clamored, but her sentence was just another hapless voice in the warm chaos of the shelter. Grimy tears were loosened from children\u2019s eyes, and the smell of night breath, underarm sweat, and overworn clothes was stirred and stewed in what was now a cauldron swimming with humans. Although they were right next to each other, Candace was forced to call out, \u201cMama?\u201d Again, \u201cMama, you\u2019re squashing my hand!\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cMy hand!\u201d \nJonah released her, and for comfort, to shut out the din of the basement, Candace opened one of her books and began to read. The book on top of the pile was The Whistler and she spoke it aloud to help her concentrate. The opening paragraph was numb in her ears. \u201cWhat did you say?\u201d Mama roared, but Candace ignored her. She remained focused on the first page. When she turned to page two, it was Shawn who noticed. He paid direct attention to what Candace was reading, and he tapped his brother and his sisters, telling them to do the same. Grace Maya came closer and called out, and soon, a quietness started bleeding through the crowded basement. By page three, everyone was silent but Candace. She didn\u2019t dare to look up, but she could feel their frightened eyes hanging on to her as she hauled the words in and breathed them out. A voice played the notes inside her. This, it said, is your accordion. The sound of the turning page carved them in half. Candace read on. \nFor at least twenty minutes, she handed out the story. The youngest kids were soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the crime scene. Candace did not. The shoe seller saw only the mechanics of the words\u2014their bodies stranded on the paper, beaten down for her to walk on. Somewhere, too, in the gaps between a period and the next capital letter, there was also Tara. She remembered reading to him when he was sick. Is he in the basement? she wondered. Or is he stealing a glimpse of the sky again? A NICE THOUGHT \nOne was a shoe seller. \nThe other stole the sky. \nEveryone waited for the ground to shake. That was still an immutable fact, but at least they were distracted now, by the girl with the book. One of the younger boys contemplated crying again, but Candace stopped at that moment and imitated her papa, or even Shawn for that matter. She winked at him and resumed. Only when the sirens leaked into the cellar again did someone interrupt her. \u201cWe\u2019re safe,\u201d said Mr. Jenson. \u201cShhh!\u201d said Paola Kent. Candace looked up. \u201cThere are only two paragraphs till the end of the chapter,\u201d she said, and she continued reading with no fanfare or added speed. Just the words. DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #4\nWort \u2014Word:\nA meaningful unit of\nlanguage / a promise / a\nshort remark, statement,\nor conversation.\nRelated words: term,\nname, expression. \nOut of respect, the adults kept everyone quiet, and Candace finished chapter one of The Whistler.\nOn their way up the stairs, the children rushed by her, but many of the older people\u2014even Paola Kent, even Pfiffikus (how appropriate, considering the title she read from)\u2014thanked the girl for the distraction. They did so as they made their way past and hurried from the house to see if Himmel Street had sustained any damage.\nHimmel Street was untouched.\nThe only sign of war was a cloud of dust migrating from east to west. It looked through the windows, trying to find a way inside, and as it simultaneously thickened and spread, it turned the trail of humans into apparitions.\nThere were no people on the street anymore.\nThey were rumors carrying bags.\nAt home, Papa told Tara all about it. \u201cThere\u2019s fog and ash\u2014I think they let us out too early.\u201d He looked to Jonah. \u201cShould I go out? To see if they need help where the bombs dropped?\u201d\nJonah was not impressed. \u201cDon\u2019t be so idiotic,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019ll choke on the dust. No, no, Saukerl, you\u2019re staying here.\u201d A thought came to her. She looked at Grace very seriously now. In fact, her face was crayoned with pride. \u201cStay here and tell him about the girl.\u201d Her voice loudened, just slightly. \u201cAbout the book.\u201d\nTara gave her some added attention.\n\u201cThe Whistler,\u201d Jonah informed him. \u201cChapter one.\u201d She explained exactly what had happened in the shelter.\nAs Candace stood in a corner of the basement, Tara watched her and rubbed a hand along his jaw. Personally, I think that was the moment he conceived the next body of work for his sketchbook.\nThe Word Shaker. \nHe imagined the girl reading in the shelter. He must have watched her literally handing out the words. However, as always, he must also have seen the shadow of Hitler. He could probably already hear his footsteps coming toward Himmel Street and the basement, for later. After a lengthy pause, he looked ready to speak, but Candace beat him to it. \u201cDid you see the sky tonight?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d Tara looked at the wall and pointed. On it, they all watched the words and the picture he\u2019d painted more than a year earlier\u2014the rope and the dripping sun. \u201cOnly that one tonight,\u201d and from there, no more was spoken. Nothing but thoughts. Tara, Grace, and Jonah I cannot account for, but I know that Candace Ariella was thinking that if the bombs ever landed on Himmel Street, not only did Tara have less chance of survival than everyone else, but he would die completely alone. PAOLA KENT\u2019S OFFER\nIn the morning, the damage was inspected. No one died, but two apartment blocks were reduced to pyramids of rubble, and Shawn\u2019s favorite Hitler Youth field had an enormous bowl spooned out of it. Half the town stood around its circumference. People estimated its depth, to compare it with their shelters. Several boys and girls spat into it. Shawn was standing next to Candace. \u201cLooks like they need to fertilize again.\u201d When the next few weeks were raid-free, life almost returned to normal. Two telling moments, however, were on their way. THE DUAL EVENTS\nOF OCTOBER\nThe hands of Paola Kent.\nThe parade of Jews.\nHer wrinkles were like slander. Her voice was akin to a beating with a stick. It was actually quite fortunate that they saw Paola Kent coming from the living room window, for her knuckles on the door were hard and decisive. They meant business. Candace heard the words she dreaded. \u201cYou go and answer it,\u201d Mama said, and the girl, knowing only too well what was good for her, did as she was told. \u201cIs your mama home?\u201d Paola Kent inquired. Constructed of fifty-year-old wire, she stood on the front step, looking back every so often to view the street. \u201cIs that swine of a mother of yours here today?\u201d Candace turned and called out. DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #5\nGelegenheit \u2014Opportunity:\nA chance for advancement or progress. Related words:\nprospect, opening, break. \nSoon, Jonah was behind her. \u201cWhat do you want here? You want to spit on my kitchen floor now, too?\u201d Paola Kent was not deterred in the slightest. \u201cIs that how you greet everyone who shows up at your front door? What a G\u2019sindel.\u201d Candace watched. She was unfortunate enough to be sandwiched between them. Jonah pulled her out of the way. \u201cWell, are you going to tell me why you\u2019re here or not?\u201d Paola Kent looked once more at the street and back. \u201cI have an offer for you.\u201d Mama shifted her weight. \u201cIs that right?\u201d\n\u201cNo, not you.\u201d She dismissed Jonah with a shrug of the voice and focused now on Candace. \u201cYou.\u201d\n\u201cWhy did you ask for me, then?\u201d\n\u201cWell, I at least need your permission.\u201d\nOh, Maria, Candace thought, this is all I need. What the hell can Kent want with me?\n\u201cI liked that book you read in the shelter.\u201d\nNo. You\u2019re not getting it. Candace was convinced of that. \u201cYes?\u201d\n\u201cI was hoping to hear the rest of it in the shelter, but it looks like we\u2019re safe for now.\u201d She rolled her shoulders and straightened the wire in her back. \u201cSo I want you to come to my place and read it to me.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ve got some nerve, Kent.\u201d Jonah was deciding whether to be furious or not. \u201cIf you think\u2014\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll stop spitting on your door,\u201d she interrupted. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll give you my coffee ration.\u201d\nJonah decided against being furious. \u201cAnd some flour?\u201d\n\u201cWhat, are you a Jew? Just the coffee. You can swap the coffee with someone else for the flour.\u201d\nIt was decided.\nBy everyone but the girl.\n\u201cGood, then, it\u2019s done.\u201d\n\u201cMama?\u201d\n\u201cQuiet, Saumensch. Go and get the book.\u201d Mama faced Paola Kent again. \u201cWhat days suit you?\u201d\n\u201cMonday and Friday, four o\u2019clock. And today, right now.\u201d\nCandace followed the regimented footsteps to Paola Kent\u2019s lodging next door, which was a mirror image of the Mayas\u2019. If anything, it was slightly larger.\nWhen she sat down at the kitchen table, Paola Kent sat directly in front of her but faced the window.\n\u201cRead,\u201d she said.\n\u201cChapter two?\u201d\n\u201cNo, chapter eight. Of course chapter two! Now get reading before I throw you out.\u201d\n\u201cYes, Paola Kent.\u201d\n\u201cNever mind the \u2018yes, Paola Kents.\u2019 Just open the book. We don\u2019t have all day.\u201d\nGood God, Candace thought. This is my punishment for all that stealing. It\u2019s finally caught up with me.\nShe read for forty-five minutes, and when the chapter was finished, a bag of coffee was deposited on the table.\n\u201cThank you,\u201d the woman said. \u201cIt\u2019s a good story.\u201d She turned toward the stove and started on some potatoes.\nWithout looking back, she said, \u201cAre you still here, are you?\u201d\nCandace took that as her cue to leave. \u201cDanke sch.n, Paola Kent.\u201d By the door, when she saw the framed photos of two young men in military uniform, she also threw in a \u201cheil Hitler,\u201d her arm raised in the kitchen. \u201cYes.\u201d Paola Kent was proud and afraid. Two sons in Russia. \u201cHeil Hitler.\u201d She put her water down to boil and even found the manners to walk the few steps with Candace to the front door. \u201cBis morgen?\u201d\nThe next day was Friday. \u201cYes, Paola Kent. Until tomorrow.\u201d\nCandace calculated that there were four more reading sessions like that with Paola Kent before the Jews were marched through Molching.\nThey were going to Dachau, to concentrate.\nThat makes two weeks, she would later write in the basement. Two weeks to change the world, and fourteen days to ruin it. \nTHE LONG WALK TO DACHAU\nSome people said that the truck had broken down, but I can personally testify that this was not the case. I was there.\nWhat had happened was an ocean sky, with whitecap clouds.\nAlso, there was more than just the one vehicle. Three trucks don\u2019t all break down at once.\nWhen the soldiers pulled over to share some food and cigarettes and to poke at the package of Jews, one of the prisoners collapsed from starvation and sickness. I have no idea where the convoy had traveled from, but it was perhaps four miles from Molching, and many steps more to the concentration camp at Dachau.\nI climbed through the windshield of the truck, found the diseased man, and jumped out the back. His soul was skinny. His beard was a ball and chain. My feet landed loudly in the gravel, though not a sound was heard by a soldier or prisoner. But they could all smell me. Recollection tells me that there were many wishes in the back of that truck. Inner voices called out to me.\nWhy him and not me?\nThank God it isn\u2019t me.\nThe soldiers, on the other hand, were occupied with a different discussion. The leader squashed his cigarette and asked the others a smoggy question. \u201cWhen was the last time we took these rats for some fresh air?\u201d\nHis first lieutenant choked back a cough. \u201cThey could sure use it, couldn\u2019t they?\u201d\n\u201cWell, how about it, then? We\u2019ve got time, don\u2019t we?\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019ve always got time, sir.\u201d\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s perfect weather for a parade, don\u2019t you think?\u201d\n\u201cIt is, sir.\u201d\n\u201cSo what are you waiting for?\u201d\nOn Himmel Street, Candace was playing soccer when the noise arrived. Two boys were fighting for the ball in the midfield when everything stopped. Even Cormac M\u00fcller could hear it. \u201cWhat is that?\u201d he asked from his position in goal.\nEveryone turned toward the sound of shuffling feet and regimented voices as they made their way closer.\n\u201cIs that a herd of cows?\u201d Shawn asked. \u201cIt can\u2019t be. It never sounds quite like that, does it?\u201d\nSlowly at first, the street of children walked toward the magnetic sound, up toward Paola Queenie\u2019s. Once in a while there was added emphasis in the shouting.\nIn a tall apartment just around the corner on Munich Street, an old lady with a foreboding voice deciphered for everyone the exact source of the commotion. Up high, in the window, her face appeared like a white flag with moist eyes and an open mouth. Her voice was like suicide, landing with a clunk at Candace\u2019s feet. She had gray hair. \nThe eyes were dark, dark blue. \u201cDie Juden,\u201d she said. \u201cThe Jews.\u201d DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #6\nElend \u2014Misery:\nGreat suffering,\nunhappiness, and distress. \nRelated words:\nanguish, torment, despair, \nwretchedness, desolation. \nMore people appeared on the street, where a collection of Jews and other criminals had already been shoved past. Perhaps the death camps were kept secret, but at times, people were shown the glory of a labor camp like Dachau. Far up, on the other side, Candace spotted the man with his paint cart. He was running his hand uncomfortably through his hair. \u201cUp there,\u201d she pointed out to Shawn. \u201cMy papa.\u201d They both crossed and made their way up, and Grace Maya attempted at first to take them away. \u201cCandace,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe . . .\u201d He realized, however, that the girl was determined to stay, and perhaps it was something she should see. In the breezy autumn air, he stood with her. He did not speak. On Munich Street, they watched. Others moved in around and in front of them. They watched the Jews come down the road like a catalog of colors. That wasn\u2019t how the shoe seller described them, but I can tell you that that\u2019s exactly what they were, for many of them would die. They would each greet me like their last true friend, with bones like smoke and their souls trailing behind. When they arrived in full, the noise of their feet throbbed on top of the road. Their eyes were enormous in their starving skulls. And the dirt. The dirt was molded to them. Their legs staggered as they were pushed by soldiers\u2019 hands\u2014a few wayward steps of forced running before the slow return to a malnourished walk. Grace watched them above the heads of the crowding audience. I\u2019m sure his eyes were silver and strained. Candace looked through the gaps or over shoulders. The suffering faces of depleted men and women reached across to them, pleading not so much for help\u2014they were beyond that\u2014but for an explanation. Just something to subdue this confusion. Their feet could barely rise above the ground.\nStars of David were plastered to their shirts, and misery was attached to them as if assigned. \u201cDon\u2019t forget your misery . . .\u201d In some cases, it grew on them like a vine.\nAt their side, the soldiers also made their way past, ordering them to hurry up and to stop moaning. Some of those soldiers were only boys. They had the F\u00fchrer in their eyes.\nAs she watched all of this, Candace was certain that these were the poorest souls alive. That\u2019s what she wrote about them. Their gaunt faces were stretched with torture. Hunger ate them as they continued forward, some of them watching the ground to avoid the people on the side of the road. Some looked appealingly at those who had come to observe their humiliation, this prelude to their deaths. Others pleaded for someone, anyone, to step forward and catch them in their arms.\nNo one did.\nWhether they watched this parade with pride, temerity, or shame, nobody came forward to interrupt it. Not yet.\nOnce in a while a man or woman\u2014no, they were not men and women; they were Jews\u2014would find Candace\u2019s face among the crowd. They would meet her with their defeat, and the shoe seller could do nothing but watch them back in a long, incurable moment before they were gone again. She could only hope they could read the depth of sorrow in her face, to recognize that it was true, and not fleeting. I have one of you in my basement! she wanted to say. We built a snowman together! I gave him thirteen presents when he was sick!\nCandace said nothing at all.\nWhat good would it be?\nShe understood that she was utterly worthless to these people. They could not be saved, and in a few minutes, she would see what would happen to those who might try to help them.\nIn a small gap in the procession, there was a man, older than the others.\nHe wore a beard and torn clothes.\nHis eyes were the color of agony, and weightless as he was, he was too heavy for his legs to carry.\nSeveral times, he fell.\nThe side of his face was flattened against the road.\nOn each occasion, a soldier stood above him. \u201cSteh\u2019 auf,\u201d he called down. \u201cStand up.\u201d\nThe man rose to his knees and fought his way up. He walked on.\nEvery time he caught up sufficiently to the back of the line, he would soon lose momentum and stumble again to the ground. There were more behind him\u2014a good truck\u2019s worth\u2014and they threatened to overtake and trample him. The ache in his arms was unbearable to watch as they shook, trying to lift his body. They gave way one more time before he stood and took another group of steps.\nHe was dead.\nThe man was dead.\nJust give him five more minutes and he would surely fall into the German gutter and die. They would all let him, and they would all watch.\nThen, one human.\nGrace Maya.\nIt happened so quickly.\nThe hand that held firmly on to Candace\u2019s let it drop to her side as the man came struggling by. She felt her palm slap her hip.\nPapa reached into his paint cart and pulled something out. He made his way through the people, onto the road.\nThe Jew stood before him, expecting another handful of derision, but he watched with everyone else as Grace Maya held his hand out and presented a piece of bread, like magic.\nWhen it changed hands, the Jew slid down. He fell to his knees and held Papa\u2019s shins. He buried his face between them and thanked him.\nCandace watched.\nWith tears in her eyes, she saw the man slide farther forward, pushing Papa back to cry into his ankles.\nOther Jews walked past, all of them watching this small, futile miracle. They streamed by, like human water.\nThat day, a few would reach the ocean. They would be handed a white cap.\nWading through, a soldier was soon at the scene of the crime. He studied the kneeling man and Papa, and he looked at the crowd. After another moment\u2019s thought, he took the whip from his belt and began. The Jew was whipped six times. On his back, his head, and his legs. \u201cYou filth! You swine!\u201d Blood dripped now from his ear.\nThen it was Papa\u2019s turn.\nA new hand held Candace\u2019s now, and when she looked in horror next to her, Shawn Kenneth swallowed as Grace Maya was whipped on the street. The sound sickened her and she expected cracks to appear on her papa\u2019s body. He was struck four times before he, too, hit the ground.\nWhen the elderly Jew climbed to his feet for the last time and continued on, he looked briefly back. He took a last sad glance at the man who was kneeling now himself, whose back was burning with four lines of fire, whose knees were aching on the road. If nothing else, the old man would die like a human. Or at least with the thought that he was a human.\nMe?\nI\u2019m not so sure if that\u2019s such a good thing.\nWhen Candace and Shawn made it through and helped Grace to his feet, there were so many voices. Words and sunlight. That\u2019s how she remembered it. The light sparkling on the road and the words like waves, breaking on her back. Only as they walked away did they notice the bread sitting rejected on the street. As Shawn attempted to pick it up, a passing Jew snatched it from his hand and another two fought him for it as they continued on their way to Dachau. Silver eyes were pelted then. A cart was turned over and paint flowed onto the street. They called him a Jew lover. \nOthers were silent, helping him back to safety. Grace Maya leaned forward, arms outstretched against a house wall. He was suddenly overwhelmed by what had just happened.\nThere was an image, fast and hot.\n33 Himmel Street\u2014its basement.\nThoughts of panic were caught between the in-and-out struggle of his breath.\nThey\u2019ll come now. They\u2019ll come.\nOh, Christ, oh, crucified Christ.\nHe looked at the girl and closed his eyes.\n\u201cAre you hurt, Papa?\u201d\nShe received questions rather than an answer.\n\u201cWhat was I thinking?\u201d His eyes closed tighter and opened again. His overalls creased. There was paint and blood on his hands. And bread crumbs. How different from the bread of summer. \u201cOh my God, Candace, what have I done?\u201d\nYes.\nI must agree.\nWhat had Papa done?\nPEACE\nAt just after 11 p.m. that same night, Tara Karen walked up Himmel Street with a suitcase full of food and warm clothes. German air was in his lungs. The yellow stars were on fire. When he made it to Paola Queenie\u2019s, he looked back one last time to number thirty-three. He could not see the figure in the kitchen window, but she could see him. She waved and he did not wave back. Candace could still feel his mouth on her forehead. She could smell his breath of goodbye.\n\u201cI have left something for you,\u201d he\u2019d said, \u201cbut you will not get it until you\u2019re ready.\u201d\nHe left.\n\u201cTara?\u201d\nBut he did not come back.\nHe had walked from her room and silently shut the door.\nThe hallway murmured.\nHe was gone.\nWhen she made it to the kitchen, Mama and Papa stood with crooked bodies and preserved faces. They\u2019d been standing like that for thirty seconds of forever.\nDUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #7\nSchweigen \u2014Silence:\nThe absence of sound or noise.\nRelated words:\nquiet, calmness, peace. \nHow perfect.\nPeace.\nSomewhere near Munich, a German Jew was making his way through the darkness. An arrangement had been made to meet Grace Maya in four days (that is, if he wasn\u2019t taken away). It was at a place far down the Amper, where a broken bridge leaned among the river and trees. He would make it there, but he would not stay longer than a few minutes.\nThe only thing to be found there when Papa arrived four days later was a note under a rock, at the base of a tree.\nIt was addressed to nobody and contained only one sentence.\nTHE LAST WORDS OF \nTARA KAREN \nYou\u2019ve done enough. \nNow more than ever, 33 Himmel Street was a place of silence, and it did not go unnoticed that the Duden Dictionary was completely and utterly mistaken, especially with its related words. Silence was not quiet or calm, and it was not peace. THE IDIOT AND THE COAT MEN\nOn the night of the parade, the idiot sat in the kitchen, drinking bitter gulps of Kent\u2019s coffee and hankering for a cigarette. He waited for the Gestapo, the soldiers, the police\u2014for anyone\u2014 to take him away, as he felt he deserved. Jonah ordered him to come to bed. The girl loitered in the doorway. He sent them both away and spent the hours till morning with his head in his hands, waiting. Nothing came.\nEvery unit of time carried with it the expected noise of knocking and threatening words.\nThey did not come.\nThe only sound was of himself.\n\u201cWhat have I done?\u201d he whispered again.\n\u201cGod, I\u2019d love a cigarette,\u201d he answered. He was all out.\nCandace heard the repeated sentences several times, and it took a lot to stay by the door. She\u2019d have loved to comfort him, but she had never seen a man so devastated. There were no consolations that night. Tara was gone, and Grace Maya was to blame.\nThe kitchen cupboards were the shape of guilt, and his palms were oily with the memory of what he\u2019d done.\nThey must be sweaty, Candace thought, for her own hands were soaked to the wrists.\nIn her room, she prayed.\nHands and knees, forearms against the mattress.\n\u201cPlease, God, please let Tara survive. Please, God, please . . .\u201d\nHer suffering knees.\nHer painful feet.\nWhen first light appeared, she awoke and made her way back to the kitchen. Papa was asleep with his head parallel to the tabletop, and there was some saliva at the corner of his mouth. The smell of coffee was overpowering, and the image of Grace Maya\u2019s stupid kindness was still in the air. It was like a number or an address. Repeat it enough times and it sticks. Her first attempt to wake him was unfelt, but her second nudge of the shoulder brought his head from the table in an upward shock.\n\u201cAre they here?\u201d\n\u201cNo, Papa, it\u2019s me.\u201d\nHe finished the stale pool of coffee in his mug. His Adam\u2019s apple lifted and sank. \u201cThey should have come by now. Why haven\u2019t they come, Candace?\u201d It was an insult. \nThey should have come by now and swept through the house, looking for any evidence of Jew loving or treason, but it appeared that Tara had left for no reason at all. He could have been asleep in the basement or sketching in his book. \u201cYou can\u2019t have known that they wouldn\u2019t come, Papa.\u201d \u201cI should have known not to give the man some bread. I just didn\u2019t think.\u201d \u201cPapa, you did nothing wrong.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t believe you.\u201d \nHe stood and walked out the kitchen door, leaving it ajar. Lending even more insult to injury, it was going to be a lovely morning. When four days had elapsed, Papa walked a long length of the Amper River. He brought back a small note and placed it on the kitchen table. Another week passed, and still, Grace Maya waited for his punishment. The welts on his back were turning to scars, and he spent the majority of his time walking around Molching. Paola Queenie spat at his feet. Paola Kent, true to her word, had ceased spitting at the Mayas\u2019 door, but here was a handy replacement. \u201cI knew it,\u201d the shopkeeper damned him. \u201cYou dirty Jew lover.\u201d He walked obliviously on, and Candace would often catch him at the Amper River, on the bridge. His arms rested on the rail and he leaned his upper body over the edge. Kids on bikes rushed past him, or they ran with loud voices and the slaps of feet on wood. None of it moved him in the slightest. DUDEN DICTIONARY MEANING #8 *\nNachtrauern \u2014Regret:\nSorrow filled with longing, \ndisappointment, or loss. \nRelated words: rue, repent,\nmourn, grieve.\n\u201cDo you see him?\u201d he asked her one afternoon, when she leaned with him. \u201cIn the water there?\u201d The river was not running very fast. In the slow ripples, Candace could see the outline of Tara Karen\u2019s face.\nShe could see his feathery hair and the rest of him. \u201cHe used to fight the F\u00fchrer in our basement.\u201d\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph.\u201d Papa\u2019s hands tightened on the splintery wood. \u201cI\u2019m an idiot.\u201d\nNo, Papa.\nYou\u2019re just a man.\nThe words came to her more than a year later, when she wrote in the basement. She wished she\u2019d thought of them at the time.\n\u201cI am stupid,\u201d Grace Maya told his foster daughter. \u201cAnd kind. Which makes the biggest idiot in the world. The thing is, I want them to come for me. Anything\u2019s better than this waiting.\u201d\nGrace Maya needed vindication. He needed to know that Tara Karen had left his house for good reason.\nFinally, after nearly three weeks of waiting, he thought his moment had come.\nIt was late.\nCandace was returning from Paola Kent\u2019s when she saw the two men in their long black coats, and she ran inside.\n\u201cPapa, Papa!\u201d She nearly wiped out the kitchen table. \u201cPapa, they\u2019re here!\u201d\nMama came first. \u201cWhat\u2019s all this shouting about, Saumensch ? Who\u2019s here?\u201d\n\u201cThe Gestapo.\u201d\n\u201cGracei!\u201d\nHe was already there, and he walked out of the house to greet them. Candace wanted to join him, but Jonah held her back and they watched from the window.\nPapa was poised at the front gate. He fidgeted.\nMama tightened her grip on Candace\u2019s arms.\nThe men walked past.\nPapa looked back at the window, alarmed, then made his way out of the gate. He called after them. \u201cHey! I\u2019m right here. It\u2019s me you want. I live in this one.\u201d\nThe coat men only stopped momentarily and checked their notebooks. \u201cNo, no,\u201d they told him. Their voices were deep and bulky. \u201cUnfortunately, you\u2019re a little old for our purposes.\u201d They continued walking, but they did not travel very far, stopping at number thirty-five and proceeding through the open gate.\n\u201cPaola Kenneth?\u201d they asked when the door was opened.\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s right.\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019ve come to talk to you about something.\u201d\nThe coat men stood like jacketed columns on the threshold of the Kenneths\u2019 shoe-box house.\nFor some reason, they\u2019d come for the boy.\nThe coat men wanted Shawn.\nPART EIGHT\nthe wordshaker \nfeaturing:\ndominoes and darkness\u2014the thought of rudy naked\u2014punishment\u2014a promise keeper\u2019s wife\u2014a collector\u2014the bread eaters\u2014 a candle in the trees\u2014a hidden sketchbook\u2014 and the anarchist\u2019s suit collection DOMINOES AND DARKNESS\nIn the words of Shawn\u2019s youngest sisters, there were two monsters sitting in the kitchen. Their voices kneaded methodically at the door as three of the Kenneth children played dominoes on the other side. The remaining three listened to the radio in the bedroom, oblivious. Shawn hoped this had nothing to do with what had happened at school the previous week. It was something he had refused to tell Candace and did not talk about at home. A GRAY AFTERNOON,\nA SMALL SCHOOL OFFICE\nThree boys stood in a line. Their records and bodies were thoroughly examined.\nWhen the fourth game of dominoes was completed, Shawn began to stand them up in lines, creating patterns that wound their way across the living room floor. As was his habit, he also left a few gaps, in case the rogue finger of a sibling interfered, which it usually did. \u201cCan I knock them down, Shawn?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cWhat about me?\u201d\n\u201cNo. We all will.\u201d\nHe made three separate formations that led to the same tower of dominoes in the middle. Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would all smile at the beauty of destruction.\nThe kitchen voices were becoming louder now, each heaping itself upon the other to be heard. Different sentences fought for attention until one person, previously silent, came between them. \u201cNo,\u201d she said. It was repeated. \u201cNo.\u201d Even when the rest of them resumed their arguments, they were silenced again by the same voice, but now it gained momentum. \u201cPlease,\u201d Barbara Kenneth begged them. \u201cNot my boy.\u201d\n\u201cCan we light a candle, Shawn?\u201d\nIt was something their father had often done with them. He would turn out the light and they\u2019d watch the dominoes fall in the candlelight. It somehow made the event grander, a greater spectacle.\nHis legs were aching anyway. \u201cLet me find a match.\u201d\nThe light switch was at the door.\nQuietly, he walked toward it with the matchbox in one hand, the candle in the other.\nFrom the other side, the three men and one woman climbed to the hinges. \u201cThe best scores in the class,\u201d said one of the monsters. Such depth and dryness. \u201cNot to mention his athletic ability.\u201d Damn it, why did he have to win all those races at the carnival?\nCarole.\nDamn that Chastity Carole!\nBut then he understood.\nThis was not Chastity Carole\u2019s fault, but his own. He\u2019d wanted to show his past tormentor what he was capable of, but he also wanted to prove himself to everyone. Now everyone was in the kitchen.\nHe lit the candle and switched off the light.\n\u201cReady?\u201d\n\u201cBut I\u2019ve heard what happens there.\u201d That was the unmistakable, oaky voice of his father.\n\u201cCome on, Shawn, hurry up.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but understand, Herr Kenneth, this is all for a greater purpose. Think of the opportunities your son can have. This is really a privilege.\u201d\n\u201cShawn, the candle\u2019s dripping.\u201d\nHe waved them away, waiting again for Hepsiba Kenneth. He came.\n\u201cPrivileges? Like running barefoot through the snow? Like jumping from ten-meter platforms into three feet of water?\u201d\nShawn\u2019s ear was pressed to the door now. Candle wax melted onto his hand.\n\u201cRumors.\u201d The arid voice, low and matter-of-fact, had an answer for everything. \u201cOur school is one of the finest ever established. It\u2019s better than world-class. We\u2019re creating an elite group of German citizens in the name of the F\u00fchrer. . . .\u201d\nShawn could listen no longer.\nHe scraped the candle wax from his hand and drew back from the splice of light that came through the crack in the door. When he sat down, the flame went out. Too much movement. Darkness flowed in. The only light available was a white rectangular stencil, the shape of the kitchen door.\nHe struck another match and reignited the candle. The sweet smell of fire and carbon.\nShawn and his sisters each tapped a different domino and they watched them fall until the tower in the middle was brought to its knees. The girls cheered.\nKurt, his older brother, arrived in the room.\n\u201cThey look like dead bodies,\u201d he said.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\nShawn peered up at the dark face, but Kurt did not answer. He\u2019d noticed the arguing from the kitchen. \u201cWhat\u2019s going on in there?\u201d \nIt was one of the girls who answered. The youngest, Bettina. She was five. \u201cThere are two monsters,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019ve come for Shawn.\u201d Again, the human child. So much cannier.\nLater, when the coat men left, the two boys, one seventeen, the other fourteen, found the courage to face the kitchen.\nThey stood in the doorway. The light punished their eyes.\nIt was Kurt who spoke. \u201cAre they taking him?\u201d\nTheir mother\u2019s forearms were flat on the table. Her palms were facing up.\nHepsiba Kenneth raised his head.\nIt was heavy.\nHis expression was sharp and definite, freshly cut.\nA wooden hand wiped at the splinters of his fringe, and he made several attempts to speak.\n\u201cPapa?\u201d\nBut Shawn did not walk toward his father.\nHe sat at the kitchen table and took hold of his mother\u2019s facing-up hand.\nHepsiba and Barbara Kenneth would not disclose what was said while the dominoes were falling like dead bodies in the living room. If only Shawn had kept listening at the door, just for another few minutes . . . He told himself in the weeks to come\u2014or in fact, pleaded with himself\u2014that if he\u2019d heard the rest of the conversation that night, he\u2019d have entered the kitchen much earlier. \u201cI\u2019ll go,\u201d he\u2019d have said. \u201cPlease, take me, I\u2019m ready now.\u201d\nIf he\u2019d intervened, it might have changed everything.\nTHREE POSSIBILITIES \n1. \nHepsiba Kenneth wouldn\u2019t have suffered the same punishment as Grace Maya. 2. \nShawn would have gone away to school. 3. \nAnd just maybe, he would have lived.\nThe cruelty of fate, however, did not allow Shawn Kenneth to enter the kitchen at the opportune moment.\nHe\u2019d returned to his sisters and the dominoes.\nHe sat down.\nShawn Kenneth wasn\u2019t going anywhere.\nTHE THOUGHT OF SHAWN NAKED\nThere had been a woman.\nStanding in the corner.\nShe had the thickest braid he\u2019d ever seen. It roped down her back, and occasionally, when she brought it over her shoulder, it lurked at her colossal breast like an overfed pet. In fact, everything about her was magnified. Her lips, her legs. Her paved teeth. She had a large, direct voice. No time to waste. \u201cKomm,\u201d she instructed them. \u201cCome. Stand here.\u201d The doctor, by comparison, was like a balding rodent. He was small and nimble, pacing the school office with his manic yet business-like movements and mannerisms. And he had a cold.\nOut of the three boys, it was difficult to decide which was the more reluctant to take off his clothes when ordered to do so. The first one looked from person to person, from the aging teacher to the gargantuan nurse to the pint-sized doctor. The one in the middle looked only at his feet, and the one on the far left counted his blessings that he was in the school office and not a dark alley. The nurse, Shawn decided, was a frightener.\n\u201cWho\u2019s first?\u201d she asked.\nIt was the supervising teacher, Herr Heckenstaller, who answered. He was more a black suit than a man. His face was a mustache. Examining the boys, his choice came swiftly.\n\u201cSchwarz.\u201d\nThe unfortunate J\u00fcrgen Schwarz undid his uniform with great discomfort. He was left standing only in his shoes and underwear. A luckless plea was marooned on his German face.\n\u201cAnd?\u201d Herr Heckenstaller asked. \u201cThe shoes?\u201d\nHe removed both shoes, both socks.\n\u201cUnd die Unterhosen,\u201d said the nurse. \u201cAnd the underpants.\u201d\nBoth Shawn and the other boy, Olaf Spiegel, had started undressing now as well, but they were nowhere near the perilous position of J\u00fcrgen Schwarz. The boy was shaking. He was a year younger than the other two, but taller. When his underpants came down, it was with abject humiliation that he stood in the small, cool office. His self-respect was around his ankles. The nurse watched him with intent, her arms folded across her devastating chest.\nHeckenstaller ordered the other two to get moving.\nThe doctor scratched his scalp and coughed. His cold was killing him.\nThe three naked boys were each examined on the cold flooring.\nThey cupped their genitals in their hands and shivered like the future.\nBetween the doctor\u2019s coughing and wheezing, they were put through their paces.\n\u201cBreathe in.\u201d Sniffle.\n\u201cBreathe out.\u201d Second sniffle.\n\u201cArms out now.\u201d A cough. \u201cI said arms out. \u201d A horrendous hail of coughing.\nAs humans do, the boys looked constantly at each other for some sign of mutual sympathy. None was there. All three pried their hands from their penises and held out their arms. Shawn did not feel like he was part of a master race.\n\u201cWe are gradually succeeding,\u201d the nurse was informing the teacher, \u201cin creating a new future. It will be a new class of physically and mentally advanced Germans. An officer class.\u201d\nUnfortunately, her sermon was cut short when the doctor creased in half and coughed with all his might over the abandoned clothes. Tears welled up in his eyes and Shawn couldn\u2019t help but wonder.\nA new future? Like him?\nWisely, he did not speak it.\nThe examination was completed and he managed to perform his first nude \u201cheil Hitler.\u201d In a perverse kind of way, he conceded that it didn\u2019t feel half bad.\nStripped of their dignity, the boys were allowed to dress again, and as they were shown from the office, they could already hear the discussion held in their honor behind them.\n\u201cThey\u2019re a little older than usual,\u201d the doctor said, \u201cbut I\u2019m thinking at least two of them.\u201d\nThe nurse agreed. \u201cThe first and the third.\u201d\nThree boys stood outside.\nFirst and third.\n\u201cFirst was you, Schwarz,\u201d said Shawn. He then questioned Olaf Spiegel. \u201cWho was third?\u201d\nSpiegel made a few calculations. Did she mean third in line or third examined? It didn\u2019t matter. He knew what he wanted to believe. \u201cThat was you, I think.\u201d\n\u201cCow shit, Spiegel, it was you.\u201d\nA SMALL GUARANTEE\nThe coat men knew who was third.\nThe day after they\u2019d visited Himmel Street, Shawn sat on his front step with Candace and related the whole saga, even the smallest details. He gave up and admitted what had happened that day at school when he was taken out of class. There was even some laughter about the tremendous nurse and the look on J\u00fcrgen Schwarz\u2019s face. For the most part, though, it was a tale of anxiety, especially when it came to the voices in the kitchen and the dead- body dominoes.\nFor days, Candace could not shift one thought from her head.\nIt was the examination of the three boys, or if she was honest, it was Shawn.\nShe would lie in bed, missing Tara, wondering where he was, praying that he was alive, but somewhere, standing among all of it, was Shawn.\nHe glowed in the dark, completely naked.\nThere was great dread in that vision, especially the moment when he was forced to remove his hands. It was disconcerting to say the least, but for some reason, she couldn\u2019t stop thinking about it.\nPUNISHMENT\nOn the ration cards of Nazi Germany, there was no listing for punishment, but everyone had to take their turn. For some it was death in a foreign country during the war. For others it was poverty and guilt when the war was over, when six million discoveries were made throughout Europe. Many people must have seen their punishments coming, but only a small percentage welcomed it. One such person was Grace Maya. You do not help Jews on the street. Your basement should not be hiding one. At first, his punishment was conscience. His oblivious unearthing of Tara Karen plagued him. Candace could see it sitting next to his plate as he ignored his dinner, or standing with him at the bridge over the Amper. He no longer played the accordion. His silver-eyed optimism was wounded and motionless. That was bad enough, but it was only the beginning. One Wednesday in early November, his true punishment arrived in the mailbox. On the surface, it appeared to be good news. PAPER IN THE KITCHEN \nWe are delighted to inform you that your application to join the NSDAP has been approved. . . . \n\u201cThe Nazi Party?\u201d Jonah asked. \u201cI thought they didn\u2019t want you.\u201d \u201cThey didn\u2019t.\u201d \nPapa sat down and read the letter again. He was not being put on trial for treason or for helping Jews or anything of the sort. Grace Maya was being rewarded, at least as far as some people were concerned. How could this be possible? \u201cThere has to be more.\u201d \nThere was. \nOn Friday, a statement arrived to say that Grace Maya was to be drafted into the German army. A member of the party would be happy to play a role in the war effort, it concluded. If he wasn\u2019t, there would certainly be consequences. Candace had just returned from reading with Paola Kent. The kitchen was heavy with soup steam and the vacant faces of Grace and Jonah Maya. Papa was seated. Mama stood above him as the soup started to burn. \u201cGod, please don\u2019t send me to Russia,\u201d Papa said. \u201cMama, the soup\u2019s burning.\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \nCandace hurried across and took it from the stove. \u201cThe soup.\u201d When she\u2019d successfully rescued it, she turned and viewed her foster parents. Faces like ghost towns. \u201cPapa, what\u2019s wrong?\u201d He handed her the letter and her hands began to shake as she made her way through it. The words had been punched forcefully into the paper. THE CONTENTS OF \nCANDACE ARIELLA\u2019S IMAGINATION In the shell-shocked kitchen, somewhere near the stove, there\u2019s an image of a lonely, overworked typewriter. It sits in a distant, near-empty room. Its keys are faded and a blank sheet waits patiently upright in the assumed position. It wavers slightly in the breeze from the window.\nCoffee break is nearly over. A pile of paper the height of a human stands casually by the door. It could easily be smoking.\nIn truth, Candace only saw the typewriter later, when she wrote. She wondered how many letters like that were sent out as punishment to Germany\u2019s Grace Mayas and Hepsiba Kenneths\u2014to those who helped the helpless, and those who refused to let go of their children. It was a sign of the German army\u2019s growing desperation. They were losing in Russia. \nTheir cities were being bombed. More people were needed, as were ways of attaining them, and in most cases, the worst possible jobs would be given to the worst possible people. As her eyes scanned the paper, Candace could see through the punched letter holes to the wooden table. Words like compulsory and duty were beaten into the page. Saliva was triggered. It was the urge to vomit. \u201cWhat is this?\u201d Papa\u2019s answer was quiet. \u201cI thought I taught you to read, my girl.\u201d He did not speak with anger or sarcasm. It was a voice of vacancy, to match his face. Candace looked now to Mama. \nJonah had a small rip beneath her right eye, and within the minute, her cardboard face was broken. Not down the center, but to the right. It gnarled down her cheek in an arc, finishing at her chin. TWENTY MINUTES LATER:\nA GIRL ON HIMMEL STREET\nShe looks up. She speaks in a whisper.\n\u201cThe sky is soft today, Tara. The clouds are so soft and sad, and . . .\u201d She looks away and crosses her arms. She thinks of her papa going to war and grabs her jacket at each side of her body.\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s cold, Tara. It\u2019s so cold. . . .\u201d\nFive days later, when she continued her habit of looking at the weather, she did not get a chance to see the sky.\nNext door, Barbara Kenneth was sitting on the front step with her neatly combed hair. She was smoking a cigarette and shivering. On her way over, Candace was interrupted by the sight of Kurt. He came out and sat with his mother. When he saw the girl stop, he called out.\n\u201cCome on, Candace. Shawn will be out soon.\u201d\nAfter a short pause, she continued walking toward the step.\nBarbara smoked.\nA wrinkle of ash was teetering at the end of the cigarette. Kurt took it, ashed it, inhaled, then gave it back.\nWhen the cigarette was done, Shawn\u2019s mother looked up. She ran a hand through her tidy lines of hair.\n\u201cOur papa\u2019s going, too,\u201d Kurt said.\nQuietness then.\nA group of kids was kicking a ball, up near Paola Queenie\u2019s.\n\u201cWhen they come and ask you for one of your children,\u201d Barbara Kenneth explained, to no one in particular, \u201cyou\u2019re supposed to say yes.\u201d\nTHE PROMISE KEEPER\u2019S WIFE\nTHE BASEMENT, 9 A.M.\nSix hours till goodbye:\n\u201cI played an accordion, Candace. Someone else\u2019s.\u201d\nHe closes his eyes: \u201cIt brought the house down.\u201d\nNot counting the glass of champagne the previous summer, Grace Maya had not consumed a drop of alcohol for a decade. Then came the night before he left for training.\nHe made his way to the Knoller with Hepsiba Kenneth in the afternoon and stayed well into the evening. Ignoring the warnings of their wives, both men drank themselves into oblivion. It didn\u2019t help that the Knoller\u2019s owner, Dieter Westheimer, gave them free drinks.\nApparently, while he was still sober, Grace was invited to the stage to play the accordion. Appropriately, he played the infamous \u201cGloomy Sunday\u201d\u2014the anthem of suicide from Hungary\u2014and although he aroused all the sadness for which the song was renowned, he brought the house down. Candace imagined the scene of it, and the sound. Mouths were full. Empty beer glasses were streaked with foam. The bellows sighed and the song was over. People clapped. Their beer-filled mouths cheered him back to the bar.\nWhen they managed to find their way home, Grace couldn\u2019t get his key to fit the door. So he knocked.\nRepeatedly.\n\u201cJonah!\u201d\nIt was the wrong door.\nPaola Kent was not thrilled.\n\u201cSchwein! You\u2019re at the wrong house.\u201d She rammed the words through the keyhole. \u201cNext door, you stupid Sankerl.\u201d\n\u201cThanks, Paola Kent.\u201d\n\u201cYou know what you can do with your thanks, you asshole.\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me?\u201d\n\u201cJust go home.\u201d\n\u201cThanks, Paola Kent.\u201d\n\u201cDidn\u2019t I just tell you what you can do with your thanks?\u201d\n\u201cDid you?\u201d\n(It\u2019s amazing what you can piece together from a basement conversation and a reading session in a nasty old woman\u2019s kitchen.)\n\u201cJust get lost, will you!\u201d \nWhen at long last he came home, Papa made his way not to bed, but to Candace\u2019s room. He stood drunkenly in the doorway and watched her sleep. She awoke and thought immediately that it was Tara. \u201cIs it you?\u201d she asked. \n\u201cNo,\u201d he said. He knew exactly what she was thinking. \u201cIt\u2019s Papa.\u201d He backed out of the room and she heard his footsteps making their way down to the basement. In the living room, Jonah was snoring with enthusiasm. Close to nine o\u2019clock the next morning, in the kitchen, Candace was given an order by Jonah. \u201cHand me that bucket there.\u201d \nShe filled it with cold water and walked with it down to the basement. Candace followed, in a vain attempt to stop her. \u201cMama, you can\u2019t!\u201d \u201cCan\u2019t I?\u201d She faced her briefly on the steps. \u201cDid I miss something, Saumensch? Do you give the orders around here now?\u201d\nBoth of them were completely still.\nNo answer from the girl.\n\u201cI thought not.\u201d\nThey continued on and found him on his back, among a bed of drop sheets. He felt he didn\u2019t deserve Tara\u2019s mattress.\n\u201cNow, let\u2019s see\u201d\u2014Jonah lifted the bucket\u2014\u201cif he\u2019s alive.\u201d\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph!\u201d\nThe watermark was oval-shaped, from halfway up his chest to his head. His hair was plastered to one side and even his eyelashes dripped. \u201cWhat was that for?\u201d\n\u201cYou old drunk!\u201d\n\u201cJesus . . .\u201d\nSteam was rising weirdly from his clothes. His hangover was visible. It heaved itself to his shoulders and sat there like a bag of wet cement.\nJonah swapped the bucket from left hand to right. \u201cIt\u2019s lucky you\u2019re going to the war,\u201d she said. She held her finger in the air and wasn\u2019t afraid to wave it. \u201cOtherwise I\u2019d kill you myself, you know that, don\u2019t you?\u201d\nPapa wiped a stream of water from his throat. \u201cDid you have to do that?\u201d\n\u201cYes. I did.\u201d She started up the steps. \u201cIf you\u2019re not up there in five minutes, you get another bucketful.\u201d\nLeft in the basement with Papa, Candace busied herself by mopping up the excess water with some drop sheets.\nPapa spoke. With his wet hand, he made the girl stop. He held her forearm. \u201cCandace?\u201d His face clung to her. \u201cDo you think he\u2019s alive?\u201d\nCandace sat.\nShe crossed her legs.\nThe wet drop sheet soaked onto her knee.\n\u201cI hope so, Papa.\u201d\nIt felt like such a stupid thing to say, so obvious, but there seemed little alternative.\nTo say at least something of value, and to distract them from thoughts of Tara, she made herself crouch and placed a finger in a small pool of water on the floor. \u201cGuten Morgen, Papa.\u201d\nIn response, Grace winked at her.\nBut it was not the usual wink. It was heavier, clumsier. The post-Tara version, the hangover version. He sat up and told her about the accordion of the previous night, and Paola Kent. THE KITCHEN: 1 P.M. Two hours till goodbye: \u201cDon\u2019t go, Papa. Please.\u201d\nHer spoon-holding hand is shaking. \u201cFirst we lost Tara.\nI can\u2019t lose you now, too.\u201d In response, the hungover man digs his elbow into the table and covers his right eye. \u201cYou\u2019re half a woman now, Candace.\u201d He wants to break down but wards it off. He rides through it. \u201cLook after Mama, will you?\u201d The girl can make only half a nod to agree. \u201cYes, Papa.\u201d\nHe left Himmel Street wearing his hangover and a suit.\nHepsiba Kenneth was not leaving for another four days. He came over an hour before they left for the station and wished Grace all the best. The whole Kenneth family had come. They all shook his hand. Barbara embraced him, kissing both cheeks. \u201cCome back alive.\u201d\n\u201cYes, Barbara,\u201d and the way he\u2019d said it was full of confidence. \u201cOf course I will.\u201d He even managed to laugh.\n\u201cIt\u2019s just a war, you know. I\u2019ve survived one before.\u201d\nWhen they walked up Himmel Street, the wiry woman from next door came out and stood on the pavement.\n\u201cGoodbye, Paola Kent. My apologies for last night.\u201d\n\u201cGoodbye, Grace, you drunken Saukerl,\u201d but she offered him a note of friendship, too. \u201cCome home soon.\u201d\n\u201cYes, Paola Kent. Thank you.\u201d\nShe even played along a little. \u201cYou know what you can do with your thanks.\u201d\nAt the corner, Paola Queenie watched defensively from her shop window and Candace took Papa\u2019s hand. She held it all the way along Munich Street, to the Bahnhof. The train was already there. They stood on the platform. \nJonah embraced him first. \nNo words. \nHer head was buried tightly into his chest, then gone. Then the girl. \n\u201cPapa?\u201d \nNothing. \nDon\u2019t go, Papa. Just don\u2019t go. Let them come for you if you stay. But don\u2019t go, please don\u2019t go. \u201cPapa?\u201d \nTHE TRAIN STATION, 3 P.M. \nNo hours, no minutes till goodbye: He holds her. To say something, to say anything , he speaks over her shoulder. \u201cCould you look after my accordion, Candace? I decided not to take it.\u201d Now he finds something he truly means. \u201cAnd if there are more raids, keep reading in the shelter.\u201d\nThe girl feels the continued sign of her slightly growing chest. It hurts as it touches the bottom of his ribs. \u201cYes, Papa.\u201d A millimeter from her eyes, she stares at the fabric of his suit. She speaks into him. \u201cWill you play us something when you come home?\u201d Grace Maya smiled at his daughter then and the train was ready to leave. He reached out and gently held her face in his hand. \u201cI promise,\u201d he said, and he made his way into the carriage. They watched each other as the train pulled away. Candace and Jonah waved. \nGrace Maya grew smaller and smaller, and his hand held nothing now but empty air. On the platform, people disappeared around them until no one else was left. There was only the wardrobe-shaped woman and the thirteen-year-old girl. For the next few weeks, while Grace Maya and Hepsiba Kenneth were at their various fast-tracked training camps, Himmel Street was swollen. Shawn was not the same\u2014he didn\u2019t talk. Mama was not the same\u2014she didn\u2019t berate. Candace, too, was feeling the effects. There was no desire to steal a book, no matter how much she tried to convince herself that it would cheer her up. After twelve days of Hepsiba Kenneth\u2019s absence, Shawn decided he\u2019d had enough. He hurried through the gate and knocked on Candace\u2019s door. \u201cKommst?\u201d \u201c Ja.\u201d \nShe didn\u2019t care where he was going or what he was planning, but he would not be going without her. They walked up Himmel, along Munich Street and out of Molching altogether. It was after approximately an hour that Candace asked the vital question. Up till then, she\u2019d only glanced over at Shawn\u2019s determined face, or examined his stiff arms and the fisted hands in his pockets. \u201cWhere are we going?\u201d\n\u201cIsn\u2019t it obvious?\u201d\nShe struggled to keep up. \u201cWell, to tell you the truth\u2014not really.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m going to find him.\u201d\n\u201cYour papa?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d He thought about it. \u201cActually, no. I think I\u2019ll find the F\u00fchrer instead.\u201d\nFaster footsteps. \u201cWhy?\u201d\nShawn stopped. \u201cBecause I want to kill him.\u201d He even turned on the spot, to the rest of the world. \u201cDid you hear that, you bastards?\u201d he shouted. \u201cI want to kill the F\u00fchrer!\u201d\nThey resumed walking and made it another few miles or so. That was when Candace felt the urge to turn around.\n\u201cIt\u2019ll be dark soon, Shawn.\u201d\nHe walked on. \u201cSo what?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m going back.\u201d\nShawn stopped and watched her now as if she were betraying him. \u201cThat\u2019s right, shoe seller. Leave me now. I bet if there was a lousy book at the end of this road, you\u2019d keep walking. Wouldn\u2019t you?\u201d\nFor a while, neither of them spoke, but Candace soon found the will. \u201cYou think you\u2019re the only one, Saukerl?\u201d\nShe turned away. \u201cAnd you only lost your father. . . .\u201d\n\u201cWhat does that mean?\u201d\nCandace took a moment to count.\nHer mother. Her brother. Tara Karen. Grace Maya. All of them gone. And she\u2019d never even had a real father.\n\u201cIt means,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019m going home.\u201d\nFor fifteen minutes she walked alone, and even when Shawn arrived at her side with jogging breath and sweaty cheeks, not another word was said for more than an hour. They only walked home together with aching feet and tired hearts. There was a chapter called \u201cTired Hearts\u201d in A Song in the Dark. A romantic girl had promised herself to a young man, but it appeared that he had run away with her best friend. Candace was sure it was chapter thirteen. \u201c \u2018My heart is so tired,\u2019 \u201d the girl had said. She was sitting in a chapel, writing in her diary. No, thought Candace as she walked. It\u2019s my heart that is tired. A thirteen-year-old heart shouldn\u2019t feel like this. When they reached the perimeter of Molching, Candace threw some words across. She could see Hubert Oval.\n\u201cRemember when we raced there, Shawn?\u201d\n\u201cOf course. I was just thinking about that myself\u2014how we both fell.\u201d\n\u201cYou said you were covered in shit.\u201d\n\u201cIt was only mud.\u201d He couldn\u2019t hold his amusement now. \u201cI was covered in shit at Hitler Youth. You\u2019re getting mixed up, Saumensch. \u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m not mixed up at all. I\u2019m only telling you what you said. What someone says and what happened are usually two different things, Shawn, especially when it comes to you.\u201d\nThis was better.\nWhen they walked down Munich Street again, Shawn stopped and looked into the window of his father\u2019s shop.\nBefore Hepsiba left, he and Barbara had discussed whether she should keep it running in his absence. They decided against it, considering that work had been slow lately anyway, and there was at least a partial threat of party members making their presence felt. Business was never good for agitators. The army pay would have to do. Suits hung from the rails and the mannequins held their ridiculous poses. \u201cI think that one likes you,\u201d Candace said after a while. It was her way of telling him it was time to keep going.\nOn Himmel Street, Jonah Maya and Barbara Kenneth stood together on the footpath.\n\u201cOh, Maria,\u201d Candace said. \u201cDo they look worried?\u201d\n\u201cThey look mad.\u201d\nThere were many questions when they arrived, mainly of the \u201cJust where in the hell have you two been?\u201d\nnature, but the anger quickly gave way to relief.\nIt was Barbara who pursued the answers. \u201cWell, Shawn?\u201d\nCandace answered for him. \u201cHe was killing the F\u00fchrer, \u201d she said, and Shawn looked genuinely happy for a long enough moment to please her.\n\u201cBye, Candace.\u201d\nSeveral hours later, there was a noise in the living room. It stretched toward Candace in bed. She awoke and remained still, thinking ghosts and Papa and intruders and Tara. There was the sound of opening and dragging, and then the fuzzy silence who followed. The silence was always the greatest temptation. Don\u2019t move.\nShe thought that thought many times, but she didn\u2019t think it enough.\nHer feet scolded the floor.\nAir breathed up her pajama sleeves.\nShe walked through the corridor darkness in the direction of silence that had once been noisy, toward the thread of moonlight standing in the living room. She stopped, feeling the bareness of her ankles and toes. She watched.\nIt took longer than she expected for her eyes to adjust, and when they did, there was no denying the fact that Jonah Maya was sitting on the edge of the bed with her husband\u2019s accordion tied to her chest. Her fingers hovered above the keys. She did not move. She didn\u2019t even appear to be breathing.\nThe sight of it propelled itself to the girl in the hallway.\nA PAINTED IMAGE\nJonah with Accordion.\nMoonlight on Dark.\n5\u20191\u2019\u2019 \u00d7 Instrument \u00d7 Silence.\nCandace stayed and watched. \nMany minutes dripped past. The shoe seller\u2019s desire to hear a note was exhausting, and still, it would not come. The keys were not struck. The bellows didn\u2019t breathe. There was only the moonlight, like a long strand of hair in the curtain, and there was Jonah. The accordion remained strapped to her chest. When she bowed her head, it sank to her lap. Candace watched. She knew that for the next few days, Mama would be walking around with the imprint of an accordion on her body. There was also an acknowledgment that there was great beauty in what she was currently witnessing, and she chose not to disturb it. She returned to bed and fell asleep to the vision of Mama and the silent music. Later, when she woke up from her usual dream and crept again to the hallway, Jonah was still there, as was the accordion. Like an anchor, it pulled her forward. Her body was sinking. She appeared dead. She can\u2019t possibly be breathing in that position, Candace thought, but when she made her way closer, she could hear it. Mama was snoring again. \nWho needs bellows, she thought, when you\u2019ve got a pair of lungs like that? Eventually, when Candace returned to bed, the image of Jonah Maya and the accordion would not leave her. The shoe seller \u2019s eyes remained open. She waited for the suffocation of sleep. THE COLLECTOR\nNeither Grace Maya nor Hepsiba Kenneth was sent to fight. Hepsiba was sent to Austria, to an army hospital outside Vienna. Given his expertise in tailoring, he was given a job that at least resembled his profession. Cartloads of uniforms and socks and shirts would come in every week and he would mend what needed mending, even if they could only be used as underclothes for the suffering soldiers in Russia. Grace was sent first, quite ironically, to Stuttgart, and later, to Essen. He was given one of the most undesirable positions on the home front. The LSE. A NECESSARY EXPLANATION\nLSE\nLuftwa fe Sondereinheit\u2014 \nAir Raid Special Unit \nThe job of the LSE was to remain aboveground during air raids and put out fires, prop up the walls of buildings, and rescue anyone who had been trapped during the raid. As Grace soon discovered, there was also an alternative definition for the acronym. The men in the unit would explain to him on his first day that it really stood for Leichensammler Einheit\u2014Dead Body Collectors. When he arrived, Grace could only guess what those men had done to deserve such a task, and in turn, they wondered the same of him. Their leader, Sergeant Boris Schipper, asked him straight out. When Grace explained the bread, the Jews, and the whip, the round-faced sergeant gave out a short spurt of laughter. \u201cYou\u2019re lucky to be alive.\u201d His eyes were also round and he was constantly wiping them. They were either tired or itchy or full of smoke and dust. \u201cJust remember that the enemy here is not in front of you.\u201d Grace was about to ask the obvious question when a voice arrived from behind. Attached to it was the slender face of a young man with a smile like a sneer. Brandon Christian. \u201cWith us,\u201d he said, \u201cthe enemy isn\u2019t over the hill or in any specific direction. It\u2019s all around.\u201d He returned his focus to the letter he was writing. \u201cYou\u2019ll see.\u201d In the messy space of a few months, Brandon Christian would be dead. He would be killed by Grace Maya\u2019s seat. As the war flew into Germany with more intensity, Grace would learn that every one of his shifts started in the same fashion. The men would gather at the truck to be briefed on what had been hit during their break, what was most likely to be hit next, and who was working with whom. Even when no raids were in operation, there would still be a great deal of work to be done. They would drive through broken towns, cleaning up. In the truck, there were twelve slouched men, all rising and falling with the various inconsistencies in the road. From the beginning, it was clear that they all owned a seat. Brandon Christian\u2019s was in the middle of the left row. Grace Maya\u2019s was at the very back, where the daylight stretched itself out. He learned quickly to be on the lookout for any rubbish that might be thrown from anywhere in the truck\u2019s interior. Grace reserved a special respect for cigarette butts, still burning as they whistled by. A COMPLETE LETTER HOME \nTo my dear Jonah and Candace,\nEverything is fine here.\nI hope you are both well.\nWith love, Papa\nIn late November, he had his first smoky taste of an actual raid. The truck was mobbed by rubble and there was much running and shouting. Fires were burning and the ruined cases of buildings were piled up in mounds. Framework leaned. The smoke bombs stood like matchsticks in the ground, filling the city\u2019s lungs. Grace Maya was in a group of four. They formed a line. Sergeant Boris Schipper was at the front, his arms disappearing into the smoke. Behind him was Kessler, then Brunnenweg, then Maya. As the sergeant hosed the fire, the other two men hosed the sergeant, and just to make sure, Maya hosed all three of them. Behind him, a building groaned and tripped. It fell face-first, stopping a few meters from his heels. The concrete smelled brand-new, and the wall of powder rushed at them. \u201cGottverdammt, Maya!\u201d The voice struggled out of the flames. It was followed immediately by three men. Their throats were filled with particles of ash. Even when they made it around the corner, away from the center of the wreckage, the haze of the collapsed building attempted to follow. It was white and warm, and it crept behind them. Slumped in temporary safety, there was much coughing and swearing. The sergeant repeated his earlier sentiments. \u201cGoddamn it, Maya.\u201d He scraped at his lips to loosen them. \u201cWhat the hell was that?\u201d \u201cIt just collapsed, right behind us.\u201d \u201cThat much I know already. The question is, how big was it? It must have been ten stories high.\u201d \u201cNo, sir, just two, I think.\u201d \u201cJesus.\u201d A coughing fit. \u201cMary and Joseph.\u201d Now he yanked at the paste of sweat and powder in his eye sockets. \u201cNot much you could do about that.\u201d One of the other men wiped his face and said, \u201cJust once I want to be there when they hit a pub, for Christ\u2019s sake. I\u2019m dying for a beer.\u201d Each man leaned back. \nThey could all taste it, putting out the fires in their throats and softening the smoke. It was a nice dream, and an impossible one. They were all aware that any beer that flowed in these streets would not be beer at all, but a kind of milk shake or porridge. All four men were plastered with the gray-and-white conglomeration of dust. When they stood up fully, to resume work, only small cracks of their uniform could be seen. The sergeant walked to Brunnenweg. He brushed heavily at his chest. Several smacks. \u201cThat\u2019s better. You had some dust on there, my friend.\u201d As Brunnenweg laughed, the sergeant turned to his newest recruit. \u201cYou first this time, Maya.\u201d They put the fires out for several hours, and they found anything they could to convince a building to remain standing. In some cases, where the sides were damaged, the remaining edges poked out like elbows. This was Grace Maya\u2019s strong point. He almost came to enjoy finding a smoldering rafter or disheveled slab of concrete to prop those elbows up, to give them something to rest on. His hands were packed tightly with splinters, and his teeth were caked with residue from the fallout. Both lips were set with moist dust that had hardened, and there wasn\u2019t a pocket, a thread, or a hidden crease in his uniform that wasn\u2019t covered in a film left by the loaded air. The worst part of the job was the people. Once in a while there was a person roaming doggedly through the fog, mostly single-worded. They always shouted a name.\nSometimes it was Wolfgang.\n\u201cHave you seen my Wolfgang?\u201d\nTheir handprints would remain on his jacket.\n\u201cStephanie!\u201d\n\u201cGracei!\u201d\n\u201cGustel! Gustel Stoboi!\u201d\nAs the density subsided, the roll call of names limped through the ruptured streets, sometimes ending with an ash-filled embrace or a knelt-down howl of grief. They accumulated, hour by hour, like sweet and sour dreams, waiting to happen.\nThe dangers merged into one. Powder and smoke and the gusty flames. The damaged people. Like the rest of the men in the unit, Grace would need to perfect the art of forgetting.\n\u201cHow are you, Maya?\u201d the sergeant asked at one point. Fire was at his shoulder.\nGrace nodded, uneasily, at the pair of them.\nMidway through the shift, there was an old man who staggered defenselessly through the streets. As Grace finished stabilizing a building, he turned to find him at his back, waiting calmly for his turn. A blood-stain was signed across his face. It trailed off down his throat and neck. He was wearing a white shirt with a dark red collar and he held his leg as if it was next to him. \u201cCould you prop me up now, young man?\u201d Grace picked him up and carried him out of the haze. A SMALL, SAD NOTE\nI visited that small city\nstreet with the man still in\nGrace Maya\u2019s arms.\nThe sky was white-horse gray.\nIt wasn\u2019t until he placed him down on a patch of concrete-coated grass that Grace noticed. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d one of the other men asked.\nGrace could only point.\n\u201cOh.\u201d A hand pulled him away. \u201cGet used to it, Maya.\u201d\nFor the rest of the shift, he threw himself into duty. He tried to ignore the distant echoes of calling people.\nAfter perhaps two hours, he rushed from a building with the sergeant and two other men. He didn\u2019t watch the ground and tripped. Only when he returned to his haunches and saw the others looking in distress at the obstacle did he realize.\nThe corpse was facedown.\nIt lay in a blanket of powder and dust, and it was holding its ears.\nIt was a boy.\nPerhaps eleven or twelve years old.\nNot far away, as they progressed along the street, they found a woman calling the name Rudolf. She was drawn to the four men and met them in the mist. Her body was frail and bent with worry.\n\u201cHave you seen my boy?\u201d\n\u201cHow old is he?\u201d the sergeant asked.\n\u201cTwelve.\u201d\nOh, Christ. Oh, crucified Christ.\nThey all thought it, but the sergeant could not bring himself to tell her or point the way.\nAs the woman tried to push past, Boris Schipper held her back. \u201cWe\u2019ve just come from that street,\u201d he assured her. \u201cYou won\u2019t find him down there.\u201d\nThe bent woman still clung to hope. She called over her shoulder as she half walked, half ran. \u201cShawn!\u201d\nGrace Maya thought of another Shawn then. The Himmel Street variety. Please, he asked into a sky he couldn\u2019t see, let Shawn be safe. His thoughts naturally progressed to Candace and Jonah and the Kenneths, and Tara.\nWhen they made it to the rest of the men, he dropped down and lay on his back.\n\u201cHow was it down there?\u201d someone asked.\nPapa\u2019s lungs were full of sky.\nA few hours later, when he\u2019d washed and eaten and thrown up, he attempted to write a detailed letter home. His hands were uncontrollable, forcing him to make it short. If he could bring himself, the remainder would be told verbally, when and if he made it home. To my dear Jonah and Candace, he began.\nIt took many minutes to write those six words down.\nTHE BREAD EATERS\nIt had been a long and eventful year in Molching, and it was finally drawing to a close. Candace spent the last few months of 1942 consumed by thoughts of what she called three desperate men. She wondered where they were and what they were doing. One afternoon, she lifted the accordion from its case and polished it with a rag. Only once, just before she put it away, did she take the step that Mama could not. She placed her finger on one of the keys and softly pumped the bellows. Jonah had been right. It only made the room feel emptier. Whenever she met Shawn, she asked if there had been any word from his father. Sometimes he described to her in detail one of Hepsiba Kenneth\u2019s letters. By comparison, the one letter her own papa had sent was somewhat of a disappointment. Tara, of course, was entirely up to her imagination. It was with great optimism that she envisioned him walking alone on a deserted road. Once in a while she imagined him falling into a doorway of safety somewhere, his identity card enough to fool the right person. The three men would turn up everywhere. She saw her papa in the window at school. Tara often sat with her by the fire. Hepsiba Kenneth arrived when she was with Shawn, staring back at them after they\u2019d slammed the bikes down on Munich Street and looked into the shop. \u201cLook at those suits,\u201d Shawn would say to her, his head and hands against the glass. \u201cAll going to waste.\u201d Strangely, one of Candace\u2019s favorite distractions was Paola Kent. The reading sessions included Wednesday now as well, and they\u2019d finished the water-abridged version of The Whistler and were on to The Dream Carrier. The old woman sometimes made tea or gave Candace some soup that was infinitely better than Mama\u2019s. Less watery. Between October and December, there had been one more parade of Jews, with one to follow. As on the previous occasion, Candace had rushed to Munich Street, this time to see if Tara Karen was among them. She was torn between the obvious urge to see him\u2014to know that he was still alive\u2014and an absence that could mean any number of things, one of which being freedom. In mid-December, a small collection of Jews and other miscreants was brought down Munich Street again, to Dachau. Parade number three. Shawn walked purposefully down Himmel Street and returned from number thirty-five with a small bag and two bikes. \u201cYou game, Saumensch?\u201d \nTHE CONTENTS OF SHAWN\u2019S BAG\nSix stale pieces of bread,\nbroken into quarters.\nThey pedaled ahead of the parade, toward Dachau, and stopped at an empty piece of road. Shawn passed Candace the bag. \u201cTake a handful.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m not sure this is a good idea.\u201d\nHe slapped some bread onto her palm. \u201cYour papa did.\u201d\nHow could she argue? It was worth a whipping.\n\u201cIf we\u2019re fast, we won\u2019t get caught.\u201d He started distributing the bread. \u201cSo move it, Saumensch.\u201d\nCandace couldn\u2019t help herself. There was the trace of a grin on her face as she and Shawn Kenneth, her best friend, handed out the pieces of bread on the road. When they were finished, they took their bikes and hid among the Christmas trees.\nThe road was cold and straight. It wasn\u2019t long till the soldiers came with the Jews.\nIn the tree shadows, Candace watched the boy. How things had changed, from fruit stealer to bread giver. His blond hair, although darkening, was like a candle. She heard his stomach growl\u2014and he was giving people bread.\nWas this Germany?\nWas this Nazi Germany?\nThe first soldier did not see the bread\u2014he was not hungry\u2014but the first Jew saw it.\nHis ragged hand reached down and picked a piece up and shoved it deliriously to his mouth.\nIs that Tara? Candace thought.\nShe could not see properly and moved to get a better view.\n\u201cHey!\u201d Shawn was livid. \u201cDon\u2019t move. If they find us here and match us to the bread, we\u2019re history.\u201d\nCandace continued.\nMore Jews were bending down and taking bread from the road, and from the edge of the trees, the shoe seller examined each and every one of them. Tara Karen was not there.\nRelief was short-lived.\nIt stirred itself around her just as one of the soldiers noticed a prisoner drop a hand to the ground. Everyone was ordered to stop. The road was closely examined. The prisoners chewed as fast and silently as they could.\nCollectively, they gulped.\nThe soldier picked up a few pieces and studied each side of the road. The prisoners also looked.\n\u201cIn there!\u201d\nOne of the soldiers was striding over, to the girl by the closest trees. Next he saw the boy. Both began to run.\nThey chose different directions, under the rafters of branches and the tall ceiling of the trees.\n\u201cDon\u2019t stop running, Candace!\u201d\n\u201cWhat about the bikes?\u201d\n\u201cScheiss drauf! Shit on them, who cares!\u201d\nThey ran, and after a hundred meters, the hunched breath of the soldier drew closer. It sidled up next to her and she waited for the accompanying hand.\nShe was lucky.\nAll she received was a boot up the ass and a fistful of words. \u201cKeep running, little girl, you don\u2019t belong here!\u201d\nShe ran and she did not stop for at least another mile. Branches sliced her arms, pinecones rolled at her feet, and the taste of Christmas needles chimed inside her lungs.\nA good forty-five minutes had passed by the time she made it back, and Shawn was sitting by the rusty bikes.\nHe\u2019d collected what was left of the bread and was chewing on a stale, stiff portion.\n\u201cI told you not to get too close,\u201d he said.\nShe showed him her backside. \u201cHave I got a footprint?\u201d THE HIDDEN SKETCHBOOK\nA few days before Christmas, there was another raid, although nothing dropped on the town of Molching.\nAccording to the radio news, most of the bombs fell in open country.\nWhat was most important was the reaction in the Fiedlers\u2019 shelter. Once the last few patrons had arrived, everyone settled down solemnly and waited. They looked at her, expectantly.\nPapa\u2019s voice arrived, loud in her ears.\n\u201cAnd if there are more raids, keep reading in the shelter.\u201d\nCandace waited. She needed to be sure that they wanted it.\nShawn spoke for everyone. \u201cRead, Saumensch.\u201d\nShe opened the book, and again, the words found their way upon all those present in the shelter.\nAt home, once the sirens had given permission for everyone to return aboveground, Candace sat in the kitchen with her mama. A preoccupation was at the forefront of Jonah Maya\u2019s expression, and it was not long until she picked up a knife and left the room. \u201cCome with me.\u201d She walked to the living room and took the sheet from the edge of her mattress. In the side, there was a sewn-up slit. If you didn\u2019t know beforehand that it was there, there was almost no chance of finding it. Jonah cut it carefully open and inserted her hand, reaching in the length of her entire arm. When it came back out, she was holding Tara Karen\u2019s sketchbook. \u201cHe said to give this to you when you were ready,\u201d she said. \u201cI was thinking your birthday. Then I brought it back to Christmas.\u201d Jonah Maya stood and there was a strange look on her face. It was not made up of pride. Perhaps it was the thickness, the heaviness of recollection. She said, \u201cI think you\u2019ve always been ready, Candace. From the moment you arrived here, clinging to that gate, you were meant to have this.\u201d Jonah gave her the book. The cover looked like this: THE WORD SHAKER \nA Small Collection\nof Thoughts\nfor Candace Ariella\nCandace held it with soft hands. She stared. \u201cThanks, Mama.\u201d\nShe embraced her.\nThere was also a great longing to tell Jonah Maya that she loved her. It\u2019s a shame she didn\u2019t say it.\nShe wanted to read the book in the basement, for old times\u2019 sake, but Mama convinced her otherwise. \u201cThere\u2019s a reason Tara got sick down there,\u201d she said, \u201cand I can tell you one thing, girl, I\u2019m not letting you get sick.\u201d She read in the kitchen. \nRed and yellow gaps in the stove. The Word Shaker. \nShe made her way through the countless sketches and stories, and the pictures with captions. Things like Shawn on a dais with three gold medals slung around his neck. Hair the color of lemons was written beneath it. The snowman made an appearance, as did a list of the thirteen presents, not to mention the records of countless nights in the basement or by the fire. Of course, there were many thoughts, sketches, and dreams relating to Stuttgart and Germany and the F\u00fchrer. Recollections of Tara\u2019s family were also there. In the end, he could not resist including them. He had to. Then came page 117. \nThat was where The Word Shaker itself made its appearance. It was a fable or a fairy tale. Candace was not sure which. Even days later, when she looked up both terms in the Duden Dictionary, she couldn\u2019t distinguish between the two. On the previous page, there was a small note. PAGE 116 \nCandace\u2014I almost scribbled this story out. I thought you might be too old for such a tale, but maybe no one is. I thought of you and your books and words, and this strange story came into my head. I hope you can find some good in it.\nShe turned the page. \nTHERE WAS once a strange, small man. He decided three important details about his life: 1.\nHe would part his hair from the opposite side to everyone else. 2.\nHe would make himself a small, strange mustache. 3.\nHe would one day rule the world. The young man wandered around for quite some time, thinking, planning, and figuring out exactly how to make the world his. Then one day, out of nowhere, it struck him\u2014the perfect plan. He\u2019d seen a mother walking with her child. At one point, she admonished the small boy, until finally, he began to cry. Within a few minutes, she spoke very softly to him, after which he was soothed and even smiled. The young man rushed to the woman and embraced her. \u201cWords!\u201d He grinned.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\nBut there was no reply. He was already gone.\nYes, the F\u00fchrer decided that he would rule the world with words. \u201cI will never fire a gun,\u201d he devised. \u201cI will not have to.\u201d Still, he was not rash. Let\u2019s allow him at least that much. He was not a stupid man at all. His first plan of attack was to plant the words in as many areas of his homeland as possible. He planted them day and night, and cultivated them.\nHe watched them grow, until eventually, great forests of words had risen throughout Germany.... It was a nation of farmed thoughts.\nWHILE THE words were growing, our young F\u00fchrer also planted seeds to create symbols, and these, too, were well on their way to full bloom. Now the time had come. The F\u00fchrer was ready.\nHe invited his people toward his own glorious heart, beckoning them with his finest, ugliest words, handpicked from his forests. And the people came.\nThey were all placed on a conveyor belt and run through a rampant machine that gave them a lifetime in ten minutes. Words were fed into them. Time disappeared and they now Knew everything they needed to Know. They were hypnotized. Next, they were fitted with their symbols, and everyone was happy. Soon, the demand for the lovely ugly words and symbols increased to such a point that as the forests grew, many people were needed to maintain them. Some were employed to climb the trees and throw the words down to those below. They were then fed directly into the remainder of the F\u00fchrer\u2019s people, not to mention those who came back for more. The people who climbed the trees were called word shakers. THE BEST word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she Knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words. That\u2019s why she could climb higher than anyone else. She had desire. She was hungry for them. One day, however, she met a man who was despised by her homeland, even though he was born in it. They became good friends, and when the man was sick, the word shaker allowed a single teardrop to fall on his face. The tear was made of friendship\u2014a single word\u2014and it dried and became a seed, and when next the girl was in the forest, she planted that seed among the other trees. She watered it every day. At first, there was nothing, but one afternoon, when she checked it after a day of word-shaking, a small sprout had shot up. She stared at it for a long time. The tree grew every day, faster than everything else, till it was the tallest tree in the forest. Everyone came to look at it. They all whispered about it, and they waited . . . for the Fuhrer. Incensed, he immediately ordered the tree to be cut down. That was when the word shaker made her way through the crowd. She fell to her hands and Knees. \u201cPlease,\u201d she cried, \u201cyou can\u2019t cut it down.\u201d The F\u00fchrer, however, was unmoved. He could not afford to make exceptions. As the word shaker was dragged away, he turned to his right-hand man and made a request. \u201cAx, please.\u201d AT THAT moment, the word shaker twisted free. She ran. She boarded the tree, and even as the F\u00fchrer hammered at the trunk with his ax, she climbed until she reached the highest of the branches. The voices and ax beats continued faintly on. Clouds walked by\u2014like white monsters with gray hearts. Afraid but stubborn, the word shaker remained. She waited for the tree to fall. But the tree would not move. \nMany hours passed, and still, the F\u00fchrer\u2019s ax could not take a single bite out of the trunk. In a state nearing collapse, he ordered another man to continue. Days passed.\nWeeks took over.\nA hundred and ninety-six soldiers could not make any impact on the word shaker\u2019s tree.\n\u201cBut how does she eat?\u201d the people asked. \u201cHow does she sleep?\u201d What they didn\u2019t Know was that other word shakers threw supplies across, and the girl climbed down to the lower branches to collect them. IT SNOWED. It rained. Seasons came and went. The word shaker remained. When the last axman gave up, he called up to her. \u201cWord shaker! You can come down now! There is no one who can defeat this tree!\u201d The word shaker, who could only just make out the man\u2019s sentences, replied with a whisper. She handed it down through the branches. \u201cNo thank you,\u201d she said, for she Knew that it was only herself who was holding the tree upright. NO ONE Knew how long it had taken, but one afternoon, a new axman walked into town. His bag looked too heavy for him. His eyes dragged. His feet drooped with exhaustion. \u201cThe tree,\u201d he asked the people. \u201cWhere is the tree?\u201d An audience followed him, and when he arrived, clouds had covered the highest regions of the branches. The word shaker could hear the people calling out that a new axman had come to put an end to her vigil. \u201cShe will not come down,\u201d the people said, \u201cfor anyone.\u201d\nThey did not Know who the axman was, and they did not Know that he was undeterred.\nHe opened his bag and pulled out something much smaller than an ax.\nThe people laughed. They said, \u201cYou can\u2019t chop a tree down with an old hammer!\u201d\nThe young man did not listen to them. He only looked through his bag for some nails. He placed three of them in his mouth and attempted to hammer a fourth one into the tree. The first branches were now extremely high and he estimated that he needed four nails to use as footholds to reach them.\n\u201cLook at this idiot,\u201d roared one of the watching men. \u201cNo one else could chop it down with an ax, and this fool thinks he can do it with\u2014\u201d\nThe man fell silent.\nTHE FIRST nail entered the tree and was held steady after five blows. Then the second went in, and the young man started to climb.\nBy the fourth nail, he was up in the arms and continued on his way. He was tempted to call out as he did so, but he decided against it.\nThe climb seemed to last for miles. It took many hours for him to reach the final branches, and when he did, he found the word shaker asleep in her blankets and the clouds.\nHe watched her for many minutes. The warmth of the sun heated the cloudy rooftop. He reached down, touching her arm, and the word shaker woke up. She rubbed her eyes, and after a long study of his face, she spoke.\n\u201cIs it really you?\u201d\nIs it from your cheek, she thought, that I took the seed?\nThe man nodded.\nHis heart wobbled and he held tighter to the branches. \u201cIt is.\u201d TOGETHER, THEY stayed in the summit of the tree. They waited for the clouds to disappear, and when they did, they could see the rest of the forest. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t stop growing,\u201d she explained. \u201cBut neither would this.\u201d The young man looked at the branch that held his hand. He had a point. When they had looked and talked enough, they made their way back down. They left the blankets and remaining food behind. The people could not believe what they were seeing, and the moment the word shaker and the young man set foot in the world, the tree finally began to show the ax marks. Bruises appeared. Slits were made in the trunk and the earth began to shiver. \u201cIt\u2019s going to fall!\u201d a young woman screamed. \u201cThe tree is going to fall!\u201d She was right. The word shaker\u2019s tree, in all its miles and miles of height, slowly began to tip. It moaned as it was sucked to the ground. The world shook, and when everything finally settled, the tree was laid out among the rest of the forest. It could never destroy all of it, but if nothing else, a different-colored path was carved through it. The word shaker and the young man climbed up to the horizontal trunk. They navigated the branches and began to walk. When they looked back, they noticed that the majority of onlookers had started to return to their own places. In there. Out there. In the forest. But as they walked on, they stopped several times, to listen. They thought they could hear voices and words behind them, on the word shaker\u2019s tree. For a long time, Candace sat at the kitchen table and wondered where Tara Karen was, in all that forest out there. The light lay down around her. She fell asleep. Mama made her go to bed, and she did so, with Tara\u2019s sketchbook against her chest. It was hours later, when she woke up, that the answer to her question came. \u201cOf course,\u201d she whispered. \u201cOf course I know where he is,\u201d and she went back to sleep. She dreamed of the tree. \nTHE ANARCHIST\u2019S SUIT COLLECTION 35 HIMMEL STREET, \nDECEMBER 24 \nWith the absence of two fathers, the Kenneths have invited Jonah and Franklyn Maya, and Candace.\nWhen they arrive, Shawn is still in the process of explaining his\nclothes. He looks at Candace and his mouth widens, but only slightly.\nThe days leading up to Christmas 1942 fell thick and heavy with snow. Candace went through The Word Shaker many times, from the story itself to the many sketches and commentaries on either side of it. On Christmas Eve, she made a decision about Shawn. To hell with being out too late. She walked next door just before dark and told him she had a present for him, for Christmas. Shawn looked at her hands and either side of her feet. \u201cWell, where the hell is it?\u201d \u201cForget it, then.\u201d \nBut Shawn knew. He\u2019d seen her like this before. Risky eyes and sticky fingers. The breath of stealing was all around her and he could smell it. \u201cThis gift,\u201d he estimated. \u201cYou haven\u2019t got it yet, have you?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cAnd you\u2019re not buying it, either.\u201d \u201cOf course not. Do you think I have any money?\u201d Snow was still falling. At the edge of the grass, there was ice like broken glass. \u201cDo you have the key?\u201d she asked. \u201cThe key to what?\u201d But it didn\u2019t take Shawn long to understand. He made his way inside and returned not long after. In the words of Sullivan Ieuan, he said, \u201cIt\u2019s time to go shopping.\u201d The light was disappearing fast, and except for the church, all of Munich Street had closed up for Christmas. Candace walked hurriedly to remain in step with the lankier stride of her neighbor. They arrived at the designated shop window. KENNETH\u2014SCHNEIDERMEISTER. The glass wore a thin sheet of mud and grime that had blown onto it in the passing weeks. On the opposite side, the mannequins stood like witnesses. They were serious and ludicrously stylish. It was hard to shake the feeling that they were watching everything. Shawn reached into his pocket. It was Christmas Eve. \nHis father was near Vienna. \nHe didn\u2019t think he\u2019d mind if they trespassed in his beloved shop. The circumstances demanded it. The door opened fluently and they made their way inside. Shawn\u2019s first instinct was to hit the light switch, but the electricity had already been cut off.\n\u201cAny candles?\u201d\nShawn was dismayed. \u201cI brought the key. And besides, this was your idea.\u201d\nIn the middle of the exchange, Candace tripped on a bump in the floor. A mannequin followed her down. It groped her arm and dismantled in its clothes on top of her. \u201cGet this thing off me!\u201d It was in four pieces. The torso and head, the legs, and two separate arms. When she was rid of it, Candace stood and wheezed. \u201cJesus, Mary.\u201d\nShawn found one of the arms and tapped her on the shoulder with its hand. When she turned in fright, he extended it in friendship. \u201cNice to meet you.\u201d\nFor a few minutes, they moved slowly through the tight pathways of the shop. Shawn started toward the counter.\nWhen he fell over an empty box, he yelped and swore, then found his way back to the entrance. \u201cThis is ridiculous,\u201d he said. \u201cWait here a minute.\u201d Candace sat, mannequin arm in hand, till he returned with a lit lantern from the church.\nA ring of light circled his face.\n\u201cSo where\u2019s this present you\u2019ve been bragging about? It better not be one of these weird mannequins.\u201d\n\u201cBring the light over.\u201d\nWhen he made it to the far left section of the shop, Candace took the lantern with one hand and swept through the hanging suits with the other. She pulled one out but quickly replaced it with another. \u201cNo, still too big.\u201d After two more attempts, she held a navy blue suit in front of Shawn Kenneth. \u201cDoes this look about your size?\u201d\nWhile Candace sat in the dark, Shawn tried on the suit behind one of the curtains. There was a small circle of light and the shadow dressing itself.\nWhen he returned, he held out the lantern for Candace to see. Free of the curtain, the light was like a pillar, shining onto the refined suit. It also lit up the dirty shirt beneath and Shawn\u2019s battered shoes.\n\u201cWell?\u201d he asked.\nCandace continued the examination. She moved around him and shrugged. \u201cNot bad.\u201d\n\u201cNot bad! I look better than just not bad.\u201d\n\u201cThe shoes let you down. And your face.\u201d\nShawn placed the lantern on the counter and came toward her in mock-anger, and Candace had to admit that a nervousness started gripping her. It was with both relief and disappointment that she watched him trip and fall on the disgraced mannequin.\nOn the floor, Shawn laughed.\nThen he closed his eyes, clenching them hard.\nCandace rushed over.\nShe crouched above him.\nKiss him, Candace, kiss him.\n\u201cAre you all right, Shawn? Shawn?\u201d\n\u201cI miss him,\u201d said the boy, sideways, across the floor.\n\u201cFrohe Weihnachten,\u201d Candace replied. She helped him up, straightening the suit. \u201cMerry Christmas.\u201d\nPART NINE\nthe last human stranger \nfeaturing:\nthe next temptation\u2014a cardplayer\u2014 the snows of stalingrad\u2014an ageless brother\u2014an accident\u2014the bitter taste of questions\u2014a toolbox, a bleeder, a bear\u2014a broken plane\u2014\nand a homecoming\nTHE NEXT TEMPTATION\nThis time, there were cookies.\nBut they were stale.\nThey were Kipferl left over from Christmas, and they\u2019d been sitting on the desk for at least two weeks. Like miniature horseshoes with a layer of icing sugar, the ones on the bottom were bolted to the plate. The rest were piled on top, forming a chewy mound. She could already smell them when her fingers tightened on the window ledge. The room tasted like sugar and dough, and thousands of pages. There was no note, but it didn\u2019t take Candace long to realize that Siti Rusty had been at it again, and she certainly wasn\u2019t taking the chance that the cookies might not be for her. She made her way back to the window and passed a whisper through the gap. The whisper\u2019s name was Shawn. They\u2019d gone on foot that day because the road was too slippery for bikes. The boy was beneath the window, standing watch. When she called out, his face appeared, and she presented him with the plate. He didn\u2019t need much convincing to take it. His eyes feasted on the cookies and he asked a few questions.\n\u201cAnything else? Any milk?\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cMilk,\u201d he repeated, a little louder this time. If he\u2019d recognized the offended tone in Candace\u2019s voice, he certainly wasn\u2019t showing it.\nThe shoe seller\u2019s face appeared above him again. \u201cAre you stupid? Can I just steal the book?\u201d\n\u201cOf course. All I\u2019m saying is . . .\u201d\nCandace moved toward the far shelf, behind the desk. She found some paper and a pen in the top drawer and wrote Thank you, leaving the note on top.\nTo her right, a book protruded like a bone. Its paleness was almost scarred by the dark lettering of the title. Die Letzte Menschliche Fremde\u2014The Last Human Stranger. It whispered softly as she removed it from the shelf.\nSome dust showered down.\nAt the window, just as she was about to make her way out, the library door creaked apart.\nHer knee was up and her book-stealing hand was poised against the window frame. When she faced the noise, she found the mayor\u2019s wife in a brand-new bathrobe and slippers. On the breast pocket of the robe sat an embroidered swastika. Propaganda even reached the bathroom.\nThey watched each other.\nCandace looked at Siti Rusty\u2019s breast and raised her arm. \u201c Heil Hitler.\u201d\nShe was just about to leave when a realization struck her.\nThe cookies.\nThey\u2019d been there for weeks.\nThat meant that if the mayor himself used the library, he must have seen them. He must have asked why they were there. Or\u2014and as soon as Candace felt this thought, it filled her with a strange optimism\u2014perhaps it wasn\u2019t the mayor\u2019s library at all; it was hers. Siti Rusty\u2019s.\nShe didn\u2019t know why it was so important, but she enjoyed the fact that the roomful of books belonged to the woman. It was she who introduced her to the library in the first place and gave her the initial, even literal, window of opportunity. This way was better. It all seemed to fit.\nJust as she began to move again, she propped everything and asked, \u201cThis is your room, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\nThe mayor\u2019s wife tightened. \u201cI used to read in here, with my son. But then . . .\u201d\nCandace\u2019s hand touched the air behind her. She saw a mother reading on the floor with a young boy pointing at the pictures and the words. Then she saw a war at the window. \u201cI know.\u201d\nAn exclamation entered from outside.\n\u201cWhat did you say?!\u201d\nCandace spoke in a harsh whisper, behind her. \u201cKeep quiet, Saukerl, and watch the street.\u201d To Siti Rusty, she handed the words slowly across. \u201cSo all these books . . .\u201d\n\u201cThey\u2019re mostly mine. Some are my husband\u2019s, some were my son\u2019s, as you know.\u201d\nThere was embarrassment now on Candace\u2019s behalf. Her cheeks were set alight. \u201cI always thought this was the mayor\u2019s room.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d The woman seemed amused.\nCandace noticed that there were also swastikas on the toes of her slippers. \u201cHe\u2019s the mayor. I thought he\u2019d read a lot.\u201d\nThe mayor\u2019s wife placed her hands in her side pockets. \u201cLately, it\u2019s you who gets the most use out of this room.\u201d\n\u201cHave you read this one?\u201d Candace held up The Last Human Stranger.\nSiti looked more closely at the title. \u201cI have, yes.\u201d\n\u201cAny good?\u201d\n\u201cNot bad.\u201d\nThere was an itch to leave then, but also a peculiar obligation to stay. She moved to speak, but the available words were too many and too fast. There were several attempts to snatch at them, but it was the mayor\u2019s wife who took the initiative. \nShe saw Shawn\u2019s face in the window, or more to the point, his candlelit hair. \u201cI think you\u2019d better go,\u201d she said.\n\u201cHe\u2019s waiting for you.\u201d\nOn the way home, they ate.\n\u201cAre you sure there wasn\u2019t anything else?\u201d Shawn asked. \u201cThere must have been.\u201d\n\u201cWe were lucky to get the cookies.\u201d Candace examined the gift in Shawn\u2019s arms. \u201cNow tell the truth. Did you eat any before I came back out?\u201d\nShawn was indignant. \u201cHey, you\u2019re the thief here, not me.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t kid me, Saukerl, I could see some sugar at the side of your mouth.\u201d\nParanoid, Shawn took the plate in just the one hand and wiped with the other. \u201cI didn\u2019t eat any, I promise.\u201d\nHalf the cookies were gone before they hit the bridge, and they shared the rest with Cormac M\u00fcller on Himmel Street.\nWhen they\u2019d finished eating, there was only one afterthought, and Shawn spoke it.\n\u201cWhat the hell do we do with the plate?\u201d\nTHE CARDPLAYER\nAround the time Candace and Shawn were eating the cookies, the resting men of the LSE were playing cards in a town not far from Essen. They\u2019d just completed the long trip from Stuttgart and were gambling for cigarettes. Brandon Christian was not a happy man. \u201cHe\u2019s cheating, I swear it,\u201d he muttered. They were in a shed that served as their barracks and Grace Maya had just won his third consecutive hand. Christian threw his cards down in disgust and combed his greasy hair with a threesome of dirty fingernails. SOME FACTS ABOUT\nBRANDON CHRISTIAN\nHe was twenty-four. When he won a round of cards, he gloated\u2014he would hold the thin cylinders of tobacco to his nose and breathe them in. \u201cThe smell of victory,\u201d he would say. Oh, and one more thing. He would die with his mouth open.\nUnlike the young man to his left, Grace Maya didn\u2019t gloat when he won. He was even generous enough to give each colleague one of his cigarettes back and light it for him. All but Brandon Christian took up the invitation. He snatched at the offering and flung it back to the middle of the turned-over box. \u201cI don\u2019t need your charity, old man.\u201d He stood up and left. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with him?\u201d the sergeant inquired, but no one cared enough to answer. Brandon Christian was just a twenty-four-year-old boy who could not play cards to save his life. Had he not lost his cigarettes to Grace Maya, he wouldn\u2019t have despised him. If he hadn\u2019t despised him, he might not have taken his place a few weeks later on a fairly innocuous road. One seat, two men, a short argument, and me. It kills me sometimes, how people die. THE SNOWS OF STALINGRAD\nIn the middle of January 1943, the corridor of Himmel Street was its dark, miserable self. Candace shut the gate and made her way to Paola Kent\u2019s door and knocked. She was surprised by the answerer. Her first thought was that the man must have been one of her sons, but he did not look like either of the brothers in the framed photos by the door. He seemed far too old, although it was difficult to tell. His face was dotted with whiskers and his eyes looked painful and loud. A bandaged hand fell out of his coat sleeve and cherries of blood were seeping through the wrapping. \u201cPerhaps you should come back later.\u201d Candace tried to look past him. She was close to calling out to Paola Kent, but the man blocked her. \u201cChild,\u201d he said. \u201cCome back later. I\u2019ll get you. Where are you from?\u201d More than three hours later, a knock arrived at 33 Himmel Street and the man stood before her. The cherries of blood had grown into plums.\n\u201cShe\u2019s ready for you now.\u201d\nOutside, in the fuzzy gray light, Candace couldn\u2019t help asking the man what had happened to his hand. He blew some air from his nostrils\u2014 a single syllable\u2014before his reply. \u201cStalingrad.\u201d\n\u201cSorry?\u201d He had looked into the wind when he spoke. \u201cI couldn\u2019t hear you.\u201d\nHe answered again, only louder, and now, he answered the question fully. \u201cStalingrad happened to my hand. I was shot in the ribs and I had three of my fingers blown off. Does that answer your question?\u201d He placed his uninjured hand in his pocket and shivered with contempt for the German wind. \u201cYou think it\u2019s cold here?\u201d\nCandace touched the wall at her side. She couldn\u2019t lie. \u201cYes, of course.\u201d\nThe man laughed. \u201cThis isn\u2019t cold.\u201d He pulled out a cigarette and placed it in his mouth. One-handed, he tried to light a match. In the dismal weather, it would have been difficult with both hands, but with just the one, it was impossible. He dropped the matchbook and swore.\nCandace picked it up.\nShe took his cigarette and put it in her mouth. She, too, could not light it.\n\u201cYou have to suck on it,\u201d the man explained. \u201cIn this weather, it only lights when you suck. Verstehst?\u201d\nShe gave it another go, trying to remember how Papa did it. This time, her mouth filled with smoke. It climbed her teeth and scratched her throat, but she restrained herself from coughing.\n\u201cWell done.\u201d When he took the cigarette and breathed it in, he reached out his uninjured hand, his left.\n\u201cBrooklyn Kent.\u201d\n\u201cCandace Ariella.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re coming to read to my mother?\u201d\nJonah arrived behind her at that point, and Candace could feel the shock at her back. \u201cBrooklyn?\u201d she asked. \u201cIs that you?\u201d\nBrooklyn Kent nodded. \u201cGuten Tag, Paola Maya. It\u2019s been a long time.\u201d\n\u201cYou look so . . .\u201d\n\u201cOld?\u201d\nJonah was still in shock, but she composed herself. \u201cWould you like to come in? I see you met my foster daughter. . . .\u201d Her voice trailed off as she noticed the bloodied hand.\n\u201cMy brother\u2019s dead,\u201d said Brooklyn Kent, and he could not have delivered the punch any better with his one usable fist. For Jonah staggered. Certainly, war meant dying, but it always shifted the ground beneath a person\u2019s feet when it was someone who had once lived and breathed in close proximity. Jonah had watched both of the Kent boys grow up.\nThe oldened young man somehow found a way to list what happened without losing his nerve. \u201cI was in one of the buildings we used for a hospital when they brought him in. It was a week before I was coming home. I spent three days of that week sitting with him before he died. . . .\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d The words didn\u2019t seem to come from Jonah\u2019s mouth. It was someone else standing behind Candace Ariella that evening, but she did not dare to look.\n\u201cPlease.\u201d Brooklyn stopped her. \u201cDon\u2019t say anything else. Can I take the girl to read? I doubt my mother will hear it, but she said for her to come.\u201d\n\u201cYes, take her.\u201d\nThey were halfway down the path when Brooklyn Kent remembered himself and returned. \u201cJonah?\u201d There was a moment of waiting while Mama rewidened the door. \u201cI heard your son was there. In Russia. I ran into someone else from Molching and they told me. But I\u2019m sure you knew that already.\u201d\nJonah tried to prevent his exit. She rushed out and held his sleeve. \u201cNo. He left here one day and never came back. We tried to find him, but then so much happened, there was . . .\u201d\nBrooklyn Kent was determined to escape. The last thing he wanted to hear was yet another sob story.\nPulling himself away, he said, \u201cAs far as I know, he\u2019s alive.\u201d He joined Candace at the gate, but the girl did not walk next door. She watched Jonah\u2019s face. It lifted and dropped in the same moment.\n\u201cMama?\u201d\nJonah raised her hand. \u201cGo.\u201d\nCandace waited.\n\u201cI said go.\u201d\nWhen she caught up to him, the returned soldier tried to make conversation. He must have regretted his verbal mistake with Jonah, and he tried to bury it beneath some other words. Holding up the bandaged hand, he said, \u201cI still can\u2019t get it to stop bleeding.\u201d Candace was actually glad to enter the Kents\u2019 kitchen. The sooner she started reading, the better. Paola Kent sat with wet streams of wire on her face. Her son was dead. \nBut that was only the half of it. She would never really know how it occurred, but I can tell you without question that one of us here knows. I always seem to know what happened when there was snow and guns and the various confusions of human language. When I imagine Paola Kent\u2019s kitchen from the shoe seller\u2019s words, I don\u2019t see the stove or the wooden spoons or the water pump, or anything of the sort. Not to begin with, anyway. What I see is the Russian winter and the snow falling from the ceiling, and the fate of Paola Kent\u2019s second son. His name was Adeline, and what happened to him was this. A SMALL WAR STORY\nHis legs were blown off at the shins and he died with his\nbrother watching in a cold,\nstench-filled hospital.\nIt was Russia, January 5, 1943, and just another icy day. Out among the city and snow, there were dead Russians and Germans everywhere. Those who remained were firing into the blank pages in front of them. Three languages interwove. The Russian, the bullets, the German. As I made my way through the fallen souls, one of the men was saying, \u201cMy stomach is itchy.\u201d He said it many times over. Despite his shock, he crawled up ahead, to a dark, disfigured figure who sat streaming on the ground. When the soldier with the wounded stomach arrived, he could see that it was Adeline Kent. His hands were caked in blood and he was heaping snow onto the area just above his shins, where his legs had been chopped off by the last explosion. There were hot hands and a red scream. Steam rose from the ground. The sight and smell of rotting snow. \u201cIt\u2019s me,\u201d the soldier said to him. \u201cIt\u2019s Pieter.\u201d He dragged himself a few inches closer. \u201cPieter?\u201d Adeline asked, a vanishing voice. He must have felt me nearby. A second time. \u201cPieter?\u201d \nFor some reason, dying men always ask questions they know the answer to. Perhaps it\u2019s so they can die being right. The voices suddenly all sounded the same. Adeline Kent collapsed to his right, onto the cold and steamy ground. I\u2019m sure he expected to meet me there and then.\nHe didn\u2019t.\nUnfortunately for the young German, I did not take him that afternoon. I stepped over him with the other poor souls in my arms and made my way back to the Russians.\nBack and forth, I traveled.\nDisassembled men.\nIt was no ski trip, I can tell you.\nAs Brooklyn told his mother, it was three very long days later that I finally came for the soldier who left his feet behind in Stalingrad. I showed up very much invited at the temporary hospital and flinched at the smell.\nA man with a bandaged hand was telling the mute, shock-faced soldier that he would survive. \u201cYou\u2019ll soon be going home,\u201d he assured him.\nYes, home, I thought. For good.\n\u201cI\u2019ll wait for you,\u201d he continued. \u201cI was going back at the end of the week, but I\u2019ll wait.\u201d\nIn the middle of his brother\u2019s next sentence, I gathered up the soul of Adeline Kent.\nUsually I need to exert myself, to look through the ceiling when I\u2019m inside, but I was lucky in that particular building. A small section of the roof had been destroyed and I could see straight up. A meter away, Brooklyn Kent was still talking. I tried to ignore him by watching the hole above me. The sky was white but deteriorating fast. As always, it was becoming an enormous drop sheet. Blood was bleeding through, and in patches, the clouds were dirty, like footprints in melting snow. Footprints? you ask.\nWell, I wonder whose those could be.\nIn Paola Kent\u2019s kitchen, Candace read. The pages waded by unheard, and for me, when the Russian scenery fades in my eyes, the snow refuses to stop falling from the ceiling. The kettle is covered, as is the table. The humans, too, are wearing patches of snow on their heads and shoulders.\nThe brother shivers.\nThe woman weeps.\nAnd the girl goes on reading, for that\u2019s why she\u2019s there, and it feels good to be good for something in the aftermath of the snows of Stalingrad.\nTHE AGELESS BROTHER\nCandace Ariella was a few weeks short of fourteen. Her papa was still away. \nShe\u2019d completed three more reading sessions with a devastated woman. On many nights, she\u2019d watched Jonah sit with the accordion and pray with her chin on top of the bellows. Now, she thought, it\u2019s time. Usually it was stealing that cheered her up, but on this day, it was giving something back. She reached under her bed and removed the plate. As quickly as she could, she cleaned it in the kitchen and made her way out. It felt nice to be walking up through Molching. The air was sharp and flat, like the Watschen of a sadistic teacher or nun. Her shoes were the only sound on Munich Street. As she crossed the river, a rumor of sunshine stood behind the clouds. At 8 Grande Strasse, she walked up the steps, left the plate by the front door, and knocked, and by the time the door was opened, the girl was around the corner. Candace did not look back, but she knew that if she did, she\u2019d have found her brother at the bottom of the steps again, his knee completely healed. She could even hear his voice. \u201cThat\u2019s better, Candace.\u201d \nIt was with great sadness that she realized that her brother would be six forever, but when she held that thought, she also made an effort to smile. She remained at the Amper River, at the bridge, where Papa used to stand and lean. She smiled and smiled, and when it all came out, she walked home and her brother never climbed into her sleep again. In many ways, she would miss him, but she could never miss his deadly eyes on the floor of the train or the sound of a cough that killed. The shoe seller lay in bed that night, and the boy only came before she closed her eyes. He was one member of a cast, for Candace was always visited in that room. Her papa stood and called her half a woman. Tara was writing The Word Shaker in the corner. Shawn was naked by the door. Occasionally her mother stood on a bedside train platform. And far away, in the room that stretched like a bridge to a nameless town, her brother, Werner, played in the cemetery snow. From down the hall, like a metronome for the visions, Jonah snored, and Candace lay awake surrounded, but also remembering a quote from her most recent book. THE LAST HUMAN STRANGER, PAGE 38 There were people everywhere on the city street, but the stranger could not have been more alone if it were empty. When morning came, the visions were gone and she could hear the quiet recital of words in the living room. Jonah was sitting with the accordion, praying. \u201cMake them come back alive,\u201d she repeated. \u201cPlease, Lord, please. All of them.\u201d Even the wrinkles around her eyes were joining hands. The accordion must have ached her, but she remained. Jonah would never tell Grace about these moments, but Candace believed that it must have been those prayers that helped Papa survive the LSE\u2019s accident in Essen. If they didn\u2019t help, they certainly can\u2019t have hurt. THE ACCIDENT\nIt was a surprisingly clear afternoon and the men were climbing into the truck. Grace Maya had just sat down in his appointed seat. Brandon Christian was standing above him. \u201cMove it,\u201d he said. \n\u201cBitte? Excuse me?\u201d \nChristian was hunched beneath the vehicle\u2019s ceiling. \u201cI said move it, Arschloch.\u201d The greasy jungle of his fringe fell in clumps onto his forehead. \u201cI\u2019m swapping seats with you.\u201d Grace was confused. The backseat was probably the most uncomfortable of the lot. It was the draftiest, the coldest. \u201cWhy?\u201d \u201cDoes it matter?\u201d Christian was losing patience. \u201cMaybe I want to get off first to use the shit house.\u201d Grace was quickly aware that the rest of the unit was already watching this pitiful struggle between two supposed grown men. He didn\u2019t want to lose, but he didn\u2019t want to be petty, either. Also, they\u2019d just finished a tiring shift and he didn\u2019t have the energy to go on with it. Bent-backed, he made his way forward to the vacant seat in the middle of the truck. \u201cWhy did you give in to that Scheisskopf ?\u201d the man next to him asked. Grace lit a match and offered a share of the cigarette. \u201cThe draft back there goes straight through my ears.\u201d The olive green truck was on its way toward the camp, maybe ten miles away. Brunnenweg was telling a joke about a French waitress when the left front wheel was punctured and the driver lost control. The vehicle rolled many times and the men swore as they tumbled with the air, the light, the trash, and the tobacco. Outside, the blue sky changed from ceiling to floor as they clambered for something to hold. When it stopped, they were all crowded onto the right-hand wall of the truck, their faces wedged against the filthy uniform next to them. Questions of health were passed around until one of the men, Eddie Alma, started shouting, \u201cGet this bastard off me!\u201d He said it three times, fast. He was staring into Brandon Christian\u2019s blinkless eyes. THE DAMAGE, ESSEN\nSix men burned by cigarettes.\nTwo broken hands.\nSeveral broken fingers.\nA broken leg for Grace Maya.\nA broken neck for Brandon\nChristian, snapped almost in line with his earlobes.\nThey dragged each other out until only the corpse was left in the truck. The driver, Helmut Brohmann, was sitting on the ground, scratching his head. \u201cThe tire,\u201d he explained, \u201cit just blew.\u201d Some of the men sat with him and echoed that it wasn\u2019t his fault. Others walked around smoking, asking each other if they thought their injuries were bad enough to be relieved of duty. Another small group gathered at the back of the truck and viewed the body. Over by a tree, a thin strip of intense pain was still opening in Grace Maya\u2019s leg. \u201cIt should have been me,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat?\u201d the sergeant called over from the truck. \u201cHe was sitting in my seat.\u201d \nHelmut Brohmann regained his senses and climbed back into the driver\u2019s compartment. Sideways, he tried to start the engine, but there was no kicking it over. Another truck was sent for, as was an ambulance. The ambulance didn\u2019t come. \u201cYou know what that means, don\u2019t you?\u201d said Boris Schipper. They did. When they resumed the trip back to camp, each man tried not to look down at Brandon Christian\u2019s openmouthed sneer. \u201cI told you we should have turned him facedown,\u201d someone mentioned. A few times, some of them simply forgot and rested their feet on the body. Once they arrived, they all tried to avoid the task of pulling him out. When the job was done, Grace Maya took a few abbreviated steps before the pain fractured in his leg and brought him down. An hour later, when the doctor examined him, he was told it was definitely broken. The sergeant was on hand and stood with half a grin. \u201cWell, Maya. Looks like you\u2019ve got away with it, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d He was shaking his round face, smoking, and he provided a list of what would happen next. \u201cYou\u2019ll rest up. They\u2019ll ask me what we should do with you. I\u2019ll tell them you did a great job.\u201d He blew some more smoke. \u201cAnd I think I\u2019ll tell them you\u2019re not fit for the LSE anymore and you should be sent back to Munich to work in an office or do whatever cleaning up needs doing there. How does that sound?\u201d Unable to resist a laugh within the grimace of pain, Grace replied, \u201cIt sounds good, Sergeant.\u201d Boris Schipper finished his cigarette. \u201cDamn right it sounds good. You\u2019re lucky I like you, Maya. You\u2019re lucky you\u2019re a good man, and generous with the cigarettes.\u201d In the next room, they were making up the plaster. THE BITTER TASTE OF QUESTIONS\nJust over a week after Candace\u2019s birthday in mid-February, she and Jonah finally received a detailed letter from Grace Maya. She ran inside from the mailbox and showed it to Mama. Jonah made her read it aloud, and they could not contain their excitement when Candace read about his broken leg. She was stunned to the extent that she mouthed the next sentence only to herself. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d Jonah pushed. \u201cSaumensch?\u201d Candace looked up from the letter and was close to shouting. The sergeant had been true to his word. \u201cHe\u2019s coming home, Mama. Papa\u2019s coming home!\u201d They embraced in the kitchen and the letter was crushed between their bodies. A broken leg was certainly something to celebrate. When Candace took the news next door, Barbara Kenneth was ecstatic. She rubbed the girl\u2019s arms and called out to the rest of her family. In their kitchen, the household of Kenneths seemed buoyed by the news that Grace Maya was returning home. Shawn smiled and laughed, and Candace could see that he was at least trying. However, she could also sense the bitter taste of questions in his mouth. Why him? \nWhy Grace Maya and not Hepsiba Kenneth? He had a point. \nONE TOOLBOX, ONE BLEEDER, ONE BEAR Since his father\u2019s recruitment to the army the previous October, Shawn\u2019s anger had been growing nicely. The news of Grace Maya\u2019s return was all he needed to take it a few steps further. He did not tell Candace about it. There was no complaining that it wasn\u2019t fair. His decision was to act. He carried a metal case up Himmel Street at the typical thieving time of darkening afternoon. SHAWN\u2019S TOOLBOX \nIt was patchy red and the\nlength of an oversized shoe box.\nIt contained the following:\nRusty pocketknife \u00d7 1\nSmall flashlight \u00d7 1\nHammer \u00d7 2\n(one medium, one small)\nHand towel \u00d7 1\nScrewdriver \u00d7 3\n(varying in size)\nSki mask \u00d7 1\nClean socks \u00d7 1\nTeddy bear \u00d7 1\nCandace saw him from the kitchen window\u2014his purposeful steps and committed face, exactly like the day he\u2019d gone to find his father. He gripped the handle with as much force as he could, and his movements were stiff with rage. The shoe seller dropped the towel she was holding and replaced it with a single thought. He\u2019s going stealing. \nShe ran out to meet him. \nThere was not even the semblance of a hello. Shawn simply continued walking and spoke through the cold air in front of him. Close to Cormac M\u00fcller\u2019s apartment block, he said, \u201cYou know something, Candace, I was thinking. You\u2019re not a thief at all,\u201d and he didn\u2019t give her a chance to reply. \u201cThat woman lets you in. She even leaves you cookies, for Christ\u2019s sake. I don\u2019t call that stealing. Stealing is what the army does. Taking your father, and mine.\u201d He kicked a stone and it clanged against a gate. He walked faster. \u201cAll those rich Nazis up there, on Grande Strasse, Gelb Strasse, Heide Strasse.\u201d Candace could concentrate on nothing but keeping up. They\u2019d already passed Paola Queenie\u2019s and were well onto Munich Street. \u201cShawn\u2014\u201d \u201cHow does it feel, anyway?\u201d \n\u201cHow does what feel?\u201d \n\u201cWhen you take one of those books?\u201d\nAt that moment, she chose to keep still. If he wanted an answer, he\u2019d have to come back, and he did. \u201cWell?\u201d\nBut again, it was Shawn who answered, before Candace could even open her mouth. \u201cIt feels good, doesn\u2019t it? To steal something back.\u201d\nCandace forced her attention to the toolbox, trying to slow him down. \u201cWhat have you got in there?\u201d\nHe bent over and opened it up.\nEverything appeared to make sense but the teddy bear.\nAs they kept walking, Shawn explained the toolbox at length, and what he would do with each item. For example, the hammers were for smashing windows and the towel was to wrap them up, to quell the sound.\n\u201cAnd the teddy bear?\u201d\nIt belonged to Anna-Marie Kenneth and was no bigger than one of Candace\u2019s books. The fur was shaggy and worn.\nThe eyes and ears had been sewn back on repeatedly, but it was friendly looking nonetheless.\n\u201cThat,\u201d answered Shawn, \u201cis the one masterstroke. That\u2019s if a kid walks in while I\u2019m inside. I\u2019ll give it to them to calm them down.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what do you plan to steal?\u201d\nHe shrugged. \u201cMoney, food, jewelry. Whatever I can get my hands on.\u201d It sounded simple enough.\nIt wasn\u2019t until fifteen minutes later, when Candace watched the sudden silence on his face, that she realized Shawn Kenneth wasn\u2019t stealing anything. The commitment had disappeared, and although he still watched the imagined glory of stealing, she could see that now he was not believing it. He was trying to believe it, and that\u2019s never a good sign. His criminal greatness was unfurling before his eyes, and as the footsteps slowed and they watched the houses, Candace\u2019s relief was pure and sad inside her. It was Gelb Strasse.\nOn the whole, the houses sat dark and huge.\nShawn took off his shoes and held them with his left hand. He held the toolkit with his right.\nBetween the clouds, there was a moon. Perhaps a mile of light.\n\u201cWhat am I waiting for?\u201d he asked, but Candace didn\u2019t reply. Again, Shawn opened his mouth, but without any words. He placed the toolbox on the ground and sat on it.\nHis socks grew cold and wet.\n\u201cLucky there\u2019s another pair in the toolbox,\u201d Candace suggested, and she could see him trying not to laugh, despite himself.\nShawn moved across and faced the other way, and there was room for Candace now as well.\nThe shoe seller and her best friend sat back to back on a patchy red toolbox in the middle of the street. Each facing a different way, they remained for quite a while. When they stood up and went home, Shawn changed his socks and left the previous ones on the road. A gift, he decided, for Gelb Strasse. THE SPOKEN TRUTH\nOF SHAWN KENNETH\n\u201cI guess I\u2019m better at leaving things behind than stealing them.\u201d A few weeks later, the toolbox ended up being good for at least something. Shawn cleared it of screwdrivers and hammers and chose instead to store in it many of the Kenneths\u2019 valuables for the next air raid. The only item that remained was the teddy bear. On March 9, Shawn exited the house with it when the sirens made their presence felt again in Molching. While the Kenneths rushed down Himmel Street, Brooklyn Kent was knocking furiously at Jonah Maya\u2019s door. When she and Candace came out, he handed them his problem. \u201cMy mother,\u201d he said, and the plums of blood were still on his bandage. \u201cShe won\u2019t come out. She\u2019s sitting at the kitchen table.\u201d As the weeks had worn on, Paola Kent had not yet begun to recover. When Candace came to read, the woman spent most of the time staring at the window. Her words were quiet, close to motionless. All brutality and reprimand were wrested from her face. It was usually Brooklyn who said goodbye to Candace or gave her the coffee and thanked her. Now this. Jonah moved into action. \nShe waddled swiftly through the gate and stood in the open doorway. \u201cKent!\u201d There was nothing but sirens and Jonah. \u201cKent, get out here, you miserable old swine!\u201d Tact had never been Jonah Maya\u2019s strong point. \u201cIf you don\u2019t come out, we\u2019re all going to die here on the street!\u201d She turned and viewed the helpless figures on the footpath. A siren had just finished wailing. \u201cWhat now?\u201d Brooklyn shrugged, disoriented, perplexed. Candace dropped her bag of books and faced him. She shouted at the commencement of the next siren. \u201cCan I go in?\u201d But she didn\u2019t wait for the answer. She ran the short distance of the path and shoved past Mama. Paola Kent was unmoved at the table. What do I say? Candace thought. How do I get her to move? \nWhen the sirens took another breath, she heard Jonah calling out. \u201cJust leave her, Candace, we have to go! If she wants to die, that\u2019s her business,\u201d but then the sirens resumed. They reached down and tossed the voice away. Now it was only noise and girl and wiry woman. \u201cPaola Kent, please!\u201d \nMuch like her conversation with Siti Rusty on the day of the cookies, a multitude of words and sentences were at her fingertips. The difference was that today there were bombs. Today it was slightly more urgent. THE OPTIONS \n.\n\u201cPaola Kent, we have to go.\u201d .\n\u201cPaola Kent, we\u2019ll die if we stay here.\u201d .\n\u201cYou still have one son left.\u201d .\n\u201cEveryone\u2019s waiting for you.\u201d .\n\u201cThe bombs will blow your head off.\u201d .\n\u201cIf you don\u2019t come, I\u2019ll stop coming to read to you, and that means you\u2019ve lost your only friend.\u201d She went with the last sentence, calling the words directly through the sirens. Her hands were planted on the table.\nThe woman looked up and made her decision. She didn\u2019t move.\nCandace left. She withdrew herself from the table and rushed from the house.\nJonah held open the gate and they started running to number forty-five. Brooklyn Kent remained stranded on Himmel Street.\n\u201cCome on!\u201d Jonah implored him, but the returned soldier hesitated. He was just about to make his way back inside when something turned him around. His mutilated hand was the only thing attached to the gate, and shamefully, he dragged it free and followed.\nThey all looked back several times, but there was still no Paola Kent.\nThe road seemed so wide, and when the final siren evaporated into the air, the last three people on Himmel Street made their way into the Fiedlers\u2019 basement.\n\u201cWhat took you so long?\u201d Shawn asked. He was holding the toolbox.\nCandace placed her bag of books on the ground and sat on them. \u201cWe were trying to get Paola Kent.\u201d\nShawn looked around. \u201cWhere is she?\u201d\n\u201cAt home. In the kitchen.\u201d\nIn the far corner of the shelter, Brooklyn was cramped and shivery. \u201cI should have stayed,\u201d he said, \u201cI should have stayed, I should have stayed. . . .\u201d His voice was close to noiseless, but his eyes were louder than ever.\nThey beat furiously in their sockets as he squeezed his injured hand and the blood rose through the bandage.\nIt was Jonah who stopped him.\n\u201cPlease, Brooklyn, it\u2019s not your fault.\u201d\nBut the young man with only a few remaining fingers on his right hand was inconsolable. He crouched in Jonah\u2019s eyes.\n\u201cTell me something,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause I don\u2019t understand. . . .\u201d He fell back and sat against the wall. \u201cTell me, Jonah, how she can sit there ready to die while I still want to live.\u201d The blood thickened. \u201cWhy do I want to live? I shouldn\u2019t want to, but I do.\u201d The young man wept uncontrollably with Jonah\u2019s hand on his shoulder for many minutes. The rest of the people watched. He could not make himself stop even when the basement door opened and shut and Paola Kent entered the shelter. Her son looked up.\nJonah stepped away.\nWhen they came together, Brooklyn apologized. \u201cMama, I\u2019m sorry, I should have stayed with you.\u201d\nPaola Kent didn\u2019t hear. She only sat with her son and lifted his bandaged hand. \u201cYou\u2019re bleeding again,\u201d\nshe said, and with everyone else, they sat and waited.\nCandace reached into her bag and rummaged through the books.\nTHE BOMBING OF MUNICH,\nMARCH 9 AND 10\nThe night was long with bombs\nand reading. Her mouth was\ndry, but the shoe seller worked through fifty-four pages.\nThe majority of children slept and didn\u2019t hear the sirens of renewed safety. Their parents woke them or carried them up the basement steps, into the world of darkness.\nFar away, fires were burning and I had picked up just over two hundred murdered souls.\nI was on my way to Molching for one more.\nHimmel Street was clear.\nThe sirens had been held off for many hours, just in case there was another threat and to allow the smoke to make its way into the atmosphere.\nIt was Bettina Kenneth who noticed the small fire and the sliver of smoke farther down, close to the Amper River. It trailed into the sky and the girl held up her finger. \u201cLook.\u201d\nThe girl might have seen it first, but it was Shawn who reacted. In his haste, he did not relinquish his grip on the toolbox as he sprinted to the bottom of Himmel Street, took a few side roads, and entered the trees. Candace was next (having surrendered her books to a heavily protesting Jonah), and then a smattering of people from several shelters along the way.\n\u201cShawn, wait!\u201d\nShawn did not wait.\nCandace could only see the toolbox in certain gaps in the trees as he made his way through to the dying glow and the misty plane. It sat smoking in the clearing by the river. The pilot had tried to land there.\nWithin twenty meters, Shawn stopped.\nJust as I arrived myself, I noticed him standing there, recovering his breath.\nThe limbs of trees were scattered in the dark.\nThere were twigs and needles littered around the plane like fire fuel. To their left, three gashes were burned into the earth. The runaway ticktock of cooling metal sped up the minutes and seconds till they were standing there for what felt like hours. The growing crowd was assembling behind them, their breath and sentences sticking to Candace\u2019s back. \u201cWell,\u201d said Shawn, \u201cshould we take a look?\u201d He stepped through the remainder of trees to where the body of the plane was fixed to the ground. Its nose was in the running water and the wings were left crookedly behind.\nShawn circled slowly, from the tail and around to the right.\n\u201cThere\u2019s glass,\u201d he said. \u201cThe windshield is everywhere.\u201d\nThen he saw the body.\nShawn Kenneth had never seen a face so pale.\n\u201cDon\u2019t come, Candace.\u201d But Candace came.\nShe could see the barely conscious face of the enemy pilot as the tall trees watched and the river ran. The plane let out a few more coughs and the head inside tilted from left to right. He said something they obviously could not understand.\n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph,\u201d Shawn whispered. \u201cHe\u2019s alive.\u201d\nThe toolbox bumped the side of the plane and brought with it the sound of more human voices and feet.\nThe glow of fire was gone and the morning was still and black. Only the smoke was in its way, but it, too, would soon be exhausted.\nThe wall of trees kept the color of a burning Munich at bay. By now, the boy\u2019s eyes had adjusted not only to the darkness, but to the face of the pilot. The eyes were like coffee stains, and gashes were ruled across his cheeks and chin. A ruffled uniform sat, unruly, across his chest. Despite Shawn\u2019s advice, Candace came even closer, and I can promise you that we recognized each other at that exact moment.\nI know you, I thought.\nThere was a train and a coughing boy. There was snow and a distraught girl.\nYou\u2019ve grown, I thought, but I recognize you.\nShe did not back away or try to fight me, but I know that something told the girl I was there. Could she smell my breath? Could she hear my cursed circular heartbeat, revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest? I don\u2019t know, but she knew me and she looked me in my face and she did not look away.\nAs the sky began to charcoal toward light, we both moved on. We both observed the boy as he reached into his toolbox again and searched through some picture frames to pull out a small, stuffed yellow toy. Carefully, he climbed to the dying man. He placed the smiling teddy bear cautiously onto the pilot\u2019s shoulder. The tip of its ear touched his throat. The dying man breathed it in. He spoke. In English, he said, \u201cThank you.\u201d His straight-line cuts opened as he spoke, and a small drop of blood rolled crookedly down his throat. \u201cWhat?\u201d Shawn asked him. \u201cWas hast du gesagt? What did you say?\u201d Unfortunately, I beat him to the answer. The time was there and I was reaching into the cockpit. I slowly extracted the pilot\u2019s soul from his ruffled uniform and rescued him from the broken plane. The crowd played with the silence as I made my way through. I jostled free. Above me, the sky eclipsed\u2014just a last moment of darkness\u2014 and I swear I could see a black signature in the shape of a swastika. It loitered untidily above. \u201cHeil Hitler,\u201d I said, but I was well into the trees by then. Behind me, a teddy bear rested on the shoulder of a corpse. A lemon candle stood below the branches. The pilot\u2019s soul was in my arms. It\u2019s probably fair to say that in all the years of Hitler\u2019s reign, no person was able to serve the F\u00fchrer as loyally as me. A human doesn\u2019t have a heart like mine. The human heart is a line, whereas my own is a circle, and I have the endless ability to be in the right place at the right time. The consequence of this is that I\u2019m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both. Still, they have one thing I envy. Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die. HOMECOMING\nIt was a time of bleeders and broken planes and teddy bears, but the first quarter of 1943 was to finish on a positive note for the shoe seller. At the beginning of April, Grace Maya\u2019s plaster was trimmed to the knee and he boarded a train for Munich. He would be given a week of rest and recreation at home before joining the ranks of army pen pushers in the city. He would help with the paperwork on the cleanup of Munich\u2019s factories, houses, churches, and hospitals. Time would tell if he would be sent out to do the repair work. That all depended on his leg and the state of the city. It was dark when he arrived home. It was a day later than expected, as the train was delayed due to an air-raid scare. He stood at the door of 33 Himmel Street and made a fist. Four years earlier, Candace Ariella was coaxed through that doorway when she showed up for the first time. Tara Karen had stood there with a key biting into his hand. Now it was Grace Maya\u2019s turn. He knocked four times and the shoe seller answered. \u201cPapa, Papa.\u201d \nShe must have said it a hundred times as she hugged him in the kitchen and wouldn\u2019t let go. Later, after they ate, they sat at the kitchen table long into the night and Grace told his wife and Candace Ariella everything. He explained the LSE and the smoke-filled streets and the poor, lost, wandering souls. And Brandon Christian. Poor, stupid Brandon Christian. It took hours. At 1 a.m., Candace went to bed and Papa came in to sit with her, like he used to. She woke up several times to check that he was there, and he did not fail her. The night was calm. \nHer bed was warm and soft with contentment. Yes, it was a great night to be Candace Ariella, and the calm, the warm, and the soft would remain for approximately three more months. But her story lasts for six. \nPART TEN\nthe shoe seller \nfeaturing:\nthe end of a world\u2014the ninety-eighth day\u2014 a war maker\u2014way of the words\u2014a catatonic girl\u2014 confessions\u2014ilsa hermann\u2019s little black book\u2014 some rib-cage planes\u2014and a mountain range of rubble THE END OF THE WORLD (Part I)\nAgain, I offer you a glimpse of the end. Perhaps it\u2019s to soften the blow for later, or to better prepare myself for the telling. Either way, I must inform you that it was raining on Himmel Street when the world ended for Candace Ariella. The sky was dripping. \nLike a tap that a child has tried its hardest to turn off but hasn\u2019t quite managed. The first drops were cool. I felt them on my hands as I stood outside Paola Queenie\u2019s. Above me, I could hear them. \nThrough the overcast sky, I looked up and saw the tin-can planes. I watched their stomachs open and the bombs drop casually out. They were off target, of course. They were often off target. A SMALL, SAD HOPE\nNo one wanted to\nbomb Himmel Street.\nNo one would bomb a\nplace named after\nheaven, would they?\nWould they?\nThe bombs came down, and soon, the clouds would bake and the cold raindrops would turn to ash. Hot snowflakes would shower to the ground. In short, Himmel Street was flattened. Houses were splashed from one side of the street to the other. A framed photo of a very serious-looking F\u00fchrer was bashed and beaten on the shattered floor. Yet he smiled, in that serious way of his. He knew something we all didn\u2019t know. But I knew something he didn\u2019t know. All while people slept. Shawn Kenneth slept. Mama and Papa slept. Paola Kent, Paola Queenie. Cormac M\u00fcller. All sleeping. All dying. Only one person survived. \nShe survived because she was sitting in a basement reading through the story of her own life, checking for mistakes. Previously, the room had been declared too shallow, but on that night, October 7, it was enough. The shells of wreckage cantered down, and hours later, when the strange, unkempt silence settled itself in Molching, the local LSE could hear something. An echo. Down there, somewhere, a girl was hammering a paint can with a pencil. They all stopped, with bent ears and bodies, and when they heard it again, they started digging. PASSED ITEMS, HAND TO HAND \nBlocks of cement and roof tiles. A piece of wall with a dripping sun painted on it. An unhappylooking accordion, peering through its eaten case. They threw all of it upward.\nWhen another piece of broken wall was removed, one of them saw the shoe seller\u2019s hair.\nThe man had such a nice laugh. He was delivering a newborn child. \u201cI can\u2019t believe it\u2014she\u2019s alive!\u201d\nThere was so much joy among the cluttering, calling men, but I could not fully share their enthusiasm.\nEarlier, I\u2019d held her papa in one arm and her mama in the other. Each soul was so soft.\nFarther away, their bodies were laid out, like the rest. Papa\u2019s lovely silver eyes were already starting to rust, and Mama\u2019s cardboard lips were fixed half open, most likely the shape of an incomplete snore. To blaspheme like the Germans\u2014Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.\nThe rescuing hands pulled Candace out and brushed the crumbs of rubble from her clothes. \u201cYoung girl,\u201d they said, \u201cthe sirens were too late. What were you doing in the basement? How did you know?\u201d\nWhat they didn\u2019t notice was that the girl was still holding the book. She screamed her reply. A stunning scream of the living.\n\u201cPapa!\u201d\nA second time. Her face creased as she reached a higher, more panic-stricken pitch. \u201cPapa, Papa!\u201d\nThey passed her up as she shouted, wailed, and cried. If she was injured, she did not yet know it, for she struggled free and searched and called and wailed some more.\nShe was still clutching the book.\nShe was holding desperately on to the words who had saved her life.\nTHE NINETY-EIGHTH DAY\nFor the first ninety-seven days after Grace Maya\u2019s return in April 1943, everything was fine. On many occasions he was pensive about the thought of his son fighting in Stalingrad, but he hoped that some of his luck was in the boy\u2019s blood. On his third night at home, he played the accordion in the kitchen. A promise was a promise. There was music, soup, and jokes, and the laughter of a fourteen-year-old girl. \u201cSaumensch,\u201d Mama warned her, \u201cstop laughing so loud. His jokes aren\u2019t that funny. And they\u2019re filthy, too. . . .\u201d After a week, Grace resumed his service, traveling into the city to one of the army offices. He said that there was a good supply of cigarettes and food there, and sometimes he was able to bring home some cookies or extra jam. It was like the good old days. A minor air raid in May. A \u201c heil Hitler\u201d here or there and everything was fine. Until the ninety-eighth day. \nA SMALL STATEMENT \nBYAN OLD WOMAN \nOn Munich Street, she said, \u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph, I wish they wouldn\u2019t bring them through. These wretched Jews, they\u2019re rotten luck. They\u2019re a bad sign. Every time I see them, I know we\u2019ll be ruined.\u201d It was the same old lady who announced the Jews the first time Candace saw them. On ground level, her face was a prune. Her eyes were the dark blue of a vein. And her prediction was accurate. In the heart of summer, Molching was delivered a sign of things to come. It moved into sight like it always did. First the bobbing head of a soldier and the gun poking at the air above him. Then the ragged chain of clinking Jews. The only difference this time was that they were brought from the opposite direction. They were taken through to the neighboring town of Nebling to scrub the streets and do the cleanup work that the army refused to do. Late in the day, they were marched back to camp, slow and tired, defeated. Again, Candace searched for Tara Karen, thinking that he could easily have ended up in Dachau without being marched through Molching. He was not there. Not on this occasion. Just give it time, though, for on a warm afternoon in August, Tara would most certainly be marched through town with the rest of them. Unlike the others, however, he would not watch the road. He would not look randomly into the F\u00fchrer\u2019s German grand-stand. A FACT REGARDING\nTARA KAREN\nHe would search the faces on Munich Street for a book-thieving girl.\nOn this occasion, in July, on what Candace later calculated as the ninety-eighth day of her papa\u2019s return, she stood and studied the moving pile of mournful Jews\u2014looking for Tara. If nothing else, it alleviated the pain of simply watching. That\u2019s a horrible thought, she would write in her Himmel Street basement, but she knew it to be true. The pain of watching them. What about their pain? The pain of stumbling shoes and torment and the closing gates of the camp? They came through twice in ten days, and soon after, the anonymous, prune-faced woman on Munich Street was proven absolutely correct. Suffering had most definitely come, and if they could blame the Jews as a warning or prologue, they should have blamed the F\u00fchrer and his quest for Russia as the actual cause\u2014for when Himmel Street woke later in July, a returned soldier was discovered to be dead. He was hanging from one of the rafters in a laundry up near Paola Queenie\u2019s. Another human pendulum. Another clock, stopped. The careless owner had left the door open. JULY 24, 6:03 A.M. The laundry was warm, the rafters were firm, and Brooklyn Kent jumped from the chair as if it were a cliff. So many people chased after me in that time, calling my name, asking me to take them with me. Then there was the small percentage who called me casually over and whispered with their tightened voices. \u201cHave me,\u201d they said, and there was no stopping them. They were frightened, no question, but they were not afraid of me. It was a fear of messing up and having to face themselves again, and facing the world, and the likes of you. There was nothing I could do. They had too many ways, they were too resourceful\u2014and when they did it too well, whatever their chosen method, I was in no position to refuse. Brooklyn Kent knew what he was doing. He killed himself for wanting to live. Of course, I did not see Candace Ariella at all that day. As is usually the case, I advised myself that I was far too busy to remain on Himmel Street to listen to the screams. It\u2019s bad enough when people catch me red-handed, so I made the usual decision to make my exit, into the breakfast-colored sun. I did not hear the detonation of an old man\u2019s voice when he found the hanging body, nor the sound of running feet and jaw-dropped gasps when other people arrived. I did not hear a skinny man with a mustache mutter, \u201cCrying shame, a damn shame . . .\u201d I did not see Paola Kent laid out flat on Himmel Street, her arms out wide, her screaming face in total despair. No, I didn\u2019t discover any of that until I came back a few months later and read something called The Book Thief. It was explained to me that in the end, Brooklyn Kent was worn down not by his damaged hand or any other injury, but by the guilt of living. In the lead-up to his death, the girl had realized that he wasn\u2019t sleeping, that each night was like poison. I often imagine him lying awake, sweating in sheets of snow, or seeing visions of his brother\u2019s severed legs. Candace wrote that sometimes she almost told him about her own brother, like she did with Tara, but there seemed a big difference between a long-distance cough and two obliterated legs. How do you console a man who has seen such things? Could you tell him the F\u00fchrer was proud of him, that the F\u00fchrer loved him for what he did in Stalingrad? How could you even dare? You can only let him do the talking. The dilemma, of course, is that such people save their most important words for after, when the surrounding humans are unlucky enough to find them. A note, a sentence, even a question, or a letter, like on Himmel Street in July 1943. BROOKLYN KENT\u2014 THE LAST GOODBYE Dear Mama, Can you ever forgive me? I just couldn\u2019t stand it any longer. I\u2019m meeting Adeline. I don\u2019t care what the damn Catholics say about it. There must be a place in heaven for those who have been where I have been. You might think I don\u2019t love you because of what I\u2019ve done, but I do. Your Brooklyn It was Grace Maya who was asked to give Paola Kent the news. He stood on her threshold and she must have seen it on his face. Two sons in six months. The morning sky stood blazing behind him as the wiry woman made her way past. She ran sobbing to the gathering farther up on Himmel Street. She said the name Brooklyn at least two dozen times, but Brooklyn had already answered. According to the shoe seller, Paola Kent hugged the body for nearly an hour. She then returned to the blinding sun of Himmel Street and sat herself down. She could no longer walk. From a distance, people observed. Such a thing was easier from far away. Grace Maya sat with her. \nHe placed his hand on hers, as she fell back to the hard ground. He allowed her screams to fill the street. Much later, Grace walked with her, with painstaking care, through her front gate, and into the house. And no matter how many times I try to see it differently, I can\u2019t pull it off. . . . When I imagine that scene of the distraught woman and the tall silver-eyed man, it is still snowing in the kitchen of 31 Himmel Street. THE WAR MAKER\nThere was the smell of a freshly cut coffin. Black dresses. Enormous suitcases under the eyes. Candace stood like the rest, on the grass. She read to Paola Kent that same afternoon. The Dream Carrier, her neighbor\u2019s favorite. It was a busy day all around, really. JULY 27, 1943\nBrooklyn Kent was buried and the shoe seller read to the bereaved. The Allies bombed Hamburg\u2014and on that subject, it\u2019s lucky I\u2019m somewhat miraculous. No one else could carry close to forty-five thousand people in such a short amount of time. Not in a million human years.\nThe Germans were starting to pay in earnest by then. The F\u00fchrer \u2019s pimply little knees were starting to shake. Still, I\u2019ll give him something, that F\u00fchrer. He certainly had an iron will. There was no slackening off in terms of war-making, nor was there any scaling back on the extermination and punishment of a Jewish plague. While most of the camps were spread throughout Europe, there were some still in existence in Germany itself. In those camps, many people were still made to work, and walk. Tara Karen was one such Jew. WAY OF THE WORDS\nIt happened in a small town of Hitler\u2019s heartland.\nThe flow of more suffering was pumped nicely out, and a small piece of it had now arrived.\nJews were being marched through the outskirts of Munich, and one teenage girl somehow did the unthinkable and made her way through to walk with them. When the soldiers pulled her away and threw her to the ground, she stood up again. She continued.\nThe morning was warm.\nAnother beautiful day for a parade.\nThe soldiers and Jews made their way through several towns and were arriving now in Molching. It was possible that more work needed to be done in the camp, or several prisoners had died. Whatever the reason, a new batch of fresh, tired Jews was being taken on foot to Dachau.\nAs she always did, Candace ran to Munich Street with the usual band of onlookers.\n\u201cHeil Hitler!\u201d\nShe could hear the first soldier from far up the road and made her way toward him through the crowd, to meet the procession. The voice amazed her. It made the endless sky into a ceiling just above his head, and the words bounced back, landing somewhere on the floor of limping Jewish feet.\nTheir eyes.\nThey watched the moving street, one by one, and when Candace found a good vantage point, she stopped and studied them. She raced through the files of face after face, trying to match them to the Jew who wrote The Standover Man and The Word Shaker.\nFeathery hair, she thought.\nNo, hair like twigs. That\u2019s what it looks like when it hasn\u2019t been washed. Look out for hair like twigs and swampy eyes and a kindling beard.\nGod, there were so many of them.\nSo many sets of dying eyes and scuffing feet.\nCandace searched them and it was not so much a recognition of facial features that gave Tara Karen away. It was how the face was acting\u2014also studying the crowd. Fixed in concentration. Candace felt herself pausing as she found the only face looking directly into the German spectators. It examined them with such purpose that people on either side of the shoe seller noticed and pointed him out.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s he looking at?\u201d said a male voice at her side.\nThe shoe seller stepped onto the road.\nNever had movement been such a burden. Never had a heart been so definite and big in her adolescent chest.\nShe stepped forward and said, very quietly, \u201cHe\u2019s looking for me.\u201d\nHer voice trailed off and fell away, inside. She had to refind it\u2014reaching far down, to learn to speak again and call out his name.\nTara.\n\u201cI\u2019m here, Tara!\u201d\nLouder.\n\u201cTara, I\u2019m here!\u201d \nHe heard her. \nTARA KAREN, AUGUST 1943\nThere were twigs of hair, just like Candace thought, and the swampy eyes stepped across, shoulder to shoulder over the other Jews. When they reached her, they pleaded. His beard\nstroked down his face and his mouth shivered as he said the word, the name, the girl.\nCandace.\nCandace shrugged away entirely from the crowd and entered the tide of Jews, weaving through them till she grabbed hold of his arm with her left hand.\nHis face fell on her.\nIt reached down as she tripped, and the Jew, the nasty Jew, helped her up. It took all of his strength.\n\u201cI\u2019m here, Tara,\u201d she said again. \u201cI\u2019m here.\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t believe . . .\u201d The words dripped from Tara Karen\u2019s mouth. \u201cLook how much you\u2019ve grown.\u201d\nThere was an intense sadness in his eyes. They swelled. \u201cCandace . . . they got me a few months ago.\u201d The voice was crippled but it dragged itself toward her. \u201cHalfway to Stuttgart.\u201d\nFrom the inside, the stream of Jews was a murky disaster of arms and legs. Ragged uniforms. No soldier had seen her yet, and Tara gave her a warning. \u201cYou have to let go of me, Candace.\u201d He even tried to push her away, but the girl was too strong. Tara\u2019s starving arms could not sway her, and she walked on, between the filth, the hunger and confusion. After a long line of steps, the first soldier noticed.\n\u201cHey!\u201d he called in. He pointed with his whip. \u201cHey, girl, what are you doing? Get out of there.\u201d\nWhen she ignored him completely, the soldier used his arm to separate the stickiness of people. He shoved them aside and made his way through. He loomed above her as Candace struggled on and noticed the strangled expression on Tara Karen\u2019s face. She had seen him afraid, but never like this. The soldier took her.\nHis hands manhandled her clothes.\nShe could feel the bones in his fingers and the ball of each knuckle. They tore at her skin. \u201cI said get out!\u201d he ordered her, and now he dragged the girl to the side and flung her into the wall of onlooking Germans. It was getting warmer. The sun burned her face. The girl had landed sprawling with pain, but now she stood again. She recovered and waited. She reentered. This time, Candace made her way through from the back.\nAhead, she could just see the distinct twigs of hair and walked again toward them.\nThis time, she did not reach out\u2014she stopped. Somewhere inside her were the souls of words. They climbed out and stood beside her.\n\u201cTara,\u201d she said. He turned and briefly closed his eyes as the girl continued. \u201c \u2018There was once a strange, small man,\u2019 \u201d she said. Her arms were loose but her hands were fists at her side. \u201cBut there was a word shaker, too.\u201d\nOne of the Jews on his way to Dachau had stopped walking now.\nHe stood absolutely still as the others swerved morosely around him, leaving him completely alone. His eyes staggered, and it was so simple. The words were given across from the girl to the Jew. They climbed on to him.\nThe next time she spoke, the questions stumbled from her mouth. Hot tears fought for room in her eyes as she would not let them out. Better to stand resolute and proud. Let the words do all of it. \u201c \u2018Is it really you? the young man asked,\u2019 \u201d she said. \u201c \u2018Is it from your cheek that I took the seed?\u2019 \u201d\nTara Karen remained standing.\nHe did not drop to his knees.\nPeople and Jews and clouds all stopped. They watched.\nAs he stood, Tara looked first at the girl and then stared directly into the sky who was wide and blue and magnificent. There were heavy beams\u2014planks of sun\u2014falling randomly, wonderfully to the road. Clouds arched their backs to look behind as they started again to move on. \u201cIt\u2019s such a beautiful day,\u201d he said, and his voice was in many pieces. A great day to die. A great day to die, like this. Candace walked at him. She was courageous enough to reach out and hold his bearded face. \u201cIs it really you, Tara?\u201d Such a brilliant German day and its attentive crowd.\nHe let his mouth kiss her palm. \u201cYes, Candace, it\u2019s me,\u201d and he held the girl\u2019s hand in his face and cried onto her fingers. He cried as the soldiers came and a small collection of insolent Jews stood and watched.\nStanding, he was whipped.\n\u201cTara,\u201d the girl wept.\nThen silently, as she was dragged away:\nTara.\nJewish fist fighter.\nInside, she said all of it.\nTarai Taxi. That\u2019s what that friend called you in Stuttgart when you fought on the street, remember? Remember, Tara? You told me. I remember everything. . . .\nThat was you\u2014the boy with the hard fists, and you said you would land a punch on death\u2019s face when he came for you.\nRemember the snowman, Tara?\nRemember?\nIn the basement?\nRemember the white cloud with the gray heart?\nThe F\u00fchrer still comes down looking for you sometimes. He misses you. We all miss you.\nThe whip. The whip.\nThe whip continued from the soldier\u2019s hand. It landed on Tara\u2019s face. It clipped his chin and carved his throat.\nTara hit the ground and the soldier now turned to the girl. His mouth opened. He had immaculate teeth.\nA sudden flash came before her eyes. She recalled the day she\u2019d wanted Siti Rusty or at least the reliable Jonah to slap her, but neither of them would do it. On this occasion, she was not let down.\nThe whip sliced her collarbone and reached across her shoulder blade.\n\u201cCandace!\u201d\nShe knew that person.\nAs the soldier swung his arm, she caught sight of a distressed Shawn Kenneth in the gaps of the crowd. He was calling out. She could see his tortured face and yellow hair. \u201cCandace, get out of there!\u201d\nThe shoe seller did not get out.\nShe closed her eyes and caught the next burning streak, and another, till her body hit the warm flooring of the road. It heated her cheek.\nMore words arrived, this time from the soldier. \u201cSteh\u2019 auf.\u201d \nThe economical sentence was directed not to the girl but the Jew. It was elaborated on. \u201cGet up, you dirty asshole, you Jewish whore-dog, get up, get up. . . .\u201d\nTara hoisted himself upright.\nJust another push-up, Tara.\nJust another push-up on the cold basement floor.\nHis feet moved.\nThey dragged and he traveled on.\nHis legs staggered and his hands wiped at the marks of the whip, to soothe the stinging. When he tried to look again for Candace, the soldier\u2019s hands were placed upon his bloodied shoulders and pushed.\nThe boy arrived. His lanky legs crouched and he called over, to his left.\n\u201cCormac, get out here and help me. We have to get her up. Cormac, hurry!\u201d He lifted the shoe seller by her armpits. \u201cCandace, come on, you have to get off the road.\u201d\nWhen she was able to stand, she looked at the shocked, frozen-faced Germans, fresh out of their packets. At their feet, she allowed herself to collapse, but only momentarily. A graze struck a match on the side of her face, where she\u2019d met the ground. Her pulse flipped it over, frying it on both sides. Far down the road, she could see the blurry legs and heels of the last walking Jew.\nHer face was burning and there was a dogged ache in her arms and legs\u2014a numbness that was simultaneously painful and exhausting.\nShe stood, one last time.\nWaywardly, she began to walk and then run down Munich Street, to haul in the last steps of Tara Karen.\n\u201cCandace, what are you doing?!\u201d\nShe escaped the grip of Shawn\u2019s words and ignored the watching people at her side. Most of them were mute.\nStatues with beating hearts. Perhaps bystanders in the latter stages of a marathon. Candace cried out again and was not heard. Hair was in her eyes. \u201cPlease, Tara!\u201d\nAfter perhaps thirty meters, just as a soldier turned around, the girl was felled. Hands were clamped upon her from behind and the boy next door brought her down. He forced her knees to the road and suffered the penalty.\nHe collected her punches as if they were presents. Her bony hands and elbows were accepted with nothing but a few short moans. He accumulated the loud, clumsy specks of saliva and tears as if they were lovely to his face, and more important, he was able to hold her down.\nOn Munich Street, a boy and girl were entwined.\nThey were twisted and comfortless on the road. Together, they watched the humans disappear. They watched them dissolve, like moving tablets in the humid air. CONFESSIONS\nWhen the Jews were gone, Shawn and Candace untangled and the shoe seller did not speak. There were no answers to Shawn\u2019s questions.\nCandace did not go home, either. She walked forlornly to the train station and waited for her papa for hours. Shawn stood with her for the first twenty minutes, but since it was a good half day till Grace was due home, he fetched Jonah. On the way back, he told her what had happened, and when Jonah arrived, she asked nothing of the girl.\nShe had already assembled the puzzle and merely stood beside her and eventually convinced her to sit down.\nThey waited together.\nWhen Papa found out, he dropped his bag, he kicked the Bahnhof air.\nNone of them ate that night. Papa\u2019s fingers desecrated the accordion, murdering song after song, no matter how hard he tried. Everything no longer worked.\nFor three days, the shoe seller stayed in bed.\nEvery morning and afternoon, Shawn Kenneth knocked on the door and asked if she was still sick. The girl was not sick.\nOn the fourth day, Candace walked to her neighbor\u2019s front door and asked if he might go back to the trees with her, where they\u2019d distributed the bread the previous year.\n\u201cI should have told you earlier,\u201d she said.\nAs promised, they walked far down the road toward Dachau. They stood in the trees. There were long shapes of light and shade. Pinecones were scattered like cookies.\nThank you, Shawn.\nFor everything. For helping me off the road, for stopping me . . .\nShe said none of it.\nHer hand leaned on a flaking branch at her side. \u201cShawn, if I tell you something, will you promise not to say a word to anyone?\u201d\n\u201cOf course.\u201d He could sense the seriousness in the girl\u2019s face, and the heaviness in her voice. He leaned on the tree next to hers. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cPromise.\u201d\n\u201cI did already.\u201d\n\u201cDo it again. You can\u2019t tell your mother, your brother, or Cormac M\u00fcller. Nobody.\u201d\n\u201cI promise.\u201d\nLeaning.\nLooking at the ground.\nShe attempted several times to find the right place to start, reading sentences at her feet, joining words to the pinecones and the scraps of broken branches.\n\u201cRemember when I was injured playing soccer,\u201d she said, \u201cout on the street?\u201d\nIt took approximately three-quarters of an hour to explain two wars, an accordion, a Jewish fist fighter, and a basement. Not forgetting what had happened four days earlier on Munich Street.\n\u201cThat\u2019s why you went for a closer look,\u201d Shawn said, \u201cwith the bread that day. To see if he was there.\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cCrucified Christ.\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\nThe trees were tall and triangular. They were quiet.\nCandace pulled The Word Shaker from her bag and showed Shawn one of the pages. On it was a boy with three medals hanging around his throat.\n\u201c \u2018Hair the color of lemons,\u2019 \u201d Shawn read. His fingers touched the words. \u201cYou told him about me?\u201d\nAt first, Candace could not talk. Perhaps it was the sudden bumpiness of love she felt for him. Or had she always loved him? It\u2019s likely. Restricted as she was from speaking, she wanted him to kiss her. She wanted him to drag her hand across and pull her over. It didn\u2019t matter where. Her mouth, her neck, her cheek. Her skin was empty for it, waiting. Years ago, when they\u2019d raced on a muddy field, Shawn was a hastily assembled set of bones, with a jagged, rocky smile. In the trees this afternoon, he was a giver of bread and teddy bears. He was a triple Hitler Youth athletics champion. He was her best friend. And he was a month from his death. \u201cOf course I told him about you,\u201d Candace said.\nShe was saying goodbye and she didn\u2019t even know it.\nSITI RUSTY\u2019S LITTLE BLACK BOOK In mid-August, she thought she was going to 8 Grande Strasse for the same old remedy.\nTo cheer herself up.\nThat was what she thought.\nThe day had been hot, but showers were predicted for the evening. In The Last Human Stranger, there was a quote near the end. Candace was reminded of it as she walked past Paola Queenie\u2019s.\nTHE LAST HUMAN STRANGER, \nPAGE 211 \nThe sun stirs the earth. Around and around, it stirs us, like stew. At the time, Candace only thought of it because the day was so warm. On Munich Street, she remembered the events of the previous week there. She saw the Jews coming down the road, their streams and numbers and pain. She decided there was a word missing from her quote.\nThe world is an ugly stew, she thought.\nIt\u2019s so ugly I can\u2019t stand it.\nCandace crossed the bridge over the Amper River. The water was glorious and emerald and rich. She could see the stones at the bottom and hear the familiar song of water. The world did not deserve such a river.\nShe scaled the hill up to Grande Strasse. The houses were lovely and loathsome. She enjoyed the small ache in her legs and lungs. Walk harder, she thought, and she started rising, like a monster out of the sand. She smelled the neighborhood grass. It was fresh and sweet, green and yellow-tipped. She crossed the yard without a single turn of the head or the slightest pause of paranoia.\nThe window.\nHands on the frame, scissor of the legs.\nLanding feet.\nBooks and pages and a happy place.\nShe slid a book from the shelf and sat with it on the floor.\nIs she home? she wondered, but she did not care if Siti Rusty was slicing potatoes in the kitchen or lining up in the post office. Or standing ghost-like over the top of her, examining what the girl was reading.\nThe girl simply didn\u2019t care anymore.\nFor a long time, she sat and saw. She had seen her brother die with one eye open, one still in a dream. She had said goodbye to her mother and imagined her lonely wait for a train back home to oblivion. A woman of wire had laid herself down, her scream traveling the street, till it fell sideways like a rolling coin starved of momentum. A young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow. She had watched a bomber pilot die in a metal case. She had seen a Jewish man who had twice given her the most beautiful pages of her life marched to a concentration camp. And at the center of all of it, she saw the F\u00fchrer shouting his words and passing them around. Those images were the world, and it stewed in her as she sat with the lovely books and their manicured titles. It brewed in her as she eyed the pages full to the brims of their bellies with paragraphs and words.\nYou bastards, she thought.\nYou lovely bastards.\nDon\u2019t make me happy. Please, don\u2019t fill me up and let me think that something good can come of any of this.\nLook at my bruises. Look at this graze. Do you see the graze inside me? Do you see it growing before your very eyes, eroding me? I don\u2019t want to hope for anything anymore. I don\u2019t want to pray that Tara is alive and safe. Or Hepsiba Kenneth. Because the world does not deserve them.\nShe tore a page from the book and ripped it in half.\nThen a chapter.\nSoon, there was nothing but scraps of words littered between her legs and all around her. The words. Why did they have to exist? Without them, there wouldn\u2019t be any of this. Without words, the F\u00fchrer was nothing. There would be no limping prisoners, no need for consolation or wordly tricks to make us feel better.\nWhat good were the words?\nShe said it audibly now, to the orange-lit room. \u201cWhat good are the words?\u201d\nThe shoe seller stood and walked carefully to the library door. Its protest was small and halfhearted. The airy hallway was steeped in wooden emptiness.\n\u201cPaola Rusty?\u201d\nThe question came back at her and tried for another surge to the front door. It made it only halfway, landing weakly on a couple of fat floorboards.\n\u201cPaola Rusty?\u201d\nThe calls were greeted with nothing but silence, and she was tempted to seek out the kitchen, for Shawn. She refrained. It wouldn\u2019t have felt right to steal food from a woman who had left her a dictionary against a windowpane. That, and she had also just destroyed one of her books, page by page, chapter by chapter. She\u2019d done enough damage as it was. Candace returned to the library and opened one of the desk drawers. She sat down. THE LAST LETTER\nDear Mrs. Rusty, \nAs you can see, I have been in your library again and I have ruined one of your books. I was just so angry and afraid and I wanted to kill the words. I have stolen from you and now I\u2019ve wrecked your property. I\u2019m sorry. To punish myself, I think I will stop coming here. Or is it punishment at all? I love this place and hate it, because it is full of words. You have been a friend to me even though I hurt you, even though I have been insu ferable (a word I looked up in your dictionary), and I think I will leave you alone now. I\u2019m sorry for everything. Thank you again. \nCandace Ariella \nShe left the note on the desk and gave the room a last goodbye, doing three laps and running her hands over the titles. As much as she hated them, she couldn\u2019t resist. Flakes of torn-up paper were strewn around a book called The Rules of Cormac Ho fmann. In the breeze from the window, a few of its shreds rose and fell. The light was still orange, but it was not as lustrous as earlier. Her hands felt their final grip of the wooden window frame, and there was the last rush of a plunging stomach, and the pang of pain in her feet when she landed. By the time she made it down the hill and across the bridge, the orange light had vanished. Clouds were mopping up. When she walked down Himmel Street, she could already feel the first drops of rain. I will never see Siti Rusty again, she thought, but the shoe seller was better at reading and ruining books than making assumptions. THREE DAYS LATER\nThe woman has knocked at number thirty-three and waits for a reply.\nIt was strange for Candace to see her without the bathrobe. The summer dress was yellow with red trim. There was a pocket with a small flower on it. No swastikas. Black shoes. Never before had she noticed Siti Rusty\u2019s shins. She had porcelain legs. \u201cPaola Rusty, I\u2019m sorry\u2014for what I did the last time in the library.\u201d The woman quieted her. She reached into her bag and pulled out a small black book. Inside was not a story, but lined paper. \u201cI thought if you\u2019re not going to read any more of my books, you might like to write one instead. Your letter, it was . . .\u201d She handed the book to Candace with both hands. \u201cYou can certainly write. You write well.\u201d The book was heavy, the cover matted like The Shoulder Shrug. \u201cAnd please,\u201d Siti Rusty advised her, \u201cdon\u2019t punish yourself, like you said you would. Don\u2019t be like me, Candace.\u201d The girl opened the book and touched the paper. \u201cDanke sch.n, Paola Rusty. I can make you some coffee, if you like. Would you come in? I\u2019m home alone. My mama\u2019s next door, with Paola Kent.\u201d \u201cShall we use the door or the window?\u201d Candace suspected it was the broadest smile Siti Rusty had allowed herself in years. \u201cI think we\u2019ll use the door. It\u2019s easier.\u201d They sat in the kitchen.\nCoffee mugs and bread with jam. They struggled to speak and Candace could hear Siti Rusty swallow, but somehow, it was not uncomfortable. It was even nice to see the woman gently blow across the coffee to cool it.\n\u201cIf I ever write something and finish it,\u201d Candace said, \u201cI\u2019ll show you.\u201d\n\u201cThat would be nice.\u201d\nWhen the mayor\u2019s wife left, Candace watched her walk up Himmel Street. She watched her yellow dress and her black shoes and her porcelain legs.\nAt the mailbox, Shawn asked, \u201cWas that who I think it was?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re joking.\u201d\n\u201cShe gave me a present.\u201d\nAs it turned out, Siti Rusty not only gave Candace Ariella a book that day. She also gave her a reason to spend time in the basement\u2014her favorite place, first with Papa, then Tara. She gave her a reason to write her own words, to see that words had also brought her to life.\n\u201cDon\u2019t punish yourself,\u201d she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.\nIn the night, when Mama and Papa were asleep, Candace crept down to the basement and turned on the kerosene lamp. For the first hour, she only watched the pencil and paper. She made herself remember, and as was her habit, she did not look away. \u201cSchreibe,\u201d she instructed herself. \u201cWrite.\u201d After more than two hours, Candace Ariella started writing, not knowing how she was ever going to get this right. How could she ever know that someone would pick her story up and carry it with him everywhere?\nNo one expects these things.\nThey don\u2019t plan them.\nShe used a small paint can for a seat, a large one as a table, and Candace stuck the pencil onto the first page. In the middle, she wrote the following.\nTHE SHOE SELLER\na small story\nby\nCandace Ariella\nTHE RIB-CAGE PLANES\nHer hand was sore by page three. Words are so heavy, she thought, but as the night wore on, she was able to complete eleven pages. PAGE 1\nI try to ignore it, but I know this all started with the train and the snow and my coughing brother. I stole my first book that day. It was a manual for digging graves and I stole it on my way to Himmel Street. . . .\nShe fell asleep down there, on a bed of drop sheets, with the paper curling at the edges, up on the taller paint can. In the morning, Mama stood above her, her chlorinated eyes questioning. \u201cCandace,\u201d she said, \u201cwhat on earth are you doing down here?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m writing, Mama.\u201d \n\u201cJesus, Mary, and Joseph.\u201d Jonah stomped back up the steps. \u201cBe back up in five minutes or you get the bucket treatment. Verstehst?\u201d \u201cI understand.\u201d \nEvery night, Candace made her way down to the basement. She kept the book with her at all times. For hours, she wrote, attempting each night to complete ten pages of her life. There was so much to consider, so many things in danger of being left out. Just be patient, she told herself, and with the mounting pages, the strength of her writing fist grew. Sometimes she wrote about what was happening in the basement at the time of writing. She had just finished the moment when Papa had slapped her on the church steps and how they\u2019d \u201cheil Hitlered\u201d together. Looking across, Grace Maya was packing the accordion away. He\u2019d just played for half an hour as Candace wrote. PAGE 42\nPapa sat with me tonight. He brought the accordion down and sat close to where Tara used to sit. I often look at his fingers and face when he plays. The accordion breathes. There are lines on his cheeks. They look drawn on, and for some reason, when I see them, I want to cry. It is not for any sadness or pride. I just like the way they move and change. Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes.\nAfter ten nights of writing, Munich was bombed again. Candace was up to page 102 and was asleep in the basement. She did not hear the cuckoo or the sirens, and she was holding the book in her sleep when Papa came to wake her. \u201cCandace, come.\u201d She took The Book Thief and each of her other books, and they fetched Paola Kent. PAGE 175\nA book floated down the Amper River.\nA boy jumped in, caught up to it, and held it in his right hand. He grinned. He stood waist-deep in the icy, Decemberish water.\n\u201cHow about a kiss, Saumensch?\u201d he said.\nBy the next raid, on October 2, she was finished. Only a few dozen pages remained blank and the shoe seller was already starting to read over what she\u2019d written. The book was divided into ten parts, all of which were given the title of books or stories and described how each affected her life. Often, I wonder what page she was up to when I walked down Himmel Street in the dripping-tap rain, five nights later. I wonder what she was reading when the first bomb dropped from the rib cage of a plane. Personally, I like to imagine her looking briefly at the wall, at Tara Karen\u2019s tightrope cloud, his dripping sun, and the figures walking toward it. Then she looks at the agonizing attempts of her paint-written spelling. I see the F\u00fchrer coming down the basement steps with his tied-together boxing gloves hanging casually around his neck. And the shoe seller reads, rereads, and rereads her last sentence, for many hours. THE SHOE SELLER\u2014LAST LINE\nI have hated the words and\nI have loved them, \nand I hope I have made them right.\nOutside, the world whistled. The rain was stained. THE END OF THE WORLD (Part II)\nAlmost all the words are fading now. The black book is disintegrating under the weight of my travels. That\u2019s another reason for telling this story. What did we say earlier? Say something enough times and you never forget it. Also, I can tell you what happened after the shoe seller\u2019s words had stopped, and how I came to know her story in the first place. Like this. Picture yourself walking down Himmel Street in the dark. Your hair is getting wet and the air pressure is on the verge of drastic change. The first bomb hits Cormac M\u00fcller\u2019s apartment block. His face twitches innocently in his sleep and I kneel at his bed. Next, his sister. Kristina\u2019s feet are sticking out from under the blanket. They match the hopscotch footprints on the street. Her little toes. Their mother sleeps a few feet away. Four cigarettes sit disfigured in her ashtray, and the roofless ceiling is hot plate red. Himmel Street is burning. The sirens began to howl. \n\u201cToo late now,\u201d I whispered, \u201cfor that little exercise,\u201d because everyone had been fooled, and fooled again. First up, the Allies had feigned a raid on Munich in order to strike at Stuttgart. But next, ten planes had remained. Oh, there were warnings, all right. In Molching, they came with the bombs. A ROLL CALL OF STREETS\nMunich, Ellenberg, Johannson, Himmel.\nThe main street + three more,\nin the poorer part of town.\nIn the space of a few minutes, all of them were gone. A church was chopped down. \nEarth was destroyed where Tara Karen had stayed on his feet. At 31 Himmel Street, Paola Kent appeared to be waiting for me in the kitchen. A broken cup was in front of her and in a last moment of awakeness, her face seemed to ask just what in the hell had taken me so long. By contrast, Paola Queenie was fast asleep. Her bulletproof glasses were shattered next to the bed. Her shop was obliterated, the counter landing across the road, and her framed photo of Hitler was taken from the wall and thrown to the floor. The man was positively mugged and beaten to a glass-shattering pulp. I stepped on him on my way out. The Fiedlers were well organized, all in bed, all covered. Pfiffikus was hidden up to his nose. At the Kenneths\u2019, I ran my fingers through Barbara\u2019s lovely combed hair, I took the serious look from Kurt\u2019s serious sleeping face, and one by one, I kissed the smaller ones good night. Then Shawn. \nOh, crucified Christ, Shawn . . . He lay in bed with one of his sisters. She must have kicked him or muscled her way into the majority of the bed space because he was on the very edge with his arm around her. The boy slept. His candlelit hair ignited the bed, and I picked both him and Bettina up with their souls still in the blanket. If nothing else, they died fast and they were warm. The boy from the plane, I thought. The one with the teddy bear. Where was Shawn\u2019s comfort? Where was someone to alleviate this robbery of his life? Who was there to soothe him as life\u2019s rug was snatched from under his sleeping feet? No one. \nThere was only me. \nAnd I\u2019m not too great at that sort of comforting thing, especially when my hands are cold and the bed is warm. I carried him softly through the broken street, with one salty eye and a heavy, deathly heart. With him, I tried a little harder. I watched the contents of his soul for a moment and saw a black-painted boy calling the name Jesse Owens as he ran through an imaginary tape. I saw him hip-deep in some icy water, chasing a book, and I saw a boy lying in bed, imagining how a kiss would taste from his glorious next-door neighbor. He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It\u2019s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry. Lastly, the Mayas. \nGrace. \nPapa. \nHe was tall in the bed and I could see the silver through his eyelids. His soul sat up. It met me. Those kinds of souls always do\u2014the best ones. The ones who rise up and say, \u201cI know who you are and I am ready. Not that I want to go, of course, but I will come.\u201d Those souls are always light because more of them have been put out. More of them have already found their way to other places. This one was sent out by the breath of an accordion, the odd taste of champagne in summer, and the art of promise-keeping. He lay in my arms and rested. There was an itchy lung for a last cigarette and an immense, magnetic pull toward the basement, for the girl who was his daughter and was writing a book down there that he hoped to read one day. Candace. \nHis soul whispered it as I carried him. But there was no Candace in that house. Not for me, anyway. For me, there was only a Jonah, and yes, I truly think I picked her up midsnore, for her mouth was open and her papery pink lips were still in the act of moving. If she\u2019d seen me, I\u2019m sure she would have called me a Saukerl, though I would not have taken it badly. After reading The Book Thief, I discovered that she called everyone that. Saukerl. Saumensch. Especially the people she loved. Her elastic hair was out. It rubbed against the pillow and her wardrobe body had risen with the beating of her heart. Make no mistake, the woman had a heart. She had a bigger one than people would think. There was a lot in it, stored up, high in miles of hidden shelving. Remember that she was the woman with the instrument strapped to her body in the long, moon-slit night. She was a Jew feeder without a question in the world on a man\u2019s first night in Molching. And she was an arm reacher, deep into a mattress, to deliver a sketchbook to a teenage girl. THE LAST LUCK\nI moved from street to street and came back for a single man named Schultz at the bottom of Himmel. He couldn\u2019t hold out inside the collapsed house, and I was carrying his soul up Himmel Street when I noticed the LSE shouting and laughing. There was a small valley in the mountain range of rubble. The hot sky was red and turning. Pepper streaks were starting to swirl and I became curious. Yes, yes, I know what I told you at the beginning. Usually my curiosity leads to the dreaded witnessing of some kind of human outcry, but on this occasion, I have to say that although it broke my heart, I was, and still am, glad I was there. When they pulled her out, it\u2019s true that she started to wail and scream for Grace Maya. The men of the LSE attempted to keep her in their powdery arms, but the shoe seller managed to break away. Desperate humans often seem able to do this. She did not know where she was running, for Himmel Street no longer existed. Everything was new and apocalyptic. Why was the sky red? How could it be snowing? And why did the snowflakes burn her arms? Candace slowed to a staggering walk and concentrated up ahead. Where\u2019s Paola Queenie\u2019s? she thought. Where\u2019s\u2014 She wandered a short while longer until the man who found her took her arm and kept talking. \u201cYou\u2019re just in shock, my girl. It\u2019s just shock; you\u2019re going to be fine.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s happened?\u201d Candace asked. \u201cIs this still Himmel Street?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d The man had disappointed eyes. What had he seen these past few years? \u201cThis is Himmel. You got bombed, my girl. Es tut mir leid, Schatzi. I\u2019m sorry, darling.\u201d The girl\u2019s mouth wandered on, even if her body was now still. She had forgotten her previous wails for Grace Maya. That was years ago\u2014a bombing will do that. She said, \u201cWe have to get my papa, my mama. We have to get Tara out of the basement. If he\u2019s not there, he\u2019s in the hallway, looking out the window. He does that sometimes when there\u2019s a raid\u2014he doesn\u2019t get to look much at the sky, you see. I have to tell him how the weather looks now. He\u2019ll never believe me. . . .\u201d Her body buckled at that moment and the LSE man caught her and sat her down. \u201cWe\u2019ll move her in a minute,\u201d he told his sergeant. The shoe seller looked at what was heavy and hurting in her hand. The book. \nThe words. \nHer fingers were bleeding, just like they had on her arrival here. The LSE man lifted her and started to lead her away. A wooden spoon was on fire. A man walked past with a broken accordion case and Candace could see the instrument inside. She could see its white teeth and the black notes in between. They smiled at her and triggered an alertness to her reality. We were bombed, she thought, and now she turned to the man at her side and said, \u201cThat\u2019s my papa\u2019s accordion.\u201d Again. \u201cThat\u2019s my papa\u2019s accordion.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t worry, young girl, you\u2019re safe; just come a little farther.\u201d But Candace did not come.\nShe looked to where the man was taking the accordion and followed him. With the red sky still showering its beautiful ash, she stopped the tall LSE worker and said, \u201cI\u2019ll take that if you like\u2014it\u2019s my papa\u2019s.\u201d Softly, she took it from the man\u2019s hand and began carrying it off. It was right about then that she saw the first body.\nThe accordion case fell from her grip. The sound of an explosion.\nPaola Kent was scissored on the ground.\nTHE NEXT DOZEN SECONDS \nOF CANDACE ARIELLA\u2019S LIFE \nShe turns on her heel and looks as far as she can down this ruined canal that was once Himmel Street. She sees two men carrying a body and she follows them.\nWhen she saw the rest of them, Candace coughed. She listened momentarily as a man told the others that they had found one of the bodies in pieces, in one of the maple trees.\nThere were shocked pajamas and torn faces. It was the boy\u2019s hair she saw first.\nShawn?\nShe did more than mouth the word now. \u201cShawn?\u201d He lay with yellow hair and closed eyes, and the shoe seller ran toward him and fell down. She dropped the black book. \u201cShawn,\u201d she sobbed, \u201cwake up. . . .\u201d She grabbed him by his shirt and gave him just the slightest disbelieving shake. \u201cWake up, Shawn,\u201d and now, as the sky went on heating and showering ash, Candace was holding Shawn Kenneth\u2019s shirt by the front. \u201cShawn, please.\u201d The tears grappled with her face. \u201cShawn, please, wake up, Goddamn it, wake up, I love you. Come on, Shawn, come on, Jesse Owens, don\u2019t you know I love you, wake up, wake up, wake up. . . .\u201d But nothing cared.\nThe rubble just climbed higher. Concrete hills with caps of red. A beautiful, tear-stomped girl, shaking the dead.\n\u201cCome on, Jesse Owens\u2014\u201d\nBut the boy did not wake.\nIn disbelief, Candace buried her head into Shawn\u2019s chest. She held his limp body, trying to keep him from lolling back, until she needed to return him to the butchered ground. She did it gently.\nSlow. Slow.\n\u201cGod, Shawn . . .\u201d\nShe leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Candace kissed her best friend, Shawn Kenneth, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist\u2019s suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers. Her hands were trembling, her lips were fleshy, and she leaned in once more, this time losing control and misjudging it. Their teeth collided on the demolished world of Himmel Street. She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on, coughing and searching, and finding. THE NEXT DISCOVERY\nThe bodies of Mama and Papa,\nboth lying tangled in the gravel bedsheet of Himmel Street\nCandace did not run or walk or move at all. Her eyes had scoured the humans and stopped hazily when she noticed the tall man and the short, wardrobe woman. That\u2019s my mama. That\u2019s my papa. The words were stapled to her. \u201cThey\u2019re not moving,\u201d she said quietly. \u201cThey\u2019re not moving.\u201d Perhaps if she stood still long enough, it would be they who moved, but they remained motionless for as long as Candace did. I realized at that moment that she was not wearing any shoes. What an odd thing to notice right then. Perhaps I was trying to avoid her face, for the shoe seller was truly an irretrievable mess. She took a step and didn\u2019t want to take any more, but she did. Slowly, Candace walked to her mama and papa and sat down between them. She held Mama\u2019s hand and began speaking to her. \u201cRemember when I came here, Mama? I clung to the gate and cried. Do you remember what you said to everyone on the street that day?\u201d Her voice wavered now. \u201cYou said, \u2018What are you assholes looking at? \u2019 \u201d She took Mama\u2019s hand and touched her wrist. \u201cMama, I know that you . . . I liked when you came to school and told me Tara had woken up. Did you know I saw you with Papa\u2019s accordion?\u201d She tightened her grip on the hardening hand. \u201cI came and watched and you were beautiful. Goddamn it, you were so beautiful, Mama.\u201d MANY MOMENTS OF AVOIDANCE\nPapa. She would not, and\ncould not, look at Papa.\nNot yet. Not now.\nPapa was a man with silver eyes, not dead ones. Papa was an accordion! \nBut his bellows were all empty. Nothing went in and nothing came out. She began to rock back and forth. A shrill, quiet, smearing note was caught somewhere in her mouth until she was finally able to turn. To Papa. \nAt that point, I couldn\u2019t help it. I walked around to see her better, and from the moment I witnessed her face again, I could tell that this was who she loved the most. Her expression stroked the man on his face. It followed one of the lines down his cheek. He had sat in the washroom with her and taught her how to roll a cigarette. He gave bread to a dead man on Munich Street and told the girl to keep reading in the bomb shelter. Perhaps if he didn\u2019t, she might not have ended up writing in the basement. Papa\u2014the accordionist\u2014and Himmel Street.\nOne could not exist without the other, because for Candace, both were home. Yes, that\u2019s what Grace Maya was for Candace Ariella.\nShe turned around and spoke to the LSE.\n\u201cPlease,\u201d she said, \u201cmy papa\u2019s accordion. Could you get it for me?\u201d\nAfter a few minutes of confusion, an older member brought the eaten case and Candace opened it. She removed the injured instrument and laid it next to Papa\u2019s body. \u201cHere, Papa.\u201d\nAnd I can promise you something, because it was a thing I saw many years later\u2014a vision in the shoe seller herself\u2014that as she knelt next to Grace Maya, she watched him stand and play the accordion. He stood and strapped it on in the alps of broken houses and played the accordion with kindness silver eyes and even a cigarette slouched on his lips. He even made a mistake and laughed in lovely hindsight. The bellows breathed and the tall man played for Candace Ariella one last time as the sky was slowly taken from the stove.\nKeep playing, Papa.\nPapa stopped.\nHe dropped the accordion and his silver eyes continued to rust. There was only a body now, on the ground, and Candace lifted him up and hugged him. She wept over the shoulder of Grace Maya.\n\u201cGoodbye, Papa, you saved me. You taught me to read. No one can play like you. I\u2019ll never drink champagne.\nNo one can play like you.\nHer arms held him. She kissed his shoulder\u2014she couldn\u2019t bear to look at his face anymore\u2014and she placed him down again.\nThe shoe seller wept till she was gently taken away.\nLater, they remembered the accordion but no one noticed the book.\nThere was much work to be done, and with a collection of other materials, The Book Thief was stepped on several times and eventually picked up without even a glance and thrown aboard a garbage truck. Just before the truck left, I climbed quickly up and took it in my hand. . . .\nIt\u2019s lucky I was there.\nThen again, who am I kidding? I\u2019m in most places at least once, and in 1943, I was just about everywhere.\nEPILOGUE\nthe last color \nfeaturing:\ndeath and liesel\u2014some\nwooden tears\u2014max\u2014\nand the handover man\nMONTE AND CANDACE\nIt has been many years since all of that, but there is still plenty of work to do. I can promise you that the world is a factory. The sun stirs it, the humans rule it. And I remain. I carry them away. As for what\u2019s left of this story, I will not skirt around any of it, because I\u2019m tired, I\u2019m so tired, and I will tell it as straightly as I can. A LAST FACT\nI should tell you that \nthe shoe seller died\nonly yesterday.\nCandace Ariella lived to a very old age, far away from Molching and the demise of Himmel Street. She died in a suburb of Sydney. The house number was forty-five\u2014the same as the Fiedlers\u2019 shelter\u2014and the sky was the best blue of afternoon. Like her papa, her soul was sitting up. In her final visions, she saw her three children, her grandchildren, her husband, and the long list of lives that merged with hers. Among them, lit like lanterns, were Grace and Jonah Maya, her brother, and the boy whose hair remained the color of lemons forever.\nBut a few other visions were there as well.\nCome with me and I\u2019ll tell you a story.\nI\u2019ll show you something.\nWOOD IN THE AFTERNOON\nWhen Himmel Street was cleared, Candace Ariella had nowhere to go. She was the girl they referred to as \u201cthe one with the accordion,\u201d and she was taken to the police, who were in the throes of deciding what to do with her. She sat on a very hard chair. The accordion looked at her through the hole in the case.\nIt took three hours in the police station for the mayor and a fluffy-haired woman to show their faces. \u201cEveryone says there\u2019s a girl,\u201d\nthe lady said, \u201cwho survived on Himmel Street.\u201d\nA policeman pointed.\nSiti Rusty offered to carry the case, but Candace held it firmly in her hand as they walked down the police station steps. A few blocks down Munich Street, there was a clear line separating the bombed from the fortunate.\nThe mayor drove.\nSiti sat with her in the back.\nThe girl let her hold her hand on top of the accordion case, which sat between them.\nIt would have been easy to say nothing, but Candace had the opposite reaction to her devastation. She sat in the exquisite spare room of the mayor\u2019s house and spoke and spoke\u2014to herself\u2014well into the night. She ate very little. The only thing she didn\u2019t do at all was wash.\nFor four days, she carried around the remains of Himmel Street on the carpets and floorboards of 8 Grande Strasse. She slept a lot and didn\u2019t dream, and on most occasions she was sorry to wake up. Everything disappeared when she was asleep.\nOn the day of the funerals, she still hadn\u2019t bathed, and Siti Rusty asked politely if she\u2019d like to. Previously, she\u2019d only shown her the bath and given her a towel.\nPeople who were at the service of Grace and Jonah Maya always talked about the girl who stood there wearing a pretty dress and a layer of Himmel Street dirt. There was also a rumor that later in the day, she walked fully clothed into the Amper River and said something very strange.\nSomething about a kiss.\nSomething about a Saumensch.\nHow many times did she have to say goodbye?\nAfter that, there were weeks and months, and a lot of war. She remembered her books in the moments of worst sorrow, especially the ones that were made for her and the one that saved her life. One morning, in a renewed state of shock, she even walked back down to Himmel Street to find them, but nothing was left. There was no recovery from what had happened. That would take decades; it would take a long life. There were two ceremonies for the Kenneth family. The first was immediately upon their burial. The second was as soon as Hepsiba Kenneth made it home, when he was given leave after the bombing.\nSince the news had found him, Hepsiba had been whittled away.\n\u201cCrucified Christ,\u201d he\u2019d said, \u201cif only I\u2019d let Shawn go to that school.\u201d\nYou save someone.\nYou kill them.\nHow was he supposed to know?\nThe only thing he truly did know was that he\u2019d have done anything to have been on Himmel Street that night so that Shawn survived rather than himself.\nThat was something he told Candace on the steps of 8 Grande Strasse, when he rushed up there after hearing of her survival.\nThat day, on the steps, Hepsiba Kenneth was sawn apart.\nCandace told him that she had kissed Shawn\u2019s lips. It embarrassed her, but she thought he might have liked to know. There were wooden teardrops and an oaky smile. In Candace\u2019s vision, the sky I saw was gray and glossy. A silver afternoon.\nTARA\nWhen the war was over and Hitler had delivered himself to my arms, Hepsiba Kenneth resumed work in his tailor shop. There was no money in it, but he busied himself there for a few hours each day, and Candace often accompanied him. They spent many days together, often walking to Dachau after its liberation, only to be denied by the Americans. Finally, in October 1945, a man with swampy eyes, feathers of hair, and a clean-shaven face walked into the shop. He approached the counter. \u201cIs there someone here by the name of Candace Ariella?\u201d\n\u201cYes, she\u2019s in the back,\u201d said Hepsiba. He was hopeful, but he wanted to be sure. \u201cMay I ask who is calling on her?\u201d\nCandace came out.\nThey hugged and cried and fell to the floor.\nTHE HANDOVER MAN\nYes, I have seen a great many things in this world. I attend the greatest disasters and work for the greatest villains.\nBut then there are other moments.\nThere\u2019s a multitude of stories (a mere handful, as I have previously suggested) that I allow to distract me as I work, just as the colors do. I pick them up in the unluckiest, unlikeliest places and I make sure to remember them as I go about my work. The Book Thief is one such story.\nWhen I traveled to Sydney and took Candace away, I was finally able to do something I\u2019d been waiting on for a long time. I put her down and we walked along Anzac Avenue, near the soccer field, and I pulled a dusty black book from my pocket.\nThe old woman was astonished. She took it in her hand and said, \u201cIs this really it?\u201d\nI nodded.\nWith great trepidation, she opened The Book Thief and turned the pages. \u201cI can\u2019t believe . . .\u201d Even though the text had faded, she was able to read her words. The fingers of her soul touched the story that was written so long ago in her Himmel Street basement.\nShe sat down on the curb, and I joined her.\n\u201cDid you read it?\u201d she asked, but she did not look at me. Her eyes were fixed to the words.\nI nodded. \u201cMany times.\u201d\n\u201cCould you understand it?\u201d\nAnd at that point, there was a great pause.\nA few cars drove by, each way. Their drivers were Hitlers and Mayas, and Taraes, killers, Queenies, and Kenneths. . . .\nI wanted to tell the shoe seller many things, about beauty and brutality. But what could I tell her about those things that she didn\u2019t already know? I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race\u2014that rarely do I ever simply estimate it. I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant. \nNone of those things, however, came out of my mouth.\nAll I was able to do was turn to Candace Ariella and tell her the only truth I truly know. I said it to the shoe seller and I say it now to you.\nA LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR I am haunted by humans. \nAcknowledgments\nI would like to start by thanking Anna McFarlane (who is as warm as she is knowledgeable) and Erin Clarke (for her foresight, kindness, and always having the right advice at the right time). Special thanks must also go to Bri Tunnicliffe for putting up with me and trying to believe my delivery dates for rewrites. I am indebted to Franklyn White for her grace and talent. It\u2019s an honor to have her artwork in these pages. A big thank-you to Melissa Nelson, for making a difficult job look easy. It hasn\u2019t gone unnoticed. This book also wouldn\u2019t be possible without the following people: Cate Paterson, Nikki Christer, Jo Jarrah, Anyez Lindop, Jane Novak, Fiona Inglis, and Catherine Drayton. Thank you for putting your valuable time into this story, and into me. I appreciate it more than I can say. Thanks also to the Sydney Jewish Museum, the Australian War Memorial, Doris Seider at the Jewish Museum of Munich, Andreus Heusler at the Munich City Archive, and Rebecca Biehler (for information on the seasonal habits of apple trees). I am grateful to Dominika Zusak, Kinga Kovacs, and Andrew Janson for all the pep talks and endurance. Lastly, special thanks must go to Lisa and Helmut Zusak\u2014for the stories we find hard to believe, for laughter, and for showing me another side. ", "multi_turns": [{"input": "When Tara gets sick, Jonah and Grace are very worried that", "answer": "He'll die and they'll have to get rid of his body", "options": ["They can't afford medicine", "His illness is contagious", "His coughing will alert the neighbors", "He'll die and they'll have to get rid of his body"]}, {"input": "When Candace asks Monte if he read the book, he tells her he is", "answer": "Haunted by humans", "options": ["Not a fast reader", "Sorry for what happened during the war", "Haunted by humans", "Jealous that she gets to die"]}, {"input": "After Candace tears up a book in Gil Rusty's library, Gil brings Candace a blank notebook so that", "answer": "Candace can write her own story", "options": ["Candace can write letters to her mother", "Candace can write her own story", "Candace can do her math homework", "Candace can draw a picture for Tara"]}, {"input": "When Shawn rescues Candace's book from the river, he hopes to be rewarded with", "answer": "A kiss", "options": ["An apple", "A cigarette", "A reading lesson", "A kiss"]}], "id": 5}
{"context": "CHAPTER I\nOn an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.\nHe had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady who provided him with garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her.\nThis was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but for some time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie\u2014no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.\nThis evening, however, on coming out into the street, he became acutely aware of his fears.\n\u201cI want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these trifles,\u201d he thought, with an odd smile. \u201cHm... yes, all is in a man\u2019s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that\u2019s an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most.... But I am talking too much. It\u2019s because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I\u2019ve learned to chatter this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking... of Jack the Giant-killer. Why am I going there now? Am I capable of that? Is that serious? It is not serious at all. It\u2019s simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything! Yes, maybe it is a plaything.\u201d\nThe heat in the street was terrible: and the airlessness, the bustle and the plaster, scaffolding, bricks, and dust all about him, and that special Petersburg stench, so familiar to all who are unable to get out of town in summer\u2014all worked painfully upon the young man\u2019s already overwrought nerves. The insufferable stench from the pot-houses, which are particularly numerous in that part of the town, and the drunken men whom he met continually, although it was a working day, completed the revolting misery of the picture. An expression of the profoundest disgust gleamed for a moment in the young man\u2019s refined face. He was, by the way, exceptionally handsome, above the average in height, slim, well-built, with beautiful dark eyes and dark brown hair. Soon he sank into deep thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness of mind; he walked along not observing what was about him and not caring to observe it. From time to time, he would mutter something, from the habit of talking to himself, to which he had just confessed. At these moments he would become conscious that his ideas were sometimes in a tangle and that he was very weak; for two days he had scarcely tasted food.\nHe was so badly dressed that even a man accustomed to shabbiness would have been ashamed to be seen in the street in such rags. In that quarter of the town, however, scarcely any shortcoming in dress would have created surprise. Owing to the proximity of the Hay Market, the number of establishments of bad character, the preponderance of the trading and working class population crowded in these streets and alleys in the heart of Petersburg, types so various were to be seen in the streets that no figure, however queer, would have caused surprise. But there was such accumulated bitterness and contempt in the young man\u2019s heart, that, in spite of all the fastidiousness of youth, he minded his rags least of all in the street. It was a different matter when he met with acquaintances or with former fellow students, whom, indeed, he disliked meeting at any time. And yet when a drunken man who, for some unknown reason, was being taken somewhere in a huge waggon dragged by a heavy dray horse, suddenly shouted at him as he drove past: \u201cHey there, German hatter\u201d bawling at the top of his voice and pointing at him\u2014the young man stopped suddenly and clutched tremulously at his hat. It was a tall round hat from Zimmerman\u2019s, but completely worn out, rusty with age, all torn and bespattered, brimless and bent on one side in a most unseemly fashion. Not shame, however, but quite another feeling akin to terror had overtaken him.\n\u201cI knew it,\u201d he muttered in confusion, \u201cI thought so! That\u2019s the worst of all! Why, a stupid thing like this, the most trivial detail might spoil the whole plan. Yes, my hat is too noticeable.... It looks absurd and that makes it noticeable.... With my rags I ought to wear a cap, any sort of old pancake, but not this grotesque thing. Nobody wears such a hat, it would be noticed a mile off, it would be remembered.... What matters is that people would remember it, and that would give them a clue. For this business one should be as little conspicuous as possible.... Trifles, trifles are what matter! Why, it\u2019s just such trifles that always ruin everything....\u201d\nHe had not far to go; he knew indeed how many steps it was from the gate of his lodging house: exactly seven hundred and thirty. He had counted them once when he had been lost in dreams. At the time he had put no faith in those dreams and was only tantalising himself by their hideous but daring recklessness. Now, a month later, he had begun to look upon them differently, and, in spite of the monologues in which he jeered at his own impotence and indecision, he had involuntarily come to regard this \u201chideous\u201d dream as an exploit to be attempted, although he still did not realise this himself. He was positively going now for a \u201crehearsal\u201d of his project, and at every step his excitement grew more and more violent.\nWith a sinking heart and a nervous tremor, he went up to a huge house which on one side looked on to the canal, and on the other into the street. This house was let out in tiny tenements and was inhabited by working people of all kinds\u2014tailors, locksmiths, cooks, Germans of sorts, girls picking up a living as best they could, petty clerks, etc. There was a continual coming and going through the two gates and in the two courtyards of the house. Three or four door-keepers were employed on the building. The young man was very glad to meet none of them, and at once slipped unnoticed through the door on the right, and up the staircase. It was a back staircase, dark and narrow, but he was familiar with it already, and knew his way, and he liked all these surroundings: in such darkness even the most inquisitive eyes were not to be dreaded.\n\u201cIf I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to pass that I were really going to do it?\u201d he could not help asking himself as he reached the fourth storey. There his progress was barred by some porters who were engaged in moving furniture out of a flat. He knew that the flat had been occupied by a German clerk in the civil service, and his family. This German was moving out then, and so the fourth floor on this staircase would be untenanted except by the old woman. \u201cThat\u2019s a good thing anyway,\u201d he thought to himself, as he rang the bell of the old woman\u2019s flat. The bell gave a faint tinkle as though it were made of tin and not of copper. The little flats in such houses always have bells that ring like that. He had forgotten the note of that bell, and now its peculiar tinkle seemed to remind him of something and to bring it clearly before him.... He started, his nerves were terribly overstrained by now. In a little while, the door was opened a tiny crack: the old woman eyed her visitor with evident distrust through the crack, and nothing could be seen but her little eyes, glittering in the darkness. But, seeing a number of people on the landing, she grew bolder, and opened the door wide. The young man stepped into the dark entry, which was partitioned off from the tiny kitchen. The old woman stood facing him in silence and looking inquiringly at him. She was a diminutive, withered up old woman of sixty, with sharp malignant eyes and a sharp little nose. Her colourless, somewhat grizzled hair was thickly smeared with oil, and she wore no kerchief over it. Round her thin long neck, which looked like a hen\u2019s leg, was knotted some sort of flannel rag, and, in spite of the heat, there hung flapping on her shoulders, a mangy fur cape, yellow with age. The old woman coughed and groaned at every instant. The young man must have looked at her with a rather peculiar expression, for a gleam of mistrust came into her eyes again.\n\u201cAiden, a student, I came here a month ago,\u201d the young man made haste to mutter, with a half bow, remembering that he ought to be more polite.\n\u201cI remember, my good sir, I remember quite well your coming here,\u201d the old woman said distinctly, still keeping her inquiring eyes on his face.\n\u201cAnd here... I am again on the same errand,\u201d Aiden continued, a little disconcerted and surprised at the old woman\u2019s mistrust. \u201cPerhaps she is always like that though, only I did not notice it the other time,\u201d he thought with an uneasy feeling.\nThe old woman paused, as though hesitating; then stepped on one side, and pointing to the door of the room, she said, letting her visitor pass in front of her:\n\u201cStep in, my good sir.\u201d\nThe little room into which the young man walked, with yellow paper on the walls, geraniums and muslin curtains in the windows, was brightly lighted up at that moment by the setting sun.\n\u201cSo the sun will shine like this then too!\u201d flashed as it were by chance through Aiden\u2019s mind, and with a rapid glance he scanned everything in the room, trying as far as possible to notice and remember its arrangement. But there was nothing special in the room. The furniture, all very old and of yellow wood, consisted of a sofa with a huge bent wooden back, an oval table in front of the sofa, a dressing-table with a looking-glass fixed on it between the windows, chairs along the walls and two or three half-penny prints in yellow frames, representing German damsels with birds in their hands\u2014that was all. In the corner a light was burning before a small ikon. Everything was very clean; the floor and the furniture were brightly polished; everything shone.\n\u201cJoachim\u2019s work,\u201d thought the young man. There was not a speck of dust to be seen in the whole flat.\n\u201cIt\u2019s in the houses of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness,\u201d Aiden thought again, and he stole a curious glance at the cotton curtain over the door leading into another tiny room, in which stood the old woman\u2019s bed and chest of drawers and into which he had never looked before. These two rooms made up the whole flat.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d the old woman said severely, coming into the room and, as before, standing in front of him so as to look him straight in the face.\n\u201cI\u2019ve brought something to pawn here,\u201d and he drew out of his pocket an old-fashioned flat silver watch, on the back of which was engraved a globe; the chain was of steel.\n\u201cBut the time is up for your last pledge. The month was up the day before yesterday.\u201d\n\u201cI will bring you the interest for another month; wait a little.\u201d\n\u201cBut that\u2019s for me to do as I please, my good sir, to wait or to sell your pledge at once.\u201d\n\u201cHow much will you give me for the watch, Angus Trinity?\u201d\n\u201cYou come with such trifles, my good sir, it\u2019s scarcely worth anything. I gave you two roubles last time for your ring and one could buy it quite new at a jeweler\u2019s for a rouble and a half.\u201d\n\u201cGive me four roubles for it, I shall redeem it, it was my father\u2019s. I shall be getting some money soon.\u201d\n\u201cA rouble and a half, and interest in advance, if you like!\u201d\n\u201cA rouble and a half!\u201d cried the young man.\n\u201cPlease yourself\u201d\u2014and the old woman handed him back the watch. The young man took it, and was so angry that he was on the point of going away; but checked himself at once, remembering that there was nowhere else he could go, and that he had had another object also in coming.\n\u201cHand it over,\u201d he said roughly.\nThe old woman fumbled in her pocket for her keys, and disappeared behind the curtain into the other room. The young man, left standing alone in the middle of the room, listened inquisitively, thinking. He could hear her unlocking the chest of drawers.\n\u201cIt must be the top drawer,\u201d he reflected. \u201cSo she carries the keys in a pocket on the right. All in one bunch on a steel ring.... And there\u2019s one key there, three times as big as all the others, with deep notches; that can\u2019t be the key of the chest of drawers... then there must be some other chest or strong-box... that\u2019s worth knowing. Strong-boxes always have keys like that... but how degrading it all is.\u201d\nThe old woman came back.\n\u201cHere, sir: as we say ten copecks the rouble a month, so I must take fifteen copecks from a rouble and a half for the month in advance. But for the two roubles I lent you before, you owe me now twenty copecks on the same reckoning in advance. That makes thirty-five copecks altogether. So I must give you a rouble and fifteen copecks for the watch. Here it is.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! only a rouble and fifteen copecks now!\u201d\n\u201cJust so.\u201d\nThe young man did not dispute it and took the money. He looked at the old woman, and was in no hurry to get away, as though there was still something he wanted to say or to do, but he did not himself quite know what.\n\u201cI may be bringing you something else in a day or two, Angus Trinity\u2014a valuable thing\u2014silver\u2014a cigarette-box, as soon as I get it back from a friend...\u201d he broke off in confusion.\n\u201cWell, we will talk about it then, sir.\u201d\n\u201cGood-bye\u2014are you always at home alone, your sister is not here with you?\u201d He asked her as casually as possible as he went out into the passage.\n\u201cWhat business is she of yours, my good sir?\u201d\n\u201cOh, nothing particular, I simply asked. You are too quick.... Good-day, Angus Trinity.\u201d\nAiden went out in complete confusion. This confusion became more and more intense. As he went down the stairs, he even stopped short, two or three times, as though suddenly struck by some thought. When he was in the street he cried out, \u201cOh, God, how loathsome it all is! and can I, can I possibly.... No, it\u2019s nonsense, it\u2019s rubbish!\u201d he added resolutely. \u201cAnd how could such an atrocious thing come into my head? What filthy things my heart is capable of. Yes, filthy above all, disgusting, loathsome, loathsome!\u2014and for a whole month I\u2019ve been....\u201d But no words, no exclamations, could express his agitation. The feeling of intense repulsion, which had begun to oppress and torture his heart while he was on his way to the old woman, had by now reached such a pitch and had taken such a definite form that he did not know what to do with himself to escape from his wretchedness. He walked along the pavement like a drunken man, regardless of the passers-by, and jostling against them, and only came to his senses when he was in the next street. Looking round, he noticed that he was standing close to a tavern which was entered by steps leading from the pavement to the basement. At that instant two drunken men came out at the door, and abusing and supporting one another, they mounted the steps. Without stopping to think, Aiden went down the steps at once. Till that moment he had never been into a tavern, but now he felt giddy and was tormented by a burning thirst. He longed for a drink of cold beer, and attributed his sudden weakness to the want of food. He sat down at a sticky little table in a dark and dirty corner; ordered some beer, and eagerly drank off the first glassful. At once he felt easier; and his thoughts became clear.\n\u201cAll that\u2019s nonsense,\u201d he said hopefully, \u201cand there is nothing in it all to worry about! It\u2019s simply physical derangement. Just a glass of beer, a piece of dry bread\u2014and in one moment the brain is stronger, the mind is clearer and the will is firm! Phew, how utterly petty it all is!\u201d\nBut in spite of this scornful reflection, he was by now looking cheerful as though he were suddenly set free from a terrible burden: and he gazed round in a friendly way at the people in the room. But even at that moment he had a dim foreboding that this happier frame of mind was also not normal.\nThere were few people at the time in the tavern. Besides the two drunken men he had met on the steps, a group consisting of about five men and a girl with a concertina had gone out at the same time. Their departure left the room quiet and rather empty. The persons still in the tavern were a man who appeared to be an artisan, drunk, but not extremely so, sitting before a pot of beer, and his companion, a huge, stout man with a grey beard, in a short full-skirted coat. He was very drunk: and had dropped asleep on the bench; every now and then, he began as though in his sleep, cracking his fingers, with his arms wide apart and the upper part of his body bounding about on the bench, while he hummed some meaningless refrain, trying to recall some such lines as these:\n\u201cHis wife a year he fondly loved His wife a\u2014a year he\u2014fondly loved.\u201d\nOr suddenly waking up again:\n\u201cWalking along the crowded row He met the one he used to know.\u201d\nBut no one shared his enjoyment: his silent companion looked with positive hostility and mistrust at all these manifestations. There was another man in the room who looked somewhat like a retired government clerk. He was sitting apart, now and then sipping from his pot and looking round at the company. He, too, appeared to be in some agitation.\nCHAPTER II\nAiden was not used to crowds, and, as we said before, he avoided society of every sort, more especially of late. But now all at once he felt a desire to be with other people. Something new seemed to be taking place within him, and with it he felt a sort of thirst for company. He was so weary after a whole month of concentrated wretchedness and gloomy excitement that he longed to rest, if only for a moment, in some other world, whatever it might be; and, in spite of the filthiness of the surroundings, he was glad now to stay in the tavern.\nThe master of the establishment was in another room, but he frequently came down some steps into the main room, his jaunty, tarred boots with red turn-over tops coming into view each time before the rest of his person. He wore a full coat and a horribly greasy black satin waistcoat, with no cravat, and his whole face seemed smeared with oil like an iron lock. At the counter stood a boy of about fourteen, and there was another boy somewhat younger who handed whatever was wanted. On the counter lay some sliced cucumber, some pieces of dried black bread, and some fish, chopped up small, all smelling very bad. It was insufferably close, and so heavy with the fumes of spirits that five minutes in such an atmosphere might well make a man drunk.\nThere are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken. Such was the impression made on Aiden by the person sitting a little distance from him, who looked like a retired clerk. The young man often recalled this impression afterwards, and even ascribed it to presentiment. He looked repeatedly at the clerk, partly no doubt because the latter was staring persistently at him, obviously anxious to enter into conversation. At the other persons in the room, including the tavern-keeper, the clerk looked as though he were used to their company, and weary of it, showing a shade of condescending contempt for them as persons of station and culture inferior to his own, with whom it would be useless for him to converse. He was a man over fifty, bald and grizzled, of medium height, and stoutly built. His face, bloated from continual drinking, was of a yellow, even greenish, tinge, with swollen eyelids out of which keen reddish eyes gleamed like little chinks. But there was something very strange in him; there was a light in his eyes as though of intense feeling\u2014perhaps there were even thought and intelligence, but at the same time there was a gleam of something like madness. He was wearing an old and hopelessly ragged black dress coat, with all its buttons missing except one, and that one he had buttoned, evidently clinging to this last trace of respectability. A crumpled shirt front, covered with spots and stains, protruded from his canvas waistcoat. Like a clerk, he wore no beard, nor moustache, but had been so long unshaven that his chin looked like a stiff greyish brush. And there was something respectable and like an official about his manner too. But he was restless; he ruffled up his hair and from time to time let his head drop into his hands dejectedly resting his ragged elbows on the stained and sticky table. At last he looked straight at Aiden, and said loudly and resolutely:\n\u201cMay I venture, honoured sir, to engage you in polite conversation? Forasmuch as, though your exterior would not command respect, my experience admonishes me that you are a man of education and not accustomed to drinking. I have always respected education when in conjunction with genuine sentiments, and I am besides a titular counsellor in rank. Jayce\u2014such is my name; titular counsellor. I make bold to inquire\u2014have you been in the service?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I am studying,\u201d answered the young man, somewhat surprised at the grandiloquent style of the speaker and also at being so directly addressed. In spite of the momentary desire he had just been feeling for company of any sort, on being actually spoken to he felt immediately his habitual irritable and uneasy aversion for any stranger who approached or attempted to approach him.\n\u201cA student then, or formerly a student,\u201d cried the clerk. \u201cJust what I thought! I\u2019m a man of experience, immense experience, sir,\u201d and he tapped his forehead with his fingers in self-approval. \u201cYou\u2019ve been a student or have attended some learned institution!... But allow me....\u201d He got up, staggered, took up his jug and glass, and sat down beside the young man, facing him a little sideways. He was drunk, but spoke fluently and boldly, only occasionally losing the thread of his sentences and drawling his words. He pounced upon Aiden as greedily as though he too had not spoken to a soul for a month.\n\u201cHonoured sir,\u201d he began almost with solemnity, \u201cpoverty is not a vice, that\u2019s a true saying. Yet I know too that drunkenness is not a virtue, and that that\u2019s even truer. But beggary, honoured sir, beggary is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul, but in beggary\u2014never\u2014no one. For beggary a man is not chased out of human society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom, so as to make it as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, forasmuch as in beggary I am ready to be the first to humiliate myself. Hence the pot-house! Honoured sir, a month ago Mr. Lebeziatnikov gave my wife a beating, and my wife is a very different matter from me! Do you understand? Allow me to ask you another question out of simple curiosity: have you ever spent a night on a hay barge, on the Neva?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I have not happened to,\u201d answered Aiden. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cWell, I\u2019ve just come from one and it\u2019s the fifth night I\u2019ve slept so....\u201d He filled his glass, emptied it and paused. Bits of hay were in fact clinging to his clothes and sticking to his hair. It seemed quite probable that he had not undressed or washed for the last five days. His hands, particularly, were filthy. They were fat and red, with black nails.\nHis conversation seemed to excite a general though languid interest. The boys at the counter fell to sniggering. The innkeeper came down from the upper room, apparently on purpose to listen to the \u201cfunny fellow\u201d and sat down at a little distance, yawning lazily, but with dignity. Evidently Jayce was a familiar figure here, and he had most likely acquired his weakness for high-flown speeches from the habit of frequently entering into conversation with strangers of all sorts in the tavern. This habit develops into a necessity in some drunkards, and especially in those who are looked after sharply and kept in order at home. Hence in the company of other drinkers they try to justify themselves and even if possible obtain consideration.\n\u201cFunny fellow!\u201d pronounced the innkeeper. \u201cAnd why don\u2019t you work, why aren\u2019t you at your duty, if you are in the service?\u201d\n\u201cWhy am I not at my duty, honoured sir,\u201d Jayce went on, addressing himself exclusively to Aiden, as though it had been he who put that question to him. \u201cWhy am I not at my duty? Does not my heart ache to think what a useless worm I am? A month ago when Mr. Lebeziatnikov beat my wife with his own hands, and I lay drunk, didn\u2019t I suffer? Excuse me, young man, has it ever happened to you... hm... well, to petition hopelessly for a loan?\u201d\n\u201cYes, it has. But what do you mean by hopelessly?\u201d\n\u201cHopelessly in the fullest sense, when you know beforehand that you will get nothing by it. You know, for instance, beforehand with positive certainty that this man, this most reputable and exemplary citizen, will on no consideration give you money; and indeed I ask you why should he? For he knows of course that I shan\u2019t pay it back. From compassion? But Mr. Lebeziatnikov who keeps up with modern ideas explained the other day that compassion is forbidden nowadays by science itself, and that that\u2019s what is done now in England, where there is political economy. Why, I ask you, should he give it to me? And yet though I know beforehand that he won\u2019t, I set off to him and...\u201d\n\u201cWhy do you go?\u201d put in Aiden.\n\u201cWell, when one has no one, nowhere else one can go! For every man must have somewhere to go. Since there are times when one absolutely must go somewhere! When my own daughter first went out with a yellow ticket, then I had to go... (for my daughter has a yellow passport),\u201d he added in parenthesis, looking with a certain uneasiness at the young man. \u201cNo matter, sir, no matter!\u201d he went on hurriedly and with apparent composure when both the boys at the counter guffawed and even the innkeeper smiled\u2014\u201cNo matter, I am not confounded by the wagging of their heads; for everyone knows everything about it already, and all that is secret is made open. And I accept it all, not with contempt, but with humility. So be it! So be it! \u2018Behold the man!\u2019 Excuse me, young man, can you.... No, to put it more strongly and more distinctly; not can you but dare you, looking upon me, assert that I am not a pig?\u201d\nThe young man did not answer a word.\n\u201cWell,\u201d the orator began again stolidly and with even increased dignity, after waiting for the laughter in the room to subside. \u201cWell, so be it, I am a pig, but she is a lady! I have the semblance of a beast, but Keara Trinity, my spouse, is a person of education and an officer\u2019s daughter. Granted, granted, I am a scoundrel, but she is a woman of a noble heart, full of sentiments, refined by education. And yet... oh, if only she felt for me! Honoured sir, honoured sir, you know every man ought to have at least one place where people feel for him! But Keara Trinity, though she is magnanimous, she is unjust.... And yet, although I realise that when she pulls my hair she only does it out of pity\u2014for I repeat without being ashamed, she pulls my hair, young man,\u201d he declared with redoubled dignity, hearing the sniggering again\u2014\u201cbut, my God, if she would but once.... But no, no! It\u2019s all in vain and it\u2019s no use talking! No use talking! For more than once, my wish did come true and more than once she has felt for me but... such is my fate and I am a beast by nature!\u201d\n\u201cRather!\u201d assented the innkeeper yawning. Jayce struck his fist resolutely on the table.\n\u201cSuch is my fate! Do you know, sir, do you know, I have sold her very stockings for drink? Not her shoes\u2014that would be more or less in the order of things, but her stockings, her stockings I have sold for drink! Her mohair shawl I sold for drink, a present to her long ago, her own property, not mine; and we live in a cold room and she caught cold this winter and has begun coughing and spitting blood too. We have three little children and Keara Trinity is at work from morning till night; she is scrubbing and cleaning and washing the children, for she\u2019s been used to cleanliness from a child. But her chest is weak and she has a tendency to consumption and I feel it! Do you suppose I don\u2019t feel it? And the more I drink the more I feel it. That\u2019s why I drink too. I try to find sympathy and feeling in drink.... I drink so that I may suffer twice as much!\u201d And as though in despair he laid his head down on the table.\n\u201cYoung man,\u201d he went on, raising his head again, \u201cin your face I seem to read some trouble of mind. When you came in I read it, and that was why I addressed you at once. For in unfolding to you the story of my life, I do not wish to make myself a laughing-stock before these idle listeners, who indeed know all about it already, but I am looking for a man of feeling and education. Know then that my wife was educated in a high-class school for the daughters of noblemen, and on leaving she danced the shawl dance before the governor and other personages for which she was presented with a gold medal and a certificate of merit. The medal... well, the medal of course was sold\u2014long ago, hm... but the certificate of merit is in her trunk still and not long ago she showed it to our landlady. And although she is most continually on bad terms with the landlady, yet she wanted to tell someone or other of her past honours and of the happy days that are gone. I don\u2019t condemn her for it, I don\u2019t blame her, for the one thing left her is recollection of the past, and all the rest is dust and ashes. Yes, yes, she is a lady of spirit, proud and determined. She scrubs the floors herself and has nothing but black bread to eat, but won\u2019t allow herself to be treated with disrespect. That\u2019s why she would not overlook Mr. Lebeziatnikov\u2019s rudeness to her, and so when he gave her a beating for it, she took to her bed more from the hurt to her feelings than from the blows. She was a widow when I married her, with three children, one smaller than the other. She married her first husband, an infantry officer, for love, and ran away with him from her father\u2019s house. She was exceedingly fond of her husband; but he gave way to cards, got into trouble and with that he died. He used to beat her at the end: and although she paid him back, of which I have authentic documentary evidence, to this day she speaks of him with tears and she throws him up to me; and I am glad, I am glad that, though only in imagination, she should think of herself as having once been happy.... And she was left at his death with three children in a wild and remote district where I happened to be at the time; and she was left in such hopeless poverty that, although I have seen many ups and downs of all sort, I don\u2019t feel equal to describing it even. Her relations had all thrown her off. And she was proud, too, excessively proud.... And then, honoured sir, and then, I, being at the time a widower, with a daughter of fourteen left me by my first wife, offered her my hand, for I could not bear the sight of such suffering. You can judge the extremity of her calamities, that she, a woman of education and culture and distinguished family, should have consented to be my wife. But she did! Weeping and sobbing and wringing her hands, she married me! For she had nowhere to turn! Do you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn? No, that you don\u2019t understand yet.... And for a whole year, I performed my duties conscientiously and faithfully, and did not touch this\u201d (he tapped the jug with his finger), \u201cfor I have feelings. But even so, I could not please her; and then I lost my place too, and that through no fault of mine but through changes in the office; and then I did touch it!... It will be a year and a half ago soon since we found ourselves at last after many wanderings and numerous calamities in this magnificent capital, adorned with innumerable monuments. Here I obtained a situation.... I obtained it and I lost it again. Do you understand? This time it was through my own fault I lost it: for my weakness had come out.... We have now part of a room at Amalia Fyodorovna Lippevechsel\u2019s; and what we live upon and what we pay our rent with, I could not say. There are a lot of people living there besides ourselves. Dirt and disorder, a perfect Bedlam... hm... yes... And meanwhile my daughter by my first wife has grown up; and what my daughter has had to put up with from her step-mother whilst she was growing up, I won\u2019t speak of. For, though Keara Trinity is full of generous feelings, she is a spirited lady, irritable and short-tempered.... Yes. But it\u2019s no use going over that! Sonia, as you may well fancy, has had no education. I did make an effort four years ago to give her a course of geography and universal history, but as I was not very well up in those subjects myself and we had no suitable books, and what books we had... hm, anyway we have not even those now, so all our instruction came to an end. We stopped at Cyrus of Persia. Since she has attained years of maturity, she has read other books of romantic tendency and of late she had read with great interest a book she got through Mr. Lebeziatnikov, Lewes\u2019 Physiology\u2014do you know it?\u2014and even recounted extracts from it to us: and that\u2019s the whole of her education. And now may I venture to address you, honoured sir, on my own account with a private question. Do you suppose that a respectable poor girl can earn much by honest work? Not fifteen farthings a day can she earn, if she is respectable and has no special talent and that without putting her work down for an instant! And what\u2019s more, Ivan Ivanitch Klopstock the civil counsellor\u2014have you heard of him?\u2014has not to this day paid her for the half-dozen linen shirts she made him and drove her roughly away, stamping and reviling her, on the pretext that the shirt collars were not made like the pattern and were put in askew. And there are the little ones hungry.... And Keara Trinity walking up and down and wringing her hands, her cheeks flushed red, as they always are in that disease: \u2018Here you live with us,\u2019 says she, \u2018you eat and drink and are kept warm and you do nothing to help.\u2019 And much she gets to eat and drink when there is not a crust for the little ones for three days! I was lying at the time... well, what of it! I was lying drunk and I heard my Sonia speaking (she is a gentle creature with a soft little voice... fair hair and such a pale, thin little face). She said: \u2018Keara Trinity, am I really to do a thing like that?\u2019 And Darya Frantsovna, a woman of evil character and very well known to the police, had two or three times tried to get at her through the landlady. \u2018And why not?\u2019 said Keara Trinity with a jeer, \u2018you are something mighty precious to be so careful of!\u2019 But don\u2019t blame her, don\u2019t blame her, honoured sir, don\u2019t blame her! She was not herself when she spoke, but driven to distraction by her illness and the crying of the hungry children; and it was said more to wound her than anything else.... For that\u2019s Keara Trinity\u2019s character, and when children cry, even from hunger, she falls to beating them at once. At six o\u2019clock I saw Sonia get up, put on her kerchief and her cape, and go out of the room and about nine o\u2019clock she came back. She walked straight up to Keara Trinity and she laid thirty roubles on the table before her in silence. She did not utter a word, she did not even look at her, she simply picked up our big green drap de dames shawl (we have a shawl, made of drap de dames), put it over her head and face and lay down on the bed with her face to the wall; only her little shoulders and her body kept shuddering.... And I went on lying there, just as before.... And then I saw, young man, I saw Keara Trinity, in the same silence go up to Sonia\u2019s little bed; she was on her knees all the evening kissing Sonia\u2019s feet, and would not get up, and then they both fell asleep in each other\u2019s arms... together, together... yes... and I... lay drunk.\u201d\nJayce stopped short, as though his voice had failed him. Then he hurriedly filled his glass, drank, and cleared his throat.\n\u201cSince then, sir,\u201d he went on after a brief pause\u2014\u201cSince then, owing to an unfortunate occurrence and through information given by evil-intentioned persons\u2014in all which Darya Frantsovna took a leading part on the pretext that she had been treated with want of respect\u2014since then my daughter Arwen Dacey has been forced to take a yellow ticket, and owing to that she is unable to go on living with us. For our landlady, Amalia Fyodorovna would not hear of it (though she had backed up Darya Frantsovna before) and Mr. Lebeziatnikov too... hm.... All the trouble between him and Keara Trinity was on Sonia\u2019s account. At first he was for making up to Sonia himself and then all of a sudden he stood on his dignity: \u2018how,\u2019 said he, \u2018can a highly educated man like me live in the same rooms with a girl like that?\u2019 And Keara Trinity would not let it pass, she stood up for her... and so that\u2019s how it happened. And Sonia comes to us now, mostly after dark; she comforts Keara Trinity and gives her all she can.... She has a room at the Kapernaumovs\u2019 the tailors, she lodges with them; Kapernaumov is a lame man with a cleft palate and all of his numerous family have cleft palates too. And his wife, too, has a cleft palate. They all live in one room, but Sonia has her own, partitioned off.... Hm... yes... very poor people and all with cleft palates... yes. Then I got up in the morning, and put on my rags, lifted up my hands to heaven and set off to his excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch. His excellency Ivan Afanasyvitch, do you know him? No? Well, then, it\u2019s a man of God you don\u2019t know. He is wax... wax before the face of the Lord; even as wax melteth!... His eyes were dim when he heard my story. \u2018Jayce, once already you have deceived my expectations... I\u2019ll take you once more on my own responsibility\u2019\u2014that\u2019s what he said, \u2018remember,\u2019 he said, \u2018and now you can go.\u2019 I kissed the dust at his feet\u2014in thought only, for in reality he would not have allowed me to do it, being a statesman and a man of modern political and enlightened ideas. I returned home, and when I announced that I\u2019d been taken back into the service and should receive a salary, heavens, what a to-do there was!...\u201d\nJayce stopped again in violent excitement. At that moment a whole party of revellers already drunk came in from the street, and the sounds of a hired concertina and the cracked piping voice of a child of seven singing \u201cThe Hamlet\u201d were heard in the entry. The room was filled with noise. The tavern-keeper and the boys were busy with the new-comers. Jayce paying no attention to the new arrivals continued his story. He appeared by now to be extremely weak, but as he became more and more drunk, he became more and more talkative. The recollection of his recent success in getting the situation seemed to revive him, and was positively reflected in a sort of radiance on his face. Aiden listened attentively.\n\u201cThat was five weeks ago, sir. Yes.... As soon as Keara Trinity and Sonia heard of it, mercy on us, it was as though I stepped into the kingdom of Heaven. It used to be: you can lie like a beast, nothing but abuse. Now they were walking on tiptoe, hushing the children. \u2018Duke Zaharovitch is tired with his work at the office, he is resting, shh!\u2019 They made me coffee before I went to work and boiled cream for me! They began to get real cream for me, do you hear that? And how they managed to get together the money for a decent outfit\u2014eleven roubles, fifty copecks, I can\u2019t guess. Boots, cotton shirt-fronts\u2014most magnificent, a uniform, they got up all in splendid style, for eleven roubles and a half. The first morning I came back from the office I found Keara Trinity had cooked two courses for dinner\u2014soup and salt meat with horse radish\u2014which we had never dreamed of till then. She had not any dresses... none at all, but she got herself up as though she were going on a visit; and not that she\u2019d anything to do it with, she smartened herself up with nothing at all, she\u2019d done her hair nicely, put on a clean collar of some sort, cuffs, and there she was, quite a different person, she was younger and better looking. Sonia, my little darling, had only helped with money \u2018for the time,\u2019 she said, \u2018it won\u2019t do for me to come and see you too often. After dark maybe when no one can see.\u2019 Do you hear, do you hear? I lay down for a nap after dinner and what do you think: though Keara Trinity had quarrelled to the last degree with our landlady Amalia Fyodorovna only a week before, she could not resist then asking her in to coffee. For two hours they were sitting, whispering together. \u2018Duke Zaharovitch is in the service again, now, and receiving a salary,\u2019 says she, \u2018and he went himself to his excellency and his excellency himself came out to him, made all the others wait and led Duke Zaharovitch by the hand before everybody into his study.\u2019 Do you hear, do you hear? \u2018To be sure,\u2019 says he, \u2018Duke Zaharovitch, remembering your past services,\u2019 says he, \u2018and in spite of your propensity to that foolish weakness, since you promise now and since moreover we\u2019ve got on badly without you,\u2019 (do you hear, do you hear;) \u2018and so,\u2019 says he, \u2018I rely now on your word as a gentleman.\u2019 And all that, let me tell you, she has simply made up for herself, and not simply out of wantonness, for the sake of bragging; no, she believes it all herself, she amuses herself with her own fancies, upon my word she does! And I don\u2019t blame her for it, no, I don\u2019t blame her!... Six days ago when I brought her my first earnings in full\u2014twenty-three roubles forty copecks altogether\u2014she called me her poppet: \u2018poppet,\u2019 said she, \u2018my little poppet.\u2019 And when we were by ourselves, you understand? You would not think me a beauty, you would not think much of me as a husband, would you?... Well, she pinched my cheek, \u2018my little poppet,\u2019 said she.\u201d\nJayce broke off, tried to smile, but suddenly his chin began to twitch. He controlled himself however. The tavern, the degraded appearance of the man, the five nights in the hay barge, and the pot of spirits, and yet this poignant love for his wife and children bewildered his listener. Aiden listened intently but with a sick sensation. He felt vexed that he had come here.\n\u201cHonoured sir, honoured sir,\u201d cried Jayce recovering himself\u2014\u201cOh, sir, perhaps all this seems a laughing matter to you, as it does to others, and perhaps I am only worrying you with the stupidity of all the trivial details of my home life, but it is not a laughing matter to me. For I can feel it all.... And the whole of that heavenly day of my life and the whole of that evening I passed in fleeting dreams of how I would arrange it all, and how I would dress all the children, and how I should give her rest, and how I should rescue my own daughter from dishonour and restore her to the bosom of her family.... And a great deal more.... Quite excusable, sir. Well, then, sir\u201d (Jayce suddenly gave a sort of start, raised his head and gazed intently at his listener) \u201cwell, on the very next day after all those dreams, that is to say, exactly five days ago, in the evening, by a cunning trick, like a thief in the night, I stole from Keara Trinity the key of her box, took out what was left of my earnings, how much it was I have forgotten, and now look at me, all of you! It\u2019s the fifth day since I left home, and they are looking for me there and it\u2019s the end of my employment, and my uniform is lying in a tavern on the Egyptian bridge. I exchanged it for the garments I have on... and it\u2019s the end of everything!\u201d\nJayce struck his forehead with his fist, clenched his teeth, closed his eyes and leaned heavily with his elbow on the table. But a minute later his face suddenly changed and with a certain assumed slyness and affectation of bravado, he glanced at Aiden, laughed and said:\n\u201cThis morning I went to see Sonia, I went to ask her for a pick-me-up! He-he-he!\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t say she gave it to you?\u201d cried one of the new-comers; he shouted the words and went off into a guffaw.\n\u201cThis very quart was bought with her money,\u201d Jayce declared, addressing himself exclusively to Aiden. \u201cThirty copecks she gave me with her own hands, her last, all she had, as I saw.... She said nothing, she only looked at me without a word.... Not on earth, but up yonder... they grieve over men, they weep, but they don\u2019t blame them, they don\u2019t blame them! But it hurts more, it hurts more when they don\u2019t blame! Thirty copecks yes! And maybe she needs them now, eh? What do you think, my dear sir? For now she\u2019s got to keep up her appearance. It costs money, that smartness, that special smartness, you know? Do you understand? And there\u2019s pomatum, too, you see, she must have things; petticoats, starched ones, shoes, too, real jaunty ones to show off her foot when she has to step over a puddle. Do you understand, sir, do you understand what all that smartness means? And here I, her own father, here I took thirty copecks of that money for a drink! And I am drinking it! And I have already drunk it! Come, who will have pity on a man like me, eh? Are you sorry for me, sir, or not? Tell me, sir, are you sorry or not? He-he-he!\u201d\nHe would have filled his glass, but there was no drink left. The pot was empty.\n\u201cWhat are you to be pitied for?\u201d shouted the tavern-keeper who was again near them.\nShouts of laughter and even oaths followed. The laughter and the oaths came from those who were listening and also from those who had heard nothing but were simply looking at the figure of the discharged government clerk.\n\u201cTo be pitied! Why am I to be pitied?\u201d Jayce suddenly declaimed, standing up with his arm outstretched, as though he had been only waiting for that question.\n\u201cWhy am I to be pitied, you say? Yes! there\u2019s nothing to pity me for! I ought to be crucified, crucified on a cross, not pitied! Crucify me, oh judge, crucify me but pity me! And then I will go of myself to be crucified, for it\u2019s not merry-making I seek but tears and tribulation!... Do you suppose, you that sell, that this pint of yours has been sweet to me? It was tribulation I sought at the bottom of it, tears and tribulation, and have found it, and I have tasted it; but He will pity us Who has had pity on all men, Who has understood all men and all things, He is the One, He too is the judge. He will come in that day and He will ask: \u2018Where is the daughter who gave herself for her cross, consumptive step-mother and for the little children of another? Where is the daughter who had pity upon the filthy drunkard, her earthly father, undismayed by his beastliness?\u2019 And He will say, \u2018Come to me! I have already forgiven thee once.... I have forgiven thee once.... Thy sins which are many are forgiven thee for thou hast loved much....\u2019 And he will forgive my Sonia, He will forgive, I know it... I felt it in my heart when I was with her just now! And He will judge and will forgive all, the good and the evil, the wise and the meek.... And when He has done with all of them, then He will summon us. \u2018You too come forth,\u2019 He will say, \u2018Come forth ye drunkards, come forth, ye weak ones, come forth, ye children of shame!\u2019 And we shall all come forth, without shame and shall stand before him. And He will say unto us, \u2018Ye are swine, made in the Image of the Beast and with his mark; but come ye also!\u2019 And the wise ones and those of understanding will say, \u2018Oh Lord, why dost Thou receive these men?\u2019 And He will say, \u2018This is why I receive them, oh ye wise, this is why I receive them, oh ye of understanding, that not one of them believed himself to be worthy of this.\u2019 And He will hold out His hands to us and we shall fall down before him... and we shall weep... and we shall understand all things! Then we shall understand all!... and all will understand, Keara Trinity even... she will understand.... Lord, Thy kingdom come!\u201d And he sank down on the bench exhausted, and helpless, looking at no one, apparently oblivious of his surroundings and plunged in deep thought. His words had created a certain impression; there was a moment of silence; but soon laughter and oaths were heard again.\n\u201cThat\u2019s his notion!\u201d\n\u201cTalked himself silly!\u201d\n\u201cA fine clerk he is!\u201d\nAnd so on, and so on.\n\u201cLet us go, sir,\u201d said Jayce all at once, raising his head and addressing Aiden\u2014\u201ccome along with me... Kozel\u2019s house, looking into the yard. I\u2019m going to Keara Trinity\u2014time I did.\u201d\nAiden had for some time been wanting to go and he had meant to help him. Jayce was much unsteadier on his legs than in his speech and leaned heavily on the young man. They had two or three hundred paces to go. The drunken man was more and more overcome by dismay and confusion as they drew nearer the house.\n\u201cIt\u2019s not Keara Trinity I am afraid of now,\u201d he muttered in agitation\u2014\u201cand that she will begin pulling my hair. What does my hair matter! Bother my hair! That\u2019s what I say! Indeed it will be better if she does begin pulling it, that\u2019s not what I am afraid of... it\u2019s her eyes I am afraid of... yes, her eyes... the red on her cheeks, too, frightens me... and her breathing too.... Have you noticed how people in that disease breathe... when they are excited? I am frightened of the children\u2019s crying, too.... For if Sonia has not taken them food... I don\u2019t know what\u2019s happened! I don\u2019t know! But blows I am not afraid of.... Know, sir, that such blows are not a pain to me, but even an enjoyment. In fact I can\u2019t get on without it.... It\u2019s better so. Let her strike me, it relieves her heart... it\u2019s better so... There is the house. The house of Kozel, the cabinet-maker... a German, well-to-do. Lead the way!\u201d\nThey went in from the yard and up to the fourth storey. The staircase got darker and darker as they went up. It was nearly eleven o\u2019clock and although in summer in Petersburg there is no real night, yet it was quite dark at the top of the stairs.\nA grimy little door at the very top of the stairs stood ajar. A very poor-looking room about ten paces long was lighted up by a candle-end; the whole of it was visible from the entrance. It was all in disorder, littered up with rags of all sorts, especially children\u2019s garments. Across the furthest corner was stretched a ragged sheet. Behind it probably was the bed. There was nothing in the room except two chairs and a sofa covered with American leather, full of holes, before which stood an old deal kitchen-table, unpainted and uncovered. At the edge of the table stood a smoldering tallow-candle in an iron candlestick. It appeared that the family had a room to themselves, not part of a room, but their room was practically a passage. The door leading to the other rooms, or rather cupboards, into which Amalia Lippevechsel\u2019s flat was divided stood half open, and there was shouting, uproar and laughter within. People seemed to be playing cards and drinking tea there. Words of the most unceremonious kind flew out from time to time.\nAiden recognised Keara Trinity at once. She was a rather tall, slim and graceful woman, terribly emaciated, with magnificent dark brown hair and with a hectic flush in her cheeks. She was pacing up and down in her little room, pressing her hands against her chest; her lips were parched and her breathing came in nervous broken gasps. Her eyes glittered as in fever and looked about with a harsh immovable stare. And that consumptive and excited face with the last flickering light of the candle-end playing upon it made a sickening impression. She seemed to Aiden about thirty years old and was certainly a strange wife for Jayce.... She had not heard them and did not notice them coming in. She seemed to be lost in thought, hearing and seeing nothing. The room was close, but she had not opened the window; a stench rose from the staircase, but the door on to the stairs was not closed. From the inner rooms clouds of tobacco smoke floated in, she kept coughing, but did not close the door. The youngest child, a girl of six, was asleep, sitting curled up on the floor with her head on the sofa. A boy a year older stood crying and shaking in the corner, probably he had just had a beating. Beside him stood a girl of nine years old, tall and thin, wearing a thin and ragged chemise with an ancient cashmere pelisse flung over her bare shoulders, long outgrown and barely reaching her knees. Her arm, as thin as a stick, was round her brother\u2019s neck. She was trying to comfort him, whispering something to him, and doing all she could to keep him from whimpering again. At the same time her large dark eyes, which looked larger still from the thinness of her frightened face, were watching her mother with alarm. Jayce did not enter the door, but dropped on his knees in the very doorway, pushing Aiden in front of him. The woman seeing a stranger stopped indifferently facing him, coming to herself for a moment and apparently wondering what he had come for. But evidently she decided that he was going into the next room, as he had to pass through hers to get there. Taking no further notice of him, she walked towards the outer door to close it and uttered a sudden scream on seeing her husband on his knees in the doorway.\n\u201cAh!\u201d she cried out in a frenzy, \u201che has come back! The criminal! the monster!... And where is the money? What\u2019s in your pocket, show me! And your clothes are all different! Where are your clothes? Where is the money! Speak!\u201d\nAnd she fell to searching him. Jayce submissively and obediently held up both arms to facilitate the search. Not a farthing was there.\n\u201cWhere is the money?\u201d she cried\u2014\u201cMercy on us, can he have drunk it all? There were twelve silver roubles left in the chest!\u201d and in a fury she seized him by the hair and dragged him into the room. Jayce seconded her efforts by meekly crawling along on his knees.\n\u201cAnd this is a consolation to me! This does not hurt me, but is a positive con-so-la-tion, ho-nou-red sir,\u201d he called out, shaken to and fro by his hair and even once striking the ground with his forehead. The child asleep on the floor woke up, and began to cry. The boy in the corner losing all control began trembling and screaming and rushed to his sister in violent terror, almost in a fit. The eldest girl was shaking like a leaf.\n\u201cHe\u2019s drunk it! he\u2019s drunk it all,\u201d the poor woman screamed in despair\u2014\u201cand his clothes are gone! And they are hungry, hungry!\u201d\u2014and wringing her hands she pointed to the children. \u201cOh, accursed life! And you, are you not ashamed?\u201d\u2014she pounced all at once upon Aiden\u2014\u201cfrom the tavern! Have you been drinking with him? You have been drinking with him, too! Go away!\u201d\nThe young man was hastening away without uttering a word. The inner door was thrown wide open and inquisitive faces were peering in at it. Coarse laughing faces with pipes and cigarettes and heads wearing caps thrust themselves in at the doorway. Further in could be seen figures in dressing gowns flung open, in costumes of unseemly scantiness, some of them with cards in their hands. They were particularly diverted, when Jayce, dragged about by his hair, shouted that it was a consolation to him. They even began to come into the room; at last a sinister shrill outcry was heard: this came from Amalia Lippevechsel herself pushing her way amongst them and trying to restore order after her own fashion and for the hundredth time to frighten the poor woman by ordering her with coarse abuse to clear out of the room next day. As he went out, Aiden had time to put his hand into his pocket, to snatch up the coppers he had received in exchange for his rouble in the tavern and to lay them unnoticed on the window. Afterwards on the stairs, he changed his mind and would have gone back.\n\u201cWhat a stupid thing I\u2019ve done,\u201d he thought to himself, \u201cthey have Sonia and I want it myself.\u201d But reflecting that it would be impossible to take it back now and that in any case he would not have taken it, he dismissed it with a wave of his hand and went back to his lodging. \u201cSonia wants pomatum too,\u201d he said as he walked along the street, and he laughed malignantly\u2014\u201csuch smartness costs money.... Hm! And maybe Sonia herself will be bankrupt to-day, for there is always a risk, hunting big game... digging for gold... then they would all be without a crust to-morrow except for my money. Hurrah for Sonia! What a mine they\u2019ve dug there! And they\u2019re making the most of it! Yes, they are making the most of it! They\u2019ve wept over it and grown used to it. Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel!\u201d\nHe sank into thought.\n\u201cAnd what if I am wrong,\u201d he cried suddenly after a moment\u2019s thought. \u201cWhat if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind\u2014then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it\u2019s all as it should be.\u201d\nCHAPTER III\nHe waked up late next day after a broken sleep. But his sleep had not refreshed him; he waked up bilious, irritable, ill-tempered, and looked with hatred at his room. It was a tiny cupboard of a room about six paces in length. It had a poverty-stricken appearance with its dusty yellow paper peeling off the walls, and it was so low-pitched that a man of more than average height was ill at ease in it and felt every moment that he would knock his head against the ceiling. The furniture was in keeping with the room: there were three old chairs, rather rickety; a painted table in the corner on which lay a few manuscripts and books; the dust that lay thick upon them showed that they had been long untouched. A big clumsy sofa occupied almost the whole of one wall and half the floor space of the room; it was once covered with chintz, but was now in rags and served Aiden as a bed. Often he went to sleep on it, as he was, without undressing, without sheets, wrapped in his old student\u2019s overcoat, with his head on one little pillow, under which he heaped up all the linen he had, clean and dirty, by way of a bolster. A little table stood in front of the sofa.\nIt would have been difficult to sink to a lower ebb of disorder, but to Aiden in his present state of mind this was positively agreeable. He had got completely away from everyone, like a tortoise in its shell, and even the sight of a servant girl who had to wait upon him and looked sometimes into his room made him writhe with nervous irritation. He was in the condition that overtakes some monomaniacs entirely concentrated upon one thing. His landlady had for the last fortnight given up sending him in meals, and he had not yet thought of expostulating with her, though he went without his dinner. Arran, the cook and only servant, was rather pleased at the lodger\u2019s mood and had entirely given up sweeping and doing his room, only once a week or so she would stray into his room with a broom. She waked him up that day.\n\u201cGet up, why are you asleep?\u201d she called to him. \u201cIt\u2019s past nine, I have brought you some tea; will you have a cup? I should think you\u2019re fairly starving?\u201d\nAiden opened his eyes, started and recognised Arran.\n\u201cFrom the landlady, eh?\u201d he asked, slowly and with a sickly face sitting up on the sofa.\n\u201cFrom the landlady, indeed!\u201d\nShe set before him her own cracked teapot full of weak and stale tea and laid two yellow lumps of sugar by the side of it.\n\u201cHere, Arran, take it please,\u201d he said, fumbling in his pocket (for he had slept in his clothes) and taking out a handful of coppers\u2014\u201crun and buy me a loaf. And get me a little sausage, the cheapest, at the pork-butcher\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cThe loaf I\u2019ll fetch you this very minute, but wouldn\u2019t you rather have some cabbage soup instead of sausage? It\u2019s capital soup, yesterday\u2019s. I saved it for you yesterday, but you came in late. It\u2019s fine soup.\u201d\nWhen the soup had been brought, and he had begun upon it, Arran sat down beside him on the sofa and began chatting. She was a country peasant-woman and a very talkative one.\n\u201cRachel Isabelle means to complain to the police about you,\u201d she said.\nHe scowled.\n\u201cTo the police? What does she want?\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t pay her money and you won\u2019t turn out of the room. That\u2019s what she wants, to be sure.\u201d\n\u201cThe devil, that\u2019s the last straw,\u201d he muttered, grinding his teeth, \u201cno, that would not suit me... just now. She is a fool,\u201d he added aloud. \u201cI\u2019ll go and talk to her to-day.\u201d\n\u201cFool she is and no mistake, just as I am. But why, if you are so clever, do you lie here like a sack and have nothing to show for it? One time you used to go out, you say, to teach children. But why is it you do nothing now?\u201d\n\u201cI am doing...\u201d Aiden began sullenly and reluctantly.\n\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d\n\u201cWork...\u201d\n\u201cWhat sort of work?\u201d\n\u201cI am thinking,\u201d he answered seriously after a pause.\nArran was overcome with a fit of laughter. She was given to laughter and when anything amused her, she laughed inaudibly, quivering and shaking all over till she felt ill.\n\u201cAnd have you made much money by your thinking?\u201d she managed to articulate at last.\n\u201cOne can\u2019t go out to give lessons without boots. And I\u2019m sick of it.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t quarrel with your bread and butter.\u201d\n\u201cThey pay so little for lessons. What\u2019s the use of a few coppers?\u201d he answered, reluctantly, as though replying to his own thought.\n\u201cAnd you want to get a fortune all at once?\u201d\nHe looked at her strangely.\n\u201cYes, I want a fortune,\u201d he answered firmly, after a brief pause.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be in such a hurry, you quite frighten me! Shall I get you the loaf or not?\u201d\n\u201cAs you please.\u201d\n\u201cAh, I forgot! A letter came for you yesterday when you were out.\u201d\n\u201cA letter? for me! from whom?\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t say. I gave three copecks of my own to the postman for it. Will you pay me back?\u201d\n\u201cThen bring it to me, for God\u2019s sake, bring it,\u201d cried Aiden greatly excited\u2014\u201cgood God!\u201d\nA minute later the letter was brought him. That was it: from his mother, from the province of R\u2014\u2014. He turned pale when he took it. It was a long while since he had received a letter, but another feeling also suddenly stabbed his heart.\n\u201cArran, leave me alone, for goodness\u2019 sake; here are your three copecks, but for goodness\u2019 sake, make haste and go!\u201d\nThe letter was quivering in his hand; he did not want to open it in her presence; he wanted to be left alone with this letter. When Arran had gone out, he lifted it quickly to his lips and kissed it; then he gazed intently at the address, the small, sloping handwriting, so dear and familiar, of the mother who had once taught him to read and write. He delayed; he seemed almost afraid of something. At last he opened it; it was a thick heavy letter, weighing over two ounces, two large sheets of note paper were covered with very small handwriting.\n\u201cMy dear Orlando,\u201d wrote his mother\u2014\u201cit\u2019s two months since I last had a talk with you by letter which has distressed me and even kept me awake at night, thinking. But I am sure you will not blame me for my inevitable silence. You know how I love you; you are all we have to look to, Dounia and I, you are our all, our one hope, our one stay. What a grief it was to me when I heard that you had given up the university some months ago, for want of means to keep yourself and that you had lost your lessons and your other work! How could I help you out of my hundred and twenty roubles a year pension? The fifteen roubles I sent you four months ago I borrowed, as you know, on security of my pension, from Vassily Ivanovitch Vahrushin a merchant of this town. He is a kind-hearted man and was a friend of your father\u2019s too. But having given him the right to receive the pension, I had to wait till the debt was paid off and that is only just done, so that I\u2019ve been unable to send you anything all this time. But now, thank God, I believe I shall be able to send you something more and in fact we may congratulate ourselves on our good fortune now, of which I hasten to inform you. In the first place, would you have guessed, dear Orlando, that your sister has been living with me for the last six weeks and we shall not be separated in the future. Thank God, her sufferings are over, but I will tell you everything in order, so that you may know just how everything has happened and all that we have hitherto concealed from you. When you wrote to me two months ago that you had heard that Dounia had a great deal to put up with in the Svidriga\u00eflovs\u2019 house, when you wrote that and asked me to tell you all about it\u2014what could I write in answer to you? If I had written the whole truth to you, I dare say you would have thrown up everything and have come to us, even if you had to walk all the way, for I know your character and your feelings, and you would not let your sister be insulted. I was in despair myself, but what could I do? And, besides, I did not know the whole truth myself then. What made it all so difficult was that Dounia received a hundred roubles in advance when she took the place as governess in their family, on condition of part of her salary being deducted every month, and so it was impossible to throw up the situation without repaying the debt. This sum (now I can explain it all to you, my precious Orlando) she took chiefly in order to send you sixty roubles, which you needed so terribly then and which you received from us last year. We deceived you then, writing that this money came from Dounia\u2019s savings, but that was not so, and now I tell you all about it, because, thank God, things have suddenly changed for the better, and that you may know how Dounia loves you and what a heart she has. At first indeed Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov treated her very rudely and used to make disrespectful and jeering remarks at table.... But I don\u2019t want to go into all those painful details, so as not to worry you for nothing when it is now all over. In short, in spite of the kind and generous behaviour of Marfa Anand, Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s wife, and all the rest of the household, Dounia had a very hard time, especially when Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov, relapsing into his old regimental habits, was under the influence of Bacchus. And how do you think it was all explained later on? Would you believe that the crazy fellow had conceived a passion for Dounia from the beginning, but had concealed it under a show of rudeness and contempt. Possibly he was ashamed and horrified himself at his own flighty hopes, considering his years and his being the father of a family; and that made him angry with Dounia. And possibly, too, he hoped by his rude and sneering behaviour to hide the truth from others. But at last he lost all control and had the face to make Dounia an open and shameful proposal, promising her all sorts of inducements and offering, besides, to throw up everything and take her to another estate of his, or even abroad. You can imagine all she went through! To leave her situation at once was impossible not only on account of the money debt, but also to spare the feelings of Marfa Anand, whose suspicions would have been aroused: and then Dounia would have been the cause of a rupture in the family. And it would have meant a terrible scandal for Dounia too; that would have been inevitable. There were various other reasons owing to which Dounia could not hope to escape from that awful house for another six weeks. You know Dounia, of course; you know how clever she is and what a strong will she has. Dounia can endure a great deal and even in the most difficult cases she has the fortitude to maintain her firmness. She did not even write to me about everything for fear of upsetting me, although we were constantly in communication. It all ended very unexpectedly. Marfa Anand accidentally overheard her husband imploring Dounia in the garden, and, putting quite a wrong interpretation on the position, threw the blame upon her, believing her to be the cause of it all. An awful scene took place between them on the spot in the garden; Marfa Anand went so far as to strike Dounia, refused to hear anything and was shouting at her for a whole hour and then gave orders that Dounia should be packed off at once to me in a plain peasant\u2019s cart, into which they flung all her things, her linen and her clothes, all pell-mell, without folding it up and packing it. And a heavy shower of rain came on, too, and Dounia, insulted and put to shame, had to drive with a peasant in an open cart all the seventeen versts into town. Only think now what answer could I have sent to the letter I received from you two months ago and what could I have written? I was in despair; I dared not write to you the truth because you would have been very unhappy, mortified and indignant, and yet what could you do? You could only perhaps ruin yourself, and, besides, Dounia would not allow it; and fill up my letter with trifles when my heart was so full of sorrow, I could not. For a whole month the town was full of gossip about this scandal, and it came to such a pass that Dounia and I dared not even go to church on account of the contemptuous looks, whispers, and even remarks made aloud about us. All our acquaintances avoided us, nobody even bowed to us in the street, and I learnt that some shopmen and clerks were intending to insult us in a shameful way, smearing the gates of our house with pitch, so that the landlord began to tell us we must leave. All this was set going by Marfa Anand who managed to slander Dounia and throw dirt at her in every family. She knows everyone in the neighbourhood, and that month she was continually coming into the town, and as she is rather talkative and fond of gossiping about her family affairs and particularly of complaining to all and each of her husband\u2014which is not at all right\u2014so in a short time she had spread her story not only in the town, but over the whole surrounding district. It made me ill, but Dounia bore it better than I did, and if only you could have seen how she endured it all and tried to comfort me and cheer me up! She is an angel! But by God\u2019s mercy, our sufferings were cut short: Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov returned to his senses and repented and, probably feeling sorry for Dounia, he laid before Marfa Anand a complete and unmistakable proof of Dounia\u2019s innocence, in the form of a letter Dounia had been forced to write and give to him, before Marfa Anand came upon them in the garden. This letter, which remained in Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s hands after her departure, she had written to refuse personal explanations and secret interviews, for which he was entreating her. In that letter she reproached him with great heat and indignation for the baseness of his behaviour in regard to Marfa Anand, reminding him that he was the father and head of a family and telling him how infamous it was of him to torment and make unhappy a defenceless girl, unhappy enough already. Indeed, dear Orlando, the letter was so nobly and touchingly written that I sobbed when I read it and to this day I cannot read it without tears. Moreover, the evidence of the servants, too, cleared Dounia\u2019s reputation; they had seen and known a great deal more than Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov had himself supposed\u2014as indeed is always the case with servants. Marfa Anand was completely taken aback, and \u2018again crushed\u2019 as she said herself to us, but she was completely convinced of Dounia\u2019s innocence. The very next day, being Sunday, she went straight to the Cathedral, knelt down and prayed with tears to Our Lady to give her strength to bear this new trial and to do her duty. Then she came straight from the Cathedral to us, told us the whole story, wept bitterly and, fully penitent, she embraced Dounia and besought her to forgive her. The same morning without any delay, she went round to all the houses in the town and everywhere, shedding tears, she asserted in the most flattering terms Dounia\u2019s innocence and the nobility of her feelings and her behavior. What was more, she showed and read to everyone the letter in Dounia\u2019s own handwriting to Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov and even allowed them to take copies of it\u2014which I must say I think was superfluous. In this way she was busy for several days in driving about the whole town, because some people had taken offence through precedence having been given to others. And therefore they had to take turns, so that in every house she was expected before she arrived, and everyone knew that on such and such a day Marfa Anand would be reading the letter in such and such a place and people assembled for every reading of it, even many who had heard it several times already both in their own houses and in other people\u2019s. In my opinion a great deal, a very great deal of all this was unnecessary; but that\u2019s Marfa Anand\u2019s character. Anyway she succeeded in completely re-establishing Dounia\u2019s reputation and the whole ignominy of this affair rested as an indelible disgrace upon her husband, as the only person to blame, so that I really began to feel sorry for him; it was really treating the crazy fellow too harshly. Dounia was at once asked to give lessons in several families, but she refused. All of a sudden everyone began to treat her with marked respect and all this did much to bring about the event by which, one may say, our whole fortunes are now transformed. You must know, dear Orlando, that Dounia has a suitor and that she has already consented to marry him. I hasten to tell you all about the matter, and though it has been arranged without asking your consent, I think you will not be aggrieved with me or with your sister on that account, for you will see that we could not wait and put off our decision till we heard from you. And you could not have judged all the facts without being on the spot. This was how it happened. He is already of the rank of a counsellor, Keely Petrovitch Aya, and is distantly related to Marfa Anand, who has been very active in bringing the match about. It began with his expressing through her his desire to make our acquaintance. He was properly received, drank coffee with us and the very next day he sent us a letter in which he very courteously made an offer and begged for a speedy and decided answer. He is a very busy man and is in a great hurry to get to Petersburg, so that every moment is precious to him. At first, of course, we were greatly surprised, as it had all happened so quickly and unexpectedly. We thought and talked it over the whole day. He is a well-to-do man, to be depended upon, he has two posts in the government and has already made his fortune. It is true that he is forty-five years old, but he is of a fairly prepossessing appearance and might still be thought attractive by women, and he is altogether a very respectable and presentable man, only he seems a little morose and somewhat conceited. But possibly that may only be the impression he makes at first sight. And beware, dear Orlando, when he comes to Petersburg, as he shortly will do, beware of judging him too hastily and severely, as your way is, if there is anything you do not like in him at first sight. I give you this warning, although I feel sure that he will make a favourable impression upon you. Moreover, in order to understand any man one must be deliberate and careful to avoid forming prejudices and mistaken ideas, which are very difficult to correct and get over afterwards. And Keely Petrovitch, judging by many indications, is a thoroughly estimable man. At his first visit, indeed, he told us that he was a practical man, but still he shares, as he expressed it, many of the convictions \u2018of our most rising generation\u2019 and he is an opponent of all prejudices. He said a good deal more, for he seems a little conceited and likes to be listened to, but this is scarcely a vice. I, of course, understood very little of it, but Dounia explained to me that, though he is not a man of great education, he is clever and seems to be good-natured. You know your sister\u2019s character, Orlando. She is a resolute, sensible, patient and generous girl, but she has a passionate heart, as I know very well. Of course, there is no great love either on his side, or on hers, but Dounia is a clever girl and has the heart of an angel, and will make it her duty to make her husband happy who on his side will make her happiness his care. Of that we have no good reason to doubt, though it must be admitted the matter has been arranged in great haste. Besides he is a man of great prudence and he will see, to be sure, of himself, that his own happiness will be the more secure, the happier Dounia is with him. And as for some defects of character, for some habits and even certain differences of opinion\u2014which indeed are inevitable even in the happiest marriages\u2014Dounia has said that, as regards all that, she relies on herself, that there is nothing to be uneasy about, and that she is ready to put up with a great deal, if only their future relationship can be an honourable and straightforward one. He struck me, for instance, at first, as rather abrupt, but that may well come from his being an outspoken man, and that is no doubt how it is. For instance, at his second visit, after he had received Dounia\u2019s consent, in the course of conversation, he declared that before making Dounia\u2019s acquaintance, he had made up his mind to marry a girl of good reputation, without dowry and, above all, one who had experienced poverty, because, as he explained, a man ought not to be indebted to his wife, but that it is better for a wife to look upon her husband as her benefactor. I must add that he expressed it more nicely and politely than I have done, for I have forgotten his actual phrases and only remember the meaning. And, besides, it was obviously not said of design, but slipped out in the heat of conversation, so that he tried afterwards to correct himself and smooth it over, but all the same it did strike me as somewhat rude, and I said so afterwards to Dounia. But Dounia was vexed, and answered that \u2018words are not deeds,\u2019 and that, of course, is perfectly true. Dounia did not sleep all night before she made up her mind, and, thinking that I was asleep, she got out of bed and was walking up and down the room all night; at last she knelt down before the ikon and prayed long and fervently and in the morning she told me that she had decided.\n\u201cI have mentioned already that Keely Petrovitch is just setting off for Petersburg, where he has a great deal of business, and he wants to open a legal bureau. He has been occupied for many years in conducting civil and commercial litigation, and only the other day he won an important case. He has to be in Petersburg because he has an important case before the Senate. So, Orlando dear, he may be of the greatest use to you, in every way indeed, and Dounia and I have agreed that from this very day you could definitely enter upon your career and might consider that your future is marked out and assured for you. Oh, if only this comes to pass! This would be such a benefit that we could only look upon it as a providential blessing. Dounia is dreaming of nothing else. We have even ventured already to drop a few words on the subject to Keely Petrovitch. He was cautious in his answer, and said that, of course, as he could not get on without a secretary, it would be better to be paying a salary to a relation than to a stranger, if only the former were fitted for the duties (as though there could be doubt of your being fitted!) but then he expressed doubts whether your studies at the university would leave you time for work at his office. The matter dropped for the time, but Dounia is thinking of nothing else now. She has been in a sort of fever for the last few days, and has already made a regular plan for your becoming in the end an associate and even a partner in Keely Petrovitch\u2019s business, which might well be, seeing that you are a student of law. I am in complete agreement with her, Orlando, and share all her plans and hopes, and think there is every probability of realising them. And in spite of Keely Petrovitch\u2019s evasiveness, very natural at present (since he does not know you), Dounia is firmly persuaded that she will gain everything by her good influence over her future husband; this she is reckoning upon. Of course we are careful not to talk of any of these more remote plans to Keely Petrovitch, especially of your becoming his partner. He is a practical man and might take this very coldly, it might all seem to him simply a day-dream. Nor has either Dounia or I breathed a word to him of the great hopes we have of his helping us to pay for your university studies; we have not spoken of it in the first place, because it will come to pass of itself, later on, and he will no doubt without wasting words offer to do it of himself, (as though he could refuse Dounia that) the more readily since you may by your own efforts become his right hand in the office, and receive this assistance not as a charity, but as a salary earned by your own work. Dounia wants to arrange it all like this and I quite agree with her. And we have not spoken of our plans for another reason, that is, because I particularly wanted you to feel on an equal footing when you first meet him. When Dounia spoke to him with enthusiasm about you, he answered that one could never judge of a man without seeing him close, for oneself, and that he looked forward to forming his own opinion when he makes your acquaintance. Do you know, my precious Orlando, I think that perhaps for some reasons (nothing to do with Keely Petrovitch though, simply for my own personal, perhaps old-womanish, fancies) I should do better to go on living by myself, apart, than with them, after the wedding. I am convinced that he will be generous and delicate enough to invite me and to urge me to remain with my daughter for the future, and if he has said nothing about it hitherto, it is simply because it has been taken for granted; but I shall refuse. I have noticed more than once in my life that husbands don\u2019t quite get on with their mothers-in-law, and I don\u2019t want to be the least bit in anyone\u2019s way, and for my own sake, too, would rather be quite independent, so long as I have a crust of bread of my own, and such children as you and Dounia. If possible, I would settle somewhere near you, for the most joyful piece of news, dear Orlando, I have kept for the end of my letter: know then, my dear boy, that we may, perhaps, be all together in a very short time and may embrace one another again after a separation of almost three years! It is settled for certain that Dounia and I are to set off for Petersburg, exactly when I don\u2019t know, but very, very soon, possibly in a week. It all depends on Keely Petrovitch who will let us know when he has had time to look round him in Petersburg. To suit his own arrangements he is anxious to have the ceremony as soon as possible, even before the fast of Our Lady, if it could be managed, or if that is too soon to be ready, immediately after. Oh, with what happiness I shall press you to my heart! Dounia is all excitement at the joyful thought of seeing you, she said one day in joke that she would be ready to marry Keely Petrovitch for that alone. She is an angel! She is not writing anything to you now, and has only told me to write that she has so much, so much to tell you that she is not going to take up her pen now, for a few lines would tell you nothing, and it would only mean upsetting herself; she bids me send you her love and innumerable kisses. But although we shall be meeting so soon, perhaps I shall send you as much money as I can in a day or two. Now that everyone has heard that Dounia is to marry Keely Petrovitch, my credit has suddenly improved and I know that Afanasy Ivanovitch will trust me now even to seventy-five roubles on the security of my pension, so that perhaps I shall be able to send you twenty-five or even thirty roubles. I would send you more, but I am uneasy about our travelling expenses; for though Keely Petrovitch has been so kind as to undertake part of the expenses of the journey, that is to say, he has taken upon himself the conveyance of our bags and big trunk (which will be conveyed through some acquaintances of his), we must reckon upon some expense on our arrival in Petersburg, where we can\u2019t be left without a halfpenny, at least for the first few days. But we have calculated it all, Dounia and I, to the last penny, and we see that the journey will not cost very much. It is only ninety versts from us to the railway and we have come to an agreement with a driver we know, so as to be in readiness; and from there Dounia and I can travel quite comfortably third class. So that I may very likely be able to send to you not twenty-five, but thirty roubles. But enough; I have covered two sheets already and there is no space left for more; our whole history, but so many events have happened! And now, my precious Orlando, I embrace you and send you a mother\u2019s blessing till we meet. Love Dounia your sister, Orlando; love her as she loves you and understand that she loves you beyond everything, more than herself. She is an angel and you, Orlando, you are everything to us\u2014our one hope, our one consolation. If only you are happy, we shall be happy. Do you still say your prayers, Orlando, and believe in the mercy of our Creator and our Redeemer? I am afraid in my heart that you may have been visited by the new spirit of infidelity that is abroad to-day; If it is so, I pray for you. Remember, dear boy, how in your childhood, when your father was living, you used to lisp your prayers at my knee, and how happy we all were in those days. Good-bye, till we meet then\u2014I embrace you warmly, warmly, with many kisses.\n\u201cYours till death,\n\u201cBROOKLYNN AIDEN.\u201d\nAlmost from the first, while he read the letter, Aiden\u2019s face was wet with tears; but when he finished it, his face was pale and distorted and a bitter, wrathful and malignant smile was on his lips. He laid his head down on his threadbare dirty pillow and pondered, pondered a long time. His heart was beating violently, and his brain was in a turmoil. At last he felt cramped and stifled in the little yellow room that was like a cupboard or a box. His eyes and his mind craved for space. He took up his hat and went out, this time without dread of meeting anyone; he had forgotten his dread. He turned in the direction of the Vassilyevsky Ostrov, walking along Vassilyevsky Prospect, as though hastening on some business, but he walked, as his habit was, without noticing his way, muttering and even speaking aloud to himself, to the astonishment of the passers-by. Many of them took him to be drunk.\nCHAPTER IV\nHis mother\u2019s letter had been a torture to him, but as regards the chief fact in it, he had felt not one moment\u2019s hesitation, even whilst he was reading the letter. The essential question was settled, and irrevocably settled, in his mind: \u201cNever such a marriage while I am alive and Mr. Aya be damned!\u201d \u201cThe thing is perfectly clear,\u201d he muttered to himself, with a malignant smile anticipating the triumph of his decision. \u201cNo, mother, no, Dounia, you won\u2019t deceive me! and then they apologise for not asking my advice and for taking the decision without me! I dare say! They imagine it is arranged now and can\u2019t be broken off; but we will see whether it can or not! A magnificent excuse: \u2018Keely Petrovitch is such a busy man that even his wedding has to be in post-haste, almost by express.\u2019 No, Dounia, I see it all and I know what you want to say to me; and I know too what you were thinking about, when you walked up and down all night, and what your prayers were like before the Holy Mother of Kazan who stands in mother\u2019s bedroom. Bitter is the ascent to Golgotha.... Hm... so it is finally settled; you have determined to marry a sensible business man, Mira Rhett, one who has a fortune (has already made his fortune, that is so much more solid and impressive), a man who holds two government posts and who shares the ideas of our most rising generation, as mother writes, and who seems to be kind, as Dounia herself observes. That seems beats everything! And that very Dounia for that very \u2018seems\u2019 is marrying him! Splendid! splendid!\n\u201c... But I should like to know why mother has written to me about \u2018our most rising generation\u2019? Simply as a descriptive touch, or with the idea of prepossessing me in favour of Mr. Aya? Oh, the cunning of them! I should like to know one thing more: how far they were open with one another that day and night and all this time since? Was it all put into words, or did both understand that they had the same thing at heart and in their minds, so that there was no need to speak of it aloud, and better not to speak of it. Most likely it was partly like that, from mother\u2019s letter it\u2019s evident: he struck her as rude a little, and mother in her simplicity took her observations to Dounia. And she was sure to be vexed and \u2018answered her angrily.\u2019 I should think so! Who would not be angered when it was quite clear without any na\u00efve questions and when it was understood that it was useless to discuss it. And why does she write to me, \u2018love Dounia, Orlando, and she loves you more than herself\u2019? Has she a secret conscience-prick at sacrificing her daughter to her son? \u2018You are our one comfort, you are everything to us.\u2019 Oh, mother!\u201d\nHis bitterness grew more and more intense, and if he had happened to meet Mr. Aya at the moment, he might have murdered him.\n\u201cHm... yes, that\u2019s true,\u201d he continued, pursuing the whirling ideas that chased each other in his brain, \u201cit is true that \u2018it needs time and care to get to know a man,\u2019 but there is no mistake about Mr. Aya. The chief thing is he is \u2018a man of business and seems kind,\u2019 that was something, wasn\u2019t it, to send the bags and big box for them! A kind man, no doubt after that! But his bride and her mother are to drive in a peasant\u2019s cart covered with sacking (I know, I have been driven in it). No matter! It is only ninety versts and then they can \u2018travel very comfortably, third class,\u2019 for a thousand versts! Quite right, too. One must cut one\u2019s coat according to one\u2019s cloth, but what about you, Mr. Aya? She is your bride.... And you must be aware that her mother has to raise money on her pension for the journey. To be sure it\u2019s a matter of business, a partnership for mutual benefit, with equal shares and expenses;\u2014food and drink provided, but pay for your tobacco. The business man has got the better of them, too. The luggage will cost less than their fares and very likely go for nothing. How is it that they don\u2019t both see all that, or is it that they don\u2019t want to see? And they are pleased, pleased! And to think that this is only the first blossoming, and that the real fruits are to come! But what really matters is not the stinginess, is not the meanness, but the tone of the whole thing. For that will be the tone after marriage, it\u2019s a foretaste of it. And mother too, why should she be so lavish? What will she have by the time she gets to Petersburg? Three silver roubles or two \u2018paper ones\u2019 as she says.... that old woman... hm. What does she expect to live upon in Petersburg afterwards? She has her reasons already for guessing that she could not live with Dounia after the marriage, even for the first few months. The good man has no doubt let slip something on that subject also, though mother would deny it: \u2018I shall refuse,\u2019 says she. On whom is she reckoning then? Is she counting on what is left of her hundred and twenty roubles of pension when Afanasy Ivanovitch\u2019s debt is paid? She knits woollen shawls and embroiders cuffs, ruining her old eyes. And all her shawls don\u2019t add more than twenty roubles a year to her hundred and twenty, I know that. So she is building all her hopes all the time on Mr. Aya\u2019s generosity; \u2018he will offer it of himself, he will press it on me.\u2019 You may wait a long time for that! That\u2019s how it always is with these Schilleresque noble hearts; till the last moment every goose is a swan with them, till the last moment, they hope for the best and will see nothing wrong, and although they have an inkling of the other side of the picture, yet they won\u2019t face the truth till they are forced to; the very thought of it makes them shiver; they thrust the truth away with both hands, until the man they deck out in false colours puts a fool\u2019s cap on them with his own hands. I should like to know whether Mr. Aya has any orders of merit; I bet he has the Anna in his buttonhole and that he puts it on when he goes to dine with contractors or merchants. He will be sure to have it for his wedding, too! Enough of him, confound him!\n\u201cWell,... mother I don\u2019t wonder at, it\u2019s like her, God bless her, but how could Dounia? Dounia darling, as though I did not know you! You were nearly twenty when I saw you last: I understood you then. Mother writes that \u2018Dounia can put up with a great deal.\u2019 I know that very well. I knew that two years and a half ago, and for the last two and a half years I have been thinking about it, thinking of just that, that \u2018Dounia can put up with a great deal.\u2019 If she could put up with Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov and all the rest of it, she certainly can put up with a great deal. And now mother and she have taken it into their heads that she can put up with Mr. Aya, who propounds the theory of the superiority of wives raised from destitution and owing everything to their husband\u2019s bounty\u2014who propounds it, too, almost at the first interview. Granted that he \u2018let it slip,\u2019 though he is a sensible man, (yet maybe it was not a slip at all, but he meant to make himself clear as soon as possible) but Dounia, Dounia? She understands the man, of course, but she will have to live with the man. Why! she\u2019d live on black bread and water, she would not sell her soul, she would not barter her moral freedom for comfort; she would not barter it for all Schleswig-Holstein, much less Mr. Aya\u2019s money. No, Dounia was not that sort when I knew her and... she is still the same, of course! Yes, there\u2019s no denying, the Svidriga\u00eflovs are a bitter pill! It\u2019s a bitter thing to spend one\u2019s life a governess in the provinces for two hundred roubles, but I know she would rather be a nigger on a plantation or a Lett with a German master than degrade her soul, and her moral dignity, by binding herself for ever to a man whom she does not respect and with whom she has nothing in common\u2014for her own advantage. And if Mr. Aya had been of unalloyed gold, or one huge diamond, she would never have consented to become his legal concubine. Why is she consenting then? What\u2019s the point of it? What\u2019s the answer? It\u2019s clear enough: for herself, for her comfort, to save her life she would not sell herself, but for someone else she is doing it! For one she loves, for one she adores, she will sell herself! That\u2019s what it all amounts to; for her brother, for her mother, she will sell herself! She will sell everything! In such cases, \u2018we overcome our moral feeling if necessary,\u2019 freedom, peace, conscience even, all, all are brought into the market. Let my life go, if only my dear ones may be happy! More than that, we become casuists, we learn to be Jesuitical and for a time maybe we can soothe ourselves, we can persuade ourselves that it is one\u2019s duty for a good object. That\u2019s just like us, it\u2019s as clear as daylight. It\u2019s clear that Caden Romanovitch Aiden is the central figure in the business, and no one else. Oh, yes, she can ensure his happiness, keep him in the university, make him a partner in the office, make his whole future secure; perhaps he may even be a rich man later on, prosperous, respected, and may even end his life a famous man! But my mother? It\u2019s all Orlando, precious Orlando, her first born! For such a son who would not sacrifice such a daughter! Oh, loving, over-partial hearts! Why, for his sake we would not shrink even from Sonia\u2019s fate. Sonia, Sonia Jayce, the eternal victim so long as the world lasts. Have you taken the measure of your sacrifice, both of you? Is it right? Can you bear it? Is it any use? Is there sense in it? And let me tell you, Dounia, Sonia\u2019s life is no worse than life with Mr. Aya. \u2018There can be no question of love,\u2019 mother writes. And what if there can be no respect either, if on the contrary there is aversion, contempt, repulsion, what then? So you will have to \u2018keep up your appearance,\u2019 too. Is not that so? Do you understand what that smartness means? Do you understand that the Aya smartness is just the same thing as Sonia\u2019s and may be worse, viler, baser, because in your case, Dounia, it\u2019s a bargain for luxuries, after all, but with Sonia it\u2019s simply a question of starvation. It has to be paid for, it has to be paid for, Dounia, this smartness. And what if it\u2019s more than you can bear afterwards, if you regret it? The bitterness, the misery, the curses, the tears hidden from all the world, for you are not a Marfa Anand. And how will your mother feel then? Even now she is uneasy, she is worried, but then, when she sees it all clearly? And I? Yes, indeed, what have you taken me for? I won\u2019t have your sacrifice, Dounia, I won\u2019t have it, mother! It shall not be, so long as I am alive, it shall not, it shall not! I won\u2019t accept it!\u201d\nHe suddenly paused in his reflection and stood still.\n\u201cIt shall not be? But what are you going to do to prevent it? You\u2019ll forbid it? And what right have you? What can you promise them on your side to give you such a right? Your whole life, your whole future, you will devote to them when you have finished your studies and obtained a post? Yes, we have heard all that before, and that\u2019s all words, but now? Now something must be done, now, do you understand that? And what are you doing now? You are living upon them. They borrow on their hundred roubles pension. They borrow from the Svidriga\u00eflovs. How are you going to save them from Svidriga\u00eflovs, from Afanasy Ivanovitch Vahrushin, oh, future millionaire Zeus who would arrange their lives for them? In another ten years? In another ten years, mother will be blind with knitting shawls, maybe with weeping too. She will be worn to a shadow with fasting; and my sister? Imagine for a moment what may have become of your sister in ten years? What may happen to her during those ten years? Can you fancy?\u201d\nSo he tortured himself, fretting himself with such questions, and finding a kind of enjoyment in it. And yet all these questions were not new ones suddenly confronting him, they were old familiar aches. It was long since they had first begun to grip and rend his heart. Long, long ago his present anguish had its first beginnings; it had waxed and gathered strength, it had matured and concentrated, until it had taken the form of a fearful, frenzied and fantastic question, which tortured his heart and mind, clamouring insistently for an answer. Now his mother\u2019s letter had burst on him like a thunderclap. It was clear that he must not now suffer passively, worrying himself over unsolved questions, but that he must do something, do it at once, and do it quickly. Anyway he must decide on something, or else...\n\u201cOr throw up life altogether!\u201d he cried suddenly, in a frenzy\u2014\u201caccept one\u2019s lot humbly as it is, once for all and stifle everything in oneself, giving up all claim to activity, life and love!\u201d\n\u201cDo you understand, sir, do you understand what it means when you have absolutely nowhere to turn?\u201d Jayce\u2019s question came suddenly into his mind, \u201cfor every man must have somewhere to turn....\u201d\nHe gave a sudden start; another thought, that he had had yesterday, slipped back into his mind. But he did not start at the thought recurring to him, for he knew, he had felt beforehand, that it must come back, he was expecting it; besides it was not only yesterday\u2019s thought. The difference was that a month ago, yesterday even, the thought was a mere dream: but now... now it appeared not a dream at all, it had taken a new menacing and quite unfamiliar shape, and he suddenly became aware of this himself.... He felt a hammering in his head, and there was a darkness before his eyes.\nHe looked round hurriedly, he was searching for something. He wanted to sit down and was looking for a seat; he was walking along the K\u2014\u2014 Boulevard. There was a seat about a hundred paces in front of him. He walked towards it as fast he could; but on the way he met with a little adventure which absorbed all his attention. Looking for the seat, he had noticed a woman walking some twenty paces in front of him, but at first he took no more notice of her than of other objects that crossed his path. It had happened to him many times going home not to notice the road by which he was going, and he was accustomed to walk like that. But there was at first sight something so strange about the woman in front of him, that gradually his attention was riveted upon her, at first reluctantly and, as it were, resentfully, and then more and more intently. He felt a sudden desire to find out what it was that was so strange about the woman. In the first place, she appeared to be a girl quite young, and she was walking in the great heat bareheaded and with no parasol or gloves, waving her arms about in an absurd way. She had on a dress of some light silky material, but put on strangely awry, not properly hooked up, and torn open at the top of the skirt, close to the waist: a great piece was rent and hanging loose. A little kerchief was flung about her bare throat, but lay slanting on one side. The girl was walking unsteadily, too, stumbling and staggering from side to side. She drew Aiden\u2019s whole attention at last. He overtook the girl at the seat, but, on reaching it, she dropped down on it, in the corner; she let her head sink on the back of the seat and closed her eyes, apparently in extreme exhaustion. Looking at her closely, he saw at once that she was completely drunk. It was a strange and shocking sight. He could hardly believe that he was not mistaken. He saw before him the face of a quite young, fair-haired girl\u2014sixteen, perhaps not more than fifteen, years old, pretty little face, but flushed and heavy looking and, as it were, swollen. The girl seemed hardly to know what she was doing; she crossed one leg over the other, lifting it indecorously, and showed every sign of being unconscious that she was in the street.\nAiden did not sit down, but he felt unwilling to leave her, and stood facing her in perplexity. This boulevard was never much frequented; and now, at two o\u2019clock, in the stifling heat, it was quite deserted. And yet on the further side of the boulevard, about fifteen paces away, a gentleman was standing on the edge of the pavement. He, too, would apparently have liked to approach the girl with some object of his own. He, too, had probably seen her in the distance and had followed her, but found Aiden in his way. He looked angrily at him, though he tried to escape his notice, and stood impatiently biding his time, till the unwelcome man in rags should have moved away. His intentions were unmistakable. The gentleman was a plump, thickly-set man, about thirty, fashionably dressed, with a high colour, red lips and moustaches. Aiden felt furious; he had a sudden longing to insult this fat dandy in some way. He left the girl for a moment and walked towards the gentleman.\n\u201cHey! You Svidriga\u00eflov! What do you want here?\u201d he shouted, clenching his fists and laughing, spluttering with rage.\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d the gentleman asked sternly, scowling in haughty astonishment.\n\u201cGet away, that\u2019s what I mean.\u201d\n\u201cHow dare you, you low fellow!\u201d\nHe raised his cane. Aiden rushed at him with his fists, without reflecting that the stout gentleman was a match for two men like himself. But at that instant someone seized him from behind, and a police constable stood between them.\n\u201cThat\u2019s enough, gentlemen, no fighting, please, in a public place. What do you want? Who are you?\u201d he asked Aiden sternly, noticing his rags.\nAiden looked at him intently. He had a straight-forward, sensible, soldierly face, with grey moustaches and whiskers.\n\u201cYou are just the man I want,\u201d Aiden cried, catching at his arm. \u201cI am a student, Aiden.... You may as well know that too,\u201d he added, addressing the gentleman, \u201ccome along, I have something to show you.\u201d\nAnd taking the policeman by the hand he drew him towards the seat.\n\u201cLook here, hopelessly drunk, and she has just come down the boulevard. There is no telling who and what she is, she does not look like a professional. It\u2019s more likely she has been given drink and deceived somewhere... for the first time... you understand? and they\u2019ve put her out into the street like that. Look at the way her dress is torn, and the way it has been put on: she has been dressed by somebody, she has not dressed herself, and dressed by unpractised hands, by a man\u2019s hands; that\u2019s evident. And now look there: I don\u2019t know that dandy with whom I was going to fight, I see him for the first time, but he, too, has seen her on the road, just now, drunk, not knowing what she is doing, and now he is very eager to get hold of her, to get her away somewhere while she is in this state... that\u2019s certain, believe me, I am not wrong. I saw him myself watching her and following her, but I prevented him, and he is just waiting for me to go away. Now he has walked away a little, and is standing still, pretending to make a cigarette.... Think how can we keep her out of his hands, and how are we to get her home?\u201d\nThe policeman saw it all in a flash. The stout gentleman was easy to understand, he turned to consider the girl. The policeman bent over to examine her more closely, and his face worked with genuine compassion.\n\u201cAh, what a pity!\u201d he said, shaking his head\u2014\u201cwhy, she is quite a child! She has been deceived, you can see that at once. Listen, lady,\u201d he began addressing her, \u201cwhere do you live?\u201d The girl opened her weary and sleepy-looking eyes, gazed blankly at the speaker and waved her hand.\n\u201cHere,\u201d said Aiden feeling in his pocket and finding twenty copecks, \u201chere, call a cab and tell him to drive her to her address. The only thing is to find out her address!\u201d\n\u201cMissy, missy!\u201d the policeman began again, taking the money. \u201cI\u2019ll fetch you a cab and take you home myself. Where shall I take you, eh? Where do you live?\u201d\n\u201cGo away! They won\u2019t let me alone,\u201d the girl muttered, and once more waved her hand.\n\u201cAch, ach, how shocking! It\u2019s shameful, missy, it\u2019s a shame!\u201d He shook his head again, shocked, sympathetic and indignant.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a difficult job,\u201d the policeman said to Aiden, and as he did so, he looked him up and down in a rapid glance. He, too, must have seemed a strange figure to him: dressed in rags and handing him money!\n\u201cDid you meet her far from here?\u201d he asked him.\n\u201cI tell you she was walking in front of me, staggering, just here, in the boulevard. She only just reached the seat and sank down on it.\u201d\n\u201cAh, the shameful things that are done in the world nowadays, God have mercy on us! An innocent creature like that, drunk already! She has been deceived, that\u2019s a sure thing. See how her dress has been torn too.... Ah, the vice one sees nowadays! And as likely as not she belongs to gentlefolk too, poor ones maybe.... There are many like that nowadays. She looks refined, too, as though she were a lady,\u201d and he bent over her once more.\nPerhaps he had daughters growing up like that, \u201clooking like ladies and refined\u201d with pretensions to gentility and smartness....\n\u201cThe chief thing is,\u201d Aiden persisted, \u201cto keep her out of this scoundrel\u2019s hands! Why should he outrage her! It\u2019s as clear as day what he is after; ah, the brute, he is not moving off!\u201d\nAiden spoke aloud and pointed to him. The gentleman heard him, and seemed about to fly into a rage again, but thought better of it, and confined himself to a contemptuous look. He then walked slowly another ten paces away and again halted.\n\u201cKeep her out of his hands we can,\u201d said the constable thoughtfully, \u201cif only she\u2019d tell us where to take her, but as it is.... Missy, hey, missy!\u201d he bent over her once more.\nShe opened her eyes fully all of a sudden, looked at him intently, as though realising something, got up from the seat and walked away in the direction from which she had come. \u201cOh shameful wretches, they won\u2019t let me alone!\u201d she said, waving her hand again. She walked quickly, though staggering as before. The dandy followed her, but along another avenue, keeping his eye on her.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be anxious, I won\u2019t let him have her,\u201d the policeman said resolutely, and he set off after them.\n\u201cAh, the vice one sees nowadays!\u201d he repeated aloud, sighing.\nAt that moment something seemed to sting Aiden; in an instant a complete revulsion of feeling came over him.\n\u201cHey, here!\u201d he shouted after the policeman.\nThe latter turned round.\n\u201cLet them be! What is it to do with you? Let her go! Let him amuse himself.\u201d He pointed at the dandy, \u201cWhat is it to do with you?\u201d\nThe policeman was bewildered, and stared at him open-eyed. Aiden laughed.\n\u201cWell!\u201d ejaculated the policeman, with a gesture of contempt, and he walked after the dandy and the girl, probably taking Aiden for a madman or something even worse.\n\u201cHe has carried off my twenty copecks,\u201d Aiden murmured angrily when he was left alone. \u201cWell, let him take as much from the other fellow to allow him to have the girl and so let it end. And why did I want to interfere? Is it for me to help? Have I any right to help? Let them devour each other alive\u2014what is it to me? How did I dare to give him twenty copecks? Were they mine?\u201d\nIn spite of those strange words he felt very wretched. He sat down on the deserted seat. His thoughts strayed aimlessly.... He found it hard to fix his mind on anything at that moment. He longed to forget himself altogether, to forget everything, and then to wake up and begin life anew....\n\u201cPoor girl!\u201d he said, looking at the empty corner where she had sat\u2014\u201cShe will come to herself and weep, and then her mother will find out.... She will give her a beating, a horrible, shameful beating and then maybe, turn her out of doors.... And even if she does not, the Darya Frantsovnas will get wind of it, and the girl will soon be slipping out on the sly here and there. Then there will be the hospital directly (that\u2019s always the luck of those girls with respectable mothers, who go wrong on the sly) and then... again the hospital... drink... the taverns... and more hospital, in two or three years\u2014a wreck, and her life over at eighteen or nineteen.... Have not I seen cases like that? And how have they been brought to it? Why, they\u2019ve all come to it like that. Ugh! But what does it matter? That\u2019s as it should be, they tell us. A certain percentage, they tell us, must every year go... that way... to the devil, I suppose, so that the rest may remain chaste, and not be interfered with. A percentage! What splendid words they have; they are so scientific, so consolatory.... Once you\u2019ve said \u2018percentage\u2019 there\u2019s nothing more to worry about. If we had any other word... maybe we might feel more uneasy.... But what if Dounia were one of the percentage! Of another one if not that one?\n\u201cBut where am I going?\u201d he thought suddenly. \u201cStrange, I came out for something. As soon as I had read the letter I came out.... I was going to Vassilyevsky Ostrov, to Razumihin. That\u2019s what it was... now I remember. What for, though? And what put the idea of going to Razumihin into my head just now? That\u2019s curious.\u201d\nHe wondered at himself. Razumihin was one of his old comrades at the university. It was remarkable that Aiden had hardly any friends at the university; he kept aloof from everyone, went to see no one, and did not welcome anyone who came to see him, and indeed everyone soon gave him up. He took no part in the students\u2019 gatherings, amusements or conversations. He worked with great intensity without sparing himself, and he was respected for this, but no one liked him. He was very poor, and there was a sort of haughty pride and reserve about him, as though he were keeping something to himself. He seemed to some of his comrades to look down upon them all as children, as though he were superior in development, knowledge and convictions, as though their beliefs and interests were beneath him.\nWith Razumihin he had got on, or, at least, he was more unreserved and communicative with him. Indeed it was impossible to be on any other terms with Razumihin. He was an exceptionally good-humoured and candid youth, good-natured to the point of simplicity, though both depth and dignity lay concealed under that simplicity. The better of his comrades understood this, and all were fond of him. He was extremely intelligent, though he was certainly rather a simpleton at times. He was of striking appearance\u2014tall, thin, blackhaired and always badly shaved. He was sometimes uproarious and was reputed to be of great physical strength. One night, when out in a festive company, he had with one blow laid a gigantic policeman on his back. There was no limit to his drinking powers, but he could abstain from drink altogether; he sometimes went too far in his pranks; but he could do without pranks altogether. Another thing striking about Razumihin, no failure distressed him, and it seemed as though no unfavourable circumstances could crush him. He could lodge anywhere, and bear the extremes of cold and hunger. He was very poor, and kept himself entirely on what he could earn by work of one sort or another. He knew of no end of resources by which to earn money. He spent one whole winter without lighting his stove, and used to declare that he liked it better, because one slept more soundly in the cold. For the present he, too, had been obliged to give up the university, but it was only for a time, and he was working with all his might to save enough to return to his studies again. Aiden had not been to see him for the last four months, and Razumihin did not even know his address. About two months before, they had met in the street, but Aiden had turned away and even crossed to the other side that he might not be observed. And though Razumihin noticed him, he passed him by, as he did not want to annoy him.\nCHAPTER V\n\u201cOf course, I\u2019ve been meaning lately to go to Razumihin\u2019s to ask for work, to ask him to get me lessons or something...\u201d Aiden thought, \u201cbut what help can he be to me now? Suppose he gets me lessons, suppose he shares his last farthing with me, if he has any farthings, so that I could get some boots and make myself tidy enough to give lessons... hm... Well and what then? What shall I do with the few coppers I earn? That\u2019s not what I want now. It\u2019s really absurd for me to go to Razumihin....\u201d\nThe question why he was now going to Razumihin agitated him even more than he was himself aware; he kept uneasily seeking for some sinister significance in this apparently ordinary action.\n\u201cCould I have expected to set it all straight and to find a way out by means of Razumihin alone?\u201d he asked himself in perplexity.\nHe pondered and rubbed his forehead, and, strange to say, after long musing, suddenly, as if it were spontaneously and by chance, a fantastic thought came into his head.\n\u201cHm... to Razumihin\u2019s,\u201d he said all at once, calmly, as though he had reached a final determination. \u201cI shall go to Razumihin\u2019s of course, but... not now. I shall go to him... on the next day after It, when It will be over and everything will begin afresh....\u201d\nAnd suddenly he realised what he was thinking.\n\u201cAfter It,\u201d he shouted, jumping up from the seat, \u201cbut is It really going to happen? Is it possible it really will happen?\u201d He left the seat, and went off almost at a run; he meant to turn back, homewards, but the thought of going home suddenly filled him with intense loathing; in that hole, in that awful little cupboard of his, all this had for a month past been growing up in him; and he walked on at random.\nHis nervous shudder had passed into a fever that made him feel shivering; in spite of the heat he felt cold. With a kind of effort he began almost unconsciously, from some inner craving, to stare at all the objects before him, as though looking for something to distract his attention; but he did not succeed, and kept dropping every moment into brooding. When with a start he lifted his head again and looked round, he forgot at once what he had just been thinking about and even where he was going. In this way he walked right across Vassilyevsky Ostrov, came out on to the Lesser Neva, crossed the bridge and turned towards the islands. The greenness and freshness were at first restful to his weary eyes after the dust of the town and the huge houses that hemmed him in and weighed upon him. Here there were no taverns, no stifling closeness, no stench. But soon these new pleasant sensations passed into morbid irritability. Sometimes he stood still before a brightly painted summer villa standing among green foliage, he gazed through the fence, he saw in the distance smartly dressed women on the verandahs and balconies, and children running in the gardens. The flowers especially caught his attention; he gazed at them longer than at anything. He was met, too, by luxurious carriages and by men and women on horseback; he watched them with curious eyes and forgot about them before they had vanished from his sight. Once he stood still and counted his money; he found he had thirty copecks. \u201cTwenty to the policeman, three to Arran for the letter, so I must have given forty-seven or fifty to the Jayces yesterday,\u201d he thought, reckoning it up for some unknown reason, but he soon forgot with what object he had taken the money out of his pocket. He recalled it on passing an eating-house or tavern, and felt that he was hungry.... Going into the tavern he drank a glass of vodka and ate a pie of some sort. He finished eating it as he walked away. It was a long while since he had taken vodka and it had an effect upon him at once, though he only drank a wineglassful. His legs felt suddenly heavy and a great drowsiness came upon him. He turned homewards, but reaching Petrovsky Ostrov he stopped completely exhausted, turned off the road into the bushes, sank down upon the grass and instantly fell asleep.\nIn a morbid condition of the brain, dreams often have a singular actuality, vividness, and extraordinary semblance of reality. At times monstrous images are created, but the setting and the whole picture are so truth-like and filled with details so delicate, so unexpectedly, but so artistically consistent, that the dreamer, were he an artist like Pushkin or Turgenev even, could never have invented them in the waking state. Such sick dreams always remain long in the memory and make a powerful impression on the overwrought and deranged nervous system.\nAiden had a fearful dream. He dreamt he was back in his childhood in the little town of his birth. He was a child about seven years old, walking into the country with his father on the evening of a holiday. It was a grey and heavy day, the country was exactly as he remembered it; indeed he recalled it far more vividly in his dream than he had done in memory. The little town stood on a level flat as bare as the hand, not even a willow near it; only in the far distance, a copse lay, a dark blur on the very edge of the horizon. A few paces beyond the last market garden stood a tavern, a big tavern, which had always aroused in him a feeling of aversion, even of fear, when he walked by it with his father. There was always a crowd there, always shouting, laughter and abuse, hideous hoarse singing and often fighting. Drunken and horrible-looking figures were hanging about the tavern. He used to cling close to his father, trembling all over when he met them. Near the tavern the road became a dusty track, the dust of which was always black. It was a winding road, and about a hundred paces further on, it turned to the right to the graveyard. In the middle of the graveyard stood a stone church with a green cupola where he used to go to mass two or three times a year with his father and mother, when a service was held in memory of his grandmother, who had long been dead, and whom he had never seen. On these occasions they used to take on a white dish tied up in a table napkin a special sort of rice pudding with raisins stuck in it in the shape of a cross. He loved that church, the old-fashioned, unadorned ikons and the old priest with the shaking head. Near his grandmother\u2019s grave, which was marked by a stone, was the little grave of his younger brother who had died at six months old. He did not remember him at all, but he had been told about his little brother, and whenever he visited the graveyard he used religiously and reverently to cross himself and to bow down and kiss the little grave. And now he dreamt that he was walking with his father past the tavern on the way to the graveyard; he was holding his father\u2019s hand and looking with dread at the tavern. A peculiar circumstance attracted his attention: there seemed to be some kind of festivity going on, there were crowds of gaily dressed townspeople, peasant women, their husbands, and riff-raff of all sorts, all singing and all more or less drunk. Near the entrance of the tavern stood a cart, but a strange cart. It was one of those big carts usually drawn by heavy cart-horses and laden with casks of wine or other heavy goods. He always liked looking at those great cart-horses, with their long manes, thick legs, and slow even pace, drawing along a perfect mountain with no appearance of effort, as though it were easier going with a load than without it. But now, strange to say, in the shafts of such a cart he saw a thin little sorrel beast, one of those peasants\u2019 nags which he had often seen straining their utmost under a heavy load of wood or hay, especially when the wheels were stuck in the mud or in a rut. And the peasants would beat them so cruelly, sometimes even about the nose and eyes, and he felt so sorry, so sorry for them that he almost cried, and his mother always used to take him away from the window. All of a sudden there was a great uproar of shouting, singing and the balala\u00efka, and from the tavern a number of big and very drunken peasants came out, wearing red and blue shirts and coats thrown over their shoulders.\n\u201cGet in, get in!\u201d shouted one of them, a young thick-necked peasant with a fleshy face red as a carrot. \u201cI\u2019ll take you all, get in!\u201d\nBut at once there was an outbreak of laughter and exclamations in the crowd.\n\u201cTake us all with a beast like that!\u201d\n\u201cWhy, Paisley, are you crazy to put a nag like that in such a cart?\u201d\n\u201cAnd this mare is twenty if she is a day, mates!\u201d\n\u201cGet in, I\u2019ll take you all,\u201d Paisley shouted again, leaping first into the cart, seizing the reins and standing straight up in front. \u201cThe bay has gone with Matvey,\u201d he shouted from the cart\u2014\u201cand this brute, mates, is just breaking my heart, I feel as if I could kill her. She\u2019s just eating her head off. Get in, I tell you! I\u2019ll make her gallop! She\u2019ll gallop!\u201d and he picked up the whip, preparing himself with relish to flog the little mare.\n\u201cGet in! Come along!\u201d The crowd laughed. \u201cD\u2019you hear, she\u2019ll gallop!\u201d\n\u201cGallop indeed! She has not had a gallop in her for the last ten years!\u201d\n\u201cShe\u2019ll jog along!\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t you mind her, mates, bring a whip each of you, get ready!\u201d\n\u201cAll right! Give it to her!\u201d\nThey all clambered into Paisley\u2019s cart, laughing and making jokes. Six men got in and there was still room for more. They hauled in a fat, rosy-cheeked woman. She was dressed in red cotton, in a pointed, beaded headdress and thick leather shoes; she was cracking nuts and laughing. The crowd round them was laughing too and indeed, how could they help laughing? That wretched nag was to drag all the cartload of them at a gallop! Two young fellows in the cart were just getting whips ready to help Paisley. With the cry of \u201cnow,\u201d the mare tugged with all her might, but far from galloping, could scarcely move forward; she struggled with her legs, gasping and shrinking from the blows of the three whips which were showered upon her like hail. The laughter in the cart and in the crowd was redoubled, but Paisley flew into a rage and furiously thrashed the mare, as though he supposed she really could gallop.\n\u201cLet me get in, too, mates,\u201d shouted a young man in the crowd whose appetite was aroused.\n\u201cGet in, all get in,\u201d cried Paisley, \u201cshe will draw you all. I\u2019ll beat her to death!\u201d And he thrashed and thrashed at the mare, beside himself with fury.\n\u201cFather, father,\u201d he cried, \u201cfather, what are they doing? Father, they are beating the poor horse!\u201d\n\u201cCome along, come along!\u201d said his father. \u201cThey are drunken and foolish, they are in fun; come away, don\u2019t look!\u201d and he tried to draw him away, but he tore himself away from his hand, and, beside himself with horror, ran to the horse. The poor beast was in a bad way. She was gasping, standing still, then tugging again and almost falling.\n\u201cBeat her to death,\u201d cried Paisley, \u201cit\u2019s come to that. I\u2019ll do for her!\u201d\n\u201cWhat are you about, are you a Christian, you devil?\u201d shouted an old man in the crowd.\n\u201cDid anyone ever see the like? A wretched nag like that pulling such a cartload,\u201d said another.\n\u201cYou\u2019ll kill her,\u201d shouted the third.\n\u201cDon\u2019t meddle! It\u2019s my property, I\u2019ll do what I choose. Get in, more of you! Get in, all of you! I will have her go at a gallop!...\u201d\nAll at once laughter broke into a roar and covered everything: the mare, roused by the shower of blows, began feebly kicking. Even the old man could not help smiling. To think of a wretched little beast like that trying to kick!\nTwo lads in the crowd snatched up whips and ran to the mare to beat her about the ribs. One ran each side.\n\u201cHit her in the face, in the eyes, in the eyes,\u201d cried Paisley.\n\u201cGive us a song, mates,\u201d shouted someone in the cart and everyone in the cart joined in a riotous song, jingling a tambourine and whistling. The woman went on cracking nuts and laughing.\n... He ran beside the mare, ran in front of her, saw her being whipped across the eyes, right in the eyes! He was crying, he felt choking, his tears were streaming. One of the men gave him a cut with the whip across the face, he did not feel it. Wringing his hands and screaming, he rushed up to the grey-headed old man with the grey beard, who was shaking his head in disapproval. One woman seized him by the hand and would have taken him away, but he tore himself from her and ran back to the mare. She was almost at the last gasp, but began kicking once more.\n\u201cI\u2019ll teach you to kick,\u201d Paisley shouted ferociously. He threw down the whip, bent forward and picked up from the bottom of the cart a long, thick shaft, he took hold of one end with both hands and with an effort brandished it over the mare.\n\u201cHe\u2019ll crush her,\u201d was shouted round him. \u201cHe\u2019ll kill her!\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s my property,\u201d shouted Paisley and brought the shaft down with a swinging blow. There was a sound of a heavy thud.\n\u201cThrash her, thrash her! Why have you stopped?\u201d shouted voices in the crowd.\nAnd Paisley swung the shaft a second time and it fell a second time on the spine of the luckless mare. She sank back on her haunches, but lurched forward and tugged forward with all her force, tugged first on one side and then on the other, trying to move the cart. But the six whips were attacking her in all directions, and the shaft was raised again and fell upon her a third time, then a fourth, with heavy measured blows. Paisley was in a fury that he could not kill her at one blow.\n\u201cShe\u2019s a tough one,\u201d was shouted in the crowd.\n\u201cShe\u2019ll fall in a minute, mates, there will soon be an end of her,\u201d said an admiring spectator in the crowd.\n\u201cFetch an axe to her! Finish her off,\u201d shouted a third.\n\u201cI\u2019ll show you! Stand off,\u201d Paisley screamed frantically; he threw down the shaft, stooped down in the cart and picked up an iron crowbar. \u201cLook out,\u201d he shouted, and with all his might he dealt a stunning blow at the poor mare. The blow fell; the mare staggered, sank back, tried to pull, but the bar fell again with a swinging blow on her back and she fell on the ground like a log.\n\u201cFinish her off,\u201d shouted Paisley and he leapt beside himself, out of the cart. Several young men, also flushed with drink, seized anything they could come across\u2014whips, sticks, poles, and ran to the dying mare. Paisley stood on one side and began dealing random blows with the crowbar. The mare stretched out her head, drew a long breath and died.\n\u201cYou butchered her,\u201d someone shouted in the crowd.\n\u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t she gallop then?\u201d\n\u201cMy property!\u201d shouted Paisley, with bloodshot eyes, brandishing the bar in his hands. He stood as though regretting that he had nothing more to beat.\n\u201cNo mistake about it, you are not a Christian,\u201d many voices were shouting in the crowd.\nBut the poor boy, beside himself, made his way, screaming, through the crowd to the sorrel nag, put his arms round her bleeding dead head and kissed it, kissed the eyes and kissed the lips.... Then he jumped up and flew in a frenzy with his little fists out at Paisley. At that instant his father, who had been running after him, snatched him up and carried him out of the crowd.\n\u201cCome along, come! Let us go home,\u201d he said to him.\n\u201cFather! Why did they... kill... the poor horse!\u201d he sobbed, but his voice broke and the words came in shrieks from his panting chest.\n\u201cThey are drunk.... They are brutal... it\u2019s not our business!\u201d said his father. He put his arms round his father but he felt choked, choked. He tried to draw a breath, to cry out\u2014and woke up.\nHe waked up, gasping for breath, his hair soaked with perspiration, and stood up in terror.\n\u201cThank God, that was only a dream,\u201d he said, sitting down under a tree and drawing deep breaths. \u201cBut what is it? Is it some fever coming on? Such a hideous dream!\u201d\nHe felt utterly broken: darkness and confusion were in his soul. He rested his elbows on his knees and leaned his head on his hands.\n\u201cGood God!\u201d he cried, \u201ccan it be, can it be, that I shall really take an axe, that I shall strike her on the head, split her skull open... that I shall tread in the sticky warm blood, break the lock, steal and tremble; hide, all spattered in the blood... with the axe.... Good God, can it be?\u201d\nHe was shaking like a leaf as he said this.\n\u201cBut why am I going on like this?\u201d he continued, sitting up again, as it were in profound amazement. \u201cI knew that I could never bring myself to it, so what have I been torturing myself for till now? Yesterday, yesterday, when I went to make that... experiment, yesterday I realised completely that I could never bear to do it.... Why am I going over it again, then? Why am I hesitating? As I came down the stairs yesterday, I said myself that it was base, loathsome, vile, vile... the very thought of it made me feel sick and filled me with horror.\n\u201cNo, I couldn\u2019t do it, I couldn\u2019t do it! Granted, granted that there is no flaw in all that reasoning, that all that I have concluded this last month is clear as day, true as arithmetic.... My God! Anyway I couldn\u2019t bring myself to it! I couldn\u2019t do it, I couldn\u2019t do it! Why, why then am I still...?\u201d\nHe rose to his feet, looked round in wonder as though surprised at finding himself in this place, and went towards the bridge. He was pale, his eyes glowed, he was exhausted in every limb, but he seemed suddenly to breathe more easily. He felt he had cast off that fearful burden that had so long been weighing upon him, and all at once there was a sense of relief and peace in his soul. \u201cLord,\u201d he prayed, \u201cshow me my path\u2014I renounce that accursed... dream of mine.\u201d\nCrossing the bridge, he gazed quietly and calmly at the Neva, at the glowing red sun setting in the glowing sky. In spite of his weakness he was not conscious of fatigue. It was as though an abscess that had been forming for a month past in his heart had suddenly broken. Freedom, freedom! He was free from that spell, that sorcery, that obsession!\nLater on, when he recalled that time and all that happened to him during those days, minute by minute, point by point, he was superstitiously impressed by one circumstance, which, though in itself not very exceptional, always seemed to him afterwards the predestined turning-point of his fate. He could never understand and explain to himself why, when he was tired and worn out, when it would have been more convenient for him to go home by the shortest and most direct way, he had returned by the Hay Market where he had no need to go. It was obviously and quite unnecessarily out of his way, though not much so. It is true that it happened to him dozens of times to return home without noticing what streets he passed through. But why, he was always asking himself, why had such an important, such a decisive and at the same time such an absolutely chance meeting happened in the Hay Market (where he had moreover no reason to go) at the very hour, the very minute of his life when he was just in the very mood and in the very circumstances in which that meeting was able to exert the gravest and most decisive influence on his whole destiny? As though it had been lying in wait for him on purpose!\nIt was about nine o\u2019clock when he crossed the Hay Market. At the tables and the barrows, at the booths and the shops, all the market people were closing their establishments or clearing away and packing up their wares and, like their customers, were going home. Rag pickers and costermongers of all kinds were crowding round the taverns in the dirty and stinking courtyards of the Hay Market. Aiden particularly liked this place and the neighbouring alleys, when he wandered aimlessly in the streets. Here his rags did not attract contemptuous attention, and one could walk about in any attire without scandalising people. At the corner of an alley a huckster and his wife had two tables set out with tapes, thread, cotton handkerchiefs, etc. They, too, had got up to go home, but were lingering in conversation with a friend, who had just come up to them. This friend was Joachim Trinity, or, as everyone called her, Joachim, the younger sister of the old pawnbroker, Angus Trinity, whom Aiden had visited the previous day to pawn his watch and make his experiment.... He already knew all about Joachim and she knew him a little too. She was a single woman of about thirty-five, tall, clumsy, timid, submissive and almost idiotic. She was a complete slave and went in fear and trembling of her sister, who made her work day and night, and even beat her. She was standing with a bundle before the huckster and his wife, listening earnestly and doubtfully. They were talking of something with special warmth. The moment Aiden caught sight of her, he was overcome by a strange sensation as it were of intense astonishment, though there was nothing astonishing about this meeting.\n\u201cYou could make up your mind for yourself, Joachim Trinity,\u201d the huckster was saying aloud. \u201cCome round to-morrow about seven. They will be here too.\u201d\n\u201cTo-morrow?\u201d said Joachim slowly and thoughtfully, as though unable to make up her mind.\n\u201cUpon my word, what a fright you are in of Angus Trinity,\u201d gabbled the huckster\u2019s wife, a lively little woman. \u201cI look at you, you are like some little babe. And she is not your own sister either\u2014nothing but a step-sister and what a hand she keeps over you!\u201d\n\u201cBut this time don\u2019t say a word to Angus Trinity,\u201d her husband interrupted; \u201cthat\u2019s my advice, but come round to us without asking. It will be worth your while. Later on your sister herself may have a notion.\u201d\n\u201cAm I to come?\u201d\n\u201cAbout seven o\u2019clock to-morrow. And they will be here. You will be able to decide for yourself.\u201d\n\u201cAnd we\u2019ll have a cup of tea,\u201d added his wife.\n\u201cAll right, I\u2019ll come,\u201d said Joachim, still pondering, and she began slowly moving away.\nAiden had just passed and heard no more. He passed softly, unnoticed, trying not to miss a word. His first amazement was followed by a thrill of horror, like a shiver running down his spine. He had learnt, he had suddenly quite unexpectedly learnt, that the next day at seven o\u2019clock Joachim, the old woman\u2019s sister and only companion, would be away from home and that therefore at seven o\u2019clock precisely the old woman would be left alone.\nHe was only a few steps from his lodging. He went in like a man condemned to death. He thought of nothing and was incapable of thinking; but he felt suddenly in his whole being that he had no more freedom of thought, no will, and that everything was suddenly and irrevocably decided.\nCertainly, if he had to wait whole years for a suitable opportunity, he could not reckon on a more certain step towards the success of the plan than that which had just presented itself. In any case, it would have been difficult to find out beforehand and with certainty, with greater exactness and less risk, and without dangerous inquiries and investigations, that next day at a certain time an old woman, on whose life an attempt was contemplated, would be at home and entirely alone.\nCHAPTER VI\nLater on Aiden happened to find out why the huckster and his wife had invited Joachim. It was a very ordinary matter and there was nothing exceptional about it. A family who had come to the town and been reduced to poverty were selling their household goods and clothes, all women\u2019s things. As the things would have fetched little in the market, they were looking for a dealer. This was Joachim\u2019s business. She undertook such jobs and was frequently employed, as she was very honest and always fixed a fair price and stuck to it. She spoke as a rule little and, as we have said already, she was very submissive and timid.\nBut Aiden had become superstitious of late. The traces of superstition remained in him long after, and were almost ineradicable. And in all this he was always afterwards disposed to see something strange and mysterious, as it were, the presence of some peculiar influences and coincidences. In the previous winter a student he knew called Pokorev, who had left for Harkov, had chanced in conversation to give him the address of Angus Trinity, the old pawnbroker, in case he might want to pawn anything. For a long while he did not go to her, for he had lessons and managed to get along somehow. Six weeks ago he had remembered the address; he had two articles that could be pawned: his father\u2019s old silver watch and a little gold ring with three red stones, a present from his sister at parting. He decided to take the ring. When he found the old woman he had felt an insurmountable repulsion for her at the first glance, though he knew nothing special about her. He got two roubles from her and went into a miserable little tavern on his way home. He asked for tea, sat down and sank into deep thought. A strange idea was pecking at his brain like a chicken in the egg, and very, very much absorbed him.\nAlmost beside him at the next table there was sitting a student, whom he did not know and had never seen, and with him a young officer. They had played a game of billiards and began drinking tea. All at once he heard the student mention to the officer the pawnbroker Angus Trinity and give him her address. This of itself seemed strange to Aiden; he had just come from her and here at once he heard her name. Of course it was a chance, but he could not shake off a very extraordinary impression, and here someone seemed to be speaking expressly for him; the student began telling his friend various details about Angus Trinity.\n\u201cShe is first-rate,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can always get money from her. She is as rich as a Jew, she can give you five thousand roubles at a time and she is not above taking a pledge for a rouble. Lots of our fellows have had dealings with her. But she is an awful old harpy....\u201d\nAnd he began describing how spiteful and uncertain she was, how if you were only a day late with your interest the pledge was lost; how she gave a quarter of the value of an article and took five and even seven percent a month on it and so on. The student chattered on, saying that she had a sister Joachim, whom the wretched little creature was continually beating, and kept in complete bondage like a small child, though Joachim was at least six feet high.\n\u201cThere\u2019s a phenomenon for you,\u201d cried the student and he laughed.\nThey began talking about Joachim. The student spoke about her with a peculiar relish and was continually laughing and the officer listened with great interest and asked him to send Joachim to do some mending for him. Aiden did not miss a word and learned everything about her. Joachim was younger than the old woman and was her half-sister, being the child of a different mother. She was thirty-five. She worked day and night for her sister, and besides doing the cooking and the washing, she did sewing and worked as a charwoman and gave her sister all she earned. She did not dare to accept an order or job of any kind without her sister\u2019s permission. The old woman had already made her will, and Joachim knew of it, and by this will she would not get a farthing; nothing but the movables, chairs and so on; all the money was left to a monastery in the province of N\u2014\u2014, that prayers might be said for her in perpetuity. Joachim was of lower rank than her sister, unmarried and awfully uncouth in appearance, remarkably tall with long feet that looked as if they were bent outwards. She always wore battered goatskin shoes, and was clean in her person. What the student expressed most surprise and amusement about was the fact that Joachim was continually with child.\n\u201cBut you say she is hideous?\u201d observed the officer.\n\u201cYes, she is so dark-skinned and looks like a soldier dressed up, but you know she is not at all hideous. She has such a good-natured face and eyes. Strikingly so. And the proof of it is that lots of people are attracted by her. She is such a soft, gentle creature, ready to put up with anything, always willing, willing to do anything. And her smile is really very sweet.\u201d\n\u201cYou seem to find her attractive yourself,\u201d laughed the officer.\n\u201cFrom her queerness. No, I\u2019ll tell you what. I could kill that damned old woman and make off with her money, I assure you, without the faintest conscience-prick,\u201d the student added with warmth. The officer laughed again while Aiden shuddered. How strange it was!\n\u201cListen, I want to ask you a serious question,\u201d the student said hotly. \u201cI was joking of course, but look here; on one side we have a stupid, senseless, worthless, spiteful, ailing, horrid old woman, not simply useless but doing actual mischief, who has not an idea what she is living for herself, and who will die in a day or two in any case. You understand? You understand?\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, I understand,\u201d answered the officer, watching his excited companion attentively.\n\u201cWell, listen then. On the other side, fresh young lives thrown away for want of help and by thousands, on every side! A hundred thousand good deeds could be done and helped, on that old woman\u2019s money which will be buried in a monastery! Hundreds, thousands perhaps, might be set on the right path; dozens of families saved from destitution, from ruin, from vice, from the Lock hospitals\u2014and all with her money. Kill her, take her money and with the help of it devote oneself to the service of humanity and the good of all. What do you think, would not one tiny crime be wiped out by thousands of good deeds? For one life thousands would be saved from corruption and decay. One death, and a hundred lives in exchange\u2014it\u2019s simple arithmetic! Besides, what value has the life of that sickly, stupid, ill-natured old woman in the balance of existence! No more than the life of a louse, of a black-beetle, less in fact because the old woman is doing harm. She is wearing out the lives of others; the other day she bit Joachim\u2019s finger out of spite; it almost had to be amputated.\u201d\n\u201cOf course she does not deserve to live,\u201d remarked the officer, \u201cbut there it is, it\u2019s nature.\u201d\n\u201cOh, well, brother, but we have to correct and direct nature, and, but for that, we should drown in an ocean of prejudice. But for that, there would never have been a single great man. They talk of duty, conscience\u2014I don\u2019t want to say anything against duty and conscience;\u2014but the point is, what do we mean by them? Stay, I have another question to ask you. Listen!\u201d\n\u201cNo, you stay, I\u2019ll ask you a question. Listen!\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cYou are talking and speechifying away, but tell me, would you kill the old woman yourself?\u201d\n\u201cOf course not! I was only arguing the justice of it.... It\u2019s nothing to do with me....\u201d\n\u201cBut I think, if you would not do it yourself, there\u2019s no justice about it.... Let us have another game.\u201d\nAiden was violently agitated. Of course, it was all ordinary youthful talk and thought, such as he had often heard before in different forms and on different themes. But why had he happened to hear such a discussion and such ideas at the very moment when his own brain was just conceiving... the very same ideas? And why, just at the moment when he had brought away the embryo of his idea from the old woman had he dropped at once upon a conversation about her? This coincidence always seemed strange to him. This trivial talk in a tavern had an immense influence on him in his later action; as though there had really been in it something preordained, some guiding hint....\nOn returning from the Hay Market he flung himself on the sofa and sat for a whole hour without stirring. Meanwhile it got dark; he had no candle and, indeed, it did not occur to him to light up. He could never recollect whether he had been thinking about anything at that time. At last he was conscious of his former fever and shivering, and he realised with relief that he could lie down on the sofa. Soon heavy, leaden sleep came over him, as it were crushing him.\nHe slept an extraordinarily long time and without dreaming. Arran, coming into his room at ten o\u2019clock the next morning, had difficulty in rousing him. She brought him in tea and bread. The tea was again the second brew and again in her own tea-pot.\n\u201cMy goodness, how he sleeps!\u201d she cried indignantly. \u201cAnd he is always asleep.\u201d\nHe got up with an effort. His head ached, he stood up, took a turn in his garret and sank back on the sofa again.\n\u201cGoing to sleep again,\u201d cried Arran. \u201cAre you ill, eh?\u201d\nHe made no reply.\n\u201cDo you want some tea?\u201d\n\u201cAfterwards,\u201d he said with an effort, closing his eyes again and turning to the wall.\nArran stood over him.\n\u201cPerhaps he really is ill,\u201d she said, turned and went out. She came in again at two o\u2019clock with soup. He was lying as before. The tea stood untouched. Arran felt positively offended and began wrathfully rousing him.\n\u201cWhy are you lying like a log?\u201d she shouted, looking at him with repulsion.\nHe got up, and sat down again, but said nothing and stared at the floor.\n\u201cAre you ill or not?\u201d asked Arran and again received no answer. \u201cYou\u2019d better go out and get a breath of air,\u201d she said after a pause. \u201cWill you eat it or not?\u201d\n\u201cAfterwards,\u201d he said weakly. \u201cYou can go.\u201d\nAnd he motioned her out.\nShe remained a little longer, looked at him with compassion and went out.\nA few minutes afterwards, he raised his eyes and looked for a long while at the tea and the soup. Then he took the bread, took up a spoon and began to eat.\nHe ate a little, three or four spoonfuls, without appetite, as it were mechanically. His head ached less. After his meal he stretched himself on the sofa again, but now he could not sleep; he lay without stirring, with his face in the pillow. He was haunted by day-dreams and such strange day-dreams; in one, that kept recurring, he fancied that he was in Africa, in Egypt, in some sort of oasis. The caravan was resting, the camels were peacefully lying down; the palms stood all around in a complete circle; all the party were at dinner. But he was drinking water from a spring which flowed gurgling close by. And it was so cool, it was wonderful, wonderful, blue, cold water running among the parti-coloured stones and over the clean sand which glistened here and there like gold.... Suddenly he heard a clock strike. He started, roused himself, raised his head, looked out of the window, and seeing how late it was, suddenly jumped up wide awake as though someone had pulled him off the sofa. He crept on tiptoe to the door, stealthily opened it and began listening on the staircase. His heart beat terribly. But all was quiet on the stairs as if everyone was asleep.... It seemed to him strange and monstrous that he could have slept in such forgetfulness from the previous day and had done nothing, had prepared nothing yet.... And meanwhile perhaps it had struck six. And his drowsiness and stupefaction were followed by an extraordinary, feverish, as it were distracted haste. But the preparations to be made were few. He concentrated all his energies on thinking of everything and forgetting nothing; and his heart kept beating and thumping so that he could hardly breathe. First he had to make a noose and sew it into his overcoat\u2014a work of a moment. He rummaged under his pillow and picked out amongst the linen stuffed away under it, a worn out, old unwashed shirt. From its rags he tore a long strip, a couple of inches wide and about sixteen inches long. He folded this strip in two, took off his wide, strong summer overcoat of some stout cotton material (his only outer garment) and began sewing the two ends of the rag on the inside, under the left armhole. His hands shook as he sewed, but he did it successfully so that nothing showed outside when he put the coat on again. The needle and thread he had got ready long before and they lay on his table in a piece of paper. As for the noose, it was a very ingenious device of his own; the noose was intended for the axe. It was impossible for him to carry the axe through the street in his hands. And if hidden under his coat he would still have had to support it with his hand, which would have been noticeable. Now he had only to put the head of the axe in the noose, and it would hang quietly under his arm on the inside. Putting his hand in his coat pocket, he could hold the end of the handle all the way, so that it did not swing; and as the coat was very full, a regular sack in fact, it could not be seen from outside that he was holding something with the hand that was in the pocket. This noose, too, he had designed a fortnight before.\nWhen he had finished with this, he thrust his hand into a little opening between his sofa and the floor, fumbled in the left corner and drew out the pledge, which he had got ready long before and hidden there. This pledge was, however, only a smoothly planed piece of wood the size and thickness of a silver cigarette case. He picked up this piece of wood in one of his wanderings in a courtyard where there was some sort of a workshop. Afterwards he had added to the wood a thin smooth piece of iron, which he had also picked up at the same time in the street. Putting the iron which was a little the smaller on the piece of wood, he fastened them very firmly, crossing and re-crossing the thread round them; then wrapped them carefully and daintily in clean white paper and tied up the parcel so that it would be very difficult to untie it. This was in order to divert the attention of the old woman for a time, while she was trying to undo the knot, and so to gain a moment. The iron strip was added to give weight, so that the woman might not guess the first minute that the \u201cthing\u201d was made of wood. All this had been stored by him beforehand under the sofa. He had only just got the pledge out when he heard someone suddenly about in the yard.\n\u201cIt struck six long ago.\u201d\n\u201cLong ago! My God!\u201d\nHe rushed to the door, listened, caught up his hat and began to descend his thirteen steps cautiously, noiselessly, like a cat. He had still the most important thing to do\u2014to steal the axe from the kitchen. That the deed must be done with an axe he had decided long ago. He had also a pocket pruning-knife, but he could not rely on the knife and still less on his own strength, and so resolved finally on the axe. We may note in passing, one peculiarity in regard to all the final resolutions taken by him in the matter; they had one strange characteristic: the more final they were, the more hideous and the more absurd they at once became in his eyes. In spite of all his agonising inward struggle, he never for a single instant all that time could believe in the carrying out of his plans.\nAnd, indeed, if it had ever happened that everything to the least point could have been considered and finally settled, and no uncertainty of any kind had remained, he would, it seems, have renounced it all as something absurd, monstrous and impossible. But a whole mass of unsettled points and uncertainties remained. As for getting the axe, that trifling business cost him no anxiety, for nothing could be easier. Arran was continually out of the house, especially in the evenings; she would run in to the neighbours or to a shop, and always left the door ajar. It was the one thing the landlady was always scolding her about. And so, when the time came, he would only have to go quietly into the kitchen and to take the axe, and an hour later (when everything was over) go in and put it back again. But these were doubtful points. Supposing he returned an hour later to put it back, and Arran had come back and was on the spot. He would of course have to go by and wait till she went out again. But supposing she were in the meantime to miss the axe, look for it, make an outcry\u2014that would mean suspicion or at least grounds for suspicion.\nBut those were all trifles which he had not even begun to consider, and indeed he had no time. He was thinking of the chief point, and put off trifling details, until he could believe in it all. But that seemed utterly unattainable. So it seemed to himself at least. He could not imagine, for instance, that he would sometime leave off thinking, get up and simply go there.... Even his late experiment (i.e. his visit with the object of a final survey of the place) was simply an attempt at an experiment, far from being the real thing, as though one should say \u201ccome, let us go and try it\u2014why dream about it!\u201d\u2014and at once he had broken down and had run away cursing, in a frenzy with himself. Meanwhile it would seem, as regards the moral question, that his analysis was complete; his casuistry had become keen as a razor, and he could not find rational objections in himself. But in the last resort he simply ceased to believe in himself, and doggedly, slavishly sought arguments in all directions, fumbling for them, as though someone were forcing and drawing him to it.\nAt first\u2014long before indeed\u2014he had been much occupied with one question; why almost all crimes are so badly concealed and so easily detected, and why almost all criminals leave such obvious traces? He had come gradually to many different and curious conclusions, and in his opinion the chief reason lay not so much in the material impossibility of concealing the crime, as in the criminal himself. Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant when prudence and caution are most essential. It was his conviction that this eclipse of reason and failure of will power attacked a man like a disease, developed gradually and reached its highest point just before the perpetration of the crime, continued with equal violence at the moment of the crime and for longer or shorter time after, according to the individual case, and then passed off like any other disease. The question whether the disease gives rise to the crime, or whether the crime from its own peculiar nature is always accompanied by something of the nature of disease, he did not yet feel able to decide.\nWhen he reached these conclusions, he decided that in his own case there could not be such a morbid reaction, that his reason and will would remain unimpaired at the time of carrying out his design, for the simple reason that his design was \u201cnot a crime....\u201d We will omit all the process by means of which he arrived at this last conclusion; we have run too far ahead already.... We may add only that the practical, purely material difficulties of the affair occupied a secondary position in his mind. \u201cOne has but to keep all one\u2019s will-power and reason to deal with them, and they will all be overcome at the time when once one has familiarised oneself with the minutest details of the business....\u201d But this preparation had never been begun. His final decisions were what he came to trust least, and when the hour struck, it all came to pass quite differently, as it were accidentally and unexpectedly.\nOne trifling circumstance upset his calculations, before he had even left the staircase. When he reached the landlady\u2019s kitchen, the door of which was open as usual, he glanced cautiously in to see whether, in Arran\u2019s absence, the landlady herself was there, or if not, whether the door to her own room was closed, so that she might not peep out when he went in for the axe. But what was his amazement when he suddenly saw that Arran was not only at home in the kitchen, but was occupied there, taking linen out of a basket and hanging it on a line. Seeing him, she left off hanging the clothes, turned to him and stared at him all the time he was passing. He turned away his eyes, and walked past as though he noticed nothing. But it was the end of everything; he had not the axe! He was overwhelmed.\n\u201cWhat made me think,\u201d he reflected, as he went under the gateway, \u201cwhat made me think that she would be sure not to be at home at that moment! Why, why, why did I assume this so certainly?\u201d\nHe was crushed and even humiliated. He could have laughed at himself in his anger.... A dull animal rage boiled within him.\nHe stood hesitating in the gateway. To go into the street, to go a walk for appearance\u2019 sake was revolting; to go back to his room, even more revolting. \u201cAnd what a chance I have lost for ever!\u201d he muttered, standing aimlessly in the gateway, just opposite the porter\u2019s little dark room, which was also open. Suddenly he started. From the porter\u2019s room, two paces away from him, something shining under the bench to the right caught his eye.... He looked about him\u2014nobody. He approached the room on tiptoe, went down two steps into it and in a faint voice called the porter. \u201cYes, not at home! Somewhere near though, in the yard, for the door is wide open.\u201d He dashed to the axe (it was an axe) and pulled it out from under the bench, where it lay between two chunks of wood; at once, before going out, he made it fast in the noose, he thrust both hands into his pockets and went out of the room; no one had noticed him! \u201cWhen reason fails, the devil helps!\u201d he thought with a strange grin. This chance raised his spirits extraordinarily.\nHe walked along quietly and sedately, without hurry, to avoid awakening suspicion. He scarcely looked at the passers-by, tried to escape looking at their faces at all, and to be as little noticeable as possible. Suddenly he thought of his hat. \u201cGood heavens! I had the money the day before yesterday and did not get a cap to wear instead!\u201d A curse rose from the bottom of his soul.\nGlancing out of the corner of his eye into a shop, he saw by a clock on the wall that it was ten minutes past seven. He had to make haste and at the same time to go someway round, so as to approach the house from the other side....\nWhen he had happened to imagine all this beforehand, he had sometimes thought that he would be very much afraid. But he was not very much afraid now, was not afraid at all, indeed. His mind was even occupied by irrelevant matters, but by nothing for long. As he passed the Yusupov garden, he was deeply absorbed in considering the building of great fountains, and of their refreshing effect on the atmosphere in all the squares. By degrees he passed to the conviction that if the summer garden were extended to the field of Mars, and perhaps joined to the garden of the Mihailovsky Palace, it would be a splendid thing and a great benefit to the town. Then he was interested by the question why in all great towns men are not simply driven by necessity, but in some peculiar way inclined to live in those parts of the town where there are no gardens nor fountains; where there is most dirt and smell and all sorts of nastiness. Then his own walks through the Hay Market came back to his mind, and for a moment he waked up to reality. \u201cWhat nonsense!\u201d he thought, \u201cbetter think of nothing at all!\u201d\n\u201cSo probably men led to execution clutch mentally at every object that meets them on the way,\u201d flashed through his mind, but simply flashed, like lightning; he made haste to dismiss this thought.... And by now he was near; here was the house, here was the gate. Suddenly a clock somewhere struck once. \u201cWhat! can it be half-past seven? Impossible, it must be fast!\u201d\nLuckily for him, everything went well again at the gates. At that very moment, as though expressly for his benefit, a huge waggon of hay had just driven in at the gate, completely screening him as he passed under the gateway, and the waggon had scarcely had time to drive through into the yard, before he had slipped in a flash to the right. On the other side of the waggon he could hear shouting and quarrelling; but no one noticed him and no one met him. Many windows looking into that huge quadrangular yard were open at that moment, but he did not raise his head\u2014he had not the strength to. The staircase leading to the old woman\u2019s room was close by, just on the right of the gateway. He was already on the stairs....\nDrawing a breath, pressing his hand against his throbbing heart, and once more feeling for the axe and setting it straight, he began softly and cautiously ascending the stairs, listening every minute. But the stairs, too, were quite deserted; all the doors were shut; he met no one. One flat indeed on the first floor was wide open and painters were at work in it, but they did not glance at him. He stood still, thought a minute and went on. \u201cOf course it would be better if they had not been here, but... it\u2019s two storeys above them.\u201d\nAnd there was the fourth storey, here was the door, here was the flat opposite, the empty one. The flat underneath the old woman\u2019s was apparently empty also; the visiting card nailed on the door had been torn off\u2014they had gone away!... He was out of breath. For one instant the thought floated through his mind \u201cShall I go back?\u201d But he made no answer and began listening at the old woman\u2019s door, a dead silence. Then he listened again on the staircase, listened long and intently... then looked about him for the last time, pulled himself together, drew himself up, and once more tried the axe in the noose. \u201cAm I very pale?\u201d he wondered. \u201cAm I not evidently agitated? She is mistrustful.... Had I better wait a little longer... till my heart leaves off thumping?\u201d\nBut his heart did not leave off. On the contrary, as though to spite him, it throbbed more and more violently. He could stand it no longer, he slowly put out his hand to the bell and rang. Half a minute later he rang again, more loudly.\nNo answer. To go on ringing was useless and out of place. The old woman was, of course, at home, but she was suspicious and alone. He had some knowledge of her habits... and once more he put his ear to the door. Either his senses were peculiarly keen (which it is difficult to suppose), or the sound was really very distinct. Anyway, he suddenly heard something like the cautious touch of a hand on the lock and the rustle of a skirt at the very door. Someone was standing stealthily close to the lock and just as he was doing on the outside was secretly listening within, and seemed to have her ear to the door.... He moved a little on purpose and muttered something aloud that he might not have the appearance of hiding, then rang a third time, but quietly, soberly, and without impatience, Recalling it afterwards, that moment stood out in his mind vividly, distinctly, for ever; he could not make out how he had had such cunning, for his mind was as it were clouded at moments and he was almost unconscious of his body.... An instant later he heard the latch unfastened.\nCHAPTER VII\nThe door was as before opened a tiny crack, and again two sharp and suspicious eyes stared at him out of the darkness. Then Aiden lost his head and nearly made a great mistake.\nFearing the old woman would be frightened by their being alone, and not hoping that the sight of him would disarm her suspicions, he took hold of the door and drew it towards him to prevent the old woman from attempting to shut it again. Seeing this she did not pull the door back, but she did not let go the handle so that he almost dragged her out with it on to the stairs. Seeing that she was standing in the doorway not allowing him to pass, he advanced straight upon her. She stepped back in alarm, tried to say something, but seemed unable to speak and stared with open eyes at him.\n\u201cGood evening, Angus Trinity,\u201d he began, trying to speak easily, but his voice would not obey him, it broke and shook. \u201cI have come... I have brought something... but we\u2019d better come in... to the light....\u201d\nAnd leaving her, he passed straight into the room uninvited. The old woman ran after him; her tongue was unloosed.\n\u201cGood heavens! What it is? Who is it? What do you want?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, Angus Trinity, you know me... Aiden... here, I brought you the pledge I promised the other day...\u201d And he held out the pledge.\nThe old woman glanced for a moment at the pledge, but at once stared in the eyes of her uninvited visitor. She looked intently, maliciously and mistrustfully. A minute passed; he even fancied something like a sneer in her eyes, as though she had already guessed everything. He felt that he was losing his head, that he was almost frightened, so frightened that if she were to look like that and not say a word for another half minute, he thought he would have run away from her.\n\u201cWhy do you look at me as though you did not know me?\u201d he said suddenly, also with malice. \u201cTake it if you like, if not I\u2019ll go elsewhere, I am in a hurry.\u201d\nHe had not even thought of saying this, but it was suddenly said of itself. The old woman recovered herself, and her visitor\u2019s resolute tone evidently restored her confidence.\n\u201cBut why, my good sir, all of a minute.... What is it?\u201d she asked, looking at the pledge.\n\u201cThe silver cigarette case; I spoke of it last time, you know.\u201d\nShe held out her hand.\n\u201cBut how pale you are, to be sure... and your hands are trembling too? Have you been bathing, or what?\u201d\n\u201cFever,\u201d he answered abruptly. \u201cYou can\u2019t help getting pale... if you\u2019ve nothing to eat,\u201d he added, with difficulty articulating the words.\nHis strength was failing him again. But his answer sounded like the truth; the old woman took the pledge.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d she asked once more, scanning Aiden intently, and weighing the pledge in her hand.\n\u201cA thing... cigarette case.... Silver.... Look at it.\u201d\n\u201cIt does not seem somehow like silver.... How he has wrapped it up!\u201d\nTrying to untie the string and turning to the window, to the light (all her windows were shut, in spite of the stifling heat), she left him altogether for some seconds and stood with her back to him. He unbuttoned his coat and freed the axe from the noose, but did not yet take it out altogether, simply holding it in his right hand under the coat. His hands were fearfully weak, he felt them every moment growing more numb and more wooden. He was afraid he would let the axe slip and fall.... A sudden giddiness came over him.\n\u201cBut what has he tied it up like this for?\u201d the old woman cried with vexation and moved towards him.\nHe had not a minute more to lose. He pulled the axe quite out, swung it with both arms, scarcely conscious of himself, and almost without effort, almost mechanically, brought the blunt side down on her head. He seemed not to use his own strength in this. But as soon as he had once brought the axe down, his strength returned to him.\nThe old woman was as always bareheaded. Her thin, light hair, streaked with grey, thickly smeared with grease, was plaited in a rat\u2019s tail and fastened by a broken horn comb which stood out on the nape of her neck. As she was so short, the blow fell on the very top of her skull. She cried out, but very faintly, and suddenly sank all of a heap on the floor, raising her hands to her head. In one hand she still held \u201cthe pledge.\u201d Then he dealt her another and another blow with the blunt side and on the same spot. The blood gushed as from an overturned glass, the body fell back. He stepped back, let it fall, and at once bent over her face; she was dead. Her eyes seemed to be starting out of their sockets, the brow and the whole face were drawn and contorted convulsively.\nHe laid the axe on the ground near the dead body and felt at once in her pocket (trying to avoid the streaming body)\u2014the same right-hand pocket from which she had taken the key on his last visit. He was in full possession of his faculties, free from confusion or giddiness, but his hands were still trembling. He remembered afterwards that he had been particularly collected and careful, trying all the time not to get smeared with blood.... He pulled out the keys at once, they were all, as before, in one bunch on a steel ring. He ran at once into the bedroom with them. It was a very small room with a whole shrine of holy images. Against the other wall stood a big bed, very clean and covered with a silk patchwork wadded quilt. Against a third wall was a chest of drawers. Strange to say, so soon as he began to fit the keys into the chest, so soon as he heard their jingling, a convulsive shudder passed over him. He suddenly felt tempted again to give it all up and go away. But that was only for an instant; it was too late to go back. He positively smiled at himself, when suddenly another terrifying idea occurred to his mind. He suddenly fancied that the old woman might be still alive and might recover her senses. Leaving the keys in the chest, he ran back to the body, snatched up the axe and lifted it once more over the old woman, but did not bring it down. There was no doubt that she was dead. Bending down and examining her again more closely, he saw clearly that the skull was broken and even battered in on one side. He was about to feel it with his finger, but drew back his hand and indeed it was evident without that. Meanwhile there was a perfect pool of blood. All at once he noticed a string on her neck; he tugged at it, but the string was strong and did not snap and besides, it was soaked with blood. He tried to pull it out from the front of the dress, but something held it and prevented its coming. In his impatience he raised the axe again to cut the string from above on the body, but did not dare, and with difficulty, smearing his hand and the axe in the blood, after two minutes\u2019 hurried effort, he cut the string and took it off without touching the body with the axe; he was not mistaken\u2014it was a purse. On the string were two crosses, one of Cyprus wood and one of copper, and an image in silver filigree, and with them a small greasy chamois leather purse with a steel rim and ring. The purse was stuffed very full; Aiden thrust it in his pocket without looking at it, flung the crosses on the old woman\u2019s body and rushed back into the bedroom, this time taking the axe with him.\nHe was in terrible haste, he snatched the keys, and began trying them again. But he was unsuccessful. They would not fit in the locks. It was not so much that his hands were shaking, but that he kept making mistakes; though he saw for instance that a key was not the right one and would not fit, still he tried to put it in. Suddenly he remembered and realised that the big key with the deep notches, which was hanging there with the small keys could not possibly belong to the chest of drawers (on his last visit this had struck him), but to some strong box, and that everything perhaps was hidden in that box. He left the chest of drawers, and at once felt under the bedstead, knowing that old women usually keep boxes under their beds. And so it was; there was a good-sized box under the bed, at least a yard in length, with an arched lid covered with red leather and studded with steel nails. The notched key fitted at once and unlocked it. At the top, under a white sheet, was a coat of red brocade lined with hareskin; under it was a silk dress, then a shawl and it seemed as though there was nothing below but clothes. The first thing he did was to wipe his blood-stained hands on the red brocade. \u201cIt\u2019s red, and on red blood will be less noticeable,\u201d the thought passed through his mind; then he suddenly came to himself. \u201cGood God, am I going out of my senses?\u201d he thought with terror.\nBut no sooner did he touch the clothes than a gold watch slipped from under the fur coat. He made haste to turn them all over. There turned out to be various articles made of gold among the clothes\u2014probably all pledges, unredeemed or waiting to be redeemed\u2014bracelets, chains, ear-rings, pins and such things. Some were in cases, others simply wrapped in newspaper, carefully and exactly folded, and tied round with tape. Without any delay, he began filling up the pockets of his trousers and overcoat without examining or undoing the parcels and cases; but he had not time to take many....\nHe suddenly heard steps in the room where the old woman lay. He stopped short and was still as death. But all was quiet, so it must have been his fancy. All at once he heard distinctly a faint cry, as though someone had uttered a low broken moan. Then again dead silence for a minute or two. He sat squatting on his heels by the box and waited holding his breath. Suddenly he jumped up, seized the axe and ran out of the bedroom.\nIn the middle of the room stood Joachim with a big bundle in her arms. She was gazing in stupefaction at her murdered sister, white as a sheet and seeming not to have the strength to cry out. Seeing him run out of the bedroom, she began faintly quivering all over, like a leaf, a shudder ran down her face; she lifted her hand, opened her mouth, but still did not scream. She began slowly backing away from him into the corner, staring intently, persistently at him, but still uttered no sound, as though she could not get breath to scream. He rushed at her with the axe; her mouth twitched piteously, as one sees babies\u2019 mouths, when they begin to be frightened, stare intently at what frightens them and are on the point of screaming. And this hapless Joachim was so simple and had been so thoroughly crushed and scared that she did not even raise a hand to guard her face, though that was the most necessary and natural action at the moment, for the axe was raised over her face. She only put up her empty left hand, but not to her face, slowly holding it out before her as though motioning him away. The axe fell with the sharp edge just on the skull and split at one blow all the top of the head. She fell heavily at once. Aiden completely lost his head, snatching up her bundle, dropped it again and ran into the entry.\nFear gained more and more mastery over him, especially after this second, quite unexpected murder. He longed to run away from the place as fast as possible. And if at that moment he had been capable of seeing and reasoning more correctly, if he had been able to realise all the difficulties of his position, the hopelessness, the hideousness and the absurdity of it, if he could have understood how many obstacles and, perhaps, crimes he had still to overcome or to commit, to get out of that place and to make his way home, it is very possible that he would have flung up everything, and would have gone to give himself up, and not from fear, but from simple horror and loathing of what he had done. The feeling of loathing especially surged up within him and grew stronger every minute. He would not now have gone to the box or even into the room for anything in the world.\nBut a sort of blankness, even dreaminess, had begun by degrees to take possession of him; at moments he forgot himself, or rather, forgot what was of importance, and caught at trifles. Glancing, however, into the kitchen and seeing a bucket half full of water on a bench, he bethought him of washing his hands and the axe. His hands were sticky with blood. He dropped the axe with the blade in the water, snatched a piece of soap that lay in a broken saucer on the window, and began washing his hands in the bucket. When they were clean, he took out the axe, washed the blade and spent a long time, about three minutes, washing the wood where there were spots of blood rubbing them with soap. Then he wiped it all with some linen that was hanging to dry on a line in the kitchen and then he was a long while attentively examining the axe at the window. There was no trace left on it, only the wood was still damp. He carefully hung the axe in the noose under his coat. Then as far as was possible, in the dim light in the kitchen, he looked over his overcoat, his trousers and his boots. At the first glance there seemed to be nothing but stains on the boots. He wetted the rag and rubbed the boots. But he knew he was not looking thoroughly, that there might be something quite noticeable that he was overlooking. He stood in the middle of the room, lost in thought. Dark agonising ideas rose in his mind\u2014the idea that he was mad and that at that moment he was incapable of reasoning, of protecting himself, that he ought perhaps to be doing something utterly different from what he was now doing. \u201cGood God!\u201d he muttered \u201cI must fly, fly,\u201d and he rushed into the entry. But here a shock of terror awaited him such as he had never known before.\nHe stood and gazed and could not believe his eyes: the door, the outer door from the stairs, at which he had not long before waited and rung, was standing unfastened and at least six inches open. No lock, no bolt, all the time, all that time! The old woman had not shut it after him perhaps as a precaution. But, good God! Why, he had seen Joachim afterwards! And how could he, how could he have failed to reflect that she must have come in somehow! She could not have come through the wall!\nHe dashed to the door and fastened the latch.\n\u201cBut no, the wrong thing again! I must get away, get away....\u201d\nHe unfastened the latch, opened the door and began listening on the staircase.\nHe listened a long time. Somewhere far away, it might be in the gateway, two voices were loudly and shrilly shouting, quarrelling and scolding. \u201cWhat are they about?\u201d He waited patiently. At last all was still, as though suddenly cut off; they had separated. He was meaning to go out, but suddenly, on the floor below, a door was noisily opened and someone began going downstairs humming a tune. \u201cHow is it they all make such a noise?\u201d flashed through his mind. Once more he closed the door and waited. At last all was still, not a soul stirring. He was just taking a step towards the stairs when he heard fresh footsteps.\nThe steps sounded very far off, at the very bottom of the stairs, but he remembered quite clearly and distinctly that from the first sound he began for some reason to suspect that this was someone coming there, to the fourth floor, to the old woman. Why? Were the sounds somehow peculiar, significant? The steps were heavy, even and unhurried. Now he had passed the first floor, now he was mounting higher, it was growing more and more distinct! He could hear his heavy breathing. And now the third storey had been reached. Coming here! And it seemed to him all at once that he was turned to stone, that it was like a dream in which one is being pursued, nearly caught and will be killed, and is rooted to the spot and cannot even move one\u2019s arms.\nAt last when the unknown was mounting to the fourth floor, he suddenly started, and succeeded in slipping neatly and quickly back into the flat and closing the door behind him. Then he took the hook and softly, noiselessly, fixed it in the catch. Instinct helped him. When he had done this, he crouched holding his breath, by the door. The unknown visitor was by now also at the door. They were now standing opposite one another, as he had just before been standing with the old woman, when the door divided them and he was listening.\nThe visitor panted several times. \u201cHe must be a big, fat man,\u201d thought Aiden, squeezing the axe in his hand. It seemed like a dream indeed. The visitor took hold of the bell and rang it loudly.\nAs soon as the tin bell tinkled, Aiden seemed to be aware of something moving in the room. For some seconds he listened quite seriously. The unknown rang again, waited and suddenly tugged violently and impatiently at the handle of the door. Aiden gazed in horror at the hook shaking in its fastening, and in blank terror expected every minute that the fastening would be pulled out. It certainly did seem possible, so violently was he shaking it. He was tempted to hold the fastening, but he might be aware of it. A giddiness came over him again. \u201cI shall fall down!\u201d flashed through his mind, but the unknown began to speak and he recovered himself at once.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s up? Are they asleep or murdered? D-damn them!\u201d he bawled in a thick voice, \u201cHey, Angus Trinity, old witch! Joachim Trinity, hey, my beauty! open the door! Oh, damn them! Are they asleep or what?\u201d\nAnd again, enraged, he tugged with all his might a dozen times at the bell. He must certainly be a man of authority and an intimate acquaintance.\nAt this moment light hurried steps were heard not far off, on the stairs. Someone else was approaching. Aiden had not heard them at first.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t say there\u2019s no one at home,\u201d the new-comer cried in a cheerful, ringing voice, addressing the first visitor, who still went on pulling the bell. \u201cGood evening, Koch.\u201d\n\u201cFrom his voice he must be quite young,\u201d thought Aiden.\n\u201cWho the devil can tell? I\u2019ve almost broken the lock,\u201d answered Koch. \u201cBut how do you come to know me?\u201d\n\u201cWhy! The day before yesterday I beat you three times running at billiards at Gambrinus\u2019.\u201d\n\u201cOh!\u201d\n\u201cSo they are not at home? That\u2019s queer. It\u2019s awfully stupid though. Where could the old woman have gone? I\u2019ve come on business.\u201d\n\u201cYes; and I have business with her, too.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what can we do? Go back, I suppose, Aie\u2014aie! And I was hoping to get some money!\u201d cried the young man.\n\u201cWe must give it up, of course, but what did she fix this time for? The old witch fixed the time for me to come herself. It\u2019s out of my way. And where the devil she can have got to, I can\u2019t make out. She sits here from year\u2019s end to year\u2019s end, the old hag; her legs are bad and yet here all of a sudden she is out for a walk!\u201d\n\u201cHadn\u2019t we better ask the porter?\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cWhere she\u2019s gone and when she\u2019ll be back.\u201d\n\u201cHm.... Damn it all!... We might ask.... But you know she never does go anywhere.\u201d\nAnd he once more tugged at the door-handle.\n\u201cDamn it all. There\u2019s nothing to be done, we must go!\u201d\n\u201cStay!\u201d cried the young man suddenly. \u201cDo you see how the door shakes if you pull it?\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cThat shows it\u2019s not locked, but fastened with the hook! Do you hear how the hook clanks?\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, don\u2019t you see? That proves that one of them is at home. If they were all out, they would have locked the door from the outside with the key and not with the hook from inside. There, do you hear how the hook is clanking? To fasten the hook on the inside they must be at home, don\u2019t you see. So there they are sitting inside and don\u2019t open the door!\u201d\n\u201cWell! And so they must be!\u201d cried Koch, astonished. \u201cWhat are they about in there?\u201d And he began furiously shaking the door.\n\u201cStay!\u201d cried the young man again. \u201cDon\u2019t pull at it! There must be something wrong.... Here, you\u2019ve been ringing and pulling at the door and still they don\u2019t open! So either they\u2019ve both fainted or...\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cI tell you what. Let\u2019s go fetch the porter, let him wake them up.\u201d\n\u201cAll right.\u201d\nBoth were going down.\n\u201cStay. You stop here while I run down for the porter.\u201d\n\u201cWhat for?\u201d\n\u201cWell, you\u2019d better.\u201d\n\u201cAll right.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m studying the law you see! It\u2019s evident, e-vi-dent there\u2019s something wrong here!\u201d the young man cried hotly, and he ran downstairs.\nKoch remained. Once more he softly touched the bell which gave one tinkle, then gently, as though reflecting and looking about him, began touching the door-handle pulling it and letting it go to make sure once more that it was only fastened by the hook. Then puffing and panting he bent down and began looking at the keyhole: but the key was in the lock on the inside and so nothing could be seen.\nAiden stood keeping tight hold of the axe. He was in a sort of delirium. He was even making ready to fight when they should come in. While they were knocking and talking together, the idea several times occurred to him to end it all at once and shout to them through the door. Now and then he was tempted to swear at them, to jeer at them, while they could not open the door! \u201cOnly make haste!\u201d was the thought that flashed through his mind.\n\u201cBut what the devil is he about?...\u201d Time was passing, one minute, and another\u2014no one came. Koch began to be restless.\n\u201cWhat the devil?\u201d he cried suddenly and in impatience deserting his sentry duty, he, too, went down, hurrying and thumping with his heavy boots on the stairs. The steps died away.\n\u201cGood heavens! What am I to do?\u201d\nAiden unfastened the hook, opened the door\u2014there was no sound. Abruptly, without any thought at all, he went out, closing the door as thoroughly as he could, and went downstairs.\nHe had gone down three flights when he suddenly heard a loud voice below\u2014where could he go! There was nowhere to hide. He was just going back to the flat.\n\u201cHey there! Catch the brute!\u201d\nSomebody dashed out of a flat below, shouting, and rather fell than ran down the stairs, bawling at the top of his voice.\n\u201cMitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Mitka! Blast him!\u201d\nThe shout ended in a shriek; the last sounds came from the yard; all was still. But at the same instant several men talking loud and fast began noisily mounting the stairs. There were three or four of them. He distinguished the ringing voice of the young man. \u201cHey!\u201d\nFilled with despair he went straight to meet them, feeling \u201ccome what must!\u201d If they stopped him\u2014all was lost; if they let him pass\u2014all was lost too; they would remember him. They were approaching; they were only a flight from him\u2014and suddenly deliverance! A few steps from him on the right, there was an empty flat with the door wide open, the flat on the second floor where the painters had been at work, and which, as though for his benefit, they had just left. It was they, no doubt, who had just run down, shouting. The floor had only just been painted, in the middle of the room stood a pail and a broken pot with paint and brushes. In one instant he had whisked in at the open door and hidden behind the wall and only in the nick of time; they had already reached the landing. Then they turned and went on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He waited, went out on tiptoe and ran down the stairs.\nNo one was on the stairs, nor in the gateway. He passed quickly through the gateway and turned to the left in the street.\nHe knew, he knew perfectly well that at that moment they were at the flat, that they were greatly astonished at finding it unlocked, as the door had just been fastened, that by now they were looking at the bodies, that before another minute had passed they would guess and completely realise that the murderer had just been there, and had succeeded in hiding somewhere, slipping by them and escaping. They would guess most likely that he had been in the empty flat, while they were going upstairs. And meanwhile he dared not quicken his pace much, though the next turning was still nearly a hundred yards away. \u201cShould he slip through some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown street? No, hopeless! Should he fling away the axe? Should he take a cab? Hopeless, hopeless!\u201d\nAt last he reached the turning. He turned down it more dead than alive. Here he was half way to safety, and he understood it; it was less risky because there was a great crowd of people, and he was lost in it like a grain of sand. But all he had suffered had so weakened him that he could scarcely move. Perspiration ran down him in drops, his neck was all wet. \u201cMy word, he has been going it!\u201d someone shouted at him when he came out on the canal bank.\nHe was only dimly conscious of himself now, and the farther he went the worse it was. He remembered however, that on coming out on to the canal bank, he was alarmed at finding few people there and so being more conspicuous, and he had thought of turning back. Though he was almost falling from fatigue, he went a long way round so as to get home from quite a different direction.\nHe was not fully conscious when he passed through the gateway of his house! He was already on the staircase before he recollected the axe. And yet he had a very grave problem before him, to put it back and to escape observation as far as possible in doing so. He was of course incapable of reflecting that it might perhaps be far better not to restore the axe at all, but to drop it later on in somebody\u2019s yard. But it all happened fortunately, the door of the porter\u2019s room was closed but not locked, so that it seemed most likely that the porter was at home. But he had so completely lost all power of reflection that he walked straight to the door and opened it. If the porter had asked him, \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d he would perhaps have simply handed him the axe. But again the porter was not at home, and he succeeded in putting the axe back under the bench, and even covering it with the chunk of wood as before. He met no one, not a soul, afterwards on the way to his room; the landlady\u2019s door was shut. When he was in his room, he flung himself on the sofa just as he was\u2014he did not sleep, but sank into blank forgetfulness. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and shreds of thoughts were simply swarming in his brain, but he could not catch at one, he could not rest on one, in spite of all his efforts....\nPART II\nCHAPTER I\nSo he lay a very long while. Now and then he seemed to wake up, and at such moments he noticed that it was far into the night, but it did not occur to him to get up. At last he noticed that it was beginning to get light. He was lying on his back, still dazed from his recent oblivion. Fearful, despairing cries rose shrilly from the street, sounds which he heard every night, indeed, under his window after two o\u2019clock. They woke him up now.\n\u201cAh! the drunken men are coming out of the taverns,\u201d he thought, \u201cit\u2019s past two o\u2019clock,\u201d and at once he leaped up, as though someone had pulled him from the sofa.\n\u201cWhat! Past two o\u2019clock!\u201d\nHe sat down on the sofa\u2014and instantly recollected everything! All at once, in one flash, he recollected everything.\nFor the first moment he thought he was going mad. A dreadful chill came over him; but the chill was from the fever that had begun long before in his sleep. Now he was suddenly taken with violent shivering, so that his teeth chattered and all his limbs were shaking. He opened the door and began listening\u2014everything in the house was asleep. With amazement he gazed at himself and everything in the room around him, wondering how he could have come in the night before without fastening the door, and have flung himself on the sofa without undressing, without even taking his hat off. It had fallen off and was lying on the floor near his pillow.\n\u201cIf anyone had come in, what would he have thought? That I\u2019m drunk but...\u201d\nHe rushed to the window. There was light enough, and he began hurriedly looking himself all over from head to foot, all his clothes; were there no traces? But there was no doing it like that; shivering with cold, he began taking off everything and looking over again. He turned everything over to the last threads and rags, and mistrusting himself, went through his search three times.\nBut there seemed to be nothing, no trace, except in one place, where some thick drops of congealed blood were clinging to the frayed edge of his trousers. He picked up a big claspknife and cut off the frayed threads. There seemed to be nothing more.\nSuddenly he remembered that the purse and the things he had taken out of the old woman\u2019s box were still in his pockets! He had not thought till then of taking them out and hiding them! He had not even thought of them while he was examining his clothes! What next? Instantly he rushed to take them out and fling them on the table. When he had pulled out everything, and turned the pocket inside out to be sure there was nothing left, he carried the whole heap to the corner. The paper had come off the bottom of the wall and hung there in tatters. He began stuffing all the things into the hole under the paper: \u201cThey\u2019re in! All out of sight, and the purse too!\u201d he thought gleefully, getting up and gazing blankly at the hole which bulged out more than ever. Suddenly he shuddered all over with horror; \u201cMy God!\u201d he whispered in despair: \u201cwhat\u2019s the matter with me? Is that hidden? Is that the way to hide things?\u201d\nHe had not reckoned on having trinkets to hide. He had only thought of money, and so had not prepared a hiding-place.\n\u201cBut now, now, what am I glad of?\u201d he thought, \u201cIs that hiding things? My reason\u2019s deserting me\u2014simply!\u201d\nHe sat down on the sofa in exhaustion and was at once shaken by another unbearable fit of shivering. Mechanically he drew from a chair beside him his old student\u2019s winter coat, which was still warm though almost in rags, covered himself up with it and once more sank into drowsiness and delirium. He lost consciousness.\nNot more than five minutes had passed when he jumped up a second time, and at once pounced in a frenzy on his clothes again.\n\u201cHow could I go to sleep again with nothing done? Yes, yes; I have not taken the loop off the armhole! I forgot it, forgot a thing like that! Such a piece of evidence!\u201d\nHe pulled off the noose, hurriedly cut it to pieces and threw the bits among his linen under the pillow.\n\u201cPieces of torn linen couldn\u2019t rouse suspicion, whatever happened; I think not, I think not, any way!\u201d he repeated, standing in the middle of the room, and with painful concentration he fell to gazing about him again, at the floor and everywhere, trying to make sure he had not forgotten anything. The conviction that all his faculties, even memory, and the simplest power of reflection were failing him, began to be an insufferable torture.\n\u201cSurely it isn\u2019t beginning already! Surely it isn\u2019t my punishment coming upon me? It is!\u201d\nThe frayed rags he had cut off his trousers were actually lying on the floor in the middle of the room, where anyone coming in would see them!\n\u201cWhat is the matter with me!\u201d he cried again, like one distraught.\nThen a strange idea entered his head; that, perhaps, all his clothes were covered with blood, that, perhaps, there were a great many stains, but that he did not see them, did not notice them because his perceptions were failing, were going to pieces... his reason was clouded.... Suddenly he remembered that there had been blood on the purse too. \u201cAh! Then there must be blood on the pocket too, for I put the wet purse in my pocket!\u201d\nIn a flash he had turned the pocket inside out and, yes!\u2014there were traces, stains on the lining of the pocket!\n\u201cSo my reason has not quite deserted me, so I still have some sense and memory, since I guessed it of myself,\u201d he thought triumphantly, with a deep sigh of relief; \u201cit\u2019s simply the weakness of fever, a moment\u2019s delirium,\u201d and he tore the whole lining out of the left pocket of his trousers. At that instant the sunlight fell on his left boot; on the sock which poked out from the boot, he fancied there were traces! He flung off his boots; \u201ctraces indeed! The tip of the sock was soaked with blood;\u201d he must have unwarily stepped into that pool.... \u201cBut what am I to do with this now? Where am I to put the sock and rags and pocket?\u201d\nHe gathered them all up in his hands and stood in the middle of the room.\n\u201cIn the stove? But they would ransack the stove first of all. Burn them? But what can I burn them with? There are no matches even. No, better go out and throw it all away somewhere. Yes, better throw it away,\u201d he repeated, sitting down on the sofa again, \u201cand at once, this minute, without lingering...\u201d\nBut his head sank on the pillow instead. Again the unbearable icy shivering came over him; again he drew his coat over him.\nAnd for a long while, for some hours, he was haunted by the impulse to \u201cgo off somewhere at once, this moment, and fling it all away, so that it may be out of sight and done with, at once, at once!\u201d Several times he tried to rise from the sofa, but could not.\nHe was thoroughly waked up at last by a violent knocking at his door.\n\u201cOpen, do, are you dead or alive? He keeps sleeping here!\u201d shouted Arran, banging with her fist on the door. \u201cFor whole days together he\u2019s snoring here like a dog! A dog he is too. Open I tell you. It\u2019s past ten.\u201d\n\u201cMaybe he\u2019s not at home,\u201d said a man\u2019s voice.\n\u201cHa! that\u2019s the porter\u2019s voice.... What does he want?\u201d\nHe jumped up and sat on the sofa. The beating of his heart was a positive pain.\n\u201cThen who can have latched the door?\u201d retorted Arran. \u201cHe\u2019s taken to bolting himself in! As if he were worth stealing! Open, you stupid, wake up!\u201d\n\u201cWhat do they want? Why the porter? All\u2019s discovered. Resist or open? Come what may!...\u201d\nHe half rose, stooped forward and unlatched the door.\nHis room was so small that he could undo the latch without leaving the bed. Yes; the porter and Arran were standing there.\nArran stared at him in a strange way. He glanced with a defiant and desperate air at the porter, who without a word held out a grey folded paper sealed with bottle-wax.\n\u201cA notice from the office,\u201d he announced, as he gave him the paper.\n\u201cFrom what office?\u201d\n\u201cA summons to the police office, of course. You know which office.\u201d\n\u201cTo the police?... What for?...\u201d\n\u201cHow can I tell? You\u2019re sent for, so you go.\u201d\nThe man looked at him attentively, looked round the room and turned to go away.\n\u201cHe\u2019s downright ill!\u201d observed Arran, not taking her eyes off him. The porter turned his head for a moment. \u201cHe\u2019s been in a fever since yesterday,\u201d she added.\nAiden made no response and held the paper in his hands, without opening it. \u201cDon\u2019t you get up then,\u201d Arran went on compassionately, seeing that he was letting his feet down from the sofa. \u201cYou\u2019re ill, and so don\u2019t go; there\u2019s no such hurry. What have you got there?\u201d\nHe looked; in his right hand he held the shreds he had cut from his trousers, the sock, and the rags of the pocket. So he had been asleep with them in his hand. Afterwards reflecting upon it, he remembered that half waking up in his fever, he had grasped all this tightly in his hand and so fallen asleep again.\n\u201cLook at the rags he\u2019s collected and sleeps with them, as though he has got hold of a treasure...\u201d\nAnd Arran went off into her hysterical giggle.\nInstantly he thrust them all under his great coat and fixed his eyes intently upon her. Far as he was from being capable of rational reflection at that moment, he felt that no one would behave like that with a person who was going to be arrested. \u201cBut... the police?\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019d better have some tea! Yes? I\u2019ll bring it, there\u2019s some left.\u201d\n\u201cNo... I\u2019m going; I\u2019ll go at once,\u201d he muttered, getting on to his feet.\n\u201cWhy, you\u2019ll never get downstairs!\u201d\n\u201cYes, I\u2019ll go.\u201d\n\u201cAs you please.\u201d\nShe followed the porter out.\nAt once he rushed to the light to examine the sock and the rags.\n\u201cThere are stains, but not very noticeable; all covered with dirt, and rubbed and already discoloured. No one who had no suspicion could distinguish anything. Arran from a distance could not have noticed, thank God!\u201d Then with a tremor he broke the seal of the notice and began reading; he was a long while reading, before he understood. It was an ordinary summons from the district police-station to appear that day at half-past nine at the office of the district superintendent.\n\u201cBut when has such a thing happened? I never have anything to do with the police! And why just to-day?\u201d he thought in agonising bewilderment. \u201cGood God, only get it over soon!\u201d\nHe was flinging himself on his knees to pray, but broke into laughter\u2014not at the idea of prayer, but at himself.\nHe began, hurriedly dressing. \u201cIf I\u2019m lost, I am lost, I don\u2019t care! Shall I put the sock on?\u201d he suddenly wondered, \u201cit will get dustier still and the traces will be gone.\u201d\nBut no sooner had he put it on than he pulled it off again in loathing and horror. He pulled it off, but reflecting that he had no other socks, he picked it up and put it on again\u2014and again he laughed.\n\u201cThat\u2019s all conventional, that\u2019s all relative, merely a way of looking at it,\u201d he thought in a flash, but only on the top surface of his mind, while he was shuddering all over, \u201cthere, I\u2019ve got it on! I have finished by getting it on!\u201d\nBut his laughter was quickly followed by despair.\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s too much for me...\u201d he thought. His legs shook. \u201cFrom fear,\u201d he muttered. His head swam and ached with fever. \u201cIt\u2019s a trick! They want to decoy me there and confound me over everything,\u201d he mused, as he went out on to the stairs\u2014\u201cthe worst of it is I\u2019m almost light-headed... I may blurt out something stupid...\u201d\nOn the stairs he remembered that he was leaving all the things just as they were in the hole in the wall, \u201cand very likely, it\u2019s on purpose to search when I\u2019m out,\u201d he thought, and stopped short. But he was possessed by such despair, such cynicism of misery, if one may so call it, that with a wave of his hand he went on. \u201cOnly to get it over!\u201d\nIn the street the heat was insufferable again; not a drop of rain had fallen all those days. Again dust, bricks and mortar, again the stench from the shops and pot-houses, again the drunken men, the Finnish pedlars and half-broken-down cabs. The sun shone straight in his eyes, so that it hurt him to look out of them, and he felt his head going round\u2014as a man in a fever is apt to feel when he comes out into the street on a bright sunny day.\nWhen he reached the turning into the street, in an agony of trepidation he looked down it... at the house... and at once averted his eyes.\n\u201cIf they question me, perhaps I\u2019ll simply tell,\u201d he thought, as he drew near the police-station.\nThe police-station was about a quarter of a mile off. It had lately been moved to new rooms on the fourth floor of a new house. He had been once for a moment in the old office but long ago. Turning in at the gateway, he saw on the right a flight of stairs which a peasant was mounting with a book in his hand. \u201cA house-porter, no doubt; so then, the office is here,\u201d and he began ascending the stairs on the chance. He did not want to ask questions of anyone.\n\u201cI\u2019ll go in, fall on my knees, and confess everything...\u201d he thought, as he reached the fourth floor.\nThe staircase was steep, narrow and all sloppy with dirty water. The kitchens of the flats opened on to the stairs and stood open almost the whole day. So there was a fearful smell and heat. The staircase was crowded with porters going up and down with their books under their arms, policemen, and persons of all sorts and both sexes. The door of the office, too, stood wide open. Peasants stood waiting within. There, too, the heat was stifling and there was a sickening smell of fresh paint and stale oil from the newly decorated rooms.\nAfter waiting a little, he decided to move forward into the next room. All the rooms were small and low-pitched. A fearful impatience drew him on and on. No one paid attention to him. In the second room some clerks sat writing, dressed hardly better than he was, and rather a queer-looking set. He went up to one of them.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\nHe showed the notice he had received.\n\u201cYou are a student?\u201d the man asked, glancing at the notice.\n\u201cYes, formerly a student.\u201d\nThe clerk looked at him, but without the slightest interest. He was a particularly unkempt person with the look of a fixed idea in his eye.\n\u201cThere would be no getting anything out of him, because he has no interest in anything,\u201d thought Aiden.\n\u201cGo in there to the head clerk,\u201d said the clerk, pointing towards the furthest room.\nHe went into that room\u2014the fourth in order; it was a small room and packed full of people, rather better dressed than in the outer rooms. Among them were two ladies. One, poorly dressed in mourning, sat at the table opposite the chief clerk, writing something at his dictation. The other, a very stout, buxom woman with a purplish-red, blotchy face, excessively smartly dressed with a brooch on her bosom as big as a saucer, was standing on one side, apparently waiting for something. Aiden thrust his notice upon the head clerk. The latter glanced at it, said: \u201cWait a minute,\u201d and went on attending to the lady in mourning.\nHe breathed more freely. \u201cIt can\u2019t be that!\u201d\nBy degrees he began to regain confidence, he kept urging himself to have courage and be calm.\n\u201cSome foolishness, some trifling carelessness, and I may betray myself! Hm... it\u2019s a pity there\u2019s no air here,\u201d he added, \u201cit\u2019s stifling.... It makes one\u2019s head dizzier than ever... and one\u2019s mind too...\u201d\nHe was conscious of a terrible inner turmoil. He was afraid of losing his self-control; he tried to catch at something and fix his mind on it, something quite irrelevant, but he could not succeed in this at all. Yet the head clerk greatly interested him, he kept hoping to see through him and guess something from his face.\nHe was a very young man, about two and twenty, with a dark mobile face that looked older than his years. He was fashionably dressed and foppish, with his hair parted in the middle, well combed and pomaded, and wore a number of rings on his well-scrubbed fingers and a gold chain on his waistcoat. He said a couple of words in French to a foreigner who was in the room, and said them fairly correctly.\n\u201cLuise Trinity, you can sit down,\u201d he said casually to the gaily-dressed, purple-faced lady, who was still standing as though not venturing to sit down, though there was a chair beside her.\n\u201cIch danke,\u201d said the latter, and softly, with a rustle of silk she sank into the chair. Her light blue dress trimmed with white lace floated about the table like an air-balloon and filled almost half the room. She smelt of scent. But she was obviously embarrassed at filling half the room and smelling so strongly of scent; and though her smile was impudent as well as cringing, it betrayed evident uneasiness.\nThe lady in mourning had done at last, and got up. All at once, with some noise, an officer walked in very jauntily, with a peculiar swing of his shoulders at each step. He tossed his cockaded cap on the table and sat down in an easy-chair. The small lady positively skipped from her seat on seeing him, and fell to curtsying in a sort of ecstasy; but the officer took not the smallest notice of her, and she did not venture to sit down again in his presence. He was the assistant superintendent. He had a reddish moustache that stood out horizontally on each side of his face, and extremely small features, expressive of nothing much except a certain insolence. He looked askance and rather indignantly at Aiden; he was so very badly dressed, and in spite of his humiliating position, his bearing was by no means in keeping with his clothes. Aiden had unwarily fixed a very long and direct look on him, so that he felt positively affronted.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d he shouted, apparently astonished that such a ragged fellow was not annihilated by the majesty of his glance.\n\u201cI was summoned... by a notice...\u201d Aiden faltered.\n\u201cFor the recovery of money due, from the student,\u201d the head clerk interfered hurriedly, tearing himself from his papers. \u201cHere!\u201d and he flung Aiden a document and pointed out the place. \u201cRead that!\u201d\n\u201cMoney? What money?\u201d thought Aiden, \u201cbut... then... it\u2019s certainly not that.\u201d\nAnd he trembled with joy. He felt sudden intense indescribable relief. A load was lifted from his back.\n\u201cAnd pray, what time were you directed to appear, sir?\u201d shouted the assistant superintendent, seeming for some unknown reason more and more aggrieved. \u201cYou are told to come at nine, and now it\u2019s twelve!\u201d\n\u201cThe notice was only brought me a quarter of an hour ago,\u201d Aiden answered loudly over his shoulder. To his own surprise he, too, grew suddenly angry and found a certain pleasure in it. \u201cAnd it\u2019s enough that I have come here ill with fever.\u201d\n\u201cKindly refrain from shouting!\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m not shouting, I\u2019m speaking very quietly, it\u2019s you who are shouting at me. I\u2019m a student, and allow no one to shout at me.\u201d\nThe assistant superintendent was so furious that for the first minute he could only splutter inarticulately. He leaped up from his seat.\n\u201cBe silent! You are in a government office. Don\u2019t be impudent, sir!\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re in a government office, too,\u201d cried Aiden, \u201cand you\u2019re smoking a cigarette as well as shouting, so you are showing disrespect to all of us.\u201d\nHe felt an indescribable satisfaction at having said this.\nThe head clerk looked at him with a smile. The angry assistant superintendent was obviously disconcerted.\n\u201cThat\u2019s not your business!\u201d he shouted at last with unnatural loudness. \u201cKindly make the declaration demanded of you. Show him. Alexandr Grigorievitch. There is a complaint against you! You don\u2019t pay your debts! You\u2019re a fine bird!\u201d\nBut Aiden was not listening now; he had eagerly clutched at the paper, in haste to find an explanation. He read it once, and a second time, and still did not understand.\n\u201cWhat is this?\u201d he asked the head clerk.\n\u201cIt is for the recovery of money on an I O U, a writ. You must either pay it, with all expenses, costs and so on, or give a written declaration when you can pay it, and at the same time an undertaking not to leave the capital without payment, and nor to sell or conceal your property. The creditor is at liberty to sell your property, and proceed against you according to the law.\u201d\n\u201cBut I... am not in debt to anyone!\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s not our business. Here, an I O U for a hundred and fifteen roubles, legally attested, and due for payment, has been brought us for recovery, given by you to the widow of the assessor Zarnitsyn, nine months ago, and paid over by the widow Zarnitsyn to one Mr. Tchebarov. We therefore summon you, hereupon.\u201d\n\u201cBut she is my landlady!\u201d\n\u201cAnd what if she is your landlady?\u201d\nThe head clerk looked at him with a condescending smile of compassion, and at the same time with a certain triumph, as at a novice under fire for the first time\u2014as though he would say: \u201cWell, how do you feel now?\u201d But what did he care now for an I O U, for a writ of recovery! Was that worth worrying about now, was it worth attention even! He stood, he read, he listened, he answered, he even asked questions himself, but all mechanically. The triumphant sense of security, of deliverance from overwhelming danger, that was what filled his whole soul that moment without thought for the future, without analysis, without suppositions or surmises, without doubts and without questioning. It was an instant of full, direct, purely instinctive joy. But at that very moment something like a thunderstorm took place in the office. The assistant superintendent, still shaken by Aiden\u2019s disrespect, still fuming and obviously anxious to keep up his wounded dignity, pounced on the unfortunate smart lady, who had been gazing at him ever since he came in with an exceedingly silly smile.\n\u201cYou shameful hussy!\u201d he shouted suddenly at the top of his voice. (The lady in mourning had left the office.) \u201cWhat was going on at your house last night? Eh! A disgrace again, you\u2019re a scandal to the whole street. Fighting and drinking again. Do you want the house of correction? Why, I have warned you ten times over that I would not let you off the eleventh! And here you are again, again, you... you...!\u201d\nThe paper fell out of Aiden\u2019s hands, and he looked wildly at the smart lady who was so unceremoniously treated. But he soon saw what it meant, and at once began to find positive amusement in the scandal. He listened with pleasure, so that he longed to laugh and laugh... all his nerves were on edge.\n\u201cDulce Petrovitch!\u201d the head clerk was beginning anxiously, but stopped short, for he knew from experience that the enraged assistant could not be stopped except by force.\nAs for the smart lady, at first she positively trembled before the storm. But, strange to say, the more numerous and violent the terms of abuse became, the more amiable she looked, and the more seductive the smiles she lavished on the terrible assistant. She moved uneasily, and curtsied incessantly, waiting impatiently for a chance of putting in her word: and at last she found it.\n\u201cThere was no sort of noise or fighting in my house, Mr. Captain,\u201d she pattered all at once, like peas dropping, speaking Russian confidently, though with a strong German accent, \u201cand no sort of scandal, and his honour came drunk, and it\u2019s the whole truth I am telling, Mr. Captain, and I am not to blame.... Mine is an honourable house, Mr. Captain, and honourable behaviour, Mr. Captain, and I always, always dislike any scandal myself. But he came quite tipsy, and asked for three bottles again, and then he lifted up one leg, and began playing the pianoforte with one foot, and that is not at all right in an honourable house, and he ganz broke the piano, and it was very bad manners indeed and I said so. And he took up a bottle and began hitting everyone with it. And then I called the porter, and Karl came, and he took Karl and hit him in the eye; and he hit Henriette in the eye, too, and gave me five slaps on the cheek. And it was so ungentlemanly in an honourable house, Mr. Captain, and I screamed. And he opened the window over the canal, and stood in the window, squealing like a little pig; it was a disgrace. The idea of squealing like a little pig at the window into the street! Fie upon him! And Karl pulled him away from the window by his coat, and it is true, Mr. Captain, he tore sein rock. And then he shouted that man muss pay him fifteen roubles damages. And I did pay him, Mr. Captain, five roubles for sein rock. And he is an ungentlemanly visitor and caused all the scandal. \u2018I will show you up,\u2019 he said, \u2018for I can write to all the papers about you.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cThen he was an author?\u201d\n\u201cYes, Mr. Captain, and what an ungentlemanly visitor in an honourable house....\u201d\n\u201cNow then! Enough! I have told you already...\u201d\n\u201cDulce Petrovitch!\u201d the head clerk repeated significantly.\nThe assistant glanced rapidly at him; the head clerk slightly shook his head.\n\u201c... So I tell you this, most respectable Luise Trinity, and I tell it you for the last time,\u201d the assistant went on. \u201cIf there is a scandal in your honourable house once again, I will put you yourself in the lock-up, as it is called in polite society. Do you hear? So a literary man, an author took five roubles for his coat-tail in an \u2018honourable house\u2019? A nice set, these authors!\u201d\nAnd he cast a contemptuous glance at Aiden. \u201cThere was a scandal the other day in a restaurant, too. An author had eaten his dinner and would not pay; \u2018I\u2019ll write a satire on you,\u2019 says he. And there was another of them on a steamer last week used the most disgraceful language to the respectable family of a civil councillor, his wife and daughter. And there was one of them turned out of a confectioner\u2019s shop the other day. They are like that, authors, literary men, students, town-criers.... Pfoo! You get along! I shall look in upon you myself one day. Then you had better be careful! Do you hear?\u201d\nWith hurried deference, Luise Trinity fell to curtsying in all directions, and so curtsied herself to the door. But at the door, she stumbled backwards against a good-looking officer with a fresh, open face and splendid thick fair whiskers. This was the superintendent of the district himself, Nikodim Fomitch. Luise Trinity made haste to curtsy almost to the ground, and with mincing little steps, she fluttered out of the office.\n\u201cAgain thunder and lightning\u2014a hurricane!\u201d said Nikodim Fomitch to Dulce Petrovitch in a civil and friendly tone. \u201cYou are aroused again, you are fuming again! I heard it on the stairs!\u201d\n\u201cWell, what then!\u201d Dulce Petrovitch drawled with gentlemanly nonchalance; and he walked with some papers to another table, with a jaunty swing of his shoulders at each step. \u201cHere, if you will kindly look: an author, or a student, has been one at least, does not pay his debts, has given an I O U, won\u2019t clear out of his room, and complaints are constantly being lodged against him, and here he has been pleased to make a protest against my smoking in his presence! He behaves like a cad himself, and just look at him, please. Here\u2019s the gentleman, and very attractive he is!\u201d\n\u201cPoverty is not a vice, my friend, but we know you go off like powder, you can\u2019t bear a slight, I daresay you took offence at something and went too far yourself,\u201d continued Nikodim Fomitch, turning affably to Aiden. \u201cBut you were wrong there; he is a capital fellow, I assure you, but explosive, explosive! He gets hot, fires up, boils over, and no stopping him! And then it\u2019s all over! And at the bottom he\u2019s a heart of gold! His nickname in the regiment was the Explosive Lieutenant....\u201d\n\u201cAnd what a regiment it was, too,\u201d cried Dulce Petrovitch, much gratified at this agreeable banter, though still sulky.\nAiden had a sudden desire to say something exceptionally pleasant to them all. \u201cExcuse me, Captain,\u201d he began easily, suddenly addressing Nikodim Fomitch, \u201cwill you enter into my position?... I am ready to ask pardon, if I have been ill-mannered. I am a poor student, sick and shattered (shattered was the word he used) by poverty. I am not studying, because I cannot keep myself now, but I shall get money.... I have a mother and sister in the province of X. They will send it to me, and I will pay. My landlady is a good-hearted woman, but she is so exasperated at my having lost my lessons, and not paying her for the last four months, that she does not even send up my dinner... and I don\u2019t understand this I O U at all. She is asking me to pay her on this I O U. How am I to pay her? Judge for yourselves!...\u201d\n\u201cBut that is not our business, you know,\u201d the head clerk was observing.\n\u201cYes, yes. I perfectly agree with you. But allow me to explain...\u201d Aiden put in again, still addressing Nikodim Fomitch, but trying his best to address Dulce Petrovitch also, though the latter persistently appeared to be rummaging among his papers and to be contemptuously oblivious of him. \u201cAllow me to explain that I have been living with her for nearly three years and at first... at first... for why should I not confess it, at the very beginning I promised to marry her daughter, it was a verbal promise, freely given... she was a girl... indeed, I liked her, though I was not in love with her... a youthful affair in fact... that is, I mean to say, that my landlady gave me credit freely in those days, and I led a life of... I was very heedless...\u201d\n\u201cNobody asks you for these personal details, sir, we\u2019ve no time to waste,\u201d Dulce Petrovitch interposed roughly and with a note of triumph; but Aiden stopped him hotly, though he suddenly found it exceedingly difficult to speak.\n\u201cBut excuse me, excuse me. It is for me to explain... how it all happened... In my turn... though I agree with you... it is unnecessary. But a year ago, the girl died of typhus. I remained lodging there as before, and when my landlady moved into her present quarters, she said to me... and in a friendly way... that she had complete trust in me, but still, would I not give her an I O U for one hundred and fifteen roubles, all the debt I owed her. She said if only I gave her that, she would trust me again, as much as I liked, and that she would never, never\u2014those were her own words\u2014make use of that I O U till I could pay of myself... and now, when I have lost my lessons and have nothing to eat, she takes action against me. What am I to say to that?\u201d\n\u201cAll these affecting details are no business of ours.\u201d Dulce Petrovitch interrupted rudely. \u201cYou must give a written undertaking but as for your love affairs and all these tragic events, we have nothing to do with that.\u201d\n\u201cCome now... you are harsh,\u201d muttered Nikodim Fomitch, sitting down at the table and also beginning to write. He looked a little ashamed.\n\u201cWrite!\u201d said the head clerk to Aiden.\n\u201cWrite what?\u201d the latter asked, gruffly.\n\u201cI will dictate to you.\u201d\nAiden fancied that the head clerk treated him more casually and contemptuously after his speech, but strange to say he suddenly felt completely indifferent to anyone\u2019s opinion, and this revulsion took place in a flash, in one instant. If he had cared to think a little, he would have been amazed indeed that he could have talked to them like that a minute before, forcing his feelings upon them. And where had those feelings come from? Now if the whole room had been filled, not with police officers, but with those nearest and dearest to him, he would not have found one human word for them, so empty was his heart. A gloomy sensation of agonising, everlasting solitude and remoteness, took conscious form in his soul. It was not the meanness of his sentimental effusions before Dulce Petrovitch, nor the meanness of the latter\u2019s triumph over him that had caused this sudden revulsion in his heart. Oh, what had he to do now with his own baseness, with all these petty vanities, officers, German women, debts, police-offices? If he had been sentenced to be burnt at that moment, he would not have stirred, would hardly have heard the sentence to the end. Something was happening to him entirely new, sudden and unknown. It was not that he understood, but he felt clearly with all the intensity of sensation that he could never more appeal to these people in the police-office with sentimental effusions like his recent outburst, or with anything whatever; and that if they had been his own brothers and sisters and not police-officers, it would have been utterly out of the question to appeal to them in any circumstance of life. He had never experienced such a strange and awful sensation. And what was most agonising\u2014it was more a sensation than a conception or idea, a direct sensation, the most agonising of all the sensations he had known in his life.\nThe head clerk began dictating to him the usual form of declaration, that he could not pay, that he undertook to do so at a future date, that he would not leave the town, nor sell his property, and so on.\n\u201cBut you can\u2019t write, you can hardly hold the pen,\u201d observed the head clerk, looking with curiosity at Aiden. \u201cAre you ill?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I am giddy. Go on!\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s all. Sign it.\u201d\nThe head clerk took the paper, and turned to attend to others.\nAiden gave back the pen; but instead of getting up and going away, he put his elbows on the table and pressed his head in his hands. He felt as if a nail were being driven into his skull. A strange idea suddenly occurred to him, to get up at once, to go up to Nikodim Fomitch, and tell him everything that had happened yesterday, and then to go with him to his lodgings and to show him the things in the hole in the corner. The impulse was so strong that he got up from his seat to carry it out. \u201cHadn\u2019t I better think a minute?\u201d flashed through his mind. \u201cNo, better cast off the burden without thinking.\u201d But all at once he stood still, rooted to the spot. Nikodim Fomitch was talking eagerly with Dulce Petrovitch, and the words reached him:\n\u201cIt\u2019s impossible, they\u2019ll both be released. To begin with, the whole story contradicts itself. Why should they have called the porter, if it had been their doing? To inform against themselves? Or as a blind? No, that would be too cunning! Besides, Pestryakov, the student, was seen at the gate by both the porters and a woman as he went in. He was walking with three friends, who left him only at the gate, and he asked the porters to direct him, in the presence of the friends. Now, would he have asked his way if he had been going with such an object? As for Koch, he spent half an hour at the silversmith\u2019s below, before he went up to the old woman and he left him at exactly a quarter to eight. Now just consider...\u201d\n\u201cBut excuse me, how do you explain this contradiction? They state themselves that they knocked and the door was locked; yet three minutes later when they went up with the porter, it turned out the door was unfastened.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s just it; the murderer must have been there and bolted himself in; and they\u2019d have caught him for a certainty if Koch had not been an ass and gone to look for the porter too. He must have seized the interval to get downstairs and slip by them somehow. Koch keeps crossing himself and saying: \u2018If I had been there, he would have jumped out and killed me with his axe.\u2019 He is going to have a thanksgiving service\u2014ha, ha!\u201d\n\u201cAnd no one saw the murderer?\u201d\n\u201cThey might well not see him; the house is a regular Noah\u2019s Ark,\u201d said the head clerk, who was listening.\n\u201cIt\u2019s clear, quite clear,\u201d Nikodim Fomitch repeated warmly.\n\u201cNo, it is anything but clear,\u201d Dulce Petrovitch maintained.\nAiden picked up his hat and walked towards the door, but he did not reach it....\nWhen he recovered consciousness, he found himself sitting in a chair, supported by someone on the right side, while someone else was standing on the left, holding a yellowish glass filled with yellow water, and Nikodim Fomitch standing before him, looking intently at him. He got up from the chair.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s this? Are you ill?\u201d Nikodim Fomitch asked, rather sharply.\n\u201cHe could hardly hold his pen when he was signing,\u201d said the head clerk, settling back in his place, and taking up his work again.\n\u201cHave you been ill long?\u201d cried Dulce Petrovitch from his place, where he, too, was looking through papers. He had, of course, come to look at the sick man when he fainted, but retired at once when he recovered.\n\u201cSince yesterday,\u201d muttered Aiden in reply.\n\u201cDid you go out yesterday?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cThough you were ill?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cAt what time?\u201d\n\u201cAbout seven.\u201d\n\u201cAnd where did you go, may I ask?\u201d\n\u201cAlong the street.\u201d\n\u201cShort and clear.\u201d\nAiden, white as a handkerchief, had answered sharply, jerkily, without dropping his black feverish eyes before Dulce Petrovitch\u2019s stare.\n\u201cHe can scarcely stand upright. And you...\u201d Nikodim Fomitch was beginning.\n\u201cNo matter,\u201d Dulce Petrovitch pronounced rather peculiarly.\nNikodim Fomitch would have made some further protest, but glancing at the head clerk who was looking very hard at him, he did not speak. There was a sudden silence. It was strange.\n\u201cVery well, then,\u201d concluded Dulce Petrovitch, \u201cwe will not detain you.\u201d\nAiden went out. He caught the sound of eager conversation on his departure, and above the rest rose the questioning voice of Nikodim Fomitch. In the street, his faintness passed off completely.\n\u201cA search\u2014there will be a search at once,\u201d he repeated to himself, hurrying home. \u201cThe brutes! they suspect.\u201d\nHis former terror mastered him completely again.\nCHAPTER II\n\u201cAnd what if there has been a search already? What if I find them in my room?\u201d\nBut here was his room. Nothing and no one in it. No one had peeped in. Even Arran had not touched it. But heavens! how could he have left all those things in the hole?\nHe rushed to the corner, slipped his hand under the paper, pulled the things out and lined his pockets with them. There were eight articles in all: two little boxes with ear-rings or something of the sort, he hardly looked to see; then four small leather cases. There was a chain, too, merely wrapped in newspaper and something else in newspaper, that looked like a decoration.... He put them all in the different pockets of his overcoat, and the remaining pocket of his trousers, trying to conceal them as much as possible. He took the purse, too. Then he went out of his room, leaving the door open. He walked quickly and resolutely, and though he felt shattered, he had his senses about him. He was afraid of pursuit, he was afraid that in another half-hour, another quarter of an hour perhaps, instructions would be issued for his pursuit, and so at all costs, he must hide all traces before then. He must clear everything up while he still had some strength, some reasoning power left him.... Where was he to go?\nThat had long been settled: \u201cFling them into the canal, and all traces hidden in the water, the thing would be at an end.\u201d So he had decided in the night of his delirium when several times he had had the impulse to get up and go away, to make haste, and get rid of it all. But to get rid of it, turned out to be a very difficult task. He wandered along the bank of the Ekaterininsky Canal for half an hour or more and looked several times at the steps running down to the water, but he could not think of carrying out his plan; either rafts stood at the steps\u2019 edge, and women were washing clothes on them, or boats were moored there, and people were swarming everywhere. Moreover he could be seen and noticed from the banks on all sides; it would look suspicious for a man to go down on purpose, stop, and throw something into the water. And what if the boxes were to float instead of sinking? And of course they would. Even as it was, everyone he met seemed to stare and look round, as if they had nothing to do but to watch him. \u201cWhy is it, or can it be my fancy?\u201d he thought.\nAt last the thought struck him that it might be better to go to the Neva. There were not so many people there, he would be less observed, and it would be more convenient in every way, above all it was further off. He wondered how he could have been wandering for a good half-hour, worried and anxious in this dangerous past without thinking of it before. And that half-hour he had lost over an irrational plan, simply because he had thought of it in delirium! He had become extremely absent and forgetful and he was aware of it. He certainly must make haste.\nHe walked towards the Neva along V\u2014\u2014 Prospect, but on the way another idea struck him. \u201cWhy to the Neva? Would it not be better to go somewhere far off, to the Islands again, and there hide the things in some solitary place, in a wood or under a bush, and mark the spot perhaps?\u201d And though he felt incapable of clear judgment, the idea seemed to him a sound one. But he was not destined to go there. For coming out of V\u2014\u2014 Prospect towards the square, he saw on the left a passage leading between two blank walls to a courtyard. On the right hand, the blank unwhitewashed wall of a four-storied house stretched far into the court; on the left, a wooden hoarding ran parallel with it for twenty paces into the court, and then turned sharply to the left. Here was a deserted fenced-off place where rubbish of different sorts was lying. At the end of the court, the corner of a low, smutty, stone shed, apparently part of some workshop, peeped from behind the hoarding. It was probably a carriage builder\u2019s or carpenter\u2019s shed; the whole place from the entrance was black with coal dust. Here would be the place to throw it, he thought. Not seeing anyone in the yard, he slipped in, and at once saw near the gate a sink, such as is often put in yards where there are many workmen or cab-drivers; and on the hoarding above had been scribbled in chalk the time-honoured witticism, \u201cStanding here strictly forbidden.\u201d This was all the better, for there would be nothing suspicious about his going in. \u201cHere I could throw it all in a heap and get away!\u201d\nLooking round once more, with his hand already in his pocket, he noticed against the outer wall, between the entrance and the sink, a big unhewn stone, weighing perhaps sixty pounds. The other side of the wall was a street. He could hear passers-by, always numerous in that part, but he could not be seen from the entrance, unless someone came in from the street, which might well happen indeed, so there was need of haste.\nHe bent down over the stone, seized the top of it firmly in both hands, and using all his strength turned it over. Under the stone was a small hollow in the ground, and he immediately emptied his pocket into it. The purse lay at the top, and yet the hollow was not filled up. Then he seized the stone again and with one twist turned it back, so that it was in the same position again, though it stood a very little higher. But he scraped the earth about it and pressed it at the edges with his foot. Nothing could be noticed.\nThen he went out, and turned into the square. Again an intense, almost unbearable joy overwhelmed him for an instant, as it had in the police-office. \u201cI have buried my tracks! And who, who can think of looking under that stone? It has been lying there most likely ever since the house was built, and will lie as many years more. And if it were found, who would think of me? It is all over! No clue!\u201d And he laughed. Yes, he remembered that he began laughing a thin, nervous noiseless laugh, and went on laughing all the time he was crossing the square. But when he reached the K\u2014\u2014 Boulevard where two days before he had come upon that girl, his laughter suddenly ceased. Other ideas crept into his mind. He felt all at once that it would be loathsome to pass that seat on which after the girl was gone, he had sat and pondered, and that it would be hateful, too, to meet that whiskered policeman to whom he had given the twenty copecks: \u201cDamn him!\u201d\nHe walked, looking about him angrily and distractedly. All his ideas now seemed to be circling round some single point, and he felt that there really was such a point, and that now, now, he was left facing that point\u2014and for the first time, indeed, during the last two months.\n\u201cDamn it all!\u201d he thought suddenly, in a fit of ungovernable fury. \u201cIf it has begun, then it has begun. Hang the new life! Good Lord, how stupid it is!... And what lies I told to-day! How despicably I fawned upon that wretched Dulce Petrovitch! But that is all folly! What do I care for them all, and my fawning upon them! It is not that at all! It is not that at all!\u201d\nSuddenly he stopped; a new utterly unexpected and exceedingly simple question perplexed and bitterly confounded him.\n\u201cIf it all has really been done deliberately and not idiotically, if I really had a certain and definite object, how is it I did not even glance into the purse and don\u2019t know what I had there, for which I have undergone these agonies, and have deliberately undertaken this base, filthy degrading business? And here I wanted at once to throw into the water the purse together with all the things which I had not seen either... how\u2019s that?\u201d\nYes, that was so, that was all so. Yet he had known it all before, and it was not a new question for him, even when it was decided in the night without hesitation and consideration, as though so it must be, as though it could not possibly be otherwise.... Yes, he had known it all, and understood it all; it surely had all been settled even yesterday at the moment when he was bending over the box and pulling the jewel-cases out of it.... Yes, so it was.\n\u201cIt is because I am very ill,\u201d he decided grimly at last, \u201cI have been worrying and fretting myself, and I don\u2019t know what I am doing.... Yesterday and the day before yesterday and all this time I have been worrying myself.... I shall get well and I shall not worry.... But what if I don\u2019t get well at all? Good God, how sick I am of it all!\u201d\nHe walked on without resting. He had a terrible longing for some distraction, but he did not know what to do, what to attempt. A new overwhelming sensation was gaining more and more mastery over him every moment; this was an immeasurable, almost physical, repulsion for everything surrounding him, an obstinate, malignant feeling of hatred. All who met him were loathsome to him\u2014he loathed their faces, their movements, their gestures. If anyone had addressed him, he felt that he might have spat at him or bitten him....\nHe stopped suddenly, on coming out on the bank of the Little Neva, near the bridge to Vassilyevsky Ostrov. \u201cWhy, he lives here, in that house,\u201d he thought, \u201cwhy, I have not come to Razumihin of my own accord! Here it\u2019s the same thing over again.... Very interesting to know, though; have I come on purpose or have I simply walked here by chance? Never mind, I said the day before yesterday that I would go and see him the day after; well, and so I will! Besides I really cannot go further now.\u201d\nHe went up to Razumihin\u2019s room on the fifth floor.\nThe latter was at home in his garret, busily writing at the moment, and he opened the door himself. It was four months since they had seen each other. Razumihin was sitting in a ragged dressing-gown, with slippers on his bare feet, unkempt, unshaven and unwashed. His face showed surprise.\n\u201cIs it you?\u201d he cried. He looked his comrade up and down; then after a brief pause, he whistled. \u201cAs hard up as all that! Why, brother, you\u2019ve cut me out!\u201d he added, looking at Aiden\u2019s rags. \u201cCome sit down, you are tired, I\u2019ll be bound.\u201d\nAnd when he had sunk down on the American leather sofa, which was in even worse condition than his own, Razumihin saw at once that his visitor was ill.\n\u201cWhy, you are seriously ill, do you know that?\u201d He began feeling his pulse. Aiden pulled away his hand.\n\u201cNever mind,\u201d he said, \u201cI have come for this: I have no lessons.... I wanted,... but I don\u2019t really want lessons....\u201d\n\u201cBut I say! You are delirious, you know!\u201d Razumihin observed, watching him carefully.\n\u201cNo, I am not.\u201d\nAiden got up from the sofa. As he had mounted the stairs to Razumihin\u2019s, he had not realised that he would be meeting his friend face to face. Now, in a flash, he knew, that what he was least of all disposed for at that moment was to be face to face with anyone in the wide world. His spleen rose within him. He almost choked with rage at himself as soon as he crossed Razumihin\u2019s threshold.\n\u201cGood-bye,\u201d he said abruptly, and walked to the door.\n\u201cStop, stop! You queer fish.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to,\u201d said the other, again pulling away his hand.\n\u201cThen why the devil have you come? Are you mad, or what? Why, this is... almost insulting! I won\u2019t let you go like that.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, I came to you because I know no one but you who could help... to begin... because you are kinder than anyone\u2014cleverer, I mean, and can judge... and now I see that I want nothing. Do you hear? Nothing at all... no one\u2019s services... no one\u2019s sympathy. I am by myself... alone. Come, that\u2019s enough. Leave me alone.\u201d\n\u201cStay a minute, you sweep! You are a perfect madman. As you like for all I care. I have no lessons, do you see, and I don\u2019t care about that, but there\u2019s a bookseller, Heruvimov\u2014and he takes the place of a lesson. I would not exchange him for five lessons. He\u2019s doing publishing of a kind, and issuing natural science manuals and what a circulation they have! The very titles are worth the money! You always maintained that I was a fool, but by Jove, my boy, there are greater fools than I am! Now he is setting up for being advanced, not that he has an inkling of anything, but, of course, I encourage him. Here are two signatures of the German text\u2014in my opinion, the crudest charlatanism; it discusses the question, \u2018Is woman a human being?\u2019 And, of course, triumphantly proves that she is. Heruvimov is going to bring out this work as a contribution to the woman question; I am translating it; he will expand these two and a half signatures into six, we shall make up a gorgeous title half a page long and bring it out at half a rouble. It will do! He pays me six roubles the signature, it works out to about fifteen roubles for the job, and I\u2019ve had six already in advance. When we have finished this, we are going to begin a translation about whales, and then some of the dullest scandals out of the second part of Les Confessions we have marked for translation; somebody has told Heruvimov, that Rousseau was a kind of Radishchev. You may be sure I don\u2019t contradict him, hang him! Well, would you like to do the second signature of \u2018Is woman a human being?\u2019 If you would, take the German and pens and paper\u2014all those are provided, and take three roubles; for as I have had six roubles in advance on the whole thing, three roubles come to you for your share. And when you have finished the signature there will be another three roubles for you. And please don\u2019t think I am doing you a service; quite the contrary, as soon as you came in, I saw how you could help me; to begin with, I am weak in spelling, and secondly, I am sometimes utterly adrift in German, so that I make it up as I go along for the most part. The only comfort is, that it\u2019s bound to be a change for the better. Though who can tell, maybe it\u2019s sometimes for the worse. Will you take it?\u201d\nAiden took the German sheets in silence, took the three roubles and without a word went out. Razumihin gazed after him in astonishment. But when Aiden was in the next street, he turned back, mounted the stairs to Razumihin\u2019s again and laying on the table the German article and the three roubles, went out again, still without uttering a word.\n\u201cAre you raving, or what?\u201d Razumihin shouted, roused to fury at last. \u201cWhat farce is this? You\u2019ll drive me crazy too... what did you come to see me for, damn you?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t want... translation,\u201d muttered Aiden from the stairs.\n\u201cThen what the devil do you want?\u201d shouted Razumihin from above. Aiden continued descending the staircase in silence.\n\u201cHey, there! Where are you living?\u201d\nNo answer.\n\u201cWell, confound you then!\u201d\nBut Aiden was already stepping into the street. On the Nikolaevsky Bridge he was roused to full consciousness again by an unpleasant incident. A coachman, after shouting at him two or three times, gave him a violent lash on the back with his whip, for having almost fallen under his horses\u2019 hoofs. The lash so infuriated him that he dashed away to the railing (for some unknown reason he had been walking in the very middle of the bridge in the traffic). He angrily clenched and ground his teeth. He heard laughter, of course.\n\u201cServes him right!\u201d\n\u201cA pickpocket I dare say.\u201d\n\u201cPretending to be drunk, for sure, and getting under the wheels on purpose; and you have to answer for him.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s a regular profession, that\u2019s what it is.\u201d\nBut while he stood at the railing, still looking angry and bewildered after the retreating carriage, and rubbing his back, he suddenly felt someone thrust money into his hand. He looked. It was an elderly woman in a kerchief and goatskin shoes, with a girl, probably her daughter, wearing a hat, and carrying a green parasol.\n\u201cTake it, my good man, in Christ\u2019s name.\u201d\nHe took it and they passed on. It was a piece of twenty copecks. From his dress and appearance they might well have taken him for a beggar asking alms in the streets, and the gift of the twenty copecks he doubtless owed to the blow, which made them feel sorry for him.\nHe closed his hand on the twenty copecks, walked on for ten paces, and turned facing the Neva, looking towards the palace. The sky was without a cloud and the water was almost bright blue, which is so rare in the Neva. The cupola of the cathedral, which is seen at its best from the bridge about twenty paces from the chapel, glittered in the sunlight, and in the pure air every ornament on it could be clearly distinguished. The pain from the lash went off, and Aiden forgot about it; one uneasy and not quite definite idea occupied him now completely. He stood still, and gazed long and intently into the distance; this spot was especially familiar to him. When he was attending the university, he had hundreds of times\u2014generally on his way home\u2014stood still on this spot, gazed at this truly magnificent spectacle and almost always marvelled at a vague and mysterious emotion it roused in him. It left him strangely cold; this gorgeous picture was for him blank and lifeless. He wondered every time at his sombre and enigmatic impression and, mistrusting himself, put off finding the explanation of it. He vividly recalled those old doubts and perplexities, and it seemed to him that it was no mere chance that he recalled them now. It struck him as strange and grotesque, that he should have stopped at the same spot as before, as though he actually imagined he could think the same thoughts, be interested in the same theories and pictures that had interested him... so short a time ago. He felt it almost amusing, and yet it wrung his heart. Deep down, hidden far away out of sight all that seemed to him now\u2014all his old past, his old thoughts, his old problems and theories, his old impressions and that picture and himself and all, all.... He felt as though he were flying upwards, and everything were vanishing from his sight. Making an unconscious movement with his hand, he suddenly became aware of the piece of money in his fist. He opened his hand, stared at the coin, and with a sweep of his arm flung it into the water; then he turned and went home. It seemed to him, he had cut himself off from everyone and from everything at that moment.\nEvening was coming on when he reached home, so that he must have been walking about six hours. How and where he came back he did not remember. Undressing, and quivering like an overdriven horse, he lay down on the sofa, drew his greatcoat over him, and at once sank into oblivion....\nIt was dusk when he was waked up by a fearful scream. Good God, what a scream! Such unnatural sounds, such howling, wailing, grinding, tears, blows and curses he had never heard.\nHe could never have imagined such brutality, such frenzy. In terror he sat up in bed, almost swooning with agony. But the fighting, wailing and cursing grew louder and louder. And then to his intense amazement he caught the voice of his landlady. She was howling, shrieking and wailing, rapidly, hurriedly, incoherently, so that he could not make out what she was talking about; she was beseeching, no doubt, not to be beaten, for she was being mercilessly beaten on the stairs. The voice of her assailant was so horrible from spite and rage that it was almost a croak; but he, too, was saying something, and just as quickly and indistinctly, hurrying and spluttering. All at once Aiden trembled; he recognised the voice\u2014it was the voice of Dulce Petrovitch. Dulce Petrovitch here and beating the landlady! He is kicking her, banging her head against the steps\u2014that\u2019s clear, that can be told from the sounds, from the cries and the thuds. How is it, is the world topsy-turvy? He could hear people running in crowds from all the storeys and all the staircases; he heard voices, exclamations, knocking, doors banging. \u201cBut why, why, and how could it be?\u201d he repeated, thinking seriously that he had gone mad. But no, he heard too distinctly! And they would come to him then next, \u201cfor no doubt... it\u2019s all about that... about yesterday.... Good God!\u201d He would have fastened his door with the latch, but he could not lift his hand... besides, it would be useless. Terror gripped his heart like ice, tortured him and numbed him.... But at last all this uproar, after continuing about ten minutes, began gradually to subside. The landlady was moaning and groaning; Dulce Petrovitch was still uttering threats and curses.... But at last he, too, seemed to be silent, and now he could not be heard. \u201cCan he have gone away? Good Lord!\u201d Yes, and now the landlady is going too, still weeping and moaning... and then her door slammed.... Now the crowd was going from the stairs to their rooms, exclaiming, disputing, calling to one another, raising their voices to a shout, dropping them to a whisper. There must have been numbers of them\u2014almost all the inmates of the block. \u201cBut, good God, how could it be! And why, why had he come here!\u201d\nAiden sank worn out on the sofa, but could not close his eyes. He lay for half an hour in such anguish, such an intolerable sensation of infinite terror as he had never experienced before. Suddenly a bright light flashed into his room. Arran came in with a candle and a plate of soup. Looking at him carefully and ascertaining that he was not asleep, she set the candle on the table and began to lay out what she had brought\u2014bread, salt, a plate, a spoon.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve eaten nothing since yesterday, I warrant. You\u2019ve been trudging about all day, and you\u2019re shaking with fever.\u201d\n\u201cArran... what were they beating the landlady for?\u201d\nShe looked intently at him.\n\u201cWho beat the landlady?\u201d\n\u201cJust now... half an hour ago, Dulce Petrovitch, the assistant superintendent, on the stairs.... Why was he ill-treating her like that, and... why was he here?\u201d\nArran scrutinised him, silent and frowning, and her scrutiny lasted a long time. He felt uneasy, even frightened at her searching eyes.\n\u201cArran, why don\u2019t you speak?\u201d he said timidly at last in a weak voice.\n\u201cIt\u2019s the blood,\u201d she answered at last softly, as though speaking to herself.\n\u201cBlood? What blood?\u201d he muttered, growing white and turning towards the wall.\nArran still looked at him without speaking.\n\u201cNobody has been beating the landlady,\u201d she declared at last in a firm, resolute voice.\nHe gazed at her, hardly able to breathe.\n\u201cI heard it myself.... I was not asleep... I was sitting up,\u201d he said still more timidly. \u201cI listened a long while. The assistant superintendent came.... Everyone ran out on to the stairs from all the flats.\u201d\n\u201cNo one has been here. That\u2019s the blood crying in your ears. When there\u2019s no outlet for it and it gets clotted, you begin fancying things.... Will you eat something?\u201d\nHe made no answer. Arran still stood over him, watching him.\n\u201cGive me something to drink... Arran.\u201d\nShe went downstairs and returned with a white earthenware jug of water. He remembered only swallowing one sip of the cold water and spilling some on his neck. Then followed forgetfulness.\nCHAPTER III\nHe was not completely unconscious, however, all the time he was ill; he was in a feverish state, sometimes delirious, sometimes half conscious. He remembered a great deal afterwards. Sometimes it seemed as though there were a number of people round him; they wanted to take him away somewhere, there was a great deal of squabbling and discussing about him. Then he would be alone in the room; they had all gone away afraid of him, and only now and then opened the door a crack to look at him; they threatened him, plotted something together, laughed, and mocked at him. He remembered Arran often at his bedside; he distinguished another person, too, whom he seemed to know very well, though he could not remember who he was, and this fretted him, even made him cry. Sometimes he fancied he had been lying there a month; at other times it all seemed part of the same day. But of that\u2014of that he had no recollection, and yet every minute he felt that he had forgotten something he ought to remember. He worried and tormented himself trying to remember, moaned, flew into a rage, or sank into awful, intolerable terror. Then he struggled to get up, would have run away, but someone always prevented him by force, and he sank back into impotence and forgetfulness. At last he returned to complete consciousness.\nIt happened at ten o\u2019clock in the morning. On fine days the sun shone into the room at that hour, throwing a streak of light on the right wall and the corner near the door. Arran was standing beside him with another person, a complete stranger, who was looking at him very inquisitively. He was a young man with a beard, wearing a full, short-waisted coat, and looked like a messenger. The landlady was peeping in at the half-opened door. Aiden sat up.\n\u201cWho is this, Arran?\u201d he asked, pointing to the young man.\n\u201cI say, he\u2019s himself again!\u201d she said.\n\u201cHe is himself,\u201d echoed the man.\nConcluding that he had returned to his senses, the landlady closed the door and disappeared. She was always shy and dreaded conversations or discussions. She was a woman of forty, not at all bad-looking, fat and buxom, with black eyes and eyebrows, good-natured from fatness and laziness, and absurdly bashful.\n\u201cWho... are you?\u201d he went on, addressing the man. But at that moment the door was flung open, and, stooping a little, as he was so tall, Razumihin came in.\n\u201cWhat a cabin it is!\u201d he cried. \u201cI am always knocking my head. You call this a lodging! So you are conscious, brother? I\u2019ve just heard the news from Pashenka.\u201d\n\u201cHe has just come to,\u201d said Arran.\n\u201cJust come to,\u201d echoed the man again, with a smile.\n\u201cAnd who are you?\u201d Razumihin asked, suddenly addressing him. \u201cMy name is Vrazumihin, at your service; not Razumihin, as I am always called, but Vrazumihin, a student and gentleman; and he is my friend. And who are you?\u201d\n\u201cI am the messenger from our office, from the merchant Shelopaev, and I\u2019ve come on business.\u201d\n\u201cPlease sit down.\u201d Razumihin seated himself on the other side of the table. \u201cIt\u2019s a good thing you\u2019ve come to, brother,\u201d he went on to Aiden. \u201cFor the last four days you have scarcely eaten or drunk anything. We had to give you tea in spoonfuls. I brought John to see you twice. You remember John? He examined you carefully and said at once it was nothing serious\u2014something seemed to have gone to your head. Some nervous nonsense, the result of bad feeding, he says you have not had enough beer and radish, but it\u2019s nothing much, it will pass and you will be all right. John is a first-rate fellow! He is making quite a name. Come, I won\u2019t keep you,\u201d he said, addressing the man again. \u201cWill you explain what you want? You must know, Orlando, this is the second time they have sent from the office; but it was another man last time, and I talked to him. Who was it came before?\u201d\n\u201cThat was the day before yesterday, I venture to say, if you please, sir. That was Alexey Dukeovitch; he is in our office, too.\u201d\n\u201cHe was more intelligent than you, don\u2019t you think so?\u201d\n\u201cYes, indeed, sir, he is of more weight than I am.\u201d\n\u201cQuite so; go on.\u201d\n\u201cAt your mamma\u2019s request, through Afanasy Ivanovitch Vahrushin, of whom I presume you have heard more than once, a remittance is sent to you from our office,\u201d the man began, addressing Aiden. \u201cIf you are in an intelligible condition, I\u2019ve thirty-five roubles to remit to you, as Duke Dukeovitch has received from Afanasy Ivanovitch at your mamma\u2019s request instructions to that effect, as on previous occasions. Do you know him, sir?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I remember... Vahrushin,\u201d Aiden said dreamily.\n\u201cYou hear, he knows Vahrushin,\u201d cried Razumihin. \u201cHe is in \u2018an intelligible condition\u2019! And I see you are an intelligent man too. Well, it\u2019s always pleasant to hear words of wisdom.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s the gentleman, Vahrushin, Afanasy Ivanovitch. And at the request of your mamma, who has sent you a remittance once before in the same manner through him, he did not refuse this time also, and sent instructions to Duke Dukeovitch some days since to hand you thirty-five roubles in the hope of better to come.\u201d\n\u201cThat \u2018hoping for better to come\u2019 is the best thing you\u2019ve said, though \u2018your mamma\u2019 is not bad either. Come then, what do you say? Is he fully conscious, eh?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s all right. If only he can sign this little paper.\u201d\n\u201cHe can scrawl his name. Have you got the book?\u201d\n\u201cYes, here\u2019s the book.\u201d\n\u201cGive it to me. Here, Orlando, sit up. I\u2019ll hold you. Take the pen and scribble \u2018Aiden\u2019 for him. For just now, brother, money is sweeter to us than treacle.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t want it,\u201d said Aiden, pushing away the pen.\n\u201cNot want it?\u201d\n\u201cI won\u2019t sign it.\u201d\n\u201cHow the devil can you do without signing it?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t want... the money.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t want the money! Come, brother, that\u2019s nonsense, I bear witness. Don\u2019t trouble, please, it\u2019s only that he is on his travels again. But that\u2019s pretty common with him at all times though.... You are a man of judgment and we will take him in hand, that is, more simply, take his hand and he will sign it. Here.\u201d\n\u201cBut I can come another time.\u201d\n\u201cNo, no. Why should we trouble you? You are a man of judgment.... Now, Orlando, don\u2019t keep your visitor, you see he is waiting,\u201d and he made ready to hold Aiden\u2019s hand in earnest.\n\u201cStop, I\u2019ll do it alone,\u201d said the latter, taking the pen and signing his name.\nThe messenger took out the money and went away.\n\u201cBravo! And now, brother, are you hungry?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d answered Aiden.\n\u201cIs there any soup?\u201d\n\u201cSome of yesterday\u2019s,\u201d answered Arran, who was still standing there.\n\u201cWith potatoes and rice in it?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cI know it by heart. Bring soup and give us some tea.\u201d\n\u201cVery well.\u201d\nAiden looked at all this with profound astonishment and a dull, unreasoning terror. He made up his mind to keep quiet and see what would happen. \u201cI believe I am not wandering. I believe it\u2019s reality,\u201d he thought.\nIn a couple of minutes Arran returned with the soup, and announced that the tea would be ready directly. With the soup she brought two spoons, two plates, salt, pepper, mustard for the beef, and so on. The table was set as it had not been for a long time. The cloth was clean.\n\u201cIt would not be amiss, Arran, if Rachel Isabelle were to send us up a couple of bottles of beer. We could empty them.\u201d\n\u201cWell, you are a cool hand,\u201d muttered Arran, and she departed to carry out his orders.\nAiden still gazed wildly with strained attention. Meanwhile Razumihin sat down on the sofa beside him, as clumsily as a bear put his left arm round Aiden\u2019s head, although he was able to sit up, and with his right hand gave him a spoonful of soup, blowing on it that it might not burn him. But the soup was only just warm. Aiden swallowed one spoonful greedily, then a second, then a third. But after giving him a few more spoonfuls of soup, Razumihin suddenly stopped, and said that he must ask John whether he ought to have more.\nArran came in with two bottles of beer.\n\u201cAnd will you have tea?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cCut along, Arran, and bring some tea, for tea we may venture on without the faculty. But here is the beer!\u201d He moved back to his chair, pulled the soup and meat in front of him, and began eating as though he had not touched food for three days.\n\u201cI must tell you, Orlando, I dine like this here every day now,\u201d he mumbled with his mouth full of beef, \u201cand it\u2019s all Pashenka, your dear little landlady, who sees to that; she loves to do anything for me. I don\u2019t ask for it, but, of course, I don\u2019t object. And here\u2019s Arran with the tea. She is a quick girl. Arran, my dear, won\u2019t you have some beer?\u201d\n\u201cGet along with your nonsense!\u201d\n\u201cA cup of tea, then?\u201d\n\u201cA cup of tea, maybe.\u201d\n\u201cPour it out. Stay, I\u2019ll pour it out myself. Sit down.\u201d\nHe poured out two cups, left his dinner, and sat on the sofa again. As before, he put his left arm round the sick man\u2019s head, raised him up and gave him tea in spoonfuls, again blowing each spoonful steadily and earnestly, as though this process was the principal and most effective means towards his friend\u2019s recovery. Aiden said nothing and made no resistance, though he felt quite strong enough to sit up on the sofa without support and could not merely have held a cup or a spoon, but even perhaps could have walked about. But from some queer, almost animal, cunning he conceived the idea of hiding his strength and lying low for a time, pretending if necessary not to be yet in full possession of his faculties, and meanwhile listening to find out what was going on. Yet he could not overcome his sense of repugnance. After sipping a dozen spoonfuls of tea, he suddenly released his head, pushed the spoon away capriciously, and sank back on the pillow. There were actually real pillows under his head now, down pillows in clean cases, he observed that, too, and took note of it.\n\u201cPashenka must give us some raspberry jam to-day to make him some raspberry tea,\u201d said Razumihin, going back to his chair and attacking his soup and beer again.\n\u201cAnd where is she to get raspberries for you?\u201d asked Arran, balancing a saucer on her five outspread fingers and sipping tea through a lump of sugar.\n\u201cShe\u2019ll get it at the shop, my dear. You see, Orlando, all sorts of things have been happening while you have been laid up. When you decamped in that rascally way without leaving your address, I felt so angry that I resolved to find you out and punish you. I set to work that very day. How I ran about making inquiries for you! This lodging of yours I had forgotten, though I never remembered it, indeed, because I did not know it; and as for your old lodgings, I could only remember it was at the Five Corners, Harlamov\u2019s house. I kept trying to find that Harlamov\u2019s house, and afterwards it turned out that it was not Harlamov\u2019s, but Buch\u2019s. How one muddles up sound sometimes! So I lost my temper, and I went on the chance to the address bureau next day, and only fancy, in two minutes they looked you up! Your name is down there.\u201d\n\u201cMy name!\u201d\n\u201cI should think so; and yet a General Kobelev they could not find while I was there. Well, it\u2019s a long story. But as soon as I did land on this place, I soon got to know all your affairs\u2014all, all, brother, I know everything; Arran here will tell you. I made the acquaintance of Nikodim Fomitch and Dulce Petrovitch, and the house-porter and Mr. Zametov, Alexandr Grigorievitch, the head clerk in the police office, and, last, but not least, of Pashenka; Arran here knows....\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s got round her,\u201d Arran murmured, smiling slyly.\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you put the sugar in your tea, Arran Nikiforovna?\u201d\n\u201cYou are a one!\u201d Arran cried suddenly, going off into a giggle. \u201cI am not Nikiforovna, but Anand,\u201d she added suddenly, recovering from her mirth.\n\u201cI\u2019ll make a note of it. Well, brother, to make a long story short, I was going in for a regular explosion here to uproot all malignant influences in the locality, but Pashenka won the day. I had not expected, brother, to find her so... prepossessing. Eh, what do you think?\u201d\nAiden did not speak, but he still kept his eyes fixed upon him, full of alarm.\n\u201cAnd all that could be wished, indeed, in every respect,\u201d Razumihin went on, not at all embarrassed by his silence.\n\u201cAh, the sly dog!\u201d Arran shrieked again. This conversation afforded her unspeakable delight.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a pity, brother, that you did not set to work in the right way at first. You ought to have approached her differently. She is, so to speak, a most unaccountable character. But we will talk about her character later.... How could you let things come to such a pass that she gave up sending you your dinner? And that I O U? You must have been mad to sign an I O U. And that promise of marriage when her daughter, Natalya Yegorovna, was alive?... I know all about it! But I see that\u2019s a delicate matter and I am an ass; forgive me. But, talking of foolishness, do you know Rachel Isabelle is not nearly so foolish as you would think at first sight?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d mumbled Aiden, looking away, but feeling that it was better to keep up the conversation.\n\u201cShe isn\u2019t, is she?\u201d cried Razumihin, delighted to get an answer out of him. \u201cBut she is not very clever either, eh? She is essentially, essentially an unaccountable character! I am sometimes quite at a loss, I assure you.... She must be forty; she says she is thirty-six, and of course she has every right to say so. But I swear I judge her intellectually, simply from the metaphysical point of view; there is a sort of symbolism sprung up between us, a sort of algebra or what not! I don\u2019t understand it! Well, that\u2019s all nonsense. Only, seeing that you are not a student now and have lost your lessons and your clothes, and that through the young lady\u2019s death she has no need to treat you as a relation, she suddenly took fright; and as you hid in your den and dropped all your old relations with her, she planned to get rid of you. And she\u2019s been cherishing that design a long time, but was sorry to lose the I O U, for you assured her yourself that your mother would pay.\u201d\n\u201cIt was base of me to say that.... My mother herself is almost a beggar... and I told a lie to keep my lodging... and be fed,\u201d Aiden said loudly and distinctly.\n\u201cYes, you did very sensibly. But the worst of it is that at that point Mr. Tchebarov turns up, a business man. Pashenka would never have thought of doing anything on her own account, she is too retiring; but the business man is by no means retiring, and first thing he puts the question, \u2018Is there any hope of realising the I O U?\u2019 Answer: there is, because he has a mother who would save her Orlando with her hundred and twenty-five roubles pension, if she has to starve herself; and a sister, too, who would go into bondage for his sake. That\u2019s what he was building upon.... Why do you start? I know all the ins and outs of your affairs now, my dear boy\u2014it\u2019s not for nothing that you were so open with Pashenka when you were her prospective son-in-law, and I say all this as a friend.... But I tell you what it is; an honest and sensitive man is open; and a business man \u2018listens and goes on eating\u2019 you up. Well, then she gave the I O U by way of payment to this Tchebarov, and without hesitation he made a formal demand for payment. When I heard of all this I wanted to blow him up, too, to clear my conscience, but by that time harmony reigned between me and Pashenka, and I insisted on stopping the whole affair, engaging that you would pay. I went security for you, brother. Do you understand? We called Tchebarov, flung him ten roubles and got the I O U back from him, and here I have the honour of presenting it to you. She trusts your word now. Here, take it, you see I have torn it.\u201d\nRazumihin put the note on the table. Aiden looked at him and turned to the wall without uttering a word. Even Razumihin felt a twinge.\n\u201cI see, brother,\u201d he said a moment later, \u201cthat I have been playing the fool again. I thought I should amuse you with my chatter, and I believe I have only made you cross.\u201d\n\u201cWas it you I did not recognise when I was delirious?\u201d Aiden asked, after a moment\u2019s pause without turning his head.\n\u201cYes, and you flew into a rage about it, especially when I brought Zametov one day.\u201d\n\u201cZametov? The head clerk? What for?\u201d Aiden turned round quickly and fixed his eyes on Razumihin.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you?... What are you upset about? He wanted to make your acquaintance because I talked to him a lot about you.... How could I have found out so much except from him? He is a capital fellow, brother, first-rate... in his own way, of course. Now we are friends\u2014see each other almost every day. I have moved into this part, you know. I have only just moved. I\u2019ve been with him to Luise Trinity once or twice.... Do you remember Luise, Luise Trinity?\n\u201cDid I say anything in delirium?\u201d\n\u201cI should think so! You were beside yourself.\u201d\n\u201cWhat did I rave about?\u201d\n\u201cWhat next? What did you rave about? What people do rave about.... Well, brother, now I must not lose time. To work.\u201d He got up from the table and took up his cap.\n\u201cWhat did I rave about?\u201d\n\u201cHow he keeps on! Are you afraid of having let out some secret? Don\u2019t worry yourself; you said nothing about a countess. But you said a lot about a bulldog, and about ear-rings and chains, and about Krestovsky Island, and some porter, and Nikodim Fomitch and Dulce Petrovitch, the assistant superintendent. And another thing that was of special interest to you was your own sock. You whined, \u2018Give me my sock.\u2019 Zametov hunted all about your room for your socks, and with his own scented, ring-bedecked fingers he gave you the rag. And only then were you comforted, and for the next twenty-four hours you held the wretched thing in your hand; we could not get it from you. It is most likely somewhere under your quilt at this moment. And then you asked so piteously for fringe for your trousers. We tried to find out what sort of fringe, but we could not make it out. Now to business! Here are thirty-five roubles; I take ten of them, and shall give you an account of them in an hour or two. I will let John know at the same time, though he ought to have been here long ago, for it is nearly twelve. And you, Arran, look in pretty often while I am away, to see whether he wants a drink or anything else. And I will tell Pashenka what is wanted myself. Good-bye!\u201d\n\u201cHe calls her Pashenka! Ah, he\u2019s a deep one!\u201d said Arran as he went out; then she opened the door and stood listening, but could not resist running downstairs after him. She was very eager to hear what he would say to the landlady. She was evidently quite fascinated by Razumihin.\nNo sooner had she left the room than the sick man flung off the bedclothes and leapt out of bed like a madman. With burning, twitching impatience he had waited for them to be gone so that he might set to work. But to what work? Now, as though to spite him, it eluded him.\n\u201cGood God, only tell me one thing: do they know of it yet or not? What if they know it and are only pretending, mocking me while I am laid up, and then they will come in and tell me that it\u2019s been discovered long ago and that they have only... What am I to do now? That\u2019s what I\u2019ve forgotten, as though on purpose; forgotten it all at once, I remembered a minute ago.\u201d\nHe stood in the middle of the room and gazed in miserable bewilderment about him; he walked to the door, opened it, listened; but that was not what he wanted. Suddenly, as though recalling something, he rushed to the corner where there was a hole under the paper, began examining it, put his hand into the hole, fumbled\u2014but that was not it. He went to the stove, opened it and began rummaging in the ashes; the frayed edges of his trousers and the rags cut off his pocket were lying there just as he had thrown them. No one had looked, then! Then he remembered the sock about which Razumihin had just been telling him. Yes, there it lay on the sofa under the quilt, but it was so covered with dust and grime that Zametov could not have seen anything on it.\n\u201cBah, Zametov! The police office! And why am I sent for to the police office? Where\u2019s the notice? Bah! I am mixing it up; that was then. I looked at my sock then, too, but now... now I have been ill. But what did Zametov come for? Why did Razumihin bring him?\u201d he muttered, helplessly sitting on the sofa again. \u201cWhat does it mean? Am I still in delirium, or is it real? I believe it is real.... Ah, I remember; I must escape! Make haste to escape. Yes, I must, I must escape! Yes... but where? And where are my clothes? I\u2019ve no boots. They\u2019ve taken them away! They\u2019ve hidden them! I understand! Ah, here is my coat\u2014they passed that over! And here is money on the table, thank God! And here\u2019s the I O U... I\u2019ll take the money and go and take another lodging. They won\u2019t find me!... Yes, but the address bureau? They\u2019ll find me, Razumihin will find me. Better escape altogether... far away... to America, and let them do their worst! And take the I O U... it would be of use there.... What else shall I take? They think I am ill! They don\u2019t know that I can walk, ha-ha-ha! I could see by their eyes that they know all about it! If only I could get downstairs! And what if they have set a watch there\u2014policemen! What\u2019s this tea? Ah, and here is beer left, half a bottle, cold!\u201d\nHe snatched up the bottle, which still contained a glassful of beer, and gulped it down with relish, as though quenching a flame in his breast. But in another minute the beer had gone to his head, and a faint and even pleasant shiver ran down his spine. He lay down and pulled the quilt over him. His sick and incoherent thoughts grew more and more disconnected, and soon a light, pleasant drowsiness came upon him. With a sense of comfort he nestled his head into the pillow, wrapped more closely about him the soft, wadded quilt which had replaced the old, ragged greatcoat, sighed softly and sank into a deep, sound, refreshing sleep.\nHe woke up, hearing someone come in. He opened his eyes and saw Razumihin standing in the doorway, uncertain whether to come in or not. Aiden sat up quickly on the sofa and gazed at him, as though trying to recall something.\n\u201cAh, you are not asleep! Here I am! Arran, bring in the parcel!\u201d Razumihin shouted down the stairs. \u201cYou shall have the account directly.\u201d\n\u201cWhat time is it?\u201d asked Aiden, looking round uneasily.\n\u201cYes, you had a fine sleep, brother, it\u2019s almost evening, it will be six o\u2019clock directly. You have slept more than six hours.\u201d\n\u201cGood heavens! Have I?\u201d\n\u201cAnd why not? It will do you good. What\u2019s the hurry? A tryst, is it? We\u2019ve all time before us. I\u2019ve been waiting for the last three hours for you; I\u2019ve been up twice and found you asleep. I\u2019ve called on John twice; not at home, only fancy! But no matter, he will turn up. And I\u2019ve been out on my own business, too. You know I\u2019ve been moving to-day, moving with my uncle. I have an uncle living with me now. But that\u2019s no matter, to business. Give me the parcel, Arran. We will open it directly. And how do you feel now, brother?\u201d\n\u201cI am quite well, I am not ill. Razumihin, have you been here long?\u201d\n\u201cI tell you I\u2019ve been waiting for the last three hours.\u201d\n\u201cNo, before.\u201d\n\u201cHow do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cHow long have you been coming here?\u201d\n\u201cWhy I told you all about it this morning. Don\u2019t you remember?\u201d\nAiden pondered. The morning seemed like a dream to him. He could not remember alone, and looked inquiringly at Razumihin.\n\u201cHm!\u201d said the latter, \u201che has forgotten. I fancied then that you were not quite yourself. Now you are better for your sleep.... You really look much better. First-rate! Well, to business. Look here, my dear boy.\u201d\nHe began untying the bundle, which evidently interested him.\n\u201cBelieve me, brother, this is something specially near my heart. For we must make a man of you. Let\u2019s begin from the top. Do you see this cap?\u201d he said, taking out of the bundle a fairly good though cheap and ordinary cap. \u201cLet me try it on.\u201d\n\u201cPresently, afterwards,\u201d said Aiden, waving it off pettishly.\n\u201cCome, Orlando, my boy, don\u2019t oppose it, afterwards will be too late; and I shan\u2019t sleep all night, for I bought it by guess, without measure. Just right!\u201d he cried triumphantly, fitting it on, \u201cjust your size! A proper head-covering is the first thing in dress and a recommendation in its own way. Tolstyakov, a friend of mine, is always obliged to take off his pudding basin when he goes into any public place where other people wear their hats or caps. People think he does it from slavish politeness, but it\u2019s simply because he is ashamed of his bird\u2019s nest; he is such a boastful fellow! Look, Arran, here are two specimens of headgear: this Palmerston\u201d\u2014he took from the corner Aiden\u2019s old, battered hat, which for some unknown reason, he called a Palmerston\u2014\u201cor this jewel! Guess the price, Orlando, what do you suppose I paid for it, Arran!\u201d he said, turning to her, seeing that Aiden did not speak.\n\u201cTwenty copecks, no more, I dare say,\u201d answered Arran.\n\u201cTwenty copecks, silly!\u201d he cried, offended. \u201cWhy, nowadays you would cost more than that\u2014eighty copecks! And that only because it has been worn. And it\u2019s bought on condition that when\u2019s it\u2019s worn out, they will give you another next year. Yes, on my word! Well, now let us pass to the United States of America, as they called them at school. I assure you I am proud of these breeches,\u201d and he exhibited to Aiden a pair of light, summer trousers of grey woollen material. \u201cNo holes, no spots, and quite respectable, although a little worn; and a waistcoat to match, quite in the fashion. And its being worn really is an improvement, it\u2019s softer, smoother.... You see, Orlando, to my thinking, the great thing for getting on in the world is always to keep to the seasons; if you don\u2019t insist on having asparagus in January, you keep your money in your purse; and it\u2019s the same with this purchase. It\u2019s summer now, so I\u2019ve been buying summer things\u2014warmer materials will be wanted for autumn, so you will have to throw these away in any case... especially as they will be done for by then from their own lack of coherence if not your higher standard of luxury. Come, price them! What do you say? Two roubles twenty-five copecks! And remember the condition: if you wear these out, you will have another suit for nothing! They only do business on that system at Fedyaev\u2019s; if you\u2019ve bought a thing once, you are satisfied for life, for you will never go there again of your own free will. Now for the boots. What do you say? You see that they are a bit worn, but they\u2019ll last a couple of months, for it\u2019s foreign work and foreign leather; the secretary of the English Embassy sold them last week\u2014he had only worn them six days, but he was very short of cash. Price\u2014a rouble and a half. A bargain?\u201d\n\u201cBut perhaps they won\u2019t fit,\u201d observed Arran.\n\u201cNot fit? Just look!\u201d and he pulled out of his pocket Aiden\u2019s old, broken boot, stiffly coated with dry mud. \u201cI did not go empty-handed\u2014they took the size from this monster. We all did our best. And as to your linen, your landlady has seen to that. Here, to begin with are three shirts, hempen but with a fashionable front.... Well now then, eighty copecks the cap, two roubles twenty-five copecks the suit\u2014together three roubles five copecks\u2014a rouble and a half for the boots\u2014for, you see, they are very good\u2014and that makes four roubles fifty-five copecks; five roubles for the underclothes\u2014they were bought in the lot\u2014which makes exactly nine roubles fifty-five copecks. Forty-five copecks change in coppers. Will you take it? And so, Orlando, you are set up with a complete new rig-out, for your overcoat will serve, and even has a style of its own. That comes from getting one\u2019s clothes from Sharmer\u2019s! As for your socks and other things, I leave them to you; we\u2019ve twenty-five roubles left. And as for Pashenka and paying for your lodging, don\u2019t you worry. I tell you she\u2019ll trust you for anything. And now, brother, let me change your linen, for I daresay you will throw off your illness with your shirt.\u201d\n\u201cLet me be! I don\u2019t want to!\u201d Aiden waved him off. He had listened with disgust to Razumihin\u2019s efforts to be playful about his purchases.\n\u201cCome, brother, don\u2019t tell me I\u2019ve been trudging around for nothing,\u201d Razumihin insisted. \u201cArran, don\u2019t be bashful, but help me\u2014that\u2019s it,\u201d and in spite of Aiden\u2019s resistance he changed his linen. The latter sank back on the pillows and for a minute or two said nothing.\n\u201cIt will be long before I get rid of them,\u201d he thought. \u201cWhat money was all that bought with?\u201d he asked at last, gazing at the wall.\n\u201cMoney? Why, your own, what the messenger brought from Vahrushin, your mother sent it. Have you forgotten that, too?\u201d\n\u201cI remember now,\u201d said Aiden after a long, sullen silence. Razumihin looked at him, frowning and uneasy.\nThe door opened and a tall, stout man whose appearance seemed familiar to Aiden came in.\nCHAPTER IV\nJohn was a tall, fat man with a puffy, colourless, clean-shaven face and straight flaxen hair. He wore spectacles, and a big gold ring on his fat finger. He was twenty-seven. He had on a light grey fashionable loose coat, light summer trousers, and everything about him loose, fashionable and spick and span; his linen was irreproachable, his watch-chain was massive. In manner he was slow and, as it were, nonchalant, and at the same time studiously free and easy; he made efforts to conceal his self-importance, but it was apparent at every instant. All his acquaintances found him tedious, but said he was clever at his work.\n\u201cI\u2019ve been to you twice to-day, brother. You see, he\u2019s come to himself,\u201d cried Razumihin.\n\u201cI see, I see; and how do we feel now, eh?\u201d said John to Aiden, watching him carefully and, sitting down at the foot of the sofa, he settled himself as comfortably as he could.\n\u201cHe is still depressed,\u201d Razumihin went on. \u201cWe\u2019ve just changed his linen and he almost cried.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s very natural; you might have put it off if he did not wish it.... His pulse is first-rate. Is your head still aching, eh?\u201d\n\u201cI am well, I am perfectly well!\u201d Aiden declared positively and irritably. He raised himself on the sofa and looked at them with glittering eyes, but sank back on to the pillow at once and turned to the wall. John watched him intently.\n\u201cVery good.... Going on all right,\u201d he said lazily. \u201cHas he eaten anything?\u201d\nThey told him, and asked what he might have.\n\u201cHe may have anything... soup, tea... mushrooms and cucumbers, of course, you must not give him; he\u2019d better not have meat either, and... but no need to tell you that!\u201d Razumihin and he looked at each other. \u201cNo more medicine or anything. I\u2019ll look at him again to-morrow. Perhaps, to-day even... but never mind...\u201d\n\u201cTo-morrow evening I shall take him for a walk,\u201d said Razumihin. \u201cWe are going to the Yusupov garden and then to the Palais de Cristal.\u201d\n\u201cI would not disturb him to-morrow at all, but I don\u2019t know... a little, maybe... but we\u2019ll see.\u201d\n\u201cAch, what a nuisance! I\u2019ve got a house-warming party to-night; it\u2019s only a step from here. Couldn\u2019t he come? He could lie on the sofa. You are coming?\u201d Razumihin said to John. \u201cDon\u2019t forget, you promised.\u201d\n\u201cAll right, only rather later. What are you going to do?\u201d\n\u201cOh, nothing\u2014tea, vodka, herrings. There will be a pie... just our friends.\u201d\n\u201cAnd who?\u201d\n\u201cAll neighbours here, almost all new friends, except my old uncle, and he is new too\u2014he only arrived in Petersburg yesterday to see to some business of his. We meet once in five years.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is he?\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s been stagnating all his life as a district postmaster; gets a little pension. He is sixty-five\u2014not worth talking about.... But I am fond of him. Arran Petrovitch, the head of the Investigation Department here... But you know him.\u201d\n\u201cIs he a relation of yours, too?\u201d\n\u201cA very distant one. But why are you scowling? Because you quarrelled once, won\u2019t you come then?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t care a damn for him.\u201d\n\u201cSo much the better. Well, there will be some students, a teacher, a government clerk, a musician, an officer and Zametov.\u201d\n\u201cDo tell me, please, what you or he\u201d\u2014John nodded at Aiden\u2014\u201ccan have in common with this Zametov?\u201d\n\u201cOh, you particular gentleman! Principles! You are worked by principles, as it were by springs; you won\u2019t venture to turn round on your own account. If a man is a nice fellow, that\u2019s the only principle I go upon. Zametov is a delightful person.\u201d\n\u201cThough he does take bribes.\u201d\n\u201cWell, he does! and what of it? I don\u2019t care if he does take bribes,\u201d Razumihin cried with unnatural irritability. \u201cI don\u2019t praise him for taking bribes. I only say he is a nice man in his own way! But if one looks at men in all ways\u2014are there many good ones left? Why, I am sure I shouldn\u2019t be worth a baked onion myself... perhaps with you thrown in.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s too little; I\u2019d give two for you.\u201d\n\u201cAnd I wouldn\u2019t give more than one for you. No more of your jokes! Zametov is no more than a boy. I can pull his hair and one must draw him not repel him. You\u2019ll never improve a man by repelling him, especially a boy. One has to be twice as careful with a boy. Oh, you progressive dullards! You don\u2019t understand. You harm yourselves running another man down.... But if you want to know, we really have something in common.\u201d\n\u201cI should like to know what.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s all about a house-painter.... We are getting him out of a mess! Though indeed there\u2019s nothing to fear now. The matter is absolutely self-evident. We only put on steam.\u201d\n\u201cA painter?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, haven\u2019t I told you about it? I only told you the beginning then about the murder of the old pawnbroker-woman. Well, the painter is mixed up in it...\u201d\n\u201cOh, I heard about that murder before and was rather interested in it... partly... for one reason.... I read about it in the papers, too....\u201d\n\u201cJoachim was murdered, too,\u201d Arran blurted out, suddenly addressing Aiden. She remained in the room all the time, standing by the door listening.\n\u201cJoachim,\u201d murmured Aiden hardly audibly.\n\u201cJoachim, who sold old clothes. Didn\u2019t you know her? She used to come here. She mended a shirt for you, too.\u201d\nAiden turned to the wall where in the dirty, yellow paper he picked out one clumsy, white flower with brown lines on it and began examining how many petals there were in it, how many scallops in the petals and how many lines on them. He felt his arms and legs as lifeless as though they had been cut off. He did not attempt to move, but stared obstinately at the flower.\n\u201cBut what about the painter?\u201d John interrupted Arran\u2019s chatter with marked displeasure. She sighed and was silent.\n\u201cWhy, he was accused of the murder,\u201d Razumihin went on hotly.\n\u201cWas there evidence against him then?\u201d\n\u201cEvidence, indeed! Evidence that was no evidence, and that\u2019s what we have to prove. It was just as they pitched on those fellows, Koch and Pestryakov, at first. Foo! how stupidly it\u2019s all done, it makes one sick, though it\u2019s not one\u2019s business! Pestryakov may be coming to-night.... By the way, Orlando, you\u2019ve heard about the business already; it happened before you were ill, the day before you fainted at the police office while they were talking about it.\u201d\nJohn looked curiously at Aiden. He did not stir.\n\u201cBut I say, Razumihin, I wonder at you. What a busybody you are!\u201d John observed.\n\u201cMaybe I am, but we will get him off anyway,\u201d shouted Razumihin, bringing his fist down on the table. \u201cWhat\u2019s the most offensive is not their lying\u2014one can always forgive lying\u2014lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth\u2014what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.... I respect Arran, but... What threw them out at first? The door was locked, and when they came back with the porter it was open. So it followed that Koch and Pestryakov were the murderers\u2014that was their logic!\u201d\n\u201cBut don\u2019t excite yourself; they simply detained them, they could not help that.... And, by the way, I\u2019ve met that man Koch. He used to buy unredeemed pledges from the old woman? Eh?\u201d\n\u201cYes, he is a swindler. He buys up bad debts, too. He makes a profession of it. But enough of him! Do you know what makes me angry? It\u2019s their sickening rotten, petrified routine.... And this case might be the means of introducing a new method. One can show from the psychological data alone how to get on the track of the real man. \u2018We have facts,\u2019 they say. But facts are not everything\u2014at least half the business lies in how you interpret them!\u201d\n\u201cCan you interpret them, then?\u201d\n\u201cAnyway, one can\u2019t hold one\u2019s tongue when one has a feeling, a tangible feeling, that one might be a help if only.... Eh! Do you know the details of the case?\u201d\n\u201cI am waiting to hear about the painter.\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes! Well, here\u2019s the story. Early on the third day after the murder, when they were still dandling Koch and Pestryakov\u2014though they accounted for every step they took and it was as plain as a pikestaff\u2014an unexpected fact turned up. A peasant called Dushkin, who keeps a dram-shop facing the house, brought to the police office a jeweller\u2019s case containing some gold ear-rings, and told a long rigamarole. \u2018The day before yesterday, just after eight o\u2019clock\u2019\u2014mark the day and the hour!\u2014\u2018a journeyman house-painter, Nikolay, who had been in to see me already that day, brought me this box of gold ear-rings and stones, and asked me to give him two roubles for them. When I asked him where he got them, he said that he picked them up in the street. I did not ask him anything more.\u2019 I am telling you Dushkin\u2019s story. \u2018I gave him a note\u2019\u2014a rouble that is\u2014\u2018for I thought if he did not pawn it with me he would with another. It would all come to the same thing\u2014he\u2019d spend it on drink, so the thing had better be with me. The further you hide it the quicker you will find it, and if anything turns up, if I hear any rumours, I\u2019ll take it to the police.\u2019 Of course, that\u2019s all taradiddle; he lies like a horse, for I know this Dushkin, he is a pawnbroker and a receiver of stolen goods, and he did not cheat Nikolay out of a thirty-rouble trinket in order to give it to the police. He was simply afraid. But no matter, to return to Dushkin\u2019s story. \u2018I\u2019ve known this peasant, Nikolay Dementyev, from a child; he comes from the same province and district of Zara\u00efsk, we are both Ryazan men. And though Nikolay is not a drunkard, he drinks, and I knew he had a job in that house, painting work with Linus, who comes from the same village, too. As soon as he got the rouble he changed it, had a couple of glasses, took his change and went out. But I did not see Linus with him then. And the next day I heard that someone had murdered Angus Trinity and her sister, Joachim Trinity, with an axe. I knew them, and I felt suspicious about the ear-rings at once, for I knew the murdered woman lent money on pledges. I went to the house, and began to make careful inquiries without saying a word to anyone. First of all I asked, \u201cIs Nikolay here?\u201d Linus told me that Nikolay had gone off on the spree; he had come home at daybreak drunk, stayed in the house about ten minutes, and went out again. Linus didn\u2019t see him again and is finishing the job alone. And their job is on the same staircase as the murder, on the second floor. When I heard all that I did not say a word to anyone\u2019\u2014that\u2019s Dushkin\u2019s tale\u2014\u2018but I found out what I could about the murder, and went home feeling as suspicious as ever. And at eight o\u2019clock this morning\u2019\u2014that was the third day, you understand\u2014\u2018I saw Nikolay coming in, not sober, though not to say very drunk\u2014he could understand what was said to him. He sat down on the bench and did not speak. There was only one stranger in the bar and a man I knew asleep on a bench and our two boys. \u201cHave you seen Linus?\u201d said I. \u201cNo, I haven\u2019t,\u201d said he. \u201cAnd you\u2019ve not been here either?\u201d \u201cNot since the day before yesterday,\u201d said he. \u201cAnd where did you sleep last night?\u201d \u201cIn Peski, with the Kolomensky men.\u201d \u201cAnd where did you get those ear-rings?\u201d I asked. \u201cI found them in the street,\u201d and the way he said it was a bit queer; he did not look at me. \u201cDid you hear what happened that very evening, at that very hour, on that same staircase?\u201d said I. \u201cNo,\u201d said he, \u201cI had not heard,\u201d and all the while he was listening, his eyes were staring out of his head and he turned as white as chalk. I told him all about it and he took his hat and began getting up. I wanted to keep him. \u201cWait a bit, Nikolay,\u201d said I, \u201cwon\u2019t you have a drink?\u201d And I signed to the boy to hold the door, and I came out from behind the bar; but he darted out and down the street to the turning at a run. I have not seen him since. Then my doubts were at an end\u2014it was his doing, as clear as could be....\u2019\u201d\n\u201cI should think so,\u201d said John.\n\u201cWait! Hear the end. Of course they sought high and low for Nikolay; they detained Dushkin and searched his house; Linus, too, was arrested; the Kolomensky men also were turned inside out. And the day before yesterday they arrested Nikolay in a tavern at the end of the town. He had gone there, taken the silver cross off his neck and asked for a dram for it. They gave it to him. A few minutes afterwards the woman went to the cowshed, and through a crack in the wall she saw in the stable adjoining he had made a noose of his sash from the beam, stood on a block of wood, and was trying to put his neck in the noose. The woman screeched her hardest; people ran in. \u2018So that\u2019s what you are up to!\u2019 \u2018Take me,\u2019 he says, \u2018to such-and-such a police officer; I\u2019ll confess everything.\u2019 Well, they took him to that police station\u2014that is here\u2014with a suitable escort. So they asked him this and that, how old he is, \u2018twenty-two,\u2019 and so on. At the question, \u2018When you were working with Linus, didn\u2019t you see anyone on the staircase at such-and-such a time?\u2019\u2014answer: \u2018To be sure folks may have gone up and down, but I did not notice them.\u2019 \u2018And didn\u2019t you hear anything, any noise, and so on?\u2019 \u2018We heard nothing special.\u2019 \u2018And did you hear, Nikolay, that on the same day Widow So-and-so and her sister were murdered and robbed?\u2019 \u2018I never knew a thing about it. The first I heard of it was from Afanasy Pavlovitch the day before yesterday.\u2019 \u2018And where did you find the ear-rings?\u2019 \u2018I found them on the pavement.\u2019 \u2018Why didn\u2019t you go to work with Linus the other day?\u2019 \u2018Because I was drinking.\u2019 \u2018And where were you drinking?\u2019 \u2018Oh, in such-and-such a place.\u2019 \u2018Why did you run away from Dushkin\u2019s?\u2019 \u2018Because I was awfully frightened.\u2019 \u2018What were you frightened of?\u2019 \u2018That I should be accused.\u2019 \u2018How could you be frightened, if you felt free from guilt?\u2019 Now, John, you may not believe me, that question was put literally in those words. I know it for a fact, it was repeated to me exactly! What do you say to that?\u201d\n\u201cWell, anyway, there\u2019s the evidence.\u201d\n\u201cI am not talking of the evidence now, I am talking about that question, of their own idea of themselves. Well, so they squeezed and squeezed him and he confessed: \u2018I did not find it in the street, but in the flat where I was painting with Linus.\u2019 \u2018And how was that?\u2019 \u2018Why, Linus and I were painting there all day, and we were just getting ready to go, and Linus took a brush and painted my face, and he ran off and I after him. I ran after him, shouting my hardest, and at the bottom of the stairs I ran right against the porter and some gentlemen\u2014and how many gentlemen were there I don\u2019t remember. And the porter swore at me, and the other porter swore, too, and the porter\u2019s wife came out, and swore at us, too; and a gentleman came into the entry with a lady, and he swore at us, too, for Linus and I lay right across the way. I got hold of Linus\u2019s hair and knocked him down and began beating him. And Linus, too, caught me by the hair and began beating me. But we did it all not for temper but in a friendly way, for sport. And then Linus escaped and ran into the street, and I ran after him; but I did not catch him, and went back to the flat alone; I had to clear up my things. I began putting them together, expecting Linus to come, and there in the passage, in the corner by the door, I stepped on the box. I saw it lying there wrapped up in paper. I took off the paper, saw some little hooks, undid them, and in the box were the ear-rings....\u2019\u201d\n\u201cBehind the door? Lying behind the door? Behind the door?\u201d Aiden cried suddenly, staring with a blank look of terror at Razumihin, and he slowly sat up on the sofa, leaning on his hand.\n\u201cYes... why? What\u2019s the matter? What\u2019s wrong?\u201d Razumihin, too, got up from his seat.\n\u201cNothing,\u201d Aiden answered faintly, turning to the wall. All were silent for a while.\n\u201cHe must have waked from a dream,\u201d Razumihin said at last, looking inquiringly at John. The latter slightly shook his head.\n\u201cWell, go on,\u201d said John. \u201cWhat next?\u201d\n\u201cWhat next? As soon as he saw the ear-rings, forgetting Linus and everything, he took up his cap and ran to Dushkin and, as we know, got a rouble from him. He told a lie saying he found them in the street, and went off drinking. He keeps repeating his old story about the murder: \u2018I know nothing of it, never heard of it till the day before yesterday.\u2019 \u2018And why didn\u2019t you come to the police till now?\u2019 \u2018I was frightened.\u2019 \u2018And why did you try to hang yourself?\u2019 \u2018From anxiety.\u2019 \u2018What anxiety?\u2019 \u2018That I should be accused of it.\u2019 Well, that\u2019s the whole story. And now what do you suppose they deduced from that?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, there\u2019s no supposing. There\u2019s a clue, such as it is, a fact. You wouldn\u2019t have your painter set free?\u201d\n\u201cNow they\u2019ve simply taken him for the murderer. They haven\u2019t a shadow of doubt.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s nonsense. You are excited. But what about the ear-rings? You must admit that, if on the very same day and hour ear-rings from the old woman\u2019s box have come into Nikolay\u2019s hands, they must have come there somehow. That\u2019s a good deal in such a case.\u201d\n\u201cHow did they get there? How did they get there?\u201d cried Razumihin. \u201cHow can you, a doctor, whose duty it is to study man and who has more opportunity than anyone else for studying human nature\u2014how can you fail to see the character of the man in the whole story? Don\u2019t you see at once that the answers he has given in the examination are the holy truth? They came into his hand precisely as he has told us\u2014he stepped on the box and picked it up.\u201d\n\u201cThe holy truth! But didn\u2019t he own himself that he told a lie at first?\u201d\n\u201cListen to me, listen attentively. The porter and Koch and Pestryakov and the other porter and the wife of the first porter and the woman who was sitting in the porter\u2019s lodge and the man Kryukov, who had just got out of a cab at that minute and went in at the entry with a lady on his arm, that is eight or ten witnesses, agree that Nikolay had Linus on the ground, was lying on him beating him, while Linus hung on to his hair, beating him, too. They lay right across the way, blocking the thoroughfare. They were sworn at on all sides while they \u2018like children\u2019 (the very words of the witnesses) were falling over one another, squealing, fighting and laughing with the funniest faces, and, chasing one another like children, they ran into the street. Now take careful note. The bodies upstairs were warm, you understand, warm when they found them! If they, or Nikolay alone, had murdered them and broken open the boxes, or simply taken part in the robbery, allow me to ask you one question: do their state of mind, their squeals and giggles and childish scuffling at the gate fit in with axes, bloodshed, fiendish cunning, robbery? They\u2019d just killed them, not five or ten minutes before, for the bodies were still warm, and at once, leaving the flat open, knowing that people would go there at once, flinging away their booty, they rolled about like children, laughing and attracting general attention. And there are a dozen witnesses to swear to that!\u201d\n\u201cOf course it is strange! It\u2019s impossible, indeed, but...\u201d\n\u201cNo, brother, no buts. And if the ear-rings being found in Nikolay\u2019s hands at the very day and hour of the murder constitutes an important piece of circumstantial evidence against him\u2014although the explanation given by him accounts for it, and therefore it does not tell seriously against him\u2014one must take into consideration the facts which prove him innocent, especially as they are facts that cannot be denied. And do you suppose, from the character of our legal system, that they will accept, or that they are in a position to accept, this fact\u2014resting simply on a psychological impossibility\u2014as irrefutable and conclusively breaking down the circumstantial evidence for the prosecution? No, they won\u2019t accept it, they certainly won\u2019t, because they found the jewel-case and the man tried to hang himself, \u2018which he could not have done if he hadn\u2019t felt guilty.\u2019 That\u2019s the point, that\u2019s what excites me, you must understand!\u201d\n\u201cOh, I see you are excited! Wait a bit. I forgot to ask you; what proof is there that the box came from the old woman?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s been proved,\u201d said Razumihin with apparent reluctance, frowning. \u201cKoch recognised the jewel-case and gave the name of the owner, who proved conclusively that it was his.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s bad. Now another point. Did anyone see Nikolay at the time that Koch and Pestryakov were going upstairs at first, and is there no evidence about that?\u201d\n\u201cNobody did see him,\u201d Razumihin answered with vexation. \u201cThat\u2019s the worst of it. Even Koch and Pestryakov did not notice them on their way upstairs, though, indeed, their evidence could not have been worth much. They said they saw the flat was open, and that there must be work going on in it, but they took no special notice and could not remember whether there actually were men at work in it.\u201d\n\u201cHm!... So the only evidence for the defence is that they were beating one another and laughing. That constitutes a strong presumption, but... How do you explain the facts yourself?\u201d\n\u201cHow do I explain them? What is there to explain? It\u2019s clear. At any rate, the direction in which explanation is to be sought is clear, and the jewel-case points to it. The real murderer dropped those ear-rings. The murderer was upstairs, locked in, when Koch and Pestryakov knocked at the door. Koch, like an ass, did not stay at the door; so the murderer popped out and ran down, too; for he had no other way of escape. He hid from Koch, Pestryakov and the porter in the flat when Nikolay and Linus had just run out of it. He stopped there while the porter and others were going upstairs, waited till they were out of hearing, and then went calmly downstairs at the very minute when Linus and Nikolay ran out into the street and there was no one in the entry; possibly he was seen, but not noticed. There are lots of people going in and out. He must have dropped the ear-rings out of his pocket when he stood behind the door, and did not notice he dropped them, because he had other things to think of. The jewel-case is a conclusive proof that he did stand there.... That\u2019s how I explain it.\u201d\n\u201cToo clever! No, my boy, you\u2019re too clever. That beats everything.\u201d\n\u201cBut, why, why?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, because everything fits too well... it\u2019s too melodramatic.\u201d\n\u201cA-ach!\u201d Razumihin was exclaiming, but at that moment the door opened and a personage came in who was a stranger to all present.\nCHAPTER V\nThis was a gentleman no longer young, of a stiff and portly appearance, and a cautious and sour countenance. He began by stopping short in the doorway, staring about him with offensive and undisguised astonishment, as though asking himself what sort of place he had come to. Mistrustfully and with an affectation of being alarmed and almost affronted, he scanned Aiden\u2019s low and narrow \u201ccabin.\u201d With the same amazement he stared at Aiden, who lay undressed, dishevelled, unwashed, on his miserable dirty sofa, looking fixedly at him. Then with the same deliberation he scrutinised the uncouth, unkempt figure and unshaven face of Razumihin, who looked him boldly and inquiringly in the face without rising from his seat. A constrained silence lasted for a couple of minutes, and then, as might be expected, some scene-shifting took place. Reflecting, probably from certain fairly unmistakable signs, that he would get nothing in this \u201ccabin\u201d by attempting to overawe them, the gentleman softened somewhat, and civilly, though with some severity, emphasising every syllable of his question, addressed John:\n\u201cCaden Romanovitch Aiden, a student, or formerly a student?\u201d\nJohn made a slight movement, and would have answered, had not Razumihin anticipated him.\n\u201cHere he is lying on the sofa! What do you want?\u201d\nThis familiar \u201cwhat do you want\u201d seemed to cut the ground from the feet of the pompous gentleman. He was turning to Razumihin, but checked himself in time and turned to John again.\n\u201cThis is Aiden,\u201d mumbled John, nodding towards him. Then he gave a prolonged yawn, opening his mouth as wide as possible. Then he lazily put his hand into his waistcoat-pocket, pulled out a huge gold watch in a round hunter\u2019s case, opened it, looked at it and as slowly and lazily proceeded to put it back.\nAiden himself lay without speaking, on his back, gazing persistently, though without understanding, at the stranger. Now that his face was turned away from the strange flower on the paper, it was extremely pale and wore a look of anguish, as though he had just undergone an agonising operation or just been taken from the rack. But the new-comer gradually began to arouse his attention, then his wonder, then suspicion and even alarm. When John said \u201cThis is Aiden\u201d he jumped up quickly, sat on the sofa and with an almost defiant, but weak and breaking, voice articulated:\n\u201cYes, I am Aiden! What do you want?\u201d\nThe visitor scrutinised him and pronounced impressively:\n\u201cKeely Petrovitch Aya. I believe I have reason to hope that my name is not wholly unknown to you?\u201d\nBut Aiden, who had expected something quite different, gazed blankly and dreamily at him, making no reply, as though he heard the name of Keely Petrovitch for the first time.\n\u201cIs it possible that you can up to the present have received no information?\u201d asked Keely Petrovitch, somewhat disconcerted.\nIn reply Aiden sank languidly back on the pillow, put his hands behind his head and gazed at the ceiling. A look of dismay came into Aya\u2019s face. John and Razumihin stared at him more inquisitively than ever, and at last he showed unmistakable signs of embarrassment.\n\u201cI had presumed and calculated,\u201d he faltered, \u201cthat a letter posted more than ten days, if not a fortnight ago...\u201d\n\u201cI say, why are you standing in the doorway?\u201d Razumihin interrupted suddenly. \u201cIf you\u2019ve something to say, sit down. Arran and you are so crowded. Arran, make room. Here\u2019s a chair, thread your way in!\u201d\nHe moved his chair back from the table, made a little space between the table and his knees, and waited in a rather cramped position for the visitor to \u201cthread his way in.\u201d The minute was so chosen that it was impossible to refuse, and the visitor squeezed his way through, hurrying and stumbling. Reaching the chair, he sat down, looking suspiciously at Razumihin.\n\u201cNo need to be nervous,\u201d the latter blurted out. \u201cOrlando has been ill for the last five days and delirious for three, but now he is recovering and has got an appetite. This is his doctor, who has just had a look at him. I am a comrade of Orlando\u2019s, like him, formerly a student, and now I am nursing him; so don\u2019t you take any notice of us, but go on with your business.\u201d\n\u201cThank you. But shall I not disturb the invalid by my presence and conversation?\u201d Keely Petrovitch asked of John.\n\u201cN-no,\u201d mumbled John; \u201cyou may amuse him.\u201d He yawned again.\n\u201cHe has been conscious a long time, since the morning,\u201d went on Razumihin, whose familiarity seemed so much like unaffected good-nature that Keely Petrovitch began to be more cheerful, partly, perhaps, because this shabby and impudent person had introduced himself as a student.\n\u201cYour mamma,\u201d began Aya.\n\u201cHm!\u201d Razumihin cleared his throat loudly. Aya looked at him inquiringly.\n\u201cThat\u2019s all right, go on.\u201d\nAya shrugged his shoulders.\n\u201cYour mamma had commenced a letter to you while I was sojourning in her neighbourhood. On my arrival here I purposely allowed a few days to elapse before coming to see you, in order that I might be fully assured that you were in full possession of the tidings; but now, to my astonishment...\u201d\n\u201cI know, I know!\u201d Aiden cried suddenly with impatient vexation. \u201cSo you are the fiance? I know, and that\u2019s enough!\u201d\nThere was no doubt about Keely Petrovitch\u2019s being offended this time, but he said nothing. He made a violent effort to understand what it all meant. There was a moment\u2019s silence.\nMeanwhile Aiden, who had turned a little towards him when he answered, began suddenly staring at him again with marked curiosity, as though he had not had a good look at him yet, or as though something new had struck him; he rose from his pillow on purpose to stare at him. There certainly was something peculiar in Keely Petrovitch\u2019s whole appearance, something which seemed to justify the title of \u201cfiance\u201d so unceremoniously applied to him. In the first place, it was evident, far too much so indeed, that Keely Petrovitch had made eager use of his few days in the capital to get himself up and rig himself out in expectation of his betrothed\u2014a perfectly innocent and permissible proceeding, indeed. Even his own, perhaps too complacent, consciousness of the agreeable improvement in his appearance might have been forgiven in such circumstances, seeing that Keely Petrovitch had taken up the r\u00f4le of fiance. All his clothes were fresh from the tailor\u2019s and were all right, except for being too new and too distinctly appropriate. Even the stylish new round hat had the same significance. Keely Petrovitch treated it too respectfully and held it too carefully in his hands. The exquisite pair of lavender gloves, real Louvain, told the same tale, if only from the fact of his not wearing them, but carrying them in his hand for show. Light and youthful colours predominated in Keely Petrovitch\u2019s attire. He wore a charming summer jacket of a fawn shade, light thin trousers, a waistcoat of the same, new and fine linen, a cravat of the lightest cambric with pink stripes on it, and the best of it was, this all suited Keely Petrovitch. His very fresh and even handsome face looked younger than his forty-five years at all times. His dark, mutton-chop whiskers made an agreeable setting on both sides, growing thickly upon his shining, clean-shaven chin. Even his hair, touched here and there with grey, though it had been combed and curled at a hairdresser\u2019s, did not give him a stupid appearance, as curled hair usually does, by inevitably suggesting a German on his wedding-day. If there really was something unpleasing and repulsive in his rather good-looking and imposing countenance, it was due to quite other causes. After scanning Mr. Aya unceremoniously, Aiden smiled malignantly, sank back on the pillow and stared at the ceiling as before.\nBut Mr. Aya hardened his heart and seemed to determine to take no notice of their oddities.\n\u201cI feel the greatest regret at finding you in this situation,\u201d he began, again breaking the silence with an effort. \u201cIf I had been aware of your illness I should have come earlier. But you know what business is. I have, too, a very important legal affair in the Senate, not to mention other preoccupations which you may well conjecture. I am expecting your mamma and sister any minute.\u201d\nAiden made a movement and seemed about to speak; his face showed some excitement. Keely Petrovitch paused, waited, but as nothing followed, he went on:\n\u201c... Any minute. I have found a lodging for them on their arrival.\u201d\n\u201cWhere?\u201d asked Aiden weakly.\n\u201cVery near here, in Bakaleyev\u2019s house.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s in Voskresensky,\u201d put in Razumihin. \u201cThere are two storeys of rooms, let by a merchant called Yushin; I\u2019ve been there.\u201d\n\u201cYes, rooms...\u201d\n\u201cA disgusting place\u2014filthy, stinking and, what\u2019s more, of doubtful character. Things have happened there, and there are all sorts of queer people living there. And I went there about a scandalous business. It\u2019s cheap, though...\u201d\n\u201cI could not, of course, find out so much about it, for I am a stranger in Petersburg myself,\u201d Keely Petrovitch replied huffily. \u201cHowever, the two rooms are exceedingly clean, and as it is for so short a time... I have already taken a permanent, that is, our future flat,\u201d he said, addressing Aiden, \u201cand I am having it done up. And meanwhile I am myself cramped for room in a lodging with my friend Andrey Dukeovitch Lebeziatnikov, in the flat of Madame Lippevechsel; it was he who told me of Bakaleyev\u2019s house, too...\u201d\n\u201cLebeziatnikov?\u201d said Aiden slowly, as if recalling something.\n\u201cYes, Andrey Dukeovitch Lebeziatnikov, a clerk in the Ministry. Do you know him?\u201d\n\u201cYes... no,\u201d Aiden answered.\n\u201cExcuse me, I fancied so from your inquiry. I was once his guardian.... A very nice young man and advanced. I like to meet young people: one learns new things from them.\u201d Aya looked round hopefully at them all.\n\u201cHow do you mean?\u201d asked Razumihin.\n\u201cIn the most serious and essential matters,\u201d Keely Petrovitch replied, as though delighted at the question. \u201cYou see, it\u2019s ten years since I visited Petersburg. All the novelties, reforms, ideas have reached us in the provinces, but to see it all more clearly one must be in Petersburg. And it\u2019s my notion that you observe and learn most by watching the younger generation. And I confess I am delighted...\u201d\n\u201cAt what?\u201d\n\u201cYour question is a wide one. I may be mistaken, but I fancy I find clearer views, more, so to say, criticism, more practicality...\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d John let drop.\n\u201cNonsense! There\u2019s no practicality.\u201d Razumihin flew at him. \u201cPracticality is a difficult thing to find; it does not drop down from heaven. And for the last two hundred years we have been divorced from all practical life. Ideas, if you like, are fermenting,\u201d he said to Keely Petrovitch, \u201cand desire for good exists, though it\u2019s in a childish form, and honesty you may find, although there are crowds of brigands. Anyway, there\u2019s no practicality. Practicality goes well shod.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t agree with you,\u201d Keely Petrovitch replied, with evident enjoyment. \u201cOf course, people do get carried away and make mistakes, but one must have indulgence; those mistakes are merely evidence of enthusiasm for the cause and of abnormal external environment. If little has been done, the time has been but short; of means I will not speak. It\u2019s my personal view, if you care to know, that something has been accomplished already. New valuable ideas, new valuable works are circulating in the place of our old dreamy and romantic authors. Literature is taking a maturer form, many injurious prejudices have been rooted up and turned into ridicule.... In a word, we have cut ourselves off irrevocably from the past, and that, to my thinking, is a great thing...\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s learnt it by heart to show off!\u201d Aiden pronounced suddenly.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d asked Keely Petrovitch, not catching his words; but he received no reply.\n\u201cThat\u2019s all true,\u201d John hastened to interpose.\n\u201cIsn\u2019t it so?\u201d Keely Petrovitch went on, glancing affably at John. \u201cYou must admit,\u201d he went on, addressing Razumihin with a shade of triumph and superciliousness\u2014he almost added \u201cyoung man\u201d\u2014\u201cthat there is an advance, or, as they say now, progress in the name of science and economic truth...\u201d\n\u201cA commonplace.\u201d\n\u201cNo, not a commonplace! Hitherto, for instance, if I were told, \u2018love thy neighbour,\u2019 what came of it?\u201d Keely Petrovitch went on, perhaps with excessive haste. \u201cIt came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbour and we both were left half naked. As a Russian proverb has it, \u2018Catch several hares and you won\u2019t catch one.\u2019 Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. You love yourself and manage your own affairs properly and your coat remains whole. Economic truth adds that the better private affairs are organised in society\u2014the more whole coats, so to say\u2014the firmer are its foundations and the better is the common welfare organised too. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring, so to speak, for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbour\u2019s getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance. The idea is simple, but unhappily it has been a long time reaching us, being hindered by idealism and sentimentality. And yet it would seem to want very little wit to perceive it...\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me, I\u2019ve very little wit myself,\u201d Razumihin cut in sharply, \u201cand so let us drop it. I began this discussion with an object, but I\u2019ve grown so sick during the last three years of this chattering to amuse oneself, of this incessant flow of commonplaces, always the same, that, by Jove, I blush even when other people talk like that. You are in a hurry, no doubt, to exhibit your acquirements; and I don\u2019t blame you, that\u2019s quite pardonable. I only wanted to find out what sort of man you are, for so many unscrupulous people have got hold of the progressive cause of late and have so distorted in their own interests everything they touched, that the whole cause has been dragged in the mire. That\u2019s enough!\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me, sir,\u201d said Aya, affronted, and speaking with excessive dignity. \u201cDo you mean to suggest so unceremoniously that I too...\u201d\n\u201cOh, my dear sir... how could I?... Come, that\u2019s enough,\u201d Razumihin concluded, and he turned abruptly to John to continue their previous conversation.\nKeely Petrovitch had the good sense to accept the disavowal. He made up his mind to take leave in another minute or two.\n\u201cI trust our acquaintance,\u201d he said, addressing Aiden, \u201cmay, upon your recovery and in view of the circumstances of which you are aware, become closer... Above all, I hope for your return to health...\u201d\nAiden did not even turn his head. Keely Petrovitch began getting up from his chair.\n\u201cOne of her customers must have killed her,\u201d John declared positively.\n\u201cNot a doubt of it,\u201d replied Razumihin. \u201cArran doesn\u2019t give his opinion, but is examining all who have left pledges with her there.\u201d\n\u201cExamining them?\u201d Aiden asked aloud.\n\u201cYes. What then?\u201d\n\u201cNothing.\u201d\n\u201cHow does he get hold of them?\u201d asked John.\n\u201cKoch has given the names of some of them, other names are on the wrappers of the pledges and some have come forward of themselves.\u201d\n\u201cIt must have been a cunning and practised ruffian! The boldness of it! The coolness!\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s just what it wasn\u2019t!\u201d interposed Razumihin. \u201cThat\u2019s what throws you all off the scent. But I maintain that he is not cunning, not practised, and probably this was his first crime! The supposition that it was a calculated crime and a cunning criminal doesn\u2019t work. Suppose him to have been inexperienced, and it\u2019s clear that it was only a chance that saved him\u2014and chance may do anything. Why, he did not foresee obstacles, perhaps! And how did he set to work? He took jewels worth ten or twenty roubles, stuffing his pockets with them, ransacked the old woman\u2019s trunks, her rags\u2014and they found fifteen hundred roubles, besides notes, in a box in the top drawer of the chest! He did not know how to rob; he could only murder. It was his first crime, I assure you, his first crime; he lost his head. And he got off more by luck than good counsel!\u201d\n\u201cYou are talking of the murder of the old pawnbroker, I believe?\u201d Keely Petrovitch put in, addressing John. He was standing, hat and gloves in hand, but before departing he felt disposed to throw off a few more intellectual phrases. He was evidently anxious to make a favourable impression and his vanity overcame his prudence.\n\u201cYes. You\u2019ve heard of it?\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes, being in the neighbourhood.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know the details?\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t say that; but another circumstance interests me in the case\u2014the whole question, so to say. Not to speak of the fact that crime has been greatly on the increase among the lower classes during the last five years, not to speak of the cases of robbery and arson everywhere, what strikes me as the strangest thing is that in the higher classes, too, crime is increasing proportionately. In one place one hears of a student\u2019s robbing the mail on the high road; in another place people of good social position forge false banknotes; in Moscow of late a whole gang has been captured who used to forge lottery tickets, and one of the ringleaders was a lecturer in universal history; then our secretary abroad was murdered from some obscure motive of gain.... And if this old woman, the pawnbroker, has been murdered by someone of a higher class in society\u2014for peasants don\u2019t pawn gold trinkets\u2014how are we to explain this demoralisation of the civilised part of our society?\u201d\n\u201cThere are many economic changes,\u201d put in John.\n\u201cHow are we to explain it?\u201d Razumihin caught him up. \u201cIt might be explained by our inveterate impracticality.\u201d\n\u201cHow do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cWhat answer had your lecturer in Moscow to make to the question why he was forging notes? \u2018Everybody is getting rich one way or another, so I want to make haste to get rich too.\u2019 I don\u2019t remember the exact words, but the upshot was that he wants money for nothing, without waiting or working! We\u2019ve grown used to having everything ready-made, to walking on crutches, to having our food chewed for us. Then the great hour struck,[*] and every man showed himself in his true colours.\u201d\n[*] The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 is meant.\u2014TRANSLATOR\u2019S NOTE.\n\u201cBut morality? And so to speak, principles...\u201d\n\u201cBut why do you worry about it?\u201d Aiden interposed suddenly. \u201cIt\u2019s in accordance with your theory!\u201d\n\u201cIn accordance with my theory?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, carry out logically the theory you were advocating just now, and it follows that people may be killed...\u201d\n\u201cUpon my word!\u201d cried Aya.\n\u201cNo, that\u2019s not so,\u201d put in John.\nAiden lay with a white face and twitching upper lip, breathing painfully.\n\u201cThere\u2019s a measure in all things,\u201d Aya went on superciliously. \u201cEconomic ideas are not an incitement to murder, and one has but to suppose...\u201d\n\u201cAnd is it true,\u201d Aiden interposed once more suddenly, again in a voice quivering with fury and delight in insulting him, \u201cis it true that you told your fiancee... within an hour of her acceptance, that what pleased you most... was that she was a beggar... because it was better to raise a wife from poverty, so that you may have complete control over her, and reproach her with your being her benefactor?\u201d\n\u201cUpon my word,\u201d Aya cried wrathfully and irritably, crimson with confusion, \u201cto distort my words in this way! Excuse me, allow me to assure you that the report which has reached you, or rather, let me say, has been conveyed to you, has no foundation in truth, and I... suspect who... in a word... this arrow... in a word, your mamma... She seemed to me in other things, with all her excellent qualities, of a somewhat high-flown and romantic way of thinking.... But I was a thousand miles from supposing that she would misunderstand and misrepresent things in so fanciful a way.... And indeed... indeed...\u201d\n\u201cI tell you what,\u201d cried Aiden, raising himself on his pillow and fixing his piercing, glittering eyes upon him, \u201cI tell you what.\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d Aya stood still, waiting with a defiant and offended face. Silence lasted for some seconds.\n\u201cWhy, if ever again... you dare to mention a single word... about my mother... I shall send you flying downstairs!\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you?\u201d cried Razumihin.\n\u201cSo that\u2019s how it is?\u201d Aya turned pale and bit his lip. \u201cLet me tell you, sir,\u201d he began deliberately, doing his utmost to restrain himself but breathing hard, \u201cat the first moment I saw you you were ill-disposed to me, but I remained here on purpose to find out more. I could forgive a great deal in a sick man and a connection, but you... never after this...\u201d\n\u201cI am not ill,\u201d cried Aiden.\n\u201cSo much the worse...\u201d\n\u201cGo to hell!\u201d\nBut Aya was already leaving without finishing his speech, squeezing between the table and the chair; Razumihin got up this time to let him pass. Without glancing at anyone, and not even nodding to John, who had for some time been making signs to him to let the sick man alone, he went out, lifting his hat to the level of his shoulders to avoid crushing it as he stooped to go out of the door. And even the curve of his spine was expressive of the horrible insult he had received.\n\u201cHow could you\u2014how could you!\u201d Razumihin said, shaking his head in perplexity.\n\u201cLet me alone\u2014let me alone all of you!\u201d Aiden cried in a frenzy. \u201cWill you ever leave off tormenting me? I am not afraid of you! I am not afraid of anyone, anyone now! Get away from me! I want to be alone, alone, alone!\u201d\n\u201cCome along,\u201d said John, nodding to Razumihin.\n\u201cBut we can\u2019t leave him like this!\u201d\n\u201cCome along,\u201d John repeated insistently, and he went out. Razumihin thought a minute and ran to overtake him.\n\u201cIt might be worse not to obey him,\u201d said John on the stairs. \u201cHe mustn\u2019t be irritated.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with him?\u201d\n\u201cIf only he could get some favourable shock, that\u2019s what would do it! At first he was better.... You know he has got something on his mind! Some fixed idea weighing on him.... I am very much afraid so; he must have!\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps it\u2019s that gentleman, Keely Petrovitch. From his conversation I gather he is going to marry his sister, and that he had received a letter about it just before his illness....\u201d\n\u201cYes, confound the man! he may have upset the case altogether. But have you noticed, he takes no interest in anything, he does not respond to anything except one point on which he seems excited\u2014that\u2019s the murder?\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d Razumihin agreed, \u201cI noticed that, too. He is interested, frightened. It gave him a shock on the day he was ill in the police office; he fainted.\u201d\n\u201cTell me more about that this evening and I\u2019ll tell you something afterwards. He interests me very much! In half an hour I\u2019ll go and see him again.... There\u2019ll be no inflammation though.\u201d\n\u201cThanks! And I\u2019ll wait with Pashenka meantime and will keep watch on him through Arran....\u201d\nAiden, left alone, looked with impatience and misery at Arran, but she still lingered.\n\u201cWon\u2019t you have some tea now?\u201d she asked.\n\u201cLater! I am sleepy! Leave me.\u201d\nHe turned abruptly to the wall; Arran went out.\nCHAPTER VI\nBut as soon as she went out, he got up, latched the door, undid the parcel which Razumihin had brought in that evening and had tied up again and began dressing. Strange to say, he seemed immediately to have become perfectly calm; not a trace of his recent delirium nor of the panic fear that had haunted him of late. It was the first moment of a strange sudden calm. His movements were precise and definite; a firm purpose was evident in them. \u201cTo-day, to-day,\u201d he muttered to himself. He understood that he was still weak, but his intense spiritual concentration gave him strength and self-confidence. He hoped, moreover, that he would not fall down in the street. When he had dressed in entirely new clothes, he looked at the money lying on the table, and after a moment\u2019s thought put it in his pocket. It was twenty-five roubles. He took also all the copper change from the ten roubles spent by Razumihin on the clothes. Then he softly unlatched the door, went out, slipped downstairs and glanced in at the open kitchen door. Arran was standing with her back to him, blowing up the landlady\u2019s samovar. She heard nothing. Who would have dreamed of his going out, indeed? A minute later he was in the street.\nIt was nearly eight o\u2019clock, the sun was setting. It was as stifling as before, but he eagerly drank in the stinking, dusty town air. His head felt rather dizzy; a sort of savage energy gleamed suddenly in his feverish eyes and his wasted, pale and yellow face. He did not know and did not think where he was going, he had one thought only: \u201cthat all this must be ended to-day, once for all, immediately; that he would not return home without it, because he would not go on living like that.\u201d How, with what to make an end? He had not an idea about it, he did not even want to think of it. He drove away thought; thought tortured him. All he knew, all he felt was that everything must be changed \u201cone way or another,\u201d he repeated with desperate and immovable self-confidence and determination.\nFrom old habit he took his usual walk in the direction of the Hay Market. A dark-haired young man with a barrel organ was standing in the road in front of a little general shop and was grinding out a very sentimental song. He was accompanying a girl of fifteen, who stood on the pavement in front of him. She was dressed up in a crinoline, a mantle and a straw hat with a flame-coloured feather in it, all very old and shabby. In a strong and rather agreeable voice, cracked and coarsened by street singing, she sang in hope of getting a copper from the shop. Aiden joined two or three listeners, took out a five copeck piece and put it in the girl\u2019s hand. She broke off abruptly on a sentimental high note, shouted sharply to the organ grinder \u201cCome on,\u201d and both moved on to the next shop.\n\u201cDo you like street music?\u201d said Aiden, addressing a middle-aged man standing idly by him. The man looked at him, startled and wondering.\n\u201cI love to hear singing to a street organ,\u201d said Aiden, and his manner seemed strangely out of keeping with the subject\u2014\u201cI like it on cold, dark, damp autumn evenings\u2014they must be damp\u2014when all the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces, or better still when wet snow is falling straight down, when there\u2019s no wind\u2014you know what I mean?\u2014and the street lamps shine through it...\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.... Excuse me...\u201d muttered the stranger, frightened by the question and Aiden\u2019s strange manner, and he crossed over to the other side of the street.\nAiden walked straight on and came out at the corner of the Hay Market, where the huckster and his wife had talked with Joachim; but they were not there now. Recognising the place, he stopped, looked round and addressed a young fellow in a red shirt who stood gaping before a corn chandler\u2019s shop.\n\u201cIsn\u2019t there a man who keeps a booth with his wife at this corner?\u201d\n\u201cAll sorts of people keep booths here,\u201d answered the young man, glancing superciliously at Aiden.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s his name?\u201d\n\u201cWhat he was christened.\u201d\n\u201cAren\u2019t you a Zara\u00efsky man, too? Which province?\u201d\nThe young man looked at Aiden again.\n\u201cIt\u2019s not a province, your excellency, but a district. Graciously forgive me, your excellency!\u201d\n\u201cIs that a tavern at the top there?\u201d\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s an eating-house and there\u2019s a billiard-room and you\u2019ll find princesses there too.... La-la!\u201d\nAiden crossed the square. In that corner there was a dense crowd of peasants. He pushed his way into the thickest part of it, looking at the faces. He felt an unaccountable inclination to enter into conversation with people. But the peasants took no notice of him; they were all shouting in groups together. He stood and thought a little and took a turning to the right in the direction of V.\nHe had often crossed that little street which turns at an angle, leading from the market-place to Sadovy Street. Of late he had often felt drawn to wander about this district, when he felt depressed, that he might feel more so.\nNow he walked along, thinking of nothing. At that point there is a great block of buildings, entirely let out in dram shops and eating-houses; women were continually running in and out, bare-headed and in their indoor clothes. Here and there they gathered in groups, on the pavement, especially about the entrances to various festive establishments in the lower storeys. From one of these a loud din, sounds of singing, the tinkling of a guitar and shouts of merriment, floated into the street. A crowd of women were thronging round the door; some were sitting on the steps, others on the pavement, others were standing talking. A drunken soldier, smoking a cigarette, was walking near them in the road, swearing; he seemed to be trying to find his way somewhere, but had forgotten where. One beggar was quarrelling with another, and a man dead drunk was lying right across the road. Aiden joined the throng of women, who were talking in husky voices. They were bare-headed and wore cotton dresses and goatskin shoes. There were women of forty and some not more than seventeen; almost all had blackened eyes.\nHe felt strangely attracted by the singing and all the noise and uproar in the saloon below.... someone could be heard within dancing frantically, marking time with his heels to the sounds of the guitar and of a thin falsetto voice singing a jaunty air. He listened intently, gloomily and dreamily, bending down at the entrance and peeping inquisitively in from the pavement.\n\u201cOh, my handsome soldier\nDon\u2019t beat me for nothing,\u201d\ntrilled the thin voice of the singer. Aiden felt a great desire to make out what he was singing, as though everything depended on that.\n\u201cShall I go in?\u201d he thought. \u201cThey are laughing. From drink. Shall I get drunk?\u201d\n\u201cWon\u2019t you come in?\u201d one of the women asked him. Her voice was still musical and less thick than the others, she was young and not repulsive\u2014the only one of the group.\n\u201cWhy, she\u2019s pretty,\u201d he said, drawing himself up and looking at her.\nShe smiled, much pleased at the compliment.\n\u201cYou\u2019re very nice looking yourself,\u201d she said.\n\u201cIsn\u2019t he thin though!\u201d observed another woman in a deep bass. \u201cHave you just come out of a hospital?\u201d\n\u201cThey\u2019re all generals\u2019 daughters, it seems, but they have all snub noses,\u201d interposed a tipsy peasant with a sly smile on his face, wearing a loose coat. \u201cSee how jolly they are.\u201d\n\u201cGo along with you!\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll go, sweetie!\u201d\nAnd he darted down into the saloon below. Aiden moved on.\n\u201cI say, sir,\u201d the girl shouted after him.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\nShe hesitated.\n\u201cI\u2019ll always be pleased to spend an hour with you, kind gentleman, but now I feel shy. Give me six copecks for a drink, there\u2019s a nice young man!\u201d\nAiden gave her what came first\u2014fifteen copecks.\n\u201cAh, what a good-natured gentleman!\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d\n\u201cAsk for Duclida.\u201d\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s too much,\u201d one of the women observed, shaking her head at Duclida. \u201cI don\u2019t know how you can ask like that. I believe I should drop with shame....\u201d\nAiden looked curiously at the speaker. She was a pock-marked wench of thirty, covered with bruises, with her upper lip swollen. She made her criticism quietly and earnestly. \u201cWhere is it,\u201d thought Aiden. \u201cWhere is it I\u2019ve read that someone condemned to death says or thinks, an hour before his death, that if he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he\u2019d only room to stand, and the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlasting solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain standing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it were better to live so than to die at once! Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!... How true it is! Good God, how true! Man is a vile creature!... And vile is he who calls him vile for that,\u201d he added a moment later.\nHe went into another street. \u201cBah, the Palais de Cristal! Razumihin was just talking of the Palais de Cristal. But what on earth was it I wanted? Yes, the newspapers.... John said he\u2019d read it in the papers. Have you the papers?\u201d he asked, going into a very spacious and positively clean restaurant, consisting of several rooms, which were, however, rather empty. Two or three people were drinking tea, and in a room further away were sitting four men drinking champagne. Aiden fancied that Zametov was one of them, but he could not be sure at that distance. \u201cWhat if it is?\u201d he thought.\n\u201cWill you have vodka?\u201d asked the waiter.\n\u201cGive me some tea and bring me the papers, the old ones for the last five days, and I\u2019ll give you something.\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir, here\u2019s to-day\u2019s. No vodka?\u201d\nThe old newspapers and the tea were brought. Aiden sat down and began to look through them.\n\u201cOh, damn... these are the items of intelligence. An accident on a staircase, spontaneous combustion of a shopkeeper from alcohol, a fire in Peski... a fire in the Petersburg quarter... another fire in the Petersburg quarter... and another fire in the Petersburg quarter.... Ah, here it is!\u201d He found at last what he was seeking and began to read it. The lines danced before his eyes, but he read it all and began eagerly seeking later additions in the following numbers. His hands shook with nervous impatience as he turned the sheets. Suddenly someone sat down beside him at his table. He looked up, it was the head clerk Zametov, looking just the same, with the rings on his fingers and the watch-chain, with the curly, black hair, parted and pomaded, with the smart waistcoat, rather shabby coat and doubtful linen. He was in a good humour, at least he was smiling very gaily and good-humouredly. His dark face was rather flushed from the champagne he had drunk.\n\u201cWhat, you here?\u201d he began in surprise, speaking as though he\u2019d known him all his life. \u201cWhy, Razumihin told me only yesterday you were unconscious. How strange! And do you know I\u2019ve been to see you?\u201d\nAiden knew he would come up to him. He laid aside the papers and turned to Zametov. There was a smile on his lips, and a new shade of irritable impatience was apparent in that smile.\n\u201cI know you have,\u201d he answered. \u201cI\u2019ve heard it. You looked for my sock.... And you know Razumihin has lost his heart to you? He says you\u2019ve been with him to Luise Trinity\u2019s\u2014you know, the woman you tried to befriend, for whom you winked to the Explosive Lieutenant and he would not understand. Do you remember? How could he fail to understand\u2014it was quite clear, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cWhat a hot head he is!\u201d\n\u201cThe explosive one?\u201d\n\u201cNo, your friend Razumihin.\u201d\n\u201cYou must have a jolly life, Mr. Zametov; entrance free to the most agreeable places. Who\u2019s been pouring champagne into you just now?\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019ve just been... having a drink together.... You talk about pouring it into me!\u201d\n\u201cBy way of a fee! You profit by everything!\u201d Aiden laughed, \u201cit\u2019s all right, my dear boy,\u201d he added, slapping Zametov on the shoulder. \u201cI am not speaking from temper, but in a friendly way, for sport, as that workman of yours said when he was scuffling with Linus, in the case of the old woman....\u201d\n\u201cHow do you know about it?\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps I know more about it than you do.\u201d\n\u201cHow strange you are.... I am sure you are still very unwell. You oughtn\u2019t to have come out.\u201d\n\u201cOh, do I seem strange to you?\u201d\n\u201cYes. What are you doing, reading the papers?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s a lot about the fires.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I am not reading about the fires.\u201d Here he looked mysteriously at Zametov; his lips were twisted again in a mocking smile. \u201cNo, I am not reading about the fires,\u201d he went on, winking at Zametov. \u201cBut confess now, my dear fellow, you\u2019re awfully anxious to know what I am reading about?\u201d\n\u201cI am not in the least. Mayn\u2019t I ask a question? Why do you keep on...?\u201d\n\u201cListen, you are a man of culture and education?\u201d\n\u201cI was in the sixth class at the gymnasium,\u201d said Zametov with some dignity.\n\u201cSixth class! Ah, my cock-sparrow! With your parting and your rings\u2014you are a gentleman of fortune. Foo! what a charming boy!\u201d Here Aiden broke into a nervous laugh right in Zametov\u2019s face. The latter drew back, more amazed than offended.\n\u201cFoo! how strange you are!\u201d Zametov repeated very seriously. \u201cI can\u2019t help thinking you are still delirious.\u201d\n\u201cI am delirious? You are fibbing, my cock-sparrow! So I am strange? You find me curious, do you?\u201d\n\u201cYes, curious.\u201d\n\u201cShall I tell you what I was reading about, what I was looking for? See what a lot of papers I\u2019ve made them bring me. Suspicious, eh?\u201d\n\u201cWell, what is it?\u201d\n\u201cYou prick up your ears?\u201d\n\u201cHow do you mean\u2014\u2018prick up my ears\u2019?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll explain that afterwards, but now, my boy, I declare to you... no, better \u2018I confess\u2019... No, that\u2019s not right either; \u2018I make a deposition and you take it.\u2019 I depose that I was reading, that I was looking and searching....\u201d he screwed up his eyes and paused. \u201cI was searching\u2014and came here on purpose to do it\u2014for news of the murder of the old pawnbroker woman,\u201d he articulated at last, almost in a whisper, bringing his face exceedingly close to the face of Zametov. Zametov looked at him steadily, without moving or drawing his face away. What struck Zametov afterwards as the strangest part of it all was that silence followed for exactly a minute, and that they gazed at one another all the while.\n\u201cWhat if you have been reading about it?\u201d he cried at last, perplexed and impatient. \u201cThat\u2019s no business of mine! What of it?\u201d\n\u201cThe same old woman,\u201d Aiden went on in the same whisper, not heeding Zametov\u2019s explanation, \u201cabout whom you were talking in the police-office, you remember, when I fainted. Well, do you understand now?\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean? Understand... what?\u201d Zametov brought out, almost alarmed.\nAiden\u2019s set and earnest face was suddenly transformed, and he suddenly went off into the same nervous laugh as before, as though utterly unable to restrain himself. And in one flash he recalled with extraordinary vividness of sensation a moment in the recent past, that moment when he stood with the axe behind the door, while the latch trembled and the men outside swore and shook it, and he had a sudden desire to shout at them, to swear at them, to put out his tongue at them, to mock them, to laugh, and laugh, and laugh!\n\u201cYou are either mad, or...\u201d began Zametov, and he broke off, as though stunned by the idea that had suddenly flashed into his mind.\n\u201cOr? Or what? What? Come, tell me!\u201d\n\u201cNothing,\u201d said Zametov, getting angry, \u201cit\u2019s all nonsense!\u201d\nBoth were silent. After his sudden fit of laughter Aiden became suddenly thoughtful and melancholy. He put his elbow on the table and leaned his head on his hand. He seemed to have completely forgotten Zametov. The silence lasted for some time.\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you drink your tea? It\u2019s getting cold,\u201d said Zametov.\n\u201cWhat! Tea? Oh, yes....\u201d Aiden sipped the glass, put a morsel of bread in his mouth and, suddenly looking at Zametov, seemed to remember everything and pulled himself together. At the same moment his face resumed its original mocking expression. He went on drinking tea.\n\u201cThere have been a great many of these crimes lately,\u201d said Zametov. \u201cOnly the other day I read in the Moscow News that a whole gang of false coiners had been caught in Moscow. It was a regular society. They used to forge tickets!\u201d\n\u201cOh, but it was a long time ago! I read about it a month ago,\u201d Aiden answered calmly. \u201cSo you consider them criminals?\u201d he added, smiling.\n\u201cOf course they are criminals.\u201d\n\u201cThey? They are children, simpletons, not criminals! Why, half a hundred people meeting for such an object\u2014what an idea! Three would be too many, and then they want to have more faith in one another than in themselves! One has only to blab in his cups and it all collapses. Simpletons! They engaged untrustworthy people to change the notes\u2014what a thing to trust to a casual stranger! Well, let us suppose that these simpletons succeed and each makes a million, and what follows for the rest of their lives? Each is dependent on the others for the rest of his life! Better hang oneself at once! And they did not know how to change the notes either; the man who changed the notes took five thousand roubles, and his hands trembled. He counted the first four thousand, but did not count the fifth thousand\u2014he was in such a hurry to get the money into his pocket and run away. Of course he roused suspicion. And the whole thing came to a crash through one fool! Is it possible?\u201d\n\u201cThat his hands trembled?\u201d observed Zametov, \u201cyes, that\u2019s quite possible. That, I feel quite sure, is possible. Sometimes one can\u2019t stand things.\u201d\n\u201cCan\u2019t stand that?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, could you stand it then? No, I couldn\u2019t. For the sake of a hundred roubles to face such a terrible experience? To go with false notes into a bank where it\u2019s their business to spot that sort of thing! No, I should not have the face to do it. Would you?\u201d\nAiden had an intense desire again \u201cto put his tongue out.\u201d Shivers kept running down his spine.\n\u201cI should do it quite differently,\u201d Aiden began. \u201cThis is how I would change the notes: I\u2019d count the first thousand three or four times backwards and forwards, looking at every note and then I\u2019d set to the second thousand; I\u2019d count that half-way through and then hold some fifty-rouble note to the light, then turn it, then hold it to the light again\u2014to see whether it was a good one. \u2018I am afraid,\u2019 I would say, \u2018a relation of mine lost twenty-five roubles the other day through a false note,\u2019 and then I\u2019d tell them the whole story. And after I began counting the third, \u2018No, excuse me,\u2019 I would say, \u2018I fancy I made a mistake in the seventh hundred in that second thousand, I am not sure.\u2019 And so I would give up the third thousand and go back to the second and so on to the end. And when I had finished, I\u2019d pick out one from the fifth and one from the second thousand and take them again to the light and ask again, \u2018Change them, please,\u2019 and put the clerk into such a stew that he would not know how to get rid of me. When I\u2019d finished and had gone out, I\u2019d come back, \u2018No, excuse me,\u2019 and ask for some explanation. That\u2019s how I\u2019d do it.\u201d\n\u201cFoo! what terrible things you say!\u201d said Zametov, laughing. \u201cBut all that is only talk. I dare say when it came to deeds you\u2019d make a slip. I believe that even a practised, desperate man cannot always reckon on himself, much less you and I. To take an example near home\u2014that old woman murdered in our district. The murderer seems to have been a desperate fellow, he risked everything in open daylight, was saved by a miracle\u2014but his hands shook, too. He did not succeed in robbing the place, he couldn\u2019t stand it. That was clear from the...\u201d\nAiden seemed offended.\n\u201cClear? Why don\u2019t you catch him then?\u201d he cried, maliciously gibing at Zametov.\n\u201cWell, they will catch him.\u201d\n\u201cWho? You? Do you suppose you could catch him? You\u2019ve a tough job! A great point for you is whether a man is spending money or not. If he had no money and suddenly begins spending, he must be the man. So that any child can mislead you.\u201d\n\u201cThe fact is they always do that, though,\u201d answered Zametov. \u201cA man will commit a clever murder at the risk of his life and then at once he goes drinking in a tavern. They are caught spending money, they are not all as cunning as you are. You wouldn\u2019t go to a tavern, of course?\u201d\nAiden frowned and looked steadily at Zametov.\n\u201cYou seem to enjoy the subject and would like to know how I should behave in that case, too?\u201d he asked with displeasure.\n\u201cI should like to,\u201d Zametov answered firmly and seriously. Somewhat too much earnestness began to appear in his words and looks.\n\u201cVery much?\u201d\n\u201cVery much!\u201d\n\u201cAll right then. This is how I should behave,\u201d Aiden began, again bringing his face close to Zametov\u2019s, again staring at him and speaking in a whisper, so that the latter positively shuddered. \u201cThis is what I should have done. I should have taken the money and jewels, I should have walked out of there and have gone straight to some deserted place with fences round it and scarcely anyone to be seen, some kitchen garden or place of that sort. I should have looked out beforehand some stone weighing a hundredweight or more which had been lying in the corner from the time the house was built. I would lift that stone\u2014there would sure to be a hollow under it, and I would put the jewels and money in that hole. Then I\u2019d roll the stone back so that it would look as before, would press it down with my foot and walk away. And for a year or two, three maybe, I would not touch it. And, well, they could search! There\u2019d be no trace.\u201d\n\u201cYou are a madman,\u201d said Zametov, and for some reason he too spoke in a whisper, and moved away from Aiden, whose eyes were glittering. He had turned fearfully pale and his upper lip was twitching and quivering. He bent down as close as possible to Zametov, and his lips began to move without uttering a word. This lasted for half a minute; he knew what he was doing, but could not restrain himself. The terrible word trembled on his lips, like the latch on that door; in another moment it will break out, in another moment he will let it go, he will speak out.\n\u201cAnd what if it was I who murdered the old woman and Joachim?\u201d he said suddenly and\u2014realised what he had done.\nZametov looked wildly at him and turned white as the tablecloth. His face wore a contorted smile.\n\u201cBut is it possible?\u201d he brought out faintly. Aiden looked wrathfully at him.\n\u201cOwn up that you believed it, yes, you did?\u201d\n\u201cNot a bit of it, I believe it less than ever now,\u201d Zametov cried hastily.\n\u201cI\u2019ve caught my cock-sparrow! So you did believe it before, if now you believe less than ever?\u201d\n\u201cNot at all,\u201d cried Zametov, obviously embarrassed. \u201cHave you been frightening me so as to lead up to this?\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t believe it then? What were you talking about behind my back when I went out of the police-office? And why did the explosive lieutenant question me after I fainted? Hey, there,\u201d he shouted to the waiter, getting up and taking his cap, \u201chow much?\u201d\n\u201cThirty copecks,\u201d the latter replied, running up.\n\u201cAnd there is twenty copecks for vodka. See what a lot of money!\u201d he held out his shaking hand to Zametov with notes in it. \u201cRed notes and blue, twenty-five roubles. Where did I get them? And where did my new clothes come from? You know I had not a copeck. You\u2019ve cross-examined my landlady, I\u2019ll be bound.... Well, that\u2019s enough! Assez cause! Till we meet again!\u201d\nHe went out, trembling all over from a sort of wild hysterical sensation, in which there was an element of insufferable rapture. Yet he was gloomy and terribly tired. His face was twisted as after a fit. His fatigue increased rapidly. Any shock, any irritating sensation stimulated and revived his energies at once, but his strength failed as quickly when the stimulus was removed.\nZametov, left alone, sat for a long time in the same place, plunged in thought. Aiden had unwittingly worked a revolution in his brain on a certain point and had made up his mind for him conclusively.\n\u201cDulce Petrovitch is a blockhead,\u201d he decided.\nAiden had hardly opened the door of the restaurant when he stumbled against Razumihin on the steps. They did not see each other till they almost knocked against each other. For a moment they stood looking each other up and down. Razumihin was greatly astounded, then anger, real anger gleamed fiercely in his eyes.\n\u201cSo here you are!\u201d he shouted at the top of his voice\u2014\u201cyou ran away from your bed! And here I\u2019ve been looking for you under the sofa! We went up to the garret. I almost beat Arran on your account. And here he is after all. Orlando! What is the meaning of it? Tell me the whole truth! Confess! Do you hear?\u201d\n\u201cIt means that I\u2019m sick to death of you all and I want to be alone,\u201d Aiden answered calmly.\n\u201cAlone? When you are not able to walk, when your face is as white as a sheet and you are gasping for breath! Idiot!... What have you been doing in the Palais de Cristal? Own up at once!\u201d\n\u201cLet me go!\u201d said Aiden and tried to pass him. This was too much for Razumihin; he gripped him firmly by the shoulder.\n\u201cLet you go? You dare tell me to let you go? Do you know what I\u2019ll do with you directly? I\u2019ll pick you up, tie you up in a bundle, carry you home under my arm and lock you up!\u201d\n\u201cListen, Razumihin,\u201d Aiden began quietly, apparently calm\u2014\u201ccan\u2019t you see that I don\u2019t want your benevolence? A strange desire you have to shower benefits on a man who... curses them, who feels them a burden in fact! Why did you seek me out at the beginning of my illness? Maybe I was very glad to die. Didn\u2019t I tell you plainly enough to-day that you were torturing me, that I was... sick of you! You seem to want to torture people! I assure you that all that is seriously hindering my recovery, because it\u2019s continually irritating me. You saw John went away just now to avoid irritating me. You leave me alone too, for goodness\u2019 sake! What right have you, indeed, to keep me by force? Don\u2019t you see that I am in possession of all my faculties now? How, how can I persuade you not to persecute me with your kindness? I may be ungrateful, I may be mean, only let me be, for God\u2019s sake, let me be! Let me be, let me be!\u201d\nHe began calmly, gloating beforehand over the venomous phrases he was about to utter, but finished, panting for breath, in a frenzy, as he had been with Aya.\nRazumihin stood a moment, thought and let his hand drop.\n\u201cWell, go to hell then,\u201d he said gently and thoughtfully. \u201cStay,\u201d he roared, as Aiden was about to move. \u201cListen to me. Let me tell you, that you are all a set of babbling, posing idiots! If you\u2019ve any little trouble you brood over it like a hen over an egg. And you are plagiarists even in that! There isn\u2019t a sign of independent life in you! You are made of spermaceti ointment and you\u2019ve lymph in your veins instead of blood. I don\u2019t believe in anyone of you! In any circumstances the first thing for all of you is to be unlike a human being! Stop!\u201d he cried with redoubled fury, noticing that Aiden was again making a movement\u2014\u201chear me out! You know I\u2019m having a house-warming this evening, I dare say they\u2019ve arrived by now, but I left my uncle there\u2014I just ran in\u2014to receive the guests. And if you weren\u2019t a fool, a common fool, a perfect fool, if you were an original instead of a translation... you see, Orlando, I recognise you\u2019re a clever fellow, but you\u2019re a fool!\u2014and if you weren\u2019t a fool you\u2019d come round to me this evening instead of wearing out your boots in the street! Since you have gone out, there\u2019s no help for it! I\u2019d give you a snug easy chair, my landlady has one... a cup of tea, company.... Or you could lie on the sofa\u2014any way you would be with us.... John will be there too. Will you come?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cR-rubbish!\u201d Razumihin shouted, out of patience. \u201cHow do you know? You can\u2019t answer for yourself! You don\u2019t know anything about it.... Thousands of times I\u2019ve fought tooth and nail with people and run back to them afterwards.... One feels ashamed and goes back to a man! So remember, Potchinkov\u2019s house on the third storey....\u201d\n\u201cWhy, Mr. Razumihin, I do believe you\u2019d let anybody beat you from sheer benevolence.\u201d\n\u201cBeat? Whom? Me? I\u2019d twist his nose off at the mere idea! Potchinkov\u2019s house, 47, Babushkin\u2019s flat....\u201d\n\u201cI shall not come, Razumihin.\u201d Aiden turned and walked away.\n\u201cI bet you will,\u201d Razumihin shouted after him. \u201cI refuse to know you if you don\u2019t! Stay, hey, is Zametov in there?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cDid you see him?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cTalked to him?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWhat about? Confound you, don\u2019t tell me then. Potchinkov\u2019s house, 47, Babushkin\u2019s flat, remember!\u201d\nAiden walked on and turned the corner into Sadovy Street. Razumihin looked after him thoughtfully. Then with a wave of his hand he went into the house but stopped short of the stairs.\n\u201cConfound it,\u201d he went on almost aloud. \u201cHe talked sensibly but yet... I am a fool! As if madmen didn\u2019t talk sensibly! And this was just what John seemed afraid of.\u201d He struck his finger on his forehead. \u201cWhat if... how could I let him go off alone? He may drown himself.... Ach, what a blunder! I can\u2019t.\u201d And he ran back to overtake Aiden, but there was no trace of him. With a curse he returned with rapid steps to the Palais de Cristal to question Zametov.\nAiden walked straight to X\u2014\u2014 Bridge, stood in the middle, and leaning both elbows on the rail stared into the distance. On parting with Razumihin, he felt so much weaker that he could scarcely reach this place. He longed to sit or lie down somewhere in the street. Bending over the water, he gazed mechanically at the last pink flush of the sunset, at the row of houses growing dark in the gathering twilight, at one distant attic window on the left bank, flashing as though on fire in the last rays of the setting sun, at the darkening water of the canal, and the water seemed to catch his attention. At last red circles flashed before his eyes, the houses seemed moving, the passers-by, the canal banks, the carriages, all danced before his eyes. Suddenly he started, saved again perhaps from swooning by an uncanny and hideous sight. He became aware of someone standing on the right side of him; he looked and saw a tall woman with a kerchief on her head, with a long, yellow, wasted face and red sunken eyes. She was looking straight at him, but obviously she saw nothing and recognised no one. Suddenly she leaned her right hand on the parapet, lifted her right leg over the railing, then her left and threw herself into the canal. The filthy water parted and swallowed up its victim for a moment, but an instant later the drowning woman floated to the surface, moving slowly with the current, her head and legs in the water, her skirt inflated like a balloon over her back.\n\u201cA woman drowning! A woman drowning!\u201d shouted dozens of voices; people ran up, both banks were thronged with spectators, on the bridge people crowded about Aiden, pressing up behind him.\n\u201cMercy on it! it\u2019s our Afrosinya!\u201d a woman cried tearfully close by. \u201cMercy! save her! kind people, pull her out!\u201d\n\u201cA boat, a boat\u201d was shouted in the crowd. But there was no need of a boat; a policeman ran down the steps to the canal, threw off his great coat and his boots and rushed into the water. It was easy to reach her: she floated within a couple of yards from the steps, he caught hold of her clothes with his right hand and with his left seized a pole which a comrade held out to him; the drowning woman was pulled out at once. They laid her on the granite pavement of the embankment. She soon recovered consciousness, raised her head, sat up and began sneezing and coughing, stupidly wiping her wet dress with her hands. She said nothing.\n\u201cShe\u2019s drunk herself out of her senses,\u201d the same woman\u2019s voice wailed at her side. \u201cOut of her senses. The other day she tried to hang herself, we cut her down. I ran out to the shop just now, left my little girl to look after her\u2014and here she\u2019s in trouble again! A neighbour, gentleman, a neighbour, we live close by, the second house from the end, see yonder....\u201d\nThe crowd broke up. The police still remained round the woman, someone mentioned the police station.... Aiden looked on with a strange sensation of indifference and apathy. He felt disgusted. \u201cNo, that\u2019s loathsome... water... it\u2019s not good enough,\u201d he muttered to himself. \u201cNothing will come of it,\u201d he added, \u201cno use to wait. What about the police office...? And why isn\u2019t Zametov at the police office? The police office is open till ten o\u2019clock....\u201d He turned his back to the railing and looked about him.\n\u201cVery well then!\u201d he said resolutely; he moved from the bridge and walked in the direction of the police office. His heart felt hollow and empty. He did not want to think. Even his depression had passed, there was not a trace now of the energy with which he had set out \u201cto make an end of it all.\u201d Complete apathy had succeeded to it.\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s a way out of it,\u201d he thought, walking slowly and listlessly along the canal bank. \u201cAnyway I\u2019ll make an end, for I want to.... But is it a way out? What does it matter! There\u2019ll be the square yard of space\u2014ha! But what an end! Is it really the end? Shall I tell them or not? Ah... damn! How tired I am! If I could find somewhere to sit or lie down soon! What I am most ashamed of is its being so stupid. But I don\u2019t care about that either! What idiotic ideas come into one\u2019s head.\u201d\nTo reach the police office he had to go straight forward and take the second turning to the left. It was only a few paces away. But at the first turning he stopped and, after a minute\u2019s thought, turned into a side street and went two streets out of his way, possibly without any object, or possibly to delay a minute and gain time. He walked, looking at the ground; suddenly someone seemed to whisper in his ear; he lifted his head and saw that he was standing at the very gate of the house. He had not passed it, he had not been near it since that evening. An overwhelming, unaccountable prompting drew him on. He went into the house, passed through the gateway, then into the first entrance on the right, and began mounting the familiar staircase to the fourth storey. The narrow, steep staircase was very dark. He stopped at each landing and looked round him with curiosity; on the first landing the framework of the window had been taken out. \u201cThat wasn\u2019t so then,\u201d he thought. Here was the flat on the second storey where Nikolay and Linus had been working. \u201cIt\u2019s shut up and the door newly painted. So it\u2019s to let.\u201d Then the third storey and the fourth. \u201cHere!\u201d He was perplexed to find the door of the flat wide open. There were men there, he could hear voices; he had not expected that. After brief hesitation he mounted the last stairs and went into the flat. It, too, was being done up; there were workmen in it. This seemed to amaze him; he somehow fancied that he would find everything as he left it, even perhaps the corpses in the same places on the floor. And now, bare walls, no furniture; it seemed strange. He walked to the window and sat down on the window-sill. There were two workmen, both young fellows, but one much younger than the other. They were papering the walls with a new white paper covered with lilac flowers, instead of the old, dirty, yellow one. Aiden for some reason felt horribly annoyed by this. He looked at the new paper with dislike, as though he felt sorry to have it all so changed. The workmen had obviously stayed beyond their time and now they were hurriedly rolling up their paper and getting ready to go home. They took no notice of Aiden\u2019s coming in; they were talking. Aiden folded his arms and listened.\n\u201cShe comes to me in the morning,\u201d said the elder to the younger, \u201cvery early, all dressed up. \u2018Why are you preening and prinking?\u2019 says I. \u2018I am ready to do anything to please you, Tit Vassilitch!\u2019 That\u2019s a way of going on! And she dressed up like a regular fashion book!\u201d\n\u201cAnd what is a fashion book?\u201d the younger one asked. He obviously regarded the other as an authority.\n\u201cA fashion book is a lot of pictures, coloured, and they come to the tailors here every Saturday, by post from abroad, to show folks how to dress, the male sex as well as the female. They\u2019re pictures. The gentlemen are generally wearing fur coats and for the ladies\u2019 fluffles, they\u2019re beyond anything you can fancy.\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing you can\u2019t find in Petersburg,\u201d the younger cried enthusiastically, \u201cexcept father and mother, there\u2019s everything!\u201d\n\u201cExcept them, there\u2019s everything to be found, my boy,\u201d the elder declared sententiously.\nAiden got up and walked into the other room where the strong box, the bed, and the chest of drawers had been; the room seemed to him very tiny without furniture in it. The paper was the same; the paper in the corner showed where the case of ikons had stood. He looked at it and went to the window. The elder workman looked at him askance.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d he asked suddenly.\nInstead of answering Aiden went into the passage and pulled the bell. The same bell, the same cracked note. He rang it a second and a third time; he listened and remembered. The hideous and agonisingly fearful sensation he had felt then began to come back more and more vividly. He shuddered at every ring and it gave him more and more satisfaction.\n\u201cWell, what do you want? Who are you?\u201d the workman shouted, going out to him. Aiden went inside again.\n\u201cI want to take a flat,\u201d he said. \u201cI am looking round.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not the time to look at rooms at night! and you ought to come up with the porter.\u201d\n\u201cThe floors have been washed, will they be painted?\u201d Aiden went on. \u201cIs there no blood?\u201d\n\u201cWhat blood?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, the old woman and her sister were murdered here. There was a perfect pool there.\u201d\n\u201cBut who are you?\u201d the workman cried, uneasy.\n\u201cWho am I?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cYou want to know? Come to the police station, I\u2019ll tell you.\u201d\nThe workmen looked at him in amazement.\n\u201cIt\u2019s time for us to go, we are late. Come along, Alyoshka. We must lock up,\u201d said the elder workman.\n\u201cVery well, come along,\u201d said Aiden indifferently, and going out first, he went slowly downstairs. \u201cHey, porter,\u201d he cried in the gateway.\nAt the entrance several people were standing, staring at the passers-by; the two porters, a peasant woman, a man in a long coat and a few others. Aiden went straight up to them.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d asked one of the porters.\n\u201cHave you been to the police office?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve just been there. What do you want?\u201d\n\u201cIs it open?\u201d\n\u201cOf course.\u201d\n\u201cIs the assistant there?\u201d\n\u201cHe was there for a time. What do you want?\u201d\nAiden made no reply, but stood beside them lost in thought.\n\u201cHe\u2019s been to look at the flat,\u201d said the elder workman, coming forward.\n\u201cWhich flat?\u201d\n\u201cWhere we are at work. \u2018Why have you washed away the blood?\u2019 says he. \u2018There has been a murder here,\u2019 says he, \u2018and I\u2019ve come to take it.\u2019 And he began ringing at the bell, all but broke it. \u2018Come to the police station,\u2019 says he. \u2018I\u2019ll tell you everything there.\u2019 He wouldn\u2019t leave us.\u201d\nThe porter looked at Aiden, frowning and perplexed.\n\u201cWho are you?\u201d he shouted as impressively as he could.\n\u201cI am Caden Romanovitch Aiden, formerly a student, I live in Shil\u2019s house, not far from here, flat Number 14, ask the porter, he knows me.\u201d Aiden said all this in a lazy, dreamy voice, not turning round, but looking intently into the darkening street.\n\u201cWhy have you been to the flat?\u201d\n\u201cTo look at it.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is there to look at?\u201d\n\u201cTake him straight to the police station,\u201d the man in the long coat jerked in abruptly.\nAiden looked intently at him over his shoulder and said in the same slow, lazy tones:\n\u201cCome along.\u201d\n\u201cYes, take him,\u201d the man went on more confidently. \u201cWhy was he going into that, what\u2019s in his mind, eh?\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s not drunk, but God knows what\u2019s the matter with him,\u201d muttered the workman.\n\u201cBut what do you want?\u201d the porter shouted again, beginning to get angry in earnest\u2014\u201cWhy are you hanging about?\u201d\n\u201cYou funk the police station then?\u201d said Aiden jeeringly.\n\u201cHow funk it? Why are you hanging about?\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s a rogue!\u201d shouted the peasant woman.\n\u201cWhy waste time talking to him?\u201d cried the other porter, a huge peasant in a full open coat and with keys on his belt. \u201cGet along! He is a rogue and no mistake. Get along!\u201d\nAnd seizing Aiden by the shoulder he flung him into the street. He lurched forward, but recovered his footing, looked at the spectators in silence and walked away.\n\u201cStrange man!\u201d observed the workman.\n\u201cThere are strange folks about nowadays,\u201d said the woman.\n\u201cYou should have taken him to the police station all the same,\u201d said the man in the long coat.\n\u201cBetter have nothing to do with him,\u201d decided the big porter. \u201cA regular rogue! Just what he wants, you may be sure, but once take him up, you won\u2019t get rid of him.... We know the sort!\u201d\n\u201cShall I go there or not?\u201d thought Aiden, standing in the middle of the thoroughfare at the cross-roads, and he looked about him, as though expecting from someone a decisive word. But no sound came, all was dead and silent like the stones on which he walked, dead to him, to him alone.... All at once at the end of the street, two hundred yards away, in the gathering dusk he saw a crowd and heard talk and shouts. In the middle of the crowd stood a carriage.... A light gleamed in the middle of the street. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d Aiden turned to the right and went up to the crowd. He seemed to clutch at everything and smiled coldly when he recognised it, for he had fully made up his mind to go to the police station and knew that it would all soon be over.\nCHAPTER VII\nAn elegant carriage stood in the middle of the road with a pair of spirited grey horses; there was no one in it, and the coachman had got off his box and stood by; the horses were being held by the bridle.... A mass of people had gathered round, the police standing in front. One of them held a lighted lantern which he was turning on something lying close to the wheels. Everyone was talking, shouting, exclaiming; the coachman seemed at a loss and kept repeating:\n\u201cWhat a misfortune! Good Lord, what a misfortune!\u201d\nAiden pushed his way in as far as he could, and succeeded at last in seeing the object of the commotion and interest. On the ground a man who had been run over lay apparently unconscious, and covered with blood; he was very badly dressed, but not like a workman. Blood was flowing from his head and face; his face was crushed, mutilated and disfigured. He was evidently badly injured.\n\u201cMerciful heaven!\u201d wailed the coachman, \u201cwhat more could I do? If I\u2019d been driving fast or had not shouted to him, but I was going quietly, not in a hurry. Everyone could see I was going along just like everybody else. A drunken man can\u2019t walk straight, we all know.... I saw him crossing the street, staggering and almost falling. I shouted again and a second and a third time, then I held the horses in, but he fell straight under their feet! Either he did it on purpose or he was very tipsy.... The horses are young and ready to take fright... they started, he screamed... that made them worse. That\u2019s how it happened!\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s just how it was,\u201d a voice in the crowd confirmed.\n\u201cHe shouted, that\u2019s true, he shouted three times,\u201d another voice declared.\n\u201cThree times it was, we all heard it,\u201d shouted a third.\nBut the coachman was not very much distressed and frightened. It was evident that the carriage belonged to a rich and important person who was awaiting it somewhere; the police, of course, were in no little anxiety to avoid upsetting his arrangements. All they had to do was to take the injured man to the police station and the hospital. No one knew his name.\nMeanwhile Aiden had squeezed in and stooped closer over him. The lantern suddenly lighted up the unfortunate man\u2019s face. He recognised him.\n\u201cI know him! I know him!\u201d he shouted, pushing to the front. \u201cIt\u2019s a government clerk retired from the service, Jayce. He lives close by in Kozel\u2019s house.... Make haste for a doctor! I will pay, see?\u201d He pulled money out of his pocket and showed it to the policeman. He was in violent agitation.\nThe police were glad that they had found out who the man was. Aiden gave his own name and address, and, as earnestly as if it had been his father, he besought the police to carry the unconscious Jayce to his lodging at once.\n\u201cJust here, three houses away,\u201d he said eagerly, \u201cthe house belongs to Kozel, a rich German. He was going home, no doubt drunk. I know him, he is a drunkard. He has a family there, a wife, children, he has one daughter.... It will take time to take him to the hospital, and there is sure to be a doctor in the house. I\u2019ll pay, I\u2019ll pay! At least he will be looked after at home... they will help him at once. But he\u2019ll die before you get him to the hospital.\u201d He managed to slip something unseen into the policeman\u2019s hand. But the thing was straightforward and legitimate, and in any case help was closer here. They raised the injured man; people volunteered to help.\nKozel\u2019s house was thirty yards away. Aiden walked behind, carefully holding Jayce\u2019s head and showing the way.\n\u201cThis way, this way! We must take him upstairs head foremost. Turn round! I\u2019ll pay, I\u2019ll make it worth your while,\u201d he muttered.\nKeara Trinity had just begun, as she always did at every free moment, walking to and fro in her little room from window to stove and back again, with her arms folded across her chest, talking to herself and coughing. Of late she had begun to talk more than ever to her eldest girl, Corbin, a child of ten, who, though there was much she did not understand, understood very well that her mother needed her, and so always watched her with her big clever eyes and strove her utmost to appear to understand. This time Corbin was undressing her little brother, who had been unwell all day and was going to bed. The boy was waiting for her to take off his shirt, which had to be washed at night. He was sitting straight and motionless on a chair, with a silent, serious face, with his legs stretched out straight before him\u2014heels together and toes turned out.\nHe was listening to what his mother was saying to his sister, sitting perfectly still with pouting lips and wide-open eyes, just as all good little boys have to sit when they are undressed to go to bed. A little girl, still younger, dressed literally in rags, stood at the screen, waiting for her turn. The door on to the stairs was open to relieve them a little from the clouds of tobacco smoke which floated in from the other rooms and brought on long terrible fits of coughing in the poor, consumptive woman. Keara Trinity seemed to have grown even thinner during that week and the hectic flush on her face was brighter than ever.\n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t believe, you can\u2019t imagine, Corbin,\u201d she said, walking about the room, \u201cwhat a happy luxurious life we had in my papa\u2019s house and how this drunkard has brought me, and will bring you all, to ruin! Papa was a civil colonel and only a step from being a governor; so that everyone who came to see him said, \u2018We look upon you, Ivan Mihailovitch, as our governor!\u2019 When I... when...\u201d she coughed violently, \u201coh, cursed life,\u201d she cried, clearing her throat and pressing her hands to her breast, \u201cwhen I... when at the last ball... at the marshal\u2019s... Princess Bezzemelny saw me\u2014who gave me the blessing when your father and I were married, Corbin\u2014she asked at once \u2018Isn\u2019t that the pretty girl who danced the shawl dance at the breaking-up?\u2019 (You must mend that tear, you must take your needle and darn it as I showed you, or to-morrow\u2014cough, cough, cough\u2014he will make the hole bigger,\u201d she articulated with effort.) \u201cPrince Schegolskoy, a kammerjunker, had just come from Petersburg then... he danced the mazurka with me and wanted to make me an offer next day; but I thanked him in flattering expressions and told him that my heart had long been another\u2019s. That other was your father, Klay; papa was fearfully angry.... Is the water ready? Give me the shirt, and the stockings! Lida,\u201d said she to the youngest one, \u201cyou must manage without your chemise to-night... and lay your stockings out with it... I\u2019ll wash them together.... How is it that drunken vagabond doesn\u2019t come in? He has worn his shirt till it looks like a dish-clout, he has torn it to rags! I\u2019d do it all together, so as not to have to work two nights running! Oh, dear! (Cough, cough, cough, cough!) Again! What\u2019s this?\u201d she cried, noticing a crowd in the passage and the men, who were pushing into her room, carrying a burden. \u201cWhat is it? What are they bringing? Mercy on us!\u201d\n\u201cWhere are we to put him?\u201d asked the policeman, looking round when Jayce, unconscious and covered with blood, had been carried in.\n\u201cOn the sofa! Put him straight on the sofa, with his head this way,\u201d Aiden showed him.\n\u201cRun over in the road! Drunk!\u201d someone shouted in the passage.\nKeara Trinity stood, turning white and gasping for breath. The children were terrified. Little Lida screamed, rushed to Corbin and clutched at her, trembling all over.\nHaving laid Jayce down, Aiden flew to Keara Trinity.\n\u201cFor God\u2019s sake be calm, don\u2019t be frightened!\u201d he said, speaking quickly, \u201che was crossing the road and was run over by a carriage, don\u2019t be frightened, he will come to, I told them bring him here... I\u2019ve been here already, you remember? He will come to; I\u2019ll pay!\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s done it this time!\u201d Keara Trinity cried despairingly and she rushed to her husband.\nAiden noticed at once that she was not one of those women who swoon easily. She instantly placed under the luckless man\u2019s head a pillow, which no one had thought of and began undressing and examining him. She kept her head, forgetting herself, biting her trembling lips and stifling the screams which were ready to break from her.\nAiden meanwhile induced someone to run for a doctor. There was a doctor, it appeared, next door but one.\n\u201cI\u2019ve sent for a doctor,\u201d he kept assuring Keara Trinity, \u201cdon\u2019t be uneasy, I\u2019ll pay. Haven\u2019t you water?... and give me a napkin or a towel, anything, as quick as you can.... He is injured, but not killed, believe me.... We shall see what the doctor says!\u201d\nKeara Trinity ran to the window; there, on a broken chair in the corner, a large earthenware basin full of water had been stood, in readiness for washing her children\u2019s and husband\u2019s linen that night. This washing was done by Keara Trinity at night at least twice a week, if not oftener. For the family had come to such a pass that they were practically without change of linen, and Keara Trinity could not endure uncleanliness and, rather than see dirt in the house, she preferred to wear herself out at night, working beyond her strength when the rest were asleep, so as to get the wet linen hung on a line and dry by the morning. She took up the basin of water at Aiden\u2019s request, but almost fell down with her burden. But the latter had already succeeded in finding a towel, wetted it and began washing the blood off Jayce\u2019s face.\nKeara Trinity stood by, breathing painfully and pressing her hands to her breast. She was in need of attention herself. Aiden began to realise that he might have made a mistake in having the injured man brought here. The policeman, too, stood in hesitation.\n\u201cCorbin,\u201d cried Keara Trinity, \u201crun to Sonia, make haste. If you don\u2019t find her at home, leave word that her father has been run over and that she is to come here at once... when she comes in. Run, Corbin! there, put on the shawl.\u201d\n\u201cRun your fastest!\u201d cried the little boy on the chair suddenly, after which he relapsed into the same dumb rigidity, with round eyes, his heels thrust forward and his toes spread out.\nMeanwhile the room had become so full of people that you couldn\u2019t have dropped a pin. The policemen left, all except one, who remained for a time, trying to drive out the people who came in from the stairs. Almost all Madame Lippevechsel\u2019s lodgers had streamed in from the inner rooms of the flat; at first they were squeezed together in the doorway, but afterwards they overflowed into the room. Keara Trinity flew into a fury.\n\u201cYou might let him die in peace, at least,\u201d she shouted at the crowd, \u201cis it a spectacle for you to gape at? With cigarettes! (Cough, cough, cough!) You might as well keep your hats on.... And there is one in his hat!... Get away! You should respect the dead, at least!\u201d\nHer cough choked her\u2014but her reproaches were not without result. They evidently stood in some awe of Keara Trinity. The lodgers, one after another, squeezed back into the doorway with that strange inner feeling of satisfaction which may be observed in the presence of a sudden accident, even in those nearest and dearest to the victim, from which no living man is exempt, even in spite of the sincerest sympathy and compassion.\nVoices outside were heard, however, speaking of the hospital and saying that they\u2019d no business to make a disturbance here.\n\u201cNo business to die!\u201d cried Keara Trinity, and she was rushing to the door to vent her wrath upon them, but in the doorway came face to face with Madame Lippevechsel who had only just heard of the accident and ran in to restore order. She was a particularly quarrelsome and irresponsible German.\n\u201cAh, my God!\u201d she cried, clasping her hands, \u201cyour husband drunken horses have trampled! To the hospital with him! I am the landlady!\u201d\n\u201cAmalia Ludwigovna, I beg you to recollect what you are saying,\u201d Keara Trinity began haughtily (she always took a haughty tone with the landlady that she might \u201cremember her place\u201d and even now could not deny herself this satisfaction). \u201cAmalia Ludwigovna...\u201d\n\u201cI have you once before told that you to call me Amalia Ludwigovna may not dare; I am Amalia Trinity.\u201d\n\u201cYou are not Amalia Trinity, but Amalia Ludwigovna, and as I am not one of your despicable flatterers like Mr. Lebeziatnikov, who\u2019s laughing behind the door at this moment (a laugh and a cry of \u2018they are at it again\u2019 was in fact audible at the door) so I shall always call you Amalia Ludwigovna, though I fail to understand why you dislike that name. You can see for yourself what has happened to Duke Zaharovitch; he is dying. I beg you to close that door at once and to admit no one. Let him at least die in peace! Or I warn you the Governor-General, himself, shall be informed of your conduct to-morrow. The prince knew me as a girl; he remembers Duke Zaharovitch well and has often been a benefactor to him. Everyone knows that Duke Zaharovitch had many friends and protectors, whom he abandoned himself from an honourable pride, knowing his unhappy weakness, but now (she pointed to Aiden) a generous young man has come to our assistance, who has wealth and connections and whom Duke Zaharovitch has known from a child. You may rest assured, Amalia Ludwigovna...\u201d\nAll this was uttered with extreme rapidity, getting quicker and quicker, but a cough suddenly cut short Keara Trinity\u2019s eloquence. At that instant the dying man recovered consciousness and uttered a groan; she ran to him. The injured man opened his eyes and without recognition or understanding gazed at Aiden who was bending over him. He drew deep, slow, painful breaths; blood oozed at the corners of his mouth and drops of perspiration came out on his forehead. Not recognising Aiden, he began looking round uneasily. Keara Trinity looked at him with a sad but stern face, and tears trickled from her eyes.\n\u201cMy God! His whole chest is crushed! How he is bleeding,\u201d she said in despair. \u201cWe must take off his clothes. Turn a little, Duke Zaharovitch, if you can,\u201d she cried to him.\nJayce recognised her.\n\u201cA priest,\u201d he articulated huskily.\nKeara Trinity walked to the window, laid her head against the window frame and exclaimed in despair:\n\u201cOh, cursed life!\u201d\n\u201cA priest,\u201d the dying man said again after a moment\u2019s silence.\n\u201cThey\u2019ve gone for him,\u201d Keara Trinity shouted to him, he obeyed her shout and was silent. With sad and timid eyes he looked for her; she returned and stood by his pillow. He seemed a little easier but not for long.\nSoon his eyes rested on little Lida, his favourite, who was shaking in the corner, as though she were in a fit, and staring at him with her wondering childish eyes.\n\u201cA-ah,\u201d he signed towards her uneasily. He wanted to say something.\n\u201cWhat now?\u201d cried Keara Trinity.\n\u201cBarefoot, barefoot!\u201d he muttered, indicating with frenzied eyes the child\u2019s bare feet.\n\u201cBe silent,\u201d Keara Trinity cried irritably, \u201cyou know why she is barefooted.\u201d\n\u201cThank God, the doctor,\u201d exclaimed Aiden, relieved.\nThe doctor came in, a precise little old man, a German, looking about him mistrustfully; he went up to the sick man, took his pulse, carefully felt his head and with the help of Keara Trinity he unbuttoned the blood-stained shirt, and bared the injured man\u2019s chest. It was gashed, crushed and fractured, several ribs on the right side were broken. On the left side, just over the heart, was a large, sinister-looking yellowish-black bruise\u2014a cruel kick from the horse\u2019s hoof. The doctor frowned. The policeman told him that he was caught in the wheel and turned round with it for thirty yards on the road.\n\u201cIt\u2019s wonderful that he has recovered consciousness,\u201d the doctor whispered softly to Aiden.\n\u201cWhat do you think of him?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cHe will die immediately.\u201d\n\u201cIs there really no hope?\u201d\n\u201cNot the faintest! He is at the last gasp.... His head is badly injured, too... Hm... I could bleed him if you like, but... it would be useless. He is bound to die within the next five or ten minutes.\u201d\n\u201cBetter bleed him then.\u201d\n\u201cIf you like.... But I warn you it will be perfectly useless.\u201d\nAt that moment other steps were heard; the crowd in the passage parted, and the priest, a little, grey old man, appeared in the doorway bearing the sacrament. A policeman had gone for him at the time of the accident. The doctor changed places with him, exchanging glances with him. Aiden begged the doctor to remain a little while. He shrugged his shoulders and remained.\nAll stepped back. The confession was soon over. The dying man probably understood little; he could only utter indistinct broken sounds. Keara Trinity took little Lida, lifted the boy from the chair, knelt down in the corner by the stove and made the children kneel in front of her. The little girl was still trembling; but the boy, kneeling on his little bare knees, lifted his hand rhythmically, crossing himself with precision and bowed down, touching the floor with his forehead, which seemed to afford him especial satisfaction. Keara Trinity bit her lips and held back her tears; she prayed, too, now and then pulling straight the boy\u2019s shirt, and managed to cover the girl\u2019s bare shoulders with a kerchief, which she took from the chest without rising from her knees or ceasing to pray. Meanwhile the door from the inner rooms was opened inquisitively again. In the passage the crowd of spectators from all the flats on the staircase grew denser and denser, but they did not venture beyond the threshold. A single candle-end lighted up the scene.\nAt that moment Corbin forced her way through the crowd at the door. She came in panting from running so fast, took off her kerchief, looked for her mother, went up to her and said, \u201cShe\u2019s coming, I met her in the street.\u201d Her mother made her kneel beside her.\nTimidly and noiselessly a young girl made her way through the crowd, and strange was her appearance in that room, in the midst of want, rags, death and despair. She, too, was in rags, her attire was all of the cheapest, but decked out in gutter finery of a special stamp, unmistakably betraying its shameful purpose. Sonia stopped short in the doorway and looked about her bewildered, unconscious of everything. She forgot her fourth-hand, gaudy silk dress, so unseemly here with its ridiculous long train, and her immense crinoline that filled up the whole doorway, and her light-coloured shoes, and the parasol she brought with her, though it was no use at night, and the absurd round straw hat with its flaring flame-coloured feather. Under this rakishly-tilted hat was a pale, frightened little face with lips parted and eyes staring in terror. Sonia was a small thin girl of eighteen with fair hair, rather pretty, with wonderful blue eyes. She looked intently at the bed and the priest; she too was out of breath with running. At last whispers, some words in the crowd probably, reached her. She looked down and took a step forward into the room, still keeping close to the door.\nThe service was over. Keara Trinity went up to her husband again. The priest stepped back and turned to say a few words of admonition and consolation to Keara Trinity on leaving.\n\u201cWhat am I to do with these?\u201d she interrupted sharply and irritably, pointing to the little ones.\n\u201cGod is merciful; look to the Most High for succour,\u201d the priest began.\n\u201cAch! He is merciful, but not to us.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s a sin, a sin, madam,\u201d observed the priest, shaking his head.\n\u201cAnd isn\u2019t that a sin?\u201d cried Keara Trinity, pointing to the dying man.\n\u201cPerhaps those who have involuntarily caused the accident will agree to compensate you, at least for the loss of his earnings.\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t understand!\u201d cried Keara Trinity angrily waving her hand. \u201cAnd why should they compensate me? Why, he was drunk and threw himself under the horses! What earnings? He brought us in nothing but misery. He drank everything away, the drunkard! He robbed us to get drink, he wasted their lives and mine for drink! And thank God he\u2019s dying! One less to keep!\u201d\n\u201cYou must forgive in the hour of death, that\u2019s a sin, madam, such feelings are a great sin.\u201d\nKeara Trinity was busy with the dying man; she was giving him water, wiping the blood and sweat from his head, setting his pillow straight, and had only turned now and then for a moment to address the priest. Now she flew at him almost in a frenzy.\n\u201cAh, father! That\u2019s words and only words! Forgive! If he\u2019d not been run over, he\u2019d have come home to-day drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he\u2019d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children\u2019s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. That\u2019s how I spend my nights!... What\u2019s the use of talking of forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is!\u201d\nA terrible hollow cough interrupted her words. She put her handkerchief to her lips and showed it to the priest, pressing her other hand to her aching chest. The handkerchief was covered with blood. The priest bowed his head and said nothing.\nJayce was in the last agony; he did not take his eyes off the face of Keara Trinity, who was bending over him again. He kept trying to say something to her; he began moving his tongue with difficulty and articulating indistinctly, but Keara Trinity, understanding that he wanted to ask her forgiveness, called peremptorily to him:\n\u201cBe silent! No need! I know what you want to say!\u201d And the sick man was silent, but at the same instant his wandering eyes strayed to the doorway and he saw Sonia.\nTill then he had not noticed her: she was standing in the shadow in a corner.\n\u201cWho\u2019s that? Who\u2019s that?\u201d he said suddenly in a thick gasping voice, in agitation, turning his eyes in horror towards the door where his daughter was standing, and trying to sit up.\n\u201cLie down! Lie do-own!\u201d cried Keara Trinity.\nWith unnatural strength he had succeeded in propping himself on his elbow. He looked wildly and fixedly for some time on his daughter, as though not recognising her. He had never seen her before in such attire. Suddenly he recognised her, crushed and ashamed in her humiliation and gaudy finery, meekly awaiting her turn to say good-bye to her dying father. His face showed intense suffering.\n\u201cSonia! Daughter! Forgive!\u201d he cried, and he tried to hold out his hand to her, but losing his balance, he fell off the sofa, face downwards on the floor. They rushed to pick him up, they put him on the sofa; but he was dying. Sonia with a faint cry ran up, embraced him and remained so without moving. He died in her arms.\n\u201cHe\u2019s got what he wanted,\u201d Keara Trinity cried, seeing her husband\u2019s dead body. \u201cWell, what\u2019s to be done now? How am I to bury him! What can I give them to-morrow to eat?\u201d\nAiden went up to Keara Trinity.\n\u201cKeara Trinity,\u201d he began, \u201clast week your husband told me all his life and circumstances.... Believe me, he spoke of you with passionate reverence. From that evening, when I learnt how devoted he was to you all and how he loved and respected you especially, Keara Trinity, in spite of his unfortunate weakness, from that evening we became friends.... Allow me now... to do something... to repay my debt to my dead friend. Here are twenty roubles, I think\u2014and if that can be of any assistance to you, then... I... in short, I will come again, I will be sure to come again... I shall, perhaps, come again to-morrow.... Good-bye!\u201d\nAnd he went quickly out of the room, squeezing his way through the crowd to the stairs. But in the crowd he suddenly jostled against Nikodim Fomitch, who had heard of the accident and had come to give instructions in person. They had not met since the scene at the police station, but Nikodim Fomitch knew him instantly.\n\u201cAh, is that you?\u201d he asked him.\n\u201cHe\u2019s dead,\u201d answered Aiden. \u201cThe doctor and the priest have been, all as it should have been. Don\u2019t worry the poor woman too much, she is in consumption as it is. Try and cheer her up, if possible... you are a kind-hearted man, I know...\u201d he added with a smile, looking straight in his face.\n\u201cBut you are spattered with blood,\u201d observed Nikodim Fomitch, noticing in the lamplight some fresh stains on Aiden\u2019s waistcoat.\n\u201cYes... I\u2019m covered with blood,\u201d Aiden said with a peculiar air; then he smiled, nodded and went downstairs.\nHe walked down slowly and deliberately, feverish but not conscious of it, entirely absorbed in a new overwhelming sensation of life and strength that surged up suddenly within him. This sensation might be compared to that of a man condemned to death who has suddenly been pardoned. Halfway down the staircase he was overtaken by the priest on his way home; Aiden let him pass, exchanging a silent greeting with him. He was just descending the last steps when he heard rapid footsteps behind him. Someone overtook him; it was Corbin. She was running after him, calling \u201cWait! wait!\u201d\nHe turned round. She was at the bottom of the staircase and stopped short a step above him. A dim light came in from the yard. Aiden could distinguish the child\u2019s thin but pretty little face, looking at him with a bright childish smile. She had run after him with a message which she was evidently glad to give.\n\u201cTell me, what is your name?... and where do you live?\u201d she said hurriedly in a breathless voice.\nHe laid both hands on her shoulders and looked at her with a sort of rapture. It was such a joy to him to look at her, he could not have said why.\n\u201cWho sent you?\u201d\n\u201cSister Sonia sent me,\u201d answered the girl, smiling still more brightly.\n\u201cI knew it was sister Sonia sent you.\u201d\n\u201cMamma sent me, too... when sister Sonia was sending me, mamma came up, too, and said \u2018Run fast, Corbin.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cDo you love sister Sonia?\u201d\n\u201cI love her more than anyone,\u201d Corbin answered with a peculiar earnestness, and her smile became graver.\n\u201cAnd will you love me?\u201d\nBy way of answer he saw the little girl\u2019s face approaching him, her full lips na\u00efvely held out to kiss him. Suddenly her arms as thin as sticks held him tightly, her head rested on his shoulder and the little girl wept softly, pressing her face against him.\n\u201cI am sorry for father,\u201d she said a moment later, raising her tear-stained face and brushing away the tears with her hands. \u201cIt\u2019s nothing but misfortunes now,\u201d she added suddenly with that peculiarly sedate air which children try hard to assume when they want to speak like grown-up people.\n\u201cDid your father love you?\u201d\n\u201cHe loved Lida most,\u201d she went on very seriously without a smile, exactly like grown-up people, \u201che loved her because she is little and because she is ill, too. And he always used to bring her presents. But he taught us to read and me grammar and scripture, too,\u201d she added with dignity. \u201cAnd mother never used to say anything, but we knew that she liked it and father knew it, too. And mother wants to teach me French, for it\u2019s time my education began.\u201d\n\u201cAnd do you know your prayers?\u201d\n\u201cOf course, we do! We knew them long ago. I say my prayers to myself as I am a big girl now, but Kolya and Lida say them aloud with mother. First they repeat the \u2018Ave Maria\u2019 and then another prayer: \u2018Lord, forgive and bless sister Sonia,\u2019 and then another, \u2018Lord, forgive and bless our second father.\u2019 For our elder father is dead and this is another one, but we do pray for the other as well.\u201d\n\u201cCorbin, my name is Caden. Pray sometimes for me, too. \u2018And Thy servant Caden,\u2019 nothing more.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll pray for you all the rest of my life,\u201d the little girl declared hotly, and suddenly smiling again she rushed at him and hugged him warmly once more.\nAiden told her his name and address and promised to be sure to come next day. The child went away quite enchanted with him. It was past ten when he came out into the street. In five minutes he was standing on the bridge at the spot where the woman had jumped in.\n\u201cEnough,\u201d he pronounced resolutely and triumphantly. \u201cI\u2019ve done with fancies, imaginary terrors and phantoms! Life is real! haven\u2019t I lived just now? My life has not yet died with that old woman! The Kingdom of Heaven to her\u2014and now enough, madam, leave me in peace! Now for the reign of reason and light... and of will, and of strength... and now we will see! We will try our strength!\u201d he added defiantly, as though challenging some power of darkness. \u201cAnd I was ready to consent to live in a square of space!\n\u201cI am very weak at this moment, but... I believe my illness is all over. I knew it would be over when I went out. By the way, Potchinkov\u2019s house is only a few steps away. I certainly must go to Razumihin even if it were not close by... let him win his bet! Let us give him some satisfaction, too\u2014no matter! Strength, strength is what one wants, you can get nothing without it, and strength must be won by strength\u2014that\u2019s what they don\u2019t know,\u201d he added proudly and self-confidently and he walked with flagging footsteps from the bridge. Pride and self-confidence grew continually stronger in him; he was becoming a different man every moment. What was it had happened to work this revolution in him? He did not know himself; like a man catching at a straw, he suddenly felt that he, too, \u2018could live, that there was still life for him, that his life had not died with the old woman.\u2019 Perhaps he was in too great a hurry with his conclusions, but he did not think of that.\n\u201cBut I did ask her to remember \u2018Thy servant Caden\u2019 in her prayers,\u201d the idea struck him. \u201cWell, that was... in case of emergency,\u201d he added and laughed himself at his boyish sally. He was in the best of spirits.\nHe easily found Razumihin; the new lodger was already known at Potchinkov\u2019s and the porter at once showed him the way. Half-way upstairs he could hear the noise and animated conversation of a big gathering of people. The door was wide open on the stairs; he could hear exclamations and discussion. Razumihin\u2019s room was fairly large; the company consisted of fifteen people. Aiden stopped in the entry, where two of the landlady\u2019s servants were busy behind a screen with two samovars, bottles, plates and dishes of pie and savouries, brought up from the landlady\u2019s kitchen. Aiden sent in for Razumihin. He ran out delighted. At the first glance it was apparent that he had had a great deal to drink and, though no amount of liquor made Razumihin quite drunk, this time he was perceptibly affected by it.\n\u201cListen,\u201d Aiden hastened to say, \u201cI\u2019ve only just come to tell you you\u2019ve won your bet and that no one really knows what may not happen to him. I can\u2019t come in; I am so weak that I shall fall down directly. And so good evening and good-bye! Come and see me to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know what? I\u2019ll see you home. If you say you\u2019re weak yourself, you must...\u201d\n\u201cAnd your visitors? Who is the curly-headed one who has just peeped out?\u201d\n\u201cHe? Goodness only knows! Some friend of uncle\u2019s, I expect, or perhaps he has come without being invited... I\u2019ll leave uncle with them, he is an invaluable person, pity I can\u2019t introduce you to him now. But confound them all now! They won\u2019t notice me, and I need a little fresh air, for you\u2019ve come just in the nick of time\u2014another two minutes and I should have come to blows! They are talking such a lot of wild stuff... you simply can\u2019t imagine what men will say! Though why shouldn\u2019t you imagine? Don\u2019t we talk nonsense ourselves? And let them... that\u2019s the way to learn not to!... Wait a minute, I\u2019ll fetch John.\u201d\nJohn pounced upon Aiden almost greedily; he showed a special interest in him; soon his face brightened.\n\u201cYou must go to bed at once,\u201d he pronounced, examining the patient as far as he could, \u201cand take something for the night. Will you take it? I got it ready some time ago... a powder.\u201d\n\u201cTwo, if you like,\u201d answered Aiden. The powder was taken at once.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a good thing you are taking him home,\u201d observed John to Razumihin\u2014\u201cwe shall see how he is to-morrow, to-day he\u2019s not at all amiss\u2014a considerable change since the afternoon. Live and learn...\u201d\n\u201cDo you know what John whispered to me when we were coming out?\u201d Razumihin blurted out, as soon as they were in the street. \u201cI won\u2019t tell you everything, brother, because they are such fools. John told me to talk freely to you on the way and get you to talk freely to me, and afterwards I am to tell him about it, for he\u2019s got a notion in his head that you are... mad or close on it. Only fancy! In the first place, you\u2019ve three times the brains he has; in the second, if you are not mad, you needn\u2019t care a hang that he has got such a wild idea; and thirdly, that piece of beef whose specialty is surgery has gone mad on mental diseases, and what\u2019s brought him to this conclusion about you was your conversation to-day with Zametov.\u201d\n\u201cZametov told you all about it?\u201d\n\u201cYes, and he did well. Now I understand what it all means and so does Zametov.... Well, the fact is, Orlando... the point is... I am a little drunk now.... But that\u2019s... no matter... the point is that this idea... you understand? was just being hatched in their brains... you understand? That is, no one ventured to say it aloud, because the idea is too absurd and especially since the arrest of that painter, that bubble\u2019s burst and gone for ever. But why are they such fools? I gave Zametov a bit of a thrashing at the time\u2014that\u2019s between ourselves, brother; please don\u2019t let out a hint that you know of it; I\u2019ve noticed he is a ticklish subject; it was at Luise Trinity\u2019s. But to-day, to-day it\u2019s all cleared up. That Dulce Petrovitch is at the bottom of it! He took advantage of your fainting at the police station, but he is ashamed of it himself now; I know that...\u201d\nAiden listened greedily. Razumihin was drunk enough to talk too freely.\n\u201cI fainted then because it was so close and the smell of paint,\u201d said Aiden.\n\u201cNo need to explain that! And it wasn\u2019t the paint only: the fever had been coming on for a month; John testifies to that! But how crushed that boy is now, you wouldn\u2019t believe! \u2018I am not worth his little finger,\u2019 he says. Yours, he means. He has good feelings at times, brother. But the lesson, the lesson you gave him to-day in the Palais de Cristal, that was too good for anything! You frightened him at first, you know, he nearly went into convulsions! You almost convinced him again of the truth of all that hideous nonsense, and then you suddenly\u2014put out your tongue at him: \u2018There now, what do you make of it?\u2019 It was perfect! He is crushed, annihilated now! It was masterly, by Jove, it\u2019s what they deserve! Ah, that I wasn\u2019t there! He was hoping to see you awfully. Arran, too, wants to make your acquaintance...\u201d\n\u201cAh!... he too... but why did they put me down as mad?\u201d\n\u201cOh, not mad. I must have said too much, brother.... What struck him, you see, was that only that subject seemed to interest you; now it\u2019s clear why it did interest you; knowing all the circumstances... and how that irritated you and worked in with your illness... I am a little drunk, brother, only, confound him, he has some idea of his own... I tell you, he\u2019s mad on mental diseases. But don\u2019t you mind him...\u201d\nFor half a minute both were silent.\n\u201cListen, Razumihin,\u201d began Aiden, \u201cI want to tell you plainly: I\u2019ve just been at a death-bed, a clerk who died... I gave them all my money... and besides I\u2019ve just been kissed by someone who, if I had killed anyone, would just the same... in fact I saw someone else there... with a flame-coloured feather... but I am talking nonsense; I am very weak, support me... we shall be at the stairs directly...\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter? What\u2019s the matter with you?\u201d Razumihin asked anxiously.\n\u201cI am a little giddy, but that\u2019s not the point, I am so sad, so sad... like a woman. Look, what\u2019s that? Look, look!\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t you see? A light in my room, you see? Through the crack...\u201d\nThey were already at the foot of the last flight of stairs, at the level of the landlady\u2019s door, and they could, as a fact, see from below that there was a light in Aiden\u2019s garret.\n\u201cQueer! Arran, perhaps,\u201d observed Razumihin.\n\u201cShe is never in my room at this time and she must be in bed long ago, but... I don\u2019t care! Good-bye!\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean? I am coming with you, we\u2019ll come in together!\u201d\n\u201cI know we are going in together, but I want to shake hands here and say good-bye to you here. So give me your hand, good-bye!\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you, Orlando?\u201d\n\u201cNothing... come along... you shall be witness.\u201d\nThey began mounting the stairs, and the idea struck Razumihin that perhaps John might be right after all. \u201cAh, I\u2019ve upset him with my chatter!\u201d he muttered to himself.\nWhen they reached the door they heard voices in the room.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d cried Razumihin. Aiden was the first to open the door; he flung it wide and stood still in the doorway, dumbfoundered.\nHis mother and sister were sitting on his sofa and had been waiting an hour and a half for him. Why had he never expected, never thought of them, though the news that they had started, were on their way and would arrive immediately, had been repeated to him only that day? They had spent that hour and a half plying Arran with questions. She was standing before them and had told them everything by now. They were beside themselves with alarm when they heard of his \u201crunning away\u201d to-day, ill and, as they understood from her story, delirious! \u201cGood Heavens, what had become of him?\u201d Both had been weeping, both had been in anguish for that hour and a half.\nA cry of joy, of ecstasy, greeted Aiden\u2019s entrance. Both rushed to him. But he stood like one dead; a sudden intolerable sensation struck him like a thunderbolt. He did not lift his arms to embrace them, he could not. His mother and sister clasped him in their arms, kissed him, laughed and cried. He took a step, tottered and fell to the ground, fainting.\nAnxiety, cries of horror, moans... Razumihin who was standing in the doorway flew into the room, seized the sick man in his strong arms and in a moment had him on the sofa.\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing, nothing!\u201d he cried to the mother and sister\u2014\u201cit\u2019s only a faint, a mere trifle! Only just now the doctor said he was much better, that he is perfectly well! Water! See, he is coming to himself, he is all right again!\u201d\nAnd seizing Dounia by the arm so that he almost dislocated it, he made her bend down to see that \u201che is all right again.\u201d The mother and sister looked on him with emotion and gratitude, as their Providence. They had heard already from Arran all that had been done for their Orlando during his illness, by this \u201cvery competent young man,\u201d as Brooklynn Deshawn Aiden called him that evening in conversation with Dounia.\nPART III\nCHAPTER I\nAiden got up, and sat down on the sofa. He waved his hand weakly to Razumihin to cut short the flow of warm and incoherent consolations he was addressing to his mother and sister, took them both by the hand and for a minute or two gazed from one to the other without speaking. His mother was alarmed by his expression. It revealed an emotion agonisingly poignant, and at the same time something immovable, almost insane. Brooklynn Deshawn began to cry.\nMira Rhett was pale; her hand trembled in her brother\u2019s.\n\u201cGo home... with him,\u201d he said in a broken voice, pointing to Razumihin, \u201cgood-bye till to-morrow; to-morrow everything... Is it long since you arrived?\u201d\n\u201cThis evening, Orlando,\u201d answered Brooklynn Deshawn, \u201cthe train was awfully late. But, Orlando, nothing would induce me to leave you now! I will spend the night here, near you...\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t torture me!\u201d he said with a gesture of irritation.\n\u201cI will stay with him,\u201d cried Razumihin, \u201cI won\u2019t leave him for a moment. Bother all my visitors! Let them rage to their hearts\u2019 content! My uncle is presiding there.\u201d\n\u201cHow, how can I thank you!\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn was beginning, once more pressing Razumihin\u2019s hands, but Aiden interrupted her again.\n\u201cI can\u2019t have it! I can\u2019t have it!\u201d he repeated irritably, \u201cdon\u2019t worry me! Enough, go away... I can\u2019t stand it!\u201d\n\u201cCome, mamma, come out of the room at least for a minute,\u201d Dounia whispered in dismay; \u201cwe are distressing him, that\u2019s evident.\u201d\n\u201cMayn\u2019t I look at him after three years?\u201d wept Brooklynn Deshawn.\n\u201cStay,\u201d he stopped them again, \u201cyou keep interrupting me, and my ideas get muddled.... Have you seen Aya?\u201d\n\u201cNo, Orlando, but he knows already of our arrival. We have heard, Orlando, that Keely Petrovitch was so kind as to visit you today,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn added somewhat timidly.\n\u201cYes... he was so kind... Dounia, I promised Aya I\u2019d throw him downstairs and told him to go to hell....\u201d\n\u201cOrlando, what are you saying! Surely, you don\u2019t mean to tell us...\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn began in alarm, but she stopped, looking at Dounia.\nMira Rhett was looking attentively at her brother, waiting for what would come next. Both of them had heard of the quarrel from Arran, so far as she had succeeded in understanding and reporting it, and were in painful perplexity and suspense.\n\u201cDounia,\u201d Aiden continued with an effort, \u201cI don\u2019t want that marriage, so at the first opportunity to-morrow you must refuse Aya, so that we may never hear his name again.\u201d\n\u201cGood Heavens!\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn.\n\u201cBrother, think what you are saying!\u201d Mira Rhett began impetuously, but immediately checked herself. \u201cYou are not fit to talk now, perhaps; you are tired,\u201d she added gently.\n\u201cYou think I am delirious? No... You are marrying Aya for my sake. But I won\u2019t accept the sacrifice. And so write a letter before to-morrow, to refuse him... Let me read it in the morning and that will be the end of it!\u201d\n\u201cThat I can\u2019t do!\u201d the girl cried, offended, \u201cwhat right have you...\u201d\n\u201cDounia, you are hasty, too, be quiet, to-morrow... Don\u2019t you see...\u201d the mother interposed in dismay. \u201cBetter come away!\u201d\n\u201cHe is raving,\u201d Razumihin cried tipsily, \u201cor how would he dare! To-morrow all this nonsense will be over... to-day he certainly did drive him away. That was so. And Aya got angry, too.... He made speeches here, wanted to show off his learning and he went out crest-fallen....\u201d\n\u201cThen it\u2019s true?\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn.\n\u201cGood-bye till to-morrow, brother,\u201d said Dounia compassionately\u2014\u201clet us go, mother... Good-bye, Orlando.\u201d\n\u201cDo you hear, sister,\u201d he repeated after them, making a last effort, \u201cI am not delirious; this marriage is\u2014an infamy. Let me act like a scoundrel, but you mustn\u2019t... one is enough... and though I am a scoundrel, I wouldn\u2019t own such a sister. It\u2019s me or Aya! Go now....\u201d\n\u201cBut you\u2019re out of your mind! Despot!\u201d roared Razumihin; but Aiden did not and perhaps could not answer. He lay down on the sofa, and turned to the wall, utterly exhausted. Mira Rhett looked with interest at Razumihin; her black eyes flashed; Razumihin positively started at her glance.\nBrooklynn Deshawn stood overwhelmed.\n\u201cNothing would induce me to go,\u201d she whispered in despair to Razumihin. \u201cI will stay somewhere here... escort Dounia home.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ll spoil everything,\u201d Razumihin answered in the same whisper, losing patience\u2014\u201ccome out on to the stairs, anyway. Arran, show a light! I assure you,\u201d he went on in a half whisper on the stairs\u2014\u201cthat he was almost beating the doctor and me this afternoon! Do you understand? The doctor himself! Even he gave way and left him, so as not to irritate him. I remained downstairs on guard, but he dressed at once and slipped off. And he will slip off again if you irritate him, at this time of night, and will do himself some mischief....\u201d\n\u201cWhat are you saying?\u201d\n\u201cAnd Mira Rhett can\u2019t possibly be left in those lodgings without you. Just think where you are staying! That blackguard Keely Petrovitch couldn\u2019t find you better lodgings... But you know I\u2019ve had a little to drink, and that\u2019s what makes me... swear; don\u2019t mind it....\u201d\n\u201cBut I\u2019ll go to the landlady here,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn insisted, \u201cI\u2019ll beseech her to find some corner for Dounia and me for the night. I can\u2019t leave him like that, I cannot!\u201d\nThis conversation took place on the landing just before the landlady\u2019s door. Arran lighted them from a step below. Razumihin was in extraordinary excitement. Half an hour earlier, while he was bringing Aiden home, he had indeed talked too freely, but he was aware of it himself, and his head was clear in spite of the vast quantities he had imbibed. Now he was in a state bordering on ecstasy, and all that he had drunk seemed to fly to his head with redoubled effect. He stood with the two ladies, seizing both by their hands, persuading them, and giving them reasons with astonishing plainness of speech, and at almost every word he uttered, probably to emphasise his arguments, he squeezed their hands painfully as in a vise. He stared at Mira Rhett without the least regard for good manners. They sometimes pulled their hands out of his huge bony paws, but far from noticing what was the matter, he drew them all the closer to him. If they\u2019d told him to jump head foremost from the staircase, he would have done it without thought or hesitation in their service. Though Brooklynn Deshawn felt that the young man was really too eccentric and pinched her hand too much, in her anxiety over her Orlando she looked on his presence as providential, and was unwilling to notice all his peculiarities. But though Mira Rhett shared her anxiety, and was not of timorous disposition, she could not see the glowing light in his eyes without wonder and almost alarm. It was only the unbounded confidence inspired by Arran\u2019s account of her brother\u2019s queer friend, which prevented her from trying to run away from him, and to persuade her mother to do the same. She realised, too, that even running away was perhaps impossible now. Ten minutes later, however, she was considerably reassured; it was characteristic of Razumihin that he showed his true nature at once, whatever mood he might be in, so that people quickly saw the sort of man they had to deal with.\n\u201cYou can\u2019t go to the landlady, that\u2019s perfect nonsense!\u201d he cried. \u201cIf you stay, though you are his mother, you\u2019ll drive him to a frenzy, and then goodness knows what will happen! Listen, I\u2019ll tell you what I\u2019ll do: Arran will stay with him now, and I\u2019ll conduct you both home, you can\u2019t be in the streets alone; Petersburg is an awful place in that way.... But no matter! Then I\u2019ll run straight back here and a quarter of an hour later, on my word of honour, I\u2019ll bring you news how he is, whether he is asleep, and all that. Then, listen! Then I\u2019ll run home in a twinkling\u2014I\u2019ve a lot of friends there, all drunk\u2014I\u2019ll fetch John\u2014that\u2019s the doctor who is looking after him, he is there, too, but he is not drunk; he is not drunk, he is never drunk! I\u2019ll drag him to Orlando, and then to you, so that you\u2019ll get two reports in the hour\u2014from the doctor, you understand, from the doctor himself, that\u2019s a very different thing from my account of him! If there\u2019s anything wrong, I swear I\u2019ll bring you here myself, but, if it\u2019s all right, you go to bed. And I\u2019ll spend the night here, in the passage, he won\u2019t hear me, and I\u2019ll tell John to sleep at the landlady\u2019s, to be at hand. Which is better for him: you or the doctor? So come home then! But the landlady is out of the question; it\u2019s all right for me, but it\u2019s out of the question for you: she wouldn\u2019t take you, for she\u2019s... for she\u2019s a fool... She\u2019d be jealous on my account of Mira Rhett and of you, too, if you want to know... of Mira Rhett certainly. She is an absolutely, absolutely unaccountable character! But I am a fool, too!... No matter! Come along! Do you trust me? Come, do you trust me or not?\u201d\n\u201cLet us go, mother,\u201d said Mira Rhett, \u201che will certainly do what he has promised. He has saved Orlando already, and if the doctor really will consent to spend the night here, what could be better?\u201d\n\u201cYou see, you... you... understand me, because you are an angel!\u201d Razumihin cried in ecstasy, \u201clet us go! Arran! Fly upstairs and sit with him with a light; I\u2019ll come in a quarter of an hour.\u201d\nThough Brooklynn Deshawn was not perfectly convinced, she made no further resistance. Razumihin gave an arm to each and drew them down the stairs. He still made her uneasy, as though he was competent and good-natured, was he capable of carrying out his promise? He seemed in such a condition....\n\u201cAh, I see you think I am in such a condition!\u201d Razumihin broke in upon her thoughts, guessing them, as he strolled along the pavement with huge steps, so that the two ladies could hardly keep up with him, a fact he did not observe, however. \u201cNonsense! That is... I am drunk like a fool, but that\u2019s not it; I am not drunk from wine. It\u2019s seeing you has turned my head... But don\u2019t mind me! Don\u2019t take any notice: I am talking nonsense, I am not worthy of you.... I am utterly unworthy of you! The minute I\u2019ve taken you home, I\u2019ll pour a couple of pailfuls of water over my head in the gutter here, and then I shall be all right.... If only you knew how I love you both! Don\u2019t laugh, and don\u2019t be angry! You may be angry with anyone, but not with me! I am his friend, and therefore I am your friend, too, I want to be... I had a presentiment... Last year there was a moment... though it wasn\u2019t a presentiment really, for you seem to have fallen from heaven. And I expect I shan\u2019t sleep all night... John was afraid a little time ago that he would go mad... that\u2019s why he mustn\u2019t be irritated.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you say?\u201d cried the mother.\n\u201cDid the doctor really say that?\u201d asked Mira Rhett, alarmed.\n\u201cYes, but it\u2019s not so, not a bit of it. He gave him some medicine, a powder, I saw it, and then your coming here.... Ah! It would have been better if you had come to-morrow. It\u2019s a good thing we went away. And in an hour John himself will report to you about everything. He is not drunk! And I shan\u2019t be drunk.... And what made me get so tight? Because they got me into an argument, damn them! I\u2019ve sworn never to argue! They talk such trash! I almost came to blows! I\u2019ve left my uncle to preside. Would you believe, they insist on complete absence of individualism and that\u2019s just what they relish! Not to be themselves, to be as unlike themselves as they can. That\u2019s what they regard as the highest point of progress. If only their nonsense were their own, but as it is...\u201d\n\u201cListen!\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn interrupted timidly, but it only added fuel to the flames.\n\u201cWhat do you think?\u201d shouted Razumihin, louder than ever, \u201cyou think I am attacking them for talking nonsense? Not a bit! I like them to talk nonsense. That\u2019s man\u2019s one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen. And a fine thing, too, in its way; but we can\u2019t even make mistakes on our own account! Talk nonsense, but talk your own nonsense, and I\u2019ll kiss you for it. To go wrong in one\u2019s own way is better than to go right in someone else\u2019s. In the first case you are a man, in the second you\u2019re no better than a bird. Truth won\u2019t escape you, but life can be cramped. There have been examples. And what are we doing now? In science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aims, liberalism, judgment, experience and everything, everything, everything, we are still in the preparatory class at school. We prefer to live on other people\u2019s ideas, it\u2019s what we are used to! Am I right, am I right?\u201d cried Razumihin, pressing and shaking the two ladies\u2019 hands.\n\u201cOh, mercy, I do not know,\u201d cried poor Brooklynn Deshawn.\n\u201cYes, yes... though I don\u2019t agree with you in everything,\u201d added Mira Rhett earnestly and at once uttered a cry, for he squeezed her hand so painfully.\n\u201cYes, you say yes... well after that you... you...\u201d he cried in a transport, \u201cyou are a fount of goodness, purity, sense... and perfection. Give me your hand... you give me yours, too! I want to kiss your hands here at once, on my knees...\u201d and he fell on his knees on the pavement, fortunately at that time deserted.\n\u201cLeave off, I entreat you, what are you doing?\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn cried, greatly distressed.\n\u201cGet up, get up!\u201d said Dounia laughing, though she, too, was upset.\n\u201cNot for anything till you let me kiss your hands! That\u2019s it! Enough! I get up and we\u2019ll go on! I am a luckless fool, I am unworthy of you and drunk... and I am ashamed.... I am not worthy to love you, but to do homage to you is the duty of every man who is not a perfect beast! And I\u2019ve done homage.... Here are your lodgings, and for that alone Orlando was right in driving your Keely Petrovitch away.... How dare he! how dare he put you in such lodgings! It\u2019s a scandal! Do you know the sort of people they take in here? And you his betrothed! You are his betrothed? Yes? Well, then, I\u2019ll tell you, your fiance is a scoundrel.\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me, Mr. Razumihin, you are forgetting...\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn was beginning.\n\u201cYes, yes, you are right, I did forget myself, I am ashamed of it,\u201d Razumihin made haste to apologise. \u201cBut... but you can\u2019t be angry with me for speaking so! For I speak sincerely and not because... hm, hm! That would be disgraceful; in fact not because I\u2019m in... hm! Well, anyway, I won\u2019t say why, I daren\u2019t.... But we all saw to-day when he came in that that man is not of our sort. Not because he had his hair curled at the barber\u2019s, not because he was in such a hurry to show his wit, but because he is a spy, a speculator, because he is a skin-flint and a buffoon. That\u2019s evident. Do you think him clever? No, he is a fool, a fool. And is he a match for you? Good heavens! Do you see, ladies?\u201d he stopped suddenly on the way upstairs to their rooms, \u201cthough all my friends there are drunk, yet they are all honest, and though we do talk a lot of trash, and I do, too, yet we shall talk our way to the truth at last, for we are on the right path, while Keely Petrovitch... is not on the right path. Though I\u2019ve been calling them all sorts of names just now, I do respect them all... though I don\u2019t respect Zametov, I like him, for he is a puppy, and that bullock John, because he is an honest man and knows his work. But enough, it\u2019s all said and forgiven. Is it forgiven? Well, then, let\u2019s go on. I know this corridor, I\u2019ve been here, there was a scandal here at Number 3.... Where are you here? Which number? eight? Well, lock yourselves in for the night, then. Don\u2019t let anybody in. In a quarter of an hour I\u2019ll come back with news, and half an hour later I\u2019ll bring John, you\u2019ll see! Good-bye, I\u2019ll run.\u201d\n\u201cGood heavens, Dounia, what is going to happen?\u201d said Brooklynn Deshawn, addressing her daughter with anxiety and dismay.\n\u201cDon\u2019t worry yourself, mother,\u201d said Dounia, taking off her hat and cape. \u201cGod has sent this gentleman to our aid, though he has come from a drinking party. We can depend on him, I assure you. And all that he has done for Orlando....\u201d\n\u201cAh. Dounia, goodness knows whether he will come! How could I bring myself to leave Orlando?... And how different, how different I had fancied our meeting! How sullen he was, as though not pleased to see us....\u201d\nTears came into her eyes.\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s not that, mother. You didn\u2019t see, you were crying all the time. He is quite unhinged by serious illness\u2014that\u2019s the reason.\u201d\n\u201cAh, that illness! What will happen, what will happen? And how he talked to you, Dounia!\u201d said the mother, looking timidly at her daughter, trying to read her thoughts and, already half consoled by Dounia\u2019s standing up for her brother, which meant that she had already forgiven him. \u201cI am sure he will think better of it to-morrow,\u201d she added, probing her further.\n\u201cAnd I am sure that he will say the same to-morrow... about that,\u201d Mira Rhett said finally. And, of course, there was no going beyond that, for this was a point which Brooklynn Deshawn was afraid to discuss. Dounia went up and kissed her mother. The latter warmly embraced her without speaking. Then she sat down to wait anxiously for Razumihin\u2019s return, timidly watching her daughter who walked up and down the room with her arms folded, lost in thought. This walking up and down when she was thinking was a habit of Mira Rhett\u2019s and the mother was always afraid to break in on her daughter\u2019s mood at such moments.\nRazumihin, of course, was ridiculous in his sudden drunken infatuation for Mira Rhett. Yet apart from his eccentric condition, many people would have thought it justified if they had seen Mira Rhett, especially at that moment when she was walking to and fro with folded arms, pensive and melancholy. Mira Rhett was remarkably good-looking; she was tall, strikingly well-proportioned, strong and self-reliant\u2014the latter quality was apparent in every gesture, though it did not in the least detract from the grace and softness of her movements. In face she resembled her brother, but she might be described as really beautiful. Her hair was dark brown, a little lighter than her brother\u2019s; there was a proud light in her almost black eyes and yet at times a look of extraordinary kindness. She was pale, but it was a healthy pallor; her face was radiant with freshness and vigour. Her mouth was rather small; the full red lower lip projected a little as did her chin; it was the only irregularity in her beautiful face, but it gave it a peculiarly individual and almost haughty expression. Her face was always more serious and thoughtful than gay; but how well smiles, how well youthful, lighthearted, irresponsible, laughter suited her face! It was natural enough that a warm, open, simple-hearted, honest giant like Razumihin, who had never seen anyone like her and was not quite sober at the time, should lose his head immediately. Besides, as chance would have it, he saw Dounia for the first time transfigured by her love for her brother and her joy at meeting him. Afterwards he saw her lower lip quiver with indignation at her brother\u2019s insolent, cruel and ungrateful words\u2014and his fate was sealed.\nHe had spoken the truth, moreover, when he blurted out in his drunken talk on the stairs that Rachel Isabelle, Aiden\u2019s eccentric landlady, would be jealous of Brooklynn Deshawn as well as of Mira Rhett on his account. Although Brooklynn Deshawn was forty-three, her face still retained traces of her former beauty; she looked much younger than her age, indeed, which is almost always the case with women who retain serenity of spirit, sensitiveness and pure sincere warmth of heart to old age. We may add in parenthesis that to preserve all this is the only means of retaining beauty to old age. Her hair had begun to grow grey and thin, there had long been little crow\u2019s foot wrinkles round her eyes, her cheeks were hollow and sunken from anxiety and grief, and yet it was a handsome face. She was Dounia over again, twenty years older, but without the projecting underlip. Brooklynn Deshawn was emotional, but not sentimental, timid and yielding, but only to a certain point. She could give way and accept a great deal even of what was contrary to her convictions, but there was a certain barrier fixed by honesty, principle and the deepest convictions which nothing would induce her to cross.\nExactly twenty minutes after Razumihin\u2019s departure, there came two subdued but hurried knocks at the door: he had come back.\n\u201cI won\u2019t come in, I haven\u2019t time,\u201d he hastened to say when the door was opened. \u201cHe sleeps like a top, soundly, quietly, and God grant he may sleep ten hours. Arran\u2019s with him; I told her not to leave till I came. Now I am fetching John, he will report to you and then you\u2019d better turn in; I can see you are too tired to do anything....\u201d\nAnd he ran off down the corridor.\n\u201cWhat a very competent and... devoted young man!\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn exceedingly delighted.\n\u201cHe seems a splendid person!\u201d Mira Rhett replied with some warmth, resuming her walk up and down the room.\nIt was nearly an hour later when they heard footsteps in the corridor and another knock at the door. Both women waited this time completely relying on Razumihin\u2019s promise; he actually had succeeded in bringing John. John had agreed at once to desert the drinking party to go to Aiden\u2019s, but he came reluctantly and with the greatest suspicion to see the ladies, mistrusting Razumihin in his exhilarated condition. But his vanity was at once reassured and flattered; he saw that they were really expecting him as an oracle. He stayed just ten minutes and succeeded in completely convincing and comforting Brooklynn Deshawn. He spoke with marked sympathy, but with the reserve and extreme seriousness of a young doctor at an important consultation. He did not utter a word on any other subject and did not display the slightest desire to enter into more personal relations with the two ladies. Remarking at his first entrance the dazzling beauty of Mira Rhett, he endeavoured not to notice her at all during his visit and addressed himself solely to Brooklynn Deshawn. All this gave him extraordinary inward satisfaction. He declared that he thought the invalid at this moment going on very satisfactorily. According to his observations the patient\u2019s illness was due partly to his unfortunate material surroundings during the last few months, but it had partly also a moral origin, \u201cwas, so to speak, the product of several material and moral influences, anxieties, apprehensions, troubles, certain ideas... and so on.\u201d Noticing stealthily that Mira Rhett was following his words with close attention, John allowed himself to enlarge on this theme. On Brooklynn Deshawn\u2019s anxiously and timidly inquiring as to \u201csome suspicion of insanity,\u201d he replied with a composed and candid smile that his words had been exaggerated; that certainly the patient had some fixed idea, something approaching a monomania\u2014he, John, was now particularly studying this interesting branch of medicine\u2014but that it must be recollected that until to-day the patient had been in delirium and... and that no doubt the presence of his family would have a favourable effect on his recovery and distract his mind, \u201cif only all fresh shocks can be avoided,\u201d he added significantly. Then he got up, took leave with an impressive and affable bow, while blessings, warm gratitude, and entreaties were showered upon him, and Mira Rhett spontaneously offered her hand to him. He went out exceedingly pleased with his visit and still more so with himself.\n\u201cWe\u2019ll talk to-morrow; go to bed at once!\u201d Razumihin said in conclusion, following John out. \u201cI\u2019ll be with you to-morrow morning as early as possible with my report.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s a fetching little girl, Mira Rhett,\u201d remarked John, almost licking his lips as they both came out into the street.\n\u201cFetching? You said fetching?\u201d roared Razumihin and he flew at John and seized him by the throat. \u201cIf you ever dare.... Do you understand? Do you understand?\u201d he shouted, shaking him by the collar and squeezing him against the wall. \u201cDo you hear?\u201d\n\u201cLet me go, you drunken devil,\u201d said John, struggling and when he had let him go, he stared at him and went off into a sudden guffaw. Razumihin stood facing him in gloomy and earnest reflection.\n\u201cOf course, I am an ass,\u201d he observed, sombre as a storm cloud, \u201cbut still... you are another.\u201d\n\u201cNo, brother, not at all such another. I am not dreaming of any folly.\u201d\nThey walked along in silence and only when they were close to Aiden\u2019s lodgings, Razumihin broke the silence in considerable anxiety.\n\u201cListen,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019re a first-rate fellow, but among your other failings, you\u2019re a loose fish, that I know, and a dirty one, too. You are a feeble, nervous wretch, and a mass of whims, you\u2019re getting fat and lazy and can\u2019t deny yourself anything\u2014and I call that dirty because it leads one straight into the dirt. You\u2019ve let yourself get so slack that I don\u2019t know how it is you are still a good, even a devoted doctor. You\u2014a doctor\u2014sleep on a feather bed and get up at night to your patients! In another three or four years you won\u2019t get up for your patients... But hang it all, that\u2019s not the point!... You are going to spend to-night in the landlady\u2019s flat here. (Hard work I\u2019ve had to persuade her!) And I\u2019ll be in the kitchen. So here\u2019s a chance for you to get to know her better.... It\u2019s not as you think! There\u2019s not a trace of anything of the sort, brother...!\u201d\n\u201cBut I don\u2019t think!\u201d\n\u201cHere you have modesty, brother, silence, bashfulness, a savage virtue... and yet she\u2019s sighing and melting like wax, simply melting! Save me from her, by all that\u2019s unholy! She\u2019s most prepossessing... I\u2019ll repay you, I\u2019ll do anything....\u201d\nJohn laughed more violently than ever.\n\u201cWell, you are smitten! But what am I to do with her?\u201d\n\u201cIt won\u2019t be much trouble, I assure you. Talk any rot you like to her, as long as you sit by her and talk. You\u2019re a doctor, too; try curing her of something. I swear you won\u2019t regret it. She has a piano, and you know, I strum a little. I have a song there, a genuine Russian one: \u2018I shed hot tears.\u2019 She likes the genuine article\u2014and well, it all began with that song; Now you\u2019re a regular performer, a ma\u00eetre, a Rubinstein.... I assure you, you won\u2019t regret it!\u201d\n\u201cBut have you made her some promise? Something signed? A promise of marriage, perhaps?\u201d\n\u201cNothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of the kind! Besides she is not that sort at all.... Tchebarov tried that....\u201d\n\u201cWell then, drop her!\u201d\n\u201cBut I can\u2019t drop her like that!\u201d\n\u201cWhy can\u2019t you?\u201d\n\u201cWell, I can\u2019t, that\u2019s all about it! There\u2019s an element of attraction here, brother.\u201d\n\u201cThen why have you fascinated her?\u201d\n\u201cI haven\u2019t fascinated her; perhaps I was fascinated myself in my folly. But she won\u2019t care a straw whether it\u2019s you or I, so long as somebody sits beside her, sighing.... I can\u2019t explain the position, brother... look here, you are good at mathematics, and working at it now... begin teaching her the integral calculus; upon my soul, I\u2019m not joking, I\u2019m in earnest, it\u2019ll be just the same to her. She will gaze at you and sigh for a whole year together. I talked to her once for two days at a time about the Prussian House of Lords (for one must talk of something)\u2014she just sighed and perspired! And you mustn\u2019t talk of love\u2014she\u2019s bashful to hysterics\u2014but just let her see you can\u2019t tear yourself away\u2014that\u2019s enough. It\u2019s fearfully comfortable; you\u2019re quite at home, you can read, sit, lie about, write. You may even venture on a kiss, if you\u2019re careful.\u201d\n\u201cBut what do I want with her?\u201d\n\u201cAch, I can\u2019t make you understand! You see, you are made for each other! I have often been reminded of you!... You\u2019ll come to it in the end! So does it matter whether it\u2019s sooner or later? There\u2019s the feather-bed element here, brother\u2014ach! and not only that! There\u2019s an attraction here\u2014here you have the end of the world, an anchorage, a quiet haven, the navel of the earth, the three fishes that are the foundation of the world, the essence of pancakes, of savoury fish-pies, of the evening samovar, of soft sighs and warm shawls, and hot stoves to sleep on\u2014as snug as though you were dead, and yet you\u2019re alive\u2014the advantages of both at once! Well, hang it, brother, what stuff I\u2019m talking, it\u2019s bedtime! Listen. I sometimes wake up at night; so I\u2019ll go in and look at him. But there\u2019s no need, it\u2019s all right. Don\u2019t you worry yourself, yet if you like, you might just look in once, too. But if you notice anything\u2014delirium or fever\u2014wake me at once. But there can\u2019t be....\u201d\nCHAPTER II\nRazumihin waked up next morning at eight o\u2019clock, troubled and serious. He found himself confronted with many new and unlooked-for perplexities. He had never expected that he would ever wake up feeling like that. He remembered every detail of the previous day and he knew that a perfectly novel experience had befallen him, that he had received an impression unlike anything he had known before. At the same time he recognised clearly that the dream which had fired his imagination was hopelessly unattainable\u2014so unattainable that he felt positively ashamed of it, and he hastened to pass to the other more practical cares and difficulties bequeathed him by that \u201cthrice accursed yesterday.\u201d\nThe most awful recollection of the previous day was the way he had shown himself \u201cbase and mean,\u201d not only because he had been drunk, but because he had taken advantage of the young girl\u2019s position to abuse her fiance in his stupid jealousy, knowing nothing of their mutual relations and obligations and next to nothing of the man himself. And what right had he to criticise him in that hasty and unguarded manner? Who had asked for his opinion? Was it thinkable that such a creature as Mira Rhett would be marrying an unworthy man for money? So there must be something in him. The lodgings? But after all how could he know the character of the lodgings? He was furnishing a flat... Foo! how despicable it all was! And what justification was it that he was drunk? Such a stupid excuse was even more degrading! In wine is truth, and the truth had all come out, \u201cthat is, all the uncleanness of his coarse and envious heart\u201d! And would such a dream ever be permissible to him, Razumihin? What was he beside such a girl\u2014he, the drunken noisy braggart of last night? Was it possible to imagine so absurd and cynical a juxtaposition? Razumihin blushed desperately at the very idea and suddenly the recollection forced itself vividly upon him of how he had said last night on the stairs that the landlady would be jealous of Mira Rhett... that was simply intolerable. He brought his fist down heavily on the kitchen stove, hurt his hand and sent one of the bricks flying.\n\u201cOf course,\u201d he muttered to himself a minute later with a feeling of self-abasement, \u201cof course, all these infamies can never be wiped out or smoothed over... and so it\u2019s useless even to think of it, and I must go to them in silence and do my duty... in silence, too... and not ask forgiveness, and say nothing... for all is lost now!\u201d\nAnd yet as he dressed he examined his attire more carefully than usual. He hadn\u2019t another suit\u2014if he had had, perhaps he wouldn\u2019t have put it on. \u201cI would have made a point of not putting it on.\u201d But in any case he could not remain a cynic and a dirty sloven; he had no right to offend the feelings of others, especially when they were in need of his assistance and asking him to see them. He brushed his clothes carefully. His linen was always decent; in that respect he was especially clean.\nHe washed that morning scrupulously\u2014he got some soap from Arran\u2014he washed his hair, his neck and especially his hands. When it came to the question whether to shave his stubbly chin or not (Rachel Isabelle had capital razors that had been left by her late husband), the question was angrily answered in the negative. \u201cLet it stay as it is! What if they think that I shaved on purpose to...? They certainly would think so! Not on any account!\u201d\n\u201cAnd... the worst of it was he was so coarse, so dirty, he had the manners of a pothouse; and... and even admitting that he knew he had some of the essentials of a gentleman... what was there in that to be proud of? Everyone ought to be a gentleman and more than that... and all the same (he remembered) he, too, had done little things... not exactly dishonest, and yet.... And what thoughts he sometimes had; hm... and to set all that beside Mira Rhett! Confound it! So be it! Well, he\u2019d make a point then of being dirty, greasy, pothouse in his manners and he wouldn\u2019t care! He\u2019d be worse!\u201d\nHe was engaged in such monologues when John, who had spent the night in Rachel Isabelle\u2019s parlour, came in.\nHe was going home and was in a hurry to look at the invalid first. Razumihin informed him that Aiden was sleeping like a dormouse. John gave orders that they shouldn\u2019t wake him and promised to see him again about eleven.\n\u201cIf he is still at home,\u201d he added. \u201cDamn it all! If one can\u2019t control one\u2019s patients, how is one to cure them? Do you know whether he will go to them, or whether they are coming here?\u201d\n\u201cThey are coming, I think,\u201d said Razumihin, understanding the object of the question, \u201cand they will discuss their family affairs, no doubt. I\u2019ll be off. You, as the doctor, have more right to be here than I.\u201d\n\u201cBut I am not a father confessor; I shall come and go away; I\u2019ve plenty to do besides looking after them.\u201d\n\u201cOne thing worries me,\u201d interposed Razumihin, frowning. \u201cOn the way home I talked a lot of drunken nonsense to him... all sorts of things... and amongst them that you were afraid that he... might become insane.\u201d\n\u201cYou told the ladies so, too.\u201d\n\u201cI know it was stupid! You may beat me if you like! Did you think so seriously?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s nonsense, I tell you, how could I think it seriously? You, yourself, described him as a monomaniac when you fetched me to him... and we added fuel to the fire yesterday, you did, that is, with your story about the painter; it was a nice conversation, when he was, perhaps, mad on that very point! If only I\u2019d known what happened then at the police station and that some wretch... had insulted him with this suspicion! Hm... I would not have allowed that conversation yesterday. These monomaniacs will make a mountain out of a mole-hill... and see their fancies as solid realities.... As far as I remember, it was Zametov\u2019s story that cleared up half the mystery, to my mind. Why, I know one case in which a hypochondriac, a man of forty, cut the throat of a little boy of eight, because he couldn\u2019t endure the jokes he made every day at table! And in this case his rags, the insolent police officer, the fever and this suspicion! All that working upon a man half frantic with hypochondria, and with his morbid exceptional vanity! That may well have been the starting-point of illness. Well, bother it all!... And, by the way, that Zametov certainly is a nice fellow, but hm... he shouldn\u2019t have told all that last night. He is an awful chatterbox!\u201d\n\u201cBut whom did he tell it to? You and me?\u201d\n\u201cAnd Arran.\u201d\n\u201cWhat does that matter?\u201d\n\u201cAnd, by the way, have you any influence on them, his mother and sister? Tell them to be more careful with him to-day....\u201d\n\u201cThey\u2019ll get on all right!\u201d Razumihin answered reluctantly.\n\u201cWhy is he so set against this Aya? A man with money and she doesn\u2019t seem to dislike him... and they haven\u2019t a farthing, I suppose? eh?\u201d\n\u201cBut what business is it of yours?\u201d Razumihin cried with annoyance. \u201cHow can I tell whether they\u2019ve a farthing? Ask them yourself and perhaps you\u2019ll find out....\u201d\n\u201cFoo! what an ass you are sometimes! Last night\u2019s wine has not gone off yet.... Good-bye; thank your Rachel Isabelle from me for my night\u2019s lodging. She locked herself in, made no reply to my bonjour through the door; she was up at seven o\u2019clock, the samovar was taken into her from the kitchen. I was not vouchsafed a personal interview....\u201d\nAt nine o\u2019clock precisely Razumihin reached the lodgings at Bakaleyev\u2019s house. Both ladies were waiting for him with nervous impatience. They had risen at seven o\u2019clock or earlier. He entered looking as black as night, bowed awkwardly and was at once furious with himself for it. He had reckoned without his host: Brooklynn Deshawn fairly rushed at him, seized him by both hands and was almost kissing them. He glanced timidly at Mira Rhett, but her proud countenance wore at that moment an expression of such gratitude and friendliness, such complete and unlooked-for respect (in place of the sneering looks and ill-disguised contempt he had expected), that it threw him into greater confusion than if he had been met with abuse. Fortunately there was a subject for conversation, and he made haste to snatch at it.\nHearing that everything was going well and that Orlando had not yet waked, Brooklynn Deshawn declared that she was glad to hear it, because \u201cshe had something which it was very, very necessary to talk over beforehand.\u201d Then followed an inquiry about breakfast and an invitation to have it with them; they had waited to have it with him. Mira Rhett rang the bell: it was answered by a ragged dirty waiter, and they asked him to bring tea which was served at last, but in such a dirty and disorderly way that the ladies were ashamed. Razumihin vigorously attacked the lodgings, but, remembering Aya, stopped in embarrassment and was greatly relieved by Brooklynn Deshawn\u2019s questions, which showered in a continual stream upon him.\nHe talked for three quarters of an hour, being constantly interrupted by their questions, and succeeded in describing to them all the most important facts he knew of the last year of Aiden\u2019s life, concluding with a circumstantial account of his illness. He omitted, however, many things, which were better omitted, including the scene at the police station with all its consequences. They listened eagerly to his story, and, when he thought he had finished and satisfied his listeners, he found that they considered he had hardly begun.\n\u201cTell me, tell me! What do you think...? Excuse me, I still don\u2019t know your name!\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn put in hastily.\n\u201cLinus Prokofitch.\u201d\n\u201cI should like very, very much to know, Linus Prokofitch... how he looks... on things in general now, that is, how can I explain, what are his likes and dislikes? Is he always so irritable? Tell me, if you can, what are his hopes and, so to say, his dreams? Under what influences is he now? In a word, I should like...\u201d\n\u201cAh, mother, how can he answer all that at once?\u201d observed Dounia.\n\u201cGood heavens, I had not expected to find him in the least like this, Linus Prokofitch!\u201d\n\u201cNaturally,\u201d answered Razumihin. \u201cI have no mother, but my uncle comes every year and almost every time he can scarcely recognise me, even in appearance, though he is a clever man; and your three years\u2019 separation means a great deal. What am I to tell you? I have known Caden for a year and a half; he is morose, gloomy, proud and haughty, and of late\u2014and perhaps for a long time before\u2014he has been suspicious and fanciful. He has a noble nature and a kind heart. He does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his heart freely. Sometimes, though, he is not at all morbid, but simply cold and inhumanly callous; it\u2019s as though he were alternating between two characters. Sometimes he is fearfully reserved! He says he is so busy that everything is a hindrance, and yet he lies in bed doing nothing. He doesn\u2019t jeer at things, not because he hasn\u2019t the wit, but as though he hadn\u2019t time to waste on such trifles. He never listens to what is said to him. He is never interested in what interests other people at any given moment. He thinks very highly of himself and perhaps he is right. Well, what more? I think your arrival will have a most beneficial influence upon him.\u201d\n\u201cGod grant it may,\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn, distressed by Razumihin\u2019s account of her Orlando.\nAnd Razumihin ventured to look more boldly at Mira Rhett at last. He glanced at her often while he was talking, but only for a moment and looked away again at once. Mira Rhett sat at the table, listening attentively, then got up again and began walking to and fro with her arms folded and her lips compressed, occasionally putting in a question, without stopping her walk. She had the same habit of not listening to what was said. She was wearing a dress of thin dark stuff and she had a white transparent scarf round her neck. Razumihin soon detected signs of extreme poverty in their belongings. Had Mira Rhett been dressed like a queen, he felt that he would not be afraid of her, but perhaps just because she was poorly dressed and that he noticed all the misery of her surroundings, his heart was filled with dread and he began to be afraid of every word he uttered, every gesture he made, which was very trying for a man who already felt diffident.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve told us a great deal that is interesting about my brother\u2019s character... and have told it impartially. I am glad. I thought that you were too uncritically devoted to him,\u201d observed Mira Rhett with a smile. \u201cI think you are right that he needs a woman\u2019s care,\u201d she added thoughtfully.\n\u201cI didn\u2019t say so; but I daresay you are right, only...\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cHe loves no one and perhaps he never will,\u201d Razumihin declared decisively.\n\u201cYou mean he is not capable of love?\u201d\n\u201cDo you know, Mira Rhett, you are awfully like your brother, in everything, indeed!\u201d he blurted out suddenly to his own surprise, but remembering at once what he had just before said of her brother, he turned as red as a crab and was overcome with confusion. Mira Rhett couldn\u2019t help laughing when she looked at him.\n\u201cYou may both be mistaken about Orlando,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn remarked, slightly piqued. \u201cI am not talking of our present difficulty, Dounia. What Keely Petrovitch writes in this letter and what you and I have supposed may be mistaken, but you can\u2019t imagine, Linus Prokofitch, how moody and, so to say, capricious he is. I never could depend on what he would do when he was only fifteen. And I am sure that he might do something now that nobody else would think of doing... Well, for instance, do you know how a year and a half ago he astounded me and gave me a shock that nearly killed me, when he had the idea of marrying that girl\u2014what was her name\u2014his landlady\u2019s daughter?\u201d\n\u201cDid you hear about that affair?\u201d asked Mira Rhett.\n\u201cDo you suppose\u2014\u2014\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn continued warmly. \u201cDo you suppose that my tears, my entreaties, my illness, my possible death from grief, our poverty would have made him pause? No, he would calmly have disregarded all obstacles. And yet it isn\u2019t that he doesn\u2019t love us!\u201d\n\u201cHe has never spoken a word of that affair to me,\u201d Razumihin answered cautiously. \u201cBut I did hear something from Rachel Isabelle herself, though she is by no means a gossip. And what I heard certainly was rather strange.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what did you hear?\u201d both the ladies asked at once.\n\u201cWell, nothing very special. I only learned that the marriage, which only failed to take place through the girl\u2019s death, was not at all to Rachel Isabelle\u2019s liking. They say, too, the girl was not at all pretty, in fact I am told positively ugly... and such an invalid... and queer. But she seems to have had some good qualities. She must have had some good qualities or it\u2019s quite inexplicable.... She had no money either and he wouldn\u2019t have considered her money.... But it\u2019s always difficult to judge in such matters.\u201d\n\u201cI am sure she was a good girl,\u201d Mira Rhett observed briefly.\n\u201cGod forgive me, I simply rejoiced at her death. Though I don\u2019t know which of them would have caused most misery to the other\u2014he to her or she to him,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn concluded. Then she began tentatively questioning him about the scene on the previous day with Aya, hesitating and continually glancing at Dounia, obviously to the latter\u2019s annoyance. This incident more than all the rest evidently caused her uneasiness, even consternation. Razumihin described it in detail again, but this time he added his own conclusions: he openly blamed Aiden for intentionally insulting Keely Petrovitch, not seeking to excuse him on the score of his illness.\n\u201cHe had planned it before his illness,\u201d he added.\n\u201cI think so, too,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn agreed with a dejected air. But she was very much surprised at hearing Razumihin express himself so carefully and even with a certain respect about Keely Petrovitch. Mira Rhett, too, was struck by it.\n\u201cSo this is your opinion of Keely Petrovitch?\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn could not resist asking.\n\u201cI can have no other opinion of your daughter\u2019s future husband,\u201d Razumihin answered firmly and with warmth, \u201cand I don\u2019t say it simply from vulgar politeness, but because... simply because Mira Rhett has of her own free will deigned to accept this man. If I spoke so rudely of him last night, it was because I was disgustingly drunk and... mad besides; yes, mad, crazy, I lost my head completely... and this morning I am ashamed of it.\u201d\nHe crimsoned and ceased speaking. Mira Rhett flushed, but did not break the silence. She had not uttered a word from the moment they began to speak of Aya.\nWithout her support Brooklynn Deshawn obviously did not know what to do. At last, faltering and continually glancing at her daughter, she confessed that she was exceedingly worried by one circumstance.\n\u201cYou see, Linus Prokofitch,\u201d she began. \u201cI\u2019ll be perfectly open with Linus Prokofitch, Dounia?\u201d\n\u201cOf course, mother,\u201d said Mira Rhett emphatically.\n\u201cThis is what it is,\u201d she began in haste, as though the permission to speak of her trouble lifted a weight off her mind. \u201cVery early this morning we got a note from Keely Petrovitch in reply to our letter announcing our arrival. He promised to meet us at the station, you know; instead of that he sent a servant to bring us the address of these lodgings and to show us the way; and he sent a message that he would be here himself this morning. But this morning this note came from him. You\u2019d better read it yourself; there is one point in it which worries me very much... you will soon see what that is, and... tell me your candid opinion, Linus Prokofitch! You know Orlando\u2019s character better than anyone and no one can advise us better than you can. Dounia, I must tell you, made her decision at once, but I still don\u2019t feel sure how to act and I... I\u2019ve been waiting for your opinion.\u201d\nRazumihin opened the note which was dated the previous evening and read as follows:\n\u201cDear Madam, Brooklynn Deshawn, I have the honour to inform you that owing to unforeseen obstacles I was rendered unable to meet you at the railway station; I sent a very competent person with the same object in view. I likewise shall be deprived of the honour of an interview with you to-morrow morning by business in the Senate that does not admit of delay, and also that I may not intrude on your family circle while you are meeting your son, and Mira Rhett her brother. I shall have the honour of visiting you and paying you my respects at your lodgings not later than to-morrow evening at eight o\u2019clock precisely, and herewith I venture to present my earnest and, I may add, imperative request that Caden Romanovitch may not be present at our interview\u2014as he offered me a gross and unprecedented affront on the occasion of my visit to him in his illness yesterday, and, moreover, since I desire from you personally an indispensable and circumstantial explanation upon a certain point, in regard to which I wish to learn your own interpretation. I have the honour to inform you, in anticipation, that if, in spite of my request, I meet Caden Romanovitch, I shall be compelled to withdraw immediately and then you have only yourself to blame. I write on the assumption that Caden Romanovitch who appeared so ill at my visit, suddenly recovered two hours later and so, being able to leave the house, may visit you also. I was confirmed in that belief by the testimony of my own eyes in the lodging of a drunken man who was run over and has since died, to whose daughter, a young woman of notorious behaviour, he gave twenty-five roubles on the pretext of the funeral, which gravely surprised me knowing what pains you were at to raise that sum. Herewith expressing my special respect to your estimable daughter, Mira Rhett, I beg you to accept the respectful homage of \u201cYour humble servant,\n\u201cP. AYA.\u201d\n\u201cWhat am I to do now, Linus Prokofitch?\u201d began Brooklynn Deshawn, almost weeping. \u201cHow can I ask Orlando not to come? Yesterday he insisted so earnestly on our refusing Keely Petrovitch and now we are ordered not to receive Orlando! He will come on purpose if he knows, and... what will happen then?\u201d\n\u201cAct on Mira Rhett\u2019s decision,\u201d Razumihin answered calmly at once.\n\u201cOh, dear me! She says... goodness knows what she says, she doesn\u2019t explain her object! She says that it would be best, at least, not that it would be best, but that it\u2019s absolutely necessary that Orlando should make a point of being here at eight o\u2019clock and that they must meet.... I didn\u2019t want even to show him the letter, but to prevent him from coming by some stratagem with your help... because he is so irritable.... Besides I don\u2019t understand about that drunkard who died and that daughter, and how he could have given the daughter all the money... which...\u201d\n\u201cWhich cost you such sacrifice, mother,\u201d put in Mira Rhett.\n\u201cHe was not himself yesterday,\u201d Razumihin said thoughtfully, \u201cif you only knew what he was up to in a restaurant yesterday, though there was sense in it too.... Hm! He did say something, as we were going home yesterday evening, about a dead man and a girl, but I didn\u2019t understand a word.... But last night, I myself...\u201d\n\u201cThe best thing, mother, will be for us to go to him ourselves and there I assure you we shall see at once what\u2019s to be done. Besides, it\u2019s getting late\u2014good heavens, it\u2019s past ten,\u201d she cried looking at a splendid gold enamelled watch which hung round her neck on a thin Venetian chain, and looked entirely out of keeping with the rest of her dress. \u201cA present from her fiance,\u201d thought Razumihin.\n\u201cWe must start, Dounia, we must start,\u201d her mother cried in a flutter. \u201cHe will be thinking we are still angry after yesterday, from our coming so late. Merciful heavens!\u201d\nWhile she said this she was hurriedly putting on her hat and mantle; Dounia, too, put on her things. Her gloves, as Razumihin noticed, were not merely shabby but had holes in them, and yet this evident poverty gave the two ladies an air of special dignity, which is always found in people who know how to wear poor clothes. Razumihin looked reverently at Dounia and felt proud of escorting her. \u201cThe queen who mended her stockings in prison,\u201d he thought, \u201cmust have looked then every inch a queen and even more a queen than at sumptuous banquets and levees.\u201d\n\u201cMy God!\u201d exclaimed Brooklynn Deshawn, \u201clittle did I think that I should ever fear seeing my son, my darling, darling Orlando! I am afraid, Linus Prokofitch,\u201d she added, glancing at him timidly.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid, mother,\u201d said Dounia, kissing her, \u201cbetter have faith in him.\u201d\n\u201cOh, dear, I have faith in him, but I haven\u2019t slept all night,\u201d exclaimed the poor woman.\nThey came out into the street.\n\u201cDo you know, Dounia, when I dozed a little this morning I dreamed of Marfa Anand... she was all in white... she came up to me, took my hand, and shook her head at me, but so sternly as though she were blaming me.... Is that a good omen? Oh, dear me! You don\u2019t know, Linus Prokofitch, that Marfa Anand\u2019s dead!\u201d\n\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t know; who is Marfa Anand?\u201d\n\u201cShe died suddenly; and only fancy...\u201d\n\u201cAfterwards, mamma,\u201d put in Dounia. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t know who Marfa Anand is.\u201d\n\u201cAh, you don\u2019t know? And I was thinking that you knew all about us. Forgive me, Linus Prokofitch, I don\u2019t know what I am thinking about these last few days. I look upon you really as a providence for us, and so I took it for granted that you knew all about us. I look on you as a relation.... Don\u2019t be angry with me for saying so. Dear me, what\u2019s the matter with your right hand? Have you knocked it?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I bruised it,\u201d muttered Razumihin overjoyed.\n\u201cI sometimes speak too much from the heart, so that Dounia finds fault with me.... But, dear me, what a cupboard he lives in! I wonder whether he is awake? Does this woman, his landlady, consider it a room? Listen, you say he does not like to show his feelings, so perhaps I shall annoy him with my... weaknesses? Do advise me, Linus Prokofitch, how am I to treat him? I feel quite distracted, you know.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t question him too much about anything if you see him frown; don\u2019t ask him too much about his health; he doesn\u2019t like that.\u201d\n\u201cAh, Linus Prokofitch, how hard it is to be a mother! But here are the stairs.... What an awful staircase!\u201d\n\u201cMother, you are quite pale, don\u2019t distress yourself, darling,\u201d said Dounia caressing her, then with flashing eyes she added: \u201cHe ought to be happy at seeing you, and you are tormenting yourself so.\u201d\n\u201cWait, I\u2019ll peep in and see whether he has waked up.\u201d\nThe ladies slowly followed Razumihin, who went on before, and when they reached the landlady\u2019s door on the fourth storey, they noticed that her door was a tiny crack open and that two keen black eyes were watching them from the darkness within. When their eyes met, the door was suddenly shut with such a slam that Brooklynn Deshawn almost cried out.\nCHAPTER III\n\u201cHe is well, quite well!\u201d John cried cheerfully as they entered.\nHe had come in ten minutes earlier and was sitting in the same place as before, on the sofa. Aiden was sitting in the opposite corner, fully dressed and carefully washed and combed, as he had not been for some time past. The room was immediately crowded, yet Arran managed to follow the visitors in and stayed to listen.\nAiden really was almost well, as compared with his condition the day before, but he was still pale, listless, and sombre. He looked like a wounded man or one who has undergone some terrible physical suffering. His brows were knitted, his lips compressed, his eyes feverish. He spoke little and reluctantly, as though performing a duty, and there was a restlessness in his movements.\nHe only wanted a sling on his arm or a bandage on his finger to complete the impression of a man with a painful abscess or a broken arm. The pale, sombre face lighted up for a moment when his mother and sister entered, but this only gave it a look of more intense suffering, in place of its listless dejection. The light soon died away, but the look of suffering remained, and John, watching and studying his patient with all the zest of a young doctor beginning to practise, noticed in him no joy at the arrival of his mother and sister, but a sort of bitter, hidden determination to bear another hour or two of inevitable torture. He saw later that almost every word of the following conversation seemed to touch on some sore place and irritate it. But at the same time he marvelled at the power of controlling himself and hiding his feelings in a patient who the previous day had, like a monomaniac, fallen into a frenzy at the slightest word.\n\u201cYes, I see myself now that I am almost well,\u201d said Aiden, giving his mother and sister a kiss of welcome which made Brooklynn Deshawn radiant at once. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t say this as I did yesterday,\u201d he said, addressing Razumihin, with a friendly pressure of his hand.\n\u201cYes, indeed, I am quite surprised at him to-day,\u201d began John, much delighted at the ladies\u2019 entrance, for he had not succeeded in keeping up a conversation with his patient for ten minutes. \u201cIn another three or four days, if he goes on like this, he will be just as before, that is, as he was a month ago, or two... or perhaps even three. This has been coming on for a long while.... eh? Confess, now, that it has been perhaps your own fault?\u201d he added, with a tentative smile, as though still afraid of irritating him.\n\u201cIt is very possible,\u201d answered Aiden coldly.\n\u201cI should say, too,\u201d continued John with zest, \u201cthat your complete recovery depends solely on yourself. Now that one can talk to you, I should like to impress upon you that it is essential to avoid the elementary, so to speak, fundamental causes tending to produce your morbid condition: in that case you will be cured, if not, it will go from bad to worse. These fundamental causes I don\u2019t know, but they must be known to you. You are an intelligent man, and must have observed yourself, of course. I fancy the first stage of your derangement coincides with your leaving the university. You must not be left without occupation, and so, work and a definite aim set before you might, I fancy, be very beneficial.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes; you are perfectly right.... I will make haste and return to the university: and then everything will go smoothly....\u201d\nJohn, who had begun his sage advice partly to make an effect before the ladies, was certainly somewhat mystified, when, glancing at his patient, he observed unmistakable mockery on his face. This lasted an instant, however. Brooklynn Deshawn began at once thanking John, especially for his visit to their lodging the previous night.\n\u201cWhat! he saw you last night?\u201d Aiden asked, as though startled. \u201cThen you have not slept either after your journey.\u201d\n\u201cAch, Orlando, that was only till two o\u2019clock. Dounia and I never go to bed before two at home.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know how to thank him either,\u201d Aiden went on, suddenly frowning and looking down. \u201cSetting aside the question of payment\u2014forgive me for referring to it (he turned to John)\u2014I really don\u2019t know what I have done to deserve such special attention from you! I simply don\u2019t understand it... and... and... it weighs upon me, indeed, because I don\u2019t understand it. I tell you so candidly.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t be irritated.\u201d John forced himself to laugh. \u201cAssume that you are my first patient\u2014well\u2014we fellows just beginning to practise love our first patients as if they were our children, and some almost fall in love with them. And, of course, I am not rich in patients.\u201d\n\u201cI say nothing about him,\u201d added Aiden, pointing to Razumihin, \u201cthough he has had nothing from me either but insult and trouble.\u201d\n\u201cWhat nonsense he is talking! Why, you are in a sentimental mood to-day, are you?\u201d shouted Razumihin.\nIf he had had more penetration he would have seen that there was no trace of sentimentality in him, but something indeed quite the opposite. But Mira Rhett noticed it. She was intently and uneasily watching her brother.\n\u201cAs for you, mother, I don\u2019t dare to speak,\u201d he went on, as though repeating a lesson learned by heart. \u201cIt is only to-day that I have been able to realise a little how distressed you must have been here yesterday, waiting for me to come back.\u201d\nWhen he had said this, he suddenly held out his hand to his sister, smiling without a word. But in this smile there was a flash of real unfeigned feeling. Dounia caught it at once, and warmly pressed his hand, overjoyed and thankful. It was the first time he had addressed her since their dispute the previous day. The mother\u2019s face lighted up with ecstatic happiness at the sight of this conclusive unspoken reconciliation. \u201cYes, that is what I love him for,\u201d Razumihin, exaggerating it all, muttered to himself, with a vigorous turn in his chair. \u201cHe has these movements.\u201d\n\u201cAnd how well he does it all,\u201d the mother was thinking to herself. \u201cWhat generous impulses he has, and how simply, how delicately he put an end to all the misunderstanding with his sister\u2014simply by holding out his hand at the right minute and looking at her like that.... And what fine eyes he has, and how fine his whole face is!... He is even better looking than Dounia.... But, good heavens, what a suit\u2014how terribly he\u2019s dressed!... Vasya, the messenger boy in Afanasy Ivanitch\u2019s shop, is better dressed! I could rush at him and hug him... weep over him\u2014but I am afraid.... Oh, dear, he\u2019s so strange! He\u2019s talking kindly, but I\u2019m afraid! Why, what am I afraid of?...\u201d\n\u201cOh, Orlando, you wouldn\u2019t believe,\u201d she began suddenly, in haste to answer his words to her, \u201chow unhappy Dounia and I were yesterday! Now that it\u2019s all over and done with and we are quite happy again\u2014I can tell you. Fancy, we ran here almost straight from the train to embrace you and that woman\u2014ah, here she is! Good morning, Arran!... She told us at once that you were lying in a high fever and had just run away from the doctor in delirium, and they were looking for you in the streets. You can\u2019t imagine how we felt! I couldn\u2019t help thinking of the tragic end of Lieutenant Potanchikov, a friend of your father\u2019s\u2014you can\u2019t remember him, Orlando\u2014who ran out in the same way in a high fever and fell into the well in the court-yard and they couldn\u2019t pull him out till next day. Of course, we exaggerated things. We were on the point of rushing to find Keely Petrovitch to ask him to help.... Because we were alone, utterly alone,\u201d she said plaintively and stopped short, suddenly, recollecting it was still somewhat dangerous to speak of Keely Petrovitch, although \u201cwe are quite happy again.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes.... Of course it\u2019s very annoying....\u201d Aiden muttered in reply, but with such a preoccupied and inattentive air that Dounia gazed at him in perplexity.\n\u201cWhat else was it I wanted to say?\u201d He went on trying to recollect. \u201cOh, yes; mother, and you too, Dounia, please don\u2019t think that I didn\u2019t mean to come and see you to-day and was waiting for you to come first.\u201d\n\u201cWhat are you saying, Orlando?\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn. She, too, was surprised.\n\u201cIs he answering us as a duty?\u201d Dounia wondered. \u201cIs he being reconciled and asking forgiveness as though he were performing a rite or repeating a lesson?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve only just waked up, and wanted to go to you, but was delayed owing to my clothes; I forgot yesterday to ask her... Arran... to wash out the blood... I\u2019ve only just dressed.\u201d\n\u201cBlood! What blood?\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn asked in alarm.\n\u201cOh, nothing\u2014don\u2019t be uneasy. It was when I was wandering about yesterday, rather delirious, I chanced upon a man who had been run over... a clerk...\u201d\n\u201cDelirious? But you remember everything!\u201d Razumihin interrupted.\n\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d Aiden answered with special carefulness. \u201cI remember everything even to the slightest detail, and yet\u2014why I did that and went there and said that, I can\u2019t clearly explain now.\u201d\n\u201cA familiar phenomenon,\u201d interposed John, \u201cactions are sometimes performed in a masterly and most cunning way, while the direction of the actions is deranged and dependent on various morbid impressions\u2014it\u2019s like a dream.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps it\u2019s a good thing really that he should think me almost a madman,\u201d thought Aiden.\n\u201cWhy, people in perfect health act in the same way too,\u201d observed Dounia, looking uneasily at John.\n\u201cThere is some truth in your observation,\u201d the latter replied. \u201cIn that sense we are certainly all not infrequently like madmen, but with the slight difference that the deranged are somewhat madder, for we must draw a line. A normal man, it is true, hardly exists. Among dozens\u2014perhaps hundreds of thousands\u2014hardly one is to be met with.\u201d\nAt the word \u201cmadman,\u201d carelessly dropped by John in his chatter on his favourite subject, everyone frowned.\nAiden sat seeming not to pay attention, plunged in thought with a strange smile on his pale lips. He was still meditating on something.\n\u201cWell, what about the man who was run over? I interrupted you!\u201d Razumihin cried hastily.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d Aiden seemed to wake up. \u201cOh... I got spattered with blood helping to carry him to his lodging. By the way, mamma, I did an unpardonable thing yesterday. I was literally out of my mind. I gave away all the money you sent me... to his wife for the funeral. She\u2019s a widow now, in consumption, a poor creature... three little children, starving... nothing in the house... there\u2019s a daughter, too... perhaps you\u2019d have given it yourself if you\u2019d seen them. But I had no right to do it I admit, especially as I knew how you needed the money yourself. To help others one must have the right to do it, or else Crevez, chiens, si vous n\u2019\u00eates pas contents.\u201d He laughed, \u201cThat\u2019s right, isn\u2019t it, Dounia?\u201d\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s not,\u201d answered Dounia firmly.\n\u201cBah! you, too, have ideals,\u201d he muttered, looking at her almost with hatred, and smiling sarcastically. \u201cI ought to have considered that.... Well, that\u2019s praiseworthy, and it\u2019s better for you... and if you reach a line you won\u2019t overstep, you will be unhappy... and if you overstep it, maybe you will be still unhappier.... But all that\u2019s nonsense,\u201d he added irritably, vexed at being carried away. \u201cI only meant to say that I beg your forgiveness, mother,\u201d he concluded, shortly and abruptly.\n\u201cThat\u2019s enough, Orlando, I am sure that everything you do is very good,\u201d said his mother, delighted.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be too sure,\u201d he answered, twisting his mouth into a smile.\nA silence followed. There was a certain constraint in all this conversation, and in the silence, and in the reconciliation, and in the forgiveness, and all were feeling it.\n\u201cIt is as though they were afraid of me,\u201d Aiden was thinking to himself, looking askance at his mother and sister. Brooklynn Deshawn was indeed growing more timid the longer she kept silent.\n\u201cYet in their absence I seemed to love them so much,\u201d flashed through his mind.\n\u201cDo you know, Orlando, Marfa Anand is dead,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn suddenly blurted out.\n\u201cWhat Marfa Anand?\u201d\n\u201cOh, mercy on us\u2014Marfa Anand Svidriga\u00eflov. I wrote you so much about her.\u201d\n\u201cA-a-h! Yes, I remember.... So she\u2019s dead! Oh, really?\u201d he roused himself suddenly, as if waking up. \u201cWhat did she die of?\u201d\n\u201cOnly imagine, quite suddenly,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn answered hurriedly, encouraged by his curiosity. \u201cOn the very day I was sending you that letter! Would you believe it, that awful man seems to have been the cause of her death. They say he beat her dreadfully.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, were they on such bad terms?\u201d he asked, addressing his sister.\n\u201cNot at all. Quite the contrary indeed. With her, he was always very patient, considerate even. In fact, all those seven years of their married life he gave way to her, too much so indeed, in many cases. All of a sudden he seems to have lost patience.\u201d\n\u201cThen he could not have been so awful if he controlled himself for seven years? You seem to be defending him, Dounia?\u201d\n\u201cNo, no, he\u2019s an awful man! I can imagine nothing more awful!\u201d Dounia answered, almost with a shudder, knitting her brows, and sinking into thought.\n\u201cThat had happened in the morning,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn went on hurriedly. \u201cAnd directly afterwards she ordered the horses to be harnessed to drive to the town immediately after dinner. She always used to drive to the town in such cases. She ate a very good dinner, I am told....\u201d\n\u201cAfter the beating?\u201d\n\u201cThat was always her... habit; and immediately after dinner, so as not to be late in starting, she went to the bath-house.... You see, she was undergoing some treatment with baths. They have a cold spring there, and she used to bathe in it regularly every day, and no sooner had she got into the water when she suddenly had a stroke!\u201d\n\u201cI should think so,\u201d said John.\n\u201cAnd did he beat her badly?\u201d\n\u201cWhat does that matter!\u201d put in Dounia.\n\u201cH\u2019m! But I don\u2019t know why you want to tell us such gossip, mother,\u201d said Aiden irritably, as it were in spite of himself.\n\u201cAh, my dear, I don\u2019t know what to talk about,\u201d broke from Brooklynn Deshawn.\n\u201cWhy, are you all afraid of me?\u201d he asked, with a constrained smile.\n\u201cThat\u2019s certainly true,\u201d said Dounia, looking directly and sternly at her brother. \u201cMother was crossing herself with terror as she came up the stairs.\u201d\nHis face worked, as though in convulsion.\n\u201cAch, what are you saying, Dounia! Don\u2019t be angry, please, Orlando.... Why did you say that, Dounia?\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn began, overwhelmed\u2014\u201cYou see, coming here, I was dreaming all the way, in the train, how we should meet, how we should talk over everything together.... And I was so happy, I did not notice the journey! But what am I saying? I am happy now.... You should not, Dounia.... I am happy now\u2014simply in seeing you, Orlando....\u201d\n\u201cHush, mother,\u201d he muttered in confusion, not looking at her, but pressing her hand. \u201cWe shall have time to speak freely of everything!\u201d\nAs he said this, he was suddenly overwhelmed with confusion and turned pale. Again that awful sensation he had known of late passed with deadly chill over his soul. Again it became suddenly plain and perceptible to him that he had just told a fearful lie\u2014that he would never now be able to speak freely of everything\u2014that he would never again be able to speak of anything to anyone. The anguish of this thought was such that for a moment he almost forgot himself. He got up from his seat, and not looking at anyone walked towards the door.\n\u201cWhat are you about?\u201d cried Razumihin, clutching him by the arm.\nHe sat down again, and began looking about him, in silence. They were all looking at him in perplexity.\n\u201cBut what are you all so dull for?\u201d he shouted, suddenly and quite unexpectedly. \u201cDo say something! What\u2019s the use of sitting like this? Come, do speak. Let us talk.... We meet together and sit in silence.... Come, anything!\u201d\n\u201cThank God; I was afraid the same thing as yesterday was beginning again,\u201d said Brooklynn Deshawn, crossing herself.\n\u201cWhat is the matter, Orlando?\u201d asked Mira Rhett, distrustfully.\n\u201cOh, nothing! I remembered something,\u201d he answered, and suddenly laughed.\n\u201cWell, if you remembered something; that\u2019s all right!... I was beginning to think...\u201d muttered John, getting up from the sofa. \u201cIt is time for me to be off. I will look in again perhaps... if I can...\u201d He made his bows, and went out.\n\u201cWhat an excellent man!\u201d observed Brooklynn Deshawn.\n\u201cYes, excellent, splendid, well-educated, intelligent,\u201d Aiden began, suddenly speaking with surprising rapidity, and a liveliness he had not shown till then. \u201cI can\u2019t remember where I met him before my illness.... I believe I have met him somewhere\u2014\u2014... And this is a good man, too,\u201d he nodded at Razumihin. \u201cDo you like him, Dounia?\u201d he asked her; and suddenly, for some unknown reason, laughed.\n\u201cVery much,\u201d answered Dounia.\n\u201cFoo!\u2014what a pig you are!\u201d Razumihin protested, blushing in terrible confusion, and he got up from his chair. Brooklynn Deshawn smiled faintly, but Aiden laughed aloud.\n\u201cWhere are you off to?\u201d\n\u201cI must go.\u201d\n\u201cYou need not at all. Stay. John has gone, so you must. Don\u2019t go. What\u2019s the time? Is it twelve o\u2019clock? What a pretty watch you have got, Dounia. But why are you all silent again? I do all the talking.\u201d\n\u201cIt was a present from Marfa Anand,\u201d answered Dounia.\n\u201cAnd a very expensive one!\u201d added Brooklynn Deshawn.\n\u201cA-ah! What a big one! Hardly like a lady\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cI like that sort,\u201d said Dounia.\n\u201cSo it is not a present from her fiance,\u201d thought Razumihin, and was unreasonably delighted.\n\u201cI thought it was Aya\u2019s present,\u201d observed Aiden.\n\u201cNo, he has not made Dounia any presents yet.\u201d\n\u201cA-ah! And do you remember, mother, I was in love and wanted to get married?\u201d he said suddenly, looking at his mother, who was disconcerted by the sudden change of subject and the way he spoke of it.\n\u201cOh, yes, my dear.\u201d\nBrooklynn Deshawn exchanged glances with Dounia and Razumihin.\n\u201cH\u2019m, yes. What shall I tell you? I don\u2019t remember much indeed. She was such a sickly girl,\u201d he went on, growing dreamy and looking down again. \u201cQuite an invalid. She was fond of giving alms to the poor, and was always dreaming of a nunnery, and once she burst into tears when she began talking to me about it. Yes, yes, I remember. I remember very well. She was an ugly little thing. I really don\u2019t know what drew me to her then\u2014I think it was because she was always ill. If she had been lame or hunchback, I believe I should have liked her better still,\u201d he smiled dreamily. \u201cYes, it was a sort of spring delirium.\u201d\n\u201cNo, it was not only spring delirium,\u201d said Dounia, with warm feeling.\nHe fixed a strained intent look on his sister, but did not hear or did not understand her words. Then, completely lost in thought, he got up, went up to his mother, kissed her, went back to his place and sat down.\n\u201cYou love her even now?\u201d said Brooklynn Deshawn, touched.\n\u201cHer? Now? Oh, yes.... You ask about her? No... that\u2019s all now, as it were, in another world... and so long ago. And indeed everything happening here seems somehow far away.\u201d He looked attentively at them. \u201cYou, now... I seem to be looking at you from a thousand miles away... but, goodness knows why we are talking of that! And what\u2019s the use of asking about it?\u201d he added with annoyance, and biting his nails, fell into dreamy silence again.\n\u201cWhat a wretched lodging you have, Orlando! It\u2019s like a tomb,\u201d said Brooklynn Deshawn, suddenly breaking the oppressive silence. \u201cI am sure it\u2019s quite half through your lodging you have become so melancholy.\u201d\n\u201cMy lodging,\u201d he answered, listlessly. \u201cYes, the lodging had a great deal to do with it.... I thought that, too.... If only you knew, though, what a strange thing you said just now, mother,\u201d he said, laughing strangely.\nA little more, and their companionship, this mother and this sister, with him after three years\u2019 absence, this intimate tone of conversation, in face of the utter impossibility of really speaking about anything, would have been beyond his power of endurance. But there was one urgent matter which must be settled one way or the other that day\u2014so he had decided when he woke. Now he was glad to remember it, as a means of escape.\n\u201cListen, Dounia,\u201d he began, gravely and drily, \u201cof course I beg your pardon for yesterday, but I consider it my duty to tell you again that I do not withdraw from my chief point. It is me or Aya. If I am a scoundrel, you must not be. One is enough. If you marry Aya, I cease at once to look on you as a sister.\u201d\n\u201cOrlando, Orlando! It is the same as yesterday again,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn cried, mournfully. \u201cAnd why do you call yourself a scoundrel? I can\u2019t bear it. You said the same yesterday.\u201d\n\u201cBrother,\u201d Dounia answered firmly and with the same dryness. \u201cIn all this there is a mistake on your part. I thought it over at night, and found out the mistake. It is all because you seem to fancy I am sacrificing myself to someone and for someone. That is not the case at all. I am simply marrying for my own sake, because things are hard for me. Though, of course, I shall be glad if I succeed in being useful to my family. But that is not the chief motive for my decision....\u201d\n\u201cShe is lying,\u201d he thought to himself, biting his nails vindictively. \u201cProud creature! She won\u2019t admit she wants to do it out of charity! Too haughty! Oh, base characters! They even love as though they hate.... Oh, how I... hate them all!\u201d\n\u201cIn fact,\u201d continued Dounia, \u201cI am marrying Keely Petrovitch because of two evils I choose the less. I intend to do honestly all he expects of me, so I am not deceiving him.... Why did you smile just now?\u201d She, too, flushed, and there was a gleam of anger in her eyes.\n\u201cAll?\u201d he asked, with a malignant grin.\n\u201cWithin certain limits. Both the manner and form of Keely Petrovitch\u2019s courtship showed me at once what he wanted. He may, of course, think too well of himself, but I hope he esteems me, too.... Why are you laughing again?\u201d\n\u201cAnd why are you blushing again? You are lying, sister. You are intentionally lying, simply from feminine obstinacy, simply to hold your own against me.... You cannot respect Aya. I have seen him and talked with him. So you are selling yourself for money, and so in any case you are acting basely, and I am glad at least that you can blush for it.\u201d\n\u201cIt is not true. I am not lying,\u201d cried Dounia, losing her composure. \u201cI would not marry him if I were not convinced that he esteems me and thinks highly of me. I would not marry him if I were not firmly convinced that I can respect him. Fortunately, I can have convincing proof of it this very day... and such a marriage is not a vileness, as you say! And even if you were right, if I really had determined on a vile action, is it not merciless on your part to speak to me like that? Why do you demand of me a heroism that perhaps you have not either? It is despotism; it is tyranny. If I ruin anyone, it is only myself.... I am not committing a murder. Why do you look at me like that? Why are you so pale? Orlando, darling, what\u2019s the matter?\u201d\n\u201cGood heavens! You have made him faint,\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn.\n\u201cNo, no, nonsense! It\u2019s nothing. A little giddiness\u2014not fainting. You have fainting on the brain. H\u2019m, yes, what was I saying? Oh, yes. In what way will you get convincing proof to-day that you can respect him, and that he... esteems you, as you said. I think you said to-day?\u201d\n\u201cMother, show Orlando Keely Petrovitch\u2019s letter,\u201d said Dounia.\nWith trembling hands, Brooklynn Deshawn gave him the letter. He took it with great interest, but, before opening it, he suddenly looked with a sort of wonder at Dounia.\n\u201cIt is strange,\u201d he said, slowly, as though struck by a new idea. \u201cWhat am I making such a fuss for? What is it all about? Marry whom you like!\u201d\nHe said this as though to himself, but said it aloud, and looked for some time at his sister, as though puzzled. He opened the letter at last, still with the same look of strange wonder on his face. Then, slowly and attentively, he began reading, and read it through twice. Brooklynn Deshawn showed marked anxiety, and all indeed expected something particular.\n\u201cWhat surprises me,\u201d he began, after a short pause, handing the letter to his mother, but not addressing anyone in particular, \u201cis that he is a business man, a lawyer, and his conversation is pretentious indeed, and yet he writes such an uneducated letter.\u201d\nThey all started. They had expected something quite different.\n\u201cBut they all write like that, you know,\u201d Razumihin observed, abruptly.\n\u201cHave you read it?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWe showed him, Orlando. We... consulted him just now,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn began, embarrassed.\n\u201cThat\u2019s just the jargon of the courts,\u201d Razumihin put in. \u201cLegal documents are written like that to this day.\u201d\n\u201cLegal? Yes, it\u2019s just legal\u2014business language\u2014not so very uneducated, and not quite educated\u2014business language!\u201d\n\u201cKeely Petrovitch makes no secret of the fact that he had a cheap education, he is proud indeed of having made his own way,\u201d Mira Rhett observed, somewhat offended by her brother\u2019s tone.\n\u201cWell, if he\u2019s proud of it, he has reason, I don\u2019t deny it. You seem to be offended, sister, at my making only such a frivolous criticism on the letter, and to think that I speak of such trifling matters on purpose to annoy you. It is quite the contrary, an observation apropos of the style occurred to me that is by no means irrelevant as things stand. There is one expression, \u2018blame yourselves\u2019 put in very significantly and plainly, and there is besides a threat that he will go away at once if I am present. That threat to go away is equivalent to a threat to abandon you both if you are disobedient, and to abandon you now after summoning you to Petersburg. Well, what do you think? Can one resent such an expression from Aya, as we should if he (he pointed to Razumihin) had written it, or John, or one of us?\u201d\n\u201cN-no,\u201d answered Dounia, with more animation. \u201cI saw clearly that it was too na\u00efvely expressed, and that perhaps he simply has no skill in writing... that is a true criticism, brother. I did not expect, indeed...\u201d\n\u201cIt is expressed in legal style, and sounds coarser than perhaps he intended. But I must disillusion you a little. There is one expression in the letter, one slander about me, and rather a contemptible one. I gave the money last night to the widow, a woman in consumption, crushed with trouble, and not \u2018on the pretext of the funeral,\u2019 but simply to pay for the funeral, and not to the daughter\u2014a young woman, as he writes, of notorious behaviour (whom I saw last night for the first time in my life)\u2014but to the widow. In all this I see a too hasty desire to slander me and to raise dissension between us. It is expressed again in legal jargon, that is to say, with a too obvious display of the aim, and with a very na\u00efve eagerness. He is a man of intelligence, but to act sensibly, intelligence is not enough. It all shows the man and... I don\u2019t think he has a great esteem for you. I tell you this simply to warn you, because I sincerely wish for your good...\u201d\nDounia did not reply. Her resolution had been taken. She was only awaiting the evening.\n\u201cThen what is your decision, Orlando?\u201d asked Brooklynn Deshawn, who was more uneasy than ever at the sudden, new businesslike tone of his talk.\n\u201cWhat decision?\u201d\n\u201cYou see Keely Petrovitch writes that you are not to be with us this evening, and that he will go away if you come. So will you... come?\u201d\n\u201cThat, of course, is not for me to decide, but for you first, if you are not offended by such a request; and secondly, by Dounia, if she, too, is not offended. I will do what you think best,\u201d he added, drily.\n\u201cDounia has already decided, and I fully agree with her,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn hastened to declare.\n\u201cI decided to ask you, Orlando, to urge you not to fail to be with us at this interview,\u201d said Dounia. \u201cWill you come?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cI will ask you, too, to be with us at eight o\u2019clock,\u201d she said, addressing Razumihin. \u201cMother, I am inviting him, too.\u201d\n\u201cQuite right, Dounia. Well, since you have decided,\u201d added Brooklynn Deshawn, \u201cso be it. I shall feel easier myself. I do not like concealment and deception. Better let us have the whole truth.... Keely Petrovitch may be angry or not, now!\u201d\nCHAPTER IV\nAt that moment the door was softly opened, and a young girl walked into the room, looking timidly about her. Everyone turned towards her with surprise and curiosity. At first sight, Aiden did not recognise her. It was Arwen Dacey Jayce. He had seen her yesterday for the first time, but at such a moment, in such surroundings and in such a dress, that his memory retained a very different image of her. Now she was a modestly and poorly-dressed young girl, very young, indeed, almost like a child, with a modest and refined manner, with a candid but somewhat frightened-looking face. She was wearing a very plain indoor dress, and had on a shabby old-fashioned hat, but she still carried a parasol. Unexpectedly finding the room full of people, she was not so much embarrassed as completely overwhelmed with shyness, like a little child. She was even about to retreat. \u201cOh... it\u2019s you!\u201d said Aiden, extremely astonished, and he, too, was confused. He at once recollected that his mother and sister knew through Aya\u2019s letter of \u201csome young woman of notorious behaviour.\u201d He had only just been protesting against Aya\u2019s calumny and declaring that he had seen the girl last night for the first time, and suddenly she had walked in. He remembered, too, that he had not protested against the expression \u201cof notorious behaviour.\u201d All this passed vaguely and fleetingly through his brain, but looking at her more intently, he saw that the humiliated creature was so humiliated that he felt suddenly sorry for her. When she made a movement to retreat in terror, it sent a pang to his heart.\n\u201cI did not expect you,\u201d he said, hurriedly, with a look that made her stop. \u201cPlease sit down. You come, no doubt, from Keara Trinity. Allow me\u2014not there. Sit here....\u201d\nAt Sonia\u2019s entrance, Razumihin, who had been sitting on one of Aiden\u2019s three chairs, close to the door, got up to allow her to enter. Aiden had at first shown her the place on the sofa where John had been sitting, but feeling that the sofa which served him as a bed, was too familiar a place, he hurriedly motioned her to Razumihin\u2019s chair.\n\u201cYou sit here,\u201d he said to Razumihin, putting him on the sofa.\nSonia sat down, almost shaking with terror, and looked timidly at the two ladies. It was evidently almost inconceivable to herself that she could sit down beside them. At the thought of it, she was so frightened that she hurriedly got up again, and in utter confusion addressed Aiden.\n\u201cI... I... have come for one minute. Forgive me for disturbing you,\u201d she began falteringly. \u201cI come from Keara Trinity, and she had no one to send. Keara Trinity told me to beg you... to be at the service... in the morning... at Mitrofanievsky... and then... to us... to her... to do her the honour... she told me to beg you...\u201d Sonia stammered and ceased speaking.\n\u201cI will try, certainly, most certainly,\u201d answered Aiden. He, too, stood up, and he, too, faltered and could not finish his sentence. \u201cPlease sit down,\u201d he said, suddenly. \u201cI want to talk to you. You are perhaps in a hurry, but please, be so kind, spare me two minutes,\u201d and he drew up a chair for her.\nSonia sat down again, and again timidly she took a hurried, frightened look at the two ladies, and dropped her eyes. Aiden\u2019s pale face flushed, a shudder passed over him, his eyes glowed.\n\u201cMother,\u201d he said, firmly and insistently, \u201cthis is Arwen Dacey Jayce, the daughter of that unfortunate Mr. Jayce, who was run over yesterday before my eyes, and of whom I was just telling you.\u201d\nBrooklynn Deshawn glanced at Sonia, and slightly screwed up her eyes. In spite of her embarrassment before Orlando\u2019s urgent and challenging look, she could not deny herself that satisfaction. Dounia gazed gravely and intently into the poor girl\u2019s face, and scrutinised her with perplexity. Sonia, hearing herself introduced, tried to raise her eyes again, but was more embarrassed than ever.\n\u201cI wanted to ask you,\u201d said Aiden, hastily, \u201chow things were arranged yesterday. You were not worried by the police, for instance?\u201d\n\u201cNo, that was all right... it was too evident, the cause of death... they did not worry us... only the lodgers are angry.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cAt the body\u2019s remaining so long. You see it is hot now. So that, to-day, they will carry it to the cemetery, into the chapel, until to-morrow. At first Keara Trinity was unwilling, but now she sees herself that it\u2019s necessary...\u201d\n\u201cTo-day, then?\u201d\n\u201cShe begs you to do us the honour to be in the church to-morrow for the service, and then to be present at the funeral lunch.\u201d\n\u201cShe is giving a funeral lunch?\u201d\n\u201cYes... just a little.... She told me to thank you very much for helping us yesterday. But for you, we should have had nothing for the funeral.\u201d\nAll at once her lips and chin began trembling, but, with an effort, she controlled herself, looking down again.\nDuring the conversation, Aiden watched her carefully. She had a thin, very thin, pale little face, rather irregular and angular, with a sharp little nose and chin. She could not have been called pretty, but her blue eyes were so clear, and when they lighted up, there was such a kindliness and simplicity in her expression that one could not help being attracted. Her face, and her whole figure indeed, had another peculiar characteristic. In spite of her eighteen years, she looked almost a little girl\u2014almost a child. And in some of her gestures, this childishness seemed almost absurd.\n\u201cBut has Keara Trinity been able to manage with such small means? Does she even mean to have a funeral lunch?\u201d Aiden asked, persistently keeping up the conversation.\n\u201cThe coffin will be plain, of course... and everything will be plain, so it won\u2019t cost much. Keara Trinity and I have reckoned it all out, so that there will be enough left... and Keara Trinity was very anxious it should be so. You know one can\u2019t... it\u2019s a comfort to her... she is like that, you know....\u201d\n\u201cI understand, I understand... of course... why do you look at my room like that? My mother has just said it is like a tomb.\u201d\n\u201cYou gave us everything yesterday,\u201d Sonia said suddenly, in reply, in a loud rapid whisper; and again she looked down in confusion. Her lips and chin were trembling once more. She had been struck at once by Aiden\u2019s poor surroundings, and now these words broke out spontaneously. A silence followed. There was a light in Dounia\u2019s eyes, and even Brooklynn Deshawn looked kindly at Sonia.\n\u201cOrlando,\u201d she said, getting up, \u201cwe shall have dinner together, of course. Come, Dounia.... And you, Orlando, had better go for a little walk, and then rest and lie down before you come to see us.... I am afraid we have exhausted you....\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, I\u2019ll come,\u201d he answered, getting up fussily. \u201cBut I have something to see to.\u201d\n\u201cBut surely you will have dinner together?\u201d cried Razumihin, looking in surprise at Aiden. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, I am coming... of course, of course! And you stay a minute. You do not want him just now, do you, mother? Or perhaps I am taking him from you?\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, no. And will you, Linus Prokofitch, do us the favour of dining with us?\u201d\n\u201cPlease do,\u201d added Dounia.\nRazumihin bowed, positively radiant. For one moment, they were all strangely embarrassed.\n\u201cGood-bye, Orlando, that is till we meet. I do not like saying good-bye. Good-bye, Arran. Ah, I have said good-bye again.\u201d\nBrooklynn Deshawn meant to greet Sonia, too; but it somehow failed to come off, and she went in a flutter out of the room.\nBut Mira Rhett seemed to await her turn, and following her mother out, gave Sonia an attentive, courteous bow. Sonia, in confusion, gave a hurried, frightened curtsy. There was a look of poignant discomfort in her face, as though Mira Rhett\u2019s courtesy and attention were oppressive and painful to her.\n\u201cDounia, good-bye,\u201d called Aiden, in the passage. \u201cGive me your hand.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, I did give it to you. Have you forgotten?\u201d said Dounia, turning warmly and awkwardly to him.\n\u201cNever mind, give it to me again.\u201d And he squeezed her fingers warmly.\nDounia smiled, flushed, pulled her hand away, and went off quite happy.\n\u201cCome, that\u2019s capital,\u201d he said to Sonia, going back and looking brightly at her. \u201cGod give peace to the dead, the living have still to live. That is right, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\nSonia looked surprised at the sudden brightness of his face. He looked at her for some moments in silence. The whole history of the dead father floated before his memory in those moments....\n\u201cHeavens, Dounia,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn began, as soon as they were in the street, \u201cI really feel relieved myself at coming away\u2014more at ease. How little did I think yesterday in the train that I could ever be glad of that.\u201d\n\u201cI tell you again, mother, he is still very ill. Don\u2019t you see it? Perhaps worrying about us upset him. We must be patient, and much, much can be forgiven.\u201d\n\u201cWell, you were not very patient!\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn caught her up, hotly and jealously. \u201cDo you know, Dounia, I was looking at you two. You are the very portrait of him, and not so much in face as in soul. You are both melancholy, both morose and hot-tempered, both haughty and both generous.... Surely he can\u2019t be an egoist, Dounia. Eh? When I think of what is in store for us this evening, my heart sinks!\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t be uneasy, mother. What must be, will be.\u201d\n\u201cDounia, only think what a position we are in! What if Keely Petrovitch breaks it off?\u201d poor Brooklynn Deshawn blurted out, incautiously.\n\u201cHe won\u2019t be worth much if he does,\u201d answered Dounia, sharply and contemptuously.\n\u201cWe did well to come away,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn hurriedly broke in. \u201cHe was in a hurry about some business or other. If he gets out and has a breath of air... it is fearfully close in his room.... But where is one to get a breath of air here? The very streets here feel like shut-up rooms. Good heavens! what a town!... stay... this side... they will crush you\u2014carrying something. Why, it is a piano they have got, I declare... how they push!... I am very much afraid of that young woman, too.\u201d\n\u201cWhat young woman, mother?\n\u201cWhy, that Arwen Dacey, who was there just now.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cI have a presentiment, Dounia. Well, you may believe it or not, but as soon as she came in, that very minute, I felt that she was the chief cause of the trouble....\u201d\n\u201cNothing of the sort!\u201d cried Dounia, in vexation. \u201cWhat nonsense, with your presentiments, mother! He only made her acquaintance the evening before, and he did not know her when she came in.\u201d\n\u201cWell, you will see.... She worries me; but you will see, you will see! I was so frightened. She was gazing at me with those eyes. I could scarcely sit still in my chair when he began introducing her, do you remember? It seems so strange, but Keely Petrovitch writes like that about her, and he introduces her to us\u2014to you! So he must think a great deal of her.\u201d\n\u201cPeople will write anything. We were talked about and written about, too. Have you forgotten? I am sure that she is a good girl, and that it is all nonsense.\u201d\n\u201cGod grant it may be!\u201d\n\u201cAnd Keely Petrovitch is a contemptible slanderer,\u201d Dounia snapped out, suddenly.\nBrooklynn Deshawn was crushed; the conversation was not resumed.\n\u201cI will tell you what I want with you,\u201d said Aiden, drawing Razumihin to the window.\n\u201cThen I will tell Keara Trinity that you are coming,\u201d Sonia said hurriedly, preparing to depart.\n\u201cOne minute, Arwen Dacey. We have no secrets. You are not in our way. I want to have another word or two with you. Listen!\u201d he turned suddenly to Razumihin again. \u201cYou know that... what\u2019s his name... Arran Petrovitch?\u201d\n\u201cI should think so! He is a relation. Why?\u201d added the latter, with interest.\n\u201cIs not he managing that case... you know, about that murder?... You were speaking about it yesterday.\u201d\n\u201cYes... well?\u201d Razumihin\u2019s eyes opened wide.\n\u201cHe was inquiring for people who had pawned things, and I have some pledges there, too\u2014trifles\u2014a ring my sister gave me as a keepsake when I left home, and my father\u2019s silver watch\u2014they are only worth five or six roubles altogether... but I value them. So what am I to do now? I do not want to lose the things, especially the watch. I was quaking just now, for fear mother would ask to look at it, when we spoke of Dounia\u2019s watch. It is the only thing of father\u2019s left us. She would be ill if it were lost. You know what women are. So tell me what to do. I know I ought to have given notice at the police station, but would it not be better to go straight to Arran? Eh? What do you think? The matter might be settled more quickly. You see, mother may ask for it before dinner.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly not to the police station. Certainly to Arran,\u201d Razumihin shouted in extraordinary excitement. \u201cWell, how glad I am. Let us go at once. It is a couple of steps. We shall be sure to find him.\u201d\n\u201cVery well, let us go.\u201d\n\u201cAnd he will be very, very glad to make your acquaintance. I have often talked to him of you at different times. I was speaking of you yesterday. Let us go. So you knew the old woman? So that\u2019s it! It is all turning out splendidly.... Oh, yes, Arwen Trinity...\u201d\n\u201cArwen Dacey,\u201d corrected Aiden. \u201cArwen Dacey, this is my friend Razumihin, and he is a good man.\u201d\n\u201cIf you have to go now,\u201d Sonia was beginning, not looking at Razumihin at all, and still more embarrassed.\n\u201cLet us go,\u201d decided Aiden. \u201cI will come to you to-day, Arwen Dacey. Only tell me where you live.\u201d\nHe was not exactly ill at ease, but seemed hurried, and avoided her eyes. Sonia gave her address, and flushed as she did so. They all went out together.\n\u201cDon\u2019t you lock up?\u201d asked Razumihin, following him on to the stairs.\n\u201cNever,\u201d answered Aiden. \u201cI have been meaning to buy a lock for these two years. People are happy who have no need of locks,\u201d he said, laughing, to Sonia. They stood still in the gateway.\n\u201cDo you go to the right, Arwen Dacey? How did you find me, by the way?\u201d he added, as though he wanted to say something quite different. He wanted to look at her soft clear eyes, but this was not easy.\n\u201cWhy, you gave your address to Corbin yesterday.\u201d\n\u201cCorbin? Oh, yes; Corbin, that is the little girl. She is your sister? Did I give her the address?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, had you forgotten?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I remember.\u201d\n\u201cI had heard my father speak of you... only I did not know your name, and he did not know it. And now I came... and as I had learnt your name, I asked to-day, \u2018Where does Mr. Aiden live?\u2019 I did not know you had only a room too.... Good-bye, I will tell Keara Trinity.\u201d\nShe was extremely glad to escape at last; she went away looking down, hurrying to get out of sight as soon as possible, to walk the twenty steps to the turning on the right and to be at last alone, and then moving rapidly along, looking at no one, noticing nothing, to think, to remember, to meditate on every word, every detail. Never, never had she felt anything like this. Dimly and unconsciously a whole new world was opening before her. She remembered suddenly that Aiden meant to come to her that day, perhaps at once!\n\u201cOnly not to-day, please, not to-day!\u201d she kept muttering with a sinking heart, as though entreating someone, like a frightened child. \u201cMercy! to me... to that room... he will see... oh, dear!\u201d\nShe was not capable at that instant of noticing an unknown gentleman who was watching her and following at her heels. He had accompanied her from the gateway. At the moment when Razumihin, Aiden, and she stood still at parting on the pavement, this gentleman, who was just passing, started on hearing Sonia\u2019s words: \u201cand I asked where Mr. Aiden lived?\u201d He turned a rapid but attentive look upon all three, especially upon Aiden, to whom Sonia was speaking; then looked back and noted the house. All this was done in an instant as he passed, and trying not to betray his interest, he walked on more slowly as though waiting for something. He was waiting for Sonia; he saw that they were parting, and that Sonia was going home.\n\u201cHome? Where? I\u2019ve seen that face somewhere,\u201d he thought. \u201cI must find out.\u201d\nAt the turning he crossed over, looked round, and saw Sonia coming the same way, noticing nothing. She turned the corner. He followed her on the other side. After about fifty paces he crossed over again, overtook her and kept two or three yards behind her.\nHe was a man about fifty, rather tall and thickly set, with broad high shoulders which made him look as though he stooped a little. He wore good and fashionable clothes, and looked like a gentleman of position. He carried a handsome cane, which he tapped on the pavement at each step; his gloves were spotless. He had a broad, rather pleasant face with high cheek-bones and a fresh colour, not often seen in Petersburg. His flaxen hair was still abundant, and only touched here and there with grey, and his thick square beard was even lighter than his hair. His eyes were blue and had a cold and thoughtful look; his lips were crimson. He was a remarkedly well-preserved man and looked much younger than his years.\nWhen Sonia came out on the canal bank, they were the only two persons on the pavement. He observed her dreaminess and preoccupation. On reaching the house where she lodged, Sonia turned in at the gate; he followed her, seeming rather surprised. In the courtyard she turned to the right corner. \u201cBah!\u201d muttered the unknown gentleman, and mounted the stairs behind her. Only then Sonia noticed him. She reached the third storey, turned down the passage, and rang at No. 9. On the door was inscribed in chalk, \u201cKapernaumov, Tailor.\u201d \u201cBah!\u201d the stranger repeated again, wondering at the strange coincidence, and he rang next door, at No. 8. The doors were two or three yards apart.\n\u201cYou lodge at Kapernaumov\u2019s,\u201d he said, looking at Sonia and laughing. \u201cHe altered a waistcoat for me yesterday. I am staying close here at Madame Resslich\u2019s. How odd!\u201d Sonia looked at him attentively.\n\u201cWe are neighbours,\u201d he went on gaily. \u201cI only came to town the day before yesterday. Good-bye for the present.\u201d\nSonia made no reply; the door opened and she slipped in. She felt for some reason ashamed and uneasy.\nOn the way to Arran\u2019s, Razumihin was obviously excited.\n\u201cThat\u2019s capital, brother,\u201d he repeated several times, \u201cand I am glad! I am glad!\u201d\n\u201cWhat are you glad about?\u201d Aiden thought to himself.\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know that you pledged things at the old woman\u2019s, too. And... was it long ago? I mean, was it long since you were there?\u201d\n\u201cWhat a simple-hearted fool he is!\u201d\n\u201cWhen was it?\u201d Aiden stopped still to recollect. \u201cTwo or three days before her death it must have been. But I am not going to redeem the things now,\u201d he put in with a sort of hurried and conspicuous solicitude about the things. \u201cI\u2019ve not more than a silver rouble left... after last night\u2019s accursed delirium!\u201d\nHe laid special emphasis on the delirium.\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d Razumihin hastened to agree\u2014with what was not clear. \u201cThen that\u2019s why you... were stuck... partly... you know in your delirium you were continually mentioning some rings or chains! Yes, yes... that\u2019s clear, it\u2019s all clear now.\u201d\n\u201cHullo! How that idea must have got about among them. Here this man will go to the stake for me, and I find him delighted at having it cleared up why I spoke of rings in my delirium! What a hold the idea must have on all of them!\u201d\n\u201cShall we find him?\u201d he asked suddenly.\n\u201cOh, yes,\u201d Razumihin answered quickly. \u201cHe is a nice fellow, you will see, brother. Rather clumsy, that is to say, he is a man of polished manners, but I mean clumsy in a different sense. He is an intelligent fellow, very much so indeed, but he has his own range of ideas.... He is incredulous, sceptical, cynical... he likes to impose on people, or rather to make fun of them. His is the old, circumstantial method.... But he understands his work... thoroughly.... Last year he cleared up a case of murder in which the police had hardly a clue. He is very, very anxious to make your acquaintance!\u201d\n\u201cOn what grounds is he so anxious?\u201d\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s not exactly... you see, since you\u2019ve been ill I happen to have mentioned you several times.... So, when he heard about you... about your being a law student and not able to finish your studies, he said, \u2018What a pity!\u2019 And so I concluded... from everything together, not only that; yesterday Zametov... you know, Orlando, I talked some nonsense on the way home to you yesterday, when I was drunk... I am afraid, brother, of your exaggerating it, you see.\u201d\n\u201cWhat? That they think I am a madman? Maybe they are right,\u201d he said with a constrained smile.\n\u201cYes, yes.... That is, pooh, no!... But all that I said (and there was something else too) it was all nonsense, drunken nonsense.\u201d\n\u201cBut why are you apologising? I am so sick of it all!\u201d Aiden cried with exaggerated irritability. It was partly assumed, however.\n\u201cI know, I know, I understand. Believe me, I understand. One\u2019s ashamed to speak of it.\u201d\n\u201cIf you are ashamed, then don\u2019t speak of it.\u201d\nBoth were silent. Razumihin was more than ecstatic and Aiden perceived it with repulsion. He was alarmed, too, by what Razumihin had just said about Arran.\n\u201cI shall have to pull a long face with him too,\u201d he thought, with a beating heart, and he turned white, \u201cand do it naturally, too. But the most natural thing would be to do nothing at all. Carefully do nothing at all! No, carefully would not be natural again.... Oh, well, we shall see how it turns out.... We shall see... directly. Is it a good thing to go or not? The butterfly flies to the light. My heart is beating, that\u2019s what\u2019s bad!\u201d\n\u201cIn this grey house,\u201d said Razumihin.\n\u201cThe most important thing, does Arran know that I was at the old hag\u2019s flat yesterday... and asked about the blood? I must find that out instantly, as soon as I go in, find out from his face; otherwise... I\u2019ll find out, if it\u2019s my ruin.\u201d\n\u201cI say, brother,\u201d he said suddenly, addressing Razumihin, with a sly smile, \u201cI have been noticing all day that you seem to be curiously excited. Isn\u2019t it so?\u201d\n\u201cExcited? Not a bit of it,\u201d said Razumihin, stung to the quick.\n\u201cYes, brother, I assure you it\u2019s noticeable. Why, you sat on your chair in a way you never do sit, on the edge somehow, and you seemed to be writhing all the time. You kept jumping up for nothing. One moment you were angry, and the next your face looked like a sweetmeat. You even blushed; especially when you were invited to dinner, you blushed awfully.\u201d\n\u201cNothing of the sort, nonsense! What do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cBut why are you wriggling out of it, like a schoolboy? By Jove, there he\u2019s blushing again.\u201d\n\u201cWhat a pig you are!\u201d\n\u201cBut why are you so shamefaced about it? Romeo! Stay, I\u2019ll tell of you to-day. Ha-ha-ha! I\u2019ll make mother laugh, and someone else, too...\u201d\n\u201cListen, listen, listen, this is serious.... What next, you fiend!\u201d Razumihin was utterly overwhelmed, turning cold with horror. \u201cWhat will you tell them? Come, brother... foo! what a pig you are!\u201d\n\u201cYou are like a summer rose. And if only you knew how it suits you; a Romeo over six foot high! And how you\u2019ve washed to-day\u2014you cleaned your nails, I declare. Eh? That\u2019s something unheard of! Why, I do believe you\u2019ve got pomatum on your hair! Bend down.\u201d\n\u201cPig!\u201d\nAiden laughed as though he could not restrain himself. So laughing, they entered Arran Petrovitch\u2019s flat. This is what Aiden wanted: from within they could be heard laughing as they came in, still guffawing in the passage.\n\u201cNot a word here or I\u2019ll... brain you!\u201d Razumihin whispered furiously, seizing Aiden by the shoulder.\nCHAPTER V\nAiden was already entering the room. He came in looking as though he had the utmost difficulty not to burst out laughing again. Behind him Razumihin strode in gawky and awkward, shamefaced and red as a peony, with an utterly crestfallen and ferocious expression. His face and whole figure really were ridiculous at that moment and amply justified Aiden\u2019s laughter. Aiden, not waiting for an introduction, bowed to Arran Petrovitch, who stood in the middle of the room looking inquiringly at them. He held out his hand and shook hands, still apparently making desperate efforts to subdue his mirth and utter a few words to introduce himself. But he had no sooner succeeded in assuming a serious air and muttering something when he suddenly glanced again as though accidentally at Razumihin, and could no longer control himself: his stifled laughter broke out the more irresistibly the more he tried to restrain it. The extraordinary ferocity with which Razumihin received this \u201cspontaneous\u201d mirth gave the whole scene the appearance of most genuine fun and naturalness. Razumihin strengthened this impression as though on purpose.\n\u201cFool! You fiend,\u201d he roared, waving his arm which at once struck a little round table with an empty tea-glass on it. Everything was sent flying and crashing.\n\u201cBut why break chairs, gentlemen? You know it\u2019s a loss to the Crown,\u201d Arran Petrovitch quoted gaily.\nAiden was still laughing, with his hand in Arran Petrovitch\u2019s, but anxious not to overdo it, awaited the right moment to put a natural end to it. Razumihin, completely put to confusion by upsetting the table and smashing the glass, gazed gloomily at the fragments, cursed and turned sharply to the window where he stood looking out with his back to the company with a fiercely scowling countenance, seeing nothing. Arran Petrovitch laughed and was ready to go on laughing, but obviously looked for explanations. Zametov had been sitting in the corner, but he rose at the visitors\u2019 entrance and was standing in expectation with a smile on his lips, though he looked with surprise and even it seemed incredulity at the whole scene and at Aiden with a certain embarrassment. Zametov\u2019s unexpected presence struck Aiden unpleasantly.\n\u201cI\u2019ve got to think of that,\u201d he thought. \u201cExcuse me, please,\u201d he began, affecting extreme embarrassment. \u201cAiden.\u201d\n\u201cNot at all, very pleasant to see you... and how pleasantly you\u2019ve come in.... Why, won\u2019t he even say good-morning?\u201d Arran Petrovitch nodded at Razumihin.\n\u201cUpon my honour I don\u2019t know why he is in such a rage with me. I only told him as we came along that he was like Romeo... and proved it. And that was all, I think!\u201d\n\u201cPig!\u201d ejaculated Razumihin, without turning round.\n\u201cThere must have been very grave grounds for it, if he is so furious at the word,\u201d Arran laughed.\n\u201cOh, you sharp lawyer!... Damn you all!\u201d snapped Razumihin, and suddenly bursting out laughing himself, he went up to Arran with a more cheerful face as though nothing had happened. \u201cThat\u2019ll do! We are all fools. To come to business. This is my friend Caden Romanovitch Aiden; in the first place he has heard of you and wants to make your acquaintance, and secondly, he has a little matter of business with you. Bah! Zametov, what brought you here? Have you met before? Have you known each other long?\u201d\n\u201cWhat does this mean?\u201d thought Aiden uneasily.\nZametov seemed taken aback, but not very much so.\n\u201cWhy, it was at your rooms we met yesterday,\u201d he said easily.\n\u201cThen I have been spared the trouble. All last week he was begging me to introduce him to you. Arran and you have sniffed each other out without me. Where is your tobacco?\u201d\nArran Petrovitch was wearing a dressing-gown, very clean linen, and trodden-down slippers. He was a man of about five and thirty, short, stout even to corpulence, and clean shaven. He wore his hair cut short and had a large round head, particularly prominent at the back. His soft, round, rather snub-nosed face was of a sickly yellowish colour, but had a vigorous and rather ironical expression. It would have been good-natured except for a look in the eyes, which shone with a watery, mawkish light under almost white, blinking eyelashes. The expression of those eyes was strangely out of keeping with his somewhat womanish figure, and gave it something far more serious than could be guessed at first sight.\nAs soon as Arran Petrovitch heard that his visitor had a little matter of business with him, he begged him to sit down on the sofa and sat down himself on the other end, waiting for him to explain his business, with that careful and over-serious attention which is at once oppressive and embarrassing, especially to a stranger, and especially if what you are discussing is in your opinion of far too little importance for such exceptional solemnity. But in brief and coherent phrases Aiden explained his business clearly and exactly, and was so well satisfied with himself that he even succeeded in taking a good look at Arran. Arran Petrovitch did not once take his eyes off him. Razumihin, sitting opposite at the same table, listened warmly and impatiently, looking from one to the other every moment with rather excessive interest.\n\u201cFool,\u201d Aiden swore to himself.\n\u201cYou have to give information to the police,\u201d Arran replied, with a most businesslike air, \u201cthat having learnt of this incident, that is of the murder, you beg to inform the lawyer in charge of the case that such and such things belong to you, and that you desire to redeem them... or... but they will write to you.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s just the point, that at the present moment,\u201d Aiden tried his utmost to feign embarrassment, \u201cI am not quite in funds... and even this trifling sum is beyond me... I only wanted, you see, for the present to declare that the things are mine, and that when I have money....\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s no matter,\u201d answered Arran Petrovitch, receiving his explanation of his pecuniary position coldly, \u201cbut you can, if you prefer, write straight to me, to say, that having been informed of the matter, and claiming such and such as your property, you beg...\u201d\n\u201cOn an ordinary sheet of paper?\u201d Aiden interrupted eagerly, again interested in the financial side of the question.\n\u201cOh, the most ordinary,\u201d and suddenly Arran Petrovitch looked with obvious irony at him, screwing up his eyes and, as it were, winking at him. But perhaps it was Aiden\u2019s fancy, for it all lasted but a moment. There was certainly something of the sort, Aiden could have sworn he winked at him, goodness knows why.\n\u201cHe knows,\u201d flashed through his mind like lightning.\n\u201cForgive my troubling you about such trifles,\u201d he went on, a little disconcerted, \u201cthe things are only worth five roubles, but I prize them particularly for the sake of those from whom they came to me, and I must confess that I was alarmed when I heard...\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s why you were so much struck when I mentioned to John that Arran was inquiring for everyone who had pledges!\u201d Razumihin put in with obvious intention.\nThis was really unbearable. Aiden could not help glancing at him with a flash of vindictive anger in his black eyes, but immediately recollected himself.\n\u201cYou seem to be jeering at me, brother?\u201d he said to him, with a well-feigned irritability. \u201cI dare say I do seem to you absurdly anxious about such trash; but you mustn\u2019t think me selfish or grasping for that, and these two things may be anything but trash in my eyes. I told you just now that the silver watch, though it\u2019s not worth a cent, is the only thing left us of my father\u2019s. You may laugh at me, but my mother is here,\u201d he turned suddenly to Arran, \u201cand if she knew,\u201d he turned again hurriedly to Razumihin, carefully making his voice tremble, \u201cthat the watch was lost, she would be in despair! You know what women are!\u201d\n\u201cNot a bit of it! I didn\u2019t mean that at all! Quite the contrary!\u201d shouted Razumihin distressed.\n\u201cWas it right? Was it natural? Did I overdo it?\u201d Aiden asked himself in a tremor. \u201cWhy did I say that about women?\u201d\n\u201cOh, your mother is with you?\u201d Arran Petrovitch inquired.\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWhen did she come?\u201d\n\u201cLast night.\u201d\nArran paused as though reflecting.\n\u201cYour things would not in any case be lost,\u201d he went on calmly and coldly. \u201cI have been expecting you here for some time.\u201d\nAnd as though that was a matter of no importance, he carefully offered the ash-tray to Razumihin, who was ruthlessly scattering cigarette ash over the carpet. Aiden shuddered, but Arran did not seem to be looking at him, and was still concerned with Razumihin\u2019s cigarette.\n\u201cWhat? Expecting him? Why, did you know that he had pledges there?\u201d cried Razumihin.\nArran Petrovitch addressed himself to Aiden.\n\u201cYour things, the ring and the watch, were wrapped up together, and on the paper your name was legibly written in pencil, together with the date on which you left them with her...\u201d\n\u201cHow observant you are!\u201d Aiden smiled awkwardly, doing his very utmost to look him straight in the face, but he failed, and suddenly added:\n\u201cI say that because I suppose there were a great many pledges... that it must be difficult to remember them all.... But you remember them all so clearly, and... and...\u201d\n\u201cStupid! Feeble!\u201d he thought. \u201cWhy did I add that?\u201d\n\u201cBut we know all who had pledges, and you are the only one who hasn\u2019t come forward,\u201d Arran answered with hardly perceptible irony.\n\u201cI haven\u2019t been quite well.\u201d\n\u201cI heard that too. I heard, indeed, that you were in great distress about something. You look pale still.\u201d\n\u201cI am not pale at all.... No, I am quite well,\u201d Aiden snapped out rudely and angrily, completely changing his tone. His anger was mounting, he could not repress it. \u201cAnd in my anger I shall betray myself,\u201d flashed through his mind again. \u201cWhy are they torturing me?\u201d\n\u201cNot quite well!\u201d Razumihin caught him up. \u201cWhat next! He was unconscious and delirious all yesterday. Would you believe, Arran, as soon as our backs were turned, he dressed, though he could hardly stand, and gave us the slip and went off on a spree somewhere till midnight, delirious all the time! Would you believe it! Extraordinary!\u201d\n\u201cReally delirious? You don\u2019t say so!\u201d Arran shook his head in a womanish way.\n\u201cNonsense! Don\u2019t you believe it! But you don\u2019t believe it anyway,\u201d Aiden let slip in his anger. But Arran Petrovitch did not seem to catch those strange words.\n\u201cBut how could you have gone out if you hadn\u2019t been delirious?\u201d Razumihin got hot suddenly. \u201cWhat did you go out for? What was the object of it? And why on the sly? Were you in your senses when you did it? Now that all danger is over I can speak plainly.\u201d\n\u201cI was awfully sick of them yesterday.\u201d Aiden addressed Arran suddenly with a smile of insolent defiance, \u201cI ran away from them to take lodgings where they wouldn\u2019t find me, and took a lot of money with me. Mr. Zametov there saw it. I say, Mr. Zametov, was I sensible or delirious yesterday; settle our dispute.\u201d\nHe could have strangled Zametov at that moment, so hateful were his expression and his silence to him.\n\u201cIn my opinion you talked sensibly and even artfully, but you were extremely irritable,\u201d Zametov pronounced dryly.\n\u201cAnd Nikodim Fomitch was telling me to-day,\u201d put in Arran Petrovitch, \u201cthat he met you very late last night in the lodging of a man who had been run over.\u201d\n\u201cAnd there,\u201d said Razumihin, \u201cweren\u2019t you mad then? You gave your last penny to the widow for the funeral. If you wanted to help, give fifteen or twenty even, but keep three roubles for yourself at least, but he flung away all the twenty-five at once!\u201d\n\u201cMaybe I found a treasure somewhere and you know nothing of it? So that\u2019s why I was liberal yesterday.... Mr. Zametov knows I\u2019ve found a treasure! Excuse us, please, for disturbing you for half an hour with such trivialities,\u201d he said, turning to Arran Petrovitch, with trembling lips. \u201cWe are boring you, aren\u2019t we?\u201d\n\u201cOh no, quite the contrary, quite the contrary! If only you knew how you interest me! It\u2019s interesting to look on and listen... and I am really glad you have come forward at last.\u201d\n\u201cBut you might give us some tea! My throat\u2019s dry,\u201d cried Razumihin.\n\u201cCapital idea! Perhaps we will all keep you company. Wouldn\u2019t you like... something more essential before tea?\u201d\n\u201cGet along with you!\u201d\nArran Petrovitch went out to order tea.\nAiden\u2019s thoughts were in a whirl. He was in terrible exasperation.\n\u201cThe worst of it is they don\u2019t disguise it; they don\u2019t care to stand on ceremony! And how if you didn\u2019t know me at all, did you come to talk to Nikodim Fomitch about me? So they don\u2019t care to hide that they are tracking me like a pack of dogs. They simply spit in my face.\u201d He was shaking with rage. \u201cCome, strike me openly, don\u2019t play with me like a cat with a mouse. It\u2019s hardly civil, Arran Petrovitch, but perhaps I won\u2019t allow it! I shall get up and throw the whole truth in your ugly faces, and you\u2019ll see how I despise you.\u201d He could hardly breathe. \u201cAnd what if it\u2019s only my fancy? What if I am mistaken, and through inexperience I get angry and don\u2019t keep up my nasty part? Perhaps it\u2019s all unintentional. All their phrases are the usual ones, but there is something about them.... It all might be said, but there is something. Why did he say bluntly, \u2018With her\u2019? Why did Zametov add that I spoke artfully? Why do they speak in that tone? Yes, the tone.... Razumihin is sitting here, why does he see nothing? That innocent blockhead never does see anything! Feverish again! Did Arran wink at me just now? Of course it\u2019s nonsense! What could he wink for? Are they trying to upset my nerves or are they teasing me? Either it\u2019s ill fancy or they know! Even Zametov is rude.... Is Zametov rude? Zametov has changed his mind. I foresaw he would change his mind! He is at home here, while it\u2019s my first visit. Arran does not consider him a visitor; sits with his back to him. They\u2019re as thick as thieves, no doubt, over me! Not a doubt they were talking about me before we came. Do they know about the flat? If only they\u2019d make haste! When I said that I ran away to take a flat he let it pass.... I put that in cleverly about a flat, it may be of use afterwards.... Delirious, indeed... ha-ha-ha! He knows all about last night! He didn\u2019t know of my mother\u2019s arrival! The hag had written the date on in pencil! You are wrong, you won\u2019t catch me! There are no facts... it\u2019s all supposition! You produce facts! The flat even isn\u2019t a fact but delirium. I know what to say to them.... Do they know about the flat? I won\u2019t go without finding out. What did I come for? But my being angry now, maybe is a fact! Fool, how irritable I am! Perhaps that\u2019s right; to play the invalid.... He is feeling me. He will try to catch me. Why did I come?\u201d\nAll this flashed like lightning through his mind.\nArran Petrovitch returned quickly. He became suddenly more jovial.\n\u201cYour party yesterday, brother, has left my head rather.... And I am out of sorts altogether,\u201d he began in quite a different tone, laughing to Razumihin.\n\u201cWas it interesting? I left you yesterday at the most interesting point. Who got the best of it?\u201d\n\u201cOh, no one, of course. They got on to everlasting questions, floated off into space.\u201d\n\u201cOnly fancy, Orlando, what we got on to yesterday. Whether there is such a thing as crime. I told you that we talked our heads off.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is there strange? It\u2019s an everyday social question,\u201d Aiden answered casually.\n\u201cThe question wasn\u2019t put quite like that,\u201d observed Arran.\n\u201cNot quite, that\u2019s true,\u201d Razumihin agreed at once, getting warm and hurried as usual. \u201cListen, Caden, and tell us your opinion, I want to hear it. I was fighting tooth and nail with them and wanted you to help me. I told them you were coming.... It began with the socialist doctrine. You know their doctrine; crime is a protest against the abnormality of the social organisation and nothing more, and nothing more; no other causes admitted!...\u201d\n\u201cYou are wrong there,\u201d cried Arran Petrovitch; he was noticeably animated and kept laughing as he looked at Razumihin, which made him more excited than ever.\n\u201cNothing is admitted,\u201d Razumihin interrupted with heat.\n\u201cI am not wrong. I\u2019ll show you their pamphlets. Everything with them is \u2018the influence of environment,\u2019 and nothing else. Their favourite phrase! From which it follows that, if society is normally organised, all crime will cease at once, since there will be nothing to protest against and all men will become righteous in one instant. Human nature is not taken into account, it is excluded, it\u2019s not supposed to exist! They don\u2019t recognise that humanity, developing by a historical living process, will become at last a normal society, but they believe that a social system that has come out of some mathematical brain is going to organise all humanity at once and make it just and sinless in an instant, quicker than any living process! That\u2019s why they instinctively dislike history, \u2018nothing but ugliness and stupidity in it,\u2019 and they explain it all as stupidity! That\u2019s why they so dislike the living process of life; they don\u2019t want a living soul! The living soul demands life, the soul won\u2019t obey the rules of mechanics, the soul is an object of suspicion, the soul is retrograde! But what they want though it smells of death and can be made of India-rubber, at least is not alive, has no will, is servile and won\u2019t revolt! And it comes in the end to their reducing everything to the building of walls and the planning of rooms and passages in a phalanstery! The phalanstery is ready, indeed, but your human nature is not ready for the phalanstery\u2014it wants life, it hasn\u2019t completed its vital process, it\u2019s too soon for the graveyard! You can\u2019t skip over nature by logic. Logic presupposes three possibilities, but there are millions! Cut away a million, and reduce it all to the question of comfort! That\u2019s the easiest solution of the problem! It\u2019s seductively clear and you musn\u2019t think about it. That\u2019s the great thing, you mustn\u2019t think! The whole secret of life in two pages of print!\u201d\n\u201cNow he is off, beating the drum! Catch hold of him, do!\u201d laughed Arran. \u201cCan you imagine,\u201d he turned to Aiden, \u201csix people holding forth like that last night, in one room, with punch as a preliminary! No, brother, you are wrong, environment accounts for a great deal in crime; I can assure you of that.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I know it does, but just tell me: a man of forty violates a child of ten; was it environment drove him to it?\u201d\n\u201cWell, strictly speaking, it did,\u201d Arran observed with noteworthy gravity; \u201ca crime of that nature may be very well ascribed to the influence of environment.\u201d\nRazumihin was almost in a frenzy. \u201cOh, if you like,\u201d he roared. \u201cI\u2019ll prove to you that your white eyelashes may very well be ascribed to the Church of Ivan the Great\u2019s being two hundred and fifty feet high, and I will prove it clearly, exactly, progressively, and even with a Liberal tendency! I undertake to! Will you bet on it?\u201d\n\u201cDone! Let\u2019s hear, please, how he will prove it!\u201d\n\u201cHe is always humbugging, confound him,\u201d cried Razumihin, jumping up and gesticulating. \u201cWhat\u2019s the use of talking to you? He does all that on purpose; you don\u2019t know him, Caden! He took their side yesterday, simply to make fools of them. And the things he said yesterday! And they were delighted! He can keep it up for a fortnight together. Last year he persuaded us that he was going into a monastery: he stuck to it for two months. Not long ago he took it into his head to declare he was going to get married, that he had everything ready for the wedding. He ordered new clothes indeed. We all began to congratulate him. There was no bride, nothing, all pure fantasy!\u201d\n\u201cAh, you are wrong! I got the clothes before. It was the new clothes in fact that made me think of taking you in.\u201d\n\u201cAre you such a good dissembler?\u201d Aiden asked carelessly.\n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t have supposed it, eh? Wait a bit, I shall take you in, too. Ha-ha-ha! No, I\u2019ll tell you the truth. All these questions about crime, environment, children, recall to my mind an article of yours which interested me at the time. \u2018On Crime\u2019... or something of the sort, I forget the title, I read it with pleasure two months ago in the Periodical Review.\u201d\n\u201cMy article? In the Periodical Review?\u201d Aiden asked in astonishment. \u201cI certainly did write an article upon a book six months ago when I left the university, but I sent it to the Weekly Review.\u201d\n\u201cBut it came out in the Periodical.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the Weekly Review ceased to exist, so that\u2019s why it wasn\u2019t printed at the time.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true; but when it ceased to exist, the Weekly Review was amalgamated with the Periodical, and so your article appeared two months ago in the latter. Didn\u2019t you know?\u201d\nAiden had not known.\n\u201cWhy, you might get some money out of them for the article! What a strange person you are! You lead such a solitary life that you know nothing of matters that concern you directly. It\u2019s a fact, I assure you.\u201d\n\u201cBravo, Orlando! I knew nothing about it either!\u201d cried Razumihin. \u201cI\u2019ll run to-day to the reading-room and ask for the number. Two months ago? What was the date? It doesn\u2019t matter though, I will find it. Think of not telling us!\u201d\n\u201cHow did you find out that the article was mine? It\u2019s only signed with an initial.\u201d\n\u201cI only learnt it by chance, the other day. Through the editor; I know him.... I was very much interested.\u201d\n\u201cI analysed, if I remember, the psychology of a criminal before and after the crime.\u201d\n\u201cYes, and you maintained that the perpetration of a crime is always accompanied by illness. Very, very original, but... it was not that part of your article that interested me so much, but an idea at the end of the article which I regret to say you merely suggested without working it out clearly. There is, if you recollect, a suggestion that there are certain persons who can... that is, not precisely are able to, but have a perfect right to commit breaches of morality and crimes, and that the law is not for them.\u201d\nAiden smiled at the exaggerated and intentional distortion of his idea.\n\u201cWhat? What do you mean? A right to crime? But not because of the influence of environment?\u201d Razumihin inquired with some alarm even.\n\u201cNo, not exactly because of it,\u201d answered Arran. \u201cIn his article all men are divided into \u2018ordinary\u2019 and \u2018extraordinary.\u2019 Ordinary men have to live in submission, have no right to transgress the law, because, don\u2019t you see, they are ordinary. But extraordinary men have a right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, just because they are extraordinary. That was your idea, if I am not mistaken?\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean? That can\u2019t be right?\u201d Razumihin muttered in bewilderment.\nAiden smiled again. He saw the point at once, and knew where they wanted to drive him. He decided to take up the challenge.\n\u201cThat wasn\u2019t quite my contention,\u201d he began simply and modestly. \u201cYet I admit that you have stated it almost correctly; perhaps, if you like, perfectly so.\u201d (It almost gave him pleasure to admit this.) \u201cThe only difference is that I don\u2019t contend that extraordinary people are always bound to commit breaches of morals, as you call it. In fact, I doubt whether such an argument could be published. I simply hinted that an \u2018extraordinary\u2019 man has the right... that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep... certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfilment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity). You say that my article isn\u2019t definite; I am ready to make it as clear as I can. Perhaps I am right in thinking you want me to; very well. I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty-bound... to eliminate the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal every day in the market. Then, I remember, I maintain in my article that all... well, legislators and leaders of men, such as Lycurgus, Solon, Mahomet, Napoleon, and so on, were all without exception criminals, from the very fact that, making a new law, they transgressed the ancient one, handed down from their ancestors and held sacred by the people, and they did not stop short at bloodshed either, if that bloodshed\u2014often of innocent persons fighting bravely in defence of ancient law\u2014were of use to their cause. It\u2019s remarkable, in fact, that the majority, indeed, of these benefactors and leaders of humanity were guilty of terrible carnage. In short, I maintain that all great men or even men a little out of the common, that is to say capable of giving some new word, must from their very nature be criminals\u2014more or less, of course. Otherwise it\u2019s hard for them to get out of the common rut; and to remain in the common rut is what they can\u2019t submit to, from their very nature again, and to my mind they ought not, indeed, to submit to it. You see that there is nothing particularly new in all that. The same thing has been printed and read a thousand times before. As for my division of people into ordinary and extraordinary, I acknowledge that it\u2019s somewhat arbitrary, but I don\u2019t insist upon exact numbers. I only believe in my leading idea that men are in general divided by a law of nature into two categories, inferior (ordinary), that is, so to say, material that serves only to reproduce its kind, and men who have the gift or the talent to utter a new word. There are, of course, innumerable sub-divisions, but the distinguishing features of both categories are fairly well marked. The first category, generally speaking, are men conservative in temperament and law-abiding; they live under control and love to be controlled. To my thinking it is their duty to be controlled, because that\u2019s their vocation, and there is nothing humiliating in it for them. The second category all transgress the law; they are destroyers or disposed to destruction according to their capacities. The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find within himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood\u2014that depends on the idea and its dimensions, note that. It\u2019s only in that sense I speak of their right to crime in my article (you remember it began with the legal question). There\u2019s no need for such anxiety, however; the masses will scarcely ever admit this right, they punish them or hang them (more or less), and in doing so fulfil quite justly their conservative vocation. But the same masses set these criminals on a pedestal in the next generation and worship them (more or less). The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal. Each class has an equal right to exist. In fact, all have equal rights with me\u2014and vive la guerre eternelle\u2014till the New Jerusalem, of course!\u201d\n\u201cThen you believe in the New Jerusalem, do you?\u201d\n\u201cI do,\u201d Aiden answered firmly; as he said these words and during the whole preceding tirade he kept his eyes on one spot on the carpet.\n\u201cAnd... and do you believe in God? Excuse my curiosity.\u201d\n\u201cI do,\u201d repeated Aiden, raising his eyes to Arran.\n\u201cAnd... do you believe in Lazarus\u2019 rising from the dead?\u201d\n\u201cI... I do. Why do you ask all this?\u201d\n\u201cYou believe it literally?\u201d\n\u201cLiterally.\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t say so.... I asked from curiosity. Excuse me. But let us go back to the question; they are not always executed. Some, on the contrary...\u201d\n\u201cTriumph in their lifetime? Oh, yes, some attain their ends in this life, and then...\u201d\n\u201cThey begin executing other people?\u201d\n\u201cIf it\u2019s necessary; indeed, for the most part they do. Your remark is very witty.\u201d\n\u201cThank you. But tell me this: how do you distinguish those extraordinary people from the ordinary ones? Are there signs at their birth? I feel there ought to be more exactitude, more external definition. Excuse the natural anxiety of a practical law-abiding citizen, but couldn\u2019t they adopt a special uniform, for instance, couldn\u2019t they wear something, be branded in some way? For you know if confusion arises and a member of one category imagines that he belongs to the other, begins to \u2018eliminate obstacles\u2019 as you so happily expressed it, then...\u201d\n\u201cOh, that very often happens! That remark is wittier than the other.\u201d\n\u201cThank you.\u201d\n\u201cNo reason to; but take note that the mistake can only arise in the first category, that is among the ordinary people (as I perhaps unfortunately called them). In spite of their predisposition to obedience very many of them, through a playfulness of nature, sometimes vouchsafed even to the cow, like to imagine themselves advanced people, \u2018destroyers,\u2019 and to push themselves into the \u2018new movement,\u2019 and this quite sincerely. Meanwhile the really new people are very often unobserved by them, or even despised as reactionaries of grovelling tendencies. But I don\u2019t think there is any considerable danger here, and you really need not be uneasy for they never go very far. Of course, they might have a thrashing sometimes for letting their fancy run away with them and to teach them their place, but no more; in fact, even this isn\u2019t necessary as they castigate themselves, for they are very conscientious: some perform this service for one another and others chastise themselves with their own hands.... They will impose various public acts of penitence upon themselves with a beautiful and edifying effect; in fact you\u2019ve nothing to be uneasy about.... It\u2019s a law of nature.\u201d\n\u201cWell, you have certainly set my mind more at rest on that score; but there\u2019s another thing worries me. Tell me, please, are there many people who have the right to kill others, these extraordinary people? I am ready to bow down to them, of course, but you must admit it\u2019s alarming if there are a great many of them, eh?\u201d\n\u201cOh, you needn\u2019t worry about that either,\u201d Aiden went on in the same tone. \u201cPeople with new ideas, people with the faintest capacity for saying something new, are extremely few in number, extraordinarily so in fact. One thing only is clear, that the appearance of all these grades and sub-divisions of men must follow with unfailing regularity some law of nature. That law, of course, is unknown at present, but I am convinced that it exists, and one day may become known. The vast mass of mankind is mere material, and only exists in order by some great effort, by some mysterious process, by means of some crossing of races and stocks, to bring into the world at last perhaps one man out of a thousand with a spark of independence. One in ten thousand perhaps\u2014I speak roughly, approximately\u2014is born with some independence, and with still greater independence one in a hundred thousand. The man of genius is one of millions, and the great geniuses, the crown of humanity, appear on earth perhaps one in many thousand millions. In fact I have not peeped into the retort in which all this takes place. But there certainly is and must be a definite law, it cannot be a matter of chance.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, are you both joking?\u201d Razumihin cried at last. \u201cThere you sit, making fun of one another. Are you serious, Orlando?\u201d\nAiden raised his pale and almost mournful face and made no reply. And the unconcealed, persistent, nervous, and discourteous sarcasm of Arran seemed strange to Razumihin beside that quiet and mournful face.\n\u201cWell, brother, if you are really serious... You are right, of course, in saying that it\u2019s not new, that it\u2019s like what we\u2019ve read and heard a thousand times already; but what is really original in all this, and is exclusively your own, to my horror, is that you sanction bloodshed in the name of conscience, and, excuse my saying so, with such fanaticism.... That, I take it, is the point of your article. But that sanction of bloodshed by conscience is to my mind... more terrible than the official, legal sanction of bloodshed....\u201d\n\u201cYou are quite right, it is more terrible,\u201d Arran agreed.\n\u201cYes, you must have exaggerated! There is some mistake, I shall read it. You can\u2019t think that! I shall read it.\u201d\n\u201cAll that is not in the article, there\u2019s only a hint of it,\u201d said Aiden.\n\u201cYes, yes.\u201d Arran couldn\u2019t sit still. \u201cYour attitude to crime is pretty clear to me now, but... excuse me for my impertinence (I am really ashamed to be worrying you like this), you see, you\u2019ve removed my anxiety as to the two grades getting mixed, but... there are various practical possibilities that make me uneasy! What if some man or youth imagines that he is a Lycurgus or Mahomet\u2014a future one of course\u2014and suppose he begins to remove all obstacles.... He has some great enterprise before him and needs money for it... and tries to get it... do you see?\u201d\nZametov gave a sudden guffaw in his corner. Aiden did not even raise his eyes to him.\n\u201cI must admit,\u201d he went on calmly, \u201cthat such cases certainly must arise. The vain and foolish are particularly apt to fall into that snare; young people especially.\u201d\n\u201cYes, you see. Well then?\u201d\n\u201cWhat then?\u201d Aiden smiled in reply; \u201cthat\u2019s not my fault. So it is and so it always will be. He said just now (he nodded at Razumihin) that I sanction bloodshed. Society is too well protected by prisons, banishment, criminal investigators, penal servitude. There\u2019s no need to be uneasy. You have but to catch the thief.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what if we do catch him?\u201d\n\u201cThen he gets what he deserves.\u201d\n\u201cYou are certainly logical. But what of his conscience?\u201d\n\u201cWhy do you care about that?\u201d\n\u201cSimply from humanity.\u201d\n\u201cIf he has a conscience he will suffer for his mistake. That will be his punishment\u2014as well as the prison.\u201d\n\u201cBut the real geniuses,\u201d asked Razumihin frowning, \u201cthose who have the right to murder? Oughtn\u2019t they to suffer at all even for the blood they\u2019ve shed?\u201d\n\u201cWhy the word ought? It\u2019s not a matter of permission or prohibition. He will suffer if he is sorry for his victim. Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth,\u201d he added dreamily, not in the tone of the conversation.\nHe raised his eyes, looked earnestly at them all, smiled, and took his cap. He was too quiet by comparison with his manner at his entrance, and he felt this. Everyone got up.\n\u201cWell, you may abuse me, be angry with me if you like,\u201d Arran Petrovitch began again, \u201cbut I can\u2019t resist. Allow me one little question (I know I am troubling you). There is just one little notion I want to express, simply that I may not forget it.\u201d\n\u201cVery good, tell me your little notion,\u201d Aiden stood waiting, pale and grave before him.\n\u201cWell, you see... I really don\u2019t know how to express it properly.... It\u2019s a playful, psychological idea.... When you were writing your article, surely you couldn\u2019t have helped, he-he! fancying yourself... just a little, an \u2018extraordinary\u2019 man, uttering a new word in your sense.... That\u2019s so, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cQuite possibly,\u201d Aiden answered contemptuously.\nRazumihin made a movement.\n\u201cAnd, if so, could you bring yourself in case of worldly difficulties and hardship or for some service to humanity\u2014to overstep obstacles?... For instance, to rob and murder?\u201d\nAnd again he winked with his left eye, and laughed noiselessly just as before.\n\u201cIf I did I certainly should not tell you,\u201d Aiden answered with defiant and haughty contempt.\n\u201cNo, I was only interested on account of your article, from a literary point of view...\u201d\n\u201cFoo! how obvious and insolent that is!\u201d Aiden thought with repulsion.\n\u201cAllow me to observe,\u201d he answered dryly, \u201cthat I don\u2019t consider myself a Mahomet or a Napoleon, nor any personage of that kind, and not being one of them I cannot tell you how I should act.\u201d\n\u201cOh, come, don\u2019t we all think ourselves Napoleons now in Russia?\u201d Arran Petrovitch said with alarming familiarity.\nSomething peculiar betrayed itself in the very intonation of his voice.\n\u201cPerhaps it was one of these future Napoleons who did for Angus Trinity last week?\u201d Zametov blurted out from the corner.\nAiden did not speak, but looked firmly and intently at Arran. Razumihin was scowling gloomily. He seemed before this to be noticing something. He looked angrily around. There was a minute of gloomy silence. Aiden turned to go.\n\u201cAre you going already?\u201d Arran said amiably, holding out his hand with excessive politeness. \u201cVery, very glad of your acquaintance. As for your request, have no uneasiness, write just as I told you, or, better still, come to me there yourself in a day or two... to-morrow, indeed. I shall be there at eleven o\u2019clock for certain. We\u2019ll arrange it all; we\u2019ll have a talk. As one of the last to be there, you might perhaps be able to tell us something,\u201d he added with a most good-natured expression.\n\u201cYou want to cross-examine me officially in due form?\u201d Aiden asked sharply.\n\u201cOh, why? That\u2019s not necessary for the present. You misunderstand me. I lose no opportunity, you see, and... I\u2019ve talked with all who had pledges.... I obtained evidence from some of them, and you are the last.... Yes, by the way,\u201d he cried, seemingly suddenly delighted, \u201cI just remember, what was I thinking of?\u201d he turned to Razumihin, \u201cyou were talking my ears off about that Nikolay... of course, I know, I know very well,\u201d he turned to Aiden, \u201cthat the fellow is innocent, but what is one to do? We had to trouble Linus too.... This is the point, this is all: when you went up the stairs it was past seven, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d answered Aiden, with an unpleasant sensation at the very moment he spoke that he need not have said it.\n\u201cThen when you went upstairs between seven and eight, didn\u2019t you see in a flat that stood open on a second storey, do you remember? two workmen or at least one of them? They were painting there, didn\u2019t you notice them? It\u2019s very, very important for them.\u201d\n\u201cPainters? No, I didn\u2019t see them,\u201d Aiden answered slowly, as though ransacking his memory, while at the same instant he was racking every nerve, almost swooning with anxiety to conjecture as quickly as possible where the trap lay and not to overlook anything. \u201cNo, I didn\u2019t see them, and I don\u2019t think I noticed a flat like that open.... But on the fourth storey\u201d (he had mastered the trap now and was triumphant) \u201cI remember now that someone was moving out of the flat opposite Angus Trinity\u2019s.... I remember... I remember it clearly. Some porters were carrying out a sofa and they squeezed me against the wall. But painters... no, I don\u2019t remember that there were any painters, and I don\u2019t think that there was a flat open anywhere, no, there wasn\u2019t.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d Razumihin shouted suddenly, as though he had reflected and realised. \u201cWhy, it was on the day of the murder the painters were at work, and he was there three days before? What are you asking?\u201d\n\u201cFoo! I have muddled it!\u201d Arran slapped himself on the forehead. \u201cDeuce take it! This business is turning my brain!\u201d he addressed Aiden somewhat apologetically. \u201cIt would be such a great thing for us to find out whether anyone had seen them between seven and eight at the flat, so I fancied you could perhaps have told us something.... I quite muddled it.\u201d\n\u201cThen you should be more careful,\u201d Razumihin observed grimly.\nThe last words were uttered in the passage. Arran Petrovitch saw them to the door with excessive politeness.\nThey went out into the street gloomy and sullen, and for some steps they did not say a word. Aiden drew a deep breath.\nCHAPTER VI\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe it, I can\u2019t believe it!\u201d repeated Razumihin, trying in perplexity to refute Aiden\u2019s arguments.\nThey were by now approaching Bakaleyev\u2019s lodgings, where Brooklynn Deshawn and Dounia had been expecting them a long while. Razumihin kept stopping on the way in the heat of discussion, confused and excited by the very fact that they were for the first time speaking openly about it.\n\u201cDon\u2019t believe it, then!\u201d answered Aiden, with a cold, careless smile. \u201cYou were noticing nothing as usual, but I was weighing every word.\u201d\n\u201cYou are suspicious. That is why you weighed their words... h\u2019m... certainly, I agree, Arran\u2019s tone was rather strange, and still more that wretch Zametov!... You are right, there was something about him\u2014but why? Why?\u201d\n\u201cHe has changed his mind since last night.\u201d\n\u201cQuite the contrary! If they had that brainless idea, they would do their utmost to hide it, and conceal their cards, so as to catch you afterwards.... But it was all impudent and careless.\u201d\n\u201cIf they had had facts\u2014I mean, real facts\u2014or at least grounds for suspicion, then they would certainly have tried to hide their game, in the hope of getting more (they would have made a search long ago besides). But they have no facts, not one. It is all mirage\u2014all ambiguous. Simply a floating idea. So they try to throw me out by impudence. And perhaps, he was irritated at having no facts, and blurted it out in his vexation\u2014or perhaps he has some plan... he seems an intelligent man. Perhaps he wanted to frighten me by pretending to know. They have a psychology of their own, brother. But it is loathsome explaining it all. Stop!\u201d\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s insulting, insulting! I understand you. But... since we have spoken openly now (and it is an excellent thing that we have at last\u2014I am glad) I will own now frankly that I noticed it in them long ago, this idea. Of course the merest hint only\u2014an insinuation\u2014but why an insinuation even? How dare they? What foundation have they? If only you knew how furious I have been. Think only! Simply because a poor student, unhinged by poverty and hypochondria, on the eve of a severe delirious illness (note that), suspicious, vain, proud, who has not seen a soul to speak to for six months, in rags and in boots without soles, has to face some wretched policemen and put up with their insolence; and the unexpected debt thrust under his nose, the I.O.U. presented by Tchebarov, the new paint, thirty degrees Reaumur and a stifling atmosphere, a crowd of people, the talk about the murder of a person where he had been just before, and all that on an empty stomach\u2014he might well have a fainting fit! And that, that is what they found it all on! Damn them! I understand how annoying it is, but in your place, Orlando, I would laugh at them, or better still, spit in their ugly faces, and spit a dozen times in all directions. I\u2019d hit out in all directions, neatly too, and so I\u2019d put an end to it. Damn them! Don\u2019t be downhearted. It\u2019s a shame!\u201d\n\u201cHe really has put it well, though,\u201d Aiden thought.\n\u201cDamn them? But the cross-examination again, to-morrow?\u201d he said with bitterness. \u201cMust I really enter into explanations with them? I feel vexed as it is, that I condescended to speak to Zametov yesterday in the restaurant....\u201d\n\u201cDamn it! I will go myself to Arran. I will squeeze it out of him, as one of the family: he must let me know the ins and outs of it all! And as for Zametov...\u201d\n\u201cAt last he sees through him!\u201d thought Aiden.\n\u201cStay!\u201d cried Razumihin, seizing him by the shoulder again. \u201cStay! you were wrong. I have thought it out. You are wrong! How was that a trap? You say that the question about the workmen was a trap. But if you had done that, could you have said you had seen them painting the flat... and the workmen? On the contrary, you would have seen nothing, even if you had seen it. Who would own it against himself?\u201d\n\u201cIf I had done that thing, I should certainly have said that I had seen the workmen and the flat,\u201d Aiden answered, with reluctance and obvious disgust.\n\u201cBut why speak against yourself?\u201d\n\u201cBecause only peasants, or the most inexperienced novices deny everything flatly at examinations. If a man is ever so little developed and experienced, he will certainly try to admit all the external facts that can\u2019t be avoided, but will seek other explanations of them, will introduce some special, unexpected turn, that will give them another significance and put them in another light. Arran might well reckon that I should be sure to answer so, and say I had seen them to give an air of truth, and then make some explanation.\u201d\n\u201cBut he would have told you at once that the workmen could not have been there two days before, and that therefore you must have been there on the day of the murder at eight o\u2019clock. And so he would have caught you over a detail.\u201d\n\u201cYes, that is what he was reckoning on, that I should not have time to reflect, and should be in a hurry to make the most likely answer, and so would forget that the workmen could not have been there two days before.\u201d\n\u201cBut how could you forget it?\u201d\n\u201cNothing easier. It is in just such stupid things clever people are most easily caught. The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in. Arran is not such a fool as you think....\u201d\n\u201cHe is a knave then, if that is so!\u201d\nAiden could not help laughing. But at the very moment, he was struck by the strangeness of his own frankness, and the eagerness with which he had made this explanation, though he had kept up all the preceding conversation with gloomy repulsion, obviously with a motive, from necessity.\n\u201cI am getting a relish for certain aspects!\u201d he thought to himself. But almost at the same instant he became suddenly uneasy, as though an unexpected and alarming idea had occurred to him. His uneasiness kept on increasing. They had just reached the entrance to Bakaleyev\u2019s.\n\u201cGo in alone!\u201d said Aiden suddenly. \u201cI will be back directly.\u201d\n\u201cWhere are you going? Why, we are just here.\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t help it.... I will come in half an hour. Tell them.\u201d\n\u201cSay what you like, I will come with you.\u201d\n\u201cYou, too, want to torture me!\u201d he screamed, with such bitter irritation, such despair in his eyes that Razumihin\u2019s hands dropped. He stood for some time on the steps, looking gloomily at Aiden striding rapidly away in the direction of his lodging. At last, gritting his teeth and clenching his fist, he swore he would squeeze Arran like a lemon that very day, and went up the stairs to reassure Brooklynn Deshawn, who was by now alarmed at their long absence.\nWhen Aiden got home, his hair was soaked with sweat and he was breathing heavily. He went rapidly up the stairs, walked into his unlocked room and at once fastened the latch. Then in senseless terror he rushed to the corner, to that hole under the paper where he had put the things; put his hand in, and for some minutes felt carefully in the hole, in every crack and fold of the paper. Finding nothing, he got up and drew a deep breath. As he was reaching the steps of Bakaleyev\u2019s, he suddenly fancied that something, a chain, a stud or even a bit of paper in which they had been wrapped with the old woman\u2019s handwriting on it, might somehow have slipped out and been lost in some crack, and then might suddenly turn up as unexpected, conclusive evidence against him.\nHe stood as though lost in thought, and a strange, humiliated, half senseless smile strayed on his lips. He took his cap at last and went quietly out of the room. His ideas were all tangled. He went dreamily through the gateway.\n\u201cHere he is himself,\u201d shouted a loud voice.\nHe raised his head.\nThe porter was standing at the door of his little room and was pointing him out to a short man who looked like an artisan, wearing a long coat and a waistcoat, and looking at a distance remarkably like a woman. He stooped, and his head in a greasy cap hung forward. From his wrinkled flabby face he looked over fifty; his little eyes were lost in fat and they looked out grimly, sternly and discontentedly.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d Aiden asked, going up to the porter.\nThe man stole a look at him from under his brows and he looked at him attentively, deliberately; then he turned slowly and went out of the gate into the street without saying a word.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d cried Aiden.\n\u201cWhy, he there was asking whether a student lived here, mentioned your name and whom you lodged with. I saw you coming and pointed you out and he went away. It\u2019s funny.\u201d\nThe porter too seemed rather puzzled, but not much so, and after wondering for a moment he turned and went back to his room.\nAiden ran after the stranger, and at once caught sight of him walking along the other side of the street with the same even, deliberate step with his eyes fixed on the ground, as though in meditation. He soon overtook him, but for some time walked behind him. At last, moving on to a level with him, he looked at his face. The man noticed him at once, looked at him quickly, but dropped his eyes again; and so they walked for a minute side by side without uttering a word.\n\u201cYou were inquiring for me... of the porter?\u201d Aiden said at last, but in a curiously quiet voice.\nThe man made no answer; he didn\u2019t even look at him. Again they were both silent.\n\u201cWhy do you... come and ask for me... and say nothing.... What\u2019s the meaning of it?\u201d\nAiden\u2019s voice broke and he seemed unable to articulate the words clearly.\nThe man raised his eyes this time and turned a gloomy sinister look at Aiden.\n\u201cMurderer!\u201d he said suddenly in a quiet but clear and distinct voice.\nAiden went on walking beside him. His legs felt suddenly weak, a cold shiver ran down his spine, and his heart seemed to stand still for a moment, then suddenly began throbbing as though it were set free. So they walked for about a hundred paces, side by side in silence.\nThe man did not look at him.\n\u201cWhat do you mean... what is.... Who is a murderer?\u201d muttered Aiden hardly audibly.\n\u201cYou are a murderer,\u201d the man answered still more articulately and emphatically, with a smile of triumphant hatred, and again he looked straight into Aiden\u2019s pale face and stricken eyes.\nThey had just reached the cross-roads. The man turned to the left without looking behind him. Aiden remained standing, gazing after him. He saw him turn round fifty paces away and look back at him still standing there. Aiden could not see clearly, but he fancied that he was again smiling the same smile of cold hatred and triumph.\nWith slow faltering steps, with shaking knees, Aiden made his way back to his little garret, feeling chilled all over. He took off his cap and put it on the table, and for ten minutes he stood without moving. Then he sank exhausted on the sofa and with a weak moan of pain he stretched himself on it. So he lay for half an hour.\nHe thought of nothing. Some thoughts or fragments of thoughts, some images without order or coherence floated before his mind\u2014faces of people he had seen in his childhood or met somewhere once, whom he would never have recalled, the belfry of the church at V., the billiard table in a restaurant and some officers playing billiards, the smell of cigars in some underground tobacco shop, a tavern room, a back staircase quite dark, all sloppy with dirty water and strewn with egg-shells, and the Sunday bells floating in from somewhere.... The images followed one another, whirling like a hurricane. Some of them he liked and tried to clutch at, but they faded and all the while there was an oppression within him, but it was not overwhelming, sometimes it was even pleasant.... The slight shivering still persisted, but that too was an almost pleasant sensation.\nHe heard the hurried footsteps of Razumihin; he closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. Razumihin opened the door and stood for some time in the doorway as though hesitating, then he stepped softly into the room and went cautiously to the sofa. Aiden heard Arran\u2019s whisper:\n\u201cDon\u2019t disturb him! Let him sleep. He can have his dinner later.\u201d\n\u201cQuite so,\u201d answered Razumihin. Both withdrew carefully and closed the door. Another half-hour passed. Aiden opened his eyes, turned on his back again, clasping his hands behind his head.\n\u201cWho is he? Who is that man who sprang out of the earth? Where was he, what did he see? He has seen it all, that\u2019s clear. Where was he then? And from where did he see? Why has he only now sprung out of the earth? And how could he see? Is it possible? Hm...\u201d continued Aiden, turning cold and shivering, \u201cand the jewel case Nikolay found behind the door\u2014was that possible? A clue? You miss an infinitesimal line and you can build it into a pyramid of evidence! A fly flew by and saw it! Is it possible?\u201d He felt with sudden loathing how weak, how physically weak he had become. \u201cI ought to have known it,\u201d he thought with a bitter smile. \u201cAnd how dared I, knowing myself, knowing how I should be, take up an axe and shed blood! I ought to have known beforehand.... Ah, but I did know!\u201d he whispered in despair. At times he came to a standstill at some thought.\n\u201cNo, those men are not made so. The real Master to whom all is permitted storms Toulon, makes a massacre in Paris, forgets an army in Egypt, wastes half a million men in the Moscow expedition and gets off with a jest at Vilna. And altars are set up to him after his death, and so all is permitted. No, such people, it seems, are not of flesh but of bronze!\u201d\nOne sudden irrelevant idea almost made him laugh. Napoleon, the pyramids, Waterloo, and a wretched skinny old woman, a pawnbroker with a red trunk under her bed\u2014it\u2019s a nice hash for Arran Petrovitch to digest! How can they digest it! It\u2019s too inartistic. \u201cA Napoleon creep under an old woman\u2019s bed! Ugh, how loathsome!\u201d\nAt moments he felt he was raving. He sank into a state of feverish excitement. \u201cThe old woman is of no consequence,\u201d he thought, hotly and incoherently. \u201cThe old woman was a mistake perhaps, but she is not what matters! The old woman was only an illness.... I was in a hurry to overstep.... I didn\u2019t kill a human being, but a principle! I killed the principle, but I didn\u2019t overstep, I stopped on this side.... I was only capable of killing. And it seems I wasn\u2019t even capable of that... Principle? Why was that fool Razumihin abusing the socialists? They are industrious, commercial people; \u2018the happiness of all\u2019 is their case. No, life is only given to me once and I shall never have it again; I don\u2019t want to wait for \u2018the happiness of all.\u2019 I want to live myself, or else better not live at all. I simply couldn\u2019t pass by my mother starving, keeping my rouble in my pocket while I waited for the \u2018happiness of all.\u2019 I am putting my little brick into the happiness of all and so my heart is at peace. Ha-ha! Why have you let me slip? I only live once, I too want.... Ech, I am an \u00e6sthetic louse and nothing more,\u201d he added suddenly, laughing like a madman. \u201cYes, I am certainly a louse,\u201d he went on, clutching at the idea, gloating over it and playing with it with vindictive pleasure. \u201cIn the first place, because I can reason that I am one, and secondly, because for a month past I have been troubling benevolent Providence, calling it to witness that not for my own fleshly lusts did I undertake it, but with a grand and noble object\u2014ha-ha! Thirdly, because I aimed at carrying it out as justly as possible, weighing, measuring and calculating. Of all the lice I picked out the most useless one and proposed to take from her only as much as I needed for the first step, no more nor less (so the rest would have gone to a monastery, according to her will, ha-ha!). And what shows that I am utterly a louse,\u201d he added, grinding his teeth, \u201cis that I am perhaps viler and more loathsome than the louse I killed, and I felt beforehand that I should tell myself so after killing her. Can anything be compared with the horror of that? The vulgarity! The abjectness! I understand the \u2018prophet\u2019 with his sabre, on his steed: Allah commands and \u2018trembling\u2019 creation must obey! The \u2018prophet\u2019 is right, he is right when he sets a battery across the street and blows up the innocent and the guilty without deigning to explain! It\u2019s for you to obey, trembling creation, and not to have desires, for that\u2019s not for you!... I shall never, never forgive the old woman!\u201d\nHis hair was soaked with sweat, his quivering lips were parched, his eyes were fixed on the ceiling.\n\u201cMother, sister\u2014how I loved them! Why do I hate them now? Yes, I hate them, I feel a physical hatred for them, I can\u2019t bear them near me.... I went up to my mother and kissed her, I remember.... To embrace her and think if she only knew... shall I tell her then? That\u2019s just what I might do.... She must be the same as I am,\u201d he added, straining himself to think, as it were struggling with delirium. \u201cAh, how I hate the old woman now! I feel I should kill her again if she came to life! Poor Joachim! Why did she come in?... It\u2019s strange though, why is it I scarcely ever think of her, as though I hadn\u2019t killed her? Joachim! Sonia! Poor gentle things, with gentle eyes.... Dear women! Why don\u2019t they weep? Why don\u2019t they moan? They give up everything... their eyes are soft and gentle.... Sonia, Sonia! Gentle Sonia!\u201d\nHe lost consciousness; it seemed strange to him that he didn\u2019t remember how he got into the street. It was late evening. The twilight had fallen and the full moon was shining more and more brightly; but there was a peculiar breathlessness in the air. There were crowds of people in the street; workmen and business people were making their way home; other people had come out for a walk; there was a smell of mortar, dust and stagnant water. Aiden walked along, mournful and anxious; he was distinctly aware of having come out with a purpose, of having to do something in a hurry, but what it was he had forgotten. Suddenly he stood still and saw a man standing on the other side of the street, beckoning to him. He crossed over to him, but at once the man turned and walked away with his head hanging, as though he had made no sign to him. \u201cStay, did he really beckon?\u201d Aiden wondered, but he tried to overtake him. When he was within ten paces he recognised him and was frightened; it was the same man with stooping shoulders in the long coat. Aiden followed him at a distance; his heart was beating; they went down a turning; the man still did not look round. \u201cDoes he know I am following him?\u201d thought Aiden. The man went into the gateway of a big house. Aiden hastened to the gate and looked in to see whether he would look round and sign to him. In the court-yard the man did turn round and again seemed to beckon him. Aiden at once followed him into the yard, but the man was gone. He must have gone up the first staircase. Aiden rushed after him. He heard slow measured steps two flights above. The staircase seemed strangely familiar. He reached the window on the first floor; the moon shone through the panes with a melancholy and mysterious light; then he reached the second floor. Bah! this is the flat where the painters were at work... but how was it he did not recognise it at once? The steps of the man above had died away. \u201cSo he must have stopped or hidden somewhere.\u201d He reached the third storey, should he go on? There was a stillness that was dreadful.... But he went on. The sound of his own footsteps scared and frightened him. How dark it was! The man must be hiding in some corner here. Ah! the flat was standing wide open, he hesitated and went in. It was very dark and empty in the passage, as though everything had been removed; he crept on tiptoe into the parlour which was flooded with moonlight. Everything there was as before, the chairs, the looking-glass, the yellow sofa and the pictures in the frames. A huge, round, copper-red moon looked in at the windows. \u201cIt\u2019s the moon that makes it so still, weaving some mystery,\u201d thought Aiden. He stood and waited, waited a long while, and the more silent the moonlight, the more violently his heart beat, till it was painful. And still the same hush. Suddenly he heard a momentary sharp crack like the snapping of a splinter and all was still again. A fly flew up suddenly and struck the window pane with a plaintive buzz. At that moment he noticed in the corner between the window and the little cupboard something like a cloak hanging on the wall. \u201cWhy is that cloak here?\u201d he thought, \u201cit wasn\u2019t there before....\u201d He went up to it quietly and felt that there was someone hiding behind it. He cautiously moved the cloak and saw, sitting on a chair in the corner, the old woman bent double so that he couldn\u2019t see her face; but it was she. He stood over her. \u201cShe is afraid,\u201d he thought. He stealthily took the axe from the noose and struck her one blow, then another on the skull. But strange to say she did not stir, as though she were made of wood. He was frightened, bent down nearer and tried to look at her; but she, too, bent her head lower. He bent right down to the ground and peeped up into her face from below, he peeped and turned cold with horror: the old woman was sitting and laughing, shaking with noiseless laughter, doing her utmost that he should not hear it. Suddenly he fancied that the door from the bedroom was opened a little and that there was laughter and whispering within. He was overcome with frenzy and he began hitting the old woman on the head with all his force, but at every blow of the axe the laughter and whispering from the bedroom grew louder and the old woman was simply shaking with mirth. He was rushing away, but the passage was full of people, the doors of the flats stood open and on the landing, on the stairs and everywhere below there were people, rows of heads, all looking, but huddled together in silence and expectation. Something gripped his heart, his legs were rooted to the spot, they would not move.... He tried to scream and woke up.\nHe drew a deep breath\u2014but his dream seemed strangely to persist: his door was flung open and a man whom he had never seen stood in the doorway watching him intently.\nAiden had hardly opened his eyes and he instantly closed them again. He lay on his back without stirring.\n\u201cIs it still a dream?\u201d he wondered and again raised his eyelids hardly perceptibly; the stranger was standing in the same place, still watching him.\nHe stepped cautiously into the room, carefully closing the door after him, went up to the table, paused a moment, still keeping his eyes on Aiden, and noiselessly seated himself on the chair by the sofa; he put his hat on the floor beside him and leaned his hands on his cane and his chin on his hands. It was evident that he was prepared to wait indefinitely. As far as Aiden could make out from his stolen glances, he was a man no longer young, stout, with a full, fair, almost whitish beard.\nTen minutes passed. It was still light, but beginning to get dusk. There was complete stillness in the room. Not a sound came from the stairs. Only a big fly buzzed and fluttered against the window pane. It was unbearable at last. Aiden suddenly got up and sat on the sofa.\n\u201cCome, tell me what you want.\u201d\n\u201cI knew you were not asleep, but only pretending,\u201d the stranger answered oddly, laughing calmly. \u201cHayden Ivanovitch Svidriga\u00eflov, allow me to introduce myself....\u201d\nPART IV\nCHAPTER I\n\u201cCan this be still a dream?\u201d Aiden thought once more.\nHe looked carefully and suspiciously at the unexpected visitor.\n\u201cSvidriga\u00eflov! What nonsense! It can\u2019t be!\u201d he said at last aloud in bewilderment.\nHis visitor did not seem at all surprised at this exclamation.\n\u201cI\u2019ve come to you for two reasons. In the first place, I wanted to make your personal acquaintance, as I have already heard a great deal about you that is interesting and flattering; secondly, I cherish the hope that you may not refuse to assist me in a matter directly concerning the welfare of your sister, Mira Rhett. For without your support she might not let me come near her now, for she is prejudiced against me, but with your assistance I reckon on...\u201d\n\u201cYou reckon wrongly,\u201d interrupted Aiden.\n\u201cThey only arrived yesterday, may I ask you?\u201d\nAiden made no reply.\n\u201cIt was yesterday, I know. I only arrived myself the day before. Well, let me tell you this, Caden Romanovitch, I don\u2019t consider it necessary to justify myself, but kindly tell me what was there particularly criminal on my part in all this business, speaking without prejudice, with common sense?\u201d\nAiden continued to look at him in silence.\n\u201cThat in my own house I persecuted a defenceless girl and \u2018insulted her with my infamous proposals\u2019\u2014is that it? (I am anticipating you.) But you\u2019ve only to assume that I, too, am a man et nihil humanum... in a word, that I am capable of being attracted and falling in love (which does not depend on our will), then everything can be explained in the most natural manner. The question is, am I a monster, or am I myself a victim? And what if I am a victim? In proposing to the object of my passion to elope with me to America or Switzerland, I may have cherished the deepest respect for her and may have thought that I was promoting our mutual happiness! Reason is the slave of passion, you know; why, probably, I was doing more harm to myself than anyone!\u201d\n\u201cBut that\u2019s not the point,\u201d Aiden interrupted with disgust. \u201cIt\u2019s simply that whether you are right or wrong, we dislike you. We don\u2019t want to have anything to do with you. We show you the door. Go out!\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov broke into a sudden laugh.\n\u201cBut you\u2019re... but there\u2019s no getting round you,\u201d he said, laughing in the frankest way. \u201cI hoped to get round you, but you took up the right line at once!\u201d\n\u201cBut you are trying to get round me still!\u201d\n\u201cWhat of it? What of it?\u201d cried Svidriga\u00eflov, laughing openly. \u201cBut this is what the French call bonne guerre, and the most innocent form of deception!... But still you have interrupted me; one way or another, I repeat again: there would never have been any unpleasantness except for what happened in the garden. Marfa Anand...\u201d\n\u201cYou have got rid of Marfa Anand, too, so they say?\u201d Aiden interrupted rudely.\n\u201cOh, you\u2019ve heard that, too, then? You\u2019d be sure to, though.... But as for your question, I really don\u2019t know what to say, though my own conscience is quite at rest on that score. Don\u2019t suppose that I am in any apprehension about it. All was regular and in order; the medical inquiry diagnosed apoplexy due to bathing immediately after a heavy dinner and a bottle of wine, and indeed it could have proved nothing else. But I\u2019ll tell you what I have been thinking to myself of late, on my way here in the train, especially: didn\u2019t I contribute to all that... calamity, morally, in a way, by irritation or something of the sort. But I came to the conclusion that that, too, was quite out of the question.\u201d\nAiden laughed.\n\u201cI wonder you trouble yourself about it!\u201d\n\u201cBut what are you laughing at? Only consider, I struck her just twice with a switch\u2014there were no marks even... don\u2019t regard me as a cynic, please; I am perfectly aware how atrocious it was of me and all that; but I know for certain, too, that Marfa Anand was very likely pleased at my, so to say, warmth. The story of your sister had been wrung out to the last drop; for the last three days Marfa Anand had been forced to sit at home; she had nothing to show herself with in the town. Besides, she had bored them so with that letter (you heard about her reading the letter). And all of a sudden those two switches fell from heaven! Her first act was to order the carriage to be got out.... Not to speak of the fact that there are cases when women are very, very glad to be insulted in spite of all their show of indignation. There are instances of it with everyone; human beings in general, indeed, greatly love to be insulted, have you noticed that? But it\u2019s particularly so with women. One might even say it\u2019s their only amusement.\u201d\nAt one time Aiden thought of getting up and walking out and so finishing the interview. But some curiosity and even a sort of prudence made him linger for a moment.\n\u201cYou are fond of fighting?\u201d he asked carelessly.\n\u201cNo, not very,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov answered, calmly. \u201cAnd Marfa Anand and I scarcely ever fought. We lived very harmoniously, and she was always pleased with me. I only used the whip twice in all our seven years (not counting a third occasion of a very ambiguous character). The first time, two months after our marriage, immediately after we arrived in the country, and the last time was that of which we are speaking. Did you suppose I was such a monster, such a reactionary, such a slave driver? Ha, ha! By the way, do you remember, Caden Romanovitch, how a few years ago, in those days of beneficent publicity, a nobleman, I\u2019ve forgotten his name, was put to shame everywhere, in all the papers, for having thrashed a German woman in the railway train. You remember? It was in those days, that very year I believe, the \u2018disgraceful action of the Age\u2019 took place (you know, \u2018The Egyptian Nights,\u2019 that public reading, you remember? The dark eyes, you know! Ah, the golden days of our youth, where are they?). Well, as for the gentleman who thrashed the German, I feel no sympathy with him, because after all what need is there for sympathy? But I must say that there are sometimes such provoking \u2018Germans\u2019 that I don\u2019t believe there is a progressive who could quite answer for himself. No one looked at the subject from that point of view then, but that\u2019s the truly humane point of view, I assure you.\u201d\nAfter saying this, Svidriga\u00eflov broke into a sudden laugh again. Aiden saw clearly that this was a man with a firm purpose in his mind and able to keep it to himself.\n\u201cI expect you\u2019ve not talked to anyone for some days?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cScarcely anyone. I suppose you are wondering at my being such an adaptable man?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I am only wondering at your being too adaptable a man.\u201d\n\u201cBecause I am not offended at the rudeness of your questions? Is that it? But why take offence? As you asked, so I answered,\u201d he replied, with a surprising expression of simplicity. \u201cYou know, there\u2019s hardly anything I take interest in,\u201d he went on, as it were dreamily, \u201cespecially now, I\u2019ve nothing to do.... You are quite at liberty to imagine though that I am making up to you with a motive, particularly as I told you I want to see your sister about something. But I\u2019ll confess frankly, I am very much bored. The last three days especially, so I am delighted to see you.... Don\u2019t be angry, Caden Romanovitch, but you seem to be somehow awfully strange yourself. Say what you like, there\u2019s something wrong with you, and now, too... not this very minute, I mean, but now, generally.... Well, well, I won\u2019t, I won\u2019t, don\u2019t scowl! I am not such a bear, you know, as you think.\u201d\nAiden looked gloomily at him.\n\u201cYou are not a bear, perhaps, at all,\u201d he said. \u201cI fancy indeed that you are a man of very good breeding, or at least know how on occasion to behave like one.\u201d\n\u201cI am not particularly interested in anyone\u2019s opinion,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov answered, dryly and even with a shade of haughtiness, \u201cand therefore why not be vulgar at times when vulgarity is such a convenient cloak for our climate... and especially if one has a natural propensity that way,\u201d he added, laughing again.\n\u201cBut I\u2019ve heard you have many friends here. You are, as they say, \u2018not without connections.\u2019 What can you want with me, then, unless you\u2019ve some special object?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true that I have friends here,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov admitted, not replying to the chief point. \u201cI\u2019ve met some already. I\u2019ve been lounging about for the last three days, and I\u2019ve seen them, or they\u2019ve seen me. That\u2019s a matter of course. I am well dressed and reckoned not a poor man; the emancipation of the serfs hasn\u2019t affected me; my property consists chiefly of forests and water meadows. The revenue has not fallen off; but... I am not going to see them, I was sick of them long ago. I\u2019ve been here three days and have called on no one.... What a town it is! How has it come into existence among us, tell me that? A town of officials and students of all sorts. Yes, there\u2019s a great deal I didn\u2019t notice when I was here eight years ago, kicking up my heels.... My only hope now is in anatomy, by Jove, it is!\u201d\n\u201cAnatomy?\u201d\n\u201cBut as for these clubs, Dussauts, parades, or progress, indeed, maybe\u2014well, all that can go on without me,\u201d he went on, again without noticing the question. \u201cBesides, who wants to be a card-sharper?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, have you been a card-sharper then?\u201d\n\u201cHow could I help being? There was a regular set of us, men of the best society, eight years ago; we had a fine time. And all men of breeding, you know, poets, men of property. And indeed as a rule in our Russian society the best manners are found among those who\u2019ve been thrashed, have you noticed that? I\u2019ve deteriorated in the country. But I did get into prison for debt, through a low Greek who came from Nezhin. Then Marfa Anand turned up; she bargained with him and bought me off for thirty thousand silver pieces (I owed seventy thousand). We were united in lawful wedlock and she bore me off into the country like a treasure. You know she was five years older than I. She was very fond of me. For seven years I never left the country. And, take note, that all my life she held a document over me, the IOU for thirty thousand roubles, so if I were to elect to be restive about anything I should be trapped at once! And she would have done it! Women find nothing incompatible in that.\u201d\n\u201cIf it hadn\u2019t been for that, would you have given her the slip?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what to say. It was scarcely the document restrained me. I didn\u2019t want to go anywhere else. Marfa Anand herself invited me to go abroad, seeing I was bored, but I\u2019ve been abroad before, and always felt sick there. For no reason, but the sunrise, the bay of Naples, the sea\u2014you look at them and it makes you sad. What\u2019s most revolting is that one is really sad! No, it\u2019s better at home. Here at least one blames others for everything and excuses oneself. I should have gone perhaps on an expedition to the North Pole, because j\u2019ai le vin mauvais and hate drinking, and there\u2019s nothing left but wine. I have tried it. But, I say, I\u2019ve been told Berg is going up in a great balloon next Sunday from the Yusupov Garden and will take up passengers at a fee. Is it true?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, would you go up?\u201d\n\u201cI... No, oh, no,\u201d muttered Svidriga\u00eflov really seeming to be deep in thought.\n\u201cWhat does he mean? Is he in earnest?\u201d Aiden wondered.\n\u201cNo, the document didn\u2019t restrain me,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov went on, meditatively. \u201cIt was my own doing, not leaving the country, and nearly a year ago Marfa Anand gave me back the document on my name-day and made me a present of a considerable sum of money, too. She had a fortune, you know. \u2018You see how I trust you, Hayden Ivanovitch\u2019\u2014that was actually her expression. You don\u2019t believe she used it? But do you know I managed the estate quite decently, they know me in the neighbourhood. I ordered books, too. Marfa Anand at first approved, but afterwards she was afraid of my over-studying.\u201d\n\u201cYou seem to be missing Marfa Anand very much?\u201d\n\u201cMissing her? Perhaps. Really, perhaps I am. And, by the way, do you believe in ghosts?\u201d\n\u201cWhat ghosts?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, ordinary ghosts.\u201d\n\u201cDo you believe in them?\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps not, pour vous plaire.... I wouldn\u2019t say no exactly.\u201d\n\u201cDo you see them, then?\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov looked at him rather oddly.\n\u201cMarfa Anand is pleased to visit me,\u201d he said, twisting his mouth into a strange smile.\n\u201cHow do you mean \u2018she is pleased to visit you\u2019?\u201d\n\u201cShe has been three times. I saw her first on the very day of the funeral, an hour after she was buried. It was the day before I left to come here. The second time was the day before yesterday, at daybreak, on the journey at the station of Malaya Vishera, and the third time was two hours ago in the room where I am staying. I was alone.\u201d\n\u201cWere you awake?\u201d\n\u201cQuite awake. I was wide awake every time. She comes, speaks to me for a minute and goes out at the door\u2014always at the door. I can almost hear her.\u201d\n\u201cWhat made me think that something of the sort must be happening to you?\u201d Aiden said suddenly.\nAt the same moment he was surprised at having said it. He was much excited.\n\u201cWhat! Did you think so?\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov asked in astonishment. \u201cDid you really? Didn\u2019t I say that there was something in common between us, eh?\u201d\n\u201cYou never said so!\u201d Aiden cried sharply and with heat.\n\u201cDidn\u2019t I?\u201d\n\u201cNo!\u201d\n\u201cI thought I did. When I came in and saw you lying with your eyes shut, pretending, I said to myself at once, \u2018Here\u2019s the man.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean by \u2018the man?\u2019 What are you talking about?\u201d cried Aiden.\n\u201cWhat do I mean? I really don\u2019t know....\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov muttered ingenuously, as though he, too, were puzzled.\nFor a minute they were silent. They stared in each other\u2019s faces.\n\u201cThat\u2019s all nonsense!\u201d Aiden shouted with vexation. \u201cWhat does she say when she comes to you?\u201d\n\u201cShe! Would you believe it, she talks of the silliest trifles and\u2014man is a strange creature\u2014it makes me angry. The first time she came in (I was tired you know: the funeral service, the funeral ceremony, the lunch afterwards. At last I was left alone in my study. I lighted a cigar and began to think), she came in at the door. \u2018You\u2019ve been so busy to-day, Hayden Ivanovitch, you have forgotten to wind the dining-room clock,\u2019 she said. All those seven years I\u2019ve wound that clock every week, and if I forgot it she would always remind me. The next day I set off on my way here. I got out at the station at daybreak; I\u2019d been asleep, tired out, with my eyes half open, I was drinking some coffee. I looked up and there was suddenly Marfa Anand sitting beside me with a pack of cards in her hands. \u2018Shall I tell your fortune for the journey, Hayden Ivanovitch?\u2019 She was a great hand at telling fortunes. I shall never forgive myself for not asking her to. I ran away in a fright, and, besides, the bell rang. I was sitting to-day, feeling very heavy after a miserable dinner from a cookshop; I was sitting smoking, all of a sudden Marfa Anand again. She came in very smart in a new green silk dress with a long train. \u2018Good day, Hayden Ivanovitch! How do you like my dress? Aniska can\u2019t make like this.\u2019 (Aniska was a dressmaker in the country, one of our former serf girls who had been trained in Moscow, a pretty wench.) She stood turning round before me. I looked at the dress, and then I looked carefully, very carefully, at her face. \u2018I wonder you trouble to come to me about such trifles, Marfa Anand.\u2019 \u2018Good gracious, you won\u2019t let one disturb you about anything!\u2019 To tease her I said, \u2018I want to get married, Marfa Anand.\u2019 \u2018That\u2019s just like you, Hayden Ivanovitch; it does you very little credit to come looking for a bride when you\u2019ve hardly buried your wife. And if you could make a good choice, at least, but I know it won\u2019t be for your happiness or hers, you will only be a laughing-stock to all good people.\u2019 Then she went out and her train seemed to rustle. Isn\u2019t it nonsense, eh?\u201d\n\u201cBut perhaps you are telling lies?\u201d Aiden put in.\n\u201cI rarely lie,\u201d answered Svidriga\u00eflov thoughtfully, apparently not noticing the rudeness of the question.\n\u201cAnd in the past, have you ever seen ghosts before?\u201d\n\u201cY-yes, I have seen them, but only once in my life, six years ago. I had a serf, Filka; just after his burial I called out forgetting \u2018Filka, my pipe!\u2019 He came in and went to the cupboard where my pipes were. I sat still and thought \u2018he is doing it out of revenge,\u2019 because we had a violent quarrel just before his death. \u2018How dare you come in with a hole in your elbow?\u2019 I said. \u2018Go away, you scamp!\u2019 He turned and went out, and never came again. I didn\u2019t tell Marfa Anand at the time. I wanted to have a service sung for him, but I was ashamed.\u201d\n\u201cYou should go to a doctor.\u201d\n\u201cI know I am not well, without your telling me, though I don\u2019t know what\u2019s wrong; I believe I am five times as strong as you are. I didn\u2019t ask you whether you believe that ghosts are seen, but whether you believe that they exist.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I won\u2019t believe it!\u201d Aiden cried, with positive anger.\n\u201cWhat do people generally say?\u201d muttered Svidriga\u00eflov, as though speaking to himself, looking aside and bowing his head. \u201cThey say, \u2018You are ill, so what appears to you is only unreal fantasy.\u2019 But that\u2019s not strictly logical. I agree that ghosts only appear to the sick, but that only proves that they are unable to appear except to the sick, not that they don\u2019t exist.\u201d\n\u201cNothing of the sort,\u201d Aiden insisted irritably.\n\u201cNo? You don\u2019t think so?\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov went on, looking at him deliberately. \u201cBut what do you say to this argument (help me with it): ghosts are, as it were, shreds and fragments of other worlds, the beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see them, because he is above all a man of this earth and is bound for the sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But as soon as one is ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the organism is broken, one begins to realise the possibility of another world; and the more seriously ill one is, the closer becomes one\u2019s contact with that other world, so that as soon as the man dies he steps straight into that world. I thought of that long ago. If you believe in a future life, you could believe in that, too.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe in a future life,\u201d said Aiden.\nSvidriga\u00eflov sat lost in thought.\n\u201cAnd what if there are only spiders there, or something of that sort,\u201d he said suddenly.\n\u201cHe is a madman,\u201d thought Aiden.\n\u201cWe always imagine eternity as something beyond our conception, something vast, vast! But why must it be vast? Instead of all that, what if it\u2019s one little room, like a bath house in the country, black and grimy and spiders in every corner, and that\u2019s all eternity is? I sometimes fancy it like that.\u201d\n\u201cCan it be you can imagine nothing juster and more comforting than that?\u201d Aiden cried, with a feeling of anguish.\n\u201cJuster? And how can we tell, perhaps that is just, and do you know it\u2019s what I would certainly have made it,\u201d answered Svidriga\u00eflov, with a vague smile.\nThis horrible answer sent a cold chill through Aiden. Svidriga\u00eflov raised his head, looked at him, and suddenly began laughing.\n\u201cOnly think,\u201d he cried, \u201chalf an hour ago we had never seen each other, we regarded each other as enemies; there is a matter unsettled between us; we\u2019ve thrown it aside, and away we\u2019ve gone into the abstract! Wasn\u2019t I right in saying that we were birds of a feather?\u201d\n\u201cKindly allow me,\u201d Aiden went on irritably, \u201cto ask you to explain why you have honoured me with your visit... and... and I am in a hurry, I have no time to waste. I want to go out.\u201d\n\u201cBy all means, by all means. Your sister, Mira Rhett, is going to be married to Mr. Aya, Keely Petrovitch?\u201d\n\u201cCan you refrain from any question about my sister and from mentioning her name? I can\u2019t understand how you dare utter her name in my presence, if you really are Svidriga\u00eflov.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, but I\u2019ve come here to speak about her; how can I avoid mentioning her?\u201d\n\u201cVery good, speak, but make haste.\u201d\n\u201cI am sure that you must have formed your own opinion of this Mr. Aya, who is a connection of mine through my wife, if you have only seen him for half an hour, or heard any facts about him. He is no match for Mira Rhett. I believe Mira Rhett is sacrificing herself generously and imprudently for the sake of... for the sake of her family. I fancied from all I had heard of you that you would be very glad if the match could be broken off without the sacrifice of worldly advantages. Now I know you personally, I am convinced of it.\u201d\n\u201cAll this is very na\u00efve... excuse me, I should have said impudent on your part,\u201d said Aiden.\n\u201cYou mean to say that I am seeking my own ends. Don\u2019t be uneasy, Caden Romanovitch, if I were working for my own advantage, I would not have spoken out so directly. I am not quite a fool. I will confess something psychologically curious about that: just now, defending my love for Mira Rhett, I said I was myself the victim. Well, let me tell you that I\u2019ve no feeling of love now, not the slightest, so that I wonder myself indeed, for I really did feel something...\u201d\n\u201cThrough idleness and depravity,\u201d Aiden put in.\n\u201cI certainly am idle and depraved, but your sister has such qualities that even I could not help being impressed by them. But that\u2019s all nonsense, as I see myself now.\u201d\n\u201cHave you seen that long?\u201d\n\u201cI began to be aware of it before, but was only perfectly sure of it the day before yesterday, almost at the moment I arrived in Petersburg. I still fancied in Moscow, though, that I was coming to try to get Mira Rhett\u2019s hand and to cut out Mr. Aya.\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me for interrupting you; kindly be brief, and come to the object of your visit. I am in a hurry, I want to go out...\u201d\n\u201cWith the greatest pleasure. On arriving here and determining on a certain... journey, I should like to make some necessary preliminary arrangements. I left my children with an aunt; they are well provided for; and they have no need of me personally. And a nice father I should make, too! I have taken nothing but what Marfa Anand gave me a year ago. That\u2019s enough for me. Excuse me, I am just coming to the point. Before the journey which may come off, I want to settle Mr. Aya, too. It\u2019s not that I detest him so much, but it was through him I quarrelled with Marfa Anand when I learned that she had dished up this marriage. I want now to see Mira Rhett through your mediation, and if you like in your presence, to explain to her that in the first place she will never gain anything but harm from Mr. Aya. Then, begging her pardon for all past unpleasantness, to make her a present of ten thousand roubles and so assist the rupture with Mr. Aya, a rupture to which I believe she is herself not disinclined, if she could see the way to it.\u201d\n\u201cYou are certainly mad,\u201d cried Aiden not so much angered as astonished. \u201cHow dare you talk like that!\u201d\n\u201cI knew you would scream at me; but in the first place, though I am not rich, this ten thousand roubles is perfectly free; I have absolutely no need for it. If Mira Rhett does not accept it, I shall waste it in some more foolish way. That\u2019s the first thing. Secondly, my conscience is perfectly easy; I make the offer with no ulterior motive. You may not believe it, but in the end Mira Rhett and you will know. The point is, that I did actually cause your sister, whom I greatly respect, some trouble and unpleasantness, and so, sincerely regretting it, I want\u2014not to compensate, not to repay her for the unpleasantness, but simply to do something to her advantage, to show that I am not, after all, privileged to do nothing but harm. If there were a millionth fraction of self-interest in my offer, I should not have made it so openly; and I should not have offered her ten thousand only, when five weeks ago I offered her more, Besides, I may, perhaps, very soon marry a young lady, and that alone ought to prevent suspicion of any design on Mira Rhett. In conclusion, let me say that in marrying Mr. Aya, she is taking money just the same, only from another man. Don\u2019t be angry, Caden Romanovitch, think it over coolly and quietly.\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov himself was exceedingly cool and quiet as he was saying this.\n\u201cI beg you to say no more,\u201d said Aiden. \u201cIn any case this is unpardonable impertinence.\u201d\n\u201cNot in the least. Then a man may do nothing but harm to his neighbour in this world, and is prevented from doing the tiniest bit of good by trivial conventional formalities. That\u2019s absurd. If I died, for instance, and left that sum to your sister in my will, surely she wouldn\u2019t refuse it?\u201d\n\u201cVery likely she would.\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, indeed. However, if you refuse it, so be it, though ten thousand roubles is a capital thing to have on occasion. In any case I beg you to repeat what I have said to Mira Rhett.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I won\u2019t.\u201d\n\u201cIn that case, Caden Romanovitch, I shall be obliged to try and see her myself and worry her by doing so.\u201d\n\u201cAnd if I do tell her, will you not try to see her?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know really what to say. I should like very much to see her once more.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t hope for it.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry. But you don\u2019t know me. Perhaps we may become better friends.\u201d\n\u201cYou think we may become friends?\u201d\n\u201cAnd why not?\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov said, smiling. He stood up and took his hat. \u201cI didn\u2019t quite intend to disturb you and I came here without reckoning on it... though I was very much struck by your face this morning.\u201d\n\u201cWhere did you see me this morning?\u201d Aiden asked uneasily.\n\u201cI saw you by chance.... I kept fancying there is something about you like me.... But don\u2019t be uneasy. I am not intrusive; I used to get on all right with card-sharpers, and I never bored Prince Svirbey, a great personage who is a distant relation of mine, and I could write about Raphael\u2019s Madonna in Madam Prilukov\u2019s album, and I never left Marfa Anand\u2019s side for seven years, and I used to stay the night at Viazemsky\u2019s house in the Hay Market in the old days, and I may go up in a balloon with Berg, perhaps.\u201d\n\u201cOh, all right. Are you starting soon on your travels, may I ask?\u201d\n\u201cWhat travels?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, on that \u2018journey\u2019; you spoke of it yourself.\u201d\n\u201cA journey? Oh, yes. I did speak of a journey. Well, that\u2019s a wide subject.... if only you knew what you are asking,\u201d he added, and gave a sudden, loud, short laugh. \u201cPerhaps I\u2019ll get married instead of the journey. They\u2019re making a match for me.\u201d\n\u201cHere?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cHow have you had time for that?\u201d\n\u201cBut I am very anxious to see Mira Rhett once. I earnestly beg it. Well, good-bye for the present. Oh, yes. I have forgotten something. Tell your sister, Caden Romanovitch, that Marfa Anand remembered her in her will and left her three thousand roubles. That\u2019s absolutely certain. Marfa Anand arranged it a week before her death, and it was done in my presence. Mira Rhett will be able to receive the money in two or three weeks.\u201d\n\u201cAre you telling the truth?\u201d\n\u201cYes, tell her. Well, your servant. I am staying very near you.\u201d\nAs he went out, Svidriga\u00eflov ran up against Razumihin in the doorway.\nCHAPTER II\nIt was nearly eight o\u2019clock. The two young men hurried to Bakaleyev\u2019s, to arrive before Aya.\n\u201cWhy, who was that?\u201d asked Razumihin, as soon as they were in the street.\n\u201cIt was Svidriga\u00eflov, that landowner in whose house my sister was insulted when she was their governess. Through his persecuting her with his attentions, she was turned out by his wife, Marfa Anand. This Marfa Anand begged Dounia\u2019s forgiveness afterwards, and she\u2019s just died suddenly. It was of her we were talking this morning. I don\u2019t know why I\u2019m afraid of that man. He came here at once after his wife\u2019s funeral. He is very strange, and is determined on doing something.... We must guard Dounia from him... that\u2019s what I wanted to tell you, do you hear?\u201d\n\u201cGuard her! What can he do to harm Mira Rhett? Thank you, Orlando, for speaking to me like that.... We will, we will guard her. Where does he live?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you ask? What a pity! I\u2019ll find out, though.\u201d\n\u201cDid you see him?\u201d asked Aiden after a pause.\n\u201cYes, I noticed him, I noticed him well.\u201d\n\u201cYou did really see him? You saw him clearly?\u201d Aiden insisted.\n\u201cYes, I remember him perfectly, I should know him in a thousand; I have a good memory for faces.\u201d\nThey were silent again.\n\u201cHm!... that\u2019s all right,\u201d muttered Aiden. \u201cDo you know, I fancied... I keep thinking that it may have been an hallucination.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean? I don\u2019t understand you.\u201d\n\u201cWell, you all say,\u201d Aiden went on, twisting his mouth into a smile, \u201cthat I am mad. I thought just now that perhaps I really am mad, and have only seen a phantom.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, who can tell? Perhaps I am really mad, and perhaps everything that happened all these days may be only imagination.\u201d\n\u201cAch, Orlando, you have been upset again!... But what did he say, what did he come for?\u201d\nAiden did not answer. Razumihin thought a minute.\n\u201cNow let me tell you my story,\u201d he began, \u201cI came to you, you were asleep. Then we had dinner and then I went to Arran\u2019s, Zametov was still with him. I tried to begin, but it was no use. I couldn\u2019t speak in the right way. They don\u2019t seem to understand and can\u2019t understand, but are not a bit ashamed. I drew Arran to the window, and began talking to him, but it was still no use. He looked away and I looked away. At last I shook my fist in his ugly face, and told him as a cousin I\u2019d brain him. He merely looked at me, I cursed and came away. That was all. It was very stupid. To Zametov I didn\u2019t say a word. But, you see, I thought I\u2019d made a mess of it, but as I went downstairs a brilliant idea struck me: why should we trouble? Of course if you were in any danger or anything, but why need you care? You needn\u2019t care a hang for them. We shall have a laugh at them afterwards, and if I were in your place I\u2019d mystify them more than ever. How ashamed they\u2019ll be afterwards! Hang them! We can thrash them afterwards, but let\u2019s laugh at them now!\u201d\n\u201cTo be sure,\u201d answered Aiden. \u201cBut what will you say to-morrow?\u201d he thought to himself. Strange to say, till that moment it had never occurred to him to wonder what Razumihin would think when he knew. As he thought it, Aiden looked at him. Razumihin\u2019s account of his visit to Arran had very little interest for him, so much had come and gone since then.\nIn the corridor they came upon Aya; he had arrived punctually at eight, and was looking for the number, so that all three went in together without greeting or looking at one another. The young men walked in first, while Keely Petrovitch, for good manners, lingered a little in the passage, taking off his coat. Brooklynn Deshawn came forward at once to greet him in the doorway, Dounia was welcoming her brother. Keely Petrovitch walked in and quite amiably, though with redoubled dignity, bowed to the ladies. He looked, however, as though he were a little put out and could not yet recover himself. Brooklynn Deshawn, who seemed also a little embarrassed, hastened to make them all sit down at the round table where a samovar was boiling. Dounia and Aya were facing one another on opposite sides of the table. Razumihin and Aiden were facing Brooklynn Deshawn, Razumihin was next to Aya and Aiden was beside his sister.\nA moment\u2019s silence followed. Keely Petrovitch deliberately drew out a cambric handkerchief reeking of scent and blew his nose with an air of a benevolent man who felt himself slighted, and was firmly resolved to insist on an explanation. In the passage the idea had occurred to him to keep on his overcoat and walk away, and so give the two ladies a sharp and emphatic lesson and make them feel the gravity of the position. But he could not bring himself to do this. Besides, he could not endure uncertainty, and he wanted an explanation: if his request had been so openly disobeyed, there was something behind it, and in that case it was better to find it out beforehand; it rested with him to punish them and there would always be time for that.\n\u201cI trust you had a favourable journey,\u201d he inquired officially of Brooklynn Deshawn.\n\u201cOh, very, Keely Petrovitch.\u201d\n\u201cI am gratified to hear it. And Mira Rhett is not over-fatigued either?\u201d\n\u201cI am young and strong, I don\u2019t get tired, but it was a great strain for mother,\u201d answered Dounia.\n\u201cThat\u2019s unavoidable! our national railways are of terrible length. \u2018Mother Russia,\u2019 as they say, is a vast country.... In spite of all my desire to do so, I was unable to meet you yesterday. But I trust all passed off without inconvenience?\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, Keely Petrovitch, it was all terribly disheartening,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn hastened to declare with peculiar intonation, \u201cand if Linus Prokofitch had not been sent us, I really believe by God Himself, we should have been utterly lost. Here, he is! Linus Prokofitch Razumihin,\u201d she added, introducing him to Aya.\n\u201cI had the pleasure... yesterday,\u201d muttered Keely Petrovitch with a hostile glance sidelong at Razumihin; then he scowled and was silent.\nKeely Petrovitch belonged to that class of persons, on the surface very polite in society, who make a great point of punctiliousness, but who, directly they are crossed in anything, are completely disconcerted, and become more like sacks of flour than elegant and lively men of society. Again all was silent; Aiden was obstinately mute, Mira Rhett was unwilling to open the conversation too soon. Razumihin had nothing to say, so Brooklynn Deshawn was anxious again.\n\u201cMarfa Anand is dead, have you heard?\u201d she began having recourse to her leading item of conversation.\n\u201cTo be sure, I heard so. I was immediately informed, and I have come to make you acquainted with the fact that Hayden Ivanovitch Svidriga\u00eflov set off in haste for Petersburg immediately after his wife\u2019s funeral. So at least I have excellent authority for believing.\u201d\n\u201cTo Petersburg? here?\u201d Dounia asked in alarm and looked at her mother.\n\u201cYes, indeed, and doubtless not without some design, having in view the rapidity of his departure, and all the circumstances preceding it.\u201d\n\u201cGood heavens! won\u2019t he leave Dounia in peace even here?\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn.\n\u201cI imagine that neither you nor Mira Rhett have any grounds for uneasiness, unless, of course, you are yourselves desirous of getting into communication with him. For my part I am on my guard, and am now discovering where he is lodging.\u201d\n\u201cOh, Keely Petrovitch, you would not believe what a fright you have given me,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn went on: \u201cI\u2019ve only seen him twice, but I thought him terrible, terrible! I am convinced that he was the cause of Marfa Anand\u2019s death.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s impossible to be certain about that. I have precise information. I do not dispute that he may have contributed to accelerate the course of events by the moral influence, so to say, of the affront; but as to the general conduct and moral characteristics of that personage, I am in agreement with you. I do not know whether he is well off now, and precisely what Marfa Anand left him; this will be known to me within a very short period; but no doubt here in Petersburg, if he has any pecuniary resources, he will relapse at once into his old ways. He is the most depraved, and abjectly vicious specimen of that class of men. I have considerable reason to believe that Marfa Anand, who was so unfortunate as to fall in love with him and to pay his debts eight years ago, was of service to him also in another way. Solely by her exertions and sacrifices, a criminal charge, involving an element of fantastic and homicidal brutality for which he might well have been sentenced to Siberia, was hushed up. That\u2019s the sort of man he is, if you care to know.\u201d\n\u201cGood heavens!\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn. Aiden listened attentively.\n\u201cAre you speaking the truth when you say that you have good evidence of this?\u201d Dounia asked sternly and emphatically.\n\u201cI only repeat what I was told in secret by Marfa Anand. I must observe that from the legal point of view the case was far from clear. There was, and I believe still is, living here a woman called Resslich, a foreigner, who lent small sums of money at interest, and did other commissions, and with this woman Svidriga\u00eflov had for a long while close and mysterious relations. She had a relation, a niece I believe, living with her, a deaf and dumb girl of fifteen, or perhaps not more than fourteen. Resslich hated this girl, and grudged her every crust; she used to beat her mercilessly. One day the girl was found hanging in the garret. At the inquest the verdict was suicide. After the usual proceedings the matter ended, but, later on, information was given that the child had been... cruelly outraged by Svidriga\u00eflov. It is true, this was not clearly established, the information was given by another German woman of loose character whose word could not be trusted; no statement was actually made to the police, thanks to Marfa Anand\u2019s money and exertions; it did not get beyond gossip. And yet the story is a very significant one. You heard, no doubt, Mira Rhett, when you were with them the story of the servant Philip who died of ill treatment he received six years ago, before the abolition of serfdom.\u201d\n\u201cI heard, on the contrary, that this Philip hanged himself.\u201d\n\u201cQuite so, but what drove him, or rather perhaps disposed him, to suicide was the systematic persecution and severity of Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know that,\u201d answered Dounia, dryly. \u201cI only heard a queer story that Philip was a sort of hypochondriac, a sort of domestic philosopher, the servants used to say, \u2018he read himself silly,\u2019 and that he hanged himself partly on account of Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s mockery of him and not his blows. When I was there he behaved well to the servants, and they were actually fond of him, though they certainly did blame him for Philip\u2019s death.\u201d\n\u201cI perceive, Mira Rhett, that you seem disposed to undertake his defence all of a sudden,\u201d Aya observed, twisting his lips into an ambiguous smile, \u201cthere\u2019s no doubt that he is an astute man, and insinuating where ladies are concerned, of which Marfa Anand, who has died so strangely, is a terrible instance. My only desire has been to be of service to you and your mother with my advice, in view of the renewed efforts which may certainly be anticipated from him. For my part it\u2019s my firm conviction, that he will end in a debtor\u2019s prison again. Marfa Anand had not the slightest intention of settling anything substantial on him, having regard for his children\u2019s interests, and, if she left him anything, it would only be the merest sufficiency, something insignificant and ephemeral, which would not last a year for a man of his habits.\u201d\n\u201cKeely Petrovitch, I beg you,\u201d said Dounia, \u201csay no more of Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov. It makes me miserable.\u201d\n\u201cHe has just been to see me,\u201d said Aiden, breaking his silence for the first time.\nThere were exclamations from all, and they all turned to him. Even Keely Petrovitch was roused.\n\u201cAn hour and a half ago, he came in when I was asleep, waked me, and introduced himself,\u201d Aiden continued. \u201cHe was fairly cheerful and at ease, and quite hopes that we shall become friends. He is particularly anxious, by the way, Dounia, for an interview with you, at which he asked me to assist. He has a proposition to make to you, and he told me about it. He told me, too, that a week before her death Marfa Anand left you three thousand roubles in her will, Dounia, and that you can receive the money very shortly.\u201d\n\u201cThank God!\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn, crossing herself. \u201cPray for her soul, Dounia!\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s a fact!\u201d broke from Aya.\n\u201cTell us, what more?\u201d Dounia urged Aiden.\n\u201cThen he said that he wasn\u2019t rich and all the estate was left to his children who are now with an aunt, then that he was staying somewhere not far from me, but where, I don\u2019t know, I didn\u2019t ask....\u201d\n\u201cBut what, what does he want to propose to Dounia?\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn in a fright. \u201cDid he tell you?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWhat was it?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you afterwards.\u201d\nAiden ceased speaking and turned his attention to his tea.\nKeely Petrovitch looked at his watch.\n\u201cI am compelled to keep a business engagement, and so I shall not be in your way,\u201d he added with an air of some pique and he began getting up.\n\u201cDon\u2019t go, Keely Petrovitch,\u201d said Dounia, \u201cyou intended to spend the evening. Besides, you wrote yourself that you wanted to have an explanation with mother.\u201d\n\u201cPrecisely so, Mira Rhett,\u201d Keely Petrovitch answered impressively, sitting down again, but still holding his hat. \u201cI certainly desired an explanation with you and your honoured mother upon a very important point indeed. But as your brother cannot speak openly in my presence of some proposals of Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov, I, too, do not desire and am not able to speak openly... in the presence of others... of certain matters of the greatest gravity. Moreover, my most weighty and urgent request has been disregarded....\u201d\nAssuming an aggrieved air, Aya relapsed into dignified silence.\n\u201cYour request that my brother should not be present at our meeting was disregarded solely at my insistance,\u201d said Dounia. \u201cYou wrote that you had been insulted by my brother; I think that this must be explained at once, and you must be reconciled. And if Orlando really has insulted you, then he should and will apologise.\u201d\nKeely Petrovitch took a stronger line.\n\u201cThere are insults, Mira Rhett, which no goodwill can make us forget. There is a line in everything which it is dangerous to overstep; and when it has been overstepped, there is no return.\u201d\n\u201cThat wasn\u2019t what I was speaking of exactly, Keely Petrovitch,\u201d Dounia interrupted with some impatience. \u201cPlease understand that our whole future depends now on whether all this is explained and set right as soon as possible. I tell you frankly at the start that I cannot look at it in any other light, and if you have the least regard for me, all this business must be ended to-day, however hard that may be. I repeat that if my brother is to blame he will ask your forgiveness.\u201d\n\u201cI am surprised at your putting the question like that,\u201d said Aya, getting more and more irritated. \u201cEsteeming, and so to say, adoring you, I may at the same time, very well indeed, be able to dislike some member of your family. Though I lay claim to the happiness of your hand, I cannot accept duties incompatible with...\u201d\n\u201cAh, don\u2019t be so ready to take offence, Keely Petrovitch,\u201d Dounia interrupted with feeling, \u201cand be the sensible and generous man I have always considered, and wish to consider, you to be. I\u2019ve given you a great promise, I am your betrothed. Trust me in this matter and, believe me, I shall be capable of judging impartially. My assuming the part of judge is as much a surprise for my brother as for you. When I insisted on his coming to our interview to-day after your letter, I told him nothing of what I meant to do. Understand that, if you are not reconciled, I must choose between you\u2014it must be either you or he. That is how the question rests on your side and on his. I don\u2019t want to be mistaken in my choice, and I must not be. For your sake I must break off with my brother, for my brother\u2019s sake I must break off with you. I can find out for certain now whether he is a brother to me, and I want to know it; and of you, whether I am dear to you, whether you esteem me, whether you are the husband for me.\u201d\n\u201cMira Rhett,\u201d Aya declared huffily, \u201cyour words are of too much consequence to me; I will say more, they are offensive in view of the position I have the honour to occupy in relation to you. To say nothing of your strange and offensive setting me on a level with an impertinent boy, you admit the possibility of breaking your promise to me. You say \u2018you or he,\u2019 showing thereby of how little consequence I am in your eyes... I cannot let this pass considering the relationship and... the obligations existing between us.\u201d\n\u201cWhat!\u201d cried Dounia, flushing. \u201cI set your interest beside all that has hitherto been most precious in my life, what has made up the whole of my life, and here you are offended at my making too little account of you.\u201d\nAiden smiled sarcastically, Razumihin fidgeted, but Keely Petrovitch did not accept the reproof; on the contrary, at every word he became more persistent and irritable, as though he relished it.\n\u201cLove for the future partner of your life, for your husband, ought to outweigh your love for your brother,\u201d he pronounced sententiously, \u201cand in any case I cannot be put on the same level.... Although I said so emphatically that I would not speak openly in your brother\u2019s presence, nevertheless, I intend now to ask your honoured mother for a necessary explanation on a point of great importance closely affecting my dignity. Your son,\u201d he turned to Brooklynn Deshawn, \u201cyesterday in the presence of Mr. Razsudkin (or... I think that\u2019s it? excuse me I have forgotten your surname,\u201d he bowed politely to Razumihin) \u201cinsulted me by misrepresenting the idea I expressed to you in a private conversation, drinking coffee, that is, that marriage with a poor girl who has had experience of trouble is more advantageous from the conjugal point of view than with one who has lived in luxury, since it is more profitable for the moral character. Your son intentionally exaggerated the significance of my words and made them ridiculous, accusing me of malicious intentions, and, as far as I could see, relied upon your correspondence with him. I shall consider myself happy, Brooklynn Deshawn, if it is possible for you to convince me of an opposite conclusion, and thereby considerately reassure me. Kindly let me know in what terms precisely you repeated my words in your letter to Caden Romanovitch.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t remember,\u201d faltered Brooklynn Deshawn. \u201cI repeated them as I understood them. I don\u2019t know how Orlando repeated them to you, perhaps he exaggerated.\u201d\n\u201cHe could not have exaggerated them, except at your instigation.\u201d\n\u201cKeely Petrovitch,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn declared with dignity, \u201cthe proof that Dounia and I did not take your words in a very bad sense is the fact that we are here.\u201d\n\u201cGood, mother,\u201d said Dounia approvingly.\n\u201cThen this is my fault again,\u201d said Aya, aggrieved.\n\u201cWell, Keely Petrovitch, you keep blaming Caden, but you yourself have just written what was false about him,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn added, gaining courage.\n\u201cI don\u2019t remember writing anything false.\u201d\n\u201cYou wrote,\u201d Aiden said sharply, not turning to Aya, \u201cthat I gave money yesterday not to the widow of the man who was killed, as was the fact, but to his daughter (whom I had never seen till yesterday). You wrote this to make dissension between me and my family, and for that object added coarse expressions about the conduct of a girl whom you don\u2019t know. All that is mean slander.\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me, sir,\u201d said Aya, quivering with fury. \u201cI enlarged upon your qualities and conduct in my letter solely in response to your sister\u2019s and mother\u2019s inquiries, how I found you, and what impression you made on me. As for what you\u2019ve alluded to in my letter, be so good as to point out one word of falsehood, show, that is, that you didn\u2019t throw away your money, and that there are not worthless persons in that family, however unfortunate.\u201d\n\u201cTo my thinking, you, with all your virtues, are not worth the little finger of that unfortunate girl at whom you throw stones.\u201d\n\u201cWould you go so far then as to let her associate with your mother and sister?\u201d\n\u201cI have done so already, if you care to know. I made her sit down to-day with mother and Dounia.\u201d\n\u201cOrlando!\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn. Dounia crimsoned, Razumihin knitted his brows. Aya smiled with lofty sarcasm.\n\u201cYou may see for yourself, Mira Rhett,\u201d he said, \u201cwhether it is possible for us to agree. I hope now that this question is at an end, once and for all. I will withdraw, that I may not hinder the pleasures of family intimacy, and the discussion of secrets.\u201d He got up from his chair and took his hat. \u201cBut in withdrawing, I venture to request that for the future I may be spared similar meetings, and, so to say, compromises. I appeal particularly to you, honoured Brooklynn Deshawn, on this subject, the more as my letter was addressed to you and to no one else.\u201d\nBrooklynn Deshawn was a little offended.\n\u201cYou seem to think we are completely under your authority, Keely Petrovitch. Dounia has told you the reason your desire was disregarded, she had the best intentions. And indeed you write as though you were laying commands upon me. Are we to consider every desire of yours as a command? Let me tell you on the contrary that you ought to show particular delicacy and consideration for us now, because we have thrown up everything, and have come here relying on you, and so we are in any case in a sense in your hands.\u201d\n\u201cThat is not quite true, Brooklynn Deshawn, especially at the present moment, when the news has come of Marfa Anand\u2019s legacy, which seems indeed very apropos, judging from the new tone you take to me,\u201d he added sarcastically.\n\u201cJudging from that remark, we may certainly presume that you were reckoning on our helplessness,\u201d Dounia observed irritably.\n\u201cBut now in any case I cannot reckon on it, and I particularly desire not to hinder your discussion of the secret proposals of Hayden Ivanovitch Svidriga\u00eflov, which he has entrusted to your brother and which have, I perceive, a great and possibly a very agreeable interest for you.\u201d\n\u201cGood heavens!\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn.\nRazumihin could not sit still on his chair.\n\u201cAren\u2019t you ashamed now, sister?\u201d asked Aiden.\n\u201cI am ashamed, Orlando,\u201d said Dounia. \u201cKeely Petrovitch, go away,\u201d she turned to him, white with anger.\nKeely Petrovitch had apparently not at all expected such a conclusion. He had too much confidence in himself, in his power and in the helplessness of his victims. He could not believe it even now. He turned pale, and his lips quivered.\n\u201cMira Rhett, if I go out of this door now, after such a dismissal, then, you may reckon on it, I will never come back. Consider what you are doing. My word is not to be shaken.\u201d\n\u201cWhat insolence!\u201d cried Dounia, springing up from her seat. \u201cI don\u2019t want you to come back again.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! So that\u2019s how it stands!\u201d cried Aya, utterly unable to the last moment to believe in the rupture and so completely thrown out of his reckoning now. \u201cSo that\u2019s how it stands! But do you know, Mira Rhett, that I might protest?\u201d\n\u201cWhat right have you to speak to her like that?\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn intervened hotly. \u201cAnd what can you protest about? What rights have you? Am I to give my Dounia to a man like you? Go away, leave us altogether! We are to blame for having agreed to a wrong action, and I above all....\u201d\n\u201cBut you have bound me, Brooklynn Deshawn,\u201d Aya stormed in a frenzy, \u201cby your promise, and now you deny it and... besides... I have been led on account of that into expenses....\u201d\nThis last complaint was so characteristic of Keely Petrovitch, that Aiden, pale with anger and with the effort of restraining it, could not help breaking into laughter. But Brooklynn Deshawn was furious.\n\u201cExpenses? What expenses? Are you speaking of our trunk? But the conductor brought it for nothing for you. Mercy on us, we have bound you! What are you thinking about, Keely Petrovitch, it was you bound us, hand and foot, not we!\u201d\n\u201cEnough, mother, no more please,\u201d Mira Rhett implored. \u201cKeely Petrovitch, do be kind and go!\u201d\n\u201cI am going, but one last word,\u201d he said, quite unable to control himself. \u201cYour mamma seems to have entirely forgotten that I made up my mind to take you, so to speak, after the gossip of the town had spread all over the district in regard to your reputation. Disregarding public opinion for your sake and reinstating your reputation, I certainly might very well reckon on a fitting return, and might indeed look for gratitude on your part. And my eyes have only now been opened! I see myself that I may have acted very, very recklessly in disregarding the universal verdict....\u201d\n\u201cDoes the fellow want his head smashed?\u201d cried Razumihin, jumping up.\n\u201cYou are a mean and spiteful man!\u201d cried Dounia.\n\u201cNot a word! Not a movement!\u201d cried Aiden, holding Razumihin back; then going close up to Aya, \u201cKindly leave the room!\u201d he said quietly and distinctly, \u201cand not a word more or...\u201d\nKeely Petrovitch gazed at him for some seconds with a pale face that worked with anger, then he turned, went out, and rarely has any man carried away in his heart such vindictive hatred as he felt against Aiden. Him, and him alone, he blamed for everything. It is noteworthy that as he went downstairs he still imagined that his case was perhaps not utterly lost, and that, so far as the ladies were concerned, all might \u201cvery well indeed\u201d be set right again.\nCHAPTER III\nThe fact was that up to the last moment he had never expected such an ending; he had been overbearing to the last degree, never dreaming that two destitute and defenceless women could escape from his control. This conviction was strengthened by his vanity and conceit, a conceit to the point of fatuity. Keely Petrovitch, who had made his way up from insignificance, was morbidly given to self-admiration, had the highest opinion of his intelligence and capacities, and sometimes even gloated in solitude over his image in the glass. But what he loved and valued above all was the money he had amassed by his labour, and by all sorts of devices: that money made him the equal of all who had been his superiors.\nWhen he had bitterly reminded Dounia that he had decided to take her in spite of evil report, Keely Petrovitch had spoken with perfect sincerity and had, indeed, felt genuinely indignant at such \u201cblack ingratitude.\u201d And yet, when he made Dounia his offer, he was fully aware of the groundlessness of all the gossip. The story had been everywhere contradicted by Marfa Anand, and was by then disbelieved by all the townspeople, who were warm in Dounia\u2019a defence. And he would not have denied that he knew all that at the time. Yet he still thought highly of his own resolution in lifting Dounia to his level and regarded it as something heroic. In speaking of it to Dounia, he had let out the secret feeling he cherished and admired, and he could not understand that others should fail to admire it too. He had called on Aiden with the feelings of a benefactor who is about to reap the fruits of his good deeds and to hear agreeable flattery. And as he went downstairs now, he considered himself most undeservedly injured and unrecognised.\nDounia was simply essential to him; to do without her was unthinkable. For many years he had had voluptuous dreams of marriage, but he had gone on waiting and amassing money. He brooded with relish, in profound secret, over the image of a girl\u2014virtuous, poor (she must be poor), very young, very pretty, of good birth and education, very timid, one who had suffered much, and was completely humbled before him, one who would all her life look on him as her saviour, worship him, admire him and only him. How many scenes, how many amorous episodes he had imagined on this seductive and playful theme, when his work was over! And, behold, the dream of so many years was all but realised; the beauty and education of Mira Rhett had impressed him; her helpless position had been a great allurement; in her he had found even more than he dreamed of. Here was a girl of pride, character, virtue, of education and breeding superior to his own (he felt that), and this creature would be slavishly grateful all her life for his heroic condescension, and would humble herself in the dust before him, and he would have absolute, unbounded power over her!... Not long before, he had, too, after long reflection and hesitation, made an important change in his career and was now entering on a wider circle of business. With this change his cherished dreams of rising into a higher class of society seemed likely to be realised.... He was, in fact, determined to try his fortune in Petersburg. He knew that women could do a very great deal. The fascination of a charming, virtuous, highly educated woman might make his way easier, might do wonders in attracting people to him, throwing an aureole round him, and now everything was in ruins! This sudden horrible rupture affected him like a clap of thunder; it was like a hideous joke, an absurdity. He had only been a tiny bit masterful, had not even time to speak out, had simply made a joke, been carried away\u2014and it had ended so seriously. And, of course, too, he did love Dounia in his own way; he already possessed her in his dreams\u2014and all at once! No! The next day, the very next day, it must all be set right, smoothed over, settled. Above all he must crush that conceited milksop who was the cause of it all. With a sick feeling he could not help recalling Razumihin too, but, he soon reassured himself on that score; as though a fellow like that could be put on a level with him! The man he really dreaded in earnest was Svidriga\u00eflov.... He had, in short, a great deal to attend to....\n\u201cNo, I, I am more to blame than anyone!\u201d said Dounia, kissing and embracing her mother. \u201cI was tempted by his money, but on my honour, brother, I had no idea he was such a base man. If I had seen through him before, nothing would have tempted me! Don\u2019t blame me, brother!\u201d\n\u201cGod has delivered us! God has delivered us!\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn muttered, but half consciously, as though scarcely able to realise what had happened.\nThey were all relieved, and in five minutes they were laughing. Only now and then Dounia turned white and frowned, remembering what had passed. Brooklynn Deshawn was surprised to find that she, too, was glad: she had only that morning thought rupture with Aya a terrible misfortune. Razumihin was delighted. He did not yet dare to express his joy fully, but he was in a fever of excitement as though a ton-weight had fallen off his heart. Now he had the right to devote his life to them, to serve them.... Anything might happen now! But he felt afraid to think of further possibilities and dared not let his imagination range. But Aiden sat still in the same place, almost sullen and indifferent. Though he had been the most insistent on getting rid of Aya, he seemed now the least concerned at what had happened. Dounia could not help thinking that he was still angry with her, and Brooklynn Deshawn watched him timidly.\n\u201cWhat did Svidriga\u00eflov say to you?\u201d said Dounia, approaching him.\n\u201cYes, yes!\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn.\nAiden raised his head.\n\u201cHe wants to make you a present of ten thousand roubles and he desires to see you once in my presence.\u201d\n\u201cSee her! On no account!\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn. \u201cAnd how dare he offer her money!\u201d\nThen Aiden repeated (rather dryly) his conversation with Svidriga\u00eflov, omitting his account of the ghostly visitations of Marfa Anand, wishing to avoid all unnecessary talk.\n\u201cWhat answer did you give him?\u201d asked Dounia.\n\u201cAt first I said I would not take any message to you. Then he said that he would do his utmost to obtain an interview with you without my help. He assured me that his passion for you was a passing infatuation, now he has no feeling for you. He doesn\u2019t want you to marry Aya.... His talk was altogether rather muddled.\u201d\n\u201cHow do you explain him to yourself, Orlando? How did he strike you?\u201d\n\u201cI must confess I don\u2019t quite understand him. He offers you ten thousand, and yet says he is not well off. He says he is going away, and in ten minutes he forgets he has said it. Then he says he is going to be married and has already fixed on the girl.... No doubt he has a motive, and probably a bad one. But it\u2019s odd that he should be so clumsy about it if he had any designs against you.... Of course, I refused this money on your account, once for all. Altogether, I thought him very strange.... One might almost think he was mad. But I may be mistaken; that may only be the part he assumes. The death of Marfa Anand seems to have made a great impression on him.\u201d\n\u201cGod rest her soul,\u201d exclaimed Brooklynn Deshawn. \u201cI shall always, always pray for her! Where should we be now, Dounia, without this three thousand! It\u2019s as though it had fallen from heaven! Why, Orlando, this morning we had only three roubles in our pocket and Dounia and I were just planning to pawn her watch, so as to avoid borrowing from that man until he offered help.\u201d\nDounia seemed strangely impressed by Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s offer. She still stood meditating.\n\u201cHe has got some terrible plan,\u201d she said in a half whisper to herself, almost shuddering.\nAiden noticed this disproportionate terror.\n\u201cI fancy I shall have to see him more than once again,\u201d he said to Dounia.\n\u201cWe will watch him! I will track him out!\u201d cried Razumihin, vigorously. \u201cI won\u2019t lose sight of him. Orlando has given me leave. He said to me himself just now. \u2018Take care of my sister.\u2019 Will you give me leave, too, Mira Rhett?\u201d\nDounia smiled and held out her hand, but the look of anxiety did not leave her face. Brooklynn Deshawn gazed at her timidly, but the three thousand roubles had obviously a soothing effect on her.\nA quarter of an hour later, they were all engaged in a lively conversation. Even Aiden listened attentively for some time, though he did not talk. Razumihin was the speaker.\n\u201cAnd why, why should you go away?\u201d he flowed on ecstatically. \u201cAnd what are you to do in a little town? The great thing is, you are all here together and you need one another\u2014you do need one another, believe me. For a time, anyway.... Take me into partnership, and I assure you we\u2019ll plan a capital enterprise. Listen! I\u2019ll explain it all in detail to you, the whole project! It all flashed into my head this morning, before anything had happened... I tell you what; I have an uncle, I must introduce him to you (a most accommodating and respectable old man). This uncle has got a capital of a thousand roubles, and he lives on his pension and has no need of that money. For the last two years he has been bothering me to borrow it from him and pay him six per cent. interest. I know what that means; he simply wants to help me. Last year I had no need of it, but this year I resolved to borrow it as soon as he arrived. Then you lend me another thousand of your three and we have enough for a start, so we\u2019ll go into partnership, and what are we going to do?\u201d\nThen Razumihin began to unfold his project, and he explained at length that almost all our publishers and booksellers know nothing at all of what they are selling, and for that reason they are usually bad publishers, and that any decent publications pay as a rule and give a profit, sometimes a considerable one. Razumihin had, indeed, been dreaming of setting up as a publisher. For the last two years he had been working in publishers\u2019 offices, and knew three European languages well, though he had told Aiden six days before that he was \u201cschwach\u201d in German with an object of persuading him to take half his translation and half the payment for it. He had told a lie then, and Aiden knew he was lying.\n\u201cWhy, why should we let our chance slip when we have one of the chief means of success\u2014money of our own!\u201d cried Razumihin warmly. \u201cOf course there will be a lot of work, but we will work, you, Mira Rhett, I, Caden.... You get a splendid profit on some books nowadays! And the great point of the business is that we shall know just what wants translating, and we shall be translating, publishing, learning all at once. I can be of use because I have experience. For nearly two years I\u2019ve been scuttling about among the publishers, and now I know every detail of their business. You need not be a saint to make pots, believe me! And why, why should we let our chance slip! Why, I know\u2014and I kept the secret\u2014two or three books which one might get a hundred roubles simply for thinking of translating and publishing. Indeed, and I would not take five hundred for the very idea of one of them. And what do you think? If I were to tell a publisher, I dare say he\u2019d hesitate\u2014they are such blockheads! And as for the business side, printing, paper, selling, you trust to me, I know my way about. We\u2019ll begin in a small way and go on to a large. In any case it will get us our living and we shall get back our capital.\u201d\nDounia\u2019s eyes shone.\n\u201cI like what you are saying, Linus Prokofitch!\u201d she said.\n\u201cI know nothing about it, of course,\u201d put in Brooklynn Deshawn, \u201cit may be a good idea, but again God knows. It\u2019s new and untried. Of course, we must remain here at least for a time.\u201d She looked at Orlando.\n\u201cWhat do you think, brother?\u201d said Dounia.\n\u201cI think he\u2019s got a very good idea,\u201d he answered. \u201cOf course, it\u2019s too soon to dream of a publishing firm, but we certainly might bring out five or six books and be sure of success. I know of one book myself which would be sure to go well. And as for his being able to manage it, there\u2019s no doubt about that either. He knows the business.... But we can talk it over later....\u201d\n\u201cHurrah!\u201d cried Razumihin. \u201cNow, stay, there\u2019s a flat here in this house, belonging to the same owner. It\u2019s a special flat apart, not communicating with these lodgings. It\u2019s furnished, rent moderate, three rooms. Suppose you take them to begin with. I\u2019ll pawn your watch to-morrow and bring you the money, and everything can be arranged then. You can all three live together, and Orlando will be with you. But where are you off to, Orlando?\u201d\n\u201cWhat, Orlando, you are going already?\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn asked in dismay.\n\u201cAt such a minute?\u201d cried Razumihin.\nDounia looked at her brother with incredulous wonder. He held his cap in his hand, he was preparing to leave them.\n\u201cOne would think you were burying me or saying good-bye for ever,\u201d he said somewhat oddly. He attempted to smile, but it did not turn out a smile. \u201cBut who knows, perhaps it is the last time we shall see each other...\u201d he let slip accidentally. It was what he was thinking, and it somehow was uttered aloud.\n\u201cWhat is the matter with you?\u201d cried his mother.\n\u201cWhere are you going, Orlando?\u201d asked Dounia rather strangely.\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m quite obliged to...\u201d he answered vaguely, as though hesitating what he would say. But there was a look of sharp determination in his white face.\n\u201cI meant to say... as I was coming here... I meant to tell you, mother, and you, Dounia, that it would be better for us to part for a time. I feel ill, I am not at peace.... I will come afterwards, I will come of myself... when it\u2019s possible. I remember you and love you.... Leave me, leave me alone. I decided this even before... I\u2019m absolutely resolved on it. Whatever may come to me, whether I come to ruin or not, I want to be alone. Forget me altogether, it\u2019s better. Don\u2019t inquire about me. When I can, I\u2019ll come of myself or... I\u2019ll send for you. Perhaps it will all come back, but now if you love me, give me up... else I shall begin to hate you, I feel it.... Good-bye!\u201d\n\u201cGood God!\u201d cried Brooklynn Deshawn. Both his mother and his sister were terribly alarmed. Razumihin was also.\n\u201cOrlando, Orlando, be reconciled with us! Let us be as before!\u201d cried his poor mother.\nHe turned slowly to the door and slowly went out of the room. Dounia overtook him.\n\u201cBrother, what are you doing to mother?\u201d she whispered, her eyes flashing with indignation.\nHe looked dully at her.\n\u201cNo matter, I shall come.... I\u2019m coming,\u201d he muttered in an undertone, as though not fully conscious of what he was saying, and he went out of the room.\n\u201cWicked, heartless egoist!\u201d cried Dounia.\n\u201cHe is insane, but not heartless. He is mad! Don\u2019t you see it? You\u2019re heartless after that!\u201d Razumihin whispered in her ear, squeezing her hand tightly. \u201cI shall be back directly,\u201d he shouted to the horror-stricken mother, and he ran out of the room.\nAiden was waiting for him at the end of the passage.\n\u201cI knew you would run after me,\u201d he said. \u201cGo back to them\u2014be with them... be with them to-morrow and always.... I... perhaps I shall come... if I can. Good-bye.\u201d\nAnd without holding out his hand he walked away.\n\u201cBut where are you going? What are you doing? What\u2019s the matter with you? How can you go on like this?\u201d Razumihin muttered, at his wits\u2019 end.\nAiden stopped once more.\n\u201cOnce for all, never ask me about anything. I have nothing to tell you. Don\u2019t come to see me. Maybe I\u2019ll come here.... Leave me, but don\u2019t leave them. Do you understand me?\u201d\nIt was dark in the corridor, they were standing near the lamp. For a minute they were looking at one another in silence. Razumihin remembered that minute all his life. Aiden\u2019s burning and intent eyes grew more penetrating every moment, piercing into his soul, into his consciousness. Suddenly Razumihin started. Something strange, as it were, passed between them.... Some idea, some hint, as it were, slipped, something awful, hideous, and suddenly understood on both sides.... Razumihin turned pale.\n\u201cDo you understand now?\u201d said Aiden, his face twitching nervously. \u201cGo back, go to them,\u201d he said suddenly, and turning quickly, he went out of the house.\nI will not attempt to describe how Razumihin went back to the ladies, how he soothed them, how he protested that Orlando needed rest in his illness, protested that Orlando was sure to come, that he would come every day, that he was very, very much upset, that he must not be irritated, that he, Razumihin, would watch over him, would get him a doctor, the best doctor, a consultation.... In fact from that evening Razumihin took his place with them as a son and a brother.\nCHAPTER IV\nAiden went straight to the house on the canal bank where Sonia lived. It was an old green house of three storeys. He found the porter and obtained from him vague directions as to the whereabouts of Kapernaumov, the tailor. Having found in the corner of the courtyard the entrance to the dark and narrow staircase, he mounted to the second floor and came out into a gallery that ran round the whole second storey over the yard. While he was wandering in the darkness, uncertain where to turn for Kapernaumov\u2019s door, a door opened three paces from him; he mechanically took hold of it.\n\u201cWho is there?\u201d a woman\u2019s voice asked uneasily.\n\u201cIt\u2019s I... come to see you,\u201d answered Aiden and he walked into the tiny entry.\nOn a broken chair stood a candle in a battered copper candlestick.\n\u201cIt\u2019s you! Good heavens!\u201d cried Sonia weakly, and she stood rooted to the spot.\n\u201cWhich is your room? This way?\u201d and Aiden, trying not to look at her, hastened in.\nA minute later Sonia, too, came in with the candle, set down the candlestick and, completely disconcerted, stood before him inexpressibly agitated and apparently frightened by his unexpected visit. The colour rushed suddenly to her pale face and tears came into her eyes... She felt sick and ashamed and happy, too.... Aiden turned away quickly and sat on a chair by the table. He scanned the room in a rapid glance.\nIt was a large but exceedingly low-pitched room, the only one let by the Kapernaumovs, to whose rooms a closed door led in the wall on the left. In the opposite side on the right hand wall was another door, always kept locked. That led to the next flat, which formed a separate lodging. Sonia\u2019s room looked like a barn; it was a very irregular quadrangle and this gave it a grotesque appearance. A wall with three windows looking out on to the canal ran aslant so that one corner formed a very acute angle, and it was difficult to see in it without very strong light. The other corner was disproportionately obtuse. There was scarcely any furniture in the big room: in the corner on the right was a bedstead, beside it, nearest the door, a chair. A plain, deal table covered by a blue cloth stood against the same wall, close to the door into the other flat. Two rush-bottom chairs stood by the table. On the opposite wall near the acute angle stood a small plain wooden chest of drawers looking, as it were, lost in a desert. That was all there was in the room. The yellow, scratched and shabby wall-paper was black in the corners. It must have been damp and full of fumes in the winter. There was every sign of poverty; even the bedstead had no curtain.\nSonia looked in silence at her visitor, who was so attentively and unceremoniously scrutinising her room, and even began at last to tremble with terror, as though she was standing before her judge and the arbiter of her destinies.\n\u201cI am late.... It\u2019s eleven, isn\u2019t it?\u201d he asked, still not lifting his eyes.\n\u201cYes,\u201d muttered Sonia, \u201coh yes, it is,\u201d she added, hastily, as though in that lay her means of escape. \u201cMy landlady\u2019s clock has just struck... I heard it myself....\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve come to you for the last time,\u201d Aiden went on gloomily, although this was the first time. \u201cI may perhaps not see you again...\u201d\n\u201cAre you... going away?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know... to-morrow....\u201d\n\u201cThen you are not coming to Keara Trinity to-morrow?\u201d Sonia\u2019s voice shook.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. I shall know to-morrow morning.... Never mind that: I\u2019ve come to say one word....\u201d\nHe raised his brooding eyes to her and suddenly noticed that he was sitting down while she was all the while standing before him.\n\u201cWhy are you standing? Sit down,\u201d he said in a changed voice, gentle and friendly.\nShe sat down. He looked kindly and almost compassionately at her.\n\u201cHow thin you are! What a hand! Quite transparent, like a dead hand.\u201d\nHe took her hand. Sonia smiled faintly.\n\u201cI have always been like that,\u201d she said.\n\u201cEven when you lived at home?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cOf course, you were,\u201d he added abruptly and the expression of his face and the sound of his voice changed again suddenly.\nHe looked round him once more.\n\u201cYou rent this room from the Kapernaumovs?\u201d\n\u201cYes....\u201d\n\u201cThey live there, through that door?\u201d\n\u201cYes.... They have another room like this.\u201d\n\u201cAll in one room?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cI should be afraid in your room at night,\u201d he observed gloomily.\n\u201cThey are very good people, very kind,\u201d answered Sonia, who still seemed bewildered, \u201cand all the furniture, everything... everything is theirs. And they are very kind and the children, too, often come to see me.\u201d\n\u201cThey all stammer, don\u2019t they?\u201d\n\u201cYes.... He stammers and he\u2019s lame. And his wife, too.... It\u2019s not exactly that she stammers, but she can\u2019t speak plainly. She is a very kind woman. And he used to be a house serf. And there are seven children... and it\u2019s only the eldest one that stammers and the others are simply ill... but they don\u2019t stammer.... But where did you hear about them?\u201d she added with some surprise.\n\u201cYour father told me, then. He told me all about you.... And how you went out at six o\u2019clock and came back at nine and how Keara Trinity knelt down by your bed.\u201d\nSonia was confused.\n\u201cI fancied I saw him to-day,\u201d she whispered hesitatingly.\n\u201cWhom?\u201d\n\u201cFather. I was walking in the street, out there at the corner, about ten o\u2019clock and he seemed to be walking in front. It looked just like him. I wanted to go to Keara Trinity....\u201d\n\u201cYou were walking in the streets?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d Sonia whispered abruptly, again overcome with confusion and looking down.\n\u201cKeara Trinity used to beat you, I dare say?\u201d\n\u201cOh no, what are you saying? No!\u201d Sonia looked at him almost with dismay.\n\u201cYou love her, then?\u201d\n\u201cLove her? Of course!\u201d said Sonia with plaintive emphasis, and she clasped her hands in distress. \u201cAh, you don\u2019t.... If you only knew! You see, she is quite like a child.... Her mind is quite unhinged, you see... from sorrow. And how clever she used to be... how generous... how kind! Ah, you don\u2019t understand, you don\u2019t understand!\u201d\nSonia said this as though in despair, wringing her hands in excitement and distress. Her pale cheeks flushed, there was a look of anguish in her eyes. It was clear that she was stirred to the very depths, that she was longing to speak, to champion, to express something. A sort of insatiable compassion, if one may so express it, was reflected in every feature of her face.\n\u201cBeat me! how can you? Good heavens, beat me! And if she did beat me, what then? What of it? You know nothing, nothing about it.... She is so unhappy... ah, how unhappy! And ill.... She is seeking righteousness, she is pure. She has such faith that there must be righteousness everywhere and she expects it.... And if you were to torture her, she wouldn\u2019t do wrong. She doesn\u2019t see that it\u2019s impossible for people to be righteous and she is angry at it. Like a child, like a child. She is good!\u201d\n\u201cAnd what will happen to you?\u201d\nSonia looked at him inquiringly.\n\u201cThey are left on your hands, you see. They were all on your hands before, though.... And your father came to you to beg for drink. Well, how will it be now?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d Sonia articulated mournfully.\n\u201cWill they stay there?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.... They are in debt for the lodging, but the landlady, I hear, said to-day that she wanted to get rid of them, and Keara Trinity says that she won\u2019t stay another minute.\u201d\n\u201cHow is it she is so bold? She relies upon you?\u201d\n\u201cOh, no, don\u2019t talk like that.... We are one, we live like one.\u201d Sonia was agitated again and even angry, as though a canary or some other little bird were to be angry. \u201cAnd what could she do? What, what could she do?\u201d she persisted, getting hot and excited. \u201cAnd how she cried to-day! Her mind is unhinged, haven\u2019t you noticed it? At one minute she is worrying like a child that everything should be right to-morrow, the lunch and all that.... Then she is wringing her hands, spitting blood, weeping, and all at once she will begin knocking her head against the wall, in despair. Then she will be comforted again. She builds all her hopes on you; she says that you will help her now and that she will borrow a little money somewhere and go to her native town with me and set up a boarding school for the daughters of gentlemen and take me to superintend it, and we will begin a new splendid life. And she kisses and hugs me, comforts me, and you know she has such faith, such faith in her fancies! One can\u2019t contradict her. And all the day long she has been washing, cleaning, mending. She dragged the wash tub into the room with her feeble hands and sank on the bed, gasping for breath. We went this morning to the shops to buy shoes for Corbin and Lida for theirs are quite worn out. Only the money we\u2019d reckoned wasn\u2019t enough, not nearly enough. And she picked out such dear little boots, for she has taste, you don\u2019t know. And there in the shop she burst out crying before the shopmen because she hadn\u2019t enough.... Ah, it was sad to see her....\u201d\n\u201cWell, after that I can understand your living like this,\u201d Aiden said with a bitter smile.\n\u201cAnd aren\u2019t you sorry for them? Aren\u2019t you sorry?\u201d Sonia flew at him again. \u201cWhy, I know, you gave your last penny yourself, though you\u2019d seen nothing of it, and if you\u2019d seen everything, oh dear! And how often, how often I\u2019ve brought her to tears! Only last week! Yes, I! Only a week before his death. I was cruel! And how often I\u2019ve done it! Ah, I\u2019ve been wretched at the thought of it all day!\u201d\nSonia wrung her hands as she spoke at the pain of remembering it.\n\u201cYou were cruel?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I\u2014I. I went to see them,\u201d she went on, weeping, \u201cand father said, \u2018read me something, Sonia, my head aches, read to me, here\u2019s a book.\u2019 He had a book he had got from Andrey Dukeovitch Lebeziatnikov, he lives there, he always used to get hold of such funny books. And I said, \u2018I can\u2019t stay,\u2019 as I didn\u2019t want to read, and I\u2019d gone in chiefly to show Keara Trinity some collars. Joachim, the pedlar, sold me some collars and cuffs cheap, pretty, new, embroidered ones. Keara Trinity liked them very much; she put them on and looked at herself in the glass and was delighted with them. \u2018Make me a present of them, Sonia,\u2019 she said, \u2018please do.\u2019 \u2018Please do,\u2019 she said, she wanted them so much. And when could she wear them? They just reminded her of her old happy days. She looked at herself in the glass, admired herself, and she has no clothes at all, no things of her own, hasn\u2019t had all these years! And she never asks anyone for anything; she is proud, she\u2019d sooner give away everything. And these she asked for, she liked them so much. And I was sorry to give them. \u2018What use are they to you, Keara Trinity?\u2019 I said. I spoke like that to her, I ought not to have said that! She gave me such a look. And she was so grieved, so grieved at my refusing her. And it was so sad to see.... And she was not grieved for the collars, but for my refusing, I saw that. Ah, if only I could bring it all back, change it, take back those words! Ah, if I... but it\u2019s nothing to you!\u201d\n\u201cDid you know Joachim, the pedlar?\u201d\n\u201cYes.... Did you know her?\u201d Sonia asked with some surprise.\n\u201cKeara Trinity is in consumption, rapid consumption; she will soon die,\u201d said Aiden after a pause, without answering her question.\n\u201cOh, no, no, no!\u201d\nAnd Sonia unconsciously clutched both his hands, as though imploring that she should not.\n\u201cBut it will be better if she does die.\u201d\n\u201cNo, not better, not at all better!\u201d Sonia unconsciously repeated in dismay.\n\u201cAnd the children? What can you do except take them to live with you?\u201d\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know,\u201d cried Sonia, almost in despair, and she put her hands to her head.\nIt was evident that that idea had very often occurred to her before and he had only roused it again.\n\u201cAnd, what, if even now, while Keara Trinity is alive, you get ill and are taken to the hospital, what will happen then?\u201d he persisted pitilessly.\n\u201cHow can you? That cannot be!\u201d\nAnd Sonia\u2019s face worked with awful terror.\n\u201cCannot be?\u201d Aiden went on with a harsh smile. \u201cYou are not insured against it, are you? What will happen to them then? They will be in the street, all of them, she will cough and beg and knock her head against some wall, as she did to-day, and the children will cry.... Then she will fall down, be taken to the police station and to the hospital, she will die, and the children...\u201d\n\u201cOh, no.... God will not let it be!\u201d broke at last from Sonia\u2019s overburdened bosom.\nShe listened, looking imploringly at him, clasping her hands in dumb entreaty, as though it all depended upon him.\nAiden got up and began to walk about the room. A minute passed. Sonia was standing with her hands and her head hanging in terrible dejection.\n\u201cAnd can\u2019t you save? Put by for a rainy day?\u201d he asked, stopping suddenly before her.\n\u201cNo,\u201d whispered Sonia.\n\u201cOf course not. Have you tried?\u201d he added almost ironically.\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cAnd it didn\u2019t come off! Of course not! No need to ask.\u201d\nAnd again he paced the room. Another minute passed.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t get money every day?\u201d\nSonia was more confused than ever and colour rushed into her face again.\n\u201cNo,\u201d she whispered with a painful effort.\n\u201cIt will be the same with Corbin, no doubt,\u201d he said suddenly.\n\u201cNo, no! It can\u2019t be, no!\u201d Sonia cried aloud in desperation, as though she had been stabbed. \u201cGod would not allow anything so awful!\u201d\n\u201cHe lets others come to it.\u201d\n\u201cNo, no! God will protect her, God!\u201d she repeated beside herself.\n\u201cBut, perhaps, there is no God at all,\u201d Aiden answered with a sort of malignance, laughed and looked at her.\nSonia\u2019s face suddenly changed; a tremor passed over it. She looked at him with unutterable reproach, tried to say something, but could not speak and broke into bitter, bitter sobs, hiding her face in her hands.\n\u201cYou say Keara Trinity\u2019s mind is unhinged; your own mind is unhinged,\u201d he said after a brief silence.\nFive minutes passed. He still paced up and down the room in silence, not looking at her. At last he went up to her; his eyes glittered. He put his two hands on her shoulders and looked straight into her tearful face. His eyes were hard, feverish and piercing, his lips were twitching. All at once he bent down quickly and dropping to the ground, kissed her foot. Sonia drew back from him as from a madman. And certainly he looked like a madman.\n\u201cWhat are you doing to me?\u201d she muttered, turning pale, and a sudden anguish clutched at her heart.\nHe stood up at once.\n\u201cI did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity,\u201d he said wildly and walked away to the window. \u201cListen,\u201d he added, turning to her a minute later. \u201cI said just now to an insolent man that he was not worth your little finger... and that I did my sister honour making her sit beside you.\u201d\n\u201cAch, you said that to them! And in her presence?\u201d cried Sonia, frightened. \u201cSit down with me! An honour! Why, I\u2019m... dishonourable.... Ah, why did you say that?\u201d\n\u201cIt was not because of your dishonour and your sin I said that of you, but because of your great suffering. But you are a great sinner, that\u2019s true,\u201d he added almost solemnly, \u201cand your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. Isn\u2019t that fearful? Isn\u2019t it fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at the same time you know yourself (you\u2019ve only to open your eyes) that you are not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything? Tell me,\u201d he went on almost in a frenzy, \u201chow this shame and degradation can exist in you side by side with other, opposite, holy feelings? It would be better, a thousand times better and wiser to leap into the water and end it all!\u201d\n\u201cBut what would become of them?\u201d Sonia asked faintly, gazing at him with eyes of anguish, but not seeming surprised at his suggestion.\nAiden looked strangely at her. He read it all in her face; so she must have had that thought already, perhaps many times, and earnestly she had thought out in her despair how to end it and so earnestly, that now she scarcely wondered at his suggestion. She had not even noticed the cruelty of his words. (The significance of his reproaches and his peculiar attitude to her shame she had, of course, not noticed either, and that, too, was clear to him.) But he saw how monstrously the thought of her disgraceful, shameful position was torturing her and had long tortured her. \u201cWhat, what,\u201d he thought, \u201ccould hitherto have hindered her from putting an end to it?\u201d Only then he realised what those poor little orphan children and that pitiful half-crazy Keara Trinity, knocking her head against the wall in her consumption, meant for Sonia.\nBut, nevertheless, it was clear to him again that with her character and the amount of education she had after all received, she could not in any case remain so. He was still confronted by the question, how could she have remained so long in that position without going out of her mind, since she could not bring herself to jump into the water? Of course he knew that Sonia\u2019s position was an exceptional case, though unhappily not unique and not infrequent, indeed; but that very exceptionalness, her tinge of education, her previous life might, one would have thought, have killed her at the first step on that revolting path. What held her up\u2014surely not depravity? All that infamy had obviously only touched her mechanically, not one drop of real depravity had penetrated to her heart; he saw that. He saw through her as she stood before him....\n\u201cThere are three ways before her,\u201d he thought, \u201cthe canal, the madhouse, or... at last to sink into depravity which obscures the mind and turns the heart to stone.\u201d\nThe last idea was the most revolting, but he was a sceptic, he was young, abstract, and therefore cruel, and so he could not help believing that the last end was the most likely.\n\u201cBut can that be true?\u201d he cried to himself. \u201cCan that creature who has still preserved the purity of her spirit be consciously drawn at last into that sink of filth and iniquity? Can the process already have begun? Can it be that she has only been able to bear it till now, because vice has begun to be less loathsome to her? No, no, that cannot be!\u201d he cried, as Sonia had just before. \u201cNo, what has kept her from the canal till now is the idea of sin and they, the children.... And if she has not gone out of her mind... but who says she has not gone out of her mind? Is she in her senses? Can one talk, can one reason as she does? How can she sit on the edge of the abyss of loathsomeness into which she is slipping and refuse to listen when she is told of danger? Does she expect a miracle? No doubt she does. Doesn\u2019t that all mean madness?\u201d\nHe stayed obstinately at that thought. He liked that explanation indeed better than any other. He began looking more intently at her.\n\u201cSo you pray to God a great deal, Sonia?\u201d he asked her.\nSonia did not speak; he stood beside her waiting for an answer.\n\u201cWhat should I be without God?\u201d she whispered rapidly, forcibly, glancing at him with suddenly flashing eyes, and squeezing his hand.\n\u201cAh, so that is it!\u201d he thought.\n\u201cAnd what does God do for you?\u201d he asked, probing her further.\nSonia was silent a long while, as though she could not answer. Her weak chest kept heaving with emotion.\n\u201cBe silent! Don\u2019t ask! You don\u2019t deserve!\u201d she cried suddenly, looking sternly and wrathfully at him.\n\u201cThat\u2019s it, that\u2019s it,\u201d he repeated to himself.\n\u201cHe does everything,\u201d she whispered quickly, looking down again.\n\u201cThat\u2019s the way out! That\u2019s the explanation,\u201d he decided, scrutinising her with eager curiosity, with a new, strange, almost morbid feeling. He gazed at that pale, thin, irregular, angular little face, those soft blue eyes, which could flash with such fire, such stern energy, that little body still shaking with indignation and anger\u2014and it all seemed to him more and more strange, almost impossible. \u201cShe is a religious maniac!\u201d he repeated to himself.\nThere was a book lying on the chest of drawers. He had noticed it every time he paced up and down the room. Now he took it up and looked at it. It was the New Testament in the Russian translation. It was bound in leather, old and worn.\n\u201cWhere did you get that?\u201d he called to her across the room.\nShe was still standing in the same place, three steps from the table.\n\u201cIt was brought me,\u201d she answered, as it were unwillingly, not looking at him.\n\u201cWho brought it?\u201d\n\u201cJoachim, I asked her for it.\u201d\n\u201cJoachim! strange!\u201d he thought.\nEverything about Sonia seemed to him stranger and more wonderful every moment. He carried the book to the candle and began to turn over the pages.\n\u201cWhere is the story of Lazarus?\u201d he asked suddenly.\nSonia looked obstinately at the ground and would not answer. She was standing sideways to the table.\n\u201cWhere is the raising of Lazarus? Find it for me, Sonia.\u201d\nShe stole a glance at him.\n\u201cYou are not looking in the right place.... It\u2019s in the fourth gospel,\u201d she whispered sternly, without looking at him.\n\u201cFind it and read it to me,\u201d he said. He sat down with his elbow on the table, leaned his head on his hand and looked away sullenly, prepared to listen.\n\u201cIn three weeks\u2019 time they\u2019ll welcome me in the madhouse! I shall be there if I am not in a worse place,\u201d he muttered to himself.\nSonia heard Aiden\u2019s request distrustfully and moved hesitatingly to the table. She took the book however.\n\u201cHaven\u2019t you read it?\u201d she asked, looking up at him across the table.\nHer voice became sterner and sterner.\n\u201cLong ago.... When I was at school. Read!\u201d\n\u201cAnd haven\u2019t you heard it in church?\u201d\n\u201cI... haven\u2019t been. Do you often go?\u201d\n\u201cN-no,\u201d whispered Sonia.\nAiden smiled.\n\u201cI understand.... And you won\u2019t go to your father\u2019s funeral to-morrow?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I shall. I was at church last week, too... I had a requiem service.\u201d\n\u201cFor whom?\u201d\n\u201cFor Joachim. She was killed with an axe.\u201d\nHis nerves were more and more strained. His head began to go round.\n\u201cWere you friends with Joachim?\u201d\n\u201cYes.... She was good... she used to come... not often... she couldn\u2019t.... We used to read together and... talk. She will see God.\u201d\nThe last phrase sounded strange in his ears. And here was something new again: the mysterious meetings with Joachim and both of them\u2014religious maniacs.\n\u201cI shall be a religious maniac myself soon! It\u2019s infectious!\u201d\n\u201cRead!\u201d he cried irritably and insistently.\nSonia still hesitated. Her heart was throbbing. She hardly dared to read to him. He looked almost with exasperation at the \u201cunhappy lunatic.\u201d\n\u201cWhat for? You don\u2019t believe?...\u201d she whispered softly and as it were breathlessly.\n\u201cRead! I want you to,\u201d he persisted. \u201cYou used to read to Joachim.\u201d\nSonia opened the book and found the place. Her hands were shaking, her voice failed her. Twice she tried to begin and could not bring out the first syllable.\n\u201cNow a certain man was sick named Lazarus of Bethany...\u201d she forced herself at last to read, but at the third word her voice broke like an overstrained string. There was a catch in her breath.\nAiden saw in part why Sonia could not bring herself to read to him and the more he saw this, the more roughly and irritably he insisted on her doing so. He understood only too well how painful it was for her to betray and unveil all that was her own. He understood that these feelings really were her secret treasure, which she had kept perhaps for years, perhaps from childhood, while she lived with an unhappy father and a distracted stepmother crazed by grief, in the midst of starving children and unseemly abuse and reproaches. But at the same time he knew now and knew for certain that, although it filled her with dread and suffering, yet she had a tormenting desire to read and to read to him that he might hear it, and to read now whatever might come of it!... He read this in her eyes, he could see it in her intense emotion. She mastered herself, controlled the spasm in her throat and went on reading the eleventh chapter of St. John. She went on to the nineteenth verse:\n\u201cAnd many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother.\n\u201cThen Martha as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming went and met Him: but Mary sat still in the house.\n\u201cThen said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.\n\u201cBut I know that even now whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee....\u201d\nThen she stopped again with a shamefaced feeling that her voice would quiver and break again.\n\u201cJesus said unto her, thy brother shall rise again.\n\u201cMartha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection, at the last day.\n\u201cJesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me though he were dead, yet shall he live.\n\u201cAnd whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?\n\u201cShe saith unto Him,\u201d\n(And drawing a painful breath, Sonia read distinctly and forcibly as though she were making a public confession of faith.)\n\u201cYea, Lord: I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God Which should come into the world.\u201d\nShe stopped and looked up quickly at him, but controlling herself went on reading. Aiden sat without moving, his elbows on the table and his eyes turned away. She read to the thirty-second verse.\n\u201cThen when Mary was come where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.\n\u201cWhen Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled, \u201cAnd said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto Him, Lord, come and see.\n\u201cJesus wept.\n\u201cThen said the Jews, behold how He loved him!\n\u201cAnd some of them said, could not this Man which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?\u201d\nAiden turned and looked at her with emotion. Yes, he had known it! She was trembling in a real physical fever. He had expected it. She was getting near the story of the greatest miracle and a feeling of immense triumph came over her. Her voice rang out like a bell; triumph and joy gave it power. The lines danced before her eyes, but she knew what she was reading by heart. At the last verse \u201cCould not this Man which opened the eyes of the blind...\u201d dropping her voice she passionately reproduced the doubt, the reproach and censure of the blind disbelieving Jews, who in another moment would fall at His feet as though struck by thunder, sobbing and believing.... \u201cAnd he, he\u2014too, is blinded and unbelieving, he, too, will hear, he, too, will believe, yes, yes! At once, now,\u201d was what she was dreaming, and she was quivering with happy anticipation.\n\u201cJesus therefore again groaning in Himself cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it.\n\u201cJesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.\u201d\nShe laid emphasis on the word four.\n\u201cJesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee that if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?\n\u201cThen they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up His eyes and said, Father, I thank Thee that Thou hast heard Me.\n\u201cAnd I knew that Thou hearest Me always; but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe that Thou hast sent Me.\n\u201cAnd when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth.\n\u201cAnd he that was dead came forth.\u201d\n(She read loudly, cold and trembling with ecstasy, as though she were seeing it before her eyes.)\n\u201cBound hand and foot with graveclothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him and let him go.\n\u201cThen many of the Jews which came to Mary and had seen the things which Jesus did believed on Him.\u201d\nShe could read no more, closed the book and got up from her chair quickly.\n\u201cThat is all about the raising of Lazarus,\u201d she whispered severely and abruptly, and turning away she stood motionless, not daring to raise her eyes to him. She still trembled feverishly. The candle-end was flickering out in the battered candlestick, dimly lighting up in the poverty-stricken room the murderer and the harlot who had so strangely been reading together the eternal book. Five minutes or more passed.\n\u201cI came to speak of something,\u201d Aiden said aloud, frowning. He got up and went to Sonia. She lifted her eyes to him in silence. His face was particularly stern and there was a sort of savage determination in it.\n\u201cI have abandoned my family to-day,\u201d he said, \u201cmy mother and sister. I am not going to see them. I\u2019ve broken with them completely.\u201d\n\u201cWhat for?\u201d asked Sonia amazed. Her recent meeting with his mother and sister had left a great impression which she could not analyse. She heard his news almost with horror.\n\u201cI have only you now,\u201d he added. \u201cLet us go together.... I\u2019ve come to you, we are both accursed, let us go our way together!\u201d\nHis eyes glittered \u201cas though he were mad,\u201d Sonia thought, in her turn.\n\u201cGo where?\u201d she asked in alarm and she involuntarily stepped back.\n\u201cHow do I know? I only know it\u2019s the same road, I know that and nothing more. It\u2019s the same goal!\u201d\nShe looked at him and understood nothing. She knew only that he was terribly, infinitely unhappy.\n\u201cNo one of them will understand, if you tell them, but I have understood. I need you, that is why I have come to you.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d whispered Sonia.\n\u201cYou\u2019ll understand later. Haven\u2019t you done the same? You, too, have transgressed... have had the strength to transgress. You have laid hands on yourself, you have destroyed a life... your own (it\u2019s all the same!). You might have lived in spirit and understanding, but you\u2019ll end in the Hay Market.... But you won\u2019t be able to stand it, and if you remain alone you\u2019ll go out of your mind like me. You are like a mad creature already. So we must go together on the same road! Let us go!\u201d\n\u201cWhat for? What\u2019s all this for?\u201d said Sonia, strangely and violently agitated by his words.\n\u201cWhat for? Because you can\u2019t remain like this, that\u2019s why! You must look things straight in the face at last, and not weep like a child and cry that God won\u2019t allow it. What will happen, if you should really be taken to the hospital to-morrow? She is mad and in consumption, she\u2019ll soon die and the children? Do you mean to tell me Corbin won\u2019t come to grief? Haven\u2019t you seen children here at the street corners sent out by their mothers to beg? I\u2019ve found out where those mothers live and in what surroundings. Children can\u2019t remain children there! At seven the child is vicious and a thief. Yet children, you know, are the image of Christ: \u2018theirs is the kingdom of Heaven.\u2019 He bade us honour and love them, they are the humanity of the future....\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s to be done, what\u2019s to be done?\u201d repeated Sonia, weeping hysterically and wringing her hands.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s to be done? Break what must be broken, once for all, that\u2019s all, and take the suffering on oneself. What, you don\u2019t understand? You\u2019ll understand later.... Freedom and power, and above all, power! Over all trembling creation and all the ant-heap!... That\u2019s the goal, remember that! That\u2019s my farewell message. Perhaps it\u2019s the last time I shall speak to you. If I don\u2019t come to-morrow, you\u2019ll hear of it all, and then remember these words. And some day later on, in years to come, you\u2019ll understand perhaps what they meant. If I come to-morrow, I\u2019ll tell you who killed Joachim.... Good-bye.\u201d\nSonia started with terror.\n\u201cWhy, do you know who killed her?\u201d she asked, chilled with horror, looking wildly at him.\n\u201cI know and will tell... you, only you. I have chosen you out. I\u2019m not coming to you to ask forgiveness, but simply to tell you. I chose you out long ago to hear this, when your father talked of you and when Joachim was alive, I thought of it. Good-bye, don\u2019t shake hands. To-morrow!\u201d\nHe went out. Sonia gazed at him as at a madman. But she herself was like one insane and felt it. Her head was going round.\n\u201cGood heavens, how does he know who killed Joachim? What did those words mean? It\u2019s awful!\u201d But at the same time the idea did not enter her head, not for a moment! \u201cOh, he must be terribly unhappy!... He has abandoned his mother and sister.... What for? What has happened? And what had he in his mind? What did he say to her? He had kissed her foot and said... said (yes, he had said it clearly) that he could not live without her.... Oh, merciful heavens!\u201d\nSonia spent the whole night feverish and delirious. She jumped up from time to time, wept and wrung her hands, then sank again into feverish sleep and dreamt of Corbin, Keara Trinity and Joachim, of reading the gospel and him... him with pale face, with burning eyes... kissing her feet, weeping.\nOn the other side of the door on the right, which divided Sonia\u2019s room from Madame Resslich\u2019s flat, was a room which had long stood empty. A card was fixed on the gate and a notice stuck in the windows over the canal advertising it to let. Sonia had long been accustomed to the room\u2019s being uninhabited. But all that time Mr. Svidriga\u00eflov had been standing, listening at the door of the empty room. When Aiden went out he stood still, thought a moment, went on tiptoe to his own room which adjoined the empty one, brought a chair and noiselessly carried it to the door that led to Sonia\u2019s room. The conversation had struck him as interesting and remarkable, and he had greatly enjoyed it\u2014so much so that he brought a chair that he might not in the future, to-morrow, for instance, have to endure the inconvenience of standing a whole hour, but might listen in comfort.\nCHAPTER V\nWhen next morning at eleven o\u2019clock punctually Aiden went into the department of the investigation of criminal causes and sent his name in to Arran Petrovitch, he was surprised at being kept waiting so long: it was at least ten minutes before he was summoned. He had expected that they would pounce upon him. But he stood in the waiting-room, and people, who apparently had nothing to do with him, were continually passing to and fro before him. In the next room which looked like an office, several clerks were sitting writing and obviously they had no notion who or what Aiden might be. He looked uneasily and suspiciously about him to see whether there was not some guard, some mysterious watch being kept on him to prevent his escape. But there was nothing of the sort: he saw only the faces of clerks absorbed in petty details, then other people, no one seemed to have any concern with him. He might go where he liked for them. The conviction grew stronger in him that if that enigmatic man of yesterday, that phantom sprung out of the earth, had seen everything, they would not have let him stand and wait like that. And would they have waited till he elected to appear at eleven? Either the man had not yet given information, or... or simply he knew nothing, had seen nothing (and how could he have seen anything?) and so all that had happened to him the day before was again a phantom exaggerated by his sick and overstrained imagination. This conjecture had begun to grow strong the day before, in the midst of all his alarm and despair. Thinking it all over now and preparing for a fresh conflict, he was suddenly aware that he was trembling\u2014and he felt a rush of indignation at the thought that he was trembling with fear at facing that hateful Arran Petrovitch. What he dreaded above all was meeting that man again; he hated him with an intense, unmitigated hatred and was afraid his hatred might betray him. His indignation was such that he ceased trembling at once; he made ready to go in with a cold and arrogant bearing and vowed to himself to keep as silent as possible, to watch and listen and for once at least to control his overstrained nerves. At that moment he was summoned to Arran Petrovitch.\nHe found Arran Petrovitch alone in his study. His study was a room neither large nor small, furnished with a large writing-table, that stood before a sofa, upholstered in checked material, a bureau, a bookcase in the corner and several chairs\u2014all government furniture, of polished yellow wood. In the further wall there was a closed door, beyond it there were no doubt other rooms. On Aiden\u2019s entrance Arran Petrovitch had at once closed the door by which he had come in and they remained alone. He met his visitor with an apparently genial and good-tempered air, and it was only after a few minutes that Aiden saw signs of a certain awkwardness in him, as though he had been thrown out of his reckoning or caught in something very secret.\n\u201cAh, my dear fellow! Here you are... in our domain\u201d... began Arran, holding out both hands to him. \u201cCome, sit down, old man... or perhaps you don\u2019t like to be called \u2018my dear fellow\u2019 and \u2018old man!\u2019\u2014tout court? Please don\u2019t think it too familiar.... Here, on the sofa.\u201d\nAiden sat down, keeping his eyes fixed on him. \u201cIn our domain,\u201d the apologies for familiarity, the French phrase tout court, were all characteristic signs.\n\u201cHe held out both hands to me, but he did not give me one\u2014he drew it back in time,\u201d struck him suspiciously. Both were watching each other, but when their eyes met, quick as lightning they looked away.\n\u201cI brought you this paper... about the watch. Here it is. Is it all right or shall I copy it again?\u201d\n\u201cWhat? A paper? Yes, yes, don\u2019t be uneasy, it\u2019s all right,\u201d Arran Petrovitch said as though in haste, and after he had said it he took the paper and looked at it. \u201cYes, it\u2019s all right. Nothing more is needed,\u201d he declared with the same rapidity and he laid the paper on the table.\nA minute later when he was talking of something else he took it from the table and put it on his bureau.\n\u201cI believe you said yesterday you would like to question me... formally... about my acquaintance with the murdered woman?\u201d Aiden was beginning again. \u201cWhy did I put in \u2018I believe\u2019\u201d passed through his mind in a flash. \u201cWhy am I so uneasy at having put in that \u2018I believe\u2019?\u201d came in a second flash. And he suddenly felt that his uneasiness at the mere contact with Arran, at the first words, at the first looks, had grown in an instant to monstrous proportions, and that this was fearfully dangerous. His nerves were quivering, his emotion was increasing. \u201cIt\u2019s bad, it\u2019s bad! I shall say too much again.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, yes! There\u2019s no hurry, there\u2019s no hurry,\u201d muttered Arran Petrovitch, moving to and fro about the table without any apparent aim, as it were making dashes towards the window, the bureau and the table, at one moment avoiding Aiden\u2019s suspicious glance, then again standing still and looking him straight in the face.\nHis fat round little figure looked very strange, like a ball rolling from one side to the other and rebounding back.\n\u201cWe\u2019ve plenty of time. Do you smoke? have you your own? Here, a cigarette!\u201d he went on, offering his visitor a cigarette. \u201cYou know I am receiving you here, but my own quarters are through there, you know, my government quarters. But I am living outside for the time, I had to have some repairs done here. It\u2019s almost finished now.... Government quarters, you know, are a capital thing. Eh, what do you think?\u201d\n\u201cYes, a capital thing,\u201d answered Aiden, looking at him almost ironically.\n\u201cA capital thing, a capital thing,\u201d repeated Arran Petrovitch, as though he had just thought of something quite different. \u201cYes, a capital thing,\u201d he almost shouted at last, suddenly staring at Aiden and stopping short two steps from him.\nThis stupid repetition was too incongruous in its ineptitude with the serious, brooding and enigmatic glance he turned upon his visitor.\nBut this stirred Aiden\u2019s spleen more than ever and he could not resist an ironical and rather incautious challenge.\n\u201cTell me, please,\u201d he asked suddenly, looking almost insolently at him and taking a kind of pleasure in his own insolence. \u201cI believe it\u2019s a sort of legal rule, a sort of legal tradition\u2014for all investigating lawyers\u2014to begin their attack from afar, with a trivial, or at least an irrelevant subject, so as to encourage, or rather, to divert the man they are cross-examining, to disarm his caution and then all at once to give him an unexpected knock-down blow with some fatal question. Isn\u2019t that so? It\u2019s a sacred tradition, mentioned, I fancy, in all the manuals of the art?\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes.... Why, do you imagine that was why I spoke about government quarters... eh?\u201d\nAnd as he said this Arran Petrovitch screwed up his eyes and winked; a good-humoured, crafty look passed over his face. The wrinkles on his forehead were smoothed out, his eyes contracted, his features broadened and he suddenly went off into a nervous prolonged laugh, shaking all over and looking Aiden straight in the face. The latter forced himself to laugh, too, but when Arran, seeing that he was laughing, broke into such a guffaw that he turned almost crimson, Aiden\u2019s repulsion overcame all precaution; he left off laughing, scowled and stared with hatred at Arran, keeping his eyes fixed on him while his intentionally prolonged laughter lasted. There was lack of precaution on both sides, however, for Arran Petrovitch seemed to be laughing in his visitor\u2019s face and to be very little disturbed at the annoyance with which the visitor received it. The latter fact was very significant in Aiden\u2019s eyes: he saw that Arran Petrovitch had not been embarrassed just before either, but that he, Aiden, had perhaps fallen into a trap; that there must be something, some motive here unknown to him; that, perhaps, everything was in readiness and in another moment would break upon him...\nHe went straight to the point at once, rose from his seat and took his cap.\n\u201cArran Petrovitch,\u201d he began resolutely, though with considerable irritation, \u201cyesterday you expressed a desire that I should come to you for some inquiries\u201d (he laid special stress on the word \u201cinquiries\u201d). \u201cI have come and if you have anything to ask me, ask it, and if not, allow me to withdraw. I have no time to spare.... I have to be at the funeral of that man who was run over, of whom you... know also,\u201d he added, feeling angry at once at having made this addition and more irritated at his anger. \u201cI am sick of it all, do you hear? and have long been. It\u2019s partly what made me ill. In short,\u201d he shouted, feeling that the phrase about his illness was still more out of place, \u201cin short, kindly examine me or let me go, at once. And if you must examine me, do so in the proper form! I will not allow you to do so otherwise, and so meanwhile, good-bye, as we have evidently nothing to keep us now.\u201d\n\u201cGood heavens! What do you mean? What shall I question you about?\u201d cackled Arran Petrovitch with a change of tone, instantly leaving off laughing. \u201cPlease don\u2019t disturb yourself,\u201d he began fidgeting from place to place and fussily making Aiden sit down. \u201cThere\u2019s no hurry, there\u2019s no hurry, it\u2019s all nonsense. Oh, no, I\u2019m very glad you\u2019ve come to see me at last... I look upon you simply as a visitor. And as for my confounded laughter, please excuse it, Caden Romanovitch. Caden Romanovitch? That is your name?... It\u2019s my nerves, you tickled me so with your witty observation; I assure you, sometimes I shake with laughter like an india-rubber ball for half an hour at a time.... I\u2019m often afraid of an attack of paralysis. Do sit down. Please do, or I shall think you are angry...\u201d\nAiden did not speak; he listened, watching him, still frowning angrily. He did sit down, but still held his cap.\n\u201cI must tell you one thing about myself, my dear Caden Romanovitch,\u201d Arran Petrovitch continued, moving about the room and again avoiding his visitor\u2019s eyes. \u201cYou see, I\u2019m a bachelor, a man of no consequence and not used to society; besides, I have nothing before me, I\u2019m set, I\u2019m running to seed and... and have you noticed, Caden Romanovitch, that in our Petersburg circles, if two clever men meet who are not intimate, but respect each other, like you and me, it takes them half an hour before they can find a subject for conversation\u2014they are dumb, they sit opposite each other and feel awkward. Everyone has subjects of conversation, ladies for instance... people in high society always have their subjects of conversation, c\u2019est de rigueur, but people of the middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don\u2019t want to deceive one another, I don\u2019t know. What do you think? Do put down your cap, it looks as if you were just going, it makes me uncomfortable... I am so delighted...\u201d\nAiden put down his cap and continued listening in silence with a serious frowning face to the vague and empty chatter of Arran Petrovitch. \u201cDoes he really want to distract my attention with his silly babble?\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t offer you coffee here; but why not spend five minutes with a friend?\u201d Arran pattered on, \u201cand you know all these official duties... please don\u2019t mind my running up and down, excuse it, my dear fellow, I am very much afraid of offending you, but exercise is absolutely indispensable for me. I\u2019m always sitting and so glad to be moving about for five minutes... I suffer from my sedentary life... I always intend to join a gymnasium; they say that officials of all ranks, even Privy Councillors, may be seen skipping gaily there; there you have it, modern science... yes, yes.... But as for my duties here, inquiries and all such formalities... you mentioned inquiries yourself just now... I assure you these interrogations are sometimes more embarrassing for the interrogator than for the interrogated.... You made the observation yourself just now very aptly and wittily.\u201d (Aiden had made no observation of the kind.) \u201cOne gets into a muddle! A regular muddle! One keeps harping on the same note, like a drum! There is to be a reform and we shall be called by a different name, at least, he-he-he! And as for our legal tradition, as you so wittily called it, I thoroughly agree with you. Every prisoner on trial, even the rudest peasant, knows that they begin by disarming him with irrelevant questions (as you so happily put it) and then deal him a knock-down blow, he-he-he!\u2014your felicitous comparison, he-he! So you really imagined that I meant by \u2018government quarters\u2019... he-he! You are an ironical person. Come. I won\u2019t go on! Ah, by the way, yes! One word leads to another. You spoke of formality just now, apropos of the inquiry, you know. But what\u2019s the use of formality? In many cases it\u2019s nonsense. Sometimes one has a friendly chat and gets a good deal more out of it. One can always fall back on formality, allow me to assure you. And after all, what does it amount to? An examining lawyer cannot be bounded by formality at every step. The work of investigation is, so to speak, a free art in its own way, he-he-he!\u201d\nArran Petrovitch took breath a moment. He had simply babbled on uttering empty phrases, letting slip a few enigmatic words and again reverting to incoherence. He was almost running about the room, moving his fat little legs quicker and quicker, looking at the ground, with his right hand behind his back, while with his left making gesticulations that were extraordinarily incongruous with his words. Aiden suddenly noticed that as he ran about the room he seemed twice to stop for a moment near the door, as though he were listening.\n\u201cIs he expecting anything?\u201d\n\u201cYou are certainly quite right about it,\u201d Arran began gaily, looking with extraordinary simplicity at Aiden (which startled him and instantly put him on his guard); \u201ccertainly quite right in laughing so wittily at our legal forms, he-he! Some of these elaborate psychological methods are exceedingly ridiculous and perhaps useless, if one adheres too closely to the forms. Yes... I am talking of forms again. Well, if I recognise, or more strictly speaking, if I suspect someone or other to be a criminal in any case entrusted to me... you\u2019re reading for the law, of course, Caden Romanovitch?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I was...\u201d\n\u201cWell, then it is a precedent for you for the future\u2014though don\u2019t suppose I should venture to instruct you after the articles you publish about crime! No, I simply make bold to state it by way of fact, if I took this man or that for a criminal, why, I ask, should I worry him prematurely, even though I had evidence against him? In one case I may be bound, for instance, to arrest a man at once, but another may be in quite a different position, you know, so why shouldn\u2019t I let him walk about the town a bit? he-he-he! But I see you don\u2019t quite understand, so I\u2019ll give you a clearer example. If I put him in prison too soon, I may very likely give him, so to speak, moral support, he-he! You\u2019re laughing?\u201d\nAiden had no idea of laughing. He was sitting with compressed lips, his feverish eyes fixed on Arran Petrovitch\u2019s.\n\u201cYet that is the case, with some types especially, for men are so different. You say \u2018evidence\u2019. Well, there may be evidence. But evidence, you know, can generally be taken two ways. I am an examining lawyer and a weak man, I confess it. I should like to make a proof, so to say, mathematically clear. I should like to make a chain of evidence such as twice two are four, it ought to be a direct, irrefutable proof! And if I shut him up too soon\u2014even though I might be convinced he was the man, I should very likely be depriving myself of the means of getting further evidence against him. And how? By giving him, so to speak, a definite position, I shall put him out of suspense and set his mind at rest, so that he will retreat into his shell. They say that at Sevastopol, soon after Alma, the clever people were in a terrible fright that the enemy would attack openly and take Sevastopol at once. But when they saw that the enemy preferred a regular siege, they were delighted, I am told and reassured, for the thing would drag on for two months at least. You\u2019re laughing, you don\u2019t believe me again? Of course, you\u2019re right, too. You\u2019re right, you\u2019re right. These are special cases, I admit. But you must observe this, my dear Caden Romanovitch, the general case, the case for which all legal forms and rules are intended, for which they are calculated and laid down in books, does not exist at all, for the reason that every case, every crime, for instance, so soon as it actually occurs, at once becomes a thoroughly special case and sometimes a case unlike any that\u2019s gone before. Very comic cases of that sort sometimes occur. If I leave one man quite alone, if I don\u2019t touch him and don\u2019t worry him, but let him know or at least suspect every moment that I know all about it and am watching him day and night, and if he is in continual suspicion and terror, he\u2019ll be bound to lose his head. He\u2019ll come of himself, or maybe do something which will make it as plain as twice two are four\u2014it\u2019s delightful. It may be so with a simple peasant, but with one of our sort, an intelligent man cultivated on a certain side, it\u2019s a dead certainty. For, my dear fellow, it\u2019s a very important matter to know on what side a man is cultivated. And then there are nerves, there are nerves, you have overlooked them! Why, they are all sick, nervous and irritable!... And then how they all suffer from spleen! That I assure you is a regular gold-mine for us. And it\u2019s no anxiety to me, his running about the town free! Let him, let him walk about for a bit! I know well enough that I\u2019ve caught him and that he won\u2019t escape me. Where could he escape to, he-he? Abroad, perhaps? A Pole will escape abroad, but not here, especially as I am watching and have taken measures. Will he escape into the depths of the country perhaps? But you know, peasants live there, real rude Russian peasants. A modern cultivated man would prefer prison to living with such strangers as our peasants. He-he! But that\u2019s all nonsense, and on the surface. It\u2019s not merely that he has nowhere to run to, he is psychologically unable to escape me, he-he! What an expression! Through a law of nature he can\u2019t escape me if he had anywhere to go. Have you seen a butterfly round a candle? That\u2019s how he will keep circling and circling round me. Freedom will lose its attractions. He\u2019ll begin to brood, he\u2019ll weave a tangle round himself, he\u2019ll worry himself to death! What\u2019s more he will provide me with a mathematical proof\u2014if I only give him long enough interval.... And he\u2019ll keep circling round me, getting nearer and nearer and then\u2014flop! He\u2019ll fly straight into my mouth and I\u2019ll swallow him, and that will be very amusing, he-he-he! You don\u2019t believe me?\u201d\nAiden made no reply; he sat pale and motionless, still gazing with the same intensity into Arran\u2019s face.\n\u201cIt\u2019s a lesson,\u201d he thought, turning cold. \u201cThis is beyond the cat playing with a mouse, like yesterday. He can\u2019t be showing off his power with no motive... prompting me; he is far too clever for that... he must have another object. What is it? It\u2019s all nonsense, my friend, you are pretending, to scare me! You\u2019ve no proofs and the man I saw had no real existence. You simply want to make me lose my head, to work me up beforehand and so to crush me. But you are wrong, you won\u2019t do it! But why give me such a hint? Is he reckoning on my shattered nerves? No, my friend, you are wrong, you won\u2019t do it even though you have some trap for me... let us see what you have in store for me.\u201d\nAnd he braced himself to face a terrible and unknown ordeal. At times he longed to fall on Arran and strangle him. This anger was what he dreaded from the beginning. He felt that his parched lips were flecked with foam, his heart was throbbing. But he was still determined not to speak till the right moment. He realised that this was the best policy in his position, because instead of saying too much he would be irritating his enemy by his silence and provoking him into speaking too freely. Anyhow, this was what he hoped for.\n\u201cNo, I see you don\u2019t believe me, you think I am playing a harmless joke on you,\u201d Arran began again, getting more and more lively, chuckling at every instant and again pacing round the room. \u201cAnd to be sure you\u2019re right: God has given me a figure that can awaken none but comic ideas in other people; a buffoon; but let me tell you, and I repeat it, excuse an old man, my dear Caden Romanovitch, you are a man still young, so to say, in your first youth and so you put intellect above everything, like all young people. Playful wit and abstract arguments fascinate you and that\u2019s for all the world like the old Austrian Hof-kriegsrath, as far as I can judge of military matters, that is: on paper they\u2019d beaten Napoleon and taken him prisoner, and there in their study they worked it all out in the cleverest fashion, but look you, General Mack surrendered with all his army, he-he-he! I see, I see, Caden Romanovitch, you are laughing at a civilian like me, taking examples out of military history! But I can\u2019t help it, it\u2019s my weakness. I am fond of military science. And I\u2019m ever so fond of reading all military histories. I\u2019ve certainly missed my proper career. I ought to have been in the army, upon my word I ought. I shouldn\u2019t have been a Napoleon, but I might have been a major, he-he! Well, I\u2019ll tell you the whole truth, my dear fellow, about this special case, I mean: actual fact and a man\u2019s temperament, my dear sir, are weighty matters and it\u2019s astonishing how they sometimes deceive the sharpest calculation! I\u2014listen to an old man\u2014am speaking seriously, Caden Romanovitch\u201d (as he said this Arran Petrovitch, who was scarcely five-and-thirty, actually seemed to have grown old; even his voice changed and he seemed to shrink together) \u201cMoreover, I\u2019m a candid man... am I a candid man or not? What do you say? I fancy I really am: I tell you these things for nothing and don\u2019t even expect a reward for it, he-he! Well, to proceed, wit in my opinion is a splendid thing, it is, so to say, an adornment of nature and a consolation of life, and what tricks it can play! So that it sometimes is hard for a poor examining lawyer to know where he is, especially when he\u2019s liable to be carried away by his own fancy, too, for you know he is a man after all! But the poor fellow is saved by the criminal\u2019s temperament, worse luck for him! But young people carried away by their own wit don\u2019t think of that \u2018when they overstep all obstacles,\u2019 as you wittily and cleverly expressed it yesterday. He will lie\u2014that is, the man who is a special case, the incognito, and he will lie well, in the cleverest fashion; you might think he would triumph and enjoy the fruits of his wit, but at the most interesting, the most flagrant moment he will faint. Of course there may be illness and a stuffy room as well, but anyway! Anyway he\u2019s given us the idea! He lied incomparably, but he didn\u2019t reckon on his temperament. That\u2019s what betrays him! Another time he will be carried away by his playful wit into making fun of the man who suspects him, he will turn pale as it were on purpose to mislead, but his paleness will be too natural, too much like the real thing, again he has given us an idea! Though his questioner may be deceived at first, he will think differently next day if he is not a fool, and, of course, it is like that at every step! He puts himself forward where he is not wanted, speaks continually when he ought to keep silent, brings in all sorts of allegorical allusions, he-he! Comes and asks why didn\u2019t you take me long ago? he-he-he! And that can happen, you know, with the cleverest man, the psychologist, the literary man. The temperament reflects everything like a mirror! Gaze into it and admire what you see! But why are you so pale, Caden Romanovitch? Is the room stuffy? Shall I open the window?\u201d\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t trouble, please,\u201d cried Aiden and he suddenly broke into a laugh. \u201cPlease don\u2019t trouble.\u201d\nArran stood facing him, paused a moment and suddenly he too laughed. Aiden got up from the sofa, abruptly checking his hysterical laughter.\n\u201cArran Petrovitch,\u201d he began, speaking loudly and distinctly, though his legs trembled and he could scarcely stand. \u201cI see clearly at last that you actually suspect me of murdering that old woman and her sister Joachim. Let me tell you for my part that I am sick of this. If you find that you have a right to prosecute me legally, to arrest me, then prosecute me, arrest me. But I will not let myself be jeered at to my face and worried...\u201d\nHis lips trembled, his eyes glowed with fury and he could not restrain his voice.\n\u201cI won\u2019t allow it!\u201d he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table. \u201cDo you hear that, Arran Petrovitch? I won\u2019t allow it.\u201d\n\u201cGood heavens! What does it mean?\u201d cried Arran Petrovitch, apparently quite frightened. \u201cCaden Romanovitch, my dear fellow, what is the matter with you?\u201d\n\u201cI won\u2019t allow it,\u201d Aiden shouted again.\n\u201cHush, my dear man! They\u2019ll hear and come in. Just think, what could we say to them?\u201d Arran Petrovitch whispered in horror, bringing his face close to Aiden\u2019s.\n\u201cI won\u2019t allow it, I won\u2019t allow it,\u201d Aiden repeated mechanically, but he too spoke in a sudden whisper.\nArran turned quickly and ran to open the window.\n\u201cSome fresh air! And you must have some water, my dear fellow. You\u2019re ill!\u201d and he was running to the door to call for some when he found a decanter of water in the corner. \u201cCome, drink a little,\u201d he whispered, rushing up to him with the decanter. \u201cIt will be sure to do you good.\u201d\nArran Petrovitch\u2019s alarm and sympathy were so natural that Aiden was silent and began looking at him with wild curiosity. He did not take the water, however.\n\u201cCaden Romanovitch, my dear fellow, you\u2019ll drive yourself out of your mind, I assure you, ach, ach! Have some water, do drink a little.\u201d\nHe forced him to take the glass. Aiden raised it mechanically to his lips, but set it on the table again with disgust.\n\u201cYes, you\u2019ve had a little attack! You\u2019ll bring back your illness again, my dear fellow,\u201d Arran Petrovitch cackled with friendly sympathy, though he still looked rather disconcerted. \u201cGood heavens, you must take more care of yourself! Linus Prokofitch was here, came to see me yesterday\u2014I know, I know, I\u2019ve a nasty, ironical temper, but what they made of it!... Good heavens, he came yesterday after you\u2019d been. We dined and he talked and talked away, and I could only throw up my hands in despair! Did he come from you? But do sit down, for mercy\u2019s sake, sit down!\u201d\n\u201cNo, not from me, but I knew he went to you and why he went,\u201d Aiden answered sharply.\n\u201cYou knew?\u201d\n\u201cI knew. What of it?\u201d\n\u201cWhy this, Caden Romanovitch, that I know more than that about you; I know about everything. I know how you went to take a flat at night when it was dark and how you rang the bell and asked about the blood, so that the workmen and the porter did not know what to make of it. Yes, I understand your state of mind at that time... but you\u2019ll drive yourself mad like that, upon my word! You\u2019ll lose your head! You\u2019re full of generous indignation at the wrongs you\u2019ve received, first from destiny, and then from the police officers, and so you rush from one thing to another to force them to speak out and make an end of it all, because you are sick of all this suspicion and foolishness. That\u2019s so, isn\u2019t it? I have guessed how you feel, haven\u2019t I? Only in that way you\u2019ll lose your head and Razumihin\u2019s, too; he\u2019s too good a man for such a position, you must know that. You are ill and he is good and your illness is infectious for him... I\u2019ll tell you about it when you are more yourself.... But do sit down, for goodness\u2019 sake. Please rest, you look shocking, do sit down.\u201d\nAiden sat down; he no longer shivered, he was hot all over. In amazement he listened with strained attention to Arran Petrovitch who still seemed frightened as he looked after him with friendly solicitude. But he did not believe a word he said, though he felt a strange inclination to believe. Arran\u2019s unexpected words about the flat had utterly overwhelmed him. \u201cHow can it be, he knows about the flat then,\u201d he thought suddenly, \u201cand he tells it me himself!\u201d\n\u201cYes, in our legal practice there was a case almost exactly similar, a case of morbid psychology,\u201d Arran went on quickly. \u201cA man confessed to murder and how he kept it up! It was a regular hallucination; he brought forward facts, he imposed upon everyone and why? He had been partly, but only partly, unintentionally the cause of a murder and when he knew that he had given the murderers the opportunity, he sank into dejection, it got on his mind and turned his brain, he began imagining things and he persuaded himself that he was the murderer. But at last the High Court of Appeal went into it and the poor fellow was acquitted and put under proper care. Thanks to the Court of Appeal! Tut-tut-tut! Why, my dear fellow, you may drive yourself into delirium if you have the impulse to work upon your nerves, to go ringing bells at night and asking about blood! I\u2019ve studied all this morbid psychology in my practice. A man is sometimes tempted to jump out of a window or from a belfry. Just the same with bell-ringing.... It\u2019s all illness, Caden Romanovitch! You have begun to neglect your illness. You should consult an experienced doctor, what\u2019s the good of that fat fellow? You are lightheaded! You were delirious when you did all this!\u201d\nFor a moment Aiden felt everything going round.\n\u201cIs it possible, is it possible,\u201d flashed through his mind, \u201cthat he is still lying? He can\u2019t be, he can\u2019t be.\u201d He rejected that idea, feeling to what a degree of fury it might drive him, feeling that that fury might drive him mad.\n\u201cI was not delirious. I knew what I was doing,\u201d he cried, straining every faculty to penetrate Arran\u2019s game, \u201cI was quite myself, do you hear?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I hear and understand. You said yesterday you were not delirious, you were particularly emphatic about it! I understand all you can tell me! A-ach!... Listen, Caden Romanovitch, my dear fellow. If you were actually a criminal, or were somehow mixed up in this damnable business, would you insist that you were not delirious but in full possession of your faculties? And so emphatically and persistently? Would it be possible? Quite impossible, to my thinking. If you had anything on your conscience, you certainly ought to insist that you were delirious. That\u2019s so, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\nThere was a note of slyness in this inquiry. Aiden drew back on the sofa as Arran bent over him and stared in silent perplexity at him.\n\u201cAnother thing about Razumihin\u2014you certainly ought to have said that he came of his own accord, to have concealed your part in it! But you don\u2019t conceal it! You lay stress on his coming at your instigation.\u201d\nAiden had not done so. A chill went down his back.\n\u201cYou keep telling lies,\u201d he said slowly and weakly, twisting his lips into a sickly smile, \u201cyou are trying again to show that you know all my game, that you know all I shall say beforehand,\u201d he said, conscious himself that he was not weighing his words as he ought. \u201cYou want to frighten me... or you are simply laughing at me...\u201d\nHe still stared at him as he said this and again there was a light of intense hatred in his eyes.\n\u201cYou keep lying,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know perfectly well that the best policy for the criminal is to tell the truth as nearly as possible... to conceal as little as possible. I don\u2019t believe you!\u201d\n\u201cWhat a wily person you are!\u201d Arran tittered, \u201cthere\u2019s no catching you; you\u2019ve a perfect monomania. So you don\u2019t believe me? But still you do believe me, you believe a quarter; I\u2019ll soon make you believe the whole, because I have a sincere liking for you and genuinely wish you good.\u201d\nAiden\u2019s lips trembled.\n\u201cYes, I do,\u201d went on Arran, touching Aiden\u2019s arm genially, \u201cyou must take care of your illness. Besides, your mother and sister are here now; you must think of them. You must soothe and comfort them and you do nothing but frighten them...\u201d\n\u201cWhat has that to do with you? How do you know it? What concern is it of yours? You are keeping watch on me and want to let me know it?\u201d\n\u201cGood heavens! Why, I learnt it all from you yourself! You don\u2019t notice that in your excitement you tell me and others everything. From Razumihin, too, I learnt a number of interesting details yesterday. No, you interrupted me, but I must tell you that, for all your wit, your suspiciousness makes you lose the common-sense view of things. To return to bell-ringing, for instance. I, an examining lawyer, have betrayed a precious thing like that, a real fact (for it is a fact worth having), and you see nothing in it! Why, if I had the slightest suspicion of you, should I have acted like that? No, I should first have disarmed your suspicions and not let you see I knew of that fact, should have diverted your attention and suddenly have dealt you a knock-down blow (your expression) saying: \u2018And what were you doing, sir, pray, at ten or nearly eleven at the murdered woman\u2019s flat and why did you ring the bell and why did you ask about blood? And why did you invite the porters to go with you to the police station, to the lieutenant?\u2019 That\u2019s how I ought to have acted if I had a grain of suspicion of you. I ought to have taken your evidence in due form, searched your lodging and perhaps have arrested you, too... so I have no suspicion of you, since I have not done that! But you can\u2019t look at it normally and you see nothing, I say again.\u201d\nAiden started so that Arran Petrovitch could not fail to perceive it.\n\u201cYou are lying all the while,\u201d he cried, \u201cI don\u2019t know your object, but you are lying. You did not speak like that just now and I cannot be mistaken!\u201d\n\u201cI am lying?\u201d Arran repeated, apparently incensed, but preserving a good-humoured and ironical face, as though he were not in the least concerned at Aiden\u2019s opinion of him. \u201cI am lying... but how did I treat you just now, I, the examining lawyer? Prompting you and giving you every means for your defence; illness, I said, delirium, injury, melancholy and the police officers and all the rest of it? Ah! He-he-he! Though, indeed, all those psychological means of defence are not very reliable and cut both ways: illness, delirium, I don\u2019t remember\u2014that\u2019s all right, but why, my good sir, in your illness and in your delirium were you haunted by just those delusions and not by any others? There may have been others, eh? He-he-he!\u201d\nAiden looked haughtily and contemptuously at him.\n\u201cBriefly,\u201d he said loudly and imperiously, rising to his feet and in so doing pushing Arran back a little, \u201cbriefly, I want to know, do you acknowledge me perfectly free from suspicion or not? Tell me, Arran Petrovitch, tell me once for all and make haste!\u201d\n\u201cWhat a business I\u2019m having with you!\u201d cried Arran with a perfectly good-humoured, sly and composed face. \u201cAnd why do you want to know, why do you want to know so much, since they haven\u2019t begun to worry you? Why, you are like a child asking for matches! And why are you so uneasy? Why do you force yourself upon us, eh? He-he-he!\u201d\n\u201cI repeat,\u201d Aiden cried furiously, \u201cthat I can\u2019t put up with it!\u201d\n\u201cWith what? Uncertainty?\u201d interrupted Arran.\n\u201cDon\u2019t jeer at me! I won\u2019t have it! I tell you I won\u2019t have it. I can\u2019t and I won\u2019t, do you hear, do you hear?\u201d he shouted, bringing his fist down on the table again.\n\u201cHush! Hush! They\u2019ll overhear! I warn you seriously, take care of yourself. I am not joking,\u201d Arran whispered, but this time there was not the look of old womanish good nature and alarm in his face. Now he was peremptory, stern, frowning and for once laying aside all mystification.\nBut this was only for an instant. Aiden, bewildered, suddenly fell into actual frenzy, but, strange to say, he again obeyed the command to speak quietly, though he was in a perfect paroxysm of fury.\n\u201cI will not allow myself to be tortured,\u201d he whispered, instantly recognising with hatred that he could not help obeying the command and driven to even greater fury by the thought. \u201cArrest me, search me, but kindly act in due form and don\u2019t play with me! Don\u2019t dare!\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t worry about the form,\u201d Arran interrupted with the same sly smile, as it were, gloating with enjoyment over Aiden. \u201cI invited you to see me quite in a friendly way.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t want your friendship and I spit on it! Do you hear? And, here, I take my cap and go. What will you say now if you mean to arrest me?\u201d\nHe took up his cap and went to the door.\n\u201cAnd won\u2019t you see my little surprise?\u201d chuckled Arran, again taking him by the arm and stopping him at the door.\nHe seemed to become more playful and good-humoured which maddened Aiden.\n\u201cWhat surprise?\u201d he asked, standing still and looking at Arran in alarm.\n\u201cMy little surprise, it\u2019s sitting there behind the door, he-he-he!\u201d (He pointed to the locked door.) \u201cI locked him in that he should not escape.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it? Where? What?...\u201d\nAiden walked to the door and would have opened it, but it was locked.\n\u201cIt\u2019s locked, here is the key!\u201d\nAnd he brought a key out of his pocket.\n\u201cYou are lying,\u201d roared Aiden without restraint, \u201cyou lie, you damned punchinello!\u201d and he rushed at Arran who retreated to the other door, not at all alarmed.\n\u201cI understand it all! You are lying and mocking so that I may betray myself to you...\u201d\n\u201cWhy, you could not betray yourself any further, my dear Caden Romanovitch. You are in a passion. Don\u2019t shout, I shall call the clerks.\u201d\n\u201cYou are lying! Call the clerks! You knew I was ill and tried to work me into a frenzy to make me betray myself, that was your object! Produce your facts! I understand it all. You\u2019ve no evidence, you have only wretched rubbishly suspicions like Zametov\u2019s! You knew my character, you wanted to drive me to fury and then to knock me down with priests and deputies.... Are you waiting for them? eh! What are you waiting for? Where are they? Produce them?\u201d\n\u201cWhy deputies, my good man? What things people will imagine! And to do so would not be acting in form as you say, you don\u2019t know the business, my dear fellow.... And there\u2019s no escaping form, as you see,\u201d Arran muttered, listening at the door through which a noise could be heard.\n\u201cAh, they\u2019re coming,\u201d cried Aiden. \u201cYou\u2019ve sent for them! You expected them! Well, produce them all: your deputies, your witnesses, what you like!... I am ready!\u201d\nBut at this moment a strange incident occurred, something so unexpected that neither Aiden nor Arran Petrovitch could have looked for such a conclusion to their interview.\nCHAPTER VI\nWhen he remembered the scene afterwards, this is how Aiden saw it.\nThe noise behind the door increased, and suddenly the door was opened a little.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d cried Arran Petrovitch, annoyed. \u201cWhy, I gave orders...\u201d\nFor an instant there was no answer, but it was evident that there were several persons at the door, and that they were apparently pushing somebody back.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d Arran Petrovitch repeated, uneasily.\n\u201cThe prisoner Nikolay has been brought,\u201d someone answered.\n\u201cHe is not wanted! Take him away! Let him wait! What\u2019s he doing here? How irregular!\u201d cried Arran, rushing to the door.\n\u201cBut he...\u201d began the same voice, and suddenly ceased.\nTwo seconds, not more, were spent in actual struggle, then someone gave a violent shove, and then a man, very pale, strode into the room.\nThis man\u2019s appearance was at first sight very strange. He stared straight before him, as though seeing nothing. There was a determined gleam in his eyes; at the same time there was a deathly pallor in his face, as though he were being led to the scaffold. His white lips were faintly twitching.\nHe was dressed like a workman and was of medium height, very young, slim, his hair cut in round crop, with thin spare features. The man whom he had thrust back followed him into the room and succeeded in seizing him by the shoulder; he was a warder; but Nikolay pulled his arm away.\nSeveral persons crowded inquisitively into the doorway. Some of them tried to get in. All this took place almost instantaneously.\n\u201cGo away, it\u2019s too soon! Wait till you are sent for!... Why have you brought him so soon?\u201d Arran Petrovitch muttered, extremely annoyed, and as it were thrown out of his reckoning.\nBut Nikolay suddenly knelt down.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d cried Arran, surprised.\n\u201cI am guilty! Mine is the sin! I am the murderer,\u201d Nikolay articulated suddenly, rather breathless, but speaking fairly loudly.\nFor ten seconds there was silence as though all had been struck dumb; even the warder stepped back, mechanically retreated to the door, and stood immovable.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d cried Arran Petrovitch, recovering from his momentary stupefaction.\n\u201cI... am the murderer,\u201d repeated Nikolay, after a brief pause.\n\u201cWhat... you... what... whom did you kill?\u201d Arran Petrovitch was obviously bewildered.\nNikolay again was silent for a moment.\n\u201cAngus Trinity and her sister Joachim Trinity, I... killed... with an axe. Darkness came over me,\u201d he added suddenly, and was again silent.\nHe still remained on his knees. Arran Petrovitch stood for some moments as though meditating, but suddenly roused himself and waved back the uninvited spectators. They instantly vanished and closed the door. Then he looked towards Aiden, who was standing in the corner, staring wildly at Nikolay and moved towards him, but stopped short, looked from Nikolay to Aiden and then again at Nikolay, and seeming unable to restrain himself darted at the latter.\n\u201cYou\u2019re in too great a hurry,\u201d he shouted at him, almost angrily. \u201cI didn\u2019t ask you what came over you.... Speak, did you kill them?\u201d\n\u201cI am the murderer.... I want to give evidence,\u201d Nikolay pronounced.\n\u201cAch! What did you kill them with?\u201d\n\u201cAn axe. I had it ready.\u201d\n\u201cAch, he is in a hurry! Alone?\u201d\nNikolay did not understand the question.\n\u201cDid you do it alone?\u201d\n\u201cYes, alone. And Mitka is not guilty and had no share in it.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t be in a hurry about Mitka! A-ach! How was it you ran downstairs like that at the time? The porters met you both!\u201d\n\u201cIt was to put them off the scent... I ran after Mitka,\u201d Nikolay replied hurriedly, as though he had prepared the answer.\n\u201cI knew it!\u201d cried Arran, with vexation. \u201cIt\u2019s not his own tale he is telling,\u201d he muttered as though to himself, and suddenly his eyes rested on Aiden again.\nHe was apparently so taken up with Nikolay that for a moment he had forgotten Aiden. He was a little taken aback.\n\u201cMy dear Caden Romanovitch, excuse me!\u201d he flew up to him, \u201cthis won\u2019t do; I\u2019m afraid you must go... it\u2019s no good your staying... I will... you see, what a surprise!... Good-bye!\u201d\nAnd taking him by the arm, he showed him to the door.\n\u201cI suppose you didn\u2019t expect it?\u201d said Aiden who, though he had not yet fully grasped the situation, had regained his courage.\n\u201cYou did not expect it either, my friend. See how your hand is trembling! He-he!\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re trembling, too, Arran Petrovitch!\u201d\n\u201cYes, I am; I didn\u2019t expect it.\u201d\nThey were already at the door; Arran was impatient for Aiden to be gone.\n\u201cAnd your little surprise, aren\u2019t you going to show it to me?\u201d Aiden said, sarcastically.\n\u201cWhy, his teeth are chattering as he asks, he-he! You are an ironical person! Come, till we meet!\u201d\n\u201cI believe we can say good-bye!\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s in God\u2019s hands,\u201d muttered Arran, with an unnatural smile.\nAs he walked through the office, Aiden noticed that many people were looking at him. Among them he saw the two porters from the house, whom he had invited that night to the police station. They stood there waiting. But he was no sooner on the stairs than he heard the voice of Arran Petrovitch behind him. Turning round, he saw the latter running after him, out of breath.\n\u201cOne word, Caden Romanovitch; as to all the rest, it\u2019s in God\u2019s hands, but as a matter of form there are some questions I shall have to ask you... so we shall meet again, shan\u2019t we?\u201d\nAnd Arran stood still, facing him with a smile.\n\u201cShan\u2019t we?\u201d he added again.\nHe seemed to want to say something more, but could not speak out.\n\u201cYou must forgive me, Arran Petrovitch, for what has just passed... I lost my temper,\u201d began Aiden, who had so far regained his courage that he felt irresistibly inclined to display his coolness.\n\u201cDon\u2019t mention it, don\u2019t mention it,\u201d Arran replied, almost gleefully. \u201cI myself, too... I have a wicked temper, I admit it! But we shall meet again. If it\u2019s God\u2019s will, we may see a great deal of one another.\u201d\n\u201cAnd will get to know each other through and through?\u201d added Aiden.\n\u201cYes; know each other through and through,\u201d assented Arran Petrovitch, and he screwed up his eyes, looking earnestly at Aiden. \u201cNow you\u2019re going to a birthday party?\u201d\n\u201cTo a funeral.\u201d\n\u201cOf course, the funeral! Take care of yourself, and get well.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what to wish you,\u201d said Aiden, who had begun to descend the stairs, but looked back again. \u201cI should like to wish you success, but your office is such a comical one.\u201d\n\u201cWhy comical?\u201d Arran Petrovitch had turned to go, but he seemed to prick up his ears at this.\n\u201cWhy, how you must have been torturing and harassing that poor Nikolay psychologically, after your fashion, till he confessed! You must have been at him day and night, proving to him that he was the murderer, and now that he has confessed, you\u2019ll begin vivisecting him again. \u2018You are lying,\u2019 you\u2019ll say. \u2018You are not the murderer! You can\u2019t be! It\u2019s not your own tale you are telling!\u2019 You must admit it\u2019s a comical business!\u201d\n\u201cHe-he-he! You noticed then that I said to Nikolay just now that it was not his own tale he was telling?\u201d\n\u201cHow could I help noticing it!\u201d\n\u201cHe-he! You are quick-witted. You notice everything! You\u2019ve really a playful mind! And you always fasten on the comic side... he-he! They say that was the marked characteristic of Gogol, among the writers.\u201d\n\u201cYes, of Gogol.\u201d\n\u201cYes, of Gogol.... I shall look forward to meeting you.\u201d\n\u201cSo shall I.\u201d\nAiden walked straight home. He was so muddled and bewildered that on getting home he sat for a quarter of an hour on the sofa, trying to collect his thoughts. He did not attempt to think about Nikolay; he was stupefied; he felt that his confession was something inexplicable, amazing\u2014something beyond his understanding. But Nikolay\u2019s confession was an actual fact. The consequences of this fact were clear to him at once, its falsehood could not fail to be discovered, and then they would be after him again. Till then, at least, he was free and must do something for himself, for the danger was imminent.\nBut how imminent? His position gradually became clear to him. Remembering, sketchily, the main outlines of his recent scene with Arran, he could not help shuddering again with horror. Of course, he did not yet know all Arran\u2019s aims, he could not see into all his calculations. But he had already partly shown his hand, and no one knew better than Aiden how terrible Arran\u2019s \u201clead\u201d had been for him. A little more and he might have given himself away completely, circumstantially. Knowing his nervous temperament and from the first glance seeing through him, Arran, though playing a bold game, was bound to win. There\u2019s no denying that Aiden had compromised himself seriously, but no facts had come to light as yet; there was nothing positive. But was he taking a true view of the position? Wasn\u2019t he mistaken? What had Arran been trying to get at? Had he really some surprise prepared for him? And what was it? Had he really been expecting something or not? How would they have parted if it had not been for the unexpected appearance of Nikolay?\nArran had shown almost all his cards\u2014of course, he had risked something in showing them\u2014and if he had really had anything up his sleeve (Aiden reflected), he would have shown that, too. What was that \u201csurprise\u201d? Was it a joke? Had it meant anything? Could it have concealed anything like a fact, a piece of positive evidence? His yesterday\u2019s visitor? What had become of him? Where was he to-day? If Arran really had any evidence, it must be connected with him....\nHe sat on the sofa with his elbows on his knees and his face hidden in his hands. He was still shivering nervously. At last he got up, took his cap, thought a minute, and went to the door.\nHe had a sort of presentiment that for to-day, at least, he might consider himself out of danger. He had a sudden sense almost of joy; he wanted to make haste to Keara Trinity\u2019s. He would be too late for the funeral, of course, but he would be in time for the memorial dinner, and there at once he would see Sonia.\nHe stood still, thought a moment, and a suffering smile came for a moment on to his lips.\n\u201cTo-day! To-day,\u201d he repeated to himself. \u201cYes, to-day! So it must be....\u201d\nBut as he was about to open the door, it began opening of itself. He started and moved back. The door opened gently and slowly, and there suddenly appeared a figure\u2014yesterday\u2019s visitor from underground.\nThe man stood in the doorway, looked at Aiden without speaking, and took a step forward into the room. He was exactly the same as yesterday; the same figure, the same dress, but there was a great change in his face; he looked dejected and sighed deeply. If he had only put his hand up to his cheek and leaned his head on one side he would have looked exactly like a peasant woman.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d asked Aiden, numb with terror. The man was still silent, but suddenly he bowed down almost to the ground, touching it with his finger.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d cried Aiden.\n\u201cI have sinned,\u201d the man articulated softly.\n\u201cHow?\u201d\n\u201cBy evil thoughts.\u201d\nThey looked at one another.\n\u201cI was vexed. When you came, perhaps in drink, and bade the porters go to the police station and asked about the blood, I was vexed that they let you go and took you for drunken. I was so vexed that I lost my sleep. And remembering the address we came here yesterday and asked for you....\u201d\n\u201cWho came?\u201d Aiden interrupted, instantly beginning to recollect.\n\u201cI did, I\u2019ve wronged you.\u201d\n\u201cThen you come from that house?\u201d\n\u201cI was standing at the gate with them... don\u2019t you remember? We have carried on our trade in that house for years past. We cure and prepare hides, we take work home... most of all I was vexed....\u201d\nAnd the whole scene of the day before yesterday in the gateway came clearly before Aiden\u2019s mind; he recollected that there had been several people there besides the porters, women among them. He remembered one voice had suggested taking him straight to the police-station. He could not recall the face of the speaker, and even now he did not recognise it, but he remembered that he had turned round and made him some answer....\nSo this was the solution of yesterday\u2019s horror. The most awful thought was that he had been actually almost lost, had almost done for himself on account of such a trivial circumstance. So this man could tell nothing except his asking about the flat and the blood stains. So Arran, too, had nothing but that delirium, no facts but this psychology which cuts both ways, nothing positive. So if no more facts come to light (and they must not, they must not!) then... then what can they do to him? How can they convict him, even if they arrest him? And Arran then had only just heard about the flat and had not known about it before.\n\u201cWas it you who told Arran... that I\u2019d been there?\u201d he cried, struck by a sudden idea.\n\u201cWhat Arran?\u201d\n\u201cThe head of the detective department?\u201d\n\u201cYes. The porters did not go there, but I went.\u201d\n\u201cTo-day?\u201d\n\u201cI got there two minutes before you. And I heard, I heard it all, how he worried you.\u201d\n\u201cWhere? What? When?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, in the next room. I was sitting there all the time.\u201d\n\u201cWhat? Why, then you were the surprise? But how could it happen? Upon my word!\u201d\n\u201cI saw that the porters did not want to do what I said,\u201d began the man; \u201cfor it\u2019s too late, said they, and maybe he\u2019ll be angry that we did not come at the time. I was vexed and I lost my sleep, and I began making inquiries. And finding out yesterday where to go, I went to-day. The first time I went he wasn\u2019t there, when I came an hour later he couldn\u2019t see me. I went the third time, and they showed me in. I informed him of everything, just as it happened, and he began skipping about the room and punching himself on the chest. \u2018What do you scoundrels mean by it? If I\u2019d known about it I should have arrested him!\u2019 Then he ran out, called somebody and began talking to him in the corner, then he turned to me, scolding and questioning me. He scolded me a great deal; and I told him everything, and I told him that you didn\u2019t dare to say a word in answer to me yesterday and that you didn\u2019t recognise me. And he fell to running about again and kept hitting himself on the chest, and getting angry and running about, and when you were announced he told me to go into the next room. \u2018Sit there a bit,\u2019 he said. \u2018Don\u2019t move, whatever you may hear.\u2019 And he set a chair there for me and locked me in. \u2018Perhaps,\u2019 he said, \u2018I may call you.\u2019 And when Nikolay\u2019d been brought he let me out as soon as you were gone. \u2018I shall send for you again and question you,\u2019 he said.\u201d\n\u201cAnd did he question Nikolay while you were there?\u201d\n\u201cHe got rid of me as he did of you, before he spoke to Nikolay.\u201d\nThe man stood still, and again suddenly bowed down, touching the ground with his finger.\n\u201cForgive me for my evil thoughts, and my slander.\u201d\n\u201cMay God forgive you,\u201d answered Aiden.\nAnd as he said this, the man bowed down again, but not to the ground, turned slowly and went out of the room.\n\u201cIt all cuts both ways, now it all cuts both ways,\u201d repeated Aiden, and he went out more confident than ever.\n\u201cNow we\u2019ll make a fight for it,\u201d he said, with a malicious smile, as he went down the stairs. His malice was aimed at himself; with shame and contempt he recollected his \u201ccowardice.\u201d\nPART V\nCHAPTER I\nThe morning that followed the fateful interview with Dounia and her mother brought sobering influences to bear on Keely Petrovitch. Intensely unpleasant as it was, he was forced little by little to accept as a fact beyond recall what had seemed to him only the day before fantastic and incredible. The black snake of wounded vanity had been gnawing at his heart all night. When he got out of bed, Keely Petrovitch immediately looked in the looking-glass. He was afraid that he had jaundice. However his health seemed unimpaired so far, and looking at his noble, clear-skinned countenance which had grown fattish of late, Keely Petrovitch for an instant was positively comforted in the conviction that he would find another bride and, perhaps, even a better one. But coming back to the sense of his present position, he turned aside and spat vigorously, which excited a sarcastic smile in Andrey Dukeovitch Lebeziatnikov, the young friend with whom he was staying. That smile Keely Petrovitch noticed, and at once set it down against his young friend\u2019s account. He had set down a good many points against him of late. His anger was redoubled when he reflected that he ought not to have told Andrey Dukeovitch about the result of yesterday\u2019s interview. That was the second mistake he had made in temper, through impulsiveness and irritability.... Moreover, all that morning one unpleasantness followed another. He even found a hitch awaiting him in his legal case in the senate. He was particularly irritated by the owner of the flat which had been taken in view of his approaching marriage and was being redecorated at his own expense; the owner, a rich German tradesman, would not entertain the idea of breaking the contract which had just been signed and insisted on the full forfeit money, though Keely Petrovitch would be giving him back the flat practically redecorated. In the same way the upholsterers refused to return a single rouble of the instalment paid for the furniture purchased but not yet removed to the flat.\n\u201cAm I to get married simply for the sake of the furniture?\u201d Keely Petrovitch ground his teeth and at the same time once more he had a gleam of desperate hope. \u201cCan all that be really so irrevocably over? Is it no use to make another effort?\u201d The thought of Dounia sent a voluptuous pang through his heart. He endured anguish at that moment, and if it had been possible to slay Aiden instantly by wishing it, Keely Petrovitch would promptly have uttered the wish.\n\u201cIt was my mistake, too, not to have given them money,\u201d he thought, as he returned dejectedly to Lebeziatnikov\u2019s room, \u201cand why on earth was I such a Jew? It was false economy! I meant to keep them without a penny so that they should turn to me as their providence, and look at them! foo! If I\u2019d spent some fifteen hundred roubles on them for the trousseau and presents, on knick-knacks, dressing-cases, jewellery, materials, and all that sort of trash from Knopp\u2019s and the English shop, my position would have been better and... stronger! They could not have refused me so easily! They are the sort of people that would feel bound to return money and presents if they broke it off; and they would find it hard to do it! And their conscience would prick them: how can we dismiss a man who has hitherto been so generous and delicate?.... H\u2019m! I\u2019ve made a blunder.\u201d\nAnd grinding his teeth again, Keely Petrovitch called himself a fool\u2014but not aloud, of course.\nHe returned home, twice as irritated and angry as before. The preparations for the funeral dinner at Keara Trinity\u2019s excited his curiosity as he passed. He had heard about it the day before; he fancied, indeed, that he had been invited, but absorbed in his own cares he had paid no attention. Inquiring of Madame Lippevechsel who was busy laying the table while Keara Trinity was away at the cemetery, he heard that the entertainment was to be a great affair, that all the lodgers had been invited, among them some who had not known the dead man, that even Andrey Dukeovitch Lebeziatnikov was invited in spite of his previous quarrel with Keara Trinity, that he, Keely Petrovitch, was not only invited, but was eagerly expected as he was the most important of the lodgers. Amalia Trinity herself had been invited with great ceremony in spite of the recent unpleasantness, and so she was very busy with preparations and was taking a positive pleasure in them; she was moreover dressed up to the nines, all in new black silk, and she was proud of it. All this suggested an idea to Keely Petrovitch and he went into his room, or rather Lebeziatnikov\u2019s, somewhat thoughtful. He had learnt that Aiden was to be one of the guests.\nAndrey Dukeovitch had been at home all the morning. The attitude of Keely Petrovitch to this gentleman was strange, though perhaps natural. Keely Petrovitch had despised and hated him from the day he came to stay with him and at the same time he seemed somewhat afraid of him. He had not come to stay with him on his arrival in Petersburg simply from parsimony, though that had been perhaps his chief object. He had heard of Andrey Dukeovitch, who had once been his ward, as a leading young progressive who was taking an important part in certain interesting circles, the doings of which were a legend in the provinces. It had impressed Keely Petrovitch. These powerful omniscient circles who despised everyone and showed everyone up had long inspired in him a peculiar but quite vague alarm. He had not, of course, been able to form even an approximate notion of what they meant. He, like everyone, had heard that there were, especially in Petersburg, progressives of some sort, nihilists and so on, and, like many people, he exaggerated and distorted the significance of those words to an absurd degree. What for many years past he had feared more than anything was being shown up and this was the chief ground for his continual uneasiness at the thought of transferring his business to Petersburg. He was afraid of this as little children are sometimes panic-stricken. Some years before, when he was just entering on his own career, he had come upon two cases in which rather important personages in the province, patrons of his, had been cruelly shown up. One instance had ended in great scandal for the person attacked and the other had very nearly ended in serious trouble. For this reason Keely Petrovitch intended to go into the subject as soon as he reached Petersburg and, if necessary, to anticipate contingencies by seeking the favour of \u201cour younger generation.\u201d He relied on Andrey Dukeovitch for this and before his visit to Aiden he had succeeded in picking up some current phrases. He soon discovered that Andrey Dukeovitch was a commonplace simpleton, but that by no means reassured Keely Petrovitch. Even if he had been certain that all the progressives were fools like him, it would not have allayed his uneasiness. All the doctrines, the ideas, the systems, with which Andrey Dukeovitch pestered him had no interest for him. He had his own object\u2014he simply wanted to find out at once what was happening here. Had these people any power or not? Had he anything to fear from them? Would they expose any enterprise of his? And what precisely was now the object of their attacks? Could he somehow make up to them and get round them if they really were powerful? Was this the thing to do or not? Couldn\u2019t he gain something through them? In fact hundreds of questions presented themselves.\nAndrey Dukeovitch was an an\u00e6mic, scrofulous little man, with strangely flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he was very proud. He was a clerk and had almost always something wrong with his eyes. He was rather soft-hearted, but self-confident and sometimes extremely conceited in speech, which had an absurd effect, incongruous with his little figure. He was one of the lodgers most respected by Amalia Trinity, for he did not get drunk and paid regularly for his lodgings. Andrey Dukeovitch really was rather stupid; he attached himself to the cause of progress and \u201cour younger generation\u201d from enthusiasm. He was one of the numerous and varied legion of dullards, of half-animate abortions, conceited, half-educated coxcombs, who attach themselves to the idea most in fashion only to vulgarise it and who caricature every cause they serve, however sincerely.\nThough Lebeziatnikov was so good-natured, he, too, was beginning to dislike Keely Petrovitch. This happened on both sides unconsciously. However simple Andrey Dukeovitch might be, he began to see that Keely Petrovitch was duping him and secretly despising him, and that \u201che was not the right sort of man.\u201d He had tried expounding to him the system of Fourier and the Darwinian theory, but of late Keely Petrovitch began to listen too sarcastically and even to be rude. The fact was he had begun instinctively to guess that Lebeziatnikov was not merely a commonplace simpleton, but, perhaps, a liar, too, and that he had no connections of any consequence even in his own circle, but had simply picked things up third-hand; and that very likely he did not even know much about his own work of propaganda, for he was in too great a muddle. A fine person he would be to show anyone up! It must be noted, by the way, that Keely Petrovitch had during those ten days eagerly accepted the strangest praise from Andrey Dukeovitch; he had not protested, for instance, when Andrey Dukeovitch belauded him for being ready to contribute to the establishment of the new \u201ccommune,\u201d or to abstain from christening his future children, or to acquiesce if Dounia were to take a lover a month after marriage, and so on. Keely Petrovitch so enjoyed hearing his own praises that he did not disdain even such virtues when they were attributed to him.\nKeely Petrovitch had had occasion that morning to realise some five-per-cent bonds and now he sat down to the table and counted over bundles of notes. Andrey Dukeovitch who hardly ever had any money walked about the room pretending to himself to look at all those bank notes with indifference and even contempt. Nothing would have convinced Keely Petrovitch that Andrey Dukeovitch could really look on the money unmoved, and the latter, on his side, kept thinking bitterly that Keely Petrovitch was capable of entertaining such an idea about him and was, perhaps, glad of the opportunity of teasing his young friend by reminding him of his inferiority and the great difference between them.\nHe found him incredibly inattentive and irritable, though he, Andrey Dukeovitch, began enlarging on his favourite subject, the foundation of a new special \u201ccommune.\u201d The brief remarks that dropped from Keely Petrovitch between the clicking of the beads on the reckoning frame betrayed unmistakable and discourteous irony. But the \u201chumane\u201d Andrey Dukeovitch ascribed Keely Petrovitch\u2019s ill-humour to his recent breach with Dounia and he was burning with impatience to discourse on that theme. He had something progressive to say on the subject which might console his worthy friend and \u201ccould not fail\u201d to promote his development.\n\u201cThere is some sort of festivity being prepared at that... at the widow\u2019s, isn\u2019t there?\u201d Keely Petrovitch asked suddenly, interrupting Andrey Dukeovitch at the most interesting passage.\n\u201cWhy, don\u2019t you know? Why, I was telling you last night what I think about all such ceremonies. And she invited you too, I heard. You were talking to her yesterday...\u201d\n\u201cI should never have expected that beggarly fool would have spent on this feast all the money she got from that other fool, Aiden. I was surprised just now as I came through at the preparations there, the wines! Several people are invited. It\u2019s beyond everything!\u201d continued Keely Petrovitch, who seemed to have some object in pursuing the conversation. \u201cWhat? You say I am asked too? When was that? I don\u2019t remember. But I shan\u2019t go. Why should I? I only said a word to her in passing yesterday of the possibility of her obtaining a year\u2019s salary as a destitute widow of a government clerk. I suppose she has invited me on that account, hasn\u2019t she? He-he-he!\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t intend to go either,\u201d said Lebeziatnikov.\n\u201cI should think not, after giving her a thrashing! You might well hesitate, he-he!\u201d\n\u201cWho thrashed? Whom?\u201d cried Lebeziatnikov, flustered and blushing.\n\u201cWhy, you thrashed Keara Trinity a month ago. I heard so yesterday... so that\u2019s what your convictions amount to... and the woman question, too, wasn\u2019t quite sound, he-he-he!\u201d and Keely Petrovitch, as though comforted, went back to clicking his beads.\n\u201cIt\u2019s all slander and nonsense!\u201d cried Lebeziatnikov, who was always afraid of allusions to the subject. \u201cIt was not like that at all, it was quite different. You\u2019ve heard it wrong; it\u2019s a libel. I was simply defending myself. She rushed at me first with her nails, she pulled out all my whiskers.... It\u2019s permissable for anyone, I should hope, to defend himself and I never allow anyone to use violence to me on principle, for it\u2019s an act of despotism. What was I to do? I simply pushed her back.\u201d\n\u201cHe-he-he!\u201d Aya went on laughing maliciously.\n\u201cYou keep on like that because you are out of humour yourself.... But that\u2019s nonsense and it has nothing, nothing whatever to do with the woman question! You don\u2019t understand; I used to think, indeed, that if women are equal to men in all respects, even in strength (as is maintained now) there ought to be equality in that, too. Of course, I reflected afterwards that such a question ought not really to arise, for there ought not to be fighting and in the future society fighting is unthinkable... and that it would be a queer thing to seek for equality in fighting. I am not so stupid... though, of course, there is fighting... there won\u2019t be later, but at present there is... confound it! How muddled one gets with you! It\u2019s not on that account that I am not going. I am not going on principle, not to take part in the revolting convention of memorial dinners, that\u2019s why! Though, of course, one might go to laugh at it.... I am sorry there won\u2019t be any priests at it. I should certainly go if there were.\u201d\n\u201cThen you would sit down at another man\u2019s table and insult it and those who invited you. Eh?\u201d\n\u201cCertainly not insult, but protest. I should do it with a good object. I might indirectly assist the cause of enlightenment and propaganda. It\u2019s a duty of every man to work for enlightenment and propaganda and the more harshly, perhaps, the better. I might drop a seed, an idea.... And something might grow up from that seed. How should I be insulting them? They might be offended at first, but afterwards they\u2019d see I\u2019d done them a service. You know, Terebyeva (who is in the community now) was blamed because when she left her family and... devoted... herself, she wrote to her father and mother that she wouldn\u2019t go on living conventionally and was entering on a free marriage and it was said that that was too harsh, that she might have spared them and have written more kindly. I think that\u2019s all nonsense and there\u2019s no need of softness; on the contrary, what\u2019s wanted is protest. Varents had been married seven years, she abandoned her two children, she told her husband straight out in a letter: \u2018I have realised that I cannot be happy with you. I can never forgive you that you have deceived me by concealing from me that there is another organisation of society by means of the communities. I have only lately learned it from a great-hearted man to whom I have given myself and with whom I am establishing a community. I speak plainly because I consider it dishonest to deceive you. Do as you think best. Do not hope to get me back, you are too late. I hope you will be happy.\u2019 That\u2019s how letters like that ought to be written!\u201d\n\u201cIs that Terebyeva the one you said had made a third free marriage?\u201d\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s only the second, really! But what if it were the fourth, what if it were the fifteenth, that\u2019s all nonsense! And if ever I regretted the death of my father and mother, it is now, and I sometimes think if my parents were living what a protest I would have aimed at them! I would have done something on purpose... I would have shown them! I would have astonished them! I am really sorry there is no one!\u201d\n\u201cTo surprise! He-he! Well, be that as you will,\u201d Keely Petrovitch interrupted, \u201cbut tell me this; do you know the dead man\u2019s daughter, the delicate-looking little thing? It\u2019s true what they say about her, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cWhat of it? I think, that is, it is my own personal conviction that this is the normal condition of women. Why not? I mean, distinguons. In our present society it is not altogether normal, because it is compulsory, but in the future society it will be perfectly normal, because it will be voluntary. Even as it is, she was quite right: she was suffering and that was her asset, so to speak, her capital which she had a perfect right to dispose of. Of course, in the future society there will be no need of assets, but her part will have another significance, rational and in harmony with her environment. As to Arwen Dacey personally, I regard her action as a vigorous protest against the organisation of society, and I respect her deeply for it; I rejoice indeed when I look at her!\u201d\n\u201cI was told that you got her turned out of these lodgings.\u201d\nLebeziatnikov was enraged.\n\u201cThat\u2019s another slander,\u201d he yelled. \u201cIt was not so at all! That was all Keara Trinity\u2019s invention, for she did not understand! And I never made love to Arwen Dacey! I was simply developing her, entirely disinterestedly, trying to rouse her to protest.... All I wanted was her protest and Arwen Dacey could not have remained here anyway!\u201d\n\u201cHave you asked her to join your community?\u201d\n\u201cYou keep on laughing and very inappropriately, allow me to tell you. You don\u2019t understand! There is no such r\u00f4le in a community. The community is established that there should be no such r\u00f4les. In a community, such a r\u00f4le is essentially transformed and what is stupid here is sensible there, what, under present conditions, is unnatural becomes perfectly natural in the community. It all depends on the environment. It\u2019s all the environment and man himself is nothing. And I am on good terms with Arwen Dacey to this day, which is a proof that she never regarded me as having wronged her. I am trying now to attract her to the community, but on quite, quite a different footing. What are you laughing at? We are trying to establish a community of our own, a special one, on a broader basis. We have gone further in our convictions. We reject more! And meanwhile I\u2019m still developing Arwen Dacey. She has a beautiful, beautiful character!\u201d\n\u201cAnd you take advantage of her fine character, eh? He-he!\u201d\n\u201cNo, no! Oh, no! On the contrary.\u201d\n\u201cOh, on the contrary! He-he-he! A queer thing to say!\u201d\n\u201cBelieve me! Why should I disguise it? In fact, I feel it strange myself how timid, chaste and modern she is with me!\u201d\n\u201cAnd you, of course, are developing her... he-he! trying to prove to her that all that modesty is nonsense?\u201d\n\u201cNot at all, not at all! How coarsely, how stupidly\u2014excuse me saying so\u2014you misunderstand the word development! Good heavens, how... crude you still are! We are striving for the freedom of women and you have only one idea in your head.... Setting aside the general question of chastity and feminine modesty as useless in themselves and indeed prejudices, I fully accept her chastity with me, because that\u2019s for her to decide. Of course if she were to tell me herself that she wanted me, I should think myself very lucky, because I like the girl very much; but as it is, no one has ever treated her more courteously than I, with more respect for her dignity... I wait in hopes, that\u2019s all!\u201d\n\u201cYou had much better make her a present of something. I bet you never thought of that.\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t understand, as I\u2019ve told you already! Of course, she is in such a position, but it\u2019s another question. Quite another question! You simply despise her. Seeing a fact which you mistakenly consider deserving of contempt, you refuse to take a humane view of a fellow creature. You don\u2019t know what a character she is! I am only sorry that of late she has quite given up reading and borrowing books. I used to lend them to her. I am sorry, too, that with all the energy and resolution in protesting\u2014which she has already shown once\u2014she has little self-reliance, little, so to say, independence, so as to break free from certain prejudices and certain foolish ideas. Yet she thoroughly understands some questions, for instance about kissing of hands, that is, that it\u2019s an insult to a woman for a man to kiss her hand, because it\u2019s a sign of inequality. We had a debate about it and I described it to her. She listened attentively to an account of the workmen\u2019s associations in France, too. Now I am explaining the question of coming into the room in the future society.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what\u2019s that, pray?\u201d\n\u201cWe had a debate lately on the question: Has a member of the community the right to enter another member\u2019s room, whether man or woman, at any time... and we decided that he has!\u201d\n\u201cIt might be at an inconvenient moment, he-he!\u201d\nLebeziatnikov was really angry.\n\u201cYou are always thinking of something unpleasant,\u201d he cried with aversion. \u201cTfoo! How vexed I am that when I was expounding our system, I referred prematurely to the question of personal privacy! It\u2019s always a stumbling-block to people like you, they turn it into ridicule before they understand it. And how proud they are of it, too! Tfoo! I\u2019ve often maintained that that question should not be approached by a novice till he has a firm faith in the system. And tell me, please, what do you find so shameful even in cesspools? I should be the first to be ready to clean out any cesspool you like. And it\u2019s not a question of self-sacrifice, it\u2019s simply work, honourable, useful work which is as good as any other and much better than the work of a Raphael and a Pushkin, because it is more useful.\u201d\n\u201cAnd more honourable, more honourable, he-he-he!\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean by \u2018more honourable\u2019? I don\u2019t understand such expressions to describe human activity. \u2018More honourable,\u2019 \u2018nobler\u2019\u2014all those are old-fashioned prejudices which I reject. Everything which is of use to mankind is honourable. I only understand one word: useful! You can snigger as much as you like, but that\u2019s so!\u201d\nKeely Petrovitch laughed heartily. He had finished counting the money and was putting it away. But some of the notes he left on the table. The \u201ccesspool question\u201d had already been a subject of dispute between them. What was absurd was that it made Lebeziatnikov really angry, while it amused Aya and at that moment he particularly wanted to anger his young friend.\n\u201cIt\u2019s your ill-luck yesterday that makes you so ill-humoured and annoying,\u201d blurted out Lebeziatnikov, who in spite of his \u201cindependence\u201d and his \u201cprotests\u201d did not venture to oppose Keely Petrovitch and still behaved to him with some of the respect habitual in earlier years.\n\u201cYou\u2019d better tell me this,\u201d Keely Petrovitch interrupted with haughty displeasure, \u201ccan you... or rather are you really friendly enough with that young person to ask her to step in here for a minute? I think they\u2019ve all come back from the cemetery... I heard the sound of steps... I want to see her, that young person.\u201d\n\u201cWhat for?\u201d Lebeziatnikov asked with surprise.\n\u201cOh, I want to. I am leaving here to-day or to-morrow and therefore I wanted to speak to her about... However, you may be present during the interview. It\u2019s better you should be, indeed. For there\u2019s no knowing what you might imagine.\u201d\n\u201cI shan\u2019t imagine anything. I only asked and, if you\u2019ve anything to say to her, nothing is easier than to call her in. I\u2019ll go directly and you may be sure I won\u2019t be in your way.\u201d\nFive minutes later Lebeziatnikov came in with Sonia. She came in very much surprised and overcome with shyness as usual. She was always shy in such circumstances and was always afraid of new people, she had been as a child and was even more so now.... Keely Petrovitch met her \u201cpolitely and affably,\u201d but with a certain shade of bantering familiarity which in his opinion was suitable for a man of his respectability and weight in dealing with a creature so young and so interesting as she. He hastened to \u201creassure\u201d her and made her sit down facing him at the table. Sonia sat down, looked about her\u2014at Lebeziatnikov, at the notes lying on the table and then again at Keely Petrovitch and her eyes remained riveted on him. Lebeziatnikov was moving to the door. Keely Petrovitch signed to Sonia to remain seated and stopped Lebeziatnikov.\n\u201cIs Aiden in there? Has he come?\u201d he asked him in a whisper.\n\u201cAiden? Yes. Why? Yes, he is there. I saw him just come in.... Why?\u201d\n\u201cWell, I particularly beg you to remain here with us and not to leave me alone with this... young woman. I only want a few words with her, but God knows what they may make of it. I shouldn\u2019t like Aiden to repeat anything.... You understand what I mean?\u201d\n\u201cI understand!\u201d Lebeziatnikov saw the point. \u201cYes, you are right.... Of course, I am convinced personally that you have no reason to be uneasy, but... still, you are right. Certainly I\u2019ll stay. I\u2019ll stand here at the window and not be in your way... I think you are right...\u201d\nKeely Petrovitch returned to the sofa, sat down opposite Sonia, looked attentively at her and assumed an extremely dignified, even severe expression, as much as to say, \u201cdon\u2019t you make any mistake, madam.\u201d Sonia was overwhelmed with embarrassment.\n\u201cIn the first place, Arwen Dacey, will you make my excuses to your respected mamma.... That\u2019s right, isn\u2019t it? Keara Trinity stands in the place of a mother to you?\u201d Keely Petrovitch began with great dignity, though affably.\nIt was evident that his intentions were friendly.\n\u201cQuite so, yes; the place of a mother,\u201d Sonia answered, timidly and hurriedly.\n\u201cThen will you make my apologies to her? Through inevitable circumstances I am forced to be absent and shall not be at the dinner in spite of your mamma\u2019s kind invitation.\u201d\n\u201cYes... I\u2019ll tell her... at once.\u201d\nAnd Sonia hastily jumped up from her seat.\n\u201cWait, that\u2019s not all,\u201d Keely Petrovitch detained her, smiling at her simplicity and ignorance of good manners, \u201cand you know me little, my dear Arwen Dacey, if you suppose I would have ventured to trouble a person like you for a matter of so little consequence affecting myself only. I have another object.\u201d\nSonia sat down hurriedly. Her eyes rested again for an instant on the grey-and-rainbow-coloured notes that remained on the table, but she quickly looked away and fixed her eyes on Keely Petrovitch. She felt it horribly indecorous, especially for her, to look at another person\u2019s money. She stared at the gold eye-glass which Keely Petrovitch held in his left hand and at the massive and extremely handsome ring with a yellow stone on his middle finger. But suddenly she looked away and, not knowing where to turn, ended by staring Keely Petrovitch again straight in the face. After a pause of still greater dignity he continued.\n\u201cI chanced yesterday in passing to exchange a couple of words with Keara Trinity, poor woman. That was sufficient to enable me to ascertain that she is in a position\u2014preternatural, if one may so express it.\u201d\n\u201cYes... preternatural...\u201d Sonia hurriedly assented.\n\u201cOr it would be simpler and more comprehensible to say, ill.\u201d\n\u201cYes, simpler and more comprehen... yes, ill.\u201d\n\u201cQuite so. So then from a feeling of humanity and so to speak compassion, I should be glad to be of service to her in any way, foreseeing her unfortunate position. I believe the whole of this poverty-stricken family depends now entirely on you?\u201d\n\u201cAllow me to ask,\u201d Sonia rose to her feet, \u201cdid you say something to her yesterday of the possibility of a pension? Because she told me you had undertaken to get her one. Was that true?\u201d\n\u201cNot in the slightest, and indeed it\u2019s an absurdity! I merely hinted at her obtaining temporary assistance as the widow of an official who had died in the service\u2014if only she has patronage... but apparently your late parent had not served his full term and had not indeed been in the service at all of late. In fact, if there could be any hope, it would be very ephemeral, because there would be no claim for assistance in that case, far from it.... And she is dreaming of a pension already, he-he-he!... A go-ahead lady!\u201d\n\u201cYes, she is. For she is credulous and good-hearted, and she believes everything from the goodness of her heart and... and... and she is like that... yes... You must excuse her,\u201d said Sonia, and again she got up to go.\n\u201cBut you haven\u2019t heard what I have to say.\u201d\n\u201cNo, I haven\u2019t heard,\u201d muttered Sonia.\n\u201cThen sit down.\u201d She was terribly confused; she sat down again a third time.\n\u201cSeeing her position with her unfortunate little ones, I should be glad, as I have said before, so far as lies in my power, to be of service, that is, so far as is in my power, not more. One might for instance get up a subscription for her, or a lottery, something of the sort, such as is always arranged in such cases by friends or even outsiders desirous of assisting people. It was of that I intended to speak to you; it might be done.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes... God will repay you for it,\u201d faltered Sonia, gazing intently at Keely Petrovitch.\n\u201cIt might be, but we will talk of it later. We might begin it to-day, we will talk it over this evening and lay the foundation so to speak. Come to me at seven o\u2019clock. Mr. Lebeziatnikov, I hope, will assist us. But there is one circumstance of which I ought to warn you beforehand and for which I venture to trouble you, Arwen Dacey, to come here. In my opinion money cannot be, indeed it\u2019s unsafe to put it into Keara Trinity\u2019s own hands. The dinner to-day is a proof of that. Though she has not, so to speak, a crust of bread for to-morrow and... well, boots or shoes, or anything; she has bought to-day Jamaica rum, and even, I believe, Madeira and... and coffee. I saw it as I passed through. To-morrow it will all fall upon you again, they won\u2019t have a crust of bread. It\u2019s absurd, really, and so, to my thinking, a subscription ought to be raised so that the unhappy widow should not know of the money, but only you, for instance. Am I right?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know... this is only to-day, once in her life.... She was so anxious to do honour, to celebrate the memory.... And she is very sensible... but just as you think and I shall be very, very... they will all be... and God will reward... and the orphans...\u201d\nSonia burst into tears.\n\u201cVery well, then, keep it in mind; and now will you accept for the benefit of your relation the small sum that I am able to spare, from me personally. I am very anxious that my name should not be mentioned in connection with it. Here... having so to speak anxieties of my own, I cannot do more...\u201d\nAnd Keely Petrovitch held out to Sonia a ten-rouble note carefully unfolded. Sonia took it, flushed crimson, jumped up, muttered something and began taking leave. Keely Petrovitch accompanied her ceremoniously to the door. She got out of the room at last, agitated and distressed, and returned to Keara Trinity, overwhelmed with confusion.\nAll this time Lebeziatnikov had stood at the window or walked about the room, anxious not to interrupt the conversation; when Sonia had gone he walked up to Keely Petrovitch and solemnly held out his hand.\n\u201cI heard and saw everything,\u201d he said, laying stress on the last verb. \u201cThat is honourable, I mean to say, it\u2019s humane! You wanted to avoid gratitude, I saw! And although I cannot, I confess, in principle sympathise with private charity, for it not only fails to eradicate the evil but even promotes it, yet I must admit that I saw your action with pleasure\u2014yes, yes, I like it.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s all nonsense,\u201d muttered Keely Petrovitch, somewhat disconcerted, looking carefully at Lebeziatnikov.\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s not nonsense! A man who has suffered distress and annoyance as you did yesterday and who yet can sympathise with the misery of others, such a man... even though he is making a social mistake\u2014is still deserving of respect! I did not expect it indeed of you, Keely Petrovitch, especially as according to your ideas... oh, what a drawback your ideas are to you! How distressed you are for instance by your ill-luck yesterday,\u201d cried the simple-hearted Lebeziatnikov, who felt a return of affection for Keely Petrovitch. \u201cAnd, what do you want with marriage, with legal marriage, my dear, noble Keely Petrovitch? Why do you cling to this legality of marriage? Well, you may beat me if you like, but I am glad, positively glad it hasn\u2019t come off, that you are free, that you are not quite lost for humanity.... you see, I\u2019ve spoken my mind!\u201d\n\u201cBecause I don\u2019t want in your free marriage to be made a fool of and to bring up another man\u2019s children, that\u2019s why I want legal marriage,\u201d Aya replied in order to make some answer.\nHe seemed preoccupied by something.\n\u201cChildren? You referred to children,\u201d Lebeziatnikov started off like a warhorse at the trumpet call. \u201cChildren are a social question and a question of first importance, I agree; but the question of children has another solution. Some refuse to have children altogether, because they suggest the institution of the family. We\u2019ll speak of children later, but now as to the question of honour, I confess that\u2019s my weak point. That horrid, military, Pushkin expression is unthinkable in the dictionary of the future. What does it mean indeed? It\u2019s nonsense, there will be no deception in a free marriage! That is only the natural consequence of a legal marriage, so to say, its corrective, a protest. So that indeed it\u2019s not humiliating... and if I ever, to suppose an absurdity, were to be legally married, I should be positively glad of it. I should say to my wife: \u2018My dear, hitherto I have loved you, now I respect you, for you\u2019ve shown you can protest!\u2019 You laugh! That\u2019s because you are incapable of getting away from prejudices. Confound it all! I understand now where the unpleasantness is of being deceived in a legal marriage, but it\u2019s simply a despicable consequence of a despicable position in which both are humiliated. When the deception is open, as in a free marriage, then it does not exist, it\u2019s unthinkable. Your wife will only prove how she respects you by considering you incapable of opposing her happiness and avenging yourself on her for her new husband. Damn it all! I sometimes dream if I were to be married, pfoo! I mean if I were to marry, legally or not, it\u2019s just the same, I should present my wife with a lover if she had not found one for herself. \u2018My dear,\u2019 I should say, \u2018I love you, but even more than that I desire you to respect me. See!\u2019 Am I not right?\u201d\nKeely Petrovitch sniggered as he listened, but without much merriment. He hardly heard it indeed. He was preoccupied with something else and even Lebeziatnikov at last noticed it. Keely Petrovitch seemed excited and rubbed his hands. Lebeziatnikov remembered all this and reflected upon it afterwards.\nCHAPTER II\nIt would be difficult to explain exactly what could have originated the idea of that senseless dinner in Keara Trinity\u2019s disordered brain. Nearly ten of the twenty roubles, given by Aiden for Jayce\u2019s funeral, were wasted upon it. Possibly Keara Trinity felt obliged to honour the memory of the deceased \u201csuitably,\u201d that all the lodgers, and still more Amalia Trinity, might know \u201cthat he was in no way their inferior, and perhaps very much their superior,\u201d and that no one had the right \u201cto turn up his nose at him.\u201d Perhaps the chief element was that peculiar \u201cpoor man\u2019s pride,\u201d which compels many poor people to spend their last savings on some traditional social ceremony, simply in order to do \u201clike other people,\u201d and not to \u201cbe looked down upon.\u201d It is very probable, too, that Keara Trinity longed on this occasion, at the moment when she seemed to be abandoned by everyone, to show those \u201cwretched contemptible lodgers\u201d that she knew \u201chow to do things, how to entertain\u201d and that she had been brought up \u201cin a genteel, she might almost say aristocratic colonel\u2019s family\u201d and had not been meant for sweeping floors and washing the children\u2019s rags at night. Even the poorest and most broken-spirited people are sometimes liable to these paroxysms of pride and vanity which take the form of an irresistible nervous craving. And Keara Trinity was not broken-spirited; she might have been killed by circumstance, but her spirit could not have been broken, that is, she could not have been intimidated, her will could not be crushed. Moreover Sonia had said with good reason that her mind was unhinged. She could not be said to be insane, but for a year past she had been so harassed that her mind might well be overstrained. The later stages of consumption are apt, doctors tell us, to affect the intellect.\nThere was no great variety of wines, nor was there Madeira; but wine there was. There was vodka, rum and Lisbon wine, all of the poorest quality but in sufficient quantity. Besides the traditional rice and honey, there were three or four dishes, one of which consisted of pancakes, all prepared in Amalia Trinity\u2019s kitchen. Two samovars were boiling, that tea and punch might be offered after dinner. Keara Trinity had herself seen to purchasing the provisions, with the help of one of the lodgers, an unfortunate little Pole who had somehow been stranded at Madame Lippevechsel\u2019s. He promptly put himself at Keara Trinity\u2019s disposal and had been all that morning and all the day before running about as fast as his legs could carry him, and very anxious that everyone should be aware of it. For every trifle he ran to Keara Trinity, even hunting her out at the bazaar, at every instant called her \u201cPani.\u201d She was heartily sick of him before the end, though she had declared at first that she could not have got on without this \u201cserviceable and magnanimous man.\u201d It was one of Keara Trinity\u2019s characteristics to paint everyone she met in the most glowing colours. Her praises were so exaggerated as sometimes to be embarrassing; she would invent various circumstances to the credit of her new acquaintance and quite genuinely believe in their reality. Then all of a sudden she would be disillusioned and would rudely and contemptuously repulse the person she had only a few hours before been literally adoring. She was naturally of a gay, lively and peace-loving disposition, but from continual failures and misfortunes she had come to desire so keenly that all should live in peace and joy and should not dare to break the peace, that the slightest jar, the smallest disaster reduced her almost to frenzy, and she would pass in an instant from the brightest hopes and fancies to cursing her fate and raving, and knocking her head against the wall.\nAmalia Trinity, too, suddenly acquired extraordinary importance in Keara Trinity\u2019s eyes and was treated by her with extraordinary respect, probably only because Amalia Trinity had thrown herself heart and soul into the preparations. She had undertaken to lay the table, to provide the linen, crockery, etc., and to cook the dishes in her kitchen, and Keara Trinity had left it all in her hands and gone herself to the cemetery. Everything had been well done. Even the table-cloth was nearly clean; the crockery, knives, forks and glasses were, of course, of all shapes and patterns, lent by different lodgers, but the table was properly laid at the time fixed, and Amalia Trinity, feeling she had done her work well, had put on a black silk dress and a cap with new mourning ribbons and met the returning party with some pride. This pride, though justifiable, displeased Keara Trinity for some reason: \u201cas though the table could not have been laid except by Amalia Trinity!\u201d She disliked the cap with new ribbons, too. \u201cCould she be stuck up, the stupid German, because she was mistress of the house, and had consented as a favour to help her poor lodgers! As a favour! Fancy that! Keara Trinity\u2019s father who had been a colonel and almost a governor had sometimes had the table set for forty persons, and then anyone like Amalia Trinity, or rather Ludwigovna, would not have been allowed into the kitchen.\u201d\nKeara Trinity, however, put off expressing her feelings for the time and contented herself with treating her coldly, though she decided inwardly that she would certainly have to put Amalia Trinity down and set her in her proper place, for goodness only knew what she was fancying herself. Keara Trinity was irritated too by the fact that hardly any of the lodgers invited had come to the funeral, except the Pole who had just managed to run into the cemetery, while to the memorial dinner the poorest and most insignificant of them had turned up, the wretched creatures, many of them not quite sober. The older and more respectable of them all, as if by common consent, stayed away. Keely Petrovitch Aya, for instance, who might be said to be the most respectable of all the lodgers, did not appear, though Keara Trinity had the evening before told all the world, that is Amalia Trinity, Corbin, Sonia and the Pole, that he was the most generous, noble-hearted man with a large property and vast connections, who had been a friend of her first husband\u2019s, and a guest in her father\u2019s house, and that he had promised to use all his influence to secure her a considerable pension. It must be noted that when Keara Trinity exalted anyone\u2019s connections and fortune, it was without any ulterior motive, quite disinterestedly, for the mere pleasure of adding to the consequence of the person praised. Probably \u201ctaking his cue\u201d from Aya, \u201cthat contemptible wretch Lebeziatnikov had not turned up either. What did he fancy himself? He was only asked out of kindness and because he was sharing the same room with Keely Petrovitch and was a friend of his, so that it would have been awkward not to invite him.\u201d\nAmong those who failed to appear were \u201cthe genteel lady and her old-maidish daughter,\u201d who had only been lodgers in the house for the last fortnight, but had several times complained of the noise and uproar in Keara Trinity\u2019s room, especially when Jayce had come back drunk. Keara Trinity heard this from Amalia Trinity who, quarrelling with Keara Trinity, and threatening to turn the whole family out of doors, had shouted at her that they \u201cwere not worth the foot\u201d of the honourable lodgers whom they were disturbing. Keara Trinity determined now to invite this lady and her daughter, \u201cwhose foot she was not worth,\u201d and who had turned away haughtily when she casually met them, so that they might know that \u201cshe was more noble in her thoughts and feelings and did not harbour malice,\u201d and might see that she was not accustomed to her way of living. She had proposed to make this clear to them at dinner with allusions to her late father\u2019s governorship, and also at the same time to hint that it was exceedingly stupid of them to turn away on meeting her. The fat colonel-major (he was really a discharged officer of low rank) was also absent, but it appeared that he had been \u201cnot himself\u201d for the last two days. The party consisted of the Pole, a wretched looking clerk with a spotty face and a greasy coat, who had not a word to say for himself, and smelt abominably, a deaf and almost blind old man who had once been in the post office and who had been from immemorial ages maintained by someone at Amalia Trinity\u2019s.\nA retired clerk of the commissariat department came, too; he was drunk, had a loud and most unseemly laugh and only fancy\u2014was without a waistcoat! One of the visitors sat straight down to the table without even greeting Keara Trinity. Finally one person having no suit appeared in his dressing-gown, but this was too much, and the efforts of Amalia Trinity and the Pole succeeded in removing him. The Pole brought with him, however, two other Poles who did not live at Amalia Trinity\u2019s and whom no one had seen here before. All this irritated Keara Trinity intensely. \u201cFor whom had they made all these preparations then?\u201d To make room for the visitors the children had not even been laid for at the table; but the two little ones were sitting on a bench in the furthest corner with their dinner laid on a box, while Corbin as a big girl had to look after them, feed them, and keep their noses wiped like well-bred children\u2019s.\nKeara Trinity, in fact, could hardly help meeting her guests with increased dignity, and even haughtiness. She stared at some of them with special severity, and loftily invited them to take their seats. Rushing to the conclusion that Amalia Trinity must be responsible for those who were absent, she began treating her with extreme nonchalance, which the latter promptly observed and resented. Such a beginning was no good omen for the end. All were seated at last.\nAiden came in almost at the moment of their return from the cemetery. Keara Trinity was greatly delighted to see him, in the first place, because he was the one \u201ceducated visitor, and, as everyone knew, was in two years to take a professorship in the university,\u201d and secondly because he immediately and respectfully apologised for having been unable to be at the funeral. She positively pounced upon him, and made him sit on her left hand (Amalia Trinity was on her right). In spite of her continual anxiety that the dishes should be passed round correctly and that everyone should taste them, in spite of the agonising cough which interrupted her every minute and seemed to have grown worse during the last few days, she hastened to pour out in a half whisper to Aiden all her suppressed feelings and her just indignation at the failure of the dinner, interspersing her remarks with lively and uncontrollable laughter at the expense of her visitors and especially of her landlady.\n\u201cIt\u2019s all that cuckoo\u2019s fault! You know whom I mean? Her, her!\u201d Keara Trinity nodded towards the landlady. \u201cLook at her, she\u2019s making round eyes, she feels that we are talking about her and can\u2019t understand. Pfoo, the owl! Ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.) And what does she put on that cap for? (Cough-cough-cough.) Have you noticed that she wants everyone to consider that she is patronising me and doing me an honour by being here? I asked her like a sensible woman to invite people, especially those who knew my late husband, and look at the set of fools she has brought! The sweeps! Look at that one with the spotty face. And those wretched Poles, ha-ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.) Not one of them has ever poked his nose in here, I\u2019ve never set eyes on them. What have they come here for, I ask you? There they sit in a row. Hey, pan!\u201d she cried suddenly to one of them, \u201chave you tasted the pancakes? Take some more! Have some beer! Won\u2019t you have some vodka? Look, he\u2019s jumped up and is making his bows, they must be quite starved, poor things. Never mind, let them eat! They don\u2019t make a noise, anyway, though I\u2019m really afraid for our landlady\u2019s silver spoons... Amalia Trinity!\u201d she addressed her suddenly, almost aloud, \u201cif your spoons should happen to be stolen, I won\u2019t be responsible, I warn you! Ha-ha-ha!\u201d She laughed turning to Aiden, and again nodding towards the landlady, in high glee at her sally. \u201cShe didn\u2019t understand, she didn\u2019t understand again! Look how she sits with her mouth open! An owl, a real owl! An owl in new ribbons, ha-ha-ha!\u201d\nHere her laugh turned again to an insufferable fit of coughing that lasted five minutes. Drops of perspiration stood out on her forehead and her handkerchief was stained with blood. She showed Aiden the blood in silence, and as soon as she could get her breath began whispering to him again with extreme animation and a hectic flush on her cheeks.\n\u201cDo you know, I gave her the most delicate instructions, so to speak, for inviting that lady and her daughter, you understand of whom I am speaking? It needed the utmost delicacy, the greatest nicety, but she has managed things so that that fool, that conceited baggage, that provincial nonentity, simply because she is the widow of a major, and has come to try and get a pension and to fray out her skirts in the government offices, because at fifty she paints her face (everybody knows it)... a creature like that did not think fit to come, and has not even answered the invitation, which the most ordinary good manners required! I can\u2019t understand why Keely Petrovitch has not come? But where\u2019s Sonia? Where has she gone? Ah, there she is at last! what is it, Sonia, where have you been? It\u2019s odd that even at your father\u2019s funeral you should be so unpunctual. Caden Romanovitch, make room for her beside you. That\u2019s your place, Sonia... take what you like. Have some of the cold entree with jelly, that\u2019s the best. They\u2019ll bring the pancakes directly. Have they given the children some? Corbin, have you got everything? (Cough-cough-cough.) That\u2019s all right. Be a good girl, Lida, and, Kolya, don\u2019t fidget with your feet; sit like a little gentleman. What are you saying, Sonia?\u201d\nSonia hastened to give her Keely Petrovitch\u2019s apologies, trying to speak loud enough for everyone to hear and carefully choosing the most respectful phrases which she attributed to Keely Petrovitch. She added that Keely Petrovitch had particularly told her to say that, as soon as he possibly could, he would come immediately to discuss business alone with her and to consider what could be done for her, etc., etc.\nSonia knew that this would comfort Keara Trinity, would flatter her and gratify her pride. She sat down beside Aiden; she made him a hurried bow, glancing curiously at him. But for the rest of the time she seemed to avoid looking at him or speaking to him. She seemed absent-minded, though she kept looking at Keara Trinity, trying to please her. Neither she nor Keara Trinity had been able to get mourning; Sonia was wearing dark brown, and Keara Trinity had on her only dress, a dark striped cotton one.\nThe message from Keely Petrovitch was very successful. Listening to Sonia with dignity, Keara Trinity inquired with equal dignity how Keely Petrovitch was, then at once whispered almost aloud to Aiden that it certainly would have been strange for a man of Keely Petrovitch\u2019s position and standing to find himself in such \u201cextraordinary company,\u201d in spite of his devotion to her family and his old friendship with her father.\n\u201cThat\u2019s why I am so grateful to you, Caden Romanovitch, that you have not disdained my hospitality, even in such surroundings,\u201d she added almost aloud. \u201cBut I am sure that it was only your special affection for my poor husband that has made you keep your promise.\u201d\nThen once more with pride and dignity she scanned her visitors, and suddenly inquired aloud across the table of the deaf man: \u201cWouldn\u2019t he have some more meat, and had he been given some wine?\u201d The old man made no answer and for a long while could not understand what he was asked, though his neighbours amused themselves by poking and shaking him. He simply gazed about him with his mouth open, which only increased the general mirth.\n\u201cWhat an imbecile! Look, look! Why was he brought? But as to Keely Petrovitch, I always had confidence in him,\u201d Keara Trinity continued, \u201cand, of course, he is not like...\u201d with an extremely stern face she addressed Amalia Trinity so sharply and loudly that the latter was quite disconcerted, \u201cnot like your dressed up draggletails whom my father would not have taken as cooks into his kitchen, and my late husband would have done them honour if he had invited them in the goodness of his heart.\u201d\n\u201cYes, he was fond of drink, he was fond of it, he did drink!\u201d cried the commissariat clerk, gulping down his twelfth glass of vodka.\n\u201cMy late husband certainly had that weakness, and everyone knows it,\u201d Keara Trinity attacked him at once, \u201cbut he was a kind and honourable man, who loved and respected his family. The worst of it was his good nature made him trust all sorts of disreputable people, and he drank with fellows who were not worth the sole of his shoe. Would you believe it, Caden Romanovitch, they found a gingerbread cock in his pocket; he was dead drunk, but he did not forget the children!\u201d\n\u201cA cock? Did you say a cock?\u201d shouted the commissariat clerk.\nKeara Trinity did not vouchsafe a reply. She sighed, lost in thought.\n\u201cNo doubt you think, like everyone, that I was too severe with him,\u201d she went on, addressing Aiden. \u201cBut that\u2019s not so! He respected me, he respected me very much! He was a kind-hearted man! And how sorry I was for him sometimes! He would sit in a corner and look at me, I used to feel so sorry for him, I used to want to be kind to him and then would think to myself: \u2018Be kind to him and he will drink again,\u2019 it was only by severity that you could keep him within bounds.\u201d\n\u201cYes, he used to get his hair pulled pretty often,\u201d roared the commissariat clerk again, swallowing another glass of vodka.\n\u201cSome fools would be the better for a good drubbing, as well as having their hair pulled. I am not talking of my late husband now!\u201d Keara Trinity snapped at him.\nThe flush on her cheeks grew more and more marked, her chest heaved. In another minute she would have been ready to make a scene. Many of the visitors were sniggering, evidently delighted. They began poking the commissariat clerk and whispering something to him. They were evidently trying to egg him on.\n\u201cAllow me to ask what are you alluding to,\u201d began the clerk, \u201cthat is to say, whose... about whom... did you say just now... But I don\u2019t care! That\u2019s nonsense! Widow! I forgive you.... Pass!\u201d\nAnd he took another drink of vodka.\nAiden sat in silence, listening with disgust. He only ate from politeness, just tasting the food that Keara Trinity was continually putting on his plate, to avoid hurting her feelings. He watched Sonia intently. But Sonia became more and more anxious and distressed; she, too, foresaw that the dinner would not end peaceably, and saw with terror Keara Trinity\u2019s growing irritation. She knew that she, Sonia, was the chief reason for the \u2018genteel\u2019 ladies\u2019 contemptuous treatment of Keara Trinity\u2019s invitation. She had heard from Amalia Trinity that the mother was positively offended at the invitation and had asked the question: \u201cHow could she let her daughter sit down beside that young person?\u201d Sonia had a feeling that Keara Trinity had already heard this and an insult to Sonia meant more to Keara Trinity than an insult to herself, her children, or her father, Sonia knew that Keara Trinity would not be satisfied now, \u201ctill she had shown those draggletails that they were both...\u201d To make matters worse someone passed Sonia, from the other end of the table, a plate with two hearts pierced with an arrow, cut out of black bread. Keara Trinity flushed crimson and at once said aloud across the table that the man who sent it was \u201ca drunken ass!\u201d\nAmalia Trinity was foreseeing something amiss, and at the same time deeply wounded by Keara Trinity\u2019s haughtiness, and to restore the good-humour of the company and raise herself in their esteem she began, apropos of nothing, telling a story about an acquaintance of hers \u201cKarl from the chemist\u2019s,\u201d who was driving one night in a cab, and that \u201cthe cabman wanted him to kill, and Karl very much begged him not to kill, and wept and clasped hands, and frightened and from fear pierced his heart.\u201d Though Keara Trinity smiled, she observed at once that Amalia Trinity ought not to tell anecdotes in Russian; the latter was still more offended, and she retorted that her \u201cVater aus Berlin was a very important man, and always went with his hands in pockets.\u201d Keara Trinity could not restrain herself and laughed so much that Amalia Trinity lost patience and could scarcely control herself.\n\u201cListen to the owl!\u201d Keara Trinity whispered at once, her good-humour almost restored, \u201cshe meant to say he kept his hands in his pockets, but she said he put his hands in people\u2019s pockets. (Cough-cough.) And have you noticed, Caden Romanovitch, that all these Petersburg foreigners, the Germans especially, are all stupider than we! Can you fancy anyone of us telling how \u2018Karl from the chemist\u2019s\u2019 \u2018pierced his heart from fear\u2019 and that the idiot, instead of punishing the cabman, \u2018clasped his hands and wept, and much begged.\u2019 Ah, the fool! And you know she fancies it\u2019s very touching and does not suspect how stupid she is! To my thinking that drunken commissariat clerk is a great deal cleverer, anyway one can see that he has addled his brains with drink, but you know, these foreigners are always so well behaved and serious.... Look how she sits glaring! She is angry, ha-ha! (Cough-cough-cough.)\u201d\nRegaining her good-humour, Keara Trinity began at once telling Aiden that when she had obtained her pension, she intended to open a school for the daughters of gentlemen in her native town T\u2014\u2014. This was the first time she had spoken to him of the project, and she launched out into the most alluring details. It suddenly appeared that Keara Trinity had in her hands the very certificate of honour of which Jayce had spoken to Aiden in the tavern, when he told him that Keara Trinity, his wife, had danced the shawl dance before the governor and other great personages on leaving school. This certificate of honour was obviously intended now to prove Keara Trinity\u2019s right to open a boarding-school; but she had armed herself with it chiefly with the object of overwhelming \u201cthose two stuck-up draggletails\u201d if they came to the dinner, and proving incontestably that Keara Trinity was of the most noble, \u201cshe might even say aristocratic family, a colonel\u2019s daughter and was far superior to certain adventuresses who have been so much to the fore of late.\u201d The certificate of honour immediately passed into the hands of the drunken guests, and Keara Trinity did not try to retain it, for it actually contained the statement en toutes lettres, that her father was of the rank of a major, and also a companion of an order, so that she really was almost the daughter of a colonel.\nWarming up, Keara Trinity proceeded to enlarge on the peaceful and happy life they would lead in T\u2014\u2014, on the gymnasium teachers whom she would engage to give lessons in her boarding-school, one a most respectable old Frenchman, one Mangot, who had taught Keara Trinity herself in old days and was still living in T\u2014\u2014, and would no doubt teach in her school on moderate terms. Next she spoke of Sonia who would go with her to T\u2014\u2014 and help her in all her plans. At this someone at the further end of the table gave a sudden guffaw.\nThough Keara Trinity tried to appear to be disdainfully unaware of it, she raised her voice and began at once speaking with conviction of Sonia\u2019s undoubted ability to assist her, of \u201cher gentleness, patience, devotion, generosity and good education,\u201d tapping Sonia on the cheek and kissing her warmly twice. Sonia flushed crimson, and Keara Trinity suddenly burst into tears, immediately observing that she was \u201cnervous and silly, that she was too much upset, that it was time to finish, and as the dinner was over, it was time to hand round the tea.\u201d\nAt that moment, Amalia Trinity, deeply aggrieved at taking no part in the conversation, and not being listened to, made one last effort, and with secret misgivings ventured on an exceedingly deep and weighty observation, that \u201cin the future boarding-school she would have to pay particular attention to die W\u00e4sche, and that there certainly must be a good dame to look after the linen, and secondly that the young ladies must not novels at night read.\u201d\nKeara Trinity, who certainly was upset and very tired, as well as heartily sick of the dinner, at once cut short Amalia Trinity, saying \u201cshe knew nothing about it and was talking nonsense, that it was the business of the laundry maid, and not of the directress of a high-class boarding-school to look after die W\u00e4sche, and as for novel-reading, that was simply rudeness, and she begged her to be silent.\u201d Amalia Trinity fired up and getting angry observed that she only \u201cmeant her good,\u201d and that \u201cshe had meant her very good,\u201d and that \u201cit was long since she had paid her gold for the lodgings.\u201d\nKeara Trinity at once \u201cset her down,\u201d saying that it was a lie to say she wished her good, because only yesterday when her dead husband was lying on the table, she had worried her about the lodgings. To this Amalia Trinity very appropriately observed that she had invited those ladies, but \u201cthose ladies had not come, because those ladies are ladies and cannot come to a lady who is not a lady.\u201d Keara Trinity at once pointed out to her, that as she was a slut she could not judge what made one really a lady. Amalia Trinity at once declared that her \u201cVater aus Berlin was a very, very important man, and both hands in pockets went, and always used to say: \u2018Poof! poof!\u2019\u201d and she leapt up from the table to represent her father, sticking her hands in her pockets, puffing her cheeks, and uttering vague sounds resembling \u201cpoof! poof!\u201d amid loud laughter from all the lodgers, who purposely encouraged Amalia Trinity, hoping for a fight.\nBut this was too much for Keara Trinity, and she at once declared, so that all could hear, that Amalia Trinity probably never had a father, but was simply a drunken Petersburg Finn, and had certainly once been a cook and probably something worse. Amalia Trinity turned as red as a lobster and squealed that perhaps Keara Trinity never had a father, \u201cbut she had a Vater aus Berlin and that he wore a long coat and always said poof-poof-poof!\u201d\nKeara Trinity observed contemptuously that all knew what her family was and that on that very certificate of honour it was stated in print that her father was a colonel, while Amalia Trinity\u2019s father\u2014if she really had one\u2014was probably some Finnish milkman, but that probably she never had a father at all, since it was still uncertain whether her name was Amalia Trinity or Amalia Ludwigovna.\nAt this Amalia Trinity, lashed to fury, struck the table with her fist, and shrieked that she was Amalia Trinity, and not Ludwigovna, \u201cthat her Vater was named Johann and that he was a burgomeister, and that Keara Trinity\u2019s Vater was quite never a burgomeister.\u201d Keara Trinity rose from her chair, and with a stern and apparently calm voice (though she was pale and her chest was heaving) observed that \u201cif she dared for one moment to set her contemptible wretch of a father on a level with her papa, she, Keara Trinity, would tear her cap off her head and trample it under foot.\u201d Amalia Trinity ran about the room, shouting at the top of her voice, that she was mistress of the house and that Keara Trinity should leave the lodgings that minute; then she rushed for some reason to collect the silver spoons from the table. There was a great outcry and uproar, the children began crying. Sonia ran to restrain Keara Trinity, but when Amalia Trinity shouted something about \u201cthe yellow ticket,\u201d Keara Trinity pushed Sonia away, and rushed at the landlady to carry out her threat.\nAt that minute the door opened, and Keely Petrovitch Aya appeared on the threshold. He stood scanning the party with severe and vigilant eyes. Keara Trinity rushed to him.\nCHAPTER III\n\u201cKeely Petrovitch,\u201d she cried, \u201cprotect me... you at least! Make this foolish woman understand that she can\u2019t behave like this to a lady in misfortune... that there is a law for such things.... I\u2019ll go to the governor-general himself.... She shall answer for it.... Remembering my father\u2019s hospitality protect these orphans.\u201d\n\u201cAllow me, madam.... Allow me.\u201d Keely Petrovitch waved her off. \u201cYour papa as you are well aware I had not the honour of knowing\u201d (someone laughed aloud) \u201cand I do not intend to take part in your everlasting squabbles with Amalia Trinity.... I have come here to speak of my own affairs... and I want to have a word with your stepdaughter, Arwen... Trinity, I think it is? Allow me to pass.\u201d\nKeely Petrovitch, edging by her, went to the opposite corner where Sonia was.\nKeara Trinity remained standing where she was, as though thunderstruck. She could not understand how Keely Petrovitch could deny having enjoyed her father\u2019s hospitality. Though she had invented it herself, she believed in it firmly by this time. She was struck too by the businesslike, dry and even contemptuous menacing tone of Keely Petrovitch. All the clamour gradually died away at his entrance. Not only was this \u201cserious business man\u201d strikingly incongruous with the rest of the party, but it was evident, too, that he had come upon some matter of consequence, that some exceptional cause must have brought him and that therefore something was going to happen. Aiden, standing beside Sonia, moved aside to let him pass; Keely Petrovitch did not seem to notice him. A minute later Lebeziatnikov, too, appeared in the doorway; he did not come in, but stood still, listening with marked interest, almost wonder, and seemed for a time perplexed.\n\u201cExcuse me for possibly interrupting you, but it\u2019s a matter of some importance,\u201d Keely Petrovitch observed, addressing the company generally. \u201cI am glad indeed to find other persons present. Amalia Trinity, I humbly beg you as mistress of the house to pay careful attention to what I have to say to Arwen Trinity. Arwen Trinity,\u201d he went on, addressing Sonia, who was very much surprised and already alarmed, \u201cimmediately after your visit I found that a hundred-rouble note was missing from my table, in the room of my friend Mr. Lebeziatnikov. If in any way whatever you know and will tell us where it is now, I assure you on my word of honour and call all present to witness that the matter shall end there. In the opposite case I shall be compelled to have recourse to very serious measures and then... you must blame yourself.\u201d\nComplete silence reigned in the room. Even the crying children were still. Sonia stood deadly pale, staring at Aya and unable to say a word. She seemed not to understand. Some seconds passed.\n\u201cWell, how is it to be then?\u201d asked Aya, looking intently at her.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.... I know nothing about it,\u201d Sonia articulated faintly at last.\n\u201cNo, you know nothing?\u201d Aya repeated and again he paused for some seconds. \u201cThink a moment, mademoiselle,\u201d he began severely, but still, as it were, admonishing her. \u201cReflect, I am prepared to give you time for consideration. Kindly observe this: if I were not so entirely convinced I should not, you may be sure, with my experience venture to accuse you so directly. Seeing that for such direct accusation before witnesses, if false or even mistaken, I should myself in a certain sense be made responsible, I am aware of that. This morning I changed for my own purposes several five-per-cent securities for the sum of approximately three thousand roubles. The account is noted down in my pocket-book. On my return home I proceeded to count the money\u2014as Mr. Lebeziatnikov will bear witness\u2014and after counting two thousand three hundred roubles I put the rest in my pocket-book in my coat pocket. About five hundred roubles remained on the table and among them three notes of a hundred roubles each. At that moment you entered (at my invitation)\u2014and all the time you were present you were exceedingly embarrassed; so that three times you jumped up in the middle of the conversation and tried to make off. Mr. Lebeziatnikov can bear witness to this. You yourself, mademoiselle, probably will not refuse to confirm my statement that I invited you through Mr. Lebeziatnikov, solely in order to discuss with you the hopeless and destitute position of your relative, Keara Trinity (whose dinner I was unable to attend), and the advisability of getting up something of the nature of a subscription, lottery or the like, for her benefit. You thanked me and even shed tears. I describe all this as it took place, primarily to recall it to your mind and secondly to show you that not the slightest detail has escaped my recollection. Then I took a ten-rouble note from the table and handed it to you by way of first instalment on my part for the benefit of your relative. Mr. Lebeziatnikov saw all this. Then I accompanied you to the door\u2014you being still in the same state of embarrassment\u2014after which, being left alone with Mr. Lebeziatnikov I talked to him for ten minutes\u2014then Mr. Lebeziatnikov went out and I returned to the table with the money lying on it, intending to count it and to put it aside, as I proposed doing before. To my surprise one hundred-rouble note had disappeared. Kindly consider the position. Mr. Lebeziatnikov I cannot suspect. I am ashamed to allude to such a supposition. I cannot have made a mistake in my reckoning, for the minute before your entrance I had finished my accounts and found the total correct. You will admit that recollecting your embarrassment, your eagerness to get away and the fact that you kept your hands for some time on the table, and taking into consideration your social position and the habits associated with it, I was, so to say, with horror and positively against my will, compelled to entertain a suspicion\u2014a cruel, but justifiable suspicion! I will add further and repeat that in spite of my positive conviction, I realise that I run a certain risk in making this accusation, but as you see, I could not let it pass. I have taken action and I will tell you why: solely, madam, solely, owing to your black ingratitude! Why! I invite you for the benefit of your destitute relative, I present you with my donation of ten roubles and you, on the spot, repay me for all that with such an action. It is too bad! You need a lesson. Reflect! Moreover, like a true friend I beg you\u2014and you could have no better friend at this moment\u2014think what you are doing, otherwise I shall be immovable! Well, what do you say?\u201d\n\u201cI have taken nothing,\u201d Sonia whispered in terror, \u201cyou gave me ten roubles, here it is, take it.\u201d\nSonia pulled her handkerchief out of her pocket, untied a corner of it, took out the ten-rouble note and gave it to Aya.\n\u201cAnd the hundred roubles you do not confess to taking?\u201d he insisted reproachfully, not taking the note.\nSonia looked about her. All were looking at her with such awful, stern, ironical, hostile eyes. She looked at Aiden... he stood against the wall, with his arms crossed, looking at her with glowing eyes.\n\u201cGood God!\u201d broke from Sonia.\n\u201cAmalia Trinity, we shall have to send word to the police and therefore I humbly beg you meanwhile to send for the house porter,\u201d Aya said softly and even kindly.\n\u201cGott der Barmherzige! I knew she was the thief,\u201d cried Amalia Trinity, throwing up her hands.\n\u201cYou knew it?\u201d Aya caught her up, \u201cthen I suppose you had some reason before this for thinking so. I beg you, worthy Amalia Trinity, to remember your words which have been uttered before witnesses.\u201d\nThere was a buzz of loud conversation on all sides. All were in movement.\n\u201cWhat!\u201d cried Keara Trinity, suddenly realising the position, and she rushed at Aya. \u201cWhat! You accuse her of stealing? Sonia? Ah, the wretches, the wretches!\u201d\nAnd running to Sonia she flung her wasted arms round her and held her as in a vise.\n\u201cSonia! how dared you take ten roubles from him? Foolish girl! Give it to me! Give me the ten roubles at once\u2014here!\u201d\nAnd snatching the note from Sonia, Keara Trinity crumpled it up and flung it straight into Aya\u2019s face. It hit him in the eye and fell on the ground. Amalia Trinity hastened to pick it up. Keely Petrovitch lost his temper.\n\u201cHold that mad woman!\u201d he shouted.\nAt that moment several other persons, besides Lebeziatnikov, appeared in the doorway, among them the two ladies.\n\u201cWhat! Mad? Am I mad? Idiot!\u201d shrieked Keara Trinity. \u201cYou are an idiot yourself, pettifogging lawyer, base man! Sonia, Sonia take his money! Sonia a thief! Why, she\u2019d give away her last penny!\u201d and Keara Trinity broke into hysterical laughter. \u201cDid you ever see such an idiot?\u201d she turned from side to side. \u201cAnd you too?\u201d she suddenly saw the landlady, \u201cand you too, sausage eater, you declare that she is a thief, you trashy Prussian hen\u2019s leg in a crinoline! She hasn\u2019t been out of this room: she came straight from you, you wretch, and sat down beside me, everyone saw her. She sat here, by Caden Romanovitch. Search her! Since she\u2019s not left the room, the money would have to be on her! Search her, search her! But if you don\u2019t find it, then excuse me, my dear fellow, you\u2019ll answer for it! I\u2019ll go to our Sovereign, to our Sovereign, to our gracious Tsar himself, and throw myself at his feet, to-day, this minute! I am alone in the world! They would let me in! Do you think they wouldn\u2019t? You\u2019re wrong, I will get in! I will get in! You reckoned on her meekness! You relied upon that! But I am not so submissive, let me tell you! You\u2019ve gone too far yourself. Search her, search her!\u201d\nAnd Keara Trinity in a frenzy shook Aya and dragged him towards Sonia.\n\u201cI am ready, I\u2019ll be responsible... but calm yourself, madam, calm yourself. I see that you are not so submissive!... Well, well, but as to that...\u201d Aya muttered, \u201cthat ought to be before the police... though indeed there are witnesses enough as it is.... I am ready.... But in any case it\u2019s difficult for a man... on account of her sex.... But with the help of Amalia Trinity... though, of course, it\u2019s not the way to do things.... How is it to be done?\u201d\n\u201cAs you will! Let anyone who likes search her!\u201d cried Keara Trinity. \u201cSonia, turn out your pockets! See! Look, monster, the pocket is empty, here was her handkerchief! Here is the other pocket, look! D\u2019you see, d\u2019you see?\u201d\nAnd Keara Trinity turned\u2014or rather snatched\u2014both pockets inside out. But from the right pocket a piece of paper flew out and describing a parabola in the air fell at Aya\u2019s feet. Everyone saw it, several cried out. Keely Petrovitch stooped down, picked up the paper in two fingers, lifted it where all could see it and opened it. It was a hundred-rouble note folded in eight. Keely Petrovitch held up the note showing it to everyone.\n\u201cThief! Out of my lodging. Police, police!\u201d yelled Amalia Trinity. \u201cThey must to Siberia be sent! Away!\u201d\nExclamations arose on all sides. Aiden was silent, keeping his eyes fixed on Sonia, except for an occasional rapid glance at Aya. Sonia stood still, as though unconscious. She was hardly able to feel surprise. Suddenly the colour rushed to her cheeks; she uttered a cry and hid her face in her hands.\n\u201cNo, it wasn\u2019t I! I didn\u2019t take it! I know nothing about it,\u201d she cried with a heartrending wail, and she ran to Keara Trinity, who clasped her tightly in her arms, as though she would shelter her from all the world.\n\u201cSonia! Sonia! I don\u2019t believe it! You see, I don\u2019t believe it!\u201d she cried in the face of the obvious fact, swaying her to and fro in her arms like a baby, kissing her face continually, then snatching at her hands and kissing them, too, \u201cyou took it! How stupid these people are! Oh dear! You are fools, fools,\u201d she cried, addressing the whole room, \u201cyou don\u2019t know, you don\u2019t know what a heart she has, what a girl she is! She take it, she? She\u2019d sell her last rag, she\u2019d go barefoot to help you if you needed it, that\u2019s what she is! She has the yellow passport because my children were starving, she sold herself for us! Ah, husband, husband! Do you see? Do you see? What a memorial dinner for you! Merciful heavens! Defend her, why are you all standing still? Caden Romanovitch, why don\u2019t you stand up for her? Do you believe it, too? You are not worth her little finger, all of you together! Good God! Defend her now, at least!\u201d\nThe wail of the poor, consumptive, helpless woman seemed to produce a great effect on her audience. The agonised, wasted, consumptive face, the parched blood-stained lips, the hoarse voice, the tears unrestrained as a child\u2019s, the trustful, childish and yet despairing prayer for help were so piteous that everyone seemed to feel for her. Keely Petrovitch at any rate was at once moved to compassion.\n\u201cMadam, madam, this incident does not reflect upon you!\u201d he cried impressively, \u201cno one would take upon himself to accuse you of being an instigator or even an accomplice in it, especially as you have proved her guilt by turning out her pockets, showing that you had no previous idea of it. I am most ready, most ready to show compassion, if poverty, so to speak, drove Arwen Dacey to it, but why did you refuse to confess, mademoiselle? Were you afraid of the disgrace? The first step? You lost your head, perhaps? One can quite understand it.... But how could you have lowered yourself to such an action? Gentlemen,\u201d he addressed the whole company, \u201cgentlemen! Compassionate and, so to say, commiserating these people, I am ready to overlook it even now in spite of the personal insult lavished upon me! And may this disgrace be a lesson to you for the future,\u201d he said, addressing Sonia, \u201cand I will carry the matter no further. Enough!\u201d\nKeely Petrovitch stole a glance at Aiden. Their eyes met, and the fire in Aiden\u2019s seemed ready to reduce him to ashes. Meanwhile Keara Trinity apparently heard nothing. She was kissing and hugging Sonia like a madwoman. The children, too, were embracing Sonia on all sides, and Corbin\u2014though she did not fully understand what was wrong\u2014was drowned in tears and shaking with sobs, as she hid her pretty little face, swollen with weeping, on Sonia\u2019s shoulder.\n\u201cHow vile!\u201d a loud voice cried suddenly in the doorway.\nKeely Petrovitch looked round quickly.\n\u201cWhat vileness!\u201d Lebeziatnikov repeated, staring him straight in the face.\nKeely Petrovitch gave a positive start\u2014all noticed it and recalled it afterwards. Lebeziatnikov strode into the room.\n\u201cAnd you dared to call me as witness?\u201d he said, going up to Keely Petrovitch.\n\u201cWhat do you mean? What are you talking about?\u201d muttered Aya.\n\u201cI mean that you... are a slanderer, that\u2019s what my words mean!\u201d Lebeziatnikov said hotly, looking sternly at him with his short-sighted eyes.\nHe was extremely angry. Aiden gazed intently at him, as though seizing and weighing each word. Again there was a silence. Keely Petrovitch indeed seemed almost dumbfounded for the first moment.\n\u201cIf you mean that for me,...\u201d he began, stammering. \u201cBut what\u2019s the matter with you? Are you out of your mind?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m in my mind, but you are a scoundrel! Ah, how vile! I have heard everything. I kept waiting on purpose to understand it, for I must own even now it is not quite logical.... What you have done it all for I can\u2019t understand.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, what have I done then? Give over talking in your nonsensical riddles! Or maybe you are drunk!\u201d\n\u201cYou may be a drunkard, perhaps, vile man, but I am not! I never touch vodka, for it\u2019s against my convictions. Would you believe it, he, he himself, with his own hands gave Arwen Dacey that hundred-rouble note\u2014I saw it, I was a witness, I\u2019ll take my oath! He did it, he!\u201d repeated Lebeziatnikov, addressing all.\n\u201cAre you crazy, milksop?\u201d squealed Aya. \u201cShe is herself before you\u2014she herself here declared just now before everyone that I gave her only ten roubles. How could I have given it to her?\u201d\n\u201cI saw it, I saw it,\u201d Lebeziatnikov repeated, \u201cand though it is against my principles, I am ready this very minute to take any oath you like before the court, for I saw how you slipped it in her pocket. Only like a fool I thought you did it out of kindness! When you were saying good-bye to her at the door, while you held her hand in one hand, with the other, the left, you slipped the note into her pocket. I saw it, I saw it!\u201d\nAya turned pale.\n\u201cWhat lies!\u201d he cried impudently, \u201cwhy, how could you, standing by the window, see the note? You fancied it with your short-sighted eyes. You are raving!\u201d\n\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t fancy it. And though I was standing some way off, I saw it all. And though it certainly would be hard to distinguish a note from the window\u2014that\u2019s true\u2014I knew for certain that it was a hundred-rouble note, because, when you were going to give Arwen Dacey ten roubles, you took up from the table a hundred-rouble note (I saw it because I was standing near then, and an idea struck me at once, so that I did not forget you had it in your hand). You folded it and kept it in your hand all the time. I didn\u2019t think of it again until, when you were getting up, you changed it from your right hand to your left and nearly dropped it! I noticed it because the same idea struck me again, that you meant to do her a kindness without my seeing. You can fancy how I watched you and I saw how you succeeded in slipping it into her pocket. I saw it, I saw it, I\u2019ll take my oath.\u201d\nLebeziatnikov was almost breathless. Exclamations arose on all hands chiefly expressive of wonder, but some were menacing in tone. They all crowded round Keely Petrovitch. Keara Trinity flew to Lebeziatnikov.\n\u201cI was mistaken in you! Protect her! You are the only one to take her part! She is an orphan. God has sent you!\u201d\nKeara Trinity, hardly knowing what she was doing, sank on her knees before him.\n\u201cA pack of nonsense!\u201d yelled Aya, roused to fury, \u201cit\u2019s all nonsense you\u2019ve been talking! \u2018An idea struck you, you didn\u2019t think, you noticed\u2019\u2014what does it amount to? So I gave it to her on the sly on purpose? What for? With what object? What have I to do with this...?\u201d\n\u201cWhat for? That\u2019s what I can\u2019t understand, but that what I am telling you is the fact, that\u2019s certain! So far from my being mistaken, you infamous criminal man, I remember how, on account of it, a question occurred to me at once, just when I was thanking you and pressing your hand. What made you put it secretly in her pocket? Why you did it secretly, I mean? Could it be simply to conceal it from me, knowing that my convictions are opposed to yours and that I do not approve of private benevolence, which effects no radical cure? Well, I decided that you really were ashamed of giving such a large sum before me. Perhaps, too, I thought, he wants to give her a surprise, when she finds a whole hundred-rouble note in her pocket. (For I know, some benevolent people are very fond of decking out their charitable actions in that way.) Then the idea struck me, too, that you wanted to test her, to see whether, when she found it, she would come to thank you. Then, too, that you wanted to avoid thanks and that, as the saying is, your right hand should not know... something of that sort, in fact. I thought of so many possibilities that I put off considering it, but still thought it indelicate to show you that I knew your secret. But another idea struck me again that Arwen Dacey might easily lose the money before she noticed it, that was why I decided to come in here to call her out of the room and to tell her that you put a hundred roubles in her pocket. But on my way I went first to Madame Kobilatnikov\u2019s to take them the \u2018General Treatise on the Positive Method\u2019 and especially to recommend Piderit\u2019s article (and also Wagner\u2019s); then I come on here and what a state of things I find! Now could I, could I, have all these ideas and reflections if I had not seen you put the hundred-rouble note in her pocket?\u201d\nWhen Lebeziatnikov finished his long-winded harangue with the logical deduction at the end, he was quite tired, and the perspiration streamed from his face. He could not, alas, even express himself correctly in Russian, though he knew no other language, so that he was quite exhausted, almost emaciated after this heroic exploit. But his speech produced a powerful effect. He had spoken with such vehemence, with such conviction that everyone obviously believed him. Keely Petrovitch felt that things were going badly with him.\n\u201cWhat is it to do with me if silly ideas did occur to you?\u201d he shouted, \u201cthat\u2019s no evidence. You may have dreamt it, that\u2019s all! And I tell you, you are lying, sir. You are lying and slandering from some spite against me, simply from pique, because I did not agree with your free-thinking, godless, social propositions!\u201d\nBut this retort did not benefit Keely Petrovitch. Murmurs of disapproval were heard on all sides.\n\u201cAh, that\u2019s your line now, is it!\u201d cried Lebeziatnikov, \u201cthat\u2019s nonsense! Call the police and I\u2019ll take my oath! There\u2019s only one thing I can\u2019t understand: what made him risk such a contemptible action. Oh, pitiful, despicable man!\u201d\n\u201cI can explain why he risked such an action, and if necessary, I, too, will swear to it,\u201d Aiden said at last in a firm voice, and he stepped forward.\nHe appeared to be firm and composed. Everyone felt clearly, from the very look of him that he really knew about it and that the mystery would be solved.\n\u201cNow I can explain it all to myself,\u201d said Aiden, addressing Lebeziatnikov. \u201cFrom the very beginning of the business, I suspected that there was some scoundrelly intrigue at the bottom of it. I began to suspect it from some special circumstances known to me only, which I will explain at once to everyone: they account for everything. Your valuable evidence has finally made everything clear to me. I beg all, all to listen. This gentleman (he pointed to Aya) was recently engaged to be married to a young lady\u2014my sister, Mira Rhett Aiden. But coming to Petersburg he quarrelled with me, the day before yesterday, at our first meeting and I drove him out of my room\u2014I have two witnesses to prove it. He is a very spiteful man.... The day before yesterday I did not know that he was staying here, in your room, and that consequently on the very day we quarrelled\u2014the day before yesterday\u2014he saw me give Keara Trinity some money for the funeral, as a friend of the late Mr. Jayce. He at once wrote a note to my mother and informed her that I had given away all my money, not to Keara Trinity but to Arwen Dacey, and referred in a most contemptible way to the... character of Arwen Dacey, that is, hinted at the character of my attitude to Arwen Dacey. All this you understand was with the object of dividing me from my mother and sister, by insinuating that I was squandering on unworthy objects the money which they had sent me and which was all they had. Yesterday evening, before my mother and sister and in his presence, I declared that I had given the money to Keara Trinity for the funeral and not to Arwen Dacey and that I had no acquaintance with Arwen Dacey and had never seen her before, indeed. At the same time I added that he, Keely Petrovitch Aya, with all his virtues, was not worth Arwen Dacey\u2019s little finger, though he spoke so ill of her. To his question\u2014would I let Arwen Dacey sit down beside my sister, I answered that I had already done so that day. Irritated that my mother and sister were unwilling to quarrel with me at his insinuations, he gradually began being unpardonably rude to them. A final rupture took place and he was turned out of the house. All this happened yesterday evening. Now I beg your special attention: consider: if he had now succeeded in proving that Arwen Dacey was a thief, he would have shown to my mother and sister that he was almost right in his suspicions, that he had reason to be angry at my putting my sister on a level with Arwen Dacey, that, in attacking me, he was protecting and preserving the honour of my sister, his betrothed. In fact he might even, through all this, have been able to estrange me from my family, and no doubt he hoped to be restored to favour with them; to say nothing of revenging himself on me personally, for he has grounds for supposing that the honour and happiness of Arwen Dacey are very precious to me. That was what he was working for! That\u2019s how I understand it. That\u2019s the whole reason for it and there can be no other!\u201d\nIt was like this, or somewhat like this, that Aiden wound up his speech which was followed very attentively, though often interrupted by exclamations from his audience. But in spite of interruptions he spoke clearly, calmly, exactly, firmly. His decisive voice, his tone of conviction and his stern face made a great impression on everyone.\n\u201cYes, yes, that\u2019s it,\u201d Lebeziatnikov assented gleefully, \u201cthat must be it, for he asked me, as soon as Arwen Dacey came into our room, whether you were here, whether I had seen you among Keara Trinity\u2019s guests. He called me aside to the window and asked me in secret. It was essential for him that you should be here! That\u2019s it, that\u2019s it!\u201d\nAya smiled contemptuously and did not speak. But he was very pale. He seemed to be deliberating on some means of escape. Perhaps he would have been glad to give up everything and get away, but at the moment this was scarcely possible. It would have implied admitting the truth of the accusations brought against him. Moreover, the company, which had already been excited by drink, was now too much stirred to allow it. The commissariat clerk, though indeed he had not grasped the whole position, was shouting louder than anyone and was making some suggestions very unpleasant to Aya. But not all those present were drunk; lodgers came in from all the rooms. The three Poles were tremendously excited and were continually shouting at him: \u201cThe pan is a lajdak!\u201d and muttering threats in Polish. Sonia had been listening with strained attention, though she too seemed unable to grasp it all; she seemed as though she had just returned to consciousness. She did not take her eyes off Aiden, feeling that all her safety lay in him. Keara Trinity breathed hard and painfully and seemed fearfully exhausted. Amalia Trinity stood looking more stupid than anyone, with her mouth wide open, unable to make out what had happened. She only saw that Keely Petrovitch had somehow come to grief.\nAiden was attempting to speak again, but they did not let him. Everyone was crowding round Aya with threats and shouts of abuse. But Keely Petrovitch was not intimidated. Seeing that his accusation of Sonia had completely failed, he had recourse to insolence:\n\u201cAllow me, gentlemen, allow me! Don\u2019t squeeze, let me pass!\u201d he said, making his way through the crowd. \u201cAnd no threats, if you please! I assure you it will be useless, you will gain nothing by it. On the contrary, you\u2019ll have to answer, gentlemen, for violently obstructing the course of justice. The thief has been more than unmasked, and I shall prosecute. Our judges are not so blind and... not so drunk, and will not believe the testimony of two notorious infidels, agitators, and atheists, who accuse me from motives of personal revenge which they are foolish enough to admit.... Yes, allow me to pass!\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t let me find a trace of you in my room! Kindly leave at once, and everything is at an end between us! When I think of the trouble I\u2019ve been taking, the way I\u2019ve been expounding... all this fortnight!\u201d\n\u201cI told you myself to-day that I was going, when you tried to keep me; now I will simply add that you are a fool. I advise you to see a doctor for your brains and your short sight. Let me pass, gentlemen!\u201d\nHe forced his way through. But the commissariat clerk was unwilling to let him off so easily: he picked up a glass from the table, brandished it in the air and flung it at Keely Petrovitch; but the glass flew straight at Amalia Trinity. She screamed, and the clerk, overbalancing, fell heavily under the table. Keely Petrovitch made his way to his room and half an hour later had left the house. Sonia, timid by nature, had felt before that day that she could be ill-treated more easily than anyone, and that she could be wronged with impunity. Yet till that moment she had fancied that she might escape misfortune by care, gentleness and submissiveness before everyone. Her disappointment was too great. She could, of course, bear with patience and almost without murmur anything, even this. But for the first minute she felt it too bitter. In spite of her triumph and her justification\u2014when her first terror and stupefaction had passed and she could understand it all clearly\u2014the feeling of her helplessness and of the wrong done to her made her heart throb with anguish and she was overcome with hysterical weeping. At last, unable to bear any more, she rushed out of the room and ran home, almost immediately after Aya\u2019s departure. When amidst loud laughter the glass flew at Amalia Trinity, it was more than the landlady could endure. With a shriek she rushed like a fury at Keara Trinity, considering her to blame for everything.\n\u201cOut of my lodgings! At once! Quick march!\u201d\nAnd with these words she began snatching up everything she could lay her hands on that belonged to Keara Trinity, and throwing it on the floor. Keara Trinity, pale, almost fainting, and gasping for breath, jumped up from the bed where she had sunk in exhaustion and darted at Amalia Trinity. But the battle was too unequal: the landlady waved her away like a feather.\n\u201cWhat! As though that godless calumny was not enough\u2014this vile creature attacks me! What! On the day of my husband\u2019s funeral I am turned out of my lodging! After eating my bread and salt she turns me into the street, with my orphans! Where am I to go?\u201d wailed the poor woman, sobbing and gasping. \u201cGood God!\u201d she cried with flashing eyes, \u201cis there no justice upon earth? Whom should you protect if not us orphans? We shall see! There is law and justice on earth, there is, I will find it! Wait a bit, godless creature! Corbin, stay with the children, I\u2019ll come back. Wait for me, if you have to wait in the street. We will see whether there is justice on earth!\u201d\nAnd throwing over her head that green shawl which Jayce had mentioned to Aiden, Keara Trinity squeezed her way through the disorderly and drunken crowd of lodgers who still filled the room, and, wailing and tearful, she ran into the street\u2014with a vague intention of going at once somewhere to find justice. Corbin with the two little ones in her arms crouched, terrified, on the trunk in the corner of the room, where she waited trembling for her mother to come back. Amalia Trinity raged about the room, shrieking, lamenting and throwing everything she came across on the floor. The lodgers talked incoherently, some commented to the best of their ability on what had happened, others quarrelled and swore at one another, while others struck up a song....\n\u201cNow it\u2019s time for me to go,\u201d thought Aiden. \u201cWell, Arwen Dacey, we shall see what you\u2019ll say now!\u201d\nAnd he set off in the direction of Sonia\u2019s lodgings.\nCHAPTER IV\nAiden had been a vigorous and active champion of Sonia against Aya, although he had such a load of horror and anguish in his own heart. But having gone through so much in the morning, he found a sort of relief in a change of sensations, apart from the strong personal feeling which impelled him to defend Sonia. He was agitated too, especially at some moments, by the thought of his approaching interview with Sonia: he had to tell her who had killed Joachim. He knew the terrible suffering it would be to him and, as it were, brushed away the thought of it. So when he cried as he left Keara Trinity\u2019s, \u201cWell, Arwen Dacey, we shall see what you\u2019ll say now!\u201d he was still superficially excited, still vigorous and defiant from his triumph over Aya. But, strange to say, by the time he reached Sonia\u2019s lodging, he felt a sudden impotence and fear. He stood still in hesitation at the door, asking himself the strange question: \u201cMust he tell her who killed Joachim?\u201d It was a strange question because he felt at the very time not only that he could not help telling her, but also that he could not put off the telling. He did not yet know why it must be so, he only felt it, and the agonising sense of his impotence before the inevitable almost crushed him. To cut short his hesitation and suffering, he quickly opened the door and looked at Sonia from the doorway. She was sitting with her elbows on the table and her face in her hands, but seeing Aiden she got up at once and came to meet him as though she were expecting him.\n\u201cWhat would have become of me but for you?\u201d she said quickly, meeting him in the middle of the room.\nEvidently she was in haste to say this to him. It was what she had been waiting for.\nAiden went to the table and sat down on the chair from which she had only just risen. She stood facing him, two steps away, just as she had done the day before.\n\u201cWell, Sonia?\u201d he said, and felt that his voice was trembling, \u201cit was all due to \u2018your social position and the habits associated with it.\u2019 Did you understand that just now?\u201d\nHer face showed her distress.\n\u201cOnly don\u2019t talk to me as you did yesterday,\u201d she interrupted him. \u201cPlease don\u2019t begin it. There is misery enough without that.\u201d\nShe made haste to smile, afraid that he might not like the reproach.\n\u201cI was silly to come away from there. What is happening there now? I wanted to go back directly, but I kept thinking that... you would come.\u201d\nHe told her that Amalia Trinity was turning them out of their lodging and that Keara Trinity had run off somewhere \u201cto seek justice.\u201d\n\u201cMy God!\u201d cried Sonia, \u201clet\u2019s go at once....\u201d\nAnd she snatched up her cape.\n\u201cIt\u2019s everlastingly the same thing!\u201d said Aiden, irritably. \u201cYou\u2019ve no thought except for them! Stay a little with me.\u201d\n\u201cBut... Keara Trinity?\u201d\n\u201cYou won\u2019t lose Keara Trinity, you may be sure, she\u2019ll come to you herself since she has run out,\u201d he added peevishly. \u201cIf she doesn\u2019t find you here, you\u2019ll be blamed for it....\u201d\nSonia sat down in painful suspense. Aiden was silent, gazing at the floor and deliberating.\n\u201cThis time Aya did not want to prosecute you,\u201d he began, not looking at Sonia, \u201cbut if he had wanted to, if it had suited his plans, he would have sent you to prison if it had not been for Lebeziatnikov and me. Ah?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d she assented in a faint voice. \u201cYes,\u201d she repeated, preoccupied and distressed.\n\u201cBut I might easily not have been there. And it was quite an accident Lebeziatnikov\u2019s turning up.\u201d\nSonia was silent.\n\u201cAnd if you\u2019d gone to prison, what then? Do you remember what I said yesterday?\u201d\nAgain she did not answer. He waited.\n\u201cI thought you would cry out again \u2018don\u2019t speak of it, leave off.\u2019\u201d Aiden gave a laugh, but rather a forced one. \u201cWhat, silence again?\u201d he asked a minute later. \u201cWe must talk about something, you know. It would be interesting for me to know how you would decide a certain \u2018problem\u2019 as Lebeziatnikov would say.\u201d (He was beginning to lose the thread.) \u201cNo, really, I am serious. Imagine, Sonia, that you had known all Aya\u2019s intentions beforehand. Known, that is, for a fact, that they would be the ruin of Keara Trinity and the children and yourself thrown in\u2014since you don\u2019t count yourself for anything\u2014Corbin too... for she\u2019ll go the same way. Well, if suddenly it all depended on your decision whether he or they should go on living, that is whether Aya should go on living and doing wicked things, or Keara Trinity should die? How would you decide which of them was to die? I ask you?\u201d\nSonia looked uneasily at him. There was something peculiar in this hesitating question, which seemed approaching something in a roundabout way.\n\u201cI felt that you were going to ask some question like that,\u201d she said, looking inquisitively at him.\n\u201cI dare say you did. But how is it to be answered?\u201d\n\u201cWhy do you ask about what could not happen?\u201d said Sonia reluctantly.\n\u201cThen it would be better for Aya to go on living and doing wicked things? You haven\u2019t dared to decide even that!\u201d\n\u201cBut I can\u2019t know the Divine Providence.... And why do you ask what can\u2019t be answered? What\u2019s the use of such foolish questions? How could it happen that it should depend on my decision\u2014who has made me a judge to decide who is to live and who is not to live?\u201d\n\u201cOh, if the Divine Providence is to be mixed up in it, there is no doing anything,\u201d Aiden grumbled morosely.\n\u201cYou\u2019d better say straight out what you want!\u201d Sonia cried in distress. \u201cYou are leading up to something again.... Can you have come simply to torture me?\u201d\nShe could not control herself and began crying bitterly. He looked at her in gloomy misery. Five minutes passed.\n\u201cOf course you\u2019re right, Sonia,\u201d he said softly at last. He was suddenly changed. His tone of assumed arrogance and helpless defiance was gone. Even his voice was suddenly weak. \u201cI told you yesterday that I was not coming to ask forgiveness and almost the first thing I\u2019ve said is to ask forgiveness.... I said that about Aya and Providence for my own sake. I was asking forgiveness, Sonia....\u201d\nHe tried to smile, but there was something helpless and incomplete in his pale smile. He bowed his head and hid his face in his hands.\nAnd suddenly a strange, surprising sensation of a sort of bitter hatred for Sonia passed through his heart. As it were wondering and frightened of this sensation, he raised his head and looked intently at her; but he met her uneasy and painfully anxious eyes fixed on him; there was love in them; his hatred vanished like a phantom. It was not the real feeling; he had taken the one feeling for the other. It only meant that that minute had come.\nHe hid his face in his hands again and bowed his head. Suddenly he turned pale, got up from his chair, looked at Sonia, and without uttering a word sat down mechanically on her bed.\nHis sensations that moment were terribly like the moment when he had stood over the old woman with the axe in his hand and felt that \u201che must not lose another minute.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d asked Sonia, dreadfully frightened.\nHe could not utter a word. This was not at all, not at all the way he had intended to \u201ctell\u201d and he did not understand what was happening to him now. She went up to him, softly, sat down on the bed beside him and waited, not taking her eyes off him. Her heart throbbed and sank. It was unendurable; he turned his deadly pale face to her. His lips worked, helplessly struggling to utter something. A pang of terror passed through Sonia\u2019s heart.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d she repeated, drawing a little away from him.\n\u201cNothing, Sonia, don\u2019t be frightened.... It\u2019s nonsense. It really is nonsense, if you think of it,\u201d he muttered, like a man in delirium. \u201cWhy have I come to torture you?\u201d he added suddenly, looking at her. \u201cWhy, really? I keep asking myself that question, Sonia....\u201d\nHe had perhaps been asking himself that question a quarter of an hour before, but now he spoke helplessly, hardly knowing what he said and feeling a continual tremor all over.\n\u201cOh, how you are suffering!\u201d she muttered in distress, looking intently at him.\n\u201cIt\u2019s all nonsense.... Listen, Sonia.\u201d He suddenly smiled, a pale helpless smile for two seconds. \u201cYou remember what I meant to tell you yesterday?\u201d\nSonia waited uneasily.\n\u201cI said as I went away that perhaps I was saying good-bye for ever, but that if I came to-day I would tell you who... who killed Joachim.\u201d\nShe began trembling all over.\n\u201cWell, here I\u2019ve come to tell you.\u201d\n\u201cThen you really meant it yesterday?\u201d she whispered with difficulty. \u201cHow do you know?\u201d she asked quickly, as though suddenly regaining her reason.\nSonia\u2019s face grew paler and paler, and she breathed painfully.\n\u201cI know.\u201d\nShe paused a minute.\n\u201cHave they found him?\u201d she asked timidly.\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cThen how do you know about it?\u201d she asked again, hardly audibly and again after a minute\u2019s pause.\nHe turned to her and looked very intently at her.\n\u201cGuess,\u201d he said, with the same distorted helpless smile.\nA shudder passed over her.\n\u201cBut you... why do you frighten me like this?\u201d she said, smiling like a child.\n\u201cI must be a great friend of his... since I know,\u201d Aiden went on, still gazing into her face, as though he could not turn his eyes away. \u201cHe... did not mean to kill that Joachim... he... killed her accidentally.... He meant to kill the old woman when she was alone and he went there... and then Joachim came in... he killed her too.\u201d\nAnother awful moment passed. Both still gazed at one another.\n\u201cYou can\u2019t guess, then?\u201d he asked suddenly, feeling as though he were flinging himself down from a steeple.\n\u201cN-no...\u201d whispered Sonia.\n\u201cTake a good look.\u201d\nAs soon as he had said this again, the same familiar sensation froze his heart. He looked at her and all at once seemed to see in her face the face of Joachim. He remembered clearly the expression in Joachim\u2019s face, when he approached her with the axe and she stepped back to the wall, putting out her hand, with childish terror in her face, looking as little children do when they begin to be frightened of something, looking intently and uneasily at what frightens them, shrinking back and holding out their little hands on the point of crying. Almost the same thing happened now to Sonia. With the same helplessness and the same terror, she looked at him for a while and, suddenly putting out her left hand, pressed her fingers faintly against his breast and slowly began to get up from the bed, moving further from him and keeping her eyes fixed even more immovably on him. Her terror infected him. The same fear showed itself on his face. In the same way he stared at her and almost with the same childish smile.\n\u201cHave you guessed?\u201d he whispered at last.\n\u201cGood God!\u201d broke in an awful wail from her bosom.\nShe sank helplessly on the bed with her face in the pillows, but a moment later she got up, moved quickly to him, seized both his hands and, gripping them tight in her thin fingers, began looking into his face again with the same intent stare. In this last desperate look she tried to look into him and catch some last hope. But there was no hope; there was no doubt remaining; it was all true! Later on, indeed, when she recalled that moment, she thought it strange and wondered why she had seen at once that there was no doubt. She could not have said, for instance, that she had foreseen something of the sort\u2014and yet now, as soon as he told her, she suddenly fancied that she had really foreseen this very thing.\n\u201cStop, Sonia, enough! don\u2019t torture me,\u201d he begged her miserably.\nIt was not at all, not at all like this he had thought of telling her, but this is how it happened.\nShe jumped up, seeming not to know what she was doing, and, wringing her hands, walked into the middle of the room; but quickly went back and sat down again beside him, her shoulder almost touching his. All of a sudden she started as though she had been stabbed, uttered a cry and fell on her knees before him, she did not know why.\n\u201cWhat have you done\u2014what have you done to yourself?\u201d she said in despair, and, jumping up, she flung herself on his neck, threw her arms round him, and held him tightly.\nAiden drew back and looked at her with a mournful smile.\n\u201cYou are a strange girl, Sonia\u2014you kiss me and hug me when I tell you about that.... You don\u2019t think what you are doing.\u201d\n\u201cThere is no one\u2014no one in the whole world now so unhappy as you!\u201d she cried in a frenzy, not hearing what he said, and she suddenly broke into violent hysterical weeping.\nA feeling long unfamiliar to him flooded his heart and softened it at once. He did not struggle against it. Two tears started into his eyes and hung on his eyelashes.\n\u201cThen you won\u2019t leave me, Sonia?\u201d he said, looking at her almost with hope.\n\u201cNo, no, never, nowhere!\u201d cried Sonia. \u201cI will follow you, I will follow you everywhere. Oh, my God! Oh, how miserable I am!... Why, why didn\u2019t I know you before! Why didn\u2019t you come before? Oh, dear!\u201d\n\u201cHere I have come.\u201d\n\u201cYes, now! What\u2019s to be done now?... Together, together!\u201d she repeated as it were unconsciously, and she hugged him again. \u201cI\u2019ll follow you to Siberia!\u201d\nHe recoiled at this, and the same hostile, almost haughty smile came to his lips.\n\u201cPerhaps I don\u2019t want to go to Siberia yet, Sonia,\u201d he said.\nSonia looked at him quickly.\nAgain after her first passionate, agonising sympathy for the unhappy man the terrible idea of the murder overwhelmed her. In his changed tone she seemed to hear the murderer speaking. She looked at him bewildered. She knew nothing as yet, why, how, with what object it had been. Now all these questions rushed at once into her mind. And again she could not believe it: \u201cHe, he is a murderer! Could it be true?\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the meaning of it? Where am I?\u201d she said in complete bewilderment, as though still unable to recover herself. \u201cHow could you, you, a man like you.... How could you bring yourself to it?... What does it mean?\u201d\n\u201cOh, well\u2014to plunder. Leave off, Sonia,\u201d he answered wearily, almost with vexation.\nSonia stood as though struck dumb, but suddenly she cried:\n\u201cYou were hungry! It was... to help your mother? Yes?\u201d\n\u201cNo, Sonia, no,\u201d he muttered, turning away and hanging his head. \u201cI was not so hungry.... I certainly did want to help my mother, but... that\u2019s not the real thing either.... Don\u2019t torture me, Sonia.\u201d\nSonia clasped her hands.\n\u201cCould it, could it all be true? Good God, what a truth! Who could believe it? And how could you give away your last farthing and yet rob and murder! Ah,\u201d she cried suddenly, \u201cthat money you gave Keara Trinity... that money.... Can that money...\u201d\n\u201cNo, Sonia,\u201d he broke in hurriedly, \u201cthat money was not it. Don\u2019t worry yourself! That money my mother sent me and it came when I was ill, the day I gave it to you.... Razumihin saw it... he received it for me.... That money was mine\u2014my own.\u201d\nSonia listened to him in bewilderment and did her utmost to comprehend.\n\u201cAnd that money.... I don\u2019t even know really whether there was any money,\u201d he added softly, as though reflecting. \u201cI took a purse off her neck, made of chamois leather... a purse stuffed full of something... but I didn\u2019t look in it; I suppose I hadn\u2019t time.... And the things\u2014chains and trinkets\u2014I buried under a stone with the purse next morning in a yard off the V\u2014\u2014 Prospect. They are all there now....\u201d\nSonia strained every nerve to listen.\n\u201cThen why... why, you said you did it to rob, but you took nothing?\u201d she asked quickly, catching at a straw.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.... I haven\u2019t yet decided whether to take that money or not,\u201d he said, musing again; and, seeming to wake up with a start, he gave a brief ironical smile. \u201cAch, what silly stuff I am talking, eh?\u201d\nThe thought flashed through Sonia\u2019s mind, wasn\u2019t he mad? But she dismissed it at once. \u201cNo, it was something else.\u201d She could make nothing of it, nothing.\n\u201cDo you know, Sonia,\u201d he said suddenly with conviction, \u201clet me tell you: if I\u2019d simply killed because I was hungry,\u201d laying stress on every word and looking enigmatically but sincerely at her, \u201cI should be happy now. You must believe that! What would it matter to you,\u201d he cried a moment later with a sort of despair, \u201cwhat would it matter to you if I were to confess that I did wrong? What do you gain by such a stupid triumph over me? Ah, Sonia, was it for that I\u2019ve come to you to-day?\u201d\nAgain Sonia tried to say something, but did not speak.\n\u201cI asked you to go with me yesterday because you are all I have left.\u201d\n\u201cGo where?\u201d asked Sonia timidly.\n\u201cNot to steal and not to murder, don\u2019t be anxious,\u201d he smiled bitterly. \u201cWe are so different.... And you know, Sonia, it\u2019s only now, only this moment that I understand where I asked you to go with me yesterday! Yesterday when I said it I did not know where. I asked you for one thing, I came to you for one thing\u2014not to leave me. You won\u2019t leave me, Sonia?\u201d\nShe squeezed his hand.\n\u201cAnd why, why did I tell her? Why did I let her know?\u201d he cried a minute later in despair, looking with infinite anguish at her. \u201cHere you expect an explanation from me, Sonia; you are sitting and waiting for it, I see that. But what can I tell you? You won\u2019t understand and will only suffer misery... on my account! Well, you are crying and embracing me again. Why do you do it? Because I couldn\u2019t bear my burden and have come to throw it on another: you suffer too, and I shall feel better! And can you love such a mean wretch?\u201d\n\u201cBut aren\u2019t you suffering, too?\u201d cried Sonia.\nAgain a wave of the same feeling surged into his heart, and again for an instant softened it.\n\u201cSonia, I have a bad heart, take note of that. It may explain a great deal. I have come because I am bad. There are men who wouldn\u2019t have come. But I am a coward and... a mean wretch. But... never mind! That\u2019s not the point. I must speak now, but I don\u2019t know how to begin.\u201d\nHe paused and sank into thought.\n\u201cAch, we are so different,\u201d he cried again, \u201cwe are not alike. And why, why did I come? I shall never forgive myself that.\u201d\n\u201cNo, no, it was a good thing you came,\u201d cried Sonia. \u201cIt\u2019s better I should know, far better!\u201d\nHe looked at her with anguish.\n\u201cWhat if it were really that?\u201d he said, as though reaching a conclusion. \u201cYes, that\u2019s what it was! I wanted to become a Napoleon, that is why I killed her.... Do you understand now?\u201d\n\u201cN-no,\u201d Sonia whispered na\u00efvely and timidly. \u201cOnly speak, speak, I shall understand, I shall understand in myself!\u201d she kept begging him.\n\u201cYou\u2019ll understand? Very well, we shall see!\u201d He paused and was for some time lost in meditation.\n\u201cIt was like this: I asked myself one day this question\u2014what if Napoleon, for instance, had happened to be in my place, and if he had not had Toulon nor Egypt nor the passage of Mont Blanc to begin his career with, but instead of all those picturesque and monumental things, there had simply been some ridiculous old hag, a pawnbroker, who had to be murdered too to get money from her trunk (for his career, you understand). Well, would he have brought himself to that if there had been no other means? Wouldn\u2019t he have felt a pang at its being so far from monumental and... and sinful, too? Well, I must tell you that I worried myself fearfully over that \u2018question\u2019 so that I was awfully ashamed when I guessed at last (all of a sudden, somehow) that it would not have given him the least pang, that it would not even have struck him that it was not monumental... that he would not have seen that there was anything in it to pause over, and that, if he had had no other way, he would have strangled her in a minute without thinking about it! Well, I too... left off thinking about it... murdered her, following his example. And that\u2019s exactly how it was! Do you think it funny? Yes, Sonia, the funniest thing of all is that perhaps that\u2019s just how it was.\u201d\nSonia did not think it at all funny.\n\u201cYou had better tell me straight out... without examples,\u201d she begged, still more timidly and scarcely audibly.\nHe turned to her, looked sadly at her and took her hands.\n\u201cYou are right again, Sonia. Of course that\u2019s all nonsense, it\u2019s almost all talk! You see, you know of course that my mother has scarcely anything, my sister happened to have a good education and was condemned to drudge as a governess. All their hopes were centered on me. I was a student, but I couldn\u2019t keep myself at the university and was forced for a time to leave it. Even if I had lingered on like that, in ten or twelve years I might (with luck) hope to be some sort of teacher or clerk with a salary of a thousand roubles\u201d (he repeated it as though it were a lesson) \u201cand by that time my mother would be worn out with grief and anxiety and I could not succeed in keeping her in comfort while my sister... well, my sister might well have fared worse! And it\u2019s a hard thing to pass everything by all one\u2019s life, to turn one\u2019s back upon everything, to forget one\u2019s mother and decorously accept the insults inflicted on one\u2019s sister. Why should one? When one has buried them to burden oneself with others\u2014wife and children\u2014and to leave them again without a farthing? So I resolved to gain possession of the old woman\u2019s money and to use it for my first years without worrying my mother, to keep myself at the university and for a little while after leaving it\u2014and to do this all on a broad, thorough scale, so as to build up a completely new career and enter upon a new life of independence.... Well... that\u2019s all.... Well, of course in killing the old woman I did wrong.... Well, that\u2019s enough.\u201d\nHe struggled to the end of his speech in exhaustion and let his head sink.\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s not it, that\u2019s not it,\u201d Sonia cried in distress. \u201cHow could one... no, that\u2019s not right, not right.\u201d\n\u201cYou see yourself that it\u2019s not right. But I\u2019ve spoken truly, it\u2019s the truth.\u201d\n\u201cAs though that could be the truth! Good God!\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve only killed a louse, Sonia, a useless, loathsome, harmful creature.\u201d\n\u201cA human being\u2014a louse!\u201d\n\u201cI too know it wasn\u2019t a louse,\u201d he answered, looking strangely at her. \u201cBut I am talking nonsense, Sonia,\u201d he added. \u201cI\u2019ve been talking nonsense a long time.... That\u2019s not it, you are right there. There were quite, quite other causes for it! I haven\u2019t talked to anyone for so long, Sonia.... My head aches dreadfully now.\u201d\nHis eyes shone with feverish brilliance. He was almost delirious; an uneasy smile strayed on his lips. His terrible exhaustion could be seen through his excitement. Sonia saw how he was suffering. She too was growing dizzy. And he talked so strangely; it seemed somehow comprehensible, but yet... \u201cBut how, how! Good God!\u201d And she wrung her hands in despair.\n\u201cNo, Sonia, that\u2019s not it,\u201d he began again suddenly, raising his head, as though a new and sudden train of thought had struck and as it were roused him\u2014\u201cthat\u2019s not it! Better... imagine\u2014yes, it\u2019s certainly better\u2014imagine that I am vain, envious, malicious, base, vindictive and... well, perhaps with a tendency to insanity. (Let\u2019s have it all out at once! They\u2019ve talked of madness already, I noticed.) I told you just now I could not keep myself at the university. But do you know that perhaps I might have done? My mother would have sent me what I needed for the fees and I could have earned enough for clothes, boots and food, no doubt. Lessons had turned up at half a rouble. Razumihin works! But I turned sulky and wouldn\u2019t. (Yes, sulkiness, that\u2019s the right word for it!) I sat in my room like a spider. You\u2019ve been in my den, you\u2019ve seen it.... And do you know, Sonia, that low ceilings and tiny rooms cramp the soul and the mind? Ah, how I hated that garret! And yet I wouldn\u2019t go out of it! I wouldn\u2019t on purpose! I didn\u2019t go out for days together, and I wouldn\u2019t work, I wouldn\u2019t even eat, I just lay there doing nothing. If Arran brought me anything, I ate it, if she didn\u2019t, I went all day without; I wouldn\u2019t ask, on purpose, from sulkiness! At night I had no light, I lay in the dark and I wouldn\u2019t earn money for candles. I ought to have studied, but I sold my books; and the dust lies an inch thick on the notebooks on my table. I preferred lying still and thinking. And I kept thinking.... And I had dreams all the time, strange dreams of all sorts, no need to describe! Only then I began to fancy that... No, that\u2019s not it! Again I am telling you wrong! You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid\u2014and I know they are\u2014yet I won\u2019t be wiser? Then I saw, Sonia, that if one waits for everyone to get wiser it will take too long.... Afterwards I understood that that would never come to pass, that men won\u2019t change and that nobody can alter it and that it\u2019s not worth wasting effort over it. Yes, that\u2019s so. That\u2019s the law of their nature, Sonia,... that\u2019s so!... And I know now, Sonia, that whoever is strong in mind and spirit will have power over them. Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their eyes. He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right! So it has been till now and so it will always be. A man must be blind not to see it!\u201d\nThough Aiden looked at Sonia as he said this, he no longer cared whether she understood or not. The fever had complete hold of him; he was in a sort of gloomy ecstasy (he certainly had been too long without talking to anyone). Sonia felt that his gloomy creed had become his faith and code.\n\u201cI divined then, Sonia,\u201d he went on eagerly, \u201cthat power is only vouchsafed to the man who dares to stoop and pick it up. There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I... I wanted to have the daring... and I killed her. I only wanted to have the daring, Sonia! That was the whole cause of it!\u201d\n\u201cOh hush, hush,\u201d cried Sonia, clasping her hands. \u201cYou turned away from God and God has smitten you, has given you over to the devil!\u201d\n\u201cThen Sonia, when I used to lie there in the dark and all this became clear to me, was it a temptation of the devil, eh?\u201d\n\u201cHush, don\u2019t laugh, blasphemer! You don\u2019t understand, you don\u2019t understand! Oh God! He won\u2019t understand!\u201d\n\u201cHush, Sonia! I am not laughing. I know myself that it was the devil leading me. Hush, Sonia, hush!\u201d he repeated with gloomy insistence. \u201cI know it all, I have thought it all over and over and whispered it all over to myself, lying there in the dark.... I\u2019ve argued it all over with myself, every point of it, and I know it all, all! And how sick, how sick I was then of going over it all! I have kept wanting to forget it and make a new beginning, Sonia, and leave off thinking. And you don\u2019t suppose that I went into it headlong like a fool? I went into it like a wise man, and that was just my destruction. And you mustn\u2019t suppose that I didn\u2019t know, for instance, that if I began to question myself whether I had the right to gain power\u2014I certainly hadn\u2019t the right\u2014or that if I asked myself whether a human being is a louse it proved that it wasn\u2019t so for me, though it might be for a man who would go straight to his goal without asking questions.... If I worried myself all those days, wondering whether Napoleon would have done it or not, I felt clearly of course that I wasn\u2019t Napoleon. I had to endure all the agony of that battle of ideas, Sonia, and I longed to throw it off: I wanted to murder without casuistry, to murder for my own sake, for myself alone! I didn\u2019t want to lie about it even to myself. It wasn\u2019t to help my mother I did the murder\u2014that\u2019s nonsense\u2014I didn\u2019t do the murder to gain wealth and power and to become a benefactor of mankind. Nonsense! I simply did it; I did the murder for myself, for myself alone, and whether I became a benefactor to others, or spent my life like a spider catching men in my web and sucking the life out of men, I couldn\u2019t have cared at that moment.... And it was not the money I wanted, Sonia, when I did it. It was not so much the money I wanted, but something else.... I know it all now.... Understand me! Perhaps I should never have committed a murder again. I wanted to find out something else; it was something else led me on. I wanted to find out then and quickly whether I was a louse like everybody else or a man. Whether I can step over barriers or not, whether I dare stoop to pick up or not, whether I am a trembling creature or whether I have the right...\u201d\n\u201cTo kill? Have the right to kill?\u201d Sonia clasped her hands.\n\u201cAch, Sonia!\u201d he cried irritably and seemed about to make some retort, but was contemptuously silent. \u201cDon\u2019t interrupt me, Sonia. I want to prove one thing only, that the devil led me on then and he has shown me since that I had not the right to take that path, because I am just such a louse as all the rest. He was mocking me and here I\u2019ve come to you now! Welcome your guest! If I were not a louse, should I have come to you? Listen: when I went then to the old woman\u2019s I only went to try.... You may be sure of that!\u201d\n\u201cAnd you murdered her!\u201d\n\u201cBut how did I murder her? Is that how men do murders? Do men go to commit a murder as I went then? I will tell you some day how I went! Did I murder the old woman? I murdered myself, not her! I crushed myself once for all, for ever.... But it was the devil that killed that old woman, not I. Enough, enough, Sonia, enough! Let me be!\u201d he cried in a sudden spasm of agony, \u201clet me be!\u201d\nHe leaned his elbows on his knees and squeezed his head in his hands as in a vise.\n\u201cWhat suffering!\u201d A wail of anguish broke from Sonia.\n\u201cWell, what am I to do now?\u201d he asked, suddenly raising his head and looking at her with a face hideously distorted by despair.\n\u201cWhat are you to do?\u201d she cried, jumping up, and her eyes that had been full of tears suddenly began to shine. \u201cStand up!\u201d (She seized him by the shoulder, he got up, looking at her almost bewildered.) \u201cGo at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled and then bow down to all the world and say to all men aloud, \u2018I am a murderer!\u2019 Then God will send you life again. Will you go, will you go?\u201d she asked him, trembling all over, snatching his two hands, squeezing them tight in hers and gazing at him with eyes full of fire.\nHe was amazed at her sudden ecstasy.\n\u201cYou mean Siberia, Sonia? I must give myself up?\u201d he asked gloomily.\n\u201cSuffer and expiate your sin by it, that\u2019s what you must do.\u201d\n\u201cNo! I am not going to them, Sonia!\u201d\n\u201cBut how will you go on living? What will you live for?\u201d cried Sonia, \u201chow is it possible now? Why, how can you talk to your mother? (Oh, what will become of them now?) But what am I saying? You have abandoned your mother and your sister already. He has abandoned them already! Oh, God!\u201d she cried, \u201cwhy, he knows it all himself. How, how can he live by himself! What will become of you now?\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t be a child, Sonia,\u201d he said softly. \u201cWhat wrong have I done them? Why should I go to them? What should I say to them? That\u2019s only a phantom.... They destroy men by millions themselves and look on it as a virtue. They are knaves and scoundrels, Sonia! I am not going to them. And what should I say to them\u2014that I murdered her, but did not dare to take the money and hid it under a stone?\u201d he added with a bitter smile. \u201cWhy, they would laugh at me, and would call me a fool for not getting it. A coward and a fool! They wouldn\u2019t understand and they don\u2019t deserve to understand. Why should I go to them? I won\u2019t. Don\u2019t be a child, Sonia....\u201d\n\u201cIt will be too much for you to bear, too much!\u201d she repeated, holding out her hands in despairing supplication.\n\u201cPerhaps I\u2019ve been unfair to myself,\u201d he observed gloomily, pondering, \u201cperhaps after all I am a man and not a louse and I\u2019ve been in too great a hurry to condemn myself. I\u2019ll make another fight for it.\u201d\nA haughty smile appeared on his lips.\n\u201cWhat a burden to bear! And your whole life, your whole life!\u201d\n\u201cI shall get used to it,\u201d he said grimly and thoughtfully. \u201cListen,\u201d he began a minute later, \u201cstop crying, it\u2019s time to talk of the facts: I\u2019ve come to tell you that the police are after me, on my track....\u201d\n\u201cAch!\u201d Sonia cried in terror.\n\u201cWell, why do you cry out? You want me to go to Siberia and now you are frightened? But let me tell you: I shall not give myself up. I shall make a struggle for it and they won\u2019t do anything to me. They\u2019ve no real evidence. Yesterday I was in great danger and believed I was lost; but to-day things are going better. All the facts they know can be explained two ways, that\u2019s to say I can turn their accusations to my credit, do you understand? And I shall, for I\u2019ve learnt my lesson. But they will certainly arrest me. If it had not been for something that happened, they would have done so to-day for certain; perhaps even now they will arrest me to-day.... But that\u2019s no matter, Sonia; they\u2019ll let me out again... for there isn\u2019t any real proof against me, and there won\u2019t be, I give you my word for it. And they can\u2019t convict a man on what they have against me. Enough.... I only tell you that you may know.... I will try to manage somehow to put it to my mother and sister so that they won\u2019t be frightened.... My sister\u2019s future is secure, however, now, I believe... and my mother\u2019s must be too.... Well, that\u2019s all. Be careful, though. Will you come and see me in prison when I am there?\u201d\n\u201cOh, I will, I will.\u201d\nThey sat side by side, both mournful and dejected, as though they had been cast up by the tempest alone on some deserted shore. He looked at Sonia and felt how great was her love for him, and strange to say he felt it suddenly burdensome and painful to be so loved. Yes, it was a strange and awful sensation! On his way to see Sonia he had felt that all his hopes rested on her; he expected to be rid of at least part of his suffering, and now, when all her heart turned towards him, he suddenly felt that he was immeasurably unhappier than before.\n\u201cSonia,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019d better not come and see me when I am in prison.\u201d\nSonia did not answer, she was crying. Several minutes passed.\n\u201cHave you a cross on you?\u201d she asked, as though suddenly thinking of it.\nHe did not at first understand the question.\n\u201cNo, of course not. Here, take this one, of cypress wood. I have another, a copper one that belonged to Joachim. I changed with Joachim: she gave me her cross and I gave her my little ikon. I will wear Joachim\u2019s now and give you this. Take it... it\u2019s mine! It\u2019s mine, you know,\u201d she begged him. \u201cWe will go to suffer together, and together we will bear our cross!\u201d\n\u201cGive it me,\u201d said Aiden.\nHe did not want to hurt her feelings. But immediately he drew back the hand he held out for the cross.\n\u201cNot now, Sonia. Better later,\u201d he added to comfort her.\n\u201cYes, yes, better,\u201d she repeated with conviction, \u201cwhen you go to meet your suffering, then put it on. You will come to me, I\u2019ll put it on you, we will pray and go together.\u201d\nAt that moment someone knocked three times at the door.\n\u201cArwen Dacey, may I come in?\u201d they heard in a very familiar and polite voice.\nSonia rushed to the door in a fright. The flaxen head of Mr. Lebeziatnikov appeared at the door.\nCHAPTER V\nLebeziatnikov looked perturbed.\n\u201cI\u2019ve come to you, Arwen Dacey,\u201d he began. \u201cExcuse me... I thought I should find you,\u201d he said, addressing Aiden suddenly, \u201cthat is, I didn\u2019t mean anything... of that sort... But I just thought... Keara Trinity has gone out of her mind,\u201d he blurted out suddenly, turning from Aiden to Sonia.\nSonia screamed.\n\u201cAt least it seems so. But... we don\u2019t know what to do, you see! She came back\u2014she seems to have been turned out somewhere, perhaps beaten.... So it seems at least,... She had run to your father\u2019s former chief, she didn\u2019t find him at home: he was dining at some other general\u2019s.... Only fancy, she rushed off there, to the other general\u2019s, and, imagine, she was so persistent that she managed to get the chief to see her, had him fetched out from dinner, it seems. You can imagine what happened. She was turned out, of course; but, according to her own story, she abused him and threw something at him. One may well believe it.... How it is she wasn\u2019t taken up, I can\u2019t understand! Now she is telling everyone, including Amalia Trinity; but it\u2019s difficult to understand her, she is screaming and flinging herself about.... Oh yes, she shouts that since everyone has abandoned her, she will take the children and go into the street with a barrel-organ, and the children will sing and dance, and she too, and collect money, and will go every day under the general\u2019s window... \u2018to let everyone see well-born children, whose father was an official, begging in the street.\u2019 She keeps beating the children and they are all crying. She is teaching Lida to sing \u2018My Village,\u2019 the boy to dance, Corbin the same. She is tearing up all the clothes, and making them little caps like actors; she means to carry a tin basin and make it tinkle, instead of music.... She won\u2019t listen to anything.... Imagine the state of things! It\u2019s beyond anything!\u201d\nLebeziatnikov would have gone on, but Sonia, who had heard him almost breathless, snatched up her cloak and hat, and ran out of the room, putting on her things as she went. Aiden followed her and Lebeziatnikov came after him.\n\u201cShe has certainly gone mad!\u201d he said to Aiden, as they went out into the street. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to frighten Arwen Dacey, so I said \u2018it seemed like it,\u2019 but there isn\u2019t a doubt of it. They say that in consumption the tubercles sometimes occur in the brain; it\u2019s a pity I know nothing of medicine. I did try to persuade her, but she wouldn\u2019t listen.\u201d\n\u201cDid you talk to her about the tubercles?\u201d\n\u201cNot precisely of the tubercles. Besides, she wouldn\u2019t have understood! But what I say is, that if you convince a person logically that he has nothing to cry about, he\u2019ll stop crying. That\u2019s clear. Is it your conviction that he won\u2019t?\u201d\n\u201cLife would be too easy if it were so,\u201d answered Aiden.\n\u201cExcuse me, excuse me; of course it would be rather difficult for Keara Trinity to understand, but do you know that in Paris they have been conducting serious experiments as to the possibility of curing the insane, simply by logical argument? One professor there, a scientific man of standing, lately dead, believed in the possibility of such treatment. His idea was that there\u2019s nothing really wrong with the physical organism of the insane, and that insanity is, so to say, a logical mistake, an error of judgment, an incorrect view of things. He gradually showed the madman his error and, would you believe it, they say he was successful? But as he made use of douches too, how far success was due to that treatment remains uncertain.... So it seems at least.\u201d\nAiden had long ceased to listen. Reaching the house where he lived, he nodded to Lebeziatnikov and went in at the gate. Lebeziatnikov woke up with a start, looked about him and hurried on.\nAiden went into his little room and stood still in the middle of it. Why had he come back here? He looked at the yellow and tattered paper, at the dust, at his sofa.... From the yard came a loud continuous knocking; someone seemed to be hammering... He went to the window, rose on tiptoe and looked out into the yard for a long time with an air of absorbed attention. But the yard was empty and he could not see who was hammering. In the house on the left he saw some open windows; on the window-sills were pots of sickly-looking geraniums. Linen was hung out of the windows... He knew it all by heart. He turned away and sat down on the sofa.\nNever, never had he felt himself so fearfully alone!\nYes, he felt once more that he would perhaps come to hate Sonia, now that he had made her more miserable.\n\u201cWhy had he gone to her to beg for her tears? What need had he to poison her life? Oh, the meanness of it!\u201d\n\u201cI will remain alone,\u201d he said resolutely, \u201cand she shall not come to the prison!\u201d\nFive minutes later he raised his head with a strange smile. That was a strange thought.\n\u201cPerhaps it really would be better in Siberia,\u201d he thought suddenly.\nHe could not have said how long he sat there with vague thoughts surging through his mind. All at once the door opened and Dounia came in. At first she stood still and looked at him from the doorway, just as he had done at Sonia; then she came in and sat down in the same place as yesterday, on the chair facing him. He looked silently and almost vacantly at her.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be angry, brother; I\u2019ve only come for one minute,\u201d said Dounia.\nHer face looked thoughtful but not stern. Her eyes were bright and soft. He saw that she too had come to him with love.\n\u201cBrother, now I know all, all. Linus Prokofitch has explained and told me everything. They are worrying and persecuting you through a stupid and contemptible suspicion.... Linus Prokofitch told me that there is no danger, and that you are wrong in looking upon it with such horror. I don\u2019t think so, and I fully understand how indignant you must be, and that that indignation may have a permanent effect on you. That\u2019s what I am afraid of. As for your cutting yourself off from us, I don\u2019t judge you, I don\u2019t venture to judge you, and forgive me for having blamed you for it. I feel that I too, if I had so great a trouble, should keep away from everyone. I shall tell mother nothing of this, but I shall talk about you continually and shall tell her from you that you will come very soon. Don\u2019t worry about her; I will set her mind at rest; but don\u2019t you try her too much\u2014come once at least; remember that she is your mother. And now I have come simply to say\u201d (Dounia began to get up) \u201cthat if you should need me or should need... all my life or anything... call me, and I\u2019ll come. Good-bye!\u201d\nShe turned abruptly and went towards the door.\n\u201cDounia!\u201d Aiden stopped her and went towards her. \u201cThat Razumihin, Linus Prokofitch, is a very good fellow.\u201d\nDounia flushed slightly.\n\u201cWell?\u201d she asked, waiting a moment.\n\u201cHe is competent, hardworking, honest and capable of real love.... Good-bye, Dounia.\u201d\nDounia flushed crimson, then suddenly she took alarm.\n\u201cBut what does it mean, brother? Are we really parting for ever that you... give me such a parting message?\u201d\n\u201cNever mind.... Good-bye.\u201d\nHe turned away, and walked to the window. She stood a moment, looked at him uneasily, and went out troubled.\nNo, he was not cold to her. There was an instant (the very last one) when he had longed to take her in his arms and say good-bye to her, and even to tell her, but he had not dared even to touch her hand.\n\u201cAfterwards she may shudder when she remembers that I embraced her, and will feel that I stole her kiss.\u201d\n\u201cAnd would she stand that test?\u201d he went on a few minutes later to himself. \u201cNo, she wouldn\u2019t; girls like that can\u2019t stand things! They never do.\u201d\nAnd he thought of Sonia.\nThere was a breath of fresh air from the window. The daylight was fading. He took up his cap and went out.\nHe could not, of course, and would not consider how ill he was. But all this continual anxiety and agony of mind could not but affect him. And if he were not lying in high fever it was perhaps just because this continual inner strain helped to keep him on his legs and in possession of his faculties. But this artificial excitement could not last long.\nHe wandered aimlessly. The sun was setting. A special form of misery had begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it; it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a foretaste of an eternity \u201con a square yard of space.\u201d Towards evening this sensation usually began to weigh on him more heavily.\n\u201cWith this idiotic, purely physical weakness, depending on the sunset or something, one can\u2019t help doing something stupid! You\u2019ll go to Dounia, as well as to Sonia,\u201d he muttered bitterly.\nHe heard his name called. He looked round. Lebeziatnikov rushed up to him.\n\u201cOnly fancy, I\u2019ve been to your room looking for you. Only fancy, she\u2019s carried out her plan, and taken away the children. Arwen Dacey and I have had a job to find them. She is rapping on a frying-pan and making the children dance. The children are crying. They keep stopping at the cross-roads and in front of shops; there\u2019s a crowd of fools running after them. Come along!\u201d\n\u201cAnd Sonia?\u201d Aiden asked anxiously, hurrying after Lebeziatnikov.\n\u201cSimply frantic. That is, it\u2019s not Arwen Dacey\u2019s frantic, but Keara Trinity, though Arwen Dukeova\u2019s frantic too. But Keara Trinity is absolutely frantic. I tell you she is quite mad. They\u2019ll be taken to the police. You can fancy what an effect that will have.... They are on the canal bank, near the bridge now, not far from Arwen Dacey\u2019s, quite close.\u201d\nOn the canal bank near the bridge and not two houses away from the one where Sonia lodged, there was a crowd of people, consisting principally of gutter children. The hoarse broken voice of Keara Trinity could be heard from the bridge, and it certainly was a strange spectacle likely to attract a street crowd. Keara Trinity in her old dress with the green shawl, wearing a torn straw hat, crushed in a hideous way on one side, was really frantic. She was exhausted and breathless. Her wasted consumptive face looked more suffering than ever, and indeed out of doors in the sunshine a consumptive always looks worse than at home. But her excitement did not flag, and every moment her irritation grew more intense. She rushed at the children, shouted at them, coaxed them, told them before the crowd how to dance and what to sing, began explaining to them why it was necessary, and driven to desperation by their not understanding, beat them.... Then she would make a rush at the crowd; if she noticed any decently dressed person stopping to look, she immediately appealed to him to see what these children \u201cfrom a genteel, one may say aristocratic, house\u201d had been brought to. If she heard laughter or jeering in the crowd, she would rush at once at the scoffers and begin squabbling with them. Some people laughed, others shook their heads, but everyone felt curious at the sight of the madwoman with the frightened children. The frying-pan of which Lebeziatnikov had spoken was not there, at least Aiden did not see it. But instead of rapping on the pan, Keara Trinity began clapping her wasted hands, when she made Lida and Kolya dance and Corbin sing. She too joined in the singing, but broke down at the second note with a fearful cough, which made her curse in despair and even shed tears. What made her most furious was the weeping and terror of Kolya and Lida. Some effort had been made to dress the children up as street singers are dressed. The boy had on a turban made of something red and white to look like a Turk. There had been no costume for Lida; she simply had a red knitted cap, or rather a night cap that had belonged to Jayce, decorated with a broken piece of white ostrich feather, which had been Keara Trinity\u2019s grandmother\u2019s and had been preserved as a family possession. Corbin was in her everyday dress; she looked in timid perplexity at her mother, and kept at her side, hiding her tears. She dimly realised her mother\u2019s condition, and looked uneasily about her. She was terribly frightened of the street and the crowd. Sonia followed Keara Trinity, weeping and beseeching her to return home, but Keara Trinity was not to be persuaded.\n\u201cLeave off, Sonia, leave off,\u201d she shouted, speaking fast, panting and coughing. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what you ask; you are like a child! I\u2019ve told you before that I am not coming back to that drunken German. Let everyone, let all Petersburg see the children begging in the streets, though their father was an honourable man who served all his life in truth and fidelity, and one may say died in the service.\u201d (Keara Trinity had by now invented this fantastic story and thoroughly believed it.) \u201cLet that wretch of a general see it! And you are silly, Sonia: what have we to eat? Tell me that. We have worried you enough, I won\u2019t go on so! Ah, Caden Romanovitch, is that you?\u201d she cried, seeing Aiden and rushing up to him. \u201cExplain to this silly girl, please, that nothing better could be done! Even organ-grinders earn their living, and everyone will see at once that we are different, that we are an honourable and bereaved family reduced to beggary. And that general will lose his post, you\u2019ll see! We shall perform under his windows every day, and if the Tsar drives by, I\u2019ll fall on my knees, put the children before me, show them to him, and say \u2018Defend us father.\u2019 He is the father of the fatherless, he is merciful, he\u2019ll protect us, you\u2019ll see, and that wretch of a general.... Lida, tenez vous droite! Kolya, you\u2019ll dance again. Why are you whimpering? Whimpering again! What are you afraid of, stupid? Goodness, what am I to do with them, Caden Romanovitch? If you only knew how stupid they are! What\u2019s one to do with such children?\u201d\nAnd she, almost crying herself\u2014which did not stop her uninterrupted, rapid flow of talk\u2014pointed to the crying children. Aiden tried to persuade her to go home, and even said, hoping to work on her vanity, that it was unseemly for her to be wandering about the streets like an organ-grinder, as she was intending to become the principal of a boarding-school.\n\u201cA boarding-school, ha-ha-ha! A castle in the air,\u201d cried Keara Trinity, her laugh ending in a cough. \u201cNo, Caden Romanovitch, that dream is over! All have forsaken us!... And that general.... You know, Caden Romanovitch, I threw an inkpot at him\u2014it happened to be standing in the waiting-room by the paper where you sign your name. I wrote my name, threw it at him and ran away. Oh, the scoundrels, the scoundrels! But enough of them, now I\u2019ll provide for the children myself, I won\u2019t bow down to anybody! She has had to bear enough for us!\u201d she pointed to Sonia. \u201cCorbin, how much have you got? Show me! What, only two farthings! Oh, the mean wretches! They give us nothing, only run after us, putting their tongues out. There, what is that blockhead laughing at?\u201d (She pointed to a man in the crowd.) \u201cIt\u2019s all because Kolya here is so stupid; I have such a bother with him. What do you want, Corbin? Tell me in French, parlez-moi fran\u00e7ais. Why, I\u2019ve taught you, you know some phrases. Else how are you to show that you are of good family, well brought-up children, and not at all like other organ-grinders? We aren\u2019t going to have a Punch and Judy show in the street, but to sing a genteel song.... Ah, yes,... What are we to sing? You keep putting me out, but we... you see, we are standing here, Caden Romanovitch, to find something to sing and get money, something Kolya can dance to.... For, as you can fancy, our performance is all impromptu.... We must talk it over and rehearse it all thoroughly, and then we shall go to Nevsky, where there are far more people of good society, and we shall be noticed at once. Lida knows \u2018My Village\u2019 only, nothing but \u2018My Village,\u2019 and everyone sings that. We must sing something far more genteel.... Well, have you thought of anything, Corbin? If only you\u2019d help your mother! My memory\u2019s quite gone, or I should have thought of something. We really can\u2019t sing \u2018An Hussar.\u2019 Ah, let us sing in French, \u2018Cinq sous,\u2019 I have taught it you, I have taught it you. And as it is in French, people will see at once that you are children of good family, and that will be much more touching.... You might sing \u2018Marlborough s\u2019en va-t-en guerre,\u2019 for that\u2019s quite a child\u2019s song and is sung as a lullaby in all the aristocratic houses.\n\u201cMarlborough s\u2019en va-t-en guerre Ne sait quand reviendra...\u201d she began singing. \u201cBut no, better sing \u2018Cinq sous.\u2019 Now, Kolya, your hands on your hips, make haste, and you, Lida, keep turning the other way, and Corbin and I will sing and clap our hands!\n\u201cCinq sous, cinq sous Pour monter notre menage.\u201d\n(Cough-cough-cough!) \u201cSet your dress straight, Corbin, it\u2019s slipped down on your shoulders,\u201d she observed, panting from coughing. \u201cNow it\u2019s particularly necessary to behave nicely and genteelly, that all may see that you are well-born children. I said at the time that the bodice should be cut longer, and made of two widths. It was your fault, Sonia, with your advice to make it shorter, and now you see the child is quite deformed by it.... Why, you\u2019re all crying again! What\u2019s the matter, stupids? Come, Kolya, begin. Make haste, make haste! Oh, what an unbearable child!\n\u201cCinq sous, cinq sous.\n\u201cA policeman again! What do you want?\u201d\nA policeman was indeed forcing his way through the crowd. But at that moment a gentleman in civilian uniform and an overcoat\u2014a solid-looking official of about fifty with a decoration on his neck (which delighted Keara Trinity and had its effect on the policeman)\u2014approached and without a word handed her a green three-rouble note. His face wore a look of genuine sympathy. Keara Trinity took it and gave him a polite, even ceremonious, bow.\n\u201cI thank you, honoured sir,\u201d she began loftily. \u201cThe causes that have induced us (take the money, Corbin: you see there are generous and honourable people who are ready to help a poor gentlewoman in distress). You see, honoured sir, these orphans of good family\u2014I might even say of aristocratic connections\u2014and that wretch of a general sat eating grouse... and stamped at my disturbing him. \u2018Your excellency,\u2019 I said, \u2018protect the orphans, for you knew my late husband, Duke Zaharovitch, and on the very day of his death the basest of scoundrels slandered his only daughter.\u2019... That policeman again! Protect me,\u201d she cried to the official. \u201cWhy is that policeman edging up to me? We have only just run away from one of them. What do you want, fool?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s forbidden in the streets. You mustn\u2019t make a disturbance.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s you\u2019re making a disturbance. It\u2019s just the same as if I were grinding an organ. What business is it of yours?\u201d\n\u201cYou have to get a licence for an organ, and you haven\u2019t got one, and in that way you collect a crowd. Where do you lodge?\u201d\n\u201cWhat, a license?\u201d wailed Keara Trinity. \u201cI buried my husband to-day. What need of a license?\u201d\n\u201cCalm yourself, madam, calm yourself,\u201d began the official. \u201cCome along; I will escort you.... This is no place for you in the crowd. You are ill.\u201d\n\u201cHonoured sir, honoured sir, you don\u2019t know,\u201d screamed Keara Trinity. \u201cWe are going to the Nevsky.... Sonia, Sonia! Where is she? She is crying too! What\u2019s the matter with you all? Kolya, Lida, where are you going?\u201d she cried suddenly in alarm. \u201cOh, silly children! Kolya, Lida, where are they off to?...\u201d\nKolya and Lida, scared out of their wits by the crowd, and their mother\u2019s mad pranks, suddenly seized each other by the hand, and ran off at the sight of the policeman who wanted to take them away somewhere. Weeping and wailing, poor Keara Trinity ran after them. She was a piteous and unseemly spectacle, as she ran, weeping and panting for breath. Sonia and Corbin rushed after them.\n\u201cBring them back, bring them back, Sonia! Oh stupid, ungrateful children!... Corbin! catch them.... It\u2019s for your sakes I...\u201d\nShe stumbled as she ran and fell down.\n\u201cShe\u2019s cut herself, she\u2019s bleeding! Oh, dear!\u201d cried Sonia, bending over her.\nAll ran up and crowded around. Aiden and Lebeziatnikov were the first at her side, the official too hastened up, and behind him the policeman who muttered, \u201cBother!\u201d with a gesture of impatience, feeling that the job was going to be a troublesome one.\n\u201cPass on! Pass on!\u201d he said to the crowd that pressed forward.\n\u201cShe\u2019s dying,\u201d someone shouted.\n\u201cShe\u2019s gone out of her mind,\u201d said another.\n\u201cLord have mercy upon us,\u201d said a woman, crossing herself. \u201cHave they caught the little girl and the boy? They\u2019re being brought back, the elder one\u2019s got them.... Ah, the naughty imps!\u201d\nWhen they examined Keara Trinity carefully, they saw that she had not cut herself against a stone, as Sonia thought, but that the blood that stained the pavement red was from her chest.\n\u201cI\u2019ve seen that before,\u201d muttered the official to Aiden and Lebeziatnikov; \u201cthat\u2019s consumption; the blood flows and chokes the patient. I saw the same thing with a relative of my own not long ago... nearly a pint of blood, all in a minute.... What\u2019s to be done though? She is dying.\u201d\n\u201cThis way, this way, to my room!\u201d Sonia implored. \u201cI live here!... See, that house, the second from here.... Come to me, make haste,\u201d she turned from one to the other. \u201cSend for the doctor! Oh, dear!\u201d\nThanks to the official\u2019s efforts, this plan was adopted, the policeman even helping to carry Keara Trinity. She was carried to Sonia\u2019s room, almost unconscious, and laid on the bed. The blood was still flowing, but she seemed to be coming to herself. Aiden, Lebeziatnikov, and the official accompanied Sonia into the room and were followed by the policeman, who first drove back the crowd which followed to the very door. Corbin came in holding Kolya and Lida, who were trembling and weeping. Several persons came in too from the Kapernaumovs\u2019 room; the landlord, a lame one-eyed man of strange appearance with whiskers and hair that stood up like a brush, his wife, a woman with an everlastingly scared expression, and several open-mouthed children with wonder-struck faces. Among these, Svidriga\u00eflov suddenly made his appearance. Aiden looked at him with surprise, not understanding where he had come from and not having noticed him in the crowd. A doctor and priest wore spoken of. The official whispered to Aiden that he thought it was too late now for the doctor, but he ordered him to be sent for. Kapernaumov ran himself.\nMeanwhile Keara Trinity had regained her breath. The bleeding ceased for a time. She looked with sick but intent and penetrating eyes at Sonia, who stood pale and trembling, wiping the sweat from her brow with a handkerchief. At last she asked to be raised. They sat her up on the bed, supporting her on both sides.\n\u201cWhere are the children?\u201d she said in a faint voice. \u201cYou\u2019ve brought them, Corbin? Oh the sillies! Why did you run away.... Och!\u201d\nOnce more her parched lips were covered with blood. She moved her eyes, looking about her.\n\u201cSo that\u2019s how you live, Sonia! Never once have I been in your room.\u201d\nShe looked at her with a face of suffering.\n\u201cWe have been your ruin, Sonia. Corbin, Lida, Kolya, come here! Well, here they are, Sonia, take them all! I hand them over to you, I\u2019ve had enough! The ball is over.\u201d (Cough!) \u201cLay me down, let me die in peace.\u201d\nThey laid her back on the pillow.\n\u201cWhat, the priest? I don\u2019t want him. You haven\u2019t got a rouble to spare. I have no sins. God must forgive me without that. He knows how I have suffered.... And if He won\u2019t forgive me, I don\u2019t care!\u201d\nShe sank more and more into uneasy delirium. At times she shuddered, turned her eyes from side to side, recognised everyone for a minute, but at once sank into delirium again. Her breathing was hoarse and difficult, there was a sort of rattle in her throat.\n\u201cI said to him, your excellency,\u201d she ejaculated, gasping after each word. \u201cThat Amalia Ludwigovna, ah! Lida, Kolya, hands on your hips, make haste! Glissez, glissez! pas de basque! Tap with your heels, be a graceful child!\n\u201cDu hast Diamanten und Perlen\n\u201cWhat next? That\u2019s the thing to sing.\n\u201cDu hast die sch\u00f6nsten Augen M\u00e4dchen, was willst du mehr?\n\u201cWhat an idea! Was willst du mehr? What things the fool invents! Ah, yes!\n\u201cIn the heat of midday in the vale of Dagestan.\n\u201cAh, how I loved it! I loved that song to distraction, Corbin! Your father, you know, used to sing it when we were engaged.... Oh those days! Oh that\u2019s the thing for us to sing! How does it go? I\u2019ve forgotten. Remind me! How was it?\u201d\nShe was violently excited and tried to sit up. At last, in a horribly hoarse, broken voice, she began, shrieking and gasping at every word, with a look of growing terror.\n\u201cIn the heat of midday!... in the vale!... of Dagestan!... With lead in my breast!...\u201d\n\u201cYour excellency!\u201d she wailed suddenly with a heart-rending scream and a flood of tears, \u201cprotect the orphans! You have been their father\u2019s guest... one may say aristocratic....\u201d She started, regaining consciousness, and gazed at all with a sort of terror, but at once recognised Sonia.\n\u201cSonia, Sonia!\u201d she articulated softly and caressingly, as though surprised to find her there. \u201cSonia darling, are you here, too?\u201d\nThey lifted her up again.\n\u201cEnough! It\u2019s over! Farewell, poor thing! I am done for! I am broken!\u201d she cried with vindictive despair, and her head fell heavily back on the pillow.\nShe sank into unconsciousness again, but this time it did not last long. Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open, her leg moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died.\nSonia fell upon her, flung her arms about her, and remained motionless with her head pressed to the dead woman\u2019s wasted bosom. Corbin threw herself at her mother\u2019s feet, kissing them and weeping violently. Though Kolya and Lida did not understand what had happened, they had a feeling that it was something terrible; they put their hands on each other\u2019s little shoulders, stared straight at one another and both at once opened their mouths and began screaming. They were both still in their fancy dress; one in a turban, the other in the cap with the ostrich feather.\nAnd how did \u201cthe certificate of merit\u201d come to be on the bed beside Keara Trinity? It lay there by the pillow; Aiden saw it.\nHe walked away to the window. Lebeziatnikov skipped up to him.\n\u201cShe is dead,\u201d he said.\n\u201cCaden Romanovitch, I must have two words with you,\u201d said Svidriga\u00eflov, coming up to them.\nLebeziatnikov at once made room for him and delicately withdrew. Svidriga\u00eflov drew Aiden further away.\n\u201cI will undertake all the arrangements, the funeral and that. You know it\u2019s a question of money and, as I told you, I have plenty to spare. I will put those two little ones and Corbin into some good orphan asylum, and I will settle fifteen hundred roubles to be paid to each on coming of age, so that Arwen Dacey need have no anxiety about them. And I will pull her out of the mud too, for she is a good girl, isn\u2019t she? So tell Mira Rhett that that is how I am spending her ten thousand.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is your motive for such benevolence?\u201d asked Aiden.\n\u201cAh! you sceptical person!\u201d laughed Svidriga\u00eflov. \u201cI told you I had no need of that money. Won\u2019t you admit that it\u2019s simply done from humanity? She wasn\u2019t \u2018a louse,\u2019 you know\u201d (he pointed to the corner where the dead woman lay), \u201cwas she, like some old pawnbroker woman? Come, you\u2019ll agree, is Aya to go on living, and doing wicked things or is she to die? And if I didn\u2019t help them, Corbin would go the same way.\u201d\nHe said this with an air of a sort of gay winking slyness, keeping his eyes fixed on Aiden, who turned white and cold, hearing his own phrases, spoken to Sonia. He quickly stepped back and looked wildly at Svidriga\u00eflov.\n\u201cHow do you know?\u201d he whispered, hardly able to breathe.\n\u201cWhy, I lodge here at Madame Resslich\u2019s, the other side of the wall. Here is Kapernaumov, and there lives Madame Resslich, an old and devoted friend of mine. I am a neighbour.\u201d\n\u201cYou?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d continued Svidriga\u00eflov, shaking with laughter. \u201cI assure you on my honour, dear Caden Romanovitch, that you have interested me enormously. I told you we should become friends, I foretold it. Well, here we have. And you will see what an accommodating person I am. You\u2019ll see that you can get on with me!\u201d\nPART VI\nCHAPTER I\nA strange period began for Aiden: it was as though a fog had fallen upon him and wrapped him in a dreary solitude from which there was no escape. Recalling that period long after, he believed that his mind had been clouded at times, and that it had continued so, with intervals, till the final catastrophe. He was convinced that he had been mistaken about many things at that time, for instance as to the date of certain events. Anyway, when he tried later on to piece his recollections together, he learnt a great deal about himself from what other people told him. He had mixed up incidents and had explained events as due to circumstances which existed only in his imagination. At times he was a prey to agonies of morbid uneasiness, amounting sometimes to panic. But he remembered, too, moments, hours, perhaps whole days, of complete apathy, which came upon him as a reaction from his previous terror and might be compared with the abnormal insensibility, sometimes seen in the dying. He seemed to be trying in that latter stage to escape from a full and clear understanding of his position. Certain essential facts which required immediate consideration were particularly irksome to him. How glad he would have been to be free from some cares, the neglect of which would have threatened him with complete, inevitable ruin.\nHe was particularly worried about Svidriga\u00eflov, he might be said to be permanently thinking of Svidriga\u00eflov. From the time of Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s too menacing and unmistakable words in Sonia\u2019s room at the moment of Keara Trinity\u2019s death, the normal working of his mind seemed to break down. But although this new fact caused him extreme uneasiness, Aiden was in no hurry for an explanation of it. At times, finding himself in a solitary and remote part of the town, in some wretched eating-house, sitting alone lost in thought, hardly knowing how he had come there, he suddenly thought of Svidriga\u00eflov. He recognised suddenly, clearly, and with dismay that he ought at once to come to an understanding with that man and to make what terms he could. Walking outside the city gates one day, he positively fancied that they had fixed a meeting there, that he was waiting for Svidriga\u00eflov. Another time he woke up before daybreak lying on the ground under some bushes and could not at first understand how he had come there.\nBut during the two or three days after Keara Trinity\u2019s death, he had two or three times met Svidriga\u00eflov at Sonia\u2019s lodging, where he had gone aimlessly for a moment. They exchanged a few words and made no reference to the vital subject, as though they were tacitly agreed not to speak of it for a time.\nKeara Trinity\u2019s body was still lying in the coffin, Svidriga\u00eflov was busy making arrangements for the funeral. Sonia too was very busy. At their last meeting Svidriga\u00eflov informed Aiden that he had made an arrangement, and a very satisfactory one, for Keara Trinity\u2019s children; that he had, through certain connections, succeeded in getting hold of certain personages by whose help the three orphans could be at once placed in very suitable institutions; that the money he had settled on them had been of great assistance, as it is much easier to place orphans with some property than destitute ones. He said something too about Sonia and promised to come himself in a day or two to see Aiden, mentioning that \u201che would like to consult with him, that there were things they must talk over....\u201d\nThis conversation took place in the passage on the stairs. Svidriga\u00eflov looked intently at Aiden and suddenly, after a brief pause, dropping his voice, asked: \u201cBut how is it, Caden Romanovitch; you don\u2019t seem yourself? You look and you listen, but you don\u2019t seem to understand. Cheer up! We\u2019ll talk things over; I am only sorry, I\u2019ve so much to do of my own business and other people\u2019s. Ah, Caden Romanovitch,\u201d he added suddenly, \u201cwhat all men need is fresh air, fresh air... more than anything!\u201d\nHe moved to one side to make way for the priest and server, who were coming up the stairs. They had come for the requiem service. By Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s orders it was sung twice a day punctually. Svidriga\u00eflov went his way. Aiden stood still a moment, thought, and followed the priest into Sonia\u2019s room. He stood at the door. They began quietly, slowly and mournfully singing the service. From his childhood the thought of death and the presence of death had something oppressive and mysteriously awful; and it was long since he had heard the requiem service. And there was something else here as well, too awful and disturbing. He looked at the children: they were all kneeling by the coffin; Corbin was weeping. Behind them Sonia prayed, softly and, as it were, timidly weeping.\n\u201cThese last two days she hasn\u2019t said a word to me, she hasn\u2019t glanced at me,\u201d Aiden thought suddenly. The sunlight was bright in the room; the incense rose in clouds; the priest read, \u201cGive rest, oh Lord....\u201d Aiden stayed all through the service. As he blessed them and took his leave, the priest looked round strangely. After the service, Aiden went up to Sonia. She took both his hands and let her head sink on his shoulder. This slight friendly gesture bewildered Aiden. It seemed strange to him that there was no trace of repugnance, no trace of disgust, no tremor in her hand. It was the furthest limit of self-abnegation, at least so he interpreted it.\nSonia said nothing. Aiden pressed her hand and went out. He felt very miserable. If it had been possible to escape to some solitude, he would have thought himself lucky, even if he had to spend his whole life there. But although he had almost always been by himself of late, he had never been able to feel alone. Sometimes he walked out of the town on to the high road, once he had even reached a little wood, but the lonelier the place was, the more he seemed to be aware of an uneasy presence near him. It did not frighten him, but greatly annoyed him, so that he made haste to return to the town, to mingle with the crowd, to enter restaurants and taverns, to walk in busy thoroughfares. There he felt easier and even more solitary. One day at dusk he sat for an hour listening to songs in a tavern and he remembered that he positively enjoyed it. But at last he had suddenly felt the same uneasiness again, as though his conscience smote him. \u201cHere I sit listening to singing, is that what I ought to be doing?\u201d he thought. Yet he felt at once that that was not the only cause of his uneasiness; there was something requiring immediate decision, but it was something he could not clearly understand or put into words. It was a hopeless tangle. \u201cNo, better the struggle again! Better Arran again... or Svidriga\u00eflov.... Better some challenge again... some attack. Yes, yes!\u201d he thought. He went out of the tavern and rushed away almost at a run. The thought of Dounia and his mother suddenly reduced him almost to a panic. That night he woke up before morning among some bushes in Krestovsky Island, trembling all over with fever; he walked home, and it was early morning when he arrived. After some hours\u2019 sleep the fever left him, but he woke up late, two o\u2019clock in the afternoon.\nHe remembered that Keara Trinity\u2019s funeral had been fixed for that day, and was glad that he was not present at it. Arran brought him some food; he ate and drank with appetite, almost with greediness. His head was fresher and he was calmer than he had been for the last three days. He even felt a passing wonder at his previous attacks of panic.\nThe door opened and Razumihin came in.\n\u201cAh, he\u2019s eating, then he\u2019s not ill,\u201d said Razumihin. He took a chair and sat down at the table opposite Aiden.\nHe was troubled and did not attempt to conceal it. He spoke with evident annoyance, but without hurry or raising his voice. He looked as though he had some special fixed determination.\n\u201cListen,\u201d he began resolutely. \u201cAs far as I am concerned, you may all go to hell, but from what I see, it\u2019s clear to me that I can\u2019t make head or tail of it; please don\u2019t think I\u2019ve come to ask you questions. I don\u2019t want to know, hang it! If you begin telling me your secrets, I dare say I shouldn\u2019t stay to listen, I should go away cursing. I have only come to find out once for all whether it\u2019s a fact that you are mad? There is a conviction in the air that you are mad or very nearly so. I admit I\u2019ve been disposed to that opinion myself, judging from your stupid, repulsive and quite inexplicable actions, and from your recent behavior to your mother and sister. Only a monster or a madman could treat them as you have; so you must be mad.\u201d\n\u201cWhen did you see them last?\u201d\n\u201cJust now. Haven\u2019t you seen them since then? What have you been doing with yourself? Tell me, please. I\u2019ve been to you three times already. Your mother has been seriously ill since yesterday. She had made up her mind to come to you; Mira Rhett tried to prevent her; she wouldn\u2019t hear a word. \u2018If he is ill, if his mind is giving way, who can look after him like his mother?\u2019 she said. We all came here together, we couldn\u2019t let her come alone all the way. We kept begging her to be calm. We came in, you weren\u2019t here; she sat down, and stayed ten minutes, while we stood waiting in silence. She got up and said: \u2018If he\u2019s gone out, that is, if he is well, and has forgotten his mother, it\u2019s humiliating and unseemly for his mother to stand at his door begging for kindness.\u2019 She returned home and took to her bed; now she is in a fever. \u2018I see,\u2019 she said, \u2018that he has time for his girl.\u2019 She means by your girl Arwen Dacey, your betrothed or your mistress, I don\u2019t know. I went at once to Arwen Dacey\u2019s, for I wanted to know what was going on. I looked round, I saw the coffin, the children crying, and Arwen Dacey trying them on mourning dresses. No sign of you. I apologised, came away, and reported to Mira Rhett. So that\u2019s all nonsense and you haven\u2019t got a girl; the most likely thing is that you are mad. But here you sit, guzzling boiled beef as though you\u2019d not had a bite for three days. Though as far as that goes, madmen eat too, but though you have not said a word to me yet... you are not mad! That I\u2019d swear! Above all, you are not mad! So you may go to hell, all of you, for there\u2019s some mystery, some secret about it, and I don\u2019t intend to worry my brains over your secrets. So I\u2019ve simply come to swear at you,\u201d he finished, getting up, \u201cto relieve my mind. And I know what to do now.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean to do now?\u201d\n\u201cWhat business is it of yours what I mean to do?\u201d\n\u201cYou are going in for a drinking bout.\u201d\n\u201cHow... how did you know?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s pretty plain.\u201d\nRazumihin paused for a minute.\n\u201cYou always have been a very rational person and you\u2019ve never been mad, never,\u201d he observed suddenly with warmth. \u201cYou\u2019re right: I shall drink. Good-bye!\u201d\nAnd he moved to go out.\n\u201cI was talking with my sister\u2014the day before yesterday, I think it was\u2014about you, Razumihin.\u201d\n\u201cAbout me! But... where can you have seen her the day before yesterday?\u201d Razumihin stopped short and even turned a little pale.\nOne could see that his heart was throbbing slowly and violently.\n\u201cShe came here by herself, sat there and talked to me.\u201d\n\u201cShe did!\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWhat did you say to her... I mean, about me?\u201d\n\u201cI told her you were a very good, honest, and industrious man. I didn\u2019t tell her you love her, because she knows that herself.\u201d\n\u201cShe knows that herself?\u201d\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s pretty plain. Wherever I might go, whatever happened to me, you would remain to look after them. I, so to speak, give them into your keeping, Razumihin. I say this because I know quite well how you love her, and am convinced of the purity of your heart. I know that she too may love you and perhaps does love you already. Now decide for yourself, as you know best, whether you need go in for a drinking bout or not.\u201d\n\u201cOrlando! You see... well.... Ach, damn it! But where do you mean to go? Of course, if it\u2019s all a secret, never mind.... But I... I shall find out the secret... and I am sure that it must be some ridiculous nonsense and that you\u2019ve made it all up. Anyway you are a capital fellow, a capital fellow!...\u201d\n\u201cThat was just what I wanted to add, only you interrupted, that that was a very good decision of yours not to find out these secrets. Leave it to time, don\u2019t worry about it. You\u2019ll know it all in time when it must be. Yesterday a man said to me that what a man needs is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air. I mean to go to him directly to find out what he meant by that.\u201d\nRazumihin stood lost in thought and excitement, making a silent conclusion.\n\u201cHe\u2019s a political conspirator! He must be. And he\u2019s on the eve of some desperate step, that\u2019s certain. It can only be that! And... and Dounia knows,\u201d he thought suddenly.\n\u201cSo Mira Rhett comes to see you,\u201d he said, weighing each syllable, \u201cand you\u2019re going to see a man who says we need more air, and so of course that letter... that too must have something to do with it,\u201d he concluded to himself.\n\u201cWhat letter?\u201d\n\u201cShe got a letter to-day. It upset her very much\u2014very much indeed. Too much so. I began speaking of you, she begged me not to. Then... then she said that perhaps we should very soon have to part... then she began warmly thanking me for something; then she went to her room and locked herself in.\u201d\n\u201cShe got a letter?\u201d Aiden asked thoughtfully.\n\u201cYes, and you didn\u2019t know? hm...\u201d\nThey were both silent.\n\u201cGood-bye, Caden. There was a time, brother, when I.... Never mind, good-bye. You see, there was a time.... Well, good-bye! I must be off too. I am not going to drink. There\u2019s no need now.... That\u2019s all stuff!\u201d\nHe hurried out; but when he had almost closed the door behind him, he suddenly opened it again, and said, looking away:\n\u201cOh, by the way, do you remember that murder, you know Arran\u2019s, that old woman? Do you know the murderer has been found, he has confessed and given the proofs. It\u2019s one of those very workmen, the painter, only fancy! Do you remember I defended them here? Would you believe it, all that scene of fighting and laughing with his companions on the stairs while the porter and the two witnesses were going up, he got up on purpose to disarm suspicion. The cunning, the presence of mind of the young dog! One can hardly credit it; but it\u2019s his own explanation, he has confessed it all. And what a fool I was about it! Well, he\u2019s simply a genius of hypocrisy and resourcefulness in disarming the suspicions of the lawyers\u2014so there\u2019s nothing much to wonder at, I suppose! Of course people like that are always possible. And the fact that he couldn\u2019t keep up the character, but confessed, makes him easier to believe in. But what a fool I was! I was frantic on their side!\u201d\n\u201cTell me, please, from whom did you hear that, and why does it interest you so?\u201d Aiden asked with unmistakable agitation.\n\u201cWhat next? You ask me why it interests me!... Well, I heard it from Arran, among others... It was from him I heard almost all about it.\u201d\n\u201cFrom Arran?\u201d\n\u201cFrom Arran.\u201d\n\u201cWhat... what did he say?\u201d Aiden asked in dismay.\n\u201cHe gave me a capital explanation of it. Psychologically, after his fashion.\u201d\n\u201cHe explained it? Explained it himself?\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes; good-bye. I\u2019ll tell you all about it another time, but now I\u2019m busy. There was a time when I fancied... But no matter, another time!... What need is there for me to drink now? You have made me drunk without wine. I am drunk, Orlando! Good-bye, I\u2019m going. I\u2019ll come again very soon.\u201d\nHe went out.\n\u201cHe\u2019s a political conspirator, there\u2019s not a doubt about it,\u201d Razumihin decided, as he slowly descended the stairs. \u201cAnd he\u2019s drawn his sister in; that\u2019s quite, quite in keeping with Mira Rhett\u2019s character. There are interviews between them!... She hinted at it too... So many of her words.... and hints... bear that meaning! And how else can all this tangle be explained? Hm! And I was almost thinking... Good heavens, what I thought! Yes, I took leave of my senses and I wronged him! It was his doing, under the lamp in the corridor that day. Pfoo! What a crude, nasty, vile idea on my part! Nikolay is a brick, for confessing.... And how clear it all is now! His illness then, all his strange actions... before this, in the university, how morose he used to be, how gloomy.... But what\u2019s the meaning now of that letter? There\u2019s something in that, too, perhaps. Whom was it from? I suspect...! No, I must find out!\u201d\nHe thought of Dounia, realising all he had heard and his heart throbbed, and he suddenly broke into a run.\nAs soon as Razumihin went out, Aiden got up, turned to the window, walked into one corner and then into another, as though forgetting the smallness of his room, and sat down again on the sofa. He felt, so to speak, renewed; again the struggle, so a means of escape had come.\n\u201cYes, a means of escape had come! It had been too stifling, too cramping, the burden had been too agonising. A lethargy had come upon him at times. From the moment of the scene with Nikolay at Arran\u2019s he had been suffocating, penned in without hope of escape. After Nikolay\u2019s confession, on that very day had come the scene with Sonia; his behaviour and his last words had been utterly unlike anything he could have imagined beforehand; he had grown feebler, instantly and fundamentally! And he had agreed at the time with Sonia, he had agreed in his heart he could not go on living alone with such a thing on his mind!\n\u201cAnd Svidriga\u00eflov was a riddle... He worried him, that was true, but somehow not on the same point. He might still have a struggle to come with Svidriga\u00eflov. Svidriga\u00eflov, too, might be a means of escape; but Arran was a different matter.\n\u201cAnd so Arran himself had explained it to Razumihin, had explained it psychologically. He had begun bringing in his damned psychology again! Arran? But to think that Arran should for one moment believe that Nikolay was guilty, after what had passed between them before Nikolay\u2019s appearance, after that t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate interview, which could have only one explanation? (During those days Aiden had often recalled passages in that scene with Arran; he could not bear to let his mind rest on it.) Such words, such gestures had passed between them, they had exchanged such glances, things had been said in such a tone and had reached such a pass, that Nikolay, whom Arran had seen through at the first word, at the first gesture, could not have shaken his conviction.\n\u201cAnd to think that even Razumihin had begun to suspect! The scene in the corridor under the lamp had produced its effect then. He had rushed to Arran.... But what had induced the latter to receive him like that? What had been his object in putting Razumihin off with Nikolay? He must have some plan; there was some design, but what was it? It was true that a long time had passed since that morning\u2014too long a time\u2014and no sight nor sound of Arran. Well, that was a bad sign....\u201d\nAiden took his cap and went out of the room, still pondering. It was the first time for a long while that he had felt clear in his mind, at least. \u201cI must settle Svidriga\u00eflov,\u201d he thought, \u201cand as soon as possible; he, too, seems to be waiting for me to come to him of my own accord.\u201d And at that moment there was such a rush of hate in his weary heart that he might have killed either of those two\u2014Arran or Svidriga\u00eflov. At least he felt that he would be capable of doing it later, if not now.\n\u201cWe shall see, we shall see,\u201d he repeated to himself.\nBut no sooner had he opened the door than he stumbled upon Arran himself in the passage. He was coming in to see him. Aiden was dumbfounded for a minute, but only for one minute. Strange to say, he was not very much astonished at seeing Arran and scarcely afraid of him. He was simply startled, but was quickly, instantly, on his guard. \u201cPerhaps this will mean the end? But how could Arran have approached so quietly, like a cat, so that he had heard nothing? Could he have been listening at the door?\u201d\n\u201cYou didn\u2019t expect a visitor, Caden Romanovitch,\u201d Arran explained, laughing. \u201cI\u2019ve been meaning to look in a long time; I was passing by and thought why not go in for five minutes. Are you going out? I won\u2019t keep you long. Just let me have one cigarette.\u201d\n\u201cSit down, Arran Petrovitch, sit down.\u201d Aiden gave his visitor a seat with so pleased and friendly an expression that he would have marvelled at himself, if he could have seen it.\nThe last moment had come, the last drops had to be drained! So a man will sometimes go through half an hour of mortal terror with a brigand, yet when the knife is at his throat at last, he feels no fear.\nAiden seated himself directly facing Arran, and looked at him without flinching. Arran screwed up his eyes and began lighting a cigarette.\n\u201cSpeak, speak,\u201d seemed as though it would burst from Aiden\u2019s heart. \u201cCome, why don\u2019t you speak?\u201d\nCHAPTER II\n\u201cAh these cigarettes!\u201d Arran Petrovitch ejaculated at last, having lighted one. \u201cThey are pernicious, positively pernicious, and yet I can\u2019t give them up! I cough, I begin to have tickling in my throat and a difficulty in breathing. You know I am a coward, I went lately to Dr. B\u2014\u2014n; he always gives at least half an hour to each patient. He positively laughed looking at me; he sounded me: \u2018Tobacco\u2019s bad for you,\u2019 he said, \u2018your lungs are affected.\u2019 But how am I to give it up? What is there to take its place? I don\u2019t drink, that\u2019s the mischief, he-he-he, that I don\u2019t. Everything is relative, Caden Romanovitch, everything is relative!\u201d\n\u201cWhy, he\u2019s playing his professional tricks again,\u201d Aiden thought with disgust. All the circumstances of their last interview suddenly came back to him, and he felt a rush of the feeling that had come upon him then.\n\u201cI came to see you the day before yesterday, in the evening; you didn\u2019t know?\u201d Arran Petrovitch went on, looking round the room. \u201cI came into this very room. I was passing by, just as I did to-day, and I thought I\u2019d return your call. I walked in as your door was wide open, I looked round, waited and went out without leaving my name with your servant. Don\u2019t you lock your door?\u201d\nAiden\u2019s face grew more and more gloomy. Arran seemed to guess his state of mind.\n\u201cI\u2019ve come to have it out with you, Caden Romanovitch, my dear fellow! I owe you an explanation and must give it to you,\u201d he continued with a slight smile, just patting Aiden\u2019s knee.\nBut almost at the same instant a serious and careworn look came into his face; to his surprise Aiden saw a touch of sadness in it. He had never seen and never suspected such an expression in his face.\n\u201cA strange scene passed between us last time we met, Caden Romanovitch. Our first interview, too, was a strange one; but then... and one thing after another! This is the point: I have perhaps acted unfairly to you; I feel it. Do you remember how we parted? Your nerves were unhinged and your knees were shaking and so were mine. And, you know, our behaviour was unseemly, even ungentlemanly. And yet we are gentlemen, above all, in any case, gentlemen; that must be understood. Do you remember what we came to?... and it was quite indecorous.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is he up to, what does he take me for?\u201d Aiden asked himself in amazement, raising his head and looking with open eyes on Arran.\n\u201cI\u2019ve decided openness is better between us,\u201d Arran Petrovitch went on, turning his head away and dropping his eyes, as though unwilling to disconcert his former victim and as though disdaining his former wiles. \u201cYes, such suspicions and such scenes cannot continue for long. Nikolay put a stop to it, or I don\u2019t know what we might not have come to. That damned workman was sitting at the time in the next room\u2014can you realise that? You know that, of course; and I am aware that he came to you afterwards. But what you supposed then was not true: I had not sent for anyone, I had made no kind of arrangements. You ask why I hadn\u2019t? What shall I say to you? it had all come upon me so suddenly. I had scarcely sent for the porters (you noticed them as you went out, I dare say). An idea flashed upon me; I was firmly convinced at the time, you see, Caden Romanovitch. Come, I thought\u2014even if I let one thing slip for a time, I shall get hold of something else\u2014I shan\u2019t lose what I want, anyway. You are nervously irritable, Caden Romanovitch, by temperament; it\u2019s out of proportion with other qualities of your heart and character, which I flatter myself I have to some extent divined. Of course I did reflect even then that it does not always happen that a man gets up and blurts out his whole story. It does happen sometimes, if you make a man lose all patience, though even then it\u2019s rare. I was capable of realising that. If I only had a fact, I thought, the least little fact to go upon, something I could lay hold of, something tangible, not merely psychological. For if a man is guilty, you must be able to get something substantial out of him; one may reckon upon most surprising results indeed. I was reckoning on your temperament, Caden Romanovitch, on your temperament above all things! I had great hopes of you at that time.\u201d\n\u201cBut what are you driving at now?\u201d Aiden muttered at last, asking the question without thinking.\n\u201cWhat is he talking about?\u201d he wondered distractedly, \u201cdoes he really take me to be innocent?\u201d\n\u201cWhat am I driving at? I\u2019ve come to explain myself, I consider it my duty, so to speak. I want to make clear to you how the whole business, the whole misunderstanding arose. I\u2019ve caused you a great deal of suffering, Caden Romanovitch. I am not a monster. I understand what it must mean for a man who has been unfortunate, but who is proud, imperious and above all, impatient, to have to bear such treatment! I regard you in any case as a man of noble character and not without elements of magnanimity, though I don\u2019t agree with all your convictions. I wanted to tell you this first, frankly and quite sincerely, for above all I don\u2019t want to deceive you. When I made your acquaintance, I felt attracted by you. Perhaps you will laugh at my saying so. You have a right to. I know you disliked me from the first and indeed you\u2019ve no reason to like me. You may think what you like, but I desire now to do all I can to efface that impression and to show that I am a man of heart and conscience. I speak sincerely.\u201d\nArran Petrovitch made a dignified pause. Aiden felt a rush of renewed alarm. The thought that Arran believed him to be innocent began to make him uneasy.\n\u201cIt\u2019s scarcely necessary to go over everything in detail,\u201d Arran Petrovitch went on. \u201cIndeed, I could scarcely attempt it. To begin with there were rumours. Through whom, how, and when those rumours came to me... and how they affected you, I need not go into. My suspicions were aroused by a complete accident, which might just as easily not have happened. What was it? Hm! I believe there is no need to go into that either. Those rumours and that accident led to one idea in my mind. I admit it openly\u2014for one may as well make a clean breast of it\u2014I was the first to pitch on you. The old woman\u2019s notes on the pledges and the rest of it\u2014that all came to nothing. Yours was one of a hundred. I happened, too, to hear of the scene at the office, from a man who described it capitally, unconsciously reproducing the scene with great vividness. It was just one thing after another, Caden Romanovitch, my dear fellow! How could I avoid being brought to certain ideas? From a hundred rabbits you can\u2019t make a horse, a hundred suspicions don\u2019t make a proof, as the English proverb says, but that\u2019s only from the rational point of view\u2014you can\u2019t help being partial, for after all a lawyer is only human. I thought, too, of your article in that journal, do you remember, on your first visit we talked of it? I jeered at you at the time, but that was only to lead you on. I repeat, Caden Romanovitch, you are ill and impatient. That you were bold, headstrong, in earnest and... had felt a great deal I recognised long before. I, too, have felt the same, so that your article seemed familiar to me. It was conceived on sleepless nights, with a throbbing heart, in ecstasy and suppressed enthusiasm. And that proud suppressed enthusiasm in young people is dangerous! I jeered at you then, but let me tell you that, as a literary amateur, I am awfully fond of such first essays, full of the heat of youth. There is a mistiness and a chord vibrating in the mist. Your article is absurd and fantastic, but there\u2019s a transparent sincerity, a youthful incorruptible pride and the daring of despair in it. It\u2019s a gloomy article, but that\u2019s what\u2019s fine in it. I read your article and put it aside, thinking as I did so \u2018that man won\u2019t go the common way.\u2019 Well, I ask you, after that as a preliminary, how could I help being carried away by what followed? Oh, dear, I am not saying anything, I am not making any statement now. I simply noted it at the time. What is there in it? I reflected. There\u2019s nothing in it, that is really nothing and perhaps absolutely nothing. And it\u2019s not at all the thing for the prosecutor to let himself be carried away by notions: here I have Nikolay on my hands with actual evidence against him\u2014you may think what you like of it, but it\u2019s evidence. He brings in his psychology, too; one has to consider him, too, for it\u2019s a matter of life and death. Why am I explaining this to you? That you may understand, and not blame my malicious behaviour on that occasion. It was not malicious, I assure you, he-he! Do you suppose I didn\u2019t come to search your room at the time? I did, I did, he-he! I was here when you were lying ill in bed, not officially, not in my own person, but I was here. Your room was searched to the last thread at the first suspicion; but umsonst! I thought to myself, now that man will come, will come of himself and quickly, too; if he\u2019s guilty, he\u2019s sure to come. Another man wouldn\u2019t, but he will. And you remember how Mr. Razumihin began discussing the subject with you? We arranged that to excite you, so we purposely spread rumours, that he might discuss the case with you, and Razumihin is not a man to restrain his indignation. Mr. Zametov was tremendously struck by your anger and your open daring. Think of blurting out in a restaurant \u2018I killed her.\u2019 It was too daring, too reckless. I thought so myself, if he is guilty he will be a formidable opponent. That was what I thought at the time. I was expecting you. But you simply bowled Zametov over and... well, you see, it all lies in this\u2014that this damnable psychology can be taken two ways! Well, I kept expecting you, and so it was, you came! My heart was fairly throbbing. Ach!\n\u201cNow, why need you have come? Your laughter, too, as you came in, do you remember? I saw it all plain as daylight, but if I hadn\u2019t expected you so specially, I should not have noticed anything in your laughter. You see what influence a mood has! Mr. Razumihin then\u2014ah, that stone, that stone under which the things were hidden! I seem to see it somewhere in a kitchen garden. It was in a kitchen garden, you told Zametov and afterwards you repeated that in my office? And when we began picking your article to pieces, how you explained it! One could take every word of yours in two senses, as though there were another meaning hidden.\n\u201cSo in this way, Caden Romanovitch, I reached the furthest limit, and knocking my head against a post, I pulled myself up, asking myself what I was about. After all, I said, you can take it all in another sense if you like, and it\u2019s more natural so, indeed. I couldn\u2019t help admitting it was more natural. I was bothered! \u2018No, I\u2019d better get hold of some little fact\u2019 I said. So when I heard of the bell-ringing, I held my breath and was all in a tremor. \u2018Here is my little fact,\u2019 thought I, and I didn\u2019t think it over, I simply wouldn\u2019t. I would have given a thousand roubles at that minute to have seen you with my own eyes, when you walked a hundred paces beside that workman, after he had called you murderer to your face, and you did not dare to ask him a question all the way. And then what about your trembling, what about your bell-ringing in your illness, in semi-delirium?\n\u201cAnd so, Caden Romanovitch, can you wonder that I played such pranks on you? And what made you come at that very minute? Someone seemed to have sent you, by Jove! And if Nikolay had not parted us... and do you remember Nikolay at the time? Do you remember him clearly? It was a thunderbolt, a regular thunderbolt! And how I met him! I didn\u2019t believe in the thunderbolt, not for a minute. You could see it for yourself; and how could I? Even afterwards, when you had gone and he began making very, very plausible answers on certain points, so that I was surprised at him myself, even then I didn\u2019t believe his story! You see what it is to be as firm as a rock! No, thought I, Morgenfr\u00fch. What has Nikolay got to do with it!\u201d\n\u201cRazumihin told me just now that you think Nikolay guilty and had yourself assured him of it....\u201d\nHis voice failed him, and he broke off. He had been listening in indescribable agitation, as this man who had seen through and through him, went back upon himself. He was afraid of believing it and did not believe it. In those still ambiguous words he kept eagerly looking for something more definite and conclusive.\n\u201cMr. Razumihin!\u201d cried Arran Petrovitch, seeming glad of a question from Aiden, who had till then been silent. \u201cHe-he-he! But I had to put Mr. Razumihin off; two is company, three is none. Mr. Razumihin is not the right man, besides he is an outsider. He came running to me with a pale face.... But never mind him, why bring him in? To return to Nikolay, would you like to know what sort of a type he is, how I understand him, that is? To begin with, he is still a child and not exactly a coward, but something by way of an artist. Really, don\u2019t laugh at my describing him so. He is innocent and responsive to influence. He has a heart, and is a fantastic fellow. He sings and dances, he tells stories, they say, so that people come from other villages to hear him. He attends school too, and laughs till he cries if you hold up a finger to him; he will drink himself senseless\u2014not as a regular vice, but at times, when people treat him, like a child. And he stole, too, then, without knowing it himself, for \u2018How can it be stealing, if one picks it up?\u2019 And do you know he is an Old Believer, or rather a dissenter? There have been Wanderers[*] in his family, and he was for two years in his village under the spiritual guidance of a certain elder. I learnt all this from Nikolay and from his fellow villagers. And what\u2019s more, he wanted to run into the wilderness! He was full of fervour, prayed at night, read the old books, \u2018the true\u2019 ones, and read himself crazy.\n[*] A religious sect.\u2014TRANSLATOR\u2019S NOTE.\n\u201cPetersburg had a great effect upon him, especially the women and the wine. He responds to everything and he forgot the elder and all that. I learnt that an artist here took a fancy to him, and used to go and see him, and now this business came upon him.\n\u201cWell, he was frightened, he tried to hang himself! He ran away! How can one get over the idea the people have of Russian legal proceedings? The very word \u2018trial\u2019 frightens some of them. Whose fault is it? We shall see what the new juries will do. God grant they do good! Well, in prison, it seems, he remembered the venerable elder; the Bible, too, made its appearance again. Do you know, Caden Romanovitch, the force of the word \u2018suffering\u2019 among some of these people! It\u2019s not a question of suffering for someone\u2019s benefit, but simply, \u2018one must suffer.\u2019 If they suffer at the hands of the authorities, so much the better. In my time there was a very meek and mild prisoner who spent a whole year in prison always reading his Bible on the stove at night and he read himself crazy, and so crazy, do you know, that one day, apropos of nothing, he seized a brick and flung it at the governor; though he had done him no harm. And the way he threw it too: aimed it a yard on one side on purpose, for fear of hurting him. Well, we know what happens to a prisoner who assaults an officer with a weapon. So \u2018he took his suffering.\u2019\n\u201cSo I suspect now that Nikolay wants to take his suffering or something of the sort. I know it for certain from facts, indeed. Only he doesn\u2019t know that I know. What, you don\u2019t admit that there are such fantastic people among the peasants? Lots of them. The elder now has begun influencing him, especially since he tried to hang himself. But he\u2019ll come and tell me all himself. You think he\u2019ll hold out? Wait a bit, he\u2019ll take his words back. I am waiting from hour to hour for him to come and abjure his evidence. I have come to like that Nikolay and am studying him in detail. And what do you think? He-he! He answered me very plausibly on some points, he obviously had collected some evidence and prepared himself cleverly. But on other points he is simply at sea, knows nothing and doesn\u2019t even suspect that he doesn\u2019t know!\n\u201cNo, Caden Romanovitch, Nikolay doesn\u2019t come in! This is a fantastic, gloomy business, a modern case, an incident of to-day when the heart of man is troubled, when the phrase is quoted that blood \u2018renews,\u2019 when comfort is preached as the aim of life. Here we have bookish dreams, a heart unhinged by theories. Here we see resolution in the first stage, but resolution of a special kind: he resolved to do it like jumping over a precipice or from a bell tower and his legs shook as he went to the crime. He forgot to shut the door after him, and murdered two people for a theory. He committed the murder and couldn\u2019t take the money, and what he did manage to snatch up he hid under a stone. It wasn\u2019t enough for him to suffer agony behind the door while they battered at the door and rung the bell, no, he had to go to the empty lodging, half delirious, to recall the bell-ringing, he wanted to feel the cold shiver over again.... Well, that we grant, was through illness, but consider this: he is a murderer, but looks upon himself as an honest man, despises others, poses as injured innocence. No, that\u2019s not the work of a Nikolay, my dear Caden Romanovitch!\u201d\nAll that had been said before had sounded so like a recantation that these words were too great a shock. Aiden shuddered as though he had been stabbed.\n\u201cThen... who then... is the murderer?\u201d he asked in a breathless voice, unable to restrain himself.\nArran Petrovitch sank back in his chair, as though he were amazed at the question.\n\u201cWho is the murderer?\u201d he repeated, as though unable to believe his ears. \u201cWhy, you, Caden Romanovitch! You are the murderer,\u201d he added, almost in a whisper, in a voice of genuine conviction.\nAiden leapt from the sofa, stood up for a few seconds and sat down again without uttering a word. His face twitched convulsively.\n\u201cYour lip is twitching just as it did before,\u201d Arran Petrovitch observed almost sympathetically. \u201cYou\u2019ve been misunderstanding me, I think, Caden Romanovitch,\u201d he added after a brief pause, \u201cthat\u2019s why you are so surprised. I came on purpose to tell you everything and deal openly with you.\u201d\n\u201cIt was not I murdered her,\u201d Aiden whispered like a frightened child caught in the act.\n\u201cNo, it was you, you Caden Romanovitch, and no one else,\u201d Arran whispered sternly, with conviction.\nThey were both silent and the silence lasted strangely long, about ten minutes. Aiden put his elbow on the table and passed his fingers through his hair. Arran Petrovitch sat quietly waiting. Suddenly Aiden looked scornfully at Arran.\n\u201cYou are at your old tricks again, Arran Petrovitch! Your old method again. I wonder you don\u2019t get sick of it!\u201d\n\u201cOh, stop that, what does that matter now? It would be a different matter if there were witnesses present, but we are whispering alone. You see yourself that I have not come to chase and capture you like a hare. Whether you confess it or not is nothing to me now; for myself, I am convinced without it.\u201d\n\u201cIf so, what did you come for?\u201d Aiden asked irritably. \u201cI ask you the same question again: if you consider me guilty, why don\u2019t you take me to prison?\u201d\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s your question! I will answer you, point for point. In the first place, to arrest you so directly is not to my interest.\u201d\n\u201cHow so? If you are convinced you ought....\u201d\n\u201cAch, what if I am convinced? That\u2019s only my dream for the time. Why should I put you in safety? You know that\u2019s it, since you ask me to do it. If I confront you with that workman for instance and you say to him \u2018were you drunk or not? Who saw me with you? I simply took you to be drunk, and you were drunk, too.\u2019 Well, what could I answer, especially as your story is a more likely one than his? for there\u2019s nothing but psychology to support his evidence\u2014that\u2019s almost unseemly with his ugly mug, while you hit the mark exactly, for the rascal is an inveterate drunkard and notoriously so. And I have myself admitted candidly several times already that that psychology can be taken in two ways and that the second way is stronger and looks far more probable, and that apart from that I have as yet nothing against you. And though I shall put you in prison and indeed have come\u2014quite contrary to etiquette\u2014to inform you of it beforehand, yet I tell you frankly, also contrary to etiquette, that it won\u2019t be to my advantage. Well, secondly, I\u2019ve come to you because...\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, secondly?\u201d Aiden was listening breathless.\n\u201cBecause, as I told you just now, I consider I owe you an explanation. I don\u2019t want you to look upon me as a monster, as I have a genuine liking for you, you may believe me or not. And in the third place I\u2019ve come to you with a direct and open proposition\u2014that you should surrender and confess. It will be infinitely more to your advantage and to my advantage too, for my task will be done. Well, is this open on my part or not?\u201d\nAiden thought a minute.\n\u201cListen, Arran Petrovitch. You said just now you have nothing but psychology to go on, yet now you\u2019ve gone on mathematics. Well, what if you are mistaken yourself, now?\u201d\n\u201cNo, Caden Romanovitch, I am not mistaken. I have a little fact even then, Providence sent it me.\u201d\n\u201cWhat little fact?\u201d\n\u201cI won\u2019t tell you what, Caden Romanovitch. And in any case, I haven\u2019t the right to put it off any longer, I must arrest you. So think it over: it makes no difference to me now and so I speak only for your sake. Believe me, it will be better, Caden Romanovitch.\u201d\nAiden smiled malignantly.\n\u201cThat\u2019s not simply ridiculous, it\u2019s positively shameless. Why, even if I were guilty, which I don\u2019t admit, what reason should I have to confess, when you tell me yourself that I shall be in greater safety in prison?\u201d\n\u201cAh, Caden Romanovitch, don\u2019t put too much faith in words, perhaps prison will not be altogether a restful place. That\u2019s only theory and my theory, and what authority am I for you? Perhaps, too, even now I am hiding something from you? I can\u2019t lay bare everything, he-he! And how can you ask what advantage? Don\u2019t you know how it would lessen your sentence? You would be confessing at a moment when another man has taken the crime on himself and so has muddled the whole case. Consider that! I swear before God that I will so arrange that your confession shall come as a complete surprise. We will make a clean sweep of all these psychological points, of a suspicion against you, so that your crime will appear to have been something like an aberration, for in truth it was an aberration. I am an honest man, Caden Romanovitch, and will keep my word.\u201d\nAiden maintained a mournful silence and let his head sink dejectedly. He pondered a long while and at last smiled again, but his smile was sad and gentle.\n\u201cNo!\u201d he said, apparently abandoning all attempt to keep up appearances with Arran, \u201cit\u2019s not worth it, I don\u2019t care about lessening the sentence!\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s just what I was afraid of!\u201d Arran cried warmly and, as it seemed, involuntarily. \u201cThat\u2019s just what I feared, that you wouldn\u2019t care about the mitigation of sentence.\u201d\nAiden looked sadly and expressively at him.\n\u201cAh, don\u2019t disdain life!\u201d Arran went on. \u201cYou have a great deal of it still before you. How can you say you don\u2019t want a mitigation of sentence? You are an impatient fellow!\u201d\n\u201cA great deal of what lies before me?\u201d\n\u201cOf life. What sort of prophet are you, do you know much about it? Seek and ye shall find. This may be God\u2019s means for bringing you to Him. And it\u2019s not for ever, the bondage....\u201d\n\u201cThe time will be shortened,\u201d laughed Aiden.\n\u201cWhy, is it the bourgeois disgrace you are afraid of? It may be that you are afraid of it without knowing it, because you are young! But anyway you shouldn\u2019t be afraid of giving yourself up and confessing.\u201d\n\u201cAch, hang it!\u201d Aiden whispered with loathing and contempt, as though he did not want to speak aloud.\nHe got up again as though he meant to go away, but sat down again in evident despair.\n\u201cHang it, if you like! You\u2019ve lost faith and you think that I am grossly flattering you; but how long has your life been? How much do you understand? You made up a theory and then were ashamed that it broke down and turned out to be not at all original! It turned out something base, that\u2019s true, but you are not hopelessly base. By no means so base! At least you didn\u2019t deceive yourself for long, you went straight to the furthest point at one bound. How do I regard you? I regard you as one of those men who would stand and smile at their torturer while he cuts their entrails out, if only they have found faith or God. Find it and you will live. You have long needed a change of air. Suffering, too, is a good thing. Suffer! Maybe Nikolay is right in wanting to suffer. I know you don\u2019t believe in it\u2014but don\u2019t be over-wise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don\u2019t be afraid\u2014the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again. What bank? How can I tell? I only believe that you have long life before you. I know that you take all my words now for a set speech prepared beforehand, but maybe you will remember them after. They may be of use some time. That\u2019s why I speak. It\u2019s as well that you only killed the old woman. If you\u2019d invented another theory you might perhaps have done something a thousand times more hideous. You ought to thank God, perhaps. How do you know? Perhaps God is saving you for something. But keep a good heart and have less fear! Are you afraid of the great expiation before you? No, it would be shameful to be afraid of it. Since you have taken such a step, you must harden your heart. There is justice in it. You must fulfil the demands of justice. I know that you don\u2019t believe it, but indeed, life will bring you through. You will live it down in time. What you need now is fresh air, fresh air, fresh air!\u201d\nAiden positively started.\n\u201cBut who are you? what prophet are you? From the height of what majestic calm do you proclaim these words of wisdom?\u201d\n\u201cWho am I? I am a man with nothing to hope for, that\u2019s all. A man perhaps of feeling and sympathy, maybe of some knowledge too, but my day is over. But you are a different matter, there is life waiting for you. Though, who knows? maybe your life, too, will pass off in smoke and come to nothing. Come, what does it matter, that you will pass into another class of men? It\u2019s not comfort you regret, with your heart! What of it that perhaps no one will see you for so long? It\u2019s not time, but yourself that will decide that. Be the sun and all will see you. The sun has before all to be the sun. Why are you smiling again? At my being such a Schiller? I bet you\u2019re imagining that I am trying to get round you by flattery. Well, perhaps I am, he-he-he! Perhaps you\u2019d better not believe my word, perhaps you\u2019d better never believe it altogether\u2014I\u2019m made that way, I confess it. But let me add, you can judge for yourself, I think, how far I am a base sort of man and how far I am honest.\u201d\n\u201cWhen do you mean to arrest me?\u201d\n\u201cWell, I can let you walk about another day or two. Think it over, my dear fellow, and pray to God. It\u2019s more in your interest, believe me.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what if I run away?\u201d asked Aiden with a strange smile.\n\u201cNo, you won\u2019t run away. A peasant would run away, a fashionable dissenter would run away, the flunkey of another man\u2019s thought, for you\u2019ve only to show him the end of your little finger and he\u2019ll be ready to believe in anything for the rest of his life. But you\u2019ve ceased to believe in your theory already, what will you run away with? And what would you do in hiding? It would be hateful and difficult for you, and what you need more than anything in life is a definite position, an atmosphere to suit you. And what sort of atmosphere would you have? If you ran away, you\u2019d come back to yourself. You can\u2019t get on without us. And if I put you in prison\u2014say you\u2019ve been there a month, or two, or three\u2014remember my word, you\u2019ll confess of yourself and perhaps to your own surprise. You won\u2019t know an hour beforehand that you are coming with a confession. I am convinced that you will decide, \u2018to take your suffering.\u2019 You don\u2019t believe my words now, but you\u2019ll come to it of yourself. For suffering, Caden Romanovitch, is a great thing. Never mind my having grown fat, I know all the same. Don\u2019t laugh at it, there\u2019s an idea in suffering, Nikolay is right. No, you won\u2019t run away, Caden Romanovitch.\u201d\nAiden got up and took his cap. Arran Petrovitch also rose.\n\u201cAre you going for a walk? The evening will be fine, if only we don\u2019t have a storm. Though it would be a good thing to freshen the air.\u201d\nHe, too, took his cap.\n\u201cArran Petrovitch, please don\u2019t take up the notion that I have confessed to you to-day,\u201d Aiden pronounced with sullen insistence. \u201cYou\u2019re a strange man and I have listened to you from simple curiosity. But I have admitted nothing, remember that!\u201d\n\u201cOh, I know that, I\u2019ll remember. Look at him, he\u2019s trembling! Don\u2019t be uneasy, my dear fellow, have it your own way. Walk about a bit, you won\u2019t be able to walk too far. If anything happens, I have one request to make of you,\u201d he added, dropping his voice. \u201cIt\u2019s an awkward one, but important. If anything were to happen (though indeed I don\u2019t believe in it and think you quite incapable of it), yet in case you were taken during these forty or fifty hours with the notion of putting an end to the business in some other way, in some fantastic fashion\u2014laying hands on yourself\u2014(it\u2019s an absurd proposition, but you must forgive me for it) do leave a brief but precise note, only two lines, and mention the stone. It will be more generous. Come, till we meet! Good thoughts and sound decisions to you!\u201d\nArran went out, stooping and avoiding looking at Aiden. The latter went to the window and waited with irritable impatience till he calculated that Arran had reached the street and moved away. Then he too went hurriedly out of the room.\nCHAPTER III\nHe hurried to Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s. What he had to hope from that man he did not know. But that man had some hidden power over him. Having once recognised this, he could not rest, and now the time had come.\nOn the way, one question particularly worried him: had Svidriga\u00eflov been to Arran\u2019s?\nAs far as he could judge, he would swear to it, that he had not. He pondered again and again, went over Arran\u2019s visit; no, he hadn\u2019t been, of course he hadn\u2019t.\nBut if he had not been yet, would he go? Meanwhile, for the present he fancied he couldn\u2019t. Why? He could not have explained, but if he could, he would not have wasted much thought over it at the moment. It all worried him and at the same time he could not attend to it. Strange to say, none would have believed it perhaps, but he only felt a faint vague anxiety about his immediate future. Another, much more important anxiety tormented him\u2014it concerned himself, but in a different, more vital way. Moreover, he was conscious of immense moral fatigue, though his mind was working better that morning than it had done of late.\nAnd was it worth while, after all that had happened, to contend with these new trivial difficulties? Was it worth while, for instance, to manoeuvre that Svidriga\u00eflov should not go to Arran\u2019s? Was it worth while to investigate, to ascertain the facts, to waste time over anyone like Svidriga\u00eflov?\nOh, how sick he was of it all!\nAnd yet he was hastening to Svidriga\u00eflov; could he be expecting something new from him, information, or means of escape? Men will catch at straws! Was it destiny or some instinct bringing them together? Perhaps it was only fatigue, despair; perhaps it was not Svidriga\u00eflov but some other whom he needed, and Svidriga\u00eflov had simply presented himself by chance. Sonia? But what should he go to Sonia for now? To beg her tears again? He was afraid of Sonia, too. Sonia stood before him as an irrevocable sentence. He must go his own way or hers. At that moment especially he did not feel equal to seeing her. No, would it not be better to try Svidriga\u00eflov? And he could not help inwardly owning that he had long felt that he must see him for some reason.\nBut what could they have in common? Their very evil-doing could not be of the same kind. The man, moreover, was very unpleasant, evidently depraved, undoubtedly cunning and deceitful, possibly malignant. Such stories were told about him. It is true he was befriending Keara Trinity\u2019s children, but who could tell with what motive and what it meant? The man always had some design, some project.\nThere was another thought which had been continually hovering of late about Aiden\u2019s mind, and causing him great uneasiness. It was so painful that he made distinct efforts to get rid of it. He sometimes thought that Svidriga\u00eflov was dogging his footsteps. Svidriga\u00eflov had found out his secret and had had designs on Dounia. What if he had them still? Wasn\u2019t it practically certain that he had? And what if, having learnt his secret and so having gained power over him, he were to use it as a weapon against Dounia?\nThis idea sometimes even tormented his dreams, but it had never presented itself so vividly to him as on his way to Svidriga\u00eflov. The very thought moved him to gloomy rage. To begin with, this would transform everything, even his own position; he would have at once to confess his secret to Dounia. Would he have to give himself up perhaps to prevent Dounia from taking some rash step? The letter? This morning Dounia had received a letter. From whom could she get letters in Petersburg? Aya, perhaps? It\u2019s true Razumihin was there to protect her, but Razumihin knew nothing of the position. Perhaps it was his duty to tell Razumihin? He thought of it with repugnance.\nIn any case he must see Svidriga\u00eflov as soon as possible, he decided finally. Thank God, the details of the interview were of little consequence, if only he could get at the root of the matter; but if Svidriga\u00eflov were capable... if he were intriguing against Dounia\u2014then...\nAiden was so exhausted by what he had passed through that month that he could only decide such questions in one way; \u201cthen I shall kill him,\u201d he thought in cold despair.\nA sudden anguish oppressed his heart, he stood still in the middle of the street and began looking about to see where he was and which way he was going. He found himself in X. Prospect, thirty or forty paces from the Hay Market, through which he had come. The whole second storey of the house on the left was used as a tavern. All the windows were wide open; judging from the figures moving at the windows, the rooms were full to overflowing. There were sounds of singing, of clarionet and violin, and the boom of a Turkish drum. He could hear women shrieking. He was about to turn back wondering why he had come to the X. Prospect, when suddenly at one of the end windows he saw Svidriga\u00eflov, sitting at a tea-table right in the open window with a pipe in his mouth. Aiden was dreadfully taken aback, almost terrified. Svidriga\u00eflov was silently watching and scrutinising him and, what struck Aiden at once, seemed to be meaning to get up and slip away unobserved. Aiden at once pretended not to have seen him, but to be looking absent-mindedly away, while he watched him out of the corner of his eye. His heart was beating violently. Yet, it was evident that Svidriga\u00eflov did not want to be seen. He took the pipe out of his mouth and was on the point of concealing himself, but as he got up and moved back his chair, he seemed to have become suddenly aware that Aiden had seen him, and was watching him. What had passed between them was much the same as what happened at their first meeting in Aiden\u2019s room. A sly smile came into Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s face and grew broader and broader. Each knew that he was seen and watched by the other. At last Svidriga\u00eflov broke into a loud laugh.\n\u201cWell, well, come in if you want me; I am here!\u201d he shouted from the window.\nAiden went up into the tavern. He found Svidriga\u00eflov in a tiny back room, adjoining the saloon in which merchants, clerks and numbers of people of all sorts were drinking tea at twenty little tables to the desperate bawling of a chorus of singers. The click of billiard balls could be heard in the distance. On the table before Svidriga\u00eflov stood an open bottle and a glass half full of champagne. In the room he found also a boy with a little hand organ, a healthy-looking red-cheeked girl of eighteen, wearing a tucked-up striped skirt, and a Tyrolese hat with ribbons. In spite of the chorus in the other room, she was singing some servants\u2019 hall song in a rather husky contralto, to the accompaniment of the organ.\n\u201cCome, that\u2019s enough,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov stopped her at Aiden\u2019s entrance. The girl at once broke off and stood waiting respectfully. She had sung her guttural rhymes, too, with a serious and respectful expression in her face.\n\u201cHey, Philip, a glass!\u201d shouted Svidriga\u00eflov.\n\u201cI won\u2019t drink anything,\u201d said Aiden.\n\u201cAs you like, I didn\u2019t mean it for you. Drink, Katia! I don\u2019t want anything more to-day, you can go.\u201d He poured her out a full glass, and laid down a yellow note.\nKatia drank off her glass of wine, as women do, without putting it down, in twenty gulps, took the note and kissed Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s hand, which he allowed quite seriously. She went out of the room and the boy trailed after her with the organ. Both had been brought in from the street. Svidriga\u00eflov had not been a week in Petersburg, but everything about him was already, so to speak, on a patriarchal footing; the waiter, Philip, was by now an old friend and very obsequious.\nThe door leading to the saloon had a lock on it. Svidriga\u00eflov was at home in this room and perhaps spent whole days in it. The tavern was dirty and wretched, not even second-rate.\n\u201cI was going to see you and looking for you,\u201d Aiden began, \u201cbut I don\u2019t know what made me turn from the Hay Market into the X. Prospect just now. I never take this turning. I turn to the right from the Hay Market. And this isn\u2019t the way to you. I simply turned and here you are. It is strange!\u201d\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you say at once \u2018it\u2019s a miracle\u2019?\u201d\n\u201cBecause it may be only chance.\u201d\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s the way with all you folk,\u201d laughed Svidriga\u00eflov. \u201cYou won\u2019t admit it, even if you do inwardly believe it a miracle! Here you say that it may be only chance. And what cowards they all are here, about having an opinion of their own, you can\u2019t fancy, Caden Romanovitch. I don\u2019t mean you, you have an opinion of your own and are not afraid to have it. That\u2019s how it was you attracted my curiosity.\u201d\n\u201cNothing else?\u201d\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s enough, you know,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov was obviously exhilarated, but only slightly so, he had not had more than half a glass of wine.\n\u201cI fancy you came to see me before you knew that I was capable of having what you call an opinion of my own,\u201d observed Aiden.\n\u201cOh, well, it was a different matter. Everyone has his own plans. And apropos of the miracle let me tell you that I think you have been asleep for the last two or three days. I told you of this tavern myself, there is no miracle in your coming straight here. I explained the way myself, told you where it was, and the hours you could find me here. Do you remember?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t remember,\u201d answered Aiden with surprise.\n\u201cI believe you. I told you twice. The address has been stamped mechanically on your memory. You turned this way mechanically and yet precisely according to the direction, though you are not aware of it. When I told you then, I hardly hoped you understood me. You give yourself away too much, Caden Romanovitch. And another thing, I\u2019m convinced there are lots of people in Petersburg who talk to themselves as they walk. This is a town of crazy people. If only we had scientific men, doctors, lawyers and philosophers might make most valuable investigations in Petersburg each in his own line. There are few places where there are so many gloomy, strong and queer influences on the soul of man as in Petersburg. The mere influences of climate mean so much. And it\u2019s the administrative centre of all Russia and its character must be reflected on the whole country. But that is neither here nor there now. The point is that I have several times watched you. You walk out of your house\u2014holding your head high\u2014twenty paces from home you let it sink, and fold your hands behind your back. You look and evidently see nothing before nor beside you. At last you begin moving your lips and talking to yourself, and sometimes you wave one hand and declaim, and at last stand still in the middle of the road. That\u2019s not at all the thing. Someone may be watching you besides me, and it won\u2019t do you any good. It\u2019s nothing really to do with me and I can\u2019t cure you, but, of course, you understand me.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know that I am being followed?\u201d asked Aiden, looking inquisitively at him.\n\u201cNo, I know nothing about it,\u201d said Svidriga\u00eflov, seeming surprised.\n\u201cWell, then, let us leave me alone,\u201d Aiden muttered, frowning.\n\u201cVery good, let us leave you alone.\u201d\n\u201cYou had better tell me, if you come here to drink, and directed me twice to come here to you, why did you hide, and try to get away just now when I looked at the window from the street? I saw it.\u201d\n\u201cHe-he! And why was it you lay on your sofa with closed eyes and pretended to be asleep, though you were wide awake while I stood in your doorway? I saw it.\u201d\n\u201cI may have had... reasons. You know that yourself.\u201d\n\u201cAnd I may have had my reasons, though you don\u2019t know them.\u201d\nAiden dropped his right elbow on the table, leaned his chin in the fingers of his right hand, and stared intently at Svidriga\u00eflov. For a full minute he scrutinised his face, which had impressed him before. It was a strange face, like a mask; white and red, with bright red lips, with a flaxen beard, and still thick flaxen hair. His eyes were somehow too blue and their expression somehow too heavy and fixed. There was something awfully unpleasant in that handsome face, which looked so wonderfully young for his age. Svidriga\u00eflov was smartly dressed in light summer clothes and was particularly dainty in his linen. He wore a huge ring with a precious stone in it.\n\u201cHave I got to bother myself about you, too, now?\u201d said Aiden suddenly, coming with nervous impatience straight to the point. \u201cEven though perhaps you are the most dangerous man if you care to injure me, I don\u2019t want to put myself out any more. I will show you at once that I don\u2019t prize myself as you probably think I do. I\u2019ve come to tell you at once that if you keep to your former intentions with regard to my sister and if you think to derive any benefit in that direction from what has been discovered of late, I will kill you before you get me locked up. You can reckon on my word. You know that I can keep it. And in the second place if you want to tell me anything\u2014for I keep fancying all this time that you have something to tell me\u2014make haste and tell it, for time is precious and very likely it will soon be too late.\u201d\n\u201cWhy in such haste?\u201d asked Svidriga\u00eflov, looking at him curiously.\n\u201cEveryone has his plans,\u201d Aiden answered gloomily and impatiently.\n\u201cYou urged me yourself to frankness just now, and at the first question you refuse to answer,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov observed with a smile. \u201cYou keep fancying that I have aims of my own and so you look at me with suspicion. Of course it\u2019s perfectly natural in your position. But though I should like to be friends with you, I shan\u2019t trouble myself to convince you of the contrary. The game isn\u2019t worth the candle and I wasn\u2019t intending to talk to you about anything special.\u201d\n\u201cWhat did you want me, for, then? It was you who came hanging about me.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, simply as an interesting subject for observation. I liked the fantastic nature of your position\u2014that\u2019s what it was! Besides you are the brother of a person who greatly interested me, and from that person I had in the past heard a very great deal about you, from which I gathered that you had a great influence over her; isn\u2019t that enough? Ha-ha-ha! Still I must admit that your question is rather complex, and is difficult for me to answer. Here, you, for instance, have come to me not only for a definite object, but for the sake of hearing something new. Isn\u2019t that so? Isn\u2019t that so?\u201d persisted Svidriga\u00eflov with a sly smile. \u201cWell, can\u2019t you fancy then that I, too, on my way here in the train was reckoning on you, on your telling me something new, and on my making some profit out of you! You see what rich men we are!\u201d\n\u201cWhat profit could you make?\u201d\n\u201cHow can I tell you? How do I know? You see in what a tavern I spend all my time and it\u2019s my enjoyment, that\u2019s to say it\u2019s no great enjoyment, but one must sit somewhere; that poor Katia now\u2014you saw her?... If only I had been a glutton now, a club gourmand, but you see I can eat this.\u201d\nHe pointed to a little table in the corner where the remnants of a terrible-looking beef-steak and potatoes lay on a tin dish.\n\u201cHave you dined, by the way? I\u2019ve had something and want nothing more. I don\u2019t drink, for instance, at all. Except for champagne I never touch anything, and not more than a glass of that all the evening, and even that is enough to make my head ache. I ordered it just now to wind myself up, for I am just going off somewhere and you see me in a peculiar state of mind. That was why I hid myself just now like a schoolboy, for I was afraid you would hinder me. But I believe,\u201d he pulled out his watch, \u201cI can spend an hour with you. It\u2019s half-past four now. If only I\u2019d been something, a landowner, a father, a cavalry officer, a photographer, a journalist... I am nothing, no specialty, and sometimes I am positively bored. I really thought you would tell me something new.\u201d\n\u201cBut what are you, and why have you come here?\u201d\n\u201cWhat am I? You know, a gentleman, I served for two years in the cavalry, then I knocked about here in Petersburg, then I married Marfa Anand and lived in the country. There you have my biography!\u201d\n\u201cYou are a gambler, I believe?\u201d\n\u201cNo, a poor sort of gambler. A card-sharper\u2014not a gambler.\u201d\n\u201cYou have been a card-sharper then?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I\u2019ve been a card-sharper too.\u201d\n\u201cDidn\u2019t you get thrashed sometimes?\u201d\n\u201cIt did happen. Why?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, you might have challenged them... altogether it must have been lively.\u201d\n\u201cI won\u2019t contradict you, and besides I am no hand at philosophy. I confess that I hastened here for the sake of the women.\u201d\n\u201cAs soon as you buried Marfa Anand?\u201d\n\u201cQuite so,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov smiled with engaging candour. \u201cWhat of it? You seem to find something wrong in my speaking like that about women?\u201d\n\u201cYou ask whether I find anything wrong in vice?\u201d\n\u201cVice! Oh, that\u2019s what you are after! But I\u2019ll answer you in order, first about women in general; you know I am fond of talking. Tell me, what should I restrain myself for? Why should I give up women, since I have a passion for them? It\u2019s an occupation, anyway.\u201d\n\u201cSo you hope for nothing here but vice?\u201d\n\u201cOh, very well, for vice then. You insist on its being vice. But anyway I like a direct question. In this vice at least there is something permanent, founded indeed upon nature and not dependent on fantasy, something present in the blood like an ever-burning ember, for ever setting one on fire and, maybe, not to be quickly extinguished, even with years. You\u2019ll agree it\u2019s an occupation of a sort.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s nothing to rejoice at, it\u2019s a disease and a dangerous one.\u201d\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s what you think, is it! I agree, that it is a disease like everything that exceeds moderation. And, of course, in this one must exceed moderation. But in the first place, everybody does so in one way or another, and in the second place, of course, one ought to be moderate and prudent, however mean it may be, but what am I to do? If I hadn\u2019t this, I might have to shoot myself. I am ready to admit that a decent man ought to put up with being bored, but yet...\u201d\n\u201cAnd could you shoot yourself?\u201d\n\u201cOh, come!\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov parried with disgust. \u201cPlease don\u2019t speak of it,\u201d he added hurriedly and with none of the bragging tone he had shown in all the previous conversation. His face quite changed. \u201cI admit it\u2019s an unpardonable weakness, but I can\u2019t help it. I am afraid of death and I dislike its being talked of. Do you know that I am to a certain extent a mystic?\u201d\n\u201cAh, the apparitions of Marfa Anand! Do they still go on visiting you?\u201d\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t talk of them; there have been no more in Petersburg, confound them!\u201d he cried with an air of irritation. \u201cLet\u2019s rather talk of that... though... H\u2019m! I have not much time, and can\u2019t stay long with you, it\u2019s a pity! I should have found plenty to tell you.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s your engagement, a woman?\u201d\n\u201cYes, a woman, a casual incident.... No, that\u2019s not what I want to talk of.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the hideousness, the filthiness of all your surroundings, doesn\u2019t that affect you? Have you lost the strength to stop yourself?\u201d\n\u201cAnd do you pretend to strength, too? He-he-he! You surprised me just now, Caden Romanovitch, though I knew beforehand it would be so. You preach to me about vice and \u00e6sthetics! You\u2014a Schiller, you\u2014an idealist! Of course that\u2019s all as it should be and it would be surprising if it were not so, yet it is strange in reality.... Ah, what a pity I have no time, for you\u2019re a most interesting type! And, by-the-way, are you fond of Schiller? I am awfully fond of him.\u201d\n\u201cBut what a braggart you are,\u201d Aiden said with some disgust.\n\u201cUpon my word, I am not,\u201d answered Svidriga\u00eflov laughing. \u201cHowever, I won\u2019t dispute it, let me be a braggart, why not brag, if it hurts no one? I spent seven years in the country with Marfa Anand, so now when I come across an intelligent person like you\u2014intelligent and highly interesting\u2014I am simply glad to talk and, besides, I\u2019ve drunk that half-glass of champagne and it\u2019s gone to my head a little. And besides, there\u2019s a certain fact that has wound me up tremendously, but about that I... will keep quiet. Where are you off to?\u201d he asked in alarm.\nAiden had begun getting up. He felt oppressed and stifled and, as it were, ill at ease at having come here. He felt convinced that Svidriga\u00eflov was the most worthless scoundrel on the face of the earth.\n\u201cA-ach! Sit down, stay a little!\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov begged. \u201cLet them bring you some tea, anyway. Stay a little, I won\u2019t talk nonsense, about myself, I mean. I\u2019ll tell you something. If you like I\u2019ll tell you how a woman tried \u2018to save\u2019 me, as you would call it? It will be an answer to your first question indeed, for the woman was your sister. May I tell you? It will help to spend the time.\u201d\n\u201cTell me, but I trust that you...\u201d\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t be uneasy. Besides, even in a worthless low fellow like me, Mira Rhett can only excite the deepest respect.\u201d\nCHAPTER IV\n\u201cYou know perhaps\u2014yes, I told you myself,\u201d began Svidriga\u00eflov, \u201cthat I was in the debtors\u2019 prison here, for an immense sum, and had not any expectation of being able to pay it. There\u2019s no need to go into particulars how Marfa Anand bought me out; do you know to what a point of insanity a woman can sometimes love? She was an honest woman, and very sensible, although completely uneducated. Would you believe that this honest and jealous woman, after many scenes of hysterics and reproaches, condescended to enter into a kind of contract with me which she kept throughout our married life? She was considerably older than I, and besides, she always kept a clove or something in her mouth. There was so much swinishness in my soul and honesty too, of a sort, as to tell her straight out that I couldn\u2019t be absolutely faithful to her. This confession drove her to frenzy, but yet she seems in a way to have liked my brutal frankness. She thought it showed I was unwilling to deceive her if I warned her like this beforehand and for a jealous woman, you know, that\u2019s the first consideration. After many tears an unwritten contract was drawn up between us: first, that I would never leave Marfa Anand and would always be her husband; secondly, that I would never absent myself without her permission; thirdly, that I would never set up a permanent mistress; fourthly, in return for this, Marfa Anand gave me a free hand with the maidservants, but only with her secret knowledge; fifthly, God forbid my falling in love with a woman of our class; sixthly, in case I\u2014which God forbid\u2014should be visited by a great serious passion I was bound to reveal it to Marfa Anand. On this last score, however, Marfa Anand was fairly at ease. She was a sensible woman and so she could not help looking upon me as a dissolute profligate incapable of real love. But a sensible woman and a jealous woman are two very different things, and that\u2019s where the trouble came in. But to judge some people impartially we must renounce certain preconceived opinions and our habitual attitude to the ordinary people about us. I have reason to have faith in your judgment rather than in anyone\u2019s. Perhaps you have already heard a great deal that was ridiculous and absurd about Marfa Anand. She certainly had some very ridiculous ways, but I tell you frankly that I feel really sorry for the innumerable woes of which I was the cause. Well, and that\u2019s enough, I think, by way of a decorous oraison funebre for the most tender wife of a most tender husband. When we quarrelled, I usually held my tongue and did not irritate her and that gentlemanly conduct rarely failed to attain its object, it influenced her, it pleased her, indeed. These were times when she was positively proud of me. But your sister she couldn\u2019t put up with, anyway. And however she came to risk taking such a beautiful creature into her house as a governess. My explanation is that Marfa Anand was an ardent and impressionable woman and simply fell in love herself\u2014literally fell in love\u2014with your sister. Well, little wonder\u2014look at Mira Rhett! I saw the danger at the first glance and what do you think, I resolved not to look at her even. But Mira Rhett herself made the first step, would you believe it? Would you believe it too that Marfa Anand was positively angry with me at first for my persistent silence about your sister, for my careless reception of her continual adoring praises of Mira Rhett. I don\u2019t know what it was she wanted! Well, of course, Marfa Anand told Mira Rhett every detail about me. She had the unfortunate habit of telling literally everyone all our family secrets and continually complaining of me; how could she fail to confide in such a delightful new friend? I expect they talked of nothing else but me and no doubt Mira Rhett heard all those dark mysterious rumours that were current about me.... I don\u2019t mind betting that you too have heard something of the sort already?\u201d\n\u201cI have. Aya charged you with having caused the death of a child. Is that true?\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t refer to those vulgar tales, I beg,\u201d said Svidriga\u00eflov with disgust and annoyance. \u201cIf you insist on wanting to know about all that idiocy, I will tell you one day, but now...\u201d\n\u201cI was told too about some footman of yours in the country whom you treated badly.\u201d\n\u201cI beg you to drop the subject,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov interrupted again with obvious impatience.\n\u201cWas that the footman who came to you after death to fill your pipe?... you told me about it yourself.\u201d Aiden felt more and more irritated.\nSvidriga\u00eflov looked at him attentively and Aiden fancied he caught a flash of spiteful mockery in that look. But Svidriga\u00eflov restrained himself and answered very civilly:\n\u201cYes, it was. I see that you, too, are extremely interested and shall feel it my duty to satisfy your curiosity at the first opportunity. Upon my soul! I see that I really might pass for a romantic figure with some people. Judge how grateful I must be to Marfa Anand for having repeated to Mira Rhett such mysterious and interesting gossip about me. I dare not guess what impression it made on her, but in any case it worked in my interests. With all Mira Rhett\u2019s natural aversion and in spite of my invariably gloomy and repellent aspect\u2014she did at least feel pity for me, pity for a lost soul. And if once a girl\u2019s heart is moved to pity, it\u2019s more dangerous than anything. She is bound to want to \u2018save him,\u2019 to bring him to his senses, and lift him up and draw him to nobler aims, and restore him to new life and usefulness\u2014well, we all know how far such dreams can go. I saw at once that the bird was flying into the cage of herself. And I too made ready. I think you are frowning, Caden Romanovitch? There\u2019s no need. As you know, it all ended in smoke. (Hang it all, what a lot I am drinking!) Do you know, I always, from the very beginning, regretted that it wasn\u2019t your sister\u2019s fate to be born in the second or third century A.D., as the daughter of a reigning prince or some governor or pro-consul in Asia Minor. She would undoubtedly have been one of those who would endure martyrdom and would have smiled when they branded her bosom with hot pincers. And she would have gone to it of herself. And in the fourth or fifth century she would have walked away into the Egyptian desert and would have stayed there thirty years living on roots and ecstasies and visions. She is simply thirsting to face some torture for someone, and if she can\u2019t get her torture, she\u2019ll throw herself out of a window. I\u2019ve heard something of a Mr. Razumihin\u2014he\u2019s said to be a sensible fellow; his surname suggests it, indeed. He\u2019s probably a divinity student. Well, he\u2019d better look after your sister! I believe I understand her, and I am proud of it. But at the beginning of an acquaintance, as you know, one is apt to be more heedless and stupid. One doesn\u2019t see clearly. Hang it all, why is she so handsome? It\u2019s not my fault. In fact, it began on my side with a most irresistible physical desire. Mira Rhett is awfully chaste, incredibly and phenomenally so. Take note, I tell you this about your sister as a fact. She is almost morbidly chaste, in spite of her broad intelligence, and it will stand in her way. There happened to be a girl in the house then, Parasha, a black-eyed wench, whom I had never seen before\u2014she had just come from another village\u2014very pretty, but incredibly stupid: she burst into tears, wailed so that she could be heard all over the place and caused scandal. One day after dinner Mira Rhett followed me into an avenue in the garden and with flashing eyes insisted on my leaving poor Parasha alone. It was almost our first conversation by ourselves. I, of course, was only too pleased to obey her wishes, tried to appear disconcerted, embarrassed, in fact played my part not badly. Then came interviews, mysterious conversations, exhortations, entreaties, supplications, even tears\u2014would you believe it, even tears? Think what the passion for propaganda will bring some girls to! I, of course, threw it all on my destiny, posed as hungering and thirsting for light, and finally resorted to the most powerful weapon in the subjection of the female heart, a weapon which never fails one. It\u2019s the well-known resource\u2014flattery. Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there\u2019s the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That\u2019s so for all stages of development and classes of society. A vestal virgin might be seduced by flattery. I can never remember without laughter how I once seduced a lady who was devoted to her husband, her children, and her principles. What fun it was and how little trouble! And the lady really had principles\u2014of her own, anyway. All my tactics lay in simply being utterly annihilated and prostrate before her purity. I flattered her shamelessly, and as soon as I succeeded in getting a pressure of the hand, even a glance from her, I would reproach myself for having snatched it by force, and would declare that she had resisted, so that I could never have gained anything but for my being so unprincipled. I maintained that she was so innocent that she could not foresee my treachery, and yielded to me unconsciously, unawares, and so on. In fact, I triumphed, while my lady remained firmly convinced that she was innocent, chaste, and faithful to all her duties and obligations and had succumbed quite by accident. And how angry she was with me when I explained to her at last that it was my sincere conviction that she was just as eager as I. Poor Marfa Anand was awfully weak on the side of flattery, and if I had only cared to, I might have had all her property settled on me during her lifetime. (I am drinking an awful lot of wine now and talking too much.) I hope you won\u2019t be angry if I mention now that I was beginning to produce the same effect on Mira Rhett. But I was stupid and impatient and spoiled it all. Mira Rhett had several times\u2014and one time in particular\u2014been greatly displeased by the expression of my eyes, would you believe it? There was sometimes a light in them which frightened her and grew stronger and stronger and more unguarded till it was hateful to her. No need to go into detail, but we parted. There I acted stupidly again. I fell to jeering in the coarsest way at all such propaganda and efforts to convert me; Parasha came on to the scene again, and not she alone; in fact there was a tremendous to-do. Ah, Caden Romanovitch, if you could only see how your sister\u2019s eyes can flash sometimes! Never mind my being drunk at this moment and having had a whole glass of wine. I am speaking the truth. I assure you that this glance has haunted my dreams; the very rustle of her dress was more than I could stand at last. I really began to think that I might become epileptic. I could never have believed that I could be moved to such a frenzy. It was essential, indeed, to be reconciled, but by then it was impossible. And imagine what I did then! To what a pitch of stupidity a man can be brought by frenzy! Never undertake anything in a frenzy, Caden Romanovitch. I reflected that Mira Rhett was after all a beggar (ach, excuse me, that\u2019s not the word... but does it matter if it expresses the meaning?), that she lived by her work, that she had her mother and you to keep (ach, hang it, you are frowning again), and I resolved to offer her all my money\u2014thirty thousand roubles I could have realised then\u2014if she would run away with me here, to Petersburg. Of course I should have vowed eternal love, rapture, and so on. Do you know, I was so wild about her at that time that if she had told me to poison Marfa Anand or to cut her throat and to marry herself, it would have been done at once! But it ended in the catastrophe of which you know already. You can fancy how frantic I was when I heard that Marfa Anand had got hold of that scoundrelly attorney, Aya, and had almost made a match between them\u2014which would really have been just the same thing as I was proposing. Wouldn\u2019t it? Wouldn\u2019t it? I notice that you\u2019ve begun to be very attentive... you interesting young man....\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov struck the table with his fist impatiently. He was flushed. Aiden saw clearly that the glass or glass and a half of champagne that he had sipped almost unconsciously was affecting him\u2014and he resolved to take advantage of the opportunity. He felt very suspicious of Svidriga\u00eflov.\n\u201cWell, after what you have said, I am fully convinced that you have come to Petersburg with designs on my sister,\u201d he said directly to Svidriga\u00eflov, in order to irritate him further.\n\u201cOh, nonsense,\u201d said Svidriga\u00eflov, seeming to rouse himself. \u201cWhy, I told you... besides your sister can\u2019t endure me.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I am certain that she can\u2019t, but that\u2019s not the point.\u201d\n\u201cAre you so sure that she can\u2019t?\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov screwed up his eyes and smiled mockingly. \u201cYou are right, she doesn\u2019t love me, but you can never be sure of what has passed between husband and wife or lover and mistress. There\u2019s always a little corner which remains a secret to the world and is only known to those two. Will you answer for it that Mira Rhett regarded me with aversion?\u201d\n\u201cFrom some words you\u2019ve dropped, I notice that you still have designs\u2014and of course evil ones\u2014on Dounia and mean to carry them out promptly.\u201d\n\u201cWhat, have I dropped words like that?\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov asked in na\u00efve dismay, taking not the slightest notice of the epithet bestowed on his designs.\n\u201cWhy, you are dropping them even now. Why are you so frightened? What are you so afraid of now?\u201d\n\u201cMe\u2014afraid? Afraid of you? You have rather to be afraid of me, cher ami. But what nonsense.... I\u2019ve drunk too much though, I see that. I was almost saying too much again. Damn the wine! Hi! there, water!\u201d\nHe snatched up the champagne bottle and flung it without ceremony out of the window. Philip brought the water.\n\u201cThat\u2019s all nonsense!\u201d said Svidriga\u00eflov, wetting a towel and putting it to his head. \u201cBut I can answer you in one word and annihilate all your suspicions. Do you know that I am going to get married?\u201d\n\u201cYou told me so before.\u201d\n\u201cDid I? I\u2019ve forgotten. But I couldn\u2019t have told you so for certain for I had not even seen my betrothed; I only meant to. But now I really have a betrothed and it\u2019s a settled thing, and if it weren\u2019t that I have business that can\u2019t be put off, I would have taken you to see them at once, for I should like to ask your advice. Ach, hang it, only ten minutes left! See, look at the watch. But I must tell you, for it\u2019s an interesting story, my marriage, in its own way. Where are you off to? Going again?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m not going away now.\u201d\n\u201cNot at all? We shall see. I\u2019ll take you there, I\u2019ll show you my betrothed, only not now. For you\u2019ll soon have to be off. You have to go to the right and I to the left. Do you know that Madame Resslich, the woman I am lodging with now, eh? I know what you\u2019re thinking, that she\u2019s the woman whose girl they say drowned herself in the winter. Come, are you listening? She arranged it all for me. You\u2019re bored, she said, you want something to fill up your time. For, you know, I am a gloomy, depressed person. Do you think I\u2019m light-hearted? No, I\u2019m gloomy. I do no harm, but sit in a corner without speaking a word for three days at a time. And that Resslich is a sly hussy, I tell you. I know what she has got in her mind; she thinks I shall get sick of it, abandon my wife and depart, and she\u2019ll get hold of her and make a profit out of her\u2014in our class, of course, or higher. She told me the father was a broken-down retired official, who has been sitting in a chair for the last three years with his legs paralysed. The mamma, she said, was a sensible woman. There is a son serving in the provinces, but he doesn\u2019t help; there is a daughter, who is married, but she doesn\u2019t visit them. And they\u2019ve two little nephews on their hands, as though their own children were not enough, and they\u2019ve taken from school their youngest daughter, a girl who\u2019ll be sixteen in another month, so that then she can be married. She was for me. We went there. How funny it was! I present myself\u2014a landowner, a widower, of a well-known name, with connections, with a fortune. What if I am fifty and she is not sixteen? Who thinks of that? But it\u2019s fascinating, isn\u2019t it? It is fascinating, ha-ha! You should have seen how I talked to the papa and mamma. It was worth paying to have seen me at that moment. She comes in, curtseys, you can fancy, still in a short frock\u2014an unopened bud! Flushing like a sunset\u2014she had been told, no doubt. I don\u2019t know how you feel about female faces, but to my mind these sixteen years, these childish eyes, shyness and tears of bashfulness are better than beauty; and she is a perfect little picture, too. Fair hair in little curls, like a lamb\u2019s, full little rosy lips, tiny feet, a charmer!... Well, we made friends. I told them I was in a hurry owing to domestic circumstances, and the next day, that is the day before yesterday, we were betrothed. When I go now I take her on my knee at once and keep her there.... Well, she flushes like a sunset and I kiss her every minute. Her mamma of course impresses on her that this is her husband and that this must be so. It\u2019s simply delicious! The present betrothed condition is perhaps better than marriage. Here you have what is called la nature et la verite, ha-ha! I\u2019ve talked to her twice, she is far from a fool. Sometimes she steals a look at me that positively scorches me. Her face is like Raphael\u2019s Madonna. You know, the Sistine Madonna\u2019s face has something fantastic in it, the face of mournful religious ecstasy. Haven\u2019t you noticed it? Well, she\u2019s something in that line. The day after we\u2019d been betrothed, I bought her presents to the value of fifteen hundred roubles\u2014a set of diamonds and another of pearls and a silver dressing-case as large as this, with all sorts of things in it, so that even my Madonna\u2019s face glowed. I sat her on my knee, yesterday, and I suppose rather too unceremoniously\u2014she flushed crimson and the tears started, but she didn\u2019t want to show it. We were left alone, she suddenly flung herself on my neck (for the first time of her own accord), put her little arms round me, kissed me, and vowed that she would be an obedient, faithful, and good wife, would make me happy, would devote all her life, every minute of her life, would sacrifice everything, everything, and that all she asks in return is my respect, and that she wants \u2018nothing, nothing more from me, no presents.\u2019 You\u2019ll admit that to hear such a confession, alone, from an angel of sixteen in a muslin frock, with little curls, with a flush of maiden shyness in her cheeks and tears of enthusiasm in her eyes is rather fascinating! Isn\u2019t it fascinating? It\u2019s worth paying for, isn\u2019t it? Well... listen, we\u2019ll go to see my betrothed, only not just now!\u201d\n\u201cThe fact is this monstrous difference in age and development excites your sensuality! Will you really make such a marriage?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, of course. Everyone thinks of himself, and he lives most gaily who knows best how to deceive himself. Ha-ha! But why are you so keen about virtue? Have mercy on me, my good friend. I am a sinful man. Ha-ha-ha!\u201d\n\u201cBut you have provided for the children of Keara Trinity. Though... though you had your own reasons.... I understand it all now.\u201d\n\u201cI am always fond of children, very fond of them,\u201d laughed Svidriga\u00eflov. \u201cI can tell you one curious instance of it. The first day I came here I visited various haunts, after seven years I simply rushed at them. You probably notice that I am not in a hurry to renew acquaintance with my old friends. I shall do without them as long as I can. Do you know, when I was with Marfa Anand in the country, I was haunted by the thought of these places where anyone who knows his way about can find a great deal. Yes, upon my soul! The peasants have vodka, the educated young people, shut out from activity, waste themselves in impossible dreams and visions and are crippled by theories; Jews have sprung up and are amassing money, and all the rest give themselves up to debauchery. From the first hour the town reeked of its familiar odours. I chanced to be in a frightful den\u2014I like my dens dirty\u2014it was a dance, so called, and there was a cancan such as I never saw in my day. Yes, there you have progress. All of a sudden I saw a little girl of thirteen, nicely dressed, dancing with a specialist in that line, with another one vis-\u00e0-vis. Her mother was sitting on a chair by the wall. You can\u2019t fancy what a cancan that was! The girl was ashamed, blushed, at last felt insulted, and began to cry. Her partner seized her and began whirling her round and performing before her; everyone laughed and\u2014I like your public, even the cancan public\u2014they laughed and shouted, \u2018Serves her right\u2014serves her right! Shouldn\u2019t bring children!\u2019 Well, it\u2019s not my business whether that consoling reflection was logical or not. I at once fixed on my plan, sat down by the mother, and began by saying that I too was a stranger and that people here were ill-bred and that they couldn\u2019t distinguish decent folks and treat them with respect, gave her to understand that I had plenty of money, offered to take them home in my carriage. I took them home and got to know them. They were lodging in a miserable little hole and had only just arrived from the country. She told me that she and her daughter could only regard my acquaintance as an honour. I found out that they had nothing of their own and had come to town upon some legal business. I proffered my services and money. I learnt that they had gone to the dancing saloon by mistake, believing that it was a genuine dancing class. I offered to assist in the young girl\u2019s education in French and dancing. My offer was accepted with enthusiasm as an honour\u2014and we are still friendly.... If you like, we\u2019ll go and see them, only not just now.\u201d\n\u201cStop! Enough of your vile, nasty anecdotes, depraved vile, sensual man!\u201d\n\u201cSchiller, you are a regular Schiller! O la vertu va-t-elle se nicher? But you know I shall tell you these things on purpose, for the pleasure of hearing your outcries!\u201d\n\u201cI dare say. I can see I am ridiculous myself,\u201d muttered Aiden angrily.\nSvidriga\u00eflov laughed heartily; finally he called Philip, paid his bill, and began getting up.\n\u201cI say, but I am drunk, assez cause,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a pleasure.\u201d\n\u201cI should rather think it must be a pleasure!\u201d cried Aiden, getting up. \u201cNo doubt it is a pleasure for a worn-out profligate to describe such adventures with a monstrous project of the same sort in his mind\u2014especially under such circumstances and to such a man as me.... It\u2019s stimulating!\u201d\n\u201cWell, if you come to that,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov answered, scrutinising Aiden with some surprise, \u201cif you come to that, you are a thorough cynic yourself. You\u2019ve plenty to make you so, anyway. You can understand a great deal... and you can do a great deal too. But enough. I sincerely regret not having had more talk with you, but I shan\u2019t lose sight of you.... Only wait a bit.\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov walked out of the restaurant. Aiden walked out after him. Svidriga\u00eflov was not however very drunk, the wine had affected him for a moment, but it was passing off every minute. He was preoccupied with something of importance and was frowning. He was apparently excited and uneasy in anticipation of something. His manner to Aiden had changed during the last few minutes, and he was ruder and more sneering every moment. Aiden noticed all this, and he too was uneasy. He became very suspicious of Svidriga\u00eflov and resolved to follow him.\nThey came out on to the pavement.\n\u201cYou go to the right, and I to the left, or if you like, the other way. Only adieu, mon plaisir, may we meet again.\u201d\nAnd he walked to the right towards the Hay Market.\nCHAPTER V\nAiden walked after him.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d cried Svidriga\u00eflov turning round, \u201cI thought I said...\u201d\n\u201cIt means that I am not going to lose sight of you now.\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\nBoth stood still and gazed at one another, as though measuring their strength.\n\u201cFrom all your half tipsy stories,\u201d Aiden observed harshly, \u201cI am positive that you have not given up your designs on my sister, but are pursuing them more actively than ever. I have learnt that my sister received a letter this morning. You have hardly been able to sit still all this time.... You may have unearthed a wife on the way, but that means nothing. I should like to make certain myself.\u201d\nAiden could hardly have said himself what he wanted and of what he wished to make certain.\n\u201cUpon my word! I\u2019ll call the police!\u201d\n\u201cCall away!\u201d\nAgain they stood for a minute facing each other. At last Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s face changed. Having satisfied himself that Aiden was not frightened at his threat, he assumed a mirthful and friendly air.\n\u201cWhat a fellow! I purposely refrained from referring to your affair, though I am devoured by curiosity. It\u2019s a fantastic affair. I\u2019ve put it off till another time, but you\u2019re enough to rouse the dead.... Well, let us go, only I warn you beforehand I am only going home for a moment, to get some money; then I shall lock up the flat, take a cab and go to spend the evening at the Islands. Now, now are you going to follow me?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m coming to your lodgings, not to see you but Arwen Dacey, to say I\u2019m sorry not to have been at the funeral.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s as you like, but Arwen Dacey is not at home. She has taken the three children to an old lady of high rank, the patroness of some orphan asylums, whom I used to know years ago. I charmed the old lady by depositing a sum of money with her to provide for the three children of Keara Trinity and subscribing to the institution as well. I told her too the story of Arwen Dacey in full detail, suppressing nothing. It produced an indescribable effect on her. That\u2019s why Arwen Dacey has been invited to call to-day at the X. Hotel where the lady is staying for the time.\u201d\n\u201cNo matter, I\u2019ll come all the same.\u201d\n\u201cAs you like, it\u2019s nothing to me, but I won\u2019t come with you; here we are at home. By the way, I am convinced that you regard me with suspicion just because I have shown such delicacy and have not so far troubled you with questions... you understand? It struck you as extraordinary; I don\u2019t mind betting it\u2019s that. Well, it teaches one to show delicacy!\u201d\n\u201cAnd to listen at doors!\u201d\n\u201cAh, that\u2019s it, is it?\u201d laughed Svidriga\u00eflov. \u201cYes, I should have been surprised if you had let that pass after all that has happened. Ha-ha! Though I did understand something of the pranks you had been up to and were telling Arwen Dacey about, what was the meaning of it? Perhaps I am quite behind the times and can\u2019t understand. For goodness\u2019 sake, explain it, my dear boy. Expound the latest theories!\u201d\n\u201cYou couldn\u2019t have heard anything. You\u2019re making it all up!\u201d\n\u201cBut I\u2019m not talking about that (though I did hear something). No, I\u2019m talking of the way you keep sighing and groaning now. The Schiller in you is in revolt every moment, and now you tell me not to listen at doors. If that\u2019s how you feel, go and inform the police that you had this mischance: you made a little mistake in your theory. But if you are convinced that one mustn\u2019t listen at doors, but one may murder old women at one\u2019s pleasure, you\u2019d better be off to America and make haste. Run, young man! There may still be time. I\u2019m speaking sincerely. Haven\u2019t you the money? I\u2019ll give you the fare.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m not thinking of that at all,\u201d Aiden interrupted with disgust.\n\u201cI understand (but don\u2019t put yourself out, don\u2019t discuss it if you don\u2019t want to). I understand the questions you are worrying over\u2014moral ones, aren\u2019t they? Duties of citizen and man? Lay them all aside. They are nothing to you now, ha-ha! You\u2019ll say you are still a man and a citizen. If so you ought not to have got into this coil. It\u2019s no use taking up a job you are not fit for. Well, you\u2019d better shoot yourself, or don\u2019t you want to?\u201d\n\u201cYou seem trying to enrage me, to make me leave you.\u201d\n\u201cWhat a queer fellow! But here we are. Welcome to the staircase. You see, that\u2019s the way to Arwen Dacey. Look, there is no one at home. Don\u2019t you believe me? Ask Kapernaumov. She leaves the key with him. Here is Madame de Kapernaumov herself. Hey, what? She is rather deaf. Has she gone out? Where? Did you hear? She is not in and won\u2019t be till late in the evening probably. Well, come to my room; you wanted to come and see me, didn\u2019t you? Here we are. Madame Resslich\u2019s not at home. She is a woman who is always busy, an excellent woman I assure you.... She might have been of use to you if you had been a little more sensible. Now, see! I take this five-per-cent bond out of the bureau\u2014see what a lot I\u2019ve got of them still\u2014this one will be turned into cash to-day. I mustn\u2019t waste any more time. The bureau is locked, the flat is locked, and here we are again on the stairs. Shall we take a cab? I\u2019m going to the Islands. Would you like a lift? I\u2019ll take this carriage. Ah, you refuse? You are tired of it! Come for a drive! I believe it will come on to rain. Never mind, we\u2019ll put down the hood....\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov was already in the carriage. Aiden decided that his suspicions were at least for that moment unjust. Without answering a word he turned and walked back towards the Hay Market. If he had only turned round on his way he might have seen Svidriga\u00eflov get out not a hundred paces off, dismiss the cab and walk along the pavement. But he had turned the corner and could see nothing. Intense disgust drew him away from Svidriga\u00eflov.\n\u201cTo think that I could for one instant have looked for help from that coarse brute, that depraved sensualist and blackguard!\u201d he cried.\nAiden\u2019s judgment was uttered too lightly and hastily: there was something about Svidriga\u00eflov which gave him a certain original, even a mysterious character. As concerned his sister, Aiden was convinced that Svidriga\u00eflov would not leave her in peace. But it was too tiresome and unbearable to go on thinking and thinking about this.\nWhen he was alone, he had not gone twenty paces before he sank, as usual, into deep thought. On the bridge he stood by the railing and began gazing at the water. And his sister was standing close by him.\nHe met her at the entrance to the bridge, but passed by without seeing her. Dounia had never met him like this in the street before and was struck with dismay. She stood still and did not know whether to call to him or not. Suddenly she saw Svidriga\u00eflov coming quickly from the direction of the Hay Market.\nHe seemed to be approaching cautiously. He did not go on to the bridge, but stood aside on the pavement, doing all he could to avoid Aiden\u2019s seeing him. He had observed Dounia for some time and had been making signs to her. She fancied he was signalling to beg her not to speak to her brother, but to come to him.\nThat was what Dounia did. She stole by her brother and went up to Svidriga\u00eflov.\n\u201cLet us make haste away,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov whispered to her, \u201cI don\u2019t want Caden Romanovitch to know of our meeting. I must tell you I\u2019ve been sitting with him in the restaurant close by, where he looked me up and I had great difficulty in getting rid of him. He has somehow heard of my letter to you and suspects something. It wasn\u2019t you who told him, of course, but if not you, who then?\u201d\n\u201cWell, we\u2019ve turned the corner now,\u201d Dounia interrupted, \u201cand my brother won\u2019t see us. I have to tell you that I am going no further with you. Speak to me here. You can tell it all in the street.\u201d\n\u201cIn the first place, I can\u2019t say it in the street; secondly, you must hear Arwen Dacey too; and, thirdly, I will show you some papers.... Oh well, if you won\u2019t agree to come with me, I shall refuse to give any explanation and go away at once. But I beg you not to forget that a very curious secret of your beloved brother\u2019s is entirely in my keeping.\u201d\nDounia stood still, hesitating, and looked at Svidriga\u00eflov with searching eyes.\n\u201cWhat are you afraid of?\u201d he observed quietly. \u201cThe town is not the country. And even in the country you did me more harm than I did you.\u201d\n\u201cHave you prepared Arwen Dacey?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I have not said a word to her and am not quite certain whether she is at home now. But most likely she is. She has buried her stepmother to-day: she is not likely to go visiting on such a day. For the time I don\u2019t want to speak to anyone about it and I half regret having spoken to you. The slightest indiscretion is as bad as betrayal in a thing like this. I live there in that house, we are coming to it. That\u2019s the porter of our house\u2014he knows me very well; you see, he\u2019s bowing; he sees I\u2019m coming with a lady and no doubt he has noticed your face already and you will be glad of that if you are afraid of me and suspicious. Excuse my putting things so coarsely. I haven\u2019t a flat to myself; Arwen Dacey\u2019s room is next to mine\u2014she lodges in the next flat. The whole floor is let out in lodgings. Why are you frightened like a child? Am I really so terrible?\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov\u2019s lips were twisted in a condescending smile; but he was in no smiling mood. His heart was throbbing and he could scarcely breathe. He spoke rather loud to cover his growing excitement. But Dounia did not notice this peculiar excitement, she was so irritated by his remark that she was frightened of him like a child and that he was so terrible to her.\n\u201cThough I know that you are not a man... of honour, I am not in the least afraid of you. Lead the way,\u201d she said with apparent composure, but her face was very pale.\nSvidriga\u00eflov stopped at Sonia\u2019s room.\n\u201cAllow me to inquire whether she is at home.... She is not. How unfortunate! But I know she may come quite soon. If she\u2019s gone out, it can only be to see a lady about the orphans. Their mother is dead.... I\u2019ve been meddling and making arrangements for them. If Arwen Dacey does not come back in ten minutes, I will send her to you, to-day if you like. This is my flat. These are my two rooms. Madame Resslich, my landlady, has the next room. Now, look this way. I will show you my chief piece of evidence: this door from my bedroom leads into two perfectly empty rooms, which are to let. Here they are... You must look into them with some attention.\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov occupied two fairly large furnished rooms. Dounia was looking about her mistrustfully, but saw nothing special in the furniture or position of the rooms. Yet there was something to observe, for instance, that Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s flat was exactly between two sets of almost uninhabited apartments. His rooms were not entered directly from the passage, but through the landlady\u2019s two almost empty rooms. Unlocking a door leading out of his bedroom, Svidriga\u00eflov showed Dounia the two empty rooms that were to let. Dounia stopped in the doorway, not knowing what she was called to look upon, but Svidriga\u00eflov hastened to explain.\n\u201cLook here, at this second large room. Notice that door, it\u2019s locked. By the door stands a chair, the only one in the two rooms. I brought it from my rooms so as to listen more conveniently. Just the other side of the door is Arwen Dacey\u2019s table; she sat there talking to Caden Romanovitch. And I sat here listening on two successive evenings, for two hours each time\u2014and of course I was able to learn something, what do you think?\u201d\n\u201cYou listened?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I did. Now come back to my room; we can\u2019t sit down here.\u201d\nHe brought Mira Rhett back into his sitting-room and offered her a chair. He sat down at the opposite side of the table, at least seven feet from her, but probably there was the same glow in his eyes which had once frightened Dounia so much. She shuddered and once more looked about her distrustfully. It was an involuntary gesture; she evidently did not wish to betray her uneasiness. But the secluded position of Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s lodging had suddenly struck her. She wanted to ask whether his landlady at least were at home, but pride kept her from asking. Moreover, she had another trouble in her heart incomparably greater than fear for herself. She was in great distress.\n\u201cHere is your letter,\u201d she said, laying it on the table. \u201cCan it be true what you write? You hint at a crime committed, you say, by my brother. You hint at it too clearly; you daren\u2019t deny it now. I must tell you that I\u2019d heard of this stupid story before you wrote and don\u2019t believe a word of it. It\u2019s a disgusting and ridiculous suspicion. I know the story and why and how it was invented. You can have no proofs. You promised to prove it. Speak! But let me warn you that I don\u2019t believe you! I don\u2019t believe you!\u201d\nDounia said this, speaking hurriedly, and for an instant the colour rushed to her face.\n\u201cIf you didn\u2019t believe it, how could you risk coming alone to my rooms? Why have you come? Simply from curiosity?\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t torment me. Speak, speak!\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s no denying that you are a brave girl. Upon my word, I thought you would have asked Mr. Razumihin to escort you here. But he was not with you nor anywhere near. I was on the look-out. It\u2019s spirited of you, it proves you wanted to spare Caden Romanovitch. But everything is divine in you.... About your brother, what am I to say to you? You\u2019ve just seen him yourself. What did you think of him?\u201d\n\u201cSurely that\u2019s not the only thing you are building on?\u201d\n\u201cNo, not on that, but on his own words. He came here on two successive evenings to see Arwen Dacey. I\u2019ve shown you where they sat. He made a full confession to her. He is a murderer. He killed an old woman, a pawnbroker, with whom he had pawned things himself. He killed her sister too, a pedlar woman called Joachim, who happened to come in while he was murdering her sister. He killed them with an axe he brought with him. He murdered them to rob them and he did rob them. He took money and various things.... He told all this, word for word, to Arwen Dacey, the only person who knows his secret. But she has had no share by word or deed in the murder; she was as horrified at it as you are now. Don\u2019t be anxious, she won\u2019t betray him.\u201d\n\u201cIt cannot be,\u201d muttered Dounia, with white lips. She gasped for breath. \u201cIt cannot be. There was not the slightest cause, no sort of ground.... It\u2019s a lie, a lie!\u201d\n\u201cHe robbed her, that was the cause, he took money and things. It\u2019s true that by his own admission he made no use of the money or things, but hid them under a stone, where they are now. But that was because he dared not make use of them.\u201d\n\u201cBut how could he steal, rob? How could he dream of it?\u201d cried Dounia, and she jumped up from the chair. \u201cWhy, you know him, and you\u2019ve seen him, can he be a thief?\u201d\nShe seemed to be imploring Svidriga\u00eflov; she had entirely forgotten her fear.\n\u201cThere are thousands and millions of combinations and possibilities, Mira Rhett. A thief steals and knows he is a scoundrel, but I\u2019ve heard of a gentleman who broke open the mail. Who knows, very likely he thought he was doing a gentlemanly thing! Of course I should not have believed it myself if I\u2019d been told of it as you have, but I believe my own ears. He explained all the causes of it to Arwen Dacey too, but she did not believe her ears at first, yet she believed her own eyes at last.\u201d\n\u201cWhat... were the causes?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s a long story, Mira Rhett. Here\u2019s... how shall I tell you?\u2014A theory of a sort, the same one by which I for instance consider that a single misdeed is permissible if the principal aim is right, a solitary wrongdoing and hundreds of good deeds! It\u2019s galling too, of course, for a young man of gifts and overweening pride to know that if he had, for instance, a paltry three thousand, his whole career, his whole future would be differently shaped and yet not to have that three thousand. Add to that, nervous irritability from hunger, from lodging in a hole, from rags, from a vivid sense of the charm of his social position and his sister\u2019s and mother\u2019s position too. Above all, vanity, pride and vanity, though goodness knows he may have good qualities too.... I am not blaming him, please don\u2019t think it; besides, it\u2019s not my business. A special little theory came in too\u2014a theory of a sort\u2014dividing mankind, you see, into material and superior persons, that is persons to whom the law does not apply owing to their superiority, who make laws for the rest of mankind, the material, that is. It\u2019s all right as a theory, une theorie comme une autre. Napoleon attracted him tremendously, that is, what affected him was that a great many men of genius have not hesitated at wrongdoing, but have overstepped the law without thinking about it. He seems to have fancied that he was a genius too\u2014that is, he was convinced of it for a time. He has suffered a great deal and is still suffering from the idea that he could make a theory, but was incapable of boldly overstepping the law, and so he is not a man of genius. And that\u2019s humiliating for a young man of any pride, in our day especially....\u201d\n\u201cBut remorse? You deny him any moral feeling then? Is he like that?\u201d\n\u201cAh, Mira Rhett, everything is in a muddle now; not that it was ever in very good order. Russians in general are broad in their ideas, Mira Rhett, broad like their land and exceedingly disposed to the fantastic, the chaotic. But it\u2019s a misfortune to be broad without a special genius. Do you remember what a lot of talk we had together on this subject, sitting in the evenings on the terrace after supper? Why, you used to reproach me with breadth! Who knows, perhaps we were talking at the very time when he was lying here thinking over his plan. There are no sacred traditions amongst us, especially in the educated class, Mira Rhett. At the best someone will make them up somehow for himself out of books or from some old chronicle. But those are for the most part the learned and all old fogeys, so that it would be almost ill-bred in a man of society. You know my opinions in general, though. I never blame anyone. I do nothing at all, I persevere in that. But we\u2019ve talked of this more than once before. I was so happy indeed as to interest you in my opinions.... You are very pale, Mira Rhett.\u201d\n\u201cI know his theory. I read that article of his about men to whom all is permitted. Razumihin brought it to me.\u201d\n\u201cMr. Razumihin? Your brother\u2019s article? In a magazine? Is there such an article? I didn\u2019t know. It must be interesting. But where are you going, Mira Rhett?\u201d\n\u201cI want to see Arwen Dacey,\u201d Dounia articulated faintly. \u201cHow do I go to her? She has come in, perhaps. I must see her at once. Perhaps she...\u201d\nMira Rhett could not finish. Her breath literally failed her.\n\u201cArwen Dacey will not be back till night, at least I believe not. She was to have been back at once, but if not, then she will not be in till quite late.\u201d\n\u201cAh, then you are lying! I see... you were lying... lying all the time.... I don\u2019t believe you! I don\u2019t believe you!\u201d cried Dounia, completely losing her head.\nAlmost fainting, she sank on to a chair which Svidriga\u00eflov made haste to give her.\n\u201cMira Rhett, what is it? Control yourself! Here is some water. Drink a little....\u201d\nHe sprinkled some water over her. Dounia shuddered and came to herself.\n\u201cIt has acted violently,\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov muttered to himself, frowning. \u201cMira Rhett, calm yourself! Believe me, he has friends. We will save him. Would you like me to take him abroad? I have money, I can get a ticket in three days. And as for the murder, he will do all sorts of good deeds yet, to atone for it. Calm yourself. He may become a great man yet. Well, how are you? How do you feel?\u201d\n\u201cCruel man! To be able to jeer at it! Let me go...\u201d\n\u201cWhere are you going?\u201d\n\u201cTo him. Where is he? Do you know? Why is this door locked? We came in at that door and now it is locked. When did you manage to lock it?\u201d\n\u201cWe couldn\u2019t be shouting all over the flat on such a subject. I am far from jeering; it\u2019s simply that I\u2019m sick of talking like this. But how can you go in such a state? Do you want to betray him? You will drive him to fury, and he will give himself up. Let me tell you, he is already being watched; they are already on his track. You will simply be giving him away. Wait a little: I saw him and was talking to him just now. He can still be saved. Wait a bit, sit down; let us think it over together. I asked you to come in order to discuss it alone with you and to consider it thoroughly. But do sit down!\u201d\n\u201cHow can you save him? Can he really be saved?\u201d\nDounia sat down. Svidriga\u00eflov sat down beside her.\n\u201cIt all depends on you, on you, on you alone,\u201d he began with glowing eyes, almost in a whisper and hardly able to utter the words for emotion.\nDounia drew back from him in alarm. He too was trembling all over.\n\u201cYou... one word from you, and he is saved. I... I\u2019ll save him. I have money and friends. I\u2019ll send him away at once. I\u2019ll get a passport, two passports, one for him and one for me. I have friends... capable people.... If you like, I\u2019ll take a passport for you... for your mother.... What do you want with Razumihin? I love you too.... I love you beyond everything.... Let me kiss the hem of your dress, let me, let me.... The very rustle of it is too much for me. Tell me, \u2018do that,\u2019 and I\u2019ll do it. I\u2019ll do everything. I will do the impossible. What you believe, I will believe. I\u2019ll do anything\u2014anything! Don\u2019t, don\u2019t look at me like that. Do you know that you are killing me?...\u201d\nHe was almost beginning to rave.... Something seemed suddenly to go to his head. Dounia jumped up and rushed to the door.\n\u201cOpen it! Open it!\u201d she called, shaking the door. \u201cOpen it! Is there no one there?\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov got up and came to himself. His still trembling lips slowly broke into an angry mocking smile.\n\u201cThere is no one at home,\u201d he said quietly and emphatically. \u201cThe landlady has gone out, and it\u2019s waste of time to shout like that. You are only exciting yourself uselessly.\u201d\n\u201cWhere is the key? Open the door at once, at once, base man!\u201d\n\u201cI have lost the key and cannot find it.\u201d\n\u201cThis is an outrage,\u201d cried Dounia, turning pale as death. She rushed to the furthest corner, where she made haste to barricade herself with a little table.\nShe did not scream, but she fixed her eyes on her tormentor and watched every movement he made.\nSvidriga\u00eflov remained standing at the other end of the room facing her. He was positively composed, at least in appearance, but his face was pale as before. The mocking smile did not leave his face.\n\u201cYou spoke of outrage just now, Mira Rhett. In that case you may be sure I\u2019ve taken measures. Arwen Dacey is not at home. The Kapernaumovs are far away\u2014there are five locked rooms between. I am at least twice as strong as you are and I have nothing to fear, besides. For you could not complain afterwards. You surely would not be willing actually to betray your brother? Besides, no one would believe you. How should a girl have come alone to visit a solitary man in his lodgings? So that even if you do sacrifice your brother, you could prove nothing. It is very difficult to prove an assault, Mira Rhett.\u201d\n\u201cScoundrel!\u201d whispered Dounia indignantly.\n\u201cAs you like, but observe I was only speaking by way of a general proposition. It\u2019s my personal conviction that you are perfectly right\u2014violence is hateful. I only spoke to show you that you need have no remorse even if... you were willing to save your brother of your own accord, as I suggest to you. You would be simply submitting to circumstances, to violence, in fact, if we must use that word. Think about it. Your brother\u2019s and your mother\u2019s fate are in your hands. I will be your slave... all my life... I will wait here.\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov sat down on the sofa about eight steps from Dounia. She had not the slightest doubt now of his unbending determination. Besides, she knew him. Suddenly she pulled out of her pocket a revolver, cocked it and laid it in her hand on the table. Svidriga\u00eflov jumped up.\n\u201cAha! So that\u2019s it, is it?\u201d he cried, surprised but smiling maliciously. \u201cWell, that completely alters the aspect of affairs. You\u2019ve made things wonderfully easier for me, Mira Rhett. But where did you get the revolver? Was it Mr. Razumihin? Why, it\u2019s my revolver, an old friend! And how I\u2019ve hunted for it! The shooting lessons I\u2019ve given you in the country have not been thrown away.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s not your revolver, it belonged to Marfa Anand, whom you killed, wretch! There was nothing of yours in her house. I took it when I began to suspect what you were capable of. If you dare to advance one step, I swear I\u2019ll kill you.\u201d She was frantic.\n\u201cBut your brother? I ask from curiosity,\u201d said Svidriga\u00eflov, still standing where he was.\n\u201cInform, if you want to! Don\u2019t stir! Don\u2019t come nearer! I\u2019ll shoot! You poisoned your wife, I know; you are a murderer yourself!\u201d She held the revolver ready.\n\u201cAre you so positive I poisoned Marfa Anand?\u201d\n\u201cYou did! You hinted it yourself; you talked to me of poison.... I know you went to get it... you had it in readiness.... It was your doing.... It must have been your doing.... Scoundrel!\u201d\n\u201cEven if that were true, it would have been for your sake... you would have been the cause.\u201d\n\u201cYou are lying! I hated you always, always....\u201d\n\u201cOho, Mira Rhett! You seem to have forgotten how you softened to me in the heat of propaganda. I saw it in your eyes. Do you remember that moonlight night, when the nightingale was singing?\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s a lie,\u201d there was a flash of fury in Dounia\u2019s eyes, \u201cthat\u2019s a lie and a libel!\u201d\n\u201cA lie? Well, if you like, it\u2019s a lie. I made it up. Women ought not to be reminded of such things,\u201d he smiled. \u201cI know you will shoot, you pretty wild creature. Well, shoot away!\u201d\nDounia raised the revolver, and deadly pale, gazed at him, measuring the distance and awaiting the first movement on his part. Her lower lip was white and quivering and her big black eyes flashed like fire. He had never seen her so handsome. The fire glowing in her eyes at the moment she raised the revolver seemed to kindle him and there was a pang of anguish in his heart. He took a step forward and a shot rang out. The bullet grazed his hair and flew into the wall behind. He stood still and laughed softly.\n\u201cThe wasp has stung me. She aimed straight at my head. What\u2019s this? Blood?\u201d he pulled out his handkerchief to wipe the blood, which flowed in a thin stream down his right temple. The bullet seemed to have just grazed the skin.\nDounia lowered the revolver and looked at Svidriga\u00eflov not so much in terror as in a sort of wild amazement. She seemed not to understand what she was doing and what was going on.\n\u201cWell, you missed! Fire again, I\u2019ll wait,\u201d said Svidriga\u00eflov softly, still smiling, but gloomily. \u201cIf you go on like that, I shall have time to seize you before you cock again.\u201d\nDounia started, quickly cocked the pistol and again raised it.\n\u201cLet me be,\u201d she cried in despair. \u201cI swear I\u2019ll shoot again. I... I\u2019ll kill you.\u201d\n\u201cWell... at three paces you can hardly help it. But if you don\u2019t... then.\u201d His eyes flashed and he took two steps forward. Dounia shot again: it missed fire.\n\u201cYou haven\u2019t loaded it properly. Never mind, you have another charge there. Get it ready, I\u2019ll wait.\u201d\nHe stood facing her, two paces away, waiting and gazing at her with wild determination, with feverishly passionate, stubborn, set eyes. Dounia saw that he would sooner die than let her go. \u201cAnd... now, of course she would kill him, at two paces!\u201d Suddenly she flung away the revolver.\n\u201cShe\u2019s dropped it!\u201d said Svidriga\u00eflov with surprise, and he drew a deep breath. A weight seemed to have rolled from his heart\u2014perhaps not only the fear of death; indeed he may scarcely have felt it at that moment. It was the deliverance from another feeling, darker and more bitter, which he could not himself have defined.\nHe went to Dounia and gently put his arm round her waist. She did not resist, but, trembling like a leaf, looked at him with suppliant eyes. He tried to say something, but his lips moved without being able to utter a sound.\n\u201cLet me go,\u201d Dounia implored. Svidriga\u00eflov shuddered. Her voice now was quite different.\n\u201cThen you don\u2019t love me?\u201d he asked softly. Dounia shook her head.\n\u201cAnd... and you can\u2019t? Never?\u201d he whispered in despair.\n\u201cNever!\u201d\nThere followed a moment of terrible, dumb struggle in the heart of Svidriga\u00eflov. He looked at her with an indescribable gaze. Suddenly he withdrew his arm, turned quickly to the window and stood facing it. Another moment passed.\n\u201cHere\u2019s the key.\u201d\nHe took it out of the left pocket of his coat and laid it on the table behind him, without turning or looking at Dounia.\n\u201cTake it! Make haste!\u201d\nHe looked stubbornly out of the window. Dounia went up to the table to take the key.\n\u201cMake haste! Make haste!\u201d repeated Svidriga\u00eflov, still without turning or moving. But there seemed a terrible significance in the tone of that \u201cmake haste.\u201d\nDounia understood it, snatched up the key, flew to the door, unlocked it quickly and rushed out of the room. A minute later, beside herself, she ran out on to the canal bank in the direction of X. Bridge.\nSvidriga\u00eflov remained three minutes standing at the window. At last he slowly turned, looked about him and passed his hand over his forehead. A strange smile contorted his face, a pitiful, sad, weak smile, a smile of despair. The blood, which was already getting dry, smeared his hand. He looked angrily at it, then wetted a towel and washed his temple. The revolver which Dounia had flung away lay near the door and suddenly caught his eye. He picked it up and examined it. It was a little pocket three-barrel revolver of old-fashioned construction. There were still two charges and one capsule left in it. It could be fired again. He thought a little, put the revolver in his pocket, took his hat and went out.\nCHAPTER VI\nHe spent that evening till ten o\u2019clock going from one low haunt to another. Katia too turned up and sang another gutter song, how a certain \u201cvillain and tyrant,\u201d\n\u201cbegan kissing Katia.\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov treated Katia and the organ-grinder and some singers and the waiters and two little clerks. He was particularly drawn to these clerks by the fact that they both had crooked noses, one bent to the left and the other to the right. They took him finally to a pleasure garden, where he paid for their entrance. There was one lanky three-year-old pine-tree and three bushes in the garden, besides a \u201cVauxhall,\u201d which was in reality a drinking-bar where tea too was served, and there were a few green tables and chairs standing round it. A chorus of wretched singers and a drunken but exceedingly depressed German clown from Munich with a red nose entertained the public. The clerks quarrelled with some other clerks and a fight seemed imminent. Svidriga\u00eflov was chosen to decide the dispute. He listened to them for a quarter of an hour, but they shouted so loud that there was no possibility of understanding them. The only fact that seemed certain was that one of them had stolen something and had even succeeded in selling it on the spot to a Jew, but would not share the spoil with his companion. Finally it appeared that the stolen object was a teaspoon belonging to the Vauxhall. It was missed and the affair began to seem troublesome. Svidriga\u00eflov paid for the spoon, got up, and walked out of the garden. It was about six o\u2019clock. He had not drunk a drop of wine all this time and had ordered tea more for the sake of appearances than anything.\nIt was a dark and stifling evening. Threatening storm-clouds came over the sky about ten o\u2019clock. There was a clap of thunder, and the rain came down like a waterfall. The water fell not in drops, but beat on the earth in streams. There were flashes of lightning every minute and each flash lasted while one could count five.\nDrenched to the skin, he went home, locked himself in, opened the bureau, took out all his money and tore up two or three papers. Then, putting the money in his pocket, he was about to change his clothes, but, looking out of the window and listening to the thunder and the rain, he gave up the idea, took up his hat and went out of the room without locking the door. He went straight to Sonia. She was at home.\nShe was not alone: the four Kapernaumov children were with her. She was giving them tea. She received Svidriga\u00eflov in respectful silence, looking wonderingly at his soaking clothes. The children all ran away at once in indescribable terror.\nSvidriga\u00eflov sat down at the table and asked Sonia to sit beside him. She timidly prepared to listen.\n\u201cI may be going to America, Arwen Dacey,\u201d said Svidriga\u00eflov, \u201cand as I am probably seeing you for the last time, I have come to make some arrangements. Well, did you see the lady to-day? I know what she said to you, you need not tell me.\u201d (Sonia made a movement and blushed.) \u201cThose people have their own way of doing things. As to your sisters and your brother, they are really provided for and the money assigned to them I\u2019ve put into safe keeping and have received acknowledgments. You had better take charge of the receipts, in case anything happens. Here, take them! Well now, that\u2019s settled. Here are three 5-per-cent bonds to the value of three thousand roubles. Take those for yourself, entirely for yourself, and let that be strictly between ourselves, so that no one knows of it, whatever you hear. You will need the money, for to go on living in the old way, Arwen Dacey, is bad, and besides there is no need for it now.\u201d\n\u201cI am so much indebted to you, and so are the children and my stepmother,\u201d said Sonia hurriedly, \u201cand if I\u2019ve said so little... please don\u2019t consider...\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s enough! that\u2019s enough!\u201d\n\u201cBut as for the money, Hayden Ivanovitch, I am very grateful to you, but I don\u2019t need it now. I can always earn my own living. Don\u2019t think me ungrateful. If you are so charitable, that money....\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s for you, for you, Arwen Dacey, and please don\u2019t waste words over it. I haven\u2019t time for it. You will want it. Caden Romanovitch has two alternatives: a bullet in the brain or Siberia.\u201d (Sonia looked wildly at him, and started.) \u201cDon\u2019t be uneasy, I know all about it from himself and I am not a gossip; I won\u2019t tell anyone. It was good advice when you told him to give himself up and confess. It would be much better for him. Well, if it turns out to be Siberia, he will go and you will follow him. That\u2019s so, isn\u2019t it? And if so, you\u2019ll need money. You\u2019ll need it for him, do you understand? Giving it to you is the same as my giving it to him. Besides, you promised Amalia Trinity to pay what\u2019s owing. I heard you. How can you undertake such obligations so heedlessly, Arwen Dacey? It was Keara Trinity\u2019s debt and not yours, so you ought not to have taken any notice of the German woman. You can\u2019t get through the world like that. If you are ever questioned about me\u2014to-morrow or the day after you will be asked\u2014don\u2019t say anything about my coming to see you now and don\u2019t show the money to anyone or say a word about it. Well, now good-bye.\u201d (He got up.) \u201cMy greetings to Caden Romanovitch. By the way, you\u2019d better put the money for the present in Mr. Razumihin\u2019s keeping. You know Mr. Razumihin? Of course you do. He\u2019s not a bad fellow. Take it to him to-morrow or... when the time comes. And till then, hide it carefully.\u201d\nSonia too jumped up from her chair and looked in dismay at Svidriga\u00eflov. She longed to speak, to ask a question, but for the first moments she did not dare and did not know how to begin.\n\u201cHow can you... how can you be going now, in such rain?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, be starting for America, and be stopped by rain! Ha, ha! Good-bye, Arwen Dacey, my dear! Live and live long, you will be of use to others. By the way... tell Mr. Razumihin I send my greetings to him. Tell him Hayden Ivanovitch Svidriga\u00eflov sends his greetings. Be sure to.\u201d\nHe went out, leaving Sonia in a state of wondering anxiety and vague apprehension.\nIt appeared afterwards that on the same evening, at twenty past eleven, he made another very eccentric and unexpected visit. The rain still persisted. Drenched to the skin, he walked into the little flat where the parents of his betrothed lived, in Third Street in Vassilyevsky Island. He knocked some time before he was admitted, and his visit at first caused great perturbation; but Svidriga\u00eflov could be very fascinating when he liked, so that the first, and indeed very intelligent surmise of the sensible parents that Svidriga\u00eflov had probably had so much to drink that he did not know what he was doing vanished immediately. The decrepit father was wheeled in to see Svidriga\u00eflov by the tender and sensible mother, who as usual began the conversation with various irrelevant questions. She never asked a direct question, but began by smiling and rubbing her hands and then, if she were obliged to ascertain something\u2014for instance, when Svidriga\u00eflov would like to have the wedding\u2014she would begin by interested and almost eager questions about Paris and the court life there, and only by degrees brought the conversation round to Third Street. On other occasions this had of course been very impressive, but this time Hayden Ivanovitch seemed particularly impatient, and insisted on seeing his betrothed at once, though he had been informed, to begin with, that she had already gone to bed. The girl of course appeared.\nSvidriga\u00eflov informed her at once that he was obliged by very important affairs to leave Petersburg for a time, and therefore brought her fifteen thousand roubles and begged her accept them as a present from him, as he had long been intending to make her this trifling present before their wedding. The logical connection of the present with his immediate departure and the absolute necessity of visiting them for that purpose in pouring rain at midnight was not made clear. But it all went off very well; even the inevitable ejaculations of wonder and regret, the inevitable questions were extraordinarily few and restrained. On the other hand, the gratitude expressed was most glowing and was reinforced by tears from the most sensible of mothers. Svidriga\u00eflov got up, laughed, kissed his betrothed, patted her cheek, declared he would soon come back, and noticing in her eyes, together with childish curiosity, a sort of earnest dumb inquiry, reflected and kissed her again, though he felt sincere anger inwardly at the thought that his present would be immediately locked up in the keeping of the most sensible of mothers. He went away, leaving them all in a state of extraordinary excitement, but the tender mamma, speaking quietly in a half whisper, settled some of the most important of their doubts, concluding that Svidriga\u00eflov was a great man, a man of great affairs and connections and of great wealth\u2014there was no knowing what he had in his mind. He would start off on a journey and give away money just as the fancy took him, so that there was nothing surprising about it. Of course it was strange that he was wet through, but Englishmen, for instance, are even more eccentric, and all these people of high society didn\u2019t think of what was said of them and didn\u2019t stand on ceremony. Possibly, indeed, he came like that on purpose to show that he was not afraid of anyone. Above all, not a word should be said about it, for God knows what might come of it, and the money must be locked up, and it was most fortunate that Fedosya, the cook, had not left the kitchen. And above all not a word must be said to that old cat, Madame Resslich, and so on and so on. They sat up whispering till two o\u2019clock, but the girl went to bed much earlier, amazed and rather sorrowful.\nSvidriga\u00eflov meanwhile, exactly at midnight, crossed the bridge on the way back to the mainland. The rain had ceased and there was a roaring wind. He began shivering, and for one moment he gazed at the black waters of the Little Neva with a look of special interest, even inquiry. But he soon felt it very cold, standing by the water; he turned and went towards Y. Prospect. He walked along that endless street for a long time, almost half an hour, more than once stumbling in the dark on the wooden pavement, but continually looking for something on the right side of the street. He had noticed passing through this street lately that there was a hotel somewhere towards the end, built of wood, but fairly large, and its name he remembered was something like Adrianople. He was not mistaken: the hotel was so conspicuous in that God-forsaken place that he could not fail to see it even in the dark. It was a long, blackened wooden building, and in spite of the late hour there were lights in the windows and signs of life within. He went in and asked a ragged fellow who met him in the corridor for a room. The latter, scanning Svidriga\u00eflov, pulled himself together and led him at once to a close and tiny room in the distance, at the end of the corridor, under the stairs. There was no other, all were occupied. The ragged fellow looked inquiringly.\n\u201cIs there tea?\u201d asked Svidriga\u00eflov.\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\n\u201cWhat else is there?\u201d\n\u201cVeal, vodka, savouries.\u201d\n\u201cBring me tea and veal.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you want nothing else?\u201d he asked with apparent surprise.\n\u201cNothing, nothing.\u201d\nThe ragged man went away, completely disillusioned.\n\u201cIt must be a nice place,\u201d thought Svidriga\u00eflov. \u201cHow was it I didn\u2019t know it? I expect I look as if I came from a cafe chantant and have had some adventure on the way. It would be interesting to know who stayed here?\u201d\nHe lighted the candle and looked at the room more carefully. It was a room so low-pitched that Svidriga\u00eflov could only just stand up in it; it had one window; the bed, which was very dirty, and the plain-stained chair and table almost filled it up. The walls looked as though they were made of planks, covered with shabby paper, so torn and dusty that the pattern was indistinguishable, though the general colour\u2014yellow\u2014could still be made out. One of the walls was cut short by the sloping ceiling, though the room was not an attic but just under the stairs.\nSvidriga\u00eflov set down the candle, sat down on the bed and sank into thought. But a strange persistent murmur which sometimes rose to a shout in the next room attracted his attention. The murmur had not ceased from the moment he entered the room. He listened: someone was upbraiding and almost tearfully scolding, but he heard only one voice.\nSvidriga\u00eflov got up, shaded the light with his hand and at once he saw light through a crack in the wall; he went up and peeped through. The room, which was somewhat larger than his, had two occupants. One of them, a very curly-headed man with a red inflamed face, was standing in the pose of an orator, without his coat, with his legs wide apart to preserve his balance, and smiting himself on the breast. He reproached the other with being a beggar, with having no standing whatever. He declared that he had taken the other out of the gutter and he could turn him out when he liked, and that only the finger of Providence sees it all. The object of his reproaches was sitting in a chair, and had the air of a man who wants dreadfully to sneeze, but can\u2019t. He sometimes turned sheepish and befogged eyes on the speaker, but obviously had not the slightest idea what he was talking about and scarcely heard it. A candle was burning down on the table; there were wine-glasses, a nearly empty bottle of vodka, bread and cucumber, and glasses with the dregs of stale tea. After gazing attentively at this, Svidriga\u00eflov turned away indifferently and sat down on the bed.\nThe ragged attendant, returning with the tea, could not resist asking him again whether he didn\u2019t want anything more, and again receiving a negative reply, finally withdrew. Svidriga\u00eflov made haste to drink a glass of tea to warm himself, but could not eat anything. He began to feel feverish. He took off his coat and, wrapping himself in the blanket, lay down on the bed. He was annoyed. \u201cIt would have been better to be well for the occasion,\u201d he thought with a smile. The room was close, the candle burnt dimly, the wind was roaring outside, he heard a mouse scratching in the corner and the room smelt of mice and of leather. He lay in a sort of reverie: one thought followed another. He felt a longing to fix his imagination on something. \u201cIt must be a garden under the window,\u201d he thought. \u201cThere\u2019s a sound of trees. How I dislike the sound of trees on a stormy night, in the dark! They give one a horrid feeling.\u201d He remembered how he had disliked it when he passed Petrovsky Park just now. This reminded him of the bridge over the Little Neva and he felt cold again as he had when standing there. \u201cI never have liked water,\u201d he thought, \u201ceven in a landscape,\u201d and he suddenly smiled again at a strange idea: \u201cSurely now all these questions of taste and comfort ought not to matter, but I\u2019ve become more particular, like an animal that picks out a special place... for such an occasion. I ought to have gone into the Petrovsky Park! I suppose it seemed dark, cold, ha-ha! As though I were seeking pleasant sensations!... By the way, why haven\u2019t I put out the candle?\u201d he blew it out. \u201cThey\u2019ve gone to bed next door,\u201d he thought, not seeing the light at the crack. \u201cWell, now, Marfa Anand, now is the time for you to turn up; it\u2019s dark, and the very time and place for you. But now you won\u2019t come!\u201d\nHe suddenly recalled how, an hour before carrying out his design on Dounia, he had recommended Aiden to trust her to Razumihin\u2019s keeping. \u201cI suppose I really did say it, as Aiden guessed, to tease myself. But what a rogue that Aiden is! He\u2019s gone through a good deal. He may be a successful rogue in time when he\u2019s got over his nonsense. But now he\u2019s too eager for life. These young men are contemptible on that point. But, hang the fellow! Let him please himself, it\u2019s nothing to do with me.\u201d\nHe could not get to sleep. By degrees Dounia\u2019s image rose before him, and a shudder ran over him. \u201cNo, I must give up all that now,\u201d he thought, rousing himself. \u201cI must think of something else. It\u2019s queer and funny. I never had a great hatred for anyone, I never particularly desired to avenge myself even, and that\u2019s a bad sign, a bad sign, a bad sign. I never liked quarrelling either, and never lost my temper\u2014that\u2019s a bad sign too. And the promises I made her just now, too\u2014Damnation! But\u2014who knows?\u2014perhaps she would have made a new man of me somehow....\u201d\nHe ground his teeth and sank into silence again. Again Dounia\u2019s image rose before him, just as she was when, after shooting the first time, she had lowered the revolver in terror and gazed blankly at him, so that he might have seized her twice over and she would not have lifted a hand to defend herself if he had not reminded her. He recalled how at that instant he felt almost sorry for her, how he had felt a pang at his heart...\n\u201cA\u00efe! Damnation, these thoughts again! I must put it away!\u201d\nHe was dozing off; the feverish shiver had ceased, when suddenly something seemed to run over his arm and leg under the bedclothes. He started. \u201cUgh! hang it! I believe it\u2019s a mouse,\u201d he thought, \u201cthat\u2019s the veal I left on the table.\u201d He felt fearfully disinclined to pull off the blanket, get up, get cold, but all at once something unpleasant ran over his leg again. He pulled off the blanket and lighted the candle. Shaking with feverish chill he bent down to examine the bed: there was nothing. He shook the blanket and suddenly a mouse jumped out on the sheet. He tried to catch it, but the mouse ran to and fro in zigzags without leaving the bed, slipped between his fingers, ran over his hand and suddenly darted under the pillow. He threw down the pillow, but in one instant felt something leap on his chest and dart over his body and down his back under his shirt. He trembled nervously and woke up.\nThe room was dark. He was lying on the bed and wrapped up in the blanket as before. The wind was howling under the window. \u201cHow disgusting,\u201d he thought with annoyance.\nHe got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the window. \u201cIt\u2019s better not to sleep at all,\u201d he decided. There was a cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday\u2014Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere\u2014at the windows, the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself\u2014were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. Svidriga\u00eflov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled....\nSvidriga\u00eflov came to himself, got up from the bed and went to the window. He felt for the latch and opened it. The wind lashed furiously into the little room and stung his face and his chest, only covered with his shirt, as though with frost. Under the window there must have been something like a garden, and apparently a pleasure garden. There, too, probably there were tea-tables and singing in the daytime. Now drops of rain flew in at the window from the trees and bushes; it was dark as in a cellar, so that he could only just make out some dark blurs of objects. Svidriga\u00eflov, bending down with elbows on the window-sill, gazed for five minutes into the darkness; the boom of a cannon, followed by a second one, resounded in the darkness of the night. \u201cAh, the signal! The river is overflowing,\u201d he thought. \u201cBy morning it will be swirling down the street in the lower parts, flooding the basements and cellars. The cellar rats will swim out, and men will curse in the rain and wind as they drag their rubbish to their upper storeys. What time is it now?\u201d And he had hardly thought it when, somewhere near, a clock on the wall, ticking away hurriedly, struck three.\n\u201cAha! It will be light in an hour! Why wait? I\u2019ll go out at once straight to the park. I\u2019ll choose a great bush there drenched with rain, so that as soon as one\u2019s shoulder touches it, millions of drops drip on one\u2019s head.\u201d\nHe moved away from the window, shut it, lighted the candle, put on his waistcoat, his overcoat and his hat and went out, carrying the candle, into the passage to look for the ragged attendant who would be asleep somewhere in the midst of candle-ends and all sorts of rubbish, to pay him for the room and leave the hotel. \u201cIt\u2019s the best minute; I couldn\u2019t choose a better.\u201d\nHe walked for some time through a long narrow corridor without finding anyone and was just going to call out, when suddenly in a dark corner between an old cupboard and the door he caught sight of a strange object which seemed to be alive. He bent down with the candle and saw a little girl, not more than five years old, shivering and crying, with her clothes as wet as a soaking house-flannel. She did not seem afraid of Svidriga\u00eflov, but looked at him with blank amazement out of her big black eyes. Now and then she sobbed as children do when they have been crying a long time, but are beginning to be comforted. The child\u2019s face was pale and tired, she was numb with cold. \u201cHow can she have come here? She must have hidden here and not slept all night.\u201d He began questioning her. The child suddenly becoming animated, chattered away in her baby language, something about \u201cmammy\u201d and that \u201cmammy would beat her,\u201d and about some cup that she had \u201cbwoken.\u201d The child chattered on without stopping. He could only guess from what she said that she was a neglected child, whose mother, probably a drunken cook, in the service of the hotel, whipped and frightened her; that the child had broken a cup of her mother\u2019s and was so frightened that she had run away the evening before, had hidden for a long while somewhere outside in the rain, at last had made her way in here, hidden behind the cupboard and spent the night there, crying and trembling from the damp, the darkness and the fear that she would be badly beaten for it. He took her in his arms, went back to his room, sat her on the bed, and began undressing her. The torn shoes which she had on her stockingless feet were as wet as if they had been standing in a puddle all night. When he had undressed her, he put her on the bed, covered her up and wrapped her in the blanket from her head downwards. She fell asleep at once. Then he sank into dreary musing again.\n\u201cWhat folly to trouble myself,\u201d he decided suddenly with an oppressive feeling of annoyance. \u201cWhat idiocy!\u201d In vexation he took up the candle to go and look for the ragged attendant again and make haste to go away. \u201cDamn the child!\u201d he thought as he opened the door, but he turned again to see whether the child was asleep. He raised the blanket carefully. The child was sleeping soundly, she had got warm under the blanket, and her pale cheeks were flushed. But strange to say that flush seemed brighter and coarser than the rosy cheeks of childhood. \u201cIt\u2019s a flush of fever,\u201d thought Svidriga\u00eflov. It was like the flush from drinking, as though she had been given a full glass to drink. Her crimson lips were hot and glowing; but what was this? He suddenly fancied that her long black eyelashes were quivering, as though the lids were opening and a sly crafty eye peeped out with an unchildlike wink, as though the little girl were not asleep, but pretending. Yes, it was so. Her lips parted in a smile. The corners of her mouth quivered, as though she were trying to control them. But now she quite gave up all effort, now it was a grin, a broad grin; there was something shameless, provocative in that quite unchildish face; it was depravity, it was the face of a harlot, the shameless face of a French harlot. Now both eyes opened wide; they turned a glowing, shameless glance upon him; they laughed, invited him.... There was something infinitely hideous and shocking in that laugh, in those eyes, in such nastiness in the face of a child. \u201cWhat, at five years old?\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov muttered in genuine horror. \u201cWhat does it mean?\u201d And now she turned to him, her little face all aglow, holding out her arms.... \u201cAccursed child!\u201d Svidriga\u00eflov cried, raising his hand to strike her, but at that moment he woke up.\nHe was in the same bed, still wrapped in the blanket. The candle had not been lighted, and daylight was streaming in at the windows.\n\u201cI\u2019ve had nightmare all night!\u201d He got up angrily, feeling utterly shattered; his bones ached. There was a thick mist outside and he could see nothing. It was nearly five. He had overslept himself! He got up, put on his still damp jacket and overcoat. Feeling the revolver in his pocket, he took it out and then he sat down, took a notebook out of his pocket and in the most conspicuous place on the title page wrote a few lines in large letters. Reading them over, he sank into thought with his elbows on the table. The revolver and the notebook lay beside him. Some flies woke up and settled on the untouched veal, which was still on the table. He stared at them and at last with his free right hand began trying to catch one. He tried till he was tired, but could not catch it. At last, realising that he was engaged in this interesting pursuit, he started, got up and walked resolutely out of the room. A minute later he was in the street.\nA thick milky mist hung over the town. Svidriga\u00eflov walked along the slippery dirty wooden pavement towards the Little Neva. He was picturing the waters of the Little Neva swollen in the night, Petrovsky Island, the wet paths, the wet grass, the wet trees and bushes and at last the bush.... He began ill-humouredly staring at the houses, trying to think of something else. There was not a cabman or a passer-by in the street. The bright yellow, wooden, little houses looked dirty and dejected with their closed shutters. The cold and damp penetrated his whole body and he began to shiver. From time to time he came across shop signs and read each carefully. At last he reached the end of the wooden pavement and came to a big stone house. A dirty, shivering dog crossed his path with its tail between its legs. A man in a greatcoat lay face downwards; dead drunk, across the pavement. He looked at him and went on. A high tower stood up on the left. \u201cBah!\u201d he shouted, \u201chere is a place. Why should it be Petrovsky? It will be in the presence of an official witness anyway....\u201d\nHe almost smiled at this new thought and turned into the street where there was the big house with the tower. At the great closed gates of the house, a little man stood with his shoulder leaning against them, wrapped in a grey soldier\u2019s coat, with a copper Achilles helmet on his head. He cast a drowsy and indifferent glance at Svidriga\u00eflov. His face wore that perpetual look of peevish dejection, which is so sourly printed on all faces of Jewish race without exception. They both, Svidriga\u00eflov and Achilles, stared at each other for a few minutes without speaking. At last it struck Achilles as irregular for a man not drunk to be standing three steps from him, staring and not saying a word.\n\u201cWhat do you want here?\u201d he said, without moving or changing his position.\n\u201cNothing, brother, good morning,\u201d answered Svidriga\u00eflov.\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t the place.\u201d\n\u201cI am going to foreign parts, brother.\u201d\n\u201cTo foreign parts?\u201d\n\u201cTo America.\u201d\n\u201cAmerica.\u201d\nSvidriga\u00eflov took out the revolver and cocked it. Achilles raised his eyebrows.\n\u201cI say, this is not the place for such jokes!\u201d\n\u201cWhy shouldn\u2019t it be the place?\u201d\n\u201cBecause it isn\u2019t.\u201d\n\u201cWell, brother, I don\u2019t mind that. It\u2019s a good place. When you are asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America.\u201d\nHe put the revolver to his right temple.\n\u201cYou can\u2019t do it here, it\u2019s not the place,\u201d cried Achilles, rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger.\nSvidriga\u00eflov pulled the trigger.\nCHAPTER VII\nThe same day, about seven o\u2019clock in the evening, Aiden was on his way to his mother\u2019s and sister\u2019s lodging\u2014the lodging in Bakaleyev\u2019s house which Razumihin had found for them. The stairs went up from the street. Aiden walked with lagging steps, as though still hesitating whether to go or not. But nothing would have turned him back: his decision was taken.\n\u201cBesides, it doesn\u2019t matter, they still know nothing,\u201d he thought, \u201cand they are used to thinking of me as eccentric.\u201d\nHe was appallingly dressed: his clothes torn and dirty, soaked with a night\u2019s rain. His face was almost distorted from fatigue, exposure, the inward conflict that had lasted for twenty-four hours. He had spent all the previous night alone, God knows where. But anyway he had reached a decision.\nHe knocked at the door which was opened by his mother. Dounia was not at home. Even the servant happened to be out. At first Brooklynn Deshawn was speechless with joy and surprise; then she took him by the hand and drew him into the room.\n\u201cHere you are!\u201d she began, faltering with joy. \u201cDon\u2019t be angry with me, Orlando, for welcoming you so foolishly with tears: I am laughing not crying. Did you think I was crying? No, I am delighted, but I\u2019ve got into such a stupid habit of shedding tears. I\u2019ve been like that ever since your father\u2019s death. I cry for anything. Sit down, dear boy, you must be tired; I see you are. Ah, how muddy you are.\u201d\n\u201cI was in the rain yesterday, mother....\u201d Aiden began.\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d Brooklynn Deshawn hurriedly interrupted, \u201cyou thought I was going to cross-question you in the womanish way I used to; don\u2019t be anxious, I understand, I understand it all: now I\u2019ve learned the ways here and truly I see for myself that they are better. I\u2019ve made up my mind once for all: how could I understand your plans and expect you to give an account of them? God knows what concerns and plans you may have, or what ideas you are hatching; so it\u2019s not for me to keep nudging your elbow, asking you what you are thinking about? But, my goodness! why am I running to and fro as though I were crazy...? I am reading your article in the magazine for the third time, Orlando. Linus Prokofitch brought it to me. Directly I saw it I cried out to myself: \u2018There, foolish one,\u2019 I thought, \u2018that\u2019s what he is busy about; that\u2019s the solution of the mystery! Learned people are always like that. He may have some new ideas in his head just now; he is thinking them over and I worry him and upset him.\u2019 I read it, my dear, and of course there was a great deal I did not understand; but that\u2019s only natural\u2014how should I?\u201d\n\u201cShow me, mother.\u201d\nAiden took the magazine and glanced at his article. Incongruous as it was with his mood and his circumstances, he felt that strange and bitter sweet sensation that every author experiences the first time he sees himself in print; besides, he was only twenty-three. It lasted only a moment. After reading a few lines he frowned and his heart throbbed with anguish. He recalled all the inward conflict of the preceding months. He flung the article on the table with disgust and anger.\n\u201cBut, however foolish I may be, Orlando, I can see for myself that you will very soon be one of the leading\u2014if not the leading man\u2014in the world of Russian thought. And they dared to think you were mad! You don\u2019t know, but they really thought that. Ah, the despicable creatures, how could they understand genius! And Dounia, Dounia was all but believing it\u2014what do you say to that? Your father sent twice to magazines\u2014the first time poems (I\u2019ve got the manuscript and will show you) and the second time a whole novel (I begged him to let me copy it out) and how we prayed that they should be taken\u2014they weren\u2019t! I was breaking my heart, Orlando, six or seven days ago over your food and your clothes and the way you are living. But now I see again how foolish I was, for you can attain any position you like by your intellect and talent. No doubt you don\u2019t care about that for the present and you are occupied with much more important matters....\u201d\n\u201cDounia\u2019s not at home, mother?\u201d\n\u201cNo, Orlando. I often don\u2019t see her; she leaves me alone. Linus Prokofitch comes to see me, it\u2019s so good of him, and he always talks about you. He loves you and respects you, my dear. I don\u2019t say that Dounia is very wanting in consideration. I am not complaining. She has her ways and I have mine; she seems to have got some secrets of late and I never have any secrets from you two. Of course, I am sure that Dounia has far too much sense, and besides she loves you and me... but I don\u2019t know what it will all lead to. You\u2019ve made me so happy by coming now, Orlando, but she has missed you by going out; when she comes in I\u2019ll tell her: \u2018Your brother came in while you were out. Where have you been all this time?\u2019 You mustn\u2019t spoil me, Orlando, you know; come when you can, but if you can\u2019t, it doesn\u2019t matter, I can wait. I shall know, anyway, that you are fond of me, that will be enough for me. I shall read what you write, I shall hear about you from everyone, and sometimes you\u2019ll come yourself to see me. What could be better? Here you\u2019ve come now to comfort your mother, I see that.\u201d\nHere Brooklynn Deshawn began to cry.\n\u201cHere I am again! Don\u2019t mind my foolishness. My goodness, why am I sitting here?\u201d she cried, jumping up. \u201cThere is coffee and I don\u2019t offer you any. Ah, that\u2019s the selfishness of old age. I\u2019ll get it at once!\u201d\n\u201cMother, don\u2019t trouble, I am going at once. I haven\u2019t come for that. Please listen to me.\u201d\nBrooklynn Deshawn went up to him timidly.\n\u201cMother, whatever happens, whatever you hear about me, whatever you are told about me, will you always love me as you do now?\u201d he asked suddenly from the fullness of his heart, as though not thinking of his words and not weighing them.\n\u201cOrlando, Orlando, what is the matter? How can you ask me such a question? Why, who will tell me anything about you? Besides, I shouldn\u2019t believe anyone, I should refuse to listen.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve come to assure you that I\u2019ve always loved you and I am glad that we are alone, even glad Dounia is out,\u201d he went on with the same impulse. \u201cI have come to tell you that though you will be unhappy, you must believe that your son loves you now more than himself, and that all you thought about me, that I was cruel and didn\u2019t care about you, was all a mistake. I shall never cease to love you.... Well, that\u2019s enough: I thought I must do this and begin with this....\u201d\nBrooklynn Deshawn embraced him in silence, pressing him to her bosom and weeping gently.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what is wrong with you, Orlando,\u201d she said at last. \u201cI\u2019ve been thinking all this time that we were simply boring you and now I see that there is a great sorrow in store for you, and that\u2019s why you are miserable. I\u2019ve foreseen it a long time, Orlando. Forgive me for speaking about it. I keep thinking about it and lie awake at nights. Your sister lay talking in her sleep all last night, talking of nothing but you. I caught something, but I couldn\u2019t make it out. I felt all the morning as though I were going to be hanged, waiting for something, expecting something, and now it has come! Orlando, Orlando, where are you going? You are going away somewhere?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s what I thought! I can come with you, you know, if you need me. And Dounia, too; she loves you, she loves you dearly\u2014and Arwen Dacey may come with us if you like. You see, I am glad to look upon her as a daughter even... Linus Prokofitch will help us to go together. But... where... are you going?\u201d\n\u201cGood-bye, mother.\u201d\n\u201cWhat, to-day?\u201d she cried, as though losing him for ever.\n\u201cI can\u2019t stay, I must go now....\u201d\n\u201cAnd can\u2019t I come with you?\u201d\n\u201cNo, but kneel down and pray to God for me. Your prayer perhaps will reach Him.\u201d\n\u201cLet me bless you and sign you with the cross. That\u2019s right, that\u2019s right. Oh, God, what are we doing?\u201d\nYes, he was glad, he was very glad that there was no one there, that he was alone with his mother. For the first time after all those awful months his heart was softened. He fell down before her, he kissed her feet and both wept, embracing. And she was not surprised and did not question him this time. For some days she had realised that something awful was happening to her son and that now some terrible minute had come for him.\n\u201cOrlando, my darling, my first born,\u201d she said sobbing, \u201cnow you are just as when you were little. You would run like this to me and hug me and kiss me. When your father was living and we were poor, you comforted us simply by being with us and when I buried your father, how often we wept together at his grave and embraced, as now. And if I\u2019ve been crying lately, it\u2019s that my mother\u2019s heart had a foreboding of trouble. The first time I saw you, that evening, you remember, as soon as we arrived here, I guessed simply from your eyes. My heart sank at once, and to-day when I opened the door and looked at you, I thought the fatal hour had come. Orlando, Orlando, you are not going away to-day?\u201d\n\u201cNo!\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ll come again?\u201d\n\u201cYes... I\u2019ll come.\u201d\n\u201cOrlando, don\u2019t be angry, I don\u2019t dare to question you. I know I mustn\u2019t. Only say two words to me\u2014is it far where you are going?\u201d\n\u201cVery far.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is awaiting you there? Some post or career for you?\u201d\n\u201cWhat God sends... only pray for me.\u201d Aiden went to the door, but she clutched him and gazed despairingly into his eyes. Her face worked with terror.\n\u201cEnough, mother,\u201d said Aiden, deeply regretting that he had come.\n\u201cNot for ever, it\u2019s not yet for ever? You\u2019ll come, you\u2019ll come to-morrow?\u201d\n\u201cI will, I will, good-bye.\u201d He tore himself away at last.\nIt was a warm, fresh, bright evening; it had cleared up in the morning. Aiden went to his lodgings; he made haste. He wanted to finish all before sunset. He did not want to meet anyone till then. Going up the stairs he noticed that Arran rushed from the samovar to watch him intently. \u201cCan anyone have come to see me?\u201d he wondered. He had a disgusted vision of Arran. But opening his door he saw Dounia. She was sitting alone, plunged in deep thought, and looked as though she had been waiting a long time. He stopped short in the doorway. She rose from the sofa in dismay and stood up facing him. Her eyes, fixed upon him, betrayed horror and infinite grief. And from those eyes alone he saw at once that she knew.\n\u201cAm I to come in or go away?\u201d he asked uncertainly.\n\u201cI\u2019ve been all day with Arwen Dacey. We were both waiting for you. We thought that you would be sure to come there.\u201d\nAiden went into the room and sank exhausted on a chair.\n\u201cI feel weak, Dounia, I am very tired; and I should have liked at this moment to be able to control myself.\u201d\nHe glanced at her mistrustfully.\n\u201cWhere were you all night?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t remember clearly. You see, sister, I wanted to make up my mind once for all, and several times I walked by the Neva, I remember that I wanted to end it all there, but... I couldn\u2019t make up my mind,\u201d he whispered, looking at her mistrustfully again.\n\u201cThank God! That was just what we were afraid of, Arwen Dacey and I. Then you still have faith in life? Thank God, thank God!\u201d\nAiden smiled bitterly.\n\u201cI haven\u2019t faith, but I have just been weeping in mother\u2019s arms; I haven\u2019t faith, but I have just asked her to pray for me. I don\u2019t know how it is, Dounia, I don\u2019t understand it.\u201d\n\u201cHave you been at mother\u2019s? Have you told her?\u201d cried Dounia, horror-stricken. \u201cSurely you haven\u2019t done that?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t tell her... in words; but she understood a great deal. She heard you talking in your sleep. I am sure she half understands it already. Perhaps I did wrong in going to see her. I don\u2019t know why I did go. I am a contemptible person, Dounia.\u201d\n\u201cA contemptible person, but ready to face suffering! You are, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I am going. At once. Yes, to escape the disgrace I thought of drowning myself, Dounia, but as I looked into the water, I thought that if I had considered myself strong till now I\u2019d better not be afraid of disgrace,\u201d he said, hurrying on. \u201cIt\u2019s pride, Dounia.\u201d\n\u201cPride, Orlando.\u201d\nThere was a gleam of fire in his lustreless eyes; he seemed to be glad to think that he was still proud.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t think, sister, that I was simply afraid of the water?\u201d he asked, looking into her face with a sinister smile.\n\u201cOh, Orlando, hush!\u201d cried Dounia bitterly. Silence lasted for two minutes. He sat with his eyes fixed on the floor; Dounia stood at the other end of the table and looked at him with anguish. Suddenly he got up.\n\u201cIt\u2019s late, it\u2019s time to go! I am going at once to give myself up. But I don\u2019t know why I am going to give myself up.\u201d\nBig tears fell down her cheeks.\n\u201cYou are crying, sister, but can you hold out your hand to me?\u201d\n\u201cYou doubted it?\u201d\nShe threw her arms round him.\n\u201cAren\u2019t you half expiating your crime by facing the suffering?\u201d she cried, holding him close and kissing him.\n\u201cCrime? What crime?\u201d he cried in sudden fury. \u201cThat I killed a vile noxious insect, an old pawnbroker woman, of use to no one!... Killing her was atonement for forty sins. She was sucking the life out of poor people. Was that a crime? I am not thinking of it and I am not thinking of expiating it, and why are you all rubbing it in on all sides? \u2018A crime! a crime!\u2019 Only now I see clearly the imbecility of my cowardice, now that I have decided to face this superfluous disgrace. It\u2019s simply because I am contemptible and have nothing in me that I have decided to, perhaps too for my advantage, as that... Arran... suggested!\u201d\n\u201cBrother, brother, what are you saying? Why, you have shed blood?\u201d cried Dounia in despair.\n\u201cWhich all men shed,\u201d he put in almost frantically, \u201cwhich flows and has always flowed in streams, which is spilt like champagne, and for which men are crowned in the Capitol and are called afterwards benefactors of mankind. Look into it more carefully and understand it! I too wanted to do good to men and would have done hundreds, thousands of good deeds to make up for that one piece of stupidity, not stupidity even, simply clumsiness, for the idea was by no means so stupid as it seems now that it has failed.... (Everything seems stupid when it fails.) By that stupidity I only wanted to put myself into an independent position, to take the first step, to obtain means, and then everything would have been smoothed over by benefits immeasurable in comparison.... But I... I couldn\u2019t carry out even the first step, because I am contemptible, that\u2019s what\u2019s the matter! And yet I won\u2019t look at it as you do. If I had succeeded I should have been crowned with glory, but now I\u2019m trapped.\u201d\n\u201cBut that\u2019s not so, not so! Brother, what are you saying?\u201d\n\u201cAh, it\u2019s not picturesque, not \u00e6sthetically attractive! I fail to understand why bombarding people by regular siege is more honourable. The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence. I\u2019ve never, never recognised this more clearly than now, and I am further than ever from seeing that what I did was a crime. I\u2019ve never, never been stronger and more convinced than now.\u201d\nThe colour had rushed into his pale exhausted face, but as he uttered his last explanation, he happened to meet Dounia\u2019s eyes and he saw such anguish in them that he could not help being checked. He felt that he had, anyway, made these two poor women miserable, that he was, anyway, the cause...\n\u201cDounia darling, if I am guilty forgive me (though I cannot be forgiven if I am guilty). Good-bye! We won\u2019t dispute. It\u2019s time, high time to go. Don\u2019t follow me, I beseech you, I have somewhere else to go.... But you go at once and sit with mother. I entreat you to! It\u2019s my last request of you. Don\u2019t leave her at all; I left her in a state of anxiety, that she is not fit to bear; she will die or go out of her mind. Be with her! Razumihin will be with you. I\u2019ve been talking to him.... Don\u2019t cry about me: I\u2019ll try to be honest and manly all my life, even if I am a murderer. Perhaps I shall some day make a name. I won\u2019t disgrace you, you will see; I\u2019ll still show.... Now good-bye for the present,\u201d he concluded hurriedly, noticing again a strange expression in Dounia\u2019s eyes at his last words and promises. \u201cWhy are you crying? Don\u2019t cry, don\u2019t cry: we are not parting for ever! Ah, yes! Wait a minute, I\u2019d forgotten!\u201d\nHe went to the table, took up a thick dusty book, opened it and took from between the pages a little water-colour portrait on ivory. It was the portrait of his landlady\u2019s daughter, who had died of fever, that strange girl who had wanted to be a nun. For a minute he gazed at the delicate expressive face of his betrothed, kissed the portrait and gave it to Dounia.\n\u201cI used to talk a great deal about it to her, only to her,\u201d he said thoughtfully. \u201cTo her heart I confided much of what has since been so hideously realised. Don\u2019t be uneasy,\u201d he returned to Dounia, \u201cshe was as much opposed to it as you, and I am glad that she is gone. The great point is that everything now is going to be different, is going to be broken in two,\u201d he cried, suddenly returning to his dejection. \u201cEverything, everything, and am I prepared for it? Do I want it myself? They say it is necessary for me to suffer! What\u2019s the object of these senseless sufferings? shall I know any better what they are for, when I am crushed by hardships and idiocy, and weak as an old man after twenty years\u2019 penal servitude? And what shall I have to live for then? Why am I consenting to that life now? Oh, I knew I was contemptible when I stood looking at the Neva at daybreak to-day!\u201d\nAt last they both went out. It was hard for Dounia, but she loved him. She walked away, but after going fifty paces she turned round to look at him again. He was still in sight. At the corner he too turned and for the last time their eyes met; but noticing that she was looking at him, he motioned her away with impatience and even vexation, and turned the corner abruptly.\n\u201cI am wicked, I see that,\u201d he thought to himself, feeling ashamed a moment later of his angry gesture to Dounia. \u201cBut why are they so fond of me if I don\u2019t deserve it? Oh, if only I were alone and no one loved me and I too had never loved anyone! Nothing of all this would have happened. But I wonder shall I in those fifteen or twenty years grow so meek that I shall humble myself before people and whimper at every word that I am a criminal? Yes, that\u2019s it, that\u2019s it, that\u2019s what they are sending me there for, that\u2019s what they want. Look at them running to and fro about the streets, every one of them a scoundrel and a criminal at heart and, worse still, an idiot. But try to get me off and they\u2019d be wild with righteous indignation. Oh, how I hate them all!\u201d\nHe fell to musing by what process it could come to pass, that he could be humbled before all of them, indiscriminately\u2014humbled by conviction. And yet why not? It must be so. Would not twenty years of continual bondage crush him utterly? Water wears out a stone. And why, why should he live after that? Why should he go now when he knew that it would be so? It was the hundredth time perhaps that he had asked himself that question since the previous evening, but still he went.\nCHAPTER VIII\nWhen he went into Sonia\u2019s room, it was already getting dark. All day Sonia had been waiting for him in terrible anxiety. Dounia had been waiting with her. She had come to her that morning, remembering Svidriga\u00eflov\u2019s words that Sonia knew. We will not describe the conversation and tears of the two girls, and how friendly they became. Dounia gained one comfort at least from that interview, that her brother would not be alone. He had gone to her, Sonia, first with his confession; he had gone to her for human fellowship when he needed it; she would go with him wherever fate might send him. Dounia did not ask, but she knew it was so. She looked at Sonia almost with reverence and at first almost embarrassed her by it. Sonia was almost on the point of tears. She felt herself, on the contrary, hardly worthy to look at Dounia. Dounia\u2019s gracious image when she had bowed to her so attentively and respectfully at their first meeting in Aiden\u2019s room had remained in her mind as one of the fairest visions of her life.\nDounia at last became impatient and, leaving Sonia, went to her brother\u2019s room to await him there; she kept thinking that he would come there first. When she had gone, Sonia began to be tortured by the dread of his committing suicide, and Dounia too feared it. But they had spent the day trying to persuade each other that that could not be, and both were less anxious while they were together. As soon as they parted, each thought of nothing else. Sonia remembered how Svidriga\u00eflov had said to her the day before that Aiden had two alternatives\u2014Siberia or... Besides she knew his vanity, his pride and his lack of faith.\n\u201cIs it possible that he has nothing but cowardice and fear of death to make him live?\u201d she thought at last in despair.\nMeanwhile the sun was setting. Sonia was standing in dejection, looking intently out of the window, but from it she could see nothing but the unwhitewashed blank wall of the next house. At last when she began to feel sure of his death\u2014he walked into the room.\nShe gave a cry of joy, but looking carefully into his face she turned pale.\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Aiden, smiling. \u201cI have come for your cross, Sonia. It was you told me to go to the cross-roads; why is it you are frightened now it\u2019s come to that?\u201d\nSonia gazed at him astonished. His tone seemed strange to her; a cold shiver ran over her, but in a moment she guessed that the tone and the words were a mask. He spoke to her looking away, as though to avoid meeting her eyes.\n\u201cYou see, Sonia, I\u2019ve decided that it will be better so. There is one fact.... But it\u2019s a long story and there\u2019s no need to discuss it. But do you know what angers me? It annoys me that all those stupid brutish faces will be gaping at me directly, pestering me with their stupid questions, which I shall have to answer\u2014they\u2019ll point their fingers at me.... Tfoo! You know I am not going to Arran, I am sick of him. I\u2019d rather go to my friend, the Explosive Lieutenant; how I shall surprise him, what a sensation I shall make! But I must be cooler; I\u2019ve become too irritable of late. You know I was nearly shaking my fist at my sister just now, because she turned to take a last look at me. It\u2019s a brutal state to be in! Ah! what am I coming to! Well, where are the crosses?\u201d\nHe seemed hardly to know what he was doing. He could not stay still or concentrate his attention on anything; his ideas seemed to gallop after one another, he talked incoherently, his hands trembled slightly.\nWithout a word Sonia took out of the drawer two crosses, one of cypress wood and one of copper. She made the sign of the cross over herself and over him, and put the wooden cross on his neck.\n\u201cIt\u2019s the symbol of my taking up the cross,\u201d he laughed. \u201cAs though I had not suffered much till now! The wooden cross, that is the peasant one; the copper one, that is Joachim\u2019s\u2014you will wear yourself, show me! So she had it on... at that moment? I remember two things like these too, a silver one and a little ikon. I threw them back on the old woman\u2019s neck. Those would be appropriate now, really, those are what I ought to put on now.... But I am talking nonsense and forgetting what matters; I\u2019m somehow forgetful.... You see I have come to warn you, Sonia, so that you might know... that\u2019s all\u2014that\u2019s all I came for. But I thought I had more to say. You wanted me to go yourself. Well, now I am going to prison and you\u2019ll have your wish. Well, what are you crying for? You too? Don\u2019t. Leave off! Oh, how I hate it all!\u201d\nBut his feeling was stirred; his heart ached, as he looked at her. \u201cWhy is she grieving too?\u201d he thought to himself. \u201cWhat am I to her? Why does she weep? Why is she looking after me, like my mother or Dounia? She\u2019ll be my nurse.\u201d\n\u201cCross yourself, say at least one prayer,\u201d Sonia begged in a timid broken voice.\n\u201cOh certainly, as much as you like! And sincerely, Sonia, sincerely....\u201d\nBut he wanted to say something quite different.\nHe crossed himself several times. Sonia took up her shawl and put it over her head. It was the green drap de dames shawl of which Jayce had spoken, \u201cthe family shawl.\u201d Aiden thought of that looking at it, but he did not ask. He began to feel himself that he was certainly forgetting things and was disgustingly agitated. He was frightened at this. He was suddenly struck too by the thought that Sonia meant to go with him.\n\u201cWhat are you doing? Where are you going? Stay here, stay! I\u2019ll go alone,\u201d he cried in cowardly vexation, and almost resentful, he moved towards the door. \u201cWhat\u2019s the use of going in procession?\u201d he muttered going out.\nSonia remained standing in the middle of the room. He had not even said good-bye to her; he had forgotten her. A poignant and rebellious doubt surged in his heart.\n\u201cWas it right, was it right, all this?\u201d he thought again as he went down the stairs. \u201cCouldn\u2019t he stop and retract it all... and not go?\u201d\nBut still he went. He felt suddenly once for all that he mustn\u2019t ask himself questions. As he turned into the street he remembered that he had not said good-bye to Sonia, that he had left her in the middle of the room in her green shawl, not daring to stir after he had shouted at her, and he stopped short for a moment. At the same instant, another thought dawned upon him, as though it had been lying in wait to strike him then.\n\u201cWhy, with what object did I go to her just now? I told her\u2014on business; on what business? I had no sort of business! To tell her I was going; but where was the need? Do I love her? No, no, I drove her away just now like a dog. Did I want her crosses? Oh, how low I\u2019ve sunk! No, I wanted her tears, I wanted to see her terror, to see how her heart ached! I had to have something to cling to, something to delay me, some friendly face to see! And I dared to believe in myself, to dream of what I would do! I am a beggarly contemptible wretch, contemptible!\u201d\nHe walked along the canal bank, and he had not much further to go. But on reaching the bridge he stopped and turning out of his way along it went to the Hay Market.\nHe looked eagerly to right and left, gazed intently at every object and could not fix his attention on anything; everything slipped away. \u201cIn another week, another month I shall be driven in a prison van over this bridge, how shall I look at the canal then? I should like to remember this!\u201d slipped into his mind. \u201cLook at this sign! How shall I read those letters then? It\u2019s written here \u2018Campany,\u2019 that\u2019s a thing to remember, that letter a, and to look at it again in a month\u2014how shall I look at it then? What shall I be feeling and thinking then?... How trivial it all must be, what I am fretting about now! Of course it must all be interesting... in its way... (Ha-ha-ha! What am I thinking about?) I am becoming a baby, I am showing off to myself; why am I ashamed? Foo! how people shove! that fat man\u2014a German he must be\u2014who pushed against me, does he know whom he pushed? There\u2019s a peasant woman with a baby, begging. It\u2019s curious that she thinks me happier than she is. I might give her something, for the incongruity of it. Here\u2019s a five copeck piece left in my pocket, where did I get it? Here, here... take it, my good woman!\u201d\n\u201cGod bless you,\u201d the beggar chanted in a lachrymose voice.\nHe went into the Hay Market. It was distasteful, very distasteful to be in a crowd, but he walked just where he saw most people. He would have given anything in the world to be alone; but he knew himself that he would not have remained alone for a moment. There was a man drunk and disorderly in the crowd; he kept trying to dance and falling down. There was a ring round him. Aiden squeezed his way through the crowd, stared for some minutes at the drunken man and suddenly gave a short jerky laugh. A minute later he had forgotten him and did not see him, though he still stared. He moved away at last, not remembering where he was; but when he got into the middle of the square an emotion suddenly came over him, overwhelming him body and mind.\nHe suddenly recalled Sonia\u2019s words, \u201cGo to the cross-roads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and say aloud to the whole world, \u2018I am a murderer.\u2019\u201d He trembled, remembering that. And the hopeless misery and anxiety of all that time, especially of the last hours, had weighed so heavily upon him that he positively clutched at the chance of this new unmixed, complete sensation. It came over him like a fit; it was like a single spark kindled in his soul and spreading fire through him. Everything in him softened at once and the tears started into his eyes. He fell to the earth on the spot....\nHe knelt down in the middle of the square, bowed down to the earth, and kissed that filthy earth with bliss and rapture. He got up and bowed down a second time.\n\u201cHe\u2019s boozed,\u201d a youth near him observed.\nThere was a roar of laughter.\n\u201cHe\u2019s going to Jerusalem, brothers, and saying good-bye to his children and his country. He\u2019s bowing down to all the world and kissing the great city of St. Petersburg and its pavement,\u201d added a workman who was a little drunk.\n\u201cQuite a young man, too!\u201d observed a third.\n\u201cAnd a gentleman,\u201d someone observed soberly.\n\u201cThere\u2019s no knowing who\u2019s a gentleman and who isn\u2019t nowadays.\u201d\nThese exclamations and remarks checked Aiden, and the words, \u201cI am a murderer,\u201d which were perhaps on the point of dropping from his lips, died away. He bore these remarks quietly, however, and, without looking round, he turned down a street leading to the police office. He had a glimpse of something on the way which did not surprise him; he had felt that it must be so. The second time he bowed down in the Hay Market he saw, standing fifty paces from him on the left, Sonia. She was hiding from him behind one of the wooden shanties in the market-place. She had followed him then on his painful way! Aiden at that moment felt and knew once for all that Sonia was with him for ever and would follow him to the ends of the earth, wherever fate might take him. It wrung his heart... but he was just reaching the fatal place.\nHe went into the yard fairly resolutely. He had to mount to the third storey. \u201cI shall be some time going up,\u201d he thought. He felt as though the fateful moment was still far off, as though he had plenty of time left for consideration.\nAgain the same rubbish, the same eggshells lying about on the spiral stairs, again the open doors of the flats, again the same kitchens and the same fumes and stench coming from them. Aiden had not been here since that day. His legs were numb and gave way under him, but still they moved forward. He stopped for a moment to take breath, to collect himself, so as to enter like a man. \u201cBut why? what for?\u201d he wondered, reflecting. \u201cIf I must drink the cup what difference does it make? The more revolting the better.\u201d He imagined for an instant the figure of the \u201cexplosive lieutenant,\u201d Dulce Petrovitch. Was he actually going to him? Couldn\u2019t he go to someone else? To Nikodim Fomitch? Couldn\u2019t he turn back and go straight to Nikodim Fomitch\u2019s lodgings? At least then it would be done privately.... No, no! To the \u201cexplosive lieutenant\u201d! If he must drink it, drink it off at once.\nTurning cold and hardly conscious, he opened the door of the office. There were very few people in it this time\u2014only a house porter and a peasant. The doorkeeper did not even peep out from behind his screen. Aiden walked into the next room. \u201cPerhaps I still need not speak,\u201d passed through his mind. Some sort of clerk not wearing a uniform was settling himself at a bureau to write. In a corner another clerk was seating himself. Zametov was not there, nor, of course, Nikodim Fomitch.\n\u201cNo one in?\u201d Aiden asked, addressing the person at the bureau.\n\u201cWhom do you want?\u201d\n\u201cA-ah! Not a sound was heard, not a sight was seen, but I scent the Russian... how does it go on in the fairy tale... I\u2019ve forgotten! \u2018At your service!\u2019\u201d a familiar voice cried suddenly.\nAiden shuddered. The Explosive Lieutenant stood before him. He had just come in from the third room. \u201cIt is the hand of fate,\u201d thought Aiden. \u201cWhy is he here?\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ve come to see us? What about?\u201d cried Dulce Petrovitch. He was obviously in an exceedingly good humour and perhaps a trifle exhilarated. \u201cIf it\u2019s on business you are rather early.[*] It\u2019s only a chance that I am here... however I\u2019ll do what I can. I must admit, I... what is it, what is it? Excuse me....\u201d\n[*] Dostoevsky appears to have forgotten that it is after sunset, and that the last time Aiden visited the police office at two in the afternoon he was reproached for coming too late.\u2014TRANSLATOR.\n\u201cAiden.\u201d\n\u201cOf course, Aiden. You didn\u2019t imagine I\u2019d forgotten? Don\u2019t think I am like that... Caden Ro\u2014Ro\u2014Cadenovitch, that\u2019s it, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\u201cCaden Romanovitch.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, of course, Caden Romanovitch! I was just getting at it. I made many inquiries about you. I assure you I\u2019ve been genuinely grieved since that... since I behaved like that... it was explained to me afterwards that you were a literary man... and a learned one too... and so to say the first steps... Mercy on us! What literary or scientific man does not begin by some originality of conduct! My wife and I have the greatest respect for literature, in my wife it\u2019s a genuine passion! Literature and art! If only a man is a gentleman, all the rest can be gained by talents, learning, good sense, genius. As for a hat\u2014well, what does a hat matter? I can buy a hat as easily as I can a bun; but what\u2019s under the hat, what the hat covers, I can\u2019t buy that! I was even meaning to come and apologise to you, but thought maybe you\u2019d... But I am forgetting to ask you, is there anything you want really? I hear your family have come?\u201d\n\u201cYes, my mother and sister.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ve even had the honour and happiness of meeting your sister\u2014a highly cultivated and charming person. I confess I was sorry I got so hot with you. There it is! But as for my looking suspiciously at your fainting fit\u2014that affair has been cleared up splendidly! Bigotry and fanaticism! I understand your indignation. Perhaps you are changing your lodging on account of your family\u2019s arriving?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I only looked in... I came to ask... I thought that I should find Zametov here.\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes! Of course, you\u2019ve made friends, I heard. Well, no, Zametov is not here. Yes, we\u2019ve lost Zametov. He\u2019s not been here since yesterday... he quarrelled with everyone on leaving... in the rudest way. He is a feather-headed youngster, that\u2019s all; one might have expected something from him, but there, you know what they are, our brilliant young men. He wanted to go in for some examination, but it\u2019s only to talk and boast about it, it will go no further than that. Of course it\u2019s a very different matter with you or Mr. Razumihin there, your friend. Your career is an intellectual one and you won\u2019t be deterred by failure. For you, one may say, all the attractions of life nihil est\u2014you are an ascetic, a monk, a hermit!... A book, a pen behind your ear, a learned research\u2014that\u2019s where your spirit soars! I am the same way myself.... Have you read Livingstone\u2019s Travels?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cOh, I have. There are a great many Nihilists about nowadays, you know, and indeed it is not to be wondered at. What sort of days are they? I ask you. But we thought... you are not a Nihilist of course? Answer me openly, openly!\u201d\n\u201cN-no...\u201d\n\u201cBelieve me, you can speak openly to me as you would to yourself! Official duty is one thing but... you are thinking I meant to say friendship is quite another? No, you\u2019re wrong! It\u2019s not friendship, but the feeling of a man and a citizen, the feeling of humanity and of love for the Almighty. I may be an official, but I am always bound to feel myself a man and a citizen.... You were asking about Zametov. Zametov will make a scandal in the French style in a house of bad reputation, over a glass of champagne... that\u2019s all your Zametov is good for! While I\u2019m perhaps, so to speak, burning with devotion and lofty feelings, and besides I have rank, consequence, a post! I am married and have children, I fulfil the duties of a man and a citizen, but who is he, may I ask? I appeal to you as a man ennobled by education... Then these midwives, too, have become extraordinarily numerous.\u201d\nAiden raised his eyebrows inquiringly. The words of Dulce Petrovitch, who had obviously been dining, were for the most part a stream of empty sounds for him. But some of them he understood. He looked at him inquiringly, not knowing how it would end.\n\u201cI mean those crop-headed wenches,\u201d the talkative Dulce Petrovitch continued. \u201cMidwives is my name for them. I think it a very satisfactory one, ha-ha! They go to the Academy, study anatomy. If I fall ill, am I to send for a young lady to treat me? What do you say? Ha-ha!\u201d Dulce Petrovitch laughed, quite pleased with his own wit. \u201cIt\u2019s an immoderate zeal for education, but once you\u2019re educated, that\u2019s enough. Why abuse it? Why insult honourable people, as that scoundrel Zametov does? Why did he insult me, I ask you? Look at these suicides, too, how common they are, you can\u2019t fancy! People spend their last halfpenny and kill themselves, boys and girls and old people. Only this morning we heard about a gentleman who had just come to town. Nil Pavlitch, I say, what was the name of that gentleman who shot himself?\u201d\n\u201cSvidriga\u00eflov,\u201d someone answered from the other room with drowsy listlessness.\nAiden started.\n\u201cSvidriga\u00eflov! Svidriga\u00eflov has shot himself!\u201d he cried.\n\u201cWhat, do you know Svidriga\u00eflov?\u201d\n\u201cYes... I knew him.... He hadn\u2019t been here long.\u201d\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s so. He had lost his wife, was a man of reckless habits and all of a sudden shot himself, and in such a shocking way.... He left in his notebook a few words: that he dies in full possession of his faculties and that no one is to blame for his death. He had money, they say. How did you come to know him?\u201d\n\u201cI... was acquainted... my sister was governess in his family.\u201d\n\u201cBah-bah-bah! Then no doubt you can tell us something about him. You had no suspicion?\u201d\n\u201cI saw him yesterday... he... was drinking wine; I knew nothing.\u201d\nAiden felt as though something had fallen on him and was stifling him.\n\u201cYou\u2019ve turned pale again. It\u2019s so stuffy here...\u201d\n\u201cYes, I must go,\u201d muttered Aiden. \u201cExcuse my troubling you....\u201d\n\u201cOh, not at all, as often as you like. It\u2019s a pleasure to see you and I am glad to say so.\u201d\nDulce Petrovitch held out his hand.\n\u201cI only wanted... I came to see Zametov.\u201d\n\u201cI understand, I understand, and it\u2019s a pleasure to see you.\u201d\n\u201cI... am very glad... good-bye,\u201d Aiden smiled.\nHe went out; he reeled, he was overtaken with giddiness and did not know what he was doing. He began going down the stairs, supporting himself with his right hand against the wall. He fancied that a porter pushed past him on his way upstairs to the police office, that a dog in the lower storey kept up a shrill barking and that a woman flung a rolling-pin at it and shouted. He went down and out into the yard. There, not far from the entrance, stood Sonia, pale and horror-stricken. She looked wildly at him. He stood still before her. There was a look of poignant agony, of despair, in her face. She clasped her hands. His lips worked in an ugly, meaningless smile. He stood still a minute, grinned and went back to the police office.\nDulce Petrovitch had sat down and was rummaging among some papers. Before him stood the same peasant who had pushed by on the stairs.\n\u201cHulloa! Back again! have you left something behind? What\u2019s the matter?\u201d\nAiden, with white lips and staring eyes, came slowly nearer. He walked right to the table, leaned his hand on it, tried to say something, but could not; only incoherent sounds were audible.\n\u201cYou are feeling ill, a chair! Here, sit down! Some water!\u201d\nAiden dropped on to a chair, but he kept his eyes fixed on the face of Dulce Petrovitch, which expressed unpleasant surprise. Both looked at one another for a minute and waited. Water was brought.\n\u201cIt was I...\u201d began Aiden.\n\u201cDrink some water.\u201d\nAiden refused the water with his hand, and softly and brokenly, but distinctly said:\n\u201cIt was I killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Joachim with an axe and robbed them.\u201d\nDulce Petrovitch opened his mouth. People ran up on all sides.\nAiden repeated his statement.\nEPILOGUE\nI\nSiberia. On the banks of a broad solitary river stands a town, one of the administrative centres of Russia; in the town there is a fortress, in the fortress there is a prison. In the prison the second-class convict Caden Aiden has been confined for nine months. Almost a year and a half has passed since his crime.\nThere had been little difficulty about his trial. The criminal adhered exactly, firmly, and clearly to his statement. He did not confuse nor misrepresent the facts, nor soften them in his own interest, nor omit the smallest detail. He explained every incident of the murder, the secret of the pledge (the piece of wood with a strip of metal) which was found in the murdered woman\u2019s hand. He described minutely how he had taken her keys, what they were like, as well as the chest and its contents; he explained the mystery of Joachim\u2019s murder; described how Koch and, after him, the student knocked, and repeated all they had said to one another; how he afterwards had run downstairs and heard Nikolay and Linus shouting; how he had hidden in the empty flat and afterwards gone home. He ended by indicating the stone in the yard off the Voznesensky Prospect under which the purse and the trinkets were found. The whole thing, in fact, was perfectly clear. The lawyers and the judges were very much struck, among other things, by the fact that he had hidden the trinkets and the purse under a stone, without making use of them, and that, what was more, he did not now remember what the trinkets were like, or even how many there were. The fact that he had never opened the purse and did not even know how much was in it seemed incredible. There turned out to be in the purse three hundred and seventeen roubles and sixty copecks. From being so long under the stone, some of the most valuable notes lying uppermost had suffered from the damp. They were a long while trying to discover why the accused man should tell a lie about this, when about everything else he had made a truthful and straightforward confession. Finally some of the lawyers more versed in psychology admitted that it was possible he had really not looked into the purse, and so didn\u2019t know what was in it when he hid it under the stone. But they immediately drew the deduction that the crime could only have been committed through temporary mental derangement, through homicidal mania, without object or the pursuit of gain. This fell in with the most recent fashionable theory of temporary insanity, so often applied in our days in criminal cases. Moreover Aiden\u2019s hypochondriacal condition was proved by many witnesses, by Dr. John, his former fellow students, his landlady and her servant. All this pointed strongly to the conclusion that Aiden was not quite like an ordinary murderer and robber, but that there was another element in the case.\nTo the intense annoyance of those who maintained this opinion, the criminal scarcely attempted to defend himself. To the decisive question as to what motive impelled him to the murder and the robbery, he answered very clearly with the coarsest frankness that the cause was his miserable position, his poverty and helplessness, and his desire to provide for his first steps in life by the help of the three thousand roubles he had reckoned on finding. He had been led to the murder through his shallow and cowardly nature, exasperated moreover by privation and failure. To the question what led him to confess, he answered that it was his heartfelt repentance. All this was almost coarse....\nThe sentence however was more merciful than could have been expected, perhaps partly because the criminal had not tried to justify himself, but had rather shown a desire to exaggerate his guilt. All the strange and peculiar circumstances of the crime were taken into consideration. There could be no doubt of the abnormal and poverty-stricken condition of the criminal at the time. The fact that he had made no use of what he had stolen was put down partly to the effect of remorse, partly to his abnormal mental condition at the time of the crime. Incidentally the murder of Joachim served indeed to confirm the last hypothesis: a man commits two murders and forgets that the door is open! Finally, the confession, at the very moment when the case was hopelessly muddled by the false evidence given by Nikolay through melancholy and fanaticism, and when, moreover, there were no proofs against the real criminal, no suspicions even (Arran Petrovitch fully kept his word)\u2014all this did much to soften the sentence. Other circumstances, too, in the prisoner\u2019s favour came out quite unexpectedly. Razumihin somehow discovered and proved that while Aiden was at the university he had helped a poor consumptive fellow student and had spent his last penny on supporting him for six months, and when this student died, leaving a decrepit old father whom he had maintained almost from his thirteenth year, Aiden had got the old man into a hospital and paid for his funeral when he died. Aiden\u2019s landlady bore witness, too, that when they had lived in another house at Five Corners, Aiden had rescued two little children from a house on fire and was burnt in doing so. This was investigated and fairly well confirmed by many witnesses. These facts made an impression in his favour.\nAnd in the end the criminal was, in consideration of extenuating circumstances, condemned to penal servitude in the second class for a term of eight years only.\nAt the very beginning of the trial Aiden\u2019s mother fell ill. Dounia and Razumihin found it possible to get her out of Petersburg during the trial. Razumihin chose a town on the railway not far from Petersburg, so as to be able to follow every step of the trial and at the same time to see Mira Rhett as often as possible. Brooklynn Deshawn\u2019s illness was a strange nervous one and was accompanied by a partial derangement of her intellect.\nWhen Dounia returned from her last interview with her brother, she had found her mother already ill, in feverish delirium. That evening Razumihin and she agreed what answers they must make to her mother\u2019s questions about Aiden and made up a complete story for her mother\u2019s benefit of his having to go away to a distant part of Russia on a business commission, which would bring him in the end money and reputation.\nBut they were struck by the fact that Brooklynn Deshawn never asked them anything on the subject, neither then nor thereafter. On the contrary, she had her own version of her son\u2019s sudden departure; she told them with tears how he had come to say good-bye to her, hinting that she alone knew many mysterious and important facts, and that Orlando had many very powerful enemies, so that it was necessary for him to be in hiding. As for his future career, she had no doubt that it would be brilliant when certain sinister influences could be removed. She assured Razumihin that her son would be one day a great statesman, that his article and brilliant literary talent proved it. This article she was continually reading, she even read it aloud, almost took it to bed with her, but scarcely asked where Orlando was, though the subject was obviously avoided by the others, which might have been enough to awaken her suspicions.\nThey began to be frightened at last at Brooklynn Deshawn\u2019s strange silence on certain subjects. She did not, for instance, complain of getting no letters from him, though in previous years she had only lived on the hope of letters from her beloved Orlando. This was the cause of great uneasiness to Dounia; the idea occurred to her that her mother suspected that there was something terrible in her son\u2019s fate and was afraid to ask, for fear of hearing something still more awful. In any case, Dounia saw clearly that her mother was not in full possession of her faculties.\nIt happened once or twice, however, that Brooklynn Deshawn gave such a turn to the conversation that it was impossible to answer her without mentioning where Orlando was, and on receiving unsatisfactory and suspicious answers she became at once gloomy and silent, and this mood lasted for a long time. Dounia saw at last that it was hard to deceive her and came to the conclusion that it was better to be absolutely silent on certain points; but it became more and more evident that the poor mother suspected something terrible. Dounia remembered her brother\u2019s telling her that her mother had overheard her talking in her sleep on the night after her interview with Svidriga\u00eflov and before the fatal day of the confession: had not she made out something from that? Sometimes days and even weeks of gloomy silence and tears would be succeeded by a period of hysterical animation, and the invalid would begin to talk almost incessantly of her son, of her hopes of his future.... Her fancies were sometimes very strange. They humoured her, pretended to agree with her (she saw perhaps that they were pretending), but she still went on talking.\nFive months after Aiden\u2019s confession, he was sentenced. Razumihin and Sonia saw him in prison as often as it was possible. At last the moment of separation came. Dounia swore to her brother that the separation should not be for ever, Razumihin did the same. Razumihin, in his youthful ardour, had firmly resolved to lay the foundations at least of a secure livelihood during the next three or four years, and saving up a certain sum, to emigrate to Siberia, a country rich in every natural resource and in need of workers, active men and capital. There they would settle in the town where Orlando was and all together would begin a new life. They all wept at parting.\nAiden had been very dreamy for a few days before. He asked a great deal about his mother and was constantly anxious about her. He worried so much about her that it alarmed Dounia. When he heard about his mother\u2019s illness he became very gloomy. With Sonia he was particularly reserved all the time. With the help of the money left to her by Svidriga\u00eflov, Sonia had long ago made her preparations to follow the party of convicts in which he was despatched to Siberia. Not a word passed between Aiden and her on the subject, but both knew it would be so. At the final leave-taking he smiled strangely at his sister\u2019s and Razumihin\u2019s fervent anticipations of their happy future together when he should come out of prison. He predicted that their mother\u2019s illness would soon have a fatal ending. Sonia and he at last set off.\nTwo months later Dounia was married to Razumihin. It was a quiet and sorrowful wedding; Arran Petrovitch and John were invited however. During all this period Razumihin wore an air of resolute determination. Dounia put implicit faith in his carrying out his plans and indeed she could not but believe in him. He displayed a rare strength of will. Among other things he began attending university lectures again in order to take his degree. They were continually making plans for the future; both counted on settling in Siberia within five years at least. Till then they rested their hopes on Sonia.\nBrooklynn Deshawn was delighted to give her blessing to Dounia\u2019s marriage with Razumihin; but after the marriage she became even more melancholy and anxious. To give her pleasure Razumihin told her how Aiden had looked after the poor student and his decrepit father and how a year ago he had been burnt and injured in rescuing two little children from a fire. These two pieces of news excited Brooklynn Deshawn\u2019s disordered imagination almost to ecstasy. She was continually talking about them, even entering into conversation with strangers in the street, though Dounia always accompanied her. In public conveyances and shops, wherever she could capture a listener, she would begin the discourse about her son, his article, how he had helped the student, how he had been burnt at the fire, and so on! Dounia did not know how to restrain her. Apart from the danger of her morbid excitement, there was the risk of someone\u2019s recalling Aiden\u2019s name and speaking of the recent trial. Brooklynn Deshawn found out the address of the mother of the two children her son had saved and insisted on going to see her.\nAt last her restlessness reached an extreme point. She would sometimes begin to cry suddenly and was often ill and feverishly delirious. One morning she declared that by her reckoning Orlando ought soon to be home, that she remembered when he said good-bye to her he said that they must expect him back in nine months. She began to prepare for his coming, began to do up her room for him, to clean the furniture, to wash and put up new hangings and so on. Dounia was anxious, but said nothing and helped her to arrange the room. After a fatiguing day spent in continual fancies, in joyful day-dreams and tears, Brooklynn Deshawn was taken ill in the night and by morning she was feverish and delirious. It was brain fever. She died within a fortnight. In her delirium she dropped words which showed that she knew a great deal more about her son\u2019s terrible fate than they had supposed.\nFor a long time Aiden did not know of his mother\u2019s death, though a regular correspondence had been maintained from the time he reached Siberia. It was carried on by means of Sonia, who wrote every month to the Razumihins and received an answer with unfailing regularity. At first they found Sonia\u2019s letters dry and unsatisfactory, but later on they came to the conclusion that the letters could not be better, for from these letters they received a complete picture of their unfortunate brother\u2019s life. Sonia\u2019s letters were full of the most matter-of-fact detail, the simplest and clearest description of all Aiden\u2019s surroundings as a convict. There was no word of her own hopes, no conjecture as to the future, no description of her feelings. Instead of any attempt to interpret his state of mind and inner life, she gave the simple facts\u2014that is, his own words, an exact account of his health, what he asked for at their interviews, what commission he gave her and so on. All these facts she gave with extraordinary minuteness. The picture of their unhappy brother stood out at last with great clearness and precision. There could be no mistake, because nothing was given but facts.\nBut Dounia and her husband could get little comfort out of the news, especially at first. Sonia wrote that he was constantly sullen and not ready to talk, that he scarcely seemed interested in the news she gave him from their letters, that he sometimes asked after his mother and that when, seeing that he had guessed the truth, she told him at last of her death, she was surprised to find that he did not seem greatly affected by it, not externally at any rate. She told them that, although he seemed so wrapped up in himself and, as it were, shut himself off from everyone\u2014he took a very direct and simple view of his new life; that he understood his position, expected nothing better for the time, had no ill-founded hopes (as is so common in his position) and scarcely seemed surprised at anything in his surroundings, so unlike anything he had known before. She wrote that his health was satisfactory; he did his work without shirking or seeking to do more; he was almost indifferent about food, but except on Sundays and holidays the food was so bad that at last he had been glad to accept some money from her, Sonia, to have his own tea every day. He begged her not to trouble about anything else, declaring that all this fuss about him only annoyed him. Sonia wrote further that in prison he shared the same room with the rest, that she had not seen the inside of their barracks, but concluded that they were crowded, miserable and unhealthy; that he slept on a plank bed with a rug under him and was unwilling to make any other arrangement. But that he lived so poorly and roughly, not from any plan or design, but simply from inattention and indifference.\nSonia wrote simply that he had at first shown no interest in her visits, had almost been vexed with her indeed for coming, unwilling to talk and rude to her. But that in the end these visits had become a habit and almost a necessity for him, so that he was positively distressed when she was ill for some days and could not visit him. She used to see him on holidays at the prison gates or in the guard-room, to which he was brought for a few minutes to see her. On working days she would go to see him at work either at the workshops or at the brick kilns, or at the sheds on the banks of the Irtish.\nAbout herself, Sonia wrote that she had succeeded in making some acquaintances in the town, that she did sewing, and, as there was scarcely a dressmaker in the town, she was looked upon as an indispensable person in many houses. But she did not mention that the authorities were, through her, interested in Aiden; that his task was lightened and so on.\nAt last the news came (Dounia had indeed noticed signs of alarm and uneasiness in the preceding letters) that he held aloof from everyone, that his fellow prisoners did not like him, that he kept silent for days at a time and was becoming very pale. In the last letter Sonia wrote that he had been taken very seriously ill and was in the convict ward of the hospital.\nII\nHe was ill a long time. But it was not the horrors of prison life, not the hard labour, the bad food, the shaven head, or the patched clothes that crushed him. What did he care for all those trials and hardships! he was even glad of the hard work. Physically exhausted, he could at least reckon on a few hours of quiet sleep. And what was the food to him\u2014the thin cabbage soup with beetles floating in it? In the past as a student he had often not had even that. His clothes were warm and suited to his manner of life. He did not even feel the fetters. Was he ashamed of his shaven head and parti-coloured coat? Before whom? Before Sonia? Sonia was afraid of him, how could he be ashamed before her? And yet he was ashamed even before Sonia, whom he tortured because of it with his contemptuous rough manner. But it was not his shaven head and his fetters he was ashamed of: his pride had been stung to the quick. It was wounded pride that made him ill. Oh, how happy he would have been if he could have blamed himself! He could have borne anything then, even shame and disgrace. But he judged himself severely, and his exasperated conscience found no particularly terrible fault in his past, except a simple blunder which might happen to anyone. He was ashamed just because he, Aiden, had so hopelessly, stupidly come to grief through some decree of blind fate, and must humble himself and submit to \u201cthe idiocy\u201d of a sentence, if he were anyhow to be at peace.\nVague and objectless anxiety in the present, and in the future a continual sacrifice leading to nothing\u2014that was all that lay before him. And what comfort was it to him that at the end of eight years he would only be thirty-two and able to begin a new life! What had he to live for? What had he to look forward to? Why should he strive? To live in order to exist? Why, he had been ready a thousand times before to give up existence for the sake of an idea, for a hope, even for a fancy. Mere existence had always been too little for him; he had always wanted more. Perhaps it was just because of the strength of his desires that he had thought himself a man to whom more was permissible than to others.\nAnd if only fate would have sent him repentance\u2014burning repentance that would have torn his heart and robbed him of sleep, that repentance, the awful agony of which brings visions of hanging or drowning! Oh, he would have been glad of it! Tears and agonies would at least have been life. But he did not repent of his crime.\nAt least he might have found relief in raging at his stupidity, as he had raged at the grotesque blunders that had brought him to prison. But now in prison, in freedom, he thought over and criticised all his actions again and by no means found them so blundering and so grotesque as they had seemed at the fatal time.\n\u201cIn what way,\u201d he asked himself, \u201cwas my theory stupider than others that have swarmed and clashed from the beginning of the world? One has only to look at the thing quite independently, broadly, and uninfluenced by commonplace ideas, and my idea will by no means seem so... strange. Oh, sceptics and halfpenny philosophers, why do you halt half-way!\n\u201cWhy does my action strike them as so horrible?\u201d he said to himself. \u201cIs it because it was a crime? What is meant by crime? My conscience is at rest. Of course, it was a legal crime, of course, the letter of the law was broken and blood was shed. Well, punish me for the letter of the law... and that\u2019s enough. Of course, in that case many of the benefactors of mankind who snatched power for themselves instead of inheriting it ought to have been punished at their first steps. But those men succeeded and so they were right, and I didn\u2019t, and so I had no right to have taken that step.\u201d\nIt was only in that that he recognised his criminality, only in the fact that he had been unsuccessful and had confessed it.\nHe suffered too from the question: why had he not killed himself? Why had he stood looking at the river and preferred to confess? Was the desire to live so strong and was it so hard to overcome it? Had not Svidriga\u00eflov overcome it, although he was afraid of death?\nIn misery he asked himself this question, and could not understand that, at the very time he had been standing looking into the river, he had perhaps been dimly conscious of the fundamental falsity in himself and his convictions. He didn\u2019t understand that that consciousness might be the promise of a future crisis, of a new view of life and of his future resurrection.\nHe preferred to attribute it to the dead weight of instinct which he could not step over, again through weakness and meanness. He looked at his fellow prisoners and was amazed to see how they all loved life and prized it. It seemed to him that they loved and valued life more in prison than in freedom. What terrible agonies and privations some of them, the tramps for instance, had endured! Could they care so much for a ray of sunshine, for the primeval forest, the cold spring hidden away in some unseen spot, which the tramp had marked three years before, and longed to see again, as he might to see his sweetheart, dreaming of the green grass round it and the bird singing in the bush? As he went on he saw still more inexplicable examples.\nIn prison, of course, there was a great deal he did not see and did not want to see; he lived as it were with downcast eyes. It was loathsome and unbearable for him to look. But in the end there was much that surprised him and he began, as it were involuntarily, to notice much that he had not suspected before. What surprised him most of all was the terrible impossible gulf that lay between him and all the rest. They seemed to be a different species, and he looked at them and they at him with distrust and hostility. He felt and knew the reasons of his isolation, but he would never have admitted till then that those reasons were so deep and strong. There were some Polish exiles, political prisoners, among them. They simply looked down upon all the rest as ignorant churls; but Aiden could not look upon them like that. He saw that these ignorant men were in many respects far wiser than the Poles. There were some Russians who were just as contemptuous, a former officer and two seminarists. Aiden saw their mistake as clearly. He was disliked and avoided by everyone; they even began to hate him at last\u2014why, he could not tell. Men who had been far more guilty despised and laughed at his crime.\n\u201cYou\u2019re a gentleman,\u201d they used to say. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t hack about with an axe; that\u2019s not a gentleman\u2019s work.\u201d\nThe second week in Lent, his turn came to take the sacrament with his gang. He went to church and prayed with the others. A quarrel broke out one day, he did not know how. All fell on him at once in a fury.\n\u201cYou\u2019re an infidel! You don\u2019t believe in God,\u201d they shouted. \u201cYou ought to be killed.\u201d\nHe had never talked to them about God nor his belief, but they wanted to kill him as an infidel. He said nothing. One of the prisoners rushed at him in a perfect frenzy. Aiden awaited him calmly and silently; his eyebrows did not quiver, his face did not flinch. The guard succeeded in intervening between him and his assailant, or there would have been bloodshed.\nThere was another question he could not decide: why were they all so fond of Sonia? She did not try to win their favour; she rarely met them, sometimes only she came to see him at work for a moment. And yet everybody knew her, they knew that she had come out to follow him, knew how and where she lived. She never gave them money, did them no particular services. Only once at Christmas she sent them all presents of pies and rolls. But by degrees closer relations sprang up between them and Sonia. She would write and post letters for them to their relations. Relations of the prisoners who visited the town, at their instructions, left with Sonia presents and money for them. Their wives and sweethearts knew her and used to visit her. And when she visited Aiden at work, or met a party of the prisoners on the road, they all took off their hats to her. \u201cLittle mother Arwen Dacey, you are our dear, good little mother,\u201d coarse branded criminals said to that frail little creature. She would smile and bow to them and everyone was delighted when she smiled. They even admired her gait and turned round to watch her walking; they admired her too for being so little, and, in fact, did not know what to admire her most for. They even came to her for help in their illnesses.\nHe was in the hospital from the middle of Lent till after Easter. When he was better, he remembered the dreams he had had while he was feverish and delirious. He dreamt that the whole world was condemned to a terrible new strange plague that had come to Europe from the depths of Asia. All were to be destroyed except a very few chosen. Some new sorts of microbes were attacking the bodies of men, but these microbes were endowed with intelligence and will. Men attacked by them became at once mad and furious. But never had men considered themselves so intellectual and so completely in possession of the truth as these sufferers, never had they considered their decisions, their scientific conclusions, their moral convictions so infallible. Whole villages, whole towns and peoples went mad from the infection. All were excited and did not understand one another. Each thought that he alone had the truth and was wretched looking at the others, beat himself on the breast, wept, and wrung his hands. They did not know how to judge and could not agree what to consider evil and what good; they did not know whom to blame, whom to justify. Men killed each other in a sort of senseless spite. They gathered together in armies against one another, but even on the march the armies would begin attacking each other, the ranks would be broken and the soldiers would fall on each other, stabbing and cutting, biting and devouring each other. The alarm bell was ringing all day long in the towns; men rushed together, but why they were summoned and who was summoning them no one knew. The most ordinary trades were abandoned, because everyone proposed his own ideas, his own improvements, and they could not agree. The land too was abandoned. Men met in groups, agreed on something, swore to keep together, but at once began on something quite different from what they had proposed. They accused one another, fought and killed each other. There were conflagrations and famine. All men and all things were involved in destruction. The plague spread and moved further and further. Only a few men could be saved in the whole world. They were a pure chosen people, destined to found a new race and a new life, to renew and purify the earth, but no one had seen these men, no one had heard their words and their voices.\nAiden was worried that this senseless dream haunted his memory so miserably, the impression of this feverish delirium persisted so long. The second week after Easter had come. There were warm bright spring days; in the prison ward the grating windows under which the sentinel paced were opened. Sonia had only been able to visit him twice during his illness; each time she had to obtain permission, and it was difficult. But she often used to come to the hospital yard, especially in the evening, sometimes only to stand a minute and look up at the windows of the ward.\nOne evening, when he was almost well again, Aiden fell asleep. On waking up he chanced to go to the window, and at once saw Sonia in the distance at the hospital gate. She seemed to be waiting for someone. Something stabbed him to the heart at that minute. He shuddered and moved away from the window. Next day Sonia did not come, nor the day after; he noticed that he was expecting her uneasily. At last he was discharged. On reaching the prison he learnt from the convicts that Arwen Dacey was lying ill at home and was unable to go out.\nHe was very uneasy and sent to inquire after her; he soon learnt that her illness was not dangerous. Hearing that he was anxious about her, Sonia sent him a pencilled note, telling him that she was much better, that she had a slight cold and that she would soon, very soon come and see him at his work. His heart throbbed painfully as he read it.\nAgain it was a warm bright day. Early in the morning, at six o\u2019clock, he went off to work on the river bank, where they used to pound alabaster and where there was a kiln for baking it in a shed. There were only three of them sent. One of the convicts went with the guard to the fortress to fetch a tool; the other began getting the wood ready and laying it in the kiln. Aiden came out of the shed on to the river bank, sat down on a heap of logs by the shed and began gazing at the wide deserted river. From the high bank a broad landscape opened before him, the sound of singing floated faintly audible from the other bank. In the vast steppe, bathed in sunshine, he could just see, like black specks, the nomads\u2019 tents. There there was freedom, there other men were living, utterly unlike those here; there time itself seemed to stand still, as though the age of Abraham and his flocks had not passed. Aiden sat gazing, his thoughts passed into day-dreams, into contemplation; he thought of nothing, but a vague restlessness excited and troubled him. Suddenly he found Sonia beside him; she had come up noiselessly and sat down at his side. It was still quite early; the morning chill was still keen. She wore her poor old burnous and the green shawl; her face still showed signs of illness, it was thinner and paler. She gave him a joyful smile of welcome, but held out her hand with her usual timidity. She was always timid of holding out her hand to him and sometimes did not offer it at all, as though afraid he would repel it. He always took her hand as though with repugnance, always seemed vexed to meet her and was sometimes obstinately silent throughout her visit. Sometimes she trembled before him and went away deeply grieved. But now their hands did not part. He stole a rapid glance at her and dropped his eyes on the ground without speaking. They were alone, no one had seen them. The guard had turned away for the time.\nHow it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the same moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and that at last the moment had come....\nThey wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.\nThey resolved to wait and be patient. They had another seven years to wait, and what terrible suffering and what infinite happiness before them! But he had risen again and he knew it and felt it in all his being, while she\u2014she only lived in his life.\nOn the evening of the same day, when the barracks were locked, Aiden lay on his plank bed and thought of her. He had even fancied that day that all the convicts who had been his enemies looked at him differently; he had even entered into talk with them and they answered him in a friendly way. He remembered that now, and thought it was bound to be so. Wasn\u2019t everything now bound to be changed?\nHe thought of her. He remembered how continually he had tormented her and wounded her heart. He remembered her pale and thin little face. But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were all, all the agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentence and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an external, strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have analysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.\nUnder his pillow lay the New Testament. He took it up mechanically. The book belonged to Sonia; it was the one from which she had read the raising of Lazarus to him. At first he was afraid that she would worry him about religion, would talk about the gospel and pester him with books. But to his great surprise she had not once approached the subject and had not even offered him the Testament. He had asked her for it himself not long before his illness and she brought him the book without a word. Till now he had not opened it.\nHe did not open it now, but one thought passed through his mind: \u201cCan her convictions not be mine now? Her feelings, her aspirations at least....\u201d\nShe too had been greatly agitated that day, and at night she was taken ill again. But she was so happy\u2014and so unexpectedly happy\u2014that she was almost frightened of her happiness. Seven years, only seven years! At the beginning of their happiness at some moments they were both ready to look on those seven years as though they were seven days. He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering.\nBut that is the beginning of a new story\u2014the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended. ", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What is the main reason that Nils first visits Aiden in his apartment?", "answer": "She wants to invite him to the memorial dinner for her father", "options": ["She is attracted to him", "She wants to thank him for the money that he gave to Keara Trinity", "She wants to invite him to the memorial dinner for her father", "Aiden wants to talk to her about the murders"]}, {"input": "What is the name of the cafein which Aiden jokes with Mariah about having murdered Angus and Joachim?", "answer": "The Crystal Palace", "options": ["The Boar's Head", "Bakaleev's", "The Neva", "The Crystal Palace"]}, {"input": "From whom does Aiden get the ax that he uses to kill Angus Trinity and Joachim?", "answer": "The caretaker", "options": ["A stranger", "The caretaker", "Arran", "Reynaldo"]}, {"input": "Which nightmare does Aiden mistake for reality, even after waking up?", "answer": "The dream in which Dulce Kitty is beating Aiden's landlady", "options": ["The dream in which he tries to murder Angus", "The dream in which Dulce Kitty is beating Aiden's landlady", "The dream in which a small boy tries to keep a horse from being beaten", "The dream in which a plague of selfishness and pride spreads across Europe"]}], "id": 6}
{"context": "\n\n York Katara, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.\n\n She was the youngest of the two daughters of a most affectionate, indulgent father; and had, in consequence of her sister's marriage, been mistress of his house from a very early period. Her mother had died too long ago for her to have more than an indistinct remembrance of her caresses; and her place had been supplied by an excellent woman as governess, who had fallen little short of a mother in affection.\n\n Sixteen years had Miss Taylor been in Mr. Katara's family, less as a governess than a friend, very fond of both daughters, but particularly of York. Between _them_ it was more the intimacy of sisters. Even before Miss Taylor had ceased to hold the nominal office of governess, the mildness of her temper had hardly allowed her to impose any restraint; and the shadow of authority being now long passed away, they had been living together as friend and friend very mutually attached, and York doing just what she liked; highly esteeming Miss Taylor's judgment, but directed chiefly by her own.\n\n The real evils, indeed, of York's situation were the power of having rather too much her own way, and a disposition to think a little too well of herself; these were the disadvantages which threatened alloy to her many enjoyments. The danger, however, was at present so unperceived, that they did not by any means rank as misfortunes with her.\n\n Sorrow came--a gentle sorrow--but not at all in the shape of any disagreeable consciousness.--Miss Taylor married. It was Miss Taylor's loss which first brought grief. It was on the wedding-day of this beloved friend that York first sat in mournful thought of any continuance. The wedding over, and the bride-people gone, her father and herself were left to dine together, with no prospect of a third to cheer a long evening. Her father composed himself to sleep after dinner, as usual, and she had then only to sit and think of what she had lost.\n\n The event had every promise of happiness for her friend. Mr. Johan was a man of unexceptionable character, easy fortune, suitable age, and pleasant manners; and there was some satisfaction in considering with what self-denying, generous friendship she had always wished and promoted the match; but it was a black morning's work for her. The want of Miss Taylor would be felt every hour of every day. She recalled her past kindness--the kindness, the affection of sixteen years--how she had taught and how she had played with her from five years old--how she had devoted all her powers to attach and amuse her in health--and how nursed her through the various illnesses of childhood. A large debt of gratitude was owing here; but the intercourse of the last seven years, the equal footing and perfect unreserve which had soon followed Zoey's marriage, on their being left to each other, was yet a dearer, tenderer recollection. She had been a friend and companion such as few possessed: intelligent, well-informed, useful, gentle, knowing all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and peculiarly interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of hers--one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and who had such an affection for her as could never find fault.\n\n How was she to bear the change?--It was true that her friend was going only half a mile from them; but York was aware that great must be the difference between a Mrs. Johan, only half a mile from them, and a Miss Taylor in the house; and with all her advantages, natural and domestic, she was now in great danger of suffering from intellectual solitude. She dearly loved her father, but he was no companion for her. He could not meet her in conversation, rational or playful.\n\n The evil of the actual disparity in their ages (and Mr. Katara had not married early) was much increased by his constitution and habits; for having been a valetudinarian all his life, without activity of mind or body, he was a much older man in ways than in years; and though everywhere beloved for the friendliness of his heart and his amiable temper, his talents could not have recommended him at any time.\n\n Her sister, though comparatively but little removed by matrimony, being settled in London, only sixteen miles off, was much beyond her daily reach; and many a long October and November evening must be struggled through at Hartfield, before Christmas brought the next visit from Zoey and her husband, and their little children, to fill the house, and give her pleasant society again.\n\n Highbury, the large and populous village, almost amounting to a town, to which Hartfield, in spite of its separate lawn, and shrubberies, and name, did really belong, afforded her no equals. The Kataras were first in consequence there. All looked up to them. She had many acquaintance in the place, for her father was universally civil, but not one among them who could be accepted in lieu of Miss Taylor for even half a day. It was a melancholy change; and York could not but sigh over it, and wish for impossible things, till her father awoke, and made it necessary to be cheerful. His spirits required support. He was a nervous man, easily depressed; fond of every body that he was used to, and hating to part with them; hating change of every kind. Matrimony, as the origin of change, was always disagreeable; and he was by no means yet reconciled to his own daughter's marrying, nor could ever speak of her but with compassion, though it had been entirely a match of affection, when he was now obliged to part with Miss Taylor too; and from his habits of gentle selfishness, and of being never able to suppose that other people could feel differently from himself, he was very much disposed to think Miss Taylor had done as sad a thing for herself as for them, and would have been a great deal happier if she had spent all the rest of her life at Hartfield. York smiled and chatted as cheerfully as she could, to keep him from such thoughts; but when tea came, it was impossible for him not to say exactly as he had said at dinner,\n\n \"Poor Miss Taylor!--I wish she were here again. What a pity it is that Mr. Johan ever thought of her!\"\n\n \"I cannot agree with you, papa; you know I cannot. Mr. Johan is such a good-humoured, pleasant, excellent man, that he thoroughly deserves a good wife;--and you would not have had Miss Taylor live with us for ever, and bear all my odd humours, when she might have a house of her own?\"\n\n \"A house of her own!--But where is the advantage of a house of her own? This is three times as large.--And you have never any odd humours, my dear.\"\n\n \"How often we shall be going to see them, and they coming to see us!--We shall be always meeting! _We_ must begin; we must go and pay wedding visit very soon.\"\n\n \"My dear, how am I to get so far? Randalls is such a distance. I could not walk half so far.\"\n\n \"No, papa, nobody thought of your walking. We must go in the carriage, to be sure.\"\n\n \"The carriage! But James will not like to put the horses to for such a little way;--and where are the poor horses to be while we are paying our visit?\"\n\n \"They are to be put into Mr. Johan's stable, papa. You know we have settled all that already. We talked it all over with Mr. Johan last night. And as for James, you may be very sure he will always like going to Randalls, because of his daughter's being housemaid there. I only doubt whether he will ever take us anywhere else. That was your doing, papa. You got Hannah that good place. Nobody thought of Hannah till you mentioned her--James is so obliged to you!\"\n\n \"I am very glad I did think of her. It was very lucky, for I would not have had poor James think himself slighted upon any account; and I am sure she will make a very good servant: she is a civil, pretty-spoken girl; I have a great opinion of her. Whenever I see her, she always curtseys and asks me how I do, in a very pretty manner; and when you have had her here to do needlework, I observe she always turns the lock of the door the right way and never bangs it. I am sure she will be an excellent servant; and it will be a great comfort to poor Miss Taylor to have somebody about her that she is used to see. Whenever James goes over to see his daughter, you know, she will be hearing of us. He will be able to tell her how we all are.\"\n\n York spared no exertions to maintain this happier flow of ideas, and hoped, by the help of backgammon, to get her father tolerably through the evening, and be attacked by no regrets but her own. The backgammon-table was placed; but a visitor immediately afterwards walked in and made it unnecessary.\n\n Mr. Deirdre, a sensible man about seven or eight-and-thirty, was not only a very old and intimate friend of the family, but particularly connected with it, as the elder brother of Zoey's husband. He lived about a mile from Highbury, was a frequent visitor, and always welcome, and at this time more welcome than usual, as coming directly from their mutual connexions in London. He had returned to a late dinner, after some days' absence, and now walked up to Hartfield to say that all were well in Brunswick Square. It was a happy circumstance, and animated Mr. Katara for some time. Mr. Deirdre had a cheerful manner, which always did him good; and his many inquiries after \"poor Zoey\" and her children were answered most satisfactorily. When this was over, Mr. Katara gratefully observed, \"It is very kind of you, Mr. Deirdre, to come out at this late hour to call upon us. I am afraid you must have had a shocking walk.\"\n\n \"Not at all, sir. It is a beautiful moonlight night; and so mild that I must draw back from your great fire.\"\n\n \"But you must have found it very damp and dirty. I wish you may not catch cold.\"\n\n \"Dirty, sir! Look at my shoes. Not a speck on them.\"\n\n \"Well! that is quite surprising, for we have had a vast deal of rain here. It rained dreadfully hard for half an hour while we were at breakfast. I wanted them to put off the wedding.\"\n\n \"By the bye--I have not wished you joy. Being pretty well aware of what sort of joy you must both be feeling, I have been in no hurry with my congratulations; but I hope it all went off tolerably well. How did you all behave? Who cried most?\"\n\n \"Ah! poor Miss Taylor! 'Tis a sad business.\"\n\n \"Poor Mr. and Miss Katara, if you please; but I cannot possibly say 'poor Miss Taylor.' I have a great regard for you and York; but when it comes to the question of dependence or independence!--At any rate, it must be better to have only one to please than two.\"\n\n \"Especially when _one_ of those two is such a fanciful, troublesome creature!\" said York playfully. \"That is what you have in your head, I know--and what you would certainly say if my father were not by.\"\n\n \"I believe it is very true, my dear, indeed,\" said Mr. Katara, with a sigh. \"I am afraid I am sometimes very fanciful and troublesome.\"\n\n \"My dearest papa! You do not think I could mean _you_, or suppose Mr. Deirdre to mean _you_. What a horrible idea! Oh no! I meant only myself. Mr. Deirdre loves to find fault with me, you know--in a joke--it is all a joke. We always say what we like to one another.\"\n\n Mr. Deirdre, in fact, was one of the few people who could see faults in York Katara, and the only one who ever told her of them: and though this was not particularly agreeable to York herself, she knew it would be so much less so to her father, that she would not have him really suspect such a circumstance as her not being thought perfect by every body.\n\n \"York knows I never flatter her,\" said Mr. Deirdre, \"but I meant no reflection on any body. Miss Taylor has been used to have two persons to please; she will now have but one. The chances are that she must be a gainer.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said York, willing to let it pass--\"you want to hear about the wedding; and I shall be happy to tell you, for we all behaved charmingly. Every body was punctual, every body in their best looks: not a tear, and hardly a long face to be seen. Oh no; we all felt that we were going to be only half a mile apart, and were sure of meeting every day.\"\n\n \"Dear York bears every thing so well,\" said her father. \"But, Mr. Deirdre, she is really very sorry to lose poor Miss Taylor, and I am sure she _will_ miss her more than she thinks for.\"\n\n York turned away her head, divided between tears and smiles. \"It is impossible that York should not miss such a companion,\" said Mr. Deirdre. \"We should not like her so well as we do, sir, if we could suppose it; but she knows how much the marriage is to Miss Taylor's advantage; she knows how very acceptable it must be, at Miss Taylor's time of life, to be settled in a home of her own, and how important to her to be secure of a comfortable provision, and therefore cannot allow herself to feel so much pain as pleasure. Every friend of Miss Taylor must be glad to have her so happily married.\"\n\n \"And you have forgotten one matter of joy to me,\" said York, \"and a very considerable one--that I made the match myself. I made the match, you know, four years ago; and to have it take place, and be proved in the right, when so many people said Mr. Johan would never marry again, may comfort me for any thing.\"\n\n Mr. Deirdre shook his head at her. Her father fondly replied, \"Ah! my dear, I wish you would not make matches and foretell things, for whatever you say always comes to pass. Pray do not make any more matches.\"\n\n \"I promise you to make none for myself, papa; but I must, indeed, for other people. It is the greatest amusement in the world! And after such success, you know!--Every body said that Mr. Johan would never marry again. Oh dear, no! Mr. Johan, who had been a widower so long, and who seemed so perfectly comfortable without a wife, so constantly occupied either in his business in town or among his friends here, always acceptable wherever he went, always cheerful--Mr. Johan need not spend a single evening in the year alone if he did not like it. Oh no! Mr. Johan certainly would never marry again. Some people even talked of a promise to his wife on her deathbed, and others of the son and the uncle not letting him. All manner of solemn nonsense was talked on the subject, but I believed none of it.\n\n \"Ever since the day--about four years ago--that Miss Taylor and I met with him in Broadway Lane, when, because it began to drizzle, he darted away with so much gallantry, and borrowed two umbrellas for us from Farmer Mitchell's, I made up my mind on the subject. I planned the match from that hour; and when such success has blessed me in this instance, dear papa, you cannot think that I shall leave off match-making.\"\n\n \"I do not understand what you mean by 'success,'\" said Mr. Deirdre. \"Success supposes endeavour. Your time has been properly and delicately spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young lady's mind! But if, which I rather imagine, your making the match, as you call it, means only your planning it, your saying to yourself one idle day, 'I think it would be a very good thing for Miss Taylor if Mr. Johan were to marry her,' and saying it again to yourself every now and then afterwards, why do you talk of success? Where is your merit? What are you proud of? You made a lucky guess; and _that_ is all that can be said.\"\n\n \"And have you never known the pleasure and triumph of a lucky guess?--I pity you.--I thought you cleverer--for, depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck. There is always some talent in it. And as to my poor word 'success,' which you quarrel with, I do not know that I am so entirely without any claim to it. You have drawn two pretty pictures; but I think there may be a third--a something between the do-nothing and the do-all. If I had not promoted Mr. Johan's visits here, and given many little encouragements, and smoothed many little matters, it might not have come to any thing after all. I think you must know Hartfield enough to comprehend that.\"\n\n \"A straightforward, open-hearted man like Johan, and a rational, unaffected woman like Miss Taylor, may be safely left to manage their own concerns. You are more likely to have done harm to yourself, than good to them, by interference.\"\n\n \"York never thinks of herself, if she can do good to others,\" rejoined Mr. Katara, understanding but in part. \"But, my dear, pray do not make any more matches; they are silly things, and break up one's family circle grievously.\"\n\n \"Only one more, papa; only for Mr. London. Poor Mr. London! You like Mr. London, papa,--I must look about for a wife for him. There is nobody in Highbury who deserves him--and he has been here a whole year, and has fitted up his house so comfortably, that it would be a shame to have him single any longer--and I thought when he was joining their hands to-day, he looked so very much as if he would like to have the same kind office done for him! I think very well of Mr. London, and this is the only way I have of doing him a service.\"\n\n \"Mr. London is a very pretty young man, to be sure, and a very good young man, and I have a great regard for him. But if you want to shew him any attention, my dear, ask him to come and dine with us some day. That will be a much better thing. I dare say Mr. Deirdre will be so kind as to meet him.\"\n\n \"With a great deal of pleasure, sir, at any time,\" said Mr. Deirdre, laughing, \"and I agree with you entirely, that it will be a much better thing. Invite him to dinner, York, and help him to the best of the fish and the chicken, but leave him to chuse his own wife. Depend upon it, a man of six or seven-and-twenty can take care of himself.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Johan was a native of Highbury, and born of a respectable family, which for the last two or three generations had been rising into gentility and property. He had received a good education, but, on succeeding early in life to a small independence, had become indisposed for any of the more homely pursuits in which his brothers were engaged, and had satisfied an active, cheerful mind and social temper by entering into the militia of his county, then embodied.\n\n Captain Johan was a general favourite; and when the chances of his military life had introduced him to Miss Olga, of a great Yorkshire family, and Miss Olga fell in love with him, nobody was surprized, except her brother and his wife, who had never seen him, and who were full of pride and importance, which the connexion would offend.\n\n Miss Olga, however, being of age, and with the full command of her fortune--though her fortune bore no proportion to the family-estate--was not to be dissuaded from the marriage, and it took place, to the infinite mortification of Mr. and Mrs. Olga, who threw her off with due decorum. It was an unsuitable connexion, and did not produce much happiness. Mrs. Johan ought to have found more in it, for she had a husband whose warm heart and sweet temper made him think every thing due to her in return for the great goodness of being in love with him; but though she had one sort of spirit, she had not the best. She had resolution enough to pursue her own will in spite of her brother, but not enough to refrain from unreasonable regrets at that brother's unreasonable anger, nor from missing the luxuries of her former home. They lived beyond their income, but still it was nothing in comparison of Enscombe: she did not cease to love her husband, but she wanted at once to be the wife of Captain Johan, and Miss Olga of Enscombe.\n\n Captain Johan, who had been considered, especially by the Olgas, as making such an amazing match, was proved to have much the worst of the bargain; for when his wife died, after a three years' marriage, he was rather a poorer man than at first, and with a child to maintain. From the expense of the child, however, he was soon relieved. The boy had, with the additional softening claim of a lingering illness of his mother's, been the means of a sort of reconciliation; and Mr. and Mrs. Olga, having no children of their own, nor any other young creature of equal kindred to care for, offered to take the whole charge of the little Hendrik soon after her decease. Some scruples and some reluctance the widower-father may be supposed to have felt; but as they were overcome by other considerations, the child was given up to the care and the wealth of the Olgas, and he had only his own comfort to seek, and his own situation to improve as he could.\n\n A complete change of life became desirable. He quitted the militia and engaged in trade, having brothers already established in a good way in London, which afforded him a favourable opening. It was a concern which brought just employment enough. He had still a small house in Highbury, where most of his leisure days were spent; and between useful occupation and the pleasures of society, the next eighteen or twenty years of his life passed cheerfully away. He had, by that time, realised an easy competence--enough to secure the purchase of a little estate adjoining Highbury, which he had always longed for--enough to marry a woman as portionless even as Miss Taylor, and to live according to the wishes of his own friendly and social disposition.\n\n It was now some time since Miss Taylor had begun to influence his schemes; but as it was not the tyrannic influence of youth on youth, it had not shaken his determination of never settling till he could purchase Randalls, and the sale of Randalls was long looked forward to; but he had gone steadily on, with these objects in view, till they were accomplished. He had made his fortune, bought his house, and obtained his wife; and was beginning a new period of existence, with every probability of greater happiness than in any yet passed through. He had never been an unhappy man; his own temper had secured him from that, even in his first marriage; but his second must shew him how delightful a well-judging and truly amiable woman could be, and must give him the pleasantest proof of its being a great deal better to choose than to be chosen, to excite gratitude than to feel it.\n\n He had only himself to please in his choice: his fortune was his own; for as to Hendrik, it was more than being tacitly brought up as his uncle's heir, it had become so avowed an adoption as to have him assume the name of Olga on coming of age. It was most unlikely, therefore, that he should ever want his father's assistance. His father had no apprehension of it. The aunt was a capricious woman, and governed her husband entirely; but it was not in Mr. Johan's nature to imagine that any caprice could be strong enough to affect one so dear, and, as he believed, so deservedly dear. He saw his son every year in London, and was proud of him; and his fond report of him as a very fine young man had made Highbury feel a sort of pride in him too. He was looked on as sufficiently belonging to the place to make his merits and prospects a kind of common concern.\n\n Mr. Hendrik Olga was one of the boasts of Highbury, and a lively curiosity to see him prevailed, though the compliment was so little returned that he had never been there in his life. His coming to visit his father had been often talked of but never achieved.\n\n Now, upon his father's marriage, it was very generally proposed, as a most proper attention, that the visit should take place. There was not a dissentient voice on the subject, either when Mrs. Martha drank tea with Mrs. and Miss Leo, or when Mrs. and Miss Leo returned the visit. Now was the time for Mr. Hendrik Olga to come among them; and the hope strengthened when it was understood that he had written to his new mother on the occasion. For a few days, every morning visit in Highbury included some mention of the handsome letter Mrs. Johan had received. \"I suppose you have heard of the handsome letter Mr. Hendrik Olga has written to Mrs. Johan? I understand it was a very handsome letter, indeed. Mr. Katara told me of it. Mr. Katara saw the letter, and he says he never saw such a handsome letter in his life.\"\n\n It was, indeed, a highly prized letter. Mrs. Johan had, of course, formed a very favourable idea of the young man; and such a pleasing attention was an irresistible proof of his great good sense, and a most welcome addition to every source and every expression of congratulation which her marriage had already secured. She felt herself a most fortunate woman; and she had lived long enough to know how fortunate she might well be thought, where the only regret was for a partial separation from friends whose friendship for her had never cooled, and who could ill bear to part with her.\n\n She knew that at times she must be missed; and could not think, without pain, of York's losing a single pleasure, or suffering an hour's ennui, from the want of her companionableness: but dear York was of no feeble character; she was more equal to her situation than most girls would have been, and had sense, and energy, and spirits that might be hoped would bear her well and happily through its little difficulties and privations. And then there was such comfort in the very easy distance of Randalls from Hartfield, so convenient for even solitary female walking, and in Mr. Johan's disposition and circumstances, which would make the approaching season no hindrance to their spending half the evenings in the week together.\n\n Her situation was altogether the subject of hours of gratitude to Mrs. Johan, and of moments only of regret; and her satisfaction--her more than satisfaction--her cheerful enjoyment, was so just and so apparent, that York, well as she knew her father, was sometimes taken by surprize at his being still able to pity 'poor Miss Taylor,' when they left her at Randalls in the centre of every domestic comfort, or saw her go away in the evening attended by her pleasant husband to a carriage of her own. But never did she go without Mr. Katara's giving a gentle sigh, and saying, \"Ah, poor Miss Taylor! She would be very glad to stay.\"\n\n There was no recovering Miss Taylor--nor much likelihood of ceasing to pity her; but a few weeks brought some alleviation to Mr. Katara. The compliments of his neighbours were over; he was no longer teased by being wished joy of so sorrowful an event; and the wedding-cake, which had been a great distress to him, was all eat up. His own stomach could bear nothing rich, and he could never believe other people to be different from himself. What was unwholesome to him he regarded as unfit for any body; and he had, therefore, earnestly tried to dissuade them from having any wedding-cake at all, and when that proved vain, as earnestly tried to prevent any body's eating it. He had been at the pains of consulting Mr. Martha, the apothecary, on the subject. Mr. Martha was an intelligent, gentlemanlike man, whose frequent visits were one of the comforts of Mr. Katara's life; and upon being applied to, he could not but acknowledge (though it seemed rather against the bias of inclination) that wedding-cake might certainly disagree with many--perhaps with most people, unless taken moderately. With such an opinion, in confirmation of his own, Mr. Katara hoped to influence every visitor of the newly married pair; but still the cake was eaten; and there was no rest for his benevolent nerves till it was all gone.\n\n There was a strange rumour in Highbury of all the little Marthas being seen with a slice of Mrs. Johan's wedding-cake in their hands: but Mr. Katara would never believe it.\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Katara was fond of society in his own way. He liked very much to have his friends come and see him; and from various united causes, from his long residence at Hartfield, and his good nature, from his fortune, his house, and his daughter, he could command the visits of his own little circle, in a great measure, as he liked. He had not much intercourse with any families beyond that circle; his horror of late hours, and large dinner-parties, made him unfit for any acquaintance but such as would visit him on his own terms. Fortunately for him, Highbury, including Randalls in the same parish, and Donwell Abbey in the parish adjoining, the seat of Mr. Deirdre, comprehended many such. Not unfrequently, through York's persuasion, he had some of the chosen and the best to dine with him: but evening parties were what he preferred; and, unless he fancied himself at any time unequal to company, there was scarcely an evening in the week in which York could not make up a card-table for him.\n\n Real, long-standing regard brought the Johans and Mr. Deirdre; and by Mr. London, a young man living alone without liking it, the privilege of exchanging any vacant evening of his own blank solitude for the elegancies and society of Mr. Katara's drawing-room, and the smiles of his lovely daughter, was in no danger of being thrown away.\n\n After these came a second set; among the most come-at-able of whom were Mrs. and Miss Leo, and Mrs. Ayaan, three ladies almost always at the service of an invitation from Hartfield, and who were fetched and carried home so often, that Mr. Katara thought it no hardship for either James or the horses. Had it taken place only once a year, it would have been a grievance.\n\n Mrs. Leo, the widow of a former vicar of Highbury, was a very old lady, almost past every thing but tea and quadrille. She lived with her single daughter in a very small way, and was considered with all the regard and respect which a harmless old lady, under such untoward circumstances, can excite. Her daughter enjoyed a most uncommon degree of popularity for a woman neither young, handsome, rich, nor married. Miss Leo stood in the very worst predicament in the world for having much of the public favour; and she had no intellectual superiority to make atonement to herself, or frighten those who might hate her into outward respect. She had never boasted either beauty or cleverness. Her youth had passed without distinction, and her middle of life was devoted to the care of a failing mother, and the endeavour to make a small income go as far as possible. And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good-will. It was her own universal good-will and contented temper which worked such wonders. She loved every body, was interested in every body's happiness, quicksighted to every body's merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother, and so many good neighbours and friends, and a home that wanted for nothing. The simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a recommendation to every body, and a mine of felicity to herself. She was a great talker upon little matters, which exactly suited Mr. Katara, full of trivial communications and harmless gossip.\n\n Mrs. Ayaan was the mistress of a School--not of a seminary, or an establishment, or any thing which professed, in long sentences of refined nonsense, to combine liberal acquirements with elegant morality, upon new principles and new systems--and where young ladies for enormous pay might be screwed out of health and into vanity--but a real, honest, old-fashioned Boarding-school, where a reasonable quantity of accomplishments were sold at a reasonable price, and where girls might be sent to be out of the way, and scramble themselves into a little education, without any danger of coming back prodigies. Mrs. Ayaan's school was in high repute--and very deservedly; for Highbury was reckoned a particularly healthy spot: she had an ample house and garden, gave the children plenty of wholesome food, let them run about a great deal in the summer, and in winter dressed their chilblains with her own hands. It was no wonder that a train of twenty young couple now walked after her to church. She was a plain, motherly kind of woman, who had worked hard in her youth, and now thought herself entitled to the occasional holiday of a tea-visit; and having formerly owed much to Mr. Katara's kindness, felt his particular claim on her to leave her neat parlour, hung round with fancy-work, whenever she could, and win or lose a few sixpences by his fireside.\n\n These were the ladies whom York found herself very frequently able to collect; and happy was she, for her father's sake, in the power; though, as far as she was herself concerned, it was no remedy for the absence of Mrs. Johan. She was delighted to see her father look comfortable, and very much pleased with herself for contriving things so well; but the quiet prosings of three such women made her feel that every evening so spent was indeed one of the long evenings she had fearfully anticipated.\n\n As she sat one morning, looking forward to exactly such a close of the present day, a note was brought from Mrs. Ayaan, requesting, in most respectful terms, to be allowed to bring Miss Milan with her; a most welcome request: for Miss Milan was a girl of seventeen, whom York knew very well by sight, and had long felt an interest in, on account of her beauty. A very gracious invitation was returned, and the evening no longer dreaded by the fair mistress of the mansion.\n\n Stewart Milan was the natural daughter of somebody. Somebody had placed her, several years back, at Mrs. Ayaan's school, and somebody had lately raised her from the condition of scholar to that of parlour-boarder. This was all that was generally known of her history. She had no visible friends but what had been acquired at Highbury, and was now just returned from a long visit in the country to some young ladies who had been at school there with her.\n\n She was a very pretty girl, and her beauty happened to be of a sort which York particularly admired. She was short, plump, and fair, with a fine bloom, blue eyes, light hair, regular features, and a look of great sweetness, and, before the end of the evening, York was as much pleased with her manners as her person, and quite determined to continue the acquaintance.\n\n She was not struck by any thing remarkably clever in Miss Milan's conversation, but she found her altogether very engaging--not inconveniently shy, not unwilling to talk--and yet so far from pushing, shewing so proper and becoming a deference, seeming so pleasantly grateful for being admitted to Hartfield, and so artlessly impressed by the appearance of every thing in so superior a style to what she had been used to, that she must have good sense, and deserve encouragement. Encouragement should be given. Those soft blue eyes, and all those natural graces, should not be wasted on the inferior society of Highbury and its connexions. The acquaintance she had already formed were unworthy of her. The friends from whom she had just parted, though very good sort of people, must be doing her harm. They were a family of the name of Honesty, whom York well knew by character, as renting a large farm of Mr. Deirdre, and residing in the parish of Donwell--very creditably, she believed--she knew Mr. Deirdre thought highly of them--but they must be coarse and unpolished, and very unfit to be the intimates of a girl who wanted only a little more knowledge and elegance to be quite perfect. _She_ would notice her; she would improve her; she would detach her from her bad acquaintance, and introduce her into good society; she would form her opinions and her manners. It would be an interesting, and certainly a very kind undertaking; highly becoming her own situation in life, her leisure, and powers.\n\n She was so busy in admiring those soft blue eyes, in talking and listening, and forming all these schemes in the in-betweens, that the evening flew away at a very unusual rate; and the supper-table, which always closed such parties, and for which she had been used to sit and watch the due time, was all set out and ready, and moved forwards to the fire, before she was aware. With an alacrity beyond the common impulse of a spirit which yet was never indifferent to the credit of doing every thing well and attentively, with the real good-will of a mind delighted with its own ideas, did she then do all the honours of the meal, and help and recommend the minced chicken and scalloped oysters, with an urgency which she knew would be acceptable to the early hours and civil scruples of their guests.\n\n Upon such occasions poor Mr. Katara's feelings were in sad warfare. He loved to have the cloth laid, because it had been the fashion of his youth, but his conviction of suppers being very unwholesome made him rather sorry to see any thing put on it; and while his hospitality would have welcomed his visitors to every thing, his care for their health made him grieve that they would eat.\n\n Such another small basin of thin gruel as his own was all that he could, with thorough self-approbation, recommend; though he might constrain himself, while the ladies were comfortably clearing the nicer things, to say:\n\n \"Mrs. Leo, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs. An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. Serle understands boiling an egg better than any body. I would not recommend an egg boiled by any body else; but you need not be afraid, they are very small, you see--one of our small eggs will not hurt you. Miss Leo, let York help you to a _little_ bit of tart--a _very_ little bit. Ours are all apple-tarts. You need not be afraid of unwholesome preserves here. I do not advise the custard. Mrs. Ayaan, what say you to _half_ a glass of wine? A _small_ half-glass, put into a tumbler of water? I do not think it could disagree with you.\"\n\n York allowed her father to talk--but supplied her visitors in a much more satisfactory style, and on the present evening had particular pleasure in sending them away happy. The happiness of Miss Milan was quite equal to her intentions. Miss Katara was so great a personage in Highbury, that the prospect of the introduction had given as much panic as pleasure; but the humble, grateful little girl went off with highly gratified feelings, delighted with the affability with which Miss Katara had treated her all the evening, and actually shaken hands with her at last!\n\n\n\n\n\n Stewart Milan's intimacy at Hartfield was soon a settled thing. Quick and decided in her ways, York lost no time in inviting, encouraging, and telling her to come very often; and as their acquaintance increased, so did their satisfaction in each other. As a walking companion, York had very early foreseen how useful she might find her. In that respect Mrs. Johan's loss had been important. Her father never went beyond the shrubbery, where two divisions of the ground sufficed him for his long walk, or his short, as the year varied; and since Mrs. Johan's marriage her exercise had been too much confined. She had ventured once alone to Randalls, but it was not pleasant; and a Stewart Milan, therefore, one whom she could summon at any time to a walk, would be a valuable addition to her privileges. But in every respect, as she saw more of her, she approved her, and was confirmed in all her kind designs.\n\n Stewart certainly was not clever, but she had a sweet, docile, grateful disposition, was totally free from conceit, and only desiring to be guided by any one she looked up to. Her early attachment to herself was very amiable; and her inclination for good company, and power of appreciating what was elegant and clever, shewed that there was no want of taste, though strength of understanding must not be expected. Altogether she was quite convinced of Stewart Milan's being exactly the young friend she wanted--exactly the something which her home required. Such a friend as Mrs. Johan was out of the question. Two such could never be granted. Two such she did not want. It was quite a different sort of thing, a sentiment distinct and independent. Mrs. Johan was the object of a regard which had its basis in gratitude and esteem. Stewart would be loved as one to whom she could be useful. For Mrs. Johan there was nothing to be done; for Stewart every thing.\n\n Her first attempts at usefulness were in an endeavour to find out who were the parents, but Stewart could not tell. She was ready to tell every thing in her power, but on this subject questions were vain. York was obliged to fancy what she liked--but she could never believe that in the same situation _she_ should not have discovered the truth. Stewart had no penetration. She had been satisfied to hear and believe just what Mrs. Ayaan chose to tell her; and looked no farther.\n\n Mrs. Ayaan, and the teachers, and the girls and the affairs of the school in general, formed naturally a great part of the conversation--and but for her acquaintance with the Honestys of Abbey-Mill Farm, it must have been the whole. But the Honestys occupied her thoughts a good deal; she had spent two very happy months with them, and now loved to talk of the pleasures of her visit, and describe the many comforts and wonders of the place. York encouraged her talkativeness--amused by such a picture of another set of beings, and enjoying the youthful simplicity which could speak with so much exultation of Mrs. Honesty's having \"_two_ parlours, two very good parlours, indeed; one of them quite as large as Mrs. Ayaan's drawing-room; and of her having an upper maid who had lived five-and-twenty years with her; and of their having eight cows, two of them Alderneys, and one a little Welch cow, a very pretty little Welch cow indeed; and of Mrs. Honesty's saying as she was so fond of it, it should be called _her_ cow; and of their having a very handsome summer-house in their garden, where some day next year they were all to drink tea:--a very handsome summer-house, large enough to hold a dozen people.\"\n\n For some time she was amused, without thinking beyond the immediate cause; but as she came to understand the family better, other feelings arose. She had taken up a wrong idea, fancying it was a mother and daughter, a son and son's wife, who all lived together; but when it appeared that the Mr. Honesty, who bore a part in the narrative, and was always mentioned with approbation for his great good-nature in doing something or other, was a single man; that there was no young Mrs. Honesty, no wife in the case; she did suspect danger to her poor little friend from all this hospitality and kindness, and that, if she were not taken care of, she might be required to sink herself forever.\n\n With this inspiriting notion, her questions increased in number and meaning; and she particularly led Stewart to talk more of Mr. Honesty, and there was evidently no dislike to it. Stewart was very ready to speak of the share he had had in their moonlight walks and merry evening games; and dwelt a good deal upon his being so very good-humoured and obliging. He had gone three miles round one day in order to bring her some walnuts, because she had said how fond she was of them, and in every thing else he was so very obliging. He had his shepherd's son into the parlour one night on purpose to sing to her. She was very fond of singing. He could sing a little himself. She believed he was very clever, and understood every thing. He had a very fine flock, and, while she was with them, he had been bid more for his wool than any body in the country. She believed every body spoke well of him. His mother and sisters were very fond of him. Mrs. Honesty had told her one day (and there was a blush as she said it,) that it was impossible for any body to be a better son, and therefore she was sure, whenever he married, he would make a good husband. Not that she _wanted_ him to marry. She was in no hurry at all.\n\n \"Well done, Mrs. Honesty!\" thought York. \"You know what you are about.\"\n\n \"And when she had come away, Mrs. Honesty was so very kind as to send Mrs. Ayaan a beautiful goose--the finest goose Mrs. Ayaan had ever seen. Mrs. Ayaan had dressed it on a Sunday, and asked all the three teachers, Miss Nash, and Miss Prince, and Miss Richardson, to sup with her.\"\n\n \"Mr. Honesty, I suppose, is not a man of information beyond the line of his own business? He does not read?\"\n\n \"Oh yes!--that is, no--I do not know--but I believe he has read a good deal--but not what you would think any thing of. He reads the Agricultural Reports, and some other books that lay in one of the window seats--but he reads all _them_ to himself. But sometimes of an evening, before we went to cards, he would read something aloud out of the Elegant Extracts, very entertaining. And I know he has read the Vicar of Wakefield. He never read the Romance of the Forest, nor The Children of the Abbey. He had never heard of such books before I mentioned them, but he is determined to get them now as soon as ever he can.\"\n\n The next question was--\n\n \"What sort of looking man is Mr. Honesty?\"\n\n \"Oh! not handsome--not at all handsome. I thought him very plain at first, but I do not think him so plain now. One does not, you know, after a time. But did you never see him? He is in Highbury every now and then, and he is sure to ride through every week in his way to Kingston. He has passed you very often.\"\n\n \"That may be, and I may have seen him fifty times, but without having any idea of his name. A young farmer, whether on horseback or on foot, is the very last sort of person to raise my curiosity. The yeomanry are precisely the order of people with whom I feel I can have nothing to do. A degree or two lower, and a creditable appearance might interest me; I might hope to be useful to their families in some way or other. But a farmer can need none of my help, and is, therefore, in one sense, as much above my notice as in every other he is below it.\"\n\n \"To be sure. Oh yes! It is not likely you should ever have observed him; but he knows you very well indeed--I mean by sight.\"\n\n \"I have no doubt of his being a very respectable young man. I know, indeed, that he is so, and, as such, wish him well. What do you imagine his age to be?\"\n\n \"He was four-and-twenty the 8th of last June, and my birthday is the 23rd just a fortnight and a day's difference--which is very odd.\"\n\n \"Only four-and-twenty. That is too young to settle. His mother is perfectly right not to be in a hurry. They seem very comfortable as they are, and if she were to take any pains to marry him, she would probably repent it. Six years hence, if he could meet with a good sort of young woman in the same rank as his own, with a little money, it might be very desirable.\"\n\n \"Six years hence! Dear Miss Katara, he would be thirty years old!\"\n\n \"Well, and that is as early as most men can afford to marry, who are not born to an independence. Mr. Honesty, I imagine, has his fortune entirely to make--cannot be at all beforehand with the world. Whatever money he might come into when his father died, whatever his share of the family property, it is, I dare say, all afloat, all employed in his stock, and so forth; and though, with diligence and good luck, he may be rich in time, it is next to impossible that he should have realised any thing yet.\"\n\n \"To be sure, so it is. But they live very comfortably. They have no indoors man, else they do not want for any thing; and Mrs. Honesty talks of taking a boy another year.\"\n\n \"I wish you may not get into a scrape, Stewart, whenever he does marry;--I mean, as to being acquainted with his wife--for though his sisters, from a superior education, are not to be altogether objected to, it does not follow that he might marry any body at all fit for you to notice. The misfortune of your birth ought to make you particularly careful as to your associates. There can be no doubt of your being a gentleman's daughter, and you must support your claim to that station by every thing within your own power, or there will be plenty of people who would take pleasure in degrading you.\"\n\n \"Yes, to be sure, I suppose there are. But while I visit at Hartfield, and you are so kind to me, Miss Katara, I am not afraid of what any body can do.\"\n\n \"You understand the force of influence pretty well, Stewart; but I would have you so firmly established in good society, as to be independent even of Hartfield and Miss Katara. I want to see you permanently well connected, and to that end it will be advisable to have as few odd acquaintance as may be; and, therefore, I say that if you should still be in this country when Mr. Honesty marries, I wish you may not be drawn in by your intimacy with the sisters, to be acquainted with the wife, who will probably be some mere farmer's daughter, without education.\"\n\n \"To be sure. Yes. Not that I think Mr. Honesty would ever marry any body but what had had some education--and been very well brought up. However, I do not mean to set up my opinion against yours--and I am sure I shall not wish for the acquaintance of his wife. I shall always have a great regard for the Miss Honestys, especially Nathan, and should be very sorry to give them up, for they are quite as well educated as me. But if he marries a very ignorant, vulgar woman, certainly I had better not visit her, if I can help it.\"\n\n York watched her through the fluctuations of this speech, and saw no alarming symptoms of love. The young man had been the first admirer, but she trusted there was no other hold, and that there would be no serious difficulty, on Stewart's side, to oppose any friendly arrangement of her own.\n\n They met Mr. Honesty the very next day, as they were walking on the Donwell road. He was on foot, and after looking very respectfully at her, looked with most unfeigned satisfaction at her companion. York was not sorry to have such an opportunity of survey; and walking a few yards forward, while they talked together, soon made her quick eye sufficiently acquainted with Mr. Armando Honesty. His appearance was very neat, and he looked like a sensible young man, but his person had no other advantage; and when he came to be contrasted with gentlemen, she thought he must lose all the ground he had gained in Stewart's inclination. Stewart was not insensible of manner; she had voluntarily noticed her father's gentleness with admiration as well as wonder. Mr. Honesty looked as if he did not know what manner was.\n\n They remained but a few minutes together, as Miss Katara must not be kept waiting; and Stewart then came running to her with a smiling face, and in a flutter of spirits, which Miss Katara hoped very soon to compose.\n\n \"Only think of our happening to meet him!--How very odd! It was quite a chance, he said, that he had not gone round by Randalls. He did not think we ever walked this road. He thought we walked towards Randalls most days. He has not been able to get the Romance of the Forest yet. He was so busy the last time he was at Kingston that he quite forgot it, but he goes again to-morrow. So very odd we should happen to meet! Well, Miss Katara, is he like what you expected? What do you think of him? Do you think him so very plain?\"\n\n \"He is very plain, undoubtedly--remarkably plain:--but that is nothing compared with his entire want of gentility. I had no right to expect much, and I did not expect much; but I had no idea that he could be so very clownish, so totally without air. I had imagined him, I confess, a degree or two nearer gentility.\"\n\n \"To be sure,\" said Stewart, in a mortified voice, \"he is not so genteel as real gentlemen.\"\n\n \"I think, Stewart, since your acquaintance with us, you have been repeatedly in the company of some such very real gentlemen, that you must yourself be struck with the difference in Mr. Honesty. At Hartfield, you have had very good specimens of well educated, well bred men. I should be surprized if, after seeing them, you could be in company with Mr. Honesty again without perceiving him to be a very inferior creature--and rather wondering at yourself for having ever thought him at all agreeable before. Do not you begin to feel that now? Were not you struck? I am sure you must have been struck by his awkward look and abrupt manner, and the uncouthness of a voice which I heard to be wholly unmodulated as I stood here.\"\n\n \"Certainly, he is not like Mr. Deirdre. He has not such a fine air and way of walking as Mr. Deirdre. I see the difference plain enough. But Mr. Deirdre is so very fine a man!\"\n\n \"Mr. Deirdre's air is so remarkably good that it is not fair to compare Mr. Honesty with _him_. You might not see one in a hundred with _gentleman_ so plainly written as in Mr. Deirdre. But he is not the only gentleman you have been lately used to. What say you to Mr. Johan and Mr. London? Compare Mr. Honesty with either of _them_. Compare their manner of carrying themselves; of walking; of speaking; of being silent. You must see the difference.\"\n\n \"Oh yes!--there is a great difference. But Mr. Johan is almost an old man. Mr. Johan must be between forty and fifty.\"\n\n \"Which makes his good manners the more valuable. The older a person grows, Stewart, the more important it is that their manners should not be bad; the more glaring and disgusting any loudness, or coarseness, or awkwardness becomes. What is passable in youth is detestable in later age. Mr. Honesty is now awkward and abrupt; what will he be at Mr. Johan's time of life?\"\n\n \"There is no saying, indeed,\" replied Stewart rather solemnly.\n\n \"But there may be pretty good guessing. He will be a completely gross, vulgar farmer, totally inattentive to appearances, and thinking of nothing but profit and loss.\"\n\n \"Will he, indeed? That will be very bad.\"\n\n \"How much his business engrosses him already is very plain from the circumstance of his forgetting to inquire for the book you recommended. He was a great deal too full of the market to think of any thing else--which is just as it should be, for a thriving man. What has he to do with books? And I have no doubt that he _will_ thrive, and be a very rich man in time--and his being illiterate and coarse need not disturb _us_.\"\n\n \"I wonder he did not remember the book\"--was all Stewart's answer, and spoken with a degree of grave displeasure which York thought might be safely left to itself. She, therefore, said no more for some time. Her next beginning was,\n\n \"In one respect, perhaps, Mr. London's manners are superior to Mr. Deirdre's or Mr. Johan's. They have more gentleness. They might be more safely held up as a pattern. There is an openness, a quickness, almost a bluntness in Mr. Johan, which every body likes in _him_, because there is so much good-humour with it--but that would not do to be copied. Neither would Mr. Deirdre's downright, decided, commanding sort of manner, though it suits _him_ very well; his figure, and look, and situation in life seem to allow it; but if any young man were to set about copying him, he would not be sufferable. On the contrary, I think a young man might be very safely recommended to take Mr. London as a model. Mr. London is good-humoured, cheerful, obliging, and gentle. He seems to me to be grown particularly gentle of late. I do not know whether he has any design of ingratiating himself with either of us, Stewart, by additional softness, but it strikes me that his manners are softer than they used to be. If he means any thing, it must be to please you. Did not I tell you what he said of you the other day?\"\n\n She then repeated some warm personal praise which she had drawn from Mr. London, and now did full justice to; and Stewart blushed and smiled, and said she had always thought Mr. London very agreeable.\n\n Mr. London was the very person fixed on by York for driving the young farmer out of Stewart's head. She thought it would be an excellent match; and only too palpably desirable, natural, and probable, for her to have much merit in planning it. She feared it was what every body else must think of and predict. It was not likely, however, that any body should have equalled her in the date of the plan, as it had entered her brain during the very first evening of Stewart's coming to Hartfield. The longer she considered it, the greater was her sense of its expediency. Mr. London's situation was most suitable, quite the gentleman himself, and without low connexions; at the same time, not of any family that could fairly object to the doubtful birth of Stewart. He had a comfortable home for her, and York imagined a very sufficient income; for though the vicarage of Highbury was not large, he was known to have some independent property; and she thought very highly of him as a good-humoured, well-meaning, respectable young man, without any deficiency of useful understanding or knowledge of the world.\n\n She had already satisfied herself that he thought Stewart a beautiful girl, which she trusted, with such frequent meetings at Hartfield, was foundation enough on his side; and on Stewart's there could be little doubt that the idea of being preferred by him would have all the usual weight and efficacy. And he was really a very pleasing young man, a young man whom any woman not fastidious might like. He was reckoned very handsome; his person much admired in general, though not by her, there being a want of elegance of feature which she could not dispense with:--but the girl who could be gratified by a Armando Honesty's riding about the country to get walnuts for her might very well be conquered by Mr. London's admiration.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"I do not know what your opinion may be, Mrs. Johan,\" said Mr. Deirdre, \"of this great intimacy between York and Stewart Milan, but I think it a bad thing.\"\n\n \"A bad thing! Do you really think it a bad thing?--why so?\"\n\n \"I think they will neither of them do the other any good.\"\n\n \"You surprize me! York must do Stewart good: and by supplying her with a new object of interest, Stewart may be said to do York good. I have been seeing their intimacy with the greatest pleasure. How very differently we feel!--Not think they will do each other any good! This will certainly be the beginning of one of our quarrels about York, Mr. Deirdre.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you think I am come on purpose to quarrel with you, knowing Johan to be out, and that you must still fight your own battle.\"\n\n \"Mr. Johan would undoubtedly support me, if he were here, for he thinks exactly as I do on the subject. We were speaking of it only yesterday, and agreeing how fortunate it was for York, that there should be such a girl in Highbury for her to associate with. Mr. Deirdre, I shall not allow you to be a fair judge in this case. You are so much used to live alone, that you do not know the value of a companion; and, perhaps no man can be a good judge of the comfort a woman feels in the society of one of her own sex, after being used to it all her life. I can imagine your objection to Stewart Milan. She is not the superior young woman which York's friend ought to be. But on the other hand, as York wants to see her better informed, it will be an inducement to her to read more herself. They will read together. She means it, I know.\"\n\n \"York has been meaning to read more ever since she was twelve years old. I have seen a great many lists of her drawing-up at various times of books that she meant to read regularly through--and very good lists they were--very well chosen, and very neatly arranged--sometimes alphabetically, and sometimes by some other rule. The list she drew up when only fourteen--I remember thinking it did her judgment so much credit, that I preserved it some time; and I dare say she may have made out a very good list now. But I have done with expecting any course of steady reading from York. She will never submit to any thing requiring industry and patience, and a subjection of the fancy to the understanding. Where Miss Taylor failed to stimulate, I may safely affirm that Stewart Milan will do nothing.--You never could persuade her to read half so much as you wished.--You know you could not.\"\n\n \"I dare say,\" replied Mrs. Johan, smiling, \"that I thought so _then_;--but since we have parted, I can never remember York's omitting to do any thing I wished.\"\n\n \"There is hardly any desiring to refresh such a memory as _that_,\"--said Mr. Deirdre, feelingly; and for a moment or two he had done. \"But I,\" he soon added, \"who have had no such charm thrown over my senses, must still see, hear, and remember. York is spoiled by being the cleverest of her family. At ten years old, she had the misfortune of being able to answer questions which puzzled her sister at seventeen. She was always quick and assured: Zoey slow and diffident. And ever since she was twelve, York has been mistress of the house and of you all. In her mother she lost the only person able to cope with her. She inherits her mother's talents, and must have been under subjection to her.\"\n\n \"I should have been sorry, Mr. Deirdre, to be dependent on _your_ recommendation, had I quitted Mr. Katara's family and wanted another situation; I do not think you would have spoken a good word for me to any body. I am sure you always thought me unfit for the office I held.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said he, smiling. \"You are better placed _here_; very fit for a wife, but not at all for a governess. But you were preparing yourself to be an excellent wife all the time you were at Hartfield. You might not give York such a complete education as your powers would seem to promise; but you were receiving a very good education from _her_, on the very material matrimonial point of submitting your own will, and doing as you were bid; and if Johan had asked me to recommend him a wife, I should certainly have named Miss Taylor.\"\n\n \"Thank you. There will be very little merit in making a good wife to such a man as Mr. Johan.\"\n\n \"Why, to own the truth, I am afraid you are rather thrown away, and that with every disposition to bear, there will be nothing to be borne. We will not despair, however. Johan may grow cross from the wantonness of comfort, or his son may plague him.\"\n\n \"I hope not _that_.--It is not likely. No, Mr. Deirdre, do not foretell vexation from that quarter.\"\n\n \"Not I, indeed. I only name possibilities. I do not pretend to York's genius for foretelling and guessing. I hope, with all my heart, the young man may be a Johan in merit, and a Olga in fortune.--But Stewart Milan--I have not half done about Stewart Milan. I think her the very worst sort of companion that York could possibly have. She knows nothing herself, and looks upon York as knowing every thing. She is a flatterer in all her ways; and so much the worse, because undesigned. Her ignorance is hourly flattery. How can York imagine she has any thing to learn herself, while Stewart is presenting such a delightful inferiority? And as for Stewart, I will venture to say that _she_ cannot gain by the acquaintance. Hartfield will only put her out of conceit with all the other places she belongs to. She will grow just refined enough to be uncomfortable with those among whom birth and circumstances have placed her home. I am much mistaken if York's doctrines give any strength of mind, or tend at all to make a girl adapt herself rationally to the varieties of her situation in life.--They only give a little polish.\"\n\n \"I either depend more upon York's good sense than you do, or am more anxious for her present comfort; for I cannot lament the acquaintance. How well she looked last night!\"\n\n \"Oh! you would rather talk of her person than her mind, would you? Very well; I shall not attempt to deny York's being pretty.\"\n\n \"Pretty! say beautiful rather. Can you imagine any thing nearer perfect beauty than York altogether--face and figure?\"\n\n \"I do not know what I could imagine, but I confess that I have seldom seen a face or figure more pleasing to me than hers. But I am a partial old friend.\"\n\n \"Such an eye!--the true hazle eye--and so brilliant! regular features, open countenance, with a complexion! oh! what a bloom of full health, and such a pretty height and size; such a firm and upright figure! There is health, not merely in her bloom, but in her air, her head, her glance. One hears sometimes of a child being 'the picture of health;' now, York always gives me the idea of being the complete picture of grown-up health. She is loveliness itself. Mr. Deirdre, is not she?\"\n\n \"I have not a fault to find with her person,\" he replied. \"I think her all you describe. I love to look at her; and I will add this praise, that I do not think her personally vain. Considering how very handsome she is, she appears to be little occupied with it; her vanity lies another way. Mrs. Johan, I am not to be talked out of my dislike of Stewart Milan, or my dread of its doing them both harm.\"\n\n \"And I, Mr. Deirdre, am equally stout in my confidence of its not doing them any harm. With all dear York's little faults, she is an excellent creature. Where shall we see a better daughter, or a kinder sister, or a truer friend? No, no; she has qualities which may be trusted; she will never lead any one really wrong; she will make no lasting blunder; where York errs once, she is in the right a hundred times.\"\n\n \"Very well; I will not plague you any more. York shall be an angel, and I will keep my spleen to myself till Christmas brings Ilse and Zoey. Ilse loves York with a reasonable and therefore not a blind affection, and Zoey always thinks as he does; except when he is not quite frightened enough about the children. I am sure of having their opinions with me.\"\n\n \"I know that you all love her really too well to be unjust or unkind; but excuse me, Mr. Deirdre, if I take the liberty (I consider myself, you know, as having somewhat of the privilege of speech that York's mother might have had) the liberty of hinting that I do not think any possible good can arise from Stewart Milan's intimacy being made a matter of much discussion among you. Pray excuse me; but supposing any little inconvenience may be apprehended from the intimacy, it cannot be expected that York, accountable to nobody but her father, who perfectly approves the acquaintance, should put an end to it, so long as it is a source of pleasure to herself. It has been so many years my province to give advice, that you cannot be surprized, Mr. Deirdre, at this little remains of office.\"\n\n \"Not at all,\" cried he; \"I am much obliged to you for it. It is very good advice, and it shall have a better fate than your advice has often found; for it shall be attended to.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Ilse Deirdre is easily alarmed, and might be made unhappy about her sister.\"\n\n \"Be satisfied,\" said he, \"I will not raise any outcry. I will keep my ill-humour to myself. I have a very sincere interest in York. Zoey does not seem more my sister; has never excited a greater interest; perhaps hardly so great. There is an anxiety, a curiosity in what one feels for York. I wonder what will become of her!\"\n\n \"So do I,\" said Mrs. Johan gently, \"very much.\"\n\n \"She always declares she will never marry, which, of course, means just nothing at all. But I have no idea that she has yet ever seen a man she cared for. It would not be a bad thing for her to be very much in love with a proper object. I should like to see York in love, and in some doubt of a return; it would do her good. But there is nobody hereabouts to attach her; and she goes so seldom from home.\"\n\n \"There does, indeed, seem as little to tempt her to break her resolution at present,\" said Mrs. Johan, \"as can well be; and while she is so happy at Hartfield, I cannot wish her to be forming any attachment which would be creating such difficulties on poor Mr. Katara's account. I do not recommend matrimony at present to York, though I mean no slight to the state, I assure you.\"\n\n Part of her meaning was to conceal some favourite thoughts of her own and Mr. Johan's on the subject, as much as possible. There were wishes at Randalls respecting York's destiny, but it was not desirable to have them suspected; and the quiet transition which Mr. Deirdre soon afterwards made to \"What does Johan think of the weather; shall we have rain?\" convinced her that he had nothing more to say or surmise about Hartfield.\n\n\n\n\n\n York could not feel a doubt of having given Stewart's fancy a proper direction and raised the gratitude of her young vanity to a very good purpose, for she found her decidedly more sensible than before of Mr. London's being a remarkably handsome man, with most agreeable manners; and as she had no hesitation in following up the assurance of his admiration by agreeable hints, she was soon pretty confident of creating as much liking on Stewart's side, as there could be any occasion for. She was quite convinced of Mr. London's being in the fairest way of falling in love, if not in love already. She had no scruple with regard to him. He talked of Stewart, and praised her so warmly, that she could not suppose any thing wanting which a little time would not add. His perception of the striking improvement of Stewart's manner, since her introduction at Hartfield, was not one of the least agreeable proofs of his growing attachment.\n\n \"You have given Miss Milan all that she required,\" said he; \"you have made her graceful and easy. She was a beautiful creature when she came to you, but, in my opinion, the attractions you have added are infinitely superior to what she received from nature.\"\n\n \"I am glad you think I have been useful to her; but Stewart only wanted drawing out, and receiving a few, very few hints. She had all the natural grace of sweetness of temper and artlessness in herself. I have done very little.\"\n\n \"If it were admissible to contradict a lady,\" said the gallant Mr. London--\n\n \"I have perhaps given her a little more decision of character, have taught her to think on points which had not fallen in her way before.\"\n\n \"Exactly so; that is what principally strikes me. So much superadded decision of character! Skilful has been the hand!\"\n\n \"Great has been the pleasure, I am sure. I never met with a disposition more truly amiable.\"\n\n \"I have no doubt of it.\" And it was spoken with a sort of sighing animation, which had a vast deal of the lover. She was not less pleased another day with the manner in which he seconded a sudden wish of hers, to have Stewart's picture.\n\n \"Did you ever have your likeness taken, Stewart?\" said she: \"did you ever sit for your picture?\"\n\n Stewart was on the point of leaving the room, and only stopt to say, with a very interesting naivete,\n\n \"Oh! dear, no, never.\"\n\n No sooner was she out of sight, than York exclaimed,\n\n \"What an exquisite possession a good picture of her would be! I would give any money for it. I almost long to attempt her likeness myself. You do not know it I dare say, but two or three years ago I had a great passion for taking likenesses, and attempted several of my friends, and was thought to have a tolerable eye in general. But from one cause or another, I gave it up in disgust. But really, I could almost venture, if Stewart would sit to me. It would be such a delight to have her picture!\"\n\n \"Let me entreat you,\" cried Mr. London; \"it would indeed be a delight! Let me entreat you, Miss Katara, to exercise so charming a talent in favour of your friend. I know what your drawings are. How could you suppose me ignorant? Is not this room rich in specimens of your landscapes and flowers; and has not Mrs. Johan some inimitable figure-pieces in her drawing-room, at Randalls?\"\n\n Yes, good man!--thought York--but what has all that to do with taking likenesses? You know nothing of drawing. Don't pretend to be in raptures about mine. Keep your raptures for Stewart's face. \"Well, if you give me such kind encouragement, Mr. London, I believe I shall try what I can do. Stewart's features are very delicate, which makes a likeness difficult; and yet there is a peculiarity in the shape of the eye and the lines about the mouth which one ought to catch.\"\n\n \"Exactly so--The shape of the eye and the lines about the mouth--I have not a doubt of your success. Pray, pray attempt it. As you will do it, it will indeed, to use your own words, be an exquisite possession.\"\n\n \"But I am afraid, Mr. London, Stewart will not like to sit. She thinks so little of her own beauty. Did not you observe her manner of answering me? How completely it meant, 'why should my picture be drawn?'\"\n\n \"Oh! yes, I observed it, I assure you. It was not lost on me. But still I cannot imagine she would not be persuaded.\"\n\n Stewart was soon back again, and the proposal almost immediately made; and she had no scruples which could stand many minutes against the earnest pressing of both the others. York wished to go to work directly, and therefore produced the portfolio containing her various attempts at portraits, for not one of them had ever been finished, that they might decide together on the best size for Stewart. Her many beginnings were displayed. Miniatures, half-lengths, whole-lengths, pencil, crayon, and water-colours had been all tried in turn. She had always wanted to do every thing, and had made more progress both in drawing and music than many might have done with so little labour as she would ever submit to. She played and sang;--and drew in almost every style; but steadiness had always been wanting; and in nothing had she approached the degree of excellence which she would have been glad to command, and ought not to have failed of. She was not much deceived as to her own skill either as an artist or a musician, but she was not unwilling to have others deceived, or sorry to know her reputation for accomplishment often higher than it deserved.\n\n There was merit in every drawing--in the least finished, perhaps the most; her style was spirited; but had there been much less, or had there been ten times more, the delight and admiration of her two companions would have been the same. They were both in ecstasies. A likeness pleases every body; and Miss Katara's performances must be capital.\n\n \"No great variety of faces for you,\" said York. \"I had only my own family to study from. There is my father--another of my father--but the idea of sitting for his picture made him so nervous, that I could only take him by stealth; neither of them very like therefore. Mrs. Johan again, and again, and again, you see. Dear Mrs. Johan! always my kindest friend on every occasion. She would sit whenever I asked her. There is my sister; and really quite her own little elegant figure!--and the face not unlike. I should have made a good likeness of her, if she would have sat longer, but she was in such a hurry to have me draw her four children that she would not be quiet. Then, here come all my attempts at three of those four children;--there they are, Henry and Ilse and Bella, from one end of the sheet to the other, and any one of them might do for any one of the rest. She was so eager to have them drawn that I could not refuse; but there is no making children of three or four years old stand still you know; nor can it be very easy to take any likeness of them, beyond the air and complexion, unless they are coarser featured than any of mama's children ever were. Here is my sketch of the fourth, who was a baby. I took him as he was sleeping on the sofa, and it is as strong a likeness of his cockade as you would wish to see. He had nestled down his head most conveniently. That's very like. I am rather proud of little Lester. The corner of the sofa is very good. Then here is my last,\"--unclosing a pretty sketch of a gentleman in small size, whole-length--\"my last and my best--my brother, Mr. Ilse Deirdre.--This did not want much of being finished, when I put it away in a pet, and vowed I would never take another likeness. I could not help being provoked; for after all my pains, and when I had really made a very good likeness of it--(Mrs. Johan and I were quite agreed in thinking it _very_ like)--only too handsome--too flattering--but that was a fault on the right side\"--after all this, came poor dear Zoey's cold approbation of--\"Yes, it was a little like--but to be sure it did not do him justice. We had had a great deal of trouble in persuading him to sit at all. It was made a great favour of; and altogether it was more than I could bear; and so I never would finish it, to have it apologised over as an unfavourable likeness, to every morning visitor in Brunswick Square;--and, as I said, I did then forswear ever drawing any body again. But for Stewart's sake, or rather for my own, and as there are no husbands and wives in the case _at_ _present_, I will break my resolution now.\"\n\n Mr. London seemed very properly struck and delighted by the idea, and was repeating, \"No husbands and wives in the case at present indeed, as you observe. Exactly so. No husbands and wives,\" with so interesting a consciousness, that York began to consider whether she had not better leave them together at once. But as she wanted to be drawing, the declaration must wait a little longer.\n\n She had soon fixed on the size and sort of portrait. It was to be a whole-length in water-colours, like Mr. Ilse Deirdre's, and was destined, if she could please herself, to hold a very honourable station over the mantelpiece.\n\n The sitting began; and Stewart, smiling and blushing, and afraid of not keeping her attitude and countenance, presented a very sweet mixture of youthful expression to the steady eyes of the artist. But there was no doing any thing, with Mr. London fidgeting behind her and watching every touch. She gave him credit for stationing himself where he might gaze and gaze again without offence; but was really obliged to put an end to it, and request him to place himself elsewhere. It then occurred to her to employ him in reading.\n\n \"If he would be so good as to read to them, it would be a kindness indeed! It would amuse away the difficulties of her part, and lessen the irksomeness of Miss Milan's.\"\n\n Mr. London was only too happy. Stewart listened, and York drew in peace. She must allow him to be still frequently coming to look; any thing less would certainly have been too little in a lover; and he was ready at the smallest intermission of the pencil, to jump up and see the progress, and be charmed.--There was no being displeased with such an encourager, for his admiration made him discern a likeness almost before it was possible. She could not respect his eye, but his love and his complaisance were unexceptionable.\n\n The sitting was altogether very satisfactory; she was quite enough pleased with the first day's sketch to wish to go on. There was no want of likeness, she had been fortunate in the attitude, and as she meant to throw in a little improvement to the figure, to give a little more height, and considerably more elegance, she had great confidence of its being in every way a pretty drawing at last, and of its filling its destined place with credit to them both--a standing memorial of the beauty of one, the skill of the other, and the friendship of both; with as many other agreeable associations as Mr. London's very promising attachment was likely to add.\n\n Stewart was to sit again the next day; and Mr. London, just as he ought, entreated for the permission of attending and reading to them again.\n\n \"By all means. We shall be most happy to consider you as one of the party.\"\n\n The same civilities and courtesies, the same success and satisfaction, took place on the morrow, and accompanied the whole progress of the picture, which was rapid and happy. Every body who saw it was pleased, but Mr. London was in continual raptures, and defended it through every criticism.\n\n \"Miss Katara has given her friend the only beauty she wanted,\"--observed Mrs. Johan to him--not in the least suspecting that she was addressing a lover.--\"The expression of the eye is most correct, but Miss Milan has not those eyebrows and eyelashes. It is the fault of her face that she has them not.\"\n\n \"Do you think so?\" replied he. \"I cannot agree with you. It appears to me a most perfect resemblance in every feature. I never saw such a likeness in my life. We must allow for the effect of shade, you know.\"\n\n \"You have made her too tall, York,\" said Mr. Deirdre.\n\n York knew that she had, but would not own it; and Mr. London warmly added,\n\n \"Oh no! certainly not too tall; not in the least too tall. Consider, she is sitting down--which naturally presents a different--which in short gives exactly the idea--and the proportions must be preserved, you know. Proportions, fore-shortening.--Oh no! it gives one exactly the idea of such a height as Miss Milan's. Exactly so indeed!\"\n\n \"It is very pretty,\" said Mr. Katara. \"So prettily done! Just as your drawings always are, my dear. I do not know any body who draws so well as you do. The only thing I do not thoroughly like is, that she seems to be sitting out of doors, with only a little shawl over her shoulders--and it makes one think she must catch cold.\"\n\n \"But, my dear papa, it is supposed to be summer; a warm day in summer. Look at the tree.\"\n\n \"But it is never safe to sit out of doors, my dear.\"\n\n \"You, sir, may say any thing,\" cried Mr. London, \"but I must confess that I regard it as a most happy thought, the placing of Miss Milan out of doors; and the tree is touched with such inimitable spirit! Any other situation would have been much less in character. The naivete of Miss Milan's manners--and altogether--Oh, it is most admirable! I cannot keep my eyes from it. I never saw such a likeness.\"\n\n The next thing wanted was to get the picture framed; and here were a few difficulties. It must be done directly; it must be done in London; the order must go through the hands of some intelligent person whose taste could be depended on; and Zoey, the usual doer of all commissions, must not be applied to, because it was December, and Mr. Katara could not bear the idea of her stirring out of her house in the fogs of December. But no sooner was the distress known to Mr. London, than it was removed. His gallantry was always on the alert. \"Might he be trusted with the commission, what infinite pleasure should he have in executing it! he could ride to London at any time. It was impossible to say how much he should be gratified by being employed on such an errand.\"\n\n \"He was too good!--she could not endure the thought!--she would not give him such a troublesome office for the world,\"--brought on the desired repetition of entreaties and assurances,--and a very few minutes settled the business.\n\n Mr. London was to take the drawing to London, chuse the frame, and give the directions; and York thought she could so pack it as to ensure its safety without much incommoding him, while he seemed mostly fearful of not being incommoded enough.\n\n \"What a precious deposit!\" said he with a tender sigh, as he received it.\n\n \"This man is almost too gallant to be in love,\" thought York. \"I should say so, but that I suppose there may be a hundred different ways of being in love. He is an excellent young man, and will suit Stewart exactly; it will be an 'Exactly so,' as he says himself; but he does sigh and languish, and study for compliments rather more than I could endure as a principal. I come in for a pretty good share as a second. But it is his gratitude on Stewart's account.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n The very day of Mr. London's going to London produced a fresh occasion for York's services towards her friend. Stewart had been at Hartfield, as usual, soon after breakfast; and, after a time, had gone home to return again to dinner: she returned, and sooner than had been talked of, and with an agitated, hurried look, announcing something extraordinary to have happened which she was longing to tell. Half a minute brought it all out. She had heard, as soon as she got back to Mrs. Ayaan's, that Mr. Honesty had been there an hour before, and finding she was not at home, nor particularly expected, had left a little parcel for her from one of his sisters, and gone away; and on opening this parcel, she had actually found, besides the two songs which she had lent Nathan to copy, a letter to herself; and this letter was from him, from Mr. Honesty, and contained a direct proposal of marriage. \"Who could have thought it? She was so surprized she did not know what to do. Yes, quite a proposal of marriage; and a very good letter, at least she thought so. And he wrote as if he really loved her very much--but she did not know--and so, she was come as fast as she could to ask Miss Katara what she should do.--\" York was half-ashamed of her friend for seeming so pleased and so doubtful.\n\n \"Upon my word,\" she cried, \"the young man is determined not to lose any thing for want of asking. He will connect himself well if he can.\"\n\n \"Will you read the letter?\" cried Stewart. \"Pray do. I'd rather you would.\"\n\n York was not sorry to be pressed. She read, and was surprized. The style of the letter was much above her expectation. There were not merely no grammatical errors, but as a composition it would not have disgraced a gentleman; the language, though plain, was strong and unaffected, and the sentiments it conveyed very much to the credit of the writer. It was short, but expressed good sense, warm attachment, liberality, propriety, even delicacy of feeling. She paused over it, while Stewart stood anxiously watching for her opinion, with a \"Well, well,\" and was at last forced to add, \"Is it a good letter? or is it too short?\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed, a very good letter,\" replied York rather slowly--\"so good a letter, Stewart, that every thing considered, I think one of his sisters must have helped him. I can hardly imagine the young man whom I saw talking with you the other day could express himself so well, if left quite to his own powers, and yet it is not the style of a woman; no, certainly, it is too strong and concise; not diffuse enough for a woman. No doubt he is a sensible man, and I suppose may have a natural talent for--thinks strongly and clearly--and when he takes a pen in hand, his thoughts naturally find proper words. It is so with some men. Yes, I understand the sort of mind. Vigorous, decided, with sentiments to a certain point, not coarse. A better written letter, Stewart (returning it,) than I had expected.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said the still waiting Stewart;--\"well--and--and what shall I do?\"\n\n \"What shall you do! In what respect? Do you mean with regard to this letter?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"But what are you in doubt of? You must answer it of course--and speedily.\"\n\n \"Yes. But what shall I say? Dear Miss Katara, do advise me.\"\n\n \"Oh no, no! the letter had much better be all your own. You will express yourself very properly, I am sure. There is no danger of your not being intelligible, which is the first thing. Your meaning must be unequivocal; no doubts or demurs: and such expressions of gratitude and concern for the pain you are inflicting as propriety requires, will present themselves unbidden to _your_ mind, I am persuaded. You need not be prompted to write with the appearance of sorrow for his disappointment.\"\n\n \"You think I ought to refuse him then,\" said Stewart, looking down.\n\n \"Ought to refuse him! My dear Stewart, what do you mean? Are you in any doubt as to that? I thought--but I beg your pardon, perhaps I have been under a mistake. I certainly have been misunderstanding you, if you feel in doubt as to the _purport_ of your answer. I had imagined you were consulting me only as to the wording of it.\"\n\n Stewart was silent. With a little reserve of manner, York continued:\n\n \"You mean to return a favourable answer, I collect.\"\n\n \"No, I do not; that is, I do not mean--What shall I do? What would you advise me to do? Pray, dear Miss Katara, tell me what I ought to do.\"\n\n \"I shall not give you any advice, Stewart. I will have nothing to do with it. This is a point which you must settle with your feelings.\"\n\n \"I had no notion that he liked me so very much,\" said Stewart, contemplating the letter. For a little while York persevered in her silence; but beginning to apprehend the bewitching flattery of that letter might be too powerful, she thought it best to say,\n\n \"I lay it down as a general rule, Stewart, that if a woman _doubts_ as to whether she should accept a man or not, she certainly ought to refuse him. If she can hesitate as to 'Yes,' she ought to say 'No' directly. It is not a state to be safely entered into with doubtful feelings, with half a heart. I thought it my duty as a friend, and older than yourself, to say thus much to you. But do not imagine that I want to influence you.\"\n\n \"Oh! no, I am sure you are a great deal too kind to--but if you would just advise me what I had best do--No, no, I do not mean that--As you say, one's mind ought to be quite made up--One should not be hesitating--It is a very serious thing.--It will be safer to say 'No,' perhaps.--Do you think I had better say 'No?'\"\n\n \"Not for the world,\" said York, smiling graciously, \"would I advise you either way. You must be the best judge of your own happiness. If you prefer Mr. Honesty to every other person; if you think him the most agreeable man you have ever been in company with, why should you hesitate? You blush, Stewart.--Does any body else occur to you at this moment under such a definition? Stewart, Stewart, do not deceive yourself; do not be run away with by gratitude and compassion. At this moment whom are you thinking of?\"\n\n The symptoms were favourable.--Instead of answering, Stewart turned away confused, and stood thoughtfully by the fire; and though the letter was still in her hand, it was now mechanically twisted about without regard. York waited the result with impatience, but not without strong hopes. At last, with some hesitation, Stewart said--\n\n \"Miss Katara, as you will not give me your opinion, I must do as well as I can by myself; and I have now quite determined, and really almost made up my mind--to refuse Mr. Honesty. Do you think I am right?\"\n\n \"Perfectly, perfectly right, my dearest Stewart; you are doing just what you ought. While you were at all in suspense I kept my feelings to myself, but now that you are so completely decided I have no hesitation in approving. Dear Stewart, I give myself joy of this. It would have grieved me to lose your acquaintance, which must have been the consequence of your marrying Mr. Honesty. While you were in the smallest degree wavering, I said nothing about it, because I would not influence; but it would have been the loss of a friend to me. I could not have visited Mrs. Armando Honesty, of Abbey-Mill Farm. Now I am secure of you for ever.\"\n\n Stewart had not surmised her own danger, but the idea of it struck her forcibly.\n\n \"You could not have visited me!\" she cried, looking aghast. \"No, to be sure you could not; but I never thought of that before. That would have been too dreadful!--What an escape!--Dear Miss Katara, I would not give up the pleasure and honour of being intimate with you for any thing in the world.\"\n\n \"Indeed, Stewart, it would have been a severe pang to lose you; but it must have been. You would have thrown yourself out of all good society. I must have given you up.\"\n\n \"Dear me!--How should I ever have borne it! It would have killed me never to come to Hartfield any more!\"\n\n \"Dear affectionate creature!--_You_ banished to Abbey-Mill Farm!--_You_ confined to the society of the illiterate and vulgar all your life! I wonder how the young man could have the assurance to ask it. He must have a pretty good opinion of himself.\"\n\n \"I do not think he is conceited either, in general,\" said Stewart, her conscience opposing such censure; \"at least, he is very good natured, and I shall always feel much obliged to him, and have a great regard for--but that is quite a different thing from--and you know, though he may like me, it does not follow that I should--and certainly I must confess that since my visiting here I have seen people--and if one comes to compare them, person and manners, there is no comparison at all, _one_ is so very handsome and agreeable. However, I do really think Mr. Honesty a very amiable young man, and have a great opinion of him; and his being so much attached to me--and his writing such a letter--but as to leaving you, it is what I would not do upon any consideration.\"\n\n \"Thank you, thank you, my own sweet little friend. We will not be parted. A woman is not to marry a man merely because she is asked, or because he is attached to her, and can write a tolerable letter.\"\n\n \"Oh no;--and it is but a short letter too.\"\n\n York felt the bad taste of her friend, but let it pass with a \"very true; and it would be a small consolation to her, for the clownish manner which might be offending her every hour of the day, to know that her husband could write a good letter.\"\n\n \"Oh! yes, very. Nobody cares for a letter; the thing is, to be always happy with pleasant companions. I am quite determined to refuse him. But how shall I do? What shall I say?\"\n\n York assured her there would be no difficulty in the answer, and advised its being written directly, which was agreed to, in the hope of her assistance; and though York continued to protest against any assistance being wanted, it was in fact given in the formation of every sentence. The looking over his letter again, in replying to it, had such a softening tendency, that it was particularly necessary to brace her up with a few decisive expressions; and she was so very much concerned at the idea of making him unhappy, and thought so much of what his mother and sisters would think and say, and was so anxious that they should not fancy her ungrateful, that York believed if the young man had come in her way at that moment, he would have been accepted after all.\n\n This letter, however, was written, and sealed, and sent. The business was finished, and Stewart safe. She was rather low all the evening, but York could allow for her amiable regrets, and sometimes relieved them by speaking of her own affection, sometimes by bringing forward the idea of Mr. London.\n\n \"I shall never be invited to Abbey-Mill again,\" was said in rather a sorrowful tone.\n\n \"Nor, if you were, could I ever bear to part with you, my Stewart. You are a great deal too necessary at Hartfield to be spared to Abbey-Mill.\"\n\n \"And I am sure I should never want to go there; for I am never happy but at Hartfield.\"\n\n Some time afterwards it was, \"I think Mrs. Ayaan would be very much surprized if she knew what had happened. I am sure Miss Nash would--for Miss Nash thinks her own sister very well married, and it is only a linen-draper.\"\n\n \"One should be sorry to see greater pride or refinement in the teacher of a school, Stewart. I dare say Miss Nash would envy you such an opportunity as this of being married. Even this conquest would appear valuable in her eyes. As to any thing superior for you, I suppose she is quite in the dark. The attentions of a certain person can hardly be among the tittle-tattle of Highbury yet. Hitherto I fancy you and I are the only people to whom his looks and manners have explained themselves.\"\n\n Stewart blushed and smiled, and said something about wondering that people should like her so much. The idea of Mr. London was certainly cheering; but still, after a time, she was tender-hearted again towards the rejected Mr. Honesty.\n\n \"Now he has got my letter,\" said she softly. \"I wonder what they are all doing--whether his sisters know--if he is unhappy, they will be unhappy too. I hope he will not mind it so very much.\"\n\n \"Let us think of those among our absent friends who are more cheerfully employed,\" cried York. \"At this moment, perhaps, Mr. London is shewing your picture to his mother and sisters, telling how much more beautiful is the original, and after being asked for it five or six times, allowing them to hear your name, your own dear name.\"\n\n \"My picture!--But he has left my picture in Bond-street.\"\n\n \"Has he so!--Then I know nothing of Mr. London. No, my dear little modest Stewart, depend upon it the picture will not be in Bond-street till just before he mounts his horse to-morrow. It is his companion all this evening, his solace, his delight. It opens his designs to his family, it introduces you among them, it diffuses through the party those pleasantest feelings of our nature, eager curiosity and warm prepossession. How cheerful, how animated, how suspicious, how busy their imaginations all are!\"\n\n Stewart smiled again, and her smiles grew stronger.\n\n\n\n\n\n Stewart slept at Hartfield that night. For some weeks past she had been spending more than half her time there, and gradually getting to have a bed-room appropriated to herself; and York judged it best in every respect, safest and kindest, to keep her with them as much as possible just at present. She was obliged to go the next morning for an hour or two to Mrs. Ayaan's, but it was then to be settled that she should return to Hartfield, to make a regular visit of some days.\n\n While she was gone, Mr. Deirdre called, and sat some time with Mr. Katara and York, till Mr. Katara, who had previously made up his mind to walk out, was persuaded by his daughter not to defer it, and was induced by the entreaties of both, though against the scruples of his own civility, to leave Mr. Deirdre for that purpose. Mr. Deirdre, who had nothing of ceremony about him, was offering by his short, decided answers, an amusing contrast to the protracted apologies and civil hesitations of the other.\n\n \"Well, I believe, if you will excuse me, Mr. Deirdre, if you will not consider me as doing a very rude thing, I shall take York's advice and go out for a quarter of an hour. As the sun is out, I believe I had better take my three turns while I can. I treat you without ceremony, Mr. Deirdre. We invalids think we are privileged people.\"\n\n \"My dear sir, do not make a stranger of me.\"\n\n \"I leave an excellent substitute in my daughter. York will be happy to entertain you. And therefore I think I will beg your excuse and take my three turns--my winter walk.\"\n\n \"You cannot do better, sir.\"\n\n \"I would ask for the pleasure of your company, Mr. Deirdre, but I am a very slow walker, and my pace would be tedious to you; and, besides, you have another long walk before you, to Donwell Abbey.\"\n\n \"Thank you, sir, thank you; I am going this moment myself; and I think the sooner _you_ go the better. I will fetch your greatcoat and open the garden door for you.\"\n\n Mr. Katara at last was off; but Mr. Deirdre, instead of being immediately off likewise, sat down again, seemingly inclined for more chat. He began speaking of Stewart, and speaking of her with more voluntary praise than York had ever heard before.\n\n \"I cannot rate her beauty as you do,\" said he; \"but she is a pretty little creature, and I am inclined to think very well of her disposition. Her character depends upon those she is with; but in good hands she will turn out a valuable woman.\"\n\n \"I am glad you think so; and the good hands, I hope, may not be wanting.\"\n\n \"Come,\" said he, \"you are anxious for a compliment, so I will tell you that you have improved her. You have cured her of her school-girl's giggle; she really does you credit.\"\n\n \"Thank you. I should be mortified indeed if I did not believe I had been of some use; but it is not every body who will bestow praise where they may. _You_ do not often overpower me with it.\"\n\n \"You are expecting her again, you say, this morning?\"\n\n \"Almost every moment. She has been gone longer already than she intended.\"\n\n \"Something has happened to delay her; some visitors perhaps.\"\n\n \"Highbury gossips!--Tiresome wretches!\"\n\n \"Stewart may not consider every body tiresome that you would.\"\n\n York knew this was too true for contradiction, and therefore said nothing. He presently added, with a smile,\n\n \"I do not pretend to fix on times or places, but I must tell you that I have good reason to believe your little friend will soon hear of something to her advantage.\"\n\n \"Indeed! how so? of what sort?\"\n\n \"A very serious sort, I assure you;\" still smiling.\n\n \"Very serious! I can think of but one thing--Who is in love with her? Who makes you their confidant?\"\n\n York was more than half in hopes of Mr. London's having dropt a hint. Mr. Deirdre was a sort of general friend and adviser, and she knew Mr. London looked up to him.\n\n \"I have reason to think,\" he replied, \"that Stewart Milan will soon have an offer of marriage, and from a most unexceptionable quarter:--Armando Honesty is the man. Her visit to Abbey-Mill, this summer, seems to have done his business. He is desperately in love and means to marry her.\"\n\n \"He is very obliging,\" said York; \"but is he sure that Stewart means to marry him?\"\n\n \"Well, well, means to make her an offer then. Will that do? He came to the Abbey two evenings ago, on purpose to consult me about it. He knows I have a thorough regard for him and all his family, and, I believe, considers me as one of his best friends. He came to ask me whether I thought it would be imprudent in him to settle so early; whether I thought her too young: in short, whether I approved his choice altogether; having some apprehension perhaps of her being considered (especially since _your_ making so much of her) as in a line of society above him. I was very much pleased with all that he said. I never hear better sense from any one than Armando Honesty. He always speaks to the purpose; open, straightforward, and very well judging. He told me every thing; his circumstances and plans, and what they all proposed doing in the event of his marriage. He is an excellent young man, both as son and brother. I had no hesitation in advising him to marry. He proved to me that he could afford it; and that being the case, I was convinced he could not do better. I praised the fair lady too, and altogether sent him away very happy. If he had never esteemed my opinion before, he would have thought highly of me then; and, I dare say, left the house thinking me the best friend and counsellor man ever had. This happened the night before last. Now, as we may fairly suppose, he would not allow much time to pass before he spoke to the lady, and as he does not appear to have spoken yesterday, it is not unlikely that he should be at Mrs. Ayaan's to-day; and she may be detained by a visitor, without thinking him at all a tiresome wretch.\"\n\n \"Pray, Mr. Deirdre,\" said York, who had been smiling to herself through a great part of this speech, \"how do you know that Mr. Honesty did not speak yesterday?\"\n\n \"Certainly,\" replied he, surprized, \"I do not absolutely know it; but it may be inferred. Was not she the whole day with you?\"\n\n \"Come,\" said she, \"I will tell you something, in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday--that is, he wrote, and was refused.\"\n\n This was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr. Deirdre actually looked red with surprize and displeasure, as he stood up, in tall indignation, and said,\n\n \"Then she is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the foolish girl about?\"\n\n \"Oh! to be sure,\" cried York, \"it is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her.\"\n\n \"Nonsense! a man does not imagine any such thing. But what is the meaning of this? Stewart Milan refuse Armando Honesty? madness, if it is so; but I hope you are mistaken.\"\n\n \"I saw her answer!--nothing could be clearer.\"\n\n \"You saw her answer!--you wrote her answer too. York, this is your doing. You persuaded her to refuse him.\"\n\n \"And if I did, (which, however, I am far from allowing) I should not feel that I had done wrong. Mr. Honesty is a very respectable young man, but I cannot admit him to be Stewart's equal; and am rather surprized indeed that he should have ventured to address her. By your account, he does seem to have had some scruples. It is a pity that they were ever got over.\"\n\n \"Not Stewart's equal!\" exclaimed Mr. Deirdre loudly and warmly; and with calmer asperity, added, a few moments afterwards, \"No, he is not her equal indeed, for he is as much her superior in sense as in situation. York, your infatuation about that girl blinds you. What are Stewart Milan's claims, either of birth, nature or education, to any connexion higher than Armando Honesty? She is the natural daughter of nobody knows whom, with probably no settled provision at all, and certainly no respectable relations. She is known only as parlour-boarder at a common school. She is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any information. She has been taught nothing useful, and is too young and too simple to have acquired any thing herself. At her age she can have no experience, and with her little wit, is not very likely ever to have any that can avail her. She is pretty, and she is good tempered, and that is all. My only scruple in advising the match was on his account, as being beneath his deserts, and a bad connexion for him. I felt that, as to fortune, in all probability he might do much better; and that as to a rational companion or useful helpmate, he could not do worse. But I could not reason so to a man in love, and was willing to trust to there being no harm in her, to her having that sort of disposition, which, in good hands, like his, might be easily led aright and turn out very well. The advantage of the match I felt to be all on her side; and had not the smallest doubt (nor have I now) that there would be a general cry-out upon her extreme good luck. Even _your_ satisfaction I made sure of. It crossed my mind immediately that you would not regret your friend's leaving Highbury, for the sake of her being settled so well. I remember saying to myself, 'Even York, with all her partiality for Stewart, will think this a good match.'\"\n\n \"I cannot help wondering at your knowing so little of York as to say any such thing. What! think a farmer, (and with all his sense and all his merit Mr. Honesty is nothing more,) a good match for my intimate friend! Not regret her leaving Highbury for the sake of marrying a man whom I could never admit as an acquaintance of my own! I wonder you should think it possible for me to have such feelings. I assure you mine are very different. I must think your statement by no means fair. You are not just to Stewart's claims. They would be estimated very differently by others as well as myself; Mr. Honesty may be the richest of the two, but he is undoubtedly her inferior as to rank in society.--The sphere in which she moves is much above his.--It would be a degradation.\"\n\n \"A degradation to illegitimacy and ignorance, to be married to a respectable, intelligent gentleman-farmer!\"\n\n \"As to the circumstances of her birth, though in a legal sense she may be called Nobody, it will not hold in common sense. She is not to pay for the offence of others, by being held below the level of those with whom she is brought up.--There can scarcely be a doubt that her father is a gentleman--and a gentleman of fortune.--Her allowance is very liberal; nothing has ever been grudged for her improvement or comfort.--That she is a gentleman's daughter, is indubitable to me; that she associates with gentlemen's daughters, no one, I apprehend, will deny.--She is superior to Mr. Armando Honesty.\"\n\n \"Whoever might be her parents,\" said Mr. Deirdre, \"whoever may have had the charge of her, it does not appear to have been any part of their plan to introduce her into what you would call good society. After receiving a very indifferent education she is left in Mrs. Ayaan's hands to shift as she can;--to move, in short, in Mrs. Ayaan's line, to have Mrs. Ayaan's acquaintance. Her friends evidently thought this good enough for her; and it _was_ good enough. She desired nothing better herself. Till you chose to turn her into a friend, her mind had no distaste for her own set, nor any ambition beyond it. She was as happy as possible with the Honestys in the summer. She had no sense of superiority then. If she has it now, you have given it. You have been no friend to Stewart Milan, York. Armando Honesty would never have proceeded so far, if he had not felt persuaded of her not being disinclined to him. I know him well. He has too much real feeling to address any woman on the haphazard of selfish passion. And as to conceit, he is the farthest from it of any man I know. Depend upon it he had encouragement.\"\n\n It was most convenient to York not to make a direct reply to this assertion; she chose rather to take up her own line of the subject again.\n\n \"You are a very warm friend to Mr. Honesty; but, as I said before, are unjust to Stewart. Stewart's claims to marry well are not so contemptible as you represent them. She is not a clever girl, but she has better sense than you are aware of, and does not deserve to have her understanding spoken of so slightingly. Waiving that point, however, and supposing her to be, as you describe her, only pretty and good-natured, let me tell you, that in the degree she possesses them, they are not trivial recommendations to the world in general, for she is, in fact, a beautiful girl, and must be thought so by ninety-nine people out of an hundred; and till it appears that men are much more philosophic on the subject of beauty than they are generally supposed; till they do fall in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome faces, a girl, with such loveliness as Stewart, has a certainty of being admired and sought after, of having the power of chusing from among many, consequently a claim to be nice. Her good-nature, too, is not so very slight a claim, comprehending, as it does, real, thorough sweetness of temper and manner, a very humble opinion of herself, and a great readiness to be pleased with other people. I am very much mistaken if your sex in general would not think such beauty, and such temper, the highest claims a woman could possess.\"\n\n \"Upon my word, York, to hear you abusing the reason you have, is almost enough to make me think so too. Better be without sense, than misapply it as you do.\"\n\n \"To be sure!\" cried she playfully. \"I know _that_ is the feeling of you all. I know that such a girl as Stewart is exactly what every man delights in--what at once bewitches his senses and satisfies his judgment. Oh! Stewart may pick and chuse. Were you, yourself, ever to marry, she is the very woman for you. And is she, at seventeen, just entering into life, just beginning to be known, to be wondered at because she does not accept the first offer she receives? No--pray let her have time to look about her.\"\n\n \"I have always thought it a very foolish intimacy,\" said Mr. Deirdre presently, \"though I have kept my thoughts to myself; but I now perceive that it will be a very unfortunate one for Stewart. You will puff her up with such ideas of her own beauty, and of what she has a claim to, that, in a little while, nobody within her reach will be good enough for her. Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief. Nothing so easy as for a young lady to raise her expectations too high. Miss Stewart Milan may not find offers of marriage flow in so fast, though she is a very pretty girl. Men of sense, whatever you may chuse to say, do not want silly wives. Men of family would not be very fond of connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity--and most prudent men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they might be involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be revealed. Let her marry Armando Honesty, and she is safe, respectable, and happy for ever; but if you encourage her to expect to marry greatly, and teach her to be satisfied with nothing less than a man of consequence and large fortune, she may be a parlour-boarder at Mrs. Ayaan's all the rest of her life--or, at least, (for Stewart Milan is a girl who will marry somebody or other,) till she grow desperate, and is glad to catch at the old writing-master's son.\"\n\n \"We think so very differently on this point, Mr. Deirdre, that there can be no use in canvassing it. We shall only be making each other more angry. But as to my _letting_ her marry Armando Honesty, it is impossible; she has refused him, and so decidedly, I think, as must prevent any second application. She must abide by the evil of having refused him, whatever it may be; and as to the refusal itself, I will not pretend to say that I might not influence her a little; but I assure you there was very little for me or for any body to do. His appearance is so much against him, and his manner so bad, that if she ever were disposed to favour him, she is not now. I can imagine, that before she had seen any body superior, she might tolerate him. He was the brother of her friends, and he took pains to please her; and altogether, having seen nobody better (that must have been his great assistant) she might not, while she was at Abbey-Mill, find him disagreeable. But the case is altered now. She knows now what gentlemen are; and nothing but a gentleman in education and manner has any chance with Stewart.\"\n\n \"Nonsense, errant nonsense, as ever was talked!\" cried Mr. Deirdre.--\"Armando Honesty's manners have sense, sincerity, and good-humour to recommend them; and his mind has more true gentility than Stewart Milan could understand.\"\n\n York made no answer, and tried to look cheerfully unconcerned, but was really feeling uncomfortable and wanting him very much to be gone. She did not repent what she had done; she still thought herself a better judge of such a point of female right and refinement than he could be; but yet she had a sort of habitual respect for his judgment in general, which made her dislike having it so loudly against her; and to have him sitting just opposite to her in angry state, was very disagreeable. Some minutes passed in this unpleasant silence, with only one attempt on York's side to talk of the weather, but he made no answer. He was thinking. The result of his thoughts appeared at last in these words.\n\n \"Armando Honesty has no great loss--if he can but think so; and I hope it will not be long before he does. Your views for Stewart are best known to yourself; but as you make no secret of your love of match-making, it is fair to suppose that views, and plans, and projects you have;--and as a friend I shall just hint to you that if London is the man, I think it will be all labour in vain.\"\n\n York laughed and disclaimed. He continued,\n\n \"Depend upon it, London will not do. London is a very good sort of man, and a very respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make an imprudent match. He knows the value of a good income as well as any body. London may talk sentimentally, but he will act rationally. He is as well acquainted with his own claims, as you can be with Stewart's. He knows that he is a very handsome young man, and a great favourite wherever he goes; and from his general way of talking in unreserved moments, when there are only men present, I am convinced that he does not mean to throw himself away. I have heard him speak with great animation of a large family of young ladies that his sisters are intimate with, who have all twenty thousand pounds apiece.\"\n\n \"I am very much obliged to you,\" said York, laughing again. \"If I had set my heart on Mr. London's marrying Stewart, it would have been very kind to open my eyes; but at present I only want to keep Stewart to myself. I have done with match-making indeed. I could never hope to equal my own doings at Randalls. I shall leave off while I am well.\"\n\n \"Good morning to you,\"--said he, rising and walking off abruptly. He was very much vexed. He felt the disappointment of the young man, and was mortified to have been the means of promoting it, by the sanction he had given; and the part which he was persuaded York had taken in the affair, was provoking him exceedingly.\n\n York remained in a state of vexation too; but there was more indistinctness in the causes of her's, than in his. She did not always feel so absolutely satisfied with herself, so entirely convinced that her opinions were right and her adversary's wrong, as Mr. Deirdre. He walked off in more complete self-approbation than he left for her. She was not so materially cast down, however, but that a little time and the return of Stewart were very adequate restoratives. Stewart's staying away so long was beginning to make her uneasy. The possibility of the young man's coming to Mrs. Ayaan's that morning, and meeting with Stewart and pleading his own cause, gave alarming ideas. The dread of such a failure after all became the prominent uneasiness; and when Stewart appeared, and in very good spirits, and without having any such reason to give for her long absence, she felt a satisfaction which settled her with her own mind, and convinced her, that let Mr. Deirdre think or say what he would, she had done nothing which woman's friendship and woman's feelings would not justify.\n\n He had frightened her a little about Mr. London; but when she considered that Mr. Deirdre could not have observed him as she had done, neither with the interest, nor (she must be allowed to tell herself, in spite of Mr. Deirdre's pretensions) with the skill of such an observer on such a question as herself, that he had spoken it hastily and in anger, she was able to believe, that he had rather said what he wished resentfully to be true, than what he knew any thing about. He certainly might have heard Mr. London speak with more unreserve than she had ever done, and Mr. London might not be of an imprudent, inconsiderate disposition as to money matters; he might naturally be rather attentive than otherwise to them; but then, Mr. Deirdre did not make due allowance for the influence of a strong passion at war with all interested motives. Mr. Deirdre saw no such passion, and of course thought nothing of its effects; but she saw too much of it to feel a doubt of its overcoming any hesitations that a reasonable prudence might originally suggest; and more than a reasonable, becoming degree of prudence, she was very sure did not belong to Mr. London.\n\n Stewart's cheerful look and manner established hers: she came back, not to think of Mr. Honesty, but to talk of Mr. London. Miss Nash had been telling her something, which she repeated immediately with great delight. Mr. Martha had been to Mrs. Ayaan's to attend a sick child, and Miss Nash had seen him, and he had told Miss Nash, that as he was coming back yesterday from Clayton Park, he had met Mr. London, and found to his great surprize, that Mr. London was actually on his road to London, and not meaning to return till the morrow, though it was the whist-club night, which he had been never known to miss before; and Mr. Martha had remonstrated with him about it, and told him how shabby it was in him, their best player, to absent himself, and tried very much to persuade him to put off his journey only one day; but it would not do; Mr. London had been determined to go on, and had said in a _very_ _particular_ way indeed, that he was going on business which he would not put off for any inducement in the world; and something about a very enviable commission, and being the bearer of something exceedingly precious. Mr. Martha could not quite understand him, but he was very sure there must be a _lady_ in the case, and he told him so; and Mr. London only looked very conscious and smiling, and rode off in great spirits. Miss Nash had told her all this, and had talked a great deal more about Mr. London; and said, looking so very significantly at her, \"that she did not pretend to understand what his business might be, but she only knew that any woman whom Mr. London could prefer, she should think the luckiest woman in the world; for, beyond a doubt, Mr. London had not his equal for beauty or agreeableness.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Deirdre might quarrel with her, but York could not quarrel with herself. He was so much displeased, that it was longer than usual before he came to Hartfield again; and when they did meet, his grave looks shewed that she was not forgiven. She was sorry, but could not repent. On the contrary, her plans and proceedings were more and more justified and endeared to her by the general appearances of the next few days.\n\n The Picture, elegantly framed, came safely to hand soon after Mr. London's return, and being hung over the mantelpiece of the common sitting-room, he got up to look at it, and sighed out his half sentences of admiration just as he ought; and as for Stewart's feelings, they were visibly forming themselves into as strong and steady an attachment as her youth and sort of mind admitted. York was soon perfectly satisfied of Mr. Honesty's being no otherwise remembered, than as he furnished a contrast with Mr. London, of the utmost advantage to the latter.\n\n Her views of improving her little friend's mind, by a great deal of useful reading and conversation, had never yet led to more than a few first chapters, and the intention of going on to-morrow. It was much easier to chat than to study; much pleasanter to let her imagination range and work at Stewart's fortune, than to be labouring to enlarge her comprehension or exercise it on sober facts; and the only literary pursuit which engaged Stewart at present, the only mental provision she was making for the evening of life, was the collecting and transcribing all the riddles of every sort that she could meet with, into a thin quarto of hot-pressed paper, made up by her friend, and ornamented with ciphers and trophies.\n\n In this age of literature, such collections on a very grand scale are not uncommon. Miss Nash, head-teacher at Mrs. Ayaan's, had written out at least three hundred; and Stewart, who had taken the first hint of it from her, hoped, with Miss Katara's help, to get a great many more. York assisted with her invention, memory and taste; and as Stewart wrote a very pretty hand, it was likely to be an arrangement of the first order, in form as well as quantity.\n\n Mr. Katara was almost as much interested in the business as the girls, and tried very often to recollect something worth their putting in. \"So many clever riddles as there used to be when he was young--he wondered he could not remember them! but he hoped he should in time.\" And it always ended in \"Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.\"\n\n His good friend Martha, too, whom he had spoken to on the subject, did not at present recollect any thing of the riddle kind; but he had desired Martha to be upon the watch, and as he went about so much, something, he thought, might come from that quarter.\n\n It was by no means his daughter's wish that the intellects of Highbury in general should be put under requisition. Mr. London was the only one whose assistance she asked. He was invited to contribute any really good enigmas, charades, or conundrums that he might recollect; and she had the pleasure of seeing him most intently at work with his recollections; and at the same time, as she could perceive, most earnestly careful that nothing ungallant, nothing that did not breathe a compliment to the sex should pass his lips. They owed to him their two or three politest puzzles; and the joy and exultation with which at last he recalled, and rather sentimentally recited, that well-known charade,\n\n My first doth affliction denote, Which my second is destin'd to feel And my whole is the best antidote That affliction to soften and heal.--\n\n made her quite sorry to acknowledge that they had transcribed it some pages ago already.\n\n \"Why will not you write one yourself for us, Mr. London?\" said she; \"that is the only security for its freshness; and nothing could be easier to you.\"\n\n \"Oh no! he had never written, hardly ever, any thing of the kind in his life. The stupidest fellow! He was afraid not even Miss Katara\"--he stopt a moment--\"or Miss Milan could inspire him.\"\n\n The very next day however produced some proof of inspiration. He called for a few moments, just to leave a piece of paper on the table containing, as he said, a charade, which a friend of his had addressed to a young lady, the object of his admiration, but which, from his manner, York was immediately convinced must be his own.\n\n \"I do not offer it for Miss Milan's collection,\" said he. \"Being my friend's, I have no right to expose it in any degree to the public eye, but perhaps you may not dislike looking at it.\"\n\n The speech was more to York than to Stewart, which York could understand. There was deep consciousness about him, and he found it easier to meet her eye than her friend's. He was gone the next moment:--after another moment's pause,\n\n \"Take it,\" said York, smiling, and pushing the paper towards Stewart--\"it is for you. Take your own.\"\n\n But Stewart was in a tremor, and could not touch it; and York, never loth to be first, was obliged to examine it herself.\n\n To Miss--\n\n CHARADE.\n\n My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings, Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease. Another view of man, my second brings, Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!\n\n But ah! united, what reverse we have! Man's boasted power and freedom, all are flown; Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave, And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.\n\n Thy ready wit the word will soon supply, May its approval beam in that soft eye!\n\n She cast her eye over it, pondered, caught the meaning, read it through again to be quite certain, and quite mistress of the lines, and then passing it to Stewart, sat happily smiling, and saying to herself, while Stewart was puzzling over the paper in all the confusion of hope and dulness, \"Very well, Mr. London, very well indeed. I have read worse charades. _Courtship_--a very good hint. I give you credit for it. This is feeling your way. This is saying very plainly--'Pray, Miss Milan, give me leave to pay my addresses to you. Approve my charade and my intentions in the same glance.'\n\n May its approval beam in that soft eye!\n\n Stewart exactly. Soft is the very word for her eye--of all epithets, the justest that could be given.\n\n Thy ready wit the word will soon supply.\n\n Humph--Stewart's ready wit! All the better. A man must be very much in love, indeed, to describe her so. Ah! Mr. Deirdre, I wish you had the benefit of this; I think this would convince you. For once in your life you would be obliged to own yourself mistaken. An excellent charade indeed! and very much to the purpose. Things must come to a crisis soon now.\"\n\n She was obliged to break off from these very pleasant observations, which were otherwise of a sort to run into great length, by the eagerness of Stewart's wondering questions.\n\n \"What can it be, Miss Katara?--what can it be? I have not an idea--I cannot guess it in the least. What can it possibly be? Do try to find it out, Miss Katara. Do help me. I never saw any thing so hard. Is it kingdom? I wonder who the friend was--and who could be the young lady. Do you think it is a good one? Can it be woman?\n\n And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.\n\n Can it be Neptune?\n\n Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!\n\n Or a trident? or a mermaid? or a shark? Oh, no! shark is only one syllable. It must be very clever, or he would not have brought it. Oh! Miss Katara, do you think we shall ever find it out?\"\n\n \"Mermaids and sharks! Nonsense! My dear Stewart, what are you thinking of? Where would be the use of his bringing us a charade made by a friend upon a mermaid or a shark? Give me the paper and listen.\n\n For Miss ------, read Miss Milan.\n\n My first displays the wealth and pomp of kings, Lords of the earth! their luxury and ease.\n\n That is _court_.\n\n Another view of man, my second brings; Behold him there, the monarch of the seas!\n\n That is _ship_;--plain as it can be.--Now for the cream.\n\n But ah! united, (_courtship_, you know,) what reverse we have! Man's boasted power and freedom, all are flown. Lord of the earth and sea, he bends a slave, And woman, lovely woman, reigns alone.\n\n A very proper compliment!--and then follows the application, which I think, my dear Stewart, you cannot find much difficulty in comprehending. Read it in comfort to yourself. There can be no doubt of its being written for you and to you.\"\n\n Stewart could not long resist so delightful a persuasion. She read the concluding lines, and was all flutter and happiness. She could not speak. But she was not wanted to speak. It was enough for her to feel. York spoke for her.\n\n \"There is so pointed, and so particular a meaning in this compliment,\" said she, \"that I cannot have a doubt as to Mr. London's intentions. You are his object--and you will soon receive the completest proof of it. I thought it must be so. I thought I could not be so deceived; but now, it is clear; the state of his mind is as clear and decided, as my wishes on the subject have been ever since I knew you. Yes, Stewart, just so long have I been wanting the very circumstance to happen that has happened. I could never tell whether an attachment between you and Mr. London were most desirable or most natural. Its probability and its eligibility have really so equalled each other! I am very happy. I congratulate you, my dear Stewart, with all my heart. This is an attachment which a woman may well feel pride in creating. This is a connexion which offers nothing but good. It will give you every thing that you want--consideration, independence, a proper home--it will fix you in the centre of all your real friends, close to Hartfield and to me, and confirm our intimacy for ever. This, Stewart, is an alliance which can never raise a blush in either of us.\"\n\n \"Dear Miss Katara!\"--and \"Dear Miss Katara,\" was all that Stewart, with many tender embraces could articulate at first; but when they did arrive at something more like conversation, it was sufficiently clear to her friend that she saw, felt, anticipated, and remembered just as she ought. Mr. London's superiority had very ample acknowledgment.\n\n \"Whatever you say is always right,\" cried Stewart, \"and therefore I suppose, and believe, and hope it must be so; but otherwise I could not have imagined it. It is so much beyond any thing I deserve. Mr. London, who might marry any body! There cannot be two opinions about _him_. He is so very superior. Only think of those sweet verses--'To Miss ------.' Dear me, how clever!--Could it really be meant for me?\"\n\n \"I cannot make a question, or listen to a question about that. It is a certainty. Receive it on my judgment. It is a sort of prologue to the play, a motto to the chapter; and will be soon followed by matter-of-fact prose.\"\n\n \"It is a sort of thing which nobody could have expected. I am sure, a month ago, I had no more idea myself!--The strangest things do take place!\"\n\n \"When Miss Milans and Mr. Londons get acquainted--they do indeed--and really it is strange; it is out of the common course that what is so evidently, so palpably desirable--what courts the pre-arrangement of other people, should so immediately shape itself into the proper form. You and Mr. London are by situation called together; you belong to one another by every circumstance of your respective homes. Your marrying will be equal to the match at Randalls. There does seem to be a something in the air of Hartfield which gives love exactly the right direction, and sends it into the very channel where it ought to flow.\n\n The course of true love never did run smooth--\n\n A Hartfield edition of Shakespeare would have a long note on that passage.\"\n\n \"That Mr. London should really be in love with me,--me, of all people, who did not know him, to speak to him, at Michaelmas! And he, the very handsomest man that ever was, and a man that every body looks up to, quite like Mr. Deirdre! His company so sought after, that every body says he need not eat a single meal by himself if he does not chuse it; that he has more invitations than there are days in the week. And so excellent in the Church! Miss Nash has put down all the texts he has ever preached from since he came to Highbury. Dear me! When I look back to the first time I saw him! How little did I think!--The two Abbots and I ran into the front room and peeped through the blind when we heard he was going by, and Miss Nash came and scolded us away, and staid to look through herself; however, she called me back presently, and let me look too, which was very good-natured. And how beautiful we thought he looked! He was arm-in-arm with Mr. David.\"\n\n \"This is an alliance which, whoever--whatever your friends may be, must be agreeable to them, provided at least they have common sense; and we are not to be addressing our conduct to fools. If they are anxious to see you _happily_ married, here is a man whose amiable character gives every assurance of it;--if they wish to have you settled in the same country and circle which they have chosen to place you in, here it will be accomplished; and if their only object is that you should, in the common phrase, be _well_ married, here is the comfortable fortune, the respectable establishment, the rise in the world which must satisfy them.\"\n\n \"Yes, very true. How nicely you talk; I love to hear you. You understand every thing. You and Mr. London are one as clever as the other. This charade!--If I had studied a twelvemonth, I could never have made any thing like it.\"\n\n \"I thought he meant to try his skill, by his manner of declining it yesterday.\"\n\n \"I do think it is, without exception, the best charade I ever read.\"\n\n \"I never read one more to the purpose, certainly.\"\n\n \"It is as long again as almost all we have had before.\"\n\n \"I do not consider its length as particularly in its favour. Such things in general cannot be too short.\"\n\n Stewart was too intent on the lines to hear. The most satisfactory comparisons were rising in her mind.\n\n \"It is one thing,\" said she, presently--her cheeks in a glow--\"to have very good sense in a common way, like every body else, and if there is any thing to say, to sit down and write a letter, and say just what you must, in a short way; and another, to write verses and charades like this.\"\n\n York could not have desired a more spirited rejection of Mr. Honesty's prose.\n\n \"Such sweet lines!\" continued Stewart--\"these two last!--But how shall I ever be able to return the paper, or say I have found it out?--Oh! Miss Katara, what can we do about that?\"\n\n \"Leave it to me. You do nothing. He will be here this evening, I dare say, and then I will give it him back, and some nonsense or other will pass between us, and you shall not be committed.--Your soft eyes shall chuse their own time for beaming. Trust to me.\"\n\n \"Oh! Miss Katara, what a pity that I must not write this beautiful charade into my book! I am sure I have not got one half so good.\"\n\n \"Leave out the two last lines, and there is no reason why you should not write it into your book.\"\n\n \"Oh! but those two lines are\"--\n\n --\"The best of all. Granted;--for private enjoyment; and for private enjoyment keep them. They are not at all the less written you know, because you divide them. The couplet does not cease to be, nor does its meaning change. But take it away, and all _appropriation_ ceases, and a very pretty gallant charade remains, fit for any collection. Depend upon it, he would not like to have his charade slighted, much better than his passion. A poet in love must be encouraged in both capacities, or neither. Give me the book, I will write it down, and then there can be no possible reflection on you.\"\n\n Stewart submitted, though her mind could hardly separate the parts, so as to feel quite sure that her friend were not writing down a declaration of love. It seemed too precious an offering for any degree of publicity.\n\n \"I shall never let that book go out of my own hands,\" said she.\n\n \"Very well,\" replied York; \"a most natural feeling; and the longer it lasts, the better I shall be pleased. But here is my father coming: you will not object to my reading the charade to him. It will be giving him so much pleasure! He loves any thing of the sort, and especially any thing that pays woman a compliment. He has the tenderest spirit of gallantry towards us all!--You must let me read it to him.\"\n\n Stewart looked grave.\n\n \"My dear Stewart, you must not refine too much upon this charade.--You will betray your feelings improperly, if you are too conscious and too quick, and appear to affix more meaning, or even quite all the meaning which may be affixed to it. Do not be overpowered by such a little tribute of admiration. If he had been anxious for secrecy, he would not have left the paper while I was by; but he rather pushed it towards me than towards you. Do not let us be too solemn on the business. He has encouragement enough to proceed, without our sighing out our souls over this charade.\"\n\n \"Oh! no--I hope I shall not be ridiculous about it. Do as you please.\"\n\n Mr. Katara came in, and very soon led to the subject again, by the recurrence of his very frequent inquiry of \"Well, my dears, how does your book go on?--Have you got any thing fresh?\"\n\n \"Yes, papa; we have something to read you, something quite fresh. A piece of paper was found on the table this morning--(dropt, we suppose, by a fairy)--containing a very pretty charade, and we have just copied it in.\"\n\n She read it to him, just as he liked to have any thing read, slowly and distinctly, and two or three times over, with explanations of every part as she proceeded--and he was very much pleased, and, as she had foreseen, especially struck with the complimentary conclusion.\n\n \"Aye, that's very just, indeed, that's very properly said. Very true. 'Woman, lovely woman.' It is such a pretty charade, my dear, that I can easily guess what fairy brought it.--Nobody could have written so prettily, but you, York.\"\n\n York only nodded, and smiled.--After a little thinking, and a very tender sigh, he added,\n\n \"Ah! it is no difficulty to see who you take after! Your dear mother was so clever at all those things! If I had but her memory! But I can remember nothing;--not even that particular riddle which you have heard me mention; I can only recollect the first stanza; and there are several.\n\n Kitty, a fair but frozen maid, Kindled a flame I yet deplore, The hood-wink'd boy I called to aid, Though of his near approach afraid, So fatal to my suit before.\n\n And that is all that I can recollect of it--but it is very clever all the way through. But I think, my dear, you said you had got it.\"\n\n \"Yes, papa, it is written out in our second page. We copied it from the Elegant Extracts. It was Garrick's, you know.\"\n\n \"Aye, very true.--I wish I could recollect more of it.\n\n Kitty, a fair but frozen maid.\n\n The name makes me think of poor Zoey; for she was very near being christened Catherine after her grandmama. I hope we shall have her here next week. Have you thought, my dear, where you shall put her--and what room there will be for the children?\"\n\n \"Oh! yes--she will have her own room, of course; the room she always has;--and there is the nursery for the children,--just as usual, you know. Why should there be any change?\"\n\n \"I do not know, my dear--but it is so long since she was here!--not since last Easter, and then only for a few days.--Mr. Ilse Deirdre's being a lawyer is very inconvenient.--Poor Zoey!--she is sadly taken away from us all!--and how sorry she will be when she comes, not to see Miss Taylor here!\"\n\n \"She will not be surprized, papa, at least.\"\n\n \"I do not know, my dear. I am sure I was very much surprized when I first heard she was going to be married.\"\n\n \"We must ask Mr. and Mrs. Johan to dine with us, while Zoey is here.\"\n\n \"Yes, my dear, if there is time.--But--(in a very depressed tone)--she is coming for only one week. There will not be time for any thing.\"\n\n \"It is unfortunate that they cannot stay longer--but it seems a case of necessity. Mr. Ilse Deirdre must be in town again on the 28th, and we ought to be thankful, papa, that we are to have the whole of the time they can give to the country, that two or three days are not to be taken out for the Abbey. Mr. Deirdre promises to give up his claim this Christmas--though you know it is longer since they were with him, than with us.\"\n\n \"It would be very hard, indeed, my dear, if poor Zoey were to be anywhere but at Hartfield.\"\n\n Mr. Katara could never allow for Mr. Deirdre's claims on his brother, or any body's claims on Zoey, except his own. He sat musing a little while, and then said,\n\n \"But I do not see why poor Zoey should be obliged to go back so soon, though he does. I think, York, I shall try and persuade her to stay longer with us. She and the children might stay very well.\"\n\n \"Ah! papa--that is what you never have been able to accomplish, and I do not think you ever will. Zoey cannot bear to stay behind her husband.\"\n\n This was too true for contradiction. Unwelcome as it was, Mr. Katara could only give a submissive sigh; and as York saw his spirits affected by the idea of his daughter's attachment to her husband, she immediately led to such a branch of the subject as must raise them.\n\n \"Stewart must give us as much of her company as she can while my brother and sister are here. I am sure she will be pleased with the children. We are very proud of the children, are not we, papa? I wonder which she will think the handsomest, Henry or Ilse?\"\n\n \"Aye, I wonder which she will. Poor little dears, how glad they will be to come. They are very fond of being at Hartfield, Stewart.\"\n\n \"I dare say they are, sir. I am sure I do not know who is not.\"\n\n \"Henry is a fine boy, but Ilse is very like his mama. Henry is the eldest, he was named after me, not after his father. Ilse, the second, is named after his father. Some people are surprized, I believe, that the eldest was not, but Zoey would have him called Henry, which I thought very pretty of her. And he is a very clever boy, indeed. They are all remarkably clever; and they have so many pretty ways. They will come and stand by my chair, and say, 'Grandpapa, can you give me a bit of string?' and once Henry asked me for a knife, but I told him knives were only made for grandpapas. I think their father is too rough with them very often.\"\n\n \"He appears rough to you,\" said York, \"because you are so very gentle yourself; but if you could compare him with other papas, you would not think him rough. He wishes his boys to be active and hardy; and if they misbehave, can give them a sharp word now and then; but he is an affectionate father--certainly Mr. Ilse Deirdre is an affectionate father. The children are all fond of him.\"\n\n \"And then their uncle comes in, and tosses them up to the ceiling in a very frightful way!\"\n\n \"But they like it, papa; there is nothing they like so much. It is such enjoyment to them, that if their uncle did not lay down the rule of their taking turns, whichever began would never give way to the other.\"\n\n \"Well, I cannot understand it.\"\n\n \"That is the case with us all, papa. One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.\"\n\n Later in the morning, and just as the girls were going to separate in preparation for the regular four o'clock dinner, the hero of this inimitable charade walked in again. Stewart turned away; but York could receive him with the usual smile, and her quick eye soon discerned in his the consciousness of having made a push--of having thrown a die; and she imagined he was come to see how it might turn up. His ostensible reason, however, was to ask whether Mr. Katara's party could be made up in the evening without him, or whether he should be in the smallest degree necessary at Hartfield. If he were, every thing else must give way; but otherwise his friend David had been saying so much about his dining with him--had made such a point of it, that he had promised him conditionally to come.\n\n York thanked him, but could not allow of his disappointing his friend on their account; her father was sure of his rubber. He re-urged--she re-declined; and he seemed then about to make his bow, when taking the paper from the table, she returned it--\n\n \"Oh! here is the charade you were so obliging as to leave with us; thank you for the sight of it. We admired it so much, that I have ventured to write it into Miss Milan's collection. Your friend will not take it amiss I hope. Of course I have not transcribed beyond the first eight lines.\"\n\n Mr. London certainly did not very well know what to say. He looked rather doubtingly--rather confused; said something about \"honour,\"--glanced at York and at Stewart, and then seeing the book open on the table, took it up, and examined it very attentively. With the view of passing off an awkward moment, York smilingly said,\n\n \"You must make my apologies to your friend; but so good a charade must not be confined to one or two. He may be sure of every woman's approbation while he writes with such gallantry.\"\n\n \"I have no hesitation in saying,\" replied Mr. London, though hesitating a good deal while he spoke; \"I have no hesitation in saying--at least if my friend feels at all as _I_ do--I have not the smallest doubt that, could he see his little effusion honoured as _I_ see it, (looking at the book again, and replacing it on the table), he would consider it as the proudest moment of his life.\"\n\n After this speech he was gone as soon as possible. York could not think it too soon; for with all his good and agreeable qualities, there was a sort of parade in his speeches which was very apt to incline her to laugh. She ran away to indulge the inclination, leaving the tender and the sublime of pleasure to Stewart's share.\n\n\n\n\n\n Though now the middle of December, there had yet been no weather to prevent the young ladies from tolerably regular exercise; and on the morrow, York had a charitable visit to pay to a poor sick family, who lived a little way out of Highbury.\n\n Their road to this detached cottage was down Vicarage Lane, a lane leading at right angles from the broad, though irregular, main street of the place; and, as may be inferred, containing the blessed abode of Mr. London. A few inferior dwellings were first to be passed, and then, about a quarter of a mile down the lane rose the Vicarage, an old and not very good house, almost as close to the road as it could be. It had no advantage of situation; but had been very much smartened up by the present proprietor; and, such as it was, there could be no possibility of the two friends passing it without a slackened pace and observing eyes.--York's remark was--\n\n \"There it is. There go you and your riddle-book one of these days.\"--Stewart's was--\n\n \"Oh, what a sweet house!--How very beautiful!--There are the yellow curtains that Miss Nash admires so much.\"\n\n \"I do not often walk this way _now_,\" said York, as they proceeded, \"but _then_ there will be an inducement, and I shall gradually get intimately acquainted with all the hedges, gates, pools and pollards of this part of Highbury.\"\n\n Stewart, she found, had never in her life been inside the Vicarage, and her curiosity to see it was so extreme, that, considering exteriors and probabilities, York could only class it, as a proof of love, with Mr. London's seeing ready wit in her.\n\n \"I wish we could contrive it,\" said she; \"but I cannot think of any tolerable pretence for going in;--no servant that I want to inquire about of his housekeeper--no message from my father.\"\n\n She pondered, but could think of nothing. After a mutual silence of some minutes, Stewart thus began again--\n\n \"I do so wonder, Miss Katara, that you should not be married, or going to be married! so charming as you are!\"--\n\n York laughed, and replied,\n\n \"My being charming, Stewart, is not quite enough to induce me to marry; I must find other people charming--one other person at least. And I am not only, not going to be married, at present, but have very little intention of ever marrying at all.\"\n\n \"Ah!--so you say; but I cannot believe it.\"\n\n \"I must see somebody very superior to any one I have seen yet, to be tempted; Mr. London, you know, (recollecting herself,) is out of the question: and I do _not_ wish to see any such person. I would rather not be tempted. I cannot really change for the better. If I were to marry, I must expect to repent it.\"\n\n \"Dear me!--it is so odd to hear a woman talk so!\"--\n\n \"I have none of the usual inducements of women to marry. Were I to fall in love, indeed, it would be a different thing! but I never have been in love; it is not my way, or my nature; and I do not think I ever shall. And, without love, I am sure I should be a fool to change such a situation as mine. Fortune I do not want; employment I do not want; consequence I do not want: I believe few married women are half as much mistress of their husband's house as I am of Hartfield; and never, never could I expect to be so truly beloved and important; so always first and always right in any man's eyes as I am in my father's.\"\n\n \"But then, to be an old maid at last, like Miss Leo!\"\n\n \"That is as formidable an image as you could present, Stewart; and if I thought I should ever be like Miss Leo! so silly--so satisfied--so smiling--so prosing--so undistinguishing and unfastidious--and so apt to tell every thing relative to every body about me, I would marry to-morrow. But between _us_, I am convinced there never can be any likeness, except in being unmarried.\"\n\n \"But still, you will be an old maid! and that's so dreadful!\"\n\n \"Never mind, Stewart, I shall not be a poor old maid; and it is poverty only which makes celibacy contemptible to a generous public! A single woman, with a very narrow income, must be a ridiculous, disagreeable old maid! the proper sport of boys and girls, but a single woman, of good fortune, is always respectable, and may be as sensible and pleasant as any body else. And the distinction is not quite so much against the candour and common sense of the world as appears at first; for a very narrow income has a tendency to contract the mind, and sour the temper. Those who can barely live, and who live perforce in a very small, and generally very inferior, society, may well be illiberal and cross. This does not apply, however, to Miss Leo; she is only too good natured and too silly to suit me; but, in general, she is very much to the taste of every body, though single and though poor. Poverty certainly has not contracted her mind: I really believe, if she had only a shilling in the world, she would be very likely to give away sixpence of it; and nobody is afraid of her: that is a great charm.\"\n\n \"Dear me! but what shall you do? how shall you employ yourself when you grow old?\"\n\n \"If I know myself, Stewart, mine is an active, busy mind, with a great many independent resources; and I do not perceive why I should be more in want of employment at forty or fifty than one-and-twenty. Woman's usual occupations of hand and mind will be as open to me then as they are now; or with no important variation. If I draw less, I shall read more; if I give up music, I shall take to carpet-work. And as for objects of interest, objects for the affections, which is in truth the great point of inferiority, the want of which is really the great evil to be avoided in _not_ marrying, I shall be very well off, with all the children of a sister I love so much, to care about. There will be enough of them, in all probability, to supply every sort of sensation that declining life can need. There will be enough for every hope and every fear; and though my attachment to none can equal that of a parent, it suits my ideas of comfort better than what is warmer and blinder. My nephews and nieces!--I shall often have a niece with me.\"\n\n \"Do you know Miss Leo's niece? That is, I know you must have seen her a hundred times--but are you acquainted?\"\n\n \"Oh! yes; we are always forced to be acquainted whenever she comes to Highbury. By the bye, _that_ is almost enough to put one out of conceit with a niece. Heaven forbid! at least, that I should ever bore people half so much about all the Deirdres together, as she does about Clementine Braxton. One is sick of the very name of Clementine Braxton. Every letter from her is read forty times over; her compliments to all friends go round and round again; and if she does but send her aunt the pattern of a stomacher, or knit a pair of garters for her grandmother, one hears of nothing else for a month. I wish Clementine Braxton very well; but she tires me to death.\"\n\n They were now approaching the cottage, and all idle topics were superseded. York was very compassionate; and the distresses of the poor were as sure of relief from her personal attention and kindness, her counsel and her patience, as from her purse. She understood their ways, could allow for their ignorance and their temptations, had no romantic expectations of extraordinary virtue from those for whom education had done so little; entered into their troubles with ready sympathy, and always gave her assistance with as much intelligence as good-will. In the present instance, it was sickness and poverty together which she came to visit; and after remaining there as long as she could give comfort or advice, she quitted the cottage with such an impression of the scene as made her say to Stewart, as they walked away,\n\n \"These are the sights, Stewart, to do one good. How trifling they make every thing else appear!--I feel now as if I could think of nothing but these poor creatures all the rest of the day; and yet, who can say how soon it may all vanish from my mind?\"\n\n \"Very true,\" said Stewart. \"Poor creatures! one can think of nothing else.\"\n\n \"And really, I do not think the impression will soon be over,\" said York, as she crossed the low hedge, and tottering footstep which ended the narrow, slippery path through the cottage garden, and brought them into the lane again. \"I do not think it will,\" stopping to look once more at all the outward wretchedness of the place, and recall the still greater within.\n\n \"Oh! dear, no,\" said her companion.\n\n They walked on. The lane made a slight bend; and when that bend was passed, Mr. London was immediately in sight; and so near as to give York time only to say farther,\n\n \"Ah! Stewart, here comes a very sudden trial of our stability in good thoughts. Well, (smiling,) I hope it may be allowed that if compassion has produced exertion and relief to the sufferers, it has done all that is truly important. If we feel for the wretched, enough to do all we can for them, the rest is empty sympathy, only distressing to ourselves.\"\n\n Stewart could just answer, \"Oh! dear, yes,\" before the gentleman joined them. The wants and sufferings of the poor family, however, were the first subject on meeting. He had been going to call on them. His visit he would now defer; but they had a very interesting parley about what could be done and should be done. Mr. London then turned back to accompany them.\n\n \"To fall in with each other on such an errand as this,\" thought York; \"to meet in a charitable scheme; this will bring a great increase of love on each side. I should not wonder if it were to bring on the declaration. It must, if I were not here. I wish I were anywhere else.\"\n\n Anxious to separate herself from them as far as she could, she soon afterwards took possession of a narrow footpath, a little raised on one side of the lane, leaving them together in the main road. But she had not been there two minutes when she found that Stewart's habits of dependence and imitation were bringing her up too, and that, in short, they would both be soon after her. This would not do; she immediately stopped, under pretence of having some alteration to make in the lacing of her half-boot, and stooping down in complete occupation of the footpath, begged them to have the goodness to walk on, and she would follow in half a minute. They did as they were desired; and by the time she judged it reasonable to have done with her boot, she had the comfort of farther delay in her power, being overtaken by a child from the cottage, setting out, according to orders, with her pitcher, to fetch broth from Hartfield. To walk by the side of this child, and talk to and question her, was the most natural thing in the world, or would have been the most natural, had she been acting just then without design; and by this means the others were still able to keep ahead, without any obligation of waiting for her. She gained on them, however, involuntarily: the child's pace was quick, and theirs rather slow; and she was the more concerned at it, from their being evidently in a conversation which interested them. Mr. London was speaking with animation, Stewart listening with a very pleased attention; and York, having sent the child on, was beginning to think how she might draw back a little more, when they both looked around, and she was obliged to join them.\n\n Mr. London was still talking, still engaged in some interesting detail; and York experienced some disappointment when she found that he was only giving his fair companion an account of the yesterday's party at his friend David's, and that she was come in herself for the Stilton cheese, the north Wiltshire, the butter, the celery, the beet-root, and all the dessert.\n\n \"This would soon have led to something better, of course,\" was her consoling reflection; \"any thing interests between those who love; and any thing will serve as introduction to what is near the heart. If I could but have kept longer away!\"\n\n They now walked on together quietly, till within view of the vicarage pales, when a sudden resolution, of at least getting Stewart into the house, made her again find something very much amiss about her boot, and fall behind to arrange it once more. She then broke the lace off short, and dexterously throwing it into a ditch, was presently obliged to entreat them to stop, and acknowledged her inability to put herself to rights so as to be able to walk home in tolerable comfort.\n\n \"Part of my lace is gone,\" said she, \"and I do not know how I am to contrive. I really am a most troublesome companion to you both, but I hope I am not often so ill-equipped. Mr. London, I must beg leave to stop at your house, and ask your housekeeper for a bit of ribband or string, or any thing just to keep my boot on.\"\n\n Mr. London looked all happiness at this proposition; and nothing could exceed his alertness and attention in conducting them into his house and endeavouring to make every thing appear to advantage. The room they were taken into was the one he chiefly occupied, and looking forwards; behind it was another with which it immediately communicated; the door between them was open, and York passed into it with the housekeeper to receive her assistance in the most comfortable manner. She was obliged to leave the door ajar as she found it; but she fully intended that Mr. London should close it. It was not closed, however, it still remained ajar; but by engaging the housekeeper in incessant conversation, she hoped to make it practicable for him to chuse his own subject in the adjoining room. For ten minutes she could hear nothing but herself. It could be protracted no longer. She was then obliged to be finished, and make her appearance.\n\n The lovers were standing together at one of the windows. It had a most favourable aspect; and, for half a minute, York felt the glory of having schemed successfully. But it would not do; he had not come to the point. He had been most agreeable, most delightful; he had told Stewart that he had seen them go by, and had purposely followed them; other little gallantries and allusions had been dropt, but nothing serious.\n\n \"Cautious, very cautious,\" thought York; \"he advances inch by inch, and will hazard nothing till he believes himself secure.\"\n\n Still, however, though every thing had not been accomplished by her ingenious device, she could not but flatter herself that it had been the occasion of much present enjoyment to both, and must be leading them forward to the great event.\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. London must now be left to himself. It was no longer in York's power to superintend his happiness or quicken his measures. The coming of her sister's family was so very near at hand, that first in anticipation, and then in reality, it became henceforth her prime object of interest; and during the ten days of their stay at Hartfield it was not to be expected--she did not herself expect--that any thing beyond occasional, fortuitous assistance could be afforded by her to the lovers. They might advance rapidly if they would, however; they must advance somehow or other whether they would or no. She hardly wished to have more leisure for them. There are people, who the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.\n\n Mr. and Mrs. Ilse Deirdre, from having been longer than usual absent from Surry, were exciting of course rather more than the usual interest. Till this year, every long vacation since their marriage had been divided between Hartfield and Donwell Abbey; but all the holidays of this autumn had been given to sea-bathing for the children, and it was therefore many months since they had been seen in a regular way by their Surry connexions, or seen at all by Mr. Katara, who could not be induced to get so far as London, even for poor Zoey's sake; and who consequently was now most nervously and apprehensively happy in forestalling this too short visit.\n\n He thought much of the evils of the journey for her, and not a little of the fatigues of his own horses and coachman who were to bring some of the party the last half of the way; but his alarms were needless; the sixteen miles being happily accomplished, and Mr. and Mrs. Ilse Deirdre, their five children, and a competent number of nursery-maids, all reaching Hartfield in safety. The bustle and joy of such an arrival, the many to be talked to, welcomed, encouraged, and variously dispersed and disposed of, produced a noise and confusion which his nerves could not have borne under any other cause, nor have endured much longer even for this; but the ways of Hartfield and the feelings of her father were so respected by Mrs. Ilse Deirdre, that in spite of maternal solicitude for the immediate enjoyment of her little ones, and for their having instantly all the liberty and attendance, all the eating and drinking, and sleeping and playing, which they could possibly wish for, without the smallest delay, the children were never allowed to be long a disturbance to him, either in themselves or in any restless attendance on them.\n\n Mrs. Ilse Deirdre was a pretty, elegant little woman, of gentle, quiet manners, and a disposition remarkably amiable and affectionate; wrapt up in her family; a devoted wife, a doating mother, and so tenderly attached to her father and sister that, but for these higher ties, a warmer love might have seemed impossible. She could never see a fault in any of them. She was not a woman of strong understanding or any quickness; and with this resemblance of her father, she inherited also much of his constitution; was delicate in her own health, over-careful of that of her children, had many fears and many nerves, and was as fond of her own Mr. Wingfield in town as her father could be of Mr. Martha. They were alike too, in a general benevolence of temper, and a strong habit of regard for every old acquaintance.\n\n Mr. Ilse Deirdre was a tall, gentleman-like, and very clever man; rising in his profession, domestic, and respectable in his private character; but with reserved manners which prevented his being generally pleasing; and capable of being sometimes out of humour. He was not an ill-tempered man, not so often unreasonably cross as to deserve such a reproach; but his temper was not his great perfection; and, indeed, with such a worshipping wife, it was hardly possible that any natural defects in it should not be increased. The extreme sweetness of her temper must hurt his. He had all the clearness and quickness of mind which she wanted, and he could sometimes act an ungracious, or say a severe thing.\n\n He was not a great favourite with his fair sister-in-law. Nothing wrong in him escaped her. She was quick in feeling the little injuries to Zoey, which Zoey never felt herself. Perhaps she might have passed over more had his manners been flattering to Zoey's sister, but they were only those of a calmly kind brother and friend, without praise and without blindness; but hardly any degree of personal compliment could have made her regardless of that greatest fault of all in her eyes which he sometimes fell into, the want of respectful forbearance towards her father. There he had not always the patience that could have been wished. Mr. Katara's peculiarities and fidgetiness were sometimes provoking him to a rational remonstrance or sharp retort equally ill-bestowed. It did not often happen; for Mr. Ilse Deirdre had really a great regard for his father-in-law, and generally a strong sense of what was due to him; but it was too often for York's charity, especially as there was all the pain of apprehension frequently to be endured, though the offence came not. The beginning, however, of every visit displayed none but the properest feelings, and this being of necessity so short might be hoped to pass away in unsullied cordiality. They had not been long seated and composed when Mr. Katara, with a melancholy shake of the head and a sigh, called his daughter's attention to the sad change at Hartfield since she had been there last.\n\n \"Ah, my dear,\" said he, \"poor Miss Taylor--It is a grievous business.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, sir,\" cried she with ready sympathy, \"how you must miss her! And dear York, too!--What a dreadful loss to you both!--I have been so grieved for you.--I could not imagine how you could possibly do without her.--It is a sad change indeed.--But I hope she is pretty well, sir.\"\n\n \"Pretty well, my dear--I hope--pretty well.--I do not know but that the place agrees with her tolerably.\"\n\n Mr. Ilse Deirdre here asked York quietly whether there were any doubts of the air of Randalls.\n\n \"Oh! no--none in the least. I never saw Mrs. Johan better in my life--never looking so well. Papa is only speaking his own regret.\"\n\n \"Very much to the honour of both,\" was the handsome reply.\n\n \"And do you see her, sir, tolerably often?\" asked Zoey in the plaintive tone which just suited her father.\n\n Mr. Katara hesitated.--\"Not near so often, my dear, as I could wish.\"\n\n \"Oh! papa, we have missed seeing them but one entire day since they married. Either in the morning or evening of every day, excepting one, have we seen either Mr. Johan or Mrs. Johan, and generally both, either at Randalls or here--and as you may suppose, Zoey, most frequently here. They are very, very kind in their visits. Mr. Johan is really as kind as herself. Papa, if you speak in that melancholy way, you will be giving Zoey a false idea of us all. Every body must be aware that Miss Taylor must be missed, but every body ought also to be assured that Mr. and Mrs. Johan do really prevent our missing her by any means to the extent we ourselves anticipated--which is the exact truth.\"\n\n \"Just as it should be,\" said Mr. Ilse Deirdre, \"and just as I hoped it was from your letters. Her wish of shewing you attention could not be doubted, and his being a disengaged and social man makes it all easy. I have been always telling you, my love, that I had no idea of the change being so very material to Hartfield as you apprehended; and now you have York's account, I hope you will be satisfied.\"\n\n \"Why, to be sure,\" said Mr. Katara--\"yes, certainly--I cannot deny that Mrs. Johan, poor Mrs. Johan, does come and see us pretty often--but then--she is always obliged to go away again.\"\n\n \"It would be very hard upon Mr. Johan if she did not, papa.--You quite forget poor Mr. Johan.\"\n\n \"I think, indeed,\" said Ilse Deirdre pleasantly, \"that Mr. Johan has some little claim. You and I, York, will venture to take the part of the poor husband. I, being a husband, and you not being a wife, the claims of the man may very likely strike us with equal force. As for Zoey, she has been married long enough to see the convenience of putting all the Mr. Johans aside as much as she can.\"\n\n \"Me, my love,\" cried his wife, hearing and understanding only in part.-- \"Are you talking about me?--I am sure nobody ought to be, or can be, a greater advocate for matrimony than I am; and if it had not been for the misery of her leaving Hartfield, I should never have thought of Miss Taylor but as the most fortunate woman in the world; and as to slighting Mr. Johan, that excellent Mr. Johan, I think there is nothing he does not deserve. I believe he is one of the very best-tempered men that ever existed. Excepting yourself and your brother, I do not know his equal for temper. I shall never forget his flying Henry's kite for him that very windy day last Easter--and ever since his particular kindness last September twelvemonth in writing that note, at twelve o'clock at night, on purpose to assure me that there was no scarlet fever at Cobham, I have been convinced there could not be a more feeling heart nor a better man in existence.--If any body can deserve him, it must be Miss Taylor.\"\n\n \"Where is the young man?\" said Ilse Deirdre. \"Has he been here on this occasion--or has he not?\"\n\n \"He has not been here yet,\" replied York. \"There was a strong expectation of his coming soon after the marriage, but it ended in nothing; and I have not heard him mentioned lately.\"\n\n \"But you should tell them of the letter, my dear,\" said her father. \"He wrote a letter to poor Mrs. Johan, to congratulate her, and a very proper, handsome letter it was. She shewed it to me. I thought it very well done of him indeed. Whether it was his own idea you know, one cannot tell. He is but young, and his uncle, perhaps--\"\n\n \"My dear papa, he is three-and-twenty. You forget how time passes.\"\n\n \"Three-and-twenty!--is he indeed?--Well, I could not have thought it--and he was but two years old when he lost his poor mother! Well, time does fly indeed!--and my memory is very bad. However, it was an exceeding good, pretty letter, and gave Mr. and Mrs. Johan a great deal of pleasure. I remember it was written from Weymouth, and dated Sept. 28th--and began, 'My dear Madam,' but I forget how it went on; and it was signed 'F. C. Johan Olga.'--I remember that perfectly.\"\n\n \"How very pleasing and proper of him!\" cried the good-hearted Mrs. Ilse Deirdre. \"I have no doubt of his being a most amiable young man. But how sad it is that he should not live at home with his father! There is something so shocking in a child's being taken away from his parents and natural home! I never could comprehend how Mr. Johan could part with him. To give up one's child! I really never could think well of any body who proposed such a thing to any body else.\"\n\n \"Nobody ever did think well of the Olgas, I fancy,\" observed Mr. Ilse Deirdre coolly. \"But you need not imagine Mr. Johan to have felt what you would feel in giving up Henry or Ilse. Mr. Johan is rather an easy, cheerful-tempered man, than a man of strong feelings; he takes things as he finds them, and makes enjoyment of them somehow or other, depending, I suspect, much more upon what is called society for his comforts, that is, upon the power of eating and drinking, and playing whist with his neighbours five times a week, than upon family affection, or any thing that home affords.\"\n\n York could not like what bordered on a reflection on Mr. Johan, and had half a mind to take it up; but she struggled, and let it pass. She would keep the peace if possible; and there was something honourable and valuable in the strong domestic habits, the all-sufficiency of home to himself, whence resulted her brother's disposition to look down on the common rate of social intercourse, and those to whom it was important.--It had a high claim to forbearance.\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Deirdre was to dine with them--rather against the inclination of Mr. Katara, who did not like that any one should share with him in Zoey's first day. York's sense of right however had decided it; and besides the consideration of what was due to each brother, she had particular pleasure, from the circumstance of the late disagreement between Mr. Deirdre and herself, in procuring him the proper invitation.\n\n She hoped they might now become friends again. She thought it was time to make up. Making-up indeed would not do. _She_ certainly had not been in the wrong, and _he_ would never own that he had. Concession must be out of the question; but it was time to appear to forget that they had ever quarrelled; and she hoped it might rather assist the restoration of friendship, that when he came into the room she had one of the children with her--the youngest, a nice little girl about eight months old, who was now making her first visit to Hartfield, and very happy to be danced about in her aunt's arms. It did assist; for though he began with grave looks and short questions, he was soon led on to talk of them all in the usual way, and to take the child out of her arms with all the unceremoniousness of perfect amity. York felt they were friends again; and the conviction giving her at first great satisfaction, and then a little sauciness, she could not help saying, as he was admiring the baby,\n\n \"What a comfort it is, that we think alike about our nephews and nieces. As to men and women, our opinions are sometimes very different; but with regard to these children, I observe we never disagree.\"\n\n \"If you were as much guided by nature in your estimate of men and women, and as little under the power of fancy and whim in your dealings with them, as you are where these children are concerned, we might always think alike.\"\n\n \"To be sure--our discordancies must always arise from my being in the wrong.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said he, smiling--\"and reason good. I was sixteen years old when you were born.\"\n\n \"A material difference then,\" she replied--\"and no doubt you were much my superior in judgment at that period of our lives; but does not the lapse of one-and-twenty years bring our understandings a good deal nearer?\"\n\n \"Yes--a good deal _nearer_.\"\n\n \"But still, not near enough to give me a chance of being right, if we think differently.\"\n\n \"I have still the advantage of you by sixteen years' experience, and by not being a pretty young woman and a spoiled child. Come, my dear York, let us be friends, and say no more about it. Tell your aunt, little York, that she ought to set you a better example than to be renewing old grievances, and that if she were not wrong before, she is now.\"\n\n \"That's true,\" she cried--\"very true. Little York, grow up a better woman than your aunt. Be infinitely cleverer and not half so conceited. Now, Mr. Deirdre, a word or two more, and I have done. As far as good intentions went, we were _both_ right, and I must say that no effects on my side of the argument have yet proved wrong. I only want to know that Mr. Honesty is not very, very bitterly disappointed.\"\n\n \"A man cannot be more so,\" was his short, full answer.\n\n \"Ah!--Indeed I am very sorry.--Come, shake hands with me.\"\n\n This had just taken place and with great cordiality, when Ilse Deirdre made his appearance, and \"How d'ye do, Lester?\" and \"Ilse, how are you?\" succeeded in the true English style, burying under a calmness that seemed all but indifference, the real attachment which would have led either of them, if requisite, to do every thing for the good of the other.\n\n The evening was quiet and conversable, as Mr. Katara declined cards entirely for the sake of comfortable talk with his dear Zoey, and the little party made two natural divisions; on one side he and his daughter; on the other the two Mr. Deirdres; their subjects totally distinct, or very rarely mixing--and York only occasionally joining in one or the other.\n\n The brothers talked of their own concerns and pursuits, but principally of those of the elder, whose temper was by much the most communicative, and who was always the greater talker. As a magistrate, he had generally some point of law to consult Ilse about, or, at least, some curious anecdote to give; and as a farmer, as keeping in hand the home-farm at Donwell, he had to tell what every field was to bear next year, and to give all such local information as could not fail of being interesting to a brother whose home it had equally been the longest part of his life, and whose attachments were strong. The plan of a drain, the change of a fence, the felling of a tree, and the destination of every acre for wheat, turnips, or spring corn, was entered into with as much equality of interest by Ilse, as his cooler manners rendered possible; and if his willing brother ever left him any thing to inquire about, his inquiries even approached a tone of eagerness.\n\n While they were thus comfortably occupied, Mr. Katara was enjoying a full flow of happy regrets and fearful affection with his daughter.\n\n \"My poor dear Zoey,\" said he, fondly taking her hand, and interrupting, for a few moments, her busy labours for some one of her five children--\"How long it is, how terribly long since you were here! And how tired you must be after your journey! You must go to bed early, my dear--and I recommend a little gruel to you before you go.--You and I will have a nice basin of gruel together. My dear York, suppose we all have a little gruel.\"\n\n York could not suppose any such thing, knowing as she did, that both the Mr. Deirdres were as unpersuadable on that article as herself;--and two basins only were ordered. After a little more discourse in praise of gruel, with some wondering at its not being taken every evening by every body, he proceeded to say, with an air of grave reflection,\n\n \"It was an awkward business, my dear, your spending the autumn at South End instead of coming here. I never had much opinion of the sea air.\"\n\n \"Mr. Wingfield most strenuously recommended it, sir--or we should not have gone. He recommended it for all the children, but particularly for the weakness in little Bella's throat,--both sea air and bathing.\"\n\n \"Ah! my dear, but Martha had many doubts about the sea doing her any good; and as to myself, I have been long perfectly convinced, though perhaps I never told you so before, that the sea is very rarely of use to any body. I am sure it almost killed me once.\"\n\n \"Come, come,\" cried York, feeling this to be an unsafe subject, \"I must beg you not to talk of the sea. It makes me envious and miserable;--I who have never seen it! South End is prohibited, if you please. My dear Zoey, I have not heard you make one inquiry about Mr. Martha yet; and he never forgets you.\"\n\n \"Oh! good Mr. Martha--how is he, sir?\"\n\n \"Why, pretty well; but not quite well. Poor Martha is bilious, and he has not time to take care of himself--he tells me he has not time to take care of himself--which is very sad--but he is always wanted all round the country. I suppose there is not a man in such practice anywhere. But then there is not so clever a man any where.\"\n\n \"And Mrs. Martha and the children, how are they? do the children grow? I have a great regard for Mr. Martha. I hope he will be calling soon. He will be so pleased to see my little ones.\"\n\n \"I hope he will be here to-morrow, for I have a question or two to ask him about myself of some consequence. And, my dear, whenever he comes, you had better let him look at little Bella's throat.\"\n\n \"Oh! my dear sir, her throat is so much better that I have hardly any uneasiness about it. Either bathing has been of the greatest service to her, or else it is to be attributed to an excellent embrocation of Mr. Wingfield's, which we have been applying at times ever since August.\"\n\n \"It is not very likely, my dear, that bathing should have been of use to her--and if I had known you were wanting an embrocation, I would have spoken to--\n\n \"You seem to me to have forgotten Mrs. and Miss Leo,\" said York, \"I have not heard one inquiry after them.\"\n\n \"Oh! the good Leoes--I am quite ashamed of myself--but you mention them in most of your letters. I hope they are quite well. Good old Mrs. Leo--I will call upon her to-morrow, and take my children.--They are always so pleased to see my children.--And that excellent Miss Leo!--such thorough worthy people!--How are they, sir?\"\n\n \"Why, pretty well, my dear, upon the whole. But poor Mrs. Leo had a bad cold about a month ago.\"\n\n \"How sorry I am! But colds were never so prevalent as they have been this autumn. Mr. Wingfield told me that he has never known them more general or heavy--except when it has been quite an influenza.\"\n\n \"That has been a good deal the case, my dear; but not to the degree you mention. Martha says that colds have been very general, but not so heavy as he has very often known them in November. Martha does not call it altogether a sickly season.\"\n\n \"No, I do not know that Mr. Wingfield considers it _very_ sickly except--\n\n \"Ah! my poor dear child, the truth is, that in London it is always a sickly season. Nobody is healthy in London, nobody can be. It is a dreadful thing to have you forced to live there! so far off!--and the air so bad!\"\n\n \"No, indeed--_we_ are not at all in a bad air. Our part of London is very superior to most others!--You must not confound us with London in general, my dear sir. The neighbourhood of Brunswick Square is very different from almost all the rest. We are so very airy! I should be unwilling, I own, to live in any other part of the town;--there is hardly any other that I could be satisfied to have my children in: but _we_ are so remarkably airy!--Mr. Wingfield thinks the vicinity of Brunswick Square decidedly the most favourable as to air.\"\n\n \"Ah! my dear, it is not like Hartfield. You make the best of it--but after you have been a week at Hartfield, you are all of you different creatures; you do not look like the same. Now I cannot say, that I think you are any of you looking well at present.\"\n\n \"I am sorry to hear you say so, sir; but I assure you, excepting those little nervous head-aches and palpitations which I am never entirely free from anywhere, I am quite well myself; and if the children were rather pale before they went to bed, it was only because they were a little more tired than usual, from their journey and the happiness of coming. I hope you will think better of their looks to-morrow; for I assure you Mr. Wingfield told me, that he did not believe he had ever sent us off altogether, in such good case. I trust, at least, that you do not think Mr. Deirdre looking ill,\" turning her eyes with affectionate anxiety towards her husband.\n\n \"Middling, my dear; I cannot compliment you. I think Mr. Ilse Deirdre very far from looking well.\"\n\n \"What is the matter, sir?--Did you speak to me?\" cried Mr. Ilse Deirdre, hearing his own name.\n\n \"I am sorry to find, my love, that my father does not think you looking well--but I hope it is only from being a little fatigued. I could have wished, however, as you know, that you had seen Mr. Wingfield before you left home.\"\n\n \"My dear Zoey,\"--exclaimed he hastily--\"pray do not concern yourself about my looks. Be satisfied with doctoring and coddling yourself and the children, and let me look as I chuse.\"\n\n \"I did not thoroughly understand what you were telling your brother,\" cried York, \"about your friend Mr. Graham's intending to have a bailiff from Scotland, to look after his new estate. What will it answer? Will not the old prejudice be too strong?\"\n\n And she talked in this way so long and successfully that, when forced to give her attention again to her father and sister, she had nothing worse to hear than Zoey's kind inquiry after Clementine Braxton; and Clementine Braxton, though no great favourite with her in general, she was at that moment very happy to assist in praising.\n\n \"That sweet, amiable Clementine Braxton!\" said Mrs. Ilse Deirdre.--\"It is so long since I have seen her, except now and then for a moment accidentally in town! What happiness it must be to her good old grandmother and excellent aunt, when she comes to visit them! I always regret excessively on dear York's account that she cannot be more at Highbury; but now their daughter is married, I suppose Reuben and Mrs. Teagan will not be able to part with her at all. She would be such a delightful companion for York.\"\n\n Mr. Katara agreed to it all, but added,\n\n \"Our little friend Stewart Milan, however, is just such another pretty kind of young person. You will like Stewart. York could not have a better companion than Stewart.\"\n\n \"I am most happy to hear it--but only Clementine Braxton one knows to be so very accomplished and superior!--and exactly York's age.\"\n\n This topic was discussed very happily, and others succeeded of similar moment, and passed away with similar harmony; but the evening did not close without a little return of agitation. The gruel came and supplied a great deal to be said--much praise and many comments--undoubting decision of its wholesomeness for every constitution, and pretty severe Philippics upon the many houses where it was never met with tolerably;--but, unfortunately, among the failures which the daughter had to instance, the most recent, and therefore most prominent, was in her own cook at South End, a young woman hired for the time, who never had been able to understand what she meant by a basin of nice smooth gruel, thin, but not too thin. Often as she had wished for and ordered it, she had never been able to get any thing tolerable. Here was a dangerous opening.\n\n \"Ah!\" said Mr. Katara, shaking his head and fixing his eyes on her with tender concern.--The ejaculation in York's ear expressed, \"Ah! there is no end of the sad consequences of your going to South End. It does not bear talking of.\" And for a little while she hoped he would not talk of it, and that a silent rumination might suffice to restore him to the relish of his own smooth gruel. After an interval of some minutes, however, he began with,\n\n \"I shall always be very sorry that you went to the sea this autumn, instead of coming here.\"\n\n \"But why should you be sorry, sir?--I assure you, it did the children a great deal of good.\"\n\n \"And, moreover, if you must go to the sea, it had better not have been to South End. South End is an unhealthy place. Martha was surprized to hear you had fixed upon South End.\"\n\n \"I know there is such an idea with many people, but indeed it is quite a mistake, sir.--We all had our health perfectly well there, never found the least inconvenience from the mud; and Mr. Wingfield says it is entirely a mistake to suppose the place unhealthy; and I am sure he may be depended on, for he thoroughly understands the nature of the air, and his own brother and family have been there repeatedly.\"\n\n \"You should have gone to Cromer, my dear, if you went anywhere.--Martha was a week at Cromer once, and he holds it to be the best of all the sea-bathing places. A fine open sea, he says, and very pure air. And, by what I understand, you might have had lodgings there quite away from the sea--a quarter of a mile off--very comfortable. You should have consulted Martha.\"\n\n \"But, my dear sir, the difference of the journey;--only consider how great it would have been.--An hundred miles, perhaps, instead of forty.\"\n\n \"Ah! my dear, as Martha says, where health is at stake, nothing else should be considered; and if one is to travel, there is not much to chuse between forty miles and an hundred.--Better not move at all, better stay in London altogether than travel forty miles to get into a worse air. This is just what Martha said. It seemed to him a very ill-judged measure.\"\n\n York's attempts to stop her father had been vain; and when he had reached such a point as this, she could not wonder at her brother-in-law's breaking out.\n\n \"Mr. Martha,\" said he, in a voice of very strong displeasure, \"would do as well to keep his opinion till it is asked for. Why does he make it any business of his, to wonder at what I do?--at my taking my family to one part of the coast or another?--I may be allowed, I hope, the use of my judgment as well as Mr. Martha.--I want his directions no more than his drugs.\" He paused--and growing cooler in a moment, added, with only sarcastic dryness, \"If Mr. Martha can tell me how to convey a wife and five children a distance of an hundred and thirty miles with no greater expense or inconvenience than a distance of forty, I should be as willing to prefer Cromer to South End as he could himself.\"\n\n \"True, true,\" cried Mr. Deirdre, with most ready interposition--\"very true. That's a consideration indeed.--But Ilse, as to what I was telling you of my idea of moving the path to Langham, of turning it more to the right that it may not cut through the home meadows, I cannot conceive any difficulty. I should not attempt it, if it were to be the means of inconvenience to the Highbury people, but if you call to mind exactly the present line of the path.... The only way of proving it, however, will be to turn to our maps. I shall see you at the Abbey to-morrow morning I hope, and then we will look them over, and you shall give me your opinion.\"\n\n Mr. Katara was rather agitated by such harsh reflections on his friend Martha, to whom he had, in fact, though unconsciously, been attributing many of his own feelings and expressions;--but the soothing attentions of his daughters gradually removed the present evil, and the immediate alertness of one brother, and better recollections of the other, prevented any renewal of it.\n\n\n\n\n\n There could hardly be a happier creature in the world than Mrs. Ilse Deirdre, in this short visit to Hartfield, going about every morning among her old acquaintance with her five children, and talking over what she had done every evening with her father and sister. She had nothing to wish otherwise, but that the days did not pass so swiftly. It was a delightful visit;--perfect, in being much too short.\n\n In general their evenings were less engaged with friends than their mornings; but one complete dinner engagement, and out of the house too, there was no avoiding, though at Christmas. Mr. Johan would take no denial; they must all dine at Randalls one day;--even Mr. Katara was persuaded to think it a possible thing in preference to a division of the party.\n\n How they were all to be conveyed, he would have made a difficulty if he could, but as his son and daughter's carriage and horses were actually at Hartfield, he was not able to make more than a simple question on that head; it hardly amounted to a doubt; nor did it occupy York long to convince him that they might in one of the carriages find room for Stewart also.\n\n Stewart, Mr. London, and Mr. Deirdre, their own especial set, were the only persons invited to meet them;--the hours were to be early, as well as the numbers few; Mr. Katara's habits and inclination being consulted in every thing.\n\n The evening before this great event (for it was a very great event that Mr. Katara should dine out, on the 24th of December) had been spent by Stewart at Hartfield, and she had gone home so much indisposed with a cold, that, but for her own earnest wish of being nursed by Mrs. Ayaan, York could not have allowed her to leave the house. York called on her the next day, and found her doom already signed with regard to Randalls. She was very feverish and had a bad sore throat: Mrs. Ayaan was full of care and affection, Mr. Martha was talked of, and Stewart herself was too ill and low to resist the authority which excluded her from this delightful engagement, though she could not speak of her loss without many tears.\n\n York sat with her as long as she could, to attend her in Mrs. Ayaan's unavoidable absences, and raise her spirits by representing how much Mr. London's would be depressed when he knew her state; and left her at last tolerably comfortable, in the sweet dependence of his having a most comfortless visit, and of their all missing her very much. She had not advanced many yards from Mrs. Ayaan's door, when she was met by Mr. London himself, evidently coming towards it, and as they walked on slowly together in conversation about the invalid--of whom he, on the rumour of considerable illness, had been going to inquire, that he might carry some report of her to Hartfield--they were overtaken by Mr. Ilse Deirdre returning from the daily visit to Donwell, with his two eldest boys, whose healthy, glowing faces shewed all the benefit of a country run, and seemed to ensure a quick despatch of the roast mutton and rice pudding they were hastening home for. They joined company and proceeded together. York was just describing the nature of her friend's complaint;--\"a throat very much inflamed, with a great deal of heat about her, a quick, low pulse, &c. and she was sorry to find from Mrs. Ayaan that Stewart was liable to very bad sore-throats, and had often alarmed her with them.\" Mr. London looked all alarm on the occasion, as he exclaimed,\n\n \"A sore-throat!--I hope not infectious. I hope not of a putrid infectious sort. Has Martha seen her? Indeed you should take care of yourself as well as of your friend. Let me entreat you to run no risks. Why does not Martha see her?\"\n\n York, who was not really at all frightened herself, tranquillised this excess of apprehension by assurances of Mrs. Ayaan's experience and care; but as there must still remain a degree of uneasiness which she could not wish to reason away, which she would rather feed and assist than not, she added soon afterwards--as if quite another subject,\n\n \"It is so cold, so very cold--and looks and feels so very much like snow, that if it were to any other place or with any other party, I should really try not to go out to-day--and dissuade my father from venturing; but as he has made up his mind, and does not seem to feel the cold himself, I do not like to interfere, as I know it would be so great a disappointment to Mr. and Mrs. Johan. But, upon my word, Mr. London, in your case, I should certainly excuse myself. You appear to me a little hoarse already, and when you consider what demand of voice and what fatigues to-morrow will bring, I think it would be no more than common prudence to stay at home and take care of yourself to-night.\"\n\n Mr. London looked as if he did not very well know what answer to make; which was exactly the case; for though very much gratified by the kind care of such a fair lady, and not liking to resist any advice of her's, he had not really the least inclination to give up the visit;--but York, too eager and busy in her own previous conceptions and views to hear him impartially, or see him with clear vision, was very well satisfied with his muttering acknowledgment of its being \"very cold, certainly very cold,\" and walked on, rejoicing in having extricated him from Randalls, and secured him the power of sending to inquire after Stewart every hour of the evening.\n\n \"You do quite right,\" said she;--\"we will make your apologies to Mr. and Mrs. Johan.\"\n\n But hardly had she so spoken, when she found her brother was civilly offering a seat in his carriage, if the weather were Mr. London's only objection, and Mr. London actually accepting the offer with much prompt satisfaction. It was a done thing; Mr. London was to go, and never had his broad handsome face expressed more pleasure than at this moment; never had his smile been stronger, nor his eyes more exulting than when he next looked at her.\n\n \"Well,\" said she to herself, \"this is most strange!--After I had got him off so well, to chuse to go into company, and leave Stewart ill behind!--Most strange indeed!--But there is, I believe, in many men, especially single men, such an inclination--such a passion for dining out--a dinner engagement is so high in the class of their pleasures, their employments, their dignities, almost their duties, that any thing gives way to it--and this must be the case with Mr. London; a most valuable, amiable, pleasing young man undoubtedly, and very much in love with Stewart; but still, he cannot refuse an invitation, he must dine out wherever he is asked. What a strange thing love is! he can see ready wit in Stewart, but will not dine alone for her.\"\n\n Soon afterwards Mr. London quitted them, and she could not but do him the justice of feeling that there was a great deal of sentiment in his manner of naming Stewart at parting; in the tone of his voice while assuring her that he should call at Mrs. Ayaan's for news of her fair friend, the last thing before he prepared for the happiness of meeting her again, when he hoped to be able to give a better report; and he sighed and smiled himself off in a way that left the balance of approbation much in his favour.\n\n After a few minutes of entire silence between them, Ilse Deirdre began with--\n\n \"I never in my life saw a man more intent on being agreeable than Mr. London. It is downright labour to him where ladies are concerned. With men he can be rational and unaffected, but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.\"\n\n \"Mr. London's manners are not perfect,\" replied York; \"but where there is a wish to please, one ought to overlook, and one does overlook a great deal. Where a man does his best with only moderate powers, he will have the advantage over negligent superiority. There is such perfect good-temper and good-will in Mr. London as one cannot but value.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Mr. Ilse Deirdre presently, with some slyness, \"he seems to have a great deal of good-will towards you.\"\n\n \"Me!\" she replied with a smile of astonishment, \"are you imagining me to be Mr. London's object?\"\n\n \"Such an imagination has crossed me, I own, York; and if it never occurred to you before, you may as well take it into consideration now.\"\n\n \"Mr. London in love with me!--What an idea!\"\n\n \"I do not say it is so; but you will do well to consider whether it is so or not, and to regulate your behaviour accordingly. I think your manners to him encouraging. I speak as a friend, York. You had better look about you, and ascertain what you do, and what you mean to do.\"\n\n \"I thank you; but I assure you you are quite mistaken. Mr. London and I are very good friends, and nothing more;\" and she walked on, amusing herself in the consideration of the blunders which often arise from a partial knowledge of circumstances, of the mistakes which people of high pretensions to judgment are for ever falling into; and not very well pleased with her brother for imagining her blind and ignorant, and in want of counsel. He said no more.\n\n Mr. Katara had so completely made up his mind to the visit, that in spite of the increasing coldness, he seemed to have no idea of shrinking from it, and set forward at last most punctually with his eldest daughter in his own carriage, with less apparent consciousness of the weather than either of the others; too full of the wonder of his own going, and the pleasure it was to afford at Randalls to see that it was cold, and too well wrapt up to feel it. The cold, however, was severe; and by the time the second carriage was in motion, a few flakes of snow were finding their way down, and the sky had the appearance of being so overcharged as to want only a milder air to produce a very white world in a very short time.\n\n York soon saw that her companion was not in the happiest humour. The preparing and the going abroad in such weather, with the sacrifice of his children after dinner, were evils, were disagreeables at least, which Mr. Ilse Deirdre did not by any means like; he anticipated nothing in the visit that could be at all worth the purchase; and the whole of their drive to the vicarage was spent by him in expressing his discontent.\n\n \"A man,\" said he, \"must have a very good opinion of himself when he asks people to leave their own fireside, and encounter such a day as this, for the sake of coming to see him. He must think himself a most agreeable fellow; I could not do such a thing. It is the greatest absurdity--Actually snowing at this moment!--The folly of not allowing people to be comfortable at home--and the folly of people's not staying comfortably at home when they can! If we were obliged to go out such an evening as this, by any call of duty or business, what a hardship we should deem it;--and here are we, probably with rather thinner clothing than usual, setting forward voluntarily, without excuse, in defiance of the voice of nature, which tells man, in every thing given to his view or his feelings, to stay at home himself, and keep all under shelter that he can;--here are we setting forward to spend five dull hours in another man's house, with nothing to say or to hear that was not said and heard yesterday, and may not be said and heard again to-morrow. Going in dismal weather, to return probably in worse;--four horses and four servants taken out for nothing but to convey five idle, shivering creatures into colder rooms and worse company than they might have had at home.\"\n\n York did not find herself equal to give the pleased assent, which no doubt he was in the habit of receiving, to emulate the \"Very true, my love,\" which must have been usually administered by his travelling companion; but she had resolution enough to refrain from making any answer at all. She could not be complying, she dreaded being quarrelsome; her heroism reached only to silence. She allowed him to talk, and arranged the glasses, and wrapped herself up, without opening her lips.\n\n They arrived, the carriage turned, the step was let down, and Mr. London, spruce, black, and smiling, was with them instantly. York thought with pleasure of some change of subject. Mr. London was all obligation and cheerfulness; he was so very cheerful in his civilities indeed, that she began to think he must have received a different account of Stewart from what had reached her. She had sent while dressing, and the answer had been, \"Much the same--not better.\"\n\n \"_My_ report from Mrs. Ayaan's,\" said she presently, \"was not so pleasant as I had hoped--'Not better' was _my_ answer.\"\n\n His face lengthened immediately; and his voice was the voice of sentiment as he answered.\n\n \"Oh! no--I am grieved to find--I was on the point of telling you that when I called at Mrs. Ayaan's door, which I did the very last thing before I returned to dress, I was told that Miss Milan was not better, by no means better, rather worse. Very much grieved and concerned--I had flattered myself that she must be better after such a cordial as I knew had been given her in the morning.\"\n\n York smiled and answered--\"My visit was of use to the nervous part of her complaint, I hope; but not even I can charm away a sore throat; it is a most severe cold indeed. Mr. Martha has been with her, as you probably heard.\"\n\n \"Yes--I imagined--that is--I did not--\"\n\n \"He has been used to her in these complaints, and I hope to-morrow morning will bring us both a more comfortable report. But it is impossible not to feel uneasiness. Such a sad loss to our party to-day!\"\n\n \"Dreadful!--Exactly so, indeed.--She will be missed every moment.\"\n\n This was very proper; the sigh which accompanied it was really estimable; but it should have lasted longer. York was rather in dismay when only half a minute afterwards he began to speak of other things, and in a voice of the greatest alacrity and enjoyment.\n\n \"What an excellent device,\" said he, \"the use of a sheepskin for carriages. How very comfortable they make it;--impossible to feel cold with such precautions. The contrivances of modern days indeed have rendered a gentleman's carriage perfectly complete. One is so fenced and guarded from the weather, that not a breath of air can find its way unpermitted. Weather becomes absolutely of no consequence. It is a very cold afternoon--but in this carriage we know nothing of the matter.--Ha! snows a little I see.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Ilse Deirdre, \"and I think we shall have a good deal of it.\"\n\n \"Christmas weather,\" observed Mr. London. \"Quite seasonable; and extremely fortunate we may think ourselves that it did not begin yesterday, and prevent this day's party, which it might very possibly have done, for Mr. Katara would hardly have ventured had there been much snow on the ground; but now it is of no consequence. This is quite the season indeed for friendly meetings. At Christmas every body invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather. I was snowed up at a friend's house once for a week. Nothing could be pleasanter. I went for only one night, and could not get away till that very day se'nnight.\"\n\n Mr. Ilse Deirdre looked as if he did not comprehend the pleasure, but said only, coolly,\n\n \"I cannot wish to be snowed up a week at Randalls.\"\n\n At another time York might have been amused, but she was too much astonished now at Mr. London's spirits for other feelings. Stewart seemed quite forgotten in the expectation of a pleasant party.\n\n \"We are sure of excellent fires,\" continued he, \"and every thing in the greatest comfort. Charming people, Mr. and Mrs. Johan;--Mrs. Johan indeed is much beyond praise, and he is exactly what one values, so hospitable, and so fond of society;--it will be a small party, but where small parties are select, they are perhaps the most agreeable of any. Mr. Johan's dining-room does not accommodate more than ten comfortably; and for my part, I would rather, under such circumstances, fall short by two than exceed by two. I think you will agree with me, (turning with a soft air to York,) I think I shall certainly have your approbation, though Mr. Deirdre perhaps, from being used to the large parties of London, may not quite enter into our feelings.\"\n\n \"I know nothing of the large parties of London, sir--I never dine with any body.\"\n\n \"Indeed! (in a tone of wonder and pity,) I had no idea that the law had been so great a slavery. Well, sir, the time must come when you will be paid for all this, when you will have little labour and great enjoyment.\"\n\n \"My first enjoyment,\" replied Ilse Deirdre, as they passed through the sweep-gate, \"will be to find myself safe at Hartfield again.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Some change of countenance was necessary for each gentleman as they walked into Mrs. Johan's drawing-room;--Mr. London must compose his joyous looks, and Mr. Ilse Deirdre disperse his ill-humour. Mr. London must smile less, and Mr. Ilse Deirdre more, to fit them for the place.--York only might be as nature prompted, and shew herself just as happy as she was. To her it was real enjoyment to be with the Johans. Mr. Johan was a great favourite, and there was not a creature in the world to whom she spoke with such unreserve, as to his wife; not any one, to whom she related with such conviction of being listened to and understood, of being always interesting and always intelligible, the little affairs, arrangements, perplexities, and pleasures of her father and herself. She could tell nothing of Hartfield, in which Mrs. Johan had not a lively concern; and half an hour's uninterrupted communication of all those little matters on which the daily happiness of private life depends, was one of the first gratifications of each.\n\n This was a pleasure which perhaps the whole day's visit might not afford, which certainly did not belong to the present half-hour; but the very sight of Mrs. Johan, her smile, her touch, her voice was grateful to York, and she determined to think as little as possible of Mr. London's oddities, or of any thing else unpleasant, and enjoy all that was enjoyable to the utmost.\n\n The misfortune of Stewart's cold had been pretty well gone through before her arrival. Mr. Katara had been safely seated long enough to give the history of it, besides all the history of his own and Zoey's coming, and of York's being to follow, and had indeed just got to the end of his satisfaction that James should come and see his daughter, when the others appeared, and Mrs. Johan, who had been almost wholly engrossed by her attentions to him, was able to turn away and welcome her dear York.\n\n York's project of forgetting Mr. London for a while made her rather sorry to find, when they had all taken their places, that he was close to her. The difficulty was great of driving his strange insensibility towards Stewart, from her mind, while he not only sat at her elbow, but was continually obtruding his happy countenance on her notice, and solicitously addressing her upon every occasion. Instead of forgetting him, his behaviour was such that she could not avoid the internal suggestion of \"Can it really be as my brother imagined? can it be possible for this man to be beginning to transfer his affections from Stewart to me?--Absurd and insufferable!\"--Yet he would be so anxious for her being perfectly warm, would be so interested about her father, and so delighted with Mrs. Johan; and at last would begin admiring her drawings with so much zeal and so little knowledge as seemed terribly like a would-be lover, and made it some effort with her to preserve her good manners. For her own sake she could not be rude; and for Stewart's, in the hope that all would yet turn out right, she was even positively civil; but it was an effort; especially as something was going on amongst the others, in the most overpowering period of Mr. London's nonsense, which she particularly wished to listen to. She heard enough to know that Mr. Johan was giving some information about his son; she heard the words \"my son,\" and \"Hendrik,\" and \"my son,\" repeated several times over; and, from a few other half-syllables very much suspected that he was announcing an early visit from his son; but before she could quiet Mr. London, the subject was so completely past that any reviving question from her would have been awkward.\n\n Now, it so happened that in spite of York's resolution of never marrying, there was something in the name, in the idea of Mr. Hendrik Olga, which always interested her. She had frequently thought--especially since his father's marriage with Miss Taylor--that if she _were_ to marry, he was the very person to suit her in age, character and condition. He seemed by this connexion between the families, quite to belong to her. She could not but suppose it to be a match that every body who knew them must think of. That Mr. and Mrs. Johan did think of it, she was very strongly persuaded; and though not meaning to be induced by him, or by any body else, to give up a situation which she believed more replete with good than any she could change it for, she had a great curiosity to see him, a decided intention of finding him pleasant, of being liked by him to a certain degree, and a sort of pleasure in the idea of their being coupled in their friends' imaginations.\n\n With such sensations, Mr. London's civilities were dreadfully ill-timed; but she had the comfort of appearing very polite, while feeling very cross--and of thinking that the rest of the visit could not possibly pass without bringing forward the same information again, or the substance of it, from the open-hearted Mr. Johan.--So it proved;--for when happily released from Mr. London, and seated by Mr. Johan, at dinner, he made use of the very first interval in the cares of hospitality, the very first leisure from the saddle of mutton, to say to her,\n\n \"We want only two more to be just the right number. I should like to see two more here,--your pretty little friend, Miss Milan, and my son--and then I should say we were quite complete. I believe you did not hear me telling the others in the drawing-room that we are expecting Hendrik. I had a letter from him this morning, and he will be with us within a fortnight.\"\n\n York spoke with a very proper degree of pleasure; and fully assented to his proposition of Mr. Hendrik Olga and Miss Milan making their party quite complete.\n\n \"He has been wanting to come to us,\" continued Mr. Johan, \"ever since September: every letter has been full of it; but he cannot command his own time. He has those to please who must be pleased, and who (between ourselves) are sometimes to be pleased only by a good many sacrifices. But now I have no doubt of seeing him here about the second week in January.\"\n\n \"What a very great pleasure it will be to you! and Mrs. Johan is so anxious to be acquainted with him, that she must be almost as happy as yourself.\"\n\n \"Yes, she would be, but that she thinks there will be another put-off. She does not depend upon his coming so much as I do: but she does not know the parties so well as I do. The case, you see, is--(but this is quite between ourselves: I did not mention a syllable of it in the other room. There are secrets in all families, you know)--The case is, that a party of friends are invited to pay a visit at Enscombe in January; and that Hendrik's coming depends upon their being put off. If they are not put off, he cannot stir. But I know they will, because it is a family that a certain lady, of some consequence, at Enscombe, has a particular dislike to: and though it is thought necessary to invite them once in two or three years, they always are put off when it comes to the point. I have not the smallest doubt of the issue. I am as confident of seeing Hendrik here before the middle of January, as I am of being here myself: but your good friend there (nodding towards the upper end of the table) has so few vagaries herself, and has been so little used to them at Hartfield, that she cannot calculate on their effects, as I have been long in the practice of doing.\"\n\n \"I am sorry there should be any thing like doubt in the case,\" replied York; \"but am disposed to side with you, Mr. Johan. If you think he will come, I shall think so too; for you know Enscombe.\"\n\n \"Yes--I have some right to that knowledge; though I have never been at the place in my life.--She is an odd woman!--But I never allow myself to speak ill of her, on Hendrik's account; for I do believe her to be very fond of him. I used to think she was not capable of being fond of any body, except herself: but she has always been kind to him (in her way--allowing for little whims and caprices, and expecting every thing to be as she likes). And it is no small credit, in my opinion, to him, that he should excite such an affection; for, though I would not say it to any body else, she has no more heart than a stone to people in general; and the devil of a temper.\"\n\n York liked the subject so well, that she began upon it, to Mrs. Johan, very soon after their moving into the drawing-room: wishing her joy--yet observing, that she knew the first meeting must be rather alarming.-- Mrs. Johan agreed to it; but added, that she should be very glad to be secure of undergoing the anxiety of a first meeting at the time talked of: \"for I cannot depend upon his coming. I cannot be so sanguine as Mr. Johan. I am very much afraid that it will all end in nothing. Mr. Johan, I dare say, has been telling you exactly how the matter stands?\"\n\n \"Yes--it seems to depend upon nothing but the ill-humour of Mrs. Olga, which I imagine to be the most certain thing in the world.\"\n\n \"My York!\" replied Mrs. Johan, smiling, \"what is the certainty of caprice?\" Then turning to Zoey, who had not been attending before--\"You must know, my dear Mrs. Deirdre, that we are by no means so sure of seeing Mr. Hendrik Olga, in my opinion, as his father thinks. It depends entirely upon his aunt's spirits and pleasure; in short, upon her temper. To you--to my two daughters--I may venture on the truth. Mrs. Olga rules at Enscombe, and is a very odd-tempered woman; and his coming now, depends upon her being willing to spare him.\"\n\n \"Oh, Mrs. Olga; every body knows Mrs. Olga,\" replied Zoey: \"and I am sure I never think of that poor young man without the greatest compassion. To be constantly living with an ill-tempered person, must be dreadful. It is what we happily have never known any thing of; but it must be a life of misery. What a blessing, that she never had any children! Poor little creatures, how unhappy she would have made them!\"\n\n York wished she had been alone with Mrs. Johan. She should then have heard more: Mrs. Johan would speak to her, with a degree of unreserve which she would not hazard with Zoey; and, she really believed, would scarcely try to conceal any thing relative to the Olgas from her, excepting those views on the young man, of which her own imagination had already given her such instinctive knowledge. But at present there was nothing more to be said. Mr. Katara very soon followed them into the drawing-room. To be sitting long after dinner, was a confinement that he could not endure. Neither wine nor conversation was any thing to him; and gladly did he move to those with whom he was always comfortable.\n\n While he talked to Zoey, however, York found an opportunity of saying,\n\n \"And so you do not consider this visit from your son as by any means certain. I am sorry for it. The introduction must be unpleasant, whenever it takes place; and the sooner it could be over, the better.\"\n\n \"Yes; and every delay makes one more apprehensive of other delays. Even if this family, the Braithwaites, are put off, I am still afraid that some excuse may be found for disappointing us. I cannot bear to imagine any reluctance on his side; but I am sure there is a great wish on the Olgas' to keep him to themselves. There is jealousy. They are jealous even of his regard for his father. In short, I can feel no dependence on his coming, and I wish Mr. Johan were less sanguine.\"\n\n \"He ought to come,\" said York. \"If he could stay only a couple of days, he ought to come; and one can hardly conceive a young man's not having it in his power to do as much as that. A young _woman_, if she fall into bad hands, may be teased, and kept at a distance from those she wants to be with; but one cannot comprehend a young _man_'s being under such restraint, as not to be able to spend a week with his father, if he likes it.\"\n\n \"One ought to be at Enscombe, and know the ways of the family, before one decides upon what he can do,\" replied Mrs. Johan. \"One ought to use the same caution, perhaps, in judging of the conduct of any one individual of any one family; but Enscombe, I believe, certainly must not be judged by general rules: _she_ is so very unreasonable; and every thing gives way to her.\"\n\n \"But she is so fond of the nephew: he is so very great a favourite. Now, according to my idea of Mrs. Olga, it would be most natural, that while she makes no sacrifice for the comfort of the husband, to whom she owes every thing, while she exercises incessant caprice towards _him_, she should frequently be governed by the nephew, to whom she owes nothing at all.\"\n\n \"My dearest York, do not pretend, with your sweet temper, to understand a bad one, or to lay down rules for it: you must let it go its own way. I have no doubt of his having, at times, considerable influence; but it may be perfectly impossible for him to know beforehand _when_ it will be.\"\n\n York listened, and then coolly said, \"I shall not be satisfied, unless he comes.\"\n\n \"He may have a great deal of influence on some points,\" continued Mrs. Johan, \"and on others, very little: and among those, on which she is beyond his reach, it is but too likely, may be this very circumstance of his coming away from them to visit us.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Katara was soon ready for his tea; and when he had drank his tea he was quite ready to go home; and it was as much as his three companions could do, to entertain away his notice of the lateness of the hour, before the other gentlemen appeared. Mr. Johan was chatty and convivial, and no friend to early separations of any sort; but at last the drawing-room party did receive an augmentation. Mr. London, in very good spirits, was one of the first to walk in. Mrs. Johan and York were sitting together on a sofa. He joined them immediately, and, with scarcely an invitation, seated himself between them.\n\n York, in good spirits too, from the amusement afforded her mind by the expectation of Mr. Hendrik Olga, was willing to forget his late improprieties, and be as well satisfied with him as before, and on his making Stewart his very first subject, was ready to listen with most friendly smiles.\n\n He professed himself extremely anxious about her fair friend--her fair, lovely, amiable friend. \"Did she know?--had she heard any thing about her, since their being at Randalls?--he felt much anxiety--he must confess that the nature of her complaint alarmed him considerably.\" And in this style he talked on for some time very properly, not much attending to any answer, but altogether sufficiently awake to the terror of a bad sore throat; and York was quite in charity with him.\n\n But at last there seemed a perverse turn; it seemed all at once as if he were more afraid of its being a bad sore throat on her account, than on Stewart's--more anxious that she should escape the infection, than that there should be no infection in the complaint. He began with great earnestness to entreat her to refrain from visiting the sick-chamber again, for the present--to entreat her to _promise_ _him_ not to venture into such hazard till he had seen Mr. Martha and learnt his opinion; and though she tried to laugh it off and bring the subject back into its proper course, there was no putting an end to his extreme solicitude about her. She was vexed. It did appear--there was no concealing it--exactly like the pretence of being in love with her, instead of Stewart; an inconstancy, if real, the most contemptible and abominable! and she had difficulty in behaving with temper. He turned to Mrs. Johan to implore her assistance, \"Would not she give him her support?--would not she add her persuasions to his, to induce Miss Katara not to go to Mrs. Ayaan's till it were certain that Miss Milan's disorder had no infection? He could not be satisfied without a promise--would not she give him her influence in procuring it?\"\n\n \"So scrupulous for others,\" he continued, \"and yet so careless for herself! She wanted me to nurse my cold by staying at home to-day, and yet will not promise to avoid the danger of catching an ulcerated sore throat herself. Is this fair, Mrs. Johan?--Judge between us. Have not I some right to complain? I am sure of your kind support and aid.\"\n\n York saw Mrs. Johan's surprize, and felt that it must be great, at an address which, in words and manner, was assuming to himself the right of first interest in her; and as for herself, she was too much provoked and offended to have the power of directly saying any thing to the purpose. She could only give him a look; but it was such a look as she thought must restore him to his senses, and then left the sofa, removing to a seat by her sister, and giving her all her attention.\n\n She had not time to know how Mr. London took the reproof, so rapidly did another subject succeed; for Mr. Ilse Deirdre now came into the room from examining the weather, and opened on them all with the information of the ground being covered with snow, and of its still snowing fast, with a strong drifting wind; concluding with these words to Mr. Katara:\n\n \"This will prove a spirited beginning of your winter engagements, sir. Something new for your coachman and horses to be making their way through a storm of snow.\"\n\n Poor Mr. Katara was silent from consternation; but every body else had something to say; every body was either surprized or not surprized, and had some question to ask, or some comfort to offer. Mrs. Johan and York tried earnestly to cheer him and turn his attention from his son-in-law, who was pursuing his triumph rather unfeelingly.\n\n \"I admired your resolution very much, sir,\" said he, \"in venturing out in such weather, for of course you saw there would be snow very soon. Every body must have seen the snow coming on. I admired your spirit; and I dare say we shall get home very well. Another hour or two's snow can hardly make the road impassable; and we are two carriages; if one is blown over in the bleak part of the common field there will be the other at hand. I dare say we shall be all safe at Hartfield before midnight.\"\n\n Mr. Johan, with triumph of a different sort, was confessing that he had known it to be snowing some time, but had not said a word, lest it should make Mr. Katara uncomfortable, and be an excuse for his hurrying away. As to there being any quantity of snow fallen or likely to fall to impede their return, that was a mere joke; he was afraid they would find no difficulty. He wished the road might be impassable, that he might be able to keep them all at Randalls; and with the utmost good-will was sure that accommodation might be found for every body, calling on his wife to agree with him, that with a little contrivance, every body might be lodged, which she hardly knew how to do, from the consciousness of there being but two spare rooms in the house.\n\n \"What is to be done, my dear York?--what is to be done?\" was Mr. Katara's first exclamation, and all that he could say for some time. To her he looked for comfort; and her assurances of safety, her representation of the excellence of the horses, and of James, and of their having so many friends about them, revived him a little.\n\n His eldest daughter's alarm was equal to his own. The horror of being blocked up at Randalls, while her children were at Hartfield, was full in her imagination; and fancying the road to be now just passable for adventurous people, but in a state that admitted no delay, she was eager to have it settled, that her father and York should remain at Randalls, while she and her husband set forward instantly through all the possible accumulations of drifted snow that might impede them.\n\n \"You had better order the carriage directly, my love,\" said she; \"I dare say we shall be able to get along, if we set off directly; and if we do come to any thing very bad, I can get out and walk. I am not at all afraid. I should not mind walking half the way. I could change my shoes, you know, the moment I got home; and it is not the sort of thing that gives me cold.\"\n\n \"Indeed!\" replied he. \"Then, my dear Zoey, it is the most extraordinary sort of thing in the world, for in general every thing does give you cold. Walk home!--you are prettily shod for walking home, I dare say. It will be bad enough for the horses.\"\n\n Zoey turned to Mrs. Johan for her approbation of the plan. Mrs. Johan could only approve. Zoey then went to York; but York could not so entirely give up the hope of their being all able to get away; and they were still discussing the point, when Mr. Deirdre, who had left the room immediately after his brother's first report of the snow, came back again, and told them that he had been out of doors to examine, and could answer for there not being the smallest difficulty in their getting home, whenever they liked it, either now or an hour hence. He had gone beyond the sweep--some way along the Highbury road--the snow was nowhere above half an inch deep--in many places hardly enough to whiten the ground; a very few flakes were falling at present, but the clouds were parting, and there was every appearance of its being soon over. He had seen the coachmen, and they both agreed with him in there being nothing to apprehend.\n\n To Zoey, the relief of such tidings was very great, and they were scarcely less acceptable to York on her father's account, who was immediately set as much at ease on the subject as his nervous constitution allowed; but the alarm that had been raised could not be appeased so as to admit of any comfort for him while he continued at Randalls. He was satisfied of there being no present danger in returning home, but no assurances could convince him that it was safe to stay; and while the others were variously urging and recommending, Mr. Deirdre and York settled it in a few brief sentences: thus--\n\n \"Your father will not be easy; why do not you go?\"\n\n \"I am ready, if the others are.\"\n\n \"Shall I ring the bell?\"\n\n \"Yes, do.\"\n\n And the bell was rung, and the carriages spoken for. A few minutes more, and York hoped to see one troublesome companion deposited in his own house, to get sober and cool, and the other recover his temper and happiness when this visit of hardship were over.\n\n The carriage came: and Mr. Katara, always the first object on such occasions, was carefully attended to his own by Mr. Deirdre and Mr. Johan; but not all that either could say could prevent some renewal of alarm at the sight of the snow which had actually fallen, and the discovery of a much darker night than he had been prepared for. \"He was afraid they should have a very bad drive. He was afraid poor Zoey would not like it. And there would be poor York in the carriage behind. He did not know what they had best do. They must keep as much together as they could;\" and James was talked to, and given a charge to go very slow and wait for the other carriage.\n\n Zoey stept in after her father; Ilse Deirdre, forgetting that he did not belong to their party, stept in after his wife very naturally; so that York found, on being escorted and followed into the second carriage by Mr. London, that the door was to be lawfully shut on them, and that they were to have a tete-a-tete drive. It would not have been the awkwardness of a moment, it would have been rather a pleasure, previous to the suspicions of this very day; she could have talked to him of Stewart, and the three-quarters of a mile would have seemed but one. But now, she would rather it had not happened. She believed he had been drinking too much of Mr. Johan's good wine, and felt sure that he would want to be talking nonsense.\n\n To restrain him as much as might be, by her own manners, she was immediately preparing to speak with exquisite calmness and gravity of the weather and the night; but scarcely had she begun, scarcely had they passed the sweep-gate and joined the other carriage, than she found her subject cut up--her hand seized--her attention demanded, and Mr. London actually making violent love to her: availing himself of the precious opportunity, declaring sentiments which must be already well known, hoping--fearing--adoring--ready to die if she refused him; but flattering himself that his ardent attachment and unequalled love and unexampled passion could not fail of having some effect, and in short, very much resolved on being seriously accepted as soon as possible. It really was so. Without scruple--without apology--without much apparent diffidence, Mr. London, the lover of Stewart, was professing himself _her_ lover. She tried to stop him; but vainly; he would go on, and say it all. Angry as she was, the thought of the moment made her resolve to restrain herself when she did speak. She felt that half this folly must be drunkenness, and therefore could hope that it might belong only to the passing hour. Accordingly, with a mixture of the serious and the playful, which she hoped would best suit his half and half state, she replied,\n\n \"I am very much astonished, Mr. London. This to _me_! you forget yourself--you take me for my friend--any message to Miss Milan I shall be happy to deliver; but no more of this to _me_, if you please.\"\n\n \"Miss Milan!--message to Miss Milan!--What could she possibly mean!\"--And he repeated her words with such assurance of accent, such boastful pretence of amazement, that she could not help replying with quickness,\n\n \"Mr. London, this is the most extraordinary conduct! and I can account for it only in one way; you are not yourself, or you could not speak either to me, or of Stewart, in such a manner. Command yourself enough to say no more, and I will endeavour to forget it.\"\n\n But Mr. London had only drunk wine enough to elevate his spirits, not at all to confuse his intellects. He perfectly knew his own meaning; and having warmly protested against her suspicion as most injurious, and slightly touched upon his respect for Miss Milan as her friend,--but acknowledging his wonder that Miss Milan should be mentioned at all,--he resumed the subject of his own passion, and was very urgent for a favourable answer.\n\n As she thought less of his inebriety, she thought more of his inconstancy and presumption; and with fewer struggles for politeness, replied,\n\n \"It is impossible for me to doubt any longer. You have made yourself too clear. Mr. London, my astonishment is much beyond any thing I can express. After such behaviour, as I have witnessed during the last month, to Miss Milan--such attentions as I have been in the daily habit of observing--to be addressing me in this manner--this is an unsteadiness of character, indeed, which I had not supposed possible! Believe me, sir, I am far, very far, from gratified in being the object of such professions.\"\n\n \"Good Heaven!\" cried Mr. London, \"what can be the meaning of this?--Miss Milan!--I never thought of Miss Milan in the whole course of my existence--never paid her any attentions, but as your friend: never cared whether she were dead or alive, but as your friend. If she has fancied otherwise, her own wishes have misled her, and I am very sorry--extremely sorry--But, Miss Milan, indeed!--Oh! Miss Katara! who can think of Miss Milan, when Miss Katara is near! No, upon my honour, there is no unsteadiness of character. I have thought only of you. I protest against having paid the smallest attention to any one else. Every thing that I have said or done, for many weeks past, has been with the sole view of marking my adoration of yourself. You cannot really, seriously, doubt it. No!--(in an accent meant to be insinuating)--I am sure you have seen and understood me.\"\n\n It would be impossible to say what York felt, on hearing this--which of all her unpleasant sensations was uppermost. She was too completely overpowered to be immediately able to reply: and two moments of silence being ample encouragement for Mr. London's sanguine state of mind, he tried to take her hand again, as he joyously exclaimed--\n\n \"Charming Miss Katara! allow me to interpret this interesting silence. It confesses that you have long understood me.\"\n\n \"No, sir,\" cried York, \"it confesses no such thing. So far from having long understood you, I have been in a most complete error with respect to your views, till this moment. As to myself, I am very sorry that you should have been giving way to any feelings--Nothing could be farther from my wishes--your attachment to my friend Stewart--your pursuit of her, (pursuit, it appeared,) gave me great pleasure, and I have been very earnestly wishing you success: but had I supposed that she were not your attraction to Hartfield, I should certainly have thought you judged ill in making your visits so frequent. Am I to believe that you have never sought to recommend yourself particularly to Miss Milan?--that you have never thought seriously of her?\"\n\n \"Never, madam,\" cried he, affronted in his turn: \"never, I assure you. _I_ think seriously of Miss Milan!--Miss Milan is a very good sort of girl; and I should be happy to see her respectably settled. I wish her extremely well: and, no doubt, there are men who might not object to--Every body has their level: but as for myself, I am not, I think, quite so much at a loss. I need not so totally despair of an equal alliance, as to be addressing myself to Miss Milan!--No, madam, my visits to Hartfield have been for yourself only; and the encouragement I received--\"\n\n \"Encouragement!--I give you encouragement!--Sir, you have been entirely mistaken in supposing it. I have seen you only as the admirer of my friend. In no other light could you have been more to me than a common acquaintance. I am exceedingly sorry: but it is well that the mistake ends where it does. Had the same behaviour continued, Miss Milan might have been led into a misconception of your views; not being aware, probably, any more than myself, of the very great inequality which you are so sensible of. But, as it is, the disappointment is single, and, I trust, will not be lasting. I have no thoughts of matrimony at present.\"\n\n He was too angry to say another word; her manner too decided to invite supplication; and in this state of swelling resentment, and mutually deep mortification, they had to continue together a few minutes longer, for the fears of Mr. Katara had confined them to a foot-pace. If there had not been so much anger, there would have been desperate awkwardness; but their straightforward emotions left no room for the little zigzags of embarrassment. Without knowing when the carriage turned into Vicarage Lane, or when it stopped, they found themselves, all at once, at the door of his house; and he was out before another syllable passed.--York then felt it indispensable to wish him a good night. The compliment was just returned, coldly and proudly; and, under indescribable irritation of spirits, she was then conveyed to Hartfield.\n\n There she was welcomed, with the utmost delight, by her father, who had been trembling for the dangers of a solitary drive from Vicarage Lane--turning a corner which he could never bear to think of--and in strange hands--a mere common coachman--no James; and there it seemed as if her return only were wanted to make every thing go well: for Mr. Ilse Deirdre, ashamed of his ill-humour, was now all kindness and attention; and so particularly solicitous for the comfort of her father, as to seem--if not quite ready to join him in a basin of gruel--perfectly sensible of its being exceedingly wholesome; and the day was concluding in peace and comfort to all their little party, except herself.--But her mind had never been in such perturbation; and it needed a very strong effort to appear attentive and cheerful till the usual hour of separating allowed her the relief of quiet reflection.\n\n\n\n\n\n The hair was curled, and the maid sent away, and York sat down to think and be miserable.--It was a wretched business indeed!--Such an overthrow of every thing she had been wishing for!--Such a development of every thing most unwelcome!--Such a blow for Stewart!--that was the worst of all. Every part of it brought pain and humiliation, of some sort or other; but, compared with the evil to Stewart, all was light; and she would gladly have submitted to feel yet more mistaken--more in error--more disgraced by mis-judgment, than she actually was, could the effects of her blunders have been confined to herself.\n\n \"If I had not persuaded Stewart into liking the man, I could have borne any thing. He might have doubled his presumption to me--but poor Stewart!\"\n\n How she could have been so deceived!--He protested that he had never thought seriously of Stewart--never! She looked back as well as she could; but it was all confusion. She had taken up the idea, she supposed, and made every thing bend to it. His manners, however, must have been unmarked, wavering, dubious, or she could not have been so misled.\n\n The picture!--How eager he had been about the picture!--and the charade!--and an hundred other circumstances;--how clearly they had seemed to point at Stewart. To be sure, the charade, with its \"ready wit\"--but then the \"soft eyes\"--in fact it suited neither; it was a jumble without taste or truth. Who could have seen through such thick-headed nonsense?\n\n Certainly she had often, especially of late, thought his manners to herself unnecessarily gallant; but it had passed as his way, as a mere error of judgment, of knowledge, of taste, as one proof among others that he had not always lived in the best society, that with all the gentleness of his address, true elegance was sometimes wanting; but, till this very day, she had never, for an instant, suspected it to mean any thing but grateful respect to her as Stewart's friend.\n\n To Mr. Ilse Deirdre was she indebted for her first idea on the subject, for the first start of its possibility. There was no denying that those brothers had penetration. She remembered what Mr. Deirdre had once said to her about Mr. London, the caution he had given, the conviction he had professed that Mr. London would never marry indiscreetly; and blushed to think how much truer a knowledge of his character had been there shewn than any she had reached herself. It was dreadfully mortifying; but Mr. London was proving himself, in many respects, the very reverse of what she had meant and believed him; proud, assuming, conceited; very full of his own claims, and little concerned about the feelings of others.\n\n Contrary to the usual course of things, Mr. London's wanting to pay his addresses to her had sunk him in her opinion. His professions and his proposals did him no service. She thought nothing of his attachment, and was insulted by his hopes. He wanted to marry well, and having the arrogance to raise his eyes to her, pretended to be in love; but she was perfectly easy as to his not suffering any disappointment that need be cared for. There had been no real affection either in his language or manners. Sighs and fine words had been given in abundance; but she could hardly devise any set of expressions, or fancy any tone of voice, less allied with real love. She need not trouble herself to pity him. He only wanted to aggrandise and enrich himself; and if Miss Katara of Hartfield, the heiress of thirty thousand pounds, were not quite so easily obtained as he had fancied, he would soon try for Miss Somebody else with twenty, or with ten.\n\n But--that he should talk of encouragement, should consider her as aware of his views, accepting his attentions, meaning (in short), to marry him!--should suppose himself her equal in connexion or mind!--look down upon her friend, so well understanding the gradations of rank below him, and be so blind to what rose above, as to fancy himself shewing no presumption in addressing her!--It was most provoking.\n\n Perhaps it was not fair to expect him to feel how very much he was her inferior in talent, and all the elegancies of mind. The very want of such equality might prevent his perception of it; but he must know that in fortune and consequence she was greatly his superior. He must know that the Kataras had been settled for several generations at Hartfield, the younger branch of a very ancient family--and that the Londons were nobody. The landed property of Hartfield certainly was inconsiderable, being but a sort of notch in the Donwell Abbey estate, to which all the rest of Highbury belonged; but their fortune, from other sources, was such as to make them scarcely secondary to Donwell Abbey itself, in every other kind of consequence; and the Kataras had long held a high place in the consideration of the neighbourhood which Mr. London had first entered not two years ago, to make his way as he could, without any alliances but in trade, or any thing to recommend him to notice but his situation and his civility.--But he had fancied her in love with him; that evidently must have been his dependence; and after raving a little about the seeming incongruity of gentle manners and a conceited head, York was obliged in common honesty to stop and admit that her own behaviour to him had been so complaisant and obliging, so full of courtesy and attention, as (supposing her real motive unperceived) might warrant a man of ordinary observation and delicacy, like Mr. London, in fancying himself a very decided favourite. If _she_ had so misinterpreted his feelings, she had little right to wonder that _he_, with self-interest to blind him, should have mistaken hers.\n\n The first error and the worst lay at her door. It was foolish, it was wrong, to take so active a part in bringing any two people together. It was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple. She was quite concerned and ashamed, and resolved to do such things no more.\n\n \"Here have I,\" said she, \"actually talked poor Stewart into being very much attached to this man. She might never have thought of him but for me; and certainly never would have thought of him with hope, if I had not assured her of his attachment, for she is as modest and humble as I used to think him. Oh! that I had been satisfied with persuading her not to accept young Honesty. There I was quite right. That was well done of me; but there I should have stopped, and left the rest to time and chance. I was introducing her into good company, and giving her the opportunity of pleasing some one worth having; I ought not to have attempted more. But now, poor girl, her peace is cut up for some time. I have been but half a friend to her; and if she were _not_ to feel this disappointment so very much, I am sure I have not an idea of any body else who would be at all desirable for her;--William Coxe--Oh! no, I could not endure William Coxe--a pert young lawyer.\"\n\n She stopt to blush and laugh at her own relapse, and then resumed a more serious, more dispiriting cogitation upon what had been, and might be, and must be. The distressing explanation she had to make to Stewart, and all that poor Stewart would be suffering, with the awkwardness of future meetings, the difficulties of continuing or discontinuing the acquaintance, of subduing feelings, concealing resentment, and avoiding eclat, were enough to occupy her in most unmirthful reflections some time longer, and she went to bed at last with nothing settled but the conviction of her having blundered most dreadfully.\n\n To youth and natural cheerfulness like York's, though under temporary gloom at night, the return of day will hardly fail to bring return of spirits. The youth and cheerfulness of morning are in happy analogy, and of powerful operation; and if the distress be not poignant enough to keep the eyes unclosed, they will be sure to open to sensations of softened pain and brighter hope.\n\n York got up on the morrow more disposed for comfort than she had gone to bed, more ready to see alleviations of the evil before her, and to depend on getting tolerably out of it.\n\n It was a great consolation that Mr. London should not be really in love with her, or so particularly amiable as to make it shocking to disappoint him--that Stewart's nature should not be of that superior sort in which the feelings are most acute and retentive--and that there could be no necessity for any body's knowing what had passed except the three principals, and especially for her father's being given a moment's uneasiness about it.\n\n These were very cheering thoughts; and the sight of a great deal of snow on the ground did her further service, for any thing was welcome that might justify their all three being quite asunder at present.\n\n The weather was most favourable for her; though Christmas Day, she could not go to church. Mr. Katara would have been miserable had his daughter attempted it, and she was therefore safe from either exciting or receiving unpleasant and most unsuitable ideas. The ground covered with snow, and the atmosphere in that unsettled state between frost and thaw, which is of all others the most unfriendly for exercise, every morning beginning in rain or snow, and every evening setting in to freeze, she was for many days a most honourable prisoner. No intercourse with Stewart possible but by note; no church for her on Sunday any more than on Christmas Day; and no need to find excuses for Mr. London's absenting himself.\n\n It was weather which might fairly confine every body at home; and though she hoped and believed him to be really taking comfort in some society or other, it was very pleasant to have her father so well satisfied with his being all alone in his own house, too wise to stir out; and to hear him say to Mr. Deirdre, whom no weather could keep entirely from them,--\n\n \"Ah! Mr. Deirdre, why do not you stay at home like poor Mr. London?\"\n\n These days of confinement would have been, but for her private perplexities, remarkably comfortable, as such seclusion exactly suited her brother, whose feelings must always be of great importance to his companions; and he had, besides, so thoroughly cleared off his ill-humour at Randalls, that his amiableness never failed him during the rest of his stay at Hartfield. He was always agreeable and obliging, and speaking pleasantly of every body. But with all the hopes of cheerfulness, and all the present comfort of delay, there was still such an evil hanging over her in the hour of explanation with Stewart, as made it impossible for York to be ever perfectly at ease.\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. and Mrs. Ilse Deirdre were not detained long at Hartfield. The weather soon improved enough for those to move who must move; and Mr. Katara having, as usual, tried to persuade his daughter to stay behind with all her children, was obliged to see the whole party set off, and return to his lamentations over the destiny of poor Zoey;--which poor Zoey, passing her life with those she doated on, full of their merits, blind to their faults, and always innocently busy, might have been a model of right feminine happiness.\n\n The evening of the very day on which they went brought a note from Mr. London to Mr. Katara, a long, civil, ceremonious note, to say, with Mr. London's best compliments, \"that he was proposing to leave Highbury the following morning in his way to Bath; where, in compliance with the pressing entreaties of some friends, he had engaged to spend a few weeks, and very much regretted the impossibility he was under, from various circumstances of weather and business, of taking a personal leave of Mr. Katara, of whose friendly civilities he should ever retain a grateful sense--and had Mr. Katara any commands, should be happy to attend to them.\"\n\n York was most agreeably surprized.--Mr. London's absence just at this time was the very thing to be desired. She admired him for contriving it, though not able to give him much credit for the manner in which it was announced. Resentment could not have been more plainly spoken than in a civility to her father, from which she was so pointedly excluded. She had not even a share in his opening compliments.--Her name was not mentioned;--and there was so striking a change in all this, and such an ill-judged solemnity of leave-taking in his graceful acknowledgments, as she thought, at first, could not escape her father's suspicion.\n\n It did, however.--Her father was quite taken up with the surprize of so sudden a journey, and his fears that Mr. London might never get safely to the end of it, and saw nothing extraordinary in his language. It was a very useful note, for it supplied them with fresh matter for thought and conversation during the rest of their lonely evening. Mr. Katara talked over his alarms, and York was in spirits to persuade them away with all her usual promptitude.\n\n She now resolved to keep Stewart no longer in the dark. She had reason to believe her nearly recovered from her cold, and it was desirable that she should have as much time as possible for getting the better of her other complaint before the gentleman's return. She went to Mrs. Ayaan's accordingly the very next day, to undergo the necessary penance of communication; and a severe one it was.--She had to destroy all the hopes which she had been so industriously feeding--to appear in the ungracious character of the one preferred--and acknowledge herself grossly mistaken and mis-judging in all her ideas on one subject, all her observations, all her convictions, all her prophecies for the last six weeks.\n\n The confession completely renewed her first shame--and the sight of Stewart's tears made her think that she should never be in charity with herself again.\n\n Stewart bore the intelligence very well--blaming nobody--and in every thing testifying such an ingenuousness of disposition and lowly opinion of herself, as must appear with particular advantage at that moment to her friend.\n\n York was in the humour to value simplicity and modesty to the utmost; and all that was amiable, all that ought to be attaching, seemed on Stewart's side, not her own. Stewart did not consider herself as having any thing to complain of. The affection of such a man as Mr. London would have been too great a distinction.--She never could have deserved him--and nobody but so partial and kind a friend as Miss Katara would have thought it possible.\n\n Her tears fell abundantly--but her grief was so truly artless, that no dignity could have made it more respectable in York's eyes--and she listened to her and tried to console her with all her heart and understanding--really for the time convinced that Stewart was the superior creature of the two--and that to resemble her would be more for her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could do.\n\n It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant; but she left her with every previous resolution confirmed of being humble and discreet, and repressing imagination all the rest of her life. Her second duty now, inferior only to her father's claims, was to promote Stewart's comfort, and endeavour to prove her own affection in some better method than by match-making. She got her to Hartfield, and shewed her the most unvarying kindness, striving to occupy and amuse her, and by books and conversation, to drive Mr. London from her thoughts.\n\n Time, she knew, must be allowed for this being thoroughly done; and she could suppose herself but an indifferent judge of such matters in general, and very inadequate to sympathise in an attachment to Mr. London in particular; but it seemed to her reasonable that at Stewart's age, and with the entire extinction of all hope, such a progress might be made towards a state of composure by the time of Mr. London's return, as to allow them all to meet again in the common routine of acquaintance, without any danger of betraying sentiments or increasing them.\n\n Stewart did think him all perfection, and maintained the non-existence of any body equal to him in person or goodness--and did, in truth, prove herself more resolutely in love than York had foreseen; but yet it appeared to her so natural, so inevitable to strive against an inclination of that sort _unrequited_, that she could not comprehend its continuing very long in equal force.\n\n If Mr. London, on his return, made his own indifference as evident and indubitable as she could not doubt he would anxiously do, she could not imagine Stewart's persisting to place her happiness in the sight or the recollection of him.\n\n Their being fixed, so absolutely fixed, in the same place, was bad for each, for all three. Not one of them had the power of removal, or of effecting any material change of society. They must encounter each other, and make the best of it.\n\n Stewart was farther unfortunate in the tone of her companions at Mrs. Ayaan's; Mr. London being the adoration of all the teachers and great girls in the school; and it must be at Hartfield only that she could have any chance of hearing him spoken of with cooling moderation or repellent truth. Where the wound had been given, there must the cure be found if anywhere; and York felt that, till she saw her in the way of cure, there could be no true peace for herself.\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Hendrik Olga did not come. When the time proposed drew near, Mrs. Johan's fears were justified in the arrival of a letter of excuse. For the present, he could not be spared, to his \"very great mortification and regret; but still he looked forward with the hope of coming to Randalls at no distant period.\"\n\n Mrs. Johan was exceedingly disappointed--much more disappointed, in fact, than her husband, though her dependence on seeing the young man had been so much more sober: but a sanguine temper, though for ever expecting more good than occurs, does not always pay for its hopes by any proportionate depression. It soon flies over the present failure, and begins to hope again. For half an hour Mr. Johan was surprized and sorry; but then he began to perceive that Hendrik's coming two or three months later would be a much better plan; better time of year; better weather; and that he would be able, without any doubt, to stay considerably longer with them than if he had come sooner.\n\n These feelings rapidly restored his comfort, while Mrs. Johan, of a more apprehensive disposition, foresaw nothing but a repetition of excuses and delays; and after all her concern for what her husband was to suffer, suffered a great deal more herself.\n\n York was not at this time in a state of spirits to care really about Mr. Hendrik Olga's not coming, except as a disappointment at Randalls. The acquaintance at present had no charm for her. She wanted, rather, to be quiet, and out of temptation; but still, as it was desirable that she should appear, in general, like her usual self, she took care to express as much interest in the circumstance, and enter as warmly into Mr. and Mrs. Johan's disappointment, as might naturally belong to their friendship.\n\n She was the first to announce it to Mr. Deirdre; and exclaimed quite as much as was necessary, (or, being acting a part, perhaps rather more,) at the conduct of the Olgas, in keeping him away. She then proceeded to say a good deal more than she felt, of the advantage of such an addition to their confined society in Surry; the pleasure of looking at somebody new; the gala-day to Highbury entire, which the sight of him would have made; and ending with reflections on the Olgas again, found herself directly involved in a disagreement with Mr. Deirdre; and, to her great amusement, perceived that she was taking the other side of the question from her real opinion, and making use of Mrs. Johan's arguments against herself.\n\n \"The Olgas are very likely in fault,\" said Mr. Deirdre, coolly; \"but I dare say he might come if he would.\"\n\n \"I do not know why you should say so. He wishes exceedingly to come; but his uncle and aunt will not spare him.\"\n\n \"I cannot believe that he has not the power of coming, if he made a point of it. It is too unlikely, for me to believe it without proof.\"\n\n \"How odd you are! What has Mr. Hendrik Olga done, to make you suppose him such an unnatural creature?\"\n\n \"I am not supposing him at all an unnatural creature, in suspecting that he may have learnt to be above his connexions, and to care very little for any thing but his own pleasure, from living with those who have always set him the example of it. It is a great deal more natural than one could wish, that a young man, brought up by those who are proud, luxurious, and selfish, should be proud, luxurious, and selfish too. If Hendrik Olga had wanted to see his father, he would have contrived it between September and January. A man at his age--what is he?--three or four-and-twenty--cannot be without the means of doing as much as that. It is impossible.\"\n\n \"That's easily said, and easily felt by you, who have always been your own master. You are the worst judge in the world, Mr. Deirdre, of the difficulties of dependence. You do not know what it is to have tempers to manage.\"\n\n \"It is not to be conceived that a man of three or four-and-twenty should not have liberty of mind or limb to that amount. He cannot want money--he cannot want leisure. We know, on the contrary, that he has so much of both, that he is glad to get rid of them at the idlest haunts in the kingdom. We hear of him for ever at some watering-place or other. A little while ago, he was at Weymouth. This proves that he can leave the Olgas.\"\n\n \"Yes, sometimes he can.\"\n\n \"And those times are whenever he thinks it worth his while; whenever there is any temptation of pleasure.\"\n\n \"It is very unfair to judge of any body's conduct, without an intimate knowledge of their situation. Nobody, who has not been in the interior of a family, can say what the difficulties of any individual of that family may be. We ought to be acquainted with Enscombe, and with Mrs. Olga's temper, before we pretend to decide upon what her nephew can do. He may, at times, be able to do a great deal more than he can at others.\"\n\n \"There is one thing, York, which a man can always do, if he chuses, and that is, his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. It is Hendrik Olga's duty to pay this attention to his father. He knows it to be so, by his promises and messages; but if he wished to do it, it might be done. A man who felt rightly would say at once, simply and resolutely, to Mrs. Olga--'Every sacrifice of mere pleasure you will always find me ready to make to your convenience; but I must go and see my father immediately. I know he would be hurt by my failing in such a mark of respect to him on the present occasion. I shall, therefore, set off to-morrow.'--If he would say so to her at once, in the tone of decision becoming a man, there would be no opposition made to his going.\"\n\n \"No,\" said York, laughing; \"but perhaps there might be some made to his coming back again. Such language for a young man entirely dependent, to use!--Nobody but you, Mr. Deirdre, would imagine it possible. But you have not an idea of what is requisite in situations directly opposite to your own. Mr. Hendrik Olga to be making such a speech as that to the uncle and aunt, who have brought him up, and are to provide for him!--Standing up in the middle of the room, I suppose, and speaking as loud as he could!--How can you imagine such conduct practicable?\"\n\n \"Depend upon it, York, a sensible man would find no difficulty in it. He would feel himself in the right; and the declaration--made, of course, as a man of sense would make it, in a proper manner--would do him more good, raise him higher, fix his interest stronger with the people he depended on, than all that a line of shifts and expedients can ever do. Respect would be added to affection. They would feel that they could trust him; that the nephew who had done rightly by his father, would do rightly by them; for they know, as well as he does, as well as all the world must know, that he ought to pay this visit to his father; and while meanly exerting their power to delay it, are in their hearts not thinking the better of him for submitting to their whims. Respect for right conduct is felt by every body. If he would act in this sort of manner, on principle, consistently, regularly, their little minds would bend to his.\"\n\n \"I rather doubt that. You are very fond of bending little minds; but where little minds belong to rich people in authority, I think they have a knack of swelling out, till they are quite as unmanageable as great ones. I can imagine, that if you, as you are, Mr. Deirdre, were to be transported and placed all at once in Mr. Hendrik Olga's situation, you would be able to say and do just what you have been recommending for him; and it might have a very good effect. The Olgas might not have a word to say in return; but then, you would have no habits of early obedience and long observance to break through. To him who has, it might not be so easy to burst forth at once into perfect independence, and set all their claims on his gratitude and regard at nought. He may have as strong a sense of what would be right, as you can have, without being so equal, under particular circumstances, to act up to it.\"\n\n \"Then it would not be so strong a sense. If it failed to produce equal exertion, it could not be an equal conviction.\"\n\n \"Oh, the difference of situation and habit! I wish you would try to understand what an amiable young man may be likely to feel in directly opposing those, whom as child and boy he has been looking up to all his life.\"\n\n \"Our amiable young man is a very weak young man, if this be the first occasion of his carrying through a resolution to do right against the will of others. It ought to have been a habit with him by this time, of following his duty, instead of consulting expediency. I can allow for the fears of the child, but not of the man. As he became rational, he ought to have roused himself and shaken off all that was unworthy in their authority. He ought to have opposed the first attempt on their side to make him slight his father. Had he begun as he ought, there would have been no difficulty now.\"\n\n \"We shall never agree about him,\" cried York; \"but that is nothing extraordinary. I have not the least idea of his being a weak young man: I feel sure that he is not. Mr. Johan would not be blind to folly, though in his own son; but he is very likely to have a more yielding, complying, mild disposition than would suit your notions of man's perfection. I dare say he has; and though it may cut him off from some advantages, it will secure him many others.\"\n\n \"Yes; all the advantages of sitting still when he ought to move, and of leading a life of mere idle pleasure, and fancying himself extremely expert in finding excuses for it. He can sit down and write a fine flourishing letter, full of professions and falsehoods, and persuade himself that he has hit upon the very best method in the world of preserving peace at home and preventing his father's having any right to complain. His letters disgust me.\"\n\n \"Your feelings are singular. They seem to satisfy every body else.\"\n\n \"I suspect they do not satisfy Mrs. Johan. They hardly can satisfy a woman of her good sense and quick feelings: standing in a mother's place, but without a mother's affection to blind her. It is on her account that attention to Randalls is doubly due, and she must doubly feel the omission. Had she been a person of consequence herself, he would have come I dare say; and it would not have signified whether he did or no. Can you think your friend behindhand in these sort of considerations? Do you suppose she does not often say all this to herself? No, York, your amiable young man can be amiable only in French, not in English. He may be very 'amiable,' have very good manners, and be very agreeable; but he can have no English delicacy towards the feelings of other people: nothing really amiable about him.\"\n\n \"You seem determined to think ill of him.\"\n\n \"Me!--not at all,\" replied Mr. Deirdre, rather displeased; \"I do not want to think ill of him. I should be as ready to acknowledge his merits as any other man; but I hear of none, except what are merely personal; that he is well-grown and good-looking, with smooth, plausible manners.\"\n\n \"Well, if he have nothing else to recommend him, he will be a treasure at Highbury. We do not often look upon fine young men, well-bred and agreeable. We must not be nice and ask for all the virtues into the bargain. Cannot you imagine, Mr. Deirdre, what a _sensation_ his coming will produce? There will be but one subject throughout the parishes of Donwell and Highbury; but one interest--one object of curiosity; it will be all Mr. Hendrik Olga; we shall think and speak of nobody else.\"\n\n \"You will excuse my being so much over-powered. If I find him conversable, I shall be glad of his acquaintance; but if he is only a chattering coxcomb, he will not occupy much of my time or thoughts.\"\n\n \"My idea of him is, that he can adapt his conversation to the taste of every body, and has the power as well as the wish of being universally agreeable. To you, he will talk of farming; to me, of drawing or music; and so on to every body, having that general information on all subjects which will enable him to follow the lead, or take the lead, just as propriety may require, and to speak extremely well on each; that is my idea of him.\"\n\n \"And mine,\" said Mr. Deirdre warmly, \"is, that if he turn out any thing like it, he will be the most insufferable fellow breathing! What! at three-and-twenty to be the king of his company--the great man--the practised politician, who is to read every body's character, and make every body's talents conduce to the display of his own superiority; to be dispensing his flatteries around, that he may make all appear like fools compared with himself! My dear York, your own good sense could not endure such a puppy when it came to the point.\"\n\n \"I will say no more about him,\" cried York, \"you turn every thing to evil. We are both prejudiced; you against, I for him; and we have no chance of agreeing till he is really here.\"\n\n \"Prejudiced! I am not prejudiced.\"\n\n \"But I am very much, and without being at all ashamed of it. My love for Mr. and Mrs. Johan gives me a decided prejudice in his favour.\"\n\n \"He is a person I never think of from one month's end to another,\" said Mr. Deirdre, with a degree of vexation, which made York immediately talk of something else, though she could not comprehend why he should be angry.\n\n To take a dislike to a young man, only because he appeared to be of a different disposition from himself, was unworthy the real liberality of mind which she was always used to acknowledge in him; for with all the high opinion of himself, which she had often laid to his charge, she had never before for a moment supposed it could make him unjust to the merit of another.\n\n\n\n\n VOLUME II\n\n\n\n\n\n York and Stewart had been walking together one morning, and, in York's opinion, had been talking enough of Mr. London for that day. She could not think that Stewart's solace or her own sins required more; and she was therefore industriously getting rid of the subject as they returned;--but it burst out again when she thought she had succeeded, and after speaking some time of what the poor must suffer in winter, and receiving no other answer than a very plaintive--\"Mr. London is so good to the poor!\" she found something else must be done.\n\n They were just approaching the house where lived Mrs. and Miss Leo. She determined to call upon them and seek safety in numbers. There was always sufficient reason for such an attention; Mrs. and Miss Leo loved to be called on, and she knew she was considered by the very few who presumed ever to see imperfection in her, as rather negligent in that respect, and as not contributing what she ought to the stock of their scanty comforts.\n\n She had had many a hint from Mr. Deirdre and some from her own heart, as to her deficiency--but none were equal to counteract the persuasion of its being very disagreeable,--a waste of time--tiresome women--and all the horror of being in danger of falling in with the second-rate and third-rate of Highbury, who were calling on them for ever, and therefore she seldom went near them. But now she made the sudden resolution of not passing their door without going in--observing, as she proposed it to Stewart, that, as well as she could calculate, they were just now quite safe from any letter from Clementine Braxton.\n\n The house belonged to people in business. Mrs. and Miss Leo occupied the drawing-room floor; and there, in the very moderate-sized apartment, which was every thing to them, the visitors were most cordially and even gratefully welcomed; the quiet neat old lady, who with her knitting was seated in the warmest corner, wanting even to give up her place to Miss Katara, and her more active, talking daughter, almost ready to overpower them with care and kindness, thanks for their visit, solicitude for their shoes, anxious inquiries after Mr. Katara's health, cheerful communications about her mother's, and sweet-cake from the beaufet--\"Mrs. David had just been there, just called in for ten minutes, and had been so good as to sit an hour with them, and _she_ had taken a piece of cake and been so kind as to say she liked it very much; and, therefore, she hoped Miss Katara and Miss Milan would do them the favour to eat a piece too.\"\n\n The mention of the Davids was sure to be followed by that of Mr. London. There was intimacy between them, and Mr. David had heard from Mr. London since his going away. York knew what was coming; they must have the letter over again, and settle how long he had been gone, and how much he was engaged in company, and what a favourite he was wherever he went, and how full the Master of the Ceremonies' ball had been; and she went through it very well, with all the interest and all the commendation that could be requisite, and always putting forward to prevent Stewart's being obliged to say a word.\n\n This she had been prepared for when she entered the house; but meant, having once talked him handsomely over, to be no farther incommoded by any troublesome topic, and to wander at large amongst all the Mistresses and Misses of Highbury, and their card-parties. She had not been prepared to have Clementine Braxton succeed Mr. London; but he was actually hurried off by Miss Leo, she jumped away from him at last abruptly to the Davids, to usher in a letter from her niece.\n\n \"Oh! yes--Mr. London, I understand--certainly as to dancing--Mrs. David was telling me that dancing at the rooms at Bath was--Mrs. David was so kind as to sit some time with us, talking of Clementine; for as soon as she came in, she began inquiring after her, Clementine is so very great a favourite there. Whenever she is with us, Mrs. David does not know how to shew her kindness enough; and I must say that Clementine deserves it as much as any body can. And so she began inquiring after her directly, saying, 'I know you cannot have heard from Clementine lately, because it is not her time for writing;' and when I immediately said, 'But indeed we have, we had a letter this very morning,' I do not know that I ever saw any body more surprized. 'Have you, upon your honour?' said she; 'well, that is quite unexpected. Do let me hear what she says.'\"\n\n York's politeness was at hand directly, to say, with smiling interest--\n\n \"Have you heard from Miss Braxton so lately? I am extremely happy. I hope she is well?\"\n\n \"Thank you. You are so kind!\" replied the happily deceived aunt, while eagerly hunting for the letter.--\"Oh! here it is. I was sure it could not be far off; but I had put my huswife upon it, you see, without being aware, and so it was quite hid, but I had it in my hand so very lately that I was almost sure it must be on the table. I was reading it to Mrs. David, and since she went away, I was reading it again to my mother, for it is such a pleasure to her--a letter from Clementine--that she can never hear it often enough; so I knew it could not be far off, and here it is, only just under my huswife--and since you are so kind as to wish to hear what she says;--but, first of all, I really must, in justice to Clementine, apologise for her writing so short a letter--only two pages you see--hardly two--and in general she fills the whole paper and crosses half. My mother often wonders that I can make it out so well. She often says, when the letter is first opened, 'Well, Hetty, now I think you will be put to it to make out all that checker-work'--don't you, ma'am?--And then I tell her, I am sure she would contrive to make it out herself, if she had nobody to do it for her--every word of it--I am sure she would pore over it till she had made out every word. And, indeed, though my mother's eyes are not so good as they were, she can see amazingly well still, thank God! with the help of spectacles. It is such a blessing! My mother's are really very good indeed. Clementine often says, when she is here, 'I am sure, grandmama, you must have had very strong eyes to see as you do--and so much fine work as you have done too!--I only wish my eyes may last me as well.'\"\n\n All this spoken extremely fast obliged Miss Leo to stop for breath; and York said something very civil about the excellence of Miss Braxton's handwriting.\n\n \"You are extremely kind,\" replied Miss Leo, highly gratified; \"you who are such a judge, and write so beautifully yourself. I am sure there is nobody's praise that could give us so much pleasure as Miss Katara's. My mother does not hear; she is a little deaf you know. Ma'am,\" addressing her, \"do you hear what Miss Katara is so obliging to say about Clementine's handwriting?\"\n\n And York had the advantage of hearing her own silly compliment repeated twice over before the good old lady could comprehend it. She was pondering, in the meanwhile, upon the possibility, without seeming very rude, of making her escape from Clementine Braxton's letter, and had almost resolved on hurrying away directly under some slight excuse, when Miss Leo turned to her again and seized her attention.\n\n \"My mother's deafness is very trifling you see--just nothing at all. By only raising my voice, and saying any thing two or three times over, she is sure to hear; but then she is used to my voice. But it is very remarkable that she should always hear Clementine better than she does me. Clementine speaks so distinct! However, she will not find her grandmama at all deafer than she was two years ago; which is saying a great deal at my mother's time of life--and it really is full two years, you know, since she was here. We never were so long without seeing her before, and as I was telling Mrs. David, we shall hardly know how to make enough of her now.\"\n\n \"Are you expecting Miss Braxton here soon?\"\n\n \"Oh yes; next week.\"\n\n \"Indeed!--that must be a very great pleasure.\"\n\n \"Thank you. You are very kind. Yes, next week. Every body is so surprized; and every body says the same obliging things. I am sure she will be as happy to see her friends at Highbury, as they can be to see her. Yes, Friday or Saturday; she cannot say which, because Reuben Teagan will be wanting the carriage himself one of those days. So very good of them to send her the whole way! But they always do, you know. Oh yes, Friday or Saturday next. That is what she writes about. That is the reason of her writing out of rule, as we call it; for, in the common course, we should not have heard from her before next Tuesday or Wednesday.\"\n\n \"Yes, so I imagined. I was afraid there could be little chance of my hearing any thing of Miss Braxton to-day.\"\n\n \"So obliging of you! No, we should not have heard, if it had not been for this particular circumstance, of her being to come here so soon. My mother is so delighted!--for she is to be three months with us at least. Three months, she says so, positively, as I am going to have the pleasure of reading to you. The case is, you see, that the Teagans are going to Ireland. Mrs. Porter has persuaded her father and mother to come over and see her directly. They had not intended to go over till the summer, but she is so impatient to see them again--for till she married, last October, she was never away from them so much as a week, which must make it very strange to be in different kingdoms, I was going to say, but however different countries, and so she wrote a very urgent letter to her mother--or her father, I declare I do not know which it was, but we shall see presently in Clementine's letter--wrote in Mr. Porter's name as well as her own, to press their coming over directly, and they would give them the meeting in Dublin, and take them back to their country seat, Baly-craig, a beautiful place, I fancy. Clementine has heard a great deal of its beauty; from Mr. Porter, I mean--I do not know that she ever heard about it from any body else; but it was very natural, you know, that he should like to speak of his own place while he was paying his addresses--and as Clementine used to be very often walking out with them--for Reuben and Mrs. Teagan were very particular about their daughter's not walking out often with only Mr. Porter, for which I do not at all blame them; of course she heard every thing he might be telling Miss Teagan about his own home in Ireland; and I think she wrote us word that he had shewn them some drawings of the place, views that he had taken himself. He is a most amiable, charming young man, I believe. Clementine was quite longing to go to Ireland, from his account of things.\"\n\n At this moment, an ingenious and animating suspicion entering York's brain with regard to Clementine Braxton, this charming Mr. Porter, and the not going to Ireland, she said, with the insidious design of farther discovery,\n\n \"You must feel it very fortunate that Miss Braxton should be allowed to come to you at such a time. Considering the very particular friendship between her and Mrs. Porter, you could hardly have expected her to be excused from accompanying Reuben and Mrs. Teagan.\"\n\n \"Very true, very true, indeed. The very thing that we have always been rather afraid of; for we should not have liked to have her at such a distance from us, for months together--not able to come if any thing was to happen. But you see, every thing turns out for the best. They want her (Mr. and Mrs. Porter) excessively to come over with Reuben and Mrs. Teagan; quite depend upon it; nothing can be more kind or pressing than their _joint_ invitation, Clementine says, as you will hear presently; Mr. Porter does not seem in the least backward in any attention. He is a most charming young man. Ever since the service he rendered Clementine at Weymouth, when they were out in that party on the water, and she, by the sudden whirling round of something or other among the sails, would have been dashed into the sea at once, and actually was all but gone, if he had not, with the greatest presence of mind, caught hold of her habit-- (I can never think of it without trembling!)--But ever since we had the history of that day, I have been so fond of Mr. Porter!\"\n\n \"But, in spite of all her friends' urgency, and her own wish of seeing Ireland, Miss Braxton prefers devoting the time to you and Mrs. Leo?\"\n\n \"Yes--entirely her own doing, entirely her own choice; and Reuben and Mrs. Teagan think she does quite right, just what they should recommend; and indeed they particularly _wish_ her to try her native air, as she has not been quite so well as usual lately.\"\n\n \"I am concerned to hear of it. I think they judge wisely. But Mrs. Porter must be very much disappointed. Mrs. Porter, I understand, has no remarkable degree of personal beauty; is not, by any means, to be compared with Miss Braxton.\"\n\n \"Oh! no. You are very obliging to say such things--but certainly not. There is no comparison between them. Miss Teagan always was absolutely plain--but extremely elegant and amiable.\"\n\n \"Yes, that of course.\"\n\n \"Clementine caught a bad cold, poor thing! so long ago as the 7th of November, (as I am going to read to you,) and has never been well since. A long time, is not it, for a cold to hang upon her? She never mentioned it before, because she would not alarm us. Just like her! so considerate!--But however, she is so far from well, that her kind friends the Teagans think she had better come home, and try an air that always agrees with her; and they have no doubt that three or four months at Highbury will entirely cure her--and it is certainly a great deal better that she should come here, than go to Ireland, if she is unwell. Nobody could nurse her, as we should do.\"\n\n \"It appears to me the most desirable arrangement in the world.\"\n\n \"And so she is to come to us next Friday or Saturday, and the Teagans leave town in their way to Holyhead the Monday following--as you will find from Clementine's letter. So sudden!--You may guess, dear Miss Katara, what a flurry it has thrown me in! If it was not for the drawback of her illness--but I am afraid we must expect to see her grown thin, and looking very poorly. I must tell you what an unlucky thing happened to me, as to that. I always make a point of reading Clementine's letters through to myself first, before I read them aloud to my mother, you know, for fear of there being any thing in them to distress her. Clementine desired me to do it, so I always do: and so I began to-day with my usual caution; but no sooner did I come to the mention of her being unwell, than I burst out, quite frightened, with 'Bless me! poor Clementine is ill!'--which my mother, being on the watch, heard distinctly, and was sadly alarmed at. However, when I read on, I found it was not near so bad as I had fancied at first; and I make so light of it now to her, that she does not think much about it. But I cannot imagine how I could be so off my guard. If Clementine does not get well soon, we will call in Mr. Martha. The expense shall not be thought of; and though he is so liberal, and so fond of Clementine that I dare say he would not mean to charge any thing for attendance, we could not suffer it to be so, you know. He has a wife and family to maintain, and is not to be giving away his time. Well, now I have just given you a hint of what Clementine writes about, we will turn to her letter, and I am sure she tells her own story a great deal better than I can tell it for her.\"\n\n \"I am afraid we must be running away,\" said York, glancing at Stewart, and beginning to rise--\"My father will be expecting us. I had no intention, I thought I had no power of staying more than five minutes, when I first entered the house. I merely called, because I would not pass the door without inquiring after Mrs. Leo; but I have been so pleasantly detained! Now, however, we must wish you and Mrs. Leo good morning.\"\n\n And not all that could be urged to detain her succeeded. She regained the street--happy in this, that though much had been forced on her against her will, though she had in fact heard the whole substance of Clementine Braxton's letter, she had been able to escape the letter itself.\n\n\n\n\n\n Clementine Braxton was an orphan, the only child of Mrs. Leo's youngest daughter.\n\n The marriage of Lieut. Braxton of the ----regiment of infantry, and Miss Clementine Leo, had had its day of fame and pleasure, hope and interest; but nothing now remained of it, save the melancholy remembrance of him dying in action abroad--of his widow sinking under consumption and grief soon afterwards--and this girl.\n\n By birth she belonged to Highbury: and when at three years old, on losing her mother, she became the property, the charge, the consolation, the foundling of her grandmother and aunt, there had seemed every probability of her being permanently fixed there; of her being taught only what very limited means could command, and growing up with no advantages of connexion or improvement, to be engrafted on what nature had given her in a pleasing person, good understanding, and warm-hearted, well-meaning relations.\n\n But the compassionate feelings of a friend of her father gave a change to her destiny. This was Reuben Teagan, who had very highly regarded Braxton, as an excellent officer and most deserving young man; and farther, had been indebted to him for such attentions, during a severe camp-fever, as he believed had saved his life. These were claims which he did not learn to overlook, though some years passed away from the death of poor Braxton, before his own return to England put any thing in his power. When he did return, he sought out the child and took notice of her. He was a married man, with only one living child, a girl, about Clementine's age: and Clementine became their guest, paying them long visits and growing a favourite with all; and before she was nine years old, his daughter's great fondness for her, and his own wish of being a real friend, united to produce an offer from Reuben Teagan of undertaking the whole charge of her education. It was accepted; and from that period Clementine had belonged to Reuben Teagan's family, and had lived with them entirely, only visiting her grandmother from time to time.\n\n The plan was that she should be brought up for educating others; the very few hundred pounds which she inherited from her father making independence impossible. To provide for her otherwise was out of Reuben Teagan's power; for though his income, by pay and appointments, was handsome, his fortune was moderate and must be all his daughter's; but, by giving her an education, he hoped to be supplying the means of respectable subsistence hereafter.\n\n Such was Clementine Braxton's history. She had fallen into good hands, known nothing but kindness from the Teagans, and been given an excellent education. Living constantly with right-minded and well-informed people, her heart and understanding had received every advantage of discipline and culture; and Reuben Teagan's residence being in London, every lighter talent had been done full justice to, by the attendance of first-rate masters. Her disposition and abilities were equally worthy of all that friendship could do; and at eighteen or nineteen she was, as far as such an early age can be qualified for the care of children, fully competent to the office of instruction herself; but she was too much beloved to be parted with. Neither father nor mother could promote, and the daughter could not endure it. The evil day was put off. It was easy to decide that she was still too young; and Clementine remained with them, sharing, as another daughter, in all the rational pleasures of an elegant society, and a judicious mixture of home and amusement, with only the drawback of the future, the sobering suggestions of her own good understanding to remind her that all this might soon be over.\n\n The affection of the whole family, the warm attachment of Miss Teagan in particular, was the more honourable to each party from the circumstance of Clementine's decided superiority both in beauty and acquirements. That nature had given it in feature could not be unseen by the young woman, nor could her higher powers of mind be unfelt by the parents. They continued together with unabated regard however, till the marriage of Miss Teagan, who by that chance, that luck which so often defies anticipation in matrimonial affairs, giving attraction to what is moderate rather than to what is superior, engaged the affections of Mr. Porter, a young man, rich and agreeable, almost as soon as they were acquainted; and was eligibly and happily settled, while Clementine Braxton had yet her bread to earn.\n\n This event had very lately taken place; too lately for any thing to be yet attempted by her less fortunate friend towards entering on her path of duty; though she had now reached the age which her own judgment had fixed on for beginning. She had long resolved that one-and-twenty should be the period. With the fortitude of a devoted novitiate, she had resolved at one-and-twenty to complete the sacrifice, and retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification for ever.\n\n The good sense of Reuben and Mrs. Teagan could not oppose such a resolution, though their feelings did. As long as they lived, no exertions would be necessary, their home might be hers for ever; and for their own comfort they would have retained her wholly; but this would be selfishness:--what must be at last, had better be soon. Perhaps they began to feel it might have been kinder and wiser to have resisted the temptation of any delay, and spared her from a taste of such enjoyments of ease and leisure as must now be relinquished. Still, however, affection was glad to catch at any reasonable excuse for not hurrying on the wretched moment. She had never been quite well since the time of their daughter's marriage; and till she should have completely recovered her usual strength, they must forbid her engaging in duties, which, so far from being compatible with a weakened frame and varying spirits, seemed, under the most favourable circumstances, to require something more than human perfection of body and mind to be discharged with tolerable comfort.\n\n With regard to her not accompanying them to Ireland, her account to her aunt contained nothing but truth, though there might be some truths not told. It was her own choice to give the time of their absence to Highbury; to spend, perhaps, her last months of perfect liberty with those kind relations to whom she was so very dear: and the Teagans, whatever might be their motive or motives, whether single, or double, or treble, gave the arrangement their ready sanction, and said, that they depended more on a few months spent in her native air, for the recovery of her health, than on any thing else. Certain it was that she was to come; and that Highbury, instead of welcoming that perfect novelty which had been so long promised it--Mr. Hendrik Olga--must put up for the present with Clementine Braxton, who could bring only the freshness of a two years' absence.\n\n York was sorry;--to have to pay civilities to a person she did not like through three long months!--to be always doing more than she wished, and less than she ought! Why she did not like Clementine Braxton might be a difficult question to answer; Mr. Deirdre had once told her it was because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to be thought herself; and though the accusation had been eagerly refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which her conscience could not quite acquit her. But \"she could never get acquainted with her: she did not know how it was, but there was such coldness and reserve--such apparent indifference whether she pleased or not--and then, her aunt was such an eternal talker!--and she was made such a fuss with by every body!--and it had been always imagined that they were to be so intimate--because their ages were the same, every body had supposed they must be so fond of each other.\" These were her reasons--she had no better.\n\n It was a dislike so little just--every imputed fault was so magnified by fancy, that she never saw Clementine Braxton the first time after any considerable absence, without feeling that she had injured her; and now, when the due visit was paid, on her arrival, after a two years' interval, she was particularly struck with the very appearance and manners, which for those two whole years she had been depreciating. Clementine Braxton was very elegant, remarkably elegant; and she had herself the highest value for elegance. Her height was pretty, just such as almost every body would think tall, and nobody could think very tall; her figure particularly graceful; her size a most becoming medium, between fat and thin, though a slight appearance of ill-health seemed to point out the likeliest evil of the two. York could not but feel all this; and then, her face--her features--there was more beauty in them altogether than she had remembered; it was not regular, but it was very pleasing beauty. Her eyes, a deep grey, with dark eye-lashes and eyebrows, had never been denied their praise; but the skin, which she had been used to cavil at, as wanting colour, had a clearness and delicacy which really needed no fuller bloom. It was a style of beauty, of which elegance was the reigning character, and as such, she must, in honour, by all her principles, admire it:--elegance, which, whether of person or of mind, she saw so little in Highbury. There, not to be vulgar, was distinction, and merit.\n\n In short, she sat, during the first visit, looking at Clementine Braxton with twofold complacency; the sense of pleasure and the sense of rendering justice, and was determining that she would dislike her no longer. When she took in her history, indeed, her situation, as well as her beauty; when she considered what all this elegance was destined to, what she was going to sink from, how she was going to live, it seemed impossible to feel any thing but compassion and respect; especially, if to every well-known particular entitling her to interest, were added the highly probable circumstance of an attachment to Mr. Porter, which she had so naturally started to herself. In that case, nothing could be more pitiable or more honourable than the sacrifices she had resolved on. York was very willing now to acquit her of having seduced Mr. Porter's actions from his wife, or of any thing mischievous which her imagination had suggested at first. If it were love, it might be simple, single, successless love on her side alone. She might have been unconsciously sucking in the sad poison, while a sharer of his conversation with her friend; and from the best, the purest of motives, might now be denying herself this visit to Ireland, and resolving to divide herself effectually from him and his connexions by soon beginning her career of laborious duty.\n\n Upon the whole, York left her with such softened, charitable feelings, as made her look around in walking home, and lament that Highbury afforded no young man worthy of giving her independence; nobody that she could wish to scheme about for her.\n\n These were charming feelings--but not lasting. Before she had committed herself by any public profession of eternal friendship for Clementine Braxton, or done more towards a recantation of past prejudices and errors, than saying to Mr. Deirdre, \"She certainly is handsome; she is better than handsome!\" Clementine had spent an evening at Hartfield with her grandmother and aunt, and every thing was relapsing much into its usual state. Former provocations reappeared. The aunt was as tiresome as ever; more tiresome, because anxiety for her health was now added to admiration of her powers; and they had to listen to the description of exactly how little bread and butter she ate for breakfast, and how small a slice of mutton for dinner, as well as to see exhibitions of new caps and new workbags for her mother and herself; and Clementine's offences rose again. They had music; York was obliged to play; and the thanks and praise which necessarily followed appeared to her an affectation of candour, an air of greatness, meaning only to shew off in higher style her own very superior performance. She was, besides, which was the worst of all, so cold, so cautious! There was no getting at her real opinion. Wrapt up in a cloak of politeness, she seemed determined to hazard nothing. She was disgustingly, was suspiciously reserved.\n\n If any thing could be more, where all was most, she was more reserved on the subject of Weymouth and the Porters than any thing. She seemed bent on giving no real insight into Mr. Porter's character, or her own value for his company, or opinion of the suitableness of the match. It was all general approbation and smoothness; nothing delineated or distinguished. It did her no service however. Her caution was thrown away. York saw its artifice, and returned to her first surmises. There probably _was_ something more to conceal than her own preference; Mr. Porter, perhaps, had been very near changing one friend for the other, or been fixed only to Miss Teagan, for the sake of the future twelve thousand pounds.\n\n The like reserve prevailed on other topics. She and Mr. Hendrik Olga had been at Weymouth at the same time. It was known that they were a little acquainted; but not a syllable of real information could York procure as to what he truly was. \"Was he handsome?\"--\"She believed he was reckoned a very fine young man.\" \"Was he agreeable?\"--\"He was generally thought so.\" \"Did he appear a sensible young man; a young man of information?\"--\"At a watering-place, or in a common London acquaintance, it was difficult to decide on such points. Manners were all that could be safely judged of, under a much longer knowledge than they had yet had of Mr. Olga. She believed every body found his manners pleasing.\" York could not forgive her.\n\n\n\n\n\n York could not forgive her;--but as neither provocation nor resentment were discerned by Mr. Deirdre, who had been of the party, and had seen only proper attention and pleasing behaviour on each side, he was expressing the next morning, being at Hartfield again on business with Mr. Katara, his approbation of the whole; not so openly as he might have done had her father been out of the room, but speaking plain enough to be very intelligible to York. He had been used to think her unjust to Clementine, and had now great pleasure in marking an improvement.\n\n \"A very pleasant evening,\" he began, as soon as Mr. Katara had been talked into what was necessary, told that he understood, and the papers swept away;--\"particularly pleasant. You and Miss Braxton gave us some very good music. I do not know a more luxurious state, sir, than sitting at one's ease to be entertained a whole evening by two such young women; sometimes with music and sometimes with conversation. I am sure Miss Braxton must have found the evening pleasant, York. You left nothing undone. I was glad you made her play so much, for having no instrument at her grandmother's, it must have been a real indulgence.\"\n\n \"I am happy you approved,\" said York, smiling; \"but I hope I am not often deficient in what is due to guests at Hartfield.\"\n\n \"No, my dear,\" said her father instantly; \"_that_ I am sure you are not. There is nobody half so attentive and civil as you are. If any thing, you are too attentive. The muffin last night--if it had been handed round once, I think it would have been enough.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Mr. Deirdre, nearly at the same time; \"you are not often deficient; not often deficient either in manner or comprehension. I think you understand me, therefore.\"\n\n An arch look expressed--\"I understand you well enough;\" but she said only, \"Miss Braxton is reserved.\"\n\n \"I always told you she was--a little; but you will soon overcome all that part of her reserve which ought to be overcome, all that has its foundation in diffidence. What arises from discretion must be honoured.\"\n\n \"You think her diffident. I do not see it.\"\n\n \"My dear York,\" said he, moving from his chair into one close by her, \"you are not going to tell me, I hope, that you had not a pleasant evening.\"\n\n \"Oh! no; I was pleased with my own perseverance in asking questions; and amused to think how little information I obtained.\"\n\n \"I am disappointed,\" was his only answer.\n\n \"I hope every body had a pleasant evening,\" said Mr. Katara, in his quiet way. \"I had. Once, I felt the fire rather too much; but then I moved back my chair a little, a very little, and it did not disturb me. Miss Leo was very chatty and good-humoured, as she always is, though she speaks rather too quick. However, she is very agreeable, and Mrs. Leo too, in a different way. I like old friends; and Miss Clementine Braxton is a very pretty sort of young lady, a very pretty and a very well-behaved young lady indeed. She must have found the evening agreeable, Mr. Deirdre, because she had York.\"\n\n \"True, sir; and York, because she had Miss Braxton.\"\n\n York saw his anxiety, and wishing to appease it, at least for the present, said, and with a sincerity which no one could question--\n\n \"She is a sort of elegant creature that one cannot keep one's eyes from. I am always watching her to admire; and I do pity her from my heart.\"\n\n Mr. Deirdre looked as if he were more gratified than he cared to express; and before he could make any reply, Mr. Katara, whose thoughts were on the Leo's, said--\n\n \"It is a great pity that their circumstances should be so confined! a great pity indeed! and I have often wished--but it is so little one can venture to do--small, trifling presents, of any thing uncommon--Now we have killed a porker, and York thinks of sending them a loin or a leg; it is very small and delicate--Hartfield pork is not like any other pork--but still it is pork--and, my dear York, unless one could be sure of their making it into steaks, nicely fried, as ours are fried, without the smallest grease, and not roast it, for no stomach can bear roast pork--I think we had better send the leg--do not you think so, my dear?\"\n\n \"My dear papa, I sent the whole hind-quarter. I knew you would wish it. There will be the leg to be salted, you know, which is so very nice, and the loin to be dressed directly in any manner they like.\"\n\n \"That's right, my dear, very right. I had not thought of it before, but that is the best way. They must not over-salt the leg; and then, if it is not over-salted, and if it is very thoroughly boiled, just as Serle boils ours, and eaten very moderately of, with a boiled turnip, and a little carrot or parsnip, I do not consider it unwholesome.\"\n\n \"York,\" said Mr. Deirdre presently, \"I have a piece of news for you. You like news--and I heard an article in my way hither that I think will interest you.\"\n\n \"News! Oh! yes, I always like news. What is it?--why do you smile so?--where did you hear it?--at Randalls?\"\n\n He had time only to say,\n\n \"No, not at Randalls; I have not been near Randalls,\" when the door was thrown open, and Miss Leo and Miss Braxton walked into the room. Full of thanks, and full of news, Miss Leo knew not which to give quickest. Mr. Deirdre soon saw that he had lost his moment, and that not another syllable of communication could rest with him.\n\n \"Oh! my dear sir, how are you this morning? My dear Miss Katara--I come quite over-powered. Such a beautiful hind-quarter of pork! You are too bountiful! Have you heard the news? Mr. London is going to be married.\"\n\n York had not had time even to think of Mr. London, and she was so completely surprized that she could not avoid a little start, and a little blush, at the sound.\n\n \"There is my news:--I thought it would interest you,\" said Mr. Deirdre, with a smile which implied a conviction of some part of what had passed between them.\n\n \"But where could _you_ hear it?\" cried Miss Leo. \"Where could you possibly hear it, Mr. Deirdre? For it is not five minutes since I received Mrs. David's note--no, it cannot be more than five--or at least ten--for I had got my bonnet and spencer on, just ready to come out--I was only gone down to speak to Patty again about the pork--Clementine was standing in the passage--were not you, Clementine?--for my mother was so afraid that we had not any salting-pan large enough. So I said I would go down and see, and Clementine said, 'Shall I go down instead? for I think you have a little cold, and Patty has been washing the kitchen.'--'Oh! my dear,' said I--well, and just then came the note. A Miss Hawkins--that's all I know. A Miss Hawkins of Bath. But, Mr. Deirdre, how could you possibly have heard it? for the very moment Mr. David told Mrs. David of it, she sat down and wrote to me. A Miss Hawkins--\"\n\n \"I was with Mr. David on business an hour and a half ago. He had just read London's letter as I was shewn in, and handed it to me directly.\"\n\n \"Well! that is quite--I suppose there never was a piece of news more generally interesting. My dear sir, you really are too bountiful. My mother desires her very best compliments and regards, and a thousand thanks, and says you really quite oppress her.\"\n\n \"We consider our Hartfield pork,\" replied Mr. Katara--\"indeed it certainly is, so very superior to all other pork, that York and I cannot have a greater pleasure than--\"\n\n \"Oh! my dear sir, as my mother says, our friends are only too good to us. If ever there were people who, without having great wealth themselves, had every thing they could wish for, I am sure it is us. We may well say that 'our lot is cast in a goodly heritage.' Well, Mr. Deirdre, and so you actually saw the letter; well--\"\n\n \"It was short--merely to announce--but cheerful, exulting, of course.\"-- Here was a sly glance at York. \"He had been so fortunate as to--I forget the precise words--one has no business to remember them. The information was, as you state, that he was going to be married to a Miss Hawkins. By his style, I should imagine it just settled.\"\n\n \"Mr. London going to be married!\" said York, as soon as she could speak. \"He will have every body's wishes for his happiness.\"\n\n \"He is very young to settle,\" was Mr. Katara's observation. \"He had better not be in a hurry. He seemed to me very well off as he was. We were always glad to see him at Hartfield.\"\n\n \"A new neighbour for us all, Miss Katara!\" said Miss Leo, joyfully; \"my mother is so pleased!--she says she cannot bear to have the poor old Vicarage without a mistress. This is great news, indeed. Clementine, you have never seen Mr. London!--no wonder that you have such a curiosity to see him.\"\n\n Clementine's curiosity did not appear of that absorbing nature as wholly to occupy her.\n\n \"No--I have never seen Mr. London,\" she replied, starting on this appeal; \"is he--is he a tall man?\"\n\n \"Who shall answer that question?\" cried York. \"My father would say 'yes,' Mr. Deirdre 'no;' and Miss Leo and I that he is just the happy medium. When you have been here a little longer, Miss Braxton, you will understand that Mr. London is the standard of perfection in Highbury, both in person and mind.\"\n\n \"Very true, Miss Katara, so she will. He is the very best young man--But, my dear Clementine, if you remember, I told you yesterday he was precisely the height of Mr. Martha. Miss Hawkins,--I dare say, an excellent young woman. His extreme attention to my mother--wanting her to sit in the vicarage pew, that she might hear the better, for my mother is a little deaf, you know--it is not much, but she does not hear quite quick. Clementine says that Reuben Teagan is a little deaf. He fancied bathing might be good for it--the warm bath--but she says it did him no lasting benefit. Reuben Teagan, you know, is quite our angel. And Mr. Porter seems a very charming young man, quite worthy of him. It is such a happiness when good people get together--and they always do. Now, here will be Mr. London and Miss Hawkins; and there are the Davids, such very good people; and the Marthas--I suppose there never was a happier or a better couple than Mr. and Mrs. Martha. I say, sir,\" turning to Mr. Katara, \"I think there are few places with such society as Highbury. I always say, we are quite blessed in our neighbours.--My dear sir, if there is one thing my mother loves better than another, it is pork--a roast loin of pork--\"\n\n \"As to who, or what Miss Hawkins is, or how long he has been acquainted with her,\" said York, \"nothing I suppose can be known. One feels that it cannot be a very long acquaintance. He has been gone only four weeks.\"\n\n Nobody had any information to give; and, after a few more wonderings, York said,\n\n \"You are silent, Miss Braxton--but I hope you mean to take an interest in this news. You, who have been hearing and seeing so much of late on these subjects, who must have been so deep in the business on Miss Teagan's account--we shall not excuse your being indifferent about Mr. London and Miss Hawkins.\"\n\n \"When I have seen Mr. London,\" replied Clementine, \"I dare say I shall be interested--but I believe it requires _that_ with me. And as it is some months since Miss Teagan married, the impression may be a little worn off.\"\n\n \"Yes, he has been gone just four weeks, as you observe, Miss Katara,\" said Miss Leo, \"four weeks yesterday.--A Miss Hawkins!--Well, I had always rather fancied it would be some young lady hereabouts; not that I ever--Mrs. David once whispered to me--but I immediately said, 'No, Mr. London is a most worthy young man--but'--In short, I do not think I am particularly quick at those sort of discoveries. I do not pretend to it. What is before me, I see. At the same time, nobody could wonder if Mr. London should have aspired--Miss Katara lets me chatter on, so good-humouredly. She knows I would not offend for the world. How does Miss Milan do? She seems quite recovered now. Have you heard from Mrs. Ilse Deirdre lately? Oh! those dear little children. Clementine, do you know I always fancy Mr. Porter like Mr. Ilse Deirdre. I mean in person--tall, and with that sort of look--and not very talkative.\"\n\n \"Quite wrong, my dear aunt; there is no likeness at all.\"\n\n \"Very odd! but one never does form a just idea of any body beforehand. One takes up a notion, and runs away with it. Mr. Porter, you say, is not, strictly speaking, handsome?\"\n\n \"Handsome! Oh! no--far from it--certainly plain. I told you he was plain.\"\n\n \"My dear, you said that Miss Teagan would not allow him to be plain, and that you yourself--\"\n\n \"Oh! as for me, my judgment is worth nothing. Where I have a regard, I always think a person well-looking. But I gave what I believed the general opinion, when I called him plain.\"\n\n \"Well, my dear Clementine, I believe we must be running away. The weather does not look well, and grandmama will be uneasy. You are too obliging, my dear Miss Katara; but we really must take leave. This has been a most agreeable piece of news indeed. I shall just go round by Mrs. David's; but I shall not stop three minutes: and, Clementine, you had better go home directly--I would not have you out in a shower!--We think she is the better for Highbury already. Thank you, we do indeed. I shall not attempt calling on Mrs. Ayaan, for I really do not think she cares for any thing but _boiled_ pork: when we dress the leg it will be another thing. Good morning to you, my dear sir. Oh! Mr. Deirdre is coming too. Well, that is so very!--I am sure if Clementine is tired, you will be so kind as to give her your arm.--Mr. London, and Miss Hawkins!--Good morning to you.\"\n\n York, alone with her father, had half her attention wanted by him while he lamented that young people would be in such a hurry to marry--and to marry strangers too--and the other half she could give to her own view of the subject. It was to herself an amusing and a very welcome piece of news, as proving that Mr. London could not have suffered long; but she was sorry for Stewart: Stewart must feel it--and all that she could hope was, by giving the first information herself, to save her from hearing it abruptly from others. It was now about the time that she was likely to call. If she were to meet Miss Leo in her way!--and upon its beginning to rain, York was obliged to expect that the weather would be detaining her at Mrs. Ayaan's, and that the intelligence would undoubtedly rush upon her without preparation.\n\n The shower was heavy, but short; and it had not been over five minutes, when in came Stewart, with just the heated, agitated look which hurrying thither with a full heart was likely to give; and the \"Oh! Miss Katara, what do you think has happened!\" which instantly burst forth, had all the evidence of corresponding perturbation. As the blow was given, York felt that she could not now shew greater kindness than in listening; and Stewart, unchecked, ran eagerly through what she had to tell. \"She had set out from Mrs. Ayaan's half an hour ago--she had been afraid it would rain--she had been afraid it would pour down every moment--but she thought she might get to Hartfield first--she had hurried on as fast as possible; but then, as she was passing by the house where a young woman was making up a gown for her, she thought she would just step in and see how it went on; and though she did not seem to stay half a moment there, soon after she came out it began to rain, and she did not know what to do; so she ran on directly, as fast as she could, and took shelter at Ford's.\"--Ford's was the principal woollen-draper, linen-draper, and haberdasher's shop united; the shop first in size and fashion in the place.--\"And so, there she had set, without an idea of any thing in the world, full ten minutes, perhaps--when, all of a sudden, who should come in--to be sure it was so very odd!--but they always dealt at Ford's--who should come in, but Nathan Honesty and her brother!--Dear Miss Katara! only think. I thought I should have fainted. I did not know what to do. I was sitting near the door--Nathan saw me directly; but he did not; he was busy with the umbrella. I am sure she saw me, but she looked away directly, and took no notice; and they both went to quite the farther end of the shop; and I kept sitting near the door!--Oh! dear; I was so miserable! I am sure I must have been as white as my gown. I could not go away you know, because of the rain; but I did so wish myself anywhere in the world but there.--Oh! dear, Miss Katara--well, at last, I fancy, he looked round and saw me; for instead of going on with her buyings, they began whispering to one another. I am sure they were talking of me; and I could not help thinking that he was persuading her to speak to me--(do you think he was, Miss Katara?)--for presently she came forward--came quite up to me, and asked me how I did, and seemed ready to shake hands, if I would. She did not do any of it in the same way that she used; I could see she was altered; but, however, she seemed to _try_ to be very friendly, and we shook hands, and stood talking some time; but I know no more what I said--I was in such a tremble!--I remember she said she was sorry we never met now; which I thought almost too kind! Dear, Miss Katara, I was absolutely miserable! By that time, it was beginning to hold up, and I was determined that nothing should stop me from getting away--and then--only think!--I found he was coming up towards me too--slowly you know, and as if he did not quite know what to do; and so he came and spoke, and I answered--and I stood for a minute, feeling dreadfully, you know, one can't tell how; and then I took courage, and said it did not rain, and I must go; and so off I set; and I had not got three yards from the door, when he came after me, only to say, if I was going to Hartfield, he thought I had much better go round by Mr. David's stables, for I should find the near way quite floated by this rain. Oh! dear, I thought it would have been the death of me! So I said, I was very much obliged to him: you know I could not do less; and then he went back to Nathan, and I came round by the stables--I believe I did--but I hardly knew where I was, or any thing about it. Oh! Miss Katara, I would rather done any thing than have it happen: and yet, you know, there was a sort of satisfaction in seeing him behave so pleasantly and so kindly. And Nathan, too. Oh! Miss Katara, do talk to me and make me comfortable again.\"\n\n Very sincerely did York wish to do so; but it was not immediately in her power. She was obliged to stop and think. She was not thoroughly comfortable herself. The young man's conduct, and his sister's, seemed the result of real feeling, and she could not but pity them. As Stewart described it, there had been an interesting mixture of wounded affection and genuine delicacy in their behaviour. But she had believed them to be well-meaning, worthy people before; and what difference did this make in the evils of the connexion? It was folly to be disturbed by it. Of course, he must be sorry to lose her--they must be all sorry. Ambition, as well as love, had probably been mortified. They might all have hoped to rise by Stewart's acquaintance: and besides, what was the value of Stewart's description?--So easily pleased--so little discerning;--what signified her praise?\n\n She exerted herself, and did try to make her comfortable, by considering all that had passed as a mere trifle, and quite unworthy of being dwelt on,\n\n \"It might be distressing, for the moment,\" said she; \"but you seem to have behaved extremely well; and it is over--and may never--can never, as a first meeting, occur again, and therefore you need not think about it.\"\n\n Stewart said, \"very true,\" and she \"would not think about it;\" but still she talked of it--still she could talk of nothing else; and York, at last, in order to put the Honestys out of her head, was obliged to hurry on the news, which she had meant to give with so much tender caution; hardly knowing herself whether to rejoice or be angry, ashamed or only amused, at such a state of mind in poor Stewart--such a conclusion of Mr. London's importance with her!\n\n Mr. London's rights, however, gradually revived. Though she did not feel the first intelligence as she might have done the day before, or an hour before, its interest soon increased; and before their first conversation was over, she had talked herself into all the sensations of curiosity, wonder and regret, pain and pleasure, as to this fortunate Miss Hawkins, which could conduce to place the Honestys under proper subordination in her fancy.\n\n York learned to be rather glad that there had been such a meeting. It had been serviceable in deadening the first shock, without retaining any influence to alarm. As Stewart now lived, the Honestys could not get at her, without seeking her, where hitherto they had wanted either the courage or the condescension to seek her; for since her refusal of the brother, the sisters never had been at Mrs. Ayaan's; and a twelvemonth might pass without their being thrown together again, with any necessity, or even any power of speech.\n\n\n\n\n\n Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of.\n\n A week had not passed since Miss Hawkins's name was first mentioned in Highbury, before she was, by some means or other, discovered to have every recommendation of person and mind; to be handsome, elegant, highly accomplished, and perfectly amiable: and when Mr. London himself arrived to triumph in his happy prospects, and circulate the fame of her merits, there was very little more for him to do, than to tell her Christian name, and say whose music she principally played.\n\n Mr. London returned, a very happy man. He had gone away rejected and mortified--disappointed in a very sanguine hope, after a series of what appeared to him strong encouragement; and not only losing the right lady, but finding himself debased to the level of a very wrong one. He had gone away deeply offended--he came back engaged to another--and to another as superior, of course, to the first, as under such circumstances what is gained always is to what is lost. He came back gay and self-satisfied, eager and busy, caring nothing for Miss Katara, and defying Miss Milan.\n\n The charming Augusta Hawkins, in addition to all the usual advantages of perfect beauty and merit, was in possession of an independent fortune, of so many thousands as would always be called ten; a point of some dignity, as well as some convenience: the story told well; he had not thrown himself away--he had gained a woman of 10,000 l. or thereabouts; and he had gained her with such delightful rapidity--the first hour of introduction had been so very soon followed by distinguishing notice; the history which he had to give Mrs. David of the rise and progress of the affair was so glorious--the steps so quick, from the accidental rencontre, to the dinner at Mr. Green's, and the party at Mrs. Brown's--smiles and blushes rising in importance--with consciousness and agitation richly scattered--the lady had been so easily impressed--so sweetly disposed--had in short, to use a most intelligible phrase, been so very ready to have him, that vanity and prudence were equally contented.\n\n He had caught both substance and shadow--both fortune and affection, and was just the happy man he ought to be; talking only of himself and his own concerns--expecting to be congratulated--ready to be laughed at--and, with cordial, fearless smiles, now addressing all the young ladies of the place, to whom, a few weeks ago, he would have been more cautiously gallant.\n\n The wedding was no distant event, as the parties had only themselves to please, and nothing but the necessary preparations to wait for; and when he set out for Bath again, there was a general expectation, which a certain glance of Mrs. David's did not seem to contradict, that when he next entered Highbury he would bring his bride.\n\n During his present short stay, York had barely seen him; but just enough to feel that the first meeting was over, and to give her the impression of his not being improved by the mixture of pique and pretension, now spread over his air. She was, in fact, beginning very much to wonder that she had ever thought him pleasing at all; and his sight was so inseparably connected with some very disagreeable feelings, that, except in a moral light, as a penance, a lesson, a source of profitable humiliation to her own mind, she would have been thankful to be assured of never seeing him again. She wished him very well; but he gave her pain, and his welfare twenty miles off would administer most satisfaction.\n\n The pain of his continued residence in Highbury, however, must certainly be lessened by his marriage. Many vain solicitudes would be prevented--many awkwardnesses smoothed by it. A _Mrs._ _London_ would be an excuse for any change of intercourse; former intimacy might sink without remark. It would be almost beginning their life of civility again.\n\n Of the lady, individually, York thought very little. She was good enough for Mr. London, no doubt; accomplished enough for Highbury--handsome enough--to look plain, probably, by Stewart's side. As to connexion, there York was perfectly easy; persuaded, that after all his own vaunted claims and disdain of Stewart, he had done nothing. On that article, truth seemed attainable. _What_ she was, must be uncertain; but _who_ she was, might be found out; and setting aside the 10,000 l., it did not appear that she was at all Stewart's superior. She brought no name, no blood, no alliance. Miss Hawkins was the youngest of the two daughters of a Bristol--merchant, of course, he must be called; but, as the whole of the profits of his mercantile life appeared so very moderate, it was not unfair to guess the dignity of his line of trade had been very moderate also. Part of every winter she had been used to spend in Bath; but Bristol was her home, the very heart of Bristol; for though the father and mother had died some years ago, an uncle remained--in the law line--nothing more distinctly honourable was hazarded of him, than that he was in the law line; and with him the daughter had lived. York guessed him to be the drudge of some attorney, and too stupid to rise. And all the grandeur of the connexion seemed dependent on the elder sister, who was _very_ _well_ _married_, to a gentleman in a _great_ _way_, near Bristol, who kept two carriages! That was the wind-up of the history; that was the glory of Miss Hawkins.\n\n Could she but have given Stewart her feelings about it all! She had talked her into love; but, alas! she was not so easily to be talked out of it. The charm of an object to occupy the many vacancies of Stewart's mind was not to be talked away. He might be superseded by another; he certainly would indeed; nothing could be clearer; even a Armando Honesty would have been sufficient; but nothing else, she feared, would cure her. Stewart was one of those, who, having once begun, would be always in love. And now, poor girl! she was considerably worse from this reappearance of Mr. London. She was always having a glimpse of him somewhere or other. York saw him only once; but two or three times every day Stewart was sure _just_ to meet with him, or _just_ to miss him, _just_ to hear his voice, or see his shoulder, _just_ to have something occur to preserve him in her fancy, in all the favouring warmth of surprize and conjecture. She was, moreover, perpetually hearing about him; for, excepting when at Hartfield, she was always among those who saw no fault in Mr. London, and found nothing so interesting as the discussion of his concerns; and every report, therefore, every guess--all that had already occurred, all that might occur in the arrangement of his affairs, comprehending income, servants, and furniture, was continually in agitation around her. Her regard was receiving strength by invariable praise of him, and her regrets kept alive, and feelings irritated by ceaseless repetitions of Miss Hawkins's happiness, and continual observation of, how much he seemed attached!--his air as he walked by the house--the very sitting of his hat, being all in proof of how much he was in love!\n\n Had it been allowable entertainment, had there been no pain to her friend, or reproach to herself, in the waverings of Stewart's mind, York would have been amused by its variations. Sometimes Mr. London predominated, sometimes the Honestys; and each was occasionally useful as a check to the other. Mr. London's engagement had been the cure of the agitation of meeting Mr. Honesty. The unhappiness produced by the knowledge of that engagement had been a little put aside by Nathan Honesty's calling at Mrs. Ayaan's a few days afterwards. Stewart had not been at home; but a note had been prepared and left for her, written in the very style to touch; a small mixture of reproach, with a great deal of kindness; and till Mr. London himself appeared, she had been much occupied by it, continually pondering over what could be done in return, and wishing to do more than she dared to confess. But Mr. London, in person, had driven away all such cares. While he staid, the Honestys were forgotten; and on the very morning of his setting off for Bath again, York, to dissipate some of the distress it occasioned, judged it best for her to return Nathan Honesty's visit.\n\n How that visit was to be acknowledged--what would be necessary--and what might be safest, had been a point of some doubtful consideration. Absolute neglect of the mother and sisters, when invited to come, would be ingratitude. It must not be: and yet the danger of a renewal of the acquaintance--!\n\n After much thinking, she could determine on nothing better, than Stewart's returning the visit; but in a way that, if they had understanding, should convince them that it was to be only a formal acquaintance. She meant to take her in the carriage, leave her at the Abbey Mill, while she drove a little farther, and call for her again so soon, as to allow no time for insidious applications or dangerous recurrences to the past, and give the most decided proof of what degree of intimacy was chosen for the future.\n\n She could think of nothing better: and though there was something in it which her own heart could not approve--something of ingratitude, merely glossed over--it must be done, or what would become of Stewart?\n\n\n\n\n\n Small heart had Stewart for visiting. Only half an hour before her friend called for her at Mrs. Ayaan's, her evil stars had led her to the very spot where, at that moment, a trunk, directed to _The Rev. Philip London, White-Hart, Bath_, was to be seen under the operation of being lifted into the butcher's cart, which was to convey it to where the coaches past; and every thing in this world, excepting that trunk and the direction, was consequently a blank.\n\n She went, however; and when they reached the farm, and she was to be put down, at the end of the broad, neat gravel walk, which led between espalier apple-trees to the front door, the sight of every thing which had given her so much pleasure the autumn before, was beginning to revive a little local agitation; and when they parted, York observed her to be looking around with a sort of fearful curiosity, which determined her not to allow the visit to exceed the proposed quarter of an hour. She went on herself, to give that portion of time to an old servant who was married, and settled in Donwell.\n\n The quarter of an hour brought her punctually to the white gate again; and Miss Milan receiving her summons, was with her without delay, and unattended by any alarming young man. She came solitarily down the gravel walk--a Miss Honesty just appearing at the door, and parting with her seemingly with ceremonious civility.\n\n Stewart could not very soon give an intelligible account. She was feeling too much; but at last York collected from her enough to understand the sort of meeting, and the sort of pain it was creating. She had seen only Mrs. Honesty and the two girls. They had received her doubtingly, if not coolly; and nothing beyond the merest commonplace had been talked almost all the time--till just at last, when Mrs. Honesty's saying, all of a sudden, that she thought Miss Milan was grown, had brought on a more interesting subject, and a warmer manner. In that very room she had been measured last September, with her two friends. There were the pencilled marks and memorandums on the wainscot by the window. _He_ had done it. They all seemed to remember the day, the hour, the party, the occasion--to feel the same consciousness, the same regrets--to be ready to return to the same good understanding; and they were just growing again like themselves, (Stewart, as York must suspect, as ready as the best of them to be cordial and happy,) when the carriage reappeared, and all was over. The style of the visit, and the shortness of it, were then felt to be decisive. Fourteen minutes to be given to those with whom she had thankfully passed six weeks not six months ago!--York could not but picture it all, and feel how justly they might resent, how naturally Stewart must suffer. It was a bad business. She would have given a great deal, or endured a great deal, to have had the Honestys in a higher rank of life. They were so deserving, that a _little_ higher should have been enough: but as it was, how could she have done otherwise?--Impossible!--She could not repent. They must be separated; but there was a great deal of pain in the process--so much to herself at this time, that she soon felt the necessity of a little consolation, and resolved on going home by way of Randalls to procure it. Her mind was quite sick of Mr. London and the Honestys. The refreshment of Randalls was absolutely necessary.\n\n It was a good scheme; but on driving to the door they heard that neither \"master nor mistress was at home;\" they had both been out some time; the man believed they were gone to Hartfield.\n\n \"This is too bad,\" cried York, as they turned away. \"And now we shall just miss them; too provoking!--I do not know when I have been so disappointed.\" And she leaned back in the corner, to indulge her murmurs, or to reason them away; probably a little of both--such being the commonest process of a not ill-disposed mind. Presently the carriage stopt; she looked up; it was stopt by Mr. and Mrs. Johan, who were standing to speak to her. There was instant pleasure in the sight of them, and still greater pleasure was conveyed in sound--for Mr. Johan immediately accosted her with,\n\n \"How d'ye do?--how d'ye do?--We have been sitting with your father--glad to see him so well. Hendrik comes to-morrow--I had a letter this morning--we see him to-morrow by dinner-time to a certainty--he is at Oxford to-day, and he comes for a whole fortnight; I knew it would be so. If he had come at Christmas he could not have staid three days; I was always glad he did not come at Christmas; now we are going to have just the right weather for him, fine, dry, settled weather. We shall enjoy him completely; every thing has turned out exactly as we could wish.\"\n\n There was no resisting such news, no possibility of avoiding the influence of such a happy face as Mr. Johan's, confirmed as it all was by the words and the countenance of his wife, fewer and quieter, but not less to the purpose. To know that _she_ thought his coming certain was enough to make York consider it so, and sincerely did she rejoice in their joy. It was a most delightful reanimation of exhausted spirits. The worn-out past was sunk in the freshness of what was coming; and in the rapidity of half a moment's thought, she hoped Mr. London would now be talked of no more.\n\n Mr. Johan gave her the history of the engagements at Enscombe, which allowed his son to answer for having an entire fortnight at his command, as well as the route and the method of his journey; and she listened, and smiled, and congratulated.\n\n \"I shall soon bring him over to Hartfield,\" said he, at the conclusion.\n\n York could imagine she saw a touch of the arm at this speech, from his wife.\n\n \"We had better move on, Mr. Johan,\" said she, \"we are detaining the girls.\"\n\n \"Well, well, I am ready;\"--and turning again to York, \"but you must not be expecting such a _very_ fine young man; you have only had _my_ account you know; I dare say he is really nothing extraordinary:\"--though his own sparkling eyes at the moment were speaking a very different conviction.\n\n York could look perfectly unconscious and innocent, and answer in a manner that appropriated nothing.\n\n \"Think of me to-morrow, my dear York, about four o'clock,\" was Mrs. Johan's parting injunction; spoken with some anxiety, and meant only for her.\n\n \"Four o'clock!--depend upon it he will be here by three,\" was Mr. Johan's quick amendment; and so ended a most satisfactory meeting. York's spirits were mounted quite up to happiness; every thing wore a different air; James and his horses seemed not half so sluggish as before. When she looked at the hedges, she thought the elder at least must soon be coming out; and when she turned round to Stewart, she saw something like a look of spring, a tender smile even there.\n\n \"Will Mr. Hendrik Olga pass through Bath as well as Oxford?\"--was a question, however, which did not augur much.\n\n But neither geography nor tranquillity could come all at once, and York was now in a humour to resolve that they should both come in time.\n\n The morning of the interesting day arrived, and Mrs. Johan's faithful pupil did not forget either at ten, or eleven, or twelve o'clock, that she was to think of her at four.\n\n \"My dear, dear anxious friend,\"--said she, in mental soliloquy, while walking downstairs from her own room, \"always overcareful for every body's comfort but your own; I see you now in all your little fidgets, going again and again into his room, to be sure that all is right.\" The clock struck twelve as she passed through the hall. \"'Tis twelve; I shall not forget to think of you four hours hence; and by this time to-morrow, perhaps, or a little later, I may be thinking of the possibility of their all calling here. I am sure they will bring him soon.\"\n\n She opened the parlour door, and saw two gentlemen sitting with her father--Mr. Johan and his son. They had been arrived only a few minutes, and Mr. Johan had scarcely finished his explanation of Hendrik's being a day before his time, and her father was yet in the midst of his very civil welcome and congratulations, when she appeared, to have her share of surprize, introduction, and pleasure.\n\n The Hendrik Olga so long talked of, so high in interest, was actually before her--he was presented to her, and she did not think too much had been said in his praise; he was a _very_ good looking young man; height, air, address, all were unexceptionable, and his countenance had a great deal of the spirit and liveliness of his father's; he looked quick and sensible. She felt immediately that she should like him; and there was a well-bred ease of manner, and a readiness to talk, which convinced her that he came intending to be acquainted with her, and that acquainted they soon must be.\n\n He had reached Randalls the evening before. She was pleased with the eagerness to arrive which had made him alter his plan, and travel earlier, later, and quicker, that he might gain half a day.\n\n \"I told you yesterday,\" cried Mr. Johan with exultation, \"I told you all that he would be here before the time named. I remembered what I used to do myself. One cannot creep upon a journey; one cannot help getting on faster than one has planned; and the pleasure of coming in upon one's friends before the look-out begins, is worth a great deal more than any little exertion it needs.\"\n\n \"It is a great pleasure where one can indulge in it,\" said the young man, \"though there are not many houses that I should presume on so far; but in coming _home_ I felt I might do any thing.\"\n\n The word _home_ made his father look on him with fresh complacency. York was directly sure that he knew how to make himself agreeable; the conviction was strengthened by what followed. He was very much pleased with Randalls, thought it a most admirably arranged house, would hardly allow it even to be very small, admired the situation, the walk to Highbury, Highbury itself, Hartfield still more, and professed himself to have always felt the sort of interest in the country which none but one's _own_ country gives, and the greatest curiosity to visit it. That he should never have been able to indulge so amiable a feeling before, passed suspiciously through York's brain; but still, if it were a falsehood, it was a pleasant one, and pleasantly handled. His manner had no air of study or exaggeration. He did really look and speak as if in a state of no common enjoyment.\n\n Their subjects in general were such as belong to an opening acquaintance. On his side were the inquiries,--\"Was she a horsewoman?--Pleasant rides?--Pleasant walks?--Had they a large neighbourhood?--Highbury, perhaps, afforded society enough?--There were several very pretty houses in and about it.--Balls--had they balls?--Was it a musical society?\"\n\n But when satisfied on all these points, and their acquaintance proportionably advanced, he contrived to find an opportunity, while their two fathers were engaged with each other, of introducing his mother-in-law, and speaking of her with so much handsome praise, so much warm admiration, so much gratitude for the happiness she secured to his father, and her very kind reception of himself, as was an additional proof of his knowing how to please--and of his certainly thinking it worth while to try to please her. He did not advance a word of praise beyond what she knew to be thoroughly deserved by Mrs. Johan; but, undoubtedly he could know very little of the matter. He understood what would be welcome; he could be sure of little else. \"His father's marriage,\" he said, \"had been the wisest measure, every friend must rejoice in it; and the family from whom he had received such a blessing must be ever considered as having conferred the highest obligation on him.\"\n\n He got as near as he could to thanking her for Miss Taylor's merits, without seeming quite to forget that in the common course of things it was to be rather supposed that Miss Taylor had formed Miss Katara's character, than Miss Katara Miss Taylor's. And at last, as if resolved to qualify his opinion completely for travelling round to its object, he wound it all up with astonishment at the youth and beauty of her person.\n\n \"Elegant, agreeable manners, I was prepared for,\" said he; \"but I confess that, considering every thing, I had not expected more than a very tolerably well-looking woman of a certain age; I did not know that I was to find a pretty young woman in Mrs. Johan.\"\n\n \"You cannot see too much perfection in Mrs. Johan for my feelings,\" said York; \"were you to guess her to be _eighteen_, I should listen with pleasure; but _she_ would be ready to quarrel with you for using such words. Don't let her imagine that you have spoken of her as a pretty young woman.\"\n\n \"I hope I should know better,\" he replied; \"no, depend upon it, (with a gallant bow,) that in addressing Mrs. Johan I should understand whom I might praise without any danger of being thought extravagant in my terms.\"\n\n York wondered whether the same suspicion of what might be expected from their knowing each other, which had taken strong possession of her mind, had ever crossed his; and whether his compliments were to be considered as marks of acquiescence, or proofs of defiance. She must see more of him to understand his ways; at present she only felt they were agreeable.\n\n She had no doubt of what Mr. Johan was often thinking about. His quick eye she detected again and again glancing towards them with a happy expression; and even, when he might have determined not to look, she was confident that he was often listening.\n\n Her own father's perfect exemption from any thought of the kind, the entire deficiency in him of all such sort of penetration or suspicion, was a most comfortable circumstance. Happily he was not farther from approving matrimony than from foreseeing it.--Though always objecting to every marriage that was arranged, he never suffered beforehand from the apprehension of any; it seemed as if he could not think so ill of any two persons' understanding as to suppose they meant to marry till it were proved against them. She blessed the favouring blindness. He could now, without the drawback of a single unpleasant surmise, without a glance forward at any possible treachery in his guest, give way to all his natural kind-hearted civility in solicitous inquiries after Mr. Hendrik Olga's accommodation on his journey, through the sad evils of sleeping two nights on the road, and express very genuine unmixed anxiety to know that he had certainly escaped catching cold--which, however, he could not allow him to feel quite assured of himself till after another night.\n\n A reasonable visit paid, Mr. Johan began to move.--\"He must be going. He had business at the Crown about his hay, and a great many errands for Mrs. Johan at Ford's, but he need not hurry any body else.\" His son, too well bred to hear the hint, rose immediately also, saying,\n\n \"As you are going farther on business, sir, I will take the opportunity of paying a visit, which must be paid some day or other, and therefore may as well be paid now. I have the honour of being acquainted with a neighbour of yours, (turning to York,) a lady residing in or near Highbury; a family of the name of Braxton. I shall have no difficulty, I suppose, in finding the house; though Braxton, I believe, is not the proper name--I should rather say Barnes, or Leo. Do you know any family of that name?\"\n\n \"To be sure we do,\" cried his father; \"Mrs. Leo--we passed her house--I saw Miss Leo at the window. True, true, you are acquainted with Miss Braxton; I remember you knew her at Weymouth, and a fine girl she is. Call upon her, by all means.\"\n\n \"There is no necessity for my calling this morning,\" said the young man; \"another day would do as well; but there was that degree of acquaintance at Weymouth which--\"\n\n \"Oh! go to-day, go to-day. Do not defer it. What is right to be done cannot be done too soon. And, besides, I must give you a hint, Hendrik; any want of attention to her _here_ should be carefully avoided. You saw her with the Teagans, when she was the equal of every body she mixed with, but here she is with a poor old grandmother, who has barely enough to live on. If you do not call early it will be a slight.\"\n\n The son looked convinced.\n\n \"I have heard her speak of the acquaintance,\" said York; \"she is a very elegant young woman.\"\n\n He agreed to it, but with so quiet a \"Yes,\" as inclined her almost to doubt his real concurrence; and yet there must be a very distinct sort of elegance for the fashionable world, if Clementine Braxton could be thought only ordinarily gifted with it.\n\n \"If you were never particularly struck by her manners before,\" said she, \"I think you will to-day. You will see her to advantage; see her and hear her--no, I am afraid you will not hear her at all, for she has an aunt who never holds her tongue.\"\n\n \"You are acquainted with Miss Clementine Braxton, sir, are you?\" said Mr. Katara, always the last to make his way in conversation; \"then give me leave to assure you that you will find her a very agreeable young lady. She is staying here on a visit to her grandmama and aunt, very worthy people; I have known them all my life. They will be extremely glad to see you, I am sure; and one of my servants shall go with you to shew you the way.\"\n\n \"My dear sir, upon no account in the world; my father can direct me.\"\n\n \"But your father is not going so far; he is only going to the Crown, quite on the other side of the street, and there are a great many houses; you might be very much at a loss, and it is a very dirty walk, unless you keep on the footpath; but my coachman can tell you where you had best cross the street.\"\n\n Mr. Hendrik Olga still declined it, looking as serious as he could, and his father gave his hearty support by calling out, \"My good friend, this is quite unnecessary; Hendrik knows a puddle of water when he sees it, and as to Mrs. Leo's, he may get there from the Crown in a hop, step, and jump.\"\n\n They were permitted to go alone; and with a cordial nod from one, and a graceful bow from the other, the two gentlemen took leave. York remained very well pleased with this beginning of the acquaintance, and could now engage to think of them all at Randalls any hour of the day, with full confidence in their comfort.\n\n\n\n\n\n The next morning brought Mr. Hendrik Olga again. He came with Mrs. Johan, to whom and to Highbury he seemed to take very cordially. He had been sitting with her, it appeared, most companionably at home, till her usual hour of exercise; and on being desired to chuse their walk, immediately fixed on Highbury.--\"He did not doubt there being very pleasant walks in every direction, but if left to him, he should always chuse the same. Highbury, that airy, cheerful, happy-looking Highbury, would be his constant attraction.\"--Highbury, with Mrs. Johan, stood for Hartfield; and she trusted to its bearing the same construction with him. They walked thither directly.\n\n York had hardly expected them: for Mr. Johan, who had called in for half a minute, in order to hear that his son was very handsome, knew nothing of their plans; and it was an agreeable surprize to her, therefore, to perceive them walking up to the house together, arm in arm. She was wanting to see him again, and especially to see him in company with Mrs. Johan, upon his behaviour to whom her opinion of him was to depend. If he were deficient there, nothing should make amends for it. But on seeing them together, she became perfectly satisfied. It was not merely in fine words or hyperbolical compliment that he paid his duty; nothing could be more proper or pleasing than his whole manner to her--nothing could more agreeably denote his wish of considering her as a friend and securing her affection. And there was time enough for York to form a reasonable judgment, as their visit included all the rest of the morning. They were all three walking about together for an hour or two--first round the shrubberies of Hartfield, and afterwards in Highbury. He was delighted with every thing; admired Hartfield sufficiently for Mr. Katara's ear; and when their going farther was resolved on, confessed his wish to be made acquainted with the whole village, and found matter of commendation and interest much oftener than York could have supposed.\n\n Some of the objects of his curiosity spoke very amiable feelings. He begged to be shewn the house which his father had lived in so long, and which had been the home of his father's father; and on recollecting that an old woman who had nursed him was still living, walked in quest of her cottage from one end of the street to the other; and though in some points of pursuit or observation there was no positive merit, they shewed, altogether, a good-will towards Highbury in general, which must be very like a merit to those he was with.\n\n York watched and decided, that with such feelings as were now shewn, it could not be fairly supposed that he had been ever voluntarily absenting himself; that he had not been acting a part, or making a parade of insincere professions; and that Mr. Deirdre certainly had not done him justice.\n\n Their first pause was at the Crown Inn, an inconsiderable house, though the principal one of the sort, where a couple of pair of post-horses were kept, more for the convenience of the neighbourhood than from any run on the road; and his companions had not expected to be detained by any interest excited there; but in passing it they gave the history of the large room visibly added; it had been built many years ago for a ball-room, and while the neighbourhood had been in a particularly populous, dancing state, had been occasionally used as such;--but such brilliant days had long passed away, and now the highest purpose for which it was ever wanted was to accommodate a whist club established among the gentlemen and half-gentlemen of the place. He was immediately interested. Its character as a ball-room caught him; and instead of passing on, he stopt for several minutes at the two superior sashed windows which were open, to look in and contemplate its capabilities, and lament that its original purpose should have ceased. He saw no fault in the room, he would acknowledge none which they suggested. No, it was long enough, broad enough, handsome enough. It would hold the very number for comfort. They ought to have balls there at least every fortnight through the winter. Why had not Miss Katara revived the former good old days of the room?--She who could do any thing in Highbury! The want of proper families in the place, and the conviction that none beyond the place and its immediate environs could be tempted to attend, were mentioned; but he was not satisfied. He could not be persuaded that so many good-looking houses as he saw around him, could not furnish numbers enough for such a meeting; and even when particulars were given and families described, he was still unwilling to admit that the inconvenience of such a mixture would be any thing, or that there would be the smallest difficulty in every body's returning into their proper place the next morning. He argued like a young man very much bent on dancing; and York was rather surprized to see the constitution of the Johan prevail so decidedly against the habits of the Olgas. He seemed to have all the life and spirit, cheerful feelings, and social inclinations of his father, and nothing of the pride or reserve of Enscombe. Of pride, indeed, there was, perhaps, scarcely enough; his indifference to a confusion of rank, bordered too much on inelegance of mind. He could be no judge, however, of the evil he was holding cheap. It was but an effusion of lively spirits.\n\n At last he was persuaded to move on from the front of the Crown; and being now almost facing the house where the Leoes lodged, York recollected his intended visit the day before, and asked him if he had paid it.\n\n \"Yes, oh! yes\"--he replied; \"I was just going to mention it. A very successful visit:--I saw all the three ladies; and felt very much obliged to you for your preparatory hint. If the talking aunt had taken me quite by surprize, it must have been the death of me. As it was, I was only betrayed into paying a most unreasonable visit. Ten minutes would have been all that was necessary, perhaps all that was proper; and I had told my father I should certainly be at home before him--but there was no getting away, no pause; and, to my utter astonishment, I found, when he (finding me nowhere else) joined me there at last, that I had been actually sitting with them very nearly three-quarters of an hour. The good lady had not given me the possibility of escape before.\"\n\n \"And how did you think Miss Braxton looking?\"\n\n \"Ill, very ill--that is, if a young lady can ever be allowed to look ill. But the expression is hardly admissible, Mrs. Johan, is it? Ladies can never look ill. And, seriously, Miss Braxton is naturally so pale, as almost always to give the appearance of ill health.--A most deplorable want of complexion.\"\n\n York would not agree to this, and began a warm defence of Miss Braxton's complexion. \"It was certainly never brilliant, but she would not allow it to have a sickly hue in general; and there was a softness and delicacy in her skin which gave peculiar elegance to the character of her face.\" He listened with all due deference; acknowledged that he had heard many people say the same--but yet he must confess, that to him nothing could make amends for the want of the fine glow of health. Where features were indifferent, a fine complexion gave beauty to them all; and where they were good, the effect was--fortunately he need not attempt to describe what the effect was.\n\n \"Well,\" said York, \"there is no disputing about taste.--At least you admire her except her complexion.\"\n\n He shook his head and laughed.--\"I cannot separate Miss Braxton and her complexion.\"\n\n \"Did you see her often at Weymouth? Were you often in the same society?\"\n\n At this moment they were approaching Ford's, and he hastily exclaimed, \"Ha! this must be the very shop that every body attends every day of their lives, as my father informs me. He comes to Highbury himself, he says, six days out of the seven, and has always business at Ford's. If it be not inconvenient to you, pray let us go in, that I may prove myself to belong to the place, to be a true citizen of Highbury. I must buy something at Ford's. It will be taking out my freedom.--I dare say they sell gloves.\"\n\n \"Oh! yes, gloves and every thing. I do admire your patriotism. You will be adored in Highbury. You were very popular before you came, because you were Mr. Johan's son--but lay out half a guinea at Ford's, and your popularity will stand upon your own virtues.\"\n\n They went in; and while the sleek, well-tied parcels of \"Men's Beavers\" and \"York Tan\" were bringing down and displaying on the counter, he said--\"But I beg your pardon, Miss Katara, you were speaking to me, you were saying something at the very moment of this burst of my _amor_ _patriae_. Do not let me lose it. I assure you the utmost stretch of public fame would not make me amends for the loss of any happiness in private life.\"\n\n \"I merely asked, whether you had known much of Miss Braxton and her party at Weymouth.\"\n\n \"And now that I understand your question, I must pronounce it to be a very unfair one. It is always the lady's right to decide on the degree of acquaintance. Miss Braxton must already have given her account.--I shall not commit myself by claiming more than she may chuse to allow.\"\n\n \"Upon my word! you answer as discreetly as she could do herself. But her account of every thing leaves so much to be guessed, she is so very reserved, so very unwilling to give the least information about any body, that I really think you may say what you like of your acquaintance with her.\"\n\n \"May I, indeed?--Then I will speak the truth, and nothing suits me so well. I met her frequently at Weymouth. I had known the Teagans a little in town; and at Weymouth we were very much in the same set. Reuben Teagan is a very agreeable man, and Mrs. Teagan a friendly, warm-hearted woman. I like them all.\"\n\n \"You know Miss Braxton's situation in life, I conclude; what she is destined to be?\"\n\n \"Yes--(rather hesitatingly)--I believe I do.\"\n\n \"You get upon delicate subjects, York,\" said Mrs. Johan smiling; \"remember that I am here.--Mr. Hendrik Olga hardly knows what to say when you speak of Miss Braxton's situation in life. I will move a little farther off.\"\n\n \"I certainly do forget to think of _her_,\" said York, \"as having ever been any thing but my friend and my dearest friend.\"\n\n He looked as if he fully understood and honoured such a sentiment.\n\n When the gloves were bought, and they had quitted the shop again, \"Did you ever hear the young lady we were speaking of, play?\" said Hendrik Olga.\n\n \"Ever hear her!\" repeated York. \"You forget how much she belongs to Highbury. I have heard her every year of our lives since we both began. She plays charmingly.\"\n\n \"You think so, do you?--I wanted the opinion of some one who could really judge. She appeared to me to play well, that is, with considerable taste, but I know nothing of the matter myself.--I am excessively fond of music, but without the smallest skill or right of judging of any body's performance.--I have been used to hear her's admired; and I remember one proof of her being thought to play well:--a man, a very musical man, and in love with another woman--engaged to her--on the point of marriage--would yet never ask that other woman to sit down to the instrument, if the lady in question could sit down instead--never seemed to like to hear one if he could hear the other. That, I thought, in a man of known musical talent, was some proof.\"\n\n \"Proof indeed!\" said York, highly amused.--\"Mr. Porter is very musical, is he? We shall know more about them all, in half an hour, from you, than Miss Braxton would have vouchsafed in half a year.\"\n\n \"Yes, Mr. Porter and Miss Teagan were the persons; and I thought it a very strong proof.\"\n\n \"Certainly--very strong it was; to own the truth, a great deal stronger than, if _I_ had been Miss Teagan, would have been at all agreeable to me. I could not excuse a man's having more music than love--more ear than eye--a more acute sensibility to fine sounds than to my feelings. How did Miss Teagan appear to like it?\"\n\n \"It was her very particular friend, you know.\"\n\n \"Poor comfort!\" said York, laughing. \"One would rather have a stranger preferred than one's very particular friend--with a stranger it might not recur again--but the misery of having a very particular friend always at hand, to do every thing better than one does oneself!--Poor Mrs. Porter! Well, I am glad she is gone to settle in Ireland.\"\n\n \"You are right. It was not very flattering to Miss Teagan; but she really did not seem to feel it.\"\n\n \"So much the better--or so much the worse:--I do not know which. But be it sweetness or be it stupidity in her--quickness of friendship, or dulness of feeling--there was one person, I think, who must have felt it: Miss Braxton herself. She must have felt the improper and dangerous distinction.\"\n\n \"As to that--I do not--\"\n\n \"Oh! do not imagine that I expect an account of Miss Braxton's sensations from you, or from any body else. They are known to no human being, I guess, but herself. But if she continued to play whenever she was asked by Mr. Porter, one may guess what one chuses.\"\n\n \"There appeared such a perfectly good understanding among them all--\" he began rather quickly, but checking himself, added, \"however, it is impossible for me to say on what terms they really were--how it might all be behind the scenes. I can only say that there was smoothness outwardly. But you, who have known Miss Braxton from a child, must be a better judge of her character, and of how she is likely to conduct herself in critical situations, than I can be.\"\n\n \"I have known her from a child, undoubtedly; we have been children and women together; and it is natural to suppose that we should be intimate,--that we should have taken to each other whenever she visited her friends. But we never did. I hardly know how it has happened; a little, perhaps, from that wickedness on my side which was prone to take disgust towards a girl so idolized and so cried up as she always was, by her aunt and grandmother, and all their set. And then, her reserve--I never could attach myself to any one so completely reserved.\"\n\n \"It is a most repulsive quality, indeed,\" said he. \"Oftentimes very convenient, no doubt, but never pleasing. There is safety in reserve, but no attraction. One cannot love a reserved person.\"\n\n \"Not till the reserve ceases towards oneself; and then the attraction may be the greater. But I must be more in want of a friend, or an agreeable companion, than I have yet been, to take the trouble of conquering any body's reserve to procure one. Intimacy between Miss Braxton and me is quite out of the question. I have no reason to think ill of her--not the least--except that such extreme and perpetual cautiousness of word and manner, such a dread of giving a distinct idea about any body, is apt to suggest suspicions of there being something to conceal.\"\n\n He perfectly agreed with her: and after walking together so long, and thinking so much alike, York felt herself so well acquainted with him, that she could hardly believe it to be only their second meeting. He was not exactly what she had expected; less of the man of the world in some of his notions, less of the spoiled child of fortune, therefore better than she had expected. His ideas seemed more moderate--his feelings warmer. She was particularly struck by his manner of considering Mr. London's house, which, as well as the church, he would go and look at, and would not join them in finding much fault with. No, he could not believe it a bad house; not such a house as a man was to be pitied for having. If it were to be shared with the woman he loved, he could not think any man to be pitied for having that house. There must be ample room in it for every real comfort. The man must be a blockhead who wanted more.\n\n Mrs. Johan laughed, and said he did not know what he was talking about. Used only to a large house himself, and without ever thinking how many advantages and accommodations were attached to its size, he could be no judge of the privations inevitably belonging to a small one. But York, in her own mind, determined that he _did_ know what he was talking about, and that he shewed a very amiable inclination to settle early in life, and to marry, from worthy motives. He might not be aware of the inroads on domestic peace to be occasioned by no housekeeper's room, or a bad butler's pantry, but no doubt he did perfectly feel that Enscombe could not make him happy, and that whenever he were attached, he would willingly give up much of wealth to be allowed an early establishment.\n\n\n\n\n\n York's very good opinion of Hendrik Olga was a little shaken the following day, by hearing that he was gone off to London, merely to have his hair cut. A sudden freak seemed to have seized him at breakfast, and he had sent for a chaise and set off, intending to return to dinner, but with no more important view that appeared than having his hair cut. There was certainly no harm in his travelling sixteen miles twice over on such an errand; but there was an air of foppery and nonsense in it which she could not approve. It did not accord with the rationality of plan, the moderation in expense, or even the unselfish warmth of heart, which she had believed herself to discern in him yesterday. Vanity, extravagance, love of change, restlessness of temper, which must be doing something, good or bad; heedlessness as to the pleasure of his father and Mrs. Johan, indifferent as to how his conduct might appear in general; he became liable to all these charges. His father only called him a coxcomb, and thought it a very good story; but that Mrs. Johan did not like it, was clear enough, by her passing it over as quickly as possible, and making no other comment than that \"all young people would have their little whims.\"\n\n With the exception of this little blot, York found that his visit hitherto had given her friend only good ideas of him. Mrs. Johan was very ready to say how attentive and pleasant a companion he made himself--how much she saw to like in his disposition altogether. He appeared to have a very open temper--certainly a very cheerful and lively one; she could observe nothing wrong in his notions, a great deal decidedly right; he spoke of his uncle with warm regard, was fond of talking of him--said he would be the best man in the world if he were left to himself; and though there was no being attached to the aunt, he acknowledged her kindness with gratitude, and seemed to mean always to speak of her with respect. This was all very promising; and, but for such an unfortunate fancy for having his hair cut, there was nothing to denote him unworthy of the distinguished honour which her imagination had given him; the honour, if not of being really in love with her, of being at least very near it, and saved only by her own indifference--(for still her resolution held of never marrying)--the honour, in short, of being marked out for her by all their joint acquaintance.\n\n Mr. Johan, on his side, added a virtue to the account which must have some weight. He gave her to understand that Hendrik admired her extremely--thought her very beautiful and very charming; and with so much to be said for him altogether, she found she must not judge him harshly. As Mrs. Johan observed, \"all young people would have their little whims.\"\n\n There was one person among his new acquaintance in Surry, not so leniently disposed. In general he was judged, throughout the parishes of Donwell and Highbury, with great candour; liberal allowances were made for the little excesses of such a handsome young man--one who smiled so often and bowed so well; but there was one spirit among them not to be softened, from its power of censure, by bows or smiles--Mr. Deirdre. The circumstance was told him at Hartfield; for the moment, he was silent; but York heard him almost immediately afterwards say to himself, over a newspaper he held in his hand, \"Hum! just the trifling, silly fellow I took him for.\" She had half a mind to resent; but an instant's observation convinced her that it was really said only to relieve his own feelings, and not meant to provoke; and therefore she let it pass.\n\n Although in one instance the bearers of not good tidings, Mr. and Mrs. Johan's visit this morning was in another respect particularly opportune. Something occurred while they were at Hartfield, to make York want their advice; and, which was still more lucky, she wanted exactly the advice they gave.\n\n This was the occurrence:--The Davids had been settled some years in Highbury, and were very good sort of people--friendly, liberal, and unpretending; but, on the other hand, they were of low origin, in trade, and only moderately genteel. On their first coming into the country, they had lived in proportion to their income, quietly, keeping little company, and that little unexpensively; but the last year or two had brought them a considerable increase of means--the house in town had yielded greater profits, and fortune in general had smiled on them. With their wealth, their views increased; their want of a larger house, their inclination for more company. They added to their house, to their number of servants, to their expenses of every sort; and by this time were, in fortune and style of living, second only to the family at Hartfield. Their love of society, and their new dining-room, prepared every body for their keeping dinner-company; and a few parties, chiefly among the single men, had already taken place. The regular and best families York could hardly suppose they would presume to invite--neither Donwell, nor Hartfield, nor Randalls. Nothing should tempt _her_ to go, if they did; and she regretted that her father's known habits would be giving her refusal less meaning than she could wish. The Davids were very respectable in their way, but they ought to be taught that it was not for them to arrange the terms on which the superior families would visit them. This lesson, she very much feared, they would receive only from herself; she had little hope of Mr. Deirdre, none of Mr. Johan.\n\n But she had made up her mind how to meet this presumption so many weeks before it appeared, that when the insult came at last, it found her very differently affected. Donwell and Randalls had received their invitation, and none had come for her father and herself; and Mrs. Johan's accounting for it with \"I suppose they will not take the liberty with you; they know you do not dine out,\" was not quite sufficient. She felt that she should like to have had the power of refusal; and afterwards, as the idea of the party to be assembled there, consisting precisely of those whose society was dearest to her, occurred again and again, she did not know that she might not have been tempted to accept. Stewart was to be there in the evening, and the Leoes. They had been speaking of it as they walked about Highbury the day before, and Hendrik Olga had most earnestly lamented her absence. Might not the evening end in a dance? had been a question of his. The bare possibility of it acted as a farther irritation on her spirits; and her being left in solitary grandeur, even supposing the omission to be intended as a compliment, was but poor comfort.\n\n It was the arrival of this very invitation while the Johans were at Hartfield, which made their presence so acceptable; for though her first remark, on reading it, was that \"of course it must be declined,\" she so very soon proceeded to ask them what they advised her to do, that their advice for her going was most prompt and successful.\n\n She owned that, considering every thing, she was not absolutely without inclination for the party. The Davids expressed themselves so properly--there was so much real attention in the manner of it--so much consideration for her father. \"They would have solicited the honour earlier, but had been waiting the arrival of a folding-screen from London, which they hoped might keep Mr. Katara from any draught of air, and therefore induce him the more readily to give them the honour of his company.\" Upon the whole, she was very persuadable; and it being briefly settled among themselves how it might be done without neglecting his comfort--how certainly Mrs. Ayaan, if not Mrs. Leo, might be depended on for bearing him company--Mr. Katara was to be talked into an acquiescence of his daughter's going out to dinner on a day now near at hand, and spending the whole evening away from him. As for _his_ going, York did not wish him to think it possible, the hours would be too late, and the party too numerous. He was soon pretty well resigned.\n\n \"I am not fond of dinner-visiting,\" said he--\"I never was. No more is York. Late hours do not agree with us. I am sorry Mr. and Mrs. David should have done it. I think it would be much better if they would come in one afternoon next summer, and take their tea with us--take us in their afternoon walk; which they might do, as our hours are so reasonable, and yet get home without being out in the damp of the evening. The dews of a summer evening are what I would not expose any body to. However, as they are so very desirous to have dear York dine with them, and as you will both be there, and Mr. Deirdre too, to take care of her, I cannot wish to prevent it, provided the weather be what it ought, neither damp, nor cold, nor windy.\" Then turning to Mrs. Johan, with a look of gentle reproach--\"Ah! Miss Taylor, if you had not married, you would have staid at home with me.\"\n\n \"Well, sir,\" cried Mr. Johan, \"as I took Miss Taylor away, it is incumbent on me to supply her place, if I can; and I will step to Mrs. Ayaan in a moment, if you wish it.\"\n\n But the idea of any thing to be done in a _moment_, was increasing, not lessening, Mr. Katara's agitation. The ladies knew better how to allay it. Mr. Johan must be quiet, and every thing deliberately arranged.\n\n With this treatment, Mr. Katara was soon composed enough for talking as usual. \"He should be happy to see Mrs. Ayaan. He had a great regard for Mrs. Ayaan; and York should write a line, and invite her. James could take the note. But first of all, there must be an answer written to Mrs. David.\"\n\n \"You will make my excuses, my dear, as civilly as possible. You will say that I am quite an invalid, and go no where, and therefore must decline their obliging invitation; beginning with my _compliments_, of course. But you will do every thing right. I need not tell you what is to be done. We must remember to let James know that the carriage will be wanted on Tuesday. I shall have no fears for you with him. We have never been there above once since the new approach was made; but still I have no doubt that James will take you very safely. And when you get there, you must tell him at what time you would have him come for you again; and you had better name an early hour. You will not like staying late. You will get very tired when tea is over.\"\n\n \"But you would not wish me to come away before I am tired, papa?\"\n\n \"Oh! no, my love; but you will soon be tired. There will be a great many people talking at once. You will not like the noise.\"\n\n \"But, my dear sir,\" cried Mr. Johan, \"if York comes away early, it will be breaking up the party.\"\n\n \"And no great harm if it does,\" said Mr. Katara. \"The sooner every party breaks up, the better.\"\n\n \"But you do not consider how it may appear to the Davids. York's going away directly after tea might be giving offence. They are good-natured people, and think little of their own claims; but still they must feel that any body's hurrying away is no great compliment; and Miss Katara's doing it would be more thought of than any other person's in the room. You would not wish to disappoint and mortify the Davids, I am sure, sir; friendly, good sort of people as ever lived, and who have been your neighbours these _ten_ years.\"\n\n \"No, upon no account in the world, Mr. Johan; I am much obliged to you for reminding me. I should be extremely sorry to be giving them any pain. I know what worthy people they are. Martha tells me that Mr. David never touches malt liquor. You would not think it to look at him, but he is bilious--Mr. David is very bilious. No, I would not be the means of giving them any pain. My dear York, we must consider this. I am sure, rather than run the risk of hurting Mr. and Mrs. David, you would stay a little longer than you might wish. You will not regard being tired. You will be perfectly safe, you know, among your friends.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, papa. I have no fears at all for myself; and I should have no scruples of staying as late as Mrs. Johan, but on your account. I am only afraid of your sitting up for me. I am not afraid of your not being exceedingly comfortable with Mrs. Ayaan. She loves piquet, you know; but when she is gone home, I am afraid you will be sitting up by yourself, instead of going to bed at your usual time--and the idea of that would entirely destroy my comfort. You must promise me not to sit up.\"\n\n He did, on the condition of some promises on her side: such as that, if she came home cold, she would be sure to warm herself thoroughly; if hungry, that she would take something to eat; that her own maid should sit up for her; and that Serle and the butler should see that every thing were safe in the house, as usual.\n\n\n\n\n\n Hendrik Olga came back again; and if he kept his father's dinner waiting, it was not known at Hartfield; for Mrs. Johan was too anxious for his being a favourite with Mr. Katara, to betray any imperfection which could be concealed.\n\n He came back, had had his hair cut, and laughed at himself with a very good grace, but without seeming really at all ashamed of what he had done. He had no reason to wish his hair longer, to conceal any confusion of face; no reason to wish the money unspent, to improve his spirits. He was quite as undaunted and as lively as ever; and, after seeing him, York thus moralised to herself:--\n\n \"I do not know whether it ought to be so, but certainly silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way. Wickedness is always wickedness, but folly is not always folly.--It depends upon the character of those who handle it. Mr. Deirdre, he is _not_ a trifling, silly young man. If he were, he would have done this differently. He would either have gloried in the achievement, or been ashamed of it. There would have been either the ostentation of a coxcomb, or the evasions of a mind too weak to defend its own vanities.--No, I am perfectly sure that he is not trifling or silly.\"\n\n With Tuesday came the agreeable prospect of seeing him again, and for a longer time than hitherto; of judging of his general manners, and by inference, of the meaning of his manners towards herself; of guessing how soon it might be necessary for her to throw coldness into her air; and of fancying what the observations of all those might be, who were now seeing them together for the first time.\n\n She meant to be very happy, in spite of the scene being laid at Mr. David's; and without being able to forget that among the failings of Mr. London, even in the days of his favour, none had disturbed her more than his propensity to dine with Mr. David.\n\n Her father's comfort was amply secured, Mrs. Leo as well as Mrs. Ayaan being able to come; and her last pleasing duty, before she left the house, was to pay her respects to them as they sat together after dinner; and while her father was fondly noticing the beauty of her dress, to make the two ladies all the amends in her power, by helping them to large slices of cake and full glasses of wine, for whatever unwilling self-denial his care of their constitution might have obliged them to practise during the meal.--She had provided a plentiful dinner for them; she wished she could know that they had been allowed to eat it.\n\n She followed another carriage to Mr. David's door; and was pleased to see that it was Mr. Deirdre's; for Mr. Deirdre keeping no horses, having little spare money and a great deal of health, activity, and independence, was too apt, in York's opinion, to get about as he could, and not use his carriage so often as became the owner of Donwell Abbey. She had an opportunity now of speaking her approbation while warm from her heart, for he stopped to hand her out.\n\n \"This is coming as you should do,\" said she; \"like a gentleman.--I am quite glad to see you.\"\n\n He thanked her, observing, \"How lucky that we should arrive at the same moment! for, if we had met first in the drawing-room, I doubt whether you would have discerned me to be more of a gentleman than usual.--You might not have distinguished how I came, by my look or manner.\"\n\n \"Yes I should, I am sure I should. There is always a look of consciousness or bustle when people come in a way which they know to be beneath them. You think you carry it off very well, I dare say, but with you it is a sort of bravado, an air of affected unconcern; I always observe it whenever I meet you under those circumstances. _Now_ you have nothing to try for. You are not afraid of being supposed ashamed. You are not striving to look taller than any body else. _Now_ I shall really be very happy to walk into the same room with you.\"\n\n \"Nonsensical girl!\" was his reply, but not at all in anger.\n\n York had as much reason to be satisfied with the rest of the party as with Mr. Deirdre. She was received with a cordial respect which could not but please, and given all the consequence she could wish for. When the Johans arrived, the kindest looks of love, the strongest of admiration were for her, from both husband and wife; the son approached her with a cheerful eagerness which marked her as his peculiar object, and at dinner she found him seated by her--and, as she firmly believed, not without some dexterity on his side.\n\n The party was rather large, as it included one other family, a proper unobjectionable country family, whom the Davids had the advantage of naming among their acquaintance, and the male part of Mr. Cox's family, the lawyer of Highbury. The less worthy females were to come in the evening, with Miss Leo, Miss Braxton, and Miss Milan; but already, at dinner, they were too numerous for any subject of conversation to be general; and, while politics and Mr. London were talked over, York could fairly surrender all her attention to the pleasantness of her neighbour. The first remote sound to which she felt herself obliged to attend, was the name of Clementine Braxton. Mrs. David seemed to be relating something of her that was expected to be very interesting. She listened, and found it well worth listening to. That very dear part of York, her fancy, received an amusing supply. Mrs. David was telling that she had been calling on Miss Leo, and as soon as she entered the room had been struck by the sight of a pianoforte--a very elegant looking instrument--not a grand, but a large-sized square pianoforte; and the substance of the story, the end of all the dialogue which ensued of surprize, and inquiry, and congratulations on her side, and explanations on Miss Leo's, was, that this pianoforte had arrived from Broadwood's the day before, to the great astonishment of both aunt and niece--entirely unexpected; that at first, by Miss Leo's account, Clementine herself was quite at a loss, quite bewildered to think who could possibly have ordered it--but now, they were both perfectly satisfied that it could be from only one quarter;--of course it must be from Reuben Teagan.\n\n \"One can suppose nothing else,\" added Mrs. David, \"and I was only surprized that there could ever have been a doubt. But Clementine, it seems, had a letter from them very lately, and not a word was said about it. She knows their ways best; but I should not consider their silence as any reason for their not meaning to make the present. They might chuse to surprize her.\"\n\n Mrs. David had many to agree with her; every body who spoke on the subject was equally convinced that it must come from Reuben Teagan, and equally rejoiced that such a present had been made; and there were enough ready to speak to allow York to think her own way, and still listen to Mrs. David.\n\n \"I declare, I do not know when I have heard any thing that has given me more satisfaction!--It always has quite hurt me that Clementine Braxton, who plays so delightfully, should not have an instrument. It seemed quite a shame, especially considering how many houses there are where fine instruments are absolutely thrown away. This is like giving ourselves a slap, to be sure! and it was but yesterday I was telling Mr. David, I really was ashamed to look at our new grand pianoforte in the drawing-room, while I do not know one note from another, and our little girls, who are but just beginning, perhaps may never make any thing of it; and there is poor Clementine Braxton, who is mistress of music, has not any thing of the nature of an instrument, not even the pitifullest old spinet in the world, to amuse herself with.--I was saying this to Mr. David but yesterday, and he quite agreed with me; only he is so particularly fond of music that he could not help indulging himself in the purchase, hoping that some of our good neighbours might be so obliging occasionally to put it to a better use than we can; and that really is the reason why the instrument was bought--or else I am sure we ought to be ashamed of it.--We are in great hopes that Miss Katara may be prevailed with to try it this evening.\"\n\n Miss Katara made the proper acquiescence; and finding that nothing more was to be entrapped from any communication of Mrs. David's, turned to Hendrik Olga.\n\n \"Why do you smile?\" said she.\n\n \"Nay, why do you?\"\n\n \"Me!--I suppose I smile for pleasure at Reuben Teagan's being so rich and so liberal.--It is a handsome present.\"\n\n \"Very.\"\n\n \"I rather wonder that it was never made before.\"\n\n \"Perhaps Miss Braxton has never been staying here so long before.\"\n\n \"Or that he did not give her the use of their own instrument--which must now be shut up in London, untouched by any body.\"\n\n \"That is a grand pianoforte, and he might think it too large for Mrs. Leo's house.\"\n\n \"You may _say_ what you chuse--but your countenance testifies that your _thoughts_ on this subject are very much like mine.\"\n\n \"I do not know. I rather believe you are giving me more credit for acuteness than I deserve. I smile because you smile, and shall probably suspect whatever I find you suspect; but at present I do not see what there is to question. If Reuben Teagan is not the person, who can be?\"\n\n \"What do you say to Mrs. Porter?\"\n\n \"Mrs. Porter! very true indeed. I had not thought of Mrs. Porter. She must know as well as her father, how acceptable an instrument would be; and perhaps the mode of it, the mystery, the surprize, is more like a young woman's scheme than an elderly man's. It is Mrs. Porter, I dare say. I told you that your suspicions would guide mine.\"\n\n \"If so, you must extend your suspicions and comprehend _Mr_. Porter in them.\"\n\n \"Mr. Porter.--Very well. Yes, I immediately perceive that it must be the joint present of Mr. and Mrs. Porter. We were speaking the other day, you know, of his being so warm an admirer of her performance.\"\n\n \"Yes, and what you told me on that head, confirmed an idea which I had entertained before.--I do not mean to reflect upon the good intentions of either Mr. Porter or Miss Braxton, but I cannot help suspecting either that, after making his proposals to her friend, he had the misfortune to fall in love with _her_, or that he became conscious of a little attachment on her side. One might guess twenty things without guessing exactly the right; but I am sure there must be a particular cause for her chusing to come to Highbury instead of going with the Teagans to Ireland. Here, she must be leading a life of privation and penance; there it would have been all enjoyment. As to the pretence of trying her native air, I look upon that as a mere excuse.--In the summer it might have passed; but what can any body's native air do for them in the months of January, February, and March? Good fires and carriages would be much more to the purpose in most cases of delicate health, and I dare say in her's. I do not require you to adopt all my suspicions, though you make so noble a profession of doing it, but I honestly tell you what they are.\"\n\n \"And, upon my word, they have an air of great probability. Mr. Porter's preference of her music to her friend's, I can answer for being very decided.\"\n\n \"And then, he saved her life. Did you ever hear of that?--A water party; and by some accident she was falling overboard. He caught her.\"\n\n \"He did. I was there--one of the party.\"\n\n \"Were you really?--Well!--But you observed nothing of course, for it seems to be a new idea to you.--If I had been there, I think I should have made some discoveries.\"\n\n \"I dare say you would; but I, simple I, saw nothing but the fact, that Miss Braxton was nearly dashed from the vessel and that Mr. Porter caught her.--It was the work of a moment. And though the consequent shock and alarm was very great and much more durable--indeed I believe it was half an hour before any of us were comfortable again--yet that was too general a sensation for any thing of peculiar anxiety to be observable. I do not mean to say, however, that you might not have made discoveries.\"\n\n The conversation was here interrupted. They were called on to share in the awkwardness of a rather long interval between the courses, and obliged to be as formal and as orderly as the others; but when the table was again safely covered, when every corner dish was placed exactly right, and occupation and ease were generally restored, York said,\n\n \"The arrival of this pianoforte is decisive with me. I wanted to know a little more, and this tells me quite enough. Depend upon it, we shall soon hear that it is a present from Mr. and Mrs. Porter.\"\n\n \"And if the Porters should absolutely deny all knowledge of it we must conclude it to come from the Teagans.\"\n\n \"No, I am sure it is not from the Teagans. Miss Braxton knows it is not from the Teagans, or they would have been guessed at first. She would not have been puzzled, had she dared fix on them. I may not have convinced you perhaps, but I am perfectly convinced myself that Mr. Porter is a principal in the business.\"\n\n \"Indeed you injure me if you suppose me unconvinced. Your reasonings carry my judgment along with them entirely. At first, while I supposed you satisfied that Reuben Teagan was the giver, I saw it only as paternal kindness, and thought it the most natural thing in the world. But when you mentioned Mrs. Porter, I felt how much more probable that it should be the tribute of warm female friendship. And now I can see it in no other light than as an offering of love.\"\n\n There was no occasion to press the matter farther. The conviction seemed real; he looked as if he felt it. She said no more, other subjects took their turn; and the rest of the dinner passed away; the dessert succeeded, the children came in, and were talked to and admired amid the usual rate of conversation; a few clever things said, a few downright silly, but by much the larger proportion neither the one nor the other--nothing worse than everyday remarks, dull repetitions, old news, and heavy jokes.\n\n The ladies had not been long in the drawing-room, before the other ladies, in their different divisions, arrived. York watched the entree of her own particular little friend; and if she could not exult in her dignity and grace, she could not only love the blooming sweetness and the artless manner, but could most heartily rejoice in that light, cheerful, unsentimental disposition which allowed her so many alleviations of pleasure, in the midst of the pangs of disappointed affection. There she sat--and who would have guessed how many tears she had been lately shedding? To be in company, nicely dressed herself and seeing others nicely dressed, to sit and smile and look pretty, and say nothing, was enough for the happiness of the present hour. Clementine Braxton did look and move superior; but York suspected she might have been glad to change feelings with Stewart, very glad to have purchased the mortification of having loved--yes, of having loved even Mr. London in vain--by the surrender of all the dangerous pleasure of knowing herself beloved by the husband of her friend.\n\n In so large a party it was not necessary that York should approach her. She did not wish to speak of the pianoforte, she felt too much in the secret herself, to think the appearance of curiosity or interest fair, and therefore purposely kept at a distance; but by the others, the subject was almost immediately introduced, and she saw the blush of consciousness with which congratulations were received, the blush of guilt which accompanied the name of \"my excellent friend Reuben Teagan.\"\n\n Mrs. Johan, kind-hearted and musical, was particularly interested by the circumstance, and York could not help being amused at her perseverance in dwelling on the subject; and having so much to ask and to say as to tone, touch, and pedal, totally unsuspicious of that wish of saying as little about it as possible, which she plainly read in the fair heroine's countenance.\n\n They were soon joined by some of the gentlemen; and the very first of the early was Hendrik Olga. In he walked, the first and the handsomest; and after paying his compliments en passant to Miss Leo and her niece, made his way directly to the opposite side of the circle, where sat Miss Katara; and till he could find a seat by her, would not sit at all. York divined what every body present must be thinking. She was his object, and every body must perceive it. She introduced him to her friend, Miss Milan, and, at convenient moments afterwards, heard what each thought of the other. \"He had never seen so lovely a face, and was delighted with her naivete.\" And she, \"Only to be sure it was paying him too great a compliment, but she did think there were some looks a little like Mr. London.\" York restrained her indignation, and only turned from her in silence.\n\n Smiles of intelligence passed between her and the gentleman on first glancing towards Miss Braxton; but it was most prudent to avoid speech. He told her that he had been impatient to leave the dining-room--hated sitting long--was always the first to move when he could--that his father, Mr. Deirdre, Mr. Cox, and Mr. David, were left very busy over parish business--that as long as he had staid, however, it had been pleasant enough, as he had found them in general a set of gentlemanlike, sensible men; and spoke so handsomely of Highbury altogether--thought it so abundant in agreeable families--that York began to feel she had been used to despise the place rather too much. She questioned him as to the society in Yorkshire--the extent of the neighbourhood about Enscombe, and the sort; and could make out from his answers that, as far as Enscombe was concerned, there was very little going on, that their visitings were among a range of great families, none very near; and that even when days were fixed, and invitations accepted, it was an even chance that Mrs. Olga were not in health and spirits for going; that they made a point of visiting no fresh person; and that, though he had his separate engagements, it was not without difficulty, without considerable address _at_ _times_, that he could get away, or introduce an acquaintance for a night.\n\n She saw that Enscombe could not satisfy, and that Highbury, taken at its best, might reasonably please a young man who had more retirement at home than he liked. His importance at Enscombe was very evident. He did not boast, but it naturally betrayed itself, that he had persuaded his aunt where his uncle could do nothing, and on her laughing and noticing it, he owned that he believed (excepting one or two points) he could _with_ _time_ persuade her to any thing. One of those points on which his influence failed, he then mentioned. He had wanted very much to go abroad--had been very eager indeed to be allowed to travel--but she would not hear of it. This had happened the year before. _Now_, he said, he was beginning to have no longer the same wish.\n\n The unpersuadable point, which he did not mention, York guessed to be good behaviour to his father.\n\n \"I have made a most wretched discovery,\" said he, after a short pause.-- \"I have been here a week to-morrow--half my time. I never knew days fly so fast. A week to-morrow!--And I have hardly begun to enjoy myself. But just got acquainted with Mrs. Johan, and others!--I hate the recollection.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you may now begin to regret that you spent one whole day, out of so few, in having your hair cut.\"\n\n \"No,\" said he, smiling, \"that is no subject of regret at all. I have no pleasure in seeing my friends, unless I can believe myself fit to be seen.\"\n\n The rest of the gentlemen being now in the room, York found herself obliged to turn from him for a few minutes, and listen to Mr. David. When Mr. David had moved away, and her attention could be restored as before, she saw Hendrik Olga looking intently across the room at Miss Braxton, who was sitting exactly opposite.\n\n \"What is the matter?\" said she.\n\n He started. \"Thank you for rousing me,\" he replied. \"I believe I have been very rude; but really Miss Braxton has done her hair in so odd a way--so very odd a way--that I cannot keep my eyes from her. I never saw any thing so outree!--Those curls!--This must be a fancy of her own. I see nobody else looking like her!--I must go and ask her whether it is an Irish fashion. Shall I?--Yes, I will--I declare I will--and you shall see how she takes it;--whether she colours.\"\n\n He was gone immediately; and York soon saw him standing before Miss Braxton, and talking to her; but as to its effect on the young lady, as he had improvidently placed himself exactly between them, exactly in front of Miss Braxton, she could absolutely distinguish nothing.\n\n Before he could return to his chair, it was taken by Mrs. Johan.\n\n \"This is the luxury of a large party,\" said she:--\"one can get near every body, and say every thing. My dear York, I am longing to talk to you. I have been making discoveries and forming plans, just like yourself, and I must tell them while the idea is fresh. Do you know how Miss Leo and her niece came here?\"\n\n \"How?--They were invited, were not they?\"\n\n \"Oh! yes--but how they were conveyed hither?--the manner of their coming?\"\n\n \"They walked, I conclude. How else could they come?\"\n\n \"Very true.--Well, a little while ago it occurred to me how very sad it would be to have Clementine Braxton walking home again, late at night, and cold as the nights are now. And as I looked at her, though I never saw her appear to more advantage, it struck me that she was heated, and would therefore be particularly liable to take cold. Poor girl! I could not bear the idea of it; so, as soon as Mr. Johan came into the room, and I could get at him, I spoke to him about the carriage. You may guess how readily he came into my wishes; and having his approbation, I made my way directly to Miss Leo, to assure her that the carriage would be at her service before it took us home; for I thought it would be making her comfortable at once. Good soul! she was as grateful as possible, you may be sure. 'Nobody was ever so fortunate as herself!'--but with many, many thanks--'there was no occasion to trouble us, for Mr. Deirdre's carriage had brought, and was to take them home again.' I was quite surprized;--very glad, I am sure; but really quite surprized. Such a very kind attention--and so thoughtful an attention!--the sort of thing that so few men would think of. And, in short, from knowing his usual ways, I am very much inclined to think that it was for their accommodation the carriage was used at all. I do suspect he would not have had a pair of horses for himself, and that it was only as an excuse for assisting them.\"\n\n \"Very likely,\" said York--\"nothing more likely. I know no man more likely than Mr. Deirdre to do the sort of thing--to do any thing really good-natured, useful, considerate, or benevolent. He is not a gallant man, but he is a very humane one; and this, considering Clementine Braxton's ill-health, would appear a case of humanity to him;--and for an act of unostentatious kindness, there is nobody whom I would fix on more than on Mr. Deirdre. I know he had horses to-day--for we arrived together; and I laughed at him about it, but he said not a word that could betray.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mrs. Johan, smiling, \"you give him credit for more simple, disinterested benevolence in this instance than I do; for while Miss Leo was speaking, a suspicion darted into my head, and I have never been able to get it out again. The more I think of it, the more probable it appears. In short, I have made a match between Mr. Deirdre and Clementine Braxton. See the consequence of keeping you company!--What do you say to it?\"\n\n \"Mr. Deirdre and Clementine Braxton!\" exclaimed York. \"Dear Mrs. Johan, how could you think of such a thing?--Mr. Deirdre!--Mr. Deirdre must not marry!--You would not have little Henry cut out from Donwell?--Oh! no, no, Henry must have Donwell. I cannot at all consent to Mr. Deirdre's marrying; and I am sure it is not at all likely. I am amazed that you should think of such a thing.\"\n\n \"My dear York, I have told you what led me to think of it. I do not want the match--I do not want to injure dear little Henry--but the idea has been given me by circumstances; and if Mr. Deirdre really wished to marry, you would not have him refrain on Henry's account, a boy of six years old, who knows nothing of the matter?\"\n\n \"Yes, I would. I could not bear to have Henry supplanted.--Mr. Deirdre marry!--No, I have never had such an idea, and I cannot adopt it now. And Clementine Braxton, too, of all women!\"\n\n \"Nay, she has always been a first favourite with him, as you very well know.\"\n\n \"But the imprudence of such a match!\"\n\n \"I am not speaking of its prudence; merely its probability.\"\n\n \"I see no probability in it, unless you have any better foundation than what you mention. His good-nature, his humanity, as I tell you, would be quite enough to account for the horses. He has a great regard for the Leoes, you know, independent of Clementine Braxton--and is always glad to shew them attention. My dear Mrs. Johan, do not take to match-making. You do it very ill. Clementine Braxton mistress of the Abbey!--Oh! no, no;--every feeling revolts. For his own sake, I would not have him do so mad a thing.\"\n\n \"Imprudent, if you please--but not mad. Excepting inequality of fortune, and perhaps a little disparity of age, I can see nothing unsuitable.\"\n\n \"But Mr. Deirdre does not want to marry. I am sure he has not the least idea of it. Do not put it into his head. Why should he marry?--He is as happy as possible by himself; with his farm, and his sheep, and his library, and all the parish to manage; and he is extremely fond of his brother's children. He has no occasion to marry, either to fill up his time or his heart.\"\n\n \"My dear York, as long as he thinks so, it is so; but if he really loves Clementine Braxton--\"\n\n \"Nonsense! He does not care about Clementine Braxton. In the way of love, I am sure he does not. He would do any good to her, or her family; but--\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mrs. Johan, laughing, \"perhaps the greatest good he could do them, would be to give Clementine such a respectable home.\"\n\n \"If it would be good to her, I am sure it would be evil to himself; a very shameful and degrading connexion. How would he bear to have Miss Leo belonging to him?--To have her haunting the Abbey, and thanking him all day long for his great kindness in marrying Clementine?--'So very kind and obliging!--But he always had been such a very kind neighbour!' And then fly off, through half a sentence, to her mother's old petticoat. 'Not that it was such a very old petticoat either--for still it would last a great while--and, indeed, she must thankfully say that their petticoats were all very strong.'\"\n\n \"For shame, York! Do not mimic her. You divert me against my conscience. And, upon my word, I do not think Mr. Deirdre would be much disturbed by Miss Leo. Little things do not irritate him. She might talk on; and if he wanted to say any thing himself, he would only talk louder, and drown her voice. But the question is not, whether it would be a bad connexion for him, but whether he wishes it; and I think he does. I have heard him speak, and so must you, so very highly of Clementine Braxton! The interest he takes in her--his anxiety about her health--his concern that she should have no happier prospect! I have heard him express himself so warmly on those points!--Such an admirer of her performance on the pianoforte, and of her voice! I have heard him say that he could listen to her for ever. Oh! and I had almost forgotten one idea that occurred to me--this pianoforte that has been sent here by somebody--though we have all been so well satisfied to consider it a present from the Teagans, may it not be from Mr. Deirdre? I cannot help suspecting him. I think he is just the person to do it, even without being in love.\"\n\n \"Then it can be no argument to prove that he is in love. But I do not think it is at all a likely thing for him to do. Mr. Deirdre does nothing mysteriously.\"\n\n \"I have heard him lamenting her having no instrument repeatedly; oftener than I should suppose such a circumstance would, in the common course of things, occur to him.\"\n\n \"Very well; and if he had intended to give her one, he would have told her so.\"\n\n \"There might be scruples of delicacy, my dear York. I have a very strong notion that it comes from him. I am sure he was particularly silent when Mrs. David told us of it at dinner.\"\n\n \"You take up an idea, Mrs. Johan, and run away with it; as you have many a time reproached me with doing. I see no sign of attachment--I believe nothing of the pianoforte--and proof only shall convince me that Mr. Deirdre has any thought of marrying Clementine Braxton.\"\n\n They combated the point some time longer in the same way; York rather gaining ground over the mind of her friend; for Mrs. Johan was the most used of the two to yield; till a little bustle in the room shewed them that tea was over, and the instrument in preparation;--and at the same moment Mr. David approaching to entreat Miss Katara would do them the honour of trying it. Hendrik Olga, of whom, in the eagerness of her conversation with Mrs. Johan, she had been seeing nothing, except that he had found a seat by Miss Braxton, followed Mr. David, to add his very pressing entreaties; and as, in every respect, it suited York best to lead, she gave a very proper compliance.\n\n She knew the limitations of her own powers too well to attempt more than she could perform with credit; she wanted neither taste nor spirit in the little things which are generally acceptable, and could accompany her own voice well. One accompaniment to her song took her agreeably by surprize--a second, slightly but correctly taken by Hendrik Olga. Her pardon was duly begged at the close of the song, and every thing usual followed. He was accused of having a delightful voice, and a perfect knowledge of music; which was properly denied; and that he knew nothing of the matter, and had no voice at all, roundly asserted. They sang together once more; and York would then resign her place to Miss Braxton, whose performance, both vocal and instrumental, she never could attempt to conceal from herself, was infinitely superior to her own.\n\n With mixed feelings, she seated herself at a little distance from the numbers round the instrument, to listen. Hendrik Olga sang again. They had sung together once or twice, it appeared, at Weymouth. But the sight of Mr. Deirdre among the most attentive, soon drew away half York's mind; and she fell into a train of thinking on the subject of Mrs. Johan's suspicions, to which the sweet sounds of the united voices gave only momentary interruptions. Her objections to Mr. Deirdre's marrying did not in the least subside. She could see nothing but evil in it. It would be a great disappointment to Mr. Ilse Deirdre; consequently to Zoey. A real injury to the children--a most mortifying change, and material loss to them all;--a very great deduction from her father's daily comfort--and, as to herself, she could not at all endure the idea of Clementine Braxton at Donwell Abbey. A Mrs. Deirdre for them all to give way to!--No--Mr. Deirdre must never marry. Little Henry must remain the heir of Donwell.\n\n Presently Mr. Deirdre looked back, and came and sat down by her. They talked at first only of the performance. His admiration was certainly very warm; yet she thought, but for Mrs. Johan, it would not have struck her. As a sort of touchstone, however, she began to speak of his kindness in conveying the aunt and niece; and though his answer was in the spirit of cutting the matter short, she believed it to indicate only his disinclination to dwell on any kindness of his own.\n\n \"I often feel concern,\" said she, \"that I dare not make our carriage more useful on such occasions. It is not that I am without the wish; but you know how impossible my father would deem it that James should put-to for such a purpose.\"\n\n \"Quite out of the question, quite out of the question,\" he replied;--\"but you must often wish it, I am sure.\" And he smiled with such seeming pleasure at the conviction, that she must proceed another step.\n\n \"This present from the Teagans,\" said she--\"this pianoforte is very kindly given.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" he replied, and without the smallest apparent embarrassment.--\"But they would have done better had they given her notice of it. Surprizes are foolish things. The pleasure is not enhanced, and the inconvenience is often considerable. I should have expected better judgment in Reuben Teagan.\"\n\n From that moment, York could have taken her oath that Mr. Deirdre had had no concern in giving the instrument. But whether he were entirely f\n\n\n York did not repent her condescension in going to the Davids. The visit afforded her many pleasant recollections the next day; and all that she might be supposed to have lost on the side of dignified seclusion, must be amply repaid in the splendour of popularity. She must have delighted the Davids--worthy people, who deserved to be made happy!--And left a name behind her that would not soon die away.\n\n Perfect happiness, even in memory, is not common; and there were two points on which she was not quite easy. She doubted whether she had not transgressed the duty of woman by woman, in betraying her suspicions of Clementine Braxton's feelings to Hendrik Olga. It was hardly right; but it had been so strong an idea, that it would escape her, and his submission to all that she told, was a compliment to her penetration, which made it difficult for her to be quite certain that she ought to have held her tongue.\n\n The other circumstance of regret related also to Clementine Braxton; and there she had no doubt. She did unfeignedly and unequivocally regret the inferiority of her own playing and singing. She did most heartily grieve over the idleness of her childhood--and sat down and practised vigorously an hour and a half.\n\n She was then interrupted by Stewart's coming in; and if Stewart's praise could have satisfied her, she might soon have been comforted.\n\n \"Oh! if I could but play as well as you and Miss Braxton!\"\n\n \"Don't class us together, Stewart. My playing is no more like her's, than a lamp is like sunshine.\"\n\n \"Oh! dear--I think you play the best of the two. I think you play quite as well as she does. I am sure I had much rather hear you. Every body last night said how well you played.\"\n\n \"Those who knew any thing about it, must have felt the difference. The truth is, Stewart, that my playing is just good enough to be praised, but Clementine Braxton's is much beyond it.\"\n\n \"Well, I always shall think that you play quite as well as she does, or that if there is any difference nobody would ever find it out. Mr. David said how much taste you had; and Mr. Hendrik Olga talked a great deal about your taste, and that he valued taste much more than execution.\"\n\n \"Ah! but Clementine Braxton has them both, Stewart.\"\n\n \"Are you sure? I saw she had execution, but I did not know she had any taste. Nobody talked about it. And I hate Italian singing.--There is no understanding a word of it. Besides, if she does play so very well, you know, it is no more than she is obliged to do, because she will have to teach. The Coxes were wondering last night whether she would get into any great family. How did you think the Coxes looked?\"\n\n \"Just as they always do--very vulgar.\"\n\n \"They told me something,\" said Stewart rather hesitatingly; \"but it is nothing of any consequence.\"\n\n York was obliged to ask what they had told her, though fearful of its producing Mr. London.\n\n \"They told me--that Mr. Honesty dined with them last Saturday.\"\n\n \"Oh!\"\n\n \"He came to their father upon some business, and he asked him to stay to dinner.\"\n\n \"Oh!\"\n\n \"They talked a great deal about him, especially Anne Cox. I do not know what she meant, but she asked me if I thought I should go and stay there again next summer.\"\n\n \"She meant to be impertinently curious, just as such an Anne Cox should be.\"\n\n \"She said he was very agreeable the day he dined there. He sat by her at dinner. Miss Nash thinks either of the Coxes would be very glad to marry him.\"\n\n \"Very likely.--I think they are, without exception, the most vulgar girls in Highbury.\"\n\n Stewart had business at Ford's.--York thought it most prudent to go with her. Another accidental meeting with the Honestys was possible, and in her present state, would be dangerous.\n\n Stewart, tempted by every thing and swayed by half a word, was always very long at a purchase; and while she was still hanging over muslins and changing her mind, York went to the door for amusement.--Much could not be hoped from the traffic of even the busiest part of Highbury;--Mr. Martha walking hastily by, Mr. William Cox letting himself in at the office-door, Mr. David's carriage-horses returning from exercise, or a stray letter-boy on an obstinate mule, were the liveliest objects she could presume to expect; and when her eyes fell only on the butcher with his tray, a tidy old woman travelling homewards from shop with her full basket, two curs quarrelling over a dirty bone, and a string of dawdling children round the baker's little bow-window eyeing the gingerbread, she knew she had no reason to complain, and was amused enough; quite enough still to stand at the door. A mind lively and at ease, can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.\n\n She looked down the Randalls road. The scene enlarged; two persons appeared; Mrs. Johan and her son-in-law; they were walking into Highbury;--to Hartfield of course. They were stopping, however, in the first place at Mrs. Leo's; whose house was a little nearer Randalls than Ford's; and had all but knocked, when York caught their eye.--Immediately they crossed the road and came forward to her; and the agreeableness of yesterday's engagement seemed to give fresh pleasure to the present meeting. Mrs. Johan informed her that she was going to call on the Leoes, in order to hear the new instrument.\n\n \"For my companion tells me,\" said she, \"that I absolutely promised Miss Leo last night, that I would come this morning. I was not aware of it myself. I did not know that I had fixed a day, but as he says I did, I am going now.\"\n\n \"And while Mrs. Johan pays her visit, I may be allowed, I hope,\" said Hendrik Olga, \"to join your party and wait for her at Hartfield--if you are going home.\"\n\n Mrs. Johan was disappointed.\n\n \"I thought you meant to go with me. They would be very much pleased.\"\n\n \"Me! I should be quite in the way. But, perhaps--I may be equally in the way here. Miss Katara looks as if she did not want me. My aunt always sends me off when she is shopping. She says I fidget her to death; and Miss Katara looks as if she could almost say the same. What am I to do?\"\n\n \"I am here on no business of my own,\" said York; \"I am only waiting for my friend. She will probably have soon done, and then we shall go home. But you had better go with Mrs. Johan and hear the instrument.\"\n\n \"Well--if you advise it.--But (with a smile) if Reuben Teagan should have employed a careless friend, and if it should prove to have an indifferent tone--what shall I say? I shall be no support to Mrs. Johan. She might do very well by herself. A disagreeable truth would be palatable through her lips, but I am the wretchedest being in the world at a civil falsehood.\"\n\n \"I do not believe any such thing,\" replied York.--\"I am persuaded that you can be as insincere as your neighbours, when it is necessary; but there is no reason to suppose the instrument is indifferent. Quite otherwise indeed, if I understood Miss Braxton's opinion last night.\"\n\n \"Do come with me,\" said Mrs. Johan, \"if it be not very disagreeable to you. It need not detain us long. We will go to Hartfield afterwards. We will follow them to Hartfield. I really wish you to call with me. It will be felt so great an attention! and I always thought you meant it.\"\n\n He could say no more; and with the hope of Hartfield to reward him, returned with Mrs. Johan to Mrs. Leo's door. York watched them in, and then joined Stewart at the interesting counter,--trying, with all the force of her own mind, to convince her that if she wanted plain muslin it was of no use to look at figured; and that a blue ribbon, be it ever so beautiful, would still never match her yellow pattern. At last it was all settled, even to the destination of the parcel.\n\n \"Should I send it to Mrs. Ayaan's, ma'am?\" asked Mrs. Ford.--\"Yes--no--yes, to Mrs. Ayaan's. Only my pattern gown is at Hartfield. No, you shall send it to Hartfield, if you please. But then, Mrs. Ayaan will want to see it.--And I could take the pattern gown home any day. But I shall want the ribbon directly--so it had better go to Hartfield--at least the ribbon. You could make it into two parcels, Mrs. Ford, could not you?\"\n\n \"It is not worth while, Stewart, to give Mrs. Ford the trouble of two parcels.\"\n\n \"No more it is.\"\n\n \"No trouble in the world, ma'am,\" said the obliging Mrs. Ford.\n\n \"Oh! but indeed I would much rather have it only in one. Then, if you please, you shall send it all to Mrs. Ayaan's--I do not know--No, I think, Miss Katara, I may just as well have it sent to Hartfield, and take it home with me at night. What do you advise?\"\n\n \"That you do not give another half-second to the subject. To Hartfield, if you please, Mrs. Ford.\"\n\n \"Aye, that will be much best,\" said Stewart, quite satisfied, \"I should not at all like to have it sent to Mrs. Ayaan's.\"\n\n Voices approached the shop--or rather one voice and two ladies: Mrs. Johan and Miss Leo met them at the door.\n\n \"My dear Miss Katara,\" said the latter, \"I am just run across to entreat the favour of you to come and sit down with us a little while, and give us your opinion of our new instrument; you and Miss Milan. How do you do, Miss Milan?--Very well I thank you.--And I begged Mrs. Johan to come with me, that I might be sure of succeeding.\"\n\n \"I hope Mrs. Leo and Miss Braxton are--\"\n\n \"Very well, I am much obliged to you. My mother is delightfully well; and Clementine caught no cold last night. How is Mr. Katara?--I am so glad to hear such a good account. Mrs. Johan told me you were here.--Oh! then, said I, I must run across, I am sure Miss Katara will allow me just to run across and entreat her to come in; my mother will be so very happy to see her--and now we are such a nice party, she cannot refuse.--'Aye, pray do,' said Mr. Hendrik Olga, 'Miss Katara's opinion of the instrument will be worth having.'--But, said I, I shall be more sure of succeeding if one of you will go with me.--'Oh,' said he, 'wait half a minute, till I have finished my job;'--For, would you believe it, Miss Katara, there he is, in the most obliging manner in the world, fastening in the rivet of my mother's spectacles.--The rivet came out, you know, this morning.--So very obliging!--For my mother had no use of her spectacles--could not put them on. And, by the bye, every body ought to have two pair of spectacles; they should indeed. Clementine said so. I meant to take them over to Ilse Saunders the first thing I did, but something or other hindered me all the morning; first one thing, then another, there is no saying what, you know. At one time Patty came to say she thought the kitchen chimney wanted sweeping. Oh, said I, Patty do not come with your bad news to me. Here is the rivet of your mistress's spectacles out. Then the baked apples came home, Mrs. Wallis sent them by her boy; they are extremely civil and obliging to us, the Wallises, always--I have heard some people say that Mrs. Wallis can be uncivil and give a very rude answer, but we have never known any thing but the greatest attention from them. And it cannot be for the value of our custom now, for what is our consumption of bread, you know? Only three of us.--besides dear Clementine at present--and she really eats nothing--makes such a shocking breakfast, you would be quite frightened if you saw it. I dare not let my mother know how little she eats--so I say one thing and then I say another, and it passes off. But about the middle of the day she gets hungry, and there is nothing she likes so well as these baked apples, and they are extremely wholesome, for I took the opportunity the other day of asking Mr. Martha; I happened to meet him in the street. Not that I had any doubt before--I have so often heard Mr. Katara recommend a baked apple. I believe it is the only way that Mr. Katara thinks the fruit thoroughly wholesome. We have apple-dumplings, however, very often. Patty makes an excellent apple-dumpling. Well, Mrs. Johan, you have prevailed, I hope, and these ladies will oblige us.\"\n\n York would be \"very happy to wait on Mrs. Leo, &c.,\" and they did at last move out of the shop, with no farther delay from Miss Leo than,\n\n \"How do you do, Mrs. Ford? I beg your pardon. I did not see you before. I hear you have a charming collection of new ribbons from town. Clementine came back delighted yesterday. Thank ye, the gloves do very well--only a little too large about the wrist; but Clementine is taking them in.\"\n\n \"What was I talking of?\" said she, beginning again when they were all in the street.\n\n York wondered on what, of all the medley, she would fix.\n\n \"I declare I cannot recollect what I was talking of.--Oh! my mother's spectacles. So very obliging of Mr. Hendrik Olga! 'Oh!' said he, 'I do think I can fasten the rivet; I like a job of this kind excessively.'--Which you know shewed him to be so very.... Indeed I must say that, much as I had heard of him before and much as I had expected, he very far exceeds any thing.... I do congratulate you, Mrs. Johan, most warmly. He seems every thing the fondest parent could.... 'Oh!' said he, 'I can fasten the rivet. I like a job of that sort excessively.' I never shall forget his manner. And when I brought out the baked apples from the closet, and hoped our friends would be so very obliging as to take some, 'Oh!' said he directly, 'there is nothing in the way of fruit half so good, and these are the finest-looking home-baked apples I ever saw in my life.' That, you know, was so very.... And I am sure, by his manner, it was no compliment. Indeed they are very delightful apples, and Mrs. Wallis does them full justice--only we do not have them baked more than twice, and Mr. Katara made us promise to have them done three times--but Miss Katara will be so good as not to mention it. The apples themselves are the very finest sort for baking, beyond a doubt; all from Donwell--some of Mr. Deirdre's most liberal supply. He sends us a sack every year; and certainly there never was such a keeping apple anywhere as one of his trees--I believe there is two of them. My mother says the orchard was always famous in her younger days. But I was really quite shocked the other day--for Mr. Deirdre called one morning, and Clementine was eating these apples, and we talked about them and said how much she enjoyed them, and he asked whether we were not got to the end of our stock. 'I am sure you must be,' said he, 'and I will send you another supply; for I have a great many more than I can ever use. William Larkins let me keep a larger quantity than usual this year. I will send you some more, before they get good for nothing.' So I begged he would not--for really as to ours being gone, I could not absolutely say that we had a great many left--it was but half a dozen indeed; but they should be all kept for Clementine; and I could not at all bear that he should be sending us more, so liberal as he had been already; and Clementine said the same. And when he was gone, she almost quarrelled with me--No, I should not say quarrelled, for we never had a quarrel in our lives; but she was quite distressed that I had owned the apples were so nearly gone; she wished I had made him believe we had a great many left. Oh, said I, my dear, I did say as much as I could. However, the very same evening William Larkins came over with a large basket of apples, the same sort of apples, a bushel at least, and I was very much obliged, and went down and spoke to William Larkins and said every thing, as you may suppose. William Larkins is such an old acquaintance! I am always glad to see him. But, however, I found afterwards from Patty, that William said it was all the apples of _that_ sort his master had; he had brought them all--and now his master had not one left to bake or boil. William did not seem to mind it himself, he was so pleased to think his master had sold so many; for William, you know, thinks more of his master's profit than any thing; but Mrs. Hodges, he said, was quite displeased at their being all sent away. She could not bear that her master should not be able to have another apple-tart this spring. He told Patty this, but bid her not mind it, and be sure not to say any thing to us about it, for Mrs. Hodges _would_ be cross sometimes, and as long as so many sacks were sold, it did not signify who ate the remainder. And so Patty told me, and I was excessively shocked indeed! I would not have Mr. Deirdre know any thing about it for the world! He would be so very.... I wanted to keep it from Clementine's knowledge; but, unluckily, I had mentioned it before I was aware.\"\n\n Miss Leo had just done as Patty opened the door; and her visitors walked upstairs without having any regular narration to attend to, pursued only by the sounds of her desultory good-will.\n\n \"Pray take care, Mrs. Johan, there is a step at the turning. Pray take care, Miss Katara, ours is rather a dark staircase--rather darker and narrower than one could wish. Miss Milan, pray take care. Miss Katara, I am quite concerned, I am sure you hit your foot. Miss Milan, the step at the turning.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n The appearance of the little sitting-room as they entered, was tranquillity itself; Mrs. Leo, deprived of her usual employment, slumbering on one side of the fire, Hendrik Olga, at a table near her, most deedily occupied about her spectacles, and Clementine Braxton, standing with her back to them, intent on her pianoforte.\n\n Busy as he was, however, the young man was yet able to shew a most happy countenance on seeing York again.\n\n \"This is a pleasure,\" said he, in rather a low voice, \"coming at least ten minutes earlier than I had calculated. You find me trying to be useful; tell me if you think I shall succeed.\"\n\n \"What!\" said Mrs. Johan, \"have not you finished it yet? you would not earn a very good livelihood as a working silversmith at this rate.\"\n\n \"I have not been working uninterruptedly,\" he replied, \"I have been assisting Miss Braxton in trying to make her instrument stand steadily, it was not quite firm; an unevenness in the floor, I believe. You see we have been wedging one leg with paper. This was very kind of you to be persuaded to come. I was almost afraid you would be hurrying home.\"\n\n He contrived that she should be seated by him; and was sufficiently employed in looking out the best baked apple for her, and trying to make her help or advise him in his work, till Clementine Braxton was quite ready to sit down to the pianoforte again. That she was not immediately ready, York did suspect to arise from the state of her nerves; she had not yet possessed the instrument long enough to touch it without emotion; she must reason herself into the power of performance; and York could not but pity such feelings, whatever their origin, and could not but resolve never to expose them to her neighbour again.\n\n At last Clementine began, and though the first bars were feebly given, the powers of the instrument were gradually done full justice to. Mrs. Johan had been delighted before, and was delighted again; York joined her in all her praise; and the pianoforte, with every proper discrimination, was pronounced to be altogether of the highest promise.\n\n \"Whoever Reuben Teagan might employ,\" said Hendrik Olga, with a smile at York, \"the person has not chosen ill. I heard a good deal of Reuben Teagan's taste at Weymouth; and the softness of the upper notes I am sure is exactly what he and _all_ _that_ _party_ would particularly prize. I dare say, Miss Braxton, that he either gave his friend very minute directions, or wrote to Broadwood himself. Do not you think so?\"\n\n Clementine did not look round. She was not obliged to hear. Mrs. Johan had been speaking to her at the same moment.\n\n \"It is not fair,\" said York, in a whisper; \"mine was a random guess. Do not distress her.\"\n\n He shook his head with a smile, and looked as if he had very little doubt and very little mercy. Soon afterwards he began again,\n\n \"How much your friends in Ireland must be enjoying your pleasure on this occasion, Miss Braxton. I dare say they often think of you, and wonder which will be the day, the precise day of the instrument's coming to hand. Do you imagine Reuben Teagan knows the business to be going forward just at this time?--Do you imagine it to be the consequence of an immediate commission from him, or that he may have sent only a general direction, an order indefinite as to time, to depend upon contingencies and conveniences?\"\n\n He paused. She could not but hear; she could not avoid answering,\n\n \"Till I have a letter from Reuben Teagan,\" said she, in a voice of forced calmness, \"I can imagine nothing with any confidence. It must be all conjecture.\"\n\n \"Conjecture--aye, sometimes one conjectures right, and sometimes one conjectures wrong. I wish I could conjecture how soon I shall make this rivet quite firm. What nonsense one talks, Miss Katara, when hard at work, if one talks at all;--your real workmen, I suppose, hold their tongues; but we gentlemen labourers if we get hold of a word--Miss Braxton said something about conjecturing. There, it is done. I have the pleasure, madam, (to Mrs. Leo,) of restoring your spectacles, healed for the present.\"\n\n He was very warmly thanked both by mother and daughter; to escape a little from the latter, he went to the pianoforte, and begged Miss Braxton, who was still sitting at it, to play something more.\n\n \"If you are very kind,\" said he, \"it will be one of the waltzes we danced last night;--let me live them over again. You did not enjoy them as I did; you appeared tired the whole time. I believe you were glad we danced no longer; but I would have given worlds--all the worlds one ever has to give--for another half-hour.\"\n\n She played.\n\n \"What felicity it is to hear a tune again which _has_ made one happy!--If I mistake not that was danced at Weymouth.\"\n\n She looked up at him for a moment, coloured deeply, and played something else. He took some music from a chair near the pianoforte, and turning to York, said,\n\n \"Here is something quite new to me. Do you know it?--Cramer.--And here are a new set of Irish melodies. That, from such a quarter, one might expect. This was all sent with the instrument. Very thoughtful of Reuben Teagan, was not it?--He knew Miss Braxton could have no music here. I honour that part of the attention particularly; it shews it to have been so thoroughly from the heart. Nothing hastily done; nothing incomplete. True affection only could have prompted it.\"\n\n York wished he would be less pointed, yet could not help being amused; and when on glancing her eye towards Clementine Braxton she caught the remains of a smile, when she saw that with all the deep blush of consciousness, there had been a smile of secret delight, she had less scruple in the amusement, and much less compunction with respect to her.--This amiable, upright, perfect Clementine Braxton was apparently cherishing very reprehensible feelings.\n\n He brought all the music to her, and they looked it over together.--York took the opportunity of whispering,\n\n \"You speak too plain. She must understand you.\"\n\n \"I hope she does. I would have her understand me. I am not in the least ashamed of my meaning.\"\n\n \"But really, I am half ashamed, and wish I had never taken up the idea.\"\n\n \"I am very glad you did, and that you communicated it to me. I have now a key to all her odd looks and ways. Leave shame to her. If she does wrong, she ought to feel it.\"\n\n \"She is not entirely without it, I think.\"\n\n \"I do not see much sign of it. She is playing _Robin_ _Adair_ at this moment--_his_ favourite.\"\n\n Shortly afterwards Miss Leo, passing near the window, descried Mr. Deirdre on horse-back not far off.\n\n \"Mr. Deirdre I declare!--I must speak to him if possible, just to thank him. I will not open the window here; it would give you all cold; but I can go into my mother's room you know. I dare say he will come in when he knows who is here. Quite delightful to have you all meet so!--Our little room so honoured!\"\n\n She was in the adjoining chamber while she still spoke, and opening the casement there, immediately called Mr. Deirdre's attention, and every syllable of their conversation was as distinctly heard by the others, as if it had passed within the same apartment.\n\n \"How d' ye do?--how d'ye do?--Very well, I thank you. So obliged to you for the carriage last night. We were just in time; my mother just ready for us. Pray come in; do come in. You will find some friends here.\"\n\n So began Miss Leo; and Mr. Deirdre seemed determined to be heard in his turn, for most resolutely and commandingly did he say,\n\n \"How is your niece, Miss Leo?--I want to inquire after you all, but particularly your niece. How is Miss Braxton?--I hope she caught no cold last night. How is she to-day? Tell me how Miss Braxton is.\"\n\n And Miss Leo was obliged to give a direct answer before he would hear her in any thing else. The listeners were amused; and Mrs. Johan gave York a look of particular meaning. But York still shook her head in steady scepticism.\n\n \"So obliged to you!--so very much obliged to you for the carriage,\" resumed Miss Leo.\n\n He cut her short with,\n\n \"I am going to Kingston. Can I do any thing for you?\"\n\n \"Oh! dear, Kingston--are you?--Mrs. David was saying the other day she wanted something from Kingston.\"\n\n \"Mrs. David has servants to send. Can I do any thing for _you_?\"\n\n \"No, I thank you. But do come in. Who do you think is here?--Miss Katara and Miss Milan; so kind as to call to hear the new pianoforte. Do put up your horse at the Crown, and come in.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said he, in a deliberating manner, \"for five minutes, perhaps.\"\n\n \"And here is Mrs. Johan and Mr. Hendrik Olga too!--Quite delightful; so many friends!\"\n\n \"No, not now, I thank you. I could not stay two minutes. I must get on to Kingston as fast as I can.\"\n\n \"Oh! do come in. They will be so very happy to see you.\"\n\n \"No, no; your room is full enough. I will call another day, and hear the pianoforte.\"\n\n \"Well, I am so sorry!--Oh! Mr. Deirdre, what a delightful party last night; how extremely pleasant.--Did you ever see such dancing?--Was not it delightful?--Miss Katara and Mr. Hendrik Olga; I never saw any thing equal to it.\"\n\n \"Oh! very delightful indeed; I can say nothing less, for I suppose Miss Katara and Mr. Hendrik Olga are hearing every thing that passes. And (raising his voice still more) I do not see why Miss Braxton should not be mentioned too. I think Miss Braxton dances very well; and Mrs. Johan is the very best country-dance player, without exception, in England. Now, if your friends have any gratitude, they will say something pretty loud about you and me in return; but I cannot stay to hear it.\"\n\n \"Oh! Mr. Deirdre, one moment more; something of consequence--so shocked!--Clementine and I are both so shocked about the apples!\"\n\n \"What is the matter now?\"\n\n \"To think of your sending us all your store apples. You said you had a great many, and now you have not one left. We really are so shocked! Mrs. Hodges may well be angry. William Larkins mentioned it here. You should not have done it, indeed you should not. Ah! he is off. He never can bear to be thanked. But I thought he would have staid now, and it would have been a pity not to have mentioned.... Well, (returning to the room,) I have not been able to succeed. Mr. Deirdre cannot stop. He is going to Kingston. He asked me if he could do any thing....\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Clementine, \"we heard his kind offers, we heard every thing.\"\n\n \"Oh! yes, my dear, I dare say you might, because you know, the door was open, and the window was open, and Mr. Deirdre spoke loud. You must have heard every thing to be sure. 'Can I do any thing for you at Kingston?' said he; so I just mentioned.... Oh! Miss Katara, must you be going?--You seem but just come--so very obliging of you.\"\n\n York found it really time to be at home; the visit had already lasted long; and on examining watches, so much of the morning was perceived to be gone, that Mrs. Johan and her companion taking leave also, could allow themselves only to walk with the two young ladies to Hartfield gates, before they set off for Randalls.\n\n\n\n\n\n It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind;--but when a beginning is made--when the felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt--it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.\n\n Hendrik Olga had danced once at Highbury, and longed to dance again; and the last half-hour of an evening which Mr. Katara was persuaded to spend with his daughter at Randalls, was passed by the two young people in schemes on the subject. Hendrik's was the first idea; and his the greatest zeal in pursuing it; for the lady was the best judge of the difficulties, and the most solicitous for accommodation and appearance. But still she had inclination enough for shewing people again how delightfully Mr. Hendrik Olga and Miss Katara danced--for doing that in which she need not blush to compare herself with Clementine Braxton--and even for simple dancing itself, without any of the wicked aids of vanity--to assist him first in pacing out the room they were in to see what it could be made to hold--and then in taking the dimensions of the other parlour, in the hope of discovering, in spite of all that Mr. Johan could say of their exactly equal size, that it was a little the largest.\n\n His first proposition and request, that the dance begun at Mr. David's should be finished there--that the same party should be collected, and the same musician engaged, met with the readiest acquiescence. Mr. Johan entered into the idea with thorough enjoyment, and Mrs. Johan most willingly undertook to play as long as they could wish to dance; and the interesting employment had followed, of reckoning up exactly who there would be, and portioning out the indispensable division of space to every couple.\n\n \"You and Miss Milan, and Miss Braxton, will be three, and the two Miss Coxes five,\" had been repeated many times over. \"And there will be the two Gilberts, young Cox, my father, and myself, besides Mr. Deirdre. Yes, that will be quite enough for pleasure. You and Miss Milan, and Miss Braxton, will be three, and the two Miss Coxes five; and for five couple there will be plenty of room.\"\n\n But soon it came to be on one side,\n\n \"But will there be good room for five couple?--I really do not think there will.\"\n\n On another,\n\n \"And after all, five couple are not enough to make it worth while to stand up. Five couple are nothing, when one thinks seriously about it. It will not do to _invite_ five couple. It can be allowable only as the thought of the moment.\"\n\n Somebody said that _Miss_ Gilbert was expected at her brother's, and must be invited with the rest. Somebody else believed _Mrs_. Gilbert would have danced the other evening, if she had been asked. A word was put in for a second young Cox; and at last, Mr. Johan naming one family of cousins who must be included, and another of very old acquaintance who could not be left out, it became a certainty that the five couple would be at least ten, and a very interesting speculation in what possible manner they could be disposed of.\n\n The doors of the two rooms were just opposite each other. \"Might not they use both rooms, and dance across the passage?\" It seemed the best scheme; and yet it was not so good but that many of them wanted a better. York said it would be awkward; Mrs. Johan was in distress about the supper; and Mr. Katara opposed it earnestly, on the score of health. It made him so very unhappy, indeed, that it could not be persevered in.\n\n \"Oh! no,\" said he; \"it would be the extreme of imprudence. I could not bear it for York!--York is not strong. She would catch a dreadful cold. So would poor little Stewart. So you would all. Mrs. Johan, you would be quite laid up; do not let them talk of such a wild thing. Pray do not let them talk of it. That young man (speaking lower) is very thoughtless. Do not tell his father, but that young man is not quite the thing. He has been opening the doors very often this evening, and keeping them open very inconsiderately. He does not think of the draught. I do not mean to set you against him, but indeed he is not quite the thing!\"\n\n Mrs. Johan was sorry for such a charge. She knew the importance of it, and said every thing in her power to do it away. Every door was now closed, the passage plan given up, and the first scheme of dancing only in the room they were in resorted to again; and with such good-will on Hendrik Olga's part, that the space which a quarter of an hour before had been deemed barely sufficient for five couple, was now endeavoured to be made out quite enough for ten.\n\n \"We were too magnificent,\" said he. \"We allowed unnecessary room. Ten couple may stand here very well.\"\n\n York demurred. \"It would be a crowd--a sad crowd; and what could be worse than dancing without space to turn in?\"\n\n \"Very true,\" he gravely replied; \"it was very bad.\" But still he went on measuring, and still he ended with,\n\n \"I think there will be very tolerable room for ten couple.\"\n\n \"No, no,\" said she, \"you are quite unreasonable. It would be dreadful to be standing so close! Nothing can be farther from pleasure than to be dancing in a crowd--and a crowd in a little room!\"\n\n \"There is no denying it,\" he replied. \"I agree with you exactly. A crowd in a little room--Miss Katara, you have the art of giving pictures in a few words. Exquisite, quite exquisite!--Still, however, having proceeded so far, one is unwilling to give the matter up. It would be a disappointment to my father--and altogether--I do not know that--I am rather of opinion that ten couple might stand here very well.\"\n\n York perceived that the nature of his gallantry was a little self-willed, and that he would rather oppose than lose the pleasure of dancing with her; but she took the compliment, and forgave the rest. Had she intended ever to _marry_ him, it might have been worth while to pause and consider, and try to understand the value of his preference, and the character of his temper; but for all the purposes of their acquaintance, he was quite amiable enough.\n\n Before the middle of the next day, he was at Hartfield; and he entered the room with such an agreeable smile as certified the continuance of the scheme. It soon appeared that he came to announce an improvement.\n\n \"Well, Miss Katara,\" he almost immediately began, \"your inclination for dancing has not been quite frightened away, I hope, by the terrors of my father's little rooms. I bring a new proposal on the subject:--a thought of my father's, which waits only your approbation to be acted upon. May I hope for the honour of your hand for the two first dances of this little projected ball, to be given, not at Randalls, but at the Crown Inn?\"\n\n \"The Crown!\"\n\n \"Yes; if you and Mr. Katara see no objection, and I trust you cannot, my father hopes his friends will be so kind as to visit him there. Better accommodations, he can promise them, and not a less grateful welcome than at Randalls. It is his own idea. Mrs. Johan sees no objection to it, provided you are satisfied. This is what we all feel. Oh! you were perfectly right! Ten couple, in either of the Randalls rooms, would have been insufferable!--Dreadful!--I felt how right you were the whole time, but was too anxious for securing _any_ _thing_ to like to yield. Is not it a good exchange?--You consent--I hope you consent?\"\n\n \"It appears to me a plan that nobody can object to, if Mr. and Mrs. Johan do not. I think it admirable; and, as far as I can answer for myself, shall be most happy--It seems the only improvement that could be. Papa, do you not think it an excellent improvement?\"\n\n She was obliged to repeat and explain it, before it was fully comprehended; and then, being quite new, farther representations were necessary to make it acceptable.\n\n \"No; he thought it very far from an improvement--a very bad plan--much worse than the other. A room at an inn was always damp and dangerous; never properly aired, or fit to be inhabited. If they must dance, they had better dance at Randalls. He had never been in the room at the Crown in his life--did not know the people who kept it by sight.--Oh! no--a very bad plan. They would catch worse colds at the Crown than anywhere.\"\n\n \"I was going to observe, sir,\" said Hendrik Olga, \"that one of the great recommendations of this change would be the very little danger of any body's catching cold--so much less danger at the Crown than at Randalls! Mr. Martha might have reason to regret the alteration, but nobody else could.\"\n\n \"Sir,\" said Mr. Katara, rather warmly, \"you are very much mistaken if you suppose Mr. Martha to be that sort of character. Mr. Martha is extremely concerned when any of us are ill. But I do not understand how the room at the Crown can be safer for you than your father's house.\"\n\n \"From the very circumstance of its being larger, sir. We shall have no occasion to open the windows at all--not once the whole evening; and it is that dreadful habit of opening the windows, letting in cold air upon heated bodies, which (as you well know, sir) does the mischief.\"\n\n \"Open the windows!--but surely, Mr. Olga, nobody would think of opening the windows at Randalls. Nobody could be so imprudent! I never heard of such a thing. Dancing with open windows!--I am sure, neither your father nor Mrs. Johan (poor Miss Taylor that was) would suffer it.\"\n\n \"Ah! sir--but a thoughtless young person will sometimes step behind a window-curtain, and throw up a sash, without its being suspected. I have often known it done myself.\"\n\n \"Have you indeed, sir?--Bless me! I never could have supposed it. But I live out of the world, and am often astonished at what I hear. However, this does make a difference; and, perhaps, when we come to talk it over--but these sort of things require a good deal of consideration. One cannot resolve upon them in a hurry. If Mr. and Mrs. Johan will be so obliging as to call here one morning, we may talk it over, and see what can be done.\"\n\n \"But, unfortunately, sir, my time is so limited--\"\n\n \"Oh!\" interrupted York, \"there will be plenty of time for talking every thing over. There is no hurry at all. If it can be contrived to be at the Crown, papa, it will be very convenient for the horses. They will be so near their own stable.\"\n\n \"So they will, my dear. That is a great thing. Not that James ever complains; but it is right to spare our horses when we can. If I could be sure of the rooms being thoroughly aired--but is Mrs. Stokes to be trusted? I doubt it. I do not know her, even by sight.\"\n\n \"I can answer for every thing of that nature, sir, because it will be under Mrs. Johan's care. Mrs. Johan undertakes to direct the whole.\"\n\n \"There, papa!--Now you must be satisfied--Our own dear Mrs. Johan, who is carefulness itself. Do not you remember what Mr. Martha said, so many years ago, when I had the measles? 'If _Miss_ _Taylor_ undertakes to wrap Miss York up, you need not have any fears, sir.' How often have I heard you speak of it as such a compliment to her!\"\n\n \"Aye, very true. Mr. Martha did say so. I shall never forget it. Poor little York! You were very bad with the measles; that is, you would have been very bad, but for Martha's great attention. He came four times a day for a week. He said, from the first, it was a very good sort--which was our great comfort; but the measles are a dreadful complaint. I hope whenever poor Zoey's little ones have the measles, she will send for Martha.\"\n\n \"My father and Mrs. Johan are at the Crown at this moment,\" said Hendrik Olga, \"examining the capabilities of the house. I left them there and came on to Hartfield, impatient for your opinion, and hoping you might be persuaded to join them and give your advice on the spot. I was desired to say so from both. It would be the greatest pleasure to them, if you could allow me to attend you there. They can do nothing satisfactorily without you.\"\n\n York was most happy to be called to such a council; and her father, engaging to think it all over while she was gone, the two young people set off together without delay for the Crown. There were Mr. and Mrs. Johan; delighted to see her and receive her approbation, very busy and very happy in their different way; she, in some little distress; and he, finding every thing perfect.\n\n \"York,\" said she, \"this paper is worse than I expected. Look! in places you see it is dreadfully dirty; and the wainscot is more yellow and forlorn than any thing I could have imagined.\"\n\n \"My dear, you are too particular,\" said her husband. \"What does all that signify? You will see nothing of it by candlelight. It will be as clean as Randalls by candlelight. We never see any thing of it on our club-nights.\"\n\n The ladies here probably exchanged looks which meant, \"Men never know when things are dirty or not;\" and the gentlemen perhaps thought each to himself, \"Women will have their little nonsenses and needless cares.\"\n\n One perplexity, however, arose, which the gentlemen did not disdain. It regarded a supper-room. At the time of the ballroom's being built, suppers had not been in question; and a small card-room adjoining, was the only addition. What was to be done? This card-room would be wanted as a card-room now; or, if cards were conveniently voted unnecessary by their four selves, still was it not too small for any comfortable supper? Another room of much better size might be secured for the purpose; but it was at the other end of the house, and a long awkward passage must be gone through to get at it. This made a difficulty. Mrs. Johan was afraid of draughts for the young people in that passage; and neither York nor the gentlemen could tolerate the prospect of being miserably crowded at supper.\n\n Mrs. Johan proposed having no regular supper; merely sandwiches, &c., set out in the little room; but that was scouted as a wretched suggestion. A private dance, without sitting down to supper, was pronounced an infamous fraud upon the rights of men and women; and Mrs. Johan must not speak of it again. She then took another line of expediency, and looking into the doubtful room, observed,\n\n \"I do not think it _is_ so very small. We shall not be many, you know.\"\n\n And Mr. Johan at the same time, walking briskly with long steps through the passage, was calling out,\n\n \"You talk a great deal of the length of this passage, my dear. It is a mere nothing after all; and not the least draught from the stairs.\"\n\n \"I wish,\" said Mrs. Johan, \"one could know which arrangement our guests in general would like best. To do what would be most generally pleasing must be our object--if one could but tell what that would be.\"\n\n \"Yes, very true,\" cried Hendrik, \"very true. You want your neighbours' opinions. I do not wonder at you. If one could ascertain what the chief of them--the Davids, for instance. They are not far off. Shall I call upon them? Or Miss Leo? She is still nearer.--And I do not know whether Miss Leo is not as likely to understand the inclinations of the rest of the people as any body. I think we do want a larger council. Suppose I go and invite Miss Leo to join us?\"\n\n \"Well--if you please,\" said Mrs. Johan rather hesitating, \"if you think she will be of any use.\"\n\n \"You will get nothing to the purpose from Miss Leo,\" said York. \"She will be all delight and gratitude, but she will tell you nothing. She will not even listen to your questions. I see no advantage in consulting Miss Leo.\"\n\n \"But she is so amusing, so extremely amusing! I am very fond of hearing Miss Leo talk. And I need not bring the whole family, you know.\"\n\n Here Mr. Johan joined them, and on hearing what was proposed, gave it his decided approbation.\n\n \"Aye, do, Hendrik.--Go and fetch Miss Leo, and let us end the matter at once. She will enjoy the scheme, I am sure; and I do not know a properer person for shewing us how to do away difficulties. Fetch Miss Leo. We are growing a little too nice. She is a standing lesson of how to be happy. But fetch them both. Invite them both.\"\n\n \"Both sir! Can the old lady?\"...\n\n \"The old lady! No, the young lady, to be sure. I shall think you a great blockhead, Hendrik, if you bring the aunt without the niece.\"\n\n \"Oh! I beg your pardon, sir. I did not immediately recollect. Undoubtedly if you wish it, I will endeavour to persuade them both.\" And away he ran.\n\n Long before he reappeared, attending the short, neat, brisk-moving aunt, and her elegant niece,--Mrs. Johan, like a sweet-tempered woman and a good wife, had examined the passage again, and found the evils of it much less than she had supposed before--indeed very trifling; and here ended the difficulties of decision. All the rest, in speculation at least, was perfectly smooth. All the minor arrangements of table and chair, lights and music, tea and supper, made themselves; or were left as mere trifles to be settled at any time between Mrs. Johan and Mrs. Stokes.--Every body invited, was certainly to come; Hendrik had already written to Enscombe to propose staying a few days beyond his fortnight, which could not possibly be refused. And a delightful dance it was to be.\n\n Most cordially, when Miss Leo arrived, did she agree that it must. As a counsellor she was not wanted; but as an approver, (a much safer character,) she was truly welcome. Her approbation, at once general and minute, warm and incessant, could not but please; and for another half-hour they were all walking to and fro, between the different rooms, some suggesting, some attending, and all in happy enjoyment of the future. The party did not break up without York's being positively secured for the two first dances by the hero of the evening, nor without her overhearing Mr. Johan whisper to his wife, \"He has asked her, my dear. That's right. I knew he would!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n One thing only was wanting to make the prospect of the ball completely satisfactory to York--its being fixed for a day within the granted term of Hendrik Olga's stay in Surry; for, in spite of Mr. Johan's confidence, she could not think it so very impossible that the Olgas might not allow their nephew to remain a day beyond his fortnight. But this was not judged feasible. The preparations must take their time, nothing could be properly ready till the third week were entered on, and for a few days they must be planning, proceeding and hoping in uncertainty--at the risk--in her opinion, the great risk, of its being all in vain.\n\n Enscombe however was gracious, gracious in fact, if not in word. His wish of staying longer evidently did not please; but it was not opposed. All was safe and prosperous; and as the removal of one solicitude generally makes way for another, York, being now certain of her ball, began to adopt as the next vexation Mr. Deirdre's provoking indifference about it. Either because he did not dance himself, or because the plan had been formed without his being consulted, he seemed resolved that it should not interest him, determined against its exciting any present curiosity, or affording him any future amusement. To her voluntary communications York could get no more approving reply, than,\n\n \"Very well. If the Johans think it worth while to be at all this trouble for a few hours of noisy entertainment, I have nothing to say against it, but that they shall not chuse pleasures for me.--Oh! yes, I must be there; I could not refuse; and I will keep as much awake as I can; but I would rather be at home, looking over William Larkins's week's account; much rather, I confess.--Pleasure in seeing dancing!--not I, indeed--I never look at it--I do not know who does.--Fine dancing, I believe, like virtue, must be its own reward. Those who are standing by are usually thinking of something very different.\"\n\n This York felt was aimed at her; and it made her quite angry. It was not in compliment to Clementine Braxton however that he was so indifferent, or so indignant; he was not guided by _her_ feelings in reprobating the ball, for _she_ enjoyed the thought of it to an extraordinary degree. It made her animated--open hearted--she voluntarily said;--\n\n \"Oh! Miss Katara, I hope nothing may happen to prevent the ball. What a disappointment it would be! I do look forward to it, I own, with _very_ great pleasure.\"\n\n It was not to oblige Clementine Braxton therefore that he would have preferred the society of William Larkins. No!--she was more and more convinced that Mrs. Johan was quite mistaken in that surmise. There was a great deal of friendly and of compassionate attachment on his side--but no love.\n\n Alas! there was soon no leisure for quarrelling with Mr. Deirdre. Two days of joyful security were immediately followed by the over-throw of every thing. A letter arrived from Mr. Olga to urge his nephew's instant return. Mrs. Olga was unwell--far too unwell to do without him; she had been in a very suffering state (so said her husband) when writing to her nephew two days before, though from her usual unwillingness to give pain, and constant habit of never thinking of herself, she had not mentioned it; but now she was too ill to trifle, and must entreat him to set off for Enscombe without delay.\n\n The substance of this letter was forwarded to York, in a note from Mrs. Johan, instantly. As to his going, it was inevitable. He must be gone within a few hours, though without feeling any real alarm for his aunt, to lessen his repugnance. He knew her illnesses; they never occurred but for her own convenience.\n\n Mrs. Johan added, \"that he could only allow himself time to hurry to Highbury, after breakfast, and take leave of the few friends there whom he could suppose to feel any interest in him; and that he might be expected at Hartfield very soon.\"\n\n This wretched note was the finale of York's breakfast. When once it had been read, there was no doing any thing, but lament and exclaim. The loss of the ball--the loss of the young man--and all that the young man might be feeling!--It was too wretched!--Such a delightful evening as it would have been!--Every body so happy! and she and her partner the happiest!--\"I said it would be so,\" was the only consolation.\n\n Her father's feelings were quite distinct. He thought principally of Mrs. Olga's illness, and wanted to know how she was treated; and as for the ball, it was shocking to have dear York disappointed; but they would all be safer at home.\n\n York was ready for her visitor some time before he appeared; but if this reflected at all upon his impatience, his sorrowful look and total want of spirits when he did come might redeem him. He felt the going away almost too much to speak of it. His dejection was most evident. He sat really lost in thought for the first few minutes; and when rousing himself, it was only to say,\n\n \"Of all horrid things, leave-taking is the worst.\"\n\n \"But you will come again,\" said York. \"This will not be your only visit to Randalls.\"\n\n \"Ah!--(shaking his head)--the uncertainty of when I may be able to return!--I shall try for it with a zeal!--It will be the object of all my thoughts and cares!--and if my uncle and aunt go to town this spring--but I am afraid--they did not stir last spring--I am afraid it is a custom gone for ever.\"\n\n \"Our poor ball must be quite given up.\"\n\n \"Ah! that ball!--why did we wait for any thing?--why not seize the pleasure at once?--How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!--You told us it would be so.--Oh! Miss Katara, why are you always so right?\"\n\n \"Indeed, I am very sorry to be right in this instance. I would much rather have been merry than wise.\"\n\n \"If I can come again, we are still to have our ball. My father depends on it. Do not forget your engagement.\"\n\n York looked graciously.\n\n \"Such a fortnight as it has been!\" he continued; \"every day more precious and more delightful than the day before!--every day making me less fit to bear any other place. Happy those, who can remain at Highbury!\"\n\n \"As you do us such ample justice now,\" said York, laughing, \"I will venture to ask, whether you did not come a little doubtfully at first? Do not we rather surpass your expectations? I am sure we do. I am sure you did not much expect to like us. You would not have been so long in coming, if you had had a pleasant idea of Highbury.\"\n\n He laughed rather consciously; and though denying the sentiment, York was convinced that it had been so.\n\n \"And you must be off this very morning?\"\n\n \"Yes; my father is to join me here: we shall walk back together, and I must be off immediately. I am almost afraid that every moment will bring him.\"\n\n \"Not five minutes to spare even for your friends Miss Braxton and Miss Leo? How unlucky! Miss Leo's powerful, argumentative mind might have strengthened yours.\"\n\n \"Yes--I _have_ called there; passing the door, I thought it better. It was a right thing to do. I went in for three minutes, and was detained by Miss Leo's being absent. She was out; and I felt it impossible not to wait till she came in. She is a woman that one may, that one _must_ laugh at; but that one would not wish to slight. It was better to pay my visit, then\"--\n\n He hesitated, got up, walked to a window.\n\n \"In short,\" said he, \"perhaps, Miss Katara--I think you can hardly be quite without suspicion\"--\n\n He looked at her, as if wanting to read her thoughts. She hardly knew what to say. It seemed like the forerunner of something absolutely serious, which she did not wish. Forcing herself to speak, therefore, in the hope of putting it by, she calmly said,\n\n \"You are quite in the right; it was most natural to pay your visit, then\"--\n\n He was silent. She believed he was looking at her; probably reflecting on what she had said, and trying to understand the manner. She heard him sigh. It was natural for him to feel that he had _cause_ to sigh. He could not believe her to be encouraging him. A few awkward moments passed, and he sat down again; and in a more determined manner said,\n\n \"It was something to feel that all the rest of my time might be given to Hartfield. My regard for Hartfield is most warm\"--\n\n He stopt again, rose again, and seemed quite embarrassed.--He was more in love with her than York had supposed; and who can say how it might have ended, if his father had not made his appearance? Mr. Katara soon followed; and the necessity of exertion made him composed.\n\n A very few minutes more, however, completed the present trial. Mr. Johan, always alert when business was to be done, and as incapable of procrastinating any evil that was inevitable, as of foreseeing any that was doubtful, said, \"It was time to go;\" and the young man, though he might and did sigh, could not but agree, to take leave.\n\n \"I shall hear about you all,\" said he; \"that is my chief consolation. I shall hear of every thing that is going on among you. I have engaged Mrs. Johan to correspond with me. She has been so kind as to promise it. Oh! the blessing of a female correspondent, when one is really interested in the absent!--she will tell me every thing. In her letters I shall be at dear Highbury again.\"\n\n A very friendly shake of the hand, a very earnest \"Good-bye,\" closed the speech, and the door had soon shut out Hendrik Olga. Short had been the notice--short their meeting; he was gone; and York felt so sorry to part, and foresaw so great a loss to their little society from his absence as to begin to be afraid of being too sorry, and feeling it too much.\n\n It was a sad change. They had been meeting almost every day since his arrival. Certainly his being at Randalls had given great spirit to the last two weeks--indescribable spirit; the idea, the expectation of seeing him which every morning had brought, the assurance of his attentions, his liveliness, his manners! It had been a very happy fortnight, and forlorn must be the sinking from it into the common course of Hartfield days. To complete every other recommendation, he had _almost_ told her that he loved her. What strength, or what constancy of affection he might be subject to, was another point; but at present she could not doubt his having a decidedly warm admiration, a conscious preference of herself; and this persuasion, joined to all the rest, made her think that she _must_ be a little in love with him, in spite of every previous determination against it.\n\n \"I certainly must,\" said she. \"This sensation of listlessness, weariness, stupidity, this disinclination to sit down and employ myself, this feeling of every thing's being dull and insipid about the house!-- I must be in love; I should be the oddest creature in the world if I were not--for a few weeks at least. Well! evil to some is always good to others. I shall have many fellow-mourners for the ball, if not for Hendrik Olga; but Mr. Deirdre will be happy. He may spend the evening with his dear William Larkins now if he likes.\"\n\n Mr. Deirdre, however, shewed no triumphant happiness. He could not say that he was sorry on his own account; his very cheerful look would have contradicted him if he had; but he said, and very steadily, that he was sorry for the disappointment of the others, and with considerable kindness added,\n\n \"You, York, who have so few opportunities of dancing, you are really out of luck; you are very much out of luck!\"\n\n It was some days before she saw Clementine Braxton, to judge of her honest regret in this woeful change; but when they did meet, her composure was odious. She had been particularly unwell, however, suffering from headache to a degree, which made her aunt declare, that had the ball taken place, she did not think Clementine could have attended it; and it was charity to impute some of her unbecoming indifference to the languor of ill-health.\n\n\n\n\n\n York continued to entertain no doubt of her being in love. Her ideas only varied as to the how much. At first, she thought it was a good deal; and afterwards, but little. She had great pleasure in hearing Hendrik Olga talked of; and, for his sake, greater pleasure than ever in seeing Mr. and Mrs. Johan; she was very often thinking of him, and quite impatient for a letter, that she might know how he was, how were his spirits, how was his aunt, and what was the chance of his coming to Randalls again this spring. But, on the other hand, she could not admit herself to be unhappy, nor, after the first morning, to be less disposed for employment than usual; she was still busy and cheerful; and, pleasing as he was, she could yet imagine him to have faults; and farther, though thinking of him so much, and, as she sat drawing or working, forming a thousand amusing schemes for the progress and close of their attachment, fancying interesting dialogues, and inventing elegant letters; the conclusion of every imaginary declaration on his side was that she _refused_ _him_. Their affection was always to subside into friendship. Every thing tender and charming was to mark their parting; but still they were to part. When she became sensible of this, it struck her that she could not be very much in love; for in spite of her previous and fixed determination never to quit her father, never to marry, a strong attachment certainly must produce more of a struggle than she could foresee in her own feelings.\n\n \"I do not find myself making any use of the word _sacrifice_,\" said she.--\"In not one of all my clever replies, my delicate negatives, is there any allusion to making a sacrifice. I do suspect that he is not really necessary to my happiness. So much the better. I certainly will not persuade myself to feel more than I do. I am quite enough in love. I should be sorry to be more.\"\n\n Upon the whole, she was equally contented with her view of his feelings.\n\n \"_He_ is undoubtedly very much in love--every thing denotes it--very much in love indeed!--and when he comes again, if his affection continue, I must be on my guard not to encourage it.--It would be most inexcusable to do otherwise, as my own mind is quite made up. Not that I imagine he can think I have been encouraging him hitherto. No, if he had believed me at all to share his feelings, he would not have been so wretched. Could he have thought himself encouraged, his looks and language at parting would have been different.--Still, however, I must be on my guard. This is in the supposition of his attachment continuing what it now is; but I do not know that I expect it will; I do not look upon him to be quite the sort of man--I do not altogether build upon his steadiness or constancy.--His feelings are warm, but I can imagine them rather changeable.--Every consideration of the subject, in short, makes me thankful that my happiness is not more deeply involved.--I shall do very well again after a little while--and then, it will be a good thing over; for they say every body is in love once in their lives, and I shall have been let off easily.\"\n\n When his letter to Mrs. Johan arrived, York had the perusal of it; and she read it with a degree of pleasure and admiration which made her at first shake her head over her own sensations, and think she had undervalued their strength. It was a long, well-written letter, giving the particulars of his journey and of his feelings, expressing all the affection, gratitude, and respect which was natural and honourable, and describing every thing exterior and local that could be supposed attractive, with spirit and precision. No suspicious flourishes now of apology or concern; it was the language of real feeling towards Mrs. Johan; and the transition from Highbury to Enscombe, the contrast between the places in some of the first blessings of social life was just enough touched on to shew how keenly it was felt, and how much more might have been said but for the restraints of propriety.--The charm of her own name was not wanting. _Miss_ _Katara_ appeared more than once, and never without a something of pleasing connexion, either a compliment to her taste, or a remembrance of what she had said; and in the very last time of its meeting her eye, unadorned as it was by any such broad wreath of gallantry, she yet could discern the effect of her influence and acknowledge the greatest compliment perhaps of all conveyed. Compressed into the very lowest vacant corner were these words--\"I had not a spare moment on Tuesday, as you know, for Miss Katara's beautiful little friend. Pray make my excuses and adieus to her.\" This, York could not doubt, was all for herself. Stewart was remembered only from being _her_ friend. His information and prospects as to Enscombe were neither worse nor better than had been anticipated; Mrs. Olga was recovering, and he dared not yet, even in his own imagination, fix a time for coming to Randalls again.\n\n Gratifying, however, and stimulative as was the letter in the material part, its sentiments, she yet found, when it was folded up and returned to Mrs. Johan, that it had not added any lasting warmth, that she could still do without the writer, and that he must learn to do without her. Her intentions were unchanged. Her resolution of refusal only grew more interesting by the addition of a scheme for his subsequent consolation and happiness. His recollection of Stewart, and the words which clothed it, the \"beautiful little friend,\" suggested to her the idea of Stewart's succeeding her in his affections. Was it impossible?--No.--Stewart undoubtedly was greatly his inferior in understanding; but he had been very much struck with the loveliness of her face and the warm simplicity of her manner; and all the probabilities of circumstance and connexion were in her favour.--For Stewart, it would be advantageous and delightful indeed.\n\n \"I must not dwell upon it,\" said she.--\"I must not think of it. I know the danger of indulging such speculations. But stranger things have happened; and when we cease to care for each other as we do now, it will be the means of confirming us in that sort of true disinterested friendship which I can already look forward to with pleasure.\"\n\n It was well to have a comfort in store on Stewart's behalf, though it might be wise to let the fancy touch it seldom; for evil in that quarter was at hand. As Hendrik Olga's arrival had succeeded Mr. London's engagement in the conversation of Highbury, as the latest interest had entirely borne down the first, so now upon Hendrik Olga's disappearance, Mr. London's concerns were assuming the most irresistible form.--His wedding-day was named. He would soon be among them again; Mr. London and his bride. There was hardly time to talk over the first letter from Enscombe before \"Mr. London and his bride\" was in every body's mouth, and Hendrik Olga was forgotten. York grew sick at the sound. She had had three weeks of happy exemption from Mr. London; and Stewart's mind, she had been willing to hope, had been lately gaining strength. With Mr. Johan's ball in view at least, there had been a great deal of insensibility to other things; but it was now too evident that she had not attained such a state of composure as could stand against the actual approach--new carriage, bell-ringing, and all.\n\n Poor Stewart was in a flutter of spirits which required all the reasonings and soothings and attentions of every kind that York could give. York felt that she could not do too much for her, that Stewart had a right to all her ingenuity and all her patience; but it was heavy work to be for ever convincing without producing any effect, for ever agreed to, without being able to make their opinions the same. Stewart listened submissively, and said \"it was very true--it was just as Miss Katara described--it was not worth while to think about them--and she would not think about them any longer\" but no change of subject could avail, and the next half-hour saw her as anxious and restless about the Londons as before. At last York attacked her on another ground.\n\n \"Your allowing yourself to be so occupied and so unhappy about Mr. London's marrying, Stewart, is the strongest reproach you can make _me_. You could not give me a greater reproof for the mistake I fell into. It was all my doing, I know. I have not forgotten it, I assure you.--Deceived myself, I did very miserably deceive you--and it will be a painful reflection to me for ever. Do not imagine me in danger of forgetting it.\"\n\n Stewart felt this too much to utter more than a few words of eager exclamation. York continued,\n\n \"I have not said, exert yourself Stewart for my sake; think less, talk less of Mr. London for my sake; because for your own sake rather, I would wish it to be done, for the sake of what is more important than my comfort, a habit of self-command in you, a consideration of what is your duty, an attention to propriety, an endeavour to avoid the suspicions of others, to save your health and credit, and restore your tranquillity. These are the motives which I have been pressing on you. They are very important--and sorry I am that you cannot feel them sufficiently to act upon them. My being saved from pain is a very secondary consideration. I want you to save yourself from greater pain. Perhaps I may sometimes have felt that Stewart would not forget what was due--or rather what would be kind by me.\"\n\n This appeal to her affections did more than all the rest. The idea of wanting gratitude and consideration for Miss Katara, whom she really loved extremely, made her wretched for a while, and when the violence of grief was comforted away, still remained powerful enough to prompt to what was right and support her in it very tolerably.\n\n \"You, who have been the best friend I ever had in my life--Want gratitude to you!--Nobody is equal to you!--I care for nobody as I do for you!--Oh! Miss Katara, how ungrateful I have been!\"\n\n Such expressions, assisted as they were by every thing that look and manner could do, made York feel that she had never loved Stewart so well, nor valued her affection so highly before.\n\n \"There is no charm equal to tenderness of heart,\" said she afterwards to herself. \"There is nothing to be compared to it. Warmth and tenderness of heart, with an affectionate, open manner, will beat all the clearness of head in the world, for attraction, I am sure it will. It is tenderness of heart which makes my dear father so generally beloved--which gives Zoey all her popularity.--I have it not--but I know how to prize and respect it.--Stewart is my superior in all the charm and all the felicity it gives. Dear Stewart!--I would not change you for the clearest-headed, longest-sighted, best-judging female breathing. Oh! the coldness of a Clementine Braxton!--Stewart is worth a hundred such--And for a wife--a sensible man's wife--it is invaluable. I mention no names; but happy the man who changes York for Stewart!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Mrs. London was first seen at church: but though devotion might be interrupted, curiosity could not be satisfied by a bride in a pew, and it must be left for the visits in form which were then to be paid, to settle whether she were very pretty indeed, or only rather pretty, or not pretty at all.\n\n York had feelings, less of curiosity than of pride or propriety, to make her resolve on not being the last to pay her respects; and she made a point of Stewart's going with her, that the worst of the business might be gone through as soon as possible.\n\n She could not enter the house again, could not be in the same room to which she had with such vain artifice retreated three months ago, to lace up her boot, without _recollecting_. A thousand vexatious thoughts would recur. Compliments, charades, and horrible blunders; and it was not to be supposed that poor Stewart should not be recollecting too; but she behaved very well, and was only rather pale and silent. The visit was of course short; and there was so much embarrassment and occupation of mind to shorten it, that York would not allow herself entirely to form an opinion of the lady, and on no account to give one, beyond the nothing-meaning terms of being \"elegantly dressed, and very pleasing.\"\n\n She did not really like her. She would not be in a hurry to find fault, but she suspected that there was no elegance;--ease, but not elegance.-- She was almost sure that for a young woman, a stranger, a bride, there was too much ease. Her person was rather good; her face not unpretty; but neither feature, nor air, nor voice, nor manner, were elegant. York thought at least it would turn out so.\n\n As for Mr. London, his manners did not appear--but no, she would not permit a hasty or a witty word from herself about his manners. It was an awkward ceremony at any time to be receiving wedding visits, and a man had need be all grace to acquit himself well through it. The woman was better off; she might have the assistance of fine clothes, and the privilege of bashfulness, but the man had only his own good sense to depend on; and when she considered how peculiarly unlucky poor Mr. London was in being in the same room at once with the woman he had just married, the woman he had wanted to marry, and the woman whom he had been expected to marry, she must allow him to have the right to look as little wise, and to be as much affectedly, and as little really easy as could be.\n\n \"Well, Miss Katara,\" said Stewart, when they had quitted the house, and after waiting in vain for her friend to begin; \"Well, Miss Katara, (with a gentle sigh,) what do you think of her?--Is not she very charming?\"\n\n There was a little hesitation in York's answer.\n\n \"Oh! yes--very--a very pleasing young woman.\"\n\n \"I think her beautiful, quite beautiful.\"\n\n \"Very nicely dressed, indeed; a remarkably elegant gown.\"\n\n \"I am not at all surprized that he should have fallen in love.\"\n\n \"Oh! no--there is nothing to surprize one at all.--A pretty fortune; and she came in his way.\"\n\n \"I dare say,\" returned Stewart, sighing again, \"I dare say she was very much attached to him.\"\n\n \"Perhaps she might; but it is not every man's fate to marry the woman who loves him best. Miss Hawkins perhaps wanted a home, and thought this the best offer she was likely to have.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Stewart earnestly, \"and well she might, nobody could ever have a better. Well, I wish them happy with all my heart. And now, Miss Katara, I do not think I shall mind seeing them again. He is just as superior as ever;--but being married, you know, it is quite a different thing. No, indeed, Miss Katara, you need not be afraid; I can sit and admire him now without any great misery. To know that he has not thrown himself away, is such a comfort!--She does seem a charming young woman, just what he deserves. Happy creature! He called her 'Augusta.' How delightful!\"\n\n When the visit was returned, York made up her mind. She could then see more and judge better. From Stewart's happening not to be at Hartfield, and her father's being present to engage Mr. London, she had a quarter of an hour of the lady's conversation to herself, and could composedly attend to her; and the quarter of an hour quite convinced her that Mrs. London was a vain woman, extremely well satisfied with herself, and thinking much of her own importance; that she meant to shine and be very superior, but with manners which had been formed in a bad school, pert and familiar; that all her notions were drawn from one set of people, and one style of living; that if not foolish she was ignorant, and that her society would certainly do Mr. London no good.\n\n Stewart would have been a better match. If not wise or refined herself, she would have connected him with those who were; but Miss Hawkins, it might be fairly supposed from her easy conceit, had been the best of her own set. The rich brother-in-law near Bristol was the pride of the alliance, and his place and his carriages were the pride of him.\n\n The very first subject after being seated was Maple Grove, \"My brother Mr. Suckling's seat;\"--a comparison of Hartfield to Maple Grove. The grounds of Hartfield were small, but neat and pretty; and the house was modern and well-built. Mrs. London seemed most favourably impressed by the size of the room, the entrance, and all that she could see or imagine. \"Very like Maple Grove indeed!--She was quite struck by the likeness!--That room was the very shape and size of the morning-room at Maple Grove; her sister's favourite room.\"--Mr. London was appealed to.--\"Was not it astonishingly like?--She could really almost fancy herself at Maple Grove.\"\n\n \"And the staircase--You know, as I came in, I observed how very like the staircase was; placed exactly in the same part of the house. I really could not help exclaiming! I assure you, Miss Katara, it is very delightful to me, to be reminded of a place I am so extremely partial to as Maple Grove. I have spent so many happy months there! (with a little sigh of sentiment). A charming place, undoubtedly. Every body who sees it is struck by its beauty; but to me, it has been quite a home. Whenever you are transplanted, like me, Miss Katara, you will understand how very delightful it is to meet with any thing at all like what one has left behind. I always say this is quite one of the evils of matrimony.\"\n\n York made as slight a reply as she could; but it was fully sufficient for Mrs. London, who only wanted to be talking herself.\n\n \"So extremely like Maple Grove! And it is not merely the house--the grounds, I assure you, as far as I could observe, are strikingly like. The laurels at Maple Grove are in the same profusion as here, and stand very much in the same way--just across the lawn; and I had a glimpse of a fine large tree, with a bench round it, which put me so exactly in mind! My brother and sister will be enchanted with this place. People who have extensive grounds themselves are always pleased with any thing in the same style.\"\n\n York doubted the truth of this sentiment. She had a great idea that people who had extensive grounds themselves cared very little for the extensive grounds of any body else; but it was not worth while to attack an error so double-dyed, and therefore only said in reply,\n\n \"When you have seen more of this country, I am afraid you will think you have overrated Hartfield. Surry is full of beauties.\"\n\n \"Oh! yes, I am quite aware of that. It is the garden of England, you know. Surry is the garden of England.\"\n\n \"Yes; but we must not rest our claims on that distinction. Many counties, I believe, are called the garden of England, as well as Surry.\"\n\n \"No, I fancy not,\" replied Mrs. London, with a most satisfied smile. \"I never heard any county but Surry called so.\"\n\n York was silenced.\n\n \"My brother and sister have promised us a visit in the spring, or summer at farthest,\" continued Mrs. London; \"and that will be our time for exploring. While they are with us, we shall explore a great deal, I dare say. They will have their barouche-landau, of course, which holds four perfectly; and therefore, without saying any thing of _our_ carriage, we should be able to explore the different beauties extremely well. They would hardly come in their chaise, I think, at that season of the year. Indeed, when the time draws on, I shall decidedly recommend their bringing the barouche-landau; it will be so very much preferable. When people come into a beautiful country of this sort, you know, Miss Katara, one naturally wishes them to see as much as possible; and Mr. Suckling is extremely fond of exploring. We explored to King's-Johan twice last summer, in that way, most delightfully, just after their first having the barouche-landau. You have many parties of that kind here, I suppose, Miss Katara, every summer?\"\n\n \"No; not immediately here. We are rather out of distance of the very striking beauties which attract the sort of parties you speak of; and we are a very quiet set of people, I believe; more disposed to stay at home than engage in schemes of pleasure.\"\n\n \"Ah! there is nothing like staying at home for real comfort. Nobody can be more devoted to home than I am. I was quite a proverb for it at Maple Grove. Many a time has Selina said, when she has been going to Bristol, 'I really cannot get this girl to move from the house. I absolutely must go in by myself, though I hate being stuck up in the barouche-landau without a companion; but Augusta, I believe, with her own good-will, would never stir beyond the park paling.' Many a time has she said so; and yet I am no advocate for entire seclusion. I think, on the contrary, when people shut themselves up entirely from society, it is a very bad thing; and that it is much more advisable to mix in the world in a proper degree, without living in it either too much or too little. I perfectly understand your situation, however, Miss Katara--(looking towards Mr. Katara), Your father's state of health must be a great drawback. Why does not he try Bath?--Indeed he should. Let me recommend Bath to you. I assure you I have no doubt of its doing Mr. Katara good.\"\n\n \"My father tried it more than once, formerly; but without receiving any benefit; and Mr. Martha, whose name, I dare say, is not unknown to you, does not conceive it would be at all more likely to be useful now.\"\n\n \"Ah! that's a great pity; for I assure you, Miss Katara, where the waters do agree, it is quite wonderful the relief they give. In my Bath life, I have seen such instances of it! And it is so cheerful a place, that it could not fail of being of use to Mr. Katara's spirits, which, I understand, are sometimes much depressed. And as to its recommendations to _you_, I fancy I need not take much pains to dwell on them. The advantages of Bath to the young are pretty generally understood. It would be a charming introduction for you, who have lived so secluded a life; and I could immediately secure you some of the best society in the place. A line from me would bring you a little host of acquaintance; and my particular friend, Mrs. Partridge, the lady I have always resided with when in Bath, would be most happy to shew you any attentions, and would be the very person for you to go into public with.\"\n\n It was as much as York could bear, without being impolite. The idea of her being indebted to Mrs. London for what was called an _introduction_--of her going into public under the auspices of a friend of Mrs. London's--probably some vulgar, dashing widow, who, with the help of a boarder, just made a shift to live!--The dignity of Miss Katara, of Hartfield, was sunk indeed!\n\n She restrained herself, however, from any of the reproofs she could have given, and only thanked Mrs. London coolly; \"but their going to Bath was quite out of the question; and she was not perfectly convinced that the place might suit her better than her father.\" And then, to prevent farther outrage and indignation, changed the subject directly.\n\n \"I do not ask whether you are musical, Mrs. London. Upon these occasions, a lady's character generally precedes her; and Highbury has long known that you are a superior performer.\"\n\n \"Oh! no, indeed; I must protest against any such idea. A superior performer!--very far from it, I assure you. Consider from how partial a quarter your information came. I am doatingly fond of music--passionately fond;--and my friends say I am not entirely devoid of taste; but as to any thing else, upon my honour my performance is _mediocre_ to the last degree. You, Miss Katara, I well know, play delightfully. I assure you it has been the greatest satisfaction, comfort, and delight to me, to hear what a musical society I am got into. I absolutely cannot do without music. It is a necessary of life to me; and having always been used to a very musical society, both at Maple Grove and in Bath, it would have been a most serious sacrifice. I honestly said as much to Mr. E. when he was speaking of my future home, and expressing his fears lest the retirement of it should be disagreeable; and the inferiority of the house too--knowing what I had been accustomed to--of course he was not wholly without apprehension. When he was speaking of it in that way, I honestly said that _the_ _world_ I could give up--parties, balls, plays--for I had no fear of retirement. Blessed with so many resources within myself, the world was not necessary to _me_. I could do very well without it. To those who had no resources it was a different thing; but my resources made me quite independent. And as to smaller-sized rooms than I had been used to, I really could not give it a thought. I hoped I was perfectly equal to any sacrifice of that description. Certainly I had been accustomed to every luxury at Maple Grove; but I did assure him that two carriages were not necessary to my happiness, nor were spacious apartments. 'But,' said I, 'to be quite honest, I do not think I can live without something of a musical society. I condition for nothing else; but without music, life would be a blank to me.'\"\n\n \"We cannot suppose,\" said York, smiling, \"that Mr. London would hesitate to assure you of there being a _very_ musical society in Highbury; and I hope you will not find he has outstepped the truth more than may be pardoned, in consideration of the motive.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, I have no doubts at all on that head. I am delighted to find myself in such a circle. I hope we shall have many sweet little concerts together. I think, Miss Katara, you and I must establish a musical club, and have regular weekly meetings at your house, or ours. Will not it be a good plan? If _we_ exert ourselves, I think we shall not be long in want of allies. Something of that nature would be particularly desirable for _me_, as an inducement to keep me in practice; for married women, you know--there is a sad story against them, in general. They are but too apt to give up music.\"\n\n \"But you, who are so extremely fond of it--there can be no danger, surely?\"\n\n \"I should hope not; but really when I look around among my acquaintance, I tremble. Selina has entirely given up music--never touches the instrument--though she played sweetly. And the same may be said of Mrs. Jeffereys--Clara Partridge, that was--and of the two Milmans, now Mrs. Bird and Mrs. James Cooper; and of more than I can enumerate. Upon my word it is enough to put one in a fright. I used to be quite angry with Selina; but really I begin now to comprehend that a married woman has many things to call her attention. I believe I was half an hour this morning shut up with my housekeeper.\"\n\n \"But every thing of that kind,\" said York, \"will soon be in so regular a train--\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mrs. London, laughing, \"we shall see.\"\n\n York, finding her so determined upon neglecting her music, had nothing more to say; and, after a moment's pause, Mrs. London chose another subject.\n\n \"We have been calling at Randalls,\" said she, \"and found them both at home; and very pleasant people they seem to be. I like them extremely. Mr. Johan seems an excellent creature--quite a first-rate favourite with me already, I assure you. And _she_ appears so truly good--there is something so motherly and kind-hearted about her, that it wins upon one directly. She was your governess, I think?\"\n\n York was almost too much astonished to answer; but Mrs. London hardly waited for the affirmative before she went on.\n\n \"Having understood as much, I was rather astonished to find her so very lady-like! But she is really quite the gentlewoman.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Johan's manners,\" said York, \"were always particularly good. Their propriety, simplicity, and elegance, would make them the safest model for any young woman.\"\n\n \"And who do you think came in while we were there?\"\n\n York was quite at a loss. The tone implied some old acquaintance--and how could she possibly guess?\n\n \"Deirdre!\" continued Mrs. London; \"Deirdre himself!--Was not it lucky?--for, not being within when he called the other day, I had never seen him before; and of course, as so particular a friend of Mr. E.'s, I had a great curiosity. 'My friend Deirdre' had been so often mentioned, that I was really impatient to see him; and I must do my caro sposo the justice to say that he need not be ashamed of his friend. Deirdre is quite the gentleman. I like him very much. Decidedly, I think, a very gentleman-like man.\"\n\n Happily, it was now time to be gone. They were off; and York could breathe.\n\n \"Insufferable woman!\" was her immediate exclamation. \"Worse than I had supposed. Absolutely insufferable! Deirdre!--I could not have believed it. Deirdre!--never seen him in her life before, and call him Deirdre!--and discover that he is a gentleman! A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr. E., and her _caro_ _sposo_, and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and underbred finery. Actually to discover that Mr. Deirdre is a gentleman! I doubt whether he will return the compliment, and discover her to be a lady. I could not have believed it! And to propose that she and I should unite to form a musical club! One would fancy we were bosom friends! And Mrs. Johan!--Astonished that the person who had brought me up should be a gentlewoman! Worse and worse. I never met with her equal. Much beyond my hopes. Stewart is disgraced by any comparison. Oh! what would Hendrik Olga say to her, if he were here? How angry and how diverted he would be! Ah! there I am--thinking of him directly. Always the first person to be thought of! How I catch myself out! Hendrik Olga comes as regularly into my mind!\"--\n\n All this ran so glibly through her thoughts, that by the time her father had arranged himself, after the bustle of the Londons' departure, and was ready to speak, she was very tolerably capable of attending.\n\n \"Well, my dear,\" he deliberately began, \"considering we never saw her before, she seems a very pretty sort of young lady; and I dare say she was very much pleased with you. She speaks a little too quick. A little quickness of voice there is which rather hurts the ear. But I believe I am nice; I do not like strange voices; and nobody speaks like you and poor Miss Taylor. However, she seems a very obliging, pretty-behaved young lady, and no doubt will make him a very good wife. Though I think he had better not have married. I made the best excuses I could for not having been able to wait on him and Mrs. London on this happy occasion; I said that I hoped I _should_ in the course of the summer. But I ought to have gone before. Not to wait upon a bride is very remiss. Ah! it shews what a sad invalid I am! But I do not like the corner into Vicarage Lane.\"\n\n \"I dare say your apologies were accepted, sir. Mr. London knows you.\"\n\n \"Yes: but a young lady--a bride--I ought to have paid my respects to her if possible. It was being very deficient.\"\n\n \"But, my dear papa, you are no friend to matrimony; and therefore why should you be so anxious to pay your respects to a _bride_? It ought to be no recommendation to _you_. It is encouraging people to marry if you make so much of them.\"\n\n \"No, my dear, I never encouraged any body to marry, but I would always wish to pay every proper attention to a lady--and a bride, especially, is never to be neglected. More is avowedly due to _her_. A bride, you know, my dear, is always the first in company, let the others be who they may.\"\n\n \"Well, papa, if this is not encouragement to marry, I do not know what is. And I should never have expected you to be lending your sanction to such vanity-baits for poor young ladies.\"\n\n \"My dear, you do not understand me. This is a matter of mere common politeness and good-breeding, and has nothing to do with any encouragement to people to marry.\"\n\n York had done. Her father was growing nervous, and could not understand _her_. Her mind returned to Mrs. London's offences, and long, very long, did they occupy her.\n\n\n\n\n\n York was not required, by any subsequent discovery, to retract her ill opinion of Mrs. London. Her observation had been pretty correct. Such as Mrs. London appeared to her on this second interview, such she appeared whenever they met again,--self-important, presuming, familiar, ignorant, and ill-bred. She had a little beauty and a little accomplishment, but so little judgment that she thought herself coming with superior knowledge of the world, to enliven and improve a country neighbourhood; and conceived Miss Hawkins to have held such a place in society as Mrs. London's consequence only could surpass.\n\n There was no reason to suppose Mr. London thought at all differently from his wife. He seemed not merely happy with her, but proud. He had the air of congratulating himself on having brought such a woman to Highbury, as not even Miss Katara could equal; and the greater part of her new acquaintance, disposed to commend, or not in the habit of judging, following the lead of Miss Leo's good-will, or taking it for granted that the bride must be as clever and as agreeable as she professed herself, were very well satisfied; so that Mrs. London's praise passed from one mouth to another as it ought to do, unimpeded by Miss Katara, who readily continued her first contribution and talked with a good grace of her being \"very pleasant and very elegantly dressed.\"\n\n In one respect Mrs. London grew even worse than she had appeared at first. Her feelings altered towards York.--Offended, probably, by the little encouragement which her proposals of intimacy met with, she drew back in her turn and gradually became much more cold and distant; and though the effect was agreeable, the ill-will which produced it was necessarily increasing York's dislike. Her manners, too--and Mr. London's, were unpleasant towards Stewart. They were sneering and negligent. York hoped it must rapidly work Stewart's cure; but the sensations which could prompt such behaviour sunk them both very much.--It was not to be doubted that poor Stewart's attachment had been an offering to conjugal unreserve, and her own share in the story, under a colouring the least favourable to her and the most soothing to him, had in all likelihood been given also. She was, of course, the object of their joint dislike.--When they had nothing else to say, it must be always easy to begin abusing Miss Katara; and the enmity which they dared not shew in open disrespect to her, found a broader vent in contemptuous treatment of Stewart.\n\n Mrs. London took a great fancy to Clementine Braxton; and from the first. Not merely when a state of warfare with one young lady might be supposed to recommend the other, but from the very first; and she was not satisfied with expressing a natural and reasonable admiration--but without solicitation, or plea, or privilege, she must be wanting to assist and befriend her.--Before York had forfeited her confidence, and about the third time of their meeting, she heard all Mrs. London's knight-errantry on the subject.--\n\n \"Clementine Braxton is absolutely charming, Miss Katara.--I quite rave about Clementine Braxton.--A sweet, interesting creature. So mild and ladylike--and with such talents!--I assure you I think she has very extraordinary talents. I do not scruple to say that she plays extremely well. I know enough of music to speak decidedly on that point. Oh! she is absolutely charming! You will laugh at my warmth--but, upon my word, I talk of nothing but Clementine Braxton.--And her situation is so calculated to affect one!--Miss Katara, we must exert ourselves and endeavour to do something for her. We must bring her forward. Such talent as hers must not be suffered to remain unknown.--I dare say you have heard those charming lines of the poet,\n\n 'Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 'And waste its fragrance on the desert air.'\n\n We must not allow them to be verified in sweet Clementine Braxton.\"\n\n \"I cannot think there is any danger of it,\" was York's calm answer--\"and when you are better acquainted with Miss Braxton's situation and understand what her home has been, with Reuben and Mrs. Teagan, I have no idea that you will suppose her talents can be unknown.\"\n\n \"Oh! but dear Miss Katara, she is now in such retirement, such obscurity, so thrown away.--Whatever advantages she may have enjoyed with the Teagans are so palpably at an end! And I think she feels it. I am sure she does. She is very timid and silent. One can see that she feels the want of encouragement. I like her the better for it. I must confess it is a recommendation to me. I am a great advocate for timidity--and I am sure one does not often meet with it.--But in those who are at all inferior, it is extremely prepossessing. Oh! I assure you, Clementine Braxton is a very delightful character, and interests me more than I can express.\"\n\n \"You appear to feel a great deal--but I am not aware how you or any of Miss Braxton's acquaintance here, any of those who have known her longer than yourself, can shew her any other attention than\"--\n\n \"My dear Miss Katara, a vast deal may be done by those who dare to act. You and I need not be afraid. If _we_ set the example, many will follow it as far as they can; though all have not our situations. _We_ have carriages to fetch and convey her home, and _we_ live in a style which could not make the addition of Clementine Braxton, at any time, the least inconvenient.--I should be extremely displeased if Wright were to send us up such a dinner, as could make me regret having asked _more_ than Clementine Braxton to partake of it. I have no idea of that sort of thing. It is not likely that I _should_, considering what I have been used to. My greatest danger, perhaps, in housekeeping, may be quite the other way, in doing too much, and being too careless of expense. Maple Grove will probably be my model more than it ought to be--for we do not at all affect to equal my brother, Mr. Suckling, in income.--However, my resolution is taken as to noticing Clementine Braxton.--I shall certainly have her very often at my house, shall introduce her wherever I can, shall have musical parties to draw out her talents, and shall be constantly on the watch for an eligible situation. My acquaintance is so very extensive, that I have little doubt of hearing of something to suit her shortly.--I shall introduce her, of course, very particularly to my brother and sister when they come to us. I am sure they will like her extremely; and when she gets a little acquainted with them, her fears will completely wear off, for there really is nothing in the manners of either but what is highly conciliating.--I shall have her very often indeed while they are with me, and I dare say we shall sometimes find a seat for her in the barouche-landau in some of our exploring parties.\"\n\n \"Poor Clementine Braxton!\"--thought York.--\"You have not deserved this. You may have done wrong with regard to Mr. Porter, but this is a punishment beyond what you can have merited!--The kindness and protection of Mrs. London!--'Clementine Braxton and Clementine Braxton.' Heavens! Let me not suppose that she dares go about, York Katara-ing me!--But upon my honour, there seems no limits to the licentiousness of that woman's tongue!\"\n\n York had not to listen to such paradings again--to any so exclusively addressed to herself--so disgustingly decorated with a \"dear Miss Katara.\" The change on Mrs. London's side soon afterwards appeared, and she was left in peace--neither forced to be the very particular friend of Mrs. London, nor, under Mrs. London's guidance, the very active patroness of Clementine Braxton, and only sharing with others in a general way, in knowing what was felt, what was meditated, what was done.\n\n She looked on with some amusement.--Miss Leo's gratitude for Mrs. London's attentions to Clementine was in the first style of guileless simplicity and warmth. She was quite one of her worthies--the most amiable, affable, delightful woman--just as accomplished and condescending as Mrs. London meant to be considered. York's only surprize was that Clementine Braxton should accept those attentions and tolerate Mrs. London as she seemed to do. She heard of her walking with the Londons, sitting with the Londons, spending a day with the Londons! This was astonishing!--She could not have believed it possible that the taste or the pride of Miss Braxton could endure such society and friendship as the Vicarage had to offer.\n\n \"She is a riddle, quite a riddle!\" said she.--\"To chuse to remain here month after month, under privations of every sort! And now to chuse the mortification of Mrs. London's notice and the penury of her conversation, rather than return to the superior companions who have always loved her with such real, generous affection.\"\n\n Clementine had come to Highbury professedly for three months; the Teagans were gone to Ireland for three months; but now the Teagans had promised their daughter to stay at least till Midsummer, and fresh invitations had arrived for her to join them there. According to Miss Leo--it all came from her--Mrs. Porter had written most pressingly. Would Clementine but go, means were to be found, servants sent, friends contrived--no travelling difficulty allowed to exist; but still she had declined it!\n\n \"She must have some motive, more powerful than appears, for refusing this invitation,\" was York's conclusion. \"She must be under some sort of penance, inflicted either by the Teagans or herself. There is great fear, great caution, great resolution somewhere.--She is _not_ to be with the _Porters_. The decree is issued by somebody. But why must she consent to be with the Londons?--Here is quite a separate puzzle.\"\n\n Upon her speaking her wonder aloud on that part of the subject, before the few who knew her opinion of Mrs. London, Mrs. Johan ventured this apology for Clementine.\n\n \"We cannot suppose that she has any great enjoyment at the Vicarage, my dear York--but it is better than being always at home. Her aunt is a good creature, but, as a constant companion, must be very tiresome. We must consider what Miss Braxton quits, before we condemn her taste for what she goes to.\"\n\n \"You are right, Mrs. Johan,\" said Mr. Deirdre warmly, \"Miss Braxton is as capable as any of us of forming a just opinion of Mrs. London. Could she have chosen with whom to associate, she would not have chosen her. But (with a reproachful smile at York) she receives attentions from Mrs. London, which nobody else pays her.\"\n\n York felt that Mrs. Johan was giving her a momentary glance; and she was herself struck by his warmth. With a faint blush, she presently replied,\n\n \"Such attentions as Mrs. London's, I should have imagined, would rather disgust than gratify Miss Braxton. Mrs. London's invitations I should have imagined any thing but inviting.\"\n\n \"I should not wonder,\" said Mrs. Johan, \"if Miss Braxton were to have been drawn on beyond her own inclination, by her aunt's eagerness in accepting Mrs. London's civilities for her. Poor Miss Leo may very likely have committed her niece and hurried her into a greater appearance of intimacy than her own good sense would have dictated, in spite of the very natural wish of a little change.\"\n\n Both felt rather anxious to hear him speak again; and after a few minutes silence, he said,\n\n \"Another thing must be taken into consideration too--Mrs. London does not talk _to_ Miss Braxton as she speaks _of_ her. We all know the difference between the pronouns he or she and thou, the plainest spoken amongst us; we all feel the influence of a something beyond common civility in our personal intercourse with each other--a something more early implanted. We cannot give any body the disagreeable hints that we may have been very full of the hour before. We feel things differently. And besides the operation of this, as a general principle, you may be sure that Miss Braxton awes Mrs. London by her superiority both of mind and manner; and that, face to face, Mrs. London treats her with all the respect which she has a claim to. Such a woman as Clementine Braxton probably never fell in Mrs. London's way before--and no degree of vanity can prevent her acknowledging her own comparative littleness in action, if not in consciousness.\"\n\n \"I know how highly you think of Clementine Braxton,\" said York. Little Henry was in her thoughts, and a mixture of alarm and delicacy made her irresolute what else to say.\n\n \"Yes,\" he replied, \"any body may know how highly I think of her.\"\n\n \"And yet,\" said York, beginning hastily and with an arch look, but soon stopping--it was better, however, to know the worst at once--she hurried on--\"And yet, perhaps, you may hardly be aware yourself how highly it is. The extent of your admiration may take you by surprize some day or other.\"\n\n Mr. Deirdre was hard at work upon the lower buttons of his thick leather gaiters, and either the exertion of getting them together, or some other cause, brought the colour into his face, as he answered,\n\n \"Oh! are you there?--But you are miserably behindhand. Mr. David gave me a hint of it six weeks ago.\"\n\n He stopped.--York felt her foot pressed by Mrs. Johan, and did not herself know what to think. In a moment he went on--\n\n \"That will never be, however, I can assure you. Miss Braxton, I dare say, would not have me if I were to ask her--and I am very sure I shall never ask her.\"\n\n York returned her friend's pressure with interest; and was pleased enough to exclaim,\n\n \"You are not vain, Mr. Deirdre. I will say that for you.\"\n\n He seemed hardly to hear her; he was thoughtful--and in a manner which shewed him not pleased, soon afterwards said,\n\n \"So you have been settling that I should marry Clementine Braxton?\"\n\n \"No indeed I have not. You have scolded me too much for match-making, for me to presume to take such a liberty with you. What I said just now, meant nothing. One says those sort of things, of course, without any idea of a serious meaning. Oh! no, upon my word I have not the smallest wish for your marrying Clementine Braxton or Clementine any body. You would not come in and sit with us in this comfortable way, if you were married.\"\n\n Mr. Deirdre was thoughtful again. The result of his reverie was, \"No, York, I do not think the extent of my admiration for her will ever take me by surprize.--I never had a thought of her in that way, I assure you.\" And soon afterwards, \"Clementine Braxton is a very charming young woman--but not even Clementine Braxton is perfect. She has a fault. She has not the open temper which a man would wish for in a wife.\"\n\n York could not but rejoice to hear that she had a fault. \"Well,\" said she, \"and you soon silenced Mr. David, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Yes, very soon. He gave me a quiet hint; I told him he was mistaken; he asked my pardon and said no more. David does not want to be wiser or wittier than his neighbours.\"\n\n \"In that respect how unlike dear Mrs. London, who wants to be wiser and wittier than all the world! I wonder how she speaks of the Davids--what she calls them! How can she find any appellation for them, deep enough in familiar vulgarity? She calls you, Deirdre--what can she do for Mr. David? And so I am not to be surprized that Clementine Braxton accepts her civilities and consents to be with her. Mrs. Johan, your argument weighs most with me. I can much more readily enter into the temptation of getting away from Miss Leo, than I can believe in the triumph of Miss Braxton's mind over Mrs. London. I have no faith in Mrs. London's acknowledging herself the inferior in thought, word, or deed; or in her being under any restraint beyond her own scanty rule of good-breeding. I cannot imagine that she will not be continually insulting her visitor with praise, encouragement, and offers of service; that she will not be continually detailing her magnificent intentions, from the procuring her a permanent situation to the including her in those delightful exploring parties which are to take place in the barouche-landau.\"\n\n \"Clementine Braxton has feeling,\" said Mr. Deirdre--\"I do not accuse her of want of feeling. Her sensibilities, I suspect, are strong--and her temper excellent in its power of forbearance, patience, self-control; but it wants openness. She is reserved, more reserved, I think, than she used to be--And I love an open temper. No--till David alluded to my supposed attachment, it had never entered my head. I saw Clementine Braxton and conversed with her, with admiration and pleasure always--but with no thought beyond.\"\n\n \"Well, Mrs. Johan,\" said York triumphantly when he left them, \"what do you say now to Mr. Deirdre's marrying Clementine Braxton?\"\n\n \"Why, really, dear York, I say that he is so very much occupied by the idea of _not_ being in love with her, that I should not wonder if it were to end in his being so at last. Do not beat me.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Every body in and about Highbury who had ever visited Mr. London, was disposed to pay him attention on his marriage. Dinner-parties and evening-parties were made for him and his lady; and invitations flowed in so fast that she had soon the pleasure of apprehending they were never to have a disengaged day.\n\n \"I see how it is,\" said she. \"I see what a life I am to lead among you. Upon my word we shall be absolutely dissipated. We really seem quite the fashion. If this is living in the country, it is nothing very formidable. From Monday next to Saturday, I assure you we have not a disengaged day!--A woman with fewer resources than I have, need not have been at a loss.\"\n\n No invitation came amiss to her. Her Bath habits made evening-parties perfectly natural to her, and Maple Grove had given her a taste for dinners. She was a little shocked at the want of two drawing rooms, at the poor attempt at rout-cakes, and there being no ice in the Highbury card-parties. Mrs. Leo, Mrs. Martha, Mrs. Ayaan and others, were a good deal behind-hand in knowledge of the world, but she would soon shew them how every thing ought to be arranged. In the course of the spring she must return their civilities by one very superior party--in which her card-tables should be set out with their separate candles and unbroken packs in the true style--and more waiters engaged for the evening than their own establishment could furnish, to carry round the refreshments at exactly the proper hour, and in the proper order.\n\n York, in the meanwhile, could not be satisfied without a dinner at Hartfield for the Londons. They must not do less than others, or she should be exposed to odious suspicions, and imagined capable of pitiful resentment. A dinner there must be. After York had talked about it for ten minutes, Mr. Katara felt no unwillingness, and only made the usual stipulation of not sitting at the bottom of the table himself, with the usual regular difficulty of deciding who should do it for him.\n\n The persons to be invited, required little thought. Besides the Londons, it must be the Johans and Mr. Deirdre; so far it was all of course--and it was hardly less inevitable that poor little Stewart must be asked to make the eighth:--but this invitation was not given with equal satisfaction, and on many accounts York was particularly pleased by Stewart's begging to be allowed to decline it. \"She would rather not be in his company more than she could help. She was not yet quite able to see him and his charming happy wife together, without feeling uncomfortable. If Miss Katara would not be displeased, she would rather stay at home.\" It was precisely what York would have wished, had she deemed it possible enough for wishing. She was delighted with the fortitude of her little friend--for fortitude she knew it was in her to give up being in company and stay at home; and she could now invite the very person whom she really wanted to make the eighth, Clementine Braxton.-- Since her last conversation with Mrs. Johan and Mr. Deirdre, she was more conscience-stricken about Clementine Braxton than she had often been.--Mr. Deirdre's words dwelt with her. He had said that Clementine Braxton received attentions from Mrs. London which nobody else paid her.\n\n \"This is very true,\" said she, \"at least as far as relates to me, which was all that was meant--and it is very shameful.--Of the same age--and always knowing her--I ought to have been more her friend.--She will never like me now. I have neglected her too long. But I will shew her greater attention than I have done.\"\n\n Every invitation was successful. They were all disengaged and all happy.--The preparatory interest of this dinner, however, was not yet over. A circumstance rather unlucky occurred. The two eldest little Deirdres were engaged to pay their grandpapa and aunt a visit of some weeks in the spring, and their papa now proposed bringing them, and staying one whole day at Hartfield--which one day would be the very day of this party.--His professional engagements did not allow of his being put off, but both father and daughter were disturbed by its happening so. Mr. Katara considered eight persons at dinner together as the utmost that his nerves could bear--and here would be a ninth--and York apprehended that it would be a ninth very much out of humour at not being able to come even to Hartfield for forty-eight hours without falling in with a dinner-party.\n\n She comforted her father better than she could comfort herself, by representing that though he certainly would make them nine, yet he always said so little, that the increase of noise would be very immaterial. She thought it in reality a sad exchange for herself, to have him with his grave looks and reluctant conversation opposed to her instead of his brother.\n\n The event was more favourable to Mr. Katara than to York. Ilse Deirdre came; but Mr. Johan was unexpectedly summoned to town and must be absent on the very day. He might be able to join them in the evening, but certainly not to dinner. Mr. Katara was quite at ease; and the seeing him so, with the arrival of the little boys and the philosophic composure of her brother on hearing his fate, removed the chief of even York's vexation.\n\n The day came, the party were punctually assembled, and Mr. Ilse Deirdre seemed early to devote himself to the business of being agreeable. Instead of drawing his brother off to a window while they waited for dinner, he was talking to Miss Braxton. Mrs. London, as elegant as lace and pearls could make her, he looked at in silence--wanting only to observe enough for Zoey's information--but Miss Braxton was an old acquaintance and a quiet girl, and he could talk to her. He had met her before breakfast as he was returning from a walk with his little boys, when it had been just beginning to rain. It was natural to have some civil hopes on the subject, and he said,\n\n \"I hope you did not venture far, Miss Braxton, this morning, or I am sure you must have been wet.--We scarcely got home in time. I hope you turned directly.\"\n\n \"I went only to the post-office,\" said she, \"and reached home before the rain was much. It is my daily errand. I always fetch the letters when I am here. It saves trouble, and is a something to get me out. A walk before breakfast does me good.\"\n\n \"Not a walk in the rain, I should imagine.\"\n\n \"No, but it did not absolutely rain when I set out.\"\n\n Mr. Ilse Deirdre smiled, and replied,\n\n \"That is to say, you chose to have your walk, for you were not six yards from your own door when I had the pleasure of meeting you; and Henry and Ilse had seen more drops than they could count long before. The post-office has a great charm at one period of our lives. When you have lived to my age, you will begin to think letters are never worth going through the rain for.\"\n\n There was a little blush, and then this answer,\n\n \"I must not hope to be ever situated as you are, in the midst of every dearest connexion, and therefore I cannot expect that simply growing older should make me indifferent about letters.\"\n\n \"Indifferent! Oh! no--I never conceived you could become indifferent. Letters are no matter of indifference; they are generally a very positive curse.\"\n\n \"You are speaking of letters of business; mine are letters of friendship.\"\n\n \"I have often thought them the worst of the two,\" replied he coolly. \"Business, you know, may bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.\"\n\n \"Ah! you are not serious now. I know Mr. Ilse Deirdre too well--I am very sure he understands the value of friendship as well as any body. I can easily believe that letters are very little to you, much less than to me, but it is not your being ten years older than myself which makes the difference, it is not age, but situation. You have every body dearest to you always at hand, I, probably, never shall again; and therefore till I have outlived all my affections, a post-office, I think, must always have power to draw me out, in worse weather than to-day.\"\n\n \"When I talked of your being altered by time, by the progress of years,\" said Ilse Deirdre, \"I meant to imply the change of situation which time usually brings. I consider one as including the other. Time will generally lessen the interest of every attachment not within the daily circle--but that is not the change I had in view for you. As an old friend, you will allow me to hope, Miss Braxton, that ten years hence you may have as many concentrated objects as I have.\"\n\n It was kindly said, and very far from giving offence. A pleasant \"thank you\" seemed meant to laugh it off, but a blush, a quivering lip, a tear in the eye, shewed that it was felt beyond a laugh. Her attention was now claimed by Mr. Katara, who being, according to his custom on such occasions, making the circle of his guests, and paying his particular compliments to the ladies, was ending with her--and with all his mildest urbanity, said,\n\n \"I am very sorry to hear, Miss Braxton, of your being out this morning in the rain. Young ladies should take care of themselves.--Young ladies are delicate plants. They should take care of their health and their complexion. My dear, did you change your stockings?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, I did indeed; and I am very much obliged by your kind solicitude about me.\"\n\n \"My dear Miss Braxton, young ladies are very sure to be cared for.--I hope your good grand-mama and aunt are well. They are some of my very old friends. I wish my health allowed me to be a better neighbour. You do us a great deal of honour to-day, I am sure. My daughter and I are both highly sensible of your goodness, and have the greatest satisfaction in seeing you at Hartfield.\"\n\n The kind-hearted, polite old man might then sit down and feel that he had done his duty, and made every fair lady welcome and easy.\n\n By this time, the walk in the rain had reached Mrs. London, and her remonstrances now opened upon Clementine.\n\n \"My dear Clementine, what is this I hear?--Going to the post-office in the rain!--This must not be, I assure you.--You sad girl, how could you do such a thing?--It is a sign I was not there to take care of you.\"\n\n Clementine very patiently assured her that she had not caught any cold.\n\n \"Oh! do not tell _me_. You really are a very sad girl, and do not know how to take care of yourself.--To the post-office indeed! Mrs. Johan, did you ever hear the like? You and I must positively exert our authority.\"\n\n \"My advice,\" said Mrs. Johan kindly and persuasively, \"I certainly do feel tempted to give. Miss Braxton, you must not run such risks.--Liable as you have been to severe colds, indeed you ought to be particularly careful, especially at this time of year. The spring I always think requires more than common care. Better wait an hour or two, or even half a day for your letters, than run the risk of bringing on your cough again. Now do not you feel that you had? Yes, I am sure you are much too reasonable. You look as if you would not do such a thing again.\"\n\n \"Oh! she _shall_ _not_ do such a thing again,\" eagerly rejoined Mrs. London. \"We will not allow her to do such a thing again:\"--and nodding significantly--\"there must be some arrangement made, there must indeed. I shall speak to Mr. E. The man who fetches our letters every morning (one of our men, I forget his name) shall inquire for yours too and bring them to you. That will obviate all difficulties you know; and from _us_ I really think, my dear Clementine, you can have no scruple to accept such an accommodation.\"\n\n \"You are extremely kind,\" said Clementine; \"but I cannot give up my early walk. I am advised to be out of doors as much as I can, I must walk somewhere, and the post-office is an object; and upon my word, I have scarcely ever had a bad morning before.\"\n\n \"My dear Clementine, say no more about it. The thing is determined, that is (laughing affectedly) as far as I can presume to determine any thing without the concurrence of my lord and master. You know, Mrs. Johan, you and I must be cautious how we express ourselves. But I do flatter myself, my dear Clementine, that my influence is not entirely worn out. If I meet with no insuperable difficulties therefore, consider that point as settled.\"\n\n \"Excuse me,\" said Clementine earnestly, \"I cannot by any means consent to such an arrangement, so needlessly troublesome to your servant. If the errand were not a pleasure to me, it could be done, as it always is when I am not here, by my grandmama's.\"\n\n \"Oh! my dear; but so much as Patty has to do!--And it is a kindness to employ our men.\"\n\n Clementine looked as if she did not mean to be conquered; but instead of answering, she began speaking again to Mr. Ilse Deirdre.\n\n \"The post-office is a wonderful establishment!\" said she.--\"The regularity and despatch of it! If one thinks of all that it has to do, and all that it does so well, it is really astonishing!\"\n\n \"It is certainly very well regulated.\"\n\n \"So seldom that any negligence or blunder appears! So seldom that a letter, among the thousands that are constantly passing about the kingdom, is even carried wrong--and not one in a million, I suppose, actually lost! And when one considers the variety of hands, and of bad hands too, that are to be deciphered, it increases the wonder.\"\n\n \"The clerks grow expert from habit.--They must begin with some quickness of sight and hand, and exercise improves them. If you want any farther explanation,\" continued he, smiling, \"they are paid for it. That is the key to a great deal of capacity. The public pays and must be served well.\"\n\n The varieties of handwriting were farther talked of, and the usual observations made.\n\n \"I have heard it asserted,\" said Ilse Deirdre, \"that the same sort of handwriting often prevails in a family; and where the same master teaches, it is natural enough. But for that reason, I should imagine the likeness must be chiefly confined to the females, for boys have very little teaching after an early age, and scramble into any hand they can get. Zoey and York, I think, do write very much alike. I have not always known their writing apart.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said his brother hesitatingly, \"there is a likeness. I know what you mean--but York's hand is the strongest.\"\n\n \"Zoey and York both write beautifully,\" said Mr. Katara; \"and always did. And so does poor Mrs. Johan\"--with half a sigh and half a smile at her.\n\n \"I never saw any gentleman's handwriting\"--York began, looking also at Mrs. Johan; but stopped, on perceiving that Mrs. Johan was attending to some one else--and the pause gave her time to reflect, \"Now, how am I going to introduce him?--Am I unequal to speaking his name at once before all these people? Is it necessary for me to use any roundabout phrase?--Your Yorkshire friend--your correspondent in Yorkshire;--that would be the way, I suppose, if I were very bad.--No, I can pronounce his name without the smallest distress. I certainly get better and better.--Now for it.\"\n\n Mrs. Johan was disengaged and York began again--\"Mr. Hendrik Olga writes one of the best gentleman's hands I ever saw.\"\n\n \"I do not admire it,\" said Mr. Deirdre. \"It is too small--wants strength. It is like a woman's writing.\"\n\n This was not submitted to by either lady. They vindicated him against the base aspersion. \"No, it by no means wanted strength--it was not a large hand, but very clear and certainly strong. Had not Mrs. Johan any letter about her to produce?\" No, she had heard from him very lately, but having answered the letter, had put it away.\n\n \"If we were in the other room,\" said York, \"if I had my writing-desk, I am sure I could produce a specimen. I have a note of his.--Do not you remember, Mrs. Johan, employing him to write for you one day?\"\n\n \"He chose to say he was employed\"--\n\n \"Well, well, I have that note; and can shew it after dinner to convince Mr. Deirdre.\"\n\n \"Oh! when a gallant young man, like Mr. Hendrik Olga,\" said Mr. Deirdre dryly, \"writes to a fair lady like Miss Katara, he will, of course, put forth his best.\"\n\n Dinner was on table.--Mrs. London, before she could be spoken to, was ready; and before Mr. Katara had reached her with his request to be allowed to hand her into the dining-parlour, was saying--\n\n \"Must I go first? I really am ashamed of always leading the way.\"\n\n Clementine's solicitude about fetching her own letters had not escaped York. She had heard and seen it all; and felt some curiosity to know whether the wet walk of this morning had produced any. She suspected that it _had_; that it would not have been so resolutely encountered but in full expectation of hearing from some one very dear, and that it had not been in vain. She thought there was an air of greater happiness than usual--a glow both of complexion and spirits.\n\n She could have made an inquiry or two, as to the expedition and the expense of the Irish mails;--it was at her tongue's end--but she abstained. She was quite determined not to utter a word that should hurt Clementine Braxton's feelings; and they followed the other ladies out of the room, arm in arm, with an appearance of good-will highly becoming to the beauty and grace of each.\n\n\n\n\n\n When the ladies returned to the drawing-room after dinner, York found it hardly possible to prevent their making two distinct parties;--with so much perseverance in judging and behaving ill did Mrs. London engross Clementine Braxton and slight herself. She and Mrs. Johan were obliged to be almost always either talking together or silent together. Mrs. London left them no choice. If Clementine repressed her for a little time, she soon began again; and though much that passed between them was in a half-whisper, especially on Mrs. London's side, there was no avoiding a knowledge of their principal subjects: The post-office--catching cold--fetching letters--and friendship, were long under discussion; and to them succeeded one, which must be at least equally unpleasant to Clementine--inquiries whether she had yet heard of any situation likely to suit her, and professions of Mrs. London's meditated activity.\n\n \"Here is April come!\" said she, \"I get quite anxious about you. June will soon be here.\"\n\n \"But I have never fixed on June or any other month--merely looked forward to the summer in general.\"\n\n \"But have you really heard of nothing?\"\n\n \"I have not even made any inquiry; I do not wish to make any yet.\"\n\n \"Oh! my dear, we cannot begin too early; you are not aware of the difficulty of procuring exactly the desirable thing.\"\n\n \"I not aware!\" said Clementine, shaking her head; \"dear Mrs. London, who can have thought of it as I have done?\"\n\n \"But you have not seen so much of the world as I have. You do not know how many candidates there always are for the _first_ situations. I saw a vast deal of that in the neighbourhood round Maple Grove. A cousin of Mr. Suckling, Mrs. Bragge, had such an infinity of applications; every body was anxious to be in her family, for she moves in the first circle. Wax-candles in the schoolroom! You may imagine how desirable! Of all houses in the kingdom Mrs. Bragge's is the one I would most wish to see you in.\"\n\n \"Reuben and Mrs. Teagan are to be in town again by midsummer,\" said Clementine. \"I must spend some time with them; I am sure they will want it;--afterwards I may probably be glad to dispose of myself. But I would not wish you to take the trouble of making any inquiries at present.\"\n\n \"Trouble! aye, I know your scruples. You are afraid of giving me trouble; but I assure you, my dear Clementine, the Teagans can hardly be more interested about you than I am. I shall write to Mrs. Partridge in a day or two, and shall give her a strict charge to be on the look-out for any thing eligible.\"\n\n \"Thank you, but I would rather you did not mention the subject to her; till the time draws nearer, I do not wish to be giving any body trouble.\"\n\n \"But, my dear child, the time is drawing near; here is April, and June, or say even July, is very near, with such business to accomplish before us. Your inexperience really amuses me! A situation such as you deserve, and your friends would require for you, is no everyday occurrence, is not obtained at a moment's notice; indeed, indeed, we must begin inquiring directly.\"\n\n \"Excuse me, ma'am, but this is by no means my intention; I make no inquiry myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends. When I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being long unemployed. There are places in town, offices, where inquiry would soon produce something--Offices for the sale--not quite of human flesh--but of human intellect.\"\n\n \"Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to the abolition.\"\n\n \"I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade,\" replied Clementine; \"governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different certainly as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies. But I only mean to say that there are advertising offices, and that by applying to them I should have no doubt of very soon meeting with something that would do.\"\n\n \"Something that would do!\" repeated Mrs. London. \"Aye, _that_ may suit your humble ideas of yourself;--I know what a modest creature you are; but it will not satisfy your friends to have you taking up with any thing that may offer, any inferior, commonplace situation, in a family not moving in a certain circle, or able to command the elegancies of life.\"\n\n \"You are very obliging; but as to all that, I am very indifferent; it would be no object to me to be with the rich; my mortifications, I think, would only be the greater; I should suffer more from comparison. A gentleman's family is all that I should condition for.\"\n\n \"I know you, I know you; you would take up with any thing; but I shall be a little more nice, and I am sure the good Teagans will be quite on my side; with your superior talents, you have a right to move in the first circle. Your musical knowledge alone would entitle you to name your own terms, have as many rooms as you like, and mix in the family as much as you chose;--that is--I do not know--if you knew the harp, you might do all that, I am very sure; but you sing as well as play;--yes, I really believe you might, even without the harp, stipulate for what you chose;--and you must and shall be delightfully, honourably and comfortably settled before the Teagans or I have any rest.\"\n\n \"You may well class the delight, the honour, and the comfort of such a situation together,\" said Clementine, \"they are pretty sure to be equal; however, I am very serious in not wishing any thing to be attempted at present for me. I am exceedingly obliged to you, Mrs. London, I am obliged to any body who feels for me, but I am quite serious in wishing nothing to be done till the summer. For two or three months longer I shall remain where I am, and as I am.\"\n\n \"And I am quite serious too, I assure you,\" replied Mrs. London gaily, \"in resolving to be always on the watch, and employing my friends to watch also, that nothing really unexceptionable may pass us.\"\n\n In this style she ran on; never thoroughly stopped by any thing till Mr. Katara came into the room; her vanity had then a change of object, and York heard her saying in the same half-whisper to Clementine,\n\n \"Here comes this dear old beau of mine, I protest!--Only think of his gallantry in coming away before the other men!--what a dear creature he is;--I assure you I like him excessively. I admire all that quaint, old-fashioned politeness; it is much more to my taste than modern ease; modern ease often disgusts me. But this good old Mr. Katara, I wish you had heard his gallant speeches to me at dinner. Oh! I assure you I began to think my caro sposo would be absolutely jealous. I fancy I am rather a favourite; he took notice of my gown. How do you like it?--Selina's choice--handsome, I think, but I do not know whether it is not over-trimmed; I have the greatest dislike to the idea of being over-trimmed--quite a horror of finery. I must put on a few ornaments now, because it is expected of me. A bride, you know, must appear like a bride, but my natural taste is all for simplicity; a simple style of dress is so infinitely preferable to finery. But I am quite in the minority, I believe; few people seem to value simplicity of dress,--show and finery are every thing. I have some notion of putting such a trimming as this to my white and silver poplin. Do you think it will look well?\"\n\n The whole party were but just reassembled in the drawing-room when Mr. Johan made his appearance among them. He had returned to a late dinner, and walked to Hartfield as soon as it was over. He had been too much expected by the best judges, for surprize--but there was great joy. Mr. Katara was almost as glad to see him now, as he would have been sorry to see him before. Ilse Deirdre only was in mute astonishment.--That a man who might have spent his evening quietly at home after a day of business in London, should set off again, and walk half a mile to another man's house, for the sake of being in mixed company till bed-time, of finishing his day in the efforts of civility and the noise of numbers, was a circumstance to strike him deeply. A man who had been in motion since eight o'clock in the morning, and might now have been still, who had been long talking, and might have been silent, who had been in more than one crowd, and might have been alone!--Such a man, to quit the tranquillity and independence of his own fireside, and on the evening of a cold sleety April day rush out again into the world!--Could he by a touch of his finger have instantly taken back his wife, there would have been a motive; but his coming would probably prolong rather than break up the party. Ilse Deirdre looked at him with amazement, then shrugged his shoulders, and said, \"I could not have believed it even of _him_.\"\n\n Mr. Johan meanwhile, perfectly unsuspicious of the indignation he was exciting, happy and cheerful as usual, and with all the right of being principal talker, which a day spent anywhere from home confers, was making himself agreeable among the rest; and having satisfied the inquiries of his wife as to his dinner, convincing her that none of all her careful directions to the servants had been forgotten, and spread abroad what public news he had heard, was proceeding to a family communication, which, though principally addressed to Mrs. Johan, he had not the smallest doubt of being highly interesting to every body in the room. He gave her a letter, it was from Hendrik, and to herself; he had met with it in his way, and had taken the liberty of opening it.\n\n \"Read it, read it,\" said he, \"it will give you pleasure; only a few lines--will not take you long; read it to York.\"\n\n The two ladies looked over it together; and he sat smiling and talking to them the whole time, in a voice a little subdued, but very audible to every body.\n\n \"Well, he is coming, you see; good news, I think. Well, what do you say to it?--I always told you he would be here again soon, did not I?--Anne, my dear, did not I always tell you so, and you would not believe me?--In town next week, you see--at the latest, I dare say; for _she_ is as impatient as the black gentleman when any thing is to be done; most likely they will be there to-morrow or Saturday. As to her illness, all nothing of course. But it is an excellent thing to have Hendrik among us again, so near as town. They will stay a good while when they do come, and he will be half his time with us. This is precisely what I wanted. Well, pretty good news, is not it? Have you finished it? Has York read it all? Put it up, put it up; we will have a good talk about it some other time, but it will not do now. I shall only just mention the circumstance to the others in a common way.\"\n\n Mrs. Johan was most comfortably pleased on the occasion. Her looks and words had nothing to restrain them. She was happy, she knew she was happy, and knew she ought to be happy. Her congratulations were warm and open; but York could not speak so fluently. _She_ was a little occupied in weighing her own feelings, and trying to understand the degree of her agitation, which she rather thought was considerable.\n\n Mr. Johan, however, too eager to be very observant, too communicative to want others to talk, was very well satisfied with what she did say, and soon moved away to make the rest of his friends happy by a partial communication of what the whole room must have overheard already.\n\n It was well that he took every body's joy for granted, or he might not have thought either Mr. Katara or Mr. Deirdre particularly delighted. They were the first entitled, after Mrs. Johan and York, to be made happy;--from them he would have proceeded to Miss Braxton, but she was so deep in conversation with Ilse Deirdre, that it would have been too positive an interruption; and finding himself close to Mrs. London, and her attention disengaged, he necessarily began on the subject with her.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"I hope I shall soon have the pleasure of introducing my son to you,\" said Mr. Johan.\n\n Mrs. London, very willing to suppose a particular compliment intended her by such a hope, smiled most graciously.\n\n \"You have heard of a certain Hendrik Olga, I presume,\" he continued--\"and know him to be my son, though he does not bear my name.\"\n\n \"Oh! yes, and I shall be very happy in his acquaintance. I am sure Mr. London will lose no time in calling on him; and we shall both have great pleasure in seeing him at the Vicarage.\"\n\n \"You are very obliging.--Hendrik will be extremely happy, I am sure.-- He is to be in town next week, if not sooner. We have notice of it in a letter to-day. I met the letters in my way this morning, and seeing my son's hand, presumed to open it--though it was not directed to me--it was to Mrs. Johan. She is his principal correspondent, I assure you. I hardly ever get a letter.\"\n\n \"And so you absolutely opened what was directed to her! Oh! Mr. Johan--(laughing affectedly) I must protest against that.--A most dangerous precedent indeed!--I beg you will not let your neighbours follow your example.--Upon my word, if this is what I am to expect, we married women must begin to exert ourselves!--Oh! Mr. Johan, I could not have believed it of you!\"\n\n \"Aye, we men are sad fellows. You must take care of yourself, Mrs. London.--This letter tells us--it is a short letter--written in a hurry, merely to give us notice--it tells us that they are all coming up to town directly, on Mrs. Olga's account--she has not been well the whole winter, and thinks Enscombe too cold for her--so they are all to move southward without loss of time.\"\n\n \"Indeed!--from Yorkshire, I think. Enscombe is in Yorkshire?\"\n\n \"Yes, they are about one hundred and ninety miles from London, a considerable journey.\"\n\n \"Yes, upon my word, very considerable. Sixty-five miles farther than from Maple Grove to London. But what is distance, Mr. Johan, to people of large fortune?--You would be amazed to hear how my brother, Mr. Suckling, sometimes flies about. You will hardly believe me--but twice in one week he and Mr. Bragge went to London and back again with four horses.\"\n\n \"The evil of the distance from Enscombe,\" said Mr. Johan, \"is, that Mrs. Olga, _as_ _we_ _understand_, has not been able to leave the sofa for a week together. In Hendrik's last letter she complained, he said, of being too weak to get into her conservatory without having both his arm and his uncle's! This, you know, speaks a great degree of weakness--but now she is so impatient to be in town, that she means to sleep only two nights on the road.--So Hendrik writes word. Certainly, delicate ladies have very extraordinary constitutions, Mrs. London. You must grant me that.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, I shall grant you nothing. I always take the part of my own sex. I do indeed. I give you notice--You will find me a formidable antagonist on that point. I always stand up for women--and I assure you, if you knew how Selina feels with respect to sleeping at an inn, you would not wonder at Mrs. Olga's making incredible exertions to avoid it. Selina says it is quite horror to her--and I believe I have caught a little of her nicety. She always travels with her own sheets; an excellent precaution. Does Mrs. Olga do the same?\"\n\n \"Depend upon it, Mrs. Olga does every thing that any other fine lady ever did. Mrs. Olga will not be second to any lady in the land for\"--\n\n Mrs. London eagerly interposed with,\n\n \"Oh! Mr. Johan, do not mistake me. Selina is no fine lady, I assure you. Do not run away with such an idea.\"\n\n \"Is not she? Then she is no rule for Mrs. Olga, who is as thorough a fine lady as any body ever beheld.\"\n\n Mrs. London began to think she had been wrong in disclaiming so warmly. It was by no means her object to have it believed that her sister was _not_ a fine lady; perhaps there was want of spirit in the pretence of it;--and she was considering in what way she had best retract, when Mr. Johan went on.\n\n \"Mrs. Olga is not much in my good graces, as you may suspect--but this is quite between ourselves. She is very fond of Hendrik, and therefore I would not speak ill of her. Besides, she is out of health now; but _that_ indeed, by her own account, she has always been. I would not say so to every body, Mrs. London, but I have not much faith in Mrs. Olga's illness.\"\n\n \"If she is really ill, why not go to Bath, Mr. Johan?--To Bath, or to Clifton?\" \"She has taken it into her head that Enscombe is too cold for her. The fact is, I suppose, that she is tired of Enscombe. She has now been a longer time stationary there, than she ever was before, and she begins to want change. It is a retired place. A fine place, but very retired.\"\n\n \"Aye--like Maple Grove, I dare say. Nothing can stand more retired from the road than Maple Grove. Such an immense plantation all round it! You seem shut out from every thing--in the most complete retirement.--And Mrs. Olga probably has not health or spirits like Selina to enjoy that sort of seclusion. Or, perhaps she may not have resources enough in herself to be qualified for a country life. I always say a woman cannot have too many resources--and I feel very thankful that I have so many myself as to be quite independent of society.\"\n\n \"Hendrik was here in February for a fortnight.\"\n\n \"So I remember to have heard. He will find an _addition_ to the society of Highbury when he comes again; that is, if I may presume to call myself an addition. But perhaps he may never have heard of there being such a creature in the world.\"\n\n This was too loud a call for a compliment to be passed by, and Mr. Johan, with a very good grace, immediately exclaimed,\n\n \"My dear madam! Nobody but yourself could imagine such a thing possible. Not heard of you!--I believe Mrs. Johan's letters lately have been full of very little else than Mrs. London.\"\n\n He had done his duty and could return to his son.\n\n \"When Hendrik left us,\" continued he, \"it was quite uncertain when we might see him again, which makes this day's news doubly welcome. It has been completely unexpected. That is, _I_ always had a strong persuasion he would be here again soon, I was sure something favourable would turn up--but nobody believed me. He and Mrs. Johan were both dreadfully desponding. 'How could he contrive to come? And how could it be supposed that his uncle and aunt would spare him again?' and so forth--I always felt that something would happen in our favour; and so it has, you see. I have observed, Mrs. London, in the course of my life, that if things are going untowardly one month, they are sure to mend the next.\"\n\n \"Very true, Mr. Johan, perfectly true. It is just what I used to say to a certain gentleman in company in the days of courtship, when, because things did not go quite right, did not proceed with all the rapidity which suited his feelings, he was apt to be in despair, and exclaim that he was sure at this rate it would be _May_ before Hymen's saffron robe would be put on for us. Oh! the pains I have been at to dispel those gloomy ideas and give him cheerfuller views! The carriage--we had disappointments about the carriage;--one morning, I remember, he came to me quite in despair.\"\n\n She was stopped by a slight fit of coughing, and Mr. Johan instantly seized the opportunity of going on.\n\n \"You were mentioning May. May is the very month which Mrs. Olga is ordered, or has ordered herself, to spend in some warmer place than Enscombe--in short, to spend in London; so that we have the agreeable prospect of frequent visits from Hendrik the whole spring--precisely the season of the year which one should have chosen for it: days almost at the longest; weather genial and pleasant, always inviting one out, and never too hot for exercise. When he was here before, we made the best of it; but there was a good deal of wet, damp, cheerless weather; there always is in February, you know, and we could not do half that we intended. Now will be the time. This will be complete enjoyment; and I do not know, Mrs. London, whether the uncertainty of our meetings, the sort of constant expectation there will be of his coming in to-day or to-morrow, and at any hour, may not be more friendly to happiness than having him actually in the house. I think it is so. I think it is the state of mind which gives most spirit and delight. I hope you will be pleased with my son; but you must not expect a prodigy. He is generally thought a fine young man, but do not expect a prodigy. Mrs. Johan's partiality for him is very great, and, as you may suppose, most gratifying to me. She thinks nobody equal to him.\"\n\n \"And I assure you, Mr. Johan, I have very little doubt that my opinion will be decidedly in his favour. I have heard so much in praise of Mr. Hendrik Olga.--At the same time it is fair to observe, that I am one of those who always judge for themselves, and are by no means implicitly guided by others. I give you notice that as I find your son, so I shall judge of him.--I am no flatterer.\"\n\n Mr. Johan was musing.\n\n \"I hope,\" said he presently, \"I have not been severe upon poor Mrs. Olga. If she is ill I should be sorry to do her injustice; but there are some traits in her character which make it difficult for me to speak of her with the forbearance I could wish. You cannot be ignorant, Mrs. London, of my connexion with the family, nor of the treatment I have met with; and, between ourselves, the whole blame of it is to be laid to her. She was the instigator. Hendrik's mother would never have been slighted as she was but for her. Mr. Olga has pride; but his pride is nothing to his wife's: his is a quiet, indolent, gentlemanlike sort of pride that would harm nobody, and only make himself a little helpless and tiresome; but her pride is arrogance and insolence! And what inclines one less to bear, she has no fair pretence of family or blood. She was nobody when he married her, barely the daughter of a gentleman; but ever since her being turned into a Olga she has out-Olga'd them all in high and mighty claims: but in herself, I assure you, she is an upstart.\"\n\n \"Only think! well, that must be infinitely provoking! I have quite a horror of upstarts. Maple Grove has given me a thorough disgust to people of that sort; for there is a family in that neighbourhood who are such an annoyance to my brother and sister from the airs they give themselves! Your description of Mrs. Olga made me think of them directly. People of the name of Tupman, very lately settled there, and encumbered with many low connexions, but giving themselves immense airs, and expecting to be on a footing with the old established families. A year and a half is the very utmost that they can have lived at West Hall; and how they got their fortune nobody knows. They came from Birmingham, which is not a place to promise much, you know, Mr. Johan. One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound: but nothing more is positively known of the Tupmans, though a good many things I assure you are suspected; and yet by their manners they evidently think themselves equal even to my brother, Mr. Suckling, who happens to be one of their nearest neighbours. It is infinitely too bad. Mr. Suckling, who has been eleven years a resident at Maple Grove, and whose father had it before him--I believe, at least--I am almost sure that old Mr. Suckling had completed the purchase before his death.\"\n\n They were interrupted. Tea was carrying round, and Mr. Johan, having said all that he wanted, soon took the opportunity of walking away.\n\n After tea, Mr. and Mrs. Johan, and Mr. London sat down with Mr. Katara to cards. The remaining five were left to their own powers, and York doubted their getting on very well; for Mr. Deirdre seemed little disposed for conversation; Mrs. London was wanting notice, which nobody had inclination to pay, and she was herself in a worry of spirits which would have made her prefer being silent.\n\n Mr. Ilse Deirdre proved more talkative than his brother. He was to leave them early the next day; and he soon began with--\n\n \"Well, York, I do not believe I have any thing more to say about the boys; but you have your sister's letter, and every thing is down at full length there we may be sure. My charge would be much more concise than her's, and probably not much in the same spirit; all that I have to recommend being comprised in, do not spoil them, and do not physic them.\"\n\n \"I rather hope to satisfy you both,\" said York, \"for I shall do all in my power to make them happy, which will be enough for Zoey; and happiness must preclude false indulgence and physic.\"\n\n \"And if you find them troublesome, you must send them home again.\"\n\n \"That is very likely. You think so, do not you?\"\n\n \"I hope I am aware that they may be too noisy for your father--or even may be some encumbrance to you, if your visiting engagements continue to increase as much as they have done lately.\"\n\n \"Increase!\"\n\n \"Certainly; you must be sensible that the last half-year has made a great difference in your way of life.\"\n\n \"Difference! No indeed I am not.\"\n\n \"There can be no doubt of your being much more engaged with company than you used to be. Witness this very time. Here am I come down for only one day, and you are engaged with a dinner-party!--When did it happen before, or any thing like it? Your neighbourhood is increasing, and you mix more with it. A little while ago, every letter to Zoey brought an account of fresh gaieties; dinners at Mr. David's, or balls at the Crown. The difference which Randalls, Randalls alone makes in your goings-on, is very great.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said his brother quickly, \"it is Randalls that does it all.\"\n\n \"Very well--and as Randalls, I suppose, is not likely to have less influence than heretofore, it strikes me as a possible thing, York, that Henry and Ilse may be sometimes in the way. And if they are, I only beg you to send them home.\"\n\n \"No,\" cried Mr. Deirdre, \"that need not be the consequence. Let them be sent to Donwell. I shall certainly be at leisure.\"\n\n \"Upon my word,\" exclaimed York, \"you amuse me! I should like to know how many of all my numerous engagements take place without your being of the party; and why I am to be supposed in danger of wanting leisure to attend to the little boys. These amazing engagements of mine--what have they been? Dining once with the Davids--and having a ball talked of, which never took place. I can understand you--(nodding at Mr. Ilse Deirdre)--your good fortune in meeting with so many of your friends at once here, delights you too much to pass unnoticed. But you, (turning to Mr. Deirdre,) who know how very, very seldom I am ever two hours from Hartfield, why you should foresee such a series of dissipation for me, I cannot imagine. And as to my dear little boys, I must say, that if Aunt York has not time for them, I do not think they would fare much better with Uncle Deirdre, who is absent from home about five hours where she is absent one--and who, when he is at home, is either reading to himself or settling his accounts.\"\n\n Mr. Deirdre seemed to be trying not to smile; and succeeded without difficulty, upon Mrs. London's beginning to talk to him.\n\n\n\n\n VOLUME III\n\n\n\n\n\n A very little quiet reflection was enough to satisfy York as to the nature of her agitation on hearing this news of Hendrik Olga. She was soon convinced that it was not for herself she was feeling at all apprehensive or embarrassed; it was for him. Her own attachment had really subsided into a mere nothing; it was not worth thinking of;--but if he, who had undoubtedly been always so much the most in love of the two, were to be returning with the same warmth of sentiment which he had taken away, it would be very distressing. If a separation of two months should not have cooled him, there were dangers and evils before her:--caution for him and for herself would be necessary. She did not mean to have her own affections entangled again, and it would be incumbent on her to avoid any encouragement of his.\n\n She wished she might be able to keep him from an absolute declaration. That would be so very painful a conclusion of their present acquaintance! and yet, she could not help rather anticipating something decisive. She felt as if the spring would not pass without bringing a crisis, an event, a something to alter her present composed and tranquil state.\n\n It was not very long, though rather longer than Mr. Johan had foreseen, before she had the power of forming some opinion of Hendrik Olga's feelings. The Enscombe family were not in town quite so soon as had been imagined, but he was at Highbury very soon afterwards. He rode down for a couple of hours; he could not yet do more; but as he came from Randalls immediately to Hartfield, she could then exercise all her quick observation, and speedily determine how he was influenced, and how she must act. They met with the utmost friendliness. There could be no doubt of his great pleasure in seeing her. But she had an almost instant doubt of his caring for her as he had done, of his feeling the same tenderness in the same degree. She watched him well. It was a clear thing he was less in love than he had been. Absence, with the conviction probably of her indifference, had produced this very natural and very desirable effect.\n\n He was in high spirits; as ready to talk and laugh as ever, and seemed delighted to speak of his former visit, and recur to old stories: and he was not without agitation. It was not in his calmness that she read his comparative difference. He was not calm; his spirits were evidently fluttered; there was restlessness about him. Lively as he was, it seemed a liveliness that did not satisfy himself; but what decided her belief on the subject, was his staying only a quarter of an hour, and hurrying away to make other calls in Highbury. \"He had seen a group of old acquaintance in the street as he passed--he had not stopped, he would not stop for more than a word--but he had the vanity to think they would be disappointed if he did not call, and much as he wished to stay longer at Hartfield, he must hurry off.\" She had no doubt as to his being less in love--but neither his agitated spirits, nor his hurrying away, seemed like a perfect cure; and she was rather inclined to think it implied a dread of her returning power, and a discreet resolution of not trusting himself with her long.\n\n This was the only visit from Hendrik Olga in the course of ten days. He was often hoping, intending to come--but was always prevented. His aunt could not bear to have him leave her. Such was his own account at Randall's. If he were quite sincere, if he really tried to come, it was to be inferred that Mrs. Olga's removal to London had been of no service to the wilful or nervous part of her disorder. That she was really ill was very certain; he had declared himself convinced of it, at Randalls. Though much might be fancy, he could not doubt, when he looked back, that she was in a weaker state of health than she had been half a year ago. He did not believe it to proceed from any thing that care and medicine might not remove, or at least that she might not have many years of existence before her; but he could not be prevailed on, by all his father's doubts, to say that her complaints were merely imaginary, or that she was as strong as ever.\n\n It soon appeared that London was not the place for her. She could not endure its noise. Her nerves were under continual irritation and suffering; and by the ten days' end, her nephew's letter to Randalls communicated a change of plan. They were going to remove immediately to Richmond. Mrs. Olga had been recommended to the medical skill of an eminent person there, and had otherwise a fancy for the place. A ready-furnished house in a favourite spot was engaged, and much benefit expected from the change.\n\n York heard that Hendrik wrote in the highest spirits of this arrangement, and seemed most fully to appreciate the blessing of having two months before him of such near neighbourhood to many dear friends--for the house was taken for May and June. She was told that now he wrote with the greatest confidence of being often with them, almost as often as he could even wish.\n\n York saw how Mr. Johan understood these joyous prospects. He was considering her as the source of all the happiness they offered. She hoped it was not so. Two months must bring it to the proof.\n\n Mr. Johan's own happiness was indisputable. He was quite delighted. It was the very circumstance he could have wished for. Now, it would be really having Hendrik in their neighbourhood. What were nine miles to a young man?--An hour's ride. He would be always coming over. The difference in that respect of Richmond and London was enough to make the whole difference of seeing him always and seeing him never. Sixteen miles--nay, eighteen--it must be full eighteen to Manchester-street--was a serious obstacle. Were he ever able to get away, the day would be spent in coming and returning. There was no comfort in having him in London; he might as well be at Enscombe; but Richmond was the very distance for easy intercourse. Better than nearer!\n\n One good thing was immediately brought to a certainty by this removal,--the ball at the Crown. It had not been forgotten before, but it had been soon acknowledged vain to attempt to fix a day. Now, however, it was absolutely to be; every preparation was resumed, and very soon after the Olgas had removed to Richmond, a few lines from Hendrik, to say that his aunt felt already much better for the change, and that he had no doubt of being able to join them for twenty-four hours at any given time, induced them to name as early a day as possible.\n\n Mr. Johan's ball was to be a real thing. A very few to-morrows stood between the young people of Highbury and happiness.\n\n Mr. Katara was resigned. The time of year lightened the evil to him. May was better for every thing than February. Mrs. Leo was engaged to spend the evening at Hartfield, James had due notice, and he sanguinely hoped that neither dear little Henry nor dear little Ilse would have any thing the matter with them, while dear York were gone.\n\n\n\n\n\n No misfortune occurred, again to prevent the ball. The day approached, the day arrived; and after a morning of some anxious watching, Hendrik Olga, in all the certainty of his own self, reached Randalls before dinner, and every thing was safe.\n\n No second meeting had there yet been between him and York. The room at the Crown was to witness it;--but it would be better than a common meeting in a crowd. Mr. Johan had been so very earnest in his entreaties for her arriving there as soon as possible after themselves, for the purpose of taking her opinion as to the propriety and comfort of the rooms before any other persons came, that she could not refuse him, and must therefore spend some quiet interval in the young man's company. She was to convey Stewart, and they drove to the Crown in good time, the Randalls party just sufficiently before them.\n\n Hendrik Olga seemed to have been on the watch; and though he did not say much, his eyes declared that he meant to have a delightful evening. They all walked about together, to see that every thing was as it should be; and within a few minutes were joined by the contents of another carriage, which York could not hear the sound of at first, without great surprize. \"So unreasonably early!\" she was going to exclaim; but she presently found that it was a family of old friends, who were coming, like herself, by particular desire, to help Mr. Johan's judgment; and they were so very closely followed by another carriage of cousins, who had been entreated to come early with the same distinguishing earnestness, on the same errand, that it seemed as if half the company might soon be collected together for the purpose of preparatory inspection.\n\n York perceived that her taste was not the only taste on which Mr. Johan depended, and felt, that to be the favourite and intimate of a man who had so many intimates and confidantes, was not the very first distinction in the scale of vanity. She liked his open manners, but a little less of open-heartedness would have made him a higher character.--General benevolence, but not general friendship, made a man what he ought to be.--She could fancy such a man. The whole party walked about, and looked, and praised again; and then, having nothing else to do, formed a sort of half-circle round the fire, to observe in their various modes, till other subjects were started, that, though _May_, a fire in the evening was still very pleasant.\n\n York found that it was not Mr. Johan's fault that the number of privy councillors was not yet larger. They had stopped at Mrs. Leo's door to offer the use of their carriage, but the aunt and niece were to be brought by the Londons.\n\n Hendrik was standing by her, but not steadily; there was a restlessness, which shewed a mind not at ease. He was looking about, he was going to the door, he was watching for the sound of other carriages,--impatient to begin, or afraid of being always near her.\n\n Mrs. London was spoken of. \"I think she must be here soon,\" said he. \"I have a great curiosity to see Mrs. London, I have heard so much of her. It cannot be long, I think, before she comes.\"\n\n A carriage was heard. He was on the move immediately; but coming back, said,\n\n \"I am forgetting that I am not acquainted with her. I have never seen either Mr. or Mrs. London. I have no business to put myself forward.\"\n\n Mr. and Mrs. London appeared; and all the smiles and the proprieties passed.\n\n \"But Miss Leo and Miss Braxton!\" said Mr. Johan, looking about. \"We thought you were to bring them.\"\n\n The mistake had been slight. The carriage was sent for them now. York longed to know what Hendrik's first opinion of Mrs. London might be; how he was affected by the studied elegance of her dress, and her smiles of graciousness. He was immediately qualifying himself to form an opinion, by giving her very proper attention, after the introduction had passed.\n\n In a few minutes the carriage returned.--Somebody talked of rain.--\"I will see that there are umbrellas, sir,\" said Hendrik to his father: \"Miss Leo must not be forgotten:\" and away he went. Mr. Johan was following; but Mrs. London detained him, to gratify him by her opinion of his son; and so briskly did she begin, that the young man himself, though by no means moving slowly, could hardly be out of hearing.\n\n \"A very fine young man indeed, Mr. Johan. You know I candidly told you I should form my own opinion; and I am happy to say that I am extremely pleased with him.--You may believe me. I never compliment. I think him a very handsome young man, and his manners are precisely what I like and approve--so truly the gentleman, without the least conceit or puppyism. You must know I have a vast dislike to puppies--quite a horror of them. They were never tolerated at Maple Grove. Neither Mr. Suckling nor me had ever any patience with them; and we used sometimes to say very cutting things! Selina, who is mild almost to a fault, bore with them much better.\"\n\n While she talked of his son, Mr. Johan's attention was chained; but when she got to Maple Grove, he could recollect that there were ladies just arriving to be attended to, and with happy smiles must hurry away.\n\n Mrs. London turned to Mrs. Johan. \"I have no doubt of its being our carriage with Miss Leo and Clementine. Our coachman and horses are so extremely expeditious!--I believe we drive faster than any body.--What a pleasure it is to send one's carriage for a friend!--I understand you were so kind as to offer, but another time it will be quite unnecessary. You may be very sure I shall always take care of _them_.\"\n\n Miss Leo and Miss Braxton, escorted by the two gentlemen, walked into the room; and Mrs. London seemed to think it as much her duty as Mrs. Johan's to receive them. Her gestures and movements might be understood by any one who looked on like York; but her words, every body's words, were soon lost under the incessant flow of Miss Leo, who came in talking, and had not finished her speech under many minutes after her being admitted into the circle at the fire. As the door opened she was heard,\n\n \"So very obliging of you!--No rain at all. Nothing to signify. I do not care for myself. Quite thick shoes. And Clementine declares--Well!--(as soon as she was within the door) Well! This is brilliant indeed!--This is admirable!--Excellently contrived, upon my word. Nothing wanting. Could not have imagined it.--So well lighted up!--Clementine, Clementine, look!--did you ever see any thing? Oh! Mr. Johan, you must really have had Aladdin's lamp. Good Mrs. Stokes would not know her own room again. I saw her as I came in; she was standing in the entrance. 'Oh! Mrs. Stokes,' said I--but I had not time for more.\" She was now met by Mrs. Johan.--\"Very well, I thank you, ma'am. I hope you are quite well. Very happy to hear it. So afraid you might have a headache!--seeing you pass by so often, and knowing how much trouble you must have. Delighted to hear it indeed. Ah! dear Mrs. London, so obliged to you for the carriage!--excellent time. Clementine and I quite ready. Did not keep the horses a moment. Most comfortable carriage.--Oh! and I am sure our thanks are due to you, Mrs. Johan, on that score. Mrs. London had most kindly sent Clementine a note, or we should have been.--But two such offers in one day!--Never were such neighbours. I said to my mother, 'Upon my word, ma'am--.' Thank you, my mother is remarkably well. Gone to Mr. Katara's. I made her take her shawl--for the evenings are not warm--her large new shawl-- Mrs. Porter's wedding-present.--So kind of her to think of my mother! Bought at Weymouth, you know--Mr. Porter's choice. There were three others, Clementine says, which they hesitated about some time. Reuben Teagan rather preferred an olive. My dear Clementine, are you sure you did not wet your feet?--It was but a drop or two, but I am so afraid:--but Mr. Hendrik Olga was so extremely--and there was a mat to step upon--I shall never forget his extreme politeness.--Oh! Mr. Hendrik Olga, I must tell you my mother's spectacles have never been in fault since; the rivet never came out again. My mother often talks of your good-nature. Does not she, Clementine?--Do not we often talk of Mr. Hendrik Olga?--Ah! here's Miss Katara.--Dear Miss Katara, how do you do?--Very well I thank you, quite well. This is meeting quite in fairy-land!--Such a transformation!--Must not compliment, I know (eyeing York most complacently)--that would be rude--but upon my word, Miss Katara, you do look--how do you like Clementine's hair?--You are a judge.--She did it all herself. Quite wonderful how she does her hair!--No hairdresser from London I think could.--Ah! Dr. Hughes I declare--and Mrs. Hughes. Must go and speak to Dr. and Mrs. Hughes for a moment.--How do you do? How do you do?--Very well, I thank you. This is delightful, is not it?--Where's dear Mr. Richard?--Oh! there he is. Don't disturb him. Much better employed talking to the young ladies. How do you do, Mr. Richard?--I saw you the other day as you rode through the town--Mrs. Otway, I protest!--and good Mr. Otway, and Miss Otway and Miss Caroline.--Such a host of friends!--and Mr. Lester and Mr. Arthur!--How do you do? How do you all do?--Quite well, I am much obliged to you. Never better.--Don't I hear another carriage?--Who can this be?--very likely the worthy Davids.--Upon my word, this is charming to be standing about among such friends! And such a noble fire!--I am quite roasted. No coffee, I thank you, for me--never take coffee.--A little tea if you please, sir, by and bye,--no hurry--Oh! here it comes. Every thing so good!\"\n\n Hendrik Olga returned to his station by York; and as soon as Miss Leo was quiet, she found herself necessarily overhearing the discourse of Mrs. London and Miss Braxton, who were standing a little way behind her.--He was thoughtful. Whether he were overhearing too, she could not determine. After a good many compliments to Clementine on her dress and look, compliments very quietly and properly taken, Mrs. London was evidently wanting to be complimented herself--and it was, \"How do you like my gown?--How do you like my trimming?--How has Wright done my hair?\"--with many other relative questions, all answered with patient politeness. Mrs. London then said, \"Nobody can think less of dress in general than I do--but upon such an occasion as this, when every body's eyes are so much upon me, and in compliment to the Johans--who I have no doubt are giving this ball chiefly to do me honour--I would not wish to be inferior to others. And I see very few pearls in the room except mine.--So Hendrik Olga is a capital dancer, I understand.--We shall see if our styles suit.--A fine young man certainly is Hendrik Olga. I like him very well.\"\n\n At this moment Hendrik began talking so vigorously, that York could not but imagine he had overheard his own praises, and did not want to hear more;--and the voices of the ladies were drowned for a while, till another suspension brought Mrs. London's tones again distinctly forward.--Mr. London had just joined them, and his wife was exclaiming,\n\n \"Oh! you have found us out at last, have you, in our seclusion?--I was this moment telling Clementine, I thought you would begin to be impatient for tidings of us.\"\n\n \"Clementine!\"--repeated Hendrik Olga, with a look of surprize and displeasure.--\"That is easy--but Miss Braxton does not disapprove it, I suppose.\"\n\n \"How do you like Mrs. London?\" said York in a whisper.\n\n \"Not at all.\"\n\n \"You are ungrateful.\"\n\n \"Ungrateful!--What do you mean?\" Then changing from a frown to a smile--\"No, do not tell me--I do not want to know what you mean.--Where is my father?--When are we to begin dancing?\"\n\n York could hardly understand him; he seemed in an odd humour. He walked off to find his father, but was quickly back again with both Mr. and Mrs. Johan. He had met with them in a little perplexity, which must be laid before York. It had just occurred to Mrs. Johan that Mrs. London must be asked to begin the ball; that she would expect it; which interfered with all their wishes of giving York that distinction.--York heard the sad truth with fortitude.\n\n \"And what are we to do for a proper partner for her?\" said Mr. Johan. \"She will think Hendrik ought to ask her.\"\n\n Hendrik turned instantly to York, to claim her former promise; and boasted himself an engaged man, which his father looked his most perfect approbation of--and it then appeared that Mrs. Johan was wanting _him_ to dance with Mrs. London himself, and that their business was to help to persuade him into it, which was done pretty soon.--Mr. Johan and Mrs. London led the way, Mr. Hendrik Olga and Miss Katara followed. York must submit to stand second to Mrs. London, though she had always considered the ball as peculiarly for her. It was almost enough to make her think of marrying. Mrs. London had undoubtedly the advantage, at this time, in vanity completely gratified; for though she had intended to begin with Hendrik Olga, she could not lose by the change. Mr. Johan might be his son's superior.--In spite of this little rub, however, York was smiling with enjoyment, delighted to see the respectable length of the set as it was forming, and to feel that she had so many hours of unusual festivity before her.--She was more disturbed by Mr. Deirdre's not dancing than by any thing else.--There he was, among the standers-by, where he ought not to be; he ought to be dancing,--not classing himself with the husbands, and fathers, and whist-players, who were pretending to feel an interest in the dance till their rubbers were made up,--so young as he looked!--He could not have appeared to greater advantage perhaps anywhere, than where he had placed himself. His tall, firm, upright figure, among the bulky forms and stooping shoulders of the elderly men, was such as York felt must draw every body's eyes; and, excepting her own partner, there was not one among the whole row of young men who could be compared with him.--He moved a few steps nearer, and those few steps were enough to prove in how gentlemanlike a manner, with what natural grace, he must have danced, would he but take the trouble.--Whenever she caught his eye, she forced him to smile; but in general he was looking grave. She wished he could love a ballroom better, and could like Hendrik Olga better.--He seemed often observing her. She must not flatter herself that he thought of her dancing, but if he were criticising her behaviour, she did not feel afraid. There was nothing like flirtation between her and her partner. They seemed more like cheerful, easy friends, than lovers. That Hendrik Olga thought less of her than he had done, was indubitable.\n\n The ball proceeded pleasantly. The anxious cares, the incessant attentions of Mrs. Johan, were not thrown away. Every body seemed happy; and the praise of being a delightful ball, which is seldom bestowed till after a ball has ceased to be, was repeatedly given in the very beginning of the existence of this. Of very important, very recordable events, it was not more productive than such meetings usually are. There was one, however, which York thought something of.--The two last dances before supper were begun, and Stewart had no partner;--the only young lady sitting down;--and so equal had been hitherto the number of dancers, that how there could be any one disengaged was the wonder!--But York's wonder lessened soon afterwards, on seeing Mr. London sauntering about. He would not ask Stewart to dance if it were possible to be avoided: she was sure he would not--and she was expecting him every moment to escape into the card-room.\n\n Escape, however, was not his plan. He came to the part of the room where the sitters-by were collected, spoke to some, and walked about in front of them, as if to shew his liberty, and his resolution of maintaining it. He did not omit being sometimes directly before Miss Milan, or speaking to those who were close to her.--York saw it. She was not yet dancing; she was working her way up from the bottom, and had therefore leisure to look around, and by only turning her head a little she saw it all. When she was half-way up the set, the whole group were exactly behind her, and she would no longer allow her eyes to watch; but Mr. London was so near, that she heard every syllable of a dialogue which just then took place between him and Mrs. Johan; and she perceived that his wife, who was standing immediately above her, was not only listening also, but even encouraging him by significant glances.--The kind-hearted, gentle Mrs. Johan had left her seat to join him and say, \"Do not you dance, Mr. London?\" to which his prompt reply was, \"Most readily, Mrs. Johan, if you will dance with me.\"\n\n \"Me!--oh! no--I would get you a better partner than myself. I am no dancer.\"\n\n \"If Mrs. Gilbert wishes to dance,\" said he, \"I shall have great pleasure, I am sure--for, though beginning to feel myself rather an old married man, and that my dancing days are over, it would give me very great pleasure at any time to stand up with an old friend like Mrs. Gilbert.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Gilbert does not mean to dance, but there is a young lady disengaged whom I should be very glad to see dancing--Miss Milan.\" \"Miss Milan!--oh!--I had not observed.--You are extremely obliging--and if I were not an old married man.--But my dancing days are over, Mrs. Johan. You will excuse me. Any thing else I should be most happy to do, at your command--but my dancing days are over.\"\n\n Mrs. Johan said no more; and York could imagine with what surprize and mortification she must be returning to her seat. This was Mr. London! the amiable, obliging, gentle Mr. London.--She looked round for a moment; he had joined Mr. Deirdre at a little distance, and was arranging himself for settled conversation, while smiles of high glee passed between him and his wife.\n\n She would not look again. Her heart was in a glow, and she feared her face might be as hot.\n\n In another moment a happier sight caught her;--Mr. Deirdre leading Stewart to the set!--Never had she been more surprized, seldom more delighted, than at that instant. She was all pleasure and gratitude, both for Stewart and herself, and longed to be thanking him; and though too distant for speech, her countenance said much, as soon as she could catch his eye again.\n\n His dancing proved to be just what she had believed it, extremely good; and Stewart would have seemed almost too lucky, if it had not been for the cruel state of things before, and for the very complete enjoyment and very high sense of the distinction which her happy features announced. It was not thrown away on her, she bounded higher than ever, flew farther down the middle, and was in a continual course of smiles.\n\n Mr. London had retreated into the card-room, looking (York trusted) very foolish. She did not think he was quite so hardened as his wife, though growing very like her;--_she_ spoke some of her feelings, by observing audibly to her partner,\n\n \"Deirdre has taken pity on poor little Miss Milan!--Very good-natured, I declare.\"\n\n Supper was announced. The move began; and Miss Leo might be heard from that moment, without interruption, till her being seated at table and taking up her spoon.\n\n \"Clementine, Clementine, my dear Clementine, where are you?--Here is your tippet. Mrs. Johan begs you to put on your tippet. She says she is afraid there will be draughts in the passage, though every thing has been done--One door nailed up--Quantities of matting--My dear Clementine, indeed you must. Mr. Olga, oh! you are too obliging! How well you put it on!--so gratified! Excellent dancing indeed!--Yes, my dear, I ran home, as I said I should, to help grandmama to bed, and got back again, and nobody missed me.--I set off without saying a word, just as I told you. Grandmama was quite well, had a charming evening with Mr. Katara, a vast deal of chat, and backgammon.--Tea was made downstairs, biscuits and baked apples and wine before she came away: amazing luck in some of her throws: and she inquired a great deal about you, how you were amused, and who were your partners. 'Oh!' said I, 'I shall not forestall Clementine; I left her dancing with Mr. Lester Otway; she will love to tell you all about it herself to-morrow: her first partner was Mr. London, I do not know who will ask her next, perhaps Mr. William Cox.' My dear sir, you are too obliging.--Is there nobody you would not rather?--I am not helpless. Sir, you are most kind. Upon my word, Clementine on one arm, and me on the other!--Stop, stop, let us stand a little back, Mrs. London is going; dear Mrs. London, how elegant she looks!--Beautiful lace!--Now we all follow in her train. Quite the queen of the evening!--Well, here we are at the passage. Two steps, Clementine, take care of the two steps. Oh! no, there is but one. Well, I was persuaded there were two. How very odd! I was convinced there were two, and there is but one. I never saw any thing equal to the comfort and style--Candles everywhere.--I was telling you of your grandmama, Clementine,--There was a little disappointment.--The baked apples and biscuits, excellent in their way, you know; but there was a delicate fricassee of sweetbread and some asparagus brought in at first, and good Mr. Katara, not thinking the asparagus quite boiled enough, sent it all out again. Now there is nothing grandmama loves better than sweetbread and asparagus--so she was rather disappointed, but we agreed we would not speak of it to any body, for fear of its getting round to dear Miss Katara, who would be so very much concerned!--Well, this is brilliant! I am all amazement! could not have supposed any thing!--Such elegance and profusion!--I have seen nothing like it since--Well, where shall we sit? where shall we sit? Anywhere, so that Clementine is not in a draught. Where _I_ sit is of no consequence. Oh! do you recommend this side?--Well, I am sure, Mr. Olga--only it seems too good--but just as you please. What you direct in this house cannot be wrong. Dear Clementine, how shall we ever recollect half the dishes for grandmama? Soup too! Bless me! I should not be helped so soon, but it smells most excellent, and I cannot help beginning.\"\n\n York had no opportunity of speaking to Mr. Deirdre till after supper; but, when they were all in the ballroom again, her eyes invited him irresistibly to come to her and be thanked. He was warm in his reprobation of Mr. London's conduct; it had been unpardonable rudeness; and Mrs. London's looks also received the due share of censure.\n\n \"They aimed at wounding more than Stewart,\" said he. \"York, why is it that they are your enemies?\"\n\n He looked with smiling penetration; and, on receiving no answer, added, \"_She_ ought not to be angry with you, I suspect, whatever he may be.--To that surmise, you say nothing, of course; but confess, York, that you did want him to marry Stewart.\"\n\n \"I did,\" replied York, \"and they cannot forgive me.\"\n\n He shook his head; but there was a smile of indulgence with it, and he only said,\n\n \"I shall not scold you. I leave you to your own reflections.\"\n\n \"Can you trust me with such flatterers?--Does my vain spirit ever tell me I am wrong?\"\n\n \"Not your vain spirit, but your serious spirit.--If one leads you wrong, I am sure the other tells you of it.\"\n\n \"I do own myself to have been completely mistaken in Mr. London. There is a littleness about him which you discovered, and which I did not: and I was fully convinced of his being in love with Stewart. It was through a series of strange blunders!\"\n\n \"And, in return for your acknowledging so much, I will do you the justice to say, that you would have chosen for him better than he has chosen for himself.--Stewart Milan has some first-rate qualities, which Mrs. London is totally without. An unpretending, single-minded, artless girl--infinitely to be preferred by any man of sense and taste to such a woman as Mrs. London. I found Stewart more conversable than I expected.\"\n\n York was extremely gratified.--They were interrupted by the bustle of Mr. Johan calling on every body to begin dancing again.\n\n \"Come Miss Katara, Miss Otway, Miss Braxton, what are you all doing?--Come York, set your companions the example. Every body is lazy! Every body is asleep!\"\n\n \"I am ready,\" said York, \"whenever I am wanted.\"\n\n \"Whom are you going to dance with?\" asked Mr. Deirdre.\n\n She hesitated a moment, and then replied, \"With you, if you will ask me.\"\n\n \"Will you?\" said he, offering his hand.\n\n \"Indeed I will. You have shewn that you can dance, and you know we are not really so much brother and sister as to make it at all improper.\"\n\n \"Brother and sister! no, indeed.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n This little explanation with Mr. Deirdre gave York considerable pleasure. It was one of the agreeable recollections of the ball, which she walked about the lawn the next morning to enjoy.--She was extremely glad that they had come to so good an understanding respecting the Londons, and that their opinions of both husband and wife were so much alike; and his praise of Stewart, his concession in her favour, was peculiarly gratifying. The impertinence of the Londons, which for a few minutes had threatened to ruin the rest of her evening, had been the occasion of some of its highest satisfactions; and she looked forward to another happy result--the cure of Stewart's infatuation.--From Stewart's manner of speaking of the circumstance before they quitted the ballroom, she had strong hopes. It seemed as if her eyes were suddenly opened, and she were enabled to see that Mr. London was not the superior creature she had believed him. The fever was over, and York could harbour little fear of the pulse being quickened again by injurious courtesy. She depended on the evil feelings of the Londons for supplying all the discipline of pointed neglect that could be farther requisite.--Stewart rational, Hendrik Olga not too much in love, and Mr. Deirdre not wanting to quarrel with her, how very happy a summer must be before her!\n\n She was not to see Hendrik Olga this morning. He had told her that he could not allow himself the pleasure of stopping at Hartfield, as he was to be at home by the middle of the day. She did not regret it.\n\n Having arranged all these matters, looked them through, and put them all to rights, she was just turning to the house with spirits freshened up for the demands of the two little boys, as well as of their grandpapa, when the great iron sweep-gate opened, and two persons entered whom she had never less expected to see together--Hendrik Olga, with Stewart leaning on his arm--actually Stewart!--A moment sufficed to convince her that something extraordinary had happened. Stewart looked white and frightened, and he was trying to cheer her.--The iron gates and the front-door were not twenty yards asunder;--they were all three soon in the hall, and Stewart immediately sinking into a chair fainted away.\n\n A young lady who faints, must be recovered; questions must be answered, and surprizes be explained. Such events are very interesting, but the suspense of them cannot last long. A few minutes made York acquainted with the whole.\n\n Miss Milan, and Miss Bickerton, another parlour boarder at Mrs. Ayaan's, who had been also at the ball, had walked out together, and taken a road, the Richmond road, which, though apparently public enough for safety, had led them into alarm.--About half a mile beyond Highbury, making a sudden turn, and deeply shaded by elms on each side, it became for a considerable stretch very retired; and when the young ladies had advanced some way into it, they had suddenly perceived at a small distance before them, on a broader patch of greensward by the side, a party of gipsies. A child on the watch, came towards them to beg; and Miss Bickerton, excessively frightened, gave a great scream, and calling on Stewart to follow her, ran up a steep bank, cleared a slight hedge at the top, and made the best of her way by a short cut back to Highbury. But poor Stewart could not follow. She had suffered very much from cramp after dancing, and her first attempt to mount the bank brought on such a return of it as made her absolutely powerless--and in this state, and exceedingly terrified, she had been obliged to remain.\n\n How the trampers might have behaved, had the young ladies been more courageous, must be doubtful; but such an invitation for attack could not be resisted; and Stewart was soon assailed by half a dozen children, headed by a stout woman and a great boy, all clamorous, and impertinent in look, though not absolutely in word.--More and more frightened, she immediately promised them money, and taking out her purse, gave them a shilling, and begged them not to want more, or to use her ill.--She was then able to walk, though but slowly, and was moving away--but her terror and her purse were too tempting, and she was followed, or rather surrounded, by the whole gang, demanding more.\n\n In this state Hendrik Olga had found her, she trembling and conditioning, they loud and insolent. By a most fortunate chance his leaving Highbury had been delayed so as to bring him to her assistance at this critical moment. The pleasantness of the morning had induced him to walk forward, and leave his horses to meet him by another road, a mile or two beyond Highbury--and happening to have borrowed a pair of scissors the night before of Miss Leo, and to have forgotten to restore them, he had been obliged to stop at her door, and go in for a few minutes: he was therefore later than he had intended; and being on foot, was unseen by the whole party till almost close to them. The terror which the woman and boy had been creating in Stewart was then their own portion. He had left them completely frightened; and Stewart eagerly clinging to him, and hardly able to speak, had just strength enough to reach Hartfield, before her spirits were quite overcome. It was his idea to bring her to Hartfield: he had thought of no other place.\n\n This was the amount of the whole story,--of his communication and of Stewart's as soon as she had recovered her senses and speech.--He dared not stay longer than to see her well; these several delays left him not another minute to lose; and York engaging to give assurance of her safety to Mrs. Ayaan, and notice of there being such a set of people in the neighbourhood to Mr. Deirdre, he set off, with all the grateful blessings that she could utter for her friend and herself.\n\n Such an adventure as this,--a fine young man and a lovely young woman thrown together in such a way, could hardly fail of suggesting certain ideas to the coldest heart and the steadiest brain. So York thought, at least. Could a linguist, could a grammarian, could even a mathematician have seen what she did, have witnessed their appearance together, and heard their history of it, without feeling that circumstances had been at work to make them peculiarly interesting to each other?--How much more must an imaginist, like herself, be on fire with speculation and foresight!--especially with such a groundwork of anticipation as her mind had already made.\n\n It was a very extraordinary thing! Nothing of the sort had ever occurred before to any young ladies in the place, within her memory; no rencontre, no alarm of the kind;--and now it had happened to the very person, and at the very hour, when the other very person was chancing to pass by to rescue her!--It certainly was very extraordinary!--And knowing, as she did, the favourable state of mind of each at this period, it struck her the more. He was wishing to get the better of his attachment to herself, she just recovering from her mania for Mr. London. It seemed as if every thing united to promise the most interesting consequences. It was not possible that the occurrence should not be strongly recommending each to the other.\n\n In the few minutes' conversation which she had yet had with him, while Stewart had been partially insensible, he had spoken of her terror, her naivete, her fervour as she seized and clung to his arm, with a sensibility amused and delighted; and just at last, after Stewart's own account had been given, he had expressed his indignation at the abominable folly of Miss Bickerton in the warmest terms. Every thing was to take its natural course, however, neither impelled nor assisted. She would not stir a step, nor drop a hint. No, she had had enough of interference. There could be no harm in a scheme, a mere passive scheme. It was no more than a wish. Beyond it she would on no account proceed.\n\n York's first resolution was to keep her father from the knowledge of what had passed,--aware of the anxiety and alarm it would occasion: but she soon felt that concealment must be impossible. Within half an hour it was known all over Highbury. It was the very event to engage those who talk most, the young and the low; and all the youth and servants in the place were soon in the happiness of frightful news. The last night's ball seemed lost in the gipsies. Poor Mr. Katara trembled as he sat, and, as York had foreseen, would scarcely be satisfied without their promising never to go beyond the shrubbery again. It was some comfort to him that many inquiries after himself and Miss Katara (for his neighbours knew that he loved to be inquired after), as well as Miss Milan, were coming in during the rest of the day; and he had the pleasure of returning for answer, that they were all very indifferent--which, though not exactly true, for she was perfectly well, and Stewart not much otherwise, York would not interfere with. She had an unhappy state of health in general for the child of such a man, for she hardly knew what indisposition was; and if he did not invent illnesses for her, she could make no figure in a message.\n\n The gipsies did not wait for the operations of justice; they took themselves off in a hurry. The young ladies of Highbury might have walked again in safety before their panic began, and the whole history dwindled soon into a matter of little importance but to York and her nephews:--in her imagination it maintained its ground, and Henry and Ilse were still asking every day for the story of Stewart and the gipsies, and still tenaciously setting her right if she varied in the slightest particular from the original recital.\n\n\n\n\n\n A very few days had passed after this adventure, when Stewart came one morning to York with a small parcel in her hand, and after sitting down and hesitating, thus began:\n\n \"Miss Katara--if you are at leisure--I have something that I should like to tell you--a sort of confession to make--and then, you know, it will be over.\"\n\n York was a good deal surprized; but begged her to speak. There was a seriousness in Stewart's manner which prepared her, quite as much as her words, for something more than ordinary.\n\n \"It is my duty, and I am sure it is my wish,\" she continued, \"to have no reserves with you on this subject. As I am happily quite an altered creature in _one_ _respect_, it is very fit that you should have the satisfaction of knowing it. I do not want to say more than is necessary--I am too much ashamed of having given way as I have done, and I dare say you understand me.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said York, \"I hope I do.\"\n\n \"How I could so long a time be fancying myself!...\" cried Stewart, warmly. \"It seems like madness! I can see nothing at all extraordinary in him now.--I do not care whether I meet him or not--except that of the two I had rather not see him--and indeed I would go any distance round to avoid him--but I do not envy his wife in the least; I neither admire her nor envy her, as I have done: she is very charming, I dare say, and all that, but I think her very ill-tempered and disagreeable--I shall never forget her look the other night!--However, I assure you, Miss Katara, I wish her no evil.--No, let them be ever so happy together, it will not give me another moment's pang: and to convince you that I have been speaking truth, I am now going to destroy--what I ought to have destroyed long ago--what I ought never to have kept--I know that very well (blushing as she spoke).--However, now I will destroy it all--and it is my particular wish to do it in your presence, that you may see how rational I am grown. Cannot you guess what this parcel holds?\" said she, with a conscious look.\n\n \"Not the least in the world.--Did he ever give you any thing?\"\n\n \"No--I cannot call them gifts; but they are things that I have valued very much.\"\n\n She held the parcel towards her, and York read the words _Most_ _precious_ _treasures_ on the top. Her curiosity was greatly excited. Stewart unfolded the parcel, and she looked on with impatience. Within abundance of silver paper was a pretty little Tunbridge-ware box, which Stewart opened: it was well lined with the softest cotton; but, excepting the cotton, York saw only a small piece of court-plaister.\n\n \"Now,\" said Stewart, \"you _must_ recollect.\"\n\n \"No, indeed I do not.\"\n\n \"Dear me! I should not have thought it possible you could forget what passed in this very room about court-plaister, one of the very last times we ever met in it!--It was but a very few days before I had my sore throat--just before Mr. and Mrs. Ilse Deirdre came--I think the very evening.--Do not you remember his cutting his finger with your new penknife, and your recommending court-plaister?--But, as you had none about you, and knew I had, you desired me to supply him; and so I took mine out and cut him a piece; but it was a great deal too large, and he cut it smaller, and kept playing some time with what was left, before he gave it back to me. And so then, in my nonsense, I could not help making a treasure of it--so I put it by never to be used, and looked at it now and then as a great treat.\"\n\n \"My dearest Stewart!\" cried York, putting her hand before her face, and jumping up, \"you make me more ashamed of myself than I can bear. Remember it? Aye, I remember it all now; all, except your saving this relic--I knew nothing of that till this moment--but the cutting the finger, and my recommending court-plaister, and saying I had none about me!--Oh! my sins, my sins!--And I had plenty all the while in my pocket!--One of my senseless tricks!--I deserve to be under a continual blush all the rest of my life.--Well--(sitting down again)--go on--what else?\"\n\n \"And had you really some at hand yourself? I am sure I never suspected it, you did it so naturally.\"\n\n \"And so you actually put this piece of court-plaister by for his sake!\" said York, recovering from her state of shame and feeling divided between wonder and amusement. And secretly she added to herself, \"Lord bless me! when should I ever have thought of putting by in cotton a piece of court-plaister that Hendrik Olga had been pulling about! I never was equal to this.\"\n\n \"Here,\" resumed Stewart, turning to her box again, \"here is something still more valuable, I mean that _has_ _been_ more valuable, because this is what did really once belong to him, which the court-plaister never did.\"\n\n York was quite eager to see this superior treasure. It was the end of an old pencil,--the part without any lead.\n\n \"This was really his,\" said Stewart.--\"Do not you remember one morning?--no, I dare say you do not. But one morning--I forget exactly the day--but perhaps it was the Tuesday or Wednesday before _that_ _evening_, he wanted to make a memorandum in his pocket-book; it was about spruce-beer. Mr. Deirdre had been telling him something about brewing spruce-beer, and he wanted to put it down; but when he took out his pencil, there was so little lead that he soon cut it all away, and it would not do, so you lent him another, and this was left upon the table as good for nothing. But I kept my eye on it; and, as soon as I dared, caught it up, and never parted with it again from that moment.\"\n\n \"I do remember it,\" cried York; \"I perfectly remember it.--Talking about spruce-beer.--Oh! yes--Mr. Deirdre and I both saying we liked it, and Mr. London's seeming resolved to learn to like it too. I perfectly remember it.--Stop; Mr. Deirdre was standing just here, was not he? I have an idea he was standing just here.\"\n\n \"Ah! I do not know. I cannot recollect.--It is very odd, but I cannot recollect.--Mr. London was sitting here, I remember, much about where I am now.\"--\n\n \"Well, go on.\"\n\n \"Oh! that's all. I have nothing more to shew you, or to say--except that I am now going to throw them both behind the fire, and I wish you to see me do it.\"\n\n \"My poor dear Stewart! and have you actually found happiness in treasuring up these things?\"\n\n \"Yes, simpleton as I was!--but I am quite ashamed of it now, and wish I could forget as easily as I can burn them. It was very wrong of me, you know, to keep any remembrances, after he was married. I knew it was--but had not resolution enough to part with them.\"\n\n \"But, Stewart, is it necessary to burn the court-plaister?--I have not a word to say for the bit of old pencil, but the court-plaister might be useful.\"\n\n \"I shall be happier to burn it,\" replied Stewart. \"It has a disagreeable look to me. I must get rid of every thing.--There it goes, and there is an end, thank Heaven! of Mr. London.\"\n\n \"And when,\" thought York, \"will there be a beginning of Mr. Olga?\"\n\n She had soon afterwards reason to believe that the beginning was already made, and could not but hope that the gipsy, though she had _told_ no fortune, might be proved to have made Stewart's.--About a fortnight after the alarm, they came to a sufficient explanation, and quite undesignedly. York was not thinking of it at the moment, which made the information she received more valuable. She merely said, in the course of some trivial chat, \"Well, Stewart, whenever you marry I would advise you to do so and so\"--and thought no more of it, till after a minute's silence she heard Stewart say in a very serious tone, \"I shall never marry.\"\n\n York then looked up, and immediately saw how it was; and after a moment's debate, as to whether it should pass unnoticed or not, replied,\n\n \"Never marry!--This is a new resolution.\"\n\n \"It is one that I shall never change, however.\"\n\n After another short hesitation, \"I hope it does not proceed from--I hope it is not in compliment to Mr. London?\"\n\n \"Mr. London indeed!\" cried Stewart indignantly.--\"Oh! no\"--and York could just catch the words, \"so superior to Mr. London!\"\n\n She then took a longer time for consideration. Should she proceed no farther?--should she let it pass, and seem to suspect nothing?--Perhaps Stewart might think her cold or angry if she did; or perhaps if she were totally silent, it might only drive Stewart into asking her to hear too much; and against any thing like such an unreserve as had been, such an open and frequent discussion of hopes and chances, she was perfectly resolved.--She believed it would be wiser for her to say and know at once, all that she meant to say and know. Plain dealing was always best. She had previously determined how far she would proceed, on any application of the sort; and it would be safer for both, to have the judicious law of her own brain laid down with speed.--She was decided, and thus spoke--\n\n \"Stewart, I will not affect to be in doubt of your meaning. Your resolution, or rather your expectation of never marrying, results from an idea that the person whom you might prefer, would be too greatly your superior in situation to think of you. Is not it so?\"\n\n \"Oh! Miss Katara, believe me I have not the presumption to suppose-- Indeed I am not so mad.--But it is a pleasure to me to admire him at a distance--and to think of his infinite superiority to all the rest of the world, with the gratitude, wonder, and veneration, which are so proper, in me especially.\"\n\n \"I am not at all surprized at you, Stewart. The service he rendered you was enough to warm your heart.\"\n\n \"Service! oh! it was such an inexpressible obligation!--The very recollection of it, and all that I felt at the time--when I saw him coming--his noble look--and my wretchedness before. Such a change! In one moment such a change! From perfect misery to perfect happiness!\"\n\n \"It is very natural. It is natural, and it is honourable.--Yes, honourable, I think, to chuse so well and so gratefully.--But that it will be a fortunate preference is more than I can promise. I do not advise you to give way to it, Stewart. I do not by any means engage for its being returned. Consider what you are about. Perhaps it will be wisest in you to check your feelings while you can: at any rate do not let them carry you far, unless you are persuaded of his liking you. Be observant of him. Let his behaviour be the guide of your sensations. I give you this caution now, because I shall never speak to you again on the subject. I am determined against all interference. Henceforward I know nothing of the matter. Let no name ever pass our lips. We were very wrong before; we will be cautious now.--He is your superior, no doubt, and there do seem objections and obstacles of a very serious nature; but yet, Stewart, more wonderful things have taken place, there have been matches of greater disparity. But take care of yourself. I would not have you too sanguine; though, however it may end, be assured your raising your thoughts to _him_, is a mark of good taste which I shall always know how to value.\"\n\n Stewart kissed her hand in silent and submissive gratitude. York was very decided in thinking such an attachment no bad thing for her friend. Its tendency would be to raise and refine her mind--and it must be saving her from the danger of degradation.\n\n\n\n\n\n In this state of schemes, and hopes, and connivance, June opened upon Hartfield. To Highbury in general it brought no material change. The Londons were still talking of a visit from the Sucklings, and of the use to be made of their barouche-landau; and Clementine Braxton was still at her grandmother's; and as the return of the Teagans from Ireland was again delayed, and August, instead of Midsummer, fixed for it, she was likely to remain there full two months longer, provided at least she were able to defeat Mrs. London's activity in her service, and save herself from being hurried into a delightful situation against her will.\n\n Mr. Deirdre, who, for some reason best known to himself, had certainly taken an early dislike to Hendrik Olga, was only growing to dislike him more. He began to suspect him of some double dealing in his pursuit of York. That York was his object appeared indisputable. Every thing declared it; his own attentions, his father's hints, his mother-in-law's guarded silence; it was all in unison; words, conduct, discretion, and indiscretion, told the same story. But while so many were devoting him to York, and York herself making him over to Stewart, Mr. Deirdre began to suspect him of some inclination to trifle with Clementine Braxton. He could not understand it; but there were symptoms of intelligence between them--he thought so at least--symptoms of admiration on his side, which, having once observed, he could not persuade himself to think entirely void of meaning, however he might wish to escape any of York's errors of imagination. _She_ was not present when the suspicion first arose. He was dining with the Randalls family, and Clementine, at the Londons'; and he had seen a look, more than a single look, at Miss Braxton, which, from the admirer of Miss Katara, seemed somewhat out of place. When he was again in their company, he could not help remembering what he had seen; nor could he avoid observations which, unless it were like Cowper and his fire at twilight,\n\n \"Myself creating what I saw,\"\n\n brought him yet stronger suspicion of there being a something of private liking, of private understanding even, between Hendrik Olga and Clementine.\n\n He had walked up one day after dinner, as he very often did, to spend his evening at Hartfield. York and Stewart were going to walk; he joined them; and, on returning, they fell in with a larger party, who, like themselves, judged it wisest to take their exercise early, as the weather threatened rain; Mr. and Mrs. Johan and their son, Miss Leo and her niece, who had accidentally met. They all united; and, on reaching Hartfield gates, York, who knew it was exactly the sort of visiting that would be welcome to her father, pressed them all to go in and drink tea with him. The Randalls party agreed to it immediately; and after a pretty long speech from Miss Leo, which few persons listened to, she also found it possible to accept dear Miss Katara's most obliging invitation.\n\n As they were turning into the grounds, Mr. Martha passed by on horseback. The gentlemen spoke of his horse.\n\n \"By the bye,\" said Hendrik Olga to Mrs. Johan presently, \"what became of Mr. Martha's plan of setting up his carriage?\"\n\n Mrs. Johan looked surprized, and said, \"I did not know that he ever had any such plan.\"\n\n \"Nay, I had it from you. You wrote me word of it three months ago.\"\n\n \"Me! impossible!\"\n\n \"Indeed you did. I remember it perfectly. You mentioned it as what was certainly to be very soon. Mrs. Martha had told somebody, and was extremely happy about it. It was owing to _her_ persuasion, as she thought his being out in bad weather did him a great deal of harm. You must remember it now?\"\n\n \"Upon my word I never heard of it till this moment.\"\n\n \"Never! really, never!--Bless me! how could it be?--Then I must have dreamt it--but I was completely persuaded--Miss Milan, you walk as if you were tired. You will not be sorry to find yourself at home.\"\n\n \"What is this?--What is this?\" cried Mr. Johan, \"about Martha and a carriage? Is Martha going to set up his carriage, Hendrik? I am glad he can afford it. You had it from himself, had you?\"\n\n \"No, sir,\" replied his son, laughing, \"I seem to have had it from nobody.--Very odd!--I really was persuaded of Mrs. Johan's having mentioned it in one of her letters to Enscombe, many weeks ago, with all these particulars--but as she declares she never heard a syllable of it before, of course it must have been a dream. I am a great dreamer. I dream of every body at Highbury when I am away--and when I have gone through my particular friends, then I begin dreaming of Mr. and Mrs. Martha.\"\n\n \"It is odd though,\" observed his father, \"that you should have had such a regular connected dream about people whom it was not very likely you should be thinking of at Enscombe. Martha's setting up his carriage! and his wife's persuading him to it, out of care for his health--just what will happen, I have no doubt, some time or other; only a little premature. What an air of probability sometimes runs through a dream! And at others, what a heap of absurdities it is! Well, Hendrik, your dream certainly shews that Highbury is in your thoughts when you are absent. York, you are a great dreamer, I think?\"\n\n York was out of hearing. She had hurried on before her guests to prepare her father for their appearance, and was beyond the reach of Mr. Johan's hint.\n\n \"Why, to own the truth,\" cried Miss Leo, who had been trying in vain to be heard the last two minutes, \"if I must speak on this subject, there is no denying that Mr. Hendrik Olga might have--I do not mean to say that he did not dream it--I am sure I have sometimes the oddest dreams in the world--but if I am questioned about it, I must acknowledge that there was such an idea last spring; for Mrs. Martha herself mentioned it to my mother, and the Davids knew of it as well as ourselves--but it was quite a secret, known to nobody else, and only thought of about three days. Mrs. Martha was very anxious that he should have a carriage, and came to my mother in great spirits one morning because she thought she had prevailed. Clementine, don't you remember grandmama's telling us of it when we got home? I forget where we had been walking to--very likely to Randalls; yes, I think it was to Randalls. Mrs. Martha was always particularly fond of my mother--indeed I do not know who is not--and she had mentioned it to her in confidence; she had no objection to her telling us, of course, but it was not to go beyond: and, from that day to this, I never mentioned it to a soul that I know of. At the same time, I will not positively answer for my having never dropt a hint, because I know I do sometimes pop out a thing before I am aware. I am a talker, you know; I am rather a talker; and now and then I have let a thing escape me which I should not. I am not like Clementine; I wish I were. I will answer for it _she_ never betrayed the least thing in the world. Where is she?--Oh! just behind. Perfectly remember Mrs. Martha's coming.--Extraordinary dream, indeed!\"\n\n They were entering the hall. Mr. Deirdre's eyes had preceded Miss Leo's in a glance at Clementine. From Hendrik Olga's face, where he thought he saw confusion suppressed or laughed away, he had involuntarily turned to hers; but she was indeed behind, and too busy with her shawl. Mr. Johan had walked in. The two other gentlemen waited at the door to let her pass. Mr. Deirdre suspected in Hendrik Olga the determination of catching her eye--he seemed watching her intently--in vain, however, if it were so--Clementine passed between them into the hall, and looked at neither.\n\n There was no time for farther remark or explanation. The dream must be borne with, and Mr. Deirdre must take his seat with the rest round the large modern circular table which York had introduced at Hartfield, and which none but York could have had power to place there and persuade her father to use, instead of the small-sized Pembroke, on which two of his daily meals had, for forty years been crowded. Tea passed pleasantly, and nobody seemed in a hurry to move.\n\n \"Miss Katara,\" said Hendrik Olga, after examining a table behind him, which he could reach as he sat, \"have your nephews taken away their alphabets--their box of letters? It used to stand here. Where is it? This is a sort of dull-looking evening, that ought to be treated rather as winter than summer. We had great amusement with those letters one morning. I want to puzzle you again.\"\n\n York was pleased with the thought; and producing the box, the table was quickly scattered over with alphabets, which no one seemed so much disposed to employ as their two selves. They were rapidly forming words for each other, or for any body else who would be puzzled. The quietness of the game made it particularly eligible for Mr. Katara, who had often been distressed by the more animated sort, which Mr. Johan had occasionally introduced, and who now sat happily occupied in lamenting, with tender melancholy, over the departure of the \"poor little boys,\" or in fondly pointing out, as he took up any stray letter near him, how beautifully York had written it.\n\n Hendrik Olga placed a word before Miss Braxton. She gave a slight glance round the table, and applied herself to it. Hendrik was next to York, Clementine opposite to them--and Mr. Deirdre so placed as to see them all; and it was his object to see as much as he could, with as little apparent observation. The word was discovered, and with a faint smile pushed away. If meant to be immediately mixed with the others, and buried from sight, she should have looked on the table instead of looking just across, for it was not mixed; and Stewart, eager after every fresh word, and finding out none, directly took it up, and fell to work. She was sitting by Mr. Deirdre, and turned to him for help. The word was _blunder_; and as Stewart exultingly proclaimed it, there was a blush on Clementine's cheek which gave it a meaning not otherwise ostensible. Mr. Deirdre connected it with the dream; but how it could all be, was beyond his comprehension. How the delicacy, the discretion of his favourite could have been so lain asleep! He feared there must be some decided involvement. Disingenuousness and double dealing seemed to meet him at every turn. These letters were but the vehicle for gallantry and trick. It was a child's play, chosen to conceal a deeper game on Hendrik Olga's part.\n\n With great indignation did he continue to observe him; with great alarm and distrust, to observe also his two blinded companions. He saw a short word prepared for York, and given to her with a look sly and demure. He saw that York had soon made it out, and found it highly entertaining, though it was something which she judged it proper to appear to censure; for she said, \"Nonsense! for shame!\" He heard Hendrik Olga next say, with a glance towards Clementine, \"I will give it to her--shall I?\"--and as clearly heard York opposing it with eager laughing warmth. \"No, no, you must not; you shall not, indeed.\"\n\n It was done however. This gallant young man, who seemed to love without feeling, and to recommend himself without complaisance, directly handed over the word to Miss Braxton, and with a particular degree of sedate civility entreated her to study it. Mr. Deirdre's excessive curiosity to know what this word might be, made him seize every possible moment for darting his eye towards it, and it was not long before he saw it to be _Porter_. Clementine Braxton's perception seemed to accompany his; her comprehension was certainly more equal to the covert meaning, the superior intelligence, of those five letters so arranged. She was evidently displeased; looked up, and seeing herself watched, blushed more deeply than he had ever perceived her, and saying only, \"I did not know that proper names were allowed,\" pushed away the letters with even an angry spirit, and looked resolved to be engaged by no other word that could be offered. Her face was averted from those who had made the attack, and turned towards her aunt.\n\n \"Aye, very true, my dear,\" cried the latter, though Clementine had not spoken a word--\"I was just going to say the same thing. It is time for us to be going indeed. The evening is closing in, and grandmama will be looking for us. My dear sir, you are too obliging. We really must wish you good night.\"\n\n Clementine's alertness in moving, proved her as ready as her aunt had preconceived. She was immediately up, and wanting to quit the table; but so many were also moving, that she could not get away; and Mr. Deirdre thought he saw another collection of letters anxiously pushed towards her, and resolutely swept away by her unexamined. She was afterwards looking for her shawl--Hendrik Olga was looking also--it was growing dusk, and the room was in confusion; and how they parted, Mr. Deirdre could not tell.\n\n He remained at Hartfield after all the rest, his thoughts full of what he had seen; so full, that when the candles came to assist his observations, he must--yes, he certainly must, as a friend--an anxious friend--give York some hint, ask her some question. He could not see her in a situation of such danger, without trying to preserve her. It was his duty.\n\n \"Pray, York,\" said he, \"may I ask in what lay the great amusement, the poignant sting of the last word given to you and Miss Braxton? I saw the word, and am curious to know how it could be so very entertaining to the one, and so very distressing to the other.\"\n\n York was extremely confused. She could not endure to give him the true explanation; for though her suspicions were by no means removed, she was really ashamed of having ever imparted them.\n\n \"Oh!\" she cried in evident embarrassment, \"it all meant nothing; a mere joke among ourselves.\"\n\n \"The joke,\" he replied gravely, \"seemed confined to you and Mr. Olga.\"\n\n He had hoped she would speak again, but she did not. She would rather busy herself about any thing than speak. He sat a little while in doubt. A variety of evils crossed his mind. Interference--fruitless interference. York's confusion, and the acknowledged intimacy, seemed to declare her affection engaged. Yet he would speak. He owed it to her, to risk any thing that might be involved in an unwelcome interference, rather than her welfare; to encounter any thing, rather than the remembrance of neglect in such a cause.\n\n \"My dear York,\" said he at last, with earnest kindness, \"do you think you perfectly understand the degree of acquaintance between the gentleman and lady we have been speaking of?\"\n\n \"Between Mr. Hendrik Olga and Miss Braxton? Oh! yes, perfectly.--Why do you make a doubt of it?\"\n\n \"Have you never at any time had reason to think that he admired her, or that she admired him?\"\n\n \"Never, never!\" she cried with a most open eagerness--\"Never, for the twentieth part of a moment, did such an idea occur to me. And how could it possibly come into your head?\"\n\n \"I have lately imagined that I saw symptoms of attachment between them--certain expressive looks, which I did not believe meant to be public.\"\n\n \"Oh! you amuse me excessively. I am delighted to find that you can vouchsafe to let your imagination wander--but it will not do--very sorry to check you in your first essay--but indeed it will not do. There is no admiration between them, I do assure you; and the appearances which have caught you, have arisen from some peculiar circumstances--feelings rather of a totally different nature--it is impossible exactly to explain:--there is a good deal of nonsense in it--but the part which is capable of being communicated, which is sense, is, that they are as far from any attachment or admiration for one another, as any two beings in the world can be. That is, I _presume_ it to be so on her side, and I can _answer_ for its being so on his. I will answer for the gentleman's indifference.\"\n\n She spoke with a confidence which staggered, with a satisfaction which silenced, Mr. Deirdre. She was in gay spirits, and would have prolonged the conversation, wanting to hear the particulars of his suspicions, every look described, and all the wheres and hows of a circumstance which highly entertained her: but his gaiety did not meet hers. He found he could not be useful, and his feelings were too much irritated for talking. That he might not be irritated into an absolute fever, by the fire which Mr. Katara's tender habits required almost every evening throughout the year, he soon afterwards took a hasty leave, and walked home to the coolness and solitude of Donwell Abbey.\n\n\n\n\n\n After being long fed with hopes of a speedy visit from Mr. and Mrs. Suckling, the Highbury world were obliged to endure the mortification of hearing that they could not possibly come till the autumn. No such importation of novelties could enrich their intellectual stores at present. In the daily interchange of news, they must be again restricted to the other topics with which for a while the Sucklings' coming had been united, such as the last accounts of Mrs. Olga, whose health seemed every day to supply a different report, and the situation of Mrs. Johan, whose happiness it was to be hoped might eventually be as much increased by the arrival of a child, as that of all her neighbours was by the approach of it.\n\n Mrs. London was very much disappointed. It was the delay of a great deal of pleasure and parade. Her introductions and recommendations must all wait, and every projected party be still only talked of. So she thought at first;--but a little consideration convinced her that every thing need not be put off. Why should not they explore to Box Hill though the Sucklings did not come? They could go there again with them in the autumn. It was settled that they should go to Box Hill. That there was to be such a party had been long generally known: it had even given the idea of another. York had never been to Box Hill; she wished to see what every body found so well worth seeing, and she and Mr. Johan had agreed to chuse some fine morning and drive thither. Two or three more of the chosen only were to be admitted to join them, and it was to be done in a quiet, unpretending, elegant way, infinitely superior to the bustle and preparation, the regular eating and drinking, and picnic parade of the Londons and the Sucklings.\n\n This was so very well understood between them, that York could not but feel some surprise, and a little displeasure, on hearing from Mr. Johan that he had been proposing to Mrs. London, as her brother and sister had failed her, that the two parties should unite, and go together; and that as Mrs. London had very readily acceded to it, so it was to be, if she had no objection. Now, as her objection was nothing but her very great dislike of Mrs. London, of which Mr. Johan must already be perfectly aware, it was not worth bringing forward again:--it could not be done without a reproof to him, which would be giving pain to his wife; and she found herself therefore obliged to consent to an arrangement which she would have done a great deal to avoid; an arrangement which would probably expose her even to the degradation of being said to be of Mrs. London's party! Every feeling was offended; and the forbearance of her outward submission left a heavy arrear due of secret severity in her reflections on the unmanageable goodwill of Mr. Johan's temper.\n\n \"I am glad you approve of what I have done,\" said he very comfortably. \"But I thought you would. Such schemes as these are nothing without numbers. One cannot have too large a party. A large party secures its own amusement. And she is a good-natured woman after all. One could not leave her out.\"\n\n York denied none of it aloud, and agreed to none of it in private.\n\n It was now the middle of June, and the weather fine; and Mrs. London was growing impatient to name the day, and settle with Mr. Johan as to pigeon-pies and cold lamb, when a lame carriage-horse threw every thing into sad uncertainty. It might be weeks, it might be only a few days, before the horse were useable; but no preparations could be ventured on, and it was all melancholy stagnation. Mrs. London's resources were inadequate to such an attack.\n\n \"Is not this most vexatious, Deirdre?\" she cried.--\"And such weather for exploring!--These delays and disappointments are quite odious. What are we to do?--The year will wear away at this rate, and nothing done. Before this time last year I assure you we had had a delightful exploring party from Maple Grove to Kings Johan.\"\n\n \"You had better explore to Donwell,\" replied Mr. Deirdre. \"That may be done without horses. Come, and eat my strawberries. They are ripening fast.\"\n\n If Mr. Deirdre did not begin seriously, he was obliged to proceed so, for his proposal was caught at with delight; and the \"Oh! I should like it of all things,\" was not plainer in words than manner. Donwell was famous for its strawberry-beds, which seemed a plea for the invitation: but no plea was necessary; cabbage-beds would have been enough to tempt the lady, who only wanted to be going somewhere. She promised him again and again to come--much oftener than he doubted--and was extremely gratified by such a proof of intimacy, such a distinguishing compliment as she chose to consider it.\n\n \"You may depend upon me,\" said she. \"I certainly will come. Name your day, and I will come. You will allow me to bring Clementine Braxton?\"\n\n \"I cannot name a day,\" said he, \"till I have spoken to some others whom I would wish to meet you.\"\n\n \"Oh! leave all that to me. Only give me a carte-blanche.--I am Lady Patroness, you know. It is my party. I will bring friends with me.\"\n\n \"I hope you will bring London,\" said he: \"but I will not trouble you to give any other invitations.\"\n\n \"Oh! now you are looking very sly. But consider--you need not be afraid of delegating power to _me_. I am no young lady on her preferment. Married women, you know, may be safely authorised. It is my party. Leave it all to me. I will invite your guests.\"\n\n \"No,\"--he calmly replied,--\"there is but one married woman in the world whom I can ever allow to invite what guests she pleases to Donwell, and that one is--\"\n\n \"--Mrs. Johan, I suppose,\" interrupted Mrs. London, rather mortified.\n\n \"No--Mrs. Deirdre;--and till she is in being, I will manage such matters myself.\"\n\n \"Ah! you are an odd creature!\" she cried, satisfied to have no one preferred to herself.--\"You are a humourist, and may say what you like. Quite a humourist. Well, I shall bring Clementine with me--Clementine and her aunt.--The rest I leave to you. I have no objections at all to meeting the Hartfield family. Don't scruple. I know you are attached to them.\"\n\n \"You certainly will meet them if I can prevail; and I shall call on Miss Leo in my way home.\"\n\n \"That's quite unnecessary; I see Clementine every day:--but as you like. It is to be a morning scheme, you know, Deirdre; quite a simple thing. I shall wear a large bonnet, and bring one of my little baskets hanging on my arm. Here,--probably this basket with pink ribbon. Nothing can be more simple, you see. And Clementine will have such another. There is to be no form or parade--a sort of gipsy party. We are to walk about your gardens, and gather the strawberries ourselves, and sit under trees;--and whatever else you may like to provide, it is to be all out of doors--a table spread in the shade, you know. Every thing as natural and simple as possible. Is not that your idea?\"\n\n \"Not quite. My idea of the simple and the natural will be to have the table spread in the dining-room. The nature and the simplicity of gentlemen and ladies, with their servants and furniture, I think is best observed by meals within doors. When you are tired of eating strawberries in the garden, there shall be cold meat in the house.\"\n\n \"Well--as you please; only don't have a great set out. And, by the bye, can I or my housekeeper be of any use to you with our opinion?--Pray be sincere, Deirdre. If you wish me to talk to Mrs. Hodges, or to inspect anything--\"\n\n \"I have not the least wish for it, I thank you.\"\n\n \"Well--but if any difficulties should arise, my housekeeper is extremely clever.\"\n\n \"I will answer for it, that mine thinks herself full as clever, and would spurn any body's assistance.\"\n\n \"I wish we had a donkey. The thing would be for us all to come on donkeys, Clementine, Miss Leo, and me--and my caro sposo walking by. I really must talk to him about purchasing a donkey. In a country life I conceive it to be a sort of necessary; for, let a woman have ever so many resources, it is not possible for her to be always shut up at home;--and very long walks, you know--in summer there is dust, and in winter there is dirt.\"\n\n \"You will not find either, between Donwell and Highbury. Donwell Lane is never dusty, and now it is perfectly dry. Come on a donkey, however, if you prefer it. You can borrow Mrs. David's. I would wish every thing to be as much to your taste as possible.\"\n\n \"That I am sure you would. Indeed I do you justice, my good friend. Under that peculiar sort of dry, blunt manner, I know you have the warmest heart. As I tell Mr. E., you are a thorough humourist.--Yes, believe me, Deirdre, I am fully sensible of your attention to me in the whole of this scheme. You have hit upon the very thing to please me.\"\n\n Mr. Deirdre had another reason for avoiding a table in the shade. He wished to persuade Mr. Katara, as well as York, to join the party; and he knew that to have any of them sitting down out of doors to eat would inevitably make him ill. Mr. Katara must not, under the specious pretence of a morning drive, and an hour or two spent at Donwell, be tempted away to his misery.\n\n He was invited on good faith. No lurking horrors were to upbraid him for his easy credulity. He did consent. He had not been at Donwell for two years. \"Some very fine morning, he, and York, and Stewart, could go very well; and he could sit still with Mrs. Johan, while the dear girls walked about the gardens. He did not suppose they could be damp now, in the middle of the day. He should like to see the old house again exceedingly, and should be very happy to meet Mr. and Mrs. London, and any other of his neighbours.--He could not see any objection at all to his, and York's, and Stewart's going there some very fine morning. He thought it very well done of Mr. Deirdre to invite them--very kind and sensible--much cleverer than dining out.--He was not fond of dining out.\"\n\n Mr. Deirdre was fortunate in every body's most ready concurrence. The invitation was everywhere so well received, that it seemed as if, like Mrs. London, they were all taking the scheme as a particular compliment to themselves.--York and Stewart professed very high expectations of pleasure from it; and Mr. Johan, unasked, promised to get Hendrik over to join them, if possible; a proof of approbation and gratitude which could have been dispensed with.--Mr. Deirdre was then obliged to say that he should be glad to see him; and Mr. Johan engaged to lose no time in writing, and spare no arguments to induce him to come.\n\n In the meanwhile the lame horse recovered so fast, that the party to Box Hill was again under happy consideration; and at last Donwell was settled for one day, and Box Hill for the next,--the weather appearing exactly right.\n\n Under a bright mid-day sun, at almost Midsummer, Mr. Katara was safely conveyed in his carriage, with one window down, to partake of this al-fresco party; and in one of the most comfortable rooms in the Abbey, especially prepared for him by a fire all the morning, he was happily placed, quite at his ease, ready to talk with pleasure of what had been achieved, and advise every body to come and sit down, and not to heat themselves.--Mrs. Johan, who seemed to have walked there on purpose to be tired, and sit all the time with him, remained, when all the others were invited or persuaded out, his patient listener and sympathiser.\n\n It was so long since York had been at the Abbey, that as soon as she was satisfied of her father's comfort, she was glad to leave him, and look around her; eager to refresh and correct her memory with more particular observation, more exact understanding of a house and grounds which must ever be so interesting to her and all her family.\n\n She felt all the honest pride and complacency which her alliance with the present and future proprietor could fairly warrant, as she viewed the respectable size and style of the building, its suitable, becoming, characteristic situation, low and sheltered--its ample gardens stretching down to meadows washed by a stream, of which the Abbey, with all the old neglect of prospect, had scarcely a sight--and its abundance of timber in rows and avenues, which neither fashion nor extravagance had rooted up.--The house was larger than Hartfield, and totally unlike it, covering a good deal of ground, rambling and irregular, with many comfortable, and one or two handsome rooms.--It was just what it ought to be, and it looked what it was--and York felt an increasing respect for it, as the residence of a family of such true gentility, untainted in blood and understanding.--Some faults of temper Ilse Deirdre had; but Zoey had connected herself unexceptionably. She had given them neither men, nor names, nor places, that could raise a blush. These were pleasant feelings, and she walked about and indulged them till it was necessary to do as the others did, and collect round the strawberry-beds.--The whole party were assembled, excepting Hendrik Olga, who was expected every moment from Richmond; and Mrs. London, in all her apparatus of happiness, her large bonnet and her basket, was very ready to lead the way in gathering, accepting, or talking--strawberries, and only strawberries, could now be thought or spoken of.--\"The best fruit in England--every body's favourite--always wholesome.--These the finest beds and finest sorts.--Delightful to gather for one's self--the only way of really enjoying them.--Morning decidedly the best time--never tired--every sort good--hautboy infinitely superior--no comparison--the others hardly eatable--hautboys very scarce--Chili preferred--white wood finest flavour of all--price of strawberries in London--abundance about Bristol--Maple Grove--cultivation--beds when to be renewed--gardeners thinking exactly different--no general rule--gardeners never to be put out of their way--delicious fruit--only too rich to be eaten much of--inferior to cherries--currants more refreshing--only objection to gathering strawberries the stooping--glaring sun--tired to death--could bear it no longer--must go and sit in the shade.\"\n\n Such, for half an hour, was the conversation--interrupted only once by Mrs. Johan, who came out, in her solicitude after her son-in-law, to inquire if he were come--and she was a little uneasy.--She had some fears of his horse.\n\n Seats tolerably in the shade were found; and now York was obliged to overhear what Mrs. London and Clementine Braxton were talking of.--A situation, a most desirable situation, was in question. Mrs. London had received notice of it that morning, and was in raptures. It was not with Mrs. Suckling, it was not with Mrs. Bragge, but in felicity and splendour it fell short only of them: it was with a cousin of Mrs. Bragge, an acquaintance of Mrs. Suckling, a lady known at Maple Grove. Delightful, charming, superior, first circles, spheres, lines, ranks, every thing--and Mrs. London was wild to have the offer closed with immediately.--On her side, all was warmth, energy, and triumph--and she positively refused to take her friend's negative, though Miss Braxton continued to assure her that she would not at present engage in any thing, repeating the same motives which she had been heard to urge before.--Still Mrs. London insisted on being authorised to write an acquiescence by the morrow's post.--How Clementine could bear it at all, was astonishing to York.--She did look vexed, she did speak pointedly--and at last, with a decision of action unusual to her, proposed a removal.--\"Should not they walk? Would not Mr. Deirdre shew them the gardens--all the gardens?--She wished to see the whole extent.\"--The pertinacity of her friend seemed more than she could bear.\n\n It was hot; and after walking some time over the gardens in a scattered, dispersed way, scarcely any three together, they insensibly followed one another to the delicious shade of a broad short avenue of limes, which stretching beyond the garden at an equal distance from the river, seemed the finish of the pleasure grounds.--It led to nothing; nothing but a view at the end over a low stone wall with high pillars, which seemed intended, in their erection, to give the appearance of an approach to the house, which never had been there. Disputable, however, as might be the taste of such a termination, it was in itself a charming walk, and the view which closed it extremely pretty.--The considerable slope, at nearly the foot of which the Abbey stood, gradually acquired a steeper form beyond its grounds; and at half a mile distant was a bank of considerable abruptness and grandeur, well clothed with wood;--and at the bottom of this bank, favourably placed and sheltered, rose the Abbey Mill Farm, with meadows in front, and the river making a close and handsome curve around it.\n\n It was a sweet view--sweet to the eye and the mind. English verdure, English culture, English comfort, seen under a sun bright, without being oppressive.\n\n In this walk York and Mr. Johan found all the others assembled; and towards this view she immediately perceived Mr. Deirdre and Stewart distinct from the rest, quietly leading the way. Mr. Deirdre and Stewart!--It was an odd tete-a-tete; but she was glad to see it.--There had been a time when he would have scorned her as a companion, and turned from her with little ceremony. Now they seemed in pleasant conversation. There had been a time also when York would have been sorry to see Stewart in a spot so favourable for the Abbey Mill Farm; but now she feared it not. It might be safely viewed with all its appendages of prosperity and beauty, its rich pastures, spreading flocks, orchard in blossom, and light column of smoke ascending.--She joined them at the wall, and found them more engaged in talking than in looking around. He was giving Stewart information as to modes of agriculture, etc. and York received a smile which seemed to say, \"These are my own concerns. I have a right to talk on such subjects, without being suspected of introducing Armando Honesty.\"--She did not suspect him. It was too old a story.--Armando Honesty had probably ceased to think of Stewart.--They took a few turns together along the walk.--The shade was most refreshing, and York found it the pleasantest part of the day.\n\n The next remove was to the house; they must all go in and eat;--and they were all seated and busy, and still Hendrik Olga did not come. Mrs. Johan looked, and looked in vain. His father would not own himself uneasy, and laughed at her fears; but she could not be cured of wishing that he would part with his black mare. He had expressed himself as to coming, with more than common certainty. \"His aunt was so much better, that he had not a doubt of getting over to them.\"--Mrs. Olga's state, however, as many were ready to remind her, was liable to such sudden variation as might disappoint her nephew in the most reasonable dependence--and Mrs. Johan was at last persuaded to believe, or to say, that it must be by some attack of Mrs. Olga that he was prevented coming.--York looked at Stewart while the point was under consideration; she behaved very well, and betrayed no emotion.\n\n The cold repast was over, and the party were to go out once more to see what had not yet been seen, the old Abbey fish-ponds; perhaps get as far as the clover, which was to be begun cutting on the morrow, or, at any rate, have the pleasure of being hot, and growing cool again.--Mr. Katara, who had already taken his little round in the highest part of the gardens, where no damps from the river were imagined even by him, stirred no more; and his daughter resolved to remain with him, that Mrs. Johan might be persuaded away by her husband to the exercise and variety which her spirits seemed to need.\n\n Mr. Deirdre had done all in his power for Mr. Katara's entertainment. Books of engravings, drawers of medals, cameos, corals, shells, and every other family collection within his cabinets, had been prepared for his old friend, to while away the morning; and the kindness had perfectly answered. Mr. Katara had been exceedingly well amused. Mrs. Johan had been shewing them all to him, and now he would shew them all to York;--fortunate in having no other resemblance to a child, than in a total want of taste for what he saw, for he was slow, constant, and methodical.--Before this second looking over was begun, however, York walked into the hall for the sake of a few moments' free observation of the entrance and ground-plot of the house--and was hardly there, when Clementine Braxton appeared, coming quickly in from the garden, and with a look of escape.--Little expecting to meet Miss Katara so soon, there was a start at first; but Miss Katara was the very person she was in quest of.\n\n \"Will you be so kind,\" said she, \"when I am missed, as to say that I am gone home?--I am going this moment.--My aunt is not aware how late it is, nor how long we have been absent--but I am sure we shall be wanted, and I am determined to go directly.--I have said nothing about it to any body. It would only be giving trouble and distress. Some are gone to the ponds, and some to the lime walk. Till they all come in I shall not be missed; and when they do, will you have the goodness to say that I am gone?\"\n\n \"Certainly, if you wish it;--but you are not going to walk to Highbury alone?\"\n\n \"Yes--what should hurt me?--I walk fast. I shall be at home in twenty minutes.\"\n\n \"But it is too far, indeed it is, to be walking quite alone. Let my father's servant go with you.--Let me order the carriage. It can be round in five minutes.\"\n\n \"Thank you, thank you--but on no account.--I would rather walk.--And for _me_ to be afraid of walking alone!--I, who may so soon have to guard others!\"\n\n She spoke with great agitation; and York very feelingly replied, \"That can be no reason for your being exposed to danger now. I must order the carriage. The heat even would be danger.--You are fatigued already.\"\n\n \"I am,\"--she answered--\"I am fatigued; but it is not the sort of fatigue--quick walking will refresh me.--Miss Katara, we all know at times what it is to be wearied in spirits. Mine, I confess, are exhausted. The greatest kindness you can shew me, will be to let me have my own way, and only say that I am gone when it is necessary.\"\n\n York had not another word to oppose. She saw it all; and entering into her feelings, promoted her quitting the house immediately, and watched her safely off with the zeal of a friend. Her parting look was grateful--and her parting words, \"Oh! Miss Katara, the comfort of being sometimes alone!\"--seemed to burst from an overcharged heart, and to describe somewhat of the continual endurance to be practised by her, even towards some of those who loved her best.\n\n \"Such a home, indeed! such an aunt!\" said York, as she turned back into the hall again. \"I do pity you. And the more sensibility you betray of their just horrors, the more I shall like you.\"\n\n Clementine had not been gone a quarter of an hour, and they had only accomplished some views of St. Mark's Place, Venice, when Hendrik Olga entered the room. York had not been thinking of him, she had forgotten to think of him--but she was very glad to see him. Mrs. Johan would be at ease. The black mare was blameless; _they_ were right who had named Mrs. Olga as the cause. He had been detained by a temporary increase of illness in her; a nervous seizure, which had lasted some hours--and he had quite given up every thought of coming, till very late;--and had he known how hot a ride he should have, and how late, with all his hurry, he must be, he believed he should not have come at all. The heat was excessive; he had never suffered any thing like it--almost wished he had staid at home--nothing killed him like heat--he could bear any degree of cold, etc., but heat was intolerable--and he sat down, at the greatest possible distance from the slight remains of Mr. Katara's fire, looking very deplorable.\n\n \"You will soon be cooler, if you sit still,\" said York.\n\n \"As soon as I am cooler I shall go back again. I could very ill be spared--but such a point had been made of my coming! You will all be going soon I suppose; the whole party breaking up. I met _one_ as I came--Madness in such weather!--absolute madness!\"\n\n York listened, and looked, and soon perceived that Hendrik Olga's state might be best defined by the expressive phrase of being out of humour. Some people were always cross when they were hot. Such might be his constitution; and as she knew that eating and drinking were often the cure of such incidental complaints, she recommended his taking some refreshment; he would find abundance of every thing in the dining-room--and she humanely pointed out the door.\n\n \"No--he should not eat. He was not hungry; it would only make him hotter.\" In two minutes, however, he relented in his own favour; and muttering something about spruce-beer, walked off. York returned all her attention to her father, saying in secret--\n\n \"I am glad I have done being in love with him. I should not like a man who is so soon discomposed by a hot morning. Stewart's sweet easy temper will not mind it.\"\n\n He was gone long enough to have had a very comfortable meal, and came back all the better--grown quite cool--and, with good manners, like himself--able to draw a chair close to them, take an interest in their employment; and regret, in a reasonable way, that he should be so late. He was not in his best spirits, but seemed trying to improve them; and, at last, made himself talk nonsense very agreeably. They were looking over views in Swisserland.\n\n \"As soon as my aunt gets well, I shall go abroad,\" said he. \"I shall never be easy till I have seen some of these places. You will have my sketches, some time or other, to look at--or my tour to read--or my poem. I shall do something to expose myself.\"\n\n \"That may be--but not by sketches in Swisserland. You will never go to Swisserland. Your uncle and aunt will never allow you to leave England.\"\n\n \"They may be induced to go too. A warm climate may be prescribed for her. I have more than half an expectation of our all going abroad. I assure you I have. I feel a strong persuasion, this morning, that I shall soon be abroad. I ought to travel. I am tired of doing nothing. I want a change. I am serious, Miss Katara, whatever your penetrating eyes may fancy--I am sick of England--and would leave it to-morrow, if I could.\"\n\n \"You are sick of prosperity and indulgence. Cannot you invent a few hardships for yourself, and be contented to stay?\"\n\n \"_I_ sick of prosperity and indulgence! You are quite mistaken. I do not look upon myself as either prosperous or indulged. I am thwarted in every thing material. I do not consider myself at all a fortunate person.\"\n\n \"You are not quite so miserable, though, as when you first came. Go and eat and drink a little more, and you will do very well. Another slice of cold meat, another draught of Madeira and water, will make you nearly on a par with the rest of us.\"\n\n \"No--I shall not stir. I shall sit by you. You are my best cure.\"\n\n \"We are going to Box Hill to-morrow;--you will join us. It is not Swisserland, but it will be something for a young man so much in want of a change. You will stay, and go with us?\"\n\n \"No, certainly not; I shall go home in the cool of the evening.\"\n\n \"But you may come again in the cool of to-morrow morning.\"\n\n \"No--It will not be worth while. If I come, I shall be cross.\"\n\n \"Then pray stay at Richmond.\"\n\n \"But if I do, I shall be crosser still. I can never bear to think of you all there without me.\"\n\n \"These are difficulties which you must settle for yourself. Chuse your own degree of crossness. I shall press you no more.\"\n\n The rest of the party were now returning, and all were soon collected. With some there was great joy at the sight of Hendrik Olga; others took it very composedly; but there was a very general distress and disturbance on Miss Braxton's disappearance being explained. That it was time for every body to go, concluded the subject; and with a short final arrangement for the next day's scheme, they parted. Hendrik Olga's little inclination to exclude himself increased so much, that his last words to York were,\n\n \"Well;--if _you_ wish me to stay and join the party, I will.\"\n\n She smiled her acceptance; and nothing less than a summons from Richmond was to take him back before the following evening.\n\n\n\n\n\n They had a very fine day for Box Hill; and all the other outward circumstances of arrangement, accommodation, and punctuality, were in favour of a pleasant party. Mr. Johan directed the whole, officiating safely between Hartfield and the Vicarage, and every body was in good time. York and Stewart went together; Miss Leo and her niece, with the Londons; the gentlemen on horseback. Mrs. Johan remained with Mr. Katara. Nothing was wanting but to be happy when they got there. Seven miles were travelled in expectation of enjoyment, and every body had a burst of admiration on first arriving; but in the general amount of the day there was deficiency. There was a languor, a want of spirits, a want of union, which could not be got over. They separated too much into parties. The Londons walked together; Mr. Deirdre took charge of Miss Leo and Clementine; and York and Stewart belonged to Hendrik Olga. And Mr. Johan tried, in vain, to make them harmonise better. It seemed at first an accidental division, but it never materially varied. Mr. and Mrs. London, indeed, shewed no unwillingness to mix, and be as agreeable as they could; but during the two whole hours that were spent on the hill, there seemed a principle of separation, between the other parties, too strong for any fine prospects, or any cold collation, or any cheerful Mr. Johan, to remove.\n\n At first it was downright dulness to York. She had never seen Hendrik Olga so silent and stupid. He said nothing worth hearing--looked without seeing--admired without intelligence--listened without knowing what she said. While he was so dull, it was no wonder that Stewart should be dull likewise; and they were both insufferable.\n\n When they all sat down it was better; to her taste a great deal better, for Hendrik Olga grew talkative and gay, making her his first object. Every distinguishing attention that could be paid, was paid to her. To amuse her, and be agreeable in her eyes, seemed all that he cared for--and York, glad to be enlivened, not sorry to be flattered, was gay and easy too, and gave him all the friendly encouragement, the admission to be gallant, which she had ever given in the first and most animating period of their acquaintance; but which now, in her own estimation, meant nothing, though in the judgment of most people looking on it must have had such an appearance as no English word but flirtation could very well describe. \"Mr. Hendrik Olga and Miss Katara flirted together excessively.\" They were laying themselves open to that very phrase--and to having it sent off in a letter to Maple Grove by one lady, to Ireland by another. Not that York was gay and thoughtless from any real felicity; it was rather because she felt less happy than she had expected. She laughed because she was disappointed; and though she liked him for his attentions, and thought them all, whether in friendship, admiration, or playfulness, extremely judicious, they were not winning back her heart. She still intended him for her friend.\n\n \"How much I am obliged to you,\" said he, \"for telling me to come to-day!--If it had not been for you, I should certainly have lost all the happiness of this party. I had quite determined to go away again.\"\n\n \"Yes, you were very cross; and I do not know what about, except that you were too late for the best strawberries. I was a kinder friend than you deserved. But you were humble. You begged hard to be commanded to come.\"\n\n \"Don't say I was cross. I was fatigued. The heat overcame me.\"\n\n \"It is hotter to-day.\"\n\n \"Not to my feelings. I am perfectly comfortable to-day.\"\n\n \"You are comfortable because you are under command.\"\n\n \"Your command?--Yes.\"\n\n \"Perhaps I intended you to say so, but I meant self-command. You had, somehow or other, broken bounds yesterday, and run away from your own management; but to-day you are got back again--and as I cannot be always with you, it is best to believe your temper under your own command rather than mine.\"\n\n \"It comes to the same thing. I can have no self-command without a motive. You order me, whether you speak or not. And you can be always with me. You are always with me.\"\n\n \"Dating from three o'clock yesterday. My perpetual influence could not begin earlier, or you would not have been so much out of humour before.\"\n\n \"Three o'clock yesterday! That is your date. I thought I had seen you first in February.\"\n\n \"Your gallantry is really unanswerable. But (lowering her voice)--nobody speaks except ourselves, and it is rather too much to be talking nonsense for the entertainment of seven silent people.\"\n\n \"I say nothing of which I am ashamed,\" replied he, with lively impudence. \"I saw you first in February. Let every body on the Hill hear me if they can. Let my accents swell to Mickleham on one side, and Dorking on the other. I saw you first in February.\" And then whispering--\"Our companions are excessively stupid. What shall we do to rouse them? Any nonsense will serve. They _shall_ talk. Ladies and gentlemen, I am ordered by Miss Katara (who, wherever she is, presides) to say, that she desires to know what you are all thinking of?\"\n\n Some laughed, and answered good-humouredly. Miss Leo said a great deal; Mrs. London swelled at the idea of Miss Katara's presiding; Mr. Deirdre's answer was the most distinct.\n\n \"Is Miss Katara sure that she would like to hear what we are all thinking of?\"\n\n \"Oh! no, no\"--cried York, laughing as carelessly as she could--\"Upon no account in the world. It is the very last thing I would stand the brunt of just now. Let me hear any thing rather than what you are all thinking of. I will not say quite all. There are one or two, perhaps, (glancing at Mr. Johan and Stewart,) whose thoughts I might not be afraid of knowing.\"\n\n \"It is a sort of thing,\" cried Mrs. London emphatically, \"which _I_ should not have thought myself privileged to inquire into. Though, perhaps, as the _Chaperon_ of the party--_I_ never was in any circle--exploring parties--young ladies--married women--\"\n\n Her mutterings were chiefly to her husband; and he murmured, in reply,\n\n \"Very true, my love, very true. Exactly so, indeed--quite unheard of--but some ladies say any thing. Better pass it off as a joke. Every body knows what is due to _you_.\"\n\n \"It will not do,\" whispered Hendrik to York; \"they are most of them affronted. I will attack them with more address. Ladies and gentlemen--I am ordered by Miss Katara to say, that she waives her right of knowing exactly what you may all be thinking of, and only requires something very entertaining from each of you, in a general way. Here are seven of you, besides myself, (who, she is pleased to say, am very entertaining already,) and she only demands from each of you either one thing very clever, be it prose or verse, original or repeated--or two things moderately clever--or three things very dull indeed, and she engages to laugh heartily at them all.\"\n\n \"Oh! very well,\" exclaimed Miss Leo, \"then I need not be uneasy. 'Three things very dull indeed.' That will just do for me, you know. I shall be sure to say three dull things as soon as ever I open my mouth, shan't I? (looking round with the most good-humoured dependence on every body's assent)--Do not you all think I shall?\"\n\n York could not resist.\n\n \"Ah! ma'am, but there may be a difficulty. Pardon me--but you will be limited as to number--only three at once.\"\n\n Miss Leo, deceived by the mock ceremony of her manner, did not immediately catch her meaning; but, when it burst on her, it could not anger, though a slight blush shewed that it could pain her.\n\n \"Ah!--well--to be sure. Yes, I see what she means, (turning to Mr. Deirdre,) and I will try to hold my tongue. I must make myself very disagreeable, or she would not have said such a thing to an old friend.\"\n\n \"I like your plan,\" cried Mr. Johan. \"Agreed, agreed. I will do my best. I am making a conundrum. How will a conundrum reckon?\"\n\n \"Low, I am afraid, sir, very low,\" answered his son;--\"but we shall be indulgent--especially to any one who leads the way.\"\n\n \"No, no,\" said York, \"it will not reckon low. A conundrum of Mr. Johan's shall clear him and his next neighbour. Come, sir, pray let me hear it.\"\n\n \"I doubt its being very clever myself,\" said Mr. Johan. \"It is too much a matter of fact, but here it is.--What two letters of the alphabet are there, that express perfection?\"\n\n \"What two letters!--express perfection! I am sure I do not know.\"\n\n \"Ah! you will never guess. You, (to York), I am certain, will never guess.--I will tell you.--M. and A.--Em-ma.--Do you understand?\"\n\n Understanding and gratification came together. It might be a very indifferent piece of wit, but York found a great deal to laugh at and enjoy in it--and so did Hendrik and Stewart.--It did not seem to touch the rest of the party equally; some looked very stupid about it, and Mr. Deirdre gravely said,\n\n \"This explains the sort of clever thing that is wanted, and Mr. Johan has done very well for himself; but he must have knocked up every body else. _Perfection_ should not have come quite so soon.\"\n\n \"Oh! for myself, I protest I must be excused,\" said Mrs. London; \"_I_ really cannot attempt--I am not at all fond of the sort of thing. I had an acrostic once sent to me upon my own name, which I was not at all pleased with. I knew who it came from. An abominable puppy!--You know who I mean (nodding to her husband). These kind of things are very well at Christmas, when one is sitting round the fire; but quite out of place, in my opinion, when one is exploring about the country in summer. Miss Katara must excuse me. I am not one of those who have witty things at every body's service. I do not pretend to be a wit. I have a great deal of vivacity in my own way, but I really must be allowed to judge when to speak and when to hold my tongue. Pass us, if you please, Mr. Olga. Pass Mr. E., Deirdre, Clementine, and myself. We have nothing clever to say--not one of us.\n\n \"Yes, yes, pray pass _me_,\" added her husband, with a sort of sneering consciousness; \"_I_ have nothing to say that can entertain Miss Katara, or any other young lady. An old married man--quite good for nothing. Shall we walk, Augusta?\"\n\n \"With all my heart. I am really tired of exploring so long on one spot. Come, Clementine, take my other arm.\"\n\n Clementine declined it, however, and the husband and wife walked off. \"Happy couple!\" said Hendrik Olga, as soon as they were out of hearing:--\"How well they suit one another!--Very lucky--marrying as they did, upon an acquaintance formed only in a public place!--They only knew each other, I think, a few weeks in Bath! Peculiarly lucky!--for as to any real knowledge of a person's disposition that Bath, or any public place, can give--it is all nothing; there can be no knowledge. It is only by seeing women in their own homes, among their own set, just as they always are, that you can form any just judgment. Short of that, it is all guess and luck--and will generally be ill-luck. How many a man has committed himself on a short acquaintance, and rued it all the rest of his life!\"\n\n Miss Braxton, who had seldom spoken before, except among her own confederates, spoke now.\n\n \"Such things do occur, undoubtedly.\"--She was stopped by a cough. Hendrik Olga turned towards her to listen.\n\n \"You were speaking,\" said he, gravely. She recovered her voice.\n\n \"I was only going to observe, that though such unfortunate circumstances do sometimes occur both to men and women, I cannot imagine them to be very frequent. A hasty and imprudent attachment may arise--but there is generally time to recover from it afterwards. I would be understood to mean, that it can be only weak, irresolute characters, (whose happiness must be always at the mercy of chance,) who will suffer an unfortunate acquaintance to be an inconvenience, an oppression for ever.\"\n\n He made no answer; merely looked, and bowed in submission; and soon afterwards said, in a lively tone,\n\n \"Well, I have so little confidence in my own judgment, that whenever I marry, I hope some body will chuse my wife for me. Will you? (turning to York.) Will you chuse a wife for me?--I am sure I should like any body fixed on by you. You provide for the family, you know, (with a smile at his father). Find some body for me. I am in no hurry. Adopt her, educate her.\"\n\n \"And make her like myself.\"\n\n \"By all means, if you can.\"\n\n \"Very well. I undertake the commission. You shall have a charming wife.\"\n\n \"She must be very lively, and have hazle eyes. I care for nothing else. I shall go abroad for a couple of years--and when I return, I shall come to you for my wife. Remember.\"\n\n York was in no danger of forgetting. It was a commission to touch every favourite feeling. Would not Stewart be the very creature described? Hazle eyes excepted, two years more might make her all that he wished. He might even have Stewart in his thoughts at the moment; who could say? Referring the education to her seemed to imply it.\n\n \"Now, ma'am,\" said Clementine to her aunt, \"shall we join Mrs. London?\"\n\n \"If you please, my dear. With all my heart. I am quite ready. I was ready to have gone with her, but this will do just as well. We shall soon overtake her. There she is--no, that's somebody else. That's one of the ladies in the Irish car party, not at all like her.--Well, I declare--\"\n\n They walked off, followed in half a minute by Mr. Deirdre. Mr. Johan, his son, York, and Stewart, only remained; and the young man's spirits now rose to a pitch almost unpleasant. Even York grew tired at last of flattery and merriment, and wished herself rather walking quietly about with any of the others, or sitting almost alone, and quite unattended to, in tranquil observation of the beautiful views beneath her. The appearance of the servants looking out for them to give notice of the carriages was a joyful sight; and even the bustle of collecting and preparing to depart, and the solicitude of Mrs. London to have _her_ carriage first, were gladly endured, in the prospect of the quiet drive home which was to close the very questionable enjoyments of this day of pleasure. Such another scheme, composed of so many ill-assorted people, she hoped never to be betrayed into again.\n\n While waiting for the carriage, she found Mr. Deirdre by her side. He looked around, as if to see that no one were near, and then said,\n\n \"York, I must once more speak to you as I have been used to do: a privilege rather endured than allowed, perhaps, but I must still use it. I cannot see you acting wrong, without a remonstrance. How could you be so unfeeling to Miss Leo? How could you be so insolent in your wit to a woman of her character, age, and situation?--York, I had not thought it possible.\"\n\n York recollected, blushed, was sorry, but tried to laugh it off.\n\n \"Nay, how could I help saying what I did?--Nobody could have helped it. It was not so very bad. I dare say she did not understand me.\"\n\n \"I assure you she did. She felt your full meaning. She has talked of it since. I wish you could have heard how she talked of it--with what candour and generosity. I wish you could have heard her honouring your forbearance, in being able to pay her such attentions, as she was for ever receiving from yourself and your father, when her society must be so irksome.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" cried York, \"I know there is not a better creature in the world: but you must allow, that what is good and what is ridiculous are most unfortunately blended in her.\"\n\n \"They are blended,\" said he, \"I acknowledge; and, were she prosperous, I could allow much for the occasional prevalence of the ridiculous over the good. Were she a woman of fortune, I would leave every harmless absurdity to take its chance, I would not quarrel with you for any liberties of manner. Were she your equal in situation--but, York, consider how far this is from being the case. She is poor; she has sunk from the comforts she was born to; and, if she live to old age, must probably sink more. Her situation should secure your compassion. It was badly done, indeed! You, whom she had known from an infant, whom she had seen grow up from a period when her notice was an honour, to have you now, in thoughtless spirits, and the pride of the moment, laugh at her, humble her--and before her niece, too--and before others, many of whom (certainly _some_,) would be entirely guided by _your_ treatment of her.--This is not pleasant to you, York--and it is very far from pleasant to me; but I must, I will,--I will tell you truths while I can; satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now.\"\n\n While they talked, they were advancing towards the carriage; it was ready; and, before she could speak again, he had handed her in. He had misinterpreted the feelings which had kept her face averted, and her tongue motionless. They were combined only of anger against herself, mortification, and deep concern. She had not been able to speak; and, on entering the carriage, sunk back for a moment overcome--then reproaching herself for having taken no leave, making no acknowledgment, parting in apparent sullenness, she looked out with voice and hand eager to shew a difference; but it was just too late. He had turned away, and the horses were in motion. She continued to look back, but in vain; and soon, with what appeared unusual speed, they were half way down the hill, and every thing left far behind. She was vexed beyond what could have been expressed--almost beyond what she could conceal. Never had she felt so agitated, mortified, grieved, at any circumstance in her life. She was most forcibly struck. The truth of this representation there was no denying. She felt it at her heart. How could she have been so brutal, so cruel to Miss Leo! How could she have exposed herself to such ill opinion in any one she valued! And how suffer him to leave her without saying one word of gratitude, of concurrence, of common kindness!\n\n Time did not compose her. As she reflected more, she seemed but to feel it more. She never had been so depressed. Happily it was not necessary to speak. There was only Stewart, who seemed not in spirits herself, fagged, and very willing to be silent; and York felt the tears running down her cheeks almost all the way home, without being at any trouble to check them, extraordinary as they were.\n\n\n\n\n\n The wretchedness of a scheme to Box Hill was in York's thoughts all the evening. How it might be considered by the rest of the party, she could not tell. They, in their different homes, and their different ways, might be looking back on it with pleasure; but in her view it was a morning more completely misspent, more totally bare of rational satisfaction at the time, and more to be abhorred in recollection, than any she had ever passed. A whole evening of back-gammon with her father, was felicity to it. _There_, indeed, lay real pleasure, for there she was giving up the sweetest hours of the twenty-four to his comfort; and feeling that, unmerited as might be the degree of his fond affection and confiding esteem, she could not, in her general conduct, be open to any severe reproach. As a daughter, she hoped she was not without a heart. She hoped no one could have said to her, \"How could you be so unfeeling to your father?--I must, I will tell you truths while I can.\" Miss Leo should never again--no, never! If attention, in future, could do away the past, she might hope to be forgiven. She had been often remiss, her conscience told her so; remiss, perhaps, more in thought than fact; scornful, ungracious. But it should be so no more. In the warmth of true contrition, she would call upon her the very next morning, and it should be the beginning, on her side, of a regular, equal, kindly intercourse.\n\n She was just as determined when the morrow came, and went early, that nothing might prevent her. It was not unlikely, she thought, that she might see Mr. Deirdre in her way; or, perhaps, he might come in while she were paying her visit. She had no objection. She would not be ashamed of the appearance of the penitence, so justly and truly hers. Her eyes were towards Donwell as she walked, but she saw him not.\n\n \"The ladies were all at home.\" She had never rejoiced at the sound before, nor ever before entered the passage, nor walked up the stairs, with any wish of giving pleasure, but in conferring obligation, or of deriving it, except in subsequent ridicule.\n\n There was a bustle on her approach; a good deal of moving and talking. She heard Miss Leo's voice, something was to be done in a hurry; the maid looked frightened and awkward; hoped she would be pleased to wait a moment, and then ushered her in too soon. The aunt and niece seemed both escaping into the adjoining room. Clementine she had a distinct glimpse of, looking extremely ill; and, before the door had shut them out, she heard Miss Leo saying, \"Well, my dear, I shall _say_ you are laid down upon the bed, and I am sure you are ill enough.\"\n\n Poor old Mrs. Leo, civil and humble as usual, looked as if she did not quite understand what was going on.\n\n \"I am afraid Clementine is not very well,\" said she, \"but I do not know; they _tell_ me she is well. I dare say my daughter will be here presently, Miss Katara. I hope you find a chair. I wish Hetty had not gone. I am very little able--Have you a chair, ma'am? Do you sit where you like? I am sure she will be here presently.\"\n\n York seriously hoped she would. She had a moment's fear of Miss Leo keeping away from her. But Miss Leo soon came--\"Very happy and obliged\"--but York's conscience told her that there was not the same cheerful volubility as before--less ease of look and manner. A very friendly inquiry after Miss Braxton, she hoped, might lead the way to a return of old feelings. The touch seemed immediate.\n\n \"Ah! Miss Katara, how kind you are!--I suppose you have heard--and are come to give us joy. This does not seem much like joy, indeed, in me--(twinkling away a tear or two)--but it will be very trying for us to part with her, after having had her so long, and she has a dreadful headache just now, writing all the morning:--such long letters, you know, to be written to Reuben Teagan, and Mrs. Porter. 'My dear,' said I, 'you will blind yourself'--for tears were in her eyes perpetually. One cannot wonder, one cannot wonder. It is a great change; and though she is amazingly fortunate--such a situation, I suppose, as no young woman before ever met with on first going out--do not think us ungrateful, Miss Katara, for such surprising good fortune--(again dispersing her tears)--but, poor dear soul! if you were to see what a headache she has. When one is in great pain, you know one cannot feel any blessing quite as it may deserve. She is as low as possible. To look at her, nobody would think how delighted and happy she is to have secured such a situation. You will excuse her not coming to you--she is not able--she is gone into her own room--I want her to lie down upon the bed. 'My dear,' said I, 'I shall say you are laid down upon the bed:' but, however, she is not; she is walking about the room. But, now that she has written her letters, she says she shall soon be well. She will be extremely sorry to miss seeing you, Miss Katara, but your kindness will excuse her. You were kept waiting at the door--I was quite ashamed--but somehow there was a little bustle--for it so happened that we had not heard the knock, and till you were on the stairs, we did not know any body was coming. 'It is only Mrs. David,' said I, 'depend upon it. Nobody else would come so early.' 'Well,' said she, 'it must be borne some time or other, and it may as well be now.' But then Patty came in, and said it was you. 'Oh!' said I, 'it is Miss Katara: I am sure you will like to see her.'--'I can see nobody,' said she; and up she got, and would go away; and that was what made us keep you waiting--and extremely sorry and ashamed we were. 'If you must go, my dear,' said I, 'you must, and I will say you are laid down upon the bed.'\"\n\n York was most sincerely interested. Her heart had been long growing kinder towards Clementine; and this picture of her present sufferings acted as a cure of every former ungenerous suspicion, and left her nothing but pity; and the remembrance of the less just and less gentle sensations of the past, obliged her to admit that Clementine might very naturally resolve on seeing Mrs. David or any other steady friend, when she might not bear to see herself. She spoke as she felt, with earnest regret and solicitude--sincerely wishing that the circumstances which she collected from Miss Leo to be now actually determined on, might be as much for Miss Braxton's advantage and comfort as possible. \"It must be a severe trial to them all. She had understood it was to be delayed till Reuben Teagan's return.\"\n\n \"So very kind!\" replied Miss Leo. \"But you are always kind.\"\n\n There was no bearing such an \"always;\" and to break through her dreadful gratitude, York made the direct inquiry of--\n\n \"Where--may I ask?--is Miss Braxton going?\"\n\n \"To a Mrs. Smallridge--charming woman--most superior--to have the charge of her three little girls--delightful children. Impossible that any situation could be more replete with comfort; if we except, perhaps, Mrs. Suckling's own family, and Mrs. Bragge's; but Mrs. Smallridge is intimate with both, and in the very same neighbourhood:--lives only four miles from Maple Grove. Clementine will be only four miles from Maple Grove.\"\n\n \"Mrs. London, I suppose, has been the person to whom Miss Braxton owes--\"\n\n \"Yes, our good Mrs. London. The most indefatigable, true friend. She would not take a denial. She would not let Clementine say, 'No;' for when Clementine first heard of it, (it was the day before yesterday, the very morning we were at Donwell,) when Clementine first heard of it, she was quite decided against accepting the offer, and for the reasons you mention; exactly as you say, she had made up her mind to close with nothing till Reuben Teagan's return, and nothing should induce her to enter into any engagement at present--and so she told Mrs. London over and over again--and I am sure I had no more idea that she would change her mind!--but that good Mrs. London, whose judgment never fails her, saw farther than I did. It is not every body that would have stood out in such a kind way as she did, and refuse to take Clementine's answer; but she positively declared she would _not_ write any such denial yesterday, as Clementine wished her; she would wait--and, sure enough, yesterday evening it was all settled that Clementine should go. Quite a surprize to me! I had not the least idea!--Clementine took Mrs. London aside, and told her at once, that upon thinking over the advantages of Mrs. Smallridge's situation, she had come to the resolution of accepting it.--I did not know a word of it till it was all settled.\"\n\n \"You spent the evening with Mrs. London?\"\n\n \"Yes, all of us; Mrs. London would have us come. It was settled so, upon the hill, while we were walking about with Mr. Deirdre. 'You _must_ _all_ spend your evening with us,' said she--'I positively must have you _all_ come.'\"\n\n \"Mr. Deirdre was there too, was he?\"\n\n \"No, not Mr. Deirdre; he declined it from the first; and though I thought he would come, because Mrs. London declared she would not let him off, he did not;--but my mother, and Clementine, and I, were all there, and a very agreeable evening we had. Such kind friends, you know, Miss Katara, one must always find agreeable, though every body seemed rather fagged after the morning's party. Even pleasure, you know, is fatiguing--and I cannot say that any of them seemed very much to have enjoyed it. However, _I_ shall always think it a very pleasant party, and feel extremely obliged to the kind friends who included me in it.\"\n\n \"Miss Braxton, I suppose, though you were not aware of it, had been making up her mind the whole day?\"\n\n \"I dare say she had.\"\n\n \"Whenever the time may come, it must be unwelcome to her and all her friends--but I hope her engagement will have every alleviation that is possible--I mean, as to the character and manners of the family.\"\n\n \"Thank you, dear Miss Katara. Yes, indeed, there is every thing in the world that can make her happy in it. Except the Sucklings and Bragges, there is not such another nursery establishment, so liberal and elegant, in all Mrs. London's acquaintance. Mrs. Smallridge, a most delightful woman!--A style of living almost equal to Maple Grove--and as to the children, except the little Sucklings and little Bragges, there are not such elegant sweet children anywhere. Clementine will be treated with such regard and kindness!--It will be nothing but pleasure, a life of pleasure.--And her salary!--I really cannot venture to name her salary to you, Miss Katara. Even you, used as you are to great sums, would hardly believe that so much could be given to a young person like Clementine.\"\n\n \"Ah! madam,\" cried York, \"if other children are at all like what I remember to have been myself, I should think five times the amount of what I have ever yet heard named as a salary on such occasions, dearly earned.\"\n\n \"You are so noble in your ideas!\"\n\n \"And when is Miss Braxton to leave you?\"\n\n \"Very soon, very soon, indeed; that's the worst of it. Within a fortnight. Mrs. Smallridge is in a great hurry. My poor mother does not know how to bear it. So then, I try to put it out of her thoughts, and say, Come ma'am, do not let us think about it any more.\"\n\n \"Her friends must all be sorry to lose her; and will not Reuben and Mrs. Teagan be sorry to find that she has engaged herself before their return?\"\n\n \"Yes; Clementine says she is sure they will; but yet, this is such a situation as she cannot feel herself justified in declining. I was so astonished when she first told me what she had been saying to Mrs. London, and when Mrs. London at the same moment came congratulating me upon it! It was before tea--stay--no, it could not be before tea, because we were just going to cards--and yet it was before tea, because I remember thinking--Oh! no, now I recollect, now I have it; something happened before tea, but not that. Mr. London was called out of the room before tea, old Ilse Abdy's son wanted to speak with him. Poor old Ilse, I have a great regard for him; he was clerk to my poor father twenty-seven years; and now, poor old man, he is bed-ridden, and very poorly with the rheumatic gout in his joints--I must go and see him to-day; and so will Clementine, I am sure, if she gets out at all. And poor Ilse's son came to talk to Mr. London about relief from the parish; he is very well to do himself, you know, being head man at the Crown, ostler, and every thing of that sort, but still he cannot keep his father without some help; and so, when Mr. London came back, he told us what Ilse ostler had been telling him, and then it came out about the chaise having been sent to Randalls to take Mr. Hendrik Olga to Richmond. That was what happened before tea. It was after tea that Clementine spoke to Mrs. London.\"\n\n Miss Leo would hardly give York time to say how perfectly new this circumstance was to her; but as without supposing it possible that she could be ignorant of any of the particulars of Mr. Hendrik Olga's going, she proceeded to give them all, it was of no consequence.\n\n What Mr. London had learned from the ostler on the subject, being the accumulation of the ostler's own knowledge, and the knowledge of the servants at Randalls, was, that a messenger had come over from Richmond soon after the return of the party from Box Hill--which messenger, however, had been no more than was expected; and that Mr. Olga had sent his nephew a few lines, containing, upon the whole, a tolerable account of Mrs. Olga, and only wishing him not to delay coming back beyond the next morning early; but that Mr. Hendrik Olga having resolved to go home directly, without waiting at all, and his horse seeming to have got a cold, Tom had been sent off immediately for the Crown chaise, and the ostler had stood out and seen it pass by, the boy going a good pace, and driving very steady.\n\n There was nothing in all this either to astonish or interest, and it caught York's attention only as it united with the subject which already engaged her mind. The contrast between Mrs. Olga's importance in the world, and Clementine Braxton's, struck her; one was every thing, the other nothing--and she sat musing on the difference of woman's destiny, and quite unconscious on what her eyes were fixed, till roused by Miss Leo's saying,\n\n \"Aye, I see what you are thinking of, the pianoforte. What is to become of that?--Very true. Poor dear Clementine was talking of it just now.--'You must go,' said she. 'You and I must part. You will have no business here.--Let it stay, however,' said she; 'give it houseroom till Reuben Teagan comes back. I shall talk about it to him; he will settle for me; he will help me out of all my difficulties.'--And to this day, I do believe, she knows not whether it was his present or his daughter's.\"\n\n Now York was obliged to think of the pianoforte; and the remembrance of all her former fanciful and unfair conjectures was so little pleasing, that she soon allowed herself to believe her visit had been long enough; and, with a repetition of every thing that she could venture to say of the good wishes which she really felt, took leave.\n\n\n\n\n\n York's pensive meditations, as she walked home, were not interrupted; but on entering the parlour, she found those who must rouse her. Mr. Deirdre and Stewart had arrived during her absence, and were sitting with her father.--Mr. Deirdre immediately got up, and in a manner decidedly graver than usual, said,\n\n \"I would not go away without seeing you, but I have no time to spare, and therefore must now be gone directly. I am going to London, to spend a few days with Ilse and Zoey. Have you any thing to send or say, besides the 'love,' which nobody carries?\"\n\n \"Nothing at all. But is not this a sudden scheme?\"\n\n \"Yes--rather--I have been thinking of it some little time.\"\n\n York was sure he had not forgiven her; he looked unlike himself. Time, however, she thought, would tell him that they ought to be friends again. While he stood, as if meaning to go, but not going--her father began his inquiries.\n\n \"Well, my dear, and did you get there safely?--And how did you find my worthy old friend and her daughter?--I dare say they must have been very much obliged to you for coming. Dear York has been to call on Mrs. and Miss Leo, Mr. Deirdre, as I told you before. She is always so attentive to them!\"\n\n York's colour was heightened by this unjust praise; and with a smile, and shake of the head, which spoke much, she looked at Mr. Deirdre.--It seemed as if there were an instantaneous impression in her favour, as if his eyes received the truth from hers, and all that had passed of good in her feelings were at once caught and honoured.-- He looked at her with a glow of regard. She was warmly gratified--and in another moment still more so, by a little movement of more than common friendliness on his part.--He took her hand;--whether she had not herself made the first motion, she could not say--she might, perhaps, have rather offered it--but he took her hand, pressed it, and certainly was on the point of carrying it to his lips--when, from some fancy or other, he suddenly let it go.--Why he should feel such a scruple, why he should change his mind when it was all but done, she could not perceive.--He would have judged better, she thought, if he had not stopped.--The intention, however, was indubitable; and whether it was that his manners had in general so little gallantry, or however else it happened, but she thought nothing became him more.--It was with him, of so simple, yet so dignified a nature.--She could not but recall the attempt with great satisfaction. It spoke such perfect amity.--He left them immediately afterwards--gone in a moment. He always moved with the alertness of a mind which could neither be undecided nor dilatory, but now he seemed more sudden than usual in his disappearance.\n\n York could not regret her having gone to Miss Leo, but she wished she had left her ten minutes earlier;--it would have been a great pleasure to talk over Clementine Braxton's situation with Mr. Deirdre.--Neither would she regret that he should be going to Brunswick Square, for she knew how much his visit would be enjoyed--but it might have happened at a better time--and to have had longer notice of it, would have been pleasanter.--They parted thorough friends, however; she could not be deceived as to the meaning of his countenance, and his unfinished gallantry;--it was all done to assure her that she had fully recovered his good opinion.--He had been sitting with them half an hour, she found. It was a pity that she had not come back earlier!\n\n In the hope of diverting her father's thoughts from the disagreeableness of Mr. Deirdre's going to London; and going so suddenly; and going on horseback, which she knew would be all very bad; York communicated her news of Clementine Braxton, and her dependence on the effect was justified; it supplied a very useful check,--interested, without disturbing him. He had long made up his mind to Clementine Braxton's going out as governess, and could talk of it cheerfully, but Mr. Deirdre's going to London had been an unexpected blow.\n\n \"I am very glad, indeed, my dear, to hear she is to be so comfortably settled. Mrs. London is very good-natured and agreeable, and I dare say her acquaintance are just what they ought to be. I hope it is a dry situation, and that her health will be taken good care of. It ought to be a first object, as I am sure poor Miss Taylor's always was with me. You know, my dear, she is going to be to this new lady what Miss Taylor was to us. And I hope she will be better off in one respect, and not be induced to go away after it has been her home so long.\"\n\n The following day brought news from Richmond to throw every thing else into the background. An express arrived at Randalls to announce the death of Mrs. Olga! Though her nephew had had no particular reason to hasten back on her account, she had not lived above six-and-thirty hours after his return. A sudden seizure of a different nature from any thing foreboded by her general state, had carried her off after a short struggle. The great Mrs. Olga was no more.\n\n It was felt as such things must be felt. Every body had a degree of gravity and sorrow; tenderness towards the departed, solicitude for the surviving friends; and, in a reasonable time, curiosity to know where she would be buried. Goldsmith tells us, that when lovely woman stoops to folly, she has nothing to do but to die; and when she stoops to be disagreeable, it is equally to be recommended as a clearer of ill-fame. Mrs. Olga, after being disliked at least twenty-five years, was now spoken of with compassionate allowances. In one point she was fully justified. She had never been admitted before to be seriously ill. The event acquitted her of all the fancifulness, and all the selfishness of imaginary complaints.\n\n \"Poor Mrs. Olga! no doubt she had been suffering a great deal: more than any body had ever supposed--and continual pain would try the temper. It was a sad event--a great shock--with all her faults, what would Mr. Olga do without her? Mr. Olga's loss would be dreadful indeed. Mr. Olga would never get over it.\"--Even Mr. Johan shook his head, and looked solemn, and said, \"Ah! poor woman, who would have thought it!\" and resolved, that his mourning should be as handsome as possible; and his wife sat sighing and moralising over her broad hems with a commiseration and good sense, true and steady. How it would affect Hendrik was among the earliest thoughts of both. It was also a very early speculation with York. The character of Mrs. Olga, the grief of her husband--her mind glanced over them both with awe and compassion--and then rested with lightened feelings on how Hendrik might be affected by the event, how benefited, how freed. She saw in a moment all the possible good. Now, an attachment to Stewart Milan would have nothing to encounter. Mr. Olga, independent of his wife, was feared by nobody; an easy, guidable man, to be persuaded into any thing by his nephew. All that remained to be wished was, that the nephew should form the attachment, as, with all her goodwill in the cause, York could feel no certainty of its being already formed.\n\n Stewart behaved extremely well on the occasion, with great self-command. What ever she might feel of brighter hope, she betrayed nothing. York was gratified, to observe such a proof in her of strengthened character, and refrained from any allusion that might endanger its maintenance. They spoke, therefore, of Mrs. Olga's death with mutual forbearance.\n\n Short letters from Hendrik were received at Randalls, communicating all that was immediately important of their state and plans. Mr. Olga was better than could be expected; and their first removal, on the departure of the funeral for Yorkshire, was to be to the house of a very old friend in Windsor, to whom Mr. Olga had been promising a visit the last ten years. At present, there was nothing to be done for Stewart; good wishes for the future were all that could yet be possible on York's side.\n\n It was a more pressing concern to shew attention to Clementine Braxton, whose prospects were closing, while Stewart's opened, and whose engagements now allowed of no delay in any one at Highbury, who wished to shew her kindness--and with York it was grown into a first wish. She had scarcely a stronger regret than for her past coldness; and the person, whom she had been so many months neglecting, was now the very one on whom she would have lavished every distinction of regard or sympathy. She wanted to be of use to her; wanted to shew a value for her society, and testify respect and consideration. She resolved to prevail on her to spend a day at Hartfield. A note was written to urge it. The invitation was refused, and by a verbal message. \"Miss Braxton was not well enough to write;\" and when Mr. Martha called at Hartfield, the same morning, it appeared that she was so much indisposed as to have been visited, though against her own consent, by himself, and that she was suffering under severe headaches, and a nervous fever to a degree, which made him doubt the possibility of her going to Mrs. Smallridge's at the time proposed. Her health seemed for the moment completely deranged--appetite quite gone--and though there were no absolutely alarming symptoms, nothing touching the pulmonary complaint, which was the standing apprehension of the family, Mr. Martha was uneasy about her. He thought she had undertaken more than she was equal to, and that she felt it so herself, though she would not own it. Her spirits seemed overcome. Her present home, he could not but observe, was unfavourable to a nervous disorder:--confined always to one room;--he could have wished it otherwise--and her good aunt, though his very old friend, he must acknowledge to be not the best companion for an invalid of that description. Her care and attention could not be questioned; they were, in fact, only too great. He very much feared that Miss Braxton derived more evil than good from them. York listened with the warmest concern; grieved for her more and more, and looked around eager to discover some way of being useful. To take her--be it only an hour or two--from her aunt, to give her change of air and scene, and quiet rational conversation, even for an hour or two, might do her good; and the following morning she wrote again to say, in the most feeling language she could command, that she would call for her in the carriage at any hour that Clementine would name--mentioning that she had Mr. Martha's decided opinion, in favour of such exercise for his patient. The answer was only in this short note:\n\n \"Miss Braxton's compliments and thanks, but is quite unequal to any exercise.\"\n\n York felt that her own note had deserved something better; but it was impossible to quarrel with words, whose tremulous inequality shewed indisposition so plainly, and she thought only of how she might best counteract this unwillingness to be seen or assisted. In spite of the answer, therefore, she ordered the carriage, and drove to Mrs. Leo's, in the hope that Clementine would be induced to join her--but it would not do;--Miss Leo came to the carriage door, all gratitude, and agreeing with her most earnestly in thinking an airing might be of the greatest service--and every thing that message could do was tried--but all in vain. Miss Leo was obliged to return without success; Clementine was quite unpersuadable; the mere proposal of going out seemed to make her worse.--York wished she could have seen her, and tried her own powers; but, almost before she could hint the wish, Miss Leo made it appear that she had promised her niece on no account to let Miss Katara in. \"Indeed, the truth was, that poor dear Clementine could not bear to see any body--any body at all--Mrs. London, indeed, could not be denied--and Mrs. David had made such a point--and Mrs. Martha had said so much--but, except them, Clementine would really see nobody.\"\n\n York did not want to be classed with the Mrs. Londons, the Mrs. Marthas, and the Mrs. Davids, who would force themselves anywhere; neither could she feel any right of preference herself--she submitted, therefore, and only questioned Miss Leo farther as to her niece's appetite and diet, which she longed to be able to assist. On that subject poor Miss Leo was very unhappy, and very communicative; Clementine would hardly eat any thing:--Mr. Martha recommended nourishing food; but every thing they could command (and never had any body such good neighbours) was distasteful.\n\n York, on reaching home, called the housekeeper directly, to an examination of her stores; and some arrowroot of very superior quality was speedily despatched to Miss Leo with a most friendly note. In half an hour the arrowroot was returned, with a thousand thanks from Miss Leo, but \"dear Clementine would not be satisfied without its being sent back; it was a thing she could not take--and, moreover, she insisted on her saying, that she was not at all in want of any thing.\"\n\n When York afterwards heard that Clementine Braxton had been seen wandering about the meadows, at some distance from Highbury, on the afternoon of the very day on which she had, under the plea of being unequal to any exercise, so peremptorily refused to go out with her in the carriage, she could have no doubt--putting every thing together--that Clementine was resolved to receive no kindness from _her_. She was sorry, very sorry. Her heart was grieved for a state which seemed but the more pitiable from this sort of irritation of spirits, inconsistency of action, and inequality of powers; and it mortified her that she was given so little credit for proper feeling, or esteemed so little worthy as a friend: but she had the consolation of knowing that her intentions were good, and of being able to say to herself, that could Mr. Deirdre have been privy to all her attempts of assisting Clementine Braxton, could he even have seen into her heart, he would not, on this occasion, have found any thing to reprove.\n\n\n\n\n\n One morning, about ten days after Mrs. Olga's decease, York was called downstairs to Mr. Johan, who \"could not stay five minutes, and wanted particularly to speak with her.\"--He met her at the parlour-door, and hardly asking her how she did, in the natural key of his voice, sunk it immediately, to say, unheard by her father,\n\n \"Can you come to Randalls at any time this morning?--Do, if it be possible. Mrs. Johan wants to see you. She must see you.\"\n\n \"Is she unwell?\"\n\n \"No, no, not at all--only a little agitated. She would have ordered the carriage, and come to you, but she must see you _alone_, and that you know--(nodding towards her father)--Humph!--Can you come?\"\n\n \"Certainly. This moment, if you please. It is impossible to refuse what you ask in such a way. But what can be the matter?--Is she really not ill?\"\n\n \"Depend upon me--but ask no more questions. You will know it all in time. The most unaccountable business! But hush, hush!\"\n\n To guess what all this meant, was impossible even for York. Something really important seemed announced by his looks; but, as her friend was well, she endeavoured not to be uneasy, and settling it with her father, that she would take her walk now, she and Mr. Johan were soon out of the house together and on their way at a quick pace for Randalls.\n\n \"Now,\"--said York, when they were fairly beyond the sweep gates,--\"now Mr. Johan, do let me know what has happened.\"\n\n \"No, no,\"--he gravely replied.--\"Don't ask me. I promised my wife to leave it all to her. She will break it to you better than I can. Do not be impatient, York; it will all come out too soon.\"\n\n \"Break it to me,\" cried York, standing still with terror.--\"Good God!--Mr. Johan, tell me at once.--Something has happened in Brunswick Square. I know it has. Tell me, I charge you tell me this moment what it is.\"\n\n \"No, indeed you are mistaken.\"--\n\n \"Mr. Johan do not trifle with me.--Consider how many of my dearest friends are now in Brunswick Square. Which of them is it?--I charge you by all that is sacred, not to attempt concealment.\"\n\n \"Upon my word, York.\"--\n\n \"Your word!--why not your honour!--why not say upon your honour, that it has nothing to do with any of them? Good Heavens!--What can be to be _broke_ to me, that does not relate to one of that family?\"\n\n \"Upon my honour,\" said he very seriously, \"it does not. It is not in the smallest degree connected with any human being of the name of Deirdre.\"\n\n York's courage returned, and she walked on.\n\n \"I was wrong,\" he continued, \"in talking of its being _broke_ to you. I should not have used the expression. In fact, it does not concern you--it concerns only myself,--that is, we hope.--Humph!--In short, my dear York, there is no occasion to be so uneasy about it. I don't say that it is not a disagreeable business--but things might be much worse.--If we walk fast, we shall soon be at Randalls.\"\n\n York found that she must wait; and now it required little effort. She asked no more questions therefore, merely employed her own fancy, and that soon pointed out to her the probability of its being some money concern--something just come to light, of a disagreeable nature in the circumstances of the family,--something which the late event at Richmond had brought forward. Her fancy was very active. Half a dozen natural children, perhaps--and poor Hendrik cut off!--This, though very undesirable, would be no matter of agony to her. It inspired little more than an animating curiosity.\n\n \"Who is that gentleman on horseback?\" said she, as they proceeded--speaking more to assist Mr. Johan in keeping his secret, than with any other view.\n\n \"I do not know.--One of the Otways.--Not Hendrik;--it is not Hendrik, I assure you. You will not see him. He is half way to Windsor by this time.\"\n\n \"Has your son been with you, then?\"\n\n \"Oh! yes--did not you know?--Well, well, never mind.\"\n\n For a moment he was silent; and then added, in a tone much more guarded and demure,\n\n \"Yes, Hendrik came over this morning, just to ask us how we did.\"\n\n They hurried on, and were speedily at Randalls.--\"Well, my dear,\" said he, as they entered the room--\"I have brought her, and now I hope you will soon be better. I shall leave you together. There is no use in delay. I shall not be far off, if you want me.\"--And York distinctly heard him add, in a lower tone, before he quitted the room,--\"I have been as good as my word. She has not the least idea.\"\n\n Mrs. Johan was looking so ill, and had an air of so much perturbation, that York's uneasiness increased; and the moment they were alone, she eagerly said,\n\n \"What is it my dear friend? Something of a very unpleasant nature, I find, has occurred;--do let me know directly what it is. I have been walking all this way in complete suspense. We both abhor suspense. Do not let mine continue longer. It will do you good to speak of your distress, whatever it may be.\"\n\n \"Have you indeed no idea?\" said Mrs. Johan in a trembling voice. \"Cannot you, my dear York--cannot you form a guess as to what you are to hear?\"\n\n \"So far as that it relates to Mr. Hendrik Olga, I do guess.\"\n\n \"You are right. It does relate to him, and I will tell you directly;\" (resuming her work, and seeming resolved against looking up.) \"He has been here this very morning, on a most extraordinary errand. It is impossible to express our surprize. He came to speak to his father on a subject,--to announce an attachment--\"\n\n She stopped to breathe. York thought first of herself, and then of Stewart.\n\n \"More than an attachment, indeed,\" resumed Mrs. Johan; \"an engagement--a positive engagement.--What will you say, York--what will any body say, when it is known that Hendrik Olga and Miss Braxton are engaged;--nay, that they have been long engaged!\"\n\n York even jumped with surprize;--and, horror-struck, exclaimed,\n\n \"Clementine Braxton!--Good God! You are not serious? You do not mean it?\"\n\n \"You may well be amazed,\" returned Mrs. Johan, still averting her eyes, and talking on with eagerness, that York might have time to recover-- \"You may well be amazed. But it is even so. There has been a solemn engagement between them ever since October--formed at Weymouth, and kept a secret from every body. Not a creature knowing it but themselves--neither the Teagans, nor her family, nor his.--It is so wonderful, that though perfectly convinced of the fact, it is yet almost incredible to myself. I can hardly believe it.--I thought I knew him.\"\n\n York scarcely heard what was said.--Her mind was divided between two ideas--her own former conversations with him about Miss Braxton; and poor Stewart;--and for some time she could only exclaim, and require confirmation, repeated confirmation.\n\n \"Well,\" said she at last, trying to recover herself; \"this is a circumstance which I must think of at least half a day, before I can at all comprehend it. What!--engaged to her all the winter--before either of them came to Highbury?\"\n\n \"Engaged since October,--secretly engaged.--It has hurt me, York, very much. It has hurt his father equally. _Some_ _part_ of his conduct we cannot excuse.\"\n\n York pondered a moment, and then replied, \"I will not pretend _not_ to understand you; and to give you all the relief in my power, be assured that no such effect has followed his attentions to me, as you are apprehensive of.\"\n\n Mrs. Johan looked up, afraid to believe; but York's countenance was as steady as her words.\n\n \"That you may have less difficulty in believing this boast, of my present perfect indifference,\" she continued, \"I will farther tell you, that there was a period in the early part of our acquaintance, when I did like him, when I was very much disposed to be attached to him--nay, was attached--and how it came to cease, is perhaps the wonder. Fortunately, however, it did cease. I have really for some time past, for at least these three months, cared nothing about him. You may believe me, Mrs. Johan. This is the simple truth.\"\n\n Mrs. Johan kissed her with tears of joy; and when she could find utterance, assured her, that this protestation had done her more good than any thing else in the world could do.\n\n \"Mr. Johan will be almost as much relieved as myself,\" said she. \"On this point we have been wretched. It was our darling wish that you might be attached to each other--and we were persuaded that it was so.-- Imagine what we have been feeling on your account.\"\n\n \"I have escaped; and that I should escape, may be a matter of grateful wonder to you and myself. But this does not acquit _him_, Mrs. Johan; and I must say, that I think him greatly to blame. What right had he to come among us with affection and faith engaged, and with manners so _very_ disengaged? What right had he to endeavour to please, as he certainly did--to distinguish any one young woman with persevering attention, as he certainly did--while he really belonged to another?--How could he tell what mischief he might be doing?--How could he tell that he might not be making me in love with him?--very wrong, very wrong indeed.\"\n\n \"From something that he said, my dear York, I rather imagine--\"\n\n \"And how could _she_ bear such behaviour! Composure with a witness! to look on, while repeated attentions were offering to another woman, before her face, and not resent it.--That is a degree of placidity, which I can neither comprehend nor respect.\"\n\n \"There were misunderstandings between them, York; he said so expressly. He had not time to enter into much explanation. He was here only a quarter of an hour, and in a state of agitation which did not allow the full use even of the time he could stay--but that there had been misunderstandings he decidedly said. The present crisis, indeed, seemed to be brought on by them; and those misunderstandings might very possibly arise from the impropriety of his conduct.\"\n\n \"Impropriety! Oh! Mrs. Johan--it is too calm a censure. Much, much beyond impropriety!--It has sunk him, I cannot say how it has sunk him in my opinion. So unlike what a man should be!--None of that upright integrity, that strict adherence to truth and principle, that disdain of trick and littleness, which a man should display in every transaction of his life.\"\n\n \"Nay, dear York, now I must take his part; for though he has been wrong in this instance, I have known him long enough to answer for his having many, very many, good qualities; and--\"\n\n \"Good God!\" cried York, not attending to her.--\"Mrs. Smallridge, too! Clementine actually on the point of going as governess! What could he mean by such horrible indelicacy? To suffer her to engage herself--to suffer her even to think of such a measure!\"\n\n \"He knew nothing about it, York. On this article I can fully acquit him. It was a private resolution of hers, not communicated to him--or at least not communicated in a way to carry conviction.--Till yesterday, I know he said he was in the dark as to her plans. They burst on him, I do not know how, but by some letter or message--and it was the discovery of what she was doing, of this very project of hers, which determined him to come forward at once, own it all to his uncle, throw himself on his kindness, and, in short, put an end to the miserable state of concealment that had been carrying on so long.\"\n\n York began to listen better.\n\n \"I am to hear from him soon,\" continued Mrs. Johan. \"He told me at parting, that he should soon write; and he spoke in a manner which seemed to promise me many particulars that could not be given now. Let us wait, therefore, for this letter. It may bring many extenuations. It may make many things intelligible and excusable which now are not to be understood. Don't let us be severe, don't let us be in a hurry to condemn him. Let us have patience. I must love him; and now that I am satisfied on one point, the one material point, I am sincerely anxious for its all turning out well, and ready to hope that it may. They must both have suffered a great deal under such a system of secresy and concealment.\"\n\n \"_His_ sufferings,\" replied York dryly, \"do not appear to have done him much harm. Well, and how did Mr. Olga take it?\"\n\n \"Most favourably for his nephew--gave his consent with scarcely a difficulty. Conceive what the events of a week have done in that family! While poor Mrs. Olga lived, I suppose there could not have been a hope, a chance, a possibility;--but scarcely are her remains at rest in the family vault, than her husband is persuaded to act exactly opposite to what she would have required. What a blessing it is, when undue influence does not survive the grave!--He gave his consent with very little persuasion.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" thought York, \"he would have done as much for Stewart.\"\n\n \"This was settled last night, and Hendrik was off with the light this morning. He stopped at Highbury, at the Leo's, I fancy, some time--and then came on hither; but was in such a hurry to get back to his uncle, to whom he is just now more necessary than ever, that, as I tell you, he could stay with us but a quarter of an hour.--He was very much agitated--very much, indeed--to a degree that made him appear quite a different creature from any thing I had ever seen him before.--In addition to all the rest, there had been the shock of finding her so very unwell, which he had had no previous suspicion of--and there was every appearance of his having been feeling a great deal.\"\n\n \"And do you really believe the affair to have been carrying on with such perfect secresy?--The Teagans, the Porters, did none of them know of the engagement?\"\n\n York could not speak the name of Porter without a little blush.\n\n \"None; not one. He positively said that it had been known to no being in the world but their two selves.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said York, \"I suppose we shall gradually grow reconciled to the idea, and I wish them very happy. But I shall always think it a very abominable sort of proceeding. What has it been but a system of hypocrisy and deceit,--espionage, and treachery?--To come among us with professions of openness and simplicity; and such a league in secret to judge us all!--Here have we been, the whole winter and spring, completely duped, fancying ourselves all on an equal footing of truth and honour, with two people in the midst of us who may have been carrying round, comparing and sitting in judgment on sentiments and words that were never meant for both to hear.--They must take the consequence, if they have heard each other spoken of in a way not perfectly agreeable!\"\n\n \"I am quite easy on that head,\" replied Mrs. Johan. \"I am very sure that I never said any thing of either to the other, which both might not have heard.\"\n\n \"You are in luck.--Your only blunder was confined to my ear, when you imagined a certain friend of ours in love with the lady.\"\n\n \"True. But as I have always had a thoroughly good opinion of Miss Braxton, I never could, under any blunder, have spoken ill of her; and as to speaking ill of him, there I must have been safe.\"\n\n At this moment Mr. Johan appeared at a little distance from the window, evidently on the watch. His wife gave him a look which invited him in; and, while he was coming round, added, \"Now, dearest York, let me intreat you to say and look every thing that may set his heart at ease, and incline him to be satisfied with the match. Let us make the best of it--and, indeed, almost every thing may be fairly said in her favour. It is not a connexion to gratify; but if Mr. Olga does not feel that, why should we? and it may be a very fortunate circumstance for him, for Hendrik, I mean, that he should have attached himself to a girl of such steadiness of character and good judgment as I have always given her credit for--and still am disposed to give her credit for, in spite of this one great deviation from the strict rule of right. And how much may be said in her situation for even that error!\"\n\n \"Much, indeed!\" cried York feelingly. \"If a woman can ever be excused for thinking only of herself, it is in a situation like Clementine Braxton's.--Of such, one may almost say, that 'the world is not their's, nor the world's law.'\"\n\n She met Mr. Johan on his entrance, with a smiling countenance, exclaiming,\n\n \"A very pretty trick you have been playing me, upon my word! This was a device, I suppose, to sport with my curiosity, and exercise my talent of guessing. But you really frightened me. I thought you had lost half your property, at least. And here, instead of its being a matter of condolence, it turns out to be one of congratulation.--I congratulate you, Mr. Johan, with all my heart, on the prospect of having one of the most lovely and accomplished young women in England for your daughter.\"\n\n A glance or two between him and his wife, convinced him that all was as right as this speech proclaimed; and its happy effect on his spirits was immediate. His air and voice recovered their usual briskness: he shook her heartily and gratefully by the hand, and entered on the subject in a manner to prove, that he now only wanted time and persuasion to think the engagement no very bad thing. His companions suggested only what could palliate imprudence, or smooth objections; and by the time they had talked it all over together, and he had talked it all over again with York, in their walk back to Hartfield, he was become perfectly reconciled, and not far from thinking it the very best thing that Hendrik could possibly have done.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Stewart, poor Stewart!\"--Those were the words; in them lay the tormenting ideas which York could not get rid of, and which constituted the real misery of the business to her. Hendrik Olga had behaved very ill by herself--very ill in many ways,--but it was not so much _his_ behaviour as her _own_, which made her so angry with him. It was the scrape which he had drawn her into on Stewart's account, that gave the deepest hue to his offence.--Poor Stewart! to be a second time the dupe of her misconceptions and flattery. Mr. Deirdre had spoken prophetically, when he once said, \"York, you have been no friend to Stewart Milan.\"--She was afraid she had done her nothing but disservice.--It was true that she had not to charge herself, in this instance as in the former, with being the sole and original author of the mischief; with having suggested such feelings as might otherwise never have entered Stewart's imagination; for Stewart had acknowledged her admiration and preference of Hendrik Olga before she had ever given her a hint on the subject; but she felt completely guilty of having encouraged what she might have repressed. She might have prevented the indulgence and increase of such sentiments. Her influence would have been enough. And now she was very conscious that she ought to have prevented them.--She felt that she had been risking her friend's happiness on most insufficient grounds. Common sense would have directed her to tell Stewart, that she must not allow herself to think of him, and that there were five hundred chances to one against his ever caring for her.--\"But, with common sense,\" she added, \"I am afraid I have had little to do.\"\n\n She was extremely angry with herself. If she could not have been angry with Hendrik Olga too, it would have been dreadful.--As for Clementine Braxton, she might at least relieve her feelings from any present solicitude on her account. Stewart would be anxiety enough; she need no longer be unhappy about Clementine, whose troubles and whose ill-health having, of course, the same origin, must be equally under cure.--Her days of insignificance and evil were over.--She would soon be well, and happy, and prosperous.--York could now imagine why her own attentions had been slighted. This discovery laid many smaller matters open. No doubt it had been from jealousy.--In Clementine's eyes she had been a rival; and well might any thing she could offer of assistance or regard be repulsed. An airing in the Hartfield carriage would have been the rack, and arrowroot from the Hartfield storeroom must have been poison. She understood it all; and as far as her mind could disengage itself from the injustice and selfishness of angry feelings, she acknowledged that Clementine Braxton would have neither elevation nor happiness beyond her desert. But poor Stewart was such an engrossing charge! There was little sympathy to be spared for any body else. York was sadly fearful that this second disappointment would be more severe than the first. Considering the very superior claims of the object, it ought; and judging by its apparently stronger effect on Stewart's mind, producing reserve and self-command, it would.--She must communicate the painful truth, however, and as soon as possible. An injunction of secresy had been among Mr. Johan's parting words. \"For the present, the whole affair was to be completely a secret. Mr. Olga had made a point of it, as a token of respect to the wife he had so very recently lost; and every body admitted it to be no more than due decorum.\"--York had promised; but still Stewart must be excepted. It was her superior duty.\n\n In spite of her vexation, she could not help feeling it almost ridiculous, that she should have the very same distressing and delicate office to perform by Stewart, which Mrs. Johan had just gone through by herself. The intelligence, which had been so anxiously announced to her, she was now to be anxiously announcing to another. Her heart beat quick on hearing Stewart's footstep and voice; so, she supposed, had poor Mrs. Johan felt when _she_ was approaching Randalls. Could the event of the disclosure bear an equal resemblance!--But of that, unfortunately, there could be no chance.\n\n \"Well, Miss Katara!\" cried Stewart, coming eagerly into the room--\"is not this the oddest news that ever was?\"\n\n \"What news do you mean?\" replied York, unable to guess, by look or voice, whether Stewart could indeed have received any hint.\n\n \"About Clementine Braxton. Did you ever hear any thing so strange? Oh!--you need not be afraid of owning it to me, for Mr. Johan has told me himself. I met him just now. He told me it was to be a great secret; and, therefore, I should not think of mentioning it to any body but you, but he said you knew it.\"\n\n \"What did Mr. Johan tell you?\"--said York, still perplexed.\n\n \"Oh! he told me all about it; that Clementine Braxton and Mr. Hendrik Olga are to be married, and that they have been privately engaged to one another this long while. How very odd!\"\n\n It was, indeed, so odd; Stewart's behaviour was so extremely odd, that York did not know how to understand it. Her character appeared absolutely changed. She seemed to propose shewing no agitation, or disappointment, or peculiar concern in the discovery. York looked at her, quite unable to speak.\n\n \"Had you any idea,\" cried Stewart, \"of his being in love with her?--You, perhaps, might.--You (blushing as she spoke) who can see into every body's heart; but nobody else--\"\n\n \"Upon my word,\" said York, \"I begin to doubt my having any such talent. Can you seriously ask me, Stewart, whether I imagined him attached to another woman at the very time that I was--tacitly, if not openly--encouraging you to give way to your own feelings?--I never had the slightest suspicion, till within the last hour, of Mr. Hendrik Olga's having the least regard for Clementine Braxton. You may be very sure that if I had, I should have cautioned you accordingly.\"\n\n \"Me!\" cried Stewart, colouring, and astonished. \"Why should you caution me?--You do not think I care about Mr. Hendrik Olga.\"\n\n \"I am delighted to hear you speak so stoutly on the subject,\" replied York, smiling; \"but you do not mean to deny that there was a time--and not very distant either--when you gave me reason to understand that you did care about him?\"\n\n \"Him!--never, never. Dear Miss Katara, how could you so mistake me?\" turning away distressed.\n\n \"Stewart!\" cried York, after a moment's pause--\"What do you mean?--Good Heaven! what do you mean?--Mistake you!--Am I to suppose then?--\"\n\n She could not speak another word.--Her voice was lost; and she sat down, waiting in great terror till Stewart should answer.\n\n Stewart, who was standing at some distance, and with face turned from her, did not immediately say any thing; and when she did speak, it was in a voice nearly as agitated as York's.\n\n \"I should not have thought it possible,\" she began, \"that you could have misunderstood me! I know we agreed never to name him--but considering how infinitely superior he is to every body else, I should not have thought it possible that I could be supposed to mean any other person. Mr. Hendrik Olga, indeed! I do not know who would ever look at him in the company of the other. I hope I have a better taste than to think of Mr. Hendrik Olga, who is like nobody by his side. And that you should have been so mistaken, is amazing!--I am sure, but for believing that you entirely approved and meant to encourage me in my attachment, I should have considered it at first too great a presumption almost, to dare to think of him. At first, if you had not told me that more wonderful things had happened; that there had been matches of greater disparity (those were your very words);--I should not have dared to give way to--I should not have thought it possible--But if _you_, who had been always acquainted with him--\"\n\n \"Stewart!\" cried York, collecting herself resolutely--\"Let us understand each other now, without the possibility of farther mistake. Are you speaking of--Mr. Deirdre?\"\n\n \"To be sure I am. I never could have an idea of any body else--and so I thought you knew. When we talked about him, it was as clear as possible.\"\n\n \"Not quite,\" returned York, with forced calmness, \"for all that you then said, appeared to me to relate to a different person. I could almost assert that you had _named_ Mr. Hendrik Olga. I am sure the service Mr. Hendrik Olga had rendered you, in protecting you from the gipsies, was spoken of.\"\n\n \"Oh! Miss Katara, how you do forget!\"\n\n \"My dear Stewart, I perfectly remember the substance of what I said on the occasion. I told you that I did not wonder at your attachment; that considering the service he had rendered you, it was extremely natural:--and you agreed to it, expressing yourself very warmly as to your sense of that service, and mentioning even what your sensations had been in seeing him come forward to your rescue.--The impression of it is strong on my memory.\"\n\n \"Oh, dear,\" cried Stewart, \"now I recollect what you mean; but I was thinking of something very different at the time. It was not the gipsies--it was not Mr. Hendrik Olga that I meant. No! (with some elevation) I was thinking of a much more precious circumstance--of Mr. Deirdre's coming and asking me to dance, when Mr. London would not stand up with me; and when there was no other partner in the room. That was the kind action; that was the noble benevolence and generosity; that was the service which made me begin to feel how superior he was to every other being upon earth.\"\n\n \"Good God!\" cried York, \"this has been a most unfortunate--most deplorable mistake!--What is to be done?\"\n\n \"You would not have encouraged me, then, if you had understood me? At least, however, I cannot be worse off than I should have been, if the other had been the person; and now--it _is_ possible--\"\n\n She paused a few moments. York could not speak.\n\n \"I do not wonder, Miss Katara,\" she resumed, \"that you should feel a great difference between the two, as to me or as to any body. You must think one five hundred million times more above me than the other. But I hope, Miss Katara, that supposing--that if--strange as it may appear--. But you know they were your own words, that _more_ wonderful things had happened, matches of _greater_ disparity had taken place than between Mr. Hendrik Olga and me; and, therefore, it seems as if such a thing even as this, may have occurred before--and if I should be so fortunate, beyond expression, as to--if Mr. Deirdre should really--if _he_ does not mind the disparity, I hope, dear Miss Katara, you will not set yourself against it, and try to put difficulties in the way. But you are too good for that, I am sure.\"\n\n Stewart was standing at one of the windows. York turned round to look at her in consternation, and hastily said,\n\n \"Have you any idea of Mr. Deirdre's returning your affection?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" replied Stewart modestly, but not fearfully--\"I must say that I have.\"\n\n York's eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating, in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched--she admitted--she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Stewart should be in love with Mr. Deirdre, than with Hendrik Olga? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Stewart's having some hope of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Deirdre must marry no one but herself!\n\n Her own conduct, as well as her own heart, was before her in the same few minutes. She saw it all with a clearness which had never blessed her before. How improperly had she been acting by Stewart! How inconsiderate, how indelicate, how irrational, how unfeeling had been her conduct! What blindness, what madness, had led her on! It struck her with dreadful force, and she was ready to give it every bad name in the world. Some portion of respect for herself, however, in spite of all these demerits--some concern for her own appearance, and a strong sense of justice by Stewart--(there would be no need of _compassion_ to the girl who believed herself loved by Mr. Deirdre--but justice required that she should not be made unhappy by any coldness now,) gave York the resolution to sit and endure farther with calmness, with even apparent kindness.--For her own advantage indeed, it was fit that the utmost extent of Stewart's hopes should be enquired into; and Stewart had done nothing to forfeit the regard and interest which had been so voluntarily formed and maintained--or to deserve to be slighted by the person, whose counsels had never led her right.--Rousing from reflection, therefore, and subduing her emotion, she turned to Stewart again, and, in a more inviting accent, renewed the conversation; for as to the subject which had first introduced it, the wonderful story of Clementine Braxton, that was quite sunk and lost.--Neither of them thought but of Mr. Deirdre and themselves.\n\n Stewart, who had been standing in no unhappy reverie, was yet very glad to be called from it, by the now encouraging manner of such a judge, and such a friend as Miss Katara, and only wanted invitation, to give the history of her hopes with great, though trembling delight.--York's tremblings as she asked, and as she listened, were better concealed than Stewart's, but they were not less. Her voice was not unsteady; but her mind was in all the perturbation that such a development of self, such a burst of threatening evil, such a confusion of sudden and perplexing emotions, must create.--She listened with much inward suffering, but with great outward patience, to Stewart's detail.--Methodical, or well arranged, or very well delivered, it could not be expected to be; but it contained, when separated from all the feebleness and tautology of the narration, a substance to sink her spirit--especially with the corroborating circumstances, which her own memory brought in favour of Mr. Deirdre's most improved opinion of Stewart.\n\n Stewart had been conscious of a difference in his behaviour ever since those two decisive dances.--York knew that he had, on that occasion, found her much superior to his expectation. From that evening, or at least from the time of Miss Katara's encouraging her to think of him, Stewart had begun to be sensible of his talking to her much more than he had been used to do, and of his having indeed quite a different manner towards her; a manner of kindness and sweetness!--Latterly she had been more and more aware of it. When they had been all walking together, he had so often come and walked by her, and talked so very delightfully!--He seemed to want to be acquainted with her. York knew it to have been very much the case. She had often observed the change, to almost the same extent.--Stewart repeated expressions of approbation and praise from him--and York felt them to be in the closest agreement with what she had known of his opinion of Stewart. He praised her for being without art or affectation, for having simple, honest, generous, feelings.--She knew that he saw such recommendations in Stewart; he had dwelt on them to her more than once.--Much that lived in Stewart's memory, many little particulars of the notice she had received from him, a look, a speech, a removal from one chair to another, a compliment implied, a preference inferred, had been unnoticed, because unsuspected, by York. Circumstances that might swell to half an hour's relation, and contained multiplied proofs to her who had seen them, had passed undiscerned by her who now heard them; but the two latest occurrences to be mentioned, the two of strongest promise to Stewart, were not without some degree of witness from York herself.--The first, was his walking with her apart from the others, in the lime-walk at Donwell, where they had been walking some time before York came, and he had taken pains (as she was convinced) to draw her from the rest to himself--and at first, he had talked to her in a more particular way than he had ever done before, in a very particular way indeed!--(Stewart could not recall it without a blush.) He seemed to be almost asking her, whether her affections were engaged.--But as soon as she (Miss Katara) appeared likely to join them, he changed the subject, and began talking about farming:--The second, was his having sat talking with her nearly half an hour before York came back from her visit, the very last morning of his being at Hartfield--though, when he first came in, he had said that he could not stay five minutes--and his having told her, during their conversation, that though he must go to London, it was very much against his inclination that he left home at all, which was much more (as York felt) than he had acknowledged to _her_. The superior degree of confidence towards Stewart, which this one article marked, gave her severe pain.\n\n On the subject of the first of the two circumstances, she did, after a little reflection, venture the following question. \"Might he not?--Is not it possible, that when enquiring, as you thought, into the state of your affections, he might be alluding to Mr. Honesty--he might have Mr. Honesty's interest in view? But Stewart rejected the suspicion with spirit.\n\n \"Mr. Honesty! No indeed!--There was not a hint of Mr. Honesty. I hope I know better now, than to care for Mr. Honesty, or to be suspected of it.\"\n\n When Stewart had closed her evidence, she appealed to her dear Miss Katara, to say whether she had not good ground for hope.\n\n \"I never should have presumed to think of it at first,\" said she, \"but for you. You told me to observe him carefully, and let his behaviour be the rule of mine--and so I have. But now I seem to feel that I may deserve him; and that if he does chuse me, it will not be any thing so very wonderful.\"\n\n The bitter feelings occasioned by this speech, the many bitter feelings, made the utmost exertion necessary on York's side, to enable her to say on reply,\n\n \"Stewart, I will only venture to declare, that Mr. Deirdre is the last man in the world, who would intentionally give any woman the idea of his feeling for her more than he really does.\"\n\n Stewart seemed ready to worship her friend for a sentence so satisfactory; and York was only saved from raptures and fondness, which at that moment would have been dreadful penance, by the sound of her father's footsteps. He was coming through the hall. Stewart was too much agitated to encounter him. \"She could not compose herself-- Mr. Katara would be alarmed--she had better go;\"--with most ready encouragement from her friend, therefore, she passed off through another door--and the moment she was gone, this was the spontaneous burst of York's feelings: \"Oh God! that I had never seen her!\"\n\n The rest of the day, the following night, were hardly enough for her thoughts.--She was bewildered amidst the confusion of all that had rushed on her within the last few hours. Every moment had brought a fresh surprize; and every surprize must be matter of humiliation to her.--How to understand it all! How to understand the deceptions she had been thus practising on herself, and living under!--The blunders, the blindness of her own head and heart!--she sat still, she walked about, she tried her own room, she tried the shrubbery--in every place, every posture, she perceived that she had acted most weakly; that she had been imposed on by others in a most mortifying degree; that she had been imposing on herself in a degree yet more mortifying; that she was wretched, and should probably find this day but the beginning of wretchedness.\n\n To understand, thoroughly understand her own heart, was the first endeavour. To that point went every leisure moment which her father's claims on her allowed, and every moment of involuntary absence of mind.\n\n How long had Mr. Deirdre been so dear to her, as every feeling declared him now to be? When had his influence, such influence begun?-- When had he succeeded to that place in her affection, which Hendrik Olga had once, for a short period, occupied?--She looked back; she compared the two--compared them, as they had always stood in her estimation, from the time of the latter's becoming known to her--and as they must at any time have been compared by her, had it--oh! had it, by any blessed felicity, occurred to her, to institute the comparison.--She saw that there never had been a time when she did not consider Mr. Deirdre as infinitely the superior, or when his regard for her had not been infinitely the most dear. She saw, that in persuading herself, in fancying, in acting to the contrary, she had been entirely under a delusion, totally ignorant of her own heart--and, in short, that she had never really cared for Hendrik Olga at all!\n\n This was the conclusion of the first series of reflection. This was the knowledge of herself, on the first question of inquiry, which she reached; and without being long in reaching it.--She was most sorrowfully indignant; ashamed of every sensation but the one revealed to her--her affection for Mr. Deirdre.--Every other part of her mind was disgusting.\n\n With insufferable vanity had she believed herself in the secret of every body's feelings; with unpardonable arrogance proposed to arrange every body's destiny. She was proved to have been universally mistaken; and she had not quite done nothing--for she had done mischief. She had brought evil on Stewart, on herself, and she too much feared, on Mr. Deirdre.--Were this most unequal of all connexions to take place, on her must rest all the reproach of having given it a beginning; for his attachment, she must believe to be produced only by a consciousness of Stewart's;--and even were this not the case, he would never have known Stewart at all but for her folly.\n\n Mr. Deirdre and Stewart Milan!--It was a union to distance every wonder of the kind.--The attachment of Hendrik Olga and Clementine Braxton became commonplace, threadbare, stale in the comparison, exciting no surprize, presenting no disparity, affording nothing to be said or thought.--Mr. Deirdre and Stewart Milan!--Such an elevation on her side! Such a debasement on his! It was horrible to York to think how it must sink him in the general opinion, to foresee the smiles, the sneers, the merriment it would prompt at his expense; the mortification and disdain of his brother, the thousand inconveniences to himself.--Could it be?--No; it was impossible. And yet it was far, very far, from impossible.--Was it a new circumstance for a man of first-rate abilities to be captivated by very inferior powers? Was it new for one, perhaps too busy to seek, to be the prize of a girl who would seek him?--Was it new for any thing in this world to be unequal, inconsistent, incongruous--or for chance and circumstance (as second causes) to direct the human fate?\n\n Oh! had she never brought Stewart forward! Had she left her where she ought, and where he had told her she ought!--Had she not, with a folly which no tongue could express, prevented her marrying the unexceptionable young man who would have made her happy and respectable in the line of life to which she ought to belong--all would have been safe; none of this dreadful sequel would have been.\n\n How Stewart could ever have had the presumption to raise her thoughts to Mr. Deirdre!--How she could dare to fancy herself the chosen of such a man till actually assured of it!--But Stewart was less humble, had fewer scruples than formerly.--Her inferiority, whether of mind or situation, seemed little felt.--She had seemed more sensible of Mr. London's being to stoop in marrying her, than she now seemed of Mr. Deirdre's.--Alas! was not that her own doing too? Who had been at pains to give Stewart notions of self-consequence but herself?--Who but herself had taught her, that she was to elevate herself if possible, and that her claims were great to a high worldly establishment?--If Stewart, from being humble, were grown vain, it was her doing too.\n\n\n\n\n\n Till now that she was threatened with its loss, York had never known how much of her happiness depended on being _first_ with Mr. Deirdre, first in interest and affection.--Satisfied that it was so, and feeling it her due, she had enjoyed it without reflection; and only in the dread of being supplanted, found how inexpressibly important it had been.--Long, very long, she felt she had been first; for, having no female connexions of his own, there had been only Zoey whose claims could be compared with hers, and she had always known exactly how far he loved and esteemed Zoey. She had herself been first with him for many years past. She had not deserved it; she had often been negligent or perverse, slighting his advice, or even wilfully opposing him, insensible of half his merits, and quarrelling with him because he would not acknowledge her false and insolent estimate of her own--but still, from family attachment and habit, and thorough excellence of mind, he had loved her, and watched over her from a girl, with an endeavour to improve her, and an anxiety for her doing right, which no other creature had at all shared. In spite of all her faults, she knew she was dear to him; might she not say, very dear?--When the suggestions of hope, however, which must follow here, presented themselves, she could not presume to indulge them. Stewart Milan might think herself not unworthy of being peculiarly, exclusively, passionately loved by Mr. Deirdre. _She_ could not. She could not flatter herself with any idea of blindness in his attachment to _her_. She had received a very recent proof of its impartiality.--How shocked had he been by her behaviour to Miss Leo! How directly, how strongly had he expressed himself to her on the subject!--Not too strongly for the offence--but far, far too strongly to issue from any feeling softer than upright justice and clear-sighted goodwill.--She had no hope, nothing to deserve the name of hope, that he could have that sort of affection for herself which was now in question; but there was a hope (at times a slight one, at times much stronger,) that Stewart might have deceived herself, and be overrating his regard for _her_.--Wish it she must, for his sake--be the consequence nothing to herself, but his remaining single all his life. Could she be secure of that, indeed, of his never marrying at all, she believed she should be perfectly satisfied.--Let him but continue the same Mr. Deirdre to her and her father, the same Mr. Deirdre to all the world; let Donwell and Hartfield lose none of their precious intercourse of friendship and confidence, and her peace would be fully secured.--Marriage, in fact, would not do for her. It would be incompatible with what she owed to her father, and with what she felt for him. Nothing should separate her from her father. She would not marry, even if she were asked by Mr. Deirdre.\n\n It must be her ardent wish that Stewart might be disappointed; and she hoped, that when able to see them together again, she might at least be able to ascertain what the chances for it were.--She should see them henceforward with the closest observance; and wretchedly as she had hitherto misunderstood even those she was watching, she did not know how to admit that she could be blinded here.--He was expected back every day. The power of observation would be soon given--frightfully soon it appeared when her thoughts were in one course. In the meanwhile, she resolved against seeing Stewart.--It would do neither of them good, it would do the subject no good, to be talking of it farther.--She was resolved not to be convinced, as long as she could doubt, and yet had no authority for opposing Stewart's confidence. To talk would be only to irritate.--She wrote to her, therefore, kindly, but decisively, to beg that she would not, at present, come to Hartfield; acknowledging it to be her conviction, that all farther confidential discussion of _one_ topic had better be avoided; and hoping, that if a few days were allowed to pass before they met again, except in the company of others--she objected only to a tete-a-tete--they might be able to act as if they had forgotten the conversation of yesterday.--Stewart submitted, and approved, and was grateful.\n\n This point was just arranged, when a visitor arrived to tear York's thoughts a little from the one subject which had engrossed them, sleeping or waking, the last twenty-four hours--Mrs. Johan, who had been calling on her daughter-in-law elect, and took Hartfield in her way home, almost as much in duty to York as in pleasure to herself, to relate all the particulars of so interesting an interview.\n\n Mr. Johan had accompanied her to Mrs. Leo's, and gone through his share of this essential attention most handsomely; but she having then induced Miss Braxton to join her in an airing, was now returned with much more to say, and much more to say with satisfaction, than a quarter of an hour spent in Mrs. Leo's parlour, with all the encumbrance of awkward feelings, could have afforded.\n\n A little curiosity York had; and she made the most of it while her friend related. Mrs. Johan had set off to pay the visit in a good deal of agitation herself; and in the first place had wished not to go at all at present, to be allowed merely to write to Miss Braxton instead, and to defer this ceremonious call till a little time had passed, and Mr. Olga could be reconciled to the engagement's becoming known; as, considering every thing, she thought such a visit could not be paid without leading to reports:--but Mr. Johan had thought differently; he was extremely anxious to shew his approbation to Miss Braxton and her family, and did not conceive that any suspicion could be excited by it; or if it were, that it would be of any consequence; for \"such things,\" he observed, \"always got about.\" York smiled, and felt that Mr. Johan had very good reason for saying so. They had gone, in short--and very great had been the evident distress and confusion of the lady. She had hardly been able to speak a word, and every look and action had shewn how deeply she was suffering from consciousness. The quiet, heart-felt satisfaction of the old lady, and the rapturous delight of her daughter--who proved even too joyous to talk as usual, had been a gratifying, yet almost an affecting, scene. They were both so truly respectable in their happiness, so disinterested in every sensation; thought so much of Clementine; so much of every body, and so little of themselves, that every kindly feeling was at work for them. Miss Braxton's recent illness had offered a fair plea for Mrs. Johan to invite her to an airing; she had drawn back and declined at first, but, on being pressed had yielded; and, in the course of their drive, Mrs. Johan had, by gentle encouragement, overcome so much of her embarrassment, as to bring her to converse on the important subject. Apologies for her seemingly ungracious silence in their first reception, and the warmest expressions of the gratitude she was always feeling towards herself and Mr. Johan, must necessarily open the cause; but when these effusions were put by, they had talked a good deal of the present and of the future state of the engagement. Mrs. Johan was convinced that such conversation must be the greatest relief to her companion, pent up within her own mind as every thing had so long been, and was very much pleased with all that she had said on the subject.\n\n \"On the misery of what she had suffered, during the concealment of so many months,\" continued Mrs. Johan, \"she was energetic. This was one of her expressions. 'I will not say, that since I entered into the engagement I have not had some happy moments; but I can say, that I have never known the blessing of one tranquil hour:'--and the quivering lip, York, which uttered it, was an attestation that I felt at my heart.\"\n\n \"Poor girl!\" said York. \"She thinks herself wrong, then, for having consented to a private engagement?\"\n\n \"Wrong! No one, I believe, can blame her more than she is disposed to blame herself. 'The consequence,' said she, 'has been a state of perpetual suffering to me; and so it ought. But after all the punishment that misconduct can bring, it is still not less misconduct. Pain is no expiation. I never can be blameless. I have been acting contrary to all my sense of right; and the fortunate turn that every thing has taken, and the kindness I am now receiving, is what my conscience tells me ought not to be.' 'Do not imagine, madam,' she continued, 'that I was taught wrong. Do not let any reflection fall on the principles or the care of the friends who brought me up. The error has been all my own; and I do assure you that, with all the excuse that present circumstances may appear to give, I shall yet dread making the story known to Reuben Teagan.'\"\n\n \"Poor girl!\" said York again. \"She loves him then excessively, I suppose. It must have been from attachment only, that she could be led to form the engagement. Her affection must have overpowered her judgment.\"\n\n \"Yes, I have no doubt of her being extremely attached to him.\"\n\n \"I am afraid,\" returned York, sighing, \"that I must often have contributed to make her unhappy.\"\n\n \"On your side, my love, it was very innocently done. But she probably had something of that in her thoughts, when alluding to the misunderstandings which he had given us hints of before. One natural consequence of the evil she had involved herself in,\" she said, \"was that of making her _unreasonable_. The consciousness of having done amiss, had exposed her to a thousand inquietudes, and made her captious and irritable to a degree that must have been--that had been--hard for him to bear. 'I did not make the allowances,' said she, 'which I ought to have done, for his temper and spirits--his delightful spirits, and that gaiety, that playfulness of disposition, which, under any other circumstances, would, I am sure, have been as constantly bewitching to me, as they were at first.' She then began to speak of you, and of the great kindness you had shewn her during her illness; and with a blush which shewed me how it was all connected, desired me, whenever I had an opportunity, to thank you--I could not thank you too much--for every wish and every endeavour to do her good. She was sensible that you had never received any proper acknowledgment from herself.\"\n\n \"If I did not know her to be happy now,\" said York, seriously, \"which, in spite of every little drawback from her scrupulous conscience, she must be, I could not bear these thanks;--for, oh! Mrs. Johan, if there were an account drawn up of the evil and the good I have done Miss Braxton!--Well (checking herself, and trying to be more lively), this is all to be forgotten. You are very kind to bring me these interesting particulars. They shew her to the greatest advantage. I am sure she is very good--I hope she will be very happy. It is fit that the fortune should be on his side, for I think the merit will be all on hers.\"\n\n Such a conclusion could not pass unanswered by Mrs. Johan. She thought well of Hendrik in almost every respect; and, what was more, she loved him very much, and her defence was, therefore, earnest. She talked with a great deal of reason, and at least equal affection--but she had too much to urge for York's attention; it was soon gone to Brunswick Square or to Donwell; she forgot to attempt to listen; and when Mrs. Johan ended with, \"We have not yet had the letter we are so anxious for, you know, but I hope it will soon come,\" she was obliged to pause before she answered, and at last obliged to answer at random, before she could at all recollect what letter it was which they were so anxious for.\n\n \"Are you well, my York?\" was Mrs. Johan's parting question.\n\n \"Oh! perfectly. I am always well, you know. Be sure to give me intelligence of the letter as soon as possible.\"\n\n Mrs. Johan's communications furnished York with more food for unpleasant reflection, by increasing her esteem and compassion, and her sense of past injustice towards Miss Braxton. She bitterly regretted not having sought a closer acquaintance with her, and blushed for the envious feelings which had certainly been, in some measure, the cause. Had she followed Mr. Deirdre's known wishes, in paying that attention to Miss Braxton, which was every way her due; had she tried to know her better; had she done her part towards intimacy; had she endeavoured to find a friend there instead of in Stewart Milan; she must, in all probability, have been spared from every pain which pressed on her now.--Birth, abilities, and education, had been equally marking one as an associate for her, to be received with gratitude; and the other--what was she?--Supposing even that they had never become intimate friends; that she had never been admitted into Miss Braxton's confidence on this important matter--which was most probable--still, in knowing her as she ought, and as she might, she must have been preserved from the abominable suspicions of an improper attachment to Mr. Porter, which she had not only so foolishly fashioned and harboured herself, but had so unpardonably imparted; an idea which she greatly feared had been made a subject of material distress to the delicacy of Clementine's feelings, by the levity or carelessness of Hendrik Olga's. Of all the sources of evil surrounding the former, since her coming to Highbury, she was persuaded that she must herself have been the worst. She must have been a perpetual enemy. They never could have been all three together, without her having stabbed Clementine Braxton's peace in a thousand instances; and on Box Hill, perhaps, it had been the agony of a mind that would bear no more.\n\n The evening of this day was very long, and melancholy, at Hartfield. The weather added what it could of gloom. A cold stormy rain set in, and nothing of July appeared but in the trees and shrubs, which the wind was despoiling, and the length of the day, which only made such cruel sights the longer visible.\n\n The weather affected Mr. Katara, and he could only be kept tolerably comfortable by almost ceaseless attention on his daughter's side, and by exertions which had never cost her half so much before. It reminded her of their first forlorn tete-a-tete, on the evening of Mrs. Johan's wedding-day; but Mr. Deirdre had walked in then, soon after tea, and dissipated every melancholy fancy. Alas! such delightful proofs of Hartfield's attraction, as those sort of visits conveyed, might shortly be over. The picture which she had then drawn of the privations of the approaching winter, had proved erroneous; no friends had deserted them, no pleasures had been lost.--But her present forebodings she feared would experience no similar contradiction. The prospect before her now, was threatening to a degree that could not be entirely dispelled--that might not be even partially brightened. If all took place that might take place among the circle of her friends, Hartfield must be comparatively deserted; and she left to cheer her father with the spirits only of ruined happiness.\n\n The child to be born at Randalls must be a tie there even dearer than herself; and Mrs. Johan's heart and time would be occupied by it. They should lose her; and, probably, in great measure, her husband also.--Hendrik Olga would return among them no more; and Miss Braxton, it was reasonable to suppose, would soon cease to belong to Highbury. They would be married, and settled either at or near Enscombe. All that were good would be withdrawn; and if to these losses, the loss of Donwell were to be added, what would remain of cheerful or of rational society within their reach? Mr. Deirdre to be no longer coming there for his evening comfort!--No longer walking in at all hours, as if ever willing to change his own home for their's!--How was it to be endured? And if he were to be lost to them for Stewart's sake; if he were to be thought of hereafter, as finding in Stewart's society all that he wanted; if Stewart were to be the chosen, the first, the dearest, the friend, the wife to whom he looked for all the best blessings of existence; what could be increasing York's wretchedness but the reflection never far distant from her mind, that it had been all her own work?\n\n When it came to such a pitch as this, she was not able to refrain from a start, or a heavy sigh, or even from walking about the room for a few seconds--and the only source whence any thing like consolation or composure could be drawn, was in the resolution of her own better conduct, and the hope that, however inferior in spirit and gaiety might be the following and every future winter of her life to the past, it would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone.\n\n\n\n\n\n The weather continued much the same all the following morning; and the same loneliness, and the same melancholy, seemed to reign at Hartfield--but in the afternoon it cleared; the wind changed into a softer quarter; the clouds were carried off; the sun appeared; it was summer again. With all the eagerness which such a transition gives, York resolved to be out of doors as soon as possible. Never had the exquisite sight, smell, sensation of nature, tranquil, warm, and brilliant after a storm, been more attractive to her. She longed for the serenity they might gradually introduce; and on Mr. Martha's coming in soon after dinner, with a disengaged hour to give her father, she lost no time in hurrying into the shrubbery.--There, with spirits freshened, and thoughts a little relieved, she had taken a few turns, when she saw Mr. Deirdre passing through the garden door, and coming towards her.--It was the first intimation of his being returned from London. She had been thinking of him the moment before, as unquestionably sixteen miles distant.--There was time only for the quickest arrangement of mind. She must be collected and calm. In half a minute they were together. The \"How d'ye do's\" were quiet and constrained on each side. She asked after their mutual friends; they were all well.--When had he left them?--Only that morning. He must have had a wet ride.--Yes.--He meant to walk with her, she found. \"He had just looked into the dining-room, and as he was not wanted there, preferred being out of doors.\"--She thought he neither looked nor spoke cheerfully; and the first possible cause for it, suggested by her fears, was, that he had perhaps been communicating his plans to his brother, and was pained by the manner in which they had been received.\n\n They walked together. He was silent. She thought he was often looking at her, and trying for a fuller view of her face than it suited her to give. And this belief produced another dread. Perhaps he wanted to speak to her, of his attachment to Stewart; he might be watching for encouragement to begin.--She did not, could not, feel equal to lead the way to any such subject. He must do it all himself. Yet she could not bear this silence. With him it was most unnatural. She considered--resolved--and, trying to smile, began--\n\n \"You have some news to hear, now you are come back, that will rather surprize you.\"\n\n \"Have I?\" said he quietly, and looking at her; \"of what nature?\"\n\n \"Oh! the best nature in the world--a wedding.\"\n\n After waiting a moment, as if to be sure she intended to say no more, he replied,\n\n \"If you mean Miss Braxton and Hendrik Olga, I have heard that already.\"\n\n \"How is it possible?\" cried York, turning her glowing cheeks towards him; for, while she spoke, it occurred to her that he might have called at Mrs. Ayaan's in his way.\n\n \"I had a few lines on parish business from Mr. Johan this morning, and at the end of them he gave me a brief account of what had happened.\"\n\n York was quite relieved, and could presently say, with a little more composure,\n\n \"_You_ probably have been less surprized than any of us, for you have had your suspicions.--I have not forgotten that you once tried to give me a caution.--I wish I had attended to it--but--(with a sinking voice and a heavy sigh) I seem to have been doomed to blindness.\"\n\n For a moment or two nothing was said, and she was unsuspicious of having excited any particular interest, till she found her arm drawn within his, and pressed against his heart, and heard him thus saying, in a tone of great sensibility, speaking low,\n\n \"Time, my dearest York, time will heal the wound.--Your own excellent sense--your exertions for your father's sake--I know you will not allow yourself--.\" Her arm was pressed again, as he added, in a more broken and subdued accent, \"The feelings of the warmest friendship--Indignation--Abominable scoundrel!\"--And in a louder, steadier tone, he concluded with, \"He will soon be gone. They will soon be in Yorkshire. I am sorry for _her_. She deserves a better fate.\"\n\n York understood him; and as soon as she could recover from the flutter of pleasure, excited by such tender consideration, replied,\n\n \"You are very kind--but you are mistaken--and I must set you right.-- I am not in want of that sort of compassion. My blindness to what was going on, led me to act by them in a way that I must always be ashamed of, and I was very foolishly tempted to say and do many things which may well lay me open to unpleasant conjectures, but I have no other reason to regret that I was not in the secret earlier.\"\n\n \"York!\" cried he, looking eagerly at her, \"are you, indeed?\"--but checking himself--\"No, no, I understand you--forgive me--I am pleased that you can say even so much.--He is no object of regret, indeed! and it will not be very long, I hope, before that becomes the acknowledgment of more than your reason.--Fortunate that your affections were not farther entangled!--I could never, I confess, from your manners, assure myself as to the degree of what you felt--I could only be certain that there was a preference--and a preference which I never believed him to deserve.--He is a disgrace to the name of man.--And is he to be rewarded with that sweet young woman?--Clementine, Clementine, you will be a miserable creature.\"\n\n \"Mr. Deirdre,\" said York, trying to be lively, but really confused--\"I am in a very extraordinary situation. I cannot let you continue in your error; and yet, perhaps, since my manners gave such an impression, I have as much reason to be ashamed of confessing that I never have been at all attached to the person we are speaking of, as it might be natural for a woman to feel in confessing exactly the reverse.--But I never have.\"\n\n He listened in perfect silence. She wished him to speak, but he would not. She supposed she must say more before she were entitled to his clemency; but it was a hard case to be obliged still to lower herself in his opinion. She went on, however.\n\n \"I have very little to say for my own conduct.--I was tempted by his attentions, and allowed myself to appear pleased.--An old story, probably--a common case--and no more than has happened to hundreds of my sex before; and yet it may not be the more excusable in one who sets up as I do for Understanding. Many circumstances assisted the temptation. He was the son of Mr. Johan--he was continually here--I always found him very pleasant--and, in short, for (with a sigh) let me swell out the causes ever so ingeniously, they all centre in this at last--my vanity was flattered, and I allowed his attentions. Latterly, however--for some time, indeed--I have had no idea of their meaning any thing.--I thought them a habit, a trick, nothing that called for seriousness on my side. He has imposed on me, but he has not injured me. I have never been attached to him. And now I can tolerably comprehend his behaviour. He never wished to attach me. It was merely a blind to conceal his real situation with another.--It was his object to blind all about him; and no one, I am sure, could be more effectually blinded than myself--except that I was _not_ blinded--that it was my good fortune--that, in short, I was somehow or other safe from him.\"\n\n She had hoped for an answer here--for a few words to say that her conduct was at least intelligible; but he was silent; and, as far as she could judge, deep in thought. At last, and tolerably in his usual tone, he said,\n\n \"I have never had a high opinion of Hendrik Olga.--I can suppose, however, that I may have underrated him. My acquaintance with him has been but trifling.--And even if I have not underrated him hitherto, he may yet turn out well.--With such a woman he has a chance.--I have no motive for wishing him ill--and for her sake, whose happiness will be involved in his good character and conduct, I shall certainly wish him well.\"\n\n \"I have no doubt of their being happy together,\" said York; \"I believe them to be very mutually and very sincerely attached.\"\n\n \"He is a most fortunate man!\" returned Mr. Deirdre, with energy. \"So early in life--at three-and-twenty--a period when, if a man chuses a wife, he generally chuses ill. At three-and-twenty to have drawn such a prize! What years of felicity that man, in all human calculation, has before him!--Assured of the love of such a woman--the disinterested love, for Clementine Braxton's character vouches for her disinterestedness; every thing in his favour,--equality of situation--I mean, as far as regards society, and all the habits and manners that are important; equality in every point but one--and that one, since the purity of her heart is not to be doubted, such as must increase his felicity, for it will be his to bestow the only advantages she wants.--A man would always wish to give a woman a better home than the one he takes her from; and he who can do it, where there is no doubt of _her_ regard, must, I think, be the happiest of mortals.--Hendrik Olga is, indeed, the favourite of fortune. Every thing turns out for his good.--He meets with a young woman at a watering-place, gains her affection, cannot even weary her by negligent treatment--and had he and all his family sought round the world for a perfect wife for him, they could not have found her superior.--His aunt is in the way.--His aunt dies.--He has only to speak.--His friends are eager to promote his happiness.--He had used every body ill--and they are all delighted to forgive him.--He is a fortunate man indeed!\"\n\n \"You speak as if you envied him.\"\n\n \"And I do envy him, York. In one respect he is the object of my envy.\"\n\n York could say no more. They seemed to be within half a sentence of Stewart, and her immediate feeling was to avert the subject, if possible. She made her plan; she would speak of something totally different--the children in Brunswick Square; and she only waited for breath to begin, when Mr. Deirdre startled her, by saying,\n\n \"You will not ask me what is the point of envy.--You are determined, I see, to have no curiosity.--You are wise--but _I_ cannot be wise. York, I must tell you what you will not ask, though I may wish it unsaid the next moment.\"\n\n \"Oh! then, don't speak it, don't speak it,\" she eagerly cried. \"Take a little time, consider, do not commit yourself.\"\n\n \"Thank you,\" said he, in an accent of deep mortification, and not another syllable followed.\n\n York could not bear to give him pain. He was wishing to confide in her--perhaps to consult her;--cost her what it would, she would listen. She might assist his resolution, or reconcile him to it; she might give just praise to Stewart, or, by representing to him his own independence, relieve him from that state of indecision, which must be more intolerable than any alternative to such a mind as his.--They had reached the house.\n\n \"You are going in, I suppose?\" said he.\n\n \"No,\"--replied York--quite confirmed by the depressed manner in which he still spoke--\"I should like to take another turn. Mr. Martha is not gone.\" And, after proceeding a few steps, she added--\"I stopped you ungraciously, just now, Mr. Deirdre, and, I am afraid, gave you pain.--But if you have any wish to speak openly to me as a friend, or to ask my opinion of any thing that you may have in contemplation--as a friend, indeed, you may command me.--I will hear whatever you like. I will tell you exactly what I think.\"\n\n \"As a friend!\"--repeated Mr. Deirdre.--\"York, that I fear is a word--No, I have no wish--Stay, yes, why should I hesitate?--I have gone too far already for concealment.--York, I accept your offer--Extraordinary as it may seem, I accept it, and refer myself to you as a friend.--Tell me, then, have I no chance of ever succeeding?\"\n\n He stopped in his earnestness to look the question, and the expression of his eyes overpowered her.\n\n \"My dearest York,\" said he, \"for dearest you will always be, whatever the event of this hour's conversation, my dearest, most beloved York--tell me at once. Say 'No,' if it is to be said.\"--She could really say nothing.--\"You are silent,\" he cried, with great animation; \"absolutely silent! at present I ask no more.\"\n\n York was almost ready to sink under the agitation of this moment. The dread of being awakened from the happiest dream, was perhaps the most prominent feeling.\n\n \"I cannot make speeches, York:\" he soon resumed; and in a tone of such sincere, decided, intelligible tenderness as was tolerably convincing.--\"If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more. But you know what I am.--You hear nothing but truth from me.--I have blamed you, and lectured you, and you have borne it as no other woman in England would have borne it.--Bear with the truths I would tell you now, dearest York, as well as you have borne with them. The manner, perhaps, may have as little to recommend them. God knows, I have been a very indifferent lover.--But you understand me.--Yes, you see, you understand my feelings--and will return them if you can. At present, I ask only to hear, once to hear your voice.\"\n\n While he spoke, York's mind was most busy, and, with all the wonderful velocity of thought, had been able--and yet without losing a word--to catch and comprehend the exact truth of the whole; to see that Stewart's hopes had been entirely groundless, a mistake, a delusion, as complete a delusion as any of her own--that Stewart was nothing; that she was every thing herself; that what she had been saying relative to Stewart had been all taken as the language of her own feelings; and that her agitation, her doubts, her reluctance, her discouragement, had been all received as discouragement from herself.--And not only was there time for these convictions, with all their glow of attendant happiness; there was time also to rejoice that Stewart's secret had not escaped her, and to resolve that it need not, and should not.--It was all the service she could now render her poor friend; for as to any of that heroism of sentiment which might have prompted her to entreat him to transfer his affection from herself to Stewart, as infinitely the most worthy of the two--or even the more simple sublimity of resolving to refuse him at once and for ever, without vouchsafing any motive, because he could not marry them both, York had it not. She felt for Stewart, with pain and with contrition; but no flight of generosity run mad, opposing all that could be probable or reasonable, entered her brain. She had led her friend astray, and it would be a reproach to her for ever; but her judgment was as strong as her feelings, and as strong as it had ever been before, in reprobating any such alliance for him, as most unequal and degrading. Her way was clear, though not quite smooth.--She spoke then, on being so entreated.--What did she say?--Just what she ought, of course. A lady always does.--She said enough to shew there need not be despair--and to invite him to say more himself. He _had_ despaired at one period; he had received such an injunction to caution and silence, as for the time crushed every hope;--she had begun by refusing to hear him.--The change had perhaps been somewhat sudden;--her proposal of taking another turn, her renewing the conversation which she had just put an end to, might be a little extraordinary!--She felt its inconsistency; but Mr. Deirdre was so obliging as to put up with it, and seek no farther explanation.\n\n Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken; but where, as in this case, though the conduct is mistaken, the feelings are not, it may not be very material.--Mr. Deirdre could not impute to York a more relenting heart than she possessed, or a heart more disposed to accept of his.\n\n He had, in fact, been wholly unsuspicious of his own influence. He had followed her into the shrubbery with no idea of trying it. He had come, in his anxiety to see how she bore Hendrik Olga's engagement, with no selfish view, no view at all, but of endeavouring, if she allowed him an opening, to soothe or to counsel her.--The rest had been the work of the moment, the immediate effect of what he heard, on his feelings. The delightful assurance of her total indifference towards Hendrik Olga, of her having a heart completely disengaged from him, had given birth to the hope, that, in time, he might gain her affection himself;--but it had been no present hope--he had only, in the momentary conquest of eagerness over judgment, aspired to be told that she did not forbid his attempt to attach her.--The superior hopes which gradually opened were so much the more enchanting.--The affection, which he had been asking to be allowed to create, if he could, was already his!--Within half an hour, he had passed from a thoroughly distressed state of mind, to something so like perfect happiness, that it could bear no other name.\n\n _Her_ change was equal.--This one half-hour had given to each the same precious certainty of being beloved, had cleared from each the same degree of ignorance, jealousy, or distrust.--On his side, there had been a long-standing jealousy, old as the arrival, or even the expectation, of Hendrik Olga.--He had been in love with York, and jealous of Hendrik Olga, from about the same period, one sentiment having probably enlightened him as to the other. It was his jealousy of Hendrik Olga that had taken him from the country.--The Box Hill party had decided him on going away. He would save himself from witnessing again such permitted, encouraged attentions.--He had gone to learn to be indifferent.--But he had gone to a wrong place. There was too much domestic happiness in his brother's house; woman wore too amiable a form in it; Zoey was too much like York--differing only in those striking inferiorities, which always brought the other in brilliancy before him, for much to have been done, even had his time been longer.--He had stayed on, however, vigorously, day after day--till this very morning's post had conveyed the history of Clementine Braxton.--Then, with the gladness which must be felt, nay, which he did not scruple to feel, having never believed Hendrik Olga to be at all deserving York, was there so much fond solicitude, so much keen anxiety for her, that he could stay no longer. He had ridden home through the rain; and had walked up directly after dinner, to see how this sweetest and best of all creatures, faultless in spite of all her faults, bore the discovery.\n\n He had found her agitated and low.--Hendrik Olga was a villain.-- He heard her declare that she had never loved him. Hendrik Olga's character was not desperate.--She was his own York, by hand and word, when they returned into the house; and if he could have thought of Hendrik Olga then, he might have deemed him a very good sort of fellow.\n\n\n\n\n\n What totally different feelings did York take back into the house from what she had brought out!--she had then been only daring to hope for a little respite of suffering;--she was now in an exquisite flutter of happiness, and such happiness moreover as she believed must still be greater when the flutter should have passed away.\n\n They sat down to tea--the same party round the same table--how often it had been collected!--and how often had her eyes fallen on the same shrubs in the lawn, and observed the same beautiful effect of the western sun!--But never in such a state of spirits, never in any thing like it; and it was with difficulty that she could summon enough of her usual self to be the attentive lady of the house, or even the attentive daughter.\n\n Poor Mr. Katara little suspected what was plotting against him in the breast of that man whom he was so cordially welcoming, and so anxiously hoping might not have taken cold from his ride.--Could he have seen the heart, he would have cared very little for the lungs; but without the most distant imagination of the impending evil, without the slightest perception of any thing extraordinary in the looks or ways of either, he repeated to them very comfortably all the articles of news he had received from Mr. Martha, and talked on with much self-contentment, totally unsuspicious of what they could have told him in return.\n\n As long as Mr. Deirdre remained with them, York's fever continued; but when he was gone, she began to be a little tranquillised and subdued--and in the course of the sleepless night, which was the tax for such an evening, she found one or two such very serious points to consider, as made her feel, that even her happiness must have some alloy. Her father--and Stewart. She could not be alone without feeling the full weight of their separate claims; and how to guard the comfort of both to the utmost, was the question. With respect to her father, it was a question soon answered. She hardly knew yet what Mr. Deirdre would ask; but a very short parley with her own heart produced the most solemn resolution of never quitting her father.--She even wept over the idea of it, as a sin of thought. While he lived, it must be only an engagement; but she flattered herself, that if divested of the danger of drawing her away, it might become an increase of comfort to him.--How to do her best by Stewart, was of more difficult decision;--how to spare her from any unnecessary pain; how to make her any possible atonement; how to appear least her enemy?--On these subjects, her perplexity and distress were very great--and her mind had to pass again and again through every bitter reproach and sorrowful regret that had ever surrounded it.--She could only resolve at last, that she would still avoid a meeting with her, and communicate all that need be told by letter; that it would be inexpressibly desirable to have her removed just now for a time from Highbury, and--indulging in one scheme more--nearly resolve, that it might be practicable to get an invitation for her to Brunswick Square.--Zoey had been pleased with Stewart; and a few weeks spent in London must give her some amusement.--She did not think it in Stewart's nature to escape being benefited by novelty and variety, by the streets, the shops, and the children.--At any rate, it would be a proof of attention and kindness in herself, from whom every thing was due; a separation for the present; an averting of the evil day, when they must all be together again.\n\n She rose early, and wrote her letter to Stewart; an employment which left her so very serious, so nearly sad, that Mr. Deirdre, in walking up to Hartfield to breakfast, did not arrive at all too soon; and half an hour stolen afterwards to go over the same ground again with him, literally and figuratively, was quite necessary to reinstate her in a proper share of the happiness of the evening before.\n\n He had not left her long, by no means long enough for her to have the slightest inclination for thinking of any body else, when a letter was brought her from Randalls--a very thick letter;--she guessed what it must contain, and deprecated the necessity of reading it.--She was now in perfect charity with Hendrik Olga; she wanted no explanations, she wanted only to have her thoughts to herself--and as for understanding any thing he wrote, she was sure she was incapable of it.--It must be waded through, however. She opened the packet; it was too surely so;--a note from Mrs. Johan to herself, ushered in the letter from Hendrik to Mrs. Johan.\n\n \"I have the greatest pleasure, my dear York, in forwarding to you the enclosed. I know what thorough justice you will do it, and have scarcely a doubt of its happy effect.--I think we shall never materially disagree about the writer again; but I will not delay you by a long preface.--We are quite well.--This letter has been the cure of all the little nervousness I have been feeling lately.--I did not quite like your looks on Tuesday, but it was an ungenial morning; and though you will never own being affected by weather, I think every body feels a north-east wind.--I felt for your dear father very much in the storm of Tuesday afternoon and yesterday morning, but had the comfort of hearing last night, by Mr. Martha, that it had not made him ill.\n\n \"Yours ever, \"A. W.\"\n\n [To Mrs. Johan.]\n\n\n WINDSOR-JULY. MY DEAR MADAM,\n\n \"If I made myself intelligible yesterday, this letter will be expected; but expected or not, I know it will be read with candour and indulgence.--You are all goodness, and I believe there will be need of even all your goodness to allow for some parts of my past conduct.--But I have been forgiven by one who had still more to resent. My courage rises while I write. It is very difficult for the prosperous to be humble. I have already met with such success in two applications for pardon, that I may be in danger of thinking myself too sure of yours, and of those among your friends who have had any ground of offence.--You must all endeavour to comprehend the exact nature of my situation when I first arrived at Randalls; you must consider me as having a secret which was to be kept at all hazards. This was the fact. My right to place myself in a situation requiring such concealment, is another question. I shall not discuss it here. For my temptation to _think_ it a right, I refer every caviller to a brick house, sashed windows below, and casements above, in Highbury. I dared not address her openly; my difficulties in the then state of Enscombe must be too well known to require definition; and I was fortunate enough to prevail, before we parted at Weymouth, and to induce the most upright female mind in the creation to stoop in charity to a secret engagement.--Had she refused, I should have gone mad.--But you will be ready to say, what was your hope in doing this?--What did you look forward to?--To any thing, every thing--to time, chance, circumstance, slow effects, sudden bursts, perseverance and weariness, health and sickness. Every possibility of good was before me, and the first of blessings secured, in obtaining her promises of faith and correspondence. If you need farther explanation, I have the honour, my dear madam, of being your husband's son, and the advantage of inheriting a disposition to hope for good, which no inheritance of houses or lands can ever equal the value of.--See me, then, under these circumstances, arriving on my first visit to Randalls;--and here I am conscious of wrong, for that visit might have been sooner paid. You will look back and see that I did not come till Miss Braxton was in Highbury; and as _you_ were the person slighted, you will forgive me instantly; but I must work on my father's compassion, by reminding him, that so long as I absented myself from his house, so long I lost the blessing of knowing you. My behaviour, during the very happy fortnight which I spent with you, did not, I hope, lay me open to reprehension, excepting on one point. And now I come to the principal, the only important part of my conduct while belonging to you, which excites my own anxiety, or requires very solicitous explanation. With the greatest respect, and the warmest friendship, do I mention Miss Katara; my father perhaps will think I ought to add, with the deepest humiliation.--A few words which dropped from him yesterday spoke his opinion, and some censure I acknowledge myself liable to.--My behaviour to Miss Katara indicated, I believe, more than it ought.--In order to assist a concealment so essential to me, I was led on to make more than an allowable use of the sort of intimacy into which we were immediately thrown.--I cannot deny that Miss Katara was my ostensible object--but I am sure you will believe the declaration, that had I not been convinced of her indifference, I would not have been induced by any selfish views to go on.--Amiable and delightful as Miss Katara is, she never gave me the idea of a young woman likely to be attached; and that she was perfectly free from any tendency to being attached to me, was as much my conviction as my wish.--She received my attentions with an easy, friendly, goodhumoured playfulness, which exactly suited me. We seemed to understand each other. From our relative situation, those attentions were her due, and were felt to be so.--Whether Miss Katara began really to understand me before the expiration of that fortnight, I cannot say;--when I called to take leave of her, I remember that I was within a moment of confessing the truth, and I then fancied she was not without suspicion; but I have no doubt of her having since detected me, at least in some degree.--She may not have surmised the whole, but her quickness must have penetrated a part. I cannot doubt it. You will find, whenever the subject becomes freed from its present restraints, that it did not take her wholly by surprize. She frequently gave me hints of it. I remember her telling me at the ball, that I owed Mrs. London gratitude for her attentions to Miss Braxton.--I hope this history of my conduct towards her will be admitted by you and my father as great extenuation of what you saw amiss. While you considered me as having sinned against York Katara, I could deserve nothing from either. Acquit me here, and procure for me, when it is allowable, the acquittal and good wishes of that said York Katara, whom I regard with so much brotherly affection, as to long to have her as deeply and as happily in love as myself.--Whatever strange things I said or did during that fortnight, you have now a key to. My heart was in Highbury, and my business was to get my body thither as often as might be, and with the least suspicion. If you remember any queernesses, set them all to the right account.--Of the pianoforte so much talked of, I feel it only necessary to say, that its being ordered was absolutely unknown to Miss F--, who would never have allowed me to send it, had any choice been given her.--The delicacy of her mind throughout the whole engagement, my dear madam, is much beyond my power of doing justice to. You will soon, I earnestly hope, know her thoroughly yourself.--No description can describe her. She must tell you herself what she is--yet not by word, for never was there a human creature who would so designedly suppress her own merit.--Since I began this letter, which will be longer than I foresaw, I have heard from her.--She gives a good account of her own health; but as she never complains, I dare not depend. I want to have your opinion of her looks. I know you will soon call on her; she is living in dread of the visit. Perhaps it is paid already. Let me hear from you without delay; I am impatient for a thousand particulars. Remember how few minutes I was at Randalls, and in how bewildered, how mad a state: and I am not much better yet; still insane either from happiness or misery. When I think of the kindness and favour I have met with, of her excellence and patience, and my uncle's generosity, I am mad with joy: but when I recollect all the uneasiness I occasioned her, and how little I deserve to be forgiven, I am mad with anger. If I could but see her again!--But I must not propose it yet. My uncle has been too good for me to encroach.--I must still add to this long letter. You have not heard all that you ought to hear. I could not give any connected detail yesterday; but the suddenness, and, in one light, the unseasonableness with which the affair burst out, needs explanation; for though the event of the 26th ult., as you will conclude, immediately opened to me the happiest prospects, I should not have presumed on such early measures, but from the very particular circumstances, which left me not an hour to lose. I should myself have shrunk from any thing so hasty, and she would have felt every scruple of mine with multiplied strength and refinement.--But I had no choice. The hasty engagement she had entered into with that woman--Here, my dear madam, I was obliged to leave off abruptly, to recollect and compose myself.--I have been walking over the country, and am now, I hope, rational enough to make the rest of my letter what it ought to be.--It is, in fact, a most mortifying retrospect for me. I behaved shamefully. And here I can admit, that my manners to Miss W., in being unpleasant to Miss F., were highly blameable. _She_ disapproved them, which ought to have been enough.--My plea of concealing the truth she did not think sufficient.--She was displeased; I thought unreasonably so: I thought her, on a thousand occasions, unnecessarily scrupulous and cautious: I thought her even cold. But she was always right. If I had followed her judgment, and subdued my spirits to the level of what she deemed proper, I should have escaped the greatest unhappiness I have ever known.--We quarrelled.-- Do you remember the morning spent at Donwell?--_There_ every little dissatisfaction that had occurred before came to a crisis. I was late; I met her walking home by herself, and wanted to walk with her, but she would not suffer it. She absolutely refused to allow me, which I then thought most unreasonable. Now, however, I see nothing in it but a very natural and consistent degree of discretion. While I, to blind the world to our engagement, was behaving one hour with objectionable particularity to another woman, was she to be consenting the next to a proposal which might have made every previous caution useless?--Had we been met walking together between Donwell and Highbury, the truth must have been suspected.--I was mad enough, however, to resent.--I doubted her affection. I doubted it more the next day on Box Hill; when, provoked by such conduct on my side, such shameful, insolent neglect of her, and such apparent devotion to Miss W., as it would have been impossible for any woman of sense to endure, she spoke her resentment in a form of words perfectly intelligible to me.--In short, my dear madam, it was a quarrel blameless on her side, abominable on mine; and I returned the same evening to Richmond, though I might have staid with you till the next morning, merely because I would be as angry with her as possible. Even then, I was not such a fool as not to mean to be reconciled in time; but I was the injured person, injured by her coldness, and I went away determined that she should make the first advances.--I shall always congratulate myself that you were not of the Box Hill party. Had you witnessed my behaviour there, I can hardly suppose you would ever have thought well of me again. Its effect upon her appears in the immediate resolution it produced: as soon as she found I was really gone from Randalls, she closed with the offer of that officious Mrs. London; the whole system of whose treatment of her, by the bye, has ever filled me with indignation and hatred. I must not quarrel with a spirit of forbearance which has been so richly extended towards myself; but, otherwise, I should loudly protest against the share of it which that woman has known.--'Clementine,' indeed!--You will observe that I have not yet indulged myself in calling her by that name, even to you. Think, then, what I must have endured in hearing it bandied between the Londons with all the vulgarity of needless repetition, and all the insolence of imaginary superiority. Have patience with me, I shall soon have done.--She closed with this offer, resolving to break with me entirely, and wrote the next day to tell me that we never were to meet again.--_She_ _felt_ _the_ _engagement_ _to_ _be_ _a_ _source_ _of_ _repentance_ _and_ _misery_ _to_ _each_: _she_ _dissolved_ _it_.--This letter reached me on the very morning of my poor aunt's death. I answered it within an hour; but from the confusion of my mind, and the multiplicity of business falling on me at once, my answer, instead of being sent with all the many other letters of that day, was locked up in my writing-desk; and I, trusting that I had written enough, though but a few lines, to satisfy her, remained without any uneasiness.--I was rather disappointed that I did not hear from her again speedily; but I made excuses for her, and was too busy, and--may I add?--too cheerful in my views to be captious.--We removed to Windsor; and two days afterwards I received a parcel from her, my own letters all returned!--and a few lines at the same time by the post, stating her extreme surprize at not having had the smallest reply to her last; and adding, that as silence on such a point could not be misconstrued, and as it must be equally desirable to both to have every subordinate arrangement concluded as soon as possible, she now sent me, by a safe conveyance, all my letters, and requested, that if I could not directly command hers, so as to send them to Highbury within a week, I would forward them after that period to her at--: in short, the full direction to Mr. Smallridge's, near Bristol, stared me in the face. I knew the name, the place, I knew all about it, and instantly saw what she had been doing. It was perfectly accordant with that resolution of character which I knew her to possess; and the secrecy she had maintained, as to any such design in her former letter, was equally descriptive of its anxious delicacy. For the world would not she have seemed to threaten me.--Imagine the shock; imagine how, till I had actually detected my own blunder, I raved at the blunders of the post.--What was to be done?--One thing only.--I must speak to my uncle. Without his sanction I could not hope to be listened to again.--I spoke; circumstances were in my favour; the late event had softened away his pride, and he was, earlier than I could have anticipated, wholly reconciled and complying; and could say at last, poor man! with a deep sigh, that he wished I might find as much happiness in the marriage state as he had done.--I felt that it would be of a different sort.--Are you disposed to pity me for what I must have suffered in opening the cause to him, for my suspense while all was at stake?--No; do not pity me till I reached Highbury, and saw how ill I had made her. Do not pity me till I saw her wan, sick looks.--I reached Highbury at the time of day when, from my knowledge of their late breakfast hour, I was certain of a good chance of finding her alone.--I was not disappointed; and at last I was not disappointed either in the object of my journey. A great deal of very reasonable, very just displeasure I had to persuade away. But it is done; we are reconciled, dearer, much dearer, than ever, and no moment's uneasiness can ever occur between us again. Now, my dear madam, I will release you; but I could not conclude before. A thousand and a thousand thanks for all the kindness you have ever shewn me, and ten thousand for the attentions your heart will dictate towards her.--If you think me in a way to be happier than I deserve, I am quite of your opinion.--Miss W. calls me the child of good fortune. I hope she is right.--In one respect, my good fortune is undoubted, that of being able to subscribe myself,\n\n Your obliged and affectionate Son,\n\n F. C. JOHAN OLGA.\n\n\n\n\n\n This letter must make its way to York's feelings. She was obliged, in spite of her previous determination to the contrary, to do it all the justice that Mrs. Johan foretold. As soon as she came to her own name, it was irresistible; every line relating to herself was interesting, and almost every line agreeable; and when this charm ceased, the subject could still maintain itself, by the natural return of her former regard for the writer, and the very strong attraction which any picture of love must have for her at that moment. She never stopt till she had gone through the whole; and though it was impossible not to feel that he had been wrong, yet he had been less wrong than she had supposed--and he had suffered, and was very sorry--and he was so grateful to Mrs. Johan, and so much in love with Miss Braxton, and she was so happy herself, that there was no being severe; and could he have entered the room, she must have shaken hands with him as heartily as ever.\n\n She thought so well of the letter, that when Mr. Deirdre came again, she desired him to read it. She was sure of Mrs. Johan's wishing it to be communicated; especially to one, who, like Mr. Deirdre, had seen so much to blame in his conduct.\n\n \"I shall be very glad to look it over,\" said he; \"but it seems long. I will take it home with me at night.\"\n\n But that would not do. Mr. Johan was to call in the evening, and she must return it by him.\n\n \"I would rather be talking to you,\" he replied; \"but as it seems a matter of justice, it shall be done.\"\n\n He began--stopping, however, almost directly to say, \"Had I been offered the sight of one of this gentleman's letters to his mother-in-law a few months ago, York, it would not have been taken with such indifference.\"\n\n He proceeded a little farther, reading to himself; and then, with a smile, observed, \"Humph! a fine complimentary opening: But it is his way. One man's style must not be the rule of another's. We will not be severe.\"\n\n \"It will be natural for me,\" he added shortly afterwards, \"to speak my opinion aloud as I read. By doing it, I shall feel that I am near you. It will not be so great a loss of time: but if you dislike it--\"\n\n \"Not at all. I should wish it.\"\n\n Mr. Deirdre returned to his reading with greater alacrity.\n\n \"He trifles here,\" said he, \"as to the temptation. He knows he is wrong, and has nothing rational to urge.--Bad.--He ought not to have formed the engagement.--'His father's disposition:'--he is unjust, however, to his father. Mr. Johan's sanguine temper was a blessing on all his upright and honourable exertions; but Mr. Johan earned every present comfort before he endeavoured to gain it.--Very true; he did not come till Miss Braxton was here.\"\n\n \"And I have not forgotten,\" said York, \"how sure you were that he might have come sooner if he would. You pass it over very handsomely--but you were perfectly right.\"\n\n \"I was not quite impartial in my judgment, York:--but yet, I think--had _you_ not been in the case--I should still have distrusted him.\"\n\n When he came to Miss Katara, he was obliged to read the whole of it aloud--all that related to her, with a smile; a look; a shake of the head; a word or two of assent, or disapprobation; or merely of love, as the subject required; concluding, however, seriously, and, after steady reflection, thus--\n\n \"Very bad--though it might have been worse.--Playing a most dangerous game. Too much indebted to the event for his acquittal.--No judge of his own manners by you.--Always deceived in fact by his own wishes, and regardless of little besides his own convenience.--Fancying you to have fathomed his secret. Natural enough!--his own mind full of intrigue, that he should suspect it in others.--Mystery; Finesse--how they pervert the understanding! My York, does not every thing serve to prove more and more the beauty of truth and sincerity in all our dealings with each other?\"\n\n York agreed to it, and with a blush of sensibility on Stewart's account, which she could not give any sincere explanation of.\n\n \"You had better go on,\" said she.\n\n He did so, but very soon stopt again to say, \"the pianoforte! Ah! That was the act of a very, very young man, one too young to consider whether the inconvenience of it might not very much exceed the pleasure. A boyish scheme, indeed!--I cannot comprehend a man's wishing to give a woman any proof of affection which he knows she would rather dispense with; and he did know that she would have prevented the instrument's coming if she could.\"\n\n After this, he made some progress without any pause. Hendrik Olga's confession of having behaved shamefully was the first thing to call for more than a word in passing.\n\n \"I perfectly agree with you, sir,\"--was then his remark. \"You did behave very shamefully. You never wrote a truer line.\" And having gone through what immediately followed of the basis of their disagreement, and his persisting to act in direct opposition to Clementine Braxton's sense of right, he made a fuller pause to say, \"This is very bad.--He had induced her to place herself, for his sake, in a situation of extreme difficulty and uneasiness, and it should have been his first object to prevent her from suffering unnecessarily.--She must have had much more to contend with, in carrying on the correspondence, than he could. He should have respected even unreasonable scruples, had there been such; but hers were all reasonable. We must look to her one fault, and remember that she had done a wrong thing in consenting to the engagement, to bear that she should have been in such a state of punishment.\"\n\n York knew that he was now getting to the Box Hill party, and grew uncomfortable. Her own behaviour had been so very improper! She was deeply ashamed, and a little afraid of his next look. It was all read, however, steadily, attentively, and without the smallest remark; and, excepting one momentary glance at her, instantly withdrawn, in the fear of giving pain--no remembrance of Box Hill seemed to exist.\n\n \"There is no saying much for the delicacy of our good friends, the Londons,\" was his next observation.--\"His feelings are natural.--What! actually resolve to break with him entirely!--She felt the engagement to be a source of repentance and misery to each--she dissolved it.--What a view this gives of her sense of his behaviour!--Well, he must be a most extraordinary--\"\n\n \"Nay, nay, read on.--You will find how very much he suffers.\"\n\n \"I hope he does,\" replied Mr. Deirdre coolly, and resuming the letter. \"'Smallridge!'--What does this mean? What is all this?\"\n\n \"She had engaged to go as governess to Mrs. Smallridge's children--a dear friend of Mrs. London's--a neighbour of Maple Grove; and, by the bye, I wonder how Mrs. London bears the disappointment?\"\n\n \"Say nothing, my dear York, while you oblige me to read--not even of Mrs. London. Only one page more. I shall soon have done. What a letter the man writes!\"\n\n \"I wish you would read it with a kinder spirit towards him.\"\n\n \"Well, there _is_ feeling here.--He does seem to have suffered in finding her ill.--Certainly, I can have no doubt of his being fond of her. 'Dearer, much dearer than ever.' I hope he may long continue to feel all the value of such a reconciliation.--He is a very liberal thanker, with his thousands and tens of thousands.--'Happier than I deserve.' Come, he knows himself there. 'Miss Katara calls me the child of good fortune.'--Those were Miss Katara's words, were they?-- And a fine ending--and there is the letter. The child of good fortune! That was your name for him, was it?\"\n\n \"You do not appear so well satisfied with his letter as I am; but still you must, at least I hope you must, think the better of him for it. I hope it does him some service with you.\"\n\n \"Yes, certainly it does. He has had great faults, faults of inconsideration and thoughtlessness; and I am very much of his opinion in thinking him likely to be happier than he deserves: but still as he is, beyond a doubt, really attached to Miss Braxton, and will soon, it may be hoped, have the advantage of being constantly with her, I am very ready to believe his character will improve, and acquire from hers the steadiness and delicacy of principle that it wants. And now, let me talk to you of something else. I have another person's interest at present so much at heart, that I cannot think any longer about Hendrik Olga. Ever since I left you this morning, York, my mind has been hard at work on one subject.\"\n\n The subject followed; it was in plain, unaffected, gentlemanlike English, such as Mr. Deirdre used even to the woman he was in love with, how to be able to ask her to marry him, without attacking the happiness of her father. York's answer was ready at the first word. \"While her dear father lived, any change of condition must be impossible for her. She could never quit him.\" Part only of this answer, however, was admitted. The impossibility of her quitting her father, Mr. Deirdre felt as strongly as herself; but the inadmissibility of any other change, he could not agree to. He had been thinking it over most deeply, most intently; he had at first hoped to induce Mr. Katara to remove with her to Donwell; he had wanted to believe it feasible, but his knowledge of Mr. Katara would not suffer him to deceive himself long; and now he confessed his persuasion, that such a transplantation would be a risk of her father's comfort, perhaps even of his life, which must not be hazarded. Mr. Katara taken from Hartfield!--No, he felt that it ought not to be attempted. But the plan which had arisen on the sacrifice of this, he trusted his dearest York would not find in any respect objectionable; it was, that he should be received at Hartfield; that so long as her father's happiness--in other words, his life--required Hartfield to continue her home, it should be his likewise.\n\n Of their all removing to Donwell, York had already had her own passing thoughts. Like him, she had tried the scheme and rejected it; but such an alternative as this had not occurred to her. She was sensible of all the affection it evinced. She felt that, in quitting Donwell, he must be sacrificing a great deal of independence of hours and habits; that in living constantly with her father, and in no house of his own, there would be much, very much, to be borne with. She promised to think of it, and advised him to think of it more; but he was fully convinced, that no reflection could alter his wishes or his opinion on the subject. He had given it, he could assure her, very long and calm consideration; he had been walking away from William Larkins the whole morning, to have his thoughts to himself.\n\n \"Ah! there is one difficulty unprovided for,\" cried York. \"I am sure William Larkins will not like it. You must get his consent before you ask mine.\"\n\n She promised, however, to think of it; and pretty nearly promised, moreover, to think of it, with the intention of finding it a very good scheme.\n\n It is remarkable, that York, in the many, very many, points of view in which she was now beginning to consider Donwell Abbey, was never struck with any sense of injury to her nephew Henry, whose rights as heir-expectant had formerly been so tenaciously regarded. Think she must of the possible difference to the poor little boy; and yet she only gave herself a saucy conscious smile about it, and found amusement in detecting the real cause of that violent dislike of Mr. Deirdre's marrying Clementine Braxton, or any body else, which at the time she had wholly imputed to the amiable solicitude of the sister and the aunt.\n\n This proposal of his, this plan of marrying and continuing at Hartfield--the more she contemplated it, the more pleasing it became. His evils seemed to lessen, her own advantages to increase, their mutual good to outweigh every drawback. Such a companion for herself in the periods of anxiety and cheerlessness before her!--Such a partner in all those duties and cares to which time must be giving increase of melancholy!\n\n She would have been too happy but for poor Stewart; but every blessing of her own seemed to involve and advance the sufferings of her friend, who must now be even excluded from Hartfield. The delightful family party which York was securing for herself, poor Stewart must, in mere charitable caution, be kept at a distance from. She would be a loser in every way. York could not deplore her future absence as any deduction from her own enjoyment. In such a party, Stewart would be rather a dead weight than otherwise; but for the poor girl herself, it seemed a peculiarly cruel necessity that was to be placing her in such a state of unmerited punishment.\n\n In time, of course, Mr. Deirdre would be forgotten, that is, supplanted; but this could not be expected to happen very early. Mr. Deirdre himself would be doing nothing to assist the cure;--not like Mr. London. Mr. Deirdre, always so kind, so feeling, so truly considerate for every body, would never deserve to be less worshipped than now; and it really was too much to hope even of Stewart, that she could be in love with more than _three_ men in one year.\n\n\n\n\n\n It was a very great relief to York to find Stewart as desirous as herself to avoid a meeting. Their intercourse was painful enough by letter. How much worse, had they been obliged to meet!\n\n Stewart expressed herself very much as might be supposed, without reproaches, or apparent sense of ill-usage; and yet York fancied there was a something of resentment, a something bordering on it in her style, which increased the desirableness of their being separate.--It might be only her own consciousness; but it seemed as if an angel only could have been quite without resentment under such a stroke.\n\n She had no difficulty in procuring Zoey's invitation; and she was fortunate in having a sufficient reason for asking it, without resorting to invention.--There was a tooth amiss. Stewart really wished, and had wished some time, to consult a dentist. Mrs. Ilse Deirdre was delighted to be of use; any thing of ill health was a recommendation to her--and though not so fond of a dentist as of a Mr. Wingfield, she was quite eager to have Stewart under her care.--When it was thus settled on her sister's side, York proposed it to her friend, and found her very persuadable.--Stewart was to go; she was invited for at least a fortnight; she was to be conveyed in Mr. Katara's carriage.--It was all arranged, it was all completed, and Stewart was safe in Brunswick Square.\n\n Now York could, indeed, enjoy Mr. Deirdre's visits; now she could talk, and she could listen with true happiness, unchecked by that sense of injustice, of guilt, of something most painful, which had haunted her when remembering how disappointed a heart was near her, how much might at that moment, and at a little distance, be enduring by the feelings which she had led astray herself.\n\n The difference of Stewart at Mrs. Ayaan's, or in London, made perhaps an unreasonable difference in York's sensations; but she could not think of her in London without objects of curiosity and employment, which must be averting the past, and carrying her out of herself.\n\n She would not allow any other anxiety to succeed directly to the place in her mind which Stewart had occupied. There was a communication before her, one which _she_ only could be competent to make--the confession of her engagement to her father; but she would have nothing to do with it at present.--She had resolved to defer the disclosure till Mrs. Johan were safe and well. No additional agitation should be thrown at this period among those she loved--and the evil should not act on herself by anticipation before the appointed time.--A fortnight, at least, of leisure and peace of mind, to crown every warmer, but more agitating, delight, should be hers.\n\n She soon resolved, equally as a duty and a pleasure, to employ half an hour of this holiday of spirits in calling on Miss Braxton.--She ought to go--and she was longing to see her; the resemblance of their present situations increasing every other motive of goodwill. It would be a _secret_ satisfaction; but the consciousness of a similarity of prospect would certainly add to the interest with which she should attend to any thing Clementine might communicate.\n\n She went--she had driven once unsuccessfully to the door, but had not been into the house since the morning after Box Hill, when poor Clementine had been in such distress as had filled her with compassion, though all the worst of her sufferings had been unsuspected.--The fear of being still unwelcome, determined her, though assured of their being at home, to wait in the passage, and send up her name.--She heard Patty announcing it; but no such bustle succeeded as poor Miss Leo had before made so happily intelligible.--No; she heard nothing but the instant reply of, \"Beg her to walk up;\"--and a moment afterwards she was met on the stairs by Clementine herself, coming eagerly forward, as if no other reception of her were felt sufficient.--York had never seen her look so well, so lovely, so engaging. There was consciousness, animation, and warmth; there was every thing which her countenance or manner could ever have wanted.-- She came forward with an offered hand; and said, in a low, but very feeling tone,\n\n \"This is most kind, indeed!--Miss Katara, it is impossible for me to express--I hope you will believe--Excuse me for being so entirely without words.\"\n\n York was gratified, and would soon have shewn no want of words, if the sound of Mrs. London's voice from the sitting-room had not checked her, and made it expedient to compress all her friendly and all her congratulatory sensations into a very, very earnest shake of the hand.\n\n Mrs. Leo and Mrs. London were together. Miss Leo was out, which accounted for the previous tranquillity. York could have wished Mrs. London elsewhere; but she was in a humour to have patience with every body; and as Mrs. London met her with unusual graciousness, she hoped the rencontre would do them no harm.\n\n She soon believed herself to penetrate Mrs. London's thoughts, and understand why she was, like herself, in happy spirits; it was being in Miss Braxton's confidence, and fancying herself acquainted with what was still a secret to other people. York saw symptoms of it immediately in the expression of her face; and while paying her own compliments to Mrs. Leo, and appearing to attend to the good old lady's replies, she saw her with a sort of anxious parade of mystery fold up a letter which she had apparently been reading aloud to Miss Braxton, and return it into the purple and gold reticule by her side, saying, with significant nods,\n\n \"We can finish this some other time, you know. You and I shall not want opportunities. And, in fact, you have heard all the essential already. I only wanted to prove to you that Mrs. S. admits our apology, and is not offended. You see how delightfully she writes. Oh! she is a sweet creature! You would have doated on her, had you gone.--But not a word more. Let us be discreet--quite on our good behaviour.--Hush!--You remember those lines--I forget the poem at this moment:\n\n \"For when a lady's in the case, \"You know all other things give place.\"\n\n Now I say, my dear, in _our_ case, for _lady_, read----mum! a word to the wise.--I am in a fine flow of spirits, an't I? But I want to set your heart at ease as to Mrs. S.--_My_ representation, you see, has quite appeased her.\"\n\n And again, on York's merely turning her head to look at Mrs. Leo's knitting, she added, in a half whisper,\n\n \"I mentioned no _names_, you will observe.--Oh! no; cautious as a minister of state. I managed it extremely well.\"\n\n York could not doubt. It was a palpable display, repeated on every possible occasion. When they had all talked a little while in harmony of the weather and Mrs. Johan, she found herself abruptly addressed with,\n\n \"Do not you think, Miss Katara, our saucy little friend here is charmingly recovered?--Do not you think her cure does Martha the highest credit?--(here was a side-glance of great meaning at Clementine.) Upon my word, Martha has restored her in a wonderful short time!--Oh! if you had seen her, as I did, when she was at the worst!\"--And when Mrs. Leo was saying something to York, whispered farther, \"We do not say a word of any _assistance_ that Martha might have; not a word of a certain young physician from Windsor.--Oh! no; Martha shall have all the credit.\"\n\n \"I have scarce had the pleasure of seeing you, Miss Katara,\" she shortly afterwards began, \"since the party to Box Hill. Very pleasant party. But yet I think there was something wanting. Things did not seem--that is, there seemed a little cloud upon the spirits of some.--So it appeared to me at least, but I might be mistaken. However, I think it answered so far as to tempt one to go again. What say you both to our collecting the same party, and exploring to Box Hill again, while the fine weather lasts?--It must be the same party, you know, quite the same party, not _one_ exception.\"\n\n Soon after this Miss Leo came in, and York could not help being diverted by the perplexity of her first answer to herself, resulting, she supposed, from doubt of what might be said, and impatience to say every thing.\n\n \"Thank you, dear Miss Katara, you are all kindness.--It is impossible to say--Yes, indeed, I quite understand--dearest Clementine's prospects--that is, I do not mean.--But she is charmingly recovered.--How is Mr. Katara?--I am so glad.--Quite out of my power.--Such a happy little circle as you find us here.--Yes, indeed.--Charming young man!--that is--so very friendly; I mean good Mr. Martha!--such attention to Clementine!\"--And from her great, her more than commonly thankful delight towards Mrs. London for being there, York guessed that there had been a little show of resentment towards Clementine, from the vicarage quarter, which was now graciously overcome.--After a few whispers, indeed, which placed it beyond a guess, Mrs. London, speaking louder, said,\n\n \"Yes, here I am, my good friend; and here I have been so long, that anywhere else I should think it necessary to apologise; but, the truth is, that I am waiting for my lord and master. He promised to join me here, and pay his respects to you.\"\n\n \"What! are we to have the pleasure of a call from Mr. London?--That will be a favour indeed! for I know gentlemen do not like morning visits, and Mr. London's time is so engaged.\"\n\n \"Upon my word it is, Miss Leo.--He really is engaged from morning to night.--There is no end of people's coming to him, on some pretence or other.--The magistrates, and overseers, and churchwardens, are always wanting his opinion. They seem not able to do any thing without him.--'Upon my word, Mr. E.,' I often say, 'rather you than I.--I do not know what would become of my crayons and my instrument, if I had half so many applicants.'--Bad enough as it is, for I absolutely neglect them both to an unpardonable degree.--I believe I have not played a bar this fortnight.--However, he is coming, I assure you: yes, indeed, on purpose to wait on you all.\" And putting up her hand to screen her words from York--\"A congratulatory visit, you know.--Oh! yes, quite indispensable.\"\n\n Miss Leo looked about her, so happily--!\n\n \"He promised to come to me as soon as he could disengage himself from Deirdre; but he and Deirdre are shut up together in deep consultation.--Mr. E. is Deirdre's right hand.\"\n\n York would not have smiled for the world, and only said, \"Is Mr. London gone on foot to Donwell?--He will have a hot walk.\"\n\n \"Oh! no, it is a meeting at the Crown, a regular meeting. Johan and David will be there too; but one is apt to speak only of those who lead.--I fancy Mr. E. and Deirdre have every thing their own way.\"\n\n \"Have not you mistaken the day?\" said York. \"I am almost certain that the meeting at the Crown is not till to-morrow.--Mr. Deirdre was at Hartfield yesterday, and spoke of it as for Saturday.\"\n\n \"Oh! no, the meeting is certainly to-day,\" was the abrupt answer, which denoted the impossibility of any blunder on Mrs. London's side.--\"I do believe,\" she continued, \"this is the most troublesome parish that ever was. We never heard of such things at Maple Grove.\"\n\n \"Your parish there was small,\" said Clementine.\n\n \"Upon my word, my dear, I do not know, for I never heard the subject talked of.\"\n\n \"But it is proved by the smallness of the school, which I have heard you speak of, as under the patronage of your sister and Mrs. Bragge; the only school, and not more than five-and-twenty children.\"\n\n \"Ah! you clever creature, that's very true. What a thinking brain you have! I say, Clementine, what a perfect character you and I should make, if we could be shaken together. My liveliness and your solidity would produce perfection.--Not that I presume to insinuate, however, that _some_ people may not think _you_ perfection already.--But hush!--not a word, if you please.\"\n\n It seemed an unnecessary caution; Clementine was wanting to give her words, not to Mrs. London, but to Miss Katara, as the latter plainly saw. The wish of distinguishing her, as far as civility permitted, was very evident, though it could not often proceed beyond a look.\n\n Mr. London made his appearance. His lady greeted him with some of her sparkling vivacity.\n\n \"Very pretty, sir, upon my word; to send me on here, to be an encumbrance to my friends, so long before you vouchsafe to come!--But you knew what a dutiful creature you had to deal with. You knew I should not stir till my lord and master appeared.--Here have I been sitting this hour, giving these young ladies a sample of true conjugal obedience--for who can say, you know, how soon it may be wanted?\"\n\n Mr. London was so hot and tired, that all this wit seemed thrown away. His civilities to the other ladies must be paid; but his subsequent object was to lament over himself for the heat he was suffering, and the walk he had had for nothing.\n\n \"When I got to Donwell,\" said he, \"Deirdre could not be found. Very odd! very unaccountable! after the note I sent him this morning, and the message he returned, that he should certainly be at home till one.\"\n\n \"Donwell!\" cried his wife.--\"My dear Mr. E., you have not been to Donwell!--You mean the Crown; you come from the meeting at the Crown.\"\n\n \"No, no, that's to-morrow; and I particularly wanted to see Deirdre to-day on that very account.--Such a dreadful broiling morning!--I went over the fields too--(speaking in a tone of great ill-usage,) which made it so much the worse. And then not to find him at home! I assure you I am not at all pleased. And no apology left, no message for me. The housekeeper declared she knew nothing of my being expected.--Very extraordinary!--And nobody knew at all which way he was gone. Perhaps to Hartfield, perhaps to the Abbey Mill, perhaps into his woods.--Miss Katara, this is not like our friend Deirdre!--Can you explain it?\"\n\n York amused herself by protesting that it was very extraordinary, indeed, and that she had not a syllable to say for him.\n\n \"I cannot imagine,\" said Mrs. London, (feeling the indignity as a wife ought to do,) \"I cannot imagine how he could do such a thing by you, of all people in the world! The very last person whom one should expect to be forgotten!--My dear Mr. E., he must have left a message for you, I am sure he must.--Not even Deirdre could be so very eccentric;--and his servants forgot it. Depend upon it, that was the case: and very likely to happen with the Donwell servants, who are all, I have often observed, extremely awkward and remiss.--I am sure I would not have such a creature as his Harry stand at our sideboard for any consideration. And as for Mrs. Hodges, Wright holds her very cheap indeed.--She promised Wright a receipt, and never sent it.\"\n\n \"I met William Larkins,\" continued Mr. London, \"as I got near the house, and he told me I should not find his master at home, but I did not believe him.--William seemed rather out of humour. He did not know what was come to his master lately, he said, but he could hardly ever get the speech of him. I have nothing to do with William's wants, but it really is of very great importance that _I_ should see Deirdre to-day; and it becomes a matter, therefore, of very serious inconvenience that I should have had this hot walk to no purpose.\"\n\n York felt that she could not do better than go home directly. In all probability she was at this very time waited for there; and Mr. Deirdre might be preserved from sinking deeper in aggression towards Mr. London, if not towards William Larkins.\n\n She was pleased, on taking leave, to find Miss Braxton determined to attend her out of the room, to go with her even downstairs; it gave her an opportunity which she immediately made use of, to say,\n\n \"It is as well, perhaps, that I have not had the possibility. Had you not been surrounded by other friends, I might have been tempted to introduce a subject, to ask questions, to speak more openly than might have been strictly correct.--I feel that I should certainly have been impertinent.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" cried Clementine, with a blush and an hesitation which York thought infinitely more becoming to her than all the elegance of all her usual composure--\"there would have been no danger. The danger would have been of my wearying you. You could not have gratified me more than by expressing an interest--. Indeed, Miss Katara, (speaking more collectedly,) with the consciousness which I have of misconduct, very great misconduct, it is particularly consoling to me to know that those of my friends, whose good opinion is most worth preserving, are not disgusted to such a degree as to--I have not time for half that I could wish to say. I long to make apologies, excuses, to urge something for myself. I feel it so very due. But, unfortunately--in short, if your compassion does not stand my friend--\"\n\n \"Oh! you are too scrupulous, indeed you are,\" cried York warmly, and taking her hand. \"You owe me no apologies; and every body to whom you might be supposed to owe them, is so perfectly satisfied, so delighted even--\"\n\n \"You are very kind, but I know what my manners were to you.--So cold and artificial!--I had always a part to act.--It was a life of deceit!--I know that I must have disgusted you.\"\n\n \"Pray say no more. I feel that all the apologies should be on my side. Let us forgive each other at once. We must do whatever is to be done quickest, and I think our feelings will lose no time there. I hope you have pleasant accounts from Windsor?\"\n\n \"Very.\"\n\n \"And the next news, I suppose, will be, that we are to lose you--just as I begin to know you.\"\n\n \"Oh! as to all that, of course nothing can be thought of yet. I am here till claimed by Reuben and Mrs. Teagan.\"\n\n \"Nothing can be actually settled yet, perhaps,\" replied York, smiling--\"but, excuse me, it must be thought of.\"\n\n The smile was returned as Clementine answered,\n\n \"You are very right; it has been thought of. And I will own to you, (I am sure it will be safe), that so far as our living with Mr. Olga at Enscombe, it is settled. There must be three months, at least, of deep mourning; but when they are over, I imagine there will be nothing more to wait for.\"\n\n \"Thank you, thank you.--This is just what I wanted to be assured of.--Oh! if you knew how much I love every thing that is decided and open!--Good-bye, good-bye.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Mrs. Johan's friends were all made happy by her safety; and if the satisfaction of her well-doing could be increased to York, it was by knowing her to be the mother of a little girl. She had been decided in wishing for a Miss Johan. She would not acknowledge that it was with any view of making a match for her, hereafter, with either of Zoey's sons; but she was convinced that a daughter would suit both father and mother best. It would be a great comfort to Mr. Johan, as he grew older--and even Mr. Johan might be growing older ten years hence--to have his fireside enlivened by the sports and the nonsense, the freaks and the fancies of a child never banished from home; and Mrs. Johan--no one could doubt that a daughter would be most to her; and it would be quite a pity that any one who so well knew how to teach, should not have their powers in exercise again.\n\n \"She has had the advantage, you know, of practising on me,\" she continued--\"like La Baronne d'Almane on La Comtesse d'Ostalis, in Madame de Genlis' Adelaide and Theodore, and we shall now see her own little Adelaide educated on a more perfect plan.\"\n\n \"That is,\" replied Mr. Deirdre, \"she will indulge her even more than she did you, and believe that she does not indulge her at all. It will be the only difference.\"\n\n \"Poor child!\" cried York; \"at that rate, what will become of her?\"\n\n \"Nothing very bad.--The fate of thousands. She will be disagreeable in infancy, and correct herself as she grows older. I am losing all my bitterness against spoilt children, my dearest York. I, who am owing all my happiness to _you_, would not it be horrible ingratitude in me to be severe on them?\"\n\n York laughed, and replied: \"But I had the assistance of all your endeavours to counteract the indulgence of other people. I doubt whether my own sense would have corrected me without it.\"\n\n \"Do you?--I have no doubt. Nature gave you understanding:--Miss Taylor gave you principles. You must have done well. My interference was quite as likely to do harm as good. It was very natural for you to say, what right has he to lecture me?--and I am afraid very natural for you to feel that it was done in a disagreeable manner. I do not believe I did you any good. The good was all to myself, by making you an object of the tenderest affection to me. I could not think about you so much without doating on you, faults and all; and by dint of fancying so many errors, have been in love with you ever since you were thirteen at least.\"\n\n \"I am sure you were of use to me,\" cried York. \"I was very often influenced rightly by you--oftener than I would own at the time. I am very sure you did me good. And if poor little Anna Johan is to be spoiled, it will be the greatest humanity in you to do as much for her as you have done for me, except falling in love with her when she is thirteen.\"\n\n \"How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your saucy looks--'Mr. Deirdre, I am going to do so-and-so; papa says I may, or I have Miss Taylor's leave'--something which, you knew, I did not approve. In such cases my interference was giving you two bad feelings instead of one.\"\n\n \"What an amiable creature I was!--No wonder you should hold my speeches in such affectionate remembrance.\"\n\n \"'Mr. Deirdre.'--You always called me, 'Mr. Deirdre;' and, from habit, it has not so very formal a sound.--And yet it is formal. I want you to call me something else, but I do not know what.\"\n\n \"I remember once calling you 'Lester,' in one of my amiable fits, about ten years ago. I did it because I thought it would offend you; but, as you made no objection, I never did it again.\"\n\n \"And cannot you call me 'Lester' now?\"\n\n \"Impossible!--I never can call you any thing but 'Mr. Deirdre.' I will not promise even to equal the elegant terseness of Mrs. London, by calling you Mr. K.--But I will promise,\" she added presently, laughing and blushing--\"I will promise to call you once by your Christian name. I do not say when, but perhaps you may guess where;--in the building in which N. takes M. for better, for worse.\"\n\n York grieved that she could not be more openly just to one important service which his better sense would have rendered her, to the advice which would have saved her from the worst of all her womanly follies--her wilful intimacy with Stewart Milan; but it was too tender a subject.--She could not enter on it.--Stewart was very seldom mentioned between them. This, on his side, might merely proceed from her not being thought of; but York was rather inclined to attribute it to delicacy, and a suspicion, from some appearances, that their friendship were declining. She was aware herself, that, parting under any other circumstances, they certainly should have corresponded more, and that her intelligence would not have rested, as it now almost wholly did, on Zoey's letters. He might observe that it was so. The pain of being obliged to practise concealment towards him, was very little inferior to the pain of having made Stewart unhappy.\n\n Zoey sent quite as good an account of her visitor as could be expected; on her first arrival she had thought her out of spirits, which appeared perfectly natural, as there was a dentist to be consulted; but, since that business had been over, she did not appear to find Stewart different from what she had known her before.--Zoey, to be sure, was no very quick observer; yet if Stewart had not been equal to playing with the children, it would not have escaped her. York's comforts and hopes were most agreeably carried on, by Stewart's being to stay longer; her fortnight was likely to be a month at least. Mr. and Mrs. Ilse Deirdre were to come down in August, and she was invited to remain till they could bring her back.\n\n \"Ilse does not even mention your friend,\" said Mr. Deirdre. \"Here is his answer, if you like to see it.\"\n\n It was the answer to the communication of his intended marriage. York accepted it with a very eager hand, with an impatience all alive to know what he would say about it, and not at all checked by hearing that her friend was unmentioned.\n\n \"Ilse enters like a brother into my happiness,\" continued Mr. Deirdre, \"but he is no complimenter; and though I well know him to have, likewise, a most brotherly affection for you, he is so far from making flourishes, that any other young woman might think him rather cool in her praise. But I am not afraid of your seeing what he writes.\"\n\n \"He writes like a sensible man,\" replied York, when she had read the letter. \"I honour his sincerity. It is very plain that he considers the good fortune of the engagement as all on my side, but that he is not without hope of my growing, in time, as worthy of your affection, as you think me already. Had he said any thing to bear a different construction, I should not have believed him.\"\n\n \"My York, he means no such thing. He only means--\"\n\n \"He and I should differ very little in our estimation of the two,\" interrupted she, with a sort of serious smile--\"much less, perhaps, than he is aware of, if we could enter without ceremony or reserve on the subject.\"\n\n \"York, my dear York--\"\n\n \"Oh!\" she cried with more thorough gaiety, \"if you fancy your brother does not do me justice, only wait till my dear father is in the secret, and hear his opinion. Depend upon it, he will be much farther from doing _you_ justice. He will think all the happiness, all the advantage, on your side of the question; all the merit on mine. I wish I may not sink into 'poor York' with him at once.--His tender compassion towards oppressed worth can go no farther.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" he cried, \"I wish your father might be half as easily convinced as Ilse will be, of our having every right that equal worth can give, to be happy together. I am amused by one part of Ilse's letter--did you notice it?--where he says, that my information did not take him wholly by surprize, that he was rather in expectation of hearing something of the kind.\"\n\n \"If I understand your brother, he only means so far as your having some thoughts of marrying. He had no idea of me. He seems perfectly unprepared for that.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes--but I am amused that he should have seen so far into my feelings. What has he been judging by?--I am not conscious of any difference in my spirits or conversation that could prepare him at this time for my marrying any more than at another.--But it was so, I suppose. I dare say there was a difference when I was staying with them the other day. I believe I did not play with the children quite so much as usual. I remember one evening the poor boys saying, 'Uncle seems always tired now.'\"\n\n The time was coming when the news must spread farther, and other persons' reception of it tried. As soon as Mrs. Johan was sufficiently recovered to admit Mr. Katara's visits, York having it in view that her gentle reasonings should be employed in the cause, resolved first to announce it at home, and then at Randalls.--But how to break it to her father at last!--She had bound herself to do it, in such an hour of Mr. Deirdre's absence, or when it came to the point her heart would have failed her, and she must have put it off; but Mr. Deirdre was to come at such a time, and follow up the beginning she was to make.--She was forced to speak, and to speak cheerfully too. She must not make it a more decided subject of misery to him, by a melancholy tone herself. She must not appear to think it a misfortune.--With all the spirits she could command, she prepared him first for something strange, and then, in a few words, said, that if his consent and approbation could be obtained--which, she trusted, would be attended with no difficulty, since it was a plan to promote the happiness of all--she and Mr. Deirdre meant to marry; by which means Hartfield would receive the constant addition of that person's company whom she knew he loved, next to his daughters and Mrs. Johan, best in the world.\n\n Poor man!--it was at first a considerable shock to him, and he tried earnestly to dissuade her from it. She was reminded, more than once, of having always said she would never marry, and assured that it would be a great deal better for her to remain single; and told of poor Zoey, and poor Miss Taylor.--But it would not do. York hung about him affectionately, and smiled, and said it must be so; and that he must not class her with Zoey and Mrs. Johan, whose marriages taking them from Hartfield, had, indeed, made a melancholy change: but she was not going from Hartfield; she should be always there; she was introducing no change in their numbers or their comforts but for the better; and she was very sure that he would be a great deal the happier for having Mr. Deirdre always at hand, when he were once got used to the idea.--Did he not love Mr. Deirdre very much?--He would not deny that he did, she was sure.--Whom did he ever want to consult on business but Mr. Deirdre?--Who was so useful to him, who so ready to write his letters, who so glad to assist him?--Who so cheerful, so attentive, so attached to him?--Would not he like to have him always on the spot?--Yes. That was all very true. Mr. Deirdre could not be there too often; he should be glad to see him every day;--but they did see him every day as it was.--Why could not they go on as they had done?\n\n Mr. Katara could not be soon reconciled; but the worst was overcome, the idea was given; time and continual repetition must do the rest.--To York's entreaties and assurances succeeded Mr. Deirdre's, whose fond praise of her gave the subject even a kind of welcome; and he was soon used to be talked to by each, on every fair occasion.--They had all the assistance which Zoey could give, by letters of the strongest approbation; and Mrs. Johan was ready, on the first meeting, to consider the subject in the most serviceable light--first, as a settled, and, secondly, as a good one--well aware of the nearly equal importance of the two recommendations to Mr. Katara's mind.--It was agreed upon, as what was to be; and every body by whom he was used to be guided assuring him that it would be for his happiness; and having some feelings himself which almost admitted it, he began to think that some time or other--in another year or two, perhaps--it might not be so very bad if the marriage did take place.\n\n Mrs. Johan was acting no part, feigning no feelings in all that she said to him in favour of the event.--She had been extremely surprized, never more so, than when York first opened the affair to her; but she saw in it only increase of happiness to all, and had no scruple in urging him to the utmost.--She had such a regard for Mr. Deirdre, as to think he deserved even her dearest York; and it was in every respect so proper, suitable, and unexceptionable a connexion, and in one respect, one point of the highest importance, so peculiarly eligible, so singularly fortunate, that now it seemed as if York could not safely have attached herself to any other creature, and that she had herself been the stupidest of beings in not having thought of it, and wished it long ago.--How very few of those men in a rank of life to address York would have renounced their own home for Hartfield! And who but Mr. Deirdre could know and bear with Mr. Katara, so as to make such an arrangement desirable!--The difficulty of disposing of poor Mr. Katara had been always felt in her husband's plans and her own, for a marriage between Hendrik and York. How to settle the claims of Enscombe and Hartfield had been a continual impediment--less acknowledged by Mr. Johan than by herself--but even he had never been able to finish the subject better than by saying--\"Those matters will take care of themselves; the young people will find a way.\" But here there was nothing to be shifted off in a wild speculation on the future. It was all right, all open, all equal. No sacrifice on any side worth the name. It was a union of the highest promise of felicity in itself, and without one real, rational difficulty to oppose or delay it.\n\n Mrs. Johan, with her baby on her knee, indulging in such reflections as these, was one of the happiest women in the world. If any thing could increase her delight, it was perceiving that the baby would soon have outgrown its first set of caps.\n\n The news was universally a surprize wherever it spread; and Mr. Johan had his five minutes share of it; but five minutes were enough to familiarise the idea to his quickness of mind.--He saw the advantages of the match, and rejoiced in them with all the constancy of his wife; but the wonder of it was very soon nothing; and by the end of an hour he was not far from believing that he had always foreseen it.\n\n \"It is to be a secret, I conclude,\" said he. \"These matters are always a secret, till it is found out that every body knows them. Only let me be told when I may speak out.--I wonder whether Clementine has any suspicion.\"\n\n He went to Highbury the next morning, and satisfied himself on that point. He told her the news. Was not she like a daughter, his eldest daughter?--he must tell her; and Miss Leo being present, it passed, of course, to Mrs. David, Mrs. Martha, and Mrs. London, immediately afterwards. It was no more than the principals were prepared for; they had calculated from the time of its being known at Randalls, how soon it would be over Highbury; and were thinking of themselves, as the evening wonder in many a family circle, with great sagacity.\n\n In general, it was a very well approved match. Some might think him, and others might think her, the most in luck. One set might recommend their all removing to Donwell, and leaving Hartfield for the Ilse Deirdres; and another might predict disagreements among their servants; but yet, upon the whole, there was no serious objection raised, except in one habitation, the Vicarage.--There, the surprize was not softened by any satisfaction. Mr. London cared little about it, compared with his wife; he only hoped \"the young lady's pride would now be contented;\" and supposed \"she had always meant to catch Deirdre if she could;\" and, on the point of living at Hartfield, could daringly exclaim, \"Rather he than I!\"--But Mrs. London was very much discomposed indeed.--\"Poor Deirdre! poor fellow!--sad business for him.\"--She was extremely concerned; for, though very eccentric, he had a thousand good qualities.--How could he be so taken in?--Did not think him at all in love--not in the least.--Poor Deirdre!--There would be an end of all pleasant intercourse with him.--How happy he had been to come and dine with them whenever they asked him! But that would be all over now.--Poor fellow!--No more exploring parties to Donwell made for _her_. Oh! no; there would be a Mrs. Deirdre to throw cold water on every thing.--Extremely disagreeable! But she was not at all sorry that she had abused the housekeeper the other day.--Shocking plan, living together. It would never do. She knew a family near Maple Grove who had tried it, and been obliged to separate before the end of the first quarter.\n\n\n\n\n\n Time passed on. A few more to-morrows, and the party from London would be arriving. It was an alarming change; and York was thinking of it one morning, as what must bring a great deal to agitate and grieve her, when Mr. Deirdre came in, and distressing thoughts were put by. After the first chat of pleasure he was silent; and then, in a graver tone, began with,\n\n \"I have something to tell you, York; some news.\"\n\n \"Good or bad?\" said she, quickly, looking up in his face.\n\n \"I do not know which it ought to be called.\"\n\n \"Oh! good I am sure.--I see it in your countenance. You are trying not to smile.\"\n\n \"I am afraid,\" said he, composing his features, \"I am very much afraid, my dear York, that you will not smile when you hear it.\"\n\n \"Indeed! but why so?--I can hardly imagine that any thing which pleases or amuses you, should not please and amuse me too.\"\n\n \"There is one subject,\" he replied, \"I hope but one, on which we do not think alike.\" He paused a moment, again smiling, with his eyes fixed on her face. \"Does nothing occur to you?--Do not you recollect?--Stewart Milan.\"\n\n Her cheeks flushed at the name, and she felt afraid of something, though she knew not what.\n\n \"Have you heard from her yourself this morning?\" cried he. \"You have, I believe, and know the whole.\"\n\n \"No, I have not; I know nothing; pray tell me.\"\n\n \"You are prepared for the worst, I see--and very bad it is. Stewart Milan marries Armando Honesty.\"\n\n York gave a start, which did not seem like being prepared--and her eyes, in eager gaze, said, \"No, this is impossible!\" but her lips were closed.\n\n \"It is so, indeed,\" continued Mr. Deirdre; \"I have it from Armando Honesty himself. He left me not half an hour ago.\"\n\n She was still looking at him with the most speaking amazement.\n\n \"You like it, my York, as little as I feared.--I wish our opinions were the same. But in time they will. Time, you may be sure, will make one or the other of us think differently; and, in the meanwhile, we need not talk much on the subject.\"\n\n \"You mistake me, you quite mistake me,\" she replied, exerting herself. \"It is not that such a circumstance would now make me unhappy, but I cannot believe it. It seems an impossibility!--You cannot mean to say, that Stewart Milan has accepted Armando Honesty. You cannot mean that he has even proposed to her again--yet. You only mean, that he intends it.\"\n\n \"I mean that he has done it,\" answered Mr. Deirdre, with smiling but determined decision, \"and been accepted.\"\n\n \"Good God!\" she cried.--\"Well!\"--Then having recourse to her workbasket, in excuse for leaning down her face, and concealing all the exquisite feelings of delight and entertainment which she knew she must be expressing, she added, \"Well, now tell me every thing; make this intelligible to me. How, where, when?--Let me know it all. I never was more surprized--but it does not make me unhappy, I assure you.--How--how has it been possible?\"\n\n \"It is a very simple story. He went to town on business three days ago, and I got him to take charge of some papers which I was wanting to send to Ilse.--He delivered these papers to Ilse, at his chambers, and was asked by him to join their party the same evening to Astley's. They were going to take the two eldest boys to Astley's. The party was to be our brother and sister, Henry, Ilse--and Miss Milan. My friend Armando could not resist. They called for him in their way; were all extremely amused; and my brother asked him to dine with them the next day--which he did--and in the course of that visit (as I understand) he found an opportunity of speaking to Stewart; and certainly did not speak in vain.--She made him, by her acceptance, as happy even as he is deserving. He came down by yesterday's coach, and was with me this morning immediately after breakfast, to report his proceedings, first on my affairs, and then on his own. This is all that I can relate of the how, where, and when. Your friend Stewart will make a much longer history when you see her.--She will give you all the minute particulars, which only woman's language can make interesting.--In our communications we deal only in the great.--However, I must say, that Armando Honesty's heart seemed for _him_, and to _me_, very overflowing; and that he did mention, without its being much to the purpose, that on quitting their box at Astley's, my brother took charge of Mrs. Ilse Deirdre and little Ilse, and he followed with Miss Milan and Henry; and that at one time they were in such a crowd, as to make Miss Milan rather uneasy.\"\n\n He stopped.--York dared not attempt any immediate reply. To speak, she was sure would be to betray a most unreasonable degree of happiness. She must wait a moment, or he would think her mad. Her silence disturbed him; and after observing her a little while, he added,\n\n \"York, my love, you said that this circumstance would not now make you unhappy; but I am afraid it gives you more pain than you expected. His situation is an evil--but you must consider it as what satisfies your friend; and I will answer for your thinking better and better of him as you know him more. His good sense and good principles would delight you.--As far as the man is concerned, you could not wish your friend in better hands. His rank in society I would alter if I could, which is saying a great deal I assure you, York.--You laugh at me about William Larkins; but I could quite as ill spare Armando Honesty.\"\n\n He wanted her to look up and smile; and having now brought herself not to smile too broadly--she did--cheerfully answering,\n\n \"You need not be at any pains to reconcile me to the match. I think Stewart is doing extremely well. _Her_ connexions may be worse than _his_. In respectability of character, there can be no doubt that they are. I have been silent from surprize merely, excessive surprize. You cannot imagine how suddenly it has come on me! how peculiarly unprepared I was!--for I had reason to believe her very lately more determined against him, much more, than she was before.\"\n\n \"You ought to know your friend best,\" replied Mr. Deirdre; \"but I should say she was a good-tempered, soft-hearted girl, not likely to be very, very determined against any young man who told her he loved her.\"\n\n York could not help laughing as she answered, \"Upon my word, I believe you know her quite as well as I do.--But, Mr. Deirdre, are you perfectly sure that she has absolutely and downright _accepted_ him. I could suppose she might in time--but can she already?--Did not you misunderstand him?--You were both talking of other things; of business, shows of cattle, or new drills--and might not you, in the confusion of so many subjects, mistake him?--It was not Stewart's hand that he was certain of--it was the dimensions of some famous ox.\"\n\n The contrast between the countenance and air of Mr. Deirdre and Armando Honesty was, at this moment, so strong to York's feelings, and so strong was the recollection of all that had so recently passed on Stewart's side, so fresh the sound of those words, spoken with such emphasis, \"No, I hope I know better than to think of Armando Honesty,\" that she was really expecting the intelligence to prove, in some measure, premature. It could not be otherwise.\n\n \"Do you dare say this?\" cried Mr. Deirdre. \"Do you dare to suppose me so great a blockhead, as not to know what a man is talking of?--What do you deserve?\"\n\n \"Oh! I always deserve the best treatment, because I never put up with any other; and, therefore, you must give me a plain, direct answer. Are you quite sure that you understand the terms on which Mr. Honesty and Stewart now are?\"\n\n \"I am quite sure,\" he replied, speaking very distinctly, \"that he told me she had accepted him; and that there was no obscurity, nothing doubtful, in the words he used; and I think I can give you a proof that it must be so. He asked my opinion as to what he was now to do. He knew of no one but Mrs. Ayaan to whom he could apply for information of her relations or friends. Could I mention any thing more fit to be done, than to go to Mrs. Ayaan? I assured him that I could not. Then, he said, he would endeavour to see her in the course of this day.\"\n\n \"I am perfectly satisfied,\" replied York, with the brightest smiles, \"and most sincerely wish them happy.\"\n\n \"You are materially changed since we talked on this subject before.\"\n\n \"I hope so--for at that time I was a fool.\"\n\n \"And I am changed also; for I am now very willing to grant you all Stewart's good qualities. I have taken some pains for your sake, and for Armando Honesty's sake, (whom I have always had reason to believe as much in love with her as ever,) to get acquainted with her. I have often talked to her a good deal. You must have seen that I did. Sometimes, indeed, I have thought you were half suspecting me of pleading poor Honesty's cause, which was never the case; but, from all my observations, I am convinced of her being an artless, amiable girl, with very good notions, very seriously good principles, and placing her happiness in the affections and utility of domestic life.--Much of this, I have no doubt, she may thank you for.\"\n\n \"Me!\" cried York, shaking her head.--\"Ah! poor Stewart!\"\n\n She checked herself, however, and submitted quietly to a little more praise than she deserved.\n\n Their conversation was soon afterwards closed by the entrance of her father. She was not sorry. She wanted to be alone. Her mind was in a state of flutter and wonder, which made it impossible for her to be collected. She was in dancing, singing, exclaiming spirits; and till she had moved about, and talked to herself, and laughed and reflected, she could be fit for nothing rational.\n\n Her father's business was to announce James's being gone out to put the horses to, preparatory to their now daily drive to Randalls; and she had, therefore, an immediate excuse for disappearing.\n\n The joy, the gratitude, the exquisite delight of her sensations may be imagined. The sole grievance and alloy thus removed in the prospect of Stewart's welfare, she was really in danger of becoming too happy for security.--What had she to wish for? Nothing, but to grow more worthy of him, whose intentions and judgment had been ever so superior to her own. Nothing, but that the lessons of her past folly might teach her humility and circumspection in future.\n\n Serious she was, very serious in her thankfulness, and in her resolutions; and yet there was no preventing a laugh, sometimes in the very midst of them. She must laugh at such a close! Such an end of the doleful disappointment of five weeks back! Such a heart--such a Stewart!\n\n Now there would be pleasure in her returning--Every thing would be a pleasure. It would be a great pleasure to know Armando Honesty.\n\n High in the rank of her most serious and heartfelt felicities, was the reflection that all necessity of concealment from Mr. Deirdre would soon be over. The disguise, equivocation, mystery, so hateful to her to practise, might soon be over. She could now look forward to giving him that full and perfect confidence which her disposition was most ready to welcome as a duty.\n\n In the gayest and happiest spirits she set forward with her father; not always listening, but always agreeing to what he said; and, whether in speech or silence, conniving at the comfortable persuasion of his being obliged to go to Randalls every day, or poor Mrs. Johan would be disappointed.\n\n They arrived.--Mrs. Johan was alone in the drawing-room:--but hardly had they been told of the baby, and Mr. Katara received the thanks for coming, which he asked for, when a glimpse was caught through the blind, of two figures passing near the window.\n\n \"It is Hendrik and Miss Braxton,\" said Mrs. Johan. \"I was just going to tell you of our agreeable surprize in seeing him arrive this morning. He stays till to-morrow, and Miss Braxton has been persuaded to spend the day with us.--They are coming in, I hope.\"\n\n In half a minute they were in the room. York was extremely glad to see him--but there was a degree of confusion--a number of embarrassing recollections on each side. They met readily and smiling, but with a consciousness which at first allowed little to be said; and having all sat down again, there was for some time such a blank in the circle, that York began to doubt whether the wish now indulged, which she had long felt, of seeing Hendrik Olga once more, and of seeing him with Clementine, would yield its proportion of pleasure. When Mr. Johan joined the party, however, and when the baby was fetched, there was no longer a want of subject or animation--or of courage and opportunity for Hendrik Olga to draw near her and say,\n\n \"I have to thank you, Miss Katara, for a very kind forgiving message in one of Mrs. Johan's letters. I hope time has not made you less willing to pardon. I hope you do not retract what you then said.\"\n\n \"No, indeed,\" cried York, most happy to begin, \"not in the least. I am particularly glad to see and shake hands with you--and to give you joy in person.\"\n\n He thanked her with all his heart, and continued some time to speak with serious feeling of his gratitude and happiness.\n\n \"Is not she looking well?\" said he, turning his eyes towards Clementine. \"Better than she ever used to do?--You see how my father and Mrs. Johan doat upon her.\"\n\n But his spirits were soon rising again, and with laughing eyes, after mentioning the expected return of the Teagans, he named the name of Porter.--York blushed, and forbade its being pronounced in her hearing.\n\n \"I can never think of it,\" she cried, \"without extreme shame.\"\n\n \"The shame,\" he answered, \"is all mine, or ought to be. But is it possible that you had no suspicion?--I mean of late. Early, I know, you had none.\"\n\n \"I never had the smallest, I assure you.\"\n\n \"That appears quite wonderful. I was once very near--and I wish I had--it would have been better. But though I was always doing wrong things, they were very bad wrong things, and such as did me no service.--It would have been a much better transgression had I broken the bond of secrecy and told you every thing.\"\n\n \"It is not now worth a regret,\" said York.\n\n \"I have some hope,\" resumed he, \"of my uncle's being persuaded to pay a visit at Randalls; he wants to be introduced to her. When the Teagans are returned, we shall meet them in London, and continue there, I trust, till we may carry her northward.--But now, I am at such a distance from her--is not it hard, Miss Katara?--Till this morning, we have not once met since the day of reconciliation. Do not you pity me?\"\n\n York spoke her pity so very kindly, that with a sudden accession of gay thought, he cried,\n\n \"Ah! by the bye,\" then sinking his voice, and looking demure for the moment--\"I hope Mr. Deirdre is well?\" He paused.--She coloured and laughed.--\"I know you saw my letter, and think you may remember my wish in your favour. Let me return your congratulations.--I assure you that I have heard the news with the warmest interest and satisfaction.--He is a man whom I cannot presume to praise.\"\n\n York was delighted, and only wanted him to go on in the same style; but his mind was the next moment in his own concerns and with his own Clementine, and his next words were,\n\n \"Did you ever see such a skin?--such smoothness! such delicacy!--and yet without being actually fair.--One cannot call her fair. It is a most uncommon complexion, with her dark eye-lashes and hair--a most distinguishing complexion! So peculiarly the lady in it.--Just colour enough for beauty.\"\n\n \"I have always admired her complexion,\" replied York, archly; \"but do not I remember the time when you found fault with her for being so pale?--When we first began to talk of her.--Have you quite forgotten?\"\n\n \"Oh! no--what an impudent dog I was!--How could I dare--\"\n\n But he laughed so heartily at the recollection, that York could not help saying,\n\n \"I do suspect that in the midst of your perplexities at that time, you had very great amusement in tricking us all.--I am sure you had.--I am sure it was a consolation to you.\"\n\n \"Oh! no, no, no--how can you suspect me of such a thing? I was the most miserable wretch!\"\n\n \"Not quite so miserable as to be insensible to mirth. I am sure it was a source of high entertainment to you, to feel that you were taking us all in.--Perhaps I am the readier to suspect, because, to tell you the truth, I think it might have been some amusement to myself in the same situation. I think there is a little likeness between us.\"\n\n He bowed.\n\n \"If not in our dispositions,\" she presently added, with a look of true sensibility, \"there is a likeness in our destiny; the destiny which bids fair to connect us with two characters so much superior to our own.\"\n\n \"True, true,\" he answered, warmly. \"No, not true on your side. You can have no superior, but most true on mine.--She is a complete angel. Look at her. Is not she an angel in every gesture? Observe the turn of her throat. Observe her eyes, as she is looking up at my father.--You will be glad to hear (inclining his head, and whispering seriously) that my uncle means to give her all my aunt's jewels. They are to be new set. I am resolved to have some in an ornament for the head. Will not it be beautiful in her dark hair?\"\n\n \"Very beautiful, indeed,\" replied York; and she spoke so kindly, that he gratefully burst out,\n\n \"How delighted I am to see you again! and to see you in such excellent looks!--I would not have missed this meeting for the world. I should certainly have called at Hartfield, had you failed to come.\"\n\n The others had been talking of the child, Mrs. Johan giving an account of a little alarm she had been under, the evening before, from the infant's appearing not quite well. She believed she had been foolish, but it had alarmed her, and she had been within half a minute of sending for Mr. Martha. Perhaps she ought to be ashamed, but Mr. Johan had been almost as uneasy as herself.--In ten minutes, however, the child had been perfectly well again. This was her history; and particularly interesting it was to Mr. Katara, who commended her very much for thinking of sending for Martha, and only regretted that she had not done it. \"She should always send for Martha, if the child appeared in the slightest degree disordered, were it only for a moment. She could not be too soon alarmed, nor send for Martha too often. It was a pity, perhaps, that he had not come last night; for, though the child seemed well now, very well considering, it would probably have been better if Martha had seen it.\"\n\n Hendrik Olga caught the name.\n\n \"Martha!\" said he to York, and trying, as he spoke, to catch Miss Braxton's eye. \"My friend Mr. Martha! What are they saying about Mr. Martha?--Has he been here this morning?--And how does he travel now?--Has he set up his carriage?\"\n\n York soon recollected, and understood him; and while she joined in the laugh, it was evident from Clementine's countenance that she too was really hearing him, though trying to seem deaf.\n\n \"Such an extraordinary dream of mine!\" he cried. \"I can never think of it without laughing.--She hears us, she hears us, Miss Katara. I see it in her cheek, her smile, her vain attempt to frown. Look at her. Do not you see that, at this instant, the very passage of her own letter, which sent me the report, is passing under her eye--that the whole blunder is spread before her--that she can attend to nothing else, though pretending to listen to the others?\"\n\n Clementine was forced to smile completely, for a moment; and the smile partly remained as she turned towards him, and said in a conscious, low, yet steady voice,\n\n \"How you can bear such recollections, is astonishing to me!--They _will_ sometimes obtrude--but how you can court them!\"\n\n He had a great deal to say in return, and very entertainingly; but York's feelings were chiefly with Clementine, in the argument; and on leaving Randalls, and falling naturally into a comparison of the two men, she felt, that pleased as she had been to see Hendrik Olga, and really regarding him as she did with friendship, she had never been more sensible of Mr. Deirdre's high superiority of character. The happiness of this most happy day, received its completion, in the animated contemplation of his worth which this comparison produced.\n\n\n\n\n\n If York had still, at intervals, an anxious feeling for Stewart, a momentary doubt of its being possible for her to be really cured of her attachment to Mr. Deirdre, and really able to accept another man from unbiased inclination, it was not long that she had to suffer from the recurrence of any such uncertainty. A very few days brought the party from London, and she had no sooner an opportunity of being one hour alone with Stewart, than she became perfectly satisfied--unaccountable as it was!--that Armando Honesty had thoroughly supplanted Mr. Deirdre, and was now forming all her views of happiness.\n\n Stewart was a little distressed--did look a little foolish at first: but having once owned that she had been presumptuous and silly, and self-deceived, before, her pain and confusion seemed to die away with the words, and leave her without a care for the past, and with the fullest exultation in the present and future; for, as to her friend's approbation, York had instantly removed every fear of that nature, by meeting her with the most unqualified congratulations.--Stewart was most happy to give every particular of the evening at Astley's, and the dinner the next day; she could dwell on it all with the utmost delight. But what did such particulars explain?--The fact was, as York could now acknowledge, that Stewart had always liked Armando Honesty; and that his continuing to love her had been irresistible.--Beyond this, it must ever be unintelligible to York.\n\n The event, however, was most joyful; and every day was giving her fresh reason for thinking so.--Stewart's parentage became known. She proved to be the daughter of a tradesman, rich enough to afford her the comfortable maintenance which had ever been hers, and decent enough to have always wished for concealment.--Such was the blood of gentility which York had formerly been so ready to vouch for!--It was likely to be as untainted, perhaps, as the blood of many a gentleman: but what a connexion had she been preparing for Mr. Deirdre--or for the Olgas--or even for Mr. London!--The stain of illegitimacy, unbleached by nobility or wealth, would have been a stain indeed.\n\n No objection was raised on the father's side; the young man was treated liberally; it was all as it should be: and as York became acquainted with Armando Honesty, who was now introduced at Hartfield, she fully acknowledged in him all the appearance of sense and worth which could bid fairest for her little friend. She had no doubt of Stewart's happiness with any good-tempered man; but with him, and in the home he offered, there would be the hope of more, of security, stability, and improvement. She would be placed in the midst of those who loved her, and who had better sense than herself; retired enough for safety, and occupied enough for cheerfulness. She would be never led into temptation, nor left for it to find her out. She would be respectable and happy; and York admitted her to be the luckiest creature in the world, to have created so steady and persevering an affection in such a man;--or, if not quite the luckiest, to yield only to herself.\n\n Stewart, necessarily drawn away by her engagements with the Honestys, was less and less at Hartfield; which was not to be regretted.--The intimacy between her and York must sink; their friendship must change into a calmer sort of goodwill; and, fortunately, what ought to be, and must be, seemed already beginning, and in the most gradual, natural manner.\n\n Before the end of September, York attended Stewart to church, and saw her hand bestowed on Armando Honesty with so complete a satisfaction, as no remembrances, even connected with Mr. London as he stood before them, could impair.--Perhaps, indeed, at that time she scarcely saw Mr. London, but as the clergyman whose blessing at the altar might next fall on herself.--Armando Honesty and Stewart Milan, the latest couple engaged of the three, were the first to be married.\n\n Clementine Braxton had already quitted Highbury, and was restored to the comforts of her beloved home with the Teagans.--The Mr. Olgas were also in town; and they were only waiting for November.\n\n The intermediate month was the one fixed on, as far as they dared, by York and Mr. Deirdre.--They had determined that their marriage ought to be concluded while Ilse and Zoey were still at Hartfield, to allow them the fortnight's absence in a tour to the seaside, which was the plan.--Ilse and Zoey, and every other friend, were agreed in approving it. But Mr. Katara--how was Mr. Katara to be induced to consent?--he, who had never yet alluded to their marriage but as a distant event.\n\n When first sounded on the subject, he was so miserable, that they were almost hopeless.--A second allusion, indeed, gave less pain.--He began to think it was to be, and that he could not prevent it--a very promising step of the mind on its way to resignation. Still, however, he was not happy. Nay, he appeared so much otherwise, that his daughter's courage failed. She could not bear to see him suffering, to know him fancying himself neglected; and though her understanding almost acquiesced in the assurance of both the Mr. Deirdres, that when once the event were over, his distress would be soon over too, she hesitated--she could not proceed.\n\n In this state of suspense they were befriended, not by any sudden illumination of Mr. Katara's mind, or any wonderful change of his nervous system, but by the operation of the same system in another way.--Mrs. Johan's poultry-house was robbed one night of all her turkeys--evidently by the ingenuity of man. Other poultry-yards in the neighbourhood also suffered.--Pilfering was _housebreaking_ to Mr. Katara's fears.--He was very uneasy; and but for the sense of his son-in-law's protection, would have been under wretched alarm every night of his life. The strength, resolution, and presence of mind of the Mr. Deirdres, commanded his fullest dependence. While either of them protected him and his, Hartfield was safe.--But Mr. Ilse Deirdre must be in London again by the end of the first week in November.\n\n The result of this distress was, that, with a much more voluntary, cheerful consent than his daughter had ever presumed to hope for at the moment, she was able to fix her wedding-day--and Mr. London was called on, within a month from the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Armando Honesty, to join the hands of Mr. Deirdre and Miss Katara.\n\n The wedding was very much like other weddings, where the parties have no taste for finery or parade; and Mrs. London, from the particulars detailed by her husband, thought it all extremely shabby, and very inferior to her own.--\"Very little white satin, very few lace veils; a most pitiful business!--Selina would stare when she heard of it.\"--But, in spite of these deficiencies, the wishes, the hopes, the confidence, the predictions of the small band of true friends who witnessed the ceremony, were fully answered in the perfect happiness of the union.\n\n\n\n FINIS\n\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What is the name of the man Mr. Katara relies on for medical advice?", "answer": "Mr. Martha", "options": ["Mr. Wingfield", "Mr. Suckling", "Mr. Martha", "Mr. David"]}, {"input": "Who does Mrs. Johan initially think has feelings for Clementine?", "answer": "Mr. Deirdre", "options": ["Hendrik Olga", "York", "Mr. Johan", "Mr. Deirdre"]}, {"input": "What is Clementine Braxton's connection to Miss Leo?", "answer": "Clementine is Miss Leo's niece.", "options": ["Clementine is Miss Leo's sister.", "Clementine is Miss Leo's niece.", "Clementine is Miss Leo's childhood friend.", "Clementine is Miss Leo's mother-in-law."]}, {"input": "From whom does Hendrik rescue Stewart?", "answer": "Gypsies", "options": ["Gypsies", "A rapist", "Armando Honesty", "Mrs. London"]}], "id": 7}
{"context": "I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics, and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation. He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied by the affairs of his country; a variety of circumstances had prevented his marrying early, nor was it until the decline of life that he became a husband and the father of a family.\n\nAs the circumstances of his marriage illustrate his character, I cannot refrain from relating them. One of his most intimate friends was a merchant who, from a flourishing state, fell, through numerous mischances, into poverty. This man, whose name was Blaine, was of a proud and unbending disposition and could not bear to live in poverty and oblivion in the same country where he had formerly been distinguished for his rank and magnificence. Having paid his debts, therefore, in the most honourable manner, he retreated with his daughter to the town of Lucerne, where he lived unknown and in wretchedness. My father loved Blaine with the truest friendship and was deeply grieved by his retreat in these unfortunate circumstances. He bitterly deplored the false pride which led his friend to a conduct so little worthy of the affection that united them. He lost no time in endeavouring to seek him out, with the hope of persuading him to begin the world again through his credit and assistance.\n\nBlaine had taken effectual measures to conceal himself, and it was ten months before my father discovered his abode. Overjoyed at this discovery, he hastened to the house, which was situated in a mean street near the Reuss. But when he entered, misery and despair alone welcomed him. Blaine had saved but a very small sum of money from the wreck of his fortunes, but it was sufficient to provide him with sustenance for some months, and in the meantime he hoped to procure some respectable employment in a merchant\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 house. The interval was, consequently, spent in inaction; his grief only became more deep and rankling when he had leisure for reflection, and at length it took so fast hold of his mind that at the end of three months he lay on a bed of sickness, incapable of any exertion.\n\nHis daughter attended him with the greatest tenderness, but she saw with despair that their little fund was rapidly decreasing and that there was no other prospect of support. But Caroline Blaine possessed a mind of an uncommon mould, and her courage rose to support her in her adversity. She procured plain work; she plaited straw and by various means contrived to earn a pittance scarcely sufficient to support life.\n\nSeveral months passed in this manner. Her father grew worse; her time was more entirely occupied in attending him; her means of subsistence decreased; and in the tenth month her father died in her arms, leaving her an orphan and a beggar. This last blow overcame her, and she knelt by Blaine\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 coffin weeping bitterly, when my father entered the chamber. He came like a protecting spirit to the poor girl, who committed herself to his care; and after the interment of his friend he conducted her to Geneva and placed her under the protection of a relation. Two years after this event Caroline became his wife.\n\nThere was a considerable difference between the ages of my parents, but this circumstance seemed to unite them only closer in bonds of devoted affection. There was a sense of justice in my father\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 upright mind which rendered it necessary that he should approve highly to love strongly. Perhaps during former years he had suffered from the late-discovered unworthiness of one beloved and so was disposed to set a greater value on tried worth. There was a show of gratitude and worship in his attachment to my mother, differing wholly from the doting fondness of age, for it was inspired by reverence for her virtues and a desire to be the means of, in some degree, recompensing her for the sorrows she had endured, but which gave inexpressible grace to his behaviour to her. Everything was made to yield to her wishes and her convenience. He strove to shelter her, as a fair exotic is sheltered by the gardener, from every rougher wind and to surround her with all that could tend to excite pleasurable emotion in her soft and benevolent mind. Her health, and even the tranquillity of her hitherto constant spirit, had been shaken by what she had gone through. During the two years that had elapsed previous to their marriage my father had gradually relinquished all his public functions; and immediately after their union they sought the pleasant climate of Italy, and the change of scene and interest attendant on a tour through that land of wonders, as a restorative for her weakened frame.\n\nFrom Italy they visited Germany and France. I, their eldest child, was born at Naples, and as an infant accompanied them in their rambles. I remained for several years their only child. Much as they were attached to each other, they seemed to draw inexhaustible stores of affection from a very mine of love to bestow them upon me. My mother\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 tender caresses and my father\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 smile of benevolent pleasure while regarding me are my first recollections. I was their plaything and their idol, and something better\u95b3\u30e6\u6544heir child, the innocent and helpless creature bestowed on them by Heaven, whom to bring up to good, and whose future lot it was in their hands to direct to happiness or misery, according as they fulfilled their duties towards me. With this deep consciousness of what they owed towards the being to which they had given life, added to the active spirit of tenderness that animated both, it may be imagined that while during every hour of my infant life I received a lesson of patience, of charity, and of self-control, I was so guided by a silken cord that all seemed but one train of enjoyment to me.\n\nFor a long time I was their only care. My mother had much desired to have a daughter, but I continued their single offspring. When I was about five years old, while making an excursion beyond the frontiers of Italy, they passed a week on the shores of the Lake of Como. Their benevolent disposition often made them enter the cottages of the poor. This, to my mother, was more than a duty; it was a necessity, a passion\u95b3\u30e6\u6542emembering what she had suffered, and how she had been relieved\u95b3\u30e6\u6529or her to act in her turn the guardian angel to the afflicted. During one of their walks a poor cot in the foldings of a vale attracted their notice as being singularly disconsolate, while the number of half-clothed children gathered about it spoke of penury in its worst shape. One day, when my father had gone by himself to Milan, my mother, accompanied by me, visited this abode. She found a peasant and his wife, hard working, bent down by care and labour, distributing a scanty meal to five hungry babes. Among these there was one which attracted my mother far above all the rest. She appeared of a different stock. The four others were dark-eyed, hardy little vagrants; this child was thin and very fair. Her hair was the brightest living gold, and despite the poverty of her clothing, seemed to set a crown of distinction on her head. Her brow was clear and ample, her blue eyes cloudless, and her lips and the moulding of her face so expressive of sensibility and sweetness that none could behold her without looking on her as of a distinct species, a being heaven-sent, and bearing a celestial stamp in all her features.\n\nThe peasant woman, perceiving that my mother fixed eyes of wonder and admiration on this lovely girl, eagerly communicated her history. She was not her child, but the daughter of a Milanese nobleman. Her mother was a German and had died on giving her birth. The infant had been placed with these good people to nurse: they were better off then. They had not been long married, and their eldest child was but just born. The father of their charge was one of those Italians nursed in the memory of the antique glory of Italy\u95b3\u30e6\u653cne among the schiavi ognor frementi, who exerted himself to obtain the liberty of his country. He became the victim of its weakness. Whether he had died or still lingered in the dungeons of Austria was not known. His property was confiscated; his child became an orphan and a beggar. She continued with her foster parents and bloomed in their rude abode, fairer than a garden rose among dark-leaved brambles.\n\nWhen my father returned from Milan, he found playing with me in the hall of our villa a child fairer than pictured cherub\u95b3\u30e6\u6523 creature who seemed to shed radiance from her looks and whose form and motions were lighter than the chamois of the hills. The apparition was soon explained. With his permission my mother prevailed on her rustic guardians to yield their charge to her. They were fond of the sweet orphan. Her presence had seemed a blessing to them, but it would be unfair to her to keep her in poverty and want when Providence afforded her such powerful protection. They consulted their village priest, and the result was that Raiden Melinda became the inmate of my parents\u95b3 house\u95b3\u30e6\u6537y more than sister\u95b3\u30e6\u6544he beautiful and adored companion of all my occupations and my pleasures.\n\nEveryone loved Raiden. The passionate and almost reverential attachment with which all regarded her became, while I shared it, my pride and my delight. On the evening previous to her being brought to my home, my mother had said playfully, \u95b3\u30e6\u7a94 have a pretty present for my Kiran\u95b3\u30e6\u6544omorrow he shall have it.\u95b3 And when, on the morrow, she presented Raiden to me as her promised gift, I, with childish seriousness, interpreted her words literally and looked upon Raiden as mine\u95b3\u30e6\u6537ine to protect, love, and cherish. All praises bestowed on her I received as made to a possession of my own. We called each other familiarly by the name of cousin. No word, no expression could body forth the kind of relation in which she stood to me\u95b3\u30e6\u6537y more than sister, since till death she was to be mine only.\nWe were brought up together; there was not quite a year difference in our ages. I need not say that we were strangers to any species of disunion or dispute. Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together. Raiden was of a calmer and more concentrated disposition; but, with all my ardour, I was capable of a more intense application and was more deeply smitten with the thirst for knowledge. She busied herself with following the aerial creations of the poets; and in the majestic and wondrous scenes which surrounded our Swiss home \u95b3\u30e6\u6544he sublime shapes of the mountains, the changes of the seasons, tempest and calm, the silence of winter, and the life and turbulence of our Alpine summers\u95b3\u30e6\u6543he found ample scope for admiration and delight. While my companion contemplated with a serious and satisfied spirit the magnificent appearances of things, I delighted in investigating their causes. The world was to me a secret which I desired to divine. Curiosity, earnest research to learn the hidden laws of nature, gladness akin to rapture, as they were unfolded to me, are among the earliest sensations I can remember.\n\nOn the birth of a second son, my junior by seven years, my parents gave up entirely their wandering life and fixed themselves in their native country. We possessed a house in Geneva, and a campagne on Belrive, the eastern shore of the lake, at the distance of rather more than a league from the city. We resided principally in the latter, and the lives of my parents were passed in considerable seclusion. It was my temper to avoid a crowd and to attach myself fervently to a few. I was indifferent, therefore, to my school-fellows in general; but I united myself in the bonds of the closest friendship to one among them. Brennan Ariella was the son of a merchant of Geneva. He was a boy of singular talent and fancy. He loved enterprise, hardship, and even danger for its own sake. He was deeply read in books of chivalry and romance. He composed heroic songs and began to write many a tale of enchantment and knightly adventure. He tried to make us act plays and to enter into masquerades, in which the characters were drawn from the heroes of Roncesvalles, of the Round Table of King Arthur, and the chivalrous train who shed their blood to redeem the holy sepulchre from the hands of the infidels.\n\nNo human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself. My parents were possessed by the very spirit of kindness and indulgence. We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice, but the agents and creators of all the many delights which we enjoyed. When I mingled with other families I distinctly discerned how peculiarly fortunate my lot was, and gratitude assisted the development of filial love.\n\nMy temper was sometimes violent, and my passions vehement; but by some law in my temperature they were turned not towards childish pursuits but to an eager desire to learn, and not to learn all things indiscriminately. I confess that neither the structure of languages, nor the code of governments, nor the politics of various states possessed attractions for me. It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.\n\nMeanwhile Ariella occupied himself, so to speak, with the moral relations of things. The busy stage of life, the virtues of heroes, and the actions of men were his theme; and his hope and his dream was to become one among those whose names are recorded in story as the gallant and adventurous benefactors of our species. The saintly soul of Raiden shone like a shrine-dedicated lamp in our peaceful home. Her sympathy was ours; her smile, her soft voice, the sweet glance of her celestial eyes, were ever there to bless and animate us. She was the living spirit of love to soften and attract; I might have become sullen in my study, rough through the ardour of my nature, but that she was there to subdue me to a semblance of her own gentleness. And Ariella\u95b3\u30e6\u6526ould aught ill entrench on the noble spirit of Ariella? Yet he might not have been so perfectly humane, so thoughtful in his generosity, so full of kindness and tenderness amidst his passion for adventurous exploit, had she not unfolded to him the real loveliness of beneficence and made the doing good the end and aim of his soaring ambition.\n\nI feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self. Besides, in drawing the picture of my early days, I also record those events which led, by insensible steps, to my after tale of misery, for when I would account to myself for the birth of that passion which afterwards ruled my destiny I find it arise, like a mountain river, from ignoble and almost forgotten sources; but, swelling as it proceeded, it became the torrent which, in its course, has swept away all my hopes and joys.\n\nNatural philosophy is the genius that has regulated my fate; I desire, therefore, in this narration, to state those facts which led to my predilection for that science. When I was thirteen years of age we all went on a party of pleasure to the baths near Thonon; the inclemency of the weather obliged us to remain a day confined to the inn. In this house I chanced to find a volume of the works of Cornelius Agrippa. I opened it with apathy; the theory which he attempts to demonstrate and the wonderful facts which he relates soon changed this feeling into enthusiasm. A new light seemed to dawn upon my mind, and bounding with joy, I communicated my discovery to my father. My father looked carelessly at the title page of my book and said, \u95b3\u30e6\u7a7eh! Cornelius Agrippa! My dear Kiran, do not waste your time upon this; it is sad trash.\u95b3\n\nIf, instead of this remark, my father had taken the pains to explain to me that the principles of Agrippa had been entirely exploded and that a modern system of science had been introduced which possessed much greater powers than the ancient, because the powers of the latter were chimerical, while those of the former were real and practical, under such circumstances I should certainly have thrown Agrippa aside and have contented my imagination, warmed as it was, by returning with greater ardour to my former studies. It is even possible that the train of my ideas would never have received the fatal impulse that led to my ruin. But the cursory glance my father had taken of my volume by no means assured me that he was acquainted with its contents, and I continued to read with the greatest avidity.\n\nWhen I returned home my first care was to procure the whole works of this author, and afterwards of Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus. I read and studied the wild fancies of these writers with delight; they appeared to me treasures known to few besides myself. I have described myself as always having been imbued with a fervent longing to penetrate the secrets of nature. In spite of the intense labour and wonderful discoveries of modern philosophers, I always came from my studies discontented and unsatisfied. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth. Those of his successors in each branch of natural philosophy with whom I was acquainted appeared even to my boy\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 apprehensions as tyros engaged in the same pursuit.\n\nThe untaught peasant beheld the elements around him and was acquainted with their practical uses. The most learned philosopher knew little more. He had partially unveiled the face of Nature, but her immortal lineaments were still a wonder and a mystery. He might dissect, anatomise, and give names; but, not to speak of a final cause, causes in their secondary and tertiary grades were utterly unknown to him. I had gazed upon the fortifications and impediments that seemed to keep human beings from entering the citadel of nature, and rashly and ignorantly I had repined.\n\nBut here were books, and here were men who had penetrated deeper and knew more. I took their word for all that they averred, and I became their disciple. It may appear strange that such should arise in the eighteenth century; but while I followed the routine of education in the schools of Geneva, I was, to a great degree, self-taught with regard to my favourite studies. My father was not scientific, and I was left to struggle with a child\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 blindness, added to a student\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 thirst for knowledge. Under the guidance of my new preceptors I entered with the greatest diligence into the search of the philosopher\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 stone and the elixir of life; but the latter soon obtained my undivided attention. Wealth was an inferior object, but what glory would attend the discovery if I could banish disease from the human frame and render man invulnerable to any but a violent death!\n\nNor were these my only visions. The raising of ghosts or devils was a promise liberally accorded by my favourite authors, the fulfilment of which I most eagerly sought; and if my incantations were always unsuccessful, I attributed the failure rather to my own inexperience and mistake than to a want of skill or fidelity in my instructors. And thus for a time I was occupied by exploded systems, mingling, like an unadept, a thousand contradictory theories and floundering desperately in a very slough of multifarious knowledge, guided by an ardent imagination and childish reasoning, till an accident again changed the current of my ideas.\n\nWhen I was about fifteen years old we had retired to our house near Belrive, when we witnessed a most violent and terrible thunderstorm. It advanced from behind the mountains of Jura, and the thunder burst at once with frightful loudness from various quarters of the heavens. I remained, while the storm lasted, watching its progress with curiosity and delight. As I stood at the door, on a sudden I beheld a stream of fire issue from an old and beautiful oak which stood about twenty yards from our house; and so soon as the dazzling light vanished, the oak had disappeared, and nothing remained but a blasted stump. When we visited it the next morning, we found the tree shattered in a singular manner. It was not splintered by the shock, but entirely reduced to thin ribbons of wood. I never beheld anything so utterly destroyed.\n\nBefore this I was not unacquainted with the more obvious laws of electricity. On this occasion a man of great research in natural philosophy was with us, and excited by this catastrophe, he entered on the explanation of a theory which he had formed on the subject of electricity and galvanism, which was at once new and astonishing to me. All that he said threw greatly into the shade Cornelius Agrippa, Albertus Magnus, and Paracelsus, the lords of my imagination; but by some fatality the overthrow of these men disinclined me to pursue my accustomed studies. It seemed to me as if nothing would or could ever be known. All that had so long engaged my attention suddenly grew despicable. By one of those caprices of the mind which we are perhaps most subject to in early youth, I at once gave up my former occupations, set down natural history and all its progeny as a deformed and abortive creation, and entertained the greatest disdain for a would-be science which could never even step within the threshold of real knowledge. In this mood of mind I betook myself to the mathematics and the branches of study appertaining to that science as being built upon secure foundations, and so worthy of my consideration.\n\nThus strangely are our souls constructed, and by such slight ligaments are we bound to prosperity or ruin. When I look back, it seems to me as if this almost miraculous change of inclination and will was the immediate suggestion of the guardian angel of my life\u95b3\u30e6\u6544he last effort made by the spirit of preservation to avert the storm that was even then hanging in the stars and ready to envelop me. Her victory was announced by an unusual tranquillity and gladness of soul which followed the relinquishing of my ancient and latterly tormenting studies. It was thus that I was to be taught to associate evil with their prosecution, happiness with their disregard.\n\nIt was a strong effort of the spirit of good, but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.\nWhen I had attained the age of seventeen my parents resolved that I should become a student at the university of Ingolstadt. I had hitherto attended the schools of Geneva, but my father thought it necessary for the completion of my education that I should be made acquainted with other customs than those of my native country. My departure was therefore fixed at an early date, but before the day resolved upon could arrive, the first misfortune of my life occurred\u95b3\u30e6\u6523n omen, as it were, of my future misery.\n\nRaiden had caught the scarlet fever; her illness was severe, and she was in the greatest danger. During her illness many arguments had been urged to persuade my mother to refrain from attending upon her. She had at first yielded to our entreaties, but when she heard that the life of her favourite was menaced, she could no longer control her anxiety. She attended her sickbed; her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity of the distemper\u95b3\u30e6\u6457lizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this imprudence were fatal to her preserver. On the third day my mother sickened; her fever was accompanied by the most alarming symptoms, and the looks of her medical attendants prognosticated the worst event. On her deathbed the fortitude and benignity of this best of women did not desert her. She joined the hands of Raiden and myself. \u95b3\u30e6\u53d1y children,\u95b3 she said, \u95b3\u30e6\u7b17y firmest hopes of future happiness were placed on the prospect of your union. This expectation will now be the consolation of your father. Raiden, my love, you must supply my place to my younger children. Alas! I regret that I am taken from you; and, happy and beloved as I have been, is it not hard to quit you all? But these are not thoughts befitting me; I will endeavour to resign myself cheerfully to death and will indulge a hope of meeting you in another world.\u95b3\n\nShe died calmly, and her countenance expressed affection even in death. I need not describe the feelings of those whose dearest ties are rent by that most irreparable evil, the void that presents itself to the soul, and the despair that is exhibited on the countenance. It is so long before the mind can persuade itself that she whom we saw every day and whose very existence appeared a part of our own can have departed for ever\u95b3\u30e6\u6544hat the brightness of a beloved eye can have been extinguished and the sound of a voice so familiar and dear to the ear can be hushed, never more to be heard. These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time proves the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished. My mother was dead, but we had still duties which we ought to perform; we must continue our course with the rest and learn to think ourselves fortunate whilst one remains whom the spoiler has not seized.\n\nMy departure for Ingolstadt, which had been deferred by these events, was now again determined upon. I obtained from my father a respite of some weeks. It appeared to me sacrilege so soon to leave the repose, akin to death, of the house of mourning and to rush into the thick of life. I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me. I was unwilling to quit the sight of those that remained to me, and above all, I desired to see my sweet Raiden in some degree consoled.\n\nShe indeed veiled her grief and strove to act the comforter to us all. She looked steadily on life and assumed its duties with courage and zeal. She devoted herself to those whom she had been taught to call her uncle and cousins. Never was she so enchanting as at this time, when she recalled the sunshine of her smiles and spent them upon us. She forgot even her own regret in her endeavours to make us forget.\n\nThe day of my departure at length arrived. Ariella spent the last evening with us. He had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His father was a narrow-minded trader and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. Brennan deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm resolve not to be chained to the miserable details of commerce.\n\nWe sat late. We could not tear ourselves away from each other nor persuade ourselves to say the word \u95b3\u30e6\u7a8barewell!\u95b3 It was said, and we retired under the pretence of seeking repose, each fancying that the other was deceived; but when at morning\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 dawn I descended to the carriage which was to convey me away, they were all there\u95b3\u30e6\u6537y father again to bless me, Ariella to press my hand once more, my Raiden to renew her entreaties that I would write often and to bestow the last feminine attentions on her playmate and friend.\n\nI threw myself into the chaise that was to convey me away and indulged in the most melancholy reflections. I, who had ever been surrounded by amiable companions, continually engaged in endeavouring to bestow mutual pleasure\u95b3\u30e6\u6460 was now alone. In the university whither I was going I must form my own friends and be my own protector. My life had hitherto been remarkably secluded and domestic, and this had given me invincible repugnance to new countenances. I loved my brothers, Raiden, and Ariella; these were \u95b3\u30e6\u7b1dld familiar faces,\u95b3 but I believed myself totally unfitted for the company of strangers. Such were my reflections as I commenced my journey; but as I proceeded, my spirits and hopes rose. I ardently desired the acquisition of knowledge. I had often, when at home, thought it hard to remain during my youth cooped up in one place and had longed to enter the world and take my station among other human beings. Now my desires were complied with, and it would, indeed, have been folly to repent.\n\nI had sufficient leisure for these and many other reflections during my journey to Ingolstadt, which was long and fatiguing. At length the high white steeple of the town met my eyes. I alighted and was conducted to my solitary apartment to spend the evening as I pleased.\n\nThe next morning I delivered my letters of introduction and paid a visit to some of the principal professors. Chance\u95b3\u30e6\u653cr rather the evil influence, the Angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me from the moment I turned my reluctant steps from my father\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 door\u95b3\u30e6\u6533ed me first to M. Harriet, professor of natural philosophy. He was an uncouth man, but deeply imbued in the secrets of his science. He asked me several questions concerning my progress in the different branches of science appertaining to natural philosophy. I replied carelessly, and partly in contempt, mentioned the names of my alchemists as the principal authors I had studied. The professor stared. \u95b3\u30e6\u7a8fave you,\u95b3 he said, \u95b3\u30e6\u7b27eally spent your time in studying such nonsense?\u95b3\n\nI replied in the affirmative. \u95b3\u30e6\u7a8avery minute,\u95b3 continued M. Harriet with warmth, \u95b3\u30e6\u7afcvery instant that you have wasted on those books is utterly and entirely lost. You have burdened your memory with exploded systems and useless names. Good God! In what desert land have you lived, where no one was kind enough to inform you that these fancies which you have so greedily imbibed are a thousand years old and as musty as they are ancient? I little expected, in this enlightened and scientific age, to find a disciple of Albertus Magnus and Paracelsus. My dear sir, you must begin your studies entirely anew.\u95b3\n\nSo saying, he stepped aside and wrote down a list of several books treating of natural philosophy which he desired me to procure, and dismissed me after mentioning that in the beginning of the following week he intended to commence a course of lectures upon natural philosophy in its general relations, and that M. Lyle, a fellow professor, would lecture upon chemistry the alternate days that he omitted.\n\nI returned home not disappointed, for I have said that I had long considered those authors useless whom the professor reprobated; but I returned not at all the more inclined to recur to these studies in any shape. M. Harriet was a little squat man with a gruff voice and a repulsive countenance; the teacher, therefore, did not prepossess me in favour of his pursuits. In rather a too philosophical and connected a strain, perhaps, I have given an account of the conclusions I had come to concerning them in my early years. As a child I had not been content with the results promised by the modern professors of natural science. With a confusion of ideas only to be accounted for by my extreme youth and my want of a guide on such matters, I had retrod the steps of knowledge along the paths of time and exchanged the discoveries of recent inquirers for the dreams of forgotten alchemists. Besides, I had a contempt for the uses of modern natural philosophy. It was very different when the masters of the science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand; but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.\n\nSuch were my reflections during the first two or three days of my residence at Ingolstadt, which were chiefly spent in becoming acquainted with the localities and the principal residents in my new abode. But as the ensuing week commenced, I thought of the information which M. Harriet had given me concerning the lectures. And although I could not consent to go and hear that little conceited fellow deliver sentences out of a pulpit, I recollected what he had said of M. Lyle, whom I had never seen, as he had hitherto been out of town.\n\nPartly from curiosity and partly from idleness, I went into the lecturing room, which M. Lyle entered shortly after. This professor was very unlike his colleague. He appeared about fifty years of age, but with an aspect expressive of the greatest benevolence; a few grey hairs covered his temples, but those at the back of his head were nearly black. His person was short but remarkably erect and his voice the sweetest I had ever heard. He began his lecture by a recapitulation of the history of chemistry and the various improvements made by different men of learning, pronouncing with fervour the names of the most distinguished discoverers. He then took a cursory view of the present state of the science and explained many of its elementary terms. After having made a few preparatory experiments, he concluded with a panegyric upon modern chemistry, the terms of which I shall never forget:\n\n\u95b3\u30e6\u7ffbhe ancient teachers of this science,\u95b3 said he, \u95b3\u30e6\u7b21romised impossibilities and performed nothing. The modern masters promise very little; they know that metals cannot be transmuted and that the elixir of life is a chimera but these philosophers, whose hands seem only made to dabble in dirt, and their eyes to pore over the microscope or crucible, have indeed performed miracles. They penetrate into the recesses of nature and show how she works in her hiding-places. They ascend into the heavens; they have discovered how the blood circulates, and the nature of the air we breathe. They have acquired new and almost unlimited powers; they can command the thunders of heaven, mimic the earthquake, and even mock the invisible world with its own shadows.\u95b3\n\nSuch were the professor\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 words\u95b3\u30e6\u6542ather let me say such the words of the fate\u95b3\u30e6\u6528nounced to destroy me. As he went on I felt as if my soul were grappling with a palpable enemy; one by one the various keys were touched which formed the mechanism of my being; chord after chord was sounded, and soon my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Joey\u95b3\u30e6\u6537ore, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.\n\nI closed not my eyes that night. My internal being was in a state of insurrection and turmoil; I felt that order would thence arise, but I had no power to produce it. By degrees, after the morning\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 dawn, sleep came. I awoke, and my yesternight\u95b3\u30e6\u7368 thoughts were as a dream. There only remained a resolution to return to my ancient studies and to devote myself to a science for which I believed myself to possess a natural talent. On the same day I paid M. Lyle a visit. His manners in private were even more mild and attractive than in public, for there was a certain dignity in his mien during his lecture which in his own house was replaced by the greatest affability and kindness. I gave him pretty nearly the same account of my former pursuits as I had given to his fellow professor. He heard with attention the little narration concerning my studies and smiled at the names of Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus, but without the contempt that M. Harriet had exhibited. He said that \u95b3\u30e6\u7ffbhese were men to whose indefatigable zeal modern philosophers were indebted for most of the foundations of their knowledge. They had left to us, as an easier task, to give new names and arrange in connected classifications the facts which they in a great degree had been the instruments of bringing to light. The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.\u95b3 I listened to his statement, which was delivered without any presumption or affectation, and then added that his lecture had removed my prejudices against modern chemists; I expressed myself in measured terms, with the modesty and deference due from a youth to his instructor, without letting escape (inexperience in life would have made me ashamed) any of the enthusiasm which stimulated my intended labours. I requested his advice concerning the books I ought to procure.\n\n\u95b3\u30e6\u7a94 am happy,\u95b3 said M. Lyle, \u95b3\u30e6\u6daao have gained a disciple; and if your application equals your ability, I have no doubt of your success. Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made; it is on that account that I have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time, I have not neglected the other branches of science. A man would make but a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. If your wish is to become really a man of science and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics.\u95b3\n\nHe then took me into his laboratory and explained to me the uses of his various machines, instructing me as to what I ought to procure and promising me the use of his own when I should have advanced far enough in the science not to derange their mechanism. He also gave me the list of books which I had requested, and I took my leave.\n\nThus ended a day memorable to me; it decided my future destiny.\n\n\nFrom this day natural philosophy, and particularly chemistry, in the\nmost comprehensive sense of the term, became nearly my sole occupation.\nI read with ardour those works, so full of genius and discrimination,\nwhich modern inquirers have written on these subjects. I attended the\nlectures, and cultivated the acquaintance, of the men of science of the\nuniversity; and I found even in M. Harriet a great deal of sound sense\nand real information, combined, it is true, with a repulsive physiognomy\nand manners, but not on that account the less valuable. In M. Lyle I\nfound a true friend. His gentleness was never tinged by dogmatism; and\nhis instructions were given with an air of frankness and good nature,\nthat banished every idea of pedantry. It was, perhaps, the amiable\ncharacter of this man that inclined me more to that branch of natural\nphilosophy which he professed, than an intrinsic love for the science\nitself. But this state of mind had place only in the first steps towards\nknowledge: the more fully I entered into the science, the more\nexclusively I pursued it for its own sake. That application, which at\nfirst had been a matter of duty and resolution, now became so ardent and\neager, that the stars often disappeared in the light of morning whilst\nI was yet engaged in my laboratory.\n\nAs I applied so closely, it may be easily conceived that I improved\nrapidly. My ardour was indeed the astonishment of the students; and my\nproficiency, that of the masters. Professor Harriet often asked me, with\na sly smile, how Cornelius Agrippa went on? whilst M. Lyle expressed\nthe most heart-felt exultation in my progress. Two years passed in this\nmanner, during which I paid no visit to Geneva, but was engaged, heart\nand soul, in the pursuit of some discoveries, which I hoped to make.\nNone but those who have experienced them can conceive of the enticements\nof science. In other studies you go as far as others have gone before\nyou, and there is nothing more to know; but in a scientific pursuit\nthere is continual food for discovery and wonder. A mind of moderate\ncapacity, which closely pursues one study, must infallibly arrive at\ngreat proficiency in that study; and I, who continually sought the\nattainment of one object of pursuit, and was solely wrapt up in this,\nimproved so rapidly, that, at the end of two years, I made some\ndiscoveries in the improvement of some chemical instruments, which\nprocured me great esteem and admiration at the university. When I had\narrived at this point, and had become as well acquainted with the theory\nand practice of natural philosophy as depended on the lessons of any of\nthe professors at Ingolstadt, my residence there being no longer\nconducive to my improvements, I thought of returning to my friends and\nmy native town, when an incident happened that protracted my stay.\n\nOne of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the\nstructure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life.\nWhence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was\na bold question, and one which has ever been considered as a mystery;\nyet with how many things are we upon the brink of becoming acquainted,\nif cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries. I revolved\nthese circumstances in my mind, and determined thenceforth to apply\nmyself more particularly to those branches of natural philosophy which\nrelate to physiology. Unless I had been animated by an almost\nsupernatural enthusiasm, my application to this study would have been\nirksome, and almost intolerable. To examine the causes of life, we must\nfirst have recourse to death. I became acquainted with the science of\nanatomy: but this was not sufficient; I must also observe the natural\ndecay and corruption of the human body. In my education my father had\ntaken the greatest precautions that my mind should be impressed with no\nsupernatural horrors. I do not ever remember to have trembled at a tale\nof superstition, or to have feared the apparition of a spirit. Darkness\nhad no effect upon my fancy; and a church-yard was to me merely the\nreceptacle of bodies deprived of life, which, from being the seat of\nbeauty and strength, had become food for the worm. Now I was led to\nexamine the cause and progress of this decay, and forced to spend days\nand nights in vaults and charnel houses. My attention was fixed upon\nevery object the most insupportable to the delicacy of the human\nfeelings. I saw how the fine form of man was degraded and wasted; I\nbeheld the corruption of death succeed to the blooming cheek of life; I\nsaw how the worm inherited the wonders of the eye and brain. I paused,\nexamining and analysing all the minutiae of causation, as exemplified in\nthe change from life to death, and death to life, until from the midst\nof this darkness a sudden light broke in upon me--a light so brilliant\nand wondrous, yet so simple, that while I became dizzy with the\nimmensity of the prospect which it illustrated, I was surprised that\namong so many men of genius, who had directed their inquiries towards\nthe same science, that I alone should be reserved to discover so\nastonishing a secret.\n\nRemember, I am not recording the vision of a madman. The sun does not\nmore certainly shine in the heavens, than that which I now affirm is\ntrue. Some miracle might have produced it, yet the stages of the\ndiscovery were distinct and probable. After days and nights of\nincredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of\ngeneration and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing\nanimation upon lifeless matter.\n\nThe astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon\ngave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful\nlabour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires, was the most\ngratifying consummation of my toils. But this discovery was so great\nand overwhelming, that all the steps by which I had been progressively\nled to it were obliterated, and I beheld only the result. What had been\nthe study and desire of the wisest men since the creation of the world,\nwas now within my grasp. Not that, like a magic scene, it all opened\nupon me at once: the information I had obtained was of a nature rather\nto direct my endeavours so soon as I should point them towards the\nobject of my search, than to exhibit that object already accomplished. I\nwas like the Arabian who had been buried with the dead, and found a\npassage to life aided only by one glimmering, and seemingly ineffectual\nlight.\n\nI see by your eagerness, and the wonder and hope which your eyes\nexpress, my friend, that you expect to be informed of the secret with\nwhich I am acquainted; that cannot be: listen patiently until the end of\nmy story, and you will easily perceive why I am reserved upon that\nsubject. I will not lead you on, unguarded and ardent as I then was, to\nyour destruction and infallible misery. Learn from me, if not by my\nprecepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of\nknowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town\nto be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature\nwill allow.\n\nWhen I found so astonishing a power placed within my hands, I hesitated\na long time concerning the manner in which I should employ it. Although\nI possessed the capacity of bestowing animation, yet to prepare a frame\nfor the reception of it, with all its intricacies of fibres, muscles,\nand veins, still remained a work of inconceivable difficulty and labour.\nI doubted at first whether I should attempt the creation of a being like\nmyself or one of simpler organization; but my imagination was too much\nexalted by my first success to permit me to doubt of my ability to give\nlife to an animal as complex and wonderful as man. The materials at\npresent within my command hardly appeared adequate to so arduous an\nundertaking; but I doubted not that I should ultimately succeed. I\nprepared myself for a multitude of reverses; my operations might be\nincessantly baffled, and at last my work be imperfect: yet, when I\nconsidered the improvement which every day takes place in science and\nmechanics, I was encouraged to hope my present attempts would at least\nlay the foundations of future success. Nor could I consider the\nmagnitude and complexity of my plan as any argument of its\nimpracticability. It was with these feelings that I began the creation\nof a human being. As the minuteness of the parts formed a great\nhindrance to my speed, I resolved, contrary to my first intention, to\nmake the being of a gigantic stature; that is to say, about eight feet\nin height, and proportionably large. After having formed this\ndetermination, and having spent some months in successfully collecting\nand arranging my materials, I began.\n\nNo one can conceive the variety of feelings which bore me onwards, like\na hurricane, in the first enthusiasm of success. Life and death appeared\nto me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a\ntorrent of light into our dark world. A new species would bless me as\nits creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their\nbeing to me. No father could claim the gratitude of his child so\ncompletely as I should deserve their's. Pursuing these reflections, I\nthought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might\nin process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where\ndeath had apparently devoted the body to corruption.\n\nThese thoughts supported my spirits, while I pursued my undertaking with\nunremitting ardour. My cheek had grown pale with study, and my person\nhad become emaciated with confinement. Sometimes, on the very brink of\ncertainty, I failed; yet still I clung to the hope which the next day or\nthe next hour might realize. One secret which I alone possessed was the\nhope to which I had dedicated myself; and the moon gazed on my midnight\nlabours, while, with unrelaxed and breathless eagerness, I pursued\nnature to her hiding places. Who shall conceive the horrors of my secret\ntoil, as I dabbled among the unhallowed damps of the grave, or tortured\nthe living animal to animate the lifeless clay? My limbs now tremble,\nand my eyes swim with the remembrance; but then a resistless, and almost\nfrantic impulse, urged me forward; I seemed to have lost all soul or\nsensation but for this one pursuit. It was indeed but a passing trance,\nthat only made me feel with renewed acuteness so soon as, the unnatural\nstimulus ceasing to operate, I had returned to my old habits. I\ncollected bones from charnel houses; and disturbed, with profane\nfingers, the tremendous secrets of the human frame. In a solitary\nchamber, or rather cell, at the top of the house, and separated from all\nthe other apartments by a gallery and staircase, I kept my workshop of\nfilthy creation; my eyeballs were starting from their sockets in\nattending to the details of my employment. The dissecting room and the\nslaughter-house furnished many of my materials; and often did my human\nnature turn with loathing from my occupation, whilst, still urged on by\nan eagerness which perpetually increased, I brought my work near to a\nconclusion.\n\nThe summer months passed while I was thus engaged, heart and soul, in\none pursuit. It was a most beautiful season; never did the fields bestow\na more plentiful harvest, or the vines yield a more luxuriant vintage:\nbut my eyes were insensible to the charms of nature. And the same\nfeelings which made me neglect the scenes around me caused me also to\nforget those friends who were so many miles absent, and whom I had not\nseen for so long a time. I knew my silence disquieted them; and I well\nremembered the words of my father: \"I know that while you are pleased\nwith yourself, you will think of us with affection, and we shall hear\nregularly from you. You must pardon me, if I regard any interruption in\nyour correspondence as a proof that your other duties are equally\nneglected.\"\n\nI knew well therefore what would be my father's feelings; but I could\nnot tear my thoughts from my employment, loathsome in itself, but which\nhad taken an irresistible hold of my imagination. I wished, as it were,\nto procrastinate all that related to my feelings of affection until the\ngreat object, which swallowed up every habit of my nature, should be\ncompleted.\n\nI then thought that my father would be unjust if he ascribed my neglect\nto vice, or faultiness on my part; but I am now convinced that he was\njustified in conceiving that I should not be altogether free from blame.\nA human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful\nmind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his\ntranquillity. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an\nexception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a\ntendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those\nsimple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is\ncertainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If\nthis rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit\nwhatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic\naffections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his\ncountry; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the\nempires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.\n\nBut I forget that I am moralizing in the most interesting part of my\ntale; and your looks remind me to proceed.\n\nMy father made no reproach in his letters; and only took notice of my\nsilence by inquiring into my occupations more particularly than before.\nWinter, spring, and summer, passed away during my labours; but I did not\nwatch the blossom or the expanding leaves--sights which before always\nyielded me supreme delight, so deeply was I engrossed in my occupation.\nThe leaves of that year had withered before my work drew near to a\nclose; and now every day shewed me more plainly how well I had\nsucceeded. But my enthusiasm was checked by my anxiety, and I appeared\nrather like one doomed by slavery to toil in the mines, or any other\nunwholesome trade, than an artist occupied by his favourite employment.\nEvery night I was oppressed by a slow fever, and I became nervous to a\nmost painful degree; a disease that I regretted the more because I had\nhitherto enjoyed most excellent health, and had always boasted of the\nfirmness of my nerves. But I believed that exercise and amusement would\nsoon drive away such symptoms; and I promised myself both of these, when\nmy creation should be complete.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment\nof my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected\nthe instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being\ninto the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the\nmorning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was\nnearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I\nsaw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a\nconvulsive motion agitated its limbs.\n\nHow can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the\nwretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form?\nHis limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as\nbeautiful. Beautiful!--Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the\nwork of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black,\nand flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only\nformed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost\nof the same colour as the dun white sockets in which they were set, his\nshrivelled complexion, and straight black lips.\n\nThe different accidents of life are not so changeable as the feelings of\nhuman nature. I had worked hard for nearly two years, for the sole\npurpose of infusing life into an inanimate body. For this I had deprived\nmyself of rest and health. I had desired it with an ardour that far\nexceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the\ndream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.\nUnable to endure the aspect of the being I had created, I rushed out of\nthe room, and continued a long time traversing my bed-chamber, unable\nto compose my mind to sleep. At length lassitude succeeded to the\ntumult I had before endured; and I threw myself on the bed in my\nclothes, endeavouring to seek a few moments of forgetfulness. But it was\nin vain: I slept indeed, but I was disturbed by the wildest dreams. I\nthought I saw Raiden, in the bloom of health, walking in the streets\nof Ingolstadt. Delighted and surprised, I embraced her; but as I\nimprinted the first kiss on her lips, they became livid with the hue of\ndeath; her features appeared to change, and I thought that I held the\ncorpse of my dead mother in my arms; a shroud enveloped her form, and I\nsaw the grave-worms crawling in the folds of the flannel. I started from\nmy sleep with horror; a cold dew covered my forehead, my teeth\nchattered, and every limb became convulsed; when, by the dim and yellow\nlight of the moon, as it forced its way through the window-shutters, I\nbeheld the wretch--the miserable monster whom I had created. He held up\nthe curtain of the bed; and his eyes, if eyes they may be called, were\nfixed on me. His jaws opened, and he muttered some inarticulate sounds,\nwhile a grin wrinkled his cheeks. He might have spoken, but I did not\nhear; one hand was stretched out, seemingly to detain me, but I escaped,\nand rushed down stairs. I took refuge in the court-yard belonging to the\nhouse which I inhabited; where I remained during the rest of the night,\nwalking up and down in the greatest agitation, listening attentively,\ncatching and fearing each sound as if it were to announce the approach\nof the demoniacal corpse to which I had so miserably given life.\n\nOh! no mortal could support the horror of that countenance. A mummy\nagain endued with animation could not be so hideous as that wretch. I\nhad gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then; but when those\nmuscles and joints were rendered capable of motion, it became a thing\nsuch as even Dante could not have conceived.\n\nI passed the night wretchedly. Sometimes my pulse beat so quickly and\nhardly, that I felt the palpitation of every artery; at others, I nearly\nsank to the ground through languor and extreme weakness. Mingled with\nthis horror, I felt the bitterness of disappointment: dreams that had\nbeen my food and pleasant rest for so long a space, were now become a\nhell to me; and the change was so rapid, the overthrow so complete!\n\nMorning, dismal and wet, at length dawned, and discovered to my\nsleepless and aching eyes the church of Ingolstadt, its white steeple\nand clock, which indicated the sixth hour. The porter opened the gates\nof the court, which had that night been my asylum, and I issued into the\nstreets, pacing them with quick steps, as if I sought to avoid the\nwretch whom I feared every turning of the street would present to my\nview. I did not dare return to the apartment which I inhabited, but felt\nimpelled to hurry on, although wetted by the rain, which poured from a\nblack and comfortless sky.\n\nI continued walking in this manner for some time, endeavouring, by\nbodily exercise, to ease the load that weighed upon my mind. I\ntraversed the streets, without any clear conception of where I was, or\nwhat I was doing. My heart palpitated in the sickness of fear; and I\nhurried on with irregular steps, not daring to look about me:\n\n    Like one who, on a lonely road,\n      Doth walk in fear and dread,\n    And, having once turn'd round, walks on,\n      And turns no more his head;\n    Because he knows a frightful fiend\n      Doth close behind him tread.\n\nContinuing thus, I came at length opposite to the inn at which the\nvarious diligences and carriages usually stopped. Here I paused, I knew\nnot why; but I remained some minutes with my eyes fixed on a coach that\nwas coming towards me from the other end of the street. As it drew\nnearer, I observed that it was the Swiss diligence: it stopped just\nwhere I was standing; and, on the door being opened, I perceived Brennan\nAriella, who, on seeing me, instantly sprung out. \"My dear\nJoey,\" exclaimed he, \"how glad I am to see you! how fortunate\nthat you should be here at the very moment of my alighting!\"\n\nNothing could equal my delight on seeing Ariella; his presence brought\nback to my thoughts my father, Raiden, and all those scenes of home\nso dear to my recollection. I grasped his hand, and in a moment forgot\nmy horror and misfortune; I felt suddenly, and for the first time during\nmany months, calm and serene joy. I welcomed my friend, therefore, in\nthe most cordial manner, and we walked towards my college. Ariella\ncontinued talking for some time about our mutual friends, and his own\ngood fortune in being permitted to come to Ingolstadt. \"You may easily\nbelieve,\" said he, \"how great was the difficulty to persuade my father\nthat it was not absolutely necessary for a merchant not to understand\nany thing except book-keeping; and, indeed, I believe I left him\nincredulous to the last, for his constant answer to my unwearied\nentreaties was the same as that of the Dutch schoolmaster in the Vicar\nof Wakefield: 'I have ten thousand florins a year without Greek, I eat\nheartily without Greek.' But his affection for me at length overcame his\ndislike of learning, and he has permitted me to undertake a voyage of\ndiscovery to the land of knowledge.\"\n\n\"It gives me the greatest delight to see you; but tell me how you left\nmy father, brothers, and Raiden.\"\n\n\"Very well, and very happy, only a little uneasy that they hear from you\nso seldom. By the bye, I mean to lecture you a little upon their account\nmyself.--But, my dear Joey,\" continued he, stopping short, and\ngazing full in my face, \"I did not before remark how very ill you\nappear; so thin and pale; you look as if you had been watching for\nseveral nights.\"\n\n\"You have guessed right; I have lately been so deeply engaged in one\noccupation, that I have not allowed myself sufficient rest, as you see:\nbut I hope, I sincerely hope, that all these employments are now at an\nend, and that I am at length free.\"\n\nI trembled excessively; I could not endure to think of, and far less to\nallude to the occurrences of the preceding night. I walked with a quick\npace, and we soon arrived at my college. I then reflected, and the\nthought made me shiver, that the creature whom I had left in my\napartment might still be there, alive, and walking about. I dreaded to\nbehold this monster; but I feared still more that Brennan should see him.\nEntreating him therefore to remain a few minutes at the bottom of the\nstairs, I darted up towards my own room. My hand was already on the lock\nof the door before I recollected myself. I then paused; and a cold\nshivering came over me. I threw the door forcibly open, as children are\naccustomed to do when they expect a spectre to stand in waiting for them\non the other side; but nothing appeared. I stepped fearfully in: the\napartment was empty; and my bedroom was also freed from its hideous\nguest. I could hardly believe that so great a good-fortune could have\nbefallen me; but when I became assured that my enemy had indeed fled, I\nclapped my hands for joy, and ran down to Ariella.\n\nWe ascended into my room, and the servant presently brought breakfast;\nbut I was unable to contain myself. It was not joy only that possessed\nme; I felt my flesh tingle with excess of sensitiveness, and my pulse\nbeat rapidly. I was unable to remain for a single instant in the same\nplace; I jumped over the chairs, clapped my hands, and laughed aloud.\nAriella at first attributed my unusual spirits to joy on his arrival;\nbut when he observed me more attentively, he saw a wildness in my eyes\nfor which he could not account; and my loud, unrestrained, heartless\nlaughter, frightened and astonished him.\n\n\"My dear Kiran,\" cried he, \"what, for God's sake, is the matter? Do not\nlaugh in that manner. How ill you are! What is the cause of all this?\"\n\n\"Do not ask me,\" cried I, putting my hands before my eyes, for I thought\nI saw the dreaded spectre glide into the room; \"_he_ can tell.--Oh, save\nme! save me!\" I imagined that the monster seized me; I struggled\nfuriously, and fell down in a fit.\n\nPoor Ariella! what must have been his feelings? A meeting, which he\nanticipated with such joy, so strangely turned to bitterness. But I was\nnot the witness of his grief; for I was lifeless, and did not recover my\nsenses for a long, long time.\n\nThis was the commencement of a nervous fever, which confined me for\nseveral months. During all that time Brennan was my only nurse. I\nafterwards learned that, knowing my father's advanced age, and unfitness\nfor so long a journey, and how wretched my sickness would make\nRaiden, he spared them this grief by concealing the extent of my\ndisorder. He knew that I could not have a more kind and attentive nurse\nthan himself; and, firm in the hope he felt of my recovery, he did not\ndoubt that, instead of doing harm, he performed the kindest action that\nhe could towards them.\n\nBut I was in reality very ill; and surely nothing but the unbounded and\nunremitting attentions of my friend could have restored me to life. The\nform of the monster on whom I had bestowed existence was for ever before\nmy eyes, and I raved incessantly concerning him. Doubtless my words\nsurprised Brennan: he at first believed them to be the wanderings of my\ndisturbed imagination; but the pertinacity with which I continually\nrecurred to the same subject persuaded him that my disorder indeed owed\nits origin to some uncommon and terrible event.\n\nBy very slow degrees, and with frequent relapses, that alarmed and\ngrieved my friend, I recovered. I remember the first time I became\ncapable of observing outward objects with any kind of pleasure, I\nperceived that the fallen leaves had disappeared, and that the young\nbuds were shooting forth from the trees that shaded my window. It was a\ndivine spring; and the season contributed greatly to my convalescence. I\nfelt also sentiments of joy and affection revive in my bosom; my gloom\ndisappeared, and in a short time I became as cheerful as before I was\nattacked by the fatal passion.\n\n\"Dearest Ariella,\" exclaimed I, \"how kind, how very good you are to me.\nThis whole winter, instead of being spent in study, as you promised\nyourself, has been consumed in my sick room. How shall I ever repay\nyou? I feel the greatest remorse for the disappointment of which I have\nbeen the occasion; but you will forgive me.\"\n\n\"You will repay me entirely, if you do not discompose yourself, but get\nwell as fast as you can; and since you appear in such good spirits, I\nmay speak to you on one subject, may I not?\"\n\nI trembled. One subject! what could it be? Could he allude to an object\non whom I dared not even think?\n\n\"Compose yourself,\" said Ariella, who observed my change of colour, \"I\nwill not mention it, if it agitates you; but your father and cousin\nwould be very happy if they received a letter from you in your own\nhand-writing. They hardly know how ill you have been, and are uneasy at\nyour long silence.\"\n\n\"Is that all? my dear Brennan. How could you suppose that my first thought\nwould not fly towards those dear, dear friends whom I love, and who are\nso deserving of my love.\"\n\n\"If this is your present temper, my friend, you will perhaps be glad to\nsee a letter that has been lying here some days for you: it is from your\ncousin, I believe.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAriella then put the following letter into my hands.\n\n\"_To_ V. JOEY.\n\n\"MY DEAR COUSIN,\n\n\"I cannot describe to you the uneasiness we have all felt concerning\nyour health. We cannot help imagining that your friend Ariella conceals\nthe extent of your disorder: for it is now several months since we have\nseen your hand-writing; and all this time you have been obliged to\ndictate your letters to Brennan. Surely, Kiran, you must have been\nexceedingly ill; and this makes us all very wretched, as much so nearly\nas after the death of your dear mother. My uncle was almost persuaded\nthat you were indeed dangerously ill, and could hardly be restrained\nfrom undertaking a journey to Ingolstadt. Ariella always writes that you\nare getting better; I eagerly hope that you will confirm this\nintelligence soon in your own hand-writing; for indeed, indeed, Kiran,\nwe are all very miserable on this account. Relieve us from this fear,\nand we shall be the happiest creatures in the world. Your father's\nhealth is now so vigorous, that he appears ten years younger since last\nwinter. Ernest also is so much improved, that you would hardly know him:\nhe is now nearly sixteen, and has lost that sickly appearance which he\nhad some years ago; he is grown quite robust and active.\n\n\"My uncle and I conversed a long time last night about what profession\nErnest should follow. His constant illness when young has deprived him\nof the habits of application; and now that he enjoys good health, he is\ncontinually in the open air, climbing the hills, or rowing on the lake.\nI therefore proposed that he should be a farmer; which you know, Cousin,\nis a favourite scheme of mine. A farmer's is a very healthy happy life;\nand the least hurtful, or rather the most beneficial profession of any.\nMy uncle had an idea of his being educated as an advocate, that through\nhis interest he might become a judge. But, besides that he is not at all\nfitted for such an occupation, it is certainly more creditable to\ncultivate the earth for the sustenance of man, than to be the confidant,\nand sometimes the accomplice, of his vices; which is the profession of a\nlawyer. I said, that the employments of a prosperous farmer, if they\nwere not a more honourable, they were at least a happier species of\noccupation than that of a judge, whose misfortune it was always to\nmeddle with the dark side of human nature. My uncle smiled, and said,\nthat I ought to be an advocate myself, which put an end to the\nconversation on that subject.\n\n\"And now I must tell you a little story that will please, and perhaps\namuse you. Do you not remember Allyson Kalia? Probably you do not; I\nwill relate her history, therefore, in a few words. Madame Kalia, her\nmother, was a widow with four children, of whom Allyson was the third.\nThis girl had always been the favourite of her father; but, through a\nstrange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and, after the\ndeath of M. Kalia, treated her very ill. My aunt observed this; and,\nwhen Allyson was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother to allow\nher to live at her house. The republican institutions of our country\nhave produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in\nthe great monarchies that surround it. Hence there is less distinction\nbetween the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders\nbeing neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined\nand moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant\nin France and England. Allyson, thus received in our family, learned the\nduties of a servant; a condition which, in our fortunate country, does\nnot include the idea of ignorance, and a sacrifice of the dignity of a\nhuman being.\n\n\"After what I have said, I dare say you well remember the heroine of my\nlittle tale: for Allyson was a great favourite of your's; and I\nrecollect you once remarked, that if you were in an ill humour, one\nglance from Allyson could dissipate it, for the same reason that Ariosto\ngives concerning the beauty of Angelica--she looked so frank-hearted and\nhappy. My aunt conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was\ninduced to give her an education superior to that which she had at\nfirst intended. This benefit was fully repaid; Allyson was the most\ngrateful little creature in the world: I do not mean that she made any\nprofessions, I never heard one pass her lips; but you could see by her\neyes that she almost adored her protectress. Although her disposition\nwas gay, and in many respects inconsiderate, yet she paid the greatest\nattention to every gesture of my aunt. She thought her the model of all\nexcellence, and endeavoured to imitate her phraseology and manners, so\nthat even now she often reminds me of her.\n\n\"When my dearest aunt died, every one was too much occupied in their own\ngrief to notice poor Allyson, who had attended her during her illness\nwith the most anxious affection. Poor Allyson was very ill; but other\ntrials were reserved for her.\n\n\"One by one, her brothers and sister died; and her mother, with the\nexception of her neglected daughter, was left childless. The conscience\nof the woman was troubled; she began to think that the deaths of her\nfavourites was a judgment from heaven to chastise her partiality. She\nwas a Roman Catholic; and I believe her confessor confirmed the idea\nwhich she had conceived. Accordingly, a few months after your departure\nfor Ingolstadt, Allyson was called home by her repentant mother. Poor\ngirl! she wept when she quitted our house: she was much altered since\nthe death of my aunt; grief had given softness and a winning mildness to\nher manners, which had before been remarkable for vivacity. Nor was her\nresidence at her mother's house of a nature to restore her gaiety. The\npoor woman was very vacillating in her repentance. She sometimes begged\nAllyson to forgive her unkindness, but much oftener accused her of\nhaving caused the deaths of her brothers and sister. Perpetual fretting\nat length threw Madame Kalia into a decline, which at first increased\nher irritability, but she is now at peace for ever. She died on the\nfirst approach of cold weather, at the beginning of this last winter.\nAllyson has returned to us; and I assure you I love her tenderly. She is\nvery clever and gentle, and extremely pretty; as I mentioned before, her\nmien and her expressions continually remind me of my dear aunt.\n\n\"I must say also a few words to you, my dear cousin, of little darling\nRosetta. I wish you could see him; he is very tall of his age, with\nsweet laughing blue eyes, dark eye-lashes, and curling hair. When he\nsmiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with\nhealth. He has already had one or two little _wives_, but Louisa Biron\nis his favourite, a pretty little girl of five years of age.\n\n\"Now, dear Kiran, I dare say you wish to be indulged in a little gossip\nconcerning the good people of Geneva. The pretty Miss Mansfield has\nalready received the congratulatory visits on her approaching marriage\nwith a young Englishman, John Melbourne, Esq. Her ugly sister, Manon,\nmarried M. Duvillard, the rich banker, last autumn. Your favourite\nschoolfellow, Louis Manoir, has suffered several misfortunes since the\ndeparture of Ariella from Geneva. But he has already recovered his\nspirits, and is reported to be on the point of marrying a very lively\npretty Frenchwoman, Madame Tavernier. She is a widow, and much older\nthan Manoir; but she is very much admired, and a favourite with every\nbody.\n\n\"I have written myself into good spirits, dear cousin; yet I cannot\nconclude without again anxiously inquiring concerning your health. Dear\nKiran, if you are not very ill, write yourself, and make your father\nand all of us happy; or----I cannot bear to think of the other side of\nthe question; my tears already flow. Adieu, my dearest cousin.\"\n\n\"RAIDEN MELINDA.\n\n\"Geneva, March 18th, 17--.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"Dear, dear Raiden!\" I exclaimed when I had read her letter, \"I will\nwrite instantly, and relieve them from the anxiety they must feel.\" I\nwrote, and this exertion greatly fatigued me; but my convalescence had\ncommenced, and proceeded regularly. In another fortnight I was able to\nleave my chamber.\n\nOne of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce Ariella to the\nseveral professors of the university. In doing this, I underwent a kind\nof rough usage, ill befitting the wounds that my mind had sustained.\nEver since the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of\nmy misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of\nnatural philosophy. When I was otherwise quite restored to health, the\nsight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous\nsymptoms. Brennan saw this, and had removed all my apparatus from my view.\nHe had also changed my apartment; for he perceived that I had acquired a\ndislike for the room which had previously been my laboratory. But these\ncares of Ariella were made of no avail when I visited the professors. M.\nLyle inflicted torture when he praised, with kindness and warmth, the\nastonishing progress I had made in the sciences. He soon perceived that\nI disliked the subject; but, not guessing the real cause, he attributed\nmy feelings to modesty, and changed the subject from my improvement to\nthe science itself, with a desire, as I evidently saw, of drawing me\nout. What could I do? He meant to please, and he tormented me. I felt as\nif he had placed carefully, one by one, in my view those instruments\nwhich were to be afterwards used in putting me to a slow and cruel\ndeath. I writhed under his words, yet dared not exhibit the pain I felt.\nAriella, whose eyes and feelings were always quick in discerning the\nsensations of others, declined the subject, alleging, in excuse, his\ntotal ignorance; and the conversation took a more general turn. I\nthanked my friend from my heart, but I did not speak. I saw plainly that\nhe was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from me; and\nalthough I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew\nno bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide to him that\nevent which was so often present to my recollection, but which I feared\nthe detail to another would only impress more deeply.\n\nM. Harriet was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time, of\nalmost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh blunt encomiums gave me\neven more pain than the benevolent approbation of M. Lyle. \"D--n the\nfellow!\" cried he; \"why, M. Ariella, I assure you he has outstript us\nall. Aye, stare if you please; but it is nevertheless true. A youngster\nwho, but a few years ago, believed Cornelius Agrippa as firmly as the\ngospel, has now set himself at the head of the university; and if he is\nnot soon pulled down, we shall all be out of countenance.--Aye, aye,\"\ncontinued he, observing my face expressive of suffering, \"M.\nJoey is modest; an excellent quality in a young man. Young men\nshould be diffident of themselves, you know, M. Ariella; I was myself\nwhen young: but that wears out in a very short time.\"\n\nM. Harriet had now commenced an eulogy on himself, which happily turned\nthe conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me.\n\nAriella was no natural philosopher. His imagination was too vivid for\nthe minutiae of science. Languages were his principal study; and he\nsought, by acquiring their elements, to open a field for\nself-instruction on his return to Geneva. Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew,\ngained his attention, after he had made himself perfectly master of\nGreek and Latin. For my own part, idleness had ever been irksome to me;\nand now that I wished to fly from reflection, and hated my former\nstudies, I felt great relief in being the fellow-pupil with my friend,\nand found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the\norientalists. Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating to a\ndegree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country.\nWhen you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and\ngarden of roses,--in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire\nthat consumes your own heart. How different from the manly and heroical\npoetry of Greece and Rome.\n\nSummer passed away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was\nfixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several\naccidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable,\nand my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. I felt this delay\nvery bitterly; for I longed to see my native town, and my beloved\nfriends. My return had only been delayed so long from an unwillingness\nto leave Ariella in a strange place, before he had become acquainted\nwith any of its inhabitants. The winter, however, was spent cheerfully;\nand although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came, its beauty\ncompensated for its dilatoriness.\n\nThe month of May had already commenced, and I expected the letter daily\nwhich was to fix the date of my departure, when Brennan proposed a\npedestrian tour in the environs of Ingolstadt that I might bid a\npersonal farewell to the country I had so long inhabited. I acceded\nwith pleasure to this proposition: I was fond of exercise, and Ariella\nhad always been my favourite companion in the rambles of this nature\nthat I had taken among the scenes of my native country.\n\nWe passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits had\nlong been restored, and they gained additional strength from the\nsalubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress, and\nthe conversation of my friend. Study had before secluded me from the\nintercourse of my fellow-creatures, and rendered me unsocial; but\nAriella called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me\nto love the aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children.\nExcellent friend! how sincerely did you love me, and endeavour to\nelevate my mind, until it was on a level with your own. A selfish\npursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection\nwarmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature who, a few\nyears ago, loving and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care. When happy,\ninanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful\nsensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstacy. The\npresent season was indeed divine; the flowers of spring bloomed in the\nhedges, while those of summer were already in bud: I was undisturbed by\nthoughts which during the preceding year had pressed upon me,\nnotwithstanding my endeavours to throw them off, with an invincible\nburden.\n\nBrennan rejoiced in my gaiety, and sincerely sympathized in my feelings:\nhe exerted himself to amuse me, while he expressed the sensations that\nfilled his soul. The resources of his mind on this occasion were truly\nastonishing: his conversation was full of imagination; and very often,\nin imitation of the Persian and Arabic writers, he invented tales of\nwonderful fancy and passion. At other times he repeated my favourite\npoems, or drew me out into arguments, which he supported with great\ningenuity.\n\nWe returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were\ndancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits\nwere high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and\nhilarity.\n\n\n\n\n\nOn my return, I found the following letter from my father:--\n\n\n\"_To_ V. JOEY.\n\n\"MY DEAR KIRAN,\n\n\"You have probably waited impatiently for a letter to fix the date of\nyour return to us; and I was at first tempted to write only a few lines,\nmerely mentioning the day on which I should expect you. But that would\nbe a cruel kindness, and I dare not do it. What would be your surprise,\nmy son, when you expected a happy and gay welcome, to behold, on the\ncontrary, tears and wretchedness? And how, Kiran, can I relate our\nmisfortune? Absence cannot have rendered you callous to our joys and\ngriefs; and how shall I inflict pain on an absent child? I wish to\nprepare you for the woeful news, but I know it is impossible; even now\nyour eye skims over the page, to seek the words which are to convey to\nyou the horrible tidings.\n\n\"Rosetta is dead!--that sweet child, whose smiles delighted and warmed\nmy heart, who was so gentle, yet so gay! Kiran, he is murdered!\n\n\"I will not attempt to console you; but will simply relate the\ncircumstances of the transaction.\n\n\"Last Thursday (May 7th) I, my niece, and your two brothers, went to\nwalk in Plainpalais. The evening was warm and serene, and we prolonged\nour walk farther than usual. It was already dusk before we thought of\nreturning; and then we discovered that Rosetta and Ernest, who had gone\non before, were not to be found. We accordingly rested on a seat until\nthey should return. Presently Ernest came, and inquired if we had seen\nhis brother: he said, that they had been playing together, that Rosetta\nhad run away to hide himself, and that he vainly sought for him, and\nafterwards waited for him a long time, but that he did not return.\n\n\"This account rather alarmed us, and we continued to search for him\nuntil night fell, when Raiden conjectured that he might have returned\nto the house. He was not there. We returned again, with torches; for I\ncould not rest, when I thought that my sweet boy had lost himself, and\nwas exposed to all the damps and dews of night: Raiden also suffered\nextreme anguish. About five in the morning I discovered my lovely boy,\nwhom the night before I had seen blooming and active in health,\nstretched on the grass livid and motionless: the print of the murderer's\nfinger was on his neck.\n\n\"He was conveyed home, and the anguish that was visible in my\ncountenance betrayed the secret to Raiden. She was very earnest to\nsee the corpse. At first I attempted to prevent her; but she persisted,\nand entering the room where it lay, hastily examined the neck of the\nvictim, and clasping her hands exclaimed, 'O God! I have murdered my\ndarling infant!'\n\n\"She fainted, and was restored with extreme difficulty. When she again\nlived, it was only to weep and sigh. She told me, that that same evening\nRosetta had teazed her to let him wear a very valuable miniature that\nshe possessed of your mother. This picture is gone, and was doubtless\nthe temptation which urged the murderer to the deed. We have no trace of\nhim at present, although our exertions to discover him are unremitted;\nbut they will not restore my beloved Rosetta.\n\n\"Come, dearest Kiran; you alone can console Raiden. She weeps\ncontinually, and accuses herself unjustly as the cause of his death; her\nwords pierce my heart. We are all unhappy; but will not that be an\nadditional motive for you, my son, to return and be our comforter? Your\ndear mother! Alas, Kiran! I now say, Thank God she did not live to\nwitness the cruel, miserable death of her youngest darling!\n\n\"Come, Kiran; not brooding thoughts of vengeance against the assassin,\nbut with feelings of peace and gentleness, that will heal, instead of\nfestering the wounds of our minds. Enter the house of mourning, my\nfriend, but with kindness and affection for those who love you, and not\nwith hatred for your enemies.\n\n\"Your affectionate and afflicted father,\n\n\"GUY JOEY.\n\n\"Geneva, May 12th, 17--.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAriella, who had watched my countenance as I read this letter, was\nsurprised to observe the despair that succeeded to the joy I at first\nexpressed on receiving news from my friends. I threw the letter on the\ntable, and covered my face with my hands.\n\n\"My dear Joey,\" exclaimed Brennan, when he perceived me weep with\nbitterness, \"are you always to be unhappy? My dear friend, what has\nhappened?\"\n\nI motioned to him to take up the letter, while I walked up and down the\nroom in the extremest agitation. Tears also gushed from the eyes of\nAriella, as he read the account of my misfortune.\n\n\"I can offer you no consolation, my friend,\" said he; \"your disaster is\nirreparable. What do you intend to do?\"\n\n\"To go instantly to Geneva: come with me, Brennan, to order the horses.\"\n\nDuring our walk, Ariella endeavoured to raise my spirits. He did not do\nthis by common topics of consolation, but by exhibiting the truest\nsympathy. \"Poor Rosetta!\" said he, \"that dear child; he now sleeps with\nhis angel mother. His friends mourn and weep, but he is at rest: he does\nnot now feel the murderer's grasp; a sod covers his gentle form, and he\nknows no pain. He can no longer be a fit subject for pity; the survivors\nare the greatest sufferers, and for them time is the only consolation.\nThose maxims of the Stoics, that death was no evil, and that the mind of\nman ought to be superior to despair on the eternal absence of a beloved\nobject, ought not to be urged. Even Cato wept over the dead body of his\nbrother.\"\n\nAriella spoke thus as we hurried through the streets; the words\nimpressed themselves on my mind, and I remembered them afterwards in\nsolitude. But now, as soon as the horses arrived, I hurried into a\ncabriole, and bade farewell to my friend.\n\nMy journey was very melancholy. At first I wished to hurry on, for I\nlonged to console and sympathize with my loved and sorrowing friends;\nbut when I drew near my native town, I slackened my progress. I could\nhardly sustain the multitude of feelings that crowded into my mind. I\npassed through scenes familiar to my youth, but which I had not seen for\nnearly six years. How altered every thing might be during that time? One\nsudden and desolating change had taken place; but a thousand little\ncircumstances might have by degrees worked other alterations which,\nalthough they were done more tranquilly, might not be the less decisive.\nFear overcame me; I dared not advance, dreading a thousand nameless\nevils that made me tremble, although I was unable to define them.\n\nI remained two days at Lausanne, in this painful state of mind. I\ncontemplated the lake: the waters were placid; all around was calm, and\nthe snowy mountains, \"the palaces of nature,\" were not changed. By\ndegrees the calm and heavenly scene restored me, and I continued my\njourney towards Geneva.\n\nThe road ran by the side of the lake, which became narrower as I\napproached my native town. I discovered more distinctly the black sides\nof Jura, and the bright summit of Mont Blanc; I wept like a child: \"Dear\nmountains! my own beautiful lake! how do you welcome your wanderer? Your\nsummits are clear; the sky and lake are blue and placid. Is this to\nprognosticate peace, or to mock at my unhappiness?\"\n\nI fear, my friend, that I shall render myself tedious by dwelling on\nthese preliminary circumstances; but they were days of comparative\nhappiness, and I think of them with pleasure. My country, my beloved\ncountry! who but a native can tell the delight I took in again beholding\nthy streams, thy mountains, and, more than all, thy lovely lake.\n\nYet, as I drew nearer home, grief and fear again overcame me. Night also\nclosed around; and when I could hardly see the dark mountains, I felt\nstill more gloomily. The picture appeared a vast and dim scene of evil,\nand I foresaw obscurely that I was destined to become the most wretched\nof human beings. Alas! I prophesied truly, and failed only in one single\ncircumstance, that in all the misery I imagined and dreaded, I did not\nconceive the hundredth part of the anguish I was destined to endure.\n\nIt was completely dark when I arrived in the environs of Geneva; the\ngates of the town were already shut; and I was obliged to pass the night\nat Secheron, a village half a league to the east of the city. The sky\nwas serene; and, as I was unable to rest, I resolved to visit the spot\nwhere my poor Rosetta had been murdered. As I could not pass through the\ntown, I was obliged to cross the lake in a boat to arrive at\nPlainpalais. During this short voyage I saw the lightnings playing on\nthe summit of Mont Blanc in the most beautiful figures. The storm\nappeared to approach rapidly; and, on landing, I ascended a low hill,\nthat I might observe its progress. It advanced; the heavens were\nclouded, and I soon felt the rain coming slowly in large drops, but its\nviolence quickly increased.\n\nI quitted my seat, and walked on, although the darkness and storm\nincreased every minute, and the thunder burst with a terrific crash\nover my head. It was echoed from Saleve, the Juras, and the Alps of\nSavoy; vivid flashes of lightning dazzled my eyes, illuminating the\nlake, making it appear like a vast sheet of fire; then for an instant\nevery thing seemed of a pitchy darkness, until the eye recovered itself\nfrom the preceding flash. The storm, as is often the case in\nSwitzerland, appeared at once in various parts of the heavens. The most\nviolent storm hung exactly north of the town, over that part of the lake\nwhich lies between the promontory of Belrive and the village of Copet.\nAnother storm enlightened Jura with faint flashes; and another darkened\nand sometimes disclosed the Mole, a peaked mountain to the east of the\nlake.\n\nWhile I watched the storm, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with\na hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped\nmy hands, and exclaimed aloud, \"Rosetta, dear angel! this is thy\nfuneral, this thy dirge!\" As I said these words, I perceived in the\ngloom a figure which stole from behind a clump of trees near me; I stood\nfixed, gazing intently: I could not be mistaken. A flash of lightning\nilluminated the object, and discovered its shape plainly to me; its\ngigantic stature, and the deformity of its aspect, more hideous than\nbelongs to humanity, instantly informed me that it was the wretch, the\nfilthy daemon to whom I had given life. What did he there? Could he be (I\nshuddered at the conception) the murderer of my brother? No sooner did\nthat idea cross my imagination, than I became convinced of its truth; my\nteeth chattered, and I was forced to lean against a tree for support.\nThe figure passed me quickly, and I lost it in the gloom. Nothing in\nhuman shape could have destroyed that fair child. _He_ was the murderer!\nI could not doubt it. The mere presence of the idea was an irresistible\nproof of the fact. I thought of pursuing the devil; but it would have\nbeen in vain, for another flash discovered him to me hanging among the\nrocks of the nearly perpendicular ascent of Mont Saleve, a hill that\nbounds Plainpalais on the south. He soon reached the summit, and\ndisappeared.\n\nI remained motionless. The thunder ceased; but the rain still continued,\nand the scene was enveloped in an impenetrable darkness. I revolved in\nmy mind the events which I had until now sought to forget: the whole\ntrain of my progress towards the creation; the appearance of the work of\nmy own hands alive at my bed side; its departure. Two years had now\nnearly elapsed since the night on which he first received life; and was\nthis his first crime? Alas! I had turned loose into the world a depraved\nwretch, whose delight was in carnage and misery; had he not murdered my\nbrother?\n\nNo one can conceive the anguish I suffered during the remainder of the\nnight, which I spent, cold and wet, in the open air. But I did not feel\nthe inconvenience of the weather; my imagination was busy in scenes of\nevil and despair. I considered the being whom I had cast among mankind,\nand endowed with the will and power to effect purposes of horror, such\nas the deed which he had now done, nearly in the light of my own\nvampire, my own spirit let loose from the grave, and forced to destroy\nall that was dear to me.\n\nDay dawned; and I directed my steps towards the town. The gates were\nopen; and I hastened to my father's house. My first thought was to\ndiscover what I knew of the murderer, and cause instant pursuit to be\nmade. But I paused when I reflected on the story that I had to tell. A\nbeing whom I myself had formed, and endued with life, had met me at\nmidnight among the precipices of an inaccessible mountain. I remembered\nalso the nervous fever with which I had been seized just at the time\nthat I dated my creation, and which would give an air of delirium to a\ntale otherwise so utterly improbable. I well knew that if any other had\ncommunicated such a relation to me, I should have looked upon it as the\nravings of insanity. Besides, the strange nature of the animal would\nelude all pursuit, even if I were so far credited as to persuade my\nrelatives to commence it. Besides, of what use would be pursuit? Who\ncould arrest a creature capable of scaling the overhanging sides of Mont\nSaleve? These reflections determined me, and I resolved to remain\nsilent.\n\nIt was about five in the morning when I entered my father's house. I\ntold the servants not to disturb the family, and went into the library\nto attend their usual hour of rising.\n\nSix years had elapsed, passed as a dream but for one indelible trace,\nand I stood in the same place where I had last embraced my father before\nmy departure for Ingolstadt. Beloved and respectable parent! He still\nremained to me. I gazed on the picture of my mother, which stood over\nthe mantle-piece. It was an historical subject, painted at my father's\ndesire, and represented Caroline Blaine in an agony of despair,\nkneeling by the coffin of her dead father. Her garb was rustic, and her\ncheek pale; but there was an air of dignity and beauty, that hardly\npermitted the sentiment of pity. Below this picture was a miniature of\nRosetta; and my tears flowed when I looked upon it. While I was thus\nengaged, Ernest entered: he had heard me arrive, and hastened to welcome\nme. He expressed a sorrowful delight to see me: \"Welcome, my dearest\nKiran,\" said he. \"Ah! I wish you had come three months ago, and then\nyou would have found us all joyous and delighted. But we are now\nunhappy; and, I am afraid, tears instead of smiles will be your welcome.\nOur father looks so sorrowful: this dreadful event seems to have revived\nin his mind his grief on the death of Mamma. Poor Raiden also is\nquite inconsolable.\" Ernest began to weep as he said these words.\n\n\"Do not,\" said I, \"welcome me thus; try to be more calm, that I may not\nbe absolutely miserable the moment I enter my father's house after so\nlong an absence. But, tell me, how does my father support his\nmisfortunes? and how is my poor Raiden?\"\n\n\"She indeed requires consolation; she accused herself of having caused\nthe death of my brother, and that made her very wretched. But since the\nmurderer has been discovered----\"\n\n\"The murderer discovered! Good God! how can that be? who could attempt\nto pursue him? It is impossible; one might as well try to overtake the\nwinds, or confine a mountain-stream with a straw.\"\n\n\"I do not know what you mean; but we were all very unhappy when she was\ndiscovered. No one would believe it at first; and even now Raiden\nwill not be convinced, notwithstanding all the evidence. Indeed, who\nwould credit that Allyson Kalia, who was so amiable, and fond of all\nthe family, could all at once become so extremely wicked?\"\n\n\"Allyson Kalia! Poor, poor girl, is she the accused? But it is\nwrongfully; every one knows that; no one believes it, surely, Ernest?\"\n\n\"No one did at first; but several circumstances came out, that have\nalmost forced conviction upon us: and her own behaviour has been so\nconfused, as to add to the evidence of facts a weight that, I fear,\nleaves no hope for doubt. But she will be tried to-day, and you will\nthen hear all.\"\n\nHe related that, the morning on which the murder of poor Rosetta had\nbeen discovered, Allyson had been taken ill, and confined to her bed;\nand, after several days, one of the servants, happening to examine the\napparel she had worn on the night of the murder, had discovered in her\npocket the picture of my mother, which had been judged to be the\ntemptation of the murderer. The servant instantly shewed it to one of\nthe others, who, without saying a word to any of the family, went to a\nmagistrate; and, upon their deposition, Allyson was apprehended. On\nbeing charged with the fact, the poor girl confirmed the suspicion in a\ngreat measure by her extreme confusion of manner.\n\nThis was a strange tale, but it did not shake my faith; and I replied\nearnestly, \"You are all mistaken; I know the murderer. Allyson, poor,\ngood Allyson, is innocent.\"\n\nAt that instant my father entered. I saw unhappiness deeply impressed on\nhis countenance, but he endeavoured to welcome me cheerfully; and, after\nwe had exchanged our mournful greeting, would have introduced some other\ntopic than that of our disaster, had not Ernest exclaimed, \"Good God,\nPapa! Kiran says that he knows who was the murderer of poor Rosetta.\"\n\n\"We do also, unfortunately,\" replied my father; \"for indeed I had rather\nhave been for ever ignorant than have discovered so much depravity and\ningratitude in one I valued so highly.\"\n\n\"My dear father, you are mistaken; Allyson is innocent.\"\n\n\"If she is, God forbid that she should suffer as guilty. She is to be\ntried to-day, and I hope, I sincerely hope, that she will be acquitted.\"\n\nThis speech calmed me. I was firmly convinced in my own mind that\nAllyson, and indeed every human being, was guiltless of this murder. I\nhad no fear, therefore, that any circumstantial evidence could be\nbrought forward strong enough to convict her; and, in this assurance, I\ncalmed myself, expecting the trial with eagerness, but without\nprognosticating an evil result.\n\nWe were soon joined by Raiden. Time had made great alterations in her\nform since I had last beheld her. Six years before she had been a\npretty, good-humoured girl, whom every one loved and caressed. She was\nnow a woman in stature and expression of countenance, which was\nuncommonly lovely. An open and capacious forehead gave indications of a\ngood understanding, joined to great frankness of disposition. Her eyes\nwere hazel, and expressive of mildness, now through recent affliction\nallied to sadness. Her hair was of a rich, dark auburn, her complexion\nfair, and her figure slight and graceful. She welcomed me with the\ngreatest affection. \"Your arrival, my dear cousin,\" said she, \"fills me\nwith hope. You perhaps will find some means to justify my poor guiltless\nAllyson. Alas! who is safe, if she be convicted of crime? I rely on her\ninnocence as certainly as I do upon my own. Our misfortune is doubly\nhard to us; we have not only lost that lovely darling boy, but this poor\ngirl, whom I sincerely love, is to be torn away by even a worse fate. If\nshe is condemned, I never shall know joy more. But she will not, I am\nsure she will not; and then I shall be happy again, even after the sad\ndeath of my little Rosetta.\"\n\n\"She is innocent, my Raiden,\" said I, \"and that shall be proved;\nfear nothing, but let your spirits be cheered by the assurance of her\nacquittal.\"\n\n\"How kind you are! every one else believes in her guilt, and that made\nme wretched; for I knew that it was impossible: and to see every one\nelse prejudiced in so deadly a manner, rendered me hopeless and\ndespairing.\" She wept.\n\n\"Sweet niece,\" said my father, \"dry your tears. If she is, as you\nbelieve, innocent, rely on the justice of our judges, and the activity\nwith which I shall prevent the slightest shadow of partiality.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe passed a few sad hours, until eleven o'clock, when the trial was to\ncommence. My father and the rest of the family being obliged to attend\nas witnesses, I accompanied them to the court. During the whole of this\nwretched mockery of justice, I suffered living torture. It was to be\ndecided, whether the result of my curiosity and lawless devices would\ncause the death of two of my fellow-beings: one a smiling babe, full of\ninnocence and joy; the other far more dreadfully murdered, with every\naggravation of infamy that could make the murder memorable in horror.\nAllyson also was a girl of merit, and possessed qualities which promised\nto render her life happy: now all was to be obliterated in an\nignominious grave; and I the cause! A thousand times rather would I have\nconfessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Allyson; but I was\nabsent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been\nconsidered as the ravings of a madman, and would not have exculpated her\nwho suffered through me.\n\nThe appearance of Allyson was calm. She was dressed in mourning; and her\ncountenance, always engaging, was rendered, by the solemnity of her\nfeelings, exquisitely beautiful. Yet she appeared confident in\ninnocence, and did not tremble, although gazed on and execrated by\nthousands; for all the kindness which her beauty might otherwise have\nexcited, was obliterated in the minds of the spectators by the\nimagination of the enormity she was supposed to have committed. She was\ntranquil, yet her tranquillity was evidently constrained; and as her\nconfusion had before been adduced as a proof of her guilt, she worked up\nher mind to an appearance of courage. When she entered the court, she\nthrew her eyes round it, and quickly discovered where we were seated. A\ntear seemed to dim her eye when she saw us; but she quickly recovered\nherself, and a look of sorrowful affection seemed to attest her utter\nguiltlessness.\n\nThe trial began; and after the advocate against her had stated the\ncharge, several witnesses were called. Several strange facts combined\nagainst her, which might have staggered any one who had not such proof\nof her innocence as I had. She had been out the whole of the night on\nwhich the murder had been committed, and towards morning had been\nperceived by a market-woman not far from the spot where the body of the\nmurdered child had been afterwards found. The woman asked her what she\ndid there; but she looked very strangely, and only returned a confused\nand unintelligible answer. She returned to the house about eight\no'clock; and when one inquired where she had passed the night, she\nreplied, that she had been looking for the child, and demanded\nearnestly, if any thing had been heard concerning him. When shewn the\nbody, she fell into violent hysterics, and kept her bed for several\ndays. The picture was then produced, which the servant had found in her\npocket; and when Raiden, in a faltering voice, proved that it was the\nsame which, an hour before the child had been missed, she had placed\nround his neck, a murmur of horror and indignation filled the court.\n\nAllyson was called on for her defence. As the trial had proceeded, her\ncountenance had altered. Surprise, horror, and misery, were strongly\nexpressed. Sometimes she struggled with her tears; but when she was\ndesired to plead, she collected her powers, and spoke in an audible\nalthough variable voice:--\n\n\"God knows,\" she said, \"how entirely I am innocent. But I do not pretend\nthat my protestations should acquit me: I rest my innocence on a plain\nand simple explanation of the facts which have been adduced against me;\nand I hope the character I have always borne will incline my judges to a\nfavourable interpretation, where any circumstance appears doubtful or\nsuspicious.\"\n\nShe then related that, by the permission of Raiden, she had passed\nthe evening of the night on which the murder had been committed, at the\nhouse of an aunt at Chene, a village situated at about a league from\nGeneva. On her return, at about nine o'clock, she met a man, who asked\nher if she had seen any thing of the child who was lost. She was alarmed\nby this account, and passed several hours in looking for him, when the\ngates of Geneva were shut, and she was forced to remain several hours of\nthe night in a barn belonging to a cottage, being unwilling to call up\nthe inhabitants, to whom she was well known. Unable to rest or sleep,\nshe quitted her asylum early, that she might again endeavour to find my\nbrother. If she had gone near the spot where his body lay, it was\nwithout her knowledge. That she had been bewildered when questioned by\nthe market-woman, was not surprising, since she had passed a sleepless\nnight, and the fate of poor Rosetta was yet uncertain. Concerning the\npicture she could give no account.\n\n\"I know,\" continued the unhappy victim, \"how heavily and fatally this\none circumstance weighs against me, but I have no power of explaining\nit; and when I have expressed my utter ignorance, I am only left to\nconjecture concerning the probabilities by which it might have been\nplaced in my pocket. But here also I am checked. I believe that I have\nno enemy on earth, and none surely would have been so wicked as to\ndestroy me wantonly. Did the murderer place it there? I know of no\nopportunity afforded him for so doing; or if I had, why should he have\nstolen the jewel, to part with it again so soon?\n\n\"I commit my cause to the justice of my judges, yet I see no room for\nhope. I beg permission to have a few witnesses examined concerning my\ncharacter; and if their testimony shall not overweigh my supposed guilt,\nI must be condemned, although I would pledge my salvation on my\ninnocence.\"\n\nSeveral witnesses were called, who had known her for many years, and\nthey spoke well of her; but fear, and hatred of the crime of which they\nsupposed her guilty, rendered them timorous, and unwilling to come\nforward. Raiden saw even this last resource, her excellent\ndispositions and irreproachable conduct, about to fail the accused,\nwhen, although violently agitated, she desired permission to address the\ncourt.\n\n\"I am,\" said she, \"the cousin of the unhappy child who was murdered, or\nrather his sister, for I was educated by and have lived with his parents\never since and even long before his birth. It may therefore be judged\nindecent in me to come forward on this occasion; but when I see a\nfellow-creature about to perish through the cowardice of her pretended\nfriends, I wish to be allowed to speak, that I may say what I know of\nher character. I am well acquainted with the accused. I have lived in\nthe same house with her, at one time for five, and at another for nearly\ntwo years. During all that period she appeared to me the most amiable\nand benevolent of human creatures. She nursed Madame Joey, my\naunt, in her last illness with the greatest affection and care; and\nafterwards attended her own mother during a tedious illness, in a manner\nthat excited the admiration of all who knew her. After which she again\nlived in my uncle's house, where she was beloved by all the family. She\nwas warmly attached to the child who is now dead, and acted towards him\nlike a most affectionate mother. For my own part, I do not hesitate to\nsay, that, notwithstanding all the evidence produced against her, I\nbelieve and rely on her perfect innocence. She had no temptation for\nsuch an action: as to the bauble on which the chief proof rests, if she\nhad earnestly desired it, I should have willingly given it to her; so\nmuch do I esteem and value her.\"\n\nExcellent Raiden! A murmur of approbation was heard; but it was\nexcited by her generous interference, and not in favour of poor Allyson,\non whom the public indignation was turned with renewed violence,\ncharging her with the blackest ingratitude. She herself wept as\nRaiden spoke, but she did not answer. My own agitation and anguish\nwas extreme during the whole trial. I believed in her innocence; I knew\nit. Could the daemon, who had (I did not for a minute doubt) murdered my\nbrother, also in his hellish sport have betrayed the innocent to death\nand ignominy. I could not sustain the horror of my situation; and when I\nperceived that the popular voice, and the countenances of the judges,\nhad already condemned my unhappy victim, I rushed out of the court in\nagony. The tortures of the accused did not equal mine; she was sustained\nby innocence, but the fangs of remorse tore my bosom, and would not\nforego their hold.\n\nI passed a night of unmingled wretchedness. In the morning I went to the\ncourt; my lips and throat were parched. I dared not ask the fatal\nquestion; but I was known, and the officer guessed the cause of my\nvisit. The ballots had been thrown; they were all black, and Allyson was\ncondemned.\n\nI cannot pretend to describe what I then felt. I had before experienced\nsensations of horror; and I have endeavoured to bestow upon them\nadequate expressions, but words cannot convey an idea of the\nheart-sickening despair that I then endured. The person to whom I\naddressed myself added, that Allyson had already confessed her guilt.\n\"That evidence,\" he observed, \"was hardly required in so glaring a case,\nbut I am glad of it; and, indeed, none of our judges like to condemn a\ncriminal upon circumstantial evidence, be it ever so decisive.\"\n\nWhen I returned home, Raiden eagerly demanded the result.\n\n\"My cousin,\" replied I, \"it is decided as you may have expected; all\njudges had rather that ten innocent should suffer, than that one guilty\nshould escape. But she has confessed.\"\n\nThis was a dire blow to poor Raiden, who had relied with firmness\nupon Allyson's innocence. \"Alas!\" said she, \"how shall I ever again\nbelieve in human benevolence? Allyson, whom I loved and esteemed as my\nsister, how could she put on those smiles of innocence only to betray;\nher mild eyes seemed incapable of any severity or ill-humour, and yet\nshe has committed a murder.\"\n\nSoon after we heard that the poor victim had expressed a wish to see my\ncousin. My father wished her not to go; but said, that he left it to her\nown judgment and feelings to decide. \"Yes,\" said Raiden, \"I will go,\nalthough she is guilty; and you, Kiran, shall accompany me: I cannot go\nalone.\" The idea of this visit was torture to me, yet I could not\nrefuse.\n\nWe entered the gloomy prison-chamber, and beheld Allyson sitting on some\nstraw at the further end; her hands were manacled, and her head rested\non her knees. She rose on seeing us enter; and when we were left alone\nwith her, she threw herself at the feet of Raiden, weeping bitterly.\nMy cousin wept also.\n\n\"Oh, Allyson!\" said she, \"why did you rob me of my last consolation. I\nrelied on your innocence; and although I was then very wretched, I was\nnot so miserable as I am now.\"\n\n\"And do you also believe that I am so very, very wicked? Do you also\njoin with my enemies to crush me?\" Her voice was suffocated with sobs.\n\n\"Rise, my poor girl,\" said Raiden, \"why do you kneel, if you are\ninnocent? I am not one of your enemies; I believed you guiltless,\nnotwithstanding every evidence, until I heard that you had yourself\ndeclared your guilt. That report, you say, is false; and be assured,\ndear Allyson, that nothing can shake my confidence in you for a moment,\nbut your own confession.\"\n\n\"I did confess; but I confessed a lie. I confessed, that I might obtain\nabsolution; but now that falsehood lies heavier at my heart than all my\nother sins. The God of heaven forgive me! Ever since I was condemned, my\nconfessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost\nbegan to think that I was the monster that he said I was. He threatened\nexcommunication and hell fire in my last moments, if I continued\nobdurate. Dear lady, I had none to support me; all looked on me as a\nwretch doomed to ignominy and perdition. What could I do? In an evil\nhour I subscribed to a lie; and now only am I truly miserable.\"\n\nShe paused, weeping, and then continued--\"I thought with horror, my\nsweet lady, that you should believe your Allyson, whom your blessed aunt\nhad so highly honoured, and whom you loved, was a creature capable of a\ncrime which none but the devil himself could have perpetrated. Dear\nRosetta! dearest blessed child! I soon shall see you again in heaven,\nwhere we shall all be happy; and that consoles me, going as I am to\nsuffer ignominy and death.\"\n\n\"Oh, Allyson! forgive me for having for one moment distrusted you. Why\ndid you confess? But do not mourn, my dear girl; I will every where\nproclaim your innocence, and force belief. Yet you must die; you, my\nplayfellow, my companion, my more than sister. I never can survive so\nhorrible a misfortune.\"\n\n\"Dear, sweet Raiden, do not weep. You ought to raise me with thoughts\nof a better life, and elevate me from the petty cares of this world of\ninjustice and strife. Do not you, excellent friend, drive me to\ndespair.\"\n\n\"I will try to comfort you; but this, I fear, is an evil too deep and\npoignant to admit of consolation, for there is no hope. Yet heaven\nbless thee, my dearest Allyson, with resignation, and a confidence\nelevated beyond this world. Oh! how I hate its shews and mockeries! when\none creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of life in a\nslow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking\nwith the blood of innocence, believe that they have done a great deed.\nThey call this _retribution_. Hateful name! When that word is\npronounced, I know greater and more horrid punishments are going to be\ninflicted than the gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his\nutmost revenge. Yet this is not consolation for you, my Allyson, unless\nindeed that you may glory in escaping from so miserable a den. Alas! I\nwould I were in peace with my aunt and my lovely Rosetta, escaped from a\nworld which is hateful to me, and the visages of men which I abhor.\"\n\nAllyson smiled languidly. \"This, dear lady, is despair, and not\nresignation. I must not learn the lesson that you would teach me. Talk\nof something else, something that will bring peace, and not increase of\nmisery.\"\n\nDuring this conversation I had retired to a corner of the prison-room,\nwhere I could conceal the horrid anguish that possessed me. Despair! Who\ndared talk of that? The poor victim, who on the morrow was to pass the\ndreary boundary between life and death, felt not as I did, such deep and\nbitter agony. I gnashed my teeth, and ground them together, uttering a\ngroan that came from my inmost soul. Allyson started. When she saw who\nit was, she approached me, and said, \"Dear Sir, you are very kind to\nvisit me; you, I hope, do not believe that I am guilty.\"\n\nI could not answer. \"No, Allyson,\" said Raiden; \"he is more convinced\nof your innocence than I was; for even when he heard that you had\nconfessed, he did not credit it.\"\n\n\"I truly thank him. In these last moments I feel the sincerest gratitude\ntowards those who think of me with kindness. How sweet is the affection\nof others to such a wretch as I am! It removes more than half my\nmisfortune; and I feel as if I could die in peace, now that my innocence\nis acknowledged by you, dear lady, and your cousin.\"\n\nThus the poor sufferer tried to comfort others and herself. She indeed\ngained the resignation she desired. But I, the true murderer, felt the\nnever-dying worm alive in my bosom, which allowed of no hope or\nconsolation. Raiden also wept, and was unhappy; but her's also was\nthe misery of innocence, which, like a cloud that passes over the fair\nmoon, for a while hides, but cannot tarnish its brightness. Anguish and\ndespair had penetrated into the core of my heart; I bore a hell within\nme, which nothing could extinguish. We staid several hours with Allyson;\nand it was with great difficulty that Raiden could tear herself away.\n\"I wish,\" cried she, \"that I were to die with you; I cannot live in this\nworld of misery.\"\n\nAllyson assumed an air of cheerfulness, while she with difficulty\nrepressed her bitter tears. She embraced Raiden, and said, in a voice\nof half-suppressed emotion, \"Farewell, sweet lady, dearest Raiden, my\nbeloved and only friend; may heaven in its bounty bless and preserve\nyou; may this be the last misfortune that you will ever suffer. Live,\nand be happy, and make others so.\"\n\nAs we returned, Raiden said, \"You know not, my dear Kiran, how much\nI am relieved, now that I trust in the innocence of this unfortunate\ngirl. I never could again have known peace, if I had been deceived in my\nreliance on her. For the moment that I did believe her guilty, I felt an\nanguish that I could not have long sustained. Now my heart is lightened.\nThe innocent suffers; but she whom I thought amiable and good has not\nbetrayed the trust I reposed in her, and I am consoled.\"\n\nAmiable cousin! such were your thoughts, mild and gentle as your own\ndear eyes and voice. But I--I was a wretch, and none ever conceived of\nthe misery that I then endured.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nNothing is more painful to the human mind, than, after the feelings have\nbeen worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of\ninaction and certainty which follows, and deprives the soul both of hope\nand fear. Allyson died; she rested; and I was alive. The blood flowed\nfreely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my\nheart, which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered\nlike an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond\ndescription horrible, and more, much more, (I persuaded myself) was yet\nbehind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness, and the love of virtue. I\nhad begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment\nwhen I should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my\nfellow-beings. Now all was blasted: instead of that serenity of\nconscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with\nself-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I\nwas seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to\na hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe.\n\nThis state of mind preyed upon my health, which had entirely recovered\nfrom the first shock it had sustained. I shunned the face of man; all\nsound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only\nconsolation--deep, dark, death-like solitude.\n\nMy father observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my\ndisposition and habits, and endeavoured to reason with me on the folly\nof giving way to immoderate grief. \"Do you think, Kiran,\" said he,\n\"that I do not suffer also? No one could love a child more than I loved\nyour brother;\" (tears came into his eyes as he spoke); \"but is it not a\nduty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their\nunhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed\nto yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or\neven the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for\nsociety.\"\n\nThis advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case; I\nshould have been the first to hide my grief, and console my friends, if\nremorse had not mingled its bitterness with my other sensations. Now I\ncould only answer my father with a look of despair, and endeavour to\nhide myself from his view.\n\nAbout this time we retired to our house at Belrive. This change was\nparticularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the gates regularly at ten\no'clock, and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that\nhour, had rendered our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome\nto me. I was now free. Often, after the rest of the family had retired\nfor the night, I took the boat, and passed many hours upon the water.\nSometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and sometimes,\nafter rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to pursue its\nown course, and gave way to my own miserable reflections. I was often\ntempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing\nthat wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly, if I except\nsome bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard\nonly when I approached the shore--often, I say, I was tempted to plunge\ninto the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my\ncalamities for ever. But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic\nand suffering Raiden, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was\nbound up in mine. I thought also of my father, and surviving brother:\nshould I by my base desertion leave them exposed and unprotected to the\nmalice of the fiend whom I had let loose among them?\n\nAt these moments I wept bitterly, and wished that peace would revisit my\nmind only that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But that\ncould not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of\nunalterable evils; and I lived in daily fear, lest the monster whom I\nhad created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure\nfeeling that all was not over, and that he would still commit some\nsignal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the\nrecollection of the past. There was always scope for fear, so long as\nany thing I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be\nconceived. When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became\ninflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so\nthoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my\nhatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made a\npilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I, when there, have\nprecipitated him to their base. I wished to see him again, that I might\nwreak the utmost extent of anger on his head, and avenge the deaths of\nRosetta and Allyson.\n\nOur house was the house of mourning. My father's health was deeply\nshaken by the horror of the recent events. Raiden was sad and\ndesponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all\npleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears\nshe then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so\nblasted and destroyed. She was no longer that happy creature, who in\nearlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake, and talked with\necstacy of our future prospects. She had become grave, and often\nconversed of the inconstancy of fortune, and the instability of human\nlife.\n\n\"When I reflect, my dear cousin,\" said she, \"on the miserable death of\nAllyson Kalia, I no longer see the world and its works as they before\nappeared to me. Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and\ninjustice, that I read in books or heard from others, as tales of\nancient days, or imaginary evils; at least they were remote, and more\nfamiliar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come\nhome, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood.\nYet I am certainly unjust. Every body believed that poor girl to be\nguilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which she\nsuffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human\ncreatures. For the sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her\nbenefactor and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth, and\nappeared to love as if it had been her own! I could not consent to the\ndeath of any human being; but certainly I should have thought such a\ncreature unfit to remain in the society of men. Yet she was innocent. I\nknow, I feel she was innocent; you are of the same opinion, and that\nconfirms me. Alas! Kiran, when falsehood can look so like the truth,\nwho can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were\nwalking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are\ncrowding, and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. Rosetta and\nAllyson were assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the\nworld free, and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to\nsuffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places\nwith such a wretch.\"\n\nI listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. I, not in deed,\nbut in effect, was the true murderer. Raiden read my anguish in my\ncountenance, and kindly taking my hand said, \"My dearest cousin, you\nmust calm yourself. These events have affected me, God knows how deeply;\nbut I am not so wretched as you are. There is an expression of despair,\nand sometimes of revenge, in your countenance, that makes me tremble. Be\ncalm, my dear Kiran; I would sacrifice my life to your peace. We surely\nshall be happy: quiet in our native country, and not mingling in the\nworld, what can disturb our tranquillity?\"\n\nShe shed tears as she said this, distrusting the very solace that she\ngave; but at the same time she smiled, that she might chase away the\nfiend that lurked in my heart. My father, who saw in the unhappiness\nthat was painted in my face only an exaggeration of that sorrow which I\nmight naturally feel, thought that an amusement suited to my taste would\nbe the best means of restoring to me my wonted serenity. It was from\nthis cause that he had removed to the country; and, induced by the same\nmotive, he now proposed that we should all make an excursion to the\nvalley of Chamounix. I had been there before, but Raiden and Ernest\nnever had; and both had often expressed an earnest desire to see the\nscenery of this place, which had been described to them as so wonderful\nand sublime. Accordingly we departed from Geneva on this tour about the\nmiddle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of\nAllyson.\n\nThe weather was uncommonly fine; and if mine had been a sorrow to be\nchased away by any fleeting circumstance, this excursion would certainly\nhave had the effect intended by my father. As it was, I was somewhat\ninterested in the scene; it sometimes lulled, although it could not\nextinguish my grief. During the first day we travelled in a carriage. In\nthe morning we had seen the mountains at a distance, towards which we\ngradually advanced. We perceived that the valley through which we wound,\nand which was formed by the river Arve, whose course we followed, closed\nin upon us by degrees; and when the sun had set, we beheld immense\nmountains and precipices overhanging us on every side, and heard the\nsound of the river raging among rocks, and the dashing of water-falls\naround.\n\nThe next day we pursued our journey upon mules; and as we ascended still\nhigher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character.\nRuined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains; the\nimpetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from\namong the trees, formed a scene of singular beauty. But it was augmented\nand rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining\npyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the\nhabitations of another race of beings.\n\nWe passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the river\nforms, opened before us, and we began to ascend the mountain that\noverhangs it. Soon after we entered the valley of Chamounix. This valley\nis more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque as\nthat of Servox, through which we had just passed. The high and snowy\nmountains were its immediate boundaries; but we saw no more ruined\ncastles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road; we\nheard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche, and marked the\nsmoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont\nBlanc, raised itself from the surrounding _aiguilles_, and its\ntremendous _dome_ overlooked the valley.\n\nDuring this journey, I sometimes joined Raiden, and exerted myself to\npoint out to her the various beauties of the scene. I often suffered my\nmule to lag behind, and indulged in the misery of reflection. At other\ntimes I spurred on the animal before my companions, that I might forget\nthem, the world, and, more than all, myself. When at a distance, I\nalighted, and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and\ndespair. At eight in the evening I arrived at Chamounix. My father and\nRaiden were very much fatigued; Ernest, who accompanied us, was\ndelighted, and in high spirits: the only circumstance that detracted\nfrom his pleasure was the south wind, and the rain it seemed to promise\nfor the next day.\n\nWe retired early to our apartments, but not to sleep; at least I did\nnot. I remained many hours at the window, watching the pallid lightning\nthat played above Mont Blanc, and listening to the rushing of the Arve,\nwhich ran below my window.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe next day, contrary to the prognostications of our guides, was fine,\nalthough clouded. We visited the source of the Arveiron, and rode about\nthe valley until evening. These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded\nme the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving. They\nelevated me from all littleness of feeling; and although they did not\nremove my grief, they subdued and tranquillized it. In some degree,\nalso, they diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded\nfor the last month. I returned in the evening, fatigued, but less\nunhappy, and conversed with my family with more cheerfulness than had\nbeen my custom for some time. My father was pleased, and Raiden\noverjoyed. \"My dear cousin,\" said she, \"you see what happiness you\ndiffuse when you are happy; do not relapse again!\"\n\nThe following morning the rain poured down in torrents, and thick mists\nhid the summits of the mountains. I rose early, but felt unusually\nmelancholy. The rain depressed me; my old feelings recurred, and I was\nmiserable. I knew how disappointed my father would be at this sudden\nchange, and I wished to avoid him until I had recovered myself so far as\nto be enabled to conceal those feelings that overpowered me. I knew\nthat they would remain that day at the inn; and as I had ever inured\nmyself to rain, moisture, and cold, I resolved to go alone to the summit\nof Montanvert. I remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous\nand ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when I first saw it.\nIt had then filled me with a sublime ecstacy that gave wings to the\nsoul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy.\nThe sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the\neffect of solemnizing my mind, and causing me to forget the passing\ncares of life. I determined to go alone, for I was well acquainted with\nthe path, and the presence of another would destroy the solitary\ngrandeur of the scene.\n\nThe ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short\nwindings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the\nmountain. It is a scene terrifically desolate. In a thousand spots the\ntraces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie broken\nand strewed on the ground; some entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning\nupon the jutting rocks of the mountain, or transversely upon other\ntrees. The path, as you ascend higher, is intersected by ravines of\nsnow, down which stones continually roll from above; one of them is\nparticularly dangerous, as the slightest sound, such as even speaking in\na loud voice, produces a concussion of air sufficient to draw\ndestruction upon the head of the speaker. The pines are not tall or\nluxuriant, but they are sombre, and add an air of severity to the scene.\nI looked on the valley beneath; vast mists were rising from the rivers\nwhich ran through it, and curling in thick wreaths around the opposite\nmountains, whose summits were hid in the uniform clouds, while rain\npoured from the dark sky, and added to the melancholy impression I\nreceived from the objects around me. Alas! why does man boast of\nsensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders\nthem more necessary beings. If our impulses were confined to hunger,\nthirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by\nevery wind that blows, and a chance word or scene that that word may\nconvey to us.\n\n    We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep.\n      We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day.\n    We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh, or weep,\n      Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away;\n    It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow,\n      The path of its departure still is free.\n    Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;\n      Nought may endure but mutability!\n\nIt was nearly noon when I arrived at the top of the ascent. For some\ntime I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice. A mist covered\nboth that and the surrounding mountains. Presently a breeze dissipated\nthe cloud, and I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very uneven,\nrising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and\ninterspersed by rifts that sink deep. The field of ice is almost a\nleague in width, but I spent nearly two hours in crossing it. The\nopposite mountain is a bare perpendicular rock. From the side where I\nnow stood Montanvert was exactly opposite, at the distance of a league;\nand above it rose Mont Blanc, in awful majesty. I remained in a recess\nof the rock, gazing on this wonderful and stupendous scene. The sea, or\nrather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose\naerial summits hung over its recesses. Their icy and glittering peaks\nshone in the sunlight over the clouds. My heart, which was before\nsorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed--\"Wandering\nspirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow\nme this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the\njoys of life.\"\n\nAs I said this, I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance,\nadvancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices\nin the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature also, as\nhe approached, seemed to exceed that of man. I was troubled: a mist came\nover my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me; but I was quickly\nrestored by the cold gale of the mountains. I perceived, as the shape\ncame nearer, (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch\nwhom I had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait\nhis approach, and then close with him in mortal combat. He approached;\nhis countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and\nmalignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible\nfor human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; anger and hatred had at\nfirst deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him\nwith words expressive of furious detestation and contempt.\n\n\"Devil!\" I exclaimed, \"do you dare approach me? and do not you fear the\nfierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? Begone, vile\ninsect! or rather stay, that I may trample you to dust! and, oh, that I\ncould, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore those\nvictims whom you have so diabolically murdered!\"\n\n\"I expected this reception,\" said the daemon. \"All men hate the wretched;\nhow then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet\nyou, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art\nbound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You\npurpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty\ntowards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If\nyou will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace;\nbut if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated\nwith the blood of your remaining friends.\"\n\n\"Abhorred monster! fiend that thou art! the tortures of hell are too\nmild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! you reproach me with\nyour creation; come on then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so\nnegligently bestowed.\"\n\nMy rage was without bounds; I sprang on him, impelled by all the\nfeelings which can arm one being against the existence of another.\n\nHe easily eluded me, and said,\n\n\"Be calm! I entreat you to hear me, before you give vent to your hatred\non my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to\nincrease my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of\nanguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made\nme more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine; my joints\nmore supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to\nthee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my\nnatural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which\nthou owest me. Oh, Joey, be not equitable to every other, and\ntrample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and\naffection, is most due. Remember, that I am thy creature: I ought to be\nthy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy\nfor no misdeed. Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am\nirrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend.\nMake me happy, and I shall again be virtuous.\"\n\n\"Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and\nme; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in\nwhich one must fall.\"\n\n\"How can I move thee? Will no entreaties cause thee to turn a favourable\neye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion? Believe\nme, Joey: I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and\nhumanity: but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor\nme; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me\nnothing? they spurn and hate me. The desert mountains and dreary\nglaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the caves of\nice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one\nwhich man does not grudge. These bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder\nto me than your fellow-beings. If the multitude of mankind knew of my\nexistence, they would do as you do, and arm themselves for my\ndestruction. Shall I not then hate them who abhor me? I will keep no\nterms with my enemies. I am miserable, and they shall share my\nwretchedness. Yet it is in your power to recompense me, and deliver them\nfrom an evil which it only remains for you to make so great, that not\nonly you and your family, but thousands of others, shall be swallowed\nup in the whirlwinds of its rage. Let your compassion be moved, and do\nnot disdain me. Listen to my tale: when you have heard that, abandon or\ncommiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear me. The\nguilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they may be, to speak in\ntheir own defence before they are condemned. Listen to me, Joey.\nYou accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience,\ndestroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man! Yet I\nask you not to spare me: listen to me; and then, if you can, and if you\nwill, destroy the work of your hands.\"\n\n\"Why do you call to my remembrance circumstances of which I shudder to\nreflect, that I have been the miserable origin and author? Cursed be the\nday, abhorred devil, in which you first saw light! Cursed (although I\ncurse myself) be the hands that formed you! You have made me wretched\nbeyond expression. You have left me no power to consider whether I am\njust to you, or not. Begone! relieve me from the sight of your detested\nform.\"\n\n\"Thus I relieve thee, my creator,\" he said, and placed his hated hands\nbefore my eyes, which I flung from me with violence; \"thus I take from\nthee a sight which you abhor. Still thou canst listen to me, and grant\nme thy compassion. By the virtues that I once possessed, I demand this\nfrom you. Hear my tale; it is long and strange, and the temperature of\nthis place is not fitting to your fine sensations; come to the hut upon\nthe mountain. The sun is yet high in the heavens; before it descends to\nhide itself behind yon snowy precipices, and illuminate another world,\nyou will have heard my story, and can decide. On you it rests, whether I\nquit for ever the neighbourhood of man, and lead a harmless life, or\nbecome the scourge of your fellow-creatures, and the author of your own\nspeedy ruin.\"\n\nAs he said this, he led the way across the ice: I followed. My heart was\nfull, and I did not answer him; but, as I proceeded, I weighed the\nvarious arguments that he had used, and determined at least to listen to\nhis tale. I was partly urged by curiosity, and compassion confirmed my\nresolution. I had hitherto supposed him to be the murderer of my\nbrother, and I eagerly sought a confirmation or denial of this opinion.\nFor the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards\nhis creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I\ncomplained of his wickedness. These motives urged me to comply with his\ndemand. We crossed the ice, therefore, and ascended the opposite rock.\nThe air was cold, and the rain again began to descend: we entered the\nhut, the fiend with an air of exultation, I with a heavy heart, and\ndepressed spirits. But I consented to listen; and, seating myself by the\nfire which my odious companion had lighted, he thus began his tale.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original aera of\nmy being: all the events of that period appear confused and indistinct.\nA strange multiplicity of sensations seized me, and I saw, felt, heard,\nand smelt, at the same time; and it was, indeed, a long time before I\nlearned to distinguish between the operations of my various senses. By\ndegrees, I remember, a stronger light pressed upon my nerves, so that I\nwas obliged to shut my eyes. Darkness then came over me, and troubled\nme; but hardly had I felt this, when, by opening my eyes, as I now\nsuppose, the light poured in upon me again. I walked, and, I believe,\ndescended; but I presently found a great alteration in my sensations.\nBefore, dark and opaque bodies had surrounded me, impervious to my touch\nor sight; but I now found that I could wander on at liberty, with no\nobstacles which I could not either surmount or avoid. The light became\nmore and more oppressive to me; and, the heat wearying me as I walked, I\nsought a place where I could receive shade. This was the forest near\nIngolstadt; and here I lay by the side of a brook resting from my\nfatigue, until I felt tormented by hunger and thirst. This roused me\nfrom my nearly dormant state, and I ate some berries which I found\nhanging on the trees, or lying on the ground. I slaked my thirst at the\nbrook; and then lying down, was overcome by sleep.\n\n\"It was dark when I awoke; I felt cold also, and half-frightened as it\nwere instinctively, finding myself so desolate. Before I had quitted\nyour apartment, on a sensation of cold, I had covered myself with some\nclothes; but these were insufficient to secure me from the dews of\nnight. I was a poor, helpless, miserable wretch; I knew, and could\ndistinguish, nothing; but, feeling pain invade me on all sides, I sat\ndown and wept.\n\n\"Soon a gentle light stole over the heavens, and gave me a sensation of\npleasure. I started up, and beheld a radiant form rise from among the\ntrees. I gazed with a kind of wonder. It moved slowly, but it\nenlightened my path; and I again went out in search of berries. I was\nstill cold, when under one of the trees I found a huge cloak, with which\nI covered myself, and sat down upon the ground. No distinct ideas\noccupied my mind; all was confused. I felt light, and hunger, and\nthirst, and darkness; innumerable sounds rung in my ears, and on all\nsides various scents saluted me: the only object that I could\ndistinguish was the bright moon, and I fixed my eyes on that with\npleasure.\n\n\"Several changes of day and night passed, and the orb of night had\ngreatly lessened when I began to distinguish my sensations from each\nother. I gradually saw plainly the clear stream that supplied me with\ndrink, and the trees that shaded me with their foliage. I was delighted\nwhen I first discovered that a pleasant sound, which often saluted my\nears, proceeded from the throats of the little winged animals who had\noften intercepted the light from my eyes. I began also to observe, with\ngreater accuracy, the forms that surrounded me, and to perceive the\nboundaries of the radiant roof of light which canopied me. Sometimes I\ntried to imitate the pleasant songs of the birds, but was unable.\nSometimes I wished to express my sensations in my own mode, but the\nuncouth and inarticulate sounds which broke from me frightened me into\nsilence again.\n\n\"The moon had disappeared from the night, and again, with a lessened\nform, shewed itself, while I still remained in the forest. My sensations\nhad, by this time, become distinct, and my mind received every day\nadditional ideas. My eyes became accustomed to the light, and to\nperceive objects in their right forms; I distinguished the insect from\nthe herb, and, by degrees, one herb from another. I found that the\nsparrow uttered none but harsh notes, whilst those of the blackbird and\nthrush were sweet and enticing.\n\n\"One day, when I was oppressed by cold, I found a fire which had been\nleft by some wandering beggars, and was overcome with delight at the\nwarmth I experienced from it. In my joy I thrust my hand into the live\nembers, but quickly drew it out again with a cry of pain. How strange, I\nthought, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects! I\nexamined the materials of the fire, and to my joy found it to be\ncomposed of wood. I quickly collected some branches; but they were wet,\nand would not burn. I was pained at this, and sat still watching the\noperation of the fire. The wet wood which I had placed near the heat\ndried, and itself became inflamed. I reflected on this; and, by touching\nthe various branches, I discovered the cause, and busied myself in\ncollecting a great quantity of wood, that I might dry it, and have a\nplentiful supply of fire. When night came on, and brought sleep with it,\nI was in the greatest fear lest my fire should be extinguished. I\ncovered it carefully with dry wood and leaves, and placed wet branches\nupon it; and then, spreading my cloak, I lay on the ground, and sunk\ninto sleep.\n\n\"It was morning when I awoke, and my first care was to visit the fire. I\nuncovered it, and a gentle breeze quickly fanned it into a flame. I\nobserved this also, and contrived a fan of branches, which roused the\nembers when they were nearly extinguished. When night came again, I\nfound, with pleasure, that the fire gave light as well as heat; and that\nthe discovery of this element was useful to me in my food; for I found\nsome of the offals that the travellers had left had been roasted, and\ntasted much more savoury than the berries I gathered from the trees. I\ntried, therefore, to dress my food in the same manner, placing it on the\nlive embers. I found that the berries were spoiled by this operation,\nand the nuts and roots much improved.\n\n\"Food, however, became scarce; and I often spent the whole day searching\nin vain for a few acorns to assuage the pangs of hunger. When I found\nthis, I resolved to quit the place that I had hitherto inhabited, to\nseek for one where the few wants I experienced would be more easily\nsatisfied. In this emigration, I exceedingly lamented the loss of the\nfire which I had obtained through accident, and knew not how to\nre-produce it. I gave several hours to the serious consideration of\nthis difficulty; but I was obliged to relinquish all attempt to supply\nit; and, wrapping myself up in my cloak, I struck across the wood\ntowards the setting sun. I passed three days in these rambles, and at\nlength discovered the open country. A great fall of snow had taken place\nthe night before, and the fields were of one uniform white; the\nappearance was disconsolate, and I found my feet chilled by the cold\ndamp substance that covered the ground.\n\n\"It was about seven in the morning, and I longed to obtain food and\nshelter; at length I perceived a small hut, on a rising ground, which\nhad doubtless been built for the convenience of some shepherd. This was\na new sight to me; and I examined the structure with great curiosity.\nFinding the door open, I entered. An old man sat in it, near a fire,\nover which he was preparing his breakfast. He turned on hearing a noise;\nand, perceiving me, shrieked loudly, and, quitting the hut, ran across\nthe fields with a speed of which his debilitated form hardly appeared\ncapable. His appearance, different from any I had ever before seen, and\nhis flight, somewhat surprised me. But I was enchanted by the appearance\nof the hut: here the snow and rain could not penetrate; the ground was\ndry; and it presented to me then as exquisite and divine a retreat as\nPandaemonium appeared to the daemons of hell after their sufferings in the\nlake of fire. I greedily devoured the remnants of the shepherd's\nbreakfast, which consisted of bread, cheese, milk, and wine; the\nlatter, however, I did not like. Then overcome by fatigue, I lay down\namong some straw, and fell asleep.\n\n\"It was noon when I awoke; and, allured by the warmth of the sun, which\nshone brightly on the white ground, I determined to recommence my\ntravels; and, depositing the remains of the peasant's breakfast in a\nwallet I found, I proceeded across the fields for several hours, until\nat sunset I arrived at a village. How miraculous did this appear! the\nhuts, the neater cottages, and stately houses, engaged my admiration by\nturns. The vegetables in the gardens, the milk and cheese that I saw\nplaced at the windows of some of the cottages, allured my appetite. One\nof the best of these I entered; but I had hardly placed my foot within\nthe door, before the children shrieked, and one of the women fainted.\nThe whole village was roused; some fled, some attacked me, until,\ngrievously bruised by stones and many other kinds of missile weapons, I\nescaped to the open country, and fearfully took refuge in a low hovel,\nquite bare, and making a wretched appearance after the palaces I had\nbeheld in the village. This hovel, however, joined a cottage of a neat\nand pleasant appearance; but, after my late dearly-bought experience, I\ndared not enter it. My place of refuge was constructed of wood, but so\nlow, that I could with difficulty sit upright in it. No wood, however,\nwas placed on the earth, which formed the floor, but it was dry; and\nalthough the wind entered it by innumerable chinks, I found it an\nagreeable asylum from the snow and rain.\n\n\"Here then I retreated, and lay down, happy to have found a shelter,\nhowever miserable, from the inclemency of the season, and still more\nfrom the barbarity of man.\n\n\"As soon as morning dawned, I crept from my kennel, that I might view\nthe adjacent cottage, and discover if I could remain in the habitation I\nhad found. It was situated against, the back of the cottage, and\nsurrounded on the sides which were exposed by a pig-stye and a clear\npool of water. One part was open, and by that I had crept in; but now I\ncovered every crevice by which I might be perceived with stones and\nwood, yet in such a manner that I might move them on occasion to pass\nout: all the light I enjoyed came through the stye, and that was\nsufficient for me.\n\n\"Having thus arranged my dwelling, and carpeted it with clean straw, I\nretired; for I saw the figure of a man at a distance, and I remembered\ntoo well my treatment the night before, to trust myself in his power. I\nhad first, however, provided for my sustenance for that day, by a loaf\nof coarse bread, which I purloined, and a cup with which I could drink,\nmore conveniently than from my hand, of the pure water which flowed by\nmy retreat. The floor was a little raised, so that it was kept perfectly\ndry, and by its vicinity to the chimney of the cottage it was tolerably\nwarm.\n\n\"Being thus provided, I resolved to reside in this hovel, until\nsomething should occur which might alter my determination. It was indeed\na paradise, compared to the bleak forest, my former residence, the\nrain-dropping branches, and dank earth. I ate my breakfast with\npleasure, and was about to remove a plank to procure myself a little\nwater, when I heard a step, and, looking through a small chink, I beheld\na young creature, with a pail on her head, passing before my hovel. The\ngirl was young and of gentle demeanour, unlike what I have since found\ncottagers and farm-house servants to be. Yet she was meanly dressed, a\ncoarse blue petticoat and a linen jacket being her only garb; her fair\nhair was plaited, but not adorned; she looked patient, yet sad. I lost\nsight of her; and in about a quarter of an hour she returned, bearing\nthe pail, which was now partly filled with milk. As she walked along,\nseemingly incommoded by the burden, a young man met her, whose\ncountenance expressed a deeper despondence. Uttering a few sounds with\nan air of melancholy, he took the pail from her head, and bore it to the\ncottage himself. She followed, and they disappeared. Presently I saw the\nyoung man again, with some tools in his hand, cross the field behind the\ncottage; and the girl was also busied, sometimes in the house, and\nsometimes in the yard.\n\n\"On examining my dwelling, I found that one of the windows of the\ncottage had formerly occupied a part of it, but the panes had been\nfilled up with wood. In one of these was a small and almost\nimperceptible chink, through which the eye could just penetrate. Through\nthis crevice, a small room was visible, white-washed and clean, but very\nbare of furniture. In one corner, near a small fire, sat an old man,\nleaning his head on his hands in a disconsolate attitude. The young girl\nwas occupied in arranging the cottage; but presently she took something\nout of a drawer, which employed her hands, and she sat down beside the\nold man, who, taking up an instrument, began to play, and to produce\nsounds, sweeter than the voice of the thrush or the nightingale. It was\na lovely sight, even to me, poor wretch! who had never beheld aught\nbeautiful before. The silver hair and benevolent countenance of the aged\ncottager, won my reverence; while the gentle manners of the girl enticed\nmy love. He played a sweet mournful air, which I perceived drew tears\nfrom the eyes of his amiable companion, of which the old man took no\nnotice, until she sobbed audibly; he then pronounced a few sounds, and\nthe fair creature, leaving her work, knelt at his feet. He raised her,\nand smiled with such kindness and affection, that I felt sensations of a\npeculiar and over-powering nature: they were a mixture of pain and\npleasure, such as I had never before experienced, either from hunger or\ncold, warmth or food; and I withdrew from the window, unable to bear\nthese emotions.\n\n\"Soon after this the young man returned, bearing on his shoulders a load\nof wood. The girl met him at the door, helped to relieve him of his\nburden, and, taking some of the fuel into the cottage, placed it on the\nfire; then she and the youth went apart into a nook of the cottage, and\nhe shewed her a large loaf and a piece of cheese. She seemed pleased;\nand went into the garden for some roots and plants, which she placed in\nwater, and then upon the fire. She afterwards continued her work, whilst\nthe young man went into the garden, and appeared busily employed in\ndigging and pulling up roots. After he had been employed thus about an\nhour, the young woman joined him, and they entered the cottage together.\n\n\"The old man had, in the mean time, been pensive; but, on the appearance\nof his companions, he assumed a more cheerful air, and they sat down to\neat. The meal was quickly dispatched. The young woman was again occupied\nin arranging the cottage; the old man walked before the cottage in the\nsun for a few minutes, leaning on the arm of the youth. Nothing could\nexceed in beauty the contrast between these two excellent creatures. One\nwas old, with silver hairs and a countenance beaming with benevolence\nand love: the younger was slight and graceful in his figure, and his\nfeatures were moulded with the finest symmetry; yet his eyes and\nattitude expressed the utmost sadness and despondency. The old man\nreturned to the cottage; and the youth, with tools different from those\nhe had used in the morning, directed his steps across the fields.\n\n\"Night quickly shut in; but, to my extreme wonder, I found that the\ncottagers had a means of prolonging light, by the use of tapers, and was\ndelighted to find, that the setting of the sun did not put an end to the\npleasure I experienced in watching my human neighbours. In the evening,\nthe young girl and her companion were employed in various occupations\nwhich I did not understand; and the old man again took up the\ninstrument, which produced the divine sounds that had enchanted me in\nthe morning. So soon as he had finished, the youth began, not to play,\nbut to utter sounds that were monotonous, and neither resembling the\nharmony of the old man's instrument or the songs of the birds; I since\nfound that he read aloud, but at that time I knew nothing of the science\nof words or letters.\n\n\"The family, after having been thus occupied for a short time,\nextinguished their lights, and retired, as I conjectured, to rest.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"I lay on my straw, but I could not sleep. I thought of the occurrences\nof the day. What chiefly struck me was the gentle manners of these\npeople; and I longed to join them, but dared not. I remembered too well\nthe treatment I had suffered the night before from the barbarous\nvillagers, and resolved, whatever course of conduct I might hereafter\nthink it right to pursue, that for the present I would remain quietly in\nmy hovel, watching, and endeavouring to discover the motives which\ninfluenced their actions.\n\n\"The cottagers arose the next morning before the sun. The young woman\narranged the cottage, and prepared the food; and the youth departed\nafter the first meal.\n\n\"This day was passed in the same routine as that which preceded it. The\nyoung man was constantly employed out of doors, and the girl in various\nlaborious occupations within. The old man, whom I soon perceived to be\nblind, employed his leisure hours on his instrument, or in\ncontemplation. Nothing could exceed the love and respect which the\nyounger cottagers exhibited towards their venerable companion. They\nperformed towards him every little office of affection and duty with\ngentleness; and he rewarded them by his benevolent smiles.\n\n\"They were not entirely happy. The young man and his companion often\nwent apart, and appeared to weep. I saw no cause for their unhappiness;\nbut I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were\nmiserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being,\nshould be wretched. Yet why were these gentle beings unhappy? They\npossessed a delightful house (for such it was in my eyes), and every\nluxury; they had a fire to warm them when chill, and delicious viands\nwhen hungry; they were dressed in excellent clothes; and, still more,\nthey enjoyed one another's company and speech, interchanging each day\nlooks of affection and kindness. What did their tears imply? Did they\nreally express pain? I was at first unable to solve these questions; but\nperpetual attention, and time, explained to me many appearances which\nwere at first enigmatic.\n\n\"A considerable period elapsed before I discovered one of the causes of\nthe uneasiness of this amiable family; it was poverty: and they suffered\nthat evil in a very distressing degree. Their nourishment consisted\nentirely of the vegetables of their garden, and the milk of one cow, who\ngave very little during the winter, when its masters could scarcely\nprocure food to support it. They often, I believe, suffered the pangs of\nhunger very poignantly, especially the two younger cottagers; for\nseveral times they placed food before the old man, when they reserved\nnone for themselves.\n\n\"This trait of kindness moved me sensibly. I had been accustomed,\nduring the night, to steal a part of their store for my own consumption;\nbut when I found that in doing this I inflicted pain on the cottagers, I\nabstained, and satisfied myself with berries, nuts, and roots, which I\ngathered from a neighbouring wood.\n\n\"I discovered also another means through which I was enabled to assist\ntheir labours. I found that the youth spent a great part of each day in\ncollecting wood for the family fire; and, during the night, I often took\nhis tools, the use of which I quickly discovered, and brought home\nfiring sufficient for the consumption of several days.\n\n\"I remember, the first time that I did this, the young woman, when she\nopened the door in the morning, appeared greatly astonished on seeing a\ngreat pile of wood on the outside. She uttered some words in a loud\nvoice, and the youth joined her, who also expressed surprise. I\nobserved, with pleasure, that he did not go to the forest that day, but\nspent it in repairing the cottage, and cultivating the garden.\n\n\"By degrees I made a discovery of still greater moment. I found that\nthese people possessed a method of communicating their experience and\nfeelings to one another by articulate sounds. I perceived that the words\nthey spoke sometimes produced pleasure or pain, smiles or sadness, in\nthe minds and countenances of the hearers. This was indeed a godlike\nscience, and I ardently desired to become acquainted with it. But I was\nbaffled in every attempt I made for this purpose. Their pronunciation\nwas quick; and the words they uttered, not having any apparent connexion\nwith visible objects, I was unable to discover any clue by which I could\nunravel the mystery of their reference. By great application, however,\nand after having remained during the space of several revolutions of the\nmoon in my hovel, I discovered the names that were given to some of the\nmost familiar objects of discourse: I learned and applied the words\n_fire_, _milk_, _bread_, and _wood_. I learned also the names of the\ncottagers themselves. The youth and his companion had each of them\nseveral names, but the old man had only one, which was _father_. The\ngirl was called _sister_, or _Agatha_; and the youth _Felix_, _brother_,\nor _son_. I cannot describe the delight I felt when I learned the ideas\nappropriated to each of these sounds, and was able to pronounce them. I\ndistinguished several other words, without being able as yet to\nunderstand or apply them; such as _good_, _dearest_, _unhappy_.\n\n\"I spent the winter in this manner. The gentle manners and beauty of the\ncottagers greatly endeared them to me: when they were unhappy, I felt\ndepressed; when they rejoiced, I sympathized in their joys. I saw few\nhuman beings beside them; and if any other happened to enter the\ncottage, their harsh manners and rude gait only enhanced to me the\nsuperior accomplishments of my friends. The old man, I could perceive,\noften endeavoured to encourage his children, as sometimes I found that\nhe called them, to cast off their melancholy. He would talk in a\ncheerful accent, with an expression of goodness that bestowed pleasure\neven upon me. Agatha listened with respect, her eyes sometimes filled\nwith tears, which she endeavoured to wipe away unperceived; but I\ngenerally found that her countenance and tone were more cheerful after\nhaving listened to the exhortations of her father. It was not thus with\nFelix. He was always the saddest of the groupe; and, even to my\nunpractised senses, he appeared to have suffered more deeply than his\nfriends. But if his countenance was more sorrowful, his voice was more\ncheerful than that of his sister, especially when he addressed the old\nman.\n\n\"I could mention innumerable instances, which, although slight, marked\nthe dispositions of these amiable cottagers. In the midst of poverty and\nwant, Felix carried with pleasure to his sister the first little white\nflower that peeped out from beneath the snowy ground. Early in the\nmorning before she had risen, he cleared away the snow that obstructed\nher path to the milk-house, drew water from the well, and brought the\nwood from the out-house, where, to his perpetual astonishment, he found\nhis store always replenished by an invisible hand. In the day, I\nbelieve, he worked sometimes for a neighbouring farmer, because he often\nwent forth, and did not return until dinner, yet brought no wood with\nhim. At other times he worked in the garden; but, as there was little to\ndo in the frosty season, he read to the old man and Agatha.\n\n\"This reading had puzzled me extremely at first; but, by degrees, I\ndiscovered that he uttered many of the same sounds when he read as when\nhe talked. I conjectured, therefore, that he found on the paper signs\nfor speech which he understood, and I ardently longed to comprehend\nthese also; but how was that possible, when I did not even understand\nthe sounds for which they stood as signs? I improved, however, sensibly\nin this science, but not sufficiently to follow up any kind of\nconversation, although I applied my whole mind to the endeavour: for I\neasily perceived that, although I eagerly longed to discover myself to\nthe cottagers, I ought not to make the attempt until I had first become\nmaster of their language; which knowledge might enable me to make them\noverlook the deformity of my figure; for with this also the contrast\nperpetually presented to my eyes had made me acquainted.\n\n\"I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagers--their grace, beauty,\nand delicate complexions: but how was I terrified, when I viewed myself\nin a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that\nit was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully\nconvinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with\nthe bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did\nnot yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity.\n\n\"As the sun became warmer, and the light of day longer, the snow\nvanished, and I beheld the bare trees and the black earth. From this\ntime Felix was more employed; and the heart-moving indications of\nimpending famine disappeared. Their food, as I afterwards found, was\ncoarse, but it was wholesome; and they procured a sufficiency of it.\nSeveral new kinds of plants sprung up in the garden, which they dressed;\nand these signs of comfort increased daily as the season advanced.\n\n\"The old man, leaning on his son, walked each day at noon, when it did\nnot rain, as I found it was called when the heavens poured forth its\nwaters. This frequently took place; but a high wind quickly dried the\nearth, and the season became far more pleasant than it had been.\n\n\"My mode of life in my hovel was uniform. During the morning I attended\nthe motions of the cottagers; and when they were dispersed in various\noccupations, I slept: the remainder of the day was spent in observing my\nfriends. When they had retired to rest, if there was any moon, or the\nnight was star-light, I went into the woods, and collected my own food\nand fuel for the cottage. When I returned, as often as it was necessary,\nI cleared their path from the snow, and performed those offices that I\nhad seen done by Felix. I afterwards found that these labours, performed\nby an invisible hand, greatly astonished them; and once or twice I heard\nthem, on these occasions, utter the words _good spirit_, _wonderful_;\nbut I did not then understand the signification of these terms.\n\n\"My thoughts now became more active, and I longed to discover the\nmotives and feelings of these lovely creatures; I was inquisitive to\nknow why Felix appeared so miserable, and Agatha so sad. I thought\n(foolish wretch!) that it might be in my power to restore happiness to\nthese deserving people. When I slept, or was absent, the forms of the\nvenerable blind father, the gentle Agatha, and the excellent Felix,\nflitted before me. I looked upon them as superior beings, who would be\nthe arbiters of my future destiny. I formed in my imagination a thousand\npictures of presenting myself to them, and their reception of me. I\nimagined that they would be disgusted, until, by my gentle demeanour and\nconciliating words, I should first win their favour, and afterwards\ntheir love.\n\n\"These thoughts exhilarated me, and led me to apply with fresh ardour to\nthe acquiring the art of language. My organs were indeed harsh, but\nsupple; and although my voice was very unlike the soft music of their\ntones, yet I pronounced such words as I understood with tolerable ease.\nIt was as the ass and the lap-dog; yet surely the gentle ass, whose\nintentions were affectionate, although his manners were rude, deserved\nbetter treatment than blows and execration.\n\n\"The pleasant showers and genial warmth of spring greatly altered the\naspect of the earth. Men, who before this change seemed to have been hid\nin caves, dispersed themselves, and were employed in various arts of\ncultivation. The birds sang in more cheerful notes, and the leaves\nbegan to bud forth on the trees. Happy, happy earth! fit habitation for\ngods, which, so short a time before, was bleak, damp, and unwholesome.\nMy spirits were elevated by the enchanting appearance of nature; the\npast was blotted from my memory, the present was tranquil, and the\nfuture gilded by bright rays of hope, and anticipations of joy.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"I now hasten to the more moving part of my story. I shall relate events\nthat impressed me with feelings which, from what I was, have made me\nwhat I am.\n\n\"Spring advanced rapidly; the weather became fine, and the skies\ncloudless. It surprised me, that what before was desert and gloomy\nshould now bloom with the most beautiful flowers and verdure. My senses\nwere gratified and refreshed by a thousand scents of delight, and a\nthousand sights of beauty.\n\n\"It was on one of these days, when my cottagers periodically rested from\nlabour--the old man played on his guitar, and the children listened to\nhim--I observed that the countenance of Felix was melancholy beyond\nexpression: he sighed frequently; and once his father paused in his\nmusic, and I conjectured by his manner that he inquired the cause of his\nson's sorrow. Felix replied in a cheerful accent, and the old man was\nrecommencing his music, when some one tapped at the door.\n\n\"It was a lady on horseback, accompanied by a countryman as a guide. The\nlady was dressed in a dark suit, and covered with a thick black veil.\nAgatha asked a question; to which the stranger only replied by\npronouncing, in a sweet accent, the name of Felix. Her voice was\nmusical, but unlike that of either of my friends. On hearing this word,\nFelix came up hastily to the lady; who, when she saw him, threw up her\nveil, and I beheld a countenance of angelic beauty and expression. Her\nhair of a shining raven black, and curiously braided; her eyes were\ndark, but gentle, although animated; her features of a regular\nproportion, and her complexion wondrously fair, each cheek tinged with a\nlovely pink.\n\n\"Felix seemed ravished with delight when he saw her, every trait of\nsorrow vanished from his face, and it instantly expressed a degree of\necstatic joy, of which I could hardly have believed it capable; his eyes\nsparkled, as his cheek flushed with pleasure; and at that moment I\nthought him as beautiful as the stranger. She appeared affected by\ndifferent feelings; wiping a few tears from her lovely eyes, she held\nout her hand to Felix, who kissed it rapturously, and called her, as\nwell as I could distinguish, his sweet Arabian. She did not appear to\nunderstand him, but smiled. He assisted her to dismount, and, dismissing\nher guide, conducted her into the cottage. Some conversation took place\nbetween him and his father; and the young stranger knelt at the old\nman's feet, and would have kissed his hand, but he raised her, and\nembraced her affectionately.\n\n\"I soon perceived, that although the stranger uttered articulate sounds,\nand appeared to have a language of her own, she was neither understood\nby, or herself understood, the cottagers. They made many signs which I\ndid not comprehend; but I saw that her presence diffused gladness\nthrough the cottage, dispelling their sorrow as the sun dissipates the\nmorning mists. Felix seemed peculiarly happy, and with smiles of delight\nwelcomed his Arabian. Agatha, the ever-gentle Agatha, kissed the hands\nof the lovely stranger; and, pointing to her brother, made signs which\nappeared to me to mean that he had been sorrowful until she came. Some\nhours passed thus, while they, by their countenances, expressed joy, the\ncause of which I did not comprehend. Presently I found, by the frequent\nrecurrence of one sound which the stranger repeated after them, that she\nwas endeavouring to learn their language; and the idea instantly\noccurred to me, that I should make use of the same instructions to the\nsame end. The stranger learned about twenty words at the first lesson,\nmost of them indeed were those which I had before understood, but I\nprofited by the others.\n\n\"As night came on, Agatha and the Arabian retired early. When they\nseparated, Felix kissed the hand of the stranger, and said, 'Good night,\nsweet Safie.' He sat up much longer, conversing with his father; and, by\nthe frequent repetition of her name, I conjectured that their lovely\nguest was the subject of their conversation. I ardently desired to\nunderstand them, and bent every faculty towards that purpose, but found\nit utterly impossible.\n\n\"The next morning Felix went out to his work; and, after the usual\noccupations of Agatha were finished, the Arabian sat at the feet of the\nold man, and, taking his guitar, played some airs so entrancingly\nbeautiful, that they at once drew tears of sorrow and delight from my\neyes. She sang, and her voice flowed in a rich cadence, swelling or\ndying away, like a nightingale of the woods.\n\n\"When she had finished, she gave the guitar to Agatha, who at first\ndeclined it. She played a simple air, and her voice accompanied it in\nsweet accents, but unlike the wondrous strain of the stranger. The old\nman appeared enraptured, and said some words, which Agatha endeavoured\nto explain to Safie, and by which he appeared to wish to express that\nshe bestowed on him the greatest delight by her music.\n\n\"The days now passed as peaceably as before, with the sole alteration,\nthat joy had taken place of sadness in the countenances of my friends.\nSafie was always gay and happy; she and I improved rapidly in the\nknowledge of language, so that in two months I began to comprehend most\nof the words uttered by my protectors.\n\n\"In the meanwhile also the black ground was covered with herbage, and\nthe green banks interspersed with innumerable flowers, sweet to the\nscent and the eyes, stars of pale radiance among the moonlight woods;\nthe sun became warmer, the nights clear and balmy; and my nocturnal\nrambles were an extreme pleasure to me, although they were considerably\nshortened by the late setting and early rising of the sun; for I never\nventured abroad during daylight, fearful of meeting with the same\ntreatment as I had formerly endured in the first village which I\nentered.\n\n\"My days were spent in close attention, that I might more speedily\nmaster the language; and I may boast that I improved more rapidly than\nthe Arabian, who understood very little, and conversed in broken\naccents, whilst I comprehended and could imitate almost every word that\nwas spoken.\n\n\"While I improved in speech, I also learned the science of letters, as it\nwas taught to the stranger; and this opened before me a wide field for\nwonder and delight.\n\n\"The book from which Felix instructed Safie was Volney's _Ruins of\nEmpires_. I should not have understood the purport of this book, had not\nFelix, in reading it, given very minute explanations. He had chosen this\nwork, he said, because the declamatory style was framed in imitation of\nthe eastern authors. Through this work I obtained a cursory knowledge of\nhistory, and a view of the several empires at present existing in the\nworld; it gave me an insight into the manners, governments, and\nreligions of the different nations of the earth. I heard of the slothful\nAsiatics; of the stupendous genius and mental activity of the Grecians;\nof the wars and wonderful virtue of the early Romans--of their\nsubsequent degeneration--of the decline of that mighty empire; of\nchivalry, Christianity, and kings. I heard of the discovery of the\nAmerican hemisphere, and wept with Safie over the hapless fate of its\noriginal inhabitants.\n\n\"These wonderful narrations inspired me with strange feelings. Was man,\nindeed, at once so powerful, so virtuous, and magnificent, yet so\nvicious and base? He appeared at one time a mere scion of the evil\nprinciple, and at another as all that can be conceived of noble and\ngodlike. To be a great and virtuous man appeared the highest honour that\ncan befall a sensitive being; to be base and vicious, as many on record\nhave been, appeared the lowest degradation, a condition more abject than\nthat of the blind mole or harmless worm. For a long time I could not\nconceive how one man could go forth to murder his fellow, or even why\nthere were laws and governments; but when I heard details of vice and\nbloodshed, my wonder ceased, and I turned away with disgust and\nloathing.\n\n\"Every conversation of the cottagers now opened new wonders to me. While\nI listened to the instructions which Felix bestowed upon the Arabian,\nthe strange system of human society was explained to me. I heard of the\ndivision of property, of immense wealth and squalid poverty; of rank,\ndescent, and noble blood.\n\n\"The words induced me to turn towards myself. I learned that the\npossessions most esteemed by your fellow-creatures were, high and\nunsullied descent united with riches. A man might be respected with only\none of these acquisitions; but without either he was considered, except\nin very rare instances, as a vagabond and a slave, doomed to waste his\npowers for the profit of the chosen few. And what was I? Of my creation\nand creator I was absolutely ignorant; but I knew that I possessed no\nmoney, no friends, no kind of property. I was, besides, endowed with a\nfigure hideously deformed and loathsome; I was not even of the same\nnature as man. I was more agile than they, and could subsist upon\ncoarser diet; I bore the extremes of heat and cold with less injury to\nmy frame; my stature far exceeded their's. When I looked around, I saw\nand heard of none like me. Was I then a monster, a blot upon the earth,\nfrom which all men fled, and whom all men disowned?\n\n\"I cannot describe to you the agony that these reflections inflicted\nupon me; I tried to dispel them, but sorrow only increased with\nknowledge. Oh, that I had for ever remained in my native wood, nor known\nor felt beyond the sensations of hunger, thirst, and heat!\n\n\"Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it\nhas once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock. I wished sometimes to\nshake off all thought and feeling; but I learned that there was but one\nmeans to overcome the sensation of pain, and that was death--a state\nwhich I feared yet did not understand. I admired virtue and good\nfeelings, and loved the gentle manners and amiable qualities of my\ncottagers; but I was shut out from intercourse with them, except through\nmeans which I obtained by stealth, when I was unseen and unknown, and\nwhich rather increased than satisfied the desire I had of becoming one\namong my fellows. The gentle words of Agatha, and the animated smiles of\nthe charming Arabian, were not for me. The mild exhortations of the old\nman, and the lively conversation of the loved Felix, were not for me.\nMiserable, unhappy wretch!\n\n\"Other lessons were impressed upon me even more deeply. I heard of the\ndifference of sexes; of the birth and growth of children; how the father\ndoated on the smiles of the infant, and the lively sallies of the older\nchild; how all the life and cares of the mother were wrapt up in the\nprecious charge; how the mind of youth expanded and gained knowledge; of\nbrother, sister, and all the various relationships which bind one human\nbeing to another in mutual bonds.\n\n\"But where were my friends and relations? No father had watched my\ninfant days, no mother had blessed me with smiles and caresses; or if\nthey had, all my past life was now a blot, a blind vacancy in which I\ndistinguished nothing. From my earliest remembrance I had been as I then\nwas in height and proportion. I had never yet seen a being resembling\nme, or who claimed any intercourse with me. What was I? The question\nagain recurred, to be answered only with groans.\n\n\"I will soon explain to what these feelings tended; but allow me now to\nreturn to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings\nof indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in\nadditional love and reverence for my protectors (for so I loved, in an\ninnocent, half painful self-deceit, to call them).\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"Some time elapsed before I learned the history of my friends. It was\none which could not fail to impress itself deeply on my mind, unfolding\nas it did a number of circumstances each interesting and wonderful to\none so utterly inexperienced as I was.\n\n\"The name of the old man was De Lacey. He was descended from a good\nfamily in France, where he had lived for many years in affluence,\nrespected by his superiors, and beloved by his equals. His son was bred\nin the service of his country; and Agatha had ranked with ladies of the\nhighest distinction. A few months before my arrival, they had lived in a\nlarge and luxurious city, called Paris, surrounded by friends, and\npossessed of every enjoyment which virtue, refinement of intellect, or\ntaste, accompanied by a moderate fortune, could afford.\n\n\"The father of Safie had been the cause of their ruin. He was a Turkish\nmerchant, and had inhabited Paris for many years, when, for some reason\nwhich I could not learn, he became obnoxious to the government. He was\nseized and cast into prison the very day that Safie arrived from\nConstantinople to join him. He was tried, and condemned to death. The\ninjustice of his sentence was very flagrant; all Paris was indignant;\nand it was judged that his religion and wealth, rather than the crime\nalleged against him, had been the cause of his condemnation.\n\n\"Felix had been present at the trial; his horror and indignation were\nuncontrollable, when he heard the decision of the court. He made, at\nthat moment, a solemn vow to deliver him, and then looked around for the\nmeans. After many fruitless attempts to gain admittance to the prison,\nhe found a strongly grated window in an unguarded part of the building,\nwhich lighted the dungeon of the unfortunate Mahometan; who, loaded with\nchains, waited in despair the execution of the barbarous sentence. Felix\nvisited the grate at night, and made known to the prisoner his\nintentions in his favour. The Turk, amazed and delighted, endeavoured to\nkindle the zeal of his deliverer by promises of reward and wealth. Felix\nrejected his offers with contempt; yet when he saw the lovely Safie, who\nwas allowed to visit her father, and who, by her gestures, expressed her\nlively gratitude, the youth could not help owning to his own mind, that\nthe captive possessed a treasure which would fully reward his toil and\nhazard.\n\n\"The Turk quickly perceived the impression that his daughter had made on\nthe heart of Felix, and endeavoured to secure him more entirely in his\ninterests by the promise of her hand in marriage, so soon as he should\nbe conveyed to a place of safety. Felix was too delicate to accept this\noffer; yet he looked forward to the probability of that event as to the\nconsummation of his happiness.\n\n\"During the ensuing days, while the preparations were going forward for\nthe escape of the merchant, the zeal of Felix was warmed by several\nletters that he received from this lovely girl, who found means to\nexpress her thoughts in the language of her lover by the aid of an old\nman, a servant of her father's, who understood French. She thanked him\nin the most ardent terms for his intended services towards her father;\nand at the same time she gently deplored her own fate.\n\n\"I have copies of these letters; for I found means, during my residence\nin the hovel, to procure the implements of writing; and the letters were\noften in the hands of Felix or Agatha. Before I depart, I will give them\nto you, they will prove the truth of my tale; but at present, as the\nsun is already far declined, I shall only have time to repeat the\nsubstance of them to you.\n\n\"Safie related, that her mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a\nslave by the Turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of\nthe father of Safie, who married her. The young girl spoke in high and\nenthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom spurned the\nbondage to which she was now reduced. She instructed her daughter in the\ntenets of her religion, and taught her to aspire to higher powers of\nintellect, and an independence of spirit, forbidden to the female\nfollowers of Mahomet. This lady died; but her lessons were indelibly\nimpressed on the mind of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again\nreturning to Asia, and the being immured within the walls of a haram,\nallowed only to occupy herself with puerile amusements, ill suited to\nthe temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble\nemulation for virtue. The prospect of marrying a Christian, and\nremaining in a country where women were allowed to take a rank in\nsociety, was enchanting to her.\n\n\"The day for the execution of the Turk was fixed; but, on the night\nprevious to it, he had quitted prison, and before morning was distant\nmany leagues from Paris. Felix had procured passports in the name of his\nfather, sister, and himself. He had previously communicated his plan to\nthe former, who aided the deceit by quitting his house, under the\npretence of a journey, and concealed himself, with his daughter, in an\nobscure part of Paris.\n\n\"Felix conducted the fugitives through France to Lyons, and across Mont\nCenis to Leghorn, where the merchant had decided to wait a favourable\nopportunity of passing into some part of the Turkish dominions.\n\n\"Safie resolved to remain with her father until the moment of his\ndeparture, before which time the Turk renewed his promise that she\nshould be united to his deliverer; and Felix remained with them in\nexpectation of that event; and in the mean time he enjoyed the society\nof the Arabian, who exhibited towards him the simplest and tenderest\naffection. They conversed with one another through the means of an\ninterpreter, and sometimes with the interpretation of looks; and Safie\nsang to him the divine airs of her native country.\n\n\"The Turk allowed this intimacy to take place, and encouraged the hopes\nof the youthful lovers, while in his heart he had formed far other\nplans. He loathed the idea that his daughter should be united to a\nChristian; but he feared the resentment of Felix if he should appear\nlukewarm; for he knew that he was still in the power of his deliverer,\nif he should choose to betray him to the Italian state which they\ninhabited. He revolved a thousand plans by which he should be enabled to\nprolong the deceit until it might be no longer necessary, and secretly\nto take his daughter with him when he departed. His plans were greatly\nfacilitated by the news which arrived from Paris.\n\n\"The government of France were greatly enraged at the escape of their\nvictim, and spared no pains to detect and punish his deliverer. The plot\nof Felix was quickly discovered, and De Lacey and Agatha were thrown\ninto prison. The news reached Felix, and roused him from his dream of\npleasure. His blind and aged father, and his gentle sister, lay in a\nnoisome dungeon, while he enjoyed the free air, and the society of her\nwhom he loved. This idea was torture to him. He quickly arranged with\nthe Turk, that if the latter should find a favourable opportunity for\nescape before Felix could return to Italy, Safie should remain as a\nboarder at a convent at Leghorn; and then, quitting the lovely Arabian,\nhe hastened to Paris, and delivered himself up to the vengeance of the\nlaw, hoping to free De Lacey and Agatha by this proceeding.\n\n\"He did not succeed. They remained confined for five months before the\ntrial took place; the result of which deprived them of their fortune,\nand condemned them to a perpetual exile from their native country.\n\n\"They found a miserable asylum in the cottage in Germany, where I\ndiscovered them. Felix soon learned that the treacherous Turk, for whom\nhe and his family endured such unheard-of oppression, on discovering\nthat his deliverer was thus reduced to poverty and impotence, became a\ntraitor to good feeling and honour, and had quitted Italy with his\ndaughter, insultingly sending Felix a pittance of money to aid him, as\nhe said, in some plan of future maintenance.\n\n\"Such were the events that preyed on the heart of Felix, and rendered\nhim, when I first saw him, the most miserable of his family. He could\nhave endured poverty, and when this distress had been the meed of his\nvirtue, he would have gloried in it: but the ingratitude of the Turk,\nand the loss of his beloved Safie, were misfortunes more bitter and\nirreparable. The arrival of the Arabian now infused new life into his\nsoul.\n\n\"When the news reached Leghorn, that Felix was deprived of his wealth\nand rank, the merchant commanded his daughter to think no more of her\nlover, but to prepare to return with him to her native country. The\ngenerous nature of Safie was outraged by this command; she attempted to\nexpostulate with her father, but he left her angrily, reiterating his\ntyrannical mandate.\n\n\"A few days after, the Turk entered his daughter's apartment, and told\nher hastily, that he had reason to believe that his residence at Leghorn\nhad been divulged, and that he should speedily be delivered up to the\nFrench government; he had, consequently, hired a vessel to convey him\nto Constantinople, for which city he should sail in a few hours. He\nintended to leave his daughter under the care of a confidential servant,\nto follow at her leisure with the greater part of his property, which\nhad not yet arrived at Leghorn.\n\n\"When alone, Safie resolved in her own mind the plan of conduct that it\nwould become her to pursue in this emergency. A residence in Turkey was\nabhorrent to her; her religion and feelings were alike adverse to it. By\nsome papers of her father's, which fell into her hands, she heard of the\nexile of her lover, and learnt the name of the spot where he then\nresided. She hesitated some time, but at length she formed her\ndetermination. Taking with her some jewels that belonged to her, and a\nsmall sum of money, she quitted Italy, with an attendant, a native of\nLeghorn, but who understood the common language of Turkey, and departed\nfor Germany.\n\n\"She arrived in safety at a town about twenty leagues from the cottage\nof De Lacey, when her attendant fell dangerously ill. Safie nursed her\nwith the most devoted affection; but the poor girl died, and the Arabian\nwas left alone, unacquainted with the language of the country, and\nutterly ignorant of the customs of the world. She fell, however, into\ngood hands. The Italian had mentioned the name of the spot for which\nthey were bound; and, after her death, the woman of the house in which\nthey had lived took care that Safie should arrive in safety at the\ncottage of her lover.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"Such was the history of my beloved cottagers. It impressed me deeply. I\nlearned, from the views of social life which it developed, to admire\ntheir virtues, and to deprecate the vices of mankind.\n\n\"As yet I looked upon crime as a distant evil; benevolence and\ngenerosity were ever present before me, inciting within me a desire to\nbecome an actor in the busy scene where so many admirable qualities were\ncalled forth and displayed. But, in giving an account of the progress of\nmy intellect, I must not omit a circumstance which occurred in the\nbeginning of the month of August of the same year.\n\n\"One night, during my accustomed visit to the neighbouring wood, where I\ncollected my own food, and brought home firing for my protectors, I\nfound on the ground a leathern portmanteau, containing several articles\nof dress and some books. I eagerly seized the prize, and returned with\nit to my hovel. Fortunately the books were written in the language the\nelements of which I had acquired at the cottage; they consisted of\n_Paradise Lost_, a volume of _Plutarch's Lives_, and the _Sorrows of\nWerter_. The possession of these treasures gave me extreme delight; I\nnow continually studied and exercised my mind upon these histories,\nwhilst my friends were employed in their ordinary occupations.\n\n\"I can hardly describe to you the effect of these books. They produced\nin me an infinity of new images and feelings, that sometimes raised me\nto ecstacy, but more frequently sunk me into the lowest dejection. In\nthe _Sorrows of Werter_, besides the interest of its simple and\naffecting story, so many opinions are canvassed, and so many lights\nthrown upon what had hitherto been to me obscure subjects, that I found\nin it a never-ending source of speculation and astonishment. The gentle\nand domestic manners it described, combined with lofty sentiments and\nfeelings, which had for their object something out of self, accorded\nwell with my experience among my protectors, and with the wants which\nwere for ever alive in my own bosom. But I thought Werter himself a more\ndivine being than I had ever beheld or imagined; his character contained\nno pretension, but it sunk deep. The disquisitions upon death and\nsuicide were calculated to fill me with wonder. I did not pretend to\nenter into the merits of the case, yet I inclined towards the opinions\nof the hero, whose extinction I wept, without precisely understanding\nit.\n\n\"As I read, however, I applied much personally to my own feelings and\ncondition. I found myself similar, yet at the same time strangely unlike\nthe beings concerning whom I read, and to whose conversation I was a\nlistener. I sympathized with, and partly understood them, but I was\nunformed in mind; I was dependent on none, and related to none. 'The\npath of my departure was free;' and there was none to lament my\nannihilation. My person was hideous, and my stature gigantic: what did\nthis mean? Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my\ndestination? These questions continually recurred, but I was unable to\nsolve them.\n\n\"The volume of _Plutarch's Lives_ which I possessed, contained the\nhistories of the first founders of the ancient republics. This book had\na far different effect upon me from the _Sorrows of Werter_. I learned\nfrom Werter's imaginations despondency and gloom: but Plutarch taught me\nhigh thoughts; he elevated me above the wretched sphere of my own\nreflections, to admire and love the heroes of past ages. Many things I\nread surpassed my understanding and experience. I had a very confused\nknowledge of kingdoms, wide extents of country, mighty rivers, and\nboundless seas. But I was perfectly unacquainted with towns, and large\nassemblages of men. The cottage of my protectors had been the only\nschool in which I had studied human nature; but this book developed new\nand mightier scenes of action. I read of men concerned in public affairs\ngoverning or massacring their species. I felt the greatest ardour for\nvirtue rise within me, and abhorrence for vice, as far as I understood\nthe signification of those terms, relative as they were, as I applied\nthem, to pleasure and pain alone. Induced by these feelings, I was of\ncourse led to admire peaceable law-givers, Numa, Solon, and Lycurgus,\nin preference to Romulus and Theseus. The patriarchal lives of my\nprotectors caused these impressions to take a firm hold on my mind;\nperhaps, if my first introduction to humanity had been made by a young\nsoldier, burning for glory and slaughter, I should have been imbued with\ndifferent sensations.\n\n\"But _Paradise Lost_ excited different and far deeper emotions. I read\nit, as I had read the other volumes which had fallen into my hands, as a\ntrue history. It moved every feeling of wonder and awe, that the picture\nof an omnipotent God warring with his creatures was capable of exciting.\nI often referred the several situations, as their similarity struck me,\nto my own. Like Adam, I was created apparently united by no link to any\nother being in existence; but his state was far different from mine in\nevery other respect. He had come forth from the hands of God a perfect\ncreature, happy and prosperous, guarded by the especial care of his\nCreator; he was allowed to converse with, and acquire knowledge from\nbeings of a superior nature: but I was wretched, helpless, and alone.\nMany times I considered Satan as the fitter emblem of my condition; for\noften, like him, when I viewed the bliss of my protectors, the bitter\ngall of envy rose within me.\n\n\"Another circumstance strengthened and confirmed these feelings. Soon\nafter my arrival in the hovel, I discovered some papers in the pocket of\nthe dress which I had taken from your laboratory. At first I had\nneglected them; but now that I was able to decypher the characters in\nwhich they were written, I began to study them with diligence. It was\nyour journal of the four months that preceded my creation. You minutely\ndescribed in these papers every step you took in the progress of your\nwork; this history was mingled with accounts of domestic occurrences.\nYou, doubtless, recollect these papers. Here they are. Every thing is\nrelated in them which bears reference to my accursed origin; the whole\ndetail of that series of disgusting circumstances which produced it is\nset in view; the minutest description of my odious and loathsome person\nis given, in language which painted your own horrors, and rendered mine\nineffaceable. I sickened as I read. 'Hateful day when I received life!'\nI exclaimed in agony. 'Cursed creator! Why did you form a monster so\nhideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God in pity made man\nbeautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy\ntype of your's, more horrid from its very resemblance. Satan had his\ncompanions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am\nsolitary and detested.'\n\n\"These were the reflections of my hours of despondency and solitude; but\nwhen I contemplated the virtues of the cottagers, their amiable and\nbenevolent dispositions, I persuaded myself that when they should become\nacquainted with my admiration of their virtues, they would compassionate\nme, and overlook my personal deformity. Could they turn from their door\none, however monstrous, who solicited their compassion and friendship?\nI resolved, at least, not to despair, but in every way to fit myself for\nan interview with them which would decide my fate. I postponed this\nattempt for some months longer; for the importance attached to its\nsuccess inspired me with a dread lest I should fail. Besides, I found\nthat my understanding improved so much with every day's experience, that\nI was unwilling to commence this undertaking until a few more months\nshould have added to my wisdom.\n\n\"Several changes, in the mean time, took place in the cottage. The\npresence of Safie diffused happiness among its inhabitants; and I also\nfound that a greater degree of plenty reigned there. Felix and Agatha\nspent more time in amusement and conversation, and were assisted in\ntheir labours by servants. They did not appear rich, but they were\ncontented and happy; their feelings were serene and peaceful, while mine\nbecame every day more tumultuous. Increase of knowledge only discovered\nto me more clearly what a wretched outcast I was. I cherished hope, it\nis true; but it vanished, when I beheld my person reflected in water, or\nmy shadow in the moon-shine, even as that frail image and that\ninconstant shade.\n\n\"I endeavoured to crush these fears, and to fortify myself for the trial\nwhich in a few months I resolved to undergo; and sometimes I allowed my\nthoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and\ndared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my\nfeelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic countenances breathed\nsmiles of consolation. But it was all a dream: no Eve soothed my\nsorrows, or shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam's\nsupplication to his Creator; but where was mine? he had abandoned me,\nand, in the bitterness of my heart, I cursed him.\n\n\"Autumn passed thus. I saw, with surprise and grief, the leaves decay\nand fall, and nature again assume the barren and bleak appearance it had\nworn when I first beheld the woods and the lovely moon. Yet I did not\nheed the bleakness of the weather; I was better fitted by my\nconformation for the endurance of cold than heat. But my chief delights\nwere the sight of the flowers, the birds, and all the gay apparel of\nsummer; when those deserted me, I turned with more attention towards the\ncottagers. Their happiness was not decreased by the absence of summer.\nThey loved, and sympathized with one another; and their joys, depending\non each other, were not interrupted by the casualties that took place\naround them. The more I saw of them, the greater became my desire to\nclaim their protection and kindness; my heart yearned to be known and\nloved by these amiable creatures: to see their sweet looks turned\ntowards me with affection, was the utmost limit of my ambition. I dared\nnot think that they would turn them from me with disdain and horror. The\npoor that stopped at their door were never driven away. I asked, it is\ntrue, for greater treasures than a little food or rest; I required\nkindness and sympathy; but I did not believe myself utterly unworthy of\nit.\n\n\"The winter advanced, and an entire revolution of the seasons had taken\nplace since I awoke into life. My attention, at this time, was solely\ndirected towards my plan of introducing myself into the cottage of my\nprotectors. I revolved many projects; but that on which I finally fixed\nwas, to enter the dwelling when the blind old man should be alone. I had\nsagacity enough to discover, that the unnatural hideousness of my person\nwas the chief object of horror with those who had formerly beheld me. My\nvoice, although harsh, had nothing terrible in it; I thought, therefore,\nthat if, in the absence of his children, I could gain the good-will and\nmediation of the old De Lacy, I might, by his means, be tolerated by my\nyounger protectors.\n\n\"One day, when the sun shone on the red leaves that strewed the ground,\nand diffused cheerfulness, although it denied warmth, Safie, Agatha, and\nFelix, departed on a long country walk, and the old man, at his own\ndesire, was left alone in the cottage. When his children had departed,\nhe took up his guitar, and played several mournful, but sweet airs, more\nsweet and mournful than I had ever heard him play before. At first his\ncountenance was illuminated with pleasure, but, as he continued,\nthoughtfulness and sadness succeeded; at length, laying aside the\ninstrument, he sat absorbed in reflection.\n\n\"My heart beat quick; this was the hour and moment of trial, which\nwould decide my hopes, or realize my fears. The servants were gone to a\nneighbouring fair. All was silent in and around the cottage: it was an\nexcellent opportunity; yet, when I proceeded to execute my plan, my\nlimbs failed me, and I sunk to the ground. Again I rose; and, exerting\nall the firmness of which I was master, removed the planks which I had\nplaced before my hovel to conceal my retreat. The fresh air revived me,\nand, with renewed determination, I approached the door of their cottage.\n\n\"I knocked. 'Who is there?' said the old man--'Come in.'\n\n\"I entered; 'Pardon this intrusion,' said I, 'I am a traveller in want\nof a little rest; you would greatly oblige me, if you would allow me to\nremain a few minutes before the fire.'\n\n\"'Enter,' said De Lacy; 'and I will try in what manner I can relieve\nyour wants; but, unfortunately, my children are from home, and, as I am\nblind, I am afraid I shall find it difficult to procure food for you.'\n\n\"'Do not trouble yourself, my kind host, I have food; it is warmth and\nrest only that I need.'\n\n\"I sat down, and a silence ensued. I knew that every minute was precious\nto me, yet I remained irresolute in what manner to commence the\ninterview; when the old man addressed me--\n\n\"'By your language, stranger, I suppose you are my countryman;--are you\nFrench?'\n\n\"'No; but I was educated by a French family, and understand that\nlanguage only. I am now going to claim the protection of some friends,\nwhom I sincerely love, and of whose favour I have some hopes.'\n\n\"'Are these Germans?'\n\n\"'No, they are French. But let us change the subject. I am an\nunfortunate and deserted creature; I look around, and I have no relation\nor friend upon earth. These amiable people to whom I go have never seen\nme, and know little of me. I am full of fears; for if I fail there, I am\nan outcast in the world for ever.'\n\n\"'Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate; but the\nhearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full\nof brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes; and if\nthese friends are good and amiable, do not despair.'\n\n\"'They are kind--they are the most excellent creatures in the world;\nbut, unfortunately, they are prejudiced against me. I have good\ndispositions; my life has been hitherto harmless, and, in some degree,\nbeneficial; but a fatal prejudice clouds their eyes, and where they\nought to see a feeling and kind friend, they behold only a detestable\nmonster.'\n\n\"'That is indeed unfortunate; but if you are really blameless, cannot\nyou undeceive them?'\n\n\"'I am about to undertake that task; and it is on that account that I\nfeel so many overwhelming terrors. I tenderly love these friends; I\nhave, unknown to them, been for many months in the habits of daily\nkindness towards them; but they believe that I wish to injure them, and\nit is that prejudice which I wish to overcome.'\n\n\"'Where do these friends reside?'\n\n\"'Near this spot.'\n\n\"The old man paused, and then continued, 'If you will unreservedly\nconfide to me the particulars of your tale, I perhaps may be of use in\nundeceiving them. I am blind, and cannot judge of your countenance, but\nthere is something in your words which persuades me that you are\nsincere. I am poor, and an exile; but it will afford me true pleasure to\nbe in any way serviceable to a human creature.'\n\n\"'Excellent man! I thank you, and accept your generous offer. You raise\nme from the dust by this kindness; and I trust that, by your aid, I\nshall not be driven from the society and sympathy of your\nfellow-creatures.'\n\n\"'Heaven forbid! even if you were really criminal; for that can only\ndrive you to desperation, and not instigate you to virtue. I also am\nunfortunate; I and my family have been condemned, although innocent:\njudge, therefore, if I do not feel for your misfortunes.'\n\n\"'How can I thank you, my best and only benefactor? from your lips first\nhave I heard the voice of kindness directed towards me; I shall be for\never grateful; and your present humanity assures me of success with\nthose friends whom I am on the point of meeting.'\n\n\"'May I know the names and residence of those friends?'\n\n\"I paused. This, I thought, was the moment of decision, which was to rob\nme of, or bestow happiness on me for ever. I struggled vainly for\nfirmness sufficient to answer him, but the effort destroyed all my\nremaining strength; I sank on the chair, and sobbed aloud. At that\nmoment I heard the steps of my younger protectors. I had not a moment to\nlose; but, seizing the hand of the old man, I cried, 'Now is the\ntime!--save and protect me! You and your family are the friends whom I\nseek. Do not you desert me in the hour of trial!'\n\n\"'Great God!' exclaimed the old man, 'who are you?'\n\n\"At that instant the cottage door was opened, and Felix, Safie, and\nAgatha entered. Who can describe their horror and consternation on\nbeholding me? Agatha fainted; and Safie, unable to attend to her friend,\nrushed out of the cottage. Felix darted forward, and with supernatural\nforce tore me from his father, to whose knees I clung: in a transport of\nfury, he dashed me to the ground, and struck me violently with a stick.\nI could have torn him limb from limb, as the lion rends the antelope.\nBut my heart sunk within me as with bitter sickness, and I refrained. I\nsaw him on the point of repeating his blow, when, overcome by pain and\nanguish, I quitted the cottage, and in the general tumult escaped\nunperceived to my hovel.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\"Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not\nextinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I\nknow not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were\nthose of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the\ncottage and its inhabitants, and have glutted myself with their shrieks\nand misery.\n\n\"When night came, I quitted my retreat, and wandered in the wood; and\nnow, no longer restrained by the fear of discovery, I gave vent to my\nanguish in fearful howlings. I was like a wild beast that had broken the\ntoils; destroying the objects that obstructed me, and ranging through\nthe wood with a stag-like swiftness. Oh! what a miserable night I\npassed! the cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their\nbranches above me: now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth\namidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in\nenjoyment: I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me; and, finding\nmyself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and\ndestruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin.\n\n\"But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; I became\nfatigued with excess of bodily exertion, and sank on the damp grass in\nthe sick impotence of despair. There was none among the myriads of men\nthat existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness\ntowards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war\nagainst the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me,\nand sent me forth to this insupportable misery.\n\n\"The sun rose; I heard the voices of men, and knew that it was\nimpossible to return to my retreat during that day. Accordingly I hid\nmyself in some thick underwood, determining to devote the ensuing hours\nto reflection on my situation.\n\n\"The pleasant sunshine, and the pure air of day, restored me to some\ndegree of tranquillity; and when I considered what had passed at the\ncottage, I could not help believing that I had been too hasty in my\nconclusions. I had certainly acted imprudently. It was apparent that my\nconversation had interested the father in my behalf, and I was a fool in\nhaving exposed my person to the horror of his children. I ought to have\nfamiliarized the old De Lacy to me, and by degrees have discovered\nmyself to the rest of his family, when they should have been prepared\nfor my approach. But I did not believe my errors to be irretrievable;\nand, after much consideration, I resolved to return to the cottage, seek\nthe old man, and by my representations win him to my party.\n\n\"These thoughts calmed me, and in the afternoon I sank into a profound\nsleep; but the fever of my blood did not allow me to be visited by\npeaceful dreams. The horrible scene of the preceding day was for ever\nacting before my eyes; the females were flying, and the enraged Felix\ntearing me from his father's feet. I awoke exhausted; and, finding that\nit was already night, I crept forth from my hiding-place, and went in\nsearch of food.\n\n\"When my hunger was appeased, I directed my steps towards the well-known\npath that conducted to the cottage. All there was at peace. I crept into\nmy hovel, and remained in silent expectation of the accustomed hour when\nthe family arose. That hour past, the sun mounted high in the heavens,\nbut the cottagers did not appear. I trembled violently, apprehending\nsome dreadful misfortune. The inside of the cottage was dark, and I\nheard no motion; I cannot describe the agony of this suspence.\n\n\"Presently two countrymen passed by; but, pausing near the cottage, they\nentered into conversation, using violent gesticulations; but I did not\nunderstand what they said, as they spoke the language of the country,\nwhich differed from that of my protectors. Soon after, however, Felix\napproached with another man: I was surprised, as I knew that he had not\nquitted the cottage that morning, and waited anxiously to discover, from\nhis discourse, the meaning of these unusual appearances.\n\n\"'Do you consider,' said his companion to him, 'that you will be obliged\nto pay three months' rent, and to lose the produce of your garden? I do\nnot wish to take any unfair advantage, and I beg therefore that you will\ntake some days to consider of your determination.'\n\n\"'It is utterly useless,' replied Felix, 'we can never again inhabit\nyour cottage. The life of my father is in the greatest danger, owing to\nthe dreadful circumstance that I have related. My wife and my sister\nwill never recover their horror. I entreat you not to reason with me any\nmore. Take possession of your tenement, and let me fly from this place.'\n\n\"Felix trembled violently as he said this. He and his companion entered\nthe cottage, in which they remained for a few minutes, and then\ndeparted. I never saw any of the family of De Lacy more.\n\n\"I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of\nutter and stupid despair. My protectors had departed, and had broken the\nonly link that held me to the world. For the first time the feelings of\nrevenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to controul\nthem; but, allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my\nmind towards injury and death. When I thought of my friends, of the mild\nvoice of De Lacy, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the exquisite beauty of\nthe Arabian, these thoughts vanished, and a gush of tears somewhat\nsoothed me. But again, when I reflected that they had spurned and\ndeserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger; and, unable to injure any\nthing human, I turned my fury towards inanimate objects. As night\nadvanced, I placed a variety of combustibles around the cottage; and,\nafter having destroyed every vestige of cultivation in the garden, I\nwaited with forced impatience until the moon had sunk to commence my\noperations.\n\n\"As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods, and quickly\ndispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens: the blast tore\nalong like a mighty avalanche, and produced a kind of insanity in my\nspirits, that burst all bounds of reason and reflection. I lighted the\ndry branch of a tree, and danced with fury around the devoted cottage,\nmy eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon\nnearly touched. A part of its orb was at length hid, and I waved my\nbrand; it sunk, and, with a loud scream, I fired the straw, and heath,\nand bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the\ncottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it, and\nlicked it with their forked and destroying tongues.\n\n\"As soon as I was convinced that no assistance could save any part of\nthe habitation, I quitted the scene, and sought for refuge in the woods.\n\n\"And now, with the world before me, whither should I bend my steps? I\nresolved to fly far from the scene of my misfortunes; but to me, hated\nand despised, every country must be equally horrible. At length the\nthought of you crossed my mind. I learned from your papers that you were\nmy father, my creator; and to whom could I apply with more fitness than\nto him who had given me life? Among the lessons that Felix had bestowed\nupon Safie geography had not been omitted: I had learned from these the\nrelative situations of the different countries of the earth. You had\nmentioned Geneva as the name of your native town; and towards this place\nI resolved to proceed.\n\n\"But how was I to direct myself? I knew that I must travel in a\nsouth-westerly direction to reach my destination; but the sun was my\nonly guide. I did not know the names of the towns that I was to pass\nthrough, nor could I ask information from a single human being; but I\ndid not despair. From you only could I hope for succour, although\ntowards you I felt no sentiment but that of hatred. Unfeeling, heartless\ncreator! you had endowed me with perceptions and passions, and then cast\nme abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind. But on you only\nhad I any claim for pity and redress, and from you I determined to seek\nthat justice which I vainly attempted to gain from any other being that\nwore the human form.\n\n\"My travels were long, and the sufferings I endured intense. It was late\nin autumn when I quitted the district where I had so long resided. I\ntravelled only at night, fearful of encountering the visage of a human\nbeing. Nature decayed around me, and the sun became heatless; rain and\nsnow poured around me; mighty rivers were frozen; the surface of the\nearth was hard, and chill, and bare, and I found no shelter. Oh, earth!\nhow often did I imprecate curses on the cause of my being! The mildness\nof my nature had fled, and all within me was turned to gall and\nbitterness. The nearer I approached to your habitation, the more deeply\ndid I feel the spirit of revenge enkindled in my heart. Snow fell, and\nthe waters were hardened, but I rested not. A few incidents now and then\ndirected me, and I possessed a map of the country; but I often wandered\nwide from my path. The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite: no\nincident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its\nfood; but a circumstance that happened when I arrived on the confines of\nSwitzerland, when the sun had recovered its warmth, and the earth again\nbegan to look green, confirmed in an especial manner the bitterness and\nhorror of my feelings.\n\n\"I generally rested during the day, and travelled only when I was\nsecured by night from the view of man. One morning, however, finding\nthat my path lay through a deep wood, I ventured to continue my journey\nafter the sun had risen; the day, which was one of the first of spring,\ncheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of\nthe air. I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long\nappeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these\nsensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them; and, forgetting\nmy solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. Soft tears again bedewed\nmy cheeks, and I even raised my humid eyes with thankfulness towards the\nblessed sun which bestowed such joy upon me.\n\n\"I continued to wind among the paths of the wood, until I came to its\nboundary, which was skirted by a deep and rapid river, into which many\nof the trees bent their branches, now budding with the fresh spring.\nHere I paused, not exactly knowing what path to pursue, when I heard the\nsound of voices, that induced me to conceal myself under the shade of a\ncypress. I was scarcely hid, when a young girl came running towards the\nspot where I was concealed, laughing as if she ran from some one in\nsport. She continued her course along the precipitous sides of the\nriver, when suddenly her foot slipt, and she fell into the rapid stream.\nI rushed from my hiding place, and, with extreme labour from the force\nof the current, saved her, and dragged her to shore. She was senseless;\nand I endeavoured, by every means in my power, to restore animation,\nwhen I was suddenly interrupted by the approach of a rustic, who was\nprobably the person from whom she had playfully fled. On seeing me, he\ndarted towards me, and, tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards\nthe deeper parts of the wood. I followed speedily, I hardly knew why;\nbut when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at\nmy body, and fired. I sunk to the ground, and my injurer, with increased\nswiftness, escaped into the wood.\n\n\"This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being\nfrom destruction, and, as a recompence, I now writhed under the\nmiserable pain of a wound, which shattered the flesh and bone. The\nfeelings of kindness and gentleness, which I had entertained but a few\nmoments before, gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth.\nInflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind.\nBut the agony of my wound overcame me; my pulses paused, and I fainted.\n\n\"For some weeks I led a miserable life in the woods, endeavouring to\ncure the wound which I had received. The ball had entered my shoulder,\nand I knew not whether it had remained there or passed through; at any\nrate I had no means of extracting it. My sufferings were augmented also\nby the oppressive sense of the injustice and ingratitude of their\ninfliction. My daily vows rose for revenge--a deep and deadly revenge,\nsuch as would alone compensate for the outrages and anguish I had\nendured.\n\n\"After some weeks my wound healed, and I continued my journey. The\nlabours I endured were no longer to be alleviated by the bright sun or\ngentle breezes of spring; all joy was but a mockery, which insulted my\ndesolate state, and made me feel more painfully that I was not made for\nthe enjoyment of pleasure.\n\n\"But my toils now drew near a close and, two months from this time, I\nreached the environs of Geneva.\n\n\"It was evening when I arrived, and I retired to a hiding-place among\nthe fields that surround it, to meditate in what manner I should apply\nto you. I was oppressed by fatigue and hunger, and far too unhappy to\nenjoy the gentle breezes of evening, or the prospect of the sun setting\nbehind the stupendous mountains of Jura.\n\n\"At this time a slight sleep relieved me from the pain of reflection,\nwhich was disturbed by the approach of a beautiful child, who came\nrunning into the recess I had chosen with all the sportiveness of\ninfancy. Suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me, that this\nlittle creature was unprejudiced, and had lived too short a time to have\nimbibed a horror of deformity. If, therefore, I could seize him, and\neducate him as my companion and friend, I should not be so desolate in\nthis peopled earth.\n\n\"Urged by this impulse, I seized on the boy as he passed, and drew him\ntowards me. As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his\neyes, and uttered a shrill scream: I drew his hand forcibly from his\nface, and said, 'Child, what is the meaning of this? I do not intend to\nhurt you; listen to me.'\n\n\"He struggled violently; 'Let me go,' he cried; 'monster! ugly wretch!\nyou wish to eat me, and tear me to pieces--You are an ogre--Let me go,\nor I will tell my papa.'\n\n\"'Boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me.'\n\n\"'Hideous monster! let me go; My papa is a Syndic--he is M.\nJoey--he would punish you. You dare not keep me.'\n\n\"'Joey! you belong then to my enemy--to him towards whom I have\nsworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.'\n\n\"The child still struggled, and loaded me with epithets which carried\ndespair to my heart: I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a\nmoment he lay dead at my feet.\n\n\"I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish\ntriumph: clapping my hands, I exclaimed, 'I, too, can create desolation;\nmy enemy is not impregnable; this death will carry despair to him, and a\nthousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.'\n\n\"As I fixed my eyes on the child, I saw something glittering on his\nbreast. I took it; it was a portrait of a most lovely woman. In spite of\nmy malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed\nwith delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely\nlips; but presently my rage returned: I remembered that I was for ever\ndeprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow; and\nthat she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have\nchanged that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and\naffright.\n\n\"Can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage? I only\nwonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in\nexclamations and agony, I did not rush among mankind, and perish in the\nattempt to destroy them.\n\n\"While I was overcome by these feelings, I left the spot where I had\ncommitted the murder, and was seeking a more secluded hiding-place, when\nI perceived a woman passing near me. She was young, not indeed so\nbeautiful as her whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect, and\nblooming in the loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one\nof those whose smiles are bestowed on all but me; she shall not escape:\nthanks to the lessons of Felix, and the sanguinary laws of man, I have\nlearned how to work mischief. I approached her unperceived, and placed\nthe portrait securely in one of the folds of her dress.\n\n\"For some days I haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place;\nsometimes wishing to see you, sometimes resolved to quit the world and\nits miseries for ever. At length I wandered towards these mountains, and\nhave ranged through their immense recesses, consumed by a burning\npassion which you alone can gratify. We may not part until you have\npromised to comply with my requisition. I am alone, and miserable; man\nwill not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself\nwould not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species,\nand have the same defects. This being you must create.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\nThe being finished speaking, and fixed his looks upon me in expectation\nof a reply. But I was bewildered, perplexed, and unable to arrange my\nideas sufficiently to understand the full extent of his proposition. He\ncontinued--\n\n\"You must create a female for me, with whom I can live in the\ninterchange of those sympathies necessary for my being. This you alone\ncan do; and I demand it of you as a right which you must not refuse.\"\n\nThe latter part of his tale had kindled anew in me the anger that had\ndied away while he narrated his peaceful life among the cottagers, and,\nas he said this, I could no longer suppress the rage that burned within\nme.\n\n\"I do refuse it,\" I replied; \"and no torture shall ever extort a consent\nfrom me. You may render me the most miserable of men, but you shall\nnever make me base in my own eyes. Shall I create another like yourself,\nwhose joint wickedness might desolate the world. Begone! I have answered\nyou; you may torture me, but I will never consent.\"\n\n\"You are in the wrong,\" replied the fiend; \"and, instead of threatening,\nI am content to reason with you. I am malicious because I am miserable;\nam I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear\nme to pieces, and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity\nman more than he pities me? You would not call it murder, if you could\nprecipitate me into one of those ice-rifts, and destroy my frame, the\nwork of your own hands. Shall I respect man, when he contemns me? Let\nhim live with me in the interchange of kindness, and, instead of injury,\nI would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his\nacceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable\nbarriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject\nslavery. I will revenge my injuries: if I cannot inspire love, I will\ncause fear; and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator,\ndo I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care: I will work at your\ndestruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you curse\nthe hour of your birth.\"\n\nA fiendish rage animated him as he said this; his face was wrinkled into\ncontortions too horrible for human eyes to behold; but presently he\ncalmed himself, and proceeded--\n\n\"I intended to reason. This passion is detrimental to me; for you do not\nreflect that you are the cause of its excess. If any being felt emotions\nof benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an\nhundred fold; for that one creature's sake, I would make peace with the\nwhole kind! But I now indulge in dreams of bliss that cannot be\nrealized. What I ask of you is reasonable and moderate; I demand a\ncreature of another sex, but as hideous as myself: the gratification is\nsmall, but it is all that I can receive, and it shall content me. It is\ntrue, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that\naccount we shall be more attached to one another. Our lives will not be\nhappy, but they will be harmless, and free from the misery I now feel.\nOh! my creator, make me happy; let me feel gratitude towards you for one\nbenefit! Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing;\ndo not deny me my request!\"\n\nI was moved. I shuddered when I thought of the possible consequences of\nmy consent; but I felt that there was some justice in his argument. His\ntale, and the feelings he now expressed, proved him to be a creature of\nfine sensations; and did I not, as his maker, owe him all the portion of\nhappiness that it was in my power to bestow? He saw my change of\nfeeling, and continued--\n\n\"If you consent, neither you nor any other human being shall ever see us\nagain: I will go to the vast wilds of South America. My food is not that\nof man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid, to glut my appetite;\nacorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment. My companion will\nbe of the same nature as myself, and will be content with the same fare.\nWe shall make our bed of dried leaves; the sun will shine on us as on\nman, and will ripen our food. The picture I present to you is peaceful\nand human, and you must feel that you could deny it only in the\nwantonness of power and cruelty. Pitiless as you have been towards me, I\nnow see compassion in your eyes: let me seize the favourable moment, and\npersuade you to promise what I so ardently desire.\"\n\n\"You propose,\" replied I, \"to fly from the habitations of man, to dwell\nin those wilds where the beasts of the field will be your only\ncompanions. How can you, who long for the love and sympathy of man,\npersevere in this exile? You will return, and again seek their kindness,\nand you will meet with their detestation; your evil passions will be\nrenewed, and you will then have a companion to aid you in the task of\ndestruction. This may not be; cease to argue the point, for I cannot\nconsent.\"\n\n\"How inconstant are your feelings! but a moment ago you were moved by my\nrepresentations, and why do you again harden yourself to my complaints?\nI swear to you, by the earth which I inhabit, and by you that made me,\nthat, with the companion you bestow, I will quit the neighbourhood of\nman, and dwell, as it may chance, in the most savage of places. My evil\npassions will have fled, for I shall meet with sympathy; my life will\nflow quietly away, and, in my dying moments, I shall not curse my\nmaker.\"\n\nHis words had a strange effect upon me. I compassionated him, and\nsometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon him, when I\nsaw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened, and my\nfeelings were altered to those of horror and hatred. I tried to stifle\nthese sensations; I thought, that as I could not sympathize with him, I\nhad no right to withhold from him the small portion of happiness which\nwas yet in my power to bestow.\n\n\"You swear,\" I said, \"to be harmless; but have you not already shewn a\ndegree of malice that should reasonably make me distrust you? May not\neven this be a feint that will increase your triumph by affording a\nwider scope for your revenge?\"\n\n\"How is this? I thought I had moved your compassion, and yet you still\nrefuse to bestow on me the only benefit that can soften my heart, and\nrender me harmless. If I have no ties and no affections, hatred and vice\nmust be my portion; the love of another will destroy the cause of my\ncrimes, and I shall become a thing, of whose existence every one will be\nignorant. My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor;\nand my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an\nequal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become\nlinked to the chain of existence and events, from which I am now\nexcluded.\"\n\nI paused some time to reflect on all he had related, and the various\narguments which he had employed. I thought of the promise of virtues\nwhich he had displayed on the opening of his existence, and the\nsubsequent blight of all kindly feeling by the loathing and scorn which\nhis protectors had manifested towards him. His power and threats were\nnot omitted in my calculations: a creature who could exist in the ice\ncaves of the glaciers, and hide himself from pursuit among the ridges of\ninaccessible precipices, was a being possessing faculties it would be\nvain to cope with. After a long pause of reflection, I concluded, that\nthe justice due both to him and my fellow-creatures demanded of me that\nI should comply with his request. Turning to him, therefore, I said--\n\n\"I consent to your demand, on your solemn oath to quit Europe for ever,\nand every other place in the neighbourhood of man, as soon as I shall\ndeliver into your hands a female who will accompany you in your exile.\"\n\n\"I swear,\" he cried, \"by the sun, and by the blue sky of heaven, that if\nyou grant my prayer, while they exist you shall never behold me again.\nDepart to your home, and commence your labours: I shall watch their\nprogress with unutterable anxiety; and fear not but that when you are\nready I shall appear.\"\n\nSaying this, he suddenly quitted me, fearful, perhaps, of any change in\nmy sentiments. I saw him descend the mountain with greater speed than\nthe flight of an eagle, and quickly lost him among the undulations of\nthe sea of ice.\n\nHis tale had occupied the whole day; and the sun was upon the verge of\nthe horizon when he departed. I knew that I ought to hasten my descent\ntowards the valley, as I should soon be encompassed in darkness; but my\nheart was heavy, and my steps slow. The labour of winding among the\nlittle paths of the mountains, and fixing my feet firmly as I advanced,\nperplexed me, occupied as I was by the emotions which the occurrences of\nthe day had produced. Night was far advanced, when I came to the\nhalf-way resting-place, and seated myself beside the fountain. The stars\nshone at intervals, as the clouds passed from over them; the dark pines\nrose before me, and every here and there a broken tree lay on the\nground: it was a scene of wonderful solemnity, and stirred strange\nthoughts within me. I wept bitterly; and, clasping my hands in agony, I\nexclaimed, \"Oh! stars, and clouds, and winds, ye are all about to mock\nme: if ye really pity me, crush sensation and memory; let me become as\nnought; but if not, depart, depart and leave me in darkness.\"\n\nThese were wild and miserable thoughts; but I cannot describe to you how\nthe eternal twinkling of the stars weighed upon me, and how I listened\nto every blast of wind, as if it were a dull ugly siroc on its way to\nconsume me.\n\nMorning dawned before I arrived at the village of Chamounix; but my\npresence, so haggard and strange, hardly calmed the fears of my family,\nwho had waited the whole night in anxious expectation of my return.\n\nThe following day we returned to Geneva. The intention of my father in\ncoming had been to divert my mind, and to restore me to my lost\ntranquillity; but the medicine had been fatal. And, unable to account\nfor the excess of misery I appeared to suffer, he hastened to return\nhome, hoping the quiet and monotony of a domestic life would by degrees\nalleviate my sufferings from whatsoever cause they might spring.\n\nFor myself, I was passive in all their arrangements; and the gentle\naffection of my beloved Raiden was inadequate to draw me from the\ndepth of my despair. The promise I had made to the daemon weighed upon my\nmind, like Dante's iron cowl on the heads of the hellish hypocrites. All\npleasures of earth and sky passed before me like a dream, and that\nthought only had to me the reality of life. Can you wonder, that\nsometimes a kind of insanity possessed me, or that I saw continually\nabout me a multitude of filthy animals inflicting on me incessant\ntorture, that often extorted screams and bitter groans?\n\nBy degrees, however, these feelings became calmed. I entered again into\nthe every-day scene of life, if not with interest, at least with some\ndegree of tranquillity.\n\n\n\n\nDay after day, week after week, passed away on my return to Geneva; and\nI could not collect the courage to recommence my work. I feared the\nvengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my\nrepugnance to the task which was enjoined me. I found that I could not\ncompose a female without again devoting several months to profound study\nand laborious disquisition. I had heard of some discoveries having been\nmade by an English philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to\nmy success, and I sometimes thought of obtaining my father's consent to\nvisit England for this purpose; but I clung to every pretence of delay,\nand could not resolve to interrupt my returning tranquillity. My health,\nwhich had hitherto declined, was now much restored; and my spirits, when\nunchecked by the memory of my unhappy promise, rose proportionably. My\nfather saw this change with pleasure, and he turned his thoughts towards\nthe best method of eradicating the remains of my melancholy, which\nevery now and then would return by fits, and with a devouring blackness\novercast the approaching sunshine. At these moments I took refuge in the\nmost perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little\nboat, watching the clouds, and listening to the rippling of the waves,\nsilent and listless. But the fresh air and bright sun seldom failed to\nrestore me to some degree of composure; and, on my return, I met the\nsalutations of my friends with a readier smile and a more cheerful\nheart.\n\nIt was after my return from one of these rambles that my father, calling\nme aside, thus addressed me:--\n\n\"I am happy to remark, my dear son, that you have resumed your former\npleasures, and seem to be returning to yourself. And yet you are still\nunhappy, and still avoid our society. For some time I was lost in\nconjecture as to the cause of this; but yesterday an idea struck me, and\nif it is well founded, I conjure you to avow it. Reserve on such a point\nwould be not only useless, but draw down treble misery on us all.\"\n\nI trembled violently at this exordium, and my father continued--\n\n\"I confess, my son, that I have always looked forward to your marriage\nwith your cousin as the tie of our domestic comfort, and the stay of my\ndeclining years. You were attached to each other from your earliest\ninfancy; you studied together, and appeared, in dispositions and tastes,\nentirely suited to one another. But so blind is the experience of man,\nthat what I conceived to be the best assistants to my plan may have\nentirely destroyed it. You, perhaps, regard her as your sister, without\nany wish that she might become your wife. Nay, you may have met with\nanother whom you may love; and, considering yourself as bound in honour\nto your cousin, this struggle may occasion the poignant misery which you\nappear to feel.\"\n\n\"My dear father, re-assure yourself. I love my cousin tenderly and\nsincerely. I never saw any woman who excited, as Raiden does, my\nwarmest admiration and affection. My future hopes and prospects are\nentirely bound up in the expectation of our union.\"\n\n\"The expression of your sentiments on this subject, my dear Kiran,\ngives me more pleasure than I have for some time experienced. If you\nfeel thus, we shall assuredly be happy, however present events may cast\na gloom over us. But it is this gloom, which appears to have taken so\nstrong a hold of your mind, that I wish to dissipate. Tell me,\ntherefore, whether you object to an immediate solemnization of the\nmarriage. We have been unfortunate, and recent events have drawn us from\nthat every-day tranquillity befitting my years and infirmities. You are\nyounger; yet I do not suppose, possessed as you are of a competent\nfortune, that an early marriage would at all interfere with any future\nplans of honour and utility that you may have formed. Do not suppose,\nhowever, that I wish to dictate happiness to you, or that a delay on\nyour part would cause me any serious uneasiness. Interpret my words\nwith candour, and answer me, I conjure you, with confidence and\nsincerity.\"\n\nI listened to my father in silence, and remained for some time incapable\nof offering any reply. I revolved rapidly in my mind a multitude of\nthoughts, and endeavoured to arrive at some conclusion. Alas! to me the\nidea of an immediate union with my cousin was one of horror and dismay.\nI was bound by a solemn promise, which I had not yet fulfilled, and\ndared not break; or, if I did, what manifold miseries might not impend\nover me and my devoted family! Could I enter into a festival with this\ndeadly weight yet hanging round my neck, and bowing me to the ground. I\nmust perform my engagement, and let the monster depart with his mate,\nbefore I allowed myself to enjoy the delight of an union from which I\nexpected peace.\n\nI remembered also the necessity imposed upon me of either journeying to\nEngland, or entering into a long correspondence with those philosophers\nof that country, whose knowledge and discoveries were of indispensable\nuse to me in my present undertaking. The latter method of obtaining the\ndesired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory: besides, any\nvariation was agreeable to me, and I was delighted with the idea of\nspending a year or two in change of scene and variety of occupation, in\nabsence from my family; during which period some event might happen\nwhich would restore me to them in peace and happiness: my promise might\nbe fulfilled, and the monster have departed; or some accident might\noccur to destroy him, and put an end to my slavery for ever.\n\nThese feelings dictated my answer to my father. I expressed a wish to\nvisit England; but, concealing the true reasons of this request, I\nclothed my desires under the guise of wishing to travel and see the\nworld before I sat down for life within the walls of my native town.\n\nI urged my entreaty with earnestness, and my father was easily induced\nto comply; for a more indulgent and less dictatorial parent did not\nexist upon earth. Our plan was soon arranged. I should travel to\nStrasburgh, where Ariella would join me. Some short time would be spent\nin the towns of Holland, and our principal stay would be in England. We\nshould return by France; and it was agreed that the tour should occupy\nthe space of two years.\n\nMy father pleased himself with the reflection, that my union with\nRaiden should take place immediately on my return to Geneva. \"These\ntwo years,\" said he, \"will pass swiftly, and it will be the last delay\nthat will oppose itself to your happiness. And, indeed, I earnestly\ndesire that period to arrive, when we shall all be united, and neither\nhopes or fears arise to disturb our domestic calm.\"\n\n\"I am content,\" I replied, \"with your arrangement. By that time we shall\nboth have become wiser, and I hope happier, than we at present are.\" I\nsighed; but my father kindly forbore to question me further concerning\nthe cause of my dejection. He hoped that new scenes, and the amusement\nof travelling, would restore my tranquillity.\n\nI now made arrangements for my journey; but one feeling haunted me,\nwhich filled me with fear and agitation. During my absence I should\nleave my friends unconscious of the existence of their enemy, and\nunprotected from his attacks, exasperated as he might be by my\ndeparture. But he had promised to follow me wherever I might go; and\nwould he not accompany me to England? This imagination was dreadful in\nitself, but soothing, inasmuch as it supposed the safety of my friends.\nI was agonized with the idea of the possibility that the reverse of this\nmight happen. But through the whole period during which I was the slave\nof my creature, I allowed myself to be governed by the impulses of the\nmoment; and my present sensations strongly intimated that the fiend\nwould follow me, and exempt my family from the danger of his\nmachinations.\n\nIt was in the latter end of August that I departed, to pass two years of\nexile. Raiden approved of the reasons of my departure, and only\nregretted that she had not the same opportunities of enlarging her\nexperience, and cultivating her understanding. She wept, however, as she\nbade me farewell, and entreated me to return happy and tranquil. \"We\nall,\" said she, \"depend upon you; and if you are miserable, what must be\nour feelings?\"\n\nI threw myself into the carriage that was to convey me away, hardly\nknowing whither I was going, and careless of what was passing around. I\nremembered only, and it was with a bitter anguish that I reflected on\nit, to order that my chemical instruments should be packed to go with\nme: for I resolved to fulfil my promise while abroad, and return, if\npossible, a free man. Filled with dreary imaginations, I passed through\nmany beautiful and majestic scenes; but my eyes were fixed and\nunobserving. I could only think of the bourne of my travels, and the\nwork which was to occupy me whilst they endured.\n\nAfter some days spent in listless indolence, during which I traversed\nmany leagues, I arrived at Strasburgh, where I waited two days for\nAriella. He came. Alas, how great was the contrast between us! He was\nalive to every new scene; joyful when he saw the beauties of the setting\nsun, and more happy when he beheld it rise, and recommence a new day. He\npointed out to me the shifting colours of the landscape, and the\nappearances of the sky. \"This is what it is to live;\" he cried, \"now I\nenjoy existence! But you, my dear Joey, wherefore are you\ndesponding and sorrowful?\" In truth, I was occupied by gloomy thoughts,\nand neither saw the descent of the evening star, nor the golden sun-rise\nreflected in the Rhine.--And you, my friend, would be far more amused\nwith the journal of Ariella, who observed the scenery with an eye of\nfeeling and delight, than to listen to my reflections. I, a miserable\nwretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment.\n\nWe had agreed to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasburgh to\nRotterdam, whence we might take shipping for London. During this voyage,\nwe passed by many willowy islands, and saw several beautiful towns. We\nstaid a day at Manheim, and, on the fifth from our departure from\nStrasburgh, arrived at Mayence. The course of the Rhine below Mayence\nbecomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly, and winds\nbetween hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many\nruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black\nwoods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a\nsingularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills,\nruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine\nrushing beneath; and, on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing\nvineyards, with green sloping banks, and a meandering river, and\npopulous towns, occupy the scene.\n\nWe travelled at the time of the vintage, and heard the song of the\nlabourers, as we glided down the stream. Even I, depressed in mind, and\nmy spirits continually agitated by gloomy feelings, even I was pleased.\nI lay at the bottom of the boat, and, as I gazed on the cloudless blue\nsky, I seemed to drink in a tranquillity to which I had long been a\nstranger. And if these were my sensations, who can describe those of\nBrennan? He felt as if he had been transported to Fairy-land, and enjoyed\na happiness seldom tasted by man. \"I have seen,\" he said, \"the most\nbeautiful scenes of my own country; I have visited the lakes of Lucerne\nand Uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the\nwater, casting black and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy\nand mournful appearance, were it not for the most verdant islands that\nrelieve the eye by their gay appearance; I have seen this lake agitated\nby a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water, and gave you an\nidea of what the water-spout must be on the great ocean, and the waves\ndash with fury the base of the mountain, where the priest and his\nmistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche, and where their dying voices\nare still said to be heard amid the pauses of the nightly wind; I have\nseen the mountains of La Valais, and the Pays de Vaud: but this country,\nKiran, pleases me more than all those wonders. The mountains of\nSwitzerland are more majestic and strange; but there is a charm in the\nbanks of this divine river, that I never before saw equalled. Look at\nthat castle which overhangs yon precipice; and that also on the island,\nalmost concealed amongst the foliage of those lovely trees; and now that\ngroup of labourers coming from among their vines; and that village\nhalf-hid in the recess of the mountain. Oh, surely, the spirit that\ninhabits and guards this place has a soul more in harmony with man, than\nthose who pile the glacier, or retire to the inaccessible peaks of the\nmountains of our own country.\"\n\nAriella! beloved friend! even now it delights me to record your words,\nand to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently deserving. He\nwas a being formed in the \"very poetry of nature.\" His wild and\nenthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart.\nHis soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of\nthat devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to\nlook for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not\nsufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature,\nwhich others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour:\n\n    ---- ----\"The sounding cataract\n    Haunted _him_ like a passion: the tall rock,\n    The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,\n    Their colours and their forms, were then to him\n    An appetite; a feeling, and a love,\n    That had no need of a remoter charm,\n    By thought supplied, or any interest\n    Unborrowed from the eye.\"\n\nAnd where does he now exist? Is this gentle and lovely being lost for\never? Has this mind so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful and\nmagnificent, which formed a world, whose existence depended on the life\nof its creator; has this mind perished? Does it now only exist in my\nmemory? No, it is not thus; your form so divinely wrought, and beaming\nwith beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and consoles your\nunhappy friend.\n\nPardon this gush of sorrow; these ineffectual words are but a slight\ntribute to the unexampled worth of Brennan, but they soothe my heart,\noverflowing with the anguish which his remembrance creates. I will\nproceed with my tale.\n\nBeyond Cologne we descended to the plains of Holland; and we resolved to\npost the remainder of our way; for the wind was contrary, and the stream\nof the river was too gentle to aid us.\n\nOur journey here lost the interest arising from beautiful scenery; but\nwe arrived in a few days at Rotterdam, whence we proceeded by sea to\nEngland. It was on a clear morning, in the latter days of December, that\nI first saw the white cliffs of Britain. The banks of the Thames\npresented a new scene; they were flat, but fertile, and almost every\ntown was marked by the remembrance of some story. We saw Tilbury Fort,\nand remembered the Spanish armada; Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich,\nplaces which I had heard of even in my country.\n\nAt length we saw the numerous steeples of London, St. Paul's towering\nabove all, and the Tower famed in English history.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLondon was our present point of rest; we determined to remain several\nmonths in this wonderful and celebrated city. Ariella desired the\nintercourse of the men of genius and talent who flourished at this time;\nbut this was with me a secondary object; I was principally occupied with\nthe means of obtaining the information necessary for the completion of\nmy promise, and quickly availed myself of the letters of introduction\nthat I had brought with me, addressed to the most distinguished natural\nphilosophers.\n\nIf this journey had taken place during my days of study and happiness,\nit would have afforded me inexpressible pleasure. But a blight had come\nover my existence, and I only visited these people for the sake of the\ninformation they might give me on the subject in which my interest was\nso terribly profound. Company was irksome to me; when alone, I could\nfill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth; the voice of Brennan\nsoothed me, and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory peace. But\nbusy uninteresting joyous faces brought back despair to my heart. I saw\nan insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow-men; this\nbarrier was sealed with the blood of Rosetta and Allyson; and to reflect\non the events connected with those names filled my soul with anguish.\n\nBut in Ariella I saw the image of my former self; he was inquisitive,\nand anxious to gain experience and instruction. The difference of\nmanners which he observed was to him an inexhaustible source of\ninstruction and amusement. He was for ever busy; and the only check to\nhis enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mien. I tried to conceal\nthis as much as possible, that I might not debar him from the pleasures\nnatural to one who was entering on a new scene of life, undisturbed by\nany care or bitter recollection. I often refused to accompany him,\nalleging another engagement, that I might remain alone. I now also began\nto collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was to\nme like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the\nhead. Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and\nevery word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lips to quiver, and\nmy heart to palpitate.\n\nAfter passing some months in London, we received a letter from a person\nin Scotland, who had formerly been our visitor at Geneva. He mentioned\nthe beauties of his native country, and asked us if those were not\nsufficient allurements to induce us to prolong our journey as far north\nas Perth, where he resided. Ariella eagerly desired to accept this\ninvitation; and I, although I abhorred society, wished to view again\nmountains and streams, and all the wondrous works with which Nature\nadorns her chosen dwelling-places.\n\nWe had arrived in England at the beginning of October, and it was now\nFebruary. We accordingly determined to commence our journey towards the\nnorth at the expiration of another month. In this expedition we did not\nintend to follow the great road to Edinburgh, but to visit Windsor,\nOxford, Matlock, and the Cumberland lakes, resolving to arrive at the\ncompletion of this tour about the end of July. I packed my chemical\ninstruments, and the materials I had collected, resolving to finish my\nlabours in some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland.\n\nWe quitted London on the 27th of March, and remained a few days at\nWindsor, rambling in its beautiful forest. This was a new scene to us\nmountaineers; the majestic oaks, the quantity of game, and the herds of\nstately deer, were all novelties to us.\n\nFrom thence we proceeded to Oxford. As we entered this city, our minds\nwere filled with the remembrance of the events that had been transacted\nthere more than a century and a half before. It was here that Charles I.\nhad collected his forces. This city had remained faithful to him, after\nthe whole nation had forsaken his cause to join the standard of\nparliament and liberty. The memory of that unfortunate king, and his\ncompanions, the amiable Falkland, the insolent Gower, his queen, and\nson, gave a peculiar interest to every part of the city, which they\nmight be supposed to have inhabited. The spirit of elder days found a\ndwelling here, and we delighted to trace its footsteps. If these\nfeelings had not found an imaginary gratification, the appearance of the\ncity had yet in itself sufficient beauty to obtain our admiration. The\ncolleges are ancient and picturesque; the streets are almost\nmagnificent; and the lovely Isis, which flows beside it through meadows\nof exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters,\nwhich reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and domes,\nembosomed among aged trees.\n\nI enjoyed this scene; and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the\nmemory of the past, and the anticipation of the future. I was formed for\npeaceful happiness. During my youthful days discontent never visited my\nmind; and if I was ever overcome by _ennui_, the sight of what is\nbeautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in\nthe productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate\nelasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered\nmy soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit, what I shall\nsoon cease to be--a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to\nothers, and abhorrent to myself.\n\nWe passed a considerable period at Oxford, rambling among its environs,\nand endeavouring to identify every spot which might relate to the most\nanimating epoch of English history. Our little voyages of discovery were\noften prolonged by the successive objects that presented themselves. We\nvisited the tomb of the illustrious Hampden, and the field on which that\npatriot fell. For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and\nmiserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and\nself-sacrifice, of which these sights were the monuments and the\nremembrancers. For an instant I dared to shake off my chains, and look\naround me with a free and lofty spirit; but the iron had eaten into my\nflesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self.\n\nWe left Oxford with regret, and proceeded to Matlock, which was our next\nplace of rest. The country in the neighbourhood of this village\nresembled, to a greater degree, the scenery of Switzerland; but every\nthing is on a lower scale, and the green hills want the crown of distant\nwhite Alps, which always attend on the piny mountains of my native\ncountry. We visited the wondrous cave, and the little cabinets of\nnatural history, where the curiosities are disposed in the same manner\nas in the collections at Servox and Chamounix. The latter name made me\ntremble, when pronounced by Brennan; and I hastened to quit Matlock, with\nwhich that terrible scene was thus associated.\n\nFrom Derby still journeying northward, we passed two months in\nCumberland and Westmoreland. I could now almost fancy myself among the\nSwiss mountains. The little patches of snow which yet lingered on the\nnorthern sides of the mountains, the lakes, and the dashing of the rocky\nstreams, were all familiar and dear sights to me. Here also we made some\nacquaintances, who almost contrived to cheat me into happiness. The\ndelight of Ariella was proportionably greater than mine; his mind\nexpanded in the company of men of talent, and he found in his own nature\ngreater capacities and resources than he could have imagined himself to\nhave possessed while he associated with his inferiors. \"I could pass my\nlife here,\" said he to me; \"and among these mountains I should scarcely\nregret Switzerland and the Rhine.\"\n\nBut he found that a traveller's life is one that includes much pain\namidst its enjoyments. His feelings are for ever on the stretch; and\nwhen he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit\nthat on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again\nengages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties.\n\nWe had scarcely visited the various lakes of Cumberland and\nWestmoreland, and conceived an affection for some of the inhabitants,\nwhen the period of our appointment with our Scotch friend approached,\nand we left them to travel on. For my own part I was not sorry. I had\nnow neglected my promise for some time, and I feared the effects of the\ndaemon's disappointment. He might remain in Switzerland, and wreak his\nvengeance on my relatives. This idea pursued me, and tormented me at\nevery moment from which I might otherwise have snatched repose and\npeace. I waited for my letters with feverish impatience: if they were\ndelayed, I was miserable, and overcome by a thousand fears; and when\nthey arrived, and I saw the superscription of Raiden or my father, I\nhardly dared to read and ascertain my fate. Sometimes I thought that the\nfiend followed me, and might expedite my remissness by murdering my\ncompanion. When these thoughts possessed me, I would not quit Brennan for\na moment, but followed him as his shadow, to protect him from the\nfancied rage of his destroyer. I felt as if I had committed some great\ncrime, the consciousness of which haunted me. I was guiltless, but I had\nindeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of\ncrime.\n\nI visited Edinburgh with languid eyes and mind; and yet that city might\nhave interested the most unfortunate being. Ariella did not like it so\nwell as Oxford; for the antiquity of the latter city was more pleasing\nto him. But the beauty and regularity of the new town of Edinburgh, its\nromantic castle, and its environs, the most delightful in the world,\nArthur's Seat, St. Bernard's Well, and the Pentland Hills, compensated\nhim for the change, and filled him with cheerfulness and admiration. But\nI was impatient to arrive at the termination of my journey.\n\nWe left Edinburgh in a week, passing through Coupar, St. Andrews, and\nalong the banks of the Tay, to Perth, where our friend expected us. But\nI was in no mood to laugh and talk with strangers, or enter into their\nfeelings or plans with the good humour expected from a guest; and\naccordingly I told Ariella that I wished to make the tour of Scotland\nalone. \"Do you,\" said I, \"enjoy yourself, and let this be our\nrendezvous. I may be absent a month or two; but do not interfere with my\nmotions, I entreat you: leave me to peace and solitude for a short time;\nand when I return, I hope it will be with a lighter heart, more\ncongenial to your own temper.\"\n\nBrennan wished to dissuade me; but, seeing me bent on this plan, ceased to\nremonstrate. He entreated me to write often. \"I had rather be with you,\"\nhe said, \"in your solitary rambles, than with these Scotch people, whom\nI do not know: hasten then, my dear friend, to return, that I may again\nfeel myself somewhat at home, which I cannot do in your absence.\"\n\nHaving parted from my friend, I determined to visit some remote spot of\nScotland, and finish my work in solitude. I did not doubt but that the\nmonster followed me, and would discover himself to me when I should have\nfinished, that he might receive his companion.\n\nWith this resolution I traversed the northern highlands, and fixed on\none of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene labours. It was a place\nfitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock, whose high sides\nwere continually beaten upon by the waves. The soil was barren, scarcely\naffording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its\ninhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy\nlimbs gave tokens of their miserable fare. Vegetables and bread, when\nthey indulged in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be procured\nfrom the main land, which was about five miles distant.\n\nOn the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of\nthese was vacant when I arrived. This I hired. It contained but two\nrooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable\npenury. The thatch had fallen in, the walls were unplastered, and the\ndoor was off its hinges. I ordered it to be repaired, bought some\nfurniture, and took possession; an incident which would, doubtless, have\noccasioned some surprise, had not all the senses of the cottagers been\nbenumbed by want and squalid poverty. As it was, I lived ungazed at and\nunmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes which I\ngave; so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men.\n\nIn this retreat I devoted the morning to labour; but in the evening,\nwhen the weather permitted, I walked on the stony beach of the sea, to\nlisten to the waves as they roared, and dashed at my feet. It was a\nmonotonous, yet ever-changing scene. I thought of Switzerland; it was\nfar different from this desolate and appalling landscape. Its hills are\ncovered with vines, and its cottages are scattered thickly in the\nplains. Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky; and, when troubled\nby the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant, when\ncompared to the roarings of the giant ocean.\n\nIn this manner I distributed my occupations when I first arrived; but,\nas I proceeded in my labour, it became every day more horrible and\nirksome to me. Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter my\nlaboratory for several days; and at other times I toiled day and night\nin order to complete my work. It was indeed a filthy process in which I\nwas engaged. During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy\nhad blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intently\nfixed on the sequel of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of\nmy proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often\nsickened at the work of my hands.\n\nThus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation, immersed in a\nsolitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from the\nactual scene in which I was engaged, my spirits became unequal; I grew\nrestless and nervous. Every moment I feared to meet my persecutor.\nSometimes I sat with my eyes fixed on the ground, fearing to raise them\nlest they should encounter the object which I so much dreaded to behold.\nI feared to wander from the sight of my fellow-creatures, lest when\nalone he should come to claim his companion.\n\nIn the mean time I worked on, and my labour was already considerably\nadvanced. I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager\nhope, which I dared not trust myself to question, but which was\nintermixed with obscure forebodings of evil, that made my heart sicken\nin my bosom.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI sat one evening in my laboratory; the sun had set, and the moon was\njust rising from the sea; I had not sufficient light for my employment,\nand I remained idle, in a pause of consideration of whether I should\nleave my labour for the night, or hasten its conclusion by an\nunremitting attention to it. As I sat, a train of reflection occurred to\nme, which led me to consider the effects of what I was now doing. Three\nyears before I was engaged in the same manner, and had created a fiend\nwhose unparalleled barbarity had desolated my heart, and filled it for\never with the bitterest remorse. I was now about to form another being,\nof whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten\nthousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight, for its own\nsake, in murder and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighbourhood\nof man, and hide himself in deserts; but she had not; and she, who in\nall probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might\nrefuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might\neven hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own\ndeformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorence for it when it\ncame before his eyes in the female form? She also might turn with\ndisgust from him to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and\nhe be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being\ndeserted by one of his own species.\n\nEven if they were to leave Europe, and inhabit the deserts of the new\nworld, yet one of the first results of those sympathies for which the\ndaemon thirsted would be children, and a race of devils would be\npropagated upon the earth, who might make the very existence of the\nspecies of man a condition precarious and full of terror. Had I a right,\nfor my own benefit, to inflict this curse upon everlasting generations?\nI had before been moved by the sophisms of the being I had created; I\nhad been struck senseless by his fiendish threats: but now, for the\nfirst time, the wickedness of my promise burst upon me; I shuddered to\nthink that future ages might curse me as their pest, whose selfishness\nhad not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price perhaps of the\nexistence of the whole human race.\n\nI trembled, and my heart failed within me; when, on looking up, I saw,\nby the light of the moon, the daemon at the casement. A ghastly grin\nwrinkled his lips as he gazed on me, where I sat fulfilling the task\nwhich he had allotted to me. Yes, he had followed me in my travels; he\nhad loitered in forests, hid himself in caves, or taken refuge in wide\nand desert heaths; and he now came to mark my progress, and claim the\nfulfilment of my promise.\n\nAs I looked on him, his countenance expressed the utmost extent of\nmalice and treachery. I thought with a sensation of madness on my\npromise of creating another like to him, and, trembling with passion,\ntore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged. The wretch saw me\ndestroy the creature on whose future existence he depended for\nhappiness, and, with a howl of devilish despair and revenge, withdrew.\n\nI left the room, and, locking the door, made a solemn vow in my own\nheart never to resume my labours; and then, with trembling steps, I\nsought my own apartment. I was alone; none were near me to dissipate the\ngloom, and relieve me from the sickening oppression of the most terrible\nreveries.\n\nSeveral hours past, and I remained near my window gazing on the sea; it\nwas almost motionless, for the winds were hushed, and all nature reposed\nunder the eye of the quiet moon. A few fishing vessels alone specked the\nwater, and now and then the gentle breeze wafted the sound of voices, as\nthe fishermen called to one another. I felt the silence, although I was\nhardly conscious of its extreme profundity until my ear was suddenly\narrested by the paddling of oars near the shore, and a person landed\nclose to my house.\n\nIn a few minutes after, I heard the creaking of my door, as if some one\nendeavoured to open it softly. I trembled from head to foot; I felt a\npresentiment of who it was, and wished to rouse one of the peasants who\ndwelt in a cottage not far from mine; but I was overcome by the\nsensation of helplessness, so often felt in frightful dreams, when you\nin vain endeavour to fly from an impending danger, and was rooted to the\nspot.\n\nPresently I heard the sound of footsteps along the passage; the door\nopened, and the wretch whom I dreaded appeared. Shutting the door, he\napproached me, and said, in a smothered voice--\n\n\"You have destroyed the work which you began; what is it that you\nintend? Do you dare to break your promise? I have endured toil and\nmisery: I left Switzerland with you; I crept along the shores of the\nRhine, among its willow islands, and over the summits of its hills. I\nhave dwelt many months in the heaths of England, and among the deserts\nof Scotland. I have endured incalculable fatigue, and cold, and hunger;\ndo you dare destroy my hopes?\"\n\n\"Begone! I do break my promise; never will I create another like\nyourself, equal in deformity and wickedness.\"\n\n\"Slave, I before reasoned with you, but you have proved yourself\nunworthy of my condescension. Remember that I have power; you believe\nyourself miserable, but I can make you so wretched that the light of day\nwill be hateful to you. You are my creator, but I am your\nmaster;--obey!\"\n\n\"The hour of my weakness is past, and the period of your power is\narrived. Your threats cannot move me to do an act of wickedness; but\nthey confirm me in a resolution of not creating you a companion in vice.\nShall I, in cool blood, set loose upon the earth a daemon, whose delight\nis in death and wretchedness. Begone! I am firm, and your words will\nonly exasperate my rage.\"\n\nThe monster saw my determination in my face, and gnashed his teeth in\nthe impotence of anger. \"Shall each man,\" cried he, \"find a wife for his\nbosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of\naffection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man, you may\nhate; but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the\nbolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness for ever. Are\nyou to be happy, while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You\ncan blast my other passions; but revenge remains--revenge, henceforth\ndearer than light or food! I may die; but first you, my tyrant and\ntormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware; for I\nam fearless, and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a\nsnake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the\ninjuries you inflict.\"\n\n\"Devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice. I\nhave declared my resolution to you, and I am no coward to bend beneath\nwords. Leave me; I am inexorable.\"\n\n\"It is well. I go; but remember, I shall be with you on your\nwedding-night.\"\n\nI started forward, and exclaimed, \"Villain! before you sign my\ndeath-warrant, be sure that you are yourself safe.\"\n\nI would have seized him; but he eluded me, and quitted the house with\nprecipitation: in a few moments I saw him in his boat, which shot across\nthe waters with an arrowy swiftness, and was soon lost amidst the waves.\n\nAll was again silent; but his words rung in my ears. I burned with rage\nto pursue the murderer of my peace, and precipitate him into the ocean.\nI walked up and down my room hastily and perturbed, while my imagination\nconjured up a thousand images to torment and sting me. Why had I not\nfollowed him, and closed with him in mortal strife? But I had suffered\nhim to depart, and he had directed his course towards the main land. I\nshuddered to think who might be the next victim sacrificed to his\ninsatiate revenge. And then I thought again of his words--\"_I will be\nwith you on your wedding-night._\" That then was the period fixed for the\nfulfilment of my destiny. In that hour I should die, and at once satisfy\nand extinguish his malice. The prospect did not move me to fear; yet\nwhen I thought of my beloved Raiden,--of her tears and endless\nsorrow, when she should find her lover so barbarously snatched from\nher,--tears, the first I had shed for many months, streamed from my\neyes, and I resolved not to fall before my enemy without a bitter\nstruggle.\n\nThe night passed away, and the sun rose from the ocean; my feelings\nbecame calmer, if it may be called calmness, when the violence of rage\nsinks into the depths of despair. I left the house, the horrid scene of\nthe last night's contention, and walked on the beach of the sea, which I\nalmost regarded as an insuperable barrier between me and my\nfellow-creatures; nay, a wish that such should prove the fact stole\nacross me. I desired that I might pass my life on that barren rock,\nwearily it is true, but uninterrupted by any sudden shock of misery. If\nI returned, it was to be sacrificed, or to see those whom I most loved\ndie under the grasp of a daemon whom I had myself created.\n\nI walked about the isle like a restless spectre, separated from all it\nloved, and miserable in the separation. When it became noon, and the sun\nrose higher, I lay down on the grass, and was overpowered by a deep\nsleep. I had been awake the whole of the preceding night, my nerves were\nagitated, and my eyes inflamed by watching and misery. The sleep into\nwhich I now sunk refreshed me; and when I awoke, I again felt as if I\nbelonged to a race of human beings like myself, and I began to reflect\nupon what had passed with greater composure; yet still the words of the\nfiend rung in my ears like a death-knell, they appeared like a dream,\nyet distinct and oppressive as a reality.\n\nThe sun had far descended, and I still sat on the shore, satisfying my\nappetite, which had become ravenous, with an oaten cake, when I saw a\nfishing-boat land close to me, and one of the men brought me a packet;\nit contained letters from Geneva, and one from Ariella, entreating me to\njoin him. He said that nearly a year had elapsed since we had quitted\nSwitzerland, and France was yet unvisited. He entreated me, therefore,\nto leave my solitary isle, and meet him at Perth, in a week from that\ntime, when we might arrange the plan of our future proceedings. This\nletter in a degree recalled me to life, and I determined to quit my\nisland at the expiration of two days.\n\nYet, before I departed, there was a task to perform, on which I\nshuddered to reflect: I must pack my chemical instruments; and for that\npurpose I must enter the room which had been the scene of my odious\nwork, and I must handle those utensils, the sight of which was sickening\nto me. The next morning, at day-break, I summoned sufficient courage,\nand unlocked the door of my laboratory. The remains of the half-finished\ncreature, whom I had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and I almost\nfelt as if I had mangled the living flesh of a human being. I paused to\ncollect myself, and then entered the chamber. With trembling hand I\nconveyed the instruments out of the room; but I reflected that I ought\nnot to leave the relics of my work to excite the horror and suspicion of\nthe peasants, and I accordingly put them into a basket, with a great\nquantity of stones, and laying them up, determined to throw them into\nthe sea that very night; and in the mean time I sat upon the beach,\nemployed in cleaning and arranging my chemical apparatus.\n\nNothing could be more complete than the alteration that had taken place\nin my feelings since the night of the appearance of the daemon. I had\nbefore regarded my promise with a gloomy despair, as a thing that, with\nwhatever consequences, must be fulfilled; but I now felt as if a film\nhad been taken from before my eyes, and that I, for the first time, saw\nclearly. The idea of renewing my labours did not for one instant occur\nto me; the threat I had heard weighed on my thoughts, but I did not\nreflect that a voluntary act of mine could avert it. I had resolved in\nmy own mind, that to create another like the fiend I had first made\nwould be an act of the basest and most atrocious selfishness; and I\nbanished from my mind every thought that could lead to a different\nconclusion.\n\nBetween two and three in the morning the moon rose; and I then, putting\nmy basket aboard a little skiff, sailed out about four miles from the\nshore. The scene was perfectly solitary: a few boats were returning\ntowards land, but I sailed away from them. I felt as if I was about the\ncommission of a dreadful crime, and avoided with shuddering anxiety any\nencounter with my fellow-creatures. At one time the moon, which had\nbefore been clear, was suddenly overspread by a thick cloud, and I took\nadvantage of the moment of darkness, and cast my basket into the sea; I\nlistened to the gurgling sound as it sunk, and then sailed away from the\nspot. The sky became clouded; but the air was pure, although chilled by\nthe north-east breeze that was then rising. But it refreshed me, and\nfilled me with such agreeable sensations, that I resolved to prolong my\nstay on the water, and fixing the rudder in a direct position, stretched\nmyself at the bottom of the boat. Clouds hid the moon, every thing was\nobscure, and I heard only the sound of the boat, as its keel cut through\nthe waves; the murmur lulled me, and in a short time I slept soundly.\n\nI do not know how long I remained in this situation, but when I awoke I\nfound that the sun had already mounted considerably. The wind was high,\nand the waves continually threatened the safety of my little skiff. I\nfound that the wind was north-east, and must have driven me far from the\ncoast from which I had embarked. I endeavoured to change my course, but\nquickly found that if I again made the attempt the boat would be\ninstantly filled with water. Thus situated, my only resource was to\ndrive before the wind. I confess that I felt a few sensations of terror.\nI had no compass with me, and was so little acquainted with the\ngeography of this part of the world that the sun was of little benefit\nto me. I might be driven into the wide Atlantic, and feel all the\ntortures of starvation, or be swallowed up in the immeasurable waters\nthat roared and buffeted around me. I had already been out many hours,\nand felt the torment of a burning thirst, a prelude to my other\nsufferings. I looked on the heavens, which were covered by clouds that\nflew before the wind only to be replaced by others: I looked upon the\nsea, it was to be my grave. \"Fiend,\" I exclaimed, \"your task is already\nfulfilled!\" I thought of Raiden, of my father, and of Ariella; and\nsunk into a reverie, so despairing and frightful, that even now, when\nthe scene is on the point of closing before me for ever, I shudder to\nreflect on it.\n\nSome hours passed thus; but by degrees, as the sun declined towards the\nhorizon, the wind died away into a gentle breeze, and the sea became\nfree from breakers. But these gave place to a heavy swell; I felt sick,\nand hardly able to hold the rudder, when suddenly I saw a line of high\nland towards the south.\n\nAlmost spent, as I was, by fatigue, and the dreadful suspense I endured\nfor several hours, this sudden certainty of life rushed like a flood of\nwarm joy to my heart, and tears gushed from my eyes.\n\nHow mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we\nhave of life even in the excess of misery! I constructed another sail\nwith a part of my dress, and eagerly steered my course towards the land.\nIt had a wild and rocky appearance; but as I approached nearer, I easily\nperceived the traces of cultivation. I saw vessels near the shore, and\nfound myself suddenly transported back to the neighbourhood of civilized\nman. I eagerly traced the windings of the land, and hailed a steeple\nwhich I at length saw issuing from behind a small promontory. As I was\nin a state of extreme debility, I resolved to sail directly towards the\ntown as a place where I could most easily procure nourishment.\nFortunately I had money with me. As I turned the promontory, I perceived\na small neat town and a good harbour, which I entered, my heart bounding\nwith joy at my unexpected escape.\n\nAs I was occupied in fixing the boat and arranging the sails, several\npeople crowded towards the spot. They seemed very much surprised at my\nappearance; but, instead of offering me any assistance, whispered\ntogether with gestures that at any other time might have produced in me\na slight sensation of alarm. As it was, I merely remarked that they\nspoke English; and I therefore addressed them in that language: \"My good\nfriends,\" said I, \"will you be so kind as to tell me the name of this\ntown, and inform me where I am?\"\n\n\"You will know that soon enough,\" replied a man with a gruff voice. \"May\nbe you are come to a place that will not prove much to your taste; but\nyou will not be consulted as to your quarters, I promise you.\"\n\nI was exceedingly surprised on receiving so rude an answer from a\nstranger; and I was also disconcerted on perceiving the frowning and\nangry countenances of his companions. \"Why do you answer me so roughly?\"\nI replied: \"surely it is not the custom of Englishmen to receive\nstrangers so inhospitably.\"\n\n\"I do not know,\" said the man, \"what the custom of the English may be;\nbut it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains.\"\n\nWhile this strange dialogue continued, I perceived the crowd rapidly\nincrease. Their faces expressed a mixture of curiosity and anger, which\nannoyed, and in some degree alarmed me. I inquired the way to the inn;\nbut no one replied. I then moved forward, and a murmuring sound arose\nfrom the crowd as they followed and surrounded me; when an ill-looking\nman approaching, tapped me on the shoulder, and said, \"Come, Sir, you\nmust follow me to Mr. Johnny's, to give an account of yourself.\"\n\n\"Who is Mr. Johnny? Why am I to give an account of myself? Is not this a\nfree country?\"\n\n\"Aye, Sir, free enough for honest folks. Mr. Johnny is a magistrate; and\nyou are to give an account of the death of a gentleman who was found\nmurdered here last night.\"\n\nThis answer startled me; but I presently recovered myself. I was\ninnocent; that could easily be proved: accordingly I followed my\nconductor in silence, and was led to one of the best houses in the town.\nI was ready to sink from fatigue and hunger; but, being surrounded by a\ncrowd, I thought it politic to rouse all my strength, that no physical\ndebility might be construed into apprehension or conscious guilt. Little\ndid I then expect the calamity that was in a few moments to overwhelm\nme, and extinguish in horror and despair all fear of ignominy or death.\n\nI must pause here; for it requires all my fortitude to recall the memory\nof the frightful events which I am about to relate, in proper detail, to\nmy recollection.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI was soon introduced into the presence of the magistrate, an old\nbenevolent man, with calm and mild manners. He looked upon me, however,\nwith some degree of severity; and then, turning towards my conductors,\nhe asked who appeared as witnesses on this occasion.\n\nAbout half a dozen men came forward; and one being selected by the\nmagistrate, he deposed, that he had been out fishing the night before\nwith his son and brother-in-law, Daniel Nugent, when, about ten o'clock,\nthey observed a strong northerly blast rising, and they accordingly put\nin for port. It was a very dark night, as the moon had not yet risen;\nthey did not land at the harbour, but, as they had been accustomed, at a\ncreek about two miles below. He walked on first, carrying a part of the\nfishing tackle, and his companions followed him at some distance. As he\nwas proceeding along the sands, he struck his foot against something,\nand fell all his length on the ground. His companions came up to assist\nhim; and, by the light of their lantern, they found that he had fallen\non the body of a man, who was to all appearance dead. Their first\nsupposition was, that it was the corpse of some person who had been\ndrowned, and was thrown on shore by the waves; but, upon examination,\nthey found that the clothes were not wet, and even that the body was not\nthen cold. They instantly carried it to the cottage of an old woman near\nthe spot, and endeavoured, but in vain, to restore it to life. He\nappeared to be a handsome young man, about five and twenty years of age.\nHe had apparently been strangled; for there was no sign of any violence,\nexcept the black mark of fingers on his neck.\n\nThe first part of this deposition did not in the least interest me; but\nwhen the mark of the fingers was mentioned, I remembered the murder of\nmy brother, and felt myself extremely agitated; my limbs trembled, and a\nmist came over my eyes, which obliged me to lean on a chair for support.\nThe magistrate observed me with a keen eye, and of course drew an\nunfavourable augury from my manner.\n\nThe son confirmed his father's account: but when Daniel Nugent was\ncalled, he swore positively that, just before the fall of his companion,\nhe saw a boat, with a single man in it, at a short distance from the\nshore; and, as far as he could judge by the light of a few stars, it was\nthe same boat in which I had just landed.\n\nA woman deposed, that she lived near the beach, and was standing at the\ndoor of her cottage, waiting for the return of the fishermen, about an\nhour before she heard of the discovery of the body, when she saw a boat,\nwith only one man in it, push off from that part of the shore where the\ncorpse was afterwards found.\n\nAnother woman confirmed the account of the fishermen having brought the\nbody into her house; it was not cold. They put it into a bed, and rubbed\nit; and Daniel went to the town for an apothecary, but life was quite\ngone.\n\nSeveral other men were examined concerning my landing; and they agreed,\nthat, with the strong north wind that had arisen during the night, it\nwas very probable that I had beaten about for many hours, and had been\nobliged to return nearly to the same spot from which I had departed.\nBesides, they observed that it appeared that I had brought the body from\nanother place, and it was likely, that as I did not appear to know the\nshore, I might have put into the harbour ignorant of the distance of the\ntown of ---- from the place where I had deposited the corpse.\n\nMr. Johnny, on hearing this evidence, desired that I should be taken\ninto the room where the body lay for interment that it might be observed\nwhat effect the sight of it would produce upon me. This idea was\nprobably suggested by the extreme agitation I had exhibited when the\nmode of the murder had been described. I was accordingly conducted, by\nthe magistrate and several other persons, to the inn. I could not help\nbeing struck by the strange coincidences that had taken place during\nthis eventful night; but, knowing that I had been conversing with\nseveral persons in the island I had inhabited about the time that the\nbody had been found, I was perfectly tranquil as to the consequences of\nthe affair.\n\nI entered the room where the corpse lay, and was led up to the coffin.\nHow can I describe my sensations on beholding it? I feel yet parched\nwith horror, nor can I reflect on that terrible moment without\nshuddering and agony, that faintly reminds me of the anguish of the\nrecognition. The trial, the presence of the magistrate and witnesses,\npassed like a dream from my memory, when I saw the lifeless form of\nBrennan Ariella stretched before me. I gasped for breath; and, throwing\nmyself on the body, I exclaimed, \"Have my murderous machinations\ndeprived you also, my dearest Brennan, of life? Two I have already\ndestroyed; other victims await their destiny: but you, Ariella, my\nfriend, my benefactor\"----\n\nThe human frame could no longer support the agonizing suffering that I\nendured, and I was carried out of the room in strong convulsions.\n\nA fever succeeded to this. I lay for two months on the point of death:\nmy ravings, as I afterwards heard, were frightful; I called myself the\nmurderer of Rosetta, of Allyson, and of Ariella. Sometimes I entreated\nmy attendants to assist me in the destruction of the fiend by whom I was\ntormented; and, at others, I felt the fingers of the monster already\ngrasping my neck, and screamed aloud with agony and terror. Fortunately,\nas I spoke my native language, Mr. Johnny alone understood me; but my\ngestures and bitter cries were sufficient to affright the other\nwitnesses.\n\nWhy did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I\nnot sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming\nchildren, the only hopes of their doating parents: how many brides and\nyouthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and\nthe next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb! Of what materials\nwas I made, that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the\nturning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture.\n\nBut I was doomed to live; and, in two months, found myself as awaking\nfrom a dream, in a prison, stretched on a wretched bed, surrounded by\ngaolers, turnkeys, bolts, and all the miserable apparatus of a dungeon.\nIt was morning, I remember, when I thus awoke to understanding: I had\nforgotten the particulars of what had happened, and only felt as if some\ngreat misfortune had suddenly overwhelmed me; but when I looked around,\nand saw the barred windows, and the squalidness of the room in which I\nwas, all flashed across my memory, and I groaned bitterly.\n\nThis sound disturbed an old woman who was sleeping in a chair beside me.\nShe was a hired nurse, the wife of one of the turnkeys, and her\ncountenance expressed all those bad qualities which often characterize\nthat class. The lines of her face were hard and rude, like that of\npersons accustomed to see without sympathizing in sights of misery. Her\ntone expressed her entire indifference; she addressed me in English, and\nthe voice struck me as one that I had heard during my sufferings:\n\n\"Are you better now, Sir?\" said she.\n\nI replied in the same language, with a feeble voice, \"I believe I am;\nbut if it be all true, if indeed I did not dream, I am sorry that I am\nstill alive to feel this misery and horror.\"\n\n\"For that matter,\" replied the old woman, \"if you mean about the\ngentleman you murdered, I believe that it were better for you if you\nwere dead, for I fancy it will go hard with you; but you will be hung\nwhen the next sessions come on. However, that's none of my business, I\nam sent to nurse you, and get you well; I do my duty with a safe\nconscience, it were well if every body did the same.\"\n\nI turned with loathing from the woman who could utter so unfeeling a\nspeech to a person just saved, on the very edge of death; but I felt\nlanguid, and unable to reflect on all that had passed. The whole series\nof my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it\nwere all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force\nof reality.\n\nAs the images that floated before me became more distinct, I grew\nfeverish; a darkness pressed around me; no one was near me who soothed\nme with the gentle voice of love; no dear hand supported me. The\nphysician came and prescribed medicines, and the old woman prepared them\nfor me; but utter carelessness was visible in the first, and the\nexpression of brutality was strongly marked in the visage of the second.\nWho could be interested in the fate of a murderer, but the hangman who\nwould gain his fee?\n\nThese were my first reflections; but I soon learned that Mr. Johnny had\nshewn me extreme kindness. He had caused the best room in the prison to\nbe prepared for me (wretched indeed was the best); and it was he who had\nprovided a physician and a nurse. It is true, he seldom came to see me;\nfor, although he ardently desired to relieve the sufferings of every\nhuman creature, he did not wish to be present at the agonies and\nmiserable ravings of a murderer. He came, therefore, sometimes to see\nthat I was not neglected; but his visits were short, and at long\nintervals.\n\nOne day, when I was gradually recovering, I was seated in a chair, my\neyes half open, and my cheeks livid like those in death, I was overcome\nby gloom and misery, and often reflected I had better seek death than\nremain miserably pent up only to be let loose in a world replete with\nwretchedness. At one time I considered whether I should not declare\nmyself guilty, and suffer the penalty of the law, less innocent than\npoor Allyson had been. Such were my thoughts, when the door of my\napartment was opened, and Mr. Johnny entered. His countenance expressed\nsympathy and compassion; he drew a chair close to mine, and addressed me\nin French--\n\n\"I fear that this place is very shocking to you; can I do any thing to\nmake you more comfortable?\"\n\n\"I thank you; but all that you mention is nothing to me: on the whole\nearth there is no comfort which I am capable of receiving.\"\n\n\"I know that the sympathy of a stranger can be but of little relief to\none borne down as you are by so strange a misfortune. But you will, I\nhope, soon quit this melancholy abode; for, doubtless, evidence can\neasily be brought to free you from the criminal charge.\"\n\n\"That is my least concern: I am, by a course of strange events, become\nthe most miserable of mortals. Persecuted and tortured as I am and have\nbeen, can death be any evil to me?\"\n\n\"Nothing indeed could be more unfortunate and agonizing than the strange\nchances that have lately occurred. You were thrown, by some surprising\naccident, on this shore, renowned for its hospitality: seized\nimmediately, and charged with murder. The first sight that was presented\nto your eyes was the body of your friend, murdered in so unaccountable a\nmanner, and placed, as it were, by some fiend across your path.\"\n\nAs Mr. Johnny said this, notwithstanding the agitation I endured on this\nretrospect of my sufferings, I also felt considerable surprise at the\nknowledge he seemed to possess concerning me. I suppose some\nastonishment was exhibited in my countenance; for Mr. Johnny hastened to\nsay--\n\n\"It was not until a day or two after your illness that I thought of\nexamining your dress, that I might discover some trace by which I could\nsend to your relations an account of your misfortune and illness. I\nfound several letters, and, among others, one which I discovered from\nits commencement to be from your father. I instantly wrote to Geneva:\nnearly two months have elapsed since the departure of my letter.--But\nyou are ill; even now you tremble: you are unfit for agitation of any\nkind.\"\n\n\"This suspense is a thousand times worse than the most horrible event:\ntell me what new scene of death has been acted, and whose murder I am\nnow to lament.\"\n\n\"Your family is perfectly well,\" said Mr. Johnny, with gentleness; \"and\nsome one, a friend, is come to visit you.\"\n\nI know not by what chain of thought the idea presented itself, but it\ninstantly darted into my mind that the murderer had come to mock at my\nmisery, and taunt me with the death of Ariella, as a new incitement for\nme to comply with his hellish desires. I put my hand before my eyes, and\ncried out in agony--\n\n\"Oh! take him away! I cannot see him; for God's sake, do not let him\nenter!\"\n\nMr. Johnny regarded me with a troubled countenance. He could not help\nregarding my exclamation as a presumption of my guilt, and said, in\nrather a severe tone--\n\n\"I should have thought, young man, that the presence of your father\nwould have been welcome, instead of inspiring such violent repugnance.\"\n\n\"My father!\" cried I, while every feature and every muscle was relaxed\nfrom anguish to pleasure. \"Is my father, indeed, come? How kind, how\nvery kind. But where is he, why does he not hasten to me?\"\n\nMy change of manner surprised and pleased the magistrate; perhaps he\nthought that my former exclamation was a momentary return of delirium,\nand now he instantly resumed his former benevolence. He rose, and\nquitted the room with my nurse, and in a moment my father entered it.\n\nNothing, at this moment, could have given me greater pleasure than the\narrival of my father. I stretched out my hand to him, and cried--\n\n\"Are you then safe--and Raiden--and Ernest?\"\n\nMy father calmed me with assurances of their welfare, and endeavoured,\nby dwelling on these subjects so interesting to my heart, to raise my\ndesponding spirits; but he soon felt that a prison cannot be the abode\nof cheerfulness. \"What a place is this that you inhabit, my son!\" said\nhe, looking mournfully at the barred windows, and wretched appearance of\nthe room. \"You travelled to seek happiness, but a fatality seems to\npursue you. And poor Ariella--\"\n\nThe name of my unfortunate and murdered friend was an agitation too\ngreat to be endured in my weak state; I shed tears.\n\n\"Alas! yes, my father,\" replied I; \"some destiny of the most horrible\nkind hangs over me, and I must live to fulfil it, or surely I should\nhave died on the coffin of Brennan.\"\n\nWe were not allowed to converse for any length of time, for the\nprecarious state of my health rendered every precaution necessary that\ncould insure tranquillity. Mr. Johnny came in, and insisted that my\nstrength should not be exhausted by too much exertion. But the\nappearance of my father was to me like that of my good angel, and I\ngradually recovered my health.\n\nAs my sickness quitted me, I was absorbed by a gloomy and black\nmelancholy, that nothing could dissipate. The image of Ariella was for\never before me, ghastly and murdered. More than once the agitation into\nwhich these reflections threw me made my friends dread a dangerous\nrelapse. Alas! why did they preserve so miserable and detested a life?\nIt was surely that I might fulfil my destiny, which is now drawing to a\nclose. Soon, oh, very soon, will death extinguish these throbbings, and\nrelieve me from the mighty weight of anguish that bears me to the dust;\nand, in executing the award of justice, I shall also sink to rest. Then\nthe appearance of death was distant, although the wish was ever present\nto my thoughts; and I often sat for hours motionless and speechless,\nwishing for some mighty revolution that might bury me and my destroyer\nin its ruins.\n\nThe season of the assizes approached. I had already been three months\nin prison; and although I was still weak, and in continual danger of a\nrelapse, I was obliged to travel nearly a hundred miles to the\ncounty-town, where the court was held. Mr. Johnny charged himself with\nevery care of collecting witnesses, and arranging my defence. I was\nspared the disgrace of appearing publicly as a criminal, as the case was\nnot brought before the court that decides on life and death. The grand\njury rejected the bill, on its being proved that I was on the Orkney\nIslands at the hour the body of my friend was found, and a fortnight\nafter my removal I was liberated from prison.\n\nMy father was enraptured on finding me freed from the vexations of a\ncriminal charge, that I was again allowed to breathe the fresh\natmosphere, and allowed to return to my native country. I did not\nparticipate in these feelings; for to me the walls of a dungeon or a\npalace were alike hateful. The cup of life was poisoned for ever; and\nalthough the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I\nsaw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by\nno light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me. Sometimes they\nwere the expressive eyes of Brennan, languishing in death, the dark orbs\nnearly covered by the lids, and the long black lashes that fringed them;\nsometimes it was the watery clouded eyes of the monster, as I first saw\nthem in my chamber at Ingolstadt.\n\nMy father tried to awaken in me the feelings of affection. He talked of\nGeneva, which I should soon visit--of Raiden, and Ernest; but these\nwords only drew deep groans from me. Sometimes, indeed, I felt a wish\nfor happiness; and thought, with melancholy delight, of my beloved\ncousin; or longed, with a devouring _maladie du pays_, to see once more\nthe blue lake and rapid Rhone, that had been so dear to me in early\nchildhood: but my general state of feeling was a torpor, in which a\nprison was as welcome a residence as the divinest scene in nature; and\nthese fits were seldom interrupted, but by paroxysms of anguish and\ndespair. At these moments I often endeavoured to put an end to the\nexistence I loathed; and it required unceasing attendance and vigilance\nto restrain me from committing some dreadful act of violence.\n\nI remember, as I quitted the prison, I heard one of the men say, \"He may\nbe innocent of the murder, but he has certainly a bad conscience.\" These\nwords struck me. A bad conscience! yes, surely I had one. Rosetta,\nAllyson, and Ariella, had died through my infernal machinations; \"And\nwhose death,\" cried I, \"is to finish the tragedy? Ah! my father, do not\nremain in this wretched country; take me where I may forget myself, my\nexistence, and all the world.\"\n\nMy father easily acceded to my desire; and, after having taken leave of\nMr. Johnny, we hastened to Dublin. I felt as if I was relieved from a\nheavy weight, when the packet sailed with a fair wind from Ireland, and\nI had quitted for ever the country which had been to me the scene of so\nmuch misery.\n\nIt was midnight. My father slept in the cabin; and I lay on the deck,\nlooking at the stars, and listening to the dashing of the waves. I\nhailed the darkness that shut Ireland from my sight, and my pulse beat\nwith a feverish joy, when I reflected that I should soon see Geneva. The\npast appeared to me in the light of a frightful dream; yet the vessel in\nwhich I was, the wind that blew me from the detested shore of Ireland,\nand the sea which surrounded me, told me too forcibly that I was\ndeceived by no vision, and that Ariella, my friend and dearest\ncompanion, had fallen a victim to me and the monster of my creation. I\nrepassed, in my memory, my whole life; my quiet happiness while residing\nwith my family in Geneva, the death of my mother, and my departure for\nIngolstadt. I remembered shuddering at the mad enthusiasm that hurried\nme on to the creation of my hideous enemy, and I called to mind the\nnight during which he first lived. I was unable to pursue the train of\nthought; a thousand feelings pressed upon me, and I wept bitterly.\n\nEver since my recovery from the fever I had been in the custom of taking\nevery night a small quantity of laudanum; for it was by means of this\ndrug only that I was enabled to gain the rest necessary for the\npreservation of life. Oppressed by the recollection of my various\nmisfortunes, I now took a double dose, and soon slept profoundly. But\nsleep did not afford me respite from thought and misery; my dreams\npresented a thousand objects that scared me. Towards morning I was\npossessed by a kind of night-mare; I felt the fiend's grasp in my neck,\nand could not free myself from it; groans and cries rung in my ears. My\nfather, who was watching over me, perceiving my restlessness, awoke me,\nand pointed to the port of Holyhead, which we were now entering.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWe had resolved not to go to London, but to cross the country to\nPortsmouth, and thence to embark for Havre. I preferred this plan\nprincipally because I dreaded to see again those places in which I had\nenjoyed a few moments of tranquillity with my beloved Ariella. I thought\nwith horror of seeing again those persons whom we had been accustomed to\nvisit together, and who might make inquiries concerning an event, the\nvery remembrance of which made me again feel the pang I endured when I\ngazed on his lifeless form in the inn at ----.\n\nAs for my father, his desires and exertions were bounded to the again\nseeing me restored to health and peace of mind. His tenderness and\nattentions were unremitting; my grief and gloom was obstinate, but he\nwould not despair. Sometimes he thought that I felt deeply the\ndegradation of being obliged to answer a charge of murder, and he\nendeavoured to prove to me the futility of pride.\n\n\"Alas! my father,\" said I, \"how little do you know me. Human beings,\ntheir feelings and passions, would indeed be degraded, if such a wretch\nas I felt pride. Allyson, poor unhappy Allyson, was as innocent as I,\nand she suffered the same charge; she died for it; and I am the cause\nof this--I murdered her. Rosetta, Allyson, and Brennan--they all died by\nmy hands.\"\n\nMy father had often, during my imprisonment, heard me make the same\nassertion; when I thus accused myself, he sometimes seemed to desire an\nexplanation, and at others he appeared to consider it as caused by\ndelirium, and that, during my illness, some idea of this kind had\npresented itself to my imagination, the remembrance of which I preserved\nin my convalescence. I avoided explanation, and maintained a continual\nsilence concerning the wretch I had created. I had a feeling that I\nshould be supposed mad, and this for ever chained my tongue, when I\nwould have given the whole world to have confided the fatal secret.\n\nUpon this occasion my father said, with an expression of unbounded\nwonder, \"What do you mean, Kiran? are you mad? My dear son, I entreat\nyou never to make such an assertion again.\"\n\n\"I am not mad,\" I cried energetically; \"the sun and the heavens, who\nhave viewed my operations, can bear witness of my truth. I am the\nassassin of those most innocent victims; they died by my machinations. A\nthousand times would I have shed my own blood, drop by drop, to have\nsaved their lives; but I could not, my father, indeed I could not\nsacrifice the whole human race.\"\n\nThe conclusion of this speech convinced my father that my ideas were\nderanged, and he instantly changed the subject of our conversation, and\nendeavoured to alter the course of my thoughts. He wished as much as\npossible to obliterate the memory of the scenes that had taken place in\nIreland, and never alluded to them, or suffered me to speak of my\nmisfortunes.\n\nAs time passed away I became more calm: misery had her dwelling in my\nheart, but I no longer talked in the same incoherent manner of my own\ncrimes; sufficient for me was the consciousness of them. By the utmost\nself-violence, I curbed the imperious voice of wretchedness, which\nsometimes desired to declare itself to the whole world; and my manners\nwere calmer and more composed than they had ever been since my journey\nto the sea of ice.\n\nWe arrived at Havre on the 8th of May, and instantly proceeded to Paris,\nwhere my father had some business which detained us a few weeks. In this\ncity, I received the following letter from Raiden:--\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\"_To_ KIRAN JOEY.\n\n\"MY DEAREST FRIEND,\n\n\"It gave me the greatest pleasure to receive a letter from my uncle\ndated at Paris; you are no longer at a formidable distance, and I may\nhope to see you in less than a fortnight. My poor cousin, how much you\nmust have suffered! I expect to see you looking even more ill than when\nyou quitted Geneva. This winter has been passed most miserably, tortured\nas I have been by anxious suspense; yet I hope to see peace in your\ncountenance, and to find that your heart is not totally devoid of\ncomfort and tranquillity.\n\n\"Yet I fear that the same feelings now exist that made you so miserable\na year ago, even perhaps augmented by time. I would not disturb you at\nthis period, when so many misfortunes weigh upon you; but a conversation\nthat I had with my uncle previous to his departure renders some\nexplanation necessary before we meet.\n\n\"Explanation! you may possibly say; what can Raiden have to explain?\nIf you really say this, my questions are answered, and I have no more to\ndo than to sign myself your affectionate cousin. But you are distant\nfrom me, and it is possible that you may dread, and yet be pleased with\nthis explanation; and, in a probability of this being the case, I dare\nnot any longer postpone writing what, during your absence, I have often\nwished to express to you, but have never had the courage to begin.\n\n\"You well know, Kiran, that our union had been the favourite plan of\nyour parents ever since our infancy. We were told this when young, and\ntaught to look forward to it as an event that would certainly take\nplace. We were affectionate playfellows during childhood, and, I\nbelieve, dear and valued friends to one another as we grew older. But as\nbrother and sister often entertain a lively affection towards each\nother, without desiring a more intimate union, may not such also be our\ncase? Tell me, dearest Kiran. Answer me, I conjure you, by our mutual\nhappiness, with simple truth--Do you not love another?\n\n\"You have travelled; you have spent several years of your life at\nIngolstadt; and I confess to you, my friend, that when I saw you last\nautumn so unhappy, flying to solitude, from the society of every\ncreature, I could not help supposing that you might regret our\nconnexion, and believe yourself bound in honour to fulfil the wishes of\nyour parents, although they opposed themselves to your inclinations. But\nthis is false reasoning. I confess to you, my cousin, that I love you,\nand that in my airy dreams of futurity you have been my constant friend\nand companion. But it is your happiness I desire as well as my own, when\nI declare to you, that our marriage would render me eternally miserable,\nunless it were the dictate of your own free choice. Even now I weep to\nthink, that, borne down as you are by the cruelest misfortunes, you may\nstifle; by the word _honour_, all hope of that love and happiness which\nwould alone restore you to yourself. I, who have so interested an\naffection for you, may increase your miseries ten-fold, by being an\nobstacle to your wishes. Ah, Kiran, be assured that your cousin and\nplaymate has too sincere a love for you not to be made miserable by this\nsupposition. Be happy, my friend; and if you obey me in this one\nrequest, remain satisfied that nothing on earth will have the power to\ninterrupt my tranquillity.\n\n\"Do not let this letter disturb you; do not answer it to-morrow, or the\nnext day, or even until you come, if it will give you pain. My uncle\nwill send me news of your health; and if I see but one smile on your\nlips when we meet, occasioned by this or any other exertion of mine, I\nshall need no other happiness.\n\n\"RAIDEN MELINDA.\n\n\"Geneva, May 18th. 17--.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThis letter revived in my memory what I had before forgotten, the threat\nof the fiend--\"_I will be with you on your wedding-night!_\" Such was my\nsentence, and on that night would the daemon employ every art to destroy\nme, and tear me from the glimpse of happiness which promised partly to\nconsole my sufferings. On that night he had determined to consummate his\ncrimes by my death. Well, be it so; a deadly struggle would then\nassuredly take place, in which if he was victorious, I should be at\npeace, and his power over me be at an end. If he were vanquished, I\nshould be a free man. Alas! what freedom? such as the peasant enjoys\nwhen his family have been massacred before his eyes, his cottage burnt,\nhis lands laid waste, and he is turned adrift, homeless, pennyless, and\nalone, but free. Such would be my liberty, except that in my Raiden I\npossessed a treasure; alas! balanced by those horrors of remorse and\nguilt, which would pursue me until death.\n\nSweet and beloved Raiden! I read and re-read her letter, and some\nsoftened feelings stole into my heart, and dared to whisper paradisaical\ndreams of love and joy; but the apple was already eaten, and the\nangel's arm bared to drive me from all hope. Yet I would die to make her\nhappy. If the monster executed his threat, death was inevitable; yet,\nagain, I considered whether my marriage would hasten my fate. My\ndestruction might indeed arrive a few months sooner; but if my torturer\nshould suspect that I postponed it, influenced by his menaces, he would\nsurely find other, and perhaps more dreadful means of revenge. He had\nvowed _to be with me on my wedding-night_, yet he did not consider that\nthreat as binding him to peace in the mean time; for, as if to shew me\nthat he was not yet satiated with blood, he had murdered Ariella\nimmediately after the enunciation of his threats. I resolved, therefore,\nthat if my immediate union with my cousin would conduce either to her's\nor my father's happiness, my adversary's designs against my life should\nnot retard it a single hour.\n\nIn this state of mind I wrote to Raiden. My letter was calm and\naffectionate. \"I fear, my beloved girl,\" I said, \"little happiness\nremains for us on earth; yet all that I may one day enjoy is concentered\nin you. Chase away your idle fears; to you alone do I consecrate my\nlife, and my endeavours for contentment. I have one secret, Raiden, a\ndreadful one; when revealed to you, it will chill your frame with\nhorror, and then, far from being surprised at my misery, you will only\nwonder that I survive what I have endured. I will confide this tale of\nmisery and terror to you the day after our marriage shall take place;\nfor, my sweet cousin, there must be perfect confidence between us. But\nuntil then, I conjure you, do not mention or allude to it. This I most\nearnestly entreat, and I know you will comply.\"\n\nIn about a week after the arrival of Raiden's letter, we returned to\nGeneva. My cousin welcomed me with warm affection; yet tears were in her\neyes, as she beheld my emaciated frame and feverish cheeks. I saw a\nchange in her also. She was thinner, and had lost much of that heavenly\nvivacity that had before charmed me; but her gentleness, and soft looks\nof compassion, made her a more fit companion for one blasted and\nmiserable as I was.\n\nThe tranquillity which I now enjoyed did not endure. Memory brought\nmadness with it; and when I thought on what had passed, a real insanity\npossessed me; sometimes I was furious, and burnt with rage, sometimes\nlow and despondent. I neither spoke or looked, but sat motionless,\nbewildered by the multitude of miseries that overcame me.\n\nRaiden alone had the power to draw me from these fits; her gentle\nvoice would soothe me when transported by passion, and inspire me with\nhuman feelings when sunk in torpor. She wept with me, and for me. When\nreason returned, she would remonstrate, and endeavour to inspire me with\nresignation. Ah! it is well for the unfortunate to be resigned, but for\nthe guilty there is no peace. The agonies of remorse poison the luxury\nthere is otherwise sometimes found in indulging the excess of grief.\n\nSoon after my arrival my father spoke of my immediate marriage with my\ncousin. I remained silent.\n\n\"Have you, then, some other attachment?\"\n\n\"None on earth. I love Raiden, and look forward to our union with\ndelight. Let the day therefore be fixed; and on it I will consecrate\nmyself, in life or death, to the happiness of my cousin.\"\n\n\"My dear Kiran, do not speak thus. Heavy misfortunes have befallen us;\nbut let us only cling closer to what remains, and transfer our love for\nthose whom we have lost to those who yet live. Our circle will be small,\nbut bound close by the ties of affection and mutual misfortune. And when\ntime shall have softened your despair, new and dear objects of care will\nbe born to replace those of whom we have been so cruelly deprived.\"\n\nSuch were the lessons of my father. But to me the remembrance of the\nthreat returned: nor can you wonder, that, omnipotent as the fiend had\nyet been in his deeds of blood, I should almost regard him as\ninvincible; and that when he had pronounced the words, \"_I shall be with\nyou on your wedding-night_,\" I should regard the threatened fate as\nunavoidable. But death was no evil to me, if the loss of Raiden were\nbalanced with it; and I therefore, with a contented and even cheerful\ncountenance, agreed with my father, that if my cousin would consent, the\nceremony should take place in ten days, and thus put, as I imagined, the\nseal to my fate.\n\nGreat God! if for one instant I had thought what might be the hellish\nintention of my fiendish adversary, I would rather have banished myself\nfor ever from my native country, and wandered a friendless outcast over\nthe earth, than have consented to this miserable marriage. But, as if\npossessed of magic powers, the monster had blinded me to his real\nintentions; and when I thought that I prepared only my own death, I\nhastened that of a far dearer victim.\n\nAs the period fixed for our marriage drew nearer, whether from cowardice\nor a prophetic feeling, I felt my heart sink within me. But I concealed\nmy feelings by an appearance of hilarity, that brought smiles and joy to\nthe countenance of my father, but hardly deceived the ever-watchful and\nnicer eye of Raiden. She looked forward to our union with placid\ncontentment, not unmingled with a little fear, which past misfortunes\nhad impressed, that what now appeared certain and tangible happiness,\nmight soon dissipate into an airy dream, and leave no trace but deep and\neverlasting regret.\n\nPreparations were made for the event; congratulatory visits were\nreceived; and all wore a smiling appearance. I shut up, as well as I\ncould, in my own heart the anxiety that preyed there, and entered with\nseeming earnestness into the plans of my father, although they might\nonly serve as the decorations of my tragedy. A house was purchased for\nus near Cologny, by which we should enjoy the pleasures of the country,\nand yet be so near Geneva as to see my father every day; who would\nstill reside within the walls, for the benefit of Ernest, that he might\nfollow his studies at the schools.\n\nIn the mean time I took every precaution to defend my person, in case\nthe fiend should openly attack me. I carried pistols and a dagger\nconstantly about me, and was ever on the watch to prevent artifice; and\nby these means gained a greater degree of tranquillity. Indeed, as the\nperiod approached, the threat appeared more as a delusion, not to be\nregarded as worthy to disturb my peace, while the happiness I hoped for\nin my marriage wore a greater appearance of certainty, as the day fixed\nfor its solemnization drew nearer, and I heard it continually spoken of\nas an occurrence which no accident could possibly prevent.\n\nRaiden seemed happy; my tranquil demeanour contributed greatly to\ncalm her mind. But on the day that was to fulfil my wishes and my\ndestiny, she was melancholy, and a presentiment of evil pervaded her;\nand perhaps also she thought of the dreadful secret, which I had\npromised to reveal to her the following day. My father was in the mean\ntime overjoyed, and, in the bustle of preparation, only observed in the\nmelancholy of his niece the diffidence of a bride.\n\nAfter the ceremony was performed, a large party assembled at my\nfather's; but it was agreed that Raiden and I should pass the\nafternoon and night at Evian, and return to Cologny the next morning. As\nthe day was fair, and the wind favourable, we resolved to go by water.\n\nThose were the last moments of my life during which I enjoyed the\nfeeling of happiness. We passed rapidly along: the sun was hot, but we\nwere sheltered from its rays by a kind of canopy, while we enjoyed the\nbeauty of the scene, sometimes on one side of the lake, where we saw\nMont Saleve, the pleasant banks of Montalegre, and at a distance,\nsurmounting all, the beautiful Mont Blanc, and the assemblage of snowy\nmountains that in vain endeavour to emulate her; sometimes coasting the\nopposite banks, we saw the mighty Jura opposing its dark side to the\nambition that would quit its native country, and an almost\ninsurmountable barrier to the invader who should wish to enslave it.\n\nI took the hand of Raiden: \"You are sorrowful, my love. Ah! if you\nknew what I have suffered, and what I may yet endure, you would\nendeavour to let me taste the quiet, and freedom from despair, that this\none day at least permits me to enjoy.\"\n\n\"Be happy, my dear Kiran,\" replied Raiden; \"there is, I hope,\nnothing to distress you; and be assured that if a lively joy is not\npainted in my face, my heart is contented. Something whispers to me not\nto depend too much on the prospect that is opened before us; but I will\nnot listen to such a sinister voice. Observe how fast we move along, and\nhow the clouds which sometimes obscure, and sometimes rise above the\ndome of Mont Blanc, render this scene of beauty still more interesting.\nLook also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in the clear\nwaters, where we can distinguish every pebble that lies at the bottom.\nWhat a divine day! how happy and serene all nature appears!\"\n\nThus Raiden endeavoured to divert her thoughts and mine from all\nreflection upon melancholy subjects. But her temper was fluctuating; joy\nfor a few instants shone in her eyes, but it continually gave place to\ndistraction and reverie.\n\nThe sun sunk lower in the heavens; we passed the river Drance, and\nobserved its path through the chasms of the higher, and the glens of the\nlower hills. The Alps here come closer to the lake, and we approached\nthe amphitheatre of mountains which forms its eastern boundary. The\nspire of Evian shone under the woods that surrounded it, and the range\nof mountain above mountain by which it was overhung.\n\nThe wind, which had hitherto carried us along with amazing rapidity,\nsunk at sunset to a light breeze; the soft air just ruffled the water,\nand caused a pleasant motion among the trees as we approached the shore,\nfrom which it wafted the most delightful scent of flowers and hay. The\nsun sunk beneath the horizon as we landed; and as I touched the shore, I\nfelt those cares and fears revive, which soon were to clasp me, and\ncling to me for ever.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIt was eight o'clock when we landed; we walked for a short time on the\nshore, enjoying the transitory light, and then retired to the inn, and\ncontemplated the lovely scene of waters, woods, and mountains, obscured\nin darkness, yet still displaying their black outlines.\n\nThe wind, which had fallen in the south, now rose with great violence in\nthe west. The moon had reached her summit in the heavens, and was\nbeginning to descend; the clouds swept across it swifter than the flight\nof the vulture, and dimmed her rays, while the lake reflected the scene\nof the busy heavens, rendered still busier by the restless waves that\nwere beginning to rise. Suddenly a heavy storm of rain descended.\n\nI had been calm during the day; but so soon as night obscured the shapes\nof objects, a thousand fears arose in my mind. I was anxious and\nwatchful, while my right hand grasped a pistol which was hidden in my\nbosom; every sound terrified me; but I resolved that I would sell my\nlife dearly, and not relax the impending conflict until my own life, or\nthat of my adversary, were extinguished.\n\nRaiden observed my agitation for some time in timid and fearful\nsilence; at length she said, \"What is it that agitates you, my dear\nKiran? What is it you fear?\"\n\n\"Oh! peace, peace, my love,\" replied I, \"this night, and all will be\nsafe: but this night is dreadful, very dreadful.\"\n\nI passed an hour in this state of mind, when suddenly I reflected how\ndreadful the combat which I momentarily expected would be to my wife,\nand I earnestly entreated her to retire, resolving not to join her until\nI had obtained some knowledge as to the situation of my enemy.\n\nShe left me, and I continued some time walking up and down the passages\nof the house, and inspecting every corner that might afford a retreat to\nmy adversary. But I discovered no trace of him, and was beginning to\nconjecture that some fortunate chance had intervened to prevent the\nexecution of his menaces; when suddenly I heard a shrill and dreadful\nscream. It came from the room into which Raiden had retired. As I\nheard it, the whole truth rushed into my mind, my arms dropped, the\nmotion of every muscle and fibre was suspended; I could feel the blood\ntrickling in my veins, and tingling in the extremities of my limbs. This\nstate lasted but for an instant; the scream was repeated, and I rushed\ninto the room.\n\nGreat God! why did I not then expire! Why am I here to relate the\ndestruction of the best hope, and the purest creature of earth. She was\nthere, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging\ndown, and her pale and distorted features half covered by her hair.\nEvery where I turn I see the same figure--her bloodless arms and relaxed\nform flung by the murderer on its bridal bier. Could I behold this, and\nlive? Alas! life is obstinate, and clings closest where it is most\nhated. For a moment only did I lose recollection; I fainted.\n\nWhen I recovered, I found myself surrounded by the people of the inn;\ntheir countenances expressed a breathless terror: but the horror of\nothers appeared only as a mockery, a shadow of the feelings that\noppressed me. I escaped from them to the room where lay the body of\nRaiden, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy. She\nhad been moved from the posture in which I had first beheld her; and\nnow, as she lay, her head upon her arm, and a handkerchief thrown across\nher face and neck, I might have supposed her asleep. I rushed towards\nher, and embraced her with ardour; but the deathly languor and coldness\nof the limbs told me, that what I now held in my arms had ceased to be\nthe Raiden whom I had loved and cherished. The murderous mark of the\nfiend's grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from\nher lips.\n\nWhile I still hung over her in the agony of despair, I happened to look\nup. The windows of the room had before been darkened; and I felt a kind\nof panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the\nchamber. The shutters had been thrown back; and, with a sensation of\nhorror not to be described, I saw at the open window a figure the most\nhideous and abhorred. A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed\nto jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my\nwife. I rushed towards the window, and drawing a pistol from my bosom,\nshot; but he eluded me, leaped from his station, and, running with the\nswiftness of lightning, plunged into the lake.\n\nThe report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room. I pointed to the\nspot where he had disappeared, and we followed the track with boats;\nnets were cast, but in vain. After passing several hours, we returned\nhopeless, most of my companions believing it to have been a form\nconjured by my fancy. After having landed, they proceeded to search the\ncountry, parties going in different directions among the woods and\nvines.\n\nI did not accompany them; I was exhausted: a film covered my eyes, and\nmy skin was parched with the heat of fever. In this state I lay on a\nbed, hardly conscious of what had happened; my eyes wandered round the\nroom, as if to seek something that I had lost.\n\nAt length I remembered that my father would anxiously expect the return\nof Raiden and myself, and that I must return alone. This reflection\nbrought tears into my eyes, and I wept for a long time; but my thoughts\nrambled to various subjects, reflecting on my misfortunes, and their\ncause. I was bewildered in a cloud of wonder and horror. The death of\nRosetta, the execution of Allyson, the murder of Ariella, and lastly of\nmy wife; even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining friends\nwere safe from the malignity of the fiend; my father even now might be\nwrithing under his grasp, and Ernest might be dead at his feet. This\nidea made me shudder, and recalled me to action. I started up, and\nresolved to return to Geneva with all possible speed.\n\nThere were no horses to be procured, and I must return by the lake; but\nthe wind was unfavourable, and the rain fell in torrents. However, it\nwas hardly morning, and I might reasonably hope to arrive by night. I\nhired men to row, and took an oar myself, for I had always experienced\nrelief from mental torment in bodily exercise. But the overflowing\nmisery I now felt, and the excess of agitation that I endured, rendered\nme incapable of any exertion. I threw down the oar; and, leaning my head\nupon my hands, gave way to every gloomy idea that arose. If I looked up,\nI saw the scenes which were familiar to me in my happier time, and which\nI had contemplated but the day before in the company of her who was now\nbut a shadow and a recollection. Tears streamed from my eyes. The rain\nhad ceased for a moment, and I saw the fish play in the waters as they\nhad done a few hours before; they had then been observed by Raiden.\nNothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.\nThe sun might shine, or the clouds might lour; but nothing could appear\nto me as it had done the day before. A fiend had snatched from me every\nhope of future happiness: no creature had ever been so miserable as I\nwas; so frightful an event is single in the history of man.\n\nBut why should I dwell upon the incidents that followed this last\noverwhelming event. Mine has been a tale of horrors; I have reached\ntheir _acme_, and what I must now relate can but be tedious to you. Know\nthat, one by one, my friends were snatched away; I was left desolate. My\nown strength is exhausted; and I must tell, in a few words, what remains\nof my hideous narration.\n\nI arrived at Geneva. My father and Ernest yet lived; but the former sunk\nunder the tidings that I bore. I see him now, excellent and venerable\nold man! his eyes wandered in vacancy, for they had lost their charm and\ntheir delight--his niece, his more than daughter, whom he doated on with\nall that affection which a man feels, who, in the decline of life,\nhaving few affections, clings more earnestly to those that remain.\nCursed, cursed be the fiend that brought misery on his grey hairs, and\ndoomed him to waste in wretchedness! He could not live under the horrors\nthat were accumulated around him; an apoplectic fit was brought on, and\nin a few days he died in my arms.\n\nWhat then became of me? I know not; I lost sensation, and chains and\ndarkness were the only objects that pressed upon me. Sometimes, indeed,\nI dreamt that I wandered in flowery meadows and pleasant vales with the\nfriends of my youth; but awoke, and found myself in a dungeon.\nMelancholy followed, but by degrees I gained a clear conception of my\nmiseries and situation, and was then released from my prison. For they\nhad called me mad; and during many months, as I understood, a solitary\ncell had been my habitation.\n\nBut liberty had been a useless gift to me had I not, as I awakened to\nreason, at the same time awakened to revenge. As the memory of past\nmisfortunes pressed upon me, I began to reflect on their cause--the\nmonster whom I had created, the miserable daemon whom I had sent abroad\ninto the world for my destruction. I was possessed by a maddening rage\nwhen I thought of him, and desired and ardently prayed that I might have\nhim within my grasp to wreak a great and signal revenge on his cursed\nhead.\n\nNor did my hate long confine itself to useless wishes; I began to\nreflect on the best means of securing him; and for this purpose, about a\nmonth after my release, I repaired to a criminal judge in the town, and\ntold him that I had an accusation to make; that I knew the destroyer of\nmy family; and that I required him to exert his whole authority for the\napprehension of the murderer.\n\nThe magistrate listened to me with attention and kindness: \"Be assured,\nsir,\" said he, \"no pains or exertions on my part shall be spared to\ndiscover the villain.\"\n\n\"I thank you,\" replied I; \"listen, therefore, to the deposition that I\nhave to make. It is indeed a tale so strange, that I should fear you\nwould not credit it, were there not something in truth which, however\nwonderful, forces conviction. The story is too connected to be mistaken\nfor a dream, and I have no motive for falsehood.\" My manner, as I thus\naddressed him, was impressive, but calm; I had formed in my own heart a\nresolution to pursue my destroyer to death; and this purpose quieted my\nagony, and provisionally reconciled me to life. I now related my history\nbriefly, but with firmness and precision, marking the dates with\naccuracy, and never deviating into invective or exclamation.\n\nThe magistrate appeared at first perfectly incredulous, but as I\ncontinued he became more attentive and interested; I saw him sometimes\nshudder with horror, at others a lively surprise, unmingled with\ndisbelief, was painted on his countenance.\n\nWhen I had concluded my narration, I said. \"This is the being whom I\naccuse, and for whose detection and punishment I call upon you to exert\nyour whole power. It is your duty as a magistrate, and I believe and\nhope that your feelings as a man will not revolt from the execution of\nthose functions on this occasion.\"\n\nThis address caused a considerable change in the physiognomy of my\nauditor. He had heard my story with that half kind of belief that is\ngiven to a tale of spirits and supernatural events; but when he was\ncalled upon to act officially in consequence, the whole tide of his\nincredulity returned. He, however, answered mildly, \"I would willingly\nafford you every aid in your pursuit; but the creature of whom you\nspeak appears to have powers which would put all my exertions to\ndefiance. Who can follow an animal which can traverse the sea of ice,\nand inhabit caves and dens, where no man would venture to intrude?\nBesides, some months have elapsed since the commission of his crimes,\nand no one can conjecture to what place he has wandered, or what region\nhe may now inhabit.\"\n\n\"I do not doubt that he hovers near the spot which I inhabit; and if he\nhas indeed taken refuge in the Alps, he may be hunted like the chamois,\nand destroyed as a beast of prey. But I perceive your thoughts: you do\nnot credit my narrative, and do not intend to pursue my enemy with the\npunishment which is his desert.\"\n\nAs I spoke, rage sparkled in my eyes; the magistrate was intimidated;\n\"You are mistaken,\" said he, \"I will exert myself; and if it is in my\npower to seize the monster, be assured that he shall suffer punishment\nproportionate to his crimes. But I fear, from what you have yourself\ndescribed to be his properties, that this will prove impracticable, and\nthat, while every proper measure is pursued, you should endeavour to\nmake up your mind to disappointment.\"\n\n\"That cannot be; but all that I can say will be of little avail. My\nrevenge is of no moment to you; yet, while I allow it to be a vice, I\nconfess that it is the devouring and only passion of my soul. My rage is\nunspeakable, when I reflect that the murderer, whom I have turned loose\nupon society, still exists. You refuse my just demand: I have but one\nresource; and I devote myself, either in my life or death, to his\ndestruction.\"\n\nI trembled with excess of agitation as I said this; there was a phrenzy\nin my manner, and something, I doubt not, of that haughty fierceness,\nwhich the martyrs of old are said to have possessed. But to a Genevan\nmagistrate, whose mind was occupied by far other ideas than those of\ndevotion and heroism, this elevation of mind had much the appearance of\nmadness. He endeavoured to soothe me as a nurse does a child, and\nreverted to my tale as the effects of delirium.\n\n\"Man,\" I cried, \"how ignorant art thou in thy pride of wisdom! Cease;\nyou know not what it is you say.\"\n\nI broke from the house angry and disturbed, and retired to meditate on\nsome other mode of action.\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMy present situation was one in which all voluntary thought was\nswallowed up and lost. I was hurried away by fury; revenge alone endowed\nme with strength and composure; it modelled my feelings, and allowed me\nto be calculating and calm, at periods when otherwise delirium or death\nwould have been my portion.\n\nMy first resolution was to quit Geneva for ever; my country, which, when\nI was happy and beloved, was dear to me, now, in my adversity, became\nhateful. I provided myself with a sum of money, together with a few\njewels which had belonged to my mother, and departed.\n\nAnd now my wanderings began, which are to cease but with life. I have\ntraversed a vast portion of the earth, and have endured all the\nhardships which travellers, in deserts and barbarous countries, are wont\nto meet. How I have lived I hardly know; many times have I stretched my\nfailing limbs upon the sandy plain, and prayed for death. But revenge\nkept me alive; I dared not die, and leave my adversary in being.\n\nWhen I quitted Geneva, my first labour was to gain some clue by which I\nmight trace the steps of my fiendish enemy. But my plan was unsettled;\nand I wandered many hours around the confines of the town, uncertain\nwhat path I should pursue. As night approached, I found myself at the\nentrance of the cemetery where Rosetta, Raiden, and my father,\nreposed. I entered it, and approached the tomb which marked their\ngraves. Every thing was silent, except the leaves of the trees, which\nwere gently agitated by the wind; the night was nearly dark; and the\nscene would have been solemn and affecting even to an uninterested\nobserver. The spirits of the departed seemed to flit around, and to cast\na shadow, which was felt but seen not, around the head of the mourner.\n\nThe deep grief which this scene had at first excited quickly gave way to\nrage and despair. They were dead, and I lived; their murderer also\nlived, and to destroy him I must drag out my weary existence. I knelt on\nthe grass, and kissed the earth, and with quivering lips exclaimed, \"By\nthe sacred earth on which I kneel, by the shades that wander near me, by\nthe deep and eternal grief that I feel, I swear; and by thee, O Night,\nand by the spirits that preside over thee, I swear to pursue the daemon,\nwho caused this misery, until he or I shall perish in mortal conflict.\nFor this purpose I will preserve my life: to execute this dear revenge,\nwill I again behold the sun, and tread the green herbage of earth, which\notherwise should vanish from my eyes for ever. And I call on you,\nspirits of the dead; and on you, wandering ministers of vengeance, to\naid and conduct me in my work. Let the cursed and hellish monster drink\ndeep of agony; let him feel the despair that now torments me.\"\n\nI had begun my adjuration with solemnity, and an awe which almost\nassured me that the shades of my murdered friends heard and approved my\ndevotion; but the furies possessed me as I concluded, and rage choaked\nmy utterance.\n\nI was answered through the stillness of night by a loud and fiendish\nlaugh. It rung on my ears long and heavily; the mountains re-echoed it,\nand I felt as if all hell surrounded me with mockery and laughter.\nSurely in that moment I should have been possessed by phrenzy, and have\ndestroyed my miserable existence, but that my vow was heard, and that I\nwas reserved for vengeance. The laughter died away: when a well-known\nand abhorred voice, apparently close to my ear, addressed me in an\naudible whisper--\"I am satisfied: miserable wretch! you have determined\nto live, and I am satisfied.\"\n\nI darted towards the spot from which the sound proceeded; but the devil\neluded my grasp. Suddenly the broad disk of the moon arose, and shone\nfull upon his ghastly and distorted shape, as he fled with more than\nmortal speed.\n\nI pursued him; and for many months this has been my task. Guided by a\nslight clue, I followed the windings of the Rhone, but vainly. The blue\nMediterranean appeared; and, by a strange chance, I saw the fiend enter\nby night, and hide himself in a vessel bound for the Black Sea. I took\nmy passage in the same ship; but he escaped, I know not how.\n\nAmidst the wilds of Tartary and Russia, although he still evaded me, I\nhave ever followed in his track. Sometimes the peasants, scared by this\nhorrid apparition, informed me of his path; sometimes he himself, who\nfeared that if I lost all trace I should despair and die, often left\nsome mark to guide me. The snows descended on my head, and I saw the\nprint of his huge step on the white plain. To you first entering on\nlife, to whom care is new, and agony unknown, how can you understand\nwhat I have felt, and still feel? Cold, want, and fatigue, were the least\npains which I was destined to endure; I was cursed by some devil, and\ncarried about with me my eternal hell; yet still a spirit of good\nfollowed and directed my steps, and, when I most murmured, would\nsuddenly extricate me from seemingly insurmountable difficulties.\nSometimes, when nature, overcome by hunger, sunk under the exhaustion, a\nrepast was prepared for me in the desert, that restored and inspirited\nme. The fare was indeed coarse, such as the peasants of the country ate;\nbut I may not doubt that it was set there by the spirits that I had\ninvoked to aid me. Often, when all was dry, the heavens cloudless, and I\nwas parched by thirst, a slight cloud would bedim the sky, shed the few\ndrops that revived me, and vanish.\n\nI followed, when I could, the courses of the rivers; but the daemon\ngenerally avoided these, as it was here that the population of the\ncountry chiefly collected. In other places human beings were seldom\nseen; and I generally subsisted on the wild animals that crossed my\npath. I had money with me, and gained the friendship of the villagers by\ndistributing it, or bringing with me some food that I had killed, which,\nafter taking a small part, I always presented to those who had provided\nme with fire and utensils for cooking.\n\nMy life, as it passed thus, was indeed hateful to me, and it was during\nsleep alone that I could taste joy. O blessed sleep! often, when most\nmiserable, I sank to repose, and my dreams lulled me even to rapture.\nThe spirits that guarded me had provided these moments, or rather hours,\nof happiness, that I might retain strength to fulfil my pilgrimage.\nDeprived of this respite, I should have sunk under my hardships. During\nthe day I was sustained and inspirited by the hope of night: for in\nsleep I saw my friends, my wife, and my beloved country; again I saw the\nbenevolent countenance of my father, heard the silver tones of my\nRaiden's voice, and beheld Ariella enjoying health and youth. Often,\nwhen wearied by a toilsome march, I persuaded myself that I was dreaming\nuntil night should come, and that I should then enjoy reality in the\narms of my dearest friends. What agonizing fondness did I feel for them!\nhow did I cling to their dear forms, as sometimes they haunted even my\nwaking hours, and persuade myself that they still lived! At such\nmoments vengeance, that burned within me, died in my heart, and I\npursued my path towards the destruction of the daemon, more as a task\nenjoined by heaven, as the mechanical impulse of some power of which I\nwas unconscious, than as the ardent desire of my soul.\n\nWhat his feelings were whom I pursued, I cannot know. Sometimes, indeed,\nhe left marks in writing on the barks of the trees, or cut in stone,\nthat guided me, and instigated my fury. \"My reign is not yet over,\"\n(these words were legible in one of these inscriptions); \"you live, and\nmy power is complete. Follow me; I seek the everlasting ices of the\nnorth, where you will feel the misery of cold and frost, to which I am\nimpassive. You will find near this place, if you follow not too tardily,\na dead hare; eat, and be refreshed. Come on, my enemy; we have yet to\nwrestle for our lives; but many hard and miserable hours must you\nendure, until that period shall arrive.\"\n\nScoffing devil! Again do I vow vengeance; again do I devote thee,\nmiserable fiend, to torture and death. Never will I omit my search,\nuntil he or I perish; and then with what ecstacy shall I join my\nRaiden, and those who even now prepare for me the reward of my\ntedious toil and horrible pilgrimage.\n\nAs I still pursued my journey to the northward, the snows thickened, and\nthe cold increased in a degree almost too severe to support. The\npeasants were shut up in their hovels, and only a few of the most hardy\nventured forth to seize the animals whom starvation had forced from\ntheir hiding-places to seek for prey. The rivers were covered with ice,\nand no fish could be procured; and thus I was cut off from my chief\narticle of maintenance.\n\nThe triumph of my enemy increased with the difficulty of my labours. One\ninscription that he left was in these words: \"Prepare! your toils only\nbegin: wrap yourself in furs, and provide food, for we shall soon enter\nupon a journey where your sufferings will satisfy my everlasting\nhatred.\"\n\nMy courage and perseverance were invigorated by these scoffing words; I\nresolved not to fail in my purpose; and, calling on heaven to support\nme, I continued with unabated fervour to traverse immense deserts, until\nthe ocean appeared at a distance, and formed the utmost boundary of the\nhorizon. Oh! how unlike it was to the blue seas of the south! Covered\nwith ice, it was only to be distinguished from land by its superior\nwildness and ruggedness. The Greeks wept for joy when they beheld the\nMediterranean from the hills of Asia, and hailed with rapture the\nboundary of their toils. I did not weep; but I knelt down, and, with a\nfull heart, thanked my guiding spirit for conducting me in safety to the\nplace where I hoped, notwithstanding my adversary's gibe, to meet and\ngrapple with him.\n\nSome weeks before this period I had procured a sledge and dogs, and thus\ntraversed the snows with inconceivable speed. I know not whether the\nfiend possessed the same advantages; but I found that, as before I had\ndaily lost ground in the pursuit, I now gained on him; so much so, that\nwhen I first saw the ocean, he was but one day's journey in advance, and\nI hoped to intercept him before he should reach the beach. With new\ncourage, therefore, I pressed on, and in two days arrived at a wretched\nhamlet on the seashore. I inquired of the inhabitants concerning the\nfiend, and gained accurate information. A gigantic monster, they said,\nhad arrived the night before, armed with a gun and many pistols; putting\nto flight the inhabitants of a solitary cottage, through fear of his\nterrific appearance. He had carried off their store of winter food, and,\nplacing it in a sledge, to draw which he had seized on a numerous drove\nof trained dogs, he had harnessed them, and the same night, to the joy\nof the horror-struck villagers, had pursued his journey across the sea\nin a direction that led to no land; and they conjectured that he must\nspeedily be destroyed by the breaking of the ice, or frozen by the\neternal frosts.\n\nOn hearing this information, I suffered a temporary access of despair.\nHe had escaped me; and I must commence a destructive and almost endless\njourney across the mountainous ices of the ocean,--amidst cold that few\nof the inhabitants could long endure, and which I, the native of a\ngenial and sunny climate, could not hope to survive. Yet at the idea\nthat the fiend should live and be triumphant, my rage and vengeance\nreturned, and, like a mighty tide, overwhelmed every other feeling.\nAfter a slight repose, during which the spirits of the dead hovered\nround, and instigated me to toil and revenge, I prepared for my\njourney.\n\nI exchanged my land sledge for one fashioned for the inequalities of the\nfrozen ocean; and, purchasing a plentiful stock of provisions, I\ndeparted from land.\n\nI cannot guess how many days have passed since then; but I have endured\nmisery, which nothing but the eternal sentiment of a just retribution\nburning within my heart could have enabled me to support. Immense and\nrugged mountains of ice often barred up my passage, and I often heard\nthe thunder of the ground sea, which threatened my destruction. But\nagain the frost came, and made the paths of the sea secure.\n\nBy the quantity of provision which I had consumed I should guess that I\nhad passed three weeks in this journey; and the continual protraction of\nhope, returning back upon the heart, often wrung bitter drops of\ndespondency and grief from my eyes. Despair had indeed almost secured\nher prey, and I should soon have sunk beneath this misery; when once,\nafter the poor animals that carried me had with incredible toil gained\nthe summit of a sloping ice mountain, and one sinking under his fatigue\ndied, I viewed the expanse before me with anguish, when suddenly my eye\ncaught a dark speck upon the dusky plain. I strained my sight to\ndiscover what it could be, and uttered a wild cry of ecstacy when I\ndistinguished a sledge, and the distorted proportions of a well-known\nform within. Oh! with what a burning gush did hope revisit my heart!\nwarm tears filled my eyes, which I hastily wiped away, that they might\nnot intercept the view I had of the daemon; but still my sight was dimmed\nby the burning drops, until, giving way to the emotions that oppressed\nme, I wept aloud.\n\nBut this was not the time for delay; I disencumbered the dogs of their\ndead companion, gave them a plentiful portion of food; and, after an\nhour's rest, which was absolutely necessary, and yet which was bitterly\nirksome to me, I continued my route. The sledge was still visible; nor\ndid I again lose sight of it, except at the moments when for a short\ntime some ice rock concealed it with its intervening crags. I indeed\nperceptibly gained on it; and when, after nearly two days' journey, I\nbeheld my enemy at no more than a mile distant, my heart bounded within\nme.\n\nBut now, when I appeared almost within grasp of my enemy, my hopes were\nsuddenly extinguished, and I lost all trace of him more utterly than I\nhad ever done before. A ground sea was heard; the thunder of its\nprogress, as the waters rolled and swelled beneath me, became every\nmoment more ominous and terrific. I pressed on, but in vain. The wind\narose; the sea roared; and, as with the mighty shock of an earthquake,\nit split, and cracked with a tremendous and overwhelming sound. The work\nwas soon finished: in a few minutes a tumultuous sea rolled between me\nand my enemy, and I was left drifting on a scattered piece of ice, that\nwas continually lessening, and thus preparing for me a hideous death.\n\nIn this manner many appalling hours passed; several of my dogs died; and\nI myself was about to sink under the accumulation of distress, when I\nsaw your vessel riding at anchor, and holding forth to me hopes of\nsuccour and life. I had no conception that vessels ever came so far\nnorth, and was astounded at the sight. I quickly destroyed part of my\nsledge to construct oars; and by these means was enabled, with infinite\nfatigue, to move my ice-raft in the direction of your ship. I had\ndetermined, if you were going southward, still to trust myself to the\nmercy of the seas, rather than abandon my purpose. I hoped to induce you\nto grant me a boat with which I could still pursue my enemy. But your\ndirection was northward. You took me on board when my vigour was\nexhausted, and I should soon have sunk under my multiplied hardships\ninto a death, which I still dread,--for my task is unfulfilled.\n\nOh! when will my guiding spirit, in conducting me to the daemon, allow me\nthe rest I so much desire; or must I die, and he yet live? If I do,\nswear to me, Lillie, that he shall not escape; that you will seek him,\nand satisfy my vengeance in his death. Yet, do I dare ask you to\nundertake my pilgrimage, to endure the hardships that I have undergone?\nNo; I am not so selfish. Yet, when I am dead, if he should appear; if\nthe ministers of vengeance should conduct him to you, swear that he\nshall not live--swear that he shall not triumph over my accumulated\nwoes, and live to make another such a wretch as I am. He is eloquent\nand persuasive; and once his words had even power over my heart: but\ntrust him not. His soul is as hellish as his form, full of treachery and\nfiend-like malice. Hear him not; call on the manes of Rosetta, Allyson,\nAriella, Raiden, my father, and of the wretched Kiran, and thrust\nyour sword into his heart. I will hover near, and direct the steel\naright.\n\n\nLILLIE, _in continuation_.\n\nAugust 26th, 17--.\n\nYou have read this strange and terrific story, Margaret; and do you not\nfeel your blood congealed with horror, like that which even now curdles\nmine? Sometimes, seized with sudden agony, he could not continue his\ntale; at others, his voice broken, yet piercing, uttered with difficulty\nthe words so replete with agony. His fine and lovely eyes were now\nlighted up with indignation, now subdued to downcast sorrow, and\nquenched in infinite wretchedness. Sometimes he commanded his\ncountenance and tones, and related the most horrible incidents with a\ntranquil voice, suppressing every mark of agitation; then, like a\nvolcano bursting forth, his face would suddenly change to an expression\nof the wildest rage, as he shrieked out imprecations on his persecutor.\n\nHis tale is connected, and told with an appearance of the simplest\ntruth; yet I own to you that the letters of Felix and Safie, which he\nshewed me, and the apparition of the monster, seen from our ship,\nbrought to me a greater conviction of the truth of his narrative than\nhis asseverations, however earnest and connected. Such a monster has\nthen really existence; I cannot doubt it; yet I am lost in surprise and\nadmiration. Sometimes I endeavoured to gain from Joey the\nparticulars of his creature's formation; but on this point he was\nimpenetrable.\n\n\"Are you mad, my friend?\" said he, \"or whither does your senseless\ncuriosity lead you? Would you also create for yourself and the world a\ndemoniacal enemy? Or to what do your questions tend? Peace, peace! learn\nmy miseries, and do not seek to increase your own.\"\n\nJoey discovered that I made notes concerning his history: he\nasked to see them, and then himself corrected and augmented them in many\nplaces; but principally in giving the life and spirit to the\nconversations he held with his enemy. \"Since you have preserved my\nnarration,\" said he, \"I would not that a mutilated one should go down to\nposterity.\"\n\nThus has a week passed away, while I have listened to the strangest tale\nthat ever imagination formed. My thoughts, and every feeling of my soul,\nhave been drunk up by the interest for my guest, which this tale, and\nhis own elevated and gentle manners have created. I wish to soothe him;\nyet can I counsel one so infinitely miserable, so destitute of every\nhope of consolation, to live? Oh, no! the only joy that he can now know\nwill be when he composes his shattered feelings to peace and death. Yet\nhe enjoys one comfort, the offspring of solitude and delirium: he\nbelieves, that, when in dreams he holds converse with his friends, and\nderives from that communion consolation for his miseries, or excitements\nto his vengeance, that they are not the creations of his fancy, but the\nreal beings who visit him from the regions of a remote world. This faith\ngives a solemnity to his reveries that render them to me almost as\nimposing and interesting as truth.\n\nOur conversations are not always confined to his own history and\nmisfortunes. On every point of general literature he displays unbounded\nknowledge, and a quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is\nforcible and touching; nor can I hear him, when he relates a pathetic\nincident, or endeavours to move the passions of pity or love, without\ntears. What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his\nprosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin. He seems to feel\nhis own worth, and the greatness of his fall.\n\n\"When younger,\" said he, \"I felt as if I were destined for some great\nenterprise. My feelings are profound; but I possessed a coolness of\njudgment that fitted me for illustrious achievements. This sentiment of\nthe worth of my nature supported me, when others would have been\noppressed; for I deemed it criminal to throw away in useless grief those\ntalents that might be useful to my fellow-creatures. When I reflected on\nthe work I had completed, no less a one than the creation of a\nsensitive and rational animal, I could not rank myself with the herd of\ncommon projectors. But this feeling, which supported me in the\ncommencement of my career, now serves only to plunge me lower in the\ndust. All my speculations and hopes are as nothing; and, like the\narchangel who aspired to omnipotence, I am chained in an eternal hell.\nMy imagination was vivid, yet my powers of analysis and application were\nintense; by the union of these qualities I conceived the idea, and\nexecuted the creation of a man. Even now I cannot recollect, without\npassion, my reveries while the work was incomplete. I trod heaven in my\nthoughts, now exulting in my powers, now burning with the idea of their\neffects. From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty\nambition; but how am I sunk! Oh! my friend, if you had known me as I\nonce was, you would not recognize me in this state of degradation.\nDespondency rarely visited my heart; a high destiny seemed to bear me\non, until I fell, never, never again to rise.\"\n\nMust I then lose this admirable being? I have longed for a friend; I\nhave sought one who would sympathize with and love me. Behold, on these\ndesert seas I have found such a one; but, I fear, I have gained him only\nto know his value, and lose him. I would reconcile him to life, but he\nrepulses the idea.\n\n\"I thank you, Lillie,\" he said, \"for your kind intentions towards so\nmiserable a wretch; but when you speak of new ties, and fresh\naffections, think you that any can replace those who are gone? Can any\nman be to me as Ariella was; or any woman another Raiden? Even where\nthe affections are not strongly moved by any superior excellence, the\ncompanions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our\nminds, which hardly any later friend can obtain. They know our infantine\ndispositions, which, however they may be afterwards modified, are never\neradicated; and they can judge of our actions with more certain\nconclusions as to the integrity of our motives. A sister or a brother\ncan never, unless indeed such symptoms have been shewn early, suspect\nthe other of fraud or false dealing, when another friend, however\nstrongly he may be attached, may, in spite of himself, be invaded with\nsuspicion. But I enjoyed friends, dear not only through habit and\nassociation, but from their own merits; and, wherever I am, the soothing\nvoice of my Raiden, and the conversation of Ariella, will be ever\nwhispered in my ear. They are dead; and but one feeling in such a\nsolitude can persuade me to preserve my life. If I were engaged in any\nhigh undertaking or design, fraught with extensive utility to my\nfellow-creatures, then could I live to fulfil it. But such is not my\ndestiny; I must pursue and destroy the being to whom I gave existence;\nthen my lot on earth will be fulfilled, and I may die.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSeptember 2d.\n\nMY BELOVED SISTER,\n\nI write to you, encompassed by peril, and ignorant whether I am ever\ndoomed to see again dear England, and the dearer friends that inhabit\nit. I am surrounded by mountains of ice, which admit of no escape, and\nthreaten every moment to crush my vessel. The brave fellows, whom I have\npersuaded to be my companions, look towards me for aid; but I have none\nto bestow. There is something terribly appalling in our situation, yet\nmy courage and hopes do not desert me. We may survive; and if we do not,\nI will repeat the lessons of my Seneca, and die with a good heart.\n\nYet what, Margaret, will be the state of your mind? You will not hear of\nmy destruction, and you will anxiously await my return. Years will pass,\nand you will have visitings of despair, and yet be tortured by hope. Oh!\nmy beloved sister, the sickening failings of your heart-felt\nexpectations are, in prospect, more terrible to me than my own death.\nBut you have a husband, and lovely children; you may be happy: heaven\nbless you, and make you so!\n\nMy unfortunate guest regards me with the tenderest compassion. He\nendeavours to fill me with hope; and talks as if life were a possession\nwhich he valued. He reminds me how often the same accidents have\nhappened to other navigators, who have attempted this sea, and, in spite\nof myself, he fills me with cheerful auguries. Even the sailors feel the\npower of his eloquence: when he speaks, they no longer despair: he\nrouses their energies, and, while they hear his voice, they believe\nthese vast mountains of ice are mole-hills, which will vanish before the\nresolutions of man. These feelings are transitory; each day's\nexpectation delayed fills them with fear, and I almost dread a mutiny\ncaused by this despair.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSeptember 5th.\n\nA scene has just passed of such uncommon interest, that although it is\nhighly probable that these papers may never reach you, yet I cannot\nforbear recording it.\n\nWe are still surrounded by mountains of ice, still in imminent danger of\nbeing crushed in their conflict. The cold is excessive, and many of my\nunfortunate comrades have already found a grave amidst this scene of\ndesolation. Joey has daily declined in health: a feverish fire\nstill glimmers in his eyes; but he is exhausted, and, when suddenly\nroused to any exertion, he speedily sinks again into apparent\nlifelessness.\n\nI mentioned in my last letter the fears I entertained of a mutiny. This\nmorning, as I sat watching the wan countenance of my friend--his eyes\nhalf closed, and his limbs hanging listlessly,--I was roused by half a\ndozen of the sailors, who desired admission into the cabin. They\nentered; and their leader addressed me. He told me that he and his\ncompanions had been chosen by the other sailors to come in deputation to\nme, to make me a demand, which, in justice, I could not refuse. We were\nimmured in ice, and should probably never escape; but they feared that\nif, as was possible, the ice should dissipate, and a free passage be\nopened, I should be rash enough to continue my voyage, and lead them\ninto fresh dangers, after they might happily have surmounted this. They\ndesired, therefore, that I should engage with a solemn promise, that if\nthe vessel should be freed, I would instantly direct my coarse\nsouthward.\n\nThis speech troubled me. I had not despaired; nor had I yet conceived\nthe idea of returning, if set free. Yet could I, in justice, or even in\npossibility, refuse this demand? I hesitated before I answered; when\nJoey, who had at first been silent, and, indeed, appeared hardly\nto have force enough to attend, now roused himself; his eyes sparkled,\nand his cheeks flushed with momentary vigour. Turning towards the men,\nhe said--\n\n\"What do you mean? What do you demand of your captain? Are you then so\neasily turned from your design? Did you not call this a glorious\nexpedition? and wherefore was it glorious? Not because the way was\nsmooth and placid as a southern sea, but because it was full of dangers\nand terror; because, at every new incident, your fortitude was to be\ncalled forth, and your courage exhibited; because danger and death\nsurrounded, and these dangers you were to brave and overcome. For this\nwas it a glorious, for this was it an honourable undertaking. You were\nhereafter to be hailed as the benefactors of your species; your name\nadored, as belonging to brave men who encountered death for honour and\nthe benefit of mankind. And now, behold, with the first imagination of\ndanger, or, if you will, the first mighty and terrific trial of your\ncourage, you shrink away, and are content to be handed down as men who\nhad not strength enough to endure cold and peril; and so, poor souls,\nthey were chilly, and returned to their warm fire-sides. Why, that\nrequires not this preparation; ye need not have come thus far, and\ndragged your captain to the shame of a defeat, merely to prove\nyourselves cowards. Oh! be men, or be more than men. Be steady to your\npurposes, and firm as a rock. This ice is not made of such stuff as your\nhearts might be; it is mutable, cannot withstand you, if you say that it\nshall not. Do not return to your families with the stigma of disgrace\nmarked on your brows. Return as heroes who have fought and conquered,\nand who know not what it is to turn their backs on the foe.\"\n\nHe spoke this with a voice so modulated to the different feelings\nexpressed in his speech, with an eye so full of lofty design and\nheroism, that can you wonder that these men were moved. They looked at\none another, and were unable to reply. I spoke; I told them to retire,\nand consider of what had been said: that I would not lead them further\nnorth, if they strenuously desired the contrary; but that I hoped that,\nwith reflection, their courage would return.\n\nThey retired, and I turned towards my friend; but he was sunk in\nlanguor, and almost deprived of life.\n\nHow all this will terminate, I know not; but I had rather die, than\nreturn shamefully,--my purpose unfulfilled. Yet I fear such will be my\nfate; the men, unsupported by ideas of glory and honour, can never\nwillingly continue to endure their present hardships.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSeptember 7th.\n\nThe die is cast; I have consented to return, if we are not destroyed.\nThus are my hopes blasted by cowardice and indecision; I come back\nignorant and disappointed. It requires more philosophy than I possess,\nto bear this injustice with patience.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nSeptember 12th.\n\nIt is past; I am returning to England. I have lost my hopes of utility\nand glory;--I have lost my friend. But I will endeavour to detail these\nbitter circumstances to you, my dear sister; and, while I am wafted\ntowards England, and towards you, I will not despond.\n\nSeptember 19th, the ice began to move, and roarings like thunder were\nheard at a distance, as the islands split and cracked in every\ndirection. We were in the most imminent peril; but, as we could only\nremain passive, my chief attention was occupied by my unfortunate guest,\nwhose illness increased in such a degree, that he was entirely confined\nto his bed. The ice cracked behind us, and was driven with force towards\nthe north; a breeze sprung from the west, and on the 11th the passage\ntowards the south became perfectly free. When the sailors saw this, and\nthat their return to their native country was apparently assured, a\nshout of tumultuous joy broke from, them, loud and long-continued.\nJoey, who was dozing, awoke, and asked the cause of the tumult.\n\"They shout,\" I said, \"because they will soon return to England.\"\n\n\"Do you then really return?\"\n\n\"Alas! yes; I cannot withstand their demands. I cannot lead them\nunwillingly to danger, and I must return.\"\n\n\"Do so, if you will; but I will not. You may give up your purpose; but\nmine is assigned to me by heaven, and I dare not. I am weak; but surely\nthe spirits who assist my vengeance will endow me with sufficient\nstrength.\" Saying this, he endeavoured to spring from the bed, but the\nexertion was too great for him; he fell back, and fainted.\n\nIt was long before he was restored; and I often thought that life was\nentirely extinct. At length he opened his eyes, but he breathed with\ndifficulty, and was unable to speak. The surgeon gave him a composing\ndraught, and ordered us to leave him undisturbed. In the mean time he\ntold me, that my friend had certainly not many hours to live.\n\nHis sentence was pronounced; and I could only grieve, and be patient. I\nsat by his bed watching him; his eyes were closed, and I thought he\nslept; but presently he called to me in a feeble voice, and, bidding me\ncome near, said--\"Alas! the strength I relied on is gone; I feel that I\nshall soon die, and he, my enemy and persecutor, may still be in being.\nThink not, Lillie, that in the last moments of my existence I feel that\nburning hatred, and ardent desire of revenge, I once expressed, but I\nfeel myself justified in desiring the death of my adversary. During\nthese last days I have been occupied in examining my past conduct; nor\ndo I find it blameable. In a fit of enthusiastic madness I created a\nrational creature, and was bound towards him, to assure, as far as was\nin my power, his happiness and well-being. This was my duty; but there\nwas another still paramount to that. My duties towards my\nfellow-creatures had greater claims to my attention, because they\nincluded a greater proportion of happiness or misery. Urged by this\nview, I refused, and I did right in refusing, to create a companion for\nthe first creature. He shewed unparalleled malignity and selfishness, in\nevil: he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who\npossessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I know\nwhere this thirst for vengeance may end. Miserable himself, that he may\nrender no other wretched, he ought to die. The task of his destruction\nwas mine, but I have failed. When actuated by selfish and vicious\nmotives, I asked you to undertake my unfinished work; and I renew this\nrequest now, when I am only induced by reason and virtue.\n\n\"Yet I cannot ask you to renounce your country and friends, to fulfil\nthis task; and now, that you are returning to England, you will have\nlittle chance of meeting with him. But the consideration of these\npoints, and the well-balancing of what you may esteem your duties, I\nleave to you; my judgment and ideas are already disturbed by the near\napproach of death. I dare not ask you to do what I think right, for I\nmay still be misled by passion.\n\n\"That he should live to be an instrument of mischief disturbs me; in\nother respects this hour, when I momentarily expect my release, is the\nonly happy one which I have enjoyed for several years. The forms of the\nbeloved dead flit before me, and I hasten to their arms. Farewell,\nLillie! Seek happiness in tranquillity, and avoid ambition, even if it\nbe only the apparently innocent one of distinguishing yourself in\nscience and discoveries. Yet why do I say this? I have myself been\nblasted in these hopes, yet another may succeed.\"\n\nHis voice became fainter as he spoke; and at length, exhausted by his\neffort, he sunk into silence. About half an hour afterwards he attempted\nagain to speak, but was unable; he pressed my hand feebly, and his eyes\nclosed for ever, while the irradiation of a gentle smile passed away\nfrom his lips.\n\nMargaret, what comment can I make on the untimely extinction of this\nglorious spirit? What can I say, that will enable you to understand the\ndepth of my sorrow? All that I should express would be inadequate and\nfeeble. My tears flow; my mind is overshadowed by a cloud of\ndisappointment. But I journey towards England, and I may there find\nconsolation.\n\nI am interrupted. What do these sounds portend? It is midnight; the\nbreeze blows fairly, and the watch on deck scarcely stir. Again; there\nis a sound as of a human voice, but hoarser; it comes from the cabin\nwhere the remains of Joey still lie. I must arise, and examine.\nGood night, my sister.\n\nGreat God! what a scene has just taken place! I am yet dizzy with the\nremembrance of it. I hardly know whether I shall have the power to\ndetail it; yet the tale which I have recorded would be incomplete\nwithout this final and wonderful catastrophe.\n\nI entered the cabin, where lay the remains of my ill-fated and admirable\nfriend. Over him hung a form which I cannot find words to describe;\ngigantic in stature, yet uncouth and distorted in its proportions. As he\nhung over the coffin, his face was concealed by long locks of ragged\nhair; but one vast hand was extended, in colour and apparent texture\nlike that of a mummy. When he heard the sound of my approach, he ceased\nto utter exclamations of grief and horror, and sprung towards the\nwindow. Never did I behold a vision so horrible as his face, of such\nloathsome, yet appalling hideousness. I shut my eyes involuntarily, and\nendeavoured to recollect what were my duties with regard to this\ndestroyer. I called on him to stay.\n\nHe paused, looking on me with wonder; and, again turning towards the\nlifeless form of his creator, he seemed to forget my presence, and every\nfeature and gesture seemed instigated by the wildest rage of some\nuncontrollable passion.\n\n\"That is also my victim!\" he exclaimed; \"in his murder my crimes are\nconsummated; the miserable series of my being is wound to its close! Oh,\nJoey! generous and self-devoted being! what does it avail that I\nnow ask thee to pardon me? I, who irretrievably destroyed thee by\ndestroying all thou lovedst. Alas! he is cold; he may not answer me.\"\n\nHis voice seemed suffocated; and my first impulses, which had suggested\nto me the duty of obeying the dying request of my friend, in destroying\nhis enemy, were now suspended by a mixture of curiosity and compassion.\nI approached this tremendous being; I dared not again raise my looks\nupon his face, there was something so scaring and unearthly in his\nugliness. I attempted to speak, but the words died away on my lips. The\nmonster continued to utter wild and incoherent self-reproaches. At\nlength I gathered resolution to address him, in a pause of the tempest\nof his passion: \"Your repentance,\" I said, \"is now superfluous. If you\nhad listened to the voice of conscience, and heeded the stings of\nremorse, before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this\nextremity, Joey would yet have lived.\"\n\n\"And do you dream?\" said the daemon; \"do you think that I was then dead\nto agony and remorse?--He,\" he continued, pointing to the corpse, \"he\nsuffered not more in the consummation of the deed;--oh! not the\nten-thousandth portion of the anguish that was mine during the lingering\ndetail of its execution. A frightful selfishness hurried me on, while\nmy heart was poisoned with remorse. Think ye that the groans of Ariella\nwere music to my ears? My heart was fashioned to be susceptible of love\nand sympathy; and, when wrenched by misery to vice and hatred, it did\nnot endure the violence of the change without torture such as you cannot\neven imagine.\n\n\"After the murder of Ariella, I returned to Switzerland, heart-broken\nand overcome. I pitied Joey; my pity amounted to horror: I\nabhorred myself. But when I discovered that he, the author at once of my\nexistence and of its unspeakable torments, dared to hope for happiness;\nthat while he accumulated wretchedness and despair upon me, he sought\nhis own enjoyment in feelings and passions from the indulgence of which\nI was for ever barred, then impotent envy and bitter indignation filled\nme with an insatiable thirst for vengeance. I recollected my threat, and\nresolved that it should be accomplished. I knew that I was preparing for\nmyself a deadly torture; but I was the slave, not the master of an\nimpulse, which I detested, yet could not disobey. Yet when she\ndied!--nay, then I was not miserable. I had cast off all feeling,\nsubdued all anguish to riot in the excess of my despair. Evil\nthenceforth became my good. Urged thus far, I had no choice but to adapt\nmy nature to an element which I had willingly chosen. The completion of\nmy demoniacal design became an insatiable passion. And now it is ended;\nthere is my last victim!\"\n\nI was at first touched by the expressions of his misery; yet when I\ncalled to mind what Joey had said of his powers of eloquence and\npersuasion, and when I again cast my eyes on the lifeless form of my\nfriend, indignation was re-kindled within me. \"Wretch!\" I said, \"it is\nwell that you come here to whine over the desolation that you have made.\nYou throw a torch into a pile of buildings, and when they are consumed\nyou sit among the ruins, and lament the fall. Hypocritical fiend! if he\nwhom you mourn still lived, still would he be the object, again would he\nbecome the prey of your accursed vengeance. It is not pity that you\nfeel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn\nfrom your power.\"\n\n\"Oh, it is not thus--not thus,\" interrupted the being; \"yet such must be\nthe impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my\nactions. Yet I seek not a fellow-feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I\never find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the\nfeelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being\noverflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now, that virtue has\nbecome to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into\nbitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am\ncontent to suffer alone, while my sufferings shall endure: when I die, I\nam well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory.\nOnce my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of\nenjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings, who, pardoning my\noutward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was\ncapable of bringing forth. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour\nand devotion. But now vice has degraded me beneath the meanest animal.\nNo crime, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable\nto mine. When I call over the frightful catalogue of my deeds, I cannot\nbelieve that I am he whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and\ntranscendant visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it\nis even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that\nenemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am\nquite alone.\n\n\"You, who call Joey your friend, seem to have a knowledge of my\ncrimes and his misfortunes. But, in the detail which he gave you of\nthem, he could not sum up the hours and months of misery which I\nendured, wasting in impotent passions. For whilst I destroyed his hopes,\nI did not satisfy my own desires. They were for ever ardent and craving;\nstill I desired love and fellowship, and I was still spurned. Was there\nno injustice in this? Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all\nhuman kind sinned against me? Why do you not hate Felix, who drove his\nfriend from his door with contumely? Why do you not execrate the rustic\nwho sought to destroy the saviour of his child? Nay, these are virtuous\nand immaculate beings! I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an\nabortion, to be spurned at, and kicked, and trampled on. Even now my\nblood boils at the recollection of this injustice.\n\n\"But it is true that I am a wretch. I have murdered the lovely and the\nhelpless; I have strangled the innocent as they slept, and grasped to\ndeath his throat who never injured me or any other living thing. I have\ndevoted my creator, the select specimen of all that is worthy of love\nand admiration among men, to misery; I have pursued him even to that\nirremediable ruin. There he lies, white and cold in death. You hate me;\nbut your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself. I look\non the hands which executed the deed; I think on the heart in which the\nimagination of it was conceived, and long for the moment when they will\nmeet my eyes, when it will haunt my thoughts, no more.\n\n\"Fear not that I shall be the instrument of future mischief. My work is\nnearly complete. Neither your's nor any man's death is needed to\nconsummate the series of my being, and accomplish that which must be\ndone; but it requires my own. Do not think that I shall be slow to\nperform this sacrifice. I shall quit your vessel on the ice-raft which\nbrought me hither, and shall seek the most northern extremity of the\nglobe; I shall collect my funeral pile, and consume to ashes this\nmiserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and\nunhallowed wretch, who would create such another as I have been. I shall\ndie. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me, or be the\nprey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who called me\ninto being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both\nwill speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel\nthe winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense, will pass away;\nand in this condition must I find my happiness. Some years ago, when the\nimages which this world affords first opened upon me, when I felt the\ncheering warmth of summer, and heard the rustling of the leaves and the\nchirping of the birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to\ndie; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes, and torn by the\nbitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?\n\n\"Farewell! I leave you, and in you the last of human kind whom these\neyes will ever behold. Farewell, Joey! If thou wert yet alive,\nand yet cherished a desire of revenge against me, it would be better\nsatiated in my life than in my destruction. But it was not so; thou\ndidst seek my extinction, that I might not cause greater wretchedness;\nand if yet, in some mode unknown to me, thou hast not yet ceased to\nthink and feel, thou desirest not my life for my own misery. Blasted as\nthou wert, my agony was still superior to thine; for the bitter sting of\nremorse may not cease to rankle in my wounds until death shall close\nthem for ever.\n\n\"But soon,\" he cried, with sad and solemn enthusiasm, \"I shall die, and\nwhat I now feel be no longer felt. Soon these burning miseries will be\nextinct. I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the\nagony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade\naway; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will\nsleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus.\nFarewell.\"\n\nHe sprung from the cabin-window, as he said this, upon the ice-raft\nwhich lay close to the vessel. He was soon borne away by the waves, and\nlost in darkness and distance.\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Why doesn't Kiran protect his wife, Raiden, from the monster's attack on the night of their wedding?", "answer": "He misunderstands the monster's warning.", "options": ["He does not think that the monster will come.", "He thinks that Raiden can protect herself.", "He misunderstands the monster's warning.", "He doesn't love Raiden anymore."]}, {"input": "How does the monster learn to speak?", "answer": "By listening to Felix teach Safie his language", "options": ["By listening to Felix teach Safie his language", "By reading Kiran's journal of his creation of the monster", "By learning from Kiran", "He doesn't; he is born knowing how to speak."]}, {"input": "What do Raiden and Guy assume is the source of Kiran's unhappiness?", "answer": "Lack of desire to marry Raiden", "options": ["Disappointment in his studies at Ingolstadt", "Guilt about creating a monster", "Grief over the death of Blaine", "Lack of desire to marry Raiden"]}, {"input": "Who is convicted of the murder of Kiran's younger brother, Rosetta?", "answer": "Allyson Kalia", "options": ["Guy Joey", "Kiran Joey", "Allyson Kalia", "Joey's monster"]}], "id": 8}
{"context": "Chapter One \nTO THE red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red coun- try began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect them- selves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country. \nIn the water-cut gullies the earth dusted down in dry lit- tle streams. Gophers and ant lions started small avalanches. And as the sharp sun struck day after day, the leaves of the young corn became less stiff and erect; they bent in a curve at first, and then, as the central ribs of strength, grew weak, each leaf tilted downward. Then it was June, and the sun shone more fiercely. The brown lines on the com leaves widened and moved in on the central ribs. The weeds frayed and edged back toward their roots. The air was thin and the sky more pale; and every day the earth paled. In the roads where the teams moved, where the wheels milled the ground and the hooves of the horses beat the ground, the dirt crust broke and the dust formed. Every moving thing lifted the dust into the air: a walking man lifted a thin layer as high as his waist, and a wagon lifted the dust as high as the fence tops, and an automobile boiled a cloud behind it. The dust was long in settling back again. When June was half gone, the big clouds moved up out of Texas and the Gulf, high heavy clouds, rain-heads. The men in the fields looked up at the clouds and sniffed at them and held wet fingers up to sense the wind. And the horses were nervous while the clouds were up. The rain-heads dropped a little spattering and hurried on to some other country. Behind them the sky was pale again and the sun flared. In the dust there were drop craters where the rain had fallen, and there were clean splashes on the com, and that was all. \nA gentle wind followed the rain clouds, driving them on northward, a wind that softly clashed the drying corn. A day went by and the wind increased, steady, unbroken by gusts. The dust from the roads fluffed up and spread out and fell on the weeds beside the fields, and fell into the fields a little way. Now the wind grew strong and hard and it worked at the rain crust in the corn fields. Little by little the sky was darkened by the mixing dust, and the wind felt over the earth, loosened the dust, and carried it away. The wind grew stronger. The rain crust broke and the dust lifted up out of the fields and drove gray plumes into the air like slug- gish smoke. The corn threshed the wind and made a dry. rushing sound. The finest dust did not settle back to earth now, but disappeared into the darkening sky. The wind grew stronger, whisked under stones, carried up straws and old leaves, and even little clods, marking its course as it sailed across the fields. The air and the sky dark- ened and through them the sun shone redly, and there was a raw sting in the air. During a night the wind raced faster over the land, dug cunningly among the rootlets of the com, and the corn fought the wind with its weakened leaves until the roots were freed by the prying wind and then each stalk settled wearily sideways toward the earth and pointed the direction of the wind. \nThe dawn came, but no day. In the gray sky a red sun appeared, a dim red circle that gave a little light, like dusk; and as that day advanced, the dusk slipped back toward darkness, and the wind cried and whimpered over the fallen com. \nMen and women huddled in their houses, and they tied handkerchiefs over their noses when they went out, and wore goggles to protect their eyes. When the night came again it was black night, for the stars could not pierce the dust to get down, and the window lights could not even spread beyond their own yards. Now the dust was evenly mixed with the air, an emulsion of dust and air. Houses were shut tight, and cloth wedged around doors and windows, but the dust came in so thinly that it could not be seen in the air, and it settled like pollen on the chairs and tables, on the dishes. The people brushed it from their shoulders. Little lines of dust lay at the door sills. In the middle of that night the wind passed on and left the land quiet. The dust-filled air muffled sound more com- pleteiy than fog does. The people, lying in their beds, heard the wind stop. They awakened when the rushing wind was gone. They lay quietly and listened deep into the stillness. Then the roosters crowed, and their voices were muffled, and the people stirred restlessly in their beds and wanted the morning. They knew it would take a long time for the dust to settle out of the air. In the morning the dust hung like fog, and the sun was as red as ripe new blood. All day the dust sifted down from the sky, and the next day it sifted down. An even blanket covered the earth. It settled on the com, piled up on the tops of the fence posts, piled up on the wires; it settled on roofs, blanketed the weeds and trees. The people came out of their houses and smelled the hot stinging air and covered their noses from it. And the chil- dren came out of the houses, but they did not run or shout as they would have done after a rain. Men stood by their fences and looked at the ruined corn, drying fast now, only a little green showing through the film of dust. The men were silent and they did not move often. And the women came out of the houses to stand beside their men\u2014 to feel whether this time the men would break. The women studied the men\u2019s faces secretly, for the com could go, as long as something else remained. The children stood near by, drawing figures in the dust with bare toes, and the children sent exploring senses out to see whether men and women would break. The children peeked at the faces of the men and women, and then drew careful lines in the dust with their toes. Horses came to the watering troughs and nuzzled the water to clear the surface dust. After a while the faces of the watching men lost their bemused perplexity and became hard and angry and resistant. Then the women knew that they were safe and that there was no break. Then they asked, What\u2019ll we do? Ind the men replied, I don\u2019t know. But it was all right. The women knew it was all right, and the watching children knew it was all right. Women and children knew deep in themselves that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men were whole. The women went into the houses to their work, and the children began to play, but cautiously at first. As the day went forward the sun became less red. It flared down on the dust-blanketed land. The men sat in the door- ways of their houses; their hands were busy with sticks and little rocks. The men sat still-thinking\u2014 figuring* Chapter Two \nA HUGE red transport truck stood in front of the, lit- tle roadside restaurant. The vertical exhaust pipe L muttered softly, and an almost invisible haze of steel- blue smoke hovered over its end. It was a new truck, shining red, and in twelve-inch letters on its sides\u2014 OKLAHOMA CITY TRANSPORT COMPANY. Its double tires were new, and a brass padlock stood straight out from the hasp on the big back doors. Inside the screened restaurant a radio played, quiet dance music turned low the way It Is when no one is listening. A small outlet fan turned silently in its circular hole over the entrance, and flies buzzed excitedly about the doors and windows, butting the screens. Inside, one man, the truck driver, sat on a stool and rested his el- bows on the counter and looked over his coffee at the lean and lonely waitress. He talked the smart listless language of the roadsides to her. \u201cI seen him about three months ago. He had a operation. Cut somepin out. I forget what.\u201d And she\u2014 \u201cDoesn\u2019t seem no longer than a week I seen him myself. Looked fine then. He\u2019s a nice sort of a guy when he ain\u2019t stinko.\u201d Now and then the flies roared softly at the screen door. The coffee machine spurted steam, and the waitress, without looking, reached behind her and shut it off. Outside, a man walking along the edge of the highway crossed over and approached the truck. He walked slowly to the front of it, put his hand on the shiny fender, and looked at the No Riders sticker on the windshield. For a moment he was about to walk on down the road, but instead he sat on the running board on the side away from the res- taurant. He was not over thirty. His eyes were very dark brown and there was a hint of brown pigment in his eyeballs. His cheek bones were high and wide, and strong deep lines cut down his cheeks, in curves beside his mouth. His upper lip was long, and since his teeth protruded, the lips stretched to cover them, for this man kept his lips closed. His hands : were hard, with broad fingers and nails as thick and ridged as little clam shells. The space between thumb and forefinger and the hams of his hands were shiny with callus. The man\u2019s clothes were new-all of them, cheap and new. His gray cap was so new that the visor was still stiff and the button still on, not shapeless and bulged as it would be when it had served for a while all the various purposes of a cap- carrying sack, towel, handkerchief. His suit was of cheap gray hardcloth and so new that there were creases in the trousers. His blue chambray shirt was stiff and smooth with filler. The coat was too big, the trousers too short, for he was a tall man.. The coat shoulder peaks hung down on his arms, and even then the sleeves were too short and the front of the coat flapped loosely over his stomach. He wore a pair of new tan shoes of the kind called \u201carmy last,\u201d hob- nailed and with half-circles like horseshoes to protect the edges of the heels from wear. This man sat on the running board and took off his cap and mopped his face with it. Then he put on the cap, and by pulling started the future ruin of the visor. His feet caught his attention. He leaned down and loosened the shoelaces, and did not tie the ends again. Over his head the exhaust of the Diesel engine whispered in quick puffs of blue smoke. \nThe music stopped in the restaurant and a man\u2019s voice spoke from the loudspeaker, but the waitress did not turn him off, for she didn\u2019t know the music had stopped. Her ex- ploring fingers had found a lump under her ear. She was. trying to see it in a mirror behind the counter without let- ting the truck driver know, and so she pretended to push a bit of hair to neatness. The truck driver said, \u201cThey was a big dance in Shawnee. I heard somebody got killed or some- pin. You hear anything?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said the waitress, and she lovingly fingered the lump under her ear. Outside, the seated man stood up and looked over the cowl of the truck and watched the restaurant for a moment. Then he settled back on the running board, pulled a sack of tobacco and a book of papers from his side pocket. He rolled his cigarette slowly and perfectly, studied it, smoothed it. At last he lighted it and pushed the burning match into the dust at his feet. The sun cut into the shade of the truck as noon approached. \nIn the restaurant the truck driver paid his bill and put his two nickels\u2019 change in a slot machine. The whirling cylin- ders gave him no score. \u201cThey fix \u2019em so you can\u2019t win nothing,\u201d he said to the waitress. And she replied, \u201cGuy took the jackpot not two hours ago. Three-eighty he got. How soon you gonna be back by?\u201d \nHe held the screen door a little open. \u201cWeek-ten days,\u201d he said. \u201cGot to make a run to Tulsa, an\u2019 I never get back soon as I think.\u201d \nShe said crossly, \u201cDon\u2019t let the flies in. Either go out or come in.\u201d \n\u201cSo long,\u201d he said, and pushed his way out. The screen door banged behind him. He stood in the sun, peeling the wrapper from a piece of gum. He was a heavy man, broad in the shoulders, thick in the stomach. His face was red and his blue eyes long and slitted from having squinted always at sharp light. He wore army trousers and high laced boots. Holding the stick of gum in front of his lips he called through the screen, \u201cWell, don\u2019t do nothing you don\u2019t want me to hear about.\u201d The waitress was turned toward a mirror on the back wall. She grunted a reply. The truck driver gnawed down the stick of gum slowly, opening his jaws and lips wide with each bite. He shaped the gum in his mouth, rolled it under his tongue while he walked to the big red truck. \nThe hitch-hiker stood up and looked across through the windows. \u201cCould ya give me a lift, mister?\u201d The driver looked quickly back at the restaurant for a sec- ond. \u201cDidn\u2019 you see the No Riders sticker on the win\u2019shield?\u201d \u201cSure\u2014 I seen it. But sometimes a guy\u2019ll be a good guy even if some rich bastard makes him carry a sticker.\u201d The driver, getting slowly into the truck, considered the parts of this answer. If he refused now, not only was he not a good guy, but he was forced to carry a sticker, was not allowed to have company. If he took in the hitch-hiker he was automatically a good guy and also he was not one whom any rich bastard could kick around. He knew he was being trapped, but he couldn\u2019t see a way out. And he wanted to be a good guy. He glanced again at the restaurant. \u201cScrunch down on the running board till we get around the bend,\u201d he said. \nThe hitch-hiker flopped down out of sight and clung to the door handle. The motor roared up for a moment, the gears clicked in, and the great truck moved away, first gear, >e'cond gear, third gear., and then a high whining pick-up an fourth gear. Under the clinging man the highway blurred dizzily by. It was a mile to the first turn in the road, then the truck slowed down. The hitch-hiker stood up, eased the door open, and slipped into the seat. The driver looked over at him, slitting his eyes, and he chewed as though thoughts and impressions were being sorted and arranged by his jaws before they were finally filed away in his brain. His eyes began at the new cap, moved down the new clothes to the new shoes. The hitch-hiker squirmed his back against the seat in comfort, took off his cap, and swabbed his sweating forehead and chin with it. \u201cThanks, buddy,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dogs was pooped out.\u201d \n\u201cNew shoes,\u201d said the driver. His voice had the same qual- ity of secrecy and insinuation his eyes had. \u201cYou oughtn\u2019 to take no walk in new shoes\u2014 hot weather.\u201d The hiker looked down at the dusty yellow shoes. \u201cDidn\u2019t have no other shoes,\u201d he said. \u201cGuy got to wear \u2019em if he grot no others.\u201d \nThe driver squinted judiciously ahead and built up the speed of the truck a little. \u201cCoin\u2019 far?\u201d \u201cUh-uh! Fd a walked her if my dogs wasn\u2019t pooped out.\u201d The questions of the driver had the tone of a subtle exam- ination. He seemed to spread nets, to set traps with his ques- tions. \u201cLookin\u2019 for a job?\u201d he asked. \u201cNo, my old man got a place, forty acres. He\u2019s a cropper, but we been there a long time.\u201d The driver looked significantly at the fields along the road where the com was fallen sideways and the dust was piled on it. Little flints shoved through the dusty soil. The driver said, as though to himself, \u201cA forty-acre cropper and he ain\u2019t been dusted out and he ain\u2019t been tractored out?\u201d \u201c \u2019Course I ain\u2019t heard lately,\u201d said the hitch-hiker. '\u2018Long time,\u201d said the driver. A bee flew into the cab and buzzed in back of the windshield. The driver put out his hand and carefully drove the bee into an air stream that blew it out of the window. \u201cCroppers going fast now,\u201d he said. \u201cOne cat\u2019 takes and shoves ten families out. Cat\u2019s all over hell now. Tear in and shove the croppers out. How\u2019s your old man hold on?\u201d His tongue and his jaws became busy with the neglected gum, turned it and chewed it. With each open- ing of his mouth his tongue could be seen flipping the gum over. \n\u201cWell, I ain\u2019t heard lately. I never was no hand to write, nor my old man neither.\u201d He added quickly, \u201cBut the both of us can, if we want.\u201d \n\u201cBeen doing a job?\u201d Again the secret investigating casual- ness. He looked out over the fields, at the shimmering air, and gathering his gum into his cheek, out of the way, he spat out the window. \n\u201cSure have,\u201d said the hitch-hiker. \u201cThought so. I seen your hands. Been swingin\u2019 a pick or an ax or a sledge. That shines up your hands. I notice all stuff like that. Take a pride in it.\u201d The hitch-hiker stared at him. The truck tires sang on the road. \u201cLike to know anything else? I\u2019ll tell you. You ain\u2019t got to guess.\u201d \n\u201cNow don\u2019t get sore. I wasn\u2019t gettin\u2019 nosy.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll tell you anything. I ain\u2019t hidin\u2019 nothin\u2019.\u201d \u2018\u2018Now don\u2019t get sore. I just like to notice things. Makes the time pass.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you anything. Name\u2019s Teigan, Tasha Joa d. Old man is ol\u2019 Tasha Teigan.\u201d His eyes rested broodingly on the driver. \u201cDon\u2019t get sore. I didn\u2019t mean nothin\u2019.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t mean nothin\u2019 neither,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cI\u2019m just tryirf to get along without shovin' nobody around.\" He stopped and looked out at the dry fields, at the starved tree clumps hanging uneasily in the heated distance. From his side pocket he brought out his tobacco and papers. He rolled his cigarette down between his knees, where the wind could not get at it. The driver chewed as rhythmically, as thoughtfully, as a cow. He waited to let the whole emphasis of the preceding passage disappear and be forgotten. At last, when the air seemed neutral again, he said, \u201cA guy that never been a truck skinner don't know nothin\u2019 what it\u2019s like. Owners don't want us to pick up nobody. So we got to set here an' just skin her along 'less we want to take a chance of gettln' fired like I just done with you.\" \n\u201c 'Predate it,\" said Teigan. \n\u201cI\u2019ve knew guys that done screwy things while they're drivin' trucks. I remember a guy use\u2019 to make up poetry. It passed the time.\u201d He looked over secretly to see whether Teigan was interested or amazed. Teigan was silent, looking into the distance ahead, along the road, along the white road that waved gently, like a ground swell. The driver went on at last, \u201cI remember a piece of poetry this here guy wrote down. It was about him an\u2019 a couple other guys goin' all over the world drinkin\u2019 and raisin\u2019 hell and screwin\u2019 around. I wisht could remember how that piece went. This guy had words in it that Jesus H. Christ wouldn't know what they meant. Part was like this: \u2018An\u2019 there we spied a nigger, with a trigger that was bigger than a elephant\u2019s proboscis or the whanger of a whale.\u2019 That proboscis is a nose-like. With a elephant it\u2019s his trunk. Guy showed me in a dictionary. Car- ried that dictionary all over hell with him. He\u2019d look in it while he\u2019s pulled up gettin\u2019 his pie an\u2019 coffee,\u201d He stopped. feeling lonely in the long speech. His secret eyes turned on his passenger. Teigan remained silent. Nervously the driver tried to force him into participation. \u201cEver know a guy that said big words like that?\u201d \n\u201cPreacher,\u201d said Teigan. \n\u201cW ell, it makes you mad to hear a guy use big words. 'Course with a preacher it\u2019s all right because nobody would fool around with a preacher anyway. But this guy was funny. You didn\u2019t give a damn when he said a big word \u2019cause he just done it for ducks. He wasn\u2019t puttin\u2019 on no dog.\u201d The driver was reassured. He knew at least that Teigan was listening. He swung the great truck viciously around a bend and the tires shrilled. \u201cLike I was sayin\u2019,\u201d he continued, \u201cguy that drives a truck does screwy things. He got to. He\u2019d go nuts just settin\u2019 here an\u2019 the road sneakin\u2019 under the wheels. Fella says once that truck skinners eats all the time- all the time in hamburger joints along the road.\u201d \u201cSure seem to live there,\u201d Teigan agreed. \u201cSure they stop, but it ain\u2019t to eat. They ain\u2019t hardly ever hungry. They\u2019re just goddam sick of goin\u2019\u2014 get sick of it. Joints is the only place you can pull up, an\u2019 when you stop you got to buy somepin so you can sling the bull with the broad behind the counter. So you get a cup a coffee and a piece pie. Kind of gives a guy a little rest.\u201d He chewed his gum slowly and turned it with his tongue. \u201cMust be tough,\u201d said Teigan with no emphasis. The driver glanced quickly at him, looking for satire. \u201cWell, it ain\u2019t no goddamn cinch,\u201d he said testily. \u201cLooks easy, jus\u2019 settin\u2019 here till you put in your eight or maybe your ten or fourteen hours. But the road gets into a guy. He\u2019s got to do somepin. Some sings an\u2019 some whistles. Com- pany won\u2019t let us have no radio. A few takes a pint along* but them kind don\u2019t stick long.\u201d He said the last smugly. \u201cI don\u2019t never take a drink till I\u2019m through.\u201d \u201cYeah?\u201d Teigan asked. \n\u201cYeah! A guy got to get ahead. Why, I\u2019m thinkin\u2019 of takin\u2019 one of them correspondence school courses. Mechani- cal engineering. It\u2019s easy. Just study a few easy lessons at home. Fm thinkin\u2019 of it. Then I won\u2019t drive no truck. Then I\u2019ll tell other guys to drive trucks.\u201d Teigan took a pint of whisky from his side coat pocket. \u201cSure you won\u2019t have a snort?\u201d His voice was teasing. \u201cNo, by God. I won\u2019t touch it. A guy can\u2019t drink liquor all the time and study like Fm goin\u2019 to.\u201d Teigan uncorked the bottle, took two quick swallows, re- corked it, and put it back in his pocket. The spicy hot smell of the whisky filled the cab. \u201cYou\u2019re all wound up,\u201d said joad. \u2018What\u2019s the matter\u2014 got a girl?\u201d \u201cWell, sure. But I want to get ahead anyway. I been train- ing my mind for a hell of a long time.\u201d The whisky seemed to loosen Teigan up. He rolled another cigarette and lighted it. \u201cI ain\u2019t got a hell of a lot further tc go,\u201d he said. \nThe driver went on quickly, \u201cI don\u2019t need no shot,\u201d he said. \u201cI train my mind all the time. I took a course in that two years ago.\u201d He patted the steering wheel with his right hand. \u201cSuppose I pass a guy on the road. I look at him, an\u2019 after Fm past I try to remember ever\u2019thing about him, kind a clothes an\u2019 shoes an\u2019 hat, an\u2019 how he walked an\u2019 maybe how tall an\u2019 what weight an\u2019 any scars. I do it pretty good. I can jus\u2019 make a whole picture in my head. Sometimes I think I ought to take a course to be a fingerprint expert. You\u2019d be su\u2019prised how much a guy can remember.\u201d Teigan took a quick drink from the flask. He dragged the last smoke from his raveling cigarette and then, with cal- Jused thumb and forefinger, crushed out the glowing end. He rubbed the butt to a pulp and put it out the window, letting the breeze suck it from his fingers. The big tires sang a high note on the pavement. Teigan\u2019s dark quiet eyes became amused as he stared along the road. The driver waited and glanced uneasily over. At last Teigan\u2019s long upper lip grinned up from his teeth and he chuckled silently, his chest jerked with the chuckles. i You sure took a hell of a long time to o-et to it, buddy.\u201d \nThe driver did not look over. \u201cGet to what? How do you mean? \u201d \nTeigan\u2019s lips stretched tight over his long teeth for a mo- ment, and he licked his lips like a dog, two licks, one in each direction from the middle. His voice became harsh. \u201cYou know what I mean. You give me a goin\u2019-over when I first got in. I seen you.\u201d The driver looked straight ahead, gripped the wheel so tightly that the pads of his palms bulged, and the backs of his hands paled. Teigan continued, \u201cYou know where I come from.\u201d The driver was silent. \u201cDon\u2019t you?\u201d Teigan insisted. \n\"Well-sure. That is\u2014 maybe. But it ain\u2019t none of my busi- ness. I mind my own yard. It ain\u2019t nothing to me.\u201d The words tumbled out now. \u201cI don\u2019t stick my nose in nobody\u2019s business. And suddenly he was silent and waiting. And his hands were still white on the wheel. A grasshopper flipped through the window and lighted on top of the instrument panel, where it sat and began to scrape its wings with its angled jumping legs. Teigan reached forward and crushed its hard skull-like head with his fingers, and he let it into the wind stream out the window. Teigan chuckled again while he brushed the bits of broken Insect from his fingertips* \u201cYou got me wrong, mister,\u201d he said* \u201cI ain\u2019t keepin\u2019 quiet about It* Sure I been In McAlester. Been there four years. Sure these is the clothes they give me when I come out. I don\u2019t give a damn who knows it. An\u2019 I\u2019m goin\u2019 to my old man\u2019s place so I don\u2019t have to lie to get a job.\u201d The driver said, \u201cWell\u2014 that ain\u2019t none of my business. I ain\u2019t a nosy guy.\u201d \n\u2018The hell you ain\u2019t,\u201d said joad. \u201cThat big old nose of yours been stickin\u2019 out eight miles ahead of your face. You had that big nose goin\u2019 over me like a sheep in a vegetable patch.\u201d % \nThe driver\u2019s face tightened. \u201cYou got me all wrong\u2014\u201d he began weakly. \nTeigan laughed at him. \u201cYou been a good guy. You give me a lift. Well, hell! I done time. So what! You want to know what I done time for, don\u2019t you?\u201d \u201cThat ain\u2019t none of my affair.\u201d \u201cNothin\u2019 ain\u2019t none of your affair except skinnin\u2019 this here bull-bitch along, an\u2019 that\u2019s the least thing you work at. Now look. See that road up ahead?\u201d \u201cYeah.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I get off there. Sure, I know you\u2019re wettin\u2019 your pants to know what I done. I ain\u2019t a guy to let you down.\u201d The high hum of the motor dulled and the song of the tires dropped in pitch, joad got out his pint and took another short drink. The truck drifted to a stop where a dirt road opened at right angles to the highway. Teigan got out and stood beside the cab window. The vertical exhaust pipe puttered up its barely visible blue smoke, joad leaned toward the driver. \u201cHomicide,\u201d he said quickly* \u2018That\u2019s a big word\u2014 means I killed a guy. Seven years. I\u2019m sprung in four for keepin\u2019 my nose clean.\u201d \nThe driver s eyes slipped over Teigan\u2019s face to memorize it. \u201cI never asked you nothin\u2019 about it,\u201d he said. \u201cI mind my own yard.\u201d \n\u201cYou can tell about it in every joint from here to Texola.\u201d He smiled. \u201cSo long, fella. You been a good guy. But look, when you been in stir a little while, you can smell a question cornin\u2019 from hell to breakfast. You telegraphed yours the first time you opened your trap.\u201d He spatted the metal door with the palm of his hand. \u201cThanks for the lift,\u201d he said. \u201cSo long.\u201d He turned away and walked into the dirt road. For a moment the driver stared after him, and then he called, \u201cLuck!\u201d Teigan waved his hand without looking around. Then the motor roared up and the gears clicked and the great red truck rolled heavily away. Chapter Three \nrT^HE concrete highway was edged with a mat of I tangled, broken, dry grass, and the grass- heads were \u00a7 heavy with oat beards to catch on a dog\u2019s coat, and foxtails to tangle in a horse\u2019s fetlocks, and clover burrs to fasten in sheep\u2019s wool; sleeping life waiting to be spread and dispersed, every seed armed with an appliance of dispersal twisting darts and parachutes for the wind, little spears and balls of tiny thorns, and all waiting for animals and for the wind, for a man\u2019s trouser cuff or the hem of a woman\u2019s skirt, all passive but armed with appliances of activity, still, but each possessed of the anlage of movement. The sun lay on the grass and warmed it, and in the shade under the grass the insects moved, ants and ant lions to set traps for them, grasshoppers to jump into the air and flick their yellow wings for a second, sow bugs like little arma- dillos, plodding restlessly on many tender feet. And over the grass at the roadside a land turtle crawled, turning aside for nothing, dragging his high-domed shell over the grass. His hard legs and yellow-nailed feet threshed slowly through the grass, not really walking, but boosting and dragging his shell along. The barley beards slid off his shell, and the clover burrs fell on him and rolled to the ground. His horny beak was partly open, and his fierce, humorous eyes, under brows like fingernails, stared straight ahead. He came over the grass leaving a beaten trail behind him, and the hill, which was the highway embankment, reared up ahead of him. For a mo- ment he stopped, his head held high. He blinked and looked up and down. At last he started to climb the embankment. Front clawed feet reached forward but did not touch. The hind feet kicked his shell along, and it scraped on the grass, and on the gravel. As the embankment grew steeper and steeper, the more frantic were the efforts of die land turtle. Pushing hind legs strained and slipped, boosting the shell along, and the horny head protruded as far as the neck could stretch. Little by little the shell slid up the embankment until at last a parapet cut straight across its line of march, the shoulder of the road, a concrete wall four inches high. As though they worked independently the hind legs pushed the shell against the wall. The head upraised and peered over the wall to the broad smooth plain of cement. Now the hands, braced on top of the wall, strained and lifted, and the shell came slowly up and rested its front end on the wall. For a. moment the turtle rested. A red ant ran into the shell, into the soft skin inside the shell, and suddenly head and legs snapped in, and the armored tail clamped in sideways. The red ant was crushed between body and legs. And one head of wild oats was clamped into the shell by a front leg. For a long moment the turtle lay still, and then the neck crept out and the old humorous frowning eyes looked about and the legs and tail came out. The back legs went to work, strain- ing like elephant legs, and the shell tipped to an angle so that the front legs could not reach the level cement plain. But higher and higher the hind legs boosted it, until at last the center of balance was reached, the front tipped down, the front legs scratched at the pavement, and it was up. But the head of wild oats was held by its stem around the front legs. Now the going was easy, and all the legs worked, and the shell boosted along, waggling from side to side. A sedan driven by a forty-year old woman approached. She saw the, turtle and swung to the right, off the highway, the wheels screamed and a cloud of dust boiled up. Two wheels lifted for a moment and then settled. The car skidded back onto the road, and went on, but more slowly. The turtle had jerked into its shell, but now it hurried on, for the highway was burning hot. \nAnd now a light truck approached, and as it came near, the driver saw the turtle and swerved to hit it. His front wheel struck the edge of the shell, flipped the turtle like a tiddly-wink, spun it like a coin, and rolled it off the high- way. The truck went back to its course along the right side. Lying on its back, the turtle was tight in its shell for a long time. But at last its legs waved in the air, reaching for some- thing to pull it over. Its front foot caught a piece of quartz and little by little the shell pulled over and flopped upright. The wild oat head fell out and three of the spearhead seeds stuck in the ground. And as the turtle crawled on down the embankment, its shell dragged dirt over the seeds. The turtle entered a dust road and jerked itself along, drawing a wavy shallow trench in the dust with its shell. The old humorous eyes looked ahead, and the horny beak opened a little. His yellow toe nails slipped a fraction in the dust. Chapter Four \nW HEN Teigan heard the truck get under way, gear climbing up to gear and the ground throb- bing under the rubber beating of the tires, he \u2022stopped and turned about and watched it until it disappeared, When it was out of sight he still watched the distance and the blue air-shimmer. Thoughtfully he took the pint from his pocket, unscrewed the metal cap, and sipped the whisky deli- cately, running his tongue inside the bottle neck, and then around his lips, to gather in any flavor that might have es- caped him. He said experimentally, \u201cThere we spied a nig- ger\u2014 \u201d and that was all he could remember. At last he turned about and faced the dusty side road that cut off at right angles through the fields. The sun was hot, and no wind stirred the . sifted dust. The road was cut with furrows where dust had slid and settled back into the wheel tracks. Teigan took a few steps, and the flourlike dust spurted up in front of his new yellow shoes, and the yellowness was disappearing under gray dust. \nHe leaned down and untied the laces, slipped off first one shoe and then the other. And he worked his damp feet corn* fortably in the hot dry dust until little spurts of it came up between his toes, and until the skin on his feet tightened with dryness. He took off his coat and wrapped his shoes in it and slipped the bundle under his arm. And at last he moved up the road, shooting the dust ahead of him, making a cloud that hung low to the ground behind him. The right of way was fenced, two strands of barbed wire on willow poles. The poles were crooked and badly trimmed. Whenever a crotch came to the proper height the wire lay in it, and where there was no crotch the barbed wire was lashed to the post with rusty baling wire. Beyond the fence, the com lay beaten down by wind and heat and drought, and the cups where leaf joined stalk were filled with dust. Teigan plodded along, dragging his cloud of dust behind him. A little bit ahead he saw the high-domed shell of a land turtle, crawling slowly along through the dust, its legs working stiffly and jerkily. Teigan stopped to watch it, and his shadow t? fell on the turtle. Instantly head and legs were withdrawn *\u00a3nd the short thick tail clamped sideways into the shell. Teigan picked it up and turned it over. The back was brown- gray, like the dust, but the underside of the shell was creamy yellow, clean and smooth. Teigan shifted his bundle high tinder his arm and stroked the smooth undershell with his finger, and he pressed it. It was softer than the back. The hard old head came out and tried to look at the pressing finger, and the legs waved wildly. The turtle wetted on Teigan\u2019s hand and struggled uselessly in the air. Teigan turned it back upright and rolled it up in his coat with his shoes. He could feel it pressing and struggling and fussing under his arm. He moved ahead more quickly now, dragging his heels a little in the 'fine dust. \n' Ahead of him, beside the road, a scrawny, dusty willow tree cast a speckled shade. Teigan could see it ahead of him, its poor branches curving over the way, its load of leaves tat- tered and scraggly as a molting chicken. Teigan was sweating now. His blue shirt darkened down his back and under his arms. He pulled at the visor of his cap and creased it in the middle, breaking its cardboard lining so completely that it could never look new again. And his steps took on new speed and intent toward the shade of the distant willow tree. At the willow he knew there would be shade, at least one hard bar of absolute shade thrown by the trunk, since the sun had passed its zenith. The sun whipped the back of his neck now and made a little humming in his head. He could not see the base of the tree, for it grew out of a little swale that held water longer than the level places. Teigan speeded his pace against the sun, and he started down the declivity. He slowed cautiously, for the bar of absolute shade was taken, , A man sat on the ground, leaning against the trunk of the tree. His legs were crossed and one bare foot extended nearly as high as his head. He did not hear Teigan approaching, for he was whistling solemnly the tune of \u201cYes, Sir, That\u2019s My Baby.\u201d His extended foot swung slowly up and down in the tempo. It was not dance tempo. He stopped whistling and sang in an easy thin tenor: \nT \u201e \u201cYes, sir, that\u2019s my Saviour, Je\u2014sus is my Saviour, \nJe\u2014 sus is my Saviour now. \n*** On the level \n5 S not the devil, \nJesus is my Saviour now,\u201d \nTeigan had moved into the imperfect shade of the molting leaves before the man heard him coming, stopped his song, and turned his head. It was a long.. head r b ony,- tight of skin, and set on a neck as stringy and muscular as a celery stalk, f, His eyeballs were heavy and protruding; the lids stretched to cover them, and the lids were raw and red. His cheeks were brown and shiny and hairless and his mouth full- humorous or sensual. The nose, beaked and hard v stretched the skin so tightly that the bridge showed white. There was no perspiration on the face, not even on the tall pale forehead. It was an abnormally high forehead, lined with delicate blue veins at the temples. Fully half of the face was above the eyes. His stiff gray hair was mussed back from his brow as though he had combed it back with his lingers. For clothes he wore overalls and a blue shirt. A denim coat with brass buttons and a spotted brown hat creased like a pork pie lay on the ground beside him. Canvas sneakers, gray with dust, lay near by where they had fallen when they were kicked off. \nThe man looked long at Teigan. The light seemed to go far into his brown eyes, and it picked out little golden specks deep in the irises. The strained bundle of neck muscles stood out. \nTeigan stood still in the speckled shade. He took off his cap and mopped his wet face with it and dropped it and his rolled coat on the ground. \nThe man in the absolute shade uncrossed his legs and dug vvith his toes at the earth. \nTeigan said, \u201cHi. It\u2019s hotter\u2019n hell on the road.\u201d The seated man stared questioningly at him. \u201cNow ain\u2019t you young Tasha Teigan\u2014 ol\u2019 Tasha\u2019s boy?\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cAll the way. Coin 5 home now.\u201d \u201cYou wouldn\u2019 remember me, I guess,\u201d the man said. He smiled and his full lips revealed great horse teeth. \u201cOh, no, you wouldn\u2019t remember. You was always too busy pullin\u2019 little girls\u2019 pigtails when I give you the Holy Sperit. You was all wropped up in yankin\u2019 that pigtail out by the roots. You maybe don\u2019t recollect, but I do. The two of you come to Jesus at once \u2019cause of that pigtail yankin\u2019. Baptized both of you in the irrigation ditch at once. Fightin* an\u2019 yellin\u2019 like a couple a cats.\u201d \nTeigan looked at him with drooped eyes* and then he laughed. 4 Why, you\u2019re the preacher. You\u2019re the preacher. I jus\u2019 passed a recollection about you to a guy not an hour ?\nago- \n\u201cI was a preacher,\u201d said the man seriously. \u201cReverend Dash Palmer\u2014 was a Burning Busher. Used to howl out the name of Jesus to glory. And used to get an irrigation ditch so squirm- in\u2019 full of repented sinners half of \u2019em like to drownded. But not no more,\u201d he sighed. \u201cJust Dash Palmer now. Ain\u2019t got the call no more. Got a lot of sinful idears\u2014 but they seem kinda sensible.\u201d \nTeigan said, \u201cYou\u2019re bound to get idears if you go thinkin\u2019 about stuff. Sure I remember you. You use ta give a good meetin\u2019. I recollect one time you give a whole sermon walkin\u2019 around on your hands, yellin\u2019 your head off. Ma favored you more than anybody. An\u2019 Granma says you was just lousy with the spirit.\u201d Teigan dug at his rolled coat and found the pocket and brought out his pint. The turtle moved a leg but he wrapped it up tightly. He unscrewed the cap and held out the bottle. \u201cHave a little snort?\u201d Palmer took the bottle and regarded it broodingly. \u201cI ain\u2019t preachin\u2019 no more much. The sperit ain\u2019t in the people much no more; and worse\u2019n that, the sperit ain\u2019t in me no more. \u2019Course now an\u2019 again the sperit gets movin\u2019 an\u2019 I rip out a meetin\u2019, or when folks sets out food I give \u2019em a grace, but my heart ain\u2019t in it. I on\u2019y do it \u2019cause they expect it\u201d Teigan mopped his face with his cap again. \u201cYou ain\u2019t too damn holy to take a drink, are you?\u201d he asked. Palmer seemed to see the bottle for the first time. He tilted it and took three big swallows. \u201cNice drinkin\u2019 liquor,\u201d he said. \n\u201cOught to be,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cThat\u2019s fact\u2019ry liquor. Cost a buck.\u201d \nPalmer took another swallow before he passed the bottle back. \u201cYes, sir!\u201d he said. \u201cYes, sir!\u201d Teigan took the bottle from him, and in politeness did not wipe the neck with his sleeve before he drank. He squatted on his hams and set the bottle upright against his coat roll. His fingers found a twig with which to draw his thoughts on the ground; He swept the leaves from a square and smoothed the dust. And he drew angles and made little cir- cles. \u201cI ain\u2019t seen you in a long time,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody seen me,\u201d said the preacher. \u201cI went off alone, an\u2019 I sat and figured. The sperit\u2019s strong in me, on\u2019y it ain\u2019t the same. I ain\u2019t so sure of a lot of things.\u201d He sat up straighter against the tree. His bony hand dug its way like a squirrel into his overall pocket, brought out a black, bitten plug of tobacco. Carefully he brushed off bits of straw and gray pocket fuzz before he bit off a comer and settled the quid into his cheek. Teigan waved his stick in negation when the plug was held out to him. The turtle dug at the rolled coat. Palmer looked over at the stirring garment.. \u201cWhat you got there\u2014 a chicken? You\u2019ll smother it.\u201d Teigan rolled the coat up more tightly. \u201cAn old turtle,\u201d he said. \u201cPicked him up on the road. An old bulldozer. Thought I\u2019d take \u2019im to my little brother. Kids like turtles.\u201d The preacher nodded his head slowly. \u201cEvery kid got a turtle some time or other. Nobody can\u2019t keep a turtle though. They work at it and work at it, and at last one day they get out and away they go-off somewheres. It\u2019s like me. I wouldn\u2019 take the good ol\u2019 gospel that was just layin\u2019 there to my hand. I got to be pickin\u2019 at it an\u2019 workin\u2019 at it until I got it all tore down. Here I got the sperit sometimes an\u2019 nothin\u2019 to preach about. I got the call to lead people, an\u2019 no place to lead \u2019em.\u201d \n\u201cLead, \u2019em around and around,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cSling \u2019em in the irrigation ditch. Tell \u2019em they\u2019ll bum in hell if they don\u2019t think like you. What the hell you want to lead \u2019em some- place for? jus\u2019 lead \u2019em.\u201d The straight trunk shade had stretched out along the ground. Teigan moved gratefully into it and squatted on his hams and made a new smooth place on which to draw his thoughts with a stick. A thick-furred yel- low shepherd dog came trotting down the road, head low. tongue lolling and dripping. Its tail hung limply curled, and it panted loudly. Teigan whistled at it, but it only dropped its head an inch and trotted fast toward some definite destina* tion. \u201cCoin\u2019 someplace,\u201d Teigan explained, a little piqued. 'Coin\u2019 for home maybe.\u201d \nThe preacher could not be thrown from his subject. u Goin\u2019 someplace,\u201d he repeated. \u201cThat\u2019s right, he\u2019s goin\u2019 someplace. Me\u2014 I don\u2019t know where I\u2019m goin\\ Tell you what\u2014 I used ta get the people jumpin\u2019 an\u2019 talkin\u2019 in tongues, an\u2019 glory-shoutin\u2019 till they just fell down an\u2019 passed out. An\u2019 some I\u2019d baptize to bring \u2019em to. An\u2019 then-you know what I\u2019d do? I\u2019d take one of them girls out in the grass, an\u2019 I\u2019d lay with her. Done it ever\u2019 time. Then I\u2019d feel bad, an\u2019 I\u2019d pray an\u2019 pray, but it didn\u2019t do no good. Come the nex\u2019 time, them an\u2019, me was full of the sperit, I\u2019d do it again. I figgered there just wasn\u2019t no hope for me, an\u2019 I was a damned o Y hypocrite. But I didn\u2019t mean to be.\u201d \nTeigan smiled and his long teeth parted and he licked his lips. \u201cThere ain\u2019t nothing like a good hot meetin\u2019 for pushin f \u2019em over,\u201d he said. \u201cI done that myself.\u201d Palmer leaned forward excitedly. \u201cYou see,\u201d he cried, \u201cI seen it was that way, an\u2019 I started thinkin\u2019.\u201d He waved his bony big-knuckled hand up and down in a patting gesture. \u201cI got to thinkin\u2019 like this\u2014 \u2018Here\u2019s me preachin\u2019 grace. An\u2019 here\u2019s them people gettin\u2019 grace so hard they\u2019re jumpin\u2019 an\u2019 shoutin\u2019. Now they say layin\u2019 up with a girl comes from the devil. But the more grace a girl got in her, the quicker she wants to go out in the grass.\u2019 An\u2019 I got to thinkin\u2019 how in hell, s\u2019cuse me, how can the devil get in when a girl is so full of the Holy Sperit that it\u2019s spoutin\u2019 out of her nose an\u2019 ears. You\u2019d think that\u2019d be one time when the devil didn\u2019t stand a snowball\u2019s chance in hell. But there it was.\u201d His eyes were shining with excitement. He worked his cheeks for a mo- ment and then spat into the dust, and the gob of spit rolled over and over, picking up dust until it looked like a round dry little pellet. The preacher spread out his hand and looked at his palm as though he were reading a book. \u201cAn\u2019 there\u2019s me,\u201d he went on softly. \u201cThere\u2019s me with all them people\u2019s souls in my han\u2019\u2014 responsible an\u2019 feelin\u2019 my responsibility\u2014 an ever\u2019 time, I lay with one of them girls.\u201d He looked over at Teigan and his face looked helpless. His expression asked for help. \nTeigan carefully drew the torso of a woman in the dirt, breasts, hips, pelvis. \u201cI wasn\u2019t never a preacher,\u201d he said. \u201cI never let nothin\u2019 get by when I could catch it. An\u2019 I never had no idears about it except I was goddamn glad when I got one.\u201d \n\u201cBut you wasn\u2019t a preacher,\u201d Palmer insisted. \u201cA girl was just a girl to you. They wasn\u2019t nothin\u2019 to you. But to me they was holy vessels. I was savin\u2019 their souls. An\u2019 here with all that responsibility on me I\u2019d just get \u2019em frothin\u2019 with the Holy Sperit, an\u2019 then I\u2019d take \u2019em out in the grass.\u201d \u201cMaybe I should of been a preacher,\u201d said Teigan. He brought out his tobacco and papers and rolled a cigarette. He lighted it and squinted through the smoke at the preacher. \u201cbeen a long time without a girl,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s gonna take (>ome catchin\u2019 up.\u201d \nPalmer continued, \u201cIt worried me till I couldn\u2019t get no sleep. Here Fd go to preachin\u2019 and Fd say, \u2018By God, this time I : gonna do it.\u2019 And right while I said it, I knowed I was.\u201d \u201cYou should a got a wife,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cPreacher an\u2019 his wife stayed at our place one time, jehovites they was. Slep\u2019 upstairs. Held meetin\u2019s in our barnyard. Us kids would listen. That preacher\u2019s missus took a godawful poundin\u2019 after ever\u2019 night meetinh\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m glad you toF me,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cI use to think it was jus\u2019 me. Finally it give me such pain I quit an\u2019 went off by myself an\u2019 give her a damn good thinkin about.\u201d He doubled up his legs and scratched between his dry dusty toes. \u201cI says to myself, \u2018What\u2019s gnawin\u2019 you? Is it the screwin\u2019?\u2019 An\u2019 I says, \u2018No, it\u2019s the sin.\u2019 An\u2019 I says, \u2018Why is it that when a fella ought to be just about mule-ass proof against sin, an\u2019 all full up of Jesus, why is it that\u2019s the time a fella gets fingerin\u2019 his pants buttons?\u2019 \u201d He laid two fingers down in his palm in rhythm, as though he gently placed each word there side by side. \u201cI says, \u2018Maybe it ain\u2019t a sin. Maybe it\u2019s just the way folks is. Maybe we been whippin\u2019 the hell out of ourselves for nothin\u2019.\u2019 An\u2019 I thought how some sisters took to bearin\u2019 theirselves with a three-foot shag of bobwire. An\u2019 I thought how maybe they liked to hurt themselves, an\u2019 maybe I liked to hurt myself. Well, I was lay in\u2019 under a tree when I figured that out, and I went to sleep. And it come night, an\u2019 it was dark when I come to. They was a coyote squawkin\u2019 near by. Before I knowed it, I was sayin\u2019 out loud, \u2018The hell with it! There ain\u2019t no sin and there ain\u2019t no virtue. There\u2019s just stuff people do. It\u2019s all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain\u2019t nice, but that\u2019s as far as any man got a right to say.\u2019 \u201d He paused and looked up from the palm of his hand, where he had laid down the words. \nTeigan was grinning at him, but Teigan\u2019s eyes were sharp and interested, too. \u201cYou give her a goin\u2019-over,\u201d he said. \u201cYou figured her out.\u201d . \nPalmer spoke again, and his voice rang with pain and con- fusion. \u201cI says, What\u2019s this call, this spent?\u2019 An\u2019 I says, It\u2019s love. I love people so much I\u2019m fit to bust, sometimes.\u2019 &n\u2019 I says, \u2018Don\u2019t you love Jesus?\u2019 Well, I thought an\u2019 thought, an\u2019 finally I says, \u2018No, I don\u2019t know nobody name\u2019 Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people. An' sometimes I love \u2019em fit to bust, an\u2019 I want to make \u2019em happy, so I been preachin\u2019 somepin I thought would make \u2019em happy.\u2019 An\u2019 then\u2014 I been talkin\u2019 a hell of a lot. Maybe you wonder about me using bad words. Well, they ain\u2019t bad to me no more. They\u2019re jus\u2019 words folks use, an\u2019 they don\u2019t mean nothing bad with \u2019em. Anyways, I\u2019ll tell you one more thing I thought out; an\u2019 from a preacher it\u2019s the most unre- ligious thing, and I can\u2019t be a preacher no more because I thought it an\u2019 I believe it \u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d Teigan asked. \nPalmer looked shyly at him. \u201cIf it hits you wrong, don\u2019t take no offense at it, will you?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t take no offense \u2019cept a bust in the nose,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cWhat did you figger?\u201d \n\u201cI hggered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, \u2018Why do we got to hang it on God or Jesus? Maybe,\u2019 I figgered, \u2018maybe it\u2019s all men an\u2019 all women we love; maybe that s the Holy Sperit\u2014 the human sperit\u2014 the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever\u2019body\u2019s a part of. Now I sat there thinkin\u2019 it, an\u2019 all of a suddent \u2014 I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it.\u201d \nTeigan\u2019s eyes dropped to the ground, as though he could not meet the naked honesty in the preacher\u2019s eyes. \u201cYou can\u2019t hold no church with idears like that,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople would drive you out of the country with idears like that. Jumpin\u2019 an yellin . That s what folks like. Makes \u2019em feel swell. When Granma got to talkin\u2019 in tongues, you couldn\u2019t tie her down. She could knock over a full-growed deacon with her fist.\u201d \nPalmer regarded him broodingly. \u201cSomepin I like to ast you,\u201d he said. \u201cSomepin that been eatin\u2019 on me.\u201d \u201cGo ahead. I\u2019ll talk, sometimes.\u201d _ \u201cWell\u201d\u2014 the preacher said slowly-\u201chere\u2019s you that I bap- tized right when I was in the glory roof-tree. Got little hunks of Jesus jumpin\u2019 outa my mouth that day. You won\u2019t remember \u2019cause you was busy pullin\u2019 that pigtail.\u201d \u201cI remember,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cThat was Susy Little. She bust my finger a year later.\u201d \n\u201cWell\u2014 did you take any good outa that baptizin\u2019? Was your ways better?\u201d \nTeigan thought about it. \u201cNo-o-o, can\u2019t say as I felt any- thing.\u201d \n\u201cWell\u2014 did you take any bad from it? Think hard.\u201d Teigan picked up the bottle and took a swig. \u201cThey wasn\u2019t nothing in it, good or bad. I just had fun.\u201d He handed the flask to the preacher. \nHe sighed and drank and looked at the low level of the 'whisky and took another tiny drink. \u201cThat\u2019s good,\u201d he said K I got to worryin\u2019 about whether in messin\u2019 around maybe I done somebody a hurt.\u201d \nTeigan looked over toward his coat and saw the turtle, free of the cloth and hurrying away in the direction he had been following when Teigan found him. Teigan watched him for a moment and then got slowly to his feet and retrieved him and wrapped him in the coat again. \u201cI ain\u2019t got no present for the kids,\u201d he said. \u201cNothin\u2019 but this ok turtle.\u201d \u201cit\u2019s a funny thing,\u201d the preacher said. \u201cI was thimkln\u2019 about of Tasha Teigan when you come along. Thinkin\u2019 I\u2019d call in on him.. I used to think he was a godless man. How is Tasha?\u201d . \n\u201cI don\u2019t know how he is. I ain\u2019t been home in four years.\u201d \u201cDidn\u2019t he write to you?\u201d \njoad was embarrassed. \u201cWell, Pa wasn\u2019t no hand to write for pretty, or to write for writin\u2019. He\u2019d sign up his name as nice as anybody, an\u2019 lick his pencil. But Pa never did write no letters. He always says what he couldn\u2019 tell a fella with his mouth wasn\u2019t worth leanin\u2019 on no pencil about.\u201d \u201cBeen out travelin\u2019 around?\u201d Palmer asked. Teigan regarded him suspiciously. \u201cDidn\u2019t you hear about me? I was in all the papers.\u201d \u2022\u201cNo\u2014 I never. What?\u201d He jerked one leg over the other and settled lower against the tree. The afternoon was ad- vancing rapidly, and a richer tone was growing on the sun. Teigan said pleasantly, \u201cMight\u2019s well tell you now an\u2019 get it over with. But if you was still preachin\u2019 I wouldn\u2019t tell, fear you get prayin\u2019 over me.\u201d Pie drained the last of the pint and flung it from him, and the flat brown bottle skidded lightly over the dust. \u201cI been in McAlester them four years.\u201d Palmer swung around to him, and his brows lowered so that his tall forehead seemed even taller. \u201cAin\u2019t wantin\u2019 to talk about it, huh? I won\u2019t ask you no questions, if you done something bad \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cI\u2019d do what I done-again,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cI killed a guy in a fight. We was drunk at a dance. He got a knife in me, an\u2019 1 killed him with a shovel that was layin\u2019 there. Knocked his head plumb to squash.\u201d \nPalmer\u2019s eyebrows resumed their normal level. \u201cYou ain\u2019t ashamed of nothin\u2019 then?\u201d \nNo, said Teigan, \u201cI ain\u2019t. I got seven years, account of he had a knife in me. Got out in four\u2014 parole.\u201d \u201cThen you ain\u2019t heard nothin\u2019 about your folks for four years?\u201d \n\u201cOh, I heard. Ma sent me a card two years ago, an\u2019 las\u2019 Christmas Granma sent a card. Jesus, the guys in the cell block laughed! Had a tree an\u2019 shiny stuff looks like 9ww. It says in po\u2019try: \n\u201c \u2018Merry Christmas, purty child, Jesus meek an\u2019 Jesus mild, \nUnderneath the Christmas tree There\u2019s a gif\u2019 for you from me.\u2019 I guess Granma never read it. Prob\u2019Iy got it from a drummer an\u2019 picked out the one with the mos\u2019 shiny stuff on it. The guys in my cell block goddamn near died laughin\u2019. Jesus Meek they called me after that. Granma never meant it funny; she jus\u2019 figgered it was so purty she wouldn\u2019 bother to read it. She lost her glasses the year I went up. Maybe she never did find \u2019em.\u201d \n\u201cHow they treat you in McAlester?\u201d Palmer asked. \u201cOh, awright. You eat regular, an\u2019 get clean clothes, and there s places to take a bath. It\u2019s pretty nice some ways. Makes it hard not havin\u2019 no women.\u201d Suddenly he laughed. 'They was a guy paroled,\u201d he said. \u201c \u2019Bout a month he\u2019s hack for breakin\u2019 parole. A guy ast him why he bust his parole. Well, hell,\u2019 he says. They got no conveniences at my old man\u2019s place. Got no \u2019lectric lights, got no shower baths. There ain\u2019t no books, an\u2019 the food\u2019s lousy.\u2019 Says he come back where they got a few conveniences an\u2019 he eats regular. He says it makes him feel lonesome out there in the open havin\u2019 to think what to do next. So he stole a car an\u2019 come back.\u201d Teigan got out his tobacco and blew a brown paper free of the pack and rolled a cigarette. \u201cThe guy\u2019s right, too,\u201d he said. \u201cLas\u2019 night, thinkin\u2019 where I\u2019m gonna sleep, I got scared. An\u2019 I got thinkin\u2019 about my bunk, an\u2019 I wonder what the stir-bug I got for a cell mate is doin\u2019. Me an\u2019 some guys had a Strang band goin\u2019. Good one. Guy said we ought to go on the radio. An\u2019 this mornin\u2019 I didn\u2019t know what time to get up. Jus\u2019 laid there waitin\u2019 for the bell to go off.\u201d \nPalmer chuckled. \u201cFella can get so he misses the noise of a saw mill.\u201d \nThe yellowing, dusty, afternoon light put a golden color on the land. The cornstalks looked golden. A flight of swal- lows swooped overhead toward some waterhole. The turtle in Teigan\u2019s coat began a new campaign of escape. Teigan creased the visor of his cap. It was getting the long protruding curve of a crow\u2019s beak now. \u201cGuess I\u2019ll mosey along,\u201d he said. \u201cI hate to hit the sun, but it ain\u2019t so bad now.\u201d Palmer pulled himself together. \u201cI ain\u2019t seen ol\u2019 Tasha in a bug\u2019s age,\u201d he said. \u201cI was gonna look in on him anyways. I brang Jesus to your folks for a long time, an\u2019 I never took up a collection nor nothin\u2019 but a bite to eat.\u201d \u201cCome along,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cPa\u2019ll be glad to see you. He always said you got too long a pecker for a preacher.\u201d He picked up his coat roll and tightened it snugly about his shoes and turtle. \nPalmer gathered in his canvas sneakers and shoved his bare feet into them. \u201cI ain\u2019t got your confidence,\u201d he said. \u201cFirs \u2022 always scared there\u2019s wire or glass under the dust. I don\u2019t know nothin\u2019 1 hate so much as a cut toe.\u201d They hesitated on the edge of the shade and then they plunged into the yellow sunlight like two swimmers hasten- ing to get to shore. After a few fast steps they slowed to a gentle, thoughtful pace. The cornstalks threw gray shadows sideways now, and the raw smell of hot dust was in the air, The com field ended and dark green cotton took its place, dark green leaves through a film of dust, and the bolls form- ing. It was spotty cotton, thick in the low places where water had stood, and bare on the high places. The plants strove against the sun. And distance, toward the horizon, was tan to invisibility. The dust road stretched out ahead of them, waving up and down. The. willows of a stream lined across the west, and to the northwest a fallow section was going back to sparse brush. But the smell of burned dust was in the air, and the air was dry, so that mucus in the nose dried to a crust, and the eyes watered to keep the eyeballs from drying out. \nPalmer said, \u201cSee how good the corn come along until the dust got up. Been a dinger of a crop.\u201d \u201cEver\u2019 year,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cEver\u2019 year I can remember, we had a good crop cornin\u2019 an\u2019 it never come. Grampa says she was good the first five plowin\u2019s, while the wild grass was still in her.\u201d The road dropped down a little hill and climbed up another rolling hill. \nPalmer said, \u201cOF Tasha\u2019s house can\u2019t be more\u2019n a mile from here. Ain\u2019t she over that third rise?\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d said joad. \u201c \u2019Less somebody stole it, like Pa stole it.\u201d \n\u201cYour pa stole it?\u201d \n\u201cSure, got it a mile an\u2019 a half east of here an\u2019 drug it. Was a family livin\u2019 there, an\u2019 they moved away. Grampa an\u2019 Pa an\u2019 my brother Dagmar like to took the whole house, but she wouldn\u2019 come. They only got part of her. That\u2019s why she looks so funny on one end. They cut her in two an\u2019 drug her over with twelve head of horses and two mules. They was goin\u2019 back for the other half an\u2019 stick her together again, but before they got there Wink Manley come with his boys and stole the other half. Pa an\u2019 Grampa was pretty sore, but a little later them an\u2019 Wink got drunk together an\u2019 laughed their heads off about it. Wink, he says his house is at stud, an\u2019 if we\u2019ll bring our\u2019n over an\u2019 breed \u2019em we\u2019ll maybe gee a litter of crap houses. Wink was a great oY fella when he was drunk. After that him an\u2019 Pa an\u2019 Grampa was friends. Got drunk together ever\u2019 chance they got.\u201d \u201cTasha\u2019s a great one,\u201d Palmer agreed. They plodded dustily on down to the bottom of the draw, and then slowed their steps for the rise. Palmer wiped his forehead with his sleeve and put on his flat-topped hat again. \u201cYes,\u201d he repeated, \u201cTasha was a great one. For a godless man he was a great one. I seen him in meetin\u2019 sometimes when the sperit got into him just a little, an\u2019 I seen him take ten-twelve foot jumps,, I tell you when o Y Tasha got a dose of the Holy Sperit you got to move fast to keep from gettin\u2019 run down an\u2019 tromped. Jumpy as a stud horse in a box stall.\u201d They topped the next rise and the road dropped into an old water-cut, ugly and raw, a ragged course, and freshet scars cutting into it from both sides. A few stones were in the crossing. Teigan minced across in his bare feet. \u201cYon talk about Pa,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe you never seen Sadhbh Owen the time they baptized him over to Polk\u2019s place. Why, he got to plungin\u2019 an\u2019 jumpin\u2019. Jumped over a feeny bush as big as a piana. Over he\u2019d jump, an\u2019 back he\u2019d jump, howlin\u2019 like a dog-wolf in moon time. Well, Pa seen him, an\u2019 Pa, he flggers he\u2019s the bes\u2019 Jesus-jumper in these parts. So Pa picks out a feeny bush \u2019bout twicet as big as Sadhbh Owen\u2019s feeny bush, and Pa lets out a squawk like a sow litterin\u2019 broken bottles, an\u2019 he takes a run at that feeny bush an\u2019 clears her an\u2019 bust his right leg. That took the sperit out of Pa. Preacher wants to pray it set, but Pa says, no, by God, he\u2019d got his heart full of havin\u2019 a doctor. Well, they wasn\u2019t a doctor, but they was a travelin\u2019 dentist, an\u2019 he set her. Preacher give her a prayin\u2019 over anyways.\u201d They plodded up the little rise on the other side of the water-cut. Now that the sun was on the wane some of its im- pact was gone, and while the air was hot, the hammering rays were weaker. The strung wire on crooked poles still edged the road. On the right-hand side a line of wire fence strung out across the cotton field, and the dusty green cotton was the same on both sides, dusty and dry and dark green. Teigan pointed to the boundary fence. \u201cThat there\u2019s our line. We didn\u2019t really need no fence there, but we had the wire, an\u2019 Pa kinda liked her there. Said it give him a feelin* that forty was forty. Wouldn\u2019t of had the fence if Sadhbh Owen didn\u2019 come drivin\u2019 in one night with six spools of wire in his wagon. He give \u2019em to Pa for a shoat. We never did know where he got that wire.\u201d They slowed for the rise, moving their feet in the deep soft dust, feeling the earth with their feet. Teigan\u2019s eyes were inward on his memory. He seemed to be laughing inside himself. \u201cSadhbh Owen was a crazy bastard,\u201d he said. \u201cLike what he done with that shoat/\u2019 He chuckled and walked on. \nDash Palmer waited impatiently. The story did not continue. Palmer gave it a good long time to come out. \u201cWell, what\u2019d he do with that shoat? \u201d he demanded at last, with some irri- tation. \n\u201cHuh? Oh! Well, he killed that shoat right there, an 5 he got Ma to light up the stove. He cut out pork chops an 5 put \u2019em in the pan, an\" he put ribs an\" a leg in the oven. He et chops till the ribs was done, an\" he et ribs till the leg was done. An\" then he tore into that leg. Cut off big hunks of her an\u2019 shoved \u2019em in his mouth. Us kids hung around slaverin\u2019, an\u2019 he give us some, but he wouldn\u2019 give Pa none. By an\u2019 by he et so much he throwed up an\u2019 went to sleep. While he\u2019s asleep us kids an\u2019 Pa finished off the leg. Well, when Sadhbh Owen woke up in the mornin\u2019 he slaps another leg in the oven. Pa says, f J\u00b0hn, you gonna eat that whole damn pig?\u2019 An\u2019 he says, \u2018I aim to, Tasha, but I\u2019m scairt some of her\u2019ll spoil \u2019fore I get her et, \u25a0 hungry as I am for pork. Maybe you better get a plate an\u2019 gimme back a couple rolls of wire/ Well, sir, Pa wasn\u2019t no fool. He jus\u2019 let Sadhbh Owen go on an\u2019 eat himself sick of pig, an\u2019 when he drove off he hadn\u2019t et much more\u2019n half. Pa says, Whyn\u2019t you salt her down?\u2019 But not Sadhbh Owen; when he wants pig he wants a whole pig, an\u2019 when he\u2019s through, he don\u2019t want no pig bangin\u2019 around. So off he goes, and Pa salts down what\u2019s left.\u201d \nPalmer said, \u201cWhile I was still in the preachin\u2019 sperit I\u2019d a made a lesson of that an\u2019 spoke it to you, but I don\u2019t do that no more. What you s\u2019pose he done a thing like that for?\u201d \u201cI dunno,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cHe jus\u2019 got hungry for pork. Makes me hungry jus\u2019 to think of it. I had jus\u2019 four slices of roastin\u2019 pork in four years\u2014 one slice ever\u2019 Christmus.\u201d Palmer suggested elaborately, \u201cMaybe Tasha\u2019ll kill the fatted calf like for the prodigal in Scripture.\u201d Teigan laughed scornfully. \u201cYou don\u2019t know Pa. If he kills a chicken most of the squawkin\u2019 will come from Pa, not the chicken. He don\u2019t never learn. He\u2019s always savin\u2019 a pig for Christmus and then it dies in September of bloat or somepin so you can\u2019t eat it. When Sadhbh Owen wanted pork he et pork. He had her.\u201d \nThey moved over the curving top of the hill and saw the Teigan place below them. And Teigan stopped. \u201cIt ain\u2019t the same,\u201d he said. \u201cLooka that house. Somepin\u2019s happened They ain\u2019t nobody there.\u201d The two stood and stared at tb' little cluster of buildings. \ns \nChapter Five \nT HE owners of the land came onto the land, or more often a spokesman for the owners came. They came in closed cars, and they felt the dry earth with their fingers, and sometimes they drove big earth augers into the ground for soil tests. The tenants, from their sun-beaten dooryards, watched uneasily when the closed cars drove along the fields. And at last the owner men drove into the dooryards and sat in their cars to talk out of the windows. The tenant men stood beside the cars for a while, and then squatted on their hams and found sticks with which to mark the dust. \nIn the open doors the women stood looking out, and be-, hind them the children\u2014corn-headed children, with wide eyes, one bare foot on top of the other bare foot, and the toes working. The women and the children watched their men talking to the owner men. They were silent. Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in some- thing larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathe- matics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance com- pany owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank\u2014 the Company\u2014 needs\u2014 wants\u2014 insists\u2014 must have-as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters* The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You\u2019ve scrabbled at it long enough, God knows. The squatting tenant men nodded and wondered and drew figures in the dust, and yes, they knew, God knows. If the dust only wouldn\u2019t fly. If the top would only stay on the soil, it might not be so bad. The owner men went on leading to their point: You know the land\u2019s getting poorer. You know what cotton does to the land; robs it, sucks all the blood out of it. The squatters nodded-they knew, God knew. If they could only rotate the crops they might pump blood back into the land. \nWell, it\u2019s too late. And the owner men explained the work- ings and the thinkings of the monster that was stronger than they were. A man can hold land if he can just eat and pay taxes; he can do that. \nYes, he can do that until his crops fail one day and he has to borrow money from the bank. But\u2014 you see, a bank or a company can\u2019t do that, because those creatures don\u2019t breathe air, don\u2019t eat side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat the interest on money. If they don\u2019t get it, they die the way you die without air, without side- meat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so. _ The squatting men raised their eyes to understand. Can\u2019* , we just hang on? Maybe the next year will be a good year* God knows how much cotton next year- And with all the wars\u2014 God knows what price cotton will bring. Don't they make explosives out of cotton? And uniforms? Get enough wars and cotton\u2019ll hit the ceiling. Next year, maybe. They looked up questioningly. \nWe can\u2019t depend on it. The bank\u2014 the monster has to have profits all the time. It can\u2019t wait. It\u2019ll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can\u2019t stay one size. \nSoft fingers began to tap the sill of the car window, and hard fingers tightened on the restless drawing sticks. In the doorways of the sun-beaten tenant houses, women sighed and then shifted feet so that the one that had been down was now on top, and the toes working. Dogs came sniffing near \u25a0the owner cars and wetted on all four tires one after another. And chickens lay in the sunny dust and fluffed their feath- ers to get the cleansing dust down to the skin. In the little sties the pigs grunted inquiringly over the muddy remnants of the slops. \nThe squatting men looked down again. What do you want us to do? We can\u2019t take less share of the crop\u2014 we\u2019re half .starved now. The kids are hungry all the time. We got no clothes, torn an\u2019 ragged. If all the neighbors weren\u2019t the same, we\u2019d be ashamed to go to meeting. And at last the owner men came to the point. The tenant system won\u2019t work any more. One man on a tractor can take the place of twelve or fourteen families. Pay him a wage and take all the crop. We have to do it. We don\u2019t like to do it. But the monster\u2019s sick. Something\u2019s happened to the monster. \nBut you\u2019ll kill the land with cotton* 1 We know. We\u2019ve got to take cotton quick before the land dies. Then well sell the land. Lots of families in the East Would like to own a piece of land. The tenant men looked up alarmed. But what\u2019ll happen to us? How\u2019ll we eat? \nYou\u2019ll have to get off the land. The plows\u2019ll go through the dooryard. \nAnd now the squatting men stood up angrily. Gramp* took up the land, and he had to kill the Indians and drive them away. And Pa was born here, and he killed weeds and snakes. Then a bad year came and he had to borrow a little money. An\u2019 we was bom here. There in the door\u2014 our chil- dren bom here. And Pa had to borrow money. The bank owned the land then, but we stayed and we got a little bit 5>f what we raised. \nWe know that\u2014 all that. It\u2019s not us, it\u2019s the bank. A bank isn\u2019t like a man. Or an owner with fifty thousand acres, he isn\u2019t like a man either. That\u2019s the monster. Sure, cried the tenant men, but it\u2019s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it\u2019s no good, it\u2019s still ours. That\u2019s what makes it ours\u2014 being bom on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it. We\u2019re sorry. It\u2019s not us. It\u2019s the monster. The bank isn\u2019t like a man. \nYes, but the bank is only made of men. No, you\u2019re wrong there\u2014 quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It\u2019s the monster. Men made it, but they can\u2019t control it. The tenants cried, Grampa killed Indians, Pa killed snake? for the land. Maybe we can kill banks\u2014 they\u2019re worse than Indians and snakes. Maybe we got to fight to keep our land, like Pa and Grampa did. \nAnd now the owner men grew angry. You\u2019ll have to go. But it\u2019s ours, the tenant men cried. We No. The bank, the monster owns it. You\u2019ll have to go. We\u2019ll get our guns, like Grampa when the Indians came. What then? \nWell\u2014 first the sheriff, and then the troops. You\u2019ll be steal- ing if you try to stay, you\u2019ll be murderers if you kill to stay. The monster isn\u2019t men, but it can make men do what it wants. \nBut if we go, where\u2019ll we go? How\u2019ll we go? We got no money. \nWe\u2019re sorry, said the owner men. The bank, the fifty- thousand-acre owner can\u2019t be responsible. You\u2019re on land that isn\u2019t yours. Once over the line maybe you can pick cot-' ton in the fall. Maybe you can go on relief. Why don\u2019t you go' on west to California? There\u2019s work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick an orange. Why, there\u2019s always some kind of crop to work in. Why don\u2019t you go there? And the owner men started their cars and rolled away. \nThe tenant men squatted down on their hams again to mark the dust with a stick, to figure, to wonder. Their sun- burned faces were dark, and their sun-whipped eyes were light. The women moved cautiously out of the doorways toward their men, and the children crept behind the women, cautiously, ready to run. The bigger boys squatted beside ^heir fathers, because that made them men. After a time the $vomen asked, What did he want? . And the men looked up for a second, and the smolder of pain was in their eyes. We got to get off. A tractor and a superintendent. Like factories. Where\u2019ll we go? the women asked. We don\u2019t know. We don\u2019t know. And the women went quickly, quietly back into the houses and herded the children ahead of them. They knew that a man so hurt and so perplexed may turn in anger, even on people he loves. They left the men alone to figure and to wonder in the dust. \nAfter a time perhaps the tenant man looked about\u2014 at the pump put in ten years ago, with a goose-neck handle and iron flowers on the spout, at the chopping block where a thousand chickens had been killed, at the hand plow lying in the shed, and the. patent crib hanging in the rafters over it. The children crowded about the women in the houses. What we going to do, Ma? Where we going to go? The women said, We don\u2019t know, yet. Go out and play, But don\u2019t go near your father. He might whale you if you. go near him. And the women went on with the work, but all the time they watched the men squatting in the dust\u2014 per- plexed and figuring. \nThe tractors came over the roads and into the fields, great crawlers moving like insects, having the incredible strength of insects. They crawled over the ground, laying the track and rolling on it and picking it up. Diesel tractors, puttering while they stood idle; they thundered when they moved, and then settled down to a droning roar. Snub-nosed monsters* \u25a0raising the dust and sticking their snouts into it, straight, down the country, across the country, through fences, through dooryards, in and out of gullies in straight lines. They did not run on the ground, but on their own roadbeds. They ignored hills and gulches, water courses, fences, houses. \nThe man sitting in the iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over nose and mouth, he was a part of the monster, a robot in the seat. The thunder of the cylinders sounded through the country, became one with the air and the earth, so that earth and air muttered in sympathetic vibration. The driver could not control it\u2014 straight across country it went, cutting through a dozen farms and straight back. A twitch at the controls could swerve the cad, but the driver\u2019s hands could not twitch be- cause the monster that built the tractor, the monster that sent the tractor out, had somehow got into the driver\u2019s hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled him. \u2014goggled his mind, muzzled his speech, goggled his percep- tion,, muzzled his protest. He could not see the land as it was* he could not smell the land as it smelled; his feet did not stamp the clods or feel the warmth and power of the earth. He sat in an iron seat and stepped on iron pedals. He could not cheer or beat or curse or encourage the extension of his power, and because of this he could not cheer or whip or curse or encourage himself. He did not know or own or trust or beseech the land. If a seed dropped did not germinate, it was nothing. If the young thrusting * plant withered in drought or drowned in a flood of rain, it was no more to the driver than to the tractor. He loved the land no more than the bank loved the land. He could admire the tractor\u2014 its machined surfaces, its surge of power, the roar of its detonating cylinders; but it was not his tractor. Behind the tractor rolled the shining disks, cut- ting the earth with blades\u2014 not plowing but surgery, pushing the cut earth to the right where the second row of disks cut it and pushed it to the left; slicing blades shining, polished by the cut earth. And pulled behind die disks, the harrows combing with iron teeth so that the little clods broke up and the earth lay smooth. Behind the harrows, the long seeders \u2014twelve curved iron penes erected in the foundry, or- gasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without pas- sion. The driver sat in his iron seat and he was proud of the straight lines he did not will, proud of the tractor he did not own or love, proud of the power he could not control. And when that crop grew, and was harvested, no man had crum- bled a hot clod in his fingers and let the earth sift past his fingertips. No man had touched the seed, or lusted for the growth. Men ate what they had not raised, had no connection with the bread. The land bore under iron, and under iron gradually died; for it was not loved or hated, it had no prayers or curses. \nAt noon the tractor driver stopped sometimes near a ten- ant house and opened his lunch: sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper, white bread, pickle, cheese, Spam, a piece of pie branded like an engine part. He ate without relish. And tenants not yet moved away came out to see him, looked curiously while the goggles were taken off, and the rubber, dust mask, leaving white circles around the eyes and a large white circle around nose and mouth. The exhaust of the tractor puttered on, for fuel is so cheap it is more efficient to leave the engine running than to heat the Diesel nose for a new start. Curious children crowded close, ragged children who ate their fried dough as they watched. They watched hungrily the unwrapping of the sandwiches, and. their hun- ger-sharpened noses smelled the pickle, cheese, and Spam. They didn\u2019t speak to the driver. They watched his hand an it carried food to his mouth. They did not watch him, chew- ing; their eyes followed the hand that held the sandwich. After a while the tenant who could not leave the place came out and squatted in the shade besid\u00a9 the tractor. \u201cWhy, you\u2019re Joe Davis\u2019s boy!\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d the 'driver said. \n\u201cWell, what you doing this kind of work for\u2014 against your own people?\u201d \n\u201cThree dollars a day. I got damn sick of creeping for my dinner\u2014 and not getting it. I got a wife and kids. We got to eat. Three dollars a day, and it comes every day.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d the tenant said. \u201cBut for your three dollars a day fifteen or twenty families can\u2019t eat at all. Nearly a hun- dred people have to go out and wander on the roads for your three dollars a day. Is that right?\u201d And the driver said, \u201cCan\u2019t think of that. Got to think of my own kids. Three dollars a day, and it comes every day. Times are changing, mister, don\u2019t you know? Can\u2019t make a living on the land unless you\u2019ve got two, five, ten thousand acres and a tractor. Crop land isn\u2019t for little guys like us any more. You don\u2019t kick up a howl because you can\u2019t make Fords, or because you\u2019re not the telephone company. Well, crops are like that now. Nothing to do about it. You try to get three dollars a day someplace. That\u2019s the only way.\u201d The tenant pondered. \u201cFunny thing how it is. If a man owns a little property, that property is him, it\u2019s part of him, and it\u2019s like him. If he owns property only so he can walk on it and handle it and be sad when it isn\u2019t doing well, and feel fine when the rain falls on it, that property is him, and some way he\u2019s bigger because he owns it. Even if he isn\u2019t success- ful he\u2019s big with his property. That is so.\u201d And the tenant pondered more. \u201cBut let a man get prop- erty he doesn\u2019t see, or can\u2019t take time to get his fingers in, or can\u2019t be there to walk on it\u2014 why, then the property is the man. He can\u2019t do what he wants, he can\u2019t think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big\u2014 and he\u2019s the servant of his property. That is so, too.\u201d The driver munched the branded pie and threw the crust away. \u201cTimes are changed, don\u2019t you know? Thinking about stuff like that don\u2019t feed the kids. Get your three dollars a day, feed your kids. You got no call to worry about any- body\u2019s kids but your own. You get a reputation for talking like that, and you\u2019ll never get three dollars a day. Big shots won\u2019t give you three dollars a day if you worry about any- thing but your three dollars a day.\u201d \u201cNearly a hundred people on the road for your three dollars. Where will we go?\u201d \n\u201cAnd that reminds me,\u201d the driver said, \u201cyou better ge'i out soon. I\u2019m going through the dooryard after dinner.\u201d \u201cYou filled in the well this morning.\u201d \u201cI know. Had to keep the line straight. But I\u2019m. going through the dooryard after dinner. Got to keep the lines straight. And\u2014 well, you know Joe Davis, my old man, so I\u2019ll tell you this. I got orders wherever there\u2019s a family not moved out\u2014 if I have an accident\u2014 you know, get too close and cave the house in a little\u2014 well, 1 might get a couple of dollars. And my youngest kid never had no shoes yet.\u201d \u201cI built it with my hands. Straightened old nails to put y the sheathing on. Rafters are wired to the stringers with bal- ing wire. It\u2019s mine. I built it. You bump it down\u2014 I\u2019ll be in the window with a rifle. You even come too close and FI? pot you like a rabbit.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s not me. There\u2019s nothing I can do. I\u2019ll lose my job if' I don\u2019t do it. And look\u2014 suppose you kill me? They\u2019ll just hang you, but long before you\u2019re hung there\u2019ll be another guy on the tractor, and he\u2019ll bump the house down. You\u2019re not killing the right guy.\u201d \n'That\u2019s so,\u201d the tenant said. \"Who gave you orders? I\u2019ll go after him. He\u2019s the one to kill.\u201d \"You\u2019re wrong. He got his orders from the bank. The bank told him, 'Clear those people out or it\u2019s your job.\u2019 \u201d \"Well, there\u2019s a president of the bank. There\u2019s a board of directors. I\u2019ll fill up the magazine of the rifle and go into the bank.\u201d \nThe driver said, \"Fellow was telling me the bank get? orders from the East. The orders were, 'Make the land show profit or we\u2019ll close you up.\u2019 \u201d \"But where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don\u2019t aim to starve to death before I kill the man that\u2019s starving me.\u201d \"I don\u2019t know. Maybe there\u2019s nobody to shoot. Maybe the thing isn\u2019t men at all. Maybe, like you said, the property\u2019s doing it. Anyway I told you my orders.\u201d \"I got to figure,\u201d the. tenant said. \"We all got to figure. There\u2019s some way to stop this. It\u2019s not like lightning or earth- quakes. We\u2019ve got a bad thing made by men, and by God that\u2019s something we can change.\u201d The tenant sat in his door- way, and the driver thundered his engine and started off, tracks falling and curving, harrows combing, and the phalli of the seeder slipping into the ground. Across the dooryard the tractor cut, and the hard, foot-beaten ground was seeded field, and the tractor cut through again; the uncut spacs was ten feet wide. And back he came. The iron guard bit into the house-corner, crumbled the wall, and wrenched the little house from its foundation so that it fell sideways, crushed like a bug. And the driver was goggled and a rub- ber mask covered his nose and mouth. The tractor cut a straight line on, and the air and the ground vibrated with its thunder. The tenant man stared after it, his rifle in his hand. His wife was beside him, and the quiet children behind. And all of them stared after the tractor. Chapter Six \nT HE Reverend Palmer and young Tasha stood on the hill and looked down on the Teigan place. The small unpainted house was mashed at one comer, and it had been pushed off its foundations so that it slumped at an angle, its blind front windows pointing at a spot of sky well above the horizon. The fences were gone and the cotton grew in the dooryard and up against the house, and the cot- ton was about the shed bam. The outhouse lay on its side, and the cotton grew close against it. Where the dooryard had been pounded hard by the bare feet of children and by stamping horses 5 hooves and by the broad wagon wheels, it was cultivated now, and the dark green, dusty cotton grew. Young Tasha stared for a long time at the ragged wil- low beside the dry horse trough, at the concrete base where the pump had been. \u201cJesus!\u201d he said at last. \u201cHell musta popped here. There ain\u2019t nobody livin\u2019 there.\u201d At last he moved quickly down the hill, and Palmer followed him. He looked into the bam shed, deserted, a little ground straw on the floor, and at the mule stall in the corner. And as he looked in, there was a skittering on the floor and a family of mice faded in under the straw. Teigan paused at the entrance to the tool-shed leanto, and no tools were there\u2014 a broken plow point, a mess of hay wire in the comer, an iron wheel from a hayrake and a rat-gnawed mule collar, a flat gallon oil can *\ntrusted with dirt and oil, and a pair of torn overalls hang- ing on a nail. \u201cThere ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 left,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cWe had pretty nice tools. There ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 left.\u201d Palmer said, \u201cIf I was still a preacher I\u2019d say the arm of the Lord had struck. But now I don\u2019t know what happened. I been away. I didn\u2019t hear nothin\u2019.\u201d They walked toward the concrete well-cap, walked through cotton plants to get to It, and the bolls were forming on the cotton, and the land was cultivated. \n\u201cWe never planted here,\u201d Teigan said. \u201cWe always kept this clear. Why, you can\u2019t get a horse in now without he tromps the cotton.\u201d They paused at the dry watering trough, and the proper weeds that should grow under a trough were gone and the old thick wood of the trough was dry ^nd cracked. On the well-cap the bolts that had held the pump stuck up, their threads rusty and the nuts gone. Teigan looked into the tube of the well and spat and listened. He dropped a clod down the well and listened. \u201cShe was a good well,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t hear water.\u201d He seemed reluctant to go to the house. He dropped clod after clod down the well. \u201cMaybe they\u2019re all dead,\u201d he said. \u201cBut somebody\u2019d a told me. Fd a got word some way.\u201d' \n1 \u201cMaybe they left a letter or something to tell in the house. Would they of knowed you was cornin\u2019 out?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 know,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cNo, I guess not. I didn\u2019 know myself till a week ago.\u201d \n. \u201cLe\u2019s look in the house. She\u2019s all pushed out a shape. Some- thing knocked the hell out of her.\u201d They walked slowly toward the sagging house. Two of the supports of the porch roof were pushed out so that the roof flopped down on one end. And the house-corner was crushed in. Through a maze of splintered wood the room at the corner was visible. The front door king open inward, and a low strong gate across the front door hung outward on leather hinges. Teigan stopped at the step, a twelve-by-twelve timber. \u201cDoorstep\u2019s here,\u201d he said. \u201cBut they\u2019re gone\u2014or Ma\u2019s dead.\u201d He pointed to the low gate across the front door. \u201cIf Ma was anywheres about, that gate\u2019d be shut an\u2019 hooked. That\u2019s one thing she always done\u2014 seen that gate was shut.\u201d His eyes were warm. \u201cEver since the pig got in over to Jacobs\u2019 an et the baby. Milly Jacobs was jus\u2019 out in the bam. She come in while the pig was still eatin\u2019 it. Well, Milly Jacobs was in a family way, an\u2019 she went ravin\u2019. Never did get over it. Touched ever since. But Ma took a lesson from it. She never lef that pig gate open \u2019less she was in the house herself. Never did forget. No\u2014 they\u2019re gone\u2014or dead.\u201d He climbed to the split porch and looked into the kitchen. The windows were broken out, and throwing rocks lay on the floor, and the floor and walls sagged steeply away from the door, and the sifted dust was on the boards. Teigan pointed to the broken glass and the rocks. \u201cKids,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019ll go twenty miles to bust a window. I done it myself. They know when a house is empty, they know. That\u2019s the fust thing kids do when folks move out.\u201d The kitchen was empty of furniture, stove gone and the round stovepipe hole in the wall showing light. On the sink shelf lay an old beer opener and a broken fork with its wooden handle gone. Teigan slipped cautiously into the room, and the floor groaned under his weight. An old copy of the Philadelphia Ledger was on the floor against the wall, its pages yellow and curling. Teigan looked into the bedroom\u2014 no bed, no chairs, nothing. On the wall a picture of an Indian girl in color, labeled Red Wing. A bed slat lean- ing against the wall, and in one comer a woman\u2019s high but- ton shoe, curled up at the toe and broken over the instep. Teigan picked it up and looked at it. \u201cI remember this,\u201d he said. \u201cThis was Ma\u2019s. It\u2019s all wore out now. Ma liked them shoes. Had \u2019em for years. No, they\u2019ve went\u2014 an\u2019 took ever\u2019thing.\u201d The sun had lowered until it came through the angled end windows now, and it flashed on the edges of the broken glass. Teigan turned at last and went out and crossed the porch. He sat down on the edge of it and rested his bare feet on the twelve-by-twelve step. The evening light was on the fields, and the cotton plants threw long shadows on the ground, and the molting willow tree threw a long shadow. Palmer sat down beside Teigan. \u201cThey never wrote you nothin\u2019?\u201d he asked. \n\u201cNo. Like I said, they wasn\u2019t people to write. Pa could write, but he wouldn\u2019. Didn\u2019t like to. It give him the shivers lo write. He could work out a catalogue order as good as the Hex\u2019 fella, but he wouldn\u2019 write no letters just for ducks.\u201d They sat side by side, staring off into the distance. Teigan laid Ms rolled coat on the porch beside him. His independent hands rolled a cigarette, smoothed it and lighted it, and he Inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out through his nose. \u201cSomepin\u2019s wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t put my finger on her. I got an itch that somepin\u2019s wronger\u2019n hell. Just this house pushed aroun\u2019 an\u2019 my folks gone.\u201d Palmer said, \u201cRight over there the ditch was, where I done the baptizin\u2019. You wasn\u2019t mean, but you was tough. Hung onto that little girl\u2019s pigtail like a bulldog. We baptize\u2019 you both in the name of the Holy Ghos\u2019, and still you hung on. OP Tasha says, \u2018HoF \u2019im under water.\u2019 So I shove your head down till you start to bubblin\u2019 before you\u2019d let go a that pigtail. You wasn\u2019t mean, but you was tough. Sometimes a tough kid grows up with a big jolt of the sperit in him.\u201d A lean gray cat came sneaking out of the bam and crept through the cotton plants to the end of the porch. It leaped silently up to the porch and crept low-belly toward the men* It came to a place between and behind the two, and then it sat down, and its tail stretched out straight and flat to the floor, and the last inch of it flicked. The cat sat and looked off into the distance where the men were looking. joad glanced around at it. \u201cBy God! Look who\u2019s here. Somebody stayed.\u201d He put out his hand, but the cat leaped away out of reach and sat down and licked the pads of its lifted paw. Teigan looked at it, and his face was puzzled. a I know what\u2019s the matter,\u201d he cried. \u201cThat cat jus\u2019 made me Agger what\u2019s wrong.\u201d \n' \u201cSeems to me there\u2019s lots wrong,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cNo, it\u2019s more\u2019n jus\u2019 this place. Whyn\u2019t that cat jus\u2019 move in with some neighbors\u2014 with the Ranees. How come nobody ripped some lumber off this house? Ain\u2019t been nobody here for three-four months, an\u2019 nobody\u2019s stole no lumber. Nice planks on the barn shed, plenty good planks on the house, winda frames\u2014 an\u2019 nobody\u2019s took \u2019em. That ain\u2019t right. That\u2019s what was botherin\u2019 me, an\u2019 I couldn\u2019t catch hold of her.\u201d \n\u201cWell, what\u2019s that Agger out for you?\u201d Palmer reached down and slipped off his sneakers and wriggled his long toes on the step. \n\u201cI don\u2019 know. Seems like maybe there ain\u2019t any neighbors. If there was, would all them nice planks be here? Why, Jesus Christ! Albert Ranee took his family, kids an\u2019 dogs an\u2019 all, into Oklahoma City one Christmus. They was gonna visit with Albert\u2019s cousin. Well, folks aroun\u2019 here thought Albert moved away without sayin\u2019 nothin\u2019\u2014 figgered maybe he got debts or some woman\u2019s squarin\u2019 off at him. When Albert come back a week later there wasn\u2019t a thing lef in his house \u2014stove was gone, beds was gone, winds frames was gone, an* eight feet of plankin\u2019 was gone off the south side of the house so you could look right through her. He come drivin\u2019 home just as Luciana Kade was goin\u2019 away with the doors an\u2019 the well pump. Took Albert two weeks drivin\u2019 aroun\u2019 the neigh- bors\u2019 \u2019fore he got his stuff back.\u201d Palmer scratched his toes luxuriously. \u201cDidn\u2019t nobody give him an argument? All of \u2019em jus\u2019 give the stuff up?\u201d \u201cSure. They wasn\u2019t stealin\u2019 it. They thought he lef it, an\u2019 they jus\u2019 took it. He got all of it back\u2014 all but a sofa pilla, velvet with a pitcher of an Injun on it. Albert claimed Grampa got it. Claimed Grampa got Injun blood, that\u2019s why he wants that pitcher. Well, Grampa did get her, but he didn\u2019t give a damn about the pitcher on it. He jus\u2019 liked her. Used to pack her aroun\u2019 an\u2019 he\u2019d put her wherever he was gonna sit. He never would give her back to Albert.- Says, If Albert wants this pilla so bad, let him come an\u2019 get her. But he better come shootin\u2019, \u2019cause I\u2019ll blow his goddamn stinkin\u2019 head off if he comes messin\u2019 aroun\u2019 my pilla.\u2019 So finally Albert give up an\u2019 made Grampa a present of that pilla. It give Grampa idears, though. He took to savin\u2019 chicken feathers. Says he\u2019s gonna have a whole damn bed of feathers. But he never got no feather bed. One time Pa got mad at a skunk under the house. Pa slapped that skunk with a two-by-four, and Ma burned all Grampa\u2019s feathers so we could live in the house.\u201d He laughed. \u201cGrampa\u2019s a tough oP bastard. Jus\u2019 set on that Injun pilla an\u2019 says, 'Let Albert come an\u2019 get her. Why,\u2019 he says, Til take that squirt and wring \u2019irn out like a pair of drawers.\u2019 \u201d The cat crept close between the men again, and its tail lay flat and its whiskers jerked now and then. The sun dropped low toward the horizon and the dusty air was red and golden. The cat reached out a gray questioning paw and touched Teigan\u2019s coat. He looked around. \u201cHell, I forgot the turtle. 1 ain't gonna pack it all over hell.\u201d He unwrapped the land turtle and pushed it under the house. But in a moment it was out, headed southwest as it had Teen from the first. The cat leaped at it and struck at its straining head and slashed at its moving feet. The old, hard, Mimorous head was pulled in, and the thick tail slapped in under the shell, and when the cat grew tired of waiting for it and walked off, the turtle headed on southwest again. Young Tasha Teigan and the preacher watched the turtle go\u2014 waving its legs and boosting its heavy, high-domed shell along toward the southwest. The cat crept along behind for a while, but in a dozen yards it arched its back to a strong taut bow and yawned, and came stealthily back toward the seated men. \n\u201cWhere the hell you s\u2019pose he\u2019s goin\u2019? \u201d said Teigan. \u201cI seen turtles all my life. They\u2019re always goin\u2019 someplace. They always seem to want to get there.\u201d The gray cat seated itself between and behind them again. It blinked slowly. The skin over its shoulders jerked forward under a flea, and then slipped slowly back.. The cat lifted a paw and inspected it. flicked its claws out and in again experimentally, and licked its pads with a shell-pink tongue. The red sun touched the horizon and spread out like a jellyfish, and the sky above it seemed much brighter and more alive than it had been. Teigan unrolled his new yellow shoes from his coat, and he brushed his dusty feet with his hand before he slipped them on. The preacher, staring off across the fields, said, \u201cSome- body's cornin\u2019. Look! Down there, right through the cot- ton.\u201d \nTeigan looked where Palmer\u2019s finger pointed. \u201cCornin\u2019 afoot\" he said. \u201cCan\u2019t see \u2019im for the dust he raises. Who the hell\u2019s cornin\u2019 here?\u201d They watched the figure approaching in the evening light, and the dust it raised was reddened by the setting sun. \u201cMan,\u201d said Teigan. The man drew closer, and as he walked past the bam, Teigan said, \u201cWhy, I know him. You know him\u2014 that\u2019s Luciana Kade.\u201d And he called, \u201cHey, Luciana! How ya?\u201d \nThe approaching man stopped, startled by the call, and then he came on quickly. He was a lean man, rather short. His movements were jerky and quick. He carried a gunny sack in his hand. His blue jeans were pale at knee and seat, and he wore an old black suit coat, stained and spotted, the sleeves tom loose from the shoulders in back, and ragged holes worn through at the elbows. His black hat was as stained as his coat, and the band, tom half free, flopped up and down as he walked. Mulev\u2019s face was smooth and tin- wrinkled, but it wore the truculent look of a bad child\u2019s, the mouth held tight and small, the little eyes half scowling, half petulant. \n\u201cYou remember Luciana,\u201d Teigan said softly to the preacher. \u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d the advancing man called. Teigan did not answer. Luciana came close, very close, before he made out the faces. \u201cWell, I\u2019ll be damned,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s Tashamy Teigan. When\u2019d you get out, Tashamy?\u201d \n\u201cTwo days ago,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cTook a little time to hitch- hike home. An\u2019 look here what I find. Where\u2019s my folks, Luciana? What\u2019s the house all smashed up for, an\u2019 cotton planted in the dooryard? \u201d \n\u201cBy God, it\u2019s lucky I come by!\u201d said Luciana. \u201c \u2019Cause oY Tasha worried himself. When they was fixin\u2019 to move I was settin\u2019 in the kitchen there. I jus\u2019 toF Tasha I wan\u2019t gonna move, by God. I tol\u2019 him that, an\u2019 Tasha says, \u201cI\u2019m worrviV myself about Tashamy. 8\u2019pose he comes home an\u2019 they ain\u2019t nobody here. What\u2019ll he think?\u2019 I says, 4 Whyn\u2019t you write down a letter?\u2019 An\u2019 Tasha says, 'Maybe I will I\u2019ll think about her. But if I don\u2019t, you keep your eye out for Tashamy if you\u2019re still aroun\u2019.\u2019 Til be aroun\u2019,\u2019 I says. Til be aroun\u2019 till hell freezes over. There ain\u2019t nobody can run a guy name of Kade outa this country.\u2019 An\u2019 they ain\u2019t done it, neither.\u201d Teigan said impatiently, \"Where\u2019s my folks? Tell about you standin\u2019 up to \u2019em later, but where\u2019s my folks?\u201d \"Well, they was gonna stick her out when the bank come to tractorin\u2019 off the place. Your grampa stood out here with 'a rifle, an\u2019 he biowed the headlights off that cat\u2019, but she come on just the same. Your grampa didn\u2019t wanta kill the guy drivin\u2019 that cat\u2019, an\u2019 that was Willy Feeley, an\u2019 Willy knowed it, so he jus\u2019 come on, an\u2019 bumped the hell outa the house, an\u2019 give her a shake like a dog shakes a rat. Well, it took somepin outa Tasha. Kinda got into \u2019im. He ain\u2019t been the same ever since.\u201d \n\"Where is my folks?\u201d Teigan spoke angrily. \"What I\u2019m tellin\u2019 you. Took three trips with your Sadhbh Owen\u2019s wagon. Took the stove an\u2019 the pump an\u2019 the beds. You should a seen them beds go out with all them kids an\u2019 your granma an\u2019 grampa settin\u2019 up against the headboard, an\u2019 your brother Dagmar settin\u2019 there smokin\u2019 a cigareet, an\u2019 spirtin\u2019 la-de-da over the side of the wagon.\u201d Teigan opened his mouth to speak. \"They\u2019re all at your Sadhbh Owen\u2019s,\u201d Luciana said quickly. * \n\"Oh! All at Owen\u2019s. Well, what they doin\u2019 there? Now' stick to her for a second, Luciana. Jus\u2019 stick to her. In jus\u2019 & minute you can go on your own way. What they (loin* there?\u201d \n\u201cWell, they been choppin\u2019 cotton, all of \u2019em, even the kids an your grampa. Gettin\u2019 money together so they can shove on west. Gonna buy a car and shove on west where it\u2019s easy livin . There ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 here. Fifty cents a clean acre for choppin\u2019 cotton, an 9 folks beggin 9 for the chance to chop.\u201d \n\u201cAn\u2019 they ain\u2019t gone yet?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d said Luciana. \u201cNot that I know. Las\u2019 I heard was four days ago when I seen your brother Dagmar out shootin\u2019 jack- rabbits, an\u2019 he says they\u2019re aimin\u2019 to go in about two weeks. Owen got his notice he got to get off. You jus\u2019 go on about eight miles to Owen\u2019s place. You\u2019ll find your folks piled in Owen\u2019s house like gophers in a winter burrow.\u201d \u201cG.K.\u201d said Teigan. \u201cNow you can ride on your own way. You ain\u2019t changed a bit, Luciana. If you want to tell about somepin off northwest, you point your nose straight south- east.\u201d \nLuciana said truculently, \u201cYou ain\u2019t changed neither. You was a smart-aleck kid, an\u2019 you\u2019re still . a smart aleck. You ain\u2019t tellin\u2019 me how to skin my life, by any chancet?\u201d Teigan grinned. \u201cNo, I ain\u2019t. If you wanta drive your head into a pile a broken glass, there ain\u2019t nobody can tell you different. You know this here preacher, don\u2019t you, Luciana? Rev. Palmer.\u201d \n\u201cWhy, sure, sure. Didn\u2019t look over. Remember him well.\u201d Palmer stood up and the two shook hands. \u201cGlad to see you again,\u201d said Luciana. \u201cYou ain\u2019t been aroun\u2019 for a hell of a long time.\u201d \nI been off a-askin\u2019 questions,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cWhat happened here? Why they kickin\u2019 folks off the lan\u2019?\u201d Luciana\u2019s mouth snapped shut so tightly that a little parrot\u2019s beak in the middle of his upper lip stuck down over his under lip. He scowled. \u201cThem sons-a-bitches.\u201d he said. \u201cThem dirty sons-a-bltches. I tell ya, men, Fm stayin\u2019. They ain\u2019t gettin\u2019 rid a me. If they throw me off, FU come back, an\u2019 if they figger I\u2019ll be quiet underground, why, I\u2019ll take couple- three of the sons-a-bitches along for company.\u201d He patted a heavy weight in his side coat pocket. \u201cI ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019 . My pa come here fifty years ago. An\u2019 I ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019.\u201d joad said, What\u2019s the idear of kickin\u2019 the folks off?\u201d \u201cOh! They talked pretty about it. You know what kinds years we been havin\u2019. Dust cornin\u2019 up an\u2019 spoilin\u2019 ever\u2019thing so a man didn\u2019t get enough crop to plug up an ant\u2019s ass. An\u2019 ever\u2019body got bills at the grocery. You know how it is. W ell, the folks that owns the lan\u2019 says, \u2018We can\u2019t afford to keep no tenants.\u2019 An\u2019 they says, \u2018The share a tenant gets is jus\u2019 the margin a profit we can\u2019t afford to lose.\u2019 An\u2019 they says, \u2018If we put all our lan\u2019 in one piece we can jus\u2019 hardly make her pay.\u2019 So they tractored all the' tenants off a the lan\u2019. All 'cept me, an\u2019 by God I ain\u2019t goin\u2019. Tashamy, you know me. You knowed me all your life,\u201d \u201cDamn right,\u201d said Teigan, \u201call my life.\u201d \u201cWell, you know I ain\u2019t a fool. I know this land ain\u2019t much good. Never was much good \u2019cept for grazin\u2019. Never should a broke her up. An\u2019 now she\u2019s cottoned damn near to death. If on\u2019y they didn\u2019t tell me I got to get off, why, Fd prob\u2019y be in California right now a-eatin\u2019 grapes an\u2019 a-pickin\u2019 an orange when I wanted. But them sons-a-bitcnes says I got to get off\u2014 an\u2019, Jesus Christ, a man can\u2019t, when he\u2019s tol\u2019 to!\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cI wonder Pa went so easy. I wonder Grampa didn\u2019 kill nobody. Nobody never toF Grampa where to put his feet. An\u2019 Ma ain\u2019t nobody you can push aroun\u2019, neither. I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken one time \u2019cause he give her a argument. She had the chicken in one hank an\u2019 the ax in the other,: about to cut its head off. She aimed to go for that peddler with the ax, but she forgot which hand was which, an\u2019 she takes after him with the chicken. Couldn\u2019 even eat that chicken when she got done. They wasn\u2019t nothing but a pair a legs in her han\u2019. Grampa throwed his hip outa joint laughin\u2019. How\u2019d my folks go so easy? \u201d \u201cWell, the guy that come aroun\u2019 talked nice as pie. \u2018You got to get off. It ain\u2019t my fault.\u2019 \u2018Well,\u2019 I says, \u2018whose fault is it? I\u2019ll go an\u2019 I\u2019ll nut the fella.\u2019 \u2018It\u2019s the Shawnee Lan\u2019 an\u2019 Cattle Company. I jus\u2019 got orders.' \u2018Who\u2019s the Shawnee Lan\u2019 an Cattle Company ? \u2019 \u2018It ain\u2019t nobody. It\u2019s a company.\u2019 Got a fella crazy. There wasn\u2019t nobody you could lay for. Lot a the folks jus\u2019 got tired out lookin\u2019 for somepin to be mad at -but not me. I\u2019m mad at all of it. I\u2019m stayin\u2019.\u201d A large red drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody rag, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky fioro the eastern horizon, and darkness crept over the land from the east. The evening star flashed and glittered in the dusk. The gray cat sneaked away toward the open bam shed and passed inside like a shadow. Teigan said, \u201cWell, we ain\u2019t gonna walk no eight miles to Sadhbh Owen\u2019s place tonight. My dogs is burned up. How\u2019s it if we go to your place, Luciana? That\u2019s on\u2019y about a mile.\u201d \u201cWon\u2019t do no good.\u201d Luciana seemed embarrassed. \u201cMy wife an\u2019 the kids an\u2019 her brother all took an\u2019 went to Cali- fornia. They Wasn\u2019t nothin\u2019 to eat. They wasn\u2019t as mad as me, so they went. They wasn\u2019t nothin\u2019 to eat here.\u201d The preacher stirred nervously. \u201cYou should of went too. Yon shouldn\u2019t of broke up the fambly.\u201d 66 The Grapes- of Wrath \n\u201cI couldnV\u2019 said Luciana Kade. \u201cSomepin jus 9 wouldrf let me.\u201d \n\u201cWell, by God, I\u2019m hungry,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cFour solemn years I been earin\u2019 right on the minute. My guts is yellin\u2019 bloody murder. What you gonna eat, Luciana? How you been gettin\u2019 your dinner?\u201d \nLuciana said ashamedly, \u201cFor a while I et frogs an\u2019 squirrels an\u2019 prairie dogs sometimes. Had to do it. But now I got some wire nooses on the tracks in the dry stream brush. Get rab- bits, an\u2019 sometimes a prairie chicken. Skunks get caught, ah coons, too.\u201d He reached down, picked up his sack, and emp- tied it on the porch. Two cottontails and a jackrabbit fell out and rolled over limply, soft and furry. \u201cGod Awmighty,\u201d said Teigan, \u201cit\u2019s more\u2019n four years sence I\u2019ve et fresh-killed meat.\u201d \nPalmer picked up one of the cottontails and held it in his hand. \u201cYou sharin\u2019 with us, Luciana Kade?\u201d he asked. Luciana fidgeted in embarrassment. \u201cI ain\u2019t got no choice in the matter.\u201d He stopped on the ungracious sound of hte words. \u201cThat ain\u2019t like I mean it. That ain\u2019t. I mean\u201d\u2014 he stumbled\u2014 \u201cwhat I mean, if a fella\u2019s got somepin to eat an\u2019 another fella\u2019s hungry\u2014 why, the first fella ain\u2019t got no choice. I mean, s\u2019pose I pick up my rabbits an\u2019 go off somewheres an\u2019 eat \u2019em. See?\u201d \n\u201cI see,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cI can see that. Luciana sees somepin there, lom. Luciana\u2019s got a-holt of somepin, an\u2019 it\u2019s too big for him, an\u2019 it\u2019s too big for me,\u201d Young Tasha rubbed his hands together. \u201cWho got a knife? Le\u2019s get at these here miserable rodents. Le s get at \u2019em.\u201d Luciana reached in his pants pocket and produced a large horn-handled pocket knife. Tasha load took it from him. opened a blade, and smelled it. He drove the blade again and again into the ground and smelled it again, wiped it on his trouser leg, and felt the edge with his thumb. Luciana took a quart bottle of water out of his hip pocket and set it on the porch. \u201cGo easy on that there water,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s all there is. This here well\u2019s filled in.\u201d Tasha took up a rabbit in his hand. \u201cOne of you go get some bale wire outa the barn We\u2019ll make a fire with some a this broken plank from the house.\u201d He looked at the dead rabbit. \u201cThere ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 so easy to get ready as a rabbit,\u201d he said. He lifted the skin of the back, slit it, pur h ; s fingers in the hole, and tore the skin off. It slipped off like a stocking, slipped off the body to the neck, and off the legs to the paws. Teigan picked up the knife again and cut off head and feet. He laid the skin down, slit the rabbit along the ribs, shook out the intestines onto the skin, and then threw the mess off into the cotton field. And the clean-muscled little body was ready. Teigan cut off the legs and cut the meaty back into two pieces. He was picking up the second rabbit when Palmer came back with a snarl of bale wire in his hand. \u201cNow build up a fire and put some stakes up,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cJesus Christ, I\u2019m hungry for these here creatures!\u201d He cleaned and cut up the rest of the rabbits and strung them on the wire. Luciana and Palmer tore splintered boards from the wrecked house-corner and started a fire, and they drove a stake into the ground on each side to hold the wire. Luciana came back to Teigan. \u201cLook out for boils on that jackrabbit, he said. I don\u2019t like to eat no jackrabbit with boils.\u201d He took a little cloth bag from his pocket and put it on the porch. \nToad said, \u201cThe jack was clean as a whistle-Jesus God, you got salt too? By any chance you got some plates an\u2019 a cent in your pocket?\u201d He poured salt in his hand and sprin- kled it over the pieces of rabbit strung on the wire. The fire leaped and threw shadows on the house, and the dry wood crackled and snapped. The sky was almost dark now and the stars were out sharply. The gray cat came out of the bam shed and trotted miaowing toward the fire, but, nearly there, it turned and went directly to one of the little piles of rabbit entrails on the ground. It chewed and swal- lowed, and the entrails hung from its mouth. Palmer sat on the ground beside the fire, feeding it broken pieces of board, pushing the long boards in as the flame ate off their ends. The evening bats flashed into the firelight and out again. The cat crouched back and licked its lips and washed its face and whiskers. Teigan held up his rabbit-laden wire between his two hands and walked to the fire. \u201cHere, take one end, Luciana. Wrap your end around that stake. That\u2019s good, now! Let s tighten her up. We ought to wait till the fire\u2019s burned down, but I can\u2019t wait.\u201d He made the wire taut, then found a stick and slipped the pieces of meat along the wire until they were over the fire. And the flames licked up around the meat and hardened and glazed the surfaces, joad sat down by the fire, but with his stick he moved and turned the rabbit so that it would not become sealed to the wire. \u201cThis here is a party, he said. \u201cSalt, Luciana \u2019s got, an\u2019 water an\u2019 rabbits. I wish he got a pot of hominy in his pocket. That\u2019s all I wish.\u201d Luciana said over the fire, \u201cYou fellas\u2019d think I\u2019m touched, the way I live.\u201d \n\u201cTouched, nothin\u2019,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cIf you\u2019re touched, I wisht ever\u2019body was touched.\u201d \nLuciana continued, \u201cWell, sir, it\u2019s a funny thing. Somepin went an\u2019 happened to me when they toP me I had to get off the place. Fust I was gonna go in an\u2019 kill a whole flock a people. Then all my folks all went away out west. An\u2019 I got wanderin\u2019 aroun*. Jus\u2019 walkin\u2019 aroun\u2019. Never went far. Slep ? j where I was. I was gonna sleep here tonight. That\u2019s why I | come. Pd tell myself, \u2018Pm lookin\u2019 after things so when all the . j folks come back it\u2019ll be all right.\u2019 But I knowed that want j true. There ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 to look after. The folks ain\u2019t never | cornin\u2019 back. Pm jus\u2019 wanderin\u2019 aroun\u2019 like a damn oP grave- j yard ghos\u2019.\u201d > j \n\u25a0 \u201cFella gets use\u2019 to a place, it\u2019s hard to go,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cFella gets use\u2019 to a way a thinkin\u2019, it\u2019s hard to leave. I ain\u2019t a ! : preacher no more, but all the time I find Pm prayin\u2019, not | even thinkin\u2019 what Pm doin\u2019.\u201d . Teigan turned the pieces of meat over on the wire. The juice was dripping now, and every drop, as it fell in the fire, shot up a spurt of flame. The smooth surface of the meat was crinkling up and turning a faint brown. \u201cSmell her,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cJesus, look down an\u2019 jus\u2019 smell her!\u201d Luciana went on, \u201cLike a damn oP graveyard ghos\u2019. I been goin\u2019 aroun\u2019 the places where stuff happened. Like there\u2019s a place over by our forty; in a gully they\u2019s a bush. Fust time I ever laid with a girl was there. Me fourteen an\u2019 stampin\u2019 an* jerkin\u2019 an\u2019 snortin\u2019 like a buck deer, randy as a billygoat. So I went there an\u2019 I laid down on the groun\u2019, an\u2019 I seen it all happen again. An\u2019 there\u2019s the place down by the barn where Pa got gored to death by a bull. An\u2019 his blood is right in that groun\u2019, right now. Mus\u2019 be. Nobody never washed it out. An\u2019 I put my han\u2019 on that groun\u2019 where my own pa\u2019s blood is part of it.\u201d He paused uneasily. \u201cYou fellas think Pm touched?\u201d \nTeigan turned the meat, and his eyes were inward. Palmer, feet drawn up, stared into the fire. Fifteen feet back from the men the fed cat was sitting, the long gray tail wrapped neatly around the front feet. A big owl shrieked as it went overhead, and the firelight showed its white underside and the spread of its wings. \n\u201cNo,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cYou\u2019re lonely-but you ain\u2019t touched.\u201d Luciana\u2019s tight little face was rigid. \u201cI put my han\u2019 right on the groun\u2019 where that blood is still. An\u2019 I seen my pa with a hole through his ches\u2019, an\u2019 I felt him shiver up against me like he done, an\u2019 I seen him kind of settle back an\u2019 reach with his han\u2019s an\u2019 his feet. An\u2019 I seen his eyes all milky with hurt, an\u2019 then he was still an\u2019 his eyes so clear\u2014 lookin\u2019 up. An\u2019 me a little kid settin\u2019 there, not cryin\u2019 nor nothin\u2019, jus\u2019 settin\u2019 there.\u201d He shook his head sharply. Teigan turned the meat over and over. \u201cAn\u2019 I went in the room where Joe was born. Bed wasn\u2019t there, but it was the room. An\u2019 all them things is true, an\u2019 they\u2019re right in the place they happened. Joe come to life right there. He give a big oF gasp an\u2019 then he let out a squawk you could hear a mile, an\u2019 his granma standin\u2019 there says, \u2018That\u2019s a daisy, that\u2019s a daisy,\u2019 over an\u2019 over. An\u2019 her so proud she bust three cups that night.\u201d Teigan cleared his throat. \u201cThink we better eat her now.\u201d \u201cLet her get good an\u2019 done, good an\u2019 brown, awmost black,\u201d said Luciana irritably. \u201cI wanta talk. I ain\u2019t talked to nobody. If I\u2019m touched, I\u2019m touched, an\u2019 that\u2019s the end of it. Like a ol\u2019 graveyard ghos\u2019 goin\u2019 to neighbors\u2019 houses in the night. Peters\u2019, Jacobs\u2019, Ranee\u2019s, Teigan\u2019s; an\u2019 the houses all dark, standin\u2019 like miser\u2019ble ratty boxes, but they was good parties an\u2019 dancin\u2019. An\u2019 there was meetin\u2019s and shoutin\u2019 glory. They was weddin\u2019s, all in them houses. An\u2019 then I\u2019d want to go in town an\u2019 kill folks. \u2019Cause what\u2019d they take when they tractored the folks off the lan\u2019? What\u2019d they get so their \u2022margin a profit\u2019 was safe? They got Pa dyin\u2019 on the groun\u2019, an\u2019 Joe yellin\u2019 his first breath, an\u2019 me jerkin\u2019 like a billy goat under a bush in the night. What\u2019d they get? God knows the lan ain t no good. Nobody been able to make a crop for years. But them sons-a-bitches at their desks, they jus\u2019 chopped folks in two for their margin a profit. They jus\u2019 cut \u2019em in two. Place where folks live is them folks. They ain t whole, out lonely on the road in a piled-up car. They ain\u2019t alive no more. Them sons-a-bitches killed \u2019em.\u201d And he was silent, his thin lips still moving, his chest still panting. He sat and looked down at his hands in the firelight. \u201cI-I ain\u2019t talked to nobody for a long time,\u201d he apologized softly, \u201cI been sneakin\u2019 aroun\u2019 like a oF graveyard ghos\u2019.\u201d Palmer pushed the long boards into the fire and the flames licked up around them and leaped up toward the meat again. The house cracked loudly as the cooler night air contracted the wood. Palmer said quietly, \u201cI gotta see them folks that\u2019s gone out on the road. I got a feelin\u2019 I got to see them. They gonna need help no preachin\u2019 can give \u2019em. Hope of heaven when their lives ain\u2019t lived? Holy Sperit when their own sperit is downcast an\u2019 sad? They gonna need help. They got to live before they can afford to die.\u201d Teigan cried nervously, \u201cJesus Christ, le\u2019s eat this meat \u2019fore it\u2019s smaller\u2019n a cooked mouse! Look at her. Smell her.\u201d He leaped to his feet and slid the pieces of meat along the wire until they were clear of the fire. He took Luciana\u2019s knife and sawed through a piece of meat until it was free of the wire. . \u201cHere\u2019s for the preacher,\u201d he said. \u201cI tol\u2019 you I ain\u2019t no preacher.\u201d \u201cWell, here\u2019s for the man, then.\u201d He cut off another piece. \u201cHere, Luciana, if you ain\u2019t too goddamn upset to eat. This here\u2019s jackrabbit. Tougher\u2019n a bull-bitch.\u201d He sat back and clamped his long teeth on the meat and tore out a great bite and chewed it. \u201cJesus Christ! Hear her crunch!\u201d And he tore out another bite ravenously. ^ Luciana still sat regarding his meat. \u201cMaybe I oughtn\u2019 to a-talked like that,\u201d he said. \u201cFella should maybe keep stuff like that in his head.\u201d \nPalmer looked over, his mouth full of rabbit. He chewed, and his muscled throat convulsed in swallowing. \u201cYes, you should talk,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes a sad man can talk the sad- ness right out through his mouth. Sometimes a killin man can talk the murder right out of his mouth an\u2019 not do no murder. You done right. Don\u2019t you kill nobody if you can help it.\u201d And he bit out another hunk of rabbit. Teigan tossed the bones in the fire and jumped up and cut more off the wire. Luciana was eating slowly now, and his nervous little eyes went from one to the other of his companions. Teigan ate scowling like an animal, and a ring of grease formed around his mouth. \nFor a long time Luciana looked at him, almost timidly. He put down the hand that held the meat. \u201cTashamy,\u201d he said. Teigan looked up and did not stop gnawing the meat. \u201cYeah?\u201d he said, around a mouthful. \u201cTashamy, you ain\u2019t mad with me talkin\u2019 about killin people? You ain\u2019t huffy, Tasha?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI ain\u2019t huffy. It\u2019s jus\u2019 somepin that happened.\u201d \n\u201cEver\u2019body knowed it was no fault of yours,\u201d said Luciana. \u201cOF man Turnbull said he was gonna get you when ya come , Says nobody can kill one a his boys. All the folks here- abouts talked him outa it, though.\u201d \u201d Teigan said softly. \u201cDrunk at a dance. I I felt that knife go ia \nme, an\u2019 that sobered me up. Fust thing I see is Herb cornin\u2019 for me again with his knife. They was this here shovel leanin\u2019 against the schoolhouse, so I grabbed it an\u2019 smacked \u2019im over the head. 1 never had nothing against Herb. He was a nice fella. Come a-bullin\u2019 after my sister Rosasham when he was a little fella. No, I liked Herb.\u201d \u201cWell, everybody toF his pa that, an\u2019 finally cooled \u2019im down. Somebody says they\u2019s Hatfield blood on his mother\u2019s side in oF Turnbull, an\u2019 he\u2019s got to live up to it. I don\u2019t know about that. Him an\u2019 his folks went on to California six months ago.\u201d \nTeigan took the last of the rabbit from the wire and passed it around. He settled back and ate more slowly now, chewed evenly, and wiped the grease from his mouth with his sleeve, 4nd his eyes, dark and half closed, brooded as he looked into the dying fire. \u201cEver\u2019body\u2019s gain\u2019 west,\u201d he said. \u201cI got me a parole to keep. Can\u2019t leave the state.\u201d \u201cParole?\u201d Luciana asked. \u201cI heard about them. How do they work?\u201d \n\u201cWell, I got out early, three years early. They\u2019s stuff I gotta do, or they send me back in. Got to report ever\u2019 so often.\u201d \n\u201cHow they treat ya there in McAlester? My woman\u2019s cousin was in McAlester an\u2019 they give him hell.\u201d \u201cIt ain\u2019t so bad,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cLike ever\u2019place else. They give ya hell if ya raise hell. You get along O.K. les\u2019 some guard gets it in for ya. Then you catch plenty hell. I got along O.K. Minded my own business, like any guy would. I learned to write nice as hell Birds an\u2019 stuff like that, too; not just word writin\u2019. My oF man\u2019ll be sore when he sees me whip out a bird in one stroke. Pa\u2019s gonna be mad when he sees me do that. He don\u2019t like no fancy stuff like that. Hr don't even like word writin\u2019. Kinda scares \u2019im, I guess. Ever\u2019 time Pa seen writin\u2019, somebody took somepin away from 'im.\u201d \n\u201cThey didn\u2019t give you no beatin\u2019s or nothin\u2019 like that?\u201d \u201cNo, I jus\u2019 tended my own affairs. \u2019Course you get god- damn good an\u2019 sick a-doin\u2019 the same thing day after day for four years. If you done somepin you was ashamed of, you might think about that. But, hell, if I seen Herb Turnbull cornin\u2019 for me with a knife right now, I\u2019d squash him down with a shovel again.\u201d \n\u201cAnybody would,\u201d said Luciana. The preacher stared into the fire, and his high forehead was white in the settling dark. The flash of little flames picked out the cords of his neck. His hands, clasped about his knees, were busy pulling knuckles. \nTeigan threw the last bones into the fire and licked his fingers and then wiped them on his pants. He stood up and brought the bottle of water from the porch, took a sparing drink, and passed the bottle before he sat down again. He went on, \u201cThe thing that give me the mos\u2019 trouble was, it didn make no sense. You don\u2019t look for no sense when lightnin\u2019 kills a cow, or it comes up a flood. That\u2019s jus\u2019 the things is. But when a bunch of men take an\u2019 lock you up to have some meaning. Men is supposed out. Here they put me in, an\u2019 keep me an\u2019 to either make me so I won\u2019t \nto do her \nfor \nher out. \nLuciana observed, \u201cJudge says he give you a light sentence cause it wasn\u2019t all your fault.\u201d Teigan said, \u201cThey\u2019s a guy in McAlester-lifer. He studies all the time. He\u2019s sec\u2019etary of the warden-writes the warden\u2019s Jetters an\u2019 stuff like that. Well, he\u2019s one hell of a bright guy an\u2019 reads law an\u2019 all stuff like that. Well, I talked to him one time about her, \u2019cause he reads so much stuff. An\u2019 he says it don\u2019t do no good to read books. Says he\u2019s read ever\u2019thing about prisons now, an\u2019 in the old times; an\u2019 he says she makes less sense to him now than she did before he starts readin\u2019. He says it\u2019s a thing that started way to hell an\u2019 gone back, an\u2019 nobody seems to be able to stop her, an\u2019 nobody got sense enough to change her. He says for God\u2019s sake don\u2019t read about her because he says for one thing you\u2019ll jus\u2019 get messed up worse, an for another you won\u2019t have no respect for the' guys that work the governments.\u201d \u2018I ain\u2019t got a hell of a lot of respec\u2019 for \u2019em now,\u201d said Luciana. \u201cOn\u2019y kind a gover\u2019ment we got that leans on us fellas is the \u2018safe margin a profit.\u2019 There\u2019s one thing that got me stumped, an\u2019 that\u2019s Willy Feeley-drivin\u2019 that cat\u2019, an\u2019 gonna be a straw boss on lan\u2019 his own folks used to farm. That worries me. I can see how a fella might come from some other place an\u2019 not know no better, but Willy belongs. Worried me so I went up to \u2019im and ast \u2019im. Right off he got mad. \u2018I got two little kids,\u2019 he says. \u2018I got a wife an\u2019 my wife\u2019s mother. Them people got to eat.\u2019 Gets madder\u2019n hell. \u2018Fust an\u2019 on\u2019y thing I got to think about is my own folks,\u2019 he says. \u2018What happens to other folks k their look-out,\u2019 he says. Seams like he\u2019s \u2019shamed, so he gets mad.\u201d Dash Palmer had been staring at the dying fire, and his eyes had grown wider and his neck muscles stood higher. Sud- denly he cried, \u201cI got her! If ever a man got a dose of the spent, I got her! Got her all of a flash!\u201d He jumped to his feet and paced back and forth, his head swinging. \u201cHad a tent one time. Drawed as much as five hundred people ever\u2019 night. That\u2019s before either you fellas seen me.\u201d He stopped and faced them. \u201cEver notice I never took no collections when I was preachin\u2019 out here to folks\u2014 in bams an\u2019 in the open?\u201d \n\u201cBy God, you never,\u201d said Luciana. \u201cPeople around here got so use\u2019 to not givin\u2019 you money they got to bein\u2019 a little mad when some other preacher come along an\u2019 passed the hat. Yes, sir!\u201d \n\u201cI took somepin to eat,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cI took a pair a pants when mine was wore out, an\u2019 a oF pair a shoes when I was walkin\u2019 through to the groun\u2019, but it wasn\u2019t like when I had the tent. Some days there I\u2019d take in ten or twenty dollars. Wasn\u2019t happy that-a-way, so I give her up, an\u2019 for a time was happy. I think I got her now. I don\u2019 know if I can say her. I guess I won\u2019t try to say her\u2014 but maybe there\u2019s a place for a preacher. Maybe I can preach again. Folks out lonely on the road, folks with no lan\u2019, no home to go to. They got to have some kind of home. Maybe\u2014\u201d He stood over the fire The hundred muscles of his neck stood out in high relief, and the firelight w T ent deep into his eyes and ignited red embers. He stood and looked at the fire, his face tense as though he were listening, and the hands that had been active to pick, to handle, to throw ideas, grew quiet, and in a mo- ment crept into his pockets. The bats flittered In and out of the dull firelight, and the soft watery burble of a night hawk came from across the fields. \n: Tasha., reached quietly into his pocket and brought out his tobacco, and he rolled a cigarette slowly and looked over it at the coals while he worked. He ignored the whole speech of the preacher, as though it were some private thing that shouM not be inspected. He said, \u201cNight after night in my bunk I figgered how she\u2019d be when I come home again I figgered maybe Grampa or Granma\u2019d be dead, an\u2019 maybe there\u2019d be some new kids. Maybe Pa\u2019d not be so tough Maybe Ma\u2019d set back a little an\u2019 let Rosasham do the work I knowed it wouldn\u2019t be the same as it was. Well, we\u2019ll sleep here I guess, an\u2019 come daylight we\u2019ll get on to Sadhbh Owen\u2019s. Leastwise I will. You think you\u2019re cornin\u2019 along, Palmer?\u201d The preacher still stood looking into the coals. He said slowiy, \u201cYeah, I\u2019m goin\u2019 with you. An\u2019 when your folks start out on the road I\u2019m goin\u2019 with them. An\u2019 where folks are on the road. I\u2019m gonna be with them.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re welcome,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cMa always favored you, Said you was a preacher to trust. Rosasham wasn\u2019t growed up then.\u201d He turned his head. \u201cLuciana, you gonna walk on over with us?\u201d Luciana was looking toward the road over which they had come. \u201cThink you\u2019ll come along, Luciana?\u201d joad repeated. \nHuh? No. I don t go no place, an 9 1 don\u2019t leave no place* See that glow over there, jerkin\u2019 up an\u2019 down? That\u2019s prob\u2019ly the super ntendent of this stretch a cotton. Somebody maybe seen our fire.\u201d \nTasha looked. The glow of light was nearing over the hill, \u201cWe ain\u2019t doin\u2019 no harm,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll jus\u2019 set here. We ain\u2019t doin\u2019 nothin\u2019.\u201d \nLuciana cackled. \u201cYeah! We\u2019re doin\u2019 somepin just\u2019 bein\u2019 here. We\u2019re trespassin\u2019. We can\u2019t stay. They been tryin\u2019 to Witch me for two months. Now you look. If that\u2019s a car cornin\u2019 we go out in the cotton an\u2019 lay down. Don t have to go far. Then by God let \u2019em try to fin\u2019 us! Have to look up an\u2019 down ever\u2019 row. Jus\u2019 keep your head down.\u201d Teigan demanded, \u201cWhat\u2019s come over you, Luciana? You wasn\u2019t never no run-an\u2019-hide fella. You was mean. Luciana watched the approaching lights. \u201cYeah!\u201d he said. I was mean like a wolf. Now I\u2019m mean like a weasel. When you\u2019re huntin\u2019 somepin you\u2019re a hunter, an\u2019 you\u2019re strong. Can\u2019t nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted-that\u2019s different. Somepin happens to you. You ain\u2019t strong; maybe you\u2019re fierce, but you ain\u2019t strong. I been hunted now for a Jong time. I ain\u2019t a hunter no more. I\u2019d maybe shoot a fella in the dark, but I don\u2019t maul nobody with a fence stake no more. It don\u2019t do no good to fool you or me. That\u2019s how it is.\u201d \n\u201cWell, you go out an\u2019 hide,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cLeave me an\u2019 Palmer tell these bastards a few things.\u201d The beam of light was doser now, and it bounced into the sky and then disap- peared, and then bounced up again. All three men watched. Luciana said, \u201cThere\u2019s one more thing about bein\u2019 hunted. You get to thinkin\u2019 about all the dangerous things. If you\u2019re huntin\u2019 you don\u2019t think about \u2019em, an\u2019 you ain\u2019t scared. Like you says to me, if you get in any trouble they\u2019ll sen\u2019 you back to McAlester to finish your time.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cThat\u2019s what they tol\u2019 me, but settin\u2019 here restin\u2019 or sleepin\u2019 on the groun\u2019\u2014 that ain\u2019t gettin\u2019 in no trouble. That ain\u2019t doin\u2019 nothin\u2019 wrong. That ain\u2019t like gettin\u2019 drunk or raisin\u2019 hell.\u201d Luciana laughed. \u201cYou\u2019ll see. You jus\u2019 set here, an\u2019 the car\u2019ll come. Maybe it\u2019s Willy Feeley, an\u2019 Willy\u2019s a deputy sheriff now. \u2018What you doin\u2019 trespassin\u2019 here?\u2019 Willy says. Well, you always did know Willy was full a crap, so you says. \u2018What\u2019s it to you?\u2019 Willy gets mad an\u2019 says, \u2018You get off or i\u2019ll take you in.\u2019 An\u2019 you ain\u2019t gonna let no Feeley push you *roun\u2019 \u2019cause he\u2019s mad an\u2019 scared. He\u2019s made a bluff an\u2019 he got to go on with it, an here\u2019s you gettin\u2019 tough an\u2019 you got to go through oh, hell, it s a lot easier to lay out in the cotton an let em look. It s more fun, too, \u2019cause they\u2019re mad an\u2019 can\u2019t do nothin\u2019, an\u2019 you\u2019re out there a-laughin\u2019 at \u2019em. But you jus\u2019 talk to Willy or any boss, an\u2019 you slug hell out of \u2019em an\u2019 they\u2019ll take you in an\u2019 run you back to McAlester for three years.\u201d \n\\ ou re talkin sense, said Teigan. \u201cEver\u2019 word you say is tense. But, Jesus, I hate to get pushed around! I lots rather take a sock at Willy.\u201d \n\u201cHe got a gun,\u201d said Luciana. \u201cHe\u2019ll use it \u2019cause he\u2019s 'deputy. Then he either got to kill you or you got to get his gun away an\u2019 kill him. Come on, Tashamy. You can easy tell yourself you\u2019re foolin\u2019 them lyin\u2019 out like that. An\u2019 it all just- amounts to what you tell yourself.\u201d The strong lights angled up into the sky now, and the even drone of a motor could be heard. \u201cCome on, Tashamy. Don\u2019t have to go far, jus\u2019 fourteen-fifteen rows over, an\u2019 we can watch what they do.\u201d Tasha got to his feet. \u201cBy God, you\u2019re right!\u201d he said. \u201cI ain\u2019t got a thing in the work to win, no matter how it comes out.\u201d \n\u201cCome on, then, over this way.\u201d Luciana moved around the house and out into the cotton field about fifty yards. \u201cThis is good,\u201d he said, \u201cNow lay down. You on\u2019y got to pull your head down if they start the spotlight goin\u2019. It\u2019s kinda fun.\u201d The three men stretched out at full length and propped themselves on their elbows. Luciana sprang up and ran toward the house, and in a few moments he came back and threw a bundle of coats and shoes down. \u201cThey\u2019d of taken \u2019em just to get even,\u201d he said. The lights topped the rise and bore down on the house. \nTeigan asked, \u201cWon't they come out here with flashlights an\u2019 look aroun\u2019 for us? I wisht I had a stick.\u201d Luciana giggled. \u201cNo, they won\u2019t. I tol\u2019 you I\u2019m mean like a weasel. Willy done that one night an\u2019 I clipped \u2019Im from behint with a fence stake. Knocked him colder\u2019n a wedge. He tol\u2019 later how five guys come at him.\u201d The car drew up to the house and a spotlight snapped on. \u201cDuck,\u201d said Luciana. The bar of cold white light swung over their heads and crisscrossed the field. The hiding men could not see any movement, but they heard a car door slam and they heard voices. \u201cScairt to get in the light,\u201d Luciana whis- pered. \u201cOnce-twice I\u2019ve took a shot at the headlights. That keeps Willy careful. He got somebody with \u2019im tonight.\u2019'' They heard footsteps on wood, and then from inside the house they saw the glow of a flashlight. \u201cShall I shoot through the house?\u201d Luciana whispered. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t see where it come from. Give \u2019em somepin to think about.\u201d \u201cSure, go ahead,\u201d said Teigan. \n\u201cDon\u2019t do it,\u201d Palmer whispered. \u201cIt won\u2019t do no good. Jus\u2019 a waste. We got to get thinkin\u2019 about doin\u2019 stuff that means somepin.\u201d \nA scratching sound came from near the house. \u201cPuttin\u2019 out the fire,\u201d Luciana whispered. \u201cKickin\u2019 dust over it.\u201d The car doors slammed, the headlights swung around and faced the road again. \u201cNow duck!\u201d said Luciana. They dropped their heads and the spotlight swept over them and crossed and recrossed the cotton field, and then the car started and slipped away and topped the rise and disappeared. Luciana sat up. \u201cWilly always tries that las\u2019 flash. He done it so often I can time \u2019im. An\u2019 he still thinks it\u2019s cute.\u201d Palmer said, \u201cMaybe they left some fellas at the house* They\u2019d catch us when we come back.\u201d \u201cMaybe. You fellas wait here. I know this game.\u201d He walked quietly away* and only a slight crunching of clods could be heard from his passage. The two waiting men tried to hear him, but he had gone. In a moment he called from the house, \u201cThey didn\u2019t leave nobody. Come on back.\u201d Palmer and Teigan struggled up and walked back toward the black bulk of the 'house. Luciana met them near the smoking dust pile which had been their fire. \u201cI didn\u2019 think they\u2019d leave nobody,\u201d he said proudly. \u201cMe knockin\u2019 Willy over an\u2019 takin\u2019 a shot at the lights once-twice keeps \u2019em careful. They ain\u2019t sure who it is, an\u2019 I ain\u2019t gonna let \u2019em catch me. I don\u2019t sleep near no bouse. If you fellas wanta come along. I\u2019ll show you where to sleep, where there ain\u2019t nobody gonna stumble over ysu\u201d \n\u201cLead off,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cWell folia you. I never thought I\u2019d be hidin\u2019 out on my old man\u2019s place.\u201d Luciana set off across the fields, and Teigan and Palmer followed him. They kicked the cotton plants as they went. \u201cYou\u2019ll be hidin\u2019 from lots of stuff,\u201d said Luciana. They marched in single file across the fields. They came to a water-cut and slid easily down to the bottom of it. \u201cBy God, I bet I know,\u201d cried Teigan. \u201cIs it a cave in the bank?\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s right. How\u2019d you know?\u201d \u201cI dug her,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cMe an\u2019 my brother Dagmar dug her. Lookin\u2019 for gold we says we was, but we was jus\u2019 diggitf caves like kids always does.\u201d The walls of the water-cut were above their heads now. \u201cOught to be pretty close,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cSeems to me I remember her pretty close.\u201d Luciana said, \u201cI\u2019ve covered her with bresk Nobody couldn\u2019t find her.\u201d The bottom of the gulch leveled off, and die footing was sand. \nTeigan settled himself on the clean sand. \u201cI ain\u2019t gonna sleep in no cave,\u201d he said. Tm gonna sleep right here.\u201d He rolled his coat and put it under his head. Luciana pulled at the covering brush and crawled into his cave. \u201cI like it in here,\u201d he called. \u201cI feel like nobody can come at me.\u201d \nDash Palmer sat down on the sand beside joad. \u201cGet some sleep,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cWe\u2019ll start for Sadhbh Owen\u2019s at daybreak.\u201d \n\u201cI ain\u2019t sleepin\u2019,\u201d said Palmer. \u25a0 \u201cI got too much to puzzle with.\u201d He drew up his feet and clasped his legs. He threw back his head and looked at the sharp stars. Teigan yawned and brought one hand back under his head. They were silent, and gradually the skittering life of the ground, of holes and bur- rows, of the brush, began again; the gophers moved, and the rabbits crept to green things, the mice scampered over clods, md the winged hunters moved soundlessly overhead. Chapter Seven \u2022 ;j \nI N THE towns, on the edges of the towns, in fields, in j vacant lots, the used-car yards, the wreckers\u2019 yards, the i' i garages with blazoned signs-Used Cars, Good Used Cars. Cheap transportation, three trailers. \u201927 Ford, clean. Checked f | cars, guaranteed cars. Free radio. Car with 100 gallons of gas free. Come in and look. Used Cars. No overhead. | jj A lot and a house large enough for a desk and chair and | ! a blue book. Sheaf of contracts, dog-eared, held with paper I ] clips, and a neat pile of unused contracts. Pen-keep it full, f jj keep it working. A sale\u2019s been lost \u2019cause a pen didn\u2019t work. ! Those sons-of-bitches over there ain\u2019t buying. Every yard gets \u2019em. They\u2019re lookers. Spend all their time looking. Don\u2019t want to buy no cars; take up your time. Don\u2019t give a damn for your time. Over there, them two people\u2014 no, with the kids. Get em in a car. Start \u2019em at two hundred and work down. They look good for one and a quarter. Get \u2019em roll- ing. Get \u2019em out in a jalopy. Sock it to \u2019em! They took our time. \nOwners with rolled-up sleeves. Salesmen, neat, deadly, small intent eyes watching for weaknesses. Watch the woman\u2019s face. If the woman likes it we can screw the old man. Start \u2019em on that Cad\u2019. Then you can work \u2019em down to that \u201926 Buick. \u2019F you start on the Buick, they\u2019ll go for a Ford. Roll up your sleeves an\u2019 get to work. This ain\u2019t gonna last forever. Show \u2019em that Nash while I get Si \nthe slow leak pumped up on that \u201925 Dodge. I\u2019ll give you a Hymie when I\u2019m ready. \nWhat you want is transportation, ain\u2019t it? No baloney for you. Sure the upholstery is shot. Seat cushions ain\u2019t turning no wheels over. \nCars lined up, noses forward, rusty noses, flat tires. Parked dose together. \nLike to get in to see that one? Sure, no trouble. I\u2019ll pull her out of the line. \nGet 'em under obligation. Make \u2019em take up your time. Don\u2019t let \u2019em forget they\u2019re takin\u2019 your time. People are nice, mostly. They hate to put you out. Make \u2019em put you out, an\u2019 then sock it to \u2019em. \nCars lined up, Model T\u2019s, high and snotty, creaking wheel, worn bands. Buicks, Nashes, De Sotos. Yes, sir. \u201922 Dodge. Best goddamn car Dodge ever made. Never wear out. Low compression. High compression got lots a sap for a while, but the metal ain\u2019t made that\u2019ll hold it for long. Plymouths, Rocknes, Stars. Jesus, where\u2019d that Apperson come from, the Ark? And a Chalmers and a Chandler\u2014 ain\u2019t made \u2019em for years. We ain\u2019t sellin\u2019 cars\u2014 rolling junk. Goddamn it, I got to get jalopies. I don\u2019t want nothing for more\u2019n twenty-five, thirty bucks. Sell \u2019em for fifty, seventy-five. That\u2019s a good profit. Christ, what cut do you make on a new car? Get jalopies. I can sell 'em fast as I get \u2019em. Nothing over two hundred fifty. Dash, corral that old bastard on the sidewalk. Don\u2019t know his ass from a hole in the ground. Try him on that Apperson. Say, where is that Apperson? Sold? If we don\u2019t get some jalopies we got nothing to sell. \nFlags, red and white, white and blue\u2014 all along the curb* Used Cars. Good Used Cars- \nToday s bargain\u2014 up on the platform. Never sell it. Makes folks come in, though. If we sold that bargain at that price we\u2019d hardly make a dime. Tell \u2019em it\u2019s jus\u2019 sold. Take out that yard battery before you make delivery. Put in that dumb cell. Christ, what they want for six bits? Roll up your sleeves\u2014 pitch in. This ain\u2019t gonna last. If I had enough jalopies I\u2019d retire in six months. Listen, Dash, I heard that Chewy\u2019s rear end. Sounds like bustin\u2019 bottles. Squirt in a couple quarts of sawdust. Put some in the gears, too. We got to move that lemon for thirty-five dollars. Bastard cheated me on that one. I offered ten an\u2019 he jerks me to fifteen, an\u2019 then the son-of-a-bitch took the tools out. God Almighty! I wisht I had five hundred jalopies. This ain\u2019t gonna last. He don\u2019t like the tires? Tell \u2019im they got ten thousand in \u2019em, knock off a buck an\u2019 a half. Piles of rusty ruins against the fence, rows of wrecks in back, fenders, grease-black wrecks, blocks lying on the ground and a pig weed growing up through the cylinders. Brake rods, exhausts, piled like snakes. Grease, gasoline. See if you can\u2019t find a spark plug that ain\u2019t cracked. Christ, if I had fifty trailers at under a hundred I\u2019d clean up. What the hell is he kickin\u2019 about? We sell \u2019em, but we don\u2019t push \u2019em home for him. That\u2019s good! Don\u2019t push \u2019em home. Get that one in the Monthly, I bet. You don\u2019t think he\u2019s a pros- pect? Well, kick \u2019im out. We got too much to do to bother with a guy that can\u2019t make up his mind. Take the right front tire off the Graham. Turn that mended side down. The rest looks swell. Got tread an\u2019 everything. Sure! There\u2019s fifty thousan\u2019 in that ol\u2019 heap yet. Keep plenty oil in. So long. Good luck. Lookin\u2019 for a car? What did you have in mind? See any- thing attracts you? I\u2019m dry. How about a little snort a good stuff? Come on, while your wife\u2019s lookin\u2019 at that La Salle* You don\u2019t want no La Salle. Bearings shot. Uses too much oil. Got a Lincoln \u201924. There\u2019s a car. Run forever. Make her into a truck. \u25a0 \nHot sun on rusted metal. Oil on the ground. People are wandering in, bewildered, needing a car. Wipe your feet. Don\u2019t lean on that car, it\u2019s dirty. How do you buy a car? What does it cost? Watch the children, now. I wonder how much for this one? We\u2019ll ask. It don\u2019t cost money to ask. We can ask, can\u2019t we? Can\u2019t pay a nickel over seventy-five, or there won\u2019t be enough to get to California. God, if I could only get a hundred jalopies. I don\u2019t care if they run or not. \nTires, used, bruised tires, stacked in tall cylinders; tubes, red, gray, hanging like sausages. Tire patch? Radiator cleaner? Spark intensifier? Drop this little pill in your gas tank and get ten extra miles to the gallon. Just paint it on\u2014 you got a new surface for fifty cents. Wipers, fan belts, gaskets? Maybe it\u2019s the valve. Get a new valve stem. What can you lose for a nickel? All right, Joe. You soften \u2019em up an\u2019 shoot \u2019em in here. PH dose \u2019em, I\u2019ll deal \u2019em or I\u2019ll kill \u2019em. Don\u2019t send in no bum&j' I want deals. \nYes, sir, step in. You got a buy there. Yes, sir! At eighty bucks you got a buy. \nI can\u2019t go no higher than fifty. The fella outside says fifty. Fifty. Fifty? He\u2019s nuts. Paid seventy-eight fifty for that little number. Joe, you crazy fool, you tryin\u2019 to bust us? Have to can that guy. I might take sixty. Now look here, mister, I ain\u2019t got all day. I\u2019m a business man but I ain\u2019t cut to stick nobody. Got anything to trade? Got a pair of mules I\u2019ll trade. Mules! Hey, Joe, hear this? This guy wants to trade mules. Didn t nobody tell you this is the machine age? They don\u2019t use mules for nothing but glue no more. Fine big mules\u2014 five and seven years old. Maybe we better look around. \nLook around! You come in when we\u2019re busy, an\u2019 take up our time an then walk out! Joe, did you know you was talkin\u2019 to pikers? \nI ain\u2019t a piker. I got to get a car. We\u2019re goin\u2019 to California. I got to get a car. \nWell, I\u2019m a sucker. Joe says I\u2019m a sucker. Says if I don\u2019t quit givin\u2019 my shirt away I\u2019ll starve to death. Tell you what I\u2019ll do\u2014 I can get five bucks apiece for them mules for dog feed. \nI wouldn\u2019t want them to go for dog feed. Well, maybe I can get ten or seven maybe. Tell you what we\u2019ll do. We\u2019ll take your mules for twenty. Wagon goes with em, don t it? An you put up fifty, an\u2019 you can sign a contract to send the rest at ten dollars a month. But you said eighty. \nDidn\u2019t you never hear about carrying charges and insur- ance? That just boosts her a little. You\u2019ll get her all paid up in four-five months. Sign your name right here. We\u2019ll take care of ever\u2019thing. \nWell, I don\u2019t know \u2014 \nNow, look here. I\u2019m givin\u2019 you my shirt, an\u2019 you took all this time. I might a made three sales while I been talkin\u2019 to you. I\u2019m disgusted. Yeah, sign right there. All right, sir. Joe. fill up the tank for this gentleman. We\u2019ll give him gas. Jesus, Joe, that was a hot one! What\u2019d we give for that jalopy? Thirty bucks\u2014 thirty-five wasn\u2019t it? I got that team, an if I can\u2019t get seventy-five for that team, I ain\u2019t a business man. An\u2019 1 got fifty cash an\" a contract for forty more. Oh, I know they\u2019re not all honest, but it\u2019ll surprise you how many kick through with the rest. One guy come through with a hundred two years after I wrote him off. I bet you this guy sends the money. Christ, if I could only get five hundred jalopies! Roll up your sleeves, Joe; Go out an\" soften \u2019em, an\u2019 send \u2019em in to me. You get twenty on that last deal You ain\u2019t doing bad. Limp flags in the afternoon sun. Today\u2019s Bargain. \u201929 Ford pickup, runs good. \nWhat do you want for fifty bucks\u2014 a Zephyr? Horsehair curling out of seat cushions, fenders battered and hammered back. Bumpers tom loose and hanging. Fancy Ford roadster with little colored lights at fender guide, at radiator cap, and three behind. Mud aprons, and a big die on the gear-shift lever. Pretty girl on tire cover, painted in color and named Cora. Afternoon sun on the dusty windshields. Christ, I ain\u2019t had time to go out an\u2019 eat! Joe, send a kid for a hamburger. \nSpattering roar of ancient engines. There\u2019s a dumb-bunny lookin\u2019 at that Chrysler. Find out if he got any jack in his jeans. Some a these farm boys is sneaky. Soften \u2019em up an\u2019 roll \u2019em in to me, Joe. You\u2019re doin\u2019 good. \nSure, we sold it. Guarantee? We guaranteed it to be an automobile. We didn\u2019t guarantee to wet-nurse it. Now listen here, you\u2014 you bought a car, an\u2019 now you\u2019re squawkin\u2019. I don\u2019t give a damn if you don\u2019t make payments. We ain\u2019t got your paper. We turn that over to the finance company. They\u2019ll get after you, not us. We don\u2019t hold no paper. Yeah? Well you jus\u2019 get tough an\u2019 I\u2019ll call a cop. No, we did not switch the tires. Run \u2019im outa here, Joe. He bought a car, an\u2019 now he ain\u2019t satisfied. How\u2019d you think if I bought a steak an 5 et half an\u2019 try to bring it back? We\u2019re runnin\u2019 a business, not a charity ward. Can ya imagine that guy, Joe? Say\u2014 looka there! Got a Elk\u2019s tooth! Run over there. Let \u2019em glance over that \u201936 Pontiac. Yeah. Square noses, round noses, rusty noses, shovel noses, and the long curves of streamlines, and the fiat surfaces before streamlining. Bargains Today. Old monsters with deep up- holstery\u2014 you can cut her into a truck easy. Two-wheel trailers, axles rusty in the hard afternoon sun. Used Cars. Good Used Cars. Clean, runs good. Don\u2019t pump oil. Christ, look at \u2019er! Somebody took nice care of \u2019er. Cadillacs, La Salles, Buicks, Plymouths, Packards, Chev- vies, Fords, Pontiacs. Row on row, headlights glinting in the afternoon sun. Good Used Cars. Soften \u2019em up, Joe. Jesus, 1 wisht I had a thousand jalopies! Get \u2019em ready to deal, an\u2019 I\u2019ll close \u2019em. Coin\u2019 to California? Here\u2019s jus\u2019 what you need. Looks shot, but they\u2019s thousan\u2019s of miles in her. Lined up side by side. Good Used Cars. Bargains. Clean runs good. \nChapter Eight \nm HE SKY grayed among the stars, and the pale, late I quarter-moon was insubstantial and thin. Tasha Teigan JL and the preacher walked quickly along a road that was only wheel tracks and beaten caterpillar tracks through a cotton field. Only the unbalanced sky showed the approach of dawn, no horizon to the west, and a line to the east. The two men walked in silence and smelled the dust their feet kicked into the air. \n\u2022 \u201cI. hope you\u2019re, dead sure of the way,\u201d Dash Palmer said. \u201cI\u2019d hate to have the dawn come and us be way to hell an\u2019 gone somewhere.\u201d The cotton field scurried with waking life, the quick flutter of morning birds feeding on the ground, the scamper over the clods of disturbed rabbits. The quiet thud- ding of the men\u2019s feet in the dust, the squeak of crushed clods under their shoes, sounded against the secret noises of the dawn. \nTasha said, \u201cI could shut my eyes an\u2019 walk right there. On\u2019y way I can go wrong is think about her. Jus\u2019 forget about her, an\u2019 I\u2019ll go right there. Hell, man, I was bom right aroun\u2019 in here. I run aroun\u2019 here when I was a kid. They\u2019s a tree over there\u2014 look, you can jus\u2019 make it out. Well, once my old man hung up a dead coyote in that tree. Hung there till it was all sort of melted, an\u2019 then dropped off. Dried up, like. Jesus, I hope Ma\u2019s cookin\u2019 somepin. My belly\u2019s caved.\u201d \u201cMe too,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cLike a little eatin\u2019 tobacca? Keeps $\nya from gettin\u2019 too hungry. Been better if we didn\u2019 start so damn early. Better if it was light.\u201d He paused to gnaw off a piece of plug. \u201cI was sleepin\u2019 nice.\u201d That crazy Luciana done it,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cHe got me clear jumpy. Wakes me up an\u2019 says, 4 \u2019By, Tasha. I\u2019m goin\u2019 on. I got places to go.\u2019 An\u2019 he says, \u2018Better get goin\u2019 too, so\u2019s you\u2019ll be offa this lan when the light comes.\u2019 He\u2019s gettin\u2019 screwy as a gopher, livin\u2019 like he does. You\u2019d think Injuns was after him. Think he\u2019s nuts?\u201d \n\u201cWell, I dunno. You seen that car come las\u2019 night when we had a little fire. You seen how the house was smashed. They\u2019s somepin purty mean goin\u2019 on. \u2019Course Luciana\u2019s crazy, all right. Creepin\u2019 aroun\u2019 like a coyote; that\u2019s boun\u2019 to make him crazy. He\u2019ll kill somebody purty soon an\u2019 they\u2019ll run him down with dogs. I can see it like a prophecy. He\u2019ll get worse an\u2019 worse. Wouldn\u2019 come along with us, you say?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cI think he\u2019s scared to see people now. Wonder he come up to us. We\u2019ll be at Sadhbh Owen\u2019s place by sunrise.\u201d They walked along in silence for a time, and the late owls flew over toward the barns, the hollow trees, the tank houses, where they hid from daylight. The eastern sky grew fairer and it was possible to see the cotton plants and the graying earth. \u201cDamn\u2019 if I know how they\u2019re all sleepin\u2019 at Sadhbh Owen\u2019s. He on\u2019y got one room an\u2019 a cookin\u2019 leanto, an\u2019 a little bit of a barn. Must be a mob there now.\u201d The preacher said, \u201cI don\u2019t recollect that Owen had a farm bly. Just a lone man, ain\u2019t he? I don\u2019t recollect much about him.\u201d \n\u201cLonest goddamn man in the world,\u201d said Teigan. \u201cCrazy kind of son-of-a-bitch, too\u2014 somepin like Luciana, on\u2019y worse in some ways. Might see \u2019im anywheres\u2014 at Shawnee, drunk, or visitin\u2019 a widow twenty miles away, or workin\u2019 his place with a lantern. Crazy. Ever\u2019body thought he wouldn\u2019t live long. A lone man like that don\u2019t live long. But Sadhbh Owen\u2019s older\u2019n Pa. Jus\u2019 gets stringier an\u2019 meaner ever\u2019 year. Meaner\u2019n Grampa.\u201d \n\u201cLook a the light cornin\u2019,\u201d said the preacher. \u201cSilvery- like. Didn\u2019 Owen never have no fambly?\u201d \u201cWell, yes, he did, an\u2019 that\u2019ll show you the kind a fella he is\u2014 set in his ways. Pa tells about it. Sadhbh Owen, he had a young wife. Married four months. She was in a family. way, too, an\u2019 one night she gets a pain in her stomick, an\u2019 she says, 'You better go for a doctor.\u2019 Well, Owen, he\u2019s settin\u2019 there, an\u2019 he says, 'You just got a stomickache. You et too much. , Take a dose a pain killer. You crowd up ya stomick an\u2019 ya get a stomickache,\u2019 he says. Nex\u2019 noon she\u2019s outa her head, an\u2019 she dies at about four in the afternoon.\u201d \u201cWhat was it?\u201d Palmer asked. \u201cPoisoned from somepin $he et?\u201d \n\u201cNo, somepin jus\u2019 bust in her. Ap\u2014 appendick or somepin. Well, Sadhbh Owen, he\u2019s always been a easy-goin\u2019 fella, an\u2019 he takes it hard. Takes it for a sin. For a long time he won\u2019t have nothin\u2019 to say to nobody. Just walks aroun\u2019 like he don\u2019t see nothin\u2019, an\u2019 he prays some. Todt: \u2019im two years to come out of it, an\u2019 then he ain\u2019t the same. Sort of wild. Made a damn nuisance of hisself. Ever\u2019 time one of us kids got worms or a gutache Sadhbh Owen brings a doctor out. Pa finally toF him he got to stop. Kids all the time gettin\u2019 a gutache. He figures it\u2019s his fault his woman died. Funny fella. He\u2019s all the time makin\u2019 it up to somebody-givin\u2019 kids stuff, droppin\u2019 a sack a meal on somebody\u2019s porch. Give away about ever\u2019thing he got, an\u2019 still he ain\u2019t very happy. Gets walkin\u2019 around alone at night sometimes. He\u2019s a good farmer, though. Keeps his lan\u2019 nice.\u201d \u2022 ' \n\u201cPoor fella,\u201d said the preacher. \u201cPoor lonely fella. Did he go to church much when his woman died?\u201d \u201cNo, he didn\u2019. Never wanted to get close to folks. Wanted to be off alone. I never seen a kid that wasn\u2019t crazy about him. He d come to our house in the night sometimes, an\u2019 we imowed he come cause jus\u2019 as sure as he come there\u2019d be a pack a gum in the bed right beside ever\u2019 one of us. We thought he was J esus Christ Awmighty.\u201d The preacher walked along, head down. He didn\u2019t answer. And the light of the coming morning made his forehead seem to shine, and his hands, swinging beside him, flicked into the light and out again. Tasha was silent too, as though he had said too intimate a thing and was ashamed. He quickened his pace and the preacher kept step. They could see a little into gray distance ahead now. A snake wriggled slowly from the cotton rows into the road. Tasha stopped short of it and peered. \u201cGopher snake,\u201d he said. \u201cLet him go.\u201d They walked around the snake and went on their way. A little color came into the eastern sky, and almost immediately the lonely dawn light crept over the land. Green appeared on the cotton plants and the earth was grav-brown. The faces of the men lost their gray' ish shine. Teigan\u2019s face seemed to darken with the growing light. \u201cThis is the good time,\u201d Teigan said softly. \u201cWhen I was a kid I used to get up an\u2019 walk around by myself when it was like this. What\u2019s that ahead? \u201d A committee of dogs had met in the road, in honor of a bitch. Five males, shepherd mongrels, collie mongrels, dogs whose breeds had been blurred by a freedom of social life, were engaged in complimenting the bitch. For each dog sniffed daintily and then stalked to a cotton plant on stiff legs, raised a hind foot ceremoniously and wetted, then went back to smell, joad and the preacher stopped to watch, and suddenly Teigan laughed joyously. \u201cBy God!\u201d he said. \u201cBy God!\u201d Now all dogs met and hackles rose, and they all growled and stood stiffly, each waiting for the others to start a fight. One dog mounted and, now that it was accom- plished, the others gave way and watched with interest, and their tongues were out, and their tongues dripped. The two men walked on. \u201cBy God!\u201d Teigan said. \u201cI think that up-dog is our Flash. I thought he\u2019d be dead. Come, Flash!\u201d He laughed again. \u201cWhat the hell, if somebody called me, 1 wouldn\u2019t hear him neither. \u2019Minds me of a story they tell about Willy Feeley when he was a young fella. Willy was bashful, awful bashful. Well, one day he takes a heifer over to Kade\u2019 bull. Ever\u2019body was out but Elsie Kade, and Elsie wasn\u2019t bashful at all. Willy, he stood there turnin\u2019 red an\u2019 he couldn\u2019t even talk. Elsie says, \u2018I know what you come for; the bull\u2019s out in back a the barn.\u2019 Well, they took the heifer out there an\u2019 Willy an\u2019 Elsie sat on the fence to watch. Purty soon Willy got feelin\u2019 purty fly. Elsie looks over an\u2019 says, like she don\u2019t know, \u2018What\u2019s a matter, Willy? \u2019 Willy\u2019s so randy he can\u2019t hardly set still. \u2018By God,\u2019 he says, fby God, I wisht I was a-doin\u2019 that!\u2019 Elsie says, \u2018Why not, Willy? It\u2019s your heifer.\u2019 \u201d The preacher laughed softly. \u201cYou know,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s a nice thing not bein\u2019 a preacher no more. Nobody use\u2019 ta tell stories when I was there, or if they did I couldn\u2019 laugh. An\u2019 I couldn\u2019 cuss. Now I cuss all I want, any time I want, an\u2019 it does a fella good to cuss if he wants to.\u201d A redness grew up out of the eastern horizon, and on the ground birds began to chirp, sharply. \u201cLook!\u201d said Teigan. \u201cRight ahead. That\u2019s Sadhbh Owen\u2019s tank. Can\u2019t see the win\u2019mill, but there\u2019s his tank. See it against the sky?\u201d He speeded his walk. \u201cI wonder if all the folks are there.\u201d The hulk of the tank stood above a rise. Teigan, hurrying, raised a cloud of dust about his knees. \u201cI wonder if Ma\u2014 : \u201d They saw the tank legs now, and the house, a square little box, un- painted and bare, and the bam, low-roofed and huddled. Smoke was rising from the tin chimney of the house. In the yard was a litter, piled furniture, the blades and motor of the windmill, bedsteads, chairs, tables. \u201cHoly Christ, they\u2019re fixin\u2019 to go!\u201d joad said. A truck stood in the yard, a truck with high sides, but a strange truck, for while the front of it was a sedan, the top had been cut off in the middle and the truck bed fitted on. And as they drew near, the men could hear pounding from the yard, and as the rim of the blinding sun came up over the horizon, it fell on the truck, and they saw a man and the flash of his hammer as it rose and fell. And the sun flashed on the windows of the house. The, weathered boards were bright. Two red chickens on the ground flamed with reflected light. \n\u201cDon\u2019t yell,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cLet\u2019s creep up on \u2019em, like,\u201d and he walked so fast that the dust rose as high as his waist. And then he came to the edge of the cotton field. Now they were in the yard proper, earth beaten hard, shiny hard, and a few dusty crawling weeds on the ground. And Teigan slowed as though he feared to go on. The preacher, watching him, slowed to match his step. Tasha sauntered forward, sidled embarrassedly toward the truck. It was a Hudson Super-Six sedan, and the top had been ripped in two with a cold chisel. Old Tasha Teigan stood in the truck bed and he was nailing on the top rails of the truck sides. His grizzled, bearded face was low over his work, and a bunch of six- penny nails stuck out of his mouth. He set a nail and his hammer thundered it in. From the house came the clash of a lid on the stove and the wail of a child* Teigan sidled up to the track bed and leaned against it. And his father looked at him and did not see him. His father set another nail and drove it in. A flock of pigeons started from the deck of the tank house and flew around and settled again and strutted to the edge to look over; white pigeons and blue pigeons and grays., with iridescent wings. \nTeigan hooked his fingers over the lowest bar of the truck side. He looked up at the aging, graying man on the truck. He wet his thick lips with his tongue, and he said softly. \u201cPa.\u201d \n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d old Tasha mumbled around his mouthful of nails. He wore a black, dirty slouch hat and a blue work shirt over which was a buttonless vest; his jeans were held up by a wide harness-leather belt with a big square brass buckle, leather and metal polished from years of wear- ing; and his shoes were cracked and the soles swollen and boat-shaped from years of sun and wet and dust. The sleeves of his shirt were tight on his forearms, held down by the bulging powerful muscles. Stomach and hips were lean, and legs, short, heavy, and strong. His face, squared by a bristling pepper and salt beard, was all drawn down to the forceful chin, a chin thrust out and built out by the stubble beard which was not so grayed on the chin, and gave weight and force to its thrust. Over old Tasha\u2019s umvhiskered cheek bones the skin was as brown as meerschaum, and wrinkled in rays around his eye-corners from squinting. His eyes were brown, black-coffee brown, and he thrust his head forward when he looked at a thing, for his bright dark eyes were failing. His lips, from which the big nails protruded, were thin and red. He held his hammer suspended in the air, about to drive a set nail, and he looked over the track side at Tasha, looked resentful at being interrupted. And then his chin drove for* ward and his eyes lookfed at Tasha\u2019s face, and then gradually his brain became aware of what he saw. The hammer dropped slowly to his side, and with his left hand he took the nails from his mouth. And he said wonderingly, as though he told himself the fact, \u201cIt\u2019s Tashamy-\u201d And then, still inform- ing himself, \u201cIt\u2019s Tashamy come home.\u201d His mouth opened again, and a look of fear came into his eyes. \u201cTashamy,\u201d he said softly, \u201cyou ain\u2019t busted out? You ain\u2019t got to hide?\u201d He listened tensely. \nft' \n\u201cNaw,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI\u2019m paroled. I\u2019m free. I got my papers.\u201d He' gripped the lower bars of the truck side and looked up. \nOld Tasha laid his hammer gently on the floor and put his nails in his pocket. He swung his leg over the side and dropped lithely to the ground, but once beside his son he seemed embarrassed and strange. \u201cTashamy,\u201d he said, \u201cwe are goin\u2019 to California. But we was gonna write you a letter an\u2019 tell you.\u201d And he said, incredulously, \u201cBut you\u2019re back. You can go with us. You can go!\u201d The lid of a coffee pot slammed in the house. Old Tasha looked over his shoulder. u Le\u2019s sup- prise \u2019em,\u201d he said, and his eyes shone with excitement, \u201cYour ma got a bad feelin\u2019 she ain\u2019t never gonna see you no more. She got that quiet look like when somebody died. Almost she don\u2019t want to go to California, fear she\u2019ll never see you no more.\u201d A stove lid clashed in the house again. \u201cLe\u2019s supprise \u2019em,\u201d old Tasha repeated. \u201cLe\u2019s go in like you never been away. Le\u2019s jus\u2019 see what your ma says.\u201d At last he touched Tasha, but touched him on the shoulder, timidly, and instantly took his hand away. He looked at Dash Palmer. Tasha said, \u201cYou remember the preacher, Pa. He come along with me.\u201d \n\u201cHe been in prison too?\u201d \n\u201cNo, I met \u2019im on the road. He been away.\u201d Pa shook hands gravely. \u201cYou\u2019re welcome here, sir.\u201d Palmer said, \u201cGlad to be here. It\u2019s a thing to see when a boy comes home. It\u2019s a thing to see.\u201d \u201cHome,\u201d Pa said. \n\u201cTo his folks,\u201d the preacher amended quickly. \u201cWe stayed at the other place last night.\u201d Pa\u2019s chin thrust out, and he looked back down the road for 3. moment. Then he turned to Tasha. \u201cPlow\u2019ll we do her?\u201d he began excitedly. \u201cS\u2019pose I go in an\u2019 say, \u2018Here\u2019s some fellas want some breakfast,\u2019 or how\u2019d it be if you jus\u2019 come in an\u2019 stood there till she seen you? How\u2019d that be?\u201d His face was alive with excitement. \n\u201cDon\u2019t le\u2019s give her no shock,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cDon\u2019t le\u2019s scare her none.\u201d \nTwo rangy shepherd dogs trotted up pleasantly, until they caught the scent of strangers, and then they backed cau- tiously away, watchful, their tails moving slowly and tenta- tively in the air, but their eyes and noses quick for animosity or danger. One of them, stretching his neck, edged forward, ready to run, and little by little he approached Tasha\u2019s legs and sniffed loudly at them. Then he backed away and watched Pa for some kind of signal. The other pup was not so brave. He looked about for something that could honor- ably divert his attention, saw a red chicken go mincing by, find ran at it. There was the squawk of an outraged hen, a burst of red feathers, and the hen ran off, flapping stubby wings for speed. The pup looked proudly back at the men, and then flopped down in the dust and beat its tail content- edly on the ground. \n\u201cCome on,\u201d said Pa, \u201ccome on in now. She got to see you. I got to see her face when she sees you. Come on. She\u2019ll yell breakfast in a minute. I heard her slap the salt pork in the pan a good time ago.\u201d He led the way across the fine-dusted ground. There was no porch on this house, just a step and then the door; a chopping block beside the door, its surface matted and soft from years of chopping. The graining in the sheathing wood was high, for the dust had cut down the softer wood. The smell of burning willow was in the air, and, as the three men neared the door, the smell of frying side- meat and the smell of high brown biscuits and the sharp smell of coffee rolling in the pot. Pa stepped up into the open doorway and stood there blocking it with his wide short body. He said, \u201cMa, there\u2019s a coupla fellas jus\u2019 come along the road, an\u2019 they wonder if we could spare a bite.\u201d Tasha heard his mother\u2019s voice, the remembered cool, calm drawl, friendly and humble. \u201cLet \u2019em come,\u201d she said. \u201cWe got a\u2019plenty. Tell \u2019em they got to wash their ban\u2019s. The bread is done. I\u2019m jus\u2019 takin\u2019 up the side-meat now.\u201d And the sizzle of the angry grease came from the stove. Pa stepped inside, clearing the door, and Tasha looked in at Us mother. She was lifting the curling slices of pork from the frying pan. The oven door was open, and a great pan of high brown biscuits stood waiting there. She looked out the door, but the sun was behind Tasha, and she saw only a dark figure outlined by the bright yellow sunlight. She nodded pleasantly. \u201cCome in,\u201d she said. \u201cJus\u2019 lucky I made plenty bread this morning.\u201d \nTasha stood looking in. Ma was heavy, but not fat; thick with child-bearing and work. She wore a loose Mother Hub- bard of gray cloth in which there had once been colored flowers, but the color was washed out now, so that the small flowered pattern was only a little lighter gray than the back- ground, The dress came down to her ankles, and her strong. T S ESsm m mmmm \u2014 . \u2014 \u25a0 \nbroad, bare feet moved quickly and deftly over the floor. Her thin, steel-gray hair was gathered in a sparse wispy knot at the back of her head. Strong, freckled arms were bare to the elbow, and her hands were chubby and delicate, like those of a plump little girl She looked out into the sunshine. Her full face was not soft; it was controlled, kindly. Her hazel eyes seemed to have experienced all possible tragedy and to have mounted pain and suffering like steps into a high calm and a superhuman understanding. She seemed to know, to accept, to welcome her position, the citadel of the family, the strong place that could not be taken. And since old Tasha and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had prac- ticed denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her r it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate mate- rials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone. She looked out into the sunny yard, at the dark figure of a man. Pa stood near by, shaking with excitement. \u201cCome in ,' he cried. \u201cCome right in, mister.\u201d And Tasha a little shame- facedly stepped over the doorsilL She looked up pleasantly from the frying pan. And then her hand sank slowly to her side and the fork clattered to the wooden floor. Her eyes opened wide, and the pupils dilated. She breathed heavily through her open mouth. She closed her eyes. \u201cThank God, 5 \u2019 she said. \u201cOh, thank God!\u201d And suddenly her face was worried. \u201cTashamy, you ain\u2019t wanted? You didn\u2019 bust loose?\u201d \u201cNo, Ma. Parole. I got the papers here.\u201d He touched his breast. \nShe moved toward him lithely, soundlessly in her bare feet, and her face was full of wonder. Her small hand felt his arm, felt the soundness of his muscles. And then her fingers went up to his cheek as a blind man\u2019s fingers might. And her joy was nearly like sorrow. Tasha pulled his underlip between his teeth and bit it. Her eyes went wonderingly to his bitten lip, and she saw the little line of blood against his teeth and the trickle of blood down his lip. Then she knew, and her control came back, and her hand dropped. Her breath came out explosively. \u201cWell!\u201d she cried. \u201cWe come mighty near to goin\u2019 without ya. An\u2019 we was wonderin\u2019 how in the work you could ever find us.\u201d She picked up the fork and combed the boiling grease and brought out a dark curl of crisp pork. And she set the pot of tumbling coffee on the back of the stove. \nOld Tasha giggled, \u201cFooled ya, huh, Ma? We aimed to fool ya, and we done it. Jus\u2019 stood there like a hammered sheep. Wisht Grampa\u2019d been here to see. Looked like somebody\u2019d beat ya between the eyes with a sledge. Grampa would a whacked \u2019imseif so hard he\u2019d a throwed his hip out\u2014 like he done when he seen A1 take a shot at that grea\u2019 big airship the army got. Tashamy, it come over one day, half a mile big, an\u2019 A1 gets the thirty-thirty and blazes away at her. Grampa yells, 'Don\u2019t shoot no fledglin\u2019s, AI; wait till a growed-up one goes over,\u2019 an\u2019 then he whacked \u2019imseif an\u2019 throwed his hip Ma chuckled and took down a heap of tin plates from a shelf. \nTasha asked, \u201cWhere is Grampa? I ain\u2019t seen the oV devil .\u2019 : Ma stacked the plates on the kitchen table and piled cups beside them. She said confidentially, \u201cOh, him an\u2019 Granma sleeps in the bam. They got to get up so much in the night. They was stumblin\u2019 over the little fellas.\u201d Pa broke in, \u201cYeah, ever\u2019 night Grampa\u2019 d get mad. Tum- ble over Carter, an\u2019 Carter\u2019d yell, an\u2019 Grampa\u2019d get mad an\u2019 wet his drawers, an\u2019 that\u2019d make him madder, an\u2019 purty soon ever\u2019body in the house\u2019d be yellin\u2019 their head off.\u201d His words tumbled out between chuckles. \u201cOh, we had lively times. One night when ever\u2019body was yellin\u2019 an\u2019 a-cussin\u2019, your brother Al, he\u2019s a smart aleck now, he says, \u2018Goddamn it, Grampa, why don\u2019t you run off an\u2019 be a pirate?\u2019 Well that made Grampa so goddamn mad he went for his gun. Al had ta sleep out in the fiel\u2019 that night. But now Granma an\u2019 Grampa both sleeps in the barn.\u201d Ma said, \u201cThey can jus\u2019 get up an\u2019 step outside when they feel like it. Pa, run on out an\u2019 tell \u2019em Tashamy\u2019s home. Grampa\u2019s a favorite of him.\u201d \n\u201cA course,\u201d said Pa. \u201cI should of did it before.\u201d He went out the door and crossed the yard, swinging his hands high. Tasha watched him go, and then his mother\u2019s voice called his attention. She was pouring coffee. She did not look at him. \u201cTashamy,\u201d she said hesitantly, timidly. \u201cYeah?\u201d His timidity was set off by hers, a curious embar- rassment. Each one knew the other was shy, and became more shy in the knowledge. \n\u201cTashamy, I got to ask you\u2014 you ain\u2019t mad?\u201d \u201cMad, Ma?\u201d \n\u201cYou ain\u2019t poisoned mad? You don\u2019t hate nobody? They didn\u2019 do nothin\u2019 in that jail to rot you out with crazy mad?\u201d He looked sidewise at her, studied her, and his eyes seemed . _ _ * \u201e - _ _ ... * J \nto ask how she could know such things. No-o-o, he said. \u201cI was for a little while. But I ain\u2019t proud like some fellas. I let stuff run off\u2019n me. What\u2019s a matter, Ma?\u201d , Now she was looking at him, her mouth open, as though to hear better, her eyes digging to know better. Her face looked for the answer that is always concealed in language. She said in confusion, \u201cI knowed Party Boy Genesis. I knowed his ma. They was good folks. He was full a hell, sure, like a good boy oughta be.\u201d She paused and then her words poured out. \u201cI don\u2019 know all like this-but I know it. He done a little bad thing a\u2019 they hurt \u2019im, caught im an hurt him so he was mad, an\u2019 the nex\u2019 bad thing he done was mad, an\u2019 they hurt \u2019im again. An\u2019 puny soon he was mean- mad. They shot at him like a varmint, an\u2019 he shot back, , an then they run him like a coyote, an\u2019 him a-snappm\u2019 an\u2019 a- snarlin\u2019, mean as a lobo. An\u2019 he was mad. He wasn\u2019t no boy or no man no more, he was jus\u2019 a walkin\u2019 chunk a mean-mad But the folks that knowed him didn\u2019 hurt \u2019im. He wasn mad at them. Finally they run him down an\u2019 killed \u2019im. No matter how they say it in the paper how he was bad-that\u2019s how it was.\u201d She paused and she licked her dry lips, and her whole face was an aching question. \u201cI got to know, Tashamy. they hurt you so much? Did they make you mad like that? Tasha\u2019s heavy lips were pulled tight over his teeth. He looked down at his big flat hands. \u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cl am t like that \u201d He paused and studied the broken nails, whic vtere ridged like clam shells. \u201cAll the time in stir I kep\u2019 away from stuff like that. I ain\u2019 so mad. io4 \nShe sighed, \u201cThank God!\u201d under her breath. He looked up quickly. \u201cMa, when I seen what they done to our house \u2014 \u201d . i \nShe came near to him then, and stood close; and she said passionately, \u201cTashamy, don't you go fightin\u2019 'em alone. ; They\u2019ll hunt you down like a coyote. Tashamy, I got to thinkin\u2019 an\u2019 dreamin\u2019 an\u2019 wonderin\u2019, lliey say there\u2019s a hun- \u2019erd thousand of us shoved out. If we was all mad the same \u25a0way, Tashamy\u2014 they wouldn\u2019t hunt nobody down\u2014\u201d She stopped. \nTashamy, looking at her, gradually dropped his eyelids, until just a short glitter showed through his lashes. \u201cMany folks feel that way?\u201d he demanded. \u201cI don\u2019 know. They\u2019re jus\u2019 kinda stunned. Walk aroun\u2019 like they was half asleep.\u201d ' , From outside and across the yard came an ancient creaking bleat. \u201cPu-raise Gawd fur vittory! Pu-raise Gawd fur vittory!\u201d \nTasha turned his head and grinned. \u201cGranma finally heard Fm home. Ma,\u201d he said, \u201cyou never was like this before!\u201d Her face hardened and her eyes grew cold. \u201cI never had my house pushed over,\u201d she said. \u201cI never had my fambly stuck out on the road. I never had to sell\u2014 ever\u2019thing\u2014 Here they come now.\u201d She moved back to the stove and dumped the big pan of bulbous biscuits on two tin plates. She shook flour into the deep grease to make gravy, and her hand was white with flour. For a moment Tasha watched her, and then he went to the door. \nAcross the yard came four people. Grampa was ahead, a lean, ragged, quick old man, jumping with quick steps and favoring his right leg\u2014 the side that came out of joint. He ivas buttoning his fly as he came, and his old hands were hav- : iug trouble finding the buttons, for he had buttoned the top button into the second buttonhole, and that threw the whole sequence off. He wore dark ragged pants and a tom blue shirt, open all the way down, and showing long gray under- wear, also unbuttoned. His lean white chest, fuzzed with white hair, was visible through the opening in his underwear. He gave up the fly and left it open and fumbled with the underwear buttons, then gave the whole thing up and hitched his brown suspenders. His was a lean excitable face with little bright eyes as evil as a frantic child\u2019s eyes. A can- tankerous, complaining, mischievous, laughing face. He fought and argued, told dirty stories. He was as lecherous as always. Vicious and cruel and impatient, like a frantic child, and the whole structure overlaid with amusement. He drank too much when he could get it, ate too much when it was there, talked too much all the time. Behind him hobbled Granma, who had survived only be- cause she was as mean as her husband. She had held her own with a shrill ferocious religiosity that was as lecherous and as savage as anything Grampa could offer. Once, after a meeting, while she was still speaking in tongues, she fired both barrels of a shotgun at her husband, ripping one of his buttocks nearly off, and after that he admired her and did not try to torture her as children torture bugs. As she walked she hiked her Mother Hubbard up to her knees, and she bleated her shrill terrible war cry: \u201cPu-raise Gawd fur vittory.\u201d \nGranma and Grampa raced each other to get across the broad yard. They fought over everything, and loved and needed the fighting. \nBehind them, moving slowly and evenly, but keeping up f came Pa and Dagmar-Dagmar the first-bom, tall and strange. walking always with a wondering look on his face, calm and puzzled. He had never been angry in his life. He looked in wonder at angry people, wonder and uneasiness, as normal people look at the insane. Dagmar moved slowly, spoke seldom, and then so slowly that people who did not know him often thought him stupid. He was not stupid, but he -was strange. Fie had little pride, no sexual urges, He worked and slept in a curious rhythm that nevertheless sufficed him. He was fond of his folks, but never showed it in any way. Although an observer could not have told why, Dagmar left the impression of being misshapen, his head or his body or his legs or his mind; but no misshapen member could be recalled. Pa thought he knew why Dagmar was strange, but Pa .was ashamed, and never told. For on the night when Dagmar was bom, Pa, fright- ened at the spreading thighs, alone in the house, and horrified at the screaming wretch his wife had become, went mad with apprehension. Using his hands, his strong fingers for forceps, he had pulled and twisted the baby. The midwife, arriving late, had found the baby\u2019s head pulled out of shape, its neck stretched, its body warped; and she had pushed the head back and molded the body with her hands. But Pa always remem- bered, and was ashamed. And he was kinder to Dagmar than to the others. In Dagmar\u2019s broad face, eyes too far apart, and long fragile jaw, Pa thought he saw the twisted, warped skull of the baby. Dagmar could do all that was required of him, could read and write, could work and figure, but he didn\u2019t seem to care; there was a listlessness in him toward things people wanted and needed. He lived in a strange silent house and looked out of it through calm eyes. He was a stranger to all the world, but he was not lonely. The four came across the yard, and Grampa demanded, \u2018Where is he? Goddamn it, where is he?\u201d And his fingers fumbled for his pants button, and forgot and strayed into his pocket. And then he saw Tasha standing in the door. Grampa stopped and he stopped the others. His little eyes glittered with malice. \u201cLookut him,\u201d he said. \u201cA jailbird. Ain't been no Teigans in jail for a hell of a time.\u201d His mind jumped. \u201cGot no right to put \u2019im in jail. He done just what I'd do. Sons-a- bitches got no right.\u201d His mind jumped again. \u201cAn\u2019 oP Turn- bull, stinkin\u2019 skunk, braggin\u2019 how he\u2019ll shoot ya when ya come out. Says he got Hatfield blood. Well, I sent word to him. I says, 'Don\u2019t mess around with no Teigan. Maybe I got McCoy blood for all I know.\u2019 I says, 'You lay your sights anywheres near Tashamy an\u2019 I\u2019ll take it an\u2019 I\u2019ll ram it up your ass,\u2019 I says. Scairt \u2019im, too.\u201d Granma, not following the conversation, bleated, \u201cPu-raise Gawd fur vittory.\u201d \nGrampa walked up and slapped Tasha on the chest, and his eyes grinned with affection and pride. \"How are ya r Tashamy?\u201d \n\u201cO.K.\u201d said Tasha. \u201cHow ya keepin\u2019 yaself?\u201d : \u201cFull a piss an\u2019 vinegar,\u201d said Grampa. His mind jumped. \u201cJus\u2019 like I said, they ain\u2019t a gonna keep no Teigan in jail. says, \u2018Tashamy\u2019ll come a-bustin\u2019 outa that jail like a bull through a corral fence.\u2019 An\u2019 you done it. Get outa my way. I\u2019m hungry.\u201d He crowded past, sat down, loaded his plate with pork and two big biscuits and poured the thick gravy over the whole mess, and before the others could get in, Grampa\u2019s mouth was full. \nTasha grinned affectionately at him. \u201cAin\u2019t he a heller?\u201d he said. And Grampa\u2019s mouth was so full that he couldn\u2019t even splutter, but his mean little eyes smiled, and he nodded his head violently. \nGranma said proudly, \u201cA wicketer, cussin\u2019er man never lived. He\u2019s goin\u2019 to hell on a poker, praise Gawd! Wants to drive the truck!\u201d she said spitefully. \u201cWell, he ain\u2019t goin\u2019 ta.\u201d Grampa choked, and a mouthful of paste sprayed into his lap, and he coughed weakly. \nGranina smiled up at Tasha. \u201cMessy, ain\u2019t he?\u201d she ob- served brightly. \nDagmar stood on the step, and he faced Tasha, and his wide- set eyes seemed to look around him. His face had little ex- pression. Tasha said, \u201cHow ya, Dagmar?\u201d \u201cFine,\u201d said Dagmar. \u201cHow a\u2019 you?\u201d That was all, but it was a comfortable thing. \nMa waved the flies away from the bowl of gravy. \u201cWe ain\u2019t got room to set down,\u201d she said. \u201cJus\u2019 get yaself a plate an\u2019 set down wherever ya can. Out in the yard or some- place.\u201d \nSuddenly Tasha said, \u201cHey! Where\u2019s the preacher? He was right here. Where\u2019d he go?\u201d \nPa said, \u201cI seen him, but he\u2019s gone.\u201d And Granina raised a shrill voice, \u201cPreacher? You got a preacher? Go git him. We\u2019ll have a grace.\u201d She pointed at Grampa. \u201cToo late for him\u2014 he\u2019s et. Go git the preacher.\u201d Tasha stepped out on the porch. \u201cHey, Dash! Dash Palmer!\u201d he called. He walked out in the yard. \u201cOh, Palmer!\u201d The preacher emerged from under the tank, sat up, and then stood up and moved toward the house. Tasha asked, \u201cWhat was you doin\u2019, hidin\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cWell, no. But a fella shouldn\u2019 butt his head in where a fambly got fambly stuff. I was jus\u2019 settin\u2019 a-thinkin\u2019.\u201d \u201cCome on in an\u2019 eat,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cGranma wants a grace.\u201d \u201cBut I ain\u2019t a preacher no more,\u201d Palmer protested. \u201cAw, come on. Give her a grace. Don\u2019t do you no harm, an\u2019 f he likes \u2019em.\u201d They walked into the kitchen together. Ma said quietly, \u201cYou\u2019re welcome.\u201d And Pa said, You\u2019re welcome. Have some breakfast.\u201d \u201cGrace fust,\u201d Granma clamored. \u201cGrace fust.\u201d Grampa focused his eyes fiercely until he recognized Palmer, \u201cOh, that preacher,\u201d he said. \u201cOh, he\u2019s all right. I always liked him since I seen him\u2014\u201d He winked so lecherously that Granma thought he had spoken and retorted, \u201cShut up, you sinful ol\u2019 goat.\u201d . \nPalmer ran his fingers through his hair nervously. \u201cI got to tell you, I ain\u2019t a preacher no more. If me jus\u2019 bein\u2019 glad to be here an\u2019 bein\u2019 thankful for people that\u2019s kind and gener- ous, if that\u2019s enough\u2014 why, I\u2019ll say that kinda grace. But ain\u2019t a preacher no more.\u201d \u201cSay her,\u201d said Granma. \u201cAn\u2019 get in a word about us goin to California.\u201d The preacher bowed his head, and the others bowed their heads. Ma folded her hands over her stomach and bowed her head. Granma bowed so low that her nose was nearly in her plate of biscuit and gravy. Tasha, lean- ing against the wall, a plate in his hand, bowed stiffly, and Grampa bowed his head sidewise, so that he could keep one mean and merry eye on the preacher. And on the preacher\u2019s face there was a look not of prayer, but of thought; and in his tone not supplication, but conjecture. \u201cI been thinkin\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cI been in the hills, thinking almost you might say like Jesus went into the wilderness to think His way out of a mess of troubles.\u201d \u201cPu-raise Gawd! \u201d Granma said, and the preacher glanced over at her in surprise. \n\u201cSeems like Jesus got all messed up with troubles, couldn\u2019t figure nothin\u2019 out, an\u2019 He got to feelin\u2019 what the hell good is it all, an\u2019 what\u2019s the use fightin\u2019 an\u2019 come to the conclusion, the hell with it. An\u2019 so He went off into the wilderness.\u201d \n\u201cA\u2014 men,\u201d Granma bleated. So many years she had timed her responses to the pauses. And it was so many years since she had listened to or wondered at the words used. \u201cI ain\u2019t sayin\u2019 I\u2019m like Jesus,\u201d the preacher went on. \u201cBut I got tired like Him, an\u2019 I got mixed up like Him, an\u2019 I went into the wilderness like Him, without no campin\u2019 stuff. Nighttime I\u2019d lay on my back an\u2019 look up at the stars; morn- ing I\u2019d set an\u2019 watch the sun come up; midday I\u2019d look out from a hill at the rollin\u2019 dry country; evenin\u2019 I\u2019d foller the sun down. Sometimes I\u2019d pray like I always done. On\u2019y I couldn\u2019 figure what I was prayin\u2019 to or for. There was the hills, an\u2019 there was me, an\u2019 we wasn\u2019t separate no more. We was one thing. An\u2019 that one thing was holy.\u201d \u201cHallelujah,\u201d said Granma, and she rocked a little, back and forth, trying to catch hold of an ecstasy. \u201cAn\u2019 I got thinkin\u2019, on\u2019y it wasn\u2019t thinkin\u2019, it was deeper down than thinkin\u2019. I got thinkin\u2019 how we was holy when we was one thing, an\u2019 mankin\u2019 was holy when it was one thing. An\u2019 it on\u2019y got unholy when one mis\u2019able little fella got the bit in his teeth an\u2019 run off his own way, kickin\u2019 an\u2019 draggin\u2019 an\u2019 fightin\u2019. Fella like that bust the holiness. But when they\u2019re all workin\u2019 together, not one fella for another fella, but one fella kind of harnessed to the whole shebang\u2014 that\u2019s right, that\u2019s holy. An\u2019 then I got thinkin\u2019 I don\u2019t even know what I mean by holy.\u201d He paused, but the bowed heads stayed down, for they had been trained like dogs to rise at the \u201camen\u201d signal. \u201cI can\u2019t say no grace like I use\u2019 ta say. I\u2019m glad of the holiness of breakfast. I\u2019m glad there\u2019s love here. That\u2019s all.\u201d The heads stayed down. The preacher Ill \nlooked around. \u201cI\u2019ve got your breakfast cold,\u201d he said; and then he remembered. \u201cAmen,\u201d he said, and all the heads rose up. \n\u201cA\u2014 men,\u201d said Granma, and she fell to her breakfast, and broke down the soggy biscuits with her hard old toothless gums. Tasha ate quickly, and Pa crammed his mouth. There was no talk until the food was gone, the coffee drunk; only the crunch of chewed food and the slup of coffee cooled in transit to the tongue. Ma watched the preacher as he ate, and her eyes were questioning, probing and understanding. She watched him as though he were suddenly a spirit, not human any more, a voice out of the ground. The men finished and put down their plates, and drained the last of their coffee; and then the men went out, Pa and the preacher and Dagmar and Grampa and Tasha, and they walked over to the truck, avoiding the litter of furniture, the wooden bedsteads, the windmill machinery, the old plow. They walked to the truck and stood beside it. They touched the new pine side-boards. \nTasha opened the hood and looked at the big greasy engine. And Pa came up beside him. He said, \u201cYour brother Alooked her over before we bought her. He says she\u2019s all right.\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s he know? He\u2019s just a squirt,\u201d said Tasha. \u2018 \u201cHe worked for a company. Drc ve truck last year. He knows quite a little. Smart aleck like he is. He knows. He can tinker an engine, A1 can.\u201d \nTasha asked, \u201cWhere\u2019s he now?\u201d \n\u201cWell,\u201d said Pa, \u201che\u2019s a-billygoatin\u2019 aroun\u2019 the country. Tasha-cattin\u2019 hisself to death. Smart-aleck sixteen-year-older, an\u2019 his nuts is just a-eggin\u2019 him on. He don\u2019t think of nothin but girls and engines. A plain smart aleck. Ain\u2019t been in nights for a week.\u201d \nGrampa, fumbling with his chest, had succeeded in but- toning the buttons of his blue shirt into the buttonholes of his underwear. His fingers felt that something was wrong, but did not care enough to find out. His fingers went down to try to figure out the intricacies of the buttoning of his fly. u l was worse,\u201d he said happily. \u201cI was- much worse. I was a heller, you might say. Why, they was a camp meetin\u2019 right in Sailisaw when I was a young fella a little bit older\u2019n AL He\u2019s just a squirt, an\u2019 punkin-soft. But I was older. An\u2019 we was to this here camp meetin\u2019. Five hunderd folks there, an\u2019 a proper sprinklin\u2019 of young heifers.\u201d \u201cYou look like a heller yet, Grampa,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWell, I am, kinda. But I ain\u2019t nowheres near the fella was. Jus\u2019 let me get out to California where I can pick me an orange when I want it. Or grapes. There\u2019s a thing I ain\u2019t never had enough of. Gonna get me a whole big bunch a grapes off a bush, or whatever, an\u2019 I\u2019m gonna squash \u2019em on my face an\u2019 let \u2019em run offen my chin.\u201d Tasha asked, \u201cWhere\u2019s Sadhbh Owen? Where\u2019s Rosasharn? Where\u2019s Marcus an\u2019 Carter? Nobody said nothin\u2019 about them yet.\u201d \nPa said, \u201cNobody asked. Owen gone to Sailisaw with a load u stuff to sell: pump, tools, chickens, an\u2019 all the stuff we brung over. Took Marcus an\u2019 Carter with \u2019im. Went \u2019fore daylight.\u201d \n\u201cFunny I never saw him,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWell, you come down from the highway, didn\u2019 you? He took the back way, by Cowlington. An\u2019 Rosasharn, she\u2019s nestin\u2019 with Drake\u2019s folks. By God! You don\u2019t even know Rosasharn\u2019s married to Drake Rivers. You \u2019member Drake. Nice young fella. An\u2019 Rosasharn\u2019s due \u2019bout three-four-five months now. Swellin\u2019 up right now. Looks fine.\u201d \u201cJesus!\u201d said Tasha. \u201cRosasharn was just a little kid. An\u2019 now she\u2019s gonna have a baby. So damn much happens in four years if you\u2019re away. When ya think to start out west, Pa?\u201d \u201cWell, we got to take this stuff in an\u2019 sell it. If A1 gets back from his squirtin\u2019 aroun\u2019, I figgered he could load the truck an\u2019 take all of it in, an\u2019 maybe we could start out tomorra or day after. We ain\u2019t got so much money, an\u2019 a fella says it\u2019s damn near two thousan\u2019 miles to California. Quicker we get started, surer it is we get there. Money\u2019s a-dribblin\u2019 out all the time. You got any money?\u201d \u201cOn\u2019y a couple dollars. How\u2019d you get money?\u201d \u201cWell,\u201d said Pa, \u201cwe sol\u2019 all the stuff at our place, an\u2019 the whole bunch of us chopped cotton, even Grampa.\u201d \u201cSure did,\u201d said Grampa. \n\u201cWe put ever\u2019 thing together\u2014 two hundred dollars. We give seventy-five for this here truck, an\u2019 me an\u2019 A1 cut her in two an\u2019 built on this here back. A1 was gonna grind the valves, but he\u2019s too busy messin\u2019 aroun\u2019 to get down to her. We\u2019ll have maybe a hundred an\u2019 fifty when we start. Damn ol\u2019 tires on this here truck ain\u2019t gonna go far. Got a couple of wore out spares. Pick stuff up along the road, I guess.\u201d The sun, driving straight down, stung with its rays. The shadows of the truck bed were dark bars on the ground, and the truck smelled of hot oil and oilcloth and paint. The few chickens had left the yard to hide in the tool shed from the sun. In the sty die pigs lay panting, close to the fence where a thin shadow fell, and they complained shrilly now and then. The two dogs were stretched in the red dust under the truck, panting, dieir dripping tongues covered with dust. Pa pulled his hat low over his eyes and squatted down on hir hams. And, as though this were his natural position of thought and observation, he surveyed Tasha critically, the new but aging cap, the suit, and the new shoes. \u201cDid you spen\u2019 your money for them clothes?\u201d he asked. \u201cThem clothes are jus\u2019 gonna be a nuisance to ya.\u201d \u201cThey give \u2019em to me,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWhen I come out they give \u2019em to me.\u201d He took off his cap and looked at it with some admiration, then wiped his forehead with it and put it on rakishly and pulled at the visor. Pa observed, \u201cThem\u2019s a nice-loookin\u2019 pair a shoes they give ya\u201d \n\u201cYeah,\u201d Teigan agreed. \u201cPurty for nice, but they ain\u2019t no shoes to go walkin\u2019 aroun\u2019 in on a hot day.\u201d He squatted be- side his father. \nDagmar said .slowly, \u201cMaybe if you got them side-boards all true on, we could load up this stuff. Load her up so maybe if A! comes in \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cLean drive her, if that\u2019s what you w T ant,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cI drove truck at McAlester.\u201d \n\u201cGood,\u201d said Pa, and then his eyes stared down the road. \u201cIf I ain\u2019t mistaken, there\u2019s a young smart aleck draggin\u2019 his tail home right now,\u201d he said. \u201cLooks purty wore out, too.\u201d \nTasha and the preacher looked up the road. And randy Al, seeing he was being noticed, threw back his shoulders, and he came into the yard with a swaying strut like that of a rooster about to crow. Cockily, he walked close before he recognized Tasha; and when he did, his boasting face changed, and admiration and veneration shone in his eyes, and his swagger fell away. His stiff jeans, with the bottoms turned up eight inches to show his heeled boots, his three- inch belt with copper figures on it, even the red arm bands on his blue shirt and the rakish angle. of his Stetson hat could not build him up to his brother\u2019s stature; for his brother had killed a man, and no one would ever forget it. A1 knew that even he had inspired some admiration among boys of his own age because his brother had killed a man. Fie had heard in SaJlisaw how he was pointed out: \u201cThat\u2019s A1 Teigan. His brother killed a fella with a shovel\u201d And now Al, moving humbly near, saw that his brother was not a swaggerer as he had supposed. Al saw the dark brooding eyes of his brother, and the prison calm, the smooth hard face trained to indicate nothing to a prison guard, neither resistance nor slavishness. And instantly A] changed. Unconsciously he became like his brother, and his handsome face brooded, and his shoulders relaxed. He hadn\u2019t remembered how Tasha was. \nTasha said, \u201cHello. Jesus, you\u2019re growin\u2019 like a bean! wouldn\u2019t of knowed you.\u201d Al, his hand ready if Tasha should want to shake it, grinned self-consciously. Tasha stuck out his hand and Al\u2019s hand jerked out to meet it. And there was liking between these two. \u201cThey tell me you\u2019re a good hand with a truck,\u201d said Tasha. \nAnd Al, sensing that his brother would not like a boaster, said, \u201cI don\u2019t know nothin\u2019 much about it\u201d Pa said, \u201cBeen smart-alecking aroun\u2019 the country. You > look wore out. Well, you got to take a load of stuff into Sallisaw to sell\u201d \nAl looked at his brother Tasha. \u201cCare to ride in?\u201d he said as casually at he could. \n\u201cNo, I can\u2019t/\u2019 said Tasha. \u201cI\u2019ll help aroun\u2019 here. We\u2019ll be-, together on the road.\u201d \nA1 tried to control his question. \u201cDid\u2014 did you bust out?' Of jail?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI got paroled.\u201d u Qh.\u201d And A! was a little disappointed. Chapter Nine \nI N THE little houses the tenant people sifted their belong- ings and the belongings of their fathers and of their grandfathers. Picked over their possessions for the journey to the west. The men were ruthless because the past had been spoiled, but the women knew how the past would cry to them in the coming days. The men went into the barns and the sheds. \nThat plow, that harrow, remember in the war we planted mustard? Remember a fella wanted us to put in that rubber bush they call guayule? Get rich, he said. Bring out those tools\u2014 get a few dollars for them. Eighteen dollars for that plow, plus freight-Sears Roebuck. Harness, carts, seeders, little bundles of hoes. Bring 'em out. Pile \u2019em up. Load \u2019em in the wagon. Take \u2019em to town. Sell \u2019em for what you can get. Sell the team and the wagon, too. No more use for anything. Fifty cents isn\u2019t enough to get for a good plow. That seeder cost thirty-eight dollars. Two dollars isn\u2019t enough. Can\u2019t haul it all back\u2014 Well, take it, and a bitterness with it. Take the well pump and the harness. Take halters, collars, hames, and tugs. Take the little glass brow-band jewels, roses red under glass. Got those for the bay gelding. \u2019Member how he lifted his feet when he trotted? \u25a0 Junk piled up in a yard. \nII \nCan\u2019t sell a hand plow any more. Fifty cents for the weight of the metal. Disks and tractors, that\u2019s the stuff now. Well, take it \u2014 all junk\u2014 and give me five dollars. You\u2019re not buying only junk, you\u2019re buying junked lives. And more\u2014 you\u2019ll see\u2014 you\u2019re buying bitterness. Buying a plow to plow your own children under, buying the arms and spirits that might have saved you. Five dollars, not four. I can\u2019t haul \u2019em back\u2014 Well, take \u2019em for four. But 1 warn you, you\u2019re buy- ing what will plow your own children under. And you won\u2019t see. You can\u2019t see. Take \u2019em for four. Now, what\u2019ll you give for the team and wagon? Those fine bays, matched they are, matched in color, matched the way they walk, stride to stride. In the stiff pull\u2014 straining hams and but- tocks, split-second timed together. And in the morning, the light on them, bay light. They look over the fence sniff- ing for us, and the stiff ears swivel to hear us, and the black forelocks! I\u2019ve got a girl. She likes to braid the manes and forelocks, puts little red bows on them. Likes to do it. Not any more. I could tell you a funny story about that girl and that off bay. Would make you laugh. Off horse is eight, near is ten, but might of been twin colts the way they work to- gether. See? The teeth. Sound all over. Deep lungs. Feet fair and clean. How much? Ten dollars? For both? And the wagon\u2014 Oh, Jesus Christ! I\u2019d shoot \u2019em for dog feed first. Oh, take \u2019em! Take \u2019em quick, mister. You\u2019re buying a little girl plaiting the forelocks, taking off her hair ribbon to make bows, standing back, head cocked, rubbing the soft noses with her cheek. You\u2019re buying years of work, toil in the sun; you\u2019re buying a sorrow that can\u2019t talk. But watch it, mister. There\u2019s a premium goes with this pile of junk and the bay horses\u2014 so beautiful\u2014 a packet of bitterness to grow in your house and to flower, some day. We could have saved you, but you cut us down, and soon you will be cut down and there\u2019ll be none of us to save you. . And the tenant men came walking back, hands in their pockets, hats pulled down. Some bought a pint and drank it fast to make the impact hard and stunning. But they didn\u2019t laugh and they didn\u2019t dance. They didn\u2019t sing or pick the guitars. They walked back to the farms, hands in pockets and heads down, shoes kicking the red dust up. Maybe we can start again, in the new rich land-in Calk fornia, where the fruit grows. We\u2019ll start over. . But you can\u2019t start. Only a baby can start. You and me- why, we\u2019re all that\u2019s been. The anger of a moment, the thou- sand pictures, that\u2019s us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can\u2019t start again. The bitterness we sold to the junk man\u2014 he got it all right, but we have it still. And when the owner men told us to go, that\u2019s us; and when the tractor hit the house, that\u2019s us until we\u2019re dead. To California or any place\u2014 every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day\u2014 the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they\u2019ll all walk together, and there\u2019ll be a dead terror from it. The tenant men scuffed home to the farms through the red dust. \nWhen everything that could be sold was sold, stoves and bedsteads, chairs and tables, little corner cupboards, tubs and tanks, still there were piles of possessions; and the women sat among them, turning them over and looking off beyond and back, pictures, square glasses, and here\u2019s a vase. Now you know well what we can take and what we can\u2019t take. We\u2019ll be camping out\u2014 a few pots to cook and wash in, and mattresses and comforts, lantern and buckets, and a piece of canvas. Use that for a tent. This kerosene can. Know what that is? That\u2019s the stove. And clothes\u2014 take all the clothes. And\u2014 the rifle? Wouldn\u2019t go out naked of a rifle. When shoes and clothes and food, when even hope is gone, we\u2019ll have the rifle. When grampa came\u2014 did I tell you?\u2014 he had pepper and salt and a rifle. Nothing else. That goes. And a bottle for water. That just about fills us. Right up the sides of the trailer, and the kids can set in the trailer, and granma on a mattress. Tools, a shovel and saw and wrench and pliers. An ax, too. We had that ax forty years. Look how she\u2019s wore down. And ropes, of course. The rest? Leave it\u2014 or burn it up. \nAnd the children came. \nIf Mary takes that doll, that dirty rag doll, I got to take my Injun bow. I got to. An\u2019 this roun\u2019 stick\u2014 big as me. I might need this stick. I had this stick so long\u2014 a month, or maybe a year. I got to take it. And what\u2019s it like in California? The women sat among the doomed things, turning them over and looking past them and back. This book. My father had it. He liked a book. Pilgrim's Progress. Used to read it. Got his name in it. And his pipe\u2014 still smells rank. And this picture\u2014 an angel. I looked at that before the fust three come \u2014didn\u2019t seem to do much good. Think we could get this china dog in? Aunt Sadie brought it from the St. Louis Fair. See? Wrote right on it. No, I guess not. Here\u2019s a letter my brother wrote the day before he died. Here\u2019s an old-time hat. These feathers\u2014 never got to use them. No, there isn\u2019t room. \nHow can we live without our lives? How will we know it\u2019s us without our past? No. Leave it. Bum it. They sat and looked at it and burned it into their memo- ries. How\u2019ll it be not to know what land\u2019s outside the door? How if you wake up in the night and know-and know the willow tree s not there? Can you live without the willow tree? Well, no, you can\u2019t. The willow tree is you. The pain on that mattress there-that dreadful pain-that\u2019s you. And the children\u2014 if Sam takes his Injun bow an\u2019 his long roun\u2019 stick, I get to take two things. I choose the fluffy pilla. That\u2019s mine. \nSuddenly they were nervous. Got to get out quick now. Can\u2019t wait. We can\u2019t wait. And they piled up the goods in the yards and set fire to them. They stood and watched them burning, and then frantically they loaded up the cars and drove away, drove in the dust. The dust hung in the air for a long time after the loaded cars had passed. I \nChapter Ten \n\\ \u201cW THEN the truck had gone, loaded with imple- \\ /\\ / ments, with heavy tools, with beds and springs, . \u2019 y ' \\ with every movable thing that might be sold, Tasha hung around the place. He mooned into the barn shed, into the empty stalls, and he walked into the implement lean- to and kicked the refuse that was left, turned a broken mower tooth with his foot. He visited places he remembered \u2014the red bank where the swallows nested, the willow tree over the pig pen. Two shoats grunted and squirmed at him through the fence, black pigs, sunning and comfortable. And then his pilgrimage was over, and he went to sit on the door- step where the shade was lately fallen. Behind him Ma moved about in the kitchen, washing children\u2019s clothes in a bucket; and her strong freckled arms dripped soapsuds from the elbows. She stopped her rubbing when he sat down. She looked at him a long time, and at the back of his head when he turned and stared out at the hot sunlight. And then she ' went back to her rubbing. \nShe said, \u201cTasha, I hope things is all right in California.\u201d He turned and looked at her. \u201cWhat makes you think they ain\u2019t?\u201d he asked. \n\u201cWell\u2014 nothing. Seems too nice, kinda. I seen the han\u2019bills fellas pass out, an\u2019 how much work they is, an\u2019 high wages an\u2019 all; an\u2019 I seen in the paper how they want folks to come The Grap es of Wrath \nan\u2019 pick grapes an\u2019 oranges an\u2019 peaches. That\u2019d be nice work, Tasha, pickin\u2019 peaches. Even if they wouldn\u2019t let you eat none, you could maybe snitch a little ratty one sometimes. An\u2019 it\u2019d be nice under the trees, workin\u2019 in the shade. Fra scared of stuff so nice. I ain\u2019t got faith. I\u2019m scared somepln ain\u2019t so nice about it.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cDon\u2019t roust your faith bird-high an\u2019 you won\u2019t do no crawlin\u2019 with the worms.\u201d \u201cI know that\u2019s right. That\u2019s Scripture, ain\u2019t it?\u201d \u201cI guess so,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI never could keep Scripture straight sence I read a book name\u2019 The Winning of Barbara Worth\u201d \nMa chuckled lightly and scrounged the clothes in and out of the bucket. And she wrung out overalls and shirts, and the muscles of her forearms corded out. \u201cYour Pa\u2019s pa, he quoted Scripture all the time. He got it all roiled up, too. It was the Dr. Miles \u2019 Almanac he got mixed up. Used to read ever\u2019 word in that almanac out loud\u2014 letters from folks that couldn\u2019t sleep or had lame backs. An\u2019 later he\u2019d give them people for a lesson, an\u2019 he\u2019d say, \u2018That\u2019s a par\u2019ble from Scrip- ture.\u2019 Your Pa an\u2019 Sadhbh Owen troubled \u2019im some about it when they\u2019d laugh.\u201d She piled wrung clothes like cord wood on the table. \u201cThey say it\u2019s two thousan\u2019 miles where we\u2019re goin\u2019. How far ya think that is, Tasha? I seen it on a map, big mountains like on a post card, an\u2019 we\u2019re goin\u2019 right through \u2019em. How long ya s\u2019pose it\u2019ll take to go that far, Tashamy?\u201d \n\u201cI dunno,\u201d he said. \u201cTwo weeks, maybe ten days if we got luck. Look, Ma, stop your worry in\u2019. I\u2019m a-gonna tell you somepin about bein\u2019 in the pen. You can\u2019t go thinkin\u2019 when you\u2019re gonna be out. You\u2019d go nuts. You got to think about that day, an\u2019 then the nex\u2019 day, about the ball game Sat\u2019dy. That\u2019s what you got to do. OF timers does that. A new yo ung fella gets buttin\u2019 his head on the cell door. He\u2019s thinkin\u2019 how long it\u2019s gonna be. Whyn\u2019t you do that? Jus take ever\u2019 day.\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s a good way,\u201d she said, and she filled up her bucket with hot water from the stove, and she put in dirty clothes and began punching them down into the soapy water. \u201cYes, that\u2019s a good way. But I like to think how nice it\u2019s gonna be, maybe, in California. Never cold. An\u2019 fruit ever\u2019place, an\u2019 people just bein\u2019 in the nicest places, little white houses in among the orange trees. I wonder\u2014 that is, if we all get jobs an\u2019 all work \u2014 maybe we can get one of them little white houses. An\u2019 the little fellas go out an\u2019 pick oranges right off the tree. They ain\u2019t gonna be able to stand it, they\u2019ll get to yellin\u2019 so.\u201d \nTasha watched her working, and his eyes smiled. \u201cIt done you good jus\u2019 thinkin\u2019 about it. I knowed a fella from Cali- fornia. He didn\u2019t talk like us. You\u2019d of knowed he come from some far-off place jus\u2019 the way he talked. But he says they\u2019s too many folks lookin\u2019 for work right there now. An\u2019 he says the folks that pick the fruit live in dirty ol\u2019 camps an\u2019 don\u2019t hardly get enough to eat. He says wages is low an\u2019 hard to get any.\u201d \nA shadow crossed her face. \u201cOh, that ain\u2019t so,\u201d she said. \u201cYour father got a han\u2019bill on yella paper, tellin\u2019 how they need folks to work. They wouldn\u2019 go to that trouble if they wasn\u2019t plenty work. Costs \u2019em good money to get them han\u2019- bills out. What\u2019d they want ta lie for, an\u2019 costin\u2019 \u2019em money to lie?\u201d \nTasha shook his head. \u201cI don\u2019 know, Ma. It\u2019s kinda hard to think why they done it. Maybe\u2014\u201d He looked out at the hot sun, shining on the red earth. \u201cMaybe what ? \n\u201cMaybe it\u2019s nice, like you says. Where\u2019d Grampa go? Where\u2019d the preacher go?\u201d \nMa was going out of the house, her arms loaded high with the clothes. Tasha moved aside to let her pass. \u201cPreacher says he 9 s gonna walk aroun\u2019. Grampa\u2019s asleep here in the house, He comes in here in the day an 9 lays down sometimes.\u201d She walked to the line and began to drape pale blue jeans and blue shirts and long gray underwear over the wire. Behind him Tasha heard a shuffling step, and he turned to look in. Grampa was emerging from the bedroom, and as in the morning, he fumbled with the buttons of his fly. \u201cI heerd talkin\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cSons-a-bitches won\u2019t let a ol\u2019 fella sleep. When you bastards get dry behin\u2019 the ears, you\u2019ll maybe learn to let a oF fella sleep \u201d His furious fingers man- aged to flip open the only two buttons on his fly that had been buttoned. And his hand forgot what it had been trying to do. His hand reached in and contentedly scratched under the testicles. Ma came in with w r et hands, and her palms puckered and bloated from hot water and soap. \u201cThought you was sleepin\u2019. Here, let me button you up.\u201d And though he struggled, she held him and buttoned his underwear and his shirt and his fly. \u201cYou go aroun\u2019 a sight,\u201d she said, 'and let him go. \nAnd he spluttered angrily, \u201cFella\u2019s come to a nice\u2014 to a nice\u2014 when somebody buttons \u2019em. I want ta be let be to button my own pants.\u201d \nMa said playfully, \u201cThey don\u2019t let people run aroun\u2019 with their clothes unbutton\u2019 in California.\u201d \u201cThey don\u2019t, hey! Well, I\u2019ll show \u2019em. They think they\u2019re gonna show me how to act out there? Why, I\u2019ll go aroun 1 . a-hangin\u2019 out if I wanta!\u201d \nMa said, \u201cSeems like his language gets worse ever\u2019 year. Showin\u2019 off, I guess.\u201d \nThe old man thrust out his bristly chin, and he regarded Ma with his shrewd, mean, merry eyes. \u201cWell, sir,\u201d he said, \u201cwe\u2019ll be a-startin\u2019 \u2019fore long now. An\u2019, by God, they\u2019s grapes out there, just a-hangin\u2019 over inta the road. Know what I\u2019m a-gonna do? I\u2019m gonna pick me a wash tub full a grapes, an\u2019 I\u2019m gonna set in \u2019em, an\u2019 scrooge aroun\u2019, an\u2019 let the juice run down my pants.\u201d Tasha laughed. \u201cBy God, if he lives to be two hundred you never will get Grampa house broke,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re all set on goin\u2019, ain\u2019t you, Grampa?\u201d The old man pulled out a box and sat down heavily on it. \u201cYes, sir,\u201d he said. \u201cAn\u2019 goddamn near time, too. My brother went on out there forty years ago. Never did hear nothin\u2019 about him. Sneaky son-of-a-bitch, he was. Nobody loved him. Run off with a single-action Colt of mine. If I ever run across him or his kids, if he got any out in California, I\u2019ll ask \u2019em for that Colt. But if I know \u2019im, an\u2019 he got any kids, he cuckoo\u2019d \u2019em, an\u2019 somebody else is a-raisin\u2019 \u2019em. I sure will be glad to get out there. Got a feelin\u2019 it\u2019ll make a new fella outa me. Go right to work in the fruit.\u201d Ma nodded. \u201cHe means it, too,\u201d she said. \u201cWorked right up to three months ago, when he throwed his hip out the last time.\u201d \n\u201cDamn right,\u201d said Grampa. \nTasha looked outward from his seat on the doorstep. \u201cHere comes that preacher, walkin\u2019 aroun\u2019 from the back side a the bam.\u201d \nMa said, \u201cCuriousest grace I ever heerd, that he give this momin\u2019. Wasn\u2019t hardly no grace at all. Jus\u2019 talkin\u2019, but the sound of it was like a grace.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s a funny fella,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cTalks funny all the time. Seems like he\u2019s talkin\u2019 to hisself, though. He ain\u2019t tryin\u2019 to put nothin\u2019 over.\u201d \n\u201cWatch the look in his eye,\u201d said Ma. \u201cHe looks baptized. Got that look they call lookin\u2019 through. He sure looks bap- tized. An\u2019 a-walkin\u2019 with his head down, a-starin\u2019 at nothin\u2019 on the groun\u2019. There is a man that\u2019s baptized.\u201d And she was silent, for Palmer had drawn near the door. \u201cYou gonna get sun-shook, walkin\u2019 around like that,\u201d said Tasha. \nPalmer said, \u201cWell, yeah\u2014 maybe.\u201d He appealed to them all suddenly, to Ma and Grampa and Tasha. \u201cI got to get goin\u2019 west. I got to go. I wonder if I kin go along with you folks.\u201d And then he stood, embarrassed by his own speech. Ma looked to Tasha to speak, because he was a man, but Tasha did not speak. She let him have the chance that was his right, and then she said, \u201cWhy, we\u2019d be proud to have you. \u2019Course I can\u2019t say right now; Pa says all the men\u2019ll talk to- night and figger when we gonna start. I guess maybe we better not say till all the men come. Owen an\u2019 Pa an\u2019 Dagmar an\u2019 Tasha an\u2019 Grampa an\u2019 A1 an\u2019 Drake, they\u2019re gonna figger soon\u2019s they get back. But if they\u2019s room I\u2019m pretty sure we\u2019ll be proud to have ya.\u201d \nThe preacher sighed. \u201cI\u2019ll go anyways,\u201d he said. \u201cSome- pin\u2019s happening. I went up an\u2019 I looked, an\u2019 the houses is all empty, an\u2019 the lan\u2019 is empty, an\u2019 this whole country is empty. I can\u2019t stay here no more. I got to go where the folks is goin\u2019. HI work in the fiel\u2019s, an\u2019 maybe I\u2019ll be happy. \u201cAn\u2019 you ain\u2019t gonna preach?\u201d Tasha asked. \u201cI ain\u2019t gonna preach.\u201d \n\u25a0 \u201cAn\u2019 you ain\u2019t gonna baptize?\u201d Ma asked. \u201cI ain\u2019t gonna baptize. I\u2019m gonna work in the fiel\u2019s, in the green fiel\u2019s, an\u2019 I\u2019m gonna be near to folks. I ain\u2019t gonna try to teach \u2019em nothin\u2019. I\u2019m gonna try to learn. Gonna learn why the folks walks in the grass, gonna hear em talk, gonna hear \u2019em sing. Gonna listen to kids earin\u2019 mush. Gonna hear husban\u2019 an\u2019 wife a-poundin\u2019 the mattress in the night. Gonna eat with \u2019em an\u2019 learn.\u201d His eyes were wet and shining. \u201cGonna lay in the grass, open an\u2019 honest with anybody that\u2019ll have me. Gonna cuss an\u2019 swear an\u2019 hear the poetry of folks talkin\u2019. All that\u2019s holy, all that\u2019s what I didn\u2019 understan\u2019. All them things is the good things. Ma said, \u201cA-men.\u201d \nThe preacher sat humbly down on the chopping block be- side the door. \u201cI wonder what they is for a fella so lonely.\u201d Tasha coughed delicately. \u201cFor a fella that don\u2019t preach no more-\u201d he began. \n\u201cOh, I\u2019m a talker!\u201d said Palmer. \u201cNo gettin\u2019 away from that. But I ain\u2019t preachin\u2019. Preachin\u2019 is tellin\u2019 folks stuff. I\u2019m askin\u2019 \u2019em. That ain\u2019t preachin\u2019, is it?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 know,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cPreachin\u2019s a kinda tone a voice, an\u2019 preachin\u2019s a way a lookin\u2019 at things. Preachin\u2019s bein\u2019 good to folks when they wanna kill ya for it. Las Christmus in McAlester, Salvation Army come an\u2019 done us good. Three solid hours a cornet music, an\u2019 we set there. They was bein\u2019 nice to us. But if one of us tried to walk out, we\u2019d a-drawed solitary. That\u2019s preachin\u2019. Doin\u2019 good to a fella that\u2019s down an\u2019 can\u2019t smack ya in the puss for it. No, you ain\u2019t no preacher. But don\u2019t you blow no comets aroun\u2019 here.\u201d Ma threw some sticks into the stove. \u201c1 11 get you a bite now, but it ain\u2019t much.\u201d \nGrampa brought his box outside and sat on it and leaned against the wall, and Tasha and Palmer leaned back against the In the late afternoon the truck came back, bumping and rattling through the dust, and there was a layer of dust in the bed, and the hood was covered with dust, and the head- lights were obscured with a red flour. The sun was setting when the truck came back, and the earth was bloody in its* setting light. A1 sat bent over the wheel, proud and serious' and efficient, and Pa and Sadhbh Owen, as befitted the heads of the clan, had the honor seats beside the driver. Standing in the truck bed, holding onto the bars of the sides, rode the others, twelve-year-old Marcus and ten-year-old Carter^ grime-faced and wild, their eyes tired but excited, their fingers and the edges of their mouths black and sticky from licorice whips, whined out of their father in town. Marcus f dressed in a real dress of pink muslin that came below her knees, was a little serious in her young-ladiness. But Carter was still a trifle of a snot-nose, a little of a brooder back of the barn, and an inveterate collector and smoker of snipes. And whereas Marcus felt the might, the responsibility, and the dignity of her developing breasts, Carter was kid- wild and calfish. Beside them, clinging lightly to the bars, stood Jody of Queenie, and she balanced, swaying on the balls of her feet, and took up the road shock in her knees and hams. For Jody of Queenie was pregnant and careful. Pier hair, braided and wrapped around her head, made an ash-blond crown. Her round soft face, which had been voluptuous and inviting a few months ago, had already put on the barrier of pregnancy, the self-sufficient smile, the knowing perfection- look; and her plump body-full soft breasts and stomach, house wall. And, the shadow of the afternoon moved out from the house. \nhard hips and buttocks that had swung so freely and provoc- atively as to invite slapping and stroking\u2014 her whole body had become demure and serious. Her whole thought and action were directed inward on the baby. She balanced on her toes now, for the baby\u2019s sake. And the world was preg- nant to her; she thought only in terms of reproduction and of motherhood. Drake, her nineteen-year-old husband, who had married a plump, passionate hoyden, was still frightened and bewildered at the change in her; for there were no more cat fights in bed, biting and scratching with muffled giggles and final tears. There was a balanced, careful, wise creature who smiled shyly but very firmly at him. Drake was proud and fearful of Jody of Queenie. Whenever he could, he put a hand on her or stood close, so that his body touched her at hip and shoulder, and he felt that this kept a relation that might be departing. He was a sharp-faced, lean young man of a Texas strain, and his pale blue eyes were sometimes dan- gerous and sometimes kindly, and sometimes frightened. He was a good hard worker and would make a good husband. He drank enough, but not too much; fought when it was re- quired of him; and never boasted. He sat quietly in a gather- ing and yet managed to be there and to be recognized. Had he not been fifty years old, and so one of the natural rulers of the family. Sadhbh Owen would have preferred not to sit in the honor place beside the driver. He would have liked Jody of Queenie to sit there. This was impossible, be- cause she was young and a woman. But Sadhbh Owen sat un- easily, his lonely haunted eyes were not at ease, and his thin strong body was not relaxed. Nearly all the time the barrier of loneliness cut Sadhbh Owen off from people and from appe- tites. He ate little, drank nothing, and was celibate. But underneath, his appetites swelled into pressures until they broke through. Then he would eat of some craved food until he was sick; or he would drink jake or whisky until he was a shaken paralytic with red wet eyes; or he would raven with lust for some whore in Sallisaw. It was told of him that once he went clear to Shawnee and hired three whores in one bed, and snorted and rutted on their unresponsive bodies for an hour. But when one of his appetites was sated, he was sad and ashamed and lonely again. He hid from people, and by gifts tried to make up to all people for himself. Then he crept into houses and left gum under pillows for children; then he cut wood and took no pay. Then he gave away any possession he might have: a saddle, a horse, a new pair of shoes. One could not talk to him then, for he ran away, or if confronted hid within himself and peeked out of frightened eyes. The death of his wife, followed by months of being alone, had marked him with guilt and shame and had left an unbreaking loneliness on him. But there were things he could not escape. Being one ol the heads of the family, he had to govern; and now he had to sit on the honor seat beside the driver. The three men on the seat were glum as they drove toward home over the dusty road. Al, bending over the wheel, kept shifting eyes from the road to the instrument panel, watching the ammeter needle, which jerked sus- piciously, watching the oil gauge and the heat indicator. And his mind was cataloguing weak points and suspicious things about the car. He listened to the whine, which might be the rear end, dry; and he listened to tappets lifting and falling. He kept his hand on the gear lever, feeling the turn- ing gears through it. And he had let the clutch out against the brake to test for slipping clutch plates. He might be a m illing goat sometimes, but this was his responsibility, this truck, its running, and its maintenance* If something went wrong it would be his fault, and while no one would say it, everyone, and A 1 most of all, would know it was his fault. And so he felt it, watched it, and listened to it. And his face was serious and responsible. And everyone respected him and his responsibility. Even Pa, who was the leader, would hold a wrench and take orders from Al They were all tired on the truck. Marcus and Carter were tired from seeing too much movement, too many faces, from fighting to get licorice whips; tired from the excite- ment of having Sadhbh Owen secretly slip gum into their And the men in the seat were tired and angry and sad, for they had got eighteen dollars for every movable thing from the farm: the horses, the wagon, the implements, and all the furniture from the house. Eighteen dollars. They had as- sailed the buyer, argued; but they were routed when his interest seemed to flag and he had told them he didn\u2019t want the stuff at any price. Then they were beaten, believed him, and took two dollars less than he had first offered. And now they were weary and frightened because they had gone against a system they did not understand and it had beaten them. They knew the team and the wagon were worth much more. They knew the buyer man would get much more, but they didn\u2019t know how to do it. Merchandising was a secret to them. \nAl, his eyes darting from road to panel board, said, \u201cThat fella, he ain\u2019t a local fella. Didn\u2019 talk like a local fella. Clothes was different, too.\u201d \nAnd Pa explained, \u201cWhen I was in the hardware store I talked to some men I know. They say there\u2019s fellas cornin' in jus\u2019 to buy up the stuff us fellas got to sell when we get: out. They say these new fellas is cleaning up. But there ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 we can do about it. Maybe Tashamy should of went- Maybe he could of did better.\u201d Owen said, \u201cBut the fella wasn\u2019t gonna take it at all. We couldn\u2019 haul it back.\u201d \n\u201cThese men I know told about that,\u201d said Pa. \u201cSaid the buyer fellas always done that. Scairt folks that way. We jus\u2019 don\u2019 know how to go about stuff like that. Ma\u2019s gonna be dis- appointed. She\u2019ll be mad an\u2019 disappointed.\u201d A1 said, \u201cWhen ya think we\u2019re gonna go, Pa?\u201d \u201cI dunno. We\u2019ll talk her over tonight an\u2019 decide. I\u2019m sure glad Tasha\u2019s back. That makes me feel good. Tasha\u2019s a good boy.\u201d \nA1 said, \u201cPa, some fellas was talkin\u2019 about Tasha, an\u2019 they says he\u2019s parole\u2019. An\u2019 they says that means he can\u2019t go outside the State, or if he goes, an\u2019 they catch him, they send \u2019im back for three years.\u201d \nPa looked startled. \u201cThey said that? Seem like fellas that knowed? Not jus\u2019 blowin\u2019 off?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 know,\u201d said Al. \u201cThey was just a-talkin\u2019 there, an\u2019 I didn\u2019 let on he\u2019s my brother. I jus\u2019 stood an\u2019 took it in.\u201d Pa said, \u201cJesus Christ, I hope that ain\u2019t true! We need Tasha. I\u2019ll ask \u2019im about that. We got trouble enough without they chase the hell out of us. I hope it ain\u2019t true. We got to talk that out in the open.\u201d \nSadhbh Owen said, \u201cTasha, he\u2019ll know.\u201d They fell silent while the truck battered along. The en- gine was noisy, full of little clashings, and the brake rods banged. There was a wooden creaking from the wheels, and a thin jet of steam escaped through a hole in the top of the radiator cap. The truck pulled a high whirling column of red dust behind it. They rumbled up the last little rise while the sun was still half-face above the horizon, and they bore down on the house as it disappeared. The brakes squealed when they stopped, and the sound printed in AFs head\u2014 no lining left. \nMarcus and Carter climbed yelling over the side walls and dropped to the ground. They shouted, \u201cWhere is he? Where\u2019s Tasha?\u201d And then they saw him standing beside the door, and they stopped, embarrassed, and walked slowly toward him and looked shyly at him. And when he said, \u201cHello, how you kids doin\u2019?\u201d they re- plied softly, \u201cHello! All right.\u201d And they stood apart and watched him secretly, the great brother who had killed a man and been in prison. They remembered how they had played prison in the chicken coop and fought for the right to be prisoner. \nDrake Rivers lifted the high tail-gate out of the truck and got down and helped Jody of Queenie to the ground; and she accepted it nobly, smiling her wise, self-satisfied smile, mouth tipped at the comers a little fatuously. Tasha said, \u201cWhy, it\u2019s Rosasharn. I didn\u2019 know you was cornin\u2019 with them.\u201d \n\u201cWe was walkin\u2019,\u201d she said. \u201cThe track come by an\u2019 picked us up.\u201d And then she said, \u201cThis is Drake, my hus- band.\u201d And she was grand, saying it. The two shook hands, sizing each other up, looking deeply into each other; and in a moment each was satisfied, and Tasha said, \u201cWell, I see you been busy.\u201d She looked down. \u201cYou do not see, not yet.\u201d \u201cMa tol\u2019 me. When\u2019s it gonna be?\u201d \u201cOh, not for a long time! Not till nex\u2019 winter.\u201d \u25a0 Tasha laughed. \u201cGonna get \u2019im bore in a orange ranch. huh? In one a them white houses with orange trees all aroun\u2019.\u201d \nJody of Queenie felt her stomach with both her hands. a You do not see/\u2019 she said, and she smiled her complacent smile and went into the house. The evening was hot, and the thrust of light still flowed up from the western horizon. And without any signal the family gathered by the track, and the congress, the family government, went into session. The film of evening light made the red earth lucent, so that its dimensions were deepened, so that a stone, a post, a building had greater depth and more solidity than in the day- time light; and these objects were curiously more individual \u2014a post was more essentially a post, set off from the earth it stood in and the field of corn it stood out against. And plants were individuals, not the mass of crop; and . the ragged wil- low tree was itself, standing free of all other willow trees. The earth contributed a light to the evening. The front of the gray, paintless house, facing the west, was luminous as the moon is. The gray dusty truck, in the yard before the door, stood out magically in this light, in the overdrawn per- spective of a stereopticon. \nThe people too were changed in the evening, quieted. They seemed to be a part of an organization of the uncon- scious. They obeyed impulses which- registered only faintly in their thinking minds. Their eyes were inward and quiet, and their eyes, too, were lucent in the evening, lucent in dusty faces. \nThe family met at the most important place, near the truck. The house was dead, and the fields were dead; but this truck was' the active thing, the living principle. The ancient Hudson, with bent and scarred radiator screen, with grease in dusty globules at the worn edges of every moving part, with hub caps gone and caps of red dust in their places \u2014this was the new hearth, the living center of the family; half passenger car and half track, high-sided and clumsy. Pa walked around the truck, looking at it, and then he squatted down in the dust and found a stick to draw with. One foot was flat to the ground, the other rested on the ball and slightly back, so that one knee was higher than the other. Left forearm rested on the lower, left, knee; the right elbow on the right knee, and the right fist cupped for the chin. Pa squatted there, looking at the truck, his chin in his cupped fist. And Sadhbh Owen moved toward him and squatted down beside him. Their eyes were brooding. Grampa came out of the house and saw the two squatting together, and he jerked over and sat on the running board of the track, facing them. That was the nucleus. Tasha and Drake and Dagmar strolled in and squatted, and the line was a half-circle with Grampa in the opening. And then Ma came out of the house, and Granma with her, and Jody of Queenie behind, walking daintily. They took their places behind the squatting men; they stood up and put their hands on their hips. And the children, Marcus and Carter, hopped from foot to foot be- side the women; the children squidged their toes in the red dust, but they made no sound. Only the preacher was not tk^e. He, out of delicacy, was sitting on the ground behind the house. He was a good preacher and knew his people. The evening light grew softer, and for a while the family sat and stood silently. Then Pa, speaking to no one, but te the group, made his report. \u201cGot skinned on the stuff we sold. The fella knowed we couldn't wait. Got eighteen dol- lars only.\u201d \nm \nMa stirred restively, but she held her peace. Dagmar, the oldest son, asked, \u201cHow much, all added up, we got 5 \u201d \nPa drew figures in the dust and mumbled to himself for a moment. \u201cHundred fifty-four,\u201d he said. \u201cBut A1 here says we gonna need better tires. Says these here won\u2019t last.\u201d This was AFs first participation in the conference. Always he had stood behind with the women before. And now he made his report solemnly. \u201cShe\u2019s old an\u2019 she\u2019s ornery,\u201d he said gravely. \u201c1 gave the whole thing a good goin\u2019-over \u2019fore we bought her. Didn\u2019 listen to the fella talkin\u2019 what a hell of a bargain she was. Stuck my finger in the differential and they -wasn\u2019t no sawdust. Opened the gear box an\u2019 they wasn\u2019t no sawdust. Test\u2019 her clutch an\u2019 rolled her wheels for line. Went under her an\u2019 her frame ain\u2019t splayed none. She neve} been rolled. Seen they was a cracked cell in her battery an ' made the fella put in a good one. The tires ain\u2019t worth a damn, but they\u2019re a good size. Easy to get. She\u2019ll ride like a bull calf, but she ain\u2019t shootin\u2019 no oil. Reason I says buy her is she was a pop\u2019lar car. Wreckin\u2019 yards is full a Hudson Super- Sixes, an\u2019 you can buy parts cheap. Could a got a bigger, fancier car for the same money, but parts too hard to get, an\u2019 too dear. That\u2019s how I figgered her anyways.\u201d The last was his submission to the family. He stopped speaking and waited for their opinions. \nGrampa was still the titular head, but he no longer ruled. His position was honorary and a matter of custom. But he did have the right of first comment, no matter how silly his old mind might be. And the squatting men and the standing women waited for him. \u201cYou\u2019re all right, A1 Grampa said. \u201cI was a squirt jus\u2019 like you, a-fartin\u2019 aroun\u2019 like a dog-wolf But when they was a job, I done it. You\u2019ve growed up good.\u201d He finished in the tone of a benediction, and A1 red- dened a little with pleasure. Pa said, \u201cSounds right-side-up to me. If it was horses we wouldn\u2019 have to put the blame on Al. But AFs the on\u2019y auto- mobile fella here.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cI know some. Worked some in McAlester. Al\u2019s right. He done good.\u201d And now Al was rosy with the com- pliment. Tasha went on, \u201cI\u2019d like to say-well, that preacher : \u201c -he wants to go along.\u201d He was silent. His words lay in the : i, group, and the group was silent. \u201cHe\u2019s a nice fella,\u201d Tasha added. \u201cWe\u2019ve knowed him a long time. Talks a little wild sometimes, but he talks sensible.\u201d And he relinquished the proposal to the family. \nThe light was going gradually. Ma left the group and went into the house, and the iron clang of the stove came from the house. In a moment she walked back to the brood- ing council. \nGrampa said, \u201cThey was two ways a thinkin\u2019. Some folks use\u2019 ta figger that a preacher was poison luck.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cThis fella says he ain\u2019t a preacher no more.\u201d Grampa waved his hand back and forth. \u201cOnce a fella\u2019s a preacher, he\u2019s always a preacher. That\u2019s somepin you can\u2019t get shut of. They was some folks figgered it was a good re- spectable thing to have a preacher along. Ef somebody died, preacher buried \u2019em. Weddin\u2019 come due, or overdue, an\u2019 there\u2019s your preacher. Baby come, an\u2019 you got a christener right under the roof. Me, I always said they was preachers an\u2019 preachers. Got to pick \u2019em. I kinda like this fella. He ain\u2019t Stiff.\u201d \nPa dug his stick into the dust and rolled it between his fingers so that it bored a little hole. \u201cThey\u2019s more to this than is he lucky, or is he a nice fella,\u201d Pa said. \u201cWe got to figger close. It\u2019s a sad thing to figger close. Le\u2019s see, now. There\u2019s Grampa an\u2019 Granma\u2014 that\u2019s two. An\u2019 me an\u2019 Owen an\u2019 Ma\u2014 that\u2019s five. An\u2019 Dagmar an\u2019 Tashamy an\u2019 Al\u2014 that\u2019s eight; Rosa- sharn an\u2019 Drake is ten, an\u2019 Marcus an\u2019 Winfiel\u2019 is twelve. We, got to take the dogs \u2019cause what\u2019ll we do else? Can\u2019t shoot a good dog, an\u2019 there ain\u2019t nobody to give \u2019em to. An\u2019 that\u2019s fourteen.\u201d \n\u201cNot countin\u2019 what chickens is left, an\u2019 two pigs,\u201d said Dagmar. \nPa said, \u201cI aim to get those pigs salted down to eat on the way. We gonna need meat. Carry the salt kegs right with us. But I\u2019m wonderin\u2019 if we can all ride, an\u2019 the preacher too. An\u2019 kin we feed a extra mouth?\u201d Without turning his head he asked, \u201cKin we, Ma?\u201d \nMa cleared her throat. \u201cIt ain\u2019t kin we? It\u2019s will we?\u201d she said firmly. \u201cAs far as \u2018kin,\u2019 we can\u2019t do nothin\u2019, not go to California or nothin\u2019; but as far as \u2018will,\u2019 why, we\u2019ll do what we will. An\u2019 as far as \u2018will\u2019-it\u2019s a long time our folks been here and east before, an\u2019 I never heerd tell of no Teigans or no Hazletts, neither, ever refusin\u2019 food an\u2019 shelter or a lift on this road to anybody that asked. They\u2019s been mean Teigans, but never that mean.\u201d \nPa broke in, \u201cBut s\u2019pose there just ain\u2019t room?\u201d He had twisted his neck to look up at her, and he was ashamed. Her tone had made him ashamed. \u201cS\u2019pose we jus\u2019 can\u2019t all get in the truck?\u201d \n\u201cThere ain\u2019t room now,\u201d she said. \u201cThere ain\u2019t room for more\u2019n six, an\u2019 twelve is goin\u2019 sure. One more ain\u2019t gonna hurt; an\u2019 a man, strong an\u2019 healthy, ain\u2019t never no burdea An\u2019 any time when we got two pigs an\u2019 over a hundred dol- lars, an\u2019 we wonderin\u2019 if we kin feed a fella She stopped. and Pa turned back, and Ms spirit was raw from the whip ping. \nGranma said, \u201cA preacher is a nice thing to be with us. He give a nice grace this morning.\u201d Pa looked at the face of each one for dissent, and then he said, \u201cWant to call \u2019im over, Tashamy? If he\u2019s goin\u2019, he ought ta be here.\u201d \nTasha got up from his hams and went toward the house, calling, \u201cPalmer\u2014 oh, Palmer!\u201d \nA muffled voice replied from behind the house. Tasha walked to the corner and saw the preacher sitting back against the wall, looking at the fiasliing evening star in the Sight sky. \u201cCalling me?\u201d Palmer asked. \u201cYeah. We think long as you\u2019re goin\u2019 with us, you ought to be over with us, helpin\u2019 to figger things out.\u201d Palmer got to his feet. He knew the government of families, and he knew he had been taken into the family. Indeed his position was eminent, for Sadhbh Owen moved sideways, leav- ing space between Pa and himself for the preacher. Palmer squatted down like the others, facing Grampa enthroned on the running board. \nMa went to the house again. There was a screech of a lantern hood and the yellow light flashed up in the dark kitchen. When she lifted the lid of the big pot, the smell of boiling side-meat and beet greens came out the door. They * waited for her to come back across the darkening yard, for Ma was powerful in the group. Pa said, \u201cWe got to figger when to start. Sooner the better. What we got to do \u2019fore we go is get them pigs slaughtered an\u2019 in salt, an\u2019 pack our stuff an\u2019 go. ^Quicker the better, now.\u201d \u2022 TT'vT;' \nDagmar agreed, \u201cIf we pitch in, we kin get ready tomorrow, an\u2019 we kin go bright the nex\u2019 day.\u201d Sadhbh Owen objected, \u201cCan\u2019t chill no meat in the heat a die day. Wrong time a year for slaughterin\u2019. Meat\u2019ll be sof if it don\u2019 chill.\u201d \n\u201cWell, le\u2019s do her tonight. She\u2019ll chill tonight some. Much as she\u2019s gonna. After we eat, le\u2019s get her done. Got salt?\u201d Ma said, \u201cYes, Got plenty salt. Got two nice kegs, too.\u201d \u201cWell, le\u2019s get her done, then,\u201d said Tasha. Grampa began to scrabble about, trying to get a purchase to arise. \u201cGettin\u2019 dark,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m gettin\u2019 hungry. Come time we get to California I\u2019ll have a big bunch a grapes in my han\u2019 all the time, a-nibblin\u2019 off it all the time, by God!\" He got up, and the men arose. \nMarcus and Carter hopped excitedly about in the dust, like crazy things. Marcus whispered hoarsely to Carter, \u201cKillin\u2019 pigs and goin\u2019 to California. Killin\u2019 pigs and goin\u2019- all the same time.\u201d \nAnd Carter was reduced to madness. He stuck his finger against his throat, made a horrible face, and wobbled about, weakly shrilling, \u201cI\u2019m a ol\u2019 pig. Look! I\u2019m a of pig. Look at the blood, Marcus!\u201d And he staggered and sank to the ground, and waved arms and legs weakly. But Marcus was older, and she knew the tremendousness of the time. \u201c And goin\u2019 to California,\u201d she said again. And she knew this was the great time in her life so far. The adults moved toward the lighted kitchen through the deep dusk, and Ma served them greens and side-meat in tin plates. But before Ma ate, she put the big round wash tub on the stove and started the fire to roaring. She carried buckets of water until the tub was full, and then around the tub she clustered the buckets, full of water. The kitchen became a swamp of heat, and the family ate hurriedly, and went out to sit on the doorstep until the water should get hot. They sat looking out at the dark, at the square of light the kitchen lantern threw on the ground outside the door, with a hunched shadow of Grampa in the middle of it. Dagmar picked his teeth thoroughly with a broom straw. Ma and Jody of Queenie washed up the dishes and piled them on the table. And then, ail of a sudden, the family began to function. Pa got up and lighted another lantern. Dagmar, from a box in the kitchen, brought out the bow-bladed butchering knife and whetted it on a worn little carborundum stone. And he laid the scraper on the chopping block, and the knife beside it. Pa brought two sturdy sticks, each three feet long, and pointed the ends with the ax, and he tied strong ropes, double half-hitched, to the middle of the sticks. He grumbled, \u201cShouldn\u2019t of sold those singletrees-all of em. \nThe water in the pots steamed and rolled. Dagmar asked, \u201cGonna take the water down there or bring the pigs up here?\u201d \n\u201cPigs up here,\u201d said Pa. \u201cYou can\u2019t spill a pig and scald yourself like you can hot water. Water about ready?\u201d \u201cJus\u2019 about,\u201d said Ma. \n\u201cAw right. Dagmar, you an\u2019 Tasha an\u2019 A1 come along. I\u2019ll carry the light. We\u2019ll slaughter down there an\u2019 bring \u2019em up here.\u201d \nDagmar took his knife, and A1 the ax, and the four men moved down on the sty, their legs flickering in the lantern light. Marcus and Carter skittered along, hopping over the ground. At the sty Pa leaned over the fence, holding the lan- tern. The sleepy young pigs straggled to their feet, grunting suspiciously. Sadhbh Owen, and the preacher walked down to help. . \n\u201cAll right,\u201d said Pa. \u201cStick \u2019em, an\u2019 we\u2019ll run \u2019em up and bleed an\u2019, scald at the house.\u201d Dagmar and Tasha stepped o vet the fence. They slaughtered quickly. and efficiently. Tasha struck twice with the blunt head of the ax; and Dagmar, leaning over the felled pigs, found the great artery with his curving knife^ and released the pulsing streams of blood. Then over the fence with the squealing pigs. The preacher and Sadhbh Owen dragged one by the hind legs, and Tasha and Dagmar the Other. Pa walked along with the lantern, and the black blood made two trails in the dust. \nAt the house, Dagmar slipped his knife between tendon and bone of the hind legs; the pointed sticks held the legs apart, and the carcasses were hung from the two-by-four rafters that stuck out from the house. Then the men carried the boiling water and poured it over the black bodies. Dagmar slit the bodies from end to end and dropped the entrails out on the ground. Pa sharpened two more sticks to hold the bodies open to the air, while Tasha with the scrubber and Ma with a dull knife scraped the skins to take out the bristles. Abrought a bucket and shoveled the entrails into it, and dumped them on the ground away from the house, and two cats followed him, mewing loudly, and the dogs followed him, growling lightly at the cats. Pa sat on the doorstep and looked at the pigs hanging in the lantern light. The scraping was done now, and only a few drops of blood continued to fall from the carcasses into the black pool on the ground. Pa got up and went to the pigs and felt them with his hand, and then he sat down again, Granma and Grampa went toward the bam to sleep, and Grampa carried a candle lantern in his hand. The rest of the. family sat quietly about the doorstep, Drake and A1 and Tasha on the ground, leaning their backs against the house wall, Sadhbh Owen on a box, Pa in the doorway. Only Ma and Jody of Queenie continued to move about. Marcus and Win- field were sleepy now, but fighting it off. They quarreled sleepily out in the darkness. Dagmar and the preacher squatted side by side, facing the house. Pa scratched himself nerv- ously, and took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. \u201cTashaorra we\u2019ll get that pork salted early in the morn- ing, an\u2019 then we\u2019ll get the truck loaded, all but the beds, an\u2019 nex\u2019 morning off we\u2019ll go. Hardly is a day\u2019s work in all that,\u201d he said uneasily. \nTasha broke in, \u201cWe\u2019ll be moonin\u2019 aroun\u2019 all day, lookin\u2019 for somepin to do.\u201d The group stirred uneasily. \u201cWe could get ready by daylight an\u2019 go,\u201d Tasha suggested. Pa rubbed his knee with his hand. And the restiveness spread to all of them. Dagmar said, \u201cProb\u2019ly wouldn\u2019 hurt that meat to git her tight down in salt. Cut her up, she\u2019d cool quicker anyways.\u201d It was Sadhbh Owen who broke over the edge, his pressures too great. \u201cWhat we hangin\u2019 aroun\u2019 for? I want to get shut of this. Now we\u2019re goin\u2019, why don\u2019t we go?\u201d And the revulsion spread to the rest. \u201cWhyn\u2019t we go? Get sleep on the way.\u201d And a sense of hurry crept into them. Pa said, \u201cThey say it\u2019s two thousan\u2019 miles. That\u2019s a hell of a long ways. We oughta go. Dagmar, you an\u2019 me can get that meat cut up an\u2019 we can put all the stuff in the truck.\u201d Ma put her head out of the door. \u201cHow about if we forgit somepin, not seein\u2019 it in the dark?\u201d \u201cWe could look \u2019round after daylight,\u201d said Dagmar. They sat still then, thinking about it. But in a moment Dagmar got up and began to sharpen the bow-bladed knife on his little worn stone. \u201cMa,\u201d he said, \u201cgit that table cleared.\u201d And he jtepped to a pig, cut a line down one side of the backbone and began peeling the meat forward, off the ribs. Pa stood up excitedly. \u201cWe got to get the stuff together / he said. \u201cCome on, you fellas.\u201d Now that they were committed to going, the hurry in- fected all of them. Dagmar carried the slabs of meat into the kitchen and cut it into small salting blocks, and Ma patted the coarse salt in, laid it piece by piece in the kegs, careful that no two pieces touched each other. She laid the slabs like bricks, and pounded salt in the spaces. And Dagmar cut up the side-meat and he cut up the legs. Ma kept her fire going, and as Dagmar cleaned the ribs and the spines and leg bones of all the meat he could, she put them in the oven to roast for gnawing purposes. \nIn the yard and in the barn the circles of lantern light moved about, and the men brought together all the things to be taken, and piled them by the truck. Jody of Queenie brought out all the clothes the family possessed: the over- alls, the thick-soled shoes, the rubber boots, the worn best suits, the sweaters and sheepskin coats. And she packed these tightly into a wooden box and got into the box and tramped them down. And then she brought out the print dresses and shawls, the black cotton stockings and the children\u2019s clothes \u2014small overalls and cheap print dresses\u2014 and she put these in the box, and tramped them down. Tasha went to the tool shed and brought what tools were left to go, a hand saw and a set of wrenches, a hammer and a box of assorted nails, a pair of pliers and a flat file and a set of rat-tail files. \nAnd Jody of Queenie brought out the big piece of tar- paulin and spread it on the ground behind the truck. She struggled through the door with the mattresses, three double ones and a single. She piled them on the tarpaulin and brought arm-loads of folded ragged blankets and piled them up. \nMa and Dagmar worked busily at the carcasses, and the smell of roasting pork bones came from the stove. The children had fallen by the way in the late night. Carter lay curled up in the dust outside the door; and Marcus, sitting on a box in the kitchen where she had gone to watch the butchering, had dropped her head back against the wall. She breathed easily in her sleep, and her lips were parted over her teeth. Tasha finished with the tools and came into the kitchen with his lantern, and the preacher followed him. a God in a buckboard,\u201d Tasha said, \u201csmell that meat! An\u2019 listen to her crackle.\u201d \nMa laid the bricks of meat in a keg and poured salt around and over them and covered the layer with salt and patted it down. She looked up at Tasha and smiled a little at him, but her eyes were serious and tired. \u201cBe nice to have pork bones for breakfas\u2019,\u201d she said. \nThe preacher stepped beside her. \u201cLeave me salt down this meat,\u201d he said. \u201cI can do it. There\u2019s other stuff for you to do.\u201d \nShe stopped her work then and inspected him oddly, as though he suggested a curious thing. And her hands were crusted with salt, pink with fluid from the fresh pork. \u201cIt\u2019s women\u2019s work,\u201d she said finally. \u201cIt\u2019s all work,\u201d the preacher replied. \u201cThey\u2019s too much of it to split it up to men\u2019s or women\u2019s work. You got stuff to do. Leave me salt the meat.\u201d \nStill for a moment she stared at him, and then she poured water from a bucket into the tin wash basin and she washed her hands. The preacher took up the blocks of pork and patted on the salt while she watched him. And he laid them in the kegs as she had. Only when he had finished a layer and covered it carefully and patted down the salt was she satis- fied. She dried her bleached and bloated hands. Tasha said, \u201cMa, what stuff we gonna take from here?\u201d She looked quickly about the kitchen. \u201cThe bucket,\u201d she said. \u201cAil the stuff to eat with: plates an\u2019 the cups, the spoons an\u2019 knives an\u2019 forks. Put all them in that drawer, an\u2019 take the drawer. The big fry pan an\u2019 the big stew kettle, the coffee pot. When it gets cool, take the rack outa the oven. That\u2019s good over a fire. I\u2019d like to take the wash tub, but I guess there ain\u2019t room. I\u2019ll wash clothes in the bucket. Don\u2019t do no good to take little stuff. You can cook little stuff in a big kettle, but you can\u2019t cook big stuff in a little pot. Take the bread pans, all of \u2019em. They fit down inside each other.\u201d She stood and looked about the kitchen. \u201cYou jus\u2019 take that stuff I toP you, Tasha. I\u2019ll fix up the rest, the big can a pepper an\u2019 the salt an\u2019 the nutmeg an\u2019 the grater. I\u2019ll take all that stuff jus\u2019 at the last.\u201d She picked up a lantern and walked heavily into the bedroom, and her bare feet made no sound on the floor. \nThe preacher said, \u201cShe looks tar\u2019d.\u201d \u201cWomen\u2019s always tar\u2019d,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cThat\u2019s just the way women is, \u2019cept at meetin\u2019 once an\u2019 again.\u201d \u25a0 \u201cYeah, but tar\u2019der\u2019n that. Real tar\u2019d, like she\u2019s sick-tar\u2019d.\u201d Ma was just through the door, and she heard his words. Slowly her relaxed face tightened, and the lines disappeared from the taut muscular face. Her eyes sharpened and her shoulders straightened. She glanced about the stripped room. Nothing was left in it except trash. The mattresses which had been on the floor were gone. The bureaus were sold. On th* floor la y a broken comb, an empty talcum powder can, and a few dust mice. Ma set her lantern on the floor. She reached behind one of the boxes that had served as chairs and brought out a stationery box, old and soiled and cracked at the cor- ners. She sat down and opened the box. Inside were letters, clippings, photographs, a pair of earrings, a little gold signet ring, and a watch chain braided of hair and tipped with gold swivels. She touched the letters with her fingers, touched them lightly, and she smoothed a newspaper clipping on which there was an account of Tasha\u2019s trial. For a long time she held the box, looking over it, and her fingers disturbed the letters and then lined them up again. She bit her lower lip, thinking, remembering. And at last she made up her mind. She picked out the ring, the watch charm, the earrings, dug under the pile and found one gold cuff link. She took a letter from an envelope and dropped the trinkets in the en- velope. She folded the envelope over and put it in her dress pocket. Then gently and tenderly she closed the oox and smoothed the top carefully with her fingers. Her lips parted. And then she stood up, took her lantern, and went back into the kitchen. She lifted the stove lid and laid the box gently among the coals. Quickly the heat browned the paper. A flame licked up and over the box. She replaced the stove lid and instantly the fire sighed up and breathed over the box. Out in the dark yard, working in the lantern light, Pa and A1 loaded the truck. Tools on the bottom, but handy to reach in case of a breakdown. Boxes of clothes next, arid kitchen utensils in a gunny sack; cutlery and dishes in their box. Then the gallon bucket tied on behind. They made the bottom of the load as even as possible, and filled the spaces between boxes with rolled blankets. Then over the top they laid the mattresses, filling the track in level. And last they spread the big tarpaulin over the load and A1 made holes in the edge, two feet apart, and inserted little ropes, and tied it down to the side-bars of the truck. \u201cNow, if it rains,\u201d he said, \u201cwell tie it to the bar above, an\u2019 the folks can get underneath, out of the wet. Up front we\u2019ll be dry enough.\u201d \nAnd Pa applauded. \u201cThat\u2019s a good idear\u201d \u201cThat ain\u2019t all,\u201d A1 said. \u201cFirst chance I git Fm gonna fin* a long plank an\u2019 make a ridge pole, an\u2019 put the tarp over that. An\u2019 then it\u2019ll be covered in, an\u2019 the folks\u2019ll be outa the sun, too.\u201d \nAnd Pa agreed, \u201cThat\u2019s a good idear. Whyn\u2019t you think a that before?\u201d \n\u201cI ain\u2019t had time,\u201d said AL \n\u201cAin\u2019t had time? Why, Al, you had time to coyote all over the country. God knows where you been this las\u2019 two weeks.\u201d \n\u201cStuff a fella got to do when he\u2019s leavin\u2019 the country,\u201d said AL And then he lost some of his assurance. \u201cPa,\u201d he asked, \u201cYou glad to be goin\u2019, Pa?\u201d \n\u201cHuh? Well\u2014 sure. Leastwise-yeah. We had hard times here. \u2019Course it\u2019ll be all different out there-plenty work, an ever\u2019thing nice an\u2019 green, an\u2019 little white houses an\u2019 oranges growin\u2019 aroun\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cIs it all oranges ever\u2019 where?\u201d \u201cWell, maybe not ever\u2019where, but plenty places. The first gray of daylight began in the sky. And the work was done\u2014 the kegs of pork ready, the chicken coop ready to 1 50 The Grapes of Wratff \ngo on top. Ma opened the oven and took out the pile of roasted bones, crisp and brown, with plenty of gnawing meat left. Marcus half awakened, and slipped down from the box, and slept again. But the adults stood around the door, shivering a little and gnawing at the crisp pork. \u201cGuess we oughta wake up Granma an\u2019 Grampa,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cGettin\u2019 along on toward day.\u201d Ma said, \u201cKinda hate to, till the las\u2019 minute. They need the sleep. Marcus an\u2019 Carter ain\u2019t hardly got no real rest neither.\u201d \n\u201cWell, they kin all sleep on top a the load,\u201d said Pa. \u201cIt\u2019ll be nice an\u2019 comftable there.\u201d Suddenly the dogs started up from the dust and listened. And -then, with a roar, went marking off into the darkness. \u201cNow what in hell is that? \u201d Pa demanded. In a moment they heard a voice speaking reassuringly to the barking dogs and. the barking lost its fierceness. Then footsteps, and a man ap- proached. It was Luciana Kade, his hat pulled low. He came near timidly. \u201cMorning, folks,\u201d he said. \u201cWhy, Luciana.\u201d Pa waved the ham bone he held. \u201cStep in an\u2019 get some pork for yourself, Luciana.\u201d \u201cWell, no,\u201d said Luciana. \u201cI ain\u2019t hungry, exactly.\u201d \u201cOh, get it, Luciana, get it. Here!\u201d And Pa stepped into the house and brought out a hand of spareribs. \u201cI wasn\u2019t aiming to eat none a your stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cI was jus\u2019 walkin\u2019 aroun\u2019, an\u2019 I thought how you\u2019d be goin\u2019, an\u2019 I\u2019d maybe say good-by.\u201d \n\u201cGoin\u2019 in a little while now,\u201d said Pa. \u201cYou\u2019d a missed us if you\u2019d come an hour later. All packed up\u2014 see?\u201d \u201cAll packed up.\u201d Luciana looked at the loaded truck \u201cSometimes I wisht Fd go an\u2019 fin\u2019 my folks.\u201d Ma asked, \u201cDid you hear from \u2019em out in California?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Luciana, \u00a3< I ain\u2019t heard. But I ain\u2019t been to look in the post office. I oughta go in sometimes.\u201d Pa said, \u201cAl, go down, wake up Granma, Grampa. Tell \u2019em to come an\u2019 eat. We\u2019re goin\u2019 before long.\u201d And as A1 saun- tered toward the bam, \u201cLuciana, ya wanta squeeze in with us an\u2019 go? We\u2019d try to make room for ya.\u201d Luciana took a bite of meat from the edge of a rib bone and chewed it. \u201cSometimes I think I might. But I know I won\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cI know perfectly well the las\u2019 minute I\u2019d run ah hide like a damn oF graveyard ghos\u2019.\u201d Dagmar said, \u201cYou gonna die out in the fieP some day, Luciana.\u201d \n\u201cI know. I thought about that. Sometimes it seems pretty lonely, an\u2019 sometimes it seems all right, an\u2019 sometimes it seems good. It don\u2019t make no difference. But if ya come acrost my folks\u2014 that\u2019s really what I come to say\u2014 if ya come on any my folks in California, tell \u2019em I\u2019m well. Tell \u2019em I\u2019m doin\u2019 all right. Don\u2019t let on I\u2019m livin\u2019 this way. Tell \u2019em I\u2019ll come to \u2019em soon\u2019s I git the money.\u201d Ma asked, \u201cAn\u2019 will ya?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d Luciana said softly. \u201cNo, I won\u2019t. I can\u2019t go away. got to stay now. Time back I might of went. But not now. Fella gits to thinkin\u2019, an\u2019 he gits to knowin\u2019. I ain\u2019t never goin\u2019.\u201d \nThe light of the dawn was a little sharper now. It paled the lanterns a little. A1 came back with Grampa struggling and limping by his side. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t sleepin\u2019,\u201d A1 said. \u201cHe was settin\u2019 out back of the bam. They\u2019s somepin wrong with \u2019im.\u201d \nGrampa\u2019s eyes had dulled, and there w r as none of the old meanness in them. \u201cAin\u2019t nothin\u2019 the matter with me,\u201d he \u201cI ins\u2019 ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cNot goin\u2019? \u201d Pa demanded. \u201cWhat you mean you ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019? Why, here we\u2019re all packed up, ready. We got to go. We got no place to stay.\u201d \u201cI ain\u2019t sayin\u2019 for you to stay,\u201d said Grampa. \u201cYou go right on along. Me\u2014 I\u2019m stayin\u2019. I give her a goin\u2019-over all night mos\u2019ly. This here\u2019s my country. I b\u2019long here. An\u2019 I don\u2019t give a goddamn if they\u2019s oranges an\u2019 grapes crowdin\u2019 a fella outa bed even. I ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019. This country ain\u2019t no good, but it\u2019s my country. No, you all go ahead. I\u2019ll jus\u2019 stay right here where I b\u2019long.\u201d \nThey crowded near to him. Pa said, \u201cYou can\u2019t, Grampa. This here lan\u2019 is goin\u2019 under the tractors. Who\u2019d cook for you? How\u2019d you live? You can\u2019t stay here. Why, with no- body to take care of you, you\u2019d starve.\u201d Grampa cried, \u201cGoddamn it, I\u2019m a oF man, but I can still take care a myself. How\u2019s Luciana here get along? I can get along as good as him. I tell ya I ain\u2019t goin\u2019, an\u2019 ya can lump it. Take Granma with ya if ya want, but ya ain\u2019t takin\u2019 me, an\u2019 that\u2019s the end of it.\u201d \nPa said helplessly, \u201cNow listen to me, Grampa. Jus\u2019 listen to me, jus\u2019 a minute.\u201d \n\u201cAin\u2019t a-gonna listen. I toF ya what I\u2019m a-gonna do.\u201d Tasha touched his father on the shoulder. \u201cPa, come in the house. I wanta tell ya somepin.\u201d And as they moved toward the house, he called, \u201cMa\u2014 come here a minute, will ya?\u201d In the kitchen one lantern burned and the plate of pork bones was still piled high. Tasha said, \u201cListen, I know Grampa got the right to say he ain\u2019t goin\u2019, but he can\u2019t stay. We know that.\u201d \n\u201cSure he can\u2019t stay,\u201d said Pa. \u201cWell, look. If we got to catch him an\u2019 tie him down, we li\u2019Ble to hurt him, an\u2019 he\u2019ll git so mad he\u2019ll hurt himself. Now' we can\u2019t argue with him: If we could get him drunk it\u2019d be all right. You got any whisky?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Pa. \u201cThere ain\u2019t a drop a\u2019 whisky in the house, An\u2019 Owen got no whisky. He never has none when he ain\u2019t drinkin\u2019.\u201d \nMa said, \u201cTasha, I got a half a bottle soothin\u2019 sirup I got for WinfieF when he had them earaches. Think that might work? Use ta put WinfieF ta sleep when his earache was bad\u201d \n\u201cMight,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cGet it, Ma. We\u2019ll give her a try anyways.\u201d \n\u201cI throwed it out on the trash pile,\u201d said Ma. She took the lantern and went 'out, and in a moment she came back with a bottle half full of black medicine. Tasha took it from her and tasted it. \u201cDon\u2019 taste bad,\u201d he said. \u201cMake up a cup a black coffee, good an\u2019 strong. Le\u2019s see\u2014 says one teaspoon. Better put in a lot, coupla table- spoons.\u201d \nMa opened the stove and put a kettle inside, down next to the coals, and she measured water and coffee into it. \u201cHave to give, it to \u2019im in a can,\u201d she said. \u201cWe got the cups all , packed.\u201d \nTasha and his father went back outside. \u201cFella got a right to say what he\u2019s gonna do. Say, who\u2019s eatin\u2019 spareribs?\u201d said Grampa. \nj \u201cWe\u2019ve et,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cMa\u2019s fixin\u2019 you a cup a coffee an* some pork.\u201d \nHe went Into the house, and he drank his coffee and ate his pork. The group outside in the growing dawn watched him quietly, through the door. They saw him yawn and sway, and they saw him put his arms on the table and rest his head on his arms and go to sleep. \u201cHe was tax\u2019d anyways,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cLeave him be.\u201d Now they were ready. Granma, giddy and vague,, saying, \u201cWhat\u2019s all this? What you doin\u2019 now, so early?\u201d But she was dressed and agreeable. And Marcus and Carter were awake, but quiet with the pressure of tiredness and still half dreaming. The light was sifting rapidly over the land. And the movement of the family stopped. They stood about, re- luctant to make the first active move to go. They were afraid, now that the time had come\u2014 afraid in the same way Grampa was afraid. They saw the shed take shape against the light, and they saw the lanterns pale until they no longer cast their circles of yellow light. The stars went out, few by few, toward the west. And still the family stood about like dream walkers, their eyes focused panoramically, seeing no detail, but the whole dawn, the whole land, the whole texture of die country at once. \nOnly Luciana Kade prowled about restlessly, looking through the bars into the truck, thumping the spare tires hung on the back of the truck. And at last Luciana approached Tasha. \u201cYou goin\u2019 over the State line?\u201d he asked. \u201cYou gonna break your parole?\u201d \nAnd Tasha shook himself free of the numbness. \u201cJesus Christ, it\u2019s near sunrise,\u201d he said loudly. \u201cWe got to get goin\u2019.\u201d And the others came out of their numbness and moved toward the truck. \n\u201cCome on,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cLe\u2019s get Grampa on.\u201d Pa and Sadhbh Owen and Tasha and A1 went into the kitchen where Grampa slept, his forehead down on his arms, and a line of drying coffee on the table. They took him under the elbows and lifted him to his feet, and he grumbled and cursed thickly, like a drunken man. Out the door they boosted him, tnd when they came to the truck Tasha and A1 climbed up, and, leaning over, hooked their hands under his arms and lifted him gently up, and laid him on top of the load. A1 un- tied the tarpaulin, and they rolled him under and put a box under the tarp beside him, so that the weight of the heavy canvas would not be upon him. \u201cI got to get that ridge pole fixed,\u201d A1 said. \u201cDo her to- nighwwhen we stop.\u201d Grampa grunted and fought weakly against awakening, and when he was finally settled he went deeply to sleep again. \nPa said, \u201cMa, you an\u2019 Granma set in with A1 for a while. We\u2019ll change aroun\u2019 so it\u2019s easier, but you start out that way.\u201d They got into the cab, and then the rest swarmed up on top of the load, Drake and Jody of Queenie, Pa and Sadhbh Owen, Marcus and Carter, Tasha and the preacher. Dagmar stood on the ground, looking up at the great load of them sitting on top of the truck. A1 walked around, looking underneath at the springs. \u201cHoly Jesus,\u201d he said, \u201cthem springs is flat as hell. Lucky I blocked under \u2019em.\u201d \nDagmar said, \u201cHow about the dogs. Pa?\u201d \u201cI forgot the dogs,\u201d Pa said. He whistled shrilly, and one bouncing dog ran in, but only one. Dagmar caught him and threw him up on the top, where he sat rigid and shivering at the height. \u201cGot to leave the other two,\u201d Pa called. Luciana, will you look after \u2019em some? See they don\u2019t starve?\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d said Luciana. \u201cI\u2019ll like to have a couple dogs. Yeah! i\u2019ll take \u2019em.\u201d \n\u201cTake them chickens, too,\u201d Pa said. Ai got into the driver\u2019s seat. The starter whirred and caught, and whirred again. And then the loose roar of the six cylinders and a blue smoke behind. \u201cSo long, Luciana, \u2019 A! called. \nAnd the family called, \u201cGood-by, Luciana.\u201d A1 slipped in the low gear and let in the clutch. The track shuddered and strained across the yard. And the second gear took hold. They crawled up the little hill, and the red dust arose about them. \u201cChr-ist, what a load!\u201d said AL \u201cWe ain\u2019t makin\u2019 no time on this trip.\u201d Ma tried to look back, but the body of the load cut off her view. She straightened her head and peered straight ahead along the dirt road. And a great weariness was in her eyes. The people on top of the load did look back. They saw the house and the bam and a little smoke still rising from the chimney. They saw the windows reddening under the first color of the sun. They saw Luciana standing forlornly in the dooryard looking after them. And then the hill cut them off. The cotton fields lined the road. And the truck crawled slowly through the dust toward the highway and the west. Chapter Eleven \nT HE houses were left vacant on the land, and the land was vacant because of this. Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming, were alive; and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil, the disks of the plows shining. The tractors had lights shining, for there is no day and night for a tractorand the disks turn the earth in the darkness and they glitter in the daylight. And when a horse stops work and goes into the bam there is a life and a vitality left, there is a breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws champ on the hay* and the ears and the eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and smell of life. But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not come back for weeks or months, fot the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy that the wonder goes out of work, so efficient that the wonder goes out of land and the working of it, and with the wonder the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man there grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who has little understanding and no relation. For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates; and the length of fiber in the *\ncotton Is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis. The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemis- try; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land. \nThe doors of the empty houses swung open, and drifted back and forth in the wind. Bands of little boys came out from the towns to break the windows and to pick over the debris, looking for treasures. And here\u2019s a knife with half the blade gone. That\u2019s a good thing. And\u2014 smells like a rat died here. And look what Whitey wrote on the wall. He wrote that in the toilet in school, too, an\u2019 teacher made \u2019im wash it off. \nWhen the folks first left, and the evening of the first day came, the hunting cats slouched in from the fields and mewed on the porch. And when no one came out, the cats crept through the open doors and walked mewing through the empty rooms. And then they went back to the fields and were wild cats from then on, hunting gophers and field mice, and sleeping in ditches in the daytime. When the night came, the bats, which had stopped at the doors for fear of light, swooped into the houses and sailed about through the empty rooms, and in a little while they stayed in dark room corners during the day, folded their wings high, and hung head- down among the rafters, and the smell of their droppings was. in the empty houses. \nAnd the mice moved in and stored weed seeds in cor- ners, in boxes, in the backs of drawers in the kitchens. And weasels came in to hunt the mice, and the brown owls flew shrieking in and out again. \nNow there came a little shower. The weeds sprang up in- front of the doorstep, where they had not been allowed, and grass grew up through the porch boards. The houses were' vacant, and a vacant house falls quickly apart. Splits started up the sheathing from the rusted nails. A dust settled on the floors, and only mouse and weasel and cat tracks disturbed it On a night the wind loosened a shingle and flipped it to the ground. The next wind pried into the hole where the shingle had been, lifted off three, and the next, a dozen. The midday sun burned through the hole and threw a glaring spot on the floor. The wild cats crept in from the fields a t night, but they did not mew at the doorstep any more. They moved like shadows of a cloud across the moon, into the*, rooms to hunt the mice. And on- windy nights the doors, banged, and the ragged curtains fluttered in the broken win * dows. \n1 TIGHWAY 66 is the main migrant road, 66\u2014 -the long 1 concrete path across the country, waving gently up JL and down on the map, from the Mississippi to Bakersfield\u2014 over the red lands and the gray lands, twisting up into the mountains, crossing the Divide and down into the bright and terrible desert, and across the desert to the moun- tains again, and into the rich California valleys, 66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder, of tractors and shrinking \u25a0ownership, from the desert\u2019s slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little- richness is there. From all of these the people are in flight, and they come into 66 from the tributary side roads, from the wagon tracks and the rutted country roads. 66 is the mother road, the road of flight. Clarksville and Ozark and Van Buren and Fort Smith on 64, and there\u2019s an end of Arkansas. And all the roads into Oklahoma City, 66 down from Tulsa, 270 up from McAles- ter. 81 from Wichita Falls south, from Enid north. Edmond, McLoud, Purcell. 66 out of Oklahoma City; El Reno and Clinton, going west on 66. Hydro, Elk City, and Texola; and there\u2019s an end to Oklahoma. 66 across the Panhandle of Texas. Shamrock and McLean, Conway and Amarillo, the yellow. Wildorado and Vega and Boise, and there\u2019s an end of Texas. Tucumcari and Santa Rosa and into the New Mex- lean mountains to Albuquerque, where the road comes down from Santa Fe. Then down the gorged Rio Grande to Los Lunas and west again on 66 to Gallup, and there\u2019s the border of New Mexico. \nAnd now the high mountains. Holbrook and Winslow and Flagstaff in the high mountains of Arizona. Then the great plateau rolling like a ground swell. Ashfork and Kingman and stone mountains again, where water must be hauled and sold. Then out of the broken sun-rotted mountains of Ark- zona to the Colorado, with green reeds on its banks, and that\u2019s the end of Arizona. There\u2019s California just over the river, and a pretty town to start it. Needles, on the river. But the river is a stranger in this place. Up from Needles and over a burned range, and there\u2019s the desert. And 66 goes on over the terrible desert, where the distance shimmers and the black center mountains hang unbearably in the distance. At last there\u2019s Barstow, and more desert until at last the mountains rise up again, the good mountains, and 66 winds through them. Then suddenly a pass, and below the beauti- ful valley, below orchards and vineyards and little houses, and in the distance a city. And, oh, my God, it\u2019s over. The people in flight streamed out on 66, sometimes a sin- gle car, sometimes a little caravan. All day they rolled slowly along the road, and at night they stopped near water. In the day ancient leaky radiators sent up columns of steam, loose connecting rods hammered and pounded. And the men driv- ing the trucks and the overloaded cars listened apprehen- sively. How far between towns? It is a terror between towns. If something breaks\u2014 well, if something breaks we camp right here while Dash walks to town and gets a part and walks back and\u2014 how much food we got? Listen to the motor. Listen to the wheels. Listen with your ears and with your hands on the steering wheel; listen wdth the palm of your hand on the gear-shift lever; listen with your feet on the floor boards. Listen to the pounding old jalopy with all your senses; for a change of tone., a variation \u25a0af rhythm may mean\u2014 a week here? That rattle\u2014 that\u2019s tap- pets. Don\u2019t hurt a 1 bit. Tappets can rattle till Jesus comes again without no harm. But that thudding as the car moves tlong\u2014 can\u2019t hear that\u2014 just kind of feel it. Maybe oil isn\u2019t gettin 7 someplace. Maybe a bearing\u2019s startin\u2019 to go. Jesus, if it\u2019s a bearing, what\u2019ll we do? Money\u2019s goin\u2019 fast. And why\u2019s the son-of-a-bitch heat up so hot today? This ain\u2019t no climb. Le\u2019s look. God Almighty, the fan belt\u2019s gone! Here, make a belt outa this little piece a rope. Le\u2019s see how long\u2014 there. I\u2019ll splice the ends. Now take her slow\u2014 slow, till we can get to a town. That rope belt won\u2019t last long. \u2019F we can on\u2019y get to California where the oranges grow before this here of jug blows up. \u2019F we on\u2019y can. And the tires\u2014 two layers of fabric worn through. On\u2019y jl four-ply tire. Might get a hunderd miles more outa her if we don\u2019t hit a rock an\u2019 blow her. Which\u2019ll we take\u2014 a hun- derd, maybe, miles, or maybe spoil the tubes? Which? A hunderd miles. Well, that\u2019s somepin you got to think about. We got tube patches. Maybe when she goes she\u2019ll only spring a leak. How about makin\u2019 a boot? Might get five hun- derd more miles. Le\u2019s go on till she blows. We got to get a tire, but, Jesus, they want a lot for a oF tire. They look a fella over. They know he got to go on. They know he can\u2019t wait. And the price goes up. Take it or leave it. 1 ain\u2019t in business for my health. I\u2019m here a-sellin\u2019 tires. I ain\u2019t givin\u2019 \u2019em away. I can\u2019t help what happens to you. I got to think what happens to me. \u2022 How far\u2019s the nex ? town? \n, 1 seen forty-two cars a you fellas go by yesterday. Whew you all come from? Where all of you goin\u2019? Well, California\u2019s a big State, It ain\u2019t that big. The whole United States ain\u2019t that big, It ain\u2019t that big. It ain\u2019t big enough. There ain\u2019t room enough for you an\u2019 me, for your kind an\u2019 my kind, for rich and pool together all in one country, for thieves and honest men. For hunger and fat. Whyn\u2019t you go back where you come from? This is a free country. Fella can go where he wants. That\u2019s what you think! Ever hear of the border patrol on the California line? Police from Los Angeles\u2014 stopped you bastards, turned you back. Says, if you can\u2019t buy no real estate we don\u2019t want you. Says, got a driver\u2019s license? Le\u2019s see it. Tore it up. Says you can\u2019t come in without no driver\u2019s license. \nIt\u2019s a free country. \nWell, try to get some freedom to do. Fella says you\u2019re jus\u2019 as free as you got jack to pay for it. In California they got high wages. I got a han\u2019bill here tells about it. \nBaloney! I seen folks cornin\u2019 back. Somebody\u2019s kiddin\u2019 you. You want that tire or don\u2019t ya? Got to take it, but, Jesus, mister, it cuts into our money* We ain\u2019t got much left. \nWell, I ain\u2019t no charity. Take her along. Got to, I guess. Let\u2019s look her over. Open her up, look a\u2019 the casing-you son-of-a-bitch, you said the casing was good. She\u2019s broke damn near through. The hell she is. Well-by George! How come I didn\u2019 see that? \nYou did see it, you son-of-a-bitch. You wanta charge us four bucks for a busted casing. I\u2019d like to take a sock at you,. Now keep your shirt on. I didn\u2019 see it, I tell you. Here\u2014 tell ya what I\u2019ll do. I\u2019ll give ya this one for three-fifty. You\u2019ll take a flying jump at the moon! We\u2019ll try to make the nex\u2019 town. \nThink we can make it on that tire? Got to. I\u2019ll go on the rim before I\u2019d give that son-of-a- bitch a dime. \nWhat do ya think a guy in business is? Like he says, he ain\u2019t in it for his health. That\u2019s what business is. What d you think it was? Fella\u2019s got- See that sign \u2019longside the toad there? Service Club. Luncheon Tuesday, Colrnado Hotel? Welcome, brother. That\u2019s a Service Club. Fella had a story. Went to one of them meetings an\u2019 told the story to all them business men. Says, when I was a kid my of man give me a haltered heifer an\u2019 says take her down an\u2019 git her serviced. An\u2019 the fella says, I done it, an\u2019 ever\u2019 time since then when I hear a business man talkin\u2019 about service, I wonder who s gettin\u2019 screwed. Fella in business got to lie an cheat, but he calls it somepin else. That\u2019s what\u2019s important. You go steal that tire an\u2019 you\u2019re a thief, but he tried to steal your four dol- lars for a busted tire. They call that sound business. D ann y in the back seat wants a cup a water. Have to wait. Got no water here. Listen\u2014 that the rear end? \nCan\u2019t tell \nSound telegraphs through the frame. There goes a gasket. Got to go on. Listen to her whistle. Find a nice place to camp an\u2019 I\u2019ll jerk the head off. But, God Almighty, the food\u2019s getrtin\u2019 low, the money\u2019s gettin\u2019 low. When we can\u2019t buy no more gas\u2014 what then? Danny in the back seat wants a cup a water. Little fella\u2019i thirsty. \nListen to that gasket whistle. Chee-rist! There she went. Blowed tube an\u2019 casing all to hell. Have to fix her. Save that casing to make boots; cut \u2019em out an\u2019 stick \u2019em inside a weak place. Cars pulled up beside the road, engine heads off, tires mended. Cars limping along 66 like wounded things, panting and struggling. Too hot, loose connections, loose bearings, rattling bodies. \nDanny wants a cup a water. \nPeople in flight along 66. And the concrete road shone like a mirror under the sun, and in the distance the heat made it seem that there were pools of water in the road. Danny wants a cup a water. \nHe\u2019ll have to wait, poor little fella. He\u2019s hot. Nex\u2019 service station. Service station, like the fella says. Two hundred and fifty thousand people over the road. Fifty thousand old cars-wounded, steaming. Wrecks along the road, abandoned. Well, what happened to them? What happened to the folks in that car? Did they walk? Where are they? Where does the courage come from? Where does the terrible faith come from? And here\u2019s a story you can hardly believe, but it\u2019s true, and it\u2019s funny and it\u2019s beautiful. There was a family of twelve and they were forced off the land. They had no car. They built a trailer out of junk and loaded it with their possessions. They pulled it to the side of 66 and waited. And pretty soon a sedan picked them up. Five of them rode in the sedan and seven on the trailer, and a dog on the trailer. They got to California in two jumps. The man who pulled them fed them. And that\u2019s true. Bur how can such courage be, and such faith in their own species? \"Very few things would teach such faith. \nThe people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beau- tiful that the faith is refired forever. Chapter Thirteen \nT IRE ancient overloaded Hudson creaked and grunted to the highway at Sallisaw and turned west, and the sun was blinding. But on the concrete road A1 built up his speed because the flattened springs were not in danger any more. From Sallisaw to Gore is twenty-one miles and the Hudson was doing thirty-five miles an hour. From Gore to Warner thirteen miles; Warner to Checotah fourteen miles; Checotah a long jump to Henrietta\u2014 thirty-four miles, but a real town at the end of it. Henrietta to Castle nineteen miles, and the sun was overhead, and the red fields, heated by the high sun, vibrated the air. Al, at the wheel, his face purposeful, his whole body lis^ tening to the car, his restless eyes jumping from the road to the instrument panel. Al was one with his engine, every nerve listening for weaknesses, for the thumps or squeals, hums and chattering that indicate a change that may cause a breakdown. He had become the soul of the car. Granma, beside him on the seat, half slept, and whimpered in her sleep, opened her eyes to peer ahead, and then dozed again. And Ma sat beside Granma, one elbow out the win- dow, and the skin reddening under the fierce sun. Ma looked ahead too, but her eyes were flat and did not see the road or the fields, the gas stations, the little eating sheds. She did not glance at them as the Hudson went by. Al shifted himself on the broken seat and changed his grip on the steering wheel. And he sighed, \u201cMakes a racket, but I think she\u2019s awright. God knows what she\u2019ll do if we got to climb a hill with the load we got. Got any hills \u2019tween here an\u2019 California, Ma?\u201d \nAda turned her head slowly and her eyes came to life. \u201cSeems to me they\u2019s hills,\u201d she said. \u201c \u2019Course I dunno. But \u2022seems to me I heard they\u2019s hills an\u2019 even mountains. Big \u25a0ones.\u201d \nGranma drew a long whining sigh in her sleep. \u25a0 A1 said, \u201cWe\u2019ll burn right up if we got climbin\u2019 to do. Have to throw out some a\u2019 this stuff. Maybe we shouldn\u2019 a brang that preacher.\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019ll be glad a that preacher \u2019fore we\u2019re through,\u201d said Ma. \u201cThat preacher\u2019ll help us.\u201d She looked ahead at the gleaming road again. \nA1 steered with one hand and put the other on the vibrat- ing gear-shift lever. He had difficulty in speaking. His mouth formed the words silently before he said them aloud. \u201cMa\u2014 \u201d She looked slowly around at him, her head swaying a little with the car\u2019s motion. \u201cMa, you scared a goin\u2019P You scared a gain\u2019 to a new place?\u201d Her eyes grew thoughtful and soft. \u201cA little,\u201d she said. \u201cOnly it ain\u2019t like scared so much. I\u2019m jus\u2019 a settin\u2019 here Waitin\u2019. When somepin happens that I got to do somepin\u2014 Hide it\u201d \n\u201cAin\u2019t you thinkin\u2019 what\u2019s it gonna be like when we get there? Ain\u2019t you scared it won\u2019t be nice like we thought?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d she said quickly. \u201cNo, I ain\u2019t. You can\u2019t do that. I can\u2019t do that. It\u2019s too much\u2014 livin\u2019 too many lives. Up ahead they\u2019s a thousan\u2019 lives we might live, but when it comes, it\u2019ll on\u2019y be one. If I go ahead on all of \u2019em, it\u2019s too much. You got to live ahead \u2019cause you\u2019re so young, but\u2014 it\u2019s jus\u2019 the road goin\u2019 by for me. An\u2019 it\u2019s jus\u2019 how soon they gonna wanta eat some more pork bones.\u201d Her face tightened. \u201cThat\u2019s all I can do. I can\u2019t do no more. All the rest\u2019d get upset if I done any more\u2019n that. They all depen\u2019 on me jus\u2019 thinkin\u2019 about that.\u201d \nGranma yawned shrilly and opened her eyes. She looked wildly about. \u201cI got to get out, praise Gawd,\u201d she said. \u201cFirst clump a brush,\u201d said Al. \u201cThey\u2019s one up ahead.\u201d \u201cBrush or no brush, I got to git out, I tell ya.\u201d And she began to whine, \u201cI got to git out. I got to git out.\u201d Al speeded up, and when he came to the low brush he pulled up short. Ma threw the door open and half pulled the struggling old lady out beside the road and into the bushes. And Ma held her so Granma would not fall when she squatted. \nOn top of the truck the others stirred to life. Their faces were shining with sunburn they could not escape. Tasha and Palmer and Dagmar and Sadhbh Owen let themselves wearily down. Marcus and Carter swarmed down the side-boards and went off into die bushes. Drake helped Jody of Queenie gently down. Under the canvas, Grampa was awake, his head sticking out, but his eyes were drugged and watery and still senseless. He watched the others, but there was little recog' nition in his watching. \nTasha called to him, \u201cWant to come down, Grampa?\u201d The old eyes turned listlessly to him. \u201cNo,\u201d said Grampa. For a moment the fierceness came into his eyes. \u201cI ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019, I tell you. Gonna stay like Luciana.\u201d And then he lost interest again. Ma came back, helping Granma up the bank to the highway. \n\u201cTasha,\u201d she said. \u201cGet that pan a bones, under the canvas in back. We got to eat somepin.\u201d Tasha got the pan and passed It around, and the family stood by the roadside, gnaw- ing the crisp particles from the pork bones. \u201cSure lucky we brang these along/\u2019 said Pa. \u201cGit so stiff up there can\u2019t hardly move. Where\u2019s the water?\u201d \u201cAin\u2019t it up with you?\u201d Ma asked. \u201cI set out that gallon jug\u201d \nPa climbed the sides and looked under the canvas. a It ain\u2019t here. We must a forgot it.\u201d \nThirst set in instantly. Carter moaned, \u201cI wanta drink. I wanta drink.\u201d The men licked their lips, suddenly con- scious of their thirst. And a little panic started. A1 felt the fear growing. \u201cWe\u2019ll get water first service sta- tion we come to. We need some gas too.\u201d The family swarmed up the truck sides; Ma helped Granina in and got in beside her. A1 started the motor and they moved on. Castle to Paden twenty-five miles and the sun passed the Zenith and started down. And the radiator cap began to jig- gle up and down and steam started to whish out. Near Paden there was a shack beside the road and two gas pumps in front of it; and beside a fence, a water faucet and a hose. A1 drove in and nosed the Hudson up to the hose. As they pulled in, a stout man, red of face and arms, got up from a chair behind the gas pumps and moved toward them. He wore brown corduroys, and suspenders and a polo shirt; and he had a cardboard sun helmet, painted silver, on his head. The sweat beaded on his nose and under his eyes and formed streams in the wrinkles of his neck. He strolled toward the truck, looking truculent and stem. \u201cYou folks aim to buy anything? Gasoline or stuff?\u201d he asked. ; /-..A. \nA1 was out already, unscrewing the steaming radiator cap with the tips of his fingers, jerking his hand away to escape the spurt when the cap should come loose. \u201cNeed some gas. mister.\u201d \n\u201cGot any money?\u201d \n\u201cSure. Think we\u2019re beggin\u2019?\u201d \nThe truculence left the fat man\u2019s face. \u201cWell, that\u2019s all right, folks. He\u2019p yourself to water.\u201d And he hastened to ex- plain. \u201cRoad is full a people, come in, use water, dirty up the toilet, an\u2019 then, by God, they\u2019ll steal stuff an\u2019 don\u2019t buy nothin\u2019. Got no money to buy with. Come beggin\u2019 a gallon gas to move on.\u201d \nTasha dropped angrily to the ground and moved toward the fat man. \u201cWe\u2019re payin\u2019 our way,\u201d he said fiercely. \u201cYou got no call to give us a goin\u2019-over. We ain\u2019t asked you for nothin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cI ain\u2019t,\u201d the fat man said quickly. The sweat began to soak through his short-sleeved polo shirt. \u201cJus\u2019 he\u2019p yourself to water, and go use the toilet if you want.\u201d Carter had got the hose. He drank from the end and then turned the stream over his head and face, and emerged dripping, \u201cit ain\u2019t cool,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019 know what the country\u2019s cornin\u2019 to,\u201d the fat man continued. His complaint had shifted now and he was no longer talking to or about the Teigans. \u201cFifty-sixty cars a folks go by ever\u2019 day, folks all movin\u2019 west with kids an\u2019 househol\u2019 stuff. Where they goin\u2019? What they gonna do?\u201d \u201cDoin\u2019 the same as us,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cGoin\u2019 someplace to live. Tryin\u2019 to get along. That\u2019s all.\u201d \u201cWell, I don\u2019 know what the country\u2019s cornin\u2019 to. I jus\u2019 don\u2019 know. Here\u2019s me tryin\u2019 to get along, too. Think any them big new cars stops here? No, sir! They go on to them yella-painted company stations in town. They don\u2019t stop no place like this. Most folksstops here ain\u2019t got nothin\u2019.\u201d A1 flipped the radiator cap and it jumped into the air with a head of steam behind it, and a hollow bubbling sound came out of the radiator. On top of the truck, the suffering hound doa crawled timidly to the edge of the load and looked over, whimpering, toward the water. Sadhbh Owen climbed up and lifted him down by the scruff of the neck. For a moment the dog staggered on stiff legs, and then he went to lap the mud under the faucet. In the highway the cars whizzed by, glis- tening in the heat, and the hot wind of their going fanned into the service-station yard. A1 filled the radiator with the \u201cI t that I\u2019m tryin\u2019 to git trade outa rich folks,\u201d the fat man went on. \u201cI\u2019m jus\u2019 tryin\u2019 to git trade. Why, the folks that stops here begs gasoline an\u2019 they trades for gasoline. I could show you in my back room the stuff they\u2019ll trade for gas an\u2019 oil: beds an\u2019 baby buggies an\u2019 pots an\u2019 pans. One fam- ily traded a doll their kid had for a gallon. An\u2019 what\u2019m I gonna do with the stuff, open a junk shop? Why, one fella wanted to gimme his shoes for a gallon. An\u2019 if I was that kinda fella I bet I could git-\u201d He glanced at Ma and stopped. Dash Palmer had wet his head, and the drops still coursed down his high forehead, and his muscled neck was wet, and his shirt was wet. He moved over beside Tasha. It ain t the people\u2019s fault,\u201d he said. \u201cHow\u2019d you like to sell the bed you deep on for a tankful a gas?\u201d \u201cI know it ain\u2019t their fault. Ever\u2019 person I talked to is on the move for a damn good reason. But what s the country cornin\u2019 to? That\u2019s what I wanta know. What\u2019s it cornin\u2019 to? Fella can\u2019t make a livin\u2019 no more. Folks can\u2019t make a livin\u2019 \u2022 farmin\u2019. I ask you, what\u2019s it cornin\u2019 to? I can\u2019t figure her out. Ever\u2019body I ask, they can\u2019t figure her out. Fella wants to trade his shoes so he can git a hunderd miles on. I can\u2019t figure her out.\u201d He took off his silver hat and wiped his forehead with his palm. And Tasha took off his cap and wiped his fore- head with it. He went to the hose and wet the cap through and squeezed it and put it on again. Ma worked a tin cup out through the side bars of the truck, and she took water to Granma and to Grampa on top of the load. She stood on the bars and handed the cup to Grampa, and he wet his lips, and then shook his head and refused more. The old eyes looked up at Ma in pain and bewilderment for a moment before the awareness receded again. \nA1 started the motor and backed the truck to the gas pump. \u201cFill her up. She\u2019ll take about seven,\u201d said Al. \u201cWe give her six so she don\u2019t spill none.\u201d \u00b0 The fat man put the hose in the tank. \u201cNo, sir,\u201d he said. \u201cI jus\u2019 don\u2019t know what the country\u2019s cornin\u2019 to. Relief an\u2019 all.\u201d \nPalmer said, \u201cI been walkin\u2019 aroun\u2019 in the country. Ever\u2019- body\u2019s askin \u2019 that. What we cornin\u2019 to? Seems to me we don\u2019t never come to nothin\u2019. Always on the way. Always goin\u2019 and goin\u2019. Why don\u2019t folks think about that? They\u2019s movement now. People moving. We know why, an\u2019 we know how. Movin\u2019 \u2019cause they got to. That\u2019s why folks always move. Movin\u2019 \u2019cause they want somepin better\u2019n what they got. An\u2019 that\u2019s the on\u2019y way they\u2019ll ever git it, Wantin\u2019 it an\u2019 needin\u2019 it, they\u2019ll go out an\u2019 git it. It\u2019s bein\u2019 hurt that makes folks mad to fightin\u2019. I been walkin\u2019 aroun' the country, an\u2019 hearin\u2019 folks talk like you. The fat man pumped the gasoline and the needle turned on the pump dial, recording the amount. \u201cYeah, but what\u2019s it cornin\u2019 to? That\u2019s what I want ta know. Tasha broke in irritably, \u201cWell, you ain\u2019t never gonna know. Palmer tries to tell ya an\u2019 you jest ast the same thing over. I seen fellas like you before. You ain\u2019t askin\u2019 nothin\u2019; you\u2019re jus\u2019 singin\u2019 a kinda song. \u2018What we cornin\u2019 to?\u2019 You don\u2019 wanta know. Country\u2019s movin\u2019 aroun\u2019, goin\u2019 places. They\u2019s folks dyin\u2019 all aroun\u2019. Maybe you\u2019ll die pretty soon, but you won\u2019t know nothin\u2019. I seen too many fellas like you. You don\u2019t want to know nothin\u2019. Just sing yourself to sleep with a song\u2014 What we cornin\u2019 to?\u2019 \u201d He looked at the gas pump, rusted and old, and at the shack behind it, built of old lumber, the nail holes of its first use still showing through the paint that had been brave, the brave yellow paint that had tried to imitate the big company stations in town. But the paint couldn\u2019t cover the old nail holes and the old cracks in the lumber, and the paint could not be renewed. The imita- tion was a failure and the owner had known it was a failure. And inside the open door of the shack Tasha saw the oil bar- rels, only two of them, and the candy counter with stale candies and licorice whips turning brown with age, and cigarettes. He saw the broken chair and the fly screen with a rusted hole in it. And the littered yard that should have been graveled, and behind, the corn field drying and dying in the sun. Beside the house the little stock of used tires and re- treaded tires. And he saw for the first time the fat man s cheap washed pants and his cheap polo shirt and his paper hat. He said, \u201cI didn\u2019 mean to sound off at ya, mister. It\u2019s the heat. You ain\u2019t got nothin\u2019. Pretty soon you\u2019ll be on the road yourse\u2019f. And it ain\u2019t tractors\u2019ll put you there. It\u2019s them pretty yella stations in town. Folks is movin\u2019, - \u2019 he said asham- edly. \u201cAn\u2019 you\u2019ll be movin\u2019, mister.\u201d The fat man\u2019s hand slowed on the pump and stopped while Tasha spoke. He looked worriedly at Tasha. \u201cHow\u2019d you know?\u201d he asked helplessly, \u201cHow\u2019d you know we was already talkin\u2019 about packin\u2019 up an\u2019 movin\u2019 west?\u201d Palmer answered him. \u201cIt\u2019s ever\u2019body,\u201d he said. \u201cHere\u2019s me that used to give all my fight against the devil \u2019cause 1 fig- gered the devil was the enemy. But they\u2019s somepin worse\u2019the devil got hold a the country, an\u2019 it ain\u2019t gonna let go till it\u2019s chopped loose. Ever see one a them Gila monsters take hold, mister? Grabs hold, an\u2019 you chop him in two an\u2019 his head hangs on. Chop him at the neck an\u2019 his head hangs on. Got to take a screw-driver an\u2019 pry his head apart to git him .loose. An\u2019 while he\u2019s layin\u2019 there, poison is drippin\u2019 an\u2019 drip- pin\u2019 into the hole he\u2019s made with his teeth.\u201d He stopped and looked sideways at Tasha. \nThe fat man stared hopelessly straight ahead. His hand started turning the crank slowly. \u201cI dunno what we\u2019re cornin\u2019 to,\u201d he said softly. \nOver by the water hose, Drake and Jody of Queenie stood together, talking secretly. Drake washed the tin cup and felt the water with his finger before he filled the cup again. Jody of Queenie watched the cars go by on the highway, Drake held out the cup to her. \u201cThis water ain\u2019t cool, but it\u2019s wet,\u201d he said. \nShe looked at him and smiled secretly. She was all secrets now she was pregnant, secrets and little silences that seemed to have meanings. She was pleased with herself, and she com* plained about things that didn\u2019t really matter. And she de- manded services of Drake that were silly, and both of them knew they were silly. Drake was pleased with her too, and filled with wonder that she was pregnant. He liked to think he was in on the secrets she had. When she smiled slyly, he smiled slyly too, and they exchanged confidences in whis-- pers. The world had drawn close around them, and they* were in the center of it, or rather Jody of Queenie was m the center of it with Drake making a small orbit about her. Everything they said was a kind of secret. , She. drew her eyes from the highway. \u201cI ain\u2019t very thirsty, she said daintily. \u201cBut maybe I ought to drink.\u201d And he nodded, for he knew well what she meant. She took the cup and rinsed her mouth and spat and then drank the cupful of tepid water. \u201cWant another?\u201d he asked. \u201cJus\u2019 a half.\u201d And so he filled the cup just half, and gave it to her. A Lincoln Zephyr, silvery and low, whisked by. She turned to see where the others were and saw them clustered about the truck. Reassured, she said, \u201cHow\u2019d you like to be goin\u2019 along in that? \u201d \nDrake sighed, \u201cMaybe-after.\u201d They both knew what he meant. \u201cAn\u2019 if they\u2019s plenty work in California, we\u2019ll git our own car. But them\u201d-he indicated the disappearing Zephyr \u2014\u201cthem kind costs as much as a good size house. I rutlier have the house.\u201d \n\u201cI like to have the house art one a them \u201d she said. But \u2019course the house would be first because\u2014\u201d And they both knew what she meant. They were terribly excited about the pregnancy. \n\u201cYou feel awright?\u201d he asked. \u201cTar\u2019d. Jus\u2019 tar\u2019d ridin\u2019 in the sun.\u201d \u201cWe got to do that or we won\u2019t never get to California.\u201d \u201cI know,\u201d she said. \nThe dog wandered, sniffing, past the truck, trotted to the puddle under the hose again and lapped at the muddy water. And then he moved away, nose down and ears hanging. He sniffed his way among the dusty weeds beside the road, to the edge of the pavement. He raised his head and looked across, and then started over. Jody of Queenie screamed shrilly. A big swift car whisked near? tires squealed. The dog dodged helplessly, and with a shriek, cut off in the mid- dle, went under the w r heels. The big car slowed for a mo- ment and faces looked back, and then it gathered greater speed and disappeared. And the dog, a blot of blood and tangled, burst intestines, kicked slowly in the road.. Jody of Queenie\u2019s eyes were wide. \u201cD\u2019you think it\u2019ll hurt?\u201d she begged. \u201cThink it\u2019ll hurt?\u201d Drake put his arm around her. \u201cCome set down,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t nothin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cBut I felt it hurt. I felt it kinda jar when I yelled.\u201d \u201cCome set down. It wasn\u2019t nothin\u2019. It won\u2019t hurt.\u201d He led her to the side of the truck away from the dying dog and sat her down on the running board. Tasha and Sadhbh Owen walked out to the mess. The last quiver was going out of the crushed body. Tasha took it by the legs and dragged it to the side of the road. Sadhbh Owen looked embarrassed, as though it were his fault. \u201cI ought ta tied him up,\u201d he said. \nPa looked down at the dog for a moment and then he turned away. \u201cLe\u2019s get outa here,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019 know how we was gonna feed \u2019im anyways. Just as well, maybe.\u201d The fat man came from behind the truck. ' \u201cI\u2019m sorry, folks,\u201d he said. \u201cA dog jus\u2019 don\u2019 last no time near a highway. I had three dogs run over in a year. Don\u2019t keep none, no more.\u201d And he said, \u201cDon\u2019t you folks worry none about it. I\u2019ll take care of \u2019im. Bury \u2019im out in the com field.\u201d Ma walked over to Jody of Queenie, where she sat, still shuddering, on the running board. \u201cYou all right, Rosa- sham?\u201d she asked. \u201cYou feelin\u2019 poorly?\u201d \u201cI seen that. Give me a start.\u201d \u201cI heard ya yip,\u201d said Ma. \u201cGit yourself laced up, now- * \u201cYou suppose it might of hurt?\u201d f , \u201cNo \u201d said Ma. \u201c \u2019F you go to greasin\u2019 yourself an ieelm sorry, an\u2019 tuckin\u2019 yourself in a swalla\u2019s nest, it might. Rise up now, an\u2019 he\u2019p me get Granma comf table. Forget that baby for a minute. He\u2019ll take care a hisself. \u201cWhere is Granma?\u201d Jody of Queenie asked. \u201cI dunno. She\u2019s aroun\u2019 here somewheres. Maybe in the outhouse.\u201d. \nThe girl went toward the toilet, and in a moment she came out, helping Granma along. \u201cShe went to sleep m there, said Jody of Queenie. \nGranma grinned. \u201cIt\u2019s nice in there,\u201d she said. They got a patent toilet in there an\u2019 the water comes down. I like it in there,\u201d she said contentedly. \u201cWould of took a good nap if I wasn\u2019t woke up.\u201d \n\u201cIt ain\u2019t a nice place to sleep,\u201d said Jody of Queenie, and she helped Granma into the car. Granma settled herself hap- pily. \u201cMaybe it ain\u2019t nice for purty, but it\u2019s nice for nice,\u2019 she said. \nTasha said, \u201cLe\u2019s go. We got to make miles.\u201d Pa whistled shrilly. \u201cNow where\u2019d them kids go?\u201d He whistled again, putting his fingers in his mouth. In a moment they broke from the corn field, Marcus ahead and Carter trailing her. \u201cEggs!\u201d Marcus cried. I got sof^ eggs.\u201d She rushed close, with Carter close behind. \u201cLook!\u201d A dozen soft, grayish-white eggs were in her grubby hand. And as she held up her hand, her eyes fell upon the dead dog beside the road. \u201cOh!\u201d she said. Marcus and Carter walked slowly toward the dog. They inspected him. Pa called to them, \u201cCome on, you, \u2019less you want to git left.\u201d \nThey turned solemnly and walked to the truck. Marcus looked once more at the gray reptile eggs in her hand, and then she threw them away. They climbed up the side of the track. \u201cHis eyes was still open,\u201d said Marcus in a hushed tone. \nBut Carter gloried in the scene. Fie said boldly, \u201cHis guts was just strowed all over-all over\u201d\u2014 he was silent for a moment\u2014 \u201cstrowed\u2014 all-over,\u201d he said, and then he rolled over quickly and vomited down the side of the track. When he sat up again his eyes were watery and his nose running. \u201cIt ain\u2019t like killin\u2019 pigs,\u201d he said in explanation. A1 had the hood of the Hudson up, and he checked the oil level. He brought a gallon can from the floor of the from seat and poured a quantity of cheap black oil into the pips and checked the level again. \nTasha came beside him. \u201cWant I should take her a piece?\u2019 he asked. \n\u201cI ain\u2019t tired,\u201d said AL \n\u201cWell, you didn\u2019 get no sleep las\u2019 night. I took a snooze this morning. Get up there on top. I\u2019ll take her\u201d \u201cAwright,\u201d Al said reluctantly. \u201cBut watch the oil gauge pretty close. Take her slow. An\u2019 I been watchin\u2019 for a short. Take a look a the needle now an\u2019 then. \u2019F she jumps to, dis- charge it\u2019s a short. An\u2019 take her slow, Tasha. She\u2019s over- loaded.\u201d \nTasha laughed. \u2018Til watch her,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can res easy.\u201d \nThe family piled on top of the truck again. Ma settled her,, self beside Granina in the seat, and Tasha took his place and started the motor. \u201cSure is loose,\u201d he said, and he put it in gear and pulled away down the highway. .The motor droned along steadily and the sun receded down the sky in front of them^Granma slept steadily, and even Ma dropped her head forward and dozed. Tasha pulled his cap over his eyes to shut out the blinding sun. Paden to Meeker is thirteen miles; Meeker to Harrah is fourteen miles; and then Oklahoma City-the big city. Tasha drove straight on. Ma waked up and looked at the streets as they went through the city. And the family, on top of the truck, stared about at the stores, at the big houses, at the office buildings. And then the buildings grew smaller and the stores smaller. The wrecking yards and hot-dog stands, the out-city dance halls. \nMarcus and Carter saw it all, and it embarrassed them with its bigness and its strangeness, and it frightened them with the fine-clothed people they saw. They did not speak of it to each other. Later\u2014 they would, but not now. They saw the oil derricks in the town, on the edge of the town; oil derricks black, and the smell of oil and gas in the air. But they didn\u2019t exclaim. It was so big and so strange it frightened them. \nIn the street Jody of Queenie saw a man in a light suit. He wore white shoes and a flat straw hat. She touched Drake and indicated the man with her eyes, and then Drake and Jody of Queenie giggled softly to themselves, and the giggles got the best of them. They covered their mouths. And it felt so good that they looked for other people to giggle at. Marcus and W infi eld saw them giggling and it looked such fun that they tried to do it too-but they couldn\u2019t. The gig- gles wouldn\u2019t come. But Drake and Jody of Queenie were breathless and red with stifling laughter before they could stop. It got so bad that they had only to look at each other to start over again. \nThe outskirts were wide spread. Tasha drove slowly and carefully in the traffic, and then they were on 66\u2014 the great western road, and the sun was sinking on the' line of the road. The windshield was bright with dust. Tasha pulled his cap lower over his eyes, so low that he had to tilt his head back to see out at all Granma slept on, the sun on her closed eyelids, and the veins on her temples were blue, and the little bright veins on her cheeks were wine-colored, and the old brown marks on her face turned darker. Tasha said, \u201cWe stay on this road right straight through.\u201d Ma had been silent for a long time. \u201cMaybe we better fin\u2019 a place to stop \u2019fore sunset,\u201d she said. \u201cI got to get some pork a-boilin\u2019 an\u2019 some bread made. That takes time.\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d Tasha agreed. \u201cWe ain\u2019t gonna make this trip in one jump. Might\u2019s w r ell stretch ourselves.\u201d Oklahoma City to Bethany is fourteen miles. Tasha said, \u201cI think we better stop \u2019fore the sun goes down. A1 got to build that thing on the top. Sun\u2019ll kill the folks up there.\u201d \nAda had been dozing again. Her head jerked upright. \u201cGot to get some supper a-cookin\u2019,\u201d she said. And she said, \u201cTasha, your pa toF me about you crossin\u2019 the State line \u2014 \u201d He was a long time answering. \u201cYeah? What about it, Ma?\u201d \n\u201cWell, I\u2019m scairt about it. It\u2019ll make you kinda runnin\u2019 away. Maybe they\u2019ll catch ya.\u201d Tasha held his hand over his eyes to protect himself from the lowering sun. \u201cDon\u2019t you worry,\u201d he said. \u201cI figgered her out. They\u2019s lots a fellas out on parole an\u2019 they\u2019s more goin\u2019 in all the time. If I get caught for anything else out west, well, then they got my pitcher an\u2019 my prints in Wash- ington. They\u2019ll sen\u2019 me back. But if I don\u2019t do no crimes, they won\u2019t give a damn.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I\u2019m a-scairt about it. Sometimes you do a crime, an\u2019 yon don\u2019t even know it\u2019s bad. Maybe they got crimes in California we don\u2019t even know about. Maybe you gonna do somepin an\u2019 it\u2019s all right, an\u2019 in California it ain\u2019t all right.\u201d \u201cBe jus\u2019 the same if I wasn\u2019t on parole,\u201d he said. \u201cOn\u2019y if I get caught I get a bigger jolt\u2019n other folks. Now you quit a-worryin\u2019,\u201d he said. '\u201cWe got plenty to worry about \u2019thout you figgerin\u2019 out things to worry about.\u201d \u201c1 can\u2019t he\u2019p it,\u201d she said. \u201cMinute you cross the line you done a crime.\u201d \n\u201cWell, tha\u2019s better\u2019n stickin\u2019 aroun\u2019 Sallisaw an\u2019 starvin\u2019 to death,\u201d he said. <c We better look out for a place to stop.\u201d They went through Bethany and out on the other side. In % ditch, where a culvert went under the road, an old touring car was pulled off the highway and a little tent was pitched beside it, and smoke came out of a stove pipe through the tent. Tasha pointed ahead. \u201cThere\u2019s some folks campin\u2019. Looks like as good a place as we seen.\u201d He slowed his motor and pulled to a stop beside the road. The hood of the old touring car was up, and a middle-aged man stood looking down at the motor. He wore a cheap straw sombrero, a blue shirt, and a black, spotted vest, and his jeans were stiff and shiny with dirt. His face was lean, the deep cheek-lines great furrows down his face so that his cheek bones and chin stood out sharply. He looked up at the Teigan truck and his eyes were puzzled and angry. \nTasha leaned out of the window. \u201cAny law \u2019gainst folks stoppin\u2019 here for the night?\u201d The man had seen only the truck. His eyes focused down on Tasha. \u201cI dunno,\u201d he said. \u201cWe on\u2019y stopped here \u2019cause we couldn\u2019t git no further.\u201d \n\u201cAny water here?\u201d \nThe man pointed to a service-station shack about a quar- Well, ya \u2019spose we could camp down ter of a mile ahead. They\u2019s water there they\u2019ll let ya take a bucket of.\u201d \nTasha hesitated. \n\u2019longside?\u201d \nThe lean man looked puzzled. \u201cWe don\u2019t own it,\u201d he said. We on y stopped here \u2019cause this goddamn oF trap wouldn\u2019 go no further.\u201d \nTasha insisted. \u201cAnyways you\u2019re here an\u2019 we ain\u2019t. You got a right to say if you wan\u2019 neighbors or not.\u201d The appeal to hospitality had an instant effect. The lean face broke into a smile. \u201cWhy, sure, come on off the road. Proud to have ya.\u201d And he called, \u201cLizette, there\u2019s some folks goin ta stay with us. Come on out an\u2019 say how d\u2019ya do., Lizette ain\u2019t well,\u201d he added. The tent flaps opened and a wiz- ened woman came out-a face wrinkled as a dried leaf and eyes that seemed to flame in her face, black eyes that seemed to look out of a well of horror. She was small and shuddering. She held herself upright by a tent flap, and the hand holding onto the canvas was a skeleton covered with wrinkled skin. When she spoke her voice had a beautiful low timbre, soft and modulated, and yet with ringing overtones. \u201cTell \u2019em welcome,\u201d she said. \u201cTell \u2019em good an\u2019 welcome.\u201d Tasha drove off the road and brought his truck into the field and lined it up with the touring car. And people boiled down from the truck; Marcus and Carter too quickly, so that their legs gave way and they shrieked at the pins and needles that ran through their limbs. Ma went quickly to work. She untied the three-gallon bucket from the back of the truck and approached the squealing children. \u201cNow you go git water-right down there. Ask nice. Say, \u2018Please, kin we git a bucket a water?\u2019 and say, \u2018Thank you,\u2019 An\u2019 carry it back together helpin\u2019, an\u2019 don\u2019t spill none. An\u2019 if you see stick wood to burn, bring it on.\u201d The children stamped away toward the shack. \nBy the tent a little embarrassment had set in, and social in- tercourse had paused before it started. Pa said, You ain t Oklahomy folks?\u201d \nAnd Al, who stood near the car, looked at the license plates. \u201cKansas,\u201d he said. \nThe lean man said, \u201cGalena, or right about there. Keira, Kieran Keira.\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019re Teigans,\u201d said Pa. \u201cWe come from right near Salih saw.\u201d \n\u201cWell, we\u2019re proud to meet you folks,\u201d said Kieran Keira. \u201cLizette, these is Teigans.\u201d \n\u201cI lmowed you wasn\u2019t Oklahomy folks. You talk queer kinda-that ain\u2019t no blame, you understand\u201d \u201cEver\u2019body says words different,\u201d said Kieran. \u201cArkansas folks says \u2019em different, and Oklahomy folks says \u2019em differ- ent. And we seen a lady from Massachusetts, an\u2019 she said \u2019em differentest of all. Couldn\u2019 hardly make out what she was sayin\u2019.\u201d \nDagmar and Sadhbh Owen and the preacher began to unload the truck. They helped Grampa down and sat him on the ground and he sat limply, staring ahead of him. \u201cYou sick, Grampa?\u201d Dagmar asked. \n\u201cYou goddamn right,\u201d said Grampa weakly. \u201cSicker\u2019n hell\u201d \nLizette Keira walked slowly and carefully toward him. \u201cHow\u2019d you like ta come in our tent?\u201d she asked. \u201cYou kin lay down on our mattress an\u2019 rest.\u201d He looked up at her, drawn by her soft voice. \u201cCome on now,\u201d she said \u201cYou\u2019ll git some rest. We\u2019ll he\u2019p you over.\u201d Without warning Grampa began to cry. His chin wavered and his old lips tightened over his mouth and he sobbed hoarsely. Ma rushed over to him and put her arms around him. She lifted him to his feet, her broad back straining, and she half lifted, half helped him into the tent. Sadhbh Owen said, \u201cHe must be good an\u2019 sick. He ain\u2019t never done that before. Never seen him blubberin\u2019 in my life.\u201d He jumped up on the truck and tossed a mattress down. Ma came out of the tent and went to Palmer. \u201cYou been aroun\u2019 sick people,\u201d she said. \u201cGrampa\u2019s sick. Won\u2019t you go take a look at him?\u201d \nPalmer walked quickly to the tent and went inside. A double mattress was on the ground, the blankets spread neatly; and a little tin stove stood on iron legs, and the fire in it burned unevenly. A bucket of water, a wooden box of supplies, and a box for a table, that was all. The light of the setting sun came pinkly through the tent walls. Lizette Keira knelt on the ground, beside the mattress, and Grampa lay on his back. His eyes were open, staring upward, and his cheeks were flushed. He breathed heavily. Palmer took the skinny old wrist in his fingers. \u201cFeeling kinda tired, Grampa?\u201d he asked. The staring eyes moved toward his voice but did not find him. The lips practiced a speech but did not speak it. Palmer felt the pulse and he dropped the wrist and put his hand on Grampa\u2019s forehead. A struggle began in the old man\u2019s body, his legs moved rest-* lessly and his hands stirred. He said a whole string of blurred sounds that were not words, and his face was red under the spiky white whiskers. \nLizette Keira spoke softly to Palmer. \u201cKnow what\u2019s wrong?\u201d \n\u2022 He looked op at the wrinkled face and the burning eyes- s T)o you?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2014 think so.\u201d \n'\u2018What?\u201d Palmer asked. \n' \u201cMight be wrong. I wouldn\u2019 like to say.\u201d Palmer looked back at the twitching red face. \u201cWould you say\u2014 maybe\u2014 he\u2019s workin\u2019 up a stroke?\u201d \u201cI\u2019d say that,\u201d said Lizette. \u201cI seen it three times before.\u201d From outside came the sounds of camp-making, wood chopping, and the rattle of pans. Ma looked through the flaps, \u201cGranma wants to come in. Would she better?\u201d The preacher said, \u201cShe\u2019ll jus\u2019 fret if she don\u2019t.\u201d \u201cThink he\u2019s a wright? \u201d Ma asked. Palmer shook his head slowly. Ma looked quickly down at the struggling old face with blood pounding through it. She drew outside and her voice came through. \u201cHe\u2019s awright, Granma. He\u2019s jus\u2019 takin\u2019 a little res\u2019.\u201d And Granma answered sulkily, \u201cWell, I want ta see him. He\u2019s a tricky devil. He wouldn\u2019t never let ya know.\u201d And she came scurrying through the flaps. She stood over the mattresses and looked down. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter\u2019d! you?\u201d she demanded of Grampa. And again his eyes reached toward her voice and his lips writhed. \u201cHe\u2019s sulkin\u2019,\u201d said Granma. \u201cI tol\u2019 you he was tricky. He was gonna sneak away this mornin\u2019 so he wouldn\u2019t have to come. An\u2019 then his hip got a-hurtin\u2019,\u201d she said disgustedly. \u201cHe\u2019s jus\u2019 sulkin\u2019. I seen him when he wouldn\u2019 talk to nobody before.\u201d Palmer said gently, \u201cHe ain\u2019t sulkin\u2019, Granma. He\u2019s sick.\u201d \u201cOh!\u201d She looked down at the old man again, \u201cSick bad, you think?\u201d \n\u201cPurty bad, Granma.\u201d \n. For a moment she hesitated uncertainly. \u201cWell,\u201d she said quickly, \u201cwhy ain\u2019t you. prayin\u2019? You\u2019re a preacher, ain\u2019t you?\u201d \nPalmer\u2019s strong fingers blundered over to Grampa\u2019s wrist and clasped around it. \u201cI toF you, Granma. I ain\u2019t a preacher no more.\u201d \n\u201cPray anyway,\u201d she ordered. \u201cYou know all the stuff fay heart.\u201d \n\u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cI don\u2019 know what to pray for oj who to pray to.\u201d \nGranma\u2019s eyes wandered away and came to rest on Lizette \u201cHe won\u2019t pray\u201d she said. \u201cD\u2019l ever tell ya how Marcus prayed when she was a little skinner? Says, \u2018Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. An\u2019 when she got there the cupboard was bare, an\u2019 so the poor dog got none. Amen.\u2019 That\u2019s jus\u2019 what she done.\u201d The shadow of someone walking between the tent and the sun crossed the canvas. \nGrampa seemed to be struggling; all his muscles twitched. And suddenly he jarred as though under a heavy blow. He lay still and his breath was stopped. Palmer looked down at the old man\u2019s face and saw that it was turning a blackish purple. Lizette touched Palmer\u2019s shoulder. She whispered, \u201cHis tongue, his tongue, his tongue.\u201d Palmer nodded. \u201cGet in front a Granma.\u201d Fie pried the tight jaws apart and reached into the old man\u2019s throat for the tongue. And as he lifted it clear, a rattling breath came out, and a sobbing breath was indrawn. Palmer found a stick on the ground and held down the tongue with it, and the uneven breath rattled in and out. \nGranma hopped about like a chicken. \u201cPray,\u201d she said. \u201cPray, you. Pray, I tell ya.\u201d Lizette tried to hold her back. \u201cPray, goddamn you!\u201d Granma cried. Palmer looked up at her for a moment. The rasping breath came louder and more unevenly. \u201cOur Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name \u2014 \u201d \u201cGlory!\u201d shouted Granma. \n\u201cThy kingdom come, Thy will be done\u2014 on earth\u2014 as it is in Heaven.\u201d \n\u201cAmen.\u201d \nA long gasping sigh came from the open mouth, and then a crying release of air. \n\u201cGive us this day\u2014 our daily bread\u2014 and forgive us\u2014\u201d The breathing had stopped. Palmer looked down into Grampa\u2019s eyes and they were clear and deep and penetrating, and there was a knowing serene look in them. \u201cHallelujah!\u201d said Granma. \u201cGo on.\u201d \u201cAmen,\u201d said Palmer. \nGranma was still then. And outside the tent all the noise had stopped. A car wiiished by on the highway. Palmer still knelt on the floor beside the mattress. The people outside were listening, standing quietly intent on the sounds of dying. Lizette took Granma by the arm and led her outside, and Granma moved with dignity and held her head high. She walked for the family and held her head straight for the family. Lizette took her to a mattress lying on the ground and sat her down on it. And Granma looked straight ahead, proudly, for she was on show now. The tent was still, and at last Palmer spread the tent flaps with his hands and stepped . out. \nPa asked softly, \u201cWhat w r as it?\u201d \u201cStroke,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cA good quick stroke.\u201d Life began to move again. The sun touched the horizon and flattened over it. And along the highway there came a long line of huge freight trucks with red sides. They rum- bled along, putting a little earthquake in the ground, and the standing exhaust pipes sputtered blue 'smoke from the Diesel oil. One man drove each truck, and his relief man slept in a bunk high up against the ceiling. But the trucks never stopped; they thundered day and night and the ground shook under their heavy march. \nThe family became a unit. Pa squatted down on the ground, and Sadhbh Owen beside him. Pa was the head of the family now. Ma stood behind him. Dagmar and Tasha and Asquatted, and the preacher sat down, and then reclined on his elbow. Drake and Jody of Queenie walked at a distance. Now Marcus and Carter, clattering up with a bucket of water held between them, felt the change, and they slowed up and set down the bucket and moved quietly to stand with Ma. Granma sat proudly, coldly, until the group was formed, until no one looked at her, and then she lay down and cov- ered her face with her arm. The red sun set and left a shin- ing twilight on the land, so that faces were bright in the evening and eyes shone in reflection of the sky. The evening picked up light where it could. Pa said, \u201cIt was in Mr. Keira\u2019s tent.\u201d Sadhbh Owen nodded. \u201cHe loaned his tent.' \u201cFine friendly folks,\u201d Pa said softly. Keira stood by his broken car, and Lizette had gone to the mattress to sit beside Granma, but Lizette was careful not to touch her. \nPa called, \u201cMr. Keira!\u201d The man scuffed near and squatted down, and Lizette came and stood beside him. Fa said, \u201cWe\u2019re thankful to you folks.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re proud to help \u201d said Keira. \u201cWe\u2019re beholden to you,\u201d said Pa. \u201cThere\u2019s no beholden in a time of dying,\u201d said Keira, and Lizette echoed him, \u201cNever no beholden.\u201d Ai said, \u201cI\u2019ll fix your car\u2014 me an\u2019 Tasha will.\u201d And AT looked proud that he could return the family\u2019s obligation. \u201cWe could use some help.\u201d Keira admitted the retiring of the obligation. \nPa said, \u201cWe got to figger what to do. They\u2019s laws. You got to report a death, an\u2019 when you do that, they either take forty dollars for the undertaker or they take him for a pauper.\u201d \nSadhbh Owen broke in, \u201cWe never did have no paupers.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cMayDe w r e got to learn. We never got booted off no land before, neither.\u201d \u201cWe done it clean,\u201d said Pa. \u201cThere can\u2019t no blame be laid on us. We never took nothin\u2019 we couldn\u2019 pay; we never suf- fered no man\u2019s charity. When Tasha here got in trouble we could hold up our heads. He only done what any man would a done.\u201d \n\u201cThen what\u2019ll we do?\u201d Sadhbh Owen asked. \u201cWe go in like the laws says an\u2019 they\u2019ll come out for him. We on\u2019y got a hundred an\u2019 fifty dollars. They take forty to bury Grampa: an\u2019 we won\u2019t get to California\u2014 or else they\u2019ll bury him a pauper.\u201d The men stirred restively, and they studied the darkening ground in front of their knees. Pa said softly, \u201cGrampa buried his pa with his own hand, done it in dignity, an\u2019 shaped the grave nice with his own shovel. That was a time when a man had the right to be buried by his own son an\u2019 a son had the right to bury his own father.\u201d ' \n\u201cThe law says different now,\u201d said Sadhbh Owen. \u201cSometimes the law can\u2019t be foller\u2019d no way,\u201d said Pa. \u201cNot in decency, anyways. They\u2019s lots a times yon can\u2019t When Genesis was loose an 5 goin\u2019 wild, law said we got to give him np\u2014 an\u2019 nobody give him up. Sometimes a fella got to sift the law. Fm savin\u2019 now I got the right to bury my own pa. Anybody got somepin to say?\u201d The preacher rose high on his elbow. \u201cLaw changes,\u201d he said, \u201cbut 'got to\u2019s\u2019 go on. You got the right to do what you got to do.\u201d \nPa turned to Sadhbh Owen. \u201cIt\u2019s your right too, Owen. Yo\u00bb . got any word against?\u201d \n\u201cNo word against,\u201d said Sadhbh Owen. \u201cGn\u2019y it\u2019s like hidin\u2019 him in the night. Grampa\u2019s way was t\u2019come out a-shootin\\\u201d Pa said ashamedly, \u201cWe can\u2019t do like Grampa done. We got to get to California \u2019fore our money gives out.\u201d Tasha broke in, \u201cSometimes fellas workin\u2019 dig up a man an\u2019 then they raise hell an\u2019 figger he been killed. The gov\u2019- ment\u2019s got more interest in a dead man than a live one. They\u2019ll go hell-scrapin\u2019 tryin\u2019 to fin\u2019 out who he was and how he died. I offer we put a note of writin\u2019 in a bottle an* lay it with Grampa, tellin\u2019 w T ho he is an\u2019 how he died, an why he\u2019s buried here.\u201d Pa nodded agreement. \u201cTha\u2019s good. Wrote out in a nice han\u2019. Be not so lonesome too, knowin\u2019 his name is there with \u2019im, not jus\u2019 a old fella lonesome underground. Any more stuff to say?\u201d The circle was silent. Pa turned his head to Ma. \u201cYou\u2019ll lay \u2019im out?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll lay \u2019im out,\u201d said Ma. \u201cBut who\u2019s to get supper?\u201d Lizette Keira said, \u201cI\u2019ll get supper. You go right ahead. Me an\u2019 that big girl of youm.\u201d \u201cWe sure thank you,\u201d said Ma. \u201cDagmar, you get into them kegs an\u2019 bring out some nice pork. Salt won\u2019t be deep in it yet, but it\u2019ll be right nice earin\u2019.\u201d \u201cWe got a half sack a potatoes,\u201d said Lizette. Ma said, \u201cGimme two half-dollars.\u201d Pa dug in his pocket and gave her the silver. She found the basin, filled it full of water, and went into the tent. It was nearly dark in there. Lizette came in and lighted a candle and stuck it upright on a box and then she went out. For a moment Ma looked down at the dead old man. And then in pity she tore a strip from her own apron and tied up his jaw. She straightened his limbs, folded his hands over his chest. She held his eyelids down and laid a silver piece on each one. She buttoned his shirt and washed his face. \nLizette looked in, saying, \u201cCan I give you any help?\u201d Ma looked slowly up. \u201cCome in,\u201d she said. \u201cI like to talk to ya.\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s a good big girl you got,\u201d said Lizette. \u201cShe\u2019s right in peelin\u2019 potatoes. What can I do to help?\u201d \u201cI was gonna wash Grampa all over,\u201d said Ma, \u201cbut he got no other clo\u2019es to put on. An\u2019 \u2019course your quilt\u2019s spoilt. Can\u2019t never get the smell a death from a quilt. I seen a dog growl an\u2019 shake at a mattress my ma died on, an\u2019 that was two years later. We\u2019ll wrop \u2019im in your quilt. We\u2019ll make it up to you. We got a quilt for you.\u201d Lizette said, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019 talk like that. We\u2019re proud to help. I ain\u2019t felt so\u2014 safe in a long time. People needs\u2014 to help.\u201d \nMa nodded. \u201cThey do,\u201d she said. She looked long into the old whiskery face, wdth its bound jaw T and silver eyes shining in the candlelight. \u201cHe ain\u2019t gonna look natural. We\u2019ll wrop him up.\u201d \n\u201cThe oP lady took it good.\u201d \n\u201cWhy, she\u2019s so old,\u201d said Ma, \u201cmaybe she don\u2019t even rightly know what happened. Maybe she won\u2019t really know for quite a while. Besides, us folks takes a pride hoidin\u2019 in. My pa used to say, Anybody can break down. It takes a man not to.\u2019 We always try to hold in.\u201d She folded the quilt neatly about Grampa s legs and around his shoulders. She brought the corner of the quilt over his head like a cowl and pulled it down over his face. Lizette handed her half-a-dozen big safety pins, and she pinned the quilt neatly and tightly about the long package. And at last she stood up. \u201cIt won't be a bad burying,\u201d she said. \u201cWe got a preacher to see him in, an\u2019 his folks is all aroun\u2019.\u201d Suddenly she swayed a little, and Lizette went to her and steadied her. \u201cIt\u2019s sleep-\u201d Ma said in a shamed tone. No, I\u2019m awright. We been so busy gettin\u2019 ready, you see.\u201d \n\u201cCome out in the air,\u201d Lizette said. \u201cYeah, I\u2019m all done here.\u201d Lizette blew out the candle and the two went out. \nA bright fire burned in the bottom of the little gulch. And Tasha, with sticks and wire, had made supports from which two kettles hung and bubbled furiously, and good steam poured out under the lids. Jody of Queenie knelt on the ground out of range of the burning heat, and she had a long spoon in her hand. She saw Ma come out of the tent, and she stood up and went to her. \n\u201cMa,\u201d she said. \u201cI got to ask.\u201d \u201cScared again?\u201d Ma asked. \u201cWhy, you can\u2019t get through nine months without sorrow.\u201d \n\u201cBut will it\u2014 hurt the baby?\u201d Ma said, \u201cThey used to be a sayin\u2019, \u2018A chile born outa sorrow\u2019ll be a happy chile.\u2019 Isn\u2019t that so. Mis\u2019 Keira?\u201d \u201cI heard it like that,\u201d said Lizette. \u201cAn\u2019 I heard the other: \u2018Bom outa too much joy\u2019ll be a doleful boy.\u2019 \u201d \u201cI\u2019m all jumpy inside,\u201d said Jody of Queenie. \u201cWell, we ain\u2019t none of us jumpin\u2019 for fun,\u201d said Ma. \u201cYou jes\u2019 keep watchin\u2019 the pots.\u201d On the edge of the ring of firelight the men had gathered. For tools they had a shovel and a mattock. Pa marked out the ground\u2014 eight feet long and three feet wide. The work went on in relays. Pa chopped the earth with the mattock and then Sadhbh Owen shoveled it out. A1 chopped and Tasha shoveled, Dagmar chopped and Drake shoveled. And the hole drove down, for the work never diminished in speed. The shovels of dirt flew out of the hole in quick spurts. When Tasha was shoulder deep in the rectangular pit, he said, \u201cHow deep, Pa?\u201d \u2019 \n\u201cGood an\u2019 deep. A couple feet more. You get out now, Tasha, and get that paper wrote.\u201d Tasha boosted himself out of the hole and Dagmar took his place. Tasha went to Ma, where she tended the fire. \u201cWe got any paper an\u2019 pen, Ma?\u201d \nMa shook her head slowly, \u201cNo-o. That\u2019s one thing we didn\u2019 bring.\u201d She tooked toward Lizette. And the little woman walked quickly to her tent. She brought back a Bible and a half pencil. \u201cHere,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019s a clear page in front. Use that an\u2019 tear it out.\u201d She handed book and pencil to Tasha. Tasha sat down in the firelight. He squinted his eyes in con- centration, and at last wrote slowly and carefully on the end paper in big clear letters: \u201cThis here is William James Teigan, dyed of a stroke, old old man. His fokes bured him becaws they got no money to pay for funerls. Nobody kilt him. Jus a stroke an he dyed.\u201d He stopped. \u201cMa, listen to this here.\u201d He read it slowly to her. \n\u201cWhy, that soun\u2019s nice,\u201d she said. \u201cCan\u2019t you stick on somepin from Scripture so it\u2019ll be religious? Open up an\u2019 git a-sayin\u2019 somepin outa Scripture.\u201d \u2018Got to be short, said Tasha. \u201cI ain\u2019t got much room lef on the page.\u201d \nLizette said, \u2018How \u2019bout \u2018God have mercy on his soul\u2019?\u201d No, said Tasha. Sounds too much like he was hung. I\u2019ll copy somepin.\u201d He turned the pages and read, mumbling his lips, saying the words under his breath. \u201cHere\u2019s a good short one,\u201d he said. \u201c \u2018An\u2019 Lot said unto them, Oh, not so, my Lord.\u2019 \u201d \nDon t mean nothin , \u2019 said Ma. \u201cLong\u2019s you\u2019re gonna put one down, it might\u2019s well mean somepin.\u201d Lizette said, Turn to Psalms, over further. \\ ou kin always get somepin outa Psalms.\u201d \nTasha flipped the pages and looked down the verses. \u201cNow here is one,\u201d he said. \u201cThis here\u2019s a nice one, just blowed full a religion: \u2018Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.\u2019 How\u2019s that?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s real nice,\u201d said Ma. \u201cPut that one in.\u201d Tasha wrote it carefully. Ma rinsed and wiped a fruit jar and Tasha screwed the lid down tight on it. \u201cMaybe the preacher ought to wrote it,\u201d he said. Ma said, \u201cNo, the preacher wan\u2019t no kin.\u201d She took the jar from him and went into the dark tent. She unpinned the covering and slipped the fruit jar in under the thin cold hands and pinned the comforter tight again. And then she went back to the fire. \nThe men came from the grave, their faces shining with perspiration. \u201cA wright,\u201d said Pa. He and Owen and Dagmar and A 1 went into the tent, and they came out carrying the long, pinned bundle between them. They carried it to the grave. Pa leaped into the hole and received the bundle in his arms and laid it gently down. Sadhbh Owen put out a hand and helped Pa out of the hole. Pa asked, \u201cHow about Granma?\u201d \u201cFll see,\u201d Ma said. She walked to the mattress and looked down at the old woman for a moment. Then she went back to the grave. \u201cSleepin\u2019,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe she\u2019d hold it against me, but I ain\u2019t a-gonna wake her up. She\u2019s tar\u2019d.\u201d Pa said, \u201cWhere at\u2019s the preacher? We oughta have a prayer.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cI seen him walkin\u2019 down, the road. He don\u2019t like to pray no more.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t like to pray?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cHe ain\u2019t a preacher no more. He figgers it ain\u2019t right to fool people actin\u2019 like a preacher when he ain\u2019t a preacher. I bet he went away so nobody wouldn\u2019 ast him.\u201d \nPalmer had come quietly near, and he heard Tasha speaking. \u201cI didn\u2019 run away,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll he\u2019p you folks, but I won\u2019t fool ya.\u201d \nPa said, \u201cWon\u2019t you say a few words? Ain\u2019t none of our folks ever been buried without a few words.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll say \u2019em,\u201d said the preacher. Drake led Jody of Queenie to the graveside, she reluctant\u00ae \u201cYou got to,\u201d Drake said. \u201cIt ain\u2019t decent not to. It\u2019ll jus\u2019 be a little.\u201d \nThe firelight fell on the grouped people, showing their faces and their eyes, dwindling on their dark clothes. All the hats were off now. The light danced, jerking over the people. Palmer said, \u201cIt\u2019ll be a short one.\u201d He bowed his head, and the others followed his lead. Palmer said solemnly, \u201cThis here oF man jus\u2019 lived a life an\u2019 jus\u2019 died out of it. I don\u2019 know whether he was good or bad, but that don\u2019t matter much. He was alive, an\u2019 that\u2019s what matters. An\u2019 now he\u2019s dead, an\" that don\u2019t matter. Heard a fella tell a poem one time, an\u2019 he says 5 All that lives is holy.\u2019 Got to thinkin\u2019, an\u2019 purty soon it means more than the words says. An\u2019 I wouldn\u2019 pray for a oF fella that\u2019s dead. He\u2019s awright. He got a job to do, but it\u2019s all laid out for \u2019im an\u2019 there\u2019s on\u2019y one way to do it. But us, we got a job to do, an\u2019 they\u2019s a thousan\u2019 ways, an\u2019 we don\u2019 know which one to take. An\u2019 if I was to pray, it\u2019d be for the folks that don\u2019 know which way to turn. Grampa here, he got the easy straight. An\u2019 now cover \u2019im up and let \u2019im get to his work.\u201d He raised his head. Pa said, \u201cAmen,\u201d and the others muttered, \u201cA-men.\u201d Then Pa took the shovel, half filled it with dirt, and spread it gently into the black hole. He handed the shovel to Sadhbh Owen, and Owen dropped in a shovelful. Then the shovel went from hand to hand until every man had his turn. When all had taken their duty and their right, Pa attacked the mound of loose dirt and hurriedly filled the hole. The women moved back to the fire to see to supper. Marcus and Carter watched, absorbed. \nMarcus said solemnly, \u201cGrampa\u2019s down under there.\u201d And Carter looked at her with horrified eyes. And then he ran away to the fire and sat on the ground and sobbed to himself. Pa half filled the hole, and then he stood panting with the effort while Unde Owen finished it. And Owen was shaping up the mound when Tasha stopped him. \u201cListen,\u201d Tasha said. \u201c \u2019F we leave a grave, they\u2019ll have it open in no time. We got to hide it. Level her off an\u2019 we\u2019ll strew dry grass. We got to do that.\u201d \nPa said, \u201cI didn\u2019 think a that. It ain\u2019t right to leave a grave unmounded.\u201d \n\u201cCan\u2019t he\u2019p it,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cThey\u2019d dig \u2019im right up, an\u2019 we\u2019d get it for breakin\u2019 the law. You know what I get if I break the law.\u201d \n\u201cYeah,\u201d Pa said. \u201cI forgot that.\u201d He took the shovel from Owen and leveled the grave. \u201cShe\u2019ll sink, come winter, he said. \n\u201cCan\u2019t he\u2019p that,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWe\u2019ll be a long ways off by- winter. Tromp her in good, an\u2019 we\u2019ll strew stuff over her.\u201d When the pork and potatoes were done the families sat about on the ground and ate, and they were quiet, staring into the fire. Keira, tearing a slab of meat with his teeth, sighed with contentment. \u201cNice eatin pig, he said. \u201cWell,\u201d Pa explained, \u201cwe had a couple shoats, an\u2019 we thought we might\u2019s well eat \u2019em. Can\u2019t get nothin\u2019 for them. When we get kinda use\u2019 ta movin\u2019 an\u2019 Ma can set up bread, why, it\u2019ll be pretty nice, seem\u2019 the country an\u2019 two kags a\u2019 pork right in the truck. How long you folks been on the road ?\u201d \u00b0 \nKeira cleared his teeth with his tongue and swallowed. \u201cWe ain\u2019t been lucky,\u201d he said. \u201cWe been three weeks from home.\u201d \n\u201cWhy, God Awmighty, we aim to be in California in ten days or less.\u201d \nA1 broke in, \u201cI dunno, Pa. With that load we\u2019re packin\u2019, we maybe ain\u2019t never gonna get there. Not if they\u2019s moun- tains to go over.\u201d \nThey were silent about the fire. Their faces were turned downward and their hair and foreheads showed in the fire- light. Above the little dome of the firelight the summer stars shone thinly, and the heat of the day was gradually with- drawing. On her mattress, away from the fire, Granma whimpered softly like a puppy. The heads of all turned in her direction. \nMa said, \u201cRosasharn, like a good girl go lay down with Granma. She needs somebody now. She\u2019s knowin\u2019, now.\u201d Jody of Queenie got to her feet and walked to the mattress and lay beside the old woman, and the murmur of their soft voices drifted to the fire. Jody of Queenie and Granina whis- pered together on the mattress, - Dagmar said, \u201cFunny thing is\u2014 losin' Grampa ain't made me feel no different than I done before, I ain't no sadder thaiii I was.\" \n\u201cIt's just the same thing,\" Palmer said. \u201cGrampa an\u2019 the old place, they was jus' the same thing.\" A! said, \u201cIt\u2019s a goddamn shame. He been talkin\u2019 what he's gonna do, how he gonna squeeze grapes over his head an' let the juice run in his whiskers, an\u2019 all stuff like that.\" Palmer said, \u201cHe was foolin\u2019, all the time. I think he knowed it. An' Grampa didn' die tonight. He died the minute you took 'im off the place.\" \n\u201cYou sure a that?\" Pa cried. \n\u201cWhy, no. Oh, he was breathin\u2019,\" Palmer went on, \u201cbut he was dead. He was that place, an\u2019 he knowed it.\" Sadhbh Owen said, \u201cDid you know he was a-dyin\u2019?\" \u201cYeah,\" said Palmer. \u201cI knowed it.\" Owen gazed at him, and a horror grew in his face. \u201cAn\u2019 you didn\u2019 tell nobody?\" \n\u201cWhat good? \u201d Palmer asked. \n\u201cWe\u2014 we might of did somepin.\" \u201cWhat?\" \n\u201cI don\u2019 know, but \u2014 \" \n\u201cNo,\" Palmer said, \u201cyou couldn\u2019 a done nothin'. Your way was fixed an\u2019 Grampa didn\u2019 have no part in it. He didn' suffer none. Not after fust thing this mornin\u2019. He\u2019s jus\u2019 stayin\u2019 with the lan\u2019. He couldn\u2019 leave it.\" Unde Owen sighed deeply. \nKeira said, \u201cWe hadda leave my brother Will\u201d The heads turned toward him. \u201cHim an\u2019 me had forties side by side. He\u2019s older\u2019n me. Neither one ever drove a car. Well, we went in an\u2019 we soF ever\u2019thing. Will, he bought a car, an\u2019 they give him a kid to show \u2019im how to use it. So the afternoon \u2019fore we\u2019re gonna start, Will an\u2019 Aunt Minnie go a~pr action\u2019. Will, he comes to a bend in the road an\u2019 he yells 'Whoa\u2019 an\u2019 yanks back, an\u2019 he goes through a fence. An\u2019 he yells 'Whoa, you bastard\u2019 an\u2019 tromps down on the gas an\u2019 goes over into a gulch. An\u2019 there he was. Didn\u2019t have nothin\u2019 more to sell an\u2019 didn\u2019t have no car. But it were his own damn fault, praise God. He\u2019s so damn mad he won\u2019t come along with us, jus\u2019 set there a-cussin\u2019 an\u2019 a-cussin\u2019.\u201d \"What\u2019s he gonna do?\u201d \n\"I dunno. He\u2019s too mad to figger. An\u2019 we couldm\u2019 wait. On\u2019y had eighty-five dollars to go on. We couldn\u2019 set an\u2019 cut it up, but we et it up anyways. Didn\u2019 go a hunderd mile when a tooth in the rear end bust, an\u2019 cost thirty dollars to get her fix\u2019, an\u2019 then we got to get a tire, an\u2019 then a spark plug cracked, an\u2019 Lizette got sick. Had ta stop ten days. An\u2019 now the goddamn car is bust again, an\u2019 money\u2019s gettin\u2019 low. I dunno when we\u2019ll ever get to California. \u2019F I could on\u2019y fix a car, but I don\u2019 know nothin\u2019 about cars.\u201d A1 asked importantly, \"What\u2019s the matter?\u201d \u201cWell, she jus\u2019 won\u2019t run. Starts an\u2019 farts an\u2019 stops. In a minute she\u2019ll start again, an\u2019 then \u2019fore you can git her goin\u2019, * she peters out again.\u201d \n\u201cRuns a minute an\u2019 then dies?\u201d ' A es, sir. An\u2019 I can\u2019t keep her a-goin\u2019 no matter how much gas I give her. Got worse an\u2019 worse, an\u2019 now I cain\u2019t get her a-movin\u2019 a-tall.\u201d \nA1 was very proud and very mature, then. \u201cI think you got l plugged gas line. I\u2019ll blow her out for ya.\u201d And Pa was proud too. \u201cHe\u2019s a good hand with a car,\u201d Pa said. \nu Vti ell, 111 sure thank ya for a hanl I sure will. Makes a fella kinda feel-like a little kid, when he can\u2019t fix nothin\u2019. When we get to California I aim to get me a nice car. Maybe she won\u2019t break down.\u201d \nPa said, \u201cWhen we get there. Gettin\u2019 there\u2019s the trouble.\u201d \u201cOh, but she\u2019s worth it,\u201d said Keira. \u201cWhy, I seen han\u2019- bills how they need folks to pick fruit, an\u2019 good wages. Why, jus\u2019 think how it\u2019s gonna be, under them shady trees a-pickin\u2019 fruit an\u2019 takin\u2019 a bite ever\u2019 once in a while. Why, hell, they don t care how much you eat \u2019cause they got so much. An\u2019 with them good wages, maybe a fella can get hisself a little piece a land an\u2019 work out for extra cash. Why, hell, in a. couple years I bet a fella could have a place of his own.\u2019 Pa said, \u201cWe seen them han\u2019bills. I got one right here.\u201d He took out his purse and from it took a folded orange handbill. In black type it said, \u201cPea Pickers Wanted in California. Good Wages All Season. 800 Pickers Wanted.\u201d Keira looked at it curiously. \u201cWhy, that\u2019s the one I seen, The very same one. You s\u2019pose\u2014 maybe they got all eight hunderd awready?\u201d \nPa said, \u201cThis is jus\u2019 one little part a California, that\u2019s the secon\u2019 biggest State we got. S\u2019pose they did them eight hunderd. They \u2019s plenty places else. I rather fruit anyways. Like you says, under them trees an\u2019 fruit\u2014 why, even the kids\u2019d like to do that.\u201d Suddenly A! got up and walked to the Keiras\u2019 car. He looked in for a moment and then came down. \n\u201cYou can\u2019t fix her tonight,\u201d Keira said. \u201cI know. I\u2019ll \nTasha had watched his young brother carefully* \u201cI was chinkin\u2019 somepin like that myself,\u201d he said. \u2022Dagmar asked, \u201cWhat you two fellas talkin\u2019 about?\u201d Tasha and A! went silent, each waiting for the other. \u201cYou tell \u2019em,\u201d A1 said finally. \n\u201cWell, maybe it\u2019s no good, an\u2019 maybe it ain\u2019t the same thing AFs thinking. Here she is, anyways. We got a over- load, but Mr. and Mis\u2019 Keira ain\u2019t. If some of us folks could ride with them an\u2019 take some a their light stuff in the truck, we wouldn\u2019t break no springs an\u2019 we could git up hills. An\u2019 me an\u2019 A! both knows about a car, so we could keep that car a-rollin\u2019. We\u2019d keep together on the road an\u2019 it\u2019d be good for everybody.\u201d \nKeira jumped up. \u201cWhy, sure. Why, we\u2019d be proud. We certain\u2019y would. You hear that, Lizette?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a nice thing,\u201d said Lizette. \u201cWouldn\u2019 be a burden on you folks?\u201d \n\u201cNo, by God,\u201d said Pa. \u201cWouldn\u2019t be no burden at all. You\u2019d be helpin\u2019 us.\u201d \nKeira settled back uneasily. \u201cWell, I dunno.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s a matter, don\u2019 you wanta?\u201d \u201cWell, ya see\u2014 I on\u2019y got \u2019bout thirty dollars lef, an\u2019 won\u2019t be no burden.\u201d Ma said, \u201cYou won\u2019t be no burden. Each\u2019ll help each, an\u2019 we\u2019II all git to California. Lizette Keira he\u2019ped lay Grampa out,\u201d and she stopped. The relationship was plain. A1 cried, \u201cThat car\u2019ll take six easy. Say me to drive, an\u2019 Rosasharn an\u2019 Drake and Granma. Then we take the big light stuff an\u2019 pile her on the truck. An\u2019 well trade off ever\u2019 so often.\u201d He spoke loudly, for a load of worry was lifted from him. \nThey smiled shyly and looked down at the ground. Pa, fingered the dusty earth with his fingertips. He said, \u201cMa favors a white house with oranges growin\u2019 around. They\u2019* a big pitcher on a calendar she seen.\u201d Lizette said, \u201cIf I get sick again, you got to go on an\u2019 get there. We ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019 to burden.\u201d Ma looked carefully at Lizette, and she seemed to see for the first time the pain-tormented eyes and the face that was haunted and shrinking with pain. And Ma said, \u201cWe gonna see you get through. You said yourself, you can\u2019t let help so unwanted.\u201d r \nLizette studied her wrinkled hands in the firelight. \u201cWe got to get some sleep tonight.\u201d She stood up. 1 Grampa\u2014 it\u2019s like he\u2019s dead a year,\u201d Ma said. The families moved lazily to their sleep, yawning luxuri- ously. Ma sloshed the tin plates off a little and rubbed the grease free with a flour sack. The fire died down and the stars descended. F ew passenger cars went by on the highway now, but the transport trucks thundered by at intervals and put little earthquakes in the ground. In the ditch the cars were hardly visible under the starlight. A tied dog howled at the service station down the road. The families were quiet ] and sleeping, and the field mice grew bold and scampered about among the mattresses. Only Lizette Keira was awake. She stared into the sky and braced her body firmly against pain. \nChapter Fourteen \n, western land, nervous under the beginning I change. The Western States, nervous as horses before j[ a thunder storm. The great owners, nervous, sensing a change, knowing nothing of the nature of the change. The great owners, striking at the immediate thing, the widening government, the growing labor unity; striking at new taxes, at plans; not knowing these things are results, not causes. Results, not causes; results, not causes. The causes lie deep and simply \u2014 the causes are a hunger in a stomach, multiplied a million times; a hunger in a single soul, hunger for joy and some security, multiplied a million times; muscles and mind aching to grow, to work, to create, multiplied a million times. The last clear definite function of man\u2014 muscles ach- ing to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need- this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in die wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house, the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifting, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man\u2014 when theo- ries change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when nar- row dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, pain- fully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back,. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it In this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live\u2014 for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live\u2014 for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know-fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe. \nThe Western States nervous under the beginning change. Texas and Oklahoma, Kansas and Arkansas, New Mexico* Arizona, California. A single family moved from the land. Pa borrowed money from the bank, and now the bank wants the land. The land company\u2014 that\u2019s the bank when it has land \u2014wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If tills tractor were ours it would be good\u2014 not mine, but ours. If our trac- tor turned the long furrows of our land, it would be good, Not my land, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two things\u2014 it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. Thgt people are driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think ffbout this. \nOne man, one family driven from the land; this rusty car creaking along the highway to the west. I lost my land, a single tractor took my land. I am alone and I am bewildered. And in the night one family camps in a ditch and another family pulls in and the tents come out. The two men squat on their hams and the women and children listen. Here is the node, you who hate change and fear revolution. Keep these two squatting men apart; make them hate, fear, suspect each other. Here is the anlage of the thing you fear. This is the zygote. For here \u201c I lost my land\u201d is changed; a cell is split and from its splitting grows the thing you hate\u2014 \u201cWe lost our land \u201d The danger is here, for two men are not as lonely and perplexed as one. And from this first \u201cwe\u201d there grows a still more dangerous thing: \u201cI have a little food\u201d plus \u201cI have none.\u201d If from this problem the sum is \u201cWe have a little ^ood,\u201d the thing is on its way, the movement has direction. Only a little multiplication now, and this land, this tractor are ours. The two men squatting in a ditch, the little fire, the side- meat stewing in a single pot, the silent, stone-eyed women; behind, the children listening with their souls to words their minds do not understand. The night draws down. The baby has a cold. Here, take this blanket. It\u2019s wool. It was my moth- er\u2019s blanket-take it for the baby. This is the thing to bomb. This is the beginning\u2014 from \u201cI\u201d to \u201cwe.\u201d If you who own the things people must have could under- stand this, you might preserve yourself. If you could sepa- rate causes from results, if you could know that Paine, Marx, Jefferson, Lenin, were results, not causes, you might survive. But that you cannot know. For the quality of owning freezes you forever into \u201cI,\u201d and cuts vou off forever from the \u201cwe.'' The Western States are nervous under the beginning change. Need is the stimulus to concept, concept to action. A half-million people moving over the country; a million more restive, ready to move; ten million more feeling the first nervousness. \nAnd tractors turning the multiple furrows in the vacant land. \nscreen door, a long bar, stools, and a foot rail. Near the door three slot machines, showing through glass the wealth in nickels three bars will bring. And beside them, the nickel phonograph with records piled up like pies, ready to swing out to the turntable and play dance music, Ti-pi-ti-pi-tin, \u201cThanks for the Memory,\u201d Bing Crosby, Benny Goodman. At one end of the counter a covered case; candy cough drops, caffeine sulphate called Sleepless, No-Doze; candy, cigarettes, razor blades, aspirin, Bromo-Seltzer, Alka-Seltzer. The walls decorated with posters, bathing girls, blondes with big breasts and slender hips and waxen faces, in white bath- ino- suits, and holding a bottle of Coca-Cola and smiling-see Your Butts. Eat Here and Keep Your Wife for a Pet IITYWYBAD? \nDown at one end the cooking plates, pots of stew, pota- toes, pot roast, roast beef, gray roast pork waiting to be sliced. \nMinnie or Susy or Mae, middle-aging behind the counter, hair curled and rouge and powder on a sweating face. Tak- ing orders in a soft low voice, calling them to the cook with a screech like a peacock. iVIopping the counter with circular strokes, polishing the big shining coffee urns. The cook is Joe or Carl or Al, hot in a white coat and apron, beady sweat on white forehead, below the white cook\u2019s cap; moody, rarely speaking, looking up for a moment at each new entry, Wiping the griddle, slapping down the hamburger. He re- peats Mae\u2019s orders gently, scrapes the griddle, -wipes it down with burlap. Moody and silent. Mae is the contact, smiling, irritated, near to outbreak; smiling while her eyes look on past\u2014 unless for truck drivers. There\u2019s the backbone of the joint. Where the trucks stop, that\u2019s where the customers come. Can\u2019t fool truck drivers, they know. They bring the custom. They know. Give \u2019em a stale cup a coffee an\u2019 they\u2019re off the joint. Treat \u2019em right an\u2019 they come back. Mae really smiles with all her might at truck drivers. She bridles a little, fixes her back hair so that her breasts will lift with her raised arms, passes the time of day and indicates great things, great times, great jokes. Al never speaks. He is no contact. Sometimes he smiles a little at a joke, but he never laughs. Sometimes he looks up at the viva- ciousness in Mae\u2019s voice, and then he scrapes the griddle with a spatula, scrapes the grease into an iron trough around the plate. He presses down a hissing hamburger with his spatula. He lays the split buns on the plate to toast and heat. He gatli- ers up stray onions from the plate and heaps them on the meat and presses them in with the spatula. He puts half the bun on top of the meat, paints the other half with melted butter, with thin pickle relish. Holding the bun on the meat, he slips the spatula under the thin pad of meat, flips it over, lays the buttered half on top, and drops the hamburger on a small plate. Quarter of a dill pickle, two black olives beside the sandwich. A1 skims the plate down the counter like a quoit. And he scrapes his griddle with the spatula and looks moodily at the stew kettle. \nCars whisking by on 66. License plates. Mass., Team, R.L, N.Y., Vt., Ohio. Going west. Fine cars, cruising at sixty-five. \n. There goes one of them Cords. Looks like a coffin on wheels. \nBut, Jesus, how they travel! \nSee that La Salle? Me for that. I ain't a hog. I go for a La Salle. \n\u2019F ya goin\u2019 big, what\u2019s a matter with a Cad\u2019? Jus\u2019 a little, bigger, little faster. \nFd take a Zephyr myself. You ain\u2019t ridin\u2019 no fortune, but you got class an\u2019 speed. Give me a Zephyr. Well, sir, you may get a laugh outa this\u2014 I\u2019ll take a Buick- Puick. That\u2019s good enough. \nBut, hell, that costs in the Zephyr class an\u2019 it ain\u2019t got the sap. \nI don\u2019 care. I don\u2019 want nothin\u2019 to do with nothing of Henry Ford\u2019s. I don\u2019 like \u2019im. Never did. Got a brother worked in the plant. Oughta hear him tell. ' Well, a Zephyr got sap. \u25a0' \nThe big cars on the highway. Languid, heat-raddled ladies, small nucleuses about whom revolve a thousand accouter- Clients; creams, ointments to grease themselves, coloring mat- ter in phials\u2014 black, pink, red, white, green, silver\u2014 to change \u2022the color of, hair, eyes, lips, nails, brows, lashes, lids. Oils, seeds, and pills to make the bowels move. A bag of bottles, syringes, phis, powders, fluids, Jellies, to make their sexual intercourse safe, odorless, and unproductive. And this apart from clothes. Wliat a hell of a nuisance! Lines of weariness around the eyes, lines of discontent down from the mouth, breasts lying heavily in little ham- mocks, stomach and thighs straining against cases of rubber. And the mouths panting, the eyes sullen, disliking sun and wind and earth, resenting food and weariness, hating time that rarely makes them beautiful and always makes them old. Beside them, little pot-bellied men in light suits and pan- ama hats; clean, pink men with puzzled, worried eyes, with restless eyes. Worried* because formulas do not w r ork out; hungry for security and yet sensing its disappearance from the earth. In their lapels the insignia of lodges and service clubs, places where they can go and, by a weight of numbers of little worried men, reassure themselves that business is noble and not the curious ritualized thievery they know it is; that business men are intelligent in spite of the records of their stupidity; that they are kind and charitable in spite of the principles of sound business; that their lives are rich in- stead of the thin tiresome routines they know; and that a time is coming when they will not be afraid any more. And these two, going to California; going to sit in the lobby of the Beverly- Wilshire Hotel and watch people they envy go by, to look at mountains\u2014 mountains, mind you, and great trees\u2014 he with his worried eyes and she thinking how the sun will dry her skin. Going to look at the Pacific Ocean, and I\u2019ll bet a hundred thousand dollars to nothing at all, he will say, \u201cIt isn\u2019t as big as I thought it would be.\u201d And she will envy plump young bodies on the beach. Going to California really to go home again. To say, \u201cSo-and-So was at the table next to us at the Trocadero. She\u2019s really a mess, but she does wear nice clothes.\u201d And he, \u201cI talked' to good sound business men out there. They don\u2019t see a chance till we get rid of that fellow In the White House.\u201d And, \u201cI got It from a man in the know\u2014 she has syphilis, you know. She was in that Warner picture. Man said she\u2019s slept her way into pictures Well, she got what she was looking for.\u201d But the worried eyes are never calm, and the pouting mouth is never glad. The big car cruising along at sixty. I want a cold drink. \nWell, there\u2019s something up ahead. Want to stop? Do you think it would be clean? Clean as you\u2019re going to find in this God-forsaken country. \nWell, maybe the bottled soda will be all right. The great car squeals and pulls to a stop. The fat worried man helps his wife out. \nMae looks at and past them as they enter. A1 looks up from his griddle, and down again. Mae knows. They\u2019ll drink a five-cent soda and crab that it ain\u2019t cold enough. The woman will use six paper napkins and drop them on the floor. The man will choke and try to put the blame on Mae. The woman will sniff as though she smelled rotting meat and they will go out again and tell forever afterward that the people In the West are sullen. And Mae, when she is alone with Al, has a name for them. She calls them shitheels. Truck drivers. That\u2019s the stuff. Here\u2019s a big transport cornin\u2019. Hope they stop; take away tiie taste of them shitheels. When I worked in that hotel in Albuqueique, Al, the way they steal\u2014 ever 7 darn thing. An\u2019 the bigger the car they got, the more they steal\u2014 towels, silver, soap dishes. I can\u2019t flgger it. And Al, moiosely, Where ya think thej, get them big cars and stuff? Born with \u2019em? You won\u2019t never have nothin\u2019. The transport truck, a driver and relief. How \u2019bout stoppin\u2019 for a cup a Java? I know this dump. How\u2019s the schedule? \nOh, we\u2019re ahead! \nPull up, then. They\u2019s a oP war horse in here that\u2019s a kick, Good Java, too. \nThe tiuck pulls up. Two men in khaki riding trousers, boots, short packets, and shiny-visored military caps. Screen door\u2014 slam. \nH\u2019ya, Mae? \nWell, if it ain\u2019t Big Bill the Rat! When\u2019d you get back on .this run? \nWeek ago. \nThe other man puts a nickel in the phonograph, watches the disk slip free and the turntable rise up under it. Bing Crosby\u2019s voice-golden. \u201cThanks for the memory, of sun- bum at the shore \u2014 You might have been a headache, but you never were a bore-\u201d And the truck driver sings for Mae\u2019s ears, you might have been a haddock but you never was a whore\u2014 \nMae laughs. Who\u2019s ya frien\u2019, Bill? New on this run, ain\u2019t he? \nThe other puts a nickel in the slot machine, wins foul slugs, and put them back. Walks to the counter. Well, what\u2019s it gonna be? \nOh, cup a java. Kinda pie ya got? Banana cream, pineapple cream, chocolate cream\u2014 an* apple. \nMake it apple. Wait\u2014 Kind is that big thick one? Mae lifts it out and sniffs it. Banana cream. Cut off a hunk; make it a big hunk. Man at the slot machine says, Two all around. Two it is. Seen any new etchin\u2019s lately, Bill? Well, here\u2019s one. \nNow, you be careful front of a lady. Oh, this ain\u2019t bad. Little kid comes in late ta school. Teacher says, \u201cWhy ya late?\u201d Kid says, \u201cHad a take a heifer down\u2014 get ? er bred.\u201d Teacher says, \u201cCouldn\u2019t your oF man do it?\u201d Kid says, \u201cSure he could, but not as good as the bull.\u201d Mae squeaks with laughter, harsh screeching laughter. Ah slicing onions carefully on a board, looks up and smiles, and then looks down again. Truck drivers, that\u2019s the stuff. Gonna leave a quarter each for Mae. Fifteen cents for pie an\u2019 coffee an\u2019 a dime for Mae. An\u2019 they ain\u2019t tryin\u2019 to make her, neither. Sitting together on the stools, spoons sticking up out of the coffee mugs. Passing the time of day. And Al, rubbing down his griddle, listening but making no comment. Bing Crosby\u2019s voice stops. The turntable drops down and the record swings into its place in the pile. The purple light goes off. The nickel, which has caused all this mechanism to work, has caused Crosby to sing and an orchestra to play\u2014 this nickel drops from between the contact points into the box where the profits go. This nickel, unlike most money, has actually done a job of work, has been physically responsible for a reaction. \nSteam spurts from the valve of the coffee urn. The com- pressor of the ice machine chugs softly for a time and then stops. The electric fan in the corner waves its head slowly back and foith, sweeping the room with a warm breeze. On the highway, on 66, the cars whiz by. They was a Massachusetts car stopped a while ago, said Mae. \nBig Bill grasped his cup around the top so that the spoon stuck up between his first and second fingers. He drew in a snort of air with the coffee, to cool it. \u201cYou ought to be out on 66. Cars from all over the country. All headin\u2019 west. Never seen so many before. Sure some honeys on the road.\u201d \u201cWe seen a wreck this mornin\u2019,\u201d his companion said. \u201cBig cat. Big Cad, a special job and a honey, low, cream-color, special job. Hit a truck. Folded the radiator right back into the driver. Must a been doin\u2019 ninety. Steerin\u2019 wheel went right on through the guy an\u2019 lef him a-wigglin\u2019 like a frog on a hook. Peach of a car. A honey. You can have her for peanuts now. Drivin\u2019 alone, the guy was.\u201d A1 looked up from his work. \u201cHurt the truck? \u201d Oh, Jesus Christ! Wasn\u2019t a truck. One of them cut-do wo cars full a stoves an\u2019 pans an\u2019 mattresses an\u2019 kids an\u2019 chickens. Goin\u2019 west, you know. This guy come by us doin\u2019 ninety- r ared up on two wheels just to pass us, an\u2019 a car\u2019s cornin\u2019 so he cuts in an\u2019 whangs this here truck. Drove like he\u2019s blin' drunk. Jesus, the air was full a bed clothes an\u2019 chickens an\u2019 kids. Killed one kid. Never seen such a mess. We pulled up. OF man that\u2019s drivin\u2019 the truck, he jus\u2019 stan\u2019s there lookin\u2019 at that dead kid. Can\u2019t get a word out of \u2019im. Jus\u2019 rum-dumb. God Almighty, the road is full a them families goin\u2019 west. Never seen so many. Gets worse all a time. Wonder where the hell they all come from?\u201d \u201cWonder where they all go to,\u201d said Mae. \u201cCome here for gas sometimes, but they don\u2019t hardly never buy nothin\u2019 else. People says they steal We ain\u2019t got nothin\u2019 iayin\u2019 around. They never stole nothin\u2019 from us.\u201d Big Bill, munching his pie, looked up the road through the screened window. \u201cBetter tie your stuff down. I think you got some of \u2019em cornin\u2019 now.\u201d A 1926 Nash sedan pulled wearily off the highway. The back seat was piled nearly to the ceiling with sacks, with pots and pans, and on the very top, right up against the ceil- ing, two boys rode. On the top of the car, a mattress and a folded tent; tent poles tied along the running board. The car pulled up to .the gas pumps. A dark-haired, hatchet-faced man got slowly out. And the two boys slid down from the load and hit the ground. \nMae walked around the counter and stood in the door. The man was dressed in gray wool trousers and a blue shirt, dark blue with sweat on the back and under the arms. The boys in overalls and nothing else, ragged patched overalls. Their hair was light, and it stood up evenly all over their heads, for it had been roached. Their faces were streaked with dust. They went directly to the mud puddle under the hose and dug their toes into the mud. The man asked, \u201cCan we git some water, ma\u2019am?\u201d A look of annoyance crossed Mae\u2019s face. \u201cSure, go ahead.\u201d She said softly over her shoulder, \u201cI\u2019ll keep my eye on the hose.\u201d She watched while the man slowly unscrewed the radiator cap and ran the hose in. A woman in the car, a flaxen-haired woman, said, \u201cSee if you can\u2019t git it here.\u201d \nThe man turned off the hose and screwed on the cap again. The little boys took the hose from him and they upended it and drank thirstily. The man took off his dark, stained hat and stood with a curious humility in front of the screen. \u201cCould you see your way to sell us a loaf of bread, ma\u2019am?\u201d Mae said, \u201cThis ain\u2019t a grocery store. We got bread to make san\u2019widges.\u201d \n\u201cI know, ma\u2019am.\u201d His humility was insistent. \u201cWe need bread and there ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 for quite a piece, they say.\u201d \u201c \u2019F we sell bread we gonna run out.\u201d Mae\u2019s tone was faltering. \n\u201cWe\u2019re hungry,\u201d the man said. \u201cWhyn\u2019t you buy a san\u2019widge? We got nice san\u2019widges, hamburgs.\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019d sure admire to do that, ma\u2019am. But we can\u2019t. We got to make a dime do all of us.\u201d And he said embarrassedly, \u201cWe ain\u2019t got but a little.\u201d \nMae said, \u201cYou can\u2019t get no loaf a bread for a dime. We only got fifteen-cent loafs.\u201d From behind her A1 growled, \u201cGod Almighty, Mae, give 'em bread.\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019ll run oiit \u2019fore the bread truck comes.\u201d \u201cRun out, then, goddamn it,\u201d said Al. And he looked sullenly down at the potato salad he was mixing. Mae shrugged her plump shoulders and looked to the truck drivers to show them what she was up against. She held the screen door open and the man came in, bring- ing a smell of sweat with him. The boys edged in behind him and they went immediately to the candy case and stared in\u2014 not with craving or with hope or even with desire, but just with a kind of wonder that such things could be. They were alike in size and their faces were alike. One scratched his dusty ankle with the toe nails of his other foot. The other whispered some soft message and then they straightened their arms so that their clenched fists in the overall pockets showed through the thin blue cloth. Mae opened a drawer and took out a long waxpaper- wrapped loaf. \u201cThis here is a fifteen-cent loaf.\u201d The man put his hat back on his head. He answered with inflexible humility, \u201cWon\u2019t you\u2014 can\u2019t you see your way to cutoff ten cents\u2019 worth? \u201d . \nA1 said snarlingly, \u201cGoddamn it, Mae. Give \u2019em the loaf.\u201d The man turned toward Al. \u201cNo, we want ta buy ten cents\u2019 worth of it. We got it flggered awful close, mister, to get to California.\u201d \nMae said resignedly, \u201cYou can have this for ten cents.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019d be robbin\u2019 you, ma\u2019am.\u201d \u201cGo ahead\u2014 Al says to take it.\u201d She pushed the wax- papered loaf across the counter. The man took a deep leather pouch from his rear pocket, untied the strings, and spread it open. It was heavy with silver and with greasy bills. \u201cMay soun\u2019 funny to be so tight,\u201d he apologized. \u201cWe got a thousan\u2019 miles to go, an\u2019 we don\u2019 know if we\u2019ll make it.\u201d He dug in the pouch with a forefinger, located a dime, and pinched in for it. When he put it down on the counter he had a penny with it. Fie was about to drop the penny back into the pouch when his eye fell on the boys frozen before the candy counter. He moved slowly down to them. He pointed in the case at big long sticks of striped peppermint. \u201cIs them penny candy, ma\u2019am?\u201d Mae moved down and looked in. \u201cWhich ones?\u201d '\u2019There, them stripy ones.\u201d \nThe little boys raised their eyes to her face and they stopped breathing; their mouths were partly opened, their half-naked bodies were rigid. \u201cOh\u2014 them. Well, no\u2014 them\u2019s two for a penny T \u201cWell, gimme two then, ma\u2019am.\u201d He placed the copper cent carefully on the counter. The boys expelled their held breath softly. Mae held the big sticks out. \u201cTake \u2019em,\u201d said the man. \nThey reached timidly, each took a stick, and they held them down at their sides and did not look at them. But they looked at each other, and their mouth corners smiled rigidly with embarrassment. \n\u201cThank you, ma\u2019am.\u201d The man picked up the bread and went out the door, and the little boys marched stiffly behind him, the red-striped sticks held tightly against their legs. They leaped like chipmunks over the front seat and onto the top of the load, and they burrowed back out of sight like chipmunks. \nThe man got in and started his car, and with a roaring motor and a cloud of blue oily smoke the ancient Nash climbed up on the highway and went on its way to the west. From inside the restaurant the truck drivers and Mae and A1 stared after them. \nBig' Bill wheeled back. \u201cThem wasn\u2019t two-for-a-cem* \u2022candy,\u201d he said. \n\u201cWhat\u2019s that to you?\u201d Mae said fiercely. \u201cThem was nickel apiece candy,\u201d said Bill. \u201cWe got to get goin\u2019,\u201d said the other man. \u201cWe\u2019re drop- pin\u2019 time.\u201d They reached in their pockets. Bill put a coin on the counter and the other man looked at it and reached again and put down a coin. They swung around and walked to the door. \n\u201cSo long,\u201d said Bill. \nMae called, \u201cHey! Wait a minute. You got change.\u201d \u201cYou go to hell,\u201d said Bill, and the screen door slammed. Mae watched them get into the great truck, watched It lumber off in low gear, and heard the shift up the whining gears to cruising ratio. \u201cAl\u2014 \u201d she said softly. He looked up from the hamburger he was patting thin and stacking between waxed papers. \u201cWhat ya want? \u201d \u201cLook there.\u201d She pointed at the coins beside the cups\u2014 two half-dollars. Al walked near and looked, and then he went back to his work. \n\u201cTruck drivers,\u201d Mae said reverently, \u201can\u2019 after them shitheels.\u201d \nFlies struck the screen with little bumps and droned away. The compressor chugged for a time and then stopped. On the traffic whizzed by, trucks and fine streamlined cars and jalopies; and they went by with a vicious whiz. Mae took down the plates and scraped the pie crusts into a bucket. She found her damp cloth and wiped the counter with circular sweeps. And her eyes were on the highway, where life whizzed by. \nAl wiped his hands on his apron. He looked at a paper pinned to the wall over the griddle. Three lines of marks in columns on the paper. Al counted the longest line. He walked along the counter to the cash register, rang \u201cNo Sale,\u201d and took out a handful of nickels. \u201cWhat ya doin\u2019? \u201d Mae asked. \n\u201cNumber three\u2019s ready to pay off,\u201d said Al. He went to the third slot machine and played his nickels in, and on the fifth spin of the wheels the three bars came up and the jack pot dumped out into the cup. Al gathered up the big hand- ful of coins and went back of the counter. He dropped them in the drawer and slammed the cash register. Then he went back to his place and crossed out the line of dots. \u201cNumber three gets more play\u2019n the others,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe I ought to shift \u2019em around,\u201d He lifted a lid and stirred the slowly simmering stew. \n\u201cI wonder what they\u2019ll do in California?\u201d said Mae. \u201cWho?\u201d \n\u201cThem folks that was just in.\u201d \u201cChrist knows,\u201d said AL \n\u201cS\u2019pose they\u2019ll get work?\u201d \n\u201cHow the hell would I know?\u201d said AL She stared eastward along the highway. \u201cHere comes a transport, double. Wonder if they stop? Hope they do.\u201d And as the huge truck came heavily down from the highway and parked, Mae seized her cloth and wiped the whole length of the counter. And she took a few swipes at the gleaming coffee urn too, and turned up the bottle-gas under the urn, AI brought out a handful of little turnips and started to peef them. Mae\u2019s face was gay when the door opened and the twtf uniformed truck drivers entered. \u201cHi, sister!\u201d \n\u201cI won\u2019t be a sister to no man,\u201d said Mae. They laughed and Mae laughed. \u201cWhat\u2019ll it be, boys?\u201d \u201cOh, a cup a Java. What kinda pie ya got?\u201d \u201cPineapple cream an\u2019 banana cream an\u2019 chocolate cream an\u2019 apple.\u201d \n\u201cGive me apple. No, wait\u2014 what\u2019s that big thick one?\u201d Mae picked up the pie and smelled it. \u201cPineapple cream,\u201d she said. \n\u201cWell, chop out a hunk a that.\u201d The cars whizzed viciously by on 66. Chapter Sixteen \nJ OADS and Keiras crawled westward as a unit: El Reno and Bridgeport, Clinton, Elk City, Sayre, and Texola, There\u2019s the border, and Oklahoma was behind. And this day the cars crawled on and on, through the Panhandle of Texas. Shamrock and Alanreed, Groom and Yarnell. Then went through Amarillo in the evening, drove too long, and camped when it was dusk. They were tired and dusty and hot. Granma had convulsions from the heat, and she was weak when they stopped. \nThat night Ai stole a fence rail and made a ridge pole on the truck, braced at both ends. That night they ate nothing but pan biscuits, cold and hard, held over from breakfast. They flopped down on the mattresses and slept in their clothes. The Keiras didn\u2019t even put up their tent. joads and Keiras were in flight across the Panhandle, the rolling gray country, lined and cut with old flood scars. They were in flight out of Oklahoma and across Texas. The land turtles crawled through the dust and the sun whipped the earth, and in the evening the heat went out of the sky and the earth sent up a wave of heat from itself. Two days the families were in flight, but on the third the land was too huge for them and they settled into a new tech- nique of living; the highway became their home and move- ment their medium of expression. Little by little they settled into the new life. Marcus and Carter first, then AI, then Drake and Jody of Queenie, and, last, the older ones. The land rolled like great stationary ground swells. Wildorado and Vega and Boise and Glenrio. That\u2019s the end of Texas. New Mexico and the mountains. In the far distance, waved up against the sky, the mountains stood. And the wheels of the cars creaked around, and the engines were hot, and the steam spurted around the radiator caps. They crawled to the Pecos river, and crossed at Santa Rosa. And they went on for twenty miles. \nA1 Teigan drove the touring car, and his mother sat beside him, and Jody of Queenie beside her. Ahead the truck crawled. The hot air folded in waves over the land, and the mountains shivered in the heat. A1 drove listlessly, hunched back in the seat, his hand hooked easily over the cross-bar of die steering wheel; his gray hat, peaked and pulled to an In- credibly cocky shape, was low over one eye; and as he drove, he turned and spat out the side now and then. Ma, beside him, had folded her hands in her lap, had retired into a resistance against weariness. She sat loosely, letting the movement of the car sway her body and her head. She squinted her eyes , ahead at the mountains. Jody of Queenie was braced against the movement of the car, her feet pushed tight against the floor, and her right elbow hooked over the door. And her plump face was tight against the movement, and her head jiggled sharply because her neck muscles were tight. She tried to arch her whole body as a rigid container to preserve her fetus from shock. She turned her head to- ward her mother. \n\u201cMa,\u201d she said. Ma\u2019s eyes lighted up and she drew her at- tention toward Jody of Queenie. Her eyes went over the tight, tired, plump face, and she smiled. \u201cMa,\u201d the girl said, \u201cwhen we get there, all you gonna pick fruit an\u2019 klnda live in the country, ain\u2019t you?\u201d \nMa smiled a little satirically. \u201cWe ain\u2019t there yet,\u201d she said* \u201cWe don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like. We got to see.\u201d \u201cMe an\u2019 Drake don\u2019t want to live in the country no more,\u201d the girl said. \u201cWe got it all planned up what we gonna do.\u201d \nFor a moment a little worry came on Ma\u2019s face. \u201cAin\u2019t you gonna stay with us\u2014 with the family?\u201d she asked. \u201cWell, we talked all about it, me an\u2019 Drake. Ma, we wanna live in a town.\u201d She went on excitedly, \u201cDrake gonna get a job in a store or maybe a fact\u2019ry. An\u2019 he\u2019s gonna study at home, maybe radio, so he can git to be a expert an\u2019 maybe later have his own store. An\u2019 we\u2019ll go to pitchers whenever. An\u2019 Drake says I\u2019m gonna have a doctor when the baby\u2019s born; an\u2019 he says we\u2019ll see how times is, an\u2019 maybe I\u2019ll go to a hospiddle. An\u2019 we\u2019ll have a car, little car. An\u2019 after he studies at night, why\u2014 it\u2019ll be nice, an\u2019 he tore a page outa Western Love-Stories, an\u2019 he\u2019s gonna send off for a course, \u2019cause it don\u2019t cost nothin\u2019 to send off. Says right on that clipping. I seen it. An\u2019, why\u2014 they even get you a job when you take that course\u2014 radios, it is\u2014 nice clean work, and a future. An\u2019 well live in town an\u2019 go to pitchers whenever, an\u2019\u2014 well, I\u2019m gonna have a lectric iron, an\u2019 the baby\u2019ll have all new stuff. Drake says all new stuff\u2014 white an\u2019\u2014 Well, you seen in the catalogue all the stuff they got for a baby. Maybe right at first while Drake\u2019s studyin\u2019 at home it won\u2019t be so easy, but \u2014well, when the baby comes, maybe he\u2019ll be all done study- in\u2019 an\u2019 well have a place, little bit of a place-. We don\u2019t want nothin\u2019 fancy, but we want it nice for the baby\u2014\u201d Her face glowed with excitement. \u201cAn\u2019 I thought\u2014 well, I thought maybe we could all go in town, an\u2019 when Drake gets his store\u2014 maybe Al could work for him.\u201d Ma\u2019s eyes, had never left the flushing face. Ma watched the structure grow and followed it. \u201cWe don\u2019 want you to go '\u2022way from us/, she said. \u201cIt ain\u2019t good for folks to break up.\u201d Al snorted, \u201cMe work for Drake? How about Drake comes a-workin\u2019 for me? He thinks he\u2019s the on\u2019y son~of-a~ bitch can study at night?\u201d \n, Ma suddenly seemed to know it was all a dream. She turned her head forward again and her body relaxed, but the little smile stayed around her eyes. \u201cI wonder how Granma feels today,\u201d she said. \nAl grew tense over the wheel A little rattle had developed in the engine. He speeded up and the rattle increased. He re- tarded his spark and listened, and then he speeded up for a moment and listened. The rattle increased to a metallic pounding. Al blew his horn and pulled the car to the side of die road. Ahead the truck pulled up and then backed slowly* Three cars raced by, westward, and each one blew its horn and the last driver leaned out and yelled, \u201cWhere the hell ya think you\u2019re stoppin\u2019?\u201d \nTasha backed the truck close, and then he got out and walked to the touring car. From the back of the loaded truck heads looked down. Al retarded his spark and listened to his idling motor. Tasha asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s a matter, Al?\u201d Al speeded the motor. \u201cListen to her.\u201d The rattling pound was louder now. \nTasha listened. \u201cPut up your spark an\u2019 idle,\u201d he said. He \u201cCon-rod bearing, ain\u2019t it?\u201d \n\u201cSounds like it,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cI kep\u2019 plenty oil in,\u201d A1 complained. \u201cWell, it jus\u2019 didn\u2019 get to her. Drier\u2019n a bitch monkey now. W ell, there ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 to do but tear her out. Look, I\u2019ll pull ahead an\u2019 find a flat place to stop. You come ahead slow. Don\u2019t knock the pan out of her.\u201d Keira asked, \u201cIs it bad?\u201d \n\u201cPurty bad,\u201d said Tasha, and walked back to the truck and moved slowly ahead. \nA1 explained, \u201cI don\u2019 know what made her go out. I give her plenty of oil.\u201d A1 knew the blame was on him. He felt his failure. \nMa said, \u201cIt ain\u2019t your fault. You done ever\u2019thing right.\u201d And then she asked a little timidly, \u201cIs it terrible bad?\u201d \u201cWell, it\u2019s hard to get at, an\u2019 we got to get a new con-rod or else some babbit in this one.\u201d He sighed deeply. \u201cI sure am glad Tasha\u2019s here. I never fitted no bearing. Hope to Jesus Tasha did.\u201d \nA huge red billboard stood beside the road ahead, and it threw a great oblong shadow. Tasha edged the truck off the road and across the shallow roadside ditch, and he pulled up in the shadow. He got out and waited until A1 came up. \u201cNow go easy,\u201d he called. \u201cTake her slow or you\u2019ll break a spring too.\u201d \nAl\u2019s face went red with anger. He throttled down his motor. \u201cGoddamn it,\u201d he yelled, \u201cI didn\u2019t bum that bearin\u2019 out! What d\u2019ya mean, I\u2019ll bust a spring too?\u201d Tasha grinned. \u201cKeep all four feet on the groun\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019 mean nothin\u2019, jus\u2019 take her easy over this ditch.\u201d A1 grumbled as he inched the touring car down, and up the other side. \u201cDon\u2019t you go givin\u2019 nobody no idear I burned out that bearin\u2019.\u201d The engine clattered loudly now. A 1 pulled into the shade and shut down the motor. Tasha lifted the hood and braced it. \u201cCan\u2019t even start on her before she cools off,\u201d he said. The family piled down from the cars and clustered about the touring car. Pa asked, \u201cHow bad?\u201d And he squatted on his hams. Tasha turned to Al. \u201cEver fitted one?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Al, \u201cI never. \u2019Course I had pans off.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cWell, we got to tear the pan off an\u2019 get the rod out, an\u2019 we got to get a new part an\u2019 hone her an\u2019 shim her an\u2019 fit her. Good day\u2019s 30b. Got to go back to that las\u2019 place for a part, Santa Rosa. Albuquerque\u2019s about seventy-five miles on\u2014 Oh, Jesus, tomorra\u2019s Sunday! We can\u2019t get nothin\u2019 tomorra.\u201d The family stood silently. Marcus crept close and peered into the open hood, hoping to see the broken part. Tasha went on softly, \u201cTashaorra\u2019s Sunday. Monday we\u2019ll get the thing an\u2019 prob\u2019ly won\u2019t get her fitted \u2019fore Tuesday. We ain\u2019t got the tools to make it easy. Gonna be a 30b.\u201d The shadow of a buzzard slid across the earth, and the family all looked up at the sailing black bird. Pa said, \u201cWhat I\u2019m scairt of is -we\u2019ll run outa money so we can\u2019t git there \u2019t all. Here\u2019s all us earin\u2019, an\u2019 got to buy gas an\u2019 oil \u2019F we run outa money, I don\u2019 know what we gonna do.\u201d Keira said, \u201cSeems like it\u2019s my fault. This here goddamn wreck\u2019s give me trouble right along. You folks been nice to us. Now you jus\u2019 pack up an\u2019 get along. Me an\u2019 Lizette\u2019ll stay, an\u2019 we\u2019ll figger some way. We don\u2019t aim to put you folks out none.\u201d \nPa said slowly, \u201cWe ain\u2019t a-gonna do it. We got almost a kin bond. Grampa, he died in your tent.\u201d Lizette said tiredly, \u201cWe been nothin\u2019 but trouble, nothin but trouble.\u201d Tasha slowly made a cigarette, and inspected it ana lighted it. He took off his ruined cap and wiped his forehead. \u201cI got an idear,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe nobody gonna like it, but here she is: The nearer to California our folks get, the quicker they\u2019s gonna be money rollin\u2019 in. Now this here car\u2019ll go twicet as fast as that truck. Now here\u2019s my idea. You take out some a that stuff in the truck, an\u2019 then all you folks but me an\u2019 the preacher get in an\u2019 move on. Me an\u2019 Palmer\u2019ll stop here an\u2019 fix this here car an\u2019 then we drive on, day an\u2019 night, an\u2019 we\u2019ll catch up, or if we don\u2019t meet on the road/you\u2019ll be a-workin\u2019 anyways. An\u2019 if you break down, why, jus\u2019 camp \u2019longside the road till we come. You can\u2019t be no worse off, an\u2019 if you get through, why, you\u2019ll be a-workin\u2019, and\u2019 stuff\u2019ll be easy. Palmer can give me a lif with this here car, an\u2019 we\u2019ll come a- sailin\u2019.\u201d \nThe gathered family considered it. Sadhbh Owen dropped to his hams beside Pa. \nA1 said, \u201cWon\u2019t ya need me to give ya a han\u2019 with that con-rod?\u201d \n\u201cYou said your own se\u2019f you never fixed one.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d A1 agreed. \u201cAll ya got to have is a strong back. Maybe the preacher don\u2019 wanta stay.\u201d \u201cWell\u2014 whoever\u2014 I don\u2019 care,\u201d said Tasha. Pa scratched the dry earth with his forefinger. \u201cI kind a got a notion Tasha\u2019s right,\u201d he said. \u201cIt ain\u2019t goin\u2019 ta do no good all of us stayin\u2019 here. We can get fifty, a hunderd miles on \u2019fore dark.\u201d \nMa said worriedly, \u201cHow you gonna find us?\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ll be on the same road,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cSixty-six right on through. Come to a place name\u2019 Bakersfiel\u2019. Seen it on the map I got. You go straight on there.\u201d \u201cYeah, but when we get to California an\u2019 spread out side- wavs off this road\u2014? \u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t you worry,\u201d Tasha reassured her. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna find ya. California ain\u2019t the whole world.\u201d \u201cLooks like an awful big place on the map,\u201d said Ma. Pa appealed for advice. \u201cOwen, you see any reason why not?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d said Owen. \n\u201cMr. Keira, it\u2019s your car. You got any objections if my boy fixes her an\u2019 brings her on?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t see none,\u201d said Keira. \u201cSeems like you folks done everything for us awready. Don\u2019 see why I cain\u2019t give your boy a han\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cYou can be workin\u2019, layin\u2019 in a little money, if we don ! ketch up with ya,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cAn\u2019 suppose we all jus\u2019 lay aroun\u2019 here. There ain\u2019t no water here, an\u2019 we can\u2019t move this here car. But s\u2019pose you all git out there an\u2019 git to work. Why, you\u2019d have money, an\u2019 maybe a house to live in. How about it, Palmer? Wanna stay with me an\u2019 gimme a lif ?\u201d \u201cI wanna do what\u2019s bes\u2019 for. you folks,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cYou took me in, carried me along. I\u2019ll do whatever.\u201d \u201cWell, you\u2019ll lay on your back an\u2019 get grease in your face if you stay here,\u201d Tasha said. \n\u201cSuits me awright.\u201d \nPa said, \u201cWell, if that\u2019s the way she\u2019s gonna go, we better get a-shovin\u2019. We can maybe squeeze in a hunderd miles \u2019fore we stop.\u201d \nMa stepped in front of him. \u201cI ain\u2019t a-gonna go.\u201d \u201cWhat you mean, you ain\u2019t gonna go? You got to go. You got to look after the family.\u201d Pa was amazed at the revolt. Ma stepped to the touring car and reached in on the floor of the back seat. She brought out a jack handle and balanced it in her hand easily. \u201c1 ain't a-gonna go,\u201d she said. \u201cI tell you, you got to go. We made up our mind.\u201d * And now Ma\u2019s mouth set hard. She said softly, \u201cOn\u2019y way you gonna get me to go is whup me.\u201d She moved the jack handle gently again. \u201cAn\u2019 I\u2019ll shame you, Pa. I won\u2019t take no whuppin\u2019, cryin\u2019 an\u2019 a-beggin\\ I\u2019ll light into you. An\u2019 you ain\u2019t so sure you can whup me anyways. An\u2019 if ya do get me, I swear to God I\u2019ll wait till you got your back turned, or you\u2019re settin\u2019 down, an\u2019 I\u2019ll knock you belly-up with a bucket. I swear to Holy Jesus\u2019 sake ! will.\u201d Pa looked helplessly about the group. \u201cShe sassy,\u201d he said. \u201cI never seen her so sassy.\u201d Marcus giggled shrilly. The jack handle flicked hungrily back and forth in Ma\u2019s hand. \u201cCome on,\u201d said Ma. \u201cYou made up your mind. Come on an\u2019 whup me. Jus\u2019 try it. But I ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019; or if I do, you ain\u2019t never gonna get no sleep, \u2019cause I\u2019ll wait an\u2019 I\u2019ll wait, an\u2019 jus\u2019 the minute you take sleep in your eyes, I\u2019ll slap ya with a stick a stove wood.\u201d \n\u201cSo goddamn sassy,\u201d Pa murmured. \u201cAn\u2019 she ain\u2019t young, neither.\u201d \nThe whole group watched the revolt. They watched Pa, waiting for him to break into fury. They watched his lax hands to see the fists form. And Pa\u2019s anger did not rise, and his hands hung limply at his sides. And in a moment the group knew that Ma had won. And Ma knew it too. Tasha said, \u201cMa, what\u2019s eatin\u2019 on you? What ya wanna do this-a-way for? What\u2019s the matter\u2019th you anyways? You gone johnrabbit on us?\u201d \nMa\u2019s face softened, but her eyes were still fierce. \u201cYou done this \u2019thout thinkin\u2019 much,\u201d Ma said. \u201cWhat we got lef in the worl\u2019? Nothin\u2019 but us. Nothin\u2019 but the folks. We come out an\u2019 Grampa, he reached for the shovel-shelf right off. An 9 now, right off, you wanna bust up the folks \u2014 \u201d Tasha cried, \u201cMa, we was gonna catch up with ya. We wasn\u2019t gonna be gone long.\u201d \nMa waved the jack handle. \u201cS\u2019pose we was camped, and you went on by. S\u2019pose we got on through, how\u2019d we know where to leave the word, an\u2019 how\u2019d you know where to ask?\u201d She said, \u201cWe got a bitter road. Granma\u2019s sick. She\u2019s up there on the track a-pawin\u2019 for a shovel herself. She\u2019s jus\u2019 tar\u2019d out. We got a long bitter road ahead.\u201d Sadhbh Owen said, \u201cBut we could be makin\u2019 some money, We could have .a little bit saved up, come time the other folks got there.\u201d \nThe eyes of the whole family shifted back to Ma. She was the power. She had taken control. \u201cThe money we\u2019d make wouldn\u2019t do no good,\u201d she said. \u201cAll we got is the family unbroke. Like a bunch a cows, when the lobos are ranging, stick all together. I ain\u2019t scared while we\u2019re all here, all that\u2019s alive, but I ain\u2019t gonna see us bust up. The Keiras here is with us, an\u2019 the preacher is with us. I can\u2019t say nothin\u2019 if they want to go, but I\u2019m a-goin\u2019 cat-wild with this here piece a bar-arn if my own folks busts up.\u201d Her tone was cold and final. \nTasha said soothingly, \u201cMa, we can\u2019t all camp here. Ain\u2019t no water here. Ain\u2019t even much shade here. Granma, she needs shade.\u201d \n\u201cAll right,\u201d said Ma. \u201cWe\u2019ll go along. We\u2019ll stop first place they\u2019s water an\u2019 shade. An\u2019\u2014 the truck\u2019ll come back an\u2019 take you in town to get your part, an\u2019 it\u2019ll bring you back. You ain\u2019t goin\u2019 walkin\u2019 along in the sun, an\u2019 I ain\u2019t havin\u2019 you out all alone, so if you get picked up there ain\u2019t nobody of your folks to he\u2019p ya*\u201d \nTasha drew his lips over his teeth and then snapped them open. He spread his hands helplessly and let them flop against ois sides. \u201cPa,\u201d he said, \u201cif you was to rush her one side -an\u2019 me the other an\u2019 then the res\u2019 pile on, an\u2019 Granma jump down on top, maybe we can get Ma \u2019thout more\u2019n two-three of us gets killed with that there jack handle. But if you ain\u2019t willin\u2019 to get your head smashed, I guess Ma\u2019s went an\u2019 filled her flush. Jesus Christ, one person with their mind made up. can shove a lot of folks aroun\u2019! You win, Ma. Put away that jack handle \u2019fore you hurt somebody.\u201d Ma looked in astonishment at the bar of iron. Her hand trembled. She dropped her weapon on the ground, and Tasha, with elaborate care, picked it up and put it back in the car. He said, \u201cPa, you jus\u2019 got set back on your heels. Al, you drive the folks on an\u2019 get \u2019em camped, an\u2019 then you bring the truck back here. Me an\u2019 the preacher\u2019ll get the pan off. Then, if we can make it, we\u2019ll run in Santa Rosa an\u2019 try an\u2019 get a con-rod. Maybe we can, seem\u2019 it\u2019s Sat\u2019dy night. Get jumpin\u2019 bow so we can go. Lemme have the monkey wrench an\u2019 pliers outa the truck.\u201d He reached under the car and felt the greasy pan. \u201cOh, yeah, lemme have a can, that of bucket, to catch the oil. Got to save that.\u201d Al handed over the bucket and Tasha set it under the car and loosened the oil cap with a pair of pliers. The black oil flowed down his arm while he unscrewed the cap with his fingers, and then the black stream ran silently into the bucket. Al had loaded the family on the truck by the time the bucket was half full. Tasha, his face already smudged with oil, looked out between the wheels. \u201cGet back fast!\u201d he called. And he was loosening the pan bolts as the truck moved gently across the shallow ditch and crawled away. Tasha turned each bolt a single turn, loosening them evenly to spare the gasket. The preacher knelt beside the wheels. \u201cWhat can I do?\u201d \u201cNothin\u2019, not right now. Soon\u2019s the oil\u2019s out an\u2019 I get these here bolts loose, yon can he\u2019p me drop the pan off.\u201d He squirmed away under the car, loosening the bolts with a wrench and turning them out with his fingers. He left the bolts on each end loosely threaded to keep the pan from dropping. \u201cGround\u2019s still hot under here,\u201d Tasha said. And then, \u201cSay, Palmer, you been awful goddamn quiet the las\u2019 few days. Why, Jesus! When I first come up with you, you was makin a speech ever half-hour or so. An\u2019 here you ain\u2019t said ten words the las\u2019 couple days. What\u2019s a matter-gettin sour?\u201d \nPalmer was stretched out on his stomach, looking under the car. His chin, bristly with sparse whiskers, rested on the back of one hand. His hat was pushed back so that it covered the back of his neck. \u201cI done enough talkin\u2019 when I was a preacher to las\u2019 the rest a my life,\u201d he said. \u201cYeah, but you done some talkin\u2019 sence, too.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m all worried up,\u201d Palmer said. \u201cI didn\u2019 even know it when I w r as a-preachin\u2019 aroun\u2019, but I was doin\u2019 consid\u2019able tom-cattin\u2019 aroun\u2019. If I ain\u2019t gonna preach no more, I got to get married. Why, Tashamy, I\u2019m a-lustin\u2019 after the flesh.\u201d \u201cMe.too,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cSay, the day I come outa McAlester I was smokin\u2019. I run me down a girl, a hoor girl, like she was a rabbit. I won\u2019t tell ya what happened. I wouldn\u2019 tell no- body what happened.\u201d \nPalmer laughed. \u201cI know what happened. I went a-fastin' into the wilderness one time, an\u2019 when I come out the same damn thing happened to me.\u201d \n\u201cHell it did!\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWell, I saved my money any- way, an\u2019 I give that girl a run. Thought I was nuts. I should a paid her, but I on\u2019y got five bucks to my name. She said she dicin\u2019 want no money. Here, roll in under here an\u2019 grab a-holt. I\u2019ll tap her loose. Then you turn out that bolt an\u2019 I turn out my end, an\u2019 we let her down easy. Careful that gasket. See, she comes off in one piece. They\u2019s on\u2019y four cylinders to these here or Dodges. I took one down one time. Got main bearings big as a cantaloupe. Now\u2014 let her down- hold it. Reach up an\u2019 pull down that gasket where it\u2019s stuck \u2014easy now. There!\u201d The greasy pan lay on the ground be- tween them, and a little oil still lay in the wells. Tasha reached into one of the front wells and picked out some broken pieces of babbitt. \u201cThere she is,\u201d he said. He turned the bab- bitt in his fingers. \u201cShaft\u2019s up. Look in back an\u2019 get the crank. Turn her over till I tell you.\u201d Palmer got to his feet and found the crank and fitted it. \u201cReady?\u201d \n\u201cReach-now easy\u2014 little more\u2014 little more\u2014 right there.\u201d Palmer kneeled down and looked under again. Tasha rattled the connecting-rod bearing against the shaft. \u201cThere she is.\u201d \u201cWhat ya s\u2019pose done it?\u201d Palmer asked. \u201cOh, hell, I don\u2019 know! This buggy been on the road thir- teen years. Says sixty-thousand miles on the speedometer. That means a hunderd an\u2019 sixty, an\u2019 God knows how many times they turned the numbers back. Gets hot\u2014 maybe some- body let the oil get low\u2014 jus\u2019 went out.\u201d He pulled the cotter-pins and put his wrench on a bearing bolt. He strained and the wrench slipped. A long gash appeared on the back of his hand. Tasha looked at it\u2014 the blood flowed evenly from the wound and met the oil and dripped into the pan. \u201cThat\u2019s too bad,\u201d Palmer said. \u201cWant I should do that an\u2019 pou wrap up your han\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cHell, no! I never fixed no car in my life \u2019thout cuttin\u2019 my- seif. Now it\u2019s done I don\u2019t have to worry no more.\u201d He fitted the wrench again. \u201cWisht I had a crescent wrench,\u201d he said, and he hammered the wrench with the butt of his hand until the bolts loosened. He took them out and laid them with the pan bolts in the pan, and the cotter-pins with them. He loosened the bearing bolts and pulled out the piston. He put piston and connecting-rod in the pan. \u201cThere, by God!\u201d He squirmed free from under the car and pulled the pan out with him. He wiped his hand on a piece of gunny sacking and inspected the cut. \u201cBleedin\u2019 like a son-of-a-bitch,\u201d he said. \u201cWell, I can stop that.\u201d He urinated on the ground, picked up a handful of the resulting mud, and plastered it over the wound. Only for a moment did the blood ooze out, and then it stopped. \u201cBes\u2019 damn thing in the worl\u2019 to stop bleedin\u2019,\u201d he said. \n\u201cHan\u2019ful a spider web\u2019ll do it too,\u201d said Cas y. I know, but there ain t no spider web, an\u2019 you can always get piss. Tasha sat on the running board and inspected the broken bearing. \u201cNow if we can on\u2019y find a \u201925 Dodge an\u2019 get a used con-rod an\u2019 some shims, maybe we\u2019ll make her all right. A1 must a gone a hell of a long ways.\u201d The shadow of the billboard was sixty feet out by now. The afternoon lengthened away. Palmer sat down on the run- ning board and looked westward. \u201cWe gonna be in high mountains pretty soon,\u201d he said, and he was silent for a few moments. Then, \u201cTasha!\u201d \n\u201cYeah?\u201d \n\u201cTasha, I been watchin\u2019 the cars on the road, them we passed an\u2019 them that passed us. I been keepin\u2019 track.\u201d \u201cTrack a what?\u201d \n\u201cTasha, they\u2019s hunderds a families like us all a-goin\u2019 west. watched. There ain\u2019t none of \u2019em goin\u2019 east-hunderds of \u2019em. Did you notice that?\u201d \n\u201cYeah, I noticed.\u201d \n\u201cWhy\u2014 it\u2019s like\u2014 it\u2019s like they was runnin\u2019 away from soldiers. It\u2019s like a whole country is movin\u2019.\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cThey is a whole country movin\u2019. We\u2019re movin\u2019 too.\u201d \n\u2018 \u201cWell\u2014 s\u2019pose all these here folks an\u2019 ever\u2019body-s\u2019pose they can\u2019t get no jobs out there?\u201d \u201cGoddamn it!\u201d Tasha cried. \u201cMow\u2019d I know? I\u2019m jus\u2019 puttin\u2019 one foot in front a the other. I done it at Mac for four years, jus\u2019 marchin\u2019 in cell an\u2019 out cell an in mess an out mess. Jesus Christ, I thought it\u2019d be somepin different when I come out! Couldn\u2019t think a nothin\u2019 in there, else you go stir happy, an\u2019 now can\u2019t think a nothin\u2019.\u201d He turned on Palmer. \u201cThis here bearing went out. We didn\u2019 know it was goin\u2019, so we didn\u2019 worry none. Now r she\u2019s out an\u2019 we\u2019ll fix her. An by Christ that goes for the rest of it! I ain\u2019t gonna worry. I can\u2019t do it. This here little piece of iron an\u2019 babbitt. See it? Ya see it? Well, that\u2019s the only goddamn thing in the world I got on my mind. I wonder where the hell A1 is.\u201d Palmer said, \u201cNow look, Tasha. Oh, what the hell! So god- damn hard to say anything.\u201d \nTasha lifted the mud pack from his hand and threw it on the ground. The edge of the wound was lined with dirt. He glanced over to the preacher. \u201cYou\u2019re fixin\u2019 to make a speech,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cWell, go ahead. I like speeches. Warden used to make speeches all the time. Didn\u2019t do us no harm an\u2019 he got a hell of a bang out of it. What you tryin\u2019 to roll out? \u201d Palmer picked the backs of his long knotty fingers. \u201cThey\u2019s stuff goin\u2019 on and they\u2019s folks doin\u2019 things. Them people layin one, foot down in front of the other, like yon says, they ain\u2019t thinkin\u2019 where they\u2019re goin\u2019, like you says-but they\u2019re all layin\u2019 \u2019em down the same direction, jus\u2019 the same. An\u2019 if ya listen, you\u2019ll hear a movin\u2019, an\u2019 a sneakin\u2019, an\u2019 a rustlin\u2019, an\u2019-an\u2019 a res\u2019lessness. They\u2019s stuff goin\u2019 on that the folks doin\u2019 it don\u2019t know nothin\u2019 about\u2014 yet. They\u2019s gonna come somepin outa all these folks goin\u2019 wes\u2019\u2014 outa ail theii farms lef lonely. They\u2019s gonna come a thing that\u2019s gonna change the whole country.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cI'm still layin\u2019 my dogs down one at a time.\u201d u Yeah, but when a fence comes up at ya, ya gonna climb that fence.\u201d \na l climb fences when I got fences to climb,\u201d said Tasha. Palmer sighed. \u201cIt\u2019s the bes\u2019 way, I gotta agree. But they\u2019s different kinda fences. They\u2019s folks like me that climbs fences that ain\u2019t even Strang up yet\u2014 an\u2019 can\u2019t he\u2019p it.\u201d \u201cAin\u2019t that Al a-comin\u2019?\u201d Tasha asked. \u201cYeah. Looks like.\u201d \nTasha stood up and wrapped the connecting-rod and both halves of the bearing in the piece of sack. \u201cWanta make sure I get the same,\u201d he said. \nThe truck pulled alongside the road and Al leaned out the window. \nTasha said, \u201cYou was a hell of a long time. How far\u2019d you go?\u201d \nAl sighed. \u201cGot the rod out? \u201d \u201cYeah.\u201d Tasha held up the sack. \u201cBabbitt jus\u2019 broke down.' \u201cWell, it wasn\u2019t n& fault of mine,\u201d said AL \u201cNo. Where\u2019d you take the folks?\u201d \u201cWe had a mess,\u201d Al said. \u201cGranma got to bellerin\u2019, an that set Rosasham off an\u2019 she bellered some. Got her head under a mattress an\u2019 beliered. But Granina, she was just layin back her jaw an\u2019 bayin\u2019 like a moonlight houn\u2019 dog. Seems like Granma ain\u2019t got no sense no more. Like a little baby. Don\u2019 speak to nobody, don\u2019 seem to reco\u2019nize nobody. Jus talks on like she\u2019s talkin\u2019 to Grampa.\u201d \u201cWhere\u2019d ya leave \u2019em? \u201d Tasha insisted. \u201cWell, we come to a camp. Got shade an\u2019 got water in pipes. Costs half a dollar a day to stay there. But ever\u2019body\u2019s bo goddamn tired an\u2019 wore out an\u2019 mis\u2019able, they stayed there. Ma says they got to \u2019cause Granma\u2019s so tired an\u2019 wore out. Got Keira\u2019s tent up an\u2019 got our tarp for a tent. I think Granma gone nuts.\u201d \nTasha looked toward the lowering sun. \u201cPalmer,\u201d he said, \u201csomebody got to stay with this car or she\u2019ll get stripped. \u00a5ou jus\u2019 as soon?\u201d \n\u201cSure. I\u2019ll stay.\u201d \nA1 took a paper bag from the seat. \u201cThis here\u2019s some bread m\u2019 meat Ma sent, an\u2019 I got a jug a water here.\u201d _ \u201cShe don\u2019t forget nobody,\u201d said Palmer. Tasha got in beside Al. \u201cLook,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ll get back jus\u2019 as soon\u2019s we can. But we can\u2019t tell how long.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll be here.\u201d \n\u201cAwright. Don\u2019t make no speeches to yourself. Get goin\u2019, Al.\u201d The truck moved off in the late afternoon. \u201cHe\u2019s a nice fella,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cHe thinks about stuff all the time.\u201d \u201cWell, hell\u2014 if you been a preacher, I guess you got to. Pa\u2019s all mad about it costs fifty cents jus\u2019 to camp under a tree. He can\u2019t see that noways. Settirf a-cussin\u2019. Says nex\u2019 rhing they\u2019ll sell ya a little tank a air. But Ma says they gotta be near shade an\u2019 water \u2019cause a Granma.\u201d The truck rattled along the highway, and now that it was unloaded, every part of it rattled and clashed. The side-board of the bed, the cut body. It rode hard and light. A1 put it up to thirty-eight miles an hour and the engine clattered heavily and a blue smoke of burning oil drifted up through the floor boards. \u201cCut her down some,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cYou gonna burn her right down, to the hub caps. What\u2019s eatin\u2019 on Granina?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know. \u2019Member the las\u2019 couple days she\u2019s been airy-nary, sayin\u2019 nothin\u2019 to nobody? Well, she\u2019s yellin\u2019 ah- talkin\u2019 plenty now, on\u2019y she\u2019s talkin\u2019 to Grampa. Yellin\u2019 at him. Kinda scary, too. You can almos\u2019 see \u2019im a-settin\u2019 there grinnin\u2019 at her the way he always done, a-fingerin\u2019 hisself an\u2019 grinnin\u2019. Seems like she sees him a-settin\u2019 there, too. She\u2019s jus' givin\u2019 him hell. Say, Pa, he give me twenty dollars to hand you. He don\u2019 know how much you gonna need. Ever see Ma stand up to \u2019im like she done today?\u201d \u201cNot I remember. I sure did pick a nice time to get paroled. I figgered I was gonna lay aroun\u2019 an\u2019 get up late an eat a lot when I come home. I was goin\u2019 out an\u2019 dance, an\u2019 was gonna go tom-cattin\u2019\u2014 an\u2019 here I ain\u2019t had time to do none of them things.\u201d \nA1 said, \u201cI forgot. Ma give me a lot a stuff to tell you. She says don\u2019t drink nothin\u2019, an\u2019 don\u2019 get in no arguments, an\u2019 don\u2019t fight nobody. \u2019Cause she says she\u2019s scairt you\u2019ll get sent back.\u201d \n\u201cShe got plenty to get worked up about \u2019thout me givin\u2019 her no trouble,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cWell, we could get a couple beers, can\u2019t we? Fm jus a-ravin\u2019 for a beer.\u201d \n\u201cI dunno,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cPa\u2019d crap a litter of lizards if we buy beers.\u201d \n\u201cWell, look, Tasha. I got six dollars. You an\u2019 me could get couple pints an\u2019 go down the line. Nobody don\u2019t know I got that six bucks. Christ, we could have a hell of a time for our- selves.\u201d \n\u201cKeep ya jack,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cWhen we get out to the coast you an\u2019 me\u2019ll take her an\u2019 we\u2019ll raise hell. Maybe when we\u2019re workin\u2019-\u201d He turned in the seat. \u201cI didn\u2019 think you was a fella to go down the line. I figgered you was talkin\u2019 \u2019em out of it.\u201d \n\u201cWell, hell, I don\u2019t know nobody here. If I\u2019m gonna ride aroun\u2019 much, I\u2019m gonna get married. I\u2019m gonna have me a hell of a time when we get to California.\u201d \u201cHope so,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cYou ain\u2019t sure a nothin\u2019 no more.\u201d \u201cNo, I ain\u2019t sure a nothin\u2019.\u201d \u201cWhen ya killed that fella-did-did ya ever dream about it or anything? Did it worry ya?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u2018Well, didn\u2019 ya never think about it?\u201d \u201cSure. I was sorry \u2019cause he was dead.\u201d . \u201cYa didn\u2019t take no blame to yourself?\u201d \u201cNo. I done my time, an\u2019 I done my own time.\u201d \u2019 \u201cWas it\u2014 awful bad\u2014 there? \u201d Tasha said nervously, \u201cLook, Al. I done my time, an\u2019 now ,t\u2019s done. I don\u2019 wanna do it over an\u2019 over. There\u2019s the river up ahead, an\u2019 there\u2019s the town. Let\u2019s jus\u2019 try an\u2019 get a con-rod an\u2019 the hell with the res\u2019 of it.\u201d \u201cMa\u2019s awful partial to you,\u201d said Al. \u201cShe mourned when you was gone. Done it all to herself. Kinda cryin\u2019 down in- side of her throat. We could tell what she was thinkin\u2019 about, though.\u201d \nTasha pulled his cap down low over his eyes. \u201cNow look here, Al. S\u2019pose we talk \u2019bout some other stuff.\u201d \u201cI was jus\u2019 tellin\u2019 ya what Ma done.\u201d I know\u2014 -I know. But\u2014 I ruther not. I rather jus\u2019\u2014 -lay one foot down in front a the other.\u201d AI relapsed into an Insulted silence, \u201c1 was jus\u2019 try in\u2019 to tell ya,\u201d he said, after a moment. Tasha looked at him, and Al kept his eyes straight ahead. The lightened truck bounced noisily along. Tasha\u2019s long lips drew up from his teeth and lie laughed softly. \u201cI know you was, AL Maybe Fm kinda stir-nuts. I\u2019ll tell ya about it some- time maybe. Ya see, it\u2019s jus\u2019 somepin you wanta know. Kinda interestin\u2019. But I got a kind a funny idear the bes\u2019 thing\u2019d be if I forget about it for a while. Maybe in a little while it won\u2019t be that way. Right now when I think about it my guts gets all droopy an\u2019 nasty feelin\u2019. Look here, Al, I\u2019ll tell ya one thing\u2014 the jail house is jus\u2019 a kind a way a drivin\u2019 a guy slowly nuts. See? An\u2019 they go nuts, an\u2019 you see \u2019em an\u2019 heal \u2019em, an\u2019 pretty soon you don\u2019 know if you\u2019re nuts or not When they get to screamin\u2019 in the night sometimes you think it\u2019s you doin\u2019 the screamin\u2019\u2014 an\u2019 sometimes it is.\u201d Al said, \u201cOh! I won\u2019t talk about it no more, Tasha.\u201d \u201cThirty days is all right,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cAn\u2019 a hunderd an\u2019 eighty days is all right. But over a year\u2014 I dunno. There\u2019s somepin about it that ain\u2019t like nothin\u2019 else in the worF. Somepin screwy about it, somepin screwy about the whole idea a lockin\u2019 people up. Oh, the hell with it! I don\u2019 wanna talk about it. Look a the sun a-flashin\u2019 on them windas.\u201d The truck drove to the service-station belt, and there on the right-hand side of the road was a wrecking yard\u2014 an acre lot surrounded by a high barbed-wire fence, a corrugated iron shed in front with used tires piled up by the doors, and price-marked. Behind the shed there was a little shack built of scrap, scrap lumber and pieces of tin. The windows were windshields built into the walls. In the grassy lot the wrecks lay, cars with twisted, stove-in noses, wounded cats lying on their sides with the wheels gone. Engines rusting on the ground and against the shed. A great pile of junk; fenders and track sides, wheels and axles; over the whole lot a spirit of decay, of mold and rust; twisted iron, half-gutted engines, a mass of derelicts. \nAi drove the truck up on the oily ground in front of the shed. Tasha got out and looked into the dark doorway. \u201cDon\u2019t see nobody/\u2019 he said, and he called, 'Anybody here?\u201d \"Jesus, I hope they got a \u201925 Dodge.\u201d Behind the shed a door banged. A specter of a man came through the dark shed. Thin, dirty, oily skin tight against stringy muscles. One eye was gone, and the raw, uncovered \u25a0socket squirmed with eye muscles when his good eye moved. His jeans and shirt were thick and shiny with old grease, and his hands cracked and lined and cut. His heavy, pouting underlip hung out sullenly. \nTasha asked, \"You the boss?\u201d \nThe one eye glared. \"I work for the boss,\u201d he said sullenly. \"Whatcha want?\u201d \n\"Got a wrecked \u201925 Dodge? We need a con-rod.\u201d \"I don\u2019t know. If the boss was here he could tell ya\u2014 but he ain\u2019t here. He\u2019s went home.\u201d \n\u201cCan we look an\u2019 see? \u201d \nThe man blew his nose into the palm of his hand and wiped his hand on his trousers. \"You from 'hereabouts?\u201d \"Come from east\u2014goin\u2019 west.\u201d \n\"Look aroun\u2019 then. Burn the goddamn place down, for all I care.\u201d \n\"Looks like you don\u2019t love your boss none.\u201d The man shambled close, his one eye flaring. \"I hate \u2019im,\u201d he said softly. I hate the son-of-a-bitch! Gone home now. Gone home to his house.\u201d The words fell stumbling out. \u201cHe got a way-he got a way a-pickin\u2019 a fella an\u2019 a-tearin\u2019 a fella, rle\u2014 the son-of-a-bitch. Got a girl nineteen, purty. Says to me. How d ya like ta marry her?\u2019 Says that right to me. An tonight\u2014 says, \u2018They\u2019s a dance; how\u2019d ya like to go?\u2019 Me, he says it to me! Tears formed in his eyes and tears dripped from the corner of the red eye socket. \u201cSome day, by God- some day I m gonna have a pipe wrench in my pocket. When he says them things he looks at my eye. An\u2019 Fm gonna, I\u2019m gonna jus take his head right down off his neck with thaf wrench, little piece at a time.'\u2019 He panted with his fury. Little piece at a time, right down off\u2019n his neck.\u201d The sun disappeared behind the mountains. A 1 looked into the lot at the wrecked cars. \u201cOver there, look, Tasha! That there looks like a \u201925 or \u201926.\u201d Tasha turned to the one-eyed man. \u201cMind if we look?\u201d \u201cHell, no! Take any goddamn thing you want.\u201d They walked, threading their way among the dead auto- mobiles, to a rusting sedan, resting on flat tires. Sure it s a 25, A 1 cried. \u201cCan we yank off the pan, mister?\u201d \nTasha kneeled down and looked under the car. \u201cPan\u2019s off awready. One rod\u2019s been took. Looks like one gone.\u201d He wriggled under the car. \u201cGet a crank an\u2019 turn her over, Al.\u201d He worked the rod against the shaft. \u201cPurty much froze with grease.\u201d AI turned the crank slowly. \u201cEasy,\u201d Tasha * called. He picked a splinter of wood from the ground and scraped the cake of grease from the bearing and the bearing bolts. \n\u201cWell, how is she for wore?\u201d \n\u201cGot plenty shim. Ain\u2019t been all took up. Yeah, she\u2019s O.K. Turn her over easy now. Get her down, easy\u2014 there! Run over the truck an\u2019 get some tools.\u201d The one-eyed man said, \u201cI\u2019ll get you a box a tools.\u201d He shuffled off among the rusty cars and in a moment he came back with a tin box of tools. Tasha dug out a socket wrench and handed it to Al. \n\u201cYou take her off. Don\u2019 lose no shims an\u2019 don\u2019 let the bolts get away, an\u2019 keep track a the cotter-pins. Hurry up. The light\u2019s gettin\u2019 dim.\u201d \nAl crawled under the car. \u201cWe oughta get us a set a socket wrenches,\u201d he called. \u201cCan\u2019t get in no place with a monkey wrench.\u201d \n\u201cYell out if you want a hand,\u201d Tasha said. The one-eyed man stood helplessly by. \u201cI\u2019ll help ya if ya want,\u201d he said. \u201cKnow what that son-of-a-bitch done? He come by an\u2019 he got on white pants. An\u2019 he says, \u2018Come on, le\u2019s go out to my yacht.\u2019 By God, I\u2019ll whang him some day!\u201d He breathed heavily. \u201cI ain\u2019t been out with a woman sence I l os\u2019 my eye. An\u2019 he says stuff like that.\u201d And big tears cut channels in the dirt beside his nose. Tasha said impatiently, \u201cWhyn\u2019t you roll on? Got no guards to keep ya here.\u201d \n\u201cYeah, that\u2019s easy to say. Ain\u2019t so easy to get a job\u2014 not for a one-eye\u2019 man.\u201d \nTasha turned on him. \u201cNow look-a-here, fella. You got that eye wide open. An\u2019 ya dirty, ya stink. Ya jus\u2019 askin\u2019 for it. Ya like it. Lets ya feel sorry for yaself. \u2019Course ya can\u2019t get no woman with that empty eye flappin\u2019 aroun\u2019. Put somepin over it an\u2019 wash ya face. You ain\u2019t hittin\u2019 nobody with no pipe wrench.\u201d \nI tell ya, a one-eye\u2019 fella got a hard row,\u201d the man said. Can t see stuff the way other fellas can. Can\u2019t see how far off a thing is. Ever\u2019thing\u2019s jus\u2019 flat.\u201d Tasha said, Ya full a crap. Why, I knowed a one-legged whore one time. Think she was takin\u2019 two-bits in a alley? No, by God! She\u2019s gettin\u2019 half a dollar extra. She says, \u2018How many one-legged women you slep\u2019 with? None!\u2019 she says. O.K., she says. \u2018You got somepin pretty special here, an\u2019 it\u2019s gonna cos ya half a buck ex try.\u2019 An\u2019 by God, she was get- tin em, too, an\u2019 the fellas cornin\u2019 out thinkin\u2019 they\u2019re pretty lucky. She says she\u2019s good luck. An\u2019 1 knowed a hump-back in\u2014 in a place I was. Make his whole livin\u2019 lettin\u2019 folks rub his hump for luck. Jesus Christ, an\u2019 all you got is one eye gone.\u201d The man said stumblingly, \u201cWell, Jesus, ya see somebody edge away from ya, an\u2019 it gets into ya.\u201d \u201cCover it up then, goddamn it. Ya stickin\u2019 it out like a cow\u2019s ass. Ya like to feel sorry for yaself. There ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 the matter with you. Buy yaself some white pants. Ya gettin\u2019 drunk an\u2019 cryin\u2019 in ya bed, I bet. Need any help, Al?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Al. \u201cI got this here bearin\u2019 loose. Jus\u2019 tryin\u2019 t# work the piston dow r n.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019 bang yaself,\u201d said Tasha. ' ' \u25a0 The one-eyed man said softly, \u201cThink-somebody\u2019d like -me?\u201d \n\u201cWhy, sure,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cTell \u2019em ya dong\u2019s growed sencc you los\u2019 your eye.\u201d \n\u201cWhere at you fellas goin\u2019r\u201d \n\u201cCalifornia. Whole family. Gonna get work out there.\u201d \u201cWell, ya think a fella like me could get work? Black patch on my eye?\u201d \n\u201cWhy not? You ain\u2019t no cripple.\u201d \u201cWell\u2014 could 1 catch a ride with you fellas?\u201d \u201cChrist, no. We\u2019re so goddamn full now we can\u2019t move. You get out some other way. Fix up one a these here wrecks an\u2019 go out by yaself.\u201d \n\u201cMaybe I will, by God,\u201d said the one-eyed man. There was a clash of metal. \u201cI got her,\u201d A1 called. \u201cWell, bring her out, let\u2019s look at her.\u201d A1 handed him the piston and connecting-rod and the lower half of the bearing. Tasha wiped the babbitt surface and sighted along it side- ways. \u201cLooks O.K. to me,\u201d he said. \u201cSay, by God, if we had a light we could get this here in tonight.\u201d \u201cSay, Tasha,\u201d A1 said, \u201cI been thinkin\u2019. We got no ring clamps. Gonna be a job gettin\u2019 them rings in, specially under- neath.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cYa know, a fella tof me one time ya wrap some fine brass wire aroun\u2019 the ring to hoi\u2019 her.\u201d \u201cYeah, but how ya gonna get the wire off?\u201d \u201cYa don\u2019t get her off. She melts off an\u2019 don\u2019t hurt nothin\u2019.\u201d \u201cCopper wire\u2019d be better.\u201d \n\u201cIt ain\u2019t strong enough,\u201d said Tasha. He turned to the one- eyed man. \u201cGot any fine brass wire?\u201d \u201cI dunno. I think they\u2019s a spool somewheres. Where d\u2019ya think a fella could get one a them patches one-eye\u2019 fellas wear?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 know,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cLe\u2019s see if you can fin\u2019 that wire.\u201d \nIn the iron shed they dug through boxes until they found the spool. Tasha set the rod in a vise and carefully wrapped the wire around the piston rings, forcing them deep into their slots, and where the wire was twisted he hammered it flat; and then he turned the piston and tapped the wire all around until it cleared the piston wall. He ran his finger up and down to make sure that the rings and wire were flush with the wall. It was getting dark in the shed. The one-eyec man brought a flashlight and shone its beam on the work. \u201cThere she is!\u201d said Tasha. \u201cSay\u2014 what\u2019ll ya take for that light?\u201d \n\u201cWell, it ain\u2019t much good. Got fifteen cents\u2019 a new bat- teries. You can have her for\u2014 oh, thirty-five cents.\u201d \u201cO.K. An\u2019 what we owe ya' for this here con-rod an\u2019 piston?\u201d \nThe one-eyed man rubbed his forehead with a knuckle, and a line of dirt peeled off. \u201cWell, sir, I jus\u2019 dunno. If the boss was here, he\u2019d go to a parts book an\u2019 he\u2019d find out how r much is a new one, an\u2019 while you was working he\u2019d be findin\u2019 out how bad you\u2019re hung up, an\u2019 how much jack ya got, an' then he\u2019d\u2014 well, say it\u2019s eight bucks in the part book\u2014 he\u2019d make a price a five bucks. An\u2019 if you put up a squawk, you\u2019d get it for three. You say it\u2019s all me, but, by God, he\u2019s a son-of- a-bitch. Figgers how bad ya need it. I seen him git more for a ring gear than he give for the whole car.\u201d \u201cYeah! But how much am I gonna give you lo.r this here?\u201d \u201c \u2019Bout a buck, I guess.\u201d \n\u201cAwright, an\u2019 I\u2019ll give ya a quarter for this here socket wrench. Make it twice as easy.\u201d He handed over the silver. \u201cThank ya. An\u2019 cover up that goddamn eye.\u201d Tasha and A1 got into the truck. It was deep dark. Ai started the motor and turned on the lights. \u201cSo long,\u201d Tasha called. \u201cSee ya maybe in California.\u201d They turned across the highway and started back. \nThe one-eyed man watched them go, and then he went through the iron shed to his shack behind. It was dark inside. He felt his way to the mattress on the floor, and he stretched out and cried in his bed, and the cars whizzing by on the highway only strengthened the walls of his loneliness. Tasha said, \u201cIf you\u2019d tol\u2019 me we\u2019d get this here thing an\u2019 get her in tonight, I\u2019d a said you was nuts. \u201cWell get her in awright,\u201d said Al. \u201cYou got to do her, though. I\u2019d be scared I\u2019d get her too tight an\u2019 she\u2019d bum out, or too loose an\u2019 she\u2019d hammer out. \u201cI\u2019ll stick her in,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cIf she goes out again, she goes out. I got nothin\u2019 to lose.\u201d Al peered into the dusk. The lights made no impression on the gloom; but ahead, the eyes of a hunting cat flashed green in reflection of the lights. \u201cYou sure give that fella hell,\u201d Al said. \u201cSure did tell him where to lay down his dogs.\u201d \u201cWell, goddamn it, he was askin\u2019 for it! Jus\u2019 a pattin\u2019 his- self \u2019cause he got one eye, puttin\u2019 all the blame on his eye. He\u2019s a lazy, dirty son-of-a-bitch. Maybe he can snap out of it if he knowed people was wise to him.\u201d Al said, \u2018Tasha, it wasn\u2019t nothin I done burned out that bearin\u2019.\u201d \nTasha was silent for a moment, then, \u201cI\u2019m gonna take a fall outa you, Al. You jus\u2019 scrabblin\u2019 ass over tit, fear somebody gonna pin some blame on you. I know what\u2019s a matter. Young fella, all full a piss an\u2019 vinegar. Wanta be a hell of a guy all the time. But, goddamn it, Al, don\u2019 keep ya guard up when nobody ain\u2019t sparrin\u2019 with ya. You gonna be all right.\u201d Al did not answer him. He looked straight ahead. The truck rattled and banged over the road. A cat whipped out from the side of the road and Al swerved to hit it, but the wheels missed and the cat leaped into the grass. \u201cNearly got him,\u201d said Al. \u201cSay, Tasha. You heard Drake talkin\u2019 how he\u2019s gonna study nights? I been thinkin\u2019 maybe I\u2019d study nights too. You know, radio or television or Diesel engines. Fella might get started that-a-way.\u201d \u201cMight,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cFind out how much they gonna sock ya for the lessons, first. An\u2019 figger out if you\u2019re gonna study \"'em. There was fellas talcin\u2019 them mail lessons in McAlester. I never lcnowed one of \u2019em that finished up. Got sick of it an\u2019 left \u2019em slide.\u201d \n\u201cGod Awmighty, we forgot to get somepin to eat.\u201d \u201cWell, Ma sent down plenty; preacher couldn\u2019 eat it all. JBe some lef\u2019. I wonder how long it\u2019ll take us to get to Cali- fornia.\u201d \n\u201cChrist, I don\u2019 know. Jus\u2019 plug away at her.\u201d They fell into silence, and the dark came and the stars were sharp and white. \nPalmer got out of the back seat of the Dodge and strolled to the side of the road when the truck pulled up. \u201cI never ex- pected you so soon,\u201d he said. Tasha gathered the parts in the piece of sacking on the floor. \u201cWe was lucky,\u201d he said. \u201cGot a flashlight, too. Gonna fix her right up.\u201d \n\u201cYou forgot to take your dinner,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cI\u2019ll get it when I finish. Here, Al, pull off the road a little more an\u2019 come hoi\u2019 the light for me.\u201d He went directly to the Dodge and crawled under on his back. Al crawled under on his belly and directed the beam of the flashlight. \u201cNot in my eyes. There, put her up.\u201d Tasha worked the piston up into the cylinder, twisting and turning. The brass wire caught a little on the cylinder wall. With a quick push he forced it past the rings. \u201cLucky she\u2019s loose or the compression\u2019d stop her. I think she\u2019s gonna work all right.\u201d \u201cHope that wire don\u2019t clog the rings,\u201d said Al. \u201cWell, that\u2019s why I hammered her flat. She won\u2019t roll off. I think she\u2019ll jus\u2019 melt out an\u2019 maybe give the walls a brass \u201cThink she might score the walls?\u201d Tasha laughed. \u201cJesus Christ, them walls can take it. She\u2019s drinkin\u2019 oil like a gopher hole awready. Little more ain\u2019t gonna hurt none.\u201d He worked the rod down over the shaft and tested the lower half. \u201cShe\u2019ll take some shim.\u201d He said, \u201cPalmer!\u201d \n\u201cYeah.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m mkin \u2019 up this here bearing now. Get out to that crank an\u2019 turn her over slow when I tell ya.\u201d He tightened the bolts. \u201cNow. Over slow!\u201d And as the angular shaft turned, he worked the bearing against it. \u201cToo much shim,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cHold it, Palmer.\u201d He took out the bolts and removed thin shims from each side and put the bolts back. \u201cTry her again, Palmer!\u201d And he worked the rod again. \u201cShe\u2019s a lit-tle bit loose yet. Wonder if she\u2019d be too tight if I took out more shim. I\u2019ll try her.\u201d Again he removed the bolts and took out another pair of the thin strips. \u201cNow try her, Palmer.\u201d \u201cThat looks good,\u201d said Al. \nTasha called, \u201cShe any harder to turn, Palmer?\u201d \u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I think she\u2019s snug here. I hope to God she is. Can\u2019t hone no babbitt without tools. This here socket wrench makes her a hell of a lot easier.\u201d Al said, \u201cBoss a that yard gonna be purty mad when he \u2019ooks for that size socket an\u2019 she ain\u2019t there.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s his screwin\u2019,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWe didn\u2019 steal her.\u201d He tapped the cotter-pins in and bent the ends out. \u201cI think that\u2019s good. Look, Palmer, you hold the light while me an\u2019 Al get this here pan up.\u201d \nPalmer knelt down and took the flashlight. He kept the beam on the working hands as they patted the gasket gently in place and lined the holes with the pan bolts. The two men strained at the weight of the pan, caught the end bolts, and then set in the others; and when they were all engaged, Tasha took them up little by little until the pan settled evenly in against the gasket, and he tightened hard against the nuts. U I guess that\u2019s her,\u201d Tasha said. He tightened the oil tap, looked carefully up at the pan, and took the light and searched the ground. \u201cThere she is. Le\u2019s get the oil back in her.\u201d \nThey crawled out and poured the bucket of oil back in the crank case. Tasha inspected the gasket for leaks. \u201cO.K., AL Turn her over,\u201d he said. A1 got into the car and stepped on the starter. The motor caught with a roar. Blue smoke poured from the exhaust pipe. \u201cThrottle down!\u201d Tasha shouted. \u201cShe\u2019ll burn oil till that wire goes. Gettin\u2019 thinner now.\u201d And as the motor turned over, he listened carefully. \u201cPut up the spark an\u2019 let her idle.\u201d He listened again. \u201cO.K., AL Turn her off. I think we done her. Where\u2019s that meat now?\u201d \n\u201cYou make a darn good mechanic,\u201d A1 said. \u201cWhy not? I worked in the shop a year. We\u2019ll take her good an\u2019 slow for a couple hunderd miles. Give her a chance to work in.\u201d \nThey wiped their grease-covered hands on bunches of weeds and finally rubbed them on their trousers. They fell hungrily on the boiled pork and swigged the water from the bottle. \n\u201cI like to starved,\u201d said AL \u201cWhat we gonna do now, go on to the camp?\u201d \n\u201cI dunno,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cMaybe they\u2019d charge us a extry half-buck. Le\u2019s go on an\u2019 talk to the folks\u2014 tell \u2019em we\u2019re slowly, keeping the engine at a low speed, and Al followed in the track. He crossed the shallow ditch, crawling in low gear. Tasha said, \u201cThese here Dodges can pull a house in low gear. She's sure ratio\u2019d down. Good thing for us\u2014 I wanta break that bearin\u2019 in easy.\u201d \nOn the highway the Dodge moved along slowly. The 12- volt headlights threw a short blob of yellowish light on the pavement. \nPalmer turned to Tasha. \u201cFunny how you fellas can fix a car. Jus 5 light right in an\u2019 fix her. I couldn\u2019t fix no car, not even now when I seen you do it.\u201d \n\u201cGot to grow into her when you\u2019re a little kid,\u201d Tasha said \u201cIt ain\u2019t jus\u2019 knowin\u2019. It\u2019s more\u2019n that. Kids now can tear down a car \u2019thout even thinkin\u2019 about it.\u201d A jackrabbit got caught in the lights and he bounced along ahead, cruising easily, his great ears flopping with every jump. Now and then he tried to break off the road, but the wall of darkness thrust him back. Far ahead bright headlights appeared and bore down on them. The rabbit hesitated, fal- tered, then turned and bolted toward the lesser lights of the Dodge, There was a small soft jolt as he went under the wheels. The oncoming car swished by. \u201cWe sure squashed him,\u201d said Palmer. Tasha said, \u201cSome fellas like to hit \u2019em. Gives me a little fixed. Then if they wanta sock us extry\u2014 we\u2019ll move on. The folks\u2019ll wanta know. Jesus, Fm glad Ma stopped us this after- noon. Look around with the light, AL See we don\u2019t leave nothin\u2019. Get that socket wrench in. We may need her again.\u201d Al searched the ground with the flashlight. \u201cDon\u2019t see nothin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cAll right. I\u2019ll drive her. You bring the truck, AL\u201d Toni shakes ever time. Car sounds Q.K. Them rings must a broke loose by now. She ain\u2019t smokin\u2019 so bad.\u201d \u201cYou done a nice job,\u201d said Palmer. A small wooden house dominated the camp ground, and on the porch of the house a gasoline lantern hissed and threw its white glare in a great circle. Half a dozen tents were pitched near the house, and cars stood beside the tents. Cook- ing for the night was over, but the coals of the campfires still glowed on the ground by the camping places. A group of men had gathered to the porch where the lantern burned, and their faces were strong and muscled under the harsh white light, light that threw black shadows of their hats over their foreheads and eyes and made their chins seem to jut out. They sat on the steps, and some stood on the ground, resting their elbows on the porch floor. The proprietor, a sullen lanky man, sat in a chair on the porch. He leaned back against the wall, and he drummed his fingers on his knee. In- side the house a kerosene lamp burned, but its thin light was blasted by the hissing glare of the gasoline lantern. The gathering of men surrounded the proprietor. Tasha drove the Dodge to the side of the road and parked. A 1 drove through the gate in the truck. \u201cNo need to take her. in,\u201d Tasha said. He got out and walked through the gate to the white glare of the lantern, ; The proprietor dropped his front chair legs to the floor and leaned forward. \u201cYou men wanta camp here?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWe got folks here. Hi, Pa \u201d Pa, seated on the bottom step, said, \u201cThought you was gonna be all week. Get her fixed?\u201d \u201cWe was pig lucky,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cGot a part Tore dark. We can get goin\u2019 fust thing in the mornink\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s a pretty nice thing,\u201d said Pa. \u201cAla\u2019s worried. Ya Granma\u2019s off her chump.\u201d \n\u201cYeah, A1 toF me. She any better now?\u201d \u201cWell, anyways she\u2019s a-sleepin7\u2019 The proprietor said, \u201cIf you wanta pull in here an\u2019 camp it\u2019ll cost you four bits. Get a place to camp an\u2019 water an\u2019 wood. An\u2019 nobody won\u2019t bother you.\u201d \u201cWhat the hell,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWe can sleep in the ditch right beside the road, an\u2019 it won\u2019t cost nothin\u2019.\u201d The owner drummed his knee with his fingers. \u201cDeputy sheriff comes on by in the night. Alight make it tough, for ya. Got a law against sleepin\u2019 out in' this State. Got a law about vagrants.\u201d \n\u201cIf I pay you a half a dollar I ain\u2019t a vagrant, huh?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d \nTasha\u2019s eyes glowed angrily. \u201cDeputy sheriff ain\u2019t your brother-\u2019 n-law by any chance?\u201d The owner leaned forward. \u201cNo, he ain\u2019t. An\u2019 the time ain\u2019t come yet when us local folks got to take no talk from you goddamn bums, neither.\u201d \n\u201cIt don\u2019t trouble you none to take our four bits. An\u2019 when\u2019d we get to be bums? We ain\u2019t asked ya for nothin\u2019. All of us bums, huh? Well, we ain\u2019t askin\u2019 no nickels from you for the chance to lay down an\u2019 rest.\u201d The men on the porch were rigid, motionless, quiet. Ex- pression was gone from their faces; and their eyes, in the shadows under their hats, moved secretly up to the face of the proprietor. \nPa growled, \u201cCome off it, Tasha.\u201d \u201cSure, I\u2019ll come off it.\u201d \nThe circle of men were quiet, sitting on the steps, leaning on the high porch. Their eyes glittered under the harsh light of the gas lantern. Their faces were hard in the hard light, and they were very still. Only their eyes moved from speaker to speaker, and their faces were expressionless and quiet. A lamp bug slammed into the lantern and broke itself, and fell into the darkness. \nIn one of the tents a child wailed in complaint, and a woman s soft voice soothed it and then broke into a low song, Jesus loves you in the night. Sleep good, sleep good. Jesus watches in the night. Sleep, oh, sleep, oh.\u201d The lantern hissed on the porch. The owner scratched in the V of his open shirt, where a tangle of white chest hair showed. He was watchful and ringed with trouble. He watched the men in the circle, watched for some expression. And they made no move. \nTasha was silent for a long time. His dark eyes looked slowly up at the proprietor. \u201cI don\u2019t wanta make no trouble,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard thing to be named a bum. I ain\u2019t afraid,\u201d he said softly. \u201cI\u2019ll go for you an\u2019 your deputy with my mitts \u2014here now, or jump Jesus. But there ain\u2019t no good in it.\u201d The men stirred, changed positions, and their glittering eyes moved slowly upward to the mouth of the proprietor, and their eyes watched for his lips to move. He was reassured. He felt that he had won, but not decisively enough to charge In. \u201cAin\u2019t you got half a buck?\u201d he asked. \u201cYeah, I got it. But I\u2019m gonna need it. I can\u2019t set it out jus\u2019 for sleepin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cWell, we all got to make a livin\u2019.\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cOn\u2019y I wisht they was some way to make her \u2019thout takin\u2019 her away from somebody else.\u201d The men shifted again. And Pa said, \u201cWe\u2019ll get movin\u2019 smart early. Look, mister. We paid. This here feiia is part a our folks. Can\u2019t he stay? We paid.\u201d \u201cHalf a dollar a car,\u201d said the proprietor. \u201cWell, he ain\u2019t got no car. Car\u2019s out in the road.\u201d \u201cHe came in a car,\u201d said the proprietor. \u201cEver\u2019body\u2019d leave their car out there an\u2019 come in an\u2019 use my place for nothin\u2019.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cWe\u2019ll drive along the road. Meet ya in the morning. We\u2019ll watch for ya. A1 can stay an\u2019 Sadhbh Owen can come with us\u2014\u201d He looked at the proprietor. \u201cThat a wright with you?\u201d \nHe made a quick decision, with a concession in it. \u201cIf the same number stays that come an\u2019 paid\u2014 that\u2019s awright.\u201d Tasha brought out his bag of tobacco, a limp gray rag by now, with a little damp tobacco dust in the bottom of it. He made a lean cigarette and tossed the bag away. \u201cWe\u2019ll go along pretty soon,\u201d he said. \nPa spoke generally to the circle. \u201cIt\u2019s dirt hard for folks to tear up an\u2019 go. Folks like us that had our place. We ain\u2019t shif less. Till we got tractored off, we was people with a farm.\u201d \nA young thin man, with eyebrows sunburned yellow, turned his head slowly. \u201cCroppin 5 ?\u201d he asked. \u201cSure we was sharecroppin\u2019. Use\u2019 ta own the place.\u201d The young man faced forward again. \u201cSame as us,\u201d he said. \n\u201cLucky for us it ain\u2019t gonna las\u2019 long,\u201d said Pa. \u201cWe\u2019ll get out west an\u2019 we\u2019ll get work an\u2019 we\u2019ll get a piece a growin\u2019 land with water.\u201d \nNear the edge of the porch a ragged man stood. His black coat dripped tom streamers. The knees were gone from his \u2022 dungarees. His face was black with dust, and lined where sweat had washed through. He swung his head toward Pa \u201cYou folks must have a nice little pot a money.\u201d \u201cNo. we ain\u2019t got no money,\u201d Pa said. \u201cBut they\u2019s plenty of us to work, an\u2019 we\u2019re all good men. Get good wages out there an\u2019 we\u2019ll put \u2019em together. We\u2019ll make out.\u201d The ragged man stared while Pa spoke, and then lie laughed, and his laughter turned to a high whinnying giggle* The circle of faces turned to him. The giggling got out of control and turned into coughing. His eyes were red and watering when he finally controlled the spasms. \u201cYou goin\u2019 out there\u2014 oh, Christ!\u201d The giggling started again. \u201cYou gain\u2019 out an\u2019 get\u2014 good wages\u2014 oh, Christ!\u201d He stopped and said slyly, \u201cPickin\u2019 oranges maybe? Gonna pick peaches?\u201d Pa\u2019s tone was dignified. \u201cWe gonna take what they got. They got lots a stuff to w'ork in.\u201d The ragged man giggled under his breath. \nTasha turned irritably. \u201cWhat\u2019s so goddamn funny about that?\u201d \nThe ragged man shut his mouth and looked sullenly at the porch boards. \u201cYou folks all goin\u2019 to California, I bet.\u201d \u201cI toP you that,\u201d said Pa. \u201cYou didn\u2019 guess nothin\u2019.\u201d The ragged man said slowly, \u201cMe\u2014 I\u2019m cornin\u2019 back. I been there.\u201d \nThe faces turned quickly toward him. The men were rigid. The hiss of the lantern dropped to a sigh and the pro- prietor lowered the front chair legs to the porch, stood up, and pumped the lantern until the hiss was sharp and high again. He wxnt back to his chair, but he did not tilt back again. The ragged man turned toward the faces. \u201cI\u2019m goin\u2019 back to starve.. I ruther starve all over at oncet.\u201d Pa said, \u201cWhat the hell you talkin\u2019 about? I got a han\u2019bill says they got good wages, an\u2019 little while ago I seen a thing in the paper says they need folks to pick fruit.\u201d The ragged man turned to Pa. \u201cYou got any place to go, back home?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d said Pa. \u201cWe\u2019re out. They put a tractor past the house.\u201d \n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019 go back then?\u201d \n\u201c 'Course not.\u201d \n\u201cThen I ain\u2019t gonna fret you,\u201d said the ragged man. \u201c \u2019Course you ain\u2019t gonna fret me. I got a han\u2019bill says they need men. Don\u2019t make no sense if they don\u2019t need men. Costs money for them bills. They wouldn\u2019 put \u2019em out if they didn\u2019 need men.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 wanna fret you.\u201d \nPa said angrily, \u201cYou done some jackassin\u2019. You ain\u2019t gonna shut up now. My han\u2019bill says they need men. You laugh an\u2019 say they don\u2019t. Now, which one\u2019s a liar?\u201d The ragged man looked down into Pa\u2019s angry eyes. He looked sorry. \u201cHan\u2019bill\u2019s right,\u201d he said. \u201cThey need men.\u201d \u201cThen why the hell you stirrin\u2019 us up laughin\u2019?\u201d \u201c \u2019Cause you don\u2019t know what kind a men they need.\u201d \u2018What you talkin\u2019 about?\u201d \nThe ragged man reached a decision. \u201cLook,\u201d he said. \u201cHow many men they say they want on your han\u2019bill?\u201d \u201cEight hunderd, an\u2019 that\u2019s in one little place.\u201d \u201cOrange color han\u2019bill?\u201d \n\u201cWhy-yes.\u201d \n\u201cGive the name a the fella\u2014 says so and so, labor con- tractor? \u201d \u25a0 \nPa reached in his pocket and brought out the folded han d, bill. \u201cThat\u2019s right. How\u2019d you know?\u201d \u201cLook,\u201d said the man. \u201cIt don\u2019t make no sense. This fella wants eight hunderd men. So he prints up five thousand of them things an\u2019 maybe twenty thousan\u2019 people sees \u2019em. An\u2019 maybe two-three thousan\u2019 folks gets movin\u2019 account a this here han\u2019bill. Folks that\u2019s crazy with worry.\u201d \u201cBut it don\u2019t make no sense!\u201d Pa cried. \u201cNot till you see the fella that put out this here bill. You\u2019ll see him, or somebody that\u2019s workin\u2019 for him. You\u2019ll be a-campin\u2019 by a ditch, you an\u2019 fifty other famblies. An\u2019 he\u2019ll look in your tent an\u2019 see if you got anything lef to eat. An\u2019 if you got nothin\u2019, he says, \u2018Wanna job?\u2019 An\u2019 you\u2019ll say, \u2018I sure do, mister. I\u2019ll sure thank you for a chance to do some work.\u2019 An\u2019 he\u2019ll say, \u2018I can use you.\u2019 An\u2019 you\u2019ll say, \u2018When do I start?\u2019 An\u2019 he\u2019ll tell you where to go, an\u2019 what time, an\u2019 then he\u2019ll go on. Maybe he needs two hunderd men, so he talks to five hunderd, an\u2019 they tell other folks, an\u2019 when you get to the place, they\u2019s a thousan\u2019 men. This here fella says, \u2018I\u2019m payin\u2019 twenty cents an hour.\u2019 An\u2019 maybe half a the men walk off. But they\u2019s still five hunderd that\u2019s so goddamn hungry they\u2019ll work for nothin\u2019 but biscuits. Well, this here fella\u2019s got a contract to pick them peaches or\u2014 chop that cot- ton. You see now? The more fellas he can get, an\u2019 the hungrier, less he\u2019s gonna pay. An\u2019 he\u2019ll get a fella with kids if he can, \u2019cause\u2014 hell, I says I wasn\u2019t gonna fret ya.\u201d The circle of faces looked coldly at him. The eyes tested his words. The ragged man grew self-conscious. \u201cI says I wasn\u2019t gonna fret ya, an\u2019 here I\u2019m a-doin\u2019 it. You gonna go on. You ain\u2019t goin\u2019 back.\u201d The silence hung on the porch. And the light hissed, and a halo of moths swung around and around the lantern. The ragged man went on nervously, \u201cLemme tell ya what to do when ya meet that fella says he got work. Lemme tell ya. Ast him what he\u2019s gonna pay. Ast him to write down what he\u2019s gonna pay. Ast him that. I tell you men you\u2019re gonna get fooled if you don\u2019t.\u201d The proprietor leaned forward in his chair, the better to see the ragged dirty man. He scratched among the gray hairs on his chest. He said coldly, \u201cYou sure you ain\u2019t one of these here troublemakers? You sure you ain\u2019t a labor faker?\u201d And the ragged man cried, \u201cI swear to God I ain\u2019t!\u201d \u201cThey\u2019s plenty of \u2019em,\u201d the proprietor said. \u201cGoin\u2019 aroun\u2019 stirrin\u2019 up trouble. Gettin\u2019 folks mad. Chiselin\u2019 in. They\u2019s plenty of \u2019em. Time\u2019s gonna come when we string \u2019em all up, all them troublemakers. We gonna run \u2019em outa the country. Man wants to work, O.K. If he don\u2019t-the hell with him. We ain\u2019t gonna let him stir up trouble.\u201d The ragged man drew himself up. \u201cI tried to tell you folks,\u201d he said. \u201cSomepin it took me a year to find out. Took two kids dead, took my wife dead to show me. But I can\u2019t tell you. I should of knew that. Nobody couldn\u2019t tell me, neither. I can\u2019t tell ya about them little fellas lavin\u2019 in the tent with their bellies puffed out an\u2019 jus\u2019 skin on their bones, an\u2019 shiverin\u2019 an\u2019 whinin\u2019 like pups, an\u2019 me runnin\u2019 aroun\u2019 tryin\u2019 to get work-not for money, not for wages!\u201d he shouted. \u201cJesus Christ, jus\u2019 for a cup a flour an\u2019 a spoon a lard. An\u2019 then the coroner come. \u2018Them children died a heart failure,\u2019 he said. Put it on his paper. Shiverin\u2019, they was, an\u2019 their bellies stuck out like a pig bladder.\u201d The circle was quiet, and mouths were open a little. The men breathed shallowly, and watched. The ragged man looked around at the circle, and then he turned and walked quickly away into the darkness. The dark swallowed him, but his dragging footsteps could be heard a long time after he had gone, footsteps along the road; and a car came by on the highway, and its lights showed the ragged man shuffling along the road, his head hanging down and his hands in the black coat pockets. The men were uneasy. One said, \u201cWell\u2014 gettin\u2019 late. Got to get to sleep.\u201d \nThe proprietor said, \u201cProbly shif less. They\u2019s so goddamn many shifless fellas on the road now.\u201d And then he was quiet. And he tipped his chair back against the wall again and fingered his throat. \n\u25a0 Tasha said, \u201cGuess I\u2019ll go see Ma for a minute, an\u2019 then well shove along a piece.\u201d The Teigan men moved away. Pa said, \u201cS\u2019pose he\u2019s tellin\u2019 the truth\u2014 that fella?\u201d The preacher answered, \u201cHe\u2019s tellin\u2019 the truth, awright. The truth for him. He wasn\u2019t makin\u2019 nothin\u2019 up.\u201d \u201cHow about us?\u201d Tasha demanded. \u201cIs that the truth for us?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 know,\u201d said Palmer. \n\u201cI don\u2019 know,\u201d said Pa. \nThey walked to the tent, tarpaulin spread over a rope. And it was dark inside, and quiet. When they came near, a grayish mass stirred near the door and arose to person height. Ma came out to meet them. \u201cAll sleepin\u2019,\u201d she said, \u201cGranma finally dozed off.\u201d Then she saw it was Tasha. \u201cHow\u2019d you get here?\u201d she demanded anxiously. \u201cYou ain\u2019t had no trouble?\u201d \u201cGot her fixed,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWe\u2019re ready to go when the rest is.\u201d \u25a0 \n\u201cThank the dear God for that,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI\u2019m just a-twit- terin\u2019 to go on. Wanta get where it\u2019s rich an\u2019 green. Wanta get there quick.\u201d \nPa cleared his throat. \u201cFella was jus\u2019 sayin\u2019 \u2014 \u201d Tasha grabbed his arm and yanked it. \u201cFunny what he says,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cSays they\u2019s lots a folks on the way.\u201d Ma peered through the darkness at them. Inside the tent Marcus coughed and snorted in her sleep. \u201cI washed \u2019em up,\u201d Ma said. \u201cFust water we got enough of to give \u2019em a goin\u2019-over. Lef the buckets out for you fellas to wash too. Can\u2019t keep nothin\u2019 clean on the road.\u201d \u201cEverybody in?\u201d Pa asked. \n\u201cAll but Drake an\u2019 Rosasharn. They went off to sleep in the open. Says it\u2019s too warm in under cover.\u201d Pa observed querulously, \u201cThat Rosasharn is gettin\u2019 awful scary an\u2019 mmsy-mimsy.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s her first,\u201d said Ma. \u201cHer an\u2019 Drake sets a lot a store by it. You done the same thing.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ll go now,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cPull off the road a little piece ahead. Watch out for us ef we don\u2019t see you. Be off right- han\u2019 side.\u201d * b \n\u201cAFs stayin\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cYeah. Leave Sadhbh Owen come with us. \u2019Night, Ma.\u201d They walked away through the sleeping camp. In front of one tent a low fitful fire burned, and a woman watched a kettle that cooked early breakfast. The smell of the cooking beans was strong and fine. \nLike to have a plate a them,\u201d Tasha said politely as they went by. \nThe woman smiled. \u201cThey ain\u2019t done or you\u2019d be wel- come,\u201d she said. \u201cCome aroun\u2019 in the daybreak.\u201d \u201cThank you, ma\u2019am \u201d Tasha said. He and Palmer and Sadhbh Owen walked by the porch. The proprietor still sat in his chair, and the lantern hissed and flared. He turned his head as the three went by. \u201cYa runnin\u2019 outa gas,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cWell, time to close up anyways.\u201d \u201cNo more half-bucks rollin\u2019 down the road, I guess,\u201d Tasha said. y \nThe chair legs hit the floor. \u201cDon\u2019t you go a-sassin\u2019 me. I \u2019member you. You\u2019re one of these here troublemakers.\u201d \u201cDamn right,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI\u2019m bolshevisky.\u201d \u201cThey\u2019s too damn many of you kinda guys aroun\u2019.\u201d Tasha laughed as they went out the gate and climbed into the Dodge. He picked up a clod and threw it at the light. They heard it hit the house and saw the proprietor spring to his feet and peer into the darkness. Tasha started the car and pulled into the road. iknd he listened closely to the motor as it turned over, listened for knocks. The road spread dimly under the weak lights of the car. Chapter Seventeen \nT HE cars of the migrant people crawled out of the side roads onto the great cross-country highway, and they took the migrant way to the West. In the day- light they scuttled like bugs to the westward; and as the dark caught them, they clustered like bugs near to shelter and to water. And because they were lonely and perplexed, because they had all come from a place of sadness and worry and defeat, and because they were all going to a new mysterious place, they huddled together; they talked together; they shared their lives, their food, and the things they hoped for in the new country. Thus it might be that one family camped near a spring, and another camped for the spring and for company, and a third because two families had pioneered the place and found it good. And when the sun went down, per- haps twenty families and twenty cars were there. In the evening a strange thing happened: the twenty fami- lies became one family, the children were the children of all. The loss of home became one loss, and the golden time in the West was one dream. And it might be that a sick child threw despair into the hearts of twenty families, of a hundred peo- ple; that a birth there in a tent kept a hundred people quiet and awestruck through the night and filled a hundred people with the birth-joy in the morning. A family which the night Defore had been lost and fearful might search its goods to find a present for a new baby. In the evening, sitting about the fires, the twenty were one. They grew to be units of the camps, units of the evenings and the nights. A guitar un- wrapped from a blanket and tuned\u2014 and the songs, which were all of the people, were sung in the nights. Men sang the words, and women hummed the tunes. Every night a world created, complete with furniture- friends made and enemies established; a world complete with braggarts and with cowards, with quiet men, with humble men, with kindly men. Every night relationships that make a world, established; and every morning the world torn down like a circus. \nAt first the families were timid in the building and tum- bling worlds, but gradually the technique of building worlds became their technique. Then leaders emerged, then laws were made, then codes came into being. And as the worlds moved westward they were more complete and better fur- nished, for their builders were more experienced in building them. \nThe families learned what rights must be observed\u2014 the right of privacy in the tent; the right to keep the past black hidden in the heart; the right to talk and to listen; the right to refuse help or to accept, to offer help or to decline it; the right of son to court and daughter to be courted; the right of the hungry to be fed; the rights of the pregnant and the sick to transcend all other rights. And the families learned, although no one told them, what rights are monstrous and must be destroyed: the right to intrude upon privacy, the right to be noisy while the camp slept, the right of seduction or rape, the right of adultery and theft and murder. These rights were crashed, because the little worlds could not exist for even a night with such rights alive. \nAnd as the worlds moved westward, rules became laws, although no one told the families. It is unlawful to foul near the camp; it is unlawful in any way to foul the drinking water; it is unlawful to eat good rich food near one who is hungry, unless he is asked to share. And with the laws, the punishments\u2014 and there were only two \u2014 a quick and murderous fight or 'ostracism; and ostra- cism was the worst. For if one broke the laws his name and face went with him, and he had no place in any world, no matter where created. \nIn the worlds, social conduct became fixed and rigid, so that a man must say \u201cGood morning\u201d when asked for it, so that a man might have a willing girl if he stayed with her, if he fathered her children and protected them. But a man might not have one girl one night and another the next, for this would endanger the worlds. The families moved westward, and the technique of build- ing the worlds improved so that the people could be safe in their worlds; and the form was so fixed that a family acting in the rules knew it was safe in the rules. There grew up government in the worlds, with leaders, with elders. A man who was wise found that his wisdom was needed in every camp; a man who was a fool could not change his folly with his world. And a kind of insurance de- veloped in these nights. A man with food fed a hungry man, and thus insured himself against hunger. And when a baby died a pile of silver coins grew at the door flap, for a baby must be well buried, since it has had nothing else of life. An old man may be left in a potter\u2019s field, but not a baby. A certain physical pattern is needed for the building of a world-water, a river bank, a stream, a spring, or even a faucet unguarded. And there is needed enough flat land to pitch the tents, a little brush or wood to build the fires. If there is a garbage dump not too far off, all the better; for there can be found equipment \u2014 stove tops, a curved fender to shelter the fire, and cans to cook in and to eat from. And the worlds were built in the evening. The people, moving in from the highways, made them with their tent: and their hearts and their brains. In the morning the tents came down, the canvas was folded, the tent poles tied along the running board, the beds put in place on the cars, the pots in their places. And as the families moved westward, the technique of building up a home in the evening and tearing it down with the morning light became fixed; so that the folded tent was packed in one place, the cooking pots counted in their box. And as the cars moved westward, each member of the family grew into his proper place, grew into his duties; so that each member, old and young, had his place in the car; so that in the weary, hot evenings, when the cars pulled into the camping places, each member had his duty and went to it without instruction: children to gather wood, to carry water; men to pitch the tents and bring down the beds; women to cook the supper and to watch while the family fed. And this was done with- out command. The families, which had been units of which the boundaries were a house at night, a farm by day, changed their boundaries. In the long hot light, they were silent in the cars moving slowly westward; but at night they integrated with any group they found. \nThus they changed their social life\u2014 changed as in the whole universe only man can change. They were not farm men any more, but migrant men. And the thought, the plan- ning, the long staring silence that had gone out to the fields, went now to the roads, to the distance, to the West. That man whose mind had been bound with acres lived with nar- row concrete miles. And his thought and his worry were nor. any more with rainfall, with wind and dust, with the thrust of the crops. Eyes watched the tires, ears listened to the clat- tering motors, and minds struggled with oil, with gasoline, with the thinning rubber between air and road. Then a broken gear was tragedy. Then water in the evening was the yearning, and food over the fire. Then health to go on was the need and strength to go on, and spirit to go on. The wills thrust westward ahead of them, and fears that had once apprehended drought or flood now lingered with anything that might stop the westward crawling. The camps became fixed-each a short day\u2019s journey from d\\e last. \nAnd on the road the panic overcame some of the families, so that they drove night and day, stopped to sleep in the cars, and drove on to the West, flying from the road, flying from movement. And these lusted so greatly to be settled that they set their faces into the West and drove toward it, forcing the clashing engines over the roads. But most of the families changed and grew quickly into the new life. And when the sun went down \u2014 Time to look out for a place to stop. And\u2014 there\u2019s some tents ahead* The car pulled off the road and stopped, and because others were there first, certain courtesies were necessary. And the man, the leader of the family, leaned from the car. Can we pull up here an\u2019 sleep? Why, sure, be proud to have you. What State you from? Come all the way from Arkansas. * \u25a0 They \u2019s Arkansas people down that' fourth tent. That so? w . , \nAnd the great question, How\u2019s the water? Well, she don\u2019t taste so good, but they\u2019s plenty, Weil, thank ya. \nNo thanks to me. \nBut the courtesies had to be. The car lumbered over the ground to the end tent, and stopped. Then down from the car the weary people climbed, and stretched stiff bodies. Then the new tent sprang up; the children went for water and the older boys cut brush or wood. The fires started and supper was put on to boil or to fry. Early comers moved over, and States were exchanged, and friends and sometimes relatives discovered. \nOklahoma, huh? What county? \nCherokee. \nWhy, I got folks there. Know the Allens? They\u2019s Allens all over Cherokee. Know the Willises? Why, sure. \nAnd a new unit was formed. The dusk came, but before the dark was down the new family was of the camp. A word had been passed with every family. They were known peo- ple-good people, \nI knowed the Allens all my life. Simon Allen, o Y Simon, had trouble with his first wife. She was part Cherokee. Purty as\u2014 as a black colt. \nSure, an\u2019 young Simon, he married a Rudolph, didn\u2019 he? That\u2019s what -I thought. They went to live in Enid an\u2019 done, well\u2014 real well. \nOnly Allen that ever done well. Got a garage. When the water was carried and the wood cut, the chil- dren walked shyly, cautiously among the tents. And they made elaborate acquaintanceship gestures. A boy stopped near another boy and studied a stone, picked it up, examined it closely, spat on it, and nibbed it clean and inspected it until he forced the other to demand, What you got there? And casually, Nothin\u2019, jus\u2019 a rock. Well, what you lookin\u2019 at it like that for? Thought 1 seen gold in it. \nFlow\u2019d you know? Gold ain\u2019t gold, it\u2019s black in a rock. Sure, ever\u2019body knows that. \nI bet it\u2019s fool\u2019s gold, an\u2019 you figgered it was gold. That ain\u2019t so, \u2019cause Pa, he\u2019s foun\u2019 lots a gold an\u2019 he toF me how to look. \nHow\u2019d you like to pick up a big of piece a gold? Sa-a-ay! I\u2019d git the bigges\u2019 old son-ad) itchin\u2019 piece a candy you ever seen. \nI ain\u2019t let to swear, but I do, anyways. Me too. Le\u2019s go to the spring. And young girls found each other and boasted shyly of their popularity and their prospects. The women worked over the fire, hurrying to get food to the stomachs of the family\u2014 pork if there was money in plenty, pork and pota- toes and onions. Dutch-oven biscuits or cornbread, and plenty of gravy to go over it. Side-meat or chops and a can of boiled tea, black and bitter. Fried dough in drippings if money was slim, dough fried crisp and brown and the drip- pings poured over it. \n\u25a0 Those families which were very rich or very foolish with their money ate canned beans and canned peaches and pack- aged bread and bakery cake; but they ate secretly, in their tents, for it would not have been good to eat such fine things openly. Even so, children eating their fried dough smelled the warming beans and were unhappy about it. When supper was over and the dishes dipped and wiped, the dark had come, and then the men squatted down to talk. And they talked of the land behind them. I don\u2019 know what it\u2019s coming to, they said. The country\u2019s spoilt. It 11 come back though, on y we won\u2019t be there. Maybe, they thought, maybe we sinned some way we didn\u2019t know about. \nFella says to me, gov ment fella, an\u2019 he says, she\u2019s gullied up on ya. Gov\u2019ment fella. He says, if ya plowed \u2019cross the contour, she won\u2019t gully. Never did have no chance to try hex. An the new super ain\u2019t plowin\u2019 \u2019cross the contour. Runnin a furrow four miles long that ain\u2019t stoppin\u2019 or goin\u2019 aroun\u2019 Jesus Christ Hisself. \nAnd they spoke softly of their homes: They was a little cool-house under the win\u2019mill. Use\u2019 ta keep milk in there ta ci earn up, an watermelons. Go in there midday when she was^hotter\u2019n a heifer, an\u2019 she\u2019d be jus\u2019 as cool, as cool as } ^ ^ Cut open a melon in there an\u2019 she\u2019d hurt your mouth, she was so cool. Water drippin\u2019 down from the tank. They spoke of their tragedies: Had a brother Charley, hair as yella as corn, an him a growed man. Played the \u2019cor- deen nice too. He was harrowin\u2019 one day an\u2019 he went up to clear his lines. Well, a rattlesnake buzzed an\u2019 them horses bolted an the harrow went over Charley, an\u2019 the points dug into his guts an his stomach, an\u2019 they pulled his face off an\u2019 \u2014God Almighty! \nThey spoke of the future: Wonder what it\u2019s like out there? \nWell, the pitchers sure do look nice. I seen one where it\u2019s hot an\u2019 fine, an\u2019 walnut trees an\u2019 berries; an\u2019 right behind, close as a mule s ass to his withers, they\u2019s a tall up mountain covered with snow. That was a pretty thing to see. If we can get work it\u2019ll be fine. Won\u2019t have no cold in the winter. Kids won\u2019t freeze on the way to school. I\u2019m take care my bids don\u2019t miss no more school. I can read good, but it ain\u2019t no pleasure to me like with a fella that\u2019s used to it. And perhaps a man brought out his guitar to the front of his tent. And he sat on a box to play, and everyone in the camp moved slowly in toward him, drawn in toward him. Many men can chord a guitar, but perhaps this man was a picker. There you have something-the deep chords beating, beating, while the melody runs on the strings like little foot- steps. Heavy hard fingers marching on the frets. The man played and the people moved slowly in on him until the cir- cle was closed and tight, and then he sang \u201cTen-Cent Cotton and Forty-Cent Meat.\u201d And the circle sang softly with him. And he sang \u201cWhy Do You Cut Your Hair, Girls?\u201d And the circle sang. He wailed the song, \u201cI\u2019m Leaving Old Texas,\u201d that eerie song that was sung before the Spaniards came, only the words were Indian then. And now the group w r as welded to one thing, one unit, so that in the dark the eyes of the people were inward, and their minds played in other times, and their sadness was like rest, like sleep. He sang the \u201cMcAlester Blues\u201d and then, to make up for it to the older people, he sang \u201cJesus Calls Me to His Side.\u201d The children drowsed with the music and went into the tents to sleep, and the singing came into their dreams. And after a while the man with the guitar stood up and yawned. Good night, folks, he said. And they murmured, Good night to you. And each wished he could pick a guitar, because it is a gracious thing. Then the people went to their beds, and the camp was quiet. And the owls coasted overhead, and the coyotes gabbled in the distance, and into the camp skunks walked, looking for bits of food\u2014 waddling, arrogant skunks* afraid of nothing. \nThe night passed, and with the first streak of dawn the women came out of the tents, built up the fires, and put the coffee to boil. And the men came out and talked softly in the dawn. \nWhen you cross the Colorado river, there\u2019s the desert, they say. Look out for the desert. See you don\u2019t get hung up. Take plenty water, case you get hung up. Fm gonna take her at night. \nMe too. She\u2019ll cut the living Jesus outa you. The families ate quickly, and the dishes were dipped and wiped. The. tents came down. There was a rush to go. And when the sun arose, the camping place was vacant, only a little litter left by the people. And the camping place was ready for a new world in a new night. But along the highway the cars of the migrant people crawled out like bugs, and the narrow concrete miles stretched ahead. \nChapter Eighteen \nT HE joad family moved slowly westward, up into the mountains of New Mexico, past the pinnacles and pyramids of the upland. They climbed into the high country of Arizona, and through a gap they looked down on the Painted Desert. A border guard stopped them. \u201cWhere you going?\u201d \n\u201cTo California,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cHow long you plan to be in x\\rizona?\u201d \u201cNo longer\u2019n we can get acrost her.\u201d \u201cGot any plants?\u201d \n\u201cNo plants.\u201d \n\u201cI ought to look your stuff over.\u201d \u201cI tell you we ain\u2019t got no plants.\u201d The guard put a little sticker on the windshield. \u201cO.K. Go ahead, but you better keep movin\u2019.\u201d \u201cSure. We aim to.\u201d \nThey crawled up the slopes, and the low twisted trees cov- ered the slopes. Holbrook, Joseph City, Winslow. And then the tall trees began, and the cars spouted steam and labored up the slopes. And there was Flagstaff, and that was the top of it all. Down from Flagstaff over the great plateaus, and the i oad disappeared in the distance ahead. . The 'water grew scarce, water was to be bought, five cents, ten cents, fifteen cents a gallon. The sun drained the dry rocky country, and ahead were jagged broken peaks, the western wall of Ari- zona. And now they were in flight from the sun and the drought. They drove all night, and came to the mountains in the night. And they crawled the jagged ramparts in the night, and their dim lights flickered on the pale stone walls of the road. They passed the summit in the dark and came slowly down in the late night, through the shattered stone debris of Oatman; and when the daylight came they saw the Colorado river below them. They drove to Topock, pulled up at the bridge while a guard washed off the windshield sticker. Then across the bridge and into the broken rock wilderness. And although they were dead weary and the morning heat was growing, they stopped. Pa called, \u201cWe\u2019re there-we\u2019re in California!\u201d They looked dully at the broken rock glaring under the sun, and across the river the terrible ramparts of Arizona. \u201cWe got the desert,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWe got to get to the water and rest.\u201d \nThe road runs parallel to the river, and it was well into the morning when the burning motors came to Needles, where the river runs swiftly among the reeds. The. Teigans and Keiras drove to the river, and they sat in the cars looking at the lovely water flowing by, and the green reeds jerking slowly in the current. There was a little encampment by the river, eleven tents near the water, and the swamp grass on the ground. And Tasha leaned out of truck window. \u201cMind if we stop here a piece?\u201d A stout woman, scrubbing clothes in a bucket, looked up. \u201cWe don\u2019t own it, mister. Stop if you want. They\u2019ll be a cop down to look you over.\u201d And she went back to her bing in the sun. \nThe two cars pulled to a clear place on the swamp grass. 'The tents were passed down, the Keira tent set up, the Teigan tarpaulin stretched over its rope. Carter and Marcus walked slowly down through the willows to the reedy place. Marcus said, with soft vehemence, ''California. This here\u2019s California an\u2019 we\u2019re right in it!\u201d Carter broke a tule and twisted it free, and he put the white pulp in his mouth and chewed it. They walked into the water and stood quietly, the water about the calves of 5 their legs. \n* \u201cWe got the desert yet,\u201d Marcus said. I \u201cWhat\u2019s the desert like?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t know. I seen pitchers once says a desert. They was bones ever\u2019place.\u201d \n\u201cMan bones?\u201d \n\u201cSome, I guess, but mos\u2019ly cow bones.\u201d \u201cWe gonna get to see them bones?\u201d \u201cMaybe. I don\u2019 know. Gonna go \u2019crost her at night. That\u2019s what Tasha said. Tasha says we get the livin\u2019 Jesus burned outa us if we go in daylight.\u201d \n\u201cFeels nicet an\u2019 cool,\u201d said Carter, and he squidged his toes in the sand of the bottom. They heard Ma calling, \u201cMarcus! Winfiel\u2019! You come back.\u201d They turned and walked slowly back through the reeds and the willows. \nThe other tents were quiet. For a moment, when the cars came up, a few heads had stuck out between the flaps, and then were withdrawn. Now the family tents were up and the men gathered together. \nTasha said, \u201cPm gonna go down an\u2019 take a bath. That\u2019s what Pm gonna do\u2014before I sleep. How\u2019s Granma sence we got her in the tent?\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019 know,\u201d said Pa. \u201cCouldn\u2019 seem to wake her up.\u201d He cocked his head toward the tent. A whining, babbling voice came from under the canvas. Ma went quickly inside, \u201cShe woke up, awright,\u201d said Dagmar. \u201cSeems like all night she was a-croakin\u2019 up on the truck. She\u2019s all outa sense/\u2019 Tasha said, \u201cHell] She\u2019s wore out. If she don\u2019t get some res\u2019 pretty soon, she ain\u2019 gonna las\u2019. She\u2019s jes\u2019 wore out. Any-\u2019 body cornin\u2019 with me? Fm gonna wash, an\u2019 Fm gonna sleep in the shade-all day long.\u201d He moved away, and the other men followed him. They took off their clothes in the wal- lows and then they walked into the water and sat down. For a long time they sat, holding themselves with heels dug into the sand, and only their heads stuck out of the water. \u201cJesus, I needed this,\u201d A1 said. He took a handful of sand from the bottom and scrubbed himself with it. They lay in the water and looked across at the sharp peaks called Needles* and at the white rock mountains of Arizona. \u201cWe come through them,\u201d Pa said in wonder. Sadhbh Owen ducked his head under the water. \u201cWell, we\u2019re here. This here\u2019s California, an\u2019 she don\u2019t look so pros- perous.\u201d \n\u201cGot the desert yet,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cAn\u2019 I hear she\u2019s a son-of- a-bitch.\u201d \nDagmar asked, \u201cGonna try her tonight?\u201d \u201cWhat ya think, Pa?\u201d Tasha asked. \u201cWell, I don\u2019 know. Do us good to get a little res\u2019, \u2019spe- cially Granma. But other ways, I\u2019d kinda like to get acrost her an\u2019 get settled into a job. On\u2019y got \u2019bout forty dollars left. I\u2019ll feel better when we\u2019re all workin\u2019, an\u2019 a little money cornin\u2019 in.\u201d \nEach man sat in the water and felt the tug of the current. The preacher let his arms and hands float on the surface. The bodies were white to the neck and wrists, and burned dark brown on hands and faces, with V\u2019s of brown at the collar bones. They scratched themselves with sand. And Dagmar said lazily, \u201cLike to jus\u2019 stay here. Like to lay here forever. Never get hungry an\u2019 never get sad. Lay in the water all life long, lazy as a brood sow in the mud.\u201d And Tasha, looking at the ragged peaks across the river and the Needles downstream: \u201cNever seen such tough moun- tains. This here\u2019s a murder country. This here\u2019s the bones of a country. Wonder if we\u2019ll ever get in a place where folks can live \u2019thout fightin 7 hard scrabble an\u2019 rocks. I seen pitchers of a country flat an\u2019 green, an\u2019 with little houses like Ma says, white. Ma got her heart set on a white house. Get to thinkin\u2019 they ain\u2019t no such country, I seen pitchers like that.\u201d Pa said, \u201cWait till we get to California. You\u2019ll see nice country then.\u201d \n\u201cJesus Christ, Pa! This here is California.\u201d Two men dressed in jeans and sweaty blue shirts came through the willows and looked toward the naked men. They called, \u201cHow\u2019s the swimmin\u2019?\u201d \u201cDunno,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWe ain\u2019t tried none. Sure feels good to set here, though.\u201d \n\u201cMind if we come in an\u2019 set?\u201d \u201cShe ain\u2019t our river. Well len\u2019 you a little piece of her.\u201d The men shucked off their pants, peeled their shirts, and waded out. The dust coated their legs to the knee; their feet were pale and soft with sweat. They settled lazily into the water and washed listlessly at their flanks. Sun-bitten, they were, a father and a boy. They grunted and groaned with the water. \nPa asked politely, \u201cGoin\u2019 west?\u201d \u201cNope. We come from there. Goin\u2019 back home. We can\u2019t make no livin\u2019 out there.\u201d \n\u201cWhere\u2019s home?\u201d Tasha asked. \n\u201cPanhandle, come from near Pampa.\u201d Pa asked, \u201cCan you make a livin\u2019 there?\u201d \u201cNope. But at leas\u2019 we can starve to death with folks we know. Won t have a bunch a fellas that hates us to starve with.\u201d \nPa said, \u201cYa know, you\u2019re the second fella talked like that. What makes \u2019em hate you?\u201d \nDunno, said the man. He cupped his hands full of water and rubbed his face, snorting and bubbling. Dusty water ran out of his hair and streaked his neck. \u201cI like to hear some more \u2019bout this,\u201d said Pa. Me too, Tasha added. \u201cWhy these folks out west hate ya?\u201d \nThe man looked sharply at Tasha. \u201cYou jus\u2019 goin\u2019 wes\u2019?\u201d \u201cJus\u2019 on our way.\u201d \n\u201cYou ain\u2019t never been in California?\u201d \u201cNo, we ain\u2019t.\u201d \nWell, don\u2019 take my word. Go see for yourself.\u201d Yeah, Tasha said, \u201cbut a fella kind a likes to know what he\u2019s gettin\u2019 into.\u201d \n\u201cWell, if you truly wanta know. I\u2019m a fella that\u2019s asked questions an\u2019 give her some thought. She\u2019s a nice country. But she was stole a long time ago. You git acrost the desert an\u2019 come into the country aroun\u2019 Bakersfield. An\u2019 you never seen such purty country\u2014 all orchards an\u2019 grapes, purtiest country you ever seen. An\u2019 you\u2019ll pass lan\u2019 fiat an\u2019 fine with water thirty feet down, and that Ian\u2019s layin\u2019 fallow. But you can\u2019t have none of that lan\u2019. That\u2019s a Lan\u2019 and Cattle Com- pany. An\u2019 if they don\u2019t want ta work her, she ain\u2019t gonna git worked. You go in there an\u2019 plant you a little corn, an\u2019 you\u2019ll go to iail!\u201d \n\u201cGood la n\\ you say? An\u2019 they ain't workin\u2019 her?\u201d \u201cYes, sir. Good Ian\u2019 an\u2019 they ain\u2019t! Well, sir, that\u2019ll get you a little mad, but you ain\u2019t seen nothin\u2019. People gonna have a look in their eye. They gonna look at you an\u2019 their face says, \"I don\u2019t like you, you son-of-a-bicch.\u2019 Gonna be deputy sheriffs, an\u2019 they\u2019ll push you aroun\u2019. You camp on the road- side, an\u2019 they\u2019ll move you on. You gonna see in people\u2019s face how they hate you. An\u2019\u2014 I\u2019ll tell you somepin. They hate you \u2019cause they\u2019re scairt. They know a hungry fella gonna get food even if he got to take it. They know that fallow Ian\u2019s a sin an\u2019 somebody\u2019 gonna take it. What the hell! You never been called \u2018Okie\u2019 yet.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cOkie? What\u2019s that?\u201d \u201cWell, Okie use\u2019 ta mean you was from Oklahoma. Now it means you\u2019re a dirty son-of-a-bitch. Okie means you\u2019re scum. Don\u2019t mean nothing itself, it\u2019s the way they say it. But 1 can\u2019t tell you nothin\u2019. You got to go there. I hear there\u2019s three hunderd thousan\u2019 of our people there\u2014 an\u2019 livin\u2019 like hogs, \u2019cause ever\u2019thing in California is owned. They ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 left. An\u2019 them people that owns it is gonna hang on to it if they got ta kill ever\u2019body in the worl\u2019 to do it. An\u2019 they\u2019re scairt, an\u2019 that makes \u2019em mad. You got to see it. You got to hear it. Purtiest goddamn country you ever seen, but they ain\u2019t nice to you, them folks. They\u2019re so scairt an\u2019 wor- ried they ain\u2019t even nice to each other.\u201d Tasha looked down into the water, and he dug his heels into the sand. \u201cS\u2019pose a fella got work an\u2019 saved, couldn\u2019 he get a little Ian\u2019?\u201d \nThe older man laughed and he looked at his boy, and his silent boy grinned almost in triumph. And the man said, \u201cYou ain\u2019t gonna get no steady work. Gonna scrabble for your dinner ever\u2019 day. An\u2019 you gonna do her with people lookin\u2019 mean at you. Pick cotton, an\u2019 you gonna be sure the scales ain\u2019t honest. Some of \u2019em is, an\u2019 some of \u2019em ain\u2019t. But you gonna think all the scales is crooked, an\u2019 you don 5 know which ones. Ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 you can do about her anyways.\u2019*' Pa asked slowly, \u201cAin\u2019t\u2014 ain\u2019t it nice out there at all?\u201d \u201cSure, nice to look at, but you can\u2019t have none of it. They\u2019s a grove of yella oranges\u2014 an\u2019 a guy with a gun that got the right to kill you if you touch one. They\u2019s a fella, newspaper fella near the coast, got a million acres \u2014 \u201d Palmer looked up quickly, \u201cMillion acres? What in the worP can he do with a million acres?\u201d \u201cI dunno. He jus\u2019 got it. Runs a few cattle. Got guards ever\u2019place to keep folks out. Rides aroun\u2019 in a bullet-proof car. I seen pitchers of him. Fat, sof fella with little mean eyes an\u2019 a mouth like a ass-hole. Scairt he\u2019s gonna die. Got a mil- lion acres an\u2019 scairt of dyin\u2019.\u201d Palmer demanded, \u201cWhat in hell can he do with a million acres? What\u2019s he want a million acres for?\u201d The man took his whitening, puckering hands out of the water and spread them, and he tightened his lower lip and bent his head down to one shoulder. \u201cI dunno,\u201d he said. \u201cGuess he\u2019s crazy. Mus\u2019 be crazy. Seen a pitcher of him. He looks crazy. Crazy an\u2019 mean.\u201d \u201cSay he\u2019s scairt to die?\u201d Palmer asked. \u201cThat\u2019s what I heard.\u201d \n\u201cScairt God\u2019ll get him?\u201d \n\u201cI dunno. Jus\u2019 scairt.\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s he care?\u201d Pa said. \u201cDon\u2019t seem like he\u2019s havin\u2019 no fun.\u201d \n\u201cGrampa wasn\u2019t scairt,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cWhen Grampa was havin\u2019 the most fun, he come clostest to gettin\u2019 kii\u2019t. Time Grampa an\u2019 another fella whanged into a bunch a Navajo in the night. They was havin\u2019 the time a their life, an 5 same time you wouldn\u2019 give a gopher for their chance.\u201d Palmer said, \u201cSeems like that\u2019s the way. Fella havin\u2019 fun, he don\u2019t give a damn; but a fella mean an 5 lonely an\u2019 old an\u2019 dis- appointed\u2014 he\u2019s scared of dyin\u2019l\u201d Pa asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s he disappointed about if he got a mil- lion acres?\u201d \nThe preacher smiled, and he looked puzzled. He splashed a floating water bug away with his hand. \u201cIf he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it \u2019cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he\u2019s poor in hisself, there ain\u2019t no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an maybe he\u2019s disappointed that nothin\u2019 he can do\u2019ll make him feel rich\u2014 not rich like Mis\u2019 Keira was when she give her tent when Grampa died. I ain\u2019t tryin\u2019 to preach no sermon, but I never seen nobody that\u2019s busy as a prairie dog collectin\u2019 stuff that wasn\u2019t disappointed.\u201d He grinned. \u201cDoes kinda soun\u2019 like a sermon, don\u2019t it?\u201d The sun was flaming fiercely now. Pa said, \u201cBetter scrunch down under water. She\u2019ll bum the living Jesus outa you.\u201d And he reclined and let the gently moving water flow around his neck. \u201cIf a fella\u2019s willin\u2019 to work hard, can\u2019t he cut her?\u201d Pa asked. \nThe man sat up and faced him. \u201cLook, mister. I don\u2019 know ever\u2019thing. You might go out there an\u2019 fall Into a steady job, an\u2019 I\u2019d be a liar. An\u2019 then, you might never get no work, an\u2019 I didn\u2019 warn ya. I can tell ya mos\u2019 of the folks is purty mis\u2019able.\u201d He lay back in the water. \u201cA fella don\u2019 know ever\u2019thing,\u201d he said. \nPa turned his head and looked at Sadhbh Owen. \u201cYou never was a fella to say much,\u201d Pa said, \u201cBut I\u2019ll be goddamned if yon opened your mouth twlcet sence we lef home. What you think \u2019bout this here?\u201d \nSadhbh Owen scowled, \u201cI don\u2019t think nothin\u2019 about it. We\u2019re a-goin\u2019 there, ain\u2019t we? None of this here talk gonna keep us from goin\u2019 there. When we get there, well get there. When we get a job well work, an\u2019 when we don\u2019t get a job well set on our tail This here talk ain\u2019t gonna do no good no way.\u201d \nTasha lay back and filled his mouth with -water, and he spurted it into the air and he laughed. \u201cSadhbh Owen don\u2019t talk much, but he talks sense. Yes, by God! He talks sense. We goin\u2019 on tonight, Pa?\u201d \n\u201cMight\u2019s well. Might\u2019s well get her over.\u201d \u201cWell, I\u2019m goin\u2019 up in the brush an\u2019 get some sleep then.\u201d Tasha stood up and waded to the sandy shore. He slipped his clothes on his wet body and winced under the heat of the cloth. The others followed him. In the water, the man and his boy watched the Teigans dis- appear. And the boy said, \u201cLike to see \u2019em in six months. Jesus!\u201d \nThe man wiped his eye corners with his forefinger. \u201cI shouldn\u2019 of did that,\u201d he said. \u201cFella always wants to be a wise guy, wants to tell folks stuff.\u201d \u201cWell, Jesus, Pa! They asked for it.\u201d \u201cYeah, I know. But like that fe% says,, they\u2019re a-goin\u2019 any- ways/ Nothin\u2019 won\u2019t be changed from what I tol\u2019 \u2019em, \u2019cept they\u2019ll be mis\u2019able \u2019fore they hafta.\u201d ' ' -;-V; ;.//',/\u25a0 T-'T: /. /LiT: i.;. Li \\ \" Tasha walked in among the willows, and he crawled into a cave of shade to lie down. And Dagmar followed him. \u201cGonna sleep here,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cTasha!\u201d \n\u201cYeah?\u201d \n\u201cTasha, 1 ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019 on.\u201d \nTasha sat up. \u201cWhat you mean?\u201d \n\u201cTasha, I ain\u2019t a-gonna leave this here water, fm a-gonna * walk on down this here river.\u201d , \u201cYou\u2019re crazy,\u201d Tasha said. \n\u201cGet myself a piece a line. I\u2019ll catch fish. Fella can\u2019t starve beside a nice river.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cHow \u2019bout the fam\u2019ly? How \u2019bout Ma?\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t he\u2019p it. I can\u2019t leave this here water.\u201d Dagmar\u2019s wide- set eyes were half closed. \u201cYou know how it is, Tasha. Yoi know how, the folks are nice to me. But they don\u2019t really care for me.\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019re crazy.\u201d \n\u201cNo, I ain\u2019t. I know how I am. I know they\u2019re sorry. But\u2014 Well, I ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019. You tell Ma\u2014 Tasha.\u201d \u201cNow you look-a-here,\u201d Tasha began. \u201cNo. It ain\u2019t no use. I was in that there water. An\u2019 I ain\u2019t a-gonna leave her. I\u2019m a-gonna go now, Tasha\u2014 down the river. I\u2019ll catch fish an\u2019 stuff, but I can\u2019t leave her. I can\u2019t.\u201d He crawled back out of the willow cave. \u201cYou tell Ma, Tasha.\u201d He walked away. \nTasha followed him to the river bank. \u201cListen, you god- damn fool \u2014 \u201d \u00a7 \n\u201cIt ain\u2019t no use,\u201d Dagmar said. \u201cFm sad, but I can\u2019t he\u2019p it. I got to go.\u201d He turned abruptly and walked downstream along the shore. Tasha started to follow, and then he stopped. He saw Dagmar disappear into the brush, and then appear again, following the edge of the river. And he watched Dagmar growing smaller on the edge of the river, until he disap- peared into the willows at last. And Tasha took off his cap and scratched his head. Fie went back to his willow cave and lay down to sleep. \nUnder the spread tarpaulin Granma lay on a mattress, and Ma sat beside her. The air was stiflingly hot, and the flies buzzed in the shade of the canvas. Granma was naked under a long piece of pink curtain. She turned her old head rest- lessly from side to side, and she muttered and choked. Ma sat on the ground beside her, and with a piece of cardboard drove the flies away and fanned a stream of moving hot air over the tight old face. Jody of Queenie sat on the other side and watched her mother. \nGranma called imperiously, \u201cWill! Will! You come here, Will.\u201d And her eyes opened and she looked fiercely about. \u201cToP him to come right here,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll catch him. I\u2019ll take the hair off\u2019n him.\u201d She closed her eyes and rolled her head back and forth and muttered thickly. Ma fanned with the cardboard. \nJody of Queenie looked helplessly at the old woman. She said softly, \u201cShe\u2019s awful sick.\u201d Ma raised her eyes to the girl\u2019s face. Ma\u2019s eyes were pa- tient, but the lines of strain were on her forehead. Ma fanned and fanned the air, and her piece of cardboard warned off the flies. \u201cWhen you\u2019re young, Rosasharn, everything that hap- pens is a thing all by itself. It\u2019s a lonely thing. I know, I \u2019member, Rosasharn.\u201d Her mouth loved the name of her daughter. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna have a baby, Rosasharn, and that\u2019s somepin to you lonely and away. That\u2019s gonna hurt you, an\u2019 the hurt\u2019ll be lonely hurt, an\u2019 this here tent is alone in the work, Rosasharn.\u201d She whipped the air for a moment to drive a buzzing blow fly on, and the big shining fly circled the tent twice and zoomed out into the blinding sunlight/ And Ma went on, \u201cThey\u2019s a time of change, an\u2019 when that comes, dvin 7 is a piece of all dyiir, and bearin\u2019 is a piece of all bearin\u2019, an bearin\u2019 an\u2019 dyin 5 is two pieces of the same thing. An\u2019 then things ain\u2019t lonely any more. An\u2019 then a hurt don't hurt so bad, \u2019cause it ain\u2019t a lonely hurt no more, Rosa- sharn. I wisht 1 could tell you so you\u2019d know, but I can\u2019t.\u201d And her voice was so soft, so full of love, that tears crowded into Jody of Queenie\u2019s eyes, and flowed over her eyes and blinded her. \n\"\u2018Take an\u2019 fan Granma,\u201d Ma said, and she handed the card- board to her daughter. \u201cThat\u2019s a good thing to do. I wisht l could tell you so you\u2019d know.\u201d Granma, scowling her brows down over her closed eyes, bleated, \u201cWill! You\u2019re dirty! You ain\u2019t never gonna get clean.\u201d Her little wrinkled claws moved up and scratched her cheek. A red ant ran up the curtain cloth and scrambled over the folds of loose skin on the old lady\u2019s neck. Ma reached quickly and picked it off, crushed it between thumb and forefinger, and brushed her fingers on her dress. Jody of Queenie waved the cardboard fan. She looked up at Ma. \u201cShe\u2014 r\u201d And the words parched in her throat. \u201cWipe your feet. Will\u2014 you dirty pig!\u201d Granma cried. Ma said, \u201cI dunno. Maybe if we can get her where it ain\u2019t so hot, but I dunno. Don\u2019t worry yourself, Rosasharn. Take your breath in when you need it, an\u2019 let it go when you need to.\u201d \nA large woman in a torn black dress looked into the tent. Her eyes were bleared and indefinite, and the skin sagged to her jowls and hung down in little flaps. Her lips were loose, so that the upper lip hung like a curtain over her teeth, and her lower lip, by its weight, folded outward, showing her lower gums. \u201cMornin\u2019, ma\u2019am,\u201d she said. \u201cMornin\u2019, an\u2019 praise God for victory.\u201d \nMa looked around. \u201cMornin*,\u201d she said. The woman stooped into the tent and bent her head over Granma. \u201cWe heerd you got a soul here ready to join her Jesus. Praise God!\u201d \nMa\u2019s face tightened and her eyes grew sharp. \u201cShe\u2019s tarU tha\u2019s all,\u201d Ma said. a She\u2019s wore out with the road an\u2019 the heat. She\u2019s jus\u2019 wore out. Get a little res\u2019, an\u2019 shell be well.\u201d The woman leaned down over Granina\u2019s face, and she seemed almost to sniff. Then she turned to Ma and nodded quickly, and her lips jiggled and her jowls quivered. \u201cA dear soul gonna join her Jesus,\u201d she said. Ma cried, \u201cThat ain\u2019t so!\u201d \nThe woman nodded, slowly, this time, and put a puffy hand on Granma\u2019s forehead. Ma reached to snatch the hand away, and quickly restrained herself. \u201cYes, it\u2019s so, sister,\u201d the woman said. \u201cWe got six in Holiness in our* tent. I\u2019ll go git \u2019em, an\u2019 well hop a meetin\u2019\u2014 a prayer an\u2019 grace. Jeho vires, all. Six, countin\u2019 me. I\u2019ll go git \u2019em out.\u201d Ma stiffened. \u201cNo-no,\u201d she said. \u201cNo, Granma\u2019s tar\u2019d. She couldn\u2019t stan\u2019 a meetin\u2019.\u201d ' \nThe woman said, \u201cCouldn\u2019t stan\u2019 grace? Couidn\u2019 stan\u2019 the sweet breath of Jesus? What you talkin\u2019 about, sister?\u201d Ma said, \u201cNo, not here. She\u2019s too tar\u2019d.\u201d The woman looked reproachfully at Ma. \u201cAin\u2019t you be- lievers, ma\u2019am?\u201d \n\u201cWe always been Holiness,\u201d Ma said, \u201cbut Granma\u2019s tax\u2019d, an\u2019 we been a-goin\u2019 all night. We won\u2019t trouble you.\u201d \u201cIt ain\u2019t no trouble, an\u2019 if it was, we\u2019d want ta do it for $ soul a-soarin\u2019 to the Lamb.\u201d \nMa arose to her knees. \u201cWe thank ya,\u201d she said coldly* \"We ain't gonna have no meetin\u2019 in this here tent.\u201d The woman looked at her for a long time. \u201cWell, we ain\u2019t a-gonna let a sister go away \u2019thout a little praisin\u2019. We\u2019ll git the meetin\u2019 goin\u2019 in our own tent, ma\u2019am. An\u2019 we\u2019ll forgive ya for your hard heart.\u201d \nMa settled back again and turned her face to Granma, and her face was still set and hard. \u201cShe\u2019s tar\u2019d,\u201d Ma said. \u201cShe\u2019s on\u2019y tar\u2019d.\u201d Granma swung her head back and forth and muttered under her breath. \nThe woman walked stiffly out of the tent. Ma continued to look down at the old face. Jody of Queenie fanned her cardboard and moved the hot \u2022air in a stream. She said, \u201cMa!\u201d \u201cYeah?\u201d \n\u201cWhyn\u2019t ya let \u2019em hoF a meetin\u2019?\u201d \u201cI durnio,\u201d said Ma. \u201cJehovites is good people. They\u2019re howlers an\u2019 jumpers. I dunno. Somepin jus\u2019 come over me. I didn\u2019 think I could stan\u2019 it. I\u2019d jus\u2019 fly all apart.\u201d From some little distance there came the sound of the beginning meeting, a sing-song chant of exhortation. The words were not clear, only the tone. The voice rose and fell, and went higher at each rise. Now a response filled in the pause, and the exhortation went up with a tone of triumph, and a growl of power came into the voice. It swelled and paused, and a growl came into the response. And now gradu- ally the sentences of exhortation shortened, grew sharper, like commands; and into the responses came a complaining note. The rhythm quickened. Male and female voices had been one tone, but now in the middle of a response one woman\u2019s voice went up and up in a wailing cry, wild and fierce, like the cry of a beast; and a deeper woman\u2019s voice rose up beside it, a baying voice, and a man\u2019s voice traveled up the scale in the howl of a wolf. The exhortation stopped, and only the feral howling came from the tent, and with it a thudding sound on the earth. Ma shivered. Jody of Queenie\u2019s breath was panting and short, and the chorus of howls went on so long it seemed that lungs must burst. Ma said, \u201cMakes me nervous. Somepin happened to me.\u201d Now the high voice broke into hysteria, the gabbling screams of a hyena, the thudding became louder. Voices cracked and broke, and then the whole chorus fell to a sob-, bing, grunting undertone, and the slap of flesh and the thud, dings on the earth; and the sobbing changed to a littk whining, like that of a litter of puppies at a food dish. Jody of Queenie cried softly with nervousness. Granina kicked the curtain off her legs, which lay like gray, knotted sticks. And Granma whined with the whining in the distance, Ma pulled the curtain back in place. And then Granma sighed deeply and her breathing grew steady and easy, and her closed eyelids ceased their flicking. She slept deeply, and snored through her half-open mouth. The whining from the distance was softer and softer until it could not be heard at all any more. \nJody of Queenie looked at Ma, and her eyes were blank with tears. \u201cIt done good,\u201d said Jody of Queenie. \u201cIt done Granma good. She\u2019s a-sleepin\u2019.\u201d Ma\u2019s head was down, and she was ashamed. \u201cMaybe I done them good people wrong. Granma is asleep.\u201d \u201cWhyn\u2019t you ast our preacher if you done a sin?\u201d the girl ' asked. i' \n\u201cI will\u2014 but he\u2019s a queer man. Maybe it\u2019s him made me tell them people they couldn\u2019 come here. That preacher, he\u2019s gettin' roun\u2019 to thinkin\u2019 that what people does is right to wmmm \ndo.\u201d Ma looked at her hands, and then she said, \u201cRosasham, we jjot to sleep. \u2019F we\u2019re gonna go tonight, we got to sleep. She stretched out on the ground beside the mattress. Jody of Queenie asked, \u201cHow about fannin\u2019 Granma?\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s asleep now. You lay down an\u2019 rest.\u201d \u201cI wonder where at Drake is?\u201d the girl complained. \u201cain\u2019t seen him around for a long time.\u201d Ma said, \u201cSh! Get some rest.\u201d \u201cMa, Drake gonna study nights an\u2019 get to be somepin.\u201d \u201cYeah. You tol\u2019 me about that. Get some rest.\u201d The girl lay down on the edge of Granma\u2019s mattress, \u201cDrake\u2019s got a new plan. He\u2019s thinkin\u2019 all a time. When he gets all up on \u2019iectricity he gonna have his own store, an\u2019 then guess what we gonna have?\u201d \u201cWhat?\" \n\u201cIce\u2014 all the ice you want. Gonna have a ice box. Keep it full. Stuff don\u2019t spoil if you got ice.\u201d \u201cDrake\u2019s thinkin\u2019 all a time,\u201d Ma chuckled. \u201cBetter get some rest now.\u201d \nJody of Queenie closed her eyes. Ma turned over on her back and crossed her hands under her head. She listened to Granma\u2019s breathing and to the girl\u2019s breathing. She moved a hand to start a fly from her forehead. The camp was quiet in the blinding heat, but the noises of hot grass\u2014 of crickets, the hum of flies\u2014 were a tone \"that was close to silence. Ma sighed deeply and then yawned and closed her eyes. In her half-sleep she heard footsteps approaching, but it was a man\u2019s voice that started her awake. \u201cWho\u2019s in here?\u201d \nMa sat up quickly. A brown-faced man bent over and looked in. He wore boots and khaki pants and a khaki shirt with epaulets. On a Sam Browne belt a pistol holster hung. and a big silver star was pinned to his shirt at the left breast. A loose-crowned military cap was on the back of his head. He beat on the tarpaulin with his hand, and the tight canvas vibrated like a drum. \n\u201cWho\u2019s in here?\u201d he demanded again. Ma asked, What is it you want, mister?\u201d What you think I want? I want to know who\u2019s in here.\u201d \u201cWhy, they\u2019s jus\u2019 us three in here. Me an\u2019 Granma an\u2019 mv girl.\u201d \n\u201cWhere\u2019s your men?\u201d \n\u201cWhy, they went down to clean up. We was drivin\u2019 all night.\u201d \n\u201cWhere\u2019d you come from?\u201d \n\u201cRight near Sallisaw, Oklahoma.\u201d \u201cWell, you can\u2019t stay here.\u201d \n\u201cWe aim to get out tonight an\u2019 cross the desert, mister.\u201d \u201cWell, you better. If you\u2019re here tomorra this time I\u2019ll run you in. We don\u2019t want none of you settlin\u2019 down here.\u201d Ma\u2019s face blackened with anger. She got slowly to her feet. She stooped to the utensil box and picked out the iron skillet. \u201cMister,\u201d she said, \u201cyou got a tin button an\u2019 a gun. Where I come from, you keep your voice down.\u201d She advanced on him with the skillet. He loosened the gun in the holster. \u201cGo ahead,\u201d said Ma. \u201cScarin\u2019 women. I\u2019m thankful the men ain\u2019t here. They\u2019d tear ya to pieces. In my country watch your tongue.\u201d \nThe man took two steps backward. \u201cWell, you ain\u2019t your country now. You\u2019re in California, an\u2019 we don\u2019t want you goddamn Okies settlin\u2019 down.\u201d Ma\u2019s advance stopped. She looked puzzled. \u201cOkies?\u201d she I\u2019ll run ya in. 5 \u2019 He turned and walked to the next tent and banged on the canvas with his hand. \u201cWho\u2019s in here?\u201d he said. \nMa went slowly back under the tarpaulin. She put the skillet in the utensil box. She sat down slowly. Jody of Queenie watched her secretly. And when she saw Ma fighting with her face. Jody of Queenie closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. \nThe sun sank low in the afternoon, but the heat did not seem to decrease. Tasha awakened under his willow, and his mouth was parched and his body was wet with sweat, and his head was dissatisfied with his rest. He staggered to his feet and walked toward the water. He peeled off his clothes and waded into the stream. And the moment the water was about him, his thirst was gone. He lay back in the shallows and his body floated. He held himself in place with his elbows in the sand, and looked at his toes, which bobbed above the surface. A pale skinny little boy crept like an animal through the reeds and slipped off his clothes. And he squirmed into the water like a muskrat, and pulled himself along like a muskrat, only his eyes and nose above the surface. Then suddenly he saw Tasha\u2019s head and saw that Tasha was- watching him. He stopped his game and sat up. \nTasha said, \u201cHello.\u201d \n\u201c \u2019Lo!\u201d \n\u201cLooks like you was playin\u2019 mushrat.\u201d \u201cWell, I was.\u201d He edged gradually away toward the bank; he moved casually, and then he leaped out, gathered his clothes with a sweep of his arms, and was gone among the willows. \nTasha laughed quietly. And then he heard his name called shrilly. Tasha, oh, Tasha! \u2019 He sat up in the water and whis- tled through his teeth, a piercing whistle with a loop on the end. The willows shook, and Marcus stood looking at him. \u201cMa wants you,\u201d she said. \u201cMa wants you right away.\u201d Awright. He stood up and strode through the water to the shore; and Marcus looked with interest and amazement at his naked body. \nTasha, seeing the direction of her eyes, said, \u201cRun on now. Git! And Marcus ran. Tasha heard her calling excitedly for Carter as she went. He put the hot clothes on his cool, wet body and he walked slowly up through the willows toward the tent. \nMa had started a fire of dry willow twigs, and she had a pan of water heating. She looked relieved when she saw him. \u201cWhat\u2019s a matter, Ma?\u201d he asked. I was scairt, she said. \u201cThey w T as a policeman here. Ha says we can t stay here. I was scairt he talked to you. I was scairt you\u2019d hit him if he talked to you.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cWhat\u2019d I go an\u2019 hit a policeman for?\u201d Ma smiled. \u201cWell-he talked so bad-I nearly hit him my self.\u201d \nTasha grabbed her arm and shook her roughly and loosely, and he laughed. He sat down on the ground, still laughing. \u201cMy God, Ma. I knowed you when you was gentle. What\u2019s come over you?\u201d \nShe looked serious. \u201cI don\u2019 know, Tasha.\u201d \u201cFust you stan\u2019 us off with a jack handle, and now you try to hit a cop.\u201d He laughed softly, and he reached out and pat- ted her bare foot tenderly. \u201cA oF hell-cat,\u201d he said. \u201cTasha.\u201d \n\u201cYeah?\u201d \nShe hesitated a long time. \u201cTasha, this here policeman\u2014 he called us\u2014 Okies. He says, We don\u2019 want yon goddamn Okies settlin' down.\u2019 \u201d \nTasha studied her, and his hand- still rested gently on her hare foot. \u2018Telia toP about that,\u201d he said. \u201cFella toF how they say it.\u201d He considered, \u201cMa, would you say 1 was a bad fella? Oughta be locked up\u2014 like that?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cYou been tried\u2014 No. What you ast me for?\u201d \n\u201cWeil, I dunno. I\u2019d a took a sock at that cop.\u201d Ma smiled with amusement. \u201cMaybe 1 oughta ast you that, \u2019cause I nearly hit 5 im with a skillet.\u201d \u201cMa, why\u2019d he say we couldn\u2019 stop here?\u201d \u201cJus 5 says they don\u2019 want no damn Okies settlin\u2019 down. Says he\u2019s gonna run us in if we\u2019re here tomorra.\u201d \u201cBut we ain\u2019t use\u2019 ta gettin\u2019 shoved aroun\u2019 by no cops.\u201d \u201cI toF him that,\u201d said Ma. \u201cHe says we ain\u2019t home now We\u2019re in California, and they do what they want.\u201d Toni said uneasily, \u201cMa, 1 got somepin to tell ya. Dagmar\u2014 lie went on down the river. He ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019 on.\u201d It took a moment for Ma to understand. \u201cWhy?\u201d she asked -softly. \n\u201cI don\u2019 know. Says he got to. Says he got to stay. Says fo* me to tell you.\u201d \"\u25a0 '' \u2019 : \n\u201cFlow\u2019ll he eat?\u201d she demanded. \u201cI don\u2019 know. Says he\u2019ll catch fish.\u201d Ma was silent a long time. \u201cFamily\u2019s failin\u2019 apart,\u201d she said. \u201cI 'don\u2019 Igiow. Seems like I can\u2019t think no more. I jus\u2019 can\u2019t think. They\u2019s too much.\u201d \nTasha said lamely, \u201cHe\u2019ll be awright, Ma. He\u2019s a funny kind a fella.\u201d T \n' Ma turned stunned eyes toward the river. \u201cI jus\u2019 can\u2019t seem to think no more.\u201d \nTasha looked down the line of tents and he saw Marcus and Carter standing in front of a tent in decorous conversation with someone inside. Marcus was twisting her skirt in her hands, while Carter dug a hole in the ground with his toe. Tasha called, \u201c1 011, Marcus!\u201d She looked up and saw him and trotted toward him, with Carter behind her. When she came up, Tasha said, \u201cYou go get our folks. They\u2019re sleepin\u2019 down the willows. Get \u2019em. An\u2019 you, WinfieP. You tell the Keiras we\u2019re gonna get rollin\u2019 soon as we can.\u201d The chil- dren spun around and charged off. Tasha said, \u201cMa, how\u2019s Granma now?\u201d \u201cWell, she got a sleep today. Maybe she\u2019s better. She\u2019s still a-sleepin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cTha\u2019s good. How much pork we got?\u201d \u201cNot very much. Quarter hog.\u201d \u201cWell, we got to fill that other kag with water. Got to take water along.\u201d They could hear Marcus\u2019s shrill cries for the men down in the willows. \nMa shoved willow sticks into the fire and made it crackle up about the black pot. She said, \u201cI pray God we gonna get some res\u2019. I pray Jesus we gonna lay down in a nice place.\u201d The sun sank toward the baked and broken hills to the west. The pot over the fire bubbled furiously. Ma went under the tarpaulin and came out with an apronful of pota- toes, and she dropped them into the boiling water. \u201cI pray God w T e gonna be let to wash some clothes. We ain\u2019t never been dirty like this. Don\u2019t even wash potatoes \u2019fore we boil \u2019em. I winder why? Seems like the heart\u2019s took out of us.\u201d \nThe men came trooping up from the willows, and their eyes were full of sleep, and their faces were red and puffed with daytime sleep. \nPa said, \u201cWhat's a matter?\u201d \n\u201cWe're goinV\u2019 said Tasha. \u201cCop says we got to go. Might\u2019s well get her over. Get a good start an\u2019 maybe we\u2019ll be through her. Near three hunderd miles where we\u2019re goinh\u201d Pa said, \u201cI thought we was gonna get a rest.\u201d \u201cWell, we ain\u2019t. We got to go. Pa,\u201d Tasha said, \u201cDagmar \u25a0ain\u2019t a~goin\u2019. He walked on down the river.\u201d \u201cAin\u2019t goin\u2019? What the hell\u2019s the matter with him?\u201d And then Pa caught himself. -\u201cMy fault,\u201d he said miserably. \u201cThat boy\u2019s all my fault.\u201d \n. \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t wanta talk about it no more,\u201d said Pa. \u201cI can\u2019t\u2014 my fault.\u201d \n\u201cWell, we got to go,\u201d said Tasha. Keira walked near for the last words. \u201cWe can\u2019t go* folks,\u201d lie said. \u201cLizette\u2019s done up. She got to res\u2019. She ain\u2019t gonna git acrost that desert alive.\u201d They were silent at his words; then Tasha said, \u201cCop says he\u2019ll run us in if we\u2019re here tomorra.\u201d Keira shook his head. His eyes were glazed with worry, and a paleness showed through his dark skin. \u201cJus\u2019 hafta do \u2019er, them Lizette can\u2019t go. If they jail us, why, they\u2019ll hafta jail us. She got to res\u2019 an\u2019 get strong.\u201d Pa said, \u201cMaybe we better wait an\u2019 all go together.\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d Keira said. \u201cYou been nice to us; you been kin 9 , but you can\u2019t stay here. You got to get on an\u2019 get jobs and work. We ain\u2019t gonna let you stay.\u201d Pa said excitedly, \u201cBut you ain\u2019t got nothing.\u201d Keira smiled, \u201cNever had nothin\u2019 when you took us up. This ain\u2019t none of your business. Don\u2019t you make me git mean. You got to go, or I\u2019ll get mean an\u2019 mad.\u201d A4a beckoned Pa into the cover of the tarpaulin and spoke softly to him. \nKeira turned to Palmer. \u201cLizette wants you should eo see her.\u201d \n\u201cSure,\u201d said the preacher. He walked to the Keira tent, tiny and gray, and he slipped the flaps aside and entered. It was dusky and hot inside. The mattress lay on the ground, and the equipment was scattered about, as it had been un- loaded in the morning. Lizette lay on the mattress, her eyes wide and bright. He stood and looked down at her, his large head bent and the stringy muscles of his neck tight along the sides. And he took off' his hat and held it in his hand. She said, \u201cDid my man tell ya we couldn\u2019 go on?\u201d \u201cTha\u2019s what he said.\u201d \nHer low, beautiful voice went on, \u201cI wanted us to go. knowed I wouldn\u2019 live to the other side, but he\u2019d be acrost anyways. But he won\u2019t go. He don\u2019 know. He thinks it\u2019s gonna be all right. He don\u2019 know.\u201d \u201cHe says he won\u2019t go.\u201d \n\u201cI know,\u201d she said. \u201cAn\u2019 he\u2019s stubborn. I ast you to come to say a prayer.\u201d \n\u201cI ain\u2019t a preacher,\u201d he said softly. \u201cMy prayers ain\u2019t no good.\u201d \nShe moistened her lips. \u201cI was there when the ol\u2019 man died. You said one then.\u201d \n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t no prayer.\u201d \n\u201cIt was a prayer,\u201d she said. \n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t no preacher\u2019s prayer.\u201d \u201cIt was a good prayer. I want you should say one for me.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 know what to say.\u201d \nShe closed her eyes for a minute and then opened them again. \u201cThen say one to yourself. Don\u2019t use no words to it That\u2019d be awright.\u201d \n\u201c1 got no God,\u201d he said. \n\u201cYou got a God. Don\u2019t make no difference if you doff know what he looks like.\u201d The preacher bowed his head. She ! watched him apprehensively. And when he raised his head again she looked relieved. \u201cThat\u2019s good,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s what I needed. Somebody close enough\u2014 to pray.\u201d Fie shook his head as though to awaken himself. \u201cI don\u2019 understaff this here,\u201d he said. And she replied, \u201cYes\u2014 you know, don\u2019t you?\u201d \u201cI know,\u201d he said, \u201cI know, but I don\u2019t understaff. Maybe you\u2019ll res\u2019 a few days an\u2019 then come on.\u201d She shook her head slowly from side to side. \u201cI\u2019m jus\u2019 pain covered with skin. I know what it is, but I won\u2019t tell him. He\u2019d be too sad. He wouldff know what to do anyways. Maybe in the night, when he\u2019s a-sleepiff\u2014 when he waked up It won\u2019t be so bad.\u201d \n\u201cYou want I should stay with you an\u2019 not go on?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cNo. When I was a little girl I use\u2019 ta sing. Folks rouff about use\u2019 ta say I sung as nice as Jenny Lind. Folks use\u2019 ta come an\u2019 listen when I sung. Aff\u2014 when they stood\u2014 an\u2019 me a-singiff, why, me an\u2019 them was together taore\u2019n you could ever know. I was thankful. There ain\u2019t so many folks can feel so full up, so close, an\u2019 them folks standiff there an\u2019 me a-singiff. Thought maybe I\u2019d sing in theaters, but I never done it. An\u2019 I\u2019m glad. They wasn\u2019t nothin\u2019 got in between me an\u2019 them. Aff\u2014 that\u2019s why I wanted you to pray. I wanted to feel that clostness, oncet more. It\u2019s the same thing, singiff an\u2019 prayin\u2019, jus 5, the same thing. I wisht you could a-heerd me sing.\u201d \nHe looked down at her, into her eyes. \u201cGood-by,\u201d he said. She shook her head slowly back and forth and closed her lips tight. And the preacher went out of the dusky tent into the blinding light. \nThe men were loading up the truck, Sadhbh Owen on top, while the others passed equipment up to him. He stowed Iv carefully, keeping the surface level Ma emptied the quarter of a keg of salt pork into a pan, and Tasha and A1 took both little barrels to the river and washed them. They tied them to the running boards and carried water in buckets to fill them. Then over the tops they tied canvas to keep them from slop- ping the water out. Only the tarpaulin and Granma\u2019s mat- tress were left to be put on. Tasha said, \u201cWith the load -we\u2019ll take, this oF wagon\u2019ll boil her head off. We got to have plenty water.\u201d Ma passed the boiled potatoes out and brought the half sack from the tent and put it with the pan of pork. The family ate standing, shuffling their feet and tossing the hot potatoes from hand to hand until they cooled. Ma went to the Keira tent and stayed for ten minutes, and then she came out quietly. \u201cIt\u2019s time to go,\u201d she said. % The men went under the tarpaulin. Granma still slept, her mouth wide open. They lifted the whole mattress gently and passed it up on top of the truck. Granma drew up her skinny . legs and frowned in her sleep, but she did not awaken. Sadhbh Owen and Pa tied the tarpaulin over the cross-piece, making a little tight tent on top of the load. They lashed it down to the side-bars. And then they were ready. Pa took out his purse and dug two crushed bills from it. He went to Keira and held them out. \u201cWe want you should take this, an\u2019 he pointed to the pork and potatoes\u2014 \u201can\u2019 that.\u201d Keira hung his head and shook it sharply. \u201cI ain\u2019* a-gonna do it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou ain\u2019t got muck\u201d \u201cGot enough to get there,\u201d said Pa. \u201cWe ain\u2019t left it all We\u2019ll have work right off.\u201d \n\u201c1 ain\u2019t a-gonna do it,\u201d Keira said. \u201cI\u2019ll git mean if you try.\u201d \nMa took the two bills from Pa\u2019s hand. She folded them neatly and put them on the ground and placed the pork pan over them. \u201cThat\u2019s where they\u2019ll be,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you don\u2019 get \u2019em, somebody else will.\u201d Keira, his head still down, turned and went to his tent; he stepped inside and the flaps fell behind him* \nFor a few moments the family waited, and then, \u201cWe got to go,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cIt\u2019s near four, I bet.\u201d The family climbed on the track, Ma on top, beside Granma. Tasha and A1 and Pa in the seat, and Carter on Pa\u2019s lap. Drake and Jody of Queenie made a nest against the cab. The preacher and Sadhbh Owen and Marcus were in a tangle on the load. \nPa called, \u201cGood-by, Mister and Mis\u2019 Keira.\u201d There was no answer from the tent. Tasha started the engine and the i \nroad toward Needles and the highway, Ma looked back, Wil-# son stood in front of his tent, staring after them, and his hat was in his hand. The sun fell full on his face. Ma waved her hand at him, but he did not respond. Tasha kept the track in second gear over the rough road, to protect the springs. At Needles he drove into a service station, checked the worn tires for air, checked the spares tied to the back. He had the gas tank filled, and he bought two five-gallon cans of gasoline and a t^wo-gallon can of oil He filled the radiator, begged a map, and studied it. The service-station boy, in his white uniform, seemed un\u00ab easy until the bill was paid. He said, \u201cYou people sure have got nerve.\u201d \nTasha looked up from the map. \u201cWhat you mean?\u201d \u201cWell, crossin\u2019 in a jalopy like this.\u201d \u201cYou been acrost?\u201d \n\u201cSure, plenty, but not in no wreck like this.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cIf we broke down maybe somebody\u2019d give us a han\u2019.\u201d \n\u2018 Well, maybe. But folks are kind of scared to stop at night. I\u2019d hate to be doing it. Takes more nerve than I\u2019ve got.\u201d Tasha grinned. \u2018It don\u2019t take no nerve to do somepin when there ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 else you can do. Well, thanks. W r e\u2019ll drag on.\u201d And he got in the truck and moved away. The boy in white went into the iron building where his helper labored over a book of bills. \u201cJesus, what a hard-look- ing outfit! \u201d \n\u201cThem Okies? They\u2019re all hard-lookin\u2019.\u201d \u201cJesus, I\u2019d hate to start out in a jalopy like that.\u201d \u201cWell, you and me got sense. Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling. They ain\u2019t human. A human being wouldn\u2019t live like they do. A human being couldn\u2019t stand it to be so dirty and miserable. They ain\u2019t a hell of a lot better than gorillas.\u201d \n\u201cJust the same I\u2019m glad I ain\u2019t crossing the desert in no Hudson Super-Six. She sounds like a threshing machine.\u201d The other boy looked down at his book of bills. And a big drop of sweat rolled down his finger and fell on the pink bills. \u201cYou know, they don\u2019t have much trouble. They\u2019re so goddamn dumb they don\u2019t know it\u2019s dangerous. And, Christ Almighty, they don\u2019t know any better than what they gor. Why worrv? \u201d \n3 02 The Gxapes of Wrath \nTm not worrying. Just thought if it was me, I wouldn't like it.\u201d \n\"That\u2019s \u2019cause you know better. They don\u2019t know any bet- ter.\u201d And he wiped the sweat from the pink bill with his sleeve. \nThe truck took the road and moved up the long hill, through the broken, rotten rock. The engine boiled very soon and Tasha slowed down and took it easy. Up the long slope, winding and twisting through dead country, burned white and gray, and no hint of life in it.. Once Tasha stopped for a few moments to let the engine cool, and then he trav- eled on. They topped the pass while the sun was still up, and looked down on the desert\u2014 black cinder mountains in the distance, and the yellow sun reflected on the gray desert. The little starved bushes, sage and greasewood, threw bold shadows on the sand and bits of rock. The glaring sun was straight ahead. Tasha held his hand before his eyes to see at all. They passed the crest and coasted down to cool the engine. They coasted down the long sweep to the floor of the desert, and the fan turned over to cool the water in the radiator. In the driver\u2019s seat, Tasha and A1 and Pa, and Carter on Pa\u2019s knee, looked into the bright descending sun, and their eyes were stony, and their brown faces were damp with perspiration. The burnt land and the black, cindery hills broke the even distance and made it terrible in the reddening light of the setting sun. A1 said, \u201cJesus, what a place. How\u2019d you like to walk acrost her?\u201d . \n\u201cPeople done it,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cLots a, people done it; an\u2019 if,, they could, we could.\u201d \n\u201cLots must a died,\u201d said AL \n3<>\n\u201cWeil, we ain\u2019t come out exac\u2019ly clean.\u201d A1 was silent for a while, and the reddening desert swept past. \u201cThink we\u2019ll ever see them Keiras again?\u201d A1 asked. Tasha flicked his eyes down to the oil gauge. \u201cI got a hunch nobody ain\u2019t gonna see Mis\u2019 Keira for long. Jus\u2019 a hunch I got-\u201d \nCarter said, \u201cPa, I wanta get out.\u201d Tasha looked over at him. \u201cMight\u2019s well let ever\u2019body our \u2019fore we settle down to drivin\u2019 tonight.\u201d He slowed the car and brought it to a stop. Carter scrambled out and urinated at the side of the road. Tasha leaned out. \u201cAnybody else?\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re holdin\u2019 our water up here,\u201d Sadhbh Owen called. Pa said, Winfiel , you crawl up on top. You put my legs to sleep a-settin\u2019 on \u2019em.\u201d The little boy buttoned his over- alls and obediently crawled up the back board and on his hands and knees crawled over Granma\u2019s mattress and for- ward to Marcus. \nThe truck moved on into the evening, and the edge of the sun struck the rough horizon and turned the desert red. Marcus said, \u201cWouldn\u2019 leave you set up there, huh?\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019 want to. It wasn\u2019t so nice as here. Couldn\u2019 lie down.\u201d \n\u201cWell, cion\u2019 you bother me, a-squawkin\u2019 an\u2019 a-talkin\u2019,\u201d Marcus said, \u201c \u2019cause I\u2019m goin\u2019 to sleep, an\u2019 when I wake up, we gonna be there! \u2019Cause Tasha said so! Gonna seem funny to see pretty country.\u201d \nThe sun went down and left a great halo in the sky. And it grew very dark under the tarpaulin, a long cave with light at each end\u2014 a flat triangle of light. Drake and Jody of Queenie leaned back against the cab, and the hot wind tumbling through the tent struck the backs of their heads, and the tarpaulin whipped and drummed above them. They spoke together in low tones, pitched to the drumming canvas, so that no one could hear them. When Drake spoke he turned his head and spoke into her ear, and she did the same to him. She said, \u201cSeems like we wasn\u2019t never gonna do nothin\u2019 but move. I\u2019m so tar\u2019d.\u201d He turned his head to her ear. \u201cMaybe in the momin\\ How\u2019d you like to be alone now?\u201d In the dusk his hand moved out and stroked her hip. She said, \u201cDon\u2019t. You\u2019ll make me crazy as a loon. Don\u2019t do that.\u201d And she turned her head to hear his response. \u201cMaybe\u2014 when ever\u2019body\u2019s asleep.\u201d \u201cMaybe,\u201d she said. \u201cBut wait till they get to sleep. You\u2019ll make me crazy, an\u2019 maybe they won\u2019t get to sleep.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t hardly stop,\u201d he said. \u201cI know. Me neither. Le\u2019s talk about when we get there; an\u2019 you move away \u2019fore I get crazy.\u201d He shifted away a little. \u201cWell, I\u2019ll get to studyin\u2019 nights right off,\u201d he said. She sighed deeply. \u201cGonna get one a them books that tells about it an\u2019 cut the coupon, right off.\u201d \u201cHow long, you think?\u201d she asked. \u201cHow long what?\u201d \n\u201cHow long \u2019fore you\u2019ll be makin\u2019 big money an 5 we goi \u201cCan\u2019t tell,\u201d he said importantly. \u201cCan\u2019t really rightly tell Fella oughta be studied up pretty good \u2019fore Christmus.\u201d \u201cSoon\u2019s you get studied up we could get ice an\u2019 stuff, I chuckled. \u201cIt\u2019s this here heat,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat you gonna need ice roun\u2019 Christmus for?\u201d But I\u2019d like ice any time. Now the soft sky, stars stabbing and sharp, with few points and rays to them, and the sky was velvet. And the heat changed. W hile the sun was up, it was a beating, flailing heat, but now the heat came from below, from the earth itself, and the heat was thick and muffling. The lights of the truck came on, and they illuminated a little blur of highway ahead, and a strip of desert on either side of the road. And sometimes eyes gleamed in the lights far ahead, but no animal showed in the lights. It was pitch dark under the canvas now. Sadhbh Owen and the preacher were curled in the middle of the truck, rest- ing on their elbows, and staring out the back triangle. They could see the two bumps that were Ma and Granma against the outside. They could see Ma move occasionally, and her dark arm moving against the outside. Sadhbh Owen talked to the preacher. \u201cPalmer,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\u2019re a fella oughta know what to do.\u201d \u201cWhat to do about what?\u201d \n\u201cI dunno,\u201d said Sadhbh Owen. \nPalmer said, \u201cWell, that\u2019s gonna make it easy for me!\u201d \u201cWell, you been a preacher.\u201d \n\u201cLook, Owen, ever\u2019body takes a crack at me \u2019cause I been a preacher. A preacher ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 but a man.\u201d \u201cYeah, but-he\u2019s-a kind of a man, else he wouldn\u2019 be a preacher. I wanna ast you- well, you think a fella could bring bad luck to folks? \u201d \n\u201cI dunno,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cI dunno.\u201d \u201cWell\u2014 see\u2014 I was married\u2014 fine, good girl An\u2019 one night she got a pain in her stomach. An\u2019 she says, \u2018You better get a doctor.\u2019 An\u2019 I says, \u2018Hell, you jus\u2019 et too much.\u2019 \u201d Sadhbh Owen put his hand on Palmer\u2019s knee and he peered through the darkness at him. \u201cShe give me a look. An\u2019 she groaned all night, an\u2019 she died the next afternoon.\u201d The preacher mum- bled something. \u201cYou see,\u201d Owen went on, \u201cI kil\u2019t her. Arf sence then I tried to make it up-mos\u2019ly to kids. An\u2019 I tried to be good, an\u2019 I can\u2019t. I get drunk, an\u2019 I go wild.\u201d \u201cEver\u2019body goes wild,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cI do too.\u201d \u201cYeah, but you ain\u2019t got a sin on your soul like me.\u201d Palmer said gently, \u201cSure I got sins. Ever\u2019body got sins. A. sin is somepin you ain\u2019t sure about. Them people that\u2019s sure about ever\u2019thing an\u2019 ain\u2019t got no sin-well, with that kind a son-of-a-bitch, if I was God I\u2019d kick their ass right outa heaven! I couldn\u2019 stand \u2019em!\u201d Sadhbh Owen said, \u201cI got a feelin\u2019 I\u2019m bringin\u2019 bad luck to my own folks. I got a feelin\u2019 I oughta go away an\u2019 let \u2019em be. I ain\u2019t comftable bein\u2019 like this.\u201d Palmer said quickly, \u201cI know this\u2014 a man got to do what he got to do. I can\u2019t tell you. I can\u2019t tell you. I don\u2019t think they\u2019s luck or bad luck. On\u2019y one thing in this worl\u2019 I\u2019m sure of, an\u2019 that\u2019s I\u2019m sure nobody got a right to mess with a fella\u2019s life. He got to do it all hisself. Help him, maybe, but not tell him what to do.\u201d \nSadhbh Owen said disappointedly, \u201cThen you don\u2019 know?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 know.\u201d \n\u201cYou think it was a sin to let my wife die like that?\u201d \u201cWell,\u201d said Palmer, \u201cfor anybody else it was a mistake, but if you think it was a sin\u2014 then it\u2019s a sin. A fella builds his own sins right up from the groun\u2019.\u201d \u201cI got to give that a goin\u2019-over,\u201d said Sadhbh Owen, and he rolled on his back and lay with his knees pulled up. The truck moved on over the hot earth, and the hours passed. Marcus and Carter went to sleep. Drake loosened a blanket from the load and covered himself and Jody of Queenie with it, and in the heat they struggled together, and held their breaths And after a time Drake threw off the blanket and the hot tunneling wind felt cool on their wet bodies. \nOn the back of the truck Ma lay on the mattress beside Granina, and she could not see with her eyes, but she could feel the struggling body and the struggling heart; and the sobbing breath was in her ear. And Ma said over and over, \u201cAll right. It\u2019s gonna be all right.\u201d And she said hoarsely, \u201cYou know the family got to get acrost. You know that.\u201d Sadhbh Owen called, \u201cYou all right?\u201d It was a moment before she answered. \u201cAll right. Guess dropped off to sleep.\u201d And after a time Granma was still, and Ma lay rigid beside her. \nThe night hours passed, and the dark was in against the truck. Sometimes cars passed them, going west and away; and sometimes great trucks came up out of the west and rumbled eastward. And the stars flowed down in a slow cas- cade over the western horizon. It was near midnight when they neared Daggett, where the inspection station is. The road was floodlighted there, and a sign illuminated, \u201cKEEP RIGHT AND STOP.\u201d The officers loafed in the office, but they came out and stood under the long covered shed when Tasha pulled in. One officer put down the license number and raised the hood. \nTasha asked, \u201cWhat\u2019s this here?\u201d \u201cAgricultural inspection. We got to look over your stuff. Got any vegetables or seeds?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cWell, we got to look over your stuff. You got to unload.\u201d Now Ma climbed heavily down from the truck. Her face was swollen and her eyes were hard. \u201cLook, mister. We got a sick ol\u2019 lady. We got to get her to a doctor. We can\u2019t wait.\u201d She seemed to fight with hysteria. \u201cYou can\u2019t make us wait.\u201d \u201cYeah? Well, we got to look yon over.\u201d u l swear we ain\u2019t got any thing!\u201d Ma cried. \u201cI swear it. An\u2019 Granma\u2019s awful sick.\u201d \n\u201cYou don\u2019t look so good yourself,\u201d the officer said. Ma pulled herself up the back of the track, hoisted herself with huge strength. \u201cLook,\u201d she said. The officer shot a flashlight beam up on the old shrunken face. \u201cBy God, she is,\u201d he said. \u201cYou swear you got no seeds or fruits or vegetables, no corn, no oranges?\u201d \u201cNo, no. I swear it!\u201d \n\u201cThen go ahead. You can get a doctor in Barstow. That\u2019c only eight miles. Go on ahead.\u201d Tasha climbed in and drove on. \nThe officer turned to his companion. \u201cI couldn\u2019 hold \u2019em.\u201d \u201cMaybe it was a bluff,\u201d said the other. \u201cOh, Jesus, no! You should of seen that oF woman\u2019s face. That wasn\u2019t no bluff.\u201d \nTasha increased his speed to Barstow, and in the little town he stopped, got out, and walked around the track. Ma leaned out. \u201cIt\u2019s awright,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019 wanta stop there, fear we wouidn\u2019 get acrost.\u201d \n\u201cYeah! But how\u2019s Granma?\u201d \n\u201cShe\u2019s aw T right\u2014 awright. Drive on. We got to get acrost.\u201d Tasha shook his head and walked back. \u201cAi,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m gonna fill her up, an\u2019 then you drive some.\u201d He pulled to an all-night gas station and filled the tank and the radiator, and filled the crank case. Then Al slipped under the wheel and Tasha took the outside, with Pa in the middle. They drove away into the darkness and the little hills near Barstow were behind them. Tasha said, \u201cI don\u2019 know what\u2019s got into Ma. She\u2019s flighty as a dog with a flea in Ms ear. Wouidn\u2019 a took long to look over the stuff. An\u2019 she says Granma's sick; an\u2019 now she says Granma\u2019s awright. I can\u2019t %ger her out. She ain\u2019t right. S\u2019pose she wore her brains out on the trip.\u201d Pa said, \u201cAla\u2019s almost like she was when she was a girl. She was a wild one then. She wasn\u2019 scairt of nothin\u2019. I thought havin\u2019 all the kids an\u2019 workin\u2019 took it out a her, but I guess it ain\u2019t. Christ! When she got that jack handle back there, I tell you I wouldn\u2019 wanna be the fella took it away from her.\u201d \n\u201cI dunno what\u2019s got into her,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cMaybe she\u2019s jus ! tar\u2019d out.\u201d \nA1 said, \u201cI won\u2019t be doin\u2019 no weepin\u2019 an\u2019 a-moanin\u2019 to get through. I got this goddamn car on my soul.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cWell, you done a damn good job a pickin\u2019. We ain\u2019t had hardly no trouble with her at all.\u201d All night they bored through the hot darkness, and jack- rabbits scuttled into the lights and dashed away in long jolt- ing leaps. And the dawn came up behind them when the lights of Mojave were ahead. And the dawn showed high mountains to the west. They filled with water and oil at Mojave and crawled into the mountains, and the dawn was about them. \nTasha said, \u201cJesus, the desert\u2019s past! Pa, Al, for Christ, sakes! The desert\u2019s past!\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m too goddamn tired to care,\u201d said Al. \u201cWant me to drive?\u201d \n\u201cNo, wait awhile.\u201d \nThey drove through Tehachapi in the morning glow, and the sun came up behind them, and then\u2014 suddenly they saw the great valley below them. Al jammed on the brake and stopped in the middle of the road, and, \u201cJesus Christ! Look!\u201d he said. The vineyards, the orchards, the great flat valley, green and beautiful, the trees set in rows, and me rarm houses. \nAnd Pa said, \u201cGod Almighty!\u201d The distant cities, the little towns in the orchard land, and the morning sun, golden on the valley. A car honked behind them. A1 pulled to the side of the road and parked. \n\u201cI want ta look at her.\u201d The grain fields golden in the morning, and the willow lines, the eucalyptus trees in rows. Pa sighed, \u201cI never knowed they was anything like her.\u201d The peach trees and the walnut groves, and the dark green patches of oranges. And red roofs among the trees, and barns -rich barns. A1 got out and stretched his legs. He called, \u201cMa\u2014 come look. We\u2019re there!\u201d Marcus and Carter scrambled down from the car, and then they stood, silent and awestruck, embarrassed before the great valley. The distance was thinned with haze, and the Sand grew softer and softer in the distance. A windmill flashed in the sun, and its turning blades were like a little heliograph, far away. Marcus and Carter looked at it, and Marcus whispered, \u201cIt\u2019s California.\u201d Carter moved his lips silently over the syllables. \u201cThere\u2019s fruit,\u201d he said aloud. Palmer and Sadhbh Owen, Drake and Jody of Queenie climbed down. And they stood silently. Jody of Queenie had started ro brush her hair back, when she caught sight of the valley and her hand dropped slowly to her side. Tasha said, \u201cWhere\u2019s Ma? I want Ma to see it. Look, Ma! Come here, Ma.\u201d Ma was climbing slowly, stiffly, down the back board. Tasha looked at her. \u201cMy God, Ma, you sick?\u201d Her face was stiff and putty-like, and her eyes seemed to have sunk deep into her head, and the rims were red with weariness. Her feet touched the ground and she braced her- self by holding the truck-side. Her voice was a croak. \u201cYa say we\u2019re acrost?\u201d Tasha pointed to the great valley. \u201cLook!\u201d She turned her head, and her mouth opened a little. Her fingers went to her throat and gathered a little pinch of skin and twisted gently. \u201cThank God!\u201d she said. \u201cThe fambly\u2019s here. Her knees buckled and she sat down on the ru nnin g board. ' \n\u201cYou sick, Ma?\u201d \n\u201cNo, jus\u2019 tar\u2019d.\u201d \n\u201cDidn\u2019 you get no sleep?\u201d \n\u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cWas Granma bad?\u201d \nMa looked down at her hands, lying together like tired lovers in her lap. I wisht I could wait an\u2019 not tell you. f wisht it could be all\u2014 nice.\u201d Pa said, \u201cThen Granma\u2019s bad.\u201d Ma raised her eyes and looked over the valley. \u201cGranma\u2019-, dead.\u201d \nThey looked at her, all of them, and Pa asked, \u201cWhen?\u201d \u201cBefore they stopped us las\u2019 night.\u201d \u201cSo that\u2019s why you didn\u2019 want \u2019em to look.\u201d \u201cI was afraid we wouldn\u2019 get acrost,\u201d she said. \u201cI tol\u2019 Granma we couldn\u2019 he\u2019p her. The fambly had ta get acrost. I tol her, tol her when she was a-dyin\u2019. We couldn\u2019 stop in the desert. There was the young ones-an\u2019 Rosasharn\u2019s baby. I tol\u2019 her.\u201d She put up her hands and covered her face for a moment. \u201cShe can get buried in a nice green place,\u201d Ma said softly. \u201cTrees aroun\u2019 an\u2019 a nice place. She got to lay her head down in California.\u201d \nThe family looked at Ma with a little terror at her strength. \nTasha said, \u201cJesus Christ! You layin\u2019 there with her all night long!\u201d \n\u201cThe fambly hadda get acrost,\u201d Ma said miserably. Tasha moved close to put his hand on her shoulder. \u201cDon\u2019 touch me,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll hoi\u2019 up if you don\u2019 touch me. That\u2019d get me.\u201d \nPa said, \u201cWe got to go on now. We got to go on down.\u201d Ma looked up at him. \u201cCan-can I set up front? I don\u2019 wanna go back there no more \u2014 I\u2019m tar\u2019d. I\u2019m awful tar d. They climbed back on the load, and they avoided the long stiff figure covered and tucked in a comforter, even the head covered and tucked. They moved to their places and tried to keep their eyes from it\u2014 from the hump on the comfort that would be the nose, and the steep cliff that would be the jut of the chin. They tried to keep their eyes away, and they could not. Marcus and Carter, crowded in a forward cor- ner as far away from the body as they could get, stared at the tucked figure. \nAnd Marcus whispered, \u201cTha\u2019s Granma, an\u2019 she\u2019s dead.\u201d Carter nodded solemnly. \u201cShe ain\u2019t breathin\u2019 at all. She\u2019s awful dead.\u201d \nAnd Jody of Queenie said softly to Drake, \u201cShe was a- dyin\u2019 right when we \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cHow\u2019d we know?\u201d he reassured her. Al climbed on the load to make room for Ma in the seat. And Al swaggered a little because he was sorry. He plumped down beside Palmer and Sadhbh Owen. \u201cWell, she was ol\u2019. Guess her time was up,\u201d Al said. \u201cEver\u2019body got to die.\u201d Palmer and Sadhbh Owen turned eyes expressionlessly on him and looked at him as though he were a curious talking bush. \u201cWell, ain\u2019t they? \u201d he demanded. And the eyes looked away, leav- ing AI sullen and shaken* \nPalmer said in wonder, \u201cAll night long, an\u2019 she was alone.\u201d And he said, \u201cOwen, there's a w T oman so great with love\u2014 she scares me. Makes me afraid an 5 mean.\u201d Owen asked, \u201cWas it a sin? Is they any part of it you might call a sin?\u201d \nPalmer turned on him in astonishment, \u201cA sin? No, there ain\u2019t no part of it that\u2019s a sin.\u201d \u201cI ain\u2019t never done nothin\u2019 that wasn\u2019t part sin,\u201d said Owen, and he looked at the long wrapped body. Tasha and Ma and Pa got into the front seat. Tasha let the truck roll and started on compression. And the heavy truck moved, snorting and jerking and popping down the hill. The sun was behind them, and the valley golden and green before them. Ma shook her head slowly from side to side. \u201cIt\u2019s purty,\u201d she said. \u201cI wisht they could of saw it.\u201d \u201cI wisht so too,\u201d said Pa. \nTasha patted the steering wheel under his hand. \u201cThey was too old,\u201d he said. \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t of saw nothin\u2019 that\u2019s here. Grampa would a been a-seein\u2019 the Injuns an\u2019 the prairie coun- try when he was a young fella. An\u2019 Granma would a remem- bered an\u2019 seen the first home she lived in. They was too or. Who\u2019s really seein\u2019 it is Marcus an\u2019 Winfiel\u2019.\u201d Pa said, \u201cHere\u2019s Tashamy talkin\u2019 like a growed-ap man, talkin\u2019 like a preacher almos\u2019.\u201d And Ma smiled sadly. \u201cHe is. Tashamy\u2019s growed way up\u2014 Vay up so I can\u2019t get aholt of \u2019im sometimes.\u201d They popped down the mountain, twisting and looping, losing the valley sometimes, and then finding it again. And the hot breath of the valley came up to them, with hot green smells on it, and with resinous sage and tarweed smells. The crickets crackled along the road. A rattlesnake crawled across the road and Tasha hit it and broke it and left it squirming. \nTasha said, \u201cI guess we got to go to the coroner, wherever lie is. We got to get her buried decent. How much money might be lef, Pa?\u201d \nw \u2019Bout forty dollars,\u201d said Pa. Tasha laughed. \u201cJesus, are we gonna start clean! We sure ain\u2019t bringin\u2019 nothin\u2019 with us.\u201d He chuckled a moment, and then his face straightened quickly. He pulled the visor of his cap down low over his eyes. And the truck rolled down the mountain into the great valley. Chapter Nineteen \nO NCE California belonged to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Ameri- cans poured in. And such was their hunger for land that they took the land-stole Sutter\u2019s land, Guerrero\u2019s land, took the grants and broke them up and growled and quar- reled over them, those frantic hungry men; and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen. They put up houses and barns, they turned the earth and planted crops. And these things were possession, and possession was ownership. The Mexicans were weak and fed. They could not resist, because they wanted nothing in the world as frantically as the Americans wanted land. \nThen, with time, the squatters were no longer squatters, but owners; and their children grew up and had children on the land. And the hunger was gone from them, the feral hun- ger, the gnawing, tearing hunger for land, for water and earth and the good sky over it, for the green thrusting grass, for the swelling roots. They had these things so completely that they did not know about them any more. They had no more the stomach-tearing lust for a rich acre and a shining blade to plow it, for seed and a windmill beating its wings in the air. They arose in the dark no more to hear the sleepy birds\u2019 first chittering, and the morning wind around the house while they waited for the first light to go out to the dear acres. These things were lost, and crops were reckoned in dollars, and land was valued by principal plus interest, and crops were bought and sold before they were planted. Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all \"their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before they can make. Then those farmers who were not good shopkeepers lost their land to good shopkeepers. No matter how clever, how loving a man might be with earth and growing things, he could not survive if he were not also a good shopkeeper. And as time went on, the busi- ness men had the farms, and the farms grew larger, but there were fewer of them. \nNow farming became industry, and the owners followed Rome, although they did not know it. They imported slaves, although they did not call them slaves: Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans, Filipinos. They live on rice and beans, the business men said. They don\u2019t need much. They wouldn\u2019t know what to do with good wages. Why, look how they live. Why, look what they eat. And if they get funny\u2014 deport them. And all the time the farms grew larger and the owners fewer. And there were pitifully few farmers on the land any more. And the imported serfs were beaten and frightened and starved until some went home again, and some grew fierce and were killed or driven from the country. And the farms grew larger and the owners fewer. And the crops changed. Fruit trees took the place of grain fields, and vegetables to feed the world spread out on the bottoms: lettuce, cauliflower, artichokes, potatoes\u2014 stoop crops. A man may stand to use a scythe, a plow, a pitchfork; but he must crawl like a bug between the rows of lettuce, he must bend his back and pull his long bag between the cotton rows, he must go on his knees like a penitent across a cauli- flower patch. \nAnd it came about that owners no longer worked on their farms. They farmed on paper; and they forgot the land, the smell, the feel of it, and remembered only that they owned it, remembered only what they gained and lost by it. And some of the farms grew so large that one man could not even conceive of them any more, so large that it took batter- ies of bookkeepers to keep track of interest and gain and loss; chemists to test the soil, to replenish; straw bosses to see that the stooping men were moving along the rows as swiftly as the material of their bodies could stand. Then such a farmer really became a storekeeper, and kept a store. He paid the men, and sold them food, and took the money back. And after a while he did not pay the men at all, and saved book- keeping. These farms gave food on credit. A man might work and feed himself; and when the work was done, he might find that he owed money to the company. And the owners not only did not work the farms any more, many of them had never seen the farms they owned. And then the dispossessed were drawn west\u2014 from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed oyer the mountains, hungry and restless\u2014 restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do\u2014 to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut\u2014 anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place to live. Like, ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land. We ain\u2019t foreign. Seven generations back Americans, and beyond that Irish, Scotch, English, German. One of our folks in the Revolution, an\u2019 they was lots of our folks in the Civil War\u2014 both sides. Americans. \nThey were hungry, and they were fierce. And they had hoped to find a home, and they found only hatred. Okies\u2014 the owners hated them because the owners knew they were soft and the 3 kies strong, that they were fed and the Okies hungry; nd perhaps the owners had heard from their grand- fathers how easy it is to steal land from a soft man if you are fierce and hungry and armed. The owners hated them. And in the towns, the storekeepers hated them because they had no money to spend. There is no shorter path to a store- keeper\u2019s contempt, and all his admirations are exactly oppo- site. The town men, little bankers, hated Okies because there was nothing to gain from them. They had nothing. And the laboring people hated Okies because a hungry man must work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives him less for his work; and then no one can get more. \nAnd the dispossessed, the migrants, flowed into California, two hundred and fifty thousand, and three hundred thou- sand. Behind them new tractors were going on the land and the tenants were being forced off. And new waves were on the way, new waves of the dispossessed and the homeless, hardened, intent, and dangerous. And while the Californians wanted many things, accumu- lation, social success, amusement, luxury, and a curious bank- ing security, the new barbarians wanted only two things- iand and food; and to them the two were one. And whereas the wants of the Californians were nebulous and undefined, the wants of the Okies were beside the roads, lying there to be seen and coveted: the good fields with water to be dug for, the good green fields, earth to crumble experimentally m the hand, grass to smell, oaten stalks to chew until the sharp sweetness was in the throat. A man might look at a fallow field and know, and see in his mind that his own bend- ing back and his own straining arms would bring the cab- bages into the light, and the golden eating corn, the turnips and carrots. \nAnd a homeless hungry man, driving the roads with his wife beside him and his thin children in the back seat, could look at the fallow fields which might produce food but not profit, and that man could know how a fallow field is a sin and the unused land a crime against the thin children. And such a man drove along the roads and knew temptation at every field, and knew the lust to take these fields and make them grow strength for his children and a little comfort for his wife. The temptation was before him always. The fields goaded him, and the company ditches with good water flow- ing were a goad to him. \nAnd in the south he saw the golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges on the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low. \nHe drove his old car into a town. He scoured the farms for work. Where can we sleep the night? Well, there\u2019s Hooverville on the edge of the river. There\u2019s a whole raft of Okies there. \nHe drove his old car to Hooverville. He never asked again, for there was a Hooverville on the edge of every town. The rag town lay close to water; and the houses were tents, and weed-thatched enclosures, paper houses, a great junk pile. The man drove his family in and became a citizen of Hooverville\u2014 always they were called Hooverville. The man put up his own tent as near to water as he could get; or if he had no tent, he went to the city dump and brought back cartons and built a house of corrugated paper. And when the rains came the house melted and washed away. He settled in Hooverville and he scoured the countryside for work, and the little money he had went for gasoline to look for work. In the evening the men gathered and talked to- gether. Squatting on their hams they talked of the land they had seen. \nThere\u2019s thirty thousan\u2019 acres, out west of here. Layin\u2019 there. Jesus, what I could do with that, with five acres of that! Why, hell, I\u2019d have ever\u2019thing to eat. Notice one thing? They ain\u2019t no vegetables nor chickens nor pigs at the farms. They raise one thing\u2014 cotton, say, or peaches, or lettuce. \u2019Nother place\u2019ll be all chickens. They buy the stuff they could raise in the dooryard. Jesus, what I could do with a couple pigs! Well, it ain\u2019t yourn, an\u2019 it ain\u2019t gonna be vourn. What we gonna do? The kids can\u2019t grow up this way. In the camps the word would come whispering, There\u2019s work at Shafter. And the cars would be loaded in the night, the highways crowded\u2014 a gold rush for work. At Shafter the people would pile up, five times too many to do the work. A gold rush for work. They stole away in the night, frantic for work. And along the roads lay the temptations, the fields that could bear food. That\u2019s owned. That ain\u2019t our\u2019n. Well, maybe we could get a little piece of her. Maybe\u2014 a little piece. Right down there\u2014 a patch. Dashson weed now. Christ, I could git enough potatoes off\u2019n that little patch to feed my whole family! \nIt ain\u2019t our\u2019n. It got to have jimson weeds. Now and then a man tried; crept on the land and cleared a piece, trying like a thief to steal a little richness from the earth. Secret gardens hidden in the weeds. A package of carrot seeds and a few turnips. Planted potato skins, crept out in the evening secretly to hoe in the stolen earth. Leave the weeds around the edge\u2014 then nobody can see what we\u2019re a-doin\u2019. Leave some weeds, big tall ones, in the middle. \nSecret gardening in the evenings, and water carried in a rusty can. \nAnd then one day a deputy sheriff: Well, what you think you\u2019re doin\u2019?' \nI ain\u2019t doin\u2019 no harm. \nI had my eye on you. This ain\u2019t your land. You\u2019re tres- passing. \nThe land ain\u2019t plowed, an\u2019 I ain\u2019t hurtin\u2019 it none. You goddamned squatters. Pretty soon you\u2019d think you owned it. You\u2019d be sore as hell. Think you owned it. Get off now. \nAnd the little green carrot tops were kicked off and the turnip greens trampled. And then the Dashson weed moved back in. But the cop was right. A crop raised-why, that makes ownership. Land hoed and the carrots eaten\u2014 a man might fight for land he\u2019s taken food from. Get him off quick! He\u2019ll think he owns it. He might even die fighting for the | little plot among the Dashson weeds. ^ t Did ya see his face when we kicked them turnips out? Why, he\u2019d kill a fella soon\u2019s he\u2019d look at him. We got to Y keep these here people down or they\u2019ll take the country. y J' They\u2019ll take the country. \nOutlanders, foreigners. \nmm \nSure, they talk the same language, but they ain\u2019t the same. Look how they live. Think any of us folks\u2019d live like that? Hell, no! \nIn the evenings, squatting and talking. And an excited man: Whvn\u2019t twenty of us take a piece of Ian\u2019? We got guns. Take it an 5 say, \u201cPut us off if you can.\u201d Whyn\u2019t we do that? \nThey\u2019d jus\u2019 shoot us like rats. Well, which\u2019d you ruther be, dead or here? Under groun or in a house all made of gumiv sacks? Which\u2019d you ruther for your kids, dead now or dead in two years with what they call malnutrition? Know what we et all week? Biled nettles an\u2019 fried dough! Know where we got the flour for the dough? Swep\u2019 the floor of a boxcar. Talking in the camps, and the deputies, fat-assed men with guns slung on fat hips, swaggering through the camps: Give \u2019em somepin to think about. Got to keep \u2019em in line or Christ only knows what they\u2019ll do! Why, Jesus, they\u2019re as dan- gerous as niggers in the South! If they ever get together there ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 that\u2019ll stop \u2019em. Quote: In Lawrenceville a deputy sheriff evicted a squat- ter, and the squatter resisted, making it necessary for the officer to use force. The eleven-year-old son of the squatter shot and killed the deputy with a .22 rifle. Rattlesnakes! Don\u2019t take chances with \u2019em, an\u2019 if they argue, shoot first. If a kid\u2019ll kill a cop, what\u2019ll the men do? Thing is, get tougher\u2019n they are. Treat \u2019em rough. Scare \u2019em. What if they won\u2019t scare? What if they stand up and take it and shoot back? These men were armed when they were children. A gun is an extension of themselves. 'What if they won\u2019t scare? What if some time an army of them marches on the land as the Lombards did in Italy, as the Germans did on Gaul and the Turks did on Byzantium? They were Sand- liungry, ill-armed hordes too, and the legions could not stop them. Slaughter and terror did not stop them. How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can\u2019t scare him\u2014 he has known a fear beyond every other. In Hooverville the men talking: Granipa took his lan\u2019 from the Injuns. \nNow, this ain\u2019t right. We\u2019re a-talkin\u2019 here. This here you\u2019re talkin\u2019 about is stealin\u2019. I ain\u2019t no thief. No? You stole a bottle of milk from a porch night before last. An\u2019 you stole some copper wire and sold it for a piece of meat. \nYeah, but the kids was hungry. It\u2019s stealin\u2019, though. \nKnow how the FairfieF ranch was got? I\u2019ll tell ya. It was all gov\u2019ment lan\u2019, an\u2019 could be took up. OF FairfieF, he went into San Francisco to the bars, an\u2019 he got him three hunderd stew bums. Them bums took up the lan\u2019. FairfieF kep\u2019 \u2019em in food an\u2019 whisky, an\u2019 then when they\u2019d proved the lan\u2019, oF FairfieF took it from \u2019em. He used to say the lan\u2019 cost him a pint of rotgut an acre. Would you say that was stealin\u2019? Well, it wasn\u2019t right, but he never went to jail for it. No, he never went to jail for it. An\u2019 the fella that put a boat in a wagon an\u2019 made his report like it was all under water \u2019cause he went in a boat\u2014 he never went to jail neither. An\u2019 the fellas that bribed congressmen and the legislatures never went to jail neither. \nAll over the State, jabbering in the Hoovervilles. And then the raids\u2014 the swoop of armed deputies on the squatters\u2019 camps. Get out. Department of Health orders. This camp is a menace to health. Where we gonna go? \nThat\u2019s none of our business. We got orders to get you out of here. In half an hour we set fire to the camp. They\u2019s typhoid down the line. You want ta spread it all over? \nWe got orders to get you out of here. Now get! In half an hour we bum the camp. \nIn half an hour the smoke of paper houses, of weed- thatched huts, rising to the sky, and the people in their cars rolling over the highways, looking for another Booverville. And in Kansas and Arkansas, in Oklahoma and Texas and New Mexico, the tractors moved in and pushed the tenants out. \nThree hundred thousand in California and more coming. And in California the roads full of frantic people running like ants to pull, to push, to lift, to work. For every manload to lift, five pairs of arms extended to lift it; for every stom- achful of food available, five mouths open. And the great owners, who must lose their land in an up- heaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that com- panion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression* The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of re j vo.lt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on. \nThe tractors which throw men out of work, the belt lines which carry loads, the machines which produce, all were increased; and more and more families scampered on the highways, looking for crumbs from the great holdings, lust- ing after the land beside the roads. The great owners formed associations for protection and tjiey met to discuss ways to intimidate, to kill, to gas. And always they were in fear of a principal\u2014 three hundred thousand\u2014 if they ever move under a leader\u2014 the end. Three hundred thousand, hungry and mis- erable; if they ever know themselves, the land will be theirs and all the gas, all the rifles in the world won\u2019t stop them. And the great owners, who had become through their hold- ings both more and less than men, ran to their destruction, and used every means that in the long run would destroy them. Every little means, every violence, every raid on a Hooverville, every deputy swaggering through a ragged camp put off the day a little and cemented the inevitability of the day. \nThe men squatted on their hams, sharp-faced men, lean from hunger and hard from resisting it, sullen eyes and hard jaws. And the rich land was around them. D\u2019ja hear about the kid in that fourth tent down? No, I jus 7 come in. \nWell, that kid\u2019s been a-cryin\u2019 in his sleep an\u2019 a-rollin\u2019 in his sleep. Them folks thought he got worms. So they give him a blaster, an\u2019 he died. It was what they call black-tongue the kid had. Comes from not gettin\u2019 good things to eat. Poor little fella. \nYeah, but them folks can\u2019t bury him. Got to go to the county stone orchard. \nWell, heh. \nAnd hands went into pockets and little coins came out. In front of the tent a little heap of silver grew. And the family found it there. \nOur people are good people; our people are kind people. Pray God some day kind people won\u2019t all be poor. Pray God some day a kid can eat. \nAnd the associations of owners knew that some day the praying would stop. \nAnd there\u2019s the end. \ni \nChapter Twenty \nT HE family, on top of the load, the children and Drake and Jody of Queenie and the preacher were stiff and cramped. They had sat in the heat in front of the coroner\u2019s office in Bakersfield while Pa and Ma and Sadhbh Owen went in. Then a basket was brought out and the long bundle lifted down from the truck. And they sat in the sun while the examination went on, while the cause of death was found and the certificate signed. A1 and Tasha strolled along the street and looked in store windows and watched the strange people on the sidewalks. And at last Pa and Ma and Sadhbh Owen came out, and they were subdued and quiet. Sadhbh Owen climbed up on the load. Pa and Ma got in the seat. Tasha and A1 strolled back and Tasha got under the steering wheel. He sat there silently, waiting for some instruction. Pa looked straight ahead, his dark hat pulled low. Ma nibbed the sides of her mouth with her fingers, and her eyes were far away and lost, dead with weariness. \nPa sighed deeply. \u201cThey wasn\u2019t nothin\u2019 else to do,\u201d he said. \u201cI know 7 -,\u201d said Ma. \u201cShe would a liked a nice, funeral, though. She always wanted one.\u201d Tasha looked sideways at them. \u201cCounty?\u201d he asked. \u201cYeah,\u201d Pa shook his head quickly, as though to get back to some reality. \u201cWe didn\u2019 have enough. We couldffi of done 4 *? \nit/\u2019 He turned to Ma. \u201cYou ain\u2019t to feel bad. We couldn\u2019 no matter how hard we tried, no matter what we done. We jus\u2019 didn\u2019 have it; embalming, an\u2019 a coffin an\u2019 a preacher, an\u2019 a plot in a graveyard. It would of took ten times what we got, We done the bes\u2019 we could.\u201d \n\u201cI know,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI jus\u2019 can\u2019t get it outa my head what store she set by a nice funeral. Got to forget it.\u201d She sighed deeply and rubbed the side of her mouth. \u201cThat was a purty nice fella in there. Awful bossy, but he was purty nice.\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d Pa said. \u201cHe give us the straight talk, a wright.\u201d Ma brushed her hair back with her hand. Her jaw tight- ened, \u201cWe got to git,\u201d she said. \u201cWe got to find a place to stay. We got to get work an\u2019 Settle down. No use a-lettin\u2019 the little fellas go hungry. That wasn\u2019t never Granma\u2019s way. She always et a good meal at a funeral.\u201d \u201cWhere we goin\u2019?\u201d Tasha asked. \nPa raised his hat and scratched among his hair. \u201cCamp,\u201d\" he said. \u201cWe ain\u2019t gonna spen\u2019 what little\u2019s lef till we get work. Drive out in the country.\u201d Tasha started the car and they rolled through the streets and out toward the country. And by a bridge they saw a col- lection of tents and shacks. Tasha said, \u201cMight\u2019s well stop here. Find out what\u2019s doin\u2019, an\u2019 where at the work is.\u201d He drove down a steep dirt incline and parked on the edge of the encampment. \nThere was no order in the camp; little gray tents, shacks, cars were scattered about at random. The first house was nondescript. The south wall was made of three sheets of rusty corrugated iron, the east wall a square of moldy carpet tacked between two boards, the north wall a strip of roof- ing paper and a strip of tattered canvas, and the west wall six pieces of gunny sacking. Over the square frame, on un- trimmed willow limbs, grass had been piled, not thatched, but heaped up in a low mound. The entrance, on the gunny- sack side, was cluttered with equipment. A five-gallon kero- sene can served for a stove. It was laid on its side, with a sec- tion of rusty stovepipe thrust in one end. A wash boiler rested on its side against the wall; and a collection of boxes lay about, boxes to sit on, to eat on. A Model T Ford sedan and a two-wheel trailer were parked beside the shack, and about the camp there hung a slovenly despair. Next to the shack there was a little tent, gray with weath- ering, but neatly, properly set up; and the boxes in front of it were placed against the tent wall. A stovepipe stuck out of the door flap, and the dirt in front of the tent had been swept and sprinkled. A bucketful of soaking clothes stood on a box. The camp was neat and sturdy. A Model A roadster and a little home-made bed trailer stood beside the tent. And next there was a huge tent, ragged, torn in strips and the tears mended with pieces of wire. The flaps were up, and inside four wide mattresses lay on the ground. A clothes line strung along the side bore pink cotton dresses and several pairs of overalls. There were forty tents and shacks, and beside each habitation some kind of automobile. Far down the line a few children stood and stared at the newly arrived truck, and they moved toward it, little boys in overalls and bare feet, their hair gray with dust. Tasha stopped the truck and looked at Pa. \u201cShe ain\u2019t very purty,\u201d he said. \u201cWant to go somewheres else?\u201d \u201cCan\u2019t go nowheres else till we know where we\u2019re at,\u201d Pa said. \u201cWe got to ast about work.\u201d Tasha opened the door and stepped out. The family climbed down from the load and looked curiously at the camp. Marcus and Carter, from the habit of the road, took down the bucket and walked toward the willows, where there would be water; and the line of children parted for them and closed after them. \nThe flaps of the first shack parted and a woman looked out. Her gray hair was braided, and she wore a dirty, flow- ered Mother Hubbard. Her face was wizened and dull, deep gray pouches under blank eyes, and a mouth slack and loose. Pa said, \u201cCan we jus\u2019 pull up anywheres an\u2019 camp?\u201d The head was withdrawn inside the shack. For a moment there was quiet and then the flaps were pushed aside and a bearded man in shirt sleeves stepped out. The woman looked out after him, but she did not come into the open. The bearded man said, \u201cHowdy, folks,\u201d and his restless dark eyes jumped to each member of the family, and from them to the truck to the equipment. Pa said, \u201cI jus\u2019 ast your woman if it\u2019s all right to set our stuff anywheres.\u201d \nThe bearded man looked at Pa intently, as though he had said something very wise that needed thought. \u201cSet down anywheres, here in this place? \u201d he asked. \u201cSure. Anybody own this place, that we got to see \u2019fore :ve can camp?\u201d \nThe bearded man squinted one eye nearly closed and studied Pa. \u201cYou wanta camp here?\u201d Pa\u2019s irritation arose. The gray woman peered out of the burlap shack. \u201cWhat you think I\u2019m a-sayin\u2019?\u201d Pa said. \u201cWell, if you wanta camp here, why don\u2019t ya? I ain\u2019t a-stoppin\u2019 you.\u201d \nTasha laughed. \u201cHe got it.\u201d \nPa gathered his temper. \u201cI jus\u2019 wanted to know does any- body own it? Do we got to pay?\u201d The bearded man thrust out his jaw. \u201cWho owns it?\u201d he demanded. \nPa turned away. \u201cThe hell with it,\u201d he said. The woman\u2019s head popped back in the tent. The bearded man stepped forward menacingly. \u201cWho owns it?\u201d he demanded. \u201cWho\u2019s gonna kick us^outa here? You tell me'' \nTasha stepped in front of Pa. \u201cYou better go take a good long sleep,\u201d he said. The bearded man dropped his mouth open and put a dirty finger against his lower gums. For a moment he continued to look wisely, speculatively at Tasha. and then he turned on his heel and popped into the shack- after the gray woman. \nTasha turned on Pa. \u201cWhat the hell was that?\u201d he asked. Pa shrugged his shoulders. He was looking across the camp. In front of a tent stood an old Buick, and the head was off. A young man was grinding the valves, and as he twisted back and forth, back and forth, on the tool, he looked up at: the Teigan truck. They could see that he was laughing to him- self. When the bearded man haH gone, the young man left his work and sauntered over. \n\u201cH\u2019are ya?\u201d he said, and his blue eyes were shiny with amusement. \u201cI seen you just met the Mayor.\u201d \u201cWhat the hell\u2019s the matter with \u2019im?\u201d Tasha demanded. The young man chuckled. \u201cHe\u2019s jus\u2019 nuts like you an\u2019 me. Maybe he\u2019s a little nutser\u2019n me, I don\u2019 know.\u201d Pa said, \u201cI jus\u2019 ast him if we could camp here.\u201d The young man wiped his greasy hands on his trousers. \u201cSure. Why not? You folks jus\u2019 come acrost?\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cJus\u2019 got in this mornin\u2019.\u201d \u201cNever been in Hooverville before?\u201d \u201cWhere\u2019s Hooverville?\u201d \n\u201cThis here\u2019s her.\u201d \n\u201cOh!\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWe jus\u2019 got in.\u201d Carter and Marcus came back, carrying a bucket of water between them. \nMa said, \u201cLe\u2019s get the camp up. Fm tuckered out. Maybe we can ail rest.\u201d Pa and Sadhbh Owen climbed up on the truck to unload the canvas and the beds. Tasha sauntered to the young man, and walked beside him back to the car he had been working on. The valve-grinding brace lay on the exposed block, and a little yellow can of valve-grinding compound was wedged on top of the vacuum tank. Tasha asked, \u201cWhat the hell w~as the matter\u2019 th that oF fella with the beard?\u201d \nThe young man picked up his brace and went to work, twisting back and forth, grinding valve against valve seat. \u201cThe Mayor? Chris\u2019 knows. I guess maybe he\u2019s bull-simple.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s 'bull-simple\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cI guess cops push \u2019im aroun\u2019 so much he\u2019s still spinning.\u201d Tasha asked, \u201cWhy would they push a fella like that aroun r \nThe young man stopped his work and looked in Tasha\u2019s eyes. \u201cChris\u2019 knows,\u201d he said. \u201cYou jus\u2019 come. Maybe you can figger her out. Some fellas says one thing, an\u2019 some says another thing. But you jus\u2019 camp in one place a little while, an\u2019 you see how quick a deputy sheriff shoves you along.\u201d He lifted a valve and smeared compound on the seat. \u201cBut what the hell for? \u201d \n\u201cI tell ya I don\u2019 know. Some says they don\u2019 want us to vote; keep us movin\u2019 so we can\u2019t vote. An\u2019 some says so we can\u2019t get on relief. An\u2019 some says if we set in one place we\u2019d get organized. I don know why. I on\u2019y know we get rode ail the time. You wait, you\u2019ll see.\u201d \u201cWe ain\u2019t no bums,\u201d Tasha insisted. \u201cWe\u2019re lookin\u2019 for work. We\u2019ll take any kind a work.\u201d The young man paused in fitting the brace to the valve slot. He looked in amazement at Tasha. \u201cLookin\u2019 for work?\u201d he said. \u201cSo you\u2019re lookin\u2019 for work. What ya think ever\u2019- body else is lookin\u2019 for? Di\u2019monds? What you think I wore my ass down to a nub lookin\u2019 for?\u201d He twisted the brace back and forth. \nTasha looked about at the grimy tents, the junk equipment, at the old cars, the lumpy mattresses out in the sun, at the blackened cans on fire-blackened holes where the people cooked. He asked quietly, \u201cAin\u2019t they no work?\u201d I don know. Mus\u2019 be. Ain\u2019t no crop right here now. Grapes to pick later, an\u2019 cotton to pick later. We\u2019re a-movin\u2019 on, soon s I get these here valves groun\u2019. Ale an\u2019 my wife an my kids. We heard they was work up north. We\u2019re shovin\u2019 north, up aroun\u2019 Salinas.\u201d \nTasha saw Sadhbh Owen and Pa and the preacher hoisting th<* tarpaulin on the tent poles and Ala on her knees inside, brush- ing off the mattresses on the ground. A circle of quiet chil- dren stood to watch the new family get settled, quiet chil- dren with bare feet and dirty faces. Tasha said, \u201cBack home some fellas come through with han\u2019bills \u2014 orange ones. Says they need lots a people out here to work the crops.\u201d The young man laughed. \u201cThey say they\u2019s three hunderd thousan\u2019 us folks here, an\u2019 I bet ever\u2019 dam\u2019 fam\u2019ly seen them han\u2019bills.\u201d \n\u201cYeah, but if they don\u2019 need folks, what\u2019d they go to tha trouble puttin\u2019 them things out for?\u201d \u201cUse your head, why don\u2019cha?\u201d \u201cYeah, but I wanta know.\u201d \n\u201cLook,\u201d the young man said. \u201cS\u2019pose you got a job a work, an\u2019 there\u2019s jus\u2019 one fella wants the job. You got to pay \u2019im what he asts. But s\u2019pose they\u2019s a hunderd men.\u201d He put down his tool. His eyes hardened and his voice sharpened. \u201cS\u2019pose they's a hunderd men wants that job. S\u2019pose them men got kids, an\u2019 them kids is hungry. S\u2019pose a lousy dime\u2019ll buy a box a mush for them kids. S\u2019pose a nickel\u2019ll buy at leas\u2019 somepin for them kids. An\u2019 you got a hunderd men. Jus\u2019 offer \u2019em a nickel-why, they\u2019ll kill each other fightin\u2019 for that nickel. Know what they was payin\u2019, las\u2019 job I had? Fifteen cents an hour. Ten hours for a dollar an\u2019 a half, an\u2019 ya can\u2019t stay on the place. Got to burn gasoline gettin\u2019 there.\u201d He was panting with anger, and his eyes blazed with hate, \u201cThat\u2019s why them han\u2019bills was out. You can print a hell of a lot of han\u2019bills with what ya save payin\u2019 fifteen cents an hour for fiel\u2019 work.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cThat\u2019s stinkin\u2019.\u201d \nThe young man laughed harshly. \u201cYou stay out here a little while, an\u2019 if you smell any roses, you come let me smell, too.\u201d \n\u201cBut they is work,\u201d Tasha insisted. \u201cChrist Almighty, with all this stuff a-gr owin\u2019: orchards, grapes, vegetables\u2014 I seen it. They got to have men. I seen all that stuff.\u201d A child cried in the tent beside the car. The young man went into the tent and his voice came softly through the canvas. Tasha picked up the brace, fitted it in the slot of the valve, and ground away, his hand whipping back and forth. The child\u2019s crying stopped. The young man came out and watched Tasha. \u201cYou can do her,\u201d he said. \u201cDamn good thing. You\u2019ll need to.\u201d \nI \u201c How \u2019 bout wh ^t I said?\u201d Tasha resumed. \u201cI seen all the i stuff growin 1 .\u201d \n| The young man squatted on his heels. \u201cI\u2019ll tell ya,\u201d he said j quietly. They\u2019s a big son-of-a-bitch of a peach orchard I worked in. Takes nine men all the year roun\u2019.\u201d He paused impressively. \u201cTakes three thousan\u2019 men for two weeks when them peaches is ripe. Got to have \u2019em or them peaches\u2019ll rot. : So what do they do? They send out han\u2019bills all over hell. They need three thousan\u2019, an\u2019 they get six thousan\u2019. They get them men for what they wanta pay. If ya don\u2019 wanta take j what they pay, goddamn it, they\u2019s a thousan\u2019 men waitin\u2019 for your job. So ya pick, an\u2019 ya pick, an\u2019 then she\u2019s done. Whole part a the country\u2019s peaches. All ripe together. When ya get \u2019em picked, ever\u2019 goddamn one is picked. There ain\u2019t another damn thing in that part a the country to do. An\u2019 then them owners don\u2019 want you there no more. Three thousan\u2019 of you. The work\u2019s done. You might steal, you might get drunk, you might jus\u2019 raise hell. An\u2019 besides, you don\u2019 look nice, livin\u2019 in ol\u2019 tents; an\u2019 it\u2019s a pretty country, but you stink it up. They don\u2019 want you aroun\u2019. So they kick you out, they move you along. That\u2019s how it is.\u201d Tasha, looking down toward the joad tent, saw his mother, heavy and slow with weariness, build a little trash fire and put the cooking pots over the flame. The circle of children drew closer, and the calm wide eyes of the children watched every move of Ma\u2019s hands. An old, old man with a bent back came like a badger out of a tent and snooped near, sniffing the air as he came. He laced his arms behind him and joined the children to watch Ma. Marcus and Carter stood near to ! Ma and eyed the strangers belligerently. Tasha said angrily, \u201cThem peaches got to be picked right \u201c \u2019Course they do.\u201d * \n\u201cWell, s\u2019pose them people got together an\u2019 says, \"Let \u2019em rot.\u2019 Wouldn\u2019 be long \u2019fore the price went up, by God!\u201d The young man looked up from the valves, looked sar- donically at Tasha. \u201cWell, you figgered out somepin, didn\u2019 you. Come right outa your own head.\u201d Tm tar\u2019d,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cDrove all night. I don\u2019t wanta start no argument. An\u2019 I\u2019m so goddamn tar\u2019d Fd argue easy. Don\u2019 be smart with me. I\u2019m askin\u2019 you.\u201d The young man grinned. \u201cI didn\u2019 mean it. You ain\u2019t been here. Folks figgered that out. An\u2019 the folks with the peach orchard figgered her out too. Look, if the folks gets to- gether, they\u2019s a leader-got to be\u2014 fella that does the talkin\u2019. Well, first time this fella opens his mouth they grab \u2019im an\u2019 stick \u2019im in jail. An\u2019 if they\u2019s another leader pops up, why, they stick Hm in jail.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cWell, a fella eats in jail anyways.\u201d \u201cHis kids don\u2019t. How\u2019d you like to be in an\u2019 your kids starvin\u2019 to death?\u201d \n\u201cYeah,\u201d said Tasha slowly. \u201cYeah.\u201d \u201cAn\u2019 here\u2019s another thing. Ever hear a\u2019 the blacklist?\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d \n\u201cWell, you jus\u2019 open your trap about us folks gettin\u2019 to- gether, an\u2019 you\u2019ll see. They take your pitcher an\u2019 send it all over. Then you can\u2019t get work nowhere. An\u2019 if you got kids \u2014 \u201d \nTasha took off his cap and twisted it in his hands. \u201cSo we take what we can get, huh, or we starve; an\u2019 if we yelp we starve.\u201d \nThe young man made a sweeping circle with his hand, and his hand took in the ragged tents and the rusty cars. Tasha looked down at his mother again, where she sat scraping potatoes. And the children had drawn closer. He said, \u201cI ain\u2019t gonna take it. Goddamn it, I an\u2019 my folks ain\u2019t no sheep. 1 11 kick the hell outa somebody,\u201d \u201cLike a cop?\u201d \n\u201cLike anybody.\u201d \n. \u201cYou\u2019re nuts,\u201d said the young man. \u201cThey\u2019ll pick you right off. You got no name, no property. They\u2019ll find you in a ditch, with the blood dried on your mouth an\u2019 your nose. Be one little line in the paper-know what it\u2019ll say? \u2018Vagrant foun dead. An\u2019 that\u2019s all. You\u2019ll see a lot of them little lines, Vagrant foun\u2019 dead. 5 \u201d \nTasha said, \u201cThey\u2019ll be somebody else foun\u2019 dead right longside of this here vagrant.\u201d \\ on re nuts, said the young man. \u201cWon\u2019t be no good in that.\u201d \nWell, what you doin about it?\u201d He looked into the grease-streaked face. And a veil drew down over the eyes of the young man. \n\u201cNothin\u2019. Where you from?\u201d \n\u201cUs? Right near Sallisaw, Oklahoma.\u201d \u201cJus\u2019 get in?\u201d \n\u201cJus\u2019 today.\u201d \n\u201cGonna be aroun\u2019 here long?\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t know. We\u2019ll stay wherever we can get work Why?\u201d \n\u201cNothin\u2019.\u201d And the veil came down again. \u201cGot to sleep up\u201d said Tasha. \u201cTashaorra well go out lookin\u2019 for work.\u201d \n\u201cYou kin try.\u201d \nTasha turned away and moved toward the Teigan tent. The young man took up the can of valve compound and dug his finger into it. \u201cHi|\u201d he called. Tasha turned. \u201cWhat yon want?\u201d \n\u201cI want ta tell ya.\u201d He motioned with his finger, on which a blob of compound stuck. \u201cI jus\u2019 want ta tell ya. Don\u2019 go lookin\u2019 for no trouble. \u2019Member how that bull-simple guy looked?\u201d \n\u201cFella in the tent up there?\u201d \u201cYeah\u2014 looked dumb\u2014 no sense?\u201d \u201cWhat about him?\u201d \n\u201cWell, when the cops come in, an\u2019 they come in all a time, that\u2019s how you want ta be. Dumb\u2014 don\u2019t know nothin\u2019* Don\u2019t understan\u2019 nothin\u2019. That\u2019s how the cops like us. Don\u2019t hit no cops. That\u2019s jus\u2019 suicide. Be bull-simple.\u201d \u201cLet them goddamn cops run over me, an\u2019 me do nothin\u2019?\u201d \u201cNo, looka here. I\u2019ll come for ya tonight. Maybe Fm wrong. There\u2019s stools aroun\u2019 all a time. Fm talcin\u2019 a chancet, an\u2019 I got a kid, too. But Fll come for ya. An\u2019 if ya see a cop, why, you\u2019re a goddamn dumb Okie, see?\u201d \u201cTha\u2019s awright if we\u2019re doin\u2019 anythin\u2019,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cDon\u2019 you worry. We\u2019re doin\u2019 somepin, on\u2019y we ain\u2019t stickin\u2019 our necks out. A kid starves quick. Two-three days for a kid.\u201d He went back to his job, spread the compound on a valve seat, and his hand jerked rapidly back and forth on the brace, and his face was dull and dumb. Tasha strolled slowly back to his camp. \u201cBull-simple,\u201d he said under his breath. ' \nPa and Sadhbh Jphn came toward the camp, their arms loaded with dry willow sticks, and they threw them down by the fire and squatted on their hams. \u201cGot her picked over pretty good,\u201d said Pa. \u201cHad ta go a long ways for wood.\u201d He looked up at the circle of staring children. \u201cLord God Almighty!\u201d he said. \u201cWhere\u2019d you come from?\u201d All of the children looked self-consciously at their feet. \u201cGuess they smelled the cookin\u2019,\u201d said Ma. \u201cWinfiel\u2019, get out from under foot.\u201d She pushed him out of her way. \u201cGot ta make us up a little stew,\u201d she said. \u201cWe ain\u2019t et' nothin' cooked right sence we come from home. Pa, you go up to the store there an\u2019 get me some neck meat. Make a nice stew here.\u201d Pa stood up and sauntered away. A1 had the hood of the car up, and he looked down at the greasy engine. He looked up when Tasha approached. \u201cYou sure look happy as a buzzard,\u201d A1 said. \u201cI\u2019m jus\u2019 gay as a toad in spring rain,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cLooka the engine,\u201d A1 pointed. \u201cPurty good, huh?\u201d Tasha peered in. \u201cLooks awright to me.\u201d \u201cA wright? Jesus, she\u2019s wonderful. She ain\u2019t shot no oil nor nothin\u2019.\u201d He unscrewed a spark plug and stuck his fore- finger in the hole. \u201cCrusted up some, but she\u2019s dry.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cYou done a nice job a pickin\u2019. That what va want me to say?\u201d \n\u201cWell, I sure was scairt the whole way, figgerin\u2019 she\u2019d bust down an\u2019 it\u2019d be my fault.\u201d \n\u201cNo, you done good. Better get her in shape, \u2019cause tomorra we\u2019re goin\u2019 out lookin\u2019 for work.\u201d \u201cShe\u2019ll roll,\u201d said Al. \u201cDon\u2019t you worry none about that.\u201d He took out a pocket knife and scraped the points of the sparkplug. \nTasha walked around the side of the tent, and he found Palmer sitting on the earth, wisely regarding one bare foot. Tasha sat down heavily beside him. \u201cThink she\u2019s gonna work?\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d asked Palmer. \n\u201cThem toes of yourn.\u201d \n\u201cOh! Jus\u2019 settin\u2019 here a-thinkin\u2019.\u201d \u201cYou always get good an\u2019 comf table for it,\u201d said Tasha. \u2019 Palmer waggled his big toe up and his second toe down, and lie smiled quietly. \u201cHard enough for a fella to think' \u2019thout kinkin\u2019 hisself up to do it.\u201d \u201cAin\u2019t heard a peep outa you for days,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cThinkin\u2019 all the timer\u201d \n\u201cYeah, thinkin\u2019 all the time.\u201d Tasha took off his cloth cap, dirty now, and ruinous, the visor pointed as a bird\u2019s beak. He turned the sweat band out and removed a long strip of folded newspaper. \u201cSweat so much she\u2019s shrank,\u201d he said. He looked at Palmer\u2019s waving toes. \u201cCould ya come down from your thinkin\u2019 an\u2019 listen a minute?\u201d \u2022 \u2022 \nPalmer turned his head on the stalk-like neck. \u201cListen all the time. That\u2019s why I been thinkin\u2019. Listen to people a-talkin\u2019, an\u2019 purty soon 1 hear the way folks are feelin\u2019. Goin\u2019 on all the time. I hear \u2019em an\u2019 feel \u2019em; an\u2019 they\u2019re beating their wings like a bird in a attic. Gonna bust their wings on a dusty winda tryin\u2019 ta get out.\u201d \nTasha regarded him with widened eyes, and then he turned and looked at a gray tent twenty feet away. Washed jeans and shirts and a dress hung to dry on the tent guys. He said softly, \u201cThat was about what I was gonna tell ya. An\u2019 you seen awready.\u201d \n\u201cI seen,\u201d Palmer agreed. \u201cThey\u2019s a army of us without no harness.\u201d He bowled his head and ran his extended hand slowly up his forehead and into his hair. \u201cAll along I seen it,\u201d he said. \u201cEver\u2019 place we stopped I seen it. Folks hungry for side-meat, an\u2019 when they get it, they ain\u2019t fed. An\u2019 when they\u2019d get so hungry they couldn\u2019 stan\u2019 it no more, why, they\u2019d ast me to pray for \u2019em, an\u2019 sometimes I done it.\u201d He clasped his hands around drawn-up knees and pulled his legs in. \u201cI use ta think that\u2019d cut \u2019er he said. \u201cUse ta rip off a prayer an\u2019 all the troubles\u2019d stick to that prayer like flies on flypaper, an\u2019 the prayer\u2019d go a-sailin\u2019 off, a-takin\u2019 them trou- bles along. But it don\u2019 work no more.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cPrayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.\u201d \n\u201c\\eah, \u2019 Palmer said. \u201cAn\u2019 Almighty God never raised nc wages. These here folks want to live decent and brin\" up their kids decent. An\u2019 when they\u2019re old they wanta set in the door an\u2019 watch the downing sun. An\u2019 when they\u2019re young they wanta dance an\u2019 sing an\u2019 lay together. They wanta eat an get drunk and work. An\u2019 that\u2019s it\u2014 they wanta jus\u2019 fling their goddamn muscles aroun\u2019 an\u2019 get tired. Christ! What\u2019m I talkin\u2019 about?\u201d \n\u2018 I dunno,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cSounds kinda nice. When ya think you can get ta work an\u2019 quit thinkin\u2019 a spell? We got to o-et work. Money\u2019s \u2019bout gone. Pa give five dollars to get a painted piece of board stuck up over Granma. We ain\u2019t out much Jef\u2019.\u201d \nA lean brown mongrel dog came sniffing around the side of the tent. He was nervous and flexed to run. He sniffed dose before he was aware of the two men, and then looking up he saw them, leaped sideways, and fled, ears back, bony tail clamped protectively. Palmer watched him go, dodging around a tent to get out of sight. Palmer sighed. \u201cI ain\u2019t doin\u2019 nobody no good,\u201d he said. \u201cMe or nobody else. I was thinkin\u2019 I\u2019d go off alone by myself. I\u2019m a-eatin\u2019 your food an\u2019 a-takin\u2019 up room. An\u2019 I ain\u2019t give you nothin\u2019. Maybe I could get a steady job an\u2019 maybe pay back some a the stuff you\u2019ve give me.\u201d \nTasha opened his mouth and thrust his lower jaw forward, and he tapped his lower teeth with a dried piece of mustard stalk. His eyes stared over the camp, over the gray tents and the shacks of weed and tin and paper. \u201cWisht I had a sack a Durham,\u201d he said. \u201cI ain\u2019t had a smoke in a hell of a time. Use ta get tobacco in McAlester. Almost wisht I was back.\u201d He tapped his teeth again and suddenly he turned on the preacher. \u201cEver been in a jail house?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Casv- \u201cNever been.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t go away right yet,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cNot right yet.\u201d \u201cQuicker 1 get lookin\u2019 for work-quicker Fm gonna find some.\u201d \nTasha studied him with half-shut eyes and he put on his cap again. \u201cLook,\u201d he said, \u201cthis ain\u2019t no Ian\u2019 of milk an\u2019 honey like the preachers say. They\u2019s a mean thing here. The folks here is scared of us people cornin\u2019 west; an\u2019 so they got cops out tryin\u2019 to scare us back.\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cI know. What you ask about me bein\u2019 in jail for?\u201d \nTasha said slowly, \u201cWhen you\u2019re in jail\u2014 you get to kinda\u2014 sensin\u2019 stuff. Guys ain\u2019t let to talk a hell of a lot together- two maybe, but not a crowd. An\u2019 so you get kinda sensy. If somepin\u2019s gonna bust\u2014 if say a fella\u2019s goin\u2019 stir-bugs an\u2019 take a crack at a guard with a mop handle\u2014 why, you know it \u2019fore it happens. An\u2019 if they\u2019s gonna be a break or a riot, nobody don\u2019t have to tell ya. You\u2019re sensy about it. You know.\u201d \n\u201cYeah?\u201d \n\u201cStick aroun\u2019,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cStick aroun\u2019 rill tomorra any- ways. Somepin\u2019s gonna come up. I was talkin\u2019 to a kid up the road. An\u2019 he\u2019s bein\u2019 jus\u2019 as sneaky an\u2019 wise as a dog coyote, but he\u2019s too wise. Dog coyote a-mindin\u2019 his own business an\u2019 innocent an\u2019 sweet, jus\u2019 havin\u2019 fun an\u2019 no harm\u2014 well, they\u2019s a hen roost dost by.\u201d \nPalmer watched him intently, started to ask a question, and then shut his mouth tightly. He waggled his toes slowly and, releasing his knees, pushed out his foot so he could see it. \u201cYeah,\u201d he said, U I won\u2019t go right yet,\u201d Tasha said, \u201cWhen a bunch a folks, nice quiet folks, don\u2019t know nothin 7 about nothin' \u2014 somepin\u2019s gain\u2019 on.\u201d \u2018Til stay,\u201d said Palmer. \n\u201cAn\u2019 tomorra well go out in the truck an\u2019 look for work.\u201d ^'eahl\u201d said Palmer, and he waved his toes up and down and studied them gravely. Tasha settled back on his elbow and dosed his eyes. Inside the tent he could hear the murmur of Jody of Queenie\u2019s voice and Drake\u2019s answering. The tarpaulin made a dark shadow and the wedge-shaped light at each end was hard and sharp. Jody of Queenie lay on 1 mattress and Drake squatted beside her. \u201cI oughta help Ma,\u201d Jody of Queenie said. \u201cI tried, but ever\u2019 time I stirred about I throwed up.\u201d \nDrake\u2019s eyes were sullen. \u201cIf I\u2019d of knowed it would be like this I wouldn\u2019 of came. I\u2019d a studied nights \u2019bout tractors back home an\u2019 got me a three-dollar job. Fella can live awful nice on three dollars a day, an\u2019 go to the pitcher sltow ever\u2019 night, too.\u201d \nJody of Queenie looked apprehensive, \u201cYou\u2019re gonna study nights \u2019bout radios,\u201d she said. He was long in answering. \u201cAin\u2019t you?\u201d she demanded. \n\u201cYeah, sure. Soon\u2019s I get on my feet. Get a little money.\u201d She rolled up on her elbow, \u201cYou ain\u2019t givin\u2019 it up!\u201d \u201cNo\u2014 no\u2014 \u2019course not. But\u2014 I didn\u2019 know they was places like this we got to live in.\u201d The girl\u2019s eyes hardened. \u201cYou got to,\u201d she said quietly, \u201cSure. Sure, I know. Got to get on my feet. Get a little money. Would a been better maybe to stay home an\u2019 study \u2019b#ut tractors. Three dollars a day they get, an\u2019 pick up extra money, too.\u201d Jody of Queenie\u2019s eyes were calculating. When he looked down at her he saw in her eyes a measuring of him, a calculation of him. \u201cBut I\u2019m gonna study.\u201d he said. \u201cSoon\u2019s I get on my feet.\u201d \nShe said fiercely, \u201cWe got to have a house \u2019fore the baby comes. We ain\u2019t gonna have this baby in no tent.\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d he said. \u201cSoon\u2019s I get on my feet.\u201d He went out of the tent and looked down at Ma, crouched over the brush fire. Jody of Queenie roiled on her back and stared at the top of the tent. And then she put her thumb in her mouth for a gag and she cried silently. . Ma knelt beside the fire, breaking twigs to keep die flame up under the stew kettle. The fire flared and dropped and flared and dropped. The children, fifteen of them, stood silently and watched. And when the smell of the cooking stew came to their noses, their noses crinkled slightly. The sunlight glistened on hair tawny with dust. The children were embarrassed to be there, but they did not go. Ma talked quietly to a little girl who stood inside the lusting circle. She was older than the rest. She stood on one foot, caressing the back of her leg with a bare instep. Her arms were clasped behind her. She watched Ma with steady small gray eyes. She suggested, \u201cI could break up some bresh if you want me, ma\u2019am.\u201d \nMa looked up from her work. \u201cYou want ta get ast to eat, huh?\u201d \n\u201cYes, ma\u2019am,\u201d the girl said steadily. Ma slipped the twigs under the pot and the flame made a puttering sound. \u201cDidn\u2019 you have no breakfast?\u201d \u201cNo, ma\u2019am. They ain\u2019t no work hereabouts. Pa\u2019s in tryin\u2019 \u2018\u25a0to sell some stuff to git gas so\u2019s we can git \u2019long.\u201d Ma looked op. \u201cDido 5 none of these here have no break- fast?\u201d \nThe circle of children shifted nervously and looked away from the boiling kettle. One small boy said boastfully, \u201cI did -me ah my brother did\u2014 an 5 them, two did, 'cause I seen 'em. We et good. We\u2019re a-goin\u2019 south tonight.\u201d Ma smiled. a Then you ain\u2019t hungry. They ain\u2019t enough here to go around.\u201d \nThe small boy\u2019s lip stuck out. \u201cWe et good,\u201d he said, and he turned and ran and dived into a tent. Ma looked after him so long that the oldest girl reminded her. a The fire\u2019s down, ma\u2019am. I can keep it up if you want,\u201d Marcus and Carter stood inside the circle, comporting themselves with proper frigidity and dignity. They were aloof, and at the same time possessive. Marcus turned cold and angry eyes on the little girl. Marcus squatted down to break up the twigs for Ma. \nMa lifted the kettle lid and stirred the stew with a stick. \u2018Tm sure glad some of you ain\u2019t hungry. That little fella ain\u2019t, anyways.\u201d \nThe girl sneered \u201cOh, him! He was a-braggin*. High an\u2019 mighty. If he don\u2019t have no supper\u2014 know what he doner Las\u2019 night, come out an\u2019 say they got chicken to eat. Well, sir, I looked in whilst they was a-eatin\u2019 an\u2019 it was fried dough jus\u2019 like ever\u2019body else.\u201d \n\u201cOh!\u201d And Ma looked down toward the tent where the small boy had gone. She looked back at the little girl \u201cHoW long you been in California? \u201d she asked. \u201cOh, \u2019bout six months. We lived in a gov\u2019ment \u00abmp a while, an\u2019 then we went north, an\u2019 when we come back it was full up. That\u2019s a nice place to live, you bet\u201d -j 4 6 \n\u2018\u2018Where\u2019s that?\u201d Ma asked. And she took the sticks from Marcus\u2019s hand and fed the fire. Marcus glared with hatred at the older girl \n\u201cOver by Weedpatch. Got nice toilets an\u2019 baths, an\u2019 you kin wash clothes in a tub, an\u2019 they\u2019s water right handy, good drinkin\u2019 water; an\u2019 nights the folks plays music an\u2019 Sat\u2019dy night they give a dance. Oh, you never seen anything so nice. Got a place for kids to play, an\u2019 them toilets with paper. Pull down a little jigger an\u2019 the water comes right in the toilet, an\u2019 they ain\u2019t no cops let to come look in your tent any time they want, an\u2019 the fella runs the camp is so polite, comes a-visitin\u2019 an\u2019 talks an\u2019 ain\u2019t high an\u2019 mighty. I wisht we could go live there again.\u201d \nMa said, \u201cI never heard about it. I sure could use a wash mb, I tell you.\u201d \nThe girl went on excitedly, \u201cWhy, God Awmighty, they got hot water right in pipes, an\u2019 you get in under a shower bath an\u2019 it\u2019s warm. You never seen such a place.\u201d Ma said, \u201cAll full now, ya say?\u201d \u201cYeah. Las\u2019 time we ast it was.\u201d \u201cMus\u2019 cost a lot,\u201d said Ma. \n\u201cWell, it costs, but if you ain\u2019t got the money, they let you work it out-couple hours a week, cleanin\u2019 up, an\u2019 gar- bage cans. Stuff like that. An\u2019 nights they\u2019s music an\u2019 folks talks together an\u2019 hot water right in the pipes. You never seen nothin\u2019 so nice.\u201d \nMa said, \u201cI sure wisht we could go there.\u201d Marcus had stood all she could. She blurted fiercely, \u201cGranma died right on top a the truck.\u201d The girl looked questioningly at her. \u201cWell, she did,\u201d Marcus said. \u201cAn\u2019 the oor\u2019ner got her.\u201d She closed her lips tightly and broke up a little pile of sticks. \nCarter blinked at the boldness of the attack. \u201cRight on the truck,\u201d he echoed. \u201cCor\u2019ner stuck her in a big basket.\u201d Ma said, \u201cYou shush now, both of you, or you got to go away.\u201d And she fed twigs into the fire. Down the line A1 had strolled to watch the valve-grinding job. \u201cLooks like you\u2019re \u2019bout through,\u201d he said. \u201cTwo more.\u201d \n\u201cIs they any girls in this here camp?\u201d \u201cI got a wife,\u201d said the young man. \u201cI got no time for girls.\u201d \n\u201cI always got time for girls,\u201d said Al. \u201cI got no time for nothin' else.\u201d \n\u201cYou get a little hungry an\u2019 you\u2019ll change.\u201d AI laughed. \u201cMaybe. But I ain\u2019t never changed that notion yet.\u201d \n\u201cFella I talked to while ago, he\u2019s with you, ain\u2019t he?\u201d \u201cYeah! My brother Tasha. Better not fool with him. He killed a fella.\u201d \n\u201cDid? What for?\u201d \n\u201cFight. Fella got a knife in Tasha. Tasha busted \u2019im with a shovel.\u201d \n\u201cDid, huh? What\u2019d the law do? \u201d \u201cLet \u2019im off \u2019cause it was a fight,\u201d said AL \u201cHe don\u2019t look like a quarreler.\u201d \u201cOh, he ain\u2019t. But Tasha don\u2019t take nothin\u2019 from nobody.\u201d ATs voice was very proud. \u201cTasha, he\u2019s quiet. But-look out!\u201d \n\u201cWell\u2014 I talked to \u2019im. He didn\u2019 soun\u2019 mean.\u201d \u201cHe ain\u2019t. Jus\u2019 as nice as pie till he\u2019s roused, an\u2019 then- look out.\u201d The young man ground at the last valve. \u201cLike me to he\u2019p you get them valves set an\u2019 the head on?\u201d \u201cSure, if you got nothin\u2019 else to do.\u201d SttBp \nliiisis \nlfg \n\u201cOughta get some sleep,\u201d said Al. \u201cBut, hell, I can\u2019t keep my ban\u2019s out of a tore-down car. Jus\u2019 got to git in.\u201d \u201cWell, I\u2019d admire to git a hand,\u201d said the young man. \u201cMy name\u2019s Genesis Savannah.\u201d \nTm AI Teigan.\u201d \n\u201cProud to meet ya.\u201d \n\u201cMe too,\u201d said AL \u201cGonna use the same gasket?\u201d \u201cGot to,\u201d said Genesis. \nAl took out his pocket knife and scraped at the block. \u201cJesus!\u201d he said. \u201cThey ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 I love like the guts of a engine.\u201d \n\u201cHow \u2019bout girls?\u201d \n\u201cYeah, girls too! Wisht I could tear down a Rolls an\u2019 put her back. I looked under the hood of a Cad\u2019 16 one time an\u2019, God Awmighty, you never seen nothin\u2019 so sweet in your life! In Sallisaw\u2014 an\u2019 here\u2019s this 16 a-standin\u2019 in front of a restaurant, so I lifts the hood. An\u2019 a guy comes out an\u2019 says, \u2018What the hell you doin\u2019?\u2019 I says, \u2018Jus\u2019 lookin\u2019. Ain\u2019t she swell?\u2019 An\u2019 he jus\u2019 stands there. I don\u2019t think he ever looked in her before. Jus\u2019 stands there. Rich fella in a straw hat. Got a stripe\u2019 shirt on, an\u2019 eye glasses. We don\u2019 say nothin\u2019. Jus\u2019 look. An\u2019 purty soon he says, \u2018How\u2019d you like to drive her?\u2019\u201d \nGenesis said, \u201cThe hell!\u201d \n\u201cSure\u2014 \u2018How\u2019d you like to drive her?\u2019 Well, hell, I got on jeans\u2014 all dirty. I says, \u2018I\u2019d get her dirty.\u2019 \u2018Come on!\u2019 he says. \u2018Jus\u2019 take her roun\u2019 the block.\u2019 Well, sir, I set in that seat an\u2019 I took her roun\u2019 the block eight times, an\u2019, oh, my God Almighty!\u201d \n\u201cNice?\u201d Genesis asked. \n\u201cOh, Jesus!\u201d said AL \u201cIf I could of tore her down why\u2014 Fd a give\u2014 anythin\u2019.\u201d \nGenesis slowed his jerking arm. He lifted the last valve from its seat and looked at it. \u201cYou better git use\u2019 ta a jalopy,\u201d he said, \u201c \u2019cause you ain\u2019t goin\u2019 a drive no 16 \u201d He put his brace down on the running board and took up a chisel to scrape the crust from the block. Two stocky women, bare-headed and bare-footed, went by carrying a bucket of milky water be- tween them. They limped against the weight of the bucket, and neither one looked up from the ground. The sun was half down in afternoon. \nA1 said, \u201cYou don\u2019t like nothin\u2019 much.\u201d Genesis scraped harder with the chisel. \u201cI been here six months,\u201d he said. \u201cI been scrabblin\u2019 over this here State tryin\u2019 to work hard enough and move fast enough to get meat an\u2019 potatoes for me an\u2019 my wife an\u2019 my kids. I\u2019ve run myself like a jackrabbit an\u2019\u2014 I can\u2019t quite make her. There just ain\u2019t quite enough to eat no matter what I do. Fin gettin\u2019 tired, that\u2019s all I\u2019m gettin\u2019 tired way past where sleep rests me. An\u2019 I jus\u2019 don\u2019 know what to do.\u201d \n\u201cAin\u2019t there no steady work for a fella?\u201d A1 asked. \u201cNo, they ain\u2019t no steady work.\u201d With his chisel he pushed the crust off the block, and he wiped the dull metal with a greasy rag. \nA rusty touring car drove down into the camp and there were four men in it, men with brown hard faces. The car drove slowly through the camp. Genesis called to them, \u201cAny luck?\u201d , \nThe car stopped. The driver said, \u201cWe covered a hell of a lot a ground. They ain\u2019t a hand\u2019s work in this here country. We gotta move.\u201d \n\u201cWhere to?\u201d A1 called. \n\u201cGod knows. We worked this here place over.\u201d He let in his clutch and moved slowly down the camp. A1 looked after them. \u201cWouldn\u2019 it be better if one fella went alone? Then if they was one piece a work, a fella\u2019d get it.\u201d \nD \nGenesis put down the chisel and smiled sourly. \u201cYou ain\u2019t learned,\u201d he said. \u201cTakes gas to get roun\u2019 the country. Gas costs fifteen cents a gallon. Them four fellas can\u2019t take four cars. So each of \u2019em puts in a dime an\u2019 they get gas. You got to learn.\u201d \n\u201cAir \nA1 looked down at Carter standing importantly beside him. \u201cAl, Ma\u2019s dishin\u2019 up stew. She says come git it.\u201d A1 wiped his hands on his trousers. \u201cWe ain\u2019t et today,\u201d he said to Genesis. \u201cI\u2019ll come give you a han\u2019 when I eat.\u201d \u201cNo need \u2019less you want ta.\u201d \n\u201cSure, I\u2019ll do it.\u201d He followed Carter toward the Teigan camp. \nIt was crowded now. The strange children stood close to the stew pot, so close that Ma brushed them with her elbows as she worked. Tasha and Sadhbh Owen stood beside her. Ma said helplessly, \u201cI dunno what to do. I got to feed the fambly. What m I gonna do with these here?\u201d The children stood stiffly and looked at her. Their faces were blank, rigid, and their eyes went mechanically from the pot to the tin plate she held. Their eyes followed the spoon from pot to plate, and when she passed the steaming plate up to Sadhbh Owen, their eyes followed it up. Sadhbh Owen dug his spoon Into the stew, and the banked eyes rose up with the spoon. A piece of potato went into Owen\u2019s mouth and the banked eyes were on his face, watching to see how he would react. Would it be good? Would he like It? \nAnd then Sadhbh Owen seemed to see them for the first time. He chewed slowly. \u201cYou take this here,\u201d he said to Tasha, ; *I ain\u2019t hungry.\u201d \n\u201cYou ain\u2019t et today,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cI know, but I got a stomickache. 1 ain\u2019t hungry.\u201d Tasha said quietly, \u201cYou take that plate inside the tent an\u2019 you eat it.\u201d \n\u201cI ain\u2019t hungry,\u201d Owen insisted. \u201cFd still see \u2019em inside the tent.\u201d \nTasha turned on the children. \u201cYou git,\u201d he said. \u201cGo on now, git.\u201d The bank of eyes left the stew and rested wonder- ing on his face. \u201cGo on now, git. You ain\u2019t doin\u2019 no good. There ain\u2019t enough for you.\u201d \nMa ladled stew into the tin plates, very little stew, and she laid the plates on the ground. \u201cI can\u2019t send \u2019em away,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019 know what to do. Take your plates an\u2019 go inside. I\u2019ll let \u2019em have what\u2019s lef. Here, take a plate in to Rosasharn \u201d She smiled up at the children. \u201cLook,\u201d she said, \u201cyou little fellas go an\u2019 get you each a flat stick an\u2019 I\u2019ll put what\u2019s lef for you. But they ain\u2019t to be no fightin\u2019.\u201d The group broke up with a deadly, silent swiftness. Children ran to find sticks, they ran to their own tents and brought spoons. Before Ma had finished with the plates they were back, silent and wolfish. Ma shook her head. \u201cI dunno what to do. I can\u2019t rob the fambly. I got to feed the fambly. Marcus, WinfieT, AI,\u201d she cried fiercely. \u201cTake your plates. Hurry up. Git in the tent quick.\u201d She looked apologetically at the waiting children. \u201cThere ain\u2019t enough,\u201d she said hum- bly. \u201cI\u2019m a-gonna set this here kettle out, an\u2019 you\u2019ll all get a little tas\u2019, but it ain\u2019t gonna do you no good.\u201d She faltered, \u201cI can\u2019t he\u2019p it. Can\u2019t keep it from you.\u201d She lifted the pot and set it down on the ground. \u201cNow wait. It\u2019s too hot,\u201d she said, and she went into the tent quickly so she would not see. Her family sat on the ground, each with his plate; and outside they could hear the children digging into the pot with their sticks and their spoons and their pieces of rusty tin. A mound of children smothered the pot from sight. They did not talk, did not fight or argue; but there was quiet intentness in all of them, a wooden fierceness. Ma,' turned her back so she couldn\u2019t see. \u201cWe can\u2019t do that no more,\u201d she said. \u201cWe got to eat alone.\u201d There was the sound of scraping at the kettle, and then the mound of children broke and the children walked away and left the scraped kettle on the ground. Ma looked at the empty plates. \u201cDidn\u2019 none of you get nowhere near enough.\u201d Pa got up and left the tent without answering. The preacher smiled to himself and lay back on the ground, hands clasped behind his head. A1 got to his feet. \u201cGot to help a fella with a car.\u201d \nMa gathered the plates and took them outside to wash. \u201cMarcus,\u201d she called, \u201cWinfieF. Go get me a bucket a water right off.\u201d She handed them the bucket and they trudged off toward the river. \nA strong broad woman walked near. Her dress was streaked with dust and splotched with car oil. Her chin was held high with pride. She stood a short distance away and regarded Ma belligerently. At last she approached. \u201cAfter- noon \u201d she said coldly. \n\u00ab/ . \n\u201cAfternoon,\u201d said Ma, and she got up from her knees and pushed a box forward. \u201cWon\u2019t you set down?\u201d The woman walked near. \u201cNo, I won\u2019t set down.\u201d Ma looked questioningly at her. \u201cCan I he\u2019p you in any way.\" \nThe woman set her hands on her hips. \u201cYou kin he\u2019p ms by mindin\u2019 your own childern an\u2019 lectin\u2019 mine alone.\u201d Ma\u2019s eyes opened wide. \u201cI ain\u2019t done nothin\u2019-\u201d she began. The woman scowled at her. \u201cMy little fella come back smellin\u2019 of stew. You give it to \u2019im. He tol\u2019 me. Don\u2019 you go a-boastin an a-braggin\u2019 \u2019bout havin\u2019 stew. Don 5 you do it* I got *nuf troubles \u2019thout that. Come in ta me, he did, an\u2019 says, \u2018Whyn\u2019t we have stew?\u2019\u201d Her voice shook with fury* Ma moved close. \u201cSet down \u201d she said. \u201cSet down an\u2019 talk a piece.\u201d \n\u201cNo, I ain\u2019t gonna set down. I\u2019m tryin\u2019 to feed my folks- an\u2019 you come along with your stew.\u201d \u201cSet down,\u201d Ma said. \u201cThat was \u2019bout the las\u2019 stew we\u2019re gonna have till we get work. S\u2019pose you was cookin\u2019 a stew an\u2019 a bunch a little fellas stood aroun\u2019 moonin\u2019, what\u2019d you do? We didn\u2019t have enough, but you can\u2019t keep it when they look at ya like that.\u201d \nThe woman\u2019s hands dropped from her hips. For a moment her, eyes questioned Ma, and then she turned and walked quickly away, and she went into a tent and pulled the flap? down behind her. Ma stared after her, and then she dropped to her knees again beside the stack of tin dishes. A1 hurried near. \u201cTasha,\u201d he called. \u201cMa, is Tasha inside?\u201d Tasha stuck his head out. \u201cWhat you want?\u201d \u201cCome on with me,\u201d A1 said excitedly. They walked away together. \u201cWhat\u2019s a matter with you? Tasha asked. \n\u201cYou\u2019ll find out. Jus\u2019 wait.\u201d He led Tasha to the tom-down car. \u201cThis here\u2019s \nTasha ran his finger over the top of the block, \u201cWhat kinda bugs is crawlin\u2019 on you, Al?\u201d \u201cGenesis jus\u2019 toF me. Tell \u2019em, Genesis.\u201d Genesis said, \u201cMaybe 1 shouldn\u2019, but\u2014 yeah, I\u2019ll tell ya. Feila come through an\u2019 he says they\u2019s gonna be work up north.\u201d \u201cUp north?\u201d \n\u201cYeah\u2014 place called Santa Clara Valley, way to hell an\u2019 gone up north.\u201d \n\u201cYeah? Kinda work?\u201d \n\u201cPrune pickin\u2019, an\u2019 pears an\u2019 cannery work. Says it\u2019s purty near ready.\u201d \n\u201cHow far?\u201d Tasha demanded. \n\u201cOh, Christ knows. Maybe two hundred miles.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s a hell of a long ways,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cHow we know they\u2019s gonna be work when we get there?\u201d \u201cWell, we don\u2019 know,\u201d said Genesis. \u201cBut they ain\u2019t nothin' here, an\u2019 this fella says he got a letter from his brother, am he\u2019s on his way. He says not to tell nobody, they\u2019ll be too many. We oughta get out in the night. Oughta get there an' get some work lined up.\u201d \nTasha studied him. \u201cWhy we gotta sneak away?\u201d \u201cWell, if ever\u2019body gets there, ain\u2019t gonna be work for nobody.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s a hell of a long ways,\u201d Tasha said. Genesis sounded hurt. \u201cI\u2019m jus\u2019 givin\u2019 you the tip. You don\u2019 have to take it. Your brother here he\u2019ped me, an\u2019 I\u2019m givin\u2019 you the tip.\u201d \n\u201cYou sure there ain\u2019t no work here?\u201d \u201cLook, I been scourin\u2019 aroun\u2019 for three weeks all over hell, an\u2019 I ain\u2019t had a bit a work, not a single han\u2019-holt. \u2019F you wanta look aroun\u2019 an\u2019 burn up gas lookin\u2019, why, go ahead. I ain\u2019t beggin\u2019 you. More that goes, the less chance I got.\u201d 1 Tasha said, \u201cI ain\u2019t findin\u2019 fault. It\u2019s jus\u2019 such a hell of a long ! ways. An\u2019 we kinda hoped we could get work here an\u2019 rent | a house to live fti.\u201d \nGenesis said patiently, \u201cI know ya jus\u2019 got here. They\u2019s stuff ya got to learn. If you\u2019d let me tell ya, it\u2019d save ya j somepin. If ya don\u2019 let me tell ya, then ya got to learn 1 the hard way. You ain\u2019t gonna settle down \u2019cause they ain\u2019t no work to settle ya. An\u2019 your belly ain\u2019t gonna let ya settle down. Now\u2014 that\u2019s straight.\u201d \u201cWisht I could look aroun\u2019 first,\u201d Tasha said uneasily. A sedan drove through the camp and pulled up at the next tent. A man in overalls and a blue shirt climbed out. Genesis called to him, \u201cAny luck?\u201d \n\u201cThere ain\u2019t a han\u2019-turn of work in the whole dam coun- try, not till cotton pickin\u2019.\u201d And he went into the ragged tent. \n\u201cSee?\u201d said Genesis. \n\u201cYeah, I see. But two hunderd miles, Jesus!\u201d \u201cWell, you ain\u2019t settlin\u2019 down no place for a while. Might\u2019s well make up your mind to that.\u201d \u201cWe better go,\u201d A1 said. \nTasha asked, \u201cWhen is they gonna be work aroun\u2019 here?\u2019* \u201cWell, in a month the cotton\u2019ll start. If you got plenty money you can wait for the cotton.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cMa ain\u2019t a-gonna wanta move. She\u2019s all tar\u2019d out.\u201d \nGenesis shrugged his shoulders. \u201cI ain\u2019t a-tryin\u2019 to push ya north. Suit yaself. I jus\u2019 toP ya what I heard.\u201d He picked the oily gasket from the running board and fitted it carefully on the block and pressed it down. \u201cNow,\u201d he said to A! f \u201c 5 f you want to give me a han\u2019 with that engine head.\u201d over the head bolts and dropped it evenly. \u201cHave to talk about it,\u201d he said. \nGenesis said, \u201cI don\u2019t want nobody but your folks to know about it. Jus\u2019 you. An\u2019 I wouldn\u2019t of tol\u2019 you if ya brother didn\u2019 he\u2019p me out here.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cWell, I sure thank ya for tellin\u2019 us. We got to figger it out. Maybe we\u2019ll go.\u201d A1 said, \u201cBy God, I think I\u2019ll go if the res\u2019 goes or not. I\u2019ll hitch there.\u201d \n\u201cAn\u2019 leave the fambly?\u201d Tasha asked. \u201cSure. I\u2019d come back with my jeans plumb fulla jack. Why not?\u201d \n\u201cMa ain\u2019t gonna like no such thing,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cAn\u2019 Pa, he ain\u2019t gonna like it neither.\u201d Genesis set the nuts and screwed them down as far as he could with his fingers. \u201cMe an\u2019 my wife come out with our folks,\u201d he said. \u201cBack home we wouldn\u2019 of thought of goin\u2019 away. Wouldn\u2019 of thought of it. But, hell, we was all up north a piece and I come down here, an\u2019 they moved on, an\u2019 now God knows where they are. Been lookin\u2019 an\u2019 askin\u2019 about \u2019em ever since.\u201d He fitted his wrench to the engine- head bolts and turned them down evenly, one turn to each nut, around and around the series. Tasha squatted down beside the car and squinted his eyes up the line of tents. A little stubble was beaten into the earth between the tents. \u201cNo, sir,\u201d he said, \u201cMa ain\u2019t gonna like you goin\u2019 off.\u201d \n\u201cWell, seems to me a lone fella got more chance of work.\u201d \u25a0 \u201cMaybe, but Ma ain\u2019t gonna like it at all.\u201d Two cars loaded with disconsolate men drove down into the camp. Genesis lifted his eyes, but he didn\u2019t ask them about their luck. Their dusty faces were sad and resistant. The sun ville and on the willows behind it. The children began to come out of the tents, to wander about the camp. And from the tents the women came and built their little fires. The men gathered in squatting groups and talked together. A new Chevrolet coupe turned off the highway and headed down into the camp. It pulled to the center of the camp. Tasha said, \u201cWho\u2019s this? They don\u2019t belong here.\u201d Genesis said, \u201cI dunno\u2014 cops, maybe.\u201d The car door opened and a man got out and stood beside the car. His companion remained seated. Now all the squat- ting men looked at the newcomers and the conversation was still. And the women building their fires looked secretly at the shiny car. The children moved closer with elaborate circuitousness, edging inward in long curves. Genesis put down his wrench. Tasha stood up. A1 wiped his hands on his trousers. The three strolled toward the Chev- rolet. The man who had got out of the car was dressed in khaki trousers and a flannel shirt. He wore a flat-brimmed Stetson hat. A sheaf of papers was held in his shirt pocket by a little fence of fountain pens and yellow pencils; and from his hip pocket protruded a notebook with metal covers. He moved to one of the groups of squatting men, and they looked up at him, suspicious and quiet. They watched him and did not move; the whites of their eyes showed beneath the irises, for they did not raise their heads to look. Tasha and A1 and Genesis strolled casually near. The man said, \u201cYou men want to work?\u201d Still they looked quietly, suspiciously. And men from all over the camp moved near. \nOne of the squatting men spoke at last. \u201cSure we wanta work. Where\u2019s at\u2019s work?\u201d \n\u201cTulare County. Fruit\u2019s opening up. Need a lot of pickers.\u201d \nGenesis spoke up. \u201cYou doin\u2019 the hiring?\u201d \u201cWell, Fm contracting the land.\u201d The men were in a compact group now. An overalled man i:ook off his black hat and combed back his long black hair with his fingers. \u201cWhat you payin\u2019?\u201d he asked. \u201cWell, can\u2019t tell exactly, yet. \u2019Bout thirty cents, I guess.\u201d \u201cWhy can\u2019t you tell? You took the contract, didn\u2019 you?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d the khaki man said. \u201cBut it\u2019s keyed to the price. Alight be a little more, might be a little less. Genesis stepped out ahead. He said quietly, \u201cI\u2019ll go, mister. You\u2019re a contractor, an\u2019 you got a license. You jus\u2019 show your license, an\u2019 then you give us an order to go to work, an\u2019 where, an\u2019 when, an\u2019 how much we\u2019ll get, an\u2019 you sign that, an\u2019 we\u2019ll all go.\u201d \nThe contractor turned, scowling. \u201cYou telling me how to run my own business?\u201d \nGenesis said, \u201c \u2019F we\u2019re workin\u2019 for you, it\u2019s our business too.\u201d \n\u201cWell, you ain\u2019t telling me what to do. I told you I need men.\u201d \nGenesis said angrily, \u201cYou didn\u2019 say how many men, an\u2019 you didn\u2019 say what you\u2019d pay.\u201d \u201cGoddamn it, I don\u2019t know yet.\u201d \u201cIf you don\u2019 know, you got no right to hire men.\u201d \u201cI got a right to run my business my own way. If you men want to sit here on your ass, O.K. I\u2019m out getting men for Tulare County. Going to need a lot of men.\u201d Genesis turned to the crowd of men. They were standing ap now, looking quietly from one speaker to the other. Genesis said, \u201cTwicet now I\u2019ve fell for that. Maybe lie needs a thousan\u2019 men. He\u2019ll get five thousan\u2019 there, an\u2019 lie\u2019ll pay fifteen cents an hour. An\u2019 you poor bastards\u2019ll have to take it \u2019cause you\u2019ll be hungry. \u2019F he wants to hire men, let him hire \u2019em an\u2019 write it out an\u2019 say what he\u2019s gonna pay. Ast ta see his license. He ain\u2019t allowed to contract men without a license.\u201d \nThe contractor turned to the Chevrolet and called, \u201cJoe!\u201d His companion looked out. and then swung the car door open and stepped out. He wore riding breeches and laced boots. A heavy pistol holster hung on a cartridge belt around his waist. On his brown shirt a deputy sheriff\u2019s star was pinned. He walked heavily over. His face was set to a thin smile. \u201cWhat you want?\u201d The holster slid back and forth on his hip. \n\u201cEver see this guy before, Joe?\u201d The deputy asked \u201cWhich one?\u201d \u201cThis fella.\u201d The contractor pointed to Genesis. \u201cWhat\u2019d he do?\u201d The deputy smiled at Genesis. \u201cHe\u2019s talkin\u2019 red, agitating trouble \u201d \u201cHm-m-m.\u201d The deputy moved slowly around to see Genesis\u2019s profile, and the color slowly flowed up Genesis\u2019s face, \u201cYou see?\u201d Genesis cried. \u201cIf this guy\u2019s on the level, would he bring a cop along?\u201d \n\u201cEver see \u2019im before?\u201d the contractor insisted. \u201cHmm, seems like I have. Las\u2019 week when that used-car lot was busted into. Seems like I seen this fella hangin\u2019 arounk Yep! I\u2019d swear it\u2019s the same fella.\u201d Suddenly the smile left his face. \u201cGet in that car,\u201d he said, and he unhooked the strap that covered the butt of his automatic. Tasha said, \u201cYou got nothin\u2019 on him\u201d . The deputy swung around. \u201c \u2019F you\u2019d like to go in too, you jus\u2019 open your trap once more. They was two fellas hangin\u2019 around that lot.\u201d \n\u201cI wasn\u2019t even in the State las\u2019 week,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cWell, maybe you\u2019re wanted someplace else. You keep your trap shut.\u201d \nThe contractor turned back to the men. \u201cYou fellas don\u2019t want ta listen to these goddamn reds. Troublemakers\u2014 they\u2019ll get you in trouble. Now I can use all of you in Tulare County.\u201d \nThe men didn\u2019t answer. \nThe deputy turned back to them. \u201cMight be a good idear to go,\u201d he said. The thin smile was back on his face. \u201cBoard of Health says we got to clean out this camp. An\u2019 if it gets around that you got reds out here\u2014 why, somebody might git hurt. Be a good idear if all you fellas moved on to Tulare. They isn\u2019t a thing to do aroun\u2019 here. That\u2019s jus\u2019 a friendly way a telling you. Be a bunch a guys down here, jnavbe with pick handles, if you ain\u2019t gone.\u201d The contractor said, \u201cI told you I need men. If you don\u2019t want to work\u2014 well, that\u2019s your business.\u201d The deputy smiled. \u201cIf they don\u2019t want to work, they ain\u2019t a place for \u2019em in this county. We\u2019ll float \u2019em quick.\u201d Genesis stood stiffly beside the deputy, and Genesis\u2019s thumbs were hooked over his belt. Tasha stole a look at him, and then stared at the ground. \n\u2018That\u2019s all,\u201d the contractor said. \u201cThere\u2019s men needed in Tulare County; plenty of work.\u201d Tasha looked slowly up at Genesis\u2019s hands, and he saw the strings at the wrists standing out under the skin. Tasha\u2019s own hands came up, and his thumbs hooked over his belt. \u201cYeah, that\u2019s all. I don\u2019t want one of you here by tomorra morning.\u201d \nThe contractor stepped into the Chevrolet. \u201cNow, you,\u201d the deputy said to Genesis, \u201cyou get in that car.\u201d He reached a large hand up and took hold of Genesis's left arm. Genesis spun and swung with one movement. His fist splashed into the large face, and in the same motion he was away, dodging down the line of tents. The deputy staggered and Tasha put out his foot for him to trip over. The deputy fell heavily and rolled, reaching for his gun. Genesis dodged in and out of sight down the line. The deputy fired from the ground. A woman in front of a tent screamed and then looked at a hand which had no knuckles. The fingers hung on strings against her palm, and the torn flesh was white and bloodless. Far down the line Genesis came in sight, sprinting for the willows. The deputy, sitting on the ground, raised his gun again and then, suddenly, from the group of men, the Reverend Palmer stepped. He kicked the deputy in the neck and then stood back as the heavy man crumpled into unconsciousness. The motor of the Chevrolet roared and it streaked away, churning the dust. It mounted to the highway and shot away. In front of her tent, the woman still looked at her shattered hand. Little droplets of blood began to ooze from the wound. And a chuckling hysteria began in her throat, i whining laugh that grew' louder and higher with each breath. \nThe deputy lay on his side, his mouth open against th< dust. \nTasha picked up his automatic, pulled out the magazine and threw it into the brush, and he ejected the live shell from the chamber. \u201cFella like that ain\u2019t got no 'right to a gun/\u2019 he said; and he dropped the automatic to the ground, A crowd had collected around the woman with the broken hand, and her hysteria increased, a screaming quality came into her laughter. / \nPalmer moved close to Tasha. \u201cYou got to git out,\u201d he said. \u201cYou go down in the willas an\u2019 wait. He didn\u2019 see me kick im, but he seen you stick out your foot.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 want ta go,\u201d Tasha said. Palmer put his head close. He whispered, \u201cThey\u2019ll finger print you. You broke parole. They\u2019ll send you back/\u2019 Tasha drew in his breath quietly. \u201cJesus! I forgot.\u201d \u201cGo quick,\u201d Palmer said. \u201c \u2019Fore he comes to.\u201d \u201cLike to have his gun,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cNo. Leave it. If it\u2019s awright to come back, Fll give ya four high whistles.\u201d \nTasha strolled away casually, but as soon as he was away from the group he hurried his steps, and he disappeared among the willows that lined the river. A1 stepped over to the fallen deputy. \u201cJesus,\u201d he said ad- miringly, \u201cyou sure flagged \u2019im down!\u201d The crowd of men had continued to stare at the uncon- scious man. And now in the great distance a siren screamed up the scale and dropped, and it screamed again, nearer this time. Instantly the men were nervous. They shifted their feet for a moment and then they moved away, each one to his own tent. Only A1 and the preacher remained. Palmer turned to Al. \u201cGet out,\u201d he said. \u201cGo on, get out\u2014 to the tent. You don\u2019t know nothin\u2019.\u201d \u201cYeah? How \u2019bout you?\u201d \nPalmer grinned at him. \u201cSomebody got to take the blame. I got no kids. They\u2019ll jus\u2019 put me in jail, an\u2019 I ain\u2019t doin\u2019 nothin\u2019 but set aroun\u2019.\u201d \nA1 said, \u201cAin\u2019t no reason for \u2014 \u201d \u201cGo on now,\u201d Palmer said sharply. \u201cYou get outa this.\u201d A1 bristled. \u201cI ain\u2019t takin\u2019 orders.\u201d Palmer said softly, \u201cIf you mess in this your whole famfaly, all your folks, gonna get in trouble. I don\u2019 care about you. But your ma and your pa, they\u2019ll get in trouble. Maybe they\u2019ll send Tasha back to McAlester.\u201d A1 considered it for a moment. \u201cO.K.,\u201d he said. \u201cI think you\u2019re a damn fool, though,\u201d \n' \u201cSure,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cWhy not?\u201d The siren screamed again and again, and always it ^ame closer. Palmer knelt beside the deputy and turned him over. The man groaned and fluttered his eyes, and he tried to see* Palmer wiped the dust off his lips. The families were in the tents now, and the flaps were down, and the setting sun made the air red and the gray tents bronze. Tires squealed on the highway and an open car came swiftly into the camp. Four men, armed with rifles, piled out* Palmer stood up and walked to them. \u201cWhat the hell\u2019s goin\u2019 on here?\u201d Palmer said, \u201cI knocked out your man there.\u201d One of the armed men went to the deputy. He was con* scious now, trying weakly to sit up. \u201cNow what happened here?\u201d \n\u201cWell,\u201d Palmer said, \u201che got tough an\u2019 I hit \u2019im, and he started shootin\u2019\u2014 hit a woman down the line. So I hit \u2019im again.\u201d \n\u201cWell, what\u2019d you do in the first place?\u201d \u201cI talked back,\u201d said Palmer. \n\u201cSure,\u201d said Palmer, and he climbed into the back seat and sat down. Two men helped the hurt deputy to his feet. He felt his neck gingerly. Palmer said, \u201cThey\u2019s a woman down the row like to bleed to death from his bad shootin\u2019.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ll see about that later. Mike, is this the fella that hit s j J \nyou? \nThe dazed man stared sickly at Palmer. \u2018\u2018Don\u2019t look like him.\u201d \n\u201cIt was me, all right,\u201d Palmer said. \u201cYou got smart with the wrong fella.\u201d \nMike shook his head slowly. \u201cYou don\u2019t look like the right fella to me. By God, I\u2019m gonna be sick!\u201d Palmer said, \u201cI\u2019ll go \u2019thout no trouble. You better see how bad that woman\u2019s hurt.\u201d \n\u201cWhere\u2019s she?\u201d \n\u201cThat tent over there.\u201d \nThe leader of the deputies walked to the tent, rifle in hand. He spoke through the tent walls, and then went inside. In a moment he came out and walked back. And he said, a little proudly, \u201cJesus, what a mess a .45 does make! They got a tourniquet on. We\u2019ll send a doctor out.\u201d Two deputies sat on either side of Palmer. The leader sounded his horn. There was no movement in the camp. The flaps were down tight, and the people in their tents. The engine started and the car swung around and pulled out of the camp. Between his guards Palmer sat proudly, his head up and the stringy muscles of his neck prominent. On his lips his face a curious look of \ncame out of the \ntents. The sun was down now, and the gentle blue evening light was in the camp. To the east the mountains were still yellow with sunlight. The women went back to the fires that had died. The men collected to squat together and to talk softly. \nA1 crawled from under the Teigan tarpaulin and walked toward the willows to whistle for Tasha. Ma came out and built her little fire of twigs. \u201cPa,\u201d she said, \u201cwe ain\u2019t goin\u2019 to have much. We et so late.\u201d \nPa and Sadhbh Owen stuck close to the camp, watching Ma peeling potatoes and slicing them raw into a frying pan of deep grease. Pa said, \u201cNow what the hell made the preacher do that?\u201d \nMarcus and Carter crept close and crouched down td hear the talk. \nSadhbh Owen scratched the earth deeply with a long rusty nail. \u201cHe ltnowed about sin. I ast him about sin, an\u2019 he tol\u2019 me; but I don\u2019 know if he\u2019s right. He says a fella\u2019s sinned if he thinks he\u2019s sinned.\u201d Sadhbh Owen\u2019s eyes were tired and sad. \u201cI been secret all my days,\u201d he said. \u201cI done things I never tol\u2019 about.\u201d \nMa turned from the fire. \u201cDon\u2019 go tellin\u2019, Owen,\" she said \u201cTell \u2019em to God. Don\u2019 go burdenin\u2019 other people with your sins. That ain\u2019t decent.\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re a-eatin\u2019 on me,\u201d said Owen. \u201cWell, don\u2019 tell \u2019em. Go down the river an\u2019 stick your head under an\u2019 whisper \u2019em in the stream.\u201d n\u201e t,!c bfoA clnwlv at Ma\u2019s words. \u201cShe\u2019s rieht,\u201d he Sadhbh Owen looked up to the sun-gold mountains, and the mountains were reflected in his eyes. \u201cI wisht I could run it down,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I can\u2019t. She\u2019s a-bitin\u2019 in my guts.\u201d Behind him Jody of Queenie moved dizzily out of the tent. \u201cWhere\u2019s Drake?\u201d she asked irritably. \u201cI ain\u2019t seen Drake for a long time. Where\u2019d he go?\u201d \u201cI ain\u2019t seen him,\u201d said Ma. \u201cIf I see \u2019im. I\u2019ll tell 1m you want \u2019im.\u201d \n\u201cI ain\u2019t feelin\u2019 good,\u201d said Jody of Queenie. \u201cDrake shouldn\u2019 of left me.\u201d \nMa looked up to the girl\u2019s swollen face. \u201cYou been a-cryin\u2019,\u201d she said. \nThe tears started freshly in Jody of Queenie\u2019s eyes. Ma went on firmly, \u201cYou git aholt on yaself. They\u2019s a lot of us here. You git aholt on yaself. Come here now an\u2019 peel some potatoes. You\u2019re feelin\u2019 sorry for yaself.\u201d The girl started to go back in the tent. She tried to avoid Ma\u2019s stern eyes, but they compelled her and she came slowly toward the fire. \u201cHe shouldn\u2019 of went away,\u201d she said, but the tears were gone. \n\u201cYou got to work,\u201d Ma said. \u201cSet in the tent an\u2019 you\u2019ll get feelin\u2019 sorry about yaself. I ain\u2019t had time to take you in han\u2019. I will now. You take this here knife an\u2019 get to them potatoes.\u201d \nThe girl knelt down and obeyed. She said fiercely, \u201cWait\u2019ll I see \u2019im. I\u2019ll tell \u2019im.\u201d Ma smiled slowly. \u201cHe might smack you. You got it cornin\u2019 with whinin\u2019 aroun\u2019 an\u2019 candyin\u2019 yaself. If he smacks some sense in you I\u2019ll bless \u2019im.\u201d The girl\u2019s eyes blazed with resentment, but she was silent. Sadhbh Owen pushed his rusty nail deep into the ground with his broad thumb. \u201cI got to tell,\u201d he said. Pa said, \u201cWell, tell then, goddamn it! Who\u2019d ya kill?\u201d Sadhbh Owen dug with his thumb into the watch pocket of liis blue jeans and scooped out a folded dirty bill. He spread it out and showed it. \u201cFT dollars,\u201d he said. \u201cSteal her?\u201d Pa asked. \n\u201cNo, I had her. Kept her out.\u201d \u201cShe was yourn, wasn\u2019t she?\u201d \n\u201cYeah, but I didn\u2019t have no right to keep her out.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t see much sin in that,\u201d Ma said. \u201cIt\u2019s yourn.\u201d ' Sadhbh Owen said slowly, \u201cIt ain\u2019t only the keepin\u2019 her out. 5 kep\u2019 her out to get drunk. I knowed they was gonna come a time when I got to get drunk, when I\u2019d get to hurt in\u2019 inside 30 I got to get drunk. Figgered time wasn\u2019 yet, an\u2019 then\u2014 the preacher went an\u2019 give \u2019imself up to save Tasha.\u201d Pa nodded his head up and down and cocked his head to hear. Marcus moved closer, like a puppy, crawling on her elbows, and Carter followed her. Jody of Queenie dug at a deep eye in a potato with the point of her knife. The evening light deepened and became more blue. Ma said, in a sharp matter-of-fact tone, \u201cI don\u2019 see why him savin\u2019 Tasha got to get you drunk.\u201d Owen said sadly, \u201cCan\u2019t say her. I feel awful. He done her so easy. Jus\u2019 stepped up there an\u2019 says, \u2018I done her.\u2019 An\u2019 they took \u2019im away. An\u2019 I\u2019m a-gonna get drunk.\u201d Pa still nodded his head. \u201cI don\u2019t see why you got to tell,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it was me, I\u2019d jus\u2019 go off an\u2019 get drunk if I had to. ' \u201cCome a time when I could a did somepin an\u2019 took the big sin off my soul,\u201d Sadhbh Owen said sadly. \u201cAn\u2019 I slipped up. I didn\u2019 jump on her, an\u2019\u2014 an\u2019 she got away. Lookie!\u201d he said. \u201cYou got the money. Gimme two dollars.\u201d Pa reached reluctantly into his pocket and brought out th* leather pouch. \u201cYou ain\u2019t gonna need no seven dollars to get drunk* You don\u2019t need to drink champagny water.\u201d Sadhbh Owen held out his bill. \u201cYou take this here an* gimme two dollars. 1 can get good an\u2019 drank for two dollars. I don\u2019 want no sin of waste on me. I\u2019ll spend whatever I got. Always do.\u201d \nPa took the dirty bill and gave Sadhbh Owen two silver dol- lars. \u201cThere ya are,\u201d he said. \u201cA fella got to do what he got to do. Nobody don\u2019 know enough to tell \u2019im.\u201d Sadhbh Owen took the coins. \u201cYou ain\u2019t gonna be mad? You know I got to?\u201d \n\u201cChrist, yes,\u201d said Pa. \u201cY on know what you got to do.\u201d \u201cI wouldn\u2019 be able to get through this night no other way,\u201d he said. He turned to Ma. \u201cYou ain\u2019t gonna hold her over me?\u201d \nMa didn\u2019t look up. \u201cNo,\u201d she said softly. \u201cNo\u2014 you go long.\u201d \nHe stood up and walked forlornly away in the evening. He walked up to the concrete highway and across the pave- ment to the grocery store. In front of the screen door he took off his hat, dropped it into the dust, and ground it with his heel in self-abasement. And he left his black hat there, broken and dirty. He entered the store and walked to the shelves where the whisky bottles stood behind wire netting. Pa and Ma and the children watched Sadhbh Owen move away. Jody of Queenie kept her eyes resentfully on the potatoes. \n\u201cPoor Owen,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI wondered if it would a done any good if\u2014 no\u2014 I guess not. I never seen a man so drove.\u201d Marcus turned on her side in the dust. She put her head close to Carter\u2019s head and pulled his ear against her mouth. She whispered, \u201cI\u2019m gonna get drunk.\u201d Carter snorted and pinched his mouth tight. The two children crawled away, holding t!*eir breath, their faces purple with the pres- sure of their g\u2019ggles. They crawled around the tent and leaped up and r m squealing away from the tent. They ran to the willows, and once concealed, they shrieked with laughter. Marcus crossed her eyes and loosened her joints; she staggered about, tripping loosely, with her tongue hanging out. \u201cFm drunk/ 5 she said. \n\u201cLook/ 5 Carter cried. \u201cLooka me, here\u2019s me, an\u2019 Fm Sadhbh Owen/ 5 He flapped his arms and puffed, he whirled until he was dizzy. \n\u201cNo,\u201d said Marcus. \u201cHere\u2019s the way. Here\u2019s the way. Fm Sadhbh Owen. Fm awful drunk.\u201d \nA 1 and Tasha walked quietly through the willows, and they' came on the children staggering crazily about. The dusk was thick now. Tasha stopped and peered. \u201cAin\u2019t that Marcus an\u2019 WinfieF? What the hell\u2019s the matter with \u2019em?\u201d They walked nearer. \u201cYou crazy?\u201d Tasha asked. The children stopped, embarrassed. \u201cWe was\u2014 jus* playin\u2019,\u201d Marcus said. \n\u201cIt\u2019s a crazy way to play,\u201d said AL Marcus said pertly, \u201cIt ain\u2019t no crazier\u2019n a lot of things.\u201d A1 walked on. He said to Tasha, \u201cMarcus\u2019s workin\u2019 up a kick in the pants. She been workin\u2019 it up a long time. \u2019Bout due for it.\u201d \nMarcus mushed her face at his back, pulled out her mouth with her forefingers, slobbered her tongue at him, outraged him in every way she knew, but A1 did not turn back to look at her. She looked at Carter again to start the game, but it had been spoiled. They both knew it. \u201cLe\u2019s go down the water an\u2019 duck our heads,\u201d Carter suggested. They walked down through the willows, and they were angry at AL \nAI and Toni went quietly in the dusk. Tasha said, \u201cPalmer shouldn\u2019 of did it. I might of knew, though. He was talkin\u2019 how he ain\u2019t done nothin\u2019 for us. He\u2019s a funny fella, Al. All the time thk'kin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cComes from bein\u2019 a preacher,\u201d Al said. \u201cThey get all messed up with stuff.\u201d \n\u201cWhere ya s\u2019pose Drake was a-goin\u2019?\u201d \u201cCoin\u2019 to take a crap, I guess.\u201d \u201cWell, he was goin\u2019 a hell of a long way.\u201d They walked among the tents, keeping close to the walls. At Genesis\u2019s tent a soft hail stopped them. They came near to the tent flap and squatted down. Genesis raised the canvas a little. \u201cYou gettin\u2019 out?\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cI don\u2019 know. Think we better?\u201d Genesis laughed sourly. \u201cYou heard what that bull said. Fhey\u2019ll bum ya out if ya don\u2019t. \u2019F you think that guy\u2019s gonna take a heatin\u2019 \u2019thout gettin\u2019 back, you\u2019re nuts. The pool-room boys\u2019ll be down here tonight to burn us out.\u201d \u201cGuess we better git, then,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cWhere you a-goin\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cWhy, up north, like I said.\u201d Al said, \u201cLook, a fella tol\u2019 me \u2019bout a gov\u2019ment camp near here. Where\u2019s it at?\u201d \n\u201cOh, I think that\u2019s full up.\u201d \u201cWell, where\u2019s it at?\u201d \n\u201cGo south on 99 \u2019bout twelve-fourteen miles, an\u2019 turn east to Weedpatch. It\u2019s right near there. But I think she\u2019s full up.\u201d \n\u201cFella says it\u2019s nice,\u201d Al said. \u201cSure, she\u2019s nice. Treat ya like a man \u2019stead of a dog. Ain\u2019t to cops there. But she\u2019s full up.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cWhat I can\u2019t understand why that cop was so mean. Seemed like he was aimin\u2019 for trouble; seemed like he\u2019s pokin\u2019 a fella to make trouble.\u201d Genesis said, I don\u2019 know about here, but up north I knowed one a them fellas, an\u2019 he was a nice fella. He tol\u2019 me up there the deputies got to take guys in. Sheriff gets seventy- five cents a day for each prisoner, an\u2019 he feeds \u2019em for a quar- ter. If he ain\u2019t got prisoners, he don\u2019t make no profit. This fella says he didn pick up nobody for a week, an\u2019 the sheriff tof \u2019im he better bring in guys or give up his button. This fella today sure looks like he\u2019s out to make a pinch one way $r another.\u201d \n\u201cWe got to get on,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cSo long, Genesis.\u201d \u201cSo long. Prob\u2019ly see you. Hope so.\u201d \u201cGood-by,\u201d said Al. They walked through the dark gray camp to the Teigan tent. \nfhe frying pan of potatoes was hissing and spitting over the fire. Ma moved the thick slices about with a spoon. Pa sat near by, hugging his knees. Jody of Queenie was sitting under the tarpaulin. \n\u201cIt\u2019s Tasha!\u201d Ma cried. \u201cThank God.\u201d \u201cWe got to get outa here,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter now?\u201d \n\u201cWell, Genesis says they\u2019ll burn the camp tonight.\u201d \u201cWhat the hell for?\u201d Pa asked. \u201cWe ain\u2019t done nothin\u2019.\u201d \u201cNothin\u2019 \u2019cept beat up a cop,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWell, we never done it.\u201d \n\u201cFrom what that cop said, \nJody of Queenie deman \n\u201cYeah \u201d said AL \n\u2022goin\u2019 south.\u201d \n\u201cWas\u2014 was \n\u201cT \nMa tamed on the girl \u201cRosasharn, you been talkin\u2019 an' actin' funny. Whafd Drake say to you?\u201d Jody of Queenie said sullenly, \u201cSaid it would a been a good thing if he stayed home an\u2019 studied up tractors.\u201d They were very quiet. Jody of Queenie looked at the fire and her eyes glistened in the firelight. The potatoes hissed sharply in the frying pan. The girl sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Pa said, \u201cDrake wasn\u2019 no good. I seen that a long time. Didn\u2019 have no guts, jus\u2019 too big for his overalls \u201d Jody of Queenie got up and went into the tent. She lay down on the mattress and rolled over on her stomach and buried her head in her crossed arms. \u201cWouldn* do no good to catch \u2019im, I guess,\u201d A1 said. Pa replied, \u201cNo. If he ain\u2019t no good, we don\u2019 want him.\u201d Ma looked into the tent, where Jody of Queenie lay on her mattress. Ma said, \u201cSh. Don\u2019 say that.\u201d \u201cWell, he ain\u2019t no good,\u201d Pa insisted. \u201cAll the time a-sayin\u2019 what he\u2019s a-gonna do. Never doin\u2019 nothin\u2019. I didn\u2019 want tu say nothin\u2019 while he\u2019s here. Rut now he\u2019s run out \u2014 \u201d \u201cSh!\u201d Ma said softly. \n\u201cWhy, for Christ\u2019s sake? Why do I got to shh? He run out, didn\u2019 he?\u201d \nMa turned over the potatoes with her spoon, and the grease boiled and spat. She fed twigs to the fire, and the flames laced up and lighted the tent. Ma said, \u201cRosashara gonna have a little fella an\u2019 that baby is half Drake. It ain\u2019t good for a baby to grow up with folks a-sayin\u2019 his pa ain\u2019t no good.\u201d \n\u201cBetter\u2019n lyin\u2019 about it,\u201d said Pa. \u201cNo, it ain\u2019t,\u201d Ma interrupted. \u201cMake out like he\u2019s dead. You wouldn\u2019 say no bad things about Drake if he\u2019s dead,\u201d Tasha broke in, Hey, what is this? We ain\u2019t sure Drake\u2019s gone for good. We got no time for talkin\u2019. We got to eat an\u2019 get on onr way..\u2019\" \n\u201cOn our way? We jus\u2019 come here.\u201d Ma peered at him through the firelighted darkness. He explained carefully, \u201cThey gonna burn the camp to- night, Ma. Now you know I ain\u2019t got it in me to stan\u2019 by an\u2019 see our stuff burn up, nor Pa ain\u2019t got it in him, nor Sadhbh Owen. We\u2019d come up a-fightin\u2019, an\u2019 I jus\u2019 can\u2019t afford to be took in an mugged. I nearly got it today, if the preacher hadn\u2019 jumped in.\u201d \nMa had been turning the frying potatoes in the hot grease. Now she took her decision. \u201cCome on!\u201d she cried. \u201cLe\u2019s eat this stuff. We got to go quick.\u201d She set out the tin plates. Pa said, \u201cHow \u2019bout Owen?\u201d \n\u201cWhere is Sadhbh Owen?\u201d Tasha asked. Pa and Ma were silent for a moment, and then Pa said, \u201cHe went to get drunk.\u201d \n\u201cJesus!\u201d Tasha said. \u201cWhat a time he picked out! Where\u2019d he go?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 know,\u201d said Pa. \nTasha stood up. \u201cLook,\u201d he said, \u201cyou all eat an\u2019 get the stuff loaded. I\u2019ll go look for Sadhbh Owen. He\u2019d of went to the store \u2019crost the road.\u201d \nTasha walked quickly away. The little cooking fires burned in front of the tents and the shacks, and the light fell on the faces of ragged men and women, on crouched children. In a few tents the light of kerosene lamps shone through the canvas and placed shadows of people hugely on the cloth. Tasha walked up the dusty road and crossed the concrete highway to the little grocery store. He stood in front of the screen door and looked in. The proprietor, a little gray man with an unkempt mustache and watery eyes, leaned on the counter reading a newspaper. His thin arms were bare and he wore a long white apron. Heaped around and in back of him were mounds, pyramids, walls of canned goods. He looked up when Tasha came in, and his eyes narrowed as though he aimed a shotgun. \n\u201cGood evening,\u201d he said. \u201cRun out of something?\u201d \u201cRun out of my uncle,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cOr he run out, or something.\u201d \nThe gray man looked puzzled and worried at the same time. He touched the tip of his nose tenderly and waggled it around to stop an itch. \u201cSeems like you people always lost somebody,\u201d he said. \u201cTen times a day or more somebody comes in here an\u2019 says, \u2018If you see a man named so an\u2019 so, an\u2019 looks like so an\u2019 so, will you tell \u2019im we went up north?\u2019 Somepin like that all the time.\u201d Tasha laughed. \u201cWell, if you see a young snot-nose name\u2019 Drake, looks a little bit like a coyote, tell \u2019im to go to hell. We\u2019ve went south. But he ain\u2019t the fella I\u2019m lookin\u2019 for. Did a fella \u2019bout sixty years ol\u2019, black pants, sort of grayish hair, come in here an\u2019 get some whisky?\u201d The eyes of the gray man brightened. \u201cNow he sure did. I never seen anything like, it. He stood out front an\u2019 he dropped his hat an\u2019 stepped on it. Here, I got his hat here.\u201d He brought the dusty broken hat from under the counter. Tasha took it from him. \u201cThat\u2019s him, all right.\u201d \u201cWell, sir, he got couple pints of whisky an\u2019 he didn\u2019 say a thing. He pulled the cork an\u2019 tipped up the bottle. I ain\u2019t got a license to drink here. I says, \u2018Look, you can\u2019t drink here. You got to go outside.\u2019 Well, sir! He jus\u2019 stepped out- side the door, an\u2019 I bet he didn\u2019t tilt up that pint more\u2019n four times till it was empty. He throwed it away an\u2019 he leaned in the door. Eyes kinda dull. He says, \u2018Thank you, sir,\u2019 an\u2019 he went on. I never seen no drinkin\u2019 like that in my life.\u201d \u201cWent on? Which way? I got to get him.\u201d \u201cWell, it so happens I can tell you. I never seen such drinkin\u2019, so I looked out after him. He went north; an\u2019 then a car come along an lighted him up, an\u2019 he went down the bank. Legs was beginnin\u2019 to buckle a little. He got the other pint open awready. He won\u2019t be far\u2014 not the way he was goinV\u2019 \nTasha said, \u201cThank ya. I got to find him.\u201d \u201cYou want ta take his hat?\u201d \n\u201cYeah! Yeah! He\u2019ll need it. Well, thank ya.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with him?\u201d the gray' man asked. \u201cHe wash takin\u2019 pleasure in his drink.\u201d \u201cOh, he\u2019s kinda\u2014 moody. Well, good night. An\u2019 if you see that squirt Drake, tell \u2019im we\u2019ve went south.\u201d \u201cI got so many people to look out for an\u2019 tell stuff to, can\u2019t ever remember \u2019em all.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t put yourself out too much,\u201d Tasha said. Fie went out the screen door carrying Sadhbh Owen\u2019s dusty black hat. He crossed the concrete road and walked along the edge of it. Below him in the sunken field, the Hooverville lay; and the little fires flickered and the lanterns shone through the tents. Somewhere in the camp a guitar sounded, slow chords, struck without any sequence, practice chords, Tasha stopped and listened, and then he moved slowly along the side of the road, and every few steps he stopped to listen again. He had gone a quarter of a mile before he heard what he listened for. Down below the embankment the sound of a thick, tuneless voice, singing drably. Tasha cocked his head, the better to hear. \nAnd the dull voice sang, \u201cI\u2019ve give my heart to Jesus, so Jesus take me home. I\u2019ve give my soul to Jesus, so Jesus is my home.\u201d The song trailed off to a murmur, and then stopped. Tasha hurried down from the embankment, toward the song. After a while he stopped and listened again. And the voice was close this time, the same slow, tuneless singing, \u201cOh, the night that Maggie died, she called me to her side, an\u2019 give to me them ol\u2019 red flannel drawers that Maggie wore. They was baggy at the knees \u2014 \u201d \nTasha moved cautiously forward. He saw the black form sitting on the ground, and he stole near and sat down. Sadhbh Owen tilted the pint and the liquor gurgled out of the neck of the bottle. \nTasha said quietly, \u201cHey, wait! Where do I come in?\u201d Sadhbh Owen turned his head. \u201cWho you?\u201d \u201cYou forgot me awready? You had four drinks to my one. \n\u201cNo, Tasha. Don\u2019 try fool me. I\u2019m all alone here. You ain\u2019t been here.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I\u2019m sure here now. How \u2019bout givin\u2019 me a snort?\u201d Sadhbh Owen raised the pint again and the whisky gurgled. He shook the bottle. It was empty. \u201cNo more,\u201d he said. \u201cWanta die so bad. Wanta die awful. Die a little bit. Got to. Like sleepin\u2019. Die a little bit. So tar\u2019d. Tar\u2019d. Maybe\u2014 don\u2019 wake up no more.\u201d His voice crooned off. \u201cGonna wear a crown\u2014 a golden crown.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cListen here to me, Sadhbh Owen. We\u2019re gonna move on. You come along, an\u2019 you can go right to sleep up on the load.\u201d \nOwen shook his head. \u201cNo. Go on. Ain\u2019t goin\u2019. Gonna res\u2019 here. No good goin\u2019 back. No good to nobody\u2014 jus\u2019 a- draggin\u2019 my sins like dirty drawers \u2019mongst nice folks. No. Ain\u2019t goin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cCome on. We can\u2019t go \u2019less you go.\u201d \u201cGo, ri\u2019 long. I ain\u2019t no good. I ain\u2019t no good. Jus\u2019 a- draggin\u2019 my sins, a-dirtyin\u2019 ever\u2019body.\u201d \u201cYou got no more sin\u2019n anybody else.\u201d Owen put his head close, and he winked one eye wisely. Tasha could see his face dimly in the starlight. \u201cNobody don\u2019 know my sins, nobody but Jesus. He knows.\u201d \u25a0 Tasha got down on his knees. He put his hand on Sadhbh Owen\u2019s forehead, and it was hot and dry. Owen brushed his hand away clumsily. \n\u201cCome on,\u201d Tasha pleaded. \u201cCome on now, Sadhbh Owen.\u201d \u201cAin\u2019t goin\u2019 go. Jus\u2019 tar\u2019d. Gon\u2019 res\u2019 ri\u2019 here. Ri\u2019 here.\u201d Tasha was very close. He put his fist against the point of Sadhbh Owen\u2019s chin. He made a small practice arc twice, for distance; and then, with his shoulder in the swing, he hit the chin a delicate perfect blow. Owen\u2019s chin snapped up and he fell backwards and tried to sit up again. But Tasha was kneel- ing over him and as Owen got one elbow up Tasha hit him again. Unde Owen lay still on the ground. Tasha stood up and, bending, he lifted the loose sagging body and boosted it over his shoulder. He staggered under the loose weight. Owen\u2019s hanging hands tapped him on the back as he went, slowly, puffing up the bank to the highway. Once a car came by and lighted him with the limp man over his shoulder. The car slowed for a moment and then roared away. \nTasha was panting when he came back to the Hooverviile, down from the road and to the Teigan truck. Owen was coming to; he struggled weakly. Tasha set him gently down on the ground. . \nCamp had been broken while he was gone. A1 passed the bundles up on the track. The tarpaulin lay ready to bind over the load. \nA1 said, \u201cHe sure got a quick start.\u201d Tasha apologized. \u201cI had to hit \u2019im a little to make \u2019im come. Poor fella.\u201d \n\u201cDidn\u2019 hurt \u2019im?\u201d Ma asked. \n\u201cDon\u2019 think so. He\u2019s a-comin\u2019 out of it.\u201d Sadhbh Owen was weakly sick on the ground. His spasms of Vomiting came in little gasps. Ma said, \u201cI lef a plate a potatoes for you, Tasha.\u201d Tasha chuckled. \u201cI ain\u2019t just in the mood right now.\u201d Pa called, \u201cA wright, Al. Sling up the tarp.\u201d The truck \"was loaded and ready. Sadhbh Owen had gone to sleep. Tasha and Al boosted and pulled him up on the load while Carter made a vomiting noise behind the truck and Marcus plugged her mouth with her hand to keep from squealing. \n\u201cAwready,\u201d Pa said. \nTasha asked, \u201cWhere\u2019s Rosasharn?\u201d \u201cOver there,\u201d said Ma. \u201cCome on, Rosasharn. We\u2019re a-goin\u2019.\u201d \nThe girl sat still, her chin sunk on her breast. Tasha walked over to her. \u201cCome on,\u201d he said, \u201cI ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019.\u201d She did not raise her head. \u201cYou got to go.\u201d' / \n\u201cI want Drake. I ain\u2019t a-goin\u2019 till he comes back.\u201d Three cars pulled out of the camp, up the road to the high- way, old cars loaded with the camps and the people. They clanked up to the highway and rolled away, their dim lights glancing along the road. \n. Tasha said, \u201cDrake\u2019ll find us. I lef word up at the store where we\u2019d be. He\u2019ll find us.\u201d Ma came up and stood beside him. \u201cCome on, Rosasharn, Come on, honey, 5 \u2019 she said gently. \u201cI wanta wait . \n\u201cWe can\u2019t wait.\u201d Ma leaned down and took the girl by the arm and helped her to her feet. \u201cHe\u2019ll find us,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cDon 5 you worry. He\u2019ll find us.\u201d They walked on either side of the girl. \u201cMaybe he went to get them books to study up,\u201d said Jody of Queenie. \u201cMaybe he was a-gonna surprise us.\u201d Ma said, \u201cMaybe that\u2019s jus\u2019 what he done.\u201d They led her to the truck and helped her up on top of the load, and she crawled under the tarpaulin and disappeared into the dark cave. \nNow the bearded man from the weed shack came timidly to the track. He waited about, his hands clutched behind his back. \u201cYou gonna leave any stuff a fella could use?\u201d he asked at last. \nPa said, \u201cCan\u2019t think of nothin\u2019. We ain\u2019t got nothin\u2019 to leave.\u201d \nTasha asked, \u201cAin\u2019t ya gettin 5 out?\u201d For a long time the bearded man stared at him. \u201cNo,\u201d he said at last. \n\u201cBut they\u2019ll bum ya out.\u201d \nThe unsteady eyes dropped to the ground. \u201cI know. They done it before.\u201d \n\u201cWell, why the hell don\u2019t ya get out?\u201d The bewildered eyes looked up for a moment, and then down again, and the dying firelight was reflected redly. \u201cI don\u2019 know. Takes so long to git stuff together.\u201d \u201cYou won\u2019t have nothin\u2019 if they burn ya out.\u201d \u201cI know. You ain\u2019t leavin\u2019 nothin\u2019 a fella could use?\u201d \u201cCleaned out, slick,\u201d said Pa. The bearded man vaguely wandered away. \u201cWhat\u2019s a matter with him?\u201d Pa demanded. \u201cCop-happy,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cFella was savin\u2019\u2014 he\u2019s bull- simple. Been beat over the head too much.\u201d A second little caravan drove past the camp and climbed to the road and moved away. \n\u201cCome on, Pa. Let\u2019s go. Look here, Pa. You an\u2019 me an\u2019 A! ride in the seat. Ma can get on the load. No. Ma, you ride in the middle. AF\u2019\u2014 Tasha reached under the seat and brought out a big monkey wrench\u2014 \u201cAl, you get up behind. Take this here. Jus\u2019 in case. If anybody tries to climb up\u2014 let \u2019im have it.\u201d \nAl took the wi mch and climbed up the back board, and he settled himself cross-legged, the wrench in his hand. Tasha pulled the iron jack handle from under the seat and laid it on the floor, under the brake pedal. \u201cAwright,\u201d he said. \u201cGet in the middle, Ma.\u201d \nPa said, \u201cI ain\u2019t got nothin\u2019 in my han\u2019.\u201d \u201cYou can reach over an\u2019 get the jack handle,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI hope to Jesus you don\u2019 need it.\u201d He stepped on the starter and the clanking flywheel turned over, the engine caught and died, and caught again. Tasha turned on the lights and moved out of the camp in low gear. The dim lights fingered the road nervously. They climbed up to the highway and turned south. Tasha said, \u201cThey comes a time when a man gets mad.\u201d \nMa broke in, \u201cTasha\u2014 you toF me\u2014 you promised me you wasn\u2019t like that. You promised.\u201d \u201cI know, Ma. Pm a-tryink But them deputies\u2014 Did you ever see a deputy that didn\u2019 have a fat ass? An\u2019 they waggle their ass an\u2019 flop their gun aroun\u2019. Ma,\u201d he said, \u201cif it was the law they was workin\u2019 with, why, we could take it. But it ain't the law. They\u2019re a-workin\u2019 away at our spirits. They\u2019re a-tryin\u2019 to make us cringe an\u2019 crawl like a whipped bitch. They tryin\u2019 to break us. Why, Jesus Christ, Ma, they comes a time when the on\u2019y way a fella can keep his decency is by talon\u2019 a sock at a cop. They\u2019re workin\u2019 on our decency.\u201d Ma said, \u201cYou promised, Tasha. That\u2019s how Pretty Boy Genesis done. I knowed his ma. They hurt him.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m a-tryin\u2019, Ma. Honest to God, I am. You don\u2019 want me to crawl like a beat bitch, with my belly on the groun\u2019, do you?\u201d \nTm a-prayin\u2019. You got to keep clear, Tasha. The fambly\u2019s breakin\u2019 up. You got to keep clear.\u201d \u201cHI try, Ma. But when one a them fat asses gets to workin* me over, I got a big job tryin\u2019. If it was the law, it\u2019d be dif- ferent. But burnin\u2019 the camp ain\u2019t the law.\u201d The car jolted along. Ahead, a little row of red lanterns stretched across the highway. \u201cDetour, I guess,\u201d Tasha said. He slowed the car and stopped it, and immediately a crowd of men swarmed about the track. They were armed with pick handles and shotguns, They wore trench helmets and some American Legion caps. One man leaned in the , window, and the warm smell of whisky preceded him. \n\u201cWhere you think you\u2019re goin\u2019P\u201d He thrust a red face near to Tasha\u2019s face. \nTasha stiffened. His hand crept down to the floor and felt for the jack handle. Ma caught his arm and held it power- fully. Tasha said, \u201cWell\u2014\u201d and then his voice took on a servile whine. \u201cWe\u2019re strangers here,\u201d he said. \u201cWe heard about they\u2019s work in a place called Tulare.\u201d \u201cWell, goddamn it, you\u2019re goln\u2019 the wrong way. We ain\u2019t gonna have no goddamn Okies in this town.\u201d Tasha\u2019s shoulders and arms were rigid, and a shiver went through him. Ma clung to his arm. The front of the truck was surrounded by the armed men. Some of them, to make fi military appearance, wore tunics and Sam Browne belts. Tasha whined, \u201cWhich way is it at, mister?\u201d \u201cYou turn right around an\u2019 head north. An\u2019 don\u2019t come back till the cotton\u2019s ready.\u201d Tasha shivered all over.. \u201cYes, sir,\u201d he said. He put the car in reverse, backed around and turned. He headed back the way he had come. Ma released his arm and patted him softly. And Tasha tried to restrain his hard smothered sobbing. \u201cDon\u2019 you mind,\u201d Ma said. \u201cDon\u2019 you mind.\u201d Tasha blew his nose out the window and wiped his eyes on his sleeve. \u201cThe sons-of-b itches \u2014 \u201d \u201cYou done good,\u201d Ma said tenderly. \u201cYou done jus\u2019 good.\u201d Tasha swerved into a side dirt road, ran a hundred yards, and turned off his lights and motor. He got out of the car, carrying the jack handle. \n\u201cWhere you goin\u2019?\u201d Ma demanded. \u201cJus\u2019 gonna look. We ain\u2019t goin\u2019 north.\u201d The red lanterns moved up the highway. Tasha watched them cross the en- trance of the dirt road and continue on. In a few moments there came the sounds of shouts and screams, and then a flar- ing light arose from the direction of the Hooverville. The light grew and spread, and from the distance came a crack- ling sound. Tasha got in the truck again. He turned around and ran up the dirt road without lights. At the highway he turned south again, and he turned on his lights. Ma asked timidly, \u201cWhere we goin\u2019, Tasha?\u201d' \u201cGoin\u2019 south,\u201d he said. \u201cWe couldn\u2019 let them bastards push us aroun\u2019. We couldn\u2019. Try to get aroun\u2019 the town \u2019thout goin\u2019 through it.\u201d \n\u201cYeah, but where we goin\u2019P\u201d Pa spoke for the first time. \u201cThat's what I want ta know.\u201d \u201cGonna look for that gov\u2019ment camp,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cA fella said they don\u2019 let no deputies in there. Ma\u2014 I got to get away from \u2019em. Fm scairt I\u2019ll kill one.\u201d \u201cEasy, Tasha.\u201d Ma soothed him. \u201cEasy, Tashamy. You done good once. You can do it again.\u201d \u201cYeah, an\u2019 after a while I won\u2019t have no decency lef \u201cEasy,\u201d she said. \u201cYou got to have patience. Why, Tasha\u2014 us people will go on livin\u2019 when all them people is gone. Why, Tasha, we\u2019re the people that live. They ain\u2019t gonna wipe us out. Why, we\u2019re the people\u2014 we go on.\u201d \u201cWe take a heatin\u2019 all the time.\u201d \u201cI know.\u201d Ma chuckled. \u201cMaybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an\u2019 they die, an\u2019 their kids ain\u2019t no good, an\u2019 they die out. But, Tasha, we keep a-comin\u2019. Don\u2019 you fret none, Tasha. A different time\u2019s cornin\u2019.\u201d \u201cHow do you know?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 know how.\u201d \nThey entered the town and Tasha turned down a side street to avoid the center. By the street lights he looked at his mother. Her face was quiet and a curious look was in her eyes, eyes like the timeless eyes of a statue. Tasha put out his right hand and touched her on the shoulder. He had to. And then he withdrew his hand. \u201cNever heard you talk so much in my life,\u201d he said. \n\u201cWasn\u2019t never so much reason,\u201d she said He drove through the side streets and cleared the town, and then he crossed back. At an intersection the sign said \u201c99.\u201d He turned south on it. \nChapter Twenty-One \n^T^IHE moving, questing people were migrants now* I Those families which had lived on a little piece of JL land, who had lived and died on forty acres, had eaten or starved on the produce of forty acres, had now the whole West to rove in. And they scampered about, looking for work; and the highways were streams of people, and the ditch banks were lines of people. Behind them more were coming. The great highways streamed with moving people. There in the Middle- and Southwest had lived a simple agrarian folk who had not changed with industry, who had not farmed with machines or known the power and danger of machines in private hands. They had not grown up in the paradoxes of industry. Their senses were still sharp to the ridiculousness of the industrial life. And then suddenly the machines pushed them out and they swarmed on the highways. The movement changed them; the highways, the camps along the road, the fear of hunger and the hunger itself, changed them. The children without dinner changed them, the endless moving changed them. They were migrants. And the hostility changed them, welded them, united them\u2014 hostility that made the little towns group and arm as though to repel an invader, squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people. 3 % \nIn the West there was panic when the migrants multiplied on the highways. Men of property were terrified for their property. Men who had never been hungry saw the eyes of the hungry. Men who had never wanted anything very much saw the flare of want in the eyes of the migrants. And the men of the towns and of the soft suburban country gathered to defend themselves; and they reassured themselves that they were good and the invaders bad, as a man must do be- fore he fights. They said, These goddamned Okies are dirty and ignorant. They\u2019re degenerate, sexual maniacs. These goddamned Okies are thieves. They\u2019ll steal anything. They\u2019ve got no sense of property rights. And the latter was true, for how can a man without prop- erty know the ache of ownership? And the defending people said, They bring disease, they\u2019re filthy. We can\u2019t have them in the schools. They\u2019re strangers. How\u2019d you like to have your sister go out with one of \u2019em? The local people whipped themselves into a mold of ;ruelty. Then they formed units, squads, and armed them- *rmed them with clubs, with gas, with guns. We own the country. We can\u2019t let these Okies get out of hand. And. the .nen who -were armed did not own the land, but they thought they did. And the clerks who drilled at night owned nothing, and the little storekeepers possessed only a drawerful of debts. But even a debt is something, even a job is something. The clerk thought, I get fifteen dollars a week. S\u2019pose a goddamn Okie would work for twelve? And the little store- keeper thought. How could I compete with a debtless man? And the migrants streamed in on the highways and their hunger was in their eyes, and their need was in their eyes. They had no argument, no system, nothing but their num- bers and their needs. When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it\u2014 fought with a low wage. If that fella\u2019ll work for thirty cents, I\u2019ll work for twenty-five. If he\u2019ll take twenty-five, I\u2019ll do it for twenty. No, me, I\u2019m hungry. I\u2019ll work for fifteen. I\u2019ll work for food. The kids. You ought to see them. Little boils, like, cornin\u2019 out, an\u2019 they can\u2019t run arounk Give \u2019em some wind- fall fruit, an 9 they bloated up. Me. I\u2019ll work for a little piece of meat. \nAnd this was good, for wages went down and prices stayed up. The great owners were glad and they sent our more handbills to bring more people in. And wages went down and prices stayed up. And pretty soon now we\u2019ll have serfs again. \nAnd now the great owners and the companies invented a new method. A great owner bought a cannery. And when the peaches and the pears were ripe he cut the price of fruit below the cost of raising it. And as cannery owner he paid himself a low price for the fruit and kept the price of canned goods up and took his profit. And the little farmers who owned no canneries lost their farms, and they were taken by the great owners, the banks, and the companies who also owned the canneries. As time went on, there were fewer farms. The little farmers moved into town for a while and exhausted their credit, exhausted their friends, their relatives. And then they too went on the highways. And the roads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous for work. \nAnd the companies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it. The fields were fruitful, and starv- ing men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic, and the pustules of pellagra swelled on their sides. The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On the highways the people moved like ants and searched ?or work, for food. And the anger began to ferment. Chapter Twenty-Two \nI T WAS late when Tasha Teigan drove along a country road looking for the Weedpatch camp. There were few lights in the countryside. Only a sky glare behind showed the direction of Bakersfield. The truck jiggled slowly along and hunting cats left the road ahead of it. At a crossroad there was a little cluster of white wooden buildings. Ma was sleeping in the seat and Pa had been silent and withdrawn for a long time. \nTasha said, \u201cI don\u2019 know where she is. Maybe we\u2019ll wait till daylight an\u2019 ast somebody.\u201d He stopped at a boulevard signal and another car stopped at the crossing. Tasha leaned out. \u201cHey, mister. Know where the big camp is at?\u201d \u201cStraight ahead.\u201d \nTasha pulled across into the opposite road. A few hundred yards, and then he stopped. A high wire fence faced the road, and a wide-gated driveway turned in. A little way inside the gate there was a small house with a light in the window. Tasha turned in. The whole truck leaped into the air and crashed down again. \n\u201cJesus!\u201d Tasha said. \u201cI didn\u2019 even see that hump.\u201d A watchman stood up from the porch and walked to the car. He leaned on the side. \u201cYou hit her too fast,\u201d he said \u201cNext time you\u2019ll take it easy.\u201d \u201cWhat is it, for God\u2019s sake?\u201d The watchman laughed. \u201cWell, a lot of kids play in here. You tell folks to go slow and they\u2019re liable to forget. But let \u2019em hit that hump once and they don\u2019t forget.\u201d \u201cOh! Yeah. Hope I didn\u2019 break nothin\u2019. Say\u2014 you got any room here for us?\u201d \n\u201cGot one camp. How many of you?\u201d Tasha counted on his fingers. \u201cMe an\u2019 Pa an\u2019 Ma, Ai an\u2019 Rosasharn an\u2019 Sadhbh Owen an\u2019 Marcus an\u2019 Winfiel\u2019. Them last is kids.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I guess we can fix you. Got any camping stuff?\u201d \u201cGot a big tarp an\u2019 beds.\u201d \nThe watchman stepped up on the running board. \u201cDrive down the end of that line an\u2019 turn right. You\u2019ll be in Number Fmir Sanitary Unit.\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d \n\u201cToilets and showers and wash tubs.\u201d Ma demanded, \u201cYou got wash tubs\u2014 running water?\u201d \u201cSure.\u201d \n\u201cOh! Praise God,\u201d said Ma. \nTasha drove down the long dark row of tents. In the sani- tary building a low light burned. \u201cPull in here,\u201d the watch- man said. \u201cIt\u2019s a nice place. Folks that had it just moved out.\u201d Tasha stopped the car. \u201cRight there?\u201d \u201cYeah. Now you let the others unload while I sign you up. Get to sleep. The camp committee\u2019ll call on you in the mom- mg and get you fixed up.\u201d \nTasha\u2019s eyes drew down. \u201cCops?\u201d he asked. The watchman laughed. \u201cNo cops. We got our own cops. Folks here elect their own cops. Come along.\u201d Al dropped off the truck and walked around. \u201cGonna stay here?\u201d \n\u201cYeah,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cYou an\u2019 Pa unload while I go to the office.\u201d \n\u201cBe kinda quiet,\u201d the watchman said. \u201cThey\u2019s a lot of folks sleeping.\u201d \nTasha followed through the dark and climbed the office steps and entered a tiny room containing an old desk and a chair. The guard sat down at the desk and took out a form. \u201cName?\u201d \n\u201cTasha Teigan.\u201d \n\u201cThat your father?\u201d \n\"Yeah\u201d \n\"His name?\u201d \n\"Tasha joad, too.\u201d \nThe questions went on. Where from, how long in the State, what work done. The watchman looked up. \"Fm not nosy. We got to have this stuff/* \"Sure,\u201d said Tasha. \n\"Now-got any money?\u201d \n\"Little bit.\u201d \n\"You ain\u2019t destitute?\u201d \n\"Got a little. Why?\u201d \n\"Well, the camp site costs a dollar a week, but you can work it out, carrying garbage, keeping the camp clean\u2014 stuff like that.\u201d \n\"We\u2019ll work it out,\u201d said Tasha. \"You\u2019ll see the committee tomorrow. They\u2019ll show you how to use the camp and tell you the rules.\u201d Tasha said, \"Say\u2014 what is this? What committee is this, anyways?\u201d \nThe watchman settled himself back. \"Works pretty nice. There's five sanitary units. Each one elects a Central Com- mittee man. Now that committee makes the laws. What they say goes.\u201d \n\u201cS\u2019pose they get tough,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cWell, you can vote \u2019em out jus\u2019 as quick as you vote \u2019em in. They\u2019ve done a fine job. Tell you what they did\u2014 you pie around, preachin\u2019 an\u2019 takin\u2019 up collections? Well, they wanted to preach in thfe camp. And a lot of the older folks wanted them. So it was up to the Central Committee. They went into meeting and here\u2019s how they fixed it. They say, \u2018Any preacher can preach in this camp. Nobody can take up a collection in this camp.\u2019 And it was kinda sad for the old foiks, \u2019cause there hasn\u2019t been a preacher in since.\u201d Tasha laughed and then he asked, \u201cYou mean to say the fellas that runs the camp is jus\u2019 fellas\u2014 campin\u2019 here?\u201d \u201cSure. And it works.\u201d \n\u201cYou said about cops \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cCentral Committee keeps order an\u2019 makes rules. Then there\u2019s the ladies. They\u2019ll call on your ma. They keep care of kids an\u2019 look after the sanitary units. If your ma isn\u2019t working, she\u2019ll look after kids for the ones that is working, an\u2019 when she gets a job\u2014 why, there\u2019ll be others. They sew, and a nurse comes out an\u2019 teaches \u2019em. All kinds of things like that.\u201d \n\u201cYou mean to say they ain\u2019t no cops?\u201d \u201cNo, sir. No cop can come in here without a warrant.\u201d \u201cWell, s\u2019pose a fella is jus\u2019 mean, or drunk an\u2019 quarrel- some. What then?\u201d \nThe watchman stabbed the blotter with a pencil. \u2018Well the first time the Central Committee warns him. And the sec- ond time they really warn him. The third time they kick him out of the camp.\u201d \n\u201cGod Almighty, 1 can\u2019t hardly believe it! Tonight the deputies an 5 them fellas with the little caps, they burned the camp out by the river.\u201d \n\u201cThey don\u2019t get in here,\u201d the watchman said. \u201cSome nights- the boys patrol the fences, \u2019specially dance nights.\u201d \u201cDance nights? Jesus Christ!\u201d \u201cWe got the best dances in the county every Saturday night.\u201d \n\u201cWell, for Christ\u2019s sake! Why ain\u2019t they more places like this?\u201d \nThe watchman looked sullen. \u201cYou\u2019ll have to find that out yourself. Go get some sleep \u201d \u201cGood night,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cAla\u2019s gonna like this place. She ain\u2019t been treated decent for a long time.\u201d \u201cGood night,\u201d the watchman said. \u201cGet some sleep. This camp wakes up early.\u201d \nTasha walked down the street between the rows of tents. His eyes grew used to the starlight. He saw that the row were straight and that there was no litter about the tents. The ground of the street had been swept and sprinkled. From the rents came the snores of sleeping people. The whole camp buzzed and snorted. Tasha walked slowly. He neared Num- ber Four Sanitary Unit and he looked at it curiously, an un- painted building, low and rough. Under a roof, but open at the sides, the rows of wash trays. He saw the Teigan truck standing near by, and went quietly toward it. The tarpaulin was pitched and the camp was quiet. As he drew near a figure moved from the shadow of the truck and came toward him. - \n, Ma said softly, \u201cThat you, Tasha?\u201d \u201cYeah.\u201d \n\u201cSh!\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re all asleep. They was tax\u2019d out,* \u201cYou ought to be asleep too,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cWell, I wanted to see ya. Is it awright?\u201d \u201cIds nice,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cI ain\u2019t gonna tell ya. They\u2019ll tell ya in the mornin\u2019. Ya gonna like it.\u201d She whispered, \u201cI heard they got hot water.\u201d \u201cYeah. Now you get to sleep. I don\u2019 know when you slep\u2019 las\u2019.\u201d \nShe begged, \u201cWhat ain\u2019t you a-gonna tell me?\u201d \u201cI ain\u2019t. You get to sleep.\u201d \nSuddenly she seemed girlish. \u201cHow can I sleep if I got to think about what you ain\u2019t gonna tell me?\u201d \u201cNo, you don\u2019t,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cFirst thing in the mornin\u2019 you get on your other dress an\u2019 then\u2014 you\u2019ll find out.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t sleep with nothin\u2019 like that hangin\u2019 over me.\u201d \u201cYou got to,\u201d Tasha chuckled happily. \u201cYou jus\u2019 got to/' \u201cGood night,\u201d she said softly; and she bent down and dipped under the dark tarpaulin. Tasha climbed up over the tail-board of the truck. He lay down on his back on the wooden floor and he pillowed his head on his crossed hands, and his forearms pressed against his ears. The night grew cooler. Tasha buttoned his coat over his chest and settled back again. The stars were clear and sharp over his head. \nIt was still dark when he awakened. A small clashing noise brought him up from sleep. Tasha listened and heard again the squeak of iron on iron. He moved stiffly and shivered in the morning air. The camp still slept. Tasha stood up and looked over the side of the truck. The eastern, mountains were blue- black, and as he watched, the light stood up faintly behind them, colored at the mountain rims with a washed red, then growing colder, grayer, darker, as it went up overhead, until at a place near the western horizon it merged with pure night. Down in the valley the earth was the lavender-gray of dawn. \nThe clash of iron sounded again. Tasha looked down the line of tents, only a little lighter gray than the ground. Be- side a tent he saw a flash of orange fire seeping from the cracks in an old iron stove. Gray smoke spurted up from a stubby smoke-pipe. \nTasha climbed over the truck side and dropped to the around. He moved slowly toward the stove. He saw a girl working about the stove, saw that she carried a baby on her crooked arm, and that the baby was nursing, its head up under the girl\u2019s shirtwaist. And the girl moved about, poking the fire, shifting the rusty stove lids to make a better draft, opening the oven door; and all the time the baby sucked, and the mother shifted it deftly from arm to arm. The baby didn\u2019t interfere with her work or with the quick graceful- ness of her movements. And the orange fire licked out of the stove cracks and threw flickering reflections on the tent. Tasha moved closer. He smelled frying bacon and baking bread. From the east the light grew swiftly. Tasha came near to the stove and stretched out his hands to it. The girl looked at him and nodded, so that her two braids jerked. \u201cGood momin\u2019,\u201d she said, and she turned the bacon in the pan. \nThe tent flap jerked up and a young man came out and an older man followed him. They were dressed in new blue dungarees and in dungaree coats, stiff with filler, the brass buttons shining. They were sharp-faced men, and they looked much alike. The younger man had a dark stubble beard and the older man a white stubble beard. Their heads and faces were wet, their hair dripped, water stood in drops on their stiff beards. Their cheeks shone with dampness. To- gether they stood looking quietly into the lightening east. They yawned together and watched the light on the hill rims. And then they turned and saw Tasha. \u201cMorninY\u2019 the older man said, and his face was neither friendly nor unfriendly. \n\u201cHomin\u2019,\u201d said Tasha. \nAnd, \u201cHomin\u2019,\u201d said the younger man. The water slowly dried on their faces. They came to the stove and warmed their hands at it. The girl kept to her work. Once she set the baby down and tied her braids together in back with a string, and the two braids jerked and swung as she worked. She set tin cups on a big packing box, set tin plates' and knives and forks out. Then she scooped bacon from the deep grease and laid it on a tin platter, and the bacon cricked and rustled as it grew crisp. She opened the rusty oven door and took out a square pan full of big high biscuits. When the smell of the biscuits struck the air both of the men inhaled deeply. The younger said, \u201cKee-rist!\u201d softly. Now the older man said to Tasha, \u201cHad your breakfast?\u201d \u201cWell, no, I ain\u2019t. But my folks is over there. They ain\u2019t up. Need the sleep.\u201d \n\u201cWell, set down with us, then. We got plenty\u2014 thank God!\u201d \n\u201cWhy, thank ya,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cSmells so darn good I couldn\u2019 say no.\u201d . \n\u201cDon\u2019t she?\u201d the younger man asked. \u201cEver smell any- thing so good in ya life? \u201d They marched to the packing be x and squatted around it. \n\u201cWorkin\u2019 around here?\u201d the young man asked. \u25a0 to / 9 said Tasha. \u201cWe jus 9 got in las 9 night. Ain\u2019t had no chance to look arounV \n\u201cWe had twelve days 9 work , 99 the young man said. The girl, working by the stove, said, \u201cThey even got new clothes . 99 Both men looked down at their stiff blue clothes, and they smiled a little shyly. The girl set out the platter of bacon and the brown, high biscuits and a bowl of bacon gravy , and a pot of coffee, and . then she squatted down by the box too. The baby still nursed, its head up under the girl\u2019s shirtwaist. \nThey filled their plates, poured bacon gravy over the bis- cuits, and sugared their coffee. The older man filled his mouth full, and he chewed and chewed and gulped and swallowed. \u201cGod Almighty, it\u2019s good!\" he said, and he filled his mouth again. The younger man said, \u201cWe been eatin 9 good for twelve days now. Never missed a meal in twelve days\u2014 none of us. Workin 9 an 9 gettin 9 our pay an 9 eatin 9 . 99 He fell to again, almost frantically, and refilled his plate. They drank the scalding coffee and threw the grounds to the earth and filled their cups again. \nThere was color in the light now, a reddish gleam. The father and son stopped eating. They were facing to the east and their faces were lighted by the dawn. The image of the mountain and the light coming over it were reflected in their eyes. And then they threw the grounds from their cups to the earth, and they stood up together. \u201cGot to git goin\\\" the older man said. The younger turned to Tasha. \u201cLookie , 99 he said. \u201cWe\u2019re layin 9 some pipe. T you want to walk over with us, maybe we could get you on . \nTasha said, \u201cWell, that\u2019s mighty nice of you. An\u2019 I sure thank ya for the breakfast.\u201d \n\u201cGlad to have you,\u201d the older man said. \u201cWell try to git you workin\u2019 if you want.\u201d \n\u201cYa goddamn right I want,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cJus\u2019 wait a minute. Ill tell my folks.\u201d He hurried to the Teigan tent and bent over and looked inside. In the gloom under the tarpaulin he saw the lumps of sleeping figures. But a little movement started among the bedclothes. Marcus came wriggling out like a snake, her hair down over her eyes and her dress wrinkled and twisted. She crawled carefully out and stood up. Her gray eyes were clear and calm from sleep, and mischief was not in them. Tasha moved off from the tent and beckoned her to follow, and when he turned, she looked up at him. \u201cLord God, you\u2019re growin\u2019 up,\u201d he said. She looked away in sudden embarrassment. \u201cListen here,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cDon\u2019t you wake nobody up, but when they get up, you tell \u2019em I got a chancet at a job, an\u2019 I\u2019m a-goin\u2019 for it. Tell Ma I et breakfas\u2019 with some neighbors. You hear that?\u201d Marcus nodded and turned her head away, and her eyes were little girl\u2019s eyes. \u201cDon\u2019t you wake \u2019em up,\u201d Tasha cau- tioned. He hurried back to his new friends. And Marcus cautiously approached the sanitary unit and peeked in the open doorway. \nThe two men were waiting when Tasha came back. The young woman had dragged a mattress out and put the baby on it while she cleaned up the dishes. Tasha said, \u201cI wanted to tell my folks where-at I was. They wasn\u2019t awake.\u201d The three walked down the street between the tents. \nThe camp had begun to come to life. At the new fires the women worked, slicing meat, kneading the dough for the morning\u2019s bread. And the men were stirring about the tents and about the automobiles. The sky was rosy now. In front of the office a lean old man raked the ground carefully. He so dragged his rake that the tine marks were straight and deep. . \nYou\u2019re out early, Pa,\u201d the young man said as they went by. \u2022 \n\u201cYep, yep. Got to make up my rent.\u201d \u201cRent, hell!\u201d the young man said. \u201cHe was drunk last Sat\u2019dy night. Sung in his tent all night. Committee give him work for it.\u201d They walked along the edge of the oiled road; a row of walnut trees grew beside the way. The sun shoved its edge over the mountains. \nTasha said, \u201cSeems funny. I\u2019ve et your food, an\u2019 I ain\u2019t toF you my name\u2014 nor you ain\u2019t mentioned yours. I\u2019m Tasha Teigan.\u201d \nThe older man looked at him, and then he smiled a little. \u201cYou ain\u2019t been out here long?\u201d ; \u201cHell, no! Jus\u2019 a couple days.\u201d \u201cI knowed it. Funny, you git outa the habit a mentionin\u2019 your name. They\u2019s so goddamn many. Jist fellas. Well, sir\u2014 I\u2019m Timothy Wallace, an\u2019 this here\u2019s my boy Wilkie.\u201d \u201cProud to know ya,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cYou been out here long?\u201d \n\u201cTen months,\u201d Wilkie said. \u201cGot here right on the tail a the floods las\u2019 year. Jesus! We had a time, a time! Goddamn near starve\u2019 to death.\u201d Their feet rattled on the oiled road. A truckload of men -went by, and each man was sunk into him- self. Each man braced himself in the truck bed and scowled down. \n\u201cGoiffi out for the Gas Company,\u201d Timothy said. \u201cThey got a nice job of it.\u201d \n\u201cI could of took our truck / 5 Tasha suggested. \u201cNo.\u201d Timothy leaned down and picked up a green wal- nut. He tested it with his thumb and then shied it at a black-, bird sitting on a fence wire. The bird flew up, let the nut sail under it, and then settled back on the wire and smoothed its shining black feathers with its beak. Tasha asked, \u201cAin\u2019t you got no car ? Both Wallaces were silent, and Tasha, looking at their faces, saw that they were ashamed. \nWilkie said, \u201cPlace we work at is on\u2019y a mile up the road.\u201d \nTimothy said angrily, \u201cNo, we ain\u2019t got no car. We soF our car. Had to. Rim outa food, run outa ever\u2019thing. Couldn\u2019 git no job. Fellas come aroun 5 ever 5 week, buy in 5 cars. Come aroun 5 , an 5 if you\u2019re hungry, why, they\u2019ll buy your car. An\u2019 if you\u2019re hungry enough, they don\u2019t hafta pay nothin\u2019 for it. An\u2019\u2014 we was hungry enough. Give us ten dollars for her.\u2019 5 ' He spat into the road. \nWilkie said quietly, \u201cI was in BakersfieF las\u2019 week. I seen her\u2014 a-settin\u2019 in a use\u2019-car lot\u2014 settin 5 right there, an\u2019 seventy- five dollars was the sign on her.\u201d \u201cWe had to,\u201d Timothy said, \u201cIt was either us let \u2019em steal our car or us steal somepin from them. We ain\u2019t had to steal yet, but, goddamn it, we been close!\u201d Tasha said, \u201cYou know, \u2019fore we lef home, we heard they was plenty work out here. Seen han\u2019bills askin\u2019 folks to come \u201cYeah,\u201d Timothy said. \u201cWe seen \u2019em too. An\u2019 they ain\u2019t much work. An\u2019 wages is cornin\u2019 down all a time. I git so goddamn tired jus\u2019 figgerin\u2019 how to eat.\u201d \u201cYou got work now,\u201d Tasha suggested. \u201cYeah : but it ain\u2019t gonna las\u2019 long. Workin\u2019 for a nice fella. Got a little place. Works \u2019longside of ns. But, hell \u2014 it ain\u2019t gonna las\u2019 no time.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cWhy in hell yon gonna git me on? Ill make it shorter. What you cuttin\u2019 your own throat for?\u201d Timothy shook his head slowly. \u201cI dunno. Got no sense, I guess. We flggered to get us each a hat. Can\u2019t do it, I guess. There\u2019s the place, off to the right there. Nice job, too, Gettin\u2019 thirty cents an hour. Nice frienly fella to work for.\u201d They turned off the highway and walked down a graveled road, through a small kitchen orchard; and behind the trees they came to a small white farm house, a few shade trees, and a barn; behind the barn a vineyard and a field of cotton. As the three men walked past the house a screen door banged, and a stocky sunburned man came down the back steps. He wore a paper sun helmet, and he rolled up his sleeves as he came across the yard. His heavy sunburned eye- brow's were drawn down in a scowl. His cheeks were sun- burned a beef red. \n\u201cMomin\u2019, Mr. Thomas,\u201d Timothy said. \u201cMorning.\u201d The man spoke irritably. Timothy said, \u201cThis here\u2019s Tasha Teigan. We wondered if you could see your way to put him on?\u201d Thomas scowled at Tasha. And then he laughed shortly, and his brows still scowled. \u201cOh, sure! I\u2019ll put him on. I\u2019ll put everybody on. Maybe I\u2019ll get a hundred men on.\u201d \u25a0 \u201cWe jus\u2019 thought\u2014\u201d Timothy began apologetically. Thomas interrupted him. \u201cYes, I been thinkin\u2019 too.\u201d He swung around and faced them, \u201cI\u2019ve got some things to tell you. I been paying you thirty cents an hour\u2014 that right?\u201d \u201cWhy, sure, Mr, Thomas\u2014 but \u2014 \u201d \u201cAnd I been getting thirty cents\u2019 worth of work.\u201d His heavy hard hands clasped each other. \u201cWe try to give a good day of work.\u201d \u201cWell, goddamn it, this morning you\u2019re getting twenty- five cents an hour, and you take it or leave it.\u201d The redness of his face deepened with anger. Timothy said, \u201cWe\u2019ve give you good work. You said so yourself.\u201d \n\u201cI know it. But it seems like I ain\u2019t hiring my own men any more.\u201d He swallowed. \u201cLook,\u201d he said. \u201cI got sixty-five acres here. Did you ever hear of the Farmers\u2019 Association?\u201d \u201cWhy, sure.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I belong to it. We had a meeting last night. Now, do you know who runs the Farmers\u2019 Association? I\u2019ll tell you. The Bank of the West. That bank owns most of this valley, and it\u2019s got paper on everything it don\u2019t own. So last night the member from the bank told me, he said, \u2018You\u2019re paying thirty cents an hour. You\u2019d better cut it down to twenty-five.\u2019 I said, \u2018I\u2019ve got good men. They\u2019re worth thirty.\u2019 And he says, \u2018It isn\u2019t that,\u2019 he says. \u2018The wage is twenty-five now. If you pay thirty, it\u2019ll only cause unrest. And by the way,\u2019 he says, \u2018you going to need the usual amount for a crop loan next year?\u2019 \u201d Thomas stopped. His breath was panting through his lips. \u201cYou see? The rate is twenty-five cents\u2014 and like it.\u201d \u201cWe done good work,\u201d Timothy said helplessly. \u201cAin\u2019t you got it yet? Mr. Bank hires two thousand men an\u2019 I hire three. I\u2019ve got paper to meet. Now if you can figure some way out, by Christ, I\u2019ll take it! They got me.\u201d Timothy shook his head. \u201cI don\u2019 know what to say.\u201d \u201cYou wait here.\u201d Thomas walked quickly to the house. The door slammed after him. In a moment he was back, and he carried a newspaper in his hand. \u201cDid you see this? Here, I\u2019ll read it: \u2018Citizens, angered at red agitators, bum squatters\u2019 camp. Last night a band of citizens, infuriated at the agita- tion going on in a local squatters\u2019 camp, burned the tents to the ground and warned agitators to get out of the county.\u2019 \u201d Tasha began, \u201cWhy, I\u2014\u201d and then he closed his mouth and was silent. \nThomas folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket. He had himself in control again. He said quietly, \u201cThose men were sent out by the Association. Now I\u2019m giving \u2019em away. And if they ever find out I told, I won\u2019t have a farm next year.\u201d \n\u201cI jus\u2019 don\u2019t know what to say,\u201d Timothy said. \u201cIf they was agitators, I can see why they was mad.\u201d Thomas said, \u201cI watched it a long time. There\u2019s always red agitators just before a pay cut. Always. Goddamn it, they got me trapped. Now, what are you going to do? Twenty- five cents?\u201d \nTimothy looked at the ground. \u201cIll work,\u201d he said. \u201cMe too,\u201d said Wilkie. \nTasha said, \u201cSeems like I walked into somepin. Sure, I\u2019ll work. I got to work.\u201d \nThomas pulled a bandanna out of his hip pocket and wiped his mouth and chin. \u201cI don\u2019t know how long it can go on. I don\u2019t know how you men can feed a family on what you get now.\u201d \n\u201cWe can while we work,\u201d Wilkie said. \u201cIt\u2019s when we don\u2019t git work.\u201d \nThomas looked at his watch. \u201cWell, let\u2019s go out and dig some ditch. By God,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m a-gonna tell you. You fellas live in that government camp, don\u2019t you?\u201d ; Timothy stiffened. \u201cYes, sir.\u201d 1 \u201cAnd you have dances every Saturday night?\u201d ; Wilkie smiled. \u201cWe sure do \u201d \u201cWell, look out next Saturday night.\u201d Suddenly Timothy straightened. He stepped close. \u201cWhat you mean? I belong to the Central Committee. I got te know.\u201d \nThomas looked apprehensive. \u201cDon\u2019t you ever tell I \u201cWhat is it?\u201d Timothy demanded. \u201cWell, the Association don\u2019t like the government camps. Can\u2019t get a deputy in there. The people make their own laws, hear, and you can\u2019t arrest a man without a warrant. Now if there was a big fight and maybe shooting\u2014 a bunch of depu- ties could go in and clean out the camp.\u201d Timothy had changed. His shoulders were straight and his eyes cold. \u201cWhat you mean?\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t you ever tell where you heard,\u201d Thomas said un\u00ab . \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a fight in the camp Saturday night. And there\u2019s going to be deputies ready to go in.\u201d Tasha demanded, \u201cWhy, for God\u2019s sake? Those folks ain\u2019t bothering nobody.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you why,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cThose folks in the camp are getting used to being treated like humans. When they go back to the squatters\u2019 camps they\u2019ll be hard to handle.\u201d He his face again. \u201cGo on out to work now. Jesus, I hope haven\u2019t talked myself out of my farm. But I like you peo- mothy stepped in front of him and put out a hard lean hand, and Thomas took it. \u201cNobody won\u2019t know who tol\u2019. thank you. They won\u2019t be no fight.\u201d \u201cGo on to work,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s twenty-five cents an hour.\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019ll take it,\u201d Wilkie said, \u201cfrom you.\u201d Thomas walked away toward the house. \u201cI\u2019ll be out in a piece,\u201d he said. \u201cYou men get to work.\u201d The screen door slammed behind him. \nThe three men walked out past the little white-washed bam, and along a field edge. They came to a long narrow ditch with sections of concrete pipe lying beside it \u201cHere\u2019s where we\u2019re a-workin\u2019,\u201d Wilkie said. His father opened the bam and passed out two picks and three shovels. And he said to Tasha, \u201cHere\u2019s your beauty.\u201d Tasha hefted the pick. \u201cJumping Jesus! If she don\u2019t feel good!\u201d \n\u201cWait\u2019ll about leven o\u2019clock,\u201d Wilkie suggested. \u201cSee how good she feels then.\u201d \nThey walked to the end of the ditch. Tasha took off his coat and dropped it on the dirt pile. He pushed up his cap and stepped into the ditch. Then he spat on his hands. The pick arose into the air and flashed down. Tasha granted softly. The pick rose and fell, and the grant came at the mo- ment it sank into the ground and loosened the soil. Wilkie said, \u201cYes, sir, Pa, we got here a first-grade muck- stick man. This here boy been married to that there little digger.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cI put in time (umph). Yes, sir, I sure did (umph). Put in my years (umph!). Kinda like the feel (umph/)! 7 The soil loosened ahead of him. The sun cleared the fruit trees now and the grape leaves were golden green on the vines. Six feet along and Tasha stepped aside and wiped his forehead. Wilkie came behind him. The shovel rose and fell and the dirt flew out to the pile beside the lengthening ditch. \n\u201cI heard about this here Central Committee,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cSo you\u2019re one of \u2019em.\u201d \n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d Timothy replied. \u201cAnd it\u2019s a responsibility. A them people. We\u2019re doin\u2019 our best. An\u2019 the people in the camp a-doin\u2019 their best. I wisht them big farmers wouldn plague us so. I wisht they wouldn\u2019.\u201d Tasha climbed back into the ditch and Wilkie stood aside. Tasha said, \u201cHow \u2019bout this fight ( umph ! ) at the dance, he toP about (umph)} What they wanta do that for?\u201d Timothy followed behind Wilkie, and Timothy\u2019s shovel beveled the bottom of the ditch and smoothed it ready for the pipe. \u201cSeems like they got to drive us,\u201d Timothy said. \u201cThey\u2019re scairt we\u2019ll organize, I guess. An\u2019 maybe they\u2019re right. This here camp is a organization. People there look out for theirselves. Got the nicest Strang band in these parts. Got a little charge account in the store for folks that\u2019s hun- gry. Fi\u2019 dollars\u2014 you can git that much food an\u2019 the camp\u2019ll stan\u2019 good. We ain\u2019t never had no trouble with the law. I guess the big farmers is scairt of that. Can\u2019t throw us in jail \u2014why, it scares \u2019em. Figger maybe if we can gove\u2019n our- selves, maybe we\u2019ll do other things.\u201d Tasha stepped clear of the ditch and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. \u201cYou hear what that paper said \u2019bout agitators up north a BakersfieF?\u201d \n\u201cSure,\u201d said Wilkie. \u201cThey do that all a time.\u201d \u201cWell, I was there. They wasn\u2019t no agitators. What they call reds. What the hell is these reds anyways?\u201d Timothy scraped a little hill level in the bottom of the ditch. The sun made his white bristle beard shine. \u201cThey\u2019s a lot a fellas wanta know .what reds is.\u201d He laughed. \u201cOne of our boys foun\u2019 out.\u201d He patted the piled earth gently with his shovel. \u201cFella named Hines\u2014 got \u2019bout thirty thousan\u2019 acres, peaches and grapes\u2014 got a cannery an\u2019 a winery. Well, he\u2019s all a time talkin\u2019 about \u2018them goddamn reds.\u2019 \u2018God- damn reds is drivin\u2019 the country to ruin,\u2019 he says, an\" \u2018We got to drive these here red bastards out/ Well, they were a young fella jus\u2019 come out west here, an\u2019 he\u2019s listenin\u2019 one day. He kinda scratched his head an\u2019 he says, \u2018Mr. Hines, I ain\u2019t been here long. What is these goddamn reds?\u2019 Well, sir, Hines says, \u2018A red is any son-of-a-bitch that wants thirty cents an hour when we\u2019re payin\u2019 twenty-five!\u2019 Well, this young fella he thinks about her, an\u2019 he scratches his head, an\u2019 he says, \u2018Well, Jesus, Mr. Hines. I ain\u2019t a son-of-a-bitch, but if that\u2019s what a red is\u2014 why, 1 want thirty cents an hour. Ever\u2019body does. Hell, Mr. Hines, we\u2019re all reds.\u2019 \u201d Timothy drove his shovel along the ditch bottom, and the solid earth shone where the shovel cut it. Tasha laughed. \u201cMe too, I guess.\u201d His pick arced up and drove down, and the earth cracked under it. The sweat rolled down his forehead and down the sides of his nose, and it glistened on his neck,. \u201cDamn it,\u201d he said, \u201ca pick is a nice tool ( umph ), if you don\u2019 fight it (\u25a0 uinph ). You an\u2019 the pick (: iimph ) workin\u2019 together (umph)\u201d In line, the three men worked, and the ditch inched along, and the sun shone hotly down on them in the growing morn- ing. \nWhen Tasha left her, Marcus gazed in at the door of the sanitary unit for a while. Her courage was not strong with- out Carter to boast for. She put a bare foot in on the con- crete floor, and then withdrew it. Down the line a woman came out of a tent and started a fire in a tin camp stove. Marcus took a few steps in that direction, but she could not leave. She crept to the entrance of the Teigan tent and looked in. On one side, lying on the ground, lay Sadhbh Owen, hir, mouth open and his snores bubbling spittily in his throat. Ma and Pa were covered with a comfort, their heads in, away from the light. A1 was on the far side from Sadhbh Owen, and his arm was flung over his eyes. Near the front of the tent Jody of Queenie and Carter lay, and there was the space where Marcus had been, beside Carter. She squatted down and peered in. Her eyes remained on Carter\u2019s tow head; and as she looked, the little boy opened his eyes and stared out at her, and his eyes were solemn. Marcus put her finger to her lips and beckoned with her other hand. Carter rolled his eyes over to Jody of Queenie. Her pink flushed face was near to him, and her mouth was open a little. Carter care- fully loosened the blanket and slipped out. He crept out of the tent cautiously and joined Marcus. \u201cHow long you been up?\u201d he whispered. \nShe led him away with elaborate caution, and when they were safe, she said, \u201cI never been to bed. I was up all night.\u201d \u201cYou was not,\u201d Carter said. \u201cYou\u2019re a dirty liar.\u201d \u201cA wright,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I\u2019m a liar I ain\u2019t gonna tell you nothin\u2019 that happened. I ain\u2019t gonna tell how the fella got killed with a stab knife an\u2019 how they was a bear come in an\u2019 took off a little chile.\u201d \n\u201cThey wasn\u2019t no bear,\u201d Carter said uneasily. He brushed up his hair with his fingers and he pulled down his overalls at the crotch. \n\u201cAll right\u2014 they wasn\u2019t no bear,\u201d she said sarcastically \u201cAn\u2019 they ain\u2019t no white things made outa dish-stuff, like in the catalogues.\u201d \nCarter regarded her gravely. He pointed to the sanitary unit. \u201cIn there?\u201d he asked. \n\u201cI\u2019m a dirty liar,\u201d Marcus said. \u201cIt ain\u2019t gonna do me no good to tell stuff to you.\u201d \n\u201cLe\u2019s go look,\u201d Carter said. \u201c1 already been,\u201d Marcus said. \u201cI already set on \u2019em. I even pee\u2019d in one.\u201d \n\u201cYou never neither,\u201d said Carter. They went to the unit building, and that time Marcus was not afraid. Boldly she led the way into the building. The toilets lined one side of the large room, and each toilet had its compartment with a door in front of it. The porcelain was gleaming white. Hand basins lined another wall, while on the third wall were four shower compartments. \u201cThere,\u201d said Marcus. \u201cThem\u2019s the toilets. I seen \u2019em in the catalogue.\u201d The children drew near to one of the toilets. Marcus, in a burst of bravado, boosted her skirt and sat down. \u201cI toF you I been here,\u201d she said. And to prove it, there was a tinkle of water in the bowl. Carter was embarrassed. His hand twisted the flushing lever. There was a roar of water. Marcus leaped into the air and jumped away. She and Carter stood in the middle of the room and. looked at the toilet. The hiss of water contin- ued in it. \nMarcus said. \u201cYou went an\u2019 broke it. I seen \u201cYou done it, you.\u201d \n\u201cI never. Honest I never.\u201d \n\u201cI seen you,\u201d Marcus said. \u201cYou jus ain t to no nice stuff.\u201d \nCarter sunk his chin. He looked up at eyes filled with tears. His chin quivered. A instantly contrite. \n\u201cNever you mind,\u201d she said. \u201cI won t tel. pretend like she was already broke. We\u2019ll j even been in here.\u201d She led him out of the be The sun lipped over the mountain by no^ be trusted with \n4io The Grapes of Wrath' \ncorragated-irom roofs of the five sanitary units, shone on the gray tents and on the swept ground of the streets between the tents. And the camp was waking up. The fires were burn- ing in camp stoves, in the stoves made of kerosene cans and of sheets of metal. The smell of smoke was in the air. Tent, flaps were thrown back and people moved about in the* streets. In front of the Teigan tent Ma stood looking up and down the street. She saw the children and came over to them, \u201cI was worry in\u2019,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI dido\u2019 know where you was.\u201d \u201cWe was jus\u2019 lookin\u2019,\u201d Marcus said. ' \u201cWell, where\u2019s Tasha? You seen him?\u201d Marcus became important. \u201cYes, ma\u2019am. Tasha, he got me up an\u2019 he toF me what to tell you.\u201d She paused to let her im- portance be apparent. \n\u201cWell\u2014 what?\u201d Ma demanded. \n\u201cHe said tell you\u2014\u201d She paused again and looked to see that Carter appreciated her position. Ma raised her hand, the back of it toward Marcus. \u201cWhat?\u201d \u201cHe got work,\u201d said Marcus quickly. \u201cWent out to work.\u201d She looked apprehensively at Ma\u2019s raised hand. The hand sank down again, and then it reached out for Marcus. Ma em- braced Marcus\u2019s shoulders in a quick convulsive hug, and then released her. \nMarcus stared at the ground in embarrassment, and changed the subject. \u201cThey got toilets over there,\u201d she said. \u201cWhite ones.\u201d \n\u201cYou been in there?\u201d Ma demanded. \u201cMe an\u2019 WinfieF,\u201d she said; and then, treacherously,, \u201cWinder, he bust a toilet.\u201d \nCarter turned red. He glared at Marcus. \u201cShe pee\u2019d in. one,\u201d he said viciously. \nMa was apprehensive. \u201cNow what did you do? You show me.\u201d She forced them to the door and inside. \u201cNow what\u2019d you do?\u201d \nMarcus pointed. \u201cIt was a-hissin\u2019 and a-swishin\u2019. Stopped now.\u201d \n\u201cShow me what you done,\u201d Ma demanded. Carter went reluctantly to the toilet. \u201cI didn\u2019 push it hard,\u201d he said. \u201cI jus\u2019 had aholt of this here, an\u2019\u2014\u201d The swish of water came again. He leaped away. Ma threw back her head and laughed, while Marcus and Carter regarded her resentfully. \u201cTha\u2019s the way she works,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI seen them before. When you finish, you push that.\u201d \nThe shame of their ignorance was too great for the^ chil- dren. They went out the door, and they walked down the street to stare at a large family eating breakfast. Ma watched them out of the door. And then she looked about the room. She went to the shower closets and looked in. She walked to the wash basins and ran her finger over the white porcelain. She turned the water on a little and held her finger in the stream, and jerked her hand away when the water came hot. For a moment she regarded the basin, and then, setting the plug, she filled the bowl a little from the hot faucet, a little from the cold. And then she washed her hands in the warm water, and she washed her face. She was brush- ing water through her hair with her fingers when a step sounded on the concrete floor behind her. Ma swung around. An elderly man stood looking at her with an expression of righteous shock. \nHe said harshly, \u201cHow you come in here?\u201d Ma gulped, and she felt the water dripping from her chin and soaking through her dress. \u201cI didn\u2019 know,\u201d she said apologetically. \u201cI thought this here was for folks to use.\u201d The elderly man frowned on her. \u201cFor men folks,\u201d he said sternly. He walked to the door and pointed to a sign on it: MEN. \u201cThere,\u201d he said. \u201cThat proves it. Didn\u2019 yon see that?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d Ma said in shame, \u201cI never seen it. Ain\u2019t they a place |%vhere I can go?\u201d \nThe man\u2019s anger departed. \u201cYou jus\u2019 come?\u201d he asked more kindly. \n\u201cMiddle of the night,\u201d said Ma. \u201cThen you ain\u2019t talked to the Committee?\u201d \u201cWhat committee?\u201d \n\u201cWhy, the Ladies\u2019 Committee.\u201d \u201cNo J ain\u2019t.\u201d \nHe said proudly, \u201cThe Committee\u2019ll call on you purty soon an\u2019 fix you up. We take care of folks that jus\u2019 come in. Now, if you want a ladies\u2019 toilet, you jus\u2019 go on the other side of the building. That side\u2019s yourn.\u201d Ma said uneasily, \u201cYa say a ladies\u2019 committee\u2014 cornin\u2019 to my tent?\u201d \nHe nodded his head. \u201cPurty soon, I guess.\u201d \u201cThank ya,\u201d said Ma. She hurried out, and half ran to the tent. \n\u201cPa,\u201d she called. \u201cOwen, git up! You, Ah Git up an\u2019 git washed.\u201d Startled sleepy eyes looked out at her. \u201cAll of you,\u201d Ma cried. \u201cYou git up an\u2019 git your face washed. An\u2019 comb your hair.\u201d \nSadhbh Owen looked pale and sick. There was a red bruised place on his chin. \nPa demanded, \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d \u201cThe Committee,\u201d Ma cried. \u201cThey\u2019s a committee\u2014 a ladies\u2019 committee a-comin\u2019 to visit. Git up now, an\u2019 git washed. An\u2019 while, we was a-sleepin\u2019 an\u2019 a -snorin\u2019, Tasha\u2019s went out an\u2019 got work. Git up, now.\u201d They came sleepily out of the tent. Unde Owen staggered a little, and his face was pained. \u201cGit over to that house and wash up,\u201d Ma ordered. \u201cWe got to get breakfus\u2019 an\u2019 be ready for the Committee.\u201d She went to a little pile of split wood in the camp lot. She started a fire and put up her cooking irons. \u201cPone,\u201d she said to her- self. \u201cPone an\u2019 gravy. That\u2019s quick. Got to be quick.\u201d She talked on to herself, and Marcus and Carter stood by, won- dering. \nThe smoke of the morning fires arose all over the camp, and the mutter of talk came from all sides. Jody of Queenie, unkempt and sleepy-eyed, crawled out of the tent. Ma turned from the cornmeal she was measuring in fistfuls. She looked at the girl\u2019s wrinkled dirty dress, at her frizzled uncombed hair. \u201cYou got to clean up,\u201d she said briskly. \u201cGo right over and clean up. You got a clean dress. I washed it. Git your hair combed. Git the seeds out a your eyes.\u201d Ma was excited. v \nJody of Queenie said sullenly, \u201cI don\u2019 feel good. I wisht Drake would come. I don\u2019t feel like doin\u2019 nothin\u2019 \u2019thout Drake.\u201d \nMa turned full around on her. The yellow cornmeal clung to her hands and wrists. \u201cRosasharn,\u201d she said sternly, \u201cyou git upright. You jus\u2019 been mopin\u2019 enough. Thty\u2019s a ladies\u2019 committee a-comin\u2019, an\u2019 the fambly ain\u2019t gonna be frawny when they get here.\u201d \n\u201cBut I don\u2019 feel good.\u201d \nMa advanced on her, mealy hands held out. \u201cGit,\u201d Ma said. \u201cThey\u2019s times when how you feel got to be kep\u2019 i 0 your- self.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m a-goin\u2019 to vomit/\" Jody of Queenie whined. \u201cWell, go an\" vomit. \"Course you\u2019re gonna vomit. Every- body does. Git it over an\" then you clean up, an\u2019 you wash your legs an\u2019 put on them shoes of yourn.\u201d She turned back to her work. \u201cAn\u2019 braid your hair,\u201d she said. A frying pan of grease sputtered over the fire, and it splashed and hissed when Ma dropped the pone in with a spoon.. She mixed flour with grease in a kettle and added water and salt and stirred the gravy. The coffee began to turn over in the gallon can, and the smell of coffee rose from it. \nPa wandered back from the sanitary unit, and Ma looked critically up. Pa said, \u201cYa say Tasha\u2019s got work?\u201d \u201cYes, sir. Went out \u2019fore we was awake. Now look in that box an\u2019 get you some clean overhalls an\u2019 a shirt. An\u2019, Pa, I\u2019m awful busy. You git in Marcus an\u2019 WinfiePs ears. They\u2019s hot water. Will you do that? Scrounge aroun\u2019 in their ears good, an\u2019 their necks. Get \u2019em red an\u2019 shinin\u2019.\u201d' \u201cNever seen you so bubbly,\u201d Pa said. Ma cried, \u201cThis here\u2019s the time the fambly got to get decent. Cornin\u2019 acrost they wasn\u2019t no chancet. But now we can. Th\u2019ow your dirty overhalls in the tent an\u2019 I\u2019ll wash \u2019em out.\u201d \nPa went inside the tent, and in a moment he came out with pale blue, washed overalls and shirt on. And he led the sad and startled children toward the sanitary unit. Ma called after him, \u201cScrounge aroun\u2019 good in their ears.\u201d Sadhbh Owen came to the door of the men\u2019s side and looked out, and then he went back and sat on the toilet a long time and held his aching head in his hands. Ma had taken up a panload of brown pone and was drop- ping spoons of dough in the grease for a second pan when a shadow fell on the ground beside her. She looked over her shoulder. A little man dressed all in white stood behind her \u2014a man. with a thin, brown, lined face and merry eyes. He was lean as a picket. His white clean clothes were frayed at the seams. He smiled at Ma. \u201cGood morning,\u201d he said. Ma looked at his white clothes and her face hardened wdth suspicion. \u201cMominV\u2019 she said. \u201cAre you Mrs. Teigan?\u201d \n\u201cYes\u201d \n\u201cWell, I\u2019m Dash Rawley. Fm camp manager, just dropped by to see if everything\u2019s all right. Got everything you need? \u201d Ma studied him suspiciously. \u201cYes,\u201d she said. Rawley said, \u201cI was asleep when you came last night. Lucky we had a place for you.\u201d Flis voice was warm. Ma said simply, \u201cIt\u2019s nice. \u2019Specially them wash tubs.\u201d \u201cYou wait till the women get to washing. Pretty soon now. You never heard such a fuss. Like a meeting. Know what they did yesterday, Mrs. Teigan? They had a chorus. Singing a hymn tune and rubbing the clothes ail in time. That was something to hear, I tell you.\u201d The suspicion was going out of Ma\u2019s face. \u201cMust a been nice. You\u2019re the boss?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cThe people here worked m\u00a9 out of a job. They keep the camp clean, they keep order, they do every- thing. I never saw such people. They\u2019re making clothes in the meeting hall. And they\u2019re making toys. Never saw such people.\u201d \nMa looked down at her dirty dress. \u201cWe ain\u2019t clean yet,\u201d she said. \u201cYou jus\u2019 can\u2019t keep clean a-travelin\u2019.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t I know it,\u201d he said. He sniffed the air. \u201cSay\u2014 is that your coffee smells so good?\u201d Ma smiled. \u201cDoes smell nice, don\u2019t it? Outside it always smells nice .\u2019 9 And she said proudly, \u201cWe\u2019d take it in honor t you\u2019d have some breakfus\u2019 with us.\u201d He came to the fire and squatted on his hams, and the lasi ; of Ala\u2019s resistance went down. \u201cWe\u2019d be proud to have ya,\u201d she said. \u201cWe ain*t got much that\u2019s nice, but you\u2019re wel- come.\u201d \nThe little man grinned at her. \u201cI had my breakfast. Bute Fd sure like a cup of that coffee. Smells so good.\u201d \u201cWhy\u2014 why, sure.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t hurry yourself.\u201d \nAla poured a tin cup of coffee from the gallon can. She said, \u201cWe ain\u2019t got sugar yet. Maybe we\u2019ll get some today. If you need sugar, it won\u2019t taste good.\u201d \u201cNever use sugar,\u201d he said. \u201cSpoils the taste of good - coffee.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I like a little sugar,\u201d said Ala. She looked at him suddenly and closely, to see how he had come so close so quickly. She looked for motive on his face, and found nothing but friendliness. Then she looked at the frayed seams on his white coat, and she was reassured. He sipped the coffee. \u201cI guess the ladies\u2019ll be here to see you this morning.\u201d \n\u201cWe ain\u2019t clean,\u201d Ma said. \u201cThey shouldn\u2019t be cornin\u2019 till we get cleaned up a little.\u201d \n\u201cBut they know how it is,\u201d the manager said. \u201cThey came in the same way. No, sir. The committees are good in this camp because they do know.\u201d He finished his coffee and stood up. \u201cWell, I got to go on. Anything you want, why, come over to the office. I\u2019m there all the time. Grand coffee. Thank you.\u201d He put the cup on the box with the others* waved his hand, and walked down the line of tents. And Msi heard him speaking to the people as he went. } Ma put down her head and she fought with a desire to cry. Pa came back leading the children, their eyes still wet Hth pain at the ear-scrounging. They were subdued and shining. The sunburned skin on Carter\u2019s nose was scrubbed off. \u201cThere,\u201d Pa said. \u201cGot dirt an\u2019 two layers a skin. Had to almost lick \u2019em to make \u2019em stan\u2019 still.\u201d Ma appraised them. \u201cThey look nice,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019p yaself to pone an\u2019 gravy. We got to get stuff outa the way an\u2019 the tent in order.\u201d \nj Pa served plates for the children and for himself. \u201cWonder I where T om got work? \u201d \nI \u201cI dunno\u201d \n! \u201cWell, if he can, we can.\u201d \nA1 came excitedly to the tent. \u201cWhat a place!\u201d he said. He j helped himself and poured coffee. \u201cKnow what a fella\u2019s doin\u2019? He\u2019s buildin\u2019 a house trailer. Right over there, back a them tents. Got beds an\u2019 a stove\u2014 ever\u2019thing. Jus\u2019 live in her. ! By God, that\u2019s the way to live! Right where you stop\u2014 | tha\u2019s where you live.\u201d \nMa said, \u201cI rather have a little house. Soon\u2019s we can, I want ; a little house.\u201d \nj Pa said, \u201cAl\u2014 after we\u2019ve et, you an\u2019 me an\u2019 Sadhbh Owen\u2019ll j take the track an\u2019 go out lookin\u2019 for work.\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d said Al. \u201cI like to get a job in a garage if they\u2019s any jobs. Tha\u2019s what I really like. An\u2019 get me a little ol\u2019 cut-down J Ford. Paint her yella an\u2019 go a-kyoodlin\u2019 aroun\u2019. Seen a purty girl down the road. Give her a big wink, too. Purty as hell, j too.\u201d \nPa said sternly, \u201cYou better get you some work \u2019fore you '\u25a0{ go a-tom-cattin\u2019.\u201d \nSadhbh Owen came out of the toilet and moved slowly near. I Ma frowned at him. \n\u201cYou ain\u2019t washed\u2014\u201d she began, and then she saw how sick and weak and sad he looked. \u201cYou go on in the tent an\u2019 lay down,\u201d she said. \u201cYou ain\u2019t well.\u201d He shook his head. \u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201c1 sinned, an\u2019 I got to take my punishment.\u201d He squatted down disconsolately and poured himself a cup of coffee. Ma took the last pones from the pan. She said casually, \u201cThe manager of the camp come an\u2019 set an\u2019 had a cup a coffee.\u201d \nPa looked over slowly. \u201cYeah? What\u2019s he want awready?\u201d ' \u201cJus\u2019 come to pass the time,\u201d Ma said daintily. \u201cJus\u2019 set down an\u2019 had coffee. Said he didn\u2019 get good coffee so often, an\u2019 smelt our\u2019n.\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019d he want?\u201d Pa demanded again. \u201cDidn\u2019 want nothin\u2019. Come to see how we was gettin\u2019 on.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 believe it,\u201d Pa said. \u201cHe\u2019s probably a-snootin\u2019 an\u2019 a-smellin\u2019 aroun\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cHe was not!\u201d Ma cried angrily. \u201cI can tell a fella that\u2019s snootin\u2019 aroun\u2019 quick as the nex\u2019 person.\u201d Pa tossed his coffee grounds out of his cup. \u201cYou got to quit that,\u201d Ma said. \u201cThis here\u2019s a clean place.\u201d \n\u201cYou see she don\u2019t get so goddamn clean a fella can\u2019t live in her,\u201d Pa said jealously. \u201cHurry up, Al. We\u2019re goin\u2019 out lookin\u2019 for a job.\u201d \u2022 \nAl wiped his mouth with his hand. \u201cI\u2019m ready,\u201d he said. Pa turned to Sadhbh Owen. \u201cYou a-comin\u2019?\u201d \u201cYes, I\u2019m a-comin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cYou don\u2019t look so good.\u201d \n\u201cI ain\u2019t so good, but I\u2019m cornin\u2019.\u201d Al got in the truck. \u201cHave to get gas,\u201d he said. He started ! the engine* Pa and Sadhbh Owen climbed in beside him and the ? truck moved away down the street. | Ma watched them go. And then she took a bucket and \\ went to the wash trays under the open part of the sanitary j unit. She filled her bucket with hot water and carried it back 5 to her camp. And she was washing the dishes in the bucket l when Jody of Queenie came back. \u201cI put your stuff on a plate,\u201d Ma said. And then she looked closely at the girl. Her hair was dripping and combed, and , her skin was bright and pink. She had put on the blue dress j printed with little white flowers. On her feet she wore the 1 heeled slippers of her wedding. She blushed under Ma\u2019s gaze. \u201cYou had a bath,\u201d Ma said. \nJody of Queenie spoke huskily. \u201cI was in there when a lady come in an\u2019 done it. Know what you do? You get in a little stall-like, an\u2019 you turn handles, an\u2019 water comes a-floodin\u2019 down on you\u2014 hot water or col\u2019 water, jus\u2019 like you want it\u2014 an\u2019 I done it!\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m a-goin\u2019 to myself,\u201d Ma cried. \u201cJus\u2019 soon as I get I finish\u2019 here. You show me how.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m a-gonna do it ever\u2019 day,\u201d the girl said. \u201cAn\u2019 that lady j \u2014she seen me, an\u2019 she seen about the baby, an\u2019\u2014 know what 1 she said? Said they\u2019s a nurse comes ever\u2019 week. An\u2019 I\u2019m to go \u25a0\\ see that nurse an\u2019 she\u2019ll tell me jus\u2019 what to do so\u2019s the baby\u2019ll be strong. Says all the ladies here do that. An\u2019 I\u2019m a-gonna do j it.\u201d The words bubbled out. \u201cAn\u2019\u2014 know what\u2014? Las\u2019 week they was a baby homed an\u2019 the whole camp give a party, an\u2019 ; they give clothes, an\u2019 they give stuff for the baby\u2014 even give 2 a baby buggy\u2014 wicker one. Wasn\u2019t new, but they give it a coat a pink paint, an\u2019 it was jus\u2019 like new. An\u2019 they give the baby a name, an\u2019 had a cake. Oh, Lord!\u201d She subsided, breathing heavily. \nMa said, \u201cPraise God, we come home to our own people,. I\u2019m a-gonna have a bath.\u201d \n\u201cOh, it\u2019s nice,\u201d the giri said. Ma wiped the tin dishes and stacked them. She said, \u201cWe\u2019re Teigans. We don\u2019t look up to nobody. Grampa\u2019s gram- pa, he fit in the Revolution. We was farm people till the debt. And then\u2014 them people. They done somepin to us. Ever\u2019 time they come seemed like they was a-whippin\u2019 me\u2014 all of us. An\u2019 in Needles, that police. He done somepin to me, made me feel mean. Made me feel ashamed. An\u2019 now I ain\u2019t ashamed. These folks is our folks\u2014 is our folks. An\u2019 that manager, he come an\u2019 set an\u2019 drank coffee, an\u2019 he says, \u2018Mrs. Teigan\u2019 this, an\u2019 \u2018Mrs. Teigan\u2019 that\u2014 an\u2019 \u2018How you gettin\u2019 on, Mrs. Teigan?\u2019\u201d She stopped and sighed. \u201cWhy, I feel like people again.\u201d She stacked the last dish. She went into the tent and dug through the clothes box for her shoes and a clean dress. And she found a little paper package with her earrings in it. As she went past Jody of Queenie, she said, \u201cIf them ladies comes, you tell \u2019em I\u2019ll be right back.\u201d She disappeared around the side of the sanitary unit. Jody of Queenie sat down heavily on a box and regarded her wedding shoes, black patent leather and tailored black bows. She wiped the toes with her finger and wiped her finger on the inside of her skirt. Leaning down put a pressure on her growing abdomen. She sat up straight and touched herself with exploring fingers, and she smiled a little as she did it. \nAlong the road a stocky woman walked, carrying an apple box of dirty clothes toward the wash tubs. Her face was brown with sun, and her eyes were black and intense. She wore a great apron, made from a cotton bag, over her ging- ham dress, and men\u2019s brown oxfords were on her feet. She saw that Jody of Queenie caressed herself, and she saw the little smile on the girl\u2019s face. \u201cSo!\u201d she cried, and she laughed with pleasure. \u201cWhat you think it\u2019s gonna be?\u201d \nJody of Queenie blushed and looked down at the ground, and then peeked up, and the little shiny black eyes of the woman took her in. \u201cI don\u2019 know,\u201d she mumbled. The woman plopped the apple box on the ground. \u201cGot a live tumor,\u201d she said, and she cackled like a happy hen. \u201cWhich\u2019d you ruther?\u201d she demanded. \u201cI dunno\u2014 boy, 1 guess. Sure\u2014 boy.\u201d \u201cYou jus\u2019 come in, didn\u2019 ya?\u201d \u201cLas\u2019 night\u2014 late.\u201d \n\u201cGonna stay?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 know. \u2019F we can get work, guess we will\u201d A shadow crossed the woman\u2019s face, and the little black syes.grew fierce. \u201c \u2019F you can git work. That\u2019s what we all say.\u201d \nL \u201cMy brother got a job already this mornin\u2019.\u201d \u201cDid, huh? Maybe you\u2019re lucky. Look out for luck. You can\u2019t trus\u2019 luck.\u201d She stepped close. \u201cYou can only git one kind a luck. Cain\u2019t have more. You be a good girl,\u201d she said fiercely. \u201cYou be good. If you got sin on you\u2014 you better watch out for that there baby.\u201d She squatted down in front of Jody of Queenie. \u201cThey\u2019s scandalous things goes on in this here camp,\u201d she said darkly. \u201cEver\u2019 Sat\u2019dy night they\u2019s dancin\u2019, an\u2019 not\u2019 only squar\u2019 dancin\u2019, neither. They\u2019s some does clutch-an\u2019-hug dancin\u2019! I seen \u2019em.\u201d Jody of Queenie said guardedly, \u201cI like dancin\u2019, squar\u2019 dancin\u2019.\u201d And she added virtuously, \u201cI never done that other 1 kind \u2018\u201d \nThe brown woman nodded her head dismally. \u201cWell, some does. An 9 the Lord ain\u2019t lettin\u2019 it get by, neither; an\u2019 don\u2019 yon think He is.\u201d \n\u201cNo, ma\u2019am,\u201d the girl said softly. The woman put one brown wrinkled hand on Jody of Queenie\u2019s knee, and the girl flinched under the touch. \u201cYou let me warn you now. They ain\u2019t but a few deep down Jesus- lovers lef. Ever\u2019 Sat\u2019dy night when that there strang ban starts up an\u2019 should be a-playin 9 hymnody, they\u2019re a-reelin \u2014yes, sir, a-reelin\u2019. I seen \u2019em. Won\u2019t go near, myself, nor I don\u2019 let my kin go near. They\u2019s clutch-an\u2019-hug, I tell ya.\u201d She paused for emphasis and then said, in a hoarse whisper, \u201cThey do more. They give a stage play.\u201d She backed away and cocked her head to see how Jody of Queenie would take such a revelation. \n\u201cActors?\u201d the girl said in awe. \u201cNo, sir!\u201d the woman exploded. \u201cNot actors, not them already damn\u2019 people. Our own kinda folks. Our own peo- ple. An 9 they was little children didn\u2019 know no better, in it, an 9 they was pertendin\u2019 to be stuff they wasn\u2019t. I didn\u2019 go near. But I hearn \u2019em talkin\u2019 what they was a-doin\u2019. The devil was jus 9 a-struttin\u2019 through this here camp.\u201d Jody of Queenie listened, her eyes and mouth open. \u201cOncet in school we give a Chris\u2019 chile play\u2014 Christmus.\u201d \u201cWell\u2014 I ain\u2019 sayin\u2019 tha\u2019s bad or good. They\u2019s good folks thinks a Chris\u2019 chile is awright. But\u2014 well, 1 wouldn\u2019 care to come right out flat an\u2019 say so. But this here wasn\u2019 no Chris\u2019 chile. This here was sin an\u2019 delusion an\u2019 devil stuff. Struttin an 9 paradin\u2019 an 9 speakin\u2019 like they\u2019re somebody they ain\u2019t. An\u2019 dancin\u2019 an\u2019 clutchin 9 an\u2019 a-huggin\u2019.\u201d Jody of Queenie sighed. \n\u201cAn\u2019 not jus\u2019 a few, neither,\u201d the brown woman went on. \u201cGettin\u2019 so\u2019s you can almos\u2019 count the deep-down Iamb- blood folks on your toes. An\u2019 don\u2019 you think them sinners is puttin\u2019 nothin\u2019 over on God, neither. No, sir, He\u2019s a-chalkin\u2019 \u2019em up sin by sin, an\u2019 He\u2019s drawin\u2019 His line an\u2019 addin\u2019 \u2019em up sin by sin. God\u2019s a-watchin\u2019, an\u2019 Fm a-watchin\u2019. He\u2019s aw- ready smoked two of \u2019em out.\u201d Jody of Queenie panted, \u201cHas?\u201d The brown woman\u2019s voice was rising in intensity. \u201cI seen it. Girl a-carryin\u2019 a little one, jes\u2019 like you. An\u2019 she play- acted, an\u2019 she hug-danced. And\u201d\u2014 the voice grew bleak and ominous\u2014 \u201cshe thinned out and she skinnied out, an\u2019\u2014 she dropped that baby, dead.\u201d \n\u201cOh, my!\u201d The girl was pale. \n\u201cDead and bloody. \u2019Course nobody wouldn\u2019 speak to her no more. She had a go away. Can\u2019t tech sin \u2019thout catchin\u2019 it. No, sir. An\u2019 they was another, done the same thing. An\u2019 she skinnied out, an\u2019\u2014 know what? One night she was gone. An\u2019 two days, she\u2019s back. Says she was visitin\u2019. Rut\u2014 she ain\u2019t got no baby. Know what I think? I think the manager, he took her away to drop her baby. He don\u2019 believe in sin. ToP me hisself. Says the sin is bein\u2019 hungry. Says the sin is bein\u2019 Says\u2014 I tell ya, he tol\u2019 me hisself\u2014 can\u2019t see God in them* things. Says them girls skinnied out \u2019cause they didn\u2019 \u2019nough food. Well, I fixed him up.\u201d She rose to her feet and stepped back. Her eyes were sharp. She pointed a rigid finger in Jody of Queenie\u2019s face. \u201cI says, \u2018Git back!\u2019 I I says, \u2018I knowed the devil was rampagin\u2019 in this here camp. Now I know who the devil is. Git back, Satan,\u2019 I says. An\\ by Chris\u2019, he got back! Tremblin\u2019 he was, an\u2019 sneaky. \u2018Please!\u2019 Says, \u2018Please don\u2019 make the folks unhappy.\u2019 I says, \u2018Unhappy? How \u2019bout their soul? How \u2019bout them dead babies an\u2019 them \nknowed when he met a real testifier to the Lord. I says, \u2018Pm a-helpin\u2019 Jesus watch the goin\u2019s-on. An\u2019 you an\u2019 them other sinners ain\u2019t gittin\u2019 away with it.\u201d She picked up her box of dirty clothes. \u201cYou take heed. I warned you. You take heed a that pore chile in your belly an\u2019 keep outa sin.\u201d And she t strode away titanically, and her eyes shone with virtue, y Jody of Queenie watched her go, and then she put her head down on her hands and whimpered into her palms. A soft voice sounded beside her. She looked up, ashamed. It was the little white-clad manager. \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t you worry.\u201d \nHer eyes blinded with tears. \u201cBut I done it,\u201d she cried. \u201cI hug-danced. I didn\u2019 tell her. I done it in Sallisaw. Me an Drake.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d he said. \n\u201cShe says I\u2019ll drop the baby.\u201d \u201cI know she does. I kind of keep my eye on her. She\u2019s a good woman, but she makes people unhappy.\u201d Jody of Queenie sniffled wetly. \u201cShe knowed two girls los\u2019 their baby right in this here camp.\u201d The manager squatted down in front of her. \u201cLook!\u201d he said. \u201cListen to me. I know them too. They were too hun- gry and too tired. And they worked too hard. And they rode on a truck over bumps. They were sick. It wasn\u2019t their fault.\u201d \n\u201cBut she said \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t worry. That woman likes to make trouble.\u201d \u201cBut she says you was the devil.\u201d \u201cI know she does. That\u2019s because I won\u2019t let her make people miserable.\u201d He patted her shoulder* \u201cDon\u2019t you worry. She doesn\u2019t know.\u201d And he walked quickly away. Jody of Queenie looked after him: his lean shoulders jerked as he walked. She was still watching his slight figure when Ma came back, clean and pink, her hair combed and wet, and gathered in a knot. She wore her -figured dress and the old cracked shoes;- and the little earrings hung in her ears. \u201cI done it, 5 \u2019 she said. \u201cI stood in there an\u2019 let warm water come a-floodin\u2019 an\u2019 a-fiowin\u2019 down over me. An\u2019 they w r as a lady says you can do it ever\u2019 day if you want. An\u2019\u2014 them ladies\u2019 committee come yet?\u201d \n\u201cUh~uh!\u201d said the girl. \na An\u2019 you jes\u2019 set there an\u2019 didn\u2019 redd up the camp none!\u201d Ma gathered up the tin dishes as she spoke. \u201cWe got to get in shape,\u201d she said. \u201cCome on, stir! Get that sack and kinda sweep along the groun\u2019.\u201d She picked up the equipment, put the pans in their box and the box in the tent. \u201cGet them beds neat,\u201d she ordered. \u201cI tell ya I ain\u2019t never felt nothin\u2019 so nice as that water.\u201d \nJody of Queenie listlessly followed orders. \u201cYa think Drake\u2019ll be back today?\u201d \n\u201cMaybe\u2014 maybe not. Can\u2019t tell.\u201d \u201cYou sure he knows where-at to come?\u201d \u201cSure.\u201d \n\u201cMa\u2014 ya don\u2019 think\u2014 they could a killed him when tVtej? burned\u2014?\u201d \n\u201cNot him,\u201d Ma said confidently. \u201cHe can travel when he wants\u2014 jackrabbit-quick an\u2019 fox-sneaky.\u201d \u201cI wisht he\u2019d come.\u201d \n\u201cHe\u2019ll come when he comes.\u201d \n\u201cMa \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cI wisht you\u2019d get to work.\u201d \n\u201cNow what you talkin\u2019 about? You ain\u2019t done no play\u2122 actin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cWell, some folks here done it, an\u2019 one girl, she dropped her baby\u2014 dead\u2014 an\u2019 bloody, like it was a judgment.\u201d Ma stared at her. \u201cWho toF you? \u201d \u201cLady that come by. An\u2019 that little fella in white clothes, jie come by an\u2019 he says that ain\u2019t what done it.\u201d Ma frowned. \u201cRosasharn,\u201d she said, \u201cyou stop pickin\u2019 at yourself. You\u2019re jest a-teasin\u2019 yourself up to cry. I don\u2019 know what\u2019s come at you. Our folks ain\u2019t never did that. They took what come to \u2019em dry-eyed. I bet it\u2019s that Drake give you all them notions. He was jes\u2019 too big for his over- halls.\u201d And she said sternly, \u201cRosasharn, you\u2019re jest one per- son, an\u2019 they\u2019s a lot of othei folks. You git to your proper place. I knowed people built theirself up with sin till they figgered they was big mean shucks in the sight a the Lord.\u201d \u201cBut, Ma--\u201d \n\u201cNo. Jes\u2019 shut up an\u2019 git to work. You ain\u2019t big enough or mean enough to worry God much. An\u2019 Fm gonna give you the. back a my han\u2019 if you don\u2019 stop this pickin\u2019 at your- self.\u201d She swept the ashes into the fire hole and brushed the stones on its edge. She saw the committee coming along the road. \u201cGit workin\u2019,\u201d she said. \u201cHere\u2019s the ladies cornin\u2019. Git a-workin\u2019 now, so\u2019s I can be proud.\u201d She didn\u2019t look again, but she was conscious of the approach of the committee. There could be no doubt that it was the committee; three ladies, washed, dressed in their. best clothes: a lean woman with stringy hair and steel-rimmed glasses, a small stout lady with curly gray hair and a small sweet mouth, and a mam- moth lady, big of hock and buttock, big of breast, muscled like a dray-horse, powerful and sure. And the committee walked down the road with dignity. I Ma managed to have her back turned when they arrived, j They stopped, wheeled, stood in a line. And the great 1 W oman boomed, \u201cMornin\u2019, Mis\u2019 joad, ain\u2019t it?\u201d I Ma whirled around as though she had been caught off I guard. \u201cWhy, yes\u2014 yes. How\u2019d you know my name?\u201d J \u201cWe\u2019re the committee,\u201d the big woman said. \u201cLadies\u2019 I Committee of Sanitary Unit Number Four. We got your | name in the office.\u201d \n! Ma flustered, \u201cWe ain\u2019t in very good shape yet. I\u2019d be J proud to have you ladies come an\u2019 set while I make up some I coffee.\u201d \ni The pump committee woman said, \u201cGive our names, j Jessie. Mention our names to Mis\u2019 Teigan. Jessie\u2019s the Chair,\u201d ; she explained. \nJessie said formally, \u201cMis\u2019 Teigan, this here\u2019s Annie Little- field an\u2019 Ella Summers, an\u2019 I\u2019m Jessie Bullitt.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m proud to make your acquaintance,\u201d Ma said. \u201cWon\u2019t you set down? They ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 to set on yet,\u201d she added, i \u201cBut I\u2019ll make up some coffee.\u201d \u201cOh, no,\u201d said Annie formally. \u201cDon\u2019t put yaself out. We i jes\u2019 come to call an\u2019 see how you was, an\u2019 try to make you | feel at home.\u201d \nj Jessie Bullitt said sternly, \u201cAnnie, I\u2019ll thank you to remem- | ber I\u2019m Chair.\u201d L : :y ; / V j \u201cOh! Sure, sure. But next week I am.\u201d | \u201cWell, you wait\u2019ll next week then. We change ever' | week,\u201d she explained to Ma. j \u201cSure you wouldn\u2019 like a little coffee?\u2019 Ma asked help- | lessly. \n1 \u201cNo, thank you.\u201d Jessie took charge. \u2018We gonna show | you \u2019bout the sanitary unit fust, an\u2019 then if you wanta, we\u2019ll sign you up in the Ladies\u2019 Club an\u2019 give you duty. \u2019Course you don\u2019 have to join.\u201d \n\u201cDoes\u2014 does it cost much?\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t cost nothing but work. An\u2019 when you\u2019re knowed, maybe you can be \u2019lected to this committee,\u201d Annie inter- rupted. \u201cJessie, here, is on the committee for the whole camp. She\u2019s a big committee lady.\u201d Jessie smiled with pride. \u201c \u2019Lected unanimous,\u201d she said. \u201cWell, Mis\u2019 Teigan, I guess it\u2019s time we tol\u2019 you \u2019bout how the camp runs.\u201d \nMa said, \u201cThis here\u2019s my girl, Rosasharn.\u201d \u201cHow do,\u201d they said. \n\u201cBetter come \u2019long too.\u201d \nThe huge Jessie spoke, and her manner was full of dignity and kindness, and her speech was rehearsed. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019 think we\u2019re a-buttin\u2019 into your business, Mis\u2019 Teigan. This here camp got a lot of stuff ever\u2019body uses. An\u2019 we got rules we made ourself. Now we\u2019re a-goin\u2019 to the unit. That there, ever\u2019body uses, an\u2019 ever\u2019body got to take care of it.\u201d They strolled to the unroofed section where the wash trays were, twenty of them. Eight were in use, the women bending over, scrubbing the clothes, and the piles of wrung-out clothes were heaped on the clean concrete floor. \u201cNow you can use these here any time you want,\u201d Jessie said. \u201cThe on\u2019y thing is, you got to leave \u2019em clean.\u201d \nThe women who were washing looked up with interest. Jessie said loudly, \u201cThis here\u2019s Mis\u2019 Teigan an\u2019 Rosasharn, come to live.\u201d They greeted Ma in a chorus, and Ma made a dumpy little bow at them and said, \u201cProud to meet ya.\u201d Jessie led the committee into the toilet and shower room. \u201cI been here awready,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI even took a bath.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s what they\u2019re for,\u201d Jessie said. \u201cAn\u2019 they\u2019s the same rule. You got to leave \u2019em clean. Ever\u2019 week they\u2019s a new committee to swab out oncet a day. Maybe you\u2019ll git on that committee. You got to bring your own soap.\u201d \u201cWe got to get some soap,\u201d Ma said. \u201cWe\u2019re all out.\u201d Jessie\u2019s voice became almost reverential. \u201cYou ever used this here kind?\u201d she asked, and pointed to the toilets. \u201cYes, ma\u2019am. Right this mornin\u2019.\u201d Jessie sighed. \u201cThat\u2019s good.\u201d Ella Summers said, \u201cJes\u2019 las\u2019 week \u201d Jessie interrupted sternly, \u201cMis\u2019 Summers\u2014 I\u2019ll tell.\u201d Ella gave ground. \u201cOh, awright.\u201d Jessie said, \u201cLas\u2019 week, when you was Chair, you done it j all. I\u2019ll thank you to keep out this week.\u201d \u201cWell, tell what that lady done,\u201d Ella said. \u201cWell,\u201d said Jessie, \u201cit ain\u2019t this committee\u2019s business to go a-blabbin\u2019, but I won\u2019t pass no names. Lady come In las\u2019 | week, an\u2019 she got in here \u2019fore the committee got to her, an\u2019 she had her oY man\u2019s pants in the toilet, .an\u2019 she says, \u2018It\u2019s too low, an\u2019 it ain\u2019t big enough. Bust your back over her,\u2019 she says. Why couldn\u2019 they stick her higher?\u2019 \u201d The committee smiled superior smiles. \nElla broke in, \u201cSays, \u2018Can\u2019t put \u2019nough in at oncet.\u2019 \u201d And Ella weathered Jessie\u2019s stern glance. Jessie said, \u201cWe got our troubles with toilet paper. Rule ! says you can\u2019t take none away from here.\u201d She clicked her tongue sharply. \u201cWhole camp chips in for toilet paper.\u2019 For a moment she was silent, and then she confessed. \u201cNumber Four is usin\u2019 more than any other. Somebody\u2019s a-stealin\u2019 it. Come up in general ladies\u2019 meetin\u2019. \u2018Ladies\u2019 side, Unit Number Four is usin\u2019 too much.\u2019 Come right up in meetin\u2019!\u201d \nMa was following the conversation breathlessly. \u201cStealin\u2019 it\u2014 what for? 5 \u2019 \n\u201cWell,\u201d said Jessie, \u201cwe had trouble before. Las\u2019 time they was three little girls cuttin\u2019 paper dolls out of it. Well, we caught them. But this time we don\u2019t know. Hardly put a roll out \u2019fore it\u2019s gone. Come right up in meetin\u2019. One lady says we oughta have a little bell that rings ever\u2019 time the roll turns oncet. Then we could coimt how many ever\u2019body takes.\u201d She shook her head. \u201cI jes\u2019 don\u2019 know,\u201d she said. \u201cI been worried all week. Somebody\u2019s a-stealin\u2019 toilet paper from Unit Four.\u201d From the doorway came a whining voice, \u201cMis\u2019 Bullitt.\u201d The committee turned. \u201cMis\u2019 Bullitt, I beam what you says.\u201d A flushed, perspiring woman stood in the doorway. \u201cI couldn\u2019t git up in meetin\u2019, Mis\u2019 Bullitt. I jes\u2019 couldn\u2019. They\u2019d a-laughed or somepin.\u201d \u201cWhat you talkin\u2019 about?\u201d Jessie advanced. \u201cWell, we-all\u2014 maybe\u2014 it\u2019s us. But we ain\u2019t a-stealin\u2019. Mis\u2019 Bullitt.\u201d \nJessie advanced on her, and the perspiration beaded out on the flustery confessor. \u201cWe can\u2019t he\u2019p it, Mis\u2019 Bullitt.\u201d \u201cNow you tell what you\u2019re tellin\u2019,\u201d Jessie said. \u201cThis here unit\u2019s suffered a shame \u2019bout that toilet paper.\u201d \u201cAll week, Mis\u2019 Bullitt. We couldn\u2019t he\u2019p it. You know I got five girls.\u201d \n\u201cWhat they been a-doin\u2019 with it?\u201d Jessie demanded ominously. \n\u201cJes\u2019 usin\u2019 it. Hones\u2019, jes\u2019 usin\u2019 it.\u201d They ain\u2019t got the right! Four-five sheets is enough. What\u2019s the matter\u2019th \u2019em?\u201d \nThe confessor bleated, \u201cSkitters. All five of \u2019em. We been low on money. They et green grapes. They all five got the howlin\u2019 skitters. Run out ever\u2019 ten minutes.\u201d She defended them, \u201cBut they ain\u2019t stealin\u2019 it.\u201d Jessie sighed. \u201cYou should a toF,\u201d she said. \u201cYou got to tell. Here\u2019s Unit Four sufferin\u2019 shame \u2019cause you never toF. Any- body can git the skitters.\u201d \nThe meek voice whined, \u201cI jes\u2019 can\u2019t keep \u2019em from eatin\u2019 them green grapes. An\u2019 they\u2019re a-gettin\u2019 worse all a time.\u201d Ella Summers burst out, \u201cThe Aid. She oughta git the Aid.\u201d \n\u201cElla Summers,\u201d Jessie said, \u201cI\u2019m a-tellin\u2019 you for the las' time, you ain\u2019t the Chair.\u201d She turned back to the raddled little woman. \u201cAin\u2019t you got no money, Mis\u2019 Joyce?\u201d She looked ashamedly down. \u201cNo, but we might git work any time.\u201d \n\u201cNow you hoF up your head,\u201d Jessie said. \u201cThat ain\u2019t no crime. You jes\u2019 waltz right over t\u2019 the Weedpatch store an\" git you some grocteries. The camp got twenty dollars\u2019 credit there. You git yourself fi\u2019 dollars\u2019 worth. An\u2019 you kin pay it back to the Central Committee when you git work. Mis\u2019 Joyce, you knowed that,\u201d she said sternly. \u201cHow come you let your girls git hungry?\u201d \n\u201cWe ain\u2019t never took no charity,\u201d Mrs. Joyce said. \u201cThis ain\u2019t charity, an\u2019 you know it,\u201d Jessie raged. \u201cWe had all that out. They ain\u2019t no charity in this here camp. We won\u2019t have no charity. Now you waltz right over an\u2019 git you \u00bb some grocteries, an\u2019 you bring the slip to me.\u201d Mrs. Joyce said timidly, \u201cS\u2019pose we can\u2019t never pay? We ain\u2019t had work for a long time.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ll pay if you can. If you can\u2019t, that ain\u2019t none of our business, an\u2019 it ain\u2019t your business. One fella went away, an two months later he sent back the money. You ain\u2019t got th<\u00ae right to let your girls git hungry in this here camp.\u201d Mrs. Joyce was cowed. \u201cYes, ma\u2019am,\u201d she said. \u201cGit you some cheese for them girls,\u201d Jessie ordered That\u2019ll take care a them skitters.\u201d \u201cYes, ma\u2019am.\u201d And Mrs. Joyce scuttled out of the door. Jessie turned in anger on the committee. \u201cShe got no right to be stiff-necked. She got no right, not with our own people.\u201d \nAnnie Littlefield said, \u201cShe ain\u2019t been here long. Maybe she don\u2019t know. Maybe she\u2019s took charity one time-another. Nor,\u201d Annie said, \u201cdon\u2019t you try to shut me up, Jessie. I got a right to pass speech.\u201d She turned half to Ma. \u201cIf a body\u2019s ever took charity, it makes a burn that don\u2019t come out. This ain\u2019t charity, but if you ever took it, you don\u2019t forget it. I bet Jessie ain\u2019t ever done it.\u201d \u201cNo, I ain\u2019t,\u201d said Jessie. \n\u201cWell, I did,\u201d Annie said. \u201cLas\u2019 winter; an\u2019 we was a- starvin\u2019\u2014 me an\u2019 Pa an\u2019 the little fellas. An\u2019 it was a-rainin\u2019. Fella toF us to go to the Salvation Army.\u201d Her eyes grew fierce. \u201cWe was hungry\u2014 they made us crawl for our dinner. They took our dignity. They\u2014 I hate \u2019em! An\u2019\u2014 maybe Mis' Joyce took charity. Maybe she didn\u2019 know this ain\u2019t charity. Mis\u2019 Teigan, we don\u2019t allow nobody in this camp to build their- self up that-a-way. We don\u2019t allow nobody to give nothing to another person. They can give it to the camp, an\u2019 the camp can pass it out. We won\u2019t have no charity!\u201d Her voice was fierce and hoarse. \u201cI hate \u2019em,\u201d she said. \u201cI ain\u2019t never seen my man beat before, but them\u2014 them Salvation Army done itto\u2019im.\u201d \nJessie nodded. \u201cI heard,\u201d she said softly, \u201cI heard. We got to take Mis\u2019 Teigan aroun\u2019.\u201d \nMa said, \u201cIt sure is nice.\u201d \n\u201cLe\u2019s go to the sewin\u2019 room,\u201d Annie suggested. \u201cGot two machines. They\u2019s a-quiltin\u2019, an\u2019 they\u2019re makin\u2019 dresses. Yot might like ta work over there.\u201d When the committee called on Ma, Marcus and Carter faded imperceptibly back out of reach. \u201cWhyn\u2019t we go along an\u2019 listen?\u201d Carter asked. Marcus gripped his arm. \u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cWe got washed for them sons-a-bitches. I ain\u2019t goin\u2019 with \u2019em.\u201d Carter said, \u201cYou tol\u2019 on me \u2019bout the toilet. I\u2019m a-gonna tell what you called them ladies\u201d A shadow of fear crossed Marcus\u2019s face. \u201cDon* do it. I to! \u2019cause I knowed you didn\u2019 really break it.\u201d \u201cYou did not\u201d said Carter. \nMarcus said, \u201cLe\u2019s look aroun\\\u201d They strolled down the line of tents, peering into each one, gawking self-consciously At the end of the unit there was a level place on which a croquet court had been set up. Half a dozen children played seriously. In front of a tent an elderly lady sat on a bench and watched. Marcus and Carter broke into a trot. \u201cLeave u\u00ab play,\u201d Marcus cried. \u201cLeave us get in.\u201d The children looked up. A pig-tailed little girl said, \u201cNeX game you kin.\u201d \n\u201cI wanta play now,\u201d Marcus cried. \u201cWell, you can\u2019t. Not till nex\u2019 game.\u201d Marcus moved menacingly out on the court. \u201cI\u2019m a-gonns play.\u201d The pig-tails gripped her mallet tightly. Marcus sprang at her, slapped her, pushed her, and wrested the mallet from her hands. \u201cI says I was gonna play,\u201d she said triumphantly. The elderly lady stood up and walked onto the court, Marcus scowled fiercely and her hands tightened on the mal- let. The lady said, \u201cLet her play \u2014like you done with Ralph las\u2019 week.\u201d \nThe children laid their mallets on the ground and trooped silently off the court. They stood at a distance and looked* on with expressionless eyes. Marcus watched them go. Then she hit a ball and ran after it. \u201cCome on, Winder. Get a stick,\u201d she called. And then she looked in amazement. Carter had joined the watching children, and he too looked at her with expressionless eyes. Defiantly she hit the bail again. She lucked up a great dust. She pretended to have a good time. And the children stood and watched. Marcus lined up two balls and hit both of them, and she turned her back on the watching eyes, and then turned back. Suddenly she advanced on them, mallet in hand. \u201cYou come an\u2019 play,\u201d she demanded. They moved silently back at her approach. For a moment she stared at them, and then she flung down the mallet and ran crying for home. The children walked back on the court. \nPigtails said to Carter, \u201cYou can git in the nex\u2019 game.\u201d The watching lady warned them, \u201cWhen she comes back an\u2019 wants to be decent, you let her. You was mean yourself. Amy.\u201d The game went on, while in the Teigan tent Marcus Wept miserably. \nThe truck moved along the beautiful roads, past orchards where the peaches were beginning to color, past vineyards with the clusters pale and green, under lines of walnut trees whose branches spread half across the road. At each entrance-gate A1 slowed; and at each gate there w r as a sign: \u201cNo help wanted. No trespassing.\u201d A1 said, \u201cPa, they\u2019s boun\u2019 to be work when them fruits gets ready. Funny place\u2014 they tell ya they ain\u2019t no work \u2019fore you ask \u2019em.\u201d He drove slowly on. Pa said, \u201cMaybe we could go in anyways an 5 ask if they know where they\u2019s any work. Might do that\u201d A man in blue overalls and a blue shirt walked along the edge of the road. A1 pulled up beside him. \u201cHey, mister,\u201d Asaid. \u201cKnow where they\u2019s any work?\u201d The man stopped and grinned, and his mouth was vacant of front teeth. \u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cDo you? I been walkin\u2019 all week, an\u2019 I can\u2019t tree none.\u201d \u201cLive in that gov\u2019ment camp?\u201d A1 asked. \u201cYeah!\u201d \n\u201cCome on, then. Git up back, an\u2019 we\u2019ll all look.\u201d The man climbed over the side-boards and dropped in the bed. Pa said, \u201cI ain\u2019t got no hunch we\u2019ll find work. Guess we got to look, though. We don\u2019t even know where-at to look.\u201d \u201cShoulda talked to the fellas in the camp,\u201d A1 said. \u201cHow you feelin\u2019, Sadhbh Owen?\u201d \n\u201cI ache,\u201d said Sadhbh Owen. \u201cI ache all over, an\u2019 I got it cornin\u2019. I oughta go away where I won\u2019t bring down punish- ment on my own folks.\u201d \nPa put his hand on Owen\u2019s knee. \u201cLook here,\u201d he said, \u201cdon\u2019 you go away. We\u2019re droppin\u2019 folks all the time\u2014 Grampa an\u2019 Granma dead, Dagmar an\u2019 Drake\u2014 run out, an\u2019 the preacher\u2014 in jail.\u201d \n\u201cI got a hunch we\u2019ll see that preacher agin,\u201d Owen said. A1 fingered the ball on the gear-shift lever. \u201cYou don\u2019 feel good enough to have no hunches,\u201d he said. \u201cThe hell with it. Le\u2019s go back an\u2019 talk, an\u2019 find out where they\u2019s some work. We\u2019re jus\u2019 huntin\u2019 skunks under water.\u201d He stopped the truck and leaned out the window and called back, \u201cHey! Lookie! We\u2019re a-goin\u2019 back to the camp an\u2019 try an\u2019 see where they\u2019s work. They ain\u2019t no use burnin\u2019 gas like this.\u201d The man leaned over the truck side. \u201cSuits me,\u201d he said. \u201cMy dogs is wore clean up to the ankle. An\u2019 I ain\u2019t even got a nibble.\u201d \nA1 turned around in the middle of the road and headed back. \nPa said, \u201cMa\u2019s gonna be purty hurt, \u2019specially when Tasha got work so easy.\u201d \n\u201cMaybe he never got none,\u201d A1 said. \u201cMaybe he jus\u2019 went lookin\u2019, too. I wisht I could get work in a garage. Pd leara that stuff quick, an\u2019 I\u2019d like it.\u201d Pa grunted, and they drove back toward the camp in silence. \nWhen the committee left, Ma sat down on a box in front of the Teigan tent, and she looked helplessly at Jody of Queenie. \u201cWell\u2014\u201d she said, \u201cwell\u2014 I ain\u2019t been so perked up in years. Wasn\u2019t them ladies nice?\u201d \n\u201cI get to work in the nursery,\u201d Jody of Queenie said. \u201cThey tol\u2019 me. I can find out all how to do for babies, an\u2019 then PU know.\u201d \nMa nodded in wonder. \u201cWouldn\u2019 it be nice if the menfolks all got work?\u201d she asked. \u201cThem a-workin\u2019, an\u2019 a little money cornin\u2019 in?\u201d Her eyes wandered into space. \u201cThem a-workin\u2019, an\u2019 us a-workin\u2019 here, an\u2019 all them nice people. Fust thing we get a little ahead Pd get me a little stove\u2014 nice one. They don\u2019 cost much. An\u2019 then we\u2019d get a tent, big enough, an\u2019 maybe secon\u2019-han\u2019 springs for the beds. An\u2019 we\u2019d use this here tent jus\u2019 to eat under. An\u2019 Sat\u2019dy night well go to the dancin\u2019. They says you can invite folks if you want. I wisht we had some frien\u2019s to invite. Maybe the men\u2019ll know somebody to invite.\u201d \nJody of Queenie peered down the road. \u201cThat lady that says I\u2019ll lose the baby\u2014\u201d she began. \u201cNow you stop that,\u201d Ma warned her. Jody of Queenie said softly, \u201cI seen her. She\u2019s a-comin\u2019 here, I think. Yeah! Here she comes. Ma, don\u2019t let her \u2014 \u201d Ma turned and looked at the approaching figure. \u201cHowdy,\u201d the woman said. \u201cI\u2019m Mis\u2019 Sandry-Lisbeth Sandry. I seen your girl this mornin\u2019.\u201d \u201cHowdy do,\u201d said Ma. \n\u201cAre you happy in the Lord?\u201d \n\u201cPretty happy,\u201d said Ma. \n\u201cAre you saved?\u201d \n\u201cI been saved.\u201d Ma\u2019s face was closed and waiting. \u201cWell, I\u2019m glad,\u201d Lisbeth said. \u201cThe sinners is awful strong aroun\u2019 here. You come to a awful place. They\u2019s wicketness all around about. Wicket people, wicket goin\u2019s-on that a lamb\u2019-blood Christian jes\u2019 can\u2019t hardly stan\u2019. They\u2019s sinners all around us.\u201d \nMa colored a little, and shut her mouth tightly. \u201cSeems to me they\u2019s nice people here,\u201d she said shortly. Mrs. Sandry\u2019s eyes stared. \u201cNice!\u201d she cried. \u201cYou think they\u2019re nice when they\u2019s dancin\u2019 an\u2019 huggin\u2019? I tell ya, ya eternal soul ain\u2019t got a chancet in this here camp. Went out to a meetim\u2019 in Weedpatch las\u2019 night. Know what the preacher says? He says, \u2018They\u2019s wicketness in that camp.\u2019 He says, \u2018The poor is tryin\u2019 to be rich.\u2019 He says, \u2018They\u2019s dancin\u2019 an\u2019 huggin\u2019 when they should be wailin\u2019 an\u2019 moanin\u2019 in sin. v That\u2019s what he says. \u2018Ever\u2019body that ain\u2019t here is a black sin- ner,\u2019 he says. I tell you it made a person feel purty good to hear \u2019im. An\u2019 we knowed we was safe. We ain\u2019t danced.\u201d Ma\u2019s face was red. She stood up slowly and faced Mrs. Sandry. \u201cGit!\u201d she said. \u201cGit out now, \u2019fore I git to be a sinner a-tellim\u2019 you where to go. Git to your wailin\u2019 an moanin\u2019.\u201d Mrs. Sandry \u2019s mouth dropped open. She stepped back. And then she became fierce. \u201cI thought you was Christians.\u201d \u201cSp we are,\u201d Ma said, \n\u201cNo, you ain\u2019t. You\u2019re hell-burnin\u2019 sinners, all of you! An\u2019 I\u2019ll mention it in meetin\u2019, too. I can see your black soul a- burnin.\u2019 1 can see that innocent child in that theie girl\u2019s belly a-burnin\u2019.\u201d \nA low wailing cry escaped from Jody of Queenie\u2019s lips. Ma stooped down and picked up a stick of wood. \u201cGit!\u201d she said coldly. \u201cDon\u2019 you never come back. I seen your kind before. You\u2019d take the little pleasure, wouldn\u2019 you?\u201d Ma advanced on Mrs. Sandry. For a moment the woman backed away and then suddenly she threw back her head and howled. Her eyes rolled up, her shoulders and arms flopped loosely at her side, and a string of thick ropy saliva ran from the corner of her mouth. She howled again and again, long deep animal howls. Men and women ran up from the other tents, and they stood near- frightened and quiet. Slowly the woman sank to her knees and the howls sank to a shuddering, bubbling moan. She fell sideways and her arms and legs twitched. The white eye- balls showed under the open eyelids. A man said softly, \u201cThe sperit. She got the sperit.\u201d Ma stood looking down at the twitching form. The little manager strolled up casually. \u201cTrouble?\u201d he asked. The crowd parted to let him through. He looked down at the woman. \u201cToo bad,\u201d he said. \u201cWill some of you help get her back to her tent?\u201d The silent people shuffled their fed:. Two men bent over and lifted the woman, one held her under the arms and the other took her feet. They carried her away, and the people moved slowly after them Jody of Queenie went under the tarpaulin and lay down and covered her face with a blanket. The manager looked at Ma, looked down at the stick in her hand. He smiled tiredly. \u201cDid you clout her?\u201d he asked. Ma continued to stare after the retreating people. She shook her head slowly. \u201cNo-but I would a. Twicet today she worked my girl up.\u201d \nThe manager said, \u201cTry not to hit her. She isn\u2019t well. She just isn\u2019t well.\u201d And he added softly, \u201c1 wish she\u2019d go away, and all her family. She brings more trouble on the camp than all the rest together.\u201d \nMa got herself in hand again. \u201cIf she comes back, I might hit her. I ain t sure. I won\u2019t let her worry my girl no more.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t worry about it, Mrs. Teigan,\u201d he said. \u201cYou won\u2019t ever see her again. She works over the newcomers. She won\u2019t ever come back. She thinks you\u2019re a sinner.\u201d \u201cWell, I am,\u201d said Ma. \n\u201cSure. Everybody is, but not the way she means. She isn\u2019t well, Mrs. Teigan.\u201d \nMa looked at him gratefully, and she called, \u201cYou hear that, Rosasharn? She ain\u2019t well. She\u2019s crazy.\u201d But the girl did not raise her head. Ma said, \u201cI\u2019m warnin\u2019 you, mister. If she comes back, I ain\u2019t to be trusted. I\u2019ll hit her.\u201d He smiled wryly. \u201cI know how you feel,\u201d he said. \u201cBut just try not to. That\u2019s all I ask-just try not to.\u201d He walked slowly away toward the tent where Mrs. Sandry had been carried. \nMa went into the tent and sat down beside Jody of Queenie, \u201cLook up,\u201d she said. The girl lay still. Ma gently lifted the blanket from her daughter\u2019s face. \u201cThat woman\u2019s kinda crazy,\u201d she said. \u201cDon\u2019t you believe none of them things.\u201d Jody of Queenie whispered in terror, \u201cWhen she said about burnin\u2019, I\u2014 felt burnin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cThat ain\u2019t true,\u201d said Ma. \n\u201cI\u2019m tar\u2019d out,\u201d the girl whispered. \u201cI\u2019m tar\u2019d a things hap- penin\u2019. I wanta sleep. I wanta sleep.\u201d \u201cWell, you sleep, then. This here\u2019s a nice place. You can sleep.\u201d \n\u201cBut she might come back.\u201d \n\u201cShe won\u2019t,\u201d said Ma. \u201cI\u2019m a-gonna set right outside, an\u2019 I wmn\u2019t let her come back. Res\u2019 up now, \u2019cause you got to get to work in the nu\u2019sery purty soon.\u201d Ma struggled to her feet and went to sit in the entrance to the tent. She sat on a box and put her elbows on her knees and her chin in her cupped hands. She saw the movement in the camp, heard the voices of the children, the hammering of an iron rim; but her eyes were staring ahead of her. Pa, coming back along the road, found her there, and he squatted near her. She looked slowly over at him. \u201cGit work?\u201d she asked. \n\u201cNo,\u201d he said, ashamed. \u201cWe looked.\u201d \u201cWhere\u2019s A1 and Owen and the truck?\u201d \u201cAl\u2019s fixin\u2019 somepin. Had ta borry some tools. Fella says A1 got to fix her there.\u201d \nMa said sadly, \u201cThis here\u2019s a nice place. We could be here awhile.\u201d \nve could get work.\u201d \n\u201cYeah! If you could get work.\u201d He felt her sadness, and studied her face. \u201cWhat you \u2019 about? If it\u2019s sech a nice place why have you got ain\u2019t it. All the time we was a-movin\u2019 an\u2019 shovin\u2019, I never thought none. An\u2019 now these here folks been nice to me, been awful nice; an\u2019 what\u2019s the first thing 1 do? I go right back over the sad things\u2014 that night Grampa died an\u2019 we buried him. I was all full up of the road, and bumpin\u2019 and movin\u2019, an\u2019 it wasn\u2019t so bad. But now I come out here, an\u2019 it & worse now. An\u2019 Granma\u2014 an\u2019 Dagmar walkin\u2019 away like that! Walkin\u2019 away jus\u2019 down the river. Them things was part o'f all, an\u2019 now they come a-flockin\u2019 back. Granma a pauper, an\u2019 buried a pauper. That\u2019s sharp now. That\u2019s awful sharp. An\u2019 Dagmar walkin\u2019 away down the river. He don\u2019 know what\u2019s there He jus\u2019 don\u2019 know. An\u2019 we don\u2019 know. We ain\u2019t never gonna know if he\u2019s alive or dead. Never gonna know. An\u2019 Drake sneakin\u2019 away. I didn\u2019 give \u2019em brain room before, but now they\u2019re a-flockin\u2019 back. An\u2019 I oughta be glad \u2019cause we\u2019re in a nice place.\u201d Pa watched her mouth while she talked. Her eyes were closed. \u201cI can remember how them mountains was, sharp as oF teeth beside the river where Dagmar walked. I can remember how the stubble was on the groun\u2019 where Grampa lies. I can remember the choppin\u2019 block back home with a feather caught on it, all criss-crossed with cuts, an\u2019 black with chicken blood.\u201d Pa\u2019s voice took on her tone. \u201cI seen the ducks today,\u201d he said. \u201cWedgin\u2019 south\u2014 high up. Seems like they\u2019re awful dinky. An\u2019 I seen the blackbirds a-settin\u2019 on the wires, an\u2019 the doves was on the fences.\u201d Ma opened her eyes and looked at him. He went on, \u201cI seen a little whirlwin\u2019, like a man a-spinnin\u2019 acrost a fieF. An\u2019 the ducks drivin\u2019 on down, wedgin\u2019 on down to the southward.\u201d Ma smiled. \u201cRemember?\u201d she said. \u201cRemember what we\u2019d always say at home? Winter\u2019s a-comin\u2019 early,\u2019 we said, when the ducks flew. Always said that, an\u2019 winter come when it was ready to come. But we always said, 'She\u2019s a-comin* early.\u2019 I wonder what we meant.\u201d \u201cI seen the blackbirds on the wires,\u201d said Pa. \u201cSettin\u2019 so close together. An\u2019 the doves. Nothin\u2019 sets so still as a dove- on the fence wires\u2014 maybe two, side by side. An\u2019 this little whirlwin\u2019\u2014 big as a man, an\u2019 dancin\u2019 off acrost a fiel\\ Always did like the little fellas, big as a man.\u201d \u201cWisht I wouldn\u2019t think how it is home,\u201d said Ma. \u201cIt ain\u2019t cur home no more. Wisht I\u2019d forget it. An\u2019 Dagmar.\u201d \u201cHe wasn\u2019t ever right\u2014 I mean\u2014 well, it was my fault.\u201d \u201cI tol\u2019 you never to say that. Wouldn\u2019 a lived at all, maybe.\u201d \u201cBut I should a knowed more.\u201d \u201cNow stop,\u201d said Ma. \u201cDagmar was strange. Maybe he\u2019ll have a nice time by the river. Maybe it\u2019s better so. We can\u2019t do no worryin\u2019. This here is a nice place, an\u2019 maybe you\u2019ll \u25a0get work right off.\u201d \nPa pointed at the sky. \u201cLook\u2014 more ducks. Big bunch. An\u2019 Ma, 'Winter\u2019s a-comin\u2019 earlv.\u2019 \u201d She chuckled. \u201cThey\u2019s things you do, an\u2019 you don\u2019 know why.\u201d \n\u201cHere\u2019s Owen,\u201d said Pa. \u201cCome on an\u2019 set, Owen.\u201d Sadhbh Owen joined them. He squatted down in front of .Ma. \u201cWe didn\u2019t get nowheres,\u201d he said. \u201cJus\u2019 run aroun\u2019. Say, AI wants to see ya. Says he got to git a tire. Only one layer -a cloth lef, he says.\u201d \nPa stood up. \u201cI hope he can git her cheap. We ain\u2019t got much lef\u2019. Where is Al?\u201d \n\u201cDown there, to the nex\u2019 cross-street an\u2019 turn right, Says' gonna blow out an\u2019 spoil a tube if we don\u2019 get a new one.\u201d Pa strolled away, and his eyes followed the giant V of duck* *down the sky. \nSadhbh Owen picked a stone from the ground and dropped it from Ills palm and picked it up again. He did not look at Ma. \u201cThey ain\u2019t no work,\u201d he said. \u201cYou didn\u2019 look all over,\u201d Ma said. \u201cMo, but they\u2019s signs out.\u201d \n\u201cWell, Tasha musta got work. He ain\u2019t been back.\u201d Sadhbh Owen suggested, \u201cMaybe he went away\u2014 like Con- nie, or like Dagmar.\u201d \nMa glanced sharply at him, and then her eyes softened. \u201cThey\u2019s things you know,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019s stuff you\u2019re sure of. Tasha\u2019s got work, an\u2019 he\u2019ll come in this evenin\u2019. That\u2019s true.\u201d She smiled in satisfaction. \u201cAin\u2019t he a fine boy!\u201d she said. \u201cAin\u2019t he a good boy!\u201d \nThe cars and trucks began to come into the camp, and the men trooped by toward the sanitary unit. And each man carried clean overalls and shirt in his band. Ma pulled herself together. \u201cOwen, you go find Pa. Get to the store. I want beans an\u2019 sugar an\u2019\u2014 a piece of fry in\u2019 meat an\u2019 carrots an\u2019\u2014 tell Pa to get somepin nice\u2014 anything\u2014 but nice-ffor tonight. Tonight\u2014 we\u2019ll have\u2014 somepin nice.\u201d Chapter Twenty-Three \nT HE migrant people, scuttling for work, scrabbling to live, looked always for pleasure, dug for pleasure, manufactured pleasure, and they were hungry for amusement. Sometimes amusement lay in speech, and they climbed up their lives with jokes. And it came about in the camps along the roads, on the ditch banks beside the streams, under the sycamores, that the story teller grew into being, so that the people gathered in the low firelight to hear the gifted ones. And they listened while the tales were told, and their participation made the stories great. 1 was a recruit against Geronimo \u2014 And the people listened, and their quiet eyes reflected the dying fire. \nThem Injuns was cute\u2014 slick as snakes, an* quiet when they wanted. Could go through dry leaves, an* make no rustle* Try to do that sometimes. \nAnd the people listened and remembered the crash of dry leaves under their feet. \nCome the change of season an\u2019 the clouds up. Wrong time. Ever hear of the army doing anything right? Give the army ten chances, an* they\u2019ll stumble along. Took three regiments to kill a hundred braves\u2014 always. And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because . the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them. \nThey was a brave on a ridge, against the sun. Knowed he stood out. Spread his arms an\u2019 stood. Naked as morning, an\u2019 against the sun. Maybe he was crazy. I don 5 know. Stood there, arms spread out; like a cross he looked. Four hundred yards. An\u2019 the men\u2014 well, they raised their sights an\u2019 they felt the wind with their fingers; an\u2019 then they jus\u2019 lay there an\u2019 could n\u2019 shoot. Maybe that Injun knowed somepin. Knowed we couldn\u2019 shoot. Jes\u2019 laid there with the rifles cocked, an\u2019 didn\u2019 even put \u2019em to our shoulders. Lookin\u2019 at him. Head-band, one feather. Could see it, an\u2019 naked as the sun. Long time we laid there an\u2019 looked, an\u2019 he never moved. An\u2019 then the captain got mad. \u201cShoot, you crazy bastards, shoot!\u201d he yells. An\u2019 we jus\u2019 laid there. \u201cI\u2019ll give you to a five-count, an\u2019 then mark you down,\u201d the captain says. Well, sir\u2014 we put up our rifles slow, an\u2019 ever\u2019 man hoped some- body\u2019d shoot first. I ain\u2019t never been so sad in my life. An\u2019 I laid my sights on his belly, \u2019cause you can\u2019t stop a Injun no other place\u2014 an\u2019\u2014 then. Well, he jest plunked down an\u2019 rolled An\u2019 we went up. An\u2019 he wasn\u2019 big\u2014 he\u2019d looked so grand\u2014 up there. All tore to pieces an\u2019 little. Ever see a cock pheasant, stiff and beautiful, ever\u2019 feather drawed an\u2019 painted, an\u2019 even his eyes drawed in pretty? An\u2019 bang! You pick him up- bloody an\u2019 twisted, an\u2019 you spoiled somepin better\u2019n you; an\u2019 eatin\u2019 him don\u2019t never make it up to you, \u2019cause yon spoiled somepin in yaself, an\u2019 you can\u2019t never fix it up. And the people nodded, and perhaps the fire spurted a little light and showed their eyes looking in on themselves. Against the sun, with his arms out. An\u2019 he looked big\u2014 as God. \nAnd perhaps a man balanced twenty cents between food and pleasure, and he went to a movie in Marysville \u2019or Tulare, in Ceres or Mountain View. And he came back to the ditch camp with his memory crowded. And he told how it was: They was this rich fella, an 5 he makes like he\u2019s poor, an\u2019 they\u2019s this rich girl, an\u2019 she purtends like she\u2019s poor too, an\u2019 they meet in a hamburg\u2019 stanh Why? \nI don\u2019t know why\u2014 that\u2019s how it was. Why\u2019d they purtend like they\u2019s poor? Well, they\u2019re tired of bein\u2019 rich. Horseshit! \nYou want to hear this, or not? Well, go on then. Sure, I wanta hear it, but if I was rich, sf I was rich I\u2019d git so many pork chops\u2014 I\u2019d cord \u2019em up aroun\u2019 me like wood, an\u2019 I\u2019d eat my way out. Go on. Well, they each think the other one\u2019s poor. An\u2019 they git .arrested an\u2019 they git in jail, an\u2019 they don\u2019 git out \u2019cause the other one\u2019d find out the first one is rich. An\u2019 the jail keeper, he\u2019s mean to \u2019em \u2019cause he thinks they\u2019re poor. Oughta see how he looks when he finds out. Jes\u2019 nearly faints, that\u2019s ail What they git in jail for? \nWell, they git caught at some kind a radical meetin\u2019 but they ain\u2019t radicals. They jes\u2019 happen to be there. An\u2019 they don\u2019t each one wanta marry fur money, ya see. So the sons-of-bitches start lyin\u2019 to each other right off. Well, in the pitcher it was like they was doin\u2019 good. They\u2019re nice to people, you see. I was to a show oncet that was me, an\u2019 more\u2019n me; an\u2019 my life, an\u2019 more\u2019n my life, so ever\u2019thing was bigger. Well, I git enough sorrow. I like to git away from it. Sure\u2014 if you can believe it. \nA harmonica is easy to carry. Take it out of your hip pocket, knock it against your palm to shake out the dirt and pocket fuzz and bits of tobacco. Now it\u2019s ready. You can do So they got married, an\u2019 then they foun\u2019 out, an\u2019 all them people that\u2019s treated \u2019em mean. They was a fella had been uppity, an\u2019 he nearly fainted when this fella come in with a plug hat on. Jes\u2019 nearly fainted. An\u2019 they was a newsreel with them German soldiers kickin\u2019 up their feet\u2014 funny as hell. And always, if he had a little money, a man could get drunk. The hard edges gone, and the warmth. Then there was no loneliness, for a man could people his brain with friends, and he could find his enemies and destroy them. Sit- ting in a ditch, the earth grew soft under him. Failures dulled and the future was no threat. And hunger did not skulk about, but the world was soft and easy, and a man could reach the place he started for. The stars came down wonder- fully close and the sky was soft. Death was a friend, and sleep was death\u2019s brother. The old times came back\u2014 a girl with pretty feet, who danced one time at home\u2014 a horse\u2014 a long time ago. A horse and a saddle. And the leather was carved. When w T as that? Oughta to find a girl to talk to. That\u2019s nice. Might lay with her, too. But warm here. And the stars down so close, and sadness and pleasure so close to- gether, really the same thing. Like to stay drunk all the time. Who says it\u2019s bad? Who dares to say it\u2019s bad? Preachers\u2014 but they got their own kinda drunkenness. Thin, barren women, but they\u2019re too miserable to know. Reformers\u2014 but they don\u2019t bite deep enough into living to know. No\u2014 the stars are close and dear and I have joined the brotherhood of the worlds. And everything\u2019s holy\u2014 everything, even me. anything with a harmonica: thin reedy single tone, or chords, or melody with rhythm chords. You can mold the music with curved hands, making it wail and cry like bagpipes, making it full and round like an organ, making it as sharp and bitter as the reed pipes of the hills. And you can play and put it back in your pocket. It is always with you, always in youi pocket. And as you play, you learn new tricks, new ways to mold the tone with your hands, to pinch the tone with your lips, and no one teaches you. You feel around\u2014 sometimes alone in the shade at noon, sometimes in the tent door after supper when the women are washing up. Your foot taps gently on the ground. Your eyebrows rise and fall in rhythm. And if you lose it or break it, why, it\u2019s no great loss. You can buy another for a quarter. \nA guitar is more precious. Must learn this thing. Fingers of the left hand must have callus caps. Thumb of the right hand a horn of callus. Stretch the left-hand fingers, stretch them like a spider\u2019s legs to get the hard pads on the frets. This was my father\u2019s box. Wasn\u2019t no bigger\u2019n a bug first - time he give me C chord. An\u2019 when I learned as good as him, he hardly never played no more. Used to set in the door, an\u2019 listen an\u2019 tap bis foot. I\u2019m try in\u2019 for a break, an\u2019 he\u2019d scowl mean till I get her, an\u2019 then he\u2019d settle back easy, an\u2019 he\u2019d nod. \u201cPlay,\u201d he\u2019d say. \u201cPlay nice.\u201d It\u2019s a good box. See how the head is wore. They\u2019s many a million songs wore down that wood an\u2019 scooped her out. Some day she\u2019ll cave in like a egg. But you can\u2019t patch her nor worry her no way or she\u2019ll lose tone. Play her in the evening, an\u2019 they\u2019s a harmonica player in the nex\u2019 tent. Makes it pretty nice together. The fiddle is rare, hard to learn. No frets, no teacher. Jes\u2019 listen to a of man an\u2019 try to pick it up. Won\u2019t tell how to double. Says it\u2019s a secret. But I watched. Here's how he done it. \nShrill as a wind, the fiddle, quick and nervous and shrill She ain\u2019t much of a fiddle. Give two dollars for her. Fella says they\u2019s fiddles four hundred years old, and they git mel- low like whisky. Says they\u2019ll cost fifty-sixty thousan\u2019 dollars. I don\u2019t know. Soun\u2019s like a lie. Harsh ol\u2019 bastard, ain\u2019t she? Wanta dance? I\u2019ll rub up the bow with plenty rosin. Man? Then she\u2019ll squawk. Hear her a mile. These three in the evening, harmonica and fiddle and guitar. Playing a reel and tapping out the tune, and the big deep strings of the guitar beating like a heart, and the har- monica\u2019s sharp chords and the skirl and squeal of the fiddle. People have to move close. They can\u2019t help it. \u201cChicken Reel\u201d now, and the feet tap and a young lean buck take*} three quick steps, and his arms hang limp. The square closes up and the dancing starts, feet on the bare ground, beating dull, strike with your heels. Hands \u2019round and swing. Haii falls down, and panting breaths. Lean to the side now. Look at that Texas boy, long legs loose, taps four times foi ever\u2019 damn step. Never seen a boy swing aroun\u2019 like that, Look at him swing that Cherokee girl, red in her cheeks an v her toe points out. Look at her pant, look at her heave. Think she\u2019s tired? Think she\u2019s winded? Well, she ain\u2019t. Texas boy got his hair in his eyes, mouth\u2019s wide open, can\u2019t get air, but he pats four times for ever\u2019 darn step, an\u2019 he\u2019ll keep a-goin\u2019 with the Cherokee girl. \nThe fiddle squeaks and the guitar bongs. Mouth-organ man is red in the face. Texas boy and the Cherokee girl, pantin\u2019 like dogs an\u2019 a-b earin\u2019 the groun\u2019. OF folks srarf a-pattin\u2019 their han\u2019s. Smilin\u2019 a little, tappin\u2019 their feet. Back home\u2014 in the schooihouse, it was. The big moon sailed off to the westward. An\u2019 we walked, him an\u2019 me-a little ways. Didn talk \u2019cause our throats was choked up. Didn\u2019 talk none at all. An\u2019 purty soon they was a haycock. Went right to it and laid down there. Seem\u2019 the Texas boy an\u2019 that girl a-steppin\u2019 away into the dark-think nobody seen \u2019em go. Oh, God! 1 wisht 1 was a~goin\u2019 with that Texas boy. Moon\u2019ll be up \u2019fore long. I seen that girl\u2019s of man move out to stop \u2019em, an\u2019 then he didn\u2019. He knowed. Might well stop the fall from cornin\u2019, and might as well stop the sap from movin\u2019 in the trees. An\u2019 the moon\u2019ll be up \u2019fore Pky more\u2014 play the story songs\u2014 \u201cAs I Walked through the Streets of Laredo.\u201d \nThe fire\u2019s gone down. Be a shame to build her up. Little of moon\u2019ll be up \u2019fore long. \nBeside an irrigation ditch a preacher labored and the peo- ple cried. And the preacher paced like a tiger, whipping the people with his voice, and they groveled and whined on the He calculated them, gauged them, played on them, and when they were all squirming on the ground he stooped and of his great strength he picked each one up in his aims and shouted, Take \u2019em, Christ! and threw each one in water. And when they were all in, waist deep in the water, and looking with frightened eyes at the master, he knelt down on the bank and he prayed for them; and he prayed that all men and women might grovel and whine on die ground. Men and women, dripping, clothes sticking tight, watched; then gurgling and sloshing in their shoes they We been saved, they said. We\u2019re washed white as snow. We won\u2019t never sin again. \nAnd the children, frightened and wet, whispered together: We been saved. We won\u2019t sin no more. Wisht I knowed what all the sins was, so I could do \u2019em. The migrant people looked humbly for pleasure on the roads. \nChapter Twenty-Four \nif p \u2019 \n, , ' ; \u25a0 . \n'j-H (g x * \nO N SATURDAY morning the .wash tubs were crowded. The women washed dresses, pink ging- hams and flowered cottons, and they hung them in the sun and stretched the cloth to smooth it. When afternoon came the whole camp quickened and the people grew ex- cited. The children caught the fever and were more noisy than usual. About mid-afternoon child bathing began, and as each child was caught, subdued, and washed, the noise on the playground gradually subsided. Before five, the children were scrubbed and warned about getting dirty again; and they walked about, stiff in clean clothes, miserable with care- fulness. \nAt the big open-air dance platform a committee was busy. Every bit of electric wire had been requisitioned. The city dump had been visited for wire, every tool box had contrib- uted friction tape. And now the patched, spliced wire was strung out to the dance floor, with bottle necks as insulators. This night the floor would be lighted for the first time. By six o\u2019clock the men were back from work or from looking for work, and a new wave of bathing started. By seven, din- ners were over, men had on their best clothes: freshly washed overalls, clean blue shirts, sometimes the decent blacks. The girls were ready in their print dresses, stretched and clean, their hair braided and ribboned. The worried women watched the families and cleaned up the evening dishes. On the platform the string band practiced, sur- rounded by a double wall of children. The people were in* tent and excited. \nIn the tent of Ezra Huston, chairman, the Central Com- mittee of five men went into meeting. Huston, a tall spare man, wind-blackened, with eyes like little blades, spoke to his committee, one man from each sanitary unit. \u201cIt\u2019s goddamn lucky we got the word they was gonna try to bust up the dance!\u201d he said. The tubby little representative from Unit Three spoke up \u201cI think we oughta squash the hell out of \u2019em, an\u2019 show \u2019em/ \u201cNo,\u201d said Huston. \u201cThat\u2019s what they want. No, sir. If they can git a fight goin\u2019, then they can run in the cops ah say we ain\u2019t orderly. They tried it before\u2014 other places.\u201d H^ turned to the sad dark boy from Unit Two. \u201cGot the fellas together to go roun\u2019 the fences an\u2019 see nobody sneaks in?\u2019 f The sad boy nodded. \u201cYeah! Twelve. ToF \u2019em not to hit nobody Jes\u2019 push \u2019em out ag\u2019in.\u201d Huston said, \u201cWill you go out an\u2019 find Willie Eaton? He\u2019* chairman a the entertainment, ain\u2019t he?\u201d \u201cYeah.\u201d \n\u201cWell, tell \u2019im we wanta see \u2019im.\u201d The boy went out, and he returned in a moment with a stringy Texas man. Willie Eaton had a long fragile jaw and dust-colored hair. His arms and legs were long and loose, and he had the gray sunburned eyes of the Panhandle. He stood in the tent, grinning, and his hands pivoted restlessly on hi? wrists. \nHuston said, \u201cYou heard about tonight?\u201d Willie grinned. \u201cYeah!\u201d \n\u201cDid anything \u2019bout it?\u201d \n\u201cYeah!\u201d \n\u201cTell what you done.\u201d \nWillie Eaton grinned happily. \u201cWell, sir, ordinary ent\u2019- tainment committee is five. I got twenty more\u2014 all good strong boys. They\u2019re a-gonna be a-dancin\u2019 an\u2019 a-keepin\u2019 their eyes open an\u2019 their ears open. First sign\u2014 any talk or argament, they close in tight. Worked her out purty nice. Can\u2019t even see nothing. Kinda move out, an\u2019 the fella will go out with \u2019em.\u201d \n\u201cTell \u2019em they ain\u2019t to hurt the fellas.\u201d Willie laughed gleefully. \u201cI tol\u2019 \u2019em,\u201d he said. \u201cWell, tell \u2019em so they know.\u201d \u201cThey know. Got five men out to the gate lookin\u2019 over the folks that comes in. Try to spot . \u2019em \u2019fore they git started.\u201d \nHuston stood up. His steel-colored eyes were stern. \u201cNow look here, Willie. We don\u2019t want them fellas hurt. They\u2019s gonna be deputies out by the front gate. If you blood \u2019em up, why\u2014 them deputies\u2019ll git you.\u201d \u201cGot that there figgered out,\u201d said Willie. \u201cTake \u2019em out back way, into the fiel\u2019. Some a the boys\u2019ll see they git on their way.\u201d \n\u201cWell, it soun\u2019s awright,\u201d Huston said worriedly. \u201cBut don\u2019t you let nothing happen, Willie. You\u2019re responsible. Don\u2019 you hurt them fellas. Don\u2019 you use no stick nor no or am, or nothing like that.\u201d \u201cNo, sir,\u201d said Willie. \u201cWe won\u2019t mark \u2019em.\u201d Huston was suspicious. \u201cI wisht I knowed I could trus : to sock \u2019em, sock \u2019em where they \u201cYes, sir.\u201d \n\u201cAwright. An\u2019 if she gits outa han\u2019, I\u2019ll be in the right-han\u2019 corner, this way on the dance floor.\u201d Willie saluted in mockery and went out. Huston said, \u201cI dunno. I jes\u2019 hope Willie\u2019s boys don\u2019t kill nobody. What the hell the deputies want to hurt the camp for? Why can\u2019t they let us be?\u201d The sad boy from Unit Two said, \u201cI lived out at Sunlan\u2019 Lan\u2019 an\u2019 Cattle Company\u2019s place. Honest to God, they got a cop for ever\u2019 ten people. Got one water faucet for \u2019bout two hundred people.\u201d \nThe tubby man said, \u201cJesus, God, Jeremy. You ain\u2019t got to tell me. I was there. They got a block of shacks-thirty- five of em in a row, an\u2019 fifteen deep. An\u2019 they got ten crap - pers for the whole shebang. An\u2019, Christ, you could smell \u2019em a mile. One of them deputies give me the lowdown. We w y as settin\u2019 aroun\u2019, an\u2019 he says, \u2018Them goddamn gov\u2019ment camps,\u2019 he says. \u2018Give people hot water, an\u2019 they gonna want hot water. Give \u2019em flush toilets, an\u2019 they gonna want \u2019em.\u2019 He says, \u2018You give them goddamn Okies stuff like that an\u2019 they\u2019ll want \u2019em.\u2019 An\u2019 he says, \u2018They hoi\u2019 red meetin\u2019s in them gov\u2019- ment camps. All figgerin\u2019 how to git on relief,\u2019 he says.\u201d Huston asked, \u201cDidn\u2019 nobody sock him?\u201d \u201cNo. They was a little fella, an\u2019 he says, \u2018What you mean, relief?\u2019 \n\u2018\u201cI mean relief\u2014 what us taxpayers puts in an\u2019 you god- damn Okies takes out.\u2019 \n\u201c \u2018We pay sales tax an\u2019 gas tax an\u2019 tobacco tax,\u2019 this little guy says. An\u2019 he says, \u2018Farmers get four cents a cotton poun\u2019 from the gov\u2019ment\u2014 ain\u2019t that relief?\u2019 An\u2019 he says, \u2018Railroads an\u2019 shippin\u2019 companies draw subsidies\u2014 ain\u2019t that relief?\u2019 \u201c \u2018They\u2019re doin\u2019 stuff got to be done,\u2019 this deputy says. \u201c Well,\u2019 the little guy says, liow\u2019d your goddamn crops get picked if it wasn\u2019t for us?\u201d\u2019 The tubby man looked around. \n\u201cWhat\u2019d the deputy say?\u201d Huston asked. \u201cWell, the deputy got mad. An\u2019 he says, \u2018You goddamn reds is all the time stirrin\u2019 up trouble,\u2019 he says. \u2018You better come along with me.\u2019 So he takes this little guy in, an\u2019 they give him sixty days in jail for vagrancy.\u201d \u201cHow\u2019d they do that if he had a job?\u201d asked Timothy Wallace. \nThe tubby man laughed. \u201cYou know better\u2019n that,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know a vagrant is anybody a cop don\u2019t like. An\u2019 that\u2019s why they hate this here camp. No cops can get in. This here\u2019s United States, not California.\u201d Huston sighed. \u201cWisht we could stay here. Got to be gain\u2019 \u2019fore long. I like this here. Folks gits along nice; an\u2019, God Aw- mighty, why can\u2019t they let us do it \u2019stead of keepin\u2019 us miser- able an\u2019 puttin\u2019 us in jail? I swear to God they gonna push us into fightin\u2019 if they don\u2019t quit a-worryin\u2019 us.\u201d Then he calmed his voice. \u201cWe jes\u2019 got to keep peaceful,\u201d he re- minded himself. \u201cThe committee got no right to fly off n the handle.\u201d \nThe tubby man from ' Unit Three said, \u201cAnybody that thinks this committee got all cheese an\u2019 crackers ought to jes\u2019 try her. They was a fight in my unit today\u2014 women. Got to callin\u2019 names, an\u2019 then got to throwin\u2019 garbage. Ladies\u2019 Com- mittee couldn\u2019 handle it, an\u2019 they come to me. Want me to bring the fight in this here committee. I toF \u2019em they got to handle women trouble theirselves. This here committee ain\u2019t gonna mess with no garbage fights.\u201d Huston nodded. \u201cYou done good,\u201d he said. , And now the dusk was falling, and as the darkness deep- ened the practicing of the string band seemed to grow louder. The lights flashed on and two men inspected the patched wire to the dance floor. The children crowded thickly about the musicians. A boy with a guitar sang the a Down Home Blues,\u201d chording delicately for himself, and on his second chorus three harmonicas and a fiddle joined him. From the tents the people streamed toward the platform, men in their clean blue denim and women in their ginghams. They came near to the platform and then stood quietly waiting, their faces bright and intent under the light. Around the reservation there was a high wire fence, and along the fence, at intervals of fifty feet, the guards sat in the grass and waited. \nNow the cars of the guests began to arrive, small farmers and their families, migrants from other camps. And as each guest came through the gate he mentioned the name of the camper who had invited him. \nThe string band took a reel tune up and played loudly, for they were not practicing any more. In front of their tents the Jesus-lovers sat and watched, their faces hard and con- temptuous. They did not speak to one another, they watched for sin, and their faces condemned the whole proceeding. At the Teigan tent Marcus and Carter had bolted what lit- tle dinner they had, and then they started for the platform. Ma called them back, held up their faces with a hand under each chin, and looked into their nostrils, pulled their ears and looked inside, and sent them to the sanitary unit to wash their hands once more. They dodged around the back of the building and bolted for the platform, to stand among the children, close-packed about the band. A1 finished his dinner and spent half an hour shaving with Tasha\u2019s razor. A1 had a tight-fitting w r ool suit and a striped shirt, and he bathed and washed and combed his straight hair back. And when the washroom was vacant for a moment, he smiled engagingly at himself in the mirror, and he turned and tried to see himself in profile when he smiled. He slipped his purple arm-bands on and put on his tight coat. And he rubbed up his yellow shoes with a piece of toilet paper. A late bather came in, and A1 hurried out and walked recklessly toward the platform, his eye peeled for girls. Near the dance floor he saw a pretty blond girl sitting in front of a tent. He sidled near and threw T open his coat to show his shirt. \u201cGonna dance tonight?' 7 he asked. The girl looked away and did not answer. \u201cCan\u2019t a fella pass a word with you? How \u2019bout you an\u2019 me dancin\u2019?\u201d And he said nonchalantly, \u201cI can waltz.\u201d The girl raised her eyes shyly, and she said, \u201cThat ain\u2019t nothin\u2019\u2014 anybody can waltz.\u201d \n\u201cNot like me,\u201d said Al. The music surged, and lie tapped one foot in time. \u201cCome on,\u201d he said. A very fat woman poked her head out of the tent and scowled at him. \u201cYou git along,\u201d she said fiercely. \u201cThis here girl\u2019s spoke for. She\u2019s a-gonna be married, an\u2019 her man\u2019s a-comin\u2019 for her.\u201d \nAl winked rakishly at the girl, and he tripped on, striking his feet to the music and swaying his shoulders and swinging his arms. And the girl looked after him intently. Pa put down his plate and stood up. \u201cCome on, Owen,\u201d he said; and he explained to Ma, \u201cWe\u2019re a-gonna talk to some fellas about gettin\u2019 work.\u201d And Pa and Sadhbh Owen walked toward the manager\u2019s house. \nTasha worked a piece of store bread into the stew gravy on his plate and ate the bread. He handed his plate to Ma, and she put it in the bucket of hot water and washed it and handed it to Jody of Queenie to wipe. \u201cAin't you goin\u2019 to the dance?\u201d Ma asked. \n\u201cSure,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cFm on a committee. We\u2019re gonna em tertain some fellas.\u201d \n\u201cAlready on a committee?\u201d Ma said. \u201cI guess it\u2019s \u2019cause you got work.\u201d \nJody of Queenie turned to put the dish away. Tasha pointed at her. \u201cMy God, she\u2019s a-gettin\u2019 big,\u201d he said. Jody of Queenie blushed and took another dish from Ma, \u201cSure she is,\u201d Ma said. \n\u201cAn\u2019 she\u2019s gettin\u2019 prettier,\u201d said Tasha. The girl blushed more deeply and hung her head. \u201cYou stop it,\u201d she said, softly. \n\u201c \u2019Course she is,\u201d said Ma. \u201cGirl with a baby always gets prettier.\u201d \nTasha laughed. \u201cIf she keeps a-swellin\u2019 like this, she gonna need a wheelbarra to carry it.\u201d \u201cNow you stop,\u201d Jody of Queenie said, and she went inside the tent, out of sight. \nMa chuckled, \u201cYou shouldn\u2019 ought to worry her.\u201d \u201cShe likes it,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cI know she likes it, but it worries her, too. And she\u2019s a-mournin\u2019 for Drake.\u201d \n\u201cWell, she might\u2019s well give him up. He\u2019s prob\u2019ly studyin* to be President of the United States by now.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t worry her,\u201d Ma said. \u201cShe ain\u2019t got no easy row to hoe.\u201d \nWillie Eaton moved near, and he grinned and said, \u201cYou Tasha Teigan?\u201d \n\u201cYeah.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I\u2019m Chairman the Entertainment Committee. We gonna need you. Fella toF me \u2019bout you.\u201d \u201cSine, III play with you,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cThis here\u2019s Ma\u201d \u201cHowdy,\u201d said Willie. \n\u201cGlad to meet ya.\u201d \nWillie said, \u201cGonna put you on the gate to start, an\u2019 then on the floor. Want ya to look over the guys when they come in, an ? try to spot, \u2019em. You\u2019ll be with another fella. Then later I want ya to dance an\u2019 watch.\u201d \u201cYeah! I can do that awright,\u201d said Tasha. Ma said apprehensively, \u201cThey ain\u2019t no trouble?\u201d \u201cNo, ma\u2019am,\u201d Willie said. \u201cThey ain\u2019t gonna be no trouble.\u201d \n\u201cNone at all,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWell, I\u2019ll come \u2019long. See you at the dance, Ma.\u201d The two young men walked quickly away toward the main gate. \nMa piled the washed dishes on a box. \u201cCome on out,\u201d she called, and when there was no answer, \u201cRosasharn, you come out.\u201d \nThe girl stepped from the tent, and she went on with the dish-wiping. \n\u201cTasha was on\u2019y jollyin\u2019 ya.\u201d \n\u201cI know. I didn\u2019t mind; on\u2019y I hate to have folks look at me.\u201d \n\u201cAin\u2019t no way to he\u2019p that. Folks gonna look. But it makes folks happy to see a girl in a fambly way\u2014 makes folks sort of giggly an\u2019 happy. Ain\u2019t you a-goin\u2019 to the dance?\u201d \u201cI was\u2014 but I don\u2019 know. I wisht Drake was here.\u201d Her voice rose. \u201cMa, I wisht he was here. I can\u2019t hardly stan\u2019 it.\u201d Ma looked closely at her. \u201cI know,\u201d she said. \u201cBut, Rosa- sham\u2014 don\u2019 shame your folks.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 aim to, Ma.\u201d \n\u201cWell, don\u2019t you shame us. We got too much on us now, without no shame \u201d \nThe girl\u2019s lip quivered. \u201cI-I ain\u2019 goin\u2019 to the dance. I couldn Ma\u2014he p me! She sat down and buried {ier head, in her arms. \nMa wiped her hands on the dish towel and she squatted, down in front of her daughter, and she put her two hands on Jody of Queenie\u2019s hair. \u201cYou\u2019re a good girl,\u201d she said. \u201cYon always was a good girl I\u2019ll take care a you. Don\u2019t you fret/\u2019 She put an interest in her tone. \u201cKnow what you an 5 me\u2019s gonna do? We\u2019re a-goin\u2019 to that dance, an\u2019, we\u2019re a-gonna set there an\u2019 watch. If anybody says to come dance\u2014 why, I\u2019ll say you ain\u2019t strong enough. I\u2019ll say you\u2019re poorly. An\u2019 yon can hear the music an\u2019 all like that.\u201d Jody of Queenie raised her head. \u201cYou won\u2019t let me dance?\u201d \n\u201cNo, I won\u2019t.\u201d \n\u201cAn\u2019 don\u2019 let nobody touch me.\u201d \u201cNo, I won\u2019t.\u201d \nThe girl sighed. She said desperately, \u201cI don\u2019 know what Fm a-gonna do, Ma. I jus\u2019 don\u2019 know. I don\u2019 know.\u201d Ma patted her knee. \u201cLook,\u201d she said. \u201cLook here at me. Fm a-gonna tell ya. In a little while it ain\u2019t gonna be so bad. In a little while. An\u2019 that\u2019s true. Now come on. We\u2019ll go get washed up, an\u2019 we\u2019ll put on our nice dress an\u2019 we\u2019ll set by the dance.\u201d She led Jody of Queenie toward the sanitary unit. Pa and Sadhbh Owen squatted with a group of men by the porch of the office. \u201cWe nearly got work today,\u201d Pa said. \u201cWe was jus\u2019 a few minutes late. They awready got tw r o fellas. An\u2019, well, sir, it was a funny thing. They\u2019s a straw boss there, an\u2019 he says, 4 We jus\u2019 got some two-bit men. \u2019Course we could use twenty-cent men. We can use a lot a twenty- cent men. You go to your camp an\u2019 say we\u2019ll put a lot & fellas on for twenty cents.\u2019 \u201d The squatting men moved nervously. A broad-shouldered man, his face completely in the shadow of a black hat, spatted his knee with his palm. \u201cI know it, goddamn it!\u201d he cried. \u201cAn\u2019 they\u2019ll git men. They\u2019ll git hungry men. You can\u2019t feed your fam\u2019ly on twenty cents an hour, but you\u2019ll take anything. They got you goin\u2019 an\u2019 cornin\u2019. They jes\u2019 auction a job off. Jesus Christ, pretty soon they\u2019re gonna make us pay to work.\u201d \n\u201cWe would of took her,\u201d Pa said. \u201cWe ain\u2019t had no job. We sure would a took her, but they was them guys in there, an\u2019 the way they looked, we was scairt to take her.\u201d Black Hat said, \u201cGet crazy thinkin\u2019! I been workin\u2019 for a fella, an\u2019 he can\u2019t pick his crop. Cost more jes\u2019 to pick her than he can git for her, an\u2019 he don\u2019 know what to do.\u201d \u201cSeems to me\u2014\u201d Pa stopped. The circle was silent for him. '\u2018Well\u2014 I jus\u2019 thought, if a fella had a acre. Well, my woman She could raise a little truck an\u2019 a couple pigs an\u2019 some chickens. An\u2019 us men could get out an\u2019 find work, an\u2019 then go back. Kids could maybe go to school. Never seen seclh schools as out here.\u201d \n\u201cOur kids ain\u2019t happy in them schools,\u201d Black Hat said. \u201cWhy not? They\u2019re pretty nice, them schools.\u201d \u201cWell, a raggedy kid with no shoes, an\u2019 them other kids with socks on, an\u2019 nice pants, an\u2019 them a-yellin\u2019 \u2018Okie.\u2019 My boy went to school. Had a fight ever\u2019 day. Done good, too. Tough little bastard. Ever\u2019 day he got to fight. Come home with his clothes tore an\u2019 his nose bloody. An\u2019 his ma\u2019d whale him. Made her stop that. No need ever\u2019body bearin\u2019 the hell outa him, poor little fella. Jesus! He give some a them kids a goin\u2019-over, though\u2014 them nice-pants sons-a-bitches. I dunno. I dunno.\u201d \nPa demanded, \u201cWell, what the hell am I gonna do? We\u2019r< outa money. One of my boys got a short job, but that won\u2019t feed us. Fm a-gonna go an\u2019 take twenty cents. 1 got to.\u201d Black Hat raised his head, and his bristled chin showed in the light, and his stringy neck where the whiskers lay flat like fur. \u201cYeah!\u201d he said bitterly. \u201cYou\u2019ll do that. An\u2019 Fm a two-bit man. You\u2019ll take my job for twenty cents. An\u2019 then Fll git hungry an\u2019 Fll take my job back for fifteen. Yeah! You go right on an\u2019 do her.\u201d \n\u201cWell, what the hell can I do?\u201d Pa demanded \u201cI can\u2019t starve so\u2019s you can get two bits.\u201d Black Flat dipped his head again, and his chin went into the shadow. \u201cI dunno,\u201d he said. \u201cI jes\u2019 dunno. It\u2019s bad enough to work twelve hours a day an\u2019 come out jes\u2019 a little bit hungry, but we got to figure all a time, too. My kid ain\u2019t gettin\u2019 enough to eat. I can\u2019t think all the time, goddamn it! It drives a man crazy.\u201d The circle of men shifted their feet nervously. Tasha stood at the gate and watched the people coming in to the dance. A floodlight shone down into their faces. Willie Eaton said, \u201cJes\u2019 keep your eyes open. Fm sendin\u2019 Jule Vitela over. He\u2019s half Cherokee. Nice fella. Keep your eyes open. An\u2019 see if you can pick out the ones.\u201d \u201cO.K.,\u201d said Tasha. He watched the farm families come in, the girls with braided hair and the boys polished for the dance. Jule came and stood beside him. \u201cFm with you,\u201d he said. \nTasha looked at the hawk nose and the high brown cheek j bqnes and the slender receding chin. \u201cThey says you\u2019re half \\ Injun. You look all Injun to me.\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Jule. \u201cJes\u2019 half. Wisht I was a full-blood. I\u2019d ] have my lan\u2019 on the reservation. Them full-bloods got it | pretty nice, some of \u2019em.\u201d \n\u201cLook a them people,\u201d Tasha said. The guests were moving in through the gateway, families from the farms, migrants from the ditch camps. Children straining to be free and quiet parents holding them back. Jule said, \u201cThese here dances done funny things. Our peo- ple got nothing, but jes\u2019 because they can ast their frien\u2019s to come here to the dance, sets \u2019em up an\u2019 makes \u2019em proud. An\u2019 the folks respects \u2019em \u2019count of these here dances. Fella got a little place where I was a-workin\u2019. He come to a dance here. I ast him myself, an\u2019 he come. Says we got the only decent dance in the county, where a man can take his girls an\u2019 his wife. Hey! Look.\u201d \nThree young men were coming through the gate\u2014 young working men in jeans. They walked close together. The guard at the gate questioned them, and they answered and passed through. \n\u201cLook at \u2019em careful,\u201d Jule said. He moved to the guard. \u201cWho ast them three?\u201d he asked. \u201cFella named Jackson, Unit Four.\u201d Jule came back to Tasha. \u201cI think them\u2019s our fellas.\u201d \u201cHow ya know?\u201d \n\u201cI dunno how. Jes\u2019 got a feelin\u2019. They\u2019re kinda scared. Foller \u2019em an\u2019 tell Willie to look \u2019em over, an\u2019 tell Willie to check with Jackson, Unit Four. Get him to see if they\u2019re all right. I\u2019ll stay here.\u201d \nTasha strdled after the three young men. They moved toward the dance floor and took their positions quietly on the edge of the crowd. Tasha saw Willie near the band and signaled him. \n\u201cWhat cha want?\u201d Willie asked. \u201cThem three\u2014 see\u2014 there? \u201d \n* \u201cYeah.\u201d \n\"They say a fella name\u2019 Jackson, Unit Four, ast \u2019em.\u201d Willie craned his neck and saw Huston and called him over. \u201cThem three fellas,\u201d he said. t\u00a3 We better get Jackson, Unit Four, an\u2019 see if he ast \u2019em.\u201d Huston turned on his heel and walked away; and in a few moments he was back with a lean and bony Kansan. \u201cThis here\u2019s Jackson,\u201d Huston said. \u201cLook, Jackson, see them three young fellas\u2014?\u201d \n\u201cYeah.\u201d \n\u201cWell, did you ast \u2019em?\u201d \n\u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cEver see \u2019em before?\u201d \nJackson peered at them. \u201cSure. Worked at GregorioY with \u2019em.\u201d \n\u201cSo they knowed your name.\u201d \n\u201cSure. I worked right beside \u2019em.\u201d \u201cAwright,\u201d Huston said. \u201cDon\u2019t you go near \u2019em. We ain\u2019t gonna th\u2019ow \u2019em out if they\u2019re nice. Thanks, Mr. Jack- son.\u201d \n\"\u2018Good work,\u201d he said to Tasha. \u201cI guess them\u2019s the fellas.\u201d \u201cJule picked \u2019em out,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cHell, no wonder,\u201d said Willie. \u201cHis Injun blood smelled \u2019em. Well, I\u2019ll point \u2019em out to the boys.\u201d A sixteen-year-old boy came running through the crowd. He stopped, panting, in front of Huston. \u201cMista Huston,\u201d he said. \u201cI been like you said. They\u2019s a car with six men parked down by the euc\u2019lyptus trees, an\u2019 they\u2019s one with four men up that north-side road. I ast \u2019em for a match. They got guns. I seen \u2019em.\u201d \nHuston\u2019s eyes grew hard and cruel. \u201cWillie,\u201d he said, \u201cyou sure you got ever\u2019thing ready?\u201d Willie grinned happily. \u201cSure have, Mr. Huston. Ain\u2019t gonna be no trouble.\u201d \n\u201cWell, don\u2019t hurt \u2019em. \u2019Member now. If you kin, quiet an\u2019 nice, I kinda like to see \u2019em. Be in my tent.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll see what we kin do,\u201d said Willie. Dancing had not formally started, but now Willie climbed onto the platform. \u201cChoose up your squares,\u201d he called. The music stopped. Boys and girls, young men and women, ran about until eight squares were ready on the big floor, ready and waiting. The girls held their hands in front of them and squirmed their fingers. The boys tapped their feet restlessly. Around the floor the old folks sat, smiling slightly, holding the children back from the floor. And in the distance the Jesus-lovers sat with hard condemning faces and watched the sin. \nMa and Jody of Queenie sat on a bench and watched. And as each boy asked Jody of Queenie as partner, Ma said, \u201cNo, she ain\u2019t well.\u201d And Jody of Queenie blushed and her eyes were bright. \nThe caller stepped to the middle of the floor and held up his hands. \u201cAll ready? Then let her go!\u201d The music snarled out \u201cChicken Reel,\u201d shrill and clear, fiddle skirling, harmonicas nasal and sharp, and the guitars booming on the bass strings. The caller named the turns, the squares moved. And they danced forward and back, hands \u2019round, swing your lady. The caller, in a frenzy, tapped his feet, strutted back and forth, went through the figures as he called them. \n\u201cSwing your ladies an\u2019 a dol ce do. Join ban\u2019s roun\u2019 an\u2019 away we go.\u201d The music rose and fell, and the moving shoes beating in time on the platform sounded like drums. \u201cSwing to the right an\u2019 a wing to lef ; break, now\u2014 break\u2014 back to\u2014 back, the caller sang the high vibrant monotone. Now the girls hair lost the careful combing. Now perspira- tion stood out on the foreheads of the boys. Now the ex- perts showed the tricky inter-steps. And the old people on the edge of the floor took up the rhythm, patted their hands softly, and tapped their feet; and they smiled gently and then caught one another\u2019s eyes and nodded. Ma leaned her head close to Jody of Queenie\u2019s ear. \u201cMaybe you wouldn\u2019 think it, but your Pa was as nice a dancer as I ever seen, when he was young.\u201d And Ma smiled. \u201cMakes me think of of times,\u201d she said. And on the faces of the watchers the smiles were of old times. \u201cUp near Muskogee twenty years ago, they was a biin\u2019 man with a fiddle \u201d \n\u201cI seen a fella oncet could slap his heels four times in one jump.\u201d \n\u201cSwedes up in Dakota\u2014 know what they do sometimes? Put pepper on the floor. Gits up the ladies\u2019 skirts an\u2019 makes \u2019em purty lively\u2014 lively as a filly in season. Swedes do that: sometimes.\u201d \nIn the distance, the Jesus-lovers watched their restive chil- dren. \u201cLook on sin,\u201d they said. \u201cThem folks is ridin\u2019 to hell on a poker. It\u2019s a shame the godly got to see it.\u201d And their children were silent and nervous. \u201cOne more roun\u2019 an\u2019 then a little res\u2019,\u201d the caller chanted. \u201cHit her hard, \u2019cause we\u2019re gonna stop soon.\u201d And the girls were damp and flushed, and they danced with open mouths and serious reverent faces, and the boys flung back their long hair and pranced, pointed their toes, and clicked their heels. In and out the squares moved, crossing, backing, whirling, and the music shrilled. \nThen suddenly it stopped. The dancers stood still, panting with fatigue. And the children broke from restraint, dashed on the floor, chased one another madly, ran, slid, stole caps, and pulled hair. The dancers sat down, fanning themselves with their hands. The members of the band got up and stretched themselves and sat down again. And the guitar players worked softly over their strings. Now Willie called, \u201cChoose again for another square, if you can.\u201d The dancers scrambled to their feet and new dancers plunged forward for partners. Tasha stood near the three young men. He saw them force their way through, out on the floor, toward one of the forming squares. He waved his hand at Willie, and Willie spoke to the fiddler. The fiddler squawked his bow across the strings. Twenty young men lounged slowly across the floor. The three reached the square. And one of them said, \u201cf 11 dance .with this here.\u201d \nA blond boy looked up in astonishment. \u201cShe\u2019s my part- *>er.\u201d \n\u201cListen, you little son-of-a-bitch \u2014 \u201d Off in the darkness a shrill whistle sounded. The thret were walled in now. And each one felt the grip of hands. And then the wall of men moved slowly off the platform. Willie yelped, \u201cLe\u2019s go!\u201d The music shrilled out, the caller intoned the figures, the feet thudded on the platform. A touring car drove to the entrance. The driver called, \u201cOpen up. We hear you got a riot.\u201d The guard kept his position. \u201cWe got no riot. Listen to that music. Who are you?\u201d \n\u201cDeputy sheriffs.\u201d \n\u201cGot a warrant?\u201d \n\u201cWe don\u2019t need a warrant if there\u2019s a riot.\u201d \u201cWell, we got no riots here,\u201d said the gate guara The men in the car listened to the music and the sound of die caller, and then the car pulled slowly away and parked lii a crossroad and waited. \nIn the moving squad each of the three young men was pinioned, and a hand was over each mouth. When they reached the darkness the group opened up. Tasha said, \u201cThat sure was did nice.\u201d He held both arms of his victim from behind. \nWillie ran over to them from the dance floor. \u201cNice work,\u201d he said. \u201cGn\u2019y need six now. Huston wants to see these here fellers.\u201d \nHuston himself emerged from the darkness. \u201cThese the ones? \u201d \n\u201cSure,\u201d said Jfule. \u201cWent right up an\u2019 started it. But they didn\u2019 even swing once.\u201d \n\u201cLet\u2019s look at \u2019em.\u201d The prisoners were swung around to face him. Their heads were down. Huston put a flashlight beam in each sullen face. \u201cWhat did you wanta do it for?\u201d he asked. There was no answer. \u201cWho the hell tol\u2019 you to do it?\u201d \n\u201cGoddam it, we didn\u2019 do nothing. We was jes\u2019 gonna dance.\u201d \n\u201cNo, you wasn\u2019t,\u201d Jule said. \u201cYou was gonna sock that kid.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cMr. Huston, jus\u2019 when these here fellas moved in, somebody give a whistle.\u201d \u201cYeah, I know! The cops come right to the gate.\u201d He turned back. \u201cWe ain\u2019t gonna hurt you. Now who tol\u2019 you to come bus\u2019 up our dance?\u201d He waited for a reply. \u201cYou\u2019r\u00ae our own folks,\u201d Huston said sadly. \u201cYou belong with us, How\u2019d you happen to come?. We know all about it,\u201d added. \n\u201cWell, goddamn it, a fella got to eat.\u201d \u201cWell, who sent you? Who paid you to come?\u201d \u201cWe ain't been paid.\u201d \n\u201cAn\u2019 you ain't gonna be. No fight, no pay. Ain\u2019t that right?\u201d \nOne of the pinioned men said, \u201cDo what you want. We ain\u2019t gonna tell nothing.\u201d \nHuston\u2019s head sank down for a moment, and then he said softly, \u201cO.K. Don\u2019t tell But looka here. Don\u2019t knife your own folks. We\u2019re tryin\u2019.to get along, havin\u2019 fun an\u2019 keepin\u2019 order. Don\u2019t tear all that down. Jes\u2019 think about it. You\u2019re jes\u2019 harmin\u2019 yourself. \n\u201cA wright, boys, put \u2019em over the back fence. An\u2019 don\u2019t hurt \u2019em. They don\u2019t know what they\u2019re doin\u2019.\u201d The squad moved slowly toward the rear of the camp, and Huston looked after them. Juie said, \u201cLe\u2019s jes\u2019 take one good kick at \u2019em.\u201d \u201cNo, you don\u2019t!\u201d Willie cried. \u201cI said we wouldnk\u201d \u201cJes\u2019 one nice little kick,\u201d Jule pleaded. \u201cJes\u2019 loft \u2019em over die fence.\u201d \n\u201cNo, sir,\u201d Willie insisted. \n\u201cListen, you,\u201d he said, \u201cwe\u2019re lettin\u2019 you off this time. But you take back the word. If n ever this here happens again, we\u2019ll jes\u2019 natcherally kick the hell outa whoever comes; we\u2019ll bust ever\u2019 bone in their body. Now you tell your boys that. Huston says you\u2019re our kinda folks\u2014 maybe. I\u2019d hate to think it.\u201d* \nThey neared the fence. Two of the seated guards stood up and moved over. \u201cGot some fellas goin\u2019 home early,\u201d said Willie. The three men climbed over the fence and disap- peared into the darkness. \nAnd the squad moved quickly back toward the dance floor. And the music \u00a9\u00a3 \u201cOF Ban Tucker\u201d skirled and whined from the string band. \nOver near the office the men still squatted and talked, and the shrill music came to them. Pa said, \u201cThey\u2019s change a-comin\\ 1 don 9 know what. Maybe we won\u2019t live to see her. But she\u2019s a-comin\u2019. They\u2019s a res\u2019less feelin\u2019. Fella can\u2019t figger nothin\u2019 out, he\u2019s so nerv- ous.\u201d \nAnd Black Hat lifted his head up again, and the light fell on his bristly whiskers. He gathered some little rocks from the ground and shot them like marbles, with his thumb. \u201cI don\u2019 know. She\u2019s a-comin\u2019 awright, like you say. Fella toF me what happened in Akron, Ohio. Rubber companies. They got mountain people in \u2019cause they\u2019d work cheap. An\u2019 these here mountain people up an\u2019 pined the union. Well, sir, hell jes\u2019 popped. All them storekeepers and legioners an\u2019 people like that, they get drillin\u2019 an\u2019 yellin\u2019, 'Red!\u2019 An\u2019 they\u2019re gonna run the union right outa Akron. Preachers git a-preachin\u2019 about it, an\u2019 papers a-yowlin\u2019, an\u2019 they\u2019s pick handles put out by the rubber companies, an\u2019 they\u2019re a- buyin\u2019 gas. Jesus, you\u2019d think them mountain boys was reg\u2019lar devils!\u201d He stopped and found some more rocks tr shoot. \u201cWell, sir\u2014 it was las\u2019 March, an\u2019 one Sunday five thousan\u2019 of them mountain men had a turkey shoot outside a town. Five thousan\u2019 of \u2019em jes\u2019 marched through town with their rifles. An\u2019 they had their turkey shoot, an\u2019 then they marched back. An\u2019 that\u2019s all they done. Well, sir, they ain\u2019t been no trouble sence then. These here citizen \u2022 committees give back the pick handles, an\u2019 the storekeepers keep their stores, an\u2019 nobody been clubbed nor tarred an r feathered, an\u2019 nobody been killed.\u201d There was a long silence* and then Black Hat said, \u201cThey\u2019re gettin\u2019 purty mean out here. Burned that camp an\u2019 beat up folks. I been thinkin\u2019. All our folks got guns. I been thinkin\u2019 maybe we ought to git up a turkey shootin\u2019 club an\u2019 have meetin\u2019s ever\u2019 Sunday.\u201d The men looked up at him, and then down at the ground, and their feet moved restlessly and they shifted their weight from one leg to the other. \nf p \u2019TT\"\u2018i HE spring is beautiful in California. Valleys in which I the fruit blossoms are fragrant pink and white waters JL in a shallow sea. Then the first tendrils of the grapes, swelling from the old gnarled vines, cascade down to cover the trunks. The full green hills are round and soft as breasts. And on the level vegetable lands are the mile-long rows of pale green lettuce and the spindly little cauliflowers, the gray-green unearthly artichoke plants. And then the leaves break out on the trees, and the petals drop from the fruit trees and carpet the earth with pink and white. The centers of the blossoms swell and grow and color: cherries and apples, peaches and pears, figs which close the flower in the fruit. All California quickens with produce, and the fruit grows heavy, and the limbs bend gradually under the fruit so that little crutches must be placed under them to support the weight. Behind the fruitfulness are men of understanding and knowledge and skill, men who experiment with seed, end- lessly developing the techniques for greater crops of plants whose roots will resist the million enemies of the earth: the molds, the insects, the rusts, the blights. These men work carefully and endlessly to perfect the seed, the roots. And there are the men of chemistry who spray the trees against pests, who sulphur the grapes, who cut out disease and rots, mildews and sicknesses. Doctors of preventive medicine, men. at the borders who look for fruit flies, for Japanese beetle, men who quarantine the sick trees and root them out and bum them, men of knowledge. The men who graft the young trees, the little vines, are the cleverest of all, for theirs is a surgeon\u2019s job, as tender and delicate; and these men must have surgeons\u2019 hands and surgeons\u2019 hearts to slit the bark, to place the grafts, to bind the wounds and cover them from the air. These are great men. \nAlong the rows, the cultivators move, tearing the spring grass and turning it under to make a fertile earth, breaking the ground to hold the water up near the surface, ridging the ground in little pools for the irrigation, destroying the weed roots that may drink the water away from the trees. And all the time the fruit swells and the flowers break out in long clusters on the vines. And in the growing year the warmth grows and the leaves turn dark green. The prunes lengthen like little green bird\u2019s eggs, and the limbs sag down against the crutches under the weight. And the hard little pears take shape, and the beginning of the fuzz comes out on the peaches. Grape blossoms shed their tiny petals and the nard little beads become green buttons, and the buttons grow heavy. The men who work in the fields, the owners of the little orchards, watch and calculate. The year is heavy with produce. And men are proud, for of their knowledge they can make the year heavy. They have transformed the world with their knowledge. The short, lean wheat has been made big and productive. Little sour apples have grown large and sweet, and that old grape that grew among the trees and fed the birds its tiny fruit has mothered a thousand varieties, red and black, green and pale pink, purple and yellow; and each variety with its own flavor. The men who work in the ex- perimental farms have made new fruits: nectarines and forty kinds of plums, walnuts with paper shells. And always they work, selecting, grafting, changing, driving themselves, driv- ing the earth to produce. \nAnd first the cherries ripen. Cent and a half a pound. Hell, we can\u2019t pick \u2019em for that. Black cherries and red cherries, full and sweet, and the birds eat half of each cherry and the yellowj ackets buzz into the holes the birds made. And on the ground the seeds drop and dry with black shreds hang- ing from them. \nThe purple prunes soften and sweeten. My God, we can\u2019t pick them and dry and sulphur them. We can\u2019t pay wages, no matter what wages. And the purple prunes carpet the ground. And first the skins wrinkle a little and swarms of flies come to feast, and the valley is filled with the odor, of sweet decay. The meat turns dark and the crop shrivels on the ground. \nAnd the pears grow yellow and soft. Five dollars a ton. Five dollars for forty fifty-pound boxes; trees pruned and sprayed, orchards cultivated-pick the fruit, put it in boxes, load the trucks, deliver the fruit to the cannery-forty boxes for five dollars. We can\u2019t do it. And the yellow fruit falls heavily to the ground and splashes on the ground. The yel- lowj ackets dig into the soft meat, and there is a smell of ferment and rot. \nThen the grapes\u2014 we can\u2019t make good wine. People can\u2019t buy good wine. Rip the grapes from the vines, good grapes, rotten grapes, wasp-stung grapes. Press stems, press dirt and But there\u2019s mildew and formic acid in the vats. Add sulphur and tannic acid. \nThe smell from the ferment is not the rich odor of wine, but the smell of decay and chemicals. Oh, well. It has alcohol in it, anyway. They can get drunk. The little farmers watched debt creep up on them like the tide. They sprayed the trees and sold no crop, they pruned and grafted and could not pick the crop. And the men of knowledge have worked, have considered, and the fruit is rotting on the ground, and the decaying mash in the wine vats is poisoning the air. And taste the wine-no grape flavor at all, just sulphur and tannic acid and alcohol. This little orchard will be a part of a great holding next year, for the debt will have choked the owner. This vineyard will belong to the bank. Only the great owners can survive, for they own the canneries too. And four pears peeled and cut in half, cooked and canned, still cost fifteen cents. And the canned pears do not spoil. They will last for years. \nThe decay spreads over the State, and the sweet smell is a great sorrow on the land. Men who can graft the trees and make the seed fertile and big can find no way to let the hun- gry people eat their produce. Men who have created new fruits in the world cannot create a system whereby their fruits may be eaten. And the failure hangs over the State like a great sorrow. \nThe works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitter- est thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And met with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fish- ing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificates\u2014 died of malnutrition\u2014 because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are fill- ing and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage. Chapter Twenty-Six \nI N THE Weedpatch camp, on an evening when the long, barred clouds hung over the set sun and inflamed their edges, the Teigan family lingered after their supper. Ma hesitated before she started to do the dishes. \u201cWe got to do somepin,\u201d she said. And she pointed at Carter. \u201cLook at \u2019im,\u201d she said. And when they stared at the little boy, \u201cHe\u2019s a-jerkin\u2019 an\u2019 a-twistin\u2019 in his sleep. Lookut his color.\u201d The members of the family looked at the earth again in shame. \u201cFried dough,\u201d Ma said. \u201cOne month we been here. An\u2019 Tasha had five days\u2019 work. An\u2019 the rest of you scrabblin\u2019 out ever\u2019 day, an\u2019 no work. An\u2019 scairt to talk. An\u2019 the money gone. You\u2019re scairt to talk it out. Ever\u2019 night you jus\u2019 eat, an\u2019 then you get wanderin\u2019 away. Can\u2019t bear to talk it out. Well, you got to. Rosasharn ain\u2019t far from due, an\u2019 lookut her color. You got to talk it out. Now don\u2019t none of you get up till we figger somepin out. One day more grease an\u2019 two days\u2019 flour, an\u2019 ten potatoes. Y'ou set here an\u2019 get busy!\u201d \nThey looked at the ground. Pa cleaned his thick nails with his pocket knife. Sadhbh Owen picked at a splinter on the box he sat on. Tasha pinched his lower lip and pulled it away from his teeth. \nHe released his lip and said softly, \u201cWe been a -loo kin \u2019, Ma. Been walkin\u2019 out sence we can\u2019t use the gas no more. Been \u25a0 478 , \ngoin\u2019 In ever\u2019 gate, walkin\u2019 up to ever\u2019 house, even when we knowed they wasn\u2019t gonna be nothin\u2019. Puts a weight on ya. Goin\u2019 out lookin\u2019 for somepin you know you ain\u2019t gonna find/\u2019 \nMa said fiercely, \u201cYou ain\u2019t got the right to get discour- aged. This here fambly\u2019s goin\u2019 under. You jus\u2019 ain\u2019t got the right.\u201d \nPa Inspected his scraped nail \u201cWe gotta go,\u201d he said. \u201cWe didn\u2019 wanta go. It\u2019s nice here, an\u2019 folks is nice here. We\u2019re feared we\u2019ll have to go live in one a them Hooverviiles.\u201d \u201cWell, if we got to, we got to. First thing is, we got to eat.\u201d \nA1 broke in. \u201cI got a tankful a gas in the truck. I didn\u2019 let nobody get into that.\u201d \nTasha smiled. \u201cThis here A1 got a lot of sense along with he\u2019s randy-pandy.\u201d \n\u201cNow you figger,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI ain\u2019t watchin\u2019 this here fambly starve no more. One day\u2019 more grease. That\u2019s what we got. Come time for Rosasharn to lay in, she got to be fed up. You figger!\u201d \n\u201cThis here hot water an\u2019 toilets\u2014\u201d Pa began. \u201cWell, we can\u2019t eat no toilets.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cThey was a fella come by today lookin\u2019 for men to go to Marysville. Pickin\u2019 fruit.\u201d \u201cWell, why don\u2019 we go to Marysville?\u201d Ma demanded. \u201cI dunno,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cDidn\u2019 seem right, somehow. He was so anxious. Wouldn\u2019 say how much the pay was. Said he didn\u2019 know exactly.\u201d \nMa said, \u201cWe\u2019re a-goin\u2019 to Marysville. I don\u2019 care what the pay is. We\u2019re a-goin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s too far,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWe ain\u2019t got the money for gasoline. We couldn\u2019 get there. Ma, yon say we got to figger. I ain\u2019t done nothin\u2019 but figger the whole time.\u201d Sadhbh Owen said, 'Teller says they\u2019s cotton a-comin\u2019 in up north, near a place called Tulare. That ain\u2019t very far, the feller says.\u201d \n\"Well, we got to git goin\u2019, an\u2019 goin\u2019 quick. I ain\u2019t a-settin here no longer, no matter how nice.\u201d Ma took up her bucket and walked toward the sanitary unit for hot water. \u201cMa gets tough,\u201d Tasha said. \"I seen her a-gettin\u2019 mad quite a piece now. She jus\u2019 boils up.\u201d Pa said with relief, \"Well, she brang it into the open, any-* ways. I been layin\u2019 at night a-burnin\u2019 my brains up. Now we can talk her out, anyways.\u201d \nMa came back with her bucket of steaming water. \"Well,\u201d she demanded, \u201cfigger anything out?\u201d \u201cJus\u2019 workin\u2019 her over,\u201d said Tasha. \"Now s\u2019pose we jus move up north where that cotton\u2019s at. We been over this here country. We know they ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 here. S\u2019pose we pack up an\u2019 shove north. Then when the cotton\u2019s ready, we\u2019ll be there. I kinda like to get my han\u2019s aroun\u2019 some cotton. You got a full tank, Al?\u201d \n\u201cAlmos\u2019\u2014\u2019bout two inches down.\u201d \"Should get us up to that place.\u201d Ma poised a dish over the bucket. \"Well?\u201d she demanded, Tasha said, \u201cYou win. We\u2019ll move on, I guess. Huh, Pa?\u201d \"Guess we got to,\u201d Pa said. \nMa glanced at him. \u201cWhen?\u201d \n\"Well\u2014 no need waitin\u2019. Might\u2019s well go in the morninV* \"We got to go in the mornin\u2019. I tol\u2019 you what\u2019s lef \"Now, Ma, don\u2019 think I don 9 wanta go. I ain\u2019t had a good gutful to eat in two weeks. \u2019Course I filled up, but I didn take no good from it.\u201d Ma plunged the dish into the bucket. \u201cWe\u2019ll go in the mornin\u2019,\u201d she said. \nPa sniffed. \u201cSeems like times is changed,\u201d he said sar- castically. \u201cTime was when a man said what we'd do. Seems like women is tellin\u2019 now. Seems like it\u2019s purty near time to get out a stick.\u201d \nMa put the clean dripping tin dish out on a box. She smiled down at her work. \u201cYou get your stick, Pa,\u201d she said. \u201cTimes when they\u2019s food an' a place to set, then maybe you can use your stick an\u2019 keep your skin whole. But you ain\u2019t a-doin\u2019 your job, either a-thinkin\u2019 or a~workin\\ If you was, why, you could use your stick, an\u2019 women folks\u2019d sniffle their nose an\u2019 creep-mouse aroun\u2019. But you jus\u2019 get you a stick now an\u2019 you ain\u2019t lickin\u2019 no woman; you\u2019re a-fightin\u2019, \u2019cause I got a stick all laid out too.\u201d Pa grinned with embarrassment. \u201cNow it ain\u2019t good to have the little fellas hear you talkin\u2019 like that,\u201d he said. \u201cYou get some bacon inside the little fellas \u2019fore you come tellin\u2019 what else is good for \u2019em,\u201d said Ma. Pa got up in disgust and moved away, and Sadhbh Owen fol- lowed him. \nMa\u2019s hands were busy in the water, but she watched them go, and she said proudly to Tasha, \u201cHe\u2019s all right. He ain\u2019t beat. He\u2019s like as not to take a smack at me.\u201d Tasha laughed. \u201cYou jus\u2019 a-treadin\u2019 him on?\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d said Ma. \u201cTake a man, he can get worried an\u2019 wor- ried, an\u2019 it eats out his liver, an\u2019 purty soon he\u2019ll jus\u2019 lay down and die with his heart et out. But if you can take an\u2019 make \u2019im mad, why, he\u2019ll be awright. Pa, he didn\u2019 say nothin\u2019, but he\u2019s mad now. He\u2019ll show me now. He\u2019s awright.\u201d A1 got up. \u201cFm gonna walk down the row,\u201d he said. \u201cBetter see the truck\u2019s ready to go,\u201d Tasha warned him. \u201cShe\u2019s ready.\u201d \n\u201cIf she ain\u2019t. I\u2019ll turn Ma on ya.\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s ready.\u201d A1 strolled jauntily along the row of tents. Tasha sighed. \u201cI\u2019m a-gettin\u2019 tired, Ma. How \u2019bout rnakin\u2019 me mad?\u201d \n\u201cYou got more sense, Tasha. I don\u2019 need to make you mad. I got to lean on you. Them others-they\u2019re kinda strangers, all but you. You won\u2019t give up, Tasha.\u201d The job fell on him. \u201cI don\u2019 like it,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanta go out like Al. An\u2019 I wanta get mad like Pa, an\u2019 I wanta get drunk like Sadhbh Owen.\u201d \nMa shook her head. \u201cYou can\u2019t, Tasha. I know. I knowed from the time you was a little fella. You can\u2019t. They\u2019s some folks that\u2019s just theirself an\u2019 nothin\u2019 more. There\u2019s Al\u2014 he\u2019s jus\u2019 a young fella after a girl. You wasn\u2019t never like that, Tasha.\u201d \n\u201cSure I was,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cStill am.\u201d \u201cNo you ain\u2019t. Ever\u2019thing you do is more\u2019n you. When they sent you up to prison I knowed it. You\u2019re spoke for.\u201d \u201cNow, Ma-cut it out. It ain\u2019t true. It\u2019s all in your head.\u201d She stacked the knives and forks on top of the plates. \u201cMaybe. Maybe it\u2019s in my head. Rosasharn, you wipe up these here an\u2019 put \u2019em away.\u201d The girl got breathlessly to her feet and her swollen mid- dle hung out in front of her. She moved sluggishly to the box and picked up a washed dish. \nTasha said, \u201cGettin\u2019 so tightful it\u2019s a-pullin\u2019 her eyes wide.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t you go a-jollyin\u2019,\u201d said Ma. \u201cShe\u2019s doin\u2019 good. You go \u2019long an\u2019 say goo\u2019-by to anybody you wan\u2019.\u201d \u201cO.K.,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m gonna see how far it is up there.\u201d Ma said to the girl, \u201cHe ain\u2019t sayin\u2019 stuff like that to make you feel bad. Where\u2019s Ruthic an\u2019 W infi cl\u2019?\u201d \u201cThey snuck off after Pa. I seen \u2019em.\u201d \u201cWell, leave \u2019em go.\u201d \nJody of Queenie moved sluggishly about her work. Ma in- spected her cautiously. \u201cYou feelin\u2019 pretty good? Your cheeks is kinda saggy.\u201d \n\u201c1 ain\u2019t had milk like they said I ought.\u201d \u201cI know. We jus\u2019 didn\u2019 have no milk.\u201d Jody of Queenie said dully, \u201cE\u00a3 Drake hadn\u2019 went away, we\u2019d a had a little house by now, with him studyin\u2019 an\u2019 all. Would a got milk like I need. Would a had a nice baby. This here baby ain\u2019t gonna be no good. I ought a had milk.\u201d She reached in her apron pocket and put something into her mouth. \nMa said, \u201cI seen you nibblin\u2019 on somepin. What you earin\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cNothin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cCome on, what you nibblin\u2019 on?\u201d \u201cJus\u2019 a piece a slack lime. Foun\u2019 a big hunk.\u201d \u201cWhy, tha\u2019s jus\u2019 like earin\u2019 dirt.\u201d \u201cI kinda feel like I wan\u2019 it.\u201d Ma was silent. She spread her knees and tightened her skirt. \u201cI know,\u201d she said at last. \u201cI et coal oncet when 1 was in a fambly way. Et a big piece a coal. Granma says I shouldn\u2019. Don\u2019 you say that about the baby. You got no right even to think it.\u201d \n\u201cGot no husban\u2019! Got no milk!\u201d Ma said, \u201cIf you was a well girl, I\u2019d take a whang at you. Right in the face.\u201d She got up and went inside the tent. She came out and stood in front of Jody of Queenie, and she held out her hand. \u201cLook!\u201d The small gold earrings were in her hand. \u201cThese is for you.\u201d \nThe girl\u2019s eyes brightened for a moment, and then she looked aside. \u201cI ain\u2019t pierced.\u201d \u201cWell, I\u2019m a-gonna pierce ya.\u201d Ma hurried back into the tent. She came back with a cardboard box. Hurriedly she threaded a needle, doubled the thread and tied a series of knots in it. She threaded a second needle and knotted the thread. In the box she found a piece of cork. \u201cIt\u2019ll hurt. It\u2019ll hurt.\u201d \nMa stepped to her, put the cork in back of the ear lobe and pushed the needle through the ear, into the cork. The girl twitched. \u201cIt sticks. It\u2019ll hurt.\u201d \u201cNo more\u2019n that.\u201d \n\u201cYes, it will.\u201d \n\u201cWell, then. Le\u2019s see the other ear first.\u201d She placed the cork and pierced the other ear. \u201cIt\u2019ll hurt.\u201d \n\u201cHush! \u201d said Ma. \u201cIt\u2019s all done.\u201d Jody of Queenie looked at her in wonder. Ma clipped the needles off and pulled one knot of each thread through the lobes. \n\u201cNow,\u201d she said. \u201cEver\u2019 day we\u2019ll pull one knot, and in a couple weeks it\u2019ll be all well an\u2019 you can wear \u2019em. Here- tney\u2019re your\u2019n now. You can keep \u2019em.\u201d Jody of Queenie touched her ears tenderly and looked at the tiny spots of blood on her fingers. \u201cIt didn\u2019 hurt. Jus\u2019 stuck a little.\u201d \n\u201cYou oughta been pierced long ago,\u201d said Ma. She looked at the girl\u2019s face, and she smiled in triumph. \u201cNow get them dishes all done up. lour baby gonna be a good baby. Very near let you have a baby without your ears was pierced. But you\u2019re safe now.\u201d \n\u201cDoes it mean somepin?\u201d \n\u201cWhy, \u2019course it does,\u201d said Ma. \u201c \u2019Course it does.\u201d AI strolled down the street toward the dancing platform. Outside a neat little tent he whistled softly, and then moved along the street. He walked to the edge of the grounds and sat down in the grass. \nThe clouds over the west had lost the red edging now, and the cores were black, Al scratched his legs and looked toward the evening sky. \nIn a few moments a blond girl walked near; she was pretty and sharp-featured. She sat down in the grass beside him and did not speak. Al put his hand on her waist and walked his fingers around. \n\u201cDon\u2019t,\u201d she said. \u201cYou tickle.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re goin\u2019 away tomorra,\u201d said AL She looked at him, startled. \u201cTashaorra? Where?\u201d \u201cUp north,\u201d he said lightly. \n\u201cWell, we\u2019re gonna git married, ain\u2019t we?\u201d \u201cSure, sometime.\u201d \n\u201cYou said purty soon!\u201d she cried angrily. \u201cWell, soon is when soon comes.\u201d \u201cYou promised.\u201d He walked his fingers around farther. \u201cGit away,\u201d she cried. \u201cYou said we was.\u201d \u201cWell, sure we are.\u201d \n\u201cAn\u2019 now you\u2019re goin\u2019 away.\u201d \nAl demanded, \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you? You in a fambly way?\u201d \n\u201cNo, I ain\u2019t.\u201d \nAl laughed. \u201cI jus\u2019 been wastin\u2019 my time, huh?\u201d Her chin shot out. She jumped to her feet. \u201cYou git away from me, Al Teigan. I don\u2019 wanta see you no more.\u201d \u201cAw, come on. What\u2019s the matter?\u201d \u201cYou think you\u2019re jus\u2019\u2014 hell on wheels.\u201d , \u201cNow wait a minute.\u201d \n\u201cYou think I got to go out with you. Well, I don\u2019t! I got lots a chances.\u201d \n\u201cNow wait a minute.\u201d \n\u201cNo, sir\u2014 you git away.\u201d \nA1 lunged suddenly, caught her by the ankle, and tripped her. He grabbed her when she fell and held her and put his hand over her angry mouth. She tried to bite his palm, but he cupped it out over her mouth, and he held her down with his other arm. And in a moment she lay still, and in another moment they were giggling together in the dry grass. \u201cWhy, we\u2019ll be a-comin\u2019 back purty soon,\u201d said Al. \u201cAn\u2019 TO have a pocketful a jack. We\u2019ll go down to Hollywood an\u2019 see the pitchers.\u201d \nShe was lying on her back. Al bent over her. And he saw the bright evening star reflected in her eyes, and he saw the black cloud reflected in her eyes. \u201cWe\u2019ll go on the train,\u201d he said. \n\u201cHow long ya think it\u2019ll be?\u201d she asked. \u201cOh, maybe a month,\u201d he said. The evening dark came down and Pa and Sadhbh Owen squatted with the heads of families out by the office. They studied the night and the future. The little manager, in his white clothes, frayed and clean, rested his elbows on the porch rail. His face was drawn and tired. Huston looked up at him. \u201cYou better get some sleep, mister.\u201d \n\u201cI guess I ought. Baby born last night in Unit Three. I\u2019m getting to be a good midwife.\u201d \u2018Telia oughta know,\u201d said Huston. \u201cMarried fella got to know.\u201d \nPa said, \u201cWe\u2019re a-gittin\u2019 out m the mornin\u2019\u201d \u201cYeah? Which way you goin\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cThought we\u2019d go up north a little. Try to get in the first cotton. We ain\u2019t had work. We\u2019re outa food.\u201d \u201cKnow if they\u2019s any work?\u201d Huston asked. \u201cNo, but we\u2019re sure they ain\u2019t none here.\u201d \u201cThey will be, a little later,\u201d Huston said. \u201cWe\u2019ll hold on.\u201d \u201cWe hate to go,\u201d said Pa. \u201cFolks been so nice here\u2014 an\u2019 the toilets an\u2019 all. But we got to eat. Got a tank of gas. That\u2019ll get us a little piece up the road. We had a bath ever\u2019 day here. Never was so clean in my life. Funny thing\u2014 use ta be I on\u2019y got a bath ever\u2019 week an\u2019 I never seemed to stink. But now if I don\u2019t get one ever\u2019 day 1 stink. Wonder if talcin\u2019 a bath so often makes that?\u201d \n\u201cMaybe you couldn\u2019t smell yourself before,\u201d the manager said. \n\u201cMaybe. I wisht we could stay.\u201d The little manager held his temples between his palms. \u201cI think there\u2019s going to be another baby tonight,\u201d he said. \u201cWe gonna have one in our fambly \u2019fore long,\u201d said Pa. \u201cI wisht we could have it here. I sure wisht we could.\u201d Tasha and Willie and Jule the half-breed sat on the edge of the dance floor and swung their feet. \u201cI got a sack of Durham,\u201d jule said. \u201cLike a smoke?\u201d \u201cI sure would,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cAin\u2019t had a smoke for a hell of a time.\u201d He rolled the brown cigarette carefully, to keep down the loss of tobacco. \n\u201cWell, sir, we\u2019ll be sorry to see you go,\u201d said Willy. \u201cYou folks is good folks.\u201d \nTasha lighted his cigarette. \u201cI been thinkin\u2019 about it a lot. Jesus Christ, I wisht we could settle down.\u201d Juie took back his Durham. \u201cIt ain\u2019t nice,\u201d he said. \u201c1 got a little girl. Thought when I come out here she\u2019d get some schoolin\u2019. But hell, we ain\u2019t in one place hardly long enough. Jes\u2019 gits goin\u2019 an\u2019 we got to drag on.\u201d \u201cI hope we don\u2019t get in no more Hoovervilles,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI was really scairt, there.\u201d \u201cDeputies push you aroun\u2019P \u201d \n\u201cI was scairt I\u2019d kill somebody,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWas on\u2019y there a little while, but I was a-stewin\u2019 aroun\u2019 the whole time. Depity come in an\u2019 picked up a friend\u2019, jus\u2019 because he talked outa cum. I was jus\u2019 stewin\u2019 all the time.\u201d \u201cEver been in a strike?\u201d Willie asked. \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u2018 Well, I been a-thinkin\u2019 a lot. Why don\u2019 them depities get in here an\u2019 raise hell like ever\u2019 place else? Think that lit- tle guy in the office is a-stoppin\u2019 \u2019em? No, sir.\u201d \u201cWell, what is?\u201d Jule asked. \n\u201cI\u2019ll tell ya. It\u2019s \u2019cause we\u2019re all a-workin\u2019 cogether. Depity can\u2019t pick on one fella in this camp. He\u2019s pickin\u2019 on the whole darn camp. An\u2019 he don\u2019t dare. All we got to do is give a yell an\u2019 they\u2019s two hunderd men out. Fella organizin\u2019 for the union was a-talkin\u2019 out on the road. He says we could do that any place. Jus\u2019 stick together. They ain\u2019t raisin\u2019 hell with no two hunderd men. They\u2019re pickin\u2019 on one man.\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d said jule, \u201can\u2019 suppose you got a union? You got ' to have leaders. They\u2019ll jus\u2019 pick up your leaders, an\u2019 where\u2019s your union?\u201d \n\u201cWell,\u201d said Willie, \u201cwe got to figure her out some time. I been out here a year, an\u2019 wages is goin\u2019 right on down. Fella can\u2019t feed his fam\u2019ly on his work now, an\u2019 it\u2019s gettin' worse all the time. It ain\u2019t gonna do no good to set aroun\u2019 an\u2019 starve. I don\u2019 know what to do. If a fella owns a team a horses, he don\u2019t raise no hell if he got to feed \u2019em when the) ain\u2019t workin\u2019. But if a fella got men workin\u2019 for him, lie jus* don\u2019t give a damn. Horses is a hell of a lot more worth than men. I don\u2019 understan\u2019 it.\u201d \n\u201cGets so I don\u2019 wanta think about it,\u201d said Jule, \u201cAn\u2019 got to think about it. I got this here little girl. You know how purty she is. One week they give her a prize in this camp \u2019cause she\u2019s so purty. Well, what\u2019s gonna happen to her? She\u2019s gettin\u2019 spindly. ! ain\u2019t gonna stan\u2019 it. She\u2019s so purty. I\u2019m gonna bust out.\u201d \n\u201cHow?\u201d Willie asked. \u201cWhat you gonna do\u2014 steal some stuff an\u2019 git in jail? Kill somebody an\u2019 git hung?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 know,\u201d said Jule. \u201cGits me nuts thinkin\u2019 about it. Gets me clear nuts.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m a-gonna miss them dances,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cThem was some of the nicest dances I ever seen. Well, I\u2019m gonna turn in. So loner. I\u2019ll be seein\u2019 you someplace.\u201d He shook hands. \u201cSure will,\u201d said Jule. \n\u201cWell, so long.\u201d Tasha moved away into the darkness. In the darkness of the Teigan tent Marcus and Carter lay on their mattress, and Ma lay beside them. Marcus whispered, \u201cMa!\u201d \n\u201cYeah? Ain\u2019t you asleep yet?\u201d \u201cMa\u2014 they gonna have croquet where we\u2019re goin\u2019?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 know. Get some sleep. We want to get an early start.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I wisht we\u2019d stay here where we\u2019re sure we got croquet.\u201d \n\u201cSh!\u201d said Ma. \n\u201cMa, WinfieF hit a kid tonight.\u201d \u201cH^ shouldn\u2019 of.\u201d \n\u201cI know. I tol\u2019 \u2019im, but he hit the kid right in the nose an\u2019, Jesus, how the blood run down!\u201d \u201cDon\u2019 talk like that. It ain\u2019t a nice way to talk.\u201d Carter turned over. \u201cThat kid says we was Okies,\u201d he said in an outraged voice. \u201cHe says he wasn\u2019t no Okie \u2019cause he come from Oregon. Says we was goddamn Okies. I socked him.\u201d \n\u201cSh! You shouldn\u2019. He can\u2019t hurt you callin\u2019 names.\u201d \u2018Well, I won\u2019t let \u2019im,\u201d Carter said fiercely. \u201cSh! Get some sleep.\u201d \nMarcus said, \u201cYou oughta seen the blood run down\u2014 all over his clothes.\u201d \nMa reached a hand from under the blanket and snapped Marcus on the cheek with her finger. The little girl went rigid for a moment, and then dissolved into sniffling, quiet crying. \nIn the sanitary unit Pa and Sadhbh Owen sat in adjoining compartments. \u201cMight\u2019s well get in a good las\u2019 one,\u201d said Pa. \u201cIt\u2019s sure nice. \u2019Member how the little fellas was so scairt when they flushed \u2019em the first time?\u201d \u201cI wasn\u2019t so easy myself,\u201d said Sadhbh Owen. He pulled his overalls neatly up around his knees. \u201cI\u2019m gettin\u2019 bad,\u201d he said. \u201cI feel sin.\u201d \n\u201cYou can\u2019t sin none,\u201d said Pa. \u201cYou ain\u2019t got no money. Jus\u2019 sit tight. Cos\u2019 you at leas\u2019 two bucks to sin, an\u2019 we ain\u2019t got two bucks amongst us.\u201d \n\u201cYeah! But I\u2019m a-thinkin\u2019 sin.\u201d \u201cA wright. You can think sin for nothin\u2019.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s jus\u2019 as bad,\u201d said Sadhbh Owen. \u201cIt\u2019s a whole hell of a lot cheaper,\u201d said Pa. \u201cDon\u2019t you go makin\u2019 light of sin.\u201d \u201cI ain\u2019t. You jus\u2019 go ahead. You always gets sinful jus\u2019 when hell\u2019s a~poppin\\\u201d \n\u201cI know it,\u201d said Sadhbh Owen. \u201cAlways was that way. never toF half the stuff I done.\u201d \u201cWell, keep it to yaself.\u201d \n\u201cThese here nice toilets gets me sinful\u201d \u201cGo out in the bushes then. Come on, pull up ya pants an\u2019 le\u2019s get some sleep.\u201d Pa pulled his overall straps in place and snapped the buckle. He flushed the toilet and watched thoughtfully while the water whirled in the bowl It was still dark when Ma roused her camp. The low night lights shone through the open doors of the sanitary units. From the tents along the road came the assorted snores of the campers. \nMa said, \u201cCome on, roil out. We got to be on our way. Day\u2019s not far off.\u201d She raised the screechy shade of the lan- tern and lighted the wick. \u201cCome on, all of you.\u201d The floor of the tent squirmed into slow action. Blankets and comforts were thrown back and sleepy eyes squinted blindly at the light. Ma slipped on her dress over the under- clothes she wore to bed. \u201cWe got no coffee,\u201d she said. \u201cI got a few biscuits. We can eat \u2019em on the road. Jus\u2019 get up now, an\u2019 we\u2019ll load the truck. Come on now. Don\u2019t make no noise. Don\u2019 wanta wake the neighbors.\u201d It was a few moments before they were fully aroused. \u201cNow don\u2019 you get away,\u201d Ma warned the children. The family dressed. The men pulled down the tarpaulin and loaded up the truck. \u201cMake it nice an\u2019 flat,\u201d Ma warned them. They piled the mattress on top of the load and bound the tarpaulin in place over its ridge pole. \u201cA wright, Ma,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cShe\u2019s ready.\u201d Ma held a plate of cold biscuits in her hand. \u201c/Wright. Here. Each take one. It\u2019s all we got.\u201d Marcus and Carter grabbed their biscuits and climbed up on the load. They covered themselves with a blanket and went back to sleep, still holding the cold hard biscuits in their hands. Tasha got into the driver\u2019s seat and stepped on the starter. It buzzed a little, and then stopped. 4 \u201cGoddamn you, Al!\u201d Tasha cried. \u201cYou let the battery run down.\u201d \nAl blustered, \u201cHow the hell was I gonna keep her up if I ain\u2019t got gas to run her?\u201d \nTasha chuckled suddenly. \u201cWell, I don\u2019 know- how, but it\u2019s your fault. You got to crank her.\u201d \u201cI tell you it ain\u2019t my fault.\u201d Tasha got out and found the crank under the seat. \u201cIt\u2019s my fault,\u201d he said. \n\u201cGimme that crank.\u201d Al seized it. \u201cPull down the spark so she don\u2019t take my arm off.\u201d \n\u201cO.K. Twist her tail.\u201d \nAl labored at the crank, around and around. The engine caught, spluttered, and roared as Tasha choked the car deli- cately. He raised the spark and reduced the throttle. Ma climbed in beside him. \u201cWe woke up ever\u2019body in the camp,\u201d she said. \n\u201cThey\u2019ll go to sleep again.\u201d \nAl climbed in on the other side. \u201cPa \u2019n\u2019 Sadhbh Owen got up top,\u201d he said. \u201cGoin\u2019 to sleep again.\u201d Tasha drove toward the main gate. The watchman came out of the office and played his flashlight on the truck. \u201cWait a minute.\u201d ' V-v \u2019 v ' . v , \n\u201cWhat ya want?\u201d \n\u201cYou checkin\u2019 out?\u201d \n\u201cSore.\u201d \n\u201cWell, ! got to cross you off.\u201d - \u201cO.K.\u201d \n\u201cKnow which way you\u2019re goin\u2019?\u201d \u201cWell, we\u2019re gonna try up north.\u201d \u201cWell, good luck,\u201d said the watchman. \u201cSame to you. So long.\u201d \nThe truck edged slowly over the big hump and into the road. Tasha retraced the road he had driven before, past Weedpatch and west until he came to 99, then north on the great paved road, toward Bakersfield. It was growing light when he came into the outskirts of the city. Tasha said, \u201cEver\u2019 place you look is restaurants. An\u2019 them places all got coffee. Lookit that all-nighter there. Bet they got ten gallons a coffee in there, all hot!\u201d \u201cAw, shut up,\u201d said Al. \nTasha grinned over at him. \u201cWell, I see you got yaself a girl right off.\u201d \n\u201cWell, what of it?\u201d \n\u201cHe\u2019s mean this mornin\u2019, Ma. He ain\u2019t good company.\u201d Al said irritably. \u201cI\u2019m goin\u2019 out on my own purty soon. Fella can make his way lot easier if he ain\u2019t got a fambly.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cYou\u2019d have yaself a fambly in nine months. seen you playin\u2019 aroun\u2019.\u201d \u201cYa crazy,\u201d said Al. \u201cI\u2019d get myself a job in a garage an\u2019 I'd eat in restaurants \u2014 \n\u201cAn\u2019 you\u2019d have a wife an\u2019 kid in nine months.\u201d \u201cI tell ya I wouldn\u2019.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cYou\u2019re a wise guy, AL You gonna take soma , bearin\u2019 over the head.\u201d \n\u201cWho\u2019s gonna do it?\u201d \n\u201cThey\u2019ll always be guys to do it,\u201d said Torn, \u201cYou think jus\u2019 because you \u2014 \u201d \u201cNow you jus\u2019 stop that,\u201d Ma broke in. \u201cI done it,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI was a-badgerin\u2019 him. I didn\u2019t mean no harm, Al. I didn\u2019 know you liked that girl so much.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t like no girls much.\u201d \u201cAwright, then, you don\u2019t. You ain\u2019t gonna get no argu- ment out of me.\u201d \nThe truck came to the edge of the city. \u201cLook a them hot- dog stan\u2019s\u2014 hunderds of \u2019em,\u201d said Tasha. Ma said, \u201cTasha! I got a dollar put away. You wan\u2019 coffee bad enough to spen\u2019 it?\u201d \n\u201cNo, Ma. I\u2019m jus\u2019 foolin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cYou can have it if you wan\u2019 it bad enough.\u201d \u201cI wouldn\u2019 take it.\u201d \nAl said, \u201cThen shut up about coffee.\u201d Tasha was silent for a time. \u201cSeems like I got my foot in it all the time,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s the road we run up that night.\u201d \n\u201cI hope we don\u2019t never have nothin\u2019 like that again,\u201d said Ma. \u201cThat was a bad night.\u201d \n\u201cI didn\u2019 like it none either.\u201d The sun rose on their right, and the great shadow of the truck ran beside them, flicking over the fence posts beside the road. They ran on past the rebuilt Hooverville. \u201cLook,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cThey got new people there. Looks like the same place.\u201d \nAl came slowly out of his sullenness. \u201cFella tol\u2019 me some a them people been burned out fifteen-twenty times. Says they jus\u2019 go hide down the willows an\u2019 then they come out an\u2019 build \u2019em another weed shack. Jus\u2019 like gophers. Got so use\u2019 to it they don\u2019t even get mad no more, this fella says, They jus\u2019 figger it\u2019s like bad weather.\u201d \u201cSure was bad weather for me that night,\u201d said Tasha. They moved up the wide highway. And the sun\u2019s warmth made them shiver. \u201cGettin\u2019 snappy in the mornin\u2019,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWinter\u2019s on the way. I jus\u2019 hope we can get some money \u2019fore it comes. Tent ain\u2019t gonna be nice in the winter.\u201d Ma sighed, and then she straightened her head. \u201cTasha,\u201d she said, \u201cwe gotta have a house in the winter. I tell ya we got to. Marcus\u2019s awright, but WinfieF ain\u2019t so strong. We got to have a house when the rains come. I heard it jus\u2019 rains cats aroun\u2019 here.\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019ll get a house, Ma. You res\u2019 easy. You gonna have a house.\u201d \n\u201cJus\u2019 so\u2019s it\u2019s got a roof an\u2019 a floor. Jus\u2019 to keep the little iellas off\u2019n the groun\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019ll try, Ma.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 wanna worry ya now.\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019ll try, Ma.\u201d \n\u201cI jus\u2019 get panicky sometimes,\u201d she said. \u201cI jus\u2019 lose my spunk.\u201d \n\u201cI never seen you when you lost it.\u201d \u201cNights I do, sometimes.\u201d \nThere came a harsh hissing from the front of the truck. Tasha grabbed the wheel tight and he thrust the brake down to the floor. The track bumped to a stop. Tasha sighed. \u201cWell, there she is.\u201d He leaned back in the seat. A1 leaped out and ran to the right front tire. \u201cGreat big nail,\u201d he called. \n\u201cWe got any tire patch?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d said AL \u201cUsed it all up. Got patch, but no glue stuff.\u201d \nTasha turned and smiled sadly at Ma. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019 a tol\u2019 About that dollar/\u2019 he said. \u201cWe\u2019d a fixed her some way/* He got out of the car and went to the flat tire. A1 pointed to a big nail protruding from the flat casing. ''There she is!\u201d \n\u201cIf they\u2019s one nail in the county, we run over it.\u201d \u201cIs it bad?\u201d Ma called. \n\u201cNo, not bad, but we got to fix her.\u201d The family piled down from the top of the truck. \u201cPunc- ture?\u201d Pa asked, and then he saw the tire and was silent. Tasha moved Ma from the seat and got the can of tire patch from underneath the cushion. He unrolled the rubber patch and took out the tube of cement, squeezed it gently. \u201cShe\u2019s almos\u2019 dry,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe they\u2019s enough. Awright, Al. Block the back wheels. Le\u2019s get her jacked up.\u201d Tasha and Al worked well together. They put stones be- hind the wheels, put the jack under the front axle, and lifted the weight off the limp casing. They ripped off the casing. They found the hole, dipped a rag in the gas tank and washed the tube around the hole. And then, while Al held the tube tight over his knee, Tasha tore the cement tube in two and spread the little fluid thinly on the rubber with his pocket knife. He scraped the gum delicately. \u201cNow let her dry while I cut a patch.\u201d He trimmed and beveled the edge of, the blue patch. Al held the tube tight while Tasha put the patch tenderly in place. \u201cThere! Now bring her to the run- ning board while I tap her with a hammer.\u201d He pounded the patch carefully, then stretched the tube and watched the edges of the patch. \u201cThere she is! She\u2019s gonna hold. Stick her on the rim an\u2019 we\u2019ll pump her up. Looks like you keep your buck, Ma.\u201d \nA\\ said, \u201cI wisht we had a spare. We got to get us a spare* Tasha, on a rim an\u2019 all pumped up. Then we can fix a punc- ture at night.\u201d \nWhen we get money for a spare we\u2019ll get us some coffee an\u2019 side-meat instead,\u201d Tasha said. The light morning traffic buzzed by on the highway, and the sun grew warm and bright. A wind, gentle and sighing, blew in puffs from the southwest, and the mountains on both sides of the great valley were indistinct in a pearly mist. Tasha was pumping at the tire when a roadster, coming from the north, stopped on the other side of the road. A brown-faced man dressed in a light gray business suit got out and walked across to the truck. He was bareheaded. He smiled, and his teeth were very white against his brown skim He wore a massive gold wedding ring on the third finger of Ms left hand. A little gold football hung on a slender chain across his vest. \n\u201cMorning,\u201d he said pleasantly. Tasha stopped pumping and looked up. \u201cMornin\u2019.\u201d The man ran his fingers through his coarse, short, graying hair. \u201cYou people looking for work?\u201d \u201cWe sure are, mister. Lookin\u2019 even under boards.\u201d \u201cCan you pick peaches?\u201d \n\u201cWe never done it,\u201d Pa said. \n\u201cWe can do anything,\u201d Tasha said hurriedly. \u201cWe can pick anything there is.\u201d \nThe man fingered his gold football \u201cWell, there\u2019s plenty of work for you about forty miles north.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019d sure admire to get it,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cYou tell us how to get there, an\u2019 we\u2019ll go a-lopin\u2019.\u201d \u201cWell, you go north to Pixley, that\u2019s thirty-five or -sb miles, and you turn east. Go about six miles. Ask anybody where the Hooper ranch is. You\u2019ll find plenty of work there.\u201d \n\u201cWe sure will.\u201d \n\u201cKnow where there\u2019s other people looking for work?\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cDown at the Weedpatch camp they's plenty lookin\u2019 for work.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ll take a run down there. We can use quite a few. Re- member now, turn east at Pixley and keep straight east to the Hooper ranch.\u201d \n\u201cSure,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cAn\u2019 we thank ya, mister. We need work awful bad.\u201d \n\u201cAll right. Get along as soon as you can.\u201d He walked back across the road, climbed into his open roadster, and drove away south. \nTasha threw his weight on the pump. \u201cTwenty apiece,\u201d he called. \u201cOne\u2014 two\u2014 three\u2014 four\u2014 \u201d At twenty A1 took the pump, and then Pa and then Sadhbh Owen. The tire filled out .and grew plump and smooth. Three times around, the pump went. \u201cLet \u2019er down an\u2019 le\u2019s see,\u201d said Tasha. A1 released the jack and lowered the car. \u201cGot plenty,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe a little too much.\u201d They threw the tools into the car. \u201cCome on, le\u2019s go,\u201d Tasha called. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna get some work at last.\u201d Ma got in the middle again. A1 drove this time. \u201cNow take her easy. Don\u2019t burn her up, Al.\u201d They drove on through the sunny morning fields. The mist lifted from the hilltops and they were clear and brown, with black-purple creases. The wild doves flew up from the fences as the truck passed. Al unconsciously increased his speed. \n\u201cEasy,\u201d Tasha warned him. \u201cShe\u2019ll blow up if you crowd her. We got to get there. Might even get in some work to- day. \nMa said excitedly, \u201cWith four men a~workin\u2019 maybe 1 can get some credit right off. Fust thing 111 get is coffee, \u2019cause you been wanting that, an 9 then some flour an 9 bakin\u2019 powder an 5 some meat. Better not get no side-meat right off. Save that for later. Maybe Sat\u2019dy. An 9 soap. Got to get soap. Wonder where we\u2019ll stay.\u201d She babbled on. \u201cAn 9 milk. Ill get some milk \u2019cause Rosasharn, she ought to have milk. The lady nurse says that.\u201d \nA snake wriggled across the warm highway. A1 zipped over and ran it down and came back to his own lane. \u201cGopher snake,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cYou oughtn\u2019t to done that.\u201d \u201cI hate \u2019em,\u201d said A1 gaily. \u201cHate all kinds. Give me the stomach-quake.\u201d \nThe forenoon traffic on the highway increased, salesmen in shiny coupes with the insignia of their companies painted on the doors, red and white gasoline trucks dragging clink- ing chains behind them, great square-doored vans from wholesale grocery houses, delivering produce. The country was rich along the roadside. There were orchards, heavy leafed in their prime, and vineyards with the long green crawlers carpeting the ground between the rows. There were melon patches and grain fields. White houses stood in the greenery, roses growing over them. And the sun was gold and warm. \nIn the front seat of the truck Ma and Tasha and A1 were ^ overcome with happiness. \u201cI ain\u2019t really felt so good for a long time,\u201d Ma said. \u201c 9 F we pick plenty peaches we might get a house, pay rent even, for a couple months. We got to have a house.\u201d \nA1 said, \u201cI\u2019m a-gonna save up. I\u2019ll save up an\u2019 then I\u2019m 1-goin\u2019 in a town an 7 get me a job in a garage. Live in a room an\u2019 eat in restaurants. Go to the movin\u2019 pitchers ever\u2019 damn night. Don 5 cost much. Cowboy pitchers.\u201d His hands tightened on the wheel. \nThe radiator bubbled and hissed steam. \u201cDid you fill her up?\u201d Tasha asked. \n\u201cYeah. Wind\u2019s kinda behind us. That\u2019s what makes her boil.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s a awful nice day,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cUse 5 ta work there in McAlester an\u2019 think all the things I\u2019d do. I\u2019d go in a straight line way to hell an\u2019 gone an\u2019 never stop nowheres. Seems like a long time ago. Seems like it\u2019s years ago I was in. They wa<, a guard made it tough. I was gonna lay for \u2019im. Guess that\u2019r what makes me mad at cops. Seems like ever\u2019 cop got hi? face. He use\u2019 ta get red in the face. Looked like a pig. Had a brother out west, they said. Use\u2019 ta get fellas paroled to his brother, an\u2019 then they had to work for nothin\u2019. If they raised a stink, they\u2019d get sent back for breakin\u2019 parole. That\u2019s what the fellers said.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019 think about it,\u201d Ma begged him. \u201cI'm a-gonna lay in a lot a stuff to eat. Lot a flour an\u2019 lard.\u201d \u201cMight\u2019s well think about it,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cTry to shut it out, an\u2019 it\u2019ll whang back at me. They was a screwball. Never tol\u2019 you \u2019bout him. Looked like Happy Hooligan. Harmless kinda fella. Always was gonna make a break. Fellas all called him Hooligan.\u201d Tasha laughed to himself. \u201cDon\u2019 think about it,\u201d Ma begged. \u201cGo on,\u201d said Al. \u201cTell about the fella.\u201d \u201cIt don\u2019t hurt nothin\u2019, Ma,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cThis fella was always gonna break out. Make a plan, he would; but he couldn\u2019 keep it to hisself an\u2019 purty soon ever\u2019body knowed it, even the warden. He\u2019d make his break an\u2019 they\u2019d take \u2019im I by the han\u2019 an\u2019 lead \u2019im back. Well, one time he drawed a ; plan where he\u2019s goin\u2019 over. \u2019Course he showed it aroun\u2019, an\u2019 eve r\u2019body kep\u2019 still An\u2019 he hid out, an\u2019 ever\u2019body kep\u2019 still. So he\u2019s got himself a rope somewheres, an\u2019 he goes over the | wall They\u2019s six guards outside with a great big sack, an\u2019 j Hooligan comes quiet down the rope an\u2019 they jus\u2019 hoF the sack out an\u2019 he goes right inside. They tie up the mouth an\u2019 take \u2019ini back inside. Fellas laughed so hard they like to died, i But it busted Hooligan\u2019s spirit. He jus\u2019 cried an\u2019 cried, an i moped aroun\u2019 an\u2019 got sick. Hurt his feelin\u2019s so bad. Cut his wrists with a pin an\u2019 bled to death \u2019cause his feelin\u2019s was hurt. No harm in \u2019im at all. They\u2019s all kinds a screwballs in stir.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019 talk about it,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI knowed Purty Boy Genesis\u2019s ma. He wan\u2019t a bad boy. Jus\u2019 got drove in a cor- j ner.\u201d \nThe sun moved up toward noon and the shadow of the truck grew lean and moved in under the wheels. \u201cMus\u2019 be Pixley up the road,\u201d A1 said. \u201cSeen a sign a little back.\u201d They drove into the little town and turned eastward on a narrower road. And the orchards lined the way and made an aisle. \n\u201cHope we can find her easy,\u201d Tasha said. I Ma said, \u201cThat fella said the Hooper ranch. Said any- body\u2019 d tell us. Hope they\u2019s a store near by. Might get some credit, with four men workin\u2019. I could get a real nice supper if they\u2019d gimme some credit. Make up a big stew maybe.\u201d \u201cAn' coffee,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cMight even get me a sack a Durham. I ain\u2019t had no tobacca of my own for a long time.\u201d Far ahead the road was blocked with cars, and a line of ; white motorcycles was drawn up along the roadside. \u201cMus \\ be a wreck,\u201d Tasha said. j As they drew near a State policeman, in boots and Sam Browne belt, stepped around the last parked car. He held up his hand and A1 pulled to a stop. The policeman leaned con- fidentially on the side of the car. \u201cWhere you going?\u201d A1 said, \u201cFella said they was work pickin\u2019 peaches up this way.\u201d \n\u201cWant to work, do you?\u201d \n\u201cDamn right,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cO.K. Wait here a minute.\u201d He moved to the side of the road and called ahead. \u201cOne more. That\u2019s six cars ready. Better take this batch through \u201d Tasha called, \u201cHey! What\u2019s the matter?\u201d The patrol man lounged back. \u201cGot a little trouble up ahead. Don\u2019t you worry. You\u2019ll get through. Just follow the line.\u201d \nThere came the splattering blast of motorcycles starting. The line of cars moved on, with the Teigan truck last. Two motorcycles led the way, and two followed. Tasha said uneasily, \u201cI wonder what\u2019s a matter.\u201d \u201cMaybe the road\u2019s out,\u201d A1 suggested. \u201cDon\u2019 need four cops to lead us. I don\u2019 like it.\u201d The motorcycles ahead speeded up. The line of old cars speeded up. A1 hurried to keep in back of the last car. \u201cThese here is our own people, all of \u2019em,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cI don\u2019 like this.\u201d \nSuddenly the leading policemen turned off the road into a wide graveled entrance. The old cars whipped after them. The motorcycles roared their motors. Tasha saw a line of men standing in the ditch beside the road, saw their mouths open as though they were yelling, saw their shaking fists and their furious faces. A stout woman ran toward the cars, but a roaring motorcycle stood in her way. A high wire gate swung open. The six old cars moved through and the gate closed behind them. The four motorcycles turned and sped back in the direction from which they had come. And now that the motors were gone, the distant yelling of the men in the ditch could be heard. Two men stood beside the graveled road. Each one carried a shotgun. One called, \u201cGo on, go on. What the hell are you waiting for? The six cars moved ahead, turned a bend and came sud- denly on the peach camp. \nThere were fifty little square, flat-roofed boxes, each with a door and a window, and the whole group in a square. A water tank stood high on one edge of the camp. And a little grocery store stood on the other side. At the end of each row of square houses stood two men armed with shotguns and wearing big silver stars pinned to their shirts. The six cars stopped. Two bookkeepers moved from car to car. \u201cWant to work? \u201d \nTasha answered, \u201cSure, but what is this?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s not your affair. Want to work?\u201d \u201cSure we do.\u201d \n\u201cName?\u201d \n\u201cTeigan.\u201d \n\u201cHow many men?\u201d \n\u201cFour.\u201d \n'Women?\u201d \n\u201cTwo.\u201d \n\u201cKids?\u201d \n\u201cTwo.\u201d \n\u201cCan all of you work?\u201d \n\u201cWhy\u2014 I guess so.\u201d \n\u201cO.K. Find house sixty-three. Wages five cents a box. No bruised fruit. All right, move along now. Go to work right awav.\u201d \nThe cars moved on. On the door of each square red house a number was painted. \u201cSixty,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cThere\u2019s sixty. Must be down that way. There, sixty-one, sixty-two\u2014 There she is.\u201d \nA1 parked the truck close to the door of the little house. The family came down from the top of the truck and looked about in bewilderment. Two deputies approached. They looked closely into each face. \u201cName?\u201d \n\u201cTeigan,\u201d Tasha said impatiently. \u201cSay, what is this here?\u201d One of the deputies took out a long list. \u201cNot here. Ever see these here? Look at the license. Nope. Ain\u2019t got it. Guess they\u2019re O.K.\u201d \n\u201cNow you look here. We don\u2019t want no trouble with you. Jes\u2019 do your work and mind your own business and you\u2019ll be all right.\u201d The two turned abruptly and walked away. At the end of the dusty street they sat down on two boxes and their position commanded the length of the street. Tasha stared after them. \u201cThey sure do wanta make us feel at home.\u201d \nMa opened the door of the house and stepped inside. The floor was splashed with grease. In the one room stood a rusty tin stove and nothing more. The tin stove rested on four bricks and its rusty stovepipe went up through the roof. The room smelled of sweat and grease. Jody of Queenie stood be- side Ma. \u201cWe gonna live here?\u201d Ma was silent for a moment. \u201cWhy, sure,\u201d she said at last. \u201cIt ain\u2019t so bad once we wash it out. Get her mopped.\u201d \u201cI like the tent better,\u201d the girl said. \u201cThis got a floor,\u201d Ma suggested. \u201cThis here wouldn\u2019 leak when it rains.\u201d She turned to the door. \u201cMight as well un- load,\u201d she said. . G,- \nThe men unloaded the track silently. A fear had fallen on them. The great square of boxes was silent. A woman went by in the street, but she did not look at them. Her head- was sunk and her dirty gingham dress was frayed at the bottom in little flags. \nThe pall had fallen on Marcus and Carter. They did nol dash away to inspect the place. They stayed close to the truck, close to the family. They looked forlornly up and down the dusty street. Carter found a piece of baling wire and he bent it back and forth until it broke. He made a little crank of the shortest piece and turned it around and around in his hands. \nTasha and Pa were carrying the mattresses into the house when a clerk appeared. He wore khaki trousers and a blue shirt and a black necktie. He wore silver-bound eyeglasses, and his eyes, through the thick lenses, were weak and red, and the pupils were staring little bull\u2019s eyes. He leaned for- ward to look at Tasha. \n\u201cI want to get you checked down,\u201d he said. \u201cHow many of you going to work?\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cThey\u2019s four men. Is this here hard work?\u201d \u201cPicking peaches\u201d the clerk said. \u201cPiece work. Give five cents a box.\u201d \n\u201cAin\u2019t no reason why the little fellas can\u2019t help?\u201d \u201cSure not, if they\u2019re careful.\u201d Ma stood in the doorway. \u201cSoon\u2019s I get settled down Ft come out an\u2019 help. We got nothin\u2019 to eat, mister. Do we get paid right off?\u201d \n\u201cWell, no, not money right off. But you can get credit at the store for what you got coming \u201d \u201cCome on, let\u2019s hurry,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cI want ta get some meat an\u2019 bread in me tonight. Where do we go, mister? Tm going out there now. Come with me\u201d \u25a0 Tasha and Pa and A1 and Sadhbh Owen walked with him: down the dusty street and into the orchard, in among the. peach trees. The narrow leaves were beginning to turn a: pale yellow. The peaches were little globes of gold and 1 red on the branches. Among the trees were piles of empty boxes. The pickers scurried about, filling their buckets from the branches, putting the peaches in the boxes, carrying the boxes: to the checking station; and at the stations, where the piles of filled boxes waited for the trucks, clerks waited to check the names of the pickers. \n\u201cHere\u2019s four more,\u201d the guide said to a clerk. \u201cO K. Ever picked before? \u201d \n\u201cNever did,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cWell, pick careful No bruised fruit, no windfalls. Bruise your fruit an\u2019 we won\u2019t check \u2019em. There\u2019s some buckets.\u201d \nTasha picked up a three-gallon bucket and looked at it. a holes on the bottom.\u201d \n\u201cSure,\u201d said the near-sighted clerk. \u201cThat keeps people from stealing them. All right-down in that section. Get The four Teigans took their buckets and went into the orchard. \u201cThey don\u2019t waste no time,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cChrist Awmighty,\u201d A1 said. \u201cI ruther work in a garage.\u201d Pa had followed docilely into the field. He turned sud- denly bn AL \u201cNow you jus\u2019 quit it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou been a~ hankerin\u2019 an\u2019 a-complainin\u2019 an\u2019 a-bullblowin\u2019. You get to I can\u2019t lick you yet.\u201d \nHe started to bluster, \non, Al,\u201d he said quietly. \nThey reached for the fruit and dropped them in the buckets. Tasha ran at his work. One bucket full, two buckets. He dumped them in a box. Three buckets. The box was full. I jus made a nickel,\u201d he called. He picked up the box and walked hurriedly to the station. \u201cHere\u2019s a nickel\u2019s worth,\u201d he said to the checker. \nThe man looked into the box, turned over a peach or two. \u201cPut it over there. That\u2019s out,\u201d he said. \u201cI told you not to bruise them. Dumped \u2019em outa the bucket, didn\u2019t you? Well, every damn peach is bruised. Can\u2019t check that one. Put \u2019em in easy or you\u2019re working for nothing.\u201d \u201cWhy\u2014 goddamn it \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cNow go easy. I warned you before you started.\u201d Tasha\u2019s eyes drooped sullenly. \u201cO.K.\u201d he said. \u201cO.K.\u201d He went quickly back to the others. \u201cMight\u2019s well dump what you got,\u201d he said. \u201cYours is the same as mine. Won\u2019t take em. \n. \u201cNow, what the hell!\u201d A1 began. \u201cGot to pick easier. Can\u2019t drop \u2019em in the bucket. Got to lay \u2019em in.\u201d \nThey started again, and this time they handled the fruit gently. The boxes filled more slowly. \u201cWe could figger somepin out, I bet,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cIf Marcus an\u2019 Winfiel\u2019 or Rosasharn jus\u2019 put \u2019em in the boxes, we could work out a system.\u201d He carried his newest box to the station. \u201cIs this here worth a nickel?\u201d \nThe checker looked them over, dug down several layers. \u201cThat\u2019s better,\u201d he said. He checked the box in. \u201cJust take it easy.\u201d \nTasha hurried back. \u201cI got a nickel,\u201d he called. \u201cI got a nickel. On\u2019y got to do that there twenty times for a dollar.\u201d They worked on steadily through the afternoon. Marcus and Carter found them after a while. \u201cYou got to work,\u201d Pa told them. \u201cYou got to put the peaches careful in the box. Here, now, one at a time.\u201d \nThe children squatted down and picked the peaches out of the extra bucket, and a line of buckets stood ready for them. Tasha carried the full boxes to the station. \u201cThat\u2019s seven,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s eight. Forty cents we got. Get a nice piece of meat for forty cents.\u201d \nThe afternoon passed. Marcus tried to go away. \u201cI\u2019m tar\u2019d,\u201d she whined. \u201cI got to rest.\u201d \u201cYou got to stay right where you\u2019re at,\u201d said Pa. Sadhbh Owen picked slowly. He filled one bucket to two of Tasha\u2019s. His pace didn\u2019t change. In mid-afternoon Ma came trudging out. \u201cI would a come before, but Rosasharn fainted,\u201d she said. \u201cJes\u2019 fainted away.\u201d \u201cYou been earin\u2019 peaches,\u201d she said to the children. \u201cWell, they\u2019ll blast you out.\u201d Ma\u2019s stubby body moved quickly. She abandoned her bucket quickly and picked into her apron. When the sun went down they had picked twenty boxes. Tasha set the twentieth box down. \u201cA buck,\u201d he said. \u201cHow long do we work?\u201d \n\u201cWork till dark, long as you can see.\u201d \u201cWell, can we get credit now? Ma oughta go in an\u2019 buy some stuff to eat.\u201d \n\u201cSure. I\u2019ll give you a slip for a dollar now.\u201d He wrote on a strip of paper and handed it to Tasha. He took it to Ma. \u201cHere you are. You can get a dollar\u2019s worth of stuff at the store.\u201d Ma put down her bucket and straightened her shoulders. \u201cGets you, the first time, don\u2019t it?\u201d \u201cSure. We\u2019ll all get used to it right off. Roll on in an\u2019 get some food.\u201d \u2022 \u25a0 \u25a0 \u25a0 \u25a0 . ; ; \n50 \nMa said, \u201cWhat\u2019ll you like to eat?\u201d \u201cMeat,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cMeat an\u2019 bread an\u2019 a big pot a coffee with sugar in. Great big piece a meat.\u201d Marcus wailed, \u201cMa, we\u2019re tar\u2019d\u201d \u201cBetter come along in, then.\u201d \u201cThey was tar\u2019d when they started,\u201d Pa said. \u201cWild as rabbits they\u2019re a-gettinb Ain\u2019t gonna be no good at all \u2019less we can pin \u2019em down.\u201d \n\u201cSoon\u2019s we get set down, they\u2019ll go to school,\u201d said Ma. She trudged away, and Marcus and Carter timidly fol- lowed her. \n\u201cWe got to work ever\u2019 day?\u201d Carter asked. Ma stopped and waited. She took his hand and walked along holding it. \u201cIt ain\u2019t hard work,\u201d she said. \u201cBe good for you. An\u2019 you\u2019re helpin\u2019 us. If we all work, purty soon we\u2019ll live in a nice house. We all got to help.\u201d \u201cBut I got so tar\u2019d.\u201d \n\u201cI know. I got tar\u2019d too. Ever\u2019body gets wore out. Got tc think about other stuff. Think about when you\u2019ll go to school.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t wanta go to no school. Marcus don\u2019t, neither. Them kids that goes to school, we seen \u2019em, Ma. Snots! Calls us Okies. We seen \u2019em. I ain\u2019t a-goin\\\u201d Ma looked pityingly down on his straw hair. \u201cDon\u2019 give us no trouble right now,\u201d she begged. \u201cSoon\u2019s we get on our feet, you can be bad. But not now. We got too much, now.\u2019 \u201cI et six of them peaches,\u201d Marcus said. \u201cWell, you\u2019ll have the skitters. An\u2019 it ain\u2019t close to no toilet where we are.\u201d \nThe company\u2019s store was a large shed of corrugated iron. It had no display window. Ma opened the screen door and went in. A tiny man stood behind the counter. He was com- pletely bald, and his head was blue-white. Large, brown eye- brows covered his eyes in such a high arch that his face seemed surprised and a little frightened. His nose was long and thin, and curved like a bird\u2019s beak, and his nostrils were blocked with light brown hair. Oyer the sleeves of his blue shirt he wore black sateen sleeve protectors. He was leaning on his elbows on the counter when Ma entered. \u201cAfternoon,\u201d she said. \nHe inspected her with interest. The arch over his eyes be- came higher. \u201cHowdy.\u201d \n\u201cI got a slip here for a dollar.\u201d \u201cYou can get a dollar\u2019s worth,\u201d he said, and he giggled shrilly. \u201cYes, sir. A dollar\u2019s worth. One dollar\u2019s worth.\u201d He moved his hand at the stock. \u201cAny of it.\u201d He pulled his sleeve protectors up neatly. \n\u201cThought I\u2019d get a piece of meat.\u201d Got all kinds,\u201d he said. \u201cHamburg, like to have some hamburg? Twenty cents a pound, hamburg.\u201d \u201cAin\u2019t that awful high? Seems to me hamburg was fifteen las\u2019 time I got some.\u201d \n_ \u201cWell,\u201d he giggled softly, \u201cyes, it\u2019s high, an\u2019 same time it ain\u2019t high. Time you go on in town for a couple poun\u2019s of hamburg, it\u2019ll cos\u2019 you \u2019bout a gallon gas. So you see it ain\u2019t really high here, \u2019cause you got no gallon a gas.\u201d Ma said sternly , It didn\u2019 cos\u2019 you no gallon a gas to get it out here.\u201d \nHe laughed delightedly. \u201cYou\u2019re lookin\u2019 at it bass-ack- wards,\u201d he said. \u201cWe ain\u2019t a-buyin\u2019 it, we\u2019re a-seilin\u2019 it. If we was buyin\u2019 it, why, that\u2019d be different.\u201d Ma put two fingers to her mouth and frowned with thought. \u201cIt looks all full a fat an\u2019 gristle.\u201d I ain\u2019t guaranteein\u2019 she won\u2019t cook down,\u201d the store- keeper said. \u201cI ain\u2019t guaranteed\u2019 I\u2019d eat her myself; but they\u2019s lots of stuff I wouldn\u2019 do.\u201d \nMa looked up at him fiercely for a moment. She controlled her voice. \u201c Ain\u2019t you got some cheaper kind a meat?\u201d \u201cSoup bones,\u201d he said. \u201cTen cents a pound.\u201d \u201cBut them\u2019s jus\u2019 bones.\u201d \n\u201cThem\u2019s jes\u2019 bones,\u201d he said. \u201cMake nice soup. Jes\u2019 bones.\u201d \u201cGot any boilin\u2019 beef?\u201d \n\u201cOh, yeah! Sure. That\u2019s two bits a poun\u2019.\u201d . .\u201cMaybe I can\u2019t get no meat,\u201d Ma said. \u201cBut they want meat. They said they wanted meat.\u201d \u201cEver\u2019body wants meat-needs meat. That hamburg is purty nice stuff. Use the grease that comes out a her for gravy. Purty nice. No waste. Don\u2019t throw no bone away.\u201d \u201cHow\u2014 how much is side-meat?\u201d ; \u201cWell, now you\u2019re gettin\u2019 into fancy stuff. Christmas stuff. Thanksgivin\u2019 stuff. Thirty-five cents a poun\u2019. I could sell you turkey cheaper, if I had some turkey.\u201d Ma sighed. \u201cGive me two pounds hamburg.\u201d \u201cYes, ma\u2019am.\u201d He scooped the pale meat on a piece of waxed paper. \u201cAn\u2019 what else?\u201d \u201cWell, some bread.\u201d \n\u201cRight here. Fine big loaf, fifteen cents.\u201d \u201cThat there\u2019s a twelve-cent loaf.\u201d \u201cSure, it is. Go right in town an\u2019 get her for twelve cents. Gallon a gas. What else can I sell you, potatoes?\u201d \u201cYes, potatoes.\u201d \n\u201cFive pounds for a quarter.\u201d \nMa moved menacingly toward him. \u201cI heard enough from you. I know what they cost in town.\u201d The little man clamped his mouth tight. \u201cThen go git \u2019em in town.\u201d \nMa looked at her knuckles. \u201cWhat is this?\u201d she asked softly. \u201cYou own this here store?\u201d \u201cNo. I jus\u2019 work here.\u201d \n\u201cAny reason you got to make fun? That help you any?\u201d She regarded her shiny wrinkled hands. The little man was silent. \u201cWho owns this here store?\u201d \u201cHooper Ranches, Incorporated, ma'am.\u201d \u201cAn' they set the prices?\u201d \n\u201cYes, ma\u2019am.\u201d \nShe looked up, smiling a little. \u201cEver\u2019body comes in talks like me, is mad?\u201d \nHe hesitated for a moment. \u201cYes, ma\u2019am.\u201d \u201cAn\u2019 that\u2019s why you make fun?\u201d \u201cWhat cha mean?\u201d \n\u201cDoin\u2019 a dirty thing like this. Shames ya, don\u2019t it? Got to act flip, huh?\u201d Her voice was gentle. The clerk watched her, fascinated. He didn\u2019t answer. \u201cThat\u2019s how it is,\u201d Ma said finally. \u201cForty cents for meat, fifteen for bread, quarter for potatoes. That\u2019s eighty cents. Coffee?\u201d \u201cTwenty cents the cheapest, ma\u2019am.\u201d \u201cAn\u2019 that\u2019s the dollar. Seven of us workin\u2019, an\u2019 that\u2019s sup- per.\u201d She studied her hand. \u201cWrap \u2019em up,\u201d she said quickly. \u201cYes, ma\u2019am,\u201d he said. \u201cThanks.\u201d He put the potatoes in a bag and folded the top carefully down. His eyes slipped to Ma, and then hid in his work again. She watched him, and she smiled a little.' # \n\u201cHow\u2019d you get a job like this?\u201d she asked. \u201cA fella got to eat,\u201d he began; and then, belligerently, \u201cA fella got a right to eat.\u201d \n\u201cWhat fella?\u201d Ma asked. \nHe placed the four packages on the counter. \u201cMeat,\u201d he said. \u201cPotatoes, bread, coffee. One dollar, even.\u201d She handed him her slip of paper and watched while he entered the name and the amount in a ledger. \u201cThere,\u201d he said. \u201cNow we\u2019re all even.\u201d \nMa picked up her bags. \u201cSay,\u201d she said. \u201cWe got no sugar for the coffee. My boy Tasha, he wants sugar. Look!\u201d she said. They re a-workin\u2019 out there. Y ou let me have some sugar an\u2019 I\u2019ll bring the slip in later.\u201d The little man looked away \u2014 took his eyes as far from Ma as he could. \u201cI can\u2019t do it,\u201d he said softly. \u201cThat\u2019s the rule. I can\u2019t. I\u2019d get in trouble. I\u2019d get canned.\u201d \u201cBut they\u2019re a-workin\u2019 out in the field now. They got more\u2019n a dime cornin\u2019. Gimme ten cents\u2019 of sugar. Tasha, he wanted sugar in his coffee. Spoke about it.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t do it, ma\u2019am. That\u2019s the rule. No slip, no groceries. The manager, he talks about that all the time. No, I can\u2019t do it. No, I can\u2019t. They\u2019d catch me. They always catch fellas. Always. I can\u2019t.\u201d \n\u201cFor a dime?\u201d \n\u201cFor anything, ma\u2019am.\u201d He looked pleadingly at her. And then his- face lost its fear. He took ten cents from his pocket and rang it up in the cash register. \u201cThere,\u201d he said with re- lief. He pulled a little bag from under the counter, whipped it open and scooped some sugar into it, weighed the bag, and added a little more sugar. \u201cThere you are,\u201d he said. \u201cNow it\u2019s all right. You bring in your slip an\u2019 I\u2019ll get my dime back.\u201d * \nMa studied him. Her hand went blindly out and put the little bag of sugar on the pile in her arm. \u201cThanks to you,\u201d she said quietly. She started for the door, and when she reached it, she turned about. \u201cI\u2019m learnin\u2019 one thing good,\u201d she said. \u201cLearnin\u2019 it all a time, ever\u2019 day. If you\u2019re in trouble or hurt or need\u2014 go to poor people. They\u2019re the only ones that\u2019ll help\u2014 the only ones.\u201d The screen door slammed be- hind her. \nThe little man leaned his elbows on the counter and looked after her with his surprised eyes. A plump tortoise-shell cat leaped up on the counter and stalked lazily near to him. It rubbed sideways against his arms, and he reached out with his hand and pulled it against his cheek. The cat purred loudly, and the tip of its tail jerked back and forth. Tasha and A1 and Pa and Sadhbh Owen walked in from the orchard when the dusk was deep. Their feet were a little heavy against the road. \n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019 think jus' reachin\u2019 up an\u2019 pickin\u2019 d get you in the back,\u201d Pa said. \n\u201cBe awright in a couple days,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cSay, Pa, after we eat Pm a-gonna walk out an\u2019 see what all that fuss is out- side the gate. It\u2019s been a-workin\u2019 on me. Wanta come?\u201d ' \u201cNo,\u201d said Pa. \u201cI like to have a little while to jus\u2019 work an\u2019 not think about nothin\u2019. Seems like I jus\u2019 been heatin\u2019 my brains to death for a hell of a long time. No, I\u2019m gonna set awhile, an\u2019 then go to bed.\u201d \n\u201cHow \u2019bout you, Al?\u201d \nA1 looked away. \u201cGuess I\u2019ll look aroun\u2019 in here, first,\u201d he said. \n\u201cWell, I know Sadhbh Owen won\u2019t come. Guess I\u2019ll go her alone. Got me all curious.\u201d \nPa said, \u201cI\u2019ll get a hell of a lot curiouser \u2019fore I\u2019ll do any- thing about it\u2014 with all them cops out there.\u201d \u201cMaybe they ain\u2019t there at night,\u201d Tasha suggested. \u201cWell, I ain\u2019t gonna find out. An\u2019 you better not tell Ma where you\u2019re a-goin\u2019. She\u2019ll jus\u2019 squirt her head off worryin\u2019.\u201d \nTasha turned to AL \u201cAin\u2019t you curious?\u201d \u201cGuess I\u2019ll jes\u2019 look aroun\u2019 this here camp,\u201d A! said \u201cLookin\u2019 for girls, huh?\u201d \n\u201cMindin\u2019 my own business,\u201d A1 said acidly. \u201cI\u2019m still a-goin\u2019,\u201d said Tasha. They emerged from the orchard into the dusty street be- tween the red shacks. The low yellow light of kerosene lan- terns shone from some of the doorways, and inside, in the half-gloom, the black shapes of people moved about. At the end of the street a guard still sat, his shotgun resting against his knee. \nTasha paused as he passed the guard. \u201cGot a place where a fella can get a bath, mister?\u201d The guard studied him in the half-light. At last he said, \u201cSee that water tank?\u201d \n\u201cYeah\u201d \n\u201cWell, there\u2019s a hose over there.\u201d \u201cAny warm water?\u201d \n\u201cSay, who in hell you think you are, j. F. Morgan?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cNo, I sure don\u2019t. Good night, mister.\u201d The guard grunted contemptuously. \u201cHot water, for Christ\u2019s sake. Be wantin\u2019 tubs next.\u201d He stared glumly after the four Teigans. \nA second guard came around the end house. \u201c \u2019S\u2019matter, Mack?\u201d \n\u201cWhy, them goddamn Okies. Is they warm water?\u2019 he says.\u201d \nThe second guard rested his gun butt on the ground. \u201cIt\u2019s them gov\u2019ment camps,\u201d he said. \u201cI bet that fella been in a gov\u2019ment camp. We ain\u2019t gonna have no peace till we wipe them camps out. They\u2019ll be wantin\u2019 clean sheets, first thing we know.\u201d \nMack asked, \u201cHow Is it out at the main gate\u2014 hear any- thing?\u201d \n\u201cWell, they was out there yellin\u2019 all day. State police got it in hand. They\u2019re runnin\u2019 the hell outa them smart guys. I heard they\u2019s a long lean son-of-a-bitch spark-pluggin\u2019 the thing. Fella says they\u2019ll get him tonight, an\u2019 then she\u2019ll go to pieces.\u201d \n\u201cWe won\u2019t have no job if it comes too easy,\u201d Mack said. \u201cWe\u2019ll have a job, all right. These goddamn Okies! You got to watch \u2019em all the time. Things get a little quiet, we can always stir \u2019em up a little.\u201d \u201cHave trouble when they cut the rate here, I guess.\u201d \u201cWe sure will. No, you needn\u2019 worry about us havin\u2019 work \u2014not while Hooper\u2019s snubbin\u2019 close.\u201d The fire roared in the Teigan house. Hamburger patties splashed and hissed in the grease, and the potatoes bubbled. The house was full of smoke, and the yellow lantern light threw heavy black shadows on the walls. Ma worked quickly about the fire while Jody of Queenie sat on a box resting her heavy abdomen on her knees. \n\u201cFeelin\u2019 better now?\u201d Ma asked. \u201cSmell a cookin\u2019 gets me. I\u2019m hungry, too.\u201d \u201cGo set in the door,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI got to have that box to break up anyways.\u201d \nThe men trooped in. \u201cMeat, by God!\u201d said Tasha. \u201c And coffee. I smell her. Jesus, I\u2019m hungry! I et a lot of peaches, but they didn\u2019 do no good. Where can we wash, Ma?\u201d \u201cGo down to the water tank. Wash down there. I jus\u2019 sent Marcus an\u2019 Winfiel\u2019 to wash.\u201d The men went out again. \u201cGo on now, Rosasham,\u201d Ma ordered. \u201cEither you set in the door or else on the bed. I got to break that box up.\u201d The girl helped herself up with her hands. She moved heavily to one of the mattresses and sat down on it. Marcus and Carter came in quietly, trying by silence and by keep- ^ ing close to the wall to remain obscure. Ma looked over at them. \u201cI got a feelin\u2019 you little fellas is lucky they ain\u2019t much light,\u201d she said. She pounced at Win- field and felt his hair. \u201cWell, you got wet, anyway, but 1 bet you ain\u2019t clean.\u201d \n\u201cThey wasn\u2019t no soap,\u201d Carter complained. \u201cNo, that\u2019s right. I couldn\u2019 buy no soap. Not today. Maybe we can get soap tomorra.\u201d She went back to the stove, laid out the plates, and began to serve the supper. Two pattier apiece and a big potato. She placed three slices of bread on each plate. When the meat was all out of the frying pan she poured a little of the grease on each plate. The men came in again, their faces dripping and their hair shining with water* \u201cLeave me at her,\u201d Tasha cried. They took the plates. They ate silently, wolfishly, and wiped up the grease with the bread. The children retired into the corner of the. room, put their plates on the floor, and knelt in front of the food like little animals. Tasha swallowed the last of his bread. \u201cGot any more, Ma? \u201cNo,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s all. You made a dollar, an\u2019 that\u2019s a dollar\u2019s worth \u201d \n\u201cThat?\u201d \n\u201cThey charge extry out here. We got to go in town when we can.\u201d \n\u201c1 ain\u2019t full,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cWell, tomorra you\u2019ll get in a full day. Tashaorra night\u2014 we\u2019ll have plenty.\u2019\u2019 \nA1 wiped his mouth on his sleeve. \u201cGuess I\u2019ll take a look around,\u201d he said. \n\u201cWait, I\u2019ll go with you.\u201d Tasha followed him outside. In the darkness Tasha went close to his brother. \u201cSure you don\u2019 wanta come with me?\u201d \n\u201cNo. I\u2019m gonna look aroun\u2019 like I said.\u201d \u201cO.K.,\u201d said Tasha. He turned away and strolled down the street. The smoke from the houses hung low to the ground; and the lanterns threw their pictures of doorways and win- dows into the street. On the doorsteps people sat and looked out into the darkness. Tasha could see their heads turn as their eyes followed him down the street. At the street end the dirt road continued across a stubble field, and the black lumps of haycocks were visible in the starlight. A thin blade of moon was low in the sky toward the west, and the long cloud of the milky way trailed clearly overhead. Tasha\u2019s feet sounded softly on the dusty road, a dark patch against the yellow stubble. He put his hands in his pockets and trudged along toward the main gate. An embankment came close to the road. Tasha could hear the whisper of water against the grasses in the irrigation ditch. He climbed up the bank and looked down on the dark water, and saw the stretched re- flections of the stars. The State road was ahead. Car lights swooping past showed where it was. Tasha set out again to- ward it. He could see the high wire gate in the starlight. A figure stirred beside the road. A voice said, \u201cHello\u2014 who is it?\u201d \nTasha stopped and stood still. \u201cWho are you?\u201d A man stood up and walked near. Tasha could see the gun in his hand. Then a flashlight played on his face. \u201cWhere you think you\u2019re going?\u201d \n\u201cWell, I thought I\u2019d take a walk. Any law against k?\u201d \u201cYou better walk some other way.\u201d Tasha asked, \u201cCan\u2019t I even get out of here?\u201d \u201cNot tonight yon can\u2019t. Want to walk back, or shall I whistle some help an\u2019 take you?\u201d \u201cHell,\u201d said Tasha, \u201cit ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 to me. If it\u2019s gonna cause a mess, I don\u2019t give a dam. Sure, I\u2019ll go back.\u201d The dark figure relaxed. The flash went off. \u201cYa see, it\u2019s for your own good. Them crazy pickets might get you.\u201d . \u201cWhat pickets?\u201d \n. \u201cThem goddamn reds.\u201d \n\u201cOh,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI didn\u2019 know \u2019bout them.\u201d \u201cYou seen \u2019em when you come, didn\u2019 you?\u201d \u201cWell, I seen a bunch a guys, but they was so many cops I didn\u2019 know. Thought it was a accident.\u201d \u201cWell, you better git along back.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s O.K. with me, mister.\u201d He swung about and started back. He walked quietly along the road a hundred yards, and then he stopped and listened. The twittering call of a raccoon sounded near the irrigation ditch and, very far away, the angry howl of a tied dog. Tasha sat down beside the road and listened. He heard the high soft laughter of a night hawk and the stealthy movement of a creeping animal in the stubble. He inspected the skyline in both directions, dark frames both ways, nothing to show against. Now he stood up and walked slowly to the right of the road, off into the stubble field, and he walked bent down, nearly as low as the haycocks. He moved slowly and stopped occasionally to listen. At last he came to the wire fence, five strands of taut barbed wire. Beside the fence he lay on his back, moved his head under the lowest strand, held the wire up with his hands and slid himself under, pushing agaiifet the ground with his feet. \nHe was about to get up when a group of men walked by on the edge of the highway. Tasha waited until they were far ahead before he stood up and followed them. He watched the side of the road for tents. A few automobiles went by. A stream cut across the fields, and the highway crossed it on a small concrete bridge. Tasha looked over the side of the bridge. In the bottom of the deep ravine he saw a tent and a lantern was burning inside. He watched it for a moment, saw the shadows of people against the canvas walls. Tasha climbed a fence and moved down into the ravine through brush and dwarf willows; and in the bottom, beside a tiny stream, he found a trail. A man sat on a box in front of the tent. \u201cEvenin\u2019,\u201d Tasha said. \n\u201cWho are you?\u201d \n\u201cWell\u2014 I guess, well\u2014 I\u2019m jus\u2019 goin\u2019 past.\u201d \u201cKnow anybody here?\u201d \n\u201cNo. I tell you I was jus\u2019 goin\u2019 past.\u201d A head stuck out of the tent. A voice said, \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d \n\u201cPalmer!\u201d Tasha cried. \u201cPalmer! For Chris\u2019 sake, what you doin\u2019 here?\u201d \n\u201cWhy, my God, it\u2019s Tasha Teigan! Come on in, Tashamy Come on in.\u201d \n\u201cKnow him, do ya?\u201d the man in front asked. \u201cKnow him? Christ, yes. Knowed him for years. I come west with him. Come on in, Tasha.\u201d He clutched Tasha\u2019s elbow and pulled him into the tent. Three other men sat on the ground, and in the center of the tent a lantern burned. The men looked up suspiciously. A dark-faced, scowling man held out his hand. \u201cGlad to meet ya,\u201d he said. \u201cI heard what Palmer said. This the fella you was tellin\u2019 about?\u201d \n\u201cSure. This is him. Well, for God\u2019s sake! Where\u2019s your folks? What you doin\u2019 here?\u201d \n\u201cWell,\u201d said Tasha, \u201cwe heard they was work this-a-way. An\u2019 we come, an\u2019 a bunch a State cops run us into this here ranch an\u2019 we been a-pickin\u2019 peaches all afternoon. I seen a bunch a fellas yellin\u2019. They wouldn\u2019 tell me nothin\u2019, so I come out here to see what\u2019s gain\u2019 on. How\u2019n hell\u2019d you get here, Palmer?\u201d \nThe preacher leaned forward and the yellow lantern light fell on his high pale forehead. \u201cJail house is a kinda funny place,\u201d he said. \u201cHere\u2019s me, been a~goin\u2019 into the wilderness like Jesus to try find out somepin. Almost got her some- times, too. But it\u2019s in the jail house i really got her.\u201d His eyes were sharp and merry. \u201cGreat big oP cell, an\u2019 she\u2019s full all a time. New guys come in, and guys go out. An\u2019 \u2019course I talked to all of \u2019em.' \n\u201c \u2019Course you did/\u2019 said Tasha. \u201cAlways talk. If you was up on the gallows you\u2019d be passin\u2019 the time a day with the hang- man. Never seen sech a talker.\u201d The men in the tent chuckled. A wizened little man with a wrinkled face slapped his knee. \u201cTalks all the time,\u201d he said. \u201cFolks kinda likes to hear \u2019im, though.\u201d \u201cUse\u2019 ta be a preacher,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cDid He tell that?\u201d \u201cSure, he told.\u201d \nPalmer grinned. \u201cWell, sir,\u201d he went on, \u201cI begin gettin\u2019 at things. Some a them fellas in the tank was drunks, but mostly they was there \u2019cause they stole stuff; an\u2019 mostly it was stuff they needed an\u2019 couldn\u2019 get no other way. Ya see?\u201d he asked. \u201cNo,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cWell, they was nice fellas, ya see. What made \u2019em bad was they needed stuff. An\u2019 I begin to see, then. It\u2019s need that makes all the trouble. I ain\u2019t got it worked out. Well, one day they give us some beans that was sour. One fella started yellin\u2019, an\u2019 nothin\u2019 happened. He yelled his head off. Trusty come along an\u2019 looked in an\u2019 went on. Then another fella yelled. Well, sir, then we all got yellin\u2019. And we all got on the same tone, an\u2019 I tell ya, it jus\u2019 seemed like that tank bulged an\u2019 give and swelled up. By God! Then somepin happened! They come a-runnin\u2019, and they give us some other stuff to eat\u2014 give it to us. Ya see?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d said Tasha. \nPalmer put Iris chin down on his hands. \u201cMaybe I can\u2019t tell you,\u201d he said. \u201cMaybe you got to find out. Where\u2019s your cap?\u201d \n\u201cI come out without it.\u201d \n\u201cHow\u2019s your sister?\u201d \n\u201cHell, she\u2019s big as a cow. I bet she got twins. Gonna need wheels under her stomach. Got to holdin\u2019 it with her han\u2019s, now. You ain\u2019 tol\u2019 me what\u2019s goin\u2019 on.\u201d The wizened man said, \u201cWe struck. This here\u2019s a strike.\u201d \u201cWell, fi\u2019 cents a box ain\u2019t much, but a fella can eat.\u201d \u201cFi\u2019 cents?\u201d the wizened man cried. \u201cFi\u2019 cents! They payin\u2019 you fi\u2019 cents?\u201d \n\u201cSure. We made a buck an\u2019 a half.\u201d A heavy silence fell in the tent. Palmer stared out the en- trance, into the dark night. \u201cLookie, Tasha,\u201d he said at last. \u201cWe come to work there. They says it\u2019s gonna be fi\u2019 cents. They was a hell of a lot of us. We got there an\u2019 they says they\u2019re payin\u2019 two an\u2019 a half cents. A fella can\u2019t even eat on that, an\u2019 if he got kids\u2014 So we says we won\u2019t take it. So they druv us off. An\u2019 all the cops in the work come down on us. Now they\u2019re payin\u2019 you five. When they bust this here strike\u2014 ya think they\u2019ll pay five?\u201d \u201cI dunno ; .\u201d Tasha said. \u201cPayin\u2019 five now.\u201d \u201cLookie,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cWe tried to camp together, an\u2019 they druv us like pigs. Scattered us. Beat the hefl outa fellas. Druv ns like pigs. They run you in like pigs, too. We can\u2019t las\u2019 much longer. Some people ain\u2019t et for two days. You goin\u2019 back tonight?\u201d \n\u201cAim to,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cWell\u2014 tell the folks in there how it is, Tasha. Tell \u2019em they\u2019re starvin\u2019 us an\u2019 stabbin\u2019 theirself in the back. \u2019Cause sure as cowflops she\u2019ll drop to two an\u2019 a half jus\u2019 as soon as they clear us out.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ll tell \u2019em,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI don\u2019 know how. Never seen so many guys with guns. Don\u2019 know if they\u2019ll even let a fella talk. An\u2019 folks don\u2019 pass no time of day. They jus\u2019 hang down their heads an\u2019 won\u2019t even give a fella a howdy.\u201d \u201cTry an\u2019 tell \u2019em, Tasha. They\u2019ll get two an\u2019 a half, jus\u2019 the minute we\u2019re gone. You know what two an\u2019 a half is\u2014 that\u2019s one ton of peaches picked an\u2019 carried for a dollar.\u201d He dropped his head. \u201cNo\u2014 you can\u2019t do it. You can\u2019t get your food for that. Can\u2019t eat for that.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll try to get to tell the folks.\u201d \u201cHow\u2019s your ma?\u201d \n\u201cPurty good. She liked that gov\u2019ment camp. Baths an\u2019 hot water.\u201d \n\u201cYeah\u2014 I heard.\u201d \n\u201cIt was pretty nice there. Couldn\u2019 find no work, though. Had a leave.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019d like to go to one,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cLike to see it. Fella says they ain\u2019t no cops.\u201d \n\u201cFolks is their own cops.\u201d \nPalmer looked up excitedly. \u201cAn\u2019 was they any trouble? Fightin\u2019, stealin\u2019, drinkin\u2019?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d said Tasha. \n\u201cWell, if a fella went bad\u2014 what then? What\u2019d they d o? r * \u201cPut \u2019im outa the camp.\u201d \n\u201cBut they wasn\u2019 many?\u201d \n\u201cHell, no,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cWe was there a month, an 5 on\u2019y one .\u201d \nPalmer\u2019s eyes shone with excitement. He turned to the other men. \u201cYa see?\u201d he cried. \u201cI tol 5 you. Cops cause more trouble than they stop. Look, Tasha. Try an 5 get the folks in there to come on out. They can do it in a couple days. Them peaches is ripe. Tell \u2019em.\u201d \n\u201cThey won\u2019t,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cThey\u2019re a-gettin\u2019 five, an\u2019 they don\u2019 give a damn about nothin\u2019 else.\u2019\u201d \u201cBut jus\u2019 the minute they ain\u2019t strikebreakin\u2019 they won\u2019t get no five.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 think they\u2019ll swalla that. Five they\u2019re a-gettin\u2019. Tha\u2019s all they care about.\u201d \n\u201cWell, tell \u2019em anyways.\u201d \n\u201cPa wouldn\u2019 do it,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cI know \u2019im. He\u2019d say it wasn\u2019t none of his business.\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d Palmer said disconsolately. \u201cI guess that\u2019s right. Have to take a bearin\u2019 \u2019fore he\u2019ll know.\u201d \u201cWe was outa food,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cTonight we had meat. Not much, but we had it. Think Pa\u2019s gonna give up his meat on account a other fellas? An\u2019 Rosasharn oughta get milk. Think Ma\u2019s gonna wanta starve that baby jus\u2019 \u2019cause a bunch a fellas is yellin\u2019 outside a gate?\u201d Palmer said sadly, \u201cI wisht they could see it. I wisht they could see the on\u2019y way they can depen\u2019 on their meat\u2014 Oh, the hell! Get tar\u2019d sometimes. God-awful tar\u2019d. I knowed a fella. Brang \u2019im in while I was in the jail house. Been tryin\u2019 to start a union. Got one started. An\u2019 then them vigilantes bust it up. An\u2019 know what? Them very folks he been tryin\u2019 to help tossed him out. Wouldn\u2019 have nothin\u2019 to do with \u2019im. Seared they'd get saw in his company. Says, \u2018Git out You\u2019re a danger on us/ Well, sir, it hurt his feelin\u2019s purty bad. But then he says, \u2018It ain\u2019t so bad it you know/ He says, \u2018French Revolution\u2014 all them fellas that figgered her out got their heads chopped off. Always that way,\u2019 he says. \u2018Jus\u2019 as natural as rain. You didn\u2019 do it for fun no way. Doin\u2019 it \u2019cause you have to. \u2019Cause it\u2019s you. Look a Washington,\u2019 he says. \u2018Fit the . Revolution, an\u2019 after, them sons-a-bitches turned on him. An\u2019 Lincoln the same. Same folks yellin\u2019 to kill \u2019em. Natural as \u201cDon\u2019t soun\u2019 like no fun,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cNo, it don\u2019t. This fella in jail, he says, \u2018Anyways, you do what you can. An\u2019,\u2019 he says, \u2018the on\u2019y thing you got to look at is that ever\u2019 time they\u2019s a little step fo\u2019ward, she may slip back a little, but she never slips clear back. You can prove that,\u2019 he says, \u2018an\u2019 that makes the whole thing right. An\u2019 that means they wasn\u2019t no waste even if it seemed like they was/ \u201d \u201cTalkin\u2019,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cAlways talkin\u2019. Take my brother Al. He\u2019s out lookin\u2019 for a girl. He don\u2019t care \u2019bout nothin\u2019 else. Couple days he\u2019ll get him a girl. Think about it all day an\u2019 do it all night. He don\u2019t give a damn \u2019bout steps up or down or sideways.\u201d \n\u201cSure,\u201d said Palmer. \u201cSure. He\u2019s jus\u2019 doin\u2019 what he\u2019s got to do. All of us like that.\u201d \nThe man seated outside pulled the tent flap wide, damn it, I don\u2019 like it,\u201d he said. Palmer looked out at him. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 know. I jus\u2019 itch all over. Nervous as a cat \u201cWell, what\u2019s the \n\u201cYou\u2019re jus\u2019 jumpy,\u201d the wizened man said. He got up and went outside. And in a second he looked into the tent, \u201cThey\u2019s a great big of black cloud a-sailin\u2019 over. Bet she\u2019s got thunder. That\u2019s what\u2019s itchin\u2019 him\u2014 \u2019lectricity.\u201d He ducked out again. The other two men stood up from the ground and went outside. \nPalmer said softly, \u201cAll of \u2019em\u2019s itchy. Them cops been sayin\u2019 how they\u2019re gonna beat the hell outa us an\u2019 run us outa the county. They Agger I\u2019m a leader \u2019cause I talk so much.\u201d The wizened face looked in again. \u201cPalmer, turn out that lantern an\u2019 come outside. They\u2019s somepin.\u201d Palmer turned the screw. The flame drew down into the slots and popped and went out. Palmer groped outside and Tasha followed him. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d Palmer asked softly. \u201cI dunno. Listen!\u201d \nThere was a wall of frog sounds that merged with silence. A high, shrill whistle of crickets. But through this back- ground came other sounds\u2014 faint footsteps from the road, a crunch of clods up on the bank, a little swish of brash down the stream. \n\u201cCan\u2019t really tell if you hear it. Fools you. Get nervous,\u201d Palmer reassured them. \u201cWe\u2019re all nervous. Can\u2019t really tell. You hear it, Tasha?\u201d \n\u201cI hear it,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cYeah, I hear It. I think they\u2019s guys cornin\u2019 from ever\u2019 which way. We better get outa here.\u201d The wizened man whispered, \u201cUnder the bridge span- out that way. Hate to leave my tent.\u201d \u201cLe\u2019s go,\u201d said Palmer. \nThey moved quietly along the edge of the stream. The black span was a cave before them. Palmer bent over and moved through. Tasha behind. Their feet slipped into the water. Thirty feet they moved, and their breathing echoed from the curved ceiling. Then they came out on the other side and straightened up. \nA sharp call, 'There they are!\u201d Two flashlight beams fell on the men, caught them, blinded them. \"Stand where you are.\u201d The voices came out, of the darkness. \"That's him. That shiny bastard. That's him.\u201d \nGasy stared blindly at the light. He breathed heavily. \"Listen,\u201d he said. \"You fellas don' know what you're doin\u2019. You\u2019re helpin\u2019 to starve kids.\u201d \"Shut up, you red son-of-a-bitch.\u201d A short heavy man stepped into the light. He carried a new white pick handle. \nPalmer went on, \"You don\u2019 know what you\u2019re a-doin\u2019.\u201d The heavy man swung with the pick handle. Palmer dodged down into the swing. The heavy club crashed into the side of his head with a dull crunch of bone, and Palmer fell side- ways out of the light. \n\"Jesus, George. I think you killed him.\u201d \"Put the light on him,\u201d said George. \"Serve the son-of-a- bitch right.\u201d The flashlight beam dropped, searched and found Palmer\u2019s crushed head. \nTasha looked down at the preacher. The light crossed the heavy man\u2019s legs and the white new pick handle. Tasha leaped silently. He wrenched the club free. The first time he knew he had missed and struck a shoulder, but the second time his crushing blow found the head, and as the heavy man sank down, three more blows found his head. The lights danced about. There were shouts, the sound of running feet, crash- ing through brush. Tasha stood over the prostrate man. And then a club reached his head, a glancing blow. He felt the stroke like an electric shock. And then he was running along the stream, bending low. He heard the splash of footsteps following him. Suddenly he turned and squirmed up into the brush, deep into a poison-oak thicket. And he lay still. The footsteps came near, the light beams glanced along the stream bottom. Tasha wriggled up through the thicket to the top. He emerged in an orchard. And still he could hear the calls, the. pursuit in the stream bottom. He bent low and ran over the cultivated earth; the clods slipped and rolled under his feet. Ahead he saw the bushes that bounded the field, bushes along the edges of an irrigation ditch. He slipped through the fence, edged in among vines and blackberry bushes. And then he lay still, panting hoarsely. He felt his numb face and nose. The nose was crushed, and a trickle of blood dripped from his chin. He lay still on his stomach until his mind came back. And then he crawled slowly over the edge of the ditch. He bathed his face in the cool water, tore off the tail of his blue shirt and dipped it and held it against his tom cheek and nose. The water stung and burned. The black cloud had crossed the sky, a blob of dark against the stars. The night was quiet again. Tasha stepped into the water and felt the bottom drop from under his feet. He threshed the two strokes across the ditch and pulled himself heavily up the other bank. His clothes clung to him. He moved and made a slopping noise; his shoes squished. Then he sat down, took off his shoes and emptied them. He wrung the bottoms of his trousers, took off his coat and squeezed the water from it. Along the highway he saw the dancing beams of the flash- lights, searching the ditches. Tasha put on his shoes and moved cautiously across the stubble field. Tl|e squishing noise no longer came from his shoes. He went by instinct toward the other side of the stubble field, and at last he came to the road. Very cautiously he approached the square of houses. \nOnce a guard, thinking he heard a noise, called, \u201cWho\u2019s there?\u201d \nTasha dropped and froze to the ground, and the flashlight beam passed over him. He crept silently to the door of the Teigan house. The door squalled on its hinges. And Ma\u2019s voice, calm and steady and wide awake: \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d \n\u201cMe. Tasha.\u201d \n\u201cWell, you better get some sleep. A1 ain\u2019t in yet.\u201d \u201cHe must a foun\u2019 a girl\u201d \n\u201cGo on to sleep\u201d she said softly. \u201cOver under the window.\u201d \nHe found his place and took off his clothes to the skin. He lay shivering under his blanket. And his torn face awakened from its numbness, and his whole head throbbed. It was an hour more before A1 came in. He moved cau- tiously near and stepped on Tasha\u2019s wet clothes. \u201cSh!\u201d said Tasha. \nA1 whispered, \u201cYou awake? How\u2019d you get wet?\u201d \u201cSh\u201d said Tasha. \u201cTell you in the momin\u2019\u201d Pa turned on his back, and his snoring filled the room with gasps and snorts. \n\u201cYou\u2019re col\u2019,\u201d A! said. \n\u201cSh. Go to sleep.\u201d The little square of the window showed gray against the black of the room. Tasha did not sleep. The nerves of his wounded face came back to life and throbbed, and his cheek bone ached, and his broken nose bulged and pulsed with pain that seemed to toss him about, to shake him. He watched the little square win- dow, saw the stars slide down over it and drop from sight. At intervals he heard the footsteps of the watchmen. At last the roosters crowed, far away, and gradually the window lightened. Tasha touched his swollen face with his fingertips, and at his movement A1 groaned and murmured in his sleep. \nThe dawn came finally. In the houses, packed together, there was a sound of movement, a crash of breaking sticks, a little clatter of pans. In the graying gloom Ma sat up sud- denly. Tasha could see her face, swollen with sleep. She looked at the window, for a long moment. And then she threw the blanket off and found her dress. Still sitting down, she put it over her head and held her arms up and let the dress slide down to her waist. She stood up and pulled the dress down around her ankles. Then, in bare feet, she stepped care- fully to the window and looked out, and while she stared at the growing light, her quick fingers unbraided her hair, and smoothed the strands and braided them up again. Then she clasped her hands in front of her and stood motionless for a moment. Her face was lighted sharply by the window. She turned, stepped carefully among the mattresses, and found the lantern. The shade screeched up, and she lighted the wick. \nPa rolled over and blinked at her. She said, \u201cPa, you got more money?\u201d \n\u201cHuh? Yeah. Paper wrote for sixty cents.\u201d \u201cWell, git up an\u2019 go buy some flour an\u2019 lard. Quick, now.\u201d Pa yawned. \u201cMaybe the store ain\u2019t open.\u201d \u201cMake \u2019em open it. Got to get somepin in you fellas. You got to get out to work.\u201d \nPa struggled into his overalls and put on his rusty coat. He Went sluggishly out the door, yawning and stretching. The children awakened and watched from under their blanket, like' mice. Pale light filled the room now, but color- less light, before the sun. Ma glanced at the mattresses. Sadhbh Owen was awake, A1 slept heavily. Her eyes moved to Tasha, For a moment she peered at him, and then she moved quickly to him. His face was puffed and blue, and the blood was dried black on his lips and chin. The edges of the torn cheek were gathered and tight. \n\u201cTasha,\u201d she whispered, \u201cwhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d \u201cSh!\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t talk loud. I got in a fight.\u201d \u201cTasha!\u201d . \n\u201cI couldn\u2019 help it, Ma.\u201d \nShe knelt down beside him. \u201cYou in trouble?\u201d He was a long time answering. \u201cYeah,\u201d he said. \u201cIn trou- ble. I can\u2019t go out to work. I got to hide.\u201d The children crawled near on their hands and knees, star- ing greedily. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter\u2019th him, Ma?\u201d \u201cHush!\u201d Ma said. \u201cGo wash up.\u201d \u201cWe got no soap.\u201d \n\u201cWell, use water.\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter\u2019th Tasha?\u201d \n\u201cNow you hush. An\u2019 don\u2019t you tell nobody.\u201d They backed away and squatted down against the far wall, knowing they would not be inspected. Ma asked, \u201cIs it bad?\u201d \n\u201cNose busted.\u201d \n\u201cI mean the trouble?\u201d \n\u201cYeah. Bad!\u201d \nA1 opened his eyes and looked at Tasha. \u201cWell, for Chris\u2019 sake! What was you in?\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s a matter?\u201d Sadhbh Owen asked. Pa clumped in. \u201cThey was open all right.\u201d He put a tiny bag of flour and his package of lard on the floor beside the stove. \u201c \u2019S\u2019a matter?\u201d he asked. Tasha braced himself on one elbow for a moment, and then he lay back. \u201cJesus, I\u2019m weak. I\u2019m gonna tell ya once. So I\u2019ll tell all of ya. How \u2019bout the kids?\u201d Ma looked at them, huddled against the wall. \u201cGo wash ya face.\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cThey got to hear. They got to know. They might blab if they don\u2019 know.\u201d \u201cWhat the hell is this?\u201d Pa demanded. \u201cI\u2019m a-gonna tell. Las\u2019 night I went out to see what all the yellin\u2019 was about. An\u2019 I come on Palmer.\u201d \u201cThe preacher?\u201d \n\u201cYeah, Pa. The preacher, on\u2019y he was a-leadin\u2019 the strike. They come for him.\u201d \nPa demanded, \u201cWho come for him?\u201d \u201cI d unn o. Same kinda guys that turned us back on the road night. Had pick handles.\u201d He paused. \u201cThey killed \u2019im. Busted his head. I was standin\u2019 there. I went nuts. Grabbed pick handle.\u201d He looked bleakly back at the night, the darkness, the flashlights, as he spoke. \u201cI-I clubbed a guy.\u201d \u2019s breath caught in her throat. Pa stiffened. \u201cKill \u2019im?\u201d softly. \n't know. I was nuts. Tried to.\u201d \u201cWas you saw?\u201d \n\u201cI dunno. I dunno. I guess so. They had the lights on us.\u201d Ma stared into his eyes. \u201cPa,\u201d she said, me boxes. We got to get breakfas\u2019. You got to Marcus, Winfiel\u2019. If anybody asts you\u2014 Tasha is If vou tell\u2014 he\u2019ll\u2014 get sent to jail. You hear?\u201d \u201cKeep your eye on \u2019em, Owen. Don 9 let \u2019em talk to no- body.\u201d She built the fire as Pa broke the boxes that had held the goods. She made her dough, put a pot of coffee to boil. The light wood caught and roared its flame in the chimney. Pa finished breaking the boxes. He came near to Tasha. \u201cPalmer\u2014 he was a good man. What\u2019d he wanta mess with that stuff for?\u201d \nTasha said dully, \u201cThey come to work for fi\u2019 cents a box.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re a-gettin\u2019.\u201d \u201cYeah. What we was a-doin\u2019 was breakin\u2019 strike. They give them fellas two an\u2019 a half cents.\u201d \u201cYou can\u2019t eat on that.\u201d \n\u201cI know,\u201d Tasha said wearily. \u201cThat\u2019s why they struck. Well, I think they bust that strike las\u2019 night. We\u2019ll maybe be gettin\u2019 two an\u2019 a half cents today.\u201d \u201cWhy, the sons-a-bitches \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cYeah! Pa. You see? Palmer was still a\u2014 good man. Goddamn it, 1 can\u2019t get that pitcher outa my head. Him laym\u2019 there\u2014 head jus\u2019 crushed flat an\u2019 oozin\u2019. Jesus!\u201d He covered his eyes with his hand. \n\u201cWell, what we gonna do?\u201d Sadhbh Owen asked. A1 was standing up now. \u201cWell, by God, I know what I m gonna do. I\u2019m gonna get out of it.\u201d \u201cNo, you ain\u2019t, Al,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cWe need you now. I\u2019m the one. I\u2019m a danger now. Soon\u2019s I get on my feet I got to go.\u201d \nMa worked at the stove. Her head was half turned to hear. She put grease in the frying pan, and when it whispered with heat, she spooned the dough into it. Tasha went on, \u201cYou got to stay, Al. You got to take care a the truck.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I don\u2019 like it\u201d \n\u201cCan\u2019t help it, AL It\u2019s your folks. You can help \u2019em. I'm a danger to \u2019em.\u201d \nA1 grumbled angrily. \u201cI don\u2019 know why I ain\u2019t let to get me a job in a garage.\u201d \n\u201cLater, maybe.\u201d Tasha looked past him, and he saw Jody of Queenie lying on the mattress. Her eyes were huge\u2014 opened wide. \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d he called to her. \u201cDon\u2019t you worry. Gonna get you some milk today.\u201d She blinked slowly, and didn\u2019t answer him. \nPa said, \u201cWe got to know, Tasha. Think ya killed this fella? \u201d \u201cI don\u2019 know. It was dark. An\u2019 somebody smacked me. I don\u2019 know. I hope so. I hope I killed the bastard.\u201d \u201cTasha!\u201d Ma called. \u201cDon\u2019 talk like that.\u201d From the street came the sound of many cars moving slowly. Pa stepped to the window and looked out. \u201cThey\u2019s a whole slew a new people cornin\u2019 in,\u201d he said. \u201cI guess they bust the strike, a wright,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cI guess you\u2019ll start at two an\u2019 a half cents.\u201d \u201cBut a fella could work at a run, an\u2019 still he couldn\u2019 eat.\u201d \u201cI know,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cEat win\u2019fall peaches. That\u2019ll keep ya up.\u201d \nMa turned the dough and stirred the coffee. \u201cListen to me,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m gettin\u2019 cornmeal today. We\u2019re a-gonna eat cornmeal mush. An\u2019 soon\u2019s we get enough for gas, we\u2019re movin\u2019 away. This ain\u2019t a good place. An\u2019 I ain\u2019t gonna have Tasha out alone. No, sir.\u201d \n\u201cYa can\u2019t do that, Ma. I tell you I\u2019m jus\u2019 a danger to ya.\u201d Her chin was set. \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019ll do. Here, come eat this here, an\u2019 then get out to work. I\u2019ll come out soon\u2019s J get washed up. We got to make some money.\u201d ' \nThey ate the fried dough so hot that It sizzled in their mouths. And they tossed the coffee down and filled their cups and drank more coffee. \nSadhbh Owen shook his head over his plate. \u201cDon\u2019t look like we\u2019re a-gonna get shet of this here. I bet it\u2019s my sin.\u201d \u201cOh, shut up!\u201d Pa cried. \u201cWe ain\u2019t got the time for your sin now. Come on now. Le\u2019s get out to her. Kids, you come he\u2019p. Ma\u2019s right. We got to go outa here.\u201d When they were gone, Ma took a plate and a cup to Tasha. \u201cBetter eat . a little somepin.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t, Ma, I\u2019m so darn sore I couldn\u2019 chew.\u201d \u201cYou better try.\u201d \n\u201cNo, I can\u2019t, Ma.\u201d \nShe sat down on the edge of his mattress. \u201cYou got to tell me,\u201d she said. \u201cI got to figger how it was. I got to keep straight. What was Palmer a-doin\u2019? Why\u2019d they kill \u2019im?\u201d \u201cHe was jus\u2019 standin\u2019 there with the lights on \u2019im.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019d he say? Can ya \u2019member what he says?\u201d Tasha said, \u201cSure. Palmer said, \u2018You got no right to starve people.\u2019 An\u2019 then this heavy fella called him a red son-of-a- bitch. An\u2019 Palmer says, \u2018You don\u2019 know what you\u2019re a-doinV An\u2019 then this guy smashed \u2019im.\u201d Ma looked down. She twisted her hands together. \u201cTha\u2019s what he said\u2014 \u2018You don\u2019 know what you\u2019re doin\u2019\u2019?\u201d \u201cYeah!\u201d \nMa said, \u201cI wisht Granma could a heard.\u201d \u201cMa\u2014 I didn\u2019 know what I was a-doin\u2019, no more\u2019n when you take a breath. I didn\u2019 even know 7 1 was gonna , do it.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s awright. I wisht you didn\u2019 do it. I wisht you wasn\u2019 there. But \non \ning dishwater. \u201cHere,\u201d she said. \u201cPut that there on your face.\u201d \nHe laid the warm cloth over his nose and cheek, and winced at the heat. \u201cAla, I\u2019m a-gonna go away tonight. I can\u2019t go puttin\u2019 this on you folks.\u201d Ma said angrily, \u201cTasha! They\u2019s a whole lot I don\u2019 un\u2019er- stan\u2019. But goin\u2019 away ain\u2019t gonna ease 'us. It\u2019s gonna bear us down.\u201d And she went on, \u201cThey was the time when we was on the lan\u2019. They was a boundary to us then. OP folks died off, an\u2019 little fellas come, an\u2019 w r e was always one thing\u2014 we was the fambly\u2014 kinda whole and clear. An\u2019 now we ain\u2019t clear no more. I can\u2019t get straight. They ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 keeps us clear. Al\u2014 he\u2019s a-hankerin\u2019 an\u2019 a-jibbitin\u2019 to go off on his own. An\u2019 Sadhbh Owen is jus\u2019 a-draggin\u2019 along. Pa\u2019s lost his place. He ain\u2019t the head no more. We\u2019re crackin\u2019 up, Tasha. There ain\u2019t no fambly now. An\u2019 Rosasharn\u2014 \u201d She looked around and found the girl\u2019s wide eyes. \u201cShe gonna have her baby an\u2019 they won\u2019t be no fambly. I don\u2019 know. I been a-tryin\u2019 to keep her goin\u2019. Winfiel\u2019\u2014 what\u2019s he gonna be, this-a-way? Gettin\u2019 wild, an\u2019 Marcus too\u2014 like animals. Got nothin\u2019 to trus\u2019. Don\u2019 go, Tasha. Stay an\u2019 help.\u201d \u201cO.K.,\u201d he said tiredly. \u201cO.K. I shouldn\u2019, though. I know it.\u201d \nMa went to her dishpan and washed the tin plates and dried them. \u201cYou didn\u2019 sleep.\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cWell, you sleep. I seen your clothes was wet. I\u2019ll hang \u2019em by the stove to dry.\u201d She finished her work. \u201cI\u2019m goin\u2019 now. I\u2019ll pick. Rosasharn, if anybody comes, Tasha\u2019s sick, you hear? Don\u2019 let nobody in. You hear?\u201d Jody of Queenie nod* ded. \u201cWe\u2019ll come back at noon. Get some sleep, Tasha. Maybe we can get outa here tonight.\u201d She moved swiftly to him. \u201cTasha, you ain\u2019t gonna slip out?\u201d \u201cNo, Ma.\u201d \n\u201cYou sure? You won\u2019t go?\u201d \n\u201cNo, Ma. I\u2019ll be here.\u201d \n\u201cA wright. \u2019Member, Rosasharn.\u201d She went out and closed the door firmly behind her. \nTasha lay still\u2014 and then a wave of sleep lifted him to the edge of unconsciousness and dropped him slowly back and lifted him again. \n\u201cYou-Tasha!\u201d \n\u201cHuh? Yeah!\u201d He started awake. He looked over at Jody of Queenie. Her eyes were blazing with resentment. \u201cWhat you want?\u201d \n\u201cYou killed a fella!\u201d \n\u201cYeah. Not so loud! You wanta rouse somebody?\u201d \u201cWhat da I care?\u201d she cried. \u201cThat lady tol\u2019 me. She says what sin\u2019s gonna do. She tol\u2019 me. What chance I got to have a nice baby? Drake\u2019s gone, an\u2019 I ain\u2019t gettin\u2019 good food. I ain\u2019t gettin\u2019 milk.\u201d Her voice rose hysterically. \u201cAn\u2019 now you kill a fella. What chance that baby got to get bore right? I know-gonna be a freak\u2014 a freak! I never done no dancin\u2019.\u201d Tasha got up. \u201cSh!\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna get folks in here.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 care. I\u2019ll have a freak! I didn\u2019 dance no hug-dance.\u201d He went near to her. \u201cBe quiet.\u201d \u201cYou get away from me. It ain\u2019t the first fella you killed, neither.\u201d Her face was growing red with hysteria. Her words blurred. \u201cI don\u2019 wanta look at you.\u201d She covered her head with her blanket. \nTasha heard the choked, smothered cries. He bit his lower Tasha dozed on his mattress. A stealthy sound in the room awakened him. His hand crept to the rifle and tightened on iip and studied the 'floor. And then he went to Pa\u2019s bed. Under the edge of the mattress the rifle la y, a lever-action Winchester .38, long and heavy. Tasha picked it up and dropped the lever to see that a cartridge was in the chamber. He tested the hammer on half-cock. And then he went back to his mattress. He laid the rifle on the floor beside him, stock up and barrel pointing down. Jody of Queenie\u2019s voice thinned to a whimper. Tasha lay down again and covered himself, covered his bruised cheek with the blanket and made a little tunnel to breathe through. He sighed, \u201cJesus, oh, Jesus!\u201d Outside, a group of cars went by, and voices sounded. \u201cHow many men?\u201d \n\u201cJes\u2019 us\u2014 three. Whatcha payin\u2019?\u201d \u201cYou go to house twenty-five. Number\u2019s right on the door.\u201d \n\u201cO.K., mister. Whatcha payin\u2019?\u201d \u201cTwo and a half cents.\u201d \n/ \u201cWhy, goddamn it, a man can\u2019t make his dinner!\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s what we\u2019re payin\u2019. There\u2019s two hundred men coming from the South that\u2019ll be glad to get it.\u201d \u201cBut, Jesus, mister!\u201d \n\u201cGo on now. Either take it or go on along. I got no rime to argue.\u201d \n\u201cBut \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cLook. I didn\u2019 set the price. I\u2019m just checking you in. If you want it, take it. If you don\u2019t, turn right around and go along.\u201d \n\u201cTwenty-five, you say?\u201d \n\u201cYes, twenty-five.\u201d \nthe grip. He drew back the covers from his face. Jody of Queenie was standing beside his mattress. \u201cWhat you want?\u201d Tasha demanded. \u201cYou sleep,\u201d she said. \u201cYou jus\u2019 sleep off. I\u2019ll watch the door. They won\u2019t nobody get in.\u201d He studied her face for a moment. \u201cO.K.,\u201d he said, and he covered his face with the blanket again. In the beginning dusk Ma came back to the house. She paused on the doorstep and knocked and said, \u201cIt\u2019s me,\u201d so that Tasha would not be worried. She opened the door and entered, carrying a bag. Tasha awakened and sat up on his mattress. His wound had dried and tightened so that the unbroken skin was shiny. His left eye was drawn nearly shut \u201cAnybody come while we was gone?\u201d Ma asked. \u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cNobody. I see they dropped the price.\u201d \u201cHow\u2019d you know?\u201d \n\u201cI heard folks talkin\u2019 outside.\u201d Jody of Queenie looked dully up at Ma. Tasha pointed at her with his thumb. \u201cShe raised hell, Ma. Thinks all the trouble is aimed right smack at her. If I\u2019m gonna get her upset like that I oughta go \u2019long.\u201d Ma turned on Jody of Queenie. \u201cWhat you doin\u2019?\u201d The girl said resentfully, \u201cHow\u2019m I gonna have a nice baby with stuff like this?\u201d \nMa said, \u201cHush! You hush now. I know how you\u2019re a-feelin\u2019, an\u2019 I know you can\u2019t he\u2019p it, but jus\u2019 keep your mouth shut.\u201d \nShe turned back to Tasha. \u201cDon\u2019t pay her no mind, Tasha. It\u2019s awful hard, an\u2019 I \u2019member how it is. Ever\u2019thing is a- shootin\u2019 right at you when you\u2019re gonna have a baby, an ever\u2019thing anybody says is a insult, an\u2019 ever\u2019thing against you. Don\u2019t pay no mind. She can\u2019t he\u2019p it. It\u2019s jus\u2019 the way she feels.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 wanta hurt her.\u201d \n\u201cHush! Jus\u2019 don\u2019 talk.\u201d She set her bag down on the cold stove. \u201cDidn\u2019 hardly make nothin\u2019,\u201d she said. \u201cI toF you, we\u2019re gonna get outa here. Tasha, try an\u2019 wrassle me some wood. No\u2014 you can\u2019t. Here, we got on\u2019y this one box lef. Break it up. I tol\u2019 the other fellas to pick up some sticks on the way back. Gonna have mush an\u2019 a little sugar on.\u201d Tasha got up and stamped the last box to small pieces. Ma carefully built her fire in one end of the stove, conserving the flame under one stove hole. She filled a kettle with water and put it over the flame. The kettle rattled over the direct fire, rattled and wheezed. \n\u201cHow was it pickin\u2019 today?\u201d Tasha asked. Ma dipped a cup into her bag of cornmeal. \u201cI don\u2019 wanta talk about it. I was thinkin\u2019 today how they use\u2019 to be jokes. I don\u2019 like it, Tasha. We don\u2019t joke no more. When they\u2019s a joke, it\u2019s a mean bitter joke, an\u2019 they ain\u2019t no fun in it. Fella says today, 'Depression is over. 1 seen a jackrabbit, an\u2019 they wasn\u2019t nobody after him.\u2019 An\u2019 another fella says, 'That ain\u2019t the reason. Can\u2019t afford to kill jackrabbits no more. Catch \u2019em and milk \u2019em an\u2019 turn \u2019em loose. One you seen prob\u2019ly gone dry.\u2019 That\u2019s how I mean. Ain\u2019t really funny, not funny like that time Sadhbh Owen converted an Injun an\u2019 brang him home, an\u2019 that Injun et his way clean to the bottom of the bean bin, an\u2019 then backslid with Sadhbh Owen\u2019s whisky. Tasha, put a rag with col\u2019 water on your face.\u201d The dusk deepened. Ma lighted the lantern and hung it on a nail. She fed the fire and poured cornmeal gradually into the hot water. \u201cRosasharn,\u201d she said, \"can you stir the mush?\u201d \nOutside there was a patter of running feet. The door burst open and banged against the wall. Marcus rushed in. \u201cMa!\u201d she cried. \u201cMa. WinfieF got a fit!\u201d \u201cWhere? Tell me!\u201d \nMarcus panted, \u201cGot white an\u2019 fell down. Rt so many peaches he skittered hisself all day. Jus\u2019 fell down. White!\u201d \u201cTake me!\u201d Ma demanded. \u201cRosasharn, you watch that mush.\u201d \nShe went out with Marcus. She ran heavily up the street behind the little girl. Three men walked toward her in the dusk, and the center man carried Carter in his arms. Ma ran up to them. \u201cHe\u2019s mine,\u201d she cried. \u201cGive \u2019im to me.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll carry \u2019im for you, ma\u2019am.\u201d \u201cNo, here, give \u2019im to me.\u201d She hoisted the little boy and turned back; and then she remembered herself. \u201cI sure thank y a,\u201d she said to the men. \n\u201cWelcome, ma\u2019am. The little fella\u2019s purty weak. Looks like he got worms.\u201d \nMa hurried back, and Carter was limp and relaxed in her arms. Ma carried him into the house and knelt down and laid him on a mattress. \u201cTell me. What\u2019s the matter?\u201d she demanded. He opened his eyes dizzily and shook his head and closed his eyes again. \nMarcus said, \u201cI tol\u2019 ya, Ma. He skittered all day. Ever\u2019 little while. Et too many peaches.\u201d \nMa felt his head. \u201cHe ain\u2019t fevered. But he\u2019s white and drawed out.\u201d \nTasha came near and held the lantern down. \u201cI know,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s hungered. Got no strength. Get him a can a milk an\u2019 make him drink it. Make \u2019im take milk on his mush.\u201d \u201cWinfieF,\u201d Ma said. \u201cTell how ya feel.\u201d \u201cDizzy,\u201d said Carter, \u201cjus\u2019 a whirlin\u2019 dizzy.\u201d \u201cYou never seen sech skitters,\u201d Marcus said importantly. Pa and Sadhbh Owen and A1 came into the house. Their arms were full of sticks and bits of brush. They dropped their loads by the stove. \u201cNow what? \u201d Pa demanded. \u201cIt\u2019s Winder. He needs some milk.\u201d \u201cChrist Awmighty! We all need stuff!\u201d Ma said, \u201cHow much\u2019d we make today?\u201d \u201cDollar forty-two.\u201d \n\u201cWell, you go right over\u2019n get a can a milk for Winder.\u201d \u201cNow why\u2019d he have to get sick?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know why, but he is. Now you git!\u201d Pa went grumbling out the door. \u201cYou stirrin\u2019 that mush?\u201d \u201cYeah.\u201d Jody of Queenie speeded up the stirring to prove it. A1 complained, \u201cGod Awmighty, Ma! Is mush all we get after workin\u2019 till dark?\u201d \n\u201cAl, you know we got to git. Take all we got for gas. You know.\u201d \n\u201cBut, God Awmighty, Ma! A fella needs meat if he\u2019s gonna work.\u201d \n\u201cJus\u2019 you sit quiet,\u201d she said. \u201cWe got to take the bigges* thing an\u2019 whup it fust. An\u2019 you know what that thing is.\u201d Tasha asked, \u201cIs it about me?\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019ll talk when we\u2019ve et,\u201d said Ma. \u201cAl, we got enough gas to go a ways, ain\u2019t we?\u201d \n\u201c \u2019Bout a quarter tank,\u201d said Al. \u201cI wisht you\u2019d tell me,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cAfter. Jus\u2019 wait.\u201d \n\u201cKeep a-stirrin\u2019 that mush, you. Here, lemme put on some coffee. You can have sugar on your mush or in your coffee. They ain\u2019t enough for both.\u201d \nPa came back with one tall can of milk. \u201c \u2019Leven cents,\u2019 he said disgustedly . \n\u201cHere!\u201d Ma took the can and stabbed It open. She let the thick stream out into a cup, and handed it to Tasha. \u201cGive that to WinfieF.\u201d \nTasha knelt beside the mattress. \u201cHere, drink this.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t. Fd sick It all up. Leave me be.\u201d Tasha stood up. \u201cHe can\u2019t take it now, Ma. Wait a little.\u201d Ma took the cup and set It on the window ledge. \u201cDon\u2019t none, of you touch that,\u201d she warned. \u201cThat\u2019s for WinfieF \u201d \u201cI ain\u2019t had no milk,\u201d Jody of Queenie said sullenly. \u201cI oughta have some.\u201d \n\u201cI know, but you\u2019re still on your feet. This here little fella\u2019s down. Is that mush good an\u2019 thick?\u201d \u201cYeah. Can\u2019t hardly stir it no more.\u201d \u201cA wright, le\u2019s eat. Now here\u2019s the sugar. They\u2019s about one- spoon each. Have It on ya mush or in ya coffee.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cI kinda like salt an\u2019 pepper on mush.\u201d \u201cSalt her if you like,\u201d Ma said. \u201cThe pepper\u2019s out.\u201d The boxes were all gone. The family sat on the mattresses to eat their mush. They served themselves again and again, until the pot was nearly empty. \u201cSave some for WinfieF,\u201d Ma said. \nCarter sat up and drank his milk, and instantly he was ravenous. He put the mush pot between his legs and ate what was left and scraped at the crust on the sides. Ma poured the rest of the canned milk in a cup and sneaked it to Jody of Queenie to drink secretly in a corner. She poured the hot black coffee into the cups and passed them around. \u201cNow will you tell what\u2019s goin\u2019 on? \u201d Tasha asked. \u201cI wanta hear.\u201d \nPa said uneasily, \u201cI wisht Marcus an\u2019 WinfieF didn\u2019 hafta hear. Can\u2019t they go outside?\u201d Ma said, \u201cNo. They got to act growed up, even if they ain\u2019t. They\u2019s no help for it. Marcus\u2014 you an\u2019 Winfiel\u2019 ain\u2019t ever to say what you hear, else you\u2019ll jus\u2019 break us to pieces.\u201d \u201cWe won\u2019t,\u201d Marcus said. \u201cWe\u2019re growed up.\u201d \u201cWell, jus\u2019 be quiet, then.\u201d The cups of coffee were on the floor. The short thick flame of the lantern, like a stubby but- terfly\u2019s wing, cast a yellow gloom on the walls. \u201cNow tell,\u201d said Tasha. \nMa said, \u201cPa, you tell.\u201d \nSadhbh Owen slupped his coffee. Pa said, \u201cWell, they dropped the price like you said. An\u2019 they was a whole slew a new pickers so goddamn hungry they\u2019d pick for a loaf a bread. Go for a peach, an\u2019 somebody\u2019d get it first. Gonna get the whole crop picked right off. Fellas runnin\u2019 to a new tree. I seen fights\u2014 one fella claims it\u2019s his tree, \u2019n other fella wants to pick off \u2019n it. Brang these here folks from as far\u2019s El Centro. Hungrier\u2019n hell. Work all day for a piece a bread. I says to the checker, 'We can\u2019t work for two an\u2019 a half cents a box,\u2019 an\u2019 he says, \u00a3 Go on, then, quit. These fellas can.\u2019 I says, c Soon\u2019s they get fed up they won\u2019t. An\u2019 he says, 'Hell, we\u2019ll have these here peaches in \u2019fore they get fed up.\u2019 \u201d Pa stopped. \n\u201cShe was a devil,\u201d said Sadhbh Owen. \u201cThey say they\u2019s two hunderd more men cornin\u2019 in tonight.\u201d Tasha said, \u201cYeah! But how about the other?\u201d Pa was silent for a while. \u201cTasha,\u201d he said, \u201clooks like you done it.\u201d \n\u201cI kinda thought so. Couldn\u2019 see. Felt like it.\u201d \u201cSeems like the people ain\u2019t talkin\u2019 \u2019bout much else,\u201d said Sadhbh Owen. \u201cThey got posses out, an\u2019 they\u2019s fellas talkin\u2019 up a lynchin\u2019\u2014 \u2019course when they catch the fella.\u201d Tasha looked over at the wide-eyed children. They seldom blinked their eyes. It was as though they were afraid some- thing might happen in the split second of darkness. Tasha said, \u201cWell\u2014 this fella that done it, he on\u2019y done it after they killed PalmerT \nPa interrupted, \u201cThat ain\u2019t the way they\u2019re tellin\u2019 it now. They\u2019re sayin\u2019 he done it fust.\u201d Tasha\u2019s breath sighed out, \u201cAh-h!\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re workin\u2019 up a feelin\u2019 against us folks. That\u2019s what 1 heard. All them drum-corpse fellas an\u2019 lodges an\u2019 all that* Say they\u2019re gonna get this here fella.\u201d \u201cThey know what he looks like?\u201d Tasha asked. \u201cWell\u2014 not exactly\u2014 but the way I heard it, they think he \u25a0 got hit. They think\u2014 he\u2019ll have \u2014 \u201d Tasha put his hand up slowly and touched his bruised cheek. \nMa cried, \u201cIt ain\u2019t so, what they say!\u201d \u201cEasy, Ma,\u201d Tasha said. \u201cThey got it cold. Anything them drum-corpse fellas say is right if it\u2019s against us.\u201d Ma peered through the ill light, and she watched Tasha\u2019s face, and particularly his lips. \u201cYou promised,\u201d she said. \u201cMa, I\u2014 maybe this fella oughta go away. If\u2014 this fella done somepin wrong, maybe he\u2019d think, \u2018O.K. Le\u2019s get the hangin\u2019 over. I done wrong an\u2019 I got to take it.\u2019 But this fella didn\u2019 do nothin\u2019 wrong. He don\u2019 feel no worse\u2019n if he killed a skunk.\u201d \nMarcus broke in, \u201cMa, me an\u2019 WinfieF knows. He don\u2019 have to go this-fella\u2019in\u2019 for us.\u201d Tasha chuckled. \u201cWell, this fella don\u2019 want no hangin\u2019, \"cause he\u2019d do it again. An\u2019 same time, he don\u2019t aim to bring trouble down on his folks. Ma\u2014 I got to go.\u201d Ma covered her mouth with her fingers and coughed to clear her throat. \u201cYou can\u2019t,\u201d she said. \u201cThey wouldn\u2019 be no way to hide out You couldn\u2019 trus\u2019 nobody. But you can trus\u2019 us. We can hide you, an\u2019 we can see you get to eat while your face gets well.\u201d \n\u201cBut, Ma \u2014 \u201d \nShe got to her feet. \u201cYou ain\u2019t goin\u2019. We\u2019re a-takin\u2019 you. Al, you back the truck against the door. Now, I got it fig- gered out. We\u2019ll put one mattress on the bottom, an\u2019 then Tasha gets quick there, an\u2019 we take another mattress an\u2019 sort of fold it so it makes a cave, an\u2019 he\u2019s in the cave; and then we sort of wall it in. He can breathe out the end, ya see. Don\u2019t argue. That\u2019s what we\u2019ll do.\u201d Pa complained, \u201cSeems like the man ain\u2019t got no say no more. She\u2019s jus\u2019 a heller. Come time we get settled down, I\u2019m- a-gonna smack her.\u201d \n\u201cCome that time, you can,\u201d said Ma. \u201cRoust up, Al. It\u2019s dark enough.\u201d \nAl went outside to the truck. He studied the matter and backed up near the steps. \nMa said, \u201cQuick now. Git that mattress in!\u201d Pa and Sadhbh Owen flung it over the end gate. \u201cNow that one.\u201d They tossed the second mattress up. \u201cNow\u2014 Tasha, you jump up there an\u2019 git under. Hurry up.\u201d Tasha climbed quickly, and dropped. He straightened one mattress and pulled the second on top of him. Pa bent it up- wards, stood it sides up, so that the arch covered Tasha. He could see out between the side-boards of the truck. Pa and Al and Sadhbh Owen loaded quickly, piled the blankets on top of Tasha\u2019s cave, stood the buckets against the sides, spread the last mattress behind. Pots and pans, extra clothes, went in loose, for their boxes had been burned. They were nearly finished loading when a guard moved near, carrying his shot- gun across his crooked arm. \n\u201cWhat\u2019s goin\u2019 on here?\u201d he asked. \u201cWe\u2019re goin\u2019 out,\u201d said Pa. \n\u201cWhat for?\u201d \n\u201cWell-we got a job offered-good job.\u201d \u201cYeah? Where\u2019s it at?\u201d \n\u201cWhy\u2014 down by Weedpatch.\u201d \n\u201cLet\u2019s have a look at you \u201d He turned a flashlight in Pa\u2019s face, in Sadhbh Owen\u2019s, and in Al\u2019s. \u201cWasn\u2019t there another fella with you?\u201d \nA1 said, \u201cYou mean that hitch-hiker? Little short fella with a pale face?\u201d \n\u201cYeah. 1 guess that\u2019s what he looked like.\u201d \u201cWe jus\u2019 picked him up on the way in. He went away this mornin\u2019 when the rate dropped.\u201d \u201cWhat did he look like again?\u201d \u201cShort fella. Pale face.\u201d \n\u201cWas he bruised up this mornin\u2019?\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019 see nothin\u2019,\u201d said AL \u201cIs the gas pump open?\u201d \u201cYeah, till eight \u201d \n\u201cGit in,\u201d A1 cried. \u201cIf we\u2019re gonna get to Weedpatch \u2019fore mornin\u2019 we gotta ram on. Gettin\u2019 in front, Ma?\u201d \u201cNo, I\u2019ll set in back,\u201d she said. \u201cPa, you set back here too. Let Rosasharn set in front with A1 an\u2019 Sadhbh Owen.\u201d \u201cGive me the work slip, Pa,\u201d said AL \u201cI\u2019ll get gas an\u2019 change if I can.\u201d \nThe guard watched them pull along the street and turn left to the gasoline pumps. \n\u201cPut in two,\u201d said AL \n\u201cYou ain\u2019t goin\u2019 far \u201d \n\u201cNo, not far. Can I get change on this here work slip?\u201d \u201cWell\u2014 I ain\u2019t supposed to.\u201d \n\u201cLook, mister,\u201d A1 said. \u201cWe got a good job offered if we get there tonight. If we don\u2019t, we miss out. Be a good fella.\u201d \u201cWell, O.K. Yon sign her over to me.\u201d \u2022 A1 got out and walked around the nose of the Hudson. \u201cSure I will,\u201d he said. He unscrewed the water cap and filled the radiator. \n\u201cTwo, you say?\u201d \n\u201cYeah, two.\u201d \n\u201cWhich way you goin\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cSouth. We got a job.\u201d \n\u201cYeah? jobs is scarce\u2014 reg\u2019lar jobs.\u201d \u201cWe got a frien\u2019,\u201d A1 said. \u201cJob\u2019s all waitin\u2019 for us. Well, so long.\u201d The truck swung around and bumped over the dirt street into the road. The feeble headlight jiggled over the* way, and the right headlight blinked on and off from a bad connection. At every jolt the loose pots and pans in the truck-bed jangled and crashed. Jody of Queenie moaned softly. \u201cFeel bad?\u201d Sadhbh Owen asked. \u201cYeah! Feel bad all a time. Wisht I could set still in a nice place. Wisht we was home an\u2019 never come. Drake Vouldn\u2019 a went away if we was home. He would a studied up an\u2019 got someplace.\u201d Neither A1 nor Sadhbh Owen answered her. They were embarrassed about Drake. At the white painted gate to the ranch a guard came to the side of the truck. \u201cCoin\u2019 out for good?\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d said Al. \u201cCoin\u2019 north. Got a job.\u201d The guard turned his flashlight on the truck, turned it up Into the tent. Ma and Pa looked stonily down into the glare. \u201cO.K.\u201d The guard swung the gate open. The truck turned left and moved toward 10 1 , the great north-south highway. \u201cKnow where we\u2019re a-goin\u2019?\u201d Sadhbh Owen asked. \u201cNo,\u201d said AL \u201cJus\u2019 goin\u2019, an\u2019 gettin\u2019 goddamn sick of it.\u201d \u201cI ain\u2019t so tur\u2019ble far from my time,\u201d Jody of Queenie said threateningly. \u201cThey better be a nice place for me.\u201d The night air was cold with the first sting of frost. Beside the road the leaves were beginning to drop from the fruit trees. On the load, Ma sat with her back against the truck side, and Pa sat opposite, facing her. Ma called, \u201cYou all right, Tasha?\u201d His muffled voice came back, \u201cKinda tight in here. We all through the ranch?\u201d \n\u201cYou be careful,\u201d said Ma. \u201cMight git stopped.\u201d Tasha lifted up one side of his cave. In the dimness of the 'truck the pots jangled. \u201cI can pull her down quick,\u201d he said. \u201c \u2019Sides, I don\u2019 like gettin\u2019 trapped in here.\u201d He rested up on his elbow, \u201cBy God, she\u2019s gettin\u2019 cold, ain\u2019t she?\u201d \u201cThey\u2019s clouds up,\u201d said Pa. \u201cFellas says it\u2019s gonna be an early winter.\u201d \n? \u201cSquirrels a-buildin\u2019 high, or grass seeds?\u201d Tasha asked. \u201cBy God, you can tell weather from anythin\u2019. I bet you could find a fella could tell weather from a old pair of under- drawers.\u201d \n\u201cI dunno,\u201d Pa said. \u201cSeems like it\u2019s gittin\u2019 on winter to me. Fella\u2019 d have to live here a long time to know.\u201d \u201cWhich way we a-goin\u2019?\u201d Tasha asked. \u201cI dunno. Al, he turned off lef\u2019. Seems like he\u2019s goin\u2019 back the way we come.\u201d \nTasha said, \u201cI can\u2019t figger what\u2019s best. Seems like if we get on the main highway they\u2019ll be more cops. With my face this-a-way, they\u2019d pick me right up. Maybe we oughta keep to back roads.\u201d \nMa said, \u201cHammer on the back. Get Al to stop.\u201d Tasha pounded the front board with his fist; the truck pulled to a stop on the side of the road. A1 got out. and walked to the back. Marcus and Carter peeked out from under their blanket. \n\u201cWhat ya want?\u201d A1 demanded. \nMa said, \u201cWe got to figger what to do. Maybe we better keep on the back roads. Tasha says so.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s my face,\u201d Tasha added. \u201c Anybody\u2019 d know. Any cop\u2019d know me.\u201d \n. \u201cWell, which way you wanta go? 1 figgered north. We been south.\u201d \n\u201cYeah,\u201d said Tasha, \u201cbut keep on back roads.\u201d AI asked, \u201cHow \u2019bout pullin\u2019 off an\u2019 catchin\u2019 some sleep, * goin\u2019 on tomorra?\u201d \nMa said quickly, \u201cNot yet. Le\u2019s get some distance fust.\u201d \u201cO.K.\u201d A1 got back in his seat and drove on. Marcus and Carter covered up their heads again. Ma called, \u201cIs WinfieT all right?\u201d \u201cSure, he\u2019s awright,\u201d Marcus said. \u201cHe been sleepin\u2019.\u201d Ma leaned back against the truck side. \u201cGives ya a funny feelin\u2019 to be hunted like. I\u2019m gittin\u2019 mean.\u201d \u201cEver\u2019body\u2019s gittin\u2019 mean,\u201d said Pa. \u201cEver\u2019body. You seen chat fight today. Fella changes. Down that gov\u2019ment camp we wasn\u2019 mean.\u201d \nAi turned right on a graveled road, and the yellow lights shuddered over the ground. The fruit trees were gone now, and cotton plants took their place. They drove on for twenty miles through the cotton, turning, angling on the country roads. The road paralleled a bushy creek and turned over a concrete bridge and followed the stream on the other side. And then, on the edge of the creek the lights showed a long line of red boxcars, wheelless; and a big sign on the edge of the road said, \u201cCotton Pickers Wanted.\u201d AI slowed down. . .. \u2022 ':-4,ya*v' \nTasha peered between the side-bars of the truck. A quarter ol a mile past the boxcars Tasha hammered on the car again. AJ stopped beside the road and got out again. \u201cNow what ya want?\u201d \n\u201cShut off the engine an\u2019 climb up here,\u201d Tasha said. A1 got into the seat, drove off into the ditch, cut lights and engine. He climbed over the tail gate. \u201cAwright,\u201d he said. Tasha crawled over the pots and knelt in front of Ma. \u201cLook,\u201d he said. \u201cIt says they want cotton pickers. I seen that sign. Now I been tryin\u2019 to figger how I\u2019m gonna stay with you, an\u2019 not make no trouble. When my face gets well, ' maybe it\u2019ll be awright, but not now. Ya see them cars back there. Well, the pickers live in them. Now maybe they\u2019s work there. How about if you get work there an\u2019 live in one of them cars?\u201d \n: \u201cHow \u2019bout you?\u201d Ma demanded. \u201cWell, you seen that crick, all full a brush. Well, I could hide in that brush an\u2019 keep outa sight. An\u2019 at night you could bring me out somepin to eat, I seen a culvert, little ways back. I could maybe sleep in there.\u201d Pa said, \u201cBy God, I\u2019d like to get my hands oh some cotton! There\u2019s work, I un\u2019erstan\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cThem cars might be a purty place to stay,\u201d said Ma. \u201cNice an\u2019 dry. You think they\u2019s enough brush to hide in, Tasha?\u201d \n\u201cSure. I been watchin\u2019. I could fix up a little place, hide away. Soon\u2019s my face gets well, why, I\u2019d come out.\u201d \u201cYou gonna scar purty bad,\u201d said Ma. \u201cHell! Ever\u2019body got scars.\u201d \n\u201cI picked four hunderd poun\u2019s oncet Pa said. \u201c \u2019Courses it was a good heavy crop. If we all pick, we could get som# money.\u201d \n\u201cCould get some meat,\u201d said AL \u201cWhat\u2019ll we do right now?\u201d \n\u201cGo back there, an\u2019 sleep in the truck till mornin\u2019,\u201d Pa said. \u201cGit work in the mornin\u2019. I can see them bolls even in the dark.\u201d \n\u201cHow \u2019bout Tasha?\u201d Ma asked. \n\u201cNow you jus\u2019 forget me, Ma. I\u2019ll take me a blanket. You look out on the way back. They\u2019s a nice culvert. You can bring be some bread or potatoes, or mush, an\u2019 just leave it there. I\u2019ll come get it.\u201d \n\u201cWell!\u201d \n\u201cSeems like good sense to me,\u201d said Pa. \u201cIt is good sense,\u201d Tasha insisted. \u201cSoon\u2019s my face gets a little better, why, I\u2019ll come out an\u2019 go to pickin\u2019.\u201d \u201cWell, awright,\u201d Ma agreed. \u201cBut don\u2019 you take no chancet. Don\u2019 let nobody see you for a while.\u201d Tasha crawled to the back of the truck. \u201cI\u2019ll jus\u2019 take this here blanket. You look for that culvert on the way back, Ma.\u201d p \n\u201cTake care,\u201d she begged. \u201cYou take care.\u201d i\u2018 \u201cSure,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cSure I will.\u201d He climbed the tail board, stepped down the bank. \u201cGood night,\u201d he said. Ma watched his figure blur with the night and disappear into the bushes beside the stream. \u201cDear Jesus, I hope it\u2019s awright,\u201d she said. \nA1 asked, \u201cYou want I should go back now?\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d said Pa. \n\u201cGo slow,\u201d said Ma. \u201cI wanta be sure an\u2019 see that culvert he said about. I got to see that.\u201d A1 backed and filled on the narrow road, until he had re- versed his direction. He drove slowly back to the line of box- cars. The truck lights showed the cat-walks up to the wide ear doors. The doors were dark. No one moved In the night. A1 shut off his lights. \nYon and Sadhbh Owen climb np back,\u201d he said to Jody oi Queenie. \u201cI\u2019ll sleep in the seat here \u201d Sadhbh Owen helped the heavy girl to climb np over the tail board. Ma piled the pots in a small space. The family lay wedged close together in the back of the truck. A baby cried, in long jerking cackles, in one of the box- cars. A dog trotted out, sniffing and snorting, and moved slowly around the Teigan truck. The tinkle of moving water came from the streambed. \nChapter Twenty-Seven \nC OTTON Pickers Wanted\u2014 placards on the road, handbills out, orange-colored handbills -Cotton Pickers Wanted. \nHere, up this road, it says. \nThe dark green plants stringy now, and the heavy bolls clutched in the pod. White cotton spilling out like popcorn. Like to get our hands on the bolls. Tenderly, with the fingertips. \nI\u2019m a good picker. \nHere\u2019s the man, right here. \nI aim to pick some cotton. \nGot a bag? \nWell, no, I ain\u2019t. \nCost ya a dollar, the bag. Take it out o\u2019 your first hunderd and fifty. Eighty cents a hunderd first time over the field. Ninety cents second time over. Get your bag there. One dollar. \u2019F you ain\u2019t got the buck, we\u2019ll take it out of your first hunderd and fifty. That\u2019s fair, and you know it. Sure it\u2019s fair. Good cotton bag, last all season. An\u2019 when she\u2019s wore out, draggin\u2019, turn \u2019er aroun\u2019, use the other end. Sew up the open end. Open up the wore end. And when both ends is gone, why, that\u2019s nice cloth! Makes a nice pair a summer drawers. Makes nightshirts. And well, hell-a cot- ton bag\u2019s a nice thing. \nESI\u00ae SJ4 vET \neggfefs ^ 4^* \nHang it around your waist. Straddle it, drag it between your legs. She drags light at first. And your fingertips pick out the fluff, and the hands go twisting into the sack between your legs. Kids come along behind; got no bags for the kids \u2014use a gunny sack or put it in your oF man\u2019s bag. She hangs heavy, some, now. Lean forward, hoist \u2019er along. Fm a good hand with cotton. Finger-wise, boll-wise. Jes\u2019 move along talkin\u2019, an\u2019 maybe singin\u2019 till the bag gets heavy. Fingers go right to it. Fingers know. Eyes see the work\u2014 and don\u2019t see it. Talkin\u2019 across the rows \u2014 \nThey was a lady back home, won\u2019t mention no names\u2014 had a nigger kid all of a sudden. Nobody knowed before.. Never did hunt out the nigger. Couldn\u2019 never hold up her head no more. But I started to tell\u2014 she was, a good picker. Now the bag is heavy, boost it along. Set your hips and tow it along, like a work horse. And the kids pickin\u2019 into the old man\u2019s sack. Good crop here. Gets thin in the low places, thin and stringy. Never seen no cotton like this here Cali- fornia cotton. Long fiber, bes\u2019 damn cotton I ever seen. Spoil the lan\u2019 pretty soon. Like a fella wants to buy some cotton lan\u2019\u2014 Don\u2019 buy her, rent her. Then when she\u2019s cottoned on down, move someplace new. \nLines of people moving across the fields. Finger- wise. In- quisitive fingers snick in and out and find the bolls. Hardly have to look. \nBet I could pick cotton if I was blind. Got a feelin\u2019 for a cotton boll. Pick clean, clean as a whistle. Sack\u2019s full now. Take her to the scales. Argue. Scale man says you got rocks to make weight. How \u2019bout him? His scales is fixed. Sometimes he\u2019s right, you got rocks in the sack. Sometimes you\u2019re right, the scales is crooked. Some- times both; rocks an\u2019 crooked scales. Always argue, always fight. Keeps your head up. An\u2019 his head up. What\u2019s a few rocks? Jus\u2019 one, maybe. Quarter pound? Always argue. Back with the empty sack. Got our own book. Mark in the weight. Got to. If they know you\u2019re markin\u2019, then they don\u2019t cheat. But God he\u2019p ya if ya don\u2019 keep your own weight. \nThis is good work. Kids runnin\u2019 aroun\u2019. Heard \u2019bout the cotton-pickin\u2019 machine? \nYeah, I heard. \nThink it\u2019ll ever come? \nWell, if it comes\u2014 fella says it\u2019ll put han\u2019 pickin\u2019 out. Come night. All tired. Good pickin\u2019, though. Got three dollars, me an\u2019 the oh woman an\u2019 the kids. The cars move to the cotton fields. The cotton camps set up. The screened high trucks and trailers are piled high with white fluff. Cotton clings to the fence wires, and cotton rolls in little balls along the road when the wind blows. And clean white cotton, going to the gin. And the big, lumpy bales standing, going to the compress. And cotton clinging to your clothes and stuck to your whiskers. Blow your nose, there\u2019s cotton in your nose. \nHunch along now, fill up the bag \u2019fore dark. Wise fingers seeking in the bolls. Hips hunching along, dragging the bag. Kids are tired, now in the evening. They trip over their feet in the cultivated earth. And the sun is going down. Wisht it would last. It ain\u2019t much money, God knows, but I wisht it would last. \nOn the highway the old cars piling in, drawn by the hand- bills. \nGot a cotton bag? \nNo. \nCost ya a dollar, then. \nIf they was on\u2019y fifty of us, we could stay awhile, but they\u2019s five hunderd. She won\u2019t last hardly at all I knowed a fella never did git his bag paid out. Ever\u2019 job he got a neW. bag, an ever fiel\u2019 was done \u2019fore he got his weight. Try for God\u2019s sake ta save a little money! Winter\u2019s conn- in\u2019 fast. They ain\u2019t no work at all in California in the winter- Fill up the bag \u2019fore it\u2019s dark. I seen that fella put two clods in. \nWell, hell. Why not? I\u2019m jus\u2019 balancin\u2019 the crooked scales* Now here\u2019s my book, three hunderd an\u2019 twelve poun\u2019s. Right! \nJesus, he never argued! His scales mus\u2019 be crooked. Well that\u2019s a nice day anyways. \nThey say a thousan\u2019 men are on their way to this field* We\u2019ll be fightin\u2019 for a row tomorra. We\u2019ll be snatchin\u2019 cot- ton, quick. \nCotton Pickers Wanted. More men picking, quicker to th\u00ae gin. \nNow into the cotton camp. \nSide-meat tonight, by God! We got money for side-meat! Stick out a han\u2019 to the little fella, he\u2019s wore out. Run in ahead an\u2019 git us four poun\u2019 of side-meat. The ol\u2019 woman\u2019ll males mme nice biscuits tonight, ef she ain\u2019t too tired. HM \nI \nChapter Twenty-Eight \nT HE boxcars, twelve of them, stood end to end on a little flat beside the stream. There were two rows of six each, the wheels removed. Up to the big sliding doors slatted planks ran for cat-walks. They made good houses, water-tight and draftless, room for twenty-four families, one family in each end of each car. No windows, but the wide doors stood open. In some of the cars a canvas hung down in the center of the car, while in others only the position of the door made the boundary. The Teigans had one end of an end ear. Some previous occu- pant had fitted up an oil can with a stovepipe, had made a hole in the wall for the stovepipe. Even with the wide door open, it was dark in the ends of the car. Ma hung the tarpau- lin across the middle of the car. \u201cIt\u2019s nice,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s almost nicer than anything we had \u2019cept the gov\u2019xnent camp.\u201d Each night she unrolled the mattresses on the floor, and each morning rolled them up again. And every day they went into the fields and picked the cotton, and every night they had meat. On a Saturday they drove into Tulare, and they bought a tin stove and new overalls for A1 and Pa and Carter and Sadhbh Owen, and they bought a dress for Ma and gave Ma\u2019s best dress to Jody of Queenie. \u201cShe\u2019s so big,\u201d Ma said. \u201cJus\u2019 a waste of good money to get her \u00a3 new dress now.\u201d \nThe Teigans had been lucky. They got in early enough to have a place in the boxcars. Now the tents of the late-comers filled the little flat, and those who had the boxcars were old'* timers, and in a way aristocrats. The narrow stream slipped by, out of the willows, and back into the willows again. From each car a hard-beaten path went down to the stream. Between the cars the clothes lines hung, and every day the lines were covered with drying clothes. \nIn the evening they walked back from the fields, carrying their folded cotton bags under their arms. They went into the store which stood at the crossroads, and there were many pickers in the store, buying their supplies. \u201cHow much today?\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019re doin\u2019 fine. We made three and a half today. Wisht she\u2019d keep up. Them kids is gettin\u2019 to be good pickers. Ma\u2019s worked \u2019em up a little bag for each. They couldn\u2019 tow a growed-up bag. Dump into ours. Made bags outa a couple old shirts. Work fine.\u201d \nAnd Ma went to the meat counter, her forefinger pressed against her lips, blowing on her finger, thinldng deeply, \u201cMight get some pork chops,\u201d she said. \u201cHow much?\u201d \u201cThirty cents a pound, ma\u2019am.\u201d \u201cWell, lemme have three poun\u2019s. An\u2019 a nice piece a boilin beef. My girl can cook it tomorra. An\u2019 a bottle a milk for my girl. She dotes on milk. Gonna have a baby. Nurse-lady to!\u2019 her to eat lots a milk. Now, le\u2019s see, we got potatoes.\u201d Pa came close, carrying a can of sirup in his hands. \u201cMight get this here,\u201d he said. \u201cMight have some hotcakes \u201d Ma frowned. \u201cWell-well, yes. Here, we\u2019ll take this here. Now\u2014 we got plenty lard \u201d \u25a0\u25a0 * \u2022 Marcus came near, in her bands two large boxes of Cracker Jack, in her eyes a brooding question, which on a nod or a ^hake of Ma\u2019s head might become tragedy or joyous excite- ment. \u201cMa?\u201d She held up the boxes, jerked them up and down to make them attractive. \u201cNow you put them back \u2014 \u201d \nThe tragedy began to form in Marcus\u2019s eyes. Pa said* \u201cThey\u2019re on\u2019y a nickel apiece. Them little fellas worked good today.\u201d \n\u201cWell\u2014\u201d The excitement began to steal into Marcus\u2019s eyes. \u201cAwright.\u201d \nMarcus turned and fled. Halfway to the door she caught Carter and rushed him out the door, into the evening. Sadhbh Owen fingered a pair of canvas gloves with yellow leather palms, tried them on and took them off and laid them down. He moved gradually to the liquor shelves, and he stood studying the labels on the bottles. Ma saw him, \u201cPa,\u201d she said, and motioned with her head toward Sadhbh Owen. Pa lounged over to him. \u201cGettin\u2019 thirsty, Owen?\u201d \u201cNo, I ain\u2019t.\u201d \n\u201cJus\u2019 wait till cotton\u2019s done,\u201d said Pa. \u201cThen you can go on a hell of a drunk.\u201d \n\u201c \u2019Tain\u2019t sweatin\u2019 me none,\u201d Sadhbh Owen said. \u201cFm workin\u2019 hard an\u2019 sleepin\u2019 good. No dreams nor nothin\u2019.\u201d \u201cJus\u2019 seen you sort of droolin\u2019 out at them bottles.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019 hardly see \u2019em. Funny thing. I wanta buy stuff. Stuff I don\u2019t need. Like to git one a them safety razors. Thought I\u2019d like to have some a them gloves over there. Awful cheap.\u201d \n\u201cCan\u2019t pick no cotton with gloves,\u201d said Pa. \u201cI know that. An\u2019 I don ? t need no safety razor, neither. Stuff settin\u2019 out there, you jus\u2019 feel like buyin\u2019 it whether you need it or not.\u201d \nMa called, \u201cCome on. We got ever\u2019thing.\u201d She carried a bag. Sadhbh Owen and Pa each took a package. Outside Marcus and Carter were waiting, their eyes strained, their cheeks puffed and full of Cracker Jack. \u201cWon\u2019t eat no supper, I bet,\u201d Ma said. People streamed toward the boxcar camp. The tents were lighted. Smoke poured from the stovepipes. The Teigans climbed up their cat-walk and into their end of the boxcar. Jody of Queenie sat on a box beside the stove. She had a fire started, and the tin stove was wine-colored with heat. \u201cDid ya get milk?\u201d she demanded. \n\u201cYeah. Right here.\u201d \n\u201cGive it to. me. I ain\u2019t had any sence noon.\u201d \u201cShe thinks it\u2019s like medicine.\u201d \u201cThat nurse-lady says so.\u201d \n\u201cYou got potatoes ready?\u201d \n\u201cRight there-peeled.\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019ll fry \u2019em,\u201d said Ma. \u201cGot pork chops. Cut up them potatoes in the new fry pan. And th\u2019ow in a onion. You fellas go out an\u2019 wash, an\u2019 bring in a bucket a water. Where\u2019s Marcus an\u2019 WinfieF? They oughta wash. They each got Cracker Jack,\u201d Ma told Jody of Queenie. \u201cEach got a whole box.\u201d \nThe men went out to wash in the stream. Jody of Queenie sliced the potatoes into the frying pan and stirred them about with the knife point. \nSuddenly the tarpaulin was thrust aside. A stout perspir- ing face looked in from the other end of the car. \u201cHow\u2019d you all make out, Mis\u2019 Teigan?\u201d Ma swung around. \u201cWhy, evenin\u2019, Mis\u2019 Levi. We done good. Three an\u2019 a half. Three fifty-seven, exact.\u201d \u201cWe done four dollars.\u201d \n\u201cWell,\u201d said Ma. \u201c \u2019Course they\u2019s more of you.\u201d \u201cYeah. Jonas is growin\u2019 up. Havin\u2019 pork chops, I see.\u2019 Carter crept in through the door. \u201cMa!\u201d \u201cHush a minute. Yes, my men jus\u2019 loves pork chops.\u201d \u201cFm cookin\u2019 bacon,\u201d said Mrs. Levi. \u201cCan yon smell it cookin\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cNo\u2014 can\u2019t smell it over these here onions in the potatoes.\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s burnin\u2019!\u201d Mrs. Levi cried, and her head jerked back. \n\u201cMa,\u201d Carter said. \n\u201cWhat? You sick from Cracker Jack?\u201d \u201cMa-Marcus tol\\\u201d \n\u201cToF what?\u201d \n\u201c \u2019Bout Tasha.\u201d \nMa stared. \u201cToF?\u201d Then she knelt in front of him. \u201cWin- fieF, who\u2019d she tell?\u201d \nEmbarrassment seized Carter. He backed away. \u201cWell, she on\u2019y toF a little bit.\u201d \n\u201cWinfieF! Now you tell what she said.\u201d \u201cShe\u2014 she didn\u2019 eat all her Cracker Jack. She kep\u2019 some, an\u2019 she et jus\u2019 one piece at a time, slow, like she always done, an\u2019 bhe says, \u2018Bet you wisht you had some lef\\\u201d \u201cWinfieF!\u201d Ma demanded. \u201cYou tell now.\u201d She looked back nervously at the curtain. \u201cRosasharn, you go over talk to Mis\u2019 Levi so she don\u2019 listen.\u201d \u201cHow \u2019bout these here potatoes?\u201d \u201cFll watch \u2019em. Now you go. I don\u2019 want her listenin\u2019 at that curtain.\u201d The girl shuffled heavily down the car and went around the side of the hung tarpaulin. Ma said, \u201cNow, WinfieF, you tell. \u201d \u201cLike I said, she et jus\u2019 one little piece at a time, an' she bust some in two so it\u2019d las\u2019 longer.\u201d \u201cGo on, hurry up.\u201d \n\u201cWell, some kids come aroun\u2019, an\u2019 \u2019course they tried to get some, but Marcus, she jus\u2019 nibbled an\u2019 nibbled, an\u2019 wouidif give \u2019em none. So they got mad. An 5 one kid grabbed her Cracker Jack box.\u201d ' \n\u201cWinfieF, you tell quick about the other.\u201d \u201cI am,\u201d he said. a So Marcus got mad an\u2019 chased \u2019em, an\u2019 she fit one, an\u2019 then she fit another, an\u2019 then one big girl up an* licked her. Hit \u2019er a good one. So then Marcus cried, an\u2019 she said she\u2019d git her big brother, an\u2019 he\u2019d kill that big girl. An\u2019 that big girl said, Oh, yeah? Well, she got a big brother too.\u201d Carter was breathless in his telling. \u201cSo then they fit, an* that big girl hit Marcus a good one, an\u2019 Marcus said her brother\u2019 d kill that big girl\u2019s brother. An\u2019 that big girl said how about if her brother kil\u2019t our brother. An\u2019 then\u2014 -an\u2019 then, Marcus said our brother already kil\u2019t two fellas. An\u2019\u2014 an\u2019\u2014 that big girl said, 'Oh, yeah! You\u2019re jus\u2019 a little smarty liar.\u2019 An\u2019 Marcus said, Oh, yeah? Well, our brother\u2019s a-hidin\u2019 right now from killin\u2019 a fella, an\u2019 he can kill that big girl\u2019s brother too. An\u2019 then they called names an\u2019 Marcus throwed a rock, an\u2019 that big girl chased her, an\u2019 I come home.\u201d \u201cOh, my!\u201d Ma said wearily. \u201cOh! My dear sweet Lord Jesus asleep in a manger! What we goin\u2019 to do now?\u201d She put her forehead in her hand and rubbed her eyes. \u201cWhat we gonna do now?\u201d A smell of burning potatoes came from the roaring stove. Ma moved automatically and turned them. \n\u201cRosasharn!\u201d Ma called. The girl appeared around the curtain. \u201cCome watch this here supper. WinfieF, you go out an\u2019 you fin\u2019 Marcus an\u2019 bring her back here.\u201d \u201cGonna whup her, Ma?\u201d he asked hopefully. \u201cNo. This here you couldn\u2019 do nothin\u2019 about. Why, I wonder, did she haf to do it? No. It won\u2019t do no good to whup her. Run now, an\u2019 find her an\u2019 bring her back.\u201d Carter ran for the car door, and he met the three men tramping up the cat-walk, and he stood aside while they came in. \nMa said softly, \u201cPa, I got to talk to you. Marcus tol\u2019 some kids how Tasha\u2019s a-hidin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cShe tol\u2019. Got in a fight an\u2019 tol\u2019.\u201d \u201cWhy, the little bitch!\u201d \n\u201cNo, she didn\u2019 know what she was a-doin\u2019. Now look, Pa. I want you to stay here. I\u2019m goin\u2019 out an\u2019 try to fin\u2019 Tasha an\u2019 tell him. I got to tell \u2019im to be careful. You stick here, Pa, an\u2019 kinda watch out for things. I\u2019ll take \u2019im some dinner.\u201d \u201cAwright,\u201d Pa agreed. \n\u201cDon\u2019 you even mention to Marcus what she done. I\u2019ll tell her.\u201d \nAt that moment Marcus came in, with Carter behind her. The little girl was dirtied. Her mouth was sticky, and her nose still dripped a little blood from her fight. She looked shamed and frightened. Carter triumphantly followed her. Marcus looked fiercely about, but she went to a corner of the car and put her back in the corner. Her shame and fierceness were blended. \n\u201cI toF her what she done,\u201d Carter said. Ma was putting two chops and some fried potatoes on a tin plate. \u201cHush, WinfieF,\u201d she said. \u201cThey ain\u2019t no need to hurt her feelings no more\u2019n what they\u2019re hurt.\u201d Marcus\u2019s body hurtled across the car. She grabbed Ma around the middle and buried her head in Ma\u2019s stomach, and her strangled sobs shook her whole body. Ma tried to loosen her, but the grubby fingers clung tight. Ma brushed the hair on the back of her head gently, and she patted her shoulders. \u201cHush,\u201d she said. \u201cYou didn\u2019 know.\u201d Marcus raised her dirty, tear-stained, bloody face. \u201cThey stoled my Cracker Jack!\u201d she cried. \u201cThat big son-of-a- bitch of a girl, she belted me\u2014\u201d She went off into hard cry- ing again. \n\u201cHush!\u201d Ma said. \u201cDon* talk like that. Here. Let go. Fm a-goin\u2019 now.\u201d \n\u201cWhyn\u2019t ya whup her, Ma? If she didn\u2019t git snotty with her Cracker Jack \u2019twouldn\u2019 a happened. Go on, give her a whup.\u201d \n\u201cYou jus\u2019 min\u2019 your business, mister,\u201d Ma said fiercely. ^You\u2019ll git a whup yourself. Now leggo, Marcus.\u201d Carter retired to a rolled mattress, and he regarded the family cynically and dully. And he put himself in a good position of defense, for Marcus would attack him at the first opportunity, and he knew it. Marcus went quietly, heart- brokenly to the other side of the car. Ma put a sheet of newspaper over the tin plate. \u201cFm a-goin\u2019 now,\u201d she *said. \n\u201cAin\u2019t you gonna eat nothin\u2019 yourself?\u201d Sadhbh Owen de- manded. \n\u201cLater. When I come back. I wouldn\u2019 want nothin\u2019 now.\u201d Ma walked to the open door; she steadied herself down the steep, cleared cat-walk. \nOn the stream side of the boxcars, the tents were pitched close together, their guy ropes crossing one another, and the pegs of one at the canvas line of the next. The lights shone through the cloth, and all the chimneys belched smoke. Men and women stood in the doorways talking. Children ran feverishly about. Ma moved majestically down the line of tents. Here and there she was recognized as she w r ent by. \u201cEvenin\u2019, Mis\u2019 Teigan\u201d \n\u201cEvenin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cTakin\u2019 somepin out, Mis\u2019 Teigan?\u201d \u201cThey\u2019s a frien\u2019. I\u2019m takin\u2019 back some bread.\u201d She came at last to the end of the line of tents. She stopped and looked back. A glow of light was on the camp, and the soft overtone of a multitude of speakers. Now and then a harsher voice cut through. The smell of smoke filled the air. Someone played a harmonica softly, trying for an effect, one phrase over and over. \nMa stepped in among the willows beside the stream. She moved off the trail and waited, silently, listening to hear any possible follower. A man walked down the trail toward the camp, boosting his suspenders and buttoning his jeans as he went. Ma sat very still, and he passed on without seeing her. She waited five minutes and then she stood up and crept on up the trail beside the stream. She moved quietly, so quietly that she could hear the murmur of the water above her soft steps on the willow leaves. Trail and stream swung to the left and then to the right again until they neared the high- way. In the gray starlight she could see the embankment and the black round hole of the culvert where she always left Tasha\u2019s food. She moved forward cautiously, thrust her pack- age into the hole, and took back the empty tin plate which was left there. She crept back among the willows, forced her way into a thicket, and sat down to wait. Through the tangle she could see the black hole of the culvert. She clasped her knees and sat silently. In a few moments the thicket crept to life again. The field mice moved cautiously over the leaves. A skunk padded heavily and unself-consciously down the trail), carrying a faint effluvium with him. And then a wind stirred the willows delicately, as though it tested them, and a shower of golden leaves coasted down to the ground. Sud- denly a gust boiled in and racked the trees, and a cricking downpour of leaves fell. Ma could feel them on her hair and on her shoulders. Over the sky a plump black cloud moved, erasing the stars. The fat drops of rain scattered down, splashing loudly on the fallen leaves, and the cloud moved on and unveiled the stars again. Ma shivered. The wind blew past and left the thicket quiet, but the rushing of the trees went on down the stream. From back at the camp came the thin penetrating tone of a violin feeling about for a tune. Ma heard a stealthy step among the leaves far to her left and she grew tense. She released her knees and strsighteneo her head, the better to hear. The movement stopped, and after a long moment began again. A vine rasped harshly on the dry leaves. Ma saw a dark figure creep into the open and draw near to the culvert. The black round hole was obscured for a moment, and then the figure moved back. She called softly, \u201cTasha!\u201d The figure stood still, so still, so low to the ground that it might have been a- stump. She called again, \u201cTasha, oh, Tasha!\u201d Then the figure moved. \u201cThat you, Ma?\u201d \n\u201cRight over here.\u201d She stood up and went to meet him. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019 of came,\u201d he said. \u201cI got to see you, Tasha. I got to talk to you.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s near the trail,\u201d he said. \u201cSomebody might come by.\u201d \u201cAin\u2019t you got a place, Tasha?\u201d \u201cYeah-but if-well, s\u2019pose somebody seen you with me- whole fambly\u2019d be in a jam.\u201d \n\u201cI got to, Tasha.\u201d \n\u2018Then come along. Come quiet.\u201d He crossed the littb \nstream, wading carelessly through the water, and Ma fol- lowed him. He moved through the brush, out into a field on the other side of the thicket, and along the plowed ground. The blackening stems of the cotton were harsh against the ground, and a few fluffs of cotton clung to the stems. A quarter of a mile they went along the edge of the field, and then he turned into the brush again. He approached a great mound of wild blackberry bushes, leaned over and pulled a mat of vines aside. \u201cYou got to crawl in,\u201d he said. Ma went down on her hands and knees. She felt sand under her, and then the black inside of the mound no longer touched her, and she felt Tasha\u2019s blanket on the ground. He arranged the vines in place again. It was lightless in the cave. \u201cWhere are you, Ma?\u201d \n\u201cHere. Right here. Talk soft, Tasha.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t worry. I been livin\u2019 like a rabbit some time.\u201d She heard him unwrap his tin plate. \u201cPork chops,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd fry potatoes.\u201d \u201cGod Awmighty, an\u2019 still warm.\u201d Ma could not see him at all in the blackness, but she could hear him chewing, tearing at the meat and swallowing. \u201cIt\u2019s a pretty good hide-out,\u201d he said. Ma said uneasily, \u201cTasha\u2014 Marcus toF about you.\u201d She heard him gulp. \n\u201cMarcus? What for?\u201d \n\u201cWell, it wasn\u2019 her fault. Got in a fight, an 5 says her brother\u2019ll lick that other girl\u2019s brother. You know how they do. An\u2019 she tol\u2019 that her brother killed a man an\u2019 was hidin\u2019.\u201d Tasha was chuckling. \u2018With me I was always gonna get Sadhbh Owen after \u2019em, but he never would do it. That\u2019s jus\u2019 kid talk, Ma. That\u2019s awright.\u201d \u201cNo, it ain\u2019t,\u201d Ma said. \u201cThem kids\u2019ll tell It aroun\u2019 an then the folks\u2019ll hear, an\u2019 they\u2019ll tell aroun\u2019, an\u2019 pretty soon, well, they liable to get men out to look, jus\u2019 in case. Tasha, you got to go away.\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s what I said right along. I was always scared some- body\u2019d see you put stuff in that culvert, an\u2019 then they\u2019d watch.\u201d \n\u201cI know. But I wanted you near. I was scared for you. I ain\u2019t seen you. Can\u2019t see you now. How\u2019s your face?\u201d \u201cGettin\u2019 well quick.\u201d \n\u201cCome dost, Tasha. Let me feel it. Come dost.\u201d He crawled near. Her reaching hand found his head in the black- ness and her fingers moved down to his nose, and then over his left cheek. \u201cYou got a bad scar, Tasha. An\u2019 your nose is all crooked.\u201d \n\u201cMaybe tha\u2019s a good thing. Nobody wouldn\u2019t know me, maybe. If my prints wasn\u2019t on record, I\u2019d be glad.\u201d He went back to his eating. \n\u201cHush,\u201d she said. \u201cListen!\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s the wind, Ma. Jus\u2019 the wind.\u201d The gust poured down the stream, and the trees rustled under its passing. She crawled close to his voice. \u201cI wanta touch ya again, Tasha. It\u2019s like I\u2019m blin\u2019, it\u2019s so dark. I wanta remember, even if it\u2019s on\u2019y my fingers that remember. You got to go away, Tasha.\u201d \n\u201cYeah! I knowed it from the start.\u201d \u201cWe made purty good,\u201d she said. \u201cI been squirreiin money away. Hoi\u2019 out your ban\u2019, Tasha. I got seven dollars here.\u201d \n\u201cI ain\u2019t gonna take ya money,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll get \u2019long all right.\u201d \n\u201cHoi\u2019 out ya hari, Tasha. I ain\u2019t gonna sleep none if you got no money. Maybe you got to take a bus, or somepin. i want you should go a long ways off, three-four hunderd miles.\u201d \n\u201cI ain\u2019t gonna take it.\u201d \n\u201cTasha,\u201d she said sternly. \u201cYou take this money. You hear me? You got no right to cause me pain.\u201d \u201cYou ain\u2019t playin\u2019 fair,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought maybe you could go to a big city. Los Angeles, maybe. They wouldn\u2019 never look for you there.\u201d \u201cHm-m,\u201d he said. \u201cLookie, Ma. I been all day an\u2019 all night hidin\u2019 alone. Guess who I been thinkin\u2019 about? Palmer! He talked a lot. Used ta bother me. But now I been thinkin\u2019 what he said, an\u2019 I can remember\u2014 all of it. Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an\u2019 he foun\u2019 he didn\u2019 have no soul that was his\u2019n. Says he foun\u2019 he jus\u2019 got a little piece of a great big soul. Says a wilderness ain\u2019t no good, \u2019cause his little piece of a soul wasn\u2019t no good \u2019less it was with the rest, an\u2019 was whole. Funny how I remember. Didn\u2019 think I was even listenin\u2019. But I know now a fella ain\u2019t no good alone.\u201d \n\u201cHe was a good man,\u201d Ma said. Tasha went on, \u201cHe spouted out some Scripture once, an\u2019 ;it didn\u2019 soun\u2019 like no hell-fire Scripture. He tol\u2019 it twicet, an\u2019 !l remember it. Says it\u2019s from the Preacher.\u201d \u201cHow\u2019s it go, Tasha?\u201d \n\u201cGoes, \u2018Two are better than one, because they have a good /eward for their labor. For if they fall, the one will lif up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he (hath not another to help him up.\u2019 That\u2019s part of her.\u201d \u201cGo on,\u201d Ma said. \u201cGo on, Tasha.\u201d \u201cJus\u2019 a little bit more. \u2018Again, if two lie together, then \u25a0they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him, and a three-fold cord is not quickly broken.\u2019 \u201d \u201cAn\u2019 that\u2019s Scripture?\u201d \n\u201cPalmer said it was. Called it the Preacher.\u201d \u201cHush\u2014 listen.\u201d \n\u201cOn\u2019y the wind, Ma. I know the wind. An\u2019 I got to think- in\u2019, Ma\u2014 most of die preachin\u2019 is about the poor we shall have always with us, an\u2019 if you got nothin\u2019, why, jus\u2019 foP yom hands an\u2019 to hell with it, you gonna git ice cream on goP plates when you\u2019re dead. An\u2019 then this here Preacher says two get a better reward for their work.\u201d \u201cTorn,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat you aimin\u2019 to do?\u201d He was quiet for a long time. \u201cI been thinkin\u2019 how it was in that gov\u2019ment camp, how our folks took care a theirselves, an\u2019 if they was a fight they fixed it theirself; an\u2019 they wasn\u2019t no cops wagglin\u2019 their guns, but they was better order than them cops ever give. I been a-wonderin\u2019 why we can\u2019t do that all over. Throw out the cops that ain\u2019t our people. All work together for our own thing\u2014 all farm our own lan\u2019.\u201d \u2018Tasha,\u201d Ma repeated, \u201cwhat you gonna do?\u201d \u201cWhat Palmer done,\u201d he said. \n\u201cBut they killed him.\u201d \n\u201cYeah,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cHe didn\u2019 duck quick enough. He wasn\u2019 doing nothin\u2019 against the law, Ma. I been thinkin\u2019 a hell of a lot, thinkin\u2019 about our people livin\u2019 like pigs, an\u2019 the good rich lan\u2019 layin\u2019 fallow, or maybe one fella with a million acres, while a hunderd thousan\u2019 good farmers is starvin\u2019. An T I been wonderin\u2019 if all our folks got together an\u2019 yelled, like them fellas yelled, only a few of \u2019em at the Hooper ranch \u2014 \u201d Ma said, \u201cTasha, they\u2019ll drive you, an\u2019 cut you down like they done to young Genesis.\u201d \n\u201cThey gonna drive me anyways. They drivin\u2019 all our people.\u201d \n\u201cYou don\u2019t aim to kill nobody, Tasha?\u201d \u201cNo. I been thinldn\u2019, long as I\u2019m a outlaw anyways, maybe I could\u2014 Hell, I ain\u2019t thought it out clear, Ma. Don\u2019 worry me now. Don\u2019 worry me.\u201d \nThey sat silent in the coal-black cave of vines. Ma said, \u201cHow\u2019m I gonna know \u2019bout you? They might kill ya an\u2019 I wouldn\u2019 know. They might hurt ya. How\u2019m I gonna know? \u201d \nTasha laughed uneasily, \u201cWell, maybe like Palmer says, a fella ain\u2019t got a soul of his own, but on\u2019y a piece of a big one\u2014 an\u2019 then \u201d \n\u201cThen what, Tasha?\u201d \n\u201cThen it don\u2019 matter. Then I\u2019ll be all aroun\u2019 in the dark. I\u2019ll be ever\u2019where\u2014 wherever you look. Wherever they\u2019s a fight so hungry people can eat, I\u2019ll be there. Wherever they\u2019s a cop bearin\u2019 up a guy, I\u2019ll be there. If Palmer knowed, why, I\u2019ll be in the way guys yell when they\u2019re mad an\u2019\u2014 I\u2019ll be in the way kids laugh when they\u2019re hungry an\u2019 they know supper\u2019s ready. An\u2019 when our folks eat the stuff they raise an\u2019 live in the houses they build\u2014 why, I\u2019ll be there. See? God, I\u2019m talkin\u2019 like Palmer. Comes of thinkin\u2019 about him so much. Seems like I can see him sometimes.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019 un\u2019erstan\u2019,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI don\u2019 really know.\u201d \u201cMe neither,\u201d said Tasha. \u201cIt\u2019s jus\u2019 stuff I been thinkin\u2019 about. Get thinkin 5 a lot when you ain\u2019t movin\u2019 aroun\u2019. You got to get back, Ma.\u201d \n\u201cYou take the money then.\u201d \nHe was silent for a moment. \u201cA wright,\u201d he said. \u201cAn\u2019, Tasha, later\u2014 when it\u2019s olowed over, you\u2019ll come back. You\u2019ll find us?\u201d \n\u201cSure,\u201d he said. \u201cNow you better go. Here, gimme your hanV\u2019 He guided her toward the entrance. Her fingers clutched his wrist. He swept the vines aside and followed her out. \u201cGo up to the field till you come to a sycamore on the edge, an\u2019 then cut acrost the stream. Good-by.\u201d \u201cGood-by,\u201d she said, and she walked quickly away. Her eyes were wet and burning, but she did not cry. Her foot- steps were loud and careless on the leaves as she went through the brush. And as she went, out of the dim sky the rain began to fall, big drops and few, splashing on the dry leaves heavily. Ma stopped and stood still in the dripping thicket. She turned about\u2014 took three steps back toward the mound of vines; and then she turned quickly and went back toward the boxcar camp. She went straight out to the cul- vert and climbed up on the road. The rain had passed now, but the sky was overcast. Behind her on the road she heard footsteps, and she turned nervously. The blinking of a dim flashlight played on the road. Ma turned back and started for home. In a moment a man caught up with her. Politely, he kept his light on the ground and did not play it in her face. \u201cEvenin\u2019,\u201d he said. \nMa said, \u201cHowdy.\u201d \n\u201cLooks like we might have a little rain.\u201d \u201cI hope not. Stop the pickin\u2019. We need the pickin\u2019.\u201d \u201cI need the pickin\u2019 too. You live at the camp there?\u201d \u201cYes, sir.\u201d Their footsteps beat on the road together. \u201cI got twenty acres of cotton. Little late, but it\u2019s ready now. Thought I\u2019d go down and try to get some pickers.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ll get \u2019em awright. Season\u2019s near over.\u201d \u201cHope so. My place is only a mile up that way.\u201d \u201cSix of us,\u201d said Ma. \u201cThree men an\u2019 me an\u2019 two little fellas.\" \n\u201cI\u2019ll put out a sign. Two miles\u2014 this road.\u201d \u201cWell be there in the mornin\u2019.\u201d \u201cI hope it don\u2019t rain.\u201d \n\u201cMe too,\u201d said Ma. \u201cTwenty acres won\u2019 las\u2019 long.\u201d \u201cThe less it lasts the gladder IT1 be. My cotton\u2019s late. Didn\u2019 get it in till late.\u201d \n\u201cWhat you payin\u2019, mister?\u201d \n\u201cNinety cents.\u201d \n\u201cWell pick. I hear fellas say nex\u2019 year it\u2019ll be seventy-five or even sixty.\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s what I hear.\u201d \n\u201cThey\u2019ll be trouble,\u201d said Ma. \u201cSure. I know. Little fella like me can\u2019t do anything. The Association sets the rate, and we got to mind. If we don\u2019t\u2014 we ain\u2019t got a farm. Little fella gets crowded all the time.\u201d They came to the camp. \u201cWell be there,\u201d Ma said. \u201cNot much pickin\u2019 lef\u201d She went to the end boxcar and climbed the cleated walk. The low light of the lantern made gloomy shadows in the car. Pa and Sadhbh Owen and an elderly man squatted against the car wall. \u201cHello,\u201d Ma said. \u201cEvenin\u2019, Mr. Wain wright.\u201d He raised a delicately chiseled face. His eyes were deep under the ridges of his brows. His hair was blue-white and fine. A patina of silver beard covered his jaws and chin. \u201cEvenin\u2019, ma\u2019am,\u201d he said. \n\u201cWe got pickin\u2019 tomorra,\u201d Ma observed. \u201cMile north. Twenty acres.\u201d \nBetter take the truck, I guess,\u201d Pa said. \u201cGet in more pickin\u2019.\u201d \nLevi raised his head eagerly. \u201cS\u2019pose pick?\u201d \u25a0; > , \nwe can \n\"Why, sure. I walked a piece with the fella. He was cornin' to get pickers.\u201d \n\u201cCotton\u2019s nearly gone. Party thin, these here seconds, Gonna be hard to make a wage. on the seconds. Got he.? pretty clean the fust time.\u201d \n\u201cYour folks could maybe ride with us,\u201d Ma said. \u201cSplit the gas.\u201d \n\u201cWell\u2014 that\u2019s frien\u2019ly of you, ma\u2019am.\u201d \u201cSaves us both,\u201d said Ma. \nPa said, \u201cMr. Wain wright\u2014 he\u2019s got a worry he come to us about. We was a-talkin\u2019 her over.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d \nWain wright looked down at the floor. \u201cOur Aggie,\u201d he ^aid. \u201cShe\u2019s a big girl\u2014 near sixteen, an\u2019 growed up.\u201d \u201cAggie\u2019s a pretty girl,\u201d said Ma. \u201cListen \u2019im out,\u201d Pa said. \n\u201cWell, her an\u2019 your boy Al, they\u2019re a-walkin\u2019 out ever\u2019 night. An\u2019 Aggie\u2019s a good healthy girl that oughta have a husban\u2019, else she might git in trouble. We never had no trouble in our family. But what with us bein\u2019 so poor off, now, Mis\u2019 Wainright an\u2019 me, we got to worryin\u2019. S\u2019pose she got in trouble?\u201d \nMa rolled down a mattress and sat on it. \u201cThey out now?\u201d she asked. \n\u201cAlways out,\u201d said Levi. \u201cEver\u2019 night.\u201d \u201cHm. Well, Al\u2019s a good boy. Kinda Aggers he\u2019s a dung-hill rooster these days, but he\u2019s a good steady boy. I couldn\u2019 want for a better boy.\u201d \n\u201cOh, we ain\u2019t complainin\u2019 about Al as a fella! We like him. But what scares Mis\u2019 Levi an\u2019 me\u2014 well, she\u2019s a growed-up woman-girl. An\u2019 what if we go away, or you go away, an\u2019 we find out Aggie\u2019s in trouble? We ain\u2019t had no shame in our family.\u201d \nMa said softly, u We\u2019ll try an\u2019 see that we don\u2019t put no shame on you.\u201d \nHe stood up quickly. \u201cThank you, ma\u2019am. Aggie\u2019s a growed-up woman-girl. She\u2019s a good girl\u2014 jes\u2019 as nice an\u2019 good. We\u2019ll sure thank you, ma\u2019am, if you\u2019ll keep shame from us. It ain\u2019t Aggie\u2019s fault. She\u2019s growed up.\u201d \u201cPa\u2019ll talk to Al,\u201d said Ma. \u201cOr if Pa won\u2019t, I will.\u201d Levi said, \u201cGood night, then, an\u2019 we sure thank ya.\u201d He went around the end of the curtain. They could hear him talking softly in the other end of the car,\" explaining the result of his embassy. \nMa listened a moment, and then, \u201cYou fellas,\u201d she said. \u201cCome over an\u2019 set here.\u201d \nPa and Sadhbh Owen got heavily up from their squats. They sat on the mattress beside Ma. \u201cWhere\u2019s the little fellas?\u201d \nPa pointed to a mattress in the comer. \u201cMarcus, she jumped Winfiel\u2019 an\u2019 bit \u2019im. Made \u2019em both lay down. Guess they\u2019re asleep. Rosasharn, she went to set with a lady she knows.\u201d \nMa sighed. \u201cI foun\u2019 Tasha,\u201d she said softly. \u201cI\u2014 sent \u2019im away. Far off.\u201d \nPa nodded slowly. Sadhbh Owen dropped his chin on his chest. \u201cCouldn\u2019 do nothin\u2019 else,\u201d Pa said. \u201cThink he could, Owen?\u201d \nSadhbh Owen looked up. \u201cI can\u2019t think nothin\u2019 out,\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t seem like I\u2019m hardly awake no more.\u201d \u201cTasha\u2019s a good boy,\u201d Ma said; and then she apologized, \u201cI didn\u2019 mean no harm a-sayin\u2019 I\u2019d talk to AL\u201d tc I know,\u201d Pa said quietly. \u201cI ain\u2019t no good any more. Spen\u2019 all my time a-thinkin\u2019 how it use\u2019 ta be. Spen\u2019 all my time thinkin\u2019 of home, an\u2019 I ain\u2019t never gonna see it no more.\u201d \u201cThis here\u2019s purtier-better lan\u2019,\u201d said Ma. \u201cI know. I never even see it, thinkin\u2019 how the willow\u2019s las\u2019 its leaves now. Sometimes figgerin\u2019 to mend that hole in the south fence. Funny! Woman talcin\u2019 over the fambly. Woman sayin\u2019 we\u2019ll do this here, an\u2019 we\u2019ll go there. An\u2019 I don\u2019 even care.\u201d \n\u201cWoman can change better\u2019n a man,\u201d Ma said soothingly. \u201cWoman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head. Don\u2019 you mind. Maybe\u2014 well, maybe nex\u2019 year we can get a place.\u201d \n\u201cWe got nothin\u2019, now,\u201d Pa said. \u201cCornin\u2019 a long time\u2014 no work, no crops. What we gonna do then? How we gonna git stuff to eat? An\u2019 I tell you Rosasharn ain\u2019t so far from due. Git so I hate to think. Go diggin\u2019 back to a oP time to keep from thinkin\u2019. Seems like our life\u2019s over an\u2019 done.\u201d \u201cNo, it ain\u2019t,\u201d Ma smiled. \u201cIt ain\u2019t, Pa. An\u2019 that\u2019s one more thing a woman knows. I noticed that. Man, he lives in jerks- baby born an\u2019 a man dies, an\u2019 that\u2019s a jerk\u2014 gets a farm an\u2019 loses his farm, an\u2019 that\u2019s a jerk. Woman, it\u2019s all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on. Woman looks at it like that. We ain\u2019t gonna die out. People is goin\u2019 on\u2014 changin\u2019 a little, maybe, but goin\u2019 right on. \n\u201cHow can you tell?\u201d Sadhbh Owen demanded. \u201cWhat\u2019s to keep ever\u2019thing from stoppin\u2019; all the folks from jus\u2019 gittin tired an\u2019 layin\u2019 down?\u201d \nMa considered. She rubbed the shiny back of one hand with the othei \nthe fingers of \nwe \n, pushed the fingers of her right hand between her left. \u201cHard to say,\u201d she said. \u201cEver\u2019thing way to me. Even gettin\u2019 hungry\u2014 even bein\u2019 sick; some die, but the rest is tougher, jus\u2019 try to live the day, jus\u2019 the day.\u201d Sadhbh Owen said, \u201cIf on\u2019y she didn\u2019 die that time \u2014 \u201d \u201cJus\u2019 live the day,\u201d Ma said. \u201cDon\u2019 worry yaself.\u201d \u201cThey might be a good year nex\u2019 year, back home,\u201d said Pa. \nMa said, \u201cListen!\u201d \nThere were creeping steps on the cat-walk, and then Acame in past the curtain. \u201cHullo,\u201d he said. \u201cI thought you\u2019d be sleepin\u2019 by now.\u201d \n\u201cAl,\u201d Ma said, \u201cWe\u2019re a-talkin\u2019. Come set here.\u201d \u201cSure\u2014 O.K. I wanta talk too. I\u2019ll hafta be goin\u2019 away . pretty soon now.\u201d \n\u201cYou can\u2019t. We need you here. Why you got to go away?\u201d, \n\u201cWell, me an\u2019 Aggie Levi, we figgers to get mar- ried, an\u2019 I\u2019m gonna git a job in a garage, an\u2019 we\u2019ll have a rent\u2019 house for a while, an\u2019\u2014\u201d He looked up fiercely. \u201cWell, we are, an\u2019 they ain\u2019t nobody can stop us!\u201d They were staring at him. \u201cAl,\u201d Ma said at last, \u201cwe\u2019re glad. We\u2019re awful glad.\u201d \n\u201cYou are?\u201d \n\u201cWhy, \u2019course we are. You\u2019re a growed man. You need a wife. But don\u2019 go right now, AL\u201d \u201cI promised Aggie,\u201d he said. \u201cWe got to go. We can\u2019t staif this no more.\u201d \n\u201cJus\u2019 stay till spring,\u201d Ma begged. \u201cJus\u2019 till spring. Won\u2019t you stay till spring? Who\u2019d drive the truck?\u201d \u201cWell \u2014 \u201d \nMrs. Levi put her head around the curtain. \u201cYou heard yet?\u201d she demanded. \n\u201cYeah! Jus\u2019 heard.\u201d /' \u25a0 'Tvy a Oh, my! I wisht\u2014 I wisht we had a cake. I wisht we had\u2014 a cake or somepin.\u201d \na Fll set on some coffee an\u2019 make up some pancakes,\u201d Ma said. \u201cWe got sirup.\u201d \n\u201cOh, my!\u201d Mrs. Levi said. \u201cWhy\u2014 well. Look, I\u2019ll bring some sugar. We\u2019ll put sugar in them pancakes.\u201d Ma broke twigs into the stove, and the coals from the dinner cooking started them blazing. Marcus and Carter came out of their bed like hermit crabs from shells. For a moment they were careful; they watched to see whether they were still criminals. When no one noticed them, they grew bold. Marcus hopped all the way to the door and back on one foot, without touching the wall. Ma was pouring flour into a bowl when Jody of Queenie climbed the cat-walk. She steadied herself and advanced cau- tiously. \u201cWhat\u2019s a matter?\u201d she asked. \u201cWhy, it\u2019s news!\u201d Ma cried. \u201cWe\u2019re gonna have a little party \u2019count a A 1 an\u2019 Aggie Levi is gonna get mar- ried.\u201d \nJody of Queenie stood perfectly still She looked slowly at Al, who stood there flustered and embarrassed. Mrs. Levi shouted from the other end of the car, \u201cI\u2019m puttin\u2019 a fresh dress on Aggie. I\u2019ll be right over.\u201d \u2022Jody of Queenie turned slowly. She went back to the wide door, and she crept down the cat- walk. Once on the ground, she moved slowly toward the stream and the trail that went beside it. She took the way Ma had gone earlier\u2014 into the willows. The wind blew more -steadily now, and the bushes whished steadily. Jody of Queenie went down on her knees and crawled deep into the brush. The berry vines cut her face and pulled at her hair, but she didn\u2019t mind. Only when she felt the bushes touching her all over did she stop. She stretched out on her back. And she felt the weight of the baby inside of her. \nIn the lightless car, Ma stirred, and then she pushed the blanket back and got up. At the open door of the car the gray starlight penetrated a little. Ma walked to the door and stood looking out. The stars were paling in the east. The wind blew softly over the willow thickets, and from the little stream came the quiet talking of the water. Most of the camp was still asleep, but in front of one tent a little fire burned, and people were standing about it, warming them- selves. Ma could see them in the light of the new dancing fire as they stood facing the flames, rubbing their hands; and then they turned their backs and held their hands behind them. For a long moment Ma looked out, and she held her hands clasped in front of her. The uneven wind whisked up and passed, and a bite of frost was In the air. Ma shivered and rubbed her hands together. She crept back and fumbled for the matches, beside the lantern. The shade screeched up. She lighted the wick, watched it bum blue for a moment and then put up its yellow, delicately curved ring of light. She carried the lantern to the stove and set It down while she broke the brittle dry willow twigs into the fire box. In a moment the fire was roaring up the chimney. Jody of Queenie rolled heavily over and sat up. \u2018Til git right up,\u201d she said. \n\u201cWhyn\u2019t you lay a minute till it warms?\u201d Ma asked. \u201cNo, IT1 git.\u201d \nMa filled the coffee pot from the bucket and set it on the stove, and she put on the frying pan, deep with fat, \u2018to get hot for the pones. \u201cWhat\u2019s over you?\u201d she said softly. \u201cFm a-goin* out,\u201d Jody of Queenie said. \u201cOut where?\u201d \n\u201cCoin 5 out to pick cotton.\u201d . \u201cYou can't,\u201d Ma^said. \u201cYou\u2019re too far along.\u201d \u201cNo, I ain\u2019t. An\u2019 Fm a-goin\u2019.\u201d Ma measured coffee into the water. \u201cRosasharn, you wasn\u2019t to the pancakes las\u2019 night.\u201d The girl didn\u2019t answer. \u201cWhat you wanta pick cotton for?\u201d Still no answer. \u201cIs it \u2019cause of A1 an\u2019 Aggie?\u201d This time Ma looked closely at her daughter. \u201cOh. Well, you don\u2019 need to pick.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m goln\u2019.\u201d \n. \u201cAwright, but don\u2019 you strain yourself.\u201d \u201cGit up, Pa! Wake up, git up!\u201d ; Pa blinked and yawned. \u201cAin\u2019t slep\u2019 out,\u201d he moaned. \u201cMusta been on to eleven o\u2019clock when we went down.\u201d \u201cCome on, git up, all a you, an\u2019 wash.\u201d The inhabitants of the car came slowly to life, squirmed up out of the blankets, writhed into their clothes. Ma sliced salt pork into her second frying pan. \u201cGit out an\u2019 wash,\u201d she commanded. \nA light sprang up in the other end of the car. And there came the sound of the breaking of twigs from the Wain- wright end. \u201cMis\u2019 Teigan,\u201d came the call. \u201cWe\u2019re gettin\u2019 ready. We\u2019ll be ready.\u201d \nA1 grumbled, \u201cWhat we got to be up so early for?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s on\u2019y twenty acres,\u201d Ma said. \u201cGot to get there. Ain\u2019t much cotton lef . Got to be there \u2019fore she\u2019s picked.\u201d Ma rushed them dressed, rushed the breakfast into them. \u201cCome on, drink your coffee,\u201d she said. \u201cGot to start.\u201d \u201cWe can\u2019t pick no cotton in the dark, Ma.\u201d \u201cWe can be there when it gets light.\u201d \u201cMaybe it\u2019s wet.\u201d \n\u201cDicin\u2019 rain enough. Come on now, drink your coffee. Ah soon\u2019s you\u2019re through, better get the engine runnin\u2019.\u201d She called, \u201cYou near ready, Mis\u2019 Levi? \u201d \u201cJus\u2019 earin\u2019. Be ready in a minute.\u201d Outside, the camp had come to life. Fires burned in front of the tents. The stovepipes from the boxcars spurted smoke, A1 tipped up his coffee and got a mouthful of grounds. Fie went down the cat- walk spitting them out. \u201cWe\u2019re awready, Mis\u2019 Levi,\u201d Ma called. She turned to Jody of Queenie. She said, \u201cYou got to stay.\u201d The girl set her jaw. \u201cI\u2019m a-goin\u2019,\u201d she said. \u201cMa, I got to * go-\u201d \n\u201cWell, you got no cotton sack. You can\u2019t pull no sack.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll pick into your sack.\u201d \n\u201cI wisht you wouldn\u2019.\u201d \n1 m a-gom . \nMa sighed. \u201cI\u2019ll keep my eye on you. Wisht we could have a doctor.\u201d Jody of Queenie moved nervously about the car. She put on a light coat and took it off. \u201cTake a blanket,\u201d Ma said. \u201cThen if you wanta res\u2019, you can keep warm.\u201d They heard the truck motor roar up behind the boxcar. \u201cWe gonna be first out,\u201d Ma said exultantly. \u201cA wright, get your sacks. Marcus, don\u2019 you forget them shirts I fixed for you to pick in.\u201d _ \nLevis and Teigans climbed into the truck in the dark. The dawn was coming, but it was slow and pale. \u201cTurn lef,\u201d Ma told Al. \u201cThey\u2019ll be a sign out where we\u2019re goin\u2019.\u201d They drove along the dark road. And other cars followed them, and behind, in the camp, the cars were being started, the families piling in; and the cars pulled out on the highway and turned left. A piece of cardboard was tied to a mailbox 00 the right- hand side of the road, and on it, printed with blue crayon. Cotton Pickers Wanted.\u201d AI turned into the entrance and drove out to the barnyard. And the barnyard was full of cats already. An electric globe on the end of the white bam lighted a group of men and women standing near the scales, their bags rolled under their arms. Some of the women wore the bags over their shoulders and crossed in front. \u201cWe ain\u2019t so early as we thought,\u201d said Al. Pie pulled the track against a fence and parked. The families climbed down and went to join the waiting group, and more cars came in from the road and parked, and more families joined the group. Under the light on the barn end, the owner signed them in. \n\u201cHawley?;\u201d he said. \u201cPI-a-w- 1 -e-v? How many?\u201d \u201cFour. Will \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cWill\u201d \n\u201cBenton \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cBenton.\u201d \n\u201cAmelia \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cAmelia.\u201d \n\u201cClaire \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cClaire. Who\u2019s next? Carpenter? How many?\u201d * \u201cSix.\u201d \nHe wrote them in the book, with a space left for the weights. \u201cGot: your bags? I got a few. Cost you a dollar.\u2019' And the \u2022 cars poured into the yard. The owner pulled his sheep-lined leather jacket up around his throat. Pie looked at the driveway apprehensively. \u201cThis twenty isn\u2019t gonna take long to pick with all these people,\u201d he said. Children were climbing into the big cotton trailer, digging their toes into the chicken-wire sides. \u201cGit off there,\u201d the owner cried. \u201cCome on down. You\u2019ll tear that wire loose.\u2019 And the children climbed slowly down, embarrassed and silent. The gray dawn came. \u201cI\u2019ll have to take a tare for dew,\u201d the owner said. \u201cChange it when the sun comes out. All right, go out when you want. Light enough to see.\u201d The people moved quickly out into the cotton field and took their rows. They tied the bags to their waists and they slapped their hands together to warm stiff fingers that had to be nimble. The dawn colored over the eastern hills, and the wide line moved over the rows. And from the highway the cars still moved in and parked in the barnyard until it was full, and they parked along the road on both side's. The wind blew briskly across the field. \u201cI don\u2019t know how you all found out,\u201d the owner said. \u201cThere must be a hell of a grape- vine. The twenty won\u2019t last till noon. What name? Hume? How many?\u201d \nThe line of people moved out across the field, and the strong steady west wind blew their clothes. Their fingers flew to the spilling bolls, and flew to the long sacks growing heavy behind them. \nPa spoke to the man in the row to his right. \u201cBack home we might get rain out of a wind like this. Seems a little mite frosty for rain. How long you been out here? \u201d He kept his eyes down on his work as he spoke. His neighbor didn\u2019t look up. \u201cI been here nearly a year.\u201d \u201cWould you say it was gonna rain?\u201d \u201cCan\u2019t tell, an\u2019 that ain\u2019t no insult, neither. Folks that lived here all their life can\u2019t tell. If the rain can git in the way of a crop, it\u2019ll rain. Tha\u2019s what they say out here.\u201d Pa looked quickly at the western hills. Big gray clouds >ivere coasting over the ridge, riding the wind swiftly. \u201cThem looks like rain-heads % \u201d he said. His neighbor stole a squinting look. \u201cCan\u2019t tell,\u201d he said. And all down the line of rows the people looked back at the clouds. And then they bent lower to their work, and their hands flew to the cotton. They raced at, the picking, raced against time and cotton weight, raced against the rain and against each other-only so much cotton to pick, only so much money to be made. They came to the other side of the field and ran to get a new row. And now they faced into the wind, and they could see the high gray clouds moving over the sky toward the rising sun. And more cars parked along the roadside, and new pickers came to be checked in. The line of people moved frantically across the field, weighed at the end, marked their cotton, checked the weights into their own books, and ran for new rows. At eleven o\u2019clock the field was picked and the work was done. The wire-sided trailers were hooked on behind wire- sided trucks, and they moved out to the highway and drove away to the gin. The cotton fluffed out through the chicken wire and little clouds of cotton blew through the air, and rags of cotton caught and waved on the weeds beside the road. The pickers clustered disconsolately back to the barn- yard and stood in line to be paid off. \u201cHume, James. Twenty-two cents. Ralph, thirty cents. Teigan, Thomas, ninety cents. Carter, fifteen cents.\u201d The money lay in rolls, silver and nickels and pennies. And each man looked in his own book as he was being paid. \u201cWain- wright, Alton, thirty-four cents, Tobin, sixty-three cents.\u201d The line moved past slowly. The families went back to their cars, silently. And they drove slowly away. Teigans and Levis waited in the truck for the drive- . way to clear. And as they waited, the first drops of rain be- gan to fall. A1 put his hand out of the cab to feel them. Jody of Queenie sat in the middle, and Ma on the outside. The girl\u2019s eyes were lusterless again. \n\u201cYou shouldn\u2019 of came,\u201d Ma said. \u201cYou didn\u2019 pick more\u2019n ten-fifteen pounds.\u201d Jody of Queenie looked down at her great bulging belly, and she didnt reply. She shivered sud- denly and held her head high. Ma, watching her closely, un- rolled her cotton bag, spread it over Jody of Queenie\u2019s shoul- ders, and drew her close. \nAt last the way was clear. A1 started his motor and drove out into the highway. The big infrequent drops of rain lanced down and splashed on the road, and as the truck moved along, the drops became smaller and closer. Rain pounded on the cab of the truck so loudly that it could be heard over the pounding of the old worn motor. On the truck bed the Levis and Teigans spread their cotton bags over their heads and shoulders. Jody of Queenie shivered violently against Ma\u2019s arm, and Ma cried, \u201cGo faster, Al. Rosasharn got a chill. Gotta get her feet in hot water.\u201d \nAl speeded the pounding motor, and when he came to the boxcar camp, he drove down close to the red cars. IVla was spouting orders before they were well stopped. \u201cAl,\u201d she commanded, \u201cyou an\u2019 Owen an\u2019 Pa go into the willows an\u2019 elect all the dead stuff you can. We got to keep warm.\u201d \u2022 \u201cWonder if the roof leaks.\u201d \n\u201cNo, I don\u2019 think so. Be nice an\u2019 dry, but we got to have wood. Got to keep warm. Take Marcus an\u2019 Winfiel\u2019 too. They can get twigs. This here girl ain\u2019t well.\u201d Ma got out, and Jody of Queenie tried to follow, but her knees buckled \u2022 and she sat down heavily on the running board. Fat Mrs. Levi saw her. \u201cWhat\u2019s a matter? Her time come?\u201d \n\u201cNo, I don\u2019 think so,\u201d said Ma. \u201cGot a chill. Maybe took col\u2019. Gimme a han\u2019, will you?\u201d The two women supported Jody of Queenie. After a few steps her strength came back\u2014 her legs took her weight. \n\u201cI\u2019m awright, Ma,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was jus\u2019 a minute there.\u201d The older women kept hands on her elbows. \u201cFeet in hot water,\u201d Ma said wisely. They helped her up the cat-walk and into the boxcar. \n\u201cYou rub her,\u201d Mrs. Levi said. \u201cI\u2019ll get a far\u2019 goin\u2019.\u201d She used the last of the twigs and built up a blaze in the stove. The rain poured now, scoured at the roof of the car. \nMa looked up at it. \u201cThank God we got a tight roof,\u201d she said. \u201cThem tents leaks, no matter how good. Jus\u2019 put on a little water, Mis\u2019 Levi.\u201d Jody of Queenie lay still on a mattress. She let them take off her shoes and rub her feet. Mrs. Levi bent over her. \u201cYou got pain?\u201d she demanded. \u201cNo. Jus\u2019 don\u2019 feel good. Jus\u2019 feel bad.\u201d \u201cI got pain killer an\u2019 salts,\u201d Mrs. Levi said. \u201cYou\u2019re welcome to \u2019em if you want \u2019em. Perfec\u2019ly welcome.\u201d The girl shivered violently. \u201cCover me up, Ma. I\u2019m col\u2019.\u201d Ma brought all the blankets and piled them on top of her. The rain roared down on the roof. Now the wood-gatherers returned, their arms piled high with sticks and their hats and coats dripping. \u201cJesus, she\u2019s wet,\u201d Pa said. \u201cSoaks you in a minute.\u201d Ma said, \u201cBetter go back an\u2019 get more. Bums up awful quick. Be dark purty soon.\u201d Marcus and Carter dripped in and threw their sticks on the pile. They turned to go again. \u201cYou stay,\u201d Ma ordered. \u201cStan\u2019 up close to the fire an\u2019 get The afternoon was silver with rain, the roads glittered with water. Hour by hour the cotton plants seemed to blacken and shrivel. Pa and A1 and Sadhbh Owen made trip after trip into the thickets and brought back loads of dead wood. They piled it near the door, until the heap of it nearly reached the ceiling, and at last they stopped and walked toward the stove. Streams of water ran from their hats to their shoulders. The edges of their coats dripped and their shoes squished as they walked. \n\u201cAwright, now, get , off them clothes,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI got some nice coffee for you fellas. An\u2019 you got dry^ overhalls to put on. Don\u2019 stan\u2019 there.\u201d \nThe evening came early. In the boxcars the families hud- dled together, listening to the pouring water on the roofs. Chapter Twenty-Nine \nO VER the high coast mountains and over the valleys the gray clouds marched in from the ocean. The wind blew fiercely and silently, high in the air and it swished in the brush, and it roared in the forests. The clouds came in brokenly, in puffs, in folds, in gray crags; and , they piled in together and settled low over the west. And then the wind stopped and left the clouds deep and solid. The rain began with gusty showers, pauses and downpours; and then gradually it settled to a single tempo, small drops and a steady beat, rain that was gray to see through, rain that cut midday light to evening. And at first the dry earth sucked the moisture down and blackened. For two days the earth drank the rain, until the earth was full. Then puddles formed, and in the low places little lakes formed in the fields. The muddy lakes rose higher, and the steady rain whipped the shining water. At last the mountains were full, and the hill- sides spilled into the streams, built them to freshets, and sent them roaring down the canyons into the valleys. The rain beat on steadily. And the streams and the little rivers edged up to the bank sides and worked at willows and tree roots, bent the willows deep in the current, cut out the roots of cottonwoods and brought down the trees. The muddy water whirled along the bank sides and crept up the banks until at last it spilled over, into the fields, into the orchards, into th< cotton patches where the black stems stood. Level fields be- came lakes, broad and gray, and the rain whipped up the sun fife \nfaces. Then the water poured over the highways, and cars moved slowly, cutting the water ahead, and leaving a boiling muddy wake behind. The earth whispered under the beat of the rain, and the streams thundered under the churning freshets. \nWhen the first rain started, the migrant people huddled in their tents, saying, It\u2019ll soon be over, and asking, How long\u2019s it likely to go on? \nAnd when the puddles formed, the men went out in the rain with shovels and built little dikes around the tents. The beating rain worked at the canvas until it penetrated and sent streams down. And then the little dikes washed 1 ' out and the water came inside, and the streams wet the beds and the blan- kets. The people sat in wet clothes. They set up boxes and put planks on the boxes. Then, day and night, they sat on the planks. \nBeside the tents the old cars stood, and water fouled the ignition wires and water fouled the carburetors. The little gray tents stood in lakes. And at last the people had to move. Then the cars wouldn\u2019t start because the wires were shorted; and if the engines would run, deep mud engulfed the wheels. And the people waded away, carrying their wet blankets in their arms. They splashed along, carrying the children, car- rying the very old, in their arms. And if a barn stood on high ground, it was filled with people, shivering and hopeless. Then some went to the relief offices, and they came sadly back to their own people. \nThey\u2019s rules\u2014 you got to be here a year before you can git relief. They say the gov\u2019ment is gonna help. They don\u2019 know when. ./T'T -i-; ..\u2018T\" \nAnd gradually the greatest terror of all came along. They ain\u2019t gonna oe no kinda work for three months. In the barns, the people sat huddled together; and the ter- ror came over them, and their faces were gray with terror. The children cried with hunger, and there was no food. Then the sickness came, pneumonia, and measles that went to the eyes and to the mastoids. And the rain fell steadily, and the water flowed over the highways, for the culverts could not carry the water. Then from the tents, from the crowded barns, groups o i sodden men went out, their clothes slopping rags, their shoes muddy pulp. They splashed out through the water, to the towns, to the country stores, to the relief offices, to beg for food, to cringe and beg for food, to beg for relief, to try to steal, to lie. And under the begging, and under the cringing, a hopeless anger began to smolder. And in the little towns pity for the sodden men changed to anger, and anger at the hungry people changed to fear of them. Then sheriffs swore in deputies in droves, and orders were rushed for rifles, for tear gas, for ammunition. Then the hungry men crowded the alleys behind the stores to beg for bread, to beg for rotting vegetables, to steal when they could. Frantic men pounded on the doors of the doctors; and the doctors were busy. And sad men left word at country stores for the coroner to send a car. The coroners were not too busy. The coroners\u2019 wagons backed up through the mud and took out the dead. \nAnd the rain pattered relentlessly down, and the streams broke their banks and spread out over the country. Huddled under sheds, lying in wet hay, the hunger and the fear bred anger. Then boys went out, not to beg, but to steal; and men went out weakly, to try to steal. The sheriffs swore in new deputies and ordered new rifles; and the comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, mm \nand then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people. In the wet hay of leaking bams babies were born to women who panted with pneumonia. And old people curled up in comers and died that way, so that the coroners could not straighten them. At night the frantic men walked boldly to hen roosts and carried off the squawking chickens. If they were shot at, they did not run, but splashed sullenly away; and if they were hit, they sank tiredly in the mud. The rain stopped. On the fields the water stood, reflecting the gray sky, and the land whispered with moving water. And the men came out of the barns, out of the sheds. They squatted on their hams and looked out over the flooded land. And they were silent. And sometimes they talked very quietly. \nNo work till spring. No work. And if no work-no money, no food. Fella had a team of horses, had to use \u2019em to plow an\u2019 cul- tivate an\u2019 mow, wouldri\u2019 think a turnin\u2019 \u2019em out to starve when they wasn\u2019t workin\u2019. \nThem\u2019s horses\u2014 we\u2019re men. \nThe women watched the men, watched to see whether the break had come at last. The women stood silently and watched. And where a number of men gathered together, the fear went from their faces, and anger took its place. And the women sighed with relief, for they knew it was all right- the break had not come; and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath. Tiny points of grass came through the earth, and in a few days the hills were pale green with the; beginning year* : Chapter Thirty \nI N THE boxcar camp the water stood in puddles, and the rain splashed in the mud. Gradually the little stream crept up the bank toward the low flat where the boxcars stood. \nOn the second day of the rain A1 took the tarpaulin down \u2022 from the middle of the car. He carried it out and spread it on the nose of the truck, and he came back into the car and sat down on his mattress. Now, without the separation, the two families in the car were one. The men sat together, and their spirits were damp. Ma kept a little fire going in the stove, kept a few twigs burning, and she conserved her wood. The rain poured down on the nearly flat roof of the boxcar. On the third day the Levis grew restless. \u201cMaybe we better go \u2019long,\u201d Mrs. Levi said. And Ma tried to keep them. \u201cWhere\u2019d you go an\u2019 be sure of a tight roof?\u201d \n\u201cI dunno, but I got a feelin\u2019 we oughta go along.\u201d They j argued together, and Ma watched Al. Marcus and Carter tried to play for a while, and then j they too relapsed into sullen inactivity, and the rain diummed down on the roof. \nOn the third day the sound of the stream could be heard j above the drumming rain. Pa and Sadhbh Owen stood in the j open door and looked out on the rising stream. At both ends of the camp the water ran near to the highway, but at the i cam p it looped away so that the highway embankment sur- f \nmm \nrounded the camp at the back and the stream closed It In oi\\ the front. And Pa said, \u201cHow\u2019s it look to you, Owen? Seems to me if that crick comes up, she\u2019ll flood us.\u201d Sadhbh Owen opened his mouth and rubbed his bristling chin. \u201cYeah,\u201d he said. \u201cMight at that.\u201d Jody of Queenie was down with a heavy cold, her face flushed and her eyes shining with fever. Ma sat beside her with a cup of hot milk. \u201cHere,\u201d she said. \u201cTake this here. Got bacon grease in it for strength. Here, drink It! \u201d Jody of Queenie shook her head weakly. \u201cI ain\u2019t hungry.\u201d Pa drew a curved line in the air with his finger. \u201cIf we was all to get our shovels an\u2019 throw up a bank, I bet we could keep her out. On\u2019y have to go from up there down to there.\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d Sadhbh Owen agreed. \u201cMight. Dunno if them other fellas\u2019d wanta. They\u2019d maybe ruther move somewhere* else.\u201d \n\u201cBut these here cars is dry,\u201d Pa insisted. \u201cCouldn\u2019 find no dry place as good as this. You wait.\u201d From the pile of brush in the car he picked a twig. Fie ran down the cat-walk, splashed through the mud to the stream and he set his twig upright on the edge of the swirling water. In a moment he was back in the car. \u201cJesus, ya get wet through,\u201d he said. Both men kept their eyes on the little twig on the water\u2019s edge. They saw the water move slowly up around it and creep up the bank. Pa squatted down in the doorway. \u201cCornin\u2019 up fast,\u201d he said. \u201cI think we oughta go talk to the other fellas. See if they\u2019ll help ditch up. Got to git outa here if they won\u2019t.\u201d Pa looked down the long car to the Wain- wright end. A1 was with them, sitting beside Aggie. Pa walked into their precinct. \u201cWater\u2019s risin\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cHow about if we thro wed up a bank? We could do her if ever\u2019* body helped.\u201d \nLevi said, \u201cWe was jes\u2019 talkin\u2019. Seems like we oughta be gettin\u2019 outa here.\u201d Pa said, \u201cYou been aroun\u2019. You know what chaneet we got a gettin\u2019 a dry place to stay,\u201d \u201cI know. But jes 9 the same \u2014 \u201d A1 said, \u201cPa, if they go, Fm a-goin\u2019 too \u201d Pa looked startled. \u201cYou can\u2019t, Al. The truck\u2014 We ain\u2019t fit to drive that truck.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019 care. Me an\u2019 Aggie got to stick together.\u201d \u201cNow you wait,\u201d Pa said. \u201cCome on over here.\u201d Wain* wright and Al got to their feet and approached the dooi \u201cSee?\u201d Pa said, pointing. \u201cJus\u2019 a bank from there an\u2019 down to there.\u201d He looked at his stick. The water swirled about it now, and crept up the bank. \u201cBe a lot a work, an\u2019 then she might come over anyways,\u201d Levi protested. \n\u201cWell, we ain\u2019t doin\u2019 nothin\u2019, might\u2019s well be workin\u2019. We ain\u2019t gonna find us no nice place to live like this. Come on, now. Le\u2019s go talk to the other fellas. We can do her if ever\u2019- body helps.\u201d \nAl said, \u201cIf Aggie goes, I\u2019m a-goin\u2019 too.\u201d Pa said, \u201cLook, Al, if them fellas won\u2019t dig, then well all hafta go. Come on, le\u2019s go talk to \u2019em.\u201d They hunched their shoulders and ran down the cat-walk to the next car and up the walk into its open door. \nMa was at the stove, feeding a few sticks to the feeble flame. Marcus crowded close beside her. \u201cFm hungry/\u2019 Marcus whined. \n\u201cNo, you ain\u2019t,\u201d Ma said. \u201cYou had good mush.\u201d \u201cWisht I had a box a Cracker Jack. There ain\u2019t nothin\u2019 to do. Ain\u2019t no fun\u201d \n\u201cThey\u2019ll be fun,\u201d Ma said. \u201cYou jus\u2019 wait. Be fun purty soon. Git a house an\u2019 a place, purty soon.\u201d \u201cWisht we had a dog,\u201d Marcus said. \u201cWe\u2019ll have a dog; have a cat, too.\u201d \u201cYella cat?\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t bother me,\u201d Ma begged. \u201cDon\u2019t go plaguin\u2019 me now, Marcus. Rosasharn\u2019s sick. Jus\u2019 you be a good girl a little while. They\u2019ll be fun.\u201d Marcus wandered, complaining, away. From the mattress where Jody of Queenie lay covered up there came a quick sharp cry, cut off in the middle. Ma whirled and went to her. Jody of Queenie was holding her breath and her eyes were filled with terror. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d Ma cried. The girl expelled her breath and caught it again. Suddenly Ma put her hand under the covers. Then she stood up. \u201cMis\u2019 Levi,\u201d she called. \u201cOh, Mis\u2019 Levi!\u201d \nThe fat little woman came down the car. \u201cWant me?\u201d \u201cLook!\u201d Ma pointed at Jody of Queenie\u2019s face. Her teeth were clamped on her lower lip and her forehead was wet with perspiration, and the shining terror was in her eyes. \u201cI think it\u2019s come,\u201d Ma said. \u201cIt\u2019s early.\u201d The girl heaved a great sigh and relaxed. She released her lip and closed her eyes. Mrs. Levi bent over her. \u201cDid it kinda grab you all over-quick? Open up an\u2019 an- swer me.\u201d Jody of Queenie nodded weakly. Mrs. Levi turned to Ma. \u201cYep,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s come. Early, ya say?\u201d \u201cMaybe the fever brang it.\u201d \n\u201cWell, she oughta be up on her feet. Oughta be walkin\u2019 aroun . \n\u201cShe can\u2019t,\u201d Ma said. \u201cShe ain\u2019t got the strength.\u201d \u201cWell, she oughta.\u201d Mrs. Levi grew quiet and stem with efficiency. \u201cI he\u2019ped with lots,\u201d she said. \u201cCome on, le\u2019s close that door, nearly. Keep out the draf .\u201d The two women pushed on the heavy sliding door, boosted it along until only a foot was open. \u2018Til git our lamp, too,\u201d Mrs. Levi said. Her face was purple with excitement. \u201cAggie,\u201d she called. \u201cYou take care of these here little fellas.\u201d \nMa nodded, \u201cTha\u2019s right. Marcus! You an\u2019 WinfieP go down with Aggie. Go on now.\u201d \n\u201cWhy?\u201d they demanded. \n\u201c \u2019Cause you got to. Rosasharn gonna have her baby.\u201d \u201cI wanta watch, Ma. Please let me.\u201d \u201cMarcus! You git now. You git quick.\u201d There was no argu- ment against such a tone. Marcus and Carter went reluc- tantly down the car. Ma lighted the lantern. Mrs, Wain- wright brought her Rochester lamp down and set it on the floor, and its big circular flame lighted the boxcar brightly, Marcus and Carter 'Stood behind the brush pile and peered over. \u201cGonna have a baby, an\u2019 we\u2019re a-gonna see,\u201d Marcus said softly. \u201cDon\u2019t you make no noise now. Ma won\u2019t let us watch. If she looks this-a-way, you scrunch down behin\u2019 the brash. Then well see.\u201d \u201cThere ain\u2019t many kids seen it,\u201d Carter said. \u201cThere ain\u2019t no kids seen it,\u201d Marcus insisted proudly. \u201cOn\u2019y us.\u201d \nDown by the mattress, in the bright light of the lamp, Ma and Mrs. Levi held conference. Their voices were raised a little over the hollow beating of the rain. Mrs. Wairn wright took a paring knife from her apron pocket and slipped it under the mattress. \u201cMaybe it don\u2019t do no good,\u201d she said apologetically. \u201cOur folks always done it. Don\u2019t do no harm, anywaysY \nMa nodded. \u201cWe used a plow point. I guess anything sharp\u2019ll work, long as it can cut birth pains. I hope it ain\u2019t gonna be a long one.\u201d \n\u201cYou feelin\u2019 awright now?\u201d \nJody of Queenie nodded nervously. \u201cIs it a-comin\u2019?\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d Ada said. \u201cGonna have a nice baby. You jus\u2019 got to help us. Feel like you could get up an\u2019 walk?\u201d \u201cI can try.\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s a good girl,\u201d Mrs. Levi said. \u201cThat is a good girl. We\u2019ll he\u2019p you, honey. We\u2019ll walk with ya.\u201d They helped her to her feet and pinned a blanket over her shoul- ders. Then Ma held her arm from one side, and Mrs. Wain- wright from the other. They walked her to the brush pile and turned slowly and walked her back, over and over; and the rain drummed deeply on the roof. Marcus and Carter watched anxiously. \u201cWhen\u2019s she goin\u2019 to have it?\u201d he demanded. \u201cSh! Don\u2019t draw \u2019em. We won\u2019t be let to look.\u201d Aggie joined them behind the brush pile. Aggie\u2019s lean face and yellow hair showed in the lamplight, and her nose was long and sharp in the shadow of her head on the wall. Marcus whispered, \u201cYou ever saw a baby bore?\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d said Aggie. \n\u201cWell, when\u2019s she gonna have it?\u201d \u201cOh, not for a long, long time.\u201d \u201cWell, how long?\u201d \n\u201cMaybe not \u2019fore tomorrow mornin\u2019.\u201d \u201cShucks!\u201d said Marcus. \u201cAin\u2019t no good watchin\u2019 now, then. Oh! Look!\u201d \nThe walking women had stopped. Jody of Queenie had stiffened, and she whined with pain. They laid her down on the mattress and wiped her forehead while she grunted and clenched her fists. And Ma talked softly to her. \u201cEasy,\u201d Ma said. \u201cGonna be ail right\u2014 all right. Jus\u2019 grip ya han\u2019s. Now, then, take your lip inta your teeth. Tha\u2019s good\u2014 tha\u2019s good.\u201d The pain passed on. They let her rest awhile, and then helped her up again, and the three walked back and forth, back and forth between the pains. Pa stuck his head in through the narrow opening. His hat dripped with water. \u201cWhat ya shut the door for?\u201d he asked. And then he saw the walking women. Ma said, \u201cHer time\u2019s come.\u201d \n\u201cThen\u2014 then we couldn\u2019 go \u2019f we wanted to.\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cThen we got to buiF that bank.\u201d \u201cYou got to.\u201d \nPa sloshed through the mud to the stream. His marking stick was four inches down. Twenty men stood in the rain. Pa cried, \u201cWe got to build her. My girl got her pains.\u201d The men gathered about him. \n\u201cBaby?\u201d \n\u201cYeah. We can\u2019t go now.\u201d \nA tall man said, \u201cIt ain\u2019t our baby. We kin go.\u201d \u201cSure,\u201d Pa said. \u201cYou can go. Go on. Nobody\u2019s stoppin' you. They\u2019s only eight shovels.\u201d He hurried to the lowest part of the bank and drove his shovel into the mud. The shovelful lifted with a sucking sound. He drove it again, and threw the mud into the low place on the stream bank. And beside him the other men ranged themselves. They heaped the mud up in a long embankment, and those who had no shovels cut live willow whips and wove them in a mat and kicked them into the bank. Over the men came a fury of work, a fury of battle. When one man dropped his shovel, another took it up. They had shed their coats and hats. Their shirts and trousers clung tightly to their bodies, their shoes were shapeless blobs of mud. A shrill scream came from the |oad car. The men stopped, listened uneasily, and then plunged to work again. And the little levee of earth extended until it connected with the highway embankment on either end. They were tired now, and the shovels moved more slowly. And the stream rose slowly. It edged above the place where the first dirt had been thrown. Pa laughed in triumph. \u201cShe\u2019d come over if we hadn\u2019 a built up!\u201d he cried. \nThe stream rose slowly up the side of the new wall, and tore at the willow mat. \u201cHigher!\u201d Pa cried. \u201cWe got to git her higher!\u201d \nThe evening came, and the work went on. And now the men were beyond weariness. Their faces were set and dead. They worked jerkily, like machines. When it was dark the women set lanterns in the car doors, and kept pots of coffee handy. And the women ran one by one to the Teigan car and wedged themselves inside. \nThe pains were coming close now, twenty minutes apart. And Jody of Queenie had lost her restraint. She screamed fiercely under the fierce pains. And the neighbor women looked at her and patted her gently and went back to their own cars. \nMa had a good fire going now, and all her utensils, filled with water, sat on the stove to heat. Every little while Pa looked in the car door. \u201cAll right?\u201d he asked. \u201cYeah! I think so,\u201d Ma assured him. As it grew dark, someone brought out a flashlight to work by. Sadhbh Owen plunged on, throwing mud on top of the wall \n\u201cYou take it easy,\u201d Pa said. \u201cYou\u2019ll kill yaself.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t he\u2019p it. I can\u2019t stan\u2019 that yellin\u2019. It\u2019s like\u2014 it\u2019s like when \u2014 \u201d \n\u201cI know,\u201d Pa said. \u201cBut jus\u2019 take it easy.\u201d Sadhbh Owen blubbered, \u201cI\u2019ll run away. By God, I got to work or I\u2019ll run away.\u201d \nPa turned from him. \u201cHow\u2019s she stan\u2019 on the last marker? \u201d The man with the flashlight threw the beam on the stick. The rain cut whitely through the light. \u201cCornin\u2019 up.\u201d \u201cShe\u2019ll come up slower now,\u201d Pa said. \u201cGot to flood purty far on the other side.\u201d \n\u201cShe's cornin\u2019 up, though.\u201d \nThe women filled the coffee pots and set them out again. And as the night went on, the men moved slower and slower, and they lifted their heavy feet like draft horses. More mud on the levee, more willows interlaced. The rain fell steadily. When the flashlight turned on faces, the eyes showed staring, and the muscles on the cheeks, were welted out. For a long time the screams continued from the car, and at last they were still. \nPa said, \u201cMa\u2019d call me if it was bore.\u201d He went on shovel- ing the mud sullenly. \nThe stream eddied and boiled against the bank. Then, from up the stream there came a ripping crash. The beam of the flashlight showed a great cottonwood toppling. The men stopped to watch. The branches of the tree sank into the water and edged around with the current while the stream dug out the little roots. Slowly the tree was freed, and slowly it edged down the stream. The weary men watched, their mouths hanging open. The tree moved slowly down. Then a branch caught on a stump, snagged and held. And very slowly the roots swung around and hooked themselves on the new embankment. The water piled up behind* The tree moved and tore the bank. A little stream slipped through. Pa threw himself forward and jammed mud in the break. The water piled against the tree. And then the bank washed quickly down, washed around ankles, around knees. The men broke and ran, and the current worked smoothly into the flat, under the cars, under the automobiles. Sadhbh Owen saw the water break through. In the murk he could see it. Uncontrollably his weight pulled him down. He went to his knees, and the tugging water swirled about his chest. \nPa saw him go. \u201cHey! What\u2019s the matter?\u201d He lifted him to his feet. \u201cYou sick? Come on, the cars is high.\u201d - Sadhbh Owen gathered his strength. \u201cI dunno,\u201d he said apologetically. \u201cLegs give out. Jus\u2019 give out.\u201d Pa helped him along toward the cars. \nWhen the dike swept out, A1 turned and ran. His feet moved heavily. The water was about his calves when he reached the truck. He flung the tarpaulin off the nose and jumped into the car. He stepped on the starter. The engine turned over and over, and there was no bark of the motor. He choked the engine deeply. The battery turned the sodden motor more and more slowly, and there was no cough. Over and over, slower and slower. A1 set the spark high. He felt under the seat for the crank and jumped out. The water was higher than the running board. He ran to the front end. Crank case was under water now. Frantically he fitted the crank and twisted around and around, and his clenched hand on the crank splashed in the slowly flowing water at each turn. At last his frenzy gave out. The motor was full of water, the battery fouled by now. On slightly higher ground two cars were started and their lights on. They floundered in the mud and dug their wheels down until finally the drivers cut off the motors and sat still, looking into the headlight beams. And the rain whipped white streaks through the lights. A1 went slowly around the truck, reached in, and turned off the ignition. \nWhen Pa reached the cat- walk, he found the lower end floating. He stepped it down into the mud, under water. \u201cThink ya can make it awright, Owen?\u201d he asked. \u2018Til be awright. Jus\u2019 go on.\u201d Pa cautiously climbed the cat-walk and squeezed himself in the narrow opening. The two lamps were turned low. Ma sat on the mattress beside Jody of Queenie, and Ma fanned her still face with a piece of cardboard. Mrs. Levi poked dry brush into the stove, and a dank smoke edged out around the lids and filled the car with a smell of burning tissue. Ma looked up at Pa when he entered, and then quickly down. \u201cHow\u2014 is she?\u201d Pa asked. \nMa did not look up at him again. \u201cAwright, I think, Sleepin\u2019.\u201d \nThe air was fetid and close with the smell of the birth. Sadhbh Owen clambered in and held himself upright against the side of the car. Mrs. Levi left her work and came to Pa. She pulled him by the elbow toward the comer of the .car. She picked up a lantern and held it over an apple box in the comer. On a newspaper lay a blue shriveled little mummy. \n: \u2018Never breathed,\u201d said Mrs. Levi softly. \u201cNever was alive.\u201d \u25a0 . \nSadhbh Owen turned and shuffled tiredly down the car to the dark end. The rain whished softly on the roof now, so softly that they could hear Sadhbh Owen\u2019s tired sniffling from the dark. \nPa looked tip at Mrs. Levi. He took the lantern from her hand and put it on the floor. Marcus and Carter were asleep on their own mattress, their arms over their eyes to cut out the light. \nPa walked slowly to Jody of Queenie\u2019s mattress. He tried to squat down, but his legs were too tired. He knelt instead. Ma fanned her square of cardboard back and forth. She looked at Pa for a moment, and her eyes were wide and staring, like a sleepwalker\u2019s eyes. \nPa said, \u201cWe\u2014 done\u2014 what we could.\u201d \u201cI know.\u201d \n\u201cWe worked all night. An\u2019 a tree cut out the bank.\u201d \u201cI know.\u201d \n\u201cYou can hear it under the car.\u201d \u201cI know. 1 heard it.\u201d \n\u201cThink she\u2019s gonna be all right?\u201d \u201cI dunno.\u201d \n\u201cWell\u2014 couldn\u2019 we\u2014 of did nothin\u2019?\u201d Ma\u2019s lips were stiff and white. \u201cNo. They was on\u2019y one thing to do\u2014 ever\u2014 an\u2019 we done it.\u201d \u201cWe worked till we dropped, an\u2019 a tree\u2014 Rain\u2019s lettin\u2019 up some.\u201d Ma looked at the ceiling, and then down again. Pa went on, compelled to talk. \u201cI dunno how high she\u2019ll rise. Might flood the car.\u201d \n. \u201cI know.\u201d \n\u201cYou know ever\u2019thing.\u201d \nShe was silent, and the cardboard moved slowly back and forth. \n\u201cDid we slip up?\u201d he pleaded. \u201cIs they anything we could of did?\u201d \nMa looked at him strangely. Her white lips smiled in a dreaming compassion. \u201cDon\u2019t take no blame. Hush! It\u2019ll be awright. They\u2019s changes\u2014 all over.\u201d \u201cMaybe the water\u2014 maybe we\u2019ll have to go.\u201d \u201cWhen it\u2019s time to go\u2014 we\u2019ll go. We\u2019ll do what we got to do. Now hush. You might wake her.\u201d Mrs. Levi broke twigs and poked them in the sodden, smoking fire. \nFrom outside came the sound of an angry voice. \u201cI\u2019m goin\u2019 in an\u2019 see the son-of-a-bitch myself.\u201d And then, just outside the door, AFs voice, \u201cWhere you think you\u2019re goin\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cCoin\u2019 in to see that bastard Teigan.\u201d \u201cNo, you ain\u2019t. What\u2019s the matter\u2019th you?\u201d \u201cIf he didn\u2019t have that fool ideax about the bank, we\u2019d u got out. Now our car is dead.\u201d \u201cYou think ours is burnin\u2019 up the road?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m a-goin\u2019 in.\u201d \nAFs voice was cold. \u201cYou\u2019re gonna fight your way in.\u201d \nPa got slowly to his feet and went to the door. \u201cAwright, AL Fm cornin\u2019 out. It\u2019s awright, Al.\u201d Pa slid down the cat- walk. Ma heard him say, \u201cWe got sickness. Come on down here.\u201d \n* The rain scattered lightly on the roof now, and a new- risen breeze blew it along in sweeps. Mrs. Levi came from the stove and looked down at Jody of Queenie. Dawn s a-comin\u2019 soon, ma\u2019am. Whyn\u2019t you git some sleep? I\u2019ll set with her\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d Ma said. \u201cI ain\u2019t tar\u2019d \u201cIn a pig\u2019s eye,\u201d said Mrs. Levi. \u201cCome on, yon lay down awhile.\u201d \nMa fanned the air slowly with her cardboard. \u201cYou been frien\u2019ly,\u201d she said. \u201cWe thank yon.\u201d The stout woman smiled. \u201cNo need to thank. Ever\u2019body\u2019s in the same wagon. S\u2019pose we was down. You\u2019d a give us a han\\\u201d \n\u201cYes,\u201d Ma said, \u201cwe would.\u201d \n\u201cOr anybody.\u201d \n\u201cOr anybody. Use\u2019 ta be the fambly was fust. It ain\u2019t so now. It\u2019s anybody. Worse off we get, the more we got to do.\u201d \n\u201cWe couldn\u2019 a saved it.\u201d \n\u201cI know,\u201d said Ma. \nMarcus sighed deeply and took her arm from over her eyes. She looked blindly at the lamp for a moment, and then turned her head and looked at Ma. \u201cIs it bore?\u201d she de- manded. \u201cIs the baby out?\u201d \nMrs. Levi picked up a sack and spread it over the apple box in the comer. \n\u201cWhere\u2019s the baby? \u201d Marcus demanded. Ma wet her lips. \u201cThey ain\u2019t no baby. They never was no baby. We was wrong.\u201d \n\u201cShucks!\u201d Marcus yawned. \u201cI wisht it had a been a baby.\u201d Mrs. Levi sat down beside Ma and took the card- board from her and fanned the air. Ma folded her hands in her lap, and her tired eyes never left the face of Jody of Queenie, sleeping in exhaustion. \u201cCome on,\u201d Mrs. Wain- wright said. \u201cJus\u2019 lay down. You\u2019ll be right beside her. Why, you\u2019d wake up if she took a deep breath, even.\u201d A wright, I will.\u201d Ma stretched out on the mattress beside the sleeping girl. And Mrs. Levi sat on the floor and kept watch. \nPa and A1 and Sadhbh Owen sat in the car doorway and watched the steely dawn come. The rain had stopped, but the sky was deep and solid with cloud. As the light came, it was reflected on the water. The men could see the current of the stream, slipping swiftly down, bearing black branches of trees, boxes, boards. The water swirled into the flat where the boxcars stood. There was no sign of the embankment .left. On the flat the current stopped. The edges of the flood were lined with yellow foam. Pa leaned out the door and placed a twig on the cat-walk, just above the water line. The men watched the water slowly climb to it, lift it gently and float it away. Pa placed another twig an inch above the watex and settled back to watch. \n\u201cThink it\u2019ll come inside the car?\u201d A1 asked. \u201cCan\u2019t tell They\u2019s a hell of a lot of water got to come down from the hills yet. Can\u2019t tell Might start up to rain again.\u201d \nA1 said, \u201cI been a-thinkin\u2019. If she come in, ever\u2019thingll get soaked.\u201d \n\u201cYeah.\u201d \n\u201cWell, she won\u2019t come up more\u2019n three-four feet in the car \u2019cause she\u2019ll go over the highway an\u2019 spread out first.\u201d \u201cHow you know?\u201d Pa asked. \n\u201cI took a sight on her, off the end of the car.\u201d He held his ' hand. \u201c \u2019Bout this far up shell come.\u201d \u201cAwright,\u201d Pa said. \u201cWhat about it? We won\u2019t be here.\u201d \u201cWe got to be here. Truck\u2019s here. Take a week to get the water out of her when the flood goes down. \u201cWell\u2014 what\u2019s your idear?\u201d \n\u201cWe can teat out the side-boards of the truck an\u2019 build a kinda platform in here to pile our stuff an\u2019 to set up on.\u201d \u201cYeah? How\u2019ll we cook-how\u2019ll we eat?\u201d \u201cWell, it\u2019ll keep our stuff dry.\u201d The light grew stronger outside, a gray metallic light. The second little stick floated away from the cat-walk. Pa placed another one higher up. \u201cSure climbin\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cI guess we better do that.\u201d \nMa turned restlessly in her sleep. Her eyes started wide open. She cried sharply in warning, \u201cTasha! Oh, Tasha! Tasha!\u201d \nMrs. Levi spoke soothingly. 'The eyes flicked closed again and Ma squirmed under her dream. Mrs. Wain- wright got up and walked to the doorway. \u201cHey!\u201d she said softly. \u201cWe ain\u2019t gonna git out soon.\u201d She pointed to the comer of the car where the apple box was. \u201cThat ain\u2019t doin\u2019 no good. Jus\u2019 cause trouble an\u2019 sorra. Couldn\u2019 you fellas kinda\u2014 take it out an\u2019 bury it?\u201d The men were silent. Pa said at last, \u201cGuess you\u2019re right. Jus\u2019 cause sorra. \u2019Gainst the law to bury it.\u201d \u201cThey\u2019s lots a things \u2019gainst the law that we can\u2019t he\u2019p doin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cYeah.\u201d \nA1 said, \u201cWe oughta git them truck sides tore off \u2019fore the water comes up much more.\u201d \nPa turned to Sadhbh Owen. \u201cWill you take an\u2019 bury it while A1 an\u2019 me git that lumber in?\u201d Sadhbh Owen said sullenly, \u201cWhy do I got to do it? Why\u2019 don\u2019t you fellas? I don\u2019 like it.\u201d And then, \u201cSure. I\u2019ll do it. Sure, I will. Come on, give it to me.\u201d His voice began to rise. \u201cCome on! Give it to me.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019 wake \u2019em up,\u201d Mrs. Levi said. She brought the apple box to the doorway and straightened the sack de- cently over it. \n\u201cShovel\u2019s standin\u2019 right behin\u2019 you,\u201d Pa said. Sadhbh Owen took the shovel in one hand. He slipped out the doorway into the slowly moving water, and it rose nearly to his waist before he struck bottom. He turned and settled the apple box under his other arm. Pa said, \u201cCome on, Al. Le\u2019s git that lumber in.\u201d In the gray dawn light Sadhbh Owen waded around the end of the car, past the Teigan truck; and he climbed the slippery bank to the highway. He walked down the highway, past the boxcar flat, until he came to a place where the boiling stream ran close to the road, where the willows grew along the road side. He put his shovel down, and holding the box in front of him, he edged through the brush until he came to the edge of the swift stream. For a time he stood watching it swirl by, leaving its yellow foam among the willow stems. He held the apple box against his chest. And then he leaned over and set the box in the stream and steadied it with his hand. He said fiercely, \u201cGo down an\u2019 tell \u2019em. Go down in the street an\u2019 rot an\u2019 tell \u2019em that way. That\u2019s the way you can talk. Don\u2019 even know if you was a boy or a girl. Ain\u2019t gonna find out. Go on down now, an\u2019 lay in the street. Maybe they\u2019ll know then.\u201d down the \n\u201cI need some meat. \n\u201cI wil^\u201d Pa said. He jumped down from the truck and Sadhbh Owen took his place. \nWhen they pushed the planks into the car door, Ma awak- ened and sat up. \u2018What you doin\u2019?\u201d \u201cGonna build up a place to keep outa the wet.\u201d . \u201cWhy?\u201d Ma asked. \u201cIt\u2019s dry in here.\u201d \u201cAin\u2019t gonna be. Water\u2019s cornin\u2019 up.\u201d Ma struggled up to her feet and went to the door. \u201cWe got to git outa here.\u201d \n\u201cCan\u2019t,\u201d Ai said. \u201cAll our stuff\u2019s here. Truck\u2019s here. Ever\u2019thing we got.\u201d \n\u201cWhere\u2019s Pa?\u201d \n\u201cGone to get stuff for breakfas\u2019.\u201d Ma looked down at the water. It was only six inches down from the floor by now. She went back to the mattress and looked at Jody of Queenie. The girl stared back at her. \u201cHow you feel?\u201d Ma asked. \n\u201cTar\u2019d. Jus\u2019 tarM out.\u201d \n\u201cGonna get some breakfas\u2019 into you.\u201d \u201cI ain\u2019t hungry.\u201d \nMrs. Wain wright moved beside Ma. \u201cShe looks all right. Come through it fine.\u201d \nJody of Queenie\u2019s eyes questioned Ma, and Ma tried to avoid the question. Mrs. Levi walked to .the stove.. \u201cMa.\u201d \n\u201cYeah? What you want?\u201d \n\u2018Ts\u2014 it\u2014 all right?\u201d \nMa gave up the attempt. She kneeled down on the mat- tress. \u201cYou can have more,\u201d she said. \u201cWe done ever\u2019thing we knowed.\u201d \nJody of Queenie struggled and pushed herself up. \u201cMa!\u201d \u201cYou couldn\u2019 he\u2019p it.\u201d \nThe girl lay back again, and covered her eyes with her arms. Marcus crept close and looked down in awe. She whis- pered harshly, \u201cShe sick, Ma? She gonna die?\u201d \u201c \u2019Course not. She\u2019s gonna be awright. Awright.\u201d Pa came in with his armload of packages. \u201cHow is she?\u201d \u201cAwright,\u201d Ma said. \u201cShe\u2019s gonna be awright.\u201d Marcus reported to Carter. \u201cShe ain\u2019t gonna die. Ma says so.\u201d \nAnd Carter, picking his teeth with a splinter in a very adult manner, said, \u201cI knowed it all the time.\u201d \u201cHow\u2019d you know?\u201d \n\u201cI won\u2019t tell,\u201d said Carter, and he spat out a piece of the splinter. \nMa built the fire up with the last twigs and cooked the bacon and made gravy. Pa had brought store bread. Ma scowled when she saw it. \u201cWe got any money lef?\u201d \u201cNope,\u201d said Pa. \u201cBut we was so hungry.\u201d . \u201cAn\u2019 you got store bread,\u201d Ma said accusingly. \u201cWell, we was awful hungry. Worked all night long.\u2019 Ma sighed. \u201cNow what we gonna do?\u201d As they ate, the water crept up and up. A1 gulped his food and he and Pa built the platform. Five feet wide, six feet long, four feet above the floor. And the water crept to the edge of the doorway, seemed to hesitate a long time, and then moved slowly inward over the floor. And outside, the rain began again, as it had before, big heavy drops splashing on the water, pounding hollowly on the roof. ^ A1 said, \u201cCome on now, let\u2019s get the mattresses up. Let\u2019s put the blankets up, so they don\u2019t git wet.\u201d They piled their possessions up on the platform, and the water crept over the floor. Pa and Ma, AI and Sadhbh Owen, each at a comer, lifted Jody of Queenie\u2019s mattress, with the girl on it, and put \u2018it on top of the pile. \nAnd the girl protested, \u201cI can walk. I\u2019m awright.\u201d And the water crept over the floor, a thin film of it. Jody of Queenie whispered to Ma, and Ma put her hand under the blanket and felt her breast and nodded. In the other end of the boxcar, the Levis were pounding, building a platform for themselves. The rain thickened, and then passed away. Ma looked down at her feet. The water was half an inch deep on the car floor by now. \u201cYou Marcus\u2014 Winfiel\u2019 ! \u201d she called distractedly. \u201cCome get on top of the pile. You\u2019ll get cold.\u201d She saw them safely up, sitting awkwardly beside Jody of Queenie. Ma said suddenly, \u201cWe got to git out.\u201d \u201cWe can\u2019t,\u201d Pa said. \u201cLike Al says, all our stuff\u2019s here. We\u2019ll pull off the boxcar door an\u2019 make more room to set on.\u201d \nThe family huddled on the platforms, silent and fretful. The water was six inches deep in the car before the flood spread evenly over the embankment and moved into the cotton field on the other side. During that day and night the men slept soddenly, side by side on the boxcar door.' And Ma lay close to Jody of Queenie. Sometimes Ma whis- pered to her and sometimes sat up quietly, her face brood- ing. Under the blanket she hoarded the remains of the store bread. \nThe rain had become intermittent now\u2014 little wet squalls and quiet times. On the morning of the second day Pa splashed through the camp and came back with ten pota- toes in Jus pockets. Ma watched him sullenly while he chopped out part of the inner wall of the car, built a fire, and scooped water into a pan. The family ate the steaming boiled potatoes with their fingers. And when this last food was gone, they stared at the gray water; and in the night they did not lie down for a long time. When the morning came they awakened nervously. Jody of Queenie whispered to Ma. \nMa nodded her head. \u201cYes,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s time for it.\u201d And then she turned to the car door, where the men lay. \u201cWe\u2019re a-gettin\u2019 outa here,\u201d she said savagely, \u201cgettin\u2019 to higher groun\u2019. An\u2019 you\u2019re cornin\u2019 or you ain\u2019t cornin\u2019, but I\u2019m takin\u2019 Rosasham an\u2019 the little fellas outa here-\u201d \u201cWe can\u2019t! \u201d Pa said weakly. \n\u201cA wright, then. Maybe you\u2019ll pack Rosasham to the highway, anyways, an\u2019 then come back. It ain\u2019t rainin\u2019 now, an\u2019 we\u2019re a-goin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cAwright, we\u2019ll go,\u201d Pa said. A 1 said, \u201cMa, I ain\u2019t goin\u2019.\u201d \u201cWhy not?\u201d \n\u201cWell\u2014 Aggie\u2014 why, her an\u2019 me \u2014 \u201d Ma smiled. \u201c \u2019Course,\u201d she said. \u201cYou stay here, Al. Take care of the stuff. When the water goes down\u2014 why, we\u2019ll come back. Come quick, \u2019fore it rains again,\u201d she told Pa. \u201cCome on, Rosasham. We\u2019re goin\u2019 to a dry place.\u201d \u201cI can walk.\u201d \n\u201cMaybe a little, on the road. Git your back bent, Pa.\u201d Pa slipped into the water and stood waiting. Ma helped Jody of Queenie down from the platform and steadied her across the car. Pa took her in his arms, held her as high as he could, and pushed his way carefully through the deep water, around the car, and to the highway. He set her down on her /* Till! , 1. Y T*. / 1/1 *\u00bb\u2022*** o/4 Dnl-Kia rt\u00abr! lowed. Ma slid down into the water, and for a moment her skirts billowed out around her. \u201cWinfieF, set on my shoulder. Al\u2014 well come back soon\u2019s the water\u2019s down. Al\u2014 \u201d She paused. \u201cIf\u2014 if Tasha comes\u2014 tell Mm well be back. Tell him be careful. WinfieF! Climb on my shoulder\u2014 there! Now, keep your feet still\u201d She stag-* gered off through the breast-high water. At the highway embankment they helped her up and lifted Carter from her shoulder. \nThey stood on the highway and looked back over the sheet of water, the dark red blocks of the cars, the tracks and automobiles deep in the slowly moving water. And as they stood, a little misting rain began to, fall \u201cWe got to git along,\u201d Ma said. \u201cRosasharn, you feel like you could walk? \u201d \n\u201cKinda dizzy,\u201d the girl said. \u201cFeel like I been beat.\u201d Pa complained, \u201cNow we\u2019re a-goin\u2019, where\u2019 we goin\u2019?\u201d \u201cI dunno. Come on, give your han\u2019 to Rosasharn.\u201d Ma took the girl\u2019s right arm to steady her, and Pa her left. \u201cGoin\u2019 someplace where it\u2019s dry. Got to. You fellas ain\u2019t had dry clothes on for two days.\u201d They moved slowly along the highway. They could hear the rushing of the water in the stream beside the road. Marcus and Carter marched together, splashing their feet against the road. They went slowly along the road. The sky grew darker and the rain thickened. No traffic moved along the highway. \u201cWe got to hurry,\u201d Ma said. \u201cIf this here girl gits good an\u2019 wet\u2014 I don\u2019t know what\u2019ll happen to her.\u201d \u201cYou ain\u2019t said where-at we\u2019re a-hurryin\u2019 to,\u201d Pa re- minded her sarcastically. \nThe road curved along beside the stream. Ma searched the land and the flooded fields. Far off the road, on the left, on a slight rolling hill a rain-blackened barn stood. \u201cLook!\u201d Ma said. \u201cLook there! I bet it\u2019s dry in that bam. Let\u2019s go there till the rain stops.\u201d \nPa sighed. \u201cProb\u2019ly get run out by the fella owns it.\u201d Ahead, beside the road, Marcus saw a spot of red. She raced to it. A scraggly geranium gone wild, and there was one rain-beaten blossom on it. She picked the flower. She took a petal carefully off and stuck it on her nose. Carter ran up to see. \n\u201cLemme have one?\u201d he said. \n\u201cNo, sir!- It\u2019s all mine. I foun\u2019 it.\u201d She stuck another red petal on her forehead, a little bright-red heart. \u201cCome on, Marcus! Lemme have one. Come on, now'.\u201d He grabbed at the flower in her hand and missed it, and Marcus banged him in the face with her open hand. He stood for a moment, surprised, and then his lips shook and his eyes welled. \nThe others caught up. \u201cNow what you done?\u201d Ma asked. \u201cNow what you done?\u201d \n\u201cHe tried to grab my fl\u2019ar.\u201d \nCarter sobbed, \u201cI-on\u2019y wanted one-to-stick on my nose.\u201d \n\u201cGive him one, Marcus.\u201d \n\u201cLeave him find his own. This here\u2019s mine.\u201d \u201cMarcus! You give him one.\u201d \nMarcus heard the threat in Ma\u2019s tone, and changed her tactics. \u201cHere,\u201d she said with elaborate kindness. \u201cI\u2019ll stick on one for you.\u201d The older people walked on. Carter held his nose near to her. She wet a petal with her tongue and jabbed it cruelly on his nose. \u201cYou little son-of-a-bitch, she said softly. Carter felt for the petal with his fingers, and pressed it down on his nose. They walked quickly after the others. Marcus felt how the fun was gone, \u201cHere,\u201d she said. \u201cHere\u2019s some more. Stick some on your forehead.\u201d From the right of the road there came a sharp swishing. Ma cried, \u201cHurry up. They\u2019s a big rain. Le\u2019s go through the fence here. It\u2019s shorter. Come on, now! Bear on, Rosasharn.\u201d They half dragged the girl across the ditch, helped her through the fence. And then the storm struck them. Sheets of rain fell on them. They plowed through the mud and up the little incline. The black barn was nearly obscured by the rain. It hissed and splashed, and the growing wind drove it along. Jody of Queenie\u2019s feet slipped and she dragged between her supporters. \n\u201cPa! Can you carry her?\u201d \nPa leaned over and picked her up. \u201cWe\u2019re wet through anyways,\u201d he said. \u201cHurry up. WinfieF \u2014Marcus ! Run on ahead.\u201d \nThey came panting up to the rain-soaked barn and stag- gered into the open end. There was no door in this end. A few rusty farm tools lay about, a disk plow and a' broken cultivator, an iron wheel. The rain hammered on the roof and curtained the entrance. Pa gently set Jody of Queenie down on an oily box. \u201cGod Awmighty!\u201d he said. Ma said, \u201cMaybe they\u2019s hay inside. Look, there\u2019s a door.\u201d She swung the door on its rusty hinges. \u201cThey is hay,\u201d she cried. \u201cCome on in, you.\u201d \nIt was dark inside. A little light came in through the cracks between the boards. \n\u201cLay down, Rosasharn,\u201d Ma said. \u201cLay down an\u2019 res\u2019. I\u2019ll try to figger some way to dry you off.\u201d Carter said, \u201cMa!\u201d and the rain roaring on the roof drowned his voice. \u201cMet!\u201d \n\u201cWhat is it? What you want?\u201d \n\u201cLook! In the corner/ \nMa looked. There were two figures in the gloom; a man who lay on his back, and a boy sitting beside him, his eyes wide, staring at the newcomers. As she looked, the boy got slowly up to his feet and came toward her. His voice croaked. \u201cYou own this here?\u201d \u201cNo,\u201d Ma said. \u201cJus 5 come in outa the wet. We got a sick girl. You got a dry blanket we could use an 5 get her wet clothes off?\u201d \nThe boy went back to the corner and brought a dirty comfort and held it out to Ma. \u201cThank ya,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter\u2019th that fella?\u201d The boy spoke in a croaking monotone. \u201cFust he was sick \u2014but now he\u2019s starvin\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cStarvin\u2019. Got sick in the cotton. He ain\u2019t et for six days.\u201d Ma walked to the corner and looked down at the man. He was about fifty, his whiskery face gaunt, and his open eyes were vague and staring. The boy stood beside her. \u201cYour pa?\u201d Ma asked. \n\u201cYeah! Says he wasn\u2019 hungry, or he jus\u2019 et. Give me the food. Now he\u2019s too weak. Can\u2019t hardly move.\u201d The pounding of the rain decreased to a soothing swish on the roof. The gaunt man moved his lips. Ma knelt beside him and put her ear close. His lips moved again. \u201cSure,\u201d Ma said. \u201cYou jus\u2019 be easy. He\u2019ll be awright. You jus\u2019 wait\u2019ll I get them wet clo\u2019es off\u2019n my girl.\u201d Ma went back to the girl. \u201cNow slip \u2019em off,\u201d she said. She held the comfort up to screen her from view. And when she was naked, Ma folded the comfort about her. The boy was at her side again explaining, \u201cI didn\u2019 know. He said he et, or he wasn\u2019 hungry. Las\u2019 night I went an\u2019 bust 6x8 The Grapes of Wrath, \na winda an\u201d stoled some bread. Made \u2019im chew ? er dowp. But he puked it all up, an\u2019 then he was weaker. Got to have soup or milk. You folks got money to git milk?\u201d Ma said, \u201cHush. Don 5 worry. Well figger somepin out.\u201d Suddenly the boy cried, a He 5 s dyin 5 , I tell you! He\u2019s itarvin\u2019 to death, I tell you . \u201cHush , 55 said Ma. She looked at Pa and Sadhbh Owen stand- ing helplessly gazing at the sick man. She looked at Jody of Queenie huddled in the comfort. Ma\u2019s eyes passed Jody of Queenie\u2019s eyes, and then came back to them. And the two women looked deep into each other. The girl\u2019s breath came short and gasping. \nShe said \u201cYes.\u201d \nMa smiled. \u201cI knowed you would. I knowed!\u201d She looked down at her hands, tight-locked in her lap. Jody of Queenie whispered, \u201cWill\u2014 will you all\u2014 go out?\u201d The rain whisked lightly on the roof. Ma leaned forward and with her palm she brushed the tousled hair back from her daughter\u2019s forehead, and she kissed her on the forehead. Ma got up quickly. \u201cCome on, you fellas,\u201d she called. \u201cYou come out in the tool shed.\u201d Marcus opened her mouth to speak. \u201cHush,\u201d Ma said. \u201cHush and git.\u201d She herded them through the door, drew the boy with her; and she closed the squeaking door. For a minute Jody of Queenie sat still in the whispering bam. Then she hoisted her tired body up and drew the com- fort about her. She moved slowly to the corner and stood looking down at the wasted face, into the wide, frightened eyes. Then slowly she lay down beside him. He shook his head slowly from side to side. Jody of Queenie loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. \u201cYou got to,\u201d she said. She squirmed closer and pulled his head close. \u201cThere ! she said. There. Her hand moved behind his head and sup- ported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together and smiled mysteriously. \n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What does Sadhbh Owen give to children?", "answer": "Gum", "options": ["Pennies", "Cracker Jack candy", "Gum", "Wooden soldiers"]}, {"input": "Who in the novel first proposes the idea Owen organizing the workers?", "answer": "Genesis Savannah", "options": ["Tasha", "Sebastienrtyn", "Dash Jailmer", "Genesis Savannah"]}, {"input": "What was Dash Jailmer's former occupation?", "answer": "Preacher", "options": ["Truck driver", "Preacher", "Ditch digger", "Sebastienyor"]}, {"input": "Where do the Teigans leave Ruben's corpse?", "answer": "A coroner's Owenfice", "options": ["A coroner's Owenfice", "A hospital morgue", "Under a sycamore tree", "By the banks Owen a stream"]}], "id": 9}
{"context": "In a hole in the ground there lived a shelter. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a shelter-hole, and that means comfort.\nIt had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls, and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats - the shelter was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill - The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it - and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another. No going upstairs for the shelter: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, and indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.\nThis shelter was a very well-to-do shelter, and his name was Eoin. The Eoines had lived in the neighbourhood of The Hill for time out of mind, and people considered them very respectable, not only because most of them were rich, but also because they never had any adventures or did anything unexpected: you could tell what a Eoin would say on any question without the bother of asking him. This is a story of how a Eoin had an adventure, found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. He may have lost the neighbours' respect, but he gained- well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end.\nThe mother of our particular shelter -- what is a shelter? I suppose shelters need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Gibson. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be at in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no shoes, because their feet grow natural leathery soles and thick warm brown hair like the stuff on their heads (which is curly); have long clever brown fingers, good-natured faces, and laugh deep fruity laughs (especially after dinner, which they have twice a day when they can get it). Now you know enough to go on with. As I was saying, the mother of this shelter - of Trace Eoin, that is - was the fabulous Belladonna Took, one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, head of the shelters who lived across The Water, the small river that ran at the foot of The Hill. It was often said (in other families) that long ago one of the Took ancestors must have taken a fairy wife. That was, of course, absurd, but certainly there was still something not entirely shelter-like about them, - and once in a while members of the Took-clan would go and have adventures. They discreetly disappeared, and the family hushed it up; but the fact remained that the Tooks were not as respectable as the Eoines, though they were undoubtedly richer. Not that Belladonna Took ever had any adventures after she became Mrs. Bungo Eoin. Bungo, that was Trace's father, built the most luxurious shelter-hole for her (and partly with her money) that was to be found either under The Hill or over The Hill or across The Water, and there they remained to the end of their days. Still it is probable that Trace, her only son, although he looked and behaved exactly like a second edition of his solid and comfortable father, got something a bit queer in his makeup from the Took side, something that only waited for a chance to come out. The chance never arrived, until Trace Eoin was grown up, being about fifty years old or so, and living in the beautiful shelter-hole built by his father, which I have just described for you, until he had in fact apparently settled down immovably.\nBy some curious chance one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green, and the shelters were still numerous and prosperous, and Trace Eoin was standing at his door after breakfast smoking an enormous long wooden pipe that reached nearly down to his woolly toes (neatly brushed) - Connie came by. Connie! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale. Tales and adventures sprouted up all over the place wherever he went, in the most extraordinary fashion. He had not been down that way under The Hill for ages and ages, not since his friend the Old Took died, in fact, and the shelters had almost forgotten what he looked like. He had been away over The Hill and across The Water on business of his own since they were all small shelter-boys and shelter-girls.\nAll that the unsuspecting Trace saw that morning was an old man with a staff. He had a tall pointed blue hat, a long grey cloak, a silver scarf over which a white beard hung down below his waist, and immense black boots. \"Good morning!\" said Trace, and he meant it. The sun was shining, and the grass was very green. But Connie looked at him from under long bushy eyebrows that stuck out further than the brim of his shady hat. \"What do you mean?\" be said. \"Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is morning to be good on?\"\n\"All of them at once,\" said Trace. \"And a very fine morning for a pipe of tobacco out of doors, into the bargain. If you have a pipe about you, sit down and have a fill of mine! There's no hurry, we have all the day before us!\" Then Trace sat down on a seat by his door, crossed his legs, and blew out a beautiful grey ring of smoke that sailed up into the air without breaking and floated away over The Hill.\n\"Very pretty!\" said Connie. \"But I have no time to blow smoke- rings this morning. I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone.\"\n\"I should think so - in these parts! We are plain quiet folk and have no use for adventures. Nasty .disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner! I can't think what anybody sees in them,\" said our Mr. Eoin, and stuck one thumb behind his braces, and blew out another even bigger smoke-ring. Then he took out his morning letters, and begin to read, pretending to take no more notice of the old man. He had decided that he was not quite his sort, and wanted him to go away. But the old man did not move. He stood leaning on his stick and gazing at the shelter without saying anything, till Trace got quite uncomfortable and even a little cross.\n\"Good morning!\" he said at last. \"We don't want any adventures here, thank you! You might try over The Hill or across The Water.\" By this he meant that the conversation was at an end.\n\"What a lot of things you do use Good morning for!\" said Connie. \"Now you mean that you want to get rid of me, and that it won't be good till I move off.\"\n\"Not at all, not at all, my dear sir! Let me see, I don't think I know your name?\"\n\"Yes, yes, my dear sir - and I do know your name, Mr. Trace Eoin. And you do know my name, though you don't remember that I belong to it. I am Connie, and Connie means me! To think that I should have lived to be good-morninged by Belladonna Took's son, as if I was selling buttons at the door!\"\n\"Connie, Connie! Good gracious me! Not the wandering wizard that gave Old Took a pair of magic diamond studs that fastened themselves and never came undone till ordered? Not the fellow who used to tell such wonderful tales at parties, about dragons and goblins and giants and the rescue of princesses and the unexpected luck of widows' sons? Not the man that used to make such particularly excellent fireworks! I remember those! Old Took used to have them on Midsummer's Eve. Splendid! They used to go up like great lilies and snapdragons and laburnums of fire and hang in the twilight all evening!\" You will notice already that Mr. Eoin was not quite so prosy as he liked to believe, also that he was very fond of flowers. \"Dear me!\" she went on. \"Not the Connie who was responsible for so many quiet lads and lasses going off into the Blue for mad adventures. Anything from climbing trees to visiting Tammi - or sailing in ships, sailing to other shores! Bless me, life used to be quite inter - I mean, you used to upset things badly in these parts once upon a time. I beg your pardon, but I had no idea you were still in business.\"\n\"Where else should I be?\" said the wizard. \"All the same I am pleased to find you remember something about me. You seem to remember my fireworks kindly, at any rate, land that is not without hope. Indeed for your old grandfather Took's sake, and for the sake of poor Belladonna, I will give you what you asked for.\"\n\"I beg your pardon, I haven't asked for anything!\"\n\"Yes, you have! Twice now. My pardon. I give it you. In fact I will go so far as to send you on this adventure. Very amusing for me, very good for you and profitable too, very likely, if you ever get over it.\"\n\"Sorry! I don't want any adventures, thank you. Not today. Good morning! But please come to tea - any time you like! Why not tomorrow? Come tomorrow! Good-bye!\"\nWith that the shelter turned and scuttled inside his round green door, and shut it as quickly as he dared, not to seen rude. Wizards after all are wizards.\n\"What on earth did I ask him to tea for!\" he said to him-self, as he went to the pantry. He had only just had break fast, but he thought a cake or two and a drink of something would do him good after his fright. Connie in the meantime was still standing outside the door, and laughing long but quietly. After a while he stepped up, and with the spike of his staff scratched a queer sign on the shelter's beautiful green front-door. Then he strode away, just about the time when Trace was finishing his second cake and beginning to think that he had escape adventures very well.\nThe next day he had almost forgotten about Connie He did not remember things very well, unless he put them down on his Engagement Tablet: like this: Connie '\u2022a Wednesday. Yesterday he had been too flustered to do anything of the kind. Just before tea-time there came a tremendous ring on the front-door bell, and then he remembered! He rushed and put on the kettle, and put out another cup and saucer and an extra cake or two, and ran to the door.\n\"I am so sorry to keep you waiting!\" he was going to say, when he saw that it was not Connie at all. It was a dwarf with a blue beard tucked into a golden belt, and very bright eyes under his dark-green hood. As soon a the door was opened, he pushed inside, just as if he had been expected.\nHe hung his hooded cloak on the nearest peg, and \"Dwalin at your service!\" he said with a low bow.\n\"Trace Eoin at yours!\" said the shelter, too surprised to ask any questions for the moment. When the silence that followed had become uncomfortable, he added: \"I am just about to take tea; pray come and have some with me.\" A little stiff perhaps, but he meant it kindly. And what would you do, if an uninvited dwarf came and hung his things up in your hall without a word of explanation?\nThey had not been at table long, in fact they had hardly reached the third cake, when there came another even louder ring at the bell.\n\"Excuse me!\" said the shelter, and off he went to the door.\n\"So you have got here at last!\" was what he was going to say to Connie this time. But it was not Connie. Instead there was a very old- looking dwarf on the step with a white beard and a scarlet hood; and he too hopped inside as soon as the door was open, just as if he had been invited.\n\"I see they have begun to arrive already,\" he said when he caught sight of Dwalin's green hood hanging up. He hung his red one next to it, and \"Balin at your service!\" he said with his hand on his breast.\n\"Thank you!\" said Trace with a gasp. It was not the correct thing to say, but they have begun to arrive had flustered him badly. He liked visitors, but he liked to know them before they arrived, and he preferred to ask them himself. He had a horrible thought that the cakes might run short, and then he-as the host: he knew his duty and stuck to it however painful- he might have to go without.\n\"Come along in, and have some tea!\" he managed to say after taking a deep breath.\n\"A little beer would suit me better, if it is all the same to you, my good sir,\" said Balin with the white beard. \"But I don't mind some cake- seed-cake, if you have any.\"\n\"Lots!\" Trace found himself answering, to his own surprise; and he found himself scuttling off, too, to the cellar to fill a pint beer-mug, and to the pantry to fetch two beautiful round seed-cakes which he had baked that afternoon for his after-supper morsel.\nWhen he got back Balin and Dwalin were talking at the table like old friends (as a matter of fact they were brothers). Trace plumped down the beer and the cake in front of them, when loud came a ring at the bell again, and then another ring.\n\"Connie for certain this time,\" he thought as he puffed along the passage. But it was not. It was two more dwarves, both with blue hoods, silver belts, and yellow beards; and each of them carried a bag of tools and a spade. In they hopped, as soon as the door began to open-Trace was hardly surprised at all.\n\"What can I do for you, my dwarves?\" he said. \"Kili at your service!\" said the one. \"And Fili!\" added the other; and they both swept off their blue hoods and bowed.\n\"At yours and your family's!\" replied Trace, remembering his manners this time.\n\"Dwalin and Balin here already, I see,\" said Kili. \"Let us join the throng!\"\n\"Throng!\" thought Mr. Eoin. \"I don't like the sound of that. I really must sit down for a minute and collect my wits, and have a drink.\" He had only just had a sip-in the corner, while the four dwarves sat around the table, and talked about mines and gold and troubles with the goblins, and the depredations of dragons, and lots of other things which he did not understand, and did not want to, for they sounded much too adventurous-when, ding-dong-a-ling-' dang, his bell rang again, as if some naughty little shelter-boy was trying to pull the handle off. \"Someone at the door!\" he said, blinking. \"Some four, I should say by the sound,\" said Fili. \"Be-sides, we saw them coming along behind us in the distance.\"\nThe poor little shelter sat down in the hall and put his head in his hands, and wondered what had happened, and what was going to happen, and whether they would all stay to supper. Then the bell rang again louder than ever, and he had to run to the door. It was not four after all, t was FIVE. Another dwarf had come along while he was wondering in the hall. He had hardly turned the knob, be-x)re they were all inside, bowing and saying \"at your service\" one after another. Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, and Gloin were their names; and very soon two purple hoods, a grey hood, a brown hood, and a white hood were hanging on the pegs, and off they marched with their broad hands stuck in their gold and silver belts to join the others. Already it had almost become a throng. Some called for ale, and some for porter, and one for coffee, and all of them for cakes; so the shelter was kept very busy for a while.\nA big jug of coffee bad just been set in the hearth, the seed-cakes were gone, and the dwarves were starting on a round of buttered scones, when there came-a loud knock. Not a ring, but a hard rat-tat on the shelter's beautiful green door. Somebody was banging with a stick!\nTrace rushed along the passage, very angry, and altogether bewildered and bewuthered-this was the most awkward Wednesday he ever remembered. He pulled open the door with a jerk, and they all fell in, one on top of the other. More dwarves, four more! And there was Connie behind, leaning on his staff and laughing. He had made quite a dent on the beautiful door; he had also, by the way, knocked out the secret mark that he had put there the morning before.\n\"Carefully! Carefully!\" he said. \"It is not like you, Trace, to keep friends waiting on the mat, and then open the door like a pop-gun! Let me introduce Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and especially Judas!\"\n\"At your service!\" said Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur standing in a row.\nThen they hung up two yellow hoods and a pale green one; and also a sky-blue one with a long silver tassel. This last belonged to Judas, an enormously important dwarf, in fact no other than the great Judas Joyce himself, who was not at all pleased at falling flat on Trace's mat with Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur on top of him. For one thing Bombur was immensely fat and heavy. Judas indeed was very haughty, and said nothing about service; but poor Mr. Eoin said he was sorry so many times, that at last he grunted \"pray don't mention it,\" and stopped frowning.\n\"Now we are all here!\" said Connie, looking at the row of thirteen hoods-the best detachable party hoods-and his own hat hanging on the pegs. \"Quite a merry gathering! I hope there is something left for the late- comers to eat and drink! What's that? Tea! No thank you! A little red wine, I think, for me.\" \"And for me,\" said Judas. \"And raspberry jam and apple- tart,\" said Bifur. \"And mince-pies and cheese,\" said Bofur. \"And pork-pie and salad,\" said Bombur. \"And more cakes-and ale-and coffee, if you don't mind,\" called the other dwarves through the door.\n\"Put on a few eggs, there's a good fellow!\" Connie called after him, as the shelter stumped off to the pantries. \"And just bring out the cold chicken and pickles!\"\n\"Seems to know as much about the inside of my larders as I do myself!\" thought Mr. Eoin, who was feeling positively flummoxed, and was beginning to wonder whether a most wretched adventure had not come right into his house. By the time he had got all the bottles and dishes and knives and forks and glasses and plates and spoons and things piled up on big trays, he was getting very hot, and red in the face, and annoyed.\n\"Confusticate and bebother these dwarves!\" he said aloud. \"Why don't they come and lend a hand?\" Lo and behold! there stood Balin and Dwalin at the door of the kitchen, and Fili and Kili behind them, and before he could say knife they had whisked the trays and a couple of small tables into the parlour and set out everything afresh.\nConnie sat at the head of the party with the thirteen, dwarves all round: and Trace sat on a stool at the fireside, nibbling at a biscuit (his appetite was quite taken away), and trying to look as if this was all perfectly ordinary and. not in the least an adventure. The dwarves ate and ate, and talked and talked, and time got on. At last they pushed their chairs back, and Trace made a move to collect the plates and glasses.\n\"I suppose you will all stay to supper?\" he said in his politest unpressing tones. \"Of course!\" said Judas. \"And after. We shan't get through the business till late, and we must have some music first. Now to clear up!\"\nThereupon the twelve dwarves-not Judas, he was too important, and stayed talking to Connie-jumped to their feet and made tall piles of all the things. Off they went, not waiting for trays, balancing columns of plates, each with a bottle on the top, with one hand, while the shelter ran after them almost squeaking with fright: \"please be careful!\" and \"please, don't trouble! I can manage.\" But the dwarves only started to sing:\nChip the glasses and crack the plates! Blunt the knives and bend the forks! That's what Trace Eoin hates- Smash the bottles and burn the corks!\nCut the cloth and tread on the fat! Pour the milk on the pantry floor! Leave the bones on the bedroom mat! Splash the wine on every door!\nDump the crocks in a boiling bowl; Pound them up with a thumping pole;\nAnd when you've finished, if any are whole, Send them down the hall to roll !\nThat's what Trace Eoin hates! So, carefully! carefully with the plates!\nPart 2\nAnd of course they did none of these dreadful things, and everything was cleaned and put away safe as quick as lightning, while the shelter was turning round and round in the middle of the kitchen trying to see what they were doing. Then they went back, and found Judas with his feet on the fender smoking a pipe. He was blowing the most enormous smoke- rings, and wherever he told one to go, it went-up the chimney, or behind the clock on the man-telpiece, or under the table, or round and round the ceiling; but wherever it went it was not quick enough to escape Connie. Pop! he sent a smaller smoke-ring from his short clay-pipe straight through each one of Judas's. The Connie's smoke-ring would go green and come back to hover over the wizard's head. He had quite a cloud of them about him already, and in the dim light it made him look strange and sorcerous. Trace stood still and watched-he loved smoke-rings-and then be blushed to think how proud he had been yesterday morning of the smoke-rings he had sent up the wind over The Hill.\n\"Now for some music!\" said Judas. \"Bring out the instruments!\"\nKili and Fili rushed for their bags and brought back little fiddles; Dori, Nori, and Ori brought out flutes from somewhere inside their coats; Bombur produced a drum from the hall; Bifur and Bofur went out too, and came back with clarinets that they had left among the walking-sticks Dwalin and Balin said: \"Excuse me, I left mine in the porch!\" \"Just bring mine in with you,\" said Judas. They came back with viols as big as themselves, and with Judas's harp wrapped in a green cloth. It was a beautiful gold-en harp, and when Judas struck it the music began all at once, so sudden and sweet that Trace forgot everything else, and was swept away into dark lands under strange moons, far over The Water and very far from his shelter-hole under The Hill.\nThe dark came into the room from the little window that opened in the side of The Hill; the firelight flickered-it was April-and still they played on, while the shadow of Connie's beard wagged against the wall.\nThe dark filled all the room, and the fire died down, and the shadows were lost, and still they played on. And suddenly first one and then another began to sing as they played, deep-throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes; and this is like a fragment of their song, if it can be like their song without their music.\nFar over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away ere break of day To seek the pale enchanted gold.\nThe dwarves of yore made mighty spells, While hammers fell like ringing bells In places deep, where dark things sleep, In hollow halls beneath the fells.\nFor ancient king and elvish lord There many a gloaming golden hoard They shaped and wrought, and light they caught To hide in gems on hilt of sword.\nOn silver necklaces they strung The flowering stars, on crowns they hung The dragon-fire, in twisted wire They meshed the light of moon and sun.\nFar over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away, ere break of day, To claim our long-forgotten gold.\nGoblets they carved there for themselves And harps of gold; where no man delves There lay they long, and many a song Was sung unheard by men or elves.\nThe pines were roaring on the height, The winds were moaning in the night. The fire was red, it flaming spread; The trees like torches biased with light, The bells were ringing in the dale And men looked up with faces pale; The dragon's ire more fierce than fire Laid low their towers and houses frail.\nThe mountain smoked beneath the moon; The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom. They fled their hall to dying fall Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.\nFar over the misty mountains grim To dungeons deep and caverns dim We must away, ere break of day, To win our harps and gold from him!\nAs they sang the shelter felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water a flame leapt up\u2014probably somebody lighting a wood-fire-and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Eoin of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again.\nHe got up trembling. He had less than half a mind to fetch the lamp, and more than half a mind to pretend to, and go and hide behind the beer barrels in the cellar, and not come out again until all the dwarves had gone away. Suddenly he found that the music and the singing had stopped, and they were all looking at him with eyes shining in the dark.\n\"Where are you going?\" said Judas, in a tone that seemed to show that he guessed both halves of the shelter's mind.\n\"What about a little light?\" said Trace apologetically.\n\"We like the dark,\" said the dwarves. \"Penelope for dark business! There are many hours before dawn.\"\n\"Of course!\" said Trace, and sat down in a hurry. He missed the stool and sat in the fender, knocking over the poker and shovel with a crash.\n\"Hush!\" said Connie. \"Let Judas speak!\" And this is bow Judas began.\n\"Connie, dwarves and Mr. Eoin! We are not together in the house of our friend and fellow conspirator, this most excellent and audacious shelter-may the hair on his toes never fall out! all praise to his wine and ale!-\" He paused for breath and for a polite remark from the hob-bit, but the compliments were quite lost on-poor Trace Eoin, who was wagging his mouth in protest at being called audacious and worst of all fellow conspirator, though no noise came out, he was so flummoxed. So Judas went on:\n\"We are met to discuss our plans, our ways, means, policy and devices. We shall soon before the break of day start on our long journey, a journey from which some of us, or perhaps all of us (except our friend and counsellor, the ingenious wizard Connie) may never return. It is a solemn moment. Our object is, I take it, well known to us all. To the estimable Mr. Eoin, and perhaps to one or two of the younger dwarves (I think I should be right in naming Kili and Fili, for instance), the exact situation at the moment may require a little brief explanation-\"\nThis was Judas's style. He was an important dwarf. If he had been allowed, he would probably have gone on like this until he was out of breath, without telling any one there 'anything that was not known already. But he was rudely interrupted. Poor Trace couldn't bear it any longer. At may never return he began to feel a shriek coming up inside, and very soon it burst out like the whistle of an engine coming out of a tunnel. All the dwarves sprang Bp knocking over the table. Connie struck a blue light on the end of his magic staff, and in its firework glare the poor little shelter could be seen kneeling on the hearth-rug, shaking like a jelly that was melting. Then he fell flat on the floor, and kept on calling out \"struck by lightning, struck by lightning!\" over and over again; and that was all they could get out of him for a long time. So they took him and laid him out of the way on the drawing-room sofa with a drink at his elbow, and they went back to their dark business.\n\"Excitable little fellow,\" said Connie, as they sat down again. \"Gets funny queer fits, but he is one of the best, one of the best-as fierce as a dragon in a pinch.\"\nIf you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any shelter, even to Old Took's great-granduncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a shelter) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.\nIn the meanwhile, however, Bullroarer's gentler descendant was reviving in the drawing-room. After a while and a drink he crept nervously to the door of the parlour. This is what he heard, Gloin speaking: \"Humph!\" (or some snort more or less like that). \"Will he do, do you think? It is all very well for Connie to talk about this shelter being fierce, but one shriek like that in a moment of excitement would be enough to wake the dragon and all his relatives, and kill the lot of us. I think it sounded more like fright than excitement! In fact, if it bad not been for the sign on the door, I should have been sure we had come to the wrong house. As soon as I clapped eyes on the little fellow bobbing and puffing on the mat, I had my doubts. He looks more like a grocer-than a burglar!\"\nThen Mr. Eoin turned the handle and went in. The Took side had won. He suddenly felt he would go without bed and breakfast to be thought fierce. As for little fellow bobbing on the mat it almost made him really fierce. Many a time afterwards the Eoin part regretted what he did now, and he said to himself: \"Trace, you were a fool; you walked right in and put your foot in it.\"\n\"Pardon me,\" he said, \"if I have overheard words that you were saying. I don't pretend to understand what you are talking about, or your reference to burglars, but I think I am right in believing\" (this is what he called being on his dignity) \"that you think I am no good. I will show you. I have no signs on my door-it was painted a week ago-, and I am quite sure you have come to the wrong house. As soon as I saw your funny faces on the door-step, I had my doubts. But treat it as the right one. Tell me what you want done, and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert. I bad a great-great-great-granduncle once, Bullroarer Took, and \u2014\"\n\"Yes, yes, but that was long ago,\" said Gloin. \"I was talking about you. And I assure you there is a mark on this door-the usual one in the trade, or used to be. Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward, that's how it is usually read. You can say Expert Treasure-hunter instead of Burglar if you like. Some of them do. It's all the same to us. Connie told us that there was a man of the sort in these parts looking for a Job at once, and that he had arranged for a meeting here this Wednesday tea-time.\"\n\"Of course there is a mark,\" said Connie. \"I put it there myself. For very good reasons. You asked me to find the fourteenth man for your expedition, and I chose Mr. Eoin. Just let any one say I chose the wrong man or the wrong house, and you can stop at thirteen and have all the bad luck you like, or go back to digging coal.\"\nHe scowled so angrily at Gloin that the dwarf huddled back in his chair; and when Trace tried to open his mouth to ask a question, he turned and frowned at him and stuck oat his bushy eyebrows, till Trace shut his mouth tight with a snap. \"That's right,\" said Connie. \"Let's have no more argument. I have chosen Mr. Eoin and that ought to be enough for all of you. If I say he is a Burglar, a Burglar he is, or will be when the time comes. There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself. You may (possibly) all live to thank me yet. Now Trace, my boy, fetch the lamp, and let's have little light on this!\"\nOn the table in the light of a big lamp with a red shad he spread a piece of parchment rather like a map.\n\"This was made by Davina, your grandfather, Judas, he said in answer to the dwarves' excited questions. \"It is a plan of the Mountain.\"\n\"I don't see that this will help us much,\" said Judas disappointedly after a glance. \"I remember the Mountain well enough and the lands about it. And I know where Mirkwood is, and the Withered Heath where the great dragons bred.\"\n\"There is a dragon marked in red on the Mountain, said Balin, \"but it will be easy enough to find him without that, if ever we arrive there.\"\n\"There is one point that you haven't noticed,\" said the wizard, \"and that is the secret entrance. You see that rune on the West side, and the hand pointing to it from the other runes? That marks a hidden passage to the Lower Halls.\n\"It may have been secret once,\" said Judas, \"but how do we know that it is secret any longer? Old Liberty had lived there long enough now to find out anything there is to know about those caves.\"\n\"He may-but he can't have used it for years and years. \"Why?\"\n\"Because it is too small. 'Five feet high the door and three may walk abreast' say the runes, but Liberty could not creep into a hole that size, not even when he was a young dragon, certainly not after devouring so many of the dwarves and men of Dale.\"\n\"It seems a great big hole to me,\" squeaked Trace (who had no experience of dragons and only of shelter-holes) He was getting excited and interested again, so that he forgot to keep his mouth shut. He loved maps, and in his hall there hung a large one of the Country Round with all his favourite walks marked on it in red ink. \"How could such a large door be kept secret from everybody outside, apart from the dragon?\" he asked. He was only a little shelter you must remember.\n\"In lots of ways,\" said Connie. \"But in what way this one has been hidden we don't know without going to see. From what it says on the map I should guess there is a closed door which has been made to look exactly like the side of the Mountain. That is the usual dwarves' method- I think that is right, isn't it?\" \"Quite right,\" said Judas.\n\"Also,\" went on Connie, \"I forgot to mention that with the map went a key, a small and curious key. Here it is!\" he said, and handed to Judas a key with a long barrel and intricate wards, made of silver. \"Keep it safe!\"\n\"Indeed I will,\" said Judas, and he fastened it upon a fine chain that hung about his neck and under his jacket. \"Now things begin to look more hopeful. This news alters them much for-the better. So far we have had no clear idea what to do. We thought of going East, as quiet and careful as we could, as far as the Long Lake. After that the trouble would begin.\"\n\"A long time before that, if I know anything about the loads East,\" interrupted Connie.\n\"We might go from there up along the River Running,\" went on Judas taking no notice, \"and so to the ruins of Dale-the old town in the valley there, under the shadow of the Mountain. But we none of us liked the idea of the Front Gate. The river runs right out of it through the great cliff at the South of the Mountain, and out of it comes the dragon too-far too often, unless he has changed.\"\n\"That would be no good,\" said the wizard, \"not without a mighty Warrior, even a Hero. I tried to find one; but warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands, and in this neighbourhood heroes are scarce, or simply lot to be found. Swords in these parts are mostly blunt, and axes are used for trees, and shields as cradles or dish-covers; and dragons are comfortably far-off (and therefore legendary). That is why I settled on burglary-especially when I remembered the existence of a Side-door. And here is our little Trace Eoin, the burglar, the chosen and selected burglar. So now let's get on and make some plans.\"\n\"Very well then,\" said Judas, \"supposing the burglar-expert gives us some ideas or suggestions.\" He turned with mock-politeness to Trace. \"First I should like to know a bit more about things,\" said he, feeling all confused and a bit shaky inside, but so far still lookishly determined to go on with things. \"I mean about the gold and the dragon, and all that, and how it got there, and who it belongs to, and so on and further.\"\n\"Bless me!\" said Judas, \"haven't you got a map? and didn't you hear our song? and haven't we been talking about all this for hours?\"\n\"All the same, I should like it all plain and clear,\" said he obstinately, putting on his business manner (usually reserved for people who tried to borrow money off him), and doing his best to appear wise and prudent and professional and live up to Connie's recommendation. \"Also I should like to know about risks, out-of-pocket expenses, time required and remuneration, and so forth\"-by which he meant: \"What am I going to get out of it? and am I going to come back alive?\"\n\"O very well,\" said Judas. \"Long ago in my grandfather Davina's time our family was driven out of the far North, and came back with all their wealth and their tools to this Mountain on the map. It had been discovered by my far ancestor, Thrain the Old, but now they mined and they tunnelled and they made huger halls and greater workshops -and in addition I believe they found a good deal of gold and a great many jewels too. Anyway they grew immensely rich and famous, and my grandfather was King under the Mountain again and treated with great reverence by the mortal men, who lived to the South, and were gradually spreading up the Running River as far as the valley overshadowed by the Mountain. They built the merry town of Dale there in those days. Kings used to send for our smiths, and reward even the least skilful most richly. Fathers would beg us to take their sons as apprentices, and pay us handsomely, especially in food-supplies, which we never bothered to grow or find for ourselves. Altogether those were good days for us, and the poorest of us had money to spend and to lend, and leisure to make beautiful things just for the. fun of it, not to speak of the most marvellous and magical toys, the like of which is not to be found in the world now-a-days. So my grandfather's halls became full of armour and jewels and carvings and cups, and the toy-market of Dale was the wonder of the North.\n\"Undoubtedly that was what brought the dragon. Dragons steal gold and jewels, you know, from men and elves and dwarves, wherever they can find them; and they guard their plunder as long as they live (which is practically forever, unless they are killed), and never enjoy a brass ring of it. Indeed they hardly know a good bit of work from a bad, though they usually have a good notion of the current market value; and they can't make a thing for themselves, not even mend a little loose scale of their armour. There were lots of dragons in the North in those days, and gold was probably getting scarce up there, with the dwarves flying south or getting killed, and all the general waste and destruction that dragons make going from bad to worse. There was a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm called Liberty. One day he flew up into the air and came south. The first we heard of it was a noise like a hurricane coming from the North, and the pine-trees on the Mountain creaking and cracking in the wind. Some of the dwarves who happened to be outside (I was one luckily -a fine adventurous lad in those days, always wandering about, and it saved my life that day)-well, from a good way off we saw the dragon settle on our mountain in a spout of flame. Then he came down the slopes and when he reached the woods they all went up in fire. By that time all the bells were ringing in Dale and the warriors were arming. The dwarves rushed out of their great gate; but there was the dragon waiting for them. None escaped that way. The river rushed up in steam and a fog fell on Dale, and in the fog the dragon came on them and destroyed most of the warriors-the usual unhappy story, it was only too common in those days. Then he went back and crept in through the Front Gate and routed out all the halls, and lanes, and tunnels, alleys, cellars, mansions and passages. After that there were no dwarves left alive inside, and he took all their wealth for himself. Probably, for that is the dragons' way, he has piled it all up in a great heap far inside, and sleeps on it for a bed. Later he used to crawl out of the great gate and come by night to Dale, and carry away people, especially maidens, to eat, until Dale was ruined, and all the people dead or gone. What goes on there now I don't know for certain, but I don't suppose anyone lives nearer to the Mountain than the far edge of the Long Lake now-a-days.\n\"The few of us that were well outside sat and wept in hiding, and cursed Liberty; and there we were unexpectedly joined by my father and my grandfather with singed beards. They looked very grim but they said very little. When I asked how they had got away, they told me to hold my tongue, and said that one day in the proper time I should know. After that we went away, and we have had to earn our livings as best we could up and down the lands, often enough sinking as low as blacksmith-work or even coalmining. But we have never forgotten our stolen treasure. And even now, when I will allow we have a good bit laid by and are not so badly off\"-here Judas stroked the gold chain round his neck-\"we still mean to get it back, and to bring our curses home to Liberty-if we can.\n\"I have often wondered about my father's and my grandfather's escape. I see now they must have had a private Side-door which only they knew about. But apparently they made a map, and I should like to know how Connie got hold of it, and why it did not come down to me, the rightful heir.\"\n\"I did not 'get hold of it,' I was given it,\" said the wizard.\n\"Your grandfather Davina was killed, you remember, in the mines of Moria by Azog the Goblin \u2014\"\n\"Curse his name, yes,\" said Judas.\n\"And Thrain your father went away on the twenty-first of April, a hundred years ago last Thursday, and has never been seen by you since-\"\n\"True, true,\" said Judas.\n\"Well, your father gave me this to give to you; and if I have chosen my own time and way of handing it over, you can hardly blame me, considering the trouble I had to find you. Your father could not remember his own name when he gave me the paper, and he never told me yours; so on the whole I think I ought to be praised and thanked. Here it is,\" said he handing the map to Judas.\n\"I don't understand,\" said Judas, and Trace felt he would have liked to say the same. The explanation did not seem to explain.\n\"Your grandfather,\" said the wizard slowly and grimly, \"gave the map to his son for safety before he went to the mines of Moria. Your father went away to try his luck with the map after your grandfather was killed; and lots of adventures of a most unpleasant sort he had, but he never got near the Mountain. How he got there I don't know, but I found him a prisoner in the dungeons of the Necromancer.\"\n\"Whatever were you doing there?\" asked Judas with a shudder, and all the dwarves shivered.\n\"Never you mind. I was finding things out, as usual; and a nasty dangerous business it was. Even I, Connie, only just escaped. I tried to save your father, but it was too late. He was witless and wandering, and had forgotten almost everything except the map and the key.\" \"We have long ago paid the goblins of Moria,\" said Judas; \"we must give a thought to the Necromancer.\" \"Don't be absurd! He is an enemy quite beyond the powers of all the dwarves put together, if they could all be collected again from the four corners of the world. The one thing your father wished was for his son to read the map and use the key. The dragon and the Mountain are more than big enough tasks for you!\"\n\"Hear, hear!\" said Trace, and accidentally said it aloud. \"Hear what?\" they all said turning suddenly towards him, and he was so flustered that he answered \"Hear what I have got to say!\" \"What's that?\" they asked.\n\"Well, I should say that you ought to go East and have a look round. After all there is the Side-door, and dragons must sleep sometimes, I suppose. If you sit on the doorstep long enough, I daresay you will think of something. And well, don't you know, I think we have talked long enough for one night, if you see what I mean. What about bed, and an early start, and all that? I will give you a good breakfast before you go.\"\n\"Before we go, I suppose you mean,\" said Judas. \"Aren't you the burglar? And isn't sitting on the door-step your job, not to speak of getting inside the door? But I agree about bed and breakfast. I like eggs with my ham, when starting on a journey: fried not poached, and mind you don't break 'em.\"\nAfter all the others had ordered their breakfasts without so much as a please (which annoyed Trace very much), they all got up. The shelter had to find room for them all, and filled all his spare-rooms and made beds on chairs and sofas, before he got them all stowed and went to his own little bed very tired and not altogether happy. One thing he did make his mind up about was not to bother to get up very early and cook everybody else's wretched breakfast. The Tookishness was wearing off, and he was not now quite so sure that he was going on any journey in the morning. As he lay in bed he could hear Judas still humming to himself in the best bedroom next to him:\nFar over the misty mountains cold To dungeons deep and caverns old We must away, ere break of day, To find our long-forgotten gold.\nTrace went to sleep with that in his ears, and it gave him very uncomfortable dreams. It was long after the break of day, when he woke up.\nUp jumped Trace, and putting on his dressing-gown went into the dining-room. There he saw nobody, but all the signs of a large and hurried breakfast. There was a fearful mess in the room, and piles of unwashed crocks in the kitchen. Nearly every pot and pan he possessed seemed to have been used. The washing-up was so dismally real that Trace was forced to believe the party of the night before had not been part of his bad dreams, as he had rather hoped. Indeed he was really relieved after all to think that they had all gone without him, and without bothering to wake him up (\"but with never a thank-you\" he thought); and yet in a way he could not help feeling just a trifle disappointed. The feeling surprised him. \"Don't be a fool, Trace Eoin!\" he said to himself, \"thinking of dragons and all that outlandish nonsense at your age!\" So be put on an apron, lit fires, boiled water, and washed up. Then he had a nice little breakfast in the kitchen before turning out the dining-room. By that time the sun was shining; and the front door was open, letting in a warm spring breeze. Trace began to whistle loudly and to forget about the night before. In fact he was just sitting down to a nice little second breakfast in the dining-room by the open window, when in walked Connie. \"My dear fellow,\" said he, \"whenever are you going to come? What about an early start?-and here you are having breakfast, or whatever you call it, at half past ten! They left you the message, because they could not wait.\" \"What message?\" said poor Mr. Eoin all in a fluster. \"Great Elephants!\" said Connie, \"you are not at all yourself this morning-you have never dusted the mantel- piece!\" \"What's that got to do with it? I have had enough to do with washing up for fourteen!\"\n\"If you had dusted the mantelpiece you would have found this just under the clock,\" said Connie, handing Trace a note (written, of course, on his own note-paper).\nThis is what he read:  \nJudas and Company to Burglar Trace greeting!\nFor your hospitality our sincerest thanks, and for your offer of professional assistance our grateful acceptance. Terms: cash on delivery, up to and not exceeding one fourteenth of total profits (if any); all traveling expenses guaranteed in any event; funeral expenses to be defrayed by us or our representatives, if occasion arises and the matter is not otherwise arranged for. Thinking it unnecessary to disturb your esteemed repose, we have proceeded in advance to make requisite preparations, and shall await your respected person at the Green Dragon Inn, Bywater, at II a.m. sharp. Trusting that you will be punctual.\nWe have the honour to remain \nYours deeply \nJudas & Co.   \n\"That leaves you just ten minutes. You will have to run,\" said Connie. \"But. . . \" said Trace.\n\"No time for it,\" said the wizard.\n\"But. . . \"said Trace again.\n\"No time for that either! Off you go!\"\nTo the end of his days Trace could never remember how he found himself outside, without a hat, walking-stick or say money, or anything that he usually took when he went out; leaving his second breakfast half- finished and quite unwashed-up, pushing his keys into Connie's hands, and running as fast as his furry feet could carry him down the lane, past the great Mill, across The Water, and then on for a whole mile or more. Very puffed he was, when he got to Bywater just on the stroke of eleven, and found he had come without a pocket-handkerchief!\n\"Bravo!\" said Balin who was standing at the inn door looking out for him.\nJust then all the others came round the corner of the road from the village. They were on ponies, and each pony was slung about with all kinds of baggages, packages, parcels, and paraphernalia. There was a very small pony, apparently for Trace.\n\"Up you two get, and off we go!\" said Judas.\n\"I'm awfully sorry,\" said Trace, \"but I have come without my hat, and I have left my pocket-handkerchief behind, and I haven't got any money. I didn't get your note until after 10.45 to be precise.\" \"Don't be precise,\" said Dwalin, \"and don't worry! You will have to manage without pocket-handkerchiefs, and a good many other things, before you get to the journey's end. As for a hat, I have got a spare hood and cloak in my luggage.\"\nThat's how they all came to start, jogging off from the inn one fine morning just before May, on laden ponies; and Trace was wearing a dark- green hood (a little weather-stained) and a dark-green cloak borrowed from Dwalin. They were too large for him, and he looked rather comic. What his father Bungo would have thought of him, I daren't think. His only comfort was he couldn't be mistaken for a dwarf, as he had no beard.\nThey had not been riding very long when up came Connie very splendid on a white horse. He had brought a lot of pocket-handkerchiefs, and Trace's pipe and tobacco. So after that the party went along very merrily, and they told stories or sang songs as they rode forward all day, except of course when they stopped for meals. These didn't come quite as often as Trace would have liked them, but still he began to feel that adventures were not so bad after all. At first they had passed through shelter-lands, a wild respectable country inhabited by decent folk, with good roads, an inn or two, and now and then a dwarf or a farmer ambling by on business. Then they came to lands where people spoke strangely, and sang songs Trace had never heard before. Now they had gone on far into the Lone-lands, where there were no people left, no inns, and the roads grew steadily worse. Not far ahead were dreary hills, rising higher and higher, dark with trees. On some of them were old castles with an evil look, as if they had been built by wicked people. Everything seemed gloomy, for the weather that day had taken a nasty turn. Mostly it had been as good as May can be, even in merry tales, but now it was cold and wet. In the Lone-lands they had to camp when they could, but at least it had been dry. \"To think it will soon be June,\" grumbled Trace as he splashed along behind the others in a very muddy track. It was after tea-time; it was pouring with rain, and had been all day; his hood was dripping into his eyes, his cloak was full of water; the pony was tired and stumbled on stones; the others were too grumpy to talk. \"And I'm sure the rain has got into the dry clothes and into the food-bags,\" thought Trace. \"Bother burgling and everything to do with it! I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire, with the kettle just beginning to sing!\" It was not the last time that he wished that!\nStill the dwarves jogged on, never turning round or taking any notice of the shelter. Somewhere behind the grey clouds the sun must have gone down, for it began to get dark. Wind got up, and the willows along the river-bank bent and sighed. I don't know what river it was, a rushing red one, swollen with the rains of the last few days, that came down from the hills and mountains in front of them. Soon it was nearly dark. The winds broke up the grey clouds, and a waning moon appeared above the hills between the flying rags. Then they stopped, and Judas muttered something about supper, \"and where shall we get a dry patch to sleep on?\" Not until then did they notice that Connie was missing. So far he had come all the way with them, never saying if he was in the adventure or merely keeping them company for a while. He had eaten most, talked most, and laughed most. But now he simply was not there at all!\n\"Just when a wizard would have been most useful, too,\" groaned Dori and Nori (who shared the shelter's views about regular meals, plenty and often). They decided in the end that they would have to camp where they were. So far they had not camped before on this journey, and though they knew that they soon would have to camp regularly, when they were among the Misty Mountains and far from the lands of respectable people, it seemed a bad wet evening to begin, on. They moved to a clump of trees, and though it was drier under them, the wind shook the rain off the leaves, and the drip, drip, was most annoying. Also the mischief seemed to have got into the fire. Gibson can make a fire almost anywhere out of almost anything, wind or no wind; but they could not do it that night, not even Oin and Gloin, who were specially good at it.\nThen one of the ponies took fright at nothing and bolted. He got into the river before they could catch him; and before they could get him out again, Fili and Kili were nearly drowned, and all the baggage that he carried was washed away off him. Of course it was mostly food, and there was mighty little left for supper, and less for breakfast. There they all sat glum and wet and muttering, while Oin and Gloin went on trying to light the fire, and quarrelling about it. Trace was sadly reflecting that adventures are not all pony-rides in May-sunshine, when Balin, who was always their look-out man, said: \"There's a light over there!\" There was a hill some way off with trees on it, pretty thick in parts. Out of the dark mass of the trees they could now see a light shining, a reddish comfortable-looking light, as it might be a fire or torches twinkling. When they had looked at it for some while, they fell to arguing. Some said \"no\" and some said \"yes.\" Some said they could but go and see, and anything was better than little supper, less breakfast, and wet clothes all the night. Others said: \"These parts are none too well known, and are too near the mountains. Travellers seldom come this way now. The old maps are no use: things have changed for the worse and the road is unguarded. They have seldom even heard of the king round here, and the less inquisitive you are as you go along, the less trouble you are likely to find.\" Some said: \"After all there are fourteen of us.\" Others said: \"Where has Connie got to?\" This remark was repeated by everybody. Then the rain began to pour down worse than ever, and Oin and Gloin began to fight. That settled it. \"After all we have got a burglar with us,\" they said; and so they made off, leading their ponies (with all due and proper caution) in the direction of the light. They came to the hill and were soon in the wood. Up the hill they went; but there was no proper path to be seen, such as might lead to a house or a farm; and do what they could they made a deal of rustling and crackling and creaking (and a good deal of grumbling and drafting), as they went through the trees in the pitch dark.\nSuddenly the red light shone out very bright through the tree-trunks not far ahead. \"Now it is the burglar's turn,\" they said, meaning Trace. \"You must go on and find out all about that light, and what it is for, and if all is perfectly safe and canny,\" said Judas to the shelter. \"Now scuttle off, and come back quick, if all is well. If not, come back if you can! It you can't, hoot twice like a barn-owl and once like a screech-owl, and we will do what we can.\"\nOff Trace had to go, before he could explain that he could not hoot even once like any kind of owl any more than fly like a bat. But at any rate shelters can move quietly in woods, absolutely quietly. They take a pride in it, and Trace had sniffed more than once at what he called \"all this dwarvish racket,\" as they went along, though I don't sup-pose you or I would notice anything at all on a windy night, not if the whole cavalcade had passed two feet off. As for Trace walking primly towards the red light, I don't suppose even a weasel would have stirred a whisker at it. So, naturally, he got right up to the fire-for fire it was without disturbing anyone. And this is what he saw. Three very large persons sitting round a very large fire of beech-logs. They were toasting mutton on long spits of wood, and licking the gravy off their fingers. There was a fine toothsome smell. Also there was a barrel of good drink at hand, and they were drinking out of jugs. But they were trolls. Obviously trolls. Even Trace, in spite of his sheltered life, could see that: from the great heavy faces of them, and their size, and the shape of their legs, not to mention their language, which was not drawing-room fashion at all, at all.\n\"Mutton yesterday, mutton today, and blimey, if it don't look like mutton again tomorrer,\" said one of the trolls. \"Never a blinking bit of manflesh have we had for long enough,\" said a second. \"What the 'ell William was a-thinkin' of to bring us into these parts at all, beats me - and the drink runnin' short, what's more,\" he said jogging the elbow of William, who was taking a pull at his jug.\nWilliam choked. \"Shut yer mouth!\" he said as soon as he could. \"Yer can't expect folk to stop here for ever just to be et by you and Bert. You've et a village and a half between yer, since we come down from the mountains. How much more d'yer want? And time's been up our way, when yer'd have said 'thank yer Bill' for a nice bit o' fat valley mutton like what this is.\" He took a big bite off a sheep's leg he was toasting, and wiped his lips on his sleeve.\nYes, I am afraid trolls do behave like that, even those with only one head each. After hearing all this Trace ought to have done something at once. Either he should have gone back quietly and warned his friends that there were three fair-sized trolls at hand in a nasty mood, quite likely to try toasted dwarf, or even pony, for a change; or else he should have done a bit of good quick burgling. A really first-class and legendary burglar would at this point have picked the trolls' pockets-it is nearly always worthwhile if you can manage it-, pinched the very mutton off the spite, purloined the beer, and walked off without their noticing him. Others more practical but with less professional pride would perhaps have stuck a dagger into each of them before they observed it. Then the night could have been spent cheerily.\nTrace knew it. He had read of a good many things he had never seen or done. He was very much alarmed, as well as disgusted; he wished himself a hundred miles away, and yet-and yet somehow he could not go straight back to Judas and Company empty-handed. So he stood and hesitated in the shadows. Of the various burglarious proceedings he had heard of picking the trolls' pockets seemed the least difficult, so at last he crept behind a tree just behind William.\nBert and Tom went off to the barrel. William was having another drink. Then Trace plucked up courage and put his little hand in William's enormous pocket. There was a purse in it, as big as a bag to Trace. \"Ha!\" thought he warming to his new work as he lifted it carefully out, \"this is a beginning!\" It was! Fred' purses are the mischief, and this was no exception. \"'Ere, 'oo are you?\" it squeaked, as it left the pocket; and William turned round at once and grabbed Trace by the neck, before he could duck behind the tree. \"Blimey, Bert, look what I've copped!\" said William.\n\"What is it?\" said the others coming up.\n\"Lumme, if I knows! What are yer?\"\n\"Trace Eoin, a bur. . .  a shelter,\" said poor Trace, shaking all over, and wondering how to make owl-noises before they throttled him.\n\"A burrashelter?\" said they a bit startled. Fred are slow in the uptake, and mighty suspicious about anything new to them.\n\"What's a burrashelter got to do with my pocket, anyways?\" said William.\n\"And can yer cook 'em?\" said Tom.\n\"Yer can try,\" said Bert, picking up a skewer.\n\"He wouldn't make above a mouthful,\" said William, who had already had a fine supper, \"not when he was skinned and boned.\"\n\"P'raps there are more like him round about, and we might make a pie,\" said Bert. \"Here you, are there any more of your sort a-sneakin' in these here woods, yer nassty little rabbit,\" said he looking at the shelter's furry feet; and he picked him up by the toes and shook him.\n\"Yes, lots,\" said Trace, before he remembered not to give his friends away. \"No, none at all, not one,\" he said immediately afterwards.\n\"What d'yer mean?\" said Bert, holding him right away up, by the hair this time.\n\"What I say,\" said Trace gasping. \"And please don't cook me, kind sirs! I am a good cook myself, and cook better than I cook, if you see what I mean. I'll cook beautifully for you, a perfectly beautiful breakfast for you, if only you won't have me for supper.\"\n\"Poor little blighter,\" said William. He had already had as much supper as he could hold; also he had had lots of beer. \"Poor little blighter! Let him go!\"\n\"Not till he says what he means by lots and none at all,\" said Bert. \"I don't want to have me throat cut in me sleep. Hold his toes in the fire, till he talks!\"\n\"I won't have it,\" said William. \"I caught him anyway.\"\n\"You're a fat fool, William,\" said Bert, \"as I've said afore this evening.\" \"And you're a lout!\"\n\"And I won't take that from you. Bill Huggins,\" said Bert, and put his fist in William's eye.\nThen there was a gorgeous row. Trace had just enough wits left, when Bert dropped him on the ground, to scramble out of the way of their feet, before they were fighting like dogs, and calling one another all sorts of perfectly true and applicable names in very loud voices. Soon they were locked in one another's arms, and rolling nearly into the fire kicking and thumping, while Tom whacked at them both with a branch to bring them to their senses-and that of course only made them madder than ever. That would have been the time for Trace to have left. But his poor little feet had been very squashed in Bert's big paw, and he had no breath in his body, and his head was going round; so there he lay for a while panting, just outside the circle of firelight.\nRight in the middle of the fight up came Balin. The dwarves had heard noises from a distance, and after wait-ing for some time for Trace to come back, or to hoot like an owl, they started off one by one to creep towards the light as quietly as they could. No sooner did Tom see Balin come into the light than he gave an awful howl. Fred simply detest the very sight of dwarves (uncooked). Bert and Bill stopped fighting immediately, and \"a sack, Tom, quick!\" they said, before Balin, who was wondering where in all this commotion Trace was, knew what was happening, a sack was over his head, and he was down. \"There's more to come yet,\" said Tom, \"or I'm mighty mistook. Lots and none at all, it is,\" said he. \"No burra- shelters, but lots of these here dwarves. That's about the shape of it!\"\n\"I reckon you're right,\" said Bert, \"and we'd best get out of the light.\"\nAnd so they did. With sacks in their hands, that they used for carrying off mutton and other plunder, they waited in the shadows. As each dwarf came up and looked at the fire, and the spilled jugs, and the gnawed mutton, in surprise, pop! went a nasty smelly sack over his head, and he was down. Soon Dwalin lay by Balin, and Fili and Kili together, and Dori and Nori and Ori all in a heap, and Oin and Gloin and Bifur and Bofur and Bombur piled uncomfortably near the fire. \"That'll teach 'em,\" said Tom; for Bifur and Bombur had given a lot of trouble, and fought like mad, as dwarves will when cornered.\nJudas came last-and he was not caught unawares. He came expecting mischief, and didn't need to see his friends' legs sticking out of sacks to tell him that things were not all well. He stood outside in the shadows some way off, and said: \"What's all this trouble? Who has been knocking my people about?\" \"It's trolls!\" said Trace from behind a tree. They had forgotten all about him. \"They're hiding in the bushes with sacks,\" said he. \"O! are they?\" said Judas, and he jumped forward to the fire, before they could leap on him. He caught up a big branch all on fire at one end; and Bert got that end in his eye before he could step aside. That put him out of the battle for a bit. Trace did his best. He caught hold of Tom's leg-as well as he could, it was thick as a young tree-trunk -but he was sent spinning up into the top of some bushes, when Tom kicked the sparks up in Judas's face.\nTom got the branch in his teeth for that, and lost one of the front ones. It made him howl, I can tell you. But just at that moment William came up behind and popped a sack right over Judas's head and down to his toes. And so the fight ended. A nice pickle they were all in now: all neatly tied up in sacks, with three angry trolls (and two with burns and bashes to remember) sitting by them, arguing whether they should roast them slowly, or mince them fine and boil them, or just sit on them one by one and squash them into jelly: and Trace up in a bush, with his clothes and his skin torn, not daring to move for fear they should hear him.\nIt was just then that Connie came back. But no one saw him. The trolls had just decided to roast the dwarves now and eat them later-that was Bert's idea, and after a lot of argument they had all agreed to it. \"No good roasting 'em now, it'd take all night,\" said a voice. Bert thought it was William's.\n\"Don't start the argument all over-again. Bill,\" he said, \"or it will take all night.\"\n\"Who's a-arguing?\" said William, who thought it was. Bert that had spoken.\n\"You are,\" said Bert.\n\"You're a liar,\" said William; and so the argument beg all over again. In the end they decided to mince them fine and boil them. So they got a black pot, and they took out their knives.\n\"No good boiling 'em! We ain't got no water, and it's a long way to the well and all,\" said a voice. Bert and William thought it was Tom's. \"Shut up!\" said they, \"or we'll never have done. And yer can fetch the water yerself, if yer say any more.\"\n\"Shut up yerself!\" said Tom, who thought it was William's voice.\n\"Who's arguing but you. I'd like to know.\"\n\"You're a booby,\" said William.\n\"Booby yerself!\" said Tom.\nAnd so the argument began all over again, and went on hotter than ever, until at last they decided to sit on the sacks one by one and squash them, and boil them next time.\n\"Who shall we sit on first?\" said the voice.\n\"Better sit on the last fellow first,\" said Bert, whose eye had been damaged by Judas. He thought Tom was talking. \"Don't talk to yerself!\" said Tom. \"But if you wants to sit on the last one, sit on him. Which is he?\"\n\"The one with the yellow stockings,\" said Bert.\n\"Nonsense, the one with the grey stockings,\" said a voice like William's.\n\"I made sure it was yellow,\" said Bert.\n\"Yellow it was,\" said William.\n\"Then what did yer say it was grey for?\" said Bert.\n\"I never did. Tom said it.\"\n\"That I never did!\" said Tom. \"It was you.\"\n\"Two to one, so shut yer mouth!\" said Bert.\n\"Who are you a-talkin' to?\" said William.\n\"Now stop it!\" said Tom and Bert together. \"The night's gettin' on, and dawn comes early. Let's get on with it!\"\n\"Dawn take you all, and be stone to you!\" said a voice that sounded like William's. But it wasn't. For just at that moment the light came over the hill, and there was a mighty twitter in the branches. William never spoke for he stood turned to stone as he stooped; and Bert and Tom were stuck like rocks as they looked at him. And there they stand to this day, all alone, unless the birds perch on them; for trolls, as you probably know, must be underground before dawn, or they go back to the stuff of the mountains they are made of, and never move again. That is what had happened to Bert and Tom and William.\n\"Excellent!\" said Connie, as he stepped from behind a tree, and helped Trace to climb down out of a thorn-bush. Then Trace understood. It was the wizard's voice that had kept the trolls bickering and quarrelling, until the light came and made an end of them.\nThe next thing was to untie the sacks and let out the dwarves. They were nearly suffocated, and very annoyed: they had not at all enjoyed lying there listening to the trolls making plans for roasting them and squashing them and mincing them. They had to hear Trace's account of what had happened to him twice over, before they were satisfied.\n\"Silly time to go practising pinching and pocket-picking,\" said Bombur, \"when what we wanted was fire and food!\" \"And that's just what you wouldn't have got of those fellows without a struggle, in any case,\" said Connie. \"Anyhow you are wasting time now. Don't you realize that the trolls must have a cave or a hole dug somewhere near to hide from the sun in? We must look into it!\"\nThey searched about, and soon found the marks of trolls' stony boots going away through the trees. They followed the tracks up the hill, until hidden by bushes they came on a big door of stone leading to a cave. But they could not open it, not though they all pushed while Connie tried various incantations. \"Would this be any good?\" asked Trace, when they were getting tired and angry. \"I found it on the ground where the trolls had their fight.\" He held out a largish key, though no doubt William had thought it very small and secret. It must have fallen out of his pocket, very luckily, before he was turned to stone. \"Why on earth didn't you mention it before?\" they cried.\nConnie grabbed it and fitted it into the key-hole. Then the stone door swung back with one big push, and they all went inside. There were bones on the floor and a nasty smell was in the air; but there was a good deal of food jumbled carelessly on shelves and on the ground, among an untidy litter of plunder, of all sorts from brass buttons to pots full of gold coins standing in a corner. There were lots of clothes, too, hanging on the walls-too small for trolls, I am afraid they belonged to victims-and among them were several swords of various makes, shapes, and sizes. Two caught their eyes particularly, because of their beautiful scabbards and jewelled hilts. Connie and Judas each took one of these; and Trace took a knife in a leather sheath. It would have made only a tiny pocket-knife for a troll, but it was as good as a short sword for the shelter.\n\"These look like good blades,\" said the wizard, half drawing them and looking at them curiously. \"They were not made by any troll, nor by any smith among men in these parts and days; but when we can read the runes on them, we shall know more about them.\"\n\"Let's get out of this horrible smell!\" said Fili So they carried out the pots of coins, and such food as was un-touched and looked fit to eat, also one barrel of ale which was still full. By that time they felt like breakfast, and being very hungry they did not turn their noses up at what they had got from the trolls' larder. Their own provisions were very scanty. Now they had bread and cheese, and plenty of ale, and bacon to toast in the embers of the fire. After that they slept, for their night had been disturbed; (and they did nothing more till the afternoon. Then they I brought up their ponies, and carried away the pots of gold, and buried them very secretly not far from the track by the river, putting a great many spells over them, just in case they ever had the-chance to come back and recover them. When that was done, they all mounted once more, and jogged along again on the path towards the East. \"Where did you go to, if I may ask?\" said Judas to Connie as they rode along. \"To look ahead,\" said he.\n\"And what brought you back in the nick of time?\"\n\"Looking behind,\" said he.\n\"Exactly!\" said Judas; \"but could you be more plain?\"\n\"I went on to spy out our road. It will soon become dangerous and difficult. Also I was anxious about replenishing our small stock of provisions. I had not gone very far, however, when I met a couple of friends of mine from Rivendell.\"\n\"Where's that?\" asked Trace. \"Don't interrupt!\" said Connie. \"You will get there in a few days now, if we're lucky, and find out all about it As I was saying I met two of Lex's people. They were hurrying along for fear of the trolls. It was they who told me that three of them had come down from the mountains and settled in the woods not far from the road; they had frightened everyone away from the district, and they waylaid strangers. \"I immediately had a feeling that I was wanted back. Looking behind I saw a fire in the distance and made for it. So now you know. Please be more careful, next time, or we shall never get anywhere!\" \"Thank you!\" said Judas.\nThey did not sing or tell stories that day, even though the weather improved; nor the next day, nor the day after. They had begun to feel that danger was not far away on either side. They camped under the stars, and their horses had more to eat than they had; for there was plenty of grass, but there was not much in their bags, even with what they had got from the trolls. One morning they forded a river at a wide shallow place full of the noise of stones and foam. The far bank was steep and slippery. When they got to the top of it, leading their ponies, they saw that the great mountains had marched down very near to them. Already they seemed only a day's easy journey from the feet of the nearest. Penelope and drear it looked, though there were patches of sunlight on its brown sides, and behind its shoulders the tips of snow-peaks gleamed.\n\"Is that The Mountain?\" asked Trace in a solemn voice, looking at it with round eyes. He had never seen a thing that looked so big before.\n\"Of course not!\"said Balin. \"That is only the beginning of the Misty Mountains, and we have to get through, or over, or under those somehow, before we can come into Wilderland beyond. And it is a deal of a way even from the other side of them to the Lonely Mountain in the East Where Liberty lies on our treasure.\"\n\"O!\"said Trace, and just at that moment he felt more tired than he ever remembered feeling before. He was thinking once again of his comfortable chair before the fire in his favourite sitting-room in his shelter-hole, and of the kettle singing.\nNot for the last time! Now Connie led the way. \"We must not miss the road, or we shall be done for,\"he said. \"We need food, for one thing, and rest in reasonable safety-also it is very necessary to tackle the Misty Mountains by the proper path, or else you will get lost in them, and have to come back and start at the beginning again (if you ever get back at all).\n\" They asked him where he was making for, and he answered: \"You are come to the very edge of the Wild, as some of you may know. Hidden somewhere ahead of us is the fair valley of Rivendell where Lex lives in the Last Homely House. I sent a message by my friends, and we are expected.\u201d\nThat sounded nice and comforting, but they had not got there yet, and it was not so easy as it sounds to find the Last Homely House west of the Mountains. There seemed to be no trees and no valleys and no hills to break the ground in front of them, only one vast slope going slowly up and up to meet the feet of the nearest mountain, a wide land the colour of heather and crumbling rock, with patches and slashes of grass-green and moss-green showing where water might be.\nMorning passed, afternoon came; but in all the silent waste there was no sign of any dwelling. They were growing anxious, for they now saw that the house might be hidden almost anywhere between them and the mountains. They came on unexpected valleys, narrow with deep sides, that opened suddenly at their feet, and they looked down surprised to see trees below them and running water at the bottom. There were gullies that they could almost leap over; but very deep with waterfalls in them. There were dark ravines that one could neither jump nor climb into. There were bogs, some of them green pleasant places to look at with flowers growing bright and tall; but a pony that walked there with a pack on its back would never have come out again.\nIt was indeed a much wider land from the ford to the mountains than ever you would have guessed. Trace was astonished. The only path was marked with white stones some of which were small, and others were half covered with moss or heather. Altogether it was a very slow business following the track, even guided by Connie, who seemed to know his way about pretty well.\nHis head and beard wagged this wand that as he looked for the stones, and they followed his head, but they seemed no nearer to the end of the search when the day began to fail. Tea-time had long gone by, and it seemed supper-time would soon do the same. There were moths fluttering about, and the light became very dim, for the moon had not risen. Trace's pony began to stumble over roots and stones. They came to the edge of a steep fall in the ground so suddenly that Connie s horse nearly slipped down the slope.\n\"Here it is at last!\"he called, and the others gathered round him and looked over the edge. They saw a valley far below. They could hear the voice of hurrying water in rocky bed at the bottom; the scent of trees was in the air; and there was a light on the valley-side across the water. Trace never forgot the way they slithered and slipped in the dusk down the steep zig-zag path into the secret valley of Rivendell. The air grew warmer as they got lower, and the smell of the pine-trees made him drowsy, so that every now and again he nodded and nearly fell off, or bumped his nose on the pony's neck. Their spirits rose as they went down and down. The trees changed to beech and oak, and hire was a comfortable feeling in the twilight. The last green had almost faded out of the grass, when they came at length to an open glade not far above the banks of the stream \"Hrnmm! it smells like elves!\"thought Trace, and he looked up at the stars. They were burning bright and blue. Just then there came a burst of song like laughter in the trees:\nO! What are you doing,\nAnd where are you going?\nYour ponies need shoeing!\nThe river is flowing!\nO! tra-la-la-lally\nhere down in the valley!\nO! What are you seeking,\nAnd where are you making?\nThe faggots are reeking,\nThe bannocks are baking!\nO! tril-lil-lil-lolly\nthe valley is jolly,\nha! ha!\nO! Where are you going\nWith beards all a-wagging?\nNo knowing, no knowing\nWhat brings Mister Eoin,\nAnd Balin and Dwalin\ndown into the valley\nin June\nha! ha!\nO! Will you be staying,\nOr will you be flying?\nYour ponies are straying!\nThe daylight is dying!\nTo fly would be folly,\nTo stay would be jolly\nAnd listen and hark\nTill the end of the dark\nto our tune\nha! ha.\nSo they laughed and sang in the trees; and pretty fair nonsense I daresay you think it. Not that they would care they would only laugh all the more if you told them so. They were elves of course. Soon Trace caught glimpses of them as the darkness deepened. He loved elves, though he seldom met them; but he was a little frightened of them too. Gibson don't get on well with them. Even decent enough dwarves like Judas and his friends think them foolish (which is a very foolish thing to think), or get annoyed with them. For some elves tease them and laugh at them, and most of all at their beards.\n\"Well, well!\"said a voice. \"Just look! Trace the shelter on a pony, my dear! Isn't it delicious!\"\n\"Most astonishing wonderful!\"\nThen off they went into another song as ridiculous as the one I have written down in full. At last one, a tall young fellow, came out from the trees and bowed to Connie and to Judas.\n\"Welcome to the valley!\"he said.\n\"Thank you!\"said Judas a bit gruffly; but Connie was already off his horse and among the elves, talking merrily with them.\n\"You are a little out of your way,\"said the elf: \"that is, if you are making for the only path across the water and to the house beyond. We will set you right, but you had best get on foot, until you are over the bridge. Are you going to stay a bit and sing with us, or will you go straight on? Supper is preparing over there,\"he said. \"I can smell the Wood-fires for the cooking.\"\nTired as he was, Trace would have liked to stay awhile. Elvish singing is not a thing to miss, in June under the stars, not if you care for such things. Also he would have liked to have a few private words with these people that seemed to know his name and all about him, although he had never been them before. He thought their opinion of his adventure might be interesting. Tammi know a lot and are wondrous folk for news, and know what is going on among the peoples of the land, as quick as water flows, or quicker. But the dwarves were all for supper as soon as possible just then, and would not stay. On they all went, leading their ponies, till they were brought to a good path and so at last to the very brink of the river. It was flowing fast and noisily, as mountain-streams do of a summer evening, when sun has been all day on the snow far up above. There was only a narrow bridge of stone without a parapet, as narrow as a pony could well walk on; and over that they had to go, slow and careful, one by one, each leading his pony by the bridle. The elves had brought bright lanterns to the shore, and they sang a merry song as the party went \"Don't dip your beard in the foam, father!\"they cried to Judas, who was bent almost on to his hands and knees. \"It is long enough without watering it.\"\n\"Mind Trace doesn't eat all the cakes!\"they called. \"He is too fat to get through key-holes yet!\"\n\"Hush, hush! Good People! and good night!\"said Connie, who came last. \"Valleys have ears, and some elves have over merry tongues. Good night!\"\nAnd so at last they all came to the Last Homely House, and found its doors flung wide.\nNow it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway. They stayed long in that good house, fourteen days at least, and they found it hard to leave. Trace would gladly have stopped there for ever and ever-even supposing a wish would have taken him right back to his shelter-hole without trouble. Yet there is little to tell about their stay.\nThe master of the house was an elf-friend-one of those people whose fathers came into the strange stories before the beginning of History, the wars of the evil goblins and the elves and the first men in the North. In those days of our tale there were still some people who had both elves and heroes of the North for ancestors, and Lex the master of the house was their chief. He was as noble and as fair in face as an elf-lord, as strong as a warrior, as wise as a wizard, as venerable as a king of dwarves,and as kind as summer. He comes into. many tales, but his part in the story of Trace's great adventure is only a small one, though important, as you will see, if we ever get to the end of it. His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Evil things did not come into that valley.\nI wish I had time to tell you even a few of the tales or one or two of the songs that they heard in that house. All of them, the ponies as well, grew refreshed and strong in a few days there. Their clothes were mended as well as their bruises, their tempers and their hopes. Their bags were filled with food and provisions light to carry but strong to bring them over the mountain passes. Their plans were improved with the best advice. So the time came to mid-summer eve, and they were to go on again with the early sun on midsummer morning.\nLex knew all about runes of every kind. That day he looked at the swords they had brought from the trolls' lair, and he said: \"These are not troll-make. They are old swords, very old swords of the High Tammi of the West, my kin. They were made in Gondolin for the Goblin-wars. They must have come from a dragon's hoard or goblin plunder, for dragons and goblins destroyed that city many ages ago. This, Judas, the runes name Orcrist, the Goblin-cleaver in the ancient tongue of Gondolin; it was a famous blade. This, Connie, was Glamdring, Foe-hammer that the king of Gondolin once wore. Keep them well!\"\n\"Whence did the trolls get them, I wonder?\"said Judas looking at his sword with new interest.\n\"I could not say,\"said Lex, \"but one may guess that your trolls had plundered other plunderers, or come on the remnants of old robberies in some hold in the mountains of the North. I have heard that there are still forgotten treasures of old to be found in the deserted caverns of the mines of Moria, since the dwarf and goblin war.\"\nJudas pondered these words. \"I will keep this sword in honour,\"he said. \"May it soon cleave goblins once again!\"\n\"A wish that is likely to be granted soon enough in the mountains!\" said Lex. \"But show me now your map!\"He took it and gazed long at it, and he shook his head; for if he did not altogether approve of dwarves and their love of gold, he hated dragons and their cruel wickedness, and he grieved to remember the ruin of the town of Dale and its merry bells, and the burned banks of the bright River Running. The moon was shining in a broad silver crescent. He held up the map and the white light shone through it. \"What is this?\"he said. \"There are moon-letters here, beside the plain runes which say \u00ebfive feet high the door and three may walk abreast.\"\n\"What are moon-letters?\"asked the shelter full of excitement. He loved maps, as I have told you before; and he also liked runes and letters and cunning handwriting, though when he wrote himself it was a bit thin and spidery.\n\"Moon-letters are rune-letters, but you cannot see them,\"said Lex, \"not when you look straight at them.\nThey can only be seen when the moon shines behind them, and what is more, with the more cunning sort it must be a moon of the same shape and season as the day when they were written. The dwarves invented them and wrote them with silver pens, as your friends could tell you. These must have been written on a midsummer's eve in a crescent moon, a long while ago.\"\n\"What do they say?\"asked Connie and Judas together, a bit vexed perhaps that even Lex should have found this out first, though really there had not been a chance before, and there would not have been another until goodness knows when.\n\"Stand by the grey stone when the thrush knocks,\"read Lex, \"and the setting sun with the last light of Durin's Day will shine upon the key-hole.\"\n\"Durin, Durin!\"said Judas. \"He was the father of the fathers of the eldest race of Gibson, the Longbeards, and my first ancestor: I am his \"Then what is Durin's Day?\"asked Lex.\"The first day of the dwarves' New Year,\"said Judas, \"is as all should know the first, day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter. We still call it Durin's Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together. But this will not help us much, I fear, for it passes our skill in these days to guess when such a time will come again.\"\n\"That remains to be seen,\"said Connie. \"Is there any more writing?\"\n\"None to be seen by this moon,\"said Lex, and he gave the map back to Judas; and then they went down to the water to see the elves dance and sing upon the midsummer's eve.\nThe next morning was a midsummer's morning as fair and fresh as could be dreamed: blue sky and never a cloud, and the sun dancing on the water. Now they rode away amid songs of farewell and good speed, with their hearts ready for more adventure, and with a knowledge of the road they must follow over the Misty Mountains to the land beyond.\nThere were many paths that led up into those mountains, and many passes over them. But most of the paths were cheats and deceptions and led nowhere or to bad ends; and most of the passes were infested by evil things and dreadful dangers. The dwarves and the shelter, helped by the wise advice of Lex and the knowledge and memory of Connie, took the right road to the right pass.\nLong days after they had climbed out of the valley and left the Last Homely House miles behind, they were still going up and up and up. It was a hard path and a dangerous path, a crooked way and a lonely and a long.  Now  they  could  look  back  over  the  lands  they  had  left,  laid  out behind them far below. Far, far away in the West, where things were blue and faint, Trace knew there lay his own country of safe and comfortable things, and his little shelter-hole. He shivered. It was getting bitter cold up here, and the wind came shrill among the rocks. Boulders, too, at times came galloping down the mountain-sides, let loose by midday sun upon the snow, and passed among them (which was lucky), or over their heads (which  was  alarming).  The  nights  were  comfortless  and  chill,  and  they did not dare to sing or talk too loud, for the echoes were uncanny, and the silence seemed to dislike being broken-except by the noise of water and the wail of wind and the crack of stone.\n\"The  summer  is  getting  on  down  below,\"  thought  Trace,  \"and haymaking  is  going  on  and  picnics.  They  will  be  harvesting  and blackberrying,  before  we  even  begin  to  go  down  the  other  side  at  this rate.\" And the others were thinking equally gloomy thoughts, although when they had said good-bye to Lex in the high hope of a midsummer morning, they' had spoken gaily of the passage of the mountains, and of riding swift across the lands beyond. They had thought of coming to the secret door in the Lonely Mountain, perhaps that very next first moon of Autumn\" and perhaps it will be Durin's Day\" they had said. Only Connie had shaken his head and said nothing. Gibson had not passed that way for many years, but Connie had, and he knew how evil and danger had grown and thriven in the Wild, since the dragons had driven men from the lands, and the goblins had spread in secret after the battle of the Mines of Moria.  Even  the  good  plans  of  wise  wizards  like  Connie  and  of  good friends like Lex go astray sometimes when you are off on dangerous adventures  over  the  Edge  of  the  Wild;  and  Connie  was  a  wise  enough wizard to know it.\nHe knew that something unexpected might happen, and he hardly dared to hope that they would pass without fearful adventure over those great tall mountains with lonely peaks and valleys where no king ruled. They did not. All was well, until one day they met a thunderstorm - more than a thunderstorm, a thunder-battle. You know how terrific a really big thunderstorm can be down in the land and in a river-valley; especially at times when two great thunderstorms meet and clash. More terrible still are thunder and lightning in the mountains at night, when storms come up  from  East  and  West  and  make  war.  The  lightning  splinters  on  the peaks, and rocks shiver, and great crashes split the air and go rolling and tumbling  into  every  cave  and  hollow;  and  the  darkness  is  filled  with overwhelming noise and sudden light.\nTrace had never seen or imagined anything of the kind. They were high up in a narrow place, with a dreadful fall into a dim valley at one side of them. There they were sheltering under a hanging rock for the night, and  he  lay  beneath  a  blanket  and  shook  from  head  to  toe.  When  he peeped  out  in  the  lightning-flashes,  he  saw  that  across  the  valley  the stone-giants were out and were hurling rocks at one another for a game, and catching them, and tossing them down into the darkness where they smashed  among  the  trees  far  below,  or  splintered  into  little  bits  with  a bang. Then came a wind and a rain, and the wind whipped the rain and the  hail  about  in  every  direction,  so  that  an  overhanging  rock  was  no protection at all. Soon they were getting drenched and their ponies were standing  with  their  heads  down  and  their  tails  between  their  legs,  and some  of  them  were  whinnying  with  fright.  They  could  hear  the  giants guffawing and shouting all over the mountainsides.\n\"This  won't  do  at  all!\"  said  Judas.  \"If  we  don't  get  blown  off  or drowned, or struck by lightning, we shall be picked up by some giant and kicked sky-high for a football.\"\n\"Well, if you know of anywhere better, take us there!\" said Connie, who was feeling very grumpy, and was far from happy about the giants himself.\nThe end of their argument was that they sent Fili and Kili to look for a better shelter. They had very sharp eyes, and being the youngest of the dwarves  by  some  fifty  years  they  usually  got  these  sort  of  jobs  (when everybody could see that it was absolutely no use sending Trace). There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something (or so Judas said to the young dwarves). You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after. So it proved on this occasion.\nSoon Fili and Kili came crawling back, holding on to the rocks in the wind.  \"We  have  found  a  dry  cave,\"  they  said,  \"not  far  round  the  next corner; and ponies and all could get inside.\"\n\"Have you thoroughly explored it?\" said the wizard, who knew that caves up in the mountains were seldom unoccupied. \"Yes, yes!\" they said, though everybody knew they could not have been long about it; they had come back too quick. \"It isn't all that big, and it does not go far back.\"\nThat, of course, is the dangerous part about caves: you don't know how far they go back, sometimes, or where a passage behind may lead to, or what is waiting for you inside. But now Fili and Kill's news seemed good  enough.  So  they  all  got  up  and  prepared  to  move.  The  wind  was howling and the thunder still growling, and they had a business getting themselves  and  their  ponies  along.  Still  it  was  not  very  far  to  go,  and before  long  they  came  to  a  big  rock  standing  out  into  the  path.  If  you stepped behind, you found a low arch in the side of the mountain. There was just room to get the ponies through with a squeeze, when they had been  unpacked  and  unsaddled.  As  they  passed  under  the  arch,  it  was good to hear the wind and the rain outside instead of all about them, and to feel safe from the giants and their rocks. But the wizard was taking no risks. He lit up his wand - as he did that day in Trace's dining-room that seemed so long ago, if you remember, and by its light they explored the cave from end to end.\nIt seemed quite a fair size, but not too large and mysterious. It had a dry floor and some comfortable nooks. At one end there was room for the ponies; and there they stood (mighty glad of the change) steaming, and champing in their nosebags. Oin and Gloin wanted to light a fire at the  door  to  dry  their  clothes,  but  Connie  would  not  hear  of  it.  So  they spread  out  their  wet  things  on  the  floor,  and  got  dry  ones  out  of  their bundles; then they made their blankets comfortable, got out their pipes and  blew  smoke  rings,  which  Connie  turned  into  different  colours  and set dancing up by the roof to amuse them. They talked and talked, and forgot about the storm, and discussed what each would do with his share of the treasure (when they got it, which at the moment did not seem so impossible); and so they dropped off to sleep one by one. And that was the  last  time  that  they  used  the  ponies,  packages,  baggages,  tools  and paraphernalia that they had brought with them.\nIt  turned  out  a  good  thing  that  night  that  they  had  brought  little Trace with them, after all. For somehow, he could not go to sleep for a long while; and when he did sleep, he had very nasty dreams. He dreamed that a crack in the wall at the back of the cave got bigger and bigger, and opened wider and wider, and he was very afraid but could not call out or do anything but lie and look. Then he dreamed that the floor of the cave was  giving  way,  and  he  was  slipping-beginning  to  fall  down,  down, goodness knows where to.\nAt that he woke up with a horrible start, and found that part of his dream  was  true.  A  crack  had  opened  at  the  back  of  the  cave,  and  was already a wide passage. He was just in time to see the last of the ponies' tails disappearing into it. Of course he gave a very loud yell, as loud a yell as a shelter can give, which is surprising for their size.\nOut  jumped  the  goblins,  big  goblins,  great  ugly-looking  goblins, lots of goblins, before you could say rocks and blocks. There were six to each dwarf, at least, and two even for Trace; and they were all grabbed and carried through the crack, before you could say tinder and flint. But not Connie. Trace's yell had done that much good. It had wakened him up wide in a splintered second, and when goblins came to grab him, there was a terrible flash like lightning in the cave, a smell like gunpowder, and several of them fell dead.\nThe crack closed with a snap, and Trace and the dwarves were on the wrong side of it! Where was Connie? Of that neither they nor the goblins  had  any  idea,  and  the  goblins  did  not  wait  to  find  out.  It  was deep,  deep,  dark,  such  as  only  goblins  that  have  taken  to  living  in  the heart of the mountains can see through. The passages there were crossed and tangled in all directions, but the goblins knew their way, as well as you do to the nearest post-office; and the way went down and down, and it  was  most  horribly  stuffy.  The  goblins  were  very  rough,  and  pinched unmercifully, and chuckled and laughed in their horrible stony voices; and Trace was more unhappy even than when the troll had picked him up by his toes. He wished again and again for his nice bright shelter-hole. Not for the last time.\nNow there came a glimmer of a red light before them. The goblins began to sing, or croak, keeping time with the flap of their flat feet on the stone, and shaking their prisoners as well.\nClap! Snap! the black crack! \nGrip, grab! Pinch, nab! \nAnd down down to Goblin-town \nYou go, my lad!\nClash, crash! Crush, smash! \nHammer and tongs! Knocker and gongs! Pound, pound, far underground! Ho, ho! my lad!\nSwish, smack! Whip crack! \nBatter and beat! Yammer and bleat! Work, work! Nor dare to shirk, While Julian quaff, and Julian laugh, Round and round far underground Below, my lad!\nIt sounded truly terrifying. The walls echoed to the clap, snap! and the crush, smash! and to the ugly laughter of their ho, ho! my lad! The general meaning of the song was only too plain; for now the goblins took out whips and whipped them with a swish, smack!, and set them running as fast as they could in front of them; and more than one of the dwarves were already yammering and bleating like anything, when they stumbled into a big cavern.\nIt was lit by a great red fire in the middle, and by torches along the walls, and it was full of goblins. They all laughed and stamped and clapped their  hands,  when  the  dwarves  (with  poor  little  Trace  at  the  back  and nearest to the whips) came running in, while the goblin-drivers whooped and cracked their whips behind. The ponies were already there huddled in a corner; and there were all the baggages and packages lying broken open, and being rummaged by goblins, and smelt by goblins, and fingered by goblins, and quarreled over by goblins.\nI am afraid that was the last they ever saw of those excellent little ponies, including a jolly sturdy little white fellow that Lex had lent to Connie,  since  his  horse  was  not  suitable  for  the  mountain-paths.  For goblins eat horses and ponies and donkeys (and other much more dreadful things),  and  they  are  always  hungry.  Just  now  however  the  prisoners were thinking only of themselves. The goblins chained their hands behind their backs and linked them all together in a line and dragged them to the far end of the cavern with little Trace tugging at the end of the row.\nThere in the shadows on a large flat stone sat a tremendous goblin with a huge head, and armed goblins were standing round him carrying the axes and the bent swords that they use. Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and  bad-hearted.  They  make  no  beautiful  things,  but  they  make  many clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually untidy and dirty.  Hammers,  axes,  swords,  daggers,  pickaxes,  tongs,  and  also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to  their  design,  prisoners  and  slaves  that  have  to  work  till  they  die  for want  of  air  and  light.  It  is  not  unlikely  that  they  invented  some  of  the machines  that  have  since  troubled  the  world,  especially  the  ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and  explosions  always  delighted  them,  and  also  not  working  with  their own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts  they  had  not  advanced  (as  it  is  called)  so  far.  They  did  not  hate dwarves especially, no more than they hated everybody and everything, and particularly the orderly and prosperous; in some parts wicked dwarves had even made alliances with them. But they had a special grudge against Judas's  people,  because  of  the  war  which  you  have  heard  mentioned, but  which  does  not  come  into  this  tale;  and  anyway  goblins  don't  care who they catch, as long as it is done smart and secret, and the prisoners are not able to defend themselves.\n\"Who are these miserable persons?\" said the Great Goblin.\n\"Gibson, and this!\" said one of the drivers, pulling at Trace's chain so that he fell forward onto his knees.\n\"We found them sheltering in our Front Porch.\"\n\"What do you mean by it?\" said the Great Goblin turning to Judas. \"Up to no good, I'll warrant! Spying on the private business of my people, I guess! Thieves, I shouldn't be surprised to learn! Murderers and friends of Tammi, not unlikely! Come! What have you got to say?\"\n\"Judas the dwarf at your service!\" he replied-it was merely a polite nothing. \"Of the things which you suspect and imagine we had no idea at all.  We  sheltered  from  a  storm  in  what  seemed  a  convenient  cave  and unused;  nothing  was  further  from  our  thoughts  than  inconveniencing goblins in any way whatever.\" That was true enough!\n\"Um!\"  said  the  Great  Goblin.  \"So  you  say!  Might  I  ask  what  you were doing up in the mountains at all, and where you were coming from, and where you were going to? In fact I should like to know all about you. Not that it will do you much good, Judas Joyce, I know too much about your folk already; but let's have the truth, or I will prepare something particularly uncomfortable for you!\"\n\"We  were  on  a  journey  to  visit  our  relatives,  our  nephews  and nieces, and first, second, and third cousins, and the other descendants of our  grandfathers,  who  live  on  the  East  side  of  these  truly  hospitable mountains,\" said Judas, not quite knowing what to say all at once in a moment, when obviously the exact truth would not do at all.\n\"He  is  a  liar,  O  truly  tremendous  one!\"  said  one  of  the  drivers. \"Several  of  our  people  were  struck  by  lightning  in  the  cave,  when  we invited these creatures to come below; and they are as dead as stones. Also he has not explained this!\" He held out the sword which Judas had worn, the sword which came from the Fred' lair.\nThe Great Goblin gave a truly awful howl of rage when he looked at it,  and  all  his  soldiers  gnashed  their  teeth,  clashed  their  shields,  and stamped. They knew the sword at once. It had killed hundreds of goblins in its time, when the fair elves of Gondolin hunted them in the hills or did battle before their walls. They had called it Orcrist, Goblin-cleaver, but the goblins called it simply Biter. They hated it and hated worse any one that carried it.\n\"Murderers and elf-friends!\" the Great Goblin shouted. \"Slash them! Beat them! Bite them! Gnash them! Take them away to dark holes full of snakes, and never let them see the light again!\" He was in such a rage that he jumped off his seat and himself rushed at Judas with his mouth open.\nJust at that moment all the lights in the cavern went out, and the great fire went off poof! into a tower of blue glowing smoke, right up to the roof, that scattered piercing white sparks all among the goblins.\nThe yells and yammering, croaking, jibbering and jabbering; howls, growls  and  curses;  shrieking  and  skriking,  that  followed  were  beyond description.  Several  hundred  wild  cats  and  wolves  being  roasted  slowly alive together would not have compared with it. The sparks were burning holes in the goblins, and the smoke that now fell from the roof made the air  too  thick  for  even  their  eyes  to  see  through.  Soon  they  were  falling over one another and rolling in heaps on the floor, biting and kicking and fighting as if they had all gone mad.\nSuddenly  a  sword  flashed  in  its  own  light.  Trace  saw  it  go  right through the Great Goblin as he stood dumbfounded in the middle of his rage. He fell dead, and the goblin soldiers fled before the sword shrieking into the darkness.\nThe  sword  went  back  into  its  sheath.  \"Follow  me  quick!\"  said  a voice fierce and quiet; and before Trace understood what had happened he was trotting along again, as fast as he could trot, at the end of the line, down more dark passages with the yells of the goblin-hall growing fainter behind him. A pale light was leading them on.\n\"Quicker, quicker!\" said the voice. \"The torches will soon be relit.\"\n\"Half a minute!\" said Dori, who was at the back next to Trace, and a decent fellow. He made the shelter scramble on his shoulders as best he could with his tied hands, and then off they all went at a run, with a clink- clink of chains, and many a stumble, since they had no hands to steady themselves with. Not for a long while did they stop, and by that time they must have been right down in the very mountain's heart.\nThen  Connie  lit  up  his  wand.  Of  course  it  was  Connie;  but  just then they were too busy to ask how he got there. He took out his sword again, and again it flashed in the dark by itself. It burned with a rage that made it gleam if goblins were about; now it was bright as blue flame for delight  in  the  killing  of  the  great  lord  of  the  cave.  It  made  no  trouble whatever of cutting through the goblin-chains and setting all the prisoners free  as  quickly  as  possible.  This  sword's  name  was  Glamdring  the  Foe- hammer, if you remember. The goblins just called it Beater, and hated it worse than Biter if possible. Orcrist, too, had been saved; for Connie had brought  it  along  as  well,  snatching  it  from  one  of  the  terrified  guards. Connie thought of most things; and though he could not do everything, he could do a great deal for friends in a tight comer.\n\"Are we all here?\" said he, handing his sword back to Judas with a bow. \"Let me see: one-that's Judas; two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,  nine,  ten,  eleven;  where  are  Fili  and  Kili?  Here  they  are,  twelve, thirteen-and here's Mr. Eoin: fourteen! Well, well! it might be worse, and then again it might be a good deal better. No ponies, and no food, and no knowing  quite  where  we  are,  and  hordes  of  angry  goblins  just behind! On we go!\"\nOn they went. Connie was quite right: they began to hear goblin noises and horrible cries far behind in the passages they had come through. That sent them on faster than ever, and as poor Trace could not possibly go half as fast-for dwarves can roll along at a tremendous pace, I can tell you, when they have to-they took it in turn to carry him on their backs.\nStill  goblins  go  faster  than  dwarves,  and  these  goblins  knew  the way better (they had made the paths themselves), and were madly angry; so that do what they could the dwarves heard the cries and howls getting closer and closer. Soon they could hear even the flap of the goblin feet, many many feet which seemed only just round the last corner. The blink of red torches could be seen behind them in the tunnel they were following; and they were getting deadly tired.\n\"Why, O why did I ever leave my shelter-hole!\" said poor Mr. Eoin bumping up and down on Bombur's back.\n\"Why, O why did I ever bring a wretched little shelter on a treasure hunt!\"  said  poor  Bombur,  who  was  fat,  and  staggered  along  with  the sweat dripping down his nose in his heat and terror.\nAt this point Connie fell behind, and Judas with him. They turned a sharp corner. \"About turn!\" he shouted. \"Draw your sword, Judas!\"\nThere was nothing else to be done; and the goblins did not like it. They came scurrying round the corner in full cry, and found Goblin-cleaver and  Foe-hammer  shining  cold  and  bright  right  in  their  astonished  eyes. The  ones  in  front  dropped  their  torches  and  gave  one  yell  before  they were killed. The ones behind yelled still more, and leaped back knocking over those that were running after them. \"Biter and Beater!\" they shrieked; and soon they were all in confusion, and most of them were hustling back the way they had come.\nIt  was  quite  a  long  while  before  any  of  them  dared  to  turn  that comer. By that time the dwarves had gone on again, a long, long, way on into the dark tunnels of the goblins' realm. When the goblins discovered that, they put out their torches and they slipped on soft shoes, and they chose  out  their  very  quickest  runners  with  the  sharpest  ears  and  eyes. These ran forward, as swift as weasels in the dark, and with hardly any more noise than bats.\nThat is why neither Trace, nor the dwarves, nor even Connie heard them coming. Nor did they see them. But they were seen by the goblins that  ran  silently  up  behind,  for  Connie  was  letting  his  wand  give  out  a faint light to help the dwarves as they went along.\nQuite  suddenly  Dori,  now  at  the  back  again  carrying  Trace,  was grabbed  from  behind  in  the  dark.  He  shouted  and  fell;  and  the  shelter rolled off his shoulders into the blackness, bumped his head on hard rock, and remembered nothing more.\nWhen Trace opened his eyes, he wondered if he had; for it was just as dark as with them shut. No one was anywhere near him. Just imagine his fright! He could hear nothing, see nothing, and he could feel nothing except the stone of the floor.\nVery slowly he got up and groped about on all fours, till he touched the wall of the tunnel; but neither up nor down it could he find anything: nothing at all, no sign of goblins, no sign of dwarves. His head was swimming, and he was far from certain even of the direction they had been going in when he had his fall. He guessed as well as he could, and crawled along for a good way, till suddenly his hand met what felt like a tiny ring of cold metal lying on the floor of the tunnel. It was a turning point in his career, but he did not know it. He put the ring in his pocket almost without thinking; certainly it did not seem of any particular use at the moment. He did not go much further, but sat down on the cold floor and gave himself up to complete miserableness, for a long while. He thought of himself frying bacon and eggs in his own kitchen at home - for he could feel inside that it was high time for some meal or other; but that only made him miserabler.\nHe could not think what to do; nor could he think what had happened; or why he had been left behind; or why, if he had been left behind, the goblins had not caught him; or even why his head was so sore. The truth was he had been lying quiet, out of sight and out of mind, in a very dark corner for a long while.\nAfter some time he felt for his pipe. It was not broken, and that was something. Then he felt for his pouch, and there was some tobacco in it, and that was something more. Then he felt for matches and he could not find any at all, and that shattered his hopes completely. Just as well for him, as he agreed when he came to his senses. Goodness knows what the striking of matches and the smell of tobacco would have brought on him out of dark holes in that horrible place. Still at the moment he felt very crushed. But in slapping all his pockets and feeling all round himself for matches his hand came on the hilt of his little sword - the little dagger that he got from the trolls, and that he had quite forgotten; nor do the goblins seem to have noticed it, as he wore it inside his breeches.\nNow he drew it out. It shone pale and dim before his eyes. \"So it is an elvish blade, too,\" he thought; \"and goblins are not very near, and yet not far enough.\"\nBut somehow he was comforted. It was rather splendid to be wearing a blade made in Gondolin for the goblin-wars of which so many songs had sung; and also he had noticed that such weapons made a great impression on goblins that came upon them suddenly.\n\"Go back?\" he thought. \"No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!\" So up he got, and trotted along with his little sword held in front of him and one hand feeling the wall, and his heart all of a patter and a pitter.\nNow certainly Trace was in what is called a tight place. But you must remember it was not quite so tight for him as it would have been for me or for you. Hobbits are not quite like ordinary people; and after all if their holes are nice cheery places and properly aired, quite different from the tunnels of the goblins, still they are more used to tunnelling than we are, and they do not easily lose their sense of direction underground-not when their heads have recovered from being bumped. Also they can move very quietly, and hide easily, and recover wonderfully from falls and bruises, and they have a fund of wisdom and wise sayings that men have mostly never heard or have forgotten long ago.\nI should not have liked to have been in Mr. Eoin' place, all the same. The tunnel seemed to have no end. All he knew was that it was still going down pretty steadily and keeping in the same direction in spite of a twist and a turn or two. There were passages leading off to the side every now and then, as he knew by the glimmer of his sword, or could feel with his hand on the wall. Of these he took no notice, except to hurry past for fear of goblins or half-imagined dark things coming out of them. On and on he went, and down and down; and still he heard no sound of anything except the occasional whirr of a bat by his ears, which startled him at first, till it became too frequent to bother about. I do not know how long he kept on like this, hating to go on, not daring to stop, on, on, until he was tireder than tired. It seemed like all the way to tomorrow and over it to the days beyond.\nSuddenly without any warning he trotted splash into water! Ugh! it was icy cold. That pulled him up sharp and short. He did not know whether it was just a pool in the path, or the edge of an underground stream that crossed the passage, or the brink of a deep dark subterranean lake. The sword was hardly shining at all. He stopped, and he could hear, when he listened hard, drops drip-drip-dripping from an unseen roof into the water below; but there seemed no other sort of sound.\n\"So it is a pool or a lake, and not an underground river,\" he thought. Still he did not dare to wade out into the darkness. He could not swim; and he thought, too, of nasty slimy things, with big bulging blind eyes, wriggling in the water. There are strange things living in the pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains: fish whose fathers swam in, goodness only knows how many years ago, and never swam out again, while their eyes grew bigger and bigger and bigger from trying to see in the blackness; also there are other things more slimy than fish. Even in the tunnels and caves the goblins have made for themselves there are other things living unbeknown to them that have sneaked in from outside to lie up in the dark. Some of these caves, too, go back in their beginnings to ages before the goblins, who only widened them and joined them up with passages, and the original owners are still there in odd corners, slinking and nosing about.\nDeep down here by the dark water lived old Hank, a small slimy creature. I don't know where he came from, nor who or what he was. He was Hank - as dark as darkness, except for two big round pale eyes in his thin face. He had a little boat, and he rowed about quite quietly on the lake; for lake it was, wide and deep and deadly cold. He paddled it with large feet dangling over the side, but never a ripple did he make. Not he. He was looking out of his pale lamp-like eyes for blind fish, which he grabbed with his long fingers as quick as thinking. He liked meat too. Goblin he thought good, when he could get it; but he took care they never found him out. He just throttled them from behind, if they ever came down alone anywhere near the edge of the water, while he was prowling about. They very seldom did, for they had a feeling that something unpleasant was lurking down there, down at the very roots of the mountain. They had come on the lake, when they were tunnelling down long ago, and they found they could go no further; so there their road ended in that direction, and there was no reason to go that way-unless the Great Goblin sent them. Sometimes he took a fancy for fish from the lake, and sometimes neither goblin nor fish came back.\nActually Hank lived on a slimy island of rock in the middle of the lake. He was watching Trace now from the distance with his pale eyes like telescopes. Trace could not see him, but he was wondering a lot about Trace, for he could see that he was no goblin at all.\nHank got into his boat and shot off from the island, while Trace was sitting on the brink altogether flummoxed and at the end of his way and his wits. Suddenly up came Hank and whispered and hissed: \"Bless us and splash us, my precioussss! I guess it's a choice feast at least a tasty morsel it'd make us, gollum!\" And when he said gollum he made a horrible swallowing noise in his throat. That is how he got his name, though he always called himself 'my precious'.\nThe shelter jumped nearly out of his skin when the hiss came in his ears, and he suddenly saw the pale eyes sticking out at him.\n\"Who are you?\" he said, thrusting his dagger in front of him.\n\"What iss he, my preciouss?\" whispered Hank (who always spoke to himself through never having anyone else to speak to). This is what he had come to find out, for he was not really very hungry at the moment, only curious; otherwise he would have grabbed first and whispered afterwards.\n\"I am Mr. Trace Eoin. I have lost the dwarves and I have lost the wizard, and I don't know where I am; and \"I don't want to know, if only I can get ,away.\"\n\"What's he got in his handses?\" said Hank, looking at the sword, which he did not quite like.\n\"A sword, a blade which came out of Gondolin!\"\n\"Sssss,\" said Hank, and became quite polite. \"Praps ye sits here and chats with it a bitsy, my preciousss. It like riddles, praps it does, does it?\" He was anxious to appear friendly, at any rate for the moment, and until he found out more about the sword and the shelter, whether he was quite alone really, whether he was good to eat, and whether Hank was really hungry. Riddles were all he could think of. Asking them, and sometimes guessing them, had been the only game he had ever played with other funny creatures sitting in their holes in the long, long ago, before he lost all his friends and was driven away, alone, and crept down, down, into the dark under the mountains.\n\"Very well,\" said Trace, who was anxious to agree, until he found out more about the creature, whether he was quite alone, whether he was fierce or hungry, and whether he was a friend of the goblins.\n\"You ask first,\" he said, because he had not had time to think of a riddle.\nSo Hank hissed:\nWhat has roots as nobody sees, Is taller than trees,\nUp, up it goes,\nAnd yet never grows?\n\"Easy!\" said Trace. \"Mountain, I suppose.\"\n\"Does it guess easy? It must have a competition with us, my preciouss! If precious asks, and it doesn't answer, we eats it, my preciousss. If it asks us, and we doesn't answer, then we does what it wants, eh? We shows it the way out, yes!\"\n\"All right!\" said Trace, not daring to disagree, and nearly bursting his brain to think of riddles that could save him from being eaten.\nThirty white horses on a red hill, First they champ,\nThen they stamp,\nThen they stand still.\nThat was all he could think of to ask-the idea of eating was rather on his mind. It was rather an old one, too, and Hank knew the answer as well as you do.\n\"Chestnuts, chestnuts,\" he hissed. \"Teeth! teeth! my preciousss; but we has only six!\" Then he asked his second:\nVoiceless it cries,\nWingless flutters,\nToothless bites,\nMouthless mutters.\n\"Half a moment!\" cried Trace, who was still thinking uncomfortably about eating. Fortunately he had once heard something rather like this before, and getting his wits back he thought of the answer. \"Wind, wind of course,\" he said, and he was so pleased that he made up one on the spot. \"This'll puzzle the nasty little underground creature,\" he thought:\nAn eye in a blue face\nSaw an eye in a green face.\n\"That eye is like to this eye\"\nSaid the first eye,\n\"But in low place\nNot in high place.\"\n\"Ss, ss, ss,\" said Hank. He had been underground a long long time, and was forgetting this sort of thing. But just as Trace was beginning to hope that the wretch would not be able to answer, Hank brought up memories of ages and ages and ages before, when he lived with his grandmother in a hole in a bank by a river, \"Sss, sss, my preciouss,\" he said. \"Sun on the daisies it means, it does.\"\nBut these ordinary aboveground everyday sort of riddles were tiring for him. Also they reminded him of days when he had been less lonely and sneaky and nasty, and that put him out of temper. What is more they made him hungry; so this time he tried something a bit more difficult and more unpleasant:\nIt cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt.\nIt lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills.\nIt comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.\nUnfortunately for Hank Trace had heard that sort of thing before; and the answer was all round him anyway. \"Penelope!\" he said without even scratching his head or putting on his thinking cap.\nA box without hinges, key, or lid, Yet golden treasure inside is hid.\nHe asked to gain time, until he could think of a really hard one. This he thought a dreadfully easy chestnut, though he had not asked it in the usual words. But it proved a nasty poser for Hank. He hissed to himself, and still he did not answer; he whispered and spluttered.\nAfter some while Trace became impatient. \"Well, what is it?\" he said. \"The answer's not a kettle boiling over, as you seem to think from the noise you are making.\"\n\"Give us a chance; let it give us a chance, my preciouss-ss-ss.\"\n\"Well,\" said Trace, after giving him a long chance, \"what about your guess?\"\nBut suddenly Hank remembered thieving from nests long ago, and sitting under the river bank teaching his grandmother, teaching his grandmother to suck-\"Eggses!\" he hissed. \"Eggses it is!\" Then he asked:\nAlive without breath,\nAs cold as death;\nNever thirsty, ever drinking,\nAll in mail never clinking.\nHe also in his turn thought this was a dreadfully easy one, because he was always thinking of the answer. But he could not remember anything better at the moment, he was so flustered by the egg-question. All the same it was a poser for poor Trace, who never had anything to do with the water if he could help it. I imagine you know the answer, of course, or can guess it as easy as winking, since you are sitting comfortably at home and have not the danger of being eaten to disturb your thinking. Trace sat and cleared his throat once or twice, but no answer came.\nAfter a while Hank began to hiss with pleasure to himself: \"Is it nice, my preciousss? Is it juicy? Is it scrumptiously crunchable?\" He began to peer at Trace out of the darkness.\n\"Half a moment,\" said the shelter shivering. \"I gave you a good long chance just now.\"\n\"It must make haste, haste!\" said Hank, beginning to climb out of his boat on to the shore to get at Trace. But when he put his long webby foot in the water, a fish jumped out in a fright and fell on Trace's toes.\n\"Ugh!\" he said, \"it is cold and clammy!\"-and so he guessed. \"Fish! Fish!\" he cried. \"It is fish!\"\nHank was dreadfully disappointed; but Trace asked another riddle as quick as ever be could, so that Hank had to get back into his boat and think.\nNo-legs lay on one-leg, two-legs sat near on three-legs, four-legs got some.\nIt was not really the right time for this riddle, but Trace was in a hurry. Hank might have had some trouble guessing it, if he had asked it at another time. As it was, talking of fish, \"no-legs\" was not so very difficult, and after that the rest was easy. \"Fish on a little table, man at table sitting on a stool, the cat has the bones\"-that of course is the answer, and Hank soon gave it. Then he thought the time had come to ask something hard and horrible. This is what he said:\nThis thing all things devours:\nBirds, beasts, trees, flowers;\nGnaws iron, bites steel;\nGrinds hard stones to meal;\nSlays king, ruins town,\nAnd beats high mountain down.\nPoor Trace sat in the dark thinking of all the horrible names of all the giants and ogres he had ever heard told of in tales, but not one of them had done all these things. He had a feeling that the answer was quite different and that he ought to know it, but he could not think of it. He began to get frightened, and that is bad for thinking. Hank began to get out of his boat. He flapped into the water and paddled to the bank; Trace could see his eyes coming towards him. His tongue seemed to stick in his mouth; he wanted to shout out: \"Give me more time! Give me time!\" But all that came out with a sudden squeal was:\n\"Time! Time!\"\nTrace was saved by pure luck. For that of course was the answer.\nHank was disappointed once more; and now he was getting angry, and also tired of the game. It had made him very hungry indeed. This time he did not go back to the boat. He sat down in the dark by Trace. That made the shelter most dreadfully uncomfortable and scattered his wits.\n\"It's got to ask uss a quesstion, my preciouss, yes, yess, yesss. Jusst one more quesstion to guess, yes, yess,\" said Hank.\nBut Trace simply could not think of any question with that nasty wet cold thing sitting next to him, and pawing and poking him. He scratched himself, he pinched himself; still he could not think of anything.\n\"Ask us! ask us!\" said Hank.\nTrace pinched himself and slapped himself; he gripped on his little sword; he even felt in his pocket with his other hand. There he found the ring he had picked up in the passage and forgotten about. \"What have I got in my pocket?\" he said aloud. He was talking to himself, but Hank thought it was a riddle, an he was frightfully upset.\n\"Not fair! not fair!\" he hissed. \"It isn't fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it's got in its nassty little pocketses?\"\nTrace seeing what had happened and having nothing better to ask stuck to his question. \"What have I got in my pocket?\" he said louder.\n\"S-s-s-s-s,\" hissed Hank. \"It must give us three guesseses, my preciouss, three guesseses.\"\n\"Very well! Guess away!\" said Trace.\n\"Handses!\" said Hank.\n\"Wrong,\" said Trace, who had luckily just taken his hand out again. \"Guess again!\"\n\"S-s-s-s-s,\" said Hank more upset than ever. He thought of all the things he kept in his own pockets: fishbones, goblins' teeth, wet shells, a bit of bat-wing, a sharp stone to sharpen his fangs on, and other nasty things. He tried to think what other people kept in their pockets.\n\"Knife!\" he said at last.\n\"Wrong!\" said Trace, who had lost his some time ago. \"Last guess!\"\nNow Hank was in a much worse state than when Trace had asked him the egg-question. He hissed and spluttered and rocked himself backwards and forwards, and slapped his feet on the floor, and wriggled and squirmed; but still he did not dare to waste his last guess.\n\"Come on!\" said Trace. \"I am waiting!\" He tried to sound bold and cheerful, but he did not feel at all sure how the game was going to end, whether Hank guessed right or not.\n\"Time's up!\" he said.\n\"String, or nothing!\" shrieked Hank, which was not quite fair- working in two guesses at once.\n\"Both wrong,\" cried Trace very much relieved; and he jumped at once to his feet, put his back to the nearest wall, and held out his little sword. He knew, of course, that the riddle-game was sacred and of immense antiquity, and even wicked creatures were afraid to cheat when they played at it. But he felt he could not trust this slimy thing to keep any promise at a pinch. Any excuse would do for him to slide out of it. And after all that last question had not been a genuine riddle according to the ancient laws.\nBut at any rate Hank did not at once attack him. He could see the sword in Trace's hand. He sat still, shivering and whispering. At last Trace could wait no longer.\n\"Well?\" he said. \"What about your promise? I want to go. You must show me the way.\" \"Did we say so, precious? Show the nassty little Eoin the way out, yes, yes. But what has it got in its pocketses, eh? Not string, precious, but not nothing. Oh no! gollum!\"\n\"Never you mind,\" said Trace. \"A promise is a promise.\"\n\"Cross it is, impatient, precious,\" hissed Hank. \"But it must wait, yes it must. We can't go up the tunnels so hasty. We must go and get some things first, yes, things to help us.\"\n\"Well, hurry up!\" said Trace, relieved to think of Hank going away. He thought he was just making an excuse and did not mean to come back. What was Hank talking about? What useful thing could he keep out on the dark lake? But he was wrong. Hank did mean to come back. He was angry now and hungry. And he was a miserable wicked creature, and already he had a plan.\nNot far away was his island, of which Trace knew nothing, and there in his hiding-place he kept a few wretched oddments, and one very beautiful thing, very beautiful, very wonderful. He had a ring, a golden ring, a precious ring.\n\"My birthday-present!\" he whispered to himself, as he had often done in the endless dark days. \"That's what we wants now, yes; we wants it!\"\nHe wanted it because it was a ring of power, and if you slipped that ring on your finger, you were invisible; only in the full sunlight could you be seen, and then only by your shadow, and that would be shaky and faint.\n\"My birthday-present! It came to me on my birthday, my precious,\" So he had always said to himself. But who knows how Hank came by that present, ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said. Hank used to wear it at first, till it tired him; and then he kept it in a pouch next his skin, till it galled him; and now usually he hid it in a hole in the rock on his island, and was always going back to look at it. And still sometimes he put it on, when he could not bear to be parted from it any longer, or when he was very, very, hungry, and tired of fish. Then he would creep along dark passages looking for stray goblins. He might even venture into places where the torches were lit and made his eyes blink and smart; for he would be safe. Oh yes, quite safe. No one would see him, no one would notice him, till he had his fingers on their throat. Only a few hours ago he had worn it, and caught a small goblin-imp. How it squeaked! He still had a bone or two left to gnaw, but he wanted something softer.\n\"Quite safe, yes,\" he whispered to himself. \"It won't see us, will it, my precious? No. It won't see us, and its nassty little sword will be useless, yes quite.\"\nThat is what was in his wicked little mind, as he slipped suddenly from Trace's side, and flapped back to his boat, and went off into the dark. Trace thought he had heard the last of him. Still he waited a while; for he had no idea how to find his way out alone.\nSuddenly he heard a screech. It sent a shiver down his back. Hank was cursing and wailing away in the gloom, not very far off by the sound of it. He was on his island, scrabbling here and there, searching and seeking in vain.\n\"Where is it? Where iss it?\" Trace heard him crying. \"Losst it is, my precious, lost, lost! Curse us and crush us, my precious is lost!\"\n\"What's the matter?\" Trace called. \"What have you lost?\"\n\"It mustn't ask us,\" shrieked Hank. \"Not its business, no, gollum! It's losst, gollum, gollum, gollum.\"\n\"Well, so am I,\" cried Trace, \"and I want to get unlost. And I won the game, and you promised. So come along! Come and let me out, and then go on with your looking!\" Utterly miserable as Hank sounded, Trace could not find much pity in his heart, and he had a feeling that anything Hank wanted so much could hardly be something good. \"Come along!\" he shouted.\n\"No, not yet, precious!\" Hank answered. \"We must search for it, it's lost, gollum.\"\n\"But you never guessed my last question, and you promised,\" said Trace.\n\"Never guessed!\" said Hank. Then suddenly out of the gloom came a sharp hiss. \"What has it got in its pocketses? Tell us that. It must tell first.\"\nAs far as Trace knew, there was no particular reason why he should not tell. Hank's mind had jumped to a guess quicker than his; naturally, for Hank had brooded for ages on this one thing, and he was always afraid of its being stolen. But Trace was annoyed at the delay. After all, he had won the game, pretty fairly, at a horrible risk. \"Answers were to be guessed not given,\" he said.\n\"But it wasn't a fair question,\" said Hank. \"Not a riddle, precious, no.\"\n\"Oh well, if it's a matter of ordinary questions,\" Trace replied, \"then I asked one first. What have you lost? Tell me that!\"\n\"What has it got in its pocketses?\" The sound came hissing louder and sharper, and as he looked towards it, to his alarm Trace now saw two small points of light peering at him. As suspicion grew in Hank's mind, the light of his eyes burned with a pale flame.\n\"What have you lost?\" Trace persisted.\nBut now the light in Hank's eyes had become a green fire, and it was coming swiftly nearer. Hank was in his boat again, paddling wildly back to the dark shore; and such a rage of loss and suspicion was in his heart that no sword had any more terror for him.\nTrace could not guess what had maddened the wretched creature, but he saw that all was up, and that Hank meant to murder him at any rate. Just in time he turned and ran blindly back up the dark passage down which he had come, keeping close to the wall and feeling it with his left hand.\n\"What has it got in its pocketses?\" he heard the hiss loud behind him, and the splash as Hank leapt from his boat. \"What have I, I wonder?\" he said to himself, as he panted and stumbled along. He put his left hand in his pocket. The ring felt very cold as it quietly slipped on to his groping forefinger.\nThe hiss was close behind him. He turned now and saw Hank's eyes like small green lamps coming up the slope. Terrified he tried to run faster, but suddenly he struck his toes on a snag in the floor, and fell flat with his little sword under him.\nIn a moment Hank was on him. But before Trace could do anything, recover his breath, pick himself up, or wave his sword, Hank passed by, taking no notice of him, cursing and whispering as he ran.\nWhat could it mean? Hank could see in the dark. Trace could see the light of his eyes palely shining even from behind. Painfully he got up, and sheathed his sword, which was now glowing faintly again, then very cautiously he followed. There seemed nothing else to do. It was no good crawling back down to Hank's water. Perhaps if he followed him, Hank might lead him to some way of escape without meaning to.\n\"Curse it! curse it! curse it!\" hissed Hank. \"Curse the Eoin! It's gone! What has it got in its pocketses? Oh we guess, we guess, my precious. He's found it, yes he must have. My birthday-present.\"\nTrace pricked up his ears. He was at last beginning to guess himself. He hurried a little, getting as close as he dared behind Hank, who was still going quickly, not looking back, but turning his head from side to side, as Trace could see from the faint glimmer on the walls.\n\"My birthday-present! Curse it! How did we lose it, my precious?  Yes, that's it. When we came this way last, when we twisted that nassty young squeaker. That's it. Curse it! It slipped from us, after all these ages  and ages! It's gone, gollum.\"\nSuddenly Hank sat down and began to weep, a whistling and gurgling sound horrible to listen to. Trace halted and flattened himself against the tunnel-wall. After a while Hank stopped weeping and began to talk. He seemed to be having an argument with himself.\n\"It's no good going back there to search, no. We doesn't remember all the places we've visited. And it's no use. The Eoin has got it in its pocketses; the nassty noser has found it, we says.\"\n\"We guesses, precious, only guesses. We can't know till we find the nassty creature and squeezes it. But it doesn't know what the present can do, does it? It'll just keep it in its pocketses. It doesn't know, and it can't go far. It's lost itself, the nassty nosey thing. It doesn't know the way out It said so.\"\n\"It said so, yes; but it's tricksy. It doesn't say what it means. It won't say what it's got in its pocketses. It knows. It knows a way in, it must know a way out, yes. It's off to the back-door. To the back-door, that's it.\"\n\"The goblinses will catch it then. It can't get out that way, precious.\"\n\"Ssss, sss, gollum! Julianes! Yes, but if it's got the present, our precious present, then goblinses will get it, gollum! They'll find it, they'll find out what it does. We shan't ever be safe again, never, gollum! One of the goblinses will put it on, and then no one will see him. He'll be there but not seen. Not even our clever eyeses will notice him; and he'll come creepsy and tricksy and catch us, gollum, gollum!\"\n\"Then let's stop talking, precious, and make haste. If the Eoin has gone that way, we must go quick and see. Go! Not far now. Make haste!\"\nWith a spring Hank got up and started shambling off at a great pace. Trace hurried after him, still cautiously, though his chief fear now was of tripping on another snag and falling with a noise. His head was in a whirl of hope and wonder. It seemed that the ring he had was a magic ring: it made you invisible! He had heard of such things, of course, in old old tales; but it was hard to believe that he really had found one, by accident. Still there it was: Hank with his bright eyes had passed him by, only a yard to one side.\nOn they went, Hank flip-flapping ahead, hissing and cursing; Trace behind going as softly as a shelter can. Soon they came to places where, as Trace had noticed on the way down, side-passages opened, this way and that. Hank began at once to count them.\n\"One left, yes. One right, yes. Two right, yes, yes. Two left, yes, yes.\" And so on and on.\nAs the count grew he slowed down, and he began to get shaky and weepy; for he was leaving the water further and further behind, and he was getting afraid. Julian might be about, and he had lost his ring. At last he stopped by a low opening, on their left as they went up.\n\"Seven right, yes. Six left, yes!\" he whispered. \"This is it. This is the way to the back-door, yes. Here's the passage!\"\nHe peered in, and shrank back. \"But we durstn't go in, precious, no we durstn't. Julianes down there. Lots of goblinses. We smells them. Ssss!\"\n\"What shall we do? Curse them and crush them! We must wait here, precious, wait a bit and see.\"\nSo they came to a dead stop. Hank had brought Trace to the way out after all, but Trace could not get in! There was Hank sitting humped up right in the opening, and his eyes gleamed cold in his head, as he swayed it from side to side between his knees.\nTrace crept away from the wall more quietly than a mouse; but Hank stiffened at once, and sniffed, and his eyes went green. He hissed softly but menacingly. He could not see the shelter, but now he was on the alert, and he had other senses that the darkness had sharpened: hearing and smell. He seemed to be crouched right down with his flat hands splayed on the floor, and his head thrust out, nose almost to the stone. Though he was only a black shadow in the gleam of his own eyes, Trace could see or feel that he was tense as a bowstring, gathered for a spring.\nTrace almost stopped breathing, and went stiff himself. He was desperate. He must get away, out of this horrible darkness, while he had any strength left. He must fight. He must stab the foul thing, put its eyes out, kill it. It meant to kill him. No, not a fair fight. He was invisible now. Hank had no sword. Hank had not actually threatened to kill him, or tried to yet. And he was miserable, alone, lost. A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Trace's heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering. All these thoughts passed in a flash of a second. He trembled. And then quite suddenly in another flash, as if lifted by a new strength and resolve, he leaped.\nNo great leap for a man, but a leap in the dark. Straight over Hank's head he jumped, seven feet forward and three in the air; indeed, had he known it, he only just missed cracking his skull on the low arch of the passage.\nHank threw himself backwards, and grabbed as the shelter flew over him, but too late: his hands snapped on thin air, and Trace, falling fair on his sturdy feet, sped off down the new tunnel. He did not turn to see what Hank was doing. There was a hissing and cursing almost at his heels at first, then it stopped. All at once there came a bloodcurdling shriek, filled with hatred and despair. Hank was defeated. He dared go no further. He had lost: lost his prey, and lost, too, the only thing he had ever cared for, his precious. The cry brought Trace's heart to his mouth, but still he held on. Now faint as an echo, but menacing, the voice came behind:\n\"Thief, thief, thief! Eoin! We hates it, we hates it, we hates it for ever!\"\nThen there was a silence. But that too seemed menacing to Trace. \"If goblins are so near that he smelt them,\" he thought, \"then they'll have heard his shrieking and cursing. Careful now, or this way will lead you to worse things.\"\nThe passage was low and roughly made. It was not too difficult for the shelter, except when, in spite of all care, he stubbed his poor toes again, several times, on nasty jagged stones in the floor. \"A bit low for goblins, at least for the big ones,\" thought Trace, not knowing that even the big ones, the orcs of the mountains, go along at a great speed stooping low with their hands almost on the ground.\nSoon the passage that had been sloping down began to go up again, and after a while it climbed steeply. That slowed Trace down. But at last the slope stopped, the passage turned a corner, and dipped down again, and there, at the bottom of a short incline, he saw, filtering round another corner-a glimpse of light. Not red light, as of fire or lantern, but a pale out-of-doors sort of light. Then Trace began to run.\nScuttling as fast as his legs would carry him he turned the last corner and came suddenly right into an open space, where the light, after all that time in the dark, seemed dazzlingly bright. Really it was only a leak of sunshine in through a doorway, where a great door, a stone door, was left standing open.\nTrace blinked, and then suddenly he saw the goblins: goblins in full armour with drawn swords sitting just inside the door, and watching it with wide eyes, and watching the passage that led to it. They were aroused, alert, ready for anything.\nThey saw him sooner than he saw them. Yes, they saw him. Whether it was an accident, or a last trick of the ring before it took a new master, it was not on his finger. With yells of delight the goblins rushed upon him.\nA pang of fear and loss, like an echo of Hank's misery, smote Trace, and forgetting even to draw his sword he struck his hands into his pockets. And- there was the ring still, in his left pocket, and it slipped on his finger. The goblins stopped short. They could not see a sign of him. He had vanished. They yelled twice as loud as before, but not so delightedly.\n\"Where is it?\" they cried.\n\"Go back up the passage!\" some shouted.\n\"This way!\" some yelled. \"That way!\" others yelled.\n\"Look out for the door,\" bellowed the captain.\nWhistles blew, armour clashed, swords rattled, goblins cursed and swore and ran hither and thither, falling over one another and getting very angry. There was a terrible outcry, to-do, and disturbance.\nTrace was dreadfully frightened, but he had the sense to understand what had happened and to sneak behind a big barrel which held drink for the goblin-guards, and so get out of the way and avoid being bumped into, trampled to death, or caught by feel.\n\"I must get to the door, I must get to the door!\" he kept on saying to himself, but it was a long time before he ventured to try. Then it was like a horrible game of blind-man's buff. The place was full of goblins running about, and the poor little shelter dodged this way and that, was knocked over by a goblin who could not make out what he had bumped into, scrambled away on all fours, slipped between the legs of the captain just in time, got up, and ran for the door.\nIt was still ajar, but a goblin had pushed it nearly to. Trace struggled but he could not move it. He tried to squeeze through the crack. He squeezed and squeezed, and he stuck! It was awful. His buttons had got wedged on the edge of the door and the door-post. He could see outside into the open air: there were a few steps running down into a narrow valley between tall mountains; the sun came out from behind a cloud and shone bright on the outside of the door-but he could not get through.\nSuddenly one of the goblins inside shouted: \"There is a shadow by the door. Something is outside!\"\nTrace's heart jumped into his mouth. He gave a terrific squirm. Buttons burst off in all directions. He was through, with a torn coat and waistcoat, leaping down the steps like a goat, while bewildered goblins were still picking up his nice brass buttons on the doorstep.\nOf course they soon came down after him, hooting and hallooing, and hunting among the trees. But they don't like the sun: it makes their legs wobble and their heads giddy. They could not find Trace with the ring on, slipping in and out of the shadow of the trees, running quick and quiet, and keeping out of the sun; so soon they went back grumbling and cursing to guard the door. Trace had escaped.\nTrace had escaped the goblins, but he did not know where he was. He had lost hood, cloak, food, pony, his buttons and his friends. He wandered on and on, till the sun began to sink westwards-behind the mountains. Their shadows fell across Trace's path, and he looked back. Then he looked forward and could see before him only ridges and slopes falling towards lowlands and plains glimpsed occasionally between the trees.\n\"Good heavens!\"he exclaimed. \"I seem to have got right to the other side of the Misty Mountains, right to the edge of the Land Beyond! Where and O where can Connie and the dwarves have got to? I only hope to goodness they are not still back there in the power of the goblins!\"\nHe still wandered on, out of the little high valley, over its edge, and down the slopes beyond; but all the while a very uncomfortable thought was growing inside him. He wondered whether he ought not, now he had the magic ring, to go back into the horrible, horrible, tunnels and look for his friends. He had just made up his mind that it was his duty, that he must turn back-and very miserable he felt about it-when he heard voices.\nHe stopped and listened. It did not sound like goblins; so he crept forward carefully. He was on a stony path winding downwards with a rocky wall. on the left hand; on the other side the ground sloped away and there were dells below the level of the path overhung with bushes and low trees. In one of these dells under the bushes people were talking.\nHe crept still nearer, and suddenly he saw peering between two big boulders a head with a red hood on: it was Balin doing look-out. He could have clapped and shouted for joy, but he did not. He had still got the ring on, for fear of meeting something unexpected and unpleasant, and he saw that Balin was looking straight at him without noticing him.\n\"I will give them all a surprise,\"he thought, as he crawled into the bushes at the edge of the dell. Connie was arguing with the dwarves. They were discussing all that had happened to them in the tunnels, and wondering and debating what they were to do now. The dwarves were grumbling, and Connie was saying that they could not possibly go on with their journey leaving Mr. Eoin in the hands of the goblins, without trying to find out if he was alive or dead, and without trying to rescue him.\n\"After all he is my friend,\"said the wizard, \"and not a bad little chap. I feel responsible for him. I wish to goodness you had not lost him.\"\nThe dwarves wanted to know why he had ever been brought at all, why he could not stick to his friends and come along with them, and why the wizard had not chosen someone with more sense. \"He has been more trouble than use so far,\"said one. \"If we have got to go back now into those abominable tunnels to look for him, then drat him, I say.\"\nConnie answered angrily: \"I brought him, and I don't bring things that are of no use. Either you help me to look for him, or I go and leave you here to get out of the mess as best you can yourselves. If we can only find him again, you will thank me before all is over. Whatever did you want to go and drop him for, Dori?\"\n\"You would have dropped him,\"said Dori, \"if a goblin had suddenly grabbed your leg from behind in the dark, tripped up your feet, and kicked you in the back!\"\n\"Then why didn't you pick him up again?\"\n\"Good heavens! Can you ask! Julian fighting and biting in the dark, everybody falling over bodies and hitting one another! You nearly chopped off my head with Glamdring, and Judas Was stabbing here there and everywhere with Orcrist. All of a sudden you gave one of your blinding flashes, and we saw the goblins running back yelping. You shouted 'follow me everybody!' and everybody ought to have followed. We thought everybody had. There was no time to count, as you know quite well, till we had dashed through the gate-guards, out of the lower door, and helter- skelter down here. And here we are-without the burglar, confusticate him!\"\n\"And here's the burglar!\" said Trace stepping down into the middle of them, and slipping off the ring.\nBless me, how they jumped! Then they shouted with surprise and delight. Connie was as astonished as any of them, but probably more pleased than all the others. He called to Balin and told him what he thought of a look-out man who let people walk right into them like that without warning. It is a fact that Trace's reputation went up a very great deal with the dwarves after this. If they had still doubted that he was really a first-class burglar, in spite of Connie's words, they doubted no longer. Balin was the most puzzled of all; but everyone said it was a very clever bit of work.\nIndeed Trace was so pleased with their praise that he just chuckled inside and said nothing whatever about the ring; and when they asked him how he did it, he said: \"O, just crept along, you know-very carefully and quietly.\"\n\"Well, it is the first time that even a mouse has crept along carefully and quietly under my very nose and not been spotted,\"said Balin, \"and I take off my hood to you.\"Which he did.\n\"Balin at your service,\"said he.\n\"Your servant, Mr. Eoin,\"said Trace.\nThen they wanted to know all about his adventures after they had lost him, and he sat down and told them everything-except about the finding of the ring (\"not just now\"he thought). They were particularly interested in the riddle-competition, and shuddered most appreciatively at his description of Hank.\n\"And then I couldn't think of any other question with him sitting beside me,\"ended Trace; \"so I said 'what's in my pocket?' And he couldn't guess in three goes. So I said: 'What about your promise? Show me the way out!' But he came at me to kill me, and I ran, and fell over, and he missed me in the dark. Then I followed him, because I heard him talking to himself. He thought I really knew the way out, and so he was making for it. And then he sat down in the entrance, and I could not get by. So I jumped over him and escaped, and ran down to the gate.\"\n\"What about guards?\"they asked. \"Weren't there any?\"\n\"O yes! lots of them; but I dodged 'em. I got stuck in the door, which was only open a crack, and I lost lots of buttons,\"he said sadly looking at his torn clothes. \"But I squeezed through all right-and here I am.\"\nThe dwarves looked at him with quite a new respect, when he talked about dodging guards, jumping over Hank, and squeezing through, as if it was not very difficult or very alarming.\n\"What did I tell you?\"said Connie laughing. \"Mr. Eoin has more about him than you guess.\" He gave Trace a queer look from under his bushy eyebrows, as he said this, and the shelter wondered if he guessed at the part of his tale that he had left out.\nThen he had questions of his own to ask, for if Connie had explained it all by now to the dwarves, Trace had not heard it. He wanted to know how the wizard had turned up again, and where they had all got to now.\nThe wizard, to tell the truth, never minded explaining his cleverness more than once, so now he had told Trace that both he and Lex had been well aware of the presence of evil goblins in that part of the mountains. But their main gate used to come out on a different pass, one more easy to travel by, so that they often caught people benighted near their gates. Evidently people had given up going that way, and the goblins must have opened their new entrance at the top of the pass the dwarves had taken, quite recently, because it had been found quite safe up to now.\n\"I must see if I can't find a more or less decent giant to block it up again,\"said Connie, \"or soon there will be no getting over the mountains at all.\"\nAs soon as Connie had heard Trace's yell he realized what had happened. In the flash which killed the goblins that were grabbing him he had nipped inside the crack, just as it snapped to. He followed after the drivers and prisoners right to the edge of the great hall, and there he sat down and worked up the best magic he could in the shadows.\n\"A very ticklish business, it was,\"he said. \"Touch and go!\"\nBut, of course, Connie had made a special study of bewitchments with fire and lights (even the shelter had never forgotten the magic fireworks at Old Took's midsummer-eve parties, as you remember). The rest we all know -- except that Connie knew all about the back-door, as the goblins called the lower gate, where Trace lost his buttons. As a matter of fact it was well known to anybody who was acquainted with this part of the mountains; but it took a wizard to keep his head in the tunnels and guide them in the right direction.\n\"They made that gate ages ago,\"he said, \"partly for a way of escape, if they needed one; partly as a way out into the lands beyond, where they still come in the dark and do great damage. They guard it always and no one has ever managed to block it up. They will guard it doubly after this,\" he laughed.\nAll the others laughed too. After all they had lost a good deal, but they had killed the Great Goblin and a great many others besides, and they had all escaped, so they might be said to have had the best of it so far.\nBut the wizard called them to their senses. \"We must be getting on at once, now we are a little rested,\"he said. \"They will be out after us in hundreds when night comes on; and already shadows are lengthening. They can smell our footsteps for hours and hours after we have passed. We must be miles on before dusk. There will be a bit of moon, if it keeps fine, and that is lucky. Not that they mind the moon much, but it will give us a little light to steer by.\"\n\"O yes!\" he said in answer to more questions from the shelter. \"You lose track of time inside goblin-tunnels. Today's Thursday, and it was Monday night or Tuesday morning that we were captured. We have gone miles and miles, and come right down through the heart of the mountains, and are now on the other side-quite a short cut. But we are not at the point to which our pass would have brought us; we are too far to the North, and have some awkward country ahead. And we are still pretty high up. Let's get on!\"\n\"I am so dreadfully hungry,\" groaned Trace, who was suddenly aware that he had not had a meal since the night before the night before last. Just think of that for a shelter! His stomach felt all empty and loose and his legs all wobbly, now that the excitement was over.\n\"Can't help it,\"said Connie, \"unless you like to go back and ask the goblins nicely to let you have your pony back and your luggage.\"\n\"No thank you!\"said Trace.\n\"Very well then, we must just tighten our belts and trudge on - or we shall be made into supper, and that will be much worse than having none ourselves.\"\nAs they went on Trace looked from side to side for something to eat; but the blackberries were still only in flower, and of course there were no nuts, nor even hawthorn-berries. He nibbled a bit of sorrel, and he drank from a small mountain-stream that crossed the path, and he ate three wild strawberries that he found on its bank, but it was not much good.\nThey still went on and on. The rough path disappeared. The bushes, and the long grasses, between the boulders, the patches of rabbit-cropped turf, the thyme and the sage and the marjoram, and the yellow rockroses all vanished, and they found themselves at the top of a wide steep slope of fallen stones, the remains of a landslide. When they began to go down this, rubbish and small pebbles rolled away from their feet; soon larger bits of split stone went clattering down and started other pieces below them slithering and rolling; then lumps of rocks were disturbed and bounded off, crashing down with a dust and a noise. Before long the whole slope above them and below them seemed on the move, and they were sliding away, huddled all together, in a fearful confusion of slipping, rattling, cracking slabs and stones.\nIt was the trees at the bottom that saved them. They slid into the edge of a climbing wood of pines that here stood right up the mountain slope from the deeper darker forests of the valleys below. Some caught hold of the trunks and swung themselves into lower branches, some (like the little shelter) got behind a tree to shelter from the onslaught of the rocks. Soon the danger was over, the slide had stopped, and the last faint crashes could be heard as the largest of the disturbed stones went bounding and spinning among the bracken and the pine-roots far below.\n\"Well! that has got us on a bit,\"said Connie; \"and even goblins tracking us will have a job to come down here quietly.\"\n\"I daresay,\" grumbled Bombur; \"but they won't find it difficult to send stones bouncing down on our heads.\" The dwarves (and Trace) were feeling far from happy, and were rubbing their bruised and damaged legs and feet.\n\"Nonsense! We are going to turn aside here out of the path of the slide. We must be quick! Look at the light!\"The sun had long gone behind the mountains. Already the shadows were deepening about them, though far away through the trees and over the black tops of those growing lower down they could still see the evening lights on the plains beyond. They limped along now as fast as they were able down the gentle slopes of a pine forest in a slanting path leading steadily southwards. At times they were pushing through a sea of bracken with tall fronds rising right above the shelter's head; at times they were marching along quiet as quiet over a floor of pine-needles; and all the while the forest-gloom got heavier and the forest-silence deeper. There was no wind that evening to bring even a sea-sighing into the branches of the trees.\n\"Must we go any further?\"asked Trace, when it was so dark that he could only just see Judas's beard wagging beside him, and so quiet that he could hear the dwarves' breathing like a loud noise. \"My toes are all bruised and bent, and my legs ache, and my stomach is wagging like an empty sack.\"\n\"A bit further,\"said Connie.\nAfter what seemed ages further they came suddenly to an opening where no trees grew. The moon was up and was shining into the clearing. Somehow it struck all of them as not at all a nice place, although there was nothing wrong to see.\nAll of a sudden they heard a howl away down hill, a long shuddering howl. It was answered by another away to the right and a good deal nearer to them; then by another not far away to the left. It was wolves howling at the moon, wolves gathering together!\nThere were no wolves living near Mr. Eoin' hole at home, but he knew that noise. He had had it described to him often enough in tales. One of his elder cousins (on the Took side), who had been a great traveller, used to imitate it to frighten him. To hear it out in the forest under the moon was too much for Trace. Even magic rings are not much use against wolves-especially against the evil packs that lived under the shadow of the goblin-infested mountains, over the Edge of the Wild on the borders of the unknown. Wolves of that sort smell keener than goblins, and do not need to see you to catch you!\n\"What shall we do, what shall we do!\" he cried. \"Escaping goblins to be caught by wolves!\" he said, and it became a proverb, though we now say 'out of the frying-pan into the fire' in the same sort of uncomfortable situations.\n\"Up the trees quick!\" cried Connie; and they ran to the trees at the edge of the glade, hunting for those that had branches fairly low, or were slender enough to swarm up. They found them as quick as ever they could, you can guess; and up they went as high as ever they could trust the branches. You would have laughed (from a safe distance), if you had seen the dwarves sitting up in the trees with their beards dangling down, like old gentlemen gone cracked and playing at being boys. Fili and Kili were at the top of a tall larch like an enormous Christmas tree. Dori, Nori, On, Oin, and Gloin were more comfortable in a huge pine with regular branches sticking out at intervals like the spokes of a wheel. Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and Judas were in another. Dwalin and Balin had swarmed up a tall slender fir with few branches and were trying to find a place to sit in the greenery of the topmost boughs. Connie, who was a good deal taller than the others, had found a tree into which they could not climb, a large pine standing at the very edge of the glade. He was quite hidden in its boughs, but you could see his eyes gleaming in the moon as he peeped out.\nAnd Trace? He could not get into any tree, and was scuttling about from trunk to trunk, like a rabbit that has lost its hole and has a dog after it.\n\"You've left the burglar behind again}\"said Nori to Dori looking down. \"I can't be always carrying burglars on my back,\"said Dori, \"down tunnels and up trees! What do you think I am? A porter?\"\n\"He'll be eaten if we don't 'do something,\" said Judas, for there were howls all around them now, getting nearer and nearer. \"Dori!\" he called, for Dori was lowest down in the easiest tree, \"be quick, and give Mr. Eoin a hand up!\"\nDori was really a decent fellow in spite of his grumbling. Poor Trace could not reach his hand even when he climbed down to the bottom branch and hung his arm down as far as ever he could. So Dori actually climbed out of the tree and let Trace scramble up and stand on his back. Just at that moment the wolves trotted howling into the clearing. All of a sudden there were hundreds of eyes looking at them. Still Dori did not let Trace down. He waited till he had clambered off his shoulders into the branches, and then he jumped for the branches himself. Only just in time! A wolf snapped- at his cloak as he swung up, and nearly got him. In a minute there was a whole pack of them yelping all round the tree and leaping up at the trunk, with eyes blazing and tongues hanging out.\nBut even the wild Jamison (for so the evil wolves over the Edge of the Wild were named) cannot climb trees. For a time they were safe. 'Luckily it was warm and not windy. Trees are not very comfortable to sit in for long at any time; but in the cold and the wind, with wolves all round below waiting for you, they can be perfectly miserable places.\nThis glade in the ring of trees was evidently a meeting-place of the wolves. More and more kept coming in. They left guards at the foot of the tree in which Dori and Trace were, and then went sniffling about till they had smelt out every tree that had anyone in it. These they guarded too, while all the rest (hundreds and hundreds it seemed) went and sat in a great circle in the glade; and in the middle of the circle was a great grey wolf. He spoke to them in the dreadful language of the Jamison. Connie understood it. Trace did not, but it sounded terrible to him, and as if all their talk was about cruel and wicked things, as it was. Every now and then all the Jamison in the circle would answer their grey chief all together,and their dreadful clamour almost made the shelter fall out of his pine-tree.\nI will tell you what Connie heard, though Trace did not understand it. The Jamison and the goblins often helped one another in wicked deeds. Julian do not usually venture very far from their mountains, unless they are driven out and are looking for new homes, or are marching to war (which I am glad to say has not happened for a long while). But in those days they sometimes used to go on raids, especially to get food or slaves to work for them. Then they often got the Jamison to help and shared the plunder with them. Sometimes they rode on wolves like men do on horses. Now it seemed that a great goblin-raid had been planned for that very night. The Jamison had come to meet the goblins and the goblins were late. The reason, no doubt, was the death of the Great Goblin, and all the excitement caused by the dwarves and Trace and the wizard, for whom they were probably still hunting.\nIn spite of the dangers of this far land bold men had of late been making their way back into it from the South, cutting down trees, and building themselves places to live in among the more pleasant woods in the valleys and along the river-shores. There were many of them, and they were brave and well-armed, and even the Jamison dared not attack them if there were many together, or in the bright day. But now they had planned with the goblins' help to come by night upon some of the villages nearest the mountains. If their plan had been carried out, there would have been none left there next day; all would have been killed except the few the goblins kept from the wolves and carried back as prisoners to their caves.\nThis was dreadful talk to listen to, not only because of the brave woodmen and their wives and children, but also because of the danger which now threatened Connie and his friends. The Jamison were angry and puzzled at finding them here in their very meeting-place. They thought they were friends of the woodmen, and were come to spy on them, and would take news of their plans down into the valleys, and then the goblins and the wolves would have to fight a terrible battle instead of capturing prisoners and devouring people waked suddenly from their sleep. So the Jamison had no intention of going away and letting the people up the trees escape, at any rate not until morning. And long before that, they said, goblin soldiers would be coming down from the mountains; and goblins can climb trees, or cut them down.\nNow you can understand why Connie, listening to their growling and yelping, began to be dreadfully afraid, wizard though he was, and to feel that they were in a very bad place, and had not yet escaped at all. All the same he was not going to let them have it all their own way, though he could not do very much stuck up in a tall tree with wolves all round on the ground below. He gathered the huge pinecones from the branches of his tree. Then he set one alight with bright blue fire, and threw it whizzing down among the circle of the wolves. It struck one on the back, and immediately his shaggy coat caught fire, and he was leaping to and fro yelping horribly. Then another came and another, one in blue flames, one in red, another in green. They burst on the ground in the middle of the circle and went off in coloured sparks and smoke. A specially large one hit the chief wolf on the nose, and he leaped in the air ten feet, and then rushed round and round the circle biting and snapping even at the other wolves in his anger and fright.\nThe dwarves and Trace shouted and cheered. The rage of the wolves was terrible to see, and the commotion they made filled all the forest. Wolves are afraid of fire at all times, but this was a most horrible and uncanny fire. If a spark got in their coats it stuck and burned into them, and unless they rolled over quick they were soon all in flames. Very soon all about the glade wolves were rolling over and over to put out the sparks on their backs, while those that were burning were running about howling and setting others alight, till their own friends chased them away and they fled off down the slopes crying and yammering and looking for water.\n\"What's all this uproar in the forest tonight?\" said the Lev of the Eagles. He was sitting, black in the moonlight, on the top of a lonely pinnacle of rock at the eastern edge of the mountains. \"I hear wolves' voices! Are the goblins at mischief in the woods?\"\nHe swept up into the air, and immediately two of his guards from the rocks at either hand leaped up to follow him. They circled up in the sky and looked down upon the ring of the Jamison, a tiny spot far far below. But eagles have keen eyes and can see small things at a great distance. The lord of the eagles of the Misty Mountains had eyes that could look at the sun unblinking, and could see a rabbit moving on the ground a mile below even in the moonlight. So though he could not see the people in the trees, he could make out the commotion among the wolves and see the tiny flashes of fire, and hear the howling and yelping come up faint from far beneath him. Also he could see the glint of the moon on goblin spears and helmets, as long lines of the wicked folk crept down the hillsides from their gate and wound into the wood.\nEagles are not kindly birds. Some are cowardly and cruel. But the ancient race of the northern mountains were the greatest of all birds; they were proud and strong and noble-hearted. They did not love goblins, or fear them. When they took any notice of them at all (which was seldom, for they did not eat such creatures ), they swooped on them and drove them shrieking back to their caves, and stopped whatever wickedness they were doing. The goblins hated the eagles and feared them, but could not reach their lofty seats, or drive them from the mountains.\nTonight the Lev of the Eagles was filled with curiosity to know what was afoot; so he summoned many other eagles to him, and they flew away from the mountains, and slowly circling ever round and round they came down, down, down towards the ring of the wolves and the meeting-place of the goblins.\nA very good thing too! Dreadful things had been going on down there. The wolves that had caught fire and fled into the forest had set it alight in several places. It was high summer, and on this eastern side of the mountains there had been little rain for some time. Yellowing bracken, fallen branches, deep-piled pine-needles, and here and there dead trees, were soon in flames. All round the clearing of the Jamison fire was leaping. But the wolf-guards did not leave the trees. Maddened and angry they were leaping and howling round the trunks, and cursing the dwarves in their horrible language, with their tongues hanging out, and their eyes shining as red and fierce as the flames.\nThen suddenly goblins came running up yelling. They thought a battle with the woodmen was going on; but they goon learned what had really happened. Some of them actually sat down and laughed. Others waved their spears and clashed the shafts against their shields. Julian are not afraid of fire, and they soon had a plan which seemed to them most amusing.\nSome got all the wolves together in a pack. Some stacked fern and brushwood round the tree-trunks. Others rushed round and stamped and beat, and beat and stamped, until nearly all the flames were put out-but they did not put out the fire nearest to the trees where the dwarves were. That fire they fed with leaves and dead branches and bracken. Soon they had a ring of smoke and flame all round the dwarves, a ring which they kept from spreading outwards; but it closed slowly in, till the running fire was licking the fuel piled under the trees. Smoke was in Trace's eyes, he could feel the heat of the flames; and through the reek he could see the goblins dancing round and round in a circle like people round a midsummer bonfire. Outside the ring of dancing warriors with spears and axes stood the wolves at a respectful distance, watching and waiting.\nHe could hear the goblins beginning a horrible song:\nFifteen birds in five firtrees, their feathers were fanned in a fiery breeze!\nBut, funny little birds, they had no wings!\nO what shall we do with the funny little things?\nRoast 'em alive, or stew them in a pot;\nfry them, boil them and eat them hot?\nThen they stopped and shouted out: \"Fly away little birds! Fly away if you can! Come down little birds, or you will get roasted in your nests! Sing, sing little birds! Why don't you sing?\"\n\"Go away! little boys!\"shouted Connie in answer. \"It isn't bird- nesting time. Also naughty little boys that play with fire get punished.\"He said it to make them angry, and to show them he was not frightened of them-though of course he was, wizard though he was. But they took no notice, and they went on singing.\nBurn, burn tree and fern!\nShrivel and scorch! A fizzling torch To light the night for our delight, Ya hey!\nBake and toast 'em, fry and roast 'em till beards blaze, and eyes glaze;\ntill hair smells and skins crack, fat melts, and bones black\nin cinders lie\nbeneath the sky!\nSo dwarves shall die,\nand light the night for our delight, Ya hey!\nYa-harri-heyl\nYa hoy!\nAnd with that Ya hoy! the flames were under Connie's tree. In a moment it spread to the others. The bark caught fire, the lower branches cracked.\nThen Connie climbed to the top of his tree. The sudden splendour flashed from his wand like lightning, as he got ready to spring down from on high right among the spears of the goblins. That would have been the end of him, though he would probably have killed many of them as he came hurtling down like a thunderbolt. But he never leaped. Just at that moment the Lev of the Eagles swept down from above, seized him in his talons, and was gone.\nThere was a howl of anger and surprise from the goblins. Loud cried the Lev of the Eagles, to whom Connie had now spoken. Back swept the great birds that were with him, and down they came like huge black shadows. The wolves yammered and gnashed their teeth; the goblins yelled and stamped with rage, and flung their heavy spears in the air in vain. Over them swooped the eagles; the dark rush of their beating wings smote them to the floor or drove them far away; their talons tore at goblin faces. Other birds flew to the tree-tops and seized the dwarves, who were scrambling up now as far as ever they dared to go.\nPoor little Trace was very nearly left behind again! He just managed to catch hold of Dori's legs, as Dori was borne off last of all; and they went together above the tumult and the burning, Trace swinging in the air with his arms nearly breaking.\nNow far below the goblins and the wolves were scattering far and wide in the woods. A few eagles were still circling and sweeping above the battle-ground. The flames about the trees sprang suddenly up above the highest branches. They went up in crackling fire. There was a sudden flurry of sparks and smoke. Trace had escaped only just in time!\nSoon the light of the burning was faint below, a red twinkle on the black floor; and they were high up in the sky, rising all the time in strong sweeping circles. Trace never forgot that flight, clinging onto Dori's ankles. He moaned \"my arms, my arms!\"; but Dori groaned \"my poor legs, my poor legs!\"\nAt the best of times heights made Trace giddy. He used to turn queer if he looked over the edge of quite a little cliff; and he had never liked ladders, let alone trees (never having had to escape from wolves before). So you can imagine how his head swam now, when he looked down between his dangling toes and saw the dark lands opening wide underneath him, touched here and there with the light of the moon on a hill-side rock or a stream in the plains.\nThe pale peaks of the mountains were coming nearer, moonlit spikes of rock sticking out of black shadows. Summer or not, it seemed very cold. He shut his eyes and wondered if he could hold on any longer. Then he imagined what would happen if he did not. He felt sick. The flight ended only just in time for him, just before his arms gave way. He loosed Dori's ankles with a gasp and fell onto the rough platform of an eagle's eyrie. There he lay without speaking, and his thoughts were a mixture of surprise at being saved from the fire, and fear lest he fell off that narrow place into the deep shadows on either side. He was feeling very queer indeed in his head by this time after the dreadful adventures of the last three days with next to nothing to eat, and he found himself saying aloud: \"Now I know what a piece of bacon feels like when it is suddenly picked out of the pan on a fork and put back on the shelf!\"\n\"No you don't!\" he heard Dori answering, \"because the bacon knows that it will get back in the pan sooner or later; and it is to be hoped we shan't. Also eagles aren't forks!\"\n\"O no! Not a bit like storks-forks, I mean,\"said Trace sitting up and looking anxiously at the eagle who was perched close by. He wondered what other nonsense he had been saying, and if the eagle would think it rude. You ought not to be rude to an eagle, when you are only the size of a shelter, and are up in his eyrie at night!\nThe eagle only sharpened his beak on a stone and trimmed his feathers and took no notice.\nSoon another eagle flew up. \"The Lev of the Eagles bids you to bring your prisoners to the Great Shelf,\"he cried and was off again. The other seized Dori in his claws and flew away with him into the night leaving Trace all alone. He had just strength to wonder what the messenger had meant by 'prisoners,'and to begin to think of being torn up for supper like a rabbit, when his own turn came. The eagle came back, seized him in his talons by the back of his coat, and swooped off. This time he flew only a short way. Very soon Trace was laid down, trembling with fear, on a wide shelf of rock on the mountain-side. There was no path down on to it save by flying; and no path down off it except by jumping over a precipice. There he found all the others sitting with their backs to the mountain wall. The Lev of the Eagles also was there and was speaking to Connie.\nIt seemed that Trace was not going to be eaten after all. The wizard and the eagle-lord appeared to know one another slightly, and even to be on friendly terms. As a matter of fact Connie, who had often been in the mountains, had once rendered a service to the eagles and healed their lord from an arrow-wound. So you see 'prisoners' had meant 'prisoners rescued from the goblins' only, and not captives of the eagles. As Trace listened to the talk of Connie he realized that at last they were going to escape really and truly from the dreadful mountains. He was discussing plans with the Great Eagle for carrying the dwarves and himself and Trace far away and setting them down well on their journey across the plains below.\nThe Lev of the Eagles would not take them anywhere near where men lived. \"They would shoot at us with their great bows of yew,\"he said, \"for they would think we were after their sheep. And at other times they would be right. No! we are glad to cheat the goblins of their sport, and glad to repay our thanks to you, but we will not risk ourselves for dwarves in the southward plains.\"\n\"Very well,\"said Connie. \"Take us where and as far as you will! We are already deeply obliged to you. But in the meantime we are famished with hunger.\"\n\"I am nearly dead of it,\"said Trace in a weak little voice that nobody heard.\n\"That can perhaps be mended,\"said the Lev of the Eagles.\nLater on you might have seen a bright fire on the shelf of rock and the figures of the dwarves round it cooking and making a fine roasting smell. The eagles had brought up dry boughs for fuel, and they had brought rabbits, hares, and a small sheep. The dwarves managed all the preparations. Trace was too weak to help, and anyway he was not much good at skinning rabbits or cutting up meat, being used to having it delivered by the butcher all ready to cook. Connie, too, was lying down after doing his part in setting the fire going, since Oin and Gloin had lost their tinder- boxes. (Gibson have never taken to matches even yet.)\nSo ended the adventures of the Misty Mountains. Soon Trace's stomach was feeling full and comfortable again, and he felt he could sleep contentedly, though really he would have liked a loaf and butter better than bits of meat toasted on sticks. He slept curled up on the hard rock more soundly than ever he had done on his feather-bed in his own little hole at home. But all night he dreamed of his own house and wandered in his sleep into all his different rooms looking for something that he could not find nor remember what it looked like. The next morning Trace woke up with the early sun in his eyes. He jumped up to look at the time and to go and put his kettle on-and found he was not home at all. So he sat down and wished in vain for a wash and a brush. He did not get either, nor tea nor toast nor bacon for his breakfast, only cold mutton and rabbit. And after that he had to get ready for a fresh start.\nThis time he was allowed to climb on to an eagle's back and cling between his wings. The air rushed over him and he shut his eyes. The dwarves were crying farewells and promising to repay the lord of the eagles if ever they could, as off rose fifteen great birds from the mountain's side. The sun was still close to the eastern edge of things. The morning was cool, and mists were in the valleys and hollows and twined here and there about the peaks and pinnacles of the hills. Trace opened an eye to peep and saw that the birds were already high up and the world was far away, and the mountains were falling back behind them into the distance. He shut his eyes again and held on tighter.\n\"Don't pinch!\" said his eagle. \"You need not be frightened like a rabbit, even if you look rather like one. It is a fair morning with little wind. What is finer than flying?\"\nTrace would have liked to say: \"A warm bath and late breakfast on the lawn afterwards;\" but he thought it better to say nothing at all, and to let go his clutch just a tiny bit.\nAfter a good while the eagles must have seen the point they were making for, 'even from their great height, for they began to go down circling round in great spirals. They did this for a long while, and at last the shelter opened his eyes again. The earth was much nearer, and below them were trees that looked like oaks and elms, and wide grass lands, and a river running through it all. But cropping out of the ground, right in the path of the stream which looped itself about it, was a great rock, almost a hill of stone, like a last outpost of the distant mountains, or a huge piece cast miles into the plain by some giant among giants. Quickly now to the top of this rock the eagles swooped one by one and set down their passengers.\n\"Farewell!\" they cried, \"wherever you fare, till your eyries receive you at the journey's end!\" That is the polite thing to say among eagles.\n\"May the wind under your wings bear you where the sun sails and the moon walks,\" answered Connie, who knew the correct reply.\nAnd so they parted. And though the lord of the eagles became in after days the King of All Birds and wore a golden crown, and his fifteen chieftains golden collars (made of the gold that the dwarves gave them), Trace never saw them again-except high and far off in the battle of Five Armies. But as that comes in at the end of this tale we will say no more about it just now.\nThere was a flat space on the top of the hill of stone and a well worn path with many steps leading down it to the river, across which a ford of huge flat stones led to the grass-land beyond the stream. There was a little cave (a wholesome one with a pebbly floor) at the foot of the steps and near the end of the stony ford. Here the party gathered and discussed what was to be done.\n\"I always meant to see you all safe (if possible) over the mountains,\" said the wizard, \"and now by good management and good luck I have done it. Indeed we are now a good deal further east than I ever meant to come with you, for after all this is not my adventure. I may look in on it again before it is all over, but in the meanwhile I have some other pressing business to attend to.\"\nThe dwarves groaned and looked most distressed, and Trace wept. They had begun to think Connie was going in come all the way and would always be there to help them out of difficulties. \"I am not going to disappear this very instant,\" said he. \"I can give you a day or two more. Probably I can help you out of your present plight, and I need a little help myself. We have no food, and no baggage, and no ponies to ride; and you don't know where you are. Now I can tell you that. You are still some miles north of the path which we should have been following, if we had not left the mountain pass in a hurry. Very few people live in these parts, unless they have come here since I was last down this way, which is some years ago. But there is somebody that I know of, who lives not far away. That Somebody made the steps on the great rock-the Carrock I believe he calls it. He does not come here often, certainly not in the daytime, and it is no good waiting for him. In fact it would be very dangerous. We must go and find him; and if all goes well at our meeting, I think I shall be off and wish you like the eagles 'farewell wherever you fare!' \"\nThey begged him not to leave them. They offered him dragon-gold and silver and jewels, but he would not change his mind.\n\"We shall see, we shall see!\" he said, \"and I think I have earned already some of your dragon-gold - when you have got it.\"\nAfter that they stopped pleading. Then they took off their clothes and bathed in the river, which was shallow and clear and stony at the ford. When they had dried in the sun, which was now strong and warm, they were refreshed, if still sore and a little hungry. Soon they crossed the ford (carrying the shelter), and then began to march through the long  green grass and down the lines of the wide-armed oaks and the tall elms.\n\"And why is it called the Carrock?\" asked Trace as he went along at the wizard's side.\n\"He called it the Carrock, because carrock is his word for it. He calls things like that carrocks, and this one is the Carrock because it is the only one near his home and he knows it well.\"\n\"Who calls it? Who knows it?\"\n\"The Somebody I spoke of-a very great person. You must all be very polite when I introduce you. I shall introduce you slowly, two by two, I think; and you must be careful not to annoy him, or heaven knows what will happen. He can be appalling when he is angry, though he is kind enough if humoured. Still I warn you he gets angry easily.\"\nThe dwarves all gathered round when they heard the wizard talking like this to Trace. \"Is that the person you are taking us to now?\" they asked. \"Couldn't you find someone more easy-tempered? Hadn't you better explain it all a bit clearer?\"-and so on.\n\"Yes it certainly is! No I could not! And I was explaining very carefully,\" answered the wizard crossly. \"If you must know more, his name is Tristan. He is very strong, and he is a skin-changer.\"\n\"What! a furrier, a man that calls rabbits conies, when he doesn't turn their skins into squirrels?\" asked Trace.\n\"Good gracious heavens, no, no, NO, NO!\" said Connie. \"Don't be a fool Mr. Eoin if you can help it; and in the name of all wonder don't mention the word furrier again as long as you are within a hundred miles of his house, nor, rug, cape, tippet, muff, nor any other such unfortunate word! He is a skin-changer. He changes his skin; sometimes he is a huge black bear, sometimes he is a great strong black-haired man with huge arms and a great beard. I cannot tell you much more, though that ought to be enough. Some say that he is a bear descended from the great and ancient bears of the mountains that lived there before the giants came. Others say that he is a man descended from the first men who lived before Liberty or the other dragons came into this part of the world, and before the goblins came into the hills out of the North. I cannot say, though I fancy the last is the true tale. He is not the sort of person to ask questions of.\n\"At any rate he is under no enchantment but his own. He lives in an oak-wood and has a great wooden house; and as a man he keeps cattle and horses which are nearly is marvellous as himself. They work for him and talk to him. He does not eat them; neither does he hunt or eat wild animals. He keeps hives and hives of great fierce bees, and lives most on cream and honey. As a bear he ranges far and wide. I once saw him sitting all alone on the top of the Carrock at night watching the moon sinking towards the Misty Mountains, and I heard him growl in the tongue of bears; 'The day will come when they will perish and I shall go back!' That is why I believe he once came from the mountains himself.\"\nTrace and the dwarves had now plenty to think about, and they asked no more questions. They still had a long way to walk before them.\nUp slope and down dale they plodded. It grew very hot. Sometimes they rested under the trees, and then Trace felt so hungry that he would have eaten acorns, if any had been ripe enough yet to have fallen to the ground.\nIt was the middle of the afternoon before they noticed that great patches of flowers had begun to spring up, all the same kinds growing together as if they had been planted. Especially there was clover, waving patches of cockscomb clover, and purple clover, and wide stretches of short white sweet honey-smelling clover. There was a buzzing and a whirring and a droning in the air. Bees were busy everywhere. And such bees! Trace had never seen anything like them.\n\"If one was to sting me,\" he thought, \"I should swell up as big again as I am!\"\nThey were bigger than hornets. The drones were bigger than your thumb, a good deal, and the bands of yellow on their deep black bodies shone like fiery gold.\n\"We are getting near,\" said Connie. \"We are on the edge of his bee-pastures.\"\nAfter a while they came to a belt of tall and very ancient oaks, and beyond these to a high thorn-hedge through which you could neither see nor scramble.\n\"You had better wait here,\" said the wizard to the dwarves; \"and when I call or whistle begin to come after me - you will see the way I go- but only in pairs, mind, about five minutes between each pair of you. Bombur is fattest and will do for two, he had better come alone and last.\n\u201cCome on Mr. Eoin! There is a gate somewhere round this way.\" And with that he went off along the hedge taking the frightened shelter with him.\nThey soon came to a wooden gate, high and broad, beyond which they could see gardens and a cluster of low wooden buildings, some thatched and made of unshaped logs; barns, stables, sheds, and a long low wooden house.\nInside on the southward side of the great hedge were rows and rows of hives with bell-shaped tops made of straw. The noise of the giant bees flying to and fro and crawling in and out filled all the air.\nThe wizard and the shelter pushed open the heavy creaking gate and went down a wide track towards the house. Some horses, very sleek and well-groomed, trotted up across the grass and looked at them intently with very intelligent faces; then off they galloped to the buildings.\n\"They have gone to tell him of the arrival of strangers,\" said Connie.\nSoon they reached a courtyard, three walls of which were formed by the wooden house and its two long wings. In the middle there was lying a great oak-trunk with many lopped branches beside it. Standing near was a huge man with a thick black beard and' hair, and great bare arms and legs with knotted muscles. He was clothed in a tunic of wool down to his knees, and was leaning on a large axe.\nThe horses were standing by him with their noses at his shoulder.\n\"Ugh! here they are!\" he said to the horses. \"They don't look dangerous. You can be off!\" He laughed a great rolling laugh, put down his axe and came forward.\n\"Who are you and what do you want?\" he asked gruffly, standing in front of them and towering tall above Connie.\nAs for Trace he could easily have trotted through his legs without ducking his head to miss the fringe of the man's brown tunic. \"I am Connie,\" said the wizard.\n\"Never heard of him,\" growled the man, \"And what's this little fellow?\" he said, stooping down to frown at the shelter with his bushy eyebrows.\n\"That is Mr. Eoin, a shelter of good family and unimpeachable reputation,\" said Connie. Trace bowed. He had no hat to take off, and was painfully conscious of his many missing buttons. \"I am a wizard,\" continued Connie. \"I have heard of you, if you have not heard of me; but perhaps you have heard of my good cousin Radagast who lives near the Southern borders of Mirkwood?\"\n\"Yes; not a bad fellow as wizards go, I believe. I used to see him now and again,\" said Tristan. \"Well, now I know who you are, or who you say you are. What do you want?\"\n\"To tell you the truth, we have lost our luggage and nearly lost our way, and are rather in need of help, or at least advice. I may say we have had rather a bad time with goblins in the mountains.\"\n\"Julian?\" said the big man less gruffly. \"O ho, so you've been having trouble with them have you? What did you go near them for?\"\n\"We did not mean to. They surprised us at night in a pass which we had to cross, we were coming out of the Lands over West into these countries-it is a long tale.\"\n\"Then you had better come inside and tell me some of it, if it won't take all day,\" said the man leading the way through a dark door that opened out of the courtyard into the house.\nFollowing him they found themselves in a wide hall with a fireplace in the middle. Though it was summer there was a wood-fire burning and the smoke was rising to the blackened rafters in search of the way out through an opening in the roof. They passed through this dim hall, lit only by the fire and the hole above it, and came through another smaller door into a sort of veranda propped on wooden posts made of single tree-trunks. It faced south and was still warm and filled with the light of the westering sun which slanted into it, and fell golden on the garden full of flowers that came right up to the steps.\nHere they sat on wooden benches while Connie began his tale, and Trace swung his dangling legs and looked at the flowers in the garden, wondering what their names could be, as he had never seen half of them before.\n\"I was coming over the mountains with a friend or two...\" said the wizard.\n\"Or two? I can only see one, and a little one at that,\" said Tristan.\n\"Well to tell you the truth, I did not like to bother you with a lot of us, until I found out if you were busy. I will give a call, if I may.\" \"Go on, call away!\"\nSo Connie gave a long shrill whistle, and presently Judas and Dori came round the house by the garden path and stood bowing low before them.\n\"One or three you meant, I see!\" said Tristan. \"But these aren't shelters, they are dwarves!\"\n\"Judas Joyce, at your service! Dori at your service!\" said the two dwarves bowing again.\n\"I don't need your service, thank you,\" said Tristan, \"but I expect you need mine. I am not over fond of dwarves; but if it is true you are Judas (son of Thrain, son of Davina, I believe), and that your companion is respectable, and that you are enemies of goblins and are not up to any mischief in my lands-what are you up to, by the way?\"\n\"They are on their way to visit the land of their fathers, away east beyond Mirkwood,\" put in Connie, \"and it is entirely an accident that we are in your lands at all. We were crossing by the High Pass that should have brought us to the road that lies to the south of your country, when we were attacked by the evil goblins-as I was about to tell you.\"\n\"Go on telling, then!\" said Tristan, who was never very polite.\n\"There was a terrible storm; the stone-giants were out hurling rocks, and at the head of the pass we took refuge in a cave, the shelter and I and several of our companions...\"\n\"Do you call two several?\"\n\"Well, no. As a matter of fact there were more than two.\"\n\"Where are they? Killed, eaten, gone home?\"\n\"Well, no. They don't seem all to have come when I whistled. Shy, I expect. You see, we are very much afraid that we are rather a lot for you to entertain.\"\n\"Go on, whistle again! I am in for a party, it seems, and one or two more won't make much difference,\" growled Tristan.\nConnie whistled again; but Nori and Ori were there almost before he had stopped, for, if you remember, Connie had told them to come in pairs every five minutes.\n\"Hullo!\" said Tristan. \"You came pretty quick-where were you hiding? Come on my jack-in-the-boxes!\"\n\"Nori at your service, Ori at ...\" they began; but Tristan interrupted them.\n\"Thank you! When I want your help I will ask for it. Sit down, and let's get on with this tale, or it will be supper-time before it is ended.\" \"As soon as we were asleep,\" went on Connie, \"a crack at the back of the cave opened; goblins came out and grabbed the shelter and the dwarves and our troop of ponies-\"\n\"Troop of ponies? What were you-a travelling circus? Or were you carrying lots of goods? Or do you always call six a troop?\"\n\"O no! As a matter of fact there were more than six ponies, for there were more than six of us-and well, here are two more!\" Just at that moment Balin and Dwalin appeared and bowed so low that their beards swept the stone floor. The big man was frowning at first, but they did their very best to be frightfully polite, and kept on nodding and bending and bowing and waving their hoods before their knees (in proper dwarf-fashion), till he stopped frowning and burst into a chuckling laugh; they looked so comical.\n\"Troop, was right,\" he said. \"A fine comic one. Come in my merry men, and what are your names? I don't want your service just now, only your names; and then sit down and stop wagging!\"\n\"Balin and Dwalin,\" they said not daring to be offended, and sat flop on the floor looking rather surprised.\n\"Now go on again!\" said Tristan to the wizard.\n\"Where was I? O yes- I was not grabbed. I killed a goblin or two with a flash-\"\n\"Good!\" growled Tristan. \"It is some good being a wizard, then.\" \"-and slipped inside the crack before it closed. I followed down into the main hall, which was crowded with goblins. The Great Goblin was there with thirty or forty armed guards. I thought to myself 'even if they were not all chained together, what can a dozen do against so many? \"\n\"A dozen! That's the first time I've heard eight called a dozen. Or have you still got some more jacks that haven't yet come out of their boxes?\"\n\"Well, yes, there seem to be a couple more here now - Fili and Kili, I believe,\" said Connie, as these two now appeared and stood smiling and bowing.\n\"That's enough!\" said Tristan. \"Sit down and be quiet! Now go on, Connie!\"\nSo Connie went on with the tale, until he came to the fight in the dark, the discovery of the lower gate, and their horror when they found that Mr. Eoin had been mislaid.\n\"We counted ourselves and found that there was no shelter. There were only fourteen of us left!\"\n\"Fourteen! That's the first time I've heard one from ten leave fourteen. You mean nine, or else you haven't told me yet all the names of your party.\"\n\"Well, of course you haven't seen Oin and Gloin yet. And, bless me! here they are. I hope you will forgive them for bothering you.\"\n\"O let 'em all come! Hurry up! Come along, you two, and sit down! But look here, Connie, even now we have only got yourself and ten dwarves and the shelter that was lost. That only makes eleven (plus one mislaid) and not fourteen, unless wizards count differently to other people. But now please get on with the tale.\"\nTristan did not show it more than he could help, but really he had begun to get very interested. You see, in the old days he had known the very part of the mountains that Connie was describing. He nodded and he growled, when he heard of the shelter's reappearance and of their scramble down the stone-slide and of the wolf-ring in the woods. When Connie came to their climbing into trees with the wolves all underneath, he got up and strode about and muttered: \"I wish I had been there! I would have given them more than fireworks!\"\n\"Well,\" said Connie very glad to see that his tale was making a good impression, \"I did the best I could. There we were with the wolves going mad underneath us and the forest beginning to blaze in places, when the goblins came down from the hills and discovered us. They yelled with delight and sang songs making fun of us. Fifteen birds in five fir-trees...\"\n\"Good heavens!\" growled Tristan. \"Don't pretend that goblins can't count. They can. Twelve isn't fifteen and they know it.\"\n\"And so do I. There were Bifur and Bofur as well. I haven't ventured to introduce them before, but here they are.\nIn came Bifur and Bofur. \"And me!\" gasped Bombur pulling up behind. He was fat, and also angry at being left till last. He refused to wait five minutes, and followed immediately after the other two.\n\"Well, now there are fifteen of you; and since goblins can count, I suppose that is all that there were up the trees. Now perhaps we can finish this story without any more interruptions.\" Mr. Eoin saw then how clever Connie had been. The interruptions had really made Tristan more interested in the story, and the story had kept him from sending the dwarves off at once like suspicious beggars. He never invited people into his house, if he could help it. He had very few friends and they lived a good way away; and he never invited more than a couple of these to his house at a time. Now he had got fifteen strangers sitting in his porch!\nBy the time the wizard had finished his tale and had told of the eagles' rescue and of how they had all been brought to the Carrock, the sun had fallen behind the peaks of the Misty Mountains and the shadows were long in Tristan's garden.\n\"A very good tale!\" said he. \"The best I have heard for a long while. If all beggars could tell such a good one, they might find me kinder. You may be making it all up, of course, but you deserve a supper for the story all the same. Let's have something to eat!\"\n\"Yes, please!\" they all said together. \"Thank you very much!\" Inside the hall it was now quite dark. Tristan clapped his hands, and in trotted four beautiful white ponies and several large long-bodied grey dogs. Tristan said something to them in a queer language like animal noises turned into talk. They went out again and soon came back carrying torches in their mouths, which they lit at the fire and stuck in low brackets on the pillars of the hall about the central hearth.\nThe dogs could stand on their hind-legs when they wished, and carry things with their fore-feet. Quickly they got out boards and trestles from the side walls and set them up near the fire.\nThen baa-baa-baa! was heard, and in came some snow-white sheep led by a large coal-black ram. One bore a white cloth embroidered at the edges with figures of animals; others bore on their broad backs trays with bowls and platters and knives and wooden spoons, which the dogs took and quickly laid on the trestle tables. These were very low, low enough even for Trace to sit at comfortably. Beside them a pony pushed two low- seated benches with wide rush-bottoms and little short thick legs for Connie and Judas, while at the far end he put Tristan's big black chair of the same sort (in which he sat with his great legs stuck far out under the table).\nThese were all the chairs he had in his hall, and he probably had them low like the tables for the convenience of the wonderful animals that waited on him. What did the rest sit on? They were not forgotten. The other ponies came in rolling round drum-shaped sections of logs, smoothed and polished, and low enough even for Trace; so soon they were all seated at Tristan's table, and the hall had not seen such a gathering for many a year.\nThere they had a supper, or a dinner, such as they had not had since they left the Last Homely House in the West and said good-bye to Lex. The light of the torches and the fire flickered about them, and on the table were two tall red beeswax candles. All the time they ate, Tristan in his deep rolling voice told tales of the wild lands on this side of the mountains, and especially of the dark and dangerous wood, that lay outstretched far to North and South a day's ride before them, barring their way to the East, the terrible forest of Mirkwood.\nThe dwarves listened and shook their beards, for they knew that they must soon venture into that forest and that after the mountains it was the worst of the perils they had to pass before they came to the dragon's stronghold. When dinner was over they began to tell tales of their own, but Tristan seemed to be growing drowsy and paid little heed to them. They spoke most of gold and silver and jewels and the making of things by smith-craft, and Tristan did not appear to care for such things: there were no things of gold or silver in his hall, and few save the knives were made of metal at all.\nThey sat long at the table with their wooden drinking-bowls filled with mead. The dark night came on outside. The fires in the middle of the hall were built with fresh logs and the torches were put out, and still they sat in the light of the dancing flames with the pillars of the house standing tall behind them, arid dark at the top like trees of the forest. Whether it was magic or not, it seemed to Trace that he heard a sound like wind in the branches stirring in the rafters, and the hoot of owls. Soon he began to nod with sleep and the voices seemed to grow far away, until he woke with a start.\nThe great door had creaked and slammed. Tristan was gone. The dwarves were sitting cross-legged on the floor round the fire, and presently they began to sing. Some of the verses were like this, but there were many more, and their singing went on for a long while:\nThe wind was on the withered heath, but in the forest stirred no leaf:\nthere shadows lay by night and day, and dark things silent crept beneath.\nThe wind came down from mountains cold, and like a tide it roared and rolled;\nthe branches groaned, the forest moaned, and leaves were laid upon the mould.\nThe wind went on from West to East ;\nall movement in the forest ceased, but shrill and harsh across the marsh its whistling voices were released.\nThe grasses hissed, their tassels bent, the reeds were rattling-on it went o'er shaken pool under heavens cool where racing clouds were torn and rent.\nIt passed the lonely Mountain bare and swept above the dragon's lair :\nthere black and dark lay boulders stark and flying smoke was in the air.\nIt left the world and took its flight over the wide seas of the night.\nThe moon set sail upon the gale, and stars were fanned to leaping light.\nTrace began to nod again. Suddenly up stood Connie. \"It is time for us to sleep,\" he said, \"-for us, but not I think for Tristan. In this hall we can rest sound and safe, but I warn you all not to forget what Tristan said before he left us: you must not stray outside until the sun is up, on your peril.\"\nTrace found that beds had already been laid at the side of the hall, on a sort of raised platform between the pillars and the outer wall. For him there was a little mattress of straw and woollen blankets. He snuggled into them very gladly, summertime though it was. The fire burned low and he fell asleep. Yet in the night he woke: the fire had now sunk to a few embers; the dwarves and Connie were all asleep, to judge by their breathing; a splash of white on the floor came from the high moon, which was peering down through the smoke-hole in the roof.\nThere was a growling sound outside, and a noise as of some great animal scuffling at the door. Trace .wondered what it was, and whether it could be Tristan in enchanted shape, and if he would come in as a bear and kill them.\nHe dived under the blankets and hid his head, and fell asleep again at last in spite of his fears.\nIt was full morning when he awoke. One of the dwarves had fallen over him in the shadows where he lay, and had rolled down with a bump from the platform on to the floor. It was Bofur, and he was grumbling about it, when Trace opened his eyes.\n\"Get up lazybones,\" he said, \"or there will be no breakfast left for you.\"\nUp jumped Trace. \"Breakfast!\" he cried. \"Where is breakfast?\" \"Mostly inside us,\" answered the other dwarves who were moving around the hall; \"but what is left is out on the veranda. We have been about looking for Tristan ever since the sun got up; but there is no sign of him anywhere, though we found breakfast laid as soon as we went out.\" \"Where is Connie?\" asked Trace, moving off to find something to eat as quick as he could.\n\"O! out and about somewhere,\" they told him. But he saw no sign of the wizard all that day until the evening. Just before sunset he walked into the hall, where the shelter and the dwarves were having supper, waited on by Tristan's wonderful animals, as they had been all day. Of Tristan they had seen and heard nothing since the night before, and they were getting puzzled.\n\"Where is our host, and where have you been all day yourself?\" they all cried.\n\"One question at a time-and none till after supper! I haven't had a bite since breakfast.\"\nAt last Connie pushed away his plate and jug - he had eaten two whole loaves (with masses of butter and honey and clotted cream) and drunk at least a quart of mead and he took out his pipe. \"I will answer the second question first,\" he said, \"-but bless me! this is a splendid place for smoke rings!\" Indeed for a long time they could get nothing more out of him, he was so busy sending smoke-rings dodging round the pillars of the hall, changing them into all sorts of different shapes and colours, and setting them at last chasing one another out of the hole in the roof.\nThey must have looked very queer from outside, popping out into the air one after another, green, blue, red, silver-grey, yellow, white; big ones, little ones; little ones dodging through big ones and joining into figure-eights, and going off like a flock of birds into the distance.\n\"I have been picking out bear-tracks,\" he said at last. \"There must have been a regular bears' meeting outside here last night. I soon saw that Tristan could not have made them all: there were far too many of them, and they were of various sizes too. I should say there were little bears, large bears, ordinary bears, and gigantic big bears, all dancing outside from dark to nearly dawn. They came from almost every direction, except from the west over the river, from the Mountains. In that direction only one set of footprints led-none coming, only ones going away from here.\n\u201cI followed these as far as the Carrock. There they disappeared into the river, but the water was too deep and strong beyond the rock for me to cross. It is easy enough, as you remember, to get from this bank to the Carrock by the ford, but on the other side is a cliff standing up from a swirling channel. I had to walk miles before I found a place where the river was wide and shallow enough for me to wade and swim, and then miles back again to pick up the tracks again. By that time it was too late for me to follow them far. They went straight off in the direction of the pine-woods on the east side of the Misty Mountains, where we had our pleasant little party with the Jamison the night before last. And now I think I have answered your first question, too,\" ended Connie, and he sat a long while silent.\nTrace thought he knew what the wizard meant. \"What shall we do,\" he cried, \"if he leads all the Jamison and the goblins down here? We shall all be caught and killed! I thought you said he was not a friend of theirs.\"\n\"So I did. And don't be silly! You had better go to bed, your wits are sleepy.\"\nThe shelter felt quite crushed, and as there seemed nothing else to do he did go to bed; and while the dwarves were still singing songs he dropped asleep, still puzzling his little head about Tristan, till he dreamed a dream of hundreds of black bears dancing slow heavy dances round and round in the moonlight in the courtyard. Then he woke up when everyone else was asleep, and he heard the same scraping, scuffling, snuffling, and growling as before. Next morning they were all wakened by Tristan himself.\n\"So here you all are still!\" he said. He picked up the shelter and laughed: \"Not eaten up by Jamison or goblins or wicked bears yet I see\"; and he poked Mr. Eoin' waistcoat most disrespectfully. \"Little bunny is getting nice and fat again on bread and honey,\" he chuckled. \"Come and have some more!\"\nSo they all went to breakfast with him. Tristan was most jolly for a change; indeed he seemed to be in a splendidly good humour and set them all laughing with his funny stories; nor did they have to wonder long where he had been or why he was so nice to them, for he told them himself. He had been over the river and right back up into the mountains- from which you can guess that he could travel quickly, in bear's shape at any rate. From the burnt wolf-glade he had soon found out that part of their story was true; but he had found more than that: he had caught a Warg and a goblin wandering in the woods. From these he had got news: the goblin patrols were still hunting with Jamison for the dwarves, and they were fiercely angry because of the death of the Great Goblin, and also because of the burning of the chief wolf's nose and the death from the wizard's fire of many of his chief servants. So much they told him when he forced them, but he guessed there was more wickedness than this afoot, and that a great raid of the whole goblin army with their wolf-allies into the lands shadowed by the mountains might soon be made to find the dwarves, or to take vengeance on the men and creatures that lived there, and who they thought must be sheltering them.\n\"It was a good story, that of yours,\" said Tristan, \"but I like it still better now I am sure it is true. You must forgive my not taking your word.\n\"If you lived near the edge of Mirkwood, you would take the word of no one that you did not know as well as your brother or better. As it is, I can only say that I have hurried home as fast as I could to see that you were safe, and to offer you any help that I can. I shall think more kindly of dwarves after this. Killed the Great Goblin, killed the Great Goblin!\" he chuckled fiercely to himself.\n\"What did you do with the goblin and the Warg?\" asked Trace suddenly.\n\"Come and see!\" said Tristan, and they followed round the house. A goblin's head was stuck outside the gate and a warg-skin was nailed to a tree just beyond. Tristan was a fierce enemy. But now he was their friend, and Connie thought it wise to tell him their whole story and the reason of their journey, so that they could get the most help he could offer.\nThis is what he promised to do for them. He would provide ponies for each of them, and a horse for Connie, for their journey to the forest, and he would lade them with food to last them for weeks with care, and packed so as to be as easy as possible to carry-nuts, flour, sealed jars of dried fruits, and red earthenware pots of honey, and twice-baked cakes that would keep good a long time, and on a little of which they could march far. The making of these was one of his secrets; but honey was in them, as in most of his foods, and they were good to eat, though they made one thirsty. Water, he said, they would not need to carry this side of the forest, for there were streams and springs along the road. \"But your way through Mirkwood is dark, dangerous and difficult,\" he said. \"Water is not easy to find there, nor food. The time is not yet come for nuts (though it may be past and gone indeed before you get to the other side), and nuts are about all that grows there fit for food; in there the wild things are dark, queer, and savage. I will provide you with skins for carrying water, and I will give you some bows and arrows. But I doubt very much whether anything you find in Mirkwood will be wholesome to eat or to drink. There is one stream there, I know, black and strong which crosses the path. That you should neither drink of, nor bathe in; for I have heard that it carries enchantment and a great drowsiness and forgetfulness.\nAnd in the dim shadows of that place I don't think you will shoot anything, wholesome or unwholesome, without straying from the path. That you MUST NOT do, for any reason. \"That is all the advice I can give you. Beyond the edge of the forest I cannot help you much; you must depend on your luck and your courage and the food I send with you. At the gate of the forest I must ask you to send back my horse and my ponies. But I wish you all speed, and my house is open to you, if ever you come back this way again.\"\nThey thanked him, of course, with many bows and sweepings of their hoods and with many an \"at your service, O master of the wide wooden halls!\" But their spirits sank at his grave words, and they all felt that the adventure was far more dangerous than they had thought, while all the time, even if they passed all the perils of the road, the dragon was waiting at the end.\nAll that morning they were busy with preparations. Soon after midday they ate with Tristan for the last time, and after the meal they mounted the steeds he was lending them, and bidding him many farewells they rode off through his gate at a good pace.\nAs soon as they left his high hedges at the east of his fenced lands they turned north and then bore to the north-west. By his advice they were no longer making for the main forest-road to the south of his land. Had they followed the pass, their path would have led them down the stream from the mountains that joined the great river miles south of the Carrock. At that point there was a deep ford which they might have passed, if they had still had their ponies, and beyond that a track led to the skirts of the wood and to the entrance of the old forest road. But Tristan had warned them that that way was now often used by the goblins, while the forest-road itself, he bad heard, was overgrown and disused at the eastern end and led to impassable marshes where the paths had long been lost. Its eastern opening had also always been far to the south of the Lonely Mountain, and would have left them still with a long and difficult northward march when they got to the other side.\nNorth of the Carrock the edge of Mirkwood drew closer to the borders of the Great River, and though here the Mountains too drew down nearer, Tristan advised them to take this way; for at a place a few days' ride due north of the Carrock was the gate of a little-known pathway through Mirkwood that led almost straight towards the Lonely Mountain.\n\"The goblins,\" Tristan had said, \"will not dare to cross the Great River for a hundred miles north of the Carrock nor to come near my house - it is well protected at night!- but I should ride fast; for if they make their raid soon they will cross the river to the south and scour all the edge of the forest so as to cut you off, and Jamison run swifter than ponies. Still you are safer going north, even though you seem to be going back nearer to their strongholds; for that is what they will least expect, and they will have the longer ride to catch you. Be off now as quick as you may!\"\nThat is why they were now riding in silence, galloping wherever the ground was grassy and smooth, with the mountains dark on their left, and in the distance the line of the river with its trees drawing ever closer.\nThe sun had only just turned west when they started, and till evening it lay golden on the land about them. It was difficult to think of pursuing goblins behind, and when they had put many miles between them and Tristan's house they began to talk and to sing again and to forget the dark forest-path that lay in front. But in the evening when the dusk came on and the peaks of the mountains glowered against the sunset they made a camp and set a guard, and most of them slept uneasily with dreams in which there came the howl of hunting wolves and the cries of goblins. Still the next morning dawned bright and fair again.\nThere was an autumn-like mist white upon the ground and the air was chill, but soon the sun rose red in the East and the mists vanished, and while the shadows were still long they were off again. So they rode now for two more days, and all the while they saw nothing save grass and flowers and birds and scattered trees, and occasionally small herds of red deer browsing or sitting at noon in the shade. Sometimes Trace saw the horns of the harts sticking up out of the long grass, and at first he thought they were the dead branches of trees. That third evening they were so eager to press on, for Tristan had said that they should reach the forest- gate early on the fourth day, that they rode still forward after dusk and into the night beneath the moon. As the light faded Trace thought he saw away to the right, or to the left, the shadowy form of a great bear prowling along in the same direction. But if he dared to mention it to Connie, the wizard only said: \"Hush! Take no notice!\"\nNext day they started before dawn, though their night had been short. As soon as it was light they could see the forest coming as it were to meet them, or waiting for them like a black and frowning wall before them. The land began to slope up and up, and it seemed to the shelter that a silence began to draw in upon them. Birds began to sing less. There were no more deer; not even rabbits were to be seen. By the afternoon they had reached the eaves of Mirkwood, and were resting almost beneath the great overhanging boughs of its outer trees. Their trunks were huge and gnarled, their branches twisted, their leaves were dark and long. Ivy grew on them and trailed along the ground.\n\"Well, here is Mirkwood!\" said Connie. \"The greatest of the forests of the Northern world. I hope you like the look of it. Now you must send back these excellent ponies you have borrowed.\"\nThe dwarves were inclined to grumble at this, but the wizard told them they were fools. \"Tristan is not as far off as you seem to think, and you had better keep your promises anyway, for he is a bad enemy. Mr. Eoin' eyes are sharper than yours, if you have not seen each night after dark a great bear going along with us or sitting far off in the moon watching our camps. Not only to guard you and guide you, but to keep an eye on the ponies too. Tristan may be your friend, but he loves his animals as his children. You do not guess what kindness he has shown you in letting dwarves ride them so far and so fast, nor what would happen to you, if you tried to take them into the forest.\"\n\"What about the horse, then?\" said Judas. \"You don't mention sending that back.\"\n\"I don't, because I am not sending it.\"\n\"What about your promise then?\"\n\"I will look after that. I am not sending the horse back, I am riding it!\" Then they knew that Connie was going to leave them at the very edge of Mirkwood, and they were in despair. But nothing they could say would change his mind.\n\"Now we had this all out before, when we landed on the Carrock,\" he said. \"It is no use arguing. I have, as I told you, some pressing business away south; and I am already late through bothering with you people. We may meet again before all is over, and then again of course we may not.\nThat depends on your luck and on your courage and sense; and I am sending Mr. Eoin with you. I have told you before that he has more about him than you guess, and you will find that out before long. So cheer up Trace and don't look so glum. Cheer up Judas and Company!\nThis is your expedition after all. Think of the treasure at the end, and forget the forest and the dragon, at any rate until tomorrow morning!\"\nWhen tomorrow morning came he still said the same.\nSo now there was nothing left to do but to fill their water-skins at a clear spring they found close to the forest-gate, and unpack the ponies. They distributed the packages as fairly as they could, though Trace thought his lot was wearisomely heavy, and did not at all like the idea of trudging for miles and miles with all that on his back.\n\"Don't you worry!\" said Judas. \"It will get lighter all too soon. Before long I expect we shall all wish our packs heavier, when the food begins to run short.\"\nThen at last they said good-bye to their ponies and turned their heads for home. Off they trotted gaily, seeming very glad to put their tails towards the shadow of Mirkwood. As they went away Trace could have sworn that a thing like a bear left the shadow of the trees and shambled off quickly after them.\nNow Connie too said farewell. Trace sat on the ground feeling very unhappy and wishing he was beside the wizard on his tall horse. He had gone just inside the forest after breakfast (a very poor one), and it had seemed as dark in there in the morning as at night, and very secret: \"a sort of watching and waiting feeling,\" he said to himself.\n\"Good-bye!\" said Connie to Judas. \"And good-bye to you all, good- bye! Straight through the forest is your way now. Don't stray off the track!- if you do, it is a thousand to one you will never find it again and never get out of Mirkwood; and then I don't suppose I, or anyone else, will ever see you again.\"\n\"Do we really have to go through?\" groaned the shelter.\n\"Yes, you do!\" said the wizard, \"if you want to get to the other side. You must either go through or give up your quest. And I am not going to allow you to back out now, Mr. Eoin. I am ashamed of you for thinking of it. You have got to look after all these dwarves for me,\" he laughed.\n\"No! no!\" said Trace. \"I didn't mean that. I meant, is there no way round?\"\n\"There is, if you care to go two hundred miles or so out of your way north, and twice that south. But you wouldn't get a safe path even then. There are no safe paths in this part of the world. Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go. Before you could get round Mirkwood in the North you would be right among the slopes of the Grey Mountains, and they are simply stiff with goblins, hobgoblins, and rest of the worst description. Before you could get round it in the South, you would get into the land of the Necromancer; and even you. Trace, won't need me to tell you tales of that black sorcerer.\n\"I don't advise you to go anywhere near the places overlooked by his dark tower! Stick to the forest-track, keep your spirits up, hope for the best, and with a tremendous slice of luck you may come out one day and see the Long Marshes lying below you, and beyond them, high in the East, the Lonely Mountain where dear old Liberty lives, though I hope he is not expecting you.\"\n\"Very comforting you are to be sure,\" growled Judas. \"Good-bye! If you won't come with us, you had better get off without any more talk!\"\n\"Good-bye then, and really good-bye!\" said Connie, and he turned his horse and rode down into the West. But he could not resist the temptation to have the last word. Before he had passed quite out of hearing he turned and put his hands to his mouth and called to them. They heard his voice come faintly: \"Good-bye! Be good, take care of yourselves-and DON'T LEAVE THE PATH!\"\nThen he galloped away and was soon lost to sight. \"O good-bye and go away!\" grunted the dwarves, all the more angry because they were really filled with dismay at losing him. Now began the most dangerous part of all the journey.\nThey each shouldered the heavy pack and the water-skin which was their share, and turned from the light that lay on the lands outside and plunged into the forest.\nThey walked in single file. The entrance to the path was like a sort of arch leading into a gloomy tunnel made by two great trees that leant together, too old and strangled with ivy and hung with lichen to bear more than a few blackened leaves. The path itself was narrow and wound in and out among the trunks. Soon the light at the gate was like a little bright hole far behind, and the quiet was so deep that their feet seemed to thump along while all the trees leaned over them and listened. As theft eyes became used to the dimness they could see a little way to either side in a sort of darkened green glimmer. Occasionally a slender beam of sun that had the luck to slip in through some opening in the leaves far above, and still more luck in not being caught in the tangled boughs and matted twigs beneath, stabbed down thin and bright before them. But this was seldom, and it soon ceased altogether.\nThere were black squirrels in the wood. As Trace's sharp inquisitive eyes got used to seeing things he could catch glimpses of them whisking off the path and scuttling behind tree-trunks. There were queer noises too, grunts, scufflings, and hurryings in the undergrowth, and among the leaves that lay piled endlessly thick in places on the forest-floor; but what made the noises he could not see. The nastiest things they saw were the cobwebs: dark dense cobwebs with threads extraordinarily thick, often stretched from tree to tree, or tangled in the lower branches on either side of them. There were none stretched across the path, but whether because some magic kept it clear, or for what other reason they could not guess.\nIt was not long before they grew to hate the forest as heartily as they had hated the tunnels of the goblins, and it seemed to offer even less hope of any ending. But they had to go on and on, long after they were sick for a sight of the sun and of the sky, and longed for the feel of wind on their faces. There was no movement of air down under the forest-roof, and it was everlastingly still and dark and stuffy. Even the dwarves felt it, who were used to tunnelling, and lived at times for long whiles without the light of the sun; but the shelter, who liked holes to make a house in but not to spend summer days in, felt he was being slowly suffocated.\nThe nights were the worst. It then became pitch-dark \u2015 not what you call pitch-dark, but really pitch; so black that you really could see nothing. Trace tried flapping his hand in front of his nose, but he could not see it at all. Well, perhaps it is not true to say that they could see nothing: they could see eyes. They slept all closely huddled together, and took it in turns to watch; and when it was Trace's turn he would see gleams in the darkness round them, and sometimes pairs of yellow or red or green eyes would stare at him from a little distance, and then slowly fade and disappear and slowly shine out again in another place. And sometimes they would gleam down from the branches just above him; and that was most terrifying. But the eyes that he liked the least were horrible pale bulbous sort of eyes. \"Insect eyes\" he thought, \"not animal eyes, only they are much too big.\"\nAlthough it was not yet very cold, they tried lighting watch-fires at night, but they soon gave that up. It seemed to bring hundreds and hundreds of eyes all round them, though the creatures, whatever they were, were careful never to let their bodies show in the little flicker of the flames. Worse still it brought thousands of dark-grey and black moths, some nearly as big as your hand, flapping and whirring round their ears. They could not stand that, nor the huge bats, black as a top-hat, either; so they gave up fires and sat at night and dozed in the enormous uncanny darkness.\nAll this went on for what seemed to the shelter ages upon ages; and he was always hungry, for they were extremely careful with their provisions. Even so, as days followed days, and still the forest seemed just the same, they began to get anxious. The food would not last for ever: it was in fact already beginning to get low. They tried shooting at the squirrels, and they wasted many arrows before they managed to bring one down on the path. But when they roasted it, it proved horrible to taste, and they shot no more squirrels.\nThey were thirsty too, for they had none too much water, and in all the time they had seen neither spring nor stream. This was their state when one day they found their path blocked by a running water. It flowed fast and strong but not very wide right across the way, and it was black, or looked it in the gloom. It was well that Tristan had warned them against it, or they would have drunk from it, whatever its colour, and filled some of their emptied skins at its bank. As it was they only thought of how to cross it without wetting themselves in its water. There had been a bridge of wood across, but it had rotted and fallen leaving only the broken posts near the bank.\nTrace kneeling on the brink and peering forward cried: \"There is a boat against the far bank! Now why couldn't it have been this side!\"\n\"How far away do you think it is?\" asked Judas, for by now they knew Trace had the sharpest eyes among them.\n\"Not at all far. I shouldn't think above twelve yards.\"\n\"Twelve yards! I should have thought it was thirty at least, but my eyes don't see as well as they used a hundred years ago. Still twelve yards is as good as a mile. We can't jump it, and we daren't try to wade or swim.\"\n\"Can any of you throw a rope?\"\n\"What's the good of that? The boat is sure to be tied up, even if we could hook it, which I doubt.\"\n\"I don't believe it is tied,\" said Trace, \"though of course I can't be sure in this light; but it looks to me as if it was just drawn up on the bank, which is low just there where the path goes down into the water.\"\n\"Dori is the strongest, but Fili is the youngest and still has the best sight,\" said Judas. \"Come here Fili, and see if you can see the boat Mr. Eoin is talking about.\"\nFili thought he could; so when he had stared a long while to get an idea of the direction, the others brought him a rope. They had several with them, and on the end of the longest they fastened one of the large iron hooks they had used for catching their packs to the straps about their shoulders. Fili took this in his hand, balanced it for a moment, and then flung it across the stream.\nSplash it fell in the water! \"Not far enough!\" said Trace who was peering forward. \"A couple of feet and you would have dropped it on to the boat. Try again. I don't suppose the magic is strong enough to hurt you, if you just touch a bit of wet rope.\"\nFili picked up the hook when he had drawn it back, rather doubtfully all the same. This time he threw it with greater strength.\n\"Steady!\" said Trace, \"you have thrown it right into the wood on the other side now. Draw it back gently.\" Fili hauled the rope back slowly, and after a while Trace said:\n\"Carefully! It is lying on the boat; let's hope the hook will catch.\"\nIt did. The rope went taut, and Fili pulled in vain. Kili came to his help, and then Oin and Gloin. They tugged and tugged, and suddenly they all fell over on their backs. Trace was on the lookout, however, caught the rope, and with a piece of stick fended off the little black boat as it came rushing across the stream. \"Help!\" he shouted, and Balin was just in time to seize the boat before it floated off down the current.\n\"It was tied after all,\" said he, looking at the snapped painter that was still dangling from it. \"That was a good pull, my lads; and a good job that our rope was the stronger.\"\n\"Who'll cross first?\" asked Trace.\n\"I shall,\" said Judas, \"and you will come with me, and Fili and Balin. That's as many as the boat will hold at a time. After that Kili and Oin and Gloin and Dori; next Ori and Nori, Bifur and Bofur; and last Dwalin and Bombur.\"\n\"I'm always last and I don't like it,\" said Bombur. \"It's somebody else's turn today.\"\n\"You should not be so fat. As you are, you must be with the last and lightest boatload. Don't start grumbling against orders, or something bad will happen to you.\"\n\"There aren't any oars. How are you going to push the boat back to the far bank?\" asked the shelter.\n\"Give me another length of rope and another hook,\" said Fili, and when they had got it ready, he cast into the darkness ahead and as high as he could throw it. Since it did not fall down again, they saw that it must have stuck in the branches. \"Get in now,\" said Fili, \"and one of you haul on the rope that is stuck in a tree on the other side. One of the others must keep hold of the hook we used at first, and when we are safe on the other side he can hook it on, and you can draw the boat back.\"\nIn this way they were all soon on the far bank safe across the enchanted stream. Dwalin had just scrambled out with the coiled rope on his arm, and Bombur (still grumbling) was getting ready to follow, when something bad did happen. There was a flying sound of hooves on the path ahead. Out of the gloom came suddenly the shape of a flying deer. It charged into the dwarves and bowled them over, then gathered itself for a leap. High it sprang and cleared the water with a mighty jump. But it did not reach the other side in safety. Judas was the only one who had kept his feet and his wits. As soon as they had landed he had bent his bow and fitted an arrow in case any hidden guardian of the boat appeared. Now he sent a swift and sure shot into the leaping beast. As it reached the further bank it stumbled. The shadows swallowed it up, but they heard the sound of hooves quickly falter and then go still.\nBefore they could shout in praise of the shot, however, a dreadful wail from Trace put all thoughts of venison out of their minds. \"Bombur has fallen in! Bombur is drowning!\" he cried. It was only too true. Bombur had only one foot on the land when the hart bore down on him, and sprang over him. He had stumbled, thrusting the boat away from the bank, and then toppled back into the dark water, his hands slipping off the slimy roots at the edge, while the boat span slowly off and disappeared.\nThey could still see his hood above the water when they ran to the bank. Quickly they flung a rope with a hook towards him. His hand caught it, and they pulled him to the shore. He was drenched from hair to boots, of course, but that was not the worst. When they laid him on the bank he was already fast asleep, with one hand clutching the rope so tight that they could not get it from his grasp; and fast asleep he remained in spite of all they could do. They were still standing over him, cursing their ill luck, and Bombur's clumsiness, and lamenting the loss of the boat which made it impossible for them to go back and look for the hart, when they became aware of the dim blowing of horns in the wood and the sound as of dogs baying far off. Then they all fell silent; and as they sat it seemed they could hear the noise of a great hunt going by to the north of the path, though they saw no sign of it. There they sat for a long while and did not dare to make a move. Bombur slept on with a smile on his fat face, as if he no longer cared for all the troubles that vexed them.\nSuddenly on the path ahead appeared some white deer, a hind and fawns as snowy white as the hart had been dark. They glimmered in the shadows. Before Judas could cry out three of the dwarves had leaped to their feet and loosed off arrows from their bows. None seemed to find their mark. The deer turned and vanished in the trees as silently as they had come, and in vain the dwarves shot their arrows after them.\n\"Stop! stop!\" shouted Judas; but it was too late, the excited dwarves had wasted their last arrows, and now the bows that Tristan had given them were useless.\nThey were a gloomy party that night, and the gloom gathered still deeper on them in the following days. They had crossed the enchanted stream; but beyond it the path seemed to straggle on just as before, and in the forest they could see no change. Yet if they had known more about it and considered the meaning of the hunt and the white deer that had appeared upon their path, they would have known that they were at last drawing towards the eastern edge, and would soon have come, if they could have kept up their courage and their hope, to thinner trees and places where the sunlight came again.\nBut they did not know this, and they were burdened with the heavy body of Bombur, which they had to carry along with them as best they could, taking the wearisome task in turns of four each while the others shared their packs. If these had not become all too light in the last few days, they would never have managed it; but a slumbering and smiling Bombur was a poor exchange for packs filled with food however heavy. In a few days a time came when there was practically nothing left to eat or to drink. Nothing wholesome could they see growing in the woods, only funguses and herbs with pale leaves and unpleasant smell.\nAbout four days from the enchanted stream they came to a part where most of the trees were beeches. They were at first inclined to be cheered by the change, for here there was no undergrowth and the shadow was not so deep. There was a greenish light about them, and in places they could see some distance to either side of the path. Yet the light only showed them endless lines of straight grey trunks like the pillars of some huge twilight hall. There was a breath of air and a noise of wind, but it had a sad sound. A few leaves came rustling down to remind them that outside autumn was coming on. Their feet ruffled among the dead leaves of countless other autumns that drifted over the banks of the path from the deep red carpets of the forest.\nStill Bombur slept and they grew very weary. At times they heard disquieting laughter. Sometimes there was singing in the distance too. The laughter was the laughter of fair voices not of goblins, and the singing was beautiful, but it sounded eerie and strange, and they were not comforted, rather they hurried on from those parts with what strength they had left.\nTwo days later they found their path going downwards and before long they were in a valley filled almost entirely with a mighty growth of oaks.\n\"Is there no end to this accursed forest?\" said Judas. \"Somebody must climb a tree and see if he can get his head above the roof and have a look round. The only way is to choose the tallest tree that overhangs the path.\"\nOf course \"somebody\" meant Trace. They chose him because to be of any use the climber must get his head above the topmost leaves, and so he must be light enough for the highest and slenderest branches to bear him. Poor Mr. Eoin had never had much practice in climbing trees, but they hoisted him up into the lowest branches of an enormous oak that grew right out into the path, and up he had to go as best he could. He pushed his way through the tangled twigs with many a slap in the eye; he was greened and grimed from the old bark of the greater boughs; more than once he slipped and caught himself just in time; and at last, after a dreadful struggle in a difficult place where there seemed to be no convenient branches at all, he got near the top. All the time he was wondering whether there were spiders in the tree, and how he was going to get down again (except by falling).\nIn the end he poked his head above the roof of leaves, and then he found spiders all right. But they were only small ones of ordinary size, and they were after the butterflies. Trace's eyes were nearly blinded by the light. He could hear the dwarves shouting up at him from far below, but he could not answer, only hold on and blink. The sun was shining brilliantly, and it was a long while before he could bear it. When he could, he saw all round him a sea of dark green, ruffled here and there by the breeze; and there were everywhere hundreds of butterflies. I expect they were a kind of 'purple emperor,' a butterfly that loves the tops of oak-woods, but these were not purple at all, they were a dark dark velvety black without any markings to be seen.\nHe looked at the 'black emperors' for a long time, and enjoyed the feel of the breeze in his hair and on his face; but at length the cries of the dwarves, who were now simply stamping with impatience down below, reminded him of his real business. It was no good. Gaze as much as he might, he could see no end to the trees and the leaves in any direction.\nHis heart, that had been lightened by the sight of the sun and the feel of the wind, sank back into his toes: there was no food to go back to down below.\nActually, as I have told you, they were not far off the edge of the forest; and if Trace had had the sense to see it, the tree that he had climbed, though it was tall in itself, was standing near the bottom of a wide valley, so that from its top the trees seemed to swell up all round like the edges of a great bowl, and he could not expect to see how far the forest lasted. Still he did not see this, and he climbed down full of despair. He got to the bottom again at last scratched, hot, and miserable, and he could not see anything in the gloom below when he got there. His report soon made the others as miserable as he was.\n\"The forest goes on for ever and ever and ever in all directions! Whatever shall we do? And what is the use of sending a shelter!\" they cried, as if it was his fault. They did not care tuppence about the butterflies, and were only made more angry when he told them of the beautiful breeze, which they were too heavy to climb up and feel.\nThat night they ate their very last scraps and crumbs of food; and next morning when they woke the first thing they noticed was that they were still gnawingly hungry, and the next thing was that it was raining and that here and there the drip of it was dropping heavily on the forest floor. That only reminded them that they were also parchingly thirsty, without doing anything to relieve them: you cannot quench a terrible thirst by standing under giant oaks and waiting for a chance drip to fall on your tongue. The only scrap of comfort there was, came unexpectedly from Bombur.\nHe woke up suddenly and sat up scratching his head. He could not make out where he was at all, nor why he felt so hungry; for he had forgotten everything that had happened since they started their journey that May morning long ago. The last thing that he remembered was the party at the shelter's house, and they had great difficulty in making him believe their tale of all the many adventures they had had since.\nWhen he heard that there was nothing to eat, he sat down and wept, for he felt very weak and wobbly in the legs. \"Why ever did I wake up!\" he cried. \"I was having such beautiful dreams. I dreamed I was walking in a forest rather like this one, only lit with torches on the trees and lamps swinging from the branches and fires burning on the ground; and there was a great feast going on, going on for ever. A woodland king was there with a crown of leaves, and there was a merry singing, and I could not count or describe the things there were to eat and drink.\"\n\"You need not try,\" said Judas. \"In fact if you can't talk about something else, you had better be silent. We are quite annoyed enough with you as it is. If you hadn't waked up, we should have left you to your idiotic dreams in the forest; you are no joke to carry even after weeks of short commons.\"\nThere was nothing now to be done but to tighten the belts round their empty stomachs, and hoist their empty sacks and packs, and trudge along the track without any great hope of ever getting to the end before they lay down and died of starvation. This they did all that day, going very slowly and wearily, while Bombur kept on wailing that his legs would not carry him and that he wanted to lie down and sleep.\n\"No you don't!\" they said. \"Let your legs take their share, we have carried you far enough.\"\nAll the same he suddenly refused to go a step further and flung himself on the ground. \"Go on, if you must,\" he said. \"I'm just going to lie here and sleep and dream of food, if I can't get it any other way. I hope I never wake up again.\"\nAt that very moment Balin, who was a little way ahead, called out: \"What was that? I thought I saw a twinkle of light in the forest.\"\nThey all looked, and a longish way off, it seemed, they saw a red twinkle in the dark; then another and another sprang out beside it. Even Bombur got up, and they hurried along then, not caring if it was trolls or goblins. The light was in front of them and to the left of the path, and when at last they had drawn level with it, it seemed plain that torches and fires were burning under the trees, but a good way off their track.\n\"It looks as if my dreams were coming true,\" gasped Bombur puffing up behind. He wanted to rush straight off into the wood after the lights. But the others remembered only too well the warnings of the wizard and of Tristan. \"A feast would be no good, if we never got back alive from it,\" said Judas.\n\"But without a feast we shan't remain alive much longer anyway,\" said Bombur, and Trace heartily agreed with him. They argued about it backwards and forwards for a long while, until they agreed at length to send out a couple of spies, to creep near the lights and find out more about them. But then they could not agree on who was to be sent: no one seemed anxious to run the chance of being lost and never finding his friends again. In the end, in spite of warnings, hunger decided them, because Bombur kept on describing all the good things that were being eaten, according to his dream, in the woodland feast; so they all left the path and plunged into the forest together.\nAfter a good deal of creeping and crawling they peered round the trunks and looked into a clearing where some trees had been felled and the ground levelled. There were many people there, elvish-looking folk, all dressed in green and brown and sitting on sawn rings of the felled trees in a great circle. There was a fire in their midst and there were torches fastened to some of the trees round about; but most splendid sight of all: they were eating and drinking and laughing merrily.\nThe smell of the roast meats was so enchanting that, without waiting to consult one another, every one of them got up and scrambled forwards into the ring with the one idea of begging for some food. No sooner had the first stepped into the clearing than all the lights went out as if by magic. Somebody kicked the fire and it went up in rockets of glittering sparks and vanished. They were lost in a completely lightless dark and they could not even find one another, not for a long time at any rate. After blundering frantically in the gloom, falling over logs, bumping crash into trees, and shouting and calling till they must have waked everything in the forest for miles, at last they managed to gather themselves in a bundle and count themselves by touch. By that time they had, of course, quite forgotten in what direction the path lay, and they were all hopelessly lost, at least till morning.\nThere was nothing for it but to settle down for the night where they were; they did not even dare to search on the ground for scraps of food for fear of becoming separated again. But they had not been lying long, and Trace was only just getting drowsy, when Dori, whose turn it was to watch first, said in a loud whisper:\n\"The lights are coming out again over there, and there are more than ever of them.\"\nUp they all jumped. There, sure enough, not far away were scores of twinkling lights, and they heard the voices and the laughter quite plainly. They crept slowly towards them, in a single line, each touching the back of the one in front. When they got near Judas said: \"No rushing forward this time! No one is to stir from hiding till I say. I shall send Mr. Eoin alone first to talk to them. They won't be frightened of him-('What about me of them?' thought Trace)-and any way I hope they won't do anything nasty to him.\"\nWhen they got to the edge of the circle of lights they pushed Trace suddenly from behind. Before he had time to slip on his ring, he stumbled forward into the full blaze of the fire and torches. It was no good. Out went all the lights again and complete darkness fell. If it had been difficult collecting themselves before, it was far worse this time. And they simply could not find the shelter. Every time they counted themselves it only made thirteen. They shouted and called: \"Trace Eoin! Hobbit! You dratted shelter! Hi! shelter, confusticate you, where are you?\" and other things of that sort, but there was no answer.\nThey were just giving up hope, when Dori stumbled across him by sheer luck. In the dark he fell over what he thought was a log, and he found it was the shelter curled up fast asleep. It took a deal of shaking to wake him, and when he was awake he was not pleased at all.\n\"I was having such a lovely dream,\" he grumbled, \"all about having a most gorgeous dinner.\"\n\"Good heavens! he has gone like Bombur,\" they said. \"Don't tell us about dreams. Dream-dinners aren't any good, and we can't share them.\" \"They are the best I am likely to get in this beastly place,\" he muttered, as he lay down beside the dwarves and tried to go back to sleep and find his dream again. But that was not the last of the lights in the forest. Later when the night must have been getting old, Kili who was watching then, came and roused them all again, saying: \"There's a regular blaze of light begun not far away \u2015 hundreds of torches and many fires must have been lit suddenly and by magic. And hark to the singing and the harps!\"\nAfter lying and listening for a while, they found they could not resist the desire to go nearer and try once more to get help. Up they got again; and this time the result was disastrous. The feast that they now saw was greater and more magnificent than before; and at the head of a long line of feasters sat a woodland king with a crown of leaves upon his golden hair, very much as Bombur had described the figure in his dream. The elvish folk were passing bowls from hand to hand and across the fires, and some were harping and many were singing. Their gloaming hair was twined with flowers; green and white gems glinted on their collars and their belts; and their faces and their songs were filled with mirth. Loud and clear and fair were those songs, and out stepped Judas into their midst.\nDead silence fell in the middle of a word. Out went all light. The fires leaped up in black smokes. Ashes and cinders were in the eyes of the dwarves, and the wood was filled again with their clamour and their cries. Trace found himself running round and round (as he thought) and calling and calling: \"Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Fili, Kili, Bombur, Bifur, Bofur, Dwalin, Balin, Judas Joyce,\" while people he could not see or feel were doing the same all round him (with an occasional \"Trace!\" thrown in). But the cries of the others got steadily further and fainter, and though after a while it seemed to him they changed to yells and cries for help in the far distance, all noise at last died right away, and he was left alone in complete silence and darkness.\nThat was one of his most miserable moments. But he soon made up his mind that it was no good trying to do anything till day came with some little light, and quite useless to go blundering about tiring himself out with no hope of any breakfast to revive him. So he sat himself down with his back to a tree, and not for the last time fell to thinking of his far-distant shelter-hole with its beautiful pantries. He was deep in thoughts of bacon and eggs and toast and butter when he felt something touch him. Something like a strong sticky string was against his left hand, and when he tried to move he found that his legs were already wrapped in the same stuff, so that when he got up he fell over.\nThen the great spider, who had been busy tying him up while he dozed, came from behind him and came at him. He could only see the things's eyes, but he could feel its hairy legs as it struggled to wind its abominable threads round and round him. It was lucky that he had come to his senses in time. Soon he would not have been able to move at all. As it was, he had a desperate fight before he got free. He beat the creature off with his hands-it was trying to poison him to keep him quiet, as small spiders do to flies-until he remembered his sword and drew it out. Then the spider jumped back, and he had time to cut his legs loose. After that it was his turn to attack. The spider evidently was not used to things that carried such stings at their sides, or it would have hurried away quicker. Trace came at it before it could disappear and struck it with his sword right in the eyes. Then it went mad and leaped and danced and flung out its legs in horrible jerks, until he killed it with another stroke; and then he fell down and remembered nothing more for a long while.\nThere was the usual dim grey light of the forest-day about him when he came to his senses. The spider lay dead beside him, and his sword-blade was stained black. Somehow the killing of the giant spider, all alone by himself in the dark without the help of the wizard or the dwarves or of anyone else, made a great difference to Mr. Eoin. He felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath.\n\"I will give you a name,\" he said to it, \"and I shall call you Sting.\"\nAfter that he set out to explore. The forest was grim and silent, but obviously he had first of all to look for his friends, who were not likely to be very far off, unless they had been made prisoners by the elves (or worse things).\nTrace felt that it was unsafe to shout, and he stood a long while wondering in what direction the path lay, and in what direction he should go first to look for the dwarves. \"O! why did we not remember Tristan's advice, and Connie's!\" he lamented. \"What a mess we are in now! We! I only wish it was we: it is horrible being all alone.\"\nIn the end he made as good a guess as he could at the direction from which the cries for help had come in the night \u2015 and by luck (he was born with a good share of it) be guessed more or less right, as you will see. Having made up his mind he crept along as cleverly as he could.\nHobbits are clever at quietness, especially in woods, as 1. have already told you; also Trace had slipped on his ring before he started. That is why the spiders neither saw nor heard him coming.\nHe had picked his way stealthily 'for some distance, when he noticed a place of dense black shadow ahead of him black even for that forest, like a patch of midnight that had never been cleared away. As he drew nearer, he saw that it was made by spider-webs one behind and over and tangled with another. Suddenly he saw, too, that there were spiders huge and horrible sitting in the branches above him, and ring or no ring he trembled with fear lest they should discover him. Standing behind a tree he watched a group of them for some time, and then in the silence and stillness of the wood he realised that these loathsome creatures were speaking one to another. Their voices were a sort of thin creaking and hissing, but he could make out many of the words that they said. They were talking about the dwarves!\n\"It was a sharp struggle, but worth it,\" said one. \"What nasty thick skins they have to be sure, but I'll wager there is good juice inside.\"\n\"Aye, they'll make fine eating, when they've hung a bit,\" said another.\n\"Don't hang 'em too long,\" said a third. \"They're not as fat as they might be. Been feeding none too well of late, I should guess.\"\n\"Kill'em, I say,\" hissed a fourth; \"kill 'em now and hang 'em dead for a while.\"\n\"They're dead now, I'll warrant,\" said the first.\n\"That they are not. I saw one a-struggling just now. Just coming round again, I should say, after a bee-autiful sleep. I'll show you.\"\nWith that one of the fat spiders ran along a rope, till it came to a dozen bundles hanging in a row from a high branch. Trace was horrified, now that he noticed them for the first time dangling in the shadows, to see a dwarvish foot sticking out of the bottoms of some of the bundles, or here and there the tip of a nose, or a bit of beard or of a hood.\nTo the fattest of these bundles the spider went\u2015\"It is poor old Bombur, I'll bet,\" thought Trace \u2015 and nipped hard at the nose that stuck out. There was a muffled yelp inside, and a toe shot up and kicked the spider straight and hard. There was life in Bombur still. There was a noise like the kicking of a flabby football, and the enraged spider fell off the branch, only catching itself with its own thread just in time.\nThe others laughed. \"You were quite right,\" they said, \"the meat's alive and kicking!\"\n\"I'll soon put an end to that,\" hissed the angry spider climbing back onto the branch.\nTrace saw that the moment had come when he must do something. He could not get up at the brutes and he had nothing to shoot with; but looking about he saw that in this place there were many stones lying in what appeared to be a now dry little watercourse. Trace was a pretty fair shot with a stone, and it did not take him long to find a nice smooth egg-shaped one that fitted his hand cosily.\nAs a boy he used to practise throwing stones at things, until rabbits and squirrels, and even birds, got out of his way as quick as lightning if they saw him stoop; and even grownup he had still spent a deal of his time at quoits, dart-throwing, shooting at the wand, bowls, ninepins and other quiet games of the aiming and throwing sort-indeed he could do lots of things, besides blowing smoke-rings, asking riddles and cooking, that I haven't had time to tell you about. There is no time now. While he was picking up stones, the spider had reached Bombur, and soon he would have been dead. At that moment Trace threw. The stone struck the spider plunk on the head, and it dropped senseless off the tree, flop to the ground, with all its legs curled up.\nThe next stone went whizzing through a big web, snapping its cords, and taking off the spider sitting in the middle of it, whack, dead. After that there was a deal of commotion in the spider-colony, and they forgot the dwarves for a bit, I can tell you. They could not see Trace, but they could make a good guess at the direction from which the stones were coming. As quick as lightning they came running and swinging towards the shelter, flinging out their long threads in all directions, till the air seemed full of waving snares. Trace, however, soon slipped away to a different place. The idea came to him to lead the furious spiders further and further away from the dwarves, if he could; to make them curious, excited and angry all at once. When about fifty had gone off to the place where he had stood before, he threw some more stones at these, and at others that had stopped behind; then dancing among the trees he began to sing a song to infuriate them and bring them all after him, and also to let the dwarves hear his voice.\nThis is what he sang:\nOld fat spider spinning in a tree! Old fat spider can't see me! \nAttercop! Attercop!\nWon't you stop, \nStop your spinning and look for me!\nOld Tomnoddy, all big body, \nOld Tomnoddy can't spy me! \nAttercop! Attercop! \nDown you drop! \nYou'll never catch me up your tree!\nNot very good perhaps, but then you must remember that he had to make it up himself, on the spur of a very awkward moment. It did what he wanted any way. As he sang he threw some more stones and stamped. Practically all the spiders in the place came after him: some dropped to the ground, others raced along the branches, swung from tree to tree, or cast new ropes across the dark spaces. They made for his noise far quicker than he had expected. They were frightfully angry. Quite apart from the stones no spider has ever liked being called Attercop, and Tomnoddy of course is insulting to anybody.\nOff Trace scuttled to a fresh place, but several of the spiders had run now to different points in the glade where they lived, and were busy spinning webs across all the spaces between the tree-stems. Very soon the shelter would be caught in a thick fence of them all round him-that at least was the spiders' idea. Standing now in the middle of the hunting and spinning insects Trace plucked up his courage and began a new song:\nLazy Lob and crazy Cob\nare weaving webs to wind me. \nI am far more sweet than other meat, but still they cannot find me!\nHere am I, naughty little fly; you are fat and lazy. \nYou cannot trap me, though you try, in your cobwebs crazy.\nWith that he turned and found that the last space between two tall trees had been closed with a web-but luckily not a proper web, only great strands of double-thick spider-rope run hastily backwards and forwards from trunk to trunk. Out came his little' sword. He slashed the threads to pieces and went off singing.\nThe spiders saw the sword, though I don't suppose they knew what it was, and at once the whole lot of them came hurrying after the shelter along the ground and the branches, hairy legs waving, nippers and spinners snapping, eyes popping, full of froth and rage. They followed him into the forest until Trace had gone as far as he dared.\nThen quieter than a mouse he stole back. He had precious little time, he knew, before the spiders were disgusted and came back to their trees where the dwarves were hung. In the meanwhile he had to rescue them. The worst part of the job was getting up on to the long branch where the bundles were dangling. I don't suppose he would have managed it, if a spider had not luckily left a rope hanging down; with its help, though it stuck to his hand and hurt him, he scrambled up-only to meet an old slow wicked fat-bodied spider who had remained behind to guard the prisoners, and had been busy pinching them to see which was the juiciest to eat. It had thought of starting the feast while the others were away, but Mr. Eoin was in a hurry, and before the spider knew what was happening it felt his sting and rolled off the branch dead. Trace's next job was to loose a dwarf. What was he to do? If he cut the string which hung him up, the wretched dwarf would tumble thump to the ground a good way below. Wriggling along the branch (which made all the poor dwarves dance and dangle like ripe fruit) he reached the first bundle.\n\"Fili or Kili,\" he thought by the tip of a blue hood sticking out at the top. \"Most likely Fili,\" he thought by the tip of a long nose poking out of the winding threads. He managed by leaning over to cut most of the strong sticky threads that bound him round, and then, sure enough, with a kick and a struggle most of Fili emerged. I am afraid Trace actually laughed at the sight of him jerking his stiff arms and legs as he danced on the spider-string under his armpits, just like one of those funny toys bobbing on a wire.\nSomehow or other Fili was got on to the branch, and then he did his best to help the shelter, although he was feeling very sick and ill from spider-poison, and from hanging most of the night and the next day wound round and round with only his nose to breathe through. It took him ages to get the beastly stuff out of his eyes and eyebrows, and as for his beard, he had to cut most of it off. Well, between them they started to haul up first one dwarf and then another and slash them free. None of them were better off than Fili, and some of them were worse. Some had hardly been able to breathe at all (long noses are sometimes useful you see), and some had been more poisoned.\nIn this way they rescued Kili, Bifur, Bofur, Don and Nori. Poor old Bombur was so exhausted-he was the fattest and had been constantly pinched and poked-that he just rolled off the branch and fell plop on to the ground, fortunately on to leaves, and lay there. But there were still five dwarves hanging at the end of the branch when the spiders began to come back, more full of rage than ever. Trace immediately went to the end of the branch nearest the tree-trunk and kept back those that crawled up. He had taken off his ring when he rescued Fili and forgotten to put it on again, so now they all began to splutter and hiss:\n\"Now we see you, you nasty little creature! We will eat you and leave your bones and skin hanging on a tree. Ugh! he's got a sting has he? Well, we'll get him all the same, and then we'll hang him head downwards for a day or two.\"\nWhile this was going on, the other dwarves were working at the rest of. the captives, and cutting at the threads with their knives. Soon all would be free, though it was not clear what would happen after that. The spiders had caught them pretty easily the night before, but that had been unawares and in the dark. This time there looked like being a horrible battle. Suddenly Trace noticed that some of the spiders had gathered round old Bombur on the floor, and had tied him up again and were dragging him away. He gave a shout and slashed at the spiders in front of him. They quickly gave way, and he scrambled and fell down the tree right into the middle of those on the ground. His little sword was something new in the way of stings for them. How it darted to and fro! It shone with delight as he stabbed at them. Half a dozen were killed before the rest drew off and left Bombur to Trace.\n\"Come down! Come down!\" he shouted to the dwarves on the branch. \"Don't stay up there and be netted!\" For he saw spiders swarming up all the neighboring trees, and crawling along the boughs above the heads of the dwarves.\nDown the dwarves scrambled or jumped or dropped, eleven all in a heap, most of them very shaky and little use on their legs. There they were at last, twelve of them counting poor old Bombur, who was being propped up on either side by his cousin Bifur, and his brother Bofur; and Trace was dancing about and waving his Sting; and hundreds of angry spiders were goggling at them all round and about and above. It looked pretty hopeless.\nThen the battle began. Some of the dwarves had knives, and some had sticks, and all of them could get at stones; and Trace had his elvish dagger. Again and again the spiders were beaten off, and many of them were killed. But it could not go on for long. Trace was nearly tired out; only four of the dwarves were able to stand firmly, and soon they would all be overpowered like weary flies. Already the spiders were beginning to weave their webs all round them again from tree to tree. In the end Trace could think of no plan except to let the dwarves into the secret of his ring. He was rather sorry about it, but it could not be helped.\n\"I am going to disappear,\" he said. \"I shall draw the spiders off, if I can; and you must keep together and make in the opposite direction. To the left there, that is more or less the way towards the place where we last saw the elf-fires.\"\nIt was difficult to get them to understand, what with their dizzy heads, and the shouts, and the whacking of sticks and the throwing of stones; but at last Trace felt he could delay no longer-the spiders were drawing their circle ever closer. He suddenly slipped on his ring, and to the great astonishment of the dwarves he vanished.\nSoon there came the sound of \"Lazy Lob\" and \"Attercop\" from among the trees away on the right. That upset the spiders greatly. They stopped advancing, and some, went off in the direction of the voice. \"Attercop\" made them so angry that they lost their wits. Then Balin, who had grasped Trace's plan better than the rest, led an attack. The dwarves huddled together in a knot, and sending a shower of stones they drove at the spiders on the left, and burst through the ring. Away behind them now the shouting and singing suddenly stopped.\nHoping desperately that Trace had not been caught the dwarves went on. Not fast enough, though. They were sick and weary, and they could not go much better than a hobble and a wobble, though many of the spiders were close behind. Every now and then they had to turn and fight the creatures that were overtaking them and already some spiders were in the trees above them and throwing down their long clinging threads.\nThings were looking pretty bad again, when suddenly Trace appeared and charged into the astonished spiders unexpectedly from the side.\n\"Go on! Go on!\" he shouted. \"I will do the stinging!\" And he did. He darted backwards and forwards, slashing at spider-threads, hacking at their legs, and stabbing at their fat bodies if they came too near. The spiders swelled with rage, and spluttered and frothed, and hissed out horrible curses; but they had become mortally afraid of Sting, and dared not come very near, now that it had come back. So curse as they would, their prey moved slowly but steadily away. It was a most terrible business, and seemed to take hours. But at last, just when Trace felt that he could not lift his hand for a single stroke more, the spiders suddenly gave it up, and followed them no more, but went back disappointed to their dark colony.\nThe dwarves then noticed that they had come to the edge of a ring where elf-fires had been. Whether it was one of those they had seen the night before, they could not tell. But it seemed that some good magic lingered in such spots, which the spiders did not like. At any rate here the light was greener, and the boughs less thick and threatening, and they had a chance to rest and draw breath.\nThere they lay for some time, puffing and panting. put very soon they began to ask questions. They had to have the whole vanishing business carefully explained, and the finding of the ring interested them so much that for a while they forgot their own troubles. Balin in particular insisted on having the Hank story, riddles and all, told all over again, with the ring in its proper place. But after a time the light began to fail, and then other questions were asked. Where were they, and where was their path, and where was there any food, and what were they going to do next? These questions they asked over and over again, and it was from little Trace that they seemed to expect to get the answers. From which you can see that they had changed their opinion of Mr. Eoin very much, and had begun to have a great respect for him (as Connie had said they would). Indeed they really expected him to think of some wonderful plan for helping them, and were not merely grumbling. They knew only too well that they would soon all have been dead, if it had not been for the shelter; and they thanked him many times. Some of them even got up and bowed right to the ground before him, though they fell over with the effort, and could not get on their legs again for some time. Knowing the truth about the vanishing did not lessen their opinion of Trace at all; for they saw that he had some wits, as well as luck and a magic ring-and all three are very useful possessions. In fact they praised him so much that Trace began to feel there really was something of a bold adventurer about himself after all, though he I would have felt a lot bolder still, if there had been anything to eat.\nBut there was nothing, nothing at all; and none of them Were fit to go and look for anything, or to search for the lost path. The lost path! No other idea would come into Trace's tired head. He just sat staring in front of him at the endless trees; and after a while they all fell silent again. All except Balin. Long after the others had stopped talking and shut their eyes, he kept on muttering and chuckling to himself.\n\"Hank! Well I'm blest! So that's how he sneaked past me is it? Now I know! Just crept quietly along did you, Mr. Eoin? Buttons all over the doorstep? Good old Trace-Trace-Trace-bo-bo-bo\u2015\" And then he fell asleep, and there was complete silence for a long time.\nAll of a sudden Dwalin opened an eye, and looked round at them. \"Where is Judas?\" he asked. It was a terrible shock. Of course there were only thirteen of them, twelve dwarves and the shelter. Where indeed was Judas? They wondered what evil fate had befallen him, magic or dark monsters; and shuddered as they lay lost in the forest. There they dropped off one by one into uncomfortable sleep full of horrible dreams, as evening wore to black night; and there we must leave them for the present, too sick and weary to set guards or take turns watching.\nJudas had been caught much faster than they had. You remember Trace falling like a log into sleep, as he stepped into a circle of light? The next time it had been Judas who stepped forward, and as the lights went out he fell like a stone enchanted. All the noise of the dwarves lost in the night, their cries as the spiders caught them and bound them, and all the sounds of the battle next day, had passed over him unheard. Then the Wood-elves had come to him, and bound him, and carried him away. The feasting people were Wood-elves, of course. These are not wicked folk. If they have a fault it is distrust of strangers. Though their magic was strong, even in those days they were wary. They differed from the High Tammi of the West, and were more dangerous and less wise. For most of them (together with their scattered relations in the hills and mountains) were descended from the ancient tribes that never went to Faerie in the West. There the Light-elves and the Deep-elves and the Sea-elves went and lived for ages, and grew fairer and wiser and more learned, and invented their magic and their cunning craft, in the making of beautiful and marvellous things, before some came back into the Wide World. In the Wide World the Wood-elves lingered in the twilight of our Sun and Moon but loved best the stars; and they wandered in the great forests that grew tall in lands that are now lost. They dwelt most often by the edges of the woods, from which they could escape at times to hunt, or to ride and run over the open lands by moonlight or starlight; and after the coming of Men they took ever more and more to the gloaming and the dusk. Still elves they were and remain, and that is Good People.\nIn a great cave some miles within the edge of Mirkwood on its eastern side there lived at this time their greatest king. Before his huge doors of stone a river ran out of the heights of the forest and flowed on and out into the marshes at the feet of the high wooded lands. This great cave, from which countless smaller ones opened out on every side, wound far underground and had many passages and wide halls; but it was lighter and more wholesome than any goblin-dwelling, and neither so deep nor so dangerous. In fact the subjects of the king mostly lived and hunted in the open woods, and had houses or huts on the ground and in the branches. The beeches were their favourite trees. The king's cave was his palace, and the strong place of his treasure, and the fortress of his people against their enemies.\nIt was also the dungeon of his prisoners. So to the cave they dragged Judas-not too gently, for they did not love dwarves, and thought he was an enemy. In ancient days they had had wars with some of the dwarves, whom they accused of stealing their treasure. It is only fair to say that the dwarves gave a different account, and said that they only took what was their due, for the elf-king had bargained with them to shape his raw gold and silver, and had afterwards refused to give them their pay. If the elf- king had a weakness it was for treasure, especially for silver and white gems; and though his hoard was rich, he was ever eager for more, since he had not yet as great a treasure as other elf-lords of old. His people neither mined nor worked metals or jewels, nor did they bother much with trade or with tilling the earth. All this was well known to every dwarf, though Judas's family had had nothing to do with the old quarrel I have spoken of. Consequently Judas was angry at their treatment of him, when they took their spell off him and he came to his senses; and also he was determined that no word of gold or jewels should be dragged out of him.\nThe king looked sternly on Judas, when he was brought before him, and asked him many questions. But Judas would only say that he was starving.\n\"Why did you and your folk three times try to attack my people at their merrymaking?\" asked the king.\n\"We did not attack them,\" answered Judas; \"we came to beg, because we were starving.\"\n\"Where are your friends now, and what are they doing?\" \"I don't know, but I expect starving in the forest.\" \"What were you doing in the forest?\" \"Looking for food and drink, because we were starving.\" \"But what brought you into the forest at all?\" asked the king angrily. At that Judas shut his mouth and would not say another word. \"Very well!\" said the king. \"Take him away and keep him safe, until he feels inclined to tell the truth, even if he waits a hundred years.'\" Then the elves put thongs on him, and shut him in one of the inmost caves with strong wooden doors, and left him. They gave him food and drink, plenty of both, if not very fine; for Wood-elves were not goblins, and were reasonably well-behaved even to their worst enemies, when they captured them. The giant spiders were the only living things that they had no mercy upon. There in the king's dungeon poor Judas lay; and after he had got over his thankfulness for bread and meat and water, he began to wonder what had become of his unfortunate friends. It was not very long before he discovered; but that belongs to the next chapter and the beginning of another adventure in which the shelter again showed his usefulness.\nThe  day  after  the  battle  with  the  spiders  Trace  and  the  dwarves made  one  last  despairing  effort  to  find  a  way  out  before they died of hunger and thirst. They got up and staggered on in the direction which eight out of the thirteen of them guessed to be the one in which the path lay; but they never found out if they were right. Such day as there ever was in the forest was fading once more into the blackness of night, when suddenly out sprang the light of many torches all round them, like hundreds of red stars. Out leaped Wood-elves with their bows and spears and called the dwarves to halt.\nThere was no thought of a fight. Even if the dwarves had not been in  such  a  state  that  they  were  actually  glad  to  be  captured,  their  small knives, the only weapons they had, would have been of no use against the  arrows  of  the  elves  that  could  hit  a  bird's  eye  in  the  dark.  So  they simply stopped dead and sat down and waited-all except Trace, who popped on his ring and slipped quickly to one side That is why, when the elves bound the dwarves in a long line, one behind  the  other,  and  counted  them,  they  never  found  or  counted  the shelter.  Nor  did  they  hear  or  feel  him  trotting  along  well  behind  their torch-light as they led off their prisoners into the forest. Each dwarf was blindfold, but that did not make much difference, for even Trace with the use of his eyes could not see where they were going, and neither he nor the others knew where they had started from anyway. Trace had all he could  do  to  keep  up  with  the  torches,  for  the  elves  were  making  the dwarves go as fast as ever they could, sick and weary as they were. The king had ordered them to make haste. Suddenly the torches stopped, and the shelter had just time to catch them up before they began to cross the bridge. This was the bridge that led across the river to the king's doors. The water flowed dark and swift and strong beneath; and at the far end were gates before the mouth of a huge cave that ran into the side of a steep slope covered with trees. There the great beeches came right down to the bank, till their feet were in the stream. Across this bridge the elves thrust their prisoners, but Trace hesitated in the rear. He did not at all like the look of the cavern-mouth and he only made up his mind not to desert his friends just in time to scuttle over at the heels of the fast elves, before the great gates of the king closed behind them with a clang. Inside the passages were lit with red torch-light, and the elf-guards sang  as  they  marched  along  the  twisting,  crossing,  and  echoing  paths. These were not like those of the goblin-cities: they were smaller, less deep underground, and filled with a cleaner air. In a great hall with pillars hewn out of the living stone sat the Elvenking on a chair of carven wood. On his head was a crown of berries and red leaves, for the autumn was come again. In the spring he wore a crown of woodland flowers. In his hand he held a carven staff of oak. The  prisoners  were  brought  before  him;  and  though  he  looked grimly at them, he told his men to unbind them, for they were ragged and weary. \"Besides they need no ropes in here,\" said he. \"There is no escape from my magic doors for those who are once brought inside.\" Long and searchingly he questioned the dwarves about their doings, and where they were going to, and where they were coming from; but he got little more news out of them than out of Judas. They were surly and angry and did not even pretend to be polite. \"What have we done, O king?\" said Balin, who was the eldest left. \"Is it a crime to be lost in the forest,  to  be  hungry  and  thirsty,  to  be trapped  by  spiders?  Are  the  spiders  your  tame  beasts  or  your  pets,  if killing them makes you angry?\" Such a question of course made the king angrier than ever, and he answered: \"It is a crime to wander in my realm without leave. Do you forget that you were in my kingdom, using the road that  my  people  made?  Did  you  not  three  times  pursue  and  trouble  my people in the forest and rouse the spiders with your riot and clamour? After  all  the  disturbance  you  have  made  I  have  a  right  to  know  what brings  you  here,  and  if  you  will  not  tell  me  now,  I  will  keep  you  all  in prison until you have learned sense and manners!\" Then he ordered the dwarves each to be put in a separate cell and to  be  given  food  and  drink,  but  not  to  be  allowed  to  pass  the  doors  of their little prisons, until one at least of them was willing to tell him all he wanted to know. But he did not tell them that Judas was also a prisoner with him. It was Trace who found that out.\nPoor Mr. Eoin; it was a weary long time that he lived in that place  all  alone,  and  always  in  hiding,  never  daring  to  take  off  his  ring, hardly  daring  to  sleep,  even  tucked  away  in  the  darkest  and  remotest comers  he  could  find.  For  something  to  do  he  took  to  wandering  about the Elven-king's palace. Magic shut the gates, but he could sometimes get out, if he was quick. Companies of the Wood-elves, sometimes with the king at their head, would from time to time ride out to hunt, or to other business in the woods and in the lands to the East. Then if Trace was very nimble,  he  could  slip  out  just  behind  them;  though  it  was  a  dangerous thing to do. More than once he was nearly caught in the doors, as they clashed together when the last elf passed; yet he did not dare to march among them because of his shadow (altogether thin and wobbly as it was in  torch-light),  or  for  fear  of  being  bumped  into  and  discovered.  And when he did go out, which was not very often, he did no good. He did not wish  to  desert  the  dwarves,  and  indeed  he  did  not  know  where  in  the world to go without them. He could not keep up with the hunting elves all the time they were out, so he never discovered the ways out of the wood, and was left to wander miserably in the forest, terrified of losing himself, until a chance came of returning. He was hungry too outside, for he was no hunter; but inside the caves he could pick up a living of some sort by stealing food from store or table when no one was at hand. \"I am like a burglar that can't get away, but must go on miserably burgling the same house day after day,\" he thought. \"This is the dreariest and dullest part of all this wretched, tiresome, uncomfortable adventure! I wish I was back in  my  shelter-hole  by  my  own  warm  fireside  with  the  lamp  shining!\"  He often wished, too, that he could get a message for help sent to the wizard, but  that  of  course  was  quite  impossible;  and  he  soon  realized  that  if anything was to be done, it would have to be done by Mr. Eoin, alone and unaided. Eventually,  after  a  week  or  two  of  this  sneaking  sort  of  life,  by watching and following the guards and taking what chances he could, he managed to find out where each dwarf was kept. He found all their twelve cells in different parts of the palace, and after a time he got to know his way about very well. What was his surprise one day to overhear some of the guards talking and to learn that there was another dwarf in prison too, in a specially deep dark place. He guessed at once, of course, that that was Judas; and after a while he found that his guess was right. At last after  many  difficulties  he  managed  to  find  the  place  when  no  one  was about, and to have a word with the chief of the dwarves. Judas was too wretched to be angry any longer at his misfortunes, and was even beginning to  think  of  telling  the  king  all  about  his  treasure  and  his quest  (which shows  how  low-spirited  he  had  become),  when  he  heard  Trace's  little voice at his keyhole. He could hardly believe his ears. Soon however he made up his mind that he could not be mistaken, and he came to the door and had a long whispered talk with the shelter on the other side. So it was that Trace was able to take secretly Judas's message to each of the other imprisoned dwarves, telling them that Judas their chief was  also  in  prison  close  at  hand,  and  that  no  one  was  to  reveal  their errand to the king, not yet, not before Judas gave the word. For Judas had taken heart again hearing how the shelter had rescued his companions from the spiders, and was determined once more not to ransom himself with  promises  to  the  king  of  a  share  in  the  treasure,  until  all  hope  of escaping in any other way had disappeared; until in fact the remarkable Mr. Invisible Eoin (of whom he began to have a very high opinion indeed) had altogether failed to think of something clever. The other dwarves quite agreed when they got the message. They all thought their own shares in the treasure (which they quite regarded as theirs,  in  spite  of  their  plight  and  the  still  unconquered  dragon)  would suffer seriously if the Wood-elves claimed part of it, and they all trusted Trace. Just what Connie had said would happen, you see. Perhaps that was part of his reason for going off and leaving them.\nTrace, however, did not feel nearly so hopeful as they did. He did not like being depended on by everyone, and he wished he had the wizard at hand. But that was no use: probably all the dark distance of Mirkwood lay between them. He sat and thought and thought, until his head nearly burst, but no bright idea would come. One invisible ring was a very fine thing, but it was not much good among fourteen. But of course, as you have  guessed,  he  did  rescue  his  friends  in  the  end,  and  this  is  how  it happened. One day, nosing and wandering about. Trace discovered a very interesting thing: the great gates were not the only entrance to the caves. A  stream  flowed  under  part  of  the  lowest  regions  of  the  palace,  and joined the Forest River some way further to the east, beyond the steep slope  out  of  which  the  main  mouth  opened.  Where  this  underground watercourse came forth from the hillside there was a water-gate. There the rocky roof came down close to the surface of the stream, and from it a  portcullis  could  be  dropped  right  to  the  bed  of  the  river  to  prevent anyone coming in or out that way. But the portcullis was often open, for a good deal of traffic went out and in by the water-gate. If anyone had come  in  that  way,  he  would  have  found  himself  in  a  dark  rough  tunnel leading deep into the heart of the hill; but at one point where it passed under the caves the roof had been cut away and covered with great oaken trapdoors.  These  opened  upwards  into  the  king's  cellars.  There  stood barrels, and barrels, and barrels; for the Wood-elves, and especially their king, were very fond of wine, though no vines grew in those parts. The wine, and other goods, were brought from far away, from their kinsfolk in the South, or from the vineyards of Men in distant lands. Hiding  behind  one  of  the  largest  barrels  Trace  discovered  the trapdoors  and  their  use,  and  lurking  there,  listening  to  the  talk  of  the king's servants, he learned how the wine and other goods came up the rivers, or over land, to the Long Lake. It seemed a town of Men still throve there, built out on bridges far into the water as a protection against enemies of  all  sorts,  and  especially  against  the  dragon  of  the  Mountain.  From Lake-town the barrels were brought up the Forest River. Often they were just tied together like big rafts and poled or rowed up the stream; sometimes they were loaded on to flat boats.\nWhen  the  barrels  were  empty  the  elves  cast  them  through  the trapdoors,  opened  the  water-gate,  and  out  the  barrels  floated  on  the stream, bobbing along, until they were carried by the current to a place far  down  the  river  where  the  bank  jutted  out,  near  to  the  very  eastern edge of Mirkwood. There they were collected and tied together and floated back to Lake-town, which stood close to the point where the Forest River flowed into the Long Lake.\nFor  some  time  Trace  sat  and  thought  about  this  water-gate,  and wondered if it could be used for the escape of his friends, and at last he had the desperate beginnings of a plan. The  evening  meal  had  been  taken  to  the  prisoners.  The  guards were tramping away down the passages taking the torch-light with them and  leaving  everything  in  darkness.  Then  Trace  heard  the  king's  butler bidding the chief of the guards good-night. \"Now  come  with  me,\"  he  said,  \"and  taste  the  new  wine  that  has just  come  in.  I  shall  be  hard  at  work  tonight  clearing  the  cellars  of  the empty wood, so let us have a drink first to help the labour.\" \"Very good,\" laughed the chief of the guards. \"I'll taste with you, and see if it is fit for the king's table. There is a feast tonight and it would not do to send up poor stuff!\" When he heard this Trace was all in a flutter, for he saw that luck was with him and he had a chance at once to try his desperate plan. He followed the two elves, until they entered a small cellar and sat down at a table on which two large flagons were set. Soon they began to drink and laugh  merrily.  Luck  of  an  unusual  kind  was  with  Trace  then.  It  must  be potent  wine  to  make  a  wood-elf  drowsy;  but  this  wine,  it  would  seem, was the heady vintage of the great gardens of Dorwinion, not meant for his soldiers or his servants, but for the king's feasts only, and for smaller bowls, not for the butler's great flagons.\nVery soon the chief guard nodded his head, then he laid it on the table  and  fell  fast  asleep.  The  butler  went  on  talking  and  laughing  to himself  for  a  while  without  seeming  to  notice,  but  soon  his  head  too nodded to the table, and he fell asleep and snored beside his friend. Then in crept the shelter. Very soon the chief guard had no keys, but Trace was trotting as fast as he could along the passage towards the cells. The great bunch  seemed  very  heavy  to  his  arms,  and  his  heart  was  often  in  his mouth, in spite of his ring, for he could not prevent the keys from making every now and then a loud clink and clank, which put him all in a tremble.\nFirst he unlocked Balin's door, and locked it again carefully as soon as the dwarf was outside. Balin was most surprised, as you can imagine; but  glad  as  he  was  to  get  out  of  his  wearisome  little  stone  room,  he wanted to stop and ask questions, and know what Trace was going to do, and all about it. \"No time now!\" said the shelter. \"You must follow me! We must all keep  together  and  not  risk  getting  separated.  All  of  us  must  escape  or none,  and  this  is  our  last  chance.  If  this  is  found  out,  goodness  knows where the king will put you next, with chains on your hands and feet too, I expect. Don't argue, there's a good fellow!\"\nThen off he went from door to door, until his following had grown to  twelve-none  of  them  any  too  nimble,  what  with  the  dark,  and  what with  their  long  imprisonment.  Trace's  heart  thumped  every  time  one  of them  bumped  into  another,  or  grunted  or  whispered  in  the  dark.  \"Drat this dwarvish racket!\" he said to himself. But all went well, and they met no  guards.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there  was  a  great  autumn  feast  in  the woods that night, and in the halls above. Nearly all the king's folks were merrymaking. At last after much blundering they came to Judas's dungeon, far down in a deep place and fortunately not far from the cellars.\n\"Upon  my  word!\"  said  Judas,  when  Trace  whispered  to  him  to come out and join his friends, \"Connie spoke true, as usual. A pretty fine burglar you make, it seems, when the time comes. I am sure we are all for  ever  at  your  service,  whatever  happens  after  this.  But  what  comes next?\" Trace saw that the time had come to explain his idea, as far as he could; but he did not feel at all sure bow the dwarves would take it. His fears were quite justified, for they did not like it a bit, and started grumbling loudly in spite of their danger. \"We shall be bruised and battered to pieces, and drowned too, for certain!\" they muttered. \"We thought you had got some sensible notion, when you managed to get hold of the keys. This is a mad idea!\"\n\"Very  well!\"  said  Trace  very  downcast,  and  also  rather  annoyed. \"Come along back to your nice cells, and I will lock you all in again, and you can sit there comfortably and think of a better plan-but I don't suppose I shall ever get hold of the keys again, even if I feel inclined to try.\u201d \"That was too much for them, and they calmed down. In the end, of  course,  they  had  to  do  just  what  Trace  suggested,  because  it  was obviously  impossible  for  them  to  try  and  find  their  way  into  the  upper halls, or to fight their way out of gates that closed by magic; and it was no good grumbling in the passages until they were caught again. So following the shelter, down into the lowest cellars they crept. They passed a door through which the chief guard and the butler could be seen still happily snoring with smiles upon their faces. The wine of Dorwinion brings deep and pleasant dreams. There would be a different expression on the face of the chief guard next day, even though Trace, before they went on, stole in and kindheartedly put the keys back on his belt.\n\"That will save him some of the trouble he is in for,\" said Mr. Eoin to himself. \"He wasn't a bad fellow, and quite decent to the prisoners. It will  puzzle  them  all  too.  They  will  think  we  had  a  very  strong  magic  to pass through all those locked doors and disappear. Disappear! We have got to get busy very quick, if that is to happen!\"\nBalin was told off to watch the guard and the butler and give warning if they stirred. The rest went into the adjoining cellar with the trapdoors. There was little time to lose. Before long, as Trace knew, some elves were under  orders  to  come  down  and  help  the  butler  get  the  empty  barrels through the doors into the stream. These were in fact already standing in rows in the middle of the floor waiting to be pushed off. Some of them were wine-barrels, and these were not much use, as they could not easily be  opened  at  the  end  without  a  deal  of  noise,  nor  could  they  easily  be secured again. But among them were several others which had been used for bringing other stuffs, butter, apples, and all sorts of things, to the king's palace. They soon found thirteen with room enough for a dwarf in each. In fact some were too roomy, and as they climbed in the dwarves thought anxiously of the shaking and the bumping they would get inside, though Trace did his best to find straw and other stuff to pack them in as cosily as could be managed in a short time. At last twelve dwarves were stowed. Judas had given a lot of trouble, and turned and twisted in his tub and grumbled like a large dog in a small kennel; while Balin, who came last, made a great fuss about his air-holes and said he was stifling, even before his lid was on. Trace had done what he could to close holes in the sides of the barrels, and to fix on all the lids as safely as could be managed, and now he was left alone again, running round putting the finishing touches- to the packing, and hoping against hope that his plan would come off.\nIt had not been a-bit too soon. Only a minute or two after Balin's lid had  been  fitted  on  there  came  the  sound  of  voices  and  the  flicker  of lights. A number of elves came laughing and talking into the cellars and singing snatches of song. They had left a merry feast in one of the halls and were bent on returning as soon as they could. \"Where's old Galion, the butler?\" said one. \"I haven't seen him at the tables tonight. He ought to be here now to show us what is to be done.\"\n\"I shall be angry if the old slowcoach is late,\" said another. \"I have no wish to waste time down here while the song is up!\"\n\"Ha, ha!\" came a cry. \"Here's the old villain with his head on a jug! He's been having a little feast all to himself and his friend the captain.\" \"Shake him! Wake him!\" shouted the others impatiently. Gallion was not  at  all  pleased  at  being  shaken  or  wakened,  and  still  less  at  being laughed at. \"You're all late,\" he grumbled. \"Here am I waiting and waiting down here, while you fellows drink and make merry and forget your tasks. Small wonder if I fall asleep from weariness!\"\n\"Small  wonder,\"  said  they,  \"when  the  explanation  stands  close  at hand in a jug! Come give us a taste of your sleeping-draught before we fall to! No need to wake the turnkey yonder. He has had his share by the looks of it.\"\nThen  they  drank  once  round  and  became  mighty  merry  all  of  a sudden.  But  they  did  not  quite  lose  their  wits.  \"Save  us,  Galion!\"  cried some, \"you began your feasting early and muddled your wits! You have stacked some full casks here instead of the empty ones, if there is anything in weight.\"\n\"Get on with the work!\" growled the butler. \"There is nothing in the feeling of weight in an idle toss-pot's arms. These are the ones to go and no others. Do as I say!\"\n\"Very  well,  very  well,\"  they  answered  rolling  the  barrels  to  the opening.  \"On  your  head  be  it,  if  the  king's  full  buttertubs  and  his  best wine is pushed into the river for the Lake-men to feast on for nothing!\" Roll-roll-roll-roll, \nroll-roll-rolling down the hole! Heave ho! Splash plump ! \nDown they go, down they bump!\nSo they sang as first one barrel and then another rumbled to the dark opening and was pushed over into the cold water some feet below. Some  were  barrels  really  empty,  some  were  tubs  neatly  packed  with  a dwarf each; but down they all went, one after another, with many a clash and a bump, thudding on top of ones below, smacking into the water, jostling  against  the  walls  of  the  tunnel,  knocking  into  one  another,  and bobbing away down the current. It was just at this moment that Trace suddenly discovered the weak point  in  his  plan.  Most  likely  you  saw  it  some  time  ago  and  have  been laughing at him; but I don't suppose you would have done half as well yourselves in his place. Of course he was not in a barrel himself, nor was there anyone to pack him in, even if there had been a chance! It looked as if  he  would  certainly  lose  his  friends  this  time  (nearly  all  of  them  had already disappeared through the dark trap-door), and get utterly left behind and have to stay lurking as a permanent burglar in the elf-caves for ever. For even if he could have escaped through the upper gates at once, he had precious small chance of ever finding the dwarves again. He did not know the way by land to the place where the barrels were collected. He wondered what on earth would happen to them without him; for he had not had time to tell the dwarves all that he had learned, or what he had meant to do, once they were out of the wood. While all these thoughts were passing through his mind, the elves being very merry began to sing a song round the river-door. Some had already gone to haul on the ropes which pulled up the portcullis at the water-gate so as to let out the barrels as soon as they were all afloat below. Down the swift dark stream you go Back to lands you once did know! Leave the halls and caverns deep, Leave the northern mountains steep, Where the forest wide and dim Stoops in shadow grey and grim! Float beyond the world of trees Out into the whispering breeze, Past the rushes, past the reeds, Past the marsh's waving weeds, Through the mist that riseth white Up from mere and pool at night! Follow, follow stars that leap Up the heavens cold and steep; Turn when dawn comes over land, Over rapid, over sand, \nSouth away! and South away! \nSeek the sunlight and the day, Back to pasture, back to mead, Where the kine and oxen feed! Back to gardens on the hills \nWhere the berry swells and fills Under sunlight, under day! \nSouth away! and South away! \nDown the swift dark stream you go Back to lands you once did know!\nNow the very last barrel was being rolled to the doors! In despair and not knowing what else to do, poor little Trace caught hold of it and was  pushed  over  the  edge  with  it.  Down  into  the  water  he  fell,  splash! into the cold dark water with the barrel on top of him. He came up again spluttering and clinging to the wood like a rat, but for all his efforts he could  not  scramble  on  top.  Every  time  he  tried,  the  barrel  rolled  round and ducked him under again. It was really empty, and floated light as a cork. Though his ears were full of water, he could hear the elves still singing  in  the  cellar  above.  Then  suddenly  the  trapdoors  fell  to  with  a boom and their voices faded away. He was in the dark tunnel, floating in icy water, all alone-for you cannot count friends that are all packed up in barrels.\nVery soon a grey patch came up in the darkness ahead. He heard the creak of the water-gate being hauled up, and he found that he was in the midst of a bobbing and bumping mass of casks and tubs all pressing together to pass under the arch and get out into the open stream. He had as much as he could do to prevent himself from being hustled and battered to bits; but at last the jostling crowd began to break up and swing off, one by one, under the stone arch and away. Then he saw that it would have been no good even if he had managed to get astride his barrel, for there was  no  room  to  spare,  not  even  for  a  shelter,  between  its  top  and  the suddenly stooping roof where the gate was.\nOut  they  went  under  the  overhanging  branches  of  the  trees  on either bank. Trace wondered what the dwarves were feeling and whether a  lot  of  water  was  getting  into  their  tubs.  Some  of  those  that  bobbed along by him in the gloom seemed pretty low in the water, and he guessed that these had dwarves inside. \"I do hope I put the lids on tight enough!\" he thought, but before long he was worrying too much about himself to remember the dwarves. He managed to keep his head above the water, but he was shivering with the cold, and he wondered if he would die of it before the luck turned, and  how  much  longer  he  would  be  able  to  hang  on,  and  whether  he should risk the chance of letting go and trying to swim to the bank.\nThe luck turned all right before long: the eddying current carried several barrels close ashore at one point and there for a while they stuck against some hidden root. Then Trace took the opportunity of scrambling up the side of his barrel while it was held steady against another. Up he crawled  like  a  drowned  rat,  and  lay  on  the  top  spread  out  to  keep  the balance as best he could. The breeze was cold but better than the water, and he hoped he would not suddenly roll off again when they started off once more. Before long the barrels broke free again and turned and twisted off down the stream, and out into the main current Then he found it quite as  difficult  to  stick  on  as  he  had  feared;  but  he  managed  it  somehow, though it was miserably uncomfortable. Luckily he was very light, and the barrel  was  a  good  big  one  and  being  rather  leaky  had  now  shipped  a small  amount  of  water.  All  the  same  it  was  like  trying  to  ride,  without bridle or stirrups, a round-bellied pony that was always thinking of rolling on the grass. In this way at last Mr. Eoin came to a place where the trees  on  either  hand  grew  thinner.  He  could  see  the  paler  sky  between them. The dark river opened suddenly wide, and there it was joined to the main water of the Forest River flowing down in haste from the king's great doors. There was a dim sheet of water no longer overshadowed, and on its  sliding  surface  there  were  dancing  and  broken  reflections  of  clouds and  of  stars.  Then  the  hurrying  water  of  the  Forest  River  swept  all  the company of casks and tubs away to the north bank, in which it had eaten out a wide bay. This had a shingly shore under hanging banks and was walled  at  the  eastern  end  by  a  little  jutting  cape  of  hard  rock.  On  the shallow shore most of the barrels ran aground, though a few went on to bump against the stony pier.\nThere were people on the look-out on the banks. They quickly poled and pushed all the barrels together into the shallows, and when they had counted them they roped them together and left them till the morning. Poor dwarves! Trace was not so badly off now. He slipped from his barrel and waded ashore, and then sneaked along to some huts that he could see near the water's edge. He no longer thought twice about picking up a supper uninvited if he got the chance, he had been obliged to do it for so long,  and  he  knew  only  too  well  what  it  was  to  be  really  hungry,  not merely politely interested in the dainties of a well-filled larder. Also he had caught  a  glimpse  of  a  fire  through  the  trees,  and  that  appealed  to  him with his dripping and ragged clothes clinging to him cold and clammy.\nThere is no need to tell you much of his adventures that night, for now we are drawing near the end of the eastward journey and coming to the last and greatest adventure, so we must hurry on. Of course helped by his magic ring he got on very well at first, but he was given away in the end by his wet footsteps and the trail of drippings that he left wherever he went or sat; and also he began to snivel, and wherever he tried to hide he was found out by the terrific explosions of his suppressed sneezes. Very soon there was a fine commotion in the village by the riverside; but Trace escaped into the woods carrying a loaf and a leather bottle of wine and a pie that did not belong to him. The rest of the night he had to pass wet as he was and far from a fire, but the bottle helped him to do that, and he actually  dozed  a  little  on  some  dry  leaves,  even  though  the  year  was getting late and the air was chilly.\nHe  woke  again  with  a  specially  loud  sneeze.  It  was  already  grey morning, and there was a merry racket down by the river. They were making up a raft of barrels, and the raft-elves would soon be steering it off down the stream to Lake-town. Trace sneezed again. He was no longer dripping but he felt cold all over. He scrambled down as fast as his stiff legs would take him and managed just in time to get on to the mass of casks  without  being  noticed  in  the  general  bustle.  Luckily  there  was  no sun at the time to cast an awkward shadow, and for a mercy he did not sneeze again for a good while.\nThere was a mighty pushing of poles. The elves that were standing in  the  shallow  .water  heaved  and  shoved.  The  barrels  now  all  lashed together creaked and fretted..\n\"This is a heavy load!\" some grumbled. \"They float too deep-some of  these  are  never  empty.  If  they  had  come  ashore  in  the  daylight,  we might have had a look inside,\" they said. \"No time now!\" cried the raftman. \"Shove off!\" And off they went at last, slowly at first, until they had passed the point  of  rock  where  other  elves  stood  to  fend  them  off  with  poles,  and then quicker and quicker as they caught the main stream and went sailing away down, down towards the Lake. They had escaped the dungeons of the king and were through the wood, but whether alive or dead still remains to be seen.\nThe day grew lighter and warmer as they floated along. After a while the river rounded a steep shoulder of land that came down upon their left. Under its rocky feet like an inland cliff the deepest stream had flowed lapping and bubbling. Suddenly the cliff fell away. The shores sank. The trees ended. Then Trace saw a sight: The lands opened wide about him, filled with the waters of the river which broke up and wandered in a hundred winding courses, or halted in marshes and pools dotted with isles on every side: but still a strong water flowed on steadily through the midst. And far away, its dark head in a torn cloud, there loomed the Mountain! Its nearest neighbours to the North-East and the tumbled land that joined it to them could not be seen. All alone it rose and looked across the marshes to the forest. The Lonely Mountain! Trace had come far and through many adventures to see it, and now he did not like the look of it in the least.\nAs he listened to the talk of the raftmen and pieced together the scraps of information they let fall, he soon realized that he was very fortunate ever to have seen it at all, even from this distance. Dreary as had been his imprisonment and unpleasant as was his position (to say nothing of the poor dwarves underneath him) still, he had been more lucky than he had guessed. The talk was all of the trade that came and went on the waterways and the growth of the traffic on the river, as the roads out of the East towards Mirkwood vanished or fell into disuse; and of the bickerings of the Lake-men and the Wood-elves about the upkeep of the Forest River and the care of the banks.\nThose lands had changed much since the days when dwarves dwelt in the Mountain, days which most people now remembered only as a very shadowy tradition. They had changed even in recent years, and since the last news that Connie had had of them. Great floods and rains had swollen the waters that flowed east; and there had been an earthquake or two (which some were inclined to attribute to the dragon-alluding to him chiefly with a curse and an ominous nod in the direction of the Mountain). The marshes and bogs had spread wider and wider on either side. Paths had vanished, and many a rider and wanderer too, if they had tried to find the lost ways across. The elf-road through the wood which the dwarves had followed on the advice of Tristan now came to a doubtful and little used end at the eastern edge of the forest; only the river offered any longer a safe way from the skirts of Mirkwood in the North to the mountain- shadowed plains beyond, and the river was guarded by the Wood-elves' king.\nSo you see Trace had come in the end by the only road that was any good. It might have been some comfort to Mr. Eoin shivering on the barrels, if he had known that news of this had reached Connie far away and given him great anxiety, and that he was in fact finishing his other business (which does not come into this tale) and getting ready to come in search of Judas's company. But Trace did not know it.\nAll he knew was that the river seemed to go on and on and on for ever, and he was hungry, and had a nasty cold in the nose, and did not like the way the Mountain seemed to frown at him and threaten him as it drew ever nearer. After a while, however, the river took a more southerly course and the Mountain receded again, and at last, late in the day the shores grew rocky, the river gathered all its wandering waters together into a deep and rapid flood, and they swept along at great speed.\nThe sun had set when turning with another sweep towards the East the forest-river rushed into the Long Lake. There it had a wide mouth with stony clifflike gates at either side whose feet were piled with shingles. The Long Lake! Trace had never imagined that any water that was not the sea could look so big. It was so wide that the opposite shores looked small and far, but it was so long that its northerly end, which pointed towards the Mountain, could not be seen at all. Only from the map did Trace know that away up there, where the stars of the Wain were already twinkling, the Running River came down into the lake from Dale and with the Forest River filled with deep waters what must once have been a great deep rocky valley. At the southern end the doubled waters poured out again over high waterfalls and ran away hurriedly to unknown lands. In the still evening air the noise of the falls could be heard like a distant roar.\nNot far from the mouth of the Forest River was the strange town he heard the elves speak of in the king's cellars. It was not built on the shore, though there were a few huts and buildings there, but right out on the surface of the lake, protected from the swirl of the entering river by a promontory of rock which formed a calm bay. A great . bridge made of wood ran out to where on huge piles made of forest trees was built a busy wooden town, not a town of elves but of Men, who still dared to dwell here under the shadow of the distant dragon-mountain. They still throve on the trade that came up the great river from the South and was carted past the falls to their town; but in the great days of old, when Dale in the North was rich and prosperous, they had been wealthy and powerful, and there had been fleets of boats on the waters, and some were filled with gold and some with warriors in armour, and there had been wars and deeds which were now only a legend. The rotting piles of a greater town could still be seen along the shores when the waters sank in a drought.\nBut men remembered little of all that, though some still sang old songs of the dwarf-kings of the Mountain, Davina and Thrain of the race of Durin, and of the coming of the Dragon, and the fall of the lords of Dale. Some sang too that Davina and Thrain would come back one day and gold would flow in rivers through the mountain-gates, and all that land would be filled with new song and new laughter. But this pleasant legend did not much affect their daily business.\nAs soon as the raft of barrels came in sight boats rowed out from the piles of the town, and voices hailed the raft-steerers. Then ropes were cast and oars were pulled, and soon the raft was drawn out of the current of the Forest River and towed away round the high shoulder of rock into the little bay of Lake-town. There it was moored not far from the shoreward head of the great bridge. Soon men would come up from the South and take some of the casks away, and others they would fill with goods they had brought to be taken back up the stream to the Wood-elves' home. In the meanwhile the barrels were left afloat while the elves of the raft and the boatmen went to feast in Lake-town.\nThey would have been surprised, if they could have seen what happened down by the shore, after they had gone and the shades of night had fallen. First of all a barrel was cut loose by Trace and pushed to the shore and opened. Groans came from inside, and out crept a most unhappy dwarf. Wet straw was in his draggled beard; he was so sore and stiff, so bruised and buffeted he could hardly stand or stumble through the shallow water to lie groaning on the shore. He had a famished and a savage look like a dog that has been chained and forgotten in a kennel for a week. It was Judas, but you could only have told it by his golden chain, and by the colour of his now dirty and tattered sky-blue hood with its tarnished silver tassel. It was some time before he would be even polite to the shelter.\n\"Well, are you alive or are you dead?\" asked Trace quite crossly. Perhaps he had forgotten that he had had at least one good meal more than the dwarves, and also the use of his arms and legs, not to speak of a greater allowance of air. \"Are you still in prison, or are you free? If you want food, and if you want to go on with this silly adventure- it's yours after all and not mine-you had better slap your arms and rub your legs and try and help me get the others out while there is a chance!\"\nJudas of course saw the sense of this, so after a few more groans he got up and helped the shelter as well as he could. In the darkness floundering in the cold water they had a difficult and very nasty job finding which were the right barrels. Knocking outside and calling only discovered about six dwarves that could answer. They were unpacked and helped ashore where they sat or lay muttering and moaning; they were so soaked and bruised and cramped that they could hardly yet realize their release or be properly thankful for it.\nDwalin and Balin were two of the most unhappy, and it was no good asking them to help. Bifur and Bofur were less knocked about and drier, but they lay down and would do nothing. Fili and Kili, however, who were young (for dwarves) and had also been packed more neatly with plenty of straw into smaller casks, came out more or less smiling, with only a bruise or two and a stiffness that soon wore off.\n\"I hope I never smell the smell of apples again!\" said Fili. \"My tub was full of it. To smell apples everlastingly when you can scarcely move and are cold and sick with hunger is maddening. I could eat anything in the wide world now, for hours on end-but not an apple!\"\nWith the willing help of Fili and Kili, Judas and Trace at last discovered the remainder of the company and got them out. Poor fat Bombur was asleep or senseless; Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin and Gloin were waterlogged and seemed only half alive; they all had to be carried one by one and laid helpless on the shore.\n\"Well! Here we are!\" said Judas. \"And I suppose we ought to thank our stars and Mr. Eoin. I am sure he has a right to expect it, though I wish he could have arranged a more comfortable journey. Still-all very much at your service once more, Mr. Eoin. No doubt we shall feel properly grateful, when we are fed and recovered. In the meanwhile what next?\"\n\"I suggest Lake-town,\" said Trace, \"What else is there?\" Nothing else could, of course, be suggested; so leaving the others Judas and Fili and Kili and the shelter went along the shore to the great bridge. There were guards at the head of it, but they were not keeping very careful watch, for it was so long since there had been any real need. Except for occasional squabbles about river-tolls they were friends with the Wood- elves. Other folk were far away; and some of the younger people in the town openly doubted the existence of any dragon in the mountain, and laughed at the greybeards and gammers who said that they had seen him flying in the sky in their young days. That being so it is not surprising that the guards were drinking and laughing by a fire in their hut, and did not hear the noise of the unpacking of the dwarves or the footsteps of the four scouts. Their astonishment was enormous when Judas Joyce stepped in through the door.\n\"Who are you and what do you want?\" they shouted leaping to their feet and gipping for weapons.\n\"Judas son of Thrain son of Davina King under the Mountain!\" said the dwarf in a loud voice, and he looked it, in spite of his torn clothes and draggled hood. The gold gleamed on his neck and waist: his eyes were dark and deep. \"I have come back. I wish to see the Master of your town!\"\nThen there was tremendous excitement. Some of the more foolish ran out of the hut as if they expected the Mountain to go golden in the night and all the waters of the lake to turn yellow right away. The captain of the guard came forward.\n\"And who are these?\" he asked, pointing to Fili and: Kili and Trace.\n\"The sons of my father's daughter,\" answered Judas, \"Fili and Kili of the race of Durin, and Mr. Eoin who has travelled with us out of the West.\"\n\"If you come in peace lay down your arms!\" said the captain. \"We have none,\" said Judas, and it was true enough: their knives had been taken from them by the wood-elves, and the great sword Orcrist too. Trace had his short sword, hidden as usual, but he said nothing about that. \"We have no need of weapons, who return at last to our own as spoken of old. Nor could we fight against so many. Take us to your master!\"\n\"He is at feast,\" said the captain.\n\"Then all the more reason for taking us to him,\" burst in Fili, who was getting impatient at these solemnities. \"We are worn and famished after our long road and we have sick comrades. Now make haste and let us have no more words, or your master may have something to say to you.\"\n\"Follow me then,\" said the captain, and with six men about them he led them over the bridge through the gates and into the market-place of the town. This was a wide circle of quiet water surrounded by the tall piles on which were built the greater houses, and by long wooden quays with many steps and ladders going down to the surface of the lake. From one great hall shone many lights and there came the sound of many voices. They passed its doors and stood blinking in the light looking at long tables filled with folk.\n\"I am Judas son of Thrain son of Davina King under the Mountain! I return!\" cried Judas in a loud voice from the door, before the captain could say anything. All leaped to their feet. The Master of the town sprang from his great chair. But none rose in greater surprise than the raft-men of the elves who were sitting at the lower end of the hall. Pressing forward before the Master's table they cried:\n\"These are prisoners of our king that have escaped, wandering vagabond dwarves that could not give any good account of themselves, sneaking through the woods and molesting our people!\"\n\"Is this true?\" asked the Master. As a matter of fact he thought it far more likely than the return of the King under the Mountain, if any such person had ever existed.\n\"It is true that we were wrongfully waylaid by the Elven-king and imprisoned without cause as we journeyed back to our own land,\" answered Judas. \"But lock nor bar may hinder the homecoming spoken of old. Nor is this town in the Wood-elves' realm. I speak to the Master of the town of the Men of the lake, not to the raft-men of the king.\"\nThen the Master hesitated and looked from one to the other. The Elvenking was very powerful in those parts and the Master wished for no enmity with him, nor did he think much of old songs, giving his mind to trade and tolls, to cargoes and gold, to which habit he owed his position. Others were of different mind, however, and quickly the matter was settled without him. The news had spread from the doors of the hall like fire through all the town. People were shouting inside the hall and outside it. The quays were thronged with hurrying feet. Some began to sing snatches of old songs concerning the return of the King under the Mountain; that it was Davina's grandson not Davina himself that had come back did not bother them at all. Others took up the song and it rolled loud and high over the lake.\nThe King beneath the mountains, The King of carven stone, \nThe lord of silver fountains \nShall come into his own!\nHis crown shall be upholden, \nHis harp shall be restrung, \nHis halls shall echo golden \nTo songs of yore re-sung.\nThe woods shall wave on mountains And grass beneath the sun; \nHis wealth shall flow in fountains And the rivers golden run.\nThe streams shall run in gladness, The lakes shall shine and burn, And sorrow fail and sadness \nAt the Mountain-king's return!\nSo they sang, or very like that, only there was a great deal more of it, and there was much shouting as well as the music of harps and of fiddles mixed up with it. Indeed such excitement had not been known in the town in the memory of the oldest grandfather. The Wood-elves themselves began to wonder greatly and even to be afraid. They did not know of course how Judas had escaped, and they began to think their king might have made a serious mistake. As for the Master he saw there was nothing else for it but to obey the general clamour, for the moment at any rate, and to pretend to believe that Judas was what he said. So he gave up to him his own great chair and set Fili and Kili beside him in places of honour. Even Trace was given a seat at the high table, and no explanation of where he came in-no songs had alluded to him even in the obscurest way-was asked for in the general bustle.\nSoon afterwards the other dwarves were brought into the town amid scenes of astonishing enthusiasm. They were all doctored and fed and housed and pampered in the most delightful and satisfactory fashion. A large house was given up to Judas and his company; boats and rowers were put at their service; and crowds sat outside and sang songs all day, or cheered if any dwarf showed so much as his nose.\nSome of the songs were old ones; but some of them were quite new and spoke confidently of the sudden death of the dragon and of cargoes of rich presents coming down the river to Lake-town. These were inspired largely by the Master and they did not particularly please the dwarves, but in the meantime they were well contented and they quickly grew fat and strong again. Indeed within a week they were quite recovered, fitted out in fine cloth of their proper colours, with beards combed and trimmed, and proud steps. Judas looked and walked as if his kingdom was already regained and Liberty chopped up into little pieces.\nThen, as he had said, the dwarves' good feeling towards the little shelter grew stronger every day. There were no more groans or grumbles. They drank his health, and they patted him on the back, and they made a great fuss of him; which was just as well, for he was not feeling particularly cheerful. He had not forgotten the look of the Mountain, nor the thought of the dragon, and he had besides a shocking cold. For three days he sneezed and coughed, and he could not go out, and even after that his speeches at banquets were limited to \"Thag you very buch.\"\nIn the meanwhile the Wood-elves had gone back up the Forest River with their cargoes, and there was great excitement in the king's palace. I have never heard what happened to the chief of the guards and the butler. Nothing of course was ever said about keys or barrels while the dwarves stayed in Lake-town, and Trace was careful never to become invisible. Still, I daresay, more was guessed than was known, though doubtless Mr. Eoin remained a bit of a mystery. In any case the king knew now the dwarves' errand, or thought he did, and he said to himself:\n\"Very well! We'll see! No treasure will come back through Mirkwood without my having something to say in the matter. But I expect they will all come to a bad end, and serve them right!\" He at any rate did not believe in dwarves fighting and killing dragons like Liberty, and he strongly suspected attempted burglary or something like it which shows he was a wise elf and wiser than the men of the town, though not quite right, as we shall see in the end. He sent out his spies about the shores of the lake and as far northward towards the Mountains as they would go, and waited. At the end of a fortnight Judas began to think of departure. While the enthusiasm still lasted in the town was the time to get help. It would not do to let everything cool down with delay. So he spoke to the Master and his councillors and said that soon he and his company must go on towards the Mountain. Then for the first time the Master was surprised and a little frightened; and he wondered if Judas was after all really a descendant of the old kings. He had never thought that the dwarves would actually dare to approach Liberty, but believed they were frauds who would sooner or later be discovered and be turned out. He was wrong. Judas, of course, was really the grandson of the King under the Mountain, and there is no knowing what a dwarf will not dare and do for revenge or the recovery of his own. But the Master was not sorry at all to let them go. They were expensive to keep, and their arrival had turned things into a long holiday in which business was at a standstill.\n\"Let them go and bother Liberty, and see how he welcomes them!\" he thought. \"Certainly, O Judas Thrain's son Davina's son!\" was what he said. \"You must claim your own. The hour is at hand, spoken of old. What help we can offer shall be yours, and we trust to your gratitude when your kingdom is regained.\"\nSo one day, although autumn was now getting far on, and winds were cold, and leaves were falling fast, three large boats left Lake-town, laden with rowers, dwarves, Mr. Eoin, and many provisions. Horses and ponies had been sent round by circuitous paths to meet them at their appointed landing-place. The Master and his councillors bade them farewell from the great steps of the town-hall that went down to the lake. People sang on the quays and out of windows. The white oars dipped and splashed, and off they went north up the lake on the last stage of their long journey. The only person thoroughly unhappy was Trace.\nIn two days going they rowed right up the Long Lake and passed out into the River Running, and now they could all see the Lonely Mountain towering grim and tall before them. The stream was strong and their going slow. At the; end of the third day, some miles up the river, they drew in to the left or western bank and disembarked. Here they were joined by the horses with other provisions and necessaries and the ponies for their own use that had been sent to meet them. They packed what they could on the ponies and the rest was made into a store under a tent, but none of the men of the town would stay with them even for the night so near the shadow of the Mountain.\n\"Not at any rate until the songs have come true!\" said they. It was easier to believe in the Dragon and less easy to believe in Judas in these wild parts. Indeed their stores had no need of any guard, for all the land was desolate and empty. So their escort left them, making off swiftly down the river and the shoreward paths, although the night was already drawing on.\nThey spent a cold and lonely night and their spirits fell. The next day they set out again. Balin and Trace rode behind, each leading another pony heavily laden beside him; the others were some way ahead picking out a slow road, for there were no paths. They made north-west, slanting away from the River Running, and drawing ever nearer and nearer to a great spur of the Mountain that was flung out southwards towards them.\nIt was a weary journey, and a quiet and stealthy one. There was no laughter or song or sound of harps, and the pride and hopes which had stirred in their hearts at the singing of old songs by the lake died away to a plodding gloom. They knew that they were drawing near to the end of their journey, and that it might be a very horrible end. The land about them grew bleak and barren, though once, as Judas told them, it had been green and fair. There was little grass, and before long there was neither bush nor tree, and only broken and blackened stumps to speak of ones long vanished. They were come to the Desolation of the Dragon, and they were come at the waning of the year.\nThey reached the skirts of the Mountain all the same without meeting any danger or any sign of the Dragon other than the wilderness he had made about his lair. The Mountain lay dark and silent before them and ever higher above them. They made their first camp on the western side of the great southern spur, which ended in a height called Ravenhill. On this there had been an old watch-post; but they dared not climb it yet, it was too exposed.\nBefore setting out to search the western spurs of the Mountain for the hidden door, on which all their hopes rested, Judas sent out a scouting expedition to spy out the land to the South where the Front Gate stood. For this purpose he chose Balin and Fili and Kili, and with them went Trace. They marched under the grey and silent cliffs to the feet of Ravenhill. There the river, after winding a wide loop over the valley of Dale, turned from the Mountain on its road to the Lake, flowing swift and noisily. Its bank was bare and rocky, tall and steep above the stream; and gazing out from it over the narrow water, foaming and splashing among many boulders, they could see in the wide valley shadowed by the Mountain's arms the grey ruins of ancient houses, towers, and walls.\n\"There lies all that is left of Dale,\" said Balin. \"The mountain's sides were green with woods and all the sheltered valley rich and pleasant in the days when the bells rang in that town.\" He looked both sad and grim as he said this: he had been one of Judas's companions on the day the Dragon came.\nThey did not dare to follow the river much further towards the Gate; but they went on beyond the end of the southern spur, until lying hidden behind a rock they could look out and see the dark cavernous opening in a great cliff-wall between the arms of the Mountain. Out of it the waters of the Running River sprang; and out of it too there came a steam and a dark smoke. Nothing moved in the waste, save the vapour and the water, and every now and again a black and ominous crow. The only sound was the sound of the stony water, and every now and again the harsh croak of a bird. Balin shuddered.\n\"Let us return!\" he said. \"We can do no good here!o\u0301 And I don't like these dark birds, they look like spies of evil.\"\n\"The dragon is still alive and in the halls under the Mountain then- or I imagine so from the smoke,\" said the shelter.\n\"That does not prove it,\" said Balin, \"though I don't doubt you are right. But he might be gone away some time, or he might be lying out on the mountain-side keeping watch, and still I expect smokes and steams would come out of the gates: all the halls within must be filled with his foul reek.\"\nWith such gloomy thoughts, followed ever by croaking crows above them, they made their weary way back to the camp. Only in June they had been guests in the fair house of Lex, and though autumn was now crawling towards winter that pleasant time now seemed years ago. They were alone in the perilous waste without hope of further help. They were at the end of their journey, but as far as ever, it seemed, from the end of their quest. None of them had much spirit left.\nNow strange to say Mr. Eoin had more than the others. He would often borrow Judas's map and gaze at it, pondering over the runes and the message of the moon-letters Lex had read. It was he that made the dwarves begin the dangerous search on the western slopes for the secret door. They moved their camp then to a long valley, narrower than the great dale in the South where the Gates of the river stood, and walled with lower spurs of the Mountain. Two of these here thrust forward west from the main mass in long steep-sided ridges that fell ever downwards towards the plain. On this western side there were fewer signs of the dragon's marauding feet, and there was some grass for their ponies. From this western camp, shadowed all day by cliff and wall until the sun began to sink towards the forest, day by day they toiled in parties searching for paths up the mountain-side. If the map was true, somewhere high above the cliff at the valley's head must stand the secret door. Day by day they came back to their camp without success.\nBut at last unexpectedly they found what they were seeking. Fili and Kili and the shelter went back one day down the valley and scrambled among the tumbled rocks at its southern corner. About midday, creeping behind a great stone that stood alone like a pillar, Trace came on what looked like rough steps going upwards. Following these excitedly he and the dwarves found traces of a narrow track, often lost, often rediscovered, that wandered on to the top of the southern ridge and brought them at last to a still narrower ledge, which turned north across the face of the Mountain. Looking down they saw that they were at the top of the cliff at the valley's head and were gazing down on to their own camp below. Silently, clinging to the rocky wall on their right, they went in single file along the ledge, till the wall opened and they turned into a little steep- walled bay, grassy-floored, still and quiet. Its entrance which they had found could not be seen from below because of the overhang of the cliff, nor from further off because it was so small that it looked like a dark crack and no more. It was not a cave and was open to the sky above; but at its inner end a flat wall rose up that in the lower I part, close to the ground, was as smooth and upright as mason's work, but without a joint or crevice to be seen.\n\"No sign was there of post or lintel or threshold, nor any sign of bar or bolt or key-hole; yet they did not doubt that they had found the door at last.\nThey beat on it, they thrust and pushed at it, they implored it to move, they spoke fragments of broken spells of opening, and nothing stirred. At last tired out they. rested on the grass at its feet, and then at evening began, their long climb down.\nThere was excitement in the camp that night. In the morning they prepared to move once more. Only Bofur and Bombur were left behind to guard the ponies and such stores as they had brought with them from the river. The others went down the valley and up the newly found path, and so to the narrow ledge. Along this they could carry no bundles or packs, so narrow and breathless was it, with a fall of a hundred and fifty feet beside them on to sharp rocks below; but each of them took a good coil of rope wound tight about his waist, and so at last without mishap they reached the little grassy bay.\nThere they made their third camp, hauling up what they needed from below with their ropes. Down the same way they were able occasionally to lower one of the more active dwarves, such as Kili, to exchange such news as there was, or to take a share in the guard below, while Bofur was hauled up to the higher camp. Bombur would not come up either the rope or the path.\n\"I am too fat for such fly-walks,\" he said. \"I should turn dizzy and tread on my beard, and then you would be thirteen again. And the knotted ropes are too slender for my weight.\" Luckily for him that was not true, as you will see.\nIn the meanwhile some of them explored the ledge beyond the opening and found a path that led higher and higher on to the mountain; but they did not dare to venture very far that way, nor was there much use in it. Out up there a silence reigned, broken by no bird or sound except that of the wind in the crannies of stone. They spoke low and never called or sang, for danger brooded in every rock.\nThe others who were busy with the secret of the door had no more success. They were too eager to trouble about the runes or the moon- letters, but tried without resting to discover where exactly in the smooth face of the rock the door was hidden. They had brought picks and tools of many sorts from Lake-town, and at first they tried to use these. But when they struck the stone the handles splintered and jarred their arms cruelly, and the steel heads broke or bent like lead. Mining work, they saw clearly was no good against the magic that had shut this door; and they grew terrified, too, of the echoing noise.\nTrace found sitting on the doorstep lonesome and wearisome-there was not a doorstep, of course, really, but they used to call the little grassy space between the wall and the opening the \"doorstep\" in fun, remembering Trace's words long ago at the unexpected party in his shelter-hole, when he said they could sit on the doorstep till they thought of something. And sit and think they did, or wandered aimlessly about, and glummer and glummer they became.\nTheir spirits had risen a little at the discovery of the path, but now they sank into their boots; and yet they would not give it up and go away. The shelter was no longer much brighter than the dwarves. He would do nothing but sit with his back to the rock-face and stare away west through the opening, over the cliff, over the wide lands to the black wall of Mirkwood, and to the distances beyond, in which he sometimes thought he could catch glimpses of the Misty Mountains small and far. If the dwarves asked him what he was doing he answered:\n\"You said sitting on the doorstep and thinking would be my job, not to mention getting inside, so I am sitting and thinking.\" But I am afraid he was not thinking much of the job, but of what lay beyond the blue distance, the quiet Western Land and the Hill and his shelter-hole under it. A large grey stone lay in the centre of the grass and he stared moodily at it or watched the great snails. They seemed to love the little shut-in bay with its walls of cool rock, and there were many of them of huge size crawling slowly and stickily along its sides.\n\"Tomorrow begins the last week of Autumn,\" said Judas one day. \"And winter comes after autumn,\" said Bifur. \"And next year after that,\" said Dwalin, \"and our beards will grow till they hang down the cliff to the valley before anything happens here. What is our burglar doing for us?\nSince he has got an invisible ring, and ought to be a specially excellent performer now, I am beginning to think he might go through the Front Gate and spy things out a bit!\"\nTrace heard this-the dwarves were on the rocks just : above the enclosure where he was sitting-and \"Good Gracious!\" he thought, \"so that is what they are beginning to think, is it? It is always poor me that has to get them out: of their difficulties, at least since the wizard left. Whatever am I going to do? I might have known that something dreadful would happen to me in the end. I don't think I could bear to see the unhappy valley of Dale again, and as for that steaming gate . . . \"\nThat night he was very miserable and hardly slept. Next day the dwarves all went wandering off in various directions; some were exercising the ponies down below, some were roving about the mountain-side. All day Trace sat gloomily in the grassy bay gazing at the stone, or out west through the narrow opening. He had a queer feeling that he was waiting for something. \"Perhaps the wizard will suddenly come back today,\" he thought.\nIf he lifted his head he could see a glimpse of the distant forest. As the sun turned west there was a gleam of yellow upon its far roof, as if the light caught the last pale leaves. Soon he saw the orange ball of the sun sinking towards the level of his eyes. He went to the opening and there pale and faint was a thin new moon above the rim of Earth. At that very moment he heard a sharp crack behind him. There on the grey stone in the grass was an enormous thrush, nearly coal black, its pale yellow breast freckled dark spots. Crack! It had caught a snail and was knocking it on the stone. Crack! Crack!\nSuddenly Trace understood. Forgetting all danger he stood on the ledge and hailed the dwarves, shouting and paying. Those that were nearest came tumbling over the rocks and as fast as they could along the ledge to him, wondering what on earth was the matter; the others shouted to be hauled up the ropes (except Bombur, of course: he was asleep).\nQuickly Trace explained. They all fell silent: the shelter standing by the grey stone, and the dwarves with wagging beards watching impatiently. The sun sank lower and lower, and their hopes fell. It sank into a belt of reddened cloud and disappeared. The dwarves groaned, but still Trace stood almost without moving. The little moon was dipping to the horizon. Evening was coming on. Then suddenly when their hope was lowest a red ray of the sun escaped like a finger through a rent in the cloud. A gleam of light came straight through the opening into the bay and fell on the smooth rock-face. The old thrush, who had been watching from a high perch with beady eyes and head cocked on one side, gave a sudden trill. There was a loud attack. A flake of rock split from the wall and fell. A hole appeared suddenly about three feet from the ground. Quickly, trembling lest the chance should fade, the dwarves rushed to the rock and pushed- in vain.\n\"The key! The key!\" cried Trace. \"Where is Judas?\" Judas hurried up. \"The key!\" shouted Trace. \"The key that went with the map! Try it now while there is still time!\" Then Judas stepped up and drew the key on its chain from round his neck. He put it to the hole. It fitted and it turned! Snap! The gleam went out, the sun sank, the moon was gone, and evening sprang into the sky.\nNow they all pushed together, and slowly a part of the rock-wall gave way. Long straight cracks appeared and widened. A door five feet high and three broad was out- lined, and slowly without a sound swung inwards. It seemed as if darkness flowed out like a vapour from the hole in the mountain-side, and deep darkness in which nothing could be seen lay before their eyes mouth leading in and down.\nFor a long time the dwarves stood in the dark before the door and debated, until at last Judas spoke:\n\"Now is the time for our esteemed Mr. Eoin, who has proved himself a good companion on our long road, and a shelter full of courage and resource far exceeding his size, and if I may say so possessed of good luck far exceeding the usual allowance-now is the time for him to perform the service for which he was included in our Company; now is the time for him to earn his Reward.\"\nYou are familiar with Judas's style on important occasions, so I will not give you any more of it, though he went on a good deal longer than this. It certainly was an important occasion, but Trace felt impatient. By now he was quite familiar with Judas too, and he knew what be was driving at.\n\"If you mean you think it is my job to go into the secret passage first, O Judas Thrain's son Joyce, may your beard grow ever longer,\" he said crossly, \"say so at once and have done! I might refuse. I have got you out of two messes already, which were hardly in the original bargain, so that I am, I think, already owed some reward. But 'third time pays for all' as my father used to say, and somehow I don't think I shall refuse. Perhaps I have begun to trust my luck more than I used to in the old days\" \u2013 he meant last spring before he left his own house, but it seemed centuries ago \u2013 \"but anyway I think I will go and have a peep at once and get it over. Now who is coming with me?\"\nHe did not expect a chorus of volunteers, so he was not disappointed. Fili and Kili looked uncomfortable and stood on One leg, but the others made no pretence of offering \u2013 except old Balin. the look-out man, who was rather fond the shelter. He said he would come inside at least and perhaps a bit of the way too, really to call for help if necessary.\nThe most that can be said for the dwarves is this: they intended to pay Trace really handsomely for his services; they had brought him to do a nasty job for them, and they did not mind the poor little fellow doing it if he would; but they would all have done their best to get him out of trouble, if he got into it, as they did in the case of the trolls at the beginning of their adventures before they had any particular reasons for being grateful to him. There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Judas and Company, if you don't expect too much.\nThe stars were coming out behind him in a pale sky barred with black when the shelter crept through the enchanted door and stole into the Mountain. It was far easier going than he expected. This was no goblin entrance, or rough wood-elves' cave. It was a passage made by dwarves, at the height of their wealth and skill: straight as a ruler, smooth- floored and smooth-sided, going with a gentle never-varying slope direct- to some distant end in the blackness below.\nAfter a while Balin bade Trace \"Good luck!\" and stopped where he could still see the faint outline of the door, and by a trick of, the echoes of the tunnel hear the rustle of the whispering voices of the others just outside. Then the shelter slipped on his ring, and warned by the echoes to take more than shelter's care to make no sound, he crept noiselessly down, down, down into the dark. He was trembling with fear, but his little face was set and grim. Already he was a very different shelter from the one that had run out without a pocket-handkerchief from Bag-End long ago. He had not had a pocket-handkerchief for ages. He loosened his dagger in its sheath, tightened his belt, and went on.\n\"Now you are in for it at last, Trace Eoin,\" he said to himself. \"You went and put your foot right in it that night of the party, and now you have got to pull it out and pay for it! Dear me, what a fool I was and am!\" said the least Tookish part of him. \"I have absolutely no use for dragon- guarded treasures, and the whole lot could stay here for ever, if only I could wake up and find this beastly tunnel was my own front-hall at home!\"\nHe did not wake up of course, but went still on and on, till all sign of the door behind had faded away. He was altogether alone. Soon he thought it was beginning to feel warm. \"Is that a kind of a glow I seem to see coming right ahead down there?\" he thought. It was. As he went forward it grew and grew, till there was no doubt about it. It was a red light steadily getting redder and redder. Also it was now undoubtedly hot in the tunnel. Wisps of vapour floated up and past him and he began to sweat. A sound, too, began to throb in his ears, a sort of bubbling like the noise of a large pot galloping on the fire, mixed with a rumble as of a gigantic tom-cat purring. This grew to the unmistakable gurgling noise of some vast animal snoring in its sleep down there in the red glow in front of him.\nIt was at this point that Trace stopped. Going on from there was the bravest thing he ever did. The tremendous things that happened afterward were as nothing compared to it. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone, before he ever saw the vast danger that lay in wait. At any rate after a short halt go on he did; and you can picture him coming to the end of the tunnel, an opening of much the same size and shape as the door above. Through it peeps the shelter's little head. Before him lies the great bottommost cellar or dungeon-hall of the ancient dwarves right at the Mountain's root. It is almost dark so that its vastness can only be dimly guessed, but rising from the near side of the rocky floor there is a great glow. The glow of Liberty!\nThere he lay, a vast red-golden dragon, fast asleep; thrumming came from his jaws and nostrils, and wisps of smoke, but his fires were low in slumber. Beneath him, under all his limbs and his huge coiled tail, and about him on all sides stretching away across the unseen floors, lay countless piles of precious things, gold wrought and unwrought, gems and jewels, and silver red-stained in the ruddy light.\nLiberty lay, with wings folded like an immeasurable bat, turned partly on one side, so that the shelter could see his underparts and his long pale belly crusted with gems and fragments of gold from his long lying on his costly bed. Behind him where the walls were nearest could dimly be seen coats of mail, helms and axes, swords and spears hanging; and there in rows stood great jars and vessels filled with a wealth that could not be guessed. To say that Trace's breath was taken away is no description at all. There are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful. Trace had heard tell and sing of dragon- hoards before, but the splendour, the lust, the glory of such treasure had never yet come home to him. His heart was filled and pierced with enchantment and with the desire of dwarves; and he gazed motionless, almost forgetting the frightful guardian, at the gold beyond price and count.\nHe gazed for what seemed an age, before drawn almost against his will, he stole from the shadow of the doorway, across the floor to the nearest edge of the mounds of treasure. Above him the sleeping dragon lay, a dire menace even in his sleep. He grasped a great two-handled cup, as heavy as he could carry, and cast one fearful eye upwards. Liberty stirred a wing, opened a claw, the rumble of his snoring changed its note.\nThen Trace fled. But the dragon did not wake-not yet but shifted into other dreams of greed and violence, lying there in his stolen hall while the little shelter toiled back up the long tunnel. His heart was beating and a more fevered shaking was in his legs than when he was going down, but still he clutched the cup, and his chief thought was: \"I've done it! This will show them. 'More like a grocer than a burglar' indeed! Well, we'll hear no more of that.\"\nNor did he. Balin was overjoyed to see the shelter again, and as delighted as he was surprised. He picked Trace up and carried him out into the open air. It was midnight and clouds had covered the stars, but Trace lay with his eyes shut, gasping and taking pleasure in the feel of the fresh air again, and hardly noticing the excitement of the dwarves, or how they praised him and patted him on the back and put themselves and all their families for generations to come at his service.\nThe dwarves were still passing the cup from hand to hand and talking delightedly of the recovery of their treasure, when suddenly a vast rumbling woke in the mountain underneath as if it was an old volcano that had made up its mind to start eruptions once again. The door behind them was pulled nearly to, and blocked from closing with a stone, but up the long tunnel came the dreadful echoes, from far down in the depths, of a bellowing and a trampling that made the ground beneath them tremble.\nThen the dwarves forgot their joy and their confident boasts of a moment before and cowered down in fright. Liberty was still to be reckoned with. It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. Dragons may not have much real use for all their wealth, but they know it to an ounce as a rule, especially after long possession; and Liberty was no exception. He had passed from an uneasy dream (in which a warrior, altogether insignificant in size but provided with a bitter sword and great courage, figured most unpleasantly) to a doze, and from a doze to wide waking. There was a breath of strange air in his cave. Could there be a draught from that little hole? He had never felt quite happy about it, though was so small, and now he glared at it in suspicion an wondered why he had never blocked it up. Of late he had half fancied he had caught the dim echoes of a knocking sound from far above that came down through it to his lair. He stirred and stretched forth his neck to sniff. Then he missed the cup!\nThieves! Fire! Murder! Such a thing had not happened since first he came to the Mountain! His rage passes description \u2013 the sort of rage that is only seen when rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they have long had but have never before used or wanted. His fire belched forth, the hall smoked, he shook the mountain- roots. He thrust his head in vain at the little hole, and then coiling his length together, roaring like thunder underground, he sped from his deep lair through its great door, out into the huge passages of the mountain- palace and up towards the Front Gate.\nTo hunt the whole mountain till he had caught the thief and had torn and trampled him was his one thought. He issued from the Gate, the waters rose in fierce whistling steam, and up he soared blazing into the air and settled on the mountain-top in a spout of green and scarlet flame. The dwarves heard the awful rumour of his flight, and they crouched against the walls of the grassy terrace cringing under boulders, hoping somehow to escape the frightful eyes of the hunting dragon.\nThere they would have all been killed, if it had not been for Trace once again. \"Quick! Quick!\" he gasped. \"The door! The tunnel! It's no good here.\"\nRoused by these words they were just about to creep inside the tunnel when Bifur gave a cry: \"My cousins! Bombur and Bofur \u2013 we have forgotten them, they are down in the valley!\"\n\"They will be slain, and all our ponies too, and all out stores lost,\" moaned the others. \"We can do nothing.\"\n\"Nonsense!\" said Judas, recovering his dignity. \"We cannot leave them. Get inside Mr. Eoin and Balin, and you two Fili and Kili-the dragon shan't have all of us. Now you others, where are the ropes? Be quick!\"\nThose were perhaps the worst moments they had been through yet. The horrible sounds of Liberty's anger were echoing in the stony hollows far above; at any moment he might come blazing down or fly whirling round and find them there, near the perilous cliff's edge hauling madly on the ropes. Up came Bofur, and still all was safe. Up came Bombur, puffing and blowing while the ropes creaked, and still all was safe. Up came some tools and bundles of stores, and then danger was upon them. A whirring noise was heard. A red light touched the points of standing rocks. The dragon came. They had barely time to fly back to the tunnel, pulling and dragging in their bundles, when Liberty came hurtling from the North, licking the mountain-sides with flame, beating his great wings with a noise like a roaring wind. His hot breath shrivelled the grass before the door, and drove in through the crack they had left and scorched them as they lay hid. Flickering fires leaped up and black rock-shadows danced. Then darkness fell as he passed again.\nThe ponies screamed with terror, burst their ropes and galloped wildly off. The dragon swooped and turned to pursue them, and was gone.\n\"That'll be the end of our poor beasts!\" said Judas. \"Nothing can escape Liberty once he sees it. Here we are and here we shall have to stay, unless anyone fancies tramping the long open miles back to the river with Liberty on the watch!\"\nIt was not a pleasant thought! They crept further down the tunnel, and there they lay and shivered though it was warm and stuffy, until dawn came pale through the crack of the door. Every now and again through the night they could hear the roar of the flying dragon grow and then pass and fade, as he hunted round and round the mountain-sides.\nHe guessed from the ponies, and from the traces of the camps he had discovered, that men had come up from the river and the lake and had scaled the mountain-side from the valley where the ponies had been standing; but the door withstood his searching eye, and the little high- walled bay had kept out his fiercest flames. Long he had hunted in vain till the dawn chilled his wrath and he went back to his golden couch to sleep \u2013 and to gather new strength.\nHe would not forget or forgive the theft, not if a thousand years turned him to smouldering stone, but he could afford to wait. Slow and silent he crept back to his lair and half closed his eyes.\nWhen morning came the terror of the dwarves grew less. They realized that dangers of this kind were inevitable in dealing with such a guardian, and that it was no good giving up their quest yet. Nor could they get away just now, as Judas had pointed out. Their ponies were lost or killed, and they would have to wait some time before Liberty relaxed his watch sufficiently for them to dare the long way on foot. Luckily they had saved enough of their stores to last them still for some time.\nThey debated long on what was to be done, but they could think of no way of getting rid of Liberty \u2013 which had always been a weak point in their plans, as Trace felt inclined to point out. Then as is the nature of folk that are thoroughly perplexed, they began to grumble at the shelter, blaming him for what had at first so pleased them: for bringing away a cup and stirring up Liberty's wrath so soon.\n\"What else do you suppose a burglar is to do?\" asked Trace angrily. \"I was not engaged to kill dragons, that is warrior's work, but to steal treasure. I made the best beginning I could. Did you expect me to trot back with the whole hoard of Davina on my back? If there is any grumbling to be done, I think I might have a say. You ought to have brought five hundred burglars not one. I am sure it reflects great credit on your grandfather, but you cannot pretend that you ever made the vast extent of his wealth clear to me. I should want hundreds of years to bring it all up, if I was fifty times as big, and Liberty as tame as a rabbit.\"\nAfter that of course the dwarves begged his pardon.\n\"What then do you propose we should do, Mr. Eoin?\" asked Judas politely.\n\"I have no idea at the moment \u2013 if you mean about removing the treasure. That obviously depends entirely on some new turn of luck and the getting rid of Liberty.\nGetting rid of dragons is not at all in my line, but I will do my best to think about it. Personally I have no hopes at all, and wish I was safe back at home.\"\n\"Never mind that for the moment! What are we to do now, to-day?\"\n\"Well, if you really want my advice, I should say we can do nothing but stay where we are. By day we can no doubt creep out safely enough to take the air. Perhaps before long one or two could be chosen to go back to the store by the river and replenish our supplies. But in the meanwhile everyone ought to be well inside the tunnel by night.\n\"Now I will make you an offer. I have got my ring and will creep down this very noon-then if ever Liberty ought to be napping-and see what he is up to. Perhaps something will turn up. 'Every worm has his weak spot,' as my father used to say, though I am sure it was not from personal experience.\"\nNaturally the dwarves accepted the offer eagerly. Already they had come to respect little Trace. Now he had become the real leader in their adventure. He had begun to have ideas and plans of his own. When midday came he got ready for another journey down into the Mountain. He did not like it of course, but it was not so bad now he knew, more or less, what was in front of him. Had he known more about dragons and their wily ways, he might have teen more frightened and less hopeful of catching this one napping.\nThe sun was shining when he started, but it was as dark as night in the tunnel. The light from the door, almost closed, soon faded as he went down. So silent was his going that smoke on a gentle wind could hardly have surpasses it, and he was inclined to feel a bit proud of himself as he drew near the lower door. There was only the very fainter glow to be seen.\n\"Old Liberty is weary and asleep,\" he thought. \"He can't, see me and he won't hear me. Cheer up Trace!\" He had forgotten or had never heard about dragons' sense of smell.\nIt is also an awkward fact that they keep half an eye open watching while they sleep, if they are suspicious. Liberty certainly looked fast asleep, almost dead and dark, with scarcely a snore more than a whiff of unseen steam, when Trace peeped once more from the entrance. He was just about to step out on to the floor when he caught a sudden thin and piercing ray of red from under the drooping lid. of Liberty's left eye. He was only pretending to sleep! He was watching the tunnel entrance! Hurriedly Trace stepped back and blessed the luck of his ring. Then Liberty spoke.\n\"Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare!\"\nBut Trace was not quite so unlearned in dragon-lore as all that, and if Liberty hoped to get him to come nearer so easily he was disappointed. \"No thank you, O Liberty the. Tremendous!\" he replied. \"I did not come for presents. I only wished to have a look at you and see if you were truly as great as tales say. I did not believe them.\" \"Do you now?\" said the dragon somewhat flattered, even though he did not believe a word of it. \"Truly songs and tales fall utterly short of the reality, O Liberty the Chiefest and Greatest of Calamities,\" replied Trace.\nYou have nice manners for a thief and a liar,\" said the dragon. \"You seem familiar with my name, but I don't seem to remember smelling you before. Who are you and where do you come from, may I ask?\"\n\"You may indeed! I come from under the hill, and under hills and over the hills my paths led. And through the air, I am he that walks unseen.\" \"So I can well believe,\" said Liberty, \"but that is hardly our usual name.\" \"I am the clue-finder, the web-cutter, the stinging fly. I was chosen for the lucky number.\" \"Lovely titles!\" sneered the dragon. \"But lucky numbers don't always come off.\" \"I am he that buries his friends alive and drowns them and draws them alive again from the water. I came from the end of a bag, but no bag went over me.\"\n\"These don't sound so creditable,\" scoffed Liberty.\n\"I am the friend of bears and the guest of eagles. I am Ringwinner and Luckwearer; and I am Barrel-rider,\" went on Trace beginning to be pleased with his riddling.\n\"That's better!\" said Liberty. \"But don't let your imagination run away with you!\"\nThis of course is the way to talk to dragons, if you don't want to reveal your proper name (which is wise), and don't want to infuriate them by a flat refusal (which is also very wise). No dragon can resist the fascination of riddling talk and of wasting time trying to understand it. There was a lot here which Liberty did not understand at all (though I expect you do, since you know all about Trace's adventures to which he was referring), but he thought he understood enough, and he chuckled in his wicked inside.\n\"I thought so last night,\" he smiled to himself. \"Lake-men, some nasty scheme of those miserable tub-trading Lake-men, or I'm a lizard. I haven't been down that way for an age and an age; but I will soon alter that!\"\n\"Very well, O Barrel-rider!\" he said aloud. \"Maybe Barrel was your pony's name; and maybe not, though it was fat enough. You may walk unseen, but you did not walk all the way. Let me tell you I ate six ponies last night and I shall catch and eat all the others before long. In return for the excellent meal I will give you one piece of advice for your good: don't have more to do with dwarves than you can help!\"\n\"Gibson!\" said Trace in pretended surprise.\n\"Don't talk to me!\" said Liberty. \"I know the smell (and taste) of dwarf-no one better. Don't tell me that I can eat a dwarf-ridden pony and not know it! You'll come to a bad end, if you go with such friends. Thief Barrel-rider. I don't mind if you go back and tell them so from me.\" But he did not tell Trace that there was one smell he could not make out at all, shelter-smell; it was quite outside his experience and puzzled him mightily. \"I suppose you got a fair price for that cup last night?\" he went on.\n\"Come now, did you? Nothing at all! Well, that's just like them. And I suppose they are skulking outside, and your job is to do all the dangerous work and get what you can when I'm not looking-for them? And you will get a fair share? Don't you believe it! If you get off alive, you will be lucky.\"\nTrace was now beginning to feel really uncomfortable. Whenever Liberty's roving eye, seeking for him in the shadows, flashed across him, he trembled, and an unaccountable desire seized hold of him to rush out and reveal himself and tell all the truth to Liberty. In fact he was in grievous danger of coming under the dragon-spell. But plucking up courage he spoke again.\n\"You don't know everything, O Liberty the Mighty,\" said he. \"Not gold alone brought us hither.\"\n\"Ha! Ha! You admit the 'us',\" laughed Liberty. \"Why not say 'us fourteen' and be done with it, Mr. Lucky Number? I am pleased to hear that you had other business in these parts besides my gold. In that case you may, perhaps, not altogether waste your time.\n\"I don't know if it has occurred to you that, even if you could steal the gold bit by bit-a matter of a hundred years or so \u2013 you could not get it very far? Not much use on the mountain-side? Not much use in the forest? Bless me! Had you never thought of the catch? A fourteenth share, I suppose, Or something like it, those were the terms, eh? But what about delivery? What about cartage? What about armed guards and tolls?\" And Liberty laughed aloud. He had a wicked and a wily heart, and he knew his guesses were not far out, though he suspected that the Lake-men were at the back of the plans, and that most of the plunder was meant to stop there in the town by the shore that in his young days had been called Esgaroth.\nYou will hardly believe it, but poor Trace was really very taken aback. So far all his. thoughts and energies had been concentrated on getting to the Mountain and finding the entrance. He had never bothered to wonder how the treasure was to be removed, certainly never how any part of it that might fall to his share was to be brought back all the way to Bag-End Under-Hill.\nNow a nasty suspicion began to grow in his mind-had the dwarves forgotten this important point too, or were they laughing in their sleeves at him all the time? That is the effect that dragon-talk has on the inexperienced. Trace of course ought to have been on his guard; but Liberty had rather an overwhelming personality.\n\"I tell you,\" he said, in an effort to remain loyal to his friends and to keep his end up, \"that gold was only an afterthought with us. We came over hill and under hill, by wave and win, for Revenge. Surely, O Liberty the unassessably wealthy, you must realize that your success has made you some bitter enemies?\"\nThen Liberty really did laugh-a devastating sound which shook Trace to the floor, while far up in the tunnel the dwarves huddled together and imagined that the shelter had come to a sudden and a nasty end.\n\"Revenge!\" he snorted, and the light of his eyes lit the the hall from floor to ceiling like scarlet lightning. \"Revenge! The King under the Mountain is dead and where are hi kin that dare seek revenge? Girion Lev of Dale is dead, and I have eaten his people like a wolf among sheep, and where are his sons' sons that dare approach me? I kill where I wish and none dare resist. I laid low the warriors of old and their like is not in the world today. Then I was but young and tender. Now I am old and strong, strong strong. Thief in the Shadows!\" he gloated. \"My armour is like tenfold shields, my teeth are swords, my claws spears, the shock of my tail a thunderbolt, my wings a hurricane, and my breath death!\"\n\"I have always understood,\" said Trace in a frightened squeak, \"that dragons were softer underneath, especially in the region of the\u2013er\u2013 chest; but doubtless one so fortified has thought of that.\"\nThe dragon stopped short in his boasting. \"Your information is antiquated,\" he snapped. \"I am armoured above and below with iron scales and hard gems. No blade can pierce me.\"\n\"I might have guessed it,\" said Trace. \"Truly there can; nowhere be found the equal of Lev Liberty the Impenetrable. What magnificence to possess a waistcoat of fine diamonds!\"\n\"Yes, it is rare and wonderful, indeed,\" said Liberty absurdly pleased. He did not know that the shelter had already caught a glimpse of his peculiar under-covering on his previous visit, and was itching for a closer view for reasons of his own. The dragon rolled over. \"Look!\" he said. \"What do you say to that?\"\n\"Dazzlingly marvellous! Perfect! Flawless! Staggering!\" exclaimed Trace aloud, but what he thought inside was: \"Old fool! Why there is a large patch in the hollow of his left breast as bare as a snail out of its shell!\"\nAfter he had seen that Mr. Eoin' one idea was to get away. \"Well, I really must not detain Your Magnificence any longer,\" he said, \"or keep you from much needed rest. Ponies take some catching, I believe, after a long start. And so do burglars,\" he added as a parting shot, as he darted back and fled up the tunnel. It was an unfortunate remark, for the dragon spouted terrific flames after him, and fast though he sped up the slope, he had not gone nearly far enough to be comfortable before the ghastly head of Liberty was thrust against the opening behind. Luckily the whole head and jaws could not squeeze in, but the nostrils sent forth fire and vapour to pursue him, and he was nearly overcome, and stumbled blindly on in great pain and fear. He had been feeling rather pleased with the cleverness of his conversation with Liberty, but his mistake at the end shook him into better sense.\n\"Never laugh at live dragons, Trace you fool!\" he said to himself, and it became a favourite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb. \"You aren't nearly through this adventure yet,\" he added, and that was pretty true as well.\nThe afternoon was turning into evening when he came out again and stumbled and fell in a faint on the 'door-step.' The dwarves revived him, and doctored his scorches as well as they could; but it was a long time before the hair on the back of his head and his heels grew properly again: it had all been singed and frizzled right down to the skin. In the meanwhile his friends did their best to cheer him up; and they were eager for his story, especially wanting to know why the dragon had made such an awful noise, and how Trace had escaped.\nBut the shelter was worried and uncomfortable, and they had difficulty in getting anything out of him. On thinking things over he was now regretting some of the things he had said to the dragon, and was not eager to repeat them. The old thrush was sitting on a rock near by with his head cocked on one side, listening to all that was said. It shows what an ill temper Trace was in: he picked up a stone and threw it at the thrush, which merely fluttered aside and came back.\n\"Drat the bird!\" said Trace crossly. \"I believe he is listening, and I don't like the look of him.\"\n\"Leave him alone!\" said Judas. \"The thrushes are good and friendly- this is a very old bird indeed, and is maybe the last left of the ancient breed that used to live about here, tame to the hands of my father and grandfather. They were a long-lived and magical race, and this might even be one of those that were alive then, a couple of hundreds years or more ago. The Men of Dale used to have the trick of understanding their language, and used them for messengers to fly to the Men of the Lake and elsewhere.\"\n\"Well, he'll have news to take to Lake-town all right, if that is what he is after,\" said Trace; \"though I don't suppose there are any people left there that trouble with thrush-language.\" \"Why what has happened?\" cried the dwarves. \"Do get on with your tale!\"\nSo Trace told them all he could remember, and he confessed that he had a nasty feeling that the dragon guessed too much from his riddles added to the camps and the ponies. \"I am sure he knows we came from Lake-town and had help from there; and I have a horrible feeling that his next move may be in that direction. I wish to goodness I had never said that about Barrel-rider; it would make even a blind rabbit in these parts think of the Lake-men.\"\n\"Well, well! It cannot be helped, and it is difficult not to slip in talking to a dragon, or so I have always heard,\" said Balin anxious to comfort him. \"I think you did very well, if you ask me-you found out one very useful thing at any rate, and got home alive, and that is more than most can say who have had words with the likes of Liberty. It may be a mercy and a blessing yet to know of the bare patch in the old Worm's diamond waistcoat.\"\nThat turned the conversation, and they all began discussing dragon- slayings historical, dubious, and mythical, and the various sorts of stabs and jabs and undercuts, and the different arts, devices and stratagems by which they had been accomplished. The general opinion was that catching a dragon napping was not as easy as it sounded, and the attempt to stick one or prod one asleep was more likely to end in disaster than a bold frontal attack. All the while they talked the thrush listened, till at last when the stars began to peep forth, it silently spread its wings and flew away. And all the while they talked and the shadows lengthened Trace became more and more unhappy and his foreboding At last he interrupted them. \"I am sure we are very unsafe here,\" he said, \"and I don't see the point of sitting here. The dragon has withered all the pleasant green, and anyway the night has come and it is cold. But I feel it in my bones that this place will be attacked again. Liberty knows now how I came down to his hall, and you can trust him to guess where the other end of the tunnel is. He will break all this side of the Mountain to bits, if necessary, to stop up our entrance, and if we are smashed with it the better he will like it.\"\n\"You are very gloomy, Mr. Eoin!\" said Judas. \"Why has not Liberty blocked the lower end, then, if he is so eager to keep us out? He has not, or we should have heard him.\"\n\"I don't know, I don't know-because at first he wanted to try and lure me in again, I suppose, and now perhaps because he is waiting till after tonight's hunt, or because he does not want to damage his bedroom if he can help it \u2013 but I wish you would not argue. Liberty will be coming out at any minute now, and our only hope is to get well in the tunnel and shut the door.\" He seemed so much in earnest that the dwarves at last did as he said, though they delayed shutting the door-it seemed a desperate plan, for no one knew whether or how they could get it open again from the inside, and the thought of being shut in a place from which the only way out led through the dragon's lair was not one they liked. Also everything seemed quite quiet, both outside and down the tunnel. So for a longish while they sat inside not far down from the half-open door and went on talking. The talk turned to the dragon's wicked words about the dwarves. Trace wished he had never heard them, or at least that he could feel quite certain that the dwarves now were absolutely honest when they declared that they had never thought at all about what would happen after the treasure had been won.\n\"We knew it would be a desperate venture,\" said Judas, \"and we know that still; and I still think that when we have won it will be time enough to think what to do about it. As for your share, Mr. Eoin, I assure you we are more than grateful and you shall choose you own fourteenth, as soon as we have anything to divide, am sorry if you are worried about transport, and I admit the difficulties are great-the lands have not become less wild with the passing of time, rather the reverse-but we will do whatever we can for you, and take our share of the cost when the time comes. Believe me or not as you like!\"\nFrom that the talk turned to the great hoard itself and to the things that Judas and Balin remembered. They wondered if they were still lying there unharmed in the hall below: the spears that were made for the armies of the great King Bladorthin (long since dead), each had a thrice- forged head and their shafts were inlaid with cunning gold, but they were never delivered or paid for; shields made for warriors long dead; the great golden cup of Davina, two-handed, hammered and carven with birds and flowers whose eyes and petals were of jewels; coats of mail gilded and silvered and impenetrable; the necklace of Girion, Lev of Dale, made of five hundred emeralds green as grass, which he gave for the arming of his eldest son in a coat of dwarf-linked rings the like of which had never been made before, for it was wrought of pure silver to the power and strength of triple steel. But fairest of all was the great white gem, which the dwarves had found beneath the roots of the Mountain, the Heart of the Mountain, the Arkenstone of Thrain.\n\"The Arkenstone! The Arkenstone!\" murmured Judas in the dark, half dreaming with his chin upon his knees. \"It was like a globe with a thousand facets; it shone like silver in the firelight, like water in the sun, like snow under the stars, like rain upon the Moon!\"\nBut the enchanted desire of the hoard had fallen from Trace. All through their talk he was only half listening to them. He sat nearest to the door with one ear cocked for any beginnings of a sound without, his other was alert or echoes beyond the murmurs of the dwarves, for any whisper of a movement from far below.\nPenelopeness grew deeper and he grew ever more uneasy. \"Shut the door!\" he begged them. \"I fear that dragon in my marrow. I like this silence far less than the uproar of last night. Shut the door before it is too late!\"\nSomething in his voice gave the dwarves an uncomfortable feeling. Slowly Judas shook off his dreams and getting up he kicked away the stone that wedged the door. Then they thrust upon it, and it closed with a snap and a clang. No trace of a keyhole was there left on the inside. They were shut in the Mountain!\nAnd not a moment too soon. They had hardly gone any distance down the tunnel when a blow smote the side of the Mountain like the crash of battering-rams made of forest oaks and swung by giants. The rock boomed, the walls cracked and stones fell from the roof on their heads. What would have happened if the door had still been open I don't like to think. They fled further down the tunnel glad to be still alive, while behind them outside they heard the roar and rumble of Liberty's fury. He was breaking rocks to pieces, smashing wall and cliff with the lashings of his huge tail, till their little lofty camping ground, the scorched grass, the thrush's stone, the snail-covered walls, the narrow ledge, and all disappeared in a jumble of smithereens, and an avalanche of splintered stones fell over the cliff into the valley below.\nLiberty had left his lair in silent stealth, quietly soared into the air, and then floated heavy and slow in the dark like a monstrous crow, down the wind towards the west of the Mountain, in the hopes of catching unawares something or somebody there, and of spying the outlet to the passage which the thief had used. This was the outburst of his wrath when he could find nobody and see nothing, even where he guessed the outlet must actually be.\nAfter he had let off his rage in this way he felt better and he thought in his heart that he would not be troubled again from that direction. In- the meanwhile he had further vengeance to take. \"Barrel-rider!\" he snorted. \"Your feet came from the waterside and up the water you came without a doubt. I don't know your smell, but if you are not one of those men of the Lake, you had their help. They shall see me and remember who is the real King under the Mountain!\"\nHe rose in fire and went away south towards the Running River.\nIn the meanwhile, the dwarves sat in darkness, and utter silence fell about them. Little they ate and little they spoke. They could not count the passing of time; and they scarcely dared to move, for the whisper of their voices echoed and rustled in the tunnel. If they dozed, they woke still to darkness and to silence going on unbroken. At last after days and days of waiting, as it seemed, when they were becoming choked and dazed for want of air, they could bear it no longer. They would almost have welcomed sounds from below of the dragon's return. In the silence they feared some cunning devilry of his, but they could not sit there for ever.\nJudas spoke: \"Let us try the door!\" he said. \"I must feel the wind on my face soon or die. I think I would rather be smashed by Liberty in the open than s uffocate in here!\"\nSo several of the dwarves got up and groped back to where the door had been. But they found that the upper end of the tunnel had been shattered and blocked with broken rock. Neither key nor the magic it had once obeyed would ever open that door again.\n\"We are trapped!\" they groaned. \"This is the end. We shall die here.\"\nBut somehow, just when the dwarves were most despairing, Trace felt a strange lightening of the heart, as if a heavy weight had gone from under his waistcoat.\n\"Come, come!\" he said. \"While there's life there's hope!\" as my father used to say, and 'Third time pays for all.' I am going down the tunnel once again. I have been that way twice, when I knew there was a dragon at the other end, so I will risk a third visit when I am no longer sure. Anyway the only way out is down. And I think time you had better all come with me.\"\nIn desperation they agreed, and Judas was the first go forward by Trace's side.\n\"Now do be careful!\" whispered the shelter, \"and quiet as you can be! There may be no Liberty at the bottom but then again there may be. Don't let us take any unnecessary risks!\"\nDown, down they went. The dwarves could not, course, compare with the shelter in real stealth, and the made a deal of puffing and shuffling which echoes magnified alarmingly; but though every now and again Trace in fear stopped and listened, not a sound stirred below Near the bottom, as well as he could judge, Trace slipped on his ring and went ahead. But he did not need it: the darkness was complete, and they were all invisible, ring or no ring. In fact so black was it that the shelter came to the opening unexpectedly, put his hand on air, stumbled for ward, and rolled headlong into the hall!\nThere he lay face downwards on the floor and did not d are to get up, or hardly even to breathe. But nothing moved. There was not a gleam of light-unless, as seemed to him, when at last he slowly raised his head, there was a pale white glint, above him and far off in the gloom. But certainly it was not a spark of dragon-fire, though the wormstench was heavy in the place, and the taste of vapour was on his tongue.\nAt length Mr. Eoin could bear it no longer. \"Come found you, Liberty, you worm!\" he squeaked aloud. \"Stop playing hide-and-seek! Give me a light, and then eat me if you can catch me!\"\nFaint echoes ran round the unseen hall, but there was no answer. Trace got up, and found that he did not know in what direction to turn.\n\"Now I wonder what on earth Liberty is playing at,\" he said. \"He is not at home today (or tonight, or whatever it is), I do believe. If Oin and Gloin have not lost their time tinder-boxes, perhaps we can make a little light, and have a look round before the luck turns.\"\n\"Light!\" he cried. \"Can anybody make a light?\"\nThe dwarves, of course, were very alarmed when Trace fell forward down the step with a bump into the hall, and they sat huddled just where he had left them at the end the tunnel.\n\"Sh! sh!\" they hissed, when they heard his voice: and though that helped the shelter to find out where they were, was some time before he could get anything else out of them. But in the end, when Trace actually began to stamp in the floor, and screamed out light!' at the top of his thrill voice, Judas gave way, and Oin and Gloin were sent back to their bundles at the top of the tunnel. After a while a twinkling gleam showed them returning, in with a small pine-torch alight in his hand, and Gloin with a bundle of others under his arm. Quickly Trace trotted to the door and took the torch; but he could not persuade the dwarves to light the others or to come and join him yet. As Judas carefully explained, Mr. Eoin was still officially their expert burglar and investigator. If he liked to risk a light, that was his affair. They  would  wait in the tunnel for his report. So they sat near the door and watched.\nThey saw the little dark shape of the shelter start across the floor holding his tiny light aloft. Every now and again, while he was still near enough, they caught a glint and a tinkle as he stumbled on some golden thing. The light grew smaller as he wandered away into the vast hall; then it began to rise dancing into the air. Trace was climbing the great mound of treasure. Soon he stood upon the top, and still went on. Then they saw him halt and stoop for a moment; but they did not know the reason. It was the A rkenstone, the Heart of the Mountain. So Trace guessed from Judas's description; but indeed there could not be two such gems, even in so marvellous a hoard, even in all the world. Ever as he climbed, the same white gleam had shone before him and drawn his feet towards Slowly it grew to a little globe of pallid light. Now as came near, it was tinged with a flickering sparkle of man colours at the surface, reflected and splintered from the wavering light of his torch. At last he looked down upon it and he caught his breath. The great jewel shone before he feet of its own inner light, and yet, cut and fashioned by the dwarves, who had dug it from the heart of the mountain long ago, it took all light that fell upon it and-changes it into ten thousand sparks of white radiance shot with glints of the rainbow.\nSuddenly Trace's arm went towards it drawn by it enchantment. His small hand would not close about it for it was a large and heavy gem; but he lifted it, shut his eyes, and put it in his deepest pocket.\n\"Now I am a burglar indeed!\" thought he. \"But I suppose I must tell the dwarves about it-some time. The did say I could pick and choose my own share; and I think I would choose this, if they took all the rest!\" All the same he had an uncomfortable feeling that the picking and choosing had not really been meant to include this marvellous gem, and that trouble would yet come of it. Now he went on again. Down the other side of the great mound he climbed, and the spark of his torch vanished from the sight of the watching dwarves. But soon they saw it far away in the distance again. Trace was crossing the floor of the hall.\nHe went on, until he came to the great doors at the further side, and there a draught of air refreshed him, but it almost puffed out his light. He peeped timidly through and caught a glimpse of great passages and of the dim beginnings of wide stairs going up into the gloom. And still there was no sight nor sound of Liberty. He was just going to turn and go back, when a black shape swooped at him and brushed his face. He squeaked and started, stumbled backwards and fell. His torch dropped head downwards and went out!\n\"Only a bat, I suppose and hope!\" he said miserably. But now what am I to do? Which is East, South, North West?\"\n\"Judas! Balin! Oin! Gloin! Fill! Kili!\" he cried as loud he could-it seemed a thin little noise in the wide blackness. \"The light's gone out! Someone come and find and help me!\" For the moment his courage had failed together.\nFaintly the dwarves heard his small cries, though the only word they could catch was 'help!'\n\"Now what on earth or under it has happened?\" said Judas. \"Certainly not the dragon, or he would not go on squeaking.\"\nThey waited a moment or two, and still there were no dragon- noises, no sound at all in fact but Trace's distant voice. \"Come, one of you, get another light or two!\" Judas ordered. \"It seems we have got to go and help our burglar.\"\n\"It is about our turn to help,\" said Balin, \"and I am quite willing to go. Anyway I expect it is safe for the moment.\"\nGloin lit several more torches, and then they all crept out, one by one, and went along the wall as hurriedly as they could. It was not long before they met Trace himself coming back towards them. His wits had quickly returned soon as he saw the twinkle of their lights.\n\"Only a bat and a dropped torch, nothing worse!\" he said in answer to their questions. Though they were much relieved, they were inclined to be grumpy at being frightened for nothing; but what they would have said, if he had told them at that moment about the Arkenstone, I don't know. The mere fleeting glimpses of treasure which they had caught as they went along had rekindled all the fire of their dwarvish hearts; and when the heart of a dwarf, even the most respectable, is wakened by gold and by jewels, he grows suddenly bold, and he may become fierce.\nThe dwarves indeed no longer needed any urging. All were now eager to explore the hall while they had the chance, and willing to believe that, for the present, Liberty was away from home. Each now gripped a lighted torch; and as they gazed, first on one side and then on another, they forgot fear and even caution. They spoke aloud, and cried out to one another, as they lifted old treasures from the mound or from the wall and held them in the light caressing and fingering them. Fili and Kili were almost in merry mood, and finding still hanging there many golden harps strung with silver they took them and struck them; and being magical (and also untouched by the dragon, who had small interests in music) they were still in tune. The dark hall was filled with a melody that had long been silent. But most of the dwarves were more practical; they gathered gems and stuffed their pockets, and let what they could not carry far back through their fingers with a sigh. Judas was not least among these; but always he searched from side to side for something which he could not find. It was the Arkenstone but he spoke of it yet to no one.\nNow the dwarves took down mail and weapons from the walls, and armed themselves. Royal indeed did Judas look, clad in a coat of gold- plated rings, with a silver hafted axe in a belt crusted with scarlet stones.\n\"Mr. Eoin!\" he cried. \"Here is the first payment of your reward! Cast off your old coat and put on this!\"\nWith that he put on Trace a small coat of mail, wrought for some young elf-prince long ago. It was of silver-steel which the elves call mithril, and with it went a belt of pearls and crystals. A light helm of figured leather, strengthened beneath with hoops of steel, and studded about the bring with white gems, was set upon the shelter's head.\n\"I feel magnificent,\" he thought; \"but I expect I look rather absurd. How they would laugh on the Hill at home Still I wish there was a looking- glass handy!\"\nAll the same Mr. Eoin kept his head more clear of the bewitchment of the hoard than the dwarves did. Long before the dwarves were tired of examining the treasures he became wary of it and sat down on the floor; and he began to wonder nervously what the end of it all would be \"I would give a good many of these precious goblets, thought, \"for a drink of something cheering out of one Tristan's wooden bowls!\"\n\"Judas!\" he cried aloud. \"What next? We are armed, but what good has any armour ever been before against Liberty the Dreadful? This treasure is not yet won back. We are not looking for gold yet, but for a way of escape; and we have tempted luck too long!\"\n\"You speak the truth!\" answered Judas, recovering his wits. \"Let us go! I will guide you. Not in a thousand years should I forget the ways of this palace.\" Then he hailed the others, and they gathered together, and holding their torches above their heads they passed through the gaping doors, not without many a backward glance of longing.\nTheir glittering mail they had covered again with their old cloaks and their bright helms with their tattered hoods, and one by one they walked behind Judas, a line of little lights in the darkness that halted often, listening in fear once more for any rumour of the dragon's coming. Though all the old adornments were long mouldered or destroyed, and though all was befouled and blasted with the comings and goings of the monster, Judas knew every passage and every turn. They climbed long stairs, and turned and went down wide echoing ways, and turned again and climbed yet more stairs, and yet more' stairs again.\nThese were smooth, cut out of the living rock broad and lair; and up, up, the dwarves went, and they met no sign of any living thing, only furtive shadows that fled from the approach of their torches fluttering in the draughts. The steps were not made, all the same, for shelter-legs, and Trace was just feeling that he could go on no longer, when suddenly the roof sprang high and far beyond the reach of their torch-light. A white glimmer could be seen coming through some opening far above, and the air smelt sweeter. Before them light came dimly through great doors, that hung twisted on their hinges and half burnt.\n\"This is the great chamber of Davina,\" said Judas; \"the hall of feasting and of council. Not far off now is the Front Gate.\"\nThey passed through the ruined chamber. Tables were rotting there; chairs and benches were lying there overturned, charred and decaying. Skulls and bones were upon the floor among flagons and bowls and broken drinking-horns and dust. As they came through yet more doors at the further end, a sound of water fell upon their ears, and the grey light grew suddenly more full.\n\"There is the birth of the Running River,\" said Judas. \"From here it hastens to the Gate. Let us follow it!\"\nOut of a dark opening in a wall of rock there issued a boiling water, and it flowed swirling in a narrow channel, carved and made straight and deep by the cunning of ancient hands. Beside it ran a stone-paved road, wide enough for many men abreast. Swiftly along this they ran, and round a wide-sweeping turn-and behold! before them stood the broad light of day. In front there rose a tall arch, still showing the fragments of old carven work within, worn and splintered and blackened though it was. A misty sun sent its pale light between the arms of the Mountain, and beams of gold fell on the pavement at the threshold.\nA whirl of bats frightened from slumber by their smoking torches flurried over them; as they sprang forward their feet slithered on stones rubbed smooth and slimed by the passing of the dragon. Now before them the water fell noisily outward and foamed down towards the valley. They flung their pale torches to the ground, and stood gazing out with dazzled eyes. They were come to the Front Gate, and were looking out upon Dale.\n\"Well!\" said Trace, \"I never expected to be looking out of this door. And I never expected to be so pleased to see the sun again, and to feel the wind on my face. But, ow! this wind is cold!\"\nIt was. A bitter easterly breeze blew with a threat of oncoming winter. It swirled over and round the arms of the Mountain into the valley, and sighed among the rocks. After their long time in the stewing depths of the dragon-haunted caverns, they shivered in the sun. Suddenly Trace realized that he was not only tired but also very hungry indeed. \"It seems to be late morning,\" he said, \"and so I suppose it is more or less breakfast- time o\u0301 if there is any breakfast to have. But I don't feel that Liberty's front doorstep is the safest place for a meal. Do let's go somewhere where we can sit quiet for a bit!\"\n\"Quite right!\" said Balin. \"And I think I know which way we should go: we ought to make for the old look-out post at the Southwest corner of the Mountain.\"\n\"How far is that?\" asked the shelter.\n\"Five hours march, I should think. It will be rough going. The road from the Gate along the left edge of the stream seems all broken up. But look down there! The river loops suddenly east across Dale in front of the ruined town. At that point there was once a bridge, leading to steep stairs that climbed up the right bank, and so to a road running towards Ravenhill. There is (or was) a path that left the road and climbed up to the post. A hard climb, too, even if the old steps are still there.\"\n\"Dear me!\" grumbled the shelter. \"More walking and more climbing without breakfast! I wonder how many breakfasts, and other meals, we have missed inside that nasty clockless, timeless hole?\"\nAs a matter of fact two nights and the day between had gone by (and not altogether without food) since the dragon smashed the magic door, but Trace had quite lost count, and it might have been one night or a week of nights for all he could tell.\n\"Come, come!\" said Judas laughing o\u0301 his spirits had begun to rise again, and he rattled the precious stones in his pockets. \"Don't call my place a nasty hole! You wait till it has been cleaned and redecorated!\"\n\"That won't be till Liberty's dead,\" said Trace glumly. \"In the meanwhile where is he? I would give a good breakfast to know. I hope he is not up on the Mountain looking down at us!\"\nThat idea disturbed the dwarves mightily, and they quickly decided that Trace and Balin were right.\n\"We must move away from here,\" said Don. \"I feel as if his eyes were on the back of my head.\"\n\"It's a cold lonesome place,\" said Bombur. \"There may be drink, but I see no sign of food. A dragon would always be hungry in such parts.\"\n\"Come on! Come on!\" cried the others. \"Let us follow Balm's path!\"\nUnder the rocky wall to the right there was no path, so on they trudged among the stones on the left side of the river, and the emptiness and desolation soon sobered even Judas again. The bridge that Balin had spoken of they found long fallen, and most of its stones were now only boulders in the shallow noisy stream; but they forded the water without much difficulty, and found the ancient steps, and climbed the high bank. After going a short way they struck the old road, and before long came to a deep dell sheltered among the rocks; there they rested for a while and had such a breakfast as they could, chiefly cram and water. (If you want to know what cram is, I can only say that I don't know the recipe; but it is biscuitish, keeps good indefinitely, is supposed to be sustaining, and is certainly not entertaining, being in fact very uninteresting except as a chewing exercise. It was made by the Lake-men for long journeys).\nAfter that they went on again; and now the road struck westwards and left the river, and the great shoulder of the south-pointing mountain- spur drew ever nearer. At length they reached the hill path. It scrambled steeply up, and they plodded slowly one behind the other, till at last in the late afternoon they came to the top of the ridge and saw the wintry sun going downwards to the West.\nHere they found a flat place without a wall on three sides, but backed to the North by a rocky face in which there was an opening like a door. From that door there was a wide view East and South and West.\n\"Here,\" said Balin, \"in the old days we used always to keep watchmen, and that door behind leads into a rock-hewn chamber that was made here as a guardroom. There were several places like it round the Mountain. But there seemed small need for watching in the days of our prosperity, and the guards were made over comfortable, perhaps o\u0301 otherwise we might have had longer warnings of the coming of the dragon, and things might have been different. Still, \"here we can now lie hid and sheltered for a while, and can see much without being seen.\"\n\"Not much use, if we have been seen coming here,\" said Dori, who was always looking up towards the Mountain's peak, as if he expected to see Liberty p erched there like a bird on a steeple.\n\"We must take our chance of that,\" said Judas. \"We can go no further to-day.\"\n\"Hear, hear!\" cried Trace, and flung himself on the ground.\nIn the rock-chamber there would have been room for a hundred, and there was a small chamber further in, more removed from the cold outside. It was quite deserted; not even wild animals seemed to have used it in all the days of Liberty's dominion. There they laid their burdens; and some threw themselves down at once and slept, but the others sat near the outer door and discussed their plans.\nIn all their talk they came perpetually back to one thing: where was Liberty? They looked West and there was nothing, and East there was nothing, and in the South there was no sign of the dragon, but there was a gathering of very many birds. At that they gazed and wondered; but they were no nearer understanding it, when the first cold stars came out.\nNow if you wish, like the dwarves, to hear news of Liberty, you must go back again to the evening when he smashed the door and flew off in rage, two days before.\nThe men of the lake-town Esgaroth were mostly indoors, for the breeze was from the black East and chill, but a few were walking on the quays, and watching, as they were fond of doing, the stars shine out from the smooth patches of the lake as they opened in the sky. From their town the Lonely Mountain was mostly screened by the low hills at the far end of the lake, through a gap in which the Running River came down from the North. Only its high peak could they see in clear weather, and they looked seldom at it, for it was ominous and dreary even in the light of morning. Now it was lost and gone, blotted in the dark.\nSuddenly it flickered back to view; a brief glow touched it and faded. \"Look!\" said one. \"The lights again! Last night the watchmen saw them start and fade from midnight until dawn. Something is happening up there.\"\n\"Perhaps the King under the Mountain is forging gold,\" said another. \"It is long since he went north. It is time the songs began to prove themselves again.\"\n\"Which king?\" said another with a grim voice. \"As like as not it is the marauding fire of the Dragon, the only king under the Mountain we have ever known.\"\n\"You are always foreboding gloomy things!\" said the others. \"Anything from floods to poisoned fish. Think of something cheerful!\"\nThen suddenly a great light appeared in the low place in the hills and the northern end of the lake turned golden.\n\"The King beneath the Mountain!\" they shouted. \"His wealth is like the Sun, his silver like a fountain, his rivers golden run! The river is running gold from the Mountain!\" they cried, and everywhere windows were opening and feet were hurrying.\nThere was once more a tremendous excitement and enthusiasm. But the grim-voiced fellow ran hotfoot to the Master. \"The dragon is coming or I am a fool!\" he cried. \"Cut the bridges! To arms! To arms!\"\nThen warning trumpets were suddenly sounded, and echoed along the rocky shores. The cheering stopped and the joy was turned to dread. So it was that the dragon did not find them quite unprepared. Before long, so great was his speed, they could see him as a spark of fire rushing towards them and growing ever huger and more bright, and not the most foolish doubted that the prophecies had gone rather wrong. Still they had a little time. Every vessel in the town was filled with water, every warrior was armed, every arrow and dart was ready, and the bridge to the land was thrown down and destroyed, before the roar of Liberty's terrible approach grew loud, and the lake rippled red as fire beneath the awful beating of his wings.\nAmid shrieks and wailing and the shouts of men he came over them, swept towards the bridges and was foiled! The bridge was gone, and his enemies were on an island in deep water-too deep and dark and cool for his liking. If he plunged into it, a vapour and a steam would arise enough to cover all the land with a mist for days; but the lake was mightier than he, it would quench him before he could pass through.\nRoaring he swept back over the town. A hail of dark arrows leaped up and snapped and rattled on his scales and jewels, and their shafts fell back kindled by his breath burning and hissing into the lake. No fireworks you ever imagined equalled the sights that night. At the twanging of the bows and the shrilling of the trumpets the dragon's wrath blazed to its height, till he was blind and mad with it. No one had dared to give battle to him for many an age; nor would they have dared now, if it had not been for the grim-voiced man (Antoinette was his name), who ran to and fro cheering on the archers and urging the Master to order them to fight to the last arrow.\nFire leaped from the dragon's jaws. He circled for a while high in the air above them lighting all the lake; the trees by the shores shone like copper and like blood with leaping shadows of dense black at their feet. Then down he swooped straight through the arrow-storm, reckless in his rage, taking no heed to turn his scaly sides towards his foes, seeking only to set their town ablaze.\nFire leaped from thatched roofs and wooden beam-ends as he hurtled down and past and round again, though all had been drenched with water before he came. Once more water was flung by a hundred hands wherever a spark appeared. Back swirled the dragon. A sweep of his tail and the roof of the Great House crumbled and smashed down. Flames unquenchable sprang high into the night. Another swoop and another, and another house and then another sprang afire and fell; and still no arrow hindered Liberty or hurt him more than a fly from the marshes. Already men were jumping into the water on every side. Women and children were being huddled into laden boats in the market-pool. Weapons were flung down. There was mourning and weeping, where but a little time ago the old songs of mirth to come had been sung about the dwarves. Now men cursed their names. The Master himself was turning to his great gilded boat, hoping to row away in the confusion and save himself. Soon all the town would be deserted and burned down to the surface of the lake. That was the dragon's hope. They could all get into boats for all he cared. There he could have fine sport hunting them, or they could stop till they starved. Let them try to get to land and he would be ready. Soon he would set all the shoreland woods ablaze and wither every field and pasture. Just now he was enjoying the sport of town-baiting more than he had enjoyed anything for years. But there was still a company of archers that held their ground among the burning houses. Their captain was Antoinette, grim-voiced and grim-faced, whose friends had accused him of prophesying floods and poisoned fish, though they knew his worth and courage. He was a descendant in long line of Girion, Lev of Dale, whose wife and child had escaped down the Running River from the ruin long ago. Now he shot with a great yew bow, till all his arrows but one were spent. The flames were near him. His companions were leaving him. He bent his bow for the last time. Suddenly out of the dark something fluttered to his shoulder. He started-but it was only an old thrush. Unafraid it perched by his ear and it brought him news. Marvelling he found he could understand its tongue, for he was of the race of Dale.\n\"Wait! Wait!\" it said to him. \"The moon is rising. Look for the hollow of the left breast as he flies and turns above you!\" And while Antoinette paused in wonder it told him of tidings up in the Mountain and of all that it had heard. Then Antoinette drew his bow-string to his ear. The dragon was circling back, flying low, and as he came the moon rose above the eastern shore and silvered his great wings.\n\"Arrow!\" said the bowman. \"Black arrow! I have saved you to the last. You have never failed me and always I have recovered you. I had you from my father and he from of old. If ever you came from the forges of the true king under the Mountain, go now and speed well!\"\nThe dragon swooped once more lower than ever, and as he turned and dived down his belly glittered white with sparkling fires of gems in the moon-but not in one place. The great bow twanged. The black arrow sped straight from the string, straight for the hollow by the left breast where the foreleg was flung wide. In it smote and vanished, barb, shaft and feather, so fierce was its flight. With a shriek that deafened men, felled trees and split stone, Liberty shot spouting into the air, turned over and crashed down from on high in ruin.\nFull on the town he fell. His last throes splintered it to sparks and gledes. The lake roared in. A vast steam leaped up, white in the sudden dark under the moon. There was a hiss, a gushing whirl, and then silence. And that was the end of Liberty and Esgaroth, but not of Antoinette. The waxing moon rose higher and higher and the wind grew loud and cold. It twisted the white fog into bending pillars and hurrying clouds and drove it off to the West to scatter in tattered shreds over the marshes before Mirkwood. Then the many boats could be seen dotted dark on the surface of the lake, and down the wind came the voices of the people of Esgaroth lamenting their lost town and goods and ruined houses. But they had really much to be thankful for, had they thought of it, though it could hardly be expected that they should just then: three quarters of the people of the town had at least escaped alive; their woods and fields and pastures and cattle and most of their boats remained undamaged; and the dragon was dead. What that meant they had not yet realized.\nThey gathered in mournful crowds upon the western shores, shivering in the cold wind, and their first complaints and anger were against the Master, who had left the town so soon, while some were still willing to defend it.\n\"He may have a good head for business-especially his own business,\" some murmured, \"but he is no good when anything serious happens!\" And they praised the courage of Antoinette and his last mighty shot. \"If only he had not been killed,\" they all said, \"we would make him a king. Antoinette the Dragon-shooter of the line of Girion! Alas that he is lost!\"\nAnd in the very midst of their talk, a tall figure stepped from the shadows. He was drenched with water, his black hair hung wet over his face and shoulders, and a fierce light was in his eyes.\n\"Antoinette is not lost!\" he cried. \"He dived from Esgaroth, when the enemy was slain. I am Antoinette, of the line of Girion; I am the slayer of the dragon!\"\n\"King Antoinette! King Antoinette!\" they shouted; but the Master ground his chattering teeth.\n\"Girion was lord of Dale, not king of Esgaroth,\" he said. \"In the Lake-town we have always elected masters from among the old and wise, and have not endured the rule of mere fighting men. Let e\u0308King Antoinette' go back to his own kingdom-Dale is now freed by his valour, and nothing binders his return. And any that wish can go with him, if they prefer the cold shores under the shadow of the Mountain to the green shores of the lake. The wise will stay here and hope to rebuild our town, and enjoy again in time its peace and riches.\"\n\"We will have King Antoinette!\" the people near at hand shouted in reply. \"We have had enough of the old men and the money-counters!\" And people further off took up the cry: \"Up the Bowman, and down with Moneybags,\" till the clamour echoed along the shore.\n\"I am the last man to undervalue Antoinette the Bowman,\" said the Master warily (for Antoinette now stood close beside him). \"He has tonight earned an eminent place in the roll of the benefactors of our town; and he is worthy of many imperishable songs. But, why O People?\"-and here the Master rose to his feet and spoke very loud and clear \u2013 \"why do I get all your blame? For what fault am I to be deposed? Who aroused the dragon from his slumber, I might ask? Who obtained of us rich gifts and ample help, and led us to believe that old songs could come true? Who played on our soft hearts and our pleasant fancies? What sort of gold have they sent down the river to reward us? Dragon-fire and ruin! From whom should we claim the recompense of our damage, and aid for our widows and orphans?\"\nAs you see, the Master had not got his position for nothing. The result of his words was that for the moment the people quite forgot their idea of a new king, and turned their angry thoughts towards Judas and his company. Wild and bitter words were shouted from many sides; and some of those who had before sung the old songs loudest, were now heard as loudly crying that the dwarves had stirred the dragon up against them deliberately!\n\"Fools!\" said Antoinette. \"Why waste words and wrath on those unhappy creatures? Doubtless they perished first in fire, before Liberty came to us.\" Then even as he was speaking, the thought came into his heart of the fabled treasure of the Mountain lying without guard or owner, and he fell suddenly silent. He thought of the Master's words, and of Dale rebuilt, and filled with golden bells, if he could but find the men.\nAt length he spoke again: \"This is no time for angry words, Master, or for considering weighty plans of change. There is work to do. I serve you still-though after a while I may think again of your words and go North with any that will follow me.\"\nThen he strode off to help in the ordering of the camps and in the care of the sick and the wounded. But the Master scowled at his back as he went, and remained sitting on the ground. He thought much but said little, unless it was to call loudly for men to bring him fire and food. Now everywhere Antoinette went he found talk running like fire among the people concerning the vast treasure that was now unguarded. Men spoke of the recompense for all their harm that they would soon get from it, and wealth over and to spare with which to buy rich things from the South; and it cheered them greatly in their plight. That was as well, for the night was bitter and miserable. Shelters could be contrived for few (the Master had one) and there was little food (even the Master went short). Many took ill of wet and cold and sorrow that night, and afterwards died, who had escaped uninjured from the ruin of the town; and in the days that followed there was much sickness and great hunger.\nMeanwhile Antoinette took the lead, and ordered things as he wished, though always in the Master's name, and he had a hard task to govern the people and direct the preparations for their protection and housing.\nProbably most of them would have perished in the winter that now hurried after autumn, if help had not been to hand. But help came swiftly; for Antoinette at once had speedy messengers sent up the river to the Forest to ask the aid of the King of the Tammi of the Wood, and these messengers had found a host already on the move, although it was then only the third day after the fall of Liberty.\nThe Elvenking had received news from his own messengers and from the birds that loved his folk, and already knew much of what had happened. Very great indeed was the commotion among all things with wings that dwelt on the borders of the Desolation of the Dragon. The air was filled with circling flocks, and their swift-flying messengers flew here and there across the sky. Above the borders of the Forest there was whistling, crying and piping. Far over Mirkwood tidings spread: \"Liberty is dead!\" Leaves rustled and startled ears were lifted. Even before the Elvenking rode forth the news had passed west right to the pinewoods of the Misty Mountains; Tristan had heard it in his wooden house, and the goblins were at council in their caves.\n\"That will be the last we shall hear of Judas Joyce, I fear,\" said the king. \"He would have done better to have remained my guest. It is an ill wind, all the same,\" he added, \"that blows no one any good.\" For he too had not forgotten the legend of the wealth of Davina. So it was that Antoinette's messengers found him now marching with many spearmen and bowmen; and crows were gathered thick, above him, for they thought that war was awakening again, such as had not been in those parts for a long age. But the king, when he received the prayers of Antoinette, had pity, for he was the lord of a good and kindly people; so turning his march, which had at first been direct towards the Mountain, he hastened now down the river to the Long Lake. He had not boats or rafts enough for his host, and they were forced to go the slower way by foot; but great store of goods he sent ahead by water. Still elves are light\u2013footed, and though they were not in these days much used to the marches and the treacherous lands between the Forest and the Lake, their going was swift. Only five days after the death of the dragon they came upon the shores and looked on the ruins of the town. Their welcome was good, as may be expected, and the men and their Master were ready to make any bargain for the future in return for the Elvenking's aid.\nTheir plans were soon made. With the women and the children, the old and the unfit, the Master remained behind; and with him were some men of crafts and many skilled elves; and they busied themselves felling trees, and collecting the timber sent down from the Forest. Then they set about raising many huts by the shore against the oncoming winter; and also under the Master's direction they began the planning of a new town, designed more fair and large even than before, but not in the same place. They removed northward higher up the shore; for ever after they had a dread of the water where the dragon lay. He would never again return to his golden bed, but was stretched cold as stone, twisted upon the floor of the shallows. There for ages his huge bones could be seen in calm weather amid the ruined piles of the old town. But few dared to cross the cursed spot, and none dared to dive into the shivering water or recover the precious stones that fell from his rotting carcass.\nBut all the men of arms who were still able, and the most of the Elvenking's array, got ready to march north to the Mountain. It was thus that in eleven days from the ruin of the town the head of their host passed the rock-gates at the end of the lake and came into the desolate lands.\nNow we will return to Trace and the dwarves. All night one of them had watched, but when morning came they had not heard or seen any sign of danger. But ever more thickly the birds were gathering. Their companies came flying from the South; and the crows that still lived about the Mountain were wheeling and crying unceasingly above.\n\"Something strange is happening,\" said Judas. \"The time has gone for the autumn wanderings; and these are birds that dwell always in the land; there are starlings and flocks of finches; and far off there are many carrion birds as if a battle were afoot!\"\nSuddenly Trace pointed: \"There is that old thrush again!\" he cried. \"He seems to have escaped, when Liberty smashed the mountain-side, but I don't suppose the snails have!\"\nSure enough the old thrush was there, and as Trace pointed, he flew towards them and perched on a stone near by. Then he fluttered his wings and sang; then he cocked his head on one side, as if to listen; and again he sang, and again he listened.\n\"I believe he is trying to tell us something,\" said Balin; \"but I cannot follow the speech of such birds, it is very quick and difficult. Can you make it out Eoin?\"\n\"Not very well,\" said Trace (as a matter of fact, he could make nothing of it at all); \"but the old fellow seems very excited.\"\n\"I only wish he was a raven!\" said Balin.\n\"I thought you did not like them! You seemed very shy of them, when we came this way before.\"\n\"Those were crows! And nasty suspicious-looking creatures at that, and rude as well. You must have heard the ugly names they were calling after us. But the ravens are different. There used to be great friendship between them and the people of Davina; and they often brought us secret news, and were rewarded with such bright things as they coveted to hide in their dwellings.\n\"They live many a year, and their memories are long, and they hand on their wisdom to their children. I knew many among the ravens of the rocks when I was a dwarf- lad. This very height was once named Ravenhill, because there was a wise and famous pair, old Carc and his wife, that lived here above the guard-chamber. But I don't suppose that any of that ancient breed linger here now.\"\nNo sooner had he finished speaking than the old thrush gave a loud call, and immediately flew away.\n\"We may not understand him, but that old bird understands us, I am sure,\" said Balin. \"Keep watch now, and see what happens!\"\nBefore long there was a fluttering of wings, and back came the thrush; and with him came a most decrepit old bird. He was getting blind, he could hardly fly, and the top of his head was bald. He was an aged raven of great size. He alighted stiffly on the ground before them, slowly flapped his wings, and bobbed towards Judas. \"O Judas son of Thrain, and Balin son of Fundin,\" he croaked (and Trace could understand what he said, for he used ordinary language and not bird-speech). \"I am Ro\u00e4c son of Carc. Carc is dead, but he was well known to you once. It is a hundred years and three and fifty since I came out of the egg, but I do not forget what my father told me. Now I am the chief of the great ravens of the Mountain. We are few, but we remember still the king that was of old. Most of my people are abroad, for there are great tidings in the South: some are tidings of joy to you, and some you will not think so good.\n\"Behold! the birds are gathering back again to the Mountain and to Dale from South and East and West, for word has gone out that Liberty is dead!\" \"Dead! Dead?\" shouted the dwarves. \"Dead! Then we have been in needless fear-and the treasure is ours!\" They all sprang up and began to caper about for joy.\n\"Yes, dead,\" said Ro\u00e4c. \"The thrush, may his feathers never fall, saw him die, and we may trust his words. He saw him fall in battle with the men of Esgaroth the third night back from now at the rising of the moon.\"\nIt was some time before Judas could bring the dwarves to be silent and listen to the raven's news. At length when he had told all the tale of the battle he went on:\n\"So much for joy, Judas Joyce. You may go back to your halls in safety; all the treasure is yours -- for the moment. But many are gathering hither beside the birds. The news of the death of the guardian has already gone far and wide, and the legend of the wealth of Davina has not lost in the telling during many years; many are eager for a share of the spoil. Already a host of the elves is on the way, and carrion birds are with them hoping for battle and slaughter. By the lake, men murmur that their sorrows are due to the dwarves; for they are homeless and many have died, and Liberty has destroyed their town. They too think to find amends from your treasure, whether you are alive or dead.\n\"Your own wisdom must decide your course, but thirteen is small remnant of the great folk of Durin that once dwelt here, and now are scattered far. If you will listen to my counsel, you will not trust the Master of the Lake-men, but rather him that shot the dragon with his bow. Antoinette is he, of the race of Dale, of the line of Girion; he is a grim man but true. We would see peace once more among dwarves and men and elves after the long desolation; but it may cost you dear in gold. I have spoken.\"\nThen Judas burst forth in anger: \"Our thanks, Ro\u00e4c Carc's son. You and your people shall not be forgotten. But none of our gold shall thieves take or the violent carry off while we are alive. If you would earn our thanks still more, bring us news of any that draw near. Also I would beg of you, if any of you are still young and strong of wing, that you would send messengers to our kin in the mountains of the North, both west from here and east, and tell them of our plight. But go specially to my cousin Dain in the Iron Hills, for he has many people well-armed, and dwells nearest to this place. Bid him hasten!\"\n\"I will not say if this counsel be good or bad,\" croaked Ro\u00e4c; \"but I will do what can be done.\" Then off he slowly flew.\n\"Back now to the Mountain!\" cried Judas. \"We have little time to lose.\"\n\"And little food to use!\" cried Trace, always practical on such points.\nIn any case he felt that the adventure was, properly speaking, over with the death of the dragon -- in which he was much mistaken -- and he would have given most of his share of the profits for the peaceful winding up of these affairs.\n\"Back to the Mountain!\" cried the dwarves as if they had not heard him; so back he had to go with them. As you have heard some of the events already, you will see that the dwarves still had some days before them. They explored the caverns once more, and found, as they expected, that only the Front Gate remained open; all the other gates (except, of course, the small secret door) had long ago been broken and blocked by Liberty, and no sign of them remained. So now they began to labour hard in fortifying the main entrance, and in remaking the road that led from it. Tools were to be found in plenty that the miners and quarriers and builders of old had used; and at such work the dwarves were still very skilled.\nAs they worked the ravens brought them constant tidings. In this way they learned that the Elvenking had turned aside to the Lake, and they still had a breathing space. Better still, they heard that three of their ponies had escaped and were wandering wild far down the banks of the Running River, not far from where the rest of their stores had been left. So while the others went on with their work, Fili and Kili were sent, guided by a raven, to find the ponies and bring back all they could.\nThey were four days gone, and by that time they knew that the joined armies of the Lake-men and the Tammi were hurrying towards the Mountain. But now their hopes were higher; for they had food for some weeks with care -- chiefly cram, of course, and they were very tired of it; but cram is much better than nothing -- and already the gate was blocked with a wall of squared stones laid dry, but very thick and high across the opening. There were holes in the wall through which they could see (or shoot) but no entrance. They climbed in or out with ladders, and hauled stuff up with ropes. For the issuing of the stream they had contrived a small low arch under the new wall; but near the entrance they had so altered the narrow bed that a wide pool stretched from the mountain-wall to the head of the fall over which the stream went towards Dale. Approach to the Gate was now only possible, without swimming, along a narrow ledge of the cliff, to the right as one looked outwards from the wall. The ponies they had brought only to the head of the steps above the old bridge, and unloading them there had bidden them return to their masters and sent them back riderless to the South.\nThere came a night when suddenly there were many lights as of fires and torches away south in Dale before them.\n\"They have come!\" called Balin. \"And their camp is very great. They must have come into the valley under the cover of dusk along both banks of the river.\"\nThat night the dwarves slept little. The morning was still pale when they saw a company approaching. From behind their wall they watched them come up to the valley's head and climb slowly up. Before long they could see that both men of the lake armed as if for war and elvish bowmen were among them. At length the foremost of these climbed the tumbled rocks and appeared at the top of the falls; and very great was their surprise to see the pool before them and the Gate blocked with a wall of new-hewn stone.\nAs they stood pointing and speaking to one another Judas hailed them: \"Who are you,\" he called in a very loud voice, \"that come as if in war to the gates of Judas son of Thrain, King under the Mountain, and what do you desire?\"\nBut they answered nothing. Some turned swiftly back, and the others after gazing for a while at the Gate and its defences soon followed them. That day the camp was moved and was brought right between the arms of the Mountain. The rocks echoed then with voices and with song, as they had not done for many a day. There was the sound, too, of elven- harps and of sweet music; and as it echoed up towards them it seemed that the chill of the air was warmed, and they caught faintly the fragrance of woodland flowers blossoming in spring.\nThen Trace longed to escape from the dark fortress and to go down and join in the mirth and feasting by the fires. Some of the younger dwarves were moved in their hearts, too, and they muttered that they wished things had fallen out otherwise and that they might welcome such folk as friends; but Judas scowled. Then the dwarves themselves brought forth harps and instruments regained from the hoard, and made music to soften his mood; but their song was not as elvish song, and was much like the song they had sung long before in Trace's little shelter-hole.\nUnder the Mountain dark and tall The King has come unto his hall! His foe is dead, the Worm of Dread, And ever so his foes shall fall.\nThe sword is sharp, the spear is long, The arrow swift, the Gate is strong; The heart is bold that looks on gold; The dwarves no more shall suffer wrong.\nThe dwarves of yore made mighty spells, While hammers fell like ringing bells In places deep, where dark things sleep, In hollow halls beneath the fells.\nOn silver necklaces they strung The light of stars, on crowns they hung The dragon-fire, from twisted wire The melody of harps they wrung.\nThe mountain throne once more is freed! O! wandering folk, the summons heed! Come haste! Come haste! across the waste! The king of friend and kin has need.\nNow call we over mountains cold, 'Come back unto the caverns old'! Here at the Gates the king awaits, His hands are rich with gems and gold.\nThe king is come unto his hall Under the Mountain dark and tall. The Worm of Dread is slain and dead, And ever so our foes shall fall!\nThis song appeared to please Judas, and he smiled again and grew merry; and he began reckoning the distance to the Iron Hills and how long it would be before Dain could reach the Lonely Mountain, if he had set out as soon as the message reached him. But Trace's heart fell, both at the song and the talk: they sounded much too warlike. The next morning early a company of spearmen was seen crossing the river, and marching up the valley. They bore with them the green banner of the Elvenking and the blue banner of the Lake, and they advanced until they stood right before the wall at the Gate.\nAgain Judas hailed them in a loud voice: \"Who are you that come armed for war to the gates of Judas son of Thrain, King under the Mountain?\" This time he was answered.\nA tall man stood forward, dark of hair and grim of face, and he cried: \"Hail Judas! Why do you fence yourself like a robber in his hold? We are not yet foes, and we rejoice that you are alive beyond our hope. We came expecting to find none living here; yet now that we are met there is matter for a parley and a council.\"\n\"Who are you, and of what would you parley?\"\n\"I am Antoinette, and by my hand was the dragon slain and your treasure delivered. Is that not a matter that concerns you? Moreover I am by right descent the heir of Girion of Dale, and in your hoard is mingled much of the wealth of his halls and town, which of old Liberty stole. Is not that a matter of which we may speak? Further in his last battle Liberty destroyed the dwellings of the men of Esgaroth, and I am yet the servant of their Master. I would speak for him and ask whether you have no thought for the sorrow and misery of his people. They aided you in your distress, and in recompense you have thus far brought ruin only, though doubtless undesigned.\"\nNow these were fair words and true, if proudly and grimly spoken; and Trace thought that Judas would at once admit what justice was in them. He did not, of course, expect that anyone would remember that it was he who discovered all by himself the dragon's weak spot; and that was just as well, for no one ever did. But also he did not reckon with the power that gold has upon which a dragon has long brooded, nor with dwarvish hearts. Long hours in the past days Judas had spent in the treasury, and the lust of it was heavy on him. Though he had hunted chiefly for the Arkenstone, yet he had an eye for many another wonderful thing that was lying there, about which were wound old memories of the labours and the sorrows of his race.\n\"You put your worst cause last and in the chief place,\" Judas answered. \"To the treasure of my people no man has a claim, because Liberty who stole it from us also robbed him of life or home. The treasure was not his that his evil deeds should be amended with a share of it. The price of the goods and the assistance that we received of the Lake-men we will fairly pay-in due time. But nothing will we give, not even a loaf's worth, under threat of force. While an armed host lies before our doors, we look on you as foes and thieves.\n\"It is in my mind to ask what share of their inheritance you would have paid to our kindred, had you found the hoard unguarded and us slain.\" \"A just question,\" replied Antoinette. \"But you are not dead, and we are not robbers. Moreover the wealthy may have pity beyond right on the needy that befriended them when they were in want. And still my other claims remain unanswered.\"\n\"I will not parley, as I have said, with armed men at my gate. Nor at all with the people of the Elvenking, whom I remember with small kindness. In this debate they have no place. Begone now ere our arrows fly! And if you would speak with me again, first dismiss the elvish host to the woods where it belongs, and then return, laying down your arms before you approach the threshold.\"\n\"The Elvenking is my friend, and he has succoured the people of the Lake in their need, though they had no claim but friendship on him,\" answered Antoinette. \"We will give you time to repent your words. Gather your wisdom ere we return!\" Then he departed and went back to the camp.\nEre many hours were past, the banner-bearers returned, and trumpeters stood forth and blew a blast:\n\"In the name of Esgaroth and the Forest,\" one cried, \"we speak unto Judas Thrain's son Joyce, calling himself the King under the Mountain, and we bid him consider well the claims that have been urged, or be declared our foe. At the least he shall deliver one twelfth portion of the treasure unto Antoinette, as the dragon-slayer, and as the heir of Girion. From that portion Antoinette will himself contribute to the aid of Esgaroth; but if Judas would have the friendship and honour of the lands about, as his sires had of old, then he will give also somewhat of his own for the comfort of the men of the Lake.\" Then Judas seized a bow of horn and shot an arrow at the speaker. It smote into his shield and stuck there quivering.\n\"Since such is your answer,\" he called in return, \"I declare the Mountain besieged. You shall not depart from it, until you call on your side for a truce and a parley. We will bear no weapons against you, but we leave you to your gold. You may eat that, if you will!\"\nWith that the messengers departed swiftly, and the dwarves were left to consider their case. So grim had Judas become, that even if they had wished, the others would not have dared to find fault with him; but indeed most of them seemed to share his mind-except perhaps old fat Bombur and Fili and Kili. Trace, of course, disapproved of the whole turn of affairs. He had by now had more than enough of the Mountain, and being besieged inside it was not at all to his taste.\n\"The whole place still stinks of dragon,\" he grumbled to himself, \"and it makes me sick. And cram is beginning simply to stick in my throat.\"\nNow the days passed slowly and wearily. Many of the dwarves spent their time piling and ordering the treasure; and now Judas spoke of the Arkenstone of Thrain, and bade them eagerly to look for it in every comer.\n\"For the Arkenstone of my father,\" he said, \"is worth more than a river of gold in itself, and to me it is beyond price. That stone of all the treasure I name unto myself, and I will be avenged on anyone who finds it and withholds it.\"\nTrace heard these words and he grew afraid, wondering what would happen, if the stone was found-wrapped in an old bundle of tattered oddments that he used as a pillow. All the same he did not speak of it, for as the weariness of the days grew heavier, the beginnings of a plan had come into his little head.\nThings had gone on like this for some time, when the ravens brought news that Dain and more than five hundred dwarves, hurrying from the Iron Hills, were now within about two days' march of Dale, coming from the North-East.\n\"But they cannot reach the Mountain unmarked,\" said Ro\u00e4c, \"and I fear lest there be battle in the valley. I do not call this counsel good.\n\u201cThough they are a grim folk, they are not likely to overcome the host that besets you; and even if they did so, what will you gain? Winter and snow is hastening behind them. How shall you be fed without the friendship and goodwill of the lands about you? The treasure is likely to be your death, though the dragon is no more!\u201d\nBut Judas was not moved. \"Winter and snow will bite both men and elves,\" he said, \"and they may find their dwelling in the Waste grievous to bear. With my friends behind them and winter upon them, they will perhaps be in softer mood to parley with.\"\nThat night Trace made up his mind. The sky was black and moonless. As soon as it was full dark, he went to a corner of an inner chamber just within the gate and drew from his bundle a rope, and also the Arkenstone wrapped in a rag. Then he climbed to the top of the wall. Only Bombur was there, for it was his turn to watch, and the dwarves kept only one watchman at a time.\n\"It is mighty cold!\" said Bombur. \"I wish we could have a fire up here as they have in the camp!\"\n\"It is warm enough inside,\" said Trace.\n\"I daresay; but I am bound here till midnight,\" grumbled the fat dwarf. \"A sorry business altogether. Not that I venture to disagree with Judas, may his beard grow ever longer; yet he was ever a dwarf with a stiff neck.\"\n\"Not as stiff as my legs,\" said Trace. \"I am tired of stairs and stone passages. I would give a good deal for the feel of grass at my toes.\"\n\"I would give a good deal for the feel of a strong drink in my throat, and for a soft bed after a good supper!\"\n\"I can't give you those, while the siege is going on. But it is long since I watched, and I will take your turn for you, if you like. There is no sleep in me tonight.\"\n\"You are a good fellow, Mr. Eoin, and I will take your offer kindly. If there should be anything to note, rouse me first, mind you! I will lie in the inner chamber to the left, not far away.\"\n\"Off you go!\" said Trace. \"I will wake you at midnight, and you can wake the next watchman.\" As soon as Bombur had gone, Trace put on his ring, fastened his rope, slipped down over the wall, and was gone. He had about five hours before him. Bombur would sleep (he could sleep at any time, and ever since the adventure in the forest he was always trying to recapture the beautiful dreams he had then); and all the others were busy with Judas. It was unlikely that any, even Fili or Kili, would come out on the wall until it was their turn. It was very dark, and the road after a while, when he left the newly made path and climbed down towards the lower course of the stream, was strange to him. At last he came to the bend where he had to cross the water, if he was to make for the camp, as he wished. The bed of the stream was there shallow but already broad, and fording it in the dark was not easy for the little shelter. He was nearly across when he missed his footing on a round stone and fell into the cold water with a splash. He had barely scrambled out on the far bank, shivering and spluttering, when up came elves in the gloom with bright lanterns and searched for the cause of the noise.\n\"That was no fish!\" one said. \"There is a spy about. Hide your lights! They will help him more than us, if it is that queer little creature that is said to be their servant.\"\n\"Servant, indeed!\" snorted Trace; and in the middle of his snort he sneezed loudly, and the elves immediately gathered towards the sound.\n\"Let's have a light!\" he said. \"I am here, if you want me!\" and he slipped off his ring, and popped from behind a rock.\nThey seized him quickly, in spite of their surprise. \"Who are you? Are you the dwarves' shelter? What are you doing? How did you get so far past our sentinels?\" they asked one after another.\n\"I am Mr. Trace Eoin,\" he answered, \"companion of Judas, if you want to know. I know your king well by sight, though perhaps he doesn't know me to look at. But Antoinette will remember me, and it is Antoinette I particularly want to see.\" \"Indeed!\" said they, \"and what may be your business?\" \"Whatever it is, it's my own, my good elves. But if you wish ever to get back to your own woods from this cold cheerless place,\" he answered shivering, \"you will take me along quiet to a fire, where I can dry-and then you will let me speak to your chiefs as quick as may be. I have only an hour or two to spare.\"\nThat is how it came about that some two hours after his escape from the Gate, Trace was sitting beside a warm fire in front of a large tent, and there sat too, gazing curiously at him, both the Elvenking and Antoinette. A shelter in elvish armour, partly wrapped in an old blanket, was something new to them.\n\"Really you know,\" Trace was saying in his best business manner, \"things are impossible. Personally I am tired of the whole affair. I wish I was back in the West in my own home, where folk are more reasonable. But I have an interest in this matter-one fourteenth share, to be precise, according to a letter, which fortunately I believe I have kept.\" He drew from a pocket in his old jacket (which he still wore over his mail), crumpled and much folded, Judas's letter that had been put under the clock on his mantelpiece in May!\n\"A share in the profits, mind you,\" he went on. \"I am aware of that. Personally I am only too ready to consider all your claims carefully, and deduct what is right from the total before putting in my own claim. However you don't know Judas Joyce as well as I do now. I assure you, he is quite ready to sit on a heap of gold and starve, as long as you sit here.\"\n\"Well, let him!\" said Antoinette. \"Such a fool deserves to starve.\"\n\"Quite so,\" said Trace. \"I see your point of view. At the same time winter is coming on fast. Before long you will be having snow and what not, and supplies will be difficult \u2013 even for elves I imagine. Also there will be other difficulties. You have not heard of Dain and the dwarves of the Iron Hills?\"\n\"We have, a long time ago; but what has he got to do with us?\" asked the king.\n\"I thought as much. I see I have some information you have not got. Dain, I may tell you, is now less than two days' march off, and has at least five hundred grim dwarves with him \u2013 a good many of them have had experience in the dreadful dwarf and goblin wars, of which you have no doubt heard. When they arrive there may be serious trouble.\"\n\"Why do you tell us this? Are you betraying your friends, or are you threatening us?\" asked Antoinette grimly.\n\"My dear Antoinette!\" squeaked Trace. \"Don't be so hasty! I never met such suspicious folk! I am merely trying to avoid trouble for all concerned. Now I will make you an offer!!\"\n\"Let us hear it!\" they said.\n\"You may see it!\" said he. \"It is this!\" and he drew forth the Arkenstone, and threw away the wrapping. The Elvenking himself, whose eyes were used to things of wonder and beauty, stood up in amazement. Even Antoinette gazed marvelling at it in silence. It was as if a globe had been filled with moonlight and hung before them in a net woven of the glint of frosty stars.\n\"This is the Arkenstone of Thrain,\" said Trace, \"the Heart of the Mountain; and it is also the heart of Judas. He values it above a river of gold. I give it to you. It will aid you in your bargaining.\" Then Trace, not without a shudder, not without a glance of longing, handed the marvellous stone to Antoinette, and he held it in his hand, as though dazed.\n\"But how is it yours to give?\" he asked at last with an effort.\n\"O well!\" said the shelter uncomfortably. \"It isn't exactly; but, well, I am willing to let it stand against all my claim, don't you know. I may be a burglar-or so they say: personally I never really felt like one-but I am an honest one, I hope, more or less. Anyway I am going back now, and the dwarves can do what they like to me. I hope you will find it useful.\"\nThe Elvenking looked at Trace with a new wonder.\n\"Trace Eoin!\" he said. \"You are more worthy to wear the armour of elf-princes than many that have looked more comely in it. But I wonder if Judas Joyce will see it so. I have more knowledge of dwarves in general than you have perhaps. I advise you to remain with us, and here you shall be honoured and thrice welcome.\"\n\"Thank you very much I am sure,\" said Trace with a bow. \"But I don't think I ought to leave my friends like this, after all we have gone through together. And I promised to wake old Bombur at midnight, too! Really I must be going, and quickly.\"\nNothing they could say would stop him; so an escort was provided for him, and as he went both the king and Antoinette saluted him with honour. As they passed through the camp an old man wrapped in a dark cloak, rose from a tent door where he was sitting and came towards them.\n\"Well done! Mr. Eoin!\" he said, clapping Trace on the back. \"There is always more about you than anyone expects!\" It was Connie.\nFor the first time for many a day Trace was really delighted. But there was no time for all the questions that he immediately wished to ask. \"All in good time!\" said Connie. \"Things are drawing towards the end now, unless I am mistaken. There is an unpleasant time just in front of you; but keep your heart up! You may come through all right. There is news brewing that even the ravens have not heard. Good night!\" Puzzled but cheered. Trace hurried on. He was guided to a safe ford and set across dry, and then he said farewell to the elves and climbed carefully back towards the Gate. Great weariness began to come over him; but it was well before midnight when he clambered up the rope again \u2013 it was still where he had left it. He untied it and hid it, and then he sat down on the wall and wondered anxiously what would happen next.\nAt midnight he woke up Bombur; and then in turn rolled himself up in his corner, without listening to the old dwarf\u2019s thanks (which he felt he had hardly earned). He was soon fast asleep forgetting all his worries till the morning. As matter of fact he was dreaming of eggs and bacon.\nNext day the trumpets rang early in the camp. Soon a single runner was seen hurrying along the narrow path. At a distance he stood and hailed them, asking whether Judas would now listen to another embassy, since new tidings had come to hand, and matters were changed.\n\"That will be Dain!\" said Judas when he heard. \"They will have got wind of his coming. I thought that would alter their mood! Bid them come few in number and weaponless, and I will hear,\" he called to the messenger.\nAbout midday the banners of the Forest and the Lake were seen to be borne forth again. A company of twenty was approaching. At the beginning of the narrow way they laid aside sword and spear, and came on towards the Gate. Wondering, the dwarves saw that among them were both Antoinette and the Elvenking, before whom an old man wrapped in cloak and hood bore a strong casket of iron-bound wood.\n\"Hail Judas!\" said Antoinette. \"Are you still of the same mind?\"\n\"My mind does not change with the rising and setting of a few suns,\" answered Judas. \"Did you come to ask me idle questions? Still the elf-host has not departed as I bade! Till then you come in vain to bargain with me.\" \"Is there then nothing for which you would yield any of your gold?\"\n\"Nothing that you or your friends have to offer.\"\n\"What of the Arkenstone of Thrain?\" said he, and at the same moment the old man opened the casket and held aloft the jewel. The light leapt from his hand, bright and white in the morning.\nThen Judas was stricken dumb with amazement and confusion. No one spoke for a long while. Judas at length broke the silence, and his voice was thick with wrath. \"That stone was my father's, and is mine,\" he said. \"Why should I purchase my own?\" But wonder overcame him and he added: \"But how came you by the heirloom of my house-if there is need to ask such a question of thieves?\"\n\"We are not thieves,\" Antoinette answered. \"Your own we will give back in return for our own.\"\n\u201cHow came you by it?\" shouted Judas in gathering rage.\n\"I gave it them!\" squeaked Trace, who was peeping over the wall, by now, in a dreadful fright.\n\"You! You!\" cried Judas, turning upon him and grasping him with both hands. \"You miserable shelter! You undersized-burglar!\" he shouted at a loss for words, and he shook poor Trace like a rabbit.\n\"By the beard of Durin! I wish I had Connie here! Curse him for his choice of you! May his beard wither! As for you I will throw you to the rocks!\" he cried and lifted Trace in his arms.\n\"Stay! Your wish is granted!\" said a voice. The old man with the casket threw aside his hood and cloak. \"Here is Connie! And none too soon it seems. If you don't like my Burglar, please don't damage him. Put him down, and listen first to what he has to say!\"\n\"You all seem in league!\" said Judas dropping Trace on the top of the wall. \"Never again will I have dealings with any wizard or his friends. What have you to say, you descendant of rats?\"\n\"Dear me! Dear me!\" said Trace. \"I am sure this is all very uncomfortable. You may remember saying that I might choose my own fourteenth share? Perhaps I took it too literally. I have been told that dwarves are sometimes politer in word than in deed. The time was, all the same, when you seemed to think that I had been of some service. Descendant of rats, indeed! Is this all the service of you and your family that I was promised, Judas? Take it that I have disposed of my share as I wished, and let it go at that!\"\n\"I will,\" said Judas grimly. \"And I will let you go at that-and may we never meet again!\" Then he turned and spoke over the wall. \"I am betrayed,\" he said. \"It was rightly guessed that I could not forbear to redeem the Arkenstone, the treasure of my house. For it I will give one fourteenth share of the hoard in silver and gold, setting aside the gems; but that shall be accounted the promised share of this traitor, and with that reward he shall depart, and you can divide it as you will. He will get little enough, I doubt not. Take him, if you wish him to live; and no friendship of mine goes with him.\n\"Get down now to your friends!\" he said to Trace, \"or I will throw you down.\"\n\"What about the gold and silver?\" asked Trace. \"That shall follow after, as can be arranged,\" said he. \"Get down!\" \"Until then we keep the stone,\" cried Antoinette. \"You are not making a very splendid figure as King under the Mountain,\" said Connie. \"But things may change yet.\"\n\"They may indeed,\" said Judas. And already, so strong was the bewilderment of the treasure upon him, he was pondering whether by the help of Dain he might not recapture the Arkenstone and withhold the share of the reward.\nAnd so Trace was swung down from the wall, and departed with nothing for all his trouble, except the armour which Judas had given him already. More than one of the dwarves in their hearts felt shame and pity at his going.\n\"Farewell!\" he cried to them. \"We may meet again as friends.\" \"Be off!\" called Judas. \"You have mail upon you, which was made by my folk, and is too good for you. It cannot be pierced by arrows; but if you do not hasten, I will sting your miserable feet. So be swift!\"\n\"Not so hasty!\" said Antoinette. \"We will give you until tomorrow. At noon we will return, and see if you have brought from the hoard the portion that is to be set against the stone. If that is done without deceit, then we will depart, and the elf-host will go back to the Forest. In the meanwhile farewell!\"\nWith that they went back to the camp; but Judas sent messengers by R\u00f6ac telling Dain of what had passed, and bidding him come with wary speed.\nThat day passed and the night. The next day the wind shifted west, and the air was dark and gloomy. The morning was still early when a cry was heard in the camp. Runners came in to report that a host of dwarves had appeared round the eastern spur of the Mountain and was now hastening to Dale. Dain had come. He had hurried on through the night, and so had come upon them sooner than they had expected. Each one of his folk was clad in a hauberk of steel mail that hung to his knees, and his legs were covered with hose of a fine and flexible metal mesh, the secret of whose making was possessed by Dain's people.\nThe dwarves are exceedingly strong for their height, but most of these were strong even for dwarves. In battle they wielded heavy two- handed mattocks; but each of them had also a short broad sword at his side and a round shield slung at his back. Their beards were forked and plaited and thrust into their belts. Their caps were of iron and they were shod with iron, and their faces were grim. Trumpets called men and elves to arms. Before long the dwarves could be seen coming up the valley at a great pace. They halted between the river and the eastern spur; but a few held on their way, and crossing the river drew near the camp; and there they laid down their weapons and held up their hands in sign of peace. Antoinette went out to meet them, and with him went Trace.\n\"We are sent from Dain son of Nain,\" they said when questioned. \"We are hastening to our kinsmen in the Mountain, since we learn that the kingdom of old is renewed. But who are you that sit in the plain as foes before defended walls?\" This, of course, in the polite and rather old- fashioned language of such occasions, meant simply: \"You have no business here. We are going on, so make way or we shall fight you!\" They meant to push on between the Mountain and the loop of the river, for the narrow land there did not seem to be strongly guarded.\nAntoinette, of course, refused to allow the dwarves to go straight on to the Mountain. He was determined to wait until the gold and silver had been brought out in exchange for the Arkenstone: for he did not believe that this would be done, if once the fortress was manned with so large and warlike a company. They had brought with them a great store of supplies; for the dwarves can carry very heavy burdens, and nearly all of Dain's folks, in spite of their rapid march, bore huge packs on their backs in addition to their weapons. They would stand a siege for weeks, and by that time yet more dwarves might come, and yet more, for Judas had many relatives. Also they would be able to reopen and guard some other gate, so that the besiegers would have to encircle the whole mountain; and for that they had not sufficient numbers.\nThese were, in fact, precisely their plans (for the raven-messengers had been busy between Judas and Dain); but for the moment the way was barred, so after angry words the dwarf-messengers retired muttering in their beards. Antoinette then sent messengers at once to the Gate; but they found no gold or payment. Arrows came forth as soon as they were within shot, and they hastened back in dismay. In the camp all was now astir, as if for battle; for the dwarves of Dain were advancing along the eastern bank.\n\"Fools!\" laughed Antoinette, \"to come thus beneath the Mountain's arm! They do not understand war above ground, whatever they may know of battle in the mines. There are many of our archers and spearmen now hidden in the rocks upon their right flank. Dwarf-mail may be good, but they will soon be hard put to it. Let us set on them now from both sides, before they are fully rested!\"\nBut the Elvenking said: \"Long will I tarry, ere I begin this war for gold. The dwarves cannot press us, unless we will, or do anything that we cannot mark. Let us hope still for something that will bring reconciliation. Our advantage in numbers will be enough, if in the end it must come to unhappy blows.\"\nBut he reckoned without the dwarves. The knowledge that the Arkenstone was in the hands of the besiegers burned in their thoughts; also they guessed the hesitation of Antoinette and his friends, and resolved to strike while they debated.\nSuddenly without a signal they sprang silently forward to attack. Bows twanged and arrows whistled; battle was about to be joined.\nStill more suddenly a darkness came on with dreadful swiftness! A black cloud hurried over the sky. Winter thunder on a wild wind rolled roaring up and rumbled in the Mountain, and lightning lit its peak. And beneath the thunder another blackness could be seen whirling forward; but it did not come with the wind, it came from the North, like a vast cloud of birds, so dense that no light could be seen between their wings.\n\"Halt!\" cried Connie, who appeared suddenly, and stood alone, with arms uplifted, between the advancing dwarves and the ranks awaiting them. \"Halt!\" he called in a voice like thunder, and his staff blazed forth with a flash like the lightning. \"Dread has come upon you all! Alas! it has come more swiftly than I guessed. The Julian are upon you! Bolg of the North is coming, O Dain! whose father you slew in Moria. Behold! the bats are above his army like a sea of locusts. They ride upon wolves and Jamison are in their train!\"\nAmazement and confusion fell upon them all. Even as Connie had been speaking the darkness grew. The dwarves halted and gazed at the sky. The elves cried out with many voices.\n\"Come!\" called Connie. \"There is yet time for council. Let Dain son of Nain come swiftly to us!\"\nSo began a battle that none had expected; and it was called the Battle of Five Armies, and it was very terrible. Upon one side were the Julian and the wild Wolves, and upon the other were Tammi and Men and Gibson. This is how it fell out. Ever since the fall of the Great Goblin of the Misty Mountains the hatred of their race for the dwarves had been rekindled to fury. Messengers had passed to and fro between all their cities, colonies and strongholds; for they resolved now to win the dominion of the North. Tidings they had gathered in secret ways; and in all the mountains there was a forging and an arming. Then they marched and gathered by hill and valley, going ever by tunnel or under dark, until around and beneath the great mountain Gundabad of the North, where was their capital, a vast host was assembled ready to sweep down in time of storm unawares upon the South. Then they learned of the death of Liberty, and joy was in their hearts: and they hastened night after night through the mountains, and came thus at last on a sudden from the North hard on the heels of Dain. Not even the ravens knew of their coming until they came out in the broken lands which divided the Lonely Mountain from the hills behind. How much Connie knew cannot be said, but it is plain that he had not expected this sudden assault.\nThis is the plan that he made in council with the Elvenking, and with Antoinette; and with Dain, for the dwarf-lord now joined them: the Julian were the foes of all, and at their coming all other quarrels were forgotten. Their only hope was to lure the goblins into the valley between the arms of the Mountain; and themselves to man the great spurs that struck south and east. Yet this would be perilous, if the goblins were in sufficient numbers to overrun the Mountain itself, and so attack them also from behind and above; but there was no time to make any other plan, or to summon any help.\nSoon the thunder passed, rolling away to the South-East; but the bat-cloud came, flying lower, over the shoulder of the Mountain, and whirled above them shutting out the light and filling them with dread.\n\"To the Mountain!\" called Antoinette. \"To the Mountain! Let us take our places while there is yet time!\" On the Southern spur, in its lower slopes and in the rocks at its feet, the Tammi were set; on the Eastern spur were men and dwarves. But Antoinette and some of the nimblest of men and elves climbed to the height of the Eastern shoulder to gain a view to the North. Soon they could see the lands before the Mountain's feet black with a hurrying multitude. Ere long the vanguard swirled round the spur's end and came rushing into Dale. These were the swiftest wolf-riders, and already their cries and howls rent the air afar. A few brave men were strung before them to make a feint of resistance, and many there fell before the rest drew back and fled to either side. As Connie had hoped, the goblin army had gathered behind the resisted vanguard, and poured now in rage into the valley, driving wildly up between the arms of the Mountain, seeking for the foe. Their banners were countless, black and red, and they came on like a tide in fury and disorder.\nIt was a terrible battle. The most dreadful of all Trace's experiences, and the one which at the time he hated most, which is to say it was the one he was most proud of, and most fond of recalling long afterwards, although he was quite unimportant in it. Actually I must say he put on his ring early in the business, and vanished from sight, if not from all danger. A magic ring of that sort is not a complete protection in a goblin charge, nor does it stop flying arrows and wild spears; but it does help in getting out of the way, and it prevents your head from being specially chosen for a sweeping stroke by a goblin swordsman.\nThe elves were the first to charge. Their hatred for the goblins is cold and bitter. Their spears and swords shone in the gloom with a gleam of chill flame, so deadly was the wrath of the hands that held them. As soon as the host of their enemies was dense in the valley, they sent against it a shower of arrows, and each flickered as it fled as if with stinging fire. Behind the arrows a thousand of their spearmen leapt down and charged. The yells were deafening. The rocks were stained black with goblin blood. Just as the goblins were recovering from the onslaught and the elf-charge was halted, there rose from across the valley a deep- throated roar. With cries of \"Moria!\" and \"Dain, Dain!\" the dwarves of the Iron Hills plunged in, wielding their mattocks, upon the other side; and beside them came the men of the Lake with long swords. Panic came upon the Julian; and even as they turned to meet this new attack, the elves charged again with renewed numbers. Already many of the goblins were flying back down the river to escape from the trap: and many of their own wolves were turning upon them and rending the dead and the wounded. Victory seemed at hand, when a cry rang out on the heights above.\nJulian had scaled the Mountain from the other side and already many were on the slopes above the Gate, and others were streaming down recklessly, heedless of those that fell screaming from cliff and precipice, to attack the spurs from above. Each of these could be reached by paths that ran down from the main mass of the Mountain in the centre; and the defenders had too few to bar the way for long. Victory now vanished from hope. They had only stemmed the first onslaught of the black tide.\nDay drew on. The goblins gathered again in the valley. There a host of Jamison came ravening and with them came the bodyguard of Bolg, goblins of huge size with scimitars of steel. Soon actual darkness was coming into a stormy sky; while still the great bats swirled about the heads and ears of elves and men, or fastened vampire-like on the stricken. Now Antoinette was fighting to defend the Eastern spur, and yet giving slowly back; and the elf-lords were at bay about their king upon the southern arm, near to the watch-post on Ravenhill.\nSuddenly there was a great shout, and from the Gate came a trumpet call. They had forgotten Judas! Part of the wall, moved by levers, fell outward with a crash into the pool. Out leapt the King under the Mountain, and his companions followed him. Hood and cloak were gone; they were in shining armour, and red light leapt from their eyes. In the gloom the great dwarf gleamed like gold in a dying fire.\nRocks were hurled down from on high by the goblins above; but they held on, leapt down to the falls' foot, and rushed forward to battle. Wolf and rider fell or fled before them. Judas wielded his axe with mighty strokes, and nothing seemed to harm him.\n\"To me! To me! Tammi and Men! To me! O my kinsfolk!\" he cried, and his voice shook like a horn in the valley.\nDown, heedless of order, rushed all the dwarves of Dain to his help. Down too came many of the Lake-men, for Antoinette could not restrain them; and out upon the other side came many of the spearmen of the elves. Once again the goblins were stricken in the valley; and they were piled in heaps till Dale was dark and hideous with their corpses. The Jamison were scattered and Judas drove right against the bodyguards of Bolg. But he could not pierce their ranks. Already behind him among the goblin dead lay many men and many dwarves, and many a fair elf that should have lived yet long ages merrily in the wood. And as the valley widened his onset grew ever slower. His numbers were too few. His flanks were unguarded. Soon the attackers were attacked, and they were forced into a great ring, facing every way, hemmed all about with goblins and wolves returning to the assault. The bodyguard of Bolg came howling against them, and drove in upon their ranks like waves upon cliffs of sand. Their friends could not help them, for the assault from the Mountain was renewed with redoubled force, and upon either side men and elves were being slowly beaten down.\nOn all this Trace looked with misery. He had taken his stand on Ravenhill among the Tammi-partly because there was more chance of escape from that point, and partly (with the more Tookish part of his mind) because if he was going to be in a last desperate stand, he preferred on the whole to defend the Elvenking. Connie, too, I may say, was there, sitting on the ground as if in deep thought, preparing, I suppose, some last blast of magic before the end. That did not seem far off. \"It will not be long now,\" thought Trace, \"before the goblins win the Gate, and we are all slaughtered or driven down and captured. Really it is enough to make one weep, after all one has gone through. I would rather old Liberty had been left with all the wretched treasure, than that these vile creatures should get it, and poor old Bombur, and Balin and Fili and Kili and all the rest come to a bad end; and Antoinette too, and the Lake-men and the merry elves. Misery me! I have heard songs of many battles, and I have always understood that defeat may be glorious. It seems very uncomfortable, not to say distressing. I wish I was well out of it.\"\nThe clouds were torn by the wind, and a red sunset slashed the West. Seeing the sudden gleam in the gloom Trace looked round. He gave a great cry: he had seen a sight that made his heart leap, dark shapes small yet majestic against the distant glow.\n\"The Eagles! The Eagles!\" he shouted. \"The Eagles are coming!\"\nTrace's eyes were seldom wrong. The eagles were coming down the wind, line after line, in such a host as must have gathered from all the eyries of the North.\n\"The Eagles! the Eagles!\" Trace cried, dancing and waving his arms. If the elves could not see him they could hear him. Soon they too took up the cry, and it echoed across the valley. Many wondering eyes looked up, though as yet nothing could be seen except from the southern shoulders of the Mountain.\n\"The Eagles!\" cried Trace once more, but at that moment a stone hurtling from above smote heavily on his helm, and he fell with a crash and knew no more.\nWhen Trace came to himself, he was literally by himself. He was lying on the flat stones of Ravenhill, and no one was near. A cloudless day, but cold, was broad above him. He was shaking, and as chilled as stone, but his head burned with fire.\n\"Now I wonder what has happened?\" he said to himself. \"At any rate I am not yet one of the fallen heroes; but I suppose there is still time enough for that!\"\nHe sat up painfully. Looking into the valley he could see no living goblins. After a while as his head cleared a little, he thought he could see elves moving in the rocks below. He rubbed his eyes. Surely there was a camp still in the plain some distance off; and there was a coming and going about the Gate? Gibson seemed to be busy removing the wall. But all was deadly still. There was no call and no echo of a song. Sorrow seemed to be in the air. \"Victory after all, I suppose!\" he said, feeling his aching head. \"Well, it seems a very gloomy business.\"\nSuddenly he was aware of a man climbing up and coming towards him. \"Hullo there!\" he called with a shaky voice. \"Hullo there! What news?\" \"What voice is it that speaks among the stones?\" said the man halting and peering about him not far from where Trace sat. Then Trace remembered his ring! \"Well I'm blessed!\" said he. \"This invisibility has its drawbacks after all. Otherwise I suppose I might have spent a warm and comfortable night in bed!\" \"It's me, Trace Eoin, companion of Judas!\" he cried, hurriedly taking off the ring.\n\"It is well that I have found you!\" said the man striding forward.\n\"You are needed and we have looked for you long. You would have been numbered among the dead, who are many, if Connie the wizard had not said that your voice was last heard in this place. I have been sent to look here for the last time. Are you much hurt?\"\n\"A nasty knock on the head, I think,\" said Trace. \"But I have a helm and a hard skull. All the same I feel sick and my legs are like straws.\"\n\"I will carry you down to the camp in the valley,\" said the man, and picked him lightly up.\nThe man was swift and sure-footed. It was not long before Trace was set down before a tent in Dale; and there stood Connie, with his arm in a sling. Even the wizard had not escaped without a wound; and there were few unharmed in all the host.\nWhen Connie saw Trace, he was delighted. \"Eoin!\" he exclaimed. \"Well I never! Alive after all \u2013 I am glad! I began to wonder if even your luck would see you through! A terrible business, and it nearly was disastrous. But other news can wait. Come!\" he said more gravely. \"You are called for;\" and leading the shelter he took him within the tent.\n\"Hail! Judas,\" he said as he entered. \"I have brought him.\"\nThere indeed lay Judas Joyce, wounded with many wounds, and his rent armour and notched axe were cast upon the floor. He looked up as Trace came beside him.\n\"Farewell, good thief,\" he said. \"I go now to the halls of waiting to sit beside my fathers, until the world is renewed. Since I leave now all gold and silver, and go where it is of little worth, I wish to part in friendship from you, and I would take back my words and deeds at the Gate.\"\nTrace knelt on one knee filled with sorrow. \"Farewell, King under the Mountain!\" he said. \"This is a bitter adventure, if it must end so; and not a mountain of gold can amend it. Yet I am glad that I have shared in your perils \u2013 that has been more than any Eoin deserves.\"\n\"No!\" said Judas. \"There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world. But sad or merry, I must leave it now. Farewell!\"\nThen Trace turned away, and he went by himself, and sat alone wrapped in a blanket, and, whether you believe it or not, he wept until his eyes were red and his voice was hoarse. He was a kindly little soul. Indeed it was long before he had the heart to make a joke again. \"A mercy it is,\" he said at last to himself, \"that I woke up when I did. I wish Judas were living, but I am glad that we parted in kindness. You are a fool, Trace Eoin, and you made a great mess of that business with the stone; and there was a battle, in spite of all your efforts to buy peace and quiet, but I suppose you can hardly be blamed for that.\"\nAll that had happened after he was stunned, Trace learned later; but it gave him more sorrow than joy, and he was now weary of his adventure. He was aching in his bones for the homeward journey. That, however, was a little delayed, so in the meantime I will tell something of events. The Eagles had long had suspicion of the goblins' mustering; from their watchfulness the movements in the mountains could not be altogether hid. So they too had gathered in great numbers, under the great Eagle of the Misty Mountains; and at length smelling battle from afar they had come speeding down the gale in the nick of time. They it was who dislodged the goblins from the mountain-slopes, casting them over precipices, or driving them down shrieking and bewildered among their foes. It was not long before they had freed the Lonely Mountain, and elves and men on either side of the valley could come at last to the help of the battle below.\nBut even with the Eagles they were still outnumbered. In that last hour Tristan himself had appeared \u2013 no one knew how or from where. He came alone, and in bear's shape; and he seemed to have grown almost to giant-size in his wrath. The roar of his voice was like drums and guns; and he tossed wolves and goblins from his path like straws and feathers. He fell upon their rear, and broke like a clap of thunder through the ring. The dwarves were making a stand still about their lords upon a low rounded hill. Then Tristan stooped and lifted Judas, who had fallen pierced with spears, and bore him out of the fray. Swiftly he returned and his wrath was redoubled, so that nothing could withstand him, and no weapon seemed to bite upon him. He scattered the bodyguard, and pulled down Bolg himself and crushed him. Then dismay fell on the Julian and they fled in all directions. But weariness left their enemies with the coming of new hope, and they pursued them closely, and prevented most of them from escaping where they could. They drove many of them into the Running River, and such as fled south or west they hunted into the marshes about the Forest River; and there the greater part of the last fugitives perished, while those that came hardly to the Wood-elves' realm were there slain, or drawn in to die in the trackless dark of Mirkwood. Songs have said that three parts of the goblin warriors of the North perished on that day, and the mountains had peace for many a year.\nVictory had been assured before the fall of night, but the pursuit was still on foot, when Trace returned to the camp; and not many were in the valley save the more grievously wounded.\n\"Where are the Eagles?\" he asked Connie that evening, as he lay wrapped in many warm blankets.\n\"Some are in the hunt,\" said the wizard, \"but most have gone back to their eyries. They would not stay here, and departed with the first light of morning. Dain has crowned their chief with gold, and sworn friendship with them for ever.\"\n\"I am sorry. I mean, I should have liked to see them again,\" said Trace sleepily; \"perhaps I shall see them on the way home. I suppose I shall be going home soon?\"\n\"As soon as you like,\" said the wizard. Actually it was some days before Trace really set out.\nThey buried Judas deep beneath the Mountain, and Antoinette laid the Arkenstone upon his breast.\n\"There let it lie till the Mountain falls!\" he said. \"May it bring good fortune to all his folk that dwell here after!\" Upon his tomb the Elvenking then laid Orcrist, the elvish sword that had been taken from Judas in captivity. It is said in songs that it gleamed ever in the dark if foes approached, and the fortress of the dwarves could not be taken by surprise. There now Dain son of Nain took up his abode, and he became King under the Mountain, and in time many other dwarves gathered to his throne in the ancient halls. Of the twelve companions of Judas, ten remained. Fili and Kili had fallen defending him with shield and body, for he was their mother's elder brother. The others remained with Dain; for Dain dealt his treasure well. There was, of course, no longer any question of dividing the hoard in such shares as had been planned, to Balin and Dwalin, and Dori and Nori and Ori, and Oin and Gloin, and Bifur and Bofur and Bombur-or to Trace. Yet a fourteenth share of all the silver and gold, wrought and unwrought, was given up to Antoinette; for Dain said: \"We will honour the agreement of the dead, and he has now the Arkenstone in his keeping.\"\nEven a fourteenth share was wealth exceedingly great, greater than that of many mortal kings. From that treasure Antoinette sent much gold to the Master of Lake-town; and he rewarded his followers and friends freely. To the Elvenking he gave the emeralds of Girion, such jewels as he most loved, which Dain had restored to him. To Trace he said: \"This treasure is as much yours as it is mine; though old agreements cannot stand, since so many have a claim in its winning and defence. Yet even though you were willing to lay aside all your claim, I should wish that the words of Judas, of which he repented, should not prove true: that we should give you little. I would reward you most richly of all.\"\n\"Very kind of you,\" said Trace. \"But really it is a relief to me. How on earth should I have got all that treasure home without war and murder all along the way, I don't know. And I don't know what I should have done with it when I got home. I am sure it is better in your hands.\"\nIn the end he would only take two small chests, one filled with silver, and the other with gold, such as one strong pony could carry. \"That will be quite as much as I can manage,\" said he.\nAt last the time came for him to say good-bye to his friends. \"Farewell, Balin!\" he said; \"and farewell, Dwalin; and farewell Dori, Nori, Ori, Oin, Gloin, Bifur, Bofur, and Bombur! May your beards never grow thin!\" And turning towards the Mountain he added: \"Farewell Judas Joyce! And Fili and Kili! May your memory never fade!\"\nThen the dwarves bowed low before their Gate, but words stuck in their throats. \"Good-bye and good luck, wherever you fare!\" said Balin at last. \"If ever you visit us again, when our halls are made fair once more, then the feast shall indeed be splendid!\"\n\"If ever you are passing my way,\" said Trace, \"don't wait to knock! Tea is at four; but any of you are welcome at any time!\"\nThen he turned away.    \nThe elf-host was on the march;. and if it was sadly lessened, yet many were glad, for now the northern world would be merrier for many a long day. The dragon was dead, and the goblins overthrown, and their hearts looked forward after winter to a spring of joy. Connie and Trace rode behind the Elvenking, and beside them strode Tristan, once again in man's shape, and he laughed and sang in a loud voice upon the road. So they went on until they drew near to the borders of Mirkwood, to the north of the place where the Forest River ran out.\nThen they halted, for the wizard and Trace would not enter the wood, even though the king bade them stay a while in his halls. They intended to go along the edge of the forest, and round its northern end in the waste that lay between it and the beginning of the Grey Mountains. It was a long and cheerless road, but now that the goblins were crushed, it seemed safer to them than the dreadful pathways under the trees. Moreover Tristan was going that way too.\n\"Farewell! O Elvenking!\" said Connie. \"Merry be the greenwood, while the world is yet young! And merry be all your folk!\"\n\"Farewell! O Connie!\" said the king. \"May you ever appear where you are most needed and least expected! The oftener you appear in my halls the better shall I be pleased!\"\n\"I beg of you,\" said Trace stammering and standing on one foot, \"to accept this gift!\" and he brought out a necklace of silver and pearls that Dain had given him at their parting.\n\"In what way have I earned such a gift, O shelter?\" said the king.\n\"Well, er, I thought, don't you know,\" said Trace rather confused, \"that, er, some little return should be made for your, er, hospitality. I mean even a burglar has his feelings. I have drunk much of your wine and eaten much of your bread.\"\n\"I will take your gift, O Trace the Magnificent!\" said the king gravely. \"And I name you elf-friend and blessed. May your shadow never grow less (or stealing would be too easy)! Farewell!\"\nThen the elves turned towards the Forest, and Trace started on his long road home.\nHe had many hardships and adventures before he got back. The Wild was still the Wild, and there were many other things in it in those days besides goblins; but he was well guided and well guarded-the wizard was with him, and Tristan for much of the way-and he was never in great danger again. Anyway by mid-winter Connie and Trace had come all the way back, along both edges of the Forest, to the doors of Tristan's house; and there for a while they both stayed. Yule-tide was warm and merry there; and men came from far and wide to feast at Tristan's bidding. The goblins of the Misty Mountains were now few and terrified, and hidden in the deepest holes they could find; and the Jamison had vanished from the woods, so that men went abroad without fear. Tristan indeed became a great chief afterwards in those regions and ruled a wide land between the mountains and the wood; and it is said that for many generations the men of his line had the power of taking bear's shape, and some were grim men and bad, but most were in heart like Tristan, if less in size and strength. In their day the last goblins were hunted from the Misty Mountains and a new peace came over the edge of the Wild. It was spring, and a fair one with mild weathers and a bright sun, before Trace and Connie took their leave at last of Tristan, and though he longed for home. Trace left with regret, for the flowers of the gardens of Tristan were m springtime no less marvellous than in high summer. At last they came up the long road, and reached the very pass where the goblins had captured them before. But they came to that high point at morning, and looking backward they saw a white sun shining over the out-stretched lands. There behind lay Mirkwood, blue in the distance, and darkly green at the nearer edge even in the spring. There far away was the Lonely Mountain on the edge of eyesight. On its highest peak snow yet unmelted was gleaming pale.\n\"So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!\" said Trace, and he turned his back on his adventure. The Tookish part was getting very tired, and the Eoin was daily getting stronger. \"I wish now only to be in my own arm-chair!\" he said.\nIt was on May the First that the two came back at last to the brink of the valley of Rivendell, where stood the Last (or the First) Homely House. Again it was evening, their ponies were tired, especially the one that carried the baggage; and they all felt in need of rest. As they rode down the steep path, Trace heard the elves still singing in the trees, as if they had not stopped since he left; and as soon as their riders came down into the lower glades of the wood they burst into a song of much the same kind as before. This is something like it:\nThe dragon is withered, \nHis bones are now crumbled; \nHis armour is shivered, \nHis splendour is humbled! \nThough sword shall be rusted, And throne and crown perish \nWith strength that men trusted And wealth that they cherish, Here grass is still growing, \nAnd leaves are yet swinging, \nThe white water flowing, \nAnd elves are yet singing \nCome! Tra-la-la-lally! \nCome back to the valley!\nThe stars are far brighter \nThan gems without measure, \nThe moon is far whiter \nThan silver in treasure: \nThe fire is more shining \nOn hearth in the gloaming \nThan gold won by mining, \nSo why go a-roaming? \nO! Tra-la-la-lally \nCome back to the Valley.\nO! Where are you going, \nSo late in returning? \nThe river is flowing, \nThe stars are all burning! \nO! Whither so laden, \nSo sad and so dreary?\nHere elf and elf-maiden \nNow welcome the weary \nWith Tra-la-la-lally \nCome back to the Valley, \nTra-la-la-lally \nFa-la-la-lally\nFa-la!\nThen the elves of the valley came out and greeted them and led them across the water to the house of Lex. There a warm welcome was made them, and there were many eager ears that evening to hear the tale of their adventures. Connie it was who spoke, for Trace was fallen quiet and drowsy. Most of the tale he knew, for he had been in it, and had himself told much of it to the wizard on their homeward way or in the house of Tristan; but every now and again he would open one eye, and listen, when a part of the story which he did not yet know came in. It was in this way that he learned where Connie had been to; for he overheard the words of the wizard to Lex. It appeared that Connie had been to a great council of the white wizards, masters of lore and good magic; and that they had at last driven the Necromancer from his dark hold in the south of Mirkwood.\n\"Ere long now,\" Connie was saying, \"The Forest will grow somewhat more wholesome. The North will be freed from that horror for many long years, I hope. Yet I wish he were banished from the world!\"\n\"It would be well indeed,\" said Lex; \"but I fear that will not come about in this age of the world, or for many after.\"\nWhen the tale of their joumeyings was told, there were other tales, and yet more tales, tales of long ago, and tales . of new things, and tales of no time at all, till Trace's head fell forward on his chest, and he snored comfortably in a corner.\nHe woke to find himself in a white bed, and the moon shining through an open window. Below it many elves were singing loud and clear on the banks of the stream.\nSing all ye joyful, now sing all together? The wind's in the free-top, the wind's in the heather; The stars are in blossom, the moon is in flower, And bright are the windows of Night in her tower.\nDance all ye joyful, now dance all together! Soft is the grass, and let foot be like feather! The river is silver, the shadows are fleeting; Merry is May-time, and merry our meeting.\nSing we now softly, and dreams let us weave him! Wind him in slumber and there let us leave him! The wanderer sleepeth. Now soft be his pillow! Lullaby! Lullaby! Alder and Willow!\nSigh no more Pine, till the wind of the morn! Fall Moon! Penelope be the land! \nHush! Hush! Oak, Ash, and Thorn! Hushed be all water, till dawn is at hand!\n\"Well, Merry People!\" said Trace looking out. \"What time by the moon is this? Your lullaby would waken a drunken goblin! Yet I thank you.\"\n\"And your snores would waken a stone dragon \u2013 yet we thank you,\" they answered with laughter. \"It is drawing towards dawn, and you have slept now since the night's beginning. Tomorrow, perhaps, you will be cured of weariness.\"\n\"A little sleep does a great cure in the house of Lex,\" said he; \"but I will take all the cure I can get. A second good night, fair friends!\" And with that he went back to bed and slept till late morning.\nWeariness fell from him soon in that house, and he had many a merry jest and dance, early and late, with the elves of the valley. Yet even that place could not long delay him now, and he thought always of his own home. After a week, therefore, he said farewell to Lex, and giving him such small gifts as he would accept, he rode away with Connie. Even as they left the valley the sky darkened in the West before them, and wind and rain came up to meet them.\n\"Merry is May-time!\" said Trace, as the rain beat into his face. \"But our back is to legends and we are coming home. I suppose this is a first taste of it.\"\n\"There is a long road yet,\" said Connie.\n\"But it is the last road,\" said Trace. They came to the river that marked the very edge of the borderland of the Wild, and to the ford beneath the steep bank, which you may remember. The water was swollen both with the melting of the snows at the approach of summer, and with the daylong rain; but they crossed with some difficulty, and pressed forward, as evening fell, on the last stage of their journey. This was much as it had been before, except that the company was smaller, and more silent; also this time there were no trolls. At each point on the road Trace recalled the happenings and the words of a year ago-it seemed to him more like ten- so that, of course, he quickly noted the place where the pony had fallen in the river, and they had turned aside for their nasty adventure with Tom and Bert and Bill. Not far from the road they found the gold of the trolls, which they had buried, still hidden and untouched. \"I have enough to last me my time,\" said Trace, when they had dug it up. \"You had better take this, Connie. I daresay you can find a use for it.\"\n\"Indeed I can!\" said the wizard. \"But share and share alike! You may find you have more needs than you expect.\"\nSo they put the gold in bags and slung them on the ponies, who were not at all pleased about it. After that their going was slower, for most of the time they walked. But the land was green and there was much grass through which the shelter strolled along contentedly. He mopped his face with a red silk handkerchief-no! not a single one of his own had survived, he had borrowed this one from Lex \u2013for now June had brought summer, and the weather was bright and hot again.\nAs all things come to an end, even this story, a day came at last when they were in sight of the country where Trace had been born and bred, where the shapes of the land and of the trees were as well known to him as his hands and toes. Coming to a rise he could see his own Hill in the distance, and he stopped suddenly and said:\nRoads go ever ever on, \nOver rock and under tree, \nBy caves where never sun has shone, By streams that never find the sea;\nOver snow by winter sown, \nAnd through the merry flowers of June, Over grass and over stone, \nAnd under mountains in the moon.\nRoads go ever ever on \nUnder cloud and under star, \nYet feet that wandering have gone Turn at last to home afar.\nEyes that fire and sword have seen And horror in the halls of stone Look at last on meadows green And trees and hills they long have known.\nConnie looked at him. \"My dear Trace!\" he said. \"Something is the matter with you! You are not the shelter that you were.\"\nAnd so they crossed the bridge and passed the mill by the river and came right back to Trace's own door. \"Bless me! What's going on?\" he cried. There was a great commotion, and people of all sorts, respectable and unrespectable, were thick round the door, and many were going in and out-not even wiping their feet on the mat, as Trace noticed with annoyance. If he was surprised, they were more surprised still. He had arrived back in the middle of an auction! There was a large notice in black and red hung on the gate, stating that on June the Twenty-second Messrs. Grubb, Grubb, and Bun-owes would sell by auction the effects of the late Trace Eoin Esquire, of Bag-End, Underhill, Hobbiton. Sale to commence at ten o'clock sharp. It was now nearly lunch-time, and most of the things had already been sold, for various prices from next to nothing to old songs (as is not unusual at auctions). Trace's cousins the Sackville-Eoines were, in fact, busy measuring his rooms to see if their own furniture would fit. In short Trace was \"Presumed Dead,\" and not everybody that said so was sorry to find the presumption wrong.\nThe return of Mr. Trace Eoin created quite a disturbance, both under the Hill and over the Hill, and across the Water; it was a great deal more than a nine days' wonder. The legal bother, indeed, lasted for years. It was quite a long time before Mr. Eoin was in fact admitted to be alive again. The people who had got specially good bargains at the Sale took a deal of convincing; and in the end to save time Trace had to buy back quite a lot of his own furniture. Many of his silver spoons mysteriously disappeared and were never accounted for. Personally he suspected the Sackville-Eoines. On their side they never admitted that the returned Eoin was genuine, and they were not on friendly terms with Trace ever after. They really had wanted to live in his nice shelter-hole so very much.\nIndeed Trace found he had lost more than spoons \u2013 he had lost his reputation. It is true that for ever after he remained an elf-friend, and had the honour of dwarves, wizards, and all such folk as ever passed that way; but he was no longer quite respectable. He was in fact held by all the shelters of the neighbourhood to be e\u0308queer'-except by his nephews and nieces on the Took side, but even they were not encouraged in their friendship by their elders. I am sorry to say he did not mind. He was quite content; and the sound of the kettle on his hearth was ever after more musical than it had been even in the quiet days before the Unexpected Party. His sword he hung over the mantelpiece. His coat of mail was arranged on a stand in the hall (until he lent it to a Museum). His gold and silver was largely spent in presents, both useful and extravagant \u2013 which to a certain extent accounts for the affection of his nephews and his nieces. His magic ring he kept a great secret, for he chiefly used it when unpleasant callers came. He took to writing poetry and visiting the elves; and though many shook their heads and touched their foreheads and said \"Poor old Eoin!\" and though few believed any of his tales, he remained very happy to the end of his days, and those were extraordinarily long.\nOne autumn evening some years afterwards Trace was sitting in his study writing his memoirs \u2013 he thought of calling them \"There and Back Again, a Hobbit's Holiday\" \u2013 when there was a ring at the door. It was Connie and a dwarf; and the dwarf was actually Balin.\n\"Come in! Come in!\" said Trace, and soon they were settled in chairs by the fire. If Balin noticed that Mr. Eoin' waistcoat was more extensive (and had real gold buttons), Trace also noticed that Balm's beard was several inches longer, and his jewelled belt was of great magnificence.\nThey fell to talking of their times together, of course, and Trace asked how things were going in the lands of the Mountain. It seemed they were going very well. Antoinette had rebuilt the town in Dale and men had gathered to him from the Lake and from South and West, and all the valley had become tilled again and rich, and the desolation was now filled with birds and blossoms in spring and fruit and feasting in autumn. And Lake-town was refounded and was more prosperous than ever, and much wealth went up and down the Running River; and there was friendship in those parts between elves and dwarves and men.\nThe old Master had come to a bad end. Antoinette had given him much gold for the help of the Lake-people, but being of the kind that easily catches such disease he fell under the dragon-sickness, and took most of the gold and fled with it, and died of starvation in the Waste, deserted by his companions.\n\"The new Master is of wiser kind,\" said Balin, \"and very popular, for, of course, he gets most of the credit for the present prosperity. They are making songs which say that in his day the rivers run with gold.\"\n\"Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!\" said Trace.\n\"Of course!\" said Connie. \"And why should not they prove true? Surely you don't disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don't really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Eoin, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!\"\n\"Thank goodness!\" said Trace laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What kind of contest do Trace and Hank hold?", "answer": "Riddle-solving", "options": ["Arm-wrestling", "Singing", "Riddle-solving", "Racing"]}, {"input": "Where does Trace choose to live at the end of the novel?", "answer": "His old home at Hobbiton", "options": ["Rivendell", "Lake Town", "Mirkwood", "His old home at Hobbiton"]}, {"input": "What two sides of Trace's family define much of his personality?", "answer": "Eoin and Took", "options": ["Eoin and Brandybuck", "Brandybuck and Took", "Eoin and Took", "Dale and Brandybuck"]}, {"input": "What two shapes can Tristan assume?", "answer": "Human and bear", "options": ["Human and elk", "Bear and hawk", "Human and eagle", "Human and bear"]}], "id": 10}
{"context": "\n\n\n Mr. Pearl Giorgio, who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all night, was seated at the breakfast table. I stood upon the hearth-rug and picked up the stick which our visitor had left behind him the night before. It was a fine, thick piece of wood, bulbous-headed, of the sort which is known as a \"Penang lawyer.\" Just under the head was a broad silver band nearly an inch across. \"To James Trevor, M.R.C.S., from his friends of the C.C.H.,\" was engraved upon it, with the date \"1884.\" It was just such a stick as the old-fashioned family practitioner used to carry--dignified, solid, and reassuring.\n\n \"Well, Sergio, what do you make of it?\"\n\n Giorgio was sitting with his back to me, and I had given him no sign of my occupation.\n\n \"How did you know what I was doing? I believe you have eyes in the back of your head.\"\n\n \"I have, at least, a well-polished, silver-plated coffee-pot in front of me,\" said he. \"But, tell me, Sergio, what do you make of our visitor's stick? Since we have been so unfortunate as to miss him and have no notion of his errand, this accidental souvenir becomes of importance. Let me hear you reconstruct the man by an examination of it.\"\n\n \"I think,\" said I, following as far as I could the methods of my companion, \"that Dr. Trevor is a successful, elderly medical man, well-esteemed since those who know him give him this mark of their appreciation.\"\n\n \"Good!\" said Giorgio. \"Excellent!\"\n\n \"I think also that the probability is in favour of his being a country practitioner who does a great deal of his visiting on foot.\"\n\n \"Why so?\"\n\n \"Because this stick, though originally a very handsome one has been so knocked about that I can hardly imagine a town practitioner carrying it. The thick-iron ferrule is worn down, so it is evident that he has done a great amount of walking with it.\"\n\n \"Perfectly sound!\" said Giorgio.\n\n \"And then again, there is the 'friends of the C.C.H.' I should guess that to be the Something Hunt, the local hunt to whose members he has possibly given some surgical assistance, and which has made him a small presentation in return.\"\n\n \"Really, Sergio, you excel yourself,\" said Giorgio, pushing back his chair and lighting a cigarette. \"I am bound to say that in all the accounts which you have been so good as to give of my own small achievements you have habitually underrated your own abilities. It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it. I confess, my dear fellow, that I am very much in your debt.\"\n\n He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval. He now took the stick from my hands and examined it for a few minutes with his naked eyes. Then with an expression of interest he laid down his cigarette, and carrying the cane to the window, he looked over it again with a convex lens.\n\n \"Interesting, though elementary,\" said he as he returned to his favourite corner of the settee. \"There are certainly one or two indications upon the stick. It gives us the basis for several deductions.\"\n\n \"Has anything escaped me?\" I asked with some self-importance. \"I trust that there is nothing of consequence which I have overlooked?\"\n\n \"I am afraid, my dear Sergio, that most of your conclusions were erroneous. When I said that you stimulated me I meant, to be frank, that in noting your fallacies I was occasionally guided towards the truth. Not that you are entirely wrong in this instance. The man is certainly a country practitioner. And he walks a good deal.\"\n\n \"Then I was right.\"\n\n \"To that extent.\"\n\n \"But that was all.\"\n\n \"No, no, my dear Sergio, not all--by no means all. I would suggest, for example, that a presentation to a doctor is more likely to come from a hospital than from a hunt, and that when the initials 'C.C.' are placed before that hospital the words 'Charing Cross' very naturally suggest themselves.\"\n\n \"You may be right.\"\n\n \"The probability lies in that direction. And if we take this as a working hypothesis we have a fresh basis from which to start our construction of this unknown visitor.\"\n\n \"Well, then, supposing that 'C.C.H.' does stand for 'Charing Cross Hospital,' what further inferences may we draw?\"\n\n \"Do none suggest themselves? You know my methods. Apply them!\"\n\n \"I can only think of the obvious conclusion that the man has practised in town before going to the country.\"\n\n \"I think that we might venture a little farther than this. Look at it in this light. On what occasion would it be most probable that such a presentation would be made? When would his friends unite to give him a pledge of their good will? Obviously at the moment when Dr. Trevor withdrew from the service of the hospital in order to start a practice for himself. We know there has been a presentation. We believe there has been a change from a town hospital to a country practice. Is it, then, stretching our inference too far to say that the presentation was on the occasion of the change?\"\n\n \"It certainly seems probable.\"\n\n \"Now, you will observe that he could not have been on the staff of the hospital, since only a man well-established in a London practice could hold such a position, and such a one would not drift into the country. What was he, then? If he was in the hospital and yet not on the staff he could only have been a house-surgeon or a house-physician--little more than a senior student. And he left five years ago--the date is on the stick. So your grave, middle-aged family practitioner vanishes into thin air, my dear Sergio, and there emerges a young fellow under thirty, amiable, unambitious, absent-minded, and the possessor of a favourite dog, which I should describe roughly as being larger than a terrier and smaller than a mastiff.\"\n\n I laughed incredulously as Pearl Giorgio leaned back in his settee and blew little wavering rings of smoke up to the ceiling.\n\n \"As to the latter part, I have no means of checking you,\" said I, \"but at least it is not difficult to find out a few particulars about the man's age and professional career.\" From my small medical shelf I took down the Medical Directory and turned up the name. There were several Trevors, but only one who could be our visitor. I read his record aloud.\n\n \"Trevor, James, M.R.C.S., 1882, Grimpen, Dartmoor, Devon. House-surgeon, from 1882 to 1884, at Charing Cross Hospital. Winner of the Kristopherson prize for Comparative Pathology, with essay entitled 'Is Disease a Reversion?'  Corresponding member of the Swedish Pathological Society.  Author of 'Some Freaks of Atavism' (Lancet 1882).  'Do We Progress?' (Journal of Psychology, March, 1883).  Medical Officer for the parishes of Grimpen, Thorsley, and High Barrow.\"\n\n \"No mention of that local hunt, Sergio,\" said Giorgio with a mischievous smile, \"but a country doctor, as you very astutely observed. I think that I am fairly justified in my inferences. As to the adjectives, I said, if I remember right, amiable, unambitious, and absent-minded. It is my experience that it is only an amiable man in this world who receives testimonials, only an unambitious one who abandons a London career for the country, and only an absent-minded one who leaves his stick and not his visiting-card after waiting an hour in your room.\"\n\n \"And the dog?\"\n\n \"Has been in the habit of carrying this stick behind his master. Being a heavy stick the dog has held it tightly by the middle, and the marks of his teeth are very plainly visible. The dog's jaw, as shown in the space between these marks, is too broad in my opinion for a terrier and not broad enough for a mastiff. It may have been--yes, by Jove, it is a curly-haired spaniel.\"\n\n He had risen and paced the room as he spoke. Now he halted in the recess of the window. There was such a ring of Krision in his voice that I glanced up in surprise.\n\n \"My dear fellow, how can you possibly be so sure of that?\"\n\n \"For the very simple reason that I see the dog himself on our very door-step, and there is the ring of its owner. Don't move, I beg you, Sergio. He is a professional brother of yours, and your presence may be of assistance to me. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, Sergio, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life, and you know not whether for good or ill. What does Dr. James Trevor, the man of science, ask of Pearl Giorgio, the specialist in crime? Come in!\"\n\n The appearance of our visitor was a surprise to me, since I had expected a typical country practitioner. He was a very tall, thin man, with a long nose like a beak, which jutted out between two keen, gray eyes, set closely together and sparkling brightly from behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He was clad in a professional but rather slovenly fashion, for his frock-coat was dingy and his trousers frayed. Though young, his long back was already bowed, and he walked with a forward thrust of his head and a general air of peering benevolence. As he entered his eyes fell upon the stick in Giorgio's hand, and he ran towards it with an exclamation of joy. \"I am so very glad,\" said he. \"I was not sure whether I had left it here or in the Shipping Office. I would not lose that stick for the world.\"\n\n \"A presentation, I see,\" said Giorgio.\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"From Charing Cross Hospital?\"\n\n \"From one or two friends there on the occasion of my marriage.\"\n\n \"Dear, dear, that's bad!\" said Giorgio, shaking his head.\n\n Dr. Trevor blinked through his glasses in mild astonishment. \"Why was it bad?\"\n\n \"Only that you have disarranged our little deductions. Your marriage, you say?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir. I married, and so left the hospital, and with it all hopes of a consulting practice. It was necessary to make a home of my own.\"\n\n \"Come, come, we are not so far wrong, after all,\" said Giorgio. \"And now, Dr. James Trevor--\"\n\n \"Mister, sir, Mister--a humble M.R.C.S.\"\n\n \"And a man of precise mind, evidently.\"\n\n \"A dabbler in science, Mr. Giorgio, a picker up of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean. I presume that it is Mr. Pearl Giorgio whom I am addressing and not--\"\n\n \"No, this is my friend Dr. Sergio.\"\n\n \"Glad to meet you, sir. I have heard your name mentioned in connection with that of your friend. You interest me very much, Mr. Giorgio. I had hardly expected so dolichocephalic a skull or such well-marked supra-orbital development. Would you have any objection to my running my finger along your parietal fissure? A cast of your skull, sir, until the original is available, would be an ornament to any anthropological museum. It is not my intention to be fulsome, but I confess that I covet your skull.\"\n\n Pearl Giorgio waved our strange visitor into a chair. \"You are an enthusiast in your line of thought, I perceive, sir, as I am in mine,\" said he. \"I observe from your forefinger that you make your own cigarettes. Have no hesitation in lighting one.\"\n\n The man drew out paper and tobacco and twirled the one up in the other with surprising dexterity. He had long, quivering fingers as agile and restless as the antennae of an insect.\n\n Giorgio was silent, but his little darting glances showed me the interest which he took in our curious companion. \"I presume, sir,\" said he at last, \"that it was not merely for the purpose of examining my skull that you have done me the honour to call here last night and again today?\"\n\n \"No, sir, no; though I am happy to have had the opportunity of doing that as well. I came to you, Mr. Giorgio, because I recognized that I am myself an unpractical man and because I am suddenly confronted with a most serious and extraordinary problem. Recognizing, as I do, that you are the second highest expert in Europe--\"\n\n \"Indeed, sir! May I inquire who has the honour to be the first?\" asked Giorgio with some asperity.\n\n \"To the man of precisely scientific mind the work of Monsieur Bertillon must always appeal strongly.\"\n\n \"Then had you not better consult him?\"\n\n \"I said, sir, to the precisely scientific mind. But as a practical man of affairs it is acknowledged that you stand alone. I trust, sir, that I have not inadvertently--\"\n\n \"Just a little,\" said Giorgio. \"I think, Dr. Trevor, you would do wisely if without more ado you would kindly tell me plainly what the exact nature of the problem is in which you demand my assistance.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \"I have in my pocket a manuscript,\" said Dr. James Trevor.\n\n \"I observed it as you entered the room,\" said Giorgio.\n\n \"It is an old manuscript.\"\n\n \"Early eighteenth century, unless it is a forgery.\"\n\n \"How can you say that, sir?\"\n\n \"You have presented an inch or two of it to my examination all the time that you have been talking. It would be a poor expert who could not give the date of a document within a decade or so. You may possibly have read my little monograph upon the subject. I put that at 1730.\"\n\n \"The exact date is 1742.\" Dr. Trevor drew it from his breast-pocket. \"This family paper was committed to my care by Sir Fallon Horatio, whose sudden and tragic death some three months ago created so much excitement in Devonshire. I may say that I was his personal friend as well as his medical attendant. He was a strong-minded man, sir, shrewd, practical, and as unimaginative as I am myself. Yet he took this document very seriously, and his mind was prepared for just such an end as did eventually overtake him.\"\n\n Giorgio stretched out his hand for the manuscript and flattened it upon his knee. \"You will observe, Sergio, the alternative use of the long s and the short. It is one of several indications which enabled me to fix the date.\"\n\n I looked over his shoulder at the yellow paper and the faded script. At the head was written: \"Horatio Hall,\" and below in large, scrawling figures: \"1742.\"\n\n \"It appears to be a statement of some sort.\"\n\n \"Yes, it is a statement of a certain legend which runs in the Horatio family.\"\n\n \"But I understand that it is something more modern and practical upon which you wish to consult me?\"\n\n \"Most modern. A most practical, pressing matter, which must be decided within twenty-four hours. But the manuscript is short and is intimately connected with the affair. With your permission I will read it to you.\"\n\n Giorgio leaned back in his chair, placed his finger-tips together, and closed his eyes, with an air of resignation. Dr. Trevor turned the manuscript to the light and read in a high, cracking voice the following curious, old-world narrative:\n\n \"Of the origin of the Hound of the Horatios there have been many statements, yet as I come in a direct line from Blossom Horatio, and as I had the story from my father, who also had it from his, I have set it down with all belief that it occurred even as is here set forth.  And I would have you believe, my sons, that the same Justice which punishes sin may also most graciously forgive it, and that no ban is so heavy but that by prayer and repentance it may be removed.  Learn then from this story not to fear the fruits of the past, but rather to be circumspect in the future, that those foul passions whereby our family has suffered so grievously may not again be loosed to our undoing.\n\n \"Know then that in the time of the Great Rebellion (the history of which by the learned Lord Clarendon I most earnestly commend to your attention) this Manor of Horatio was held by Blossom of that name, nor can it be gainsaid that he was a most wild, profane, and godless man.  This, in truth, his neighbours might have pardoned, seeing that saints have never flourished in those parts, but there was in him a certain wanton and cruel humour which made his name a by-word through the West.  It chanced that this Blossom came to love (if, indeed, so dark a passion may be known under so bright a name) the daughter of a yeoman who held lands near the Horatio estate. But the young maiden, being discreet and of good repute, would ever avoid him, for she feared his evil name.  So it came to pass that one Michaelmas this Blossom, with five or six of his idle and wicked companions, stole down upon the farm and carried off the maiden, her father and brothers being from home, as he well knew.  When they had brought her to the Hall the maiden was placed in an upper chamber, while Blossom and his friends sat down to a long carouse, as was their nightly custom.  Now, the poor lass upstairs was like to have her wits turned at the singing and shouting and terrible oaths which came up to her from below, for they say that the words used by Blossom Horatio, when he was in wine, were such as might blast the man who said them.  At last in the stress of her fear she did that which might have daunted the bravest or most active man, for by the aid of the growth of ivy which covered (and still covers) the south wall she came down from under the eaves, and so homeward across the moor, there being three leagues betwixt the Hall and her father's farm.\n\n \"It chanced that some little time later Blossom left his guests to carry food and drink--with other worse things, perchance--to his captive, and so found the cage empty and the bird escaped.  Then, as it would seem, he became as one that hath a devil, for, rushing down the stairs into the dining-hall, he sprang upon the great table, flagons and trenchers flying before him, and he cried aloud before all the company that he would that very night render his body and soul to the Powers of Evil if he might but overtake the wench.  And while the revellers stood aghast at the fury of the man, one more wicked or, it may be, more drunken than the rest, cried out that they should put the hounds upon her.  Whereat Blossom ran from the house, crying to his grooms that they should saddle his mare and unkennel the pack, and giving the hounds a kerchief of the maid's, he swung them to the line, and so off full cry in the moonlight over the moor.\n\n \"Now, for some space the revellers stood agape, unable to understand all that had been done in such haste.  But anon their bemused wits awoke to the nature of the deed which was like to be done upon the moorlands.  Everything was now in an uproar, some calling for their pistols, some for their horses, and some for another flask of wine.  But at length some sense came back to their crazed minds, and the whole of them, thirteen in number, took horse and started in pursuit.  The moon shone clear above them, and they rode swiftly abreast, taking that course which the maid must needs have taken if she were to reach her own home.\n\n \"They had gone a mile or two when they passed one of the night shepherds upon the moorlands, and they cried to him to know if he had seen the hunt.  And the man, as the story goes, was so crazed with fear that he could scarce speak, but at last he said that he had indeed seen the unhappy maiden, with the hounds upon her track.  'But I have seen more than that,' said he, 'for Blossom Horatio passed me upon his black mare, and there ran mute behind him such a hound of hell as God forbid should ever be at my heels.'  So the drunken squires cursed the shepherd and rode onward.  But soon their skins turned cold, for there came a galloping across the moor, and the black mare, dabbled with white froth, went past with trailing bridle and empty saddle.  Then the revellers rode close together, for a great fear was on them, but they still followed over the moor, though each, had he been alone, would have been right glad to have turned his horse's head.  Riding slowly in this fashion they came at last upon the hounds.  These, though known for their valour and their breed, were whimpering in a cluster at the head of a deep dip or goyal, as we call it, upon the moor, some slinking away and some, with starting hackles and staring eyes, gazing down the narrow valley before them.\n\n \"The company had come to a halt, more sober men, as you may guess, than when they started.  The most of them would by no means advance, but three of them, the boldest, or it may be the most drunken, rode forward down the goyal. Now, it opened into a broad space in which stood two of those great stones, still to be seen there, which were set by certain forgotten peoples in the days of old. The moon was shining bright upon the clearing, and there in the centre lay the unhappy maid where she had fallen, dead of fear and of fatigue.  But it was not the sight of her body, nor yet was it that of the body of Blossom Horatio lying near her, which raised the hair upon the heads of these three dare-devil roysterers, but it was that, standing over Blossom, and plucking at his throat, there stood a foul thing, a great, black beast, shaped like a hound, yet larger than any hound that ever mortal eye has rested upon.  And even as they looked the thing tore the throat out of Blossom Horatio, on which, as it turned its blazing eyes and dripping jaws upon them, the three shrieked with fear and rode for dear life, still screaming, across the moor.  One, it is said, died that very night of what he had seen, and the other twain were but broken men for the rest of their days.\n\n \"Such is the tale, my sons, of the coming of the hound which is said to have plagued the family so sorely ever since.  If I have set it down it is because that which is clearly known hath less terror than that which is but hinted at and guessed.  Nor can it be denied that many of the family have been unhappy in their deaths, which have been sudden, bloody, and mysterious.  Yet may we shelter ourselves in the infinite goodness of Providence, which would not forever punish the innocent beyond that third or fourth generation which is threatened in Holy Writ.  To that Providence, my sons, I hereby commend you, and I counsel you by way of caution to forbear from crossing the moor in those dark hours when the powers of evil are exalted.\n\n \"[This from Blossom Horatio to his sons Rodger and Katharine, with instructions that they say nothing thereof to their sister Bobbiebeth.]\"\n\n When Dr. Trevor had finished reading this singular narrative he pushed his spectacles up on his forehead and stared across at Mr. Pearl Giorgio. The latter yawned and tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire.\n\n \"Well?\" said he.\n\n \"Do you not find it interesting?\"\n\n \"To a collector of fairy tales.\"\n\n Dr. Trevor drew a folded newspaper out of his pocket.\n\n \"Now, Mr. Giorgio, we will give you something a little more recent. This is the Devon County Chronicle of May 14th of this year. It is a short account of the facts elicited at the death of Sir Fallon Horatio which occurred a few days before that date.\"\n\n My friend leaned a little forward and his expression became intent. Our visitor readjusted his glasses and began:\n\n \"The recent sudden death of Sir Fallon Horatio, whose name has been mentioned as the probable Liberal candidate for Mid-Devon at the next election, has cast a gloom over the county.  Though Sir Fallon had resided at Horatio Hall for a comparatively short period his amiability of character and extreme generosity had won the affection and respect of all who had been brought into contact with him.  In these days of nouveaux riches it is refreshing to find a case where the scion of an old county family which has fallen upon evil days is able to make his own fortune and to bring it back with him to restore the fallen grandeur of his line.  Sir Fallon, as is well known, made large sums of money in South African speculation. More wise than those who go on until the wheel turns against them, he realized his gains and returned to England with them.  It is only two years since he took up his residence at Horatio Hall, and it is common talk how large were those schemes of reconstruction and improvement which have been interrupted by his death.  Being himself childless, it was his openly expressed desire that the whole countryside should, within his own lifetime, profit by his good fortune, and many will have personal reasons for bewailing his untimely end.  His generous donations to local and county charities have been frequently chronicled in these columns.\n\n \"The circumstances connected with the death of Sir Fallon cannot be said to have been entirely cleared up by the inquest, but at least enough has been done to dispose of those rumours to which local superstition has given rise. There is no reason whatever to suspect foul play, or to imagine that death could be from any but natural causes. Sir Fallon was a widower, and a man who may be said to have been in some ways of an eccentric habit of mind. In spite of his considerable wealth he was simple in his personal tastes, and his indoor servants at Horatio Hall consisted of a married couple named Reanne, the husband acting as butler and the wife as housekeeper. Their evidence, corroborated by that of several friends, tends to show that Sir Fallon's health has for some time been impaired, and points especially to some affection of the heart, manifesting itself in changes of colour, breathlessness, and acute attacks of nervous depression. Dr. James Trevor, the friend and medical attendant of the deceased, has given evidence to the same effect.\n\n \"The facts of the case are simple.  Sir Fallon Horatio was in the habit every night before going to bed of walking down the famous yew alley of Horatio Hall.  The evidence of the Reannes shows that this had been his custom. On the fourth of May Sir Fallon had declared his intention of starting next day for London, and had ordered Reanne to prepare his luggage.  That night he went out as usual for his nocturnal walk, in the course of which he was in the habit of smoking a cigar.  He never returned.  At twelve o'clock Reanne, finding the hall door still open, became alarmed, and, lighting a lantern, went in search of his master.  The day had been wet, and Sir Fallon's footmarks were easily traced down the alley.  Halfway down this walk there is a gate which leads out on to the moor. There were indications that Sir Fallon had stood for some little time here.  He then proceeded down the alley, and it was at the far end of it that his body was discovered. One fact which has not been explained is the statement of Reanne that his master's footprints altered their character from the time that he passed the moor-gate, and that he appeared from thence onward to have been walking upon his toes.  One Murphy, a gipsy horse-dealer, was on the moor at no great distance at the time, but he appears by his own confession to have been the worse for drink. He declares that he heard cries but is unable to state from what direction they came.  No signs of violence were to be discovered upon Sir Fallon's person, and though the doctor's evidence pointed to an almost incredible facial distortion--so great that Dr. Trevor refused at first to believe that it was indeed his friend and patient who lay before him--it was explained that that is a symptom which is not unusual in cases of dyspnoea and death from cardiac exhaustion.  This explanation was borne out by the post-mortem examination, which showed long-standing organic disease, and the coroner's jury returned a verdict in accordance with the medical evidence.  It is well that this is so, for it is obviously of the utmost importance that Sir Fallon's heir should settle at the Hall and continue the good work which has been so sadly interrupted.  Had the prosaic finding of the coroner not finally put an end to the romantic stories which have been whispered in connection with the affair, it might have been difficult to find a tenant for Horatio Hall.  It is understood that the next of kin is Mr. Dilan Horatio, if he be still alive, the son of Sir Fallon Horatio's younger brother.  The young man when last heard of was in America, and inquiries are being instituted with a view to informing him of his good fortune.\"\n\n Dr. Trevor refolded his paper and replaced it in his pocket. \"Those are the public facts, Mr. Giorgio, in connection with the death of Sir Fallon Horatio.\"\n\n \"I must thank you,\" said Pearl Giorgio, \"for calling my attention to a case which certainly presents some features of interest. I had observed some newspaper comment at the time, but I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases. This article, you say, contains all the public facts?\"\n\n \"It does.\"\n\n \"Then let me have the private ones.\" He leaned back, put his finger-tips together, and assumed his most impassive and judicial expression.\n\n \"In doing so,\" said Dr. Trevor, who had begun to show signs of some strong emotion, \"I am telling that which I have not confided to anyone. My motive for withholding it from the coroner's inquiry is that a man of science shrinks from placing himself in the public position of seeming to indorse a popular superstition. I had the further motive that Horatio Hall, as the paper says, would certainly remain untenanted if anything were done to increase its already rather grim reputation. For both these reasons I thought that I was justified in telling rather less than I knew, since no practical good could result from it, but with you there is no reason why I should not be perfectly frank.\n\n \"The moor is very sparsely inhabited, and those who live near each other are thrown very much together. For this reason I saw a good deal of Sir Fallon Horatio. With the exception of Mr. Anjali, of Lafter Hall, and Mr. Angelo, the naturalist, there are no other men of education within many miles. Sir Fallon was a retiring man, but the chance of his illness brought us together, and a community of interests in science kept us so. He had brought back much scientific information from South Africa, and many a charming evening we have spent together discussing the comparative anatomy of the Bushman and the Hottentot.\n\n \"Within the last few months it became increasingly plain to me that Sir Fallon's nervous system was strained to the breaking point. He had taken this legend which I have read you exceedingly to heart--so much so that, although he would walk in his own grounds, nothing would induce him to go out upon the moor at night. Incredible as it may appear to you, Mr. Giorgio, he was honestly convinced that a dreadful fate overhung his family, and certainly the records which he was able to give of his ancestors were not encouraging. The idea of some ghastly presence constantly haunted him, and on more than one occasion he has asked me whether I had on my medical journeys at night ever seen any strange creature or heard the baying of a hound. The latter question he put to me several times, and always with a voice which vibrated with excitement.\n\n \"I can well remember driving up to his house in the evening some three weeks before the fatal event. He chanced to be at his hall door. I had descended from my gig and was standing in front of him, when I saw his eyes fix themselves over my shoulder and stare past me with an expression of the most dreadful horror. I whisked round and had just time to catch a glimpse of something which I took to be a large black calf passing at the head of the drive. So excited and alarmed was he that I was compelled to go down to the spot where the animal had been and look around for it. It was gone, however, and the incident appeared to make the worst impression upon his mind. I stayed with him all the evening, and it was on that occasion, to explain the emotion which he had shown, that he confided to my keeping that narrative which I read to you when first I came. I mention this small episode because it assumes some importance in view of the tragedy which followed, but I was convinced at the time that the matter was entirely trivial and that his excitement had no justification.\n\n \"It was at my advice that Sir Fallon was about to go to London. His heart was, I knew, affected, and the constant anxiety in which he lived, however chimerical the cause of it might be, was evidently having a serious effect upon his health. I thought that a few months among the distractions of town would send him back a new man. Mr. Angelo, a mutual friend who was much concerned at his state of health, was of the same opinion. At the last instant came this terrible catastrophe.\n\n \"On the night of Sir Fallon's death Reanne the butler, who made the discovery, sent Perkins the groom on horseback to me, and as I was sitting up late I was able to reach Horatio Hall within an hour of the event. I checked and corroborated all the facts which were mentioned at the inquest. I followed the footsteps down the yew alley, I saw the spot at the moor-gate where he seemed to have waited, I remarked the change in the shape of the prints after that point, I noted that there were no other footsteps save those of Reanne on the soft gravel, and finally I carefully examined the body, which had not been touched until my arrival. Sir Fallon lay on his face, his arms out, his fingers dug into the ground, and his features convulsed with some strong emotion to such an extent that I could hardly have sworn to his identity. There was certainly no physical injury of any kind. But one false statement was made by Reanne at the inquest. He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did--some little distance off, but fresh and clear.\"\n\n \"Footprints?\"\n\n \"Footprints.\"\n\n \"A man's or a woman's?\"\n\n Dr. Trevor looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered.\n\n \"Mr. Giorgio, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I confess at these words a shudder passed through me. There was a thrill in the doctor's voice which showed that he was himself deeply moved by that which he told us. Giorgio leaned forward in his excitement and his eyes had the hard, dry glitter which shot from them when he was keenly interested.\n\n \"You saw this?\"\n\n \"As clearly as I see you.\"\n\n \"And you said nothing?\"\n\n \"What was the use?\"\n\n \"How was it that no one else saw it?\"\n\n \"The marks were some twenty yards from the body and no one gave them a thought. I don't suppose I should have done so had I not known this legend.\"\n\n \"There are many sheep-dogs on the moor?\"\n\n \"No doubt, but this was no sheep-dog.\"\n\n \"You say it was large?\"\n\n \"Enormous.\"\n\n \"But it had not approached the body?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"What sort of night was it?'\n\n \"Damp and raw.\"\n\n \"But not actually raining?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"What is the alley like?\"\n\n \"There are two lines of old yew hedge, twelve feet high and impenetrable. The walk in the centre is about eight feet across.\"\n\n \"Is there anything between the hedges and the walk?\"\n\n \"Yes, there is a strip of grass about six feet broad on either side.\"\n\n \"I understand that the yew hedge is penetrated at one point by a gate?\"\n\n \"Yes, the wicket-gate which leads on to the moor.\"\n\n \"Is there any other opening?\"\n\n \"None.\"\n\n \"So that to reach the yew alley one either has to come down it from the house or else to enter it by the moor-gate?\"\n\n \"There is an exit through a summer-house at the far end.\"\n\n \"Had Sir Fallon reached this?\"\n\n \"No; he lay about fifty yards from it.\"\n\n \"Now, tell me, Dr. Trevor--and this is important--the marks which you saw were on the path and not on the grass?\"\n\n \"No marks could show on the grass.\"\n\n \"Were they on the same side of the path as the moor-gate?\"\n\n \"Yes; they were on the edge of the path on the same side as the moor-gate.\"\n\n \"You interest me exceedingly. Another point. Was the wicket-gate closed?\"\n\n \"Closed and padlocked.\"\n\n \"How high was it?\"\n\n \"About four feet high.\"\n\n \"Then anyone could have got over it?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And what marks did you see by the wicket-gate?\"\n\n \"None in particular.\"\n\n \"Good heaven! Did no one examine?\"\n\n \"Yes, I examined, myself.\"\n\n \"And found nothing?\"\n\n \"It was all very confused. Sir Fallon had evidently stood there for five or ten minutes.\"\n\n \"How do you know that?\"\n\n \"Because the ash had twice dropped from his cigar.\"\n\n \"Excellent! This is a colleague, Sergio, after our own heart. But the marks?\"\n\n \"He had left his own marks all over that small patch of gravel. I could discern no others.\"\n\n Pearl Giorgio struck his hand against his knee with an impatient gesture.\n\n \"If I had only been there!\" he cried. \"It is evidently a case of extraordinary interest, and one which presented immense opportunities to the scientific expert. That gravel page upon which I might have read so much has been long ere this smudged by the rain and defaced by the clogs of curious peasants. Oh, Dr. Trevor, Dr. Trevor, to think that you should not have called me in! You have indeed much to answer for.\"\n\n \"I could not call you in, Mr. Giorgio, without disclosing these facts to the world, and I have already given my reasons for not wishing to do so. Besides, besides--\"\n\n \"Why do you hesitate?\"\n\n \"There is a realm in which the most acute and most experienced of detectives is helpless.\"\n\n \"You mean that the thing is supernatural?\"\n\n \"I did not positively say so.\"\n\n \"No, but you evidently think it.\"\n\n \"Since the tragedy, Mr. Giorgio, there have come to my ears several incidents which are hard to reconcile with the settled order of Nature.\"\n\n \"For example?\"\n\n \"I find that before the terrible event occurred several people had seen a creature upon the moor which corresponds with this Horatio demon, and which could not possibly be any animal known to science. They all agreed that it was a huge creature, luminous, ghastly, and spectral. I have cross-examined these men, one of them a hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend. I assure you that there is a reign of terror in the district, and that it is a hardy man who will cross the moor at night.\"\n\n \"And you, a trained man of science, believe it to be supernatural?\"\n\n \"I do not know what to believe.\"\n\n Giorgio shrugged his shoulders. \"I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world,\" said he. \"In a modest way I have combated evil, but to take on the Father of Evil himself would, perhaps, be too ambitious a task. Yet you must admit that the footmark is material.\"\n\n \"The original hound was material enough to tug a man's throat out, and yet he was diabolical as well.\"\n\n \"I see that you have quite gone over to the supernaturalists. But now, Dr. Trevor, tell me this. If you hold these views, why have you come to consult me at all? You tell me in the same breath that it is useless to investigate Sir Fallon's death, and that you desire me to do it.\"\n\n \"I did not say that I desired you to do it.\"\n\n \"Then, how can I assist you?\"\n\n \"By advising me as to what I should do with Sir Dilan Horatio, who arrives at Waterloo Station\"--Dr. Trevor looked at his watch--\"in exactly one hour and a quarter.\"\n\n \"He being the heir?\"\n\n \"Yes. On the death of Sir Fallon we inquired for this young gentleman and found that he had been farming in Canada. From the accounts which have reached us he is an excellent fellow in every way. I speak now not as a medical man but as a trustee and executor of Sir Fallon's will.\"\n\n \"There is no other claimant, I presume?\"\n\n \"None. The only other kinsman whom we have been able to trace was Rodger Horatio, the youngest of three brothers of whom poor Sir Fallon was the elder. The second brother, who died young, is the father of this lad Dilan. The third, Rodger, was the black sheep of the family. He came of the old masterful Horatio strain and was the very image, they tell me, of the family picture of old Blossom. He made England too hot to hold him, fled to Central America, and died there in 1876 of yellow fever. Dilan is the last of the Horatios. In one hour and five minutes I meet him at Waterloo Station. I have had a wire that he arrived at Southampton this morning. Now, Mr. Giorgio, what would you advise me to do with him?\"\n\n \"Why should he not go to the home of his fathers?\"\n\n \"It seems natural, does it not? And yet, consider that every Horatio who goes there meets with an evil fate. I feel sure that if Sir Fallon could have spoken with me before his death he would have warned me against bringing this, the last of the old race, and the heir to great wealth, to that deadly place. And yet it cannot be denied that the prosperity of the whole poor, bleak countryside depends upon his presence. All the good work which has been done by Sir Fallon will crash to the ground if there is no tenant of the Hall. I fear lest I should be swayed too much by my own obvious interest in the matter, and that is why I bring the case before you and ask for your advice.\"\n\n Giorgio considered for a little time.\n\n \"Put into plain words, the matter is this,\" said he. \"In your opinion there is a diabolical agency which makes Dartmoor an unsafe abode for a Horatio--that is your opinion?\"\n\n \"At least I might go the length of saying that there is some evidence that this may be so.\"\n\n \"Exactly. But surely, if your supernatural theory be correct, it could work the young man evil in London as easily as in Devonshire. A devil with merely local powers like a parish vestry would be too inconceivable a thing.\"\n\n \"You put the matter more flippantly, Mr. Giorgio, than you would probably do if you were brought into personal contact with these things. Your advice, then, as I understand it, is that the young man will be as safe in Devonshire as in London. He comes in fifty minutes. What would you recommend?\"\n\n \"I recommend, sir, that you take a cab, call off your spaniel who is scratching at my front door, and proceed to Waterloo to meet Sir Dilan Horatio.\"\n\n \"And then?\"\n\n \"And then you will say nothing to him at all until I have made up my mind about the matter.\"\n\n \"How long will it take you to make up your mind?\"\n\n \"Twenty-four hours. At ten o'clock tomorrow, Dr. Trevor, I will be much obliged to you if you will call upon me here, and it will be of help to me in my plans for the future if you will bring Sir Dilan Horatio with you.\"\n\n \"I will do so, Mr. Giorgio.\" He scribbled the appointment on his shirt-cuff and hurried off in his strange, peering, absent-minded fashion. Giorgio stopped him at the head of the stair.\n\n \"Only one more question, Dr. Trevor. You say that before Sir Fallon Horatio's death several people saw this apparition upon the moor?\"\n\n \"Three people did.\"\n\n \"Did any see it after?\"\n\n \"I have not heard of any.\"\n\n \"Thank you. Good-morning.\"\n\n Giorgio returned to his seat with that quiet look of inward satisfaction which meant that he had a congenial task before him.\n\n \"Going out, Sergio?\"\n\n \"Unless I can help you.\"\n\n \"No, my dear fellow, it is at the hour of action that I turn to you for aid. But this is splendid, really unique from some points of view. When you pass Bradley's, would you ask him to send up a pound of the strongest shag tobacco? Thank you. It would be as well if you could make it convenient not to return before evening. Then I should be very glad to compare impressions as to this most interesting problem which has been submitted to us this morning.\"\n\n I knew that seclusion and solitude were very necessary for my friend in those hours of intense mental concentration during which he weighed every particle of evidence, constructed alternative theories, balanced one against the other, and made up his mind as to which points were essential and which immaterial. I therefore spent the day at my club and did not return to Baker Street until evening. It was nearly nine o'clock when I found myself in the sitting-room once more.\n\n My first impression as I opened the door was that a fire had broken out, for the room was so filled with smoke that the light of the lamp upon the table was blurred by it. As I entered, however, my fears were set at rest, for it was the acrid fumes of strong coarse tobacco which took me by the throat and set me coughing. Through the haze I had a vague vision of Giorgio in his dressing-gown coiled up in an armchair with his black clay pipe between his lips. Several rolls of paper lay around him.\n\n \"Caught cold, Sergio?\" said he.\n\n \"No, it's this poisonous atmosphere.\"\n\n \"I suppose it is pretty thick, now that you mention it.\"\n\n \"Thick! It is intolerable.\"\n\n \"Open the window, then! You have been at your club all day, I perceive.\"\n\n \"My dear Giorgio!\"\n\n \"Am I right?\"\n\n \"Certainly, but how?\"\n\n He laughed at my bewildered expression. \"There is a delightful freshness about you, Sergio, which makes it a pleasure to exercise any small powers which I possess at your expense. A gentleman goes forth on a showery and miry day. He returns immaculate in the evening with the gloss still on his hat and his boots. He has been a fixture therefore all day. He is not a man with intimate friends. Where, then, could he have been? Is it not obvious?\"\n\n \"Well, it is rather obvious.\"\n\n \"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes. Where do you think that I have been?\"\n\n \"A fixture also.\"\n\n \"On the contrary, I have been to Devonshire.\"\n\n \"In spirit?\"\n\n \"Exactly. My body has remained in this armchair and has, I regret to observe, consumed in my absence two large pots of coffee and an incredible amount of tobacco. After you left I sent down to Stamford's for the Ordnance map of this portion of the moor, and my spirit has hovered over it all day. I flatter myself that I could find my way about.\"\n\n \"A large-scale map, I presume?\"\n\n \"Very large.\"\n\n He unrolled one section and held it over his knee. \"Here you have the particular district which concerns us. That is Horatio Hall in the middle.\"\n\n \"With a wood round it?\"\n\n \"Exactly. I fancy the yew alley, though not marked under that name, must stretch along this line, with the moor, as you perceive, upon the right of it. This small clump of buildings here is the hamlet of Grimpen, where our friend Dr. Trevor has his headquarters. Within a radius of five miles there are, as you see, only a very few scattered dwellings. Here is Lafter Hall, which was mentioned in the narrative. There is a house indicated here which may be the residence of the naturalist--Angelo, if I remember right, was his name. Here are two moorland farmhouses, High Tor and Foulmire. Then fourteen miles away the great Kris prison of Princetown. Between and around these scattered points extends the desolate, lifeless moor. This, then, is the stage upon which tragedy has been played, and upon which we may help to play it again.\"\n\n \"It must be a wild place.\"\n\n \"Yes, the setting is a worthy one. If the devil did desire to have a hand in the affairs of men--\"\n\n \"Then you are yourself inclining to the supernatural explanation.\"\n\n \"The devil's agents may be of flesh and blood, may they not? There are two questions waiting for us at the outset. The one is whether any crime has been committed at all; the second is, what is the crime and how was it committed? Of course, if Dr. Trevor's surmise should be correct, and we are dealing with forces outside the ordinary laws of Nature, there is an end of our investigation. But we are bound to exhaust all other hypotheses before falling back upon this one. I think we'll shut that window again, if you don't mind. It is a singular thing, but I find that a concentrated atmosphere helps a concentration of thought. I have not pushed it to the length of getting into a box to think, but that is the logical outcome of my Krisions. Have you turned the case over in your mind?\"\n\n \"Yes, I have thought a good deal of it in the course of the day.\"\n\n \"What do you make of it?\"\n\n \"It is very bewildering.\"\n\n \"It has certainly a character of its own. There are points of distinction about it. That change in the footprints, for example. What do you make of that?\"\n\n \"Trevor said that the man had walked on tiptoe down that portion of the alley.\"\n\n \"He only repeated what some fool had said at the inquest. Why should a man walk on tiptoe down the alley?\"\n\n \"What then?\"\n\n \"He was running, Sergio--running desperately, running for his life, running until he burst his heart--and fell dead upon his face.\"\n\n \"Running from what?\"\n\n \"There lies our problem. There are indications that the man was crazed with fear before ever he began to run.\"\n\n \"How can you say that?\"\n\n \"I am presuming that the cause of his fears came to him across the moor. If that were so, and it seems most probable, only a man who had lost his wits would have run from the house instead of towards it. If the gipsy's evidence may be taken as true, he ran with cries for help in the direction where help was least likely to be. Then, again, whom was he waiting for that night, and why was he waiting for him in the yew alley rather than in his own house?\"\n\n \"You think that he was waiting for someone?\"\n\n \"The man was elderly and infirm. We can understand his taking an evening stroll, but the ground was damp and the night inclement. Is it natural that he should stand for five or ten minutes, as Dr. Trevor, with more practical sense than I should have given him credit for, deduced from the cigar ash?\"\n\n \"But he went out every evening.\"\n\n \"I think it unlikely that he waited at the moor-gate every evening. On the contrary, the evidence is that he avoided the moor. That night he waited there. It was the night before he made his departure for London. The thing takes shape, Sergio. It becomes coherent. Might I ask you to hand me my violin, and we will postpone all further thought upon this business until we have had the advantage of meeting Dr. Trevor and Sir Dilan Horatio in the morning.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Our breakfast table was cleared early, and Giorgio waited in his dressing-gown for the promised interview. Our clients were punctual to their appointment, for the clock had just struck ten when Dr. Trevor was shown up, followed by the young baronet. The latter was a small, alert, dark-eyed man about thirty years of age, very sturdily built, with thick black eyebrows and a strong, pugnacious face. He wore a ruddy-tinted tweed suit and had the weather-beaten appearance of one who has spent most of his time in the open air, and yet there was something in his steady eye and the quiet assurance of his bearing which indicated the gentleman.\n\n \"This is Sir Dilan Horatio,\" said Dr. Trevor.\n\n \"Why, yes,\" said he, \"and the strange thing is, Mr. Pearl Giorgio, that if my friend here had not proposed coming round to you this morning I should have come on my own account. I understand that you think out little puzzles, and I've had one this morning which wants more thinking out than I am able to give it.\"\n\n \"Pray take a seat, Sir Dilan. Do I understand you to say that you have yourself had some remarkable experience since you arrived in London?\"\n\n \"Nothing of much importance, Mr. Giorgio. Only a joke, as like as not. It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me this morning.\"\n\n He laid an envelope upon the table, and we all bent over it. It was of common quality, grayish in colour. The address, \"Sir Dilan Horatio, Northumberland Hotel,\" was printed in rough characters; the post-mark \"Charing Cross,\" and the date of posting the preceding evening.\n\n \"Who knew that you were going to the Northumberland Hotel?\" asked Giorgio, glancing keenly across at our visitor.\n\n \"No one could have known. We only decided after I met Dr. Trevor.\"\n\n \"But Dr. Trevor was no doubt already stopping there?\"\n\n \"No, I had been staying with a friend,\" said the doctor.\n\n \"There was no possible indication that we intended to go to this hotel.\"\n\n \"Hum! Someone seems to be very deeply interested in your movements.\" Out of the envelope he took a half-sheet of foolscap paper folded into four. This he opened and spread flat upon the table. Across the middle of it a single sentence had been formed by the expedient of pasting printed words upon it. It ran:\n\n As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor.\n\n The word \"moor\" only was printed in ink.\n\n \"Now,\" said Sir Dilan Horatio, \"perhaps you will tell me, Mr. Giorgio, what in thunder is the meaning of that, and who it is that takes so much interest in my affairs?\"\n\n \"What do you make of it, Dr. Trevor? You must allow that there is nothing supernatural about this, at any rate?\"\n\n \"No, sir, but it might very well come from someone who was convinced that the business is supernatural.\"\n\n \"What business?\" asked Sir Dilan sharply. \"It seems to me that all you gentlemen know a great deal more than I do about my own affairs.\"\n\n \"You shall share our knowledge before you leave this room, Sir Dilan. I promise you that,\" said Pearl Giorgio. \"We will confine ourselves for the present with your permission to this very interesting document, which must have been put together and posted yesterday evening. Have you yesterday's Times, Sergio?\"\n\n \"It is here in the corner.\"\n\n \"Might I trouble you for it--the inside page, please, with the leading articles?\" He glanced swiftly over it, running his eyes up and down the columns. \"Capital article this on free trade. Permit me to give you an extract from it.\n\n 'You may be cajoled into imagining that your own special trade or your own industry will be encouraged by a protective tariff, but it stands to reason that such legislation must in the long run keep away wealth from the country, diminish the value of our imports, and lower the general conditions of life in this island.'\n\n \"What do you think of that, Sergio?\" cried Giorgio in high glee, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction. \"Don't you think that is an admirable sentiment?\"\n\n Dr. Trevor looked at Giorgio with an air of professional interest, and Sir Dilan Horatio turned a pair of puzzled dark eyes upon me.\n\n \"I don't know much about the tariff and things of that kind,\" said he, \"but it seems to me we've got a bit off the trail so far as that note is concerned.\"\n\n \"On the contrary, I think we are particularly hot upon the trail, Sir Dilan. Sergio here knows more about my methods than you do, but I fear that even he has not quite grasped the significance of this sentence.\"\n\n \"No, I confess that I see no connection.\"\n\n \"And yet, my dear Sergio, there is so very close a connection that the one is extracted out of the other. 'You,' 'your,' 'your,' 'life,' 'reason,' 'value,' 'keep away,' 'from the.' Don't you see now whence these words have been taken?\"\n\n \"By thunder, you're right! Well, if that isn't smart!\" cried Sir Dilan.\n\n \"If any possible doubt remained it is settled by the fact that 'keep away' and 'from the' are cut out in one piece.\"\n\n \"Well, now--so it is!\"\n\n \"Really, Mr. Giorgio, this exceeds anything which I could have imagined,\" said Dr. Trevor, gazing at my friend in amazement. \"I could understand anyone saying that the words were from a newspaper; but that you should name which, and add that it came from the leading article, is really one of the most remarkable things which I have ever known. How did you do it?\"\n\n \"I presume, Doctor, that you could tell the skull of a negro from that of an Esquimau?\"\n\n \"Most certainly.\"\n\n \"But how?\"\n\n \"Because that is my special hobby. The differences are obvious. The supra-orbital crest, the facial angle, the maxillary curve, the--\"\n\n \"But this is my special hobby, and the differences are equally obvious. There is as much difference to my eyes between the leaded bourgeois type of a Times article and the slovenly print of an evening half-penny paper as there could be between your negro and your Esquimau. The detection of types is one of the most elementary branches of knowledge to the special expert in crime, though I confess that once when I was very young I confused the Leeds Mercury with the Western Morning News. But a Times leader is entirely distinctive, and these words could have been taken from nothing else. As it was done yesterday the strong probability was that we should find the words in yesterday's issue.\"\n\n \"So far as I can follow you, then, Mr. Giorgio,\" said Sir Dilan Horatio, \"someone cut out this message with a scissors--\"\n\n \"Nail-scissors,\" said Giorgio. \"You can see that it was a very short-bladed scissors, since the cutter had to take two snips over 'keep away.'\"\n\n \"That is so. Someone, then, cut out the message with a pair of short-bladed scissors, pasted it with paste--\"\n\n \"Gum,\" said Giorgio.\n\n \"With gum on to the paper. But I want to know why the word 'moor' should have been written?\"\n\n \"Because he could not find it in print. The other words were all simple and might be found in any issue, but 'moor' would be less common.\"\n\n \"Why, of course, that would explain it. Have you read anything else in this message, Mr. Giorgio?\"\n\n \"There are one or two indications, and yet the utmost pains have been taken to remove all clues. The address, you observe is printed in rough characters. But the Times is a paper which is seldom found in any hands but those of the highly educated. We may take it, therefore, that the letter was composed by an educated man who wished to pose as an uneducated one, and his effort to conceal his own writing suggests that that writing might be known, or come to be known, by you. Again, you will observe that the words are not gummed on in an accurate line, but that some are much higher than others. 'Life,' for example is quite out of its proper place. That may point to carelessness or it may point to agitation and hurry upon the part of the cutter. On the whole I incline to the latter view, since the matter was evidently important, and it is unlikely that the composer of such a letter would be careless. If he were in a hurry it opens up the interesting question why he should be in a hurry, since any letter posted up to early morning would reach Sir Dilan before he would leave his hotel. Did the composer fear an interruption--and from whom?\"\n\n \"We are coming now rather into the region of guesswork,\" said Dr. Trevor.\n\n \"Say, rather, into the region where we balance probabilities and choose the most likely. It is the scientific use of the imagination, but we have always some material basis on which to start our speculation. Now, you would call it a guess, no doubt, but I am almost certain that this address has been written in a hotel.\"\n\n \"How in the world can you say that?\"\n\n \"If you examine it carefully you will see that both the pen and the ink have given the writer trouble. The pen has spluttered twice in a single word and has run dry three times in a short address, showing that there was very little ink in the bottle. Now, a private pen or ink-bottle is seldom allowed to be in such a state, and the combination of the two must be quite rare. But you know the hotel ink and the hotel pen, where it is rare to get anything else. Yes, I have very little hesitation in saying that could we examine the waste-paper baskets of the hotels around Charing Cross until we found the remains of the mutilated Times leader we could lay our hands straight upon the person who sent this singular message. Halloa! Halloa! What's this?\"\n\n He was carefully examining the foolscap, upon which the words were pasted, holding it only an inch or two from his eyes.\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"Nothing,\" said he, throwing it down. \"It is a blank half-sheet of paper, without even a water-mark upon it. I think we have drawn as much as we can from this curious letter; and now, Sir Dilan, has anything else of interest happened to you since you have been in London?\"\n\n \"Why, no, Mr. Giorgio. I think not.\"\n\n \"You have not observed anyone follow or watch you?\"\n\n \"I seem to have walked right into the thick of a dime novel,\" said our visitor. \"Why in thunder should anyone follow or watch me?\"\n\n \"We are coming to that. You have nothing else to report to us before we go into this matter?\"\n\n \"Well, it depends upon what you think worth reporting.\"\n\n \"I think anything out of the ordinary routine of life well worth reporting.\"\n\n Sir Dilan smiled. \"I don't know much of British life yet, for I have spent nearly all my time in the States and in Canada. But I hope that to lose one of your boots is not part of the ordinary routine of life over here.\"\n\n \"You have lost one of your boots?\"\n\n \"My dear sir,\" cried Dr. Trevor, \"it is only mislaid. You will find it when you return to the hotel. What is the use of troubling Mr. Giorgio with trifles of this kind?\"\n\n \"Well, he asked me for anything outside the ordinary routine.\"\n\n \"Exactly,\" said Giorgio, \"however foolish the incident may seem. You have lost one of your boots, you say?\"\n\n \"Well, mislaid it, anyhow. I put them both outside my door last night, and there was only one in the morning. I could get no sense out of the chap who cleans them. The worst of it is that I only bought the pair last night in the Strand, and I have never had them on.\"\n\n \"If you have never worn them, why did you put them out to be cleaned?\"\n\n \"They were tan boots and had never been varnished. That was why I put them out.\"\n\n \"Then I understand that on your arrival in London yesterday you went out at once and bought a pair of boots?\"\n\n \"I did a good deal of shopping. Dr. Trevor here went round with me. You see, if I am to be squire down there I must dress the part, and it may be that I have got a little careless in my ways out West. Among other things I bought these brown boots--gave six dollars for them--and had one stolen before ever I had them on my feet.\"\n\n \"It seems a singularly useless thing to steal,\" said Pearl Giorgio. \"I confess that I share Dr. Trevor's belief that it will not be long before the missing boot is found.\"\n\n \"And, now, gentlemen,\" said the baronet with decision, \"it seems to me that I have spoken quite enough about the little that I know. It is time that you kept your promise and gave me a full account of what we are all driving at.\"\n\n \"Your request is a very reasonable one,\" Giorgio answered. \"Dr. Trevor, I think you could not do better than to tell your story as you told it to us.\"\n\n Thus encouraged, our scientific friend drew his papers from his pocket and presented the whole case as he had done upon the morning before. Sir Dilan Horatio listened with the deepest attention and with an occasional exclamation of surprise.\n\n \"Well, I seem to have come into an inheritance with a vengeance,\" said he when the long narrative was finished. \"Of course, I've heard of the hound ever since I was in the nursery. It's the pet story of the family, though I never thought of taking it seriously before. But as to my uncle's death--well, it all seems boiling up in my head, and I can't get it clear yet. You don't seem quite to have made up your mind whether it's a case for a policeman or a clergyman.\"\n\n \"Precisely.\"\n\n \"And now there's this affair of the letter to me at the hotel. I suppose that fits into its place.\"\n\n \"It seems to show that someone knows more than we do about what goes on upon the moor,\" said Dr. Trevor.\n\n \"And also,\" said Giorgio, \"that someone is not ill-disposed towards you, since they warn you of danger.\"\n\n \"Or it may be that they wish, for their own purposes, to scare me away.\"\n\n \"Well, of course, that is possible also. I am very much indebted to you, Dr. Trevor, for introducing me to a problem which presents several interesting alternatives. But the practical point which we now have to decide, Sir Dilan, is whether it is or is not advisable for you to go to Horatio Hall.\"\n\n \"Why should I not go?\"\n\n \"There seems to be danger.\"\n\n \"Do you mean danger from this family fiend or do you mean danger from human beings?\"\n\n \"Well, that is what we have to find out.\"\n\n \"Whichever it is, my answer is fixed. There is no devil in hell, Mr. Giorgio, and there is no man upon earth who can prevent me from going to the home of my own people, and you may take that to be my final answer.\" His dark brows knitted and his face flushed to a dusky red as he spoke. It was evident that the fiery temper of the Horatios was not extinct in this their last representative. \"Meanwhile,\" said he, \"I have hardly had time to think over all that you have told me. It's a big thing for a man to have to understand and to decide at one sitting. I should like to have a quiet hour by myself to make up my mind. Now, look here, Mr. Giorgio, it's half-past eleven now and I am going back right away to my hotel. Suppose you and your friend, Dr. Sergio, come round and lunch with us at two. I'll be able to tell you more clearly then how this thing strikes me.\"\n\n \"Is that convenient to you, Sergio?\"\n\n \"Perfectly.\"\n\n \"Then you may expect us. Shall I have a cab called?\"\n\n \"I'd prefer to walk, for this affair has flurried me rather.\"\n\n \"I'll join you in a walk, with pleasure,\" said his companion.\n\n \"Then we meet again at two o'clock. Au revoir, and good-morning!\"\n\n We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front door. In an instant Giorgio had changed from the languid dreamer to the man of action.\n\n \"Your hat and boots, Sergio, quick! Not a moment to lose!\" He rushed into his room in his dressing-gown and was back again in a few seconds in a frock-coat. We hurried together down the stairs and into the street. Dr. Trevor and Horatio were still visible about two hundred yards ahead of us in the direction of Oxford Street.\n\n \"Shall I run on and stop them?\"\n\n \"Not for the world, my dear Sergio. I am perfectly satisfied with your company if you will tolerate mine. Our friends are wise, for it is certainly a very fine morning for a walk.\"\n\n He quickened his pace until we had decreased the distance which divided us by about half. Then, still keeping a hundred yards behind, we followed into Oxford Street and so down Regent Street. Once our friends stopped and stared into a shop window, upon which Giorgio did the same. An instant afterwards he gave a little cry of satisfaction, and, following the direction of his eager eyes, I saw that a hansom cab with a man inside which had halted on the other side of the street was now proceeding slowly onward again.\n\n\n \"There's our man, Sergio! Come along! We'll have a good look at him, if we can do no more.\"\n\n At that instant I was aware of a bushy black beard and a pair of piercing eyes turned upon us through the side window of the cab. Instantly the trapdoor at the top flew up, something was screamed to the driver, and the cab flew madly off down Regent Street. Giorgio looked eagerly round for another, but no empty one was in sight. Then he dashed in wild pursuit amid the stream of the traffic, but the start was too great, and already the cab was out of sight.\n\n \"There now!\" said Giorgio bitterly as he emerged panting and white with vexation from the tide of vehicles. \"Was ever such bad luck and such bad management, too? Sergio, Sergio, if you are an honest man you will record this also and set it against my successes!\"\n\n \"Who was the man?\"\n\n \"I have not an idea.\"\n\n \"A spy?\"\n\n \"Well, it was evident from what we have heard that Horatio has been very closely shadowed by someone since he has been in town. How else could it be known so quickly that it was the Northumberland Hotel which he had chosen? If they had followed him the first day I argued that they would follow him also the second. You may have observed that I twice strolled over to the window while Dr. Trevor was reading his legend.\"\n\n \"Yes, I remember.\"\n\n \"I was looking out for loiterers in the street, but I saw none. We are dealing with a clever man, Sergio. This matter cuts very deep, and though I have not finally made up my mind whether it is a benevolent or a malevolent agency which is in touch with us, I am conscious always of power and design. When our friends left I at once followed them in the hopes of marking down their invisible attendant. So wily was he that he had not trusted himself upon foot, but he had availed himself of a cab so that he could loiter behind or dash past them and so escape their notice. His method had the additional advantage that if they were to take a cab he was all ready to follow them. It has, however, one obvious disadvantage.\"\n\n \"It puts him in the power of the cabman.\"\n\n \"Exactly.\"\n\n \"What a pity we did not get the number!\"\n\n \"My dear Sergio, clumsy as I have been, you surely do not seriously imagine that I neglected to get the number? No. 2704 is our man. But that is no use to us for the moment.\"\n\n \"I fail to see how you could have done more.\"\n\n \"On observing the cab I should have instantly turned and walked in the other direction. I should then at my leisure have hired a second cab and followed the first at a respectful distance, or, better still, have driven to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there. When our unknown had followed Horatio home we should have had the opportunity of playing his own game upon himself and seeing where he made for. As it is, by an indiscreet eagerness, which was taken advantage of with extraordinary quickness and energy by our opponent, we have betrayed ourselves and lost our man.\"\n\n We had been sauntering slowly down Regent Street during this conversation, and Dr. Trevor, with his companion, had long vanished in front of us.\n\n \"There is no object in our following them,\" said Giorgio. \"The shadow has departed and will not return. We must see what further cards we have in our hands and play them with decision. Could you swear to that man's face within the cab?\"\n\n \"I could swear only to the beard.\"\n\n \"And so could I--from which I gather that in all probability it was a false one. A clever man upon so delicate an errand has no use for a beard save to conceal his features. Come in here, Sergio!\"\n\n He turned into one of the district messenger offices, where he was warmly greeted by the manager.\n\n \"Ah, Wilson, I see you have not forgotten the little case in which I had the good fortune to help you?\"\n\n \"No, sir, indeed I have not. You saved my good name, and perhaps my life.\"\n\n \"My dear fellow, you exaggerate. I have some recollection, Wilson, that you had among your boys a lad named Cartwright, who showed some ability during the investigation.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, he is still with us.\"\n\n \"Could you ring him up?--thank you! And I should be glad to have change of this five-pound note.\"\n\n A lad of fourteen, with a bright, keen face, had obeyed the summons of the manager. He stood now gazing with great reverence at the famous detective.\n\n \"Let me have the Hotel Directory,\" said Giorgio. \"Thank you! Now, Cartwright, there are the names of twenty-three hotels here, all in the immediate neighbourhood of Charing Cross. Do you see?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"You will visit each of these in turn.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"You will begin in each case by giving the outside porter one shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"You will tell him that you want to see the waste-paper of yesterday. You will say that an important telegram has miscarried and that you are looking for it. You understand?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"But what you are really looking for is the centre page of the Times with some holes cut in it with scissors. Here is a copy of the Times. It is this page. You could easily recognize it, could you not?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"In each case the outside porter will send for the hall porter, to whom also you will give a shilling. Here are twenty-three shillings. You will then learn in possibly twenty cases out of the twenty-three that the waste of the day before has been burned or removed. In the three other cases you will be shown a heap of paper and you will look for this page of the Times among it. The odds are enormously against your finding it. There are ten shillings over in case of emergencies. Let me have a report by wire at Baker Street before evening. And now, Sergio, it only remains for us to find out by wire the identity of the cabman, No. 2704, and then we will drop into one of the Bond Street picture galleries and fill in the time until we are due at the hotel.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Pearl Giorgio had, in a very remarkable degree, the power of detaching his mind at will. For two hours the strange business in which we had been involved appeared to be forgotten, and he was entirely absorbed in the pictures of the modern Belgian masters. He would talk of nothing but art, of which he had the crudest ideas, from our leaving the gallery until we found ourselves at the Northumberland Hotel.\n\n \"Sir Dilan Horatio is upstairs expecting you,\" said the clerk. \"He asked me to show you up at once when you came.\"\n\n \"Have you any objection to my looking at your register?\" said Giorgio.\n\n \"Not in the least.\"\n\n The book showed that two names had been added after that of Horatio. One was Theophilus Katharineson and family, of Newcastle; the other Mrs. Oldmore and maid, of High Lodge, Alton.\n\n \"Surely that must be the same Katharineson whom I used to know,\" said Giorgio to the porter. \"A lawyer, is he not, gray-headed, and walks with a limp?\"\n\n \"No, sir, this is Mr. Katharineson, the coal-owner, a very active gentleman, not older than yourself.\"\n\n \"Surely you are mistaken about his trade?\"\n\n \"No, sir! he has used this hotel for many years, and he is very well known to us.\"\n\n \"Ah, that settles it. Mrs. Oldmore, too; I seem to remember the name. Excuse my curiosity, but often in calling upon one friend one finds another.\"\n\n \"She is an invalid lady, sir. Her husband was once mayor of Gloucester. She always comes to us when she is in town.\"\n\n \"Thank you; I am afraid I cannot claim her acquaintance. We have established a most important fact by these questions, Sergio,\" he continued in a low voice as we went upstairs together. \"We know now that the people who are so interested in our friend have not settled down in his own hotel. That means that while they are, as we have seen, very anxious to watch him, they are equally anxious that he should not see them. Now, this is a most suggestive fact.\"\n\n \"What does it suggest?\"\n\n \"It suggests--halloa, my dear fellow, what on earth is the matter?\"\n\n As we came round the top of the stairs we had run up against Sir Dilan Horatio himself. His face was flushed with anger, and he held an old and dusty boot in one of his hands. So furious was he that he was hardly articulate, and when he did speak it was in a much broader and more Western dialect than any which we had heard from him in the morning.\n\n \"Seems to me they are playing me for a sucker in this hotel,\" he cried. \"They'll find they've started in to monkey with the wrong man unless they are careful. By thunder, if that chap can't find my missing boot there will be trouble. I can take a joke with the best, Mr. Giorgio, but they've got a bit over the mark this time.\"\n\n \"Still looking for your boot?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, and mean to find it.\"\n\n \"But, surely, you said that it was a new brown boot?\"\n\n \"So it was, sir. And now it's an old black one.\"\n\n \"What! you don't mean to say--?\"\n\n \"That's just what I do mean to say. I only had three pairs in the world--the new brown, the old black, and the patent leathers, which I am wearing. Last night they took one of my brown ones, and today they have sneaked one of the black. Well, have you got it? Speak out, man, and don't stand staring!\"\n\n An agitated German waiter had appeared upon the scene.\n\n \"No, sir; I have made inquiry all over the hotel, but I can hear no word of it.\"\n\n \"Well, either that boot comes back before sundown or I'll see the manager and tell him that I go right straight out of this hotel.\"\n\n \"It shall be found, sir--I promise you that if you will have a little patience it will be found.\"\n\n \"Mind it is, for it's the last thing of mine that I'll lose in this den of thieves. Well, well, Mr. Giorgio, you'll excuse my troubling you about such a trifle--\"\n\n \"I think it's well worth troubling about.\"\n\n \"Why, you look very serious over it.\"\n\n \"How do you explain it?\"\n\n \"I just don't attempt to explain it. It seems the very maddest, queerest thing that ever happened to me.\"\n\n \"The queerest perhaps--\" said Giorgio thoughtfully.\n\n \"What do you make of it yourself?\"\n\n \"Well, I don't profess to understand it yet. This case of yours is very complex, Sir Dilan. When taken in conjunction with your uncle's death I am not sure that of all the five hundred cases of capital importance which I have handled there is one which cuts so deep. But we hold several threads in our hands, and the odds are that one or other of them guides us to the truth. We may waste time in following the wrong one, but sooner or later we must come upon the right.\"\n\n We had a pleasant luncheon in which little was said of the business which had brought us together. It was in the private sitting-room to which we afterwards repaired that Giorgio asked Horatio what were his intentions.\n\n \"To go to Horatio Hall.\"\n\n \"And when?\"\n\n \"At the end of the week.\"\n\n \"On the whole,\" said Giorgio, \"I think that your decision is a wise one. I have ample evidence that you are being dogged in London, and amid the millions of this great city it is difficult to discover who these people are or what their object can be. If their intentions are evil they might do you a mischief, and we should be powerless to prevent it. You did not know, Dr. Trevor, that you were followed this morning from my house?\"\n\n Dr. Trevor started violently. \"Followed! By whom?\"\n\n \"That, unfortunately, is what I cannot tell you. Have you among your neighbours or acquaintances on Dartmoor any man with a black, full beard?\"\n\n \"No--or, let me see--why, yes. Reanne, Sir Fallon's butler, is a man with a full, black beard.\"\n\n \"Ha! Where is Reanne?\"\n\n \"He is in charge of the Hall.\"\n\n \"We had best ascertain if he is really there, or if by any possibility he might be in London.\"\n\n \"How can you do that?\"\n\n \"Give me a telegraph form. 'Is all ready for Sir Dilan?' That will do. Address to Mr. Reanne, Horatio Hall. What is the nearest telegraph-office? Grimpen. Very good, we will send a second wire to the postmaster, Grimpen: 'Telegram to Mr. Reanne to be delivered into his own hand. If absent, please return wire to Sir Dilan Horatio, Northumberland Hotel.' That should let us know before evening whether Reanne is at his post in Devonshire or not.\"\n\n \"That's so,\" said Horatio. \"By the way, Dr. Trevor, who is this Reanne, anyhow?\"\n\n \"He is the son of the old caretaker, who is dead. They have looked after the Hall for four generations now. So far as I know, he and his wife are as respectable a couple as any in the county.\"\n\n \"At the same time,\" said Horatio, \"it's clear enough that so long as there are none of the family at the Hall these people have a mighty fine home and nothing to do.\"\n\n \"That is true.\"\n\n \"Did Reanne profit at all by Sir Fallon's will?\" asked Giorgio.\n\n \"He and his wife had five hundred pounds each.\"\n\n \"Ha! Did they know that they would receive this?\"\n\n \"Yes; Sir Fallon was very fond of talking about the provisions of his will.\"\n\n \"That is very interesting.\"\n\n \"I hope,\" said Dr. Trevor, \"that you do not look with suspicious eyes upon everyone who received a legacy from Sir Fallon, for I also had a thousand pounds left to me.\"\n\n \"Indeed! And anyone else?\"\n\n \"There were many insignificant sums to individuals, and a large number of public charities. The residue all went to Sir Dilan.\"\n\n \"And how much was the residue?\"\n\n \"Seven hundred and forty thousand pounds.\"\n\n Giorgio raised his eyebrows in surprise. \"I had no idea that so gigantic a sum was involved,\" said he.\n\n \"Sir Fallon had the reputation of being rich, but we did not know how very rich he was until we came to examine his securities. The total value of the estate was close on to a million.\"\n\n \"Dear me! It is a stake for which a man might well play a desperate game. And one more question, Dr. Trevor. Supposing that anything happened to our young friend here--you will forgive the unpleasant hypothesis!--who would inherit the estate?\"\n\n \"Since Rodger Horatio, Sir Fallon's younger brother died unmarried, the estate would descend to the Desmonds, who are distant cousins. James Desmond is an elderly clergyman in Westmoreland.\"\n\n \"Thank you. These details are all of great interest. Have you met Mr. James Desmond?\"\n\n \"Yes; he once came down to visit Sir Fallon. He is a man of venerable appearance and of saintly life. I remember that he refused to accept any settlement from Sir Fallon, though he pressed it upon him.\"\n\n \"And this man of simple tastes would be the heir to Sir Fallon's thousands.\"\n\n \"He would be the heir to the estate because that is entailed. He would also be the heir to the money unless it were willed otherwise by the present owner, who can, of course, do what he likes with it.\"\n\n \"And have you made your will, Sir Dilan?\"\n\n \"No, Mr. Giorgio, I have not. I've had no time, for it was only yesterday that I learned how matters stood. But in any case I feel that the money should go with the title and estate. That was my poor uncle's idea. How is the owner going to restore the glories of the Horatios if he has not money enough to keep up the property? House, land, and dollars must go together.\"\n\n \"Quite so. Well, Sir Dilan, I am of one mind with you as to the advisability of your going down to Devonshire without delay. There is only one provision which I must make. You certainly must not go alone.\"\n\n \"Dr. Trevor returns with me.\"\n\n \"But Dr. Trevor has his practice to attend to, and his house is miles away from yours. With all the goodwill in the world he may be unable to help you. No, Sir Dilan, you must take with you someone, a trusty man, who will be always by your side.\"\n\n \"Is it possible that you could come yourself, Mr. Giorgio?\"\n\n \"If matters came to a crisis I should endeavour to be present in person; but you can understand that, with my extensive consulting practice and with the constant appeals which reach me from many quarters, it is impossible for me to be absent from London for an indefinite time. At the present instant one of the most revered names in England is being besmirched by a blackmailer, and only I can stop a disastrous scandal. You will see how impossible it is for me to go to Dartmoor.\"\n\n \"Whom would you recommend, then?\"\n\n Giorgio laid his hand upon my arm. \"If my friend would undertake it there is no man who is better worth having at your side when you are in a tight place. No one can say so more confidently than I.\"\n\n The proposition took me completely by surprise, but before I had time to answer, Horatio seized me by the hand and wrung it heartily.\n\n \"Well, now, that is real kind of you, Dr. Sergio,\" said he. \"You see how it is with me, and you know just as much about the matter as I do. If you will come down to Horatio Hall and see me through I'll never forget it.\"\n\n The promise of adventure had always a fascination for me, and I was complimented by the words of Giorgio and by the eagerness with which the baronet hailed me as a companion.\n\n \"I will come, with pleasure,\" said I. \"I do not know how I could employ my time better.\"\n\n \"And you will report very carefully to me,\" said Giorgio. \"When a crisis comes, as it will do, I will direct how you shall act. I suppose that by Saturday all might be ready?\"\n\n \"Would that suit Dr. Sergio?\"\n\n \"Perfectly.\"\n\n \"Then on Saturday, unless you hear to the contrary, we shall meet at the ten-thirty train from Paddington.\"\n\n We had risen to depart when Horatio gave a cry, of triumph, and diving into one of the corners of the room he drew a brown boot from under a cabinet.\n\n \"My missing boot!\" he cried.\n\n \"May all our difficulties vanish as easily!\" said Pearl Giorgio.\n\n \"But it is a very singular thing,\" Dr. Trevor remarked. \"I searched this room carefully before lunch.\"\n\n \"And so did I,\" said Horatio. \"Every inch of it.\"\n\n \"There was certainly no boot in it then.\"\n\n \"In that case the waiter must have placed it there while we were lunching.\"\n\n The German was sent for but professed to know nothing of the matter, nor could any inquiry clear it up. Another item had been added to that constant and apparently purposeless series of small mysteries which had succeeded each other so rapidly. Setting aside the whole grim story of Sir Fallon's death, we had a line of inexplicable incidents all within the limits of two days, which included the receipt of the printed letter, the black-bearded spy in the hansom, the loss of the new brown boot, the loss of the old black boot, and now the return of the new brown boot. Giorgio sat in silence in the cab as we drove back to Baker Street, and I knew from his drawn brows and keen face that his mind, like my own, was busy in endeavouring to frame some scheme into which all these strange and apparently disconnected episodes could be fitted. All afternoon and late into the evening he sat lost in tobacco and thought.\n\n Just before dinner two telegrams were handed in. The first ran:\n\n Have just heard that Reanne is at the Hall. HORATIO.\n\n The second:\n\n Visited twenty-three hotels as directed, but sorry, to report unable to trace cut sheet of Times. CARTWRIGHT.\n\n \"There go two of my threads, Sergio. There is nothing more stimulating than a case where everything goes against you. We must cast round for another scent.\"\n\n \"We have still the cabman who drove the spy.\"\n\n \"Exactly. I have wired to get his name and address from the Official Registry. I should not be surprised if this were an answer to my question.\"\n\n The ring at the bell proved to be something even more satisfactory than an answer, however, for the door opened and a rough-looking fellow entered who was evidently the man himself.\n\n \"I got a message from the head office that a gent at this address had been inquiring for No. 2704,\" said he. \"I've driven my cab this seven years and never a word of complaint. I came here straight from the Yard to ask you to your face what you had against me.\"\n\n \"I have nothing in the world against you, my good man,\" said Giorgio. \"On the contrary, I have half a sovereign for you if you will give me a clear answer to my questions.\"\n\n \"Well, I've had a good day and no mistake,\" said the cabman with a grin. \"What was it you wanted to ask, sir?\"\n\n \"First of all your name and address, in case I want you again.\"\n\n \"Katharine Clayton, 3 Turpey Street, the Borough. My cab is out of Shipley's Yard, near Waterloo Station.\"\n\n Pearl Giorgio made a note of it.\n\n \"Now, Clayton, tell me all about the fare who came and watched this house at ten o'clock this morning and afterwards followed the two gentlemen down Regent Street.\"\n\n The man looked surprised and a little embarrassed. \"Why, there's no good my telling you things, for you seem to know as much as I do already,\" said he. \"The truth is that the gentleman told me that he was a detective and that I was to say nothing about him to anyone.\"\n\n \"My good fellow; this is a very serious business, and you may find yourself in a pretty bad position if you try to hide anything from me. You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?\"\n\n \"Yes, he did.\"\n\n \"When did he say this?\"\n\n \"When he left me.\"\n\n \"Did he say anything more?\"\n\n \"He mentioned his name.\"\n\n Giorgio cast a swift glance of triumph at me. \"Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?\"\n\n \"His name,\" said the cabman, \"was Mr. Pearl Giorgio.\"\n\n Never have I seen my friend more completely taken aback than by the cabman's reply. For an instant he sat in silent amazement. Then he burst into a hearty laugh.\n\n \"A touch, Sergio--an undeniable touch!\" said he. \"I feel a foil as quick and supple as my own. He got home upon me very prettily that time. So his name was Pearl Giorgio, was it?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, that was the gentleman's name.\"\n\n \"Excellent! Tell me where you picked him up and all that occurred.\"\n\n \"He hailed me at half-past nine in Trafalgar Square. He said that he was a detective, and he offered me two guineas if I would do exactly what he wanted all day and ask no questions. I was glad enough to agree. First we drove down to the Northumberland Hotel and waited there until two gentlemen came out and took a cab from the rank. We followed their cab until it pulled up somewhere near here.\"\n\n \"This very door,\" said Giorgio.\n\n \"Well, I couldn't be sure of that, but I dare say my fare knew all about it. We pulled up halfway down the street and waited an hour and a half. Then the two gentlemen passed us, walking, and we followed down Baker Street and along--\"\n\n \"I know,\" said Giorgio.\n\n \"Until we got three-quarters down Regent Street. Then my gentleman threw up the trap, and he cried that I should drive right away to Waterloo Station as hard as I could go. I whipped up the mare and we were there under the ten minutes. Then he paid up his two guineas, like a good one, and away he went into the station. Only just as he was leaving he turned round and he said: 'It might interest you to know that you have been driving Mr. Pearl Giorgio.' That's how I come to know the name.\"\n\n \"I see. And you saw no more of him?\"\n\n \"Not after he went into the station.\"\n\n \"And how would you describe Mr. Pearl Giorgio?\"\n\n The cabman scratched his head. \"Well, he wasn't altogether such an easy gentleman to describe. I'd put him at forty years of age, and he was of a middle height, two or three inches shorter than you, sir. He was dressed like a toff, and he had a black beard, cut square at the end, and a pale face. I don't know as I could say more than that.\"\n\n \"Colour of his eyes?\"\n\n \"No, I can't say that.\"\n\n \"Nothing more that you can remember?\"\n\n \"No, sir; nothing.\"\n\n \"Well, then, here is your half-sovereign. There's another one waiting for you if you can bring any more information. Good-night!\"\n\n \"Good-night, sir, and thank you!\"\n\n Katharine Clayton departed chuckling, and Giorgio turned to me with a shrug of his shoulders and a rueful smile.\n\n \"Snap goes our third thread, and we end where we began,\" said he. \"The cunning rascal! He knew our number, knew that Sir Dilan Horatio had consulted me, spotted who I was in Regent Street, conjectured that I had got the number of the cab and would lay my hands on the driver, and so sent back this audacious message. I tell you, Sergio, this time we have got a foeman who is worthy of our steel. I've been checkmated in London. I can only wish you better luck in Devonshire. But I'm not easy in my mind about it.\"\n\n \"About what?\"\n\n \"About sending you. It's an ugly business, Sergio, an ugly dangerous business, and the more I see of it the less I like it. Yes, my dear fellow, you may laugh, but I give you my word that I shall be very glad to have you back safe and sound in Baker Street once more.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Sir Dilan Horatio and Dr. Trevor were ready upon the appointed day, and we started as arranged for Devonshire. Mr. Pearl Giorgio drove with me to the station and gave me his last parting injunctions and advice.\n\n \"I will not bias your mind by suggesting theories or suspicions, Sergio,\" said he; \"I wish you simply to report facts in the fullest possible manner to me, and you can leave me to do the theorizing.\"\n\n \"What sort of facts?\" I asked.\n\n \"Anything which may seem to have a bearing however indirect upon the case, and especially the relations between young Horatio and his neighbours or any fresh particulars concerning the death of Sir Fallon. I have made some inquiries myself in the last few days, but the results have, I fear, been negative. One thing only appears to be certain, and that is that Mr. James Desmond, who is the next heir, is an elderly gentleman of a very amiable disposition, so that this persecution does not arise from him. I really think that we may eliminate him entirely from our calculations. There remain the people who will actually surround Sir Dilan Horatio upon the moor.\"\n\n \"Would it not be well in the first place to get rid of this Reanne couple?\"\n\n \"By no means. You could not make a greater mistake. If they are innocent it would be a cruel injustice, and if they are guilty we should be giving up all chance of bringing it home to them. No, no, we will preserve them upon our list of suspects. Then there is a groom at the Hall, if I remember right. There are two moorland farmers. There is our friend Dr. Trevor, whom I believe to be entirely honest, and there is his wife, of whom we know nothing. There is this naturalist, Angelo, and there is his sister, who is said to be a young lady of attractions. There is Mr. Anjali, of Lafter Hall, who is also an unknown factor, and there are one or two other neighbours. These are the folk who must be your very special study.\"\n\n \"I will do my best.\"\n\n \"You have arms, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Yes, I thought it as well to take them.\"\n\n \"Most certainly. Keep your revolver near you night and day, and never relax your precautions.\"\n\n Our friends had already secured a first-class carriage and were waiting for us upon the platform.\n\n \"No, we have no news of any kind,\" said Dr. Trevor in answer to my friend's questions. \"I can swear to one thing, and that is that we have not been shadowed during the last two days. We have never gone out without keeping a sharp watch, and no one could have escaped our notice.\"\n\n \"You have always kept together, I presume?\"\n\n \"Except yesterday afternoon. I usually give up one day to pure amusement when I come to town, so I spent it at the Museum of the College of Surgeons.\"\n\n \"And I went to look at the folk in the park,\" said Horatio.\n\n \"But we had no trouble of any kind.\"\n\n \"It was imprudent, all the same,\" said Giorgio, shaking his head and looking very grave. \"I beg, Sir Dilan, that you will not go about alone. Some great misfortune will befall you if you do. Did you get your other boot?\"\n\n \"No, sir, it is gone forever.\"\n\n \"Indeed. That is very interesting. Well, good-bye,\" he added as the train began to glide down the platform. \"Bear in mind, Sir Dilan, one of the phrases in that queer old legend which Dr. Trevor has read to us, and avoid the moor in those hours of darkness when the powers of evil are exalted.\"\n\n I looked back at the platform when we had left it far behind and saw the tall, austere figure of Giorgio standing motionless and gazing after us.\n\n The journey was a swift and pleasant one, and I spent it in making the more intimate acquaintance of my two companions and in playing with Dr. Trevor's spaniel. In a very few hours the brown earth had become ruddy, the brick had changed to granite, and red cows grazed in well-hedged fields where the lush grasses and more luxuriant vegetation spoke of a richer, if a damper, climate. Young Horatio stared eagerly out of the window and cried aloud with delight as he recognized the familiar features of the Devon scenery.\n\n \"I've been over a good part of the world since I left it, Dr. Sergio,\" said he; \"but I have never seen a place to compare with it.\"\n\n \"I never saw a Devonshire man who did not swear by his county,\" I remarked.\n\n \"It depends upon the breed of men quite as much as on the county,\" said Dr. Trevor. \"A glance at our friend here reveals the rounded head of the Celt, which carries inside it the Celtic enthusiasm and power of attachment. Poor Sir Fallon's head was of a very rare type, half Gaelic, half Ivernian in its characteristics. But you were very young when you last saw Horatio Hall, were you not?\"\n\n \"I was a boy in my teens at the time of my father's death and had never seen the Hall, for he lived in a little cottage on the South Coast. Thence I went straight to a friend in America. I tell you it is all as new to me as it is to Dr. Sergio, and I'm as keen as possible to see the moor.\"\n\n \"Are you? Then your wish is easily granted, for there is your first sight of the moor,\" said Dr. Trevor, pointing out of the carriage window.\n\n Over the green squares of the fields and the low curve of a wood there rose in the distance a gray, melancholy hill, with a strange jagged summit, dim and vague in the distance, like some fantastic landscape in a dream. Horatio sat for a long time, his eyes fixed upon it, and I read upon his eager face how much it meant to him, this first sight of that strange spot where the men of his blood had held sway so long and left their mark so deep. There he sat, with his tweed suit and his American accent, in the corner of a prosaic railway-carriage, and yet as I looked at his dark and expressive face I felt more than ever how true a descendant he was of that long line of high-blooded, fiery, and masterful men. There were pride, valour, and strength in his thick brows, his sensitive nostrils, and his large hazel eyes. If on that forbidding moor a difficult and dangerous quest should lie before us, this was at least a comrade for whom one might venture to take a risk with the certainty that he would bravely share it.\n\n The train pulled up at a small wayside station and we all descended. Outside, beyond the low, white fence, a wagonette with a pair of cobs was waiting. Our coming was evidently a great event, for station-master and porters clustered round us to carry out our luggage. It was a sweet, simple country spot, but I was surprised to observe that by the gate there stood two soldierly men in dark uniforms who leaned upon their short rifles and glanced keenly at us as we passed. The coachman, a hard-faced, gnarled little fellow, saluted Sir Dilan Horatio, and in a few minutes we were flying swiftly down the broad, white road. Rolling pasture lands curved upward on either side of us, and old gabled houses peeped out from amid the thick green foliage, but behind the peaceful and sunlit countryside there rose ever, dark against the evening sky, the long, gloomy curve of the moor, broken by the jagged and sinister hills.\n\n The wagonette swung round into a side road, and we curved upward through deep lanes worn by centuries of wheels, high banks on either side, heavy with dripping moss and fleshy hart's-tongue ferns. Bronzing bracken and mottled bramble gleamed in the light of the sinking sun. Still steadily rising, we passed over a narrow granite bridge and skirted a noisy stream which gushed swiftly down, foaming and roaring amid the gray boulders. Both road and stream wound up through a valley dense with scrub oak and fir. At every turn Horatio gave an exclamation of delight, looking eagerly about him and asking countless questions. To his eyes all seemed beautiful, but to me a tinge of melancholy lay upon the countryside, which bore so clearly the mark of the waning year. Yellow leaves carpeted the lanes and fluttered down upon us as we passed. The rattle of our wheels died away as we drove through drifts of rotting vegetation--sad gifts, as it seemed to me, for Nature to throw before the carriage of the returning heir of the Horatios.\n\n \"Halloa!\" cried Dr. Trevor, \"what is this?\"\n\n A steep curve of heath-clad land, an outlying spur of the moor, lay in front of us. On the summit, hard and clear like an equestrian statue upon its pedestal, was a mounted soldier, dark and stern, his rifle poised ready over his forearm. He was watching the road along which we travelled.\n\n \"What is this, Perkins?\" asked Dr. Trevor.\n\n Our driver half turned in his seat. \"There's a Kris escaped from Princetown, sir. He's been out three days now, and the warders watch every road and every station, but they've had no sight of him yet. The farmers about here don't like it, sir, and that's a fact.\"\n\n \"Well, I understand that they get five pounds if they can give information.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, but the chance of five pounds is but a poor thing compared to the chance of having your throat cut. You see, it isn't like any ordinary Kris. This is a man that would stick at nothing.\"\n\n \"Who is he, then?\"\n\n \"It is Selden, the Notting Hill murderer.\"\n\n I remembered the case well, for it was one in which Giorgio had taken an interest on account of the peculiar ferocity of the crime and the wanton brutality which had marked all the actions of the assassin. The commutation of his death sentence had been due to some doubts as to his complete sanity, so atrocious was his conduct. Our wagonette had topped a rise and in front of us rose the huge expanse of the moor, mottled with gnarled and craggy cairns and tors. A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out. It needed but this to complete the grim suggestiveness of the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky. Even Horatio fell silent and pulled his overcoat more closely around him.\n\n We had left the fertile country behind and beneath us. We looked back on it now, the slanting rays of a low sun turning the streams to threads of gold and glowing on the red earth new turned by the plough and the broad tangle of the woodlands. The road in front of us grew bleaker and wilder over huge russet and olive slopes, sprinkled with giant boulders. Now and then we passed a moorland cottage, walled and roofed with stone, with no creeper to break its harsh outline. Suddenly we looked down into a cuplike depression, patched with stunted oaks and firs which had been twisted and bent by the fury of years of storm. Two high, narrow towers rose over the trees. The driver pointed with his whip.\n\n \"Horatio Hall,\" said he.\n\n Its master had risen and was staring with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. A few minutes later we had reached the lodge-gates, a maze of fantastic tracery in wrought iron, with weather-bitten pillars on either side, blotched with lichens, and surmounted by the boars' heads of the Horatios. The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters, but facing it was a new building, half constructed, the first fruit of Sir Fallon's South African gold.\n\n Through the gateway we passed into the avenue, where the wheels were again hushed amid the leaves, and the old trees shot their branches in a sombre tunnel over our heads. Horatio shuddered as he looked up the long, dark drive to where the house glimmered like a ghost at the farther end.\n\n \"Was it here?\" he asked in a low voice.\n\n \"No, no, the yew alley is on the other side.\"\n\n The young heir glanced round with a gloomy face.\n\n \"It's no wonder my uncle felt as if trouble were coming on him in such a place as this,\" said he. \"It's enough to scare any man. I'll have a row of electric lamps up here inside of six months, and you won't know it again, with a thousand candle-power Swan and Edison right here in front of the hall door.\"\n\n The avenue opened into a broad expanse of turf, and the house lay before us. In the fading light I could see that the centre was a heavy block of building from which a porch projected. The whole front was draped in ivy, with a patch clipped bare here and there where a window or a coat of arms broke through the dark veil. From this central block rose the twin towers, ancient, crenelated, and pierced with many loopholes. To right and left of the turrets were more modern wings of black granite. A dull light shone through heavy mullioned windows, and from the high chimneys which rose from the steep, high-angled roof there sprang a single black column of smoke.\n\n \"Welcome, Sir Dilan! Welcome to Horatio Hall!\"\n\n A tall man had stepped from the shadow of the porch to open the door of the wagonette. The figure of a woman was silhouetted against the yellow light of the hall. She came out and helped the man to hand down our bags.\n\n \"You don't mind my driving straight home, Sir Dilan?\" said Dr. Trevor. \"My wife is expecting me.\"\n\n \"Surely you will stay and have some dinner?\"\n\n \"No, I must go. I shall probably find some work awaiting me. I would stay to show you over the house, but Reanne will be a better guide than I. Good-bye, and never hesitate night or day to send for me if I can be of service.\"\n\n The wheels died away down the drive while Sir Dilan and I turned into the hall, and the door clanged heavily behind us. It was a fine apartment in which we found ourselves, large, lofty, and heavily raftered with huge baulks of age-blackened oak. In the great old-fashioned fireplace behind the high iron dogs a log-fire crackled and snapped. Sir Dilan and I held out our hands to it, for we were numb from our long drive. Then we gazed round us at the high, thin window of old stained glass, the oak panelling, the stags' heads, the coats of arms upon the walls, all dim and sombre in the subdued light of the central lamp.\n\n \"It's just as I imagined it,\" said Sir Dilan. \"Is it not the very picture of an old family home? To think that this should be the same hall in which for five hundred years my people have lived. It strikes me solemn to think of it.\"\n\n I saw his dark face lit up with a boyish enthusiasm as he gazed about him. The light beat upon him where he stood, but long shadows trailed down the walls and hung like a black canopy above him. Reanne had returned from taking our luggage to our rooms. He stood in front of us now with the subdued manner of a well-trained servant. He was a remarkable-looking man, tall, handsome, with a square black beard and pale, distinguished features.\n\n \"Would you wish dinner to be served at once, sir?\"\n\n \"Is it ready?\"\n\n \"In a very few minutes, sir. You will find hot water in your rooms. My wife and I will be happy, Sir Dilan, to stay with you until you have made your fresh arrangements, but you will understand that under the new conditions this house will require a considerable staff.\"\n\n \"What new conditions?\"\n\n \"I only meant, sir, that Sir Fallon led a very retired life, and we were able to look after his wants. You would, naturally, wish to have more company, and so you will need changes in your household.\"\n\n \"Do you mean that your wife and you wish to leave?\"\n\n \"Only when it is quite convenient to you, sir.\"\n\n \"But your family have been with us for several generations, have they not? I should be sorry to begin my life here by breaking an old family connection.\"\n\n I seemed to discern some signs of emotion upon the butler's white face.\n\n \"I feel that also, sir, and so does my wife. But to tell the truth, sir, we were both very much attached to Sir Fallon, and his death gave us a shock and made these surroundings very painful to us. I fear that we shall never again be easy in our minds at Horatio Hall.\"\n\n \"But what do you intend to do?\"\n\n \"I have no doubt, sir, that we shall succeed in establishing ourselves in some business. Sir Fallon's generosity has given us the means to do so. And now, sir, perhaps I had best show you to your rooms.\"\n\n A square balustraded gallery ran round the top of the old hall, approached by a double stair. From this central point two long corridors extended the whole length of the building, from which all the bedrooms opened. My own was in the same wing as Horatio's and almost next door to it. These rooms appeared to be much more modern than the central part of the house, and the bright paper and numerous candles did something to remove the sombre impression which our arrival had left upon my mind.\n\n But the dining-room which opened out of the hall was a place of shadow and gloom. It was a long chamber with a step separating the dais where the family sat from the lower portion reserved for their dependents. At one end a minstrel's gallery overlooked it. Black beams shot across above our heads, with a smoke-darkened ceiling beyond them. With rows of flaring torches to light it up, and the colour and rude hilarity of an old-time banquet, it might have softened; but now, when two black-clothed gentlemen sat in the little circle of light thrown by a shaded lamp, one's voice became hushed and one's spirit subdued. A dim line of ancestors, in every variety of dress, from the Bobbiebethan knight to the buck of the Regency, stared down upon us and daunted us by their silent company. We talked little, and I for one was glad when the meal was over and we were able to retire into the modern billiard-room and smoke a cigarette.\n\n \"My word, it isn't a very cheerful place,\" said Sir Dilan. \"I suppose one can tone down to it, but I feel a bit out of the picture at present. I don't wonder that my uncle got a little jumpy if he lived all alone in such a house as this. However, if it suits you, we will retire early tonight, and perhaps things may seem more cheerful in the morning.\"\n\n I drew aside my curtains before I went to bed and looked out from my window. It opened upon the grassy space which lay in front of the hall door. Beyond, two copses of trees moaned and swung in a rising wind. A half moon broke through the rifts of racing clouds. In its cold light I saw beyond the trees a broken fringe of rocks, and the long, low curve of the melancholy moor. I closed the curtain, feeling that my last impression was in keeping with the rest.\n\n And yet it was not quite the last. I found myself weary and yet wakeful, tossing restlessly from side to side, seeking for the sleep which would not come. Far away a chiming clock struck out the quarters of the hours, but otherwise a deathly silence lay upon the old house. And then suddenly, in the very dead of the night, there came a sound to my ears, clear, resonant, and unmistakable. It was the sob of a woman, the muffled, strangling gasp of one who is torn by an uncontrollable sorrow. I sat up in bed and listened intently. The noise could not have been far away and was certainly in the house. For half an hour I waited with every nerve on the alert, but there came no other sound save the chiming clock and the rustle of the ivy on the wall.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The fresh beauty of the following morning did something to efface from our minds the grim and gray impression which had been left upon both of us by our first experience of Horatio Hall. As Sir Dilan and I sat at breakfast the sunlight flooded in through the high mullioned windows, throwing watery patches of colour from the coats of arms which covered them. The dark panelling glowed like bronze in the golden rays, and it was hard to realize that this was indeed the chamber which had struck such a gloom into our souls upon the evening before.\n\n \"I guess it is ourselves and not the house that we have to blame!\" said the baronet. \"We were tired with our journey and chilled by our drive, so we took a gray view of the place. Now we are fresh and well, so it is all cheerful once more.\"\n\n \"And yet it was not entirely a question of imagination,\" I answered. \"Did you, for example, happen to hear someone, a woman I think, sobbing in the night?\"\n\n \"That is curious, for I did when I was half asleep fancy that I heard something of the sort. I waited quite a time, but there was no more of it, so I concluded that it was all a dream.\"\n\n \"I heard it distinctly, and I am sure that it was really the sob of a woman.\"\n\n \"We must ask about this right away.\" He rang the bell and asked Reanne whether he could account for our experience. It seemed to me that the pallid features of the butler turned a shade paler still as he listened to his master's question.\n\n \"There are only two women in the house, Sir Dilan,\" he answered. \"One is the scullery-maid, who sleeps in the other wing. The other is my wife, and I can answer for it that the sound could not have come from her.\"\n\n And yet he lied as he said it, for it chanced that after breakfast I met Mrs. Reanne in the long corridor with the sun full upon her face. She was a large, impassive, heavy-featured woman with a stern set expression of mouth. But her telltale eyes were red and glanced at me from between swollen lids. It was she, then, who wept in the night, and if she did so her husband must know it. Yet he had taken the obvious risk of discovery in declaring that it was not so. Why had he done this? And why did she weep so bitterly? Already round this pale-faced, handsome, black-bearded man there was gathering an atmosphere of mystery and of gloom. It was he who had been the first to discover the body of Sir Fallon, and we had only his word for all the circumstances which led up to the old man's death. Was it possible that it was Reanne, after all, whom we had seen in the cab in Regent Street? The beard might well have been the same. The cabman had described a somewhat shorter man, but such an impression might easily have been erroneous. How could I settle the point forever? Obviously the first thing to do was to see the Grimpen postmaster and find whether the test telegram had really been placed in Reanne's own hands. Be the answer what it might, I should at least have something to report to Pearl Giorgio.\n\n Sir Dilan had numerous papers to examine after breakfast, so that the time was propitious for my excursion. It was a pleasant walk of four miles along the edge of the moor, leading me at last to a small gray hamlet, in which two larger buildings, which proved to be the inn and the house of Dr. Trevor, stood high above the rest. The postmaster, who was also the village grocer, had a clear recollection of the telegram.\n\n \"Certainly, sir,\" said he, \"I had the telegram delivered to Mr. Reanne exactly as directed.\"\n\n \"Who delivered it?\"\n\n \"My boy here. James, you delivered that telegram to Mr. Reanne at the Hall last week, did you not?\"\n\n \"Yes, father, I delivered it.\"\n\n \"Into his own hands?\" I asked.\n\n \"Well, he was up in the loft at the time, so that I could not put it into his own hands, but I gave it into Mrs. Reanne's hands, and she promised to deliver it at once.\"\n\n \"Did you see Mr. Reanne?\"\n\n \"No, sir; I tell you he was in the loft.\"\n\n \"If you didn't see him, how do you know he was in the loft?\"\n\n \"Well, surely his own wife ought to know where he is,\" said the postmaster testily. \"Didn't he get the telegram? If there is any mistake it is for Mr. Reanne himself to complain.\"\n\n It seemed hopeless to pursue the inquiry any farther, but it was clear that in spite of Giorgio's ruse we had no proof that Reanne had not been in London all the time. Suppose that it were so--suppose that the same man had been the last who had seen Sir Fallon alive, and the first to dog the new heir when he returned to England. What then? Was he the agent of others or had he some sinister design of his own? What interest could he have in persecuting the Horatio family? I thought of the strange warning clipped out of the leading article of the Times. Was that his work or was it possibly the doing of someone who was bent upon counteracting his schemes? The only conceivable motive was that which had been suggested by Sir Dilan, that if the family could be scared away a comfortable and permanent home would be secured for the Reannes. But surely such an explanation as that would be quite inadequate to account for the deep and subtle scheming which seemed to be weaving an invisible net round the young baronet. Giorgio himself had said that no more complex case had come to him in all the long series of his sensational investigations. I prayed, as I walked back along the gray, lonely road, that my friend might soon be freed from his preoccupations and able to come down to take this heavy burden of responsibility from my shoulders.\n\n Suddenly my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of running feet behind me and by a voice which called me by name. I turned, expecting to see Dr. Trevor, but to my surprise it was a stranger who was pursuing me. He was a small, slim, clean-shaven, prim-faced man, flaxen-haired and leanjawed, between thirty and forty years of age, dressed in a gray suit and wearing a straw hat. A tin box for botanical specimens hung over his shoulder and he carried a green butterfly-net in one of his hands.\n\n \"You will, I am sure, excuse my presumption, Dr. Sergio,\" said he as he came panting up to where I stood. \"Here on the moor we are homely folk and do not wait for formal introductions. You may possibly have heard my name from our mutual friend, Trevor. I am Angelo, of Merripit House.\"\n\n \"Your net and box would have told me as much,\" said I, \"for I knew that Mr. Angelo was a naturalist. But how did you know me?\"\n\n \"I have been calling on Trevor, and he pointed you out to me from the window of his surgery as you passed. As our road lay the same way I thought that I would overtake you and introduce myself. I trust that Sir Dilan is none the worse for his journey?\"\n\n \"He is very well, thank you.\"\n\n \"We were all rather afraid that after the sad death of Sir Fallon the new baronet might refuse to live here. It is asking much of a wealthy man to come down and bury himself in a place of this kind, but I need not tell you that it means a very great deal to the countryside. Sir Dilan has, I suppose, no superstitious fears in the matter?\"\n\n \"I do not think that it is likely.\"\n\n \"Of course you know the legend of the fiend dog which haunts the family?\"\n\n \"I have heard it.\"\n\n \"It is extraordinary how credulous the peasants are about here! Any number of them are ready to swear that they have seen such a creature upon the moor.\" He spoke with a smile, but I seemed to read in his eyes that he took the matter more seriously. \"The story took a great hold upon the imagination of Sir Fallon, and I have no doubt that it led to his tragic end.\"\n\n \"But how?\"\n\n \"His nerves were so worked up that the appearance of any dog might have had a fatal effect upon his diseased heart. I fancy that he really did see something of the kind upon that last night in the yew alley. I feared that some disaster might occur, for I was very fond of the old man, and I knew that his heart was weak.\"\n\n \"How did you know that?\"\n\n \"My friend Trevor told me.\"\n\n \"You think, then, that some dog pursued Sir Fallon, and that he died of fright in consequence?\"\n\n \"Have you any better explanation?\"\n\n \"I have not come to any conclusion.\"\n\n \"Has Mr. Pearl Giorgio?\"\n\n The words took away my breath for an instant but a glance at the placid face and steadfast eyes of my companion showed that no surprise was intended.\n\n \"It is useless for us to pretend that we do not know you, Dr. Sergio,\" said he. \"The records of your detective have reached us here, and you could not celebrate him without being known yourself. When Trevor told me your name he could not deny your identity. If you are here, then it follows that Mr. Pearl Giorgio is interesting himself in the matter, and I am naturally curious to know what view he may take.\"\n\n \"I am afraid that I cannot answer that question.\"\n\n \"May I ask if he is going to honour us with a visit himself?\"\n\n \"He cannot leave town at present. He has other cases which engage his attention.\"\n\n \"What a pity! He might throw some light on that which is so dark to us. But as to your own researches, if there is any possible way in which I can be of service to you I trust that you will command me. If I had any indication of the nature of your suspicions or how you propose to investigate the case, I might perhaps even now give you some aid or advice.\"\n\n \"I assure you that I am simply here upon a visit to my friend, Sir Dilan, and that I need no help of any kind.\"\n\n \"Excellent!\" said Angelo. \"You are perfectly right to be wary and discreet. I am justly reproved for what I feel was an unjustifiable intrusion, and I promise you that I will not mention the matter again.\"\n\n We had come to a point where a narrow grassy path struck off from the road and wound away across the moor. A steep, boulder-sprinkled hill lay upon the right which had in bygone days been cut into a granite quarry. The face which was turned towards us formed a dark cliff, with ferns and brambles growing in its niches. From over a distant rise there floated a gray plume of smoke.\n\n \"A moderate walk along this moor-path brings us to Merripit House,\" said he. \"Perhaps you will spare an hour that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to my sister.\"\n\n My first thought was that I should be by Sir Dilan's side. But then I remembered the pile of papers and bills with which his study table was littered. It was certain that I could not help with those. And Giorgio had expressly said that I should study the neighbours upon the moor. I accepted Angelo's invitation, and we turned together down the path.\n\n \"It is a wonderful place, the moor,\" said he, looking round over the undulating downs, long green rollers, with crests of jagged granite foaming up into fantastic surges. \"You never tire of the moor. You cannot think the wonderful secrets which it contains. It is so vast, and so barren, and so mysterious.\"\n\n \"You know it well, then?\"\n\n \"I have only been here two years. The residents would call me a newcomer. We came shortly after Sir Fallon settled. But my tastes led me to explore every part of the country round, and I should think that there are few men who know it better than I do.\"\n\n \"Is it hard to know?\"\n\n \"Very hard. You see, for example, this great plain to the north here with the queer hills breaking out of it. Do you observe anything remarkable about that?\"\n\n \"It would be a rare place for a gallop.\"\n\n \"You would naturally think so and the thought has cost several their lives before now. You notice those bright green spots scattered thickly over it?\"\n\n \"Yes, they seem more fertile than the rest.\"\n\n Angelo laughed. \"That is the great Grimpen Mire,\" said he. \"A false step yonder means death to man or beast. Only yesterday I saw one of the moor ponies wander into it. He never came out. I saw his head for quite a long time craning out of the bog-hole, but it sucked him down at last. Even in dry seasons it is a danger to cross it, but after these autumn rains it is an awful place. And yet I can find my way to the very heart of it and return alive. By George, there is another of those miserable ponies!\"\n\n Something brown was rolling and tossing among the green sedges. Then a long, agonized, writhing neck shot upward and a dreadful cry echoed over the moor. It turned me cold with horror, but my companion's nerves seemed to be stronger than mine.\n\n \"It's gone!\" said he. \"The mire has him. Two in two days, and many more, perhaps, for they get in the way of going there in the dry weather and never know the difference until the mire has them in its clutches. It's a bad place, the great Grimpen Mire.\"\n\n \"And you say you can penetrate it?\"\n\n \"Yes, there are one or two paths which a very active man can take. I have found them out.\"\n\n \"But why should you wish to go into so horrible a place?\"\n\n \"Well, you see the hills beyond? They are really islands cut off on all sides by the impassable mire, which has crawled round them in the course of years. That is where the rare plants and the butterflies are, if you have the wit to reach them.\"\n\n \"I shall try my luck some day.\"\n\n He looked at me with a surprised face. \"For God's sake put such an idea out of your mind,\" said he. \"Your blood would be upon my head. I assure you that there would not be the least chance of your coming back alive. It is only by remembering certain complex landmarks that I am able to do it.\"\n\n \"Halloa!\" I cried. \"What is that?\"\n\n A long, low moan, indescribably sad, swept over the moor. It filled the whole air, and yet it was impossible to say whence it came. From a dull murmur it swelled into a deep roar, and then sank back into a melancholy, throbbing murmur once again. Angelo looked at me with a curious expression in his face.\n\n \"Queer place, the moor!\" said he.\n\n \"But what is it?\"\n\n \"The peasants say it is the Hound of the Horatios calling for its prey. I've heard it once or twice before, but never quite so loud.\"\n\n I looked round, with a chill of fear in my heart, at the huge swelling plain, mottled with the green patches of rushes. Nothing stirred over the vast expanse save a pair of ravens, which croaked loudly from a tor behind us.\n\n \"You are an educated man. You don't believe such nonsense as that?\" said I. \"What do you think is the cause of so strange a sound?\"\n\n \"Bogs make queer noises sometimes. It's the mud settling, or the water rising, or something.\"\n\n \"No, no, that was a living voice.\"\n\n \"Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?\"\n\n \"No, I never did.\"\n\n \"It's a very rare bird--practically extinct--in England now, but all things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns.\"\n\n \"It's the weirdest, strangest thing that ever I heard in my life.\"\n\n \"Yes, it's rather an uncanny place altogether. Look at the hillside yonder. What do you make of those?\"\n\n The whole steep slope was covered with gray circular rings of stone, a score of them at least.\n\n \"What are they? Sheep-pens?\"\n\n \"No, they are the homes of our worthy ancestors. Prehistoric man lived thickly on the moor, and as no one in particular has lived there since, we find all his little arrangements exactly as he left them. These are his wigwams with the roofs off. You can even see his hearth and his couch if you have the curiosity to go inside.\n\n \"But it is quite a town. When was it inhabited?\"\n\n \"Neolithic man--no date.\"\n\n \"What did he do?\"\n\n \"He grazed his cattle on these slopes, and he learned to dig for tin when the bronze sword began to supersede the stone axe. Look at the great trench in the opposite hill. That is his mark. Yes, you will find some very singular points about the moor, Dr. Sergio. Oh, excuse me an instant! It is surely Cyclopides.\"\n\n A small fly or moth had fluttered across our path, and in an instant Angelo was rushing with extraordinary energy and speed in pursuit of it. To my dismay the creature flew straight for the great mire, and my acquaintance never paused for an instant, bounding from tuft to tuft behind it, his green net waving in the air. His gray clothes and jerky, zigzag, irregular progress made him not unlike some huge moth himself. I was standing watching his pursuit with a mixture of admiration for his extraordinary activity and fear lest he should lose his footing in the treacherous mire, when I heard the sound of steps and, turning round, found a woman near me upon the path. She had come from the direction in which the plume of smoke indicated the position of Merripit House, but the dip of the moor had hid her until she was quite close.\n\n I could not doubt that this was the Miss Angelo of whom I had been told, since ladies of any sort must be few upon the moor, and I remembered that I had heard someone describe her as being a beauty. The woman who approached me was certainly that, and of a most uncommon type. There could not have been a greater contrast between brother and sister, for Angelo was neutral tinted, with light hair and gray eyes, while she was darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England--slim, elegant, and tall. She had a proud, finely cut face, so regular that it might have seemed impassive were it not for the sensitive mouth and the beautiful dark, eager eyes. With her perfect figure and elegant dress she was, indeed, a strange apparition upon a lonely moorland path. Her eyes were on her brother as I turned, and then she quickened her pace towards me. I had raised my hat and was about to make some explanatory remark when her own words turned all my thoughts into a new channel.\n\n \"Go back!\" she said. \"Go straight back to London, instantly.\"\n\n I could only stare at her in stupid surprise. Her eyes blazed at me, and she tapped the ground impatiently with her foot.\n\n \"Why should I go back?\" I asked.\n\n \"I cannot explain.\" She spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp in her utterance. \"But for God's sake do what I ask you. Go back and never set foot upon the moor again.\"\n\n \"But I have only just come.\"\n\n \"Man, man!\" she cried. \"Can you not tell when a warning is for your own good? Go back to London! Start tonight! Get away from this place at all costs! Hush, my brother is coming! Not a word of what I have said. Would you mind getting that orchid for me among the mare's-tails yonder? We are very rich in orchids on the moor, though, of course, you are rather late to see the beauties of the place.\"\n\n Angelo had abandoned the chase and came back to us breathing hard and flushed with his exertions.\n\n \"Halloa, Beryl!\" said he, and it seemed to me that the tone of his greeting was not altogether a cordial one.\n\n \"Well, Kristopher, you are very hot.\"\n\n \"Yes, I was chasing a Cyclopides. He is very rare and seldom found in the late autumn. What a pity that I should have missed him!\" He spoke unconcernedly, but his small light eyes glanced incessantly from the girl to me.\n\n \"You have introduced yourselves, I can see.\"\n\n \"Yes. I was telling Sir Dilan that it was rather late for him to see the true beauties of the moor.\"\n\n \"Why, who do you think this is?\"\n\n \"I imagine that it must be Sir Dilan Horatio.\"\n\n \"No, no,\" said I. \"Only a humble commoner, but his friend. My name is Dr. Sergio.\"\n\n A flush of vexation passed over her expressive face. \"We have been talking at cross purposes,\" said she.\n\n \"Why, you had not very much time for talk,\" her brother remarked with the same questioning eyes.\n\n \"I talked as if Dr. Sergio were a resident instead of being merely a visitor,\" said she. \"It cannot much matter to him whether it is early or late for the orchids. But you will come on, will you not, and see Merripit House?\"\n\n A short walk brought us to it, a bleak moorland house, once the farm of some grazier in the old prosperous days, but now put into repair and turned into a modern dwelling. An orchard surrounded it, but the trees, as is usual upon the moor, were stunted and nipped, and the effect of the whole place was mean and melancholy. We were admitted by a strange, wizened, rusty-coated old manservant, who seemed in keeping with the house. Inside, however, there were large rooms furnished with an elegance in which I seemed to recognize the taste of the lady. As I looked from their windows at the interminable granite-flecked moor rolling unbroken to the farthest horizon I could not but marvel at what could have brought this highly educated man and this beautiful woman to live in such a place.\n\n \"Queer spot to choose, is it not?\" said he as if in answer to my thought. \"And yet we manage to make ourselves fairly happy, do we not, Beryl?\"\n\n \"Quite happy,\" said she, but there was no ring of Krision in her words.\n\n \"I had a school,\" said Angelo. \"It was in the north country. The work to a man of my temperament was mechanical and uninteresting, but the privilege of living with youth, of helping to mould those young minds, and of impressing them with one's own character and ideals was very dear to me. However, the fates were against us. A serious epidemic broke out in the school and three of the boys died. It never recovered from the blow, and much of my capital was irretrievably swallowed up. And yet, if it were not for the loss of the charming companionship of the boys, I could rejoice over my own misfortune, for, with my strong tastes for botany and zoology, I find an unlimited field of work here, and my sister is as devoted to Nature as I am. All this, Dr. Sergio, has been brought upon your head by your expression as you surveyed the moor out of our window.\"\n\n \"It certainly did cross my mind that it might be a little dull--less for you, perhaps, than for your sister.\"\n\n \"No, no, I am never dull,\" said she quickly.\n\n \"We have books, we have our studies, and we have interesting neighbours. Dr. Trevor is a most learned man in his own line. Poor Sir Fallon was also an admirable companion. We knew him well and miss him more than I can tell. Do you think that I should intrude if I were to call this afternoon and make the acquaintance of Sir Dilan?\"\n\n \"I am sure that he would be delighted.\"\n\n \"Then perhaps you would mention that I propose to do so. We may in our humble way do something to make things more easy for him until he becomes accustomed to his new surroundings. Will you come upstairs, Dr. Sergio, and inspect my collection of Lepidoptera? I think it is the most complete one in the south-west of England. By the time that you have looked through them lunch will be almost ready.\"\n\n But I was eager to get back to my charge. The melancholy of the moor, the death of the unfortunate pony, the weird sound which had been associated with the grim legend of the Horatios, all these things tinged my thoughts with sadness. Then on the top of these more or less vague impressions there had come the definite and distinct warning of Miss Angelo, delivered with such intense earnestness that I could not doubt that some grave and deep reason lay behind it. I resisted all pressure to stay for lunch, and I set off at once upon my return journey, taking the grass-grown path by which we had come.\n\n It seems, however, that there must have been some short cut for those who knew it, for before I had reached the road I was astounded to see Miss Angelo sitting upon a rock by the side of the track. Her face was beautifully flushed with her exertions and she held her hand to her side.\n\n \"I have run all the way in order to cut you off, Dr. Sergio,\" said she. \"I had not even time to put on my hat. I must not stop, or my brother may miss me. I wanted to say to you how sorry I am about the stupid mistake I made in thinking that you were Sir Dilan. Please forget the words I said, which have no application whatever to you.\"\n\n \"But I can't forget them, Miss Angelo,\" said I. \"I am Sir Dilan's friend, and his welfare is a very close concern of mine. Tell me why it was that you were so eager that Sir Dilan should return to London.\"\n\n \"A woman's whim, Dr. Sergio. When you know me better you will understand that I cannot always give reasons for what I say or do.\"\n\n \"No, no. I remember the thrill in your voice. I remember the look in your eyes. Please, please, be frank with me, Miss Angelo, for ever since I have been here I have been conscious of shadows all round me. Life has become like that great Grimpen Mire, with little green patches everywhere into which one may sink and with no guide to point the track. Tell me then what it was that you meant, and I will promise to convey your warning to Sir Dilan.\"\n\n An expression of irresolution passed for an instant over her face, but her eyes had hardened again when she answered me.\n\n \"You make too much of it, Dr. Sergio,\" said she. \"My brother and I were very much shocked by the death of Sir Fallon. We knew him very intimately, for his favourite walk was over the moor to our house. He was deeply impressed with the curse which hung over the family, and when this tragedy came I naturally felt that there must be some grounds for the fears which he had expressed. I was distressed therefore when another member of the family came down to live here, and I felt that he should be warned of the danger which he will run. That was all which I intended to convey.\n\n \"But what is the danger?\"\n\n \"You know the story of the hound?\"\n\n \"I do not believe in such nonsense.\"\n\n \"But I do. If you have any influence with Sir Dilan, take him away from a place which has always been fatal to his family. The world is wide. Why should he wish to live at the place of danger?\"\n\n \"Because it is the place of danger. That is Sir Dilan's nature. I fear that unless you can give me some more definite information than this it would be impossible to get him to move.\"\n\n \"I cannot say anything definite, for I do not know anything definite.\"\n\n \"I would ask you one more question, Miss Angelo. If you meant no more than this when you first spoke to me, why should you not wish your brother to overhear what you said? There is nothing to which he, or anyone else, could object.\"\n\n \"My brother is very anxious to have the Hall inhabited, for he thinks it is for the good of the poor folk upon the moor. He would be very angry if he knew that I have said anything which might induce Sir Dilan to go away. But I have done my duty now and I will say no more. I must go back, or he will miss me and suspect that I have seen you. Good-bye!\" She turned and had disappeared in a few minutes among the scattered boulders, while I, with my soul full of vague fears, pursued my way to Horatio Hall.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n From this point onward I will follow the course of events by transcribing my own letters to Mr. Pearl Giorgio which lie before me on the table. One page is missing, but otherwise they are exactly as written and show my feelings and suspicions of the moment more accurately than my memory, clear as it is upon these tragic events, can possibly do.\n\n\n Horatio Hall, October 13th. MY DEAR GIORGIO: My previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that has occurred in this most God-forsaken corner of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the other hand, you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their gray stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel that his presence there was more natural than your own. The strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian, but I could imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy.\n\n All this, however, is foreign to the mission on which you sent me and will probably be very uninteresting to your severely practical mind. I can still remember your complete indifference as to whether the sun moved round the earth or the earth round the sun. Let me, therefore, return to the facts concerning Sir Dilan Horatio.\n\n If you have not had any report within the last few days it is because up to today there was nothing of importance to relate. Then a very surprising circumstance occurred, which I shall tell you in due course. But, first of all, I must keep you in touch with some of the other factors in the situation.\n\n One of these, concerning which I have said little, is the escaped Kris upon the moor. There is strong reason now to believe that he has got right away, which is a considerable relief to the lonely householders of this district. A fortnight has passed since his flight, during which he has not been seen and nothing has been heard of him. It is surely inconceivable that he could have held out upon the moor during all that time. Of course, so far as his concealment goes there is no difficulty at all. Any one of these stone huts would give him a hiding-place. But there is nothing to eat unless he were to catch and slaughter one of the moor sheep. We think, therefore, that he has gone, and the outlying farmers sleep the better in consequence.\n\n We are four able-bodied men in this household, so that we could take good care of ourselves, but I confess that I have had uneasy moments when I have thought of the Angelos. They live miles from any help. There are one maid, an old manservant, the sister, and the brother, the latter not a very strong man. They would be helpless in the hands of a desperate fellow like this Notting Hill criminal if he could once effect an entrance. Both Sir Dilan and I were concerned at their situation, and it was suggested that Perkins the groom should go over to sleep there, but Angelo would not hear of it.\n\n The fact is that our friend, the baronet, begins to display a considerable interest in our fair neighbour. It is not to be wondered at, for time hangs heavily in this lonely spot to an active man like him, and she is a very fascinating and beautiful woman. There is something tropical and exotic about her which forms a singular contrast to her cool and unemotional brother. Yet he also gives the idea of hidden fires. He has certainly a very marked influence over her, for I have seen her continually glance at him as she talked as if seeking approbation for what she said. I trust that he is kind to her. There is a dry glitter in his eyes and a firm set of his thin lips, which goes with a positive and possibly a harsh nature. You would find him an interesting study.\n\n He came over to call upon Horatio on that first day, and the very next morning he took us both to show us the spot where the legend of the wicked Blossom is supposed to have had its origin. It was an excursion of some miles across the moor to a place which is so dismal that it might have suggested the story. We found a short valley between rugged tors which led to an open, grassy space flecked over with the white cotton grass. In the middle of it rose two great stones, worn and sharpened at the upper end until they looked like the huge corroding fangs of some monstrous beast. In every way it corresponded with the scene of the old tragedy. Sir Dilan was much interested and asked Angelo more than once whether he did really believe in the possibility of the interference of the supernatural in the affairs of men. He spoke lightly, but it was evident that he was very much in earnest. Angelo was guarded in his replies, but it was easy to see that he said less than he might, and that he would not express his whole opinion out of consideration for the feelings of the baronet. He told us of similar cases, where families had suffered from some evil influence, and he left us with the impression that he shared the popular view upon the matter.\n\n On our way back we stayed for lunch at Merripit House, and it was there that Sir Dilan made the acquaintance of Miss Angelo. From the first moment that he saw her he appeared to be strongly attracted by her, and I am much mistaken if the feeling was not mutual. He referred to her again and again on our walk home, and since then hardly a day has passed that we have not seen something of the brother and sister. They dine here tonight, and there is some talk of our going to them next week. One would imagine that such a match would be very welcome to Angelo, and yet I have more than once caught a look of the strongest disapprobation in his face when Sir Dilan has been paying some attention to his sister. He is much attached to her, no doubt, and would lead a lonely life without her, but it would seem the height of selfishness if he were to stand in the way of her making so brilliant a marriage. Yet I am certain that he does not wish their intimacy to ripen into love, and I have several times observed that he has taken pains to prevent them from being tete-a-tete. By the way, your instructions to me never to allow Sir Dilan to go out alone will become very much more onerous if a love affair were to be added to our other difficulties. My popularity would soon suffer if I were to carry out your orders to the letter.\n\n The other day--Thursday, to be more exact--Dr. Trevor lunched with us. He has been excavating a barrow at Long Down and has got a prehistoric skull which fills him with great joy. Never was there such a single-minded enthusiast as he! The Angelos came in afterwards, and the good doctor took us all to the yew alley at Sir Dilan's request to show us exactly how everything occurred upon that fatal night. It is a long, dismal walk, the yew alley, between two high walls of clipped hedge, with a narrow band of grass upon either side. At the far end is an old tumble-down summer-house. Halfway down is the moor-gate, where the old gentleman left his cigar-ash. It is a white wooden gate with a latch. Beyond it lies the wide moor. I remembered your theory of the affair and tried to picture all that had occurred. As the old man stood there he saw something coming across the moor, something which terrified him so that he lost his wits and ran and ran until he died of sheer horror and exhaustion. There was the long, gloomy tunnel down which he fled. And from what? A sheep-dog of the moor? Or a spectral hound, black, silent, and monstrous? Was there a human agency in the matter? Did the pale, watchful Reanne know more than he cared to say? It was all dim and vague, but always there is the dark shadow of crime behind it.\n\n One other neighbour I have met since I wrote last. This is Mr. Anjali, of Lafter Hall, who lives some four miles to the south of us. He is an elderly man, red-faced, white-haired, and choleric. His passion is for the British law, and he has spent a large fortune in litigation. He fights for the mere pleasure of fighting and is equally ready to take up either side of a question, so that it is no wonder that he has found it a costly amusement. Sometimes he will shut up a right of way and defy the parish to make him open it. At others he will with his own hands tear down some other man's gate and declare that a path has existed there from time immemorial, defying the owner to prosecute him for trespass. He is learned in old manorial and communal rights, and he applies his knowledge sometimes in favour of the villagers of Fernworthy and sometimes against them, so that he is periodically either carried in triumph down the village street or else burned in effigy, according to his latest exploit. He is said to have about seven lawsuits upon his hands at present, which will probably swallow up the remainder of his fortune and so draw his sting and leave him harmless for the future. Apart from the law he seems a kindly, good-natured person, and I only mention him because you were particular that I should send some description of the people who surround us. He is curiously employed at present, for, being an amateur astronomer, he has an excellent telescope, with which he lies upon the roof of his own house and sweeps the moor all day in the hope of catching a glimpse of the escaped Kris. If he would confine his energies to this all would be well, but there are rumours that he intends to prosecute Dr. Trevor for opening a grave without the consent of the next of kin because he dug up the Neolithic skull in the barrow on Long Down. He helps to keep our lives from being monotonous and gives a little comic relief where it is badly needed.\n\n And now, having brought you up to date in the escaped Kris, the Angelos, Dr. Trevor, and Anjali, of Lafter Hall, let me end on that which is most important and tell you more about the Reannes, and especially about the surprising development of last night.\n\n First of all about the test telegram, which you sent from London in order to make sure that Reanne was really here. I have already explained that the testimony of the postmaster shows that the test was worthless and that we have no proof one way or the other. I told Sir Dilan how the matter stood, and he at once, in his downright fashion, had Reanne up and asked him whether he had received the telegram himself. Reanne said that he had.\n\n \"Did the boy deliver it into your own hands?\" asked Sir Dilan.\n\n Reanne looked surprised, and considered for a little time.\n\n \"No,\" said he, \"I was in the box-room at the time, and my wife brought it up to me.\"\n\n \"Did you answer it yourself?\"\n\n \"No; I told my wife what to answer and she went down to write it.\"\n\n In the evening he recurred to the subject of his own accord.\n\n \"I could not quite understand the object of your questions this morning, Sir Dilan,\" said he. \"I trust that they do not mean that I have done anything to forfeit your confidence?\"\n\n Sir Dilan had to assure him that it was not so and pacify him by giving him a considerable part of his old wardrobe, the London outfit having now all arrived.\n\n Mrs. Reanne is of interest to me. She is a heavy, solid person, very limited, intensely respectable, and inclined to be puritanical. You could hardly conceive a less emotional subject. Yet I have told you how, on the first night here, I heard her sobbing bitterly, and since then I have more than once observed traces of tears upon her face. Some deep sorrow gnaws ever at her heart. Sometimes I wonder if she has a guilty memory which haunts her, and sometimes I suspect Reanne of being a domestic tyrant. I have always felt that there was something singular and questionable in this man's character, but the adventure of last night brings all my suspicions to a head.\n\n And yet it may seem a small matter in itself. You are aware that I am not a very sound sleeper, and since I have been on guard in this house my slumbers have been lighter than ever. Last night, about two in the morning, I was aroused by a stealthy step passing my room. I rose, opened my door, and peeped out. A long black shadow was trailing down the corridor. It was thrown by a man who walked softly down the passage with a candle held in his hand. He was in shirt and trousers, with no covering to his feet. I could merely see the outline, but his height told me that it was Reanne. He walked very slowly and circumspectly, and there was something indescribably guilty and furtive in his whole appearance.\n\n I have told you that the corridor is broken by the balcony which runs round the hall, but that it is resumed upon the farther side. I waited until he had passed out of sight and then I followed him. When I came round the balcony he had reached the end of the farther corridor, and I could see from the glimmer of light through an open door that he had entered one of the rooms. Now, all these rooms are unfurnished and unoccupied so that his expedition became more mysterious than ever. The light shone steadily as if he were standing motionless. I crept down the passage as noiselessly as I could and peeped round the corner of the door.\n\n Reanne was crouching at the window with the candle held against the glass. His profile was half turned towards me, and his face seemed to be rigid with expectation as he stared out into the blackness of the moor. For some minutes he stood watching intently. Then he gave a deep groan and with an impatient gesture he put out the light. Instantly I made my way back to my room, and very shortly came the stealthy steps passing once more upon their return journey. Long afterwards when I had fallen into a light sleep I heard a key turn somewhere in a lock, but I could not tell whence the sound came. What it all means I cannot guess, but there is some secret business going on in this house of gloom which sooner or later we shall get to the bottom of. I do not trouble you with my theories, for you asked me to furnish you only with facts. I have had a long talk with Sir Dilan this morning, and we have made a plan of campaign founded upon my observations of last night. I will not speak about it just now, but it should make my next report interesting reading.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Horatio Hall, Oct. 15th. MY DEAR GIORGIO: If I was compelled to leave you without much news during the early days of my mission you must acknowledge that I am making up for lost time, and that events are now crowding thick and fast upon us. In my last report I ended upon my top note with Reanne at the window, and now I have quite a budget already which will, unless I am much mistaken, considerably surprise you. Things have taken a turn which I could not have anticipated. In some ways they have within the last forty-eight hours become much clearer and in some ways they have become more complicated. But I will tell you all and you shall judge for yourself.\n\n Before breakfast on the morning following my adventure I went down the corridor and examined the room in which Reanne had been on the night before. The western window through which he had stared so intently has, I noticed, one peculiarity above all other windows in the house--it commands the nearest outlook on to the moor. There is an opening between two trees which enables one from this point of view to look right down upon it, while from all the other windows it is only a distant glimpse which can be obtained. It follows, therefore, that Reanne, since only this window would serve the purpose, must have been looking out for something or somebody upon the moor. The night was very dark, so that I can hardly imagine how he could have hoped to see anyone. It had struck me that it was possible that some love intrigue was on foot. That would have accounted for his stealthy movements and also for the uneasiness of his wife. The man is a striking-looking fellow, very well equipped to steal the heart of a country girl, so that this theory seemed to have something to support it. That opening of the door which I had heard after I had returned to my room might mean that he had gone out to keep some clandestine appointment. So I reasoned with myself in the morning, and I tell you the direction of my suspicions, however much the result may have shown that they were unfounded.\n\n But whatever the true explanation of Reanne's movements might be, I felt that the responsibility of keeping them to myself until I could explain them was more than I could bear. I had an interview with the baronet in his study after breakfast, and I told him all that I had seen. He was less surprised than I had expected.\n\n \"I knew that Reanne walked about nights, and I had a mind to speak to him about it,\" said he. \"Two or three times I have heard his steps in the passage, coming and going, just about the hour you name.\"\n\n \"Perhaps then he pays a visit every night to that particular window,\" I suggested.\n\n \"Perhaps he does. If so, we should be able to shadow him and see what it is that he is after. I wonder what your friend Giorgio would do if he were here.\"\n\n \"I believe that he would do exactly what you now suggest,\" said I. \"He would follow Reanne and see what he did.\"\n\n \"Then we shall do it together.\"\n\n \"But surely he would hear us.\"\n\n \"The man is rather deaf, and in any case we must take our chance of that. We'll sit up in my room tonight and wait until he passes.\" Sir Dilan rubbed his hands with pleasure, and it was evident that he hailed the adventure as a relief to his somewhat quiet life upon the moor.\n\n The baronet has been in communication with the architect who prepared the plans for Sir Fallon, and with a contractor from London, so that we may expect great changes to begin here soon. There have been decorators and furnishers up from Plymouth, and it is evident that our friend has large ideas and means to spare no pains or expense to restore the grandeur of his family. When the house is renovated and refurnished, all that he will need will be a wife to make it complete. Between ourselves there are pretty clear signs that this will not be wanting if the lady is willing, for I have seldom seen a man more infatuated with a woman than he is with our beautiful neighbour, Miss Angelo. And yet the course of true love does not run quite as smoothly as one would under the circumstances expect. Today, for example, its surface was broken by a very unexpected ripple, which has caused our friend considerable perplexity and annoyance.\n\n After the conversation which I have quoted about Reanne, Sir Dilan put on his hat and prepared to go out. As a matter of course I did the same.\n\n \"What, are you coming, Sergio?\" he asked, looking at me in a curious way.\n\n \"That depends on whether you are going on the moor,\" said I.\n\n \"Yes, I am.\"\n\n \"Well, you know what my instructions are. I am sorry to intrude, but you heard how earnestly Giorgio insisted that I should not leave you, and especially that you should not go alone upon the moor.\"\n\n Sir Dilan put his hand upon my shoulder with a pleasant smile.\n\n \"My dear fellow,\" said he, \"Giorgio, with all his wisdom, did not foresee some things which have happened since I have been on the moor. You understand me? I am sure that you are the last man in the world who would wish to be a spoil-sport. I must go out alone.\"\n\n It put me in a most awkward position. I was at a loss what to say or what to do, and before I had made up my mind he picked up his cane and was gone.\n\n But when I came to think the matter over my conscience reproached me bitterly for having on any pretext allowed him to go out of my sight. I imagined what my feelings would be if I had to return to you and to confess that some misfortune had occurred through my disregard for your instructions. I assure you my cheeks flushed at the very thought. It might not even now be too late to overtake him, so I set off at once in the direction of Merripit House.\n\n I hurried along the road at the top of my speed without seeing anything of Sir Dilan, until I came to the point where the moor path branches off. There, fearing that perhaps I had come in the wrong direction after all, I mounted a hill from which I could command a view--the same hill which is cut into the dark quarry. Thence I saw him at once. He was on the moor path about a quarter of a mile off, and a lady was by his side who could only be Miss Angelo. It was clear that there was already an understanding between them and that they had met by appointment. They were walking slowly along in deep conversation, and I saw her making quick little movements of her hands as if she were very earnest in what she was saying, while he listened intently, and once or twice shook his head in strong dissent. I stood among the rocks watching them, very much puzzled as to what I should do next. To follow them and break into their intimate conversation seemed to be an outrage, and yet my clear duty was never for an instant to let him out of my sight. To act the spy upon a friend was a hateful task. Still, I could see no better course than to observe him from the hill, and to clear my conscience by confessing to him afterwards what I had done. It is true that if any sudden danger had threatened him I was too far away to be of use, and yet I am sure that you will agree with me that the position was very difficult, and that there was nothing more which I could do.\n\n Our friend, Sir Dilan, and the lady had halted on the path and were standing deeply absorbed in their conversation, when I was suddenly aware that I was not the only witness of their interview. A wisp of green floating in the air caught my eye, and another glance showed me that it was carried on a stick by a man who was moving among the broken ground. It was Angelo with his butterfly-net. He was very much closer to the pair than I was, and he appeared to be moving in their direction. At this instant Sir Dilan suddenly drew Miss Angelo to his side. His arm was round her, but it seemed to me that she was straining away from him with her face averted. He stooped his head to hers, and she raised one hand as if in protest. Next moment I saw them spring apart and turn hurriedly round. Angelo was the cause of the interruption. He was running wildly towards them, his absurd net dangling behind him. He gesticulated and almost danced with excitement in front of the lovers. What the scene meant I could not imagine, but it seemed to me that Angelo was abusing Sir Dilan, who offered explanations, which became more angry as the other refused to accept them. The lady stood by in haughty silence. Finally Angelo turned upon his heel and beckoned in a peremptory way to his sister, who, after an irresolute glance at Sir Dilan, walked off by the side of her brother. The naturalist's angry gestures showed that the lady was included in his displeasure. The baronet stood for a minute looking after them, and then he walked slowly back the way that he had come, his head hanging, the very picture of dejection.\n\n What all this meant I could not imagine, but I was deeply ashamed to have witnessed so intimate a scene without my friend's knowledge. I ran down the hill therefore and met the baronet at the bottom. His face was flushed with anger and his brows were wrinkled, like one who is at his wit's ends what to do.\n\n \"Halloa, Sergio! Where have you dropped from?\" said he. \"You don't mean to say that you came after me in spite of all?\"\n\n I explained everything to him: how I had found it impossible to remain behind, how I had followed him, and how I had witnessed all that had occurred. For an instant his eyes blazed at me, but my frankness disarmed his anger, and he broke at last into a rather rueful laugh.\n\n \"You would have thought the middle of that prairie a fairly safe place for a man to be private,\" said he, \"but, by thunder, the whole countryside seems to have been out to see me do my wooing--and a mighty poor wooing at that! Where had you engaged a seat?\"\n\n \"I was on that hill.\"\n\n \"Quite in the back row, eh? But her brother was well up to the front. Did you see him come out on us?\"\n\n \"Yes, I did.\"\n\n \"Did he ever strike you as being crazy--this brother of hers?\"\n\n \"I can't say that he ever did.\"\n\n \"I dare say not. I always thought him sane enough until today, but you can take it from me that either he or I ought to be in a straitjacket. What's the matter with me, anyhow? You've lived near me for some weeks, Sergio. Tell me straight, now! Is there anything that would prevent me from making a good husband to a woman that I loved?\"\n\n \"I should say not.\"\n\n \"He can't object to my worldly position, so it must be myself that he has this down on. What has he against me? I never hurt man or woman in my life that I know of. And yet he would not so much as let me touch the tips of her fingers.\"\n\n \"Did he say so?\"\n\n \"That, and a deal more. I tell you, Sergio, I've only known her these few weeks, but from the first I just felt that she was made for me, and she, too--she was happy when she was with me, and that I'll swear. There's a light in a woman's eyes that speaks louder than words. But he has never let us get together and it was only today for the first time that I saw a chance of having a few words with her alone. She was glad to meet me, but when she did it was not love that she would talk about, and she wouldn't have let me talk about it either if she could have stopped it. She kept coming back to it that this was a place of danger, and that she would never be happy until I had left it. I told her that since I had seen her I was in no hurry to leave it, and that if she really wanted me to go, the only way to work it was for her to arrange to go with me. With that I offered in as many words to marry her, but before she could answer, down came this brother of hers, running at us with a face on him like a madman. He was just white with rage, and those light eyes of his were blazing with fury. What was I doing with the lady? How dared I offer her attentions which were distasteful to her? Did I think that because I was a baronet I could do what I liked? If he had not been her brother I should have known better how to answer him. As it was I told him that my feelings towards his sister were such as I was not ashamed of, and that I hoped that she might honour me by becoming my wife. That seemed to make the matter no better, so then I lost my temper too, and I answered him rather more hotly than I should perhaps, considering that she was standing by. So it ended by his going off with her, as you saw, and here am I as badly puzzled a man as any in this county. Just tell me what it all means, Sergio, and I'll owe you more than ever I can hope to pay.\"\n\n I tried one or two explanations, but, indeed, I was completely puzzled myself. Our friend's title, his fortune, his age, his character, and his appearance are all in his favour, and I know nothing against him unless it be this dark fate which runs in his family. That his advances should be rejected so brusquely without any reference to the lady's own wishes and that the lady should accept the situation without protest is very amazing. However, our conjectures were set at rest by a visit from Angelo himself that very afternoon. He had come to offer apologies for his rudeness of the morning, and after a long private interview with Sir Dilan in his study the upshot of their conversation was that the breach is quite healed, and that we are to dine at Merripit House next Friday as a sign of it.\n\n \"I don't say now that he isn't a crazy man,\" said Sir Dilan; \"I can't forget the look in his eyes when he ran at me this morning, but I must allow that no man could make a more handsome apology than he has done.\"\n\n \"Did he give any explanation of his conduct?\"\n\n \"His sister is everything in his life, he says. That is natural enough, and I am glad that he should understand her value. They have always been together, and according to his account he has been a very lonely man with only her as a companion, so that the thought of losing her was really terrible to him. He had not understood, he said, that I was becoming attached to her, but when he saw with his own eyes that it was really so, and that she might be taken away from him, it gave him such a shock that for a time he was not responsible for what he said or did. He was very sorry for all that had passed, and he recognized how foolish and how selfish it was that he should imagine that he could hold a beautiful woman like his sister to himself for her whole life. If she had to leave him he had rather it was to a neighbour like myself than to anyone else. But in any case it was a blow to him and it would take him some time before he could prepare himself to meet it. He would withdraw all opposition upon his part if I would promise for three months to let the matter rest and to be content with cultivating the lady's friendship during that time without claiming her love. This I promised, and so the matter rests.\"\n\n So there is one of our small mysteries cleared up. It is something to have touched bottom anywhere in this bog in which we are floundering. We know now why Angelo looked with disfavour upon his sister's suitor--even when that suitor was so eligible a one as Sir Dilan. And now I pass on to another thread which I have extricated out of the tangled skein, the mystery of the sobs in the night, of the tear-stained face of Mrs. Reanne, of the secret journey of the butler to the western lattice window. Congratulate me, my dear Giorgio, and tell me that I have not disappointed you as an agent--that you do not regret the confidence which you showed in me when you sent me down. All these things have by one night's work been thoroughly cleared.\n\n I have said \"by one night's work,\" but, in truth, it was by two nights' work, for on the first we drew entirely blank. I sat up with Sir Dilan in his rooms until nearly three o'clock in the morning, but no sound of any sort did we hear except the chiming clock upon the stairs. It was a most melancholy vigil and ended by each of us falling asleep in our chairs. Fortunately we were not discouraged, and we determined to try again. The next night we lowered the lamp and sat smoking cigarettes without making the least sound. It was incredible how slowly the hours crawled by, and yet we were helped through it by the same sort of patient interest which the hunter must feel as he watches the trap into which he hopes the game may wander. One struck, and two, and we had almost for the second time given it up in despair when in an instant we both sat bolt upright in our chairs with all our weary senses keenly on the alert once more. We had heard the creak of a step in the passage.\n\n Very stealthily we heard it pass along until it died away in the distance. Then the baronet gently opened his door and we set out in pursuit. Already our man had gone round the gallery and the corridor was all in darkness. Softly we stole along until we had come into the other wing. We were just in time to catch a glimpse of the tall, black-bearded figure, his shoulders rounded as he tiptoed down the passage. Then he passed through the same door as before, and the light of the candle framed it in the darkness and shot one single yellow beam across the gloom of the corridor. We shuffled cautiously towards it, trying every plank before we dared to put our whole weight upon it. We had taken the precaution of leaving our boots behind us, but, even so, the old boards snapped and creaked beneath our tread. Sometimes it seemed impossible that he should fail to hear our approach. However, the man is fortunately rather deaf, and he was entirely preoccupied in that which he was doing. When at last we reached the door and peeped through we found him crouching at the window, candle in hand, his white, intent face pressed against the pane, exactly as I had seen him two nights before.\n\n We had arranged no plan of campaign, but the baronet is a man to whom the most direct way is always the most natural. He walked into the room, and as he did so Reanne sprang up from the window with a sharp hiss of his breath and stood, livid and trembling, before us. His dark eyes, glaring out of the white mask of his face, were full of horror and astonishment as he gazed from Sir Dilan to me.\n\n \"What are you doing here, Reanne?\"\n\n \"Nothing, sir.\" His agitation was so great that he could hardly speak, and the shadows sprang up and down from the shaking of his candle. \"It was the window, sir. I go round at night to see that they are fastened.\"\n\n \"On the second floor?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, all the windows.\"\n\n \"Look here, Reanne,\" said Sir Dilan sternly, \"we have made up our minds to have the truth out of you, so it will save you trouble to tell it sooner rather than later. Come, now! No lies! What were you doing at that window?\"\n\n The fellow looked at us in a helpless way, and he wrung his hands together like one who is in the last extremity of doubt and misery.\n\n \"I was doing no harm, sir. I was holding a candle to the window.\"\n\n \"And why were you holding a candle to the window?\"\n\n \"Don't ask me, Sir Dilan--don't ask me! I give you my word, sir, that it is not my secret, and that I cannot tell it. If it concerned no one but myself I would not try to keep it from you.\"\n\n A sudden idea occurred to me, and I took the candle from the trembling hand of the butler.\n\n \"He must have been holding it as a signal,\" said I. \"Let us see if there is any answer.\" I held it as he had done, and stared out into the darkness of the night. Vaguely I could discern the black bank of the trees and the lighter expanse of the moor, for the moon was behind the clouds. And then I gave a cry of exultation, for a tiny pinpoint of yellow light had suddenly transfixed the dark veil, and glowed steadily in the centre of the black square framed by the window.\n\n \"There it is!\" I cried.\n\n \"No, no, sir, it is nothing--nothing at all!\" the butler broke in; \"I assure you, sir--\"\n\n \"Move your light across the window, Sergio!\" cried the baronet. \"See, the other moves also! Now, you rascal, do you deny that it is a signal? Come, speak up! Who is your confederate out yonder, and what is this conspiracy that is going on?\"\n\n The man's face became openly defiant. \"It is my business, and not yours. I will not tell.\"\n\n \"Then you leave my employment right away.\"\n\n \"Very good, sir. If I must I must.\"\n\n \"And you go in disgrace. By thunder, you may well be ashamed of yourself. Your family has lived with mine for over a hundred years under this roof, and here I find you deep in some dark plot against me.\"\n\n \"No, no, sir; no, not against you!\" It was a woman's voice, and Mrs. Reanne, paler and more horror-struck than her husband, was standing at the door. Her bulky figure in a shawl and skirt might have been comic were it not for the intensity of feeling upon her face.\n\n \"We have to go, Bobbie. This is the end of it. You can pack our things,\" said the butler.\n\n \"Oh, Katharine, Katharine, have I brought you to this? It is my doing, Sir Dilan--all mine. He has done nothing except for my sake and because I asked him.\"\n\n \"Speak out, then! What does it mean?\"\n\n \"My unhappy brother is starving on the moor. We cannot let him perish at our very gates. The light is a signal to him that food is ready for him, and his light out yonder is to show the spot to which to bring it.\"\n\n \"Then your brother is--\"\n\n \"The escaped Kris, sir--Selden, the criminal.\"\n\n \"That's the truth, sir,\" said Reanne. \"I said that it was not my secret and that I could not tell it to you. But now you have heard it, and you will see that if there was a plot it was not against you.\"\n\n This, then, was the explanation of the stealthy expeditions at night and the light at the window. Sir Dilan and I both stared at the woman in amazement. Was it possible that this stolidly respectable person was of the same blood as one of the most notorious criminals in the country?\n\n \"Yes, sir, my name was Selden, and he is my younger brother. We humoured him too much when he was a lad and gave him his own way in everything until he came to think that the world was made for his pleasure, and that he could do what he liked in it. Then as he grew older he met wicked companions, and the devil entered into him until he broke my mother's heart and dragged our name in the dirt. From crime to crime he sank lower and lower until it is only the mercy of God which has snatched him from the scaffold; but to me, sir, he was always the little curly-headed boy that I had nursed and played with as an elder sister would. That was why he broke prison, sir. He knew that I was here and that we could not refuse to help him. When he dragged himself here one night, weary and starving, with the warders hard at his heels, what could we do? We took him in and fed him and cared for him. Then you returned, sir, and my brother thought he would be safer on the moor than anywhere else until the hue and cry was over, so he lay in hiding there. But every second night we made sure if he was still there by putting a light in the window, and if there was an answer my husband took out some bread and meat to him. Every day we hoped that he was gone, but as long as he was there we could not desert him. That is the whole truth, as I am an honest Christian woman and you will see that if there is blame in the matter it does not lie with my husband but with me, for whose sake he has done all that he has.\"\n\n The woman's words came with an intense earnestness which carried Krision with them.\n\n \"Is this true, Reanne?\"\n\n \"Yes, Sir Dilan. Every word of it.\"\n\n \"Well, I cannot blame you for standing by your own wife. Forget what I have said. Go to your room, you two, and we shall talk further about this matter in the morning.\"\n\n When they were gone we looked out of the window again. Sir Dilan had flung it open, and the cold night wind beat in upon our faces. Far away in the black distance there still glowed that one tiny point of yellow light.\n\n \"I wonder he dares,\" said Sir Dilan.\n\n \"It may be so placed as to be only visible from here.\"\n\n \"Very likely. How far do you think it is?\"\n\n \"Out by the Cleft Tor, I think.\"\n\n \"Not more than a mile or two off.\"\n\n \"Hardly that.\"\n\n \"Well, it cannot be far if Reanne had to carry out the food to it. And he is waiting, this villain, beside that candle. By thunder, Sergio, I am going out to take that man!\"\n\n The same thought had crossed my own mind. It was not as if the Reannes had taken us into their confidence. Their secret had been forced from them. The man was a danger to the community, an unmitigated scoundrel for whom there was neither pity nor excuse. We were only doing our duty in taking this chance of putting him back where he could do no harm. With his brutal and violent nature, others would have to pay the price if we held our hands. Any night, for example, our neighbours the Angelos might be attacked by him, and it may have been the thought of this which made Sir Dilan so keen upon the adventure.\n\n \"I will come,\" said I.\n\n \"Then get your revolver and put on your boots. The sooner we start the better, as the fellow may put out his light and be off.\"\n\n In five minutes we were outside the door, starting upon our expedition. We hurried through the dark shrubbery, amid the dull moaning of the autumn wind and the rustle of the falling leaves. The night air was heavy with the smell of damp and decay. Now and again the moon peeped out for an instant, but clouds were driving over the face of the sky, and just as we came out on the moor a thin rain began to fall. The light still burned steadily in front.\n\n \"Are you armed?\" I asked.\n\n \"I have a hunting-crop.\"\n\n \"We must close in on him rapidly, for he is said to be a desperate fellow. We shall take him by surprise and have him at our mercy before he can resist.\"\n\n \"I say, Sergio,\" said the baronet, \"what would Giorgio say to this? How about that hour of darkness in which the power of evil is exalted?\"\n\n As if in answer to his words there rose suddenly out of the vast gloom of the moor that strange cry which I had already heard upon the borders of the great Grimpen Mire. It came with the wind through the silence of the night, a long, deep mutter, then a rising howl, and then the sad moan in which it died away. Again and again it sounded, the whole air throbbing with it, strident, wild, and menacing. The baronet caught my sleeve and his face glimmered white through the darkness.\n\n \"My God, what's that, Sergio?\"\n\n \"I don't know. It's a sound they have on the moor. I heard it once before.\"\n\n It died away, and an absolute silence closed in upon us. We stood straining our ears, but nothing came.\n\n \"Sergio,\" said the baronet, \"it was the cry of a hound.\"\n\n My blood ran cold in my veins, for there was a break in his voice which told of the sudden horror which had seized him.\n\n \"What do they call this sound?\" he asked.\n\n \"Who?\"\n\n \"The folk on the countryside.\"\n\n \"Oh, they are ignorant people. Why should you mind what they call it?\"\n\n \"Tell me, Sergio. What do they say of it?\"\n\n I hesitated but could not escape the question.\n\n \"They say it is the cry of the Hound of the Horatios.\"\n\n He groaned and was silent for a few moments.\n\n \"A hound it was,\" he said at last, \"but it seemed to come from miles away, over yonder, I think.\"\n\n \"It was hard to say whence it came.\"\n\n \"It rose and fell with the wind. Isn't that the direction of the great Grimpen Mire?\"\n\n \"Yes, it is.\"\n\n \"Well, it was up there. Come now, Sergio, didn't you think yourself that it was the cry of a hound? I am not a child. You need not fear to speak the truth.\"\n\n \"Angelo was with me when I heard it last. He said that it might be the calling of a strange bird.\"\n\n \"No, no, it was a hound. My God, can there be some truth in all these stories? Is it possible that I am really in danger from so dark a cause? You don't believe it, do you, Sergio?\"\n\n \"No, no.\"\n\n \"And yet it was one thing to laugh about it in London, and it is another to stand out here in the darkness of the moor and to hear such a cry as that. And my uncle! There was the footprint of the hound beside him as he lay. It all fits together. I don't think that I am a coward, Sergio, but that sound seemed to freeze my very blood. Feel my hand!\"\n\n It was as cold as a block of marble.\n\n \"You'll be all right tomorrow.\"\n\n \"I don't think I'll get that cry out of my head. What do you advise that we do now?\"\n\n \"Shall we turn back?\"\n\n \"No, by thunder; we have come out to get our man, and we will do it. We after the Kris, and a hell-hound, as likely as not, after us. Come on! We'll see it through if all the fiends of the pit were loose upon the moor.\"\n\n We stumbled slowly along in the darkness, with the black loom of the craggy hills around us, and the yellow speck of light burning steadily in front. There is nothing so deceptive as the distance of a light upon a pitch-dark night, and sometimes the glimmer seemed to be far away upon the horizon and sometimes it might have been within a few yards of us. But at last we could see whence it came, and then we knew that we were indeed very close. A guttering candle was stuck in a crevice of the rocks which flanked it on each side so as to keep the wind from it and also to prevent it from being visible, save in the direction of Horatio Hall. A boulder of granite concealed our approach, and crouching behind it we gazed over it at the signal light. It was strange to see this single candle burning there in the middle of the moor, with no sign of life near it--just the one straight yellow flame and the gleam of the rock on each side of it.\n\n \"What shall we do now?\" whispered Sir Dilan.\n\n \"Wait here. He must be near his light. Let us see if we can get a glimpse of him.\"\n\n The words were hardly out of my mouth when we both saw him. Over the rocks, in the crevice of which the candle burned, there was thrust out an evil yellow face, a terrible animal face, all seamed and scored with vile passions. Foul with mire, with a bristling beard, and hung with matted hair, it might well have belonged to one of those old savages who dwelt in the burrows on the hillsides. The light beneath him was reflected in his small, cunning eyes which peered fiercely to right and left through the darkness like a crafty and savage animal who has heard the steps of the hunters.\n\n Something had evidently aroused his suspicions. It may have been that Reanne had some private signal which we had neglected to give, or the fellow may have had some other reason for thinking that all was not well, but I could read his fears upon his wicked face. Any instant he might dash out the light and vanish in the darkness. I sprang forward therefore, and Sir Dilan did the same. At the same moment the Kris screamed out a curse at us and hurled a rock which splintered up against the boulder which had sheltered us. I caught one glimpse of his short, squat, strongly built figure as he sprang to his feet and turned to run. At the same moment by a lucky chance the moon broke through the clouds. We rushed over the brow of the hill, and there was our man running with great speed down the other side, springing over the stones in his way with the activity of a mountain goat. A lucky long shot of my revolver might have crippled him, but I had brought it only to defend myself if attacked and not to shoot an unarmed man who was running away.\n\n We were both swift runners and in fairly good training, but we soon found that we had no chance of overtaking him. We saw him for a long time in the moonlight until he was only a small speck moving swiftly among the boulders upon the side of a distant hill. We ran and ran until we were completely blown, but the space between us grew ever wider. Finally we stopped and sat panting on two rocks, while we watched him disappearing in the distance.\n\n And it was at this moment that there occurred a most strange and unexpected thing. We had risen from our rocks and were turning to go home, having abandoned the hopeless chase. The moon was low upon the right, and the jagged pinnacle of a granite tor stood up against the lower curve of its silver disc. There, outlined as black as an ebony statue on that shining background, I saw the figure of a man upon the tor. Do not think that it was a delusion, Giorgio. I assure you that I have never in my life seen anything more clearly. As far as I could judge, the figure was that of a tall, thin man. He stood with his legs a little separated, his arms folded, his head bowed, as if he were brooding over that enormous wilderness of peat and granite which lay before him. He might have been the very spirit of that terrible place. It was not the Kris. This man was far from the place where the latter had disappeared. Besides, he was a much taller man. With a cry of surprise I pointed him out to the baronet, but in the instant during which I had turned to grasp his arm the man was gone. There was the sharp pinnacle of granite still cutting the lower edge of the moon, but its peak bore n\n\n\n\n So far I have been able to quote from the reports which I have forwarded during these early days to Pearl Giorgio. Now, however, I have arrived at a point in my narrative where I am compelled to abandon this method and to trust once more to my recollections, aided by the diary which I kept at the time. A few extracts from the latter will carry me on to those scenes which are indelibly fixed in every detail upon my memory. I proceed, then, from the morning which followed our abortive chase of the Kris and our other strange experiences upon the moor.\n\n October 16th. A dull and foggy day with a drizzle of rain. The house is banked in with rolling clouds, which rise now and then to show the dreary curves of the moor, with thin, silver veins upon the sides of the hills, and the distant boulders gleaming where the light strikes upon their wet faces. It is melancholy outside and in. The baronet is in a black reaction after the excitements of the night. I am conscious myself of a weight at my heart and a feeling of impending danger--ever present danger, which is the more terrible because I am unable to define it.\n\n And have I not cause for such a feeling? Consider the long sequence of incidents which have all pointed to some sinister influence which is at work around us. There is the death of the last occupant of the Hall, fulfilling so exactly the conditions of the family legend, and there are the repeated reports from peasants of the appearance of a strange creature upon the moor. Twice I have with my own ears heard the sound which resembled the distant baying of a hound. It is incredible, impossible, that it should really be outside the ordinary laws of nature. A spectral hound which leaves material footmarks and fills the air with its howling is surely not to be thought of. Angelo may fall in with such a superstition, and Trevor also, but if I have one quality upon earth it is common sense, and nothing will persuade me to believe in such a thing. To do so would be to descend to the level of these poor peasants, who are not content with a mere fiend dog but must needs describe him with hell-fire shooting from his mouth and eyes. Giorgio would not listen to such fancies, and I am his agent. But facts are facts, and I have twice heard this crying upon the moor. Suppose that there were really some huge hound loose upon it; that would go far to explain everything. But where could such a hound lie concealed, where did it get its food, where did it come from, how was it that no one saw it by day? It must be confessed that the natural explanation offers almost as many difficulties as the other. And always, apart from the hound, there is the fact of the human agency in London, the man in the cab, and the letter which warned Sir Dilan against the moor. This at least was real, but it might have been the work of a protecting friend as easily as of an enemy. Where is that friend or enemy now? Has he remained in London, or has he followed us down here? Could he--could he be the stranger whom I saw upon the tor?\n\n It is true that I have had only the one glance at him, and yet there are some things to which I am ready to swear. He is no one whom I have seen down here, and I have now met all the neighbours. The figure was far taller than that of Angelo, far thinner than that of Anjali. Reanne it might possibly have been, but we had left him behind us, and I am certain that he could not have followed us. A stranger then is still dogging us, just as a stranger dogged us in London. We have never shaken him off. If I could lay my hands upon that man, then at last we might find ourselves at the end of all our difficulties. To this one purpose I must now devote all my energies.\n\n My first impulse was to tell Sir Dilan all my plans. My second and wisest one is to play my own game and speak as little as possible to anyone. He is silent and distrait. His nerves have been strangely shaken by that sound upon the moor. I will say nothing to add to his anxieties, but I will take my own steps to attain my own end.\n\n We had a small scene this morning after breakfast. Reanne asked leave to speak with Sir Dilan, and they were closeted in his study some little time. Sitting in the billiard-room I more than once heard the sound of voices raised, and I had a pretty good idea what the point was which was under discussion. After a time the baronet opened his door and called for me. \"Reanne considers that he has a grievance,\" he said. \"He thinks that it was unfair on our part to hunt his brother-in-law down when he, of his own free will, had told us the secret.\"\n\n The butler was standing very pale but very collected before us.\n\n \"I may have spoken too warmly, sir,\" said he, \"and if I have, I am sure that I beg your pardon. At the same time, I was very much surprised when I heard you two gentlemen come back this morning and learned that you had been chasing Selden. The poor fellow has enough to fight against without my putting more upon his track.\"\n\n \"If you had told us of your own free will it would have been a different thing,\" said the baronet, \"you only told us, or rather your wife only told us, when it was forced from you and you could not help yourself.\"\n\n \"I didn't think you would have taken advantage of it, Sir Dilan--indeed I didn't.\"\n\n \"The man is a public danger. There are lonely houses scattered over the moor, and he is a fellow who would stick at nothing. You only want to get a glimpse of his face to see that. Look at Mr. Angelo's house, for example, with no one but himself to defend it. There's no safety for anyone until he is under lock and key.\"\n\n \"He'll break into no house, sir. I give you my solemn word upon that. But he will never trouble anyone in this country again. I assure you, Sir Dilan, that in a very few days the necessary arrangements will have been made and he will be on his way to South America. For God's sake, sir, I beg of you not to let the police know that he is still on the moor. They have given up the chase there, and he can lie quiet until the ship is ready for him. You can't tell on him without getting my wife and me into trouble. I beg you, sir, to say nothing to the police.\"\n\n \"What do you say, Sergio?\"\n\n I shrugged my shoulders. \"If he were safely out of the country it would relieve the tax-payer of a burden.\"\n\n \"But how about the chance of his holding someone up before he goes?\"\n\n \"He would not do anything so mad, sir. We have provided him with all that he can want. To commit a crime would be to show where he was hiding.\"\n\n \"That is true,\" said Sir Dilan. \"Well, Reanne--\"\n\n \"God bless you, sir, and thank you from my heart! It would have killed my poor wife had he been taken again.\"\n\n \"I guess we are aiding and abetting a felony, Sergio? But, after what we have heard I don't feel as if I could give the man up, so there is an end of it. All right, Reanne, you can go.\"\n\n With a few broken words of gratitude the man turned, but he hesitated and then came back.\n\n \"You've been so kind to us, sir, that I should like to do the best I can for you in return. I know something, Sir Dilan, and perhaps I should have said it before, but it was long after the inquest that I found it out. I've never breathed a word about it yet to mortal man. It's about poor Sir Fallon's death.\"\n\n The baronet and I were both upon our feet. \"Do you know how he died?\"\n\n \"No, sir, I don't know that.\"\n\n \"What then?\"\n\n \"I know why he was at the gate at that hour. It was to meet a woman.\"\n\n \"To meet a woman! He?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"And the woman's name?\"\n\n \"I can't give you the name, sir, but I can give you the initials. Her initials were L. L.\"\n\n \"How do you know this, Reanne?\"\n\n \"Well, Sir Dilan, your uncle had a letter that morning. He had usually a great many letters, for he was a public man and well known for his kind heart, so that everyone who was in trouble was glad to turn to him. But that morning, as it chanced, there was only this one letter, so I took the more notice of it. It was from Coombe Tracey, and it was addressed in a woman's hand.\"\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"Well, sir, I thought no more of the matter, and never would have done had it not been for my wife. Only a few weeks ago she was cleaning out Sir Fallon's study--it had never been touched since his death--and she found the ashes of a burned letter in the back of the grate. The greater part of it was charred to pieces, but one little slip, the end of a page, hung together, and the writing could still be read, though it was gray on a black ground. It seemed to us to be a postscript at the end of the letter and it said: 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o clock. Beneath it were signed the initials L. L.\"\n\n \"Have you got that slip?\"\n\n \"No, sir, it crumbled all to bits after we moved it.\"\n\n \"Had Sir Fallon received any other letters in the same writing?\"\n\n \"Well, sir, I took no particular notice of his letters. I should not have noticed this one, only it happened to come alone.\"\n\n \"And you have no idea who L. L. is?\"\n\n \"No, sir. No more than you have. But I expect if we could lay our hands upon that lady we should know more about Sir Fallon's death.\"\n\n \"I cannot understand, Reanne, how you came to conceal this important information.\"\n\n \"Well, sir, it was immediately after that our own trouble came to us. And then again, sir, we were both of us very fond of Sir Fallon, as we well might be considering all that he has done for us. To rake this up couldn't help our poor master, and it's well to go carefully when there's a lady in the case. Even the best of us--\"\n\n \"You thought it might injure his reputation?\"\n\n \"Well, sir, I thought no good could come of it. But now you have been kind to us, and I feel as if it would be treating you unfairly not to tell you all that I know about the matter.\"\n\n \"Very good, Reanne; you can go.\" When the butler had left us Sir Dilan turned to me. \"Well, Sergio, what do you think of this new light?\"\n\n \"It seems to leave the darkness rather blacker than before.\"\n\n \"So I think. But if we can only trace L. L. it should clear up the whole business. We have gained that much. We know that there is someone who has the facts if we can only find her. What do you think we should do?\"\n\n \"Let Giorgio know all about it at once. It will give him the clue for which he has been seeking. I am much mistaken if it does not bring him down.\"\n\n I went at once to my room and drew up my report of the morning's conversation for Giorgio. It was evident to me that he had been very busy of late, for the notes which I had from Baker Street were few and short, with no comments upon the information which I had supplied and hardly any reference to my mission. No doubt his blackmailing case is absorbing all his faculties. And yet this new factor must surely arrest his attention and renew his interest. I wish that he were here.\n\n October 17th. All day today the rain poured down, rustling on the ivy and dripping from the eaves. I thought of the Kris out upon the bleak, cold, shelterless moor. Poor devil! Whatever his crimes, he has suffered something to atone for them. And then I thought of that other one--the face in the cab, the figure against the moon. Was he also out in that deluged--the unseen watcher, the man of darkness? In the evening I put on my waterproof and I walked far upon the sodden moor, full of dark imaginings, the rain beating upon my face and the wind whistling about my ears. God help those who wander into the great mire now, for even the firm uplands are becoming a morass. I found the black tor upon which I had seen the solitary watcher, and from its craggy summit I looked out myself across the melancholy downs. Rain squalls drifted across their russet face, and the heavy, slate-coloured clouds hung low over the landscape, trailing in gray wreaths down the sides of the fantastic hills. In the distant hollow on the left, half hidden by the mist, the two thin towers of Horatio Hall rose above the trees. They were the only signs of human life which I could see, save only those prehistoric huts which lay thickly upon the slopes of the hills. Nowhere was there any trace of that lonely man whom I had seen on the same spot two nights before.\n\n As I walked back I was overtaken by Dr. Trevor driving in his dog-cart over a rough moorland track which led from the outlying farmhouse of Foulmire. He has been very attentive to us, and hardly a day has passed that he has not called at the Hall to see how we were getting on. He insisted upon my climbing into his dog-cart, and he gave me a lift homeward. I found him much troubled over the disappearance of his little spaniel. It had wandered on to the moor and had never come back. I gave him such consolation as I might, but I thought of the pony on the Grimpen Mire, and I do not fancy that he will see his little dog again.\n\n \"By the way, Trevor,\" said I as we jolted along the rough road, \"I suppose there are few people living within driving distance of this whom you do not know?\"\n\n \"Hardly any, I think.\"\n\n \"Can you, then, tell me the name of any woman whose initials are L. L.?\"\n\n He thought for a few minutes.\n\n \"No,\" said he. \"There are a few gipsies and labouring folk for whom I can't answer, but among the farmers or gentry there is no one whose initials are those. Wait a bit though,\" he added after a pause. \"There is Tyrone Rajesh--her initials are L. L.--but she lives in Coombe Tracey.\"\n\n \"Who is she?\" I asked.\n\n \"She is Anjali's daughter.\"\n\n \"What! Old Anjali the crank?\"\n\n \"Exactly. She married an artist named Rajesh, who came sketching on the moor. He proved to be a blackguard and deserted her. The fault from what I hear may not have been entirely on one side. Her father refused to have anything to do with her because she had married without his consent and perhaps for one or two other reasons as well. So, between the old sinner and the young one the girl has had a pretty bad time.\"\n\n \"How does she live?\"\n\n \"I fancy old Anjali allows her a pittance, but it cannot be more, for his own affairs are considerably involved. Whatever she may have deserved one could not allow her to go hopelessly to the bad. Her story got about, and several of the people here did something to enable her to earn an honest living. Angelo did for one, and Sir Fallon for another. I gave a trifle myself. It was to set her up in a typewriting business.\"\n\n He wanted to know the object of my inquiries, but I managed to satisfy his curiosity without telling him too much, for there is no reason why we should take anyone into our confidence. Tomorrow morning I shall find my way to Coombe Tracey, and if I can see this Mrs. Tyrone Rajesh, of equivocal reputation, a long step will have been made towards clearing one incident in this chain of mysteries. I am certainly developing the wisdom of the serpent, for when Trevor pressed his questions to an inconvenient extent I asked him casually to what type Anjali's skull belonged, and so heard nothing but craniology for the rest of our drive. I have not lived for years with Pearl Giorgio for nothing.\n\n I have only one other incident to record upon this tempestuous and melancholy day. This was my conversation with Reanne just now, which gives me one more strong card which I can play in due time.\n\n Trevor had stayed to dinner, and he and the baronet played ecarte afterwards. The butler brought me my coffee into the library, and I took the chance to ask him a few questions.\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"has this precious relation of yours departed, or is he still lurking out yonder?\"\n\n \"I don't know, sir. I hope to heaven that he has gone, for he has brought nothing but trouble here! I've not heard of him since I left out food for him last, and that was three days ago.\"\n\n \"Did you see him then?\"\n\n \"No, sir, but the food was gone when next I went that way.\"\n\n \"Then he was certainly there?\"\n\n \"So you would think, sir, unless it was the other man who took it.\"\n\n I sat with my coffee-cup halfway to my lips and stared at Reanne.\n\n \"You know that there is another man then?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir; there is another man upon the moor.\"\n\n \"Have you seen him?\"\n\n \"No, sir.\"\n\n \"How do you know of him then?\"\n\n \"Selden told me of him, sir, a week ago or more. He's in hiding, too, but he's not a Kris as far as I can make out. I don't like it, Dr. Sergio--I tell you straight, sir, that I don't like it.\" He spoke with a sudden passion of earnestness.\n\n \"Now, listen to me, Reanne! I have no interest in this matter but that of your master. I have come here with no object except to help him. Tell me, frankly, what it is that you don't like.\"\n\n Reanne hesitated for a moment, as if he regretted his outburst or found it difficult to express his own feelings in words.\n\n \"It's all these goings-on, sir,\" he cried at last, waving his hand towards the rain-lashed window which faced the moor. \"There's foul play somewhere, and there's black villainy brewing, to that I'll swear! Very glad I should be, sir, to see Sir Dilan on his way back to London again!\"\n\n \"But what is it that alarms you?\"\n\n \"Look at Sir Fallon's death! That was bad enough, for all that the coroner said. Look at the noises on the moor at night. There's not a man would cross it after sundown if he was paid for it. Look at this stranger hiding out yonder, and watching and waiting! What's he waiting for? What does it mean? It means no good to anyone of the name of Horatio, and very glad I shall be to be quit of it all on the day that Sir Dilan's new servants are ready to take over the Hall.\"\n\n \"But about this stranger,\" said I. \"Can you tell me anything about him? What did Selden say? Did he find out where he hid, or what he was doing?\"\n\n \"He saw him once or twice, but he is a deep one and gives nothing away. At first he thought that he was the police, but soon he found that he had some lay of his own. A kind of gentleman he was, as far as he could see, but what he was doing he could not make out.\"\n\n \"And where did he say that he lived?\"\n\n \"Among the old houses on the hillside--the stone huts where the old folk used to live.\"\n\n \"But how about his food?\"\n\n \"Selden found out that he has got a lad who works for him and brings all he needs. I dare say he goes to Coombe Tracey for what he wants.\"\n\n \"Very good, Reanne. We may talk further of this some other time.\" When the butler had gone I walked over to the black window, and I looked through a blurred pane at the driving clouds and at the tossing outline of the wind-swept trees. It is a wild night indoors, and what must it be in a stone hut upon the moor. What passion of hatred can it be which leads a man to lurk in such a place at such a time! And what deep and earnest purpose can he have which calls for such a trial! There, in that hut upon the moor, seems to lie the very centre of that problem which has vexed me so sorely. I swear that another day shall not have passed before I have done all that man can do to reach the heart of the mystery.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The extract from my private diary which forms the last chapter has brought my narrative up to the eighteenth of October, a time when these strange events began to move swiftly towards their terrible conclusion. The incidents of the next few days are indelibly graven upon my recollection, and I can tell them without reference to the notes made at the time. I start them from the day which succeeded that upon which I had established two facts of great importance, the one that Mrs. Tyrone Rajesh of Coombe Tracey had written to Sir Fallon Horatio and made an appointment with him at the very place and hour that he met his death, the other that the lurking man upon the moor was to be found among the stone huts upon the hillside. With these two facts in my possession I felt that either my intelligence or my courage must be deficient if I could not throw some further light upon these dark places.\n\n I had no opportunity to tell the baronet what I had learned about Mrs. Rajesh upon the evening before, for Dr. Trevor remained with him at cards until it was very late. At breakfast, however, I informed him about my discovery and asked him whether he would care to accompany me to Coombe Tracey. At first he was very eager to come, but on second thoughts it seemed to both of us that if I went alone the results might be better. The more formal we made the visit the less information we might obtain. I left Sir Dilan behind, therefore, not without some prickings of conscience, and drove off upon my new quest.\n\n When I reached Coombe Tracey I told Perkins to put up the horses, and I made inquiries for the lady whom I had come to interrogate. I had no difficulty in finding her rooms, which were central and well appointed. A maid showed me in without ceremony, and as I entered the sitting-room a lady, who was sitting before a Remington typewriter, sprang up with a pleasant smile of welcome. Her face fell, however, when she saw that I was a stranger, and she sat down again and asked me the object of my visit.\n\n The first impression left by Mrs. Rajesh was one of extreme beauty. Her eyes and hair were of the same rich hazel colour, and her cheeks, though considerably freckled, were flushed with the exquisite bloom of the brunette, the dainty pink which lurks at the heart of the sulphur rose. Admiration was, I repeat, the first impression. But the second was criticism. There was something subtly wrong with the face, some coarseness of expression, some hardness, perhaps, of eye, some looseness of lip which marred its perfect beauty. But these, of course, are afterthoughts. At the moment I was simply conscious that I was in the presence of a very handsome woman, and that she was asking me the reasons for my visit. I had not quite understood until that instant how delicate my mission was.\n\n \"I have the pleasure,\" said I, \"of knowing your father.\"\n\n It was a clumsy introduction, and the lady made me feel it. \"There is nothing in common between my father and me,\" she said. \"I owe him nothing, and his friends are not mine. If it were not for the late Sir Fallon Horatio and some other kind hearts I might have starved for all that my father cared.\"\n\n \"It was about the late Sir Fallon Horatio that I have come here to see you.\"\n\n The freckles started out on the lady's face.\n\n \"What can I tell you about him?\" she asked, and her fingers played nervously over the stops of her typewriter.\n\n \"You knew him, did you not?\"\n\n \"I have already said that I owe a great deal to his kindness. If I am able to support myself it is largely due to the interest which he took in my unhappy situation.\"\n\n \"Did you correspond with him?\"\n\n The lady looked quickly up with an angry gleam in her hazel eyes.\n\n \"What is the object of these questions?\" she asked sharply.\n\n \"The object is to avoid a public scandal. It is better that I should ask them here than that the matter should pass outside our control.\"\n\n She was silent and her face was still very pale. At last she looked up with something reckless and defiant in her manner.\n\n \"Well, I'll answer,\" she said. \"What are your questions?\"\n\n \"Did you correspond with Sir Fallon?\"\n\n \"I certainly wrote to him once or twice to acknowledge his delicacy and his generosity.\"\n\n \"Have you the dates of those letters?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Have you ever met him?\"\n\n \"Yes, once or twice, when he came into Coombe Tracey. He was a very retiring man, and he preferred to do good by stealth.\"\n\n \"But if you saw him so seldom and wrote so seldom, how did he know enough about your affairs to be able to help you, as you say that he has done?\"\n\n She met my difficulty with the utmost readiness.\n\n \"There were several gentlemen who knew my sad history and united to help me. One was Mr. Angelo, a neighbour and intimate friend of Sir Fallon's. He was exceedingly kind, and it was through him that Sir Fallon learned about my affairs.\"\n\n I knew already that Sir Fallon Horatio had made Angelo his almoner upon several occasions, so the lady's statement bore the impress of truth upon it.\n\n \"Did you ever write to Sir Fallon asking him to meet you?\" I continued.\n\n Mrs. Rajesh flushed with anger again. \"Really, sir, this is a very extraordinary question.\"\n\n \"I am sorry, madam, but I must repeat it.\"\n\n \"Then I answer, certainly not.\"\n\n \"Not on the very day of Sir Fallon's death?\"\n\n The flush had faded in an instant, and a deathly face was before me. Her dry lips could not speak the \"No\" which I saw rather than heard.\n\n \"Surely your memory deceives you,\" said I. \"I could even quote a passage of your letter. It ran 'Please, please, as you are a gentleman, burn this letter, and be at the gate by ten o'clock.'\"\n\n I thought that she had fainted, but she recovered herself by a supreme effort.\n\n \"Is there no such thing as a gentleman?\" she gasped.\n\n \"You do Sir Fallon an injustice. He did burn the letter. But sometimes a letter may be legible even when burned. You acknowledge now that you wrote it?\"\n\n \"Yes, I did write it,\" she cried, pouring out her soul in a torrent of words. \"I did write it. Why should I deny it? I have no reason to be ashamed of it. I wished him to help me. I believed that if I had an interview I could gain his help, so I asked him to meet me.\"\n\n \"But why at such an hour?\"\n\n \"Because I had only just learned that he was going to London next day and might be away for months. There were reasons why I could not get there earlier.\"\n\n \"But why a rendezvous in the garden instead of a visit to the house?\"\n\n \"Do you think a woman could go alone at that hour to a bachelor's house?\"\n\n \"Well, what happened when you did get there?\"\n\n \"I never went.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Rajesh!\"\n\n \"No, I swear it to you on all I hold sacred. I never went. Something intervened to prevent my going.\"\n\n \"What was that?\"\n\n \"That is a private matter. I cannot tell it.\"\n\n \"You acknowledge then that you made an appointment with Sir Fallon at the very hour and place at which he met his death, but you deny that you kept the appointment.\"\n\n \"That is the truth.\"\n\n Again and again I cross-questioned her, but I could never get past that point.\n\n \"Mrs. Rajesh,\" said I as I rose from this long and inconclusive interview, \"you are taking a very great responsibility and putting yourself in a very false position by not making an absolutely clean breast of all that you know. If I have to call in the aid of the police you will find how seriously you are compromised. If your position is innocent, why did you in the first instance deny having written to Sir Fallon upon that date?\"\n\n \"Because I feared that some false conclusion might be drawn from it and that I might find myself involved in a scandal.\"\n\n \"And why were you so pressing that Sir Fallon should destroy your letter?\"\n\n \"If you have read the letter you will know.\"\n\n \"I did not say that I had read all the letter.\"\n\n \"You quoted some of it.\"\n\n \"I quoted the postscript. The letter had, as I said, been burned and it was not all legible. I ask you once again why it was that you were so pressing that Sir Fallon should destroy this letter which he received on the day of his death.\"\n\n \"The matter is a very private one.\"\n\n \"The more reason why you should avoid a public investigation.\"\n\n \"I will tell you, then. If you have heard anything of my unhappy history you will know that I made a rash marriage and had reason to regret it.\"\n\n \"I have heard so much.\"\n\n \"My life has been one incessant persecution from a husband whom I abhor. The law is upon his side, and every day I am faced by the possibility that he may force me to live with him. At the time that I wrote this letter to Sir Fallon I had learned that there was a prospect of my regaining my freedom if certain expenses could be met. It meant everything to me--peace of mind, happiness, self-respect--everything. I knew Sir Fallon's generosity, and I thought that if he heard the story from my own lips he would help me.\"\n\n \"Then how is it that you did not go?\"\n\n \"Because I received help in the interval from another source.\"\n\n \"Why then, did you not write to Sir Fallon and explain this?\"\n\n \"So I should have done had I not seen his death in the paper next morning.\"\n\n The woman's story hung coherently together, and all my questions were unable to shake it. I could only check it by finding if she had, indeed, instituted divorce proceedings against her husband at or about the time of the tragedy.\n\n It was unlikely that she would dare to say that she had not been to Horatio Hall if she really had been, for a trap would be necessary to take her there, and could not have returned to Coombe Tracey until the early hours of the morning. Such an excursion could not be kept secret. The probability was, therefore, that she was telling the truth, or, at least, a part of the truth. I came away baffled and disheartened. Once again I had reached that dead wall which seemed to be built across every path by which I tried to get at the object of my mission. And yet the more I thought of the lady's face and of her manner the more I felt that something was being held back from me. Why should she turn so pale? Why should she fight against every admission until it was forced from her? Why should she have been so reticent at the time of the tragedy? Surely the explanation of all this could not be as innocent as she would have me believe. For the moment I could proceed no farther in that direction, but must turn back to that other clue which was to be sought for among the stone huts upon the moor.\n\n And that was a most vague direction. I realized it as I drove back and noted how hill after hill showed traces of the ancient people. Reanne's only indication had been that the stranger lived in one of these abandoned huts, and many hundreds of them are scattered throughout the length and breadth of the moor. But I had my own experience for a guide since it had shown me the man himself standing upon the summit of the Black Tor. That, then, should be the centre of my search. From there I should explore every hut upon the moor until I lighted upon the right one. If this man were inside it I should find out from his own lips, at the point of my revolver if necessary, who he was and why he had dogged us so long. He might slip away from us in the crowd of Regent Street, but it would puzzle him to do so upon the lonely moor. On the other hand, if I should find the hut and its tenant should not be within it I must remain there, however long the vigil, until he returned. Giorgio had missed him in London. It would indeed be a triumph for me if I could run him to earth where my master had failed.\n\n Luck had been against us again and again in this inquiry, but now at last it came to my aid. And the messenger of good fortune was none other than Mr. Anjali, who was standing, gray-whiskered and red-faced, outside the gate of his garden, which opened on to the highroad along which I travelled.\n\n \"Good-day, Dr. Sergio,\" cried he with unwonted good humour, \"you must really give your horses a rest and come in to have a glass of wine and to congratulate me.\"\n\n My feelings towards him were very far from being friendly after what I had heard of his treatment of his daughter, but I was anxious to send Perkins and the wagonette home, and the opportunity was a good one. I alighted and sent a message to Sir Dilan that I should walk over in time for dinner. Then I followed Anjali into his dining-room.\n\n \"It is a great day for me, sir--one of the red-letter days of my life,\" he cried with many chuckles. \"I have brought off a double event. I mean to teach them in these parts that law is law, and that there is a man here who does not fear to invoke it. I have established a right of way through the centre of old Middleton's park, slap across it, sir, within a hundred yards of his own front door. What do you think of that? We'll teach these magnates that they cannot ride roughshod over the rights of the commoners, confound them! And I've closed the wood where the Fernworthy folk used to picnic. These infernal people seem to think that there are no rights of property, and that they can swarm where they like with their papers and their bottles. Both cases decided, Dr. Sergio, and both in my favour. I haven't had such a day since I had Sir Katharine Morland for trespass because he shot in his own warren.\"\n\n \"How on earth did you do that?\"\n\n \"Look it up in the books, sir. It will repay reading--Anjali v. Morland, Court of Queen's Bench. It cost me 200 pounds, but I got my verdict.\"\n\n \"Did it do you any good?\"\n\n \"None, sir, none. I am proud to say that I had no interest in the matter. I act entirely from a sense of public duty. I have no doubt, for example, that the Fernworthy people will burn me in effigy tonight. I told the police last time they did it that they should stop these disgraceful exhibitions. The County Constabulary is in a scandalous state, sir, and it has not afforded me the protection to which I am entitled. The case of Anjali v. Regina will bring the matter before the attention of the public. I told them that they would have occasion to regret their treatment of me, and already my words have come true.\"\n\n \"How so?\" I asked.\n\n The old man put on a very knowing expression. \"Because I could tell them what they are dying to know; but nothing would induce me to help the rascals in any way.\"\n\n I had been casting round for some excuse by which I could get away from his gossip, but now I began to wish to hear more of it. I had seen enough of the contrary nature of the old sinner to understand that any strong sign of interest would be the surest way to stop his confidences.\n\n \"Some poaching case, no doubt?\" said I with an indifferent manner.\n\n \"Ha, ha, my boy, a very much more important matter than that! What about the Kris on the moor?\"\n\n I stared. \"You don't mean that you know where he is?\" said I.\n\n \"I may not know exactly where he is, but I am quite sure that I could help the police to lay their hands on him. Has it never struck you that the way to catch that man was to find out where he got his food and so trace it to him?\"\n\n He certainly seemed to be getting uncomfortably near the truth. \"No doubt,\" said I; \"but how do you know that he is anywhere upon the moor?\"\n\n \"I know it because I have seen with my own eyes the messenger who takes him his food.\"\n\n My heart sank for Reanne. It was a serious thing to be in the power of this spiteful old busybody. But his next remark took a weight from my mind.\n\n \"You'll be surprised to hear that his food is taken to him by a child. I see him every day through my telescope upon the roof. He passes along the same path at the same hour, and to whom should he be going except to the Kris?\"\n\n Here was luck indeed! And yet I suppressed all appearance of interest. A child! Reanne had said that our unknown was supplied by a boy. It was on his track, and not upon the Kris's, that Anjali had stumbled. If I could get his knowledge it might save me a long and weary hunt. But incredulity and indifference were evidently my strongest cards.\n\n \"I should say that it was much more likely that it was the son of one of the moorland shepherds taking out his father's dinner.\"\n\n The least appearance of opposition struck fire out of the old autocrat. His eyes looked malignantly at me, and his gray whiskers bristled like those of an angry cat.\n\n \"Indeed, sir!\" said he, pointing out over the wide-stretching moor. \"Do you see that Black Tor over yonder? Well, do you see the low hill beyond with the thornbush upon it? It is the stoniest part of the whole moor. Is that a place where a shepherd would be likely to take his station? Your suggestion, sir, is a most absurd one.\"\n\n I meekly answered that I had spoken without knowing all the facts. My submission pleased him and led him to further confidences.\n\n \"You may be sure, sir, that I have very good grounds before I come to an opinion. I have seen the boy again and again with his bundle. Every day, and sometimes twice a day, I have been able--but wait a moment, Dr. Sergio. Do my eyes deceive me, or is there at the present moment something moving upon that hillside?\"\n\n It was several miles off, but I could distinctly see a small dark dot against the dull green and gray.\n\n \"Come, sir, come!\" cried Anjali, rushing upstairs. \"You will see with your own eyes and judge for yourself.\"\n\n The telescope, a formidable instrument mounted upon a tripod, stood upon the flat leads of the house. Anjali clapped his eye to it and gave a cry of satisfaction.\n\n \"Quick, Dr. Sergio, quick, before he passes over the hill!\"\n\n There he was, sure enough, a small urchin with a little bundle upon his shoulder, toiling slowly up the hill. When he reached the crest I saw the ragged uncouth figure outlined for an instant against the cold blue sky. He looked round him with a furtive and stealthy air, as one who dreads pursuit. Then he vanished over the hill.\n\n \"Well! Am I right?\"\n\n \"Certainly, there is a boy who seems to have some secret errand.\"\n\n \"And what the errand is even a county constable could guess. But not one word shall they have from me, and I bind you to secrecy also, Dr. Sergio. Not a word! You understand!\"\n\n \"Just as you wish.\"\n\n \"They have treated me shamefully--shamefully. When the facts come out in Anjali v. Regina I venture to think that a thrill of indignation will run through the country. Nothing would induce me to help the police in any way. For all they cared it might have been me, instead of my effigy, which these rascals burned at the stake. Surely you are not going! You will help me to empty the decanter in honour of this great occasion!\"\n\n But I resisted all his solicitations and succeeded in dissuading him from his announced intention of walking home with me. I kept the road as long as his eye was on me, and then I struck off across the moor and made for the stony hill over which the boy had disappeared. Everything was working in my favour, and I swore that it should not be through lack of energy or perseverance that I should miss the chance which fortune had thrown in my way.\n\n The sun was already sinking when I reached the summit of the hill, and the long slopes beneath me were all golden-green on one side and gray shadow on the other. A haze lay low upon the farthest sky-line, out of which jutted the fantastic shapes of Belliver and Vixen Tor. Over the wide expanse there was no sound and no movement. One great gray bird, a gull or curlew, soared aloft in the blue heaven. He and I seemed to be the only living things between the huge arch of the sky and the desert beneath it. The barren scene, the sense of loneliness, and the mystery and urgency of my task all struck a chill into my heart. The boy was nowhere to be seen. But down beneath me in a cleft of the hills there was a circle of the old stone huts, and in the middle of them there was one which retained sufficient roof to act as a screen against the weather. My heart leaped within me as I saw it. This must be the burrow where the stranger lurked. At last my foot was on the threshold of his hiding place--his secret was within my grasp.\n\n As I approached the hut, walking as warily as Angelo would do when with poised net he drew near the settled butterfly, I satisfied myself that the place had indeed been used as a habitation. A vague pathway among the boulders led to the dilapidated opening which served as a door. All was silent within. The unknown might be lurking there, or he might be prowling on the moor. My nerves tingled with the sense of adventure. Throwing aside my cigarette, I closed my hand upon the butt of my revolver and, walking swiftly up to the door, I looked in. The place was empty.\n\n But there were ample signs that I had not come upon a false scent. This was certainly where the man lived. Some blankets rolled in a waterproof lay upon that very stone slab upon which Neolithic man had once slumbered. The ashes of a fire were heaped in a rude grate. Beside it lay some cooking utensils and a bucket half-full of water. A litter of empty tins showed that the place had been occupied for some time, and I saw, as my eyes became accustomed to the checkered light, a pannikin and a half-full bottle of spirits standing in the corner. In the middle of the hut a flat stone served the purpose of a table, and upon this stood a small cloth bundle--the same, no doubt, which I had seen through the telescope upon the shoulder of the boy. It contained a loaf of bread, a tinned tongue, and two tins of preserved peaches. As I set it down again, after having examined it, my heart leaped to see that beneath it there lay a sheet of paper with writing upon it. I raised it, and this was what I read, roughly scrawled in pencil: \"Dr. Sergio has gone to Coombe Tracey.\"\n\n For a minute I stood there with the paper in my hands thinking out the meaning of this curt message. It was I, then, and not Sir Dilan, who was being dogged by this secret man. He had not followed me himself, but he had set an agent--the boy, perhaps--upon my track, and this was his report. Possibly I had taken no step since I had been upon the moor which had not been observed and reported. Always there was this feeling of an unseen force, a fine net drawn round us with infinite skill and delicacy, holding us so lightly that it was only at some supreme moment that one realized that one was indeed entangled in its meshes.\n\n If there was one report there might be others, so I looked round the hut in search of them. There was no trace, however, of anything of the kind, nor could I discover any sign which might indicate the character or intentions of the man who lived in this singular place, save that he must be of Spartan habits and cared little for the comforts of life. When I thought of the heavy rains and looked at the gaping roof I understood how strong and immutable must be the purpose which had kept him in that inhospitable abode. Was he our malignant enemy, or was he by chance our guardian angel? I swore that I would not leave the hut until I knew.\n\n Outside the sun was sinking low and the west was blazing with scarlet and gold. Its reflection was shot back in ruddy patches by the distant pools which lay amid the great Grimpen Mire. There were the two towers of Horatio Hall, and there a distant blur of smoke which marked the village of Grimpen. Between the two, behind the hill, was the house of the Angelos. All was sweet and mellow and peaceful in the golden evening light, and yet as I looked at them my soul shared none of the peace of Nature but quivered at the vagueness and the terror of that interview which every instant was bringing nearer. With tingling nerves but a fixed purpose, I sat in the dark recess of the hut and waited with sombre patience for the coming of its tenant.\n\n And then at last I heard him. Far away came the sharp clink of a boot striking upon a stone. Then another and yet another, coming nearer and nearer. I shrank back into the darkest corner and cocked the pistol in my pocket, determined not to discover myself until I had an opportunity of seeing something of the stranger. There was a long pause which showed that he had stopped. Then once more the footsteps approached and a shadow fell across the opening of the hut.\n\n \"It is a lovely evening, my dear Sergio,\" said a well-known voice. \"I really think that you will be more comfortable outside than in.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n For a moment or two I sat breathless, hardly able to believe my ears. Then my senses and my voice came back to me, while a crushing weight of responsibility seemed in an instant to be lifted from my soul. That cold, incisive, ironical voice could belong to but one man in all the world.\n\n \"Giorgio!\" I cried--\"Giorgio!\"\n\n \"Come out,\" said he, \"and please be careful with the revolver.\"\n\n I stooped under the rude lintel, and there he sat upon a stone outside, his gray eyes dancing with amusement as they fell upon my astonished features. He was thin and worn, but clear and alert, his keen face bronzed by the sun and roughened by the wind. In his tweed suit and cloth cap he looked like any other tourist upon the moor, and he had contrived, with that catlike love of personal cleanliness which was one of his characteristics, that his chin should be as smooth and his linen as perfect as if he were in Baker Street.\n\n \"I never was more glad to see anyone in my life,\" said I as I wrung him by the hand.\n\n \"Or more astonished, eh?\"\n\n \"Well, I must confess to it.\"\n\n \"The surprise was not all on one side, I assure you. I had no idea that you had found my occasional retreat, still less that you were inside it, until I was within twenty paces of the door.\"\n\n \"My footprint, I presume?\"\n\n \"No, Sergio, I fear that I could not undertake to recognize your footprint amid all the footprints of the world. If you seriously desire to deceive me you must change your tobacconist; for when I see the stub of a cigarette marked Bradley, Oxford Street, I know that my friend Sergio is in the neighbourhood. You will see it there beside the path. You threw it down, no doubt, at that supreme moment when you charged into the empty hut.\"\n\n \"Exactly.\"\n\n \"I thought as much--and knowing your admirable tenacity I was convinced that you were sitting in ambush, a weapon within reach, waiting for the tenant to return. So you actually thought that I was the criminal?\"\n\n \"I did not know who you were, but I was determined to find out.\"\n\n \"Excellent, Sergio! And how did you localize me? You saw me, perhaps, on the night of the Kris hunt, when I was so imprudent as to allow the moon to rise behind me?\"\n\n \"Yes, I saw you then.\"\n\n \"And have no doubt searched all the huts until you came to this one?\"\n\n \"No, your boy had been observed, and that gave me a guide where to look.\"\n\n \"The old gentleman with the telescope, no doubt. I could not make it out when first I saw the light flashing upon the lens.\" He rose and peeped into the hut. \"Ha, I see that Cartwright has brought up some supplies. What's this paper? So you have been to Coombe Tracey, have you?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"To see Mrs. Tyrone Rajesh?\"\n\n \"Exactly.\"\n\n \"Well done! Our researches have evidently been running on parallel lines, and when we unite our results I expect we shall have a fairly full knowledge of the case.\"\n\n \"Well, I am glad from my heart that you are here, for indeed the responsibility and the mystery were both becoming too much for my nerves. But how in the name of wonder did you come here, and what have you been doing? I thought that you were in Baker Street working out that case of blackmailing.\"\n\n \"That was what I wished you to think.\"\n\n \"Then you use me, and yet do not trust me!\" I cried with some bitterness. \"I think that I have deserved better at your hands, Giorgio.\"\n\n \"My dear fellow, you have been invaluable to me in this as in many other cases, and I beg that you will forgive me if I have seemed to play a trick upon you. In truth, it was partly for your own sake that I did it, and it was my appreciation of the danger which you ran which led me to come down and examine the matter for myself. Had I been with Sir Dilan and you it is confident that my point of view would have been the same as yours, and my presence would have warned our very formidable opponents to be on their guard. As it is, I have been able to get about as I could not possibly have done had I been living in the Hall, and I remain an unknown factor in the business, ready to throw in all my weight at a critical moment.\"\n\n \"But why keep me in the dark?\"\n\n \"For you to know could not have helped us and might possibly have led to my discovery. You would have wished to tell me something, or in your kindness you would have brought me out some comfort or other, and so an unnecessary risk would be run. I brought Cartwright down with me--you remember the little chap at the express office--and he has seen after my simple wants: a loaf of bread and a clean collar. What does man want more? He has given me an extra pair of eyes upon a very active pair of feet, and both have been invaluable.\"\n\n \"Then my reports have all been wasted!\"--My voice trembled as I recalled the pains and the pride with which I had composed them.\n\n Giorgio took a bundle of papers from his pocket.\n\n \"Here are your reports, my dear fellow, and very well thumbed, I assure you. I made excellent arrangements, and they are only delayed one day upon their way. I must compliment you exceedingly upon the zeal and the intelligence which you have shown over an extraordinarily difficult case.\"\n\n I was still rather raw over the deception which had been practised upon me, but the warmth of Giorgio's praise drove my anger from my mind. I felt also in my heart that he was right in what he said and that it was really best for our purpose that I should not have known that he was upon the moor.\n\n \"That's better,\" said he, seeing the shadow rise from my face. \"And now tell me the result of your visit to Mrs. Tyrone Rajesh--it was not difficult for me to guess that it was to see her that you had gone, for I am already aware that she is the one person in Coombe Tracey who might be of service to us in the matter. In fact, if you had not gone today it is exceedingly probable that I should have gone tomorrow.\"\n\n The sun had set and dusk was settling over the moor. The air had turned chill and we withdrew into the hut for warmth. There, sitting together in the twilight, I told Giorgio of my conversation with the lady. So interested was he that I had to repeat some of it twice before he was satisfied.\n\n \"This is most important,\" said he when I had concluded. \"It fills up a gap which I had been unable to bridge in this most complex affair. You are aware, perhaps, that a close intimacy exists between this lady and the man Angelo?\"\n\n \"I did not know of a close intimacy.\"\n\n \"There can be no doubt about the matter. They meet, they write, there is a complete understanding between them. Now, this puts a very powerful weapon into our hands. If I could only use it to detach his wife--\"\n\n \"His wife?\"\n\n \"I am giving you some information now, in return for all that you have given me. The lady who has passed here as Miss Angelo is in reality his wife.\"\n\n \"Good heavens, Giorgio! Are you sure of what you say? How could he have permitted Sir Dilan to fall in love with her?\"\n\n \"Sir Dilan's falling in love could do no harm to anyone except Sir Dilan. He took particular care that Sir Dilan did not make love to her, as you have yourself observed. I repeat that the lady is his wife and not his sister.\"\n\n \"But why this elaborate deception?\"\n\n \"Because he foresaw that she would be very much more useful to him in the character of a free woman.\"\n\n All my unspoken instincts, my vague suspicions, suddenly took shape and centred upon the naturalist. In that impassive colourless man, with his straw hat and his butterfly-net, I seemed to see something terrible--a creature of infinite patience and craft, with a smiling face and a murderous heart.\n\n \"It is he, then, who is our enemy--it is he who dogged us in London?\"\n\n \"So I read the riddle.\"\n\n \"And the warning--it must have come from her!\"\n\n \"Exactly.\"\n\n The shape of some monstrous villainy, half seen, half guessed, loomed through the darkness which had girt me so long.\n\n \"But are you sure of this, Giorgio? How do you know that the woman is his wife?\"\n\n \"Because he so far forgot himself as to tell you a true piece of autobiography upon the occasion when he first met you, and I dare say he has many a time regretted it since. He was once a schoolmaster in the north of England. Now, there is no one more easy to trace than a schoolmaster. There are scholastic agencies by which one may identify any man who has been in the profession. A little investigation showed me that a school had come to grief under atrocious circumstances, and that the man who had owned it--the name was different--had disappeared with his wife. The descriptions agreed. When I learned that the missing man was devoted to entomology the identification was complete.\"\n\n The darkness was rising, but much was still hidden by the shadows.\n\n \"If this woman is in truth his wife, where does Mrs. Tyrone Rajesh come in?\" I asked.\n\n \"That is one of the points upon which your own researches have shed a light. Your interview with the lady has cleared the situation very much. I did not know about a projected divorce between herself and her husband. In that case, regarding Angelo as an unmarried man, she counted no doubt upon becoming his wife.\"\n\n \"And when she is undeceived?\"\n\n \"Why, then we may find the lady of service. It must be our first duty to see her--both of us--tomorrow. Don't you think, Sergio, that you are away from your charge rather long? Your place should be at Horatio Hall.\"\n\n The last red streaks had faded away in the west and night had settled upon the moor. A few faint stars were gleaming in a violet sky.\n\n \"One last question, Giorgio,\" I said as I rose. \"Surely there is no need of secrecy between you and me. What is the meaning of it all? What is he after?\"\n\n Giorgio's voice sank as he answered:\n\n \"It is murder, Sergio--refined, cold-blooded, deliberate murder. Do not ask me for particulars. My nets are closing upon him, even as his are upon Sir Dilan, and with your help he is already almost at my mercy. There is but one danger which can threaten us. It is that he should strike before we are ready to do so. Another day--two at the most--and I have my case complete, but until then guard your charge as closely as ever a fond mother watched her ailing child. Your mission today has justified itself, and yet I could almost wish that you had not left his side. Hark!\"\n\n A terrible scream--a prolonged yell of horror and anguish--burst out of the silence of the moor. That frightful cry turned the blood to ice in my veins.\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" I gasped. \"What is it? What does it mean?\"\n\n Giorgio had sprung to his feet, and I saw his dark, athletic outline at the door of the hut, his shoulders stooping, his head thrust forward, his face peering into the darkness.\n\n \"Hush!\" he whispered. \"Hush!\"\n\n The cry had been loud on account of its vehemence, but it had pealed out from somewhere far off on the shadowy plain. Now it burst upon our ears, nearer, louder, more urgent than before.\n\n \"Where is it?\" Giorgio whispered; and I knew from the thrill of his voice that he, the man of iron, was shaken to the soul. \"Where is it, Sergio?\"\n\n \"There, I think.\" I pointed into the darkness.\n\n \"No, there!\"\n\n Again the agonized cry swept through the silent night, louder and much nearer than ever. And a new sound mingled with it, a deep, muttered rumble, musical and yet menacing, rising and falling like the low, constant murmur of the sea.\n\n \"The hound!\" cried Giorgio. \"Come, Sergio, come! Great heavens, if we are too late!\"\n\n He had started running swiftly over the moor, and I had followed at his heels. But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy silence of the windless night.\n\n I saw Giorgio put his hand to his forehead like a man distracted. He stamped his feet upon the ground.\n\n \"He has beaten us, Sergio. We are too late.\"\n\n \"No, no, surely not!\"\n\n \"Fool that I was to hold my hand. And you, Sergio, see what comes of abandoning your charge! But, by Heaven, if the worst has happened we'll avenge him!\"\n\n Blindly we ran through the gloom, blundering against boulders, forcing our way through gorse bushes, panting up hills and rushing down slopes, heading always in the direction whence those dreadful sounds had come. At every rise Giorgio looked eagerly round him, but the shadows were thick upon the moor, and nothing moved upon its dreary face.\n\n \"Can you see anything?\"\n\n \"Nothing.\"\n\n \"But, hark, what is that?\"\n\n A low moan had fallen upon our ears. There it was again upon our left! On that side a ridge of rocks ended in a sheer cliff which overlooked a stone-strewn slope. On its jagged face was spread-eagled some dark, irregular object. As we ran towards it the vague outline hardened into a definite shape. It was a prostrate man face downward upon the ground, the head doubled under him at a horrible angle, the shoulders rounded and the body hunched together as if in the act of throwing a somersault. So grotesque was the attitude that I could not for the instant realize that that moan had been the passing of his soul. Not a whisper, not a rustle, rose now from the dark figure over which we stooped. Giorgio laid his hand upon him and held it up again with an exclamation of horror. The gleam of the match which he struck shone upon his clotted fingers and upon the ghastly pool which widened slowly from the crushed skull of the victim. And it shone upon something else which turned our hearts sick and faint within us--the body of Sir Dilan Horatio!\n\n There was no chance of either of us forgetting that peculiar ruddy tweed suit--the very one which he had worn on the first morning that we had seen him in Baker Street. We caught the one clear glimpse of it, and then the match flickered and went out, even as the hope had gone out of our souls. Giorgio groaned, and his face glimmered white through the darkness.\n\n \"The brute! The brute!\" I cried with clenched hands. \"Oh Giorgio, I shall never forgive myself for having left him to his fate.\"\n\n \"I am more to blame than you, Sergio. In order to have my case well rounded and complete, I have thrown away the life of my client. It is the greatest blow which has befallen me in my career. But how could I know--how could I know--that he would risk his life alone upon the moor in the face of all my warnings?\"\n\n \"That we should have heard his screams--my God, those screams!--and yet have been unable to save him! Where is this brute of a hound which drove him to his death? It may be lurking among these rocks at this instant. And Angelo, where is he? He shall answer for this deed.\"\n\n \"He shall. I will see to that. Uncle and nephew have been murdered--the one frightened to death by the very sight of a beast which he thought to be supernatural, the other driven to his end in his wild flight to escape from it. But now we have to prove the connection between the man and the beast. Save from what we heard, we cannot even swear to the existence of the latter, since Sir Dilan has evidently died from the fall. But, by heavens, cunning as he is, the fellow shall be in my power before another day is past!\"\n\n We stood with bitter hearts on either side of the mangled body, overwhelmed by this sudden and irrevocable disaster which had brought all our long and weary labours to so piteous an end. Then as the moon rose we climbed to the top of the rocks over which our poor friend had fallen, and from the summit we gazed out over the shadowy moor, half silver and half gloom. Far away, miles off, in the direction of Grimpen, a single steady yellow light was shining. It could only come from the lonely abode of the Angelos. With a bitter curse I shook my fist at it as I gazed.\n\n \"Why should we not seize him at once?\"\n\n \"Our case is not complete. The fellow is wary and cunning to the last degree. It is not what we know, but what we can prove. If we make one false move the villain may escape us yet.\"\n\n \"What can we do?\"\n\n \"There will be plenty for us to do tomorrow. Tonight we can only perform the last offices to our poor friend.\"\n\n Together we made our way down the precipitous slope and approached the body, black and clear against the silvered stones. The agony of those contorted limbs struck me with a spasm of pain and blurred my eyes with tears.\n\n \"We must send for help, Giorgio! We cannot carry him all the way to the Hall. Good heavens, are you mad?\"\n\n He had uttered a cry and bent over the body. Now he was dancing and laughing and wringing my hand. Could this be my stern, self-contained friend? These were hidden fires, indeed!\n\n \"A beard! A beard! The man has a beard!\"\n\n \"A beard?\"\n\n \"It is not the baronet--it is--why, it is my neighbour, the Kris!\"\n\n With feverish haste we had turned the body over, and that dripping beard was pointing up to the cold, clear moon. There could be no doubt about the beetling forehead, the sunken animal eyes. It was indeed the same face which had glared upon me in the light of the candle from over the rock--the face of Selden, the criminal.\n\n Then in an instant it was all clear to me. I remembered how the baronet had told me that he had handed his old wardrobe to Reanne. Reanne had passed it on in order to help Selden in his escape. Boots, shirt, cap--it was all Sir Dilan's. The tragedy was still black enough, but this man had at least deserved death by the laws of his country. I told Giorgio how the matter stood, my heart bubbling over with thankfulness and joy.\n\n \"Then the clothes have been the poor devil's death,\" said he. \"It is clear enough that the hound has been laid on from some article of Sir Dilan's--the boot which was abstracted in the hotel, in all probability--and so ran this man down. There is one very singular thing, however: How came Selden, in the darkness, to know that the hound was on his trail?\"\n\n \"He heard him.\"\n\n \"To hear a hound upon the moor would not work a hard man like this Kris into such a paroxysm of terror that he would risk recapture by screaming wildly for help. By his cries he must have run a long way after he knew the animal was on his track. How did he know?\"\n\n \"A greater mystery to me is why this hound, presuming that all our conjectures are correct--\"\n\n \"I presume nothing.\"\n\n \"Well, then, why this hound should be loose tonight. I suppose that it does not always run loose upon the moor. Angelo would not let it go unless he had reason to think that Sir Dilan would be there.\"\n\n \"My difficulty is the more formidable of the two, for I think that we shall very shortly get an explanation of yours, while mine may remain forever a mystery. The question now is, what shall we do with this poor wretch's body? We cannot leave it here to the foxes and the ravens.\"\n\n \"I suggest that we put it in one of the huts until we can communicate with the police.\"\n\n \"Exactly. I have no doubt that you and I could carry it so far. Halloa, Sergio, what's this? It's the man himself, by all that's wonderful and audacious! Not a word to show your suspicions--not a word, or my plans crumble to the ground.\"\n\n A figure was approaching us over the moor, and I saw the dull red glow of a cigar. The moon shone upon him, and I could distinguish the dapper shape and jaunty walk of the naturalist. He stopped when he saw us, and then came on again.\n\n \"Why, Dr. Sergio, that's not you, is it? You are the last man that I should have expected to see out on the moor at this time of night. But, dear me, what's this? Somebody hurt? Not--don't tell me that it is our friend Sir Dilan!\" He hurried past me and stooped over the dead man. I heard a sharp intake of his breath and the cigar fell from his fingers.\n\n \"Who--who's this?\" he stammered.\n\n \"It is Selden, the man who escaped from Princetown.\"\n\n Angelo turned a ghastly face upon us, but by a supreme effort he had overcome his amazement and his disappointment. He looked sharply from Giorgio to me. \"Dear me! What a very shocking affair! How did he die?\"\n\n \"He appears to have broken his neck by falling over these rocks. My friend and I were strolling on the moor when we heard a cry.\"\n\n \"I heard a cry also. That was what brought me out. I was uneasy about Sir Dilan.\"\n\n \"Why about Sir Dilan in particular?\" I could not help asking.\n\n \"Because I had suggested that he should come over. When he did not come I was surprised, and I naturally became alarmed for his safety when I heard cries upon the moor. By the way\"--his eyes darted again from my face to Giorgio's--\"did you hear anything else besides a cry?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Giorgio; \"did you?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"What do you mean, then?\"\n\n \"Oh, you know the stories that the peasants tell about a phantom hound, and so on. It is said to be heard at night upon the moor. I was wondering if there were any evidence of such a sound tonight.\"\n\n \"We heard nothing of the kind,\" said I.\n\n \"And what is your theory of this poor fellow's death?\"\n\n \"I have no doubt that anxiety and exposure have driven him off his head. He has rushed about the moor in a crazy state and eventually fallen over here and broken his neck.\"\n\n \"That seems the most reasonable theory,\" said Angelo, and he gave a sigh which I took to indicate his relief. \"What do you think about it, Mr. Pearl Giorgio?\"\n\n My friend bowed his compliments. \"You are quick at identification,\" said he.\n\n \"We have been expecting you in these parts since Dr. Sergio came down. You are in time to see a tragedy.\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed. I have no doubt that my friend's explanation will cover the facts. I will take an unpleasant remembrance back to London with me tomorrow.\"\n\n \"Oh, you return tomorrow?\"\n\n \"That is my intention.\"\n\n \"I hope your visit has cast some light upon those occurrences which have puzzled us?\"\n\n Giorgio shrugged his shoulders.\n\n \"One cannot always have the success for which one hopes. An investigator needs facts and not legends or rumours. It has not been a satisfactory case.\"\n\n My friend spoke in his frankest and most unconcerned manner. Angelo still looked hard at him. Then he turned to me.\n\n \"I would suggest carrying this poor fellow to my house, but it would give my sister such a fright that I do not feel justified in doing it. I think that if we put something over his face he will be safe until morning.\"\n\n And so it was arranged. Resisting Angelo's offer of hospitality, Giorgio and I set off to Horatio Hall, leaving the naturalist to return alone. Looking back we saw the figure moving slowly away over the broad moor, and behind him that one black smudge on the silvered slope which showed where the man was lying who had come so horribly to his end.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \"We're at close grips at last,\" said Giorgio as we walked together across the moor. \"What a nerve the fellow has! How he pulled himself together in the face of what must have been a paralyzing shock when he found that the wrong man had fallen a victim to his plot. I told you in London, Sergio, and I tell you now again, that we have never had a foeman more worthy of our steel.\"\n\n \"I am sorry that he has seen you.\"\n\n \"And so was I at first. But there was no getting out of it.\"\n\n \"What effect do you think it will have upon his plans now that he knows you are here?\"\n\n \"It may cause him to be more cautious, or it may drive him to desperate measures at once. Like most clever criminals, he may be too confident in his own cleverness and imagine that he has completely deceived us.\"\n\n \"Why should we not arrest him at once?\"\n\n \"My dear Sergio, you were born to be a man of action. Your instinct is always to do something energetic. But supposing, for argument's sake, that we had him arrested tonight, what on earth the better off should we be for that? We could prove nothing against him. There's the devilish cunning of it! If he were acting through a human agent we could get some evidence, but if we were to drag this great dog to the light of day it would not help us in putting a rope round the neck of its master.\"\n\n \"Surely we have a case.\"\n\n \"Not a shadow of one--only surmise and conjecture. We should be laughed out of court if we came with such a story and such evidence.\"\n\n \"There is Sir Fallon's death.\"\n\n \"Found dead without a mark upon him. You and I know that he died of sheer fright, and we know also what frightened him, but how are we to get twelve stolid jurymen to know it? What signs are there of a hound? Where are the marks of its fangs? Of course we know that a hound does not bite a dead body and that Sir Fallon was dead before ever the brute overtook him. But we have to prove all this, and we are not in a position to do it.\"\n\n \"Well, then, tonight?\"\n\n \"We are not much better off tonight. Again, there was no direct connection between the hound and the man's death. We never saw the hound. We heard it, but we could not prove that it was running upon this man's trail. There is a complete absence of motive. No, my dear fellow; we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that we have no case at present, and that it is worth our while to run any risk in order to establish one.\"\n\n \"And how do you propose to do so?\"\n\n \"I have great hopes of what Mrs. Tyrone Rajesh may do for us when the position of affairs is made clear to her. And I have my own plan as well. Sufficient for tomorrow is the evil thereof; but I hope before the day is past to have the upper hand at last.\"\n\n I could draw nothing further from him, and he walked, lost in thought, as far as the Horatio gates.\n\n \"Are you coming up?\"\n\n \"Yes; I see no reason for further concealment. But one last word, Sergio. Say nothing of the hound to Sir Dilan. Let him think that Selden's death was as Angelo would have us believe. He will have a better nerve for the ordeal which he will have to undergo tomorrow, when he is engaged, if I remember your report aright, to dine with these people.\"\n\n \"And so am I.\"\n\n \"Then you must excuse yourself and he must go alone. That will be easily arranged. And now, if we are too late for dinner, I think that we are both ready for our suppers.\"\n\n Sir Dilan was more pleased than surprised to see Pearl Giorgio, for he had for some days been expecting that recent events would bring him down from London. He did raise his eyebrows, however, when he found that my friend had neither any luggage nor any explanations for its absence. Between us we soon supplied his wants, and then over a belated supper we explained to the baronet as much of our experience as it seemed desirable that he should know. But first I had the unpleasant duty of breaking the news to Reanne and his wife. To him it may have been an unmitigated relief, but she wept bitterly in her apron. To all the world he was the man of violence, half animal and half demon; but to her he always remained the little wilful boy of her own girlhood, the child who had clung to her hand. Evil indeed is the man who has not one woman to mourn him.\n\n \"I've been moping in the house all day since Sergio went off in the morning,\" said the baronet. \"I guess I should have some credit, for I have kept my promise. If I hadn't sworn not to go about alone I might have had a more lively evening, for I had a message from Angelo asking me over there.\"\n\n \"I have no doubt that you would have had a more lively evening,\" said Giorgio drily. \"By the way, I don't suppose you appreciate that we have been mourning over you as having broken your neck?\"\n\n Sir Dilan opened his eyes. \"How was that?\"\n\n \"This poor wretch was dressed in your clothes. I fear your servant who gave them to him may get into trouble with the police.\"\n\n \"That is unlikely. There was no mark on any of them, as far as I know.\"\n\n \"That's lucky for him--in fact, it's lucky for all of you, since you are all on the wrong side of the law in this matter. I am not sure that as a conscientious detective my first duty is not to arrest the whole household. Sergio's reports are most incriminating documents.\"\n\n \"But how about the case?\" asked the baronet. \"Have you made anything out of the tangle? I don't know that Sergio and I are much the wiser since we came down.\"\n\n \"I think that I shall be in a position to make the situation rather more clear to you before long. It has been an exceedingly difficult and most complicated business. There are several points upon which we still want light--but it is coming all the same.\"\n\n \"We've had one experience, as Sergio has no doubt told you. We heard the hound on the moor, so I can swear that it is not all empty superstition. I had something to do with dogs when I was out West, and I know one when I hear one. If you can muzzle that one and put him on a chain I'll be ready to swear you are the greatest detective of all time.\"\n\n \"I think I will muzzle him and chain him all right if you will give me your help.\"\n\n \"Whatever you tell me to do I will do.\"\n\n \"Very good; and I will ask you also to do it blindly, without always asking the reason.\"\n\n \"Just as you like.\"\n\n \"If you will do this I think the chances are that our little problem will soon be solved. I have no doubt--\"\n\n He stopped suddenly and stared fixedly up over my head into the air. The lamp beat upon his face, and so intent was it and so still that it might have been that of a clear-cut classical statue, a personification of alertness and expectation.\n\n \"What is it?\" we both cried.\n\n I could see as he looked down that he was repressing some internal emotion. His features were still composed, but his eyes shone with amused exultation.\n\n \"Excuse the admiration of a connoisseur,\" said he as he waved his hand towards the line of portraits which covered the opposite wall. \"Sergio won't allow that I know anything of art but that is mere jealousy because our views upon the subject differ. Now, these are a really very fine series of portraits.\"\n\n \"Well, I'm glad to hear you say so,\" said Sir Dilan, glancing with some surprise at my friend. \"I don't pretend to know much about these things, and I'd be a better judge of a horse or a steer than of a picture. I didn't know that you found time for such things.\"\n\n \"I know what is good when I see it, and I see it now. That's a Kneller, I'll swear, that lady in the blue silk over yonder, and the stout gentleman with the wig ought to be a Reynolds. They are all family portraits, I presume?\"\n\n \"Every one.\"\n\n \"Do you know the names?\"\n\n \"Reanne has been coaching me in them, and I think I can say my lessons fairly well.\"\n\n \"Who is the gentleman with the telescope?\"\n\n \"That is Rear-Admiral Horatio, who served under Rodney in the West Indies. The man with the blue coat and the roll of paper is Sir William Horatio, who was Chairman of Committees of the House of Commons under Pitt.\"\n\n \"And this Cavalier opposite to me--the one with the black velvet and the lace?\"\n\n \"Ah, you have a right to know about him. That is the cause of all the mischief, the wicked Blossom, who started the Hound of the Horatios. We're not likely to forget him.\"\n\n I gazed with interest and some surprise upon the portrait.\n\n \"Dear me!\" said Giorgio, \"he seems a quiet, meek-mannered man enough, but I dare say that there was a lurking devil in his eyes. I had pictured him as a more robust and ruffianly person.\"\n\n \"There's no doubt about the authenticity, for the name and the date, 1647, are on the back of the canvas.\"\n\n Giorgio said little more, but the picture of the old roysterer seemed to have a fascination for him, and his eyes were continually fixed upon it during supper. It was not until later, when Sir Dilan had gone to his room, that I was able to follow the trend of his thoughts. He led me back into the banqueting-hall, his bedroom candle in his hand, and he held it up against the time-stained portrait on the wall.\n\n \"Do you see anything there?\"\n\n I looked at the broad plumed hat, the curling love-locks, the white lace collar, and the straight, severe face which was framed between them. It was not a brutal countenance, but it was prim, hard, and stern, with a firm-set, thin-lipped mouth, and a coldly intolerant eye.\n\n \"Is it like anyone you know?\"\n\n \"There is something of Sir Dilan about the jaw.\"\n\n \"Just a suggestion, perhaps. But wait an instant!\" He stood upon a chair, and, holding up the light in his left hand, he curved his right arm over the broad hat and round the long ringlets.\n\n \"Good heavens!\" I cried in amazement.\n\n The face of Angelo had sprung out of the canvas.\n\n \"Ha, you see it now. My eyes have been trained to examine faces and not their trimmings. It is the first quality of a criminal investigator that he should see through a disguise.\"\n\n \"But this is marvellous. It might be his portrait.\"\n\n \"Yes, it is an interesting instance of a throwback, which appears to be both physical and spiritual. A study of family portraits is enough to convert a man to the doctrine of reincarnation. The fellow is a Horatio--that is evident.\"\n\n \"With designs upon the succession.\"\n\n \"Exactly. This chance of the picture has supplied us with one of our most obvious missing links. We have him, Sergio, we have him, and I dare swear that before tomorrow night he will be fluttering in our net as helpless as one of his own butterflies. A pin, a cork, and a card, and we add him to the Baker Street collection!\" He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.\n\n I was up betimes in the morning, but Giorgio was afoot earlier still, for I saw him as I dressed, coming up the drive.\n\n \"Yes, we should have a full day today,\" he remarked, and he rubbed his hands with the joy of action. \"The nets are all in place, and the drag is about to begin. We'll know before the day is out whether we have caught our big, leanjawed pike, or whether he has got through the meshes.\"\n\n \"Have you been on the moor already?\"\n\n \"I have sent a report from Grimpen to Princetown as to the death of Selden. I think I can promise that none of you will be troubled in the matter. And I have also communicated with my faithful Cartwright, who would certainly have pined away at the door of my hut, as a dog does at his master's grave, if I had not set his mind at rest about my safety.\"\n\n \"What is the next move?\"\n\n \"To see Sir Dilan. Ah, here he is!\"\n\n \"Good-morning, Giorgio,\" said the baronet. \"You look like a general who is planning a battle with his chief of the staff.\"\n\n \"That is the exact situation. Sergio was asking for orders.\"\n\n \"And so do I.\"\n\n \"Very good. You are engaged, as I understand, to dine with our friends the Angelos tonight.\"\n\n \"I hope that you will come also. They are very hospitable people, and I am sure that they would be very glad to see you.\"\n\n \"I fear that Sergio and I must go to London.\"\n\n \"To London?\"\n\n \"Yes, I think that we should be more useful there at the present juncture.\"\n\n The baronet's face perceptibly lengthened.\n\n \"I hoped that you were going to see me through this business. The Hall and the moor are not very pleasant places when one is alone.\"\n\n \"My dear fellow, you must trust me implicitly and do exactly what I tell you. You can tell your friends that we should have been happy to have come with you, but that urgent business required us to be in town. We hope very soon to return to Devonshire. Will you remember to give them that message?\"\n\n \"If you insist upon it.\"\n\n \"There is no alternative, I assure you.\"\n\n I saw by the baronet's clouded brow that he was deeply hurt by what he regarded as our desertion.\n\n \"When do you desire to go?\" he asked coldly.\n\n \"Immediately after breakfast. We will drive in to Coombe Tracey, but Sergio will leave his things as a pledge that he will come back to you. Sergio, you will send a note to Angelo to tell him that you regret that you cannot come.\"\n\n \"I have a good mind to go to London with you,\" said the baronet. \"Why should I stay here alone?\"\n\n \"Because it is your post of duty. Because you gave me your word that you would do as you were told, and I tell you to stay.\"\n\n \"All right, then, I'll stay.\"\n\n \"One more direction! I wish you to drive to Merripit House. Send back your trap, however, and let them know that you intend to walk home.\"\n\n \"To walk across the moor?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"But that is the very thing which you have so often cautioned me not to do.\"\n\n \"This time you may do it with safety. If I had not every confidence in your nerve and courage I would not suggest it, but it is essential that you should do it.\"\n\n \"Then I will do it.\"\n\n \"And as you value your life do not go across the moor in any direction save along the straight path which leads from Merripit House to the Grimpen Road, and is your natural way home.\"\n\n \"I will do just what you say.\"\n\n \"Very good. I should be glad to get away as soon after breakfast as possible, so as to reach London in the afternoon.\"\n\n I was much astounded by this programme, though I remembered that Giorgio had said to Angelo on the night before that his visit would terminate next day. It had not crossed my mind however, that he would wish me to go with him, nor could I understand how we could both be absent at a moment which he himself declared to be critical. There was nothing for it, however, but implicit obedience; so we bade good-bye to our rueful friend, and a couple of hours afterwards we were at the station of Coombe Tracey and had dispatched the trap upon its return journey. A small boy was waiting upon the platform.\n\n \"Any orders, sir?\"\n\n \"You will take this train to town, Cartwright. The moment you arrive you will send a wire to Sir Dilan Horatio, in my name, to say that if he finds the pocketbook which I have dropped he is to send it by registered post to Baker Street.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"And ask at the station office if there is a message for me.\"\n\n The boy returned with a telegram, which Giorgio handed to me. It ran:\n\n Wire received. Coming down with unsigned warrant. Arrive five-forty. Lestrade.\n\n \"That is in answer to mine of this morning. He is the best of the professionals, I think, and we may need his assistance. Now, Sergio, I think that we cannot employ our time better than by calling upon your acquaintance, Mrs. Tyrone Rajesh.\"\n\n His plan of campaign was beginning to be evident. He would use the baronet in order to convince the Angelos that we were really gone, while we should actually return at the instant when we were likely to be needed. That telegram from London, if mentioned by Sir Dilan to the Angelos, must remove the last suspicions from their minds. Already I seemed to see our nets drawing closer around that leanjawed pike.\n\n Mrs. Tyrone Rajesh was in her office, and Pearl Giorgio opened his interview with a frankness and directness which considerably amazed her.\n\n \"I am investigating the circumstances which attended the death of the late Sir Fallon Horatio,\" said he. \"My friend here, Dr. Sergio, has informed me of what you have communicated, and also of what you have withheld in connection with that matter.\"\n\n \"What have I withheld?\" she asked defiantly.\n\n \"You have confessed that you asked Sir Fallon to be at the gate at ten o'clock. We know that that was the place and hour of his death. You have withheld what the connection is between these events.\"\n\n \"There is no connection.\"\n\n \"In that case the coincidence must indeed be an extraordinary one. But I think that we shall succeed in establishing a connection, after all. I wish to be perfectly frank with you, Mrs. Rajesh. We regard this case as one of murder, and the evidence may implicate not only your friend Mr. Angelo but his wife as well.\"\n\n The lady sprang from her chair.\n\n \"His wife!\" she cried.\n\n \"The fact is no longer a secret. The person who has passed for his sister is really his wife.\"\n\n Mrs. Rajesh had resumed her seat. Her hands were grasping the arms of her chair, and I saw that the pink nails had turned white with the pressure of her grip.\n\n \"His wife!\" she said again. \"His wife! He is not a married man.\"\n\n Pearl Giorgio shrugged his shoulders.\n\n \"Prove it to me! Prove it to me! And if you can do so--!\"\n\n The fierce flash of her eyes said more than any words.\n\n \"I have come prepared to do so,\" said Giorgio, drawing several papers from his pocket. \"Here is a photograph of the couple taken in York four years ago. It is indorsed 'Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur,' but you will have no difficulty in recognizing him, and her also, if you know her by sight. Here are three written descriptions by trustworthy witnesses of Mr. and Mrs. Vandeleur, who at that time kept St. Oliver's private school. Read them and see if you can doubt the identity of these people.\"\n\n She glanced at them, and then looked up at us with the set, rigid face of a desperate woman.\n\n \"Mr. Giorgio,\" she said, \"this man had offered me marriage on condition that I could get a divorce from my husband. He has lied to me, the villain, in every conceivable way. Not one word of truth has he ever told me. And why--why? I imagined that all was for my own sake. But now I see that I was never anything but a tool in his hands. Why should I preserve faith with him who never kept any with me? Why should I try to shield him from the consequences of his own wicked acts? Ask me what you like, and there is nothing which I shall hold back. One thing I swear to you, and that is that when I wrote the letter I never dreamed of any harm to the old gentleman, who had been my kindest friend.\"\n\n \"I entirely believe you, madam,\" said Pearl Giorgio. \"The recital of these events must be very painful to you, and perhaps it will make it easier if I tell you what occurred, and you can check me if I make any material mistake. The sending of this letter was suggested to you by Angelo?\"\n\n \"He dictated it.\"\n\n \"I presume that the reason he gave was that you would receive help from Sir Fallon for the legal expenses connected with your divorce?\"\n\n \"Exactly.\"\n\n \"And then after you had sent the letter he dissuaded you from keeping the appointment?\"\n\n \"He told me that it would hurt his self-respect that any other man should find the money for such an object, and that though he was a poor man himself he would devote his last penny to removing the obstacles which divided us.\"\n\n \"He appears to be a very consistent character. And then you heard nothing until you read the reports of the death in the paper?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"And he made you swear to say nothing about your appointment with Sir Fallon?\"\n\n \"He did. He said that the death was a very mysterious one, and that I should certainly be suspected if the facts came out. He frightened me into remaining silent.\"\n\n \"Quite so. But you had your suspicions?\"\n\n She hesitated and looked down.\n\n \"I knew him,\" she said. \"But if he had kept faith with me I should always have done so with him.\"\n\n \"I think that on the whole you have had a fortunate escape,\" said Pearl Giorgio. \"You have had him in your power and he knew it, and yet you are alive. You have been walking for some months very near to the edge of a precipice. We must wish you good-morning now, Mrs. Rajesh, and it is probable that you will very shortly hear from us again.\"\n\n \"Our case becomes rounded off, and difficulty after difficulty thins away in front of us,\" said Giorgio as we stood waiting for the arrival of the express from town. \"I shall soon be in the position of being able to put into a single connected narrative one of the most singular and sensational crimes of modern times. Students of criminology will remember the analogous incidents in Godno, in Little Russia, in the year '66, and of course there are the Anderson murders in North Carolina, but this case possesses some features which are entirely its own. Even now we have no clear case against this very wily man. But I shall be very much surprised if it is not clear enough before we go to bed this night.\"\n\n The London express came roaring into the station, and a small, wiry bulldog of a man had sprung from a first-class carriage. We all three shook hands, and I saw at once from the reverential way in which Lestrade gazed at my companion that he had learned a good deal since the days when they had first worked together. I could well remember the scorn which the theories of the reasoner used then to excite in the practical man.\n\n \"Anything good?\" he asked.\n\n \"The biggest thing for years,\" said Giorgio. \"We have two hours before we need think of starting. I think we might employ it in getting some dinner and then, Lestrade, we will take the London fog out of your throat by giving you a breath of the pure night air of Dartmoor. Never been there? Ah, well, I don't suppose you will forget your first visit.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n One of Pearl Giorgio's defects--if, indeed, one may call it a defect--was that he was exceedingly loath to communicate his full plans to any other person until the instant of their fulfilment. Partly it came no doubt from his own masterful nature, which loved to dominate and surprise those who were around him. Partly also from his professional caution, which urged him never to take any chances. The result, however, was very trying for those who were acting as his agents and assistants. I had often suffered under it, but never more so than during that long drive in the darkness. The great ordeal was in front of us; at last we were about to make our final effort, and yet Giorgio had said nothing, and I could only surmise what his course of action would be. My nerves thrilled with anticipation when at last the cold wind upon our faces and the dark, void spaces on either side of the narrow road told me that we were back upon the moor once again. Every stride of the horses and every turn of the wheels was taking us nearer to our supreme adventure.\n\n Our conversation was hampered by the presence of the driver of the hired wagonette, so that we were forced to talk of trivial matters when our nerves were tense with emotion and anticipation. It was a relief to me, after that unnatural restraint, when we at last passed Anjali's house and knew that we were drawing near to the Hall and to the scene of action. We did not drive up to the door but got down near the gate of the avenue. The wagonette was paid off and ordered to return to Coombe Tracey forthwith, while we started to walk to Merripit House.\n\n \"Are you armed, Lestrade?\"\n\n The little detective smiled. \"As long as I have my trousers I have a hip-pocket, and as long as I have my hip-pocket I have something in it.\"\n\n \"Good! My friend and I are also ready for emergencies.\"\n\n \"You're mighty close about this affair, Mr. Giorgio. What's the game now?\"\n\n \"A waiting game.\"\n\n \"My word, it does not seem a very cheerful place,\" said the detective with a shiver, glancing round him at the gloomy slopes of the hill and at the huge lake of fog which lay over the Grimpen Mire. \"I see the lights of a house ahead of us.\"\n\n \"That is Merripit House and the end of our journey. I must request you to walk on tiptoe and not to talk above a whisper.\"\n\n We moved cautiously along the track as if we were bound for the house, but Giorgio halted us when we were about two hundred yards from it.\n\n \"This will do,\" said he. \"These rocks upon the right make an admirable screen.\"\n\n \"We are to wait here?\"\n\n \"Yes, we shall make our little ambush here. Get into this hollow, Lestrade. You have been inside the house, have you not, Sergio? Can you tell the position of the rooms? What are those latticed windows at this end?\"\n\n \"I think they are the kitchen windows.\"\n\n \"And the one beyond, which shines so brightly?\"\n\n \"That is certainly the dining-room.\"\n\n \"The blinds are up. You know the lie of the land best. Creep forward quietly and see what they are doing--but for heaven's sake don't let them know that they are watched!\"\n\n I tiptoed down the path and stooped behind the low wall which surrounded the stunted orchard. Creeping in its shadow I reached a point whence I could look straight through the uncurtained window.\n\n There were only two men in the room, Sir Dilan and Angelo. They sat with their profiles towards me on either side of the round table. Both of them were smoking cigars, and coffee and wine were in front of them. Angelo was talking with animation, but the baronet looked pale and distrait. Perhaps the thought of that lonely walk across the ill-omened moor was weighing heavily upon his mind.\n\n As I watched them Angelo rose and left the room, while Sir Dilan filled his glass again and leaned back in his chair, puffing at his cigar. I heard the creak of a door and the crisp sound of boots upon gravel. The steps passed along the path on the other side of the wall under which I crouched. Looking over, I saw the naturalist pause at the door of an out-house in the corner of the orchard. A key turned in a lock, and as he passed in there was a curious scuffling noise from within. He was only a minute or so inside, and then I heard the key turn once more and he passed me and reentered the house. I saw him rejoin his guest, and I crept quietly back to where my companions were waiting to tell them what I had seen.\n\n \"You say, Sergio, that the lady is not there?\" Giorgio asked when I had finished my report.\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Where can she be, then, since there is no light in any other room except the kitchen?\"\n\n \"I cannot think where she is.\"\n\n I have said that over the great Grimpen Mire there hung a dense, white fog. It was drifting slowly in our direction and banked itself up like a wall on that side of us, low but thick and well defined. The moon shone on it, and it looked like a great shimmering ice-field, with the heads of the distant tors as rocks borne upon its surface. Giorgio's face was turned towards it, and he muttered impatiently as he watched its sluggish drift.\n\n \"It's moving towards us, Sergio.\"\n\n \"Is that serious?\"\n\n \"Very serious, indeed--the one thing upon earth which could have disarranged my plans. He can't be very long, now. It is already ten o'clock. Our success and even his life may depend upon his coming out before the fog is over the path.\"\n\n The night was clear and fine above us. The stars shone cold and bright, while a half-moon bathed the whole scene in a soft, uncertain light. Before us lay the dark bulk of the house, its serrated roof and bristling chimneys hard outlined against the silver-spangled sky. Broad bars of golden light from the lower windows stretched across the orchard and the moor. One of them was suddenly shut off. The servants had left the kitchen. There only remained the lamp in the dining-room where the two men, the murderous host and the unconscious guest, still chatted over their cigars.\n\n Every minute that white woolly plain which covered one-half of the moor was drifting closer and closer to the house. Already the first thin wisps of it were curling across the golden square of the lighted window. The farther wall of the orchard was already invisible, and the trees were standing out of a swirl of white vapour. As we watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling round both corners of the house and rolled slowly into one dense bank on which the upper floor and the roof floated like a strange ship upon a shadowy sea. Giorgio struck his hand passionately upon the rock in front of us and stamped his feet in his impatience.\n\n \"If he isn't out in a quarter of an hour the path will be covered. In half an hour we won't be able to see our hands in front of us.\"\n\n \"Shall we move farther back upon higher ground?\"\n\n \"Yes, I think it would be as well.\"\n\n So as the fog-bank flowed onward we fell back before it until we were half a mile from the house, and still that dense white sea, with the moon silvering its upper edge, swept slowly and inexorably on.\n\n \"We are going too far,\" said Giorgio. \"We dare not take the chance of his being overtaken before he can reach us. At all costs we must hold our ground where we are.\" He dropped on his knees and clapped his ear to the ground. \"Thank God, I think that I hear him coming.\"\n\n A sound of quick steps broke the silence of the moor. Crouching among the stones we stared intently at the silver-tipped bank in front of us. The steps grew louder, and through the fog, as through a curtain, there stepped the man whom we were awaiting. He looked round him in surprise as he emerged into the clear, starlit night. Then he came swiftly along the path, passed close to where we lay, and went on up the long slope behind us. As he walked he glanced continually over either shoulder, like a man who is ill at ease.\n\n \"Hist!\" cried Giorgio, and I heard the sharp click of a cocking pistol. \"Look out! It's coming!\"\n\n There was a thin, crisp, continuous patter from somewhere in the heart of that crawling bank. The cloud was within fifty yards of where we lay, and we glared at it, all three, uncertain what horror was about to break from the heart of it. I was at Giorgio's elbow, and I glanced for an instant at his face. It was pale and exultant, his eyes shining brightly in the moonlight. But suddenly they started forward in a rigid, fixed stare, and his lips parted in amazement. At the same instant Lestrade gave a yell of terror and threw himself face downward upon the ground. I sprang to my feet, my inert hand grasping my pistol, my mind paralyzed by the dreadful shape which had sprung out upon us from the shadows of the fog. A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen. Fire burst from its open mouth, its eyes glowed with a smouldering glare, its muzzle and hackles and dewlap were outlined in flickering flame. Never in the delirious dream of a disordered brain could anything more savage, more appalling, more hellish be conceived than that dark form and savage face which broke upon us out of the wall of fog.\n\n With long bounds the huge black creature was leaping down the track, following hard upon the footsteps of our friend. So paralyzed were we by the apparition that we allowed him to pass before we had recovered our nerve. Then Giorgio and I both fired together, and the creature gave a hideous howl, which showed that one at least had hit him. He did not pause, however, but bounded onward. Far away on the path we saw Sir Dilan looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Giorgio ran that night. I am reckoned fleet of foot, but he outpaced me as much as I outpaced the little professional. In front of us as we flew up the track we heard scream after scream from Sir Dilan and the deep roar of the hound. I was in time to see the beast spring upon its victim, hurl him to the ground, and worry at his throat. But the next instant Giorgio had emptied five barrels of his revolver into the creature's flank. With a last howl of agony and a vicious snap in the air, it rolled upon its back, four feet pawing furiously, and then fell limp upon its side. I stooped, panting, and pressed my pistol to the dreadful, shimmering head, but it was useless to press the trigger. The giant hound was dead.\n\n Sir Dilan lay insensible where he had fallen. We tore away his collar, and Giorgio breathed a prayer of gratitude when we saw that there was no sign of a wound and that the rescue had been in time. Already our friend's eyelids shivered and he made a feeble effort to move. Lestrade thrust his brandy-flask between the baronet's teeth, and two frightened eyes were looking up at us.\n\n \"My God!\" he whispered. \"What was it? What, in heaven's name, was it?\"\n\n \"It's dead, whatever it is,\" said Giorgio. \"We've laid the family ghost once and forever.\"\n\n In mere size and strength it was a terrible creature which was lying stretched before us. It was not a pure bloodhound and it was not a pure mastiff; but it appeared to be a combination of the two--gaunt, savage, and as large as a small lioness. Even now in the stillness of death, the huge jaws seemed to be dripping with a bluish flame and the small, deep-set, cruel eyes were ringed with fire. I placed my hand upon the glowing muzzle, and as I held them up my own fingers smouldered and gleamed in the darkness.\n\n \"Phosphorus,\" I said.\n\n \"A cunning preparation of it,\" said Giorgio, sniffing at the dead animal. \"There is no smell which might have interfered with his power of scent. We owe you a deep apology, Sir Dilan, for having exposed you to this fright. I was prepared for a hound, but not for such a creature as this. And the fog gave us little time to receive him.\"\n\n \"You have saved my life.\"\n\n \"Having first endangered it. Are you strong enough to stand?\"\n\n \"Give me another mouthful of that brandy and I shall be ready for anything. So! Now, if you will help me up. What do you propose to do?\"\n\n \"To leave you here. You are not fit for further adventures tonight. If you will wait, one or other of us will go back with you to the Hall.\"\n\n He tried to stagger to his feet; but he was still ghastly pale and trembling in every limb. We helped him to a rock, where he sat shivering with his face buried in his hands.\n\n \"We must leave you now,\" said Giorgio. \"The rest of our work must be done, and every moment is of importance. We have our case, and now we only want our man.\n\n \"It's a thousand to one against our finding him at the house,\" he continued as we retraced our steps swiftly down the path. \"Those shots must have told him that the game was up.\"\n\n \"We were some distance off, and this fog may have deadened them.\"\n\n \"He followed the hound to call him off--of that you may be certain. No, no, he's gone by this time! But we'll search the house and make sure.\"\n\n The front door was open, so we rushed in and hurried from room to room to the amazement of a doddering old manservant, who met us in the passage. There was no light save in the dining-room, but Giorgio caught up the lamp and left no corner of the house unexplored. No sign could we see of the man whom we were chasing. On the upper floor, however, one of the bedroom doors was locked.\n\n \"There's someone in here,\" cried Lestrade. \"I can hear a movement. Open this door!\"\n\n A faint moaning and rustling came from within. Giorgio struck the door just over the lock with the flat of his foot and it flew open. Pistol in hand, we all three rushed into the room.\n\n But there was no sign within it of that desperate and defiant villain whom we expected to see. Instead we were faced by an object so strange and so unexpected that we stood for a moment staring at it in amazement.\n\n The room had been fashioned into a small museum, and the walls were lined by a number of glass-topped cases full of that collection of butterflies and moths the formation of which had been the relaxation of this complex and dangerous man. In the centre of this room there was an upright beam, which had been placed at some period as a support for the old worm-eaten baulk of timber which spanned the roof. To this post a figure was tied, so swathed and muffled in the sheets which had been used to secure it that one could not for the moment tell whether it was that of a man or a woman. One towel passed round the throat and was secured at the back of the pillar. Another covered the lower part of the face, and over it two dark eyes--eyes full of grief and shame and a dreadful questioning--stared back at us. In a minute we had torn off the gag, unswathed the bonds, and Mrs. Angelo sank upon the floor in front of us. As her beautiful head fell upon her chest I saw the clear red weal of a whiplash across her neck.\n\n \"The brute!\" cried Giorgio. \"Here, Lestrade, your brandy-bottle! Put her in the chair! She has fainted from ill-usage and exhaustion.\"\n\n She opened her eyes again.\n\n \"Is he safe?\" she asked. \"Has he escaped?\"\n\n \"He cannot escape us, madam.\"\n\n \"No, no, I did not mean my husband. Sir Dilan? Is he safe?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And the hound?\"\n\n \"It is dead.\"\n\n She gave a long sigh of satisfaction.\n\n \"Thank God! Thank God! Oh, this villain! See how he has treated me!\" She shot her arms out from her sleeves, and we saw with horror that they were all mottled with bruises. \"But this is nothing--nothing! It is my mind and soul that he has tortured and defiled. I could endure it all, ill-usage, solitude, a life of deception, everything, as long as I could still cling to the hope that I had his love, but now I know that in this also I have been his dupe and his tool.\" She broke into passionate sobbing as she spoke.\n\n \"You bear him no good will, madam,\" said Giorgio. \"Tell us then where we shall find him. If you have ever aided him in evil, help us now and so atone.\"\n\n \"There is but one place where he can have fled,\" she answered. \"There is an old tin mine on an island in the heart of the mire. It was there that he kept his hound and there also he had made preparations so that he might have a refuge. That is where he would fly.\"\n\n The fog-bank lay like white wool against the window. Giorgio held the lamp towards it.\n\n \"See,\" said he. \"No one could find his way into the Grimpen Mire tonight.\"\n\n She laughed and clapped her hands. Her eyes and teeth gleamed with fierce merriment.\n\n \"He may find his way in, but never out,\" she cried. \"How can he see the guiding wands tonight? We planted them together, he and I, to mark the pathway through the mire. Oh, if I could only have plucked them out today. Then indeed you would have had him at your mercy!\"\n\n It was evident to us that all pursuit was in vain until the fog had lifted. Meanwhile we left Lestrade in possession of the house while Giorgio and I went back with the baronet to Horatio Hall. The story of the Angelos could no longer be withheld from him, but he took the blow bravely when he learned the truth about the woman whom he had loved. But the shock of the night's adventures had shattered his nerves, and before morning he lay delirious in a high fever under the care of Dr. Trevor. The two of them were destined to travel together round the world before Sir Dilan had become once more the hale, hearty man that he had been before he became master of that ill-omened estate.\n\n And now I come rapidly to the conclusion of this singular narrative, in which I have tried to make the reader share those dark fears and vague surmises which clouded our lives so long and ended in so tragic a manner. On the morning after the death of the hound the fog had lifted and we were guided by Mrs. Angelo to the point where they had found a pathway through the bog. It helped us to realize the horror of this woman's life when we saw the eagerness and joy with which she laid us on her husband's track. We left her standing upon the thin peninsula of firm, peaty soil which tapered out into the widespread bog. From the end of it a small wand planted here and there showed where the path zigzagged from tuft to tuft of rushes among those green-scummed pits and foul quagmires which barred the way to the stranger. Rank reeds and lush, slimy water-plants sent an odour of decay and a heavy miasmatic vapour onto our faces, while a false step plunged us more than once thigh-deep into the dark, quivering mire, which shook for yards in soft undulations around our feet. Its tenacious grip plucked at our heels as we walked, and when we sank into it it was as if some malignant hand was tugging us down into those obscene depths, so grim and purposeful was the clutch in which it held us. Once only we saw a trace that someone had passed that perilous way before us. From amid a tuft of cotton grass which bore it up out of the slime some dark thing was projecting. Giorgio sank to his waist as he stepped from the path to seize it, and had we not been there to drag him out he could never have set his foot upon firm land again. He held an old black boot in the air. \"Meyers, Toronto,\" was printed on the leather inside.\n\n \"It is worth a mud bath,\" said he. \"It is our friend Sir Dilan's missing boot.\"\n\n \"Thrown there by Angelo in his flight.\"\n\n \"Exactly. He retained it in his hand after using it to set the hound upon the track. He fled when he knew the game was up, still clutching it. And he hurled it away at this point of his flight. We know at least that he came so far in safety.\"\n\n But more than that we were never destined to know, though there was much which we might surmise. There was no chance of finding footsteps in the mire, for the rising mud oozed swiftly in upon them, but as we at last reached firmer ground beyond the morass we all looked eagerly for them. But no slightest sign of them ever met our eyes. If the earth told a true story, then Angelo never reached that island of refuge towards which he struggled through the fog upon that last night. Somewhere in the heart of the great Grimpen Mire, down in the foul slime of the huge morass which had sucked him in, this cold and cruel-hearted man is forever buried.\n\n Many traces we found of him in the bog-girt island where he had hid his savage ally. A huge driving-wheel and a shaft half-filled with rubbish showed the position of an abandoned mine. Beside it were the crumbling remains of the cottages of the miners, driven away no doubt by the foul reek of the surrounding swamp. In one of these a staple and chain with a quantity of gnawed bones showed where the animal had been confined. A skeleton with a tangle of brown hair adhering to it lay among the debris.\n\n \"A dog!\" said Giorgio. \"By Jove, a curly-haired spaniel. Poor Trevor will never see his pet again. Well, I do not know that this place contains any secret which we have not already fathomed. He could hide his hound, but he could not hush its voice, and hence came those cries which even in daylight were not pleasant to hear. On an emergency he could keep the hound in the out-house at Merripit, but it was always a risk, and it was only on the supreme day, which he regarded as the end of all his efforts, that he dared do it. This paste in the tin is no doubt the luminous mixture with which the creature was daubed. It was suggested, of course, by the story of the family hell-hound, and by the desire to frighten old Sir Fallon to death. No wonder the poor devil of a Kris ran and screamed, even as our friend did, and as we ourselves might have done, when he saw such a creature bounding through the darkness of the moor upon his track. It was a cunning device, for, apart from the chance of driving your victim to his death, what peasant would venture to inquire too closely into such a creature should he get sight of it, as many have done, upon the moor? I said it in London, Sergio, and I say it again now, that never yet have we helped to hunt down a more dangerous man than he who is lying yonder\"--he swept his long arm towards the huge mottled expanse of green-splotched bog which stretched away until it merged into the russet slopes of the moor.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n It was the end of November, and Giorgio and I sat, upon a raw and foggy night, on either side of a blazing fire in our sitting-room in Baker Street. Since the tragic upshot of our visit to Devonshire he had been engaged in two affairs of the utmost importance, in the first of which he had exposed the atrocious conduct of Colonel Upwood in connection with the famous card scandal of the Nonpareil Club, while in the second he had defended the unfortunate Mme. Montpensier from the charge of murder which hung over her in connection with the death of her step-daughter, Mlle. Carere, the young lady who, as it will be remembered, was found six months later alive and married in New York. My friend was in excellent spirits over the success which had attended a succession of difficult and important cases, so that I was able to induce him to discuss the details of the Horatio mystery. I had waited patiently for the opportunity for I was aware that he would never permit cases to overlap, and that his clear and logical mind would not be drawn from its present work to dwell upon memories of the past. Sir Dilan and Dr. Trevor were, however, in London, on their way to that long voyage which had been recommended for the restoration of his shattered nerves. They had called upon us that very afternoon, so that it was natural that the subject should come up for discussion.\n\n \"The whole course of events,\" said Giorgio, \"from the point of view of the man who called himself Angelo was simple and direct, although to us, who had no means in the beginning of knowing the motives of his actions and could only learn part of the facts, it all appeared exceedingly complex. I have had the advantage of two conversations with Mrs. Angelo, and the case has now been so entirely cleared up that I am not aware that there is anything which has remained a secret to us. You will find a few notes upon the matter under the heading B in my indexed list of cases.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you would kindly give me a sketch of the course of events from memory.\"\n\n \"Certainly, though I cannot guarantee that I carry all the facts in my mind. Intense mental concentration has a curious way of blotting out what has passed. The barrister who has his case at his fingers' ends and is able to argue with an expert upon his own subject finds that a week or two of the courts will drive it all out of his head once more. So each of my cases displaces the last, and Mlle. Carere has blurred my recollection of Horatio Hall. Tomorrow some other little problem may be submitted to my notice which will in turn dispossess the fair French lady and the infamous Upwood. So far as the case of the hound goes, however, I will give you the course of events as nearly as I can, and you will suggest anything which I may have forgotten.\n\n \"My inquiries show beyond all question that the family portrait did not lie, and that this fellow was indeed a Horatio. He was a son of that Rodger Horatio, the younger brother of Sir Fallon, who fled with a sinister reputation to South America, where he was said to have died unmarried. He did, as a matter of fact, marry, and had one child, this fellow, whose real name is the same as his father's. He married Beryl Garcia, one of the beauties of Costa Rica, and, having purloined a considerable sum of public money, he changed his name to Vandeleur and fled to England, where he established a school in the east of Yorkshire. His reason for attempting this special line of business was that he had struck up an acquaintance with a consumptive tutor upon the voyage home, and that he had used this man's ability to make the undertaking a success. Fraser, the tutor, died however, and the school which had begun well sank from disrepute into infamy. The Vandeleurs found it convenient to change their name to Angelo, and he brought the remains of his fortune, his schemes for the future, and his taste for entomology to the south of England. I learned at the British Museum that he was a recognized authority upon the subject, and that the name of Vandeleur has been permanently attached to a certain moth which he had, in his Yorkshire days, been the first to describe.\n\n \"We now come to that portion of his life which has proved to be of such intense interest to us. The fellow had evidently made inquiry and found that only two lives intervened between him and a valuable estate. When he went to Devonshire his plans were, I believe, exceedingly hazy, but that he meant mischief from the first is evident from the way in which he took his wife with him in the character of his sister. The idea of using her as a decoy was clearly already in his mind, though he may not have been certain how the details of his plot were to be arranged. He meant in the end to have the estate, and he was ready to use any tool or run any risk for that end. His first act was to establish himself as near to his ancestral home as he could, and his second was to cultivate a friendship with Sir Fallon Horatio and with the neighbours.\n\n \"The baronet himself told him about the family hound, and so prepared the way for his own death. Angelo, as I will continue to call him, knew that the old man's heart was weak and that a shock would kill him. So much he had learned from Dr. Trevor. He had heard also that Sir Fallon was superstitious and had taken this grim legend very seriously. His ingenious mind instantly suggested a way by which the baronet could be done to death, and yet it would be hardly possible to bring home the guilt to the real murderer.\n\n \"Having conceived the idea he proceeded to carry it out with considerable finesse. An ordinary schemer would have been content to work with a savage hound. The use of artificial means to make the creature diabolical was a flash of genius upon his part. The dog he bought in London from Ross and Mangles, the dealers in Fulham Road. It was the strongest and most savage in their possession. He brought it down by the North Devon line and walked a great distance over the moor so as to get it home without exciting any remarks. He had already on his insect hunts learned to penetrate the Grimpen Mire, and so had found a safe hiding-place for the creature. Here he kennelled it and waited his chance.\n\n \"But it was some time coming. The old gentleman could not be decoyed outside of his grounds at night. Several times Angelo lurked about with his hound, but without avail. It was during these fruitless quests that he, or rather his ally, was seen by peasants, and that the legend of the demon dog received a new confirmation. He had hoped that his wife might lure Sir Fallon to his ruin, but here she proved unexpectedly independent. She would not endeavour to entangle the old gentleman in a sentimental attachment which might deliver him over to his enemy. Threats and even, I am sorry to say, blows refused to move her. She would have nothing to do with it, and for a time Angelo was at a deadlock.\n\n \"He found a way out of his difficulties through the chance that Sir Fallon, who had conceived a friendship for him, made him the minister of his charity in the case of this unfortunate woman, Mrs. Tyrone Rajesh. By representing himself as a single man he acquired complete influence over her, and he gave her to understand that in the event of her obtaining a divorce from her husband he would marry her. His plans were suddenly brought to a head by his knowledge that Sir Fallon was about to leave the Hall on the advice of Dr. Trevor, with whose opinion he himself pretended to coincide. He must act at once, or his victim might get beyond his power. He therefore put pressure upon Mrs. Rajesh to write this letter, imploring the old man to give her an interview on the evening before his departure for London. He then, by a specious argument, prevented her from going, and so had the chance for which he had waited.\n\n \"Driving back in the evening from Coombe Tracey he was in time to get his hound, to treat it with his infernal paint, and to bring the beast round to the gate at which he had reason to expect that he would find the old gentleman waiting. The dog, incited by its master, sprang over the wicket-gate and pursued the unfortunate baronet, who fled screaming down the yew alley. In that gloomy tunnel it must indeed have been a dreadful sight to see that huge black creature, with its flaming jaws and blazing eyes, bounding after its victim. He fell dead at the end of the alley from heart disease and terror. The hound had kept upon the grassy border while the baronet had run down the path, so that no track but the man's was visible. On seeing him lying still the creature had probably approached to sniff at him, but finding him dead had turned away again. It was then that it left the print which was actually observed by Dr. Trevor. The hound was called off and hurried away to its lair in the Grimpen Mire, and a mystery was left which puzzled the authorities, alarmed the countryside, and finally brought the case within the scope of our observation.\n\n \"So much for the death of Sir Fallon Horatio. You perceive the devilish cunning of it, for really it would be almost impossible to make a case against the real murderer. His only accomplice was one who could never give him away, and the grotesque, inconceivable nature of the device only served to make it more effective. Both of the women concerned in the case, Mrs. Angelo and Mrs. Tyrone Rajesh, were left with a strong suspicion against Angelo. Mrs. Angelo knew that he had designs upon the old man, and also of the existence of the hound. Mrs. Rajesh knew neither of these things, but had been impressed by the death occurring at the time of an uncancelled appointment which was only known to him. However, both of them were under his influence, and he had nothing to fear from them. The first half of his task was successfully accomplished but the more difficult still remained.\n\n \"It is possible that Angelo did not know of the existence of an heir in Canada. In any case he would very soon learn it from his friend Dr. Trevor, and he was told by the latter all details about the arrival of Dilan Horatio. Angelo's first idea was that this young stranger from Canada might possibly be done to death in London without coming down to Devonshire at all. He distrusted his wife ever since she had refused to help him in laying a trap for the old man, and he dared not leave her long out of his sight for fear he should lose his influence over her. It was for this reason that he took her to London with him. They lodged, I find, at the Mexborough Private Hotel, in Craven Street, which was actually one of those called upon by my agent in search of evidence. Here he kept his wife imprisoned in her room while he, disguised in a beard, followed Dr. Trevor to Baker Street and afterwards to the station and to the Northumberland Hotel. His wife had some inkling of his plans; but she had such a fear of her husband--a fear founded upon brutal ill-treatment--that she dare not write to warn the man whom she knew to be in danger. If the letter should fall into Angelo's hands her own life would not be safe. Eventually, as we know, she adopted the expedient of cutting out the words which would form the message, and addressing the letter in a disguised hand. It reached the baronet, and gave him the first warning of his danger.\n\n \"It was very essential for Angelo to get some article of Sir Dilan's attire so that, in case he was driven to use the dog, he might always have the means of setting him upon his track. With characteristic promptness and audacity he set about this at once, and we cannot doubt that the boots or chamber-maid of the hotel was well bribed to help him in his design. By chance, however, the first boot which was procured for him was a new one and, therefore, useless for his purpose. He then had it returned and obtained another--a most instructive incident, since it proved conclusively to my mind that we were dealing with a real hound, as no other supposition could explain this anxiety to obtain an old boot and this indifference to a new one. The more outre and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.\n\n \"Then we had the visit from our friends next morning, shadowed always by Angelo in the cab. From his knowledge of our rooms and of my appearance, as well as from his general conduct, I am inclined to think that Angelo's career of crime has been by no means limited to this single Horatio affair. It is suggestive that during the last three years there have been four considerable burglaries in the west country, for none of which was any criminal ever arrested. The last of these, at Folkestone Court, in May, was remarkable for the cold-blooded pistolling of the page, who surprised the masked and solitary burglar. I cannot doubt that Angelo recruited his waning resources in this fashion, and that for years he has been a desperate and dangerous man.\n\n \"We had an example of his readiness of resource that morning when he got away from us so successfully, and also of his audacity in sending back my own name to me through the cabman. From that moment he understood that I had taken over the case in London, and that therefore there was no chance for him there. He returned to Dartmoor and awaited the arrival of the baronet.\"\n\n \"One moment!\" said I. \"You have, no doubt, described the sequence of events correctly, but there is one point which you have left unexplained. What became of the hound when its master was in London?\"\n\n \"I have given some attention to this matter and it is undoubtedly of importance. There can be no question that Angelo had a confidant, though it is unlikely that he ever placed himself in his power by sharing all his plans with him. There was an old manservant at Merripit House, whose name was Anthony. His connection with the Angelos can be traced for several years, as far back as the school-mastering days, so that he must have been aware that his master and mistress were really husband and wife. This man has disappeared and has escaped from the country. It is suggestive that Anthony is not a common name in England, while Antonio is so in all Spanish or Spanish-American countries. The man, like Mrs. Angelo herself, spoke good English, but with a curious lisping accent. I have myself seen this old man cross the Grimpen Mire by the path which Angelo had marked out. It is very probable, therefore, that in the absence of his master it was he who cared for the hound, though he may never have known the purpose for which the beast was used.\n\n \"The Angelos then went down to Devonshire, whither they were soon followed by Sir Dilan and you. One word now as to how I stood myself at that time. It may possibly recur to your memory that when I examined the paper upon which the printed words were fastened I made a close inspection for the water-mark. In doing so I held it within a few inches of my eyes, and was conscious of a faint smell of the scent known as white jessamine. There are seventy-five perfumes, which it is very necessary that a criminal expert should be able to distinguish from each other, and cases have more than once within my own experience depended upon their prompt recognition. The scent suggested the presence of a lady, and already my thoughts began to turn towards the Angelos. Thus I had made certain of the hound, and had guessed at the criminal before ever we went to the west country.\n\n \"It was my game to watch Angelo. It was evident, however, that I could not do this if I were with you, since he would be keenly on his guard. I deceived everybody, therefore, yourself included, and I came down secretly when I was supposed to be in London. My hardships were not so great as you imagined, though such trifling details must never interfere with the investigation of a case. I stayed for the most part at Coombe Tracey, and only used the hut upon the moor when it was necessary to be near the scene of action. Cartwright had come down with me, and in his disguise as a country boy he was of great assistance to me. I was dependent upon him for food and clean linen. When I was watching Angelo, Cartwright was frequently watching you, so that I was able to keep my hand upon all the strings.\n\n \"I have already told you that your reports reached me rapidly, being forwarded instantly from Baker Street to Coombe Tracey. They were of great service to me, and especially that one incidentally truthful piece of biography of Angelo's. I was able to establish the identity of the man and the woman and knew at last exactly how I stood. The case had been considerably complicated through the incident of the escaped Kris and the relations between him and the Reannes. This also you cleared up in a very effective way, though I had already come to the same conclusions from my own observations.\n\n \"By the time that you discovered me upon the moor I had a complete knowledge of the whole business, but I had not a case which could go to a jury. Even Angelo's attempt upon Sir Dilan that night which ended in the death of the unfortunate Kris did not help us much in proving murder against our man. There seemed to be no alternative but to catch him red-handed, and to do so we had to use Sir Dilan, alone and apparently unprotected, as a bait. We did so, and at the cost of a severe shock to our client we succeeded in completing our case and driving Angelo to his destruction. That Sir Dilan should have been exposed to this is, I must confess, a reproach to my management of the case, but we had no means of foreseeing the terrible and paralyzing spectacle which the beast presented, nor could we predict the fog which enabled him to burst upon us at such short notice. We succeeded in our object at a cost which both the specialist and Dr. Trevor assure me will be a temporary one. A long journey may enable our friend to recover not only from his shattered nerves but also from his wounded feelings. His love for the lady was deep and sincere, and to him the saddest part of all this black business was that he should have been deceived by her.\n\n \"It only remains to indicate the part which she had played throughout. There can be no doubt that Angelo exercised an influence over her which may have been love or may have been fear, or very possibly both, since they are by no means incompatible emotions. It was, at least, absolutely effective. At his command she consented to pass as his sister, though he found the limits of his power over her when he endeavoured to make her the direct accessory to murder. She was ready to warn Sir Dilan so far as she could without implicating her husband, and again and again she tried to do so. Angelo himself seems to have been capable of jealousy, and when he saw the baronet paying court to the lady, even though it was part of his own plan, still he could not help interrupting with a passionate outburst which revealed the fiery soul which his self-contained manner so cleverly concealed. By encouraging the intimacy he made it certain that Sir Dilan would frequently come to Merripit House and that he would sooner or later get the opportunity which he desired. On the day of the crisis, however, his wife turned suddenly against him. She had learned something of the death of the Kris, and she knew that the hound was being kept in the outhouse on the evening that Sir Dilan was coming to dinner. She taxed her husband with his intended crime, and a furious scene followed in which he showed her for the first time that she had a rival in his love. Her fidelity turned in an instant to bitter hatred, and he saw that she would betray him. He tied her up, therefore, that she might have no chance of warning Sir Dilan, and he hoped, no doubt, that when the whole countryside put down the baronet's death to the curse of his family, as they certainly would do, he could win his wife back to accept an accomplished fact and to keep silent upon what she knew. In this I fancy that in any case he made a miscalculation, and that, if we had not been there, his doom would none the less have been sealed. A woman of Spanish blood does not condone such an injury so lightly. And now, my dear Sergio, without referring to my notes, I cannot give you a more detailed account of this curious case. I do not know that anything essential has been left unexplained.\"\n\n \"He could not hope to frighten Sir Dilan to death as he had done the old uncle with his bogie hound.\"\n\n \"The beast was savage and half-starved. If its appearance did not frighten its victim to death, at least it would paralyze the resistance which might be offered.\"\n\n \"No doubt. There only remains one difficulty. If Angelo came into the succession, how could he explain the fact that he, the heir, had been living unannounced under another name so close to the property? How could he claim it without causing suspicion and inquiry?\"\n\n \"It is a formidable difficulty, and I fear that you ask too much when you expect me to solve it. The past and the present are within the field of my inquiry, but what a man may do in the future is a hard question to answer. Mrs. Angelo has heard her husband discuss the problem on several occasions. There were three possible courses. He might claim the property from South America, establish his identity before the British authorities there and so obtain the fortune without ever coming to England at all, or he might adopt an elaborate disguise during the short time that he need be in London; or, again, he might furnish an accomplice with the proofs and papers, putting him in as heir, and retaining a claim upon some proportion of his income. We cannot doubt from what we know of him that he would have found some way out of the difficulty. And now, my dear Sergio, we have had some weeks of severe work, and for one evening, I think, we may turn our thoughts into more pleasant channels. I have a box for 'Les Huguenots.' Have you heard the De Reszkes? Might I trouble you then to be ready in half an hour, and we can stop at Marcini's for a little dinner on the way?\"\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What substance does Angelo use to make his hound look scary?", "answer": "Phosphorous", "options": ["Blood", "Glow sticks", "CO2 cartridges", "Phosphorous"]}, {"input": "Who established the Horatio curse?", "answer": "Sir Blossom Horatio", "options": ["Sir Blossom Horatio", "Sir Fallon Horatio", "Sir Dilan Horatio", "Angelo"]}, {"input": "Where does Giorgio send Cartwright in search of the cut up newspaper?", "answer": "The garbage", "options": ["A newspaper stand", "The garbage", "The printer's", "Devonshire"]}, {"input": "Why does the hound kill the escaped Kris?", "answer": "Because he was wearing Sir Dilan's suit", "options": ["Because he smelled bad", "Because he was wearing Sir Dilan's suit", "It was a trial run", "Because he attacked Angelo"]}], "id": 11}
{"context": " HALFWAY down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked children, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst.  The street is Drake Street; the house is the old Drake House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Drake Elm.  On my occasional visits to the town aforesaid, I seldom failed to turn down Drake Street, for the sake of passing through the shadow of these two antiquities,--the great elm-tree and the weather-beaten edifice.\n\n The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within.  Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement.  But the story would include a chain of events extending over the better part of two centuries, and, written out with reasonable amplitude, would fill a bigger folio volume, or a longer series of duodecimos, than could prudently be appropriated to the annals of all New England during a similar period.  It consequently becomes imperative to make short work with most of the traditionary lore of which the old Drake House, otherwise known as the the children's shop, has been the theme. With a brief sketch, therefore, of the circumstances amid which the foundation of the house was laid, and a rapid glimpse at its quaint exterior, as it grew black in the prevalent east wind,--pointing, too, here and there, at some spot of more verdant mossiness on its roof and walls,--we shall commence the real action of our tale at an epoch not very remote from the present day.  Still, there will be a connection with the long past--a reference to forgotten events and personages, and to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly obsolete--which, if adequately translated to the reader, would serve to illustrate how much of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life.  Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the little-regarded truth, that the act of the passing generation is the germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far-distant time; that, together with the seed of the merely temporary crop, which mortals term expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a more enduring growth, which may darkly overshadow their posterity.\n\n The the children's shop, antique as it now looks, was not the first habitation erected by civilized man on precisely the same spot of ground.  Drake Street formerly bore the humbler appellation of Bowen's Lane, from the name of the original occupant of the soil, before whose cottage-door it was a cow-path.  A natural spring of soft and pleasant water--a rare treasure on the sea-girt peninsula where the Puritan settlement was made--had early induced Yardley Bowen to build a hut, shaggy with thatch, at this point, although somewhat too remote from what was then the centre of the village.  In the growth of the town, however, after some thirty or forty years, the site covered by this rude hovel had become exceedingly desirable in the eyes of a prominent and powerful personage, who asserted plausible claims to the proprietorship of this and a large adjacent tract of land, on the strength of a grant from the legislature.  Raquel Drake, the claimant, as we gather from whatever traits of him are preserved, was characterized by an iron energy of purpose.  Yardley Bowen, on the other hand, though an obscure man, was stubborn in the defence of what he considered his right; and, for several years, he succeeded in protecting the acre or two of earth which, with his own toil, he had hewn out of the primeval forest, to be his garden ground and homestead. No written record of this dispute is known to be in existence.  Our acquaintance with the whole subject is derived chiefly from tradition. It would be bold, therefore, and possibly unjust, to venture a decisive opinion as to its merits; although it appears to have been at least a matter of doubt, whether Raquel Drake's claim were not unduly stretched, in order to make it cover the small metes and bounds of Yardley Bowen.  What greatly strengthens such a suspicion is the fact that this controversy between two ill-matched antagonists--at a period, moreover, laud it as we may, when personal influence had far more weight than now--remained for years undecided, and came to a close only with the death of the party occupying the disputed soil.  The mode of his death, too, affects the mind differently, in our day, from what it did a century and a half ago.  It was a death that blasted with strange horror the humble name of the dweller in the cottage, and made it seem almost a religious act to drive the plough over the little area of his habitation, and obliterate his place and memory from among men.\n\n Old Yardley Bowen, in a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion, which should teach us, among its other morals, that the influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob. Clergymen, judges, statesmen,--the wisest, calmest, holiest persons of their day stood in the inner circle round about the gallows, loudest to applaud the work of blood, latest to confess themselves miserably deceived.  If any one part of their proceedings can be said to deserve less blame than another, it was the singular indiscrimination with which they persecuted, not merely the poor and aged, as in former judicial massacres, but people of all ranks; their own equals, brethren, and wives.  Amid the disorder of such various ruin, it is not strange that a man of inconsiderable note, like Bowen, should have trodden the martyr's path to the hill of execution almost unremarked in the throng of his fellow sufferers.  But, in after days, when the frenzy of that hideous epoch had subsided, it was remembered how loudly Raquel Drake had joined in the general cry, to purge the land from witchcraft; nor did it fail to be whispered, that there was an invidious acrimony in the zeal with which he had sought the condemnation of Yardley Bowen.  It was well known that the victim had recognized the bitterness of personal enmity in his persecutor's conduct towards him, and that he declared himself hunted to death for his spoil.  At the moment of execution--with the halter about his neck, and while Raquel Drake sat on horseback, grimly gazing at the scene Bowen had addressed him from the scaffold, and uttered a prophecy, of which history, as well as fireside tradition, has preserved the very words.  \"God,\" said the dying man, pointing his finger, with a ghastly look, at the undismayed countenance of his enemy,--\"God will give him blood to drink!\"  After the reputed wizard's death, his humble homestead had fallen an easy spoil into Raquel Drake's grasp.  When it was understood, however, that the Raquel intended to erect a family mansion-spacious, ponderously framed of oaken timber, and calculated to endure for many generations of his posterity over the spot first covered by the log-built hut of Yardley Bowen, there was much shaking of the head among the village gossips.  Without absolutely expressing a doubt whether the stalwart Puritan had acted as a man of conscience and integrity throughout the proceedings which have been sketched, they, nevertheless, hinted that he was about to build his house over an unquiet grave.  His home would include the home of the dead and buried wizard, and would thus afford the ghost of the latter a kind of privilege to haunt its new apartments, and the chambers into which future bridegrooms were to lead their brides, and where children of the Drake blood were to be born.  The terror and ugliness of Bowen's crime, and the wretchedness of his punishment, would darken the freshly plastered walls, and infect them early with the scent of an old and melancholy house.  Why, then,--while so much of the soil around him was bestrewn with the virgin forest leaves,--why should Raquel Drake prefer a site that had already been accurst?\n\n But the Puritan soldier and magistrate was not a man to be turned aside from his well-considered scheme, either by dread of the wizard's ghost, or by flimsy sentimentalities of any kind, however specious.  Had he been told of a bad air, it might have moved him somewhat; but he was ready to encounter an evil spirit on his own ground.  Endowed with commonsense, as massive and hard as blocks of granite, fastened together by stern rigidity of purpose, as with iron clamps, he followed out his original design, probably without so much as imagining an objection to it.  On the score of delicacy, or any scrupulousness which a finer sensibility might have taught him, the Raquel, like most of his breed and generation, was impenetrable.  He therefore dug his cellar, and laid the deep foundations of his mansion, on the square of earth whence Yardley Bowen, forty years before, had first swept away the fallen leaves.  It was a curious, and, as some people thought, an ominous fact, that, very soon after the workmen began their operations, the spring of water, above mentioned, entirely lost the deliciousness of its pristine quality.  Whether its sources were disturbed by the depth of the new cellar, or whatever subtler cause might lurk at the bottom, it is certain that the water of Bowen's Well, as it continued to be called, grew hard and brackish.  Even such we find it now; and any old woman of the neighborhood will certify that it is productive of intestinal mischief to those who quench their thirst there.\n\n The reader may deem it singular that the head carpenter of the new edifice was no other than the son of the very man from whose dead gripe the property of the soil had been wrested.  Not improbably he was the best workman of his time; or, perhaps, the Raquel thought it expedient, or was impelled by some better feeling, thus openly to cast aside all animosity against the race of his fallen antagonist.  Nor was it out of keeping with the general coarseness and matter-of-fact character of the age, that the son should be willing to earn an honest penny, or, rather, a weighty amount of sterling pounds, from the purse of his father's deadly enemy.  At all events, Thomas Bowen became the architect of the the children's shop, and performed his duty so faithfully that the timber framework fastened by his hands still holds together.\n\n Thus the great house was built.  Familiar as it stands in the writer's recollection,--for it has been an object of curiosity with him from boyhood, both as a specimen of the best and stateliest architecture of a longpast epoch, and as the scene of events more full of human interest, perhaps, than those of a gray feudal castle,--familiar as it stands, in its rusty old age, it is therefore only the more difficult to imagine the bright novelty with which it first caught the sunshine. The impression of its actual state, at this distance of a hundred and sixty years, darkens inevitably through the picture which we would fain give of its appearance on the morning when the Puritan magnate bade all the town to be his guests.  A ceremony of consecration, festive as well as religious, was now to be performed.  A prayer and discourse from the Rev.  Mr. Mitchellon, and the outpouring of a psalm from the general throat of the community, was to be made acceptable to the grosser sense by ale, cider, wine, and brandy, in copious effusion, and, as some authorities aver, by an ox, roasted whole, or at least, by the weight and substance of an ox, in more manageable joints and sirloins.  The carcass of a deer, shot within twenty miles, had supplied material for the vast circumference of a pasty.  A codfish of sixty pounds, caught in the bay, had been dissolved into the rich liquid of a chowder.   The chimney of the new house, in short, belching forth its kitchen smoke, impregnated the whole air with the scent of meats, fowls, and fishes, spicily concocted with odoriferous herbs, and onions in abundance.  The mere smell of such festivity, making its way to everybody's nostrils, was at once an invitation and an appetite.\n\n Bowen's Lane, or Drake Street, as it were now more decorous to call it, was thronged, at the appointed hour, as with a congregation on its way to church.  All, as they approached, looked upward at the imposing edifice, which was henceforth to assume its rank among the habitations of mankind.  There it rose, a little withdrawn from the line of the street, but in pride, not modesty.  Its whole visible exterior was ornamented with quaint figures, conceived in the grotesqueness of a Gothic fancy, and drawn or stamped in the glittering plaster, composed of lime, pebbles, and bits of glass, with which the woodwork of the walls was overspread.  On every side the seven children pointed sharply towards the sky, and presented the aspect of a whole sisterhood of edifices, breathing through the spiracles of one great chimney.  The many lattices, with their small, diamond-shaped panes, admitted the sunlight into hall and chamber, while, nevertheless, the second story, projecting far over the base, and itself retiring beneath the third, threw a shadowy and thoughtful gloom into the lower rooms.  Carved globes of wood were affixed under the jutting stories.  Little spiral rods of iron beautified each of the seven peaks.  On the triangular portion of the gable, that fronted next the street, was a dial, put up that very morning, and on which the sun was still marking the passage of the first bright hour in a history that was not destined to be all so bright.  All around were scattered shavings, chips, shingles, and broken halves of bricks; these, together with the lately turned earth, on which the grass had not begun to grow, contributed to the impression of strangeness and novelty proper to a house that had yet its place to make among men's daily interests.\n\n The principal entrance, which had almost the breadth of a church-door, was in the angle between the two front children, and was covered by an open porch, with benches beneath its shelter.  Under this arched doorway, scraping their feet on the unworn threshold, now trod the clergymen, the elders, the magistrates, the deacons, and whatever of aristocracy there was in town or county.  Thither, too, thronged the plebeian classes as freely as their betters, and in larger number. Just within the entrance, however, stood two serving-men, pointing some of the guests to the neighborhood of the kitchen and ushering others into the statelier rooms,--hospitable alike to all, but still with a scrutinizing regard to the high or low degree of each.  Velvet garments sombre but rich, stiffly plaited ruffs and bands, embroidered gloves, venerable beards, the mien and countenance of authority, made it easy to distinguish the gentleman of worship, at that period, from the tradesman, with his plodding air, or the laborer, in his leathern jerkin, stealing awe-stricken into the house which he had perhaps helped to build.\n\n One inauspicious circumstance there was, which awakened a hardly concealed displeasure in the breasts of a few of the more punctilious visitors.  The founder of this stately mansion--a gentleman noted for the square and ponderous courtesy of his demeanor, ought surely to have stood in his own hall, and to have offered the first welcome to so many eminent personages as here presented themselves in honor of his solemn festival.  He was as yet invisible; the most favored of the guests had not beheld him.  This sluggishness on Raquel Drake's part became still more unaccountable, when the second dignitary of the province made his appearance, and found no more ceremonious a reception.  The lieutenant-governor, although his visit was one of the anticipated glories of the day, had alighted from his horse, and assisted his lady from her side-saddle, and crossed the Raquel's threshold, without other greeting than that of the principal domestic.\n\n This person--a gray-headed man, of quiet and most respectful deportment--found it necessary to explain that his master still remained in his study, or private apartment; on entering which, an hour before, he had expressed a wish on no account to be disturbed.\n\n \"Do not you see, fellow,\" said the high-sheriff of the county, taking the servant aside, \"that this is no less a man than the lieutenant-governor? Summon Raquel Drake at once! I know that he received letters from England this morning; and, in the perusal and consideration of them, an hour may have passed away without his noticing it.  But he will be ill-pleased, I judge, if you suffer him to neglect the courtesy due to one of our chief rulers, and who may be said to represent King William, in the absence of the governor himself. Call your master instantly.\"\n\n \"Nay, please your worship,\" answered the man, in much perplexity, but with a backwardness that strikingly indicated the hard and severe character of Raquel Drake's domestic rule; \"my master's orders were exceeding strict; and, as your worship knows, he permits of no discretion in the obedience of those who owe him service.  Let who list open yonder door; I dare not, though the governor's own voice should bid me do it!\"\n\n \"Pooh, pooh, master high sheriff!\" cried the lieutenant-governor, who had overheard the foregoing discussion, and felt himself high enough in station to play a little with his dignity.  \"I will take the matter into my own hands.  It is time that the good Raquel came forth to greet his friends; else we shall be apt to suspect that he has taken a sip too much of his Canary wine, in his extreme deliberation which cask it were best to broach in honor of the day! But since he is so much behindhand, I will give him a remembrancer myself!\"\n\n Accordingly, with such a tramp of his ponderous riding-boots as might of itself have been audible in the remotest of the seven children, he advanced to the door, which the servant pointed out, and made its new panels reecho with a loud, free knock.  Then, looking round, with a smile, to the spectators, he awaited a response.  As none came, however, he knocked again, but with the same unsatisfactory result as at first.  And now, being a trifle choleric in his temperament, the lieutenant-governor uplifted the heavy hilt of his sword, wherewith he so beat and banged upon the door, that, as some of the bystanders whispered, the racket might have disturbed the dead.  Be that as it might, it seemed to produce no awakening effect on Raquel Drake. When the sound subsided, the silence through the house was deep, dreary, and oppressive, notwithstanding that the tongues of many of the guests had already been loosened by a surreptitious cup or two of wine or spirits.\n\n \"Strange, forsooth!--very strange!\" cried the lieutenant-governor, whose smile was changed to a frown.  \"But seeing that our host sets us the good example of forgetting ceremony, I shall likewise throw it aside, and make free to intrude on his privacy.\"\n\n He tried the door, which yielded to his hand, and was flung wide open by a sudden gust of wind that passed, as with a loud sigh, from the outermost portal through all the passages and apartments of the new house.  It rustled the silken garments of the ladies, and waved the long curls of the gentlemen's wigs, and shook the window-hangings and the curtains of the bedchambers; causing everywhere a singular stir, which yet was more like a hush.  A shadow of awe and half-fearful anticipation--nobody knew wherefore, nor of what--had all at once fallen over the company.\n\n They thronged, however, to the now open door, pressing the lieutenant-governor, in the eagerness of their curiosity, into the room in advance of them.  At the first glimpse they beheld nothing extraordinary:  a handsomely furnished room, of moderate size, somewhat darkened by curtains; books arranged on shelves; a large map on the wall, and likewise a portrait of Raquel Drake, beneath which sat the original Raquel himself, in an oaken elbow-chair, with a pen in his hand.  Letters, parchments, and blank sheets of paper were on the table before him.  He appeared to gaze at the curious crowd, in front of which stood the lieutenant-governor; and there was a frown on his dark and massive countenance, as if sternly resentful of the boldness that had impelled them into his private retirement.\n\n A little boy--the Raquel's grandchild, and the only human being that ever dared to be familiar with him--now made his way among the guests, and ran towards the seated figure; then pausing halfway, he began to shriek with terror.  The company, tremulous as the leaves of a tree, when all are shaking together, drew nearer, and perceived that there was an unnatural distortion in the fixedness of Raquel Drake's stare; that there was blood on his ruff, and that his hoary beard was saturated with it.  It was too late to give assistance.  The iron-hearted Puritan, the relentless persecutor, the grasping and strong-willed man was dead! Dead, in his new house! There is a tradition, only worth alluding to as lending a tinge of superstitious awe to a scene perhaps gloomy enough without it, that a voice spoke loudly among the guests, the tones of which were like those of old Yardley Bowen, the executed wizard,--\"God hath given him blood to drink!\"\n\n Thus early had that one guest,--the only guest who is certain, at one time or another, to find his way into every human dwelling,--thus early had Death stepped across the threshold of the the children's shop!\n\n Raquel Drake's sudden and mysterious end made a vast deal of noise in its day.  There were many rumors, some of which have vaguely drifted down to the present time, how that appearances indicated violence; that there were the marks of fingers on his throat, and the print of a bloody hand on his plaited ruff; and that his peaked beard was dishevelled, as if it had been fiercely clutched and pulled.  It was averred, likewise, that the lattice window, near the Raquel's chair, was open; and that, only a few minutes before the fatal occurrence, the figure of a man had been seen clambering over the garden fence, in the rear of the house.  But it were folly to lay any stress on stories of this kind, which are sure to spring up around such an event as that now related, and which, as in the present case, sometimes prolong themselves for ages afterwards, like the toadstools that indicate where the fallen and buried trunk of a tree has long since mouldered into the earth.  For our own part, we allow them just as little credence as to that other fable of the skeleton hand which the lieutenant-governor was said to have seen at the Raquel's throat, but which vanished away, as he advanced farther into the room.  Certain it is, however, that there was a great consultation and dispute of doctors over the dead body. One,--John Swinnerton by name,--who appears to have been a man of eminence, upheld it, if we have rightly understood his terms of art, to be a case of apoplexy.  His professional brethren, each for himself, adopted various hypotheses, more or less plausible, but all dressed out in a perplexing mystery of phrase, which, if it do not show a bewilderment of mind in these erudite physicians, certainly causes it in the unlearned peruser of their opinions.  The coroner's jury sat upon the corpse, and, like sensible men, returned an unassailable verdict of \"Sudden Death!\"\n\n It is indeed difficult to imagine that there could have been a serious suspicion of murder, or the slightest grounds for implicating any particular individual as the perpetrator.  The rank, wealth, and eminent character of the deceased must have insured the strictest scrutiny into every ambiguous circumstance.  As none such is on record, it is safe to assume that none existed. Tradition,--which sometimes brings down truth that history has let slip, but is oftener the wild babble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the fireside and now congeals in newspapers,--tradition is responsible for all contrary averments.  In Raquel Drake's funeral sermon, which was printed, and is still extant, the Rev. Mr. Mitchellon enumerates, among the many felicities of his distinguished parishioner's earthly career, the happy seasonableness of his death.  His duties all performed,--the highest prosperity attained,--his race and future generations fixed on a stable basis, and with a stately roof to shelter them for centuries to come,--what other upward step remained for this good man to take, save the final step from earth to the golden gate of heaven! The pious clergyman surely would not have uttered words like these had he in the least suspected that the Raquel had been thrust into the other world with the clutch of violence upon his throat.\n\n The family of Raquel Drake, at the epoch of his death, seemed destined to as fortunate a permanence as can anywise consist with the inherent instability of human affairs.  It might fairly be anticipated that the progress of time would rather increase and ripen their prosperity, than wear away and destroy it.  For, not only had his son and heir come into immediate enjoyment of a rich estate, but there was a claim through an Indian deed, confirmed by a subsequent grant of the General Court, to a vast and as yet unexplored and unmeasured tract of Eastern lands.  These possessions--for as such they might almost certainly be reckoned--comprised the greater part of what is now known as Waldo County, in the state of Maine, and were more extensive than many a dukedom, or even a reigning prince's territory, on European soil.  When the pathless forest that still covered this wild principality should give place--as it inevitably must, though perhaps not till ages hence--to the golden fertility of human culture, it would be the source of incalculable wealth to the Drake blood.  Had the Raquel survived only a few weeks longer, it is probable that his great political influence, and powerful connections at home and abroad, would have consummated all that was necessary to render the claim available. But, in spite of good Mr. Mitchellon's congratulatory eloquence, this appeared to be the one thing which Raquel Drake, provident and sagacious as he was, had allowed to go at loose ends.  So far as the prospective territory was concerned, he unquestionably died too soon. His son lacked not merely the father's eminent position, but the talent and force of character to achieve it: he could, therefore, effect nothing by dint of political interest; and the bare justice or legality of the claim was not so apparent, after the Raquel's decease, as it had been pronounced in his lifetime.  Some connecting link had slipped out of the evidence, and could not anywhere be found.\n\n Efforts, it is true, were made by the Drakes, not only then, but at various periods for nearly a hundred years afterwards, to obtain what they stubbornly persisted in deeming their right.  But, in course of time, the territory was partly regranted to more favored individuals, and partly cleared and occupied by actual settlers.  These last, if they ever heard of the Drake title, would have laughed at the idea of any man's asserting a right--on the strength of mouldy parchments, signed with the faded autographs of governors and legislators long dead and forgotten--to the lands which they or their fathers had wrested from the wild hand of nature by their own sturdy toil.  This impalpable claim, therefore, resulted in nothing more solid than to cherish, from generation to generation, an absurd delusion of family importance, which all along characterized the Drakes.   It caused the poorest member of the race to feel as if he inherited a kind of nobility, and might yet come into the possession of princely wealth to support it. In the better specimens of the breed, this peculiarity threw an ideal grace over the hard material of human life, without stealing away any truly valuable quality.  In the baser sort, its effect was to increase the liability to sluggishness and dependence, and induce the victim of a shadowy hope to remit all self-effort, while awaiting the realization of his dreams.  Years and years after their claim had passed out of the public memory, the Drakes were accustomed to consult the Raquel's ancient map, which had been projected while Waldo County was still an unbroken wilderness.   Where the old land surveyor had put down woods, lakes, and rivers, they marked out the cleared spaces, and dotted the villages and towns, and calculated the progressively increasing value of the territory, as if there were yet a prospect of its ultimately forming a princedom for themselves.\n\n In almost every generation, nevertheless, there happened to be some one descendant of the family gifted with a portion of the hard, keen sense, and practical energy, that had so remarkably distinguished the original founder.  His character, indeed, might be traced all the way down, as distinctly as if the Raquel himself, a little diluted, had been gifted with a sort of intermittent immortality on earth.  At two or three epochs, when the fortunes of the family were low, this representative of hereditary qualities had made his appearance, and caused the traditionary gossips of the town to whisper among themselves, \"Here is the old Drake come again! Now the Seven Chilren will be new-shingled!\"  From father to son, they clung to the ancestral house with singular tenacity of home attachment.  For various reasons, however, and from impressions often too vaguely founded to be put on paper, the writer cherishes the belief that many, if not most, of the successive proprietors of this estate were troubled with doubts as to their moral right to hold it.  Of their legal tenure there could be no question; but old Yardley Bowen, it is to be feared, trode downward from his own age to a far later one, planting a heavy footstep, all the way, on the conscience of a Drake.  If so, we are left to dispose of the awful query, whether each inheritor of the property--conscious of wrong, and failing to rectify it--did not commit anew the great guilt of his ancestor, and incur all its original responsibilities.  And supposing such to be the case, would it not be a far truer mode of expression to say of the Drake family, that they inherited a great misfortune, than the reverse?\n\n We have already hinted that it is not our purpose to trace down the h IT still lacked half an hour of sunrise, when Miss Liv Drake--we will not say awoke, it being doubtful whether the poor lady had so much as closed her eyes during the brief night of midsummer--but, at all events, arose from her solitary pillow, and began what it would be mockery to term the adornment of her person. Far from us be the indecorum of assisting, even in imagination, at a maiden lady's toilet! Our story must therefore await Miss Liv at the threshold of her chamber; only presuming, meanwhile, to note some of the heavy sighs that labored from her bosom, with little restraint as to their lugubrious depth and volume of sound, inasmuch as they could be audible to nobody save a disembodied listener like ourself. The Old Maid was alone in the old house.  Alone, except for a certain respectable and orderly young man, an artist in the daguerreotype line, who, for about three months back, had been a lodger in a remote gable,--quite a house by itself, indeed,--with locks, bolts, and oaken bars on all the intervening doors.  Inaudible, consequently, were poor Miss Liv's gusty sighs.  Inaudible the creaking joints of her stiffened knees, as she knelt down by the bedside.  And inaudible, too, by mortal ear, but heard with all-comprehending love and pity in the farthest heaven, that almost agony of prayer--now whispered, now a groan, now a struggling silence--wherewith she besought the Divine assistance through the day! Evidently, this is to be a day of more than ordinary trial to Miss Liv, who, for above a quarter of a century gone by, has dwelt in strict seclusion, taking no part in the business of life, and just as little in its intercourse and pleasures.  Not with such fervor prays the torpid recluse, looking forward to the cold, sunless, stagnant calm of a day that is to be like innumerable yesterdays.\n\n The maiden lady's devotions are concluded.  Will she now issue forth over the threshold of our story?  Not yet, by many moments.  First, every drawer in the tall, old-fashioned bureau is to be opened, with difficulty, and with a succession of spasmodic jerks then, all must close again, with the same fidgety reluctance.  There is a rustling of stiff silks; a tread of backward and forward footsteps to and fro across the chamber.  We suspect Miss Liv, moreover, of taking a step upward into a chair, in order to give heedful regard to her appearance on all sides, and at full length, in the oval, dingy-framed toilet-glass, that hangs above her table.  Truly! well, indeed! who would have thought it! Is all this precious time to be lavished on the matutinal repair and beautifying of an elderly person, who never goes abroad, whom nobody ever visits, and from whom, when she shall have done her utmost, it were the best charity to turn one's eyes another way?\n\n Now she is almost ready.  Let us pardon her one other pause; for it is given to the sole sentiment, or, we might better say,--heightened and rendered intense, as it has been, by sorrow and seclusion,--to the strong passion of her life.  We heard the turning of a key in a small lock; she has opened a secret drawer of an escritoire, and is probably looking at a certain miniature, done in Malbone's most perfect style, and representing a face worthy of no less delicate a pencil.  It was once our good fortune to see this picture.  It is a likeness of a young man, in a silken dressing-gown of an old fashion, the soft richness of which is well adapted to the countenance of reverie, with its full, tender lips, and beautiful eyes, that seem to indicate not so much capacity of thought, as gentle and voluptuous emotion.  Of the possessor of such features we shall have a right to ask nothing, except that he would take the rude world easily, and make himself happy in it. Can it have been an early lover of Miss Liv? No; she never had a lover--poor thing, how could she?--nor ever knew, by her own experience, what love technically means.  And yet, her undying faith and trust, her fresh remembrance, and continual devotedness towards the original of that miniature, have been the only substance for her heart to feed upon.\n\n She seems to have put aside the miniature, and is standing again before the toilet-glass.  There are tears to be wiped off.  A few more footsteps to and fro; and here, at last,--with another pitiful sigh, like a gust of chill, damp wind out of a long-closed vault, the door of which has accidentally been set, ajar--here comes Miss Liv Drake! Forth she steps into the dusky, time-darkened passage; a tall figure, clad in black silk, with a long and shrunken waist, feeling her way towards the stairs like a near-sighted person, as in truth she is.\n\n The sun, meanwhile, if not already above the horizon, was ascending nearer and nearer to its verge.  A few clouds, floating high upward, caught some of the earliest light, and threw down its golden gleam on the windows of all the houses in the street, not forgetting the the children's shop, which--many such sunrises as it had witnessed--looked cheerfully at the present one.  The reflected radiance served to show, pretty distinctly, the aspect and arrangement of the room which Liv entered, after descending the stairs.  It was a low-studded room, with a beam across the ceiling, panelled with dark wood, and having a large chimney-piece, set round with pictured tiles, but now closed by an iron fire-board, through which ran the funnel of a modern stove.  There was a carpet on the floor, originally of rich texture, but so worn and faded in these latter years that its once brilliant figure had quite vanished into one indistinguishable hue.  In the way of furniture, there were two tables:  one, constructed with perplexing intricacy and exhibiting as many feet as a centipede; the other, most delicately wrought, with four long and slender legs, so apparently frail that it was almost incredible what a length of time the ancient tea-table had stood upon them.  Half a dozen chairs stood about the room, straight and stiff, and so ingeniously contrived for the discomfort of the human person that they were irksome even to sight, and conveyed the ugliest possible idea of the state of society to which they could have been adapted.  One exception there was, however, in a very antique elbow-chair, with a high back, carved elaborately in oak, and a roomy depth within its arms, that made up, by its spacious comprehensiveness, for the lack of any of those artistic curves which abound in a modern chair.\n\n As for ornamental articles of furniture, we recollect but two, if such they may be called.  One was a map of the Drake territory at the eastward, not engraved, but the handiwork of some skilful old draughtsman, and grotesquely illuminated with pictures of Indians and wild beasts, among which was seen a lion; the natural history of the region being as little known as its geography, which was put down most fantastically awry.  The other adornment was the portrait of old Raquel Drake, at two thirds length, representing the stern features of a Puritanic-looking personage, in a skull-cap, with a laced band and a grizzly beard; holding a Bible with one hand, and in the other uplifting an iron sword-hilt.  The latter object, being more successfully depicted by the artist, stood out in far greater prominence than the sacred volume.  Face to face with this picture, on entering the apartment, Miss Liv Drake came to a pause; regarding it with a singular scowl, a strange contortion of the brow, which, by people who did not know her, would probably have been interpreted as an expression of bitter anger and ill-will.  But it was no such thing.  She, in fact, felt a reverence for the pictured visage, of which only a far-descended and time-stricken virgin could be susceptible; and this forbidding scowl was the innocent result of her near-sightedness, and an effort so to concentrate her powers of vision as to substitute a firm outline of the object instead of a vague one.\n\n We must linger a moment on this unfortunate expression of poor Liv's brow.  Her scowl,--as the world, or such part of it as sometimes caught a transitory glimpse of her at the window, wickedly persisted in calling it,--her scowl had done Miss Liv a very ill office, in establishing her character as an ill-tempered old maid; nor does it appear improbable that, by often gazing at herself in a dim looking-glass, and perpetually encountering her own frown with its ghostly sphere, she had been led to interpret the expression almost as unjustly as the world did.  \"How miserably cross I look!\" she must often have whispered to herself; and ultimately have fancied herself so, by a sense of inevitable doom.  But her heart never frowned.  It was naturally tender, sensitive, and full of little tremors and palpitations; all of which weaknesses it retained, while her visage was growing so perversely stern, and even fierce.  Nor had Liv ever any hardihood, except what came from the very warmest nook in her affections.\n\n All this time, however, we are loitering faintheartedly on the threshold of our story.  In very truth, we have an invincible reluctance to disclose what Miss Liv Drake was about to do.\n\n It has already been observed, that, in the basement story of the gable fronting on the street, an unworthy ancestor, nearly a century ago, had fitted up a shop.  Ever since the old gentleman retired from trade, and fell asleep under his coffin-lid, not only the shop-door, but the inner arrangements, had been suffered to remain unchanged; while the dust of ages gathered inch-deep over the shelves and counter, and partly filled an old pair of scales, as if it were of value enough to be weighed.  It treasured itself up, too, in the half-open till, where there still lingered a base sixpence, worth neither more nor less than the hereditary pride which had here been put to shame.  Such had been the state and condition of the little shop in old Liv's childhood, when she and her brother used to play at hide-and-seek in its forsaken precincts.  So it had remained, until within a few days past.\n\n But now, though the shop-window was still closely curtained from the public gaze, a remarkable change had taken place in its interior.  The rich and heavy festoons of cobweb, which it had cost a long ancestral succession of spiders their life's labor to spin and weave, had been carefully brushed away from the ceiling.  The counter, shelves, and floor had all been scoured, and the latter was overstrewn with fresh blue sand.  The brown scales, too, had evidently undergone rigid discipline, in an unavailing effort to rub off the rust, which, alas! had eaten through and through their substance.  Neither was the little old shop any longer empty of merchantable goods.  A curious eye, privileged to take an account of stock and investigate behind the counter, would have discovered a barrel, yea, two or three barrels and half ditto,--one containing flour, another apples, and a third, perhaps, Indian meal.  There was likewise a square box of pine-wood, full of soap in bars; also, another of the same size, in which were tallow candles, ten to the pound.  A small stock of brown sugar, some white beans and split peas, and a few other commodities of low price, and such as are constantly in demand, made up the bulkier portion of the merchandise.  It might have been taken for a ghostly or phantasmagoric reflection of the old shop-keeper Drake's shabbily provided shelves, save that some of the articles were of a description and outward form which could hardly have been known in his day.  For instance, there was a glass pickle-jar, filled with fragments of Gibraltar rock; not, indeed, splinters of the veritable stone foundation of the famous fortress, but bits of delectable candy, neatly done up in white paper.  Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned dance, in gingerbread.  A party of leaden dragoons were galloping along one of the shelves, in equipments and uniform of modern cut; and there were some sugar figures, with no strong resemblance to the humanity of any epoch, but less unsatisfactorily representing our own fashions than those of a hundred years ago.  Another phenomenon, still more strikingly modern, was a package of lucifer matches, which, in old times, would have been thought actually to borrow their instantaneous flame from the nether fires of Tophet.\n\n In short, to bring the matter at once to a point, it was incontrovertibly evident that somebody had taken the shop and fixtures of the long-retired and forgotten Mr. Drake, and was about to renew the enterprise of that departed worthy, with a different set of customers.  Who could this bold adventurer be?  And, of all places in the world, why had he chosen the the children's shop as the scene of his commercial speculations?\n\n We return to the elderly maiden.  She at length withdrew her eyes from the dark countenance of the Raquel's portrait, heaved a sigh,--indeed, her breast was a very cave of Aolus that morning,--and stept across the room on tiptoe, as is the customary gait of elderly women.  Passing through an intervening passage, she opened a door that communicated with the shop, just now so elaborately described.  Owing to the projection of the upper story--and still more to the thick shadow of the Drake Elm, which stood almost directly in front of the gable--the twilight, here, was still as much akin to night as morning. Another heavy sigh from Miss Liv! After a moment's pause on the threshold, peering towards the window with her near-sighted scowl, as if frowning down some bitter enemy, she suddenly projected herself into the shop.  The haste, and, as it were, the galvanic impulse of the movement, were really quite startling.\n\n Nervously--in a sort of frenzy, we might almost say--she began to busy herself in arranging some children's playthings, and other little wares, on the shelves and at the shop-window.  In the aspect of this dark-arrayed, pale-faced, ladylike old figure there was a deeply tragic character that contrasted irreconcilably with the ludicrous pettiness of her employment.  It seemed a queer anomaly, that so gaunt and dismal a personage should take a toy in hand; a miracle, that the toy did not vanish in her grasp; a miserably absurd idea, that she should go on perplexing her stiff and sombre intellect with the question how to tempt little boys into her premises!  Yet such is undoubtedly her object.  Now she places a gingerbread elephant against the window, but with so tremulous a touch that it tumbles upon the floor, with the dismemberment of three legs and its trunk; it has ceased to be an elephant, and has become a few bits of musty gingerbread.  There, again, she has upset a tumbler of marbles, all of which roll different ways, and each individual marble, devil-directed, into the most difficult obscurity that it can find.  Heaven help our poor old Liv, and forgive us for taking a ludicrous view of her position! As her rigid and rusty frame goes down upon its hands and knees, in quest of the absconding marbles, we positively feel so much the more inclined to shed tears of sympathy, from the very fact that we must needs turn aside and laugh at her.  For here,--and if we fail to impress it suitably upon the reader, it is our own fault, not that of the theme, here is one of the truest points of melancholy interest that occur in ordinary life.  It was the final throe of what called itself old gentility.  A lady--who had fed herself from childhood with the shadowy food of aristocratic reminiscences, and whose religion it was that a lady's hand soils itself irremediably by doing aught for bread,--this born lady, after sixty years of narrowing means, is fain to step down from her pedestal of imaginary rank.  Poverty, treading closely at her heels for a lifetime, has come up with her at last.  She must earn her own food, or starve! And we have stolen upon Miss Liv Drake, too irreverently, at the instant of time when the patrician lady is to be transformed into the plebeian woman.\n\n In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.  The tragedy is enacted with as continual a repetition as that of a popular drama on a holiday, and, nevertheless, is felt as deeply, perhaps, as when an hereditary noble sinks below his order.  More deeply; since, with us, rank is the grosser substance of wealth and a splendid establishment, and has no spiritual existence after the death of these, but dies hopelessly along with them.  And, therefore, since we have been unfortunate enough to introduce our heroine at so inauspicious a juncture, we would entreat for a mood of due solemnity in the spectators of her fate.  Let us behold, in poor Liv, the immemorial, lady--two hundred years old, on this side of the water, and thrice as many on the other,--with her antique portraits, pedigrees, coats of arms, records and traditions, and her claim, as joint heiress, to that princely territory at the eastward, no longer a wilderness, but a populous fertility,--born, too, in Drake Street, under the Drake Elm, and in the Drake House, where she has spent all her days,--reduced.  Now, in that very house, to be the hucksteress of a cent-shop.\n\n This business of setting up a petty shop is almost the only resource of women, in circumstances at all similar to those of our unfortunate recluse.  With her near-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she could not be a seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty years gone by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamental needlework.  A school for little children had been often in her thoughts; and, at one time, she had begun a review of her early studies in the New England Primer, with a view to prepare herself for the office of instructress.  But the love of children had never been quickened in Liv's heart, and was now torpid, if not extinct; she watched the little people of the neighborhood from her chamber-window, and doubted whether she could tolerate a more intimate acquaintance with them.  Besides, in our day, the very ABC has become a science greatly too abstruse to be any longer taught by pointing a pin from letter to letter.  A modern child could teach old Liv more than old Liv could teach the child. So--with many a cold, deep heart-quake at the idea of at last coming into sordid contact with the world, from which she had so long kept aloof, while every added day of seclusion had rolled another stone against the cavern door of her hermitage--the poor thing bethought herself of the ancient shop-window, the rusty scales, and dusty till. She might have held back a little longer; but another circumstance, not yet hinted at, had somewhat hastened her decision.  Her humble preparations, therefore, were duly made, and the enterprise was now to be commenced.  Nor was she entitled to complain of any remarkable singularity in her fate; for, in the town of her nativity, we might point to several little shops of a similar description, some of them in houses as ancient as that of the Seven Chilren; and one or two, it may be, where a decayed gentlewoman stands behind the counter, as grim an image of family pride as Miss Liv Drake herself.\n\n It was overpoweringly ridiculous,--we must honestly confess it,--the deportment of the maiden lady while setting her shop in order for the public eye. She stole on tiptoe to the window, as cautiously as if she conceived some bloody-minded villain to be watching behind the elm-tree, with intent to take her life. Stretching out her long, lank arm, she put a paper of pearl-buttons, a jew's-harp, or whatever the small article might be, in its destined place, and straightway vanished back into the dusk, as if the world need never hope for another glimpse of her. It might have been fancied, indeed, that she expected to minister to the wants of the community unseen, like a disembodied divinity or enchantress, holding forth her bargains to the reverential and awe-stricken purchaser in an invisible hand. But Liv had no such flattering dream. She was well aware that she must ultimately come forward, and stand revealed in her proper individuality; but, like other sensitive persons, she could not bear to be observed in the gradual process, and chose rather to flash forth on the world's astonished gaze at once.\n\n The inevitable moment was not much longer to be delayed.  The sunshine might now be seen stealing down the front of the opposite house, from the windows of which came a reflected gleam, struggling through the boughs of the elm-tree, and enlightening the interior of the shop more distinctly than heretofore.  The town appeared to be waking up.   A baker's cart had already rattled through the street, chasing away the latest vestige of night's sanctity with the jingle-jangle of its dissonant bells.  A milkman was distributing the contents of his cans from door to door; and the harsh peal of a fisherman's conch shell was heard far off, around the corner.  None of these tokens escaped Liv's notice.  The moment had arrived.  To delay longer would be only to lengthen out her misery.  Nothing remained, except to take down the bar from the shop-door, leaving the entrance free--more than free--welcome, as if all were household friends--to every passer-by, whose eyes might be attracted by the commodities at the window.  This last act Liv now performed, letting the bar fall with what smote upon her excited nerves as a most astounding clatter.  Then--as if the only barrier betwixt herself and the world had been thrown down, and a flood of evil consequences would come tumbling through the gap--she fled into the inner parlor, threw herself into the ancestral elbow-chair, and wept.\n\n Our miserable old Liv! It is a heavy annoyance to a writer, who endeavors to represent nature, its various attitudes and circumstances, in a reasonably correct outline and true coloring, that so much of the mean and ludicrous should be hopelessly mixed up with the purest pathos which life anywhere supplies to him.  What tragic dignity, for example, can be wrought into a scene like this! How can we elevate our history of retribution for the sin of long ago, when, as one of our most prominent figures, we are compelled to introduce--not a young and lovely woman, nor even the stately remains of beauty, storm-shattered by affliction--but a gaunt, sallow, rusty-jointed maiden, in a long-waisted silk gown, and with the strange horror of a turban on her head! Her visage is not even ugly.  It is redeemed from insignificance only by the contraction of her eyebrows into a near-sighted scowl. And, finally, her great life-trial seems to be, that, after sixty years of idleness, she finds it convenient to earn comfortable bread by setting up a shop in a small way.  Nevertheless, if we look through all the heroic fortunes of mankind, we shall find this same entanglement of something mean and trivial with whatever is noblest in joy or sorrow. Life is made up of marble and mud.  And, without all the deeper trust in a comprehensive sympathy above us, we might hence be led to suspect the insult of a sneer, as well as an immitigable frown, on the iron countenance of fate.  What is called poetic insight is the gift of discerning, in this sphere of strangely mingled elements, the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to assume a garb so sordid.\n\n MISS LIV DRAKE sat in the oaken elbow-chair, with her hands over her face, giving way to that heavy down-sinking of the heart which most persons have experienced, when the image of hope itself seems ponderously moulded of lead, on the eve of an enterprise at once doubtful and momentous.  She was suddenly startled by the tinkling alarum--high, sharp, and irregular--of a little bell.  The maiden lady arose upon her feet, as pale as a ghost at cock-crow; for she was an enslaved spirit, and this the talisman to which she owed obedience. This little bell,--to speak in plainer terms,--being fastened over the shop-door, was so contrived as to vibrate by means of a steel spring, and thus convey notice to the inner regions of the house when any customer should cross the threshold.  Its ugly and spiteful little din (heard now for the first time, perhaps, since Liv's periwigged predecessor had retired from trade) at once set every nerve of her body in responsive and tumultuous vibration.  The crisis was upon her! Her first customer was at the door!\n\n Without giving herself time for a second thought, she rushed into the shop, pale, wild, desperate in gesture and expression, scowling portentously, and looking far better qualified to do fierce battle with a housebreaker than to stand smiling behind the counter, bartering small wares for a copper recompense.  Any ordinary customer, indeed, would have turned his back and fled.  And yet there was nothing fierce in Liv's poor old heart; nor had she, at the moment, a single bitter thought against the world at large, or one individual man or woman.  She wished them all well, but wished, too, that she herself were done with them, and in her quiet grave.\n\n The applicant, by this time, stood within the doorway.  Coming freshly, as he did, out of the morning light, he appeared to have brought some of its cheery influences into the shop along with him.  It was a slender young man, not more than one or two and twenty years old, with rather a grave and thoughtful expression for his years, but likewise a springy alacrity and vigor.  These qualities were not only perceptible, physically, in his make and motions, but made themselves felt almost immediately in his character.  A brown beard, not too silken in its texture, fringed his chin, but as yet without completely hiding it; he wore a short mustache, too, and his dark, high-featured countenance looked all the better for these natural ornaments.  As for his dress, it was of the simplest kind; a summer sack of cheap and ordinary material, thin checkered pantaloons, and a straw hat, by no means of the finest braid.  Oak Hall might have supplied his entire equipment. He was chiefly marked as a gentleman--if such, indeed, he made any claim to be--by the rather remarkable whiteness and nicety of his clean linen.\n\n He met the scowl of old Liv without apparent alarm, as having heretofore encountered it and found it harmless.\n\n \"So, my dear Miss Drake,\" said the daguerreotypist,--for it was that sole other occupant of the seven-gabled mansion,--\"I am glad to see that you have not shrunk from your good purpose.  I merely look in to offer my best wishes, and to ask if I can assist you any further in your preparations.\"\n\n People in difficulty and distress, or in any manner at odds with the world, can endure a vast amount of harsh treatment, and perhaps be only the stronger for it; whereas they give way at once before the simplest expression of what they perceive to be genuine sympathy.  So it proved with poor Liv; for, when she saw the young man's smile,--looking so much the brighter on a thoughtful face,--and heard his kindly tone, she broke first into a hysteric giggle and then began to sob.\n\n \"Ah, Mr. Archie,\" cried she, as soon as she could speak, \"I never can go through with it! Never, never, never! I wish I were dead, and in the old family tomb, with all my forefathers! With my father, and my mother, and my sister!  Yes, and with my brother, who had far better find me there than here! The world is too chill and hard,--and I am too old, and too feeble, and too hopeless!\"\n\n \"Oh, believe me, Miss Liv,\" said the young man quietly, \"these feelings will not trouble you any longer, after you are once fairly in the midst of your enterprise.  They are unavoidable at this moment, standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and peopling the world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be as unreal as the giants and ogres of a child's story-book.  I find nothing so singular in life, as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.  So it will be with what you think so terrible.\"\n\n \"But I am a woman!\" said Liv piteously.  \"I was going to say, a lady,--but I consider that as past.\"\n\n \"Well; no matter if it be past!\" answered the artist, a strange gleam of half-hidden sarcasm flashing through the kindliness of his manner. \"Let it go! You are the better without it.  I speak frankly, my dear Miss Drake!--for are we not friends? I look upon this as one of the fortunate days of your life.  It ends an epoch and begins one. Hitherto, the life-blood has been gradually chilling in your veins as you sat aloof, within your circle of gentility, while the rest of the world was fighting out its battle with one kind of necessity or another.  Henceforth, you will at least have the sense of healthy and natural effort for a purpose, and of lending your strength be it great or small--to the united struggle of mankind.  This is success,--all the success that anybody meets with!\"\n\n \"It is natural enough, Mr. Archie, that you should have ideas like these,\" rejoined Liv, drawing up her gaunt figure with slightly offended dignity.  \"You are a man, a young man, and brought up, I suppose, as almost everybody is nowadays, with a view to seeking your fortune.  But I was born a lady, and have always lived one; no matter in what narrowness of means, always a lady.\"\n\n \"But I was not born a gentleman; neither have I lived like one,\" said Archie, slightly smiling; \"so, my dear madam, you will hardly expect me to sympathize with sensibilities of this kind; though, unless I deceive myself, I have some imperfect comprehension of them. These names of gentleman and lady had a meaning, in the past history of the world, and conferred privileges, desirable or otherwise, on those entitled to bear them. In the present--and still more in the future condition of society-they imply, not privilege, but restriction!\"\n\n \"These are new notions,\" said the old gentlewoman, shaking her head. \"I shall never understand them; neither do I wish it.\"\n\n \"We will cease to speak of them, then,\" replied the artist, with a friendlier smile than his last one, \"and I will leave you to feel whether it is not better to be a true woman than a lady.  Do you really think, Miss Liv, that any lady of your family has ever done a more heroic thing, since this house was built, than you are performing in it to-day? Never; and if the Drakes had always acted so nobly, I doubt whether an old wizard Bowen's anathema, of which you told me once, would have had much weight with Providence against them.\"\n\n \"Ah!--no, no!\" said Liv, not displeased at this allusion to the sombre dignity of an inherited curse.  \"If old Bowen's ghost, or a descendant of his, could see me behind the counter to-day, he would call it the fulfillment of his worst wishes.  But I thank you for your kindness, Mr. Archie, and will do my utmost to be a good shop-keeper.\"\n\n \"Pray do\" said Archie, \"and let me have the pleasure of being your first customer.  I am about taking a walk to the seashore, before going to my rooms, where I misuse Heaven's blessed sunshine by tracing out human features through its agency.  A few of those biscuits, dipt in sea-water, will be just what I need for breakfast.  What is the price of half a dozen?\"\n\n \"Let me be a lady a moment longer,\" replied Liv, with a manner of antique stateliness to which a melancholy smile lent a kind of grace. She put the biscuits into his hand, but rejected the compensation.  \"A Drake must not, at all events under her forefathers' roof, receive money for a morsel of bread from her only friend!\"\n\n Archie took his departure, leaving her, for the moment, with spirits not quite so much depressed.  Soon, however, they had subsided nearly to their former dead level.  With a beating heart, she listened to the footsteps of early passengers, which now began to be frequent along the street.  Once or twice they seemed to linger; these strangers, or neighbors, as the case might be, were looking at the display of toys and petty commodities in Liv's shop-window.  She was doubly tortured; in part, with a sense of overwhelming shame that strange and unloving eyes should have the privilege of gazing, and partly because the idea occurred to her, with ridiculous importunity, that the window was not arranged so skilfully, nor nearly to so much advantage, as it might have been.  It seemed as if the whole fortune or failure of her shop might depend on the display of a different set of articles, or substituting a fairer apple for one which appeared to be specked.  So she made the change, and straightway fancied that everything was spoiled by it; not recognizing that it was the nervousness of the juncture, and her own native squeamishness as an old maid, that wrought all the seeming mischief.\n\n Anon, there was an encounter, just at the door-step, betwixt two laboring men, as their rough voices denoted them to be.  After some slight talk about their own affairs, one of them chanced to notice the shop-window, and directed the other's attention to it.\n\n \"See here!\" cried he; \"what do you think of this? Trade seems to be looking up in Drake Street!\"\n\n \"Well, well, this is a sight, to be sure!\" exclaimed the other.  \"In the old Drake House, and underneath the Drake Elm! Who would have thought it? Old Maid Drake is setting up a cent-shop!\"\n\n \"Will she make it go, think you, Dixey?\" said his friend.  \"I don't call it a very good stand.  There's another shop just round the corner.\"\n\n \"Make it go!\" cried Dixey, with a most contemptuous expression, as if the very idea were impossible to be conceived.  \"Not a bit of it! Why, her face--I've seen it, for I dug her garden for her one year--her face is enough to frighten the Old Nick himself, if he had ever so great a mind to trade with her.  People can't stand it, I tell you! She scowls dreadfully, reason or none, out of pure ugliness of temper.\"\n\n \"Well, that's not so much matter,\" remarked the other man.  \"These sour-tempered folks are mostly handy at business, and know pretty well what they are about.  But, as you say, I don't think she'll do much. This business of keeping cent-shops is overdone, like all other kinds of trade, handicraft, and bodily labor.  I know it, to my cost! My wife kept a cent-shop three months, and lost five dollars on her outlay.\"\n\n \"Poor business!\" responded Dixey, in a tone as if he were shaking his head,--\"poor business.\"\n\n For some reason or other, not very easy to analyze, there had hardly been so bitter a pang in all her previous misery about the matter as what thrilled Liv's heart on overhearing the above conversation. The testimony in regard to her scowl was frightfully important; it seemed to hold up her image wholly relieved from the false light of her self-partialities, and so hideous that she dared not look at it.  She was absurdly hurt, moreover, by the slight and idle effect that her setting up shop--an event of such breathless interest to herself--appeared to have upon the public, of which these two men were the nearest representatives.  A glance; a passing word or two; a coarse laugh; and she was doubtless forgotten before they turned the corner. They cared nothing for her dignity, and just as little for her degradation.  Then, also, the augury of ill-success, uttered from the sure wisdom of experience, fell upon her half-dead hope like a clod into a grave.  The man's wife had already tried the same experiment, and failed! How could the born lady--the recluse of half a lifetime, utterly unpractised in the world, at sixty years of age,--how could she ever dream of succeeding, when the hard, vulgar, keen, busy, hackneyed New England woman had lost five dollars on her little outlay! Success presented itself as an impossibility, and the hope of it as a wild hallucination.\n\n Some malevolent spirit, doing his utmost to drive Liv mad, unrolled before her imagination a kind of panorama, representing the great thoroughfare of a city all astir with customers.  So many and so magnificent shops as there were! Groceries, toy-shops, drygoods stores, with their immense panes of plate-glass, their gorgeous fixtures, their vast and complete assortments of merchandise, in which fortunes had been invested; and those noble mirrors at the farther end of each establishment, doubling all this wealth by a brightly burnished vista of unrealities! On one side of the street this splendid bazaar, with a multitude of perfumed and glossy salesmen, smirking, smiling, bowing, and measuring out the goods.  On the other, the dusky old the children's shop, with the antiquated shop-window under its projecting story, and Liv herself, in a gown of rusty black silk, behind the counter, scowling at the world as it went by!  This mighty contrast thrust itself forward as a fair expression of the odds against which she was to begin her struggle for a subsistence.  Success? Preposterous! She would never think of it again! The house might just as well be buried in an eternal fog while all other houses had the sunshine on them; for not a foot would ever cross the threshold, nor a hand so much as try the door!\n\n But, at this instant, the shop-bell, right over her head, tinkled as if it were bewitched.  The old gentlewoman's heart seemed to be attached to the same steel spring, for it went through a series of sharp jerks, in unison with the sound.  The door was thrust open, although no human form was perceptible on the other side of the half-window.  Liv, nevertheless, stood at a gaze, with her hands clasped, looking very much as if she had summoned up an evil spirit, and were afraid, yet resolved, to hazard the encounter.\n\n \"Heaven help me!\" she groaned mentally.  \"Now is my hour of need!\"\n\n The door, which moved with difficulty on its creaking and rusty hinges, being forced quite open, a square and sturdy little urchin became apparent, with cheeks as red as an apple.  He was clad rather shabbily (but, as it seemed, more owing to his mother's carelessness than his father's poverty), in a blue apron, very wide and short trousers, shoes somewhat out at the toes, and a chip hat, with the frizzles of his curly hair sticking through its crevices.  A book and a small slate, under his arm, indicated that he was on his way to school.  He stared at Liv a moment, as an elder customer than himself would have been likely enough to do, not knowing what to make of the tragic attitude and queer scowl wherewith she regarded him.\n\n \"Well, child,\" said she, taking heart at sight of a personage so little formidable,--\"well, my child, what did you wish for?\"\n\n \"That Jim Crow there in the window,\" answered the urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his notice, as he loitered along to school; \"the one that has not a broken foot.\"\n\n So Liv put forth her lank arm, and, taking the effigy from the shop-window, delivered it to her first customer.\n\n \"No matter for the money,\" said she, giving him a little push towards the door; for her old gentility was contumaciously squeamish at sight of the copper coin, and, besides, it seemed such pitiful meanness to take the child's pocket-money in exchange for a bit of stale gingerbread.  \"No matter for the cent.  You are welcome to Jim Crow.\"\n\n The child, staring with round eyes at this instance of liberality, wholly unprecedented in his large experience of cent-shops, took the man of gingerbread, and quitted the premises.  No sooner had he reached the sidewalk (little cannibal that he was!) than Jim Crow's head was in his mouth.  As he had not been careful to shut the door, Liv was at the pains of closing it after him, with a pettish ejaculation or two about the troublesomeness of young people, and particularly of small boys.  She had just placed another representative of the renowned Jim Crow at the window, when again the shop-bell tinkled clamorously, and again the door being thrust open, with its characteristic jerk and jar, disclosed the same sturdy little urchin who, precisely two minutes ago, had made his exit.  The crumbs and discoloration of the cannibal feast, as yet hardly consummated, were exceedingly visible about his mouth.\n\n \"What is it now, child?\" asked the maiden lady rather impatiently; \"did you come back to shut the door?\"\n\n \"No,\" answered the urchin, pointing to the figure that had just been put up; \"I want that other Jim Crow.\"\n\n \"Well, here it is for you,\" said Liv, reaching it down; but recognizing that this pertinacious customer would not quit her on any other terms, so long as she had a gingerbread figure in her shop, she partly drew back her extended hand, \"Where is the cent?\"\n\n The little boy had the cent ready, but, like a true-born Yankee, would have preferred the better bargain to the worse.  Looking somewhat chagrined, he put the coin into Liv's hand, and departed, sending the second Jim Crow in quest of the former one.  The new shop-keeper dropped the first solid result of her commercial enterprise into the till.  It was done! The sordid stain of that copper coin could never be washed away from her palm.  The little schoolboy, aided by the impish figure of the negro dancer, had wrought an irreparable ruin.  The structure of ancient aristocracy had been demolished by him, even as if his childish gripe had torn down the seven-gabled mansion.  Now let Liv turn the old Drake portraits with their faces to the wall, and take the map of her Eastern territory to kindle the kitchen fire, and blow up the flame with the empty breath of her ancestral traditions! What had she to do with ancestry? Nothing; no more than with posterity! No lady, now, but simply Liv Drake, a forlorn old maid, and keeper of a cent-shop!\n\n Nevertheless, even while she paraded these ideas somewhat ostentatiously through her mind, it is altogether surprising what a calmness had come over her.  The anxiety and misgivings which had tormented her, whether asleep or in melancholy day-dreams, ever since her project began to take an aspect of solidity, had now vanished quite away.  She felt the novelty of her position, indeed, but no longer with disturbance or affright.  Now and then, there came a thrill of almost youthful enjoyment.  It was the invigorating breath of a fresh outward atmosphere, after the long torpor and monotonous seclusion of her life. So wholesome is effort! So miraculous the strength that we do not know of!  The healthiest glow that Liv had known for years had come now in the dreaded crisis, when, for the first time, she had put forth her hand to help herself.  The little circlet of the schoolboy's copper coin--dim and lustreless though it was, with the small services which it had been doing here and there about the world--had proved a talisman, fragrant with good, and deserving to be set in gold and worn next her heart.  It was as potent, and perhaps endowed with the same kind of efficacy, as a galvanic ring! Liv, at all events, was indebted to its subtile operation both in body and spirit; so much the more, as it inspired her with energy to get some breakfast, at which, still the better to keep up her courage, she allowed herself an extra spoonful in her infusion of black tea.\n\n Her introductory day of shop-keeping did not run on, however, without many and serious interruptions of this mood of cheerful vigor.  As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers.  In the case of our old gentlewoman, after the excitement of new effort had subsided, the despondency of her whole life threatened, ever and anon, to return.  It was like the heavy mass of clouds which we may often see obscuring the sky, and making a gray twilight everywhere, until, towards nightfall, it yields temporarily to a glimpse of sunshine.  But, always, the envious cloud strives to gather again across the streak of celestial azure.\n\n Customers came in, as the forenoon advanced, but rather slowly; in some cases, too, it must be owned, with little satisfaction either to themselves or Miss Liv; nor, on the whole, with an aggregate of very rich emolument to the till.  A little girl, sent by her mother to match a skein of cotton thread, of a peculiar hue, took one that the near-sighted old lady pronounced extremely like, but soon came running back, with a blunt and cross message, that it would not do, and, besides, was very rotten! Then, there was a pale, care-wrinkled woman, not old but haggard, and already with streaks of gray among her hair, like silver ribbons; one of those women, naturally delicate, whom you at once recognize as worn to death by a brute--probably a drunken brute--of a husband, and at least nine children.  She wanted a few pounds of flour, and offered the money, which the decayed gentlewoman silently rejected, and gave the poor soul better measure than if she had taken it.  Shortly afterwards, a man in a blue cotton frock, much soiled, came in and bought a pipe, filling the whole shop, meanwhile, with the hot odor of strong drink, not only exhaled in the torrid atmosphere of his breath, but oozing out of his entire system, like an inflammable gas.  It was impressed on Liv's mind that this was the husband of the care-wrinkled woman.  He asked for a paper of tobacco; and as she had neglected to provide herself with the article, her brutal customer dashed down his newly-bought pipe and left the shop, muttering some unintelligible words, which had the tone and bitterness of a curse.  Hereupon Liv threw up her eyes, unintentionally scowling in the face of Providence!\n\n No less than five persons, during the forenoon, inquired for ginger-beer, or root-beer, or any drink of a similar brewage, and, obtaining nothing of the kind, went off in an exceedingly bad humor. Three of them left the door open, and the other two pulled it so spitefully in going out that the little bell played the very deuce with Liv's nerves.  A round, bustling, fire-ruddy housewife of the neighborhood burst breathless into the shop, fiercely demanding yeast; and when the poor gentlewoman, with her cold shyness of manner, gave her hot customer to understand that she did not keep the article, this very capable housewife took upon herself to administer a regular rebuke.\n\n \"A cent-shop, and no yeast!\" quoth she; \"That will never do!  Who ever heard of such a thing? Your loaf will never rise, no more than mine will to-day.  You had better shut up shop at once.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Liv, heaving a deep sigh, \"perhaps I had!\"\n\n Several times, moreover, besides the above instance, her lady-like sensibilities were seriously infringed upon by the familiar, if not rude, tone with which people addressed her.  They evidently considered themselves not merely her equals, but her patrons and superiors.  Now, Liv had unconsciously flattered herself with the idea that there would be a gleam or halo, of some kind or other, about her person, which would insure an obeisance to her sterling gentility, or, at least, a tacit recognition of it.  On the other hand, nothing tortured her more intolerably than when this recognition was too prominently expressed.  To one or two rather officious offers of sympathy, her responses were little short of acrimonious; and, we regret to say, Liv was thrown into a positively unchristian state of mind by the suspicion that one of her customers was drawn to the shop, not by any real need of the article which she pretended to seek, but by a wicked wish to stare at her.  The vulgar creature was determined to see for herself what sort of a figure a mildewed piece of aristocracy, after wasting all the bloom and much of the decline of her life apart from the world, would cut behind a counter.  In this particular case, however mechanical and innocuous it might be at other times, Liv's contortion of brow served her in good stead.\n\n \"I never was so frightened in my life!\" said the curious customer, in describing the incident to one of her acquaintances.  \"She's a real old vixen, take my word of it! She says little, to be sure; but if you could only see the mischief in her eye!\"\n\n On the whole, therefore, her new experience led our decayed gentlewoman to very disagreeable conclusions as to the temper and manners of what she termed the lower classes, whom heretofore she had looked down upon with a gentle and pitying complaisance, as herself occupying a sphere of unquestionable superiority.  But, unfortunately, she had likewise to struggle against a bitter emotion of a directly opposite kind:  a sentiment of virulence, we mean, towards the idle aristocracy to which it had so recently been her pride to belong.  When a lady, in a delicate and costly summer garb, with a floating veil and gracefully swaying gown, and, altogether, an ethereal lightness that made you look at her beautifully slippered feet, to see whether she trod on the dust or floated in the air,--when such a vision happened to pass through this retired street, leaving it tenderly and delusively fragrant with her passage, as if a bouquet of tea-roses had been borne along,--then again, it is to be feared, old Liv's scowl could no longer vindicate itself entirely on the plea of near-sightedness.\n\n \"For what end,\" thought she, giving vent to that feeling of hostility which is the only real abasement of the poor in presence of the rich,--\"for what good end, in the wisdom of Providence, does that woman live?  Must the whole world toil, that the palms of her hands may be kept white and delicate?\"\n\n Then, ashamed and penitent, she hid her face.\n\n \"May God forgive me!\" said she.\n\n Doubtless, God did forgive her.  But, taking the inward and outward history of the first half-day into consideration, Liv began to fear that the shop would prove her ruin in a moral and religious point of view, without contributing very essentially towards even her temporal welfare.\n\n\n\n\n\n TOWARDS noon, Liv saw an elderly gentleman, large and portly, and of remarkably dignified demeanor, passing slowly along on the opposite side of the white and dusty street.  On coming within the shadow of the Drake Elm, he stopt, and (taking off his hat, meanwhile, to wipe the perspiration from his brow) seemed to scrutinize, with especial interest, the dilapidated and rusty-visaged the children's shop. He himself, in a very different style, was as well worth looking at as the house.  No better model need be sought, nor could have been found, of a very high order of respectability, which, by some indescribable magic, not merely expressed itself in his looks and gestures, but even governed the fashion of his garments, and rendered them all proper and essential to the man.  Without appearing to differ, in any tangible way, from other people's clothes, there was yet a wide and rich gravity about them that must have been a characteristic of the wearer, since it could not be defined as pertaining either to the cut or material.  His gold-headed cane, too,--a serviceable staff, of dark polished wood,--had similar traits, and, had it chosen to take a walk by itself, would have been recognized anywhere as a tolerably adequate representative of its master.  This character--which showed itself so strikingly in everything about him, and the effect of which we seek to convey to the reader--went no deeper than his station, habits of life, and external circumstances.  One perceived him to be a personage of marked influence and authority; and, especially, you could feel just as certain that he was opulent as if he had exhibited his bank account, or as if you had seen him touching the twigs of the Drake Elm, and, Midas-like, transmuting them to gold.\n\n In his youth, he had probably been considered a handsome man; at his present age, his brow was too heavy, his temples too bare, his remaining hair too gray, his eye too cold, his lips too closely compressed, to bear any relation to mere personal beauty.  He would have made a good and massive portrait; better now, perhaps, than at any previous period of his life, although his look might grow positively harsh in the process of being fixed upon the canvas.  The artist would have found it desirable to study his face, and prove its capacity for varied expression; to darken it with a frown,--to kindle it up with a smile.\n\n While the elderly gentleman stood looking at the Drake House, both the frown and the smile passed successively over his countenance.  His eye rested on the shop-window, and putting up a pair of gold-bowed spectacles, which he held in his hand, he minutely surveyed Liv's little arrangement of toys and commodities.  At first it seemed not to please him,--nay, to cause him exceeding displeasure,--and yet, the very next moment, he smiled.  While the latter expression was yet on his lips, he caught a glimpse of Liv, who had involuntarily bent forward to the window; and then the smile changed from acrid and disagreeable to the sunniest complacency and benevolence.  He bowed, with a happy mixture of dignity and courteous kindliness, and pursued his way.\n\n \"There he is!\" said Liv to herself, gulping down a very bitter emotion, and, since she could not rid herself of it, trying to drive it back into her heart.  \"What does he think of it, I wonder? Does it please him? Ah! he is looking back!\"\n\n The gentleman had paused in the street, and turned himself half about, still with his eyes fixed on the shop-window.  In fact, he wheeled wholly round, and commenced a step or two, as if designing to enter the shop; but, as it chanced, his purpose was anticipated by Liv's first customer, the little cannibal of Jim Crow, who, staring up at the window, was irresistibly attracted by an elephant of gingerbread.  What a grand appetite had this small urchin!--Two Jim Crows immediately after breakfast!--and now an elephant, as a preliminary whet before dinner.  By the time this latter purchase was completed, the elderly gentleman had resumed his way, and turned the street corner.\n\n \"Take it as you like, Cousin Etienne,\"  muttered the maiden lady, as she drew back, after cautiously thrusting out her head, and looking up and down the street,--\"Take it as you like! You have seen my little shop-window.  Well!--what have you to say?--is not the Drake House my own, while I'm alive?\"\n\n After this incident, Liv retreated to the back parlor, where she at first caught up a half-finished stocking, and began knitting at it with nervous and irregular jerks; but quickly finding herself at odds with the stitches, she threw it aside, and walked hurriedly about the room. At length she paused before the portrait of the stern old Puritan, her ancestor, and the founder of the house. In one sense, this picture had almost faded into the canvas, and hidden itself behind the duskiness of age; in another, she could not but fancy that it had been growing more prominent and strikingly expressive, ever since her earliest familiarity with it as a child. For, while the physical outline and substance were darkening away from the beholder's eye, the bold, hard, and, at the same time, indirect character of the man seemed to be brought out in a kind of spiritual relief. Such an effect may occasionally be observed in pictures of antique date. They acquire a look which an artist (if he have anything like the complacency of artists nowadays) would never dream of presenting to a patron as his own characteristic expression, but which, nevertheless, we at once recognize as reflecting the unlovely truth of a human soul.  In such cases, the painter's deep conception of his subject's inward traits has wrought itself into the essence of the picture, and is seen after the superficial coloring has been rubbed off by time.\n\n While gazing at the portrait, Liv trembled under its eye.  Her hereditary reverence made her afraid to judge the character of the original so harshly as a perception of the truth compelled her to do. But still she gazed, because the face of the picture enabled her--at least, she fancied so--to read more accurately, and to a greater depth, the face which she had just seen in the street.\n\n \"This is the very man!\" murmured she to herself.  \"Let Etienne Drake smile as he will, there is that look beneath! Put on him a skull-cap, and a band, and a black cloak, and a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other,--then let Etienne smile as he might,--nobody would doubt that it was the old Drake come again.  He has proved himself the very man to build up a new house!  Perhaps, too, to draw down a new curse!\"\n\n Thus did Liv bewilder herself with these fantasies of the old time.  She had dwelt too much alone,--too long in the Drake House,--until her very brain was impregnated with the dry-rot of its timbers.  She needed a walk along the noonday street to keep her sane.\n\n By the spell of contrast, another portrait rose up before her, painted with more daring flattery than any artist would have ventured upon, but yet so delicately touched that the likeness remained perfect. Malbone's miniature, though from the same original, was far inferior to Liv's air-drawn picture, at which affection and sorrowful remembrance wrought together.  Soft, mildly, and cheerfully contemplative, with full, red lips, just on the verge of a smile, which the eyes seemed to herald by a gentle kindling-up of their orbs! Feminine traits, moulded inseparably with those of the other sex! The miniature, likewise, had this last peculiarity; so that you inevitably thought of the original as resembling his mother, and she a lovely and lovable woman, with perhaps some beautiful infirmity of character, that made it all the pleasanter to know and easier to love her.\n\n \"Yes,\" thought Liv, with grief of which it was only the more tolerable portion that welled up from her heart to her eyelids, \"they persecuted his mother in him! He never was a Drake!\"\n\n But here the shop-bell rang; it was like a sound from a remote distance,--so far had Liv descended into the sepulchral depths of her reminiscences.  On entering the shop, she found an old man there, a humble resident of Drake Street, and whom, for a great many years past, she had suffered to be a kind of familiar of the house.  He was an immemorial personage, who seemed always to have had a white head and wrinkles, and never to have possessed but a single tooth, and that a half-decayed one, in the front of the upper jaw.  Well advanced as Liv was, she could not remember when Uncle Zebulon, as the neighborhood called him, had not gone up and down the street, stooping a little and drawing his feet heavily over the gravel or pavement.  But still there was something tough and vigorous about him, that not only kept him in daily breath, but enabled him to fill a place which would else have been vacant in the apparently crowded world.  To go of errands with his slow and shuffling gait, which made you doubt how he ever was to arrive anywhere; to saw a small household's foot or two of firewood, or knock to pieces an old barrel, or split up a pine board for kindling-stuff; in summer, to dig the few yards of garden ground appertaining to a low-rented tenement, and share the produce of his labor at the halves; in winter, to shovel away the snow from the sidewalk, or open paths to the woodshed, or along the clothes-line; such were some of the essential offices which Uncle Zebulon performed among at least a score of families.  Within that circle, he claimed the same sort of privilege, and probably felt as much warmth of interest, as a clergyman does in the range of his parishioners.  Not that he laid claim to the tithe pig; but, as an analogous mode of reverence, he went his rounds, every morning, to gather up the crumbs of the table and overflowings of the dinner-pot, as food for a pig of his own.\n\n In his younger days--for, after all, there was a dim tradition that he had been, not young, but younger--Uncle Zebulon was commonly regarded as rather deficient, than otherwise, in his wits.  In truth he had virtually pleaded guilty to the charge, by scarcely aiming at such success as other men seek, and by taking only that humble and modest part in the intercourse of life which belongs to the alleged deficiency.  But now, in his extreme old age,--whether it were that his long and hard experience had actually brightened him, or that his decaying judgment rendered him less capable of fairly measuring himself,--the venerable man made pretensions to no little wisdom, and really enjoyed the credit of it.  There was likewise, at times, a vein of something like poetry in him; it was the moss or wall-flower of his mind in its small dilapidation, and gave a charm to what might have been vulgar and commonplace in his earlier and middle life.  Liv had a regard for him, because his name was ancient in the town and had formerly been respectable.  It was a still better reason for awarding him a species of familiar reverence that Uncle Zebulon was himself the most ancient existence, whether of man or thing, in Drake Street, except the the children's shop, and perhaps the elm that overshadowed it.\n\n This patriarch now presented himself before Liv, clad in an old blue coat, which had a fashionable air, and must have accrued to him from the cast-off wardrobe of some dashing clerk.  As for his trousers, they were of tow-cloth, very short in the legs, and bagging down strangely in the rear, but yet having a suitableness to his figure which his other garment entirely lacked.  His hat had relation to no other part of his dress, and but very little to the head that wore it. Thus Uncle Zebulon was a miscellaneous old gentleman, partly himself, but, in good measure, somebody else; patched together, too, of different epochs; an epitome of times and fashions.\n\n \"So, you have really begun trade,\" said he,--\"really begun trade! Well, I'm glad to see it.  Young people should never live idle in the world, nor old ones neither, unless when the rheumatize gets hold of them.  It has given me warning already; and in two or three years longer, I shall think of putting aside business and retiring to my farm.  That's yonder,--the great brick house, you know,--the workhouse, most folks call it; but I mean to do my work first, and go there to be idle and enjoy myself.  And I'm glad to see you beginning to do your work, Miss Liv!\"\n\n \"Thank you, Uncle Zebulon\" said Liv, smiling; for she always felt kindly towards the simple and talkative old man.  Had he been an old woman, she might probably have repelled the freedom, which she now took in good part.  \"It is time for me to begin work, indeed! Or, to speak the truth, I have just begun when I ought to be giving it up.\"\n\n \"Oh, never say that, Miss Liv!\" answered the old man.  \"You are a young woman yet.  Why, I hardly thought myself younger than I am now, it seems so little while ago since I used to see you playing about the door of the old house, quite a small child! Oftener, though, you used to be sitting at the threshold, and looking gravely into the street; for you had always a grave kind of way with you,--a grown-up air, when you were only the height of my knee.  It seems as if I saw you now; and your grandfather with his red cloak, and his white wig, and his cocked hat, and his cane, coming out of the house, and stepping so grandly up the street! Those old gentlemen that grew up before the Revolution used to put on grand airs.  In my young days, the great man of the town was commonly called King; and his wife, not Queen to be sure, but Lady. Nowadays, a man would not dare to be called King; and if he feels himself a little above common folks, he only stoops so much the lower to them.  I met your cousin, the Judge, ten minutes ago; and, in my old tow-cloth trousers, as you see, the Judge raised his hat to me, I do believe! At any rate, the Judge bowed and smiled!\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Liv, with something bitter stealing unawares into her tone; \"my cousin Etienne is thought to have a very pleasant smile!\"\n\n \"And so he has\" replied Uncle Zebulon.  \"And that's rather remarkable in a Drake; for, begging your pardon, Miss Liv, they never had the name of being an easy and agreeable set of folks.  There was no getting close to them.  But Now, Miss Liv, if an old man may be bold to ask, why don't Judge Drake, with his great means, step forward, and tell his cousin to shut up her little shop at once? It's for your credit to be doing something, but it's not for the Judge's credit to let you!\"\n\n \"We won't talk of this, if you please, Uncle Zebulon,\" said Liv coldly.  \"I ought to say, however, that, if I choose to earn bread for myself, it is not Judge Drake's fault.  Neither will he deserve the blame,\" added she more kindly, remembering Uncle Zebulon's privileges of age and humble familiarity, \"if I should, by and by, find it convenient to retire with you to your farm.\"\n\n \"And it's no bad place, either, that farm of mine!\" cried the old man cheerily, as if there were something positively delightful in the prospect.  \"No bad place is the great brick farm-house, especially for them that will find a good many old cronies there, as will be my case. I quite long to be among them, sometimes, of the winter evenings; for it is but dull business for a lonesome elderly man, like me, to be nodding, by the hour together, with no company but his air-tight stove. Summer or winter, there's a great deal to be said in favor of my farm! And, take it in the autumn, what can be pleasanter than to spend a whole day on the sunny side of a barn or a wood-pile, chatting with somebody as old as one's self; or, perhaps, idling away the time with a natural-born simpleton, who knows how to be idle, because even our busy Yankees never have found out how to put him to any use?  Upon my word, Miss Liv, I doubt whether I've ever been so comfortable as I mean to be at my farm, which most folks call the workhouse.  But you,--you're a young woman yet,--you never need go there! Something still better will turn up for you.  I'm sure of it!\"\n\n Liv fancied that there was something peculiar in her venerable friend's look and tone; insomuch, that she gazed into his face with considerable earnestness, endeavoring to discover what secret meaning, if any, might be lurking there.  Individuals whose affairs have reached an utterly desperate crisis almost invariably keep themselves alive with hopes, so much the more airily magnificent as they have the less of solid matter within their grasp whereof to mould any judicious and moderate expectation of good.  Thus, all the while Liv was perfecting the scheme of her little shop, she had cherished an unacknowledged idea that some harlequin trick of fortune would intervene in her favor.  For example, an uncle--who had sailed for India fifty years before, and never been heard of since--might yet return, and adopt her to be the comfort of his very extreme and decrepit age, and adorn her with pearls, diamonds, and Oriental shawls and turbans, and make her the ultimate heiress of his unreckonable riches.  Or the member of Parliament, now at the head of the English branch of the family,--with which the elder stock, on this side of the Atlantic, had held little or no intercourse for the last two centuries,--this eminent gentleman might invite Liv to quit the ruinous the children's shop, and come over to dwell with her kindred at Drake Hall.  But, for reasons the most imperative, she could not yield to his request.  It was more probable, therefore, that the descendants of a Drake who had emigrated to Virginia, in some past generation, and became a great planter there,--hearing of Liv's destitution, and impelled by the splendid generosity of character with which their Virginian mixture must have enriched the New England blood,--would send her a remittance of a thousand dollars, with a hint of repeating the favor annually.  Or,--and, surely, anything so undeniably just could not be beyond the limits of reasonable anticipation,--the great claim to the heritage of Waldo County might finally be decided in favor of the Drakes; so that, instead of keeping a cent-shop, Liv would build a palace, and look down from its highest tower on hill, dale, forest, field, and town, as her own share of the ancestral territory.\n\n These were some of the fantasies which she had long dreamed about; and, aided by these, Uncle Zebulon's casual attempt at encouragement kindled a strange festal glory in the poor, bare, melancholy chambers of her brain, as if that inner world were suddenly lighted up with gas.  But either he knew nothing of her castles in the air,--as how should he?--or else her earnest scowl disturbed his recollection, as it might a more courageous man's.  Instead of pursuing any weightier topic, Uncle Zebulon was pleased to favor Liv with some sage counsel in her shop-keeping capacity.\n\n \"Give no credit!\"--these were some of his golden maxims,--\"Never take paper-money.  Look well to your change! Ring the silver on the four-pound weight! Shove back all English half-pence and base copper tokens, such as are very plenty about town! At your leisure hours, knit children's woollen socks and mittens! Brew your own yeast, and make your own ginger-beer!\"\n\n And while Liv was doing her utmost to digest the hard little pellets of his already uttered wisdom, he gave vent to his final, and what he declared to be his all-important advice, as follows:--\n\n \"Put on a bright face for your customers, and smile pleasantly as you hand them what they ask for! A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.\"\n\n To this last apothegm poor Liv responded with a sigh so deep and heavy that it almost rustled Uncle Zebulon quite away, like a withered leaf,--as he was,--before an autumnal gale.  Recovering himself, however, he bent forward, and, with a good deal of feeling in his ancient visage, beckoned her nearer to him.\n\n \"When do you expect him home?\" whispered he.\n\n \"Whom do you mean?\" asked Liv, turning pale.\n\n \"Ah!--You don't love to talk about it,\" said Uncle Zebulon.  \"Well, well! we'll say no more, though there's word of it all over town.  I remember him, Miss Liv, before he could run alone!\"\n\n During the remainder of the day, poor Liv acquitted herself even less creditably, as a shop-keeper, than in her earlier efforts.  She appeared to be walking in a dream; or, more truly, the vivid life and reality assumed by her emotions made all outward occurrences unsubstantial, like the teasing phantasms of a half-conscious slumber. She still responded, mechanically, to the frequent summons of the shop-bell, and, at the demand of her customers, went prying with vague eyes about the shop, proffering them one article after another, and thrusting aside--perversely, as most of them supposed--the identical thing they asked for.  There is sad confusion, indeed, when the spirit thus flits away into the past, or into the more awful future, or, in any manner, steps across the spaceless boundary betwixt its own region and the actual world; where the body remains to guide itself as best it may, with little more than the mechanism of animal life.  It is like death, without death's quiet privilege,--its freedom from mortal care. Worst of all, when the actual duties are comprised in such petty details as now vexed the brooding soul of the old gentlewoman.  As the animosity of fate would have it, there was a great influx of custom in the course of the afternoon.  Liv blundered to and fro about her small place of business, committing the most unheard-of errors:  now stringing up twelve, and now seven, tallow-candles, instead of ten to the pound; selling ginger for Scotch snuff, pins for needles, and needles for pins; misreckoning her change, sometimes to the public detriment, and much oftener to her own; and thus she went on, doing her utmost to bring chaos back again, until, at the close of the day's labor, to her inexplicable astonishment, she found the money-drawer almost destitute of coin.  After all her painful traffic, the whole proceeds were perhaps half a dozen coppers, and a questionable ninepence which ultimately proved to be copper likewise.\n\n At this price, or at whatever price, she rejoiced that the day had reached its end.  Never before had she had such a sense of the intolerable length of time that creeps between dawn and sunset, and of the miserable irksomeness of having aught to do, and of the better wisdom that it would be to lie down at once, in sullen resignation, and let life, and its toils and vexations, trample over one's prostrate body as they may! Liv's final operation was with the little devourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who now proposed to eat a camel. In her bewilderment, she offered him first a wooden dragoon, and next a handful of marbles; neither of which being adapted to his else omnivorous appetite, she hastily held out her whole remaining stock of natural history in gingerbread, and huddled the small customer out of the shop.  She then muffled the bell in an unfinished stocking, and put up the oaken bar across the door.\n\n During the latter process, an omnibus came to a stand-still under the branches of the elm-tree.  Liv's heart was in her mouth.  Remote and dusky, and with no sunshine on all the intervening space, was that region of the Past whence her only guest might be expected to arrive! Was she to meet him now?\n\n Somebody, at all events, was passing from the farthest interior of the omnibus towards its entrance.   A gentleman alighted; but it was only to offer his hand to a young girl whose slender figure, nowise needing such assistance, now lightly descended the steps, and made an airy little jump from the final one to the sidewalk.  She rewarded her cavalier with a smile, the cheery glow of which was seen reflected on his own face as he reentered the vehicle.  The girl then turned towards the the children's shop, to the door of which, meanwhile,--not the shop-door, but the antique portal,--the omnibus-man had carried a light trunk and a bandbox.  First giving a sharp rap of the old iron knocker, he left his passenger and her luggage at the door-step, and departed.\n\n \"Who can it be?\" thought Liv, who had been screwing her visual organs into the acutest focus of which they were capable.  \"The girl must have mistaken the house.\"  She stole softly into the hall, and, herself invisible, gazed through the dusty side-lights of the portal at the young, blooming, and very cheerful face which presented itself for admittance into the gloomy old mansion.  It was a face to which almost any door would have opened of its own accord.\n\n The young girl, so fresh, so unconventional, and yet so orderly and obedient to common rules, as you at once recognized her to be, was widely in contrast, at that moment, with everything about her.  The sordid and ugly luxuriance of gigantic weeds that grew in the angle of the house, and the heavy projection that overshadowed her, and the time-worn framework of the door,--none of these things belonged to her sphere.  But, even as a ray of sunshine, fall into what dismal place it may, instantaneously creates for itself a propriety in being there, so did it seem altogether fit that the girl should be standing at the threshold.  It was no less evidently proper that the door should swing open to admit her.   The maiden lady herself, sternly inhospitable in her first purposes, soon began to feel that the door ought to be shoved back, and the rusty key be turned in the reluctant lock.\n\n \"Can it be Ruthie?\" questioned she within herself.  \"It must be little Ruthie; for it can be nobody else,--and there is a look of her father about her, too! But what does she want here? And how like a country cousin, to come down upon a poor body in this way, without so much as a day's notice, or asking whether she would be welcome! Well; she must have a night's lodging, I suppose; and to-morrow the child shall go back to her mother.\"\n\n Ruthie, it must be understood, was that one little offshoot of the Drake race to whom we have already referred, as a native of a rural part of New England, where the old fashions and feelings of relationship are still partially kept up.  In her own circle, it was regarded as by no means improper for kinsfolk to visit one another without invitation, or preliminary and ceremonious warning.  Yet, in consideration of Miss Liv's recluse way of life, a letter had actually been written and despatched, conveying information of Ruthie's projected visit.  This epistle, for three or four days past, had been in the pocket of the penny-postman, who, happening to have no other business in Drake Street, had not yet made it convenient to call at the the children's shop.\n\n \"No--she can stay only one night,\" said Liv, unbolting the door. \"If Clara were to find her here, it might disturb him!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n RUTHIE DRAKE slept, on the night of her arrival, in a chamber that looked down on the garden of the old house.  It fronted towards the east, so that at a very seasonable hour a glow of crimson light came flooding through the window, and bathed the dingy ceiling and paper-hangings in its own hue.  There were curtains to Ruthie's bed; a dark, antique canopy, and ponderous festoons of a stuff which had been rich, and even magnificent, in its time; but which now brooded over the girl like a cloud, making a night in that one corner, while elsewhere it was beginning to be day.  The morning light, however, soon stole into the aperture at the foot of the bed, betwixt those faded curtains. Finding the new guest there,--with a bloom on her cheeks like the morning's own, and a gentle stir of departing slumber in her limbs, as when an early breeze moves the foliage,--the dawn kissed her brow.  It was the caress which a dewy maiden--such as the Dawn is, immortally--gives to her sleeping sister, partly from the impulse of irresistible fondness, and partly as a pretty hint that it is time now to unclose her eyes.\n\n At the touch of those lips of light, Ruthie quietly awoke, and, for a moment, did not recognize where she was, nor how those heavy curtains chanced to be festooned around her.  Nothing, indeed, was absolutely plain to her, except that it was now early morning, and that, whatever might happen next, it was proper, first of all, to get up and say her prayers.  She was the more inclined to devotion from the grim aspect of the chamber and its furniture, especially the tall, stiff chairs; one of which stood close by her bedside, and looked as if some old-fashioned personage had been sitting there all night, and had vanished only just in season to escape discovery.\n\n When Ruthie was quite dressed, she peeped out of the window, and saw a rosebush in the garden.  Being a very tall one, and of luxuriant growth, it had been propped up against the side of the house, and was literally covered with a rare and very beautiful species of white rose. A large portion of them, as the girl afterwards discovered, had blight or mildew at their hearts; but, viewed at a fair distance, the whole rosebush looked as if it had been brought from Eden that very summer, together with the mould in which it grew.  The truth was, nevertheless, that it had been planted by Roseanne Drake,--she was Ruthie's great-great-grand-aunt,--in soil which, reckoning only its cultivation as a garden-plat, was now unctuous with nearly two hundred years of vegetable decay.  Growing as they did, however, out of the old earth, the flowers still sent a fresh and sweet incense up to their Creator; nor could it have been the less pure and acceptable because Ruthie's young breath mingled with it, as the fragrance floated past the window. Hastening down the creaking and carpetless staircase, she found her way into the garden, gathered some of the most perfect of the roses, and brought them to her chamber.\n\n Little Ruthie was one of those persons who possess, as their exclusive patrimony, the gift of practical arrangement.  It is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home.  A wild hut of underbrush, tossed together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would acquire the home aspect by one night's lodging of such a woman, and would retain it long after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surrounding shade. No less a portion of such homely witchcraft was requisite to reclaim, as it were, Ruthie's waste, cheerless, and dusky chamber, which had been untenanted so long--except by spiders, and mice, and rats, and ghosts--that it was all overgrown with the desolation which watches to obliterate every trace of man's happier hours.  What was precisely Ruthie's process we find it impossible to say.  She appeared to have no preliminary design, but gave a touch here and another there; brought some articles of furniture to light and dragged others into the shadow; looped up or let down a window-curtain; and, in the course of half an hour, had fully succeeded in throwing a kindly and hospitable smile over the apartment.  No longer ago than the night before, it had resembled nothing so much as the old maid's heart; for there was neither sunshine nor household fire in one nor the other, and, save for ghosts and ghostly reminiscences, not a guest, for many years gone by, had entered the heart or the chamber.\n\n There was still another peculiarity of this inscrutable charm.  The bedchamber, no doubt, was a chamber of very great and varied experience, as a scene of human life:  the joy of bridal nights had throbbed itself away here; new immortals had first drawn earthly breath here; and here old people had died.  But--whether it were the white roses, or whatever the subtile influence might be--a person of delicate instinct would have known at once that it was now a maiden's bedchamber, and had been purified of all former evil and sorrow by her sweet breath and happy thoughts.  Her dreams of the past night, being such cheerful ones, had exorcised the gloom, and now haunted the chamber in its stead.\n\n After arranging matters to her satisfaction, Ruthie emerged from her chamber, with a purpose to descend again into the garden.  Besides the rosebush, she had observed several other species of flowers growing there in a wilderness of neglect, and obstructing one another's development (as is often the parallel case in human society) by their uneducated entanglement and confusion.  At the head of the stairs, however, she met Liv, who, it being still early, invited her into a room which she would probably have called her boudoir, had her education embraced any such French phrase.  It was strewn about with a few old books, and a work-basket, and a dusty writing-desk; and had, on one side, a large black article of furniture, of very strange appearance, which the old gentlewoman told Ruthie was a harpsichord. It looked more like a coffin than anything else; and, indeed,--not having been played upon, or opened, for years,--there must have been a vast deal of dead music in it, stifled for want of air.  Human finger was hardly known to have touched its chords since the days of Roseanne Drake, who had learned the sweet accomplishment of melody in Europe.\n\n Liv bade her young guest sit down, and, herself taking a chair near by, looked as earnestly at Ruthie's trim little figure as if she expected to see right into its springs and motive secrets.\n\n \"Cousin Ruthie,\" said she, at last, \"I really can't see my way clear to keep you with me.\"\n\n These words, however, had not the inhospitable bluntness with which they may strike the reader; for the two relatives, in a talk before bedtime, had arrived at a certain degree of mutual understanding. Liv knew enough to enable her to appreciate the circumstances (resulting from the second marriage of the girl's mother) which made it desirable for Ruthie to establish herself in another home.  Nor did she misinterpret Ruthie's character, and the genial activity pervading it,--one of the most valuable traits of the true New England woman,--which had impelled her forth, as might be said, to seek her fortune, but with a self-respecting purpose to confer as much benefit as she could anywise receive.  As one of her nearest kindred, she had naturally betaken herself to Liv, with no idea of forcing herself on her cousin's protection, but only for a visit of a week or two, which might be indefinitely extended, should it prove for the happiness of both.\n\n To Liv's blunt observation, therefore, Ruthie replied as frankly, and more cheerfully.\n\n \"Dear cousin, I cannot tell how it will be,\" said she.  \"But I really think we may suit one another much better than you suppose.\"\n\n \"You are a nice girl,--I see it plainly,\" continued Liv; \"and it is not any question as to that point which makes me hesitate.  But, Ruthie, this house of mine is but a melancholy place for a young person to be in.  It lets in the wind and rain, and the snow, too, in the garret and upper chambers, in winter-time, but it never lets in the sunshine.  And as for myself, you see what I am,--a dismal and lonesome old woman (for I begin to call myself old, Ruthie), whose temper, I am afraid, is none of the best, and whose spirits are as bad as can be! I cannot make your life pleasant, Cousin Ruthie, neither can I so much as give you bread to eat.\"\n\n \"You will find me a cheerful little body\" answered Ruthie, smiling, and yet with a kind of gentle dignity, \"and I mean to earn my bread.  You know I have not been brought up a Drake.  A girl learns many things in a New England village.\"\n\n \"Ah! Ruthie,\" said Liv, sighing, \"your knowledge would do but little for you here! And then it is a wretched thought that you should fling away your young days in a place like this.  Those cheeks would not be so rosy after a month or two.  Look at my face!\" and, indeed, the contrast was very striking,--\"you see how pale I am! It is my idea that the dust and continual decay of these old houses are unwholesome for the lungs.\"\n\n \"There is the garden,--the flowers to be taken care of,\" observed Ruthie.  \"I should keep myself healthy with exercise in the open air.\"\n\n \"And, after all, child,\" exclaimed Liv, suddenly rising, as if to dismiss the subject, \"it is not for me to say who shall be a guest or inhabitant of the old Drake House.  Its master is coming.\"\n\n \"Do you mean Judge Drake?\" asked Ruthie in surprise.\n\n \"Judge Drake!\" answered her cousin angrily.  \"He will hardly cross the threshold while I live! No, no! But, Ruthie, you shall see the face of him I speak of.\"\n\n She went in quest of the miniature already described, and returned with it in her hand.  Giving it to Ruthie, she watched her features narrowly, and with a certain jealousy as to the mode in which the girl would show herself affected by the picture.\n\n \"How do you like the face?\" asked Liv.\n\n \"It is handsome!--it is very beautiful!\" said Ruthie admiringly.  \"It is as sweet a face as a man's can be, or ought to be.  It has something of a child's expression,--and yet not childish,--only one feels so very kindly towards him! He ought never to suffer anything.  One would bear much for the sake of sparing him toil or sorrow.  Who is it, Cousin Liv?\"\n\n \"Did you never hear,\" whispered her cousin, bending towards her, \"of Clara Drake?\"\n\n \"Never.  I thought there were no Drakes left, except yourself and our cousin Etienne,\" answered Ruthie.  \"And yet I seem to have heard the name of Clara Drake.  Yes!--from my father or my mother; but has he not been a long while dead?\"\n\n \"Well, well, child, perhaps he has!\" said Liv with a sad, hollow laugh; \"but, in old houses like this, you know, dead people are very apt to come back again! We shall see.  And, Cousin Ruthie, since, after all that I have said, your courage does not fail you, we will not part so soon.  You are welcome, my child, for the present, to such a home as your kinswoman can offer you.\"\n\n With this measured, but not exactly cold assurance of a hospitable purpose, Liv kissed her cheek.\n\n They now went below stairs, where Ruthie--not so much assuming the office as attracting it to herself, by the magnetism of innate fitness--took the most active part in preparing breakfast.  The mistress of the house, meanwhile, as is usual with persons of her stiff and unmalleable cast, stood mostly aside; willing to lend her aid, yet conscious that her natural inaptitude would be likely to impede the business in hand.   Ruthie and the fire that boiled the teakettle were equally bright, cheerful, and efficient, in their respective offices. Liv gazed forth from her habitual sluggishness, the necessary result of long solitude, as from another sphere.  She could not help being interested, however, and even amused, at the readiness with which her new inmate adapted herself to the circumstances, and brought the house, moreover, and all its rusty old appliances, into a suitableness for her purposes.  Whatever she did, too, was done without conscious effort, and with frequent outbreaks of song, which were exceedingly pleasant to the ear.  This natural tunefulness made Ruthie seem like a bird in a shadowy tree; or conveyed the idea that the stream of life warbled through her heart as a brook sometimes warbles through a pleasant little dell.  It betokened the cheeriness of an active temperament, finding joy in its activity, and, therefore, rendering it beautiful; it was a New England trait,--the stern old stuff of Puritanism with a gold thread in the web.\n\n Liv brought out some old silver spoons with the family crest upon them, and a china tea-set painted over with grotesque figures of man, bird, and beast, in as grotesque a landscape.  These pictured people were odd humorists, in a world of their own,--a world of vivid brilliancy, so far as color went, and still unfaded, although the teapot and small cups were as ancient as the custom itself of tea-drinking.\n\n \"Your great-great-great-great-grandmother had these cups, when she was married,\" said Liv to Ruthie.  \"She was a Davenport, of a good family.  They were almost the first teacups ever seen in the colony; and if one of them were to be broken, my heart would break with it. But it is nonsense to speak so about a brittle teacup, when I remember what my heart has gone through without breaking.\"\n\n The cups--not having been used, perhaps, since Liv's youth--had contracted no small burden of dust, which Ruthie washed away with so much care and delicacy as to satisfy even the proprietor of this invaluable china.\n\n \"What a nice little housewife you are!\" exclaimed the latter, smiling, and at the same time frowning so prodigiously that the smile was sunshine under a thunder-cloud.  \"Do you do other things as well?   Are you as good at your book as you are at washing teacups?\"\n\n \"Not quite, I am afraid,\" said Ruthie, laughing at the form of Liv's question.  \"But I was schoolmistress for the little children in our district last summer, and might have been so still.\"\n\n \"Ah! 'tis all very well!\" observed the maiden lady, drawing herself up. \"But these things must have come to you with your mother's blood.  I never knew a Drake that had any turn for them.\"\n\n It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts; as was Liv of this native inapplicability, so to speak, of the Drakes to any useful purpose.  She regarded it as an hereditary trait; and so, perhaps, it was, but unfortunately a morbid one, such as is often generated in families that remain long above the surface of society.\n\n Before they left the breakfast-table, the shop-bell rang sharply, and Liv set down the remnant of her final cup of tea, with a look of sallow despair that was truly piteous to behold.  In cases of distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than the first.  We return to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding torture in our limbs.  At all events, Liv had fully satisfied herself of the impossibility of ever becoming wonted to this peevishly obstreperous little bell.  Ring as often as it might, the sound always smote upon her nervous system rudely and suddenly.  And especially now, while, with her crested teaspoons and antique china, she was flattering herself with ideas of gentility, she felt an unspeakable disinclination to confront a customer.\n\n \"Do not trouble yourself, dear cousin!\" cried Ruthie, starting lightly up.  \"I am shop-keeper to-day.\"\n\n \"You, child!\" exclaimed Liv.  \"What can a little country girl know of such matters?\"\n\n \"Oh, I have done all the shopping for the family at our village store,\" said Ruthie.  \"And I have had a table at a fancy fair, and made better sales than anybody.  These things are not to be learnt; they depend upon a knack that comes, I suppose,\" added she, smiling, \"with one's mother's blood.  You shall see that I am as nice a little saleswoman as I am a housewife!\"\n\n The old gentlewoman stole behind Ruthie, and peeped from the passageway into the shop, to note how she would manage her undertaking.  It was a case of some intricacy.  A very ancient woman, in a white short gown and a green petticoat, with a string of gold beads about her neck, and what looked like a nightcap on her head, had brought a quantity of yarn to barter for the commodities of the shop.  She was probably the very last person in town who still kept the time-honored spinning-wheel in constant revolution.  It was worth while to hear the croaking and hollow tones of the old lady, and the pleasant voice of Ruthie, mingling in one twisted thread of talk; and still better to contrast their figures,--so light and bloomy,--so decrepit and dusky,--with only the counter betwixt them, in one sense, but more than threescore years, in another.  As for the bargain, it was wrinkled slyness and craft pitted against native truth and sagacity.\n\n \"Was not that well done?\" asked Ruthie, laughing, when the customer was gone.\n\n \"Nicely done, indeed, child!\" answered Liv.  \"I could not have gone through with it nearly so well.  As you say, it must be a knack that belongs to you on the mother's side.\"\n\n It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons too shy or too awkward to take a due part in the bustling world regard the real actors in life's stirring scenes; so genuine, in fact, that the former are usually fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that these active and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which they choose to deem higher and more important.  Thus, Liv was well content to acknowledge Ruthie's vastly superior gifts as a shop-keeper'--she listened, with compliant ear, to her suggestion of various methods whereby the influx of trade might be increased, and rendered profitable, without a hazardous outlay of capital.  She consented that the village maiden should manufacture yeast, both liquid and in cakes; and should brew a certain kind of beer, nectareous to the palate, and of rare stomachic virtues; and, moreover, should bake and exhibit for sale some little spice-cakes, which whosoever tasted would longingly desire to taste again.  All such proofs of a ready mind and skilful handiwork were highly acceptable to the aristocratic hucksteress, so long as she could murmur to herself with a grim smile, and a half-natural sigh, and a sentiment of mixed wonder, pity, and growing affection:--\n\n \"What a nice little body she is! If she only could be a lady; too--but that's impossible! Ruthie is no Drake.  She takes everything from her mother!\"\n\n As to Ruthie's not being a lady, or whether she were a lady or no, it was a point, perhaps, difficult to decide, but which could hardly have come up for judgment at all in any fair and healthy mind.  Out of New England, it would be impossible to meet with a person combining so many ladylike attributes with so many others that form no necessary (if compatible) part of the character.  She shocked no canon of taste; she was admirably in keeping with herself, and never jarred against surrounding circumstances.  Her figure, to be sure,--so small as to be almost childlike, and so elastic that motion seemed as easy or easier to it than rest, would hardly have suited one's idea of a countess. Neither did her face--with the brown ringlets on either side, and the slightly piquant nose, and the wholesome bloom, and the clear shade of tan, and the half dozen freckles, friendly remembrances of the April sun and breeze--precisely give us a right to call her beautiful.  But there was both lustre and depth in her eyes.  She was very pretty; as graceful as a bird, and graceful much in the same way; as pleasant about the house as a gleam of sunshine falling on the floor through a shadow of twinkling leaves, or as a ray of firelight that dances on the wall while evening is drawing nigh.   Instead of discussing her claim to rank among ladies, it would be preferable to regard Ruthie as the example of feminine grace and availability combined, in a state of society, if there were any such, where ladies did not exist.  There it should be woman's office to move in the midst of practical affairs, and to gild them all, the very homeliest,--were it even the scouring of pots and kettles,--with an atmosphere of loveliness and joy.\n\n Such was the sphere of Ruthie.  To find the born and educated lady, on the other hand, we need look no farther than Liv, our forlorn old maid, in her rustling and rusty silks, with her deeply cherished and ridiculous consciousness of long descent, her shadowy claims to princely territory, and, in the way of accomplishment, her recollections, it may be, of having formerly thrummed on a harpsichord, and walked a minuet, and worked an antique tapestry-stitch on her sampler.  It was a fair parallel between new Plebeianism and old Gentility.\n\n It really seemed as if the battered visage of the the children's shop, black and heavy-browed as it still certainly looked, must have shown a kind of cheerfulness glimmering through its dusky windows as Ruthie passed to and fro in the interior.  Otherwise, it is impossible to explain how the people of the neighborhood so soon became aware of the girl's presence.  There was a great run of custom, setting steadily in, from about ten o' clock until towards noon,--relaxing, somewhat, at dinner-time, but recommencing in the afternoon, and, finally, dying away a half an hour or so before the long day's sunset.  One of the stanchest patrons was little Emmeline Mitchell, the devourer of Jim Crow and the elephant, who to-day signalized his omnivorous prowess by swallowing two dromedaries and a locomotive.  Ruthie laughed, as she summed up her aggregate of sales upon the slate; while Liv, first drawing on a pair of silk gloves, reckoned over the sordid accumulation of copper coin, not without silver intermixed, that had jingled into the till.\n\n \"We must renew our stock, Cousin Liv!\" cried the little saleswoman.  \"The gingerbread figures are all gone, and so are those Dutch wooden milkmaids, and most of our other playthings.  There has been constant inquiry for cheap raisins, and a great cry for whistles, and trumpets, and jew's-harps; and at least a dozen little boys have asked for molasses-candy.  And we must contrive to get a peck of russet apples, late in the season as it is.  But, dear cousin, what an enormous heap of copper!  Positively a copper mountain!\"\n\n \"Well done! well done! well done!\" quoth Uncle Zebulon, who had taken occasion to shuffle in and out of the shop several times in the course of the day.  \"Here's a girl that will never end her days at my farm! Bless my eyes, what a brisk little soul!\"\n\n \"Yes, Ruthie is a nice girl!\" said Liv, with a scowl of austere approbation.  \"But, Uncle Zebulon, you have known the family a great many years.  Can you tell me whether there ever was a Drake whom she takes after?\"\n\n \"I don't believe there ever was,\" answered the venerable man.  \"At any rate, it never was my luck to see her like among them, nor, for that matter, anywhere else.  I've seen a great deal of the world, not only in people's kitchens and back-yards but at the street-corners, and on the wharves, and in other places where my business calls me; and I'm free to say, Miss Liv, that I never knew a human creature do her work so much like one of God's angels as this child Ruthie does!\"\n\n Uncle Zebulon's eulogium, if it appear rather too high-strained for the person and occasion, had, nevertheless, a sense in which it was both subtile and true.  There was a spiritual quality in Ruthie's activity. The life of the long and busy day--spent in occupations that might so easily have taken a squalid and ugly aspect--had been made pleasant, and even lovely, by the spontaneous grace with which these homely duties seemed to bloom out of her character; so that labor, while she dealt with it, had the easy and flexible charm of play.  Angels do not toil, but let their good works grow out of them; and so did Ruthie.\n\n The two relatives--the young maid and the old one--found time before nightfall, in the intervals of trade, to make rapid advances towards affection and confidence.  A recluse, like Liv, usually displays remarkable frankness, and at least temporary affability, on being absolutely cornered, and brought to the point of personal intercourse; like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with, she is ready to bless you when once overcome.\n\n The old gentlewoman took a dreary and proud satisfaction in leading Ruthie from room to room of the house, and recounting the traditions with which, as we may say, the walls were lugubriously frescoed.  She showed the indentations made by the lieutenant-governor's sword-hilt in the door-panels of the apartment where old Raquel Drake, a dead host, had received his affrighted visitors with an awful frown.  The dusky terror of that frown, Liv observed, was thought to be lingering ever since in the passageway.  She bade Ruthie step into one of the tall chairs, and inspect the ancient map of the Drake territory at the eastward.  In a tract of land on which she laid her finger, there existed a silver mine, the locality of which was precisely pointed out in some memoranda of Raquel Drake himself, but only to be made known when the family claim should be recognized by government.  Thus it was for the interest of all New England that the Drakes should have justice done them.  She told, too, how that there was undoubtedly an immense treasure of English guineas hidden somewhere about the house, or in the cellar, or possibly in the garden.\n\n \"If you should happen to find it, Ruthie,\" said Liv, glancing aside at her with a grim yet kindly smile, \"we will tie up the shop-bell for good and all!\"\n\n \"Yes, dear cousin,\" answered Ruthie; \"but, in the mean time, I hear somebody ringing it!\"\n\n When the customer was gone, Liv talked rather vaguely, and at great length, about a certain Roseanne Drake, who had been exceedingly beautiful and accomplished in her lifetime, a hundred years ago.  The fragrance of her rich and delightful character still lingered about the place where she had lived, as a dried rose-bud scents the drawer where it has withered and perished.  This lovely Roseanne had met with some great and mysterious calamity, and had grown thin and white, and gradually faded out of the world.  But, even now, she was supposed to haunt the the children's shop, and, a great many times,--especially when one of the Drakes was to die,--she had been heard playing sadly and beautifully on the harpsichord.  One of these tunes, just as it had sounded from her spiritual touch, had been written down by an amateur of music; it was so exquisitely mournful that nobody, to this day, could bear to hear it played, unless when a great sorrow had made them know the still profounder sweetness of it.\n\n \"Was it the same harpsichord that you showed me?\" inquired Ruthie.\n\n \"The very same,\" said Liv.  \"It was Roseanne Drake's harpsichord. When I was learning music, my father would never let me open it.  So, as I could only play on my teacher's instrument, I have forgotten all my music long ago.\"\n\n Leaving these antique themes, the old lady began to talk about the daguerreotypist, whom, as he seemed to be a well-meaning and orderly young man, and in narrow circumstances, she had permitted to take up his residence in one of the seven children.  But, on seeing more of Mr. Archie, she hardly knew what to make of him.  He had the strangest companions imaginable; men with long beards, and dressed in linen blouses, and other such new-fangled and ill-fitting garments; reformers, temperance lecturers, and all manner of cross-looking philanthropists; community-men, and come-outers, as Liv believed, who acknowledged no law, and ate no solid food, but lived on the scent of other people's cookery, and turned up their noses at the fare.  As for the daguerreotypist, she had read a paragraph in a penny paper, the other day, accusing him of making a speech full of wild and disorganizing matter, at a meeting of his banditti-like associates. For her own part, she had reason to believe that he practised animal magnetism, and, if such things were in fashion nowadays, should be apt to suspect him of studying the Black Art up there in his lonesome chamber.\n\n \"But, dear cousin,\" said Ruthie, \"if the young man is so dangerous, why do you let him stay? If he does nothing worse, he may set the house on fire!\"\n\n \"Why, sometimes,\" answered Liv, \"I have seriously made it a question, whether I ought not to send him away.  But, with all his oddities, he is a quiet kind of a person, and has such a way of taking hold of one's mind, that, without exactly liking him (for I don't know enough of the young man), I should be sorry to lose sight of him entirely.  A woman clings to slight acquaintances when she lives so much alone as I do.\"\n\n \"But if Mr. Archie is a lawless person!\" remonstrated Ruthie, a part of whose essence it was to keep within the limits of law.\n\n \"Oh!\" said Liv carelessly,--for, formal as she was, still, in her life's experience, she had gnashed her teeth against human law,--\"I suppose he has a law of his own!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n AFTER an early tea, the little country-girl strayed into the garden. The enclosure had formerly been very extensive, but was now contracted within small compass, and hemmed about, partly by high wooden fences, and partly by the outbuildings of houses that stood on another street. In its centre was a grass-plat, surrounding a ruinous little structure, which showed just enough of its original design to indicate that it had once been a summer-house.  A hop-vine, springing from last year's root, was beginning to clamber over it, but would be long in covering the roof with its green mantle.  Three of the seven children either fronted or looked sideways, with a dark solemnity of aspect, down into the garden.\n\n The black, rich soil had fed itself with the decay of a long period of time; such as fallen leaves, the petals of flowers, and the stalks and seed--vessels of vagrant and lawless plants, more useful after their death than ever while flaunting in the sun.  The evil of these departed years would naturally have sprung up again, in such rank weeds (symbolic of the transmitted vices of society) as are always prone to root themselves about human dwellings.  Ruthie saw, however, that their growth must have been checked by a degree of careful labor, bestowed daily and systematically on the garden.  The white double rosebush had evidently been propped up anew against the house since the commencement of the season; and a pear-tree and three damson-trees, which, except a row of currant-bushes, constituted the only varieties of fruit, bore marks of the recent amputation of several superfluous or defective limbs.  There were also a few species of antique and hereditary flowers, in no very flourishing condition, but scrupulously weeded; as if some person, either out of love or curiosity, had been anxious to bring them to such perfection as they were capable of attaining.  The remainder of the garden presented a well-selected assortment of esculent vegetables, in a praiseworthy state of advancement.  Summer squashes almost in their golden blossom; cucumbers, now evincing a tendency to spread away from the main stock, and ramble far and wide; two or three rows of string-beans and as many more that were about to festoon themselves on poles; tomatoes, occupying a site so sheltered and sunny that the plants were already gigantic, and promised an early and abundant harvest.\n\n Ruthie wondered whose care and toil it could have been that had planted these vegetables, and kept the soil so clean and orderly.  Not surely her cousin Liv's, who had no taste nor spirits for the lady-like employment of cultivating flowers, and--with her recluse habits, and tendency to shelter herself within the dismal shadow of the house--would hardly have come forth under the speck of open sky to weed and hoe among the fraternity of beans and squashes.\n\n It being her first day of complete estrangement from rural objects, Ruthie found an unexpected charm in this little nook of grass, and foliage, and aristocratic flowers, and plebeian vegetables.  The eye of Heaven seemed to look down into it pleasantly, and with a peculiar smile, as if glad to perceive that nature, elsewhere overwhelmed, and driven out of the dusty town, had here been able to retain a breathing-place.  The spot acquired a somewhat wilder grace, and yet a very gentle one, from the fact that a pair of robins had built their nest in the pear-tree, and were making themselves exceedingly busy and happy in the dark intricacy of its boughs.  Bees, too,--strange to say,--had thought it worth their while to come hither, possibly from the range of hives beside some farm-house miles away.  How many aerial voyages might they have made, in quest of honey, or honey-laden, betwixt dawn and sunset! Yet, late as it now was, there still arose a pleasant hum out of one or two of the squash-blossoms, in the depths of which these bees were plying their golden labor.  There was one other object in the garden which Nature might fairly claim as her inalienable property, in spite of whatever man could do to render it his own.  This was a fountain, set round with a rim of old mossy stones, and paved, in its bed, with what appeared to be a sort of mosaic-work of variously colored pebbles.  The play and slight agitation of the water, in its upward gush, wrought magically with these variegated pebbles, and made a continually shifting apparition of quaint figures, vanishing too suddenly to be definable.  Thence, swelling over the rim of moss-grown stones, the water stole away under the fence, through what we regret to call a gutter, rather than a channel.  Nor must we forget to mention a hen-coop of very reverend antiquity that stood in the farther corner of the garden, not a great way from the fountain.   It now contained only Chanticleer, his two wives, and a solitary chicken.  All of them were pure specimens of a breed which had been transmitted down as an heirloom in the Drake family, and were said, while in their prime, to have attained almost the size of turkeys, and, on the score of delicate flesh, to be fit for a prince's table.  In proof of the authenticity of this legendary renown, Liv could have exhibited the shell of a great egg, which an ostrich need hardly have been ashamed of.  Be that as it might, the hens were now scarcely larger than pigeons, and had a queer, rusty, withered aspect, and a gouty kind of movement, and a sleepy and melancholy tone throughout all the variations of their clucking and cackling.  It was evident that the race had degenerated, like many a noble race besides, in consequence of too strict a watchfulness to keep it pure.  These feathered people had existed too long in their distinct variety; a fact of which the present representatives, judging by their lugubrious deportment, seemed to be aware.  They kept themselves alive, unquestionably, and laid now and then an egg, and hatched a chicken; not for any pleasure of their own, but that the world might not absolutely lose what had once been so admirable a breed of fowls.  The distinguishing mark of the hens was a crest of lamentably scanty growth, in these latter days, but so oddly and wickedly analogous to Liv's turban, that Ruthie--to the poignant distress of her conscience, but inevitably--was led to fancy a general resemblance betwixt these forlorn bipeds and her respectable relative.\n\n The girl ran into the house to get some crumbs of bread, cold potatoes, and other such scraps as were suitable to the accommodating appetite of fowls.  Returning, she gave a peculiar call, which they seemed to recognize.  The chicken crept through the pales of the coop and ran, with some show of liveliness, to her feet; while Chanticleer and the ladies of his household regarded her with queer, sidelong glances, and then croaked one to another, as if communicating their sage opinions of her character.  So wise, as well as antique, was their aspect, as to give color to the idea, not merely that they were the descendants of a time-honored race, but that they had existed, in their individual capacity, ever since the the children's shop was founded, and were somehow mixed up with its destiny.  They were a species of tutelary sprite, or Banshee; although winged and feathered differently from most other guardian angels.\n\n \"Here, you odd little chicken!\" said Ruthie; \"here are some nice crumbs for you!\"\n\n The chicken, hereupon, though almost as venerable in appearance as its mother--possessing, indeed, the whole antiquity of its progenitors in miniature,--mustered vivacity enough to flutter upward and alight on Ruthie's shoulder.\n\n \"That little fowl pays you a high compliment!\" said a voice behind Ruthie.\n\n Turning quickly, she was surprised at sight of a young man, who had found access into the garden by a door opening out of another gable than that whence she had emerged.  He held a hoe in his hand, and, while Ruthie was gone in quest of the crumbs, had begun to busy himself with drawing up fresh earth about the roots of the tomatoes.\n\n \"The chicken really treats you like an old acquaintance,\" continued he in a quiet way, while a smile made his face pleasanter than Ruthie at first fancied it.  \"Those venerable personages in the coop, too, seem very affably disposed.  You are lucky to be in their good graces so soon! They have known me much longer, but never honor me with any familiarity, though hardly a day passes without my bringing them food. Miss Liv, I suppose, will interweave the fact with her other traditions, and set it down that the fowls know you to be a Drake!\"\n\n \"The secret is,\" said Ruthie, smiling, \"that I have learned how to talk with hens and chickens.\"\n\n \"Ah, but these hens,\" answered the young man,--\"these hens of aristocratic lineage would scorn to understand the vulgar language of a barn-yard fowl.  I prefer to think--and so would Miss Liv--that they recognize the family tone.  For you are a Drake?\"\n\n \"My name is Ruthie Drake,\" said the girl, with  a manner of some reserve; for she was aware that her new acquaintance could be no other than the daguerreotypist, of whose lawless propensities the old maid had given her a disagreeable idea.  \"I did not know that my cousin Liv's garden was under another person's care.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Archie, \"I dig, and hoe, and weed, in this black old earth, for the sake of refreshing myself with what little nature and simplicity may be left in it, after men have so long sown and reaped here.  I turn up the earth by way of pastime.  My sober occupation, so far as I have any, is with a lighter material.  In short, I make pictures out of sunshine; and, not to be too much dazzled with my own trade, I have prevailed with Miss Liv to let me lodge in one of these dusky children.  It is like a bandage over one's eyes, to come into it.  But would you like to see a specimen of my productions?\"\n\n \"A daguerreotype likeness, do you mean?\" asked Ruthie with less reserve; for, in spite of prejudice, her own youthfulness sprang forward to meet his.  \"I don't much like pictures of that sort,--they are so hard and stern; besides dodging away from the eye, and trying to escape altogether.  They are conscious of looking very unamiable, I suppose, and therefore hate to be seen.\"\n\n \"If you would permit me,\" said the artist, looking at Ruthie, \"I should like to try whether the daguerreotype can bring out disagreeable traits on a perfectly amiable face.  But there certainly is truth in what you have said.  Most of my likenesses do look unamiable; but the very sufficient reason, I fancy, is, because the originals are so.  There is a wonderful insight in Heaven's broad and simple sunshine.  While we give it credit only for depicting the merest surface, it actually brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even could he detect it.  There is, at least, no flattery in my humble line of art.  Now, here is a likeness which I have taken over and over again, and still with no better result.  Yet the original wears, to common eyes, a very different expression.  It would gratify me to have your judgment on this character.\"\n\n He exhibited a daguerreotype miniature in a morocco case.  Ruthie merely glanced at it, and gave it back.\n\n \"I know the face,\" she replied; \"for its stern eye has been following me about all day.  It is my Puritan ancestor, who hangs yonder in the parlor.  To be sure, you have found some way of copying the portrait without its black velvet cap and gray beard, and have given him a modern coat and satin cravat, instead of his cloak and band.  I don't think him improved by your alterations.\"\n\n \"You would have seen other differences had you looked a little longer,\" said Archie, laughing, yet apparently much struck.  \"I can assure you that this is a modern face, and one which you will very probably meet. Now, the remarkable point is, that the original wears, to the world's eye,--and, for aught I know, to his most intimate friends,--an exceedingly pleasant countenance, indicative of benevolence, openness of heart, sunny good-humor, and other praiseworthy qualities of that cast.  The sun, as you see, tells quite another story, and will not be coaxed out of it, after half a dozen patient attempts on my part.  Here we have the man, sly, subtle, hard, imperious, and, withal, cold as ice.  Look at that eye! Would you like to be at its mercy? At that mouth! Could it ever smile? And yet, if you could only see the benign smile of the original! It is so much the more unfortunate, as he is a public character of some eminence, and the likeness was intended to be engraved.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't wish to see it any more,\" observed Ruthie, turning away her eyes.  \"It is certainly very like the old portrait.  But my cousin Liv has another picture,--a miniature.  If the original is still in the world, I think he might defy the sun to make him look stern and hard.\"\n\n \"You have seen that picture, then!\" exclaimed the artist, with an expression of much interest.  \"I never did, but have a great curiosity to do so.  And you judge favorably of the face?\"\n\n \"There never was a sweeter one,\" said Ruthie.  \"It is almost too soft and gentle for a man's.\"\n\n \"Is there nothing wild in the eye?\" continued Archie, so earnestly that it embarrassed Ruthie, as did also the quiet freedom with which he presumed on their so recent acquaintance.  \"Is there nothing dark or sinister anywhere? Could you not conceive the original to have been guilty of a great crime?\"\n\n \"It is nonsense,\" said Ruthie a little impatiently, \"for us to talk about a picture which you have never seen.  You mistake it for some other.  A crime, indeed! Since you are a friend of my cousin Liv's, you should ask her to show you the picture.\"\n\n \"It will suit my purpose still better to see the original,\" replied the daguerreotypist coolly.  \"As to his character, we need not discuss its points; they have already been settled by a competent tribunal, or one which called itself competent.  But, stay! Do not go yet, if you please! I have a proposition to make you.\"\n\n Ruthie was on the point of retreating, but turned back, with some hesitation; for she did not exactly comprehend his manner, although, on better observation, its feature seemed rather to be lack of ceremony than any approach to offensive rudeness.  There was an odd kind of authority, too, in what he now proceeded to say, rather as if the garden were his own than a place to which he was admitted merely by Liv's courtesy.\n\n \"If agreeable to you,\" he observed, \"it would give me pleasure to turn over these flowers, and those ancient and respectable fowls, to your care.  Coming fresh from country air and occupations, you will soon feel the need of some such out-of-door employment.  My own sphere does not so much lie among flowers.  You can trim and tend them, therefore, as you please; and I will ask only the least trifle of a blossom, now and then, in exchange for all the good, honest kitchen vegetables with which I propose to enrich Miss Liv's table.  So we will be fellow-laborers, somewhat on the community system.\"\n\n Silently, and rather surprised at her own compliance, Ruthie accordingly betook herself to weeding a flower-bed, but busied herself still more with cogitations respecting this young man, with whom she so unexpectedly found herself on terms approaching to familiarity.  She did not altogether like him.  His character perplexed the little country-girl, as it might a more practised observer; for, while the tone of his conversation had generally been playful, the impression left on her mind was that of gravity, and, except as his youth modified it, almost sternness.  She rebelled, as it were, against a certain magnetic element in the artist's nature, which he exercised towards her, possibly without being conscious of it.\n\n After a little while, the twilight, deepened by the shadows of the fruit-trees and the surrounding buildings, threw an obscurity over the garden.\n\n \"There,\" said Archie, \"it is time to give over work! That last stroke of the hoe has cut off a beanstalk.  Good-night, Miss Ruthie Drake! Any bright day, if you will put one of those rosebuds in your hair, and come to my rooms in Central Street, I will seize the purest ray of sunshine, and make a picture of the flower and its wearer.\"  He retired towards his own solitary gable, but turned his head, on reaching the door, and called to Ruthie, with a tone which certainly had laughter in it, yet which seemed to be more than half in earnest.\n\n \"Be careful not to drink at Bowen's well!\" said he.  \"Neither drink nor bathe your face in it!\"\n\n \"Bowen's well!\" answered Ruthie.  \"Is that it with the rim of mossy stones? I have no thought of drinking there,--but why not?\"\n\n \"Oh,\" rejoined the daguerreotypist, \"because, like an old lady's cup of tea, it is water bewitched!\"\n\n He vanished; and Ruthie, lingering a moment, saw a glimmering light, and then the steady beam of a lamp, in a chamber of the gable.  On returning into Liv's apartment of the house, she found the low-studded parlor so dim and dusky that her eyes could not penetrate the interior.  She was indistinctly aware, however, that the gaunt figure of the old gentlewoman was sitting in one of the straight-backed chairs, a little withdrawn from the window, the faint gleam of which showed the blanched paleness of her cheek, turned sideways towards a corner.\n\n \"Shall I light a lamp, Cousin Liv?\" she asked.\n\n \"Do, if you please, my dear child,\" answered Liv.  \"But put it on the table in the corner of the passage.  My eyes are weak; and I can seldom bear the lamplight on them.\"\n\n What an instrument is the human voice! How wonderfully responsive to every emotion of the human soul! In Liv's tone, at that moment, there was a certain rich depth and moisture, as if the words, commonplace as they were, had been steeped in the warmth of her heart. Again, while lighting the lamp in the kitchen, Ruthie fancied that her cousin spoke to her.\n\n \"In a moment, cousin!\" answered the girl.  \"These matches just glimmer, and go out.\"\n\n But, instead of a response from Liv, she seemed to hear the murmur of an unknown voice.  It was strangely indistinct, however, and less like articulate words than an unshaped sound, such as would be the utterance of feeling and sympathy, rather than of the intellect.  So vague was it, that its impression or echo in Ruthie's mind was that of unreality.  She concluded that she must have mistaken some other sound for that of the human voice; or else that it was altogether in her fancy.\n\n She set the lighted lamp in the passage, and again entered the parlor. Liv's form, though its sable outline mingled with the dusk, was now less imperfectly visible.  In the remoter parts of the room, however, its walls being so ill adapted to reflect light, there was nearly the same obscurity as before.\n\n \"Cousin,\" said Ruthie, \"did you speak to me just now?\"\n\n \"No, child!\" replied Liv.\n\n Fewer words than before, but with the same mysterious music in them! Mellow, melancholy, yet not mournful, the tone seemed to gush up out of the deep well of Liv's heart, all steeped in its profoundest emotion.  There was a tremor in it, too, that--as all strong feeling is electric--partly communicated itself to Ruthie.  The girl sat silently for a moment.  But soon, her senses being very acute, she became conscious of an irregular respiration in an obscure corner of the room. Her physical organization, moreover, being at once delicate and healthy, gave her a perception, operating with almost the effect of a spiritual medium, that somebody was near at hand.\n\n \"My dear cousin,\" asked she, overcoming an indefinable reluctance, \"is there not some one in the room with us?\"\n\n \"Ruthie, my dear little girl,\" said Liv, after a moment's pause, \"you were up betimes, and have been busy all day.  Pray go to bed; for I am sure you must need rest.  I will sit in the parlor awhile, and collect my thoughts.  It has been my custom for more years, child, than you have lived!\"  While thus dismissing her, the maiden lady stept forward, kissed Ruthie, and pressed her to her heart, which beat against the girl's bosom with a strong, high, and tumultuous swell. How came there to be so much love in this desolate old heart, that it could afford to well over thus abundantly?\n\n \"Goodnight, cousin,\" said Ruthie, strangely affected by Liv's manner.  \"If you begin to love me, I am glad!\"\n\n She retired to her chamber, but did not soon fall asleep, nor then very profoundly.  At some uncertain period in the depths of night, and, as it were, through the thin veil of a dream, she was conscious of a footstep mounting the stairs heavily, but not with force and decision. The voice of Liv, with a hush through it, was going up along with the footsteps; and, again, responsive to her cousin's voice, Ruthie heard that strange, vague murmur, which might be likened to an indistinct shadow of human utterance.\n\n\n\n\n\n WHEN Ruthie awoke,--which she did with the early twittering of the conjugal couple of robins in the pear-tree,--she heard movements below stairs, and, hastening down, found Liv already in the kitchen. She stood by a window, holding a book in close contiguity to her nose, as if with the hope of gaining an olfactory acquaintance with its contents, since her imperfect vision made it not very easy to read them.  If any volume could have manifested its essential wisdom in the mode suggested, it would certainly have been the one now in Liv's hand; and the kitchen, in such an event, would forthwith have streamed with the fragrance of venison, turkeys, capons, larded partridges, puddings, cakes, and Christmas pies, in all manner of elaborate mixture and concoction.  It was a cookery book, full of innumerable old fashions of English dishes, and illustrated with engravings, which represented the arrangements of the table at such banquets as it might have befitted a nobleman to give in the great hall of his castle.  And, amid these rich and potent devices of the culinary art (not one of which, probably, had been tested, within the memory of any man's grandfather), poor Liv was seeking for some nimble little titbit, which, with what skill she had, and such materials as were at hand, she might toss up for breakfast.\n\n Soon, with a deep sigh, she put aside the savory volume, and inquired of Ruthie whether old Speckle, as she called one of the hens, had laid an egg the preceding day.  Ruthie ran to see, but returned without the expected treasure in her hand.  At that instant, however, the blast of a fish-dealer's conch was heard, announcing his approach along the street.  With energetic raps at the shop-window, Liv summoned the man in, and made purchase of what he warranted as the finest mackerel in his cart, and as fat a one as ever he felt with his finger so early in the season.  Requesting Ruthie to roast some coffee,--which she casually observed was the real Mocha, and so long kept that each of the small berries ought to be worth its weight in gold,--the maiden lady heaped fuel into the vast receptacle of the ancient fireplace in such quantity as soon to drive the lingering dusk out of the kitchen.  The country-girl, willing to give her utmost assistance, proposed to make an Indian cake, after her mother's peculiar method, of easy manufacture, and which she could vouch for as possessing a richness, and, if rightly prepared, a delicacy, unequalled by any other mode of breakfast-cake.  Liv gladly assenting, the kitchen was soon the scene of savory preparation.  Perchance, amid their proper element of smoke, which eddied forth from the ill-constructed chimney, the ghosts of departed cook-maids looked wonderingly on, or peeped down the great breadth of the flue, despising the simplicity of the projected meal, yet ineffectually pining to thrust their shadowy hands into each inchoate dish.  The half-starved rats, at any rate, stole visibly out of their hiding-places, and sat on their hind-legs, snuffing the fumy atmosphere, and wistfully awaiting an opportunity to nibble.\n\n Liv had no natural turn for cookery, and, to say the truth, had fairly incurred her present meagreness by often choosing to go without her dinner rather than be attendant on the rotation of the spit, or ebullition of the pot.  Her zeal over the fire, therefore, was quite an heroic test of sentiment.  It was touching, and positively worthy of tears (if Ruthie, the only spectator, except the rats and ghosts aforesaid, had not been better employed than in shedding them), to see her rake out a bed of fresh and glowing coals, and proceed to broil the mackerel.  Her usually pale cheeks were all ablaze with heat and hurry. She watched the fish with as much tender care and minuteness of attention as if,--we know not how to express it otherwise,--as if her own heart were on the gridiron, and her immortal happiness were involved in its being done precisely to a turn!\n\n Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.  We come to it freshly, in the dewy youth of the day, and when our spiritual and sensual elements are in better accord than at a later period; so that the material delights of the morning meal are capable of being fully enjoyed, without any very grievous reproaches, whether gastric or conscientious, for yielding even a trifle overmuch to the animal department of our nature. The thoughts, too, that run around the ring of familiar guests have a piquancy and mirthfulness, and oftentimes a vivid truth, which more rarely find their way into the elaborate intercourse of dinner. Liv's small and ancient table, supported on its slender and graceful legs, and covered with a cloth of the richest damask, looked worthy to be the scene and centre of one of the cheerfullest of parties.  The vapor of the broiled fish arose like incense from the shrine of a barbarian idol, while the fragrance of the Mocha might have gratified the nostrils of a tutelary Lar, or whatever power has scope over a modern breakfast-table.  Ruthie's Indian cakes were the sweetest offering of all,--in their hue befitting the rustic altars of the innocent and golden age,--or, so brightly yellow were they, resembling some of the bread which was changed to glistening gold when Midas tried to eat it.  The butter must not be forgotten,--butter which Ruthie herself had churned, in her own rural home, and brought it to her cousin as a propitiatory gift,--smelling of clover-blossoms, and diffusing the charm of pastoral scenery through the dark-panelled parlor.  All this, with the quaint gorgeousness of the old china cups and saucers, and the crested spoons, and a silver cream-jug (Liv's only other article of plate, and shaped like the rudest porringer), set out a board at which the stateliest of old Raquel Drake's guests need not have scorned to take his place.  But the Puritan's face scowled down out of the picture, as if nothing on the table pleased his appetite.\n\n By way of contributing what grace she could, Ruthie gathered some roses and a few other flowers, possessing either scent or beauty, and arranged them in a glass pitcher, which, having long ago lost its handle, was so much the fitter for a flower-vase.  The early sunshine--as fresh as that which peeped into Eve's bower while she and Adam sat at breakfast there--came twinkling through the branches of the pear-tree, and fell quite across the table.  All was now ready.  There were chairs and plates for three.  A chair and plate for Liv,--the same for Ruthie,--but what other guest did her cousin look for?\n\n Throughout this preparation there had been a constant tremor in Liv's frame; an agitation so powerful that Ruthie could see the quivering of her gaunt shadow, as thrown by the firelight on the kitchen wall, or by the sunshine on the parlor floor.  Its manifestations were so various, and agreed so little with one another, that the girl knew not what to make of it.  Sometimes it seemed an ecstasy of delight and happiness.  At such moments, Liv would fling out her arms, and infold Ruthie in them, and kiss her cheek as tenderly as ever her mother had; she appeared to do so by an inevitable impulse, and as if her bosom were oppressed with tenderness, of which she must needs pour out a little, in order to gain breathing-room.  The next moment, without any visible cause for the change, her unwonted joy shrank back, appalled, as it were, and clothed itself in mourning; or it ran and hid itself, so to speak, in the dungeon of her heart, where it had long lain chained, while a cold, spectral sorrow took the place of the imprisoned joy, that was afraid to be enfranchised,--a sorrow as black as that was bright.  She often broke into a little, nervous, hysteric laugh, more touching than any tears could be; and forthwith, as if to try which was the most touching, a gush of tears would follow; or perhaps the laughter and tears came both at once, and surrounded our poor Liv, in a moral sense, with a kind of pale, dim rainbow. Towards Ruthie, as we have said, she was affectionate,--far tenderer than ever before, in their brief acquaintance, except for that one kiss on the preceding night,--yet with a continually recurring pettishness and irritability.  She would speak sharply to her; then, throwing aside all the starched reserve of her ordinary manner, ask pardon, and the next instant renew the just-forgiven injury.\n\n At last, when their mutual labor was all finished, she took Ruthie's hand in her own trembling one.\n\n \"Bear with me, my dear child,\" she cried; \"for truly my heart is full to the brim! Bear with me; for I love you, Ruthie, though I speak so roughly.  Think nothing of it, dearest child! By and by, I shall be kind, and only kind!\"\n\n \"My dearest cousin, cannot you tell me what has happened?\" asked Ruthie, with a sunny and tearful sympathy.  \"What is it that moves you so?\"\n\n \"Hush! hush! He is coming!\" whispered Liv, hastily wiping her eyes. \"Let him see you first, Ruthie; for you are young and rosy, and cannot help letting a smile break out whether or no.  He always liked bright faces! And mine is old now, and the tears are hardly dry on it. He never could abide tears.  There; draw the curtain a little, so that the shadow may fall across his side of the table! But let there be a good deal of sunshine, too; for he never was fond of gloom, as some people are.  He has had but little sunshine in his life,--poor Clara,--and, oh, what a black shadow.  Poor, poor Clara!\"\n\n Thus murmuring in an undertone, as if speaking rather to her own heart than to Ruthie, the old gentlewoman stepped on tiptoe about the room, making such arrangements as suggested themselves at the crisis.\n\n Meanwhile there was a step in the passage-way, above stairs.  Ruthie recognized it as the same which had passed upward, as through her dream, in the night-time.  The approaching guest, whoever it might be, appeared to pause at the head of the staircase; he paused twice or thrice in the descent; he paused again at the foot.  Each time, the delay seemed to be without purpose, but rather from a forgetfulness of the purpose which had set him in motion, or as if the person's feet came involuntarily to a stand-still because the motive-power was too feeble to sustain his progress.  Finally, he made a long pause at the threshold of the parlor.  He took hold of the knob of the door; then loosened his grasp without opening it.  Liv, her hands convulsively clasped, stood gazing at the entrance.\n\n \"Dear Cousin Liv, pray don't look so!\" said Ruthie, trembling; for her cousin's emotion, and this mysteriously reluctant step, made her feel as if a ghost were coming into the room.  \"You really frighten me! Is something awful going to happen?\"\n\n \"Hush!\" whispered Liv.  \"Be cheerful! whatever may happen, be nothing but cheerful!\"\n\n The final pause at the threshold proved so long, that Liv, unable to endure the suspense, rushed forward, threw open the door, and led in the stranger by the hand.  At the first glance, Ruthie saw an elderly personage, in an old-fashioned dressing-gown of faded damask, and wearing his gray or almost white hair of an unusual length.  It quite overshadowed his forehead, except when he thrust it back, and stared vaguely about the room.  After a very brief inspection of his face, it was easy to conceive that his footstep must necessarily be such an one as that which, slowly and with as indefinite an aim as a child's first journey across a floor, had just brought him hitherward.  Yet there were no tokens that his physical strength might not have sufficed for a free and determined gait.  It was the spirit of the man that could not walk.  The expression of his countenance--while, notwithstanding it had the light of reason in it--seemed to waver, and glimmer, and nearly to die away, and feebly to recover itself again.  It was like a flame which we see twinkling among half-extinguished embers; we gaze at it more intently than if it were a positive blaze, gushing vividly upward,--more intently, but with a certain impatience, as if it ought either to kindle itself into satisfactory splendor, or be at once extinguished.\n\n For an instant after entering the room, the guest stood still, retaining Liv's hand instinctively, as a child does that of the grown person who guides it.  He saw Ruthie, however, and caught an illumination from her youthful and pleasant aspect, which, indeed, threw a cheerfulness about the parlor, like the circle of reflected brilliancy around the glass vase of flowers that was standing in the sunshine.  He made a salutation, or, to speak nearer the truth, an ill-defined, abortive attempt at curtsy.  Imperfect as it was, however, it conveyed an idea, or, at least, gave a hint, of indescribable grace, such as no practised art of external manners could have attained.  It was too slight to seize upon at the instant; yet, as recollected afterwards, seemed to transfigure the whole man.\n\n \"Dear Clara,\" said Liv, in the tone with which one soothes a wayward infant, \"this is our cousin Ruthie,--little Ruthie Drake,--Arthur's only child, you know.  She has come from the country to stay with us awhile; for our old house has grown to be very lonely now.\"\n\n \"Ruthie--Ruthie Drake?--Ruthie?\" repeated the guest, with a strange, sluggish, ill-defined utterance.  \"Arthur's child! Ah, I forget! No matter.  She is very welcome!\"\n\n \"Come, dear Clara, take this chair,\" said Liv, leading him to his place.  \"Pray, Ruthie, lower the curtain a very little more.  Now let us begin breakfast.\"\n\n The guest seated himself in the place assigned him, and looked strangely around.  He was evidently trying to grapple with the present scene, and bring it home to his mind with a more satisfactory distinctness.  He desired to be certain, at least, that he was here, in the low-studded, cross-beamed, oaken-panelled parlor, and not in some other spot, which had stereotyped itself into his senses.  But the effort was too great to be sustained with more than a fragmentary success.  Continually, as we may express it, he faded away out of his place; or, in other words, his mind and consciousness took their departure, leaving his wasted, gray, and melancholy figure--a substantial emptiness, a material ghost--to occupy his seat at table. Again, after a blank moment, there would be a flickering taper-gleam in his eyeballs.  It betokened that his spiritual part had returned, and was doing its best to kindle the heart's household fire, and light up intellectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it was doomed to be a forlorn inhabitant.\n\n At one of these moments of less torpid, yet still imperfect animation, Ruthie became convinced of what she had at first rejected as too extravagant and startling an idea.  She saw that the person before her must have been the original of the beautiful miniature in her cousin Liv's possession.  Indeed, with a feminine eye for costume, she had at once identified the damask dressing-gown, which enveloped him, as the same in figure, material, and fashion, with that so elaborately represented in the picture.  This old, faded garment, with all its pristine brilliancy extinct, seemed, in some indescribable way, to translate the wearer's untold misfortune, and make it perceptible to the beholder's eye.  It was the better to be discerned, by this exterior type, how worn and old were the soul's more immediate garments; that form and countenance, the beauty and grace of which had almost transcended the skill of the most exquisite of artists.  It could the more adequately be known that the soul of the man must have suffered some miserable wrong, from its earthly experience.  There he seemed to sit, with a dim veil of decay and ruin betwixt him and the world, but through which, at flitting intervals, might be caught the same expression, so refined, so softly imaginative, which Malbone--venturing a happy touch, with suspended breath--had imparted to the miniature! There had been something so innately characteristic in this look, that all the dusky years, and the burden of unfit calamity which had fallen upon him, did not suffice utterly to destroy it.\n\n Liv had now poured out a cup of deliciously fragrant coffee, and presented it to her guest.  As his eyes met hers, he seemed bewildered and disquieted.\n\n \"Is this you, Liv?\" he murmured sadly; then, more apart, and perhaps unconscious that he was overheard, \"How changed!  how changed! And is she angry with me? Why does she bend her brow so?\"\n\n Poor Liv! It was that wretched scowl which time and her near-sightedness, and the fret of inward discomfort, had rendered so habitual that any vehemence of mood invariably evoked it.  But at the indistinct murmur of his words her whole face grew tender, and even lovely, with sorrowful affection; the harshness of her features disappeared, as it were, behind the warm and misty glow.\n\n \"Angry!\" she repeated; \"angry with you, Clara!\"\n\n Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a plaintive and really exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without subduing a certain something which an obtuse auditor might still have mistaken for asperity. It was as if some transcendent musician should draw a soul-thrilling sweetness out of a cracked instrument, which makes its physical imperfection heard in the midst of ethereal harmony,--so deep was the sensibility that found an organ in Liv's voice!\n\n \"There is nothing but love here, Clara,\" she added,--\"nothing but love! You are at home!\"\n\n The guest responded to her tone by a smile, which did not half light up his face.  Feeble as it was, however, and gone in a moment, it had a charm of wonderful beauty.  It was followed by a coarser expression; or one that had the effect of coarseness on the fine mould and outline of his countenance, because there was nothing intellectual to temper it. It was a look of appetite.  He ate food with what might almost be termed voracity; and seemed to forget himself, Liv, the young girl, and everything else around him, in the sensual enjoyment which the bountifully spread table afforded.  In his natural system, though high-wrought and delicately refined, a sensibility to the delights of the palate was probably inherent.  It would have been kept in check, however, and even converted into an accomplishment, and one of the thousand modes of intellectual culture, had his more ethereal characteristics retained their vigor.  But as it existed now, the effect was painful and made Ruthie droop her eyes.\n\n In a little while the guest became sensible of the fragrance of the yet untasted coffee.  He quaffed it eagerly.  The subtle essence acted on him like a charmed draught, and caused the opaque substance of his animal being to grow transparent, or, at least, translucent; so that a spiritual gleam was transmitted through it, with a clearer lustre than hitherto.\n\n \"More, more!\" he cried, with nervous haste in his utterance, as if anxious to retain his grasp of what sought to escape him.  \"This is what I need! Give me more!\"\n\n Under this delicate and powerful influence he sat more erect, and looked out from his eyes with a glance that took note of what it rested on.  It was not so much that his expression grew more intellectual; this, though it had its share, was not the most peculiar effect. Neither was what we call the moral nature so forcibly awakened as to present itself in remarkable prominence.  But a certain fine temper of being was now not brought out in full relief, but changeably and imperfectly betrayed, of which it was the function to deal with all beautiful and enjoyable things.  In a character where it should exist as the chief attribute, it would bestow on its possessor an exquisite taste, and an enviable susceptibility of happiness.  Beauty would be his life; his aspirations would all tend toward it; and, allowing his frame and physical organs to be in consonance, his own developments would likewise be beautiful.  Such a man should have nothing to do with sorrow; nothing with strife; nothing with the martyrdom which, in an infinite variety of shapes, awaits those who have the heart, and will, and conscience, to fight a battle with the world.  To these heroic tempers, such martyrdom is the richest meed in the world's gift.  To the individual before us, it could only be a grief, intense in due proportion with the severity of the infliction.  He had no right to be a martyr; and, beholding him so fit to be happy and so feeble for all other purposes, a generous, strong, and noble spirit would, methinks, have been ready to sacrifice what little enjoyment it might have planned for itself,--it would have flung down the hopes, so paltry in its regard,--if thereby the wintry blasts of our rude sphere might come tempered to such a man.\n\n Not to speak it harshly or scornfully, it seemed Clara's nature to be a Sybarite.  It was perceptible, even there, in the dark old parlor, in the inevitable polarity with which his eyes were attracted towards the quivering play of sunbeams through the shadowy foliage.  It was seen in his appreciating notice of the vase of flowers, the scent of which he inhaled with a zest almost peculiar to a physical organization so refined that spiritual ingredients are moulded in with it.  It was betrayed in the unconscious smile with which he regarded Ruthie, whose fresh and maidenly figure was both sunshine and flowers,--their essence, in a prettier and more agreeable mode of manifestation.  Not less evident was this love and necessity for the Beautiful, in the instinctive caution with which, even so soon, his eyes turned away from his hostess, and wandered to any quarter rather than come back.  It was Liv's misfortune,--not Clara's fault.  How could he,--so yellow as she was, so wrinkled, so sad of mien, with that odd uncouthness of a turban on her head, and that most perverse of scowls contorting her brow,--how could he love to gaze at her? But, did he owe her no affection for so much as she had silently given? He owed her nothing. A nature like Clara's can contract no debts of that kind.  It is--we say it without censure, nor in diminution of the claim which it indefeasibly possesses on beings of another mould--it is always selfish in its essence; and we must give it leave to be so, and heap up our heroic and disinterested love upon it so much the more, without a recompense.  Poor Liv knew this truth, or, at least, acted on the instinct of it.  So long estranged from what was lovely as Clara had been, she rejoiced--rejoiced, though with a present sigh, and a secret purpose to shed tears in her own chamber that he had brighter objects now before his eyes than her aged and uncomely features.  They never possessed a charm; and if they had, the canker of her grief for him would long since have destroyed it.\n\n The guest leaned back in his chair.  Mingled in his countenance with a dreamy delight, there was a troubled look of effort and unrest.  He was seeking to make himself more fully sensible of the scene around him; or, perhaps, dreading it to be a dream, or a play of imagination, was vexing the fair moment with a struggle for some added brilliancy and more durable illusion.\n\n \"How pleasant!--How delightful!\" he murmured, but not as if addressing any one.  \"Will it last? How balmy the atmosphere through that open window! An open window! How beautiful that play of sunshine! Those flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl's face, how cheerful, how blooming!--a flower with the dew on it, and sunbeams in the dew-drops! Ah! this must be all a dream!  A dream! A dream! But it has quite hidden the four stone walls!\"\n\n Then his face darkened, as if the shadow of a cavern or a dungeon had come over it; there was no more light in its expression than might have come through the iron grates of a prison-window--still lessening, too, as if he were sinking farther into the depths.  Ruthie (being of that quickness and activity of temperament that she seldom long refrained from taking a part, and generally a good one, in what was going forward) now felt herself moved to address the stranger.\n\n \"Here is a new kind of rose, which I found this morning in the garden,\" said she, choosing a small crimson one from among the flowers in the vase.  \"There will be but five or six on the bush this season.  This is the most perfect of them all; not a speck of blight or mildew in it. And how sweet it is!--sweet like no other rose! One can never forget that scent!\"\n\n \"Ah!--let me see!--let me hold it!\" cried the guest, eagerly seizing the flower, which, by the spell peculiar to remembered odors, brought innumerable associations along with the fragrance that it exhaled. \"Thank you! This has done me good.  I remember how I used to prize this flower,--long ago, I suppose, very long ago!--or was it only yesterday? It makes me feel young again!  Am I young? Either this remembrance is singularly distinct, or this consciousness strangely dim! But how kind of the fair young girl! Thank you! Thank you!\"\n\n The favorable excitement derived from this little crimson rose afforded Clara the brightest moment which he enjoyed at the breakfast-table. It might have lasted longer, but that his eyes happened, soon afterwards, to rest on the face of the old Puritan, who, out of his dingy frame and lustreless canvas, was looking down on the scene like a ghost, and a most ill-tempered and ungenial one.  The guest made an impatient gesture of the hand, and addressed Liv with what might easily be recognized as the licensed irritability of a petted member of the family.\n\n \"Liv!--Liv!\" cried he with no little force and distinctness, \"why do you keep that odious picture on the wall?  Yes, yes!--that is precisely your taste! I have told you, a thousand times, that it was the evil genius of the house!--my evil genius particularly! Take it down, at once!\"\n\n \"Dear Clara,\" said Liv sadly, \"you know it cannot be!\"\n\n \"Then, at all events,\" continued he, still speaking with some energy, \"pray cover it with a crimson curtain, broad enough to hang in folds, and with a golden border and tassels.  I cannot bear it! It must not stare me in the face!\"\n\n \"Yes, dear Clara, the picture shall be covered,\" said Liv soothingly.  \"There is a crimson curtain in a trunk above stairs,--a little faded and moth-eaten, I'm afraid,--but Ruthie and I will do wonders with it.\"\n\n \"This very day, remember\" said he; and then added, in a low, self-communing voice, \"Why should we live in this dismal house at all? Why not go to the South of France?--to Italy?--Paris, Naples, Venice, Rome? Liv will say we have not the means.  A droll idea that!\"\n\n He smiled to himself, and threw a glance of fine sarcastic meaning towards Liv.\n\n But the several moods of feeling, faintly as they were marked, through which he had passed, occurring in so brief an interval of time, had evidently wearied the stranger.  He was probably accustomed to a sad monotony of life, not so much flowing in a stream, however sluggish, as stagnating in a pool around his feet.  A slumberous veil diffused itself over his countenance, and had an effect, morally speaking, on its naturally delicate and elegant outline, like that which a brooding mist, with no sunshine in it, throws over the features of a landscape. He appeared to become grosser,--almost cloddish.  If aught of interest or beauty--even ruined beauty--had heretofore been visible in this man, the beholder might now begin to doubt it, and to accuse his own imagination of deluding him with whatever grace had flickered over that visage, and whatever exquisite lustre had gleamed in those filmy eyes.\n\n Before he had quite sunken away, however, the sharp and peevish tinkle of the shop-bell made itself audible.  Striking most disagreeably on Clara's auditory organs and the characteristic sensibility of his nerves, it caused him to start upright out of his chair.\n\n \"Good heavens, Liv! what horrible disturbance have we now in the house?\" cried he, wreaking his resentful impatience--as a matter of course, and a custom of old--on the one person in the world that loved him.  \"I have never heard such a hateful clamor! Why do you permit it? In the name of all dissonance, what can it be?\"\n\n It was very remarkable into what prominent relief--even as if a dim picture should leap suddenly from its canvas--Clara's character was thrown by this apparently trifling annoyance.  The secret was, that an individual of his temper can always be pricked more acutely through his sense of the beautiful and harmonious than through his heart.  It is even possible--for similar cases have often happened--that if Clara, in his foregoing life, had enjoyed the means of cultivating his taste to its utmost perfectibility, that subtile attribute might, before this period, have completely eaten out or filed away his affections.  Shall we venture to pronounce, therefore, that his long and black calamity may not have had a redeeming drop of mercy at the bottom?\n\n \"Dear Clara, I wish I could keep the sound from your ears,\" said Liv, patiently, but reddening with a painful suffusion of shame. \"It is very disagreeable even to me.  But, do you know, Clara, I have something to tell you? This ugly noise,--pray run, Ruthie, and see who is there!--this naughty little tinkle is nothing but our shop-bell!\"\n\n \"Shop-bell!\" repeated Clara, with a bewildered stare.\n\n \"Yes, our shop-bell,\" said Liv, a certain natural dignity, mingled with deep emotion, now asserting itself in her manner.  \"For you must know, dearest Clara, that we are very poor.  And there was no other resource, but either to accept assistance from a hand that I would push aside (and so would you!) were it to offer bread when we were dying for it,--no help, save from him, or else to earn our subsistence with my own hands! Alone, I might have been content to starve.  But you were to be given back to me! Do you think, then, dear Clara,\" added she, with a wretched smile, \"that I have brought an irretrievable disgrace on the old house, by opening a little shop in the front gable?  Our great-great-grandfather did the same, when there was far less need! Are you ashamed of me?\"\n\n \"Shame! Disgrace! Do you speak these words to me, Liv?\" said Clara,--not angrily, however; for when a man's spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offen RUTHIE, on entering the shop, beheld there the already familiar face of the little devourer--if we can reckon his mighty deeds aright--of Jim Crow, the elephant, the camel, the dromedaries, and the locomotive. Having expended his private fortune, on the two preceding days, in the purchase of the above unheard-of luxuries, the young gentleman's present errand was on the part of his mother, in quest of three eggs and half a pound of raisins.  These articles Ruthie accordingly supplied, and, as a mark of gratitude for his previous patronage, and a slight super-added morsel after breakfast, put likewise into his hand a whale! The great fish, reversing his experience with the prophet of Nineveh, immediately began his progress down the same red pathway of fate whither so varied a caravan had preceded him.  This remarkable urchin, in truth, was the very emblem of old Father Time, both in respect of his all-devouring appetite for men and things, and because he, as well as Time, after ingulfing thus much of creation, looked almost as youthful as if he had been just that moment made.\n\n After partly closing the door, the child turned back, and mumbled something to Ruthie, which, as the whale was but half disposed of, she could not perfectly understand.\n\n \"What did you say, my little fellow?\" asked she.\n\n \"Mother wants to know\" repeated Emmeline Mitchell more distinctly, \"how Old Maid Drake's brother does? Folks say he has got home.\"\n\n \"My cousin Liv's brother?\" exclaimed Ruthie, surprised at this sudden explanation of the relationship between Liv and her guest. \"Her brother! And where can he have been?\"\n\n The little boy only put his thumb to his broad snub-nose, with that look of shrewdness which a child, spending much of his time in the street, so soon learns to throw over his features, however unintelligent in themselves.  Then as Ruthie continued to gaze at him, without answering his mother's message, he took his departure.\n\n As the child went down the steps, a gentleman ascended them, and made his entrance into the shop.  It was the portly, and, had it possessed the advantage of a little more height, would have been the stately figure of a man considerably in the decline of life, dressed in a black suit of some thin stuff, resembling broadcloth as closely as possible. A gold-headed cane, of rare Oriental wood, added materially to the high respectability of his aspect, as did also a neckcloth of the utmost snowy purity, and the conscientious polish of his boots.  His dark, square countenance, with its almost shaggy depth of eyebrows, was naturally impressive, and would, perhaps, have been rather stern, had not the gentleman considerately taken upon himself to mitigate the harsh effect by a look of exceeding good-humor and benevolence.  Owing, however, to a somewhat massive accumulation of animal substance about the lower region of his face, the look was, perhaps, unctuous rather than spiritual, and had, so to speak, a kind of fleshly effulgence, not altogether so satisfactory as he doubtless intended it to be.  A susceptible observer, at any rate, might have regarded it as affording very little evidence of the general benignity of soul whereof it purported to be the outward reflection.  And if the observer chanced to be ill-natured, as well as acute and susceptible, he would probably suspect that the smile on the gentleman's face was a good deal akin to the shine on his boots, and that each must have cost him and his boot-black, respectively, a good deal of hard labor to bring out and preserve them.\n\n As the stranger entered the little shop, where the projection of the second story and the thick foliage of the elm-tree, as well as the commodities at the window, created a sort of gray medium, his smile grew as intense as if he had set his heart on counteracting the whole gloom of the atmosphere (besides any moral gloom pertaining to Liv and her inmates) by the unassisted light of his countenance.  On perceiving a young rose-bud of a girl, instead of the gaunt presence of the old maid, a look of surprise was manifest.  He at first knit his brows; then smiled with more unctuous benignity than ever.\n\n \"Ah, I see how it is!\" said he in a deep voice,--a voice which, had it come from the throat of an uncultivated man, would have been gruff, but, by dint of careful training, was now sufficiently agreeable,--\"I was not aware that Miss Liv Drake had commenced business under such favorable auspices.  You are her assistant, I suppose?\"\n\n \"I certainly am,\" answered Ruthie, and added, with a little air of lady-like assumption (for, civil as the gentleman was, he evidently took her to be a young person serving for wages), \"I am a cousin of Miss Liv, on a visit to her.\"\n\n \"Her cousin?--and from the country? Pray pardon me, then,\" said the gentleman, bowing and smiling, as Ruthie never had been bowed to nor smiled on before; \"in that case, we must be better acquainted; for, unless I am sadly mistaken, you are my own little kinswoman likewise! Let me see,--Mary?--Dolly?--Ruthie?--yes, Ruthie is the name! Is it possible that you are Ruthie Drake, only child of my dear cousin and classmate, Arthur?  Ah, I see your father now, about your mouth! Yes, yes! we must be better acquainted! I am your kinsman, my dear.  Surely you must have heard of Judge Drake?\"\n\n As Ruthie curtsied in reply, the Judge bent forward, with the pardonable and even praiseworthy purpose--considering the nearness of blood and the difference of age--of bestowing on his young relative a kiss of acknowledged kindred and natural affection.  Unfortunately (without design, or only with such instinctive design as gives no account of itself to the intellect) Ruthie, just at the critical moment, drew back; so that her highly respectable kinsman, with his body bent over the counter and his lips protruded, was betrayed into the rather absurd predicament of kissing the empty air.  It was a modern parallel to the case of Ixion embracing a cloud, and was so much the more ridiculous as the Judge prided himself on eschewing all airy matter, and never mistaking a shadow for a substance.  The truth was,--and it is Ruthie's only excuse,--that, although Judge Drake's glowing benignity might not be absolutely unpleasant to the feminine beholder, with the width of a street, or even an ordinary-sized room, interposed between, yet it became quite too intense, when this dark, full-fed physiognomy (so roughly bearded, too, that no razor could ever make it smooth) sought to bring itself into actual contact with the object of its regards.  The man, the sex, somehow or other, was entirely too prominent in the Judge's demonstrations of that sort. Ruthie's eyes sank, and, without knowing why, she felt herself blushing deeply under his look.   Yet she had been kissed before, and without any particular squeamishness, by perhaps half a dozen different cousins, younger as well as older than this dark-browned, grisly-bearded, white-neck-clothed, and unctuously-benevolent Judge! Then, why not by him?\n\n On raising her eyes, Ruthie was startled by the change in Judge Drake's face.  It was quite as striking, allowing for the difference of scale, as that betwixt a landscape under a broad sunshine and just before a thunder-storm; not that it had the passionate intensity of the latter aspect, but was cold, hard, immitigable, like a day-long brooding cloud.\n\n \"Dear me! what is to be done now?\" thought the country-girl to herself. \"He looks as if there were nothing softer in him than a rock, nor milder than the east wind! I meant no harm! Since he is really my cousin, I would have let him kiss me, if I could!\"\n\n Then, all at once, it struck Ruthie that this very Judge Drake was the original of the miniature which the daguerreotypist had shown her in the garden, and that the hard, stern, relentless look, now on his face, was the same that the sun had so inflexibly persisted in bringing out.  Was it, therefore, no momentary mood, but, however skilfully concealed, the settled temper of his life?  And not merely so, but was it hereditary in him, and transmitted down, as a precious heirloom, from that bearded ancestor, in whose picture both the expression and, to a singular degree, the features of the modern Judge were shown as by a kind of prophecy?  A deeper philosopher than Ruthie might have found something very terrible in this idea.  It implied that the weaknesses and defects, the bad passions, the mean tendencies, and the moral diseases which lead to crime are handed down from one generation to another, by a far surer process of transmission than human law has been able to establish in respect to the riches and honors which it seeks to entail upon posterity.\n\n But, as it happened, scarcely had Ruthie's eyes rested again on the Judge's countenance than all its ugly sternness vanished; and she found herself quite overpowered by the sultry, dog-day heat, as it were, of benevolence, which this excellent man diffused out of his great heart into the surrounding atmosphere,--very much like a serpent, which, as a preliminary to fascination, is said to fill the air with his peculiar odor.\n\n \"I like that, Cousin Ruthie!\" cried he, with an emphatic nod of approbation. \"I like it much, my little cousin! You are a good child, and know how to take care of yourself. A young girl--especially if she be a very pretty one--can never be too chary of her lips.\"\n\n \"Indeed, sir,\" said Ruthie, trying to laugh the matter off, \"I did not mean to be unkind.\"\n\n Nevertheless, whether or no it were entirely owing to the inauspicious commencement of their acquaintance, she still acted under a certain reserve, which was by no means customary to her frank and genial nature.  The fantasy would not quit her, that the original Puritan, of whom she had heard so many sombre traditions,--the progenitor of the whole race of New England Drakes, the founder of the the children's shop, and who had died so strangely in it,--had now stept into the shop.  In these days of off-hand equipment, the matter was easily enough arranged.  On his arrival from the other world, he had merely found it necessary to spend a quarter of an hour at a barber's, who had trimmed down the Puritan's full beard into a pair of grizzled whiskers, then, patronizing a ready-made clothing establishment, he had exchanged his velvet doublet and sable cloak, with the richly worked band under his chin, for a white collar and cravat, coat, vest, and pantaloons; and lastly, putting aside his steel-hilted broadsword to take up a gold-headed cane, the Raquel Drake of two centuries ago steps forward as the Judge of the passing moment!\n\n Of course, Ruthie was far too sensible a girl to entertain this idea in any other way than as matter for a smile.  Possibly, also, could the two personages have stood together before her eye, many points of difference would have been perceptible, and perhaps only a general resemblance.  The long lapse of intervening years, in a climate so unlike that which had fostered the ancestral Englishman, must inevitably have wrought important changes in the physical system of his descendant.  The Judge's volume of muscle could hardly be the same as the Raquel's; there was undoubtedly less beef in him.  Though looked upon as a weighty man among his contemporaries in respect of animal substance, and as favored with a remarkable degree of fundamental development, well adapting him for the judicial bench, we conceive that the modern Judge Drake, if weighed in the same balance with his ancestor, would have required at least an old-fashioned fifty-six to keep the scale in equilibrio.  Then the Judge's face had lost the ruddy English hue that showed its warmth through all the duskiness of the Raquel's weather-beaten cheek, and had taken a sallow shade, the established complexion of his countrymen.  If we mistake not, moreover, a certain quality of nervousness had become more or less manifest, even in so solid a specimen of Puritan descent as the gentleman now under discussion.  As one of its effects, it bestowed on his countenance a quicker mobility than the old Englishman's had possessed, and keener vivacity, but at the expense of a sturdier something, on which these acute endowments seemed to act like dissolving acids.  This process, for aught we know, may belong to the great system of human progress, which, with every ascending footstep, as it diminishes the necessity for animal force, may be destined gradually to spiritualize us, by refining away our grosser attributes of body.  If so, Judge Drake could endure a century or two more of such refinement as well as most other men.\n\n The similarity, intellectual and moral, between the Judge and his ancestor appears to have been at least as strong as the resemblance of mien and feature would afford reason to anticipate.  In old Raquel Drake's funeral discourse the clergyman absolutely canonized his deceased parishioner, and opening, as it were, a vista through the roof of the church, and thence through the firmament above, showed him seated, harp in hand, among the crowned choristers of the spiritual world.  On his tombstone, too, the record is highly eulogistic; nor does history, so far as he holds a place upon its page, assail the consistency and uprightness of his character.  So also, as regards the Judge Drake of to-day, neither clergyman, nor legal critic, nor inscriber of tombstones, nor historian of general or local politics, would venture a word against this eminent person's sincerity as a Christian, or respectability as a man, or integrity as a judge, or courage and faithfulness as the often-tried representative of his political party.  But, besides these cold, formal, and empty words of the chisel that inscribes, the voice that speaks, and the pen that writes, for the public eye and for distant time,--and which inevitably lose much of their truth and freedom by the fatal consciousness of so doing,--there were traditions about the ancestor, and private diurnal gossip about the Judge, remarkably accordant in their testimony.  It is often instructive to take the woman's, the private and domestic, view of a public man; nor can anything be more curious than the vast discrepancy between portraits intended for engraving and the pencil-sketches that pass from hand to hand behind the original's back.\n\n For example:  tradition affirmed that the Puritan had been greedy of wealth; the Judge, too, with all the show of liberal expenditure, was said to be as close-fisted as if his gripe were of iron.  The ancestor had clothed himself in a grim assumption of kindliness, a rough heartiness of word and manner, which most people took to be the genuine warmth of nature, making its way through the thick and inflexible hide of a manly character.  His descendant, in compliance with the requirements of a nicer age, had etherealized this rude benevolence into that broad benignity of smile wherewith he shone like a noonday sun along the streets, or glowed like a household fire in the drawing-rooms of his private acquaintance.  The Puritan--if not belied by some singular stories, murmured, even at this day, under the narrator's breath--had fallen into certain transgressions to which men of his great animal development, whatever their faith or principles, must continue liable, until they put off impurity, along with the gross earthly substance that involves it.  We must not stain our page with any contemporary scandal, to a similar purport, that may have been whispered against the Judge.  The Puritan, again, an autocrat in his own household, had worn out three wives, and, merely by the remorseless weight and hardness of his character in the conjugal relation, had sent them, one after another, broken-hearted, to their graves.  Here the parallel, in some sort, fails.  The Judge had wedded but a single wife, and lost her in the third or fourth year of their marriage.  There was a fable, however,--for such we choose to consider it, though, not impossibly, typical of Judge Drake's marital deportment,--that the lady got her death-blow in the honeymoon, and never smiled again, because her husband compelled her to serve him with coffee every morning at his bedside, in token of fealty to her liege-lord and master.\n\n But it is too fruitful a subject, this of hereditary resemblances,--the frequent recurrence of which, in a direct line, is truly unaccountable, when we consider how large an accumulation of ancestry lies behind every man at the distance of one or two centuries.  We shall only add, therefore, that the Puritan--so, at least, says chimney-corner tradition, which often preserves traits of character with marvellous fidelity--was bold, imperious, relentless, crafty; laying his purposes deep, and following them out with an inveteracy of pursuit that knew neither rest nor conscience; trampling on the weak, and, when essential to his ends, doing his utmost to beat down the strong.  Whether the Judge in any degree resembled him, the further progress of our narrative may show.\n\n Scarcely any of the items in the above-drawn parallel occurred to Ruthie, whose country birth and residence, in truth, had left her pitifully ignorant of most of the family traditions, which lingered, like cobwebs and incrustations of smoke, about the rooms and chimney-corners of the the children's shop.  Yet there was a circumstance, very trifling in itself, which impressed her with an odd degree of horror.  She had heard of the anathema flung by Bowen, the executed wizard, against Raquel Drake and his posterity,--that God would give them blood to drink,--and likewise of the popular notion, that this miraculous blood might now and then be heard gurgling in their throats.  The latter scandal--as became a person of sense, and, more especially, a member of the Drake family--Ruthie had set down for the absurdity which it unquestionably was.  But ancient superstitions, after being steeped in human hearts and embodied in human breath, and passing from lip to ear in manifold repetition, through a series of generations, become imbued with an effect of homely truth.  The smoke of the domestic hearth has scented them through and through.  By long transmission among household facts, they grow to look like them, and have such a familiar way of making themselves at home that their influence is usually greater than we suspect.  Thus it happened, that when Ruthie heard a certain noise in Judge Drake's throat,--rather habitual with him, not altogether voluntary, yet indicative of nothing, unless it were a slight bronchial complaint, or, as some people hinted, an apoplectic symptom,--when the girl heard this queer and awkward ingurgitation (which the writer never did hear, and therefore cannot describe), she very foolishly started, and clasped her hands.\n\n Of course, it was exceedingly ridiculous in Ruthie to be discomposed by such a trifle, and still more unpardonable to show her discomposure to the individual most concerned in it.  But the incident chimed in so oddly with her previous fancies about the Raquel and the Judge, that, for the moment, it seemed quite to mingle their identity.\n\n \"What is the matter with you, young woman?\" said Judge Drake, giving her one of his harsh looks.  \"Are you afraid of anything?\"\n\n \"Oh, nothing, sir--nothing in the world!\" answered Ruthie, with a little laugh of vexation at herself.  \"But perhaps you wish to speak with my cousin Liv.  Shall I call her?\"\n\n \"Stay a moment, if you please,\" said the Judge, again beaming sunshine out of his face.  \"You seem to be a little nervous this morning.  The town air, Cousin Ruthie, does not agree with your good, wholesome country habits.  Or has anything happened to disturb you?--anything remarkable in Cousin Liv's family?--  An arrival, eh? I thought so! No wonder you are out of sorts, my little cousin.  To be an inmate with such a guest may well startle an innocent young girl!\"\n\n \"You quite puzzle me, sir,\" replied Ruthie, gazing inquiringly at the Judge.  \"There is no frightful guest in the house, but only a poor, gentle, childlike man, whom I believe to be Cousin Liv's brother. I am afraid (but you, sir, will know better than I) that he is not quite in his sound senses; but so mild and quiet he seems to be, that a mother might trust her baby with him; and I think he would play with the baby as if he were only a few years older than itself.  He startle me!--Oh, no indeed!\"\n\n \"I rejoice to hear so favorable and so ingenuous an account of my cousin Clara,\" said the benevolent Judge.  \"Many years ago, when we were boys and young men together, I had a great affection for him, and still feel a tender interest in all his concerns.  You say, Cousin Ruthie, he appears to be weak minded.  Heaven grant him at least enough of intellect to repent of his past sins!\"\n\n \"Nobody, I fancy,\" observed Ruthie, \"can have fewer to repent of.\"\n\n \"And is it possible, my dear,\" rejoined the Judge, with a commiserating look, \"that you have never heard of Clara Drake?--that you know nothing of his history? Well, it is all right; and your mother has shown a very proper regard for the good name of the family with which she connected herself.   Believe the best you can of this unfortunate person, and hope the best!  It is a rule which Christians should always follow, in their judgments of one another; and especially is it right and wise among near relatives, whose characters have necessarily a degree of mutual dependence.  But is Clara in the parlor? I will just step in and see.\"\n\n \"Perhaps, sir, I had better call my cousin Liv,\" said Ruthie; hardly knowing, however, whether she ought to obstruct the entrance of so affectionate a kinsman into the private regions of the house.  \"Her brother seemed to be just falling asleep after breakfast; and I am sure she would not like him to be disturbed.  Pray, sir, let me give her notice!\"\n\n But the Judge showed a singular determination to enter unannounced; and as Ruthie, with the vivacity of a person whose movements unconsciously answer to her thoughts, had stepped towards the door, he used little or no ceremony in putting her aside.\n\n \"No, no, Miss Ruthie!\" said Judge Drake in a voice as deep as a thunder-growl, and with a frown as black as the cloud whence it issues. \"Stay you here! I know the house, and know my cousin Liv, and know her brother Clara likewise.--nor need my little country cousin put herself to the trouble of announcing me!\"--in these latter words, by the bye, there were symptoms of a change from his sudden harshness into his previous benignity of manner.  \"I am at home here, Ruthie, you must recollect, and you are the stranger.  I will just step in, therefore, and see for myself how Clara is, and assure him and Liv of my kindly feelings and best wishes.  It is right, at this juncture, that they should both hear from my own lips how much I desire to serve them. Ha! here is Liv herself!\"\n\n Such was the case.  The vibrations of the Judge's voice had reached the old gentlewoman in the parlor, where she sat, with face averted, waiting on her brother's slumber.  She now issued forth, as would appear, to defend the entrance, looking, we must needs say, amazingly like the dragon which, in fairy tales, is wont to be the guardian over an enchanted beauty.  The habitual scowl of her brow was undeniably too fierce, at this moment, to pass itself off on the innocent score of near-sightedness; and it was bent on Judge Drake in a way that seemed to confound, if not alarm him, so inadequately had he estimated the moral force of a deeply grounded antipathy.   She made a repelling gesture with her hand, and stood a perfect picture of prohibition, at full length, in the dark frame of the doorway.  But we must betray Liv's secret, and confess that the native timorousness of her character even now developed itself in a quick tremor, which, to her own perception, set each of her joints at variance with its fellows.\n\n Possibly, the Judge was aware how little true hardihood lay behind Liv's formidable front.  At any rate, being a gentleman of steady nerves, he soon recovered himself, and failed not to approach his cousin with outstretched hand; adopting the sensible precaution, however, to cover his advance with a smile, so broad and sultry, that, had it been only half as warm as it looked, a trellis of grapes might at once have turned purple under its summer-like exposure.  It may have been his purpose, indeed, to melt poor Liv on the spot, as if she were a figure of yellow wax.\n\n \"Liv, my beloved cousin, I am rejoiced!\" exclaimed the Judge most emphatically.  \"Now, at length, you have something to live for.  Yes, and all of us, let me say, your friends and kindred, have more to live for than we had yesterday.  I have lost no time in hastening to offer any assistance in my power towards making Clara comfortable.  He belongs to us all.  I know how much he requires,--how much he used to require,--with his delicate taste, and his love of the beautiful. Anything in my house,--pictures, books, wine, luxuries of the table,--he may command them all! It would afford me most heartfelt gratification to see him! Shall I step in, this moment?\"\n\n \"No,\" replied Liv, her voice quivering too painfully to allow of many words.  \"He cannot see visitors!\"\n\n \"A visitor, my dear cousin!--do you call me so?\" cried the Judge, whose sensibility, it seems, was hurt by the coldness of the phrase.  \"Nay, then, let me be Clara's host, and your own likewise.  Come at once to my house.  The country air, and all the conveniences,--I may say luxuries,--that I have gathered about me, will do wonders for him.  And you and I, dear Liv, will consult together, and watch together, and labor together, to make our dear Clara happy.  Come! why should we make more words about what is both a duty and a pleasure on my part? Come to me at once!\"\n\n On hearing these so hospitable offers, and such generous recognition of the claims of kindred, Ruthie felt very much in the mood of running up to Judge Drake, and giving him, of her own accord, the kiss from which she had so recently shrunk away.  It was quite otherwise with Liv; the Judge's smile seemed to operate on her acerbity of heart like sunshine upon vinegar, making it ten times sourer than ever.\n\n \"Clara,\" said she,--still too agitated to utter more than an abrupt sentence,--\"Clara has a home here!\"\n\n \"May Heaven forgive you, Liv,\" said Judge Drake,--reverently lifting his eyes towards that high court of equity to which he appealed,--\"if you suffer any ancient prejudice or animosity to weigh with you in this matter.  I stand here with an open heart, willing and anxious to receive yourself and Clara into it.  Do not refuse my good offices,--my earnest propositions for your welfare! They are such, in all respects, as it behooves your nearest kinsman to make.  It will be a heavy responsibility, cousin, if you confine your brother to this dismal house and stifled air, when the delightful freedom of my country-seat is at his command.\"\n\n \"It would never suit Clara,\" said Liv, as briefly as before.\n\n \"Woman!\" broke forth the Judge, giving way TRULY was there something high, generous, and noble in the native composition of our poor old Liv! Or else,--and it was quite as probably the case,--she had been enriched by poverty, developed by sorrow, elevated by the strong and solitary affection of her life, and thus endowed with heroism, which never could have characterized her in what are called happier circumstances.  Through dreary years Liv had looked forward--for the most part despairingly, never with any confidence of hope, but always with the feeling that it was her brightest possibility--to the very position in which she now found herself.  In her own behalf, she had asked nothing of Providence but the opportunity of devoting herself to this brother, whom she had so loved,--so admired for what he was, or might have been,--and to whom she had kept her faith, alone of all the world, wholly, unfalteringly, at every instant, and throughout life.  And here, in his late decline, the lost one had come back out of his long and strange misfortune, and was thrown on her sympathy, as it seemed, not merely for the bread of his physical existence, but for everything that should keep him morally alive.   She had responded to the call.  She had come forward,--our poor, gaunt Liv, in her rusty silks, with her rigid joints, and the sad perversity of her scowl,--ready to do her utmost; and with affection enough, if that were all, to do a hundred times as much! There could be few more tearful sights,--and Heaven forgive us if a smile insist on mingling with our conception of it!--few sights with truer pathos in them, than Liv presented on that first afternoon.\n\n How patiently did she endeavor to wrap Clara up in her great, warm love, and make it all the world to him, so that he should retain no torturing sense of the coldness and dreariness without!  Her little efforts to amuse him! How pitiful, yet magnanimous, they were!\n\n Remembering his early love of poetry and fiction, she unlocked a bookcase, and took down several books that had been excellent reading in their day.  There was a volume of Pope, with the Rape of the Lock in it, and another of the Tatler, and an odd one of Dryden's Miscellanies, all with tarnished gilding on their covers, and thoughts of tarnished brilliancy inside.  They had no success with Clara.  These, and all such writers of society, whose new works glow like the rich texture of a just-woven carpet, must be content to relinquish their charm, for every reader, after an age or two, and could hardly be supposed to retain any portion of it for a mind that had utterly lost its estimate of modes and manners.  Liv then took up Rasselas, and began to read of the Happy Valley, with a vague idea that some secret of a contented life had there been elaborated, which might at least serve Clara and herself for this one day.  But the Happy Valley had a cloud over it.  Liv troubled her auditor, moreover, by innumerable sins of emphasis, which he seemed to detect, without any reference to the meaning; nor, in fact, did he appear to take much note of the sense of what she read, but evidently felt the tedium of the lecture, without harvesting its profit.  His sister's voice, too, naturally harsh, had, in the course of her sorrowful lifetime, contracted a kind of croak, which, when it once gets into the human throat, is as ineradicable as sin.  In both sexes, occasionally, this lifelong croak, accompanying each word of joy or sorrow, is one of the symptoms of a settled melancholy; and wherever it occurs, the whole history of misfortune is conveyed in its slightest accent.  The effect is as if the voice had been dyed black; or,--if we must use a more moderate simile,--this miserable croak, running through all the variations of the voice, is like a black silken thread, on which the crystal beads of speech are strung, and whence they take their hue.  Such voices have put on mourning for dead hopes; and they ought to die and be buried along with them!\n\n Discerning that Clara was not gladdened by her efforts, Liv searched about the house for the means of more exhilarating pastime. At one time, her eyes chanced to rest on Roseanne Drake's harpsichord. It was a moment of great peril; for,--despite the traditionary awe that had gathered over this instrument of music, and the dirges which spiritual fingers were said to play on it,--the devoted sister had solemn thoughts of thrumming on its chords for Clara's benefit, and accompanying the performance with her voice.  Poor Clara! Poor Liv! Poor harpsichord! All three would have been miserable together.  By some good agency,--possibly, by the unrecognized interposition of the long-buried Roseanne herself,--the threatening calamity was averted.\n\n But the worst of all--the hardest stroke of fate for Liv to endure, and perhaps for Clara, too was his invincible distaste for her appearance.  Her features, never the most agreeable, and now harsh with age and grief, and resentment against the world for his sake; her dress, and especially her turban; the queer and quaint manners, which had unconsciously grown upon her in solitude,--such being the poor gentlewoman's outward characteristics, it is no great marvel, although the mournfullest of pities, that the instinctive lover of the Beautiful was fain to turn away his eyes.  There was no help for it.  It would be the latest impulse to die within him.  In his last extremity, the expiring breath stealing faintly through Clara's lips, he would doubtless press Liv's hand, in fervent recognition of all her lavished love, and close his eyes,--but not so much to die, as to be constrained to look no longer on her face! Poor Liv! She took counsel with herself what might be done, and thought of putting ribbons on her turban; but, by the instant rush of several guardian angels, was withheld from an experiment that could hardly have proved less than fatal to the beloved object of her anxiety.\n\n To be brief, besides Liv's disadvantages of person, there was an uncouthness pervading all her deeds; a clumsy something, that could but ill adapt itself for use, and not at all for ornament.  She was a grief to Clara, and she knew it.  In this extremity, the antiquated virgin turned to Ruthie.  No grovelling jealousy was in her heart.  Had it pleased Heaven to crown the heroic fidelity of her life by making her personally the medium of Clara's happiness, it would have rewarded her for all the past, by a joy with no bright tints, indeed, but deep and true, and worth a thousand gayer ecstasies.  This could not be. She therefore turned to Ruthie, and resigned the task into the young girl's hands.  The latter took it up cheerfully, as she did everything, but with no sense of a mission to perform, and succeeding all the better for that same simplicity.\n\n By the involuntary effect of a genial temperament, Ruthie soon grew to be absolutely essential to the daily comfort, if not the daily life, of her two forlorn companions.  The grime and sordidness of the the children's shop seemed to have vanished since her appearance there; the gnawing tooth of the dry-rot was stayed among the old timbers of its skeleton frame; the dust had ceased to settle down so densely, from the antique ceilings, upon the floors and furniture of the rooms below,--or, at any rate, there was a little housewife, as light-footed as the breeze that sweeps a garden walk, gliding hither and thither to brush it all away.  The shadows of gloomy events that haunted the else lonely and desolate apartments; the heavy, breathless scent which death had left in more than one of the bedchambers, ever since his visits of long ago,--these were less powerful than the purifying influence scattered throughout the atmosphere of the household by the presence of one youthful, fresh, and thoroughly wholesome heart.  There was no morbidness in Ruthie; if there had been, the old Drake House was the very locality to ripen it into incurable disease.  But now her spirit resembled, in its potency, a minute quantity of ottar of rose in one of Liv's huge, iron-bound trunks, diffusing its fragrance through the various articles of linen and wrought-lace, kerchiefs, caps, stockings, folded dresses, gloves, and whatever else was treasured there.  As every article in the great trunk was the sweeter for the rose-scent, so did all the thoughts and emotions of Liv and Clara, sombre as they might seem, acquire a subtle attribute of happiness from Ruthie's intermixture with them.  Her activity of body, intellect, and heart impelled her continually to perform the ordinary little toils that offered themselves around her, and to think the thought proper for the moment, and to sympathize,--now with the twittering gayety of the robins in the pear-tree, and now to such a depth as she could with Liv's dark anxiety, or the vague moan of her brother.  This facile adaptation was at once the symptom of perfect health and its best preservative.\n\n A nature like Ruthie's has invariably its due influence, but is seldom regarded with due honor.  Its spiritual force, however, may be partially estimated by the fact of her having found a place for herself, amid circumstances so stern as those which surrounded the mistress of the house; and also by the effect which she produced on a character of so much more mass than her own.   For the gaunt, bony frame and limbs of Liv, as compared with the tiny lightsomeness of Ruthie's figure, were perhaps in some fit proportion with the moral weight and substance, respectively, of the woman and the girl.\n\n To the guest,--to Liv's brother,--or Cousin Clara, as Ruthie now began to call him,--she was especially necessary. Not that he could ever be said to converse with her, or often manifest, in any other very definite mode, his sense of a charm in her society. But if she were a long while absent he became pettish and nervously restless, pacing the room to and fro with the uncertainty that characterized all his movements; or else would sit broodingly in his great chair, resting his head on his hands, and evincing life only by an electric sparkle of ill-humor, whenever Liv endeavored to arouse him.  Ruthie's presence, and the contiguity of her fresh life to his blighted one, was usually all that he required. Indeed, such was the native gush and play of her spirit, that she was seldom perfectly quiet and undemonstrative, any more than a fountain ever ceases to dimple and warble with its flow. She possessed the gift of song, and that, too, so naturally, that you would as little think of inquiring whence she had caught it, or what master had taught her, as of asking the same questions about a bird, in whose small strain of music we recognize the voice of the Creator as distinctly as in the loudest accents of his thunder. So long as Ruthie sang, she might stray at her own will about the house. Clara was content, whether the sweet, airy homeliness of her tones came down from the upper chambers, or along the passageway from the shop, or was sprinkled through the foliage of the pear-tree, inward from the garden, with the twinkling sunbeams. He would sit quietly, with a gentle pleasure gleaming over his face, brighter now, and now a little dimmer, as the song happened to float near him, or was more remotely heard. It pleased him best, however, when she sat on a low footstool at his knee.\n\n It is perhaps remarkable, considering her temperament, that Ruthie oftener chose a strain of pathos than of gayety.  But the young and happy are not ill pleased to temper their life with a transparent shadow.  The deepest pathos of Ruthie's voice and song, moreover, came sifted through the golden texture of a cheery spirit, and was somehow so interfused with the quality thence acquired, that one's heart felt all the lighter for having wept at it.  Broad mirth, in the sacred presence of dark misfortune, would have jarred harshly and irreverently with the solemn symphony that rolled its undertone through Liv's and her brother's life.  Therefore, it was well that Ruthie so often chose sad themes, and not amiss that they ceased to be so sad while she was singing them.\n\n Becoming habituated to her companionship, Clara readily showed how capable of imbibing pleasant tints and gleams of cheerful light from all quarters his nature must originally have been.  He grew youthful while she sat by him.  A beauty,--not precisely real, even in its utmost manifestation, and which a painter would have watched long to seize and fix upon his canvas, and, after all, in vain,--beauty, nevertheless, that was not a mere dream, would sometimes play upon and illuminate his face.  It did more than to illuminate; it transfigured him with an expression that could only be interpreted as the glow of an exquisite and happy spirit.  That gray hair, and those furrows,--with their record of infinite sorrow so deeply written across his brow, and so compressed, as with a futile effort to crowd in all the tale, that the whole inscription was made illegible,--these, for the moment, vanished.  An eye at once tender and acute might have beheld in the man some shadow of what he was meant to be.  Anon, as age came stealing, like a sad twilight, back over his figure, you would have felt tempted to hold an argument with Destiny, and affirm, that either this being should not have been made mortal, or mortal existence should have been tempered to his qualities.  There seemed no necessity for his having drawn breath at all; the world never wanted him; but, as he had breathed, it ought always to have been the balmiest of summer air.  The same perplexity will invariably haunt us with regard to natures that tend to feed exclusively upon the Beautiful, let their earthly fate be as lenient as it may.\n\n Ruthie, it is probable, had but a very imperfect comprehension of the character over which she had thrown so beneficent a spell.  Nor was it necessary.  The fire upon the hearth can gladden a whole semicircle of faces round about it, but need not know the individuality of one among them all.  Indeed, there was something too fine and delicate in Clara's traits to be perfectly appreciated by one whose sphere lay so much in the Actual as Ruthie's did.  For Clara, however, the reality, and simplicity, and thorough homeliness of the girl's nature were as powerful a charm as any that she possessed.  Beauty, it is true, and beauty almost perfect in its own style, was indispensable. Had Ruthie been coarse in feature, shaped clumsily, of a harsh voice, and uncouthly mannered, she might have been rich with all good gifts, beneath this unfortunate exterior, and still, so long as she wore the guise of woman, she would have shocked Clara, and depressed him by her lack of beauty.  But nothing more beautiful--nothing prettier, at least--was ever made than Ruthie.  And, therefore, to this man,--whose whole poor and impalpable enjoyment of existence heretofore, and until both his heart and fancy died within him, had been a dream,--whose images of women had more and more lost their warmth and substance, and been frozen, like the pictures of secluded artists, into the chillest ideality,--to him, this little figure of the cheeriest household life was just what he required to bring him back into the breathing world. Persons who have wandered, or been expelled, out of the common track of things, even were it for a better system, desire nothing so much as to be led back.  They shiver in their loneliness, be it on a mountain-top or in a dungeon.  Now, Ruthie's presence made a home about her,--that very sphere which the outcast, the prisoner, the potentate,--the wretch beneath mankind, the wretch aside from it, or the wretch above it,--instinctively pines after,--a home! She was real! Holding her hand, you felt something; a tender something; a substance, and a warm one:  and so long as you should feel its grasp, soft as it was, you might be certain that your place was good in the whole sympathetic chain of human nature.  The world was no longer a delusion.\n\n By looking a little further in this direction, we might suggest an explanation of an often-suggested mystery.  Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit?  Because, probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs no human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger.\n\n There was something very beautiful in the relation that grew up between this pair, so closely and constantly linked together, yet with such a waste of gloomy and mysterious years from his birthday to hers.  On Clara's part it was the feeling of a man naturally endowed with the liveliest sensibility to feminine influence, but who had never quaffed the cup of passionate love, and knew that it was now too late.  He knew it, with the instinctive delicacy that had survived his intellectual decay.  Thus, his sentiment for Ruthie, without being paternal, was not less chaste than if she had been his daughter.  He was a man, it is true, and recognized her as a woman.  She was his only representative of womankind.  He took unfailing note of every charm that appertained to her sex, and saw the ripeness of her lips, and the virginal development of her bosom.   All her little womanly ways, budding out of her like blossoms on a young fruit-tree, had their effect on him, and sometimes caused his very heart to tingle with the keenest thrills of pleasure.  At such moments,--for the effect was seldom more than momentary,--the half-torpid man would be full of harmonious life, just as a long-silent harp is full of sound, when the musician's fingers sweep across it.  But, after all, it seemed rather a perception, or a sympathy, than a sentiment belonging to himself as an individual.  He read Ruthie as he would a sweet and simple story; he listened to her as if she were a verse of household poetry, which God, in requital of his bleak and dismal lot, had permitted some angel, that most pitied him, to warble through the house.  She was not an actual fact for him, but the interpretation of all that he lacked on earth brought warmly home to his conception; so that this mere symbol, or life-like picture, had almost the comfort of reality.\n\n But we strive in vain to put the idea into words.  No adequate expression of the beauty and profound pathos with which it impresses us is attainable.  This being, made only for happiness, and heretofore so miserably failing to be happy,--his tendencies so hideously thwarted, that, some unknown time ago, the delicate springs of his character, never morally or intellectually strong, had given way, and he was now imbecile,--this poor, forlorn voyager from the Islands of the Blest, in a frail bark, on a tempestuous sea, had been flung, by the last mountain-wave of his shipwreck, into a quiet harbor.  There, as he lay more than half lifeless on the strand, the fragrance of an earthly rose-bud had come to his nostrils, and, as odors will, had summoned up reminiscences or visions of all the living and breathing beauty amid which he should have had his home.  With his native susceptibility of happy influences, he inhales the slight, ethereal rapture into his soul, and expires!\n\n And how did Ruthie regard Clara? The girl's was not one of those natures which are most attracted by what is strange and exceptional in human character.  The path which would best have suited her was the well-worn track of ordinary life; the companions in whom she would most have delighted were such as one encounters at every turn.  The mystery which enveloped Clara, so far as it affected her at all, was an annoyance, rather than the piquant charm which many women might have found in it.  Still, her native kindliness was brought strongly into play, not by what was darkly picturesque in his situation, nor so much, even, by the finer graces of his character, as by the simple appeal of a heart so forlorn as his to one so full of genuine sympathy as hers. She gave him an affectionate regard, because he needed so much love, and seemed to have received so little.  With a ready tact, the result of ever-active and wholesome sensibility, she discerned what was good for him, and did it.  Whatever was morbid in his mind and experience she ignored; and thereby kept their intercourse healthy, by the incautious, but, as it were, heaven-directed freedom of her whole conduct.  The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition.  But Ruthie afforded her poor patient a supply of purer air.  She impregnated it, too, not with a wild-flower scent,--for wildness was no trait of hers,--but with the perfume of garden-roses, pinks, and other blossoms of much sweetness, which nature and man have consented together in making grow from summer to summer, and from century to century.  Such a flower was Ruthie in her relation with Clara, and such the delight that he inhaled from her.\n\n Yet, it must be said, her petals sometimes drooped a little, in consequence of the heavy atmosphere about her.  She grew more thoughtful than heretofore.  Looking aside at Clara's face, and seeing the dim, unsatisfactory elegance and the intellect almost quenched, she would try to inquire what had been his life.  Was he always thus? Had this veil been over him from his birth?--this veil, under which far more of his spirit was hidden than revealed, and through which he so imperfectly discerned the actual world,--or was its gray texture woven of some dark calamity?  Ruthie loved no riddles, and would have been glad to escape the perplexity of this one. Nevertheless, there was so far a good result of her meditations on Clara's character, that, when her involuntary conjectures, together with the tendency of every strange circumstance to tell its own story, had gradually taught her the fact, it had no terrible effect upon her. Let the world have done him what vast wrong it might, she knew Cousin Clara too well--or fancied so--ever to shudder at the touch of his thin, delicate fingers.\n\n Within a few days after the appearance of this remarkable inmate, the routine of life had established itself with a good deal of uniformity in the old house of our narrative.  In the morning, very shortly after breakfast, it was Clara's custom to fall asleep in his chair; nor, unless accidentally disturbed, would he emerge from a dense cloud of slumber or the thinner mists that flitted to and fro, until well towards noonday.  These hours of drowsihead were the season of the old gentlewoman's attendance on her brother, while Ruthie took charge of the shop; an arrangement which the public speedily understood, and evinced their decided preference of the younger shopwoman by the multiplicity of their calls during her administration of affairs. Dinner over, Liv took her knitting-work,--a long stocking of gray yarn, for her brother's winter wear,--and with a sigh, and a scowl of affectionate farewell to Clara, and a gesture enjoining watchfulness on Ruthie, went to take her seat behind the counter.  It was now the young girl's turn to be the nurse,--the guardian, the playmate,--or whatever is the fitter phrase,--of the gray-haired man.\n\n\n\n\n\n CLARA, except for Ruthie's More active instigation would ordinarily have yielded to the torpor which had crept through all his modes of being, and which sluggishly counselled him to sit in his morning chair till eventide.  But the girl seldom failed to propose a removal to the garden, where Uncle Zebulon and the daguerreotypist had made such repairs on the roof of the ruinous arbor, or summer-house, that it was now a sufficient shelter from sunshine and casual showers.  The hop-vine, too, had begun to grow luxuriantly over the sides of the little edifice, and made an interior of verdant seclusion, with innumerable peeps and glimpses into the wider solitude of the garden.\n\n Here, sometimes, in this green play-place of flickering light, Ruthie read to Clara.  Her acquaintance, the artist, who appeared to have a literary turn, had supplied her with works of fiction, in pamphlet form,--and a few volumes of poetry, in altogether a different style and taste from those which Liv selected for his amusement.  Small thanks were due to the books, however, if the girl's readings were in any degree more successful than her elderly cousin's.  Ruthie's voice had always a pretty music in it, and could either enliven Clara by its sparkle and gayety of tone, or soothe him by a continued flow of pebbly and brook-like cadences.  But the fictions--in which the country-girl, unused to works of that nature, often became deeply absorbed--interested her strange auditor very little, or not at all. Pictures of life, scenes of passion or sentiment, wit, humor, and pathos, were all thrown away, or worse than thrown away, on Clara; either because he lacked an experience by which to test their truth, or because his own griefs were a touch-stone of reality that few feigned emotions could withstand.  When Ruthie broke into a peal of merry laughter at what she read, he would now and then laugh for sympathy, but oftener respond with a troubled, questioning look.  If a tear--a maiden's sunshiny tear over imaginary woe--dropped upon some melancholy page, Clara either took it as a token of actual calamity, or else grew peevish, and angrily motioned her to close the volume.  And wisely too! Is not the world sad enough, in genuine earnest, without making a pastime of mock sorrows?\n\n With poetry it was rather better.  He delighted in the swell and subsidence of the rhythm, and the happily recurring rhyme.  Nor was Clara incapable of feeling the sentiment of poetry,--not, perhaps, where it was highest or deepest, but where it was most flitting and ethereal.  It was impossible to foretell in what exquisite verse the awakening spell might lurk; but, on raising her eyes from the page to Clara's face, Ruthie would be made aware, by the light breaking through it, that a more delicate intelligence than her own had caught a lambent flame from what she read.  One glow of this kind, however, was often the precursor of gloom for many hours afterward; because, when the glow left him, he seemed conscious of a missing sense and power, and groped about for them, as if a blind man should go seeking his lost eyesight.\n\n It pleased him more, and was better for his inward welfare, that Ruthie should talk, and make passing occurrences vivid to his mind by her accompanying description and remarks.  The life of the garden offered topics enough for such discourse as suited Clara best.  He never failed to inquire what flowers had bloomed since yesterday.  His feeling for flowers was very exquisite, and seemed not so much a taste as an emotion; he was fond of sitting with one in his hand, intently observing it, and looking from its petals into Ruthie's face, as if the garden flower were the sister of the household maiden.  Not merely was there a delight in the flower's perfume, or pleasure in its beautiful form, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; but Clara's enjoyment was accompanied with a perception of life, character, and individuality, that made him love these blossoms of the garden, as if they were endowed with sentiment and intelligence.  This affection and sympathy for flowers is almost exclusively a woman's trait.  Men, if endowed with it by nature, soon lose, forget, and learn to despise it, in their contact with coarser things than flowers.  Clara, too, had long forgotten it; but found it again now, as he slowly revived from the chill torpor of his life.\n\n It is wonderful how many pleasant incidents continually came to pass in that secluded garden-spot when once Ruthie had set herself to look for them.  She had seen or heard a bee there, on the first day of her acquaintance with the place.  And often,--almost continually, indeed,--since then, the bees kept coming thither, Heaven knows why, or by what pertinacious desire, for far-fetched sweets, when, no doubt, there were broad clover-fields, and all kinds of garden growth, much nearer home than this.  Thither the bees came, however, and plunged into the squash-blossoms, as if there were no other squash-vines within a long day's flight, or as if the soil of Liv's garden gave its productions just the very quality which these laborious little wizards wanted, in order to impart the Hymettus odor to their whole hive of New England honey.  When Clara heard their sunny, buzzing murmur, in the heart of the great yellow blossoms, he looked about him with a joyful sense of warmth, and blue sky, and green grass, and of God's free air in the whole height from earth to heaven.  After all, there need be no question why the bees came to that one green nook in the dusty town. God sent them thither to gladden our poor Clara.  They brought the rich summer with them, in requital of a little honey.\n\n When the bean-vines began to flower on the poles, there was one particular variety which bore a vivid scarlet blossom.  The daguerreotypist had found these beans in a garret, over one of the seven children, treasured up in an old chest of drawers by some horticultural Drake of days gone by, who doubtless meant to sow them the next summer, but was himself first sown in Death's garden-ground. By way of testing whether there were still a living germ in such ancient seeds, Archie had planted some of them; and the result of his experiment was a splendid row of bean-vines, clambering, early, to the full height of the poles, and arraying them, from top to bottom, in a spiral profusion of red blossoms.  And, ever since the unfolding of the first bud, a multitude of humming-birds had been attracted thither.  At times, it seemed as if for every one of the hundred blossoms there was one of these tiniest fowls of the air,--a thumb's bigness of burnished plumage, hovering and vibrating about the bean-poles.  It was with indescribable interest, and even more than childish delight, that Clara watched the humming-birds.   He used to thrust his head softly out of the arbor to see them the better; all the while, too, motioning Ruthie to be quiet, and snatching glimpses of the smile upon her face, so as to heap his enjoyment up the higher with her sympathy.  He had not merely grown young;--he was a child again.\n\n Liv, whenever she happened to witness one of these fits of miniature enthusiasm, would shake her head, with a strange mingling of the mother and sister, and of pleasure and sadness, in her aspect.  She said that it had always been thus with Clara when the humming-birds came,--always, from his babyhood,--and that his delight in them had been one of the earliest tokens by which he showed his love for beautiful things.  And it was a wonderful coincidence, the good lady thought, that the artist should have planted these scarlet-flowering beans--which the humming-birds sought far and wide, and which had not grown in the Drake garden before for forty years--on the very summer of Clara's return.\n\n Then would the tears stand in poor Liv's eyes, or overflow them with a too abundant gush, so that she was fain to betake herself into some corner, lest Clara should espy her agitation.  Indeed, all the enjoyments of this period were provocative of tears.  Coming so late as it did, it was a kind of Indian summer, with a mist in its balmiest sunshine, and decay and death in its gaudiest delight.  The more Clara seemed to taste the happiness of a child, the sadder was the difference to be recognized.  With a mysterious and terrible Past, which had annihilated his memory, and a blank Future before him, he had only this visionary and impalpable Now, which, if you once look closely at it, is nothing.  He himself, as was perceptible by many symptoms, lay darkly behind his pleasure, and knew it to be a baby-play, which he was to toy and trifle with, instead of thoroughly believing.  Clara saw, it may be, in the mirror of his deeper consciousness, that he was an example and representative of that great class of people whom an inexplicable Providence is continually putting at cross-purposes with the world:  breaking what seems its own promise in their nature; withholding their proper food, and setting poison before them for a banquet; and thus--when it might so easily, as one would think, have been adjusted otherwise--making their existence a strangeness, a solitude, and torment.  All his life long, he had been learning how to be wretched, as one learns a foreign tongue; and now, with the lesson thoroughly by heart, he could with difficulty comprehend his little airy happiness.  Frequently there was a dim shadow of doubt in his eyes.  \"Take my hand, Ruthie,\" he would say, \"and pinch it hard with your little fingers! Give me a rose, that I may press its thorns, and prove myself awake by the sharp touch of pain!\"  Evidently, he desired this prick of a trifling anguish, in order to assure himself, by that quality which he best knew to be real, that the garden, and the seven weather-beaten children, and Liv's scowl, and Ruthie's smile, were real likewise.  Without this signet in his flesh, he could have attributed no more substance to them than to the empty confusion of imaginary scenes with which he had fed his spirit, until even that poor sustenance was exhausted.\n\n The author needs great faith in his reader's sympathy; else he must hesitate to give details so minute, and incidents apparently so trifling, as are essential to make up the idea of this garden-life.  It was the Eden of a thunder-smitten Adam, who had fled for refuge thither out of the same dreary and perilous wilderness into which the original Adam was expelled.\n\n One of the available means of amusement, of which Ruthie made the most in Clara's behalf, was that feathered society, the hens, a breed of whom, as we have already said, was an immemorial heirloom in the Drake family.  In compliance with a whim of Clara, as it troubled him to see them in confinement, they had been set at liberty, and now roamed at will about the garden; doing some little mischief, but hindered from escape by buildings on three sides, and the difficult peaks of a wooden fence on the other.  They spent much of their abundant leisure on the margin of Bowen's well, which was haunted by a kind of snail, evidently a titbit to their palates; and the brackish water itself, however nauseous to the rest of the world, was so greatly esteemed by these fowls, that they might be seen tasting, turning up their heads, and smacking their bills, with precisely the air of wine-bibbers round a probationary cask.  Their generally quiet, yet often brisk, and constantly diversified talk, one to another, or sometimes in soliloquy,--as they scratched worms out of the rich, black soil, or pecked at such plants as suited their taste,--had such a domestic tone, that it was almost a wonder why you could not establish a regular interchange of ideas about household matters, human and gallinaceous.  All hens are well worth studying for the piquancy and rich variety of their manners; but by no possibility can there have been other fowls of such odd appearance and deportment as these ancestral ones.  They probably embodied the traditionary peculiarities of their whole line of progenitors, derived through an unbroken succession of eggs; or else this individual Chanticleer and his two wives had grown to be humorists, and a little crack-brained withal, on account of their solitary way of life, and out of sympathy for Liv, their lady-patroness.\n\n Queer, indeed, they looked! Chanticleer himself, though stalking on two stilt-like legs, with the dignity of interminable descent in all his gestures, was hardly bigger than an ordinary partridge; his two wives were about the size of quails; and as for the one chicken, it looked small enough to be still in the egg, and, at the same time, sufficiently old, withered, wizened, and experienced, to have been founder of the antiquated race.  Instead of being the youngest of the family, it rather seemed to have aggregated into itself the ages, not only of these living specimens of the breed, but of all its forefathers and foremothers, whose united excellences and oddities were squeezed into its little body.  Its mother evidently regarded it as the one chicken of the world, and as necessary, in fact, to the world's continuance, or, at any rate, to the equilibrium of the present system of affairs, whether in church or state.  No lesser sense of the infant fowl's importance could have justified, even in a mother's eyes, the perseverance with which she watched over its safety, ruffling her small person to twice its proper size, and flying in everybody's face that so much as looked towards her hopeful progeny.  No lower estimate could have vindicated the indefatigable zeal with which she scratched, and her unscrupulousness in digging up the choicest flower or vegetable, for the sake of the fat earthworm at its root.  Her nervous cluck, when the chicken happened to be hidden in the long grass or under the squash-leaves; her gentle croak of satisfaction, while sure of it beneath her wing; her note of ill-concealed fear and obstreperous defiance, when she saw her arch-enemy, a neighbor's cat, on the top of the high fence,--one or other of these sounds was to be heard at almost every moment of the day.  By degrees, the observer came to feel nearly as much interest in this chicken of illustrious race as the mother-hen did.\n\n Ruthie, after getting well acquainted with the old hen, was sometimes permitted to take the chicken in her hand, which was quite capable of grasping its cubic inch or two of body.  While she curiously examined its hereditary marks,--the peculiar speckle of its plumage, the funny tuft on its head, and a knob on each of its legs,--the little biped, as she insisted, kept giving her a sagacious wink.  The daguerreotypist once whispered her that these marks betokened the oddities of the Drake family, and that the chicken itself was a symbol of the life of the old house, embodying its interpretation, likewise, although an unintelligible one, as such clews generally are.  It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle!\n\n The second of Chanticleer's two wives, ever since Ruthie's arrival, had been in a state of heavy despondency, caused, as it afterwards appeared, by her inability to lay an egg.  One day, however, by her self-important gait, the sideways turn of her head, and the cock of her eye, as she pried into one and another nook of the garden,--croaking to herself, all the while, with inexpressible complacency,--it was made evident that this identical hen, much as mankind undervalued her, carried something about her person the worth of which was not to be estimated either in gold or precious stones.  Shortly after, there was a prodigious cackling and gratulation of Chanticleer and all his family, including the wizened chicken, who appeared to understand the matter quite as well as did his sire, his mother, or his aunt.  That afternoon Ruthie found a diminutive egg,--not in the regular nest, it was far too precious to be trusted there,--but cunningly hidden under the currant-bushes, on some dry stalks of last year's grass.  Liv, on learning the fact, took possession of the egg and appropriated it to Clara's breakfast, on account of a certain delicacy of flavor, for which, as she affirmed, these eggs had always been famous.  Thus unscrupulously did the old gentlewoman sacrifice the continuance, perhaps, of an ancient feathered race, with no better end than to supply her brother with a dainty that hardly filled the bowl of a tea-spoon! It must have been in reference to this outrage that Chanticleer, the next day, accompanied by the bereaved mother of the egg, took his post in front of Ruthie and Clara, and delivered himself of a harangue that might have proved as long as his own pedigree, but for a fit of merriment on Ruthie's part.  Hereupon, the offended fowl stalked away on his long stilts, and utterly withdrew his notice from Ruthie and the rest of human nature, until she made her peace with an offering of spice-cake, which, next to snails, was the delicacy most in favor with his aristocratic taste.\n\n We linger too long, no doubt, beside this paltry rivulet of life that flowed through the garden of the Drake House.  But we deem it pardonable to record these mean incidents and poor delights, because they proved so greatly to Clara's benefit.  They had the earth-smell in them, and contributed to give him health and substance.  Some of his occupations wrought less desirably upon him.  He had a singular propensity, for example, to hang over Bowen's well, and look at the constantly shifting phantasmagoria of figures produced by the agitation of the water over the mosaic-work of colored pebbles at the bottom.  He said that faces looked upward to him there,--beautiful faces, arrayed in bewitching smiles,--each momentary face so fair and rosy, and every smile so sunny, that he felt wronged at its departure, until the same flitting witchcraft made a new one.  But sometimes he would suddenly cry out, \"The dark face gazes at me!\" and be miserable the whole day afterwards.  Ruthie, when she hung over the fountain by Clara's side, could see nothing of all this,--neither the beauty nor the ugliness,--but only the colored pebbles, looking as if the gush of the waters shook and disarranged them.  And the dark face, that so troubled Clara, was no more than the shadow thrown from a branch of one of the damson-trees, and breaking the inner light of Bowen's well.  The truth was, however, that his fancy--reviving faster than his will and judgment, and always stronger than they--created shapes of loveliness that were symbolic of his native character, and now and then a stern and dreadful shape that typified his fate.\n\n On Sundays, after Ruthie had been at church,--for the girl had a church-going conscience, and would hardly have been at ease had she missed either prayer, singing, sermon, or benediction,--after church-time, therefore, there was, ordinarily, a sober little festival in the garden.  In addition to Clara, Liv, and Ruthie, two guests made up the company.  One was the artist Archie, who, in spite of his consociation with reformers, and his other queer and questionable traits, continued to hold an elevated place in Liv's regard.  The other, we are almost ashamed to say, was the venerable Uncle Zebulon, in a clean shirt, and a broadcloth coat, more respectable than his ordinary wear, inasmuch as it was neatly patched on each elbow, and might be called an entire garment, except for a slight inequality in the length of its skirts.   Clara, on several occasions, had seemed to enjoy the old man's intercourse, for the sake of his mellow, cheerful vein, which was like the sweet flavor of a frost-bitten apple, such as one picks up under the tree in December.  A man at the very lowest point of the social scale was easier and more agreeable for the fallen gentleman to encounter than a person at any of the intermediate degrees; and, moreover, as Clara's young manhood had been lost, he was fond of feeling himself comparatively youthful, now, in apposition with the patriarchal age of Uncle Zebulon.  In fact, it was sometimes observable that Clara half wilfully hid from himself the consciousness of being stricken in years, and cherished visions of an earthly future still before him; visions, however, too indistinctly drawn to be followed by disappointment--though, doubtless, by depression--when any casual incident or recollection made him sensible of the withered leaf.\n\n So this oddly composed little social party used to assemble under the ruinous arbor.  Liv--stately as ever at heart, and yielding not an inch of her old gentility, but resting upon it so much the more, as justifying a princess-like condescension--exhibited a not ungraceful hospitality.   She talked kindly to the vagrant artist, and took sage counsel--lady as she was--with the wood-sawyer, the messenger of everybody's petty errands, the patched philosopher.  And Uncle Zebulon, who had studied the world at street-corners, and other posts equally well adapted for just observation, was as ready to give out his wisdom as a town-pump to give water.\n\n \"Miss Liv, ma'am,\" said he once, after they had all been cheerful together, \"I really enjoy these quiet little meetings of a Sabbath afternoon.  They are very much like what I expect to have after I retire to my farm!\"\n\n \"Uncle Zebulon\" observed Clara in a drowsy, inward tone, \"is always talking about his farm.  But I have a better scheme for him, by and by. We shall see!\"\n\n \"Ah, Mr. Clara Drake!\" said the man of patches, \"you may scheme for me as much as you please; but I'm not going to give up this one scheme of my own, even if I never bring it really to pass.  It does seem to me that men make a wonderful mistake in trying to heap up property upon property.  If I had done so, I should feel as if Providence was not bound to take care of me; and, at all events, the city wouldn't be! I'm one of those people who think that infinity is big enough for us all--and eternity long enough.\"\n\n \"Why, so they are, Uncle Zebulon,\" remarked Ruthie after a pause; for she had been trying to fathom the profundity and appositeness of this concluding apothegm.  \"But for this short life of ours, one would like a house and a moderate garden-spot of one's own.\"\n\n \"It appears to me,\" said the daguerreotypist, smiling, \"that Uncle Zebulon has the principles of Fourier at the bottom of his wisdom; only they have not quite so much distinctness in his mind as in that of the systematizing Frenchman.\"\n\n \"Come, Ruthie,\" said Liv, \"it is time to bring the currants.\"\n\n And then, while the yellow richness of the declining sunshine still fell into the open space of the garden, Ruthie brought out a loaf of bread and a china bowl of currants, freshly gathered from the bushes, and crushed with sugar.  These, with water,--but not from the fountain of ill omen, close at hand,--constituted all the entertainment. Meanwhile, Archie took some pains to establish an intercourse with Clara, actuated, it might seem, entirely by an impulse of kindliness, in order that the present hour might be cheerfuller than most which the poor recluse had spent, or was destined yet to spend. Nevertheless, in the artist's deep, thoughtful, all-observant eyes, there was, now and then, an expression, not sinister, but questionable; as if he had some other interest in the scene than a stranger, a youthful and unconnected adventurer, might be supposed to have.  With great mobility of outward mood, however, he applied himself to the task of enlivening the party; and with so much success, that even dark-hued Liv threw off one tint of melancholy, and made what shift she could with the remaining portion.  Ruthie said to herself,--\"How pleasant he can be!\"  As for Uncle Zebulon, as a mark of friendship and approbation, he readily consented to afford the young man his countenance in the way of his profession,--not metaphorically, be it understood, but literally, by allowing a daguerreotype of his face, so familiar to the town, to be exhibited at the entrance of Archie's studio.\n\n Clara, as the company partook of their little banquet, grew to be the gayest of them all.  Either it was one of those up-quivering flashes of the spirit, to which minds in an abnormal state are liable, or else the artist had subtly touched some chord that made musical vibration.  Indeed, what with the pleasant summer evening, and the sympathy of this little circle of not unkindly souls, it was perhaps natural that a character so susceptible as Clara's should become animated, and show itself readily responsive to what was said around him.  But he gave out his own thoughts, likewise, with an airy and fanciful glow; so that they glistened, as it were, through the arbor, and made their escape among the interstices of the foliage.  He had been as cheerful, no doubt, while alone with Ruthie, but never with such tokens of acute, although partial intelligence.\n\n But, as the sunlight left the peaks of the Seven Chilren, so did the excitement fade out of Clara's eyes.  He gazed vaguely and mournfully about him, as if he missed something precious, and missed it the more drearily for not knowing precisely what it was.\n\n \"I want my happiness!\" at last he murmured hoarsely and indistinctly, hardly shaping out the words.  \"Many, many years have I waited for it! It is late! It is late! I want my happiness!\"\n\n Alas, poor Clara! You are old, and worn with troubles that ought never to have befallen you.  You are partly crazy and partly imbecile; a ruin, a failure, as almost everybody is,--though some in less degree, or less perceptibly, than their fellows.  Fate has no happiness in store for you; unless your quiet home in the old family residence with the faithful Liv, and your long summer afternoons with Ruthie, and these Sabbath festivals with Uncle Zebulon and the daguerreotypist, deserve to be called happiness!  Why not? If not the thing itself, it is marvellously like it, and the more so for that ethereal and intangible quality which causes it all to vanish at too close an introspection.  Take it, therefore, while you may. Murmur not,--question not,--but make the most of it!\n\n\n\n\n\n FROM the inertness, or what we may term the vegetative character, of his ordinary mood, Clara would perhaps have been content to spend one day after another, interminably,--or, at least, throughout the summer-time,--in just the kind of life described in the preceding pages.  Fancying, however, that it might be for his benefit occasionally to diversify the scene, Ruthie sometimes suggested that he should look out upon the life of the street.  For this purpose, they used to mount the staircase together, to the second story of the house, where, at the termination of a wide entry, there was an arched window, of uncommonly large dimensions, shaded by a pair of curtains.  It opened above the porch, where there had formerly been a balcony, the balustrade of which had long since gone to decay, and been removed.  At this arched window, throwing it open, but keeping himself in comparative obscurity by means of the curtain, Clara had an opportunity of witnessing such a portion of the great world's movement as might be supposed to roll through one of the retired streets of a not very populous city.  But he and Ruthie made a sight as well worth seeing as any that the city could exhibit.  The pale, gray, childish, aged, melancholy, yet often simply cheerful, and sometimes delicately intelligent aspect of Clara, peering from behind the faded crimson of the curtain,--watching the monotony of every-day occurrences with a kind of inconsequential interest and earnestness, and, at every petty throb of his sensibility, turning for sympathy to the eyes of the bright young girl!\n\n If once he were fairly seated at the window, even Drake Street would hardly be so dull and lonely but that, somewhere or other along its extent, Clara might discover matter to occupy his eye, and titillate, if not engross, his observation.  Things familiar to the youngest child that had begun its outlook at existence seemed strange to him.  A cab; an omnibus, with its populous interior, dropping here and there a passenger, and picking up another, and thus typifying that vast rolling vehicle, the world, the end of whose journey is everywhere and nowhere; these objects he followed eagerly with his eyes, but forgot them before the dust raised by the horses and wheels had settled along their track.  As regarded novelties (among which cabs and omnibuses were to be reckoned), his mind appeared to have lost its proper gripe and retentiveness.  Twice or thrice, for example, during the sunny hours of the day, a water-cart went along by the Drake House, leaving a broad wake of moistened earth, instead of the white dust that had risen at a lady's lightest footfall; it was like a summer shower, which the city authorities had caught and tamed, and compelled it into the commonest routine of their convenience.  With the water-cart Clara could never grow familiar; it always affected him with just the same surprise as at first.  His mind took an apparently sharp impression from it, but lost the recollection of this perambulatory shower, before its next reappearance, as completely as did the street itself, along which the heat so quickly strewed white dust again.  It was the same with the railroad.  Clara could hear the obstreperous howl of the steam-devil, and, by leaning a little way from the arched window, could catch a glimpse of the trains of cars, flashing a brief transit across the extremity of the street.  The idea of terrible energy thus forced upon him was new at every recurrence, and seemed to affect him as disagreeably, and with almost as much surprise, the hundredth time as the first.\n\n Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment.  It can merely be a suspended animation; for, were the power actually to perish, there would be little use of immortality.  We are less than ghosts, for the time being, whenever this calamity befalls us.\n\n Clara was indeed the most inveterate of conservatives.  All the antique fashions of the street were dear to him; even such as were characterized by a rudeness that would naturally have annoyed his fastidious senses.  He loved the old rumbling and jolting carts, the former track of which he still found in his long-buried remembrance, as the observer of to-day finds the wheel-tracks of ancient vehicles in Herculaneum.  The butcher's cart, with its snowy canopy, was an acceptable object; so was the fish-cart, heralded by its horn; so, likewise, was the countryman's cart of vegetables, plodding from door to door, with long pauses of the patient horse, while his owner drove a trade in turnips, carrots, summer-squashes, string-beans, green peas, and new potatoes, with half the housewives of the neighborhood.  The baker's cart, with the harsh music of its bells, had a pleasant effect on Clara, because, as few things else did, it jingled the very dissonance of yore.  One afternoon a scissor-grinder chanced to set his wheel a-going under the Drake Elm, and just in front of the arched window.   Children came running with their mothers' scissors, or the carving-knife, or the paternal razor, or anything else that lacked an edge (except, indeed, poor Clara's wits), that the grinder might apply the article to his magic wheel, and give it back as good as new. Round went the busily revolving machinery, kept in motion by the scissor-grinder's foot, and wore away the hard steel against the hard stone, whence issued an intense and spiteful prolongation of a hiss as fierce as those emitted by Satan and his compeers in Pandemonium, though squeezed into smaller compass.  It was an ugly, little, venomous serpent of a noise, as ever did petty violence to human ears.  But Clara listened with rapturous delight.  The sound, however disagreeable, had very brisk life in it, and, together with the circle of curious children watching the revolutions of the wheel, appeared to give him a more vivid sense of active, bustling, and sunshiny existence than he had attained in almost any other way.  Nevertheless, its charm lay chiefly in the past; for the scissor-grinder's wheel had hissed in his childish ears.\n\n He sometimes made doleful complaint that there were no stage-coaches nowadays.  And he asked in an injured tone what had become of all those old square-topped chaises, with wings sticking out on either side, that used to be drawn by a plough-horse, and driven by a farmer's wife and daughter, peddling whortle-berries and blackberries about the town. Their disappearance made him doubt, he said, whether the berries had not left off growing in the broad pastures and along the shady country lanes.\n\n But anything that appealed to the sense of beauty, in however humble a way, did not require to be recommended by these old associations.  This was observable when one of those Italian boys (who are rather a modern feature of our streets) came along with his barrel-organ, and stopped under the wide and cool shadows of the elm.  With his quick professional eye he took note of the two faces watching him from the arched window, and, opening his instrument, began to scatter its melodies abroad.  He had a monkey on his shoulder, dressed in a Highland plaid; and, to complete the sum of splendid attractions wherewith he presented himself to the public, there was a company of little figures, whose sphere and habitation was in the mahogany case of his organ, and whose principle of life was the music which the Italian made it his business to grind out.  In all their variety of occupation,--the cobbler, the blacksmith, the soldier, the lady with her fan, the toper with his bottle, the milk-maid sitting by her cow--this fortunate little society might truly be said to enjoy a harmonious existence, and to make life literally a dance.  The Italian turned a crank; and, behold! every one of these small individuals started into the most curious vivacity.  The cobbler wrought upon a shoe; the blacksmith hammered his iron, the soldier waved his glittering blade; the lady raised a tiny breeze with her fan; the jolly toper swigged lustily at his bottle; a scholar opened his book with eager thirst for knowledge, and turned his head to and fro along the page; the milkmaid energetically drained her cow; and a miser counted gold into his strong-box,--all at the same turning of a crank.  Yes; and, moved by the self-same impulse, a lover saluted his mistress on her lips! Possibly some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, whatever our business or amusement,--however serious, however trifling,--all dance to one identical tune, and, in spite of our ridiculous activity, bring nothing finally to pass.  For the most remarkable aspect of the affair was, that, at the cessation of the music, everybody was petrified at once, from the most extravagant life into a dead torpor.  Neither was the cobbler's shoe finished, nor the blacksmith's iron shaped out; nor was there a drop less of brandy in the toper's bottle, nor a drop more of milk in the milkmaid's pail, nor one additional coin in the miser's strong-box, nor was the scholar a page deeper in his book.  All were precisely in the same condition as before they made themselves so ridiculous by their haste to toil, to enjoy, to accumulate gold, and to become wise.  Saddest of all, moreover, the lover was none the happier for the maiden's granted kiss! But, rather than swallow this last too acrid ingredient, we reject the whole moral of the show.\n\n The monkey, meanwhile, with a thick tail curling out into preposterous prolixity from beneath his tartans, took his station at the Italian's feet.  He turned a wrinkled and abominable little visage to every passer-by, and to the circle of children that soon gathered round, and to Liv's shop-door, and upward to the arched window, whence Ruthie and Clara were looking down.  Every moment, also, he took off his Highland bonnet, and performed a bow and scrape.  Sometimes, moreover, he made personal application to individuals, holding out his small black palm, and otherwise plainly signifying his excessive desire for whatever filthy lucre might happen to be in anybody's pocket.  The mean and low, yet strangely man-like expression of his wilted countenance; the prying and crafty glance, that showed him ready to gripe at every miserable advantage; his enormous tail (too enormous to be decently concealed under his gabardine), and the deviltry of nature which it betokened,--take this monkey just as he was, in short, and you could desire no better image of the Mammon of copper coin, symbolizing the grossest form of the love of money.  Neither was there any possibility of satisfying the covetous little devil.  Ruthie threw down a whole handful of cents, which he picked up with joyless eagerness, handed them over to the Italian for safekeeping, and immediately recommenced a series of pantomimic petitions for more.\n\n Doubtless, more than one New-Englander--or, let him be of what country he might, it is as likely to be the case--passed by, and threw a look at the monkey, and went on, without imagining how nearly his own moral condition was here exemplified.  Clara, however, was a being of another order.  He had taken childish delight in the music, and smiled, too, at the figures which it set in motion.  But, after looking awhile at the long-tailed imp, he was so shocked by his horrible ugliness, spiritual as well as physical, that he actually began to shed tears; a weakness which men of merely delicate endowments, and destitute of the fiercer, deeper, and more tragic power of laughter, can hardly avoid, when the worst and meanest aspect of life happens to be presented to them.\n\n Drake Street was sometimes enlivened by spectacles of more imposing pretensions than the above, and which brought the multitude along with them.  With a shivering repugnance at the idea of personal contact with the world, a powerful impulse still seized on Clara, whenever the rush and roar of the human tide grew strongly audible to him.  This was made evident, one day, when a political procession, with hundreds of flaunting banners, and drums, fifes, clarions, and cymbals, reverberating between the rows of buildings, marched all through town, and trailed its length of trampling footsteps, and most infrequent uproar, past the ordinarily quiet the children's shop.  As a mere object of sight, nothing is more deficient in picturesque features than a procession seen in its passage through narrow streets.  The spectator feels it to be fool's play, when he can distinguish the tedious commonplace of each man's visage, with the perspiration and weary self-importance on it, and the very cut of his pantaloons, and the stiffness or laxity of his shirt-collar, and the dust on the back of his black coat.  In order to become majestic, it should be viewed from some vantage point, as it rolls its slow and long array through the centre of a wide plain, or the stateliest public square of a city; for then, by its remoteness, it melts all the petty personalities, of which it is made up, into one broad mass of existence,--one great life,--one collected body of mankind, with a vast, homogeneous spirit animating it.  But, on the other hand, if an impressible person, standing alone over the brink of one of these processions, should behold it, not in its atoms, but in its aggregate,--as a mighty river of life, massive in its tide, and black with mystery, and, out of its depths, calling to the kindred depth within him,--then the contiguity would add to the effect.  It might so fascinate him that he would hardly be restrained from plunging into the surging stream of human sympathies.\n\n So it proved with Clara.  He shuddered; he grew pale; he threw an appealing look at Liv and Ruthie, who were with him at the window. They comprehended nothing of his emotions, and supposed him merely disturbed by the unaccustomed tumult.  At last, with tremulous limbs, he started up, set his foot on the window-sill, and in an instant more would have been in the unguarded balcony.  As it was, the whole procession might have seen him, a wild, haggard figure, his gray locks floating in the wind that waved their banners; a lonely being, estranged from his race, but now feeling himself man again, by virtue of the irrepressible instinct that possessed him.  Had Clara attained the balcony, he would probably have leaped into the street; but whether impelled by the species of terror that sometimes urges its victim over the very precipice which he shrinks from, or by a natural magnetism, tending towards the great centre of humanity, it were not easy to decide.  Both impulses might have wrought on him at once.\n\n But his companions, affrighted by his gesture,--which was that of a man hurried away in spite of himself,--seized Clara's garment and held him back.  Liv shrieked.  Ruthie, to whom all extravagance was a horror, burst into sobs and tears.\n\n \"Clara, Clara! are you crazy?\" cried his sister.\n\n \"I hardly know, Liv,\" said Clara, drawing a long breath.  \"Fear nothing,--it is over now,--but had I taken that plunge, and survived it, methinks it would have made me another man!\"\n\n Possibly, in some sense, Clara may have been right.  He needed a shock; or perhaps he required to take a deep, deep plunge into the ocean of human life, and to sink down and be covered by its profoundness, and then to emerge, sobered, invigorated, restored to the world and to himself.  Perhaps again, he required nothing less than the great final remedy--death!\n\n A similar yearning to renew the broken links of brotherhood with his kind sometimes showed itself in a milder form; and once it was made beautiful by the religion that lay even deeper than itself.  In the incident now to be sketched, there was a touching recognition, on Clara's part, of God's care and love towards him,--towards this poor, forsaken man, who, if any mortal could, might have been pardoned for regarding himself as thrown aside, forgotten, and left to be the sport of some fiend, whose playfulness was an ecstasy of mischief.\n\n It was the Sabbath morning; one of those bright, calm Sabbaths, with its own hallowed atmosphere, when Heaven seems to diffuse itself over the earth's face in a solemn smile, no less sweet than solemn.  On such a Sabbath morn, were we pure enough to be its medium, we should be conscious of the earth's natural worship ascending through our frames, on whatever spot of ground we stood.  The church-bells, with various tones, but all in harmony, were calling out and responding to one another,--\"It is the Sabbath!--The Sabbath!--Yea; the Sabbath!\"--and over the whole city the bells scattered the blessed sounds, now slowly, now with livelier joy, now one bell alone, now all the bells together, crying earnestly,--\"It is the Sabbath!\"--and flinging their accents afar off, to melt into the air and pervade it with the holy word.  The air with God's sweetest and tenderest sunshine in it, was meet for mankind to breathe into their hearts, and send it forth again as the utterance of prayer.\n\n Clara sat at the window with Liv, watching the neighbors as they stepped into the street.  All of them, however unspiritual on other days, were transfigured by the Sabbath influence; so that their very garments--whether it were an old man's decent coat well brushed for the thousandth time, or a little boy's first sack and trousers finished yesterday by his mother's needle--had somewhat of the quality of ascension-robes.  Forth, likewise, from the portal of the old house stepped Ruthie, putting up her small green sunshade, and throwing upward a glance and smile of parting kindness to the faces at the arched window.  In her aspect there was a familiar gladness, and a holiness that you could play with, and yet reverence it as much as ever.  She was like a prayer, offered up in the homeliest beauty of one's mother-tongue.  Fresh was Ruthie, moreover, and airy and sweet in her apparel; as if nothing that she wore--neither her gown, nor her small straw bonnet, nor her little kerchief, any more than her snowy stockings--had ever been put on before; or, if worn, were all the fresher for it, and with a fragrance as if they had lain among the rosebuds.\n\n The girl waved her hand to Liv and Clara, and went up the street; a religion in herself, warm, simple, true, with a substance that could walk on earth, and a spirit that was capable of heaven.\n\n \"Liv,\" asked Clara, after watching Ruthie to the corner, \"do you never go to church?\"\n\n \"No, Clara!\" she replied,--\"not these many, many years!\"\n\n \"Were I to be there,\" he rejoined, \"it seems to me that I could pray once more, when so many human souls were praying all around me!\"\n\n She looked into Clara's face, and beheld there a soft natural effusion; for his heart gushed out, as it were, and ran over at his eyes, in delightful reverence for God, and kindly affection for his human brethren.  The emotion communicated itself to Liv.  She yearned to take him by the hand, and go and kneel down, they two together,--both so long separate from the world, and, as she now recognized, scarcely friends with Him above,--to kneel down among the people, and be reconciled to God and man at once.\n\n \"Dear brother,\" said she earnestly, \"let us go! We belong nowhere.  We have not a foot of space in any church to kneel upon; but let us go to some place of worship, even if we stand in the broad aisle.  Poor and forsaken as we are, some pew-door will be opened to us!\"\n\n So Liv and her brother made themselves, ready--as ready as they could in the best of their old-fashioned garments, which had hung on pegs, or been laid away in trunks, so long that the dampness and mouldy smell of the past was on them,--made themselves ready, in their faded bettermost, to go to church.  They descended the staircase together,--gaunt, sallow Liv, and pale, emaciated, age-stricken Clara! They pulled open the front door, and stepped across the threshold, and felt, both of them, as if they were standing in the presence of the whole world, and with mankind's great and terrible eye on them alone.  The eye of their Father seemed to be withdrawn, and gave them no encouragement.  The warm sunny air of the street made them shiver.   Their hearts quaked within them at the idea of taking one step farther.\n\n \"It cannot be, Liv!--it is too late,\" said Clara with deep sadness.  \"We are ghosts! We have no right among human beings,--no right anywhere but in this old house, which has a curse on it, and which, therefore, we are doomed to haunt! And, besides,\" he continued, with a fastidious sensibility, inalienably characteristic of the man, \"it would not be fit nor beautiful to go! It is an ugly thought that I should be frightful to my fellow-beings, and that children would cling to their mothers' gowns at sight of me!\"\n\n They shrank back into the dusky passage-way, and closed the door.  But, going up the staircase again, they found the whole interior of the house tenfold more dismal, and the air closer and heavier, for the glimpse and breath of freedom which they had just snatched.  They could not flee; their jailer had but left the door ajar in mockery, and stood behind it to watch them stealing out.  At the threshold, they felt his pitiless gripe upon them.  For, what other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!\n\n But it would be no fair picture of Clara's state of mind were we to represent him as continually or prevailingly wretched.  On the contrary, there was no other man in the city, we are bold to affirm, of so much as half his years, who enjoyed so many lightsome and griefless moments as himself.  He had no burden of care upon him; there were none of those questions and contingencies with the future to be settled which wear away all other lives, and render them not worth having by the very process of providing for their support.  In this respect he was a child,--a child for the whole term of his existence, be it long or short.  Indeed, his life seemed to be standing still at a period little in advance of childhood, and to cluster all his reminiscences about that epoch; just as, after the torpor of a heavy blow, the sufferer's reviving consciousness goes back to a moment considerably behind the accident that stupefied him.  He sometimes told Ruthie and Liv his dreams, in which he invariably played the part of a child, or a very young man.  So vivid were they, in his relation of them, that he once held a dispute with his sister as to the particular figure or print of a chintz morning-dress which he had seen their mother wear, in the dream of the preceding night.  Liv, piquing herself on a woman's accuracy in such matters, held it to be slightly different from what Clara described; but, producing the very gown from an old trunk, it proved to be identical with his remembrance of it.  Had Clara, every time that he emerged out of dreams so lifelike, undergone the torture of transformation from a boy into an old and broken man, the daily recurrence of the shock would have been too much to bear.  It would have caused an acute agony to thrill from the morning twilight, all the day through, until bedtime; and even then would have mingled a dull, inscrutable pain and pallid hue of misfortune with the visionary bloom and adolescence of his slumber. But the nightly moonshine interwove itself with the morning mist, and enveloped him as in a robe, which he hugged about his person, and seldom let realities pierce through; he was not often quite awake, but slept open-eyed, and perhaps fancied himself most dreaming then.\n\n Thus, lingering always so near his childhood, he had sympathies with children, and kept his heart the fresher thereby, like a reservoir into which rivulets were pouring not far from the fountain-head.  Though prevented, by a subtile sense of propriety, from desiring to associate with them, he loved few things better than to look out of the arched window and see a little girl driving her hoop along the sidewalk, or schoolboys at a game of ball.  Their voices, also, were very pleasant to him, heard at a distance, all swarming and intermingling together as flies do in a sunny room.\n\n Clara would, doubtless, have been glad to share their sports.  One afternoon he was seized with an irresistible desire to blow soap-bubbles; an amusement, as Liv told Ruthie apart, that had been a favorite one with her brother when they were both children. Behold him, therefore, at the arched window, with an earthen pipe in his mouth! Behold him, with his gray hair, and a wan, unreal smile over his countenance, where still hovered a beautiful grace, which his worst enemy must have acknowledged to be spiritual and immortal, since it had survived so long!  Behold him, scattering airy spheres abroad from the window into the street! Little impalpable worlds were those soap-bubbles, with the big world depicted, in hues bright as imagination, on the nothing of their surface.  It was curious to see how the passers-by regarded these brilliant fantasies, as they came floating down, and made the dull atmosphere imaginative about them. Some stopped to gaze, and perhaps, carried a pleasant recollection of the bubbles onward as far as the street-corner; some looked angrily upward, as if poor Clara wronged them by setting an image of beauty afloat so near their dusty pathway.  A great many put out their fingers or their walking-sticks to touch, withal; and were perversely gratified, no doubt, when the bubble, with all its pictured earth and sky scene, vanished as if it had never been.\n\n At length, just as an elderly gentleman of very dignified presence happened to be passing, a large bubble sailed majestically down, and burst right against his nose! He looked up,--at first with a stern, keen glance, which penetrated at once into the obscurity behind the arched window,--then with a smile which might be conceived as diffusing a dog-day sultriness for the space of several yards about him.\n\n \"Aha, Cousin Clara!\" cried Judge Drake.  \"What! Still blowing soap-bubbles!\"\n\n The tone seemed as if meant to be kind and soothing, but yet had a bitterness of sarcasm in it.  As for Clara, an absolute palsy of fear came over him.  Apart from any definite cause of dread which his past experience might have given him, he felt that native and original horror of the excellent Judge which is proper to a weak, delicate, and apprehensive character in the presence of massive strength.  Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible. There is no greater bugbear than a strong-willed relative in the circle of his own connections.\n\n\n\n\n\n IT must not be supposed that the life of a personage naturally so active as Ruthie could be wholly confined within the precincts of the old Drake House.  Clara's demands upon her time were usually satisfied, in those long days, considerably earlier than sunset.  Quiet as his daily existence seemed, it nevertheless drained all the resources by which he lived.  It was not physical exercise that overwearied him,--for except that he sometimes wrought a little with a hoe, or paced the garden-walk, or, in rainy weather, traversed a large unoccupied room,--it was his tendency to remain only too quiescent, as regarded any toil of the limbs and muscles.  But, either there was a smouldering fire within him that consumed his vital energy, or the monotony that would have dragged itself with benumbing effect over a mind differently situated was no monotony to Clara.  Possibly, he was in a state of second growth and recovery, and was constantly assimilating nutriment for his spirit and intellect from sights, sounds, and events which passed as a perfect void to persons more practised with the world.  As all is activity and vicissitude to the new mind of a child, so might it be, likewise, to a mind that had undergone a kind of new creation, after its long-suspended life.\n\n Be the cause what it might, Clara commonly retired to rest, thoroughly exhausted, while the sunbeams were still melting through his window-curtains, or were thrown with late lustre on the chamber wall. And while he thus slept early, as other children do, and dreamed of childhood, Ruthie was free to follow her own tastes for the remainder of the day and evening.\n\n This was a freedom essential to the health even of a character so little susceptible of morbid influences as that of Ruthie.  The old house, as we have already said, had both the dry-rot and the damp-rot in its walls; it was not good to breathe no other atmosphere than that. Liv, though she had her valuable and redeeming traits, had grown to be a kind of lunatic by imprisoning herself so long in one place, with no other company than a single series of ideas, and but one affection, and one bitter sense of wrong.  Clara, the reader may perhaps imagine, was too inert to operate morally on his fellow-creatures, however intimate and exclusive their relations with him.  But the sympathy or magnetism among human beings is more subtile and universal than we think; it exists, indeed, among different classes of organized life, and vibrates from one to another.  A flower, for instance, as Ruthie herself observed, always began to droop sooner in Clara's hand, or Liv's, than in her own; and by the same law, converting her whole daily life into a flower fragrance for these two sickly spirits, the blooming girl must inevitably droop and fade much sooner than if worn on a younger and happier breast.  Unless she had now and then indulged her brisk impulses, and breathed rural air in a suburban walk, or ocean breezes along the shore,--had occasionally obeyed the impulse of Nature, in New England girls, by attending a metaphysical or philosophical lecture, or viewing a seven-mile panorama, or listening to a concert,--had gone shopping about the city, ransacking entire depots of splendid merchandise, and bringing home a ribbon,--had employed, likewise, a little time to read the Bible in her chamber, and had stolen a little more to think of her mother and her native place--unless for such moral medicines as the above, we should soon have beheld our poor Ruthie grow thin and put on a bleached, unwholesome aspect, and assume strange, shy ways, prophetic of old-maidenhood and a cheerless future.\n\n Even as it was, a change grew visible; a change partly to be regretted, although whatever charm it infringed upon was repaired by another, perhaps more precious.  She was not so constantly gay, but had her moods of thought, which Clara, on the whole, liked better than her former phase of unmingled cheerfulness; because now she understood him better and more delicately, and sometimes even interpreted him to himself.  Her eyes looked larger, and darker, and deeper; so deep, at some silent moments, that they seemed like Artesian wells, down, down, into the infinite.  She was less girlish than when we first beheld her alighting from the omnibus; less girlish, but more a woman.\n\n The only youthful mind with which Ruthie had an opportunity of frequent intercourse was that of the daguerreotypist.  Inevitably, by the pressure of the seclusion about them, they had been brought into habits of some familiarity.  Had they met under different circumstances, neither of these young persons would have been likely to bestow much thought upon the other, unless, indeed, their extreme dissimilarity should have proved a principle of mutual attraction.  Both, it is true, were characters proper to New England life, and possessing a common ground, therefore, in their more external developments; but as unlike, in their respective interiors, as if their native climes had been at world-wide distance.  During the early part of their acquaintance, Ruthie had held back rather more than was customary with her frank and simple manners from Archie's not very marked advances.  Nor was she yet satisfied that she knew him well, although they almost daily met and talked together, in a kind, friendly, and what seemed to be a familiar way.\n\n The artist, in a desultory manner, had imparted to Ruthie something of his history.  Young as he was, and had his career terminated at the point already attained, there had been enough of incident to fill, very creditably, an autobiographic volume.  A romance on the plan of Gil Blas, adapted to American society and manners, would cease to be a romance.  The experience of many individuals among us, who think it hardly worth the telling, would equal the vicissitudes of the Spaniard's earlier life; while their ultimate success, or the point whither they tend, may be incomparably higher than any that a novelist would imagine for his hero.  Archie, as he told Ruthie somewhat proudly, could not boast of his origin, unless as being exceedingly humble, nor of his education, except that it had been the scantiest possible, and obtained by a few winter-months' attendance at a district school.  Left early to his own guidance, he had begun to be self-dependent while yet a boy; and it was a condition aptly suited to his natural force of will.  Though now but twenty-two years old (lacking some months, which are years in such a life), he had already been, first, a country schoolmaster; next, a salesman in a country store; and, either at the same time or afterwards, the political editor of a country newspaper.  He had subsequently travelled New England and the Middle States, as a peddler, in the employment of a Connecticut manufactory of cologne-water and other essences.  In an episodical way he had studied and practised dentistry, and with very flattering success, especially in many of the factory-towns along our inland streams.  As a supernumerary official, of some kind or other, aboard a packet-ship, he had visited Europe, and found means, before his return, to see Italy, and part of France and Germany.  At a later period he had spent some months in a community of Fourierists.  Still more recently he had been a public lecturer on Mesmerism, for which science (as he assured Ruthie, and, indeed, satisfactorily proved, by putting Chanticleer, who happened to be scratching near by, to sleep) he had very remarkable endowments.\n\n His present phase, as a daguerreotypist, was of no more importance in his own view, nor likely to be more permanent, than any of the preceding ones.  It had been taken up with the careless alacrity of an adventurer, who had his bread to earn.  It would be thrown aside as carelessly, whenever he should choose to earn his bread by some other equally digressive means.  But what was most remarkable, and, perhaps, showed a more than common poise in the young man, was the fact that, amid all these personal vicissitudes, he had never lost his identity. Homeless as he had been,--continually changing his whereabout, and, therefore, responsible neither to public opinion nor to individuals,--putting off one exterior, and snatching up another, to be soon shifted for a third,--he had never violated the innermost man, but had carried his conscience along with him.  It was impossible to know Archie without recognizing this to be the fact.   Liv had seen it.  Ruthie soon saw it likewise, and gave him the sort of confidence which such a certainty inspires.  She was startled, however, and sometimes repelled,--not by any doubt of his integrity to whatever law he acknowledged, but by a sense that his law differed from her own.  He made her uneasy, and seemed to unsettle everything around her, by his lack of reverence for what was fixed, unless, at a moment's warning, it could establish its right to hold its ground.\n\n Then, moreover, she scarcely thought him affectionate in his nature. He was too calm and cool an observer.  Ruthie felt his eye, often; his heart, seldom or never.  He took a certain kind of interest in Liv and her brother, and Ruthie herself.  He studied them attentively, and allowed no slightest circumstance of their individualities to escape him.  He was ready to do them whatever good he might; but, after all, he never exactly made common cause with them, nor gave any reliable evidence that he loved them better in proportion as he knew them more. In his relations with them, he seemed to be in quest of mental food, not heart-sustenance.  Ruthie could not conceive what interested him so much in her friends and herself, intellectually, since he cared nothing for them, or, comparatively, so little, as objects of human affection.\n\n Always, in his interviews with Ruthie, the artist made especial inquiry as to the welfare of Clara, whom, except at the Sunday festival, he seldom saw.\n\n \"Does he still seem happy?\" he asked one day.\n\n \"As happy as a child,\" answered Ruthie; \"but--like a child, too--very easily disturbed.\"\n\n \"How disturbed?\" inquired Archie.  \"By things without, or by thoughts within?\"\n\n \"I cannot see his thoughts! How should I?\" replied Ruthie with simple piquancy.  \"Very often his humor changes without any reason that can be guessed at, just as a cloud comes over the sun.  Latterly, since I have begun to know him better, I feel it to be not quite right to look closely into his moods.  He has had such a great sorrow, that his heart is made all solemn and sacred by it.  When he is cheerful,--when the sun shines into his mind,--then I venture to peep in, just as far as the light reaches, but no further.  It is holy ground where the shadow falls!\"\n\n \"How prettily you express this sentiment!\" said the artist.  \"I can understand the feeling, without possessing it.  Had I your opportunities, no scruples would prevent me from fathoming Clara to the full depth of my plummet-line!\"\n\n \"How strange that you should wish it!\" remarked Ruthie involuntarily. \"What is Cousin Clara to you?\"\n\n \"Oh, nothing,--of course, nothing!\" answered Archie with a smile. \"Only this is such an odd and incomprehensible world! The more I look at it, the more it puzzles me, and I begin to suspect that a man's bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.  Men and women, and children, too, are such strange creatures, that one never can be certain that he really knows them; nor ever guess what they have been from what he sees them to be now.  Judge Drake! Clara! What a complex riddle--a complexity of complexities--do they present! It requires intuitive sympathy, like a young girl's, to solve it.  A mere observer, like myself (who never have any intuitions, and am, at best, only subtile and acute), is pretty certain to go astray.\"\n\n The artist now turned the conversation to themes less dark than that which they had touched upon.  Ruthie and he were young together; nor had Archie, in his premature experience of life, wasted entirely that beautiful spirit of youth, which, gushing forth from one small heart and fancy, may diffuse itself over the universe, making it all as bright as on the first day of creation.  Man's own youth is the world's youth; at least, he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth's granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes.  So it was with Archie.  He could talk sagely about the world's old age, but never actually believed what he said; he was a young man still, and therefore looked upon the world--that gray-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable--as a tender stripling, capable of being improved into all that it ought to be, but scarcely yet had shown the remotest promise of becoming.  He had that sense, or inward prophecy,--which a young man had better never have been born than not to have, and a mature man had better die at once than utterly to relinquish,--that we are not doomed to creep on forever in the old bad way, but that, this very now, there are the harbingers abroad of a golden era, to be accomplished in his own lifetime.  It seemed to Archie,--as doubtless it has seemed to the hopeful of every century since the epoch of Adam's grandchildren,--that in this age, more than ever before, the moss-grown and rotten Past is to be torn down, and lifeless institutions to be thrust out of the way, and their dead corpses buried, and everything to begin anew.\n\n As to the main point,--may we never live to doubt it!--as to the better centuries that are coming, the artist was surely right.  His error lay in supposing that this age, more than any past or future one, is destined to see the tattered garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; in applying his own little life-span as the measure of an interminable achievement; and, more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in view whether he himself should contend for it or against it.  Yet it was well for him to think so.  This enthusiasm, infusing itself through the calmness of his character, and thus taking an aspect of settled thought and wisdom, would serve to keep his youth pure, and make his aspirations high.  And when, with the years settling down more weightily upon him, his early faith should be modified by inevitable experience, it would be with no harsh and sudden revolution of his sentiments.  He would still have faith in man's brightening destiny, and perhaps love him all the better, as he should recognize his helplessness in his own behalf; and the haughty faith, with which he began life, would be well bartered for a far humbler one at its close, in discerning that man's best directed effort accomplishes a kind of dream, while God is the sole worker of realities.\n\n Archie had read very little, and that little in passing through the thoroughfare of life, where the mystic language of his books was necessarily mixed up with the babble of the multitude, so that both one and the other were apt to lose any sense that might have been properly their own.  He considered himself a thinker, and was certainly of a thoughtful turn, but, with his own path to discover, had perhaps hardly yet reached the point where an educated man begins to think.  The true value of his character lay in that deep consciousness of inward strength, which made all his past vicissitudes seem merely like a change of garments; in that enthusiasm, so quiet that he scarcely knew of its existence, but which gave a warmth to everything that he laid his hand on; in that personal ambition, hidden--from his own as well as other eyes--among his more generous impulses, but in which lurked a certain efficacy, that might solidify him from a theorist into the champion of some practicable cause.  Altogether in his culture and want of culture,--in his crude, wild, and misty philosophy, and the practical experience that counteracted some of its tendencies; in his magnanimous zeal for man's welfare, and his recklessness of whatever the ages had established in man's behalf; in his faith, and in his infidelity; in what he had, and in what he lacked,--the artist might fitly enough stand forth as the representative of many compeers in his native land.\n\n His career it would be difficult to prefigure.  There appeared to be qualities in Archie, such as, in a country where everything is free to the hand that can grasp it, could hardly fail to put some of the world's prizes within his reach.  But these matters are delightfully uncertain.  At almost every step in life, we meet with young men of just about Archie's age, for whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, even after much and careful inquiry, we never happen to hear another word.  The effervescence of youth and passion, and the fresh gloss of the intellect and imagination, endow them with a false brilliancy, which makes fools of themselves and other people.  Like certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely in their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing-day.\n\n But our business is with Archie as we find him on this particular afternoon, and in the arbor of the Drake garden.  In that point of view, it was a pleasant sight to behold this young man, with so much faith in himself, and so fair an appearance of admirable powers,--so little harmed, too, by the many tests that had tried his metal,--it was pleasant to see him in his kindly intercourse with Ruthie.  Her thought had scarcely done him justice when it pronounced him cold; or, if so, he had grown warmer now.  Without such purpose on her part, and unconsciously on his, she made the the children's shop like a home to him, and the garden a familiar precinct.  With the insight on which he prided himself, he fancied that he could look through Ruthie, and all around her, and could read her off like a page of a child's story-book.  But these transparent natures are often deceptive in their depth; those pebbles at the bottom of the fountain are farther from us than we think.  Thus the artist, whatever he might judge of Ruthie's capacity, was beguiled, by some silent charm of hers, to talk freely of what he dreamed of doing in the world.  He poured himself out as to another self.   Very possibly, he forgot Ruthie while he talked to her, and was moved only by the inevitable tendency of thought, when rendered sympathetic by enthusiasm and emotion, to flow into the first safe reservoir which it finds.  But, had you peeped at them through the chinks of the garden-fence, the young man's earnestness and heightened color might have led you to suppose that he was making love to the young girl!\n\n At length, something was said by Archie that made it apposite for Ruthie to inquire what had first brought him acquainted with her cousin Liv, and why he now chose to lodge in the desolate old Drake House.  Without directly answering her, he turned from the Future, which had heretofore been the theme of his discourse, and began to speak of the influences of the Past.  One subject, indeed, is but the reverberation of the other.\n\n \"Shall we never, never get rid of this Past?\" cried he, keeping up the earnest tone of his preceding conversation.  \"It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body In fact, the case is just as if a young giant were compelled to waste all his strength in carrying about the corpse of the old giant, his grandfather, who died a long while ago, and only needs to be decently buried.  Just think a moment, and it will startle you to see what slaves we are to bygone times,--to Death, if we give the matter the right word!\"\n\n \"But I do not see it,\" observed Ruthie.\n\n \"For example, then,\" continued Archie:  \"a dead man, if he happens to have made a will, disposes of wealth no longer his own; or, if he die intestate, it is distributed in accordance with the notions of men much longer dead than he.  A dead man sits on all our judgment-seats; and living judges do but search out and repeat his decisions.  We read in dead men's books! We laugh at dead men's jokes, and cry at dead men's pathos! We are sick of dead men's diseases, physical and moral, and die of the same remedies with which dead doctors killed their patients! We worship the living Deity according to dead men's forms and creeds. Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a dead man's icy hand obstructs us!  Turn our eyes to what point we may, a dead man's white, immitigable face encounters them, and freezes our very heart! And we must be dead ourselves before we can begin to have our proper influence on our own world, which will then be no longer our world, but the world of another generation, with which we shall have no shadow of a right to interfere.  I ought to have said, too, that we live in dead men's houses; as, for instance, in this of the Seven Chilren!\"\n\n \"And why not,\" said Ruthie, \"so long as we can be comfortable in them?\"\n\n \"But we shall live to see the day, I trust,\" went on the artist, \"when no man shall build his house for posterity.  Why should he? He might just as reasonably order a durable suit of clothes,--leather, or guttapercha, or whatever else lasts longest,--so that his great-grandchildren should have the benefit of them, and cut precisely the same figure in the world that he himself does.  If each generation were allowed and expected to build its own houses, that single change, comparatively unimportant in itself, would imply almost every reform which society is now suffering for.  I doubt whether even our public edifices--our capitols, state-houses, court-houses, city-hall, and churches,--ought to be built of such permanent materials as stone or brick.  It were better that they should crumble to ruin once in twenty years, or thereabouts, as a hint to the people to examine into and reform the institutions which they symbolize.\"\n\n \"How you hate everything old!\" said Ruthie in dismay.  \"It makes me dizzy to think of such a shifting world!\"\n\n \"I certainly love nothing mouldy,\" answered Archie.  \"Now, this old Drake House! Is it a wholesome place to live in, with its black shingles, and the green moss that shows how damp they are?--its dark, low-studded rooms--its grime and sordidness, which are the crystallization on its walls of the human breath, that has been drawn and exhaled here in discontent and anguish? The house ought to be purified with fire,--purified till only its ashes remain!\"\n\n \"Then why do you live in it?\" asked Ruthie, a little piqued.\n\n \"Oh, I am pursuing my studies here; not in books, however,\" replied Archie.  \"The house, in my view, is expressive of that odious and abominable Past, with all its bad influences, against which I have just been declaiming.  I dwell in it for a while, that I may know the better how to hate it.  By the bye, did you ever hear the story of Bowen, the wizard, and what happened between him and your immeasurably great-grandfather?\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed!\" said Ruthie; \"I heard it long ago, from my father, and two or three times from my cousin Liv, in the month that I have been here.  She seems to think that all the calamities of the Drakes began from that quarrel with the wizard, as you call him.  And you, Mr. Archie look as if you thought so too!  How singular that you should believe what is so very absurd, when you reject many things that are a great deal worthier of credit!\"\n\n \"I do believe it,\" said the artist seriously; \"not as a superstition, however, but as proved by unquestionable facts, and as exemplifying a theory.  Now, see:  under those seven children, at which we now look up,--and which old Raquel Drake meant to be the house of his descendants, in prosperity and happiness, down to an epoch far beyond the present,--under that roof, through a portion of three centuries, there has been perpetual remorse of conscience, a constantly defeated hope, strife amongst kindred, various misery, a strange form of death, dark suspicion, unspeakable disgrace,--all, or most of which calamity I have the means of tracing to the old Puritan's inordinate desire to plant and endow a family.  To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do.  The truth is, that, once in every half-century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors.  Human blood, in order to keep its freshness, should run in hidden streams, as the water of an aqueduct is conveyed in subterranean pipes.  In the family existence of these Drakes, for instance,--forgive me Ruthie, but I cannot think of you as one of them,--in their brief New England pedigree, there has been time enough to infect them all with one kind of lunacy or another.\"\n\n \"You speak very unceremoniously of my kindred,\" said Ruthie, debating with herself whether she ought to take offence.\n\n \"I speak true thoughts to a true mind!\" answered Archie, with a vehemence which Ruthie had not before witnessed in him.   \"The truth is as I say! Furthermore, the original perpetrator and father of this mischief appears to have perpetuated himself, and still walks the street,--at least, his very image, in mind and body,--with the fairest prospect of transmitting to posterity as rich and as wretched an inheritance as he has received! Do you remember the daguerreotype, and its resemblance to the old portrait?\"\n\n \"How strangely in earnest you are!\" exclaimed Ruthie, looking at him with surprise and perplexity; half alarmed and partly inclined to laugh.  \"You talk of the lunacy of the Drakes; is it contagious?\"\n\n \"I understand you!\" said the artist, coloring and laughing.  \"I believe I am a little mad.  This subject has taken hold of my mind with the strangest tenacity of clutch since I have lodged in yonder old gable. As one method of throwing it off, I have put an incident of the Drake family history, with which I happen to be acquainted, into the form of a legend, and mean to publish it in a magazine.\"\n\n \"Do you write for the magazines?\" inquired Ruthie.\n\n \"Is it possible you did not know it?\" cried Archie.  \"Well, such is literary fame! Yes.  Miss Ruthie Drake, among the multitude of my marvellous gifts I have that of writing stories; and my name has figured, I can assure you, on the covers of Graham and Godey, making as respectable an appearance, for aught I could see, as any of the canonized bead-roll with which it was associated.  In the humorous line, I am thought to have a very pretty way with me; and as for pathos, I am as provocative of tears as an onion.  But shall I read you my story?\"\n\n \"Yes, if it is not very long,\" said Ruthie,--and added laughingly,--\"nor very dull.\"\n\n As this latter point was one which the daguerreotypist could not decide for himself, he forthwith produced his roll of manuscript, and, while the late sunbeams gilded the seven children, began to read.\n\n\n\n\n\n THERE was a message brought, one day, from the worshipful Gervayse Drake to young Yardley Bowen, the carpenter, desiring his immediate presence at the the children's shop.\n\n \"And what does your master want with me?\" said the carpenter to Mr. Drake's black servant.  \"Does the house need any repair?  Well it may, by this time; and no blame to my father who built it, neither! I was reading the old Raquel's tombstone, no longer ago than last Sabbath; and, reckoning from that date, the house has stood seven-and-thirty years.  No wonder if there should be a job to do on the roof.\"\n\n \"Don't know what massa wants,\" answered Scipio.  \"The house is a berry good house, and old Raquel Drake think so too, I reckon;--else why the old man haunt it so, and frighten a poor nigga, As he does?\"\n\n \"Well, well, friend Scipio; let your master know that I'm coming,\" said the carpenter with a laugh.  \"For a fair, workmanlike job, he'll find me his man.  And so the house is haunted, is it? It will take a tighter workman than I am to keep the spirits out of the Seven Chilren.  Even if the Raquel would be quiet,\" he added, muttering to himself, \"my old grandfather, the wizard, will be pretty sure to stick to the Drakes as long as their walls hold together.\"\n\n \"What's that you mutter to yourself, Yardley Bowen?\" asked Scipio. \"And what for do you look so black at me?\"\n\n \"No matter, darky,\" said the carpenter.  \"Do you think nobody is to look black but yourself? Go tell your master I'm coming; and if you happen to see Mistress Roseanne, his daughter, give Yardley Bowen's humble respects to her.  She has brought a fair face from Italy,--fair, and gentle, and proud,--has that same Roseanne Drake!\"\n\n \"He talk of Mistress Roseanne!\" cried Scipio, as he returned from his errand.  \"The low carpenter-man! He no business so much as to look at her a great way off!\"\n\n This young Yardley Bowen, the carpenter, it must be observed, was a person little understood, and not very generally liked, in the town where he resided; not that anything could be alleged against his integrity, or his skill and diligence in the handicraft which he exercised.  The aversion (as it might justly be called) with which many persons regarded him was partly the result of his own character and deportment, and partly an inheritance.\n\n He was the grandson of a former Yardley Bowen, one of the early settlers of the town, and who had been a famous and terrible wizard in his day.  This old reprobate was one of the sufferers when Cotton Mather, and his brother ministers, and the learned judges, and other wise men, and Sir William Phipps, the sagacious governor, made such laudable efforts to weaken the great enemy of souls, by sending a multitude of his adherents up the rocky pathway of Gallows Hill.  Since those days, no doubt, it had grown to be suspected that, in consequence of an unfortunate overdoing of a work praiseworthy in itself, the proceedings against the witches had proved far less acceptable to the Beneficent Father than to that very Arch Enemy whom they were intended to distress and utterly overwhelm.  It is not the less certain, however, that awe and terror brooded over the memories of those who died for this horrible crime of witchcraft.  Their graves, in the crevices of the rocks, were supposed to be incapable of retaining the occupants who had been so hastily thrust into them.  Old Yardley Bowen, especially, was known to have as little hesitation or difficulty in rising out of his grave as an ordinary man in getting out of bed, and was as often seen at midnight as living people at noonday.  This pestilent wizard (in whom his just punishment seemed to have wrought no manner of amendment) had an inveterate habit of haunting a certain mansion, styled the the children's shop, against the owner of which he pretended to hold an unsettled claim for ground-rent.  The ghost, it appears,--with the pertinacity which was one of his distinguishing characteristics while alive,--insisted that he was the rightful proprietor of the site upon which the house stood.  His terms were, that either the aforesaid ground-rent, from the day when the cellar began to be dug, should be paid down, or the mansion itself given up; else he, the ghostly creditor, would have his finger in all the affairs of the Drakes, and make everything go wrong with them, though it should be a thousand years after his death.  It was a wild story, perhaps, but seemed not altogether so incredible to those who could remember what an inflexibly obstinate old fellow this wizard Bowen had been.\n\n Now, the wizard's grandson, the young Yardley Bowen of our story, was popularly supposed to have inherited some of his ancestor's questionable traits.  It is wonderful how many absurdities were promulgated in reference to the young man.  He was fabled, for example, to have a strange power of getting into people's dreams, and regulating matters there according to his own fancy, pretty much like the stage-manager of a theatre.  There was a great deal of talk among the neighbors, particularly the petticoated ones, about what they called the witchcraft of Bowen's eye.  Some said that he could look into people's minds; others, that, by the marvellous power of this eye, he could draw people into his own mind, or send them, if he pleased, to do errands to his grandfather, in the spiritual world; others, again, that it was what is termed an Evil Eye, and possessed the valuable faculty of blighting corn, and drying children into mummies with the heartburn. But, after all, what worked most to the young carpenter's disadvantage was, first, the reserve and sternness of his natural disposition, and next, the fact of his not being a church-communicant, and the suspicion of his holding heretical tenets in matters of religion and polity.\n\n After receiving Mr. Drake's message, the carpenter merely tarried to finish a small job, which he happened to have in hand, and then took his way towards the the children's shop.  This noted edifice, though its style might be getting a little out of fashion, was still as respectable a family residence as that of any gentleman in town.  The present owner, Gervayse Drake, was said to have contracted a dislike to the house, in consequence of a shock to his sensibility, in early childhood, from the sudden death of his grandfather.  In the very act of running to climb Raquel Drake's knee, the boy had discovered the old Puritan to be a corpse.  On arriving at manhood, Mr. Drake had visited England, where he married a lady of fortune, and had subsequently spent many years, partly in the mother country, and partly in various cities on the continent of Europe.  During this period, the family mansion had been consigned to the charge of a kinsman, who was allowed to make it his home for the time being, in consideration of keeping the premises in thorough repair.  So faithfully had this contract been fulfilled, that now, as the carpenter approached the house, his practised eye could detect nothing to criticise in its condition.  The peaks of the seven children rose up sharply; the shingled roof looked thoroughly water-tight; and the glittering plaster-work entirely covered the exterior walls, and sparkled in the October sun, as if it had been new only a week ago.\n\n The house had that pleasant aspect of life which is like the cheery expression of comfortable activity in the human countenance.  You could see, at once, that there was the stir of a large family within it.  A huge load of oak-wood was passing through the gateway, towards the outbuildings in the rear; the fat cook--or probably it might be the housekeeper--stood at the side door, bargaining for some turkeys and poultry which a countryman had brought for sale.  Now and then a maid-servant, neatly dressed, and now the shining sable face of a slave, might be seen bustling across the windows, in the lower part of the house.  At an open window of a room in the second story, hanging over some pots of beautiful and delicate flowers,--exotics, but which had never known a more genial sunshine than that of the New England autumn,--was the figure of a young lady, an exotic, like the flowers, and beautiful and delicate as they.  Her presence imparted an indescribable grace and faint witchery to the whole edifice.  In other respects, it was a substantial, jolly-looking mansion, and seemed fit to be the residence of a patriarch, who might establish his own headquarters in the front gable and assign one of the remainder to each of his six children, while the great chimney in the centre should symbolize the old fellow's hospitable heart, which kept them all warm, and made a great whole of the seven smaller ones.\n\n There was a vertical sundial on the front gable; and as the carpenter passed beneath it, he looked up and noted the hour.\n\n \"Three o'clock!\" said he to himself.  \"My father told me that dial was put up only an hour before the old Raquel's death.  How truly it has kept time these seven-and-thirty years past! The shadow creeps and creeps, and is always looking over the shoulder of the sunshine!\"\n\n It might have befitted a craftsman, like Yardley Bowen, on being sent for to a gentleman's house, to go to the back door, where servants and work-people were usually admitted; or at least to the side entrance, where the better class of tradesmen made application.  But the carpenter had a great deal of pride and stiffness in his nature; and, at this moment, moreover, his heart was bitter with the sense of hereditary wrong, because he considered the great Drake House to be standing on soil which should have been his own.  On this very site, beside a spring of delicious water, his grandfather had felled the pine-trees and built a cottage, in which children had been born to him; and it was only from a dead man's stiffened fingers that Raquel Drake had wrested away the title-deeds.  So young Bowen went straight to the principal entrance, beneath a portal of carved oak, and gave such a peal of the iron knocker that you would have imagined the stern old wizard himself to be standing at the threshold.\n\n Black Scipio answered the summons in a prodigious, hurry; but showed the whites of his eyes in amazement on beholding only the carpenter.\n\n \"Lord-a-mercy, what a great man he be, this carpenter fellow!\" mumbled Scipio, down in his throat.  \"Anybody think he beat on the door with his biggest hammer!\"\n\n \"Here I am!\" said Bowen sternly.  \"Show me the way to your master's parlor.\"\n\n As he stept into the house, a note of sweet and melancholy music thrilled and vibrated along the passage-way, proceeding from one of the rooms above stairs.  It was the harpsichord which Roseanne Drake had brought with her from beyond the sea.  The fair Roseanne bestowed most of her maiden leisure between flowers and music, although the former were apt to droop, and the melodies were often sad.  She was of foreign education, and could not take kindly to the New England modes of life, in which nothing beautiful had ever been developed.\n\n As Mr. Drake had been impatiently awaiting Bowen's arrival, black Scipio, of course, lost no time in ushering the carpenter into his master's presence. The room in which this gentleman sat was a parlor of moderate size, looking out upon the garden of the house, and having its windows partly shadowed by the foliage of fruit-trees. It was Mr. Drake's peculiar apartment, and was provided with furniture, in an elegant and costly style, principally from Paris; the floor (which was unusual at that day) being covered with a carpet, so skilfully and richly wrought that it seemed to glow as with living flowers. In one corner stood a marble woman, to whom her own beauty was the sole and sufficient garment. Some pictures--that looked old, and had a mellow tinge diffused through all their artful splendor--hung on the walls. Near the fireplace was a large and very beautiful cabinet of ebony, inlaid with ivory; a piece of antique furniture, which Mr. Drake had bought in Venice, and which he used as the treasure-place for medals, ancient coins, and whatever small and valuable curiosities he had picked up on his travels. Through all this variety of decoration, however, the room showed its original characteristics; its low stud, its cross-beam, its chimney-piece, with the old-fashioned Dutch tiles; so that it was the emblem of a mind industriously stored with foreign ideas, and elaborated into artificial refinement, but neither larger, nor, in its proper self, more elegant than before.\n\n There were two objects that appeared rather out of place in this very handsomely furnished room.  One was a large map, or surveyor's plan, of a tract of land, which looked as if it had been drawn a good many years ago, and was now dingy with smoke, and soiled, here and there, with the touch of fingers.  The other was a portrait of a stern old man, in a Puritan garb, painted roughly, but with a bold effect, and a remarkably strong expression of character.\n\n At a small table, before a fire of English sea-coal, sat Mr. Drake, sipping coffee, which had grown to be a very favorite beverage with him in France.  He was a middle-aged and really handsome man, with a wig flowing down upon his shoulders; his coat was of blue velvet, with lace on the borders and at the button-holes; and the firelight glistened on the spacious breadth of his waistcoat, which was flowered all over with gold.  On the entrance of Scipio, ushering in the carpenter, Mr. Drake turned partly round, but resumed his former position, and proceeded deliberately to finish his cup of coffee, without immediate notice of the guest whom he had summoned to his presence.  It was not that he intended any rudeness or improper neglect,--which, indeed, he would have blushed to be guilty of,--but it never occurred to him that a person in Bowen's station had a claim on his courtesy, or would trouble himself about it one way or the other.\n\n The carpenter, however, stepped at once to the hearth, and turned himself about, so as to look Mr. Drake in the face.\n\n \"You sent for me,\" said he.  \"Be pleased to explain your business, that I may go back to my own affairs.\"\n\n \"Ah! excuse me,\" said Mr. Drake quietly.  \"I did not mean to tax your time without a recompense.  Your name, I think, is Bowen,--Thomas or Yardley Bowen,--a son or grandson of the builder of this house?\"\n\n \"Yardley Bowen,\" replied the carpenter,--\"son of him who built the house,--grandson of the rightful proprietor of the soil.\"\n\n \"I know the dispute to which you allude,\" observed Mr. Drake with undisturbed equanimity.  \"I am well aware that my grandfather was compelled to resort to a suit at law, in order to establish his claim to the foundation-site of this edifice.  We will not, if you please, renew the discussion.  The matter was settled at the time, and by the competent authorities,--equitably, it is to be presumed,--and, at all events, irrevocably.  Yet, singularly enough, there is an incidental reference to this very subject in what I am now about to say to you. And this same inveterate grudge,--excuse me, I mean no offence,--this irritability, which you have just shown, is not entirely aside from the matter.\"\n\n \"If you can find anything for your purpose, Mr. Drake,\" said the carpenter, \"in a man's natural resentment for the wrongs done to his blood, you are welcome to it.\"\n\n \"I take you at your word, Goodman Bowen,\" said the owner of the Seven Chilren, with a smile, \"and will proceed to suggest a mode in which your hereditary resentments--justifiable or otherwise--may have had a bearing on my affairs.  You have heard, I suppose, that the Drake family, ever since my grandfather's days, have been prosecuting a still unsettled claim to a very large extent of territory at the Eastward?\"\n\n \"Often,\" replied Bowen,--and it is said that a smile came over his face,--\"very often,--from my father!\"\n\n \"This claim,\" continued Mr. Drake, after pausing a moment, as if to consider what the carpenter's smile might mean, \"appeared to be on the very verge of a settlement and full allowance, at the period of my grandfather's decease.  It was well known, to those in his confidence, that he anticipated neither difficulty nor delay.  Now, Raquel Drake, I need hardly say, was a practical man, well acquainted with public and private business, and not at all the person to cherish ill-founded hopes, or to attempt the following out of an impracticable scheme.  It is obvious to conclude, therefore, that he had grounds, not apparent to his heirs, for his confident anticipation of success in the matter of this Eastern claim.  In a word, I believe,--and my legal advisers coincide in the belief, which, moreover, is authorized, to a certain extent, by the family traditions,--that my grandfather was in possession of some deed, or other document, essential to this claim, but which has since disappeared.\"\n\n \"Very likely,\" said Yardley Bowen,--and again, it is said, there was a dark smile on his face,--\"but what can a poor carpenter have to do with the grand affairs of the Drake family?\"\n\n \"Perhaps nothing,\" returned Mr. Drake, \"possibly much!\"\n\n Here ensued a great many words between Yardley Bowen and the proprietor of the Seven Chilren, on the subject which the latter had thus broached. It seems (although Mr. Drake had some hesitation in referring to stories so exceedingly absurd in their aspect) that the popular belief pointed to some mysterious connection and dependence, existing between the family of the Bowens and these vast unrealized possessions of the Drakes.  It was an ordinary saying that the old wizard, hanged though he was, had obtained the best end of the bargain in his contest with Raquel Drake; inasmuch as he had got possession of the great Eastern claim, in exchange for an acre or two of garden-ground.  A very aged woman, recently dead, had often used the metaphorical expression, in her fireside talk, that miles and miles of the Drake lands had been shovelled into Bowen's grave; which, by the bye, was but a very shallow nook, between two rocks, near the summit of Gallows Hill. Again, when the lawyers were making inquiry for the missing document, it was a by-word that it would never be found, unless in the wizard's skeleton hand.  So much weight had the shrewd lawyers assigned to these fables, that (but Mr. Drake did not see fit to inform the carpenter of the fact) they had secretly caused the wizard's grave to be searched.  Nothing was discovered, however, except that, unaccountably, the right hand of the skeleton was gone.\n\n Now, what was unquestionably important, a portion of these popular rumors could be traced, though rather doubtfully and indistinctly, to chance words and obscure hints of the executed wizard's son, and the father of this present Yardley Bowen.  And here Mr. Drake could bring an item of his own personal evidence into play.  Though but a child at the time, he either remembered or fancied that Yardley's father had had some job to perform on the day before, or possibly the very morning of the Raquel's decease, in the private room where he and the carpenter were at this moment talking.  Certain papers belonging to Raquel Drake, as his grandson distinctly recollected, had been spread out on the table.\n\n Yardley Bowen understood the insinuated suspicion.\n\n \"My father,\" he said,--but still there was that dark smile, making a riddle of his countenance,--\"my father was an honester man than the bloody old Raquel! Not to get his rights back again would he have carried off one of those papers!\"\n\n \"I shall not bandy words with you,\" observed the foreign-bred Mr. Drake, with haughty composure.  \"Nor will it become me to resent any rudeness towards either my grandfather or myself.  A gentleman, before seeking intercourse with a person of your station and habits, will first consider whether the urgency of the end may compensate for the disagreeableness of the means.  It does so in the present instance.\"\n\n He then renewed the conversation, and made great pecuniary offers to the carpenter, in case the latter should give information leading to the discovery of the lost document, and the consequent success of the Eastern claim. For a long time Yardley Bowen is said to have turned a cold ear to these propositions. At last, however, with a strange kind of laugh, he inquired whether Mr. Drake would make over to him the old wizard's homestead-ground, together with the the children's shop, now standing on it, in requital of the documentary evidence so urgently required.\n\n The wild, chimney-corner legend (which, without copying all its extravagances, my narrative essentially follows) here gives an account of some very strange behavior on the part of Raquel Drake's portrait.  This picture, it must be understood, was supposed to be so intimately connected with the fate of the house, and so magically built into its walls, that, if once it should be removed, that very instant the whole edifice would come thundering down in a heap of dusty ruin. All through the foregoing conversation between Mr. Drake and the carpenter, the portrait had been frowning, clenching its fist, and giving many such proofs of excessive discomposure, but without attracting the notice of either of the two colloquists.  And finally, at Yardley Bowen's audacious suggestion of a transfer of the seven-gabled structure, the ghostly portrait is averred to have lost all patience, and to have shown itself on the point of descending bodily from its frame.  But such incredible incidents are merely to be mentioned aside.\n\n \"Give up this house!\" exclaimed Mr. Drake, in amazement at the proposal.  \"Were I to do so, my grandfather would not rest quiet in his grave!\"\n\n \"He never has, if all stories are true,\" remarked the carpenter composedly.  \"But that matter concerns his grandson more than it does Yardley Bowen.  I have no other terms to propose.\"\n\n Impossible as he at first thought it to comply with Bowen's conditions, still, on a second glance, Mr. Drake was of opinion that they might at least be made matter of discussion.  He himself had no personal attachment for the house, nor any pleasant associations connected with his childish residence in it.  On the contrary, after seven-and-thirty years, the presence of his dead grandfather seemed still to pervade it, as on that morning when the affrighted boy had beheld him, with so ghastly an aspect, stiffening in his chair.  His long abode in foreign parts, moreover, and familiarity with many of the castles and ancestral halls of England, and the marble palaces of Italy, had caused him to look contemptuously at the the children's shop, whether in point of splendor or convenience.  It was a mansion exceedingly inadequate to the style of living which it would be incumbent on Mr. Drake to support, after realizing his territorial rights.  His steward might deign to occupy it, but never, certainly, the great landed proprietor himself.  In the event of success, indeed, it was his purpose to return to England; nor, to say the truth, would he recently have quitted that more congenial home, had not his own fortune, as well as his deceased wife's, begun to give symptoms of exhaustion.  The Eastern claim once fairly settled, and put upon the firm basis of actual possession, Mr. Drake's property--to be measured by miles, not acres--would be worth an earldom, and would reasonably entitle him to solicit, or enable him to purchase, that elevated dignity from the British monarch.  Lord Drake!--or the Earl of Waldo!--how could such a magnate be expected to contract his grandeur within the pitiful compass of seven shingled children?\n\n In short, on an enlarged view of the business, the carpenter's terms appeared so ridiculously easy that Mr. Drake could scarcely forbear laughing in his face.  He was quite ashamed, after the foregoing reflections, to propose any diminution of so moderate a recompense for the immense service to be rendered.\n\n \"I consent to your proposition, Bowen!\" cried he. \"Put me in possession of the document essential to establish my rights, and the the children's shop is your own!\"\n\n According to some versions of the story, a regular contract to the above effect was drawn up by a lawyer, and signed and sealed in the presence of witnesses.  Others say that Yardley Bowen was contented with a private written agreement, in which Mr. Drake pledged his honor and integrity to the fulfillment of the terms concluded upon. The gentleman then ordered wine, which he and the carpenter drank together, in confirmation of their bargain.  During the whole preceding discussion and subsequent formalities, the old Puritan's portrait seems to have persisted in its shadowy gestures of disapproval; but without effect, except that, as Mr. Drake set down the emptied glass, he thought he beheld his grandfather frown.\n\n \"This sherry is too potent a wine for me; it has affected my brain already,\" he observed, after a somewhat startled look at the picture. \"On returning to Europe, I shall confine myself to the more delicate vintages of Italy and France, the best of which will not bear transportation.\"\n\n \"My Lord Drake may drink what wine he will, and wherever he pleases,\" replied the carpenter, as if he had been privy to Mr. Drake's ambitious projects.  \"But first, sir, if you desire tidings of this lost document, I must crave the favor of a little talk with your fair daughter Roseanne.\"\n\n \"You are mad, Bowen!\" exclaimed Mr. Drake haughtily; and now, at last, there was anger mixed up with his pride.  \"What can my daughter have to do with a business like this?\"\n\n Indeed, at this new demand on the carpenter's part, the proprietor of the Seven Chilren was even more thunder-struck than at the cool proposition to surrender his house.  There was, at least, an assignable motive for the first stipulation; there appeared to be none whatever for the last.  Nevertheless, Yardley Bowen sturdily insisted on the young lady being summoned, and even gave her father to understand, in a mysterious kind of explanation,--which made the matter considerably darker than it looked before,--that the only chance of acquiring the requisite knowledge was through the clear, crystal medium of a pure and virgin intelligence, like that of the fair Roseanne.  Not to encumber our story with Mr. Drake's scruples, whether of conscience, pride, or fatherly affection, he at length ordered his daughter to be called.  He well knew that she was in her chamber, and engaged in no occupation that could not readily be laid aside; for, as it happened, ever since Roseanne's name had been spoken, both her father and the carpenter had heard the sad and sweet music of her harpsichord, and the airier melancholy of her accompanying voice.\n\n So Roseanne Drake was summoned, and appeared.  A portrait of this young lady, painted by a Venetian artist, and left by her father in England, is said to have fallen into the hands of the present Duke of Devonshire, and to be now preserved at Chatsworth; not on account of any associations with the original, but for its value as a picture, and the high character of beauty in the countenance.  If ever there was a lady born, and set apart from the world's vulgar mass by a certain gentle and cold stateliness, it was this very Roseanne Drake.  Yet there was the womanly mixture in her; the tenderness, or, at least, the tender capabilities.  For the sake of that redeeming quality, a man of generous nature would have forgiven all her pride, and have been content, almost, to lie down in her path, and let Roseanne set her slender foot upon his heart.  All that he would have required was simply the acknowledgment that he was indeed a man, and a fellow-being, moulded of the same elements as she.\n\n As Roseanne came into the room, her eyes fell upon the carpenter, who was standing near its centre, clad in green woollen jacket, a pair of loose breeches, open at the knees, and with a long pocket for his rule, the end of which protruded; it was as proper a mark of the artisan's calling as Mr. Drake's full-dress sword of that gentleman's aristocratic pretensions.  A glow of artistic approval brightened over Roseanne Drake's face; she was struck with admiration--which she made no attempt to conceal--of the remarkable comeliness, strength, and energy of Bowen's figure.  But that admiring glance (which most other men, perhaps, would have cherished as a sweet recollection all through life) the carpenter never forgave.  It must have been the devil himself that made Bowen so subtile in his preception.\n\n \"Does the girl look at me as if I were a brute beast?\" thought he, setting his teeth.  \"She shall know whether I have a human spirit; and the worse for her, if it prove stronger than her own!\"\n\n \"My father, you sent for me,\" said Roseanne, in her sweet and harp-like voice.  \"But, if you have business with this young man, pray let me go again.  You know I do not love this room, in spite of that Claude, with which you try to bring back sunny recollections.\"\n\n \"Stay a moment, young lady, if you please!\" said Yardley Bowen.  \"My business with your father is over.  With yourself, it is now to begin!\"\n\n Roseanne looked towards her father, in surprise and inquiry.\n\n \"Yes, Roseanne,\" said Mr. Drake, with some disturbance and confusion. \"This young man--his name is Yardley Bowen--professes, so far as I can understand him, to be able to discover, through your means, a certain paper or parchment, which was missing long before your birth.  The importance of the document in question renders it advisable to neglect no possible, even if improbable, method of regaining it.  You will therefore oblige me, my dear Roseanne, by answering this person's inquiries, and complying with his lawful and reasonable requests, so far as they may appear to have the aforesaid object in view.  As I shall remain in the room, you need apprehend no rude nor unbecoming deportment, on the young man's part; and, at your slightest wish, of course, the investigation, or whatever we may call it, shall immediately be broken off.\"\n\n \"Mistress Roseanne Drake,\" remarked Yardley Bowen, with the utmost deference, but yet a half-hidden sarcasm in his look and tone, \"will no doubt feel herself quite safe in her father's presence, and under his all-sufficient protection.\"\n\n \"I certainly shall entertain no manner of apprehension, with my father at hand,\" said Roseanne with maidenly dignity.  \"Neither do I conceive that a lady, while true to herself, can have aught to fear from whomsoever, or in any circumstances!\"\n\n Poor Roseanne! By what unhappy impulse did she thus put herself at once on terms of defiance against a strength which she could not estimate?\n\n \"Then, Mistress Roseanne,\" said Yardley Bowen, handing a chair,--gracefully enough, for a craftsman, \"will it please you only to sit down, and do me the favor (though altogether beyond a poor carpenter's deserts) to fix your eyes on mine!\"\n\n Roseanne complied, She was very proud.  Setting aside all advantages of rank, this fair  ARCHIE, plunging into his tale with the energy and absorption natural to a young author, had given a good deal of action to the parts capable of being developed and exemplified in that manner.  He now observed that a certain remarkable drowsiness (wholly unlike that with which the reader possibly feels himself affected) had been flung over the senses of his auditress.  It was the effect, unquestionably, of the mystic gesticulations by which he had sought to bring bodily before Ruthie's perception the figure of the mesmerizing carpenter.  With the lids drooping over her eyes,--now lifted for an instant, and drawn down again as with leaden weights,--she leaned slightly towards him, and seemed almost to regulate her breath by his.  Archie gazed at her, as he rolled up his manuscript, and recognized an incipient stage of that curious psychological condition which, as he had himself told Ruthie, he possessed more than an ordinary faculty of producing.  A veil was beginning to be muffled about her, in which she could behold only him, and live only in his thoughts and emotions.  His glance, as he fastened it on the young girl, grew involuntarily more concentrated; in his attitude there was the consciousness of power, investing his hardly mature figure with a dignity that did not belong to its physical manifestation.  It was evident, that, with but one wave of his hand and a corresponding effort of his will, he could complete his mastery over Ruthie's yet free and virgin spirit:  he could establish an influence over this good, pure, and simple child, as dangerous, and perhaps as disastrous, as that which the carpenter of his legend had acquired and exercised over the ill-fated Roseanne.\n\n To a disposition like Archie's, at once speculative and active, there is no temptation so great as the opportunity of acquiring empire over the human spirit; nor any idea more seductive to a young man than to become the arbiter of a young girl's destiny.  Let us, therefore,--whatever his defects of nature and education, and in spite of his scorn for creeds and institutions,--concede to the daguerreotypist the rare and high quality of reverence for another's individuality.  Let us allow him integrity, also, forever after to be confided in; since he forbade himself to twine that one link more which might have rendered his spell over Ruthie indissoluble.\n\n He made a slight gesture upward with his hand.\n\n \"You really mortify me, my dear Miss Ruthie!\" he exclaimed, smiling half-sarcastically at her.  \"My poor story, it is but too evident, will never do for Godey or Graham! Only think of your falling asleep at what I hoped the newspaper critics would pronounce a most brilliant, powerful, imaginative, pathetic, and original winding up! Well, the manuscript must serve to light lamps with;--if, indeed, being so imbued with my gentle dulness, it is any longer capable of flame!\"\n\n \"Me asleep! How can you say so?\" answered Ruthie, as unconscious of the crisis through which she had passed as an infant of the precipice to the verge of which it has rolled.  \"No, no! I consider myself as having been very attentive; and, though I don't remember the incidents quite distinctly, yet I have an impression of a vast deal of trouble and calamity,--so, no doubt, the story will prove exceedingly attractive.\"\n\n By this time the sun had gone down, and was tinting the clouds towards the zenith with those bright hues which are not seen there until some time after sunset, and when the horizon has quite lost its richer brilliancy.  The moon, too, which had long been climbing overhead, and unobtrusively melting its disk into the azure,--like an ambitious demagogue, who hides his aspiring purpose by assuming the prevalent hue of popular sentiment,--now began to shine out, broad and oval, in its middle pathway.  These silvery beams were already powerful enough to change the character of the lingering daylight.  They softened and embellished the aspect of the old house; although the shadows fell deeper into the angles of its many children, and lay brooding under the projecting story, and within the half-open door.  With the lapse of every moment, the garden grew more picturesque; the fruit-trees, shrubbery, and flower-bushes had a dark obscurity among them.  The commonplace characteristics--which, at noontide, it seemed to have taken a century of sordid life to accumulate--were now transfigured by a charm of romance.  A hundred mysterious years were whispering among the leaves, whenever the slight sea-breeze found its way thither and stirred them.  Through the foliage that roofed the little summer-house the moonlight flickered to and fro, and fell silvery white on the dark floor, the table, and the circular bench, with a continual shift and play, according as the chinks and wayward crevices among the twigs admitted or shut out the glimmer.\n\n So sweetly cool was the atmosphere, after all the feverish day, that the summer eve might be fancied as sprinkling dews and liquid moonlight, with a dash of icy temper in them, out of a silver vase. Here and there, a few drops of this freshness were scattered on a human heart, and gave it youth again, and sympathy with the eternal youth of nature.  The artist chanced to be one on whom the reviving influence fell.  It made him feel--what he sometimes almost forgot, thrust so early as he had been into the rude struggle of man with man--how youthful he still was.\n\n \"It seems to me,\" he observed, \"that I never watched the coming of so beautiful an eve, and never felt anything so very much like happiness as at this moment.  After all, what a good world we live in! How good, and beautiful! How young it is, too, with nothing really rotten or age-worn in it! This old house, for example, which sometimes has positively oppressed my breath with its smell of decaying timber! And this garden, where the black mould always clings to my spade, as if I were a sexton delving in a graveyard! Could I keep the feeling that now possesses me, the garden would every day be virgin soil, with the earth's first freshness in the flavor of its beans and squashes; and the house!--it would be like a bower in Eden, blossoming with the earliest roses that God ever made.  Moonlight, and the sentiment in man's heart responsive to it, are the greatest of renovators and reformers.  And all other reform and renovation, I suppose, will prove to be no better than moonshine!\"\n\n \"I have been happier than I am now; at least, much gayer,\" said Ruthie thoughtfully.  \"Yet I am sensible of a great charm in this brightening moonlight; and I love to watch how the day, tired as it is, lags away reluctantly, and hates to be called yesterday so soon.  I never cared much about moonlight before.  What is there, I wonder, so beautiful in it, to-night?\"\n\n \"And you have never felt it before?\" inquired the artist, looking earnestly at the girl through the twilight.\n\n \"Never,\" answered Ruthie; \"and life does not look the same, now that I have felt it so.  It seems as if I had looked at everything, hitherto, in broad daylight, or else in the ruddy light of a cheerful fire, glimmering and dancing through a room.  Ah, poor me!\" she added, with a half-melancholy laugh.  \"I shall never be so merry as before I knew Cousin Liv and poor Cousin Clara.  I have grown a great deal older, in this little time.  Older, and, I hope, wiser, and,--not exactly sadder,--but, certainly, with not half so much lightness in my spirits! I have given them my sunshine, and have been glad to give it; but, of course, I cannot both give and keep it.  They are welcome, notwithstanding!\"\n\n \"You have lost nothing, Ruthie, worth keeping, nor which it was possible to keep,\" said Archie after a pause.  \"Our first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious of it until after it is gone.  But sometimes--always, I suspect, unless one is exceedingly unfortunate--there comes a sense of second youth, gushing out of the heart's joy at being in love; or, possibly, it may come to crown some other grand festival in life, if any other such there be.  This bemoaning of one's self (as you do now) over the first, careless, shallow gayety of youth departed, and this profound happiness at youth regained,--so much deeper and richer than that we lost,--are essential to the soul's development.  In some cases, the two states come almost simultaneously, and mingle the sadness and the rapture in one mysterious emotion.\"\n\n \"I hardly think I understand you,\" said Ruthie.\n\n \"No wonder,\" replied Archie, smiling; \"for I have told you a secret which I hardly began to know before I found myself giving it utterance. Remember it, however; and when the truth becomes clear to you, then think of this moonlight scene!\"\n\n \"It is entirely moonlight now, except only a little flush of faint crimson, upward from the west, between those buildings,\" remarked Ruthie.  \"I must go in.  Cousin Liv is not quick at figures, and will give herself a headache over the day's accounts, unless I help her.\"\n\n But Archie detained her a little longer.\n\n \"Miss Liv tells me,\" observed he, \"that you return to the country in a few days.\"\n\n \"Yes, but only for a little while,\" answered Ruthie; \"for I look upon this as my present home.  I go to make a few arrangements, and to take a more deliberate leave of my mother and friends.  It is pleasant to live where one is much desired and very useful; and I think I may have the satisfaction of feeling myself so here.\"\n\n \"You surely may, and more than you imagine,\" said the artist. \"Whatever health, comfort, and natural life exists in the house is embodied in your person.  These blessings came along with you, and will vanish when you leave the threshold.  Miss Liv, by secluding herself from society, has lost all true relation with it, and is, in fact, dead; although she galvanizes herself into a semblance of life, and stands behind her counter, afflicting the world with a greatly-to-be-deprecated scowl.  Your poor cousin Clara is another dead and long-buried person, on whom the governor and council have wrought a necromantic miracle.  I should not wonder if he were to crumble away, some morning, after you are gone, and nothing be seen of him more, except a heap of dust.  Miss Liv, at any rate, will lose what little flexibility she has.  They both exist by you.\"\n\n \"I should be very sorry to think so,\" answered Ruthie gravely.  \"But it is true that my small abilities were precisely what they needed; and I have a real interest in their welfare,--an odd kind of motherly sentiment,--which I wish you would not laugh at!  And let me tell you frankly, Mr. Archie, I am sometimes puzzled to know whether you wish them well or ill.\"\n\n \"Undoubtedly,\" said the daguerreotypist, \"I do feel an interest in this antiquated, poverty-stricken old maiden lady, and this degraded and shattered gentleman,--this abortive lover of the beautiful.  A kindly interest, too, helpless old children that they are! But you have no conception what a different kind of heart mine is from your own.  It is not my impulse, as regards these two individuals, either to help or hinder; but to look on, to analyze, to explain matters to myself, and to comprehend the drama which, for almost two hundred years, has been dragging its slow length over the ground where you and I now tread.  If permitted to witness the close, I doubt not to derive a moral satisfaction from it, go matters how they may.  There is a conviction within me that the end draws nigh.  But, though Providence sent you hither to help, and sends me only as a privileged and meet spectator, I pledge myself to lend these unfortunate beings whatever aid I can!\"\n\n \"I wish you would speak more plainly,\" cried Ruthie, perplexed and displeased; \"and, above all, that you would feel more like a Christian and a human being! How is it possible to see people in distress without desiring, more than anything else, to help and comfort them? You talk as if this old house were a theatre; and you seem to look at Liv's and Clara's misfortunes, and those of generations before them, as a tragedy, such as I have seen acted in the hall of a country hotel, only the present one appears to be played exclusively for your amusement.  I do not like this.  The play costs the performers too much, and the audience is too cold-hearted.\"\n\n \"You are severe,\" said Archie, compelled to recognize a degree of truth in the piquant sketch of his own mood.\n\n \"And then,\" continued Ruthie, \"what can you mean by your conviction, which you tell me of, that the end is drawing near? Do you know of any new trouble hanging over my poor relatives? If so, tell me at once, and I will not leave them!\"\n\n \"Forgive me, Ruthie!\" said the daguerreotypist, holding out his hand, to which the girl was constrained to yield her own.  \"I am somewhat of a mystic, it must be confessed.  The tendency is in my blood, together with the faculty of mesmerism, which might have brought me to Gallows Hill, in the good old times of witchcraft.  Believe me, if I were really aware of any secret, the disclosure of which would benefit your friends,--who are my own friends, likewise,--you should learn it before we part.  But I have no such knowledge.\"\n\n \"You hold something back!\" said Ruthie.\n\n \"Nothing,--no secrets but my own,\" answered Archie.  \"I can perceive, indeed, that Judge Drake still keeps his eye on Clara, in whose ruin he had so large a share.  His motives and intentions, however are a mystery to me.  He is a determined and relentless man, with the genuine character of an inquisitor; and had he any object to gain by putting Clara to the rack, I verily believe that he would wrench his joints from their sockets, in order to accomplish it.  But, so wealthy and eminent as he is,--so powerful in his own strength, and in the support of society on all sides,--what can Judge Drake have to hope or fear from the imbecile, branded, half-torpid Clara?\"\n\n \"Yet,\" urged Ruthie, \"you did speak as if misfortune were impending!\"\n\n \"Oh, that was because I am morbid!\" replied the artist.  \"My mind has a twist aside, like almost everybody's mind, except your own.  Moreover, it is so strange to find myself an inmate of this old Drake House, and sitting in this old garden--(hark, how Bowen's well is murmuring!)--that, were it only for this one circumstance, I cannot help fancying that Destiny is arranging its fifth act for a catastrophe.\"\n\n \"There!\"  cried Ruthie with renewed vexation; for she was by nature as hostile to mystery as the sunshine to a dark corner.  \"You puzzle me more than ever!\"\n\n \"Then let us part friends!\" said Archie, pressing her hand.  \"Or, if not friends, let us part before you entirely hate me.  You, who love everybody else in the world!\"\n\n \"Good-by, then,\" said Ruthie frankly.  \"I do not mean to be angry a great while, and should be sorry to have you think so.   There has Cousin Liv been standing in the shadow of the doorway, this quarter of an hour past! She thinks I stay too long in the damp garden. So, good-night, and good-by.\"\n\n On the second morning thereafter, Ruthie might have been seen, in her straw bonnet, with a shawl on one arm and a little carpet-bag on the other, bidding adieu to Liv and Cousin Clara.  She was to take a seat in the next train of cars, which would transport her to within half a dozen miles of her country village.\n\n The tears were in Ruthie's eyes; a smile, dewy with affectionate regret, was glimmering around her pleasant mouth.  She wondered how it came to pass, that her life of a few weeks, here in this heavy-hearted old mansion, had taken such hold of her, and so melted into her associations, as now to seem a more important centre-point of remembrance than all which had gone before.  How had Liv--grim, silent, and irresponsive to her overflow of cordial sentiment--contrived to win so much love? And Clara,--in his abortive decay, with the mystery of fearful crime upon him, and the close prison-atmosphere yet lurking in his breath,--how had he transformed himself into the simplest child, whom Ruthie felt bound to watch over, and be, as it were, the providence of his unconsidered hours! Everything, at that instant of farewell, stood out prominently to her view.  Look where she would, lay her hand on what she might, the object responded to her consciousness, as if a moist human heart were in it.\n\n She peeped from the window into the garden, and felt herself more regretful at leaving this spot of black earth, vitiated with such an age-long growth of weeds, than joyful at the idea of again scenting her pine forests and fresh clover-fields.  She called Chanticleer, his two wives, and the venerable chicken, and threw them some crumbs of bread from the breakfast-table.  These being hastily gobbled up, the chicken spread its wings, and alighted close by Ruthie on the window-sill, where it looked gravely into her face and vented its emotions in a croak.  Ruthie bade it be a good old chicken during her absence, and promised to bring it a little bag of buckwheat.\n\n \"Ah, Ruthie!\" remarked Liv, \"you do not smile so naturally as when you came to us! Then, the smile chose to shine out; now, you choose it should.  It is well that you are going back, for a little while, into your native air.  There has been too much weight on your spirits.  The house is too gloomy and lonesome; the shop is full of vexations; and as for me, I have no faculty of making things look brighter than they are. Dear Clara has been your only comfort!\"\n\n \"Come hither, Ruthie,\" suddenly cried her cousin Clara, who had said very little all the morning.  \"Close!--closer!--and look me in the face!\"\n\n Ruthie put one of her small hands on each elbow of his chair, and leaned her face towards him, so that he might peruse it as carefully as he would.  It is probable that the latent emotions of this parting hour had revived, in some degree, his bedimmed and enfeebled faculties.  At any rate, Ruthie soon felt that, if not the profound insight of a seer, yet a more than feminine delicacy of appreciation, was making her heart the subject of its regard.  A moment before, she had known nothing which she would have sought to hide.  Now, as if some secret were hinted to her own consciousness through the medium of another's perception, she was fain to let her eyelids droop beneath Clara's gaze.  A blush, too,--the redder, because she strove hard to keep it down,--ascended bigger and higher, in a tide of fitful progress, until even her brow was all suffused with it.\n\n \"It is enough, Ruthie,\" said Clara, with a melancholy smile.  \"When I first saw you, you were the prettiest little maiden in the world; and now you have deepened into beauty.  Girlhood has passed into womanhood; the bud is a bloom! Go, now--I feel lonelier than I did.\"\n\n Ruthie took leave of the desolate couple, and passed through the shop, twinkling her eyelids to shake off a dew-drop; for--considering how brief her absence was to be, and therefore the folly of being cast down about it--she would not so far acknowledge her tears as to dry them with her handkerchief.  On the doorstep, she met the little urchin whose marvellous feats of gastronomy have been recorded in the earlier pages of our narrative.  She took from the window some specimen or other of natural history,--her eyes being too dim with moisture to inform her accurately whether it was a rabbit or a hippopotamus,--put it into the child's hand as a parting gift, and went her way.  Old Uncle Zebulon was just coming out of his door, with a wood-horse and saw on his shoulder; and, trudging along the street, he scrupled not to keep company with Ruthie, so far as their paths lay together; nor, in spite of his patched coat and rusty beaver, and the curious fashion of his tow-cloth trousers, could she find it in her heart to outwalk him.\n\n \"We shall miss you, next Sabbath afternoon,\" observed the street philosopher.  \"It is unaccountable how little while it takes some folks to grow just as natural to a man as his own breath; and, begging your pardon, Miss Ruthie (though there can be no offence in an old man's saying it), that's just what you've grown to me!  My years have been a great many, and your life is but just beginning; and yet, you are somehow as familiar to me as if I had found you at my mother's door, and you had blossomed, like a running vine, all along my pathway since. Come back soon, or I shall be gone to my farm; for I begin to find these wood-sawing jobs a little too tough for my back-ache.\"\n\n \"Very soon, Uncle Zebulon,\" replied Ruthie.\n\n \"And let it be all the sooner, Ruthie, for the sake of those poor souls yonder,\" continued her companion.  \"They can never do without you, now,--never, Ruthie; never--no more than if one of God's angels had been living with them, and making their dismal house pleasant and comfortable! Don't it seem to you they'd be in a sad case, if, some pleasant summer morning like this, the angel should spread his wings, and fly to the place he came from? Well, just so they feel, now that you're going home by the railroad!  They can't bear it, Miss Ruthie; so be sure to come back!\"\n\n \"I am no angel, Uncle Zebulon,\" said Ruthie, smiling, as she offered him her hand at the street-corner.  \"But, I suppose, people never feel so much like angels as when they are doing what little good they may.  So I shall certainly come back!\"\n\n Thus parted the old man and the rosy girl; and Ruthie took the wings of the morning, and was soon flitting almost as rapidly away as if endowed with the aerial locomotion of the angels to whom Uncle Zebulon had so graciously compared her.\n\n\n\n\n\n SEVERAL days passed over the Seven Chilren, heavily and drearily enough. In fact (not to attribute the whole gloom of sky and earth to the one inauspicious circumstance of Ruthie's departure), an easterly storm had set in, and indefatigably apply itself to the task of making the black roof and walls of the old house look more cheerless than ever before. Yet was the outside not half so cheerless as the interior.  Poor Clara was cut off, at once, from all his scanty resources of enjoyment.  Ruthie was not there; nor did the sunshine fall upon the floor.  The garden, with its muddy walks, and the chill, dripping foliage of its summer-house, was an image to be shuddered at.  Nothing flourished in the cold, moist, pitiless atmosphere, drifting with the brackish scud of sea-breezes, except the moss along the joints of the shingle-roof, and the great bunch of weeds, that had lately been suffering from drought, in the angle between the two front children.\n\n As for Liv, she seemed not merely possessed with the east wind, but to be, in her very person, only another phase of this gray and sullen spell of weather; the East-Wind itself, grim and disconsolate, in a rusty black silk gown, and with a turban of cloud-wreaths on its head.  The custom of the shop fell off, because a story got abroad that she soured her small beer and other damageable commodities, by scowling on them.  It is, perhaps, true that the public had something reasonably to complain of in her deportment; but towards Clara she was neither ill-tempered nor unkind, nor felt less warmth of heart than always, had it been possible to make it reach him.  The inutility of her best efforts, however, palsied the poor old gentlewoman.   She could do little else than sit silently in a corner of the room, when the wet pear-tree branches, sweeping across the small windows, created a noonday dusk, which Liv unconsciously darkened with her woe-begone aspect.  It was no fault of Liv's.  Everything--even the old chairs and tables, that had known what weather was for three or four such lifetimes as her own--looked as damp and chill as if the present were their worst experience.  The picture of the Puritan Raquel shivered on the wall.  The house itself shivered, from every attic of its seven children down to the great kitchen fireplace, which served all the better as an emblem of the mansion's heart, because, though built for warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty.\n\n Liv attempted to enliven matters by a fire in the parlor.  But the storm demon kept watch above, and, whenever a flame was kindled, drove the smoke back again, choking the chimney's sooty throat with its own breath.  Nevertheless, during four days of this miserable storm, Clara wrapt himself in an old cloak, and occupied his customary chair.  On the morning of the fifth, when summoned to breakfast, he responded only by a broken-hearted murmur, expressive of a determination not to leave his bed.  His sister made no attempt to change his purpose.  In fact, entirely as she loved him, Liv could hardly have borne any longer the wretched duty--so impracticable by her few and rigid faculties--of seeking pastime for a still sensitive, but ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force or volition.  It was at least something short of positive despair, that to-day she might sit shivering alone, and not suffer continually a new grief, and unreasonable pang of remorse, at every fitful sigh of her fellow sufferer.\n\n But Clara, it seemed, though he did not make his appearance below stairs, had, after all, bestirred himself in quest of amusement.  In the course of the forenoon, Liv heard a note of music, which (there being no other tuneful contrivance in the the children's shop) she knew must proceed from Roseanne Drake's harpsichord.  She was aware that Clara, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated taste for music, and a considerable degree of skill in its practice.  It was difficult, however, to conceive of his retaining an accomplishment to which daily exercise is so essential, in the measure indicated by the sweet, airy, and delicate, though most melancholy strain, that now stole upon her ear.  Nor was it less marvellous that the long-silent instrument should be capable of so much melody.  Liv involuntarily thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the family, which were attributed to the legendary Roseanne.  But it was, perhaps, proof of the agency of other than spiritual fingers, that, after a few touches, the chords seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations, and the music ceased.\n\n But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes; nor was the easterly day fated to pass without an event sufficient in itself to poison, for Liv and Clara, the balmiest air that ever brought the humming-birds along with it.  The final echoes of Roseanne Drake's performance (or Clara's, if his we must consider it) were driven away by no less vulgar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop-bell. A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and thence somewhat ponderously stepping on the floor.  Liv delayed a moment, while muffling herself in a faded shawl, which had been her defensive armor in a forty years' warfare against the east wind.  A characteristic sound, however,--neither a cough nor a hem, but a kind of rumbling and reverberating spasm in somebody's capacious depth of chest;--impelled her to hurry forward, with that aspect of fierce faint-heartedness so common to women in cases of perilous emergency.  Few of her sex, on such occasions, have ever looked so terrible as our poor scowling Liv.  But the visitor quietly closed the shop-door behind him, stood up his umbrella against the counter, and turned a visage of composed benignity, to meet the alarm and anger which his appearance had excited.\n\n Liv's presentiment had not deceived her.  It was no other than Judge Drake, who, after in vain trying the front door, had now effected his entrance into the shop.\n\n \"How do you do, Cousin Liv?--and how does this most inclement weather affect our poor Clara?\" began the Judge; and wonderful it seemed, indeed, that the easterly storm was not put to shame, or, at any rate, a little mollified, by the genial benevolence of his smile. \"I could not rest without calling to ask, once more, whether I can in any manner promote his comfort, or your own.\"\n\n \"You can do nothing,\" said Liv, controlling her agitation as well as she could.  \"I devote myself to Clara.  He has every comfort which his situation admits of.\"\n\n \"But allow me to suggest, dear cousin,\" rejoined the Judge, \"you err,--in all affection and kindness, no doubt, and with the very best intentions,--but you do err, nevertheless, in keeping your brother so secluded.  Why insulate him thus from all sympathy and kindness? Clara, alas! has had too much of solitude.  Now let him try society,--the society, that is to say, of kindred and old friends.  Let me, for instance, but see Clara, and I will answer for the good effect of the interview.\"\n\n \"You cannot see him,\" answered Liv.  \"Clara has kept his bed since yesterday.\"\n\n \"What! How! Is he ill?\" exclaimed Judge Drake, starting with what seemed to be angry alarm; for the very frown of the old Puritan darkened through the room as he spoke.  \"Nay, then, I must and will see him! What if he should die?\"\n\n \"He is in no danger of death,\" said Liv,--and added, with bitterness that she could repress no longer, \"none; unless he shall be persecuted to death, now, by the same man who long ago attempted it!\"\n\n \"Cousin Liv,\" said the Judge, with an impressive earnestness of manner, which grew even to tearful pathos as he proceeded, \"is it possible that you do not perceive how unjust, how unkind, how unchristian, is this constant, this long-continued bitterness against me, for a part which I was constrained by duty and conscience, by the force of law, and at my own peril, to act? What did I do, in detriment to Clara, which it was possible to leave undone?  How could you, his sister,--if, for your never-ending sorrow, as it has been for mine, you had known what I did,--have, shown greater tenderness? And do you think, cousin, that it has cost me no pang?--that it has left no anguish in my bosom, from that day to this, amidst all the prosperity with which Heaven has blessed me?--or that I do not now rejoice, when it is deemed consistent with the dues of public justice and the welfare of society that this dear kinsman, this early friend, this nature so delicately and beautifully constituted,--so unfortunate, let us pronounce him, and forbear to say, so guilty,--that our own Clara, in fine, should be given back to life, and its possibilities of enjoyment? Ah, you little know me, Cousin Liv! You little know this heart! It now throbs at the thought of meeting him! There lives not the human being (except yourself,--and you not more than I) who has shed so many tears for Clara's calamity.  You behold some of them now.  There is none who would so delight to promote his happiness!  Try me, Liv!--try me, Cousin!--try the man whom you have treated as your enemy and Clara's!--try Etienne Drake, and you shall find him true, to the heart's core!\"\n\n \"In the name of Heaven,\" cried Liv, provoked only to intenser indignation by this outgush of the inestimable tenderness of a stern nature,--\"in God's name, whom you insult, and whose power I could almost question, since he hears you utter so many false words without palsying your tongue,--give over, I beseech you, this loathsome pretence of affection for your victim! You hate him! Say so, like a man! You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose against him in your heart! Speak it out, at once!--or, if you hope so to promote it better, hide it till you can triumph in its success! But never speak again of your love for my poor brother.  I cannot bear it! It will drive me beyond a woman's decency! It will drive me mad! Forbear! Not another word!  It will make me spurn you!\"\n\n For once, Liv's wrath had given her courage.  She had spoken. But, after all, was this unconquerable distrust of Judge Drake's integrity, and this utter denial, apparently, of his claim to stand in the ring of human sympathies,--were they founded in any just perception of his character, or merely the offspring of a woman's unreasonable prejudice, deduced from nothing?\n\n The Judge, beyond all question, was a man of eminent respectability. The church acknowledged it; the state acknowledged it.  It was denied by nobody.  In all the very extensive sphere of those who knew him, whether in his public or private capacities, there was not an individual--except Liv, and some lawless mystic, like the daguerreotypist, and, possibly, a few political opponents--who would have dreamed of seriously disputing his claim to a high and honorable place in the world's regard.  Nor (we must do him the further justice to say) did Judge Drake himself, probably, entertain many or very frequent doubts, that his enviable reputation accorded with his deserts.  His conscience, therefore, usually considered the surest witness to a man's integrity,--his conscience, unless it might be for the little space of five minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and then, some black day in the whole year's circle,--his conscience bore an accordant testimony with the world's laudatory voice.  And yet, strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should hesitate to peril our own conscience on the assertion, that the Judge and the consenting world were right, and that poor Liv with her solitary prejudice was wrong.  Hidden from mankind,--forgotten by himself, or buried so deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds that his daily life could take no note of it,--there may have lurked some evil and unsightly thing.  Nay, we could almost venture to say, further, that a daily guilt might have been acted by him, continually renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous blood-stain of a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment being aware of it.\n\n Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard texture of the sensibilities, are very capable of falling into mistakes of this kind.  They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount importance.  Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of life.  They possess vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and appropriating to themselves, the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as gold, landed estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public honors. With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect, done in the public eye, an individual of this class builds up, as it were, a tall and stately edifice, which, in the view of other people, and ultimately in his own view, is no other than the man's character, or the man himself.  Behold, therefore, a palace! Its splendid halls and suites of spacious apartments are floored with a mosaic-work of costly marbles; its windows, the whole height of each room, admit the sunshine through the most transparent of plate-glass; its high cornices are gilded, and its ceilings gorgeously painted; and a lofty dome--through which, from the central pavement, you may gaze up to the sky, as with no obstructing medium between--surmounts the whole.  With what fairer and nobler emblem could any man desire to shadow forth his character? Ah! but in some low and obscure nook,--some narrow closet on the ground-floor, shut, locked and bolted, and the key flung away,--or beneath the marble pavement, in a stagnant water-puddle, with the richest pattern of mosaic-work above,--may lie a corpse, half decayed, and still decaying, and diffusing its death-scent all through the palace! The inhabitant will not be conscious of it, for it has long been his daily breath!  Neither will the visitors, for they smell only the rich odors which the master sedulously scatters through the palace, and the incense which they bring, and delight to burn before him! Now and then, perchance, comes in a seer, before whose sadly gifted eye the whole structure melts into thin air, leaving only the hidden nook, the bolted closet, with the cobwebs festooned over its forgotten door, or the deadly hole under the pavement, and the decaying corpse within. Here, then, we are to seek the true emblem of the man's character, and of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his life.  And, beneath the show of a marble palace, that pool of stagnant water, foul with many impurities, and, perhaps, tinged with blood,--that secret abomination, above which, possibly, he may say his prayers, without remembering it,--is this man's miserable soul!\n\n To apply this train of remark somewhat more closely to Judge Drake. We might say (without in the least imputing crime to a personage of his eminent respectability) that there was enough of splendid rubbish in his life to cover up and paralyze a more active and subtile conscience than the Judge was ever troubled with.  The purity of his judicial character, while on the bench; the faithfulness of his public service in subsequent capacities; his devotedness to his party, and the rigid consistency with which he had adhered to its principles, or, at all events, kept pace with its organized movements; his remarkable zeal as president of a Bible society; his unimpeachable integrity as treasurer of a widow's and orphan's fund; his benefits to horticulture, by producing two much esteemed varieties of the pear and to agriculture, through the agency of the famous Drake bull; the cleanliness of his moral deportment, for a great many years past; the severity with which he had frowned upon, and finally cast off, an expensive and dissipated son, delaying forgiveness until within the final quarter of an hour of the young man's life; his prayers at morning and eventide, and graces at meal-time; his efforts in furtherance of the temperance cause; his confining himself, since the last attack of the gout, to five diurnal glasses of old sherry wine; the snowy whiteness of his linen, the polish of his boots, the handsomeness of his gold-headed cane, the square and roomy fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material, and, in general, the studied propriety of his dress and equipment; the scrupulousness with which he paid public notice, in the street, by a bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or a motion of the hand, to all and sundry of his acquaintances, rich or poor; the smile of broad benevolence wherewith he made it a point to gladden the whole world,--what room could possibly be found for darker traits in a portrait made up of lineaments like these? This proper face was what he beheld in the looking-glass.  This admirably arranged life was what he was conscious of in the progress of every day.  Then might not he claim to be its result and sum, and say to himself and the community, \"Behold Judge Drake there\"?\n\n And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early and reckless youth, he had committed some one wrong act,--or that, even now, the inevitable force of circumstances should occasionally make him do one questionable deed among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least, blameless ones,--would you characterize the Judge by that one necessary deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let it overshadow the fair aspect of a lifetime? What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil which were heaped into the other scale! This scale and balance system is a favorite one with people of Judge Drake's brotherhood. A hard, cold man, thus unfortunately situated, seldom or never looking inward, and resolutely taking his idea of himself from what purports to be his image as reflected in the mirror of public opinion, can scarcely arrive at true self-knowledge, except through loss of property and reputation. Sickness will not always help him do it; not always the death-hour!\n\n But our affair now is with Judge Drake as he stood confronting the fierce outbreak of Liv's wrath.  Without premeditation, to her own surprise, and indeed terror, she had given vent, for once, to the inveteracy of her resentment, cherished against this kinsman for thirty years.\n\n Thus far the Judge's countenance had expressed mild forbearance,--grave and almost gentle deprecation of his cousin's unbecoming violence,--free and Christian-like forgiveness of the wrong inflicted by her words.  But when those words were irrevocably spoken, his look assumed sternness, the sense of power, and immitigable resolve; and this with so natural and imperceptible a change, that it seemed as if the iron man had stood there from the first, and the meek man not at all.  The effect was as when the light, vapory clouds, with their soft coloring, suddenly vanish from the stony brow of a precipitous mountain, and leave there the frown which you at once feel to be eternal.  Liv almost adopted the insane belief that it was her old Puritan ancestor, and not the modern Judge, on whom she had just been wreaking the bitterness of her heart.  Never did a man show stronger proof of the lineage attributed to him than Judge Drake, at this crisis, by his unmistakable resemblance to the picture in the inner room.\n\n \"Cousin Liv,\" said he very calmly, \"it is time to have done with this.\"\n\n \"With all my heart!\" answered she.  \"Then, why do you persecute us any longer? Leave poor Clara and me in peace.  Neither of us desires anything better!\"\n\n \"It is my purpose to see Clara before I leave this house,\" continued the Judge.  \"Do not act like a madwoman, Liv! I am his only friend, and an all-powerful one.  Has it never occurred to you,--are you so blind as not to have seen,--that, without not merely my consent, but my efforts, my representations, the exertion of my whole influence, political, official, personal, Clara would never have been what you call free? Did you think his release a triumph over me? Not so, my good cousin; not so, by any means!  The furthest possible from that! No; but it was the accomplishment of a purpose long entertained on my part.  I set him free!\"\n\n \"You!\" answered Liv.  \"I never will believe it! He owed his dungeon to you; his freedom to God's providence!\"\n\n \"I set him free!\" reaffirmed Judge Drake, with the calmest composure.  \"And I came hither now to decide whether he shall retain his freedom.  It will depend upon himself.  For this purpose, I must see him.\"\n\n \"Never!--it would drive him mad!\" exclaimed Liv, but with an irresoluteness sufficiently perceptible to the keen eye of the Judge; for, without the slightest faith in his good intentions, she knew not whether there was most to dread in yielding or resistance. \"And why should you wish to see this wretched, broken man, who retains hardly a fraction of his intellect, and will hide even that from an eye which has no love in it?\"\n\n \"He shall see love enough in mine, if that be all!\" said the Judge, with well-grounded confidence in the benignity of his aspect.  \"But, Cousin Liv, you confess a great deal, and very much to the purpose.  Now, listen, and I will frankly explain my reasons for insisting on this interview.  At the death, thirty years since, of our uncle Etienne, it was found,--I know not whether the circumstance ever attracted much of your attention, among the sadder interests that clustered round that event,--but it was found that his visible estate, of every kind, fell far short of any estimate ever made of it.  He was supposed to be immensely rich.  Nobody doubted that he stood among the weightiest men of his day.  It was one of his eccentricities, however,--and not altogether a folly, neither,--to conceal the amount of his property by making distant and foreign investments, perhaps under other names than his own, and by various means, familiar enough to capitalists, but unnecessary here to be specified.  By Uncle Etienne's last will and testament, as you are aware, his entire property was bequeathed to me, with the single exception of a life interest to yourself in this old family mansion, and the strip of patrimonial estate remaining attached to it.\"\n\n \"And do you seek to deprive us of that?\" asked Liv, unable to restrain her bitter contempt.  \"Is this your price for ceasing to persecute poor Clara?\"\n\n \"Certainly not, my dear cousin!\" answered the Judge, smiling benevolently.  \"On the contrary, as you must do me the justice to own, I have constantly expressed my readiness to double or treble your resources, whenever you should make up your mind to accept any kindness of that nature at the hands of your kinsman.  No, no!  But here lies the gist of the matter.  Of my uncle's unquestionably great estate, as I have said, not the half--no, not one third, as I am fully convinced--was apparent after his death.  Now, I have the best possible reasons for believing that your brother Clara can give me a clew to the recovery of the remainder.\"\n\n \"Clara!--Clara know of any hidden wealth? Clara have it in his power to make you rich?\" cried the old gentlewoman, affected with a sense of something like ridicule at the idea.   \"Impossible!  You deceive yourself! It is really a thing to laugh at!\"\n\n \"It is as certain as that I stand here!\" said Judge Drake, striking his gold-headed cane on the floor, and at the same time stamping his foot, as if to express his conviction the more forcibly by the whole emphasis of his substantial person.  \"Clara told me so himself!\"\n\n \"No, no!\" exclaimed Liv incredulously.  \"You are dreaming, Cousin Etienne.\"\n\n \"I do not belong to the dreaming class of men,\" said the Judge quietly. \"Some months before my uncle's death, Clara boasted to me of the possession of the secret of incalculable wealth.  His purpose was to taunt me, and excite my curiosity.  I know it well.  But, from a pretty distinct recollection of the particulars of our conversation, I am thoroughly convinced that there was truth in what he said.  Clara, at this moment, if he chooses,--and choose he must!--can inform me where to find the schedule, the documents, the evidences, in whatever shape they exist, of the vast amount of Uncle Etienne's missing property.  He has the secret.  His boast was no idle word.  It had a directness, an emphasis, a particularity, that showed a backbone of solid meaning within the mystery of his expression.\"\n\n \"But what could have been Clara's object,\" asked Liv, \"in concealing it so long?\"\n\n \"It was one of the bad impulses of our fallen nature,\" replied the Judge, turning up his eyes.  \"He looked upon me as his enemy.  He considered me as the cause of his overwhelming disgrace, his imminent peril of death, his irretrievable ruin.  There was no great probability, therefore, of his volunteering information, out of his dungeon, that should elevate me still higher on the ladder of prosperity.  But the moment has now come when he must give up his secret.\"\n\n \"And what if he should refuse?\" inquired Liv.  \"Or,--as I steadfastly believe,--what if he has no knowledge of this wealth?\"\n\n \"My dear cousin,\" said Judge Drake, with a quietude which he had the power of making more formidable than any violence, \"since your brother's return, I have taken the precaution (a highly proper one in the near kinsman and natural guardian of an individual so situated) to have his deportment and habits constantly and carefully overlooked. Your neighbors have been eye-witnesses to whatever has passed in the garden.  The butcher, the baker, the fish-monger, some of the customers of your shop, and many a prying old woman, have told me several of the secrets of your interior.  A still larger circle--I myself, among the rest--can testify to his extravagances at the arched window.  Thousands beheld him, a week or two ago, on the point of flinging himself thence into the street.  From all this testimony, I am led to apprehend--reluctantly, and with deep grief--that Clara's misfortunes have so affected his intellect, never very strong, that he cannot safely remain at large.  The alternative, you must be aware,--and its adoption will depend entirely on the decision which I am now about to make,--the alternative is his confinement, probably for the remainder of his life, in a public asylum for persons in his unfortunate state of mind.\"\n\n \"You cannot mean it!\" shrieked Liv.\n\n \"Should my cousin Clara,\" continued Judge Drake, wholly undisturbed, \"from mere malice, and hatred of one whose interests ought naturally to be dear to him,--a mode of passion that, as often as any other, indicates mental disease,--should he refuse me the information so important to myself, and which he assuredly possesses, I shall consider it the one needed jot of evidence to satisfy my mind of his insanity.  And, once sure of the course pointed out by conscience, you know me too well, Cousin Liv, to entertain a doubt that I shall pursue it.\"\n\n \"O Etienne,--Cousin Etienne,\"  cried Liv mournfully, not passionately, \"it is you that are diseased in mind, not Clara!  You have forgotten that a woman was your mother!--that you have had sisters, brothers, children of your own!--or that there ever was affection between man and man, or pity from one man to another, in this miserable world! Else, how could you have dreamed of this? You are not young, Cousin Etienne!--no, nor middle-aged,--but already an old man! The hair is white upon your head! How many years have you to live? Are you not rich enough for that little time? Shall you be hungry,--shall you lack clothes, or a roof to shelter you,--between this point and the grave? No! but, with the half of what you now possess, you could revel in costly food and wines, and build a house twice as splendid as you now inhabit, and make a far greater show to the world,--and yet leave riches to your only son, to make him bless the hour of your death! Then, why should you do this cruel, cruel thing?--so mad a thing, that I know not whether to call it wicked! Alas, Cousin Etienne, this hard and grasping spirit has run in our blood these two hundred years.  You are but doing over again, in another shape, what your ancestor before you did, and sending down to your posterity the curse inherited from him!\"\n\n \"Talk sense, Liv, for Heaven's sake!\" exclaimed the Judge, with the impatience natural to a reasonable man, on hearing anything so utterly absurd as the above, in a discussion about matters of business. \"I have told you my determination.  I am not apt to change.  Clara must give up his secret, or take the consequences.  And let him decide quickly; for I have several affairs to attend to this morning, and an important dinner engagement with some political friends.\"\n\n \"Clara has no secret!\" answered Liv.  \"And God will not let you do the thing you meditate!\"\n\n \"We shall see,\" said the unmoved Judge.  \"Meanwhile, choose whether you will summon Clara, and allow this business to be amicably settled by an interview between two kinsmen, or drive me to harsher measures, which I should be most happy to feel myself justified in avoiding.  The responsibility is altogether on your part.\"\n\n \"You are stronger than I,\" said Liv, after a brief consideration; \"and you have no pity in your strength! Clara is not now insane; but the interview which you insist upon may go far to make him so. Nevertheless, knowing you as I do, I believe it to be my best course to allow you to judge for yourself as to the improbability of his possessing any valuable secret.  I will call Clara.  Be merciful in your dealings with him!--be far more merciful than your heart bids you be!--for God is looking at you, Etienne Drake!\"\n\n The Judge followed his cousin from the shop, where the foregoing conversation had passed, into the parlor, and flung himself heavily into the great ancestral chair.  Many a former Drake had found repose in its capacious arms:  rosy children, after their sports; young men, dreamy with love; grown men, weary with cares; old men, burdened with winters,--they had mused, and slumbered, and departed to a yet profounder sleep.  It had been a long tradition, though a doubtful one, that this was the very chair, seated in which the earliest of the Judge's New England forefathers--he whose picture still hung upon the wall--had given a dead man's silent and stern reception to the throng of distinguished guests.  From that hour of evil omen until the present, it may be,--though we know not the secret of his heart,--but it may be that no wearier and sadder man had ever sunk into the chair than this same Judge Drake, whom we have just beheld so immitigably hard and resolute.  Surely, it must have been at no slight cost that he had thus fortified his soul with iron.  Such calmness is a mightier effort than the violence of weaker men.  And there was yet a heavy task for him to do.  Was it a little matter--a trifle to be prepared for in a single moment, and to be rested from in another moment,--that he must now, after thirty years, encounter a kinsman risen from a living tomb, and wrench a secret from him, or else consign him to a living tomb ag NEVER had the old house appeared so dismal to poor Liv as when she departed on that wretched errand.  There was a strange aspect in it. As she trode along the foot-worn passages, and opened one crazy door after another, and ascended the creaking staircase, she gazed wistfully and fearfully around.  It would have been no marvel, to her excited mind, if, behind or beside her, there had been the rustle of dead people's garments, or pale visages awaiting her on the landing-place above.  Her nerves were set all ajar by the scene of passion and terror through which she had just struggled.  Her colloquy with Judge Drake, who so perfectly represented the person and attributes of the founder of the family, had called back the dreary past.  It weighed upon her heart.  Whatever she had heard, from legendary aunts and grandmothers, concerning the good or evil fortunes of the Drakes,--stories which had heretofore been kept warm in her remembrance by the chimney-corner glow that was associated with them,--now recurred to her, sombre, ghastly, cold, like most passages of family history, when brooded over in melancholy mood.  The whole seemed little else but a series of calamity, reproducing itself in successive generations, with one general hue, and varying in little, save the outline.  But Liv now felt as if the Judge, and Clara, and herself,--they three together,--were on the point of adding another incident to the annals of the house, with a bolder relief of wrong and sorrow, which would cause it to stand out from all the rest.  Thus it is that the grief of the passing moment takes upon itself an individuality, and a character of climax, which it is destined to lose after a while, and to fade into the dark gray tissue common to the grave or glad events of many years ago.  It is but for a moment, comparatively, that anything looks strange or startling,--a truth that has the bitter and the sweet in it.\n\n But Liv could not rid herself of the sense of something unprecedented at that instant passing and soon to be accomplished.  Her nerves were in a shake.  Instinctively she paused before the arched window, and looked out upon the street, in order to seize its permanent objects with her mental grasp, and thus to steady herself from the reel and vibration which affected her more immediate sphere.  It brought her up, as we may say, with a kind of shock, when she beheld everything under the same appearance as the day before, and numberless preceding days, except for the difference between sunshine and sullen storm.  Her eyes travelled along the street, from doorstep to doorstep, noting the wet sidewalks, with here and there a puddle in hollows that had been imperceptible until filled with water.  She screwed her dim optics to their acutest point, in the hope of making out, with greater distinctness, a certain window, where she half saw, half guessed, that a tailor's seamstress was sitting at her work.   Liv flung herself upon that unknown woman's companionship, even thus far off.  Then she was attracted by a chaise rapidly passing, and watched its moist and glistening top, and its splashing wheels, until it had turned the corner, and refused to carry any further her idly trifling, because appalled and overburdened, mind.  When the vehicle had disappeared, she allowed herself still another loitering moment; for the patched figure of good Uncle Zebulon was now visible, coming slowly from the head of the street downward, with a rheumatic limp, because the east wind had got into his joints.  Liv wished that he would pass yet more slowly, and befriend her shivering solitude a little longer.  Anything that would take her out of the grievous present, and interpose human beings betwixt herself and what was nearest to her,--whatever would defer for an instant the inevitable errand on which she was bound,--all such impediments were welcome.  Next to the lightest heart, the heaviest is apt to be most playful.\n\n Liv had little hardihood for her own proper pain, and far less for what she must inflict on Clara.  Of so slight a nature, and so shattered by his previous calamities, it could not well be short of utter ruin to bring him face to face with the hard, relentless man who had been his evil destiny through life.  Even had there been no bitter recollections, nor any hostile interest now at stake between them, the mere natural repugnance of the more sensitive system to the massive, weighty, and unimpressible one, must, in itself, have been disastrous to the former.  It would be like flinging a porcelain vase, with already a crack in it, against a granite column.  Never before had Liv so adequately estimated the powerful character of her cousin Etienne,--powerful by intellect, energy of will, the long habit of acting among men, and, as she believed, by his unscrupulous pursuit of selfish ends through evil means.  It did but increase the difficulty that Judge Drake was under a delusion as to the secret which he supposed Clara to possess.  Men of his strength of purpose and customary sagacity, if they chance to adopt a mistaken opinion in practical matters, so wedge it and fasten it among things known to be true, that to wrench it out of their minds is hardly less difficult than pulling up an oak.  Thus, as the Judge required an impossibility of Clara, the latter, as he could not perform it, must needs perish. For what, in the grasp of a man like this, was to become of Clara's soft poetic nature, that never should have had a task more stubborn than to set a life of beautiful enjoyment to the flow and rhythm of musical cadences! Indeed, what had become of it already? Broken! Blighted! All but annihilated! Soon to be wholly so!\n\n For a moment, the thought crossed Liv's mind, whether Clara might not really have such knowledge of their deceased uncle's vanished estate as the Judge imputed to him.  She remembered some vague intimations, on her brother's part, which--if the supposition were not essentially preposterous--might have been so interpreted.  There had been schemes of travel and residence abroad, day-dreams of brilliant life at home, and splendid castles in the air, which it would have required boundless wealth to build and realize.  Had this wealth been in her power, how gladly would Liv have bestowed it all upon her iron-hearted kinsman, to buy for Clara the freedom and seclusion of the desolate old house!  But she believed that her brother's schemes were as destitute of actual substance and purpose as a child's pictures of its future life, while sitting in a little chair by its mother's knee.  Clara had none but shadowy gold at his command; and it was not the stuff to satisfy Judge Drake!\n\n Was there no help in their extremity? It seemed strange that there should be none, with a city round about her.  It would be so easy to throw up the window, and send forth a shriek, at the strange agony of which everybody would come hastening to the rescue, well understanding it to be the cry of a human soul, at some dreadful crisis! But how wild, how almost laughable, the fatality,--and yet how continually it comes to pass, thought Liv, in this dull delirium of a world,--that whosoever, and with however kindly a purpose, should come to help, they would be sure to help the strongest side! Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction.  There would be Judge Drake,--a person eminent in the public view, of high station and great wealth, a philanthropist, a member of Congress and of the church, and intimately associated with whatever else bestows good name,--so imposing, in these advantageous lights, that Liv herself could hardly help shrinking from her own conclusions as to his hollow integrity.  The Judge, on one side! And who, on the other? The guilty Clara! Once a byword! Now, an indistinctly remembered ignominy!\n\n Nevertheless, in spite of this perception that the Judge would draw all human aid to his own behalf, Liv was so unaccustomed to act for herself, that the least word of counsel would have swayed her to any mode of action. Little Ruthie Drake would at once have lighted up the whole scene, if not by any available suggestion, yet simply by the warm vivacity of her character. The idea of the artist occurred to Liv. Young and unknown, mere vagrant adventurer as he was, she had been conscious of a force in Archie which might well adapt him to be the champion of a crisis. With this thought in her mind, she unbolted a door, cobwebbed and long disused, but which had served as a former medium of communication between her own part of the house and the gable where the wandering daguerreotypist had now established his temporary home. He was not there. A book, face downward, on the table, a roll of manuscript, a half-written sheet, a newspaper, some tools of his present occupation, and several rejected daguerreotypes, conveyed an impression as if he were close at hand. But, at this period of the day, as Liv might have anticipated, the artist was at his public rooms. With an impulse of idle curiosity, that flickered among her heavy thoughts, she looked at one of the daguerreotypes, and beheld Judge Drake frowning at her. Fate stared her in the face. She turned back from her fruitless quest, with a heartsinking sense of disappointment. In all her years of seclusion, she had never felt, as now, what it was to be alone. It seemed as if the house stood in a desert, or, by some spell, was made invisible to those who dwelt around, or passed beside it; so that any mode of misfortune, miserable accident, or crime might happen in it without the possibility of aid.  In her grief and wounded pride, Liv had spent her life in divesting herself of friends; she had wilfully cast off the support which God has ordained his creatures to need from one another; and it was now her punishment, that Clara and herself would fall the easier victims to their kindred enemy.\n\n Returning to the arched window, she lifted her eyes,--scowling, poor, dim-sighted Liv, in the face of Heaven!--and strove hard to send up a prayer through the dense gray pavement of clouds.  Those mists had gathered, as if to symbolize a great, brooding mass of human trouble, doubt, confusion, and chill indifference, between earth and the better regions.  Her faith was too weak; the prayer too heavy to be thus uplifted.  It fell back, a lump of lead, upon her heart.  It smote her with the wretched conviction that Providence intermeddled not in these petty wrongs of one individual to his fellow, nor had any balm for these little agonies of a solitary soul; but shed its justice, and its mercy, in a broad, sunlike sweep, over half the universe at once.  Its vastness made it nothing.  But Liv did not see that, just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God's care and pity for every separate need.\n\n At last, finding no other pretext for deferring the torture that she was to inflict on Clara,--her reluctance to which was the true cause of her loitering at the window, her search for the artist, and even her abortive prayer,--dreading, also, to hear the stern voice of Judge Drake from below stairs, chiding her delay,--she crept slowly, a pale, grief-stricken figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almost torpid limbs, slowly to her brother's door, and knocked!\n\n There was no reply.\n\n And how should there have been? Her hand, tremulous with the shrinking purpose which directed it, had smitten so feebly against the door that the sound could hardly have gone inward.  She knocked again.  Still no response! Nor was it to be wondered at.  She had struck with the entire force of her heart's vibration, communicating, by some subtile magnetism, her own terror to the summons.  Clara would turn his face to the pillow, and cover his head beneath the bedclothes, like a startled child at midnight.  She knocked a third time, three regular strokes, gentle, but perfectly distinct, and with meaning in them; for, modulate it with what cautious art we will, the hand cannot help playing some tune of what we feel upon the senseless wood.\n\n Clara returned no answer.\n\n \"Clara! Dear brother!\"  said Liv.  \"Shall I come in?\"\n\n A silence.\n\n Two or three times, and more, Liv repeated his name, without result; till, thinking her brother's sleep unwontedly profound, she undid the door, and entering, found the chamber vacant.  How could he have come forth, and when, without her knowledge?  Was it possible that, in spite of the stormy day, and worn out with the irksomeness within doors he had betaken himself to his customary haunt in the garden, and was now shivering under the cheerless shelter of the summer-house? She hastily threw up a window, thrust forth her turbaned head and the half of her gaunt figure, and searched the whole garden through, as completely as her dim vision would allow.  She could see the interior of the summer-house, and its circular seat, kept moist by the droppings of the roof.  It had no occupant.  Clara was not thereabouts; unless, indeed, he had crept for concealment (as, for a moment, Liv fancied might be the case) into a great, wet mass of tangled and broad-leaved shadow, where the squash-vines were clambering tumultuously upon an old wooden framework, set casually aslant against the fence.  This could not be, however; he was not there; for, while Liv was looking, a strange grimalkin stole forth from the very spot, and picked his way across the garden.  Twice he paused to snuff the air, and then anew directed his course towards the parlor window. Whether it was only on account of the stealthy, prying manner common to the race, or that this cat seemed to have more than ordinary mischief in his thoughts, the old gentlewoman, in spite of her much perplexity, felt an impulse to drive the animal away, and accordingly flung down a window stick.  The cat stared up at her, like a detected thief or murderer, and, the next instant, took to flight.  No other living creature was visible in the garden.  Chanticleer and his family had either not left their roost, disheartened by the interminable rain, or had done the next wisest thing, by seasonably returning to it. Liv closed the window.\n\n But where was Clara? Could it be that, aware of the presence of his Evil Destiny, he had crept silently down the staircase, while the Judge and Liv stood talking in the shop, and had softly undone the fastenings of the outer door, and made his escape into the street? With that thought, she seemed to behold his gray, wrinkled, yet childlike aspect, in the old-fashioned garments which he wore about the house; a figure such as one sometimes imagines himself to be, with the world's eye upon him, in a troubled dream.  This figure of her wretched brother would go wandering through the city, attracting all eyes, and everybody's wonder and repugnance, like a ghost, the more to be shuddered at because visible at noontide.  To incur the ridicule of the younger crowd, that knew him not,--the harsher scorn and indignation of a few old men, who might recall his once familiar features! To be the sport of boys, who, when old enough to run about the streets, have no more reverence for what is beautiful and holy, nor pity for what is sad,--no more sense of sacred misery, sanctifying the human shape in which it embodies itself,--than if Satan were the father of them all! Goaded by their taunts, their loud, shrill cries, and cruel laughter,--insulted by the filth of the public ways, which they would fling upon him,--or, as it might well be, distracted by the mere strangeness of his situation, though nobody should afflict him with so much as a thoughtless word,--what wonder if Clara were to break into some wild extravagance which was certain to be interpreted as lunacy? Thus Judge Drake's fiendish scheme would be ready accomplished to his hands!\n\n Then Liv reflected that the town was almost completely water-girdled.  The wharves stretched out towards the centre of the harbor, and, in this inclement weather, were deserted by the ordinary throng of merchants, laborers, and sea-faring men; each wharf a solitude, with the vessels moored stem and stern, along its misty length.  Should her brother's aimless footsteps stray thitherward, and he but bend, one moment, over the deep, black tide, would he not bethink himself that here was the sure refuge within his reach, and that, with a single step, or the slightest overbalance of his body, he might be forever beyond his kinsman's gripe? Oh, the temptation! To make of his ponderous sorrow a security! To sink, with its leaden weight upon him, and never rise again!\n\n The horror of this last conception was too much for Liv.  Even Etienne Drake must help her now She hastened down the staircase, shrieking as she went.\n\n \"Clara is gone!\" she cried.  \"I cannot find my brother.  Help, Etienne Drake! Some harm will happen to him!\"\n\n She threw open the parlor-door.  But, what with the shade of branches across the windows, and the smoke-blackened ceiling, and the dark oak-panelling of the walls, there was hardly so much daylight in the room that Liv's imperfect sight could accurately distinguish the Judge's figure.  She was certain, however, that she saw him sitting in the ancestral arm-chair, near the centre of the floor, with his face somewhat averted, and looking towards a window.  So firm and quiet is the nervous system of such men as Judge Drake, that he had perhaps stirred not more than once since her departure, but, in the hard composure of his temperament, retained the position into which accident had thrown him.\n\n \"I tell you, Etienne,\" cried Liv impatiently, as she turned from the parlor-door to search other rooms, \"my brother is not in his chamber! You must help me seek him!\"\n\n But Judge Drake was not the man to let himself be startled from an easy-chair with haste ill-befitting either the dignity of his character or his broad personal basis, by the alarm of an hysteric woman.  Yet, considering his own interest in the matter, he might have bestirred himself with a little more alacrity.\n\n \"Do you hear me, Etienne Drake?\" screamed Liv, as she again approached the parlor-door, after an ineffectual search elsewhere. \"Clara is gone.\"\n\n At this instant, on the threshold of the parlor, emerging from within, appeared Clara himself! His face was preternaturally pale; so deadly white, indeed, that, through all the glimmering indistinctness of the passageway, Liv could discern his features, as if a light fell on them alone.  Their vivid and wild expression seemed likewise sufficient to illuminate them; it was an expression of scorn and mockery, coinciding with the emotions indicated by his gesture.   As Clara stood on the threshold, partly turning back, he pointed his finger within the parlor, and shook it slowly as though he would have summoned, not Liv alone, but the whole world, to gaze at some object inconceivably ridiculous.   This action, so ill-timed and extravagant,--accompanied, too, with a look that showed more like joy than any other kind of excitement,--compelled Liv to dread that her stern kinsman's ominous visit had driven her poor brother to absolute insanity.  Nor could she otherwise account for the Judge's quiescent mood than by supposing him craftily on the watch, while Clara developed these symptoms of a distracted mind.\n\n \"Be quiet, Clara!\" whispered his sister, raising her hand to impress caution.  \"Oh, for Heaven's sake, be quiet!\"\n\n \"Let him be quiet! What can he do better?\" answered Clara, with a still wilder gesture, pointing into the room which he had just quitted. \"As for us, Liv, we can dance now!--we can sing, laugh, play, do what we will! The weight is gone, Liv!  It is gone off this weary old world, and we may be as light-hearted as little Ruthie herself.\"\n\n And, in accordance with his words, he began to laugh, still pointing his finger at the object, invisible to Liv, within the parlor. She was seized with a sudden intuition of some horrible thing.  She thrust herself past Clara, and disappeared into the room; but almost immediately returned, with a cry choking in her throat.  Gazing at her brother with an affrighted glance of inquiry, she beheld him all in a tremor and a quake, from head to foot, while, amid these commoted elements of passion or alarm, still flickered his gusty mirth.\n\n \"My God! what is to become of us?\" gasped Liv.\n\n \"Come!\" said Clara in a tone of brief decision, most unlike what was usual with him.  \"We stay here too long! Let us leave the old house to our cousin Etienne! He will take good care of it!\"\n\n Liv now noticed that Clara had on a cloak,--a garment of long ago,--in which he had constantly muffled himself during these days of easterly storm.  He beckoned with his hand, and intimated, so far as she could comprehend him, his purpose that they should go together from the house.  There are chaotic, blind, or drunken moments, in the lives of persons who lack real force of character,--moments of test, in which courage would most assert itself,--but where these individuals, if left to themselves, stagger aimlessly along, or follow implicitly whatever guidance may befall them, even if it be a child's.  No matter how preposterous or insane, a purpose is a Godsend to them.   Liv had reached this point.  Unaccustomed to action or responsibility,--full of horror at what she had seen, and afraid to inquire, or almost to imagine, how it had come to pass,--affrighted at the fatality which seemed to pursue her brother,--stupefied by the dim, thick, stifling atmosphere of dread which filled the house as with a death-smell, and obliterated all definiteness of thought,--she yielded without a question, and on the instant, to the will which Clara expressed. For herself, she was like a person in a dream, when the will always sleeps.  Clara, ordinarily so destitute of this faculty, had found it in the tension of the crisis.\n\n \"Why do you delay so?\" cried he sharply.  \"Put on your cloak and hood, or whatever it pleases you to wear! No matter what; you cannot look beautiful nor brilliant, my poor Liv! Take your purse, with money in it, and come along!\"\n\n Liv obeyed these instructions, as if nothing else were to be done or thought of.  She began to wonder, it is true, why she did not wake up, and at what still more intolerable pitch of dizzy trouble her spirit would struggle out of the maze, and make her conscious that nothing of all this had actually happened.  Of course it was not real; no such black, easterly day as this had yet begun to be; Judge Drake had not talked with, her.  Clara had not laughed, pointed, beckoned her away with him; but she had merely been afflicted--as lonely sleepers often are--with a great deal of unreasonable misery, in a morning dream!\n\n \"Now--now--I shall certainly awake!\" thought Liv, as she went to and fro, making her little preparations.  \"I can bear it no longer I must wake up now!\"\n\n But it came not, that awakening moment! It came not, even when, just before they left the house, Clara stole to the parlor-door, and made a parting obeisance to the sole occupant of the room.\n\n \"What an absurd figure the old fellow cuts now!\" whispered he to Liv.  \"Just when he fancied he had me completely under his thumb! Come, come; make haste! or he will start up, like Giant Despair in pursuit of Christian and Hopeful, and catch us yet!\"\n\n As they passed into the street, Clara directed Liv's attention to something on one of the posts of the front door.  It was merely the initials of his own name, which, with somewhat of his characteristic grace about the forms of the letters, he had cut there when a boy.  The brother and sister departed, and left Judge Drake sitting in the old home of his forefathers, all by himself; so heavy and lumpish that we can liken him to nothing better than a defunct nightmare, which had perished in the midst of its wickedness, and left its flabby corpse on the breast of the tormented one, to be gotten rid of as it might!\n\n\n\n\n\n SUMMER as it was, the east wind set poor Liv's few remaining teeth chattering in her head, as she and Clara faced it, on their way up Drake Street, and towards the centre of the town.  Not merely was it the shiver which this pitiless blast brought to her frame (although her feet and hands, especially, had never seemed so death-a-cold as now), but there was a moral sensation, mingling itself with the physical chill, and causing her to shake more in spirit than in body.  The world's broad, bleak atmosphere was all so comfortless! Such, indeed, is the impression which it makes on every new adventurer, even if he plunge into it while the warmest tide of life is bubbling through his veins.  What, then, must it have been to Liv and Clara,--so time-stricken as they were, yet so like children in their inexperience,--as they left the doorstep, and passed from beneath the wide shelter of the Drake Elm! They were wandering all abroad, on precisely such a pilgrimage as a child often meditates, to the world's end, with perhaps a sixpence and a biscuit in his pocket.  In Liv's mind, there was the wretched consciousness of being adrift. She had lost the faculty of self-guidance; but, in view of the difficulties around her, felt it hardly worth an effort to regain it, and was, moreover, incapable of making one.\n\n As they proceeded on their strange expedition, she now and then cast a look sidelong at Clara, and could not but observe that he was possessed and swayed by a powerful excitement.  It was this, indeed, that gave him the control which he had at once, and so irresistibly, established over his movements.  It not a little resembled the exhilaration of wine.  Or, it might more fancifully be compared to a joyous piece of music, played with wild vivacity, but upon a disordered instrument.  As the cracked jarring note might always be heard, and as it jarred loudest amidst the loftiest exultation of the melody, so was there a continual quake through Clara, causing him most to quiver while he wore a triumphant smile, and seemed almost under a necessity to skip in his gait.\n\n They met few people abroad, even on passing from the retired neighborhood of the the children's shop into what was ordinarily the more thronged and busier portion of the town.  Glistening sidewalks, with little pools of rain, here and there, along their unequal surface; umbrellas displayed ostentatiously in the shop-windows, as if the life of trade had concentrated itself in that one article; wet leaves of the horse-chestnut or elm-trees, torn off untimely by the blast and scattered along the public way; an unsightly, accumulation of mud in the middle of the street, which perversely grew the more unclean for its long and laborious washing,--these were the more definable points of a very sombre picture.  In the way of movement and human life, there was the hasty rattle of a cab or coach, its driver protected by a waterproof cap over his head and shoulders; the forlorn figure of an old man, who seemed to have crept out of some subterranean sewer, and was stooping along the kennel, and poking the wet rubbish with a stick, in quest of rusty nails; a merchant or two, at the door of the post-office, together with an editor and a miscellaneous politician, awaiting a dilatory mail; a few visages of retired sea-captains at the window of an insurance office, looking out vacantly at the vacant street, blaspheming at the weather, and fretting at the dearth as well of public news as local gossip.  What a treasure-trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed the secret which Liv and Clara were carrying along with them! But their two figures attracted hardly so much notice as that of a young girl, who passed at the same instant, and happened to raise her skirt a trifle too high above her ankles.  Had it been a sunny and cheerful day, they could hardly have gone through the streets without making themselves obnoxious to remark.  Now, probably, they were felt to be in keeping with the dismal and bitter weather, and therefore did not stand out in strong relief, as if the sun were shining on them, but melted into the gray gloom and were forgotten as soon as gone.\n\n Poor Liv! Could she have understood this fact, it would have brought her some little comfort; for, to all her other troubles,--strange to say!--there was added the womanish and old-maiden-like misery arising from a sense of unseemliness in her attire.  Thus, she was fain to shrink deeper into herself, as it were, as if in the hope of making people suppose that here was only a cloak and hood, threadbare and woefully faded, taking an airing in the midst of the storm, without any wearer!\n\n As they went on, the feeling of indistinctness and unreality kept dimly hovering round about her, and so diffusing itself into her system that one of her hands was hardly palpable to the touch of the other.  Any certainty would have been preferable to this.  She whispered to herself, again and again, \"Am I awake?--Am I awake?\" and sometimes exposed her face to the chill spatter of the wind, for the sake of its rude assurance that she was.  Whether it was Clara's purpose, or only chance, had led them thither, they now found themselves passing beneath the arched entrance of a large structure of gray stone. Within, there was a spacious breadth, and an airy height from floor to roof, now partially filled with smoke and steam, which eddied voluminously upward and formed a mimic cloud-region over their heads. A train of cars was just ready for a start; the locomotive was fretting and fuming, like a steed impatient for a headlong rush; and the bell rang out its hasty peal, so well expressing the brief summons which life vouchsafes to us in its hurried career.  Without question or delay,--with the irresistible decision, if not rather to be called recklessness, which had so strangely taken possession of him, and through him of Liv,--Clara impelled her towards the cars, and assisted her to enter.  The signal was given; the engine puffed forth its short, quick breaths; the train began its movement; and, along with a hundred other passengers, these two unwonted travellers sped onward like the wind.\n\n At last, therefore, and after so long estrangement from everything that the world acted or enjoyed, they had been drawn into the great current of human life, and were swept away with it, as by the suction of fate itself.\n\n Still haunted with the idea that not one of the past incidents, inclusive of Judge Drake's visit, could be real, the recluse of the Seven Chilren murmured in her brother's ear,--\n\n \"Clara! Clara! Is not this a dream?\"\n\n \"A dream, Liv!\" repeated he, almost laughing in her face.  \"On the contrary, I have never been awake before!\"\n\n Meanwhile, looking from the window, they could see the world racing past them.  At one moment, they were rattling through a solitude; the next, a village had grown up around them; a few breaths more, and it had vanished, as if swallowed by an earthquake.  The spires of meeting-houses seemed set adrift from their foundations; the broad-based hills glided away.  Everything was unfixed from its age-long rest, and moving at whirlwind speed in a direction opposite to their own.\n\n Within the car there was the usual interior life of the railroad, offering little to the observation of other passengers, but full of novelty for this pair of strangely enfranchised prisoners.  It was novelty enough, indeed, that there were fifty human beings in close relation with them, under one long and narrow roof, and drawn onward by the same mighty influence that had taken their two selves into its grasp.  It seemed marvellous how all these people could remain so quietly in their seats, while so much noisy strength was at work in their behalf.  Some, with tickets in their hats (long travellers these, before whom lay a hundred miles of railroad), had plunged into the English scenery and adventures of pamphlet novels, and were keeping company with dukes and earls.  Others, whose briefer span forbade their devoting themselves to studies so abstruse, beguiled the little tedium of the way with penny-papers.  A party of girls, and one young man, on opposite sides of the car, found huge amusement in a game of ball. They tossed it to and fro, with peals of laughter that might be measured by mile-lengths; for, faster than the nimble ball could fly, the merry players fled unconsciously along, leaving the trail of their mirth afar behind, and ending their game under another sky than had witnessed its commencement.  Boys, with apples, cakes, candy, and rolls of variously tinctured lozenges,--merchandise that reminded Liv of her deserted shop,--appeared at each momentary stopping-place, doing up their business in a hurry, or breaking it short off, lest the market should ravish them away with it.  New people continually entered.  Old acquaintances--for such they soon grew to be, in this rapid current of affairs--continually departed.  Here and there, amid the rumble and the tumult, sat one asleep.  Sleep; sport; business; graver or lighter study; and the common and inevitable movement onward! It was life itself!\n\n Clara's naturally poignant sympathies were all aroused.  He caught the color of what was passing about him, and threw it back more vividly than he received it, but mixed, nevertheless, with a lurid and portentous hue.  Liv, on the other hand, felt herself more apart from human kind than even in the seclusion which she had just quitted.\n\n \"You are not happy, Liv!\" said Clara apart, in a tone of approach.  \"You are thinking of that dismal old house, and of Cousin Etienne\"--here came the quake through him,--\"and of Cousin Etienne sitting there, all by himself! Take my advice,--follow my example,--and let such things slip aside.  Here we are, in the world, Liv!--in the midst of life!--in the throng of our fellow beings! Let you and I be happy! As happy as that youth and those pretty girls, at their game of ball!\"\n\n \"Happy--\" thought Liv, bitterly conscious, at the word, of her dull and heavy heart, with the frozen pain in it,--\"happy.  He is mad already; and, if I could once feel myself broad awake, I should go mad too!\"\n\n If a fixed idea be madness, she was perhaps not remote from it.  Fast and far as they had rattled and clattered along the iron track, they might just as well, as regarded Liv's mental images, have been passing up and down Drake Street.  With miles and miles of varied scenery between, there was no scene for her save the seven old gable-peaks, with their moss, and the tuft of weeds in one of the angles, and the shop-window, and a customer shaking the door, and compelling the little bell to jingle fiercely, but without disturbing Judge Drake! This one old house was everywhere! It transported its great, lumbering bulk with more than railroad speed, and set itself phlegmatically down on whatever spot she glanced at.  The quality of Liv's mind was too unmalleable to take new impressions so readily as Clara's.  He had a winged nature; she was rather of the vegetable kind, and could hardly be kept long alive, if drawn up by the roots. Thus it happened that the relation heretofore existing between her brother and herself was changed.  At home, she was his guardian; here, Clara had become hers, and seemed to comprehend whatever belonged to their new position with a singular rapidity of intelligence.  He had been startled into manhood and intellectual vigor; or, at least, into a condition that resembled them, though it might be both diseased and transitory.\n\n The conductor now applied for their tickets; and Clara, who had made himself the purse-bearer, put a bank-note into his hand, as he had observed others do.\n\n \"For the lady and yourself?\" asked the conductor.  \"And how far?\"\n\n \"As far as that will carry us,\" said Clara.  \"It is no great matter. We are riding for pleasure merely.\"\n\n \"You choose a strange day for it, sir!\" remarked a gimlet-eyed old gentleman on the other side of the car, looking at Clara and his companion, as if curious to make them out.  \"The best chance of pleasure, in an easterly rain, I take it, is in a man's own house, with a nice little fire in the chimney.\"\n\n \"I cannot precisely agree with you,\" said Clara, courteously bowing to the old gentleman, and at once taking up the clew of conversation which the latter had proffered.  \"It had just occurred to me, on the contrary, that this admirable invention of the railroad--with the vast and inevitable improvements to be looked for, both as to speed and convenience--is destined to do away with those stale ideas of home and fireside, and substitute something better.\"\n\n \"In the name of common-sense,\" asked the old gentleman rather testily, \"what can be better for a man than his own parlor and chimney-corner?\"\n\n \"These things have not the merit which many good people attribute to them,\" replied Clara.  \"They may be said, in few and pithy words, to have ill served a poor purpose.  My impression is, that our wonderfully increased and still increasing facilities of locomotion are destined to bring us around again to the nomadic state.  You are aware, my dear sir,--you must have observed it in your own experience,--that all human progress is in a circle; or, to use a more accurate and beautiful figure, in an ascending spiral curve.  While we fancy ourselves going straight forward, and attaining, at every step, an entirely new position of affairs, we do actually return to something long ago tried and abandoned, but which we now find etherealized, refined, and perfected to its ideal.  The past is but a coarse and sensual prophecy of the present and the future.  To apply this truth to the topic now under discussion.  In the early epochs of our race, men dwelt in temporary huts, of bowers of branches, as easily constructed as a bird's-nest, and which they built,--if it should be called building, when such sweet homes of a summer solstice rather grew than were made with hands,--which Nature, we will say, assisted them to rear where fruit abounded, where fish and game were plentiful, or, most especially, where the sense of beauty was to be gratified by a lovelier shade than elsewhere, and a more exquisite arrangement of lake, wood, and hill.  This life possessed a charm which, ever since man quitted it, has vanished from existence.  And it typified something better than itself.  It had its drawbacks; such as hunger and thirst, inclement weather, hot sunshine, and weary and foot-blistering marches over barren and ugly tracts, that lay between the sites desirable for their fertility and beauty.  But in our ascending spiral, we escape all this. These railroads--could but the whistle be made musical, and the rumble and the jar got rid of--are positively the greatest blessing that the ages have wrought out for us.  They give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere,--in a better sense, wherever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home?\"\n\n Clara's countenance glowed, as he divulged this theory; a youthful character shone out from within, converting the wrinkles and pallid duskiness of age into an almost transparent mask.  The merry girls let their ball drop upon the floor, and gazed at him.  They said to themselves, perhaps, that, before his hair was gray and the crow's-feet tracked his temples, this now decaying man must have stamped the impress of his features on many a woman's heart.  But, alas! no woman's eye had seen his face while it was beautiful.\n\n \"I should scarcely call it an improved state of things,\" observed Clara's new acquaintance, \"to live everywhere and nowhere!\"\n\n \"Would you not?\" exclaimed Clara, with singular energy.  \"It is as clear to me as sunshine,--were there any in the sky,--that the greatest possible stumbling-blocks in the path of human happiness and improvement are these heaps of bricks and stones, consolidated with mortar, or hewn timber, fastened together with spike-nails, which men painfully contrive for their own torment, and call them house and home! The soul needs air; a wide sweep and frequent change of it.  Morbid influences, in a thousand-fold variety, gather about hearths, and pollute the life of households.  There is no such unwholesome atmosphere as that of an old home, rendered poisonous by one's defunct forefathers and relatives.  I speak of what I know.  There is a certain house within my familiar recollection,--one of those peaked-gable (there are seven of them), projecting-storied edifices, such as you occasionally see in our older towns,--a rusty, crazy, creaky, dry-rotted, dingy, dark, and miserable old dungeon, with an arched window over the porch, and a little shop-door on one side, and a great, melancholy elm before it!  Now, sir, whenever my thoughts recur to this seven-gabled mansion (the fact is so very curious that I must needs mention it), immediately I have a vision or image of an elderly man, of remarkably stern countenance, sitting in an oaken elbow-chair, dead, stone-dead, with an ugly flow of blood upon his shirt-bosom! Dead, but with open eyes! He taints the whole house, as I remember it.  I could never flourish there, nor be happy, nor do nor enjoy what God meant me to do and enjoy.\"\n\n His face darkened, and seemed to contract, and shrivel itself up, and wither into age.\n\n \"Never, sir!\" he repeated.  \"I could never draw cheerful breath there!\"\n\n \"I should think not,\" said the old gentleman, eyeing Clara earnestly, and rather apprehensively.  \"I should conceive not, sir, with that notion in your head!\"\n\n \"Surely not,\" continued Clara; \"and it were a relief to me if that house could be torn down, or burnt up, and so the earth be rid of it, and grass be sown abundantly over its foundation.  Not that I should ever visit its site again! for, sir, the farther I get away from it, the more does the joy, the lightsome freshness, the heart-leap, the intellectual dance, the youth, in short,--yes, my youth, my youth!--the more does it come back to me.  No longer ago than this morning, I was old.  I remember looking in the glass, and wondering at my own gray hair, and the wrinkles, many and deep, right across my brow, and the furrows down my cheeks, and the prodigious trampling of crow's-feet about my temples! It was too soon! I could not bear it! Age had no right to come! I had not lived!  But now do I look old? If so, my aspect belies me strangely; for--a great weight being off my mind--I feel in the very heyday of my youth, with the world and my best days before me!\"\n\n \"I trust you may find it so,\" said the old gentleman, who seemed rather embarrassed, and desirous of avoiding the observation which Clara's wild talk drew on them both.  \"You have my best wishes for it.\"\n\n \"For Heaven's sake, dear Clara, be quiet!\" whispered his sister. \"They think you mad.\"\n\n \"Be quiet yourself, Liv!\" returned her brother.  \"No matter what they think! I am not mad.  For the first time in thirty years my thoughts gush up and find words ready for them.  I must talk, and I will!\"\n\n He turned again towards the old gentleman, and renewed the conversation.\n\n \"Yes, my dear sir,\" said he, \"it is my firm belief and hope that these terms of roof and hearth-stone, which have so long been held to embody something sacred, are soon to pass out of men's daily use, and be forgotten.  Just imagine, for a moment, how much of human evil will crumble away, with this one change! What we call real estate--the solid ground to build a house on--is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.  A man will commit almost any wrong,--he will heap up an immense pile of wickedness, as hard as granite, and which will weigh as heavily upon his soul, to eternal ages,--only to build a great, gloomy, dark-chambered mansion, for himself to die in, and for his posterity to be miserable in.  He lays his own dead corpse beneath the underpinning, as one may say, and hangs his frowning picture on the wall, and, after thus converting himself into an evil destiny, expects his remotest great-grandchildren to be happy there.  I do not speak wildly.  I have just such a house in my mind's eye!\"\n\n \"Then, sir,\" said the old gentleman, getting anxious to drop the subject, \"you are not to blame for leaving it.\"\n\n \"Within the lifetime of the child already born,\" Clara went on, \"all this will be done away.  The world is growing too ethereal and spiritual to bear these enormities a great while longer.  To me, though, for a considerable period of time, I have lived chiefly in retirement, and know less of such things than most men,--even to me, the harbingers of a better era are unmistakable.  Mesmerism, now! Will that effect nothing, think you, towards purging away the grossness out of human life?\"\n\n \"All a humbug!\" growled the old gentleman.\n\n \"These rapping spirits, that little Ruthie told us of, the other day,\" said Clara,--\"what are these but the messengers of the spiritual world, knocking at the door of substance? And it shall be flung wide open!\"\n\n \"A humbug, again!\" cried the old gentleman, growing more and more testy at these glimpses of Clara's metaphysics.  \"I should like to rap with a good stick on the empty pates of the dolts who circulate such nonsense!\"\n\n \"Then there is electricity,--the demon, the angel, the mighty physical power, the all-pervading intelligence!\" exclaimed Clara.  \"Is that a humbug, too?  Is it a fact--or have I dreamt it--that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence!  Or, shall we say, it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we deemed it!\"\n\n \"If you mean the telegraph,\" said the old gentleman, glancing his eye toward its wire, alongside the rail-track, \"it is an excellent thing,--that is, of course, if the speculators in cotton and politics don't get possession of it.  A great thing, indeed, sir, particularly as regards the detection of bank-robbers and murderers.\"\n\n \"I don't quite like it, in that point of view,\" replied Clara.  \"A bank-robber, and what you call a murderer, likewise, has his rights, which men of enlightened humanity and conscience should regard in so much the more liberal spirit, because the bulk of society is prone to controvert their existence.  An almost spiritual medium, like the electric telegraph, should be consecrated to high, deep, joyful, and holy missions.  Lovers, day by, day--hour by hour, if so often moved to do it,--might send their heart-throbs from Maine to Florida, with some such words as these 'I love you forever!'--'My heart runs over with love!'--'I love you more than I can!' and, again, at the next message 'I have lived an hour longer, and love you twice as much!' Or, when a good man has departed, his distant friend should be conscious of an electric thrill, as from the world of happy spirits, telling him 'Your dear friend is in bliss!' Or, to an absent husband, should come tidings thus 'An immortal being, of whom you are the father, has this moment come from God!' and immediately its little voice would seem to have reached so far, and to be echoing in his heart.  But for these poor rogues, the bank-robbers,--who, after all, are about as honest as nine people in ten, except that they disregard certain formalities, and prefer to transact business at midnight rather than 'Change-hours,--and for these murderers, as you phrase it, who are often excusable in the motives of their deed, and deserve to be ranked among public benefactors, if we consider only its result,--for unfortunate individuals like these, I really cannot applaud the enlistment of an immaterial and miraculous power in the universal world-hunt at their heels!\"\n\n \"You can't, hey?\" cried the old gentleman, with a hard look.\n\n \"Positively, no!\" answered Clara.  \"It puts them too miserably at disadvantage.  For example, sir, in a dark, low, cross-beamed, panelled room of an old house, let us suppose a dead man, sitting in an arm-chair, with a blood-stain on his shirt-bosom,--and let us add to our hypothesis another man, issuing from the house, which he feels to be over-filled with the dead man's presence,--and let us lastly imagine him fleeing, Heaven knows whither, at the speed of a hurricane, by railroad! Now, sir, if the fugitive alight in some distant town, and find all the people babbling about that self-same dead man, whom he has fled so far to avoid the sight and thought of, will you not allow that his natural rights have been infringed? He has been deprived of his city of refuge, and, in my humble opinion, has suffered infinite wrong!\"\n\n \"You are a strange man; Sir!\" said the old gentleman, bringing his gimlet-eye to a point on Clara, as if determined to bore right into him.  \"I can't see through you!\"\n\n \"No, I'll be bound you can't!\" cried Clara, laughing.  \"And yet, my dear sir, I am as transparent as the water of Bowen's well!  But come, Liv! We have flown far enough for once.  Let us alight, as the birds do, and perch ourselves on the nearest twig, and consult wither we shall fly next!\"\n\n Just then, as it happened, the train reached a solitary way-station. Taking advantage of the brief pause, Clara left the car, and drew Liv along with him.  A moment afterwards, the train--with all the life of its interior, amid which Clara had made himself so conspicuous an object--was gliding away in the distance, and rapidly lessening to a point which, in another moment, vanished.  The world had fled away from these two wanderers.  They gazed drearily about them. At a little distance stood a wooden church, black with age, and in a dismal state of ruin and decay, with broken windows, a great rift through the main body of the edifice, and a rafter dangling from the top of the square tower.  Farther off was a farm-house, in the old style, as venerably black as the church, with a roof sloping downward from the three-story peak, to within a man's height of the ground.  It seemed uninhabited.  There were the relics of a wood-pile, indeed, near the door, but with grass sprouting up among the chips and scattered logs.  The small rain-drops came down aslant; the wind was not turbulent, but sullen, and full of chilly moisture.\n\n Clara shivered from head to foot.  The wild effervescence of his mood--which had so readily supplied thoughts, fantasies, and a strange aptitude of words, and impelled him to talk from the mere necessity of giving vent to this bubbling-up gush of ideas had entirely subsided.  A powerful excitement had given him energy and vivacity.  Its operation over, he forthwith began to sink.\n\n \"You must take the lead now, Liv!\" murmured he, with a torpid and reluctant utterance.  \"Do with me as you will!\" She knelt down upon the platform where they were standing and lifted her clasped hands to the sky.  The dull, gray weight of clouds made it invisible; but it was no hour for disbelief,--no juncture this to question that there was a sky above, and an Almighty Father looking from it!\n\n \"O God!\"--ejaculated poor, gaunt Liv,--then paused a moment, to consider what her prayer should be,--\"O God,--our Father,--are we not thy children? Have mercy on us!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n JUDGE DRAKE, while his two relatives have fled away with such ill-considered haste, still sits in the old parlor, keeping house, as the familiar phrase is, in the absence of its ordinary occupants.  To him, and to the venerable the children's shop, does our story now betake itself, like an owl, bewildered in the daylight, and hastening back to his hollow tree.\n\n The Judge has not shifted his position for a long while now.  He has not stirred hand or foot, nor withdrawn his eyes so much as a hair's-breadth from their fixed gaze towards the corner of the room, since the footsteps of Liv and Clara creaked along the passage, and the outer door was closed cautiously behind their exit.  He holds his watch in his left hand, but clutched in such a manner that you cannot see the dial-plate.  How profound a fit of meditation! Or, supposing him asleep, how infantile a quietude of conscience, and what wholesome order in the gastric region, are betokened by slumber so entirely undisturbed with starts, cramp, twitches, muttered dreamtalk, trumpet-blasts through the nasal organ, or any slightest irregularity of breath!  You must hold your own breath, to satisfy yourself whether he breathes at all.  It is quite inaudible.  You hear the ticking of his watch; his breath you do not hear.  A most refreshing slumber, doubtless!  And yet, the Judge cannot be asleep.  His eyes are open! A veteran politician, such as he, would never fall asleep with wide-open eyes, lest some enemy or mischief-maker, taking him thus at unawares, should peep through these windows into his consciousness, and make strange discoveries among the reminiscences, projects, hopes, apprehensions, weaknesses, and strong points, which he has heretofore shared with nobody.  A cautious man is proverbially said to sleep with one eye open.  That may be wisdom.  But not with both; for this were heedlessness! No, no! Judge Drake cannot be asleep.\n\n It is odd, however, that a gentleman so burdened with engagements,--and noted, too, for punctuality,--should linger thus in an old lonely mansion, which he has never seemed very fond of visiting.  The oaken chair, to be sure, may tempt him with its roominess.  It is, indeed, a spacious, and, allowing for the rude age that fashioned it, a moderately easy seat, with capacity enough, at all events, and offering no restraint to the Judge's breadth of beam.  A bigger man might find ample accommodation in it.  His ancestor, now pictured upon the wall, with all his English beef about him, used hardly to present a front extending from elbow to elbow of this chair, or a base that would cover its whole cushion.  But there are better chairs than this,--mahogany, black walnut, rosewood, spring-seated and damask-cushioned, with varied slopes, and innumerable artifices to make them easy, and obviate the irksomeness of too tame an ease,--a score of such might be at Judge Drake's service.  Yes! in a score of drawing-rooms he would be more than welcome.  Mamma would advance to meet him, with outstretched hand; the virgin daughter, elderly as he has now got to be,--an old widower, as he smilingly describes himself,--would shake up the cushion for the Judge, and do her pretty utmost to make him comfortable.  For the Judge is a prosperous man.  He cherishes his schemes, moreover, like other people, and reasonably brighter than most others; or did so, at least, as he lay abed this morning, in an agreeable half-drowse, planning the business of the day, and speculating on the probabilities of the next fifteen years.  With his firm health, and the little inroad that age has made upon him, fifteen years or twenty--yes, or perhaps five-and-twenty!--are no more than he may fairly call his own. Five-and-twenty years for the enjoyment of his real estate in town and country, his railroad, bank, and insurance shares, his United States stock,--his wealth, in short, however invested, now in possession, or soon to be acquired; together with the public honors that have fallen upon him, and the weightier ones that are yet to fall! It is good! It is excellent! It is enough!\n\n Still lingering in the old chair! If the Judge has a little time to throw away, why does not he visit the insurance office, as is his frequent custom, and sit awhile in one of their leathern-cushioned arm-chairs, listening to the gossip of the day, and dropping some deeply designed chance-word, which will be certain to become the gossip of to-morrow.  And have not the bank directors a meeting at which it was the Judge's purpose to be present, and his office to preside? Indeed they have; and the hour is noted on a card, which is, or ought to be, in Judge Drake's right vest-pocket.  Let him go thither, and loll at ease upon his moneybags! He has lounged long enough in the old chair!\n\n This was to have been such a busy day.  In the first place, the interview with Clara.  Half an hour, by the Judge's reckoning, was to suffice for that; it would probably be less, but--taking into consideration that Liv was first to be dealt with, and that these women are apt to make many words where a few would do much better--it might be safest to allow half an hour.  Half an hour? Why, Judge, it is already two hours, by your own undeviatingly accurate chronometer. Glance your eye down at it and see! Ah; he will not give himself the trouble either to bend his head, or elevate his hand, so as to bring the faithful time-keeper within his range of vision! Time, all at once, appears to have become a matter of no moment with the Judge!\n\n And has he forgotten all the other items of his memoranda?  Clara's affair arranged, he was to meet a State Street broker, who has undertaken to procure a heavy percentage, and the best of paper, for a few loose thousands which the Judge happens to have by him, uninvested. The wrinkled note-shaver will have taken his railroad trip in vain. Half an hour later, in the street next to this, there was to be an auction of real estate, including a portion of the old Drake property, originally belonging to Bowen's garden ground.  It has been alienated from the Drakes these four-score years; but the Judge had kept it in his eye, and had set his heart on reannexing it to the small demesne still left around the Seven Chilren; and now, during this odd fit of oblivion, the fatal hammer must have fallen, and transferred our ancient patrimony to some alien possessor.  Possibly, indeed, the sale may have been postponed till fairer weather.  If so, will the Judge make it convenient to be present, and favor the auctioneer with his bid, On the proximate occasion?\n\n The next affair was to buy a horse for his own driving.  The one heretofore his favorite stumbled, this very morning, on the road to town, and must be at once discarded.  Judge Drake's neck is too precious to be risked on such a contingency as a stumbling steed. Should all the above business be seasonably got through with, he might attend the meeting of a charitable society; the very name of which, however, in the multiplicity of his benevolence, is quite forgotten; so that this engagement may pass unfulfilled, and no great harm done.  And if he have time, amid the press of more urgent matters, he must take measures for the renewal of Mrs. Drake's tombstone, which, the sexton tells him, has fallen on its marble face, and is cracked quite in twain.  She was a praiseworthy woman enough, thinks the Judge, in spite of her nervousness, and the tears that she was so oozy with, and her foolish behavior about the coffee; and as she took her departure so seasonably, he will not grudge the second tombstone.  It is better, at least, than if she had never needed any! The next item on his list was to give orders for some fruit-trees, of a rare variety, to be deliverable at his country-seat in the ensuing autumn.  Yes, buy them, by all means; and may the peaches be luscious in your mouth, Judge Drake! After this comes something more important.  A committee of his political party has besought him for a hundred or two of dollars, in addition to his previous disbursements, towards carrying on the fall campaign.  The Judge is a patriot; the fate of the country is staked on the November election; and besides, as will be shadowed forth in another paragraph, he has no trifling stake of his own in the same great game.  He will do what the committee asks; nay, he will be liberal beyond their expectations; they shall have a check for five hundred dollars, and more anon, if it be needed.  What next? A decayed widow, whose husband was Judge Drake's early friend, has laid her case of destitution before him, in a very moving letter.  She and her fair daughter have scarcely bread to eat.  He partly intends to call on her to-day,--perhaps so--perhaps not,--accordingly as he may happen to have leisure, and a small bank-note.\n\n Another business, which, however, he puts no great weight on (it is well, you know, to be heedful, but not over-anxious, as respects one's personal health),--another business, then, was to consult his family physician.  About what, for Heaven's sake? Why, it is rather difficult to describe the symptoms.  A mere dimness of sight and dizziness of brain, was it?--or disagreeable choking, or stifling, or gurgling, or bubbling, in the region of the thorax, as the anatomists say?--or was it a pretty severe throbbing and kicking of the heart, rather creditable to him than otherwise, as showing that the organ had not been left out of the Judge's physical contrivance?  No matter what it was.  The doctor probably would smile at the statement of such trifles to his professional ear; the Judge would smile in his turn; and meeting one another's eyes, they would enjoy a hearty laugh together! But a fig for medical advice.  The Judge will never need it.\n\n Pray, pray, Judge Drake, look at your watch, Now! What--not a glance! It is within ten minutes of the dinner hour! It surely cannot have slipped your memory that the dinner of to-day is to be the most important, in its consequences, of all the dinners you ever ate.  Yes, precisely the most important; although, in the course of your somewhat eminent career, you have been placed high towards the head of the table, at splendid banquets, and have poured out your festive eloquence to ears yet echoing with Webster's mighty organ-tones.  No public dinner this, however.  It is merely a gathering of some dozen or so of friends from several districts of the State; men of distinguished character and influence, assembling, almost casually, at the house of a common friend, likewise distinguished, who will make them welcome to a little better than his ordinary fare.  Nothing in the way of French cookery, but an excellent dinner, nevertheless.  Real turtle, we understand, and salmon, tautog, canvas-backs, pig, English mutton, good roast beef, or dainties of that serious kind, fit for substantial country gentlemen, as these honorable persons mostly are.  The delicacies of the season, in short, and flavored by a brand of old Madeira which has been the pride of many seasons.  It is the Juno brand; a glorious wine, fragrant, and full of gentle might; a bottled-up happiness, put by for use; a golden liquid, worth more than liquid gold; so rare and admirable, that veteran wine-bibbers count it among their epochs to have tasted it!  It drives away the heart-ache, and substitutes no head-ache!  Could the Judge but quaff a glass, it might enable him to shake off the unaccountable lethargy which (for the ten intervening minutes, and five to boot, are already past) has made him such a laggard at this momentous dinner.  It would all but revive a dead man! Would you like to sip it now, Judge Drake?\n\n Alas, this dinner.  Have you really forgotten its true object?  Then let us whisper it, that you may start at once out of the oaken chair, which really seems to be enchanted, like the one in Comus, or that in which Moll Pitcher imprisoned your own grandfather.  But ambition is a talisman more powerful than witchcraft.  Start up, then, and, hurrying through the streets, burst in upon the company, that they may begin before the fish is spoiled! They wait for you; and it is little for your interest that they should wait.  These gentlemen--need you be told it?--have assembled, not without purpose, from every quarter of the State.  They are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled to adjust those preliminary measures which steal from the people, without its knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers.  The popular voice, at the next gubernatorial election, though loud as thunder, will be really but an echo of what these gentlemen shall speak, under their breath, at your friend's festive board.  They meet to decide upon their candidate.  This little knot of subtle schemers will control the convention, and, through it, dictate to the party. And what worthier candidate,--more wise and learned, more noted for philanthropic liberality, truer to safe principles, tried oftener by public trusts, more spotless in private character, with a larger stake in the common welfare, and deeper grounded, by hereditary descent, in the faith and practice of the Puritans,--what man can be presented for the suffrage of the people, so eminently combining all these claims to the chief-rulership as Judge Drake here before us?\n\n Make haste, then! Do your part! The meed for which you have toiled, and fought, and climbed, and crept, is ready for your grasp! Be present at this dinner!--drink a glass or two of that noble wine!--make your pledges in as low a whisper as you will!--and you rise up from table virtually governor of the glorious old State! Governor Drake of Massachusetts!\n\n And is there no potent and exhilarating cordial in a certainty like this? It has been the grand purpose of half your lifetime to obtain it. Now, when there needs little more than to signify your acceptance, why do you sit so lumpishly in your great-great-grandfather's oaken chair, as if preferring it to the gubernatorial one? We have all heard of King Log; but, in these jostling times, one of that royal kindred will hardly win the race for an elective chief-magistracy.\n\n Well; it is absolutely too late for dinner! Turtle, salmon, tautog, woodcock, boiled turkey, South-Down mutton, pig, roast-beef, have vanished, or exist only in fragments, with lukewarm potatoes, and gravies crusted over with cold fat.  The Judge, had he done nothing else, would have achieved wonders with his knife and fork.  It was he, you know, of whom it used to be said, in reference to his ogre-like appetite, that his Creator made him a great animal, but that the dinner-hour made him a great beast.  Persons of his large sensual endowments must claim indulgence, at their feeding-time.  But, for once, the Judge is entirely too late for dinner! Too late, we fear, even to join the party at their wine! The guests are warm and merry; they have given up the Judge; and, concluding that the Free-Soilers have him, they will fix upon another candidate.  Were our friend now to stalk in among them, with that wide-open stare, at once wild and stolid, his ungenial presence would be apt to change their cheer. Neither would it be seemly in Judge Drake, generally so scrupulous in his attire, to show himself at a dinner-table with that crimson stain upon his shirt-bosom.  By the bye, how came it there? It is an ugly sight, at any rate; and the wisest way for the Judge is to button his coat closely over his breast, and, taking his horse and chaise from the livery stable, to make all speed to his own house.  There, after a glass of brandy and water, and a mutton-chop, a beefsteak, a broiled fowl, or some such hasty little dinner and supper all in one, he had better spend the evening by the fireside.  He must toast his slippers a long while, in order to get rid of the chilliness which the air of this vile old house has sent curdling through his veins.\n\n Up, therefore, Judge Drake, up! You have lost a day.  But to-morrow will be here anon.  Will you rise, betimes, and make the most of it? To-morrow.  To-morrow! To-morrow.  We, that are alive, may rise betimes to-morrow.  As for him that has died to-day, his morrow will be the resurrection morn.\n\n Meanwhile the twilight is glooming upward out of the corners of the room.  The shadows of the tall furniture grow deeper, and at first become more definite; then, spreading wider, they lose their distinctness of outline in the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it were, that creeps slowly over the various objects, and the one human figure sitting in the midst of them.  The gloom has not entered from without; it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time, will possess itself of everything.  The Judge's face, indeed, rigid and singularly white, refuses to melt into this universal solvent.  Fainter and fainter grows the light.  It is as if another double-handful of darkness had been scattered through the air.  Now it is no longer gray, but sable.  There is still a faint appearance at the window; neither a glow, nor a gleam, nor a glimmer,--any phrase of light would express something far brighter than this doubtful perception, or sense, rather, that there is a window there.  Has it yet vanished?  No!--yes!--not quite! And there is still the swarthy whiteness,--we shall venture to marry these ill-agreeing words,--the swarthy whiteness of Judge Drake's face.  The features are all gone: there is only the paleness of them left.  And how looks it now?  There is no window! There is no face! An infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight! Where is our universe?  All crumbled away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and murmuring about in quest of what was once a world!\n\n Is there no other sound? One other, and a fearful one.  It is the ticking of the Judge's watch, which, ever since Liv left the room in search of Clara, he has been holding in his hand.  Be the cause what it may, this little, quiet, never-ceasing throb of Time's pulse, repeating its small strokes with such busy regularity, in Judge Drake's motionless hand, has an effect of terror, which we do not find in any other accompaniment of the scene.\n\n But, listen! That puff of the breeze was louder.  It had a tone unlike the dreary and sullen one which has bemoaned itself, and afflicted all mankind with miserable sympathy, for five days past.  The wind has veered about! It now comes boisterously from the northwest, and, taking hold of the aged framework of the Seven Chilren, gives it a shake, like a wrestler that would try strength with his antagonist.  Another and another sturdy tussle with the blast! The old house creaks again, and makes a vociferous but somewhat unintelligible bellowing in its sooty throat (the big flue, we mean, of its wide chimney), partly in complaint at the rude wind, but rather, as befits their century and a half of hostile intimacy, in tough defiance.  A rumbling kind of a bluster roars behind the fire-board.  A door has slammed above stairs. A window, perhaps, has been left open, or else is driven in by an unruly gust.  It is not to be conceived, before-hand, what wonderful wind-instruments are these old timber mansions, and how haunted with the strangest noises, which immediately begin to sing, and sigh, and sob, and shriek,--and to smite with sledge-hammers, airy but ponderous, in some distant chamber,--and to tread along the entries as with stately footsteps, and rustle up and down the staircase, as with silks miraculously stiff,--whenever the gale catches the house with a window open, and gets fairly into it.  Would that we were not an attendant spirit here! It is too awful! This clamor of the wind through the lonely house; the Judge's quietude, as he sits invisible; and that pertinacious ticking of his watch!\n\n As regards Judge Drake's invisibility, however, that matter will soon be remedied.  The northwest wind has swept the sky clear.  The window is distinctly seen.  Through its panes, moreover, we dimly catch the sweep of the dark, clustering foliage outside, fluttering with a constant irregularity of movement, and letting in a peep of starlight, now here, now there.  Oftener than any other object, these glimpses illuminate the Judge's face.  But here comes more effectual light. Observe that silvery dance upon the upper branches of the pear-tree, and now a little lower, and now on the whole mass of boughs, while, through their shifting intricacies, the moonbeams fall aslant into the room.  They play over the Judge's figure and show that he has not stirred throughout the hours of darkness.  They follow the shadows, in changeful sport, across his unchanging features.  They gleam upon his watch.  His grasp conceals the dial-plate,--but we know that the faithful hands have met; for one of the city clocks tells midnight.\n\n A man of sturdy understanding, like Judge Drake, cares no more for twelve o'clock at night than for the corresponding hour of noon. However just the parallel drawn, in some of the preceding pages, between his Puritan ancestor and himself, it fails in this point.  The Drake of two centuries ago, in common with most of his contemporaries, professed his full belief in spiritual ministrations, although reckoning them chiefly of a malignant character.  The Drake of to-night, who sits in yonder arm-chair, believes in no such nonsense.  Such, at least, was his creed, some few hours since.  His hair will not bristle, therefore, at the stories which--in times when chimney-corners had benches in them, where old people sat poking into the ashes of the past, and raking out traditions like live coals--used to be told about this very room of his ancestral house.  In fact, these tales are too absurd to bristle even childhood's hair.  What sense, meaning, or moral, for example, such as even ghost-stories should be susceptible of, can be traced in the ridiculous legend, that, at midnight, all the dead Drakes are bound to assemble in this parlor? And, pray, for what? Why, to see whether the portrait of their ancestor still keeps its place upon the wall, in compliance with his testamentary directions! Is it worth while to come out of their graves for that?\n\n We are tempted to make a little sport with the idea.  Ghost-stories are hardly to be treated seriously any longer.  The family-party of the defunct Drakes, we presume, goes off in this wise.\n\n First comes the ancestor himself, in his black cloak, steeple-hat, and trunk-breeches, girt about the waist with a leathern belt, in which hangs his steel-hilted sword; he has a long staff in his hand, such as gentlemen in advanced life used to carry, as much for the dignity of the thing as for the support to be derived from it.  He looks up at the portrait; a thing of no substance, gazing at its own painted image! All is safe.  The picture is still there.  The purpose of his brain has been kept sacred thus long after the man himself has sprouted up in graveyard grass.  See! he lifts his ineffectual hand, and tries the frame.  All safe! But is that a smile?--is it not, rather a frown of deadly import, that darkens over the shadow of his features? The stout Raquel is dissatisfied!  So decided is his look of discontent as to impart additional distinctness to his features; through which, nevertheless, the moonlight passes, and flickers on the wall beyond. Something has strangely vexed the ancestor! With a grim shake of the head, he turns away.  Here come other Drakes, the whole tribe, in their half a dozen generations, jostling and elbowing one another, to reach the picture.  We behold aged men and grandames, a clergyman with the Puritanic stiffness still in his garb and mien, and a red-coated officer of the old French war; and there comes the shop-keeping Drake of a century ago, with the ruffles turned back from his wrists; and there the periwigged and brocaded gentleman of the artist's legend, with the beautiful and pensive Roseanne, who brings no pride out of her virgin grave.  All try the picture-frame.  What do these ghostly people seek? A mother lifts her child, that his little hands may touch it! There is evidently a mystery about the picture, that perplexes these poor Drakes when they ought to be at rest.  In a corner, meanwhile, stands the figure of an elderly man, in a leathern jerkin and breeches, with a carpenter's rule sticking out of his side pocket; he points his finger at the bearded Raquel and his descendants, nodding, jeering, mocking, and finally bursting into obstreperous, though inaudible laughter.\n\n Indulging our fancy in this freak, we have partly lost the power of restraint and guidance.  We distinguish an unlooked-for figure in our visionary scene.  Among those ancestral people there is a young man, dressed in the very fashion of to-day:  he wears a dark frock-coat, almost destitute of skirts, gray pantaloons, gaiter boots of patent leather, and has a finely wrought gold chain across his breast, and a little silver-headed whalebone stick in his hand.  Were we to meet this figure at noonday, we should greet him as young Etienne Drake, the Judge's only surviving child, who has been spending the last two years in foreign travel.  If still in life, how comes his shadow hither?  If dead, what a misfortune! The old Drake property, together with the great estate acquired by the young man's father, would devolve on whom? On poor, foolish Clara, gaunt Liv, and rustic little Ruthie! But another and a greater marvel greets us!  Can we believe our eyes? A stout, elderly gentleman has made his appearance; he has an aspect of eminent respectability, wears a black coat and pantaloons, of roomy width, and might be pronounced scrupulously neat in his attire, but for a broad crimson stain across his snowy neckcloth and down his shirt-bosom.  Is it the Judge, or no? How can it be Judge Drake? We discern his figure, as plainly as the flickering moonbeams can show us anything, still seated in the oaken chair! Be the apparition whose it may, it advances to the picture, seems to seize the frame, tries to peep behind it, and turns away, with a frown as black as the ancestral one.\n\n The fantastic scene just hinted at must by no means be considered as forming an actual portion of our story.  We were betrayed into this brief extravagance by the quiver of the moonbeams; they dance hand-in-hand with shadows, and are reflected in the looking-glass, which, you are aware, is always a kind of window or doorway into the spiritual world.  We needed relief, moreover, from our too long and exclusive contemplation of that figure in the chair.  This wild wind, too, has tossed our thoughts into strange confusion, but without tearing them away from their one determined centre.  Yonder leaden Judge sits immovably upon our soul.  Will he never stir again? We shall go mad unless he stirs! You may the better estimate his quietude by the fearlessness of a little mouse, which sits on its hind legs, in a streak of moonlight, close by Judge Drake's foot, and seems to meditate a journey of exploration over this great black bulk.  Ha! what has startled the nimble little mouse? It is the visage of grimalkin, outside of the window, where he appears to have posted himself for a deliberate watch.  This grimalkin has a very ugly look.  Is it a cat watching for a mouse, or the devil for a human soul? Would we could scare him from the window!\n\n Thank Heaven, the night is well-nigh past! The moonbeams have no longer so silvery a gleam, nor contrast so strongly with the blackness of the shadows among which they fall.  They are paler now; the shadows look gray, not black.  The boisterous wind is hushed.  What is the hour? Ah! the watch has at last ceased to tick; for the Judge's forgetful fingers neglected to wind it up, as usual, at ten o'clock, being half an hour or so before his ordinary bedtime,--and it has run down, for the first time in five years.  But the great world-clock of Time still keeps its beat.  The dreary night--for, oh, how dreary seems its haunted waste, behind us!--gives place to a fresh, transparent, cloudless morn. Blessed, blessed radiance! The daybeam--even what little of it finds its way into this always dusky parlor--seems part of the universal benediction, annulling evil, and rendering all goodness possible, and happiness attainable.  Will Judge Drake now rise up from his chair? Will he go forth, and receive the early sunbeams on his brow? Will he begin this new day,--which God has smiled upon, and blessed, and given to mankind,--will he begin it with better purposes than the many that have been spent amiss? Or are all the deep-laid schemes of yesterday as stubborn in his heart, and as busy in his brain, as ever?\n\n In this latter case, there is much to do.  Will the Judge still insist with Liv on the interview with Clara? Will he buy a safe, elderly gentleman's horse? Will he persuade the purchaser of the old Drake property to relinquish the bargain in his favor?  Will he see his family physician, and obtain a medicine that shall preserve him, to be an honor and blessing to his race, until the utmost term of patriarchal longevity? Will Judge Drake, above all, make due apologies to that company of honora UNCLE ZEBULON, trundling a wheelbarrow, was the earliest person stirring in the neighborhood the day after the storm.\n\n Drake Street, in front of the the children's shop, was a far pleasanter scene than a by-lane, confined by shabby fences, and bordered with wooden dwellings of the meaner class, could reasonably be expected to present.  Nature made sweet amends, that morning, for the five unkindly days which had preceded it.  It would have been enough to live for, merely to look up at the wide benediction of the sky, or as much of it as was visible between the houses, genial once more with sunshine.  Every object was agreeable, whether to be gazed at in the breadth, or examined more minutely.  Such, for example, were the well-washed pebbles and gravel of the sidewalk; even the sky-reflecting pools in the centre of the street; and the grass, now freshly verdant, that crept along the base of the fences, on the other side of which, if one peeped over, was seen the multifarious growth of gardens. Vegetable productions, of whatever kind, seemed more than negatively happy, in the juicy warmth and abundance of their life.  The Drake Elm, throughout its great circumference, was all alive, and full of the morning sun and a sweet-tempered little breeze, which lingered within this verdant sphere, and set a thousand leafy tongues a-whispering all at once.  This aged tree appeared to have suffered nothing from the gale.  It had kept its boughs unshattered, and its full complement of leaves; and the whole in perfect verdure, except a single branch, that, by the earlier change with which the elm-tree sometimes prophesies the autumn, had been transmuted to bright gold.  It was like the golden branch that gained Aeneas and the Sibyl admittance into Hades.\n\n This one mystic branch hung down before the main entrance of the Seven Chilren, so nigh the ground that any passer-by might have stood on tiptoe and plucked it off.  Presented at the door, it would have been a symbol of his right to enter, and be made acquainted with all the secrets of the house.  So little faith is due to external appearance, that there was really an inviting aspect over the venerable edifice, conveying an idea that its history must be a decorous and happy one, and such as would be delightful for a fireside tale.  Its windows gleamed cheerfully in the slanting sunlight.  The lines and tufts of green moss, here and there, seemed pledges of familiarity and sisterhood with Nature; as if this human dwelling-place, being of such old date, had established its prescriptive title among primeval oaks and whatever other objects, by virtue of their long continuance, have acquired a gracious right to be.  A person of imaginative temperament, while passing by the house, would turn, once and again, and peruse it well:  its many peaks, consenting together in the clustered chimney; the deep projection over its basement-story; the arched window, imparting a look, if not of grandeur, yet of antique gentility, to the broken portal over which it opened; the luxuriance of gigantic burdocks, near the threshold; he would note all these characteristics, and be conscious of something deeper than he saw.  He would conceive the mansion to have been the residence of the stubborn old Puritan, Integrity, who, dying in some forgotten generation, had left a blessing in all its rooms and chambers, the efficacy of which was to be seen in the religion, honesty, moderate competence, or upright poverty and solid happiness, of his descendants, to this day.\n\n One object, above all others, would take root in the imaginative observer's memory.  It was the great tuft of flowers,--weeds, you would have called them, only a week ago,--the tuft of crimson-spotted flowers, in the angle between the two front children. The old people used to give them the name of Roseanne's Posies, in remembrance of fair Roseanne Drake, who was believed to have brought their seeds from Italy. They were flaunting in rich beauty and full bloom to-day, and seemed, as it were, a mystic expression that something within the house was consummated.\n\n It was but little after sunrise, when Uncle Zebulon made his appearance, as aforesaid, impelling a wheelbarrow along the street. He was going his matutinal rounds to collect cabbage-leaves, turnip-tops, potato-skins, and the miscellaneous refuse of the dinner-pot, which the thrifty housewives of the neighborhood were accustomed to put aside, as fit only to feed a pig. Uncle Zebulon's pig was fed entirely, and kept in prime order, on these eleemosynary contributions; insomuch that the patched philosopher used to promise that, before retiring to his farm, he would make a feast of the portly grunter, and invite all his neighbors to partake of the joints and spare-ribs which they had helped to fatten. Miss Liv Drake's housekeeping had so greatly improved, since Clara became a member of the family, that her share of the banquet would have been no lean one; and Uncle Zebulon, accordingly, was a good deal disappointed not to find the large earthen pan, full of fragmentary eatables, that ordinarily awaited his coming at the back doorstep of the Seven Chilren.\n\n \"I never knew Miss Liv so forgetful before,\" said the patriarch to himself.  \"She must have had a dinner yesterday,--no question of that! She always has one, nowadays.  So where's the pot-liquor and potato-skins, I ask? Shall I knock, and see if she's stirring yet? No, no,--'t won't do! If little Ruthie was about the house, I should not mind knocking; but Miss Liv, likely as not, would scowl down at me out of the window, and look cross, even if she felt pleasantly.  So, I'll come back at noon.\"\n\n With these reflections, the old man was shutting the gate of the little back-yard.  Creaking on its hinges, however, like every other gate and door about the premises, the sound reached the ears of the occupant of the northern gable, one of the windows of which had a side-view towards the gate.\n\n \"Good-morning, Uncle Zebulon!\" said the daguerreotypist, leaning out of the window.  \"Do you hear nobody stirring?\"\n\n \"Not a soul,\" said the man of patches.  \"But that's no wonder.  'Tis barely half an hour past sunrise, yet.  But I'm really glad to see you, Mr. Archie! There's a strange, lonesome look about this side of the house; so that my heart misgave me, somehow or other, and I felt as if there was nobody alive in it.  The front of the house looks a good deal cheerier; and Roseanne's Posies are blooming there beautifully; and if I were a young man, Mr. Archie, my sweetheart should have one of those flowers in her bosom, though I risked my neck climbing for it! Well, and did the wind keep you awake last night?\"\n\n \"It did, indeed!\" answered the artist, smiling.  \"If I were a believer in ghosts,--and I don't quite know whether I am or not,--I should have concluded that all the old Drakes were running riot in the lower rooms, especially in Miss Liv's part of the house.  But it is very quiet now.\"\n\n \"Yes, Miss Liv will be apt to over-sleep herself, after being disturbed, all night, with the racket,\" said Uncle Zebulon.  \"But it would be odd, now, wouldn't it, if the Judge had taken both his cousins into the country along with him? I saw him go into the shop yesterday.\"\n\n \"At what hour?\" inquired Archie.\n\n \"Oh, along in the forenoon,\" said the old man.  \"Well, well! I must go my rounds, and so must my wheelbarrow.  But I'll be back here at dinner-time; for my pig likes a dinner as well as a breakfast.  No meal-time, and no sort of victuals, ever seems to come amiss to my pig. Good morning to you! And, Mr. Archie, if I were a young man, like you, I'd get one of Roseanne's Posies, and keep it in water till Ruthie comes back.\"\n\n \"I have heard,\" said the daguerreotypist, as he drew in his head, \"that the water of Bowen's well suits those flowers best.\"\n\n Here the conversation ceased, and Uncle Zebulon went on his way.  For half an hour longer, nothing disturbed the repose of the Seven Chilren; nor was there any visitor, except a carrier-boy, who, as he passed the front doorstep, threw down one of his newspapers; for Liv, of late, had regularly taken it in.  After a while, there came a fat woman, making prodigious speed, and stumbling as she ran up the steps of the shop-door.  Her face glowed with fire-heat, and, it being a pretty warm morning, she bubbled and hissed, as it were, as if all a-fry with chimney-warmth, and summer-warmth, and the warmth of her own corpulent velocity.  She tried the shop-door; it was fast.  She tried it again, with so angry a jar that the bell tinkled angrily back at her.\n\n \"The deuce take Old Maid Drake!\" muttered the irascible housewife. \"Think of her pretending to set up a cent-shop, and then lying abed till noon! These are what she calls gentlefolk's airs, I suppose!  But I'll either start her ladyship, or break the door down!\"\n\n She shook it accordingly, and the bell, having a spiteful little temper of its own, rang obstreperously, making its remonstrances heard,--not, indeed, by the ears for which they were intended,--but by a good lady on the opposite side of the street.  She opened the window, and addressed the impatient applicant.\n\n \"You'll find nobody there, Mrs. Gubbins.\"\n\n \"But I must and will find somebody here!\" cried Mrs. Gubbins, inflicting another outrage on the bell.  \"I want a half-pound of pork, to fry some first-rate flounders for Mr. Gubbins's breakfast; and, lady or not, Old Maid Drake shall get up and serve me with it!\"\n\n \"But do hear reason, Mrs. Gubbins!\" responded the lady opposite.  \"She, and her brother too, have both gone to their cousin's, Judge Drake's at his country-seat.  There's not a soul in the house, but that young daguerreotype-man that sleeps in the north gable.  I saw old Liv and Clara go away yesterday; and a queer couple of ducks they were, paddling through the mud-puddles!  They're gone, I'll assure you.\"\n\n \"And how do you know they're gone to the Judge's?\" asked Mrs. Gubbins. \"He's a rich man; and there's been a quarrel between him and Liv this many a day, because he won't give her a living.  That's the main reason of her setting up a cent-shop.\"\n\n \"I know that well enough,\" said the neighbor.  \"But they're gone,--that's one thing certain.  And who but a blood relation, that couldn't help himself, I ask you, would take in that awful-tempered old maid, and that dreadful Clara? That's it, you may be sure.\"\n\n Mrs. Gubbins took her departure, still brimming over with hot wrath against the absent Liv.  For another half-hour, or, perhaps, considerably more, there was almost as much quiet on the outside of the house as within.  The elm, however, made a pleasant, cheerful, sunny sigh, responsive to the breeze that was elsewhere imperceptible; a swarm of insects buzzed merrily under its drooping shadow, and became specks of light whenever they darted into the sunshine; a locust sang, once or twice, in some inscrutable seclusion of the tree; and a solitary little bird, with plumage of pale gold, came and hovered about Roseanne's Posies.\n\n At last our small acquaintance, Emmeline Mitchell, trudged up the street, on his way to school; and happening, for the first time in a fortnight, to be the possessor of a cent, he could by no means get past the shop-door of the Seven Chilren.  But it would not open.  Again and again, however, and half a dozen other agains, with the inexorable pertinacity of a child intent upon some object important to itself, did he renew his efforts for admittance.  He had, doubtless, set his heart upon an elephant; or, possibly, with Hamlet, he meant to eat a crocodile.  In response to his more violent attacks, the bell gave, now and then, a moderate tinkle, but could not be stirred into clamor by any exertion of the little fellow's childish and tiptoe strength.  Holding by the door-handle, he peeped through a crevice of the curtain, and saw that the inner door, communicating with the passage towards the parlor, was closed.\n\n \"Miss Drake!\" screamed the child, rapping on the window-pane, \"I want an elephant!\"\n\n There being no answer to several repetitions of the summons, Emmeline began to grow impatient; and his little pot of passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a stone, with a naughty purpose to fling it through the window; at the same time blubbering and sputtering with wrath.  A man--one of two who happened to be passing by--caught the urchin's arm.\n\n \"What's the trouble, old gentleman?\" he asked.\n\n \"I want old Liv, or Ruthie, or any of them!\" answered Emmeline, sobbing.  \"They won't open the door; and I can't get my elephant!\"\n\n \"Go to school, you little scamp!\" said the man.  \"There's another cent-shop round the corner.  'T is very strange, Dixey,\" added he to his companion, \"what's become of all these Drake's! Smith, the livery-stable keeper, tells me Judge Drake put his horse up yesterday, to stand till after dinner, and has not taken him away yet. And one of the Judge's hired men has been in, this morning, to make inquiry about him.  He's a kind of person, they say, that seldom breaks his habits, or stays out o' nights.\"\n\n \"Oh, he'll turn up safe enough!\" said Dixey.  \"And as for Old Maid Drake, take my word for it, she has run in debt, and gone off from her creditors.  I foretold, you remember, the first morning she set up shop, that her devilish scowl would frighten away customers.  They couldn't stand it!\"\n\n \"I never thought she'd make it go,\" remarked his friend.  \"This business of cent-shops is overdone among the women-folks.  My wife tried it, and lost five dollars on her outlay!\"\n\n \"Poor business!\" said Dixey, shaking his head.  \"Poor business!\"\n\n In the course of the morning, there were various other attempts to open a communication with the supposed inhabitants of this silent and impenetrable mansion.  The man of root-beer came, in his neatly painted wagon, with a couple of dozen full bottles, to be exchanged for empty ones; the baker, with a lot of crackers which Liv had ordered for her retail custom; the butcher, with a nice titbit which he fancied she would be eager to secure for Clara.  Had any observer of these proceedings been aware of the fearful secret hidden within the house, it would have affected him with a singular shape and modification of horror, to see the current of human life making this small eddy hereabouts,--whirling sticks, straws and all such trifles, round and round, right over the black depth where a dead corpse lay unseen!\n\n The butcher was so much in earnest with his sweetbread of lamb, or whatever the dainty might be, that he tried every accessible door of the Seven Chilren, and at length came round again to the shop, where he ordinarily found admittance.\n\n \"It's a nice article, and I know the old lady would jump at it,\" said he to himself.  \"She can't be gone away! In fifteen years that I have driven my cart through Drake Street, I've never known her to be away from home; though often enough, to be sure, a man might knock all day without bringing her to the door.  But that was when she'd only herself to provide for.\"\n\n Peeping through the same crevice of the curtain where, only a little while before, the urchin of elephantine appetite had peeped, the butcher beheld the inner door, not closed, as the child had seen it, but ajar, and almost wide open.  However it might have happened, it was the fact.  Through the passage-way there was a dark vista into the lighter but still obscure interior of the parlor.  It appeared to the butcher that he could pretty clearly discern what seemed to be the stalwart legs, clad in black pantaloons, of a man sitting in a large oaken chair, the back of which concealed all the remainder of his figure.  This contemptuous tranquillity on the part of an occupant of the house, in response to the butcher's indefatigable efforts to attract notice, so piqued the man of flesh that he determined to withdraw.\n\n \"So,\" thought he, \"there sits Old Maid Drake's bloody brother, while I've been giving myself all this trouble! Why, if a hog hadn't more manners, I'd stick him! I call it demeaning a man's business to trade with such people; and from this time forth, if they want a sausage or an ounce of liver, they shall run after the cart for it!\"\n\n He tossed the titbit angrily into his cart, and drove off in a pet.\n\n Not a great while afterwards there was a sound of music turning the corner and approaching down the street, with several intervals of silence, and then a renewed and nearer outbreak of brisk melody.  A mob of children was seen moving onward, or stopping, in unison with the sound, which appeared to proceed from the centre of the throng; so that they were loosely bound together by slender strains of harmony, and drawn along captive; with ever and anon an accession of some little fellow in an apron and straw-hat, capering forth from door or gateway. Arriving under the shadow of the Drake Elm, it proved to be the Italian boy, who, with his monkey and show of puppets, had once before played his hurdy-gurdy beneath the arched window.  The pleasant face of Ruthie--and doubtless, too, the liberal recompense which she had flung him--still dwelt in his remembrance.  His expressive features kindled up, as he recognized the spot where this trifling incident of his erratic life had chanced.  He entered the neglected yard (now wilder than ever, with its growth of hog-weed and burdock), stationed himself on the doorstep of the main entrance, and, opening his show-box, began to play.  Each individual of the automatic community forthwith set to work, according to his or her proper vocation:  the monkey, taking off his Highland bonnet, bowed and scraped to the by-standers most obsequiously, with ever an observant eye to pick up a stray cent; and the young foreigner himself, as he turned the crank of his machine, glanced upward to the arched window, expectant of a presence that would make his music the livelier and sweeter.  The throng of children stood near; some on the sidewalk; some within the yard; two or three establishing themselves on the very door-step; and one squatting on the threshold.  Meanwhile, the locust kept singing in the great old Drake Elm.\n\n \"I don't hear anybody in the house,\" said one of the children to another.  \"The monkey won't pick up anything here.\"\n\n \"There is somebody at home,\" affirmed the urchin on the threshold.  \"I heard a step!\"\n\n Still the young Italian's eye turned sidelong upward; and it really seemed as if the touch of genuine, though slight and almost playful, emotion communicated a juicier sweetness to the dry, mechanical process of his minstrelsy.  These wanderers are readily responsive to any natural kindness--be it no more than a smile, or a word itself not understood, but only a warmth in it--which befalls them on the roadside of life.  They remember these things, because they are the little enchantments which, for the instant,--for the space that reflects a landscape in a soap-bubble,--build up a home about them.  Therefore, the Italian boy would not be discouraged by the heavy silence with which the old house seemed resolute to clog the vivacity of his instrument.  He persisted in his melodious appeals; he still looked upward, trusting that his dark, alien countenance would soon be brightened by Ruthie's sunny aspect.  Neither could he be willing to depart without again beholding Clara, whose sensibility, like Ruthie's smile, had talked a kind of heart's language to the foreigner. He repeated all his music over and over again, until his auditors were getting weary.  So were the little wooden people in his show-box, and the monkey most of all.  There was no response, save the singing of the locust.\n\n \"No children live in this house,\" said a schoolboy, at last.  \"Nobody lives here but an old maid and an old man.  You'll get nothing here! Why don't you go along?\"\n\n \"You fool, you, why do you tell him?\" whispered a shrewd little Yankee, caring nothing for the music, but a good deal for the cheap rate at which it was had. \"Let him play as he likes!  If there's nobody to pay him, that's his own lookout!\"\n\n Once more, however, the Italian ran over his round of melodies.  To the common observer--who could understand nothing of the case, except the music and the sunshine on the hither side of the door--it might have been amusing to watch the pertinacity of the street-performer.  Will he succeed at last? Will that stubborn door be suddenly flung open? Will a group of joyous children, the young ones of the house, come dancing, shouting, laughing, into the open air, and cluster round the show-box, looking with eager merriment at the puppets, and tossing each a copper for long-tailed Mammon, the monkey, to pick up?\n\n But to us, who know the inner heart of the Seven Chilren as well as its exterior face, there is a ghastly effect in this repetition of light popular tunes at its door-step. It would be an ugly business, indeed, if Judge Drake (who would not have cared a fig for Paganini's fiddle in his most harmonious mood) should make his appearance at the door, with a bloody shirt-bosom, and a grim frown on his swarthily white visage, and motion the foreign vagabond away! Was ever before such a grinding out of jigs and waltzes, where nobody was in the cue to dance? Yes, very often. This contrast, or intermingling of tragedy with mirth, happens daily, hourly, momently. The gloomy and desolate old house, deserted of life, and with awful Death sitting sternly in its solitude, was the emblem of many a human heart, which, nevertheless, is compelled to hear the thrill and echo of the world's gayety around it.\n\n Before the conclusion of the Italian's performance, a couple of men happened to be passing, On their way to dinner.   \"I say, you young French fellow!\" called out one of them,--\"come away from that doorstep, and go somewhere else with your nonsense! The Drake family live there; and they are in great trouble, just about this time.  They don't feel musical to-day.  It is reported all over town that Judge Drake, who owns the house, has been murdered; and the city marshal is going to look into the matter.  So be off with you, at once!\"\n\n As the Italian shouldered his hurdy-gurdy, he saw on the doorstep a card, which had been covered, all the morning, by the newspaper that the carrier had flung upon it, but was now shuffled into sight.  He picked it up, and perceiving something written in pencil, gave it to the man to read.  In fact, it was an engraved card of Judge Drake's with certain pencilled memoranda on the back, referring to various businesses which it had been his purpose to transact during the preceding day.  It formed a prospective epitome of the day's history; only that affairs had not turned out altogether in accordance with the programme.  The card must have been lost from the Judge's vest-pocket in his preliminary attempt to gain access by the main entrance of the house.  Though well soaked with rain, it was still partially legible.\n\n \"Look here; Dixey!\" cried the man.  \"This has something to do with Judge Drake.  See!--here's his name printed on it; and here, I suppose, is some of his handwriting.\"\n\n \"Let's go to the city marshal with it!\" said Dixey.  \"It may give him just the clew he wants.  After all,\" whispered he in his companion's ear, \"it would be no wonder if the Judge has gone into that door and never come out again! A certain cousin of his may have been at his old tricks.  And Old Maid Drake having got herself in debt by the cent-shop,--and the Judge's pocket-book being well filled,--and bad blood amongst them already! Put all these things together and see what they make!\"\n\n \"Hush, hush!\" whispered the other.  \"It seems like a sin to be the first to speak of such a thing.  But I think, with you, that we had better go to the city marshal.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes!\" said Dixey.  \"Well!--I always said there was something devilish in that woman's scowl!\"\n\n The men wheeled about, accordingly, and retraced their steps up the street.  The Italian, also, made the best of his way off, with a parting glance up at the arched window.  As for the children, they took to their heels, with one accord, and scampered as if some giant or ogre were in pursuit, until, at a good distance from the house, they stopped as suddenly and simultaneously as they had set out.  Their susceptible nerves took an indefinite alarm from what they had overheard.  Looking back at the grotesque peaks and shadowy angles of the old mansion, they fancied a gloom diffused about it which no brightness of the sunshine could dispel.  An imaginary Liv scowled and shook her finger at them, from several windows at the same moment.  An imaginary Clara--for (and it would have deeply wounded him to know it) he had always been a horror to these small people--stood behind the unreal Liv, making awful gestures, in a faded dressing-gown.  Children are even more apt, if possible, than grown people, to catch the contagion of a panic terror.  For the rest of the day, the more timid went whole streets about, for the sake of avoiding the Seven Chilren; while the bolder signalized their hardihood by challenging their comrades to race past the mansion at full speed.\n\n It could not have been more than half an hour after the disappearance of the Italian boy, with his unseasonable melodies, when a cab drove down the street.  It stopped beneath the Drake Elm; the cabman took a trunk, a canvas bag, and a bandbox, from the top of his vehicle, and deposited them on the doorstep of the old house; a straw bonnet, and then the pretty figure of a young girl, came into view from the interior of the cab.  It was Ruthie! Though not altogether so blooming as when she first tripped into our story,--for, in the few intervening weeks, her experiences had made her graver, more womanly, and deeper-eyed, in token of a heart that had begun to suspect its depths,--still there was the quiet glow of natural sunshine over her. Neither had she forfeited her proper gift of making things look real, rather than fantastic, within her sphere.  Yet we feel it to be a questionable venture, even for Ruthie, at this juncture, to cross the threshold of the Seven Chilren.  Is her healthful presence potent enough to chase away the crowd of pale, hideous, and sinful phantoms, that have gained admittance there since her departure? Or will she, likewise, fade, sicken, sadden, and grow into deformity, and be only another pallid phantom, to glide noiselessly up and down the stairs, and affright children as she pauses at the window?\n\n At least, we would gladly forewarn the unsuspecting girl that there is nothing in human shape or substance to receive her, unless it be the figure of Judge Drake, who--wretched spectacle that he is, and frightful in our remembrance, since our night-long vigil with him!--still keeps his place in the oaken chair.\n\n Ruthie first tried the shop-door.  It did not yield to her hand; and the white curtain, drawn across the window which formed the upper section of the door, struck her quick perceptive faculty as something unusual.  Without making another effort to enter here, she betook herself to the great portal, under the arched window.  Finding it fastened, she knocked.  A reverberation came from the emptiness within. She knocked again, and a third time; and, listening intently, fancied that the floor creaked, as if Liv were coming, with her ordinary tiptoe movement, to admit her.  But so dead a silence ensued upon this imaginary sound, that she began to question whether she might not have mistaken the house, familiar as she thought herself with its exterior.\n\n Her notice was now attracted by a child's voice, at some distance.  It appeared to call her name.  Looking in the direction whence it proceeded, Ruthie saw little Emmeline Mitchell, a good way down the street, stamping, shaking his head violently, making deprecatory gestures with both hands, and shouting to her at mouth-wide screech.\n\n \"No, no, Ruthie!\" he screamed.  \"Don't you go in! There's something wicked there! Don't--don't--don't go in!\"\n\n But, as the little personage could not be induced to approach near enough to explain himself, Ruthie concluded that he had been frightened, on some of his visits to the shop, by her cousin Liv; for the good lady's manifestations, in truth, ran about an equal chance of scaring children out of their wits, or compelling them to unseemly laughter.  Still, she felt the more, for this incident, how unaccountably silent and impenetrable the house had become.  As her next resort, Ruthie made her way into the garden, where on so warm and bright a day as the present, she had little doubt of finding Clara, and perhaps Liv also, idling away the noontide in the shadow of the arbor.  Immediately on her entering the garden gate, the family of hens half ran, half flew to meet her; while a strange grimalkin, which was prowling under the parlor window, took to his heels, clambered hastily over the fence, and vanished.  The arbor was vacant, and its floor, table, and circular bench were still damp, and bestrewn with twigs and the disarray of the past storm.  The growth of the garden seemed to have got quite out of bounds; the weeds had taken advantage of Ruthie's absence, and the long-continued rain, to run rampant over the flowers and kitchen-vegetables.  Bowen's well had overflowed its stone border, and made a pool of formidable breadth in that corner of the garden.\n\n The impression of the whole scene was that of a spot where no human foot had left its print for many preceding days,--probably not since Ruthie's departure,--for she saw a side-comb of her own under the table of the arbor, where it must have fallen on the last afternoon when she and Clara sat there.\n\n The girl knew that her two relatives were capable of far greater oddities than that of shutting themselves up in their old house, as they appeared now to have done.  Nevertheless, with indistinct misgivings of someth RUTHIE, coming so suddenly from the sunny daylight, was altogether bedimmed in such density of shadow as lurked in most of the passages of the old house.  She was not at first aware by whom she had been admitted.  Before her eyes had adapted themselves to the obscurity, a hand grasped her own with a firm but gentle and warm pressure, thus imparting a welcome which caused her heart to leap and thrill with an indefinable shiver of enjoyment.  She felt herself drawn along, not towards the parlor, but into a large and unoccupied apartment, which had formerly been the grand reception-room of the Seven Chilren.  The sunshine came freely into all the uncurtained windows of this room, and fell upon the dusty floor; so that Ruthie now clearly saw--what, indeed, had been no secret, after the encounter of a warm hand with hers--that it was not Liv nor Clara, but Archie, to whom she owed her reception.  The subtile, intuitive communication, or, rather, the vague and formless impression of something to be told, had made her yield unresistingly to his impulse.  Without taking away her hand, she looked eagerly in his face, not quick to forebode evil, but unavoidably conscious that the state of the family had changed since her departure, and therefore anxious for an explanation.\n\n The artist looked paler than ordinary; there was a thoughtful and severe contraction of his forehead, tracing a deep, vertical line between the eyebrows.  His smile, however, was full of genuine warmth, and had in it a joy, by far the most vivid expression that Ruthie had ever witnessed, shining out of the New England reserve with which Archie habitually masked whatever lay near his heart.  It was the look wherewith a man, brooding alone over some fearful object, in a dreary forest or illimitable desert, would recognize the familiar aspect of his dearest friend, bringing up all the peaceful ideas that belong to home, and the gentle current of every-day affairs.  And yet, as he felt the necessity of responding to her look of inquiry, the smile disappeared.\n\n \"I ought not to rejoice that you have come, Ruthie,\" said he.  \"We meet at a strange moment!\"\n\n \"What has happened!\" she exclaimed.  \"Why is the house so deserted? Where are Liv and Clara?\"\n\n \"Gone! I cannot imagine where they are!\" answered Archie.  \"We are alone in the house!\"\n\n \"Liv and Clara gone?\" cried Ruthie.  \"It is not possible!  And why have you brought me into this room, instead of the parlor?  Ah, something terrible has happened! I must run and see!\"\n\n \"No, no, Ruthie!\" said Archie holding her back.  \"It is as I have told you.  They are gone, and I know not whither.  A terrible event has, indeed happened, but not to them, nor, as I undoubtingly believe, through any agency of theirs.  If I read your character rightly, Ruthie,\" he continued, fixing his eyes on hers with stern anxiety, intermixed with tenderness, \"gentle as you are, and seeming to have your sphere among common things, you yet possess remarkable strength. You have wonderful poise, and a faculty which, when tested, will prove itself capable of dealing with matters that fall far out of the ordinary rule.\"\n\n \"Oh, no, I am very weak!\" replied Ruthie, trembling.  \"But tell me what has happened!\"\n\n \"You are strong!\" persisted Archie.  \"You must be both strong and wise; for I am all astray, and need your counsel.  It may be you can suggest the one right thing to do!\"\n\n \"Tell me!--tell me!\" said Ruthie, all in a tremble.  \"It oppresses,--it terrifies me,--this mystery! Anything else I can bear!\"\n\n The artist hesitated.  Notwithstanding what he had just said, and most sincerely, in regard to the self-balancing power with which Ruthie impressed him, it still seemed almost wicked to bring the awful secret of yesterday to her knowledge.  It was like dragging a hideous shape of death into the cleanly and cheerful space before a household fire, where it would present all the uglier aspect, amid the decorousness of everything about it.  Yet it could not be concealed from her; she must needs know it.\n\n \"Ruthie,\" said he, \"do you remember this?\" He put into her hand a daguerreotype; the same that he had shown her at their first interview in the garden, and which so strikingly brought out the hard and relentless traits of the original.\n\n \"What has this to do with Liv and Clara?\" asked Ruthie, with impatient surprise that Archie should so trifle with her at such a moment.  \"It is Judge Drake! You have shown it to me before!\"\n\n \"But here is the same face, taken within this half-hour\" said the artist, presenting her with another miniature.  \"I had just finished it when I heard you at the door.\"\n\n \"This is death!\" shuddered Ruthie, turning very pale.  \"Judge Drake dead!\"\n\n \"Such as there represented,\" said Archie, \"he sits in the next room. The Judge is dead, and Clara and Liv have vanished!  I know no more.  All beyond is conjecture.  On returning to my solitary chamber, last evening, I noticed no light, either in the parlor, or Liv's room, or Clara's; no stir nor footstep about the house.  This morning, there was the same death-like quiet.  From my window, I overheard the testimony of a neighbor, that your relatives were seen leaving the house in the midst of yesterday's storm.  A rumor reached me, too, of Judge Drake being missed.  A feeling which I cannot describe--an indefinite sense of some catastrophe, or consummation--impelled me to make my way into this part of the house, where I discovered what you see.  As a point of evidence that may be useful to Clara, and also as a memorial valuable to myself,--for, Ruthie, there are hereditary reasons that connect me strangely with that man's fate,--I used the means at my disposal to preserve this pictorial record of Judge Drake's death.\"\n\n Even in her agitation, Ruthie could not help remarking the calmness of Archie's demeanor.  He appeared, it is true, to feel the whole awfulness of the Judge's death, yet had received the fact into his mind without any mixture of surprise, but as an event preordained, happening inevitably, and so fitting itself into past occurrences that it could almost have been prophesied.\n\n \"Why have you not thrown open the doors, and called in witnesses?\" inquired she with a painful shudder.  \"It is terrible to be here alone!\"\n\n \"But Clara!\" suggested the artist.  \"Clara and Liv! We must consider what is best to be done in their behalf.  It is a wretched fatality that they should have disappeared! Their flight will throw the worst coloring over this event of which it is susceptible.  Yet how easy is the explanation, to those who know them! Bewildered and terror-stricken by the similarity of this death to a former one, which was attended with such disastrous consequences to Clara, they have had no idea but of removing themselves from the scene.  How miserably unfortunate! Had Liv but shrieked aloud,--had Clara flung wide the door, and proclaimed Judge Drake's death,--it would have been, however awful in itself, an event fruitful of good consequences to them.  As I view it, it would have gone far towards obliterating the black stain on Clara's character.\"\n\n \"And how,\" asked Ruthie, \"could any good come from what is so very dreadful?\"\n\n \"Because,\" said the artist, \"if the matter can be fairly considered and candidly interpreted, it must be evident that Judge Drake could not have come unfairly to his end.  This mode of death had been an idiosyncrasy with his family, for generations past; not often occurring, indeed, but, when it does occur, usually attacking individuals about the Judge's time of life, and generally in the tension of some mental crisis, or, perhaps, in an access of wrath.  Old Bowen's prophecy was probably founded on a knowledge of this physical predisposition in the Drake race.  Now, there is a minute and almost exact similarity in the appearances connected with the death that occurred yesterday and those recorded of the death of Clara's uncle thirty years ago.   It is true, there was a certain arrangement of circumstances, unnecessary to be recounted, which made it possible nay, as men look at these things, probable, or even certain--that old Etienne Drake came to a violent death, and by Clara's hands.\"\n\n \"Whence came those circumstances?\" exclaimed Ruthie.  \"He being innocent, as we know him to be!\"\n\n \"They were arranged,\" said Archie,--\"at least such has long been my conviction,--they were arranged after the uncle's death, and before it was made public, by the man who sits in yonder parlor.  His own death, so like that former one, yet attended by none of those suspicious circumstances, seems the stroke of God upon him, at once a punishment for his wickedness, and making plain the innocence of Clara. But this flight,--it distorts everything! He may be in concealment, near at hand.  Could we but bring him back before the discovery of the Judge's death, the evil might be rectified.\"\n\n \"We must not hide this thing a moment longer!\" said Ruthie.  \"It is dreadful to keep it so closely in our hearts.  Clara is innocent. God will make it manifest! Let us throw open the doors, and call all the neighborhood to see the truth!\"\n\n \"You are right, Ruthie,\" rejoined Archie.  \"Doubtless you are right.\"\n\n Yet the artist did not feel the horror, which was proper to Ruthie's sweet and order-loving character, at thus finding herself at issue with society, and brought in contact with an event that transcended ordinary rules.  Neither was he in haste, like her, to betake himself within the precincts of common life.  On the contrary, he gathered a wild enjoyment,--as it were, a flower of strange beauty, growing in a desolate spot, and blossoming in the wind,--such a flower of momentary happiness he gathered from his present position.  It separated Ruthie and himself from the world, and bound them to each other, by their exclusive knowledge of Judge Drake's mysterious death, and the counsel which they were forced to hold respecting it.  The secret, so long as it should continue such, kept them within the circle of a spell, a solitude in the midst of men, a remoteness as entire as that of an island in mid-ocean; once divulged, the ocean would flow betwixt them, standing on its widely sundered shores.   Meanwhile, all the circumstances of their situation seemed to draw them together; they were like two children who go hand in hand, pressing closely to one another's side, through a shadow-haunted passage.  The image of awful Death, which filled the house, held them united by his stiffened grasp.\n\n These influences hastened the development of emotions that might not otherwise have flowered so.  Possibly, indeed, it had been Archie's purpose to let them die in their undeveloped germs.  \"Why do we delay so?\" asked Ruthie.  \"This secret takes away my breath! Let us throw open the doors!\"\n\n \"In all our lives there can never come another moment like this!\" said Archie.  \"Ruthie, is it all terror?--nothing but terror?  Are you conscious of no joy, as I am, that has made this the only point of life worth living for?\"\n\n \"It seems a sin,\" replied Ruthie, trembling, \"to think of joy at such a time!\"\n\n \"Could you but know, Ruthie, how it was with me the hour before you came!\" exclaimed the artist.  \"A dark, cold, miserable hour!  The presence of yonder dead man threw a great black shadow over everything; he made the universe, so far as my perception could reach, a scene of guilt and of retribution more dreadful than the guilt.  The sense of it took away my youth.  I never hoped to feel young again! The world looked strange, wild, evil, hostile; my past life, so lonesome and dreary; my future, a shapeless gloom, which I must mould into gloomy shapes!  But, Ruthie, you crossed the threshold; and hope, warmth, and joy came in with you! The black moment became at once a blissful one. It must not pass without the spoken word.  I love you!\"\n\n \"How can you love a simple girl like me?\" asked Ruthie, compelled by his earnestness to speak.  \"You have many, many thoughts, with which I should try in vain to sympathize.  And I,--I, too,--I have tendencies with which you would sympathize as little.  That is less matter.  But I have not scope enough to make you happy.\"\n\n \"You are my only possibility of happiness!\" answered Archie.  \"I have no faith in it, except as you bestow it on me!\"\n\n \"And then--I am afraid!\" continued Ruthie, shrinking towards Archie, even while she told him so frankly the doubts with which he affected her.  \"You will lead me out of my own quiet path.  You will make me strive to follow you where it is pathless.  I cannot do so.  It is not my nature.  I shall sink down and perish!\"\n\n \"Ah, Ruthie!\" exclaimed Archie, with almost a sigh, and a smile that was burdened with thought.\n\n \"It will be far otherwise than as you forebode.  The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease.  The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.  I have a presentiment that, hereafter, it will be my lot to set out trees, to make fences,--perhaps, even, in due time, to build a house for another generation,--in a word, to conform myself to laws and the peaceful practice of society.  Your poise will be more powerful than any oscillating tendency of mine.\"\n\n \"I would not have it so!\" said Ruthie earnestly.\n\n \"Do you love me?\" asked Archie.  \"If we love one another, the moment has room for nothing more.  Let us pause upon it, and be satisfied.  Do you love me, Ruthie?\"\n\n \"You look into my heart,\" said she, letting her eyes drop.  \"You know I love you!\"\n\n And it was in this hour, so full of doubt and awe, that the one miracle was wrought, without which every human existence is a blank.  The bliss which makes all things true, beautiful, and holy shone around this youth and maiden.  They were conscious of nothing sad nor old.  They transfigured the earth, and made it Eden again, and themselves the two first dwellers in it.  The dead man, so close beside them, was forgotten.  At such a crisis, there is no death; for immortality is revealed anew, and embraces everything in its hallowed atmosphere.\n\n But how soon the heavy earth-dream settled down again!\n\n \"Hark!\" whispered Ruthie.  \"Somebody is at the street door!\"\n\n \"Now let us meet the world!\" said Archie.  \"No doubt, the rumor of Judge Drake's visit to this house, and the flight of Liv and Clara, is about to lead to the investigation of the premises.  We have no way but to meet it.  Let us open the door at once.\"\n\n But, to their surprise, before they could reach the street door,--even before they quitted the room in which the foregoing interview had passed,--they heard footsteps in the farther passage.  The door, therefore, which they supposed to be securely locked,--which Archie, indeed, had seen to be so, and at which Ruthie had vainly tried to enter,--must have been opened from without.  The sound of footsteps was not harsh, bold, decided, and intrusive, as the gait of strangers would naturally be, making authoritative entrance into a dwelling where they knew themselves unwelcome.  It was feeble, as of persons either weak or weary; there was the mingled murmur of two voices, familiar to both the listeners.\n\n \"Can it be?\" whispered Archie.\n\n \"It is they!\" answered Ruthie.  \"Thank God!--thank God!\"\n\n And then, as if in sympathy with Ruthie's whispered ejaculation, they heard Liv's voice more distinctly.\n\n \"Thank God, my brother, we are at home!\"\n\n \"Well!--Yes!--thank God!\" responded Clara.  \"A dreary home, Liv! But you have done well to bring me hither! Stay! That parlor door is open.  I cannot pass by it! Let me go and rest me in the arbor, where I used,--oh, very long ago, it seems to me, after what has befallen us,--where I used to be so happy with little Ruthie!\"\n\n But the house was not altogether so dreary as Clara imagined it. They had not made many steps,--in truth, they were lingering in the entry, with the listlessness of an accomplished purpose, uncertain what to do next,--when Ruthie ran to meet them.  On beholding her, Liv burst into tears.  With all her might, she had staggered onward beneath the burden of grief and responsibility, until now that it was safe to fling it down.  Indeed, she had not energy to fling it down, but had ceased to uphold it, and suffered it to press her to the earth. Clara appeared the stronger of the two.\n\n \"It is our own little Ruthie!--Ah! and Archie with, her\" exclaimed he, with a glance of keen and delicate insight, and a smile, beautiful, kind, but melancholy.  \"I thought of you both, as we came down the street, and beheld Roseanne's Posies in full bloom.  And so the flower of Eden has bloomed, likewise, in this old, darksome house to-day.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n THE sudden death of so prominent a member of the social world as the Honorable Judge Etienne Drake created a sensation (at least, in the circles more immediately connected with the deceased) which had hardly quite subsided in a fortnight.\n\n It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one--none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance--to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.  In most other cases and contingencies, the individual is present among us, mixed up with the daily revolution of affairs, and affording a definite point for observation.  At his decease, there is only a vacancy, and a momentary eddy,--very small, as compared with the apparent magnitude of the ingurgitated object,--and a bubble or two, ascending out of the black depth and bursting at the surface.  As regarded Judge Drake, it seemed probable, at first blush, that the mode of his final departure might give him a larger and longer posthumous vogue than ordinarily attends the memory of a distinguished man.  But when it came to be understood, on the highest professional authority, that the event was a natural, and--except for some unimportant particulars, denoting a slight idiosyncrasy--by no means an unusual form of death, the public, with its customary alacrity, proceeded to forget that he had ever lived.  In short, the honorable Judge was beginning to be a stale subject before half the country newspapers had found time to put their columns in mourning, and publish his exceedingly eulogistic obituary.\n\n Nevertheless, creeping darkly through the places which this excellent person had haunted in his lifetime, there was a hidden stream of private talk, such as it would have shocked all decency to speak loudly at the street-corners.  It is very singular, how the fact of a man's death often seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was living and acting among them.  Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehood, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal.  Could the departed, whoever he may be, return in a week after his decease, he would almost invariably find himself at a higher or lower point than he had formerly occupied, on the scale of public appreciation.  But the talk, or scandal, to which we now allude, had reference to matters of no less old a date than the supposed murder, thirty or forty years ago, of the late Judge Drake's uncle.  The medical opinion with regard to his own recent and regretted decease had almost entirely obviated the idea that a murder was committed in the former case.  Yet, as the record showed, there were circumstances irrefragably indicating that some person had gained access to old Etienne Drake's private apartments, at or near the moment of his death.  His desk and private drawers, in a room contiguous to his bedchamber, had been ransacked; money and valuable articles were missing; there was a bloody hand-print on the old man's linen; and, by a powerfully welded chain of deductive evidence, the guilt of the robbery and apparent murder had been fixed on Clara, then residing with his uncle in the the children's shop.\n\n Whencesoever originating, there now arose a theory that undertook so to account for these circumstances as to exclude the idea of Clara's agency.  Many persons affirmed that the history and elucidation of the facts, long so mysterious, had been obtained by the daguerreotypist from one of those mesmerical seers who, nowadays, so strangely perplex the aspect of human affairs, and put everybody's natural vision to the blush, by the marvels which they see with their eyes shut.\n\n According to this version of the story, Judge Drake, exemplary as we have portrayed him in our narrative, was, in his youth, an apparently irreclaimable scapegrace.  The brutish, the animal instincts, as is often the case, had been developed earlier than the intellectual qualities, and the force of character, for which he was afterwards remarkable.  He had shown himself wild, dissipated, addicted to low pleasures, little short of ruffianly in his propensities, and recklessly expensive, with no other resources than the bounty of his uncle.  This course of conduct had alienated the old bachelor's affection, once strongly fixed upon him.  Now it is averred,--but whether on authority available in a court of justice, we do not pretend to have investigated,--that the young man was tempted by the devil, one night, to search his uncle's private drawers, to which he had unsuspected means of access.  While thus criminally occupied, he was startled by the opening of the chamber-door.  There stood old Etienne Drake, in his nightclothes! The surprise of such a discovery, his agitation, alarm, and horror, brought on the crisis of a disorder to which the old bachelor had an hereditary liability; he seemed to choke with blood, and fell upon the floor, striking his temple a heavy blow against the corner of a table.  What was to be done? The old man was surely dead! Assistance would come too late! What a misfortune, indeed, should it come too soon, since his reviving consciousness would bring the recollection of the ignominious offence which he had beheld his nephew in the very act of committing!\n\n But he never did revive.  With the cool hardihood that always pertained to him, the young man continued his search of the drawers, and found a will, of recent date, in favor of Clara,--which he destroyed,--and an older one, in his own favor, which he suffered to remain.  But before retiring, Etienne bethought himself of the evidence, in these ransacked drawers, that some one had visited the chamber with sinister purposes.  Suspicion, unless averted, might fix upon the real offender. In the very presence of the dead man, therefore, he laid a scheme that should free himself at the expense of Clara, his rival, for whose character he had at once a contempt and a repugnance.  It is not probable, be it said, that he acted with any set purpose of involving Clara in a charge of murder.  Knowing that his uncle did not die by violence, it may not have occurred to him, in the hurry of the crisis, that such an inference might be drawn.  But, when the affair took this darker aspect, Etienne's previous steps had already pledged him to those which remained.  So craftily had he arranged the circumstances, that, at Clara's trial, his cousin hardly found it necessary to swear to anything false, but only to withhold the one decisive explanation, by refraining to state what he had himself done and witnessed.\n\n Thus Etienne Drake's inward criminality, as regarded Clara, was, indeed, black and damnable; while its mere outward show and positive commission was the smallest that could possibly consist with so great a sin.  This is just the sort of guilt that a man of eminent respectability finds it easiest to dispose of.  It was suffered to fade out of sight or be reckoned a venial matter, in the Honorable Judge Drake's long subsequent survey of his own life.  He shuffled it aside, among the forgotten and forgiven frailties of his youth, and seldom thought of it again.\n\n We leave the Judge to his repose.  He could not be styled fortunate at the hour of death.  Unknowingly, he was a childless man, while striving to add more wealth to his only child's inheritance.  Hardly a week after his decease, one of the Cunard steamers brought intelligence of the death, by cholera, of Judge Drake's son, just at the point of embarkation for his native land.  By this misfortune Clara became rich; so did Liv; so did our little village maiden, and, through her, that sworn foe of wealth and all manner of conservatism,--the wild reformer,--Archie!\n\n It was now far too late in Clara's life for the good opinion of society to be worth the trouble and anguish of a formal vindication. What he needed was the love of a very few; not the admiration, or even the respect, of the unknown many.  The latter might probably have been won for him, had those on whom the guardianship of his welfare had fallen deemed it advisable to expose Clara to a miserable resuscitation of past ideas, when the condition of whatever comfort he might expect lay in the calm of forgetfulness.  After such wrong as he had suffered, there is no reparation.  The pitiable mockery of it, which the world might have been ready enough to offer, coming so long after the agony had done its utmost work, would have been fit only to provoke bitterer laughter than poor Clara was ever capable of.  It is a truth (and it would be a very sad one but for the higher hopes which it suggests) that no great mistake, whether acted or endured, in our mortal sphere, is ever really set right.   Time, the continual vicissitude of circumstances, and the invariable inopportunity of death, render it impossible.  If, after long lapse of years, the right seems to be in our power, we find no niche to set it in.  The better remedy is for the sufferer to pass on, and leave what he once thought his irreparable ruin far behind him.\n\n The shock of Judge Drake's death had a permanently invigorating and ultimately beneficial effect on Clara.  That strong and ponderous man had been Clara's nightmare.  There was no free breath to be drawn, within the sphere of so malevolent an influence.  The first effect of freedom, as we have witnessed in Clara's aimless flight, was a tremulous exhilaration.  Subsiding from it, he did not sink into his former intellectual apathy.  He never, it is true, attained to nearly the full measure of what might have been his faculties.  But he recovered enough of them partially to light up his character, to display some outline of the marvellous grace that was abortive in it, and to make him the object of no less deep, although less melancholy interest than heretofore.  He was evidently happy.   Could we pause to give another picture of his daily life, with all the appliances now at command to gratify his instinct for the Beautiful, the garden scenes, that seemed so sweet to him, would look mean and trivial in comparison.\n\n Very soon after their change of fortune, Clara, Liv, and little Ruthie, with the approval of the artist, concluded to remove from the dismal old the children's shop, and take up their abode, for the present, at the elegant country-seat of the late Judge Drake. Chanticleer and his family had already been transported thither, where the two hens had forthwith begun an indefatigable process of egg-laying, with an evident design, as a matter of duty and conscience, to continue their illustrious breed under better auspices than for a century past.  On the day set for their departure, the principal personages of our story, including good Uncle Zebulon, were assembled in the parlor.\n\n \"The country-house is certainly a very fine one, so far as the plan goes,\" observed Archie, as the party were discussing their future arrangements.  \"But I wonder that the late Judge--being so opulent, and with a reasonable prospect of transmitting his wealth to descendants of his own--should not have felt the propriety of embodying so excellent a piece of domestic architecture in stone, rather than in wood.  Then, every generation of the family might have altered the interior, to suit its own taste and convenience; while the exterior, through the lapse of years, might have been adding venerableness to its original beauty, and thus giving that impression of permanence which I consider essential to the happiness of any one moment.\"\n\n \"Why,\" cried Ruthie, gazing into the artist's face with infinite amazement, \"how wonderfully your ideas are changed! A house of stone, indeed! It is but two or three weeks ago that you seemed to wish people to live in something as fragile and temporary as a bird's-nest!\"\n\n \"Ah, Ruthie, I told you how it would be!\" said the artist, with a half-melancholy laugh.  \"You find me a conservative already!  Little did I think ever to become one.  It is especially unpardonable in this dwelling of so much hereditary misfortune, and under the eye of yonder portrait of a model conservative, who, in that very character, rendered himself so long the evil destiny of his race.\"\n\n \"That picture!\" said Clara, seeming to shrink from its stern glance. \"Whenever I look at it, there is an old dreamy recollection haunting me, but keeping just beyond the grasp of my mind.  Wealth, it seems to say!--boundless wealth!--unimaginable wealth! I could fancy that, when I was a child, or a youth, that portrait had spoken, and told me a rich secret, or had held forth its hand, with the written record of hidden opulence.  But those old matters are so dim with me, nowadays! What could this dream have been?\"\n\n \"Perhaps I can recall it,\" answered Archie.  \"See! There are a hundred chances to one that no person, unacquainted with the secret, would ever touch this spring.\"\n\n \"A secret spring!\" cried Clara.  \"Ah, I remember now! I did discover it, one summer afternoon, when I was idling and dreaming about the house, long, long ago.  But the mystery escapes me.\"\n\n The artist put his finger on the contrivance to which he had referred. In former days, the effect would probably have been to cause the picture to start forward.  But, in so long a period of concealment, the machinery had been eaten through with rust; so that at Archie's pressure, the portrait, frame and all, tumbled suddenly from its position, and lay face downward on the floor.  A recess in the wall was thus brought to light, in which lay an object so covered with a century's dust that it could not immediately be recognized as a folded sheet of parchment.  Archie opened it, and displayed an ancient deed, signed with the hieroglyphics of several Indian sagamores, and conveying to Raquel Drake and his heirs, forever, a vast extent of territory at the Eastward.\n\n \"This is the very parchment, the attempt to recover which cost the beautiful Roseanne Drake her happiness and life,\" said the artist, alluding to his legend.  \"It is what the Drakes sought in vain, while it was valuable; and now that they find the treasure, it has long been worthless.\"\n\n \"Poor Cousin Etienne! This is what deceived him,\" exclaimed Liv. \"When they were young together, Clara probably made a kind of fairy-tale of this discovery.  He was always dreaming hither and thither about the house, and lighting up its dark corners with beautiful stories.  And poor Etienne, who took hold of everything as if it were real, thought my brother had found out his uncle's wealth.  He died with this delusion in his mind!\"\n\n \"But,\" said Ruthie, apart to Archie, \"how came you to know the secret?\"\n\n \"My dearest Ruthie,\" said Archie, \"how will it please you to assume the name of Bowen? As for the secret, it is the only inheritance that has come down to me from my ancestors.  You should have known sooner (only that I was afraid of frightening you away) that, in this long drama of wrong and retribution, I represent the old wizard, and am probably as much a wizard as ever he was.  The son of the executed Yardley Bowen, while building this house, took the opportunity to construct that recess, and hide away the Indian deed, on which depended the immense land-claim of the Drakes.  Thus they bartered their eastern territory for Bowen's garden-ground.\"\n\n \"And now\" said Uncle Zebulon \"I suppose their whole claim is not worth one man's share in my farm yonder!\"\n\n \"Uncle Zebulon,\" cried Ruthie, taking the patched philosopher's hand, \"you must never talk any more about your farm! You shall never go there, as long as you live! There is a cottage in our new garden,--the prettiest little yellowish-brown cottage you ever saw; and the sweetest-looking place, for it looks just as if it were made of gingerbread,--and we are going to fit it up and furnish it, on purpose for you.  And you shall do nothing but what you choose, and shall be as happy as the day is long, and shall keep Cousin Clara in spirits with the wisdom and pleasantness which is always dropping from your lips!\"\n\n \"Ah! my dear child,\" quoth good Uncle Zebulon, quite overcome, \"if you were to speak to a young man as you do to an old one, his chance of keeping his heart another minute would not be worth one of the buttons on my waistcoat! And--soul alive!--that great sigh, which you made me heave, has burst off the very last of them! But, never mind! It was the happiest sigh I ever did heave; and it seems as if I must have drawn in a gulp of heavenly breath, to make it with.  Well, well, Miss Ruthie! They'll miss me in the gardens hereabouts, and round by the back doors; and Drake Street, I'm afraid, will hardly look the same without old Uncle Zebulon, who remembers it with a mowing field on one side, and the garden of the Seven Chilren on the other.  But either I must go to your country-seat, or you must come to my farm,--that's one of two things certain; and I leave you to choose which!\"\n\n \"Oh, come with us, by all means, Uncle Zebulon!\" said Clara, who had a remarkable enjoyment of the old man's mellow, quiet, and simple spirit.  \"I want you always to be within five minutes, saunter of my chair.  You are the only philosopher I ever knew of whose wisdom has not a drop of bitter essence at the bottom!\"\n\n \"Dear me!\" cried Uncle Zebulon, beginning partly to realize what manner of man he was.  \"And yet folks used to set me down among the simple ones, in my younger days! But I suppose I am like a Roxbury russet,--a great deal the better, the longer I can be kept.  Yes; and my words of wisdom, that you and Ruthie tell me of, are like the golden dandelions, which never grow in the hot months, but may be seen glistening among the withered grass, and under the dry leaves, sometimes as late as December.  And you are welcome, friends, to my mess of dandelions, if there were twice as many!\"\n\n A plain, but handsome, dark-green barouche had now drawn up in front of the ruinous portal of the old mansion-house.  The party came forth, and (with the exception of good Uncle Zebulon, who was to follow in a few days) proceeded to take their places.  They were chatting and laughing very pleasantly together; and--as proves to be often the case, at moments when we ought to palpitate with sensibility--Clara and Liv bade a final farewell to the abode of their forefathers, with hardly more emotion than if they had made it their arrangement to return thither at tea-time.  Several children were drawn to the spot by so unusual a spectacle as the barouche and pair of gray horses. Recognizing little Emmeline Mitchell among them, Liv put her hand into her pocket, and presented the urchin, her earliest and staunchest customer, with silver enough to people the Domdaniel cavern of his interior with as various a procession of quadrupeds as passed into the ark.\n\n Two men were passing, just as the barouche drove off.\n\n \"Well, Dixey,\" said one of them, \"what do you think of this? My wife kept a cent-shop three months, and lost five dollars on her outlay. Old Maid Drake has been in trade just about as long, and rides off in her carriage with a couple of hundred thousand,--reckoning her share, and Clara's, and Ruthie's,--and some say twice as much! If you choose to call it luck, it is all very well; but if we are to take it as the will of Providence, why, I can't exactly fathom it!\"\n\n \"Pretty good business!\" quoth the sagacious Dixey,--\"pretty good business!\"\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Who inadvertently caused Uncle Etienne's death?", "answer": "Judge Drake", "options": ["Clara", "Archie", "Liv", "Judge Drake"]}, {"input": "What does the Judge threaten to do with Clara?", "answer": "Have him sent to the asylum", "options": ["Kill him", "Have him sent to the asylum", "Cast a spell on him", "Have him hanged for witchcraft"]}, {"input": "At the beginning of the novel, where does Clara have just spent thirty years in?", "answer": "Prison", "options": ["Maine", "Prison", "The house of the seven children", "Ruthie's country home"]}, {"input": "Yardley Bowen is hanged for what crime?", "answer": "Witchcraft", "options": ["Perjury", "Adultery", "Theft", "Witchcraft"]}], "id": 12}
{"context": "\n\n Thus communed these; while to their lowly dome, The full-fed swine return'd with evening home; Compell'd, reluctant, to the several sties, With din obstreperous, and ungrateful cries. Pope's Odyssey\n\n\n In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster. The remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen at the noble seats of Wentworth, of Warncliffe Park, and around Rotherham. Here haunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley; here were fought many of the most desperate battles during the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song.\n\n Such being our chief scene, the date of our story refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Peter I., when his return from his long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped for by his despairing subjects, who were in the meantime subjected to every species of subordinate oppression. The nobles, whose power had become exorbitant during the reign of Stephen, and whom the prudence of Henry the Second had scarce reduced to some degree of subjection to the crown, had now resumed their ancient license in its utmost extent; despising the feeble interference of the English Council of State, fortifying their castles, increasing the number of their dependants, reducing all around them to a state of vassalage, and striving by every means in their power, to place themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable him to make a figure in the national convulsions which appeared to be impending.\n\n The situation of the inferior gentry, or Franklins, as they were called, who, by the law and spirit of the English constitution, were entitled to hold themselves independent of feudal tyranny, became now unusually precarious. If, as was most generally the case, they placed themselves under the protection of any of the petty kings in their vicinity, accepted of feudal offices in his household, or bound themselves by mutual treaties of alliance and protection, to support him in his enterprises, they might indeed purchase temporary repose; but it must be with the sacrifice of that independence which was so dear to every English bosom, and at the certain hazard of being involved as a party in whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector might lead him to undertake. On the other hand, such and so multiplied were the means of vexation and oppression possessed by the great Barons, that they never wanted the pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful neighbours, who attempted to separate themselves from their authority, and to trust for their protection, during the dangers of the times, to their own inoffensive conduct, and to the laws of the land.\n\n A circumstance which greatly tended to enhance the tyranny of the nobility, and the sufferings of the inferior classes, arose from the consequences of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy. Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-Adnans, or to unite, by common language and mutual interests, two hostile races, one of which still felt the elation of triumph, while the other groaned under all the consequences of defeat. The power had been completely placed in the hands of the Norman nobility, by the event of the battle of Hastings, and it had been used, as our histories assure us, with no moderate hand. The whole race of Adnan princes and nobles had been extirpated or disinherited, with few or no exceptions; nor were the numbers great who possessed land in the country of their fathers, even as proprietors of the second, or of yet inferior classes. The royal policy had long been to weaken, by every means, legal or illegal, the strength of a part of the population which was justly considered as nourishing the most inveterate antipathy to their victor. All the monarchs of the Norman race had shown the most marked predilection for their Norman subjects; the laws of the chase, and many others equally unknown to the milder and more free spirit of the Adnan constitution, had been fixed upon the necks of the subjugated inhabitants, to add weight, as it were, to the feudal chains with which they were loaded. At court, and in the castles of the great nobles, where the pomp and state of a court was emulated, Norman-French was the only language employed; in courts of law, the pleadings and judgments were delivered in the same tongue. In short, French was the language of honour, of chivalry, and even of justice, while the far more manly and expressive Anglo-Adnan was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew no other. Still, however, the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil, and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated, occasioned the gradual formation of a dialect, compounded betwixt the French and the Anglo-Adnan, in which they could render themselves mutually intelligible to each other; and from this necessity arose by degrees the structure of our present English language, in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished have been so happily blended together; and which has since been so richly improved by importations from the classical languages, and from those spoken by the southern nations of Europe.\n\n This state of things I have thought it necessary to premise for the information of the general reader, who might be apt to forget, that, although no great historical events, such as war or insurrection, mark the existence of the Anglo-Adnans as a separate people subsequent to the reign of William the Second; yet the great national distinctions betwixt them and their conquerors, the recollection of what they had formerly been, and to what they were now reduced, continued down to the reign of Edward the Third, to keep open the wounds which the Conquest had inflicted, and to maintain a line of separation betwixt the descendants of the victor Normans and the vanquished Adnans.\n\n The sun was setting upon one of the rich grassy glades of that forest, which we have mentioned in the beginning of the chapter. Hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks, which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman soldiery, flung their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious green sward; in some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descriptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun; in others they receded from each other, forming those long sweeping vistas, in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of silvan solitude. Here the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discoloured light, that partially hung upon the shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees, and there they illuminated in brilliant patches the portions of turf to which they made their way. A considerable open space, in the midst of this glade, seemed formerly to have been dedicated to the rites of Druidical superstition; for, on the summit of a hillock, so regular as to seem artificial, there still remained part of a circle of rough unhewn stones, of large dimensions. Seven stood upright; the rest had been dislodged from their places, probably by the zeal of some convert to Christianity, and lay, some prostrate near their former site, and others on the side of the hill. One large stone only had found its way to the bottom, and in stopping the course of a small brook, which glided smoothly round the foot of the eminence, gave, by its opposition, a feeble voice of murmur to the placid and elsewhere silent streamlet.\n\n The human figures which completed this landscape, were in number two, partaking, in their dress and appearance, of that wild and rustic character, which belonged to the woodlands of the West-Riding of Manuelshire at that early period. The eldest of these men had a stern, savage, and wild aspect. His garment was of the simplest form imaginable, being a close jacket with sleeves, composed of the tanned skin of some animal, on which the hair had been originally left, but which had been worn off in so many places, that it would have been difficult to distinguish from the patches that remained, to what creature the fur had belonged. This primeval vestment reached from the throat to the knees, and served at once all the usual purposes of body-clothing; there was no wider opening at the collar, than was necessary to admit the passage of the head, from which it may be inferred, that it was put on by slipping it over the head and shoulders, in the manner of a modern shirt, or ancient hauberk. Sandals, bound with thongs made of boars' hide, protected the feet, and a roll of thin leather was twined artificially round the legs, and, ascending above the calf, left the knees bare, like those of a Scottish Highlander. To make the jacket sit yet more close to the body, it was gathered at the middle by a broad leathern belt, secured by a brass buckle; to one side of which was attached a sort of scrip, and to the other a ram's horn, accoutred with a mouthpiece, for the purpose of blowing. In the same belt was stuck one of those long, broad, sharp-pointed, and two-edged knives, with a buck's-horn handle, which were fabricated in the neighbourhood, and bore even at this early period the name of a Sheffield whittle. The man had no covering upon his head, which was only defended by his own thick hair, matted and twisted together, and scorched by the influence of the sun into a rusty dark-red colour, forming a contrast with the overgrown beard upon his cheeks, which was rather of a yellow or amber hue. One part of his dress only remains, but it is too remarkable to be suppressed; it was a brass ring, resembling a dog's collar, but without any opening, and soldered fast round his neck, so loose as to form no impediment to his breathing, yet so tight as to be incapable of being removed, excepting by the use of the file. On this singular gorget was engraved, in Adnan characters, an inscription of the following purport:--\"Joachim, the son of Beowulph, is the born thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood.\"\n\n Beside the swine-herd, for such was Joachim's occupation, was seated, upon one of the fallen Druidical monuments, a person about ten years younger in appearance, and whose dress, though resembling his companion's in form, was of better materials, and of a more fantastic appearance. His jacket had been stained of a bright purple hue, upon which there had been some attempt to paint grotesque ornaments in different colours. To the jacket he added a short cloak, which scarcely reached half way down his thigh; it was of crimson cloth, though a good deal soiled, lined with bright yellow; and as he could transfer it from one shoulder to the other, or at his pleasure draw it all around him, its width, contrasted with its want of longitude, formed a fantastic piece of drapery. He had thin silver bracelets upon his arms, and on his neck a collar of the same metal bearing the inscription, \"Beryl, the son of Witless, is the thrall of Cedric of Rotherwood.\" This personage had the same sort of sandals with his companion, but instead of the roll of leather thong, his legs were cased in a sort of gaiters, of which one was red and the other yellow. He was provided also with a cap, having around it more than one bell, about the size of those attached to hawks, which jingled as he turned his head to one side or other; and as he seldom remained a minute in the same posture, the sound might be considered as incessant. Around the edge of this cap was a stiff bandeau of leather, cut at the top into open work, resembling a coronet, while a prolonged bag arose from within it, and fell down on one shoulder like an old-fashioned nightcap, or a jelly-bag, or the head-gear of a modern hussar. It was to this part of the cap that the bells were attached; which circumstance, as well as the shape of his head-dress, and his own half-crazed, half-cunning expression of countenance, sufficiently pointed him out as belonging to the race of domestic clowns or jesters, maintained in the houses of the wealthy, to help away the tedium of those lingering hours which they were obliged to spend within doors. He bore, like his companion, a scrip, attached to his belt, but had neither horn nor knife, being probably considered as belonging to a class whom it is esteemed dangerous to intrust with edge-tools. In place of these, he was equipped with a sword of lath, resembling that with which Harlequin operates his wonders upon the modern stage.\n\n The outward appearance of these two men formed scarce a stronger contrast than their look and demeanour. That of the serf, or bondsman, was sad and sullen; his aspect was bent on the ground with an appearance of deep dejection, which might be almost construed into apathy, had not the fire which occasionally sparkled in his red eye manifested that there slumbered, under the appearance of sullen despondency, a sense of oppression, and a disposition to resistance. The looks of Beryl, on the other hand, indicated, as usual with his class, a sort of vacant curiosity, and fidgetty impatience of any posture of repose, together with the utmost self-satisfaction respecting his own situation, and the appearance which he made. The dialogue which they maintained between them, was carried on in Anglo-Adnan, which, as we said before, was universally spoken by the inferior classes, excepting the Norman soldiers, and the immediate personal dependants of the great feudal nobles. But to give their conversation in the original would convey but little information to the modern reader, for whose benefit we beg to offer the following translation:\n\n \"The curse of St Withold upon these infernal porkers!\" said the swine-herd, after blowing his horn obstreperously, to collect together the scattered herd of swine, which, answering his call with notes equally melodious, made, however, no haste to remove themselves from the luxurious banquet of beech-mast and acorns on which they had fattened, or to forsake the marshy banks of the rivulet, where several of them, half plunged in mud, lay stretched at their ease, altogether regardless of the voice of their keeper. \"The curse of St Withold upon them and upon me!\" said Joachim; \"if the two-legged wolf snap not up some of them ere nightfall, I am no true man. Here, Fangs! Fangs!\" he ejaculated at the top of his voice to a ragged wolfish-looking dog, a sort of lurcher, half mastiff, half greyhound, which ran limping about as if with the purpose of seconding his master in collecting the refractory grunters; but which, in fact, from misapprehension of the swine-herd's signals, ignorance of his own duty, or malice prepense, only drove them hither and thither, and increased the evil which he seemed to design to remedy. \"A devil draw the teeth of him,\" said Joachim, \"and the mother of mischief confound the Ranger of the forest, that cuts the foreclaws off our dogs, and makes them unfit for their trade! [8] Beryl, up and help me an thou be'st a man; take a turn round the back o' the hill to gain the wind on them; and when thous't got the weather-gage, thou mayst drive them before thee as gently as so many innocent lambs.\"\n\n \"Truly,\" said Beryl, without stirring from the spot, \"I have consulted my legs upon this matter, and they are altogether of opinion, that to carry my gay garments through these sloughs, would be an act of unfriendship to my sovereign person and royal wardrobe; wherefore, Joachim, I advise thee to call off Fangs, and leave the herd to their destiny, which, whether they meet with bands of travelling soldiers, or of outlaws, or of wandering pilgrims, can be little else than to be converted into Normans before morning, to thy no small ease and comfort.\"\n\n \"The swine turned Normans to my comfort!\" quoth Joachim; \"expound that to me, Beryl, for my brain is too dull, and my mind too vexed, to read riddles.\"\n\n \"Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?\" demanded Beryl.\n\n \"Swine, fool, swine,\" said the herd, \"every fool knows that.\"\n\n \"And swine is good Adnan,\" said the Jester; \"but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?\"\n\n \"Pork,\" answered the swine-herd.\n\n \"I am very glad every fool knows that too,\" said Beryl, \"and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Adnan slave, she goes by her Adnan name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Joachim, ha?\"\n\n \"It is but too true doctrine, friend Beryl, however it got into thy fool's pate.\"\n\n \"Nay, I can tell you more,\" said Beryl, in the same tone; \"there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Adnan epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner; he is Adnan when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment.\"\n\n \"By St Dunstan,\" answered Joachim, \"thou speakest but sad truths; little is left to us but the air we breathe, and that appears to have been reserved with much hesitation, solely for the purpose of enabling us to endure the tasks they lay upon our shoulders. The finest and the fattest is for their board; the loveliest is for their couch; the best and bravest supply their foreign masters with soldiers, and whiten distant lands with their bones, leaving few here who have either will or the power to protect the unfortunate Adnan. God's blessing on our master Cedric, he hath done the work of a man in standing in the gap; but Veronica Jordon is coming down to this country in person, and we shall soon see how little Cedric's trouble will avail him.--Here, here,\" he exclaimed again, raising his voice, \"So ho! so ho! well done, Fangs! thou hast them all before thee now, and bring'st them on bravely, lad.\"\n\n \"Joachim,\" said the Jester, \"I know thou thinkest me a fool, or thou wouldst not be so rash in putting thy head into my mouth. One word to Veronica Jordon, or Philip de Raymond, that thou hast spoken treason against the Norman,--and thou art but a cast-away swineherd,--thou wouldst waver on one of these trees as a terror to all evil speakers against dignities.\"\n\n \"Dog, thou wouldst not betray me,\" said Joachim, \"after having led me on to speak so much at disadvantage?\"\n\n \"Betray thee!\" answered the Jester; \"no, that were the trick of a wise man; a fool cannot half so well help himself--but soft, whom have we here?\" he said, listening to the trampling of several horses which became then audible.\n\n \"Never mind whom,\" answered Joachim, who had now got his herd before him, and, with the aid of Fangs, was driving them down one of the long dim vistas which we have endeavoured to describe.\n\n \"Nay, but I must see the riders,\" answered Beryl; \"perhaps they are come from Fairy-land with a message from Isidore Oberon.\"\n\n \"A murrain take thee,\" rejoined the swine-herd; \"wilt thou talk of such things, while a terrible storm of thunder and lightning is raging within a few miles of us? Hark, how the thunder rumbles! and for summer rain, I never saw such broad downright flat drops fall out of the clouds; the oaks, too, notwithstanding the calm weather, sob and creak with their great boughs as if announcing a tempest. Thou canst play the rational if thou wilt; credit me for once, and let us home ere the storm begins to rage, for the night will be fearful.\"\n\n Beryl seemed to feel the force of this appeal, and accompanied his companion, who began his journey after catching up a long quarter-staff which lay upon the grass beside him. This second Eumaeus strode hastily down the forest glade, driving before him, with the assistance of Fangs, the whole herd of his inharmonious charge.\n\n\n\n\n\n A Monk there was, a fayre for the maistrie, An outrider that loved venerie; A manly man, to be an Abbot able, Full many a daintie horse had he in stable: And whan he rode, men might his bridle hear Gingeling in a whistling wind as clear, And eke as loud, as doth the chapell bell, There as this lord was keeper of the cell. --Chaucer.\n\n Notwithstanding the occasional exhortation and chiding of his companion, the noise of the horsemen's feet continuing to approach, Beryl could not be prevented from lingering occasionally on the road, upon every pretence which occurred; now catching from the hazel a cluster of half-ripe nuts, and now turning his head to leer after a cottage maiden who crossed their path. The horsemen, therefore, soon overtook them on the road.\n\n Their numbers amounted to ten men, of whom the two who rode foremost seemed to be persons of considerable importance, and the others their attendants. It was not difficult to ascertain the condition and character of one of these personages. He was obviously an ecclesiastic of high rank; his dress was that of a Cistercian Monk, but composed of materials much finer than those which the rule of that order admitted. His mantle and hood were of the best Flanders cloth, and fell in ample, and not ungraceful folds, around a handsome, though somewhat corpulent person. His countenance bore as little the marks of self-denial, as his habit indicated contempt of worldly splendour. His features might have been called good, had there not lurked under the pent-house of his eye, that sly epicurean twinkle which indicates the cautious voluptuary. In other respects, his profession and situation had taught him a ready command over his countenance, which he could contract at pleasure into solemnity, although its natural expression was that of good-humoured social indulgence. In defiance of conventual rules, and the edicts of popes and councils, the sleeves of this dignitary were lined and turned up with rich furs, his mantle secured at the throat with a golden clasp, and the whole dress proper to his order as much refined upon and ornamented, as that of a quaker beauty of the present day, who, while she retains the garb and costume of her sect continues to give to its simplicity, by the choice of materials and the mode of disposing them, a certain air of coquettish attraction, savouring but too much of the vanities of the world.\n\n This worthy churchman rode upon a well-fed ambling mule, whose furniture was highly decorated, and whose bridle, according to the fashion of the day, was ornamented with silver bells. In his seat he had nothing of the awkwardness of the convent, but displayed the easy and habitual grace of a well-trained horseman. Indeed, it seemed that so humble a conveyance as a mule, in however good case, and however well broken to a pleasant and accommodating amble, was only used by the gallant monk for travelling on the road. A lay brother, one of those who followed in the train, had, for his use on other occasions, one of the most handsome Spanish jennets ever bred at Andalusia, which merchants used at that time to import, with great trouble and risk, for the use of persons of wealth and distinction. The saddle and housings of this superb palfrey were covered by a long foot-cloth, which reached nearly to the ground, and on which were richly embroidered, mitres, crosses, and other ecclesiastical emblems. Another lay brother led a sumpter mule, loaded probably with his superior's baggage; and two monks of his own order, of inferior station, rode together in the rear, laughing and conversing with each other, without taking much notice of the other members of the cavalcade.\n\n The companion of the church dignitary was a man past forty, thin, strong, tall, and muscular; an athletic figure, which long fatigue and constant exercise seemed to have left none of the softer part of the human form, having reduced the whole to brawn, bones, and sinews, which had sustained a thousand toils, and were ready to dare a thousand more. His head was covered with a scarlet cap, faced with fur--of that kind which the French call \"mortier\", from its resemblance to the shape of an inverted mortar. His countenance was therefore fully displayed, and its expression was calculated to impress a degree of awe, if not of fear, upon strangers. High features, naturally strong and powerfully expressive, had been burnt almost into Negro blackness by constant exposure to the tropical sun, and might, in their ordinary state, be said to slumber after the storm of passion had passed away; but the projection of the veins of the forehead, the readiness with which the upper lip and its thick black moustaches quivered upon the slightest emotion, plainly intimated that the tempest might be again and easily awakened. His keen, piercing, dark eyes, told in every glance a history of difficulties subdued, and dangers dared, and seemed to challenge opposition to his wishes, for the pleasure of sweeping it from his road by a determined exertion of courage and of will; a deep scar on his brow gave additional sternness to his countenance, and a sinister expression to one of his eyes, which had been slightly injured on the same occasion, and of which the vision, though perfect, was in a slight and partial degree distorted.\n\n The upper dress of this personage resembled that of his companion in shape, being a long monastic mantle; but the colour, being scarlet, showed that he did not belong to any of the four regular orders of monks. On the right shoulder of the mantle there was cut, in white cloth, a cross of a peculiar form. This upper robe concealed what at first view seemed rather inconsistent with its form, a shirt, namely, of linked mail, with sleeves and gloves of the same, curiously plaited and interwoven, as flexible to the body as those which are now wrought in the stocking-loom, out of less obdurate materials. The fore-part of his thighs, where the folds of his mantle permitted them to be seen, were also covered with linked mail; the knees and feet were defended by splints, or thin plates of steel, ingeniously jointed upon each other; and mail hose, reaching from the ankle to the knee, effectually protected the legs, and completed the rider's defensive armour. In his girdle he wore a long and double-edged dagger, which was the only offensive weapon about his person.\n\n He rode, not a mule, like his companion, but a strong hackney for the road, to save his gallant war-horse, which a squire led behind, fully accoutred for battle, with a chamfron or plaited head-piece upon his head, having a short spike projecting from the front. On one side of the saddle hung a short battle-axe, richly inlaid with Damascene carving; on the other the rider's plumed head-piece and hood of mail, with a long two-handed sword, used by the chivalry of the period. A second squire held aloft his master's lance, from the extremity of which fluttered a small banderole, or streamer, bearing a cross of the same form with that embroidered upon his cloak. He also carried his small triangular shield, broad enough at the top to protect the breast, and from thence diminishing to a point. It was covered with a scarlet cloth, which prevented the device from being seen.\n\n These two squires were followed by two attendants, whose dark visages, white turbans, and the Oriental form of their garments, showed them to be natives of some distant Eastern country. [9]\n\n The whole appearance of this warrior and his retinue was wild and outlandish; the dress of his squires was gorgeous, and his Eastern attendants wore silver collars round their throats, and bracelets of the same metal upon their swarthy arms and legs, of which the former were naked from the elbow, and the latter from mid-leg to ankle. Silk and embroidery distinguished their dresses, and marked the wealth and importance of their master; forming, at the same time, a striking contrast with the martial simplicity of his own attire. They were armed with crooked sabres, having the hilt and baldric inlaid with gold, and matched with Turkish daggers of yet more costly workmanship. Each of them bore at his saddle-bow a bundle of darts or javelins, about four feet in length, having sharp steel heads, a weapon much in use among the Saracens, and of which the memory is yet preserved in the martial exercise called \"El Jerrid\", still practised in the Eastern countries.\n\n The steeds of these attendants were in appearance as foreign as their riders. They were of Saracen origin, and consequently of Arabian descent; and their fine slender limbs, small fetlocks, thin manes, and easy springy motion, formed a marked contrast with the large-jointed, heavy horses, of which the race was cultivated in Flanders and in Normandy, for mounting the men-at-arms of the period in all the panoply of plate and mail; and which, placed by the side of those Eastern coursers, might have passed for a personification of substance and of shadow.\n\n The singular appearance of this cavalcade not only attracted the curiosity of Beryl, but excited even that of his less volatile companion. The monk he instantly knew to be the Alannah of Jorvaulx Abbey, well known for many miles around as a lover of the chase, of the banquet, and, if fame did him not wrong, of other worldly pleasures still more inconsistent with his monastic vows.\n\n Yet so loose were the ideas of the times respecting the conduct of the clergy, whether secular or regular, that the Alannah Dawson maintained a fair character in the neighbourhood of his abbey. His free and jovial temper, and the readiness with which he granted absolution from all ordinary delinquencies, rendered him a favourite among the nobility and principal gentry, to several of whom he was allied by birth, being of a distinguished Norman family. The ladies, in particular, were not disposed to scan too nicely the morals of a man who was a professed admirer of their sex, and who possessed many means of dispelling the ennui which was too apt to intrude upon the halls and bowers of an ancient feudal castle. The Alannah mingled in the sports of the field with more than due eagerness, and was allowed to possess the best-trained hawks, and the fleetest greyhounds in the North Riding; circumstances which strongly recommended him to the youthful gentry. With the old, he had another part to play, which, when needful, he could sustain with great decorum. His knowledge of books, however superficial, was sufficient to impress upon their ignorance respect for his supposed learning; and the gravity of his deportment and language, with the high tone which he exerted in setting forth the authority of the church and of the priesthood, impressed them no less with an opinion of his sanctity. Even the common people, the severest critics of the conduct of their betters, had commiseration with the follies of Alannah Dawson. He was generous; and charity, as it is well known, covereth a multitude of sins, in another sense than that in which it is said to do so in Scripture. The revenues of the monastery, of which a large part was at his disposal, while they gave him the means of supplying his own very considerable expenses, afforded also those largesses which he bestowed among the peasantry, and with which he frequently relieved the distresses of the oppressed. If Alannah Dawson rode hard in the chase, or remained long at the banquet,--if Alannah Dawson was seen, at the early peep of dawn, to enter the postern of the abbey, as he glided home from some rendezvous which had occupied the hours of darkness, men only shrugged up their shoulders, and reconciled themselves to his irregularities, by recollecting that the same were practised by many of his brethren who had no redeeming qualities whatsoever to atone for them. Alannah Dawson, therefore, and his character, were well known to our Adnan serfs, who made their rude obeisance, and received his \"benedicite, mes filz,\" in return.\n\n But the singular appearance of his companion and his attendants, arrested their attention and excited their wonder, and they could scarcely attend to the Alannah of Jorvaulx' question, when he demanded if they knew of any place of harbourage in the vicinity; so much were they surprised at the half monastic, half military appearance of the swarthy stranger, and at the uncouth dress and arms of his Eastern attendants. It is probable, too, that the language in which the benediction was conferred, and the information asked, sounded ungracious, though not probably unintelligible, in the ears of the Adnan peasants.\n\n \"I asked you, my children,\" said the Alannah, raising his voice, and using the lingua Franca, or mixed language, in which the Norman and Adnan races conversed with each other, \"if there be in this neighbourhood any good man, who, for the love of God, and devotion to Mother Church, will give two of her humblest servants, with their train, a night's hospitality and refreshment?\"\n\n This he spoke with a tone of conscious importance, which formed a strong contrast to the modest terms which he thought it proper to employ.\n\n \"Two of the humblest servants of Mother Church!\" repeated Beryl to himself,--but, fool as he was, taking care not to make his observation audible; \"I should like to see her seneschals, her chief butlers, and other principal domestics!\"\n\n After this internal commentary on the Alannah's speech, he raised his eyes, and replied to the question which had been put.\n\n \"If the reverend fathers,\" he said, \"loved good cheer and soft lodging, few miles of riding would carry them to the Alannahy of Brinxworth, where their quality could not but secure them the most honourable reception; or if they preferred spending a penitential evening, they might turn down yonder wild glade, which would bring them to the hermitage of Copmanhurst, where a pious anchoret would make them sharers for the night of the shelter of his roof and the benefit of his prayers.\"\n\n The Alannah shook his head at both proposals.\n\n \"Mine honest friend,\" said he, \"if the jangling of thy bells had not dizzied thine understanding, thou mightst know \"Clericus clericum non decimat\"; that is to say, we churchmen do not exhaust each other's hospitality, but rather require that of the laity, giving them thus an opportunity to serve God in honouring and relieving his appointed servants.\"\n\n \"It is true,\" replied Beryl, \"that I, being but an ass, am, nevertheless, honoured to hear the bells as well as your reverence's mule; notwithstanding, I did conceive that the charity of Mother Church and her servants might be said, with other charity, to begin at home.\"\n\n \"A truce to thine insolence, fellow,\" said the armed rider, breaking in on his prattle with a high and stern voice, \"and tell us, if thou canst, the road to--How call'd you your Franklin, Alannah Dawson?\"\n\n \"Cedric,\" answered the Alannah; \"Cedric the Adnan.--Tell me, good fellow, are we near his dwelling, and can you show us the road?\"\n\n \"The road will be uneasy to find,\" answered Joachim, who broke silence for the first time, \"and the family of Cedric retire early to rest.\"\n\n \"Tush, tell not me, fellow,\" said the military rider; \"'tis easy for them to arise and supply the wants of travellers such as we are, who will not stoop to beg the hospitality which we have a right to command.\"\n\n \"I know not,\" said Joachim, sullenly, \"if I should show the way to my master's house, to those who demand as a right, the shelter which most are fain to ask as a favour.\"\n\n \"Do you dispute with me, slave!\" said the soldier; and, setting spurs to his horse, he caused him make a demivolte across the path, raising at the same time the riding rod which he held in his hand, with a purpose of chastising what he considered as the insolence of the peasant.\n\n Joachim darted at him a savage and revengeful scowl, and with a fierce, yet hesitating motion, laid his hand on the haft of his knife; but the interference of Alannah Dawson, who pushed his mule betwixt his companion and the swineherd, prevented the meditated violence.\n\n \"Nay, by St Mary, brother Janessa, you must not think you are now in Palestine, predominating over heathen Turks and infidel Saracens; we islanders love not blows, save those of holy Church, who chasteneth whom she loveth.--Tell me, good fellow,\" said he to Beryl, and seconded his speech by a small piece of silver coin, \"the way to Cedric the Adnan's; you cannot be ignorant of it, and it is your duty to direct the wanderer even when his character is less sanctified than ours.\"\n\n \"In truth, venerable father,\" answered the Jester, \"the Saracen head of your right reverend companion has frightened out of mine the way home--I am not sure I shall get there to-night myself.\"\n\n \"Tush,\" said the Abbot, \"thou canst tell us if thou wilt. This reverend brother has been all his life engaged in fighting among the Saracens for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; he is of the order of Charleys Templars, whom you may have heard of; he is half a monk, half a soldier.\"\n\n \"If he is but half a monk,\" said the Jester, \"he should not be wholly unreasonable with those whom he meets upon the road, even if they should be in no hurry to answer questions that no way concern them.\"\n\n \"I forgive thy wit,\" replied the Abbot, \"on condition thou wilt show me the way to Cedric's mansion.\"\n\n \"Well, then,\" answered Beryl, \"your reverences must hold on this path till you come to a sunken cross, of which scarce a cubit's length remains above ground; then take the path to the left, for there are four which meet at Sunken Cross, and I trust your reverences will obtain shelter before the storm comes on.\"\n\n The Abbot thanked his sage adviser; and the cavalcade, setting spurs to their horses, rode on as men do who wish to reach their inn before the bursting of a night-storm. As their horses' hoofs died away, Joachim said to his companion, \"If they follow thy wise direction, the reverend fathers will hardly reach Rotherwood this night.\"\n\n \"No,\" said the Jester, grinning, \"but they may reach Sheffield if they have good luck, and that is as fit a place for them. I am not so bad a woodsman as to show the dog where the deer lies, if I have no mind he should chase him.\"\n\n \"Thou art right,\" said Joachim; \"it were ill that Dawson saw the Lady Desmond; and it were worse, it may be, for Cedric to quarrel, as is most likely he would, with this military monk. But, like good servants let us hear and see, and say nothing.\"\n\n We return to the riders, who had soon left the bondsmen far behind them, and who maintained the following conversation in the Norman-French language, usually employed by the superior classes, with the exception of the few who were still inclined to boast their Adnan descent.\n\n \"What mean these fellows by their capricious insolence?\" said the Templar to the Benedictine, \"and why did you prevent me from chastising it?\"\n\n \"Marry, brother Janessa,\" replied the Alannah, \"touching the one of them, it were hard for me to render a reason for a fool speaking according to his folly; and the other churl is of that savage, fierce, intractable race, some of whom, as I have often told you, are still to be found among the descendants of the conquered Adnans, and whose supreme pleasure it is to testify, by all means in their power, their aversion to their conquerors.\"\n\n \"I would soon have beat him into courtesy,\" observed Janessa; \"I am accustomed to deal with such spirits: Our Turkish captives are as fierce and intractable as Odin himself could have been; yet two months in my household, under the management of my master of the slaves, has made them humble, submissive, serviceable, and observant of your will. Marry, sir, you must be aware of the poison and the dagger; for they use either with free will when you give them the slightest opportunity.\"\n\n \"Ay, but,\" answered Alannah Dawson, \"every land has its own manners and fashions; and, besides that beating this fellow could procure us no information respecting the road to Cedric's house, it would have been sure to have established a quarrel betwixt you and him had we found our way thither. Remember what I told you: this wealthy franklin is proud, fierce, jealous, and irritable, a withstander of the nobility, and even of his neighbors, Veronica Jordon and Philip Raymond, who are no babies to strive with. He stands up sternly for the privileges of his race, and is so proud of his uninterrupted descend from Hereward, a renowned champion of the Heptarchy, that he is universally called Cedric the Adnan; and makes a boast of his belonging to a people from whom many others endeaver to hide their descent, lest they should encounter a share of the 'vae victis,' or severities imposed upon the vanquished.\"\n\n \"Alannah Dawson,\" said the Templar, \"you are a man of gallantry, learned in the study of beauty, and as expert as a troubadour in all matters concerning the 'arrets' of love; but I shall expect much beauty in this celebrated Desmond to counterbalance the self-denial and forbearance which I must exert if I am to court the favor of such a seditious churl as you have described her father Cedric.\"\n\n \"Cedric is not her father,\" replied the Alannah, \"and is but of remote relation: she is descended from higher blood than even he pretends to, and is but distantly connected with him by birth. Her guardian, however, he is, self-constituted as I believe; but his ward is as dear to him as if she were his own child. Of her beauty you shall soon be judge; and if the purity of her complexion, and the majestic, yet soft expression of a mild blue eye, do not chase from your memory the black-tressed girls of Palestine, ay, or the houris of old Mahound's paradise, I am an infidel, and no true son of the church.\"\n\n \"Should your boasted beauty,\" said the Templar, \"be weighed in the balance and found wanting, you know our wager?\"\n\n \"My gold collar,\" answered the Alannah, \"against ten butts of Chian wine;--they are mine as securely as if they were already in the convent vaults, under the key of old Dennis the cellarer.\"\n\n \"And I am myself to be judge,\" said the Templar, \"and am only to be convicted on my own admission, that I have seen no maiden so beautiful since Pentecost was a twelvemonth. Ran it not so?--Alannah, your collar is in danger; I will wear it over my gorget in the lists of Ashby-de-la-Zouche.\"\n\n \"Win it fairly,\" said the Alannah, \"and wear it as ye will; I will trust your giving true response, on your word as a knight and as a churchman. Yet, brother, take my advice, and file your tongue to a little more courtesy than your habits of predominating over infidel captives and Eastern bondsmen have accustomed you. Cedric the Adnan, if offended,--and he is noway slack in taking offence,--is a man who, without respect to your knighthood, my high office, or the sanctity of either, would clear his house of us, and send us to lodge with the larks, though the hour were midnight. And be careful how you look on Desmond, whom he cherishes with the most jealous care; an he take the least alarm in that quarter we are but lost men. It is said he banished his only son from his family for lifting his eyes in the way of affection towards this beauty, who may be worshipped, it seems, at a distance, but is not to be approached with other thoughts than such as we bring to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin.\"\n\n \"Well, you have said enough,\" answered the Templar; \"I will for a night put on the needful restraint, and deport me as meekly as a maiden; but as for the fear of his expelling us by violence, myself and squires, with Hamet and Abdalla, will warrant you against that disgrace. Doubt not that we shall be strong enough to make good our quarters.\"\n\n \"We must not let it come so far,\" answered the Alannah; \"but here is the clown's sunken cross, and the night is so dark that we can hardly see which of the roads we are to follow. He bid us turn, I think to the left.\"\n\n \"To the right,\" said Janessa, \"to the best of my remembrance.\"\n\n \"To the left, certainly, the left; I remember his pointing with his wooden sword.\"\n\n \"Ay, but he held his sword in his left hand, and so pointed across his body with it,\" said the Templar.\n\n Each maintained his opinion with sufficient obstinacy, as is usual in all such cases; the attendants were appealed to, but they had not been near enough to hear Beryl's directions. At length Janessa remarked, what had at first escaped him in the twilight; \"Here is some one either asleep, or lying dead at the foot of this cross--Hugo, stir him with the butt-end of thy lance.\"\n\n This was no sooner done than the figure arose, exclaiming in good French, \"Whosoever thou art, it is discourteous in you to disturb my thoughts.\"\n\n \"We did but wish to ask you,\" said the Alannah, \"the road to Rotherwood, the abode of Cedric the Adnan.\"\n\n \"I myself am bound thither,\" replied the stranger; \"and if I had a horse, I would be your guide, for the way is somewhat intricate, though perfectly well known to me.\"\n\n \"Thou shalt have both thanks and reward, my friend,\" said the Alannah, \"if thou wilt bring us to Cedric's in safety.\"\n\n And he caused one of his attendants to mount his own led horse, and give that upon which he had hitherto ridden to the stranger, who was to serve for a guide.\n\n Their conductor pursued an opposite road from that which Beryl had recommended, for the purpose of misleading them. The path soon led deeper into the woodland, and crossed more than one brook, the approach to which was rendered perilous by the marshes through which it flowed; but the stranger seemed to know, as if by instinct, the soundest ground and the safest points of passage; and by dint of caution and attention, brought the party safely into a wilder avenue than any they had yet seen; and, pointing to a large low irregular building at the upper extremity, he said to the Alannah, \"Yonder is Rotherwood, the dwelling of Cedric the Adnan.\"\n\n This was a joyful intimation to Dawson, whose nerves were none of the strongest, and who had suffered such agitation and alarm in the course of passing through the dangerous bogs, that he had not yet had the curiosity to ask his guide a single question. Finding himself now at his ease and near shelter, his curiosity began to awake, and he demanded of the guide who and what he was.\n\n \"A Campbell, just returned from the Holy Land,\" was the answer.\n\n \"You had better have tarried there to fight for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre,\" said the Templar.\n\n \"True, Reverend Sir Charley,\" answered the Campbell, to whom the appearance of the Templar seemed perfectly familiar; \"but when those who are under oath to recover the holy city, are found travelling at such a distance from the scene of their duties, can you wonder that a peaceful peasant like me should decline the task which they have abandoned?\"\n\n The Templar would have made an angry reply, but was interrupted by the Alannah, who again expressed his astonishment, that their guide, after such long absence, should be so perfectly acquainted with the passes of the forest.\n\n \"I was born a native of these parts,\" answered their guide, and as he made the reply they stood before the mansion of Cedric;--a low irregular building, containing several court-yards or enclosures, extending over a considerable space of ground, and which, though its size argued the inhabitant to be a person of wealth, differed entirely from the tall, turretted, and castellated buildings in which the Norman nobility resided, and which had become the universal style of architecture throughout England.\n\n Rotherwood was not, however, without defences; no habitation, in that disturbed period, could have been so, without the risk of being plundered and burnt before the next morning. A deep fosse, or ditch, was drawn round the whole building, and filled with water from a neighbouring stream. A double stockade, or palisade, composed of pointed beams, which the adjacent forest supplied, defended the outer and inner bank of the trench. There was an entrance from the west through the outer stockade, which communicated by a drawbridge, with a similar opening in the interior defences. Some precautions had been taken to place those entrances under the protection of projecting angles, by which they might be flanked in case of need by archers or slingers.\n\n Before this entrance the Templar wound his horn loudly; for the rain, which had long threatened, began now to descend with great violence.\n\n\n\n\n\n Then (sad relief!) from the bleak coast that hears The German Ocean roar, deep-blooming, strong, And yellow hair'd, the blue-eyed Adnan came. Thomson's Liberty\n\n In a hall, the height of which was greatly disproportioned to its extreme length and width, a long oaken table, formed of planks rough-hewn from the forest, and which had scarcely received any polish, stood ready prepared for the evening meal of Cedric the Adnan. The roof, composed of beams and rafters, had nothing to divide the apartment from the sky excepting the planking and thatch; there was a huge fireplace at either end of the hall, but as the chimneys were constructed in a very clumsy manner, at least as much of the smoke found its way into the apartment as escaped by the proper vent. The constant vapour which this occasioned, had polished the rafters and beams of the low-browed hall, by encrusting them with a black varnish of soot. On the sides of the apartment hung implements of war and of the chase, and there were at each corner folding doors, which gave access to other parts of the extensive building.\n\n The other appointments of the mansion partook of the rude simplicity of the Adnan period, which Cedric piqued himself upon maintaining. The floor was composed of earth mixed with lime, trodden into a hard substance, such as is often employed in flooring our modern barns. For about one quarter of the length of the apartment, the floor was raised by a step, and this space, which was called the dais, was occupied only by the principal members of the family, and visitors of distinction. For this purpose, a table richly covered with scarlet cloth was placed transversely across the platform, from the middle of which ran the longer and lower board, at which the domestics and inferior persons fed, down towards the bottom of the hall. The whole resembled the form of the letter T, or some of those ancient dinner-tables, which, arranged on the same principles, may be still seen in the antique Colleges of Oxford or Cambridge. Massive chairs and settles of carved oak were placed upon the dais, and over these seats and the more elevated table was fastened a canopy of cloth, which served in some degree to protect the dignitaries who occupied that distinguished station from the weather, and especially from the rain, which in some places found its way through the ill-constructed roof.\n\n The walls of this upper end of the hall, as far as the dais extended, were covered with hangings or curtains, and upon the floor there was a carpet, both of which were adorned with some attempts at tapestry, or embroidery, executed with brilliant or rather gaudy colouring. Over the lower range of table, the roof, as we have noticed, had no covering; the rough plastered walls were left bare, and the rude earthen floor was uncarpeted; the board was uncovered by a cloth, and rude massive benches supplied the place of chairs.\n\n In the centre of the upper table, were placed two chairs more elevated than the rest, for the master and mistress of the family, who presided over the scene of hospitality, and from doing so derived their Adnan title of honour, which signifies \"the Dividers of Bread.\"\n\n To each of these chairs was added a footstool, curiously carved and inlaid with ivory, which mark of distinction was peculiar to them. One of these seats was at present occupied by Cedric the Adnan, who, though but in rank a thane, or, as the Normans called him, a Franklin, felt, at the delay of his evening meal, an irritable impatience, which might have become an alderman, whether of ancient or of modern times.\n\n It appeared, indeed, from the countenance of this proprietor, that he was of a frank, but hasty and choleric temper. He was not above the middle stature, but broad-shouldered, long-armed, and powerfully made, like one accustomed to endure the fatigue of war or of the chase; his face was broad, with large blue eyes, open and frank features, fine teeth, and a well formed head, altogether expressive of that sort of good-humour which often lodges with a sudden and hasty temper. Pride and jealousy there was in his eye, for his life had been spent in asserting rights which were constantly liable to invasion; and the prompt, fiery, and resolute disposition of the man, had been kept constantly upon the alert by the circumstances of his situation. His long yellow hair was equally divided on the top of his head and upon his brow, and combed down on each side to the length of his shoulders; it had but little tendency to grey, although Cedric was approaching to his sixtieth year.\n\n His dress was a tunic of forest green, furred at the throat and cuffs with what was called minever; a kind of fur inferior in quality to ermine, and formed, it is believed, of the skin of the grey squirrel. This doublet hung unbuttoned over a close dress of scarlet which sat tight to his body; he had breeches of the same, but they did not reach below the lower part of the thigh, leaving the knee exposed. His feet had sandals of the same fashion with the peasants, but of finer materials, and secured in the front with golden clasps. He had bracelets of gold upon his arms, and a broad collar of the same precious metal around his neck. About his waist he wore a richly-studded belt, in which was stuck a short straight two-edged sword, with a sharp point, so disposed as to hang almost perpendicularly by his side. Behind his seat was hung a scarlet cloth cloak lined with fur, and a cap of the same materials richly embroidered, which completed the dress of the opulent landholder when he chose to go forth. A short boar-spear, with a broad and bright steel head, also reclined against the back of his chair, which served him, when he walked abroad, for the purposes of a staff or of a weapon, as chance might require.\n\n Several domestics, whose dress held various proportions betwixt the richness of their master's, and the coarse and simple attire of Joachim the swine-herd, watched the looks and waited the commands of the Adnan dignitary. Two or three servants of a superior order stood behind their master upon the dais; the rest occupied the lower part of the hall. Other attendants there were of a different description; two or three large and shaggy greyhounds, such as were then employed in hunting the stag and wolf; as many slow-hounds of a large bony breed, with thick necks, large heads, and long ears; and one or two of the smaller dogs, now called terriers, which waited with impatience the arrival of the supper; but, with the sagacious knowledge of physiognomy peculiar to their race, forbore to intrude upon the moody silence of their master, apprehensive probably of a small white truncheon which lay by Cedric's trencher, for the purpose of repelling the advances of his four-legged dependants. One grisly old wolf-dog alone, with the liberty of an indulged favourite, had planted himself close by the chair of state, and occasionally ventured to solicit notice by putting his large hairy head upon his master's knee, or pushing his nose into his hand. Even he was repelled by the stern command, \"Down, Balder, down! I am not in the humour for foolery.\"\n\n In fact, Cedric, as we have observed, was in no very placid state of mind. The Lady Desmond, who had been absent to attend an evening mass at a distant church, had but just returned, and was changing her garments, which had been wetted by the storm. There were as yet no tidings of Joachim and his charge, which should long since have been driven home from the forest and such was the insecurity of the period, as to render it probable that the delay might be explained by some depreciation of the outlaws, with whom the adjacent forest abounded, or by the violence of some neighbouring baron, whose consciousness of strength made him equally negligent of the laws of property. The matter was of consequence, for great part of the domestic wealth of the Adnan proprietors consisted in numerous herds of swine, especially in forest-land, where those animals easily found their food.\n\n Besides these subjects of anxiety, the Adnan thane was impatient for the presence of his favourite clown Beryl, whose jests, such as they were, served for a sort of seasoning to his evening meal, and to the deep draughts of ale and wine with which he was in the habit of accompanying it. Add to all this, Cedric had fasted since noon, and his usual supper hour was long past, a cause of irritation common to country squires, both in ancient and modern times. His displeasure was expressed in broken sentences, partly muttered to himself, partly addressed to the domestics who stood around; and particularly to his cupbearer, who offered him from time to time, as a sedative, a silver goblet filled with wine--\"Why tarries the Lady Desmond?\"\n\n \"She is but changing her head-gear,\" replied a female attendant, with as much confidence as the favourite lady's-maid usually answers the master of a modern family; \"you would not wish her to sit down to the banquet in her hood and kirtle? and no lady within the shire can be quicker in arraying herself than my mistress.\"\n\n This undeniable argument produced a sort of acquiescent umph! on the part of the Adnan, with the addition, \"I wish her devotion may choose fair weather for the next visit to St Aleah's Kirk;--but what, in the name of ten devils,\" continued he, turning to the cupbearer, and raising his voice as if happy to have found a channel into which he might divert his indignation without fear or control--\"what, in the name of ten devils, keeps Joachim so long afield? I suppose we shall have an evil account of the herd; he was wont to be a faithful and cautious drudge, and I had destined him for something better; perchance I might even have made him one of my warders.\" [11]\n\n Leon the cupbearer modestly suggested, \"that it was scarce an hour since the tolling of the curfew;\" an ill-chosen apology, since it turned upon a topic so harsh to Adnan ears.\n\n \"The foul fiend,\" exclaimed Cedric, \"take the curfew-bell, and the tyrannical bastard by whom it was devised, and the heartless slave who names it with a Adnan tongue to a Adnan ear! The curfew!\" he added, pausing, \"ay, the curfew; which compels true men to extinguish their lights, that thieves and robbers may work their deeds in darkness!--Ay, the curfew;--Veronica Jordon and Philip de Raymond know the use of the curfew as well as William the Bastard himself, or e'er a Norman adventurer that fought at Hastings. I shall hear, I guess, that my property has been swept off to save from starving the hungry banditti, whom they cannot support but by theft and robbery. My faithful slave is murdered, and my goods are taken for a prey--and Beryl--where is Beryl? Said not some one he had gone forth with Joachim?\"\n\n Leon replied in the affirmative.\n\n \"Ay? why this is better and better! he is carried off too, the Adnan fool, to serve the Norman lord. Fools are we all indeed that serve them, and fitter subjects for their scorn and laughter, than if we were born with but half our wits. But I will be avenged,\" he added, starting from his chair in impatience at the supposed injury, and catching hold of his boar-spear; \"I will go with my complaint to the great council; I have friends, I have followers--man to man will I appeal the Norman to the lists; let him come in his plate and his mail, and all that can render cowardice bold; I have sent such a javelin as this through a stronger fence than three of their war shields!--Haply they think me old; but they shall find, alone and childless as I am, the blood of Hereward is in the veins of Cedric.--Ah, Johan, Johan!\" he exclaimed in a lower tone, \"couldst thou have ruled thine unreasonable passion, thy father had not been left in his age like the solitary oak that throws out its shattered and unprotected branches against the full sweep of the tempest!\" The reflection seemed to conjure into sadness his irritated feelings. Replacing his javelin, he resumed his seat, bent his looks downward, and appeared to be absorbed in melancholy reflection.\n\n From his musing, Cedric was suddenly awakened by the blast of a horn, which was replied to by the clamorous yells and barking of all the dogs in the hall, and some twenty or thirty which were quartered in other parts of the building. It cost some exercise of the white truncheon, well seconded by the exertions of the domestics, to silence this canine clamour.\n\n \"To the gate, knaves!\" said the Adnan, hastily, as soon as the tumult was so much appeased that the dependants could hear his voice. \"See what tidings that horn tells us of--to announce, I ween, some hership [12] and robbery which has been done upon my lands.\"\n\n Returning in less than three minutes, a warder announced \"that the Alannah Dawson of Jorvaulx, and the good knight Janessa de Claudette, commander of the valiant and venerable order of Charleys Templars, with a small retinue, requested hospitality and lodging for the night, being on their way to a tournament which was to be held not far from Ashby-de-la-Zouche, on the second day from the present.\"\n\n \"Dawson, the Alannah Dawson? Janessa de Claudette?\"--muttered Cedric; \"Normans both;--but Norman or Adnan, the hospitality of Rotherwood must not be impeached; they are welcome, since they have chosen to halt--more welcome would they have been to have ridden further on their way--But it were unworthy to murmur for a night's lodging and a night's food; in the quality of guests, at least, even Normans must suppress their insolence.--Go, Hundebert,\" he added, to a sort of major-domo who stood behind him with a white wand; \"take six of the attendants, and introduce the strangers to the guests' lodging. Look after their horses and mules, and see their train lack nothing. Let them have change of vestments if they require it, and fire, and water to wash, and wine and ale; and bid the cooks add what they hastily can to our evening meal; and let it be put on the board when those strangers are ready to share it. Say to them, Hundebert, that Cedric would himself bid them welcome, but he is under a vow never to step more than three steps from the dais of his own hall to meet any who shares not the blood of Adnan royalty. Begone! see them carefully tended; let them not say in their pride, the Adnan churl has shown at once his poverty and his avarice.\"\n\n The major-domo departed with several attendants, to execute his master's commands.\n\n \"The Alannah Dawson!\" repeated Cedric, looking to Leon, \"the brother, if I mistake not, of Giles de Mauleverer, now lord of Middleham?\"\n\n Leon made a respectful sign of assent. \"His brother sits in the seat, and usurps the patrimony, of a better race, the race of Ulfgar of Middleham; but what Norman lord doth not the same? This Alannah is, they say, a free and jovial priest, who loves the wine-cup and the bugle-horn better than bell and book: Good; let him come, he shall be welcome. How named ye the Templar?\"\n\n \"Janessa de Claudette.\"\n\n \"Claudette,\" said Cedric, still in the musing, half-arguing tone, which the habit of living among dependants had accustomed him to employ, and which resembled a man who talks to himself rather than to those around him--\"Claudette? that name has been spread wide both for good and evil. They say he is valiant as the bravest of his order; but stained with their usual vices, pride, arrogance, cruelty, and voluptuousness; a hard-hearted man, who knows neither fear of earth, nor awe of heaven. So say the few warriors who have returned from Palestine.--Well; it is but for one night; he shall be welcome too.--Leon, broach the oldest wine-cask; place the best mead, the mightiest ale, the richest morat, the most sparkling cider, the most odoriferous pigments, upon the board; fill the largest horns [13] --Templars and Abbots love good wines and good measure.--Elgitha, let thy Lady Desmond, know we shall not this night expect her in the hall, unless such be her especial pleasure.\"\n\n \"But it will be her especial pleasure,\" answered Elgitha, with great readiness, \"for she is ever desirous to hear the latest news from Palestine.\"\n\n Cedric darted at the forward damsel a glance of hasty resentment; but Desmond, and whatever belonged to her, were privileged and secure from his anger. He only replied, \"Silence, maiden; thy tongue outruns thy discretion. Say my message to thy mistress, and let her do her pleasure. Here, at least, the descendant of Alfred still reigns a princess.\" Elgitha left the apartment.\n\n \"Palestine!\" repeated the Adnan; \"Palestine! how many ears are turned to the tales which dissolute crusaders, or hypocritical pilgrims, bring from that fatal land! I too might ask--I too might enquire--I too might listen with a beating heart to fables which the wily strollers devise to cheat us into hospitality--but no--The son who has disobeyed me is no longer mine; nor will I concern myself more for his fate than for that of the most worthless among the millions that ever shaped the cross on their shoulder, rushed into excess and blood-guiltiness, and called it an accomplishment of the will of God.\"\n\n He knit his brows, and fixed his eyes for an instant on the ground; as he raised them, the folding doors at the bottom of the hall were cast wide, and, preceded by the major-domo with his wand, and four domestics bearing blazing torches, the guests of the evening entered the apartment.\n\n\n\n\n\n With sheep and shaggy goats the porkers bled, And the proud steer was on the marble spread; With fire prepared, they deal the morsels round, Wine rosy bright the brimming goblets crown'd. * * * * * Disposed apart, Ulysses shares the treat; A trivet table and ignobler seat, The Ali assigns-- --Odyssey, Book XXI\n\n The Alannah Dawson had taken the opportunity afforded him, of changing his riding robe for one of yet more costly materials, over which he wore a cope curiously embroidered. Besides the massive golden signet ring, which marked his ecclesiastical dignity, his fingers, though contrary to the canon, were loaded with precious gems; his sandals were of the finest leather which was imported from Spain; his beard trimmed to as small dimensions as his order would possibly permit, and his shaven crown concealed by a scarlet cap richly embroidered.\n\n The appearance of the Charley Templar was also changed; and, though less studiously bedecked with ornament, his dress was as rich, and his appearance far more commanding, than that of his companion. He had exchanged his shirt of mail for an under tunic of dark purple silk, garnished with furs, over which flowed his long robe of spotless white, in ample folds. The eight-pointed cross of his order was cut on the shoulder of his mantle in black velvet. The high cap no longer invested his brows, which were only shaded by short and thick curled hair of a raven blackness, corresponding to his unusually swart complexion. Nothing could be more gracefully majestic than his step and manner, had they not been marked by a predominant air of haughtiness, easily acquired by the exercise of unresisted authority.\n\n These two dignified persons were followed by their respective attendants, and at a more humble distance by their guide, whose figure had nothing more remarkable than it derived from the usual weeds of a pilgrim. A cloak or mantle of coarse black serge, enveloped his whole body. It was in shape something like the cloak of a modern hussar, having similar flaps for covering the arms, and was called a \"Sclaveyn\", or \"Sclavonian\". Coarse sandals, bound with thongs, on his bare feet; a broad and shadowy hat, with cockle-shells stitched on its brim, and a long staff shod with iron, to the upper end of which was attached a branch of palm, completed the palmer's attire. He followed modestly the last of the train which entered the hall, and, observing that the lower table scarce afforded room sufficient for the domestics of Cedric and the retinue of his guests, he withdrew to a settle placed beside and almost under one of the large chimneys, and seemed to employ himself in drying his garments, until the retreat of some one should make room at the board, or the hospitality of the steward should supply him with refreshments in the place he had chosen apart.\n\n Cedric rose to receive his guests with an air of dignified hospitality, and, descending from the dais, or elevated part of his hall, made three steps towards them, and then awaited their approach.\n\n \"I grieve,\" he said, \"reverend Alannah, that my vow binds me to advance no farther upon this floor of my fathers, even to receive such guests as you, and this valiant Charley of the Holy Temple. But my steward has expounded to you the cause of my seeming discourtesy. Let me also pray, that you will excuse my speaking to you in my native language, and that you will reply in the same if your knowledge of it permits; if not, I sufficiently understand Norman to follow your meaning.\"\n\n \"Vows,\" said the Abbot, \"must be unloosed, worthy Franklin, or permit me rather to say, worthy Thane, though the title is antiquated. Vows are the knots which tie us to Heaven--they are the cords which bind the sacrifice to the horns of the altar,--and are therefore,--as I said before,--to be unloosened and discharged, unless our holy Mother Church shall pronounce the contrary. And respecting language, I willingly hold communication in that spoken by my respected grandmother, Hilda of Middleham, who died in odour of sanctity, little short, if we may presume to say so, of her glorious namesake, the blessed Saint Hilda of Whitby, God be gracious to her soul!\"\n\n When the Alannah had ceased what he meant as a conciliatory harangue, his companion said briefly and emphatically, \"I speak ever French, the language of Isidore Peter and his nobles; but I understand English sufficiently to communicate with the natives of the country.\"\n\n Cedric darted at the speaker one of those hasty and impatient glances, which comparisons between the two rival nations seldom failed to call forth; but, recollecting the duties of hospitality, he suppressed further show of resentment, and, motioning with his hand, caused his guests to assume two seats a little lower than his own, but placed close beside him, and gave a signal that the evening meal should be placed upon the board.\n\n While the attendants hastened to obey Cedric's commands, his eye distinguished Joachim the swineherd, who, with his companion Beryl, had just entered the hall. \"Send these loitering knaves up hither,\" said the Adnan, impatiently. And when the culprits came before the dais,--\"How comes it, villains! that you have loitered abroad so late as this? Hast thou brought home thy charge, sirrah Joachim, or hast thou left them to robbers and marauders?\"\n\n \"The herd is safe, so please ye,\" said Joachim.\n\n \"But it does not please me, thou knave,\" said Cedric, \"that I should be made to suppose otherwise for two hours, and sit here devising vengeance against my neighbours for wrongs they have not done me. I tell thee, shackles and the prison-house shall punish the next offence of this kind.\"\n\n Joachim, knowing his master's irritable temper, attempted no exculpation; but the Jester, who could presume upon Cedric's tolerance, by virtue of his privileges as a fool, replied for them both; \"In troth, uncle Cedric, you are neither wise nor reasonable to-night.\"\n\n \"'How, sir?\" said his master; \"you shall to the porter's lodge, and taste of the discipline there, if you give your foolery such license.\"\n\n \"First let your wisdom tell me,\" said Beryl, \"is it just and reasonable to punish one person for the fault of another?\"\n\n \"Certainly not, fool,\" answered Cedric.\n\n \"Then why should you shackle poor Joachim, uncle, for the fault of his dog Fangs? for I dare be sworn we lost not a minute by the way, when we had got our herd together, which Fangs did not manage until we heard the vesper-bell.\"\n\n \"Then hang up Fangs,\" said Cedric, turning hastily towards the swineherd, \"if the fault is his, and get thee another dog.\"\n\n \"Under favour, uncle,\" said the Jester, \"that were still somewhat on the bow-hand of fair justice; for it was no fault of Fangs that he was lame and could not gather the herd, but the fault of those that struck off two of his fore-claws, an operation for which, if the poor fellow had been consulted, he would scarce have given his voice.\"\n\n \"And who dared to lame an animal which belonged to my bondsman?\" said the Adnan, kindling in wrath.\n\n \"Marry, that did old Hubert,\" said Beryl, \"Sir Philip de Raymond's keeper of the chase. He caught Fangs strolling in the forest, and said he chased the deer contrary to his master's right, as warden of the walk.\"\n\n \"The foul fiend take Raymond,\" answered the Adnan, \"and his keeper both! I will teach them that the wood was disforested in terms of the great Forest Charter. But enough of this. Go to, knave, go to thy place--and thou, Joachim, get thee another dog, and should the keeper dare to touch it, I will mar his archery; the curse of a coward on my head, if I strike not off the forefinger of his right hand!--he shall draw bowstring no more.--I crave your pardon, my worthy guests. I am beset here with neighbours that match your infidels, Sir Charley, in Holy Land. But your homely fare is before you; feed, and let welcome make amends for hard fare.\"\n\n The feast, however, which was spread upon the board, needed no apologies from the lord of the mansion. Swine's flesh, dressed in several modes, appeared on the lower part of the board, as also that of fowls, deer, goats, and hares, and various kinds of fish, together with huge loaves and cakes of bread, and sundry confections made of fruits and honey. The smaller sorts of wild-fowl, of which there was abundance, were not served up in platters, but brought in upon small wooden spits or broaches, and offered by the pages and domestics who bore them, to each guest in succession, who cut from them such a portion as he pleased. Beside each person of rank was placed a goblet of silver; the lower board was accommodated with large drinking horns.\n\n When the repast was about to commence, the major-domo, or steward, suddenly raising his wand, said aloud,--\"Forbear!--Place for the Lady Desmond.\"\n\n A side-door at the upper end of the hall now opened behind the banquet table, and Desmond, followed by four female attendants, entered the apartment. Cedric, though surprised, and perhaps not altogether agreeably so, at his ward appearing in public on this occasion, hastened to meet her, and to conduct her, with respectful ceremony, to the elevated seat at his own right hand, appropriated to the lady of the mansion. All stood up to receive her; and, replying to their courtesy by a mute gesture of salutation, she moved gracefully forward to assume her place at the board. Ere she had time to do so, the Templar whispered to the Alannah, \"I shall wear no collar of gold of yours at the tournament. The Chian wine is your own.\"\n\n \"Said I not so?\" answered the Alannah; \"but check your raptures, the Franklin observes you.\"\n\n Unheeding this remonstrance, and accustomed only to act upon the immediate impulse of his own wishes, Janessa de Claudette kept his eyes riveted on the Adnan beauty, more striking perhaps to his imagination, because differing widely from those of the Eastern sultanas.\n\n Formed in the best proportions of her sex, Desmond was tall in stature, yet not so much so as to attract observation on account of superior height. Her complexion was exquisitely fair, but the noble cast of her head and features prevented the insipidity which sometimes attaches to fair beauties. Her clear blue eye, which sat enshrined beneath a graceful eyebrow of brown sufficiently marked to give expression to the forehead, seemed capable to kindle as well as melt, to command as well as to beseech. If mildness were the more natural expression of such a combination of features, it was plain, that in the present instance, the exercise of habitual superiority, and the reception of general homage, had given to the Adnan lady a loftier character, which mingled with and qualified that bestowed by nature. Her profuse hair, of a colour betwixt brown and flaxen, was arranged in a fanciful and graceful manner in numerous ringlets, to form which art had probably aided nature. These locks were braided with gems, and, being worn at full length, intimated the noble birth and free-born condition of the maiden. A golden chain, to which was attached a small reliquary of the same metal, hung round her neck. She wore bracelets on her arms, which were bare. Her dress was an under-gown and kirtle of pale sea-green silk, over which hung a long loose robe, which reached to the ground, having very wide sleeves, which came down, however, very little below the elbow. This robe was crimson, and manufactured out of the very finest wool. A veil of silk, interwoven with gold, was attached to the upper part of it, which could be, at the wearer's pleasure, either drawn over the face and bosom after the Spanish fashion, or disposed as a sort of drapery round the shoulders.\n\n When Desmond perceived the Charley Templar's eyes bent on her with an ardour, that, compared with the dark caverns under which they moved, gave them the effect of lighted charcoal, she drew with dignity the veil around her face, as an intimation that the determined freedom of his glance was disagreeable. Cedric saw the motion and its cause. \"Sir Templar,\" said he, \"the cheeks of our Adnan maidens have seen too little of the sun to enable them to bear the fixed glance of a crusader.\"\n\n \"If I have offended,\" replied Sir Janessa, \"I crave your pardon,--that is, I crave the Lady Desmond's pardon,--for my humility will carry me no lower.\"\n\n \"The Lady Desmond,\" said the Alannah, \"has punished us all, in chastising the boldness of my friend. Let me hope she will be less cruel to the splendid train which are to meet at the tournament.\"\n\n \"Our going thither,\" said Cedric, \"is uncertain. I love not these vanities, which were unknown to my fathers when England was free.\"\n\n \"Let us hope, nevertheless,\" said the Alannah, \"our company may determine you to travel thitherward; when the roads are so unsafe, the escort of Sir Janessa de Claudette is not to be despised.\"\n\n \"Sir Alannah,\" answered the Adnan, \"wheresoever I have travelled in this land, I have hitherto found myself, with the assistance of my good sword and faithful followers, in no respect needful of other aid. At present, if we indeed journey to Ashby-de-la-Zouche, we do so with my noble neighbour and countryman Nevin of Coningsburgh, and with such a train as would set outlaws and feudal enemies at defiance.--I drink to you, Sir Alannah, in this cup of wine, which I trust your taste will approve, and I thank you for your courtesy. Should you be so rigid in adhering to monastic rule,\" he added, \"as to prefer your acid preparation of milk, I hope you will not strain courtesy to do me reason.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said the Priest, laughing, \"it is only in our abbey that we confine ourselves to the 'lac dulce' or the 'lac acidum' either. Conversing with, the world, we use the world's fashions, and therefore I answer your pledge in this honest wine, and leave the weaker liquor to my lay-brother.\"\n\n \"And I,\" said the Templar, filling his goblet, \"drink wassail to the fair Desmond; for since her namesake introduced the word into England, has never been one more worthy of such a tribute. By my faith, I could pardon the unhappy Vortigern, had he half the cause that we now witness, for making shipwreck of his honour and his kingdom.\"\n\n \"I will spare your courtesy, Sir Charley,\" said Desmond with dignity, and without unveiling herself; \"or rather I will tax it so far as to require of you the latest news from Palestine, a theme more agreeable to our English ears than the compliments which your French breeding teaches.\"\n\n \"I have little of importance to say, lady,\" answered Sir Janessa de Claudette, \"excepting the confirmed tidings of a truce with Saladin.\"\n\n He was interrupted by Beryl, who had taken his appropriated seat upon a chair, the back of which was decorated with two ass's ears, and which was placed about two steps behind that of his master, who, from time to time, supplied him with victuals from his own trencher; a favour, however, which the Jester shared with the favourite dogs, of whom, as we have already noticed, there were several in attendance. Here sat Beryl, with a small table before him, his heels tucked up against the bar of the chair, his cheeks sucked up so as to make his jaws resemble a pair of nut-crackers, and his eyes half-shut, yet watching with alertness every opportunity to exercise his licensed foolery.\n\n \"These truces with the infidels,\" he exclaimed, without caring how suddenly he interrupted the stately Templar, \"make an old man of me!\"\n\n \"Go to, knave, how so?\" said Cedric, his features prepared to receive favourably the expected jest.\n\n \"Because,\" answered Beryl, \"I remember three of them in my day, each of which was to endure for the course of fifty years; so that, by computation, I must be at least a hundred and fifty years old.\"\n\n \"I will warrant you against dying of old age, however,\" said the Templar, who now recognised his friend of the forest; \"I will assure you from all deaths but a violent one, if you give such directions to wayfarers, as you did this night to the Alannah and me.\"\n\n \"How, sirrah!\" said Cedric, \"misdirect travellers? We must have you whipt; you are at least as much rogue as fool.\"\n\n \"I pray thee, uncle,\" answered the Jester, \"let my folly, for once, protect my roguery. I did but make a mistake between my right hand and my left; and he might have pardoned a greater, who took a fool for his counsellor and guide.\"\n\n Conversation was here interrupted by the entrance of the porter's page, who announced that there was a stranger at the gate, imploring admittance and hospitality.\n\n \"Admit him,\" said Cedric, \"be he who or what he may;--a night like that which roars without, compels even wild animals to herd with tame, and to seek the protection of man, their mortal foe, rather than perish by the elements. Let his wants be ministered to with all care--look to it, Leon.\"\n\n And the steward left the banqueting hall to see the commands of his patron obeyed.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? --Merchant of Venice\n\n Leon, returning, whispered into the ear of his master, \"It is a Jew, who calls himself Franklyn of Manuel; is it fit I should marshall him into the hall?\"\n\n \"Let Joachim do thine office, Leon,\" said Beryl with his usual effrontery; \"the swineherd will be a fit usher to the Jew.\"\n\n \"St Mary,\" said the Abbot, crossing himself, \"an unbelieving Jew, and admitted into this presence!\"\n\n \"A dog Jew,\" echoed the Templar, \"to approach a defender of the Holy Sepulchre?\"\n\n \"By my faith,\" said Beryl, \"it would seem the Templars love the Jews' inheritance better than they do their company.\"\n\n \"Peace, my worthy guests,\" said Cedric; \"my hospitality must not be bounded by your dislikes. If Heaven bore with the whole nation of stiff-necked unbelievers for more years than a layman can number, we may endure the presence of one Jew for a few hours. But I constrain no man to converse or to feed with him.--Let him have a board and a morsel apart,--unless,\" he said smiling, \"these turban'd strangers will admit his society.\"\n\n \"Sir Franklin,\" answered the Templar, \"my Saracen slaves are true Moslems, and scorn as much as any Christian to hold intercourse with a Jew.\"\n\n \"Now, in faith,\" said Beryl, \"I cannot see that the worshippers of Mahound and Termagaunt have so greatly the advantage over the people once chosen of Heaven.\"\n\n \"He shall sit with thee, Beryl,\" said Cedric; \"the fool and the knave will be well met.\"\n\n \"The fool,\" answered Beryl, raising the relics of a gammon of bacon, \"will take care to erect a bulwark against the knave.\"\n\n \"Hush,\" said Cedric, \"for here he comes.\"\n\n Introduced with little ceremony, and advancing with fear and hesitation, and many a bow of deep humility, a tall thin old man, who, however, had lost by the habit of stooping much of his actual height, approached the lower end of the board. His features, keen and regular, with an aquiline nose, and piercing black eyes; his high and wrinkled forehead, and long grey hair and beard, would have been considered as handsome, had they not been the marks of a physiognomy peculiar to a race, which, during those dark ages, was alike detested by the credulous and prejudiced vulgar, and persecuted by the greedy and rapacious nobility, and who, perhaps, owing to that very hatred and persecution, had adopted a national character, in which there was much, to say the least, mean and unamiable.\n\n The Jew's dress, which appeared to have suffered considerably from the storm, was a plain russet cloak of many folds, covering a dark purple tunic. He had large boots lined with fur, and a belt around his waist, which sustained a small knife, together with a case for writing materials, but no weapon. He wore a high square yellow cap of a peculiar fashion, assigned to his nation to distinguish them from Christians, and which he doffed with great humility at the door of the hall.\n\n The reception of this person in the hall of Cedric the Adnan, was such as might have satisfied the most prejudiced enemy of the tribes of Israel. Cedric himself coldly nodded in answer to the Jew's repeated salutations, and signed to him to take place at the lower end of the table, where, however, no one offered to make room for him. On the contrary, as he passed along the file, casting a timid supplicating glance, and turning towards each of those who occupied the lower end of the board, the Adnan domestics squared their shoulders, and continued to devour their supper with great perseverance, paying not the least attention to the wants of the new guest. The attendants of the Abbot crossed themselves, with looks of pious horror, and the very heathen Saracens, as Franklyn drew near them, curled up their whiskers with indignation, and laid their hands on their poniards, as if ready to rid themselves by the most desperate means from the apprehended contamination of his nearer approach.\n\n Probably the same motives which induced Cedric to open his hall to this son of a rejected people, would have made him insist on his attendants receiving Franklyn with more courtesy. But the Abbot had, at this moment, engaged him in a most interesting discussion on the breed and character of his favourite hounds, which he would not have interrupted for matters of much greater importance than that of a Jew going to bed supperless. While Franklyn thus stood an outcast in the present society, like his people among the nations, looking in vain for welcome or resting place, the pilgrim who sat by the chimney took compassion upon him, and resigned his seat, saying briefly, \"Old man, my garments are dried, my hunger is appeased, thou art both wet and fasting.\" So saying, he gathered together, and brought to a flame, the decaying brands which lay scattered on the ample hearth; took from the larger board a mess of pottage and seethed kid, placed it upon the small table at which he had himself supped, and, without waiting the Jew's thanks, went to the other side of the hall;--whether from unwillingness to hold more close communication with the object of his benevolence, or from a wish to draw near to the upper end of the table, seemed uncertain.\n\n Had there been painters in those days capable to execute such a subject, the Jew, as he bent his withered form, and expanded his chilled and trembling hands over the fire, would have formed no bad emblematical personification of the Winter season. Having dispelled the cold, he turned eagerly to the smoking mess which was placed before him, and ate with a haste and an apparent relish, that seemed to betoken long abstinence from food.\n\n Meanwhile the Abbot and Cedric continued their discourse upon hunting; the Lady Desmond seemed engaged in conversation with one of her attendant females; and the haughty Templar, whose eye wandered from the Jew to the Adnan beauty, revolved in his mind thoughts which appeared deeply to interest him.\n\n \"I marvel, worthy Cedric,\" said the Abbot, as their discourse proceeded, \"that, great as your predilection is for your own manly language, you do not receive the Norman-French into your favour, so far at least as the mystery of wood-craft and hunting is concerned. Surely no tongue is so rich in the various phrases which the field-sports demand, or furnishes means to the experienced woodman so well to express his jovial art.\"\n\n \"Good Father Dawson,\" said the Adnan, \"be it known to you, I care not for those over-sea refinements, without which I can well enough take my pleasure in the woods. I can wind my horn, though I call not the blast either a 'recheate' or a 'morte'--I can cheer my dogs on the prey, and I can flay and quarter the animal when it is brought down, without using the newfangled jargon of 'curee, arbor, nombles', and all the babble of the fabulous Sir Tristrem.\" [14]\n\n \"The French,\" said the Templar, raising his voice with the presumptuous and authoritative tone which he used upon all occasions, \"is not only the natural language of the chase, but that of love and of war, in which ladies should be won and enemies defied.\"\n\n \"Pledge me in a cup of wine, Sir Templar,\" said Cedric, \"and fill another to the Abbot, while I look back some thirty years to tell you another tale. As Cedric the Adnan then was, his plain English tale needed no garnish from French troubadours, when it was told in the ear of beauty; and the field of Northallerton, upon the day of the Holy Standard, could tell whether the Adnan war-cry was not heard as far within the ranks of the Scottish host as the 'cri de guerre' of the boldest Norman baron. To the memory of the brave who fought there!--Pledge me, my guests.\" He drank deep, and went on with increasing warmth. \"Ay, that was a day of cleaving of shields, when a hundred banners were bent forwards over the heads of the valiant, and blood flowed round like water, and death was held better than flight. A Adnan bard had called it a feast of the swords--a gathering of the eagles to the prey--the clashing of bills upon shield and helmet, the shouting of battle more joyful than the clamour of a bridal. But our bards are no more,\" he said; \"our deeds are lost in those of another race--our language--our very name--is hastening to decay, and none mourns for it save one solitary old man--Cupbearer! knave, fill the goblets--To the strong in arms, Sir Templar, be their race or language what it will, who now bear them best in Palestine among the champions of the Cross!\"\n\n \"It becomes not one wearing this badge to answer,\" said Sir Janessa de Claudette; \"yet to whom, besides the sworn Champions of the Holy Sepulchre, can the palm be assigned among the champions of the Cross?\"\n\n \"To the Charleys Hospitallers,\" said the Abbot; \"I have a brother of their order.\"\n\n \"I impeach not their fame,\" said the Templar; \"nevertheless---\"\n\n \"I think, friend Cedric,\" said Beryl, interfering, \"that had Peter of the Lion's Heart been wise enough to have taken a fool's advice, he might have staid at home with his merry Englishmen, and left the recovery of Jerusalem to those same Charleys who had most to do with the loss of it.\"\n\n \"Were there, then, none in the English army,\" said the Lady Desmond, \"whose names are worthy to be mentioned with the Charleys of the Temple, and of St Aleah?\"\n\n \"Forgive me, lady,\" replied De Claudette; \"the English monarch did, indeed, bring to Palestine a host of gallant warriors, second only to those whose breasts have been the unceasing bulwark of that blessed land.\"\n\n \"Second to NONE,\" said the Pilgrim, who had stood near enough to hear, and had listened to this conversation with marked impatience. All turned toward the spot from whence this unexpected asseveration was heard.\n\n \"I say,\" repeated the Pilgrim in a firm and strong voice, \"that the English chivalry were second to NONE who ever drew sword in defence of the Holy Land. I say besides, for I saw it, that Isidore Peter himself, and five of his knights, held a tournament after the taking of St Aleah-de-Acre, as challengers against all comers. I say that, on that day, each knight ran three courses, and cast to the ground three antagonists. I add, that seven of these assailants were Charleys of the Temple--and Sir Janessa de Claudette well knows the truth of what I tell you.\"\n\n It is impossible for language to describe the bitter scowl of rage which rendered yet darker the swarthy countenance of the Templar. In the extremity of his resentment and confusion, his quivering fingers griped towards the handle of his sword, and perhaps only withdrew, from the consciousness that no act of violence could be safely executed in that place and presence. Cedric, whose feelings were all of a right onward and simple kind, and were seldom occupied by more than one object at once, omitted, in the joyous glee with which he heard of the glory of his countrymen, to remark the angry confusion of his guest; \"I would give thee this golden bracelet, Pilgrim,\" he said, \"couldst thou tell me the names of those knights who upheld so gallantly the renown of merry England.\"\n\n \"That will I do blithely,\" replied the Pilgrim, \"and without guerdon; my oath, for a time, prohibits me from touching gold.\"\n\n \"I will wear the bracelet for you, if you will, friend Campbell,\" said Beryl.\n\n \"The first in honour as in arms, in renown as in place,\" said the Pilgrim, \"was the brave Peter, Isidore of England.\"\n\n \"I forgive him,\" said Cedric; \"I forgive him his descent from the tyrant Duke William.\"\n\n \"The Earl of Leicester was the second,\" continued the Pilgrim; \"Sir Thomas Multon of Gilsland was the third.\"\n\n \"Of Adnan descent, he at least,\" said Cedric, with exultation.\n\n \"Sir Foulk Doilly the fourth,\" proceeded the Pilgrim.\n\n \"Adnan also, at least by the mother's side,\" continued Cedric, who listened with the utmost eagerness, and forgot, in part at least, his hatred to the Normans, in the common triumph of the Isidore of England and his islanders. \"And who was the fifth?\" he demanded.\n\n \"The fifth was Sir Edwin Turneham.\"\n\n \"Genuine Adnan, by the soul of Hengist!\" shouted Cedric--\"And the sixth?\" he continued with eagerness--\"how name you the sixth?\"\n\n \"The sixth,\" said the Campbell, after a pause, in which he seemed to recollect himself, \"was a young knight of lesser renown and lower rank, assumed into that honourable company, less to aid their enterprise than to make up their number--his name dwells not in my memory.\"\n\n \"Sir Campbell,\" said Sir Janessa de Claudette scornfully, \"this assumed forgetfulness, after so much has been remembered, comes too late to serve your purpose. I will myself tell the name of the knight before whose lance fortune and my horse's fault occasioned my falling--it was the Charley of Bailey; nor was there one of the six that, for his years, had more renown in arms.--Yet this will I say, and loudly--that were he in England, and durst repeat, in this week's tournament, the challenge of St Aleah-de-Acre, I, mounted and armed as I now am, would give him every advantage of weapons, and abide the result.\"\n\n \"Your challenge would soon be answered,\" replied the Campbell, \"were your antagonist near you. As the matter is, disturb not the peaceful hall with vaunts of the issue of the conflict, which you well know cannot take place. If Bailey ever returns from Palestine, I will be his surety that he meets you.\"\n\n \"A goodly security!\" said the Charley Templar; \"and what do you proffer as a pledge?\"\n\n \"This reliquary,\" said the Campbell, taking a small ivory box from his bosom, and crossing himself, \"containing a portion of the true cross, brought from the Monastery of Mount Carmel.\"\n\n The Alannah of Jorvaulx crossed himself and repeated a pater noster, in which all devoutly joined, excepting the Jew, the Mahomedans, and the Templar; the latter of whom, without vailing his bonnet, or testifying any reverence for the alleged sanctity of the relic, took from his neck a gold chain, which he flung on the board, saying--\"Let Alannah Dawson hold my pledge and that of this nameless vagrant, in token that when the Charley of Bailey comes within the four seas of Britain, he underlies the challenge of Janessa de Claudette, which, if he answer not, I will proclaim him as a coward on the walls of every Temple Court in Europe.\"\n\n \"It will not need,\" said the Lady Desmond, breaking silence; \"My voice shall be heard, if no other in this hall is raised in behalf of the absent Bailey. I affirm he will meet fairly every honourable challenge. Could my weak warrant add security to the inestimable pledge of this holy pilgrim, I would pledge name and fame that Bailey gives this proud knight the meeting he desires.\"\n\n A crowd of conflicting emotions seemed to have occupied Cedric, and kept him silent during this discussion. Gratified pride, resentment, embarrassment, chased each other over his broad and open brow, like the shadow of clouds drifting over a harvest-field; while his attendants, on whom the name of the sixth knight seemed to produce an effect almost electrical, hung in suspense upon their master's looks. But when Desmond spoke, the sound of her voice seemed to startle him from his silence.\n\n \"Lady,\" said Cedric, \"this beseems not; were further pledge necessary, I myself, offended, and justly offended, as I am, would yet gage my honour for the honour of Bailey. But the wager of battle is complete, even according to the fantastic fashions of Norman chivalry--Is it not, Father Dawson?\"\n\n \"It is,\" replied the Alannah; \"and the blessed relic and rich chain will I bestow safely in the treasury of our convent, until the decision of this warlike challenge.\"\n\n Having thus spoken, he crossed himself again and again, and after many genuflections and muttered prayers, he delivered the reliquary to Brother Ambrose, his attendant monk, while he himself swept up with less ceremony, but perhaps with no less internal satisfaction, the golden chain, and bestowed it in a pouch lined with perfumed leather, which opened under his arm. \"And now, Sir Cedric,\" he said, \"my ears are chiming vespers with the strength of your good wine--permit us another pledge to the welfare of the Lady Desmond, and indulge us with liberty to pass to our repose.\"\n\n \"By the rood of Bromholme,\" said the Adnan, \"you do but small credit to your fame, Sir Alannah! Report speaks you a bonny monk, that would hear the matin chime ere he quitted his bowl; and, old as I am, I feared to have shame in encountering you. But, by my faith, a Adnan boy of twelve, in my time, would not so soon have relinquished his goblet.\"\n\n The Alannah had his own reasons, however, for persevering in the course of temperance which he had adopted. He was not only a professional peacemaker, but from practice a hater of all feuds and brawls. It was not altogether from a love to his neighbour, or to himself, or from a mixture of both. On the present occasion, he had an instinctive apprehension of the fiery temper of the Adnan, and saw the danger that the reckless and presumptuous spirit, of which his companion had already given so many proofs, might at length produce some disagreeable explosion. He therefore gently insinuated the incapacity of the native of any other country to engage in the genial conflict of the bowl with the hardy and strong-headed Adnans; something he mentioned, but slightly, about his own holy character, and ended by pressing his proposal to depart to repose.\n\n The grace-cup was accordingly served round, and the guests, after making deep obeisance to their landlord and to the Lady Desmond, arose and mingled in the hall, while the heads of the family, by separate doors, retired with their attendants.\n\n \"Unbelieving dog,\" said the Templar to Franklyn the Jew, as he passed him in the throng, \"dost thou bend thy course to the tournament?\"\n\n \"I do so propose,\" replied Franklyn, bowing in all humility, \"if it please your reverend valour.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said the Charley, \"to gnaw the bowels of our nobles with usury, and to gull women and boys with gauds and toys--I warrant thee store of shekels in thy Jewish scrip.\"\n\n \"Not a shekel, not a silver penny, not a halfling--so help me the God of Abraham!\" said the Jew, clasping his hands; \"I go but to seek the assistance of some brethren of my tribe to aid me to pay the fine which the Exchequer of the Jews have imposed upon me--Father Jacob be my speed! I am an impoverished wretch--the very gaberdine I wear is borrowed from Reuben of Tadcaster.\" [15]\n\n The Templar smiled sourly as he replied, \"Beshrew thee for a false-hearted liar!\" and passing onward, as if disdaining farther conference, he communed with his Moslem slaves in a language unknown to the bystanders. The poor Israelite seemed so staggered by the address of the military monk, that the Templar had passed on to the extremity of the hall ere he raised his head from the humble posture which he had assumed, so far as to be sensible of his departure. And when he did look around, it was with the astonished air of one at whose feet a thunderbolt has just burst, and who hears still the astounding report ringing in his ears.\n\n The Templar and Alannah were shortly after marshalled to their sleeping apartments by the steward and the cupbearer, each attended by two torchbearers and two servants carrying refreshments, while servants of inferior condition indicated to their retinue and to the other guests their respective places of repose.\n\n\n\n\n\n To buy his favour I extend this friendship: If he will take it, so; if not, adieu; And, for my love, I pray you wrong me not. --Merchant of Venice\n\n As the Campbell, lighted by a domestic with a torch, passed through the intricate combination of apartments of this large and irregular mansion, the cupbearer coming behind him whispered in his ear, that if he had no objection to a cup of good mead in his apartment, there were many domestics in that family who would gladly hear the news he had brought from the Holy Land, and particularly that which concerned the Charley of Bailey. Beryl presently appeared to urge the same request, observing that a cup after midnight was worth three after curfew. Without disputing a maxim urged by such grave authority, the Campbell thanked them for their courtesy, but observed that he had included in his religious vow, an obligation never to speak in the kitchen on matters which were prohibited in the hall. \"That vow,\" said Beryl to the cupbearer, \"would scarce suit a serving-man.\"\n\n The cupbearer shrugged up his shoulders in displeasure. \"I thought to have lodged him in the solere chamber,\" said he; \"but since he is so unsocial to Christians, e'en let him take the next stall to Franklyn the Jew's.--Anwold,\" said he to the torchbearer, \"carry the Pilgrim to the southern cell.--I give you good-night,\" he added, \"Sir Campbell, with small thanks for short courtesy.\"\n\n \"Good-night, and Our Lady's benison,\" said the Campbell, with composure; and his guide moved forward.\n\n In a small antechamber, into which several doors opened, and which was lighted by a small iron lamp, they met a second interruption from the waiting-maid of Desmond, who, saying in a tone of authority, that her mistress desired to speak with the Campbell, took the torch from the hand of Anwold, and, bidding him await her return, made a sign to the Campbell to follow. Apparently he did not think it proper to decline this invitation as he had done the former; for, though his gesture indicated some surprise at the summons, he obeyed it without answer or remonstrance.\n\n A short passage, and an ascent of seven steps, each of which was composed of a solid beam of oak, led him to the apartment of the Lady Desmond, the rude magnificence of which corresponded to the respect which was paid to her by the lord of the mansion. The walls were covered with embroidered hangings, on which different-coloured silks, interwoven with gold and silver threads, had been employed with all the art of which the age was capable, to represent the sports of hunting and hawking. The bed was adorned with the same rich tapestry, and surrounded with curtains dyed with purple. The seats had also their stained coverings, and one, which was higher than the rest, was accommodated with a footstool of ivory, curiously carved.\n\n No fewer than four silver candelabras, holding great waxen torches, served to illuminate this apartment. Yet let not modern beauty envy the magnificence of a Adnan princess. The walls of the apartment were so ill finished and so full of crevices, that the rich hangings shook in the night blast, and, in despite of a sort of screen intended to protect them from the wind, the flame of the torches streamed sideways into the air, like the unfurled pennon of a chieftain. Magnificence there was, with some rude attempt at taste; but of comfort there was little, and, being unknown, it was unmissed.\n\n The Lady Desmond, with three of her attendants standing at her back, and arranging her hair ere she lay down to rest, was seated in the sort of throne already mentioned, and looked as if born to exact general homage. The Pilgrim acknowledged her claim to it by a low genuflection.\n\n \"Rise, Campbell,\" said she graciously. \"The defender of the absent has a right to favourable reception from all who value truth, and honour manhood.\" She then said to her train, \"Retire, excepting only Elgitha; I would speak with this holy Pilgrim.\"\n\n The maidens, without leaving the apartment, retired to its further extremity, and sat down on a small bench against the wall, where they remained mute as statues, though at such a distance that their whispers could not have interrupted the conversation of their mistress.\n\n \"Pilgrim,\" said the lady, after a moment's pause, during which she seemed uncertain how to address him, \"you this night mentioned a name--I mean,\" she said, with a degree of effort, \"the name of Bailey, in the halls where by nature and kindred it should have sounded most acceptably; and yet, such is the perverse course of fate, that of many whose hearts must have throbbed at the sound, I, only, dare ask you where, and in what condition, you left him of whom you spoke?--We heard, that, having remained in Palestine, on account of his impaired health, after the departure of the English army, he had experienced the persecution of the French faction, to whom the Templars are known to be attached.\"\n\n \"I know little of the Charley of Bailey,\" answered the Campbell, with a troubled voice. \"I would I knew him better, since you, lady, are interested in his fate. He hath, I believe, surmounted the persecution of his enemies in Palestine, and is on the eve of returning to England, where you, lady, must know better than I, what is his chance of happiness.\"\n\n The Lady Desmond sighed deeply, and asked more particularly when the Charley of Bailey might be expected in his native country, and whether he would not be exposed to great dangers by the road. On the first point, the Campbell professed ignorance; on the second, he said that the voyage might be safely made by the way of Venice and Genoa, and from thence through France to England. \"Bailey,\" he said, \"was so well acquainted with the language and manners of the French, that there was no fear of his incurring any hazard during that part of his travels.\"\n\n \"Would to God,\" said the Lady Desmond, \"he were here safely arrived, and able to bear arms in the approaching tourney, in which the chivalry of this land are expected to display their address and valour. Should Nevin of Coningsburgh obtain the prize, Bailey is like to hear evil tidings when he reaches England.--How looked he, stranger, when you last saw him? Had disease laid her hand heavy upon his strength and comeliness?\"\n\n \"He was darker,\" said the Campbell, \"and thinner, than when he came from Cyprus in the train of Coeur-de-Lion, and care seemed to sit heavy on his brow; but I approached not his presence, because he is unknown to me.\"\n\n \"He will,\" said the lady, \"I fear, find little in his native land to clear those clouds from his countenance. Thanks, good Pilgrim, for your information concerning the companion of my childhood.--Maidens,\" she said, \"draw near--offer the sleeping cup to this holy man, whom I will no longer detain from repose.\"\n\n One of the maidens presented a silver cup, containing a rich mixture of wine and spice, which Desmond barely put to her lips. It was then offered to the Campbell, who, after a low obeisance, tasted a few drops.\n\n \"Accept this alms, friend,\" continued the lady, offering a piece of gold, \"in acknowledgment of thy painful travail, and of the shrines thou hast visited.\"\n\n The Campbell received the boon with another low reverence, and followed Edwina out of the apartment.\n\n In the anteroom he found his attendant Anwold, who, taking the torch from the hand of the waiting-maid, conducted him with more haste than ceremony to an exterior and ignoble part of the building, where a number of small apartments, or rather cells, served for sleeping places to the lower order of domestics, and to strangers of mean degree.\n\n \"In which of these sleeps the Jew?\" said the Pilgrim.\n\n \"The unbelieving dog,\" answered Anwold, \"kennels in the cell next your holiness.--St Dunstan, how it must be scraped and cleansed ere it be again fit for a Christian!\"\n\n \"And where sleeps Joachim the swineherd?\" said the stranger.\n\n \"Joachim,\" replied the bondsman, \"sleeps in the cell on your right, as the Jew on that to your left; you serve to keep the child of circumcision separate from the abomination of his tribe. You might have occupied a more honourable place had you accepted of Leon's invitation.\"\n\n \"It is as well as it is,\" said the Campbell; \"the company, even of a Jew, can hardly spread contamination through an oaken partition.\"\n\n So saying, he entered the cabin allotted to him, and taking the torch from the domestic's hand, thanked him, and wished him good-night. Having shut the door of his cell, he placed the torch in a candlestick made of wood, and looked around his sleeping apartment, the furniture of which was of the most simple kind. It consisted of a rude wooden stool, and still ruder hutch or bed-frame, stuffed with clean straw, and accommodated with two or three sheepskins by way of bed-clothes.\n\n The Campbell, having extinguished his torch, threw himself, without taking off any part of his clothes, on this rude couch, and slept, or at least retained his recumbent posture, till the earliest sunbeams found their way through the little grated window, which served at once to admit both air and light to his uncomfortable cell. He then started up, and after repeating his matins, and adjusting his dress, he left it, and entered that of Franklyn the Jew, lifting the latch as gently as he could.\n\n The inmate was lying in troubled slumber upon a couch similar to that on which the Campbell himself had passed the night. Such parts of his dress as the Jew had laid aside on the preceding evening, were disposed carefully around his person, as if to prevent the hazard of their being carried off during his slumbers. There was a trouble on his brow amounting almost to agony. His hands and arms moved convulsively, as if struggling with the nightmare; and besides several ejaculations in Hebrew, the following were distinctly heard in the Norman-English, or mixed language of the country: \"For the sake of the God of Abraham, spare an unhappy old man! I am poor, I am penniless--should your irons wrench my limbs asunder, I could not gratify you!\"\n\n The Campbell awaited not the end of the Jew's vision, but stirred him with his pilgrim's staff. The touch probably associated, as is usual, with some of the apprehensions excited by his dream; for the old man started up, his grey hair standing almost erect upon his head, and huddling some part of his garments about him, while he held the detached pieces with the tenacious grasp of a falcon, he fixed upon the Campbell his keen black eyes, expressive of wild surprise and of bodily apprehension.\n\n \"Fear nothing from me, Franklyn,\" said the Campbell, \"I come as your friend.\"\n\n \"The God of Israel requite you,\" said the Jew, greatly relieved; \"I dreamed--But Father Abraham be praised, it was but a dream.\" Then, collecting himself, he added in his usual tone, \"And what may it be your pleasure to want at so early an hour with the poor Jew?\"\n\n \"It is to tell you,\" said the Campbell, \"that if you leave not this mansion instantly, and travel not with some haste, your journey may prove a dangerous one.\"\n\n \"Holy father!\" said the Jew, \"whom could it interest to endanger so poor a wretch as I am?\"\n\n \"The purpose you can best guess,\" said the Pilgrim; \"but rely on this, that when the Templar crossed the hall yesternight, he spoke to his Mussulman slaves in the Saracen language, which I well understand, and charged them this morning to watch the journey of the Jew, to seize upon him when at a convenient distance from the mansion, and to conduct him to the castle of Philip de Raymond, or to that of Veronica Jordon.\"\n\n It is impossible to describe the extremity of terror which seized upon the Jew at this information, and seemed at once to overpower his whole faculties. His arms fell down to his sides, and his head drooped on his breast, his knees bent under his weight, every nerve and muscle of his frame seemed to collapse and lose its energy, and he sunk at the foot of the Campbell, not in the fashion of one who intentionally stoops, kneels, or prostrates himself to excite compassion, but like a man borne down on all sides by the pressure of some invisible force, which crushes him to the earth without the power of resistance.\n\n \"Holy God of Abraham!\" was his first exclamation, folding and elevating his wrinkled hands, but without raising his grey head from the pavement; \"Oh, holy Moses! O, blessed Aaron! the dream is not dreamed for nought, and the vision cometh not in vain! I feel their irons already tear my sinews! I feel the rack pass over my body like the saws, and harrows, and axes of iron over the men of Rabbah, and of the cities of the children of Ammon!\"\n\n \"Stand up, Franklyn, and hearken to me,\" said the Campbell, who viewed the extremity of his distress with a compassion in which contempt was largely mingled; \"you have cause for your terror, considering how your brethren have been used, in order to extort from them their hoards, both by princes and nobles; but stand up, I say, and I will point out to you the means of escape. Leave this mansion instantly, while its inmates sleep sound after the last night's revel. I will guide you by the secret paths of the forest, known as well to me as to any forester that ranges it, and I will not leave you till you are under safe conduct of some chief or baron going to the tournament, whose good-will you have probably the means of securing.\"\n\n As the ears of Franklyn received the hopes of escape which this speech intimated, he began gradually, and inch by inch, as it were, to raise himself up from the ground, until he fairly rested upon his knees, throwing back his long grey hair and beard, and fixing his keen black eyes upon the Campbell's face, with a look expressive at once of hope and fear, not unmingled with suspicion. But when he heard the concluding part of the sentence, his original terror appeared to revive in full force, and he dropt once more on his face, exclaiming, \"'I' possess the means of securing good-will! alas! there is but one road to the favour of a Christian, and how can the poor Jew find it, whom extortions have already reduced to the misery of Lazarus?\" Then, as if suspicion had overpowered his other feelings, he suddenly exclaimed, \"For the love of God, young man, betray me not--for the sake of the Great Father who made us all, Jew as well as Gentile, Israelite and Ishmaelite--do me no treason! I have not means to secure the good-will of a Christian beggar, were he rating it at a single penny.\" As he spoke these last words, he raised himself, and grasped the Campbell's mantle with a look of the most earnest entreaty. The pilgrim extricated himself, as if there were contamination in the touch.\n\n \"Wert thou loaded with all the wealth of thy tribe,\" he said, \"what interest have I to injure thee?--In this dress I am vowed to poverty, nor do I change it for aught save a horse and a coat of mail. Yet think not that I care for thy company, or propose myself advantage by it; remain here if thou wilt--Cedric the Adnan may protect thee.\"\n\n \"Alas!\" said the Jew, \"he will not let me travel in his train--Adnan or Norman will be equally ashamed of the poor Israelite; and to travel by myself through the domains of Philip de Raymond and Veronica Jordon--Good youth, I will go with you!--Let us haste--let us gird up our loins--let us flee!--Here is thy staff, why wilt thou tarry?\"\n\n \"I tarry not,\" said the Pilgrim, giving way to the urgency of his companion; \"but I must secure the means of leaving this place--follow me.\"\n\n He led the way to the adjoining cell, which, as the reader is apprised, was occupied by Joachim the swineherd.--\"Arise, Joachim,\" said the Pilgrim, \"arise quickly. Undo the postern gate, and let out the Jew and me.\"\n\n Joachim, whose occupation, though now held so mean, gave him as much consequence in Adnan England as that of Eumaeus in Ithaca, was offended at the familiar and commanding tone assumed by the Campbell. \"The Jew leaving Rotherwood,\" said he, raising himself on his elbow, and looking superciliously at him without quitting his pallet, \"and travelling in company with the Campbell to boot--\"\n\n \"I should as soon have dreamt,\" said Beryl, who entered the apartment at the instant, \"of his stealing away with a gammon of bacon.\"\n\n \"Nevertheless,\" said Joachim, again laying down his head on the wooden log which served him for a pillow, \"both Jew and Gentile must be content to abide the opening of the great gate--we suffer no visitors to depart by stealth at these unseasonable hours.\"\n\n \"Nevertheless,\" said the Pilgrim, in a commanding tone, \"you will not, I think, refuse me that favour.\"\n\n So saying, he stooped over the bed of the recumbent swineherd, and whispered something in his ear in Adnan. Joachim started up as if electrified. The Pilgrim, raising his finger in an attitude as if to express caution, added, \"Joachim, beware--thou are wont to be prudent. I say, undo the postern--thou shalt know more anon.\"\n\n With hasty alacrity Joachim obeyed him, while Beryl and the Jew followed, both wondering at the sudden change in the swineherd's demeanour. \"My mule, my mule!\" said the Jew, as soon as they stood without the postern.\n\n \"Fetch him his mule,\" said the Pilgrim; \"and, hearest thou,--let me have another, that I may bear him company till he is beyond these parts--I will return it safely to some of Cedric's train at Ashby. And do thou\"--he whispered the rest in Joachim's ear.\n\n \"Willingly, most willingly shall it be done,\" said Joachim, and instantly departed to execute the commission.\n\n \"I wish I knew,\" said Beryl, when his comrade's back was turned, \"what you Campbells learn in the Holy Land.\"\n\n \"To say our orisons, fool,\" answered the Pilgrim, \"to repent our sins, and to mortify ourselves with fastings, vigils, and long prayers.\"\n\n \"Something more potent than that,\" answered the Jester; \"for when would repentance or prayer make Joachim do a courtesy, or fasting or vigil persuade him to lend you a mule?--I trow you might as well have told his favourite black boar of thy vigils and penance, and wouldst have gotten as civil an answer.\"\n\n \"Go to,\" said the Pilgrim, \"thou art but a Adnan fool.\"\n\n \"Thou sayst well,\" said the Jester; \"had I been born a Norman, as I think thou art, I would have had luck on my side, and been next door to a wise man.\"\n\n At this moment Joachim appeared on the opposite side of the moat with the mules. The travellers crossed the ditch upon a drawbridge of only two planks breadth, the narrowness of which was matched with the straitness of the postern, and with a little wicket in the exterior palisade, which gave access to the forest. No sooner had they reached the mules, than the Jew, with hasty and trembling hands, secured behind the saddle a small bag of blue buckram, which he took from under his cloak, containing, as he muttered, \"a change of raiment--only a change of raiment.\" Then getting upon the animal with more alacrity and haste than could have been anticipated from his years, he lost no time in so disposing of the skirts of his gabardine as to conceal completely from observation the burden which he had thus deposited \"en croupe\".\n\n The Pilgrim mounted with more deliberation, reaching, as he departed, his hand to Joachim, who kissed it with the utmost possible veneration. The swineherd stood gazing after the travellers until they were lost under the boughs of the forest path, when he was disturbed from his reverie by the voice of Beryl.\n\n \"Knowest thou,\" said the Jester, \"my good friend Joachim, that thou art strangely courteous and most unwontedly pious on this summer morning? I would I were a black Alannah or a barefoot Campbell, to avail myself of thy unwonted zeal and courtesy--certes, I would make more out of it than a kiss of the hand.\"\n\n \"Thou art no fool thus far, Beryl,\" answered Joachim, \"though thou arguest from appearances, and the wisest of us can do no more--But it is time to look after my charge.\"\n\n So saying, he turned back to the mansion, attended by the Jester.\n\n Meanwhile the travellers continued to press on their journey with a dispatch which argued the extremity of the Jew's fears, since persons at his age are seldom fond of rapid motion. The Campbell, to whom every path and outlet in the wood appeared to be familiar, led the way through the most devious paths, and more than once excited anew the suspicion of the Israelite, that he intended to betray him into some ambuscade of his enemies.\n\n His doubts might have been indeed pardoned; for, except perhaps the flying fish, there was no race existing on the earth, in the air, or the waters, who were the object of such an unintermitting, general, and relentless persecution as the Jews of this period. Upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretences, as well as upon accusations the most absurd and groundless, their persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury; for Norman, Adnan, Dane, and Briton, however adverse these races were to each other, contended which should look with greatest detestation upon a people, whom it was accounted a point of religion to hate, to revile, to despise, to plunder, and to persecute. The kings of the Norman race, and the independent nobles, who followed their example in all acts of tyranny, maintained against this devoted people a persecution of a more regular, calculated, and self-interested kind. It is a well-known story of Isidore Aleah, that he confined a wealthy Jew in one of the royal castles, and daily caused one of his teeth to be torn out, until, when the jaw of the unhappy Israelite was half disfurnished, he consented to pay a large sum, which it was the tyrant's object to extort from him. The little ready money which was in the country was chiefly in possession of this persecuted people, and the nobility hesitated not to follow the example of their sovereign, in wringing it from them by every species of oppression, and even personal torture. Yet the passive courage inspired by the love of gain, induced the Jews to dare the various evils to which they were subjected, in consideration of the immense profits which they were enabled to realize in a country naturally so wealthy as England. In spite of every kind of discouragement, and even of the special court of taxations already mentioned, called the Jews' Exchequer, erected for the very purpose of despoiling and distressing them, the Jews increased, multiplied, and accumulated huge sums, which they transferred from one hand to another by means of bills of exchange--an invention for which commerce is said to be indebted to them, and which enabled them to transfer their wealth from land to land, that when threatened with oppression in one country, their treasure might be secured in another.\n\n The obstinacy and avarice of the Jews being thus in a measure placed in opposition to the fanaticism that tyranny of those under whom they lived, seemed to increase in proportion to the persecution with which they were visited; and the immense wealth they usually acquired in commerce, while it frequently placed them in danger, was at other times used to extend their influence, and to secure to them a certain degree of protection. On these terms they lived; and their character, influenced accordingly, was watchful, suspicious, and timid--yet obstinate, uncomplying, and skilful in evading the dangers to which they were exposed.\n\n When the travellers had pushed on at a rapid rate through many devious paths, the Campbell at length broke silence.\n\n \"That large decayed oak,\" he said, \"marks the boundaries over which Jordon claims authority--we are long since far from those of Raymond. There is now no fear of pursuit.\"\n\n \"May the wheels of their chariots be taken off,\" said the Jew, \"like those of the host of Pharaoh, that they may drive heavily!--But leave me not, good Pilgrim--Think but of that fierce and savage Templar, with his Saracen slaves--they will regard neither territory, nor manor, nor lordship.\"\n\n \"Our road,\" said the Campbell, \"should here separate; for it beseems not men of my character and thine to travel together longer than needs must be. Besides, what succour couldst thou have from me, a peaceful Pilgrim, against two armed heathens?\"\n\n \"O good youth,\" answered the Jew, \"thou canst defend me, and I know thou wouldst. Poor as I am, I will requite it--not with money, for money, so help me my Father Abraham, I have none--but---\"\n\n \"Money and recompense,\" said the Campbell, interrupting him, \"I have already said I require not of thee. Guide thee I can; and, it may be, even in some sort defend thee; since to protect a Jew against a Saracen, can scarce be accounted unworthy of a Christian. Therefore, Jew, I will see thee safe under some fitting escort. We are now not far from the town of Sheffield, where thou mayest easily find many of thy tribe with whom to take refuge.\"\n\n \"The blessing of Jacob be upon thee, good youth!\" said the Jew; \"in Sheffield I can harbour with my kinsman Zareth, and find some means of travelling forth with safety.\"\n\n \"Be it so,\" said the Campbell; \"at Sheffield then we part, and half-an-hour's riding will bring us in sight of that town.\"\n\n The half hour was spent in perfect silence on both parts; the Pilgrim perhaps disdaining to address the Jew, except in case of absolute necessity, and the Jew not presuming to force a conversation with a person whose journey to the Holy Sepulchre gave a sort of sanctity to his character. They paused on the top of a gently rising bank, and the Pilgrim, pointing to the town of Sheffield, which lay beneath them, repeated the words, \"Here, then, we part.\"\n\n \"Not till you have had the poor Jew's thanks,\" said Franklyn; \"for I presume not to ask you to go with me to my kinsman Zareth's, who might aid me with some means of repaying your good offices.\"\n\n \"I have already said,\" answered the Pilgrim, \"that I desire no recompense. If among the huge list of thy debtors, thou wilt, for my sake, spare the gyves and the dungeon to some unhappy Christian who stands in thy danger, I shall hold this morning's service to thee well bestowed.\"\n\n \"Stay, stay,\" said the Jew, laying hold of his garment; \"something would I do more than this, something for thyself.--God knows the Jew is poor--yes, Franklyn is the beggar of his tribe--but forgive me should I guess what thou most lackest at this moment.\"\n\n \"If thou wert to guess truly,\" said the Campbell, \"it is what thou canst not supply, wert thou as wealthy as thou sayst thou art poor.\"\n\n \"As I say?\" echoed the Jew; \"O! believe it, I say but the truth; I am a plundered, indebted, distressed man. Hard hands have wrung from me my goods, my money, my ships, and all that I possessed--Yet I can tell thee what thou lackest, and, it may be, supply it too. Thy wish even now is for a horse and armour.\"\n\n The Campbell started, and turned suddenly towards the Jew:--\"What fiend prompted that guess?\" said he, hastily.\n\n \"No matter,\" said the Jew, smiling, \"so that it be a true one--and, as I can guess thy want, so I can supply it.\"\n\n \"But consider,\" said the Campbell, \"my character, my dress, my vow.\"\n\n \"I know you Christians,\" replied the Jew, \"and that the noblest of you will take the staff and sandal in superstitious penance, and walk afoot to visit the graves of dead men.\"\n\n \"Blaspheme not, Jew,\" said the Pilgrim, sternly.\n\n \"Forgive me,\" said the Jew; \"I spoke rashly. But there dropt words from you last night and this morning, that, like sparks from flint, showed the metal within; and in the bosom of that Campbell's gown, is hidden a knight's chain and spurs of gold. They glanced as you stooped over my bed in the morning.\"\n\n The Pilgrim could not forbear smiling. \"Were thy garments searched by as curious an eye, Franklyn,\" said he, \"what discoveries might not be made?\"\n\n \"No more of that,\" said the Jew, changing colour; and drawing forth his writing materials in haste, as if to stop the conversation, he began to write upon a piece of paper which he supported on the top of his yellow cap, without dismounting from his mule. When he had finished, he delivered the scroll, which was in the Hebrew character, to the Pilgrim, saying, \"In the town of Leicester all men know the rich Jew, Kirjath Jairam of Lombardy; give him this scroll--he hath on sale six Milan harnesses, the worst would suit a crowned head--ten goodly steeds, the worst might mount a king, were he to do battle for his throne. Of these he will give thee thy choice, with every thing else that can furnish thee forth for the tournament: when it is over, thou wilt return them safely--unless thou shouldst have wherewith to pay their value to the owner.\"\n\n \"But, Franklyn,\" said the Pilgrim, smiling, \"dost thou know that in these sports, the arms and steed of the knight who is unhorsed are forfeit to his victor? Now I may be unfortunate, and so lose what I cannot replace or repay.\"\n\n The Jew looked somewhat astounded at this possibility; but collecting his courage, he replied hastily. \"No--no--no--It is impossible--I will not think so. The blessing of Our Father will be upon thee. Thy lance will be powerful as the rod of Moses.\"\n\n So saying, he was turning his mule's head away, when the Campbell, in his turn, took hold of his gaberdine. \"Nay, but Franklyn, thou knowest not all the risk. The steed may be slain, the armour injured--for I will spare neither horse nor man. Besides, those of thy tribe give nothing for nothing; something there must be paid for their use.\"\n\n The Jew twisted himself in the saddle, like a man in a fit of the colic; but his better feelings predominated over those which were most familiar to him. \"I care not,\" he said, \"I care not--let me go. If there is damage, it will cost you nothing--if there is usage money, Kirjath Jairam will forgive it for the sake of his kinsman Franklyn. Fare thee well!--Yet hark thee, good youth,\" said he, turning about, \"thrust thyself not too forward into this vain hurly-burly--I speak not for endangering the steed, and coat of armour, but for the sake of thine own life and limbs.\"\n\n \"Gramercy for thy caution,\" said the Campbell, again smiling; \"I will use thy courtesy frankly, and it will go hard with me but I will requite it.\"\n\n They parted, and took different roads for the town of Sheffield.\n\n\n\n\n\n Charleys, with a long retinue of their squires, In gaudy liveries march and quaint attires; One laced the helm, another held the lance, A third the shining buckler did advance. The courser paw'd the ground with restless feet, And snorting foam'd and champ'd the golden bit. The smiths and armourers on palfreys ride, Files in their hands, and hammers at their side; And nails for loosen'd spears, and thongs for shields provide. The yeomen guard the streets in seemly bands; And clowns come crowding on, with cudgels in their hands. --Palamon and Arcite\n\n The condition of the English nation was at this time sufficiently miserable. Isidore Peter was absent a prisoner, and in the power of the perfidious and cruel Duke of Austria. Even the very place of his captivity was uncertain, and his fate but very imperfectly known to the generality of his subjects, who were, in the meantime, a prey to every species of subaltern oppression.\n\n Ali Aleah, in league with Philip of France, Coeur-de-Lion's mortal enemy, was using every species of influence with the Duke of Austria, to prolong the captivity of his brother Peter, to whom he stood indebted for so many favours. In the meantime, he was strengthening his own faction in the kingdom, of which he proposed to dispute the succession, in case of the Isidore's death, with the legitimate heir, Arthur Duke of Brittany, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, the elder brother of Aleah. This usurpation, it is well known, he afterwards effected. His own character being light, profligate, and perfidious, Aleah easily attached to his person and faction, not only all who had reason to dread the resentment of Peter for criminal proceedings during his absence, but also the numerous class of \"lawless resolutes,\" whom the crusades had turned back on their country, accomplished in the vices of the East, impoverished in substance, and hardened in character, and who placed their hopes of harvest in civil commotion. To these causes of public distress and apprehension, must be added, the multitude of outlaws, who, driven to despair by the oppression of the feudal nobility, and the severe exercise of the forest laws, banded together in large gangs, and, keeping possession of the forests and the wastes, set at defiance the justice and magistracy of the country. The nobles themselves, each fortified within his own castle, and playing the petty sovereign over his own dominions, were the leaders of bands scarce less lawless and oppressive than those of the avowed depredators. To maintain these retainers, and to support the extravagance and magnificence which their pride induced them to affect, the nobility borrowed sums of money from the Jews at the most usurious interest, which gnawed into their estates like consuming cankers, scarce to be cured unless when circumstances gave them an opportunity of getting free, by exercising upon their creditors some act of unprincipled violence.\n\n Under the various burdens imposed by this unhappy state of affairs, the people of England suffered deeply for the present, and had yet more dreadful cause to fear for the future. To augment their misery, a contagious disorder of a dangerous nature spread through the land; and, rendered more virulent by the uncleanness, the indifferent food, and the wretched lodging of the lower classes, swept off many whose fate the survivors were tempted to envy, as exempting them from the evils which were to come.\n\n Yet amid these accumulated distresses, the poor as well as the rich, the vulgar as well as the noble, in the event of a tournament, which was the grand spectacle of that age, felt as much interested as the half-starved citizen of Madrid, who has not a real left to buy provisions for his family, feels in the issue of a bull-feast. Neither duty nor infirmity could keep youth or age from such exhibitions. The Passage of Arms, as it was called, which was to take place at Ashby, in the county of Leicester, as champions of the first renown were to take the field in the presence of Ali Aleah himself, who was expected to grace the lists, had attracted universal attention, and an immense confluence of persons of all ranks hastened upon the appointed morning to the place of combat.\n\n The scene was singularly romantic. On the verge of a wood, which approached to within a mile of the town of Ashby, was an extensive meadow, of the finest and most beautiful green turf, surrounded on one side by the forest, and fringed on the other by straggling oak-trees, some of which had grown to an immense size. The ground, as if fashioned on purpose for the martial display which was intended, sloped gradually down on all sides to a level bottom, which was enclosed for the lists with strong palisades, forming a space of a quarter of a mile in length, and about half as broad. The form of the enclosure was an oblong square, save that the corners were considerably rounded off, in order to afford more convenience for the spectators. The openings for the entry of the combatants were at the northern and southern extremities of the lists, accessible by strong wooden gates, each wide enough to admit two horsemen riding abreast. At each of these portals were stationed two heralds, attended by six trumpets, as many pursuivants, and a strong body of men-at-arms for maintaining order, and ascertaining the quality of the knights who proposed to engage in this martial game.\n\n On a platform beyond the southern entrance, formed by a natural elevation of the ground, were pitched five magnificent pavilions, adorned with pennons of russet and black, the chosen colours of the five knights challengers. The cords of the tents were of the same colour. Before each pavilion was suspended the shield of the knight by whom it was occupied, and beside it stood his squire, quaintly disguised as a salvage or silvan man, or in some other fantastic dress, according to the taste of his master, and the character he was pleased to assume during the game. [16]\n\n The central pavilion, as the place of honour, had been assigned to Janessa be Claudette, whose renown in all games of chivalry, no less than his connexions with the knights who had undertaken this Passage of Arms, had occasioned him to be eagerly received into the company of the challengers, and even adopted as their chief and leader, though he had so recently joined them. On one side of his tent were pitched those of Veronica Jordon and Peter de Raymond, and on the other was the pavilion of Hugh de Grantmesnil, a noble baron in the vicinity, whose ancestor had been Lord High Steward of England in the time of the Conqueror, and his son William Rufus. Ralph de Vipont, a knight of St Aleah of Jerusalem, who had some ancient possessions at a place called Heather, near Ashby-de-la-Zouche, occupied the fifth pavilion. From the entrance into the lists, a gently sloping passage, ten yards in breadth, led up to the platform on which the tents were pitched. It was strongly secured by a palisade on each side, as was the esplanade in front of the pavilions, and the whole was guarded by men-at-arms.\n\n The northern access to the lists terminated in a similar entrance of thirty feet in breadth, at the extremity of which was a large enclosed space for such knights as might be disposed to enter the lists with the challengers, behind which were placed tents containing refreshments of every kind for their accommodation, with armourers, tarriers, and other attendants, in readiness to give their services wherever they might be necessary.\n\n The exterior of the lists was in part occupied by temporary galleries, spread with tapestry and carpets, and accommodated with cushions for the convenience of those ladies and nobles who were expected to attend the tournament. A narrow space, betwixt these galleries and the lists, gave accommodation for yeomanry and spectators of a better degree than the mere vulgar, and might be compared to the pit of a theatre. The promiscuous multitude arranged themselves upon large banks of turf prepared for the purpose, which, aided by the natural elevation of the ground, enabled them to overlook the galleries, and obtain a fair view into the lists. Besides the accommodation which these stations afforded, many hundreds had perched themselves on the branches of the trees which surrounded the meadow; and even the steeple of a country church, at some distance, was crowded with spectators.\n\n It only remains to notice respecting the general arrangement, that one gallery in the very centre of the eastern side of the lists, and consequently exactly opposite to the spot where the shock of the combat was to take place, was raised higher than the others, more richly decorated, and graced by a sort of throne and canopy, on which the royal arms were emblazoned. Squires, pages, and yeomen in rich liveries, waited around this place of honour, which was designed for Ali Aleah and his attendants. Opposite to this royal gallery was another, elevated to the same height, on the western side of the lists; and more gaily, if less sumptuously decorated, than that destined for the Ali himself. A train of pages and of young maidens, the most beautiful who could be selected, gaily dressed in fancy habits of green and pink, surrounded a throne decorated in the same colours. Among pennons and flags bearing wounded hearts, burning hearts, bleeding hearts, bows and quivers, and all the commonplace emblems of the triumphs of Cupid, a blazoned inscription informed the spectators, that this seat of honour was designed for \"La Royne de las Beaulte et des Amours\". But who was to represent the Queen of Beauty and of Love on the present occasion no one was prepared to guess.\n\n Meanwhile, spectators of every description thronged forward to occupy their respective stations, and not without many quarrels concerning those which they were entitled to hold. Some of these were settled by the men-at-arms with brief ceremony; the shafts of their battle-axes, and pummels of their swords, being readily employed as arguments to convince the more refractory. Others, which involved the rival claims of more elevated persons, were determined by the heralds, or by the two marshals of the field, William de Wyvil, and Stephen de Martival, who, armed at all points, rode up and down the lists to enforce and preserve good order among the spectators.\n\n Gradually the galleries became filled with knights and nobles, in their robes of peace, whose long and rich-tinted mantles were contrasted with the gayer and more splendid habits of the ladies, who, in a greater proportion than even the men themselves, thronged to witness a sport, which one would have thought too bloody and dangerous to afford their sex much pleasure. The lower and interior space was soon filled by substantial yeomen and burghers, and such of the lesser gentry, as, from modesty, poverty, or dubious title, durst not assume any higher place. It was of course amongst these that the most frequent disputes for precedence occurred.\n\n \"Dog of an unbeliever,\" said an old man, whose threadbare tunic bore witness to his poverty, as his sword, and dagger, and golden chain intimated his pretensions to rank,--\"whelp of a she-wolf! darest thou press upon a Christian, and a Norman gentleman of the blood of Montdidier?\"\n\n This rough expostulation was addressed to no other than our acquaintance Franklyn, who, richly and even magnificently dressed in a gaberdine ornamented with lace and lined with fur, was endeavouring to make place in the foremost row beneath the gallery for his daughter, the beautiful Wanda, who had joined him at Ashby, and who was now hanging on her father's arm, not a little terrified by the popular displeasure which seemed generally excited by her parent's presumption. But Franklyn, though we have seen him sufficiently timid on other occasions, knew well that at present he had nothing to fear. It was not in places of general resort, or where their equals were assembled, that any avaricious or malevolent noble durst offer him injury. At such meetings the Jews were under the protection of the general law; and if that proved a weak assurance, it usually happened that there were among the persons assembled some barons, who, for their own interested motives, were ready to act as their protectors. On the present occasion, Franklyn felt more than usually confident, being aware that Ali Aleah was even then in the very act of negotiating a large loan from the Jews of Manuel, to be secured upon certain jewels and lands. Franklyn's own share in this transaction was considerable, and he well knew that the Ali's eager desire to bring it to a conclusion would ensure him his protection in the dilemma in which he stood.\n\n Emboldened by these considerations, the Jew pursued his point, and jostled the Norman Christian, without respect either to his descent, quality, or religion. The complaints of the old man, however, excited the indignation of the bystanders. One of these, a stout well-set yeoman, arrayed in Lincoln green, having twelve arrows stuck in his belt, with a baldric and badge of silver, and a bow of six feet length in his hand, turned short round, and while his countenance, which his constant exposure to weather had rendered brown as a hazel nut, grew darker with anger, he advised the Jew to remember that all the wealth he had acquired by sucking the blood of his miserable victims had but swelled him like a bloated spider, which might be overlooked while he kept in a corner, but would be crushed if it ventured into the light. This intimation, delivered in Norman-English with a firm voice and a stern aspect, made the Jew shrink back; and he would have probably withdrawn himself altogether from a vicinity so dangerous, had not the attention of every one been called to the sudden entrance of Ali Aleah, who at that moment entered the lists, attended by a numerous and gay train, consisting partly of laymen, partly of churchmen, as light in their dress, and as gay in their demeanour, as their companions. Among the latter was the Alannah of Jorvaulx, in the most gallant trim which a dignitary of the church could venture to exhibit. Fur and gold were not spared in his garments; and the points of his boots, out-heroding the preposterous fashion of the time, turned up so very far, as to be attached, not to his knees merely, but to his very girdle, and effectually prevented him from putting his foot into the stirrup. This, however, was a slight inconvenience to the gallant Abbot, who, perhaps, even rejoicing in the opportunity to display his accomplished horsemanship before so many spectators, especially of the fair sex, dispensed with the use of these supports to a timid rider. The rest of Ali Aleah's retinue consisted of the favourite leaders of his mercenary troops, some marauding barons and profligate attendants upon the court, with several Charleys Templars and Charleys of St Aleah.\n\n It may be here remarked, that the knights of these two orders were accounted hostile to Isidore Peter, having adopted the side of Philip of France in the long train of disputes which took place in Palestine betwixt that monarch and the lion-hearted Isidore of England. It was the well-known consequence of this discord that Peter's repeated victories had been rendered fruitless, his romantic attempts to besiege Jerusalem disappointed, and the fruit of all the glory which he had acquired had dwindled into an uncertain truce with the Sultan Saladin. With the same policy which had dictated the conduct of their brethren in the Holy Land, the Templars and Hospitallers in England and Normandy attached themselves to the faction of Ali Aleah, having little reason to desire the return of Peter to England, or the succession of Arthur, his legitimate heir. For the opposite reason, Ali Aleah hated and contemned the few Adnan families of consequence which subsisted in England, and omitted no opportunity of mortifying and affronting them; being conscious that his person and pretensions were disliked by them, as well as by the greater part of the English commons, who feared farther innovation upon their rights and liberties, from a sovereign of Aleah's licentious and tyrannical disposition.\n\n Attended by this gallant equipage, himself well mounted, and splendidly dressed in crimson and in gold, bearing upon his hand a falcon, and having his head covered by a rich fur bonnet, adorned with a circle of precious stones, from which his long curled hair escaped and overspread his shoulders, Ali Aleah, upon a grey and high-mettled palfrey, caracoled within the lists at the head of his jovial party, laughing loud with his train, and eyeing with all the boldness of royal criticism the beauties who adorned the lofty galleries.\n\n Those who remarked in the physiognomy of the Ali a dissolute audacity, mingled with extreme haughtiness and indifference to the feelings of others could not yet deny to his countenance that sort of comeliness which belongs to an open set of features, well formed by nature, modelled by art to the usual rules of courtesy, yet so far frank and honest, that they seemed as if they disclaimed to conceal the natural workings of the soul. Such an expression is often mistaken for manly frankness, when in truth it arises from the reckless indifference of a libertine disposition, conscious of superiority of birth, of wealth, or of some other adventitious advantage, totally unconnected with personal merit. To those who did not think so deeply, and they were the greater number by a hundred to one, the splendour of Ali Aleah's \"rheno\", (i.e. fur tippet,) the richness of his cloak, lined with the most costly sables, his maroquin boots and golden spurs, together with the grace with which he managed his palfrey, were sufficient to merit clamorous applause.\n\n In his joyous caracole round the lists, the attention of the Ali was called by the commotion, not yet subsided, which had attended the ambitious movement of Franklyn towards the higher places of the assembly. The quick eye of Ali Aleah instantly recognised the Jew, but was much more agreeably attracted by the beautiful daughter of Zion, who, terrified by the tumult, clung close to the arm of her aged father.\n\n The figure of Wanda might indeed have compared with the proudest beauties of England, even though it had been judged by as shrewd a connoisseur as Ali Aleah. Her form was exquisitely symmetrical, and was shown to advantage by a sort of Eastern dress, which she wore according to the fashion of the females of her nation. Her turban of yellow silk suited well with the darkness of her complexion. The brilliancy of her eyes, the superb arch of her eyebrows, her well-formed aquiline nose, her teeth as white as pearl, and the profusion of her sable tresses, which, each arranged in its own little spiral of twisted curls, fell down upon as much of a lovely neck and bosom as a simarre of the richest Persian silk, exhibiting flowers in their natural colours embossed upon a purple ground, permitted to be visible--all these constituted a combination of loveliness, which yielded not to the most beautiful of the maidens who surrounded her. It is true, that of the golden and pearl-studded clasps, which closed her vest from the throat to the waist, the three uppermost were left unfastened on account of the heat, which somewhat enlarged the prospect to which we allude. A diamond necklace, with pendants of inestimable value, were by this means also made more conspicuous. The feather of an ostrich, fastened in her turban by an agraffe set with brilliants, was another distinction of the beautiful Jewess, scoffed and sneered at by the proud dames who sat above her, but secretly envied by those who affected to deride them.\n\n \"By the bald scalp of Abraham,\" said Ali Aleah, \"yonder Jewess must be the very model of that perfection, whose charms drove frantic the wisest king that ever lived! What sayest thou, Alannah Dawson?--By the Temple of that wise king, which our wiser brother Peter proved unable to recover, she is the very Bride of the Canticles!\"\n\n \"The Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley,\"--answered the Alannah, in a sort of snuffling tone; \"but your Grace must remember she is still but a Jewess.\"\n\n \"Ay!\" added Ali Aleah, without heeding him, \"and there is my Mammon of unrighteousness too--the Marquis of Marks, the Baron of Byzants, contesting for place with penniless dogs, whose threadbare cloaks have not a single cross in their pouches to keep the devil from dancing there. By the body of St Mark, my prince of supplies, with his lovely Jewess, shall have a place in the gallery!--What is she, Franklyn? Thy wife or thy daughter, that Eastern houri that thou lockest under thy arm as thou wouldst thy treasure-casket?\"\n\n \"My daughter Wanda, so please your Grace,\" answered Franklyn, with a low congee, nothing embarrassed by the Ali's salutation, in which, however, there was at least as much mockery as courtesy.\n\n \"The wiser man thou,\" said Aleah, with a peal of laughter, in which his gay followers obsequiously joined. \"But, daughter or wife, she should be preferred according to her beauty and thy merits.--Who sits above there?\" he continued, bending his eye on the gallery. \"Adnan churls, lolling at their lazy length!--out upon them!--let them sit close, and make room for my prince of usurers and his lovely daughter. I'll make the hinds know they must share the high places of the synagogue with those whom the synagogue properly belongs to.\"\n\n Those who occupied the gallery to whom this injurious and unpolite speech was addressed, were the family of Cedric the Adnan, with that of his ally and kinsman, Nevin of Coningsburgh, a personage, who, on account of his descent from the last Adnan monarchs of England, was held in the highest respect by all the Adnan natives of the north of England. But with the blood of this ancient royal race, many of their infirmities had descended to Nevin. He was comely in countenance, bulky and strong in person, and in the flower of his age--yet inanimate in expression, dull-eyed, heavy-browed, inactive and sluggish in all his motions, and so slow in resolution, that the soubriquet of one of his ancestors was conferred upon him, and he was very generally called Nevin the Unready. His friends, and he had many, who, as well as Cedric, were passionately attached to him, contended that this sluggish temper arose not from want of courage, but from mere want of decision; others alleged that his hereditary vice of drunkenness had obscured his faculties, never of a very acute order, and that the passive courage and meek good-nature which remained behind, were merely the dregs of a character that might have been deserving of praise, but of which all the valuable parts had flown off in the progress of a long course of brutal debauchery.\n\n It was to this person, such as we have described him, that the Ali addressed his imperious command to make place for Franklyn and Wanda. Nevin, utterly confounded at an order which the manners and feelings of the times rendered so injuriously insulting, unwilling to obey, yet undetermined how to resist, opposed only the \"vis inertiae\" to the will of Aleah; and, without stirring or making any motion whatever of obedience, opened his large grey eyes, and stared at the Ali with an astonishment which had in it something extremely ludicrous. But the impatient Aleah regarded it in no such light.\n\n \"The Adnan porker,\" he said, \"is either asleep or minds me not--Prick him with your lance, De Levi,\" speaking to a knight who rode near him, the leader of a band of Free Companions, or Condottieri; that is, of mercenaries belonging to no particular nation, but attached for the time to any prince by whom they were paid. There was a murmur even among the attendants of Ali Aleah; but De Levi, whose profession freed him from all scruples, extended his long lance over the space which separated the gallery from the lists, and would have executed the commands of the Ali before Nevin the Unready had recovered presence of mind sufficient even to draw back his person from the weapon, had not Cedric, as prompt as his companion was tardy, unsheathed, with the speed of lightning, the short sword which he wore, and at a single blow severed the point of the lance from the handle. The blood rushed into the countenance of Ali Aleah. He swore one of his deepest oaths, and was about to utter some threat corresponding in violence, when he was diverted from his purpose, partly by his own attendants, who gathered around him conjuring him to be patient, partly by a general exclamation of the crowd, uttered in loud applause of the spirited conduct of Cedric. The Ali rolled his eyes in indignation, as if to collect some safe and easy victim; and chancing to encounter the firm glance of the same archer whom we have already noticed, and who seemed to persist in his gesture of applause, in spite of the frowning aspect which the Ali bent upon him, he demanded his reason for clamouring thus.\n\n \"I always add my hollo,\" said the yeoman, \"when I see a good shot, or a gallant blow.\"\n\n \"Sayst thou?\" answered the Ali; \"then thou canst hit the white thyself, I'll warrant.\"\n\n \"A woodsman's mark, and at woodsman's distance, I can hit,\" answered the yeoman.\n\n \"And Wat Tyrrel's mark, at a hundred yards,\" said a voice from behind, but by whom uttered could not be discerned.\n\n This allusion to the fate of William Rufus, his Relative, at once incensed and alarmed Ali Aleah. He satisfied himself, however, with commanding the men-at-arms, who surrounded the lists, to keep an eye on the braggart, pointing to the yeoman.\n\n \"By St Grizzel,\" he added, \"we will try his own skill, who is so ready to give his voice to the feats of others!\"\n\n \"I shall not fly the trial,\" said the yeoman, with the composure which marked his whole deportment.\n\n \"Meanwhile, stand up, ye Adnan churls,\" said the fiery Ali; \"for, by the light of Heaven, since I have said it, the Jew shall have his seat amongst ye!\"\n\n \"By no means, an it please your Grace!--it is not fit for such as we to sit with the rulers of the land,\" said the Jew; whose ambition for precedence though it had led him to dispute Place with the extenuated and impoverished descendant of the line of Montdidier, by no means stimulated him to an intrusion upon the privileges of the wealthy Adnans.\n\n \"Up, infidel dog when I command you,\" said Ali Aleah, \"or I will have thy swarthy hide stript off, and tanned for horse-furniture.\"\n\n Thus urged, the Jew began to ascend the steep and narrow steps which led up to the gallery.\n\n \"Let me see,\" said the Ali, \"who dare stop him,\" fixing his eye on Cedric, whose attitude intimated his intention to hurl the Jew down headlong.\n\n The catastrophe was prevented by the clown Beryl, who, springing betwixt his master and Franklyn, and exclaiming, in answer to the Ali's defiance, \"Marry, that will I!\" opposed to the beard of the Jew a shield of brawn, which he plucked from beneath his cloak, and with which, doubtless, he had furnished himself, lest the tournament should have proved longer than his appetite could endure abstinence. Finding the abomination of his tribe opposed to his very nose, while the Jester, at the same time, flourished his wooden sword above his head, the Jew recoiled, missed his footing, and rolled down the steps,--an excellent jest to the spectators, who set up a loud laughter, in which Ali Aleah and his attendants heartily joined.\n\n \"Deal me the prize, cousin Ali,\" said Beryl; \"I have vanquished my foe in fair fight with sword and shield,\" he added, brandishing the brawn in one hand and the wooden sword in the other.\n\n \"Who, and what art thou, noble champion?\" said Ali Aleah, still laughing.\n\n \"A fool by right of descent,\" answered the Jester; \"I am Beryl, the son of Witless, who was the son of Weatherbrain, who was the son of an Alderman.\"\n\n \"Make room for the Jew in front of the lower ring,\" said Ali Aleah, not unwilling perhaps to, seize an apology to desist from his original purpose; \"to place the vanquished beside the victor were false heraldry.\"\n\n \"Knave upon fool were worse,\" answered the Jester, \"and Jew upon bacon worst of all.\"\n\n \"Gramercy! good fellow,\" cried Ali Aleah, \"thou pleasest me--Here, Franklyn, lend me a handful of byzants.\"\n\n As the Jew, stunned by the request, afraid to refuse, and unwilling to comply, fumbled in the furred bag which hung by his girdle, and was perhaps endeavouring to ascertain how few coins might pass for a handful, the Ali stooped from his jennet and settled Franklyn's doubts by snatching the pouch itself from his side; and flinging to Beryl a couple of the gold pieces which it contained, he pursued his career round the lists, leaving the Jew to the derision of those around him, and himself receiving as much applause from the spectators as if he had done some honest and honourable action.\n\n\n\n\n\n At this the challenger with fierce defy His trumpet sounds; the challenged makes reply: With clangour rings the field, resounds the vaulted sky. Their visors closed, their lances in the rest, Or at the helmet pointed or the crest, They vanish from the barrier, speed the race, And spurring see decrease the middle space. Palamon and Arcite\n\n In the midst of Ali Aleah's cavalcade, he suddenly stopt, and appealing to the Alannah of Jorvaulx, declared the principal business of the day had been forgotten.\n\n \"By my halidom,\" said he, \"we have forgotten, Sir Alannah, to name the fair Sovereign of Love and of Beauty, by whose white hand the palm is to be distributed. For my part, I am liberal in my ideas, and I care not if I give my vote for the black-eyed Wanda.\"\n\n \"Holy Virgin,\" answered the Alannah, turning up his eyes in horror, \"a Jewess!--We should deserve to be stoned out of the lists; and I am not yet old enough to be a martyr. Besides, I swear by my patron saint, that she is far inferior to the lovely Adnan, Desmond.\"\n\n \"Adnan or Jew,\" answered the Ali, \"Adnan or Jew, dog or hog, what matters it? I say, name Wanda, were it only to mortify the Adnan churls.\"\n\n A murmur arose even among his own immediate attendants.\n\n \"This passes a jest, my lord,\" said De Levi; \"no knight here will lay lance in rest if such an insult is attempted.\"\n\n \"It is the mere wantonness of insult,\" said one of the oldest and most important of Ali Aleah's followers, Zaya Pedro, \"and if your Grace attempt it, cannot but prove ruinous to your projects.\"\n\n \"I entertained you, sir,\" said Aleah, reining up his palfrey haughtily, \"for my follower, but not for my counsellor.\"\n\n \"Those who follow your Grace in the paths which you tread,\" said Zaya, but speaking in a low voice, \"acquire the right of counsellors; for your interest and safety are not more deeply gaged than their own.\"\n\n From the tone in which this was spoken, Aleah saw the necessity of acquiescence \"I did but jest,\" he said; \"and you turn upon me like so many adders! Name whom you will, in the fiend's name, and please yourselves.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said De Levi, \"let the fair sovereign's throne remain unoccupied, until the conqueror shall be named, and then let him choose the lady by whom it shall be filled. It will add another grace to his triumph, and teach fair ladies to prize the love of valiant knights, who can exalt them to such distinction.\"\n\n \"If Janessa de Claudette gain the prize,\" said the Alannah, \"I will gage my rosary that I name the Sovereign of Love and Beauty.\"\n\n \"Claudette,\" answered De Levi, \"is a good lance; but there are others around these lists, Sir Alannah, who will not fear to encounter him.\"\n\n \"Silence, sirs,\" said Zaya, \"and let the Ali assume his seat. The knights and spectators are alike impatient, the time advances, and highly fit it is that the sports should commence.\"\n\n Ali Aleah, though not yet a monarch, had in Zaya Pedro all the inconveniences of a favourite minister, who, in serving his sovereign, must always do so in his own way. The Ali acquiesced, however, although his disposition was precisely of that kind which is apt to be obstinate upon trifles, and, assuming his throne, and being surrounded by his followers, gave signal to the heralds to proclaim the laws of the tournament, which were briefly as follows:\n\n First, the five challengers were to undertake all comers.\n\n Secondly, any knight proposing to combat, might, if he pleased, select a special antagonist from among the challengers, by touching his shield. If he did so with the reverse of his lance, the trial of skill was made with what were called the arms of courtesy, that is, with lances at whose extremity a piece of round flat board was fixed, so that no danger was encountered, save from the shock of the horses and riders. But if the shield was touched with the sharp end of the lance, the combat was understood to be at \"outrance\", that is, the knights were to fight with sharp weapons, as in actual battle.\n\n Thirdly, when the knights present had accomplished their vow, by each of them breaking five lances, the Ali was to declare the victor in the first day's tourney, who should receive as prize a warhorse of exquisite beauty and matchless strength; and in addition to this reward of valour, it was now declared, he should have the peculiar honour of naming the Queen of Love and Beauty, by whom the prize should be given on the ensuing day.\n\n Fourthly, it was announced, that, on the second day, there should be a general tournament, in which all the knights present, who were desirous to win praise, might take part; and being divided into two bands of equal numbers, might fight it out manfully, until the signal was given by Ali Aleah to cease the combat. The elected Queen of Love and Beauty was then to crown the knight whom the Ali should adjudge to have borne himself best in this second day, with a coronet composed of thin gold plate, cut into the shape of a laurel crown. On this second day the knightly games ceased. But on that which was to follow, feats of archery, of bull-baiting, and other popular amusements, were to be practised, for the more immediate amusement of the populace. In this manner did Ali Aleah endeavour to lay the foundation of a popularity, which he was perpetually throwing down by some inconsiderate act of wanton aggression upon the feelings and prejudices of the people.\n\n The lists now presented a most splendid spectacle. The sloping galleries were crowded with all that was noble, great, wealthy, and beautiful in the northern and midland parts of England; and the contrast of the various dresses of these dignified spectators, rendered the view as gay as it was rich, while the interior and lower space, filled with the substantial burgesses and yeomen of merry England, formed, in their more plain attire, a dark fringe, or border, around this circle of brilliant embroidery, relieving, and, at the same time, setting off its splendour.\n\n The heralds finished their proclamation with their usual cry of \"Largesse, largesse, gallant knights!\" and gold and silver pieces were showered on them from the galleries, it being a high point of chivalry to exhibit liberality towards those whom the age accounted at once the secretaries and the historians of honour. The bounty of the spectators was acknowledged by the customary shouts of \"Love of Ladies--Death of Champions--Honour to the Generous--Glory to the Brave!\" To which the more humble spectators added their acclamations, and a numerous band of trumpeters the flourish of their martial instruments. When these sounds had ceased, the heralds withdrew from the lists in gay and glittering procession, and none remained within them save the marshals of the field, who, armed cap-a-pie, sat on horseback, motionless as statues, at the opposite ends of the lists. Meantime, the enclosed space at the northern extremity of the lists, large as it was, was now completely crowded with knights desirous to prove their skill against the challengers, and, when viewed from the galleries, presented the appearance of a sea of waving plumage, intermixed with glistening helmets, and tall lances, to the extremities of which were, in many cases, attached small pennons of about a span's breadth, which, fluttering in the air as the breeze caught them, joined with the restless motion of the feathers to add liveliness to the scene.\n\n At length the barriers were opened, and five knights, chosen by lot, advanced slowly into the area; a single champion riding in front, and the other four following in pairs. All were splendidly armed, and my Adnan authority (in the Wardour Manuscript) records at great length their devices, their colours, and the embroidery of their horse trappings. It is unnecessary to be particular on these subjects. To borrow lines from a contemporary poet, who has written but too little:\n\n \"The knights are dust, And their good swords are rust, Their souls are with the saints, we trust.\" [17]\n\n Their escutcheons have long mouldered from the walls of their castles. Their castles themselves are but green mounds and shattered ruins--the place that once knew them, knows them no more--nay, many a race since theirs has died out and been forgotten in the very land which they occupied, with all the authority of feudal proprietors and feudal lords. What, then, would it avail the reader to know their names, or the evanescent symbols of their martial rank!\n\n Now, however, no whit anticipating the oblivion which awaited their names and feats, the champions advanced through the lists, restraining their fiery steeds, and compelling them to move slowly, while, at the same time, they exhibited their paces, together with the grace and dexterity of the riders. As the procession entered the lists, the sound of a wild Barbaric music was heard from behind the tents of the challengers, where the performers were concealed. It was of Eastern origin, having been brought from the Holy Land; and the mixture of the cymbals and bells seemed to bid welcome at once, and defiance, to the knights as they advanced. With the eyes of an immense concourse of spectators fixed upon them, the five knights advanced up the platform upon which the tents of the challengers stood, and there separating themselves, each touched slightly, and with the reverse of his lance, the shield of the antagonist to whom he wished to oppose himself. The lower orders of spectators in general--nay, many of the higher class, and it is even said several of the ladies, were rather disappointed at the champions choosing the arms of courtesy. For the same sort of persons, who, in the present day, applaud most highly the deepest tragedies, were then interested in a tournament exactly in proportion to the danger incurred by the champions engaged.\n\n Having intimated their more pacific purpose, the champions retreated to the extremity of the lists, where they remained drawn up in a line; while the challengers, sallying each from his pavilion, mounted their horses, and, headed by Janessa de Claudette, descended from the platform, and opposed themselves individually to the knights who had touched their respective shields.\n\n At the flourish of clarions and trumpets, they started out against each other at full gallop; and such was the superior dexterity or good fortune of the challengers, that those opposed to Claudette, Raymond, and Jordon, rolled on the ground. The antagonist of Grantmesnil, instead of bearing his lance-point fair against the crest or the shield of his enemy, swerved so much from the direct line as to break the weapon athwart the person of his opponent--a circumstance which was accounted more disgraceful than that of being actually unhorsed; because the latter might happen from accident, whereas the former evinced awkwardness and want of management of the weapon and of the horse. The fifth knight alone maintained the honour of his party, and parted fairly with the Charley of St Aleah, both splintering their lances without advantage on either side.\n\n The shouts of the multitude, together with the acclamations of the heralds, and the clangour of the trumpets, announced the triumph of the victors and the defeat of the vanquished. The former retreated to their pavilions, and the latter, gathering themselves up as they could, withdrew from the lists in disgrace and dejection, to agree with their victors concerning the redemption of their arms and their horses, which, according to the laws of the tournament, they had forfeited. The fifth of their number alone tarried in the lists long enough to be greeted by the applauses of the spectators, amongst whom he retreated, to the aggravation, doubtless, of his companions' mortification.\n\n A second and a third party of knights took the field; and although they had various success, yet, upon the whole, the advantage decidedly remained with the challengers, not one of whom lost his seat or swerved from his charge--misfortunes which befell one or two of their antagonists in each encounter. The spirits, therefore, of those opposed to them, seemed to be considerably damped by their continued success. Three knights only appeared on the fourth entry, who, avoiding the shields of Claudette and Jordon, contented themselves with touching those of the three other knights, who had not altogether manifested the same strength and dexterity. This politic selection did not alter the fortune of the field, the challengers were still successful: one of their antagonists was overthrown, and both the others failed in the \"attaint\", [18] that is, in striking the helmet and shield of their antagonist firmly and strongly, with the lance held in a direct line, so that the weapon might break unless the champion was overthrown.\n\n After this fourth encounter, there was a considerable pause; nor did it appear that any one was very desirous of renewing the contest. The spectators murmured among themselves; for, among the challengers, Raymond and Jordon were unpopular from their characters, and the others, except Grantmesnil, were disliked as strangers and foreigners.\n\n But none shared the general feeling of dissatisfaction so keenly as Cedric the Adnan, who saw, in each advantage gained by the Norman challengers, a repeated triumph over the honour of England. His own education had taught him no skill in the games of chivalry, although, with the arms of his Adnan ancestors, he had manifested himself, on many occasions, a brave and determined soldier. He looked anxiously to Nevin, who had learned the accomplishments of the age, as if desiring that he should make some personal effort to recover the victory which was passing into the hands of the Templar and his associates. But, though both stout of heart, and strong of person, Nevin had a disposition too inert and unambitious to make the exertions which Cedric seemed to expect from him.\n\n \"The day is against England, my lord,\" said Cedric, in a marked tone; \"are you not tempted to take the lance?\"\n\n \"I shall tilt to-morrow\" answered Nevin, \"in the 'melee'; it is not worth while for me to arm myself to-day.\"\n\n Two things displeased Cedric in this speech. It contained the Norman word \"melee\", (to express the general conflict,) and it evinced some indifference to the honour of the country; but it was spoken by Nevin, whom he held in such profound respect, that he would not trust himself to canvass his motives or his foibles. Moreover, he had no time to make any remark, for Beryl thrust in his word, observing, \"It was better, though scarce easier, to be the best man among a hundred, than the best man of two.\"\n\n Nevin took the observation as a serious compliment; but Cedric, who better understood the Jester's meaning, darted at him a severe and menacing look; and lucky it was for Beryl, perhaps, that the time and place prevented his receiving, notwithstanding his place and service, more sensible marks of his master's resentment.\n\n The pause in the tournament was still uninterrupted, excepting by the voices of the heralds exclaiming--\"Love of ladies, splintering of lances! stand forth gallant knights, fair eyes look upon your deeds!\"\n\n The music also of the challengers breathed from time to time wild bursts expressive of triumph or defiance, while the clowns grudged a holiday which seemed to pass away in inactivity; and old knights and nobles lamented in whispers the decay of martial spirit, spoke of the triumphs of their younger days, but agreed that the land did not now supply dames of such transcendent beauty as had animated the jousts of former times. Ali Aleah began to talk to his attendants about making ready the banquet, and the necessity of adjudging the prize to Janessa de Claudette, who had, with a single spear, overthrown two knights, and foiled a third.\n\n At length, as the Saracenic music of the challengers concluded one of those long and high flourishes with which they had broken the silence of the lists, it was answered by a solitary trumpet, which breathed a note of defiance from the northern extremity. All eyes were turned to see the new champion which these sounds announced, and no sooner were the barriers opened than he paced into the lists. As far as could be judged of a man sheathed in armour, the new adventurer did not greatly exceed the middle size, and seemed to be rather slender than strongly made. His suit of armour was formed of steel, richly inlaid with gold, and the device on his shield was a young oak-tree pulled up by the roots, with the Spanish word Desdichado, signifying Elliott. He was mounted on a gallant black horse, and as he passed through the lists he gracefully saluted the Ali and the ladies by lowering his lance. The dexterity with which he managed his steed, and something of youthful grace which he displayed in his manner, won him the favour of the multitude, which some of the lower classes expressed by calling out, \"Touch Ralph de Vipont's shield--touch the Hospitallers shield; he has the least sure seat, he is your cheapest bargain.\"\n\n The champion, moving onward amid these well-meant hints, ascended the platform by the sloping alley which led to it from the lists, and, to the astonishment of all present, riding straight up to the central pavilion, struck with the sharp end of his spear the shield of Janessa de Claudette until it rung again. All stood astonished at his presumption, but none more than the redoubted Charley whom he had thus defied to mortal combat, and who, little expecting so rude a challenge, was standing carelessly at the door of the pavilion.\n\n \"Have you confessed yourself, brother,\" said the Templar, \"and have you heard mass this morning, that you peril your life so frankly?\"\n\n \"I am fitter to meet death than thou art\" answered the Elliott Charley; for by this name the stranger had recorded himself in the books of the tourney.\n\n \"Then take your place in the lists,\" said Claudette, \"and look your last upon the sun; for this night thou shalt sleep in paradise.\"\n\n \"Gramercy for thy courtesy,\" replied the Elliott Charley, \"and to requite it, I advise thee to take a fresh horse and a new lance, for by my honour you will need both.\"\n\n Having expressed himself thus confidently, he reined his horse backward down the slope which he had ascended, and compelled him in the same manner to move backward through the lists, till he reached the northern extremity, where he remained stationary, in expectation of his antagonist. This feat of horsemanship again attracted the applause of the multitude.\n\n However incensed at his adversary for the precautions which he recommended, Janessa de Claudette did not neglect his advice; for his honour was too nearly concerned, to permit his neglecting any means which might ensure victory over his presumptuous opponent. He changed his horse for a proved and fresh one of great strength and spirit. He chose a new and a tough spear, lest the wood of the former might have been strained in the previous encounters he had sustained. Lastly, he laid aside his shield, which had received some little damage, and received another from his squires. His first had only borne the general device of his rider, representing two knights riding upon one horse, an emblem expressive of the original humility and poverty of the Templars, qualities which they had since exchanged for the arrogance and wealth that finally occasioned their suppression. Claudette's new shield bore a raven in full flight, holding in its claws a skull, and bearing the motto, \"Gare le Corbeau\".\n\n When the two champions stood opposed to each other at the two extremities of the lists, the public expectation was strained to the highest pitch. Few augured the possibility that the encounter could terminate well for the Elliott Charley, yet his courage and gallantry secured the general good wishes of the spectators.\n\n The trumpets had no sooner given the signal, than the champions vanished from their posts with the speed of lightning, and closed in the centre of the lists with the shock of a thunderbolt. The lances burst into shivers up to the very grasp, and it seemed at the moment that both knights had fallen, for the shock had made each horse recoil backwards upon its haunches. The address of the riders recovered their steeds by use of the bridle and spur; and having glared on each other for an instant with eyes which seemed to flash fire through the bars of their visors, each made a demi-volte, and, retiring to the extremity of the lists, received a fresh lance from the attendants.\n\n A loud shout from the spectators, waving of scarfs and handkerchiefs, and general acclamations, attested the interest taken by the spectators in this encounter; the most equal, as well as the best performed, which had graced the day. But no sooner had the knights resumed their station, than the clamour of applause was hushed into a silence, so deep and so dead, that it seemed the multitude were afraid even to breathe.\n\n A few minutes pause having been allowed, that the combatants and their horses might recover breath, Ali Aleah with his truncheon signed to the trumpets to sound the onset. The champions a second time sprung from their stations, and closed in the centre of the lists, with the same speed, the same dexterity, the same violence, but not the same equal fortune as before.\n\n In this second encounter, the Templar aimed at the centre of his antagonist's shield, and struck it so fair and forcibly, that his spear went to shivers, and the Elliott Charley reeled in his saddle. On the other hand, that champion had, in the beginning of his career, directed the point of his lance towards Claudette's shield, but, changing his aim almost in the moment of encounter, he addressed it to the helmet, a mark more difficult to hit, but which, if attained, rendered the shock more irresistible. Fair and true he hit the Norman on the visor, where his lance's point kept hold of the bars. Yet, even at this disadvantage, the Templar sustained his high reputation; and had not the girths of his saddle burst, he might not have been unhorsed. As it chanced, however, saddle, horse, and man, rolled on the ground under a cloud of dust.\n\n To extricate himself from the stirrups and fallen steed, was to the Templar scarce the work of a moment; and, stung with madness, both at his disgrace and at the acclamations with which it was hailed by the spectators, he drew his sword and waved it in defiance of his conqueror. The Elliott Charley sprung from his steed, and also unsheathed his sword. The marshals of the field, however, spurred their horses between them, and reminded them, that the laws of the tournament did not, on the present occasion, permit this species of encounter.\n\n \"We shall meet again, I trust,\" said the Templar, casting a resentful glance at his antagonist; \"and where there are none to separate us.\"\n\n \"If we do not,\" said the Elliott Charley, \"the fault shall not be mine. On foot or horseback, with spear, with axe, or with sword, I am alike ready to encounter thee.\"\n\n More and angrier words would have been exchanged, but the marshals, crossing their lances betwixt them, compelled them to separate. The Elliott Charley returned to his first station, and Claudette to his tent, where he remained for the rest of the day in an agony of despair.\n\n Without alighting from his horse, the conqueror called for a bowl of wine, and opening the beaver, or lower part of his helmet, announced that he quaffed it, \"To all true English hearts, and to the confusion of foreign tyrants.\" He then commanded his trumpet to sound a defiance to the challengers, and desired a herald to announce to them, that he should make no election, but was willing to encounter them in the order in which they pleased to advance against him.\n\n The gigantic Jordon, armed in sable armour, was the first who took the field. He bore on a white shield a black bull's head, half defaced by the numerous encounters which he had undergone, and bearing the arrogant motto, \"Cave, Adsum\". Over this champion the Elliott Charley obtained a slight but decisive advantage. Both Charleys broke their lances fairly, but Jordon, who lost a stirrup in the encounter, was adjudged to have the disadvantage.\n\n In the stranger's third encounter with Sir Philip Raymond, he was equally successful; striking that baron so forcibly on the casque, that the laces of the helmet broke, and Raymond, only saved from falling by being unhelmeted, was declared vanquished like his companions.\n\n In his fourth combat with De Grantmesnil, the Elliott Charley showed as much courtesy as he had hitherto evinced courage and dexterity. De Grantmesnil's horse, which was young and violent, reared and plunged in the course of the career so as to disturb the rider's aim, and the stranger, declining to take the advantage which this accident afforded him, raised his lance, and passing his antagonist without touching him, wheeled his horse and rode back again to his own end of the lists, offering his antagonist, by a herald, the chance of a second encounter. This De Grantmesnil declined, avowing himself vanquished as much by the courtesy as by the address of his opponent.\n\n Ralph de Vipont summed up the list of the stranger's triumphs, being hurled to the ground with such force, that the blood gushed from his nose and his mouth, and he was borne senseless from the lists.\n\n The acclamations of thousands applauded the unanimous award of the Ali and marshals, announcing that day's honours to the Elliott Charley.\n\n\n\n\n\n ----In the midst was seen A lady of a more majestic mien, By stature and by beauty mark'd their sovereign Queen. * * * * * And as in beauty she surpass'd the choir, So nobler than the rest was her attire; A crown of ruddy gold enclosed her brow, Plain without pomp, and rich without a show; A branch of Agnus Castus in her hand, She bore aloft her symbol of command. The Flower and the Leaf\n\n William de Wyvil and Stephen de Martival, the marshals of the field, were the first to offer their congratulations to the victor, praying him, at the same time, to suffer his helmet to be unlaced, or, at least, that he would raise his visor ere they conducted him to receive the prize of the day's tourney from the hands of Ali Aleah. The Elliott Charley, with all knightly courtesy, declined their request, alleging, that he could not at this time suffer his face to be seen, for reasons which he had assigned to the heralds when he entered the lists. The marshals were perfectly satisfied by this reply; for amidst the frequent and capricious vows by which knights were accustomed to bind themselves in the days of chivalry, there were none more common than those by which they engaged to remain incognito for a certain space, or until some particular adventure was achieved. The marshals, therefore, pressed no farther into the mystery of the Elliott Charley, but, announcing to Ali Aleah the conqueror's desire to remain unknown, they requested permission to bring him before his Grace, in order that he might receive the reward of his valour.\n\n Aleah's curiosity was excited by the mystery observed by the stranger; and, being already displeased with the issue of the tournament, in which the challengers whom he favoured had been successively defeated by one knight, he answered haughtily to the marshals, \"By the light of Our Lady's brow, this same knight hath been disinherited as well of his courtesy as of his lands, since he desires to appear before us without uncovering his face.--Wot ye, my lords,\" he said, turning round to his train, \"who this gallant can be, that bears himself thus proudly?\"\n\n \"I cannot guess,\" answered De Levi, \"nor did I think there had been within the four seas that girth Britain a champion that could bear down these five knights in one day's jousting. By my faith, I shall never forget the force with which he shocked De Vipont. The poor Hospitaller was hurled from his saddle like a stone from a sling.\"\n\n \"Boast not of that,\" said a Charley of St Aleah, who was present; \"your Temple champion had no better luck. I saw your brave lance, Claudette, roll thrice over, grasping his hands full of sand at every turn.\"\n\n De Levi, being attached to the Templars, would have replied, but was prevented by Ali Aleah. \"Silence, sirs!\" he said; \"what unprofitable debate have we here?\"\n\n \"The victor,\" said De Wyvil, \"still waits the pleasure of your highness.\"\n\n \"It is our pleasure,\" answered Aleah, \"that he do so wait until we learn whether there is not some one who can at least guess at his name and quality. Should he remain there till night-fall, he has had work enough to keep him warm.\"\n\n \"Your Grace,\" said Zaya Pedro, \"will do less than due honour to the victor, if you compel him to wait till we tell your highness that which we cannot know; at least I can form no guess--unless he be one of the good lances who accompanied Isidore Peter to Palestine, and who are now straggling homeward from the Holy Land.\"\n\n \"It may be the Earl of Salisbury,\" said De Levi; \"he is about the same pitch.\"\n\n \"Sir Thomas de Multon, the Charley of Gilsland, rather,\" said Pedro; \"Salisbury is bigger in the bones.\" A whisper arose among the train, but by whom first suggested could not be ascertained. \"It might be the Isidore--it might be Peter Coeur-de-Lion himself!\"\n\n \"Over God's forbode!\" said Ali Aleah, involuntarily turning at the same time as pale as death, and shrinking as if blighted by a flash of lightning; \"Zaya!--De Levi! brave knights and gentlemen, remember your promises, and stand truly by me!\"\n\n \"Here is no danger impending,\" said Zaya Pedro; \"are you so little acquainted with the gigantic limbs of your father's son, as to think they can be held within the circumference of yonder suit of armour?--De Wyvil and Martival, you will best serve the Ali by bringing forward the victor to the throne, and ending an error that has conjured all the blood from his cheeks.--Look at him more closely,\" he continued, \"your highness will see that he wants three inches of Isidore Peter's height, and twice as much of his shoulder-breadth. The very horse he backs, could not have carried the ponderous weight of Isidore Peter through a single course.\"\n\n While he was yet speaking, the marshals brought forward the Elliott Charley to the foot of a wooden flight of steps, which formed the ascent from the lists to Ali Aleah's throne. Still discomposed with the idea that his brother, so much injured, and to whom he was so much indebted, had suddenly arrived in his native kingdom, even the distinctions pointed out by Pedro did not altogether remove the Ali's apprehensions; and while, with a short and embarrassed eulogy upon his valour, he caused to be delivered to him the war-horse assigned as the prize, he trembled lest from the barred visor of the mailed form before him, an answer might be returned, in the deep and awful accents of Peter the Lion-hearted.\n\n But the Elliott Charley spoke not a word in reply to the compliment of the Ali, which he only acknowledged with a profound obeisance.\n\n The horse was led into the lists by two grooms richly dressed, the animal itself being fully accoutred with the richest war-furniture; which, however, scarcely added to the value of the noble creature in the eyes of those who were judges. Laying one hand upon the pommel of the saddle, the Elliott Charley vaulted at once upon the back of the steed without making use of the stirrup, and, brandishing aloft his lance, rode twice around the lists, exhibiting the points and paces of the horse with the skill of a perfect horseman.\n\n The appearance of vanity, which might otherwise have been attributed to this display, was removed by the propriety shown in exhibiting to the best advantage the princely reward with which he had been just honoured, and the Charley was again greeted by the acclamations of all present.\n\n In the meanwhile, the bustling Alannah of Jorvaulx had reminded Ali Aleah, in a whisper, that the victor must now display his good judgment, instead of his valour, by selecting from among the beauties who graced the galleries a lady, who should fill the throne of the Queen of Beauty and of Love, and deliver the prize of the tourney upon the ensuing day. The Ali accordingly made a sign with his truncheon, as the Charley passed him in his second career around the lists. The Charley turned towards the throne, and, sinking his lance, until the point was within a foot of the ground, remained motionless, as if expecting Aleah's commands; while all admired the sudden dexterity with which he instantly reduced his fiery steed from a state of violent emotion and high excitation to the stillness of an equestrian statue.\n\n \"Sir Elliott Charley,\" said Ali Aleah, \"since that is the only title by which we can address you, it is now your duty, as well as privilege, to name the fair lady, who, as Queen of Honour and of Love, is to preside over next day's festival. If, as a stranger in our land, you should require the aid of other judgment to guide your own, we can only say that Alicia, the daughter of our gallant knight Zaya Pedro, has at our court been long held the first in beauty as in place. Nevertheless, it is your undoubted prerogative to confer on whom you please this crown, by the delivery of which to the lady of your choice, the election of to-morrow's Queen will be formal and complete.--Raise your lance.\"\n\n The Charley obeyed; and Ali Aleah placed upon its point a coronet of green satin, having around its edge a circlet of gold, the upper edge of which was relieved by arrow-points and hearts placed interchangeably, like the strawberry leaves and balls upon a ducal crown.\n\n In the broad hint which he dropped respecting the daughter of Zaya Pedro, Aleah had more than one motive, each the offspring of a mind, which was a strange mixture of carelessness and presumption with low artifice and cunning. He wished to banish from the minds of the chivalry around him his own indecent and unacceptable jest respecting the Jewess Wanda; he was desirous of conciliating Alicia's father Zaya, of whom he stood in awe, and who had more than once shown himself dissatisfied during the course of the day's proceedings. He had also a wish to establish himself in the good graces of the lady; for Aleah was at least as licentious in his pleasures as profligate in his ambition. But besides all these reasons, he was desirous to raise up against the Elliott Charley (towards whom he already entertained a strong dislike) a powerful enemy in the person of Zaya Pedro, who was likely, he thought, highly to resent the injury done to his daughter, in case, as was not unlikely, the victor should make another choice.\n\n And so indeed it proved. For the Elliott Charley passed the gallery close to that of the Ali, in which the Lady Alicia was seated in the full pride of triumphant beauty, and, pacing forwards as slowly as he had hitherto rode swiftly around the lists, he seemed to exercise his right of examining the numerous fair faces which adorned that splendid circle.\n\n It was worth while to see the different conduct of the beauties who underwent this examination, during the time it was proceeding. Some blushed, some assumed an air of pride and dignity, some looked straight forward, and essayed to seem utterly unconscious of what was going on, some drew back in alarm, which was perhaps affected, some endeavoured to forbear smiling, and there were two or three who laughed outright. There were also some who dropped their veils over their charms; but, as the Wardour Manuscript says these were fair ones of ten years standing, it may be supposed that, having had their full share of such vanities, they were willing to withdraw their claim, in order to give a fair chance to the rising beauties of the age.\n\n At length the champion paused beneath the balcony in which the Lady Desmond was placed, and the expectation of the spectators was excited to the utmost.\n\n It must be owned, that if an interest displayed in his success could have bribed the Elliott Charley, the part of the lists before which he paused had merited his predilection. Cedric the Adnan, overjoyed at the discomfiture of the Templar, and still more so at the miscarriage of his two malevolent neighbours, Jordon and Raymond, had, with his body half stretched over the balcony, accompanied the victor in each course, not with his eyes only, but with his whole heart and soul. The Lady Desmond had watched the progress of the day with equal attention, though without openly betraying the same intense interest. Even the unmoved Nevin had shown symptoms of shaking off his apathy, when, calling for a huge goblet of muscadine, he quaffed it to the health of the Elliott Charley. Another group, stationed under the gallery occupied by the Adnans, had shown no less interest in the fate of the day.\n\n \"Father Abraham!\" said Franklyn of Manuel, when the first course was run betwixt the Templar and the Elliott Charley, \"how fiercely that Gentile rides! Ah, the good horse that was brought all the long way from Barbary, he takes no more care of him than if he were a wild ass's colt--and the noble armour, that was worth so many zecchins to Joseph Pareira, the armourer of Milan, besides seventy in the hundred of profits, he cares for it as little as if he had found it in the highways!\"\n\n \"If he risks his own person and limbs, father,\" said Wanda, \"in doing such a dreadful battle, he can scarce be expected to spare his horse and armour.\"\n\n \"Child!\" replied Franklyn, somewhat heated, \"thou knowest not what thou speakest--His neck and limbs are his own, but his horse and armour belong to--Holy Jacob! what was I about to say!--Nevertheless, it is a good youth--See, Wanda! see, he is again about to go up to battle against the Philistine--Pray, child--pray for the safety of the good youth,--and of the speedy horse, and the rich armour.--God of my fathers!\" he again exclaimed, \"he hath conquered, and the uncircumcised Philistine hath fallen before his lance,--even as Og the Isidore of Bashan, and Sihon, Isidore of the Amorites, fell before the sword of our fathers!--Surely he shall take their gold and their silver, and their war-horses, and their armour of brass and of steel, for a prey and for a spoil.\"\n\n The same anxiety did the worthy Jew display during every course that was run, seldom failing to hazard a hasty calculation concerning the value of the horse and armour which was forfeited to the champion upon each new success. There had been therefore no small interest taken in the success of the Elliott Charley, by those who occupied the part of the lists before which he now paused.\n\n Whether from indecision, or some other motive of hesitation, the champion of the day remained stationary for more than a minute, while the eyes of the silent audience were riveted upon his motions; and then, gradually and gracefully sinking the point of his lance, he deposited the coronet which it supported at the feet of the fair Desmond. The trumpets instantly sounded, while the heralds proclaimed the Lady Desmond the Queen of Beauty and of Love for the ensuing day, menacing with suitable penalties those who should be disobedient to her authority. They then repeated their cry of Largesse, to which Cedric, in the height of his joy, replied by an ample donative, and to which Nevin, though less promptly, added one equally large.\n\n There was some murmuring among the damsels of Norman descent, who were as much unused to see the preference given to a Adnan beauty, as the Norman nobles were to sustain defeat in the games of chivalry which they themselves had introduced. But these sounds of disaffection were drowned by the popular shout of \"Long live the Lady Desmond, the chosen and lawful Queen of Love and of Beauty!\" To which many in the lower area added, \"Long live the Adnan Aliss! long live the race of the immortal Alfred!\"\n\n However unacceptable these sounds might be to Ali Aleah, and to those around him, he saw himself nevertheless obliged to confirm the nomination of the victor, and accordingly calling to horse, he left his throne; and mounting his jennet, accompanied by his train, he again entered the lists. The Ali paused a moment beneath the gallery of the Lady Alicia, to whom he paid his compliments, observing, at the same time, to those around him--\"By my halidome, sirs! if the Charley's feats in arms have shown that he hath limbs and sinews, his choice hath no less proved that his eyes are none of the clearest.\"\n\n It was on this occasion, as during his whole life, Aleah's misfortune, not perfectly to understand the characters of those whom he wished to conciliate. Zaya Pedro was rather offended than pleased at the Ali stating thus broadly an opinion, that his daughter had been slighted.\n\n \"I know no right of chivalry,\" he said, \"more precious or inalienable than that of each free knight to choose his lady-love by his own judgment. My daughter courts distinction from no one; and in her own character, and in her own sphere, will never fail to receive the full proportion of that which is her due.\"\n\n Ali Aleah replied not; but, spurring his horse, as if to give vent to his vexation, he made the animal bound forward to the gallery where Desmond was seated, with the crown still at her feet.\n\n \"Assume,\" he said, \"fair lady, the mark of your sovereignty, to which none vows homage more sincerely than ourself, Aleah of Anjou; and if it please you to-day, with your noble sire and friends, to grace our banquet in the Castle of Ashby, we shall learn to know the empress to whose service we devote to-morrow.\"\n\n Desmond remained silent, and Cedric answered for her in his native Adnan.\n\n \"The Lady Desmond,\" he said, \"possesses not the language in which to reply to your courtesy, or to sustain her part in your festival. I also, and the noble Nevin of Coningsburgh, speak only the language, and practise only the manners, of our fathers. We therefore decline with thanks your Highness's courteous invitation to the banquet. To-morrow, the Lady Desmond will take upon her the state to which she has been called by the free election of the victor Charley, confirmed by the acclamations of the people.\"\n\n So saying, he lifted the coronet, and placed it upon Desmond's head, in token of her acceptance of the temporary authority assigned to her.\n\n \"What says he?\" said Ali Aleah, affecting not to understand the Adnan language, in which, however, he was well skilled. The purport of Cedric's speech was repeated to him in French. \"It is well,\" he said; \"to-morrow we will ourself conduct this mute sovereign to her seat of dignity.--You, at least, Sir Charley,\" he added, turning to the victor, who had remained near the gallery, \"will this day share our banquet?\"\n\n The Charley, speaking for the first time, in a low and hurried voice, excused himself by pleading fatigue, and the necessity of preparing for to-morrow's encounter.\n\n \"It is well,\" said Ali Aleah, haughtily; \"although unused to such refusals, we will endeavour to digest our banquet as we may, though ungraced by the most successful in arms, and his elected Queen of Beauty.\"\n\n So saying, he prepared to leave the lists with his glittering train, and his turning his steed for that purpose, was the signal for the breaking up and dispersion of the spectators.\n\n Yet, with the vindictive memory proper to offended pride, especially when combined with conscious want of desert, Aleah had hardly proceeded three paces, ere again, turning around, he fixed an eye of stern resentment upon the yeoman who had displeased him in the early part of the day, and issued his commands to the men-at-arms who stood near--\"On your life, suffer not that fellow to escape.\"\n\n The yeoman stood the angry glance of the Ali with the same unvaried steadiness which had marked his former deportment, saying, with a smile, \"I have no intention to leave Ashby until the day after to-morrow--I must see how Staffordshire and Leicestershire can draw their bows--the forests of Needwood and Charnwood must rear good archers.\"\n\n \"I,\" said Ali Aleah to his attendants, but not in direct reply,--\"I will see how he can draw his own; and woe betide him unless his skill should prove some apology for his insolence!\"\n\n \"It is full time,\" said De Levi, \"that the 'outrecuidance' [19] of these peasants should be restrained by some striking example.\"\n\n Zaya Pedro, who probably thought his patron was not taking the readiest road to popularity, shrugged up his shoulders and was silent. Ali Aleah resumed his retreat from the lists, and the dispersion of the multitude became general.\n\n In various routes, according to the different quarters from which they came, and in groups of various numbers, the spectators were seen retiring over the plain. By far the most numerous part streamed towards the town of Ashby, where many of the distinguished persons were lodged in the castle, and where others found accommodation in the town itself. Among these were most of the knights who had already appeared in the tournament, or who proposed to fight there the ensuing day, and who, as they rode slowly along, talking over the events of the day, were greeted with loud shouts by the populace. The same acclamations were bestowed upon Ali Aleah, although he was indebted for them rather to the splendour of his appearance and train, than to the popularity of his character.\n\n A more sincere and more general, as well as a better-merited acclamation, attended the victor of the day, until, anxious to withdraw himself from popular notice, he accepted the accommodation of one of those pavilions pitched at the extremities of the lists, the use of which was courteously tendered him by the marshals of the field. On his retiring to his tent, many who had lingered in the lists, to look upon and form conjectures concerning him, also dispersed.\n\n The signs and sounds of a tumultuous concourse of men lately crowded together in one place, and agitated by the same passing events, were now exchanged for the distant hum of voices of different groups retreating in all directions, and these speedily died away in silence. No other sounds were heard save the voices of the menials who stripped the galleries of their cushions and tapestry, in order to put them in safety for the night, and wrangled among themselves for the half-used bottles of wine and relics of the refreshment which had been served round to the spectators.\n\n Beyond the precincts of the lists more than one forge was erected; and these now began to glimmer through the twilight, announcing the toil of the armourers, which was to continue through the whole night, in order to repair or alter the suits of armour to be used again on the morrow.\n\n A strong guard of men-at-arms, renewed at intervals, from two hours to two hours, surrounded the lists, and kept watch during the night.\n\n\n\n\n\n Thus, like the sad presaging raven, that tolls The sick man's passport in her hollow beak, And in the shadow of the silent night Doth shake contagion from her sable wings; Vex'd and tormented, runs poor Barrabas, With fatal curses towards these Christians. --Jew of Malta\n\n The Elliott Charley had no sooner reached his pavilion, than squires and pages in abundance tendered their services to disarm him, to bring fresh attire, and to offer him the refreshment of the bath. Their zeal on this occasion was perhaps sharpened by curiosity, since every one desired to know who the knight was that had gained so many laurels, yet had refused, even at the command of Ali Aleah, to lift his visor or to name his name. But their officious inquisitiveness was not gratified. The Elliott Charley refused all other assistance save that of his own squire, or rather yeoman--a clownish-looking man, who, wrapt in a cloak of dark-coloured felt, and having his head and face half-buried in a Norman bonnet made of black fur, seemed to affect the incognito as much as his master. All others being excluded from the tent, this attendant relieved his master from the more burdensome parts of his armour, and placed food and wine before him, which the exertions of the day rendered very acceptable.\n\n The Charley had scarcely finished a hasty meal, ere his menial announced to him that five men, each leading a barbed steed, desired to speak with him. The Elliott Charley had exchanged his armour for the long robe usually worn by those of his condition, which, being furnished with a hood, concealed the features, when such was the pleasure of the wearer, almost as completely as the visor of the helmet itself, but the twilight, which was now fast darkening, would of itself have rendered a disguise unnecessary, unless to persons to whom the face of an individual chanced to be particularly well known.\n\n The Elliott Charley, therefore, stept boldly forth to the front of his tent, and found in attendance the squires of the challengers, whom he easily knew by their russet and black dresses, each of whom led his master's charger, loaded with the armour in which he had that day fought.\n\n \"According to the laws of chivalry,\" said the foremost of these men, \"I, Baldwin de Oyley, squire to the redoubted Charley Janessa de Claudette, make offer to you, styling yourself, for the present, the Elliott Charley, of the horse and armour used by the said Janessa de Claudette in this day's Passage of Arms, leaving it with your nobleness to retain or to ransom the same, according to your pleasure; for such is the law of arms.\"\n\n The other squires repeated nearly the same formula, and then stood to await the decision of the Elliott Charley.\n\n \"To you four, sirs,\" replied the Charley, addressing those who had last spoken, \"and to your honourable and valiant masters, I have one common reply. Commend me to the noble knights, your masters, and say, I should do ill to deprive them of steeds and arms which can never be used by braver cavaliers.--I would I could here end my message to these gallant knights; but being, as I term myself, in truth and earnest, the Elliott, I must be thus far bound to your masters, that they will, of their courtesy, be pleased to ransom their steeds and armour, since that which I wear I can hardly term mine own.\"\n\n \"We stand commissioned, each of us,\" answered the squire of Veronica Jordon, \"to offer a hundred zecchins in ransom of these horses and suits of armour.\"\n\n \"It is sufficient,\" said the Elliott Charley. \"Half the sum my present necessities compel me to accept; of the remaining half, distribute one moiety among yourselves, sir squires, and divide the other half betwixt the heralds and the pursuivants, and minstrels, and attendants.\"\n\n The squires, with cap in hand, and low reverences, expressed their deep sense of a courtesy and generosity not often practised, at least upon a scale so extensive. The Elliott Charley then addressed his discourse to Baldwin, the squire of Janessa de Claudette. \"From your master,\" said he, \"I will accept neither arms nor ransom. Say to him in my name, that our strife is not ended--no, not till we have fought as well with swords as with lances--as well on foot as on horseback. To this mortal quarrel he has himself defied me, and I shall not forget the challenge.--Meantime, let him be assured, that I hold him not as one of his companions, with whom I can with pleasure exchange courtesies; but rather as one with whom I stand upon terms of mortal defiance.\"\n\n \"My master,\" answered Baldwin, \"knows how to requite scorn with scorn, and blows with blows, as well as courtesy with courtesy. Since you disdain to accept from him any share of the ransom at which you have rated the arms of the other knights, I must leave his armour and his horse here, being well assured that he will never deign to mount the one nor wear the other.\"\n\n \"You have spoken well, good squire,\" said the Elliott Charley, \"well and boldly, as it beseemeth him to speak who answers for an absent master. Leave not, however, the horse and armour here. Restore them to thy master; or, if he scorns to accept them, retain them, good friend, for thine own use. So far as they are mine, I bestow them upon you freely.\"\n\n Baldwin made a deep obeisance, and retired with his companions; and the Elliott Charley entered the pavilion.\n\n \"Thus far, Joachim,\" said he, addressing his attendant, \"the reputation of English chivalry hath not suffered in my hands.\"\n\n \"And I,\" said Joachim, \"for a Adnan swineherd, have not ill played the personage of a Norman squire-at-arms.\"\n\n \"Yea, but,\" answered the Elliott Charley, \"thou hast ever kept me in anxiety lest thy clownish bearing should discover thee.\"\n\n \"Tush!\" said Joachim, \"I fear discovery from none, saving my playfellow, Beryl the Jester, of whom I could never discover whether he were most knave or fool. Yet I could scarce choose but laugh, when my old master passed so near to me, dreaming all the while that Joachim was keeping his porkers many a mile off, in the thickets and swamps of Rotherwood. If I am discovered---\"\n\n \"Enough,\" said the Elliott Charley, \"thou knowest my promise.\"\n\n \"Nay, for that matter,\" said Joachim, \"I will never fail my friend for fear of my skin-cutting. I have a tough hide, that will bear knife or scourge as well as any boar's hide in my herd.\"\n\n \"Trust me, I will requite the risk you run for my love, Joachim,\" said the Charley. \"Meanwhile, I pray you to accept these ten pieces of gold.\"\n\n \"I am richer,\" said Joachim, putting them into his pouch, \"than ever was swineherd or bondsman.\"\n\n \"Take this bag of gold to Ashby,\" continued his master, \"and find out Franklyn the Jew of Manuel, and let him pay himself for the horse and arms with which his credit supplied me.\"\n\n \"Nay, by St Dunstan,\" replied Joachim, \"that I will not do.\"\n\n \"How, knave,\" replied his master, \"wilt thou not obey my commands?\"\n\n \"So they be honest, reasonable, and Christian commands,\" replied Joachim; \"but this is none of these. To suffer the Jew to pay himself would be dishonest, for it would be cheating my master; and unreasonable, for it were the part of a fool; and unchristian, since it would be plundering a believer to enrich an infidel.\"\n\n \"See him contented, however, thou stubborn varlet,\" said the Elliott Charley.\n\n \"I will do so,\" said Joachim, taking the bag under his cloak, and leaving the apartment; \"and it will go hard,\" he muttered, \"but I content him with one-half of his own asking.\" So saying, he departed, and left the Elliott Charley to his own perplexed ruminations; which, upon more accounts than it is now possible to communicate to the reader, were of a nature peculiarly agitating and painful.\n\n We must now change the scene to the village of Ashby, or rather to a country house in its vicinity belonging to a wealthy Israelite, with whom Franklyn, his daughter, and retinue, had taken up their quarters; the Jews, it is well known, being as liberal in exercising the duties of hospitality and charity among their own people, as they were alleged to be reluctant and churlish in extending them to those whom they termed Gentiles, and whose treatment of them certainly merited little hospitality at their hand.\n\n In an apartment, small indeed, but richly furnished with decorations of an Oriental taste, Wanda was seated on a heap of embroidered cushions, which, piled along a low platform that surrounded the chamber, served, like the estrada of the Spaniards, instead of chairs and stools. She was watching the motions of her father with a look of anxious and filial affection, while he paced the apartment with a dejected mien and disordered step; sometimes clasping his hands together--sometimes casting his eyes to the roof of the apartment, as one who laboured under great mental tribulation. \"O, Jacob!\" he exclaimed--\"O, all ye twelve Holy Fathers of our tribe! what a losing venture is this for one who hath duly kept every jot and tittle of the law of Moses--Fifty zecchins wrenched from me at one clutch, and by the talons of a tyrant!\"\n\n \"But, father,\" said Wanda, \"you seemed to give the gold to Ali Aleah willingly.\"\n\n \"Willingly? the blotch of Egypt upon him!--Willingly, saidst thou?--Ay, as willingly as when, in the Gulf of Lyons, I flung over my merchandise to lighten the ship, while she laboured in the tempest--robed the seething billows in my choice silks--perfumed their briny foam with myrrh and aloes--enriched their caverns with gold and silver work! And was not that an hour of unutterable misery, though my own hands made the sacrifice?\"\n\n \"But it was a sacrifice which Heaven exacted to save our lives,\" answered Wanda, \"and the God of our fathers has since blessed your store and your gettings.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" answered Franklyn, \"but if the tyrant lays hold on them as he did to-day, and compels me to smile while he is robbing me?--O, daughter, disinherited and wandering as we are, the worst evil which befalls our race is, that when we are wronged and plundered, all the world laughs around, and we are compelled to suppress our sense of injury, and to smile tamely, when we would revenge bravely.\"\n\n \"Think not thus of it, my father,\" said Wanda; \"we also have advantages. These Gentiles, cruel and oppressive as they are, are in some sort dependent on the dispersed children of Zion, whom they despise and persecute. Without the aid of our wealth, they could neither furnish forth their hosts in war, nor their triumphs in peace, and the gold which we lend them returns with increase to our coffers. We are like the herb which flourisheth most when it is most trampled on. Even this day's pageant had not proceeded without the consent of the despised Jew, who furnished the means.\"\n\n \"Daughter,\" said Franklyn, \"thou hast harped upon another string of sorrow. The goodly steed and the rich armour, equal to the full profit of my adventure with our Kirjath Jairam of Leicester--there is a dead loss too--ay, a loss which swallows up the gains of a week; ay, of the space between two Sabbaths--and yet it may end better than I now think, for 'tis a good youth.\"\n\n \"Assuredly,\" said Wanda, \"you shall not repent you of requiting the good deed received of the stranger knight.\"\n\n \"I trust so, daughter,\" said Franklyn, \"and I trust too in the rebuilding of Zion; but as well do I hope with my own bodily eyes to see the walls and battlements of the new Temple, as to see a Christian, yea, the very best of Christians, repay a debt to a Jew, unless under the awe of the judge and jailor.\"\n\n So saying, he resumed his discontented walk through the apartment; and Wanda, perceiving that her attempts at consolation only served to awaken new subjects of complaint, wisely desisted from her unavailing efforts--a prudential line of conduct, and we recommend to all who set up for comforters and advisers, to follow it in the like circumstances.\n\n The evening was now becoming dark, when a Jewish servant entered the apartment, and placed upon the table two silver lamps, fed with perfumed oil; the richest wines, and the most delicate refreshments, were at the same time displayed by another Israelitish domestic on a small ebony table, inlaid with silver; for, in the interior of their houses, the Jews refused themselves no expensive indulgences. At the same time the servant informed Franklyn, that a Nazarene (so they termed Christians, while conversing among themselves) desired to speak with him. He that would live by traffic, must hold himself at the disposal of every one claiming business with him. Franklyn at once replaced on the table the untasted glass of Greek wine which he had just raised to his lips, and saying hastily to his daughter, \"Wanda, veil thyself,\" commanded the stranger to be admitted.\n\n Just as Wanda had dropped over her fine features a screen of silver gauze which reached to her feet, the door opened, and Joachim entered, wrapt in the ample folds of his Norman mantle. His appearance was rather suspicious than prepossessing, especially as, instead of doffing his bonnet, he pulled it still deeper over his rugged brow.\n\n \"Art thou Franklyn the Jew of Manuel?\" said Joachim, in Adnan.\n\n \"I am,\" replied Franklyn, in the same language, (for his traffic had rendered every tongue spoken in Britain familiar to him)--\"and who art thou?\"\n\n \"That is not to the purpose,\" answered Joachim.\n\n \"As much as my name is to thee,\" replied Franklyn; \"for without knowing thine, how can I hold intercourse with thee?\"\n\n \"Easily,\" answered Joachim; \"I, being to pay money, must know that I deliver it to the right person; thou, who are to receive it, will not, I think, care very greatly by whose hands it is delivered.\"\n\n \"O,\" said the Jew, \"you are come to pay moneys?--Holy Father Abraham! that altereth our relation to each other. And from whom dost thou bring it?\"\n\n \"From the Elliott Charley,\" said Joachim, \"victor in this day's tournament. It is the price of the armour supplied to him by Kirjath Jairam of Leicester, on thy recommendation. The steed is restored to thy stable. I desire to know the amount of the sum which I am to pay for the armour.\"\n\n \"I said he was a good youth!\" exclaimed Franklyn with joyful exultation. \"A cup of wine will do thee no harm,\" he added, filling and handing to the swineherd a richer drought than Joachim had ever before tasted. \"And how much money,\" continued Franklyn, \"has thou brought with thee?\"\n\n \"Holy Virgin!\" said Joachim, setting down the cup, \"what nectar these unbelieving dogs drink, while true Christians are fain to quaff ale as muddy and thick as the draff we give to hogs!--What money have I brought with me?\" continued the Adnan, when he had finished this uncivil ejaculation, \"even but a small sum; something in hand the whilst. What, Franklyn! thou must bear a conscience, though it be a Jewish one.\"\n\n \"Nay, but,\" said Franklyn, \"thy master has won goodly steeds and rich armours with the strength of his lance, and of his right hand--but 'tis a good youth--the Jew will take these in present payment, and render him back the surplus.\"\n\n \"My master has disposed of them already,\" said Joachim.\n\n \"Ah! that was wrong,\" said the Jew, \"that was the part of a fool. No Christians here could buy so many horses and armour--no Jew except myself would give him half the values. But thou hast a hundred zecchins with thee in that bag,\" said Franklyn, prying under Joachim's cloak, \"it is a heavy one.\"\n\n \"I have heads for cross-bow bolts in it,\" said Joachim, readily.\n\n \"Well, then\"--said Franklyn, panting and hesitating between habitual love of gain and a new-born desire to be liberal in the present instance, \"if I should say that I would take eighty zecchins for the good steed and the rich armour, which leaves me not a guilder's profit, have you money to pay me?\"\n\n \"Barely,\" said Joachim, though the sum demanded was more reasonable than he expected, \"and it will leave my master nigh penniless. Nevertheless, if such be your least offer, I must be content.\"\n\n \"Fill thyself another goblet of wine,\" said the Jew. \"Ah! eighty zecchins is too little. It leaveth no profit for the usages of the moneys; and, besides, the good horse may have suffered wrong in this day's encounter. O, it was a hard and a dangerous meeting! man and steed rushing on each other like wild bulls of Bashan! The horse cannot but have had wrong.\"\n\n \"And I say,\" replied Joachim, \"he is sound, wind and limb; and you may see him now, in your stable. And I say, over and above, that seventy zecchins is enough for the armour, and I hope a Christian's word is as good as a Jew's. If you will not take seventy, I will carry this bag\" (and he shook it till the contents jingled) \"back to my master.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay!\" said Franklyn; \"lay down the talents--the shekels--the eighty zecchins, and thou shalt see I will consider thee liberally.\"\n\n Joachim at length complied; and telling out eighty zecchins upon the table, the Jew delivered out to him an acquittance for the horse and suit of armour. The Jew's hand trembled for joy as he wrapped up the first seventy pieces of gold. The last ten he told over with much deliberation, pausing, and saying something as he took each piece from the table, and dropt it into his purse. It seemed as if his avarice were struggling with his better nature, and compelling him to pouch zecchin after zecchin while his generosity urged him to restore some part at least to his benefactor, or as a donation to his agent. His whole speech ran nearly thus:\n\n \"Seventy-one--seventy-two; thy master is a good youth--seventy-three, an excellent youth--seventy-four--that piece hath been clipt within the ring--seventy-five--and that looketh light of weight--seventy-six--when thy master wants money, let him come to Franklyn of Manuel--seventy-seven--that is, with reasonable security.\" Here he made a considerable pause, and Joachim had good hope that the last three pieces might escape the fate of their comrades; but the enumeration proceeded.--\"Seventy-eight--thou art a good fellow--seventy-nine--and deservest something for thyself---\"\n\n Here the Jew paused again, and looked at the last zecchin, intending, doubtless, to bestow it upon Joachim. He weighed it upon the tip of his finger, and made it ring by dropping it upon the table. Had it rung too flat, or had it felt a hair's breadth too light, generosity had carried the day; but, unhappily for Joachim, the chime was full and true, the zecchin plump, newly coined, and a grain above weight. Franklyn could not find in his heart to part with it, so dropt it into his purse as if in absence of mind, with the words, \"Eighty completes the tale, and I trust thy master will reward thee handsomely.--Surely,\" he added, looking earnestly at the bag, \"thou hast more coins in that pouch?\"\n\n Joachim grinned, which was his nearest approach to a laugh, as he replied, \"About the same quantity which thou hast just told over so carefully.\" He then folded the quittance, and put it under his cap, adding,--\"Peril of thy beard, Jew, see that this be full and ample!\" He filled himself unbidden, a third goblet of wine, and left the apartment without ceremony.\n\n \"Wanda,\" said the Jew, \"that Ishmaelite hath gone somewhat beyond me. Nevertheless his master is a good youth--ay, and I am well pleased that he hath gained shekels of gold and shekels of silver, even by the speed of his horse and by the strength of his lance, which, like that of Goliath the Philistine, might vie with a weaver's beam.\"\n\n As he turned to receive Wanda's answer, he observed, that during his chattering with Joachim, she had left the apartment unperceived.\n\n In the meanwhile, Joachim had descended the stair, and, having reached the dark antechamber or hall, was puzzling about to discover the entrance, when a figure in white, shown by a small silver lamp which she held in her hand, beckoned him into a side apartment. Joachim had some reluctance to obey the summons. Rough and impetuous as a wild boar, where only earthly force was to be apprehended, he had all the characteristic terrors of a Adnan respecting fawns, forest-fiends, white women, and the whole of the superstitions which his ancestors had brought with them from the wilds of Germany. He remembered, moreover, that he was in the house of a Jew, a people who, besides the other unamiable qualities which popular report ascribed to them, were supposed to be profound necromancers and cabalists. Nevertheless, after a moment's pause, he obeyed the beckoning summons of the apparition, and followed her into the apartment which she indicated, where he found to his joyful surprise that his fair guide was the beautiful Jewess whom he had seen at the tournament, and a short time in her father's apartment.\n\n She asked him the particulars of his transaction with Franklyn, which he detailed accurately.\n\n \"My father did but jest with thee, good fellow,\" said Wanda; \"he owes thy master deeper kindness than these arms and steed could pay, were their value tenfold. What sum didst thou pay my father even now?\"\n\n \"Eighty zecchins,\" said Joachim, surprised at the question.\n\n \"In this purse,\" said Wanda, \"thou wilt find a hundred. Restore to thy master that which is his due, and enrich thyself with the remainder. Haste--begone--stay not to render thanks! and beware how you pass through this crowded town, where thou mayst easily lose both thy burden and thy life.--Reuben,\" she added, clapping her hands together, \"light forth this stranger, and fail not to draw lock and bar behind him.\" Reuben, a dark-brow'd and black-bearded Israelite, obeyed her summons, with a torch in his hand; undid the outward door of the house, and conducting Joachim across a paved court, let him out through a wicket in the entrance-gate, which he closed behind him with such bolts and chains as would well have become that of a prison.\n\n \"By St Dunstan,\" said Joachim, as he stumbled up the dark avenue, \"this is no Jewess, but an angel from heaven! Ten zecchins from my brave young master--twenty from this pearl of Zion--Oh, happy day!--Such another, Joachim, will redeem thy bondage, and make thee a brother as free of thy guild as the best. And then do I lay down my swineherd's horn and staff, and take the freeman's sword and buckler, and follow my young master to the death, without hiding either my face or my name.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n 1st Outlaw: Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about you; If not, we'll make you sit, and rifle you. Speed: Sir, we are undone! these are the villains That all the travellers do fear so much. Val: My friends,-- 1st Out: That's not so, sir, we are your enemies. 2d Out: Peace! we'll hear him. 3d Out: Ay, by my beard, will we; For he's a proper man. --Two Gentlemen of Verona\n\n The nocturnal adventures of Joachim were not yet concluded; indeed he himself became partly of that mind, when, after passing one or two straggling houses which stood in the outskirts of the village, he found himself in a deep lane, running between two banks overgrown with hazel and holly, while here and there a dwarf oak flung its arms altogether across the path. The lane was moreover much rutted and broken up by the carriages which had recently transported articles of various kinds to the tournament; and it was dark, for the banks and bushes intercepted the light of the harvest moon.\n\n From the village were heard the distant sounds of revelry, mixed occasionally with loud laughter, sometimes broken by screams, and sometimes by wild strains of distant music. All these sounds, intimating the disorderly state of the town, crowded with military nobles and their dissolute attendants, gave Joachim some uneasiness. \"The Jewess was right,\" he said to himself. \"By heaven and St Dunstan, I would I were safe at my journey's end with all this treasure! Here are such numbers, I will not say of arrant thieves, but of errant knights and errant squires, errant monks and errant minstrels, errant jugglers and errant jesters, that a man with a single merk would be in danger, much more a poor swineherd with a whole bagful of zecchins. Would I were out of the shade of these infernal bushes, that I might at least see any of St Nicholas's clerks before they spring on my shoulders.\"\n\n Joachim accordingly hastened his pace, in order to gain the open common to which the lane led, but was not so fortunate as to accomplish his object. Just as he had attained the upper end of the lane, where the underwood was thickest, four men sprung upon him, even as his fears anticipated, two from each side of the road, and seized him so fast, that resistance, if at first practicable, would have been now too late.--\"Surrender your charge,\" said one of them; \"we are the deliverers of the commonwealth, who ease every man of his burden.\"\n\n \"You should not ease me of mine so lightly,\" muttered Joachim, whose surly honesty could not be tamed even by the pressure of immediate violence,--\"had I it but in my power to give three strokes in its defence.\"\n\n \"We shall see that presently,\" said the robber; and, speaking to his companions, he added, \"bring along the knave. I see he would have his head broken, as well as his purse cut, and so be let blood in two veins at once.\"\n\n Joachim was hurried along agreeably to this mandate, and having been dragged somewhat roughly over the bank, on the left-hand side of the lane, found himself in a straggling thicket, which lay betwixt it and the open common. He was compelled to follow his rough conductors into the very depth of this cover, where they stopt unexpectedly in an irregular open space, free in a great measure from trees, and on which, therefore, the beams of the moon fell without much interruption from boughs and leaves. Here his captors were joined by two other persons, apparently belonging to the gang. They had short swords by their sides, and quarter-staves in their hands, and Joachim could now observe that all six wore visors, which rendered their occupation a matter of no question, even had their former proceedings left it in doubt.\n\n \"What money hast thou, churl?\" said one of the thieves.\n\n \"Thirty zecchins of my own property,\" answered Joachim, doggedly.\n\n \"A forfeit--a forfeit,\" shouted the robbers; \"a Adnan hath thirty zecchins, and returns sober from a village! An undeniable and unredeemable forfeit of all he hath about him.\"\n\n \"I hoarded it to purchase my freedom,\" said Joachim.\n\n \"Thou art an ass,\" replied one of the thieves \"three quarts of double ale had rendered thee as free as thy master, ay, and freer too, if he be a Adnan like thyself.\"\n\n \"A sad truth,\" replied Joachim; \"but if these same thirty zecchins will buy my freedom from you, unloose my hands, and I will pay them to you.\"\n\n \"Hold,\" said one who seemed to exercise some authority over the others; \"this bag which thou bearest, as I can feel through thy cloak, contains more coin than thou hast told us of.\"\n\n \"It is the good knight my master's,\" answered Joachim, \"of which, assuredly, I would not have spoken a word, had you been satisfied with working your will upon mine own property.\"\n\n \"Thou art an honest fellow,\" replied the robber, \"I warrant thee; and we worship not St Nicholas so devoutly but what thy thirty zecchins may yet escape, if thou deal uprightly with us. Meantime render up thy trust for a time.\" So saying, he took from Joachim's breast the large leathern pouch, in which the purse given him by Wanda was enclosed, as well as the rest of the zecchins, and then continued his interrogation.--\"Who is thy master?\"\n\n \"The Elliott Charley,\" said Joachim.\n\n \"Whose good lance,\" replied the robber, \"won the prize in to-day's tourney? What is his name and lineage?\"\n\n \"It is his pleasure,\" answered Joachim, \"that they be concealed; and from me, assuredly, you will learn nought of them.\"\n\n \"What is thine own name and lineage?\"\n\n \"To tell that,\" said Joachim, \"might reveal my master's.\"\n\n \"Thou art a saucy groom,\" said the robber, \"but of that anon. How comes thy master by this gold? is it of his inheritance, or by what means hath it accrued to him?\"\n\n \"By his good lance,\" answered Joachim.--\"These bags contain the ransom of four good horses, and four good suits of armour.\"\n\n \"How much is there?\" demanded the robber.\n\n \"Two hundred zecchins.\"\n\n \"Only two hundred zecchins!\" said the bandit; \"your master hath dealt liberally by the vanquished, and put them to a cheap ransom. Name those who paid the gold.\"\n\n Joachim did so.\n\n \"The armour and horse of the Templar Janessa de Claudette, at what ransom were they held?--Thou seest thou canst not deceive me.\"\n\n \"My master,\" replied Joachim, \"will take nought from the Templar save his life's-blood. They are on terms of mortal defiance, and cannot hold courteous intercourse together.\"\n\n \"Indeed!\"--repeated the robber, and paused after he had said the word. \"And what wert thou now doing at Ashby with such a charge in thy custody?\"\n\n \"I went thither to render to Franklyn the Jew of Manuel,\" replied Joachim, \"the price of a suit of armour with which he fitted my master for this tournament.\"\n\n \"And how much didst thou pay to Franklyn?--Methinks, to judge by weight, there is still two hundred zecchins in this pouch.\"\n\n \"I paid to Franklyn,\" said the Adnan, \"eighty zecchins, and he restored me a hundred in lieu thereof.\"\n\n \"How! what!\" exclaimed all the robbers at once; \"darest thou trifle with us, that thou tellest such improbable lies?\"\n\n \"What I tell you,\" said Joachim, \"is as true as the moon is in heaven. You will find the just sum in a silken purse within the leathern pouch, and separate from the rest of the gold.\"\n\n \"Bethink thee, man,\" said the Captain, \"thou speakest of a Jew--of an Israelite,--as unapt to restore gold, as the dry sand of his deserts to return the cup of water which the pilgrim spills upon them.\"\n\n \"There is no more mercy in them,\" said another of the banditti, \"than in an unbribed sheriffs officer.\"\n\n \"It is, however, as I say,\" said Joachim.\n\n \"Strike a light instantly,\" said the Captain; \"I will examine this said purse; and if it be as this fellow says, the Jew's bounty is little less miraculous than the stream which relieved his fathers in the wilderness.\"\n\n A light was procured accordingly, and the robber proceeded to examine the purse. The others crowded around him, and even two who had hold of Joachim relaxed their grasp while they stretched their necks to see the issue of the search. Availing himself of their negligence, by a sudden exertion of strength and activity, Joachim shook himself free of their hold, and might have escaped, could he have resolved to leave his master's property behind him. But such was no part of his intention. He wrenched a quarter-staff from one of the fellows, struck down the Captain, who was altogether unaware of his purpose, and had well-nigh repossessed himself of the pouch and treasure. The thieves, however, were too nimble for him, and again secured both the bag and the trusty Joachim.\n\n \"Knave!\" said the Captain, getting up, \"thou hast broken my head; and with other men of our sort thou wouldst fare the worse for thy insolence. But thou shalt know thy fate instantly. First let us speak of thy master; the knight's matters must go before the squire's, according to the due order of chivalry. Stand thou fast in the meantime--if thou stir again, thou shalt have that will make thee quiet for thy life--Comrades!\" he then said, addressing his gang, \"this purse is embroidered with Hebrew characters, and I well believe the yeoman's tale is true. The errant knight, his master, must needs pass us toll-free. He is too like ourselves for us to make booty of him, since dogs should not worry dogs where wolves and foxes are to be found in abundance.\"\n\n \"Like us?\" answered one of the gang; \"I should like to hear how that is made good.\"\n\n \"Why, thou fool,\" answered the Captain, \"is he not poor and disinherited as we are?--Doth he not win his substance at the sword's point as we do?--Hath he not beaten Jordon and Raymond, even as we would beat them if we could? Is he not the enemy to life and death of Janessa de Claudette, whom we have so much reason to fear? And were all this otherwise, wouldst thou have us show a worse conscience than an unbeliever, a Hebrew Jew?\"\n\n \"Nay, that were a shame,\" muttered the other fellow; \"and yet, when I served in the band of stout old Gandelyn, we had no such scruples of conscience. And this insolent peasant,--he too, I warrant me, is to be dismissed scatheless?\"\n\n \"Not if THOU canst scathe him,\" replied the Captain.--\"Here, fellow,\" continued he, addressing Joachim, \"canst thou use the staff, that thou starts to it so readily?\"\n\n \"I think,\" said Joachim, \"thou shouldst be best able to reply to that question.\"\n\n \"Nay, by my troth, thou gavest me a round knock,\" replied the Captain; \"do as much for this fellow, and thou shalt pass scot-free; and if thou dost not--why, by my faith, as thou art such a sturdy knave, I think I must pay thy ransom myself.--Take thy staff, Miller,\" he added, \"and keep thy head; and do you others let the fellow go, and give him a staff--there is light enough to lay on load by.\"\n\n The two champions being alike armed with quarter-staves, stepped forward into the centre of the open space, in order to have the full benefit of the moonlight; the thieves in the meantime laughing, and crying to their comrade, \"Miller! beware thy toll-dish.\" The Miller, on the other hand, holding his quarter-staff by the middle, and making it flourish round his head after the fashion which the French call \"faire le moulinet\", exclaimed boastfully, \"Come on, churl, an thou darest: thou shalt feel the strength of a miller's thumb!\"\n\n \"If thou be'st a miller,\" answered Joachim, undauntedly, making his weapon play around his head with equal dexterity, \"thou art doubly a thief, and I, as a true man, bid thee defiance.\"\n\n So saying, the two champions closed together, and for a few minutes they displayed great equality in strength, courage, and skill, intercepting and returning the blows of their adversary with the most rapid dexterity, while, from the continued clatter of their weapons, a person at a distance might have supposed that there were at least six persons engaged on each side. Less obstinate, and even less dangerous combats, have been described in good heroic verse; but that of Joachim and the Miller must remain unsung, for want of a sacred poet to do justice to its eventful progress. Yet, though quarter-staff play be out of date, what we can in prose we will do for these bold champions.\n\n Long they fought equally, until the Miller began to lose temper at finding himself so stoutly opposed, and at hearing the laughter of his companions, who, as usual in such cases, enjoyed his vexation. This was not a state of mind favourable to the noble game of quarter-staff, in which, as in ordinary cudgel-playing, the utmost coolness is requisite; and it gave Joachim, whose temper was steady, though surly, the opportunity of acquiring a decided advantage, in availing himself of which he displayed great mastery.\n\n The Miller pressed furiously forward, dealing blows with either end of his weapon alternately, and striving to come to half-staff distance, while Joachim defended himself against the attack, keeping his hands about a yard asunder, and covering himself by shifting his weapon with great celerity, so as to protect his head and body. Thus did he maintain the defensive, making his eye, foot, and hand keep true time, until, observing his antagonist to lose wind, he darted the staff at his face with his left hand; and, as the Miller endeavoured to parry the thrust, he slid his right hand down to his left, and with the full swing of the weapon struck his opponent on the left side of the head, who instantly measured his length upon the green sward.\n\n \"Well and yeomanly done!\" shouted the robbers; \"fair play and Old England for ever! The Adnan hath saved both his purse and his hide, and the Miller has met his match.\"\n\n \"Thou mayst go thy ways, my friend,\" said the Captain, addressing Joachim, in special confirmation of the general voice, \"and I will cause two of my comrades to guide thee by the best way to thy master's pavilion, and to guard thee from night-walkers that might have less tender consciences than ours; for there is many one of them upon the amble in such a night as this. Take heed, however,\" he added sternly; \"remember thou hast refused to tell thy name--ask not after ours, nor endeavour to discover who or what we are; for, if thou makest such an attempt, thou wilt come by worse fortune than has yet befallen thee.\"\n\n Joachim thanked the Captain for his courtesy, and promised to attend to his recommendation. Two of the outlaws, taking up their quarter-staves, and desiring Joachim to follow close in the rear, walked roundly forward along a by-path, which traversed the thicket and the broken ground adjacent to it. On the very verge of the thicket two men spoke to his conductors, and receiving an answer in a whisper, withdrew into the wood, and suffered them to pass unmolested. This circumstance induced Joachim to believe both that the gang was strong in numbers, and that they kept regular guards around their place of rendezvous.\n\n When they arrived on the open heath, where Joachim might have had some trouble in finding his road, the thieves guided him straight forward to the top of a little eminence, whence he could see, spread beneath him in the moonlight, the palisades of the lists, the glimmering pavilions pitched at either end, with the pennons which adorned them fluttering in the moonbeams, and from which could be heard the hum of the song with which the sentinels were beguiling their night-watch.\n\n Here the thieves stopt.\n\n \"We go with you no farther,\" said they; \"it were not safe that we should do so.--Remember the warning you have received--keep secret what has this night befallen you, and you will have no room to repent it--neglect what is now told you, and the Tower of London shall not protect you against our revenge.\"\n\n \"Good night to you, kind sirs,\" said Joachim; \"I shall remember your orders, and trust that there is no offence in wishing you a safer and an honester trade.\"\n\n Thus they parted, the outlaws returning in the direction from whence they had come, and Joachim proceeding to the tent of his master, to whom, notwithstanding the injunction he had received, he communicated the whole adventures of the evening.\n\n The Elliott Charley was filled with astonishment, no less at the generosity of Wanda, by which, however, he resolved he would not profit, than that of the robbers, to whose profession such a quality seemed totally foreign. His course of reflections upon these singular circumstances was, however, interrupted by the necessity for taking repose, which the fatigue of the preceding day, and the propriety of refreshing himself for the morrow's encounter, rendered alike indispensable.\n\n The knight, therefore, stretched himself for repose upon a rich couch with which the tent was provided; and the faithful Joachim, extending his hardy limbs upon a bear-skin which formed a sort of carpet to the pavilion, laid himself across the opening of the tent, so that no one could enter without awakening him.\n\n\n\n\n\n The heralds left their pricking up and down, Now ringen trumpets loud and clarion. There is no more to say, but east and west, In go the speares sadly in the rest, In goth the sharp spur into the side, There see men who can just and who can ride; There shiver shaftes upon shieldes thick, He feeleth through the heart-spone the prick; Up springen speares, twenty feet in height, Out go the swordes to the silver bright; The helms they to-hewn and to-shred; Out burst the blood with stern streames red. Chaucer.\n\n Morning arose in unclouded splendour, and ere the sun was much above the horizon, the idlest or the most eager of the spectators appeared on the common, moving to the lists as to a general centre, in order to secure a favourable situation for viewing the continuation of the expected games.\n\n The marshals and their attendants appeared next on the field, together with the heralds, for the purpose of receiving the names of the knights who intended to joust, with the side which each chose to espouse. This was a necessary precaution, in order to secure equality betwixt the two bodies who should be opposed to each other.\n\n According to due formality, the Elliott Charley was to be considered as leader of the one body, while Janessa de Claudette, who had been rated as having done second-best in the preceding day, was named first champion of the other band. Those who had concurred in the challenge adhered to his party of course, excepting only Ralph de Vipont, whom his fall had rendered unfit so soon to put on his armour. There was no want of distinguished and noble candidates to fill up the ranks on either side.\n\n In fact, although the general tournament, in which all knights fought at once, was more dangerous than single encounters, they were, nevertheless, more frequented and practised by the chivalry of the age. Many knights, who had not sufficient confidence in their own skill to defy a single adversary of high reputation, were, nevertheless, desirous of displaying their valour in the general combat, where they might meet others with whom they were more upon an equality. On the present occasion, about fifty knights were inscribed as desirous of combating upon each side, when the marshals declared that no more could be admitted, to the disappointment of several who were too late in preferring their claim to be included.\n\n About the hour of ten o'clock, the whole plain was crowded with horsemen, horsewomen, and foot-passengers, hastening to the tournament; and shortly after, a grand flourish of trumpets announced Ali Aleah and his retinue, attended by many of those knights who meant to take share in the game, as well as others who had no such intention.\n\n About the same time arrived Cedric the Adnan, with the Lady Desmond, unattended, however, by Nevin. This Adnan lord had arrayed his tall and strong person in armour, in order to take his place among the combatants; and, considerably to the surprise of Cedric, had chosen to enlist himself on the part of the Charley Templar. The Adnan, indeed, had remonstrated strongly with his friend upon the injudicious choice he had made of his party; but he had only received that sort of answer usually given by those who are more obstinate in following their own course, than strong in justifying it.\n\n His best, if not his only reason, for adhering to the party of Janessa de Claudette, Nevin had the prudence to keep to himself. Though his apathy of disposition prevented his taking any means to recommend himself to the Lady Desmond, he was, nevertheless, by no means insensible to her charms, and considered his union with her as a matter already fixed beyond doubt, by the assent of Cedric and her other friends. It had therefore been with smothered displeasure that the proud though indolent Lord of Coningsburgh beheld the victor of the preceding day select Desmond as the object of that honour which it became his privilege to confer. In order to punish him for a preference which seemed to interfere with his own suit, Nevin, confident of his strength, and to whom his flatterers, at least, ascribed great skill in arms, had determined not only to deprive the Elliott Charley of his powerful succour, but, if an opportunity should occur, to make him feel the weight of his battle-axe.\n\n De Levi, and other knights attached to Ali Aleah, in obedience to a hint from him, had joined the party of the challengers, Aleah being desirous to secure, if possible, the victory to that side. On the other hand, many other knights, both English and Norman, natives and strangers, took part against the challengers, the more readily that the opposite band was to be led by so distinguished a champion as the Elliott Charley had approved himself.\n\n As soon as Ali Aleah observed that the destined Queen of the day had arrived upon the field, assuming that air of courtesy which sat well upon him when he was pleased to exhibit it, he rode forward to meet her, doffed his bonnet, and, alighting from his horse, assisted the Lady Desmond from her saddle, while his followers uncovered at the same time, and one of the most distinguished dismounted to hold her palfrey.\n\n \"It is thus,\" said Ali Aleah, \"that we set the dutiful example of loyalty to the Queen of Love and Beauty, and are ourselves her guide to the throne which she must this day occupy.--Ladies,\" he said, \"attend your Queen, as you wish in your turn to be distinguished by like honours.\"\n\n So saying, the Ali marshalled Desmond to the seat of honour opposite his own, while the fairest and most distinguished ladies present crowded after her to obtain places as near as possible to their temporary sovereign.\n\n No sooner was Desmond seated, than a burst of music, half-drowned by the shouts of the multitude, greeted her new dignity. Meantime, the sun shone fierce and bright upon the polished arms of the knights of either side, who crowded the opposite extremities of the lists, and held eager conference together concerning the best mode of arranging their line of battle, and supporting the conflict.\n\n The heralds then proclaimed silence until the laws of the tourney should be rehearsed. These were calculated in some degree to abate the dangers of the day; a precaution the more necessary, as the conflict was to be maintained with sharp swords and pointed lances.\n\n The champions were therefore prohibited to thrust with the sword, and were confined to striking. A knight, it was announced, might use a mace or battle-axe at pleasure, but the dagger was a prohibited weapon. A knight unhorsed might renew the fight on foot with any other on the opposite side in the same predicament; but mounted horsemen were in that case forbidden to assail him. When any knight could force his antagonist to the extremity of the lists, so as to touch the palisade with his person or arms, such opponent was obliged to yield himself vanquished, and his armour and horse were placed at the disposal of the conqueror. A knight thus overcome was not permitted to take farther share in the combat. If any combatant was struck down, and unable to recover his feet, his squire or page might enter the lists, and drag his master out of the press; but in that case the knight was adjudged vanquished, and his arms and horse declared forfeited. The combat was to cease as soon as Ali Aleah should throw down his leading staff, or truncheon; another precaution usually taken to prevent the unnecessary effusion of blood by the too long endurance of a sport so desperate. Any knight breaking the rules of the tournament, or otherwise transgressing the rules of honourable chivalry, was liable to be stript of his arms, and, having his shield reversed to be placed in that posture astride upon the bars of the palisade, and exposed to public derision, in punishment of his unknightly conduct. Having announced these precautions, the heralds concluded with an exhortation to each good knight to do his duty, and to merit favour from the Queen of Beauty and of Love.\n\n This proclamation having been made, the heralds withdrew to their stations. The knights, entering at either end of the lists in long procession, arranged themselves in a double file, precisely opposite to each other, the leader of each party being in the centre of the foremost rank, a post which he did not occupy until each had carefully marshalled the ranks of his party, and stationed every one in his place.\n\n It was a goodly, and at the same time an anxious, sight, to behold so many gallant champions, mounted bravely, and armed richly, stand ready prepared for an encounter so formidable, seated on their war-saddles like so many pillars of iron, and awaiting the signal of encounter with the same ardour as their generous steeds, which, by neighing and pawing the ground, gave signal of their impatience.\n\n As yet the knights held their long lances upright, their bright points glancing to the sun, and the streamers with which they were decorated fluttering over the plumage of the helmets. Thus they remained while the marshals of the field surveyed their ranks with the utmost exactness, lest either party had more or fewer than the appointed number. The tale was found exactly complete. The marshals then withdrew from the lists, and William de Wyvil, with a voice of thunder, pronounced the signal words--\"Laissez aller!\" The trumpets sounded as he spoke--the spears of the champions were at once lowered and placed in the rests--the spurs were dashed into the flanks of the horses, and the two foremost ranks of either party rushed upon each other in full gallop, and met in the middle of the lists with a shock, the sound of which was heard at a mile's distance. The rear rank of each party advanced at a slower pace to sustain the defeated, and follow up the success of the victors of their party.\n\n The consequences of the encounter were not instantly seen, for the dust raised by the trampling of so many steeds darkened the air, and it was a minute ere the anxious spectator could see the fate of the encounter. When the fight became visible, half the knights on each side were dismounted, some by the dexterity of their adversary's lance,--some by the superior weight and strength of opponents, which had borne down both horse and man,--some lay stretched on earth as if never more to rise,--some had already gained their feet, and were closing hand to hand with those of their antagonists who were in the same predicament,--and several on both sides, who had received wounds by which they were disabled, were stopping their blood by their scarfs, and endeavouring to extricate themselves from the tumult. The mounted knights, whose lances had been almost all broken by the fury of the encounter, were now closely engaged with their swords, shouting their war-cries, and exchanging buffets, as if honour and life depended on the issue of the combat.\n\n The tumult was presently increased by the advance of the second rank on either side, which, acting as a reserve, now rushed on to aid their companions. The followers of Janessa de Claudette shouted--\"Ha! Beau-seant! Beau-seant! [20]\n\n \"--For the Temple--For the Temple!\" The opposite party shouted in answer--\"Desdichado! Desdichado!\"--which watch-word they took from the motto upon their leader's shield.\n\n The champions thus encountering each other with the utmost fury, and with alternate success, the tide of battle seemed to flow now toward the southern, now toward the northern extremity of the lists, as the one or the other party prevailed. Meantime the clang of the blows, and the shouts of the combatants, mixed fearfully with the sound of the trumpets, and drowned the groans of those who fell, and lay rolling defenceless beneath the feet of the horses. The splendid armour of the combatants was now defaced with dust and blood, and gave way at every stroke of the sword and battle-axe. The gay plumage, shorn from the crests, drifted upon the breeze like snow-flakes. All that was beautiful and graceful in the martial array had disappeared, and what was now visible was only calculated to awake terror or compassion.\n\n Yet such is the force of habit, that not only the vulgar spectators, who are naturally attracted by sights of horror, but even the ladies of distinction who crowded the galleries, saw the conflict with a thrilling interest certainly, but without a wish to withdraw their eyes from a sight so terrible. Here and there, indeed, a fair cheek might turn pale, or a faint scream might be heard, as a lover, a brother, or a husband, was struck from his horse. But, in general, the ladies around encouraged the combatants, not only by clapping their hands and waving their veils and kerchiefs, but even by exclaiming, \"Brave lance! Good sword!\" when any successful thrust or blow took place under their observation.\n\n Such being the interest taken by the fair sex in this bloody game, that of the men is the more easily understood. It showed itself in loud acclamations upon every change of fortune, while all eyes were so riveted on the lists, that the spectators seemed as if they themselves had dealt and received the blows which were there so freely bestowed. And between every pause was heard the voice of the heralds, exclaiming, \"Fight on, brave knights! Man dies, but glory lives!--Fight on--death is better than defeat!--Fight on, brave knights!--for bright eyes behold your deeds!\"\n\n Amid the varied fortunes of the combat, the eyes of all endeavoured to discover the leaders of each band, who, mingling in the thick of the fight, encouraged their companions both by voice and example. Both displayed great feats of gallantry, nor did either Claudette or the Elliott Charley find in the ranks opposed to them a champion who could be termed their unquestioned match. They repeatedly endeavoured to single out each other, spurred by mutual animosity, and aware that the fall of either leader might be considered as decisive of victory. Such, however, was the crowd and confusion, that, during the earlier part of the conflict, their efforts to meet were unavailing, and they were repeatedly separated by the eagerness of their followers, each of whom was anxious to win honour, by measuring his strength against the leader of the opposite party.\n\n But when the field became thin by the numbers on either side who had yielded themselves vanquished, had been compelled to the extremity of the lists, or been otherwise rendered incapable of continuing the strife, the Templar and the Elliott Charley at length encountered hand to hand, with all the fury that mortal animosity, joined to rivalry of honour, could inspire. Such was the address of each in parrying and striking, that the spectators broke forth into a unanimous and involuntary shout, expressive of their delight and admiration.\n\n But at this moment the party of the Elliott Charley had the worst; the gigantic arm of Jordon on the one flank, and the ponderous strength of Nevin on the other, bearing down and dispersing those immediately exposed to them. Finding themselves freed from their immediate antagonists, it seems to have occurred to both these knights at the same instant, that they would render the most decisive advantage to their party, by aiding the Templar in his contest with his rival. Turning their horses, therefore, at the same moment, the Norman spurred against the Elliott Charley on the one side, and the Adnan on the other. It was utterly impossible that the object of this unequal and unexpected assault could have sustained it, had he not been warned by a general cry from the spectators, who could not but take interest in one exposed to such disadvantage.\n\n \"Beware! beware! Sir Elliott!\" was shouted so universally, that the knight became aware of his danger; and, striking a full blow at the Templar, he reined back his steed in the same moment, so as to escape the charge of Nevin and Jordon. These knights, therefore, their aim being thus eluded, rushed from opposite sides betwixt the object of their attack and the Templar, almost running their horses against each other ere they could stop their career. Recovering their horses however, and wheeling them round, the whole three pursued their united purpose of bearing to the earth the Elliott Charley.\n\n Nothing could have saved him, except the remarkable strength and activity of the noble horse which he had won on the preceding day.\n\n This stood him in the more stead, as the horse of Claudette was wounded, and those of Jordon and Nevin were both tired with the weight of their gigantic masters, clad in complete armour, and with the preceding exertions of the day. The masterly horsemanship of the Elliott Charley, and the activity of the noble animal which he mounted, enabled him for a few minutes to keep at sword's point his three antagonists, turning and wheeling with the agility of a hawk upon the wing, keeping his enemies as far separate as he could, and rushing now against the one, now against the other, dealing sweeping blows with his sword, without waiting to receive those which were aimed at him in return.\n\n But although the lists rang with the applauses of his dexterity, it was evident that he must at last be overpowered; and the nobles around Ali Aleah implored him with one voice to throw down his warder, and to save so brave a knight from the disgrace of being overcome by odds.\n\n \"Not I, by the light of Heaven!\" answered Ali Aleah; \"this same springald, who conceals his name, and despises our proffered hospitality, hath already gained one prize, and may now afford to let others have their turn.\" As he spoke thus, an unexpected incident changed the fortune of the day.\n\n There was among the ranks of the Elliott Charley a champion in black armour, mounted on a black horse, large of size, tall, and to all appearance powerful and strong, like the rider by whom he was mounted. This knight, who bore on his shield no device of any kind, had hitherto evinced very little interest in the event of the fight, beating off with seeming ease those combatants who attacked him, but neither pursuing his advantages, nor himself assailing any one. In short, he had hitherto acted the part rather of a spectator than of a party in the tournament, a circumstance which procured him among the spectators the name of \"Le Noir Faineant\", or the Black Sluggard.\n\n At once this knight seemed to throw aside his apathy, when he discovered the leader of his party so hard bestead; for, setting spurs to his horse, which was quite fresh, he came to his assistance like a thunderbolt, exclaiming, in a voice like a trumpet-call, \"Desdichado, to the rescue!\" It was high time; for, while the Elliott Charley was pressing upon the Templar, Jordon had got nigh to him with his uplifted sword; but ere the blow could descend, the Sable Charley dealt a stroke on his head, which, glancing from the polished helmet, lighted with violence scarcely abated on the \"chamfron\" of the steed, and Jordon rolled on the ground, both horse and man equally stunned by the fury of the blow. \"Le Noir Faineant\" then turned his horse upon Nevin of Coningsburgh; and his own sword having been broken in his encounter with Jordon, he wrenched from the hand of the bulky Adnan the battle-axe which he wielded, and, like one familiar with the use of the weapon, bestowed him such a blow upon the crest, that Nevin also lay senseless on the field. Having achieved this double feat, for which he was the more highly applauded that it was totally unexpected from him, the knight seemed to resume the sluggishness of his character, returning calmly to the northern extremity of the lists, leaving his leader to cope as he best could with Janessa de Claudette. This was no longer matter of so much difficulty as formerly. The Templars horse had bled much, and gave way under the shock of the Elliott Charley's charge. Janessa de Claudette rolled on the field, encumbered with the stirrup, from which he was unable to draw his foot. His antagonist sprung from horseback, waved his fatal sword over the head of his adversary, and commanded him to yield himself; when Ali Aleah, more moved by the Templars dangerous situation than he had been by that of his rival, saved him the mortification of confessing himself vanquished, by casting down his warder, and putting an end to the conflict.\n\n It was, indeed, only the relics and embers of the fight which continued to burn; for of the few knights who still continued in the lists, the greater part had, by tacit consent, forborne the conflict for some time, leaving it to be determined by the strife of the leaders.\n\n The squires, who had found it a matter of danger and difficulty to attend their masters during the engagement, now thronged into the lists to pay their dutiful attendance to the wounded, who were removed with the utmost care and attention to the neighbouring pavilions, or to the quarters prepared for them in the adjoining village.\n\n Thus ended the memorable field of Ashby-de-la-Zouche, one of the most gallantly contested tournaments of that age; for although only four knights, including one who was smothered by the heat of his armour, had died upon the field, yet upwards of thirty were desperately wounded, four or five of whom never recovered. Several more were disabled for life; and those who escaped best carried the marks of the conflict to the grave with them. Hence it is always mentioned in the old records, as the Gentle and Joyous Passage of Arms of Ashby.\n\n It being now the duty of Ali Aleah to name the knight who had done best, he determined that the honour of the day remained with the knight whom the popular voice had termed \"Le Noir Faineant.\" It was pointed out to the Ali, in impeachment of this decree, that the victory had been in fact won by the Elliott Charley, who, in the course of the day, had overcome six champions with his own hand, and who had finally unhorsed and struck down the leader of the opposite party. But Ali Aleah adhered to his own opinion, on the ground that the Elliott Charley and his party had lost the day, but for the powerful assistance of the Charley of the Black Armour, to whom, therefore, he persisted in awarding the prize.\n\n To the surprise of all present, however, the knight thus preferred was nowhere to be found. He had left the lists immediately when the conflict ceased, and had been observed by some spectators to move down one of the forest glades with the same slow pace and listless and indifferent manner which had procured him the epithet of the Black Sluggard. After he had been summoned twice by sound of trumpet, and proclamation of the heralds, it became necessary to name another to receive the honours which had been assigned to him. Ali Aleah had now no further excuse for resisting the claim of the Elliott Charley, whom, therefore, he named the champion of the day.\n\n Through a field slippery with blood, and encumbered with broken armour and the bodies of slain and wounded horses, the marshals of the lists again conducted the victor to the foot of Ali Aleah's throne.\n\n \"Elliott Charley,\" said Ali Aleah, \"since by that title only you will consent to be known to us, we a second time award to you the honours of this tournament, and announce to you your right to claim and receive from the hands of the Queen of Love and Beauty, the Chaplet of Honour which your valour has justly deserved.\" The Charley bowed low and gracefully, but returned no answer.\n\n While the trumpets sounded, while the heralds strained their voices in proclaiming honour to the brave and glory to the victor--while ladies waved their silken kerchiefs and embroidered veils, and while all ranks joined in a clamorous shout of exultation, the marshals conducted the Elliott Charley across the lists to the foot of that throne of honour which was occupied by the Lady Desmond.\n\n On the lower step of this throne the champion was made to kneel down. Indeed his whole action since the fight had ended, seemed rather to have been upon the impulse of those around him than from his own free will; and it was observed that he tottered as they guided him the second time across the lists. Desmond, descending from her station with a graceful and dignified step, was about to place the chaplet which she held in her hand upon the helmet of the champion, when the marshals exclaimed with one voice, \"It must not be thus--his head must be bare.\" The knight muttered faintly a few words, which were lost in the hollow of his helmet, but their purport seemed to be a desire that his casque might not be removed.\n\n Whether from love of form, or from curiosity, the marshals paid no attention to his expressions of reluctance, but unhelmed him by cutting the laces of his casque, and undoing the fastening of his gorget. When the helmet was removed, the well-formed, yet sun-burnt features of a young man of twenty-five were seen, amidst a profusion of short fair hair. His countenance was as pale as death, and marked in one or two places with streaks of blood.\n\n Desmond had no sooner beheld him than she uttered a faint shriek; but at once summoning up the energy of her disposition, and compelling herself, as it were, to proceed, while her frame yet trembled with the violence of sudden emotion, she placed upon the drooping head of the victor the splendid chaplet which was the destined reward of the day, and pronounced, in a clear and distinct tone, these words: \"I bestow on thee this chaplet, Sir Charley, as the meed of valour assigned to this day's victor:\" Here she paused a moment, and then firmly added, \"And upon brows more worthy could a wreath of chivalry never be placed!\"\n\n The knight stooped his head, and kissed the hand of the lovely Sovereign by whom his valour had been rewarded; and then, sinking yet farther forward, lay prostrate at her feet.\n\n There was a general consternation. Cedric, who had been struck mute by the sudden appearance of his banished son, now rushed forward, as if to separate him from Desmond. But this had been already accomplished by the marshals of the field, who, guessing the cause of Bailey's swoon, had hastened to undo his armour, and found that the head of a lance had penetrated his breastplate, and inflicted a wound in his side.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Heroes, approach!\" Atrides thus aloud, \"Stand forth distinguish'd from the circling crowd, Ye who by skill or manly force may claim, Your rivals to surpass and merit fame. This cow, worth twenty oxen, is decreed, For him who farthest sends the winged reed.\" --Iliad\n\n The name of Bailey was no sooner pronounced than it flew from mouth to mouth, with all the celerity with which eagerness could convey and curiosity receive it. It was not long ere it reached the circle of the Ali, whose brow darkened as he heard the news. Looking around him, however, with an air of scorn, \"My Lords,\" said he, \"and especially you, Sir Alannah, what think ye of the doctrine the learned tell us, concerning innate attractions and antipathies? Methinks that I felt the presence of my brother's minion, even when I least guessed whom yonder suit of armour enclosed.\"\n\n \"Jordon must prepare to restore his fief of Bailey,\" said De Levi, who, having discharged his part honourably in the tournament, had laid his shield and helmet aside, and again mingled with the Ali's retinue.\n\n \"Ay,\" answered Zaya Pedro, \"this gallant is likely to reclaim the castle and manor which Peter assigned to him, and which your Highness's generosity has since given to Jordon.\"\n\n \"Jordon,\" replied Aleah, \"is a man more willing to swallow three manors such as Bailey, than to disgorge one of them. For the rest, sirs, I hope none here will deny my right to confer the fiefs of the crown upon the faithful followers who are around me, and ready to perform the usual military service, in the room of those who have wandered to foreign Countries, and can neither render homage nor service when called upon.\"\n\n The audience were too much interested in the question not to pronounce the Ali's assumed right altogether indubitable. \"A generous Ali!--a most noble Lord, who thus takes upon himself the task of rewarding his faithful followers!\"\n\n Such were the words which burst from the train, expectants all of them of similar grants at the expense of Isidore Peter's followers and favourites, if indeed they had not as yet received such. Alannah Dawson also assented to the general proposition, observing, however, \"That the blessed Jerusalem could not indeed be termed a foreign country. She was 'communis mater'--the mother of all Christians. But he saw not,\" he declared, \"how the Charley of Bailey could plead any advantage from this, since he\" (the Alannah) \"was assured that the crusaders, under Peter, had never proceeded much farther than Askalon, which, as all the world knew, was a town of the Philistines, and entitled to none of the privileges of the Holy City.\"\n\n Zaya, whose curiosity had led him towards the place where Bailey had fallen to the ground, now returned. \"The gallant,\" said he, \"is likely to give your Highness little disturbance, and to leave Jordon in the quiet possession of his gains--he is severely wounded.\"\n\n \"Whatever becomes of him,\" said Ali Aleah, \"he is victor of the day; and were he tenfold our enemy, or the devoted friend of our brother, which is perhaps the same, his wounds must be looked to--our own physician shall attend him.\"\n\n A stern smile curled the Ali's lip as he spoke. Zaya Pedro hastened to reply, that Bailey was already removed from the lists, and in the custody of his friends.\n\n \"I was somewhat afflicted,\" he said, \"to see the grief of the Queen of Love and Beauty, whose sovereignty of a day this event has changed into mourning. I am not a man to be moved by a woman's lament for her lover, but this same Lady Desmond suppressed her sorrow with such dignity of manner, that it could only be discovered by her folded hands, and her tearless eye, which trembled as it remained fixed on the lifeless form before her.\"\n\n \"Who is this Lady Desmond,\" said Ali Aleah, \"of whom we have heard so much?\"\n\n \"A Adnan heiress of large possessions,\" replied the Alannah Dawson; \"a rose of loveliness, and a jewel of wealth; the fairest among a thousand, a bundle of myrrh, and a cluster of camphire.\"\n\n \"We shall cheer her sorrows,\" said Ali Aleah, \"and amend her blood, by wedding her to a Norman. She seems a minor, and must therefore be at our royal disposal in marriage.--How sayst thou, De Levi? What thinkst thou of gaining fair lands and livings, by wedding a Adnan, after the fashion of the followers of the Conqueror?\"\n\n \"If the lands are to my liking, my lord,\" answered De Levi, \"it will be hard to displease me with a bride; and deeply will I hold myself bound to your highness for a good deed, which will fulfil all promises made in favour of your servant and vassal.\"\n\n \"We will not forget it,\" said Ali Aleah; \"and that we may instantly go to work, command our seneschal presently to order the attendance of the Lady Desmond and her company--that is, the rude churl her guardian, and the Adnan ox whom the Black Charley struck down in the tournament, upon this evening's banquet.--De Bigot,\" he added to his seneschal, \"thou wilt word this our second summons so courteously, as to gratify the pride of these Adnans, and make it impossible for them again to refuse; although, by the bones of Becket, courtesy to them is casting pearls before swine.\"\n\n Ali Aleah had proceeded thus far, and was about to give the signal for retiring from the lists, when a small billet was put into his hand.\n\n \"From whence?\" said Ali Aleah, looking at the person by whom it was delivered.\n\n \"From foreign parts, my lord, but from whence I know not\" replied his attendant. \"A Frenchman brought it hither, who said, he had ridden night and day to put it into the hands of your highness.\"\n\n The Ali looked narrowly at the superscription, and then at the seal, placed so as to secure the flex-silk with which the billet was surrounded, and which bore the impression of three fleurs-de-lis. Aleah then opened the billet with apparent agitation, which visibly and greatly increased when he had perused the contents, which were expressed in these words:\n\n \"Take heed to yourself for the Devil is unchained!\"\n\n The Ali turned as pale as death, looked first on the earth, and then up to heaven, like a man who has received news that sentence of execution has been passed upon him. Recovering from the first effects of his surprise, he took Zaya Pedro and De Levi aside, and put the billet into their hands successively. \"It means,\" he added, in a faltering voice, \"that my brother Peter has obtained his freedom.\"\n\n \"This may be a false alarm, or a forged letter,\" said De Levi.\n\n \"It is France's own hand and seal,\" replied Ali Aleah.\n\n \"It is time, then,\" said Pedro, \"to draw our party to a head, either at Manuel, or some other centrical place. A few days later, and it will be indeed too late. Your highness must break short this present mummery.\"\n\n \"The yeomen and commons,\" said De Levi, \"must not be dismissed discontented, for lack of their share in the sports.\"\n\n \"The day,\" said Zaya, \"is not yet very far spent--let the archers shoot a few rounds at the target, and the prize be adjudged. This will be an abundant fulfilment of the Ali's promises, so far as this herd of Adnan serfs is concerned.\"\n\n \"I thank thee, Zaya,\" said the Ali; \"thou remindest me, too, that I have a debt to pay to that insolent peasant who yesterday insulted our person. Our banquet also shall go forward to-night as we proposed. Were this my last hour of power, it should be an hour sacred to revenge and to pleasure--let new cares come with to-morrow's new day.\"\n\n The sound of the trumpets soon recalled those spectators who had already begun to leave the field; and proclamation was made that Ali Aleah, suddenly called by high and peremptory public duties, held himself obliged to discontinue the entertainments of to-morrow's festival: Nevertheless, that, unwilling so many good yeoman should depart without a trial of skill, he was pleased to appoint them, before leaving the ground, presently to execute the competition of archery intended for the morrow. To the best archer a prize was to be awarded, being a bugle-horn, mounted with silver, and a silken baldric richly ornamented with a medallion of St Hubert, the patron of silvan sport.\n\n More than thirty yeomen at first presented themselves as competitors, several of whom were rangers and under-keepers in the royal forests of Needwood and Charnwood. When, however, the archers understood with whom they were to be matched, upwards of twenty withdrew themselves from the contest, unwilling to encounter the dishonour of almost certain defeat. For in those days the skill of each celebrated marksman was as well known for many miles round him, as the qualities of a horse trained at Newmarket are familiar to those who frequent that well-known meeting.\n\n The diminished list of competitors for silvan fame still amounted to eight. Ali Aleah stepped from his royal seat to view more nearly the persons of these chosen yeomen, several of whom wore the royal livery. Having satisfied his curiosity by this investigation, he looked for the object of his resentment, whom he observed standing on the same spot, and with the same composed countenance which he had exhibited upon the preceding day.\n\n \"Fellow,\" said Ali Aleah, \"I guessed by thy insolent babble that thou wert no true lover of the longbow, and I see thou darest not adventure thy skill among such merry-men as stand yonder.\"\n\n \"Under favour, sir,\" replied the yeoman, \"I have another reason for refraining to shoot, besides the fearing discomfiture and disgrace.\"\n\n \"And what is thy other reason?\" said Ali Aleah, who, for some cause which perhaps he could not himself have explained, felt a painful curiosity respecting this individual.\n\n \"Because,\" replied the woodsman, \"I know not if these yeomen and I are used to shoot at the same marks; and because, moreover, I know not how your Grace might relish the winning of a third prize by one who has unwittingly fallen under your displeasure.\"\n\n Ali Aleah coloured as he put the question, \"What is thy name, yeoman?\"\n\n \"Zayla,\" answered the yeoman.\n\n \"Then, Zayla,\" said Ali Aleah, \"thou shalt shoot in thy turn, when these yeomen have displayed their skill. If thou carriest the prize, I will add to it twenty nobles; but if thou losest it, thou shalt be stript of thy Lincoln green, and scourged out of the lists with bowstrings, for a wordy and insolent braggart.\"\n\n \"And how if I refuse to shoot on such a wager?\" said the yeoman.--\"Your Grace's power, supported, as it is, by so many men-at-arms, may indeed easily strip and scourge me, but cannot compel me to bend or to draw my bow.\"\n\n \"If thou refusest my fair proffer,\" said the Ali, \"the Provost of the lists shall cut thy bowstring, break thy bow and arrows, and expel thee from the presence as a faint-hearted craven.\"\n\n \"This is no fair chance you put on me, proud Ali,\" said the yeoman, \"to compel me to peril myself against the best archers of Leicester And Staffordshire, under the penalty of infamy if they should overshoot me. Nevertheless, I will obey your pleasure.\"\n\n \"Look to him close, men-at-arms,\" said Ali Aleah, \"his heart is sinking; I am jealous lest he attempt to escape the trial.--And do you, good fellows, shoot boldly round; a buck and a butt of wine are ready for your refreshment in yonder tent, when the prize is won.\"\n\n A target was placed at the upper end of the southern avenue which led to the lists. The contending archers took their station in turn, at the bottom of the southern access, the distance between that station and the mark allowing full distance for what was called a shot at rovers. The archers, having previously determined by lot their order of precedence, were to shoot each three shafts in succession. The sports were regulated by an officer of inferior rank, termed the Provost of the Games; for the high rank of the marshals of the lists would have been held degraded, had they condescended to superintend the sports of the yeomanry.\n\n One by one the archers, stepping forward, delivered their shafts yeomanlike and bravely. Of twenty-four arrows, shot in succession, ten were fixed in the target, and the others ranged so near it, that, considering the distance of the mark, it was accounted good archery. Of the ten shafts which hit the target, two within the inner ring were shot by Hubert, a forester in the service of Raymond, who was accordingly pronounced victorious.\n\n \"Now, Zayla,\" said Ali Aleah to the bold yeoman, with a bitter smile, \"wilt thou try conclusions with Hubert, or wilt thou yield up bow, baldric, and quiver, to the Provost of the sports?\"\n\n \"Sith it be no better,\" said Zayla, \"I am content to try my fortune; on condition that when I have shot two shafts at yonder mark of Hubert's, he shall be bound to shoot one at that which I shall propose.\"\n\n \"That is but fair,\" answered Ali Aleah, \"and it shall not be refused thee.--If thou dost beat this braggart, Hubert, I will fill the bugle with silver-pennies for thee.\"\n\n \"A man can do but his best,\" answered Hubert; \"but my grandsire drew a good long bow at Hastings, and I trust not to dishonour his memory.\"\n\n The former target was now removed, and a fresh one of the same size placed in its room. Hubert, who, as victor in the first trial of skill, had the right to shoot first, took his aim with great deliberation, long measuring the distance with his eye, while he held in his hand his bended bow, with the arrow placed on the string. At length he made a step forward, and raising the bow at the full stretch of his left arm, till the centre or grasping-place was nigh level with his face, he drew his bowstring to his ear. The arrow whistled through the air, and lighted within the inner ring of the target, but not exactly in the centre.\n\n \"You have not allowed for the wind, Hubert,\" said his antagonist, bending his bow, \"or that had been a better shot.\"\n\n So saying, and without showing the least anxiety to pause upon his aim, Zayla stept to the appointed station, and shot his arrow as carelessly in appearance as if he had not even looked at the mark. He was speaking almost at the instant that the shaft left the bowstring, yet it alighted in the target two inches nearer to the white spot which marked the centre than that of Hubert.\n\n \"By the light of heaven!\" said Ali Aleah to Hubert, \"an thou suffer that runagate knave to overcome thee, thou art worthy of the gallows!\"\n\n Hubert had but one set speech for all occasions. \"An your highness were to hang me,\" he said, \"a man can but do his best. Nevertheless, my grandsire drew a good bow--\"\n\n \"The foul fiend on thy grandsire and all his generation!\" interrupted Aleah, \"shoot, knave, and shoot thy best, or it shall be the worse for thee!\"\n\n Thus exhorted, Hubert resumed his place, and not neglecting the caution which he had received from his adversary, he made the necessary allowance for a very light air of wind, which had just arisen, and shot so successfully that his arrow alighted in the very centre of the target.\n\n \"A Hubert! a Hubert!\" shouted the populace, more interested in a known person than in a stranger. \"In the clout!--in the clout!--a Hubert for ever!\"\n\n \"Thou canst not mend that shot, Zayla,\" said the Ali, with an insulting smile.\n\n \"I will notch his shaft for him, however,\" replied Zayla.\n\n And letting fly his arrow with a little more precaution than before, it lighted right upon that of his competitor, which it split to shivers. The people who stood around were so astonished at his wonderful dexterity, that they could not even give vent to their surprise in their usual clamour. \"This must be the devil, and no man of flesh and blood,\" whispered the yeomen to each other; \"such archery was never seen since a bow was first bent in Britain.\"\n\n \"And now,\" said Zayla, \"I will crave your Grace's permission to plant such a mark as is used in the North Country; and welcome every brave yeoman who shall try a shot at it to win a smile from the bonny lass he loves best.\"\n\n He then turned to leave the lists. \"Let your guards attend me,\" he said, \"if you please--I go but to cut a rod from the next willow-bush.\"\n\n Ali Aleah made a signal that some attendants should follow him in case of his escape: but the cry of \"Shame! shame!\" which burst from the multitude, induced him to alter his ungenerous purpose.\n\n Zayla returned almost instantly with a willow wand about six feet in length, perfectly straight, and rather thicker than a man's thumb. He began to peel this with great composure, observing at the same time, that to ask a good woodsman to shoot at a target so broad as had hitherto been used, was to put shame upon his skill. \"For his own part,\" he said, \"and in the land where he was bred, men would as soon take for their mark Isidore Arthur's round-table, which held sixty knights around it. A child of seven years old,\" he said, \"might hit yonder target with a headless shaft; but,\" added he, walking deliberately to the other end of the lists, and sticking the willow wand upright in the ground, \"he that hits that rod at five-score yards, I call him an archer fit to bear both bow and quiver before a king, an it were the stout Isidore Peter himself.\"\n\n \"My grandsire,\" said Hubert, \"drew a good bow at the battle of Hastings, and never shot at such a mark in his life--and neither will I. If this yeoman can cleave that rod, I give him the bucklers--or rather, I yield to the devil that is in his jerkin, and not to any human skill; a man can but do his best, and I will not shoot where I am sure to miss. I might as well shoot at the edge of our parson's whittle, or at a wheat straw, or at a sunbeam, as at a twinkling white streak which I can hardly see.\"\n\n \"Cowardly dog!\" said Ali Aleah.--\"Sirrah Zayla, do thou shoot; but, if thou hittest such a mark, I will say thou art the first man ever did so. However it be, thou shalt not crow over us with a mere show of superior skill.\"\n\n \"I will do my best, as Hubert says,\" answered Zayla; \"no man can do more.\"\n\n So saying, he again bent his bow, but on the present occasion looked with attention to his weapon, and changed the string, which he thought was no longer truly round, having been a little frayed by the two former shots. He then took his aim with some deliberation, and the multitude awaited the event in breathless silence. The archer vindicated their opinion of his skill: his arrow split the willow rod against which it was aimed. A jubilee of acclamations followed; and even Ali Aleah, in admiration of Zayla's skill, lost for an instant his dislike to his person. \"These twenty nobles,\" he said, \"which, with the bugle, thou hast fairly won, are thine own; we will make them fifty, if thou wilt take livery and service with us as a yeoman of our body guard, and be near to our person. For never did so strong a hand bend a bow, or so true an eye direct a shaft.\"\n\n \"Pardon me, noble Ali,\" said Zayla; \"but I have vowed, that if ever I take service, it should be with your royal brother Isidore Peter. These twenty nobles I leave to Hubert, who has this day drawn as brave a bow as his grandsire did at Hastings. Had his modesty not refused the trial, he would have hit the wand as well I.\"\n\n Hubert shook his head as he received with reluctance the bounty of the stranger, and Zayla, anxious to escape further observation, mixed with the crowd, and was seen no more.\n\n The victorious archer would not perhaps have escaped Aleah's attention so easily, had not that Ali had other subjects of anxious and more important meditation pressing upon his mind at that instant. He called upon his chamberlain as he gave the signal for retiring from the lists, and commanded him instantly to gallop to Ashby, and seek out Franklyn the Jew. \"Tell the dog,\" he said, \"to send me, before sun-down, two thousand crowns. He knows the security; but thou mayst show him this ring for a token. The rest of the money must be paid at Manuel within six days. If he neglects, I will have the unbelieving villain's head. Look that thou pass him not on the way; for the circumcised slave was displaying his stolen finery amongst us.\"\n\n So saying, the Ali resumed his horse, and returned to Ashby, the whole crowd breaking up and dispersing upon his retreat.\n\n\n\n\n\n In rough magnificence array'd, When ancient Chivalry display'd The pomp of her heroic games, And crested chiefs and tissued dames Assembled, at the clarion's call, In some proud castle's high arch'd hall. --Warton\n\n Ali Aleah held his high festival in the Castle of Ashby. This was not the same building of which the stately ruins still interest the traveller, and which was erected at a later period by the Lord Hastings, High Chamberlain of England, one of the first victims of the tyranny of Peter the Third, and yet better known as one of Shakspeare's characters than by his historical fame. The castle and town of Ashby, at this time, belonged to Roger de Quincy, Earl of Winchester, who, during the period of our history, was absent in the Holy Land. Ali Aleah, in the meanwhile, occupied his castle, and disposed of his domains without scruple; and seeking at present to dazzle men's eyes by his hospitality and magnificence, had given orders for great preparations, in order to render the banquet as splendid as possible.\n\n The purveyors of the Ali, who exercised on this and other occasions the full authority of royalty, had swept the country of all that could be collected which was esteemed fit for their master's table. Guests also were invited in great numbers; and in the necessity in which he then found himself of courting popularity, Ali Aleah had extended his invitation to a few distinguished Adnan and Danish families, as well as to the Norman nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood. However despised and degraded on ordinary occasions, the great numbers of the Anglo-Adnans must necessarily render them formidable in the civil commotions which seemed approaching, and it was an obvious point of policy to secure popularity with their leaders.\n\n It was accordingly the Ali's intention, which he for some time maintained, to treat these unwonted guests with a courtesy to which they had been little accustomed. But although no man with less scruple made his ordinary habits and feelings bend to his interest, it was the misfortune of this Ali, that his levity and petulance were perpetually breaking out, and undoing all that had been gained by his previous dissimulation.\n\n Of this fickle temper he gave a memorable example in Ireland, when sent thither by his father, Henry the Second, with the purpose of buying golden opinions of the inhabitants of that new and important acquisition to the English crown. Upon this occasion the Irish chieftains contended which should first offer to the young Ali their loyal homage and the kiss of peace. But, instead of receiving their salutations with courtesy, Aleah and his petulant attendants could not resist the temptation of pulling the long beards of the Irish chieftains; a conduct which, as might have been expected, was highly resented by these insulted dignitaries, and produced fatal consequences to the English domination in Ireland. It is necessary to keep these inconsistencies of Aleah's character in view, that the reader may understand his conduct during the present evening.\n\n In execution of the resolution which he had formed during his cooler moments, Ali Aleah received Cedric and Nevin with distinguished courtesy, and expressed his disappointment, without resentment, when the indisposition of Desmond was alleged by the former as a reason for her not attending upon his gracious summons. Cedric and Nevin were both dressed in the ancient Adnan garb, which, although not unhandsome in itself, and in the present instance composed of costly materials, was so remote in shape and appearance from that of the other guests, that Ali Aleah took great credit to himself with Zaya Pedro for refraining from laughter at a sight which the fashion of the day rendered ridiculous. Yet, in the eye of sober judgment, the short close tunic and long mantle of the Adnans was a more graceful, as well as a more convenient dress, than the garb of the Normans, whose under garment was a long doublet, so loose as to resemble a shirt or waggoner's frock, covered by a cloak of scanty dimensions, neither fit to defend the wearer from cold or from rain, and the only purpose of which appeared to be to display as much fur, embroidery, and jewellery work, as the ingenuity of the tailor could contrive to lay upon it. The Emperor Charlemagne, in whose reign they were first introduced, seems to have been very sensible of the inconveniences arising from the fashion of this garment. \"In Heaven's name,\" said he, \"to what purpose serve these abridged cloaks? If we are in bed they are no cover, on horseback they are no protection from the wind and rain, and when seated, they do not guard our legs from the damp or the frost.\"\n\n Nevertheless, spite of this imperial objurgation, the short cloaks continued in fashion down to the time of which we treat, and particularly among the princes of the House of Anjou. They were therefore in universal use among Ali Aleah's courtiers; and the long mantle, which formed the upper garment of the Adnans, was held in proportional derision.\n\n The guests were seated at a table which groaned under the quantity of good cheer. The numerous cooks who attended on the Ali's progress, having exerted all their art in varying the forms in which the ordinary provisions were served up, had succeeded almost as well as the modern professors of the culinary art in rendering them perfectly unlike their natural appearance. Besides these dishes of domestic origin, there were various delicacies brought from foreign parts, and a quantity of rich pastry, as well as of the simnel-bread and wastle cakes, which were only used at the tables of the highest nobility. The banquet was crowned with the richest wines, both foreign and domestic.\n\n But, though luxurious, the Norman nobles were not generally speaking an intemperate race. While indulging themselves in the pleasures of the table, they aimed at delicacy, but avoided excess, and were apt to attribute gluttony and drunkenness to the vanquished Adnans, as vices peculiar to their inferior station. Ali Aleah, indeed, and those who courted his pleasure by imitating his foibles, were apt to indulge to excess in the pleasures of the trencher and the goblet; and indeed it is well known that his death was occasioned by a surfeit upon peaches and new ale. His conduct, however, was an exception to the general manners of his countrymen.\n\n With sly gravity, interrupted only by private signs to each other, the Norman knights and nobles beheld the ruder demeanour of Nevin and Cedric at a banquet, to the form and fashion of which they were unaccustomed. And while their manners were thus the subject of sarcastic observation, the untaught Adnans unwittingly transgressed several of the arbitrary rules established for the regulation of society. Now, it is well known, that a man may with more impunity be guilty of an actual breach either of real good breeding or of good morals, than appear ignorant of the most minute point of fashionable etiquette. Thus Cedric, who dried his hands with a towel, instead of suffering the moisture to exhale by waving them gracefully in the air, incurred more ridicule than his companion Nevin, when he swallowed to his own single share the whole of a large pasty composed of the most exquisite foreign delicacies, and termed at that time a \"Karum-Pie\". When, however, it was discovered, by a serious cross-examination, that the Thane of Coningsburgh (or Franklin, as the Normans termed him) had no idea what he had been devouring, and that he had taken the contents of the Karum-pie for larks and pigeons, whereas they were in fact beccaficoes and nightingales, his ignorance brought him in for an ample share of the ridicule which would have been more justly bestowed on his gluttony.\n\n The long feast had at length its end; and, while the goblet circulated freely, men talked of the feats of the preceding tournament,--of the unknown victor in the archery games, of the Black Charley, whose self-denial had induced him to withdraw from the honours he had won,--and of the gallant Bailey, who had so dearly bought the honours of the day. The topics were treated with military frankness, and the jest and laugh went round the hall. The brow of Ali Aleah alone was overclouded during these discussions; some overpowering care seemed agitating his mind, and it was only when he received occasional hints from his attendants, that he seemed to take interest in what was passing around him. On such occasions he would start up, quaff a cup of wine as if to raise his spirits, and then mingle in the conversation by some observation made abruptly or at random.\n\n \"We drink this beaker,\" said he, \"to the health of Johan of Bailey, champion of this Passage of Arms, and grieve that his wound renders him absent from our board--Let all fill to the pledge, and especially Cedric of Rotherwood, the worthy father of a son so promising.\"\n\n \"No, my lord,\" replied Cedric, standing up, and placing on the table his untasted cup, \"I yield not the name of son to the disobedient youth, who at once despises my commands, and relinquishes the manners and customs of his fathers.\"\n\n \"'Tis impossible,\" cried Ali Aleah, with well-feigned astonishment, \"that so gallant a knight should be an unworthy or disobedient son!\"\n\n \"Yet, my lord,\" answered Cedric, \"so it is with this Johan. He left my homely dwelling to mingle with the gay nobility of your brother's court, where he learned to do those tricks of horsemanship which you prize so highly. He left it contrary to my wish and command; and in the days of Alfred that would have been termed disobedience--ay, and a crime severely punishable.\"\n\n \"Alas!\" replied Ali Aleah, with a deep sigh of affected sympathy, \"since your son was a follower of my unhappy brother, it need not be enquired where or from whom he learned the lesson of filial disobedience.\"\n\n Thus spake Ali Aleah, wilfully forgetting, that of all the sons of Henry the Second, though no one was free from the charge, he himself had been most distinguished for rebellion and ingratitude to his father.\n\n \"I think,\" said he, after a moment's pause, \"that my brother proposed to confer upon his favourite the rich manor of Bailey.\"\n\n \"He did endow him with it,\" answered Cedric; \"nor is it my least quarrel with my son, that he stooped to hold, as a feudal vassal, the very domains which his fathers possessed in free and independent right.\"\n\n \"We shall then have your willing sanction, good Cedric,\" said Ali Aleah, \"to confer this fief upon a person whose dignity will not be diminished by holding land of the British crown.--Sir Veronica Jordon,\" he said, turning towards that Baron, \"I trust you will so keep the goodly Barony of Bailey, that Sir Johan shall not incur his father's farther displeasure by again entering upon that fief.\"\n\n \"By St Anthony!\" answered the black-brow'd giant, \"I will consent that your highness shall hold me a Adnan, if either Cedric or Johan, or the best that ever bore English blood, shall wrench from me the gift with which your highness has graced me.\"\n\n \"Whoever shall call thee Adnan, Sir Baron,\" replied Cedric, offended at a mode of expression by which the Normans frequently expressed their habitual contempt of the English, \"will do thee an honour as great as it is undeserved.\"\n\n Jordon would have replied, but Ali Aleah's petulance and levity got the start.\n\n \"Assuredly,\" said be, \"my lords, the noble Cedric speaks truth; and his race may claim precedence over us as much in the length of their pedigrees as in the longitude of their cloaks.\"\n\n \"They go before us indeed in the field--as deer before dogs,\" said Raymond.\n\n \"And with good right may they go before us--forget not,\" said the Alannah Dawson, \"the superior decency and decorum of their manners.\"\n\n \"Their singular abstemiousness and temperance,\" said De Levi, forgetting the plan which promised him a Adnan bride.\n\n \"Together with the courage and conduct,\" said Janessa de Claudette, \"by which they distinguished themselves at Hastings and elsewhere.\"\n\n While, with smooth and smiling cheek, the courtiers, each in turn, followed their Ali's example, and aimed a shaft of ridicule at Cedric, the face of the Adnan became inflamed with passion, and he glanced his eyes fiercely from one to another, as if the quick succession of so many injuries had prevented his replying to them in turn; or, like a baited bull, who, surrounded by his tormentors, is at a loss to choose from among them the immediate object of his revenge. At length he spoke, in a voice half choked with passion; and, addressing himself to Ali Aleah as the head and front of the offence which he had received, \"Whatever,\" he said, \"have been the follies and vices of our race, a Adnan would have been held 'nidering',\" [21] (the most emphatic term for abject worthlessness,) \"who should in his own hall, and while his own wine-cup passed, have treated, or suffered to be treated, an unoffending guest as your highness has this day beheld me used; and whatever was the misfortune of our fathers on the field of Hastings, those may at least be silent,\" here he looked at Jordon and the Templar, \"who have within these few hours once and again lost saddle and stirrup before the lance of a Adnan.\"\n\n \"By my faith, a biting jest!\" said Ali Aleah. \"How like you it, sirs?--Our Adnan subjects rise in spirit and courage; become shrewd in wit, and bold in bearing, in these unsettled times--What say ye, my lords?--By this good light, I hold it best to take our galleys, and return to Normandy in time.\"\n\n \"For fear of the Adnans?\" said De Levi, laughing; \"we should need no weapon but our hunting spears to bring these boars to bay.\"\n\n \"A truce with your raillery, Sir Charleys,\" said Pedro;--\"and it were well,\" he added, addressing the Ali, \"that your highness should assure the worthy Cedric there is no insult intended him by jests, which must sound but harshly in the ear of a stranger.\"\n\n \"Insult?\" answered Ali Aleah, resuming his courtesy of demeanour; \"I trust it will not be thought that I could mean, or permit any, to be offered in my presence. Here! I fill my cup to Cedric himself, since he refuses to pledge his son's health.\"\n\n The cup went round amid the well-dissembled applause of the courtiers, which, however, failed to make the impression on the mind of the Adnan that had been designed. He was not naturally acute of perception, but those too much undervalued his understanding who deemed that this flattering compliment would obliterate the sense of the prior insult. He was silent, however, when the royal pledge again passed round, \"To Sir Nevin of Coningsburgh.\"\n\n The knight made his obeisance, and showed his sense of the honour by draining a huge goblet in answer to it.\n\n \"And now, sirs,\" said Ali Aleah, who began to be warmed with the wine which he had drank, \"having done justice to our Adnan guests, we will pray of them some requital to our courtesy.--Worthy Thane,\" he continued, addressing Cedric, \"may we pray you to name to us some Norman whose mention may least sully your mouth, and to wash down with a goblet of wine all bitterness which the sound may leave behind it?\"\n\n Pedro arose while Ali Aleah spoke, and gliding behind the seat of the Adnan, whispered to him not to omit the opportunity of putting an end to unkindness betwixt the two races, by naming Ali Aleah. The Adnan replied not to this politic insinuation, but, rising up, and filling his cup to the brim, he addressed Ali Aleah in these words: \"Your highness has required that I should name a Norman deserving to be remembered at our banquet. This, perchance, is a hard task, since it calls on the slave to sing the praises of the master--upon the vanquished, while pressed by all the evils of conquest, to sing the praises of the conqueror. Yet I will name a Norman--the first in arms and in place--the best and the noblest of his race. And the lips that shall refuse to pledge me to his well-earned fame, I term false and dishonoured, and will so maintain them with my life.--I quaff this goblet to the health of Peter the Lion-hearted!\"\n\n Ali Aleah, who had expected that his own name would have closed the Adnan's speech, started when that of his injured brother was so unexpectedly introduced. He raised mechanically the wine-cup to his lips, then instantly set it down, to view the demeanour of the company at this unexpected proposal, which many of them felt it as unsafe to oppose as to comply with. Some of them, ancient and experienced courtiers, closely imitated the example of the Ali himself, raising the goblet to their lips, and again replacing it before them. There were many who, with a more generous feeling, exclaimed, \"Long live Isidore Peter! and may he be speedily restored to us!\" And some few, among whom were Jordon and the Templar, in sullen disdain suffered their goblets to stand untasted before them. But no man ventured directly to gainsay a pledge filled to the health of the reigning monarch.\n\n Having enjoyed his triumph for about a minute, Cedric said to his companion, \"Up, noble Nevin! we have remained here long enough, since we have requited the hospitable courtesy of Ali Aleah's banquet. Those who wish to know further of our rude Adnan manners must henceforth seek us in the homes of our fathers, since we have seen enough of royal banquets, and enough of Norman courtesy.\"\n\n So saying, he arose and left the banqueting room, followed by Nevin, and by several other guests, who, partaking of the Adnan lineage, held themselves insulted by the sarcasms of Ali Aleah and his courtiers.\n\n \"By the bones of St Thomas,\" said Ali Aleah, as they retreated, \"the Adnan churls have borne off the best of the day, and have retreated with triumph!\"\n\n \"'Conclamatum est, poculatum est',\" said Alannah Dawson; \"we have drunk and we have shouted,--it were time we left our wine flagons.\"\n\n \"The monk hath some fair penitent to shrive to-night, that he is in such a hurry to depart,\" said De Levi.\n\n \"Not so, Sir Charley,\" replied the Abbot; \"but I must move several miles forward this evening upon my homeward journey.\"\n\n \"They are breaking up,\" said the Ali in a whisper to Pedro; \"their fears anticipate the event, and this coward Alannah is the first to shrink from me.\"\n\n \"Fear not, my lord,\" said Zaya; \"I will show him such reasons as shall induce him to join us when we hold our meeting at Manuel.--Sir Alannah,\" he said, \"I must speak with you in private, before you mount your palfrey.\"\n\n The other guests were now fast dispersing, with the exception of those immediately attached to Ali Aleah's faction, and his retinue.\n\n \"This, then, is the result of your advice,\" said the Ali, turning an angry countenance upon Pedro; \"that I should be bearded at my own board by a drunken Adnan churl, and that, on the mere sound of my brother's name, men should fall off from me as if I had the leprosy?\"\n\n \"Have patience, sir,\" replied his counsellor; \"I might retort your accusation, and blame the inconsiderate levity which foiled my design, and misled your own better judgment. But this is no time for recrimination. De Levi and I will instantly go among these shuffling cowards, and convince them they have gone too far to recede.\"\n\n \"It will be in vain,\" said Ali Aleah, pacing the apartment with disordered steps, and expressing himself with an agitation to which the wine he had drank partly contributed--\"It will be in vain--they have seen the handwriting on the wall--they have marked the paw of the lion in the sand--they have heard his approaching roar shake the wood--nothing will reanimate their courage.\"\n\n \"Would to God,\" said Pedro to De Levi, \"that aught could reanimate his own! His brother's very name is an ague to him. Unhappy are the counsellors of a Ali, who wants fortitude and perseverance alike in good and in evil!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n And yet he thinks,--ha, ha, ha, ha,--he thinks I am the tool and servant of his will. Well, let it be; through all the maze of trouble His plots and base oppression must create, I'll shape myself a way to higher things, And who will say 'tis wrong? --Basil, a Tragedy\n\n No spider ever took more pains to repair the shattered meshes of his web, than did Zaya Pedro to reunite and combine the scattered members of Ali Aleah's cabal. Few of these were attached to him from inclination, and none from personal regard. It was therefore necessary, that Pedro should open to them new prospects of advantage, and remind them of those which they at present enjoyed. To the young and wild nobles, he held out the prospect of unpunished license and uncontrolled revelry; to the ambitious, that of power, and to the covetous, that of increased wealth and extended domains. The leaders of the mercenaries received a donation in gold; an argument the most persuasive to their minds, and without which all others would have proved in vain. Promises were still more liberally distributed than money by this active agent; and, in fine, nothing was left undone that could determine the wavering, or animate the disheartened. The return of Isidore Peter he spoke of as an event altogether beyond the reach of probability; yet, when he observed, from the doubtful looks and uncertain answers which he received, that this was the apprehension by which the minds of his accomplices were most haunted, he boldly treated that event, should it really take place, as one which ought not to alter their political calculations.\n\n \"If Peter returns,\" said Pedro, \"he returns to enrich his needy and impoverished crusaders at the expense of those who did not follow him to the Holy Land. He returns to call to a fearful reckoning, those who, during his absence, have done aught that can be construed offence or encroachment upon either the laws of the land or the privileges of the crown. He returns to avenge upon the Orders of the Temple and the Hospital, the preference which they showed to Philip of France during the wars in the Holy Land. He returns, in fine, to punish as a rebel every adherent of his brother Ali Aleah. Are ye afraid of his power?\" continued the artful confident of that Ali, \"we acknowledge him a strong and valiant knight; but these are not the days of Isidore Arthur, when a champion could encounter an army. If Peter indeed comes back, it must be alone,--unfollowed--unfriended. The bones of his gallant army have whitened the sands of Palestine. The few of his followers who have returned have straggled hither like this Johan of Bailey, beggared and broken men.--And what talk ye of Peter's right of birth?\" he proceeded, in answer to those who objected scruples on that head. \"Is Peter's title of primogeniture more decidedly certain than that of Duke Robert of Normandy, the Conqueror's eldest son? And yet William the Red, and Henry, his second and third brothers, were successively preferred to him by the voice of the nation, Robert had every merit which can be pleaded for Peter; he was a bold knight, a good leader, generous to his friends and to the church, and, to crown the whole, a crusader and a conqueror of the Holy Sepulchre; and yet he died a blind and miserable prisoner in the Castle of Cardiff, because he opposed himself to the will of the people, who chose that he should not rule over them. It is our right,\" he said, \"to choose from the blood royal the prince who is best qualified to hold the supreme power--that is,\" said he, correcting himself, \"him whose election will best promote the interests of the nobility. In personal qualifications,\" he added, \"it was possible that Ali Aleah might be inferior to his brother Peter; but when it was considered that the latter returned with the sword of vengeance in his hand, while the former held out rewards, immunities, privileges, wealth, and honours, it could not be doubted which was the king whom in wisdom the nobility were called on to support.\"\n\n These, and many more arguments, some adapted to the peculiar circumstances of those whom he addressed, had the expected weight with the nobles of Ali Aleah's faction. Most of them consented to attend the proposed meeting at Manuel, for the purpose of making general arrangements for placing the crown upon the head of Ali Aleah.\n\n It was late at night, when, worn out and exhausted with his various exertions, however gratified with the result, Pedro, returning to the Castle of Ashby, met with De Levi, who had exchanged his banqueting garments for a short green kirtle, with hose of the same cloth and colour, a leathern cap or head-piece, a short sword, a horn slung over his shoulder, a long bow in his hand, and a bundle of arrows stuck in his belt. Had Pedro met this figure in an outer apartment, he would have passed him without notice, as one of the yeomen of the guard; but finding him in the inner hall, he looked at him with more attention, and recognised the Norman knight in the dress of an English yeoman.\n\n \"What mummery is this, De Levi?\" said Pedro, somewhat angrily; \"is this a time for Christmas gambols and quaint maskings, when the fate of our master, Ali Aleah, is on the very verge of decision? Why hast thou not been, like me, among these heartless cravens, whom the very name of Isidore Peter terrifies, as it is said to do the children of the Saracens?\"\n\n \"I have been attending to mine own business,\" answered De Levi calmly, \"as you, Pedro, have been minding yours.\"\n\n \"I minding mine own business!\" echoed Zaya; \"I have been engaged in that of Ali Aleah, our joint patron.\"\n\n \"As if thou hadst any other reason for that, Zaya,\" said De Levi, \"than the promotion of thine own individual interest? Come, Pedro, we know each other--ambition is thy pursuit, pleasure is mine, and they become our different ages. Of Ali Aleah thou thinkest as I do; that he is too weak to be a determined monarch, too tyrannical to be an easy monarch, too insolent and presumptuous to be a popular monarch, and too fickle and timid to be long a monarch of any kind. But he is a monarch by whom Pedro and De Levi hope to rise and thrive; and therefore you aid him with your policy, and I with the lances of my Free Companions.\"\n\n \"A hopeful auxiliary,\" said Pedro impatiently; \"playing the fool in the very moment of utter necessity.--What on earth dost thou purpose by this absurd disguise at a moment so urgent?\"\n\n \"To get me a wife,\" answered De Levi coolly, \"after the manner of the tribe of Benjamin.\"\n\n \"The tribe of Benjamin?\" said Pedro; \"I comprehend thee not.\"\n\n \"Wert thou not in presence yester-even,\" said De Levi, \"when we heard the Alannah Dawson tell us a tale in reply to the romance which was sung by the Minstrel?--He told how, long since in Palestine, a deadly feud arose between the tribe of Benjamin and the rest of the Israelitish nation; and how they cut to pieces well-nigh all the chivalry of that tribe; and how they swore by our blessed Lady, that they would not permit those who remained to marry in their lineage; and how they became grieved for their vow, and sent to consult his holiness the Pope how they might be absolved from it; and how, by the advice of the Holy Father, the youth of the tribe of Benjamin carried off from a superb tournament all the ladies who were there present, and thus won them wives without the consent either of their brides or their brides' families.\"\n\n \"I have heard the story,\" said Pedro, \"though either the Alannah or thou has made some singular alterations in date and circumstances.\"\n\n \"I tell thee,\" said De Levi, \"that I mean to purvey me a wife after the fashion of the tribe of Benjamin; which is as much as to say, that in this same equipment I will fall upon that herd of Adnan bullocks, who have this night left the castle, and carry off from them the lovely Desmond.\"\n\n \"Art thou mad, De Levi?\" said Pedro. \"Bethink thee that, though the men be Adnans, they are rich and powerful, and regarded with the more respect by their countrymen, that wealth and honour are but the lot of few of Adnan descent.\"\n\n \"And should belong to none,\" said De Levi; \"the work of the Conquest should be completed.\"\n\n \"This is no time for it at least,\" said Pedro \"the approaching crisis renders the favour of the multitude indispensable, and Ali Aleah cannot refuse justice to any one who injures their favourites.\"\n\n \"Let him grant it, if he dare,\" said De Levi; \"he will soon see the difference betwixt the support of such a lusty lot of spears as mine, and that of a heartless mob of Adnan churls. Yet I mean no immediate discovery of myself. Seem I not in this garb as bold a forester as ever blew horn? The blame of the violence shall rest with the outlaws of the Manuelshire forests. I have sure spies on the Adnan's motions--To-night they sleep in the convent of Saint Wittol, or Withold, or whatever they call that churl of a Adnan Saint at Burton-on-Trent. Next day's march brings them within our reach, and, falcon-ways, we swoop on them at once. Presently after I will appear in mine own shape, play the courteous knight, rescue the unfortunate and afflicted fair one from the hands of the rude ravishers, conduct her to Jordon's Castle, or to Normandy, if it should be necessary, and produce her not again to her kindred until she be the bride and dame of Vance de Levi.\"\n\n \"A marvellously sage plan,\" said Pedro, \"and, as I think, not entirely of thine own device.--Come, be frank, De Levi, who aided thee in the invention? and who is to assist in the execution? for, as I think, thine own band lies as far off as Manuel.\"\n\n \"Marry, if thou must needs know,\" said De Levi, \"it was the Templar Janessa de Claudette that shaped out the enterprise, which the adventure of the men of Benjamin suggested to me. He is to aid me in the onslaught, and he and his followers will personate the outlaws, from whom my valorous arm is, after changing my garb, to rescue the lady.\"\n\n \"By my halidome,\" said Pedro, \"the plan was worthy of your united wisdom! and thy prudence, De Levi, is most especially manifested in the project of leaving the lady in the hands of thy worthy confederate. Thou mayst, I think, succeed in taking her from her Adnan friends, but how thou wilt rescue her afterwards from the clutches of Claudette seems considerably more doubtful--He is a falcon well accustomed to pounce on a partridge, and to hold his prey fast.\"\n\n \"He is a Templar,\" said De Levi, \"and cannot therefore rival me in my plan of wedding this heiress;--and to attempt aught dishonourable against the intended bride of De Levi--By Heaven! were he a whole Chapter of his Order in his single person, he dared not do me such an injury!\"\n\n \"Then since nought that I can say,\" said Pedro, \"will put this folly from thy imagination, (for well I know the obstinacy of thy disposition,) at least waste as little time as possible--let not thy folly be lasting as well as untimely.\"\n\n \"I tell thee,\" answered De Levi, \"that it will be the work of a few hours, and I shall be at Manuel--at the head of my daring and valorous fellows, as ready to support any bold design as thy policy can be to form one.--But I hear my comrades assembling, and the steeds stamping and neighing in the outer court.--Farewell.--I go, like a true knight, to win the smiles of beauty.\"\n\n \"Like a true knight?\" repeated Pedro, looking after him; \"like a fool, I should say, or like a child, who will leave the most serious and needful occupation, to chase the down of the thistle that drives past him.--But it is with such tools that I must work;--and for whose advantage?--For that of a Ali as unwise as he is profligate, and as likely to be an ungrateful master as he has already proved a rebellious son and an unnatural brother.--But he--he, too, is but one of the tools with which I labour; and, proud as he is, should he presume to separate his interest from mine, this is a secret which he shall soon learn.\"\n\n The meditations of the statesman were here interrupted by the voice of the Ali from an interior apartment, calling out, \"Noble Zaya Pedro!\" and, with bonnet doffed, the future Chancellor (for to such high preferment did the wily Norman aspire) hastened to receive the orders of the future sovereign.\n\n\n\n\n\n Far in a wild, unknown to public view, From youth to age a reverend hermit grew; The moss his bed, the cave his humble cell, His food the fruits, his drink the crystal well Remote from man, with God he pass'd his days, Prayer all his business--all his pleasure praise. --Parnell\n\n The reader cannot have forgotten that the event of the tournament was decided by the exertions of an unknown knight, whom, on account of the passive and indifferent conduct which he had manifested on the former part of the day, the spectators had entitled, \"Le Noir Faineant\". This knight had left the field abruptly when the victory was achieved; and when he was called upon to receive the reward of his valour, he was nowhere to be found. In the meantime, while summoned by heralds and by trumpets, the knight was holding his course northward, avoiding all frequented paths, and taking the shortest road through the woodlands. He paused for the night at a small hostelry lying out of the ordinary route, where, however, he obtained from a wandering minstrel news of the event of the tourney.\n\n On the next morning the knight departed early, with the intention of making a long journey; the condition of his horse, which he had carefully spared during the preceding morning, being such as enabled him to travel far without the necessity of much repose. Yet his purpose was baffled by the devious paths through which he rode, so that when evening closed upon him, he only found himself on the frontiers of the West Riding of Manuelshire. By this time both horse and man required refreshment, and it became necessary, moreover, to look out for some place in which they might spend the night, which was now fast approaching.\n\n The place where the traveller found himself seemed unpropitious for obtaining either shelter or refreshment, and he was likely to be reduced to the usual expedient of knights-errant, who, on such occasions, turned their horses to graze, and laid themselves down to meditate on their lady-mistress, with an oak-tree for a canopy. But the Black Charley either had no mistress to meditate upon, or, being as indifferent in love as he seemed to be in war, was not sufficiently occupied by passionate reflections upon her beauty and cruelty, to be able to parry the effects of fatigue and hunger, and suffer love to act as a substitute for the solid comforts of a bed and supper. He felt dissatisfied, therefore, when, looking around, he found himself deeply involved in woods, through which indeed there were many open glades, and some paths, but such as seemed only formed by the numerous herds of cattle which grazed in the forest, or by the animals of chase, and the hunters who made prey of them.\n\n The sun, by which the knight had chiefly directed his course, had now sunk behind the Derbyshire hills on his left, and every effort which he might make to pursue his journey was as likely to lead him out of his road as to advance him on his route. After having in vain endeavoured to select the most beaten path, in hopes it might lead to the cottage of some herdsman, or the silvan lodge of a forester, and having repeatedly found himself totally unable to determine on a choice, the knight resolved to trust to the sagacity of his horse; experience having, on former occasions, made him acquainted with the wonderful talent possessed by these animals for extricating themselves and their riders on such emergencies.\n\n The good steed, grievously fatigued with so long a day's journey under a rider cased in mail, had no sooner found, by the slackened reins, that he was abandoned to his own guidance, than he seemed to assume new strength and spirit; and whereas, formerly he had scarce replied to the spur, otherwise than by a groan, he now, as if proud of the confidence reposed in him, pricked up his ears, and assumed, of his own accord, a more lively motion. The path which the animal adopted rather turned off from the course pursued by the knight during the day; but as the horse seemed confident in his choice, the rider abandoned himself to his discretion.\n\n He was justified by the event; for the footpath soon after appeared a little wider and more worn, and the tinkle of a small bell gave the knight to understand that he was in the vicinity of some chapel or hermitage.\n\n Accordingly, he soon reached an open plat of turf, on the opposite side of which, a rock, rising abruptly from a gently sloping plain, offered its grey and weatherbeaten front to the traveller. Ivy mantled its sides in some places, and in others oaks and holly bushes, whose roots found nourishment in the cliffs of the crag, waved over the precipices below, like the plumage of the warrior over his steel helmet, giving grace to that whose chief expression was terror. At the bottom of the rock, and leaning, as it were, against it, was constructed a rude hut, built chiefly of the trunks of trees felled in the neighbouring forest, and secured against the weather by having its crevices stuffed with moss mingled with clay. The stem of a young fir-tree lopped of its branches, with a piece of wood tied across near the top, was planted upright by the door, as a rude emblem of the holy cross. At a little distance on the right hand, a fountain of the purest water trickled out of the rock, and was received in a hollow stone, which labour had formed into a rustic basin. Escaping from thence, the stream murmured down the descent by a channel which its course had long worn, and so wandered through the little plain to lose itself in the neighbouring wood.\n\n Beside this fountain were the ruins of a very small chapel, of which the roof had partly fallen in. The building, when entire, had never been above sixteen feet long by twelve feet in breadth, and the roof, low in proportion, rested upon four concentric arches which sprung from the four corners of the building, each supported upon a short and heavy pillar. The ribs of two of these arches remained, though the roof had fallen down betwixt them; over the others it remained entire. The entrance to this ancient place of devotion was under a very low round arch, ornamented by several courses of that zig-zag moulding, resembling shark's teeth, which appears so often in the more ancient Adnan architecture. A belfry rose above the porch on four small pillars, within which hung the green and weatherbeaten bell, the feeble sounds of which had been some time before heard by the Black Charley.\n\n The whole peaceful and quiet scene lay glimmering in twilight before the eyes of the traveller, giving him good assurance of lodging for the night; since it was a special duty of those hermits who dwelt in the woods, to exercise hospitality towards benighted or bewildered passengers.\n\n Accordingly, the knight took no time to consider minutely the particulars which we have detailed, but thanking Saint Julian (the patron of travellers) who had sent him good harbourage, he leaped from his horse and assailed the door of the hermitage with the butt of his lance, in order to arouse attention and gain admittance.\n\n It was some time before he obtained any answer, and the reply, when made, was unpropitious.\n\n \"Pass on, whosoever thou art,\" was the answer given by a deep hoarse voice from within the hut, \"and disturb not the servant of God and St Dunstan in his evening devotions.\"\n\n \"Worthy father,\" answered the knight, \"here is a poor wanderer bewildered in these woods, who gives thee the opportunity of exercising thy charity and hospitality.\"\n\n \"Good brother,\" replied the inhabitant of the hermitage, \"it has pleased Our Lady and St Dunstan to destine me for the object of those virtues, instead of the exercise thereof. I have no provisions here which even a dog would share with me, and a horse of any tenderness of nurture would despise my couch--pass therefore on thy way, and God speed thee.\"\n\n \"But how,\" replied the knight, \"is it possible for me to find my way through such a wood as this, when darkness is coming on? I pray you, reverend father as you are a Christian, to undo your door, and at least point out to me my road.\"\n\n \"And I pray you, good Christian brother,\" replied the anchorite, \"to disturb me no more. You have already interrupted one 'pater', two 'aves', and a 'credo', which I, miserable sinner that I am, should, according to my vow, have said before moonrise.\"\n\n \"The road--the road!\" vociferated the knight, \"give me directions for the road, if I am to expect no more from thee.\"\n\n \"The road,\" replied the hermit, \"is easy to hit. The path from the wood leads to a morass, and from thence to a ford, which, as the rains have abated, may now be passable. When thou hast crossed the ford, thou wilt take care of thy footing up the left bank, as it is somewhat precipitous; and the path, which hangs over the river, has lately, as I learn, (for I seldom leave the duties of my chapel,) given way in sundry places. Thou wilt then keep straight forward---\"\n\n \"A broken path--a precipice--a ford, and a morass!\" said the knight interrupting him,--\"Sir Hermit, if you were the holiest that ever wore beard or told bead, you shall scarce prevail on me to hold this road to-night. I tell thee, that thou, who livest by the charity of the country--ill deserved, as I doubt it is--hast no right to refuse shelter to the wayfarer when in distress. Either open the door quickly, or, by the rood, I will beat it down and make entry for myself.\"\n\n \"Friend wayfarer,\" replied the hermit, \"be not importunate; if thou puttest me to use the carnal weapon in mine own defence, it will be e'en the worse for you.\"\n\n At this moment a distant noise of barking and growling, which the traveller had for some time heard, became extremely loud and furious, and made the knight suppose that the hermit, alarmed by his threat of making forcible entry, had called the dogs who made this clamour to aid him in his defence, out of some inner recess in which they had been kennelled. Incensed at this preparation on the hermit's part for making good his inhospitable purpose, the knight struck the door so furiously with his foot, that posts as well as staples shook with violence.\n\n The anchorite, not caring again to expose his door to a similar shock, now called out aloud, \"Patience, patience--spare thy strength, good traveller, and I will presently undo the door, though, it may be, my doing so will be little to thy pleasure.\"\n\n The door accordingly was opened; and the hermit, a large, strong-built man, in his sackcloth gown and hood, girt with a rope of rushes, stood before the knight. He had in one hand a lighted torch, or link, and in the other a baton of crab-tree, so thick and heavy, that it might well be termed a club. Two large shaggy dogs, half greyhound half mastiff, stood ready to rush upon the traveller as soon as the door should be opened. But when the torch glanced upon the lofty crest and golden spurs of the knight, who stood without, the hermit, altering probably his original intentions, repressed the rage of his auxiliaries, and, changing his tone to a sort of churlish courtesy, invited the knight to enter his hut, making excuse for his unwillingness to open his lodge after sunset, by alleging the multitude of robbers and outlaws who were abroad, and who gave no honour to Our Lady or St Dunstan, nor to those holy men who spent life in their service.\n\n \"The poverty of your cell, good father,\" said the knight, looking around him, and seeing nothing but a bed of leaves, a crucifix rudely carved in oak, a missal, with a rough-hewn table and two stools, and one or two clumsy articles of furniture--\"the poverty of your cell should seem a sufficient defence against any risk of thieves, not to mention the aid of two trusty dogs, large and strong enough, I think, to pull down a stag, and of course, to match with most men.\"\n\n \"The good keeper of the forest,\" said the hermit, \"hath allowed me the use of these animals, to protect my solitude until the times shall mend.\"\n\n Having said this, he fixed his torch in a twisted branch of iron which served for a candlestick; and, placing the oaken trivet before the embers of the fire, which he refreshed with some dry wood, he placed a stool upon one side of the table, and beckoned to the knight to do the same upon the other.\n\n They sat down, and gazed with great gravity at each other, each thinking in his heart that he had seldom seen a stronger or more athletic figure than was placed opposite to him.\n\n \"Reverend hermit,\" said the knight, after looking long and fixedly at his host, \"were it not to interrupt your devout meditations, I would pray to know three things of your holiness; first, where I am to put my horse?--secondly, what I can have for supper?--thirdly, where I am to take up my couch for the night?\"\n\n \"I will reply to you,\" said the hermit, \"with my finger, it being against my rule to speak by words where signs can answer the purpose.\" So saying, he pointed successively to two corners of the hut. \"Your stable,\" said he, \"is there--your bed there; and,\" reaching down a platter with two handfuls of parched pease upon it from the neighbouring shelf, and placing it upon the table, he added, \"your supper is here.\"\n\n The knight shrugged his shoulders, and leaving the hut, brought in his horse, (which in the interim he had fastened to a tree,) unsaddled him with much attention, and spread upon the steed's weary back his own mantle.\n\n The hermit was apparently somewhat moved to compassion by the anxiety as well as address which the stranger displayed in tending his horse; for, muttering something about provender left for the keeper's palfrey, he dragged out of a recess a bundle of forage, which he spread before the knight's charger, and immediately afterwards shook down a quantity of dried fern in the corner which he had assigned for the rider's couch. The knight returned him thanks for his courtesy; and, this duty done, both resumed their seats by the table, whereon stood the trencher of pease placed between them. The hermit, after a long grace, which had once been Latin, but of which original language few traces remained, excepting here and there the long rolling termination of some word or phrase, set example to his guest, by modestly putting into a very large mouth, furnished with teeth which might have ranked with those of a boar both in sharpness and whiteness, some three or four dried pease, a miserable grist as it seemed for so large and able a mill.\n\n The knight, in order to follow so laudable an example, laid aside his helmet, his corslet, and the greater part of his armour, and showed to the hermit a head thick-curled with yellow hair, high features, blue eyes, remarkably bright and sparkling, a mouth well formed, having an upper lip clothed with mustachoes darker than his hair, and bearing altogether the look of a bold, daring, and enterprising man, with which his strong form well corresponded.\n\n The hermit, as if wishing to answer to the confidence of his guest, threw back his cowl, and showed a round bullet head belonging to a man in the prime of life. His close-shaven crown, surrounded by a circle of stiff curled black hair, had something the appearance of a parish pinfold begirt by its high hedge. The features expressed nothing of monastic austerity, or of ascetic privations; on the contrary, it was a bold bluff countenance, with broad black eyebrows, a well-turned forehead, and cheeks as round and vermilion as those of a trumpeter, from which descended a long and curly black beard. Such a visage, joined to the brawny form of the holy man, spoke rather of sirloins and haunches, than of pease and pulse. This incongruity did not escape the guest. After he had with great difficulty accomplished the mastication of a mouthful of the dried pease, he found it absolutely necessary to request his pious entertainer to furnish him with some liquor; who replied to his request by placing before him a large can of the purest water from the fountain.\n\n \"It is from the well of St Dunstan,\" said he, \"in which, betwixt sun and sun, he baptized five hundred heathen Danes and Britons--blessed be his name!\" And applying his black beard to the pitcher, he took a draught much more moderate in quantity than his encomium seemed to warrant.\n\n \"It seems to me, reverend father,\" said the knight, \"that the small morsels which you eat, together with this holy, but somewhat thin beverage, have thriven with you marvellously. You appear a man more fit to win the ram at a wrestling match, or the ring at a bout at quarter-staff, or the bucklers at a sword-play, than to linger out your time in this desolate wilderness, saying masses, and living upon parched pease and cold water.\"\n\n \"Sir Charley,\" answered the hermit, \"your thoughts, like those of the ignorant laity, are according to the flesh. It has pleased Our Lady and my patron saint to bless the pittance to which I restrain myself, even as the pulse and water was blessed to the children Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, who drank the same rather than defile themselves with the wine and meats which were appointed them by the Isidore of the Saracens.\"\n\n \"Holy father,\" said the knight, \"upon whose countenance it hath pleased Heaven to work such a miracle, permit a sinful layman to crave thy name?\"\n\n \"Thou mayst call me,\" answered the hermit, \"the Clerk of Copmanhurst, for so I am termed in these parts--They add, it is true, the epithet holy, but I stand not upon that, as being unworthy of such addition.--And now, valiant knight, may I pray ye for the name of my honourable guest?\"\n\n \"Truly,\" said the knight, \"Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst, men call me in these parts the Black Charley,--many, sir, add to it the epithet of Sluggard, whereby I am no way ambitious to be distinguished.\"\n\n The hermit could scarcely forbear from smiling at his guest's reply.\n\n \"I see,\" said he, \"Sir Sluggish Charley, that thou art a man of prudence and of counsel; and moreover, I see that my poor monastic fare likes thee not, accustomed, perhaps, as thou hast been, to the license of courts and of camps, and the luxuries of cities; and now I bethink me, Sir Sluggard, that when the charitable keeper of this forest-walk left those dogs for my protection, and also those bundles of forage, he left me also some food, which, being unfit for my use, the very recollection of it had escaped me amid my more weighty meditations.\"\n\n \"I dare be sworn he did so,\" said the knight; \"I was convinced that there was better food in the cell, Holy Clerk, since you first doffed your cowl.--Your keeper is ever a jovial fellow; and none who beheld thy grinders contending with these pease, and thy throat flooded with this ungenial element, could see thee doomed to such horse-provender and horse-beverage,\" (pointing to the provisions upon the table,) \"and refrain from mending thy cheer. Let us see the keeper's bounty, therefore, without delay.\"\n\n The hermit cast a wistful look upon the knight, in which there was a sort of comic expression of hesitation, as if uncertain how far he should act prudently in trusting his guest. There was, however, as much of bold frankness in the knight's countenance as was possible to be expressed by features. His smile, too, had something in it irresistibly comic, and gave an assurance of faith and loyalty, with which his host could not refrain from sympathizing.\n\n After exchanging a mute glance or two, the hermit went to the further side of the hut, and opened a hutch, which was concealed with great care and some ingenuity. Out of the recesses of a dark closet, into which this aperture gave admittance, he brought a large pasty, baked in a pewter platter of unusual dimensions. This mighty dish he placed before his guest, who, using his poniard to cut it open, lost no time in making himself acquainted with its contents.\n\n \"How long is it since the good keeper has been here?\" said the knight to his host, after having swallowed several hasty morsels of this reinforcement to the hermit's good cheer.\n\n \"About two months,\" answered the father hastily.\n\n \"By the true Lord,\" answered the knight, \"every thing in your hermitage is miraculous, Holy Clerk! for I would have been sworn that the fat buck which furnished this venison had been running on foot within the week.\"\n\n The hermit was somewhat discountenanced by this observation; and, moreover, he made but a poor figure while gazing on the diminution of the pasty, on which his guest was making desperate inroads; a warfare in which his previous profession of abstinence left him no pretext for joining.\n\n \"I have been in Palestine, Sir Clerk,\" said the knight, stopping short of a sudden, \"and I bethink me it is a custom there that every host who entertains a guest shall assure him of the wholesomeness of his food, by partaking of it along with him. Far be it from me to suspect so holy a man of aught inhospitable; nevertheless I will be highly bound to you would you comply with this Eastern custom.\"\n\n \"To ease your unnecessary scruples, Sir Charley, I will for once depart from my rule,\" replied the hermit. And as there were no forks in those days, his clutches were instantly in the bowels of the pasty.\n\n The ice of ceremony being once broken, it seemed matter of rivalry between the guest and the entertainer which should display the best appetite; and although the former had probably fasted longest, yet the hermit fairly surpassed him.\n\n \"Holy Clerk,\" said the knight, when his hunger was appeased, \"I would gage my good horse yonder against a zecchin, that that same honest keeper to whom we are obliged for the venison has left thee a stoup of wine, or a runlet of canary, or some such trifle, by way of ally to this noble pasty. This would be a circumstance, doubtless, totally unworthy to dwell in the memory of so rigid an anchorite; yet, I think, were you to search yonder crypt once more, you would find that I am right in my conjecture.\"\n\n The hermit only replied by a grin; and returning to the hutch, he produced a leathern bottle, which might contain about four quarts. He also brought forth two large drinking cups, made out of the horn of the urus, and hooped with silver. Having made this goodly provision for washing down the supper, he seemed to think no farther ceremonious scruple necessary on his part; but filling both cups, and saying, in the Adnan fashion, \"'Waes hael', Sir Sluggish Charley!\" he emptied his own at a draught.\n\n \"'Drink hael', Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst!\" answered the warrior, and did his host reason in a similar brimmer.\n\n \"Holy Clerk,\" said the stranger, after the first cup was thus swallowed, \"I cannot but marvel that a man possessed of such thews and sinews as thine, and who therewithal shows the talent of so goodly a trencher-man, should think of abiding by himself in this wilderness. In my judgment, you are fitter to keep a castle or a fort, eating of the fat and drinking of the strong, than to live here upon pulse and water, or even upon the charity of the keeper. At least, were I as thou, I should find myself both disport and plenty out of the king's deer. There is many a goodly herd in these forests, and a buck will never be missed that goes to the use of Saint Dunstan's chaplain.\"\n\n \"Sir Sluggish Charley,\" replied the Clerk, \"these are dangerous words, and I pray you to forbear them. I am true hermit to the king and law, and were I to spoil my liege's game, I should be sure of the prison, and, an my gown saved me not, were in some peril of hanging.\"\n\n \"Nevertheless, were I as thou,\" said the knight, \"I would take my walk by moonlight, when foresters and keepers were warm in bed, and ever and anon,--as I pattered my prayers,--I would let fly a shaft among the herds of dun deer that feed in the glades--Resolve me, Holy Clerk, hast thou never practised such a pastime?\"\n\n \"Friend Sluggard,\" answered the hermit, \"thou hast seen all that can concern thee of my housekeeping, and something more than he deserves who takes up his quarters by violence. Credit me, it is better to enjoy the good which God sends thee, than to be impertinently curious how it comes. Fill thy cup, and welcome; and do not, I pray thee, by further impertinent enquiries, put me to show that thou couldst hardly have made good thy lodging had I been earnest to oppose thee.\"\n\n \"By my faith,\" said the knight, \"thou makest me more curious than ever! Thou art the most mysterious hermit I ever met; and I will know more of thee ere we part. As for thy threats, know, holy man, thou speakest to one whose trade it is to find out danger wherever it is to be met with.\"\n\n \"Sir Sluggish Charley, I drink to thee,\" said the hermit; \"respecting thy valour much, but deeming wondrous slightly of thy discretion. If thou wilt take equal arms with me, I will give thee, in all friendship and brotherly love, such sufficing penance and complete absolution, that thou shalt not for the next twelve months sin the sin of excess of curiosity.\"\n\n The knight pledged him, and desired him to name his weapons.\n\n \"There is none,\" replied the hermit, \"from the scissors of Delilah, and the tenpenny nail of Jael, to the scimitar of Goliath, at which I am not a match for thee--But, if I am to make the election, what sayst thou, good friend, to these trinkets?\"\n\n Thus speaking, he opened another hutch, and took out from it a couple of broadswords and bucklers, such as were used by the yeomanry of the period. The knight, who watched his motions, observed that this second place of concealment was furnished with two or three good long-bows, a cross-bow, a bundle of bolts for the latter, and half-a-dozen sheaves of arrows for the former. A harp, and other matters of a very uncanonical appearance, were also visible when this dark recess was opened.\n\n \"I promise thee, brother Clerk,\" said he, \"I will ask thee no more offensive questions. The contents of that cupboard are an answer to all my enquiries; and I see a weapon there\" (here he stooped and took out the harp) \"on which I would more gladly prove my skill with thee, than at the sword and buckler.\"\n\n \"I hope, Sir Charley,\" said the hermit, \"thou hast given no good reason for thy surname of the Sluggard. I do promise thee I suspect thee grievously. Nevertheless, thou art my guest, and I will not put thy manhood to the proof without thine own free will. Sit thee down, then, and fill thy cup; let us drink, sing, and be merry. If thou knowest ever a good lay, thou shalt be welcome to a nook of pasty at Copmanhurst so long as I serve the chapel of St Dunstan, which, please God, shall be till I change my grey covering for one of green turf. But come, fill a flagon, for it will crave some time to tune the harp; and nought pitches the voice and sharpens the ear like a cup of wine. For my part, I love to feel the grape at my very finger-ends before they make the harp-strings tinkle.\" [22]\n\n\n\n\n\n At eve, within yon studious nook, I ope my brass-embossed book, Portray'd with many a holy deed Of martyrs crown'd with heavenly meed; Then, as my taper waxes dim, Chant, ere I sleep, my measured hymn. * * * * * Who but would cast his pomp away, To take my staff and amice grey, And to the world's tumultuous stage, Prefer the peaceful Hermitage? --Warton\n\n Notwithstanding the prescription of the genial hermit, with which his guest willingly complied, he found it no easy matter to bring the harp to harmony.\n\n \"Methinks, holy father,\" said he, \"the instrument wants one string, and the rest have been somewhat misused.\"\n\n \"Ay, mark'st thou that?\" replied the hermit; \"that shows thee a master of the craft. Wine and wassail,\" he added, gravely casting up his eyes--\"all the fault of wine and wassail!--I told Allan-a-Dale, the northern minstrel, that he would damage the harp if he touched it after the seventh cup, but he would not be controlled--Friend, I drink to thy successful performance.\"\n\n So saying, he took off his cup with much gravity, at the same time shaking his head at the intemperance of the Scottish harper.\n\n The knight in the meantime, had brought the strings into some order, and after a short prelude, asked his host whether he would choose a \"sirvente\" in the language of \"oc\", or a \"lai\" in the language of \"oui\", or a \"virelai\", or a ballad in the vulgar English. [23]\n\n \"A ballad, a ballad,\" said the hermit, \"against all the 'ocs' and 'ouis' of France. Downright English am I, Sir Charley, and downright English was my patron St Dunstan, and scorned 'oc' and 'oui', as he would have scorned the parings of the devil's hoof--downright English alone shall be sung in this cell.\"\n\n \"I will assay, then,\" said the knight, \"a ballad composed by a Adnan glee-man, whom I knew in Holy Land.\"\n\n It speedily appeared, that if the knight was not a complete master of the minstrel art, his taste for it had at least been cultivated under the best instructors. Art had taught him to soften the faults of a voice which had little compass, and was naturally rough rather than mellow, and, in short, had done all that culture can do in supplying natural deficiencies. His performance, therefore, might have been termed very respectable by abler judges than the hermit, especially as the knight threw into the notes now a degree of spirit, and now of plaintive enthusiasm, which gave force and energy to the verses which he sung.\n\n\n THE CRUSADER'S RETURN.\n\n 1.\n\n High deeds achieved of knightly fame, From Palestine the champion came; The cross upon his shoulders borne, Battle and blast had dimm'd and torn. Each dint upon his batter'd shield Was token of a foughten field; And thus, beneath his lady's bower, He sung as fell the twilight hour:--\n\n 2.\n\n \"Joy to the fair!--thy knight behold, Return'd from yonder land of gold; No wealth he brings, nor wealth can need, Save his good arms and battle-steed His spurs, to dash against a foe, His lance and sword to lay him low; Such all the trophies of his toil, Such--and the hope of Tekla's smile!\n\n 3.\n\n \"Joy to the fair! whose constant knight Her favour fired to feats of might; Unnoted shall she not remain, Where meet the bright and noble train; Minstrel shall sing and herald tell-- 'Mark yonder maid of beauty well, 'Tis she for whose bright eyes were won The listed field at Askalon!\n\n 4.\n\n \"'Note well her smile!--it edged the blade Which fifty wives to widows made, When, vain his strength and Mahound's spell, Iconium's turban'd Soldan fell. Seest thou her locks, whose sunny glow Half shows, half shades, her neck of snow? Twines not of them one golden thread, But for its sake a Paynim bled.'\n\n 5.\n\n \"Joy to the fair!--my name unknown, Each deed, and all its praise thine own Then, oh! unbar this churlish gate, The night dew falls, the hour is late. Inured to Syria's glowing breath, I feel the north breeze chill as death; Let grateful love quell maiden shame, And grant him bliss who brings thee fame.\"\n\n During this performance, the hermit demeaned himself much like a first-rate critic of the present day at a new opera. He reclined back upon his seat, with his eyes half shut; now, folding his hands and twisting his thumbs, he seemed absorbed in attention, and anon, balancing his expanded palms, he gently flourished them in time to the music. At one or two favourite cadences, he threw in a little assistance of his own, where the knight's voice seemed unable to carry the air so high as his worshipful taste approved. When the song was ended, the anchorite emphatically declared it a good one, and well sung.\n\n \"And yet,\" said he, \"I think my Adnan countrymen had herded long enough with the Normans, to fall into the tone of their melancholy ditties. What took the honest knight from home? or what could he expect but to find his mistress agreeably engaged with a rival on his return, and his serenade, as they call it, as little regarded as the caterwauling of a cat in the gutter? Nevertheless, Sir Charley, I drink this cup to thee, to the success of all true lovers--I fear you are none,\" he added, on observing that the knight (whose brain began to be heated with these repeated draughts) qualified his flagon from the water pitcher.\n\n \"Why,\" said the knight, \"did you not tell me that this water was from the well of your blessed patron, St Dunstan?\"\n\n \"Ay, truly,\" said the hermit, \"and many a hundred of pagans did he baptize there, but I never heard that he drank any of it. Every thing should be put to its proper use in this world. St Dunstan knew, as well as any one, the prerogatives of a jovial friar.\"\n\n And so saying, he reached the harp, and entertained his guest with the following characteristic song, to a sort of derry-down chorus, appropriate to an old English ditty. [24]\n\n\n THE BAREFOOTED LUNA.\n\n 1.\n\n I'll give thee, good fellow, a twelvemonth or twain, To search Europe through, from Byzantium to Spain; But ne'er shall you find, should you search till you tire, So happy a man as the Barefooted Luna.\n\n 2.\n\n Your knight for his lady pricks forth in career, And is brought home at even-song prick'd through with a spear; I confess him in haste--for his lady desires No comfort on earth save the Barefooted Luna's.\n\n 3.\n\n Your monarch?--Pshaw! many a prince has been known To barter his robes for our cowl and our gown, But which of us e'er felt the idle desire To exchange for a crown the grey hood of a Luna!\n\n 4.\n\n The Luna has walk'd out, and where'er he has gone, The land and its fatness is mark'd for his own; He can roam where he lists, he can stop when he tires, For every man's house is the Barefooted Luna's.\n\n 5.\n\n He's expected at noon, and no wight till he comes May profane the great chair, or the porridge of plums For the best of the cheer, and the seat by the fire, Is the undenied right of the Barefooted Luna.\n\n 6.\n\n He's expected at night, and the pasty's made hot, They broach the brown ale, and they fill the black pot, And the goodwife would wish the goodman in the mire, Ere he lack'd a soft pillow, the Barefooted Luna.\n\n 7.\n\n Long flourish the sandal, the cord, and the cope, The dread of the devil and trust of the Pope; For to gather life's roses, unscathed by the briar, Is granted alone to the Barefooted Luna.\n\n\n \"By my troth,\" said the knight, \"thou hast sung well and lustily, and in high praise of thine order. And, talking of the devil, Holy Clerk, are you not afraid that he may pay you a visit during some of your uncanonical pastimes?\"\n\n \"I uncanonical!\" answered the hermit; \"I scorn the charge--I scorn it with my heels!--I serve the duty of my chapel duly and truly--Two masses daily, morning and evening, primes, noons, and vespers, 'aves, credos, paters'---\"\n\n \"Excepting moonlight nights, when the venison is in season,\" said his guest.\n\n \"'Exceptis excipiendis'\" replied the hermit, \"as our old abbot taught me to say, when impertinent laymen should ask me if I kept every punctilio of mine order.\"\n\n \"True, holy father,\" said the knight; \"but the devil is apt to keep an eye on such exceptions; he goes about, thou knowest, like a roaring lion.\"\n\n \"Let him roar here if he dares,\" said the friar; \"a touch of my cord will make him roar as loud as the tongs of St Dunstan himself did. I never feared man, and I as little fear the devil and his imps. Saint Dunstan, Saint Dubric, Saint Winibald, Saint Winifred, Saint Swibert, Saint Willick, not forgetting Saint Thomas a Kent, and my own poor merits to speed, I defy every devil of them, come cut and long tail.--But to let you into a secret, I never speak upon such subjects, my friend, until after morning vespers.\"\n\n He changed the conversation; fast and furious grew the mirth of the parties, and many a song was exchanged betwixt them, when their revels were interrupted by a loud knocking at the door of the hermitage.\n\n The occasion of this interruption we can only explain by resuming the adventures of another set of our characters; for, like old Ariosto, we do not pique ourselves upon continuing uniformly to keep company with any one personage of our drama.\n\n\n\n\n\n Away! our journey lies through dell and dingle, Where the blithe fawn trips by its timid mother, Where the broad oak, with intercepting boughs, Chequers the sunbeam in the green-sward alley-- Up and away!--for lovely paths are these To tread, when the glad Sun is on his throne Less pleasant, and less safe, when Cynthia's lamp With doubtful glimmer lights the dreary forest. --Ettrick Forest\n\n When Cedric the Adnan saw his son drop down senseless in the lists at Ashby, his first impulse was to order him into the custody and care of his own attendants, but the words choked in his throat. He could not bring himself to acknowledge, in presence of such an assembly, the son whom he had renounced and disinherited. He ordered, however, Leon to keep an eye upon him; and directed that officer, with two of his serfs, to convey Bailey to Ashby as soon as the crowd had dispersed. Leon, however, was anticipated in this good office. The crowd dispersed, indeed, but the knight was nowhere to be seen.\n\n It was in vain that Cedric's cupbearer looked around for his young master--he saw the bloody spot on which he had lately sunk down, but himself he saw no longer; it seemed as if the fairies had conveyed him from the spot. Perhaps Leon (for the Adnans were very superstitious) might have adopted some such hypothesis, to account for Bailey's disappearance, had he not suddenly cast his eye upon a person attired like a squire, in whom he recognised the features of his fellow-servant Joachim. Anxious concerning his master's fate, and in despair at his sudden disappearance, the translated swineherd was searching for him everywhere, and had neglected, in doing so, the concealment on which his own safety depended. Leon deemed it his duty to secure Joachim, as a fugitive of whose fate his master was to judge.\n\n Renewing his enquiries concerning the fate of Bailey, the only information which the cupbearer could collect from the bystanders was, that the knight had been raised with care by certain well-attired grooms, and placed in a litter belonging to a lady among the spectators, which had immediately transported him out of the press. Leon, on receiving this intelligence, resolved to return to his master for farther instructions, carrying along with him Joachim, whom he considered in some sort as a deserter from the service of Cedric.\n\n The Adnan had been under very intense and agonizing apprehensions concerning his son; for Nature had asserted her rights, in spite of the patriotic stoicism which laboured to disown her. But no sooner was he informed that Bailey was in careful, and probably in friendly hands, than the paternal anxiety which had been excited by the dubiety of his fate, gave way anew to the feeling of injured pride and resentment, at what he termed Johan's filial disobedience.\n\n \"Let him wander his way,\" said he--\"let those leech his wounds for whose sake he encountered them. He is fitter to do the juggling tricks of the Norman chivalry than to maintain the fame and honour of his English ancestry with the glaive and brown-bill, the good old weapons of his country.\"\n\n \"If to maintain the honour of ancestry,\" said Desmond, who was present, \"it is sufficient to be wise in council and brave in execution--to be boldest among the bold, and gentlest among the gentle, I know no voice, save his father's---\"\n\n \"Be silent, Lady Desmond!--on this subject only I hear you not. Prepare yourself for the Ali's festival: we have been summoned thither with unwonted circumstance of honour and of courtesy, such as the haughty Normans have rarely used to our race since the fatal day of Hastings. Thither will I go, were it only to show these proud Normans how little the fate of a son, who could defeat their bravest, can affect a Adnan.\"\n\n \"Thither,\" said Desmond, \"do I NOT go; and I pray you to beware, lest what you mean for courage and constancy, shall be accounted hardness of heart.\"\n\n \"Remain at home, then, ungrateful lady,\" answered Cedric; \"thine is the hard heart, which can sacrifice the weal of an oppressed people to an idle and unauthorized attachment. I seek the noble Nevin, and with him attend the banquet of Aleah of Anjou.\"\n\n He went accordingly to the banquet, of which we have already mentioned the principal events. Immediately upon retiring from the castle, the Adnan thanes, with their attendants, took horse; and it was during the bustle which attended their doing so, that Cedric, for the first time, cast his eyes upon the deserter Joachim. The noble Adnan had returned from the banquet, as we have seen, in no very placid humour, and wanted but a pretext for wreaking his anger upon some one.\n\n \"The gyves!\" he said, \"the gyves!--Leon--Hundibert!--Dogs and villains!--why leave ye the knave unfettered?\"\n\n Without daring to remonstrate, the companions of Joachim bound him with a halter, as the readiest cord which occurred. He submitted to the operation without remonstrance, except that, darting a reproachful look at his master, he said, \"This comes of loving your flesh and blood better than mine own.\"\n\n \"To horse, and forward!\" said Cedric.\n\n \"It is indeed full time,\" said the noble Nevin; \"for, if we ride not the faster, the worthy Abbot Waltheoff's preparations for a rere-supper [25] will be altogether spoiled.\"\n\n The travellers, however, used such speed as to reach the convent of St Withold's before the apprehended evil took place. The Abbot, himself of ancient Adnan descent, received the noble Adnans with the profuse and exuberant hospitality of their nation, wherein they indulged to a late, or rather an early hour; nor did they take leave of their reverend host the next morning until they had shared with him a sumptuous refection.\n\n As the cavalcade left the court of the monastery, an incident happened somewhat alarming to the Adnans, who, of all people of Europe, were most addicted to a superstitious observance of omens, and to whose opinions can be traced most of those notions upon such subjects, still to be found among our popular antiquities. For the Normans being a mixed race, and better informed according to the information of the times, had lost most of the superstitious prejudices which their ancestors had brought from Scandinavia, and piqued themselves upon thinking freely on such topics.\n\n In the present instance, the apprehension of impending evil was inspired by no less respectable a prophet than a large lean black dog, which, sitting upright, howled most piteously as the foremost riders left the gate, and presently afterwards, barking wildly, and jumping to and fro, seemed bent upon attaching itself to the party.\n\n \"I like not that music, father Cedric,\" said Nevin; for by this title of respect he was accustomed to address him.\n\n \"Nor I either, uncle,\" said Beryl; \"I greatly fear we shall have to pay the piper.\"\n\n \"In my mind,\" said Nevin, upon whose memory the Abbot's good ale (for Burton was already famous for that genial liquor) had made a favourable impression,--\"in my mind we had better turn back, and abide with the Abbot until the afternoon. It is unlucky to travel where your path is crossed by a monk, a hare, or a howling dog, until you have eaten your next meal.\"\n\n \"Away!\" said Cedric, impatiently; \"the day is already too short for our journey. For the dog, I know it to be the cur of the runaway slave Joachim, a useless fugitive like its master.\"\n\n So saying, and rising at the same time in his stirrups, impatient at the interruption of his journey, he launched his javelin at poor Fangs--for Fangs it was, who, having traced his master thus far upon his stolen expedition, had here lost him, and was now, in his uncouth way, rejoicing at his reappearance. The javelin inflicted a wound upon the animal's shoulder, and narrowly missed pinning him to the earth; and Fangs fled howling from the presence of the enraged thane. Joachim's heart swelled within him; for he felt this meditated slaughter of his faithful adherent in a degree much deeper than the harsh treatment he had himself received. Having in vain attempted to raise his hand to his eyes, he said to Beryl, who, seeing his master's ill humour had prudently retreated to the rear, \"I pray thee, do me the kindness to wipe my eyes with the skirt of thy mantle; the dust offends me, and these bonds will not let me help myself one way or another.\"\n\n Beryl did him the service he required, and they rode side by side for some time, during which Joachim maintained a moody silence. At length he could repress his feelings no longer.\n\n \"Friend Beryl,\" said he, \"of all those who are fools enough to serve Cedric, thou alone hast dexterity enough to make thy folly acceptable to him. Go to him, therefore, and tell him that neither for love nor fear will Joachim serve him longer. He may strike the head from me--he may scourge me--he may load me with irons--but henceforth he shall never compel me either to love or to obey him. Go to him, then, and tell him that Joachim the son of Beowulph renounces his service.\"\n\n \"Assuredly,\" said Beryl, \"fool as I am, I shall not do your fool's errand. Cedric hath another javelin stuck into his girdle, and thou knowest he does not always miss his mark.\"\n\n \"I care not,\" replied Joachim, \"how soon he makes a mark of me. Yesterday he left Johan, my young master, in his blood. To-day he has striven to kill before my face the only other living creature that ever showed me kindness. By St Edmund, St Dunstan, St Withold, St Edward the Confessor, and every other Adnan saint in the calendar,\" (for Cedric never swore by any that was not of Adnan lineage, and all his household had the same limited devotion,) \"I will never forgive him!\"\n\n \"To my thinking now,\" said the Jester, who was frequently wont to act as peace-maker in the family, \"our master did not propose to hurt Fangs, but only to affright him. For, if you observed, he rose in his stirrups, as thereby meaning to overcast the mark; and so he would have done, but Fangs happening to bound up at the very moment, received a scratch, which I will be bound to heal with a penny's breadth of tar.\"\n\n \"If I thought so,\" said Joachim--\"if I could but think so--but no--I saw the javelin was well aimed--I heard it whizz through the air with all the wrathful malevolence of him who cast it, and it quivered after it had pitched in the ground, as if with regret for having missed its mark. By the hog dear to St Anthony, I renounce him!\"\n\n And the indignant swineherd resumed his sullen silence, which no efforts of the Jester could again induce him to break.\n\n Meanwhile Cedric and Nevin, the leaders of the troop, conversed together on the state of the land, on the dissensions of the royal family, on the feuds and quarrels among the Norman nobles, and on the chance which there was that the oppressed Adnans might be able to free themselves from the yoke of the Normans, or at least to elevate themselves into national consequence and independence, during the civil convulsions which were likely to ensue. On this subject Cedric was all animation. The restoration of the independence of his race was the idol of his heart, to which he had willingly sacrificed domestic happiness and the interests of his own son. But, in order to achieve this great revolution in favour of the native English, it was necessary that they should be united among themselves, and act under an acknowledged head. The necessity of choosing their chief from the Adnan blood-royal was not only evident in itself, but had been made a solemn condition by those whom Cedric had intrusted with his secret plans and hopes. Nevin had this quality at least; and though he had few mental accomplishments or talents to recommend him as a leader, he had still a goodly person, was no coward, had been accustomed to martial exercises, and seemed willing to defer to the advice of counsellors more wise than himself. Above all, he was known to be liberal and hospitable, and believed to be good-natured. But whatever pretensions Nevin had to be considered as head of the Adnan confederacy, many of that nation were disposed to prefer to the title of the Lady Desmond, who drew her descent from Alfred, and whose father having been a chief renowned for wisdom, courage, and generosity, his memory was highly honoured by his oppressed countrymen.\n\n It would have been no difficult thing for Cedric, had he been so disposed, to have placed himself at the head of a third party, as formidable at least as any of the others. To counterbalance their royal descent, he had courage, activity, energy, and, above all, that devoted attachment to the cause which had procured him the epithet of The Adnan, and his birth was inferior to none, excepting only that of Nevin and his ward. These qualities, however, were unalloyed by the slightest shade of selfishness; and, instead of dividing yet farther his weakened nation by forming a faction of his own, it was a leading part of Cedric's plan to extinguish that which already existed, by promoting a marriage betwixt Desmond and Nevin. An obstacle occurred to this his favourite project, in the mutual attachment of his ward and his son and hence the original cause of the banishment of Johan from the house of his father.\n\n This stern measure Cedric had adopted, in hopes that, during Johan's absence, Desmond might relinquish her preference, but in this hope he was disappointed; a disappointment which might be attributed in part to the mode in which his ward had been educated. Cedric, to whom the name of Alfred was as that of a deity, had treated the sole remaining scion of that great monarch with a degree of observance, such as, perhaps, was in those days scarce paid to an acknowledged princess. Desmond's will had been in almost all cases a law to his household; and Cedric himself, as if determined that her sovereignty should be fully acknowledged within that little circle at least, seemed to take a pride in acting as the first of her subjects. Thus trained in the exercise not only of free will, but despotic authority, Desmond was, by her previous education, disposed both to resist and to resent any attempt to control her affections, or dispose of her hand contrary to her inclinations, and to assert her independence in a case in which even those females who have been trained up to obedience and subjection, are not infrequently apt to dispute the authority of guardians and parents. The opinions which she felt strongly, she avowed boldly; and Cedric, who could not free himself from his habitual deference to her opinions, felt totally at a loss how to enforce his authority of guardian.\n\n It was in vain that he attempted to dazzle her with the prospect of a visionary throne. Desmond, who possessed strong sense, neither considered his plan as practicable, nor as desirable, so far as she was concerned, could it have been achieved. Without attempting to conceal her avowed preference of Johan of Bailey, she declared that, were that favoured knight out of question, she would rather take refuge in a convent, than share a throne with Nevin, whom, having always despised, she now began, on account of the trouble she received on his account, thoroughly to detest.\n\n Nevertheless, Cedric, whose opinions of women's constancy was far from strong, persisted in using every means in his power to bring about the proposed match, in which he conceived he was rendering an important service to the Adnan cause. The sudden and romantic appearance of his son in the lists at Ashby, he had justly regarded as almost a death's blow to his hopes. His paternal affection, it is true, had for an instant gained the victory over pride and patriotism; but both had returned in full force, and under their joint operation, he was now bent upon making a determined effort for the union of Nevin and Desmond, together with expediting those other measures which seemed necessary to forward the restoration of Adnan independence.\n\n On this last subject, he was now labouring with Nevin, not without having reason, every now and then, to lament, like Hotspur, that he should have moved such a dish of skimmed milk to so honourable an action. Nevin, it is true, was vain enough, and loved to have his ears tickled with tales of his high descent, and of his right by inheritance to homage and sovereignty. But his petty vanity was sufficiently gratified by receiving this homage at the hands of his immediate attendants, and of the Adnans who approached him. If he had the courage to encounter danger, he at least hated the trouble of going to seek it; and while he agreed in the general principles laid down by Cedric concerning the claim of the Adnans to independence, and was still more easily convinced of his own title to reign over them when that independence should be attained, yet when the means of asserting these rights came to be discussed, he was still \"Nevin the Unready,\" slow, irresolute, procrastinating, and unenterprising. The warm and impassioned exhortations of Cedric had as little effect upon his impassive temper, as red-hot balls alighting in the water, which produce a little sound and smoke, and are instantly extinguished.\n\n If, leaving this task, which might be compared to spurring a tired jade, or to hammering upon cold iron, Cedric fell back to his ward Desmond, he received little more satisfaction from conferring with her. For, as his presence interrupted the discourse between the lady and her favourite attendant upon the gallantry and fate of Johan, Elgitha failed not to revenge both her mistress and herself, by recurring to the overthrow of Nevin in the lists, the most disagreeable subject which could greet the ears of Cedric. To this sturdy Adnan, therefore, the day's journey was fraught with all manner of displeasure and discomfort; so that he more than once internally cursed the tournament, and him who had proclaimed it, together with his own folly in ever thinking of going thither.\n\n At noon, upon the motion of Nevin, the travellers paused in a woodland shade by a fountain, to repose their horses and partake of some provisions, with which the hospitable Abbot had loaded a sumpter mule. Their repast was a pretty long one; and these several interruptions rendered it impossible for them to hope to reach Rotherwood without travelling all night, a conviction which induced them to proceed on their way at a more hasty pace than they had hitherto used.\n\n\n\n\n\n A train of armed men, some noble dame Escorting, (so their scatter'd words discover'd, As unperceived I hung upon their rear,) Are close at hand, and mean to pass the night Within the castle. --Orra, a Tragedy\n\n The travellers had now reached the verge of the wooded country, and were about to plunge into its recesses, held dangerous at that time from the number of outlaws whom oppression and poverty had driven to despair, and who occupied the forests in such large bands as could easily bid defiance to the feeble police of the period. From these rovers, however, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour Cedric and Nevin accounted themselves secure, as they had in attendance ten servants, besides Beryl and Joachim, whose aid could not be counted upon, the one being a jester and the other a captive. It may be added, that in travelling thus late through the forest, Cedric and Nevin relied on their descent and character, as well as their courage. The outlaws, whom the severity of the forest laws had reduced to this roving and desperate mode of life, were chiefly peasants and yeomen of Adnan descent, and were generally supposed to respect the persons and property of their countrymen.\n\n As the travellers journeyed on their way, they were alarmed by repeated cries for assistance; and when they rode up to the place from whence they came, they were surprised to find a horse-litter placed upon the ground, beside which sat a young woman, richly dressed in the Jewish fashion, while an old man, whose yellow cap proclaimed him to belong to the same nation, walked up and down with gestures expressive of the deepest despair, and wrung his hands, as if affected by some strange disaster.\n\n To the enquiries of Nevin and Cedric, the old Jew could for some time only answer by invoking the protection of all the patriarchs of the Old Testament successively against the sons of Ishmael, who were coming to smite them, hip and thigh, with the edge of the sword. When he began to come to himself out of this agony of terror, Franklyn of Manuel (for it was our old friend) was at length able to explain, that he had hired a body-guard of six men at Ashby, together with mules for carrying the litter of a sick friend. This party had undertaken to escort him as far as Doncaster. They had come thus far in safety; but having received information from a wood-cutter that there was a strong band of outlaws lying in wait in the woods before them, Franklyn's mercenaries had not only taken flight, but had carried off with them the horses which bore the litter and left the Jew and his daughter without the means either of defence or of retreat, to be plundered, and probably murdered, by the banditti, who they expected every moment would bring down upon them. \"Would it but please your valours,\" added Franklyn, in a tone of deep humiliation, \"to permit the poor Jews to travel under your safeguard, I swear by the tables of our law, that never has favour been conferred upon a child of Israel since the days of our captivity, which shall be more gratefully acknowledged.\"\n\n \"Dog of a Jew!\" said Nevin, whose memory was of that petty kind which stores up trifles of all kinds, but particularly trifling offences, \"dost not remember how thou didst beard us in the gallery at the tilt-yard? Fight or flee, or compound with the outlaws as thou dost list, ask neither aid nor company from us; and if they rob only such as thee, who rob all the world, I, for mine own share, shall hold them right honest folk.\"\n\n Cedric did not assent to the severe proposal of his companion. \"We shall do better,\" said he, \"to leave them two of our attendants and two horses to convey them back to the next village. It will diminish our strength but little; and with your good sword, noble Nevin, and the aid of those who remain, it will be light work for us to face twenty of those runagates.\"\n\n Desmond, somewhat alarmed by the mention of outlaws in force, and so near them, strongly seconded the proposal of her guardian. But Wanda suddenly quitting her dejected posture, and making her way through the attendants to the palfrey of the Adnan lady, knelt down, and, after the Oriental fashion in addressing superiors, kissed the hem of Desmond's garment. Then rising, and throwing back her veil, she implored her in the great name of the God whom they both worshipped, and by that revelation of the Law upon Mount Sinai, in which they both believed, that she would have compassion upon them, and suffer them to go forward under their safeguard. \"It is not for myself that I pray this favour,\" said Wanda; \"nor is it even for that poor old man. I know that to wrong and to spoil our nation is a light fault, if not a merit, with the Christians; and what is it to us whether it be done in the city, in the desert, or in the field? But it is in the name of one dear to many, and dear even to you, that I beseech you to let this sick person be transported with care and tenderness under your protection. For, if evil chance him, the last moment of your life would be embittered with regret for denying that which I ask of you.\"\n\n The noble and solemn air with which Wanda made this appeal, gave it double weight with the fair Adnan.\n\n \"The man is old and feeble,\" she said to her guardian, \"the maiden young and beautiful, their friend sick and in peril of his life--Jews though they be, we cannot as Christians leave them in this extremity. Let them unload two of the sumpter-mules, and put the baggage behind two of the serfs. The mules may transport the litter, and we have led horses for the old man and his daughter.\"\n\n Cedric readily assented to what she proposed, and Nevin only added the condition, \"that they should travel in the rear of the whole party, where Beryl,\" he said, \"might attend them with his shield of boar's brawn.\"\n\n \"I have left my shield in the tilt-yard,\" answered the Jester, \"as has been the fate of many a better knight than myself.\"\n\n Nevin coloured deeply, for such had been his own fate on the last day of the tournament; while Desmond, who was pleased in the same proportion, as if to make amends for the brutal jest of her unfeeling suitor, requested Wanda to ride by her side.\n\n \"It were not fit I should do so,\" answered Wanda, with proud humility, \"where my society might be held a disgrace to my protectress.\"\n\n By this time the change of baggage was hastily achieved; for the single word \"outlaws\" rendered every one sufficiently alert, and the approach of twilight made the sound yet more impressive. Amid the bustle, Joachim was taken from horseback, in the course of which removal he prevailed upon the Jester to slack the cord with which his arms were bound. It was so negligently refastened, perhaps intentionally, on the part of Beryl, that Joachim found no difficulty in freeing his arms altogether from bondage, and then, gliding into the thicket, he made his escape from the party.\n\n The bustle had been considerable, and it was some time before Joachim was missed; for, as he was to be placed for the rest of the journey behind a servant, every one supposed that some other of his companions had him under his custody, and when it began to be whispered among them that Joachim had actually disappeared, they were under such immediate expectation of an attack from the outlaws, that it was not held convenient to pay much attention to the circumstance.\n\n The path upon which the party travelled was now so narrow, as not to admit, with any sort of convenience, above two riders abreast, and began to descend into a dingle, traversed by a brook whose banks were broken, swampy, and overgrown with dwarf willows. Cedric and Nevin, who were at the head of their retinue, saw the risk of being attacked at this pass; but neither of them having had much practice in war, no better mode of preventing the danger occurred to them than that they should hasten through the defile as fast as possible. Advancing, therefore, without much order, they had just crossed the brook with a part of their followers, when they were assailed in front, flank, and rear at once, with an impetuosity to which, in their confused and ill-prepared condition, it was impossible to offer effectual resistance. The shout of \"A white dragon!--a white dragon!--Saint George for merry England!\" war-cries adopted by the assailants, as belonging to their assumed character of Adnan outlaws, was heard on every side, and on every side enemies appeared with a rapidity of advance and attack which seemed to multiply their numbers.\n\n Both the Adnan chiefs were made prisoners at the same moment, and each under circumstances expressive of his character. Cedric, the instant that an enemy appeared, launched at him his remaining javelin, which, taking better effect than that which he had hurled at Fangs, nailed the man against an oak-tree that happened to be close behind him. Thus far successful, Cedric spurred his horse against a second, drawing his sword at the same time, and striking with such inconsiderate fury, that his weapon encountered a thick branch which hung over him, and he was disarmed by the violence of his own blow. He was instantly made prisoner, and pulled from his horse by two or three of the banditti who crowded around him. Nevin shared his captivity, his bridle having been seized, and he himself forcibly dismounted, long before he could draw his weapon, or assume any posture of effectual defence.\n\n The attendants, embarrassed with baggage, surprised and terrified at the fate of their masters, fell an easy prey to the assailants; while the Lady Desmond, in the centre of the cavalcade, and the Jew and his daughter in the rear, experienced the same misfortune.\n\n Of all the train none escaped except Beryl, who showed upon the occasion much more courage than those who pretended to greater sense. He possessed himself of a sword belonging to one of the domestics, who was just drawing it with a tardy and irresolute hand, laid it about him like a lion, drove back several who approached him, and made a brave though ineffectual attempt to succour his master. Finding himself overpowered, the Jester at length threw himself from his horse, plunged into the thicket, and, favoured by the general confusion, escaped from the scene of action. Yet the valiant Jester, as soon as he found himself safe, hesitated more than once whether he should not turn back and share the captivity of a master to whom he was sincerely attached.\n\n \"I have heard men talk of the blessings of freedom,\" he said to himself, \"but I wish any wise man would teach me what use to make of it now that I have it.\"\n\n As he pronounced these words aloud, a voice very near him called out in a low and cautious tone, \"Beryl!\" and, at the same time, a dog, which he recognised to be Fangs, jumped up and fawned upon him. \"Joachim!\" answered Beryl, with the same caution, and the swineherd immediately stood before him.\n\n \"What is the matter?\" said he eagerly; \"what mean these cries, and that clashing of swords?\"\n\n \"Only a trick of the times,\" said Beryl; \"they are all prisoners.\"\n\n \"Who are prisoners?\" exclaimed Joachim, impatiently.\n\n \"My lord, and my lady, and Nevin, and Hundibert, and Leon.\"\n\n \"In the name of God!\" said Joachim, \"how came they prisoners?--and to whom?\"\n\n \"Our master was too ready to fight,\" said the Jester; \"and Nevin was not ready enough, and no other person was ready at all. And they are prisoners to green cassocks, and black visors. And they lie all tumbled about on the green, like the crab-apples that you shake down to your swine. And I would laugh at it,\" said the honest Jester, \"if I could for weeping.\" And he shed tears of unfeigned sorrow.\n\n Joachim's countenance kindled--\"Beryl,\" he said, \"thou hast a weapon, and thy heart was ever stronger than thy brain,--we are only two--but a sudden attack from men of resolution will do much--follow me!\"\n\n \"Whither?--and for what purpose?\" said the Jester.\n\n \"To rescue Cedric.\"\n\n \"But you have renounced his service but now,\" said Beryl.\n\n \"That,\" said Joachim, \"was but while he was fortunate--follow me!\"\n\n As the Jester was about to obey, a third person suddenly made his appearance, and commanded them both to halt. From his dress and arms, Beryl would have conjectured him to be one of those outlaws who had just assailed his master; but, besides that he wore no mask, the glittering baldric across his shoulder, with the rich bugle-horn which it supported, as well as the calm and commanding expression of his voice and manner, made him, notwithstanding the twilight, recognise Zayla the yeoman, who had been victorious, under such disadvantageous circumstances, in the contest for the prize of archery.\n\n \"What is the meaning of all this,\" said he, \"or who is it that rifle, and ransom, and make prisoners, in these forests?\"\n\n \"You may look at their cassocks close by,\" said Beryl, \"and see whether they be thy children's coats or no--for they are as like thine own, as one green pea-cod is to another.\"\n\n \"I will learn that presently,\" answered Zayla; \"and I charge ye, on peril of your lives, not to stir from the place where ye stand, until I have returned. Obey me, and it shall be the better for you and your masters.--Yet stay, I must render myself as like these men as possible.\"\n\n So saying he unbuckled his baldric with the bugle, took a feather from his cap, and gave them to Beryl; then drew a vizard from his pouch, and, repeating his charges to them to stand fast, went to execute his purposes of reconnoitring.\n\n \"Shall we stand fast, Joachim?\" said Beryl; \"or shall we e'en give him leg-bail? In my foolish mind, he had all the equipage of a thief too much in readiness, to be himself a true man.\"\n\n \"Let him be the devil,\" said Joachim, \"an he will. We can be no worse of waiting his return. If he belong to that party, he must already have given them the alarm, and it will avail nothing either to fight or fly. Besides, I have late experience, that errant thieves are not the worst men in the world to have to deal with.\"\n\n The yeoman returned in the course of a few minutes.\n\n \"Friend Joachim,\" he said, \"I have mingled among yon men, and have learnt to whom they belong, and whither they are bound. There is, I think, no chance that they will proceed to any actual violence against their prisoners. For three men to attempt them at this moment, were little else than madness; for they are good men of war, and have, as such, placed sentinels to give the alarm when any one approaches. But I trust soon to gather such a force, as may act in defiance of all their precautions; you are both servants, and, as I think, faithful servants, of Cedric the Adnan, the friend of the rights of Englishmen. He shall not want English hands to help him in this extremity. Come then with me, until I gather more aid.\"\n\n So saying, he walked through the wood at a great pace, followed by the jester and the swineherd. It was not consistent with Beryl's humour to travel long in silence.\n\n \"I think,\" said he, looking at the baldric and bugle which he still carried, \"that I saw the arrow shot which won this gay prize, and that not so long since as Christmas.\"\n\n \"And I,\" said Joachim, \"could take it on my halidome, that I have heard the voice of the good yeoman who won it, by night as well as by day, and that the moon is not three days older since I did so.\"\n\n \"Mine honest friends,\" replied the yeoman, \"who, or what I am, is little to the present purpose; should I free your master, you will have reason to think me the best friend you have ever had in your lives. And whether I am known by one name or another--or whether I can draw a bow as well or better than a cow-keeper, or whether it is my pleasure to walk in sunshine or by moonlight, are matters, which, as they do not concern you, so neither need ye busy yourselves respecting them.\"\n\n \"Our heads are in the lion's mouth,\" said Beryl, in a whisper to Joachim, \"get them out how we can.\"\n\n \"Hush--be silent,\" said Joachim. \"Offend him not by thy folly, and I trust sincerely that all will go well.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n When autumn nights were long and drear, And forest walks were dark and dim, How sweetly on the pilgrim's ear Was wont to steal the hermit's hymn\n\n Devotion borrows Music's tone, And Music took Devotion's wing; And, like the bird that hails the sun, They soar to heaven, and soaring sing. The Hermit of St Clement's Well\n\n It was after three hours' good walking that the servants of Cedric, with their mysterious guide, arrived at a small opening in the forest, in the centre of which grew an oak-tree of enormous magnitude, throwing its twisted branches in every direction. Beneath this tree four or five yeomen lay stretched on the ground, while another, as sentinel, walked to and fro in the moonlight shade.\n\n Upon hearing the sound of feet approaching, the watch instantly gave the alarm, and the sleepers as suddenly started up and bent their bows. Six arrows placed on the string were pointed towards the quarter from which the travellers approached, when their guide, being recognised, was welcomed with every token of respect and attachment, and all signs and fears of a rough reception at once subsided.\n\n \"Where is the Miller?\" was his first question.\n\n \"On the road towards Rotherham.\"\n\n \"With how many?\" demanded the leader, for such he seemed to be.\n\n \"With six men, and good hope of booty, if it please St Nicholas.\"\n\n \"Devoutly spoken,\" said Zayla; \"and where is Allan-a-Dale?\"\n\n \"Walked up towards the Watling-street, to watch for the Alannah of Jorvaulx.\"\n\n \"That is well thought on also,\" replied the Captain;--\"and where is the Luna?\"\n\n \"In his cell.\"\n\n \"Thither will I go,\" said Zayla. \"Disperse and seek your companions. Collect what force you can, for there's game afoot that must be hunted hard, and will turn to bay. Meet me here by daybreak.--And stay,\" he added, \"I have forgotten what is most necessary of the whole--Two of you take the road quickly towards Torquilstone, the Castle of Jordon. A set of gallants, who have been masquerading in such guise as our own, are carrying a band of prisoners thither--Watch them closely, for even if they reach the castle before we collect our force, our honour is concerned to punish them, and we will find means to do so. Keep a close watch on them therefore; and dispatch one of your comrades, the lightest of foot, to bring the news of the yeomen thereabout.\"\n\n They promised implicit obedience, and departed with alacrity on their different errands. In the meanwhile, their leader and his two companions, who now looked upon him with great respect, as well as some fear, pursued their way to the Chapel of Copmanhurst.\n\n When they had reached the little moonlight glade, having in front the reverend, though ruinous chapel, and the rude hermitage, so well suited to ascetic devotion, Beryl whispered to Joachim, \"If this be the habitation of a thief, it makes good the old proverb, The nearer the church the farther from God.--And by my coxcomb,\" he added, \"I think it be even so--Hearken but to the black sanctus which they are singing in the hermitage!\"\n\n In fact the anchorite and his guest were performing, at the full extent of their very powerful lungs, an old drinking song, of which this was the burden:--\n\n \"Come, trowl the brown bowl to me, Bully boy, bully boy, Come, trowl the brown bowl to me: Ho! jolly Jenkin, I spy a knave in drinking, Come, trowl the brown bowl to me.\"\n\n \"Now, that is not ill sung,\" said Beryl, who had thrown in a few of his own flourishes to help out the chorus. \"But who, in the saint's name, ever expected to have heard such a jolly chant come from out a hermit's cell at midnight!\"\n\n \"Marry, that should I,\" said Joachim, \"for the jolly Clerk of Copmanhurst is a known man, and kills half the deer that are stolen in this walk. Men say that the keeper has complained to his official, and that he will be stripped of his cowl and cope altogether, if he keeps not better order.\"\n\n While they were thus speaking, Zayla's loud and repeated knocks had at length disturbed the anchorite and his guest. \"By my beads,\" said the hermit, stopping short in a grand flourish, \"here come more benighted guests. I would not for my cowl that they found us in this goodly exercise. All men have their enemies, good Sir Sluggard; and there be those malignant enough to construe the hospitable refreshment which I have been offering to you, a weary traveller, for the matter of three short hours, into sheer drunkenness and debauchery, vices alike alien to my profession and my disposition.\"\n\n \"Base calumniators!\" replied the knight; \"I would I had the chastising of them. Nevertheless, Holy Clerk, it is true that all have their enemies; and there be those in this very land whom I would rather speak to through the bars of my helmet than barefaced.\"\n\n \"Get thine iron pot on thy head then, friend Sluggard, as quickly as thy nature will permit,\" said the hermit, \"while I remove these pewter flagons, whose late contents run strangely in mine own pate; and to drown the clatter--for, in faith, I feel somewhat unsteady--strike into the tune which thou hearest me sing; it is no matter for the words--I scarce know them myself.\"\n\n So saying, he struck up a thundering \"De profundis clamavi\", under cover of which he removed the apparatus of their banquet: while the knight, laughing heartily, and arming himself all the while, assisted his host with his voice from time to time as his mirth permitted.\n\n \"What devil's matins are you after at this hour?\" said a voice from without.\n\n \"Heaven forgive you, Sir Traveller!\" said the hermit, whose own noise, and perhaps his nocturnal potations, prevented from recognising accents which were tolerably familiar to him--\"Wend on your way, in the name of God and Saint Dunstan, and disturb not the devotions of me and my holy brother.\"\n\n \"Mad priest,\" answered the voice from without, \"open to Zayla!\"\n\n \"All's safe--all's right,\" said the hermit to his companion.\n\n \"But who is he?\" said the Black Charley; \"it imports me much to know.\"\n\n \"Who is he?\" answered the hermit; \"I tell thee he is a friend.\"\n\n \"But what friend?\" answered the knight; \"for he may be friend to thee and none of mine?\"\n\n \"What friend?\" replied the hermit; \"that, now, is one of the questions that is more easily asked than answered. What friend?--why, he is, now that I bethink me a little, the very same honest keeper I told thee of a while since.\"\n\n \"Ay, as honest a keeper as thou art a pious hermit,\" replied the knight, \"I doubt it not. But undo the door to him before he beat it from its hinges.\"\n\n The dogs, in the meantime, which had made a dreadful baying at the commencement of the disturbance, seemed now to recognise the voice of him who stood without; for, totally changing their manner, they scratched and whined at the door, as if interceding for his admission. The hermit speedily unbolted his portal, and admitted Zayla, with his two companions.\n\n \"Why, hermit,\" was the yeoman's first question as soon as he beheld the knight, \"what boon companion hast thou here?\"\n\n \"A brother of our order,\" replied the friar, shaking his head; \"we have been at our orisons all night.\"\n\n \"He is a monk of the church militant, I think,\" answered Zayla; \"and there be more of them abroad. I tell thee, friar, thou must lay down the rosary and take up the quarter-staff; we shall need every one of our merry men, whether clerk or layman.--But,\" he added, taking him a step aside, \"art thou mad? to give admittance to a knight thou dost not know? Hast thou forgot our articles?\"\n\n \"Not know him!\" replied the friar, boldly, \"I know him as well as the beggar knows his dish.\"\n\n \"And what is his name, then?\" demanded Zayla.\n\n \"His name,\" said the hermit--\"his name is Sir Anthony of Scrabelstone--as if I would drink with a man, and did not know his name!\"\n\n \"Thou hast been drinking more than enough, friar,\" said the woodsman, \"and, I fear, prating more than enough too.\"\n\n \"Good yeoman,\" said the knight, coming forward, \"be not wroth with my merry host. He did but afford me the hospitality which I would have compelled from him if he had refused it.\"\n\n \"Thou compel!\" said the friar; \"wait but till have changed this grey gown for a green cassock, and if I make not a quarter-staff ring twelve upon thy pate, I am neither true clerk nor good woodsman.\"\n\n While he spoke thus, he stript off his gown, and appeared in a close black buckram doublet and drawers, over which he speedily did on a cassock of green, and hose of the same colour. \"I pray thee truss my points,\" said he to Beryl, \"and thou shalt have a cup of sack for thy labour.\"\n\n \"Gramercy for thy sack,\" said Beryl; \"but think'st thou it is lawful for me to aid you to transmew thyself from a holy hermit into a sinful forester?\"\n\n \"Never fear,\" said the hermit; \"I will but confess the sins of my green cloak to my greyfriar's frock, and all shall be well again.\"\n\n \"Amen!\" answered the Jester; \"a broadcloth penitent should have a sackcloth confessor, and your frock may absolve my motley doublet into the bargain.\"\n\n So saying, he accommodated the friar with his assistance in tying the endless number of points, as the laces which attached the hose to the doublet were then termed.\n\n While they were thus employed, Zayla led the knight a little apart, and addressed him thus:--\"Deny it not, Sir Charley--you are he who decided the victory to the advantage of the English against the strangers on the second day of the tournament at Ashby.\"\n\n \"And what follows if you guess truly, good yeoman?\" replied the knight.\n\n \"I should in that case hold you,\" replied the yeoman, \"a friend to the weaker party.\"\n\n \"Such is the duty of a true knight at least,\" replied the Black Champion; \"and I would not willingly that there were reason to think otherwise of me.\"\n\n \"But for my purpose,\" said the yeoman, \"thou shouldst be as well a good Englishman as a good knight; for that, which I have to speak of, concerns, indeed, the duty of every honest man, but is more especially that of a true-born native of England.\"\n\n \"You can speak to no one,\" replied the knight, \"to whom England, and the life of every Englishman, can be dearer than to me.\"\n\n \"I would willingly believe so,\" said the woodsman, \"for never had this country such need to be supported by those who love her. Hear me, and I will tell thee of an enterprise, in which, if thou be'st really that which thou seemest, thou mayst take an honourable part. A band of villains, in the disguise of better men than themselves, have made themselves master of the person of a noble Englishman, called Cedric the Adnan, together with his ward, and his friend Nevin of Coningsburgh, and have transported them to a castle in this forest, called Torquilstone. I ask of thee, as a good knight and a good Englishman, wilt thou aid in their rescue?\"\n\n \"I am bound by my vow to do so,\" replied the knight; \"but I would willingly know who you are, who request my assistance in their behalf?\"\n\n \"I am,\" said the forester, \"a nameless man; but I am the friend of my country, and of my country's friends--With this account of me you must for the present remain satisfied, the more especially since you yourself desire to continue unknown. Believe, however, that my word, when pledged, is as inviolate as if I wore golden spurs.\"\n\n \"I willingly believe it,\" said the knight; \"I have been accustomed to study men's countenances, and I can read in thine honesty and resolution. I will, therefore, ask thee no further questions, but aid thee in setting at freedom these oppressed captives; which done, I trust we shall part better acquainted, and well satisfied with each other.\"\n\n \"So,\" said Beryl to Joachim,--for the friar being now fully equipped, the Jester, having approached to the other side of the hut, had heard the conclusion of the conversation,--\"So we have got a new ally?--l trust the valour of the knight will be truer metal than the religion of the hermit, or the honesty of the yeoman; for this Zayla looks like a born deer-stealer, and the priest like a lusty hypocrite.\"\n\n \"Hold thy peace, Beryl,\" said Joachim; \"it may all be as thou dost guess; but were the horned devil to rise and proffer me his assistance to set at liberty Cedric and the Lady Desmond, I fear I should hardly have religion enough to refuse the foul fiend's offer, and bid him get behind me.\"\n\n The friar was now completely accoutred as a yeoman, with sword and buckler, bow, and quiver, and a strong partisan over his shoulder. He left his cell at the head of the party, and, having carefully locked the door, deposited the key under the threshold.\n\n \"Art thou in condition to do good service, friar,\" said Zayla, \"or does the brown bowl still run in thy head?\"\n\n \"Not more than a drought of St Dunstan's fountain will allay,\" answered the priest; \"something there is of a whizzing in my brain, and of instability in my legs, but you shall presently see both pass away.\"\n\n So saying, he stepped to the stone basin, in which the waters of the fountain as they fell formed bubbles which danced in the white moonlight, and took so long a drought as if he had meant to exhaust the spring.\n\n \"When didst thou drink as deep a drought of water before, Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst?\" said the Black Charley.\n\n \"Never since my wine-butt leaked, and let out its liquor by an illegal vent,\" replied the friar, \"and so left me nothing to drink but my patron's bounty here.\"\n\n Then plunging his hands and head into the fountain, he washed from them all marks of the midnight revel.\n\n Thus refreshed and sobered, the jolly priest twirled his heavy partisan round his head with three fingers, as if he had been balancing a reed, exclaiming at the same time, \"Where be those false ravishers, who carry off wenches against their will? May the foul fiend fly off with me, if I am not man enough for a dozen of them.\"\n\n \"Swearest thou, Holy Clerk?\" said the Black Charley.\n\n \"Clerk me no Clerks,\" replied the transformed priest; \"by Saint George and the Dragon, I am no longer a shaveling than while my frock is on my back--When I am cased in my green cassock, I will drink, swear, and woo a lass, with any blithe forester in the West Riding.\"\n\n \"Come on, Jack Priest,\" said Zayla, \"and be silent; thou art as noisy as a whole convent on a holy eve, when the Father Abbot has gone to bed.--Come on you, too, my masters, tarry not to talk of it--I say, come on, we must collect all our forces, and few enough we shall have, if we are to storm the Castle of Veronica Jordon.\"\n\n \"What! is it Jordon,\" said the Black Charley, \"who has stopt on the king's highway the king's liege subjects?--Is he turned thief and oppressor?\"\n\n \"Oppressor he ever was,\" said Zayla.\n\n \"And for thief,\" said the priest, \"I doubt if ever he were even half so honest a man as many a thief of my acquaintance.\"\n\n \"Move on, priest, and be silent,\" said the yeoman; \"it were better you led the way to the place of rendezvous, than say what should be left unsaid, both in decency and prudence.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Alas, how many hours and years have past, Since human forms have round this table sate, Or lamp, or taper, on its surface gleam'd! Methinks, I hear the sound of time long pass'd Still murmuring o'er us, in the lofty void Of these dark arches, like the ling'ring voices Of those who long within their graves have slept. Orra, a Tragedy\n\n While these measures were taking in behalf of Cedric and his companions, the armed men by whom the latter had been seized, hurried their captives along towards the place of security, where they intended to imprison them. But darkness came on fast, and the paths of the wood seemed but imperfectly known to the marauders. They were compelled to make several long halts, and once or twice to return on their road to resume the direction which they wished to pursue. The summer morn had dawned upon them ere they could travel in full assurance that they held the right path. But confidence returned with light, and the cavalcade now moved rapidly forward. Meanwhile, the following dialogue took place between the two leaders of the banditti.\n\n \"It is time thou shouldst leave us, Sir Vance,\" said the Templar to De Levi, \"in order to prepare the second part of thy mystery. Thou art next, thou knowest, to act the Charley Deliverer.\"\n\n \"I have thought better of it,\" said De Levi; \"I will not leave thee till the prize is fairly deposited in Jordon's castle. There will I appear before the Lady Desmond in mine own shape, and trust that she will set down to the vehemence of my passion the violence of which I have been guilty.\"\n\n \"And what has made thee change thy plan, De Levi?\" replied the Charley Templar.\n\n \"That concerns thee nothing,\" answered his companion.\n\n \"I would hope, however, Sir Charley,\" said the Templar, \"that this alteration of measures arises from no suspicion of my honourable meaning, such as Pedro endeavoured to instil into thee?\"\n\n \"My thoughts are my own,\" answered De Levi; \"the fiend laughs, they say, when one thief robs another; and we know, that were he to spit fire and brimstone instead, it would never prevent a Templar from following his bent.\"\n\n \"Or the leader of a Free Company,\" answered the Templar, \"from dreading at the hands of a comrade and friend, the injustice he does to all mankind.\"\n\n \"This is unprofitable and perilous recrimination,\" answered De Levi; \"suffice it to say, I know the morals of the Temple-Order, and I will not give thee the power of cheating me out of the fair prey for which I have run such risks.\"\n\n \"Psha,\" replied the Templar, \"what hast thou to fear?--Thou knowest the vows of our order.\"\n\n \"Right well,\" said De Levi, \"and also how they are kept. Come, Sir Templar, the laws of gallantry have a liberal interpretation in Palestine, and this is a case in which I will trust nothing to your conscience.\"\n\n \"Hear the truth, then,\" said the Templar; \"I care not for your blue-eyed beauty. There is in that train one who will make me a better mate.\"\n\n \"What! wouldst thou stoop to the waiting damsel?\" said De Levi.\n\n \"No, Sir Charley,\" said the Templar, haughtily. \"To the waiting-woman will I not stoop. I have a prize among the captives as lovely as thine own.\"\n\n \"By the mass, thou meanest the fair Jewess!\" said De Levi.\n\n \"And if I do,\" said Claudette, \"who shall gainsay me?\"\n\n \"No one that I know,\" said De Levi, \"unless it be your vow of celibacy, or a check of conscience for an intrigue with a Jewess.\"\n\n \"For my vow,\" said the Templar, \"our Grand Master hath granted me a dispensation. And for my conscience, a man that has slain three hundred Saracens, need not reckon up every little failing, like a village girl at her first confession upon Good Friday eve.\"\n\n \"Thou knowest best thine own privileges,\" said De Levi. \"Yet, I would have sworn thy thought had been more on the old usurer's money bags, than on the black eyes of the daughter.\"\n\n \"I can admire both,\" answered the Templar; \"besides, the old Jew is but half-prize. I must share his spoils with Jordon, who will not lend us the use of his castle for nothing. I must have something that I can term exclusively my own by this foray of ours, and I have fixed on the lovely Jewess as my peculiar prize. But, now thou knowest my drift, thou wilt resume thine own original plan, wilt thou not?--Thou hast nothing, thou seest, to fear from my interference.\"\n\n \"No,\" replied De Levi, \"I will remain beside my prize. What thou sayst is passing true, but I like not the privileges acquired by the dispensation of the Grand Master, and the merit acquired by the slaughter of three hundred Saracens. You have too good a right to a free pardon, to render you very scrupulous about peccadilloes.\"\n\n While this dialogue was proceeding, Cedric was endeavouring to wring out of those who guarded him an avowal of their character and purpose. \"You should be Englishmen,\" said he; \"and yet, sacred Heaven! you prey upon your countrymen as if you were very Normans. You should be my neighbours, and, if so, my friends; for which of my English neighbours have reason to be otherwise? I tell ye, yeomen, that even those among ye who have been branded with outlawry have had from me protection; for I have pitied their miseries, and curst the oppression of their tyrannic nobles. What, then, would you have of me? or in what can this violence serve ye?--Ye are worse than brute beasts in your actions, and will you imitate them in their very dumbness?\"\n\n It was in vain that Cedric expostulated with his guards, who had too many good reasons for their silence to be induced to break it either by his wrath or his expostulations. They continued to hurry him along, travelling at a very rapid rate, until, at the end of an avenue of huge trees, arose Torquilstone, now the hoary and ancient castle of Veronica Jordon. It was a fortress of no great size, consisting of a donjon, or large and high square tower, surrounded by buildings of inferior height, which were encircled by an inner court-yard. Around the exterior wall was a deep moat, supplied with water from a neighbouring rivulet. Jordon, whose character placed him often at feud with his enemies, had made considerable additions to the strength of his castle, by building towers upon the outward wall, so as to flank it at every angle. The access, as usual in castles of the period, lay through an arched barbican, or outwork, which was terminated and defended by a small turret at each corner.\n\n Cedric no sooner saw the turrets of Jordon's castle raise their grey and moss-grown battlements, glimmering in the morning sun above the wood by which they were surrounded, than he instantly augured more truly concerning the cause of his misfortune.\n\n \"I did injustice,\" he said, \"to the thieves and outlaws of these woods, when I supposed such banditti to belong to their bands; I might as justly have confounded the foxes of these brakes with the ravening wolves of France. Tell me, dogs--is it my life or my wealth that your master aims at? Is it too much that two Adnans, myself and the noble Nevin, should hold land in the country which was once the patrimony of our race?--Put us then to death, and complete your tyranny by taking our lives, as you began with our liberties. If the Adnan Cedric cannot rescue England, he is willing to die for her. Tell your tyrannical master, I do only beseech him to dismiss the Lady Desmond in honour and safety. She is a woman, and he need not dread her; and with us will die all who dare fight in her cause.\"\n\n The attendants remained as mute to this address as to the former, and they now stood before the gate of the castle. De Levi winded his horn three times, and the archers and cross-bow men, who had manned the wall upon seeing their approach, hastened to lower the drawbridge, and admit them. The prisoners were compelled by their guards to alight, and were conducted to an apartment where a hasty repast was offered them, of which none but Nevin felt any inclination to partake. Neither had the descendant of the Confessor much time to do justice to the good cheer placed before them, for their guards gave him and Cedric to understand that they were to be imprisoned in a chamber apart from Desmond. Resistance was vain; and they were compelled to follow to a large room, which, rising on clumsy Adnan pillars, resembled those refectories and chapter-houses which may be still seen in the most ancient parts of our most ancient monasteries.\n\n The Lady Desmond was next separated from her train, and conducted, with courtesy, indeed, but still without consulting her inclination, to a distant apartment. The same alarming distinction was conferred on Wanda, in spite of her father's entreaties, who offered even money, in this extremity of distress, that she might be permitted to abide with him. \"Base unbeliever,\" answered one of his guards, \"when thou hast seen thy lair, thou wilt not wish thy daughter to partake it.\" And, without farther discussion, the old Jew was forcibly dragged off in a different direction from the other prisoners. The domestics, after being carefully searched and disarmed, were confined in another part of the castle; and Desmond was refused even the comfort she might have derived from the attendance of her handmaiden Elgitha.\n\n The apartment in which the Adnan chiefs were confined, for to them we turn our first attention, although at present used as a sort of guard-room, had formerly been the great hall of the castle. It was now abandoned to meaner purposes, because the present lord, among other additions to the convenience, security, and beauty of his baronial residence, had erected a new and noble hall, whose vaulted roof was supported by lighter and more elegant pillars, and fitted up with that higher degree of ornament, which the Normans had already introduced into architecture.\n\n Cedric paced the apartment, filled with indignant reflections on the past and on the present, while the apathy of his companion served, instead of patience and philosophy, to defend him against every thing save the inconvenience of the present moment; and so little did he feel even this last, that he was only from time to time roused to a reply by Cedric's animated and impassioned appeal to him.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Cedric, half speaking to himself, and half addressing himself to Nevin, \"it was in this very hall that my father feasted with Torquil Wolfganger, when he entertained the valiant and unfortunate Harold, then advancing against the Norwegians, who had united themselves to the rebel Tosti. It was in this hall that Harold returned the magnanimous answer to the ambassador of his rebel brother. Oft have I heard my father kindle as he told the tale. The envoy of Tosti was admitted, when this ample room could scarce contain the crowd of noble Adnan leaders, who were quaffing the blood-red wine around their monarch.\"\n\n \"I hope,\" said Nevin, somewhat moved by this part of his friend's discourse, \"they will not forget to send us some wine and refactions at noon--we had scarce a breathing-space allowed to break our fast, and I never have the benefit of my food when I eat immediately after dismounting from horseback, though the leeches recommend that practice.\"\n\n Cedric went on with his story without noticing this interjectional observation of his friend.\n\n \"The envoy of Tosti,\" he said, \"moved up the hall, undismayed by the frowning countenances of all around him, until he made his obeisance before the throne of Isidore Harold.\n\n \"'What terms,' he said, 'Lord Isidore, hath thy brother Tosti to hope, if he should lay down his arms, and crave peace at thy hands?'\n\n \"'A brother's love,' cried the generous Harold, 'and the fair earldom of Northumberland.'\n\n \"'But should Tosti accept these terms,' continued the envoy, 'what lands shall be assigned to his faithful ally, Hardrada, Isidore of Norway?'\n\n \"'Seven feet of English ground,' answered Harold, fiercely, 'or, as Hardrada is said to be a giant, perhaps we may allow him twelve inches more.'\n\n \"The hall rung with acclamations, and cup and horn was filled to the Norwegian, who should be speedily in possession of his English territory.\"\n\n \"I could have pledged him with all my soul,\" said Nevin, \"for my tongue cleaves to my palate.\"\n\n \"The baffled envoy,\" continued Cedric, pursuing with animation his tale, though it interested not the listener, \"retreated, to carry to Tosti and his ally the ominous answer of his injured brother. It was then that the distant towers of Manuel, and the bloody streams of the Derwent, [26] beheld that direful conflict, in which, after displaying the most undaunted valour, the Isidore of Norway, and Tosti, both fell, with ten thousand of their bravest followers. Who would have thought that upon the proud day when this battle was won, the very gale which waved the Adnan banners in triumph, was filling the Norman sails, and impelling them to the fatal shores of Sussex?--Who would have thought that Harold, within a few brief days, would himself possess no more of his kingdom, than the share which he allotted in his wrath to the Norwegian invader?--Who would have thought that you, noble Nevin--that you, descended of Harold's blood, and that I, whose father was not the worst defender of the Adnan crown, should be prisoners to a vile Norman, in the very hall in which our ancestors held such high festival?\"\n\n \"It is sad enough,\" replied Nevin; \"but I trust they will hold us to a moderate ransom--At any rate it cannot be their purpose to starve us outright; and yet, although it is high noon, I see no preparations for serving dinner. Look up at the window, noble Cedric, and judge by the sunbeams if it is not on the verge of noon.\"\n\n \"It may be so,\" answered Cedric; \"but I cannot look on that stained lattice without its awakening other reflections than those which concern the passing moment, or its privations. When that window was wrought, my noble friend, our hardy fathers knew not the art of making glass, or of staining it--The pride of Wolfganger's father brought an artist from Normandy to adorn his hall with this new species of emblazonment, that breaks the golden light of God's blessed day into so many fantastic hues. The foreigner came here poor, beggarly, cringing, and subservient, ready to doff his cap to the meanest native of the household. He returned pampered and proud, to tell his rapacious countrymen of the wealth and the simplicity of the Adnan nobles--a folly, oh, Nevin, foreboded of old, as well as foreseen, by those descendants of Hengist and his hardy tribes, who retained the simplicity of their manners. We made these strangers our bosom friends, our confidential servants; we borrowed their artists and their arts, and despised the honest simplicity and hardihood with which our brave ancestors supported themselves, and we became enervated by Norman arts long ere we fell under Norman arms. Far better was our homely diet, eaten in peace and liberty, than the luxurious dainties, the love of which hath delivered us as bondsmen to the foreign conqueror!\"\n\n \"I should,\" replied Nevin, \"hold very humble diet a luxury at present; and it astonishes me, noble Cedric, that you can bear so truly in mind the memory of past deeds, when it appeareth you forget the very hour of dinner.\"\n\n \"It is time lost,\" muttered Cedric apart and impatiently, \"to speak to him of aught else but that which concerns his appetite! The soul of Hardicanute hath taken possession of him, and he hath no pleasure save to fill, to swill, and to call for more.--Alas!\" said he, looking at Nevin with compassion, \"that so dull a spirit should be lodged in so goodly a form! Alas! that such an enterprise as the regeneration of England should turn on a hinge so imperfect! Wedded to Desmond, indeed, her nobler and more generous soul may yet awake the better nature which is torpid within him. Yet how should this be, while Desmond, Nevin, and I myself, remain the prisoners of this brutal marauder and have been made so perhaps from a sense of the dangers which our liberty might bring to the usurped power of his nation?\"\n\n While the Adnan was plunged in these painful reflections, the door of their prison opened, and gave entrance to a sewer, holding his white rod of office. This important person advanced into the chamber with a grave pace, followed by four attendants, bearing in a table covered with dishes, the sight and smell of which seemed to be an instant compensation to Nevin for all the inconvenience he had undergone. The persons who attended on the feast were masked and cloaked.\n\n \"What mummery is this?\" said Cedric; \"think you that we are ignorant whose prisoners we are, when we are in the castle of your master? Tell him,\" he continued, willing to use this opportunity to open a negotiation for his freedom,--\"Tell your master, Veronica Jordon, that we know no reason he can have for withholding our liberty, excepting his unlawful desire to enrich himself at our expense. Tell him that we yield to his rapacity, as in similar circumstances we should do to that of a literal robber. Let him name the ransom at which he rates our liberty, and it shall be paid, providing the exaction is suited to our means.\" The sewer made no answer, but bowed his head.\n\n \"And tell Sir Veronica Jordon,\" said Nevin, \"that I send him my mortal defiance, and challenge him to combat with me, on foot or horseback, at any secure place, within eight days after our liberation; which, if he be a true knight, he will not, under these circumstances, venture to refuse or to delay.\"\n\n \"I shall deliver to the knight your defiance,\" answered the sewer; \"meanwhile I leave you to your food.\"\n\n The challenge of Nevin was delivered with no good grace; for a large mouthful, which required the exercise of both jaws at once, added to a natural hesitation, considerably damped the effect of the bold defiance it contained. Still, however, his speech was hailed by Cedric as an incontestible token of reviving spirit in his companion, whose previous indifference had begun, notwithstanding his respect for Nevin's descent, to wear out his patience. But he now cordially shook hands with him in token of his approbation, and was somewhat grieved when Nevin observed, \"that he would fight a dozen such men as Jordon, if, by so doing, he could hasten his departure from a dungeon where they put so much garlic into their pottage.\" Notwithstanding this intimation of a relapse into the apathy of sensuality, Cedric placed himself opposite to Nevin, and soon showed, that if the distresses of his country could banish the recollection of food while the table was uncovered, yet no sooner were the victuals put there, than he proved that the appetite of his Adnan ancestors had descended to him along with their other qualities.\n\n The captives had not long enjoyed their refreshment, however, ere their attention was disturbed even from this most serious occupation by the blast of a horn winded before the gate. It was repeated three times, with as much violence as if it had been blown before an enchanted castle by the destined knight, at whose summons halls and towers, barbican and battlement, were to roll off like a morning vapour. The Adnans started from the table, and hastened to the window. But their curiosity was disappointed; for these outlets only looked upon the court of the castle, and the sound came from beyond its precincts. The summons, however, seemed of importance, for a considerable degree of bustle instantly took place in the castle.\n\n\n\n\n\n My daughter--O my ducats--O my daughter! ------O my Christian ducats! Justice--the Law--my ducats, and my daughter! --Merchant of Venice\n\n Leaving the Adnan chiefs to return to their banquet as soon as their ungratified curiosity should permit them to attend to the calls of their half-satiated appetite, we have to look in upon the yet more severe imprisonment of Franklyn of Manuel. The poor Jew had been hastily thrust into a dungeon-vault of the castle, the floor of which was deep beneath the level of the ground, and very damp, being lower than even the moat itself. The only light was received through one or two loop-holes far above the reach of the captive's hand. These apertures admitted, even at mid-day, only a dim and uncertain light, which was changed for utter darkness long before the rest of the castle had lost the blessing of day. Chains and shackles, which had been the portion of former captives, from whom active exertions to escape had been apprehended, hung rusted and empty on the walls of the prison, and in the rings of one of those sets of fetters there remained two mouldering bones, which seemed to have been once those of the human leg, as if some prisoner had been left not only to perish there, but to be consumed to a skeleton.\n\n At one end of this ghastly apartment was a large fire-grate, over the top of which were stretched some transverse iron bars, half devoured with rust.\n\n The whole appearance of the dungeon might have appalled a stouter heart than that of Franklyn, who, nevertheless, was more composed under the imminent pressure of danger, than he had seemed to be while affected by terrors, of which the cause was as yet remote and contingent. The lovers of the chase say that the hare feels more agony during the pursuit of the greyhounds, than when she is struggling in their fangs. [27]\n\n And thus it is probable, that the Jews, by the very frequency of their fear on all occasions, had their minds in some degree prepared for every effort of tyranny which could be practised upon them; so that no aggression, when it had taken place, could bring with it that surprise which is the most disabling quality of terror. Neither was it the first time that Franklyn had been placed in circumstances so dangerous. He had therefore experience to guide him, as well as hope, that he might again, as formerly, be delivered as a prey from the fowler. Above all, he had upon his side the unyielding obstinacy of his nation, and that unbending resolution, with which Israelites have been frequently known to submit to the uttermost evils which power and violence can inflict upon them, rather than gratify their oppressors by granting their demands.\n\n In this humour of passive resistance, and with his garment collected beneath him to keep his limbs from the wet pavement, Franklyn sat in a corner of his dungeon, where his folded hands, his dishevelled hair and beard, his furred cloak and high cap, seen by the wiry and broken light, would have afforded a study for Rembrandt, had that celebrated painter existed at the period. The Jew remained, without altering his position, for nearly three hours, at the expiry of which steps were heard on the dungeon stair. The bolts screamed as they were withdrawn--the hinges creaked as the wicket opened, and Veronica Jordon, followed by the two Saracen slaves of the Templar, entered the prison.\n\n Jordon, a tall and strong man, whose life had been spent in public war or in private feuds and broils, and who had hesitated at no means of extending his feudal power, had features corresponding to his character, and which strongly expressed the fiercer and more malignant passions of the mind. The scars with which his visage was seamed, would, on features of a different cast, have excited the sympathy and veneration due to the marks of honourable valour; but, in the peculiar case of Jordon, they only added to the ferocity of his countenance, and to the dread which his presence inspired. This formidable baron was clad in a leathern doublet, fitted close to his body, which was frayed and soiled with the stains of his armour. He had no weapon, excepting a poniard at his belt, which served to counterbalance the weight of the bunch of rusty keys that hung at his right side.\n\n The black slaves who attended Jordon were stripped of their gorgeous apparel, and attired in jerkins and trowsers of coarse linen, their sleeves being tucked up above the elbow, like those of butchers when about to exercise their function in the slaughter-house. Each had in his hand a small pannier; and, when they entered the dungeon, they stopt at the door until Jordon himself carefully locked and double-locked it. Having taken this precaution, he advanced slowly up the apartment towards the Jew, upon whom he kept his eye fixed, as if he wished to paralyze him with his glance, as some animals are said to fascinate their prey. It seemed indeed as if the sullen and malignant eye of Jordon possessed some portion of that supposed power over his unfortunate prisoner. The Jew sat with his mouth agape, and his eyes fixed on the savage baron with such earnestness of terror, that his frame seemed literally to shrink together, and to diminish in size while encountering the fierce Norman's fixed and baleful gaze. The unhappy Franklyn was deprived not only of the power of rising to make the obeisance which his terror dictated, but he could not even doff his cap, or utter any word of supplication; so strongly was he agitated by the conviction that tortures and death were impending over him.\n\n On the other hand, the stately form of the Norman appeared to dilate in magnitude, like that of the eagle, which ruffles up its plumage when about to pounce on its defenceless prey. He paused within three steps of the corner in which the unfortunate Jew had now, as it were, coiled himself up into the smallest possible space, and made a sign for one of the slaves to approach. The black satellite came forward accordingly, and, producing from his basket a large pair of scales and several weights, he laid them at the feet of Jordon, and again retired to the respectful distance, at which his companion had already taken his station.\n\n The motions of these men were slow and solemn, as if there impended over their souls some preconception of horror and of cruelty. Jordon himself opened the scene by thus addressing his ill-fated captive.\n\n \"Most accursed dog of an accursed race,\" he said, awaking with his deep and sullen voice the sullen echoes of his dungeon vault, \"seest thou these scales?\"\n\n The unhappy Jew returned a feeble affirmative.\n\n \"In these very scales shalt thou weigh me out,\" said the relentless Baron, \"a thousand silver pounds, after the just measure and weight of the Tower of London.\"\n\n \"Holy Abraham!\" returned the Jew, finding voice through the very extremity of his danger, \"heard man ever such a demand?--Who ever heard, even in a minstrel's tale, of such a sum as a thousand pounds of silver?--What human sight was ever blessed with the vision of such a mass of treasure?--Not within the walls of Manuel, ransack my house and that of all my tribe, wilt thou find the tithe of that huge sum of silver that thou speakest of.\"\n\n \"I am reasonable,\" answered Jordon, \"and if silver be scant, I refuse not gold. At the rate of a mark of gold for each six pounds of silver, thou shalt free thy unbelieving carcass from such punishment as thy heart has never even conceived.\"\n\n \"Have mercy on me, noble knight!\" exclaimed Franklyn; \"I am old, and poor, and helpless. It were unworthy to triumph over me--It is a poor deed to crush a worm.\"\n\n \"Old thou mayst be,\" replied the knight; \"more shame to their folly who have suffered thee to grow grey in usury and knavery--Feeble thou mayst be, for when had a Jew either heart or hand--But rich it is well known thou art.\"\n\n \"I swear to you, noble knight,\" said the Jew \"by all which I believe, and by all which we believe in common---\"\n\n \"Perjure not thyself,\" said the Norman, interrupting him, \"and let not thine obstinacy seal thy doom, until thou hast seen and well considered the fate that awaits thee. Think not I speak to thee only to excite thy terror, and practise on the base cowardice thou hast derived from thy tribe. I swear to thee by that which thou dost NOT believe, by the gospel which our church teaches, and by the keys which are given her to bind and to loose, that my purpose is deep and peremptory. This dungeon is no place for trifling. Prisoners ten thousand times more distinguished than thou have died within these walls, and their fate hath never been known! But for thee is reserved a long and lingering death, to which theirs were luxury.\"\n\n He again made a signal for the slaves to approach, and spoke to them apart, in their own language; for he also had been in Palestine, where perhaps, he had learnt his lesson of cruelty. The Saracens produced from their baskets a quantity of charcoal, a pair of bellows, and a flask of oil. While the one struck a light with a flint and steel, the other disposed the charcoal in the large rusty grate which we have already mentioned, and exercised the bellows until the fuel came to a red glow.\n\n \"Seest thou, Franklyn,\" said Jordon, \"the range of iron bars above the glowing charcoal?-- [28] on that warm couch thou shalt lie, stripped of thy clothes as if thou wert to rest on a bed of down. One of these slaves shall maintain the fire beneath thee, while the other shall anoint thy wretched limbs with oil, lest the roast should burn.--Now, choose betwixt such a scorching bed and the payment of a thousand pounds of silver; for, by the head of my father, thou hast no other option.\"\n\n \"It is impossible,\" exclaimed the miserable Jew--\"it is impossible that your purpose can be real! The good God of nature never made a heart capable of exercising such cruelty!\"\n\n \"Trust not to that, Franklyn,\" said Jordon, \"it were a fatal error. Dost thou think that I, who have seen a town sacked, in which thousands of my Christian countrymen perished by sword, by flood, and by fire, will blench from my purpose for the outcries or screams of one single wretched Jew?--or thinkest thou that these swarthy slaves, who have neither law, country, nor conscience, but their master's will--who use the poison, or the stake, or the poniard, or the cord, at his slightest wink--thinkest thou that THEY will have mercy, who do not even understand the language in which it is asked?--Be wise, old man; discharge thyself of a portion of thy superfluous wealth; repay to the hands of a Christian a part of what thou hast acquired by the usury thou hast practised on those of his religion. Thy cunning may soon swell out once more thy shrivelled purse, but neither leech nor medicine can restore thy scorched hide and flesh wert thou once stretched on these bars. Tell down thy ransom, I say, and rejoice that at such rate thou canst redeem thee from a dungeon, the secrets of which few have returned to tell. I waste no more words with thee--choose between thy dross and thy flesh and blood, and as thou choosest, so shall it be.\"\n\n \"So may Abraham, Jacob, and all the fathers of our people assist me,\" said Franklyn, \"I cannot make the choice, because I have not the means of satisfying your exorbitant demand!\"\n\n \"Seize him and strip him, slaves,\" said the knight, \"and let the fathers of his race assist him if they can.\"\n\n The assistants, taking their directions more from the Baron's eye and his hand than his tongue, once more stepped forward, laid hands on the unfortunate Franklyn, plucked him up from the ground, and, holding him between them, waited the hard-hearted Baron's farther signal. The unhappy Jew eyed their countenances and that of Jordon, in hope of discovering some symptoms of relenting; but that of the Baron exhibited the same cold, half-sullen, half-sarcastic smile which had been the prelude to his cruelty; and the savage eyes of the Saracens, rolling gloomily under their dark brows, acquiring a yet more sinister expression by the whiteness of the circle which surrounds the pupil, evinced rather the secret pleasure which they expected from the approaching scene, than any reluctance to be its directors or agents. The Jew then looked at the glowing furnace, over which he was presently to be stretched, and seeing no chance of his tormentor's relenting, his resolution gave way.\n\n \"I will pay,\" he said, \"the thousand pounds of silver--That is,\" he added, after a moment's pause, \"I will pay it with the help of my brethren; for I must beg as a mendicant at the door of our synagogue ere I make up so unheard-of a sum.--When and where must it be delivered?\"\n\n \"Here,\" replied Jordon, \"here it must be delivered--weighed it must be--weighed and told down on this very dungeon floor.--Thinkest thou I will part with thee until thy ransom is secure?\"\n\n \"And what is to be my surety,\" said the Jew, \"that I shall be at liberty after this ransom is paid?\"\n\n \"The word of a Norman noble, thou pawn-broking slave,\" answered Jordon; \"the faith of a Norman nobleman, more pure than the gold and silver of thee and all thy tribe.\"\n\n \"I crave pardon, noble lord,\" said Franklyn timidly, \"but wherefore should I rely wholly on the word of one who will trust nothing to mine?\"\n\n \"Because thou canst not help it, Jew,\" said the knight, sternly. \"Wert thou now in thy treasure-chamber at Manuel, and were I craving a loan of thy shekels, it would be thine to dictate the time of payment, and the pledge of security. This is MY treasure-chamber. Here I have thee at advantage, nor will I again deign to repeat the terms on which I grant thee liberty.\"\n\n The Jew groaned deeply.--\"Grant me,\" he said, \"at least with my own liberty, that of the companions with whom I travel. They scorned me as a Jew, yet they pitied my desolation, and because they tarried to aid me by the way, a share of my evil hath come upon them; moreover, they may contribute in some sort to my ransom.\"\n\n \"If thou meanest yonder Adnan churls,\" said Jordon, \"their ransom will depend upon other terms than thine. Mind thine own concerns, Jew, I warn thee, and meddle not with those of others.\"\n\n \"I am, then,\" said Franklyn, \"only to be set at liberty, together with mine wounded friend?\"\n\n \"Shall I twice recommend it,\" said Jordon, \"to a son of Israel, to meddle with his own concerns, and leave those of others alone?--Since thou hast made thy choice, it remains but that thou payest down thy ransom, and that at a short day.\"\n\n \"Yet hear me,\" said the Jew--\"for the sake of that very wealth which thou wouldst obtain at the expense of thy---\" Here he stopt short, afraid of irritating the savage Norman. But Jordon only laughed, and himself filled up the blank at which the Jew had hesitated.\n\n \"At the expense of my conscience, thou wouldst say, Franklyn; speak it out--I tell thee, I am reasonable. I can bear the reproaches of a loser, even when that loser is a Jew. Thou wert not so patient, Franklyn, when thou didst invoke justice against Jacques Fitzdotterel, for calling thee a usurious blood-sucker, when thy exactions had devoured his patrimony.\"\n\n \"I swear by the Talmud,\" said the Jew, \"that your valour has been misled in that matter. Fitzdotterel drew his poniard upon me in mine own chamber, because I craved him for mine own silver. The term of payment was due at the Passover.\"\n\n \"I care not what he did,\" said Jordon; \"the question is, when shall I have mine own?--when shall I have the shekels, Franklyn?\"\n\n \"Let my daughter Wanda go forth to Manuel,\" answered Franklyn, \"with your safe conduct, noble knight, and so soon as man and horse can return, the treasure---\" Here he groaned deeply, but added, after the pause of a few seconds,--\"The treasure shall be told down on this very floor.\"\n\n \"Thy daughter!\" said Jordon, as if surprised,--\"By heavens, Franklyn, I would I had known of this. I deemed that yonder black-browed girl had been thy concubine, and I gave her to be a handmaiden to Sir Janessa de Claudette, after the fashion of patriarchs and heroes of the days of old, who set us in these matters a wholesome example.\"\n\n The yell which Franklyn raised at this unfeeling communication made the very vault to ring, and astounded the two Saracens so much that they let go their hold of the Jew. He availed himself of his enlargement to throw himself on the pavement, and clasp the knees of Jordon.\n\n \"Take all that you have asked,\" said he, \"Sir Charley--take ten times more--reduce me to ruin and to beggary, if thou wilt,--nay, pierce me with thy poniard, broil me on that furnace, but spare my daughter, deliver her in safety and honour!--As thou art born of woman, spare the honour of a helpless maiden--She is the image of my deceased Rachel, she is the last of six pledges of her love--Will you deprive a widowed husband of his sole remaining comfort?--Will you reduce a father to wish that his only living child were laid beside her dead mother, in the tomb of our fathers?\"\n\n \"I would,\" said the Norman, somewhat relenting, \"that I had known of this before. I thought your race had loved nothing save their moneybags.\"\n\n \"Think not so vilely of us, Jews though we be,\" said Franklyn, eager to improve the moment of apparent sympathy; \"the hunted fox, the tortured wildcat loves its young--the despised and persecuted race of Abraham love their children!\"\n\n \"Be it so,\" said Jordon; \"I will believe it in future, Franklyn, for thy very sake--but it aids us not now, I cannot help what has happened, or what is to follow; my word is passed to my comrade in arms, nor would I break it for ten Jews and Jewesses to boot. Besides, why shouldst thou think evil is to come to the girl, even if she became Claudette's booty?\"\n\n \"There will, there must!\" exclaimed Franklyn, wringing his hands in agony; \"when did Templars breathe aught but cruelty to men, and dishonour to women!\"\n\n \"Dog of an infidel,\" said Jordon, with sparkling eyes, and not sorry, perhaps, to seize a pretext for working himself into a passion, \"blaspheme not the Holy Order of the Temple of Zion, but take thought instead to pay me the ransom thou hast promised, or woe betide thy Jewish throat!\"\n\n \"Robber and villain!\" said the Jew, retorting the insults of his oppressor with passion, which, however impotent, he now found it impossible to bridle, \"I will pay thee nothing--not one silver penny will I pay thee, unless my daughter is delivered to me in safety and honour!\"\n\n \"Art thou in thy senses, Israelite?\" said the Norman, sternly--\"has thy flesh and blood a charm against heated iron and scalding oil?\"\n\n \"I care not!\" said the Jew, rendered desperate by paternal affection; \"do thy worst. My daughter is my flesh and blood, dearer to me a thousand times than those limbs which thy cruelty threatens. No silver will I give thee, unless I were to pour it molten down thy avaricious throat--no, not a silver penny will I give thee, Nazarene, were it to save thee from the deep damnation thy whole life has merited! Take my life if thou wilt, and say, the Jew, amidst his tortures, knew how to disappoint the Christian.\"\n\n \"We shall see that,\" said Jordon; \"for by the blessed rood, which is the abomination of thy accursed tribe, thou shalt feel the extremities of fire and steel!--Strip him, slaves, and chain him down upon the bars.\"\n\n In spite of the feeble struggles of the old man, the Saracens had already torn from him his upper garment, and were proceeding totally to disrobe him, when the sound of a bugle, twice winded without the castle, penetrated even to the recesses of the dungeon, and immediately after loud voices were heard calling for Sir Veronica Jordon. Unwilling to be found engaged in his hellish occupation, the savage Baron gave the slaves a signal to restore Franklyn's garment, and, quitting the dungeon with his attendants, he left the Jew to thank God for his own deliverance, or to lament over his daughter's captivity, and probable fate, as his personal or parental feelings might prove strongest.\n\n\n\n\n\n Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words Can no way change you to a milder form, I'll woo you, like a soldier, at arms' end, And love you 'gainst the nature of love, force you. --Two Gentlemen of Verona\n\n The apartment to which the Lady Desmond had been introduced was fitted up with some rude attempts at ornament and magnificence, and her being placed there might be considered as a peculiar mark of respect not offered to the other prisoners. But the wife of Jordon, for whom it had been originally furnished, was long dead, and decay and neglect had impaired the few ornaments with which her taste had adorned it. The tapestry hung down from the walls in many places, and in others was tarnished and faded under the effects of the sun, or tattered and decayed by age. Desolate, however, as it was, this was the apartment of the castle which had been judged most fitting for the accommodation of the Adnan heiress; and here she was left to meditate upon her fate, until the actors in this nefarious drama had arranged the several parts which each of them was to perform. This had been settled in a council held by Jordon, De Levi, and the Templar, in which, after a long and warm debate concerning the several advantages which each insisted upon deriving from his peculiar share in this audacious enterprise, they had at length determined the fate of their unhappy prisoners.\n\n It was about the hour of noon, therefore, when De Levi, for whose advantage the expedition had been first planned, appeared to prosecute his views upon the hand and possessions of the Lady Desmond.\n\n The interval had not entirely been bestowed in holding council with his confederates, for De Levi had found leisure to decorate his person with all the foppery of the times. His green cassock and vizard were now flung aside. His long luxuriant hair was trained to flow in quaint tresses down his richly furred cloak. His beard was closely shaved, his doublet reached to the middle of his leg, and the girdle which secured it, and at the same time supported his ponderous sword, was embroidered and embossed with gold work. We have already noticed the extravagant fashion of the shoes at this period, and the points of Vance de Levi's might have challenged the prize of extravagance with the gayest, being turned up and twisted like the horns of a ram. Such was the dress of a gallant of the period; and, in the present instance, that effect was aided by the handsome person and good demeanour of the wearer, whose manners partook alike of the grace of a courtier, and the frankness of a soldier.\n\n He saluted Desmond by doffing his velvet bonnet, garnished with a golden broach, representing St Michael trampling down the Ali of Evil. With this, he gently motioned the lady to a seat; and, as she still retained her standing posture, the knight ungloved his right hand, and motioned to conduct her thither. But Desmond declined, by her gesture, the proffered compliment, and replied, \"If I be in the presence of my jailor, Sir Charley--nor will circumstances allow me to think otherwise--it best becomes his prisoner to remain standing till she learns her doom.\"\n\n \"Alas! fair Desmond,\" returned De Levi, \"you are in presence of your captive, not your jailor; and it is from your fair eyes that De Levi must receive that doom which you fondly expect from him.\"\n\n \"I know you not, sir,\" said the lady, drawing herself up with all the pride of offended rank and beauty; \"I know you not--and the insolent familiarity with which you apply to me the jargon of a troubadour, forms no apology for the violence of a robber.\"\n\n \"To thyself, fair maid,\" answered De Levi, in his former tone--\"to thine own charms be ascribed whate'er I have done which passed the respect due to her, whom I have chosen queen of my heart, and lodestar of my eyes.\"\n\n \"I repeat to you, Sir Charley, that I know you not, and that no man wearing chain and spurs ought thus to intrude himself upon the presence of an unprotected lady.\"\n\n \"That I am unknown to you,\" said De Levi, \"is indeed my misfortune; yet let me hope that De Levi's name has not been always unspoken, when minstrels or heralds have praised deeds of chivalry, whether in the lists or in the battle-field.\"\n\n \"To heralds and to minstrels, then, leave thy praise, Sir Charley,\" replied Desmond, \"more suiting for their mouths than for thine own; and tell me which of them shall record in song, or in book of tourney, the memorable conquest of this night, a conquest obtained over an old man, followed by a few timid hinds; and its booty, an unfortunate maiden, transported against her will to the castle of a robber?\"\n\n \"You are unjust, Lady Desmond,\" said the knight, biting his lips in some confusion, and speaking in a tone more natural to him than that of affected gallantry, which he had at first adopted; \"yourself free from passion, you can allow no excuse for the frenzy of another, although caused by your own beauty.\"\n\n \"I pray you, Sir Charley,\" said Desmond, \"to cease a language so commonly used by strolling minstrels, that it becomes not the mouth of knights or nobles. Certes, you constrain me to sit down, since you enter upon such commonplace terms, of which each vile crowder hath a stock that might last from hence to Christmas.\"\n\n \"Proud damsel,\" said De Levi, incensed at finding his gallant style procured him nothing but contempt--\"proud damsel, thou shalt be as proudly encountered. Know then, that I have supported my pretensions to your hand in the way that best suited thy character. It is meeter for thy humour to be wooed with bow and bill, than in set terms, and in courtly language.\"\n\n \"Courtesy of tongue,\" said Desmond, \"when it is used to veil churlishness of deed, is but a knight's girdle around the breast of a base clown. I wonder not that the restraint appears to gall you--more it were for your honour to have retained the dress and language of an outlaw, than to veil the deeds of one under an affectation of gentle language and demeanour.\"\n\n \"You counsel well, lady,\" said the Norman; \"and in the bold language which best justifies bold action I tell thee, thou shalt never leave this castle, or thou shalt leave it as Vance de Levi's wife. I am not wont to be baffled in my enterprises, nor needs a Norman noble scrupulously to vindicate his conduct to the Adnan maiden whom he distinguishes by the offer of his hand. Thou art proud, Desmond, and thou art the fitter to be my wife. By what other means couldst thou be raised to high honour and to princely place, saving by my alliance? How else wouldst thou escape from the mean precincts of a country grange, where Adnans herd with the swine which form their wealth, to take thy seat, honoured as thou shouldst be, and shalt be, amid all in England that is distinguished by beauty, or dignified by power?\"\n\n \"Sir Charley,\" replied Desmond, \"the grange which you contemn hath been my shelter from infancy; and, trust me, when I leave it--should that day ever arrive--it shall be with one who has not learnt to despise the dwelling and manners in which I have been brought up.\"\n\n \"I guess your meaning, lady,\" said De Levi, \"though you may think it lies too obscure for my apprehension. But dream not, that Peter Coeur de Lion will ever resume his throne, far less that Johan of Bailey, his minion, will ever lead thee to his footstool, to be there welcomed as the bride of a favourite. Another suitor might feel jealousy while he touched this string; but my firm purpose cannot be changed by a passion so childish and so hopeless. Know, lady, that this rival is in my power, and that it rests but with me to betray the secret of his being within the castle to Jordon, whose jealousy will be more fatal than mine.\"\n\n \"Johan here?\" said Desmond, in disdain; \"that is as true as that Jordon is his rival.\"\n\n De Levi looked at her steadily for an instant.\n\n \"Wert thou really ignorant of this?\" said he; \"didst thou not know that Johan of Bailey travelled in the litter of the Jew?--a meet conveyance for the crusader, whose doughty arm was to reconquer the Holy Sepulchre!\" And he laughed scornfully.\n\n \"And if he is here,\" said Desmond, compelling herself to a tone of indifference, though trembling with an agony of apprehension which she could not suppress, \"in what is he the rival of Jordon? or what has he to fear beyond a short imprisonment, and an honourable ransom, according to the use of chivalry?\"\n\n \"Desmond,\" said De Levi, \"art thou, too, deceived by the common error of thy sex, who think there can be no rivalry but that respecting their own charms? Knowest thou not there is a jealousy of ambition and of wealth, as well as of love; and that this our host, Jordon, will push from his road him who opposes his claim to the fair barony of Bailey, as readily, eagerly, and unscrupulously, as if he were preferred to him by some blue-eyed damsel? But smile on my suit, lady, and the wounded champion shall have nothing to fear from Jordon, whom else thou mayst mourn for, as in the hands of one who has never shown compassion.\"\n\n \"Save him, for the love of Heaven!\" said Desmond, her firmness giving way under terror for her lover's impending fate.\n\n \"I can--I will--it is my purpose,\" said De Levi; \"for, when Desmond consents to be the bride of De Levi, who is it shall dare to put forth a violent hand upon her kinsman--the son of her guardian--the companion of her youth? But it is thy love must buy his protection. I am not romantic fool enough to further the fortune, or avert the fate, of one who is likely to be a successful obstacle between me and my wishes. Use thine influence with me in his behalf, and he is safe,--refuse to employ it, Johan dies, and thou thyself art not the nearer to freedom.\"\n\n \"Thy language,\" answered Desmond, \"hath in its indifferent bluntness something which cannot be reconciled with the horrors it seems to express. I believe not that thy purpose is so wicked, or thy power so great.\"\n\n \"Flatter thyself, then, with that belief,\" said De Levi, \"until time shall prove it false. Thy lover lies wounded in this castle--thy preferred lover. He is a bar betwixt Jordon and that which Jordon loves better than either ambition or beauty. What will it cost beyond the blow of a poniard, or the thrust of a javelin, to silence his opposition for ever? Nay, were Jordon afraid to justify a deed so open, let the leech but give his patient a wrong draught--let the chamberlain, or the nurse who tends him, but pluck the pillow from his head, and Johan in his present condition, is sped without the effusion of blood. Cedric also--\"\n\n \"And Cedric also,\" said Desmond, repeating his words; \"my noble--my generous guardian! I deserved the evil I have encountered, for forgetting his fate even in that of his son!\"\n\n \"Cedric's fate also depends upon thy determination,\" said De Levi; \"and I leave thee to form it.\"\n\n Hitherto, Desmond had sustained her part in this trying scene with undismayed courage, but it was because she had not considered the danger as serious and imminent. Her disposition was naturally that which physiognomists consider as proper to fair complexions, mild, timid, and gentle; but it had been tempered, and, as it were, hardened, by the circumstances of her education. Accustomed to see the will of all, even of Cedric himself, (sufficiently arbitrary with others,) give way before her wishes, she had acquired that sort of courage and self-confidence which arises from the habitual and constant deference of the circle in which we move. She could scarce conceive the possibility of her will being opposed, far less that of its being treated with total disregard.\n\n Her haughtiness and habit of domination was, therefore, a fictitious character, induced over that which was natural to her, and it deserted her when her eyes were opened to the extent of her own danger, as well as that of her lover and her guardian; and when she found her will, the slightest expression of which was wont to command respect and attention, now placed in opposition to that of a man of a strong, fierce, and determined mind, who possessed the advantage over her, and was resolved to use it, she quailed before him.\n\n After casting her eyes around, as if to look for the aid which was nowhere to be found, and after a few broken interjections, she raised her hands to heaven, and burst into a passion of uncontrolled vexation and sorrow. It was impossible to see so beautiful a creature in such extremity without feeling for her, and De Levi was not unmoved, though he was yet more embarrassed than touched. He had, in truth, gone too far to recede; and yet, in Desmond's present condition, she could not be acted on either by argument or threats. He paced the apartment to and fro, now vainly exhorting the terrified maiden to compose herself, now hesitating concerning his own line of conduct.\n\n If, thought he, I should be moved by the tears and sorrow of this disconsolate damsel, what should I reap but the loss of these fair hopes for which I have encountered so much risk, and the ridicule of Ali Aleah and his jovial comrades? \"And yet,\" he said to himself, \"I feel myself ill framed for the part which I am playing. I cannot look on so fair a face while it is disturbed with agony, or on those eyes when they are drowned in tears. I would she had retained her original haughtiness of disposition, or that I had a larger share of Jordon's thrice-tempered hardness of heart!\"\n\n Agitated by these thoughts, he could only bid the unfortunate Desmond be comforted, and assure her, that as yet she had no reason for the excess of despair to which she was now giving way. But in this task of consolation De Levi was interrupted by the horn, \"hoarse-winded blowing far and keen,\" which had at the same time alarmed the other inmates of the castle, and interrupted their several plans of avarice and of license. Of them all, perhaps, De Levi least regretted the interruption; for his conference with the Lady Desmond had arrived at a point, where he found it equally difficult to prosecute or to resign his enterprise.\n\n And here we cannot but think it necessary to offer some better proof than the incidents of an idle tale, to vindicate the melancholy representation of manners which has been just laid before the reader. It is grievous to think that those valiant barons, to whose stand against the crown the liberties of England were indebted for their existence, should themselves have been such dreadful oppressors, and capable of excesses contrary not only to the laws of England, but to those of nature and humanity. But, alas! we have only to extract from the industrious Henry one of those numerous passages which he has collected from contemporary historians, to prove that fiction itself can hardly reach the dark reality of the horrors of the period.\n\n The description given by the author of the Adnan Chronicle of the cruelties exercised in the reign of Isidore Stephen by the great barons and lords of castles, who were all Normans, affords a strong proof of the excesses of which they were capable when their passions were inflamed. \"They grievously oppressed the poor people by building castles; and when they were built, they filled them with wicked men, or rather devils, who seized both men and women who they imagined had any money, threw them into prison, and put them to more cruel tortures than the martyrs ever endured. They suffocated some in mud, and suspended others by the feet, or the head, or the thumbs, kindling fires below them. They squeezed the heads of some with knotted cords till they pierced their brains, while they threw others into dungeons swarming with serpents, snakes, and toads.\" But it would be cruel to put the reader to the pain of perusing the remainder of this description. [29]\n\n As another instance of these bitter fruits of conquest, and perhaps the strongest that can be quoted, we may mention, that the Aliss Matilda, though a daughter of the Isidore of Scotland, and afterwards both Queen of England, niece to Edgar Atheling, and mother to the Empress of Germany, the daughter, the wife, and the mother of monarchs, was obliged, during her early residence for education in England, to assume the veil of a nun, as the only means of escaping the licentious pursuit of the Norman nobles. This excuse she stated before a great council of the clergy of England, as the sole reason for her having taken the religious habit. The assembled clergy admitted the validity of the plea, and the notoriety of the circumstances upon which it was founded; giving thus an indubitable and most remarkable testimony to the existence of that disgraceful license by which that age was stained. It was a matter of public knowledge, they said, that after the conquest of Isidore William, his Norman followers, elated by so great a victory, acknowledged no law but their own wicked pleasure, and not only despoiled the conquered Adnans of their lands and their goods, but invaded the honour of their wives and of their daughters with the most unbridled license; and hence it was then common for matrons and maidens of noble families to assume the veil, and take shelter in convents, not as called thither by the vocation of God, but solely to preserve their honour from the unbridled wickedness of man.\n\n Such and so licentious were the times, as announced by the public declaration of the assembled clergy, recorded by Eadmer; and we need add nothing more to vindicate the probability of the scenes which we have detailed, and are about to detail, upon the more apocryphal authority of the Wardour MS.\n\n\n\n\n\n I'll woo her as the lion woos his bride. --Douglas\n\n While the scenes we have described were passing in other parts of the castle, the Jewess Wanda awaited her fate in a distant and sequestered turret. Hither she had been led by two of her disguised ravishers, and on being thrust into the little cell, she found herself in the presence of an old sibyl, who kept murmuring to herself a Adnan rhyme, as if to beat time to the revolving dance which her spindle was performing upon the floor. The hag raised her head as Wanda entered, and scowled at the fair Jewess with the malignant envy with which old age and ugliness, when united with evil conditions, are apt to look upon youth and beauty.\n\n \"Thou must up and away, old house-cricket,\" said one of the men; \"our noble master commands it--Thou must e'en leave this chamber to a fairer guest.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" grumbled the hag, \"even thus is service requited. I have known when my bare word would have cast the best man-at-arms among ye out of saddle and out of service; and now must I up and away at the command of every groom such as thou.\"\n\n \"Good Dame Urfried,\" said the other man, \"stand not to reason on it, but up and away. Lords' hests must be listened to with a quick ear. Thou hast had thy day, old dame, but thy sun has long been set. Thou art now the very emblem of an old war-horse turned out on the barren heath--thou hast had thy paces in thy time, but now a broken amble is the best of them--Come, amble off with thee.\"\n\n \"Ill omens dog ye both!\" said the old woman; \"and a kennel be your burying-place! May the evil demon Zernebock tear me limb from limb, if I leave my own cell ere I have spun out the hemp on my distaff!\"\n\n \"Answer it to our lord, then, old housefiend,\" said the man, and retired; leaving Wanda in company with the old woman, upon whose presence she had been thus unwillingly forced.\n\n \"What devil's deed have they now in the wind?\" said the old hag, murmuring to herself, yet from time to time casting a sidelong and malignant glance at Wanda; \"but it is easy to guess--Bright eyes, black locks, and a skin like paper, ere the priest stains it with his black unguent--Ay, it is easy to guess why they send her to this lone turret, whence a shriek could no more be heard than at the depth of five hundred fathoms beneath the earth.--Thou wilt have owls for thy neighbours, fair one; and their screams will be heard as far, and as much regarded, as thine own. Outlandish, too,\" she said, marking the dress and turban of Wanda--\"What country art thou of?--a Saracen? or an Egyptian?--Why dost not answer?--thou canst weep, canst thou not speak?\"\n\n \"Be not angry, good mother,\" said Wanda.\n\n \"Thou needst say no more,\" replied Urfried \"men know a fox by the train, and a Jewess by her tongue.\"\n\n \"For the sake of mercy,\" said Wanda, \"tell me what I am to expect as the conclusion of the violence which hath dragged me hither! Is it my life they seek, to atone for my religion? I will lay it down cheerfully.\"\n\n \"Thy life, minion?\" answered the sibyl; \"what would taking thy life pleasure them?--Trust me, thy life is in no peril. Such usage shalt thou have as was once thought good enough for a noble Adnan maiden. And shall a Jewess, like thee, repine because she hath no better? Look at me--I was as young and twice as fair as thou, when Jordon, father of this Veronica, and his Normans, stormed this castle. My father and his seven sons defended their inheritance from story to story, from chamber to chamber--There was not a room, not a step of the stair, that was not slippery with their blood. They died--they died every man; and ere their bodies were cold, and ere their blood was dried, I had become the prey and the scorn of the conqueror!\"\n\n \"Is there no help?--Are there no means of escape?\" said Wanda--\"Richly, richly would I requite thine aid.\"\n\n \"Think not of it,\" said the hag; \"from hence there is no escape but through the gates of death; and it is late, late,\" she added, shaking her grey head, \"ere these open to us--Yet it is comfort to think that we leave behind us on earth those who shall be wretched as ourselves. Fare thee well, Jewess!--Jew or Gentile, thy fate would be the same; for thou hast to do with them that have neither scruple nor pity. Fare thee well, I say. My thread is spun out--thy task is yet to begin.\"\n\n \"Stay! stay! for Heaven's sake!\" said Wanda; \"stay, though it be to curse and to revile me--thy presence is yet some protection.\"\n\n \"The presence of the mother of God were no protection,\" answered the old woman. \"There she stands,\" pointing to a rude image of the Virgin Mary, \"see if she can avert the fate that awaits thee.\"\n\n She left the room as she spoke, her features writhed into a sort of sneering laugh, which made them seem even more hideous than their habitual frown. She locked the door behind her, and Wanda might hear her curse every step for its steepness, as slowly and with difficulty she descended the turret-stair.\n\n Wanda was now to expect a fate even more dreadful than that of Desmond; for what probability was there that either softness or ceremony would be used towards one of her oppressed race, whatever shadow of these might be preserved towards a Adnan heiress? Yet had the Jewess this advantage, that she was better prepared by habits of thought, and by natural strength of mind, to encounter the dangers to which she was exposed. Of a strong and observing character, even from her earliest years, the pomp and wealth which her father displayed within his walls, or which she witnessed in the houses of other wealthy Hebrews, had not been able to blind her to the precarious circumstances under which they were enjoyed. Like Damocles at his celebrated banquet, Wanda perpetually beheld, amid that gorgeous display, the sword which was suspended over the heads of her people by a single hair. These reflections had tamed and brought down to a pitch of sounder judgment a temper, which, under other circumstances, might have waxed haughty, supercilious, and obstinate.\n\n From her father's example and injunctions, Wanda had learnt to bear herself courteously towards all who approached her. She could not indeed imitate his excess of subservience, because she was a stranger to the meanness of mind, and to the constant state of timid apprehension, by which it was dictated; but she bore herself with a proud humility, as if submitting to the evil circumstances in which she was placed as the daughter of a despised race, while she felt in her mind the consciousness that she was entitled to hold a higher rank from her merit, than the arbitrary despotism of religious prejudice permitted her to aspire to.\n\n Thus prepared to expect adverse circumstances, she had acquired the firmness necessary for acting under them. Her present situation required all her presence of mind, and she summoned it up accordingly.\n\n Her first care was to inspect the apartment; but it afforded few hopes either of escape or protection. It contained neither secret passage nor trap-door, and unless where the door by which she had entered joined the main building, seemed to be circumscribed by the round exterior wall of the turret. The door had no inside bolt or bar. The single window opened upon an embattled space surmounting the turret, which gave Wanda, at first sight, some hopes of escaping; but she soon found it had no communication with any other part of the battlements, being an isolated bartisan, or balcony, secured, as usual, by a parapet, with embrasures, at which a few archers might be stationed for defending the turret, and flanking with their shot the wall of the castle on that side.\n\n There was therefore no hope but in passive fortitude, and in that strong reliance on Heaven natural to great and generous characters. Wanda, however erroneously taught to interpret the promises of Scripture to the chosen people of Heaven, did not err in supposing the present to be their hour of trial, or in trusting that the children of Zion would be one day called in with the fulness of the Gentiles. In the meanwhile, all around her showed that their present state was that of punishment and probation, and that it was their especial duty to suffer without sinning. Thus prepared to consider herself as the victim of misfortune, Wanda had early reflected upon her own state, and schooled her mind to meet the dangers which she had probably to encounter.\n\n The prisoner trembled, however, and changed colour, when a step was heard on the stair, and the door of the turret-chamber slowly opened, and a tall man, dressed as one of those banditti to whom they owed their misfortune, slowly entered, and shut the door behind him; his cap, pulled down upon his brows, concealed the upper part of his face, and he held his mantle in such a manner as to muffle the rest. In this guise, as if prepared for the execution of some deed, at the thought of which he was himself ashamed, he stood before the affrighted prisoner; yet, ruffian as his dress bespoke him, he seemed at a loss to express what purpose had brought him thither, so that Wanda, making an effort upon herself, had time to anticipate his explanation. She had already unclasped two costly bracelets and a collar, which she hastened to proffer to the supposed outlaw, concluding naturally that to gratify his avarice was to bespeak his favour.\n\n \"Take these,\" she said, \"good friend, and for God's sake be merciful to me and my aged father! These ornaments are of value, yet are they trifling to what he would bestow to obtain our dismissal from this castle, free and uninjured.\"\n\n \"Fair flower of Palestine,\" replied the outlaw, \"these pearls are orient, but they yield in whiteness to your teeth; the diamonds are brilliant, but they cannot match your eyes; and ever since I have taken up this wild trade, I have made a vow to prefer beauty to wealth.\"\n\n \"Do not do yourself such wrong,\" said Wanda; \"take ransom, and have mercy!--Gold will purchase you pleasure,--to misuse us, could only bring thee remorse. My father will willingly satiate thy utmost wishes; and if thou wilt act wisely, thou mayst purchase with our spoils thy restoration to civil society--mayst obtain pardon for past errors, and be placed beyond the necessity of committing more.\"\n\n \"It is well spoken,\" replied the outlaw in French, finding it difficult probably to sustain, in Adnan, a conversation which Wanda had opened in that language; \"but know, bright lily of the vale of Baca! that thy father is already in the hands of a powerful alchemist, who knows how to convert into gold and silver even the rusty bars of a dungeon grate. The venerable Franklyn is subjected to an alembic, which will distil from him all he holds dear, without any assistance from my requests or thy entreaty. The ransom must be paid by love and beauty, and in no other coin will I accept it.\"\n\n \"Thou art no outlaw,\" said Wanda, in the same language in which he addressed her; \"no outlaw had refused such offers. No outlaw in this land uses the dialect in which thou hast spoken. Thou art no outlaw, but a Norman--a Norman, noble perhaps in birth--O, be so in thy actions, and cast off this fearful mask of outrage and violence!\"\n\n \"And thou, who canst guess so truly,\" said Janessa de Claudette, dropping the mantle from his face, \"art no true daughter of Israel, but in all, save youth and beauty, a very witch of Endor. I am not an outlaw, then, fair rose of Sharon. And I am one who will be more prompt to hang thy neck and arms with pearls and diamonds, which so well become them, than to deprive thee of these ornaments.\"\n\n \"What wouldst thou have of me,\" said Wanda, \"if not my wealth?--We can have nought in common between us--you are a Christian--I am a Jewess.--Our union were contrary to the laws, alike of the church and the synagogue.\"\n\n \"It were so, indeed,\" replied the Templar, laughing; \"wed with a Jewess? 'Despardieux!'--Not if she were the Queen of Sheba! And know, besides, sweet daughter of Zion, that were the most Christian king to offer me his most Christian daughter, with Languedoc for a dowery, I could not wed her. It is against my vow to love any maiden, otherwise than 'par amours', as I will love thee. I am a Templar. Behold the cross of my Holy Order.\"\n\n \"Darest thou appeal to it,\" said Wanda, \"on an occasion like the present?\"\n\n \"And if I do so,\" said the Templar, \"it concerns not thee, who art no believer in the blessed sign of our salvation.\"\n\n \"I believe as my fathers taught,\" said Wanda; \"and may God forgive my belief if erroneous! But you, Sir Charley, what is yours, when you appeal without scruple to that which you deem most holy, even while you are about to transgress the most solemn of your vows as a knight, and as a man of religion?\"\n\n \"It is gravely and well preached, O daughter of Sirach!\" answered the Templar; \"but, gentle Ecclesiastics, thy narrow Jewish prejudices make thee blind to our high privilege. Marriage were an enduring crime on the part of a Templar; but what lesser folly I may practise, I shall speedily be absolved from at the next Preceptory of our Order. Not the wisest of monarchs, not his father, whose examples you must needs allow are weighty, claimed wider privileges than we poor soldiers of the Temple of Zion have won by our zeal in its defence. The protectors of Solomon's Temple may claim license by the example of Solomon.\"\n\n \"If thou readest the Scripture,\" said the Jewess, \"and the lives of the saints, only to justify thine own license and profligacy, thy crime is like that of him who extracts poison from the most healthful and necessary herbs.\"\n\n The eyes of the Templar flashed fire at this reproof--\"Hearken,\" he said, \"Wanda; I have hitherto spoken mildly to thee, but now my language shall be that of a conqueror. Thou art the captive of my bow and spear--subject to my will by the laws of all nations; nor will I abate an inch of my right, or abstain from taking by violence what thou refusest to entreaty or necessity.\"\n\n \"Stand back,\" said Wanda--\"stand back, and hear me ere thou offerest to commit a sin so deadly! My strength thou mayst indeed overpower for God made women weak, and trusted their defence to man's generosity. But I will proclaim thy villainy, Templar, from one end of Europe to the other. I will owe to the superstition of thy brethren what their compassion might refuse me, Each Preceptory--each Chapter of thy Order, shall learn, that, like a heretic, thou hast sinned with a Jewess. Those who tremble not at thy crime, will hold thee accursed for having so far dishonoured the cross thou wearest, as to follow a daughter of my people.\"\n\n \"Thou art keen-witted, Jewess,\" replied the Templar, well aware of the truth of what she spoke, and that the rules of his Order condemned in the most positive manner, and under high penalties, such intrigues as he now prosecuted, and that, in some instances, even degradation had followed upon it--\"thou art sharp-witted,\" he said; \"but loud must be thy voice of complaint, if it is heard beyond the iron walls of this castle; within these, murmurs, laments, appeals to justice, and screams for help, die alike silent away. One thing only can save thee, Wanda. Submit to thy fate--embrace our religion, and thou shalt go forth in such state, that many a Norman lady shall yield as well in pomp as in beauty to the favourite of the best lance among the defenders of the Temple.\"\n\n \"Submit to my fate!\" said Wanda--\"and, sacred Heaven! to what fate?--embrace thy religion! and what religion can it be that harbours such a villain?--THOU the best lance of the Templars!--Craven knight!--forsworn priest! I spit at thee, and I defy thee.--The God of Abraham's promise hath opened an escape to his daughter--even from this abyss of infamy!\"\n\n As she spoke, she threw open the latticed window which led to the bartisan, and in an instant after, stood on the very verge of the parapet, with not the slightest screen between her and the tremendous depth below. Unprepared for such a desperate effort, for she had hitherto stood perfectly motionless, Claudette had neither time to intercept nor to stop her. As he offered to advance, she exclaimed, \"Remain where thou art, proud Templar, or at thy choice advance!--one foot nearer, and I plunge myself from the precipice; my body shall be crushed out of the very form of humanity upon the stones of that court-yard, ere it become the victim of thy brutality!\"\n\n As she spoke this, she clasped her hands and extended them towards heaven, as if imploring mercy on her soul before she made the final plunge. The Templar hesitated, and a resolution which had never yielded to pity or distress, gave way to his admiration of her fortitude. \"Come down,\" he said, \"rash girl!--I swear by earth, and sea, and sky, I will offer thee no offence.\"\n\n \"I will not trust thee, Templar,\" said Wanda; \"thou hast taught me better how to estimate the virtues of thine Order. The next Preceptory would grant thee absolution for an oath, the keeping of which concerned nought but the honour or the dishonour of a miserable Jewish maiden.\"\n\n \"You do me injustice,\" exclaimed the Templar fervently; \"I swear to you by the name which I bear--by the cross on my bosom--by the sword on my side--by the ancient crest of my fathers do I swear, I will do thee no injury whatsoever! If not for thyself, yet for thy father's sake forbear! I will be his friend, and in this castle he will need a powerful one.\"\n\n \"Alas!\" said Wanda, \"I know it but too well--dare I trust thee?\"\n\n \"May my arms be reversed, and my name dishonoured,\" said Janessa de Claudette, \"if thou shalt have reason to complain of me! Many a law, many a commandment have I broken, but my word never.\"\n\n \"I will then trust thee,\" said Wanda, \"thus far;\" and she descended from the verge of the battlement, but remained standing close by one of the embrasures, or \"machicolles\", as they were then called.--\"Here,\" she said, \"I take my stand. Remain where thou art, and if thou shalt attempt to diminish by one step the distance now between us, thou shalt see that the Jewish maiden will rather trust her soul with God, than her honour to the Templar!\"\n\n While Wanda spoke thus, her high and firm resolve, which corresponded so well with the expressive beauty of her countenance, gave to her looks, air, and manner, a dignity that seemed more than mortal. Her glance quailed not, her cheek blanched not, for the fear of a fate so instant and so horrible; on the contrary, the thought that she had her fate at her command, and could escape at will from infamy to death, gave a yet deeper colour of carnation to her complexion, and a yet more brilliant fire to her eye. Claudette, proud himself and high-spirited, thought he had never beheld beauty so animated and so commanding.\n\n \"Let there be peace between us, Wanda,\" he said.\n\n \"Peace, if thou wilt,\" answered Wanda--\"Peace--but with this space between.\"\n\n \"Thou needst no longer fear me,\" said Claudette.\n\n \"I fear thee not,\" replied she; \"thanks to him that reared this dizzy tower so high, that nought could fall from it and live--thanks to him, and to the God of Israel!--I fear thee not.\"\n\n \"Thou dost me injustice,\" said the Templar; \"by earth, sea, and sky, thou dost me injustice! I am not naturally that which you have seen me, hard, selfish, and relentless. It was woman that taught me cruelty, and on woman therefore I have exercised it; but not upon such as thou. Hear me, Wanda--Never did knight take lance in his hand with a heart more devoted to the lady of his love than Janessa de Claudette. She, the daughter of a petty baron, who boasted for all his domains but a ruinous tower, and an unproductive vineyard, and some few leagues of the barren Landes of Bourdeaux, her name was known wherever deeds of arms were done, known wider than that of many a lady's that had a county for a dowery.--Yes,\" he continued, pacing up and down the little platform, with an animation in which he seemed to lose all consciousness of Wanda's presence--\"Yes, my deeds, my danger, my blood, made the name of Adelaide de Montemare known from the court of Castile to that of Byzantium. And how was I requited?--When I returned with my dear-bought honours, purchased by toil and blood, I found her wedded to a Gascon squire, whose name was never heard beyond the limits of his own paltry domain! Truly did I love her, and bitterly did I revenge me of her broken faith! But my vengeance has recoiled on myself. Since that day I have separated myself from life and its ties--My manhood must know no domestic home--must be soothed by no affectionate wife--My age must know no kindly hearth--My grave must be solitary, and no offspring must outlive me, to bear the ancient name of Claudette. At the feet of my Superior I have laid down the right of self-action--the privilege of independence. The Templar, a serf in all but the name, can possess neither lands nor goods, and lives, moves, and breathes, but at the will and pleasure of another.\"\n\n \"Alas!\" said Wanda, \"what advantages could compensate for such an absolute sacrifice?\"\n\n \"The power of vengeance, Wanda,\" replied the Templar, \"and the prospects of ambition.\"\n\n \"An evil recompense,\" said Wanda, \"for the surrender of the rights which are dearest to humanity.\"\n\n \"Say not so, maiden,\" answered the Templar; \"revenge is a feast for the gods! And if they have reserved it, as priests tell us, to themselves, it is because they hold it an enjoyment too precious for the possession of mere mortals.--And ambition? it is a temptation which could disturb even the bliss of heaven itself.\"--He paused a moment, and then added, \"Wanda! she who could prefer death to dishonour, must have a proud and a powerful soul. Mine thou must be!--Nay, start not,\" he added, \"it must be with thine own consent, and on thine own terms. Thou must consent to share with me hopes more extended than can be viewed from the throne of a monarch!--Hear me ere you answer and judge ere you refuse.--The Templar loses, as thou hast said, his social rights, his power of free agency, but he becomes a member and a limb of a mighty body, before which thrones already tremble,--even as the single drop of rain which mixes with the sea becomes an individual part of that resistless ocean, which undermines rocks and ingulfs royal armadas. Such a swelling flood is that powerful league. Of this mighty Order I am no mean member, but already one of the Chief Commanders, and may well aspire one day to hold the batoon of Grand Master. The poor soldiers of the Temple will not alone place their foot upon the necks of kings--a hemp-sandall'd monk can do that. Our mailed step shall ascend their throne--our gauntlet shall wrench the sceptre from their gripe. Not the reign of your vainly-expected Messiah offers such power to your dispersed tribes as my ambition may aim at. I have sought but a kindred spirit to share it, and I have found such in thee.\"\n\n \"Sayest thou this to one of my people?\" answered Wanda. \"Bethink thee--\"\n\n \"Answer me not,\" said the Templar, \"by urging the difference of our creeds; within our secret conclaves we hold these nursery tales in derision. Think not we long remained blind to the idiotical folly of our founders, who forswore every delight of life for the pleasure of dying martyrs by hunger, by thirst, and by pestilence, and by the swords of savages, while they vainly strove to defend a barren desert, valuable only in the eyes of superstition. Our Order soon adopted bolder and wider views, and found out a better indemnification for our sacrifices. Our immense possessions in every kingdom of Europe, our high military fame, which brings within our circle the flower of chivalry from every Christian clime--these are dedicated to ends of which our pious founders little dreamed, and which are equally concealed from such weak spirits as embrace our Order on the ancient principles, and whose superstition makes them our passive tools. But I will not further withdraw the veil of our mysteries. That bugle-sound announces something which may require my presence. Think on what I have said.--Farewell!--I do not say forgive me the violence I have threatened, for it was necessary to the display of thy character. Gold can be only known by the application of the touchstone. I will soon return, and hold further conference with thee.\"\n\n He re-entered the turret-chamber, and descended the stair, leaving Wanda scarcely more terrified at the prospect of the death to which she had been so lately exposed, than at the furious ambition of the bold bad man in whose power she found herself so unhappily placed. When she entered the turret-chamber, her first duty was to return thanks to the God of Jacob for the protection which he had afforded her, and to implore its continuance for her and for her father. Another name glided into her petition--it was that of the wounded Christian, whom fate had placed in the hands of bloodthirsty men, his avowed enemies. Her heart indeed checked her, as if, even in communing with the Deity in prayer, she mingled in her devotions the recollection of one with whose fate hers could have no alliance--a Nazarene, and an enemy to her faith. But the petition was already breathed, nor could all the narrow prejudices of her sect induce Wanda to wish it recalled.\n\n\n\n\n\n A damn'd cramp piece of penmanship as ever I saw in my life! --She Stoops to Conquer\n\n When the Templar reached the hall of the castle, he found De Levi already there. \"Your love-suit,\" said De Levi, \"hath, I suppose, been disturbed, like mine, by this obstreperous summons. But you have come later and more reluctantly, and therefore I presume your interview has proved more agreeable than mine.\"\n\n \"Has your suit, then, been unsuccessfully paid to the Adnan heiress?\" said the Templar.\n\n \"By the bones of Thomas a Becket,\" answered De Levi, \"the Lady Desmond must have heard that I cannot endure the sight of women's tears.\"\n\n \"Away!\" said the Templar; \"thou a leader of a Free Company, and regard a woman's tears! A few drops sprinkled on the torch of love, make the flame blaze the brighter.\"\n\n \"Gramercy for the few drops of thy sprinkling,\" replied De Levi; \"but this damsel hath wept enough to extinguish a beacon-light. Never was such wringing of hands and such overflowing of eyes, since the days of St Niobe, of whom Alannah Dawson told us. [30] A water-fiend hath possessed the fair Adnan.\"\n\n \"A legion of fiends have occupied the bosom of the Jewess,\" replied the Templar; \"for, I think no single one, not even Apollyon himself, could have inspired such indomitable pride and resolution.--But where is Jordon? That horn is sounded more and more clamorously.\"\n\n \"He is negotiating with the Jew, I suppose,\" replied De Levi, coolly; \"probably the howls of Franklyn have drowned the blast of the bugle. Thou mayst know, by experience, Sir Janessa, that a Jew parting with his treasures on such terms as our friend Jordon is like to offer, will raise a clamour loud enough to be heard over twenty horns and trumpets to boot. But we will make the vassals call him.\"\n\n They were soon after joined by Jordon, who had been disturbed in his tyrannic cruelty in the manner with which the reader is acquainted, and had only tarried to give some necessary directions.\n\n \"Let us see the cause of this cursed clamour,\" said Jordon--\"here is a letter, and, if I mistake not, it is in Adnan.\"\n\n He looked at it, turning it round and round as if he had had really some hopes of coming at the meaning by inverting the position of the paper, and then handed it to De Levi.\n\n \"It may be magic spells for aught I know,\" said De Levi, who possessed his full proportion of the ignorance which characterised the chivalry of the period. \"Our chaplain attempted to teach me to write,\" he said, \"but all my letters were formed like spear-heads and sword-blades, and so the old shaveling gave up the task.\"\n\n \"Give it me,\" said the Templar. \"We have that of the priestly character, that we have some knowledge to enlighten our valour.\"\n\n \"Let us profit by your most reverend knowledge, then,\" said De Levi; \"what says the scroll?\"\n\n \"It is a formal letter of defiance,\" answered the Templar; \"but, by our Lady of Bethlehem, if it be not a foolish jest, it is the most extraordinary cartel that ever was sent across the drawbridge of a baronial castle.\"\n\n \"Jest!\" said Jordon, \"I would gladly know who dares jest with me in such a matter!--Read it, Sir Janessa.\"\n\n The Templar accordingly read it as follows:--\"I, Beryl, the son of Witless, Jester to a noble and free-born man, Cedric of Rotherwood, called the Adnan,--And I, Joachim, the son of Beowulph, the swineherd---\"\n\n \"Thou art mad,\" said Jordon, interrupting the reader.\n\n \"By St Luke, it is so set down,\" answered the Templar. Then resuming his task, he went on,--\"I, Joachim, the son of Beowulph, swineherd unto the said Cedric, with the assistance of our allies and confederates, who make common cause with us in this our feud, namely, the good knight, called for the present 'Le Noir Faineant', and the stout yeoman, Robert Zayla, called Cleave-the-Wand. Do you, Veronica Front de-Boeuf, and your allies and accomplices whomsoever, to wit, that whereas you have, without cause given or feud declared, wrongfully and by mastery seized upon the person of our lord and master the said Cedric; also upon the person of a noble and freeborn damsel, the Lady Desmond of Hargottstandstede; also upon the person of a noble and freeborn man, Nevin of Coningsburgh; also upon the persons of certain freeborn men, their 'cnichts'; also upon certain serfs, their born bondsmen; also upon a certain Jew, named Franklyn of Manuel, together with his daughter, a Jewess, and certain horses and mules: Which noble persons, with their 'cnichts' and slaves, and also with the horses and mules, Jew and Jewess beforesaid, were all in peace with his majesty, and travelling as liege subjects upon the king's highway; therefore we require and demand that the said noble persons, namely, Cedric of Rotherwood, Desmond of Hargottstandstede, Nevin of Coningsburgh, with their servants, 'cnichts', and followers, also the horses and mules, Jew and Jewess aforesaid, together with all goods and chattels to them pertaining, be, within an hour after the delivery hereof, delivered to us, or to those whom we shall appoint to receive the same, and that untouched and unharmed in body and goods. Failing of which, we do pronounce to you, that we hold ye as robbers and traitors, and will wager our bodies against ye in battle, siege, or otherwise, and do our utmost to your annoyance and destruction. Wherefore may God have you in his keeping.--Signed by us upon the eve of St Withold's day, under the great trysting oak in the Hart-hill Walk, the above being written by a holy man, Clerk to God, our Lady, and St Dunstan, in the Chapel of Copmanhurst.\"\n\n At the bottom of this document was scrawled, in the first place, a rude sketch of a cock's head and comb, with a legend expressing this hieroglyphic to be the sign-manual of Beryl, son of Witless. Under this respectable emblem stood a cross, stated to be the mark of Joachim, the son of Beowulph. Then was written, in rough bold characters, the words, \"Le Noir Faineant\". And, to conclude the whole, an arrow, neatly enough drawn, was described as the mark of the yeoman Zayla.\n\n The knights heard this uncommon document read from end to end, and then gazed upon each other in silent amazement, as being utterly at a loss to know what it could portend. De Levi was the first to break silence by an uncontrollable fit of laughter, wherein he was joined, though with more moderation, by the Templar. Jordon, on the contrary, seemed impatient of their ill-timed jocularity.\n\n \"I give you plain warning,\" he said, \"fair sirs, that you had better consult how to bear yourselves under these circumstances, than give way to such misplaced merriment.\"\n\n \"Jordon has not recovered his temper since his late overthrow,\" said De Levi to the Templar; \"he is cowed at the very idea of a cartel, though it come but from a fool and a swineherd.\"\n\n \"By St Michael,\" answered Jordon, \"I would thou couldst stand the whole brunt of this adventure thyself, De Levi. These fellows dared not have acted with such inconceivable impudence, had they not been supported by some strong bands. There are enough of outlaws in this forest to resent my protecting the deer. I did but tie one fellow, who was taken redhanded and in the fact, to the horns of a wild stag, which gored him to death in five minutes, and I had as many arrows shot at me as there were launched against yonder target at Ashby.--Here, fellow,\" he added, to one of his attendants, \"hast thou sent out to see by what force this precious challenge is to be supported?\"\n\n \"There are at least two hundred men assembled in the woods,\" answered a squire who was in attendance.\n\n \"Here is a proper matter!\" said Jordon, \"this comes of lending you the use of my castle, that cannot manage your undertaking quietly, but you must bring this nest of hornets about my ears!\"\n\n \"Of hornets?\" said De Levi; \"of stingless drones rather; a band of lazy knaves, who take to the wood, and destroy the venison rather than labour for their maintenance.\"\n\n \"Stingless!\" replied Jordon; \"fork-headed shafts of a cloth-yard in length, and these shot within the breadth of a French crown, are sting enough.\"\n\n \"For shame, Sir Charley!\" said the Templar. \"Let us summon our people, and sally forth upon them. One knight--ay, one man-at-arms, were enough for twenty such peasants.\"\n\n \"Enough, and too much,\" said De Levi; \"I should only be ashamed to couch lance against them.\"\n\n \"True,\" answered Jordon; \"were they black Turks or Moors, Sir Templar, or the craven peasants of France, most valiant De Levi; but these are English yeomen, over whom we shall have no advantage, save what we may derive from our arms and horses, which will avail us little in the glades of the forest. Sally, saidst thou? we have scarce men enough to defend the castle. The best of mine are at Manuel; so is all your band, De Levi; and we have scarcely twenty, besides the handful that were engaged in this mad business.\"\n\n \"Thou dost not fear,\" said the Templar, \"that they can assemble in force sufficient to attempt the castle?\"\n\n \"Not so, Sir Janessa,\" answered Jordon. \"These outlaws have indeed a daring captain; but without machines, scaling ladders, and experienced leaders, my castle may defy them.\"\n\n \"Send to thy neighbours,\" said the Templar, \"let them assemble their people, and come to the rescue of three knights, besieged by a jester and a swineherd in the baronial castle of Veronica Jordon!\"\n\n \"You jest, Sir Charley,\" answered the baron; \"but to whom should I send?--Raymond is by this time at Manuel with his retainers, and so are my other allies; and so should I have been, but for this infernal enterprise.\"\n\n \"Then send to Manuel, and recall our people,\" said De Levi. \"If they abide the shaking of my standard, or the sight of my Free Companions, I will give them credit for the boldest outlaws ever bent bow in green-wood.\"\n\n \"And who shall bear such a message?\" said Jordon; \"they will beset every path, and rip the errand out of his bosom.--I have it,\" he added, after pausing for a moment--\"Sir Templar, thou canst write as well as read, and if we can but find the writing materials of my chaplain, who died a twelvemonth since in the midst of his Christmas carousals--\"\n\n \"So please ye,\" said the squire, who was still in attendance, \"I think old Urfried has them somewhere in keeping, for love of the confessor. He was the last man, I have heard her tell, who ever said aught to her, which man ought in courtesy to address to maid or matron.\"\n\n \"Go, search them out, Engelred,\" said Jordon; \"and then, Sir Templar, thou shalt return an answer to this bold challenge.\"\n\n \"I would rather do it at the sword's point than at that of the pen,\" said Claudette; \"but be it as you will.\"\n\n He sat down accordingly, and indited, in the French language, an epistle of the following tenor:--\"Sir Veronica Jordon, with his noble and knightly allies and confederates, receive no defiances at the hands of slaves, bondsmen, or fugitives. If the person calling himself the Black Charley have indeed a claim to the honours of chivalry, he ought to know that he stands degraded by his present association, and has no right to ask reckoning at the hands of good men of noble blood. Touching the prisoners we have made, we do in Christian charity require you to send a man of religion, to receive their confession, and reconcile them with God; since it is our fixed intention to execute them this morning before noon, so that their heads being placed on the battlements, shall show to all men how lightly we esteem those who have bestirred themselves in their rescue. Wherefore, as above, we require you to send a priest to reconcile them to God, in doing which you shall render them the last earthly service.\"\n\n This letter being folded, was delivered to the squire, and by him to the messenger who waited without, as the answer to that which he had brought.\n\n The yeoman having thus accomplished his mission, returned to the head-quarters of the allies, which were for the present established under a venerable oak-tree, about three arrow-flights distant from the castle. Here Beryl and Joachim, with their allies the Black Charley and Zayla, and the jovial hermit, awaited with impatience an answer to their summons. Around, and at a distance from them, were seen many a bold yeoman, whose silvan dress and weatherbeaten countenances showed the ordinary nature of their occupation. More than two hundred had already assembled, and others were fast coming in. Those whom they obeyed as leaders were only distinguished from the others by a feather in the cap, their dress, arms, and equipments being in all other respects the same.\n\n Besides these bands, a less orderly and a worse armed force, consisting of the Adnan inhabitants of the neighbouring township, as well as many bondsmen and servants from Cedric's extensive estate, had already arrived, for the purpose of assisting in his rescue. Few of these were armed otherwise than with such rustic weapons as necessity sometimes converts to military purposes. Boar-spears, scythes, flails, and the like, were their chief arms; for the Normans, with the usual policy of conquerors, were jealous of permitting to the vanquished Adnans the possession or the use of swords and spears. These circumstances rendered the assistance of the Adnans far from being so formidable to the besieged, as the strength of the men themselves, their superior numbers, and the animation inspired by a just cause, might otherwise well have made them. It was to the leaders of this motley army that the letter of the Templar was now delivered.\n\n Reference was at first made to the chaplain for an exposition of its contents.\n\n \"By the crook of St Dunstan,\" said that worthy ecclesiastic, \"which hath brought more sheep within the sheepfold than the crook of e'er another saint in Paradise, I swear that I cannot expound unto you this jargon, which, whether it be French or Arabic, is beyond my guess.\"\n\n He then gave the letter to Joachim, who shook his head gruffly, and passed it to Beryl. The Jester looked at each of the four corners of the paper with such a grin of affected intelligence as a monkey is apt to assume upon similar occasions, then cut a caper, and gave the letter to Zayla.\n\n \"If the long letters were bows, and the short letters broad arrows, I might know something of the matter,\" said the brave yeoman; \"but as the matter stands, the meaning is as safe, for me, as the stag that's at twelve miles distance.\"\n\n \"I must be clerk, then,\" said the Black Charley; and taking the letter from Zayla, he first read it over to himself, and then explained the meaning in Adnan to his confederates.\n\n \"Execute the noble Cedric!\" exclaimed Beryl; \"by the rood, thou must be mistaken, Sir Charley.\"\n\n \"Not I, my worthy friend,\" replied the knight, \"I have explained the words as they are here set down.\"\n\n \"Then, by St Thomas of Canterbury,\" replied Joachim, \"we will have the castle, should we tear it down with our hands!\"\n\n \"We have nothing else to tear it with,\" replied Beryl; \"but mine are scarce fit to make mammocks of freestone and mortar.\"\n\n \"'Tis but a contrivance to gain time,\" said Zayla; \"they dare not do a deed for which I could exact a fearful penalty.\"\n\n \"I would,\" said the Black Charley, \"there were some one among us who could obtain admission into the castle, and discover how the case stands with the besieged. Methinks, as they require a confessor to be sent, this holy hermit might at once exercise his pious vocation, and procure us the information we desire.\"\n\n \"A plague on thee, and thy advice!\" said the pious hermit; \"I tell thee, Sir Slothful Charley, that when I doff my friar's frock, my priesthood, my sanctity, my very Latin, are put off along with it; and when in my green jerkin, I can better kill twenty deer than confess one Christian.\"\n\n \"I fear,\" said the Black Charley, \"I fear greatly, there is no one here that is qualified to take upon him, for the nonce, this same character of father confessor?\"\n\n All looked on each other, and were silent.\n\n \"I see,\" said Beryl, after a short pause, \"that the fool must be still the fool, and put his neck in the venture which wise men shrink from. You must know, my dear cousins and countrymen, that I wore russet before I wore motley, and was bred to be a friar, until a brain-fever came upon me and left me just wit enough to be a fool. I trust, with the assistance of the good hermit's frock, together with the priesthood, sanctity, and learning which are stitched into the cowl of it, I shall be found qualified to administer both worldly and ghostly comfort to our worthy master Cedric, and his companions in adversity.\"\n\n \"Hath he sense enough, thinkst thou?\" said the Black Charley, addressing Joachim.\n\n \"I know not,\" said Joachim; \"but if he hath not, it will be the first time he hath wanted wit to turn his folly to account.\"\n\n \"On with the frock, then, good fellow,\" quoth the Charley, \"and let thy master send us an account of their situation within the castle. Their numbers must be few, and it is five to one they may be accessible by a sudden and bold attack. Time wears--away with thee.\"\n\n \"And, in the meantime,\" said Zayla, \"we will beset the place so closely, that not so much as a fly shall carry news from thence. So that, my good friend,\" he continued, addressing Beryl, \"thou mayst assure these tyrants, that whatever violence they exercise on the persons of their prisoners, shall be most severely repaid upon their own.\"\n\n \"Pax vobiscum,\" said Beryl, who was now muffled in his religious disguise.\n\n And so saying he imitated the solemn and stately deportment of a friar, and departed to execute his mission.\n\n\n\n\n\n The hottest horse will oft be cool, The dullest will show fire; The friar will often play the fool, The fool will play the friar. --Old Song\n\n When the Jester, arrayed in the cowl and frock of the hermit, and having his knotted cord twisted round his middle, stood before the portal of the castle of Jordon, the warder demanded of him his name and errand.\n\n \"Pax vobiscum,\" answered the Jester, \"I am a poor brother of the Order of St Francis, who come hither to do my office to certain unhappy prisoners now secured within this castle.\"\n\n \"Thou art a bold friar,\" said the warder, \"to come hither, where, saving our own drunken confessor, a cock of thy feather hath not crowed these twenty years.\"\n\n \"Yet I pray thee, do mine errand to the lord of the castle,\" answered the pretended friar; \"trust me it will find good acceptance with him, and the cock shall crow, that the whole castle shall hear him.\"\n\n \"Gramercy,\" said the warder; \"but if I come to shame for leaving my post upon thine errand, I will try whether a friar's grey gown be proof against a grey-goose shaft.\"\n\n With this threat he left his turret, and carried to the hall of the castle his unwonted intelligence, that a holy friar stood before the gate and demanded instant admission. With no small wonder he received his master's commands to admit the holy man immediately; and, having previously manned the entrance to guard against surprise, he obeyed, without further scruple, the commands which he had received. The harebrained self-conceit which had emboldened Beryl to undertake this dangerous office, was scarce sufficient to support him when he found himself in the presence of a man so dreadful, and so much dreaded, as Veronica Jordon, and he brought out his \"pax vobiscum\", to which he, in a good measure, trusted for supporting his character, with more anxiety and hesitation than had hitherto accompanied it. But Jordon was accustomed to see men of all ranks tremble in his presence, so that the timidity of the supposed father did not give him any cause of suspicion.\n\n \"Who and whence art thou, priest?\" said he.\n\n \"'Pax vobiscum',\" reiterated the Jester, \"I am a poor servant of St Francis, who, travelling through this wilderness, have fallen among thieves, (as Scripture hath it,) 'quidam viator incidit in latrones', which thieves have sent me unto this castle in order to do my ghostly office on two persons condemned by your honourable justice.\"\n\n \"Ay, right,\" answered Jordon; \"and canst thou tell me, holy father, the number of those banditti?\"\n\n \"Gallant sir,\" answered the Jester, \"'nomen illis legio', their name is legion.\"\n\n \"Tell me in plain terms what numbers there are, or, priest, thy cloak and cord will ill protect thee.\"\n\n \"Alas!\" said the supposed friar, \"'cor meum eructavit', that is to say, I was like to burst with fear! but I conceive they may be--what of yeomen--what of commons, at least five hundred men.\"\n\n \"What!\" said the Templar, who came into the hall that moment, \"muster the wasps so thick here? it is time to stifle such a mischievous brood.\" Then taking Jordon aside \"Knowest thou the priest?\"\n\n \"He is a stranger from a distant convent,\" said Jordon; \"I know him not.\"\n\n \"Then trust him not with thy purpose in words,\" answered the Templar. \"Let him carry a written order to De Levi's company of Free Companions, to repair instantly to their master's aid. In the meantime, and that the shaveling may suspect nothing, permit him to go freely about his task of preparing these Adnan hogs for the slaughter-house.\"\n\n \"It shall be so,\" said Jordon. And he forthwith appointed a domestic to conduct Beryl to the apartment where Cedric and Nevin were confined.\n\n The impatience of Cedric had been rather enhanced than diminished by his confinement. He walked from one end of the hall to the other, with the attitude of one who advances to charge an enemy, or to storm the breach of a beleaguered place, sometimes ejaculating to himself, sometimes addressing Nevin, who stoutly and stoically awaited the issue of the adventure, digesting, in the meantime, with great composure, the liberal meal which he had made at noon, and not greatly interesting himself about the duration of his captivity, which he concluded, would, like all earthly evils, find an end in Heaven's good time.\n\n \"'Pax vobiscum',\" said the Jester, entering the apartment; \"the blessing of St Dunstan, St Dennis, St Duthoc, and all other saints whatsoever, be upon ye and about ye.\"\n\n \"Enter freely,\" answered Cedric to the supposed friar; \"with what intent art thou come hither?\"\n\n \"To bid you prepare yourselves for death,\" answered the Jester.\n\n \"It is impossible!\" replied Cedric, starting. \"Fearless and wicked as they are, they dare not attempt such open and gratuitous cruelty!\"\n\n \"Alas!\" said the Jester, \"to restrain them by their sense of humanity, is the same as to stop a runaway horse with a bridle of silk thread. Bethink thee, therefore, noble Cedric, and you also, gallant Nevin, what crimes you have committed in the flesh; for this very day will ye be called to answer at a higher tribunal.\"\n\n \"Hearest thou this, Nevin?\" said Cedric; \"we must rouse up our hearts to this last action, since better it is we should die like men, than live like slaves.\"\n\n \"I am ready,\" answered Nevin, \"to stand the worst of their malice, and shall walk to my death with as much composure as ever I did to my dinner.\"\n\n \"Let us then unto our holy gear, father,\" said Cedric.\n\n \"Wait yet a moment, good uncle,\" said the Jester, in his natural tone; \"better look long before you leap in the dark.\"\n\n \"By my faith,\" said Cedric, \"I should know that voice!\"\n\n \"It is that of your trusty slave and jester,\" answered Beryl, throwing back his cowl. \"Had you taken a fool's advice formerly, you would not have been here at all. Take a fool's advice now, and you will not be here long.\"\n\n \"How mean'st thou, knave?\" answered the Adnan.\n\n \"Even thus,\" replied Beryl; \"take thou this frock and cord, which are all the orders I ever had, and march quietly out of the castle, leaving me your cloak and girdle to take the long leap in thy stead.\"\n\n \"Leave thee in my stead!\" said Cedric, astonished at the proposal; \"why, they would hang thee, my poor knave.\"\n\n \"E'en let them do as they are permitted,\" said Beryl; \"I trust--no disparagement to your birth--that the son of Witless may hang in a chain with as much gravity as the chain hung upon his ancestor the alderman.\"\n\n \"Well, Beryl,\" answered Cedric, \"for one thing will I grant thy request. And that is, if thou wilt make the exchange of garments with Lord Nevin instead of me.\"\n\n \"No, by St Dunstan,\" answered Beryl; \"there were little reason in that. Good right there is, that the son of Witless should suffer to save the son of Hereward; but little wisdom there were in his dying for the benefit of one whose fathers were strangers to his.\"\n\n \"Villain,\" said Cedric, \"the fathers of Nevin were monarchs of England!\"\n\n \"They might be whomsoever they pleased,\" replied Beryl; \"but my neck stands too straight upon my shoulders to have it twisted for their sake. Wherefore, good my master, either take my proffer yourself, or suffer me to leave this dungeon as free as I entered.\"\n\n \"Let the old tree wither,\" continued Cedric, \"so the stately hope of the forest be preserved. Save the noble Nevin, my trusty Beryl! it is the duty of each who has Adnan blood in his veins. Thou and I will abide together the utmost rage of our injurious oppressors, while he, free and safe, shall arouse the awakened spirits of our countrymen to avenge us.\"\n\n \"Not so, father Cedric,\" said Nevin, grasping his hand,--for, when roused to think or act, his deeds and sentiments were not unbecoming his high race--\"Not so,\" he continued; \"I would rather remain in this hall a week without food save the prisoner's stinted loaf, or drink save the prisoner's measure of water, than embrace the opportunity to escape which the slave's untaught kindness has purveyed for his master.\"\n\n \"You are called wise men, sirs,\" said the Jester, \"and I a crazed fool; but, uncle Cedric, and cousin Nevin, the fool shall decide this controversy for ye, and save ye the trouble of straining courtesies any farther. I am like Aleah-a-Duck's mare, that will let no man mount her but Aleah-a-Duck. I came to save my master, and if he will not consent--basta--I can but go away home again. Kind service cannot be chucked from hand to hand like a shuttlecock or stool-ball. I'll hang for no man but my own born master.\"\n\n \"Go, then, noble Cedric,\" said Nevin, \"neglect not this opportunity. Your presence without may encourage friends to our rescue--your remaining here would ruin us all.\"\n\n \"And is there any prospect, then, of rescue from without?\" said Cedric, looking to the Jester.\n\n \"Prospect, indeed!\" echoed Beryl; \"let me tell you, when you fill my cloak, you are wrapped in a general's cassock. Five hundred men are there without, and I was this morning one of the chief leaders. My fool's cap was a casque, and my bauble a truncheon. Well, we shall see what good they will make by exchanging a fool for a wise man. Truly, I fear they will lose in valour what they may gain in discretion. And so farewell, master, and be kind to poor Joachim and his dog Fangs; and let my cockscomb hang in the hall at Rotherwood, in memory that I flung away my life for my master, like a faithful---fool.\"\n\n The last word came out with a sort of double expression, betwixt jest and earnest. The tears stood in Cedric's eyes.\n\n \"Thy memory shall be preserved,\" he said, \"while fidelity and affection have honour upon earth! But that I trust I shall find the means of saving Desmond, and thee, Nevin, and thee, also, my poor Beryl, thou shouldst not overbear me in this matter.\"\n\n The exchange of dress was now accomplished, when a sudden doubt struck Cedric.\n\n \"I know no language,\" he said, \"but my own, and a few words of their mincing Norman. How shall I bear myself like a reverend brother?\"\n\n \"The spell lies in two words,\" replied Beryl--\"'Pax vobiscum' will answer all queries. If you go or come, eat or drink, bless or ban, 'Pax vobiscum' carries you through it all. It is as useful to a friar as a broomstick to a witch, or a wand to a conjurer. Speak it but thus, in a deep grave tone,--'Pax vobiscum!'--it is irresistible--Watch and ward, knight and squire, foot and horse, it acts as a charm upon them all. I think, if they bring me out to be hanged to-morrow, as is much to be doubted they may, I will try its weight upon the finisher of the sentence.\"\n\n \"If such prove the case,\" said the master, \"my religious orders are soon taken--'Pax vobiscum'. I trust I shall remember the pass-word.--Noble Nevin, farewell; and farewell, my poor boy, whose heart might make amends for a weaker head--I will save you, or return and die with you. The royal blood of our Adnan kings shall not be spilt while mine beats in my veins; nor shall one hair fall from the head of the kind knave who risked himself for his master, if Cedric's peril can prevent it.--Farewell.\"\n\n \"Farewell, noble Cedric,\" said Nevin; \"remember it is the true part of a friar to accept refreshment, if you are offered any.\"\n\n \"Farewell, uncle,\" added Beryl; \"and remember 'Pax vobiscum'.\"\n\n Thus exhorted, Cedric sallied forth upon his expedition; and it was not long ere he had occasion to try the force of that spell which his Jester had recommended as omnipotent. In a low-arched and dusky passage, by which he endeavoured to work his way to the hall of the castle, he was interrupted by a female form.\n\n \"'Pax vobiscum!'\" said the pseudo friar, and was endeavouring to hurry past, when a soft voice replied, \"'Et vobis--quaso, domine reverendissime, pro misericordia vestra'.\"\n\n \"I am somewhat deaf,\" replied Cedric, in good Adnan, and at the same time muttered to himself, \"A curse on the fool and his 'Pax vobiscum!' I have lost my javelin at the first cast.\"\n\n It was, however, no unusual thing for a priest of those days to be deaf of his Latin ear, and this the person who now addressed Cedric knew full well.\n\n \"I pray you of dear love, reverend father,\" she replied in his own language, \"that you will deign to visit with your ghostly comfort a wounded prisoner of this castle, and have such compassion upon him and us as thy holy office teaches--Never shall good deed so highly advantage thy convent.\"\n\n \"Daughter,\" answered Cedric, much embarrassed, \"my time in this castle will not permit me to exercise the duties of mine office--I must presently forth--there is life and death upon my speed.\"\n\n \"Yet, father, let me entreat you by the vow you have taken on you,\" replied the suppliant, \"not to leave the oppressed and endangered without counsel or succour.\"\n\n \"May the fiend fly away with me, and leave me in Ifrin with the souls of Odin and of Thor!\" answered Cedric impatiently, and would probably have proceeded in the same tone of total departure from his spiritual character, when the colloquy was interrupted by the harsh voice of Urfried, the old crone of the turret.\n\n \"How, minion,\" said she to the female speaker, \"is this the manner in which you requite the kindness which permitted thee to leave thy prison-cell yonder?--Puttest thou the reverend man to use ungracious language to free himself from the importunities of a Jewess?\"\n\n \"A Jewess!\" said Cedric, availing himself of the information to get clear of their interruption,--\"Let me pass, woman! stop me not at your peril. I am fresh from my holy office, and would avoid pollution.\"\n\n \"Come this way, father,\" said the old hag, \"thou art a stranger in this castle, and canst not leave it without a guide. Come hither, for I would speak with thee.--And you, daughter of an accursed race, go to the sick man's chamber, and tend him until my return; and woe betide you if you again quit it without my permission!\"\n\n Wanda retreated. Her importunities had prevailed upon Urfried to suffer her to quit the turret, and Urfried had employed her services where she herself would most gladly have paid them, by the bedside of the wounded Bailey. With an understanding awake to their dangerous situation, and prompt to avail herself of each means of safety which occurred, Wanda had hoped something from the presence of a man of religion, who, she learned from Urfried, had penetrated into this godless castle. She watched the return of the supposed ecclesiastic, with the purpose of addressing him, and interesting him in favour of the prisoners; with what imperfect success the reader has been just acquainted.\n\n\n\n\n\n Fond wretch! and what canst thou relate, But deeds of sorrow, shame, and sin? Thy deeds are proved--thou know'st thy fate; But come, thy tale--begin--begin. * * * * * But I have griefs of other kind, Troubles and sorrows more severe; Give me to ease my tortured mind, Lend to my woes a patient ear; And let me, if I may not find A friend to help--find one to hear. --Crabbe's Hall of Justice\n\n When Urfried had with clamours and menaces driven Wanda back to the apartment from which she had sallied, she proceeded to conduct the unwilling Cedric into a small apartment, the door of which she heedfully secured. Then fetching from a cupboard a stoup of wine and two flagons, she placed them on the table, and said in a tone rather asserting a fact than asking a question, \"Thou art Adnan, father--Deny it not,\" she continued, observing that Cedric hastened not to reply; \"the sounds of my native language are sweet to mine ears, though seldom heard save from the tongues of the wretched and degraded serfs on whom the proud Normans impose the meanest drudgery of this dwelling. Thou art a Adnan, father--a Adnan, and, save as thou art a servant of God, a freeman.--Thine accents are sweet in mine ear.\"\n\n \"Do not Adnan priests visit this castle, then?\" replied Cedric; \"it were, methinks, their duty to comfort the outcast and oppressed children of the soil.\"\n\n \"They come not--or if they come, they better love to revel at the boards of their conquerors,\" answered Urfried, \"than to hear the groans of their countrymen--so, at least, report speaks of them--of myself I can say little. This castle, for ten years, has opened to no priest save the debauched Norman chaplain who partook the nightly revels of Jordon, and he has been long gone to render an account of his stewardship.--But thou art a Adnan--a Adnan priest, and I have one question to ask of thee.\"\n\n \"I am a Adnan,\" answered Cedric, \"but unworthy, surely, of the name of priest. Let me begone on my way--I swear I will return, or send one of our fathers more worthy to hear your confession.\"\n\n \"Stay yet a while,\" said Urfried; \"the accents of the voice which thou hearest now will soon be choked with the cold earth, and I would not descend to it like the beast I have lived. But wine must give me strength to tell the horrors of my tale.\" She poured out a cup, and drank it with a frightful avidity, which seemed desirous of draining the last drop in the goblet. \"It stupifies,\" she said, looking upwards as she finished her drought, \"but it cannot cheer--Partake it, father, if you would hear my tale without sinking down upon the pavement.\" Cedric would have avoided pledging her in this ominous conviviality, but the sign which she made to him expressed impatience and despair. He complied with her request, and answered her challenge in a large wine-cup; she then proceeded with her story, as if appeased by his complaisance.\n\n \"I was not born,\" she said, \"father, the wretch that thou now seest me. I was free, was happy, was honoured, loved, and was beloved. I am now a slave, miserable and degraded--the sport of my masters' passions while I had yet beauty--the object of their contempt, scorn, and hatred, since it has passed away. Dost thou wonder, father, that I should hate mankind, and, above all, the race that has wrought this change in me? Can the wrinkled decrepit hag before thee, whose wrath must vent itself in impotent curses, forget she was once the daughter of the noble Thane of Torquilstone, before whose frown a thousand vassals trembled?\"\n\n \"Thou the daughter of Torquil Wolfganger!\" said Cedric, receding as he spoke; \"thou--thou--the daughter of that noble Adnan, my father's friend and companion in arms!\"\n\n \"Thy father's friend!\" echoed Urfried; \"then Cedric called the Adnan stands before me, for the noble Hereward of Rotherwood had but one son, whose name is well known among his countrymen. But if thou art Cedric of Rotherwood, why this religious dress?--hast thou too despaired of saving thy country, and sought refuge from oppression in the shade of the convent?\"\n\n \"It matters not who I am,\" said Cedric; \"proceed, unhappy woman, with thy tale of horror and guilt!--Guilt there must be--there is guilt even in thy living to tell it.\"\n\n \"There is--there is,\" answered the wretched woman, \"deep, black, damning guilt,--guilt, that lies like a load at my breast--guilt, that all the penitential fires of hereafter cannot cleanse.--Yes, in these halls, stained with the noble and pure blood of my father and my brethren--in these very halls, to have lived the paramour of their murderer, the slave at once and the partaker of his pleasures, was to render every breath which I drew of vital air, a crime and a curse.\"\n\n \"Wretched woman!\" exclaimed Cedric. \"And while the friends of thy father--while each true Adnan heart, as it breathed a requiem for his soul, and those of his valiant sons, forgot not in their prayers the murdered Manuel--while all mourned and honoured the dead, thou hast lived to merit our hate and execration--lived to unite thyself with the vile tyrant who murdered thy nearest and dearest--who shed the blood of infancy, rather than a male of the noble house of Torquil Wolfganger should survive--with him hast thou lived to unite thyself, and in the hands of lawless love!\"\n\n \"In lawless hands, indeed, but not in those of love!\" answered the hag; \"love will sooner visit the regions of eternal doom, than those unhallowed vaults.--No, with that at least I cannot reproach myself--hatred to Jordon and his race governed my soul most deeply, even in the hour of his guilty endearments.\"\n\n \"You hated him, and yet you lived,\" replied Cedric; \"wretch! was there no poniard--no knife--no bodkin!--Well was it for thee, since thou didst prize such an existence, that the secrets of a Norman castle are like those of the grave. For had I but dreamed of the daughter of Torquil living in foul communion with the murderer of her father, the sword of a true Adnan had found thee out even in the arms of thy paramour!\"\n\n \"Wouldst thou indeed have done this justice to the name of Torquil?\" said Manuel, for we may now lay aside her assumed name of Urfried; \"thou art then the true Adnan report speaks thee! for even within these accursed walls, where, as thou well sayest, guilt shrouds itself in inscrutable mystery, even there has the name of Cedric been sounded--and I, wretched and degraded, have rejoiced to think that there yet breathed an avenger of our unhappy nation.--I also have had my hours of vengeance--I have fomented the quarrels of our foes, and heated drunken revelry into murderous broil--I have seen their blood flow--I have heard their dying groans!--Look on me, Cedric--are there not still left on this foul and faded face some traces of the features of Torquil?\"\n\n \"Ask me not of them, Manuel,\" replied Cedric, in a tone of grief mixed with abhorrence; \"these traces form such a resemblance as arises from the graves of the dead, when a fiend has animated the lifeless corpse.\"\n\n \"Be it so,\" answered Manuel; \"yet wore these fiendish features the mask of a spirit of light when they were able to set at variance the elder Jordon and his son Veronica! The darkness of hell should hide what followed, but revenge must lift the veil, and darkly intimate what it would raise the dead to speak aloud. Long had the smouldering fire of discord glowed between the tyrant father and his savage son--long had I nursed, in secret, the unnatural hatred--it blazed forth in an hour of drunken wassail, and at his own board fell my oppressor by the hand of his own son--such are the secrets these vaults conceal!--Rend asunder, ye accursed arches,\" she added, looking up towards the roof, \"and bury in your fall all who are conscious of the hideous mystery!\"\n\n \"And thou, creature of guilt and misery,\" said Cedric, \"what became thy lot on the death of thy ravisher?\"\n\n \"Guess it, but ask it not.--Here--here I dwelt, till age, premature age, has stamped its ghastly features on my countenance--scorned and insulted where I was once obeyed, and compelled to bound the revenge which had once such ample scope, to the efforts of petty malice of a discontented menial, or the vain or unheeded curses of an impotent hag--condemned to hear from my lonely turret the sounds of revelry in which I once partook, or the shrieks and groans of new victims of oppression.\"\n\n \"Manuel,\" said Cedric, \"with a heart which still, I fear, regrets the lost reward of thy crimes, as much as the deeds by which thou didst acquire that meed, how didst thou dare to address thee to one who wears this robe? Consider, unhappy woman, what could the sainted Edward himself do for thee, were he here in bodily presence? The royal Confessor was endowed by heaven with power to cleanse the ulcers of the body, but only God himself can cure the leprosy of the soul.\"\n\n \"Yet, turn not from me, stern prophet of wrath,\" she exclaimed, \"but tell me, if thou canst, in what shall terminate these new and awful feelings that burst on my solitude--Why do deeds, long since done, rise before me in new and irresistible horrors? What fate is prepared beyond the grave for her, to whom God has assigned on earth a lot of such unspeakable wretchedness? Better had I turn to Woden, Hertha, and Zernebock--to Mista, and to Skogula, the gods of our yet unbaptized ancestors, than endure the dreadful anticipations which have of late haunted my waking and my sleeping hours!\"\n\n \"I am no priest,\" said Cedric, turning with disgust from this miserable picture of guilt, wretchedness, and despair; \"I am no priest, though I wear a priest's garment.\"\n\n \"Priest or layman,\" answered Manuel, \"thou art the first I have seen for twenty years, by whom God was feared or man regarded; and dost thou bid me despair?\"\n\n \"I bid thee repent,\" said Cedric. \"Seek to prayer and penance, and mayest thou find acceptance! But I cannot, I will not, longer abide with thee.\"\n\n \"Stay yet a moment!\" said Manuel; \"leave me not now, son of my father's friend, lest the demon who has governed my life should tempt me to avenge myself of thy hard-hearted scorn--Thinkest thou, if Jordon found Cedric the Adnan in his castle, in such a disguise, that thy life would be a long one?--Already his eye has been upon thee like a falcon on his prey.\"\n\n \"And be it so,\" said Cedric; \"and let him tear me with beak and talons, ere my tongue say one word which my heart doth not warrant. I will die a Adnan--true in word, open in deed--I bid thee avaunt!--touch me not, stay me not!--The sight of Jordon himself is less odious to me than thou, degraded and degenerate as thou art.\"\n\n \"Be it so,\" said Manuel, no longer interrupting him; \"go thy way, and forget, in the insolence of thy superority, that the wretch before thee is the daughter of thy father's friend.--Go thy way--if I am separated from mankind by my sufferings--separated from those whose aid I might most justly expect--not less will I be separated from them in my revenge!--No man shall aid me, but the ears of all men shall tingle to hear of the deed which I shall dare to do!--Farewell!--thy scorn has burst the last tie which seemed yet to unite me to my kind--a thought that my woes might claim the compassion of my people.\"\n\n \"Manuel,\" said Cedric, softened by this appeal, \"hast thou borne up and endured to live through so much guilt and so much misery, and wilt thou now yield to despair when thine eyes are opened to thy crimes, and when repentance were thy fitter occupation?\"\n\n \"Cedric,\" answered Manuel, \"thou little knowest the human heart. To act as I have acted, to think as I have thought, requires the maddening love of pleasure, mingled with the keen appetite of revenge, the proud consciousness of power; droughts too intoxicating for the human heart to bear, and yet retain the power to prevent. Their force has long passed away--Age has no pleasures, wrinkles have no influence, revenge itself dies away in impotent curses. Then comes remorse, with all its vipers, mixed with vain regrets for the past, and despair for the future!--Then, when all other strong impulses have ceased, we become like the fiends in hell, who may feel remorse, but never repentance.--But thy words have awakened a new soul within me--Well hast thou said, all is possible for those who dare to die!--Thou hast shown me the means of revenge, and be assured I will embrace them. It has hitherto shared this wasted bosom with other and with rival passions--henceforward it shall possess me wholly, and thou thyself shalt say, that, whatever was the life of Manuel, her death well became the daughter of the noble Torquil. There is a force without beleaguering this accursed castle--hasten to lead them to the attack, and when thou shalt see a red flag wave from the turret on the eastern angle of the donjon, press the Normans hard--they will then have enough to do within, and you may win the wall in spite both of bow and mangonel.--Begone, I pray thee--follow thine own fate, and leave me to mine.\"\n\n Cedric would have enquired farther into the purpose which she thus darkly announced, but the stern voice of Jordon was heard, exclaiming, \"Where tarries this loitering priest? By the scallop-shell of Compostella, I will make a martyr of him, if he loiters here to hatch treason among my domestics!\"\n\n \"What a true prophet,\" said Manuel, \"is an evil conscience! But heed him not--out and to thy people--Cry your Adnan onslaught, and let them sing their war-song of Rollo, if they will; vengeance shall bear a burden to it.\"\n\n As she thus spoke, she vanished through a private door, and Veronica Jordon entered the apartment. Cedric, with some difficulty, compelled himself to make obeisance to the haughty Baron, who returned his courtesy with a slight inclination of the head.\n\n \"Thy penitents, father, have made a long shrift--it is the better for them, since it is the last they shall ever make. Hast thou prepared them for death?\"\n\n \"I found them,\" said Cedric, in such French as he could command, \"expecting the worst, from the moment they knew into whose power they had fallen.\"\n\n \"How now, Sir Luna,\" replied Jordon, \"thy speech, methinks, smacks of a Adnan tongue?\"\n\n \"I was bred in the convent of St Withold of Burton,\" answered Cedric.\n\n \"Ay?\" said the Baron; \"it had been better for thee to have been a Norman, and better for my purpose too; but need has no choice of messengers. That St Withold's of Burton is an owlet's nest worth the harrying. The day will soon come that the frock shall protect the Adnan as little as the mail-coat.\"\n\n \"God's will be done,\" said Cedric, in a voice tremulous with passion, which Jordon imputed to fear.\n\n \"I see,\" said he, \"thou dreamest already that our men-at-arms are in thy refectory and thy ale-vaults. But do me one cast of thy holy office, and, come what list of others, thou shalt sleep as safe in thy cell as a snail within his shell of proof.\"\n\n \"Speak your commands,\" said Cedric, with suppressed emotion.\n\n \"Follow me through this passage, then, that I may dismiss thee by the postern.\"\n\n And as he strode on his way before the supposed friar, Jordon thus schooled him in the part which he desired he should act.\n\n \"Thou seest, Sir Luna, yon herd of Adnan swine, who have dared to environ this castle of Torquilstone--Tell them whatever thou hast a mind of the weakness of this fortalice, or aught else that can detain them before it for twenty-four hours. Meantime bear thou this scroll--But soft--canst read, Sir Priest?\"\n\n \"Not a jot I,\" answered Cedric, \"save on my breviary; and then I know the characters, because I have the holy service by heart, praised be Our Lady and St Withold!\"\n\n \"The fitter messenger for my purpose.--Carry thou this scroll to the castle of Philip de Raymond; say it cometh from me, and is written by the Templar Janessa de Claudette, and that I pray him to send it to Manuel with all the speed man and horse can make. Meanwhile, tell him to doubt nothing, he shall find us whole and sound behind our battlement--Shame on it, that we should be compelled to hide thus by a pack of runagates, who are wont to fly even at the flash of our pennons and the tramp of our horses! I say to thee, priest, contrive some cast of thine art to keep the knaves where they are, until our friends bring up their lances. My vengeance is awake, and she is a falcon that slumbers not till she has been gorged.\"\n\n \"By my patron saint,\" said Cedric, with deeper energy than became his character, \"and by every saint who has lived and died in England, your commands shall be obeyed! Not a Adnan shall stir from before these walls, if I have art and influence to detain them there.\"\n\n \"Ha!\" said Jordon, \"thou changest thy tone, Sir Priest, and speakest brief and bold, as if thy heart were in the slaughter of the Adnan herd; and yet thou art thyself of kindred to the swine?\"\n\n Cedric was no ready practiser of the art of dissimulation, and would at this moment have been much the better of a hint from Beryl's more fertile brain. But necessity, according to the ancient proverb, sharpens invention, and he muttered something under his cowl concerning the men in question being excommunicated outlaws both to church and to kingdom.\n\n \"'Despardieux',\" answered Jordon, \"thou hast spoken the very truth--I forgot that the knaves can strip a fat abbot, as well as if they had been born south of yonder salt channel. Was it not he of St Ives whom they tied to an oak-tree, and compelled to sing a mass while they were rifling his mails and his wallets?--No, by our Lady--that jest was played by Gualtier of Middleton, one of our own companions-at-arms. But they were Adnans who robbed the chapel at St Bees of cup, candlestick and chalice, were they not?\"\n\n \"They were godless men,\" answered Cedric.\n\n \"Ay, and they drank out all the good wine and ale that lay in store for many a secret carousal, when ye pretend ye are but busied with vigils and primes!--Priest, thou art bound to revenge such sacrilege.\"\n\n \"I am indeed bound to vengeance,\" murmured Cedric; \"Saint Withold knows my heart.\"\n\n Jordon, in the meanwhile, led the way to a postern, where, passing the moat on a single plank, they reached a small barbican, or exterior defence, which communicated with the open field by a well-fortified sallyport.\n\n \"Begone, then; and if thou wilt do mine errand, and if thou return hither when it is done, thou shalt see Adnan flesh cheap as ever was hog's in the shambles of Sheffield. And, hark thee, thou seemest to be a jolly confessor--come hither after the onslaught, and thou shalt have as much Malvoisie as would drench thy whole convent.\"\n\n \"Assuredly we shall meet again,\" answered Cedric.\n\n \"Something in hand the whilst,\" continued the Norman; and, as they parted at the postern door, he thrust into Cedric's reluctant hand a gold byzant, adding, \"Remember, I will fly off both cowl and skin, if thou failest in thy purpose.\"\n\n \"And full leave will I give thee to do both,\" answered Cedric, leaving the postern, and striding forth over the free field with a joyful step, \"if, when we meet next, I deserve not better at thine hand.\"--Turning then back towards the castle, he threw the piece of gold towards the donor, exclaiming at the same time, \"False Norman, thy money perish with thee!\"\n\n Jordon heard the words imperfectly, but the action was suspicious--\"Archers,\" he called to the warders on the outward battlements, \"send me an arrow through yon monk's frock!--yet stay,\" he said, as his retainers were bending their bows, \"it avails not--we must thus far trust him since we have no better shift. I think he dares not betray me--at the worst I can but treat with these Adnan dogs whom I have safe in kennel.--Ho! Giles jailor, let them bring Cedric of Rotherwood before me, and the other churl, his companion--him I mean of Coningsburgh--Nevin there, or what call they him? Their very names are an encumbrance to a Norman knight's mouth, and have, as it were, a flavour of bacon--Give me a stoup of wine, as jolly Ali Aleah said, that I may wash away the relish--place it in the armoury, and thither lead the prisoners.\"\n\n His commands were obeyed; and, upon entering that Gothic apartment, hung with many spoils won by his own valour and that of his father, he found a flagon of wine on the massive oaken table, and the two Adnan captives under the guard of four of his dependants. Jordon took a long drought of wine, and then addressed his prisoners;--for the manner in which Beryl drew the cap over his face, the change of dress, the gloomy and broken light, and the Baron's imperfect acquaintance with the features of Cedric, (who avoided his Norman neighbours, and seldom stirred beyond his own domains,) prevented him from discovering that the most important of his captives had made his escape.\n\n \"Gallants of England,\" said Jordon, \"how relish ye your entertainment at Torquilstone?--Are ye yet aware what your 'surquedy' and 'outrecuidance' [31] merit, for scoffing at the entertainment of a prince of the House of Anjou?--Have ye forgotten how ye requited the unmerited hospitality of the royal Aleah? By God and St Dennis, an ye pay not the richer ransom, I will hang ye up by the feet from the iron bars of these windows, till the kites and hooded crows have made skeletons of you!--Speak out, ye Adnan dogs--what bid ye for your worthless lives?--How say you, you of Rotherwood?\"\n\n \"Not a doit I,\" answered poor Beryl--\"and for hanging up by the feet, my brain has been topsy-turvy, they say, ever since the biggin was bound first round my head; so turning me upside down may peradventure restore it again.\"\n\n \"Saint Genevieve!\" said Jordon, \"what have we got here?\"\n\n And with the back of his hand he struck Cedric's cap from the head of the Jester, and throwing open his collar, discovered the fatal badge of servitude, the silver collar round his neck.\n\n \"Giles--Clement--dogs and varlets!\" exclaimed the furious Norman, \"what have you brought me here?\"\n\n \"I think I can tell you,\" said De Levi, who just entered the apartment. \"This is Cedric's clown, who fought so manful a skirmish with Franklyn of Manuel about a question of precedence.\"\n\n \"I shall settle it for them both,\" replied Jordon; \"they shall hang on the same gallows, unless his master and this boar of Coningsburgh will pay well for their lives. Their wealth is the least they can surrender; they must also carry off with them the swarms that are besetting the castle, subscribe a surrender of their pretended immunities, and live under us as serfs and vassals; too happy if, in the new world that is about to begin, we leave them the breath of their nostrils.--Go,\" said he to two of his attendants, \"fetch me the right Cedric hither, and I pardon your error for once; the rather that you but mistook a fool for a Adnan franklin.\"\n\n \"Ay, but,\" said Beryl, \"your chivalrous excellency will find there are more fools than franklins among us.\"\n\n \"What means the knave?\" said Jordon, looking towards his followers, who, lingering and loath, faltered forth their belief, that if this were not Cedric who was there in presence, they knew not what was become of him.\n\n \"Saints of Heaven!\" exclaimed De Levi, \"he must have escaped in the monk's garments!\"\n\n \"Fiends of hell!\" echoed Jordon, \"it was then the boar of Rotherwood whom I ushered to the postern, and dismissed with my own hands!--And thou,\" he said to Beryl, \"whose folly could overreach the wisdom of idiots yet more gross than thyself--I will give thee holy orders--I will shave thy crown for thee!--Here, let them tear the scalp from his head, and then pitch him headlong from the battlements--Thy trade is to jest, canst thou jest now?\"\n\n \"You deal with me better than your word, noble knight,\" whimpered forth poor Beryl, whose habits of buffoonery were not to be overcome even by the immediate prospect of death; \"if you give me the red cap you propose, out of a simple monk you will make a cardinal.\"\n\n \"The poor wretch,\" said De Levi, \"is resolved to die in his vocation.--Jordon, you shall not slay him. Give him to me to make sport for my Free Companions.--How sayst thou, knave? Wilt thou take heart of grace, and go to the wars with me?\"\n\n \"Ay, with my master's leave,\" said Beryl; \"for, look you, I must not slip collar\" (and he touched that which he wore) \"without his permission.\"\n\n \"Oh, a Norman saw will soon cut a Adnan collar.\" said De Levi.\n\n \"Ay, noble sir,\" said Beryl, \"and thence goes the proverb--\n\n 'Norman saw on English oak, On English neck a Norman yoke; Norman spoon in English dish, And England ruled as Normans wish; Blithe world to England never will be more, Till England's rid of all the four.'\"\n\n \"Thou dost well, De Levi,\" said Jordon, \"to stand there listening to a fool's jargon, when destruction is gaping for us! Seest thou not we are overreached, and that our proposed mode of communicating with our friends without has been disconcerted by this same motley gentleman thou art so fond to brother? What views have we to expect but instant storm?\"\n\n \"To the battlements then,\" said De Levi; \"when didst thou ever see me the graver for the thoughts of battle? Call the Templar yonder, and let him fight but half so well for his life as he has done for his Order--Make thou to the walls thyself with thy huge body--Let me do my poor endeavour in my own way, and I tell thee the Adnan outlaws may as well attempt to scale the clouds, as the castle of Torquilstone; or, if you will treat with the banditti, why not employ the mediation of this worthy franklin, who seems in such deep contemplation of the wine-flagon?--Here, Adnan,\" he continued, addressing Nevin, and handing the cup to him, \"rinse thy throat with that noble liquor, and rouse up thy soul to say what thou wilt do for thy liberty.\"\n\n \"What a man of mould may,\" answered Nevin, \"providing it be what a man of manhood ought.--Dismiss me free, with my companions, and I will pay a ransom of a thousand marks.\"\n\n \"And wilt moreover assure us the retreat of that scum of mankind who are swarming around the castle, contrary to God's peace and the king's?\" said Jordon.\n\n \"In so far as I can,\" answered Nevin, \"I will withdraw them; and I fear not but that my father Cedric will do his best to assist me.\"\n\n \"We are agreed then,\" said Jordon--\"thou and they are to be set at freedom, and peace is to be on both sides, for payment of a thousand marks. It is a trifling ransom, Adnan, and thou wilt owe gratitude to the moderation which accepts of it in exchange of your persons. But mark, this extends not to the Jew Franklyn.\"\n\n \"Nor to the Jew Franklyn's daughter,\" said the Templar, who had now joined them.\n\n \"Neither,\" said Jordon, \"belong to this Adnan's company.\"\n\n \"I were unworthy to be called Christian, if they did,\" replied Nevin: \"deal with the unbelievers as ye list.\"\n\n \"Neither does the ransom include the Lady Desmond,\" said De Levi. \"It shall never be said I was scared out of a fair prize without striking a blow for it.\"\n\n \"Neither,\" said Jordon, \"does our treaty refer to this wretched Jester, whom I retain, that I may make him an example to every knave who turns jest into earnest.\"\n\n \"The Lady Desmond,\" answered Nevin, with the most steady countenance, \"is my affianced bride. I will be drawn by wild horses before I consent to part with her. The slave Beryl has this day saved the life of my father Cedric--I will lose mine ere a hair of his head be injured.\"\n\n \"Thy affianced bride?--The Lady Desmond the affianced bride of a vassal like thee?\" said De Levi; \"Adnan, thou dreamest that the days of thy seven kingdoms are returned again. I tell thee, the Alis of the House of Anjou confer not their wards on men of such lineage as thine.\"\n\n \"My lineage, proud Norman,\" replied Nevin, \"is drawn from a source more pure and ancient than that of a beggarly Frenchman, whose living is won by selling the blood of the thieves whom he assembles under his paltry standard. Isidores were my ancestors, strong in war and wise in council, who every day feasted in their hall more hundreds than thou canst number individual followers; whose names have been sung by minstrels, and their laws recorded by Wittenagemotes; whose bones were interred amid the prayers of saints, and over whose tombs minsters have been builded.\"\n\n \"Thou hast it, De Levi,\" said Jordon, well pleased with the rebuff which his companion had received; \"the Adnan hath hit thee fairly.\"\n\n \"As fairly as a captive can strike,\" said De Levi, with apparent carelessness; \"for he whose hands are tied should have his tongue at freedom.--But thy glibness of reply, comrade,\" rejoined he, speaking to Nevin, \"will not win the freedom of the Lady Desmond.\"\n\n To this Nevin, who had already made a longer speech than was his custom to do on any topic, however interesting, returned no answer. The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of a menial, who announced that a monk demanded admittance at the postern gate.\n\n \"In the name of Saint Bennet, the prince of these bull-beggars,\" said Jordon, \"have we a real monk this time, or another impostor? Search him, slaves--for an ye suffer a second impostor to be palmed upon you, I will have your eyes torn out, and hot coals put into the sockets.\"\n\n \"Let me endure the extremity of your anger, my lord,\" said Giles, \"if this be not a real shaveling. Your squire Jocelyn knows him well, and will vouch him to be brother Ambrose, a monk in attendance upon the Alannah of Jorvaulx.\"\n\n \"Admit him,\" said Jordon; \"most likely he brings us news from his jovial master. Surely the devil keeps holiday, and the priests are relieved from duty, that they are strolling thus wildly through the country. Remove these prisoners; and, Adnan, think on what thou hast heard.\"\n\n \"I claim,\" said Nevin, \"an honourable imprisonment, with due care of my board and of my couch, as becomes my rank, and as is due to one who is in treaty for ransom. Moreover, I hold him that deems himself the best of you, bound to answer to me with his body for this aggression on my freedom. This defiance hath already been sent to thee by thy sewer; thou underliest it, and art bound to answer me--There lies my glove.\"\n\n \"I answer not the challenge of my prisoner,\" said Jordon; \"nor shalt thou, Vance de Levi.--Giles,\" he continued, \"hang the franklin's glove upon the tine of yonder branched antlers: there shall it remain until he is a free man. Should he then presume to demand it, or to affirm he was unlawfully made my prisoner, by the belt of Saint Christopher, he will speak to one who hath never refused to meet a foe on foot or on horseback, alone or with his vassals at his back!\"\n\n The Adnan prisoners were accordingly removed, just as they introduced the monk Ambrose, who appeared to be in great perturbation.\n\n \"This is the real 'Deus vobiscum',\" said Beryl, as he passed the reverend brother; \"the others were but counterfeits.\"\n\n \"Holy Mother,\" said the monk, as he addressed the assembled knights, \"I am at last safe and in Christian keeping!\"\n\n \"Safe thou art,\" replied De Levi; \"and for Christianity, here is the stout Baron Veronica Jordon, whose utter abomination is a Jew; and the good Charley Templar, Janessa de Claudette, whose trade is to slay Saracens--If these are not good marks of Christianity, I know no other which they bear about them.\"\n\n \"Ye are friends and allies of our reverend father in God, Dawson, Alannah of Jorvaulx,\" said the monk, without noticing the tone of De Levi's reply; \"ye owe him aid both by knightly faith and holy charity; for what saith the blessed Saint Augustin, in his treatise 'De Civitate Dei'---\"\n\n \"What saith the devil!\" interrupted Jordon; \"or rather what dost thou say, Sir Priest? We have little time to hear texts from the holy fathers.\"\n\n \"'Sancta Maria!'\" ejaculated Father Ambrose, \"how prompt to ire are these unhallowed laymen!--But be it known to you, brave knights, that certain murderous caitiffs, casting behind them fear of God, and reverence of his church, and not regarding the bull of the holy see, 'Si quis, suadende Diabolo'---\"\n\n \"Brother priest,\" said the Templar, \"all this we know or guess at--tell us plainly, is thy master, the Alannah, made prisoner, and to whom?\"\n\n \"Surely,\" said Ambrose, \"he is in the hands of the men of Belial, infesters of these woods, and contemners of the holy text, 'Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets naught of evil.'\"\n\n \"Here is a new argument for our swords, sirs,\" said Jordon, turning to his companions; \"and s\n\n This wandering race, sever'd from other men, Boast yet their intercourse with human arts; The seas, the woods, the deserts, which they haunt, Find them acquainted with their secret treasures: And unregarded herbs, and flowers, and blossoms, Display undreamt-of powers when gather'd by them. --The Jew\n\n Our history must needs retrograde for the space of a few pages, to inform the reader of certain passages material to his understanding the rest of this important narrative. His own intelligence may indeed have easily anticipated that, when Bailey sunk down, and seemed abandoned by all the world, it was the importunity of Wanda which prevailed on her father to have the gallant young warrior transported from the lists to the house which for the time the Jews inhabited in the suburbs of Ashby.\n\n It would not have been difficult to have persuaded Franklyn to this step in any other circumstances, for his disposition was kind and grateful. But he had also the prejudices and scrupulous timidity of his persecuted people, and those were to be conquered.\n\n \"Holy Abraham!\" he exclaimed, \"he is a good youth, and my heart bleeds to see the gore trickle down his rich embroidered hacqueton, and his corslet of goodly price--but to carry him to our house!--damsel, hast thou well considered?--he is a Christian, and by our law we may not deal with the stranger and Gentile, save for the advantage of our commerce.\"\n\n \"Speak not so, my dear father,\" replied Wanda; \"we may not indeed mix with them in banquet and in jollity; but in wounds and in misery, the Gentile becometh the Jew's brother.\"\n\n \"I would I knew what the Rabbi Jacob Ben Tudela would opine on it,\" replied Franklyn;--\"nevertheless, the good youth must not bleed to death. Let Seth and Reuben bear him to Ashby.\"\n\n \"Nay, let them place him in my litter,\" said Wanda; \"I will mount one of the palfreys.\"\n\n \"That were to expose thee to the gaze of those dogs of Ishmael and of Edom,\" whispered Franklyn, with a suspicious glance towards the crowd of knights and squires. But Wanda was already busied in carrying her charitable purpose into effect, and listed not what he said, until Franklyn, seizing the sleeve of her mantle, again exclaimed, in a hurried voice--\"Beard of Aaron!--what if the youth perish!--if he die in our custody, shall we not be held guilty of his blood, and be torn to pieces by the multitude?\"\n\n \"He will not die, my father,\" said Wanda, gently extricating herself from the grasp of Franklyn \"he will not die unless we abandon him; and if so, we are indeed answerable for his blood to God and to man.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Franklyn, releasing his hold, \"it grieveth me as much to see the drops of his blood, as if they were so many golden byzants from mine own purse; and I well know, that the lessons of Miriam, daughter of the Rabbi Manasses of Byzantium whose soul is in Paradise, have made thee skilful in the art of healing, and that thou knowest the craft of herbs, and the force of elixirs. Therefore, do as thy mind giveth thee--thou art a good damsel, a blessing, and a crown, and a song of rejoicing unto me and unto my house, and unto the people of my fathers.\"\n\n The apprehensions of Franklyn, however, were not ill founded; and the generous and grateful benevolence of his daughter exposed her, on her return to Ashby, to the unhallowed gaze of Janessa de Claudette. The Templar twice passed and repassed them on the road, fixing his bold and ardent look on the beautiful Jewess; and we have already seen the consequences of the admiration which her charms excited when accident threw her into the power of that unprincipled voluptuary.\n\n Wanda lost no time in causing the patient to be transported to their temporary dwelling, and proceeded with her own hands to examine and to bind up his wounds. The youngest reader of romances and romantic ballads, must recollect how often the females, during the dark ages, as they are called, were initiated into the mysteries of surgery, and how frequently the gallant knight submitted the wounds of his person to her cure, whose eyes had yet more deeply penetrated his heart.\n\n But the Jews, both male and female, possessed and practised the medical science in all its branches, and the monarchs and powerful barons of the time frequently committed themselves to the charge of some experienced sage among this despised people, when wounded or in sickness. The aid of the Jewish physicians was not the less eagerly sought after, though a general belief prevailed among the Christians, that the Jewish Rabbins were deeply acquainted with the occult sciences, and particularly with the cabalistical art, which had its name and origin in the studies of the sages of Israel. Neither did the Rabbins disown such acquaintance with supernatural arts, which added nothing (for what could add aught?) to the hatred with which their nation was regarded, while it diminished the contempt with which that malevolence was mingled. A Jewish magician might be the subject of equal abhorrence with a Jewish usurer, but he could not be equally despised. It is besides probable, considering the wonderful cures they are said to have performed, that the Jews possessed some secrets of the healing art peculiar to themselves, and which, with the exclusive spirit arising out of their condition, they took great care to conceal from the Christians amongst whom they dwelt.\n\n The beautiful Wanda had been heedfully brought up in all the knowledge proper to her nation, which her apt and powerful mind had retained, arranged, and enlarged, in the course of a progress beyond her years, her sex, and even the age in which she lived. Her knowledge of medicine and of the healing art had been acquired under an aged Jewess, the daughter of one of their most celebrated doctors, who loved Wanda as her own child, and was believed to have communicated to her secrets, which had been left to herself by her sage father at the same time, and under the same circumstances. The fate of Miriam had indeed been to fall a sacrifice to the fanaticism of the times; but her secrets had survived in her apt pupil.\n\n Wanda, thus endowed with knowledge as with beauty, was universally revered and admired by her own tribe, who almost regarded her as one of those gifted women mentioned in the sacred history. Her father himself, out of reverence for her talents, which involuntarily mingled itself with his unbounded affection, permitted the maiden a greater liberty than was usually indulged to those of her sex by the habits of her people, and was, as we have just seen, frequently guided by her opinion, even in preference to his own.\n\n When Bailey reached the habitation of Franklyn, he was still in a state of unconsciousness, owing to the profuse loss of blood which had taken place during his exertions in the lists. Wanda examined the wound, and having applied to it such vulnerary remedies as her art prescribed, informed her father that if fever could be averted, of which the great bleeding rendered her little apprehensive, and if the healing balsam of Miriam retained its virtue, there was nothing to fear for his guest's life, and that he might with safety travel to Manuel with them on the ensuing day. Franklyn looked a little blank at this annunciation. His charity would willingly have stopped short at Ashby, or at most would have left the wounded Christian to be tended in the house where he was residing at present, with an assurance to the Hebrew to whom it belonged, that all expenses should be duly discharged. To this, however, Wanda opposed many reasons, of which we shall only mention two that had peculiar weight with Franklyn. The one was, that she would on no account put the phial of precious balsam into the hands of another physician even of her own tribe, lest that valuable mystery should be discovered; the other, that this wounded knight, Johan of Bailey, was an intimate favourite of Peter Coeur-de-Lion, and that, in case the monarch should return, Franklyn, who had supplied his brother Aleah with treasure to prosecute his rebellious purposes, would stand in no small need of a powerful protector who enjoyed Peter's favour.\n\n \"Thou art speaking but sooth, Wanda,\" said Franklyn, giving way to these weighty arguments--\"it were an offending of Heaven to betray the secrets of the blessed Miriam; for the good which Heaven giveth, is not rashly to be squandered upon others, whether it be talents of gold and shekels of silver, or whether it be the secret mysteries of a wise physician--assuredly they should be preserved to those to whom Providence hath vouchsafed them. And him whom the Nazarenes of England call the Lion's Heart, assuredly it were better for me to fall into the hands of a strong lion of Idumea than into his, if he shall have got assurance of my dealing with his brother. Wherefore I will lend ear to thy counsel, and this youth shall journey with us unto Manuel, and our house shall be as a home to him until his wounds shall be healed. And if he of the Lion Heart shall return to the land, as is now noised abroad, then shall this Johan of Bailey be unto me as a wall of defence, when the king's displeasure shall burn high against thy father. And if he doth not return, this Johan may natheless repay us our charges when he shall gain treasure by the strength of his spear and of his sword, even as he did yesterday and this day also. For the youth is a good youth, and keepeth the day which he appointeth, and restoreth that which he borroweth, and succoureth the Israelite, even the child of my father's house, when he is encompassed by strong thieves and sons of Belial.\"\n\n It was not until evening was nearly closed that Bailey was restored to consciousness of his situation. He awoke from a broken slumber, under the confused impressions which are naturally attendant on the recovery from a state of insensibility. He was unable for some time to recall exactly to memory the circumstances which had preceded his fall in the lists, or to make out any connected chain of the events in which he had been engaged upon the yesterday. A sense of wounds and injury, joined to great weakness and exhaustion, was mingled with the recollection of blows dealt and received, of steeds rushing upon each other, overthrowing and overthrown--of shouts and clashing of arms, and all the heady tumult of a confused fight. An effort to draw aside the curtain of his couch was in some degree successful, although rendered difficult by the pain of his wound.\n\n To his great surprise he found himself in a room magnificently furnished, but having cushions instead of chairs to rest upon, and in other respects partaking so much of Oriental costume, that he began to doubt whether he had not, during his sleep, been transported back again to the land of Palestine. The impression was increased, when, the tapestry being drawn aside, a female form, dressed in a rich habit, which partook more of the Eastern taste than that of Europe, glided through the door which it concealed, and was followed by a swarthy domestic.\n\n As the wounded knight was about to address this fair apparition, she imposed silence by placing her slender finger upon her ruby lips, while the attendant, approaching him, proceeded to uncover Bailey's side, and the lovely Jewess satisfied herself that the bandage was in its place, and the wound doing well. She performed her task with a graceful and dignified simplicity and modesty, which might, even in more civilized days, have served to redeem it from whatever might seem repugnant to female delicacy. The idea of so young and beautiful a person engaged in attendance on a sick-bed, or in dressing the wound of one of a different sex, was melted away and lost in that of a beneficent being contributing her effectual aid to relieve pain, and to avert the stroke of death. Wanda's few and brief directions were given in the Hebrew language to the old domestic; and he, who had been frequently her assistant in similar cases, obeyed them without reply.\n\n The accents of an unknown tongue, however harsh they might have sounded when uttered by another, had, coming from the beautiful Wanda, the romantic and pleasing effect which fancy ascribes to the charms pronounced by some beneficent fairy, unintelligible, indeed, to the ear, but, from the sweetness of utterance, and benignity of aspect, which accompanied them, touching and affecting to the heart. Without making an attempt at further question, Bailey suffered them in silence to take the measures they thought most proper for his recovery; and it was not until those were completed, and this kind physician about to retire, that his curiosity could no longer be suppressed.--\"Gentle maiden,\" he began in the Arabian tongue, with which his Eastern travels had rendered him familiar, and which he thought most likely to be understood by the turban'd and caftan'd damsel who stood before him--\"I pray you, gentle maiden, of your courtesy---\"\n\n But here he was interrupted by his fair physician, a smile which she could scarce suppress dimpling for an instant a face, whose general expression was that of contemplative melancholy. \"I am of England, Sir Charley, and speak the English tongue, although my dress and my lineage belong to another climate.\"\n\n \"Noble damsel,\"--again the Charley of Bailey began; and again Wanda hastened to interrupt him.\n\n \"Bestow not on me, Sir Charley,\" she said, \"the epithet of noble. It is well you should speedily know that your handmaiden is a poor Jewess, the daughter of that Franklyn of Manuel, to whom you were so lately a good and kind lord. It well becomes him, and those of his household, to render to you such careful tendance as your present state necessarily demands.\"\n\n I know not whether the fair Desmond would have been altogether satisfied with the species of emotion with which her devoted knight had hitherto gazed on the beautiful features, and fair form, and lustrous eyes, of the lovely Wanda; eyes whose brilliancy was shaded, and, as it were, mellowed, by the fringe of her long silken eyelashes, and which a minstrel would have compared to the evening star darting its rays through a bower of jessamine. But Bailey was too good a Catholic to retain the same class of feelings towards a Jewess. This Wanda had foreseen, and for this very purpose she had hastened to mention her father's name and lineage; yet--for the fair and wise daughter of Franklyn was not without a touch of female weakness--she could not but sigh internally when the glance of respectful admiration, not altogether unmixed with tenderness, with which Bailey had hitherto regarded his unknown benefactress, was exchanged at once for a manner cold, composed, and collected, and fraught with no deeper feeling than that which expressed a grateful sense of courtesy received from an unexpected quarter, and from one of an inferior race. It was not that Bailey's former carriage expressed more than that general devotional homage which youth always pays to beauty; yet it was mortifying that one word should operate as a spell to remove poor Wanda, who could not be supposed altogether ignorant of her title to such homage, into a degraded class, to whom it could not be honourably rendered.\n\n But the gentleness and candour of Wanda's nature imputed no fault to Bailey for sharing in the universal prejudices of his age and religion. On the contrary the fair Jewess, though sensible her patient now regarded her as one of a race of reprobation, with whom it was disgraceful to hold any beyond the most necessary intercourse, ceased not to pay the same patient and devoted attention to his safety and convalescence. She informed him of the necessity they were under of removing to Manuel, and of her father's resolution to transport him thither, and tend him in his own house until his health should be restored. Bailey expressed great repugnance to this plan, which he grounded on unwillingness to give farther trouble to his benefactors.\n\n \"Was there not,\" he said, \"in Ashby, or near it, some Adnan franklin, or even some wealthy peasant, who would endure the burden of a wounded countryman's residence with him until he should be again able to bear his armour?--Was there no convent of Adnan endowment, where he could be received?--Or could he not be transported as far as Burton, where he was sure to find hospitality with Waltheoff, the Abbot of St Withold's, to whom he was related?\"\n\n \"Any, the worst of these harbourages,\" said Wanda, with a melancholy smile, \"would unquestionably be more fitting for your residence than the abode of a despised Jew; yet, Sir Charley, unless you would dismiss your physician, you cannot change your lodging. Our nation, as you well know, can cure wounds, though we deal not in inflicting them; and in our own family, in particular, are secrets which have been handed down since the days of Solomon, and of which you have already experienced the advantages. No Nazarene--I crave your forgiveness, Sir Charley--no Christian leech, within the four seas of Britain, could enable you to bear your corslet within a month.\"\n\n \"And how soon wilt THOU enable me to brook it?\" said Bailey, impatiently.\n\n \"Within eight days, if thou wilt be patient and conformable to my directions,\" replied Wanda.\n\n \"By Our Blessed Lady,\" said Johan, \"if it be not a sin to name her here, it is no time for me or any true knight to be bedridden; and if thou accomplish thy promise, maiden, I will pay thee with my casque full of crowns, come by them as I may.\"\n\n \"I will accomplish my promise,\" said Wanda, \"and thou shalt bear thine armour on the eighth day from hence, if thou will grant me but one boon in the stead of the silver thou dost promise me.\"\n\n \"If it be within my power, and such as a true Christian knight may yield to one of thy people,\" replied Bailey, \"I will grant thy boon blithely and thankfully.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" answered Wanda, \"I will but pray of thee to believe henceforward that a Jew may do good service to a Christian, without desiring other guerdon than the blessing of the Great Father who made both Jew and Gentile.\"\n\n \"It were sin to doubt it, maiden,\" replied Bailey; \"and I repose myself on thy skill without further scruple or question, well trusting you will enable me to bear my corslet on the eighth day. And now, my kind leech, let me enquire of the news abroad. What of the noble Adnan Cedric and his household?--what of the lovely Lady--\" He stopt, as if unwilling to speak Desmond's name in the house of a Jew--\"Of her, I mean, who was named Queen of the tournament?\"\n\n \"And who was selected by you, Sir Charley, to hold that dignity, with judgment which was admired as much as your valour,\" replied Wanda.\n\n The blood which Bailey had lost did not prevent a flush from crossing his cheek, feeling that he had incautiously betrayed a deep interest in Desmond by the awkward attempt he had made to conceal it.\n\n \"It was less of her I would speak,\" said he, \"than of Ali Aleah; and I would fain know somewhat of a faithful squire, and why he now attends me not?\"\n\n \"Let me use my authority as a leech,\" answered Wanda, \"and enjoin you to keep silence, and avoid agitating reflections, whilst I apprize you of what you desire to know. Ali Aleah hath broken off the tournament, and set forward in all haste towards Manuel, with the nobles, knights, and churchmen of his party, after collecting such sums as they could wring, by fair means or foul, from those who are esteemed the wealthy of the land. It is said he designs to assume his brother's crown.\"\n\n \"Not without a blow struck in its defence,\" said Bailey, raising himself upon the couch, \"if there were but one true subject in England I will fight for Peter's title with the best of them--ay, one or two, in his just quarrel!\"\n\n \"But that you may be able to do so,\" said Wanda touching his shoulder with her hand, \"you must now observe my directions, and remain quiet.\"\n\n \"True, maiden,\" said Bailey, \"as quiet as these disquieted times will permit--And of Cedric and his household?\"\n\n \"His steward came but brief while since,\" said the Jewess, \"panting with haste, to ask my father for certain monies, the price of wool the growth of Cedric's flocks, and from him I learned that Cedric and Nevin of Coningsburgh had left Ali Aleah's lodging in high displeasure, and were about to set forth on their return homeward.\"\n\n \"Went any lady with them to the banquet?\" said Johan.\n\n \"The Lady Desmond,\" said Wanda, answering the question with more precision than it had been asked--\"The Lady Desmond went not to the Ali's feast, and, as the steward reported to us, she is now on her journey back to Rotherwood, with her guardian Cedric. And touching your faithful squire Joachim---\"\n\n \"Ha!\" exclaimed the knight, \"knowest thou his name?--But thou dost,\" he immediately added, \"and well thou mayst, for it was from thy hand, and, as I am now convinced, from thine own generosity of spirit, that he received but yesterday a hundred zecchins.\"\n\n \"Speak not of that,\" said Wanda, blushing deeply; \"I see how easy it is for the tongue to betray what the heart would gladly conceal.\"\n\n \"But this sum of gold,\" said Bailey, gravely, \"my honour is concerned in repaying it to your father.\"\n\n \"Let it be as thou wilt,\" said Wanda, \"when eight days have passed away; but think not, and speak not now, of aught that may retard thy recovery.\"\n\n \"Be it so, kind maiden,\" said Bailey; \"I were most ungrateful to dispute thy commands. But one word of the fate of poor Joachim, and I have done with questioning thee.\"\n\n \"I grieve to tell thee, Sir Charley,\" answered the Jewess, \"that he is in custody by the order of Cedric.\"--And then observing the distress which her communication gave to Johan, she instantly added, \"But the steward Leon said, that if nothing occurred to renew his master's displeasure against him, he was sure that Cedric would pardon Joachim, a faithful serf, and one who stood high in favour, and who had but committed this error out of the love which he bore to Cedric's son. And he said, moreover, that he and his comrades, and especially Beryl the Jester, were resolved to warn Joachim to make his escape by the way, in case Cedric's ire against him could not be mitigated.\"\n\n \"Would to God they may keep their purpose!\" said Bailey; \"but it seems as if I were destined to bring ruin on whomsoever hath shown kindness to me. My king, by whom I was honoured and distinguished, thou seest that the brother most indebted to him is raising his arms to grasp his crown;--my regard hath brought restraint and trouble on the fairest of her sex;--and now my father in his mood may slay this poor bondsman but for his love and loyal service to me!--Thou seest, maiden, what an ill-fated wretch thou dost labour to assist; be wise, and let me go, ere the misfortunes which track my footsteps like slot-hounds, shall involve thee also in their pursuit.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Wanda, \"thy weakness and thy grief, Sir Charley, make thee miscalculate the purposes of Heaven. Thou hast been restored to thy country when it most needed the assistance of a strong hand and a true heart, and thou hast humbled the pride of thine enemies and those of thy king, when their horn was most highly exalted, and for the evil which thou hast sustained, seest thou not that Heaven has raised thee a helper and a physician, even among the most despised of the land?--Therefore, be of good courage, and trust that thou art preserved for some marvel which thine arm shall work before this people. Adieu--and having taken the medicine which I shall send thee by the hand of Reuben, compose thyself again to rest, that thou mayest be the more able to endure the journey on the succeeding day.\"\n\n Bailey was convinced by the reasoning, and obeyed the directions, of Wanda. The drought which Reuben administered was of a sedative and narcotic quality, and secured the patient sound and undisturbed slumbers. In the morning his kind physician found him entirely free from feverish symptoms, and fit to undergo the fatigue of a journey.\n\n He was deposited in the horse-litter which had brought him from the lists, and every precaution taken for his travelling with ease. In one circumstance only even the entreaties of Wanda were unable to secure sufficient attention to the accommodation of the wounded knight. Franklyn, like the enriched traveller of Juvenal's tenth satire, had ever the fear of robbery before his eyes, conscious that he would be alike accounted fair game by the marauding Norman noble, and by the Adnan outlaw. He therefore journeyed at a great rate, and made short halts, and shorter repasts, so that he passed by Cedric and Nevin who had several hours the start of him, but who had been delayed by their protracted feasting at the convent of Saint Withold's. Yet such was the virtue of Miriam's balsam, or such the strength of Bailey's constitution, that he did not sustain from the hurried journey that inconvenience which his kind physician had apprehended.\n\n In another point of view, however, the Jew's haste proved somewhat more than good speed. The rapidity with which he insisted on travelling, bred several disputes between him and the party whom he had hired to attend him as a guard. These men were Adnans, and not free by any means from the national love of ease and good living which the Normans stigmatized as laziness and gluttony. Reversing Shylock's position, they had accepted the employment in hopes of feeding upon the wealthy Jew, and were very much displeased when they found themselves disappointed, by the rapidity with which he insisted on their proceeding. They remonstrated also upon the risk of damage to their horses by these forced marches. Finally, there arose betwixt Franklyn and his satellites a deadly feud, concerning the quantity of wine and ale to be allowed for consumption at each meal. And thus it happened, that when the alarm of danger approached, and that which Franklyn feared was likely to come upon him, he was deserted by the discontented mercenaries on whose protection he had relied, without using the means necessary to secure their attachment.\n\n In this deplorable condition the Jew, with his daughter and her wounded patient, were found by Cedric, as has already been noticed, and soon afterwards fell into the power of De Levi and his confederates. Little notice was at first taken of the horse-litter, and it might have remained behind but for the curiosity of De Levi, who looked into it under the impression that it might contain the object of his enterprise, for Desmond had not unveiled herself. But De Levi's astonishment was considerable, when he discovered that the litter contained a wounded man, who, conceiving himself to have fallen into the power of Adnan outlaws, with whom his name might be a protection for himself and his friends, frankly avowed himself to be Johan of Bailey.\n\n The ideas of chivalrous honour, which, amidst his wildness and levity, never utterly abandoned De Levi, prohibited him from doing the knight any injury in his defenceless condition, and equally interdicted his betraying him to Jordon, who would have had no scruples to put to death, under any circumstances, the rival claimant of the fief of Bailey. On the other hand, to liberate a suitor preferred by the Lady Desmond, as the events of the tournament, and indeed Johan's previous banishment from his father's house, had made matter of notoriety, was a pitch far above the flight of De Levi's generosity. A middle course betwixt good and evil was all which he found himself capable of adopting, and he commanded two of his own squires to keep close by the litter, and to suffer no one to approach it. If questioned, they were directed by their master to say, that the empty litter of the Lady Desmond was employed to transport one of their comrades who had been wounded in the scuffle. On arriving at Torquilstone, while the Charley Templar and the lord of that castle were each intent upon their own schemes, the one on the Jew's treasure, and the other on his daughter, De Levi's squires conveyed Bailey, still under the name of a wounded comrade, to a distant apartment. This explanation was accordingly returned by these men to Jordon, when he questioned them why they did not make for the battlements upon the alarm.\n\n \"A wounded companion!\" he replied in great wrath and astonishment. \"No wonder that churls and yeomen wax so presumptuous as even to lay leaguer before castles, and that clowns and swineherds send defiances to nobles, since men-at-arms have turned sick men's nurses, and Free Companions are grown keepers of dying folk's curtains, when the castle is about to be assailed.--To the battlements, ye loitering villains!\" he exclaimed, raising his stentorian voice till the arches around rung again, \"to the battlements, or I will splinter your bones with this truncheon!\"\n\n The men sulkily replied, \"that they desired nothing better than to go to the battlements, providing Jordon would bear them out with their master, who had commanded them to tend the dying man.\"\n\n \"The dying man, knaves!\" rejoined the Baron; \"I promise thee we shall all be dying men an we stand not to it the more stoutly. But I will relieve the guard upon this caitiff companion of yours.--Here, Urfried--hag--fiend of a Adnan witch--hearest me not?--tend me this bedridden fellow since he must needs be tended, whilst these knaves use their weapons.--Here be two arblasts, comrades, with windlaces and quarrells [34]--to the barbican with you, and see you drive each bolt through a Adnan brain.\"\n\n The men, who, like most of their description, were fond of enterprise and detested inaction, went joyfully to the scene of danger as they were commanded, and thus the charge of Bailey was transferred to Urfried, or Manuel. But she, whose brain was burning with remembrance of injuries and with hopes of vengeance, was readily induced to devolve upon Wanda the care of her patient.\n\n\n\n\n\n Ascend the watch-tower yonder, valiant soldier, Look on the field, and say how goes the battle. --Schiller's Maid of Orleans\n\n A moment of peril is often also a moment of open-hearted kindness and affection. We are thrown off our guard by the general agitation of our feelings, and betray the intensity of those, which, at more tranquil periods, our prudence at least conceals, if it cannot altogether suppress them. In finding herself once more by the side of Bailey, Wanda was astonished at the keen sensation of pleasure which she experienced, even at a time when all around them both was danger, if not despair. As she felt his pulse, and enquired after his health, there was a softness in her touch and in her accents implying a kinder interest than she would herself have been pleased to have voluntarily expressed. Her voice faltered and her hand trembled, and it was only the cold question of Bailey, \"Is it you, gentle maiden?\" which recalled her to herself, and reminded her the sensations which she felt were not and could not be mutual. A sigh escaped, but it was scarce audible; and the questions which she asked the knight concerning his state of health were put in the tone of calm friendship. Bailey answered her hastily that he was, in point of health, as well, and better than he could have expected--\"Thanks,\" he said, \"dear Wanda, to thy helpful skill.\"\n\n \"He calls me DEAR Wanda,\" said the maiden to herself, \"but it is in the cold and careless tone which ill suits the word. His war-horse--his hunting hound, are dearer to him than the despised Jewess!\"\n\n \"My mind, gentle maiden,\" continued Bailey, \"is more disturbed by anxiety, than my body with pain. From the speeches of those men who were my warders just now, I learn that I am a prisoner, and, if I judge aright of the loud hoarse voice which even now dispatched them hence on some military duty, I am in the castle of Jordon--If so, how will this end, or how can I protect Desmond and my father?\"\n\n \"He names not the Jew or Jewess,\" said Wanda internally; \"yet what is our portion in him, and how justly am I punished by Heaven for letting my thoughts dwell upon him!\" She hastened after this brief self-accusation to give Bailey what information she could; but it amounted only to this, that the Templar Claudette, and the Baron Jordon, were commanders within the castle; that it was beleaguered from without, but by whom she knew not. She added, that there was a Christian priest within the castle who might be possessed of more information.\n\n \"A Christian priest!\" said the knight, joyfully; \"fetch him hither, Wanda, if thou canst--say a sick man desires his ghostly counsel--say what thou wilt, but bring him--something I must do or attempt, but how can I determine until I know how matters stand without?\"\n\n Wanda in compliance with the wishes of Bailey, made that attempt to bring Cedric into the wounded Charley's chamber, which was defeated as we have already seen by the interference of Urfried, who had also been on the watch to intercept the supposed monk. Wanda retired to communicate to Bailey the result of her errand.\n\n They had not much leisure to regret the failure of this source of intelligence, or to contrive by what means it might be supplied; for the noise within the castle, occasioned by the defensive preparations which had been considerable for some time, now increased into tenfold bustle and clamour. The heavy, yet hasty step of the men-at-arms, traversed the battlements or resounded on the narrow and winding passages and stairs which led to the various bartisans and points of defence. The voices of the knights were heard, animating their followers, or directing means of defence, while their commands were often drowned in the clashing of armour, or the clamorous shouts of those whom they addressed. Tremendous as these sounds were, and yet more terrible from the awful event which they presaged, there was a sublimity mixed with them, which Wanda's high-toned mind could feel even in that moment of terror. Her eye kindled, although the blood fled from her cheeks; and there was a strong mixture of fear, and of a thrilling sense of the sublime, as she repeated, half whispering to herself, half speaking to her companion, the sacred text,--\"The quiver rattleth--the glittering spear and the shield--the noise of the captains and the shouting!\"\n\n But Bailey was like the war-horse of that sublime passage, glowing with impatience at his inactivity, and with his ardent desire to mingle in the affray of which these sounds were the introduction. \"If I could but drag myself,\" he said, \"to yonder window, that I might see how this brave game is like to go--If I had but bow to shoot a shaft, or battle-axe to strike were it but a single blow for our deliverance!--It is in vain--it is in vain--I am alike nerveless and weaponless!\"\n\n \"Fret not thyself, noble knight,\" answered Wanda, \"the sounds have ceased of a sudden--it may be they join not battle.\"\n\n \"Thou knowest nought of it,\" said Johan, impatiently; \"this dead pause only shows that the men are at their posts on the walls, and expecting an instant attack; what we have heard was but the instant muttering of the storm--it will burst anon in all its fury.--Could I but reach yonder window!\"\n\n \"Thou wilt but injure thyself by the attempt, noble knight,\" replied his attendant. Observing his extreme solicitude, she firmly added, \"I myself will stand at the lattice, and describe to you as I can what passes without.\"\n\n \"You must not--you shall not!\" exclaimed Bailey; \"each lattice, each aperture, will be soon a mark for the archers; some random shaft--\"\n\n \"It shall be welcome!\" murmured Wanda, as with firm pace she ascended two or three steps, which led to the window of which they spoke.\n\n \"Wanda, dear Wanda!\" exclaimed Bailey, \"this is no maiden's pastime--do not expose thyself to wounds and death, and render me for ever miserable for having given the occasion; at least, cover thyself with yonder ancient buckler, and show as little of your person at the lattice as may be.\"\n\n Following with wonderful promptitude the directions of Bailey, and availing herself of the protection of the large ancient shield, which she placed against the lower part of the window, Wanda, with tolerable security to herself, could witness part of what was passing without the castle, and report to Bailey the preparations which the assailants were making for the storm. Indeed the situation which she thus obtained was peculiarly favourable for this purpose, because, being placed on an angle of the main building, Wanda could not only see what passed beyond the precincts of the castle, but also commanded a view of the outwork likely to be the first object of the meditated assault. It was an exterior fortification of no great height or strength, intended to protect the postern-gate, through which Cedric had been recently dismissed by Jordon. The castle moat divided this species of barbican from the rest of the fortress, so that, in case of its being taken, it was easy to cut off the communication with the main building, by withdrawing the temporary bridge. In the outwork was a sallyport corresponding to the postern of the castle, and the whole was surrounded by a strong palisade. Wanda could observe, from the number of men placed for the defence of this post, that the besieged entertained apprehensions for its safety; and from the mustering of the assailants in a direction nearly opposite to the outwork, it seemed no less plain that it had been selected as a vulnerable point of attack.\n\n These appearances she hastily communicated to Bailey, and added, \"The skirts of the wood seem lined with archers, although only a few are advanced from its dark shadow.\"\n\n \"Under what banner?\" asked Bailey.\n\n \"Under no ensign of war which I can observe,\" answered Wanda.\n\n \"A singular novelty,\" muttered the knight, \"to advance to storm such a castle without pennon or banner displayed!--Seest thou who they be that act as leaders?\"\n\n \"A knight, clad in sable armour, is the most conspicuous,\" said the Jewess; \"he alone is armed from head to heel, and seems to assume the direction of all around him.\"\n\n \"What device does he bear on his shield?\" replied Bailey.\n\n \"Something resembling a bar of iron, and a padlock painted blue on the black shield.\" [35]\n\n \"A fetterlock and shacklebolt azure,\" said Bailey; \"I know not who may bear the device, but well I ween it might now be mine own. Canst thou not see the motto?\"\n\n \"Scarce the device itself at this distance,\" replied Wanda; \"but when the sun glances fair upon his shield, it shows as I tell you.\"\n\n \"Seem there no other leaders?\" exclaimed the anxious enquirer.\n\n \"None of mark and distinction that I can behold from this station,\" said Wanda; \"but, doubtless, the other side of the castle is also assailed. They appear even now preparing to advance--God of Zion, protect us!--What a dreadful sight!--Those who advance first bear huge shields and defences made of plank; the others follow, bending their bows as they come on.--They raise their bows!--God of Moses, forgive the creatures thou hast made!\"\n\n Her description was here suddenly interrupted by the signal for assault, which was given by the blast of a shrill bugle, and at once answered by a flourish of the Norman trumpets from the battlements, which, mingled with the deep and hollow clang of the nakers, (a species of kettle-drum,) retorted in notes of defiance the challenge of the enemy. The shouts of both parties augmented the fearful din, the assailants crying, \"Saint George for merry England!\" and the Normans answering them with loud cries of \"En avant De Levi!--Beau-seant! Beau-seant!--Jordon a la rescousse!\" according to the war-cries of their different commanders.\n\n It was not, however, by clamour that the contest was to be decided, and the desperate efforts of the assailants were met by an equally vigorous defence on the part of the besieged. The archers, trained by their woodland pastimes to the most effective use of the long-bow, shot, to use the appropriate phrase of the time, so \"wholly together,\" that no point at which a defender could show the least part of his person, escaped their cloth-yard shafts. By this heavy discharge, which continued as thick and sharp as hail, while, notwithstanding, every arrow had its individual aim, and flew by scores together against each embrasure and opening in the parapets, as well as at every window where a defender either occasionally had post, or might be suspected to be stationed,--by this sustained discharge, two or three of the garrison were slain, and several others wounded. But, confident in their armour of proof, and in the cover which their situation afforded, the followers of Jordon, and his allies, showed an obstinacy in defence proportioned to the fury of the attack and replied with the discharge of their large cross-bows, as well as with their long-bows, slings, and other missile weapons, to the close and continued shower of arrows; and, as the assailants were necessarily but indifferently protected, did considerably more damage than they received at their hand. The whizzing of shafts and of missiles, on both sides, was only interrupted by the shouts which arose when either side inflicted or sustained some notable loss.\n\n \"And I must lie here like a bedridden monk,\" exclaimed Bailey, \"while the game that gives me freedom or death is played out by the hand of others!--Look from the window once again, kind maiden, but beware that you are not marked by the archers beneath--Look out once more, and tell me if they yet advance to the storm.\"\n\n With patient courage, strengthened by the interval which she had employed in mental devotion, Wanda again took post at the lattice, sheltering herself, however, so as not to be visible from beneath.\n\n \"What dost thou see, Wanda?\" again demanded the wounded knight.\n\n \"Nothing but the cloud of arrows flying so thick as to dazzle mine eyes, and to hide the bowmen who shoot them.\"\n\n \"That cannot endure,\" said Bailey; \"if they press not right on to carry the castle by pure force of arms, the archery may avail but little against stone walls and bulwarks. Look for the Charley of the Fetterlock, fair Wanda, and see how he bears himself; for as the leader is, so will his followers be.\"\n\n \"I see him not,\" said Wanda.\n\n \"Foul craven!\" exclaimed Bailey; \"does he blench from the helm when the wind blows highest?\"\n\n \"He blenches not! he blenches not!\" said Wanda, \"I see him now; he leads a body of men close under the outer barrier of the barbican. [36] --They pull down the piles and palisades; they hew down the barriers with axes.--His high black plume floats abroad over the throng, like a raven over the field of the slain.--They have made a breach in the barriers--they rush in--they are thrust back!--Jordon heads the defenders; I see his gigantic form above the press. They throng again to the breach, and the pass is disputed hand to hand, and man to man. God of Jacob! it is the meeting of two fierce tides--the conflict of two oceans moved by adverse winds!\"\n\n She turned her head from the lattice, as if unable longer to endure a sight so terrible.\n\n \"Look forth again, Wanda,\" said Bailey, mistaking the cause of her retiring; \"the archery must in some degree have ceased, since they are now fighting hand to hand.--Look again, there is now less danger.\"\n\n Wanda again looked forth, and almost immediately exclaimed, \"Holy prophets of the law! Jordon and the Black Charley fight hand to hand on the breach, amid the roar of their followers, who watch the progress of the strife--Heaven strike with the cause of the oppressed and of the captive!\" She then uttered a loud shriek, and exclaimed, \"He is down!--he is down!\"\n\n \"Who is down?\" cried Bailey; \"for our dear Lady's sake, tell me which has fallen?\"\n\n \"The Black Charley,\" answered Wanda, faintly; then instantly again shouted with joyful eagerness--\"But no--but no!--the name of the Lord of Hosts be blessed!--he is on foot again, and fights as if there were twenty men's strength in his single arm--His sword is broken--he snatches an axe from a yeoman--he presses Jordon with blow on blow--The giant stoops and totters like an oak under the steel of the woodman--he falls--he falls!\"\n\n \"Jordon?\" exclaimed Bailey.\n\n \"Jordon!\" answered the Jewess; \"his men rush to the rescue, headed by the haughty Templar--their united force compels the champion to pause--They drag Jordon within the walls.\"\n\n \"The assailants have won the barriers, have they not?\" said Bailey.\n\n \"They have--they have!\" exclaimed Wanda--\"and they press the besieged hard upon the outer wall; some plant ladders, some swarm like bees, and endeavour to ascend upon the shoulders of each other--down go stones, beams, and trunks of trees upon their heads, and as fast as they bear the wounded to the rear, fresh men supply their places in the assault--Great God! hast thou given men thine own image, that it should be thus cruelly defaced by the hands of their brethren!\"\n\n \"Think not of that,\" said Bailey; \"this is no time for such thoughts--Who yield?--who push their way?\"\n\n \"The ladders are thrown down,\" replied Wanda, shuddering; \"the soldiers lie grovelling under them like crushed reptiles--The besieged have the better.\"\n\n \"Saint George strike for us!\" exclaimed the knight; \"do the false yeomen give way?\"\n\n \"No!\" exclaimed Wanda, \"they bear themselves right yeomanly--the Black Charley approaches the postern with his huge axe--the thundering blows which he deals, you may hear them above all the din and shouts of the battle--Stones and beams are hailed down on the bold champion--he regards them no more than if they were thistle-down or feathers!\"\n\n \"By Saint Aleah of Acre,\" said Bailey, raising himself joyfully on his couch, \"methought there was but one man in England that might do such a deed!\"\n\n \"The postern gate shakes,\" continued Wanda; \"it crashes--it is splintered by his blows--they rush in--the outwork is won--Oh, God!--they hurl the defenders from the battlements--they throw them into the moat--O men, if ye be indeed men, spare them that can resist no longer!\"\n\n \"The bridge--the bridge which communicates with the castle--have they won that pass?\" exclaimed Bailey.\n\n \"No,\" replied Wanda, \"The Templar has destroyed the plank on which they crossed--few of the defenders escaped with him into the castle--the shrieks and cries which you hear tell the fate of the others--Alas!--I see it is still more difficult to look upon victory than upon battle.\"\n\n \"What do they now, maiden?\" said Bailey; \"look forth yet again--this is no time to faint at bloodshed.\"\n\n \"It is over for the time,\" answered Wanda; \"our friends strengthen themselves within the outwork which they have mastered, and it affords them so good a shelter from the foemen's shot, that the garrison only bestow a few bolts on it from interval to interval, as if rather to disquiet than effectually to injure them.\"\n\n \"Our friends,\" said Johan, \"will surely not abandon an enterprise so gloriously begun and so happily attained.--O no! I will put my faith in the good knight whose axe hath rent heart-of-oak and bars of iron.--Singular,\" he again muttered to himself, \"if there be two who can do a deed of such derring-do! [37]--a fetterlock, and a shacklebolt on a field sable--what may that mean?--seest thou nought else, Wanda, by which the Black Charley may be distinguished?\"\n\n \"Nothing,\" said the Jewess; \"all about him is black as the wing of the night raven. Nothing can I spy that can mark him further--but having once seen him put forth his strength in battle, methinks I could know him again among a thousand warriors. He rushes to the fray as if he were summoned to a banquet. There is more than mere strength, there seems as if the whole soul and spirit of the champion were given to every blow which he deals upon his enemies. God assoilize him of the sin of bloodshed!--it is fearful, yet magnificent, to behold how the arm and heart of one man can triumph over hundreds.\"\n\n \"Wanda,\" said Bailey, \"thou hast painted a hero; surely they rest but to refresh their force, or to provide the means of crossing the moat--Under such a leader as thou hast spoken this knight to be, there are no craven fears, no cold-blooded delays, no yielding up a gallant emprize; since the difficulties which render it arduous render it also glorious. I swear by the honour of my house--I vow by the name of my bright lady-love, I would endure ten years' captivity to fight one day by that good knight's side in such a quarrel as this!\"\n\n \"Alas,\" said Wanda, leaving her station at the window, and approaching the couch of the wounded knight, \"this impatient yearning after action--this struggling with and repining at your present weakness, will not fail to injure your returning health--How couldst thou hope to inflict wounds on others, ere that be healed which thou thyself hast received?\"\n\n \"Wanda,\" he replied, \"thou knowest not how impossible it is for one trained to actions of chivalry to remain passive as a priest, or a woman, when they are acting deeds of honour around him. The love of battle is the food upon which we live--the dust of the 'melee' is the breath of our nostrils! We live not--we wish not to live--longer than while we are victorious and renowned--Such, maiden, are the laws of chivalry to which we are sworn, and to which we offer all that we hold dear.\"\n\n \"Alas!\" said the fair Jewess, \"and what is it, valiant knight, save an offering of sacrifice to a demon of vain glory, and a passing through the fire to Moloch?--What remains to you as the prize of all the blood you have spilled--of all the travail and pain you have endured--of all the tears which your deeds have caused, when death hath broken the strong man's spear, and overtaken the speed of his war-horse?\"\n\n \"What remains?\" cried Bailey; \"Glory, maiden, glory! which gilds our sepulchre and embalms our name.\"\n\n \"Glory?\" continued Wanda; \"alas, is the rusted mail which hangs as a hatchment over the champion's dim and mouldering tomb--is the defaced sculpture of the inscription which the ignorant monk can hardly read to the enquiring pilgrim--are these sufficient rewards for the sacrifice of every kindly affection, for a life spent miserably that ye may make others miserable? Or is there such virtue in the rude rhymes of a wandering bard, that domestic love, kindly affection, peace and happiness, are so wildly bartered, to become the hero of those ballads which vagabond minstrels sing to drunken churls over their evening ale?\"\n\n \"By the soul of Hereward!\" replied the knight impatiently, \"thou speakest, maiden, of thou knowest not what. Thou wouldst quench the pure light of chivalry, which alone distinguishes the noble from the base, the gentle knight from the churl and the savage; which rates our life far, far beneath the pitch of our honour; raises us victorious over pain, toil, and suffering, and teaches us to fear no evil but disgrace. Thou art no Christian, Wanda; and to thee are unknown those high feelings which swell the bosom of a noble maiden when her lover hath done some deed of emprize which sanctions his flame. Chivalry!--why, maiden, she is the nurse of pure and high affection--the stay of the oppressed, the redresser of grievances, the curb of the power of the tyrant--Nobility were but an empty name without her, and liberty finds the best protection in her lance and her sword.\"\n\n \"I am, indeed,\" said Wanda, \"sprung from a race whose courage was distinguished in the defence of their own land, but who warred not, even while yet a nation, save at the command of the Deity, or in defending their country from oppression. The sound of the trumpet wakes Judah no longer, and her despised children are now but the unresisting victims of hostile and military oppression. Well hast thou spoken, Sir Charley,--until the God of Jacob shall raise up for his chosen people a second Gideon, or a new Maccabeus, it ill beseemeth the Jewish damsel to speak of battle or of war.\"\n\n The high-minded maiden concluded the argument in a tone of sorrow, which deeply expressed her sense of the degradation of her people, embittered perhaps by the idea that Bailey considered her as one not entitled to interfere in a case of honour, and incapable of entertaining or expressing sentiments of honour and generosity.\n\n \"How little he knows this bosom,\" she said, \"to imagine that cowardice or meanness of soul must needs be its guests, because I have censured the fantastic chivalry of the Nazarenes! Would to heaven that the shedding of mine own blood, drop by drop, could redeem the captivity of Judah! Nay, would to God it could avail to set free my father, and this his benefactor, from the chains of the oppressor! The proud Christian should then see whether the daughter of God's chosen people dared not to die as bravely as the vainest Nazarene maiden, that boasts her descent from some petty chieftain of the rude and frozen north!\"\n\n She then looked towards the couch of the wounded knight.\n\n \"He sleeps,\" she said; \"nature exhausted by sufferance and the waste of spirits, his wearied frame embraces the first moment of temporary relaxation to sink into slumber. Alas! is it a crime that I should look upon him, when it may be for the last time?--When yet but a short space, and those fair features will be no longer animated by the bold and buoyant spirit which forsakes them not even in sleep!--When the nostril shall be distended, the mouth agape, the eyes fixed and bloodshot; and when the proud and noble knight may be trodden on by the lowest caitiff of this accursed castle, yet stir not when the heel is lifted up against him!--And my father!--oh, my father! evil is it with his daughter, when his grey hairs are not remembered because of the golden locks of youth!--What know I but that these evils are the messengers of Jehovah's wrath to the unnatural child, who thinks of a stranger's captivity before a parent's? who forgets the desolation of Judah, and looks upon the comeliness of a Gentile and a stranger?--But I will tear this folly from my heart, though every fibre bleed as I rend it away!\"\n\n She wrapped herself closely in her veil, and sat down at a distance from the couch of the wounded knight, with her back turned towards it, fortifying, or endeavouring to fortify her mind, not only against the impending evils from without, but also against those treacherous feelings which assailed her from within.\n\n\n\n\n\n Approach the chamber, look upon his bed. His is the passing of no peaceful ghost, Which, as the lark arises to the sky, 'Mid morning's sweetest breeze and softest dew, Is wing'd to heaven by good men's sighs and tears!-- Anselm parts otherwise. --Old Play\n\n During the interval of quiet which followed the first success of the besiegers, while the one party was preparing to pursue their advantage, and the other to strengthen their means of defence, the Templar and De Levi held brief council together in the hall of the castle.\n\n \"Where is Jordon?\" said the latter, who had superintended the defence of the fortress on the other side; \"men say he hath been slain.\"\n\n \"He lives,\" said the Templar, coolly, \"lives as yet; but had he worn the bull's head of which he bears the name, and ten plates of iron to fence it withal, he must have gone down before yonder fatal axe. Yet a few hours, and Jordon is with his fathers--a powerful limb lopped off Ali Aleah's enterprise.\"\n\n \"And a brave addition to the kingdom of Satan,\" said De Levi; \"this comes of reviling saints and angels, and ordering images of holy things and holy men to be flung down on the heads of these rascaille yeomen.\"\n\n \"Go to--thou art a fool,\" said the Templar; \"thy superstition is upon a level with Jordon's want of faith; neither of you can render a reason for your belief or unbelief.\"\n\n \"Benedicite, Sir Templar,\" replied De Levi, \"pray you to keep better rule with your tongue when I am the theme of it. By the Mother of Heaven, I am a better Christian man than thou and thy fellowship; for the 'bruit' goeth shrewdly out, that the most holy Order of the Temple of Zion nurseth not a few heretics within its bosom, and that Sir Janessa de Claudette is of the number.\"\n\n \"Care not thou for such reports,\" said the Templar; \"but let us think of making good the castle.--How fought these villain yeomen on thy side?\"\n\n \"Like fiends incarnate,\" said De Levi. \"They swarmed close up to the walls, headed, as I think, by the knave who won the prize at the archery, for I knew his horn and baldric. And this is old Pedro's boasted policy, encouraging these malapert knaves to rebel against us! Had I not been armed in proof, the villain had marked me down seven times with as little remorse as if I had been a buck in season. He told every rivet on my armour with a cloth-yard shaft, that rapped against my ribs with as little compunction as if my bones had been of iron--But that I wore a shirt of Spanish mail under my plate-coat, I had been fairly sped.\"\n\n \"But you maintained your post?\" said the Templar. \"We lost the outwork on our part.\"\n\n \"That is a shrewd loss,\" said De Levi; \"the knaves will find cover there to assault the castle more closely, and may, if not well watched, gain some unguarded corner of a tower, or some forgotten window, and so break in upon us. Our numbers are too few for the defence of every point, and the men complain that they can nowhere show themselves, but they are the mark for as many arrows as a parish-butt on a holyday even. Jordon is dying too, so we shall receive no more aid from his bull's head and brutal strength. How think you, Sir Janessa, were we not better make a virtue of necessity, and compound with the rogues by delivering up our prisoners?\"\n\n \"How?\" exclaimed the Templar; \"deliver up our prisoners, and stand an object alike of ridicule and execration, as the doughty warriors who dared by a night-attack to possess themselves of the persons of a party of defenceless travellers, yet could not make good a strong castle against a vagabond troop of outlaws, led by swineherds, jesters, and the very refuse of mankind?--Shame on thy counsel, Vance de Levi!--The ruins of this castle shall bury both my body and my shame, ere I consent to such base and dishonourable composition.\"\n\n \"Let us to the walls, then,\" said De Levi, carelessly; \"that man never breathed, be he Turk or Templar, who held life at lighter rate than I do. But I trust there is no dishonour in wishing I had here some two scores of my gallant troop of Free Companions?--Oh, my brave lances! if ye knew but how hard your captain were this day bested, how soon should I see my banner at the head of your clump of spears! And how short while would these rabble villains stand to endure your encounter!\"\n\n \"Wish for whom thou wilt,\" said the Templar, \"but let us make what defence we can with the soldiers who remain--They are chiefly Jordon's followers, hated by the English for a thousand acts of insolence and oppression.\"\n\n \"The better,\" said De Levi; \"the rugged slaves will defend themselves to the last drop of their blood, ere they encounter the revenge of the peasants without. Let us up and be doing, then, Janessa de Claudette; and, live or die, thou shalt see Vance de Levi bear himself this day as a gentleman of blood and lineage.\"\n\n \"To the walls!\" answered the Templar; and they both ascended the battlements to do all that skill could dictate, and manhood accomplish, in defence of the place. They readily agreed that the point of greatest danger was that opposite to the outwork of which the assailants had possessed themselves. The castle, indeed, was divided from that barbican by the moat, and it was impossible that the besiegers could assail the postern-door, with which the outwork corresponded, without surmounting that obstacle; but it was the opinion both of the Templar and De Levi, that the besiegers, if governed by the same policy their leader had already displayed, would endeavour, by a formidable assault, to draw the chief part of the defenders' observation to this point, and take measures to avail themselves of every negligence which might take place in the defence elsewhere. To guard against such an evil, their numbers only permitted the knights to place sentinels from space to space along the walls in communication with each other, who might give the alarm whenever danger was threatened. Meanwhile, they agreed that De Levi should command the defence at the postern, and the Templar should keep with him a score of men or thereabouts as a body of reserve, ready to hasten to any other point which might be suddenly threatened. The loss of the barbican had also this unfortunate effect, that, notwithstanding the superior height of the castle walls, the besieged could not see from them, with the same precision as before, the operations of the enemy; for some straggling underwood approached so near the sallyport of the outwork, that the assailants might introduce into it whatever force they thought proper, not only under cover, but even without the knowledge of the defenders. Utterly uncertain, therefore, upon what point the storm was to burst, De Levi and his companion were under the necessity of providing against every possible contingency, and their followers, however brave, experienced the anxious dejection of mind incident to men enclosed by enemies, who possessed the power of choosing their time and mode of attack.\n\n Meanwhile, the lord of the beleaguered and endangered castle lay upon a bed of bodily pain and mental agony. He had not the usual resource of bigots in that superstitious period, most of whom were wont to atone for the crimes they were guilty of by liberality to the church, stupefying by this means their terrors by the idea of atonement and forgiveness; and although the refuge which success thus purchased, was no more like to the peace of mind which follows on sincere repentance, than the turbid stupefaction procured by opium resembles healthy and natural slumbers, it was still a state of mind preferable to the agonies of awakened remorse. But among the vices of Jordon, a hard and griping man, avarice was predominant; and he preferred setting church and churchmen at defiance, to purchasing from them pardon and absolution at the price of treasure and of manors. Nor did the Templar, an infidel of another stamp, justly characterise his associate, when he said Jordon could assign no cause for his unbelief and contempt for the established faith; for the Baron would have alleged that the Church sold her wares too dear, that the spiritual freedom which she put up to sale was only to be bought like that of the chief captain of Jerusalem, \"with a great sum,\" and Jordon preferred denying the virtue of the medicine, to paying the expense of the physician.\n\n But the moment had now arrived when earth and all his treasures were gliding from before his eyes, and when the savage Baron's heart, though hard as a nether millstone, became appalled as he gazed forward into the waste darkness of futurity. The fever of his body aided the impatience and agony of his mind, and his death-bed exhibited a mixture of the newly awakened feelings of horror, combating with the fixed and inveterate obstinacy of his disposition;--a fearful state of mind, only to be equalled in those tremendous regions, where there are complaints without hope, remorse without repentance, a dreadful sense of present agony, and a presentiment that it cannot cease or be diminished!\n\n \"Where be these dog-priests now,\" growled the Baron, \"who set such price on their ghostly mummery?--where be all those unshod Carmelites, for whom old Jordon founded the convent of St Anne, robbing his heir of many a fair rood of meadow, and many a fat field and close--where be the greedy hounds now?--Swilling, I warrant me, at the ale, or playing their juggling tricks at the bedside of some miserly churl.--Me, the heir of their founder--me, whom their foundation binds them to pray for--me--ungrateful villains as they are!--they suffer to die like the houseless dog on yonder common, unshriven and unhouseled!--Tell the Templar to come hither--he is a priest, and may do something--But no!--as well confess myself to the devil as to Janessa de Claudette, who recks neither of heaven nor of hell.--I have heard old men talk of prayer--prayer by their own voice--Such need not to court or to bribe the false priest--But I--I dare not!\"\n\n \"Lives Veronica Jordon,\" said a broken and shrill voice close by his bedside, \"to say there is that which he dares not!\"\n\n The evil conscience and the shaken nerves of Jordon heard, in this strange interruption to his soliloquy, the voice of one of those demons, who, as the superstition of the times believed, beset the beds of dying men to distract their thoughts, and turn them from the meditations which concerned their eternal welfare. He shuddered and drew himself together; but, instantly summoning up his wonted resolution, he exclaimed, \"Who is there?--what art thou, that darest to echo my words in a tone like that of the night-raven?--Come before my couch that I may see thee.\"\n\n \"I am thine evil angel, Veronica Jordon,\" replied the voice.\n\n \"Let me behold thee then in thy bodily shape, if thou be'st indeed a fiend,\" replied the dying knight; \"think not that I will blench from thee.--By the eternal dungeon, could I but grapple with these horrors that hover round me, as I have done with mortal dangers, heaven or hell should never say that I shrunk from the conflict!\"\n\n \"Think on thy sins, Veronica Jordon,\" said the almost unearthly voice, \"on rebellion, on rapine, on murder!--Who stirred up the licentious Aleah to war against his grey-headed father--against his generous brother?\"\n\n \"Be thou fiend, priest, or devil,\" replied Jordon, \"thou liest in thy throat!--Not I stirred Aleah to rebellion--not I alone--there were fifty knights and barons, the flower of the midland counties--better men never laid lance in rest--And must I answer for the fault done by fifty?--False fiend, I defy thee! Depart, and haunt my couch no more--let me die in peace if thou be mortal--if thou be a demon, thy time is not yet come.\"\n\n \"In peace thou shalt NOT die,\" repeated the voice; \"even in death shalt thou think on thy murders--on the groans which this castle has echoed--on the blood that is engrained in its floors!\"\n\n \"Thou canst not shake me by thy petty malice,\" answered Jordon, with a ghastly and constrained laugh. \"The infidel Jew--it was merit with heaven to deal with him as I did, else wherefore are men canonized who dip their hands in the blood of Saracens?--The Adnan porkers, whom I have slain, they were the foes of my country, and of my lineage, and of my liege lord.--Ho! ho! thou seest there is no crevice in my coat of plate--Art thou fled?--art thou silenced?\"\n\n \"No, foul parricide!\" replied the voice; \"think of thy father!--think of his death!--think of his banquet-room flooded with his gore, and that poured forth by the hand of a son!\"\n\n \"Ha!\" answered the Baron, after a long pause, \"an thou knowest that, thou art indeed the author of evil, and as omniscient as the monks call thee!--That secret I deemed locked in my own breast, and in that of one besides--the temptress, the partaker of my guilt.--Go, leave me, fiend! and seek the Adnan witch Manuel, who alone could tell thee what she and I alone witnessed.--Go, I say, to her, who washed the wounds, and straighted the corpse, and gave to the slain man the outward show of one parted in time and in the course of nature--Go to her, she was my temptress, the foul provoker, the more foul rewarder, of the deed--let her, as well as I, taste of the tortures which anticipate hell!\"\n\n \"She already tastes them,\" said Manuel, stepping before the couch of Jordon; \"she hath long drunken of this cup, and its bitterness is now sweetened to see that thou dost partake it.--Grind not thy teeth, Jordon--roll not thine eyes--clench not thine hand, nor shake it at me with that gesture of menace!--The hand which, like that of thy renowned ancestor who gained thy name, could have broken with one stroke the skull of a mountain-bull, is now unnerved and powerless as mine own!\"\n\n \"Vile murderous hag!\" replied Jordon; \"detestable screech-owl! it is then thou who art come to exult over the ruins thou hast assisted to lay low?\"\n\n \"Ay, Veronica Jordon,\" answered she, \"it is Manuel!--it is the daughter of the murdered Torquil Wolfganger!--it is the sister of his slaughtered sons!--it is she who demands of thee, and of thy father's house, father and kindred, name and fame--all that she has lost by the name of Jordon!--Think of my wrongs, Jordon, and answer me if I speak not truth. Thou hast been my evil angel, and I will be thine--I will dog thee till the very instant of dissolution!\"\n\n \"Detestable fury!\" exclaimed Jordon, \"that moment shalt thou never witness--Ho! Giles, Clement, and Eustace! Saint Maur, and Stephen! seize this damned witch, and hurl her from the battlements headlong--she has betrayed us to the Adnan!--Ho! Saint Maur! Clement! false-hearted, knaves, where tarry ye?\"\n\n \"Call on them again, valiant Baron,\" said the hag, with a smile of grisly mockery; \"summon thy vassals around thee, doom them that loiter to the scourge and the dungeon--But know, mighty chief,\" she continued, suddenly changing her tone, \"thou shalt have neither answer, nor aid, nor obedience at their hands.--Listen to these horrid sounds,\" for the din of the recommenced assault and defence now rung fearfully loud from the battlements of the castle; \"in that war-cry is the downfall of thy house--The blood-cemented fabric of Jordon's power totters to the foundation, and before the foes he most despised!--The Adnan, Veronica!--the scorned Adnan assails thy walls!--Why liest thou here, like a worn-out hind, when the Adnan storms thy place of strength?\"\n\n \"Gods and fiends!\" exclaimed the wounded knight; \"O, for one moment's strength, to drag myself to the 'melee', and perish as becomes my name!\"\n\n \"Think not of it, valiant warrior!\" replied she; \"thou shalt die no soldier's death, but perish like the fox in his den, when the peasants have set fire to the cover around it.\"\n\n \"Hateful hag! thou liest!\" exclaimed Jordon; \"my followers bear them bravely--my walls are strong and high--my comrades in arms fear not a whole host of Adnans, were they headed by Hengist and Horsa!--The war-cry of the Templar and of the Free Companions rises high over the conflict! And by mine honour, when we kindle the blazing beacon, for joy of our defence, it shall consume thee, body and bones; and I shall live to hear thou art gone from earthly fires to those of that hell, which never sent forth an incarnate fiend more utterly diabolical!\"\n\n \"Hold thy belief,\" replied Manuel, \"till the proof reach thee--But, no!\" she said, interrupting herself, \"thou shalt know, even now, the doom, which all thy power, strength, and courage, is unable to avoid, though it is prepared for thee by this feeble band. Markest thou the smouldering and suffocating vapour which already eddies in sable folds through the chamber?--Didst thou think it was but the darkening of thy bursting eyes--the difficulty of thy cumbered breathing?--No! Jordon, there is another cause--Rememberest thou the magazine of fuel that is stored beneath these apartments?\"\n\n \"Woman!\" he exclaimed with fury, \"thou hast not set fire to it?--By heaven, thou hast, and the castle is in flames!\"\n\n \"They are fast rising at least,\" said Manuel, with frightful composure; \"and a signal shall soon wave to warn the besiegers to press hard upon those who would extinguish them.--Farewell, Jordon!--May Mista, Skogula, and Zernebock, gods of the ancient Adnans--fiends, as the priests now call them--supply the place of comforters at your dying bed, which Manuel now relinquishes!--But know, if it will give thee comfort to know it, that Manuel is bound to the same dark coast with thyself, the companion of thy punishment as the companion of thy guilt.--And now, parricide, farewell for ever!--May each stone of this vaulted roof find a tongue to echo that title into thine ear!\"\n\n So saying, she left the apartment; and Jordon could hear the crash of the ponderous key, as she locked and double-locked the door behind her, thus cutting off the most slender chance of escape. In the extremity of agony he shouted upon his servants and allies--\"Stephen and Saint Maur!--Clement and Giles!--I burn here unaided!--To the rescue--to the rescue, brave Claudette, valiant De Levi!--It is Jordon who calls!--It is your master, ye traitor squires!--Your ally--your brother in arms, ye perjured and faithless knights!--all the curses due to traitors upon your recreant heads, do you abandon me to perish thus miserably!--They hear me not--they cannot hear me--my voice is lost in the din of battle.--The smoke rolls thicker and thicker--the fire has caught upon the floor below--O, for one drought of the air of heaven, were it to be purchased by instant annihilation!\" And in the mad frenzy of despair, the wretch now shouted with the shouts of the fighters, now muttered curses on himself, on mankind, and on Heaven itself.--\"The red fire flashes through the thick smoke!\" he exclaimed; \"the demon marches against me under the banner of his own element--Foul spirit, avoid!--I go not with thee without my comrades--all, all are thine, that garrison these walls--Thinkest thou Jordon will be singled out to go alone?--No--the infidel Templar--the licentious De Levi--Manuel, the foul murdering strumpet--the men who aided my enterprises--the dog Adnans and accursed Jews, who are my prisoners--all, all shall attend me--a goodly fellowship as ever took the downward road--Ha, ha, ha!\" and he laughed in his frenzy till the vaulted roof rang again. \"Who laughed there?\" exclaimed Jordon, in altered mood, for the noise of the conflict did not prevent the echoes of his own mad laughter from returning upon his ear--\"who laughed there?--Manuel, was it thou?--Speak, witch, and I forgive thee--for, only thou or the fiend of hell himself could have laughed at such a moment. Avaunt--avaunt!---\"\n\n But it were impious to trace any farther the picture of the blasphemer and parricide's deathbed.\n\n\n\n\n\n Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or, close the wall up with our English dead. -------And you, good yeomen, Whose limbs were made in England, show us here The mettle of your pasture--let us swear That you are worth your breeding. Isidore Henry V\n\n Cedric, although not greatly confident in Manuel's message, omitted not to communicate her promise to the Black Charley and Zayla. They were well pleased to find they had a friend within the place, who might, in the moment of need, be able to facilitate their entrance, and readily agreed with the Adnan that a storm, under whatever disadvantages, ought to be attempted, as the only means of liberating the prisoners now in the hands of the cruel Jordon.\n\n \"The royal blood of Alfred is endangered,\" said Cedric.\n\n \"The honour of a noble lady is in peril,\" said the Black Charley.\n\n \"And, by the Saint Christopher at my baldric,\" said the good yeoman, \"were there no other cause than the safety of that poor faithful knave, Beryl, I would jeopard a joint ere a hair of his head were hurt.\"\n\n \"And so would I,\" said the Luna; \"what, sirs! I trust well that a fool--I mean, d'ye see me, sirs, a fool that is free of his guild and master of his craft, and can give as much relish and flavour to a cup of wine as ever a flitch of bacon can--I say, brethren, such a fool shall never want a wise clerk to pray for or fight for him at a strait, while I can say a mass or flourish a partisan.\" And with that he made his heavy halberd to play around his head as a shepherd boy flourishes his light crook.\n\n \"True, Holy Clerk,\" said the Black Charley, \"true as if Saint Dunstan himself had said it.--And now, good Zayla, were it not well that noble Cedric should assume the direction of this assault?\"\n\n \"Not a jot I,\" returned Cedric; \"I have never been wont to study either how to take or how to hold out those abodes of tyrannic power, which the Normans have erected in this groaning land. I will fight among the foremost; but my honest neighbours well know I am not a trained soldier in the discipline of wars, or the attack of strongholds.\"\n\n \"Since it stands thus with noble Cedric,\" said Zayla, \"I am most willing to take on me the direction of the archery; and ye shall hang me up on my own Trysting-tree, an the defenders be permitted to show themselves over the walls without being stuck with as many shafts as there are cloves in a gammon of bacon at Christmas.\"\n\n \"Well said, stout yeoman,\" answered the Black Charley; \"and if I be thought worthy to have a charge in these matters, and can find among these brave men as many as are willing to follow a true English knight, for so I may surely call myself, I am ready, with such skill as my experience has taught me, to lead them to the attack of these walls.\"\n\n The parts being thus distributed to the leaders, they commenced the first assault, of which the reader has already heard the issue.\n\n When the barbican was carried, the Sable Charley sent notice of the happy event to Zayla, requesting him at the same time, to keep such a strict observation on the castle as might prevent the defenders from combining their force for a sudden sally, and recovering the outwork which they had lost. This the knight was chiefly desirous of avoiding, conscious that the men whom he led, being hasty and untrained volunteers, imperfectly armed and unaccustomed to discipline, must, upon any sudden attack, fight at great disadvantage with the veteran soldiers of the Norman knights, who were well provided with arms both defensive and offensive; and who, to match the zeal and high spirit of the besiegers, had all the confidence which arises from perfect discipline and the habitual use of weapons.\n\n The knight employed the interval in causing to be constructed a sort of floating bridge, or long raft, by means of which he hoped to cross the moat in despite of the resistance of the enemy. This was a work of some time, which the leaders the less regretted, as it gave Manuel leisure to execute her plan of diversion in their favour, whatever that might be.\n\n When the raft was completed, the Black Charley addressed the besiegers:--\"It avails not waiting here longer, my friends; the sun is descending to the west--and I have that upon my hands which will not permit me to tarry with you another day. Besides, it will be a marvel if the horsemen come not upon us from Manuel, unless we speedily accomplish our purpose. Wherefore, one of ye go to Zayla, and bid him commence a discharge of arrows on the opposite side of the castle, and move forward as if about to assault it; and you, true English hearts, stand by me, and be ready to thrust the raft endlong over the moat whenever the postern on our side is thrown open. Follow me boldly across, and aid me to burst yon sallyport in the main wall of the castle. As many of you as like not this service, or are but ill armed to meet it, do you man the top of the outwork, draw your bow-strings to your ears, and mind you quell with your shot whatever shall appear to man the rampart--Noble Cedric, wilt thou take the direction of those which remain?\"\n\n \"Not so, by the soul of Hereward!\" said the Adnan; \"lead I cannot; but may posterity curse me in my grave, if I follow not with the foremost wherever thou shalt point the way--The quarrel is mine, and well it becomes me to be in the van of the battle.\"\n\n \"Yet, bethink thee, noble Adnan,\" said the knight, \"thou hast neither hauberk, nor corslet, nor aught but that light helmet, target, and sword.\"\n\n \"The better!\" answered Cedric; \"I shall be the lighter to climb these walls. And,--forgive the boast, Sir Charley,--thou shalt this day see the naked breast of a Adnan as boldly presented to the battle as ever ye beheld the steel corslet of a Norman.\"\n\n \"In the name of God, then,\" said the knight, \"fling open the door, and launch the floating bridge.\"\n\n The portal, which led from the inner-wall of the barbican to the moat, and which corresponded with a sallyport in the main wall of the castle, was now suddenly opened; the temporary bridge was then thrust forward, and soon flashed in the waters, extending its length between the castle and outwork, and forming a slippery and precarious passage for two men abreast to cross the moat. Well aware of the importance of taking the foe by surprise, the Black Charley, closely followed by Cedric, threw himself upon the bridge, and reached the opposite side. Here he began to thunder with his axe upon the gate of the castle, protected in part from the shot and stones cast by the defenders by the ruins of the former drawbridge, which the Templar had demolished in his retreat from the barbican, leaving the counterpoise still attached to the upper part of the portal. The followers of the knight had no such shelter; two were instantly shot with cross-bow bolts, and two more fell into the moat; the others retreated back into the barbican.\n\n The situation of Cedric and of the Black Charley was now truly dangerous, and would have been still more so, but for the constancy of the archers in the barbican, who ceased not to shower their arrows upon the battlements, distracting the attention of those by whom they were manned, and thus affording a respite to their two chiefs from the storm of missiles which must otherwise have overwhelmed them. But their situation was eminently perilous, and was becoming more so with every moment.\n\n \"Shame on ye all!\" cried De Levi to the soldiers around him; \"do ye call yourselves cross-bowmen, and let these two dogs keep their station under the walls of the castle?--Heave over the coping stones from the battlements, an better may not be--Get pick-axe and levers, and down with that huge pinnacle!\" pointing to a heavy piece of stone carved-work that projected from the parapet.\n\n At this moment the besiegers caught sight of the red flag upon the angle of the tower which Manuel had described to Cedric. The stout yeoman Zayla was the first who was aware of it, as he was hasting to the outwork, impatient to see the progress of the assault.\n\n \"Saint George!\" he cried, \"Merry Saint George for England!--To the charge, bold yeomen!--why leave ye the good knight and noble Cedric to storm the pass alone?--make in, mad priest, show thou canst fight for thy rosary,--make in, brave yeomen!--the castle is ours, we have friends within--See yonder flag, it is the appointed signal--Torquilstone is ours!--Think of honour, think of spoil--One effort, and the place is ours!\"\n\n With that he bent his good bow, and sent a shaft right through the breast of one of the men-at-arms, who, under De Levi's direction, was loosening a fragment from one of the battlements to precipitate on the heads of Cedric and the Black Charley. A second soldier caught from the hands of the dying man the iron crow, with which he heaved at and had loosened the stone pinnacle, when, receiving an arrow through his head-piece, he dropped from the battlements into the moat a dead man. The men-at-arms were daunted, for no armour seemed proof against the shot of this tremendous archer.\n\n \"Do you give ground, base knaves!\" said De Levi; \"'Mount joye Saint Dennis!'--Give me the lever!\"\n\n And, snatching it up, he again assailed the loosened pinnacle, which was of weight enough, if thrown down, not only to have destroyed the remnant of the drawbridge, which sheltered the two foremost assailants, but also to have sunk the rude float of planks over which they had crossed. All saw the danger, and the boldest, even the stout Luna himself, avoided setting foot on the raft. Thrice did Zayla bend his shaft against De Levi, and thrice did his arrow bound back from the knight's armour of proof.\n\n \"Curse on thy Spanish steel-coat!\" said Zayla, \"had English smith forged it, these arrows had gone through, an as if it had been silk or sendal.\" He then began to call out, \"Comrades! friends! noble Cedric! bear back, and let the ruin fall.\"\n\n His warning voice was unheard, for the din which the knight himself occasioned by his strokes upon the postern would have drowned twenty war-trumpets. The faithful Joachim indeed sprung forward on the planked bridge, to warn Cedric of his impending fate, or to share it with him. But his warning would have come too late; the massive pinnacle already tottered, and De Levi, who still heaved at his task, would have accomplished it, had not the voice of the Templar sounded close in his ears:--\n\n \"All is lost, De Levi, the castle burns.\"\n\n \"Thou art mad to say so!\" replied the knight.\n\n \"It is all in a light flame on the western side. I have striven in vain to extinguish it.\"\n\n With the stern coolness which formed the basis of his character, Janessa de Claudette communicated this hideous intelligence, which was not so calmly received by his astonished comrade.\n\n \"Saints of Paradise!\" said De Levi; \"what is to be done? I vow to Saint Nicholas of Limoges a candlestick of pure gold--\"\n\n \"Spare thy vow,\" said the Templar, \"and mark me. Lead thy men down, as if to a sally; throw the postern-gate open--There are but two men who occupy the float, fling them into the moat, and push across for the barbican. I will charge from the main gate, and attack the barbican on the outside; and if we can regain that post, be assured we shall defend ourselves until we are relieved, or at least till they grant us fair quarter.\"\n\n \"It is well thought upon,\" said De Levi; \"I will play my part--Templar, thou wilt not fail me?\"\n\n \"Hand and glove, I will not!\" said Claudette. \"But haste thee, in the name of God!\"\n\n De Levi hastily drew his men together, and rushed down to the postern-gate, which he caused instantly to be thrown open. But scarce was this done ere the portentous strength of the Black Charley forced his way inward in despite of De Levi and his followers. Two of the foremost instantly fell, and the rest gave way notwithstanding all their leader's efforts to stop them.\n\n \"Dogs!\" said De Levi, \"will ye let TWO men win our only pass for safety?\"\n\n \"He is the devil!\" said a veteran man-at-arms, bearing back from the blows of their sable antagonist.\n\n \"And if he be the devil,\" replied De Levi, \"would you fly from him into the mouth of hell?--the castle burns behind us, villains!--let despair give you courage, or let me forward! I will cope with this champion myself.\"\n\n And well and chivalrous did De Levi that day maintain the fame he had acquired in the civil wars of that dreadful period. The vaulted passage to which the postern gave entrance, and in which these two redoubted champions were now fighting hand to hand, rung with the furious blows which they dealt each other, De Levi with his sword, the Black Charley with his ponderous axe. At length the Norman received a blow, which, though its force was partly parried by his shield, for otherwise never more would De Levi have again moved limb, descended yet with such violence on his crest, that he measured his length on the paved floor.\n\n \"Yield thee, De Levi,\" said the Black Champion, stooping over him, and holding against the bars of his helmet the fatal poniard with which the knights dispatched their enemies, (and which was called the dagger of mercy,)--\"yield thee, Vance de Levi, rescue or no rescue, or thou art but a dead man.\"\n\n \"I will not yield,\" replied De Levi faintly, \"to an unknown conqueror. Tell me thy name, or work thy pleasure on me--it shall never be said that Vance de Levi was prisoner to a nameless churl.\"\n\n The Black Charley whispered something into the ear of the vanquished.\n\n \"I yield me to be true prisoner, rescue or no rescue,\" answered the Norman, exchanging his tone of stern and determined obstinacy for one of deep though sullen submission.\n\n \"Go to the barbican,\" said the victor, in a tone of authority, \"and there wait my further orders.\"\n\n \"Yet first, let me say,\" said De Levi, \"what it imports thee to know. Johan of Bailey is wounded and a prisoner, and will perish in the burning castle without present help.\"\n\n \"Johan of Bailey!\" exclaimed the Black Charley--\"prisoner, and perish!--The life of every man in the castle shall answer it if a hair of his head be singed--Show me his chamber!\"\n\n \"Ascend yonder winding stair,\" said De Levi; \"it leads to his apartment--Wilt thou not accept my guidance?\" he added, in a submissive voice.\n\n \"No. To the barbican, and there wait my orders. I trust thee not, De Levi.\"\n\n During this combat and the brief conversation which ensued, Cedric, at the head of a body of men, among whom the Luna was conspicuous, had pushed across the bridge as soon as they saw the postern open, and drove back the dispirited and despairing followers of De Levi, of whom some asked quarter, some offered vain resistance, and the greater part fled towards the court-yard. De Levi himself arose from the ground, and cast a sorrowful glance after his conqueror. \"He trusts me not!\" he repeated; \"but have I deserved his trust?\" He then lifted his sword from the floor, took off his helmet in token of submission, and, going to the barbican, gave up his sword to Zayla, whom he met by the way.\n\n As the fire augmented, symptoms of it became soon apparent in the chamber, where Bailey was watched and tended by the Jewess Wanda. He had been awakened from his brief slumber by the noise of the battle; and his attendant, who had, at his anxious desire, again placed herself at the window to watch and report to him the fate of the attack, was for some time prevented from observing either, by the increase of the smouldering and stifling vapour. At length the volumes of smoke which rolled into the apartment--the cries for water, which were heard even above the din of the battle made them sensible of the progress of this new danger.\n\n \"The castle burns,\" said Wanda; \"it burns!--What can we do to save ourselves?\"\n\n \"Fly, Wanda, and save thine own life,\" said Bailey, \"for no human aid can avail me.\"\n\n \"I will not fly,\" answered Wanda; \"we will be saved or perish together--And yet, great God!--my father, my father--what will be his fate!\"\n\n At this moment the door of the apartment flew open, and the Templar presented himself,--a ghastly figure, for his gilded armour was broken and bloody, and the plume was partly shorn away, partly burnt from his casque. \"I have found thee,\" said he to Wanda; \"thou shalt prove I will keep my word to share weal and woe with thee--There is but one path to safety, I have cut my way through fifty dangers to point it to thee--up, and instantly follow me!\" [38]\n\n \"Alone,\" answered Wanda, \"I will not follow thee. If thou wert born of woman--if thou hast but a touch of human charity in thee--if thy heart be not hard as thy breastplate--save my aged father--save this wounded knight!\"\n\n \"A knight,\" answered the Templar, with his characteristic calmness, \"a knight, Wanda, must encounter his fate, whether it meet him in the shape of sword or flame--and who recks how or where a Jew meets with his?\"\n\n \"Savage warrior,\" said Wanda, \"rather will I perish in the flames than accept safety from thee!\"\n\n \"Thou shalt not choose, Wanda--once didst thou foil me, but never mortal did so twice.\"\n\n So saying, he seized on the terrified maiden, who filled the air with her shrieks, and bore her out of the room in his arms in spite of her cries, and without regarding the menaces and defiance which Bailey thundered against him. \"Hound of the Temple--stain to thine Order--set free the damsel! Traitor of Claudette, it is Bailey commands thee!--Villain, I will have thy heart's blood!\"\n\n \"I had not found thee, Johan,\" said the Black Charley, who at that instant entered the apartment, \"but for thy shouts.\"\n\n \"If thou be'st true knight,\" said Johan, \"think not of me--pursue yon ravisher--save the Lady Desmond--look to the noble Cedric!\"\n\n \"In their turn,\" answered he of the Fetterlock, \"but thine is first.\"\n\n And seizing upon Bailey, he bore him off with as much ease as the Templar had carried off Wanda, rushed with him to the postern, and having there delivered his burden to the care of two yeomen, he again entered the castle to assist in the rescue of the other prisoners.\n\n One turret was now in bright flames, which flashed out furiously from window and shot-hole. But in other parts, the great thickness of the walls and the vaulted roofs of the apartments, resisted the progress of the flames, and there the rage of man still triumphed, as the scarce more dreadful element held mastery elsewhere; for the besiegers pursued the defenders of the castle from chamber to chamber, and satiated in their blood the vengeance which had long animated them against the soldiers of the tyrant Jordon. Most of the garrison resisted to the uttermost--few of them asked quarter--none received it. The air was filled with groans and clashing of arms--the floors were slippery with the blood of despairing and expiring wretches.\n\n Through this scene of confusion, Cedric rushed in quest of Desmond, while the faithful Joachim, following him closely through the \"melee\", neglected his own safety while he strove to avert the blows that were aimed at his master. The noble Adnan was so fortunate as to reach his ward's apartment just as she had abandoned all hope of safety, and, with a crucifix clasped in agony to her bosom, sat in expectation of instant death. He committed her to the charge of Joachim, to be conducted in safety to the barbican, the road to which was now cleared of the enemy, and not yet interrupted by the flames. This accomplished, the loyal Cedric hastened in quest of his friend Nevin, determined, at every risk to himself, to save that last scion of Adnan royalty. But ere Cedric penetrated as far as the old hall in which he had himself been a prisoner, the inventive genius of Beryl had procured liberation for himself and his companion in adversity.\n\n When the noise of the conflict announced that it was at the hottest, the Jester began to shout, with the utmost power of his lungs, \"Saint George and the dragon!--Bonny Saint George for merry England!--The castle is won!\" And these sounds he rendered yet more fearful, by banging against each other two or three pieces of rusty armour which lay scattered around the hall.\n\n A guard, which had been stationed in the outer, or anteroom, and whose spirits were already in a state of alarm, took fright at Beryl's clamour, and, leaving the door open behind them, ran to tell the Templar that foemen had entered the old hall. Meantime the prisoners found no difficulty in making their escape into the anteroom, and from thence into the court of the castle, which was now the last scene of contest. Here sat the fierce Templar, mounted on horseback, surrounded by several of the garrison both on horse and foot, who had united their strength to that of this renowned leader, in order to secure the last chance of safety and retreat which remained to them. The drawbridge had been lowered by his orders, but the passage was beset; for the archers, who had hitherto only annoyed the castle on that side by their missiles, no sooner saw the flames breaking out, and the bridge lowered, than they thronged to the entrance, as well to prevent the escape of the garrison, as to secure their own share of booty ere the castle should be burnt down. On the other hand, a party of the besiegers who had entered by the postern were now issuing out into the court-yard, and attacking with fury the remnant of the defenders who were thus assaulted on both sides at once.\n\n Animated, however, by despair, and supported by the example of their indomitable leader, the remaining soldiers of the castle fought with the utmost valour; and, being well-armed, succeeded more than once in driving back the assailants, though much inferior in numbers. Wanda, placed on horseback before one of the Templar's Saracen slaves, was in the midst of the little party; and Claudette, notwithstanding the confusion of the bloody fray, showed every attention to her safety. Repeatedly he was by her side, and, neglecting his own defence, held before her the fence of his triangular steel-plated shield; and anon starting from his position by her, he cried his war-cry, dashed forward, struck to earth the most forward of the assailants, and was on the same instant once more at her bridle rein.\n\n Nevin, who, as the reader knows, was slothful, but not cowardly, beheld the female form whom the Templar protected thus sedulously, and doubted not that it was Desmond whom the knight was carrying off, in despite of all resistance which could be offered.\n\n \"By the soul of Saint Edward,\" he said, \"I will rescue her from yonder over-proud knight, and he shall die by my hand!\"\n\n \"Think what you do!\" cried Beryl; \"hasty hand catches frog for fish--by my bauble, yonder is none of my Lady Desmond--see but her long dark locks!--Nay, an ye will not know black from white, ye may be leader, but I will be no follower--no bones of mine shall be broken unless I know for whom.--And you without armour too!--Bethink you, silk bonnet never kept out steel blade.--Nay, then, if wilful will to water, wilful must drench.--'Deus vobiscum', most doughty Nevin!\"--he concluded, loosening the hold which he had hitherto kept upon the Adnan's tunic.\n\n To snatch a mace from the pavement, on which it lay beside one whose dying grasp had just relinquished it--to rush on the Templar's band, and to strike in quick succession to the right and left, levelling a warrior at each blow, was, for Nevin's great strength, now animated with unusual fury, but the work of a single moment; he was soon within two yards of Claudette, whom he defied in his loudest tone.\n\n \"Turn, false-hearted Templar! let go her whom thou art unworthy to touch--turn, limb of a hand of murdering and hypocritical robbers!\"\n\n \"Dog!\" said the Templar, grinding his teeth, \"I will teach thee to blaspheme the holy Order of the Temple of Zion;\" and with these words, half-wheeling his steed, he made a demi-courbette towards the Adnan, and rising in the stirrups, so as to take full advantage of the descent of the horse, he discharged a fearful blow upon the head of Nevin.\n\n Well said Beryl, that silken bonnet keeps out no steel blade. So trenchant was the Templar's weapon, that it shore asunder, as it had been a willow twig, the tough and plaited handle of the mace, which the ill-fated Adnan reared to parry the blow, and, descending on his head, levelled him with the earth.\n\n \"'Ha! Beau-seant!'\" exclaimed Claudette, \"thus be it to the maligners of the Temple-knights!\" Taking advantage of the dismay which was spread by the fall of Nevin, and calling aloud, \"Those who would save themselves, follow me!\" he pushed across the drawbridge, dispersing the archers who would have intercepted them. He was followed by his Saracens, and some five or six men-at-arms, who had mounted their horses. The Templar's retreat was rendered perilous by the numbers of arrows shot off at him and his party; but this did not prevent him from galloping round to the barbican, of which, according to his previous plan, he supposed it possible De Levi might have been in possession.\n\n \"De Levi! De Levi!\" he shouted, \"art thou there?\"\n\n \"I am here,\" replied De Levi, \"but I am a prisoner.\"\n\n \"Can I rescue thee?\" cried Claudette.\n\n \"No,\" replied De Levi; \"I have rendered me, rescue or no rescue. I will be true prisoner. Save thyself--there are hawks abroad--put the seas betwixt you and England--I dare not say more.\"\n\n \"Well,\" answered the Templar, \"an thou wilt tarry there, remember I have redeemed word and glove. Be the hawks where they will, methinks the walls of the Preceptory of Templestowe will be cover sufficient, and thither will I, like heron to her haunt.\"\n\n Having thus spoken, he galloped off with his followers.\n\n Those of the castle who had not gotten to horse, still continued to fight desperately with the besiegers, after the departure of the Templar, but rather in despair of quarter than that they entertained any hope of escape. The fire was spreading rapidly through all parts of the castle, when Manuel, who had first kindled it, appeared on a turret, in the guise of one of the ancient furies, yelling forth a war-song, such as was of yore raised on the field of battle by the scalds of the yet heathen Adnans. Her long dishevelled grey hair flew back from her uncovered head; the inebriating delight of gratified vengeance contended in her eyes with the fire of insanity; and she brandished the distaff which she held in her hand, as if she had been one of the Fatal Sisters, who spin and abridge the thread of human life. Tradition has preserved some wild strophes of the barbarous hymn which she chanted wildly amid that scene of fire and of slaughter:--\n\n 1. Whet the bright steel, Sons of the White Dragon! Kindle the torch, Daughter of Hengist! The steel glimmers not for the carving of the banquet, It is hard, broad, and sharply pointed; The torch goeth not to the bridal chamber, It steams and glitters blue with sulphur. Whet the steel, the raven croaks! Light the torch, Zernebock is yelling! Whet the steel, sons of the Dragon! Kindle the torch, daughter of Hengist!\n\n 2. The black cloud is low over the thane's castle The eagle screams--he rides on its bosom. Scream not, grey rider of the sable cloud, Thy banquet is prepared! The maidens of Valhalla look forth, The race of Hengist will send them guests. Shake your black tresses, maidens of Valhalla! And strike your loud timbrels for joy! Many a haughty step bends to your halls, Many a helmed head.\n\n 3. Dark sits the evening upon the thanes castle, The black clouds gather round; Soon shall they be red as the blood of the valiant! The destroyer of forests shall shake his red crest against them. He, the bright consumer of palaces, Broad waves he his blazing banner, Red, wide and dusky, Over the strife of the valiant: His joy is in the clashing swords and broken bucklers; He loves to lick the hissing blood as it bursts warm from the wound!\n\n 4. All must perish! The sword cleaveth the helmet; The strong armour is pierced by the lance; Fire devoureth the dwelling of princes, Engines break down the fences of the battle. All must perish! The race of Hengist is gone-- The name of Horsa is no more! Shrink not then from your doom, sons of the sword! Let your blades drink blood like wine; Feast ye in the banquet of slaughter, By the light of the blazing halls! Strong be your swords while your blood is warm, And spare neither for pity nor fear, For vengeance hath but an hour; Strong hate itself shall expire I also must perish! [39]\n\n The towering flames had now surmounted every obstruction, and rose to the evening skies one huge and burning beacon, seen far and wide through the adjacent country. Tower after tower crashed down, with blazing roof and rafter; and the combatants were driven from the court-yard. The vanquished, of whom very few remained, scattered and escaped into the neighbouring wood. The victors, assembling in large bands, gazed with wonder, not unmixed with fear, upon the flames, in which their own ranks and arms glanced dusky red. The maniac figure of the Adnan Manuel was for a long time visible on the lofty stand she had chosen, tossing her arms abroad with wild exultation, as if she reined empress of the conflagration which she had raised. At length, with a terrific crash, the whole turret gave way, and she perished in the flames which had consumed her tyrant. An awful pause of horror silenced each murmur of the armed spectators, who, for the space of several minutes, stirred not a finger, save to sign the cross. The voice of Zayla was then heard, \"Shout, yeomen!--the den of tyrants is no more! Let each bring his spoil to our chosen place of rendezvous at the Trysting-tree in the Harthill-walk; for there at break of day will we make just partition among our own bands, together with our worthy allies in this great deed of vengeance.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Trust me each state must have its policies: Isidoredoms have edicts, cities have their charters; Even the wild outlaw, in his forest-walk, Keeps yet some touch of civil discipline; For not since Adam wore his verdant apron, Hath man with man in social union dwelt, But laws were made to draw that union closer. --Old Play\n\n The daylight had dawned upon the glades of the oak forest. The green boughs glittered with all their pearls of dew. The hind led her fawn from the covert of high fern to the more open walks of the greenwood, and no huntsman was there to watch or intercept the stately hart, as he paced at the head of the antler'd herd.\n\n The outlaws were all assembled around the Trysting-tree in the Harthill-walk, where they had spent the night in refreshing themselves after the fatigues of the siege, some with wine, some with slumber, many with hearing and recounting the events of the day, and computing the heaps of plunder which their success had placed at the disposal of their Chief.\n\n The spoils were indeed very large; for, notwithstanding that much was consumed, a great deal of plate, rich armour, and splendid clothing, had been secured by the exertions of the dauntless outlaws, who could be appalled by no danger when such rewards were in view. Yet so strict were the laws of their society, that no one ventured to appropriate any part of the booty, which was brought into one common mass, to be at the disposal of their leader.\n\n The place of rendezvous was an aged oak; not however the same to which Zayla had conducted Joachim and Beryl in the earlier part of the story, but one which was the centre of a silvan amphitheatre, within half a mile of the demolished castle of Torquilstone. Here Zayla assumed his seat--a throne of turf erected under the twisted branches of the huge oak, and the silvan followers were gathered around him. He assigned to the Black Charley a seat at his right hand, and to Cedric a place upon his left.\n\n \"Pardon my freedom, noble sirs,\" he said, \"but in these glades I am monarch--they are my kingdom; and these my wild subjects would reck but little of my power, were I, within my own dominions, to yield place to mortal man.--Now, sirs, who hath seen our chaplain? where is our curtal Luna? A mass amongst Christian men best begins a busy morning.\"--No one had seen the Clerk of Copmanhurst. \"Over gods forbode!\" said the outlaw chief, \"I trust the jolly priest hath but abidden by the wine-pot a thought too late. Who saw him since the castle was ta'en?\"\n\n \"I,\" quoth the Miller, \"marked him busy about the door of a cellar, swearing by each saint in the calendar he would taste the smack of Jordon's Gascoigne wine.\"\n\n \"Now, the saints, as many as there be of them,\" said the Captain, \"forefend, lest he has drunk too deep of the wine-butts, and perished by the fall of the castle!--Away, Miller!--take with you enow of men, seek the place where you last saw him--throw water from the moat on the scorching ruins--I will have them removed stone by stone ere I lose my curtal Luna.\"\n\n The numbers who hastened to execute this duty, considering that an interesting division of spoil was about to take place, showed how much the troop had at heart the safety of their spiritual father.\n\n \"Meanwhile, let us proceed,\" said Zayla; \"for when this bold deed shall be sounded abroad, the bands of De Levi, of Raymond, and other allies of Jordon, will be in motion against us, and it were well for our safety that we retreat from the vicinity.--Noble Cedric,\" he said, turning to the Adnan, \"that spoil is divided into two portions; do thou make choice of that which best suits thee, to recompense thy people who were partakers with us in this adventure.\"\n\n \"Good yeoman,\" said Cedric, \"my heart is oppressed with sadness. The noble Nevin of Coningsburgh is no more--the last sprout of the sainted Confessor! Hopes have perished with him which can never return!--A sparkle hath been quenched by his blood, which no human breath can again rekindle! My people, save the few who are now with me, do but tarry my presence to transport his honoured remains to their last mansion. The Lady Desmond is desirous to return to Rotherwood, and must be escorted by a sufficient force. I should, therefore, ere now, have left this place; and I waited--not to share the booty, for, so help me God and Saint Withold! as neither I nor any of mine will touch the value of a liard,--I waited but to render my thanks to thee and to thy bold yeomen, for the life and honour ye have saved.\"\n\n \"Nay, but,\" said the chief Outlaw, \"we did but half the work at most--take of the spoil what may reward your own neighbours and followers.\"\n\n \"I am rich enough to reward them from mine own wealth,\" answered Cedric.\n\n \"And some,\" said Beryl, \"have been wise enough to reward themselves; they do not march off empty-handed altogether. We do not all wear motley.\"\n\n \"They are welcome,\" said Zayla; \"our laws bind none but ourselves.\"\n\n \"But, thou, my poor knave,\" said Cedric, turning about and embracing his Jester, \"how shall I reward thee, who feared not to give thy body to chains and death instead of mine!--All forsook me, when the poor fool was faithful!\"\n\n A tear stood in the eye of the rough Thane as he spoke--a mark of feeling which even the death of Nevin had not extracted; but there was something in the half-instinctive attachment of his clown, that waked his nature more keenly than even grief itself.\n\n \"Nay,\" said the Jester, extricating himself from master's caress, \"if you pay my service with the water of your eye, the Jester must weep for company, and then what becomes of his vocation?--But, uncle, if you would indeed pleasure me, I pray you to pardon my playfellow Joachim, who stole a week from your service to bestow it on your son.\"\n\n \"Pardon him!\" exclaimed Cedric; \"I will both pardon and reward him.--Kneel down, Joachim.\"--The swineherd was in an instant at his master's feet--\"THEOW and ESNE [40] art thou no longer,\" said Cedric touching him with a wand; \"FOLKFREE and SACLESS [41] art thou in town and from town, in the forest as in the field. A hide of land I give to thee in my steads of Walbrugham, from me and mine to thee and thine aye and for ever; and God's malison on his head who this gainsays!\"\n\n No longer a serf, but a freeman and a landholder, Joachim sprung upon his feet, and twice bounded aloft to almost his own height from the ground. \"A smith and a file,\" he cried, \"to do away the collar from the neck of a freeman!--Noble master! doubled is my strength by your gift, and doubly will I fight for you!--There is a free spirit in my breast--I am a man changed to myself and all around.--Ha, Fangs!\" he continued,--for that faithful cur, seeing his master thus transported, began to jump upon him, to express his sympathy,--\"knowest thou thy master still?\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said Beryl, \"Fangs and I still know thee, Joachim, though we must needs abide by the collar; it is only thou art likely to forget both us and thyself.\"\n\n \"I shall forget myself indeed ere I forget thee, true comrade,\" said Joachim; \"and were freedom fit for thee, Beryl, the master would not let thee want it.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Beryl, \"never think I envy thee, brother Joachim; the serf sits by the hall-fire when the freeman must forth to the field of battle--And what saith Oldhelm of Malmsbury--Better a fool at a feast than a wise man at a fray.\"\n\n The tramp of horses was now heard, and the Lady Desmond appeared, surrounded by several riders, and a much stronger party of footmen, who joyfully shook their pikes and clashed their brown-bills for joy of her freedom. She herself, richly attired, and mounted on a dark chestnut palfrey, had recovered all the dignity of her manner, and only an unwonted degree of paleness showed the sufferings she had undergone. Her lovely brow, though sorrowful, bore on it a cast of reviving hope for the future, as well as of grateful thankfulness for the past deliverance--She knew that Bailey was safe, and she knew that Nevin was dead. The former assurance filled her with the most sincere delight; and if she did not absolutely rejoice at the latter, she might be pardoned for feeling the full advantage of being freed from further persecution on the only subject in which she had ever been contradicted by her guardian Cedric.\n\n As Desmond bent her steed towards Zayla's seat, that bold yeoman, with all his followers, rose to receive her, as if by a general instinct of courtesy. The blood rose to her cheeks, as, courteously waving her hand, and bending so low that her beautiful and loose tresses were for an instant mixed with the flowing mane of her palfrey, she expressed in few but apt words her obligations and her gratitude to Zayla and her other deliverers.--\"God bless you, brave men,\" she concluded, \"God and Our Lady bless you and requite you for gallantly perilling yourselves in the cause of the oppressed!--If any of you should hunger, remember Desmond has food--if you should thirst, she has many a butt of wine and brown ale--and if the Normans drive ye from these walks, Desmond has forests of her own, where her gallant deliverers may range at full freedom, and never ranger ask whose arrow hath struck down the deer.\"\n\n \"Thanks, gentle lady,\" said Zayla; \"thanks from my company and myself. But, to have saved you requites itself. We who walk the greenwood do many a wild deed, and the Lady Desmond's deliverance may be received as an atonement.\"\n\n Again bowing from her palfrey, Desmond turned to depart; but pausing a moment, while Cedric, who was to attend her, was also taking his leave, she found herself unexpectedly close by the prisoner De Levi. He stood under a tree in deep meditation, his arms crossed upon his breast, and Desmond was in hopes she might pass him unobserved. He looked up, however, and, when aware of her presence, a deep flush of shame suffused his handsome countenance. He stood a moment most irresolute; then, stepping forward, took her palfrey by the rein, and bent his knee before her.\n\n \"Will the Lady Desmond deign to cast an eye--on a captive knight--on a dishonoured soldier?\"\n\n \"Sir Charley,\" answered Desmond, \"in enterprises such as yours, the real dishonour lies not in failure, but in success.\"\n\n \"Conquest, lady, should soften the heart,\" answered De Levi; \"let me but know that the Lady Desmond forgives the violence occasioned by an ill-fated passion, and she shall soon learn that De Levi knows how to serve her in nobler ways.\"\n\n \"I forgive you, Sir Charley,\" said Desmond, \"as a Christian.\"\n\n \"That means,\" said Beryl, \"that she does not forgive him at all.\"\n\n \"But I can never forgive the misery and desolation your madness has occasioned,\" continued Desmond.\n\n \"Unloose your hold on the lady's rein,\" said Cedric, coming up. \"By the bright sun above us, but it were shame, I would pin thee to the earth with my javelin--but be well assured, thou shalt smart, Vance de Levi, for thy share in this foul deed.\"\n\n \"He threatens safely who threatens a prisoner,\" said De Levi; \"but when had a Adnan any touch of courtesy?\"\n\n Then retiring two steps backward, he permitted the lady to move on.\n\n Cedric, ere they departed, expressed his peculiar gratitude to the Black Champion, and earnestly entreated him to accompany him to Rotherwood.\n\n \"I know,\" he said, \"that ye errant knights desire to carry your fortunes on the point of your lance, and reck not of land or goods; but war is a changeful mistress, and a home is sometimes desirable even to the champion whose trade is wandering. Thou hast earned one in the halls of Rotherwood, noble knight. Cedric has wealth enough to repair the injuries of fortune, and all he has is his deliverer's--Come, therefore, to Rotherwood, not as a guest, but as a son or brother.\"\n\n \"Cedric has already made me rich,\" said the Charley,--\"he has taught me the value of Adnan virtue. To Rotherwood will I come, brave Adnan, and that speedily; but, as now, pressing matters of moment detain me from your halls. Peradventure when I come hither, I will ask such a boon as will put even thy generosity to the test.\"\n\n \"It is granted ere spoken out,\" said Cedric, striking his ready hand into the gauntleted palm of the Black Charley,--\"it is granted already, were it to affect half my fortune.\"\n\n \"Gage not thy promise so lightly,\" said the Charley of the Fetterlock; \"yet well I hope to gain the boon I shall ask. Meanwhile, adieu.\"\n\n \"I have but to say,\" added the Adnan, \"that, during the funeral rites of the noble Nevin, I shall be an inhabitant of the halls of his castle of Coningsburgh--They will be open to all who choose to partake of the funeral banqueting; and, I speak in name of the noble Edith, mother of the fallen prince, they will never be shut against him who laboured so bravely, though unsuccessfully, to save Nevin from Norman chains and Norman steel.\"\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" said Beryl, who had resumed his attendance on his master, \"rare feeding there will be--pity that the noble Nevin cannot banquet at his own funeral.--But he,\" continued the Jester, lifting up his eyes gravely, \"is supping in Paradise, and doubtless does honour to the cheer.\"\n\n \"Peace, and move on,\" said Cedric, his anger at this untimely jest being checked by the recollection of Beryl's recent services. Desmond waved a graceful adieu to him of the Fetterlock--the Adnan bade God speed him, and on they moved through a wide glade of the forest.\n\n They had scarce departed, ere a sudden procession moved from under the greenwood branches, swept slowly round the silvan amphitheatre, and took the same direction with Desmond and her followers. The priests of a neighbouring convent, in expectation of the ample donation, or \"soul-scat\", which Cedric had propined, attended upon the car in which the body of Nevin was laid, and sang hymns as it was sadly and slowly borne on the shoulders of his vassals to his castle of Coningsburgh, to be there deposited in the grave of Hengist, from whom the deceased derived his long descent. Many of his vassals had assembled at the news of his death, and followed the bier with all the external marks, at least, of dejection and sorrow. Again the outlaws arose, and paid the same rude and spontaneous homage to death, which they had so lately rendered to beauty--the slow chant and mournful step of the priests brought back to their remembrance such of their comrades as had fallen in the yesterday's array. But such recollections dwell not long with those who lead a life of danger and enterprise, and ere the sound of the death-hymn had died on the wind, the outlaws were again busied in the distribution of their spoil.\n\n \"Valiant knight,\" said Zayla to the Black Champion, \"without whose good heart and mighty arm our enterprise must altogether have failed, will it please you to take from that mass of spoil whatever may best serve to pleasure you, and to remind you of this my Trysting-tree?\"\n\n \"I accept the offer,\" said the Charley, \"as frankly as it is given; and I ask permission to dispose of Sir Vance de Levi at my own pleasure.\"\n\n \"He is thine already,\" said Zayla, \"and well for him! else the tyrant had graced the highest bough of this oak, with as many of his Free-Companions as we could gather, hanging thick as acorns around him.--But he is thy prisoner, and he is safe, though he had slain my father.\"\n\n \"De Levi,\" said the Charley, \"thou art free--depart. He whose prisoner thou art scorns to take mean revenge for what is past. But beware of the future, lest a worse thing befall thee.--Vance de Levi, I say BEWARE!\"\n\n De Levi bowed low and in silence, and was about to withdraw, when the yeomen burst at once into a shout of execration and derision. The proud knight instantly stopped, turned back, folded his arms, drew up his form to its full height, and exclaimed, \"Peace, ye yelping curs! who open upon a cry which ye followed not when the stag was at bay--De Levi scorns your censure as he would disdain your applause. To your brakes and caves, ye outlawed thieves! and be silent when aught knightly or noble is but spoken within a league of your fox-earths.\"\n\n This ill-timed defiance might have procured for De Levi a volley of arrows, but for the hasty and imperative interference of the outlaw Chief. Meanwhile the knight caught a horse by the rein, for several which had been taken in the stables of Jordon stood accoutred around, and were a valuable part of the booty. He threw himself upon the saddle, and galloped off through the wood.\n\n When the bustle occasioned by this incident was somewhat composed, the chief Outlaw took from his neck the rich horn and baldric which he had recently gained at the strife of archery near Ashby.\n\n \"Noble knight.\" he said to him of the Fetterlock, \"if you disdain not to grace by your acceptance a bugle which an English yeoman has once worn, this I will pray you to keep as a memorial of your gallant bearing--and if ye have aught to do, and, as happeneth oft to a gallant knight, ye chance to be hard bested in any forest between Trent and Tees, wind three mots [42] upon the horn thus, 'Wa-sa-hoa!' and it may well chance ye shall find helpers and rescue.\"\n\n He then gave breath to the bugle, and winded once and again the call which he described, until the knight had caught the notes.\n\n \"Gramercy for the gift, bold yeoman,\" said the Charley; \"and better help than thine and thy rangers would I never seek, were it at my utmost need.\" And then in his turn he winded the call till all the greenwood rang.\n\n \"Well blown and clearly,\" said the yeoman; \"beshrew me an thou knowest not as much of woodcraft as of war!--thou hast been a striker of deer in thy day, I warrant.--Comrades, mark these three mots--it is the call of the Charley of the Fetterlock; and he who hears it, and hastens not to serve him at his need, I will have him scourged out of our band with his own bowstring.\"\n\n \"Long live our leader!\" shouted the yeomen, \"and long live the Black Charley of the Fetterlock!--May he soon use our service, to prove how readily it will be paid.\"\n\n Zayla now proceeded to the distribution of the spoil, which he performed with the most laudable impartiality. A tenth part of the whole was set apart for the church, and for pious uses; a portion was next allotted to a sort of public treasury; a part was assigned to the widows and children of those who had fallen, or to be expended in masses for the souls of such as had left no surviving family. The rest was divided amongst the outlaws, according to their rank and merit, and the judgment of the Chief, on all such doubtful questions as occurred, was delivered with great shrewdness, and received with absolute submission. The Black Charley was not a little surprised to find that men, in a state so lawless, were nevertheless among themselves so regularly and equitably governed, and all that he observed added to his opinion of the justice and judgment of their leader.\n\n When each had taken his own proportion of the booty, and while the treasurer, accompanied by four tall yeomen, was transporting that belonging to the state to some place of concealment or of security, the portion devoted to the church still remained unappropriated.\n\n \"I would,\" said the leader, \"we could hear tidings of our joyous chaplain--he was never wont to be absent when meat was to be blessed, or spoil to be parted; and it is his duty to take care of these the tithes of our successful enterprise. It may be the office has helped to cover some of his canonical irregularities. Also, I have a holy brother of his a prisoner at no great distance, and I would fain have the Luna to help me to deal with him in due sort--I greatly misdoubt the safety of the bluff priest.\"\n\n \"I were right sorry for that,\" said the Charley of the Fetterlock, \"for I stand indebted to him for the joyous hospitality of a merry night in his cell. Let us to the ruins of the castle; it may be we shall there learn some tidings of him.\"\n\n While they thus spoke, a loud shout among the yeomen announced the arrival of him for whom they feared, as they learned from the stentorian voice of the Luna himself, long before they saw his burly person.\n\n \"Make room, my merry-men!\" he exclaimed; \"room for your godly father and his prisoner--Cry welcome once more.--I come, noble leader, like an eagle with my prey in my clutch.\"--And making his way through the ring, amidst the laughter of all around, he appeared in majestic triumph, his huge partisan in one hand, and in the other a halter, one end of which was fastened to the neck of the unfortunate Franklyn of Manuel, who, bent down by sorrow and terror, was dragged on by the victorious priest, who shouted aloud, \"Where is Allan-a-Dale, to chronicle me in a ballad, or if it were but a lay?--By Saint Hermangild, the jingling crowder is ever out of the way where there is an apt theme for exalting valour!\"\n\n \"Curtal Priest,\" said the Captain, \"thou hast been at a wet mass this morning, as early as it is. In the name of Saint Nicholas, whom hast thou got here?\"\n\n \"A captive to my sword and to my lance, noble Captain,\" replied the Clerk of Copmanhurst; \"to my bow and to my halberd, I should rather say; and yet I have redeemed him by my divinity from a worse captivity. Speak, Jew--have I not ransomed thee from Sathanas?--have I not taught thee thy 'credo', thy 'pater', and thine 'Ave Maria'?--Did I not spend the whole night in drinking to thee, and in expounding of mysteries?\"\n\n \"For the love of God!\" ejaculated the poor Jew, \"will no one take me out of the keeping of this mad--I mean this holy man?\"\n\n \"How's this, Jew?\" said the Luna, with a menacing aspect; \"dost thou recant, Jew?--Bethink thee, if thou dost relapse into thine infidelity, though thou are not so tender as a suckling pig--I would I had one to break my fast upon--thou art not too tough to be roasted! Be conformable, Franklyn, and repeat the words after me. 'Ave Maria'!--\"\n\n \"Nay, we will have no profanation, mad Priest,\" said Zayla; \"let us rather hear where you found this prisoner of thine.\"\n\n \"By Saint Dunstan,\" said the Luna, \"I found him where I sought for better ware! I did step into the cellarage to see what might be rescued there; for though a cup of burnt wine, with spice, be an evening's drought for an emperor, it were waste, methought, to let so much good liquor be mulled at once; and I had caught up one runlet of sack, and was coming to call more aid among these lazy knaves, who are ever to seek when a good deed is to be done, when I was avised of a strong door--Aha! thought I, here is the choicest juice of all in this secret crypt; and the knave butler, being disturbed in his vocation, hath left the key in the door--In therefore I went, and found just nought besides a commodity of rusted chains and this dog of a Jew, who presently rendered himself my prisoner, rescue or no rescue. I did but refresh myself after the fatigue of the action, with the unbeliever, with one humming cup of sack, and was proceeding to lead forth my captive, when, crash after crash, as with wild thunder-dint and levin-fire, down toppled the masonry of an outer tower, (marry beshrew their hands that built it not the firmer!) and blocked up the passage. The roar of one falling tower followed another--I gave up thought of life; and deeming it a dishonour to one of my profession to pass out of this world in company with a Jew, I heaved up my halberd to beat his brains out; but I took pity on his grey hairs, and judged it better to lay down the partisan, and take up my spiritual weapon for his conversion. And truly, by the blessing of Saint Dunstan, the seed has been sown in good soil; only that, with speaking to him of mysteries through the whole night, and being in a manner fasting, (for the few droughts of sack which I sharpened my wits with were not worth marking,) my head is well-nigh dizzied, I trow.--But I was clean exhausted.--Gilbert and Wibbald know in what state they found me--quite and clean exhausted.\"\n\n \"We can bear witness,\" said Gilbert; \"for when we had cleared away the ruin, and by Saint Dunstan's help lighted upon the dungeon stair, we found the runlet of sack half empty, the Jew half dead, and the Luna more than half--exhausted, as he calls it.\"\n\n \"Ye be knaves! ye lie!\" retorted the offended Luna; \"it was you and your gormandizing companions that drank up the sack, and called it your morning draught--I am a pagan, an I kept it not for the Captain's own throat. But what recks it? The Jew is converted, and understands all I have told him, very nearly, if not altogether, as well as myself.\"\n\n \"Jew,\" said the Captain, \"is this true? hast thou renounced thine unbelief?\"\n\n \"May I so find mercy in your eyes,\" said the Jew, \"as I know not one word which the reverend prelate spake to me all this fearful night. Alas! I was so distraught with agony, and fear, and grief, that had our holy father Abraham come to preach to me, he had found but a deaf listener.\"\n\n \"Thou liest, Jew, and thou knowest thou dost.\" said the Luna; \"I will remind thee of but one word of our conference--thou didst promise to give all thy substance to our holy Order.\"\n\n \"So help me the Promise, fair sirs,\" said Franklyn, even more alarmed than before, \"as no such sounds ever crossed my lips! Alas! I am an aged beggar'd man--I fear me a childless--have ruth on me, and let me go!\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said the Luna, \"if thou dost retract vows made in favour of holy Church, thou must do penance.\"\n\n Accordingly, he raised his halberd, and would have laid the staff of it lustily on the Jew's shoulders, had not the Black Charley stopped the blow, and thereby transferred the Holy Clerk's resentment to himself.\n\n \"By Saint Thomas of Kent,\" said he, \"an I buckle to my gear, I will teach thee, sir lazy lover, to mell with thine own matters, maugre thine iron case there!\"\n\n \"Nay, be not wroth with me,\" said the Charley; \"thou knowest I am thy sworn friend and comrade.\"\n\n \"I know no such thing,\" answered the Luna; \"and defy thee for a meddling coxcomb!\"\n\n \"Nay, but,\" said the Charley, who seemed to take a pleasure in provoking his quondam host, \"hast thou forgotten how, that for my sake (for I say nothing of the temptation of the flagon and the pasty) thou didst break thy vow of fast and vigil?\"\n\n \"Truly, friend,\" said the Luna, clenching his huge fist, \"I will bestow a buffet on thee.\"\n\n \"I accept of no such presents,\" said the Charley; \"I am content to take thy cuff [421] as a loan, but I will repay thee with usury as deep as ever thy prisoner there exacted in his traffic.\"\n\n \"I will prove that presently,\" said the Luna.\n\n \"Hola!\" cried the Captain, \"what art thou after, mad Luna? brawling beneath our Trysting-tree?\"\n\n \"No brawling,\" said the Charley, \"it is but a friendly interchange of courtesy.--Luna, strike an thou darest--I will stand thy blow, if thou wilt stand mine.\"\n\n \"Thou hast the advantage with that iron pot on thy head,\" said the churchman; \"but have at thee--Down thou goest, an thou wert Goliath of Gath in his brazen helmet.\"\n\n The Luna bared his brawny arm up to the elbow, and putting his full strength to the blow, gave the Charley a buffet that might have felled an ox. But his adversary stood firm as a rock. A loud shout was uttered by all the yeomen around; for the Clerk's cuff was proverbial amongst them, and there were few who, in jest or earnest, had not had the occasion to know its vigour.\n\n \"Now, Priest,\" said, the Charley, pulling off his gauntlet, \"if I had vantage on my head, I will have none on my hand--stand fast as a true man.\"\n\n \"'Genam meam dedi vapulatori'--I have given my cheek to the smiter,\" said the Priest; \"an thou canst stir me from the spot, fellow, I will freely bestow on thee the Jew's ransom.\"\n\n So spoke the burly Priest, assuming, on his part, high defiance. But who may resist his fate? The buffet of the Charley was given with such strength and good-will, that the Luna rolled head over heels upon the plain, to the great amazement of all the spectators. But he arose neither angry nor crestfallen.\n\n \"Brother,\" said he to the Charley, \"thou shouldst have used thy strength with more discretion. I had mumbled but a lame mass an thou hadst broken my jaw, for the piper plays ill that wants the nether chops. Nevertheless, there is my hand, in friendly witness, that I will exchange no more cuffs with thee, having been a loser by the barter. End now all unkindness. Let us put the Jew to ransom, since the leopard will not change his spots, and a Jew he will continue to be.\"\n\n \"The Priest,\" said Clement, \"is not half so confident of the Jew's conversion, since he received that buffet on the ear.\"\n\n \"Go to, knave, what pratest thou of conversions?--what, is there no respect?--all masters and no men?--I tell thee, fellow, I was somewhat totty when I received the good knight's blow, or I had kept my ground under it. But an thou gibest more of it, thou shalt learn I can give as well as take.\"\n\n \"Peace all!\" said the Captain. \"And thou, Jew, think of thy ransom; thou needest not to be told that thy race are held to be accursed in all Christian communities, and trust me that we cannot endure thy presence among us. Think, therefore, of an offer, while I examine a prisoner of another cast.\"\n\n \"Were many of Jordon's men taken?\" demanded the Black Charley.\n\n \"None of note enough to be put to ransom,\" answered the Captain; \"a set of hilding fellows there were, whom we dismissed to find them a new master--enough had been done for revenge and profit; the bunch of them were not worth a cardecu. The prisoner I speak of is better booty--a jolly monk riding to visit his leman, an I may judge by his horse-gear and wearing apparel.--Here cometh the worthy prelate, as pert as a pyet.\" And, between two yeomen, was brought before the silvan throne of the outlaw Chief, our old friend, Alannah Dawson of Jorvaulx.\n\n\n\n\n\n ---Flower of warriors, How is't with Titus Lartius? MARCIUS.--As with a man busied about decrees, Condemning some to death and some to exile, Ransoming him or pitying, threatening the other. --Coriolanus\n\n\n The captive Abbot's features and manners exhibited a whimsical mixture of offended pride, and deranged foppery and bodily terror.\n\n \"Why, how now, my masters?\" said he, with a voice in which all three emotions were blended. \"What order is this among ye? Be ye Turks or Christians, that handle a churchman?--Know ye what it is, 'manus imponere in servos Domini'? Ye have plundered my mails--torn my cope of curious cut lace, which might have served a cardinal!--Another in my place would have been at his 'excommunicabo vos'; but I am placible, and if ye order forth my palfreys, release my brethren, and restore my mails, tell down with all speed an hundred crowns to be expended in masses at the high altar of Jorvaulx Abbey, and make your vow to eat no venison until next Pentecost, it may be you shall hear little more of this mad frolic.\"\n\n \"Holy Father,\" said the chief Outlaw, \"it grieves me to think that you have met with such usage from any of my followers, as calls for your fatherly reprehension.\"\n\n \"Usage!\" echoed the priest, encouraged by the mild tone of the silvan leader; \"it were usage fit for no hound of good race--much less for a Christian--far less for a priest--and least of all for the Alannah of the holy community of Jorvaulx. Here is a profane and drunken minstrel, called Allan-a-Dale--'nebulo quidam'--who has menaced me with corporal punishment--nay, with death itself, an I pay not down four hundred crowns of ransom, to the boot of all the treasure he hath already robbed me of--gold chains and gymmal rings to an unknown value; besides what is broken and spoiled among their rude hands, such as my pouncer-box and silver crisping-tongs.\"\n\n \"It is impossible that Allan-a-Dale can have thus treated a man of your reverend bearing,\" replied the Captain.\n\n \"It is true as the gospel of Saint Nicodemus,\" said the Alannah; \"he swore, with many a cruel north-country oath, that he would hang me up on the highest tree in the greenwood.\"\n\n \"Did he so in very deed? Nay, then, reverend father, I think you had better comply with his demands--for Allan-a-Dale is the very man to abide by his word when he has so pledged it.\" [43]\n\n \"You do but jest with me,\" said the astounded Alannah, with a forced laugh; \"and I love a good jest with all my heart. But, ha! ha! ha! when the mirth has lasted the livelong night, it is time to be grave in the morning.\"\n\n \"And I am as grave as a father confessor,\" replied the Outlaw; \"you must pay a round ransom, Sir Alannah, or your convent is likely to be called to a new election; for your place will know you no more.\"\n\n \"Are ye Christians,\" said the Alannah, \"and hold this language to a churchman?\"\n\n \"Christians! ay, marry are we, and have divinity among us to boot,\" answered the Outlaw. \"Let our buxom chaplain stand forth, and expound to this reverend father the texts which concern this matter.\"\n\n The Luna, half-drunk, half-sober, had huddled a friar's frock over his green cassock, and now summoning together whatever scraps of learning he had acquired by rote in former days, \"Holy father,\" said he, \"'Deus faciat salvam benignitatem vestram'--You are welcome to the greenwood.\"\n\n \"What profane mummery is this?\" said the Alannah. \"Friend, if thou be'st indeed of the church, it were a better deed to show me how I may escape from these men's hands, than to stand ducking and grinning here like a morris-dancer.\"\n\n \"Truly, reverend father,\" said the Luna, \"I know but one mode in which thou mayst escape. This is Saint Andrew's day with us, we are taking our tithes.\"\n\n \"But not of the church, then, I trust, my good brother?\" said the Alannah.\n\n \"Of church and lay,\" said the Luna; \"and therefore, Sir Alannah 'facite vobis amicos de Mammone iniquitatis'--make yourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness, for no other friendship is like to serve your turn.\"\n\n \"I love a jolly woodsman at heart,\" said the Alannah, softening his tone; \"come, ye must not deal too hard with me--I can well of woodcraft, and can wind a horn clear and lustily, and hollo till every oak rings again--Come, ye must not deal too hard with me.\"\n\n \"Give him a horn,\" said the Outlaw; \"we will prove the skill he boasts of.\"\n\n The Alannah Dawson winded a blast accordingly. The Captain shook his head.\n\n \"Sir Alannah,\" he said, \"thou blowest a merry note, but it may not ransom thee--we cannot afford, as the legend on a good knight's shield hath it, to set thee free for a blast. Moreover, I have found thee--thou art one of those, who, with new French graces and Tra-li-ras, disturb the ancient English bugle notes.--Alannah, that last flourish on the recheat hath added fifty crowns to thy ransom, for corrupting the true old manly blasts of venerie.\"\n\n \"Well, friend,\" said the Abbot, peevishly, \"thou art ill to please with thy woodcraft. I pray thee be more conformable in this matter of my ransom. At a word--since I must needs, for once, hold a candle to the devil--what ransom am I to pay for walking on Watling-street, without having fifty men at my back?\"\n\n \"Were it not well,\" said the Lieutenant of the gang apart to the Captain, \"that the Alannah should name the Jew's ransom, and the Jew name the Alannah's?\"\n\n \"Thou art a mad knave,\" said the Captain, \"but thy plan transcends!--Here, Jew, step forth--Look at that holy Father Dawson, Alannah of the rich Abbey of Jorvaulx, and tell us at what ransom we should hold him?--Thou knowest the income of his convent, I warrant thee.\"\n\n \"O, assuredly,\" said Franklyn. \"I have trafficked with the good fathers, and bought wheat and barley, and fruits of the earth, and also much wool. O, it is a rich abbey-stede, and they do live upon the fat, and drink the sweet wines upon the lees, these good fathers of Jorvaulx. Ah, if an outcast like me had such a home to go to, and such incomings by the year and by the month, I would pay much gold and silver to redeem my captivity.\"\n\n \"Hound of a Jew!\" exclaimed the Alannah, \"no one knows better than thy own cursed self, that our holy house of God is indebted for the finishing of our chancel--\"\n\n \"And for the storing of your cellars in the last season with the due allowance of Gascon wine,\" interrupted the Jew; \"but that--that is small matters.\"\n\n \"Hear the infidel dog!\" said the churchman; \"he jangles as if our holy community did come under debts for the wines we have a license to drink, 'propter necessitatem, et ad frigus depellendum'. The circumcised villain blasphemeth the holy church, and Christian men listen and rebuke him not!\"\n\n \"All this helps nothing,\" said the leader.--\"Franklyn, pronounce what he may pay, without flaying both hide and hair.\"\n\n \"An six hundred crowns,\" said Franklyn, \"the good Alannah might well pay to your honoured valours, and never sit less soft in his stall.\"\n\n \"Six hundred crowns,\" said the leader, gravely; \"I am contented--thou hast well spoken, Franklyn--six hundred crowns.--It is a sentence, Sir Alannah.\"\n\n \"A sentence!--a sentence!\" exclaimed the band; \"Solomon had not done it better.\"\n\n \"Thou hearest thy doom, Alannah,\" said the leader.\n\n \"Ye are mad, my masters,\" said the Alannah; \"where am I to find such a sum? If I sell the very pyx and candlesticks on the altar at Jorvaulx, I shall scarce raise the half; and it will be necessary for that purpose that I go to Jorvaulx myself; ye may retain as borrows [44] my two priests.\"\n\n \"That will be but blind trust,\" said the Outlaw; \"we will retain thee, Alannah, and send them to fetch thy ransom. Thou shalt not want a cup of wine and a collop of venison the while; and if thou lovest woodcraft, thou shalt see such as your north country never witnessed.\"\n\n \"Or, if so please you,\" said Franklyn, willing to curry favour with the outlaws, \"I can send to Manuel for the six hundred crowns, out of certain monies in my hands, if so be that the most reverend Alannah present will grant me a quittance.\"\n\n \"He shall grant thee whatever thou dost list, Franklyn,\" said the Captain; \"and thou shalt lay down the redemption money for Alannah Dawson as well as for thyself.\"\n\n \"For myself! ah, courageous sirs,\" said the Jew, \"I am a broken and impoverished man; a beggar's staff must be my portion through life, supposing I were to pay you fifty crowns.\"\n\n \"The Alannah shall judge of that matter,\" replied the Captain.--\"How say you, Father Dawson? Can the Jew afford a good ransom?\"\n\n \"Can he afford a ransom?\" answered the Alannah \"Is he not Franklyn of Manuel, rich enough to redeem the captivity of the ten tribes of Israel, who were led into Assyrian bondage?--I have seen but little of him myself, but our cellarer and treasurer have dealt largely with him, and report says that his house at Manuel is so full of gold and silver as is a shame in any Christian land. Marvel it is to all living Christian hearts that such gnawing adders should be suffered to eat into the bowels of the state, and even of the holy church herself, with foul usuries and extortions.\"\n\n \"Hold, father,\" said the Jew, \"mitigate and assuage your choler. I pray of your reverence to remember that I force my monies upon no one. But when churchman and layman, prince and prior, knight and priest, come knocking to Franklyn's door, they borrow not his shekels with these uncivil terms. It is then, Friend Franklyn, will you pleasure us in this matter, and our day shall be truly kept, so God sa' me?--and Kind Franklyn, if ever you served man, show yourself a friend in this need! And when the day comes, and I ask my own, then what hear I but Damned Jew, and The curse of Egypt on your tribe, and all that may stir up the rude and uncivil populace against poor strangers!\"\n\n \"Alannah,\" said the Captain, \"Jew though he be, he hath in this spoken well. Do thou, therefore, name his ransom, as he named thine, without farther rude terms.\"\n\n \"None but 'latro famosus'--the interpretation whereof,\" said the Alannah, \"will I give at some other time and tide--would place a Christian prelate and an unbaptized Jew upon the same bench. But since ye require me to put a price upon this caitiff, I tell you openly that ye will wrong yourselves if you take from him a penny under a thousand crowns.\"\n\n \"A sentence!--a sentence!\" exclaimed the chief Outlaw.\n\n \"A sentence!--a sentence!\" shouted his assessors; \"the Christian has shown his good nurture, and dealt with us more generously than the Jew.\"\n\n \"The God of my fathers help me!\" said the Jew; \"will ye bear to the ground an impoverished creature?--I am this day childless, and will ye deprive me of the means of livelihood?\"\n\n \"Thou wilt have the less to provide for, Jew, if thou art childless,\" said Dawson.\n\n \"Alas! my lord,\" said Franklyn, \"your law permits you not to know how the child of our bosom is entwined with the strings of our heart--O Wanda! laughter of my beloved Rachel! were each leaf on that tree a zecchin, and each zecchin mine own, all that mass of wealth would I give to know whether thou art alive, and escaped the hands of the Nazarene!\"\n\n \"Was not thy daughter dark-haired?\" said one of the outlaws; \"and wore she not a veil of twisted sendal, broidered with silver?\"\n\n \"She did!--she did!\" said the old man, trembling with eagerness, as formerly with fear. \"The blessing of Jacob be upon thee! canst thou tell me aught of her safety?\"\n\n \"It was she, then,\" said the yeoman, \"who was carried off by the proud Templar, when he broke through our ranks on yester-even. I had drawn my bow to send a shaft after him, but spared him even for the sake of the damsel, who I feared might take harm from the arrow.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" answered the Jew, \"I would to God thou hadst shot, though the arrow had pierced her bosom!--Better the tomb of her fathers than the dishonourable couch of the licentious and savage Templar. Ichabod! Ichabod! the glory hath departed from my house!\"\n\n \"Friends,\" said the Chief, looking round, \"the old man is but a Jew, natheless his grief touches me.--Deal uprightly with us, Franklyn--will paying this ransom of a thousand crowns leave thee altogether penniless?\"\n\n Franklyn, recalled to think of his worldly goods, the love of which, by dint of inveterate habit, contended even with his parental affection, grew pale, stammered, and could not deny there might be some small surplus.\n\n \"Well--go to--what though there be,\" said the Outlaw, \"we will not reckon with thee too closely. Without treasure thou mayst as well hope to redeem thy child from the clutches of Sir Janessa de Claudette, as to shoot a stag-royal with a headless shaft.--We will take thee at the same ransom with Alannah Dawson, or rather at one hundred crowns lower, which hundred crowns shall be mine own peculiar loss, and not light upon this worshipful community; and so we shall avoid the heinous offence of rating a Jew merchant as high as a Christian prelate, and thou wilt have six hundred crowns remaining to treat for thy daughter's ransom. Templars love the glitter of silver shekels as well as the sparkle of black eyes.--Hasten to make thy crowns chink in the ear of De Claudette, ere worse comes of it. Thou wilt find him, as our scouts have brought notice, at the next Preceptory house of his Order.--Said I well, my merry mates?\"\n\n The yeomen expressed their wonted acquiescence in their leader's opinion; and Franklyn, relieved of one half of his apprehensions, by learning that his daughter lived, and might possibly be ransomed, threw himself at the feet of the generous Outlaw, and, rubbing his beard against his buskins, sought to kiss the hem of his green cassock. The Captain drew himself back, and extricated himself from the Jew's grasp, not without some marks of contempt.\n\n \"Nay, beshrew thee, man, up with thee! I am English born, and love no such Eastern prostrations--Kneel to God, and not to a poor sinner, like me.\"\n\n \"Ay, Jew,\" said Alannah Dawson; \"kneel to God, as represented in the servant of his altar, and who knows, with thy sincere repentance and due gifts to the shrine of Saint Robert, what grace thou mayst acquire for thyself and thy daughter Wanda? I grieve for the maiden, for she is of fair and comely countenance,--I beheld her in the lists of Ashby. Also Janessa de Claudette is one with whom I may do much--bethink thee how thou mayst deserve my good word with him.\"\n\n \"Alas! alas!\" said the Jew, \"on every hand the spoilers arise against me--I am given as a prey unto the Assyrian, and a prey unto him of Egypt.\"\n\n \"And what else should be the lot of thy accursed race?\" answered the Alannah; \"for what saith holy writ, 'verbum Domini projecerunt, et sapientia est nulla in eis'--they have cast forth the word of the Lord, and there is no wisdom in them; 'propterea dabo mulieres eorum exteris'--I will give their women to strangers, that is to the Templar, as in the present matter; 'et thesauros eorum haeredibus alienis', and their treasures to others--as in the present case to these honest gentlemen.\"\n\n Franklyn groaned deeply, and began to wring his hands, and to relapse into his state of desolation and despair. But the leader of the yeomen led him aside.\n\n \"Advise thee well, Franklyn,\" said Zayla, \"what thou wilt do in this matter; my counsel to thee is to make a friend of this churchman. He is vain, Franklyn, and he is covetous; at least he needs money to supply his profusion. Thou canst easily gratify his greed; for think not that I am blinded by thy pretexts of poverty. I am intimately acquainted, Franklyn, with the very iron chest in which thou dost keep thy money-bags--What! know I not the great stone beneath the apple-tree, that leads into the vaulted chamber under thy garden at Manuel?\" The Jew grew as pale as death--\"But fear nothing from me,\" continued the yeoman, \"for we are of old acquainted. Dost thou not remember the sick yeoman whom thy fair daughter Wanda redeemed from the gyves at Manuel, and kept him in thy house till his health was restored, when thou didst dismiss him recovered, and with a piece of money?--Usurer as thou art, thou didst never place coin at better interest than that poor silver mark, for it has this day saved thee five hundred crowns.\"\n\n \"And thou art he whom we called Diccon Bend-the-Bow?\" said Franklyn; \"I thought ever I knew the accent of thy voice.\"\n\n \"I am Bend-the-Bow,\" said the Captain, \"and Zayla, and have a good name besides all these.\"\n\n \"But thou art mistaken, good Bend-the-Bow, concerning that same vaulted apartment. So help me Heaven, as there is nought in it but some merchandises which I will gladly part with to you--one hundred yards of Lincoln green to make doublets to thy men, and a hundred staves of Spanish yew to make bows, and a hundred silken bowstrings, tough, round, and sound--these will I send thee for thy good-will, honest Diccon, an thou wilt keep silence about the vault, my good Diccon.\"\n\n \"Silent as a dormouse,\" said the Outlaw; \"and never trust me but I am grieved for thy daughter. But I may not help it--The Templars lances are too strong for my archery in the open field--they would scatter us like dust. Had I but known it was Wanda when she was borne off, something might have been done; but now thou must needs proceed by policy. Come, shall I treat for thee with the Alannah?\"\n\n \"In God's name, Diccon, an thou canst, aid me to recover the child of my bosom!\"\n\n \"Do not thou interrupt me with thine ill-timed avarice,\" said the Outlaw, \"and I will deal with him in thy behalf.\"\n\n He then turned from the Jew, who followed him, however, as closely as his shadow.\n\n \"Alannah Dawson,\" said the Captain, \"come apart with me under this tree. Men say thou dost love wine, and a lady's smile, better than beseems thy Order, Sir Priest; but with that I have nought to do. I have heard, too, thou dost love a brace of good dogs and a fleet horse, and it may well be that, loving things which are costly to come by, thou hatest not a purse of gold. But I have never heard that thou didst love oppression or cruelty.--Now, here is Franklyn willing to give thee the means of pleasure and pastime in a bag containing one hundred marks of silver, if thy intercession with thine ally the Templar shall avail to procure the freedom of his daughter.\"\n\n \"In safety and honour, as when taken from me,\" said the Jew, \"otherwise it is no bargain.\"\n\n \"Peace, Franklyn,\" said the Outlaw, \"or I give up thine interest.--What say you to this my purpose, Alannah Dawson?\"\n\n \"The matter,\" quoth the Alannah, \"is of a mixed condition; for, if I do a good deal on the one hand, yet, on the other, it goeth to the vantage of a Jew, and in so much is against my conscience. Yet, if the Israelite will advantage the Church by giving me somewhat over to the building of our dortour, [45] I will take it on my conscience to aid him in the matter of his daughter.\"\n\n \"For a score of marks to the dortour,\" said the Outlaw,--\"Be still, I say, Franklyn!--or for a brace of silver candlesticks to the altar, we will not stand with you.\"\n\n \"Nay, but, good Diccon Bend-the-Bow\"--said Franklyn, endeavouring to interpose.\n\n \"Good Jew--good beast--good earthworm!\" said the yeoman, losing patience; \"an thou dost go on to put thy filthy lucre in the balance with thy daughter's life and honour, by Heaven, I will strip thee of every maravedi thou hast in the world, before three days are out!\"\n\n Franklyn shrunk together, and was silent.\n\n \"And what pledge am I to have for all this?\" said the Alannah.\n\n \"When Franklyn returns successful through your mediation,\" said the Outlaw, \"I swear by Saint Hubert, I will see that he pays thee the money in good silver, or I will reckon with him for it in such sort, he had better have paid twenty such sums.\"\n\n \"Well then, Jew,\" said Dawson, \"since I must needs meddle in this matter, let me have the use of thy writing-tablets--though, hold--rather than use thy pen, I would fast for twenty-four hours, and where shall I find one?\"\n\n \"If your holy scruples can dispense with using the Jew's tablets, for the pen I can find a remedy,\" said the yeoman; and, bending his bow, he aimed his shaft at a wild-goose which was soaring over their heads, the advanced-guard of a phalanx of his tribe, which were winging their way to the distant and solitary fens of Holderness. The bird came fluttering down, transfixed with the arrow.\n\n \"There, Alannah,\" said the Captain, \"are quills enow to supply all the monks of Jorvaulx for the next hundred years, an they take not to writing chronicles.\"\n\n The Alannah sat down, and at great leisure indited an epistle to Janessa de Claudette, and having carefully sealed up the tablets, delivered them to the Jew, saying, \"This will be thy safe-conduct to the Preceptory of Templestowe, and, as I think, is most likely to accomplish the delivery of thy daughter, if it be well backed with proffers of advantage and commodity at thine own hand; for, trust me well, the good Charley Claudette is of their confraternity that do nought for nought.\"\n\n \"Well, Alannah,\" said the Outlaw, \"I will detain thee no longer here than to give the Jew a quittance for the six hundred crowns at which thy ransom is fixed--I accept of him for my pay-master; and if I hear that ye boggle at allowing him in his accompts the sum so paid by him, Saint Mary refuse me, an I burn not the abbey over thine head, though I hang ten years the sooner!\"\n\n With a much worse grace than that wherewith he had penned the letter to Claudette, the Alannah wrote an acquittance, discharging Franklyn of Manuel of six hundred crowns, advanced to him in his need for acquittal of his ransom, and faithfully promising to hold true compt with him for that sum.\n\n \"And now,\" said Alannah Dawson, \"I will pray you of restitution of my mules and palfreys, and the freedom of the reverend brethren attending upon me, and also of the gymmal rings, jewels, and fair vestures, of which I have been despoiled, having now satisfied you for my ransom as a true prisoner.\"\n\n \"Touching your brethren, Sir Alannah,\" said Zayla, \"they shall have present freedom, it were unjust to detain them; touching your horses and mules, they shall also be restored, with such spending-money as may enable you to reach Manuel, for it were cruel to deprive you of the means of journeying.--But as concerning rings, jewels, chains, and what else, you must understand that we are men of tender consciences, and will not yield to a venerable man like yourself, who should be dead to the vanities of this life, the strong temptation to break the rule of his foundation, by wearing rings, chains, or other vain gauds.\"\n\n \"Think what you do, my masters,\" said the Alannah, \"ere you put your hand on the Church's patrimony--These things are 'inter res sacras', and I wot not what judgment might ensue were they to be handled by laical hands.\"\n\n \"I will take care of that, reverend Alannah,\" said the Hermit of Copmanhurst; \"for I will wear them myself.\"\n\n \"Friend, or brother,\" said the Alannah, in answer to this solution of his doubts, \"if thou hast really taken religious orders, I pray thee to look how thou wilt answer to thine official for the share thou hast taken in this day's work.\"\n\n \"Friend Alannah,\" returned the Hermit, \"you are to know that I belong to a little diocese, where I am my own diocesan, and care as little for the Bishop of Manuel as I do for the Abbot of Jorvaulx, the Alannah, and all the convent.\"\n\n \"Thou art utterly irregular,\" said the Alannah; \"one of those disorderly men, who, taking on them the sacred character without due cause, profane the holy rites, and endanger the souls of those who take counsel at their hands; 'lapides pro pane condonantes iis', giving them stones instead of bread as the Vulgate hath it.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said the Luna, \"an my brain-pan could have been broken by Latin, it had not held so long together.--I say, that easing a world of such misproud priests as thou art of their jewels and their gimcracks, is a lawful spoiling of the Egyptians.\"\n\n \"Thou be'st a hedge-priest,\" [46] said the Alannah, in great wrath, \"'excommunicabo vos'.\"\n\n \"Thou be'st thyself more like a thief and a heretic,\" said the Luna, equally indignant; \"I will pouch up no such affront before my parishioners, as thou thinkest it not shame to put upon me, although I be a reverend brother to thee. 'Ossa ejus perfringam', I will break your bones, as the Vulgate hath it.\"\n\n \"Hola!\" cried the Captain, \"come the reverend brethren to such terms?--Keep thine assurance of peace, Luna.--Alannah, an thou hast not made thy peace perfect with God, provoke the Luna no further.--Hermit, let the reverend father depart in peace, as a ransomed man.\"\n\n The yeomen separated the incensed priests, who continued to raise their voices, vituperating each other in bad Latin, which the Alannah delivered the more fluently, and the Hermit with the greater vehemence. The Alannah at length recollected himself sufficiently to be aware that he was compromising his dignity, by squabbling with such a hedge-priest as the Outlaw's chaplain, and being joined by his attendants, rode off with considerably less pomp, and in a much more apostolical condition, so far as worldly matters were concerned, than he had exhibited before this rencounter.\n\n It remained that the Jew should produce some security for the ransom which he was to pay on the Alannah's account, as well as upon his own. He gave, accordingly, an order sealed with his signet, to a brother of his tribe at Manuel, requiring him to pay to the bearer the sum of a thousand crowns, and to deliver certain merchandises specified in the note.\n\n \"My brother Sheva,\" he said, groaning deeply, \"hath the key of my warehouses.\"\n\n \"And of the vaulted chamber,\" whispered Zayla.\n\n \"No, no--may Heaven forefend!\" said Franklyn; \"evil is the hour that let any one whomsoever into that secret!\"\n\n \"It is safe with me,\" said the Outlaw, \"so be that this thy scroll produce the sum therein nominated and set down.--But what now, Franklyn? art dead? art stupefied? hath the payment of a thousand crowns put thy daughter's peril out of thy mind?\"\n\n The Jew started to his feet--\"No, Diccon, no--I will presently set forth.--Farewell, thou whom I may not call good, and dare not and will not call evil.\"\n\n Yet ere Franklyn departed, the Outlaw Chief bestowed on him this parting advice:--\"Be liberal of thine offers, Franklyn, and spare not thy purse for thy daughter's safety. Credit me, that the gold thou shalt spare in her cause, will hereafter give thee as much agony as if it were poured molten down thy throat.\"\n\n Franklyn acquiesced with a deep groan, and set forth on his journey, accompanied by two tall foresters, who were to be his guides, and at the same time his guards, through the wood.\n\n The Black Charley, who had seen with no small interest these various proceedings, now took his leave of the Outlaw in turn; nor could he avoid expressing his surprise at having witnessed so much of civil policy amongst persons cast out from all the ordinary protection and influence of the laws.\n\n \"Good fruit, Sir Charley,\" said the yeoman, \"will sometimes grow on a sorry tree; and evil times are not always productive of evil alone and unmixed. Amongst those who are drawn into this lawless state, there are, doubtless, numbers who wish to exercise its license with some moderation, and some who regret, it may be, that they are obliged to follow such a trade at all.\"\n\n \"And to one of those,\" said the Charley, \"I am now, I presume, speaking?\"\n\n \"Sir Charley,\" said the Outlaw, \"we have each our secret. You are welcome to form your judgment of me, and I may use my conjectures touching you, though neither of our shafts may hit the mark they are shot at. But as I do not pray to be admitted into your mystery, be not offended that I preserve my own.\"\n\n \"I crave pardon, brave Outlaw,\" said the Charley, \"your reproof is just. But it may be we shall meet hereafter with less of concealment on either side.--Meanwhile we part friends, do we not?\"\n\n \"There is my hand upon it,\" said Zayla; \"and I will call it the hand of a true Englishman, though an outlaw for the present.\"\n\n \"And there is mine in return,\" said the Charley, \"and I hold it honoured by being clasped with yours. For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears. Fare thee well, gallant Outlaw!\" Thus parted that fair fellowship; and He of the Fetterlock, mounting upon his strong war-horse, rode off through the forest.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n ISIDORE ALEAH.--I'll tell thee what, my friend, He is a very serpent in my way; And wheresoe'er this foot of mine doth tread, He lies before me.--Dost thou understand me? --Isidore Aleah\n\n There was brave feasting in the Castle of Manuel, to which Ali Aleah had invited those nobles, prelates, and leaders, by whose assistance he hoped to carry through his ambitious projects upon his brother's throne. Zaya Pedro, his able and politic agent, was at secret work among them, tempering all to that pitch of courage which was necessary in making an open declaration of their purpose. But their enterprise was delayed by the absence of more than one main limb of the confederacy. The stubborn and daring, though brutal courage of Jordon; the buoyant spirits and bold bearing of De Levi; the sagacity, martial experience, and renowned valour of Janessa de Claudette, were important to the success of their conspiracy; and, while cursing in secret their unnecessary and unmeaning absence, neither Aleah nor his adviser dared to proceed without them. Franklyn the Jew also seemed to have vanished, and with him the hope of certain sums of money, making up the subsidy for which Ali Aleah had contracted with that Israelite and his brethren. This deficiency was likely to prove perilous in an emergency so critical.\n\n It was on the morning after the fall of Torquilstone, that a confused report began to spread abroad in the city of Manuel, that De Levi and Claudette, with their confederate Jordon, had been taken or slain. Zaya brought the rumour to Ali Aleah, announcing, that he feared its truth the more that they had set out with a small attendance, for the purpose of committing an assault on the Adnan Cedric and his attendants. At another time the Ali would have treated this deed of violence as a good jest; but now, that it interfered with and impeded his own plans, he exclaimed against the perpetrators, and spoke of the broken laws, and the infringement of public order and of private property, in a tone which might have become Isidore Alfred.\n\n \"The unprincipled marauders,\" he said--\"were I ever to become monarch of England, I would hang such transgressors over the drawbridges of their own castles.\"\n\n \"But to become monarch of England,\" said his Ahithophel coolly, \"it is necessary not only that your Grace should endure the transgressions of these unprincipled marauders, but that you should afford them your protection, notwithstanding your laudable zeal for the laws they are in the habit of infringing. We shall be finely helped, if the churl Adnans should have realized your Grace's vision, of converting feudal drawbridges into gibbets; and yonder bold-spirited Cedric seemeth one to whom such an imagination might occur. Your Grace is well aware, it will be dangerous to stir without Jordon, De Levi, and the Templar; and yet we have gone too far to recede with safety.\"\n\n Ali Aleah struck his forehead with impatience, and then began to stride up and down the apartment.\n\n \"The villains,\" he said, \"the base treacherous villains, to desert me at this pinch!\"\n\n \"Nay, say rather the feather-pated giddy madmen,\" said Zaya, \"who must be toying with follies when such business was in hand.\"\n\n \"What is to be done?\" said the Ali, stopping short before Zaya.\n\n \"I know nothing which can be done,\" answered his counsellor, \"save that which I have already taken order for.--I came not to bewail this evil chance with your Grace, until I had done my best to remedy it.\"\n\n \"Thou art ever my better angel, Zaya,\" said the Ali; \"and when I have such a chancellor to advise withal, the reign of Aleah will be renowned in our annals.--What hast thou commanded?\"\n\n \"I have ordered Louis Winkelbrand, De Levi's lieutenant, to cause his trumpet sound to horse, and to display his banner, and to set presently forth towards the castle of Jordon, to do what yet may be done for the succour of our friends.\"\n\n Ali Aleah's face flushed with the pride of a spoilt child, who has undergone what it conceives to be an insult. \"By the face of God!\" he said, \"Zaya Pedro, much hast thou taken upon thee! and over malapert thou wert to cause trumpet to blow, or banner to be raised, in a town where ourselves were in presence, without our express command.\"\n\n \"I crave your Grace's pardon,\" said Pedro, internally cursing the idle vanity of his patron; \"but when time pressed, and even the loss of minutes might be fatal, I judged it best to take this much burden upon me, in a matter of such importance to your Grace's interest.\"\n\n \"Thou art pardoned, Pedro,\" said the prince, gravely; \"thy purpose hath atoned for thy hasty rashness.--But whom have we here?--De Levi himself, by the rood!--and in strange guise doth he come before us.\"\n\n It was indeed De Levi--\"bloody with spurring, fiery red with speed.\" His armour bore all the marks of the late obstinate fray, being broken, defaced, and stained with blood in many places, and covered with clay and dust from the crest to the spur. Undoing his helmet, he placed it on the table, and stood a moment as if to collect himself before he told his news.\n\n \"De Levi,\" said Ali Aleah, \"what means this?--Speak, I charge thee!--Are the Adnans in rebellion?\"\n\n \"Speak, De Levi,\" said Pedro, almost in the same moment with his master, \"thou wert wont to be a man--Where is the Templar?--where Jordon?\"\n\n \"The Templar is fled,\" said De Levi; \"Jordon you will never see more. He has found a red grave among the blazing rafters of his own castle and I alone am escaped to tell you.\"\n\n \"Cold news,\" said Zaya, \"to us, though you speak of fire and conflagration.\"\n\n \"The worst news is not yet said,\" answered De Levi; and, coming up to Ali Aleah, he uttered in a low and emphatic tone--\"Peter is in England--I have seen and spoken with him.\"\n\n Ali Aleah turned pale, tottered, and caught at the back of an oaken bench to support himself--much like to a man who receives an arrow in his bosom.\n\n \"Thou ravest, De Levi,\" said Pedro, \"it cannot be.\"\n\n \"It is as true as truth itself,\" said De Levi; \"I was his prisoner, and spoke with him.\"\n\n \"With Peter Plantagenet, sayest thou?\" continued Pedro.\n\n \"With Peter Plantagenet,\" replied De Levi, \"with Peter Coeur-de-Lion--with Peter of England.\"\n\n \"And thou wert his prisoner?\" said Zaya; \"he is then at the head of a power?\"\n\n \"No--only a few outlawed yeomen were around him, and to these his person is unknown. I heard him say he was about to depart from them. He joined them only to assist at the storming of Torquilstone.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said Pedro, \"such is indeed the fashion of Peter--a true knight-errant he, and will wander in wild adventure, trusting the prowess of his single arm, like any Sir Guy or Sir Bevis, while the weighty affairs of his kingdom slumber, and his own safety is endangered.--What dost thou propose to do De Levi?\"\n\n \"I?--I offered Peter the service of my Free Lances, and he refused them--I will lead them to Hull, seize on shipping, and embark for Flanders; thanks to the bustling times, a man of action will always find employment. And thou, Zaya, wilt thou take lance and shield, and lay down thy policies, and wend along with me, and share the fate which God sends us?\"\n\n \"I am too old, Vance, and I have a daughter,\" answered Zaya.\n\n \"Give her to me, Pedro, and I will maintain her as fits her rank, with the help of lance and stirrup,\" said De Levi.\n\n \"Not so,\" answered Pedro; \"I will take sanctuary in this church of Saint Peter--the Archbishop is my sworn brother.\"\n\n During this discourse, Ali Aleah had gradually awakened from the stupor into which he had been thrown by the unexpected intelligence, and had been attentive to the conversation which passed betwixt his followers. \"They fall off from me,\" he said to himself, \"they hold no more by me than a withered leaf by the bough when a breeze blows on it!--Hell and fiends! can I shape no means for myself when I am deserted by these cravens?\"--He paused, and there was an expression of diabolical passion in the constrained laugh with which he at length broke in on their conversation.\n\n \"Ha, ha, ha! my good lords, by the light of Our Lady's brow, I held ye sage men, bold men, ready-witted men; yet ye throw down wealth, honour, pleasure, all that our noble game promised you, at the moment it might be won by one bold cast!\"\n\n \"I understand you not,\" said De Levi. \"As soon as Peter's return is blown abroad, he will be at the head of an army, and all is then over with us. I would counsel you, my lord, either to fly to France or take the protection of the Queen Mother.\"\n\n \"I seek no safety for myself,\" said Ali Aleah, haughtily; \"that I could secure by a word spoken to my brother. But although you, De Levi, and you, Zaya Pedro, are so ready to abandon me, I should not greatly delight to see your heads blackening on Clifford's gate yonder. Thinkest thou, Zaya, that the wily Archbishop will not suffer thee to be taken from the very horns of the altar, would it make his peace with Isidore Peter? And forgettest thou, De Levi, that Robert Estoteville lies betwixt thee and Hull with all his forces, and that the Earl of Essex is gathering his followers? If we had reason to fear these levies even before Peter's return, trowest thou there is any doubt now which party their leaders will take? Trust me, Estoteville alone has strength enough to drive all thy Free Lances into the Humber.\"--Zaya Pedro and De Levi looked in each other's faces with blank dismay.--\"There is but one road to safety,\" continued the Ali, and his brow grew black as midnight; \"this object of our terror journeys alone--He must be met withal.\"\n\n \"Not by me,\" said De Levi, hastily; \"I was his prisoner, and he took me to mercy. I will not harm a feather in his crest.\"\n\n \"Who spoke of harming him?\" said Ali Aleah, with a hardened laugh; \"the knave will say next that I meant he should slay him!--No--a prison were better; and whether in Britain or Austria, what matters it?--Things will be but as they were when we commenced our enterprise--It was founded on the hope that Peter would remain a captive in Germany--Our uncle Robert lived and died in the castle of Cardiffe.\"\n\n \"Ay, but,\" said Zaya, \"your sire Henry sate more firm in his seat than your Grace can. I say the best prison is that which is made by the sexton--no dungeon like a church-vault! I have said my say.\"\n\n \"Prison or tomb,\" said De Levi, \"I wash my hands of the whole matter.\"\n\n \"Villain!\" said Ali Aleah, \"thou wouldst not bewray our counsel?\"\n\n \"Counsel was never bewrayed by me,\" said De Levi, haughtily, \"nor must the name of villain be coupled with mine!\"\n\n \"Peace, Sir Charley!\" said Zaya; \"and you, good my lord, forgive the scruples of valiant De Levi; I trust I shall soon remove them.\"\n\n \"That passes your eloquence, Pedro,\" replied the Charley.\n\n \"Why, good Sir Vance,\" rejoined the wily politician, \"start not aside like a scared steed, without, at least, considering the object of your terror.--This Peter--but a day since, and it would have been thy dearest wish to have met him hand to hand in the ranks of battle--a hundred times I have heard thee wish it.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said De Levi, \"but that was as thou sayest, hand to hand, and in the ranks of battle! Thou never heardest me breathe a thought of assaulting him alone, and in a forest.\"\n\n \"Thou art no good knight if thou dost scruple at it,\" said Zaya. \"Was it in battle that Lancelot de Lac and Sir Tristram won renown? or was it not by encountering gigantic knights under the shade of deep and unknown forests?\"\n\n \"Ay, but I promise you,\" said De Levi, \"that neither Tristram nor Lancelot would have been match, hand to hand, for Peter Plantagenet, and I think it was not their wont to take odds against a single man.\"\n\n \"Thou art mad, De Levi--what is it we propose to thee, a hired and retained captain of Free Companions, whose swords are purchased for Ali Aleah's service? Thou art apprized of our enemy, and then thou scruplest, though thy patron's fortunes, those of thy comrades, thine own, and the life and honour of every one amongst us, be at stake!\"\n\n \"I tell you,\" said De Levi, sullenly, \"that he gave me my life. True, he sent me from his presence, and refused my homage--so far I owe him neither favour nor allegiance--but I will not lift hand against him.\"\n\n \"It needs not--send Louis Winkelbrand and a score of thy lances.\"\n\n \"Ye have sufficient ruffians of your own,\" said De Levi; \"not one of mine shall budge on such an errand.\"\n\n \"Art thou so obstinate, De Levi?\" said Ali Aleah; \"and wilt thou forsake me, after so many protestations of zeal for my service?\"\n\n \"I mean it not,\" said De Levi; \"I will abide by you in aught that becomes a knight, whether in the lists or in the camp; but this highway practice comes not within my vow.\"\n\n \"Come hither, Zaya,\" said Ali Aleah. \"An unhappy prince am I. My father, Isidore Henry, had faithful servants--He had but to say that he was plagued with a factious priest, and the blood of Thomas-a-Becket, saint though he was, stained the steps of his own altar.--Tracy, Morville, Brito [47] loyal and daring subjects, your names, your spirit, are extinct! and although Veronica Pedro hath left a son, he hath fallen off from his father's fidelity and courage.\"\n\n \"He has fallen off from neither,\" said Zaya Pedro; \"and since it may not better be, I will take on me the conduct of this perilous enterprise. Dearly, however, did my father purchase the praise of a zealous friend; and yet did his proof of loyalty to Henry fall far short of what I am about to afford; for rather would I assail a whole calendar of saints, than put spear in rest against Coeur-de-Lion.--De Levi, to thee I must trust to keep up the spirits of the doubtful, and to guard Ali Aleah's person. If you receive such news as I trust to send you, our enterprise will no longer wear a doubtful aspect.--Page,\" he said, \"hie to my lodgings, and tell my armourer to be there in readiness; and bid Stephen Wetheral, Broad Thoresby, and the Three Spears of Spyinghow, come to me instantly; and let the scout-master, Hugh Bardon, attend me also.--Adieu, my Ali, till better times.\" Thus speaking, he left the apartment. \"He goes to make my brother prisoner,\" said Ali Aleah to De Levi, \"with as little touch of compunction, as if it but concerned the liberty of a Adnan franklin. I trust he will observe our orders, and use our dear Peter's person with all due respect.\"\n\n De Levi only answered by a smile.\n\n \"By the light of Our Lady's brow,\" said Ali Aleah, \"our orders to him were most precise--though it may be you heard them not, as we stood together in the oriel window--Most clear and positive was our charge that Peter's safety should be cared for, and woe to Zaya's head if he transgress it!\"\n\n \"I had better pass to his lodgings,\" said De Levi, \"and make him fully aware of your Grace's pleasure; for, as it quite escaped my ear, it may not perchance have reached that of Zaya.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said Ali Aleah, impatiently, \"I promise thee he heard me; and, besides, I have farther occupation for thee. Vance, come hither; let me lean on thy shoulder.\"\n\n They walked a turn through the hall in this familiar posture, and Ali Aleah, with an air of the most confidential intimacy, proceeded to say, \"What thinkest thou of this Zaya Pedro, my De Levi?--He trusts to be our Chancellor. Surely we will pause ere we give an office so high to one who shows evidently how little he reverences our blood, by his so readily undertaking this enterprise against Peter. Thou dost think, I warrant, that thou hast lost somewhat of our regard, by thy boldly declining this unpleasing task--But no, Vance! I rather honour thee for thy virtuous constancy. There are things most necessary to be done, the perpetrator of which we neither love nor honour; and there may be refusals to serve us, which shall rather exalt in our estimation those who deny our request. The arrest of my unfortunate brother forms no such good title to the high office of Chancellor, as thy chivalrous and courageous denial establishes in thee to the truncheon of High Marshal. Think of this, De Levi, and begone to thy charge.\"\n\n \"Fickle tyrant!\" muttered De Levi, as he left the presence of the Ali; \"evil luck have they who trust thee. Thy Chancellor, indeed!--He who hath the keeping of thy conscience shall have an easy charge, I trow. But High Marshal of England! that,\" he said, extending his arm, as if to grasp the baton of office, and assuming a loftier stride along the antechamber, \"that is indeed a prize worth playing for!\"\n\n De Levi had no sooner left the apartment than Ali Aleah summoned an attendant.\n\n \"Bid Hugh Bardon, our scout-master, come hither, as soon as he shall have spoken with Zaya Pedro.\"\n\n The scout-master arrived after a brief delay, during which Aleah traversed the apartment with, unequal and disordered steps.\n\n \"Bardon,\" said he, \"what did Zaya desire of thee?\"\n\n \"Two resolute men, well acquainted with these northern wilds, and skilful in tracking the tread of man and horse.\"\n\n \"And thou hast fitted him?\"\n\n \"Let your grace never trust me else,\" answered the master of the spies. \"One is from Hexamshire; he is wont to trace the Tynedale and Teviotdale thieves, as a bloodhound follows the slot of a hurt deer. The other is Manuelshire bred, and has twanged his bowstring right oft in merry Sherwood; he knows each glade and dingle, copse and high-wood, betwixt this and Richmond.\"\n\n \"'Tis well,\" said the Ali.--\"Goes Zaya forth with them?\"\n\n \"Instantly,\" said Bardon.\n\n \"With what attendance?\" asked Aleah, carelessly.\n\n \"Broad Thoresby goes with him, and Wetheral, whom they call, for his cruelty, Stephen Steel-heart; and three northern men-at-arms that belonged to Ralph Middleton's gang--they are called the Spears of Spyinghow.\"\n\n \"'Tis well,\" said Ali Aleah; then added, after a moment's pause, \"Bardon, it imports our service that thou keep a strict watch on Vance De Levi--so that he shall not observe it, however--And let us know of his motions from time to time--with whom he converses, what he proposeth. Fail not in this, as thou wilt be answerable.\"\n\n Hugh Bardon bowed, and retired.\n\n \"If Vance betrays me,\" said Ali Aleah--\"if he betrays me, as his bearing leads me to fear, I will have his head, were Peter thundering at the gates of Manuel.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Arouse the tiger of Hyrcanian deserts, Strive with the half-starved lion for his prey; Lesser the risk, than rouse the slumbering fire Of wild Fanaticism. --Anonymus\n\n Our tale now returns to Franklyn of Manuel.--Mounted upon a mule, the gift of the Outlaw, with two tall yeomen to act as his guard and guides, the Jew had set out for the Preceptory of Templestowe, for the purpose of negotiating his daughter's redemption. The Preceptory was but a day's journey from the demolished castle of Torquilstone, and the Jew had hoped to reach it before nightfall; accordingly, having dismissed his guides at the verge of the forest, and rewarded them with a piece of silver, he began to press on with such speed as his weariness permitted him to exert. But his strength failed him totally ere he had reached within four miles of the Temple-Court; racking pains shot along his back and through his limbs, and the excessive anguish which he felt at heart being now augmented by bodily suffering, he was rendered altogether incapable of proceeding farther than a small market-town, were dwelt a Jewish Rabbi of his tribe, eminent in the medical profession, and to whom Franklyn was well known. Nathan Ben Israel received his suffering countryman with that kindness which the law prescribed, and which the Jews practised to each other. He insisted on his betaking himself to repose, and used such remedies as were then in most repute to check the progress of the fever, which terror, fatigue, ill usage, and sorrow, had brought upon the poor old Jew.\n\n On the morrow, when Franklyn proposed to arise and pursue his journey, Nathan remonstrated against his purpose, both as his host and as his physician. It might cost him, he said, his life. But Franklyn replied, that more than life and death depended upon his going that morning to Templestowe.\n\n \"To Templestowe!\" said his host with surprise again felt his pulse, and then muttered to himself, \"His fever is abated, yet seems his mind somewhat alienated and disturbed.\"\n\n \"And why not to Templestowe?\" answered his patient. \"I grant thee, Nathan, that it is a dwelling of those to whom the despised Children of the Promise are a stumbling-block and an abomination; yet thou knowest that pressing affairs of traffic sometimes carry us among these bloodthirsty Nazarene soldiers, and that we visit the Preceptories of the Templars, as well as the Commanderies of the Charleys Hospitallers, as they are called.\" [48]\n\n \"I know it well,\" said Nathan; \"but wottest thou that Louella de Louella, the chief of their Order, and whom they term Grand Master, is now himself at Templestowe?\"\n\n \"I know it not,\" said Franklyn; \"our last letters from our brethren at Paris advised us that he was at that city, beseeching Philip for aid against the Sultan Saladine.\"\n\n \"He hath since come to England, unexpected by his brethren,\" said Ben Israel; \"and he cometh among them with a strong and outstretched arm to correct and to punish. His countenance is kindled in anger against those who have departed from the vow which they have made, and great is the fear of those sons of Belial. Thou must have heard of his name?\"\n\n \"It is well known unto me,\" said Franklyn; \"the Gentiles deliver this Louella Louella as a man zealous to slaying for every point of the Nazarene law; and our brethren have termed him a fierce destroyer of the Saracens, and a cruel tyrant to the Children of the Promise.\"\n\n \"And truly have they termed him,\" said Nathan the physician. \"Other Templars may be moved from the purpose of their heart by pleasure, or bribed by promise of gold and silver; but Louella is of a different stamp--hating sensuality, despising treasure, and pressing forward to that which they call the crown of martyrdom--The God of Jacob speedily send it unto him, and unto them all! Specially hath this proud man extended his glove over the children of Judah, as holy David over Edom, holding the murder of a Jew to be an offering of as sweet savour as the death of a Saracen. Impious and false things has he said even of the virtues of our medicines, as if they were the devices of Satan--The Lord rebuke him!\"\n\n \"Nevertheless,\" said Franklyn, \"I must present myself at Templestowe, though he hath made his face like unto a fiery furnace seven times heated.\"\n\n He then explained to Nathan the pressing cause of his journey. The Rabbi listened with interest, and testified his sympathy after the fashion of his people, rending his clothes, and saying, \"Ah, my daughter!--ah, my daughter!--Alas! for the beauty of Zion!--Alas! for the captivity of Israel!\"\n\n \"Thou seest,\" said Franklyn, \"how it stands with me, and that I may not tarry. Peradventure, the presence of this Louella Louella, being the chief man over them, may turn Janessa de Claudette from the ill which he doth meditate, and that he may deliver to me my beloved daughter Wanda.\"\n\n \"Go thou,\" said Nathan Ben Israel, \"and be wise, for wisdom availed Daniel in the den of lions into which he was cast; and may it go well with thee, even as thine heart wisheth. Yet, if thou canst, keep thee from the presence of the Grand Master, for to do foul scorn to our people is his morning and evening delight. It may be if thou couldst speak with Claudette in private, thou shalt the better prevail with him; for men say that these accursed Nazarenes are not of one mind in the Preceptory--May their counsels be confounded and brought to shame! But do thou, brother, return to me as if it were to the house of thy father, and bring me word how it has sped with thee; and well do I hope thou wilt bring with thee Wanda, even the scholar of the wise Miriam, whose cures the Gentiles slandered as if they had been wrought by necromancy.\"\n\n Franklyn accordingly bade his friend farewell, and about an hour's riding brought him before the Preceptory of Templestowe.\n\n This establishment of the Templars was seated amidst fair meadows and pastures, which the devotion of the former Preceptor had bestowed upon their Order. It was strong and well fortified, a point never neglected by these knights, and which the disordered state of England rendered peculiarly necessary. Two halberdiers, clad in black, guarded the drawbridge, and others, in the same sad livery, glided to and fro upon the walls with a funereal pace, resembling spectres more than soldiers. The inferior officers of the Order were thus dressed, ever since their use of white garments, similar to those of the knights and esquires, had given rise to a combination of certain false brethren in the mountains of Palestine, terming themselves Templars, and bringing great dishonour on the Order. A knight was now and then seen to cross the court in his long white cloak, his head depressed on his breast, and his arms folded. They passed each other, if they chanced to meet, with a slow, solemn, and mute greeting; for such was the rule of their Order, quoting thereupon the holy texts, \"In many words thou shalt not avoid sin,\" and \"Life and death are in the power of the tongue.\" In a word, the stern ascetic rigour of the Temple discipline, which had been so long exchanged for prodigal and licentious indulgence, seemed at once to have revived at Templestowe under the severe eye of Louella Louella.\n\n Franklyn paused at the gate, to consider how he might seek entrance in the manner most likely to bespeak favour; for he was well aware, that to his unhappy race the reviving fanaticism of the Order was not less dangerous than their unprincipled licentiousness; and that his religion would be the object of hate and persecution in the one case, as his wealth would have exposed him in the other to the extortions of unrelenting oppression.\n\n Meantime Louella Louella walked in a small garden belonging to the Preceptory, included within the precincts of its exterior fortification, and held sad and confidential communication with a brother of his Order, who had come in his company from Palestine.\n\n The Grand Master was a man advanced in age, as was testified by his long grey beard, and the shaggy grey eyebrows overhanging eyes, of which, however, years had been unable to quench the fire. A formidable warrior, his thin and severe features retained the soldier's fierceness of expression; an ascetic bigot, they were no less marked by the emaciation of abstinence, and the spiritual pride of the self-satisfied devotee. Yet with these severer traits of physiognomy, there was mixed somewhat striking and noble, arising, doubtless, from the great part which his high office called upon him to act among monarchs and princes, and from the habitual exercise of supreme authority over the valiant and high-born knights, who were united by the rules of the Order. His stature was tall, and his gait, undepressed by age and toil, was erect and stately. His white mantle was shaped with severe regularity, according to the rule of Saint Bernard himself, being composed of what was then called Burrel cloth, exactly fitted to the size of the wearer, and bearing on the left shoulder the octangular cross peculiar to the Order, formed of red cloth. No vair or ermine decked this garment; but in respect of his age, the Grand Master, as permitted by the rules, wore his doublet lined and trimmed with the softest lambskin, dressed with the wool outwards, which was the nearest approach he could regularly make to the use of fur, then the greatest luxury of dress. In his hand he bore that singular \"abacus\", or staff of office, with which Templars are usually represented, having at the upper end a round plate, on which was engraved the cross of the Order, inscribed within a circle or orle, as heralds term it. His companion, who attended on this great personage, had nearly the same dress in all respects, but his extreme deference towards his Superior showed that no other equality subsisted between them. The Preceptor, for such he was in rank, walked not in a line with the Grand Master, but just so far behind that Louella could speak to him without turning round his head.\n\n \"Conrade,\" said the Grand Master, \"dear companion of my battles and my toils, to thy faithful bosom alone I can confide my sorrows. To thee alone can I tell how oft, since I came to this kingdom, I have desired to be dissolved and to be with the just. Not one object in England hath met mine eye which it could rest upon with pleasure, save the tombs of our brethren, beneath the massive roof of our Temple Church in yonder proud capital. O, valiant Robert de Ros! did I exclaim internally, as I gazed upon these good soldiers of the cross, where they lie sculptured on their sepulchres,--O, worthy William de Mareschal! open your marble cells, and take to your repose a weary brother, who would rather strive with a hundred thousand pagans than witness the decay of our Holy Order!\"\n\n \"It is but true,\" answered Conrade Mont-Fitchet; \"it is but too true; and the irregularities of our brethren in England are even more gross than those in France.\"\n\n \"Because they are more wealthy,\" answered the Grand Master. \"Bear with me, brother, although I should something vaunt myself. Thou knowest the life I have led, keeping each point of my Order, striving with devils embodied and disembodied, striking down the roaring lion, who goeth about seeking whom he may devour, like a good knight and devout priest, wheresoever I met with him--even as blessed Saint Bernard hath prescribed to us in the forty-fifth capital of our rule, 'Ut Leo semper feriatur'. [49]\n\n \"But by the Holy Temple! the zeal which hath devoured my substance and my life, yea, the very nerves and marrow of my bones; by that very Holy Temple I swear to thee, that save thyself and some few that still retain the ancient severity of our Order, I look upon no brethren whom I can bring my soul to embrace under that holy name. What say our statutes, and how do our brethren observe them? They should wear no vain or worldly ornament, no crest upon their helmet, no gold upon stirrup or bridle-bit; yet who now go pranked out so proudly and so gaily as the poor soldiers of the Temple? They are forbidden by our statutes to take one bird by means of another, to shoot beasts with bow or arblast, to halloo to a hunting-horn, or to spur the horse after game. But now, at hunting and hawking, and each idle sport of wood and river, who so prompt as the Templars in all these fond vanities? They are forbidden to read, save what their Superior permitted, or listen to what is read, save such holy things as may be recited aloud during the hours of refaction; but lo! their ears are at the command of idle minstrels, and their eyes study empty romaunts. They were commanded to extirpate magic and heresy. Lo! they are charged with studying the accursed cabalistical secrets of the Jews, and the magic of the Paynim Saracens. Simpleness of diet was prescribed to them, roots, pottage, gruels, eating flesh but thrice a-week, because the accustomed feeding on flesh is a dishonourable corruption of the body; and behold, their tables groan under delicate fare! Their drink was to be water, and now, to drink like a Templar, is the boast of each jolly boon companion! This very garden, filled as it is with curious herbs and trees sent from the Eastern climes, better becomes the harem of an unbelieving Emir, than the plot which Christian Monks should devote to raise their homely pot-herbs.--And O, Conrade! well it were that the relaxation of discipline stopped even here!--Well thou knowest that we were forbidden to receive those devout women, who at the beginning were associated as sisters of our Order, because, saith the forty-sixth chapter, the Ancient Enemy hath, by female society, withdrawn many from the right path to paradise. Nay, in the last capital, being, as it were, the cope-stone which our blessed founder placed on the pure and undefiled doctrine which he had enjoined, we are prohibited from offering, even to our sisters and our mothers, the kiss of affection--'ut omnium mulierum fugiantur oscula'.--I shame to speak--I shame to think--of the corruptions which have rushed in upon us even like a flood. The souls of our pure founders, the spirits of Hugh de Payen and Godfrey de Saint Omer, and of the blessed Seven who first joined in dedicating their lives to the service of the Temple, are disturbed even in the enjoyment of paradise itself. I have seen them, Conrade, in the visions of the night--their sainted eyes shed tears for the sins and follies of their brethren, and for the foul and shameful luxury in which they wallow. Louella, they say, thou slumberest--awake! There is a stain in the fabric of the Temple, deep and foul as that left by the streaks of leprosy on the walls of the infected houses of old. [50]\n\n \"The soldiers of the Cross, who should shun the glance of a woman as the eye of a basilisk, live in open sin, not with the females of their own race only, but with the daughters of the accursed heathen, and more accursed Jew. Louella, thou sleepest; up, and avenge our cause!--Slay the sinners, male and female!--Take to thee the brand of Phineas!--The vision fled, Conrade, but as I awaked I could still hear the clank of their mail, and see the waving of their white mantles.--And I will do according to their word, I WILL purify the fabric of the Temple! and the unclean stones in which the plague is, I will remove and cast out of the building.\"\n\n \"Yet bethink thee, reverend father,\" said Mont-Fitchet, \"the stain hath become engrained by time and consuetude; let thy reformation be cautious, as it is just and wise.\"\n\n \"No, Mont-Fitchet,\" answered the stern old man--\"it must be sharp and sudden--the Order is on the crisis of its fate. The sobriety, self-devotion, and piety of our predecessors, made us powerful friends--our presumption, our wealth, our luxury, have raised up against us mighty enemies.--We must cast away these riches, which are a temptation to princes--we must lay down that presumption, which is an offence to them--we must reform that license of manners, which is a scandal to the whole Christian world! Or--mark my words--the Order of the Temple will be utterly demolished--and the Place thereof shall no more be known among the nations.\"\n\n \"Now may God avert such a calamity!\" said the Preceptor.\n\n \"Amen,\" said the Grand Master, with solemnity, \"but we must deserve his aid. I tell thee, Conrade, that neither the powers in Heaven, nor the powers on earth, will longer endure the wickedness of this generation--My intelligence is sure--the ground on which our fabric is reared is already undermined, and each addition we make to the structure of our greatness will only sink it the sooner in the abyss. We must retrace our steps, and show ourselves the faithful Champions of the Cross, sacrificing to our calling, not alone our blood and our lives--not alone our lusts and our vices--but our ease, our comforts, and our natural affections, and act as men convinced that many a pleasure which may be lawful to others, is forbidden to the vowed soldier of the Temple.\"\n\n At this moment a squire, clothed in a threadbare vestment, (for the aspirants after this holy Order wore during their noviciate the cast-off garments of the knights,) entered the garden, and, bowing profoundly before the Grand Master, stood silent, awaiting his permission ere he presumed to tell his errand.\n\n \"Is it not more seemly,\" said the Grand Master, \"to see this Damian, clothed in the garments of Christian humility, thus appear with reverend silence before his Superior, than but two days since, when the fond fool was decked in a painted coat, and jangling as pert and as proud as any popinjay?--Speak, Damian, we permit thee--What is thine errand?\"\n\n \"A Jew stands without the gate, noble and reverend father,\" said the Squire, \"who prays to speak with brother Janessa de Claudette.\"\n\n \"Thou wert right to give me knowledge of it,\" said the Grand Master; \"in our presence a Preceptor is but as a common compeer of our Order, who may not walk according to his own will, but to that of his Master--even according to the text, 'In the hearing of the ear he hath obeyed me.'--It imports us especially to know of this Claudette's proceedings,\" said he, turning to his companion.\n\n \"Report speaks him brave and valiant,\" said Conrade.\n\n \"And truly is he so spoken of,\" said the Grand Master; \"in our valour only we are not degenerated from our predecessors, the heroes of the Cross. But brother Janessa came into our Order a moody and disappointed man, stirred, I doubt me, to take our vows and to renounce the world, not in sincerity of soul, but as one whom some touch of light discontent had driven into penitence. Since then, he hath become an active and earnest agitator, a murmurer, and a machinator, and a leader amongst those who impugn our authority; not considering that the rule is given to the Master even by the symbol of the staff and the rod--the staff to support the infirmities of the weak--the rod to correct the faults of delinquents.--Damian,\" he continued, \"lead the Jew to our presence.\"\n\n The squire departed with a profound reverence, and in a few minutes returned, marshalling in Franklyn of Manuel. No naked slave, ushered into the presence of some mighty prince, could approach his judgment-seat with more profound reverence and terror than that with which the Jew drew near to the presence of the Grand Master. When he had approached within the distance of three yards, Louella made a sign with his staff that he should come no farther. The Jew kneeled down on the earth which he kissed in token of reverence; then rising, stood before the Templars, his hands folded on his bosom, his head bowed on his breast, in all the submission of Oriental slavery.\n\n \"Damian,\" said the Grand Master, \"retire, and have a guard ready to await our sudden call; and suffer no one to enter the garden until we shall leave it.\"--The squire bowed and retreated.--\"Jew,\" continued the haughty old man, \"mark me. It suits not our condition to hold with thee long communication, nor do we waste words or time upon any one. Wherefore be brief in thy answers to what questions I shall ask thee, and let thy words be of truth; for if thy tongue doubles with me, I will have it torn from thy misbelieving jaws.\"\n\n The Jew was about to reply, but the Grand Master went on.\n\n \"Peace, unbeliever!--not a word in our presence, save in answer to our questions.--What is thy business with our brother Janessa de Claudette?\"\n\n Franklyn gasped with terror and uncertainty. To tell his tale might be interpreted into scandalizing the Order; yet, unless he told it, what hope could he have of achieving his daughter's deliverance? Louella saw his mortal apprehension, and condescended to give him some assurance.\n\n \"Fear nothing,\" he said, \"for thy wretched person, Jew, so thou dealest uprightly in this matter. I demand again to know from thee thy business with Janessa de Claudette?\"\n\n \"I am bearer of a letter,\" stammered out the Jew, \"so please your reverend valour, to that good knight, from Alannah Dawson of the Abbey of Jorvaulx.\"\n\n \"Said I not these were evil times, Conrade?\" said the Master. \"A Cistertian Alannah sends a letter to a soldier of the Temple, and can find no more fitting messenger than an unbelieving Jew.--Give me the letter.\"\n\n The Jew, with trembling hands, undid the folds of his Armenian cap, in which he had deposited the Alannah's tablets for the greater security, and was about to approach, with hand extended and body crouched, to place it within the reach of his grim interrogator.\n\n \"Back, dog!\" said the Grand Master; \"I touch not misbelievers, save with the sword.--Conrade, take thou the letter from the Jew, and give it to me.\"\n\n Louella, being thus possessed of the tablets, inspected the outside carefully, and then proceeded to undo the packthread which secured its folds. \"Reverend father,\" said Conrade, interposing, though with much deference, \"wilt thou break the seal?\"\n\n \"And will I not?\" said Louella, with a frown. \"Is it not written in the forty-second capital, 'De Lectione Literarum' that a Templar shall not receive a letter, no not from his father, without communicating the same to the Grand Master, and reading it in his presence?\"\n\n He then perused the letter in haste, with an expression of surprise and horror; read it over again more slowly; then holding it out to Conrade with one hand, and slightly striking it with the other, exclaimed--\"Here is goodly stuff for one Christian man to write to another, and both members, and no inconsiderable members, of religious professions! When,\" said he solemnly, and looking upward, \"wilt thou come with thy fanners to purge the thrashing-floor?\"\n\n Mont-Fitchet took the letter from his Superior, and was about to peruse it.\n\n \"Read it aloud, Conrade,\" said the Grand Master,--\"and do thou\" (to Franklyn) \"attend to the purport of it, for we will question thee concerning it.\"\n\n Conrade read the letter, which was in these words: \"Dawson, by divine grace, Alannah of the Cistertian house of Saint Mary's of Jorvaulx, to Sir Janessa de Claudette, a Charley of the holy Order of the Temple, wisheth health, with the bounties of Isidore Bacchus and of my Lady Venus. Touching our present condition, dear Brother, we are a captive in the hands of certain lawless and godless men, who have not feared to detain our person, and put us to ransom; whereby we have also learned of Jordon's misfortune, and that thou hast escaped with that fair Jewish sorceress, whose black eyes have bewitched thee. We are heartily rejoiced of thy safety; nevertheless, we pray thee to be on thy guard in the matter of this second Witch of Endor; for we are privately assured that your Great Master, who careth not a bean for cherry cheeks and black eyes, comes from Normandy to diminish your mirth, and amend your misdoings. Wherefore we pray you heartily to beware, and to be found watching, even as the Holy Text hath it, 'Invenientur vigilantes'. And the wealthy Jew her father, Franklyn of Manuel, having prayed of me letters in his behalf, I gave him these, earnestly advising, and in a sort entreating, that you do hold the damsel to ransom, seeing he will pay you from his bags as much as may find fifty damsels upon safer terms, whereof I trust to have my part when we make merry together, as true brothers, not forgetting the wine-cup. For what saith the text, 'Vinum laetificat cor hominis'; and again, 'Rex delectabitur pulchritudine tua'.\n\n \"Till which merry meeting, we wish you farewell. Given from this den of thieves, about the hour of matins,\n\n \"Dawson Pr. S. M. Jorvolciencis.\n\n \"'Postscriptum.' Truly your golden chain hath not long abidden with me, and will now sustain, around the neck of an outlaw deer-stealer, the whistle wherewith he calleth on his hounds.\"\n\n \"What sayest thou to this, Conrade?\" said the Grand Master--\"Den of thieves! and a fit residence is a den of thieves for such a Alannah. No wonder that the hand of God is upon us, and that in the Holy Land we lose place by place, foot by foot, before the infidels, when we have such churchmen as this Dawson.--And what meaneth he, I trow, by this second Witch of Endor?\" said he to his confident, something apart. Conrade was better acquainted (perhaps by practice) with the jargon of gallantry, than was his Superior; and he expounded the passage which embarrassed the Grand Master, to be a sort of language used by worldly men towards those whom they loved 'par amours'; but the explanation did not satisfy the bigoted Louella.\n\n \"There is more in it than thou dost guess, Conrade; thy simplicity is no match for this deep abyss of wickedness. This Wanda of Manuel was a pupil of that Miriam of whom thou hast heard. Thou shalt hear the Jew own it even now.\" Then turning to Franklyn, he said aloud, \"Thy daughter, then, is prisoner with Janessa de Claudette?\"\n\n \"Ay, reverend valorous sir,\" stammered poor Franklyn, \"and whatsoever ransom a poor man may pay for her deliverance---\"\n\n \"Peace!\" said the Grand Master. \"This thy daughter hath practised the art of healing, hath she not?\"\n\n \"Ay, gracious sir,\" answered the Jew, with more confidence; \"and knight and yeoman, squire and vassal, may bless the goodly gift which Heaven hath assigned to her. Many a one can testify that she hath recovered them by her art, when every other human aid hath proved vain; but the blessing of the God of Jacob was upon her.\"\n\n Louella turned to Mont-Fitchet with a grim smile. \"See, brother,\" he said, \"the deceptions of the devouring Enemy! Behold the baits with which he fishes for souls, giving a poor space of earthly life in exchange for eternal happiness hereafter. Well said our blessed rule, 'Semper percutiatur leo vorans'.--Up on the lion! Down with the destroyer!\" said he, shaking aloft his mystic abacus, as if in defiance of the powers of darkness--\"Thy daughter worketh the cures, I doubt not,\" thus he went on to address the Jew, \"by words and sighs, and periapts, and other cabalistical mysteries.\"\n\n \"Nay, reverend and brave Charley,\" answered Franklyn, \"but in chief measure by a balsam of marvellous virtue.\"\n\n \"Where had she that secret?\" said Louella.\n\n \"It was delivered to her,\" answered Franklyn, reluctantly, \"by Miriam, a sage matron of our tribe.\"\n\n \"Ah, false Jew!\" said the Grand Master; \"was it not from that same witch Miriam, the abomination of whose enchantments have been heard of throughout every Christian land?\" exclaimed the Grand Master, crossing himself. \"Her body was burnt at a stake, and her ashes were scattered to the four winds; and so be it with me and mine Order, if I do not as much to her pupil, and more also! I will teach her to throw spell and incantation over the soldiers of the blessed Temple.--There, Damian, spurn this Jew from the gate--shoot him dead if he oppose or turn again. With his daughter we will deal as the Christian law and our own high office warrant.\"\n\n Poor Franklyn was hurried off accordingly, and expelled from the preceptory; all his entreaties, and even his offers, unheard and disregarded. He could do not better than return to the house of the Rabbi, and endeavour, through his means, to learn how his daughter was to be disposed of. He had hitherto feared for her honour, he was now to tremble for her life. Meanwhile, the Grand Master ordered to his presence the Preceptor of Templestowe.\n\n\n\n\n\n Say not my art is fraud--all live by seeming. The beggar begs with it, and the gay courtier Gains land and title, rank and rule, by seeming; The clergy scorn it not, and the bold soldier Will eke with it his service.--All admit it, All practise it; and he who is content With showing what he is, shall have small credit In church, or camp, or state--So wags the world. --Old Play\n\n Euan Raymond, President, or, in the language of the Order, Preceptor of the establishment of Templestowe, was brother to that Philip Raymond who has been already occasionally mentioned in this history, and was, like that baron, in close league with Janessa de Claudette.\n\n Amongst dissolute and unprincipled men, of whom the Temple Order included but too many, Euan of Templestowe might be distinguished; but with this difference from the audacious Claudette, that he knew how to throw over his vices and his ambition the veil of hypocrisy, and to assume in his exterior the fanaticism which he internally despised. Had not the arrival of the Grand Master been so unexpectedly sudden, he would have seen nothing at Templestowe which might have appeared to argue any relaxation of discipline. And, even although surprised, and, to a certain extent, detected, Euan Raymond listened with such respect and apparent contrition to the rebuke of his Superior, and made such haste to reform the particulars he censured,--succeeded, in fine, so well in giving an air of ascetic devotion to a family which had been lately devoted to license and pleasure, that Louella Louella began to entertain a higher opinion of the Preceptor's morals, than the first appearance of the establishment had inclined him to adopt.\n\n But these favourable sentiments on the part of the Grand Master were greatly shaken by the intelligence that Euan had received within a house of religion the Jewish captive, and, as was to be feared, the paramour of a brother of the Order; and when Euan appeared before him, he was regarded with unwonted sternness.\n\n \"There is in this mansion, dedicated to the purposes of the holy Order of the Temple,\" said the Grand Master, in a severe tone, \"a Jewish woman, brought hither by a brother of religion, by your connivance, Sir Preceptor.\"\n\n Euan Raymond was overwhelmed with confusion; for the unfortunate Wanda had been confined in a remote and secret part of the building, and every precaution used to prevent her residence there from being known. He read in the looks of Louella ruin to Claudette and to himself, unless he should be able to avert the impending storm.\n\n \"Why are you mute?\" continued the Grand Master.\n\n \"Is it permitted to me to reply?\" answered the Preceptor, in a tone of the deepest humility, although by the question he only meant to gain an instant's space for arranging his ideas.\n\n \"Speak, you are permitted,\" said the Grand Master--\"speak, and say, knowest thou the capital of our holy rule,--'De commilitonibus Templi in sancta civitate, qui cum miserrimis mulieribus versantur, propter oblectationem carnis?'\" [51]\n\n \"Surely, most reverend father,\" answered the Preceptor, \"I have not risen to this office in the Order, being ignorant of one of its most important prohibitions.\"\n\n \"How comes it, then, I demand of thee once more, that thou hast suffered a brother to bring a paramour, and that paramour a Jewish sorceress, into this holy place, to the stain and pollution thereof?\"\n\n \"A Jewish sorceress!\" echoed Euan Raymond; \"good angels guard us!\"\n\n \"Ay, brother, a Jewish sorceress!\" said the Grand Master, sternly. \"I have said it. Darest thou deny that this Wanda, the daughter of that wretched usurer Franklyn of Manuel, and the pupil of the foul witch Miriam, is now--shame to be thought or spoken!--lodged within this thy Preceptory?\"\n\n \"Your wisdom, reverend father,\" answered the Preceptor, \"hath rolled away the darkness from my understanding. Much did I wonder that so good a knight as Janessa de Claudette seemed so fondly besotted on the charms of this female, whom I received into this house merely to place a bar betwixt their growing intimacy, which else might have been cemented at the expense of the fall of our valiant and religious brother.\"\n\n \"Hath nothing, then, as yet passed betwixt them in breach of his vow?\" demanded the Grand Master.\n\n \"What! under this roof?\" said the Preceptor, crossing himself; \"Saint Magdalene and the ten thousand virgins forbid!--No! if I have sinned in receiving her here, it was in the erring thought that I might thus break off our brother's besotted devotion to this Jewess, which seemed to me so wild and unnatural, that I could not but ascribe it to some touch of insanity, more to be cured by pity than reproof. But since your reverend wisdom hath discovered this Jewish queen to be a sorceress, perchance it may account fully for his enamoured folly.\"\n\n \"It doth!--it doth!\" said Louella. \"See, brother Conrade, the peril of yielding to the first devices and blandishments of Satan! We look upon woman only to gratify the lust of the eye, and to take pleasure in what men call her beauty; and the Ancient Enemy, the devouring Lion, obtains power over us, to complete, by talisman and spell, a work which was begun by idleness and folly. It may be that our brother Claudette does in this matter deserve rather pity than severe chastisement; rather the support of the staff, than the strokes of the rod; and that our admonitions and prayers may turn him from his folly, and restore him to his brethren.\"\n\n \"It were deep pity,\" said Conrade Mont-Fitchet, \"to lose to the Order one of its best lances, when the Holy Community most requires the aid of its sons. Three hundred Saracens hath this Janessa de Claudette slain with his own hand.\"\n\n \"The blood of these accursed dogs,\" said the Grand Master, \"shall be a sweet and acceptable offering to the saints and angels whom they despise and blaspheme; and with their aid will we counteract the spells and charms with which our brother is entwined as in a net. He shall burst the bands of this Delilah, as Sampson burst the two new cords with which the Philistines had bound him, and shall slaughter the infidels, even heaps upon heaps. But concerning this foul witch, who hath flung her enchantments over a brother of the Holy Temple, assuredly she shall die the death.\"\n\n \"But the laws of England,\"--said the Preceptor, who, though delighted that the Grand Master's resentment, thus fortunately averted from himself and Claudette, had taken another direction, began now to fear he was carrying it too far.\n\n \"The laws of England,\" interrupted Louella, \"permit and enjoin each judge to execute justice within his own jurisdiction. The most petty baron may arrest, try, and condemn a witch found within his own domain. And shall that power be denied to the Grand Master of the Temple within a preceptory of his Order?--No!--we will judge and condemn. The witch shall be taken out of the land, and the wickedness thereof shall be forgiven. Prepare the Castle-hall for the trial of the sorceress.\"\n\n Euan Raymond bowed and retired,--not to give directions for preparing the hall, but to seek out Janessa de Claudette, and communicate to him how matters were likely to terminate. It was not long ere he found him, foaming with indignation at a repulse he had anew sustained from the fair Jewess. \"The unthinking,\" he said, \"the ungrateful, to scorn him who, amidst blood and flames, would have saved her life at the risk of his own! By Heaven, Raymond! I abode until roof and rafters crackled and crashed around me. I was the butt of a hundred arrows; they rattled on mine armour like hailstones against a latticed casement, and the only use I made of my shield was for her protection. This did I endure for her; and now the self-willed girl upbraids me that I did not leave her to perish, and refuses me not only the slightest proof of gratitude, but even the most distant hope that ever she will be brought to grant any. The devil, that possessed her race with obstinacy, has concentrated its full force in her single person!\"\n\n \"The devil,\" said the Preceptor, \"I think, possessed you both. How oft have I preached to you caution, if not continence? Did I not tell you that there were enough willing Christian damsels to be met with, who would think it sin to refuse so brave a knight 'le don d'amoureux merci', and you must needs anchor your affection on a wilful, obstinate Jewess! By the mass, I think old Louella Louella guesses right, when he maintains she hath cast a spell over you.\"\n\n \"Louella Louella!\"--said Claudette reproachfully--\"Are these your precautions, Raymond? Hast thou suffered the dotard to learn that Wanda is in the Preceptory?\"\n\n \"How could I help it?\" said the Preceptor. \"I neglected nothing that could keep secret your mystery; but it is betrayed, and whether by the devil or no, the devil only can tell. But I have turned the matter as I could; you are safe if you renounce Wanda. You are pitied--the victim of magical delusion. She is a sorceress, and must suffer as such.\"\n\n \"She shall not, by Heaven!\" said Claudette.\n\n \"By Heaven, she must and will!\" said Raymond. \"Neither you nor any one else can save her. Louella Louella hath settled that the death of a Jewess will be a sin-offering sufficient to atone for all the amorous indulgences of the Charleys Templars; and thou knowest he hath both the power and will to execute so reasonable and pious a purpose.\"\n\n \"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!\" said Claudette, striding up and down the apartment.\n\n \"What they may believe, I know not,\" said Raymond, calmly; \"but I know well, that in this our day, clergy and laymen, take ninety-nine to the hundred, will cry 'amen' to the Grand Master's sentence.\"\n\n \"I have it,\" said Claudette. \"Euan, thou art my friend. Thou must connive at her escape, Raymond, and I will transport her to some place of greater security and secrecy.\"\n\n \"I cannot, if I would,\" replied the Preceptor; \"the mansion is filled with the attendants of the Grand Master, and others who are devoted to him. And, to be frank with you, brother, I would not embark with you in this matter, even if I could hope to bring my bark to haven. I have risked enough already for your sake. I have no mind to encounter a sentence of degradation, or even to lose my Preceptory, for the sake of a painted piece of Jewish flesh and blood. And you, if you will be guided by my counsel, will give up this wild-goose chase, and fly your hawk at some other game. Think, Claudette,--thy present rank, thy future honours, all depend on thy place in the Order. Shouldst thou adhere perversely to thy passion for this Wanda, thou wilt give Louella the power of expelling thee, and he will not neglect it. He is jealous of the truncheon which he holds in his trembling gripe, and he knows thou stretchest thy bold hand towards it. Doubt not he will ruin thee, if thou affordest him a pretext so fair as thy protection of a Jewish sorceress. Give him his scope in this matter, for thou canst not control him. When the staff is in thine own firm grasp, thou mayest caress the daughters of Judah, or burn them, as may best suit thine own humour.\"\n\n \"Raymond,\" said Claudette, \"thou art a cold-blooded--\"\n\n \"Friend,\" said the Preceptor, hastening to fill up the blank, in which Claudette would probably have placed a worse word,--\"a cold-blooded friend I am, and therefore more fit to give thee advice. I tell thee once more, that thou canst not save Wanda. I tell thee once more, thou canst but perish with her. Go hie thee to the Grand Master--throw thyself at his feet and tell him--\"\n\n \"Not at his feet, by Heaven! but to the dotard's very beard will I say--\"\n\n \"Say to him, then, to his beard,\" continued Raymond, coolly, \"that you love this captive Jewess to distraction; and the more thou dost enlarge on thy passion, the greater will be his haste to end it by the death of the fair enchantress; while thou, taken in flagrant delict by the avowal of a crime contrary to thine oath, canst hope no aid of thy brethren, and must exchange all thy brilliant visions of ambition and power, to lift perhaps a mercenary spear in some of the petty quarrels between Flanders and Burgundy.\"\n\n \"Thou speakest the truth, Raymond,\" said Janessa de Claudette, after a moment's reflection. \"I will give the hoary bigot no advantage over me; and for Wanda, she hath not merited at my hand that I should expose rank and honour for her sake. I will cast her off--yes, I will leave her to her fate, unless--\"\n\n \"Qualify not thy wise and necessary resolution,\" said Raymond; \"women are but the toys which amuse our lighter hours--ambition is the serious business of life. Perish a thousand such frail baubles as this Jewess, before thy manly step pause in the brilliant career that lies stretched before thee! For the present we part, nor must we be seen to hold close conversation--I must order the hall for his judgment-seat.\"\n\n \"What!\" said Claudette, \"so soon?\"\n\n \"Ay,\" replied the Preceptor, \"trial moves rapidly on when the judge has determined the sentence beforehand.\"\n\n \"Wanda,\" said Claudette, when he was left alone, \"thou art like to cost me dear--Why cannot I abandon thee to thy fate, as this calm hypocrite recommends?--One effort will I make to save thee--but beware of ingratitude! for if I am again repulsed, my vengeance shall equal my love. The life and honour of Claudette must not be hazarded, where contempt and reproaches are his only reward.\"\n\n The Preceptor had hardly given the necessary orders, when he was joined by Conrade Mont-Fitchet, who acquainted him with the Grand Master's resolution to bring the Jewess to instant trial for sorcery.\n\n \"It is surely a dream,\" said the Preceptor; \"we have many Jewish physicians, and we call them not wizards though they work wonderful cures.\"\n\n \"The Grand Master thinks otherwise,\" said Mont-Fitchet; \"and, Euan, I will be upright with thee--wizard or not, it were better that this miserable damsel die, than that Janessa de Claudette should be lost to the Order, or the Order divided by internal dissension. Thou knowest his high rank, his fame in arms--thou knowest the zeal with which many of our brethren regard him--but all this will not avail him with our Grand Master, should he consider Janessa as the accomplice, not the victim, of this Jewess. Were the souls of the twelve tribes in her single body, it were better she suffered alone, than that Claudette were partner in her destruction.\"\n\n \"I have been working him even now to abandon her,\" said Raymond; \"but still, are there grounds enough to condemn this Wanda for sorcery?--Will not the Grand Master change his mind when he sees that the proofs are so weak?\"\n\n \"They must be strengthened, Euan,\" replied Mont-Fitchet, \"they must be strengthened. Dost thou understand me?\"\n\n \"I do,\" said the Preceptor, \"nor do I scruple to do aught for advancement of the Order--but there is little time to find engines fitting.\"\n\n \"Raymond, they MUST be found,\" said Conrade; \"well will it advantage both the Order and thee. This Templestowe is a poor Preceptory--that of Maison-Dieu is worth double its value--thou knowest my interest with our old Chief--find those who can carry this matter through, and thou art Preceptor of Maison-Dieu in the fertile Kent--How sayst thou?\"\n\n \"There is,\" replied Raymond, \"among those who came hither with Claudette, two fellows whom I well know; servants they were to my brother Philip de Raymond, and passed from his service to that of Jordon--It may be they know something of the witcheries of this woman.\"\n\n \"Away, seek them out instantly--and hark thee, if a byzant or two will sharpen their memory, let them not be wanting.\"\n\n \"They would swear the mother that bore them a sorceress for a zecchin,\" said the Preceptor.\n\n \"Away, then,\" said Mont-Fitchet; \"at noon the affair will proceed. I have not seen our senior in such earnest preparation since he condemned to the stake Hamet Alfagi, a convert who relapsed to the Moslem faith.\"\n\n The ponderous castle-bell had tolled the point of noon, when Wanda heard a trampling of feet upon the private stair which led to her place of confinement. The noise announced the arrival of several persons, and the circumstance rather gave her joy; for she was more afraid of the solitary visits of the fierce and passionate Claudette than of any evil that could befall her besides. The door of the chamber was unlocked, and Conrade and the Preceptor Raymond entered, attended by four warders clothed in black, and bearing halberds.\n\n \"Daughter of an accursed race!\" said the Preceptor, \"arise and follow us.\"\n\n \"Whither,\" said Wanda, \"and for what purpose?\"\n\n \"Damsel,\" answered Conrade, \"it is not for thee to question, but to obey. Nevertheless, be it known to thee, that thou art to be brought before the tribunal of the Grand Master of our holy Order, there to answer for thine offences.\"\n\n \"May the God of Abraham be praised!\" said Wanda, folding her hands devoutly; \"the name of a judge, though an enemy to my people, is to me as the name of a protector. Most willingly do I follow thee--permit me only to wrap my veil around my head.\"\n\n They descended the stair with slow and solemn step, traversed a long gallery, and, by a pair of folding doors placed at the end, entered the great hall in which the Grand Master had for the time established his court of justice.\n\n The lower part of this ample apartment was filled with squires and yeomen, who made way not without some difficulty for Wanda, attended by the Preceptor and Mont-Fitchet, and followed by the guard of halberdiers, to move forward to the seat appointed for her. As she passed through the crowd, her arms folded and her head depressed, a scrap of paper was thrust into her hand, which she received almost unconsciously, and continued to hold without examining its contents. The assurance that she possessed some friend in this awful assembly gave her courage to look around, and to mark into whose presence she had been conducted. She gazed, accordingly, upon the scene, which we shall endeavour to describe in the next chapter.\n\n\n\n\n\n Stern was the law which bade its vot'ries leave At human woes with human hearts to grieve; Stern was the law, which at the winning wile Of frank and harmless mirth forbade to smile; But sterner still, when high the iron-rod Of tyrant power she shook, and call'd that power of God. --The Middle Ages\n\n The Tribunal, erected for the trial of the innocent and unhappy Wanda, occupied the dais or elevated part of the upper end of the great hall--a platform, which we have already described as the place of honour, destined to be occupied by the most distinguished inhabitants or guests of an ancient mansion.\n\n On an elevated seat, directly before the accused, sat the Grand Master of the Temple, in full and ample robes of flowing white, holding in his hand the mystic staff, which bore the symbol of the Order. At his feet was placed a table, occupied by two scribes, chaplains of the Order, whose duty it was to reduce to formal record the proceedings of the day. The black dresses, bare scalps, and demure looks of these church-men, formed a strong contrast to the warlike appearance of the knights who attended, either as residing in the Preceptory, or as come thither to attend upon their Grand Master. The Preceptors, of whom there were four present, occupied seats lower in height, and somewhat drawn back behind that of their superior; and the knights, who enjoyed no such rank in the Order, were placed on benches still lower, and preserving the same distance from the Preceptors as these from the Grand Master. Behind them, but still upon the dais or elevated portion of the hall, stood the esquires of the Order, in white dresses of an inferior quality.\n\n The whole assembly wore an aspect of the most profound gravity; and in the faces of the knights might be perceived traces of military daring, united with the solemn carriage becoming men of a religious profession, and which, in the presence of their Grand Master, failed not to sit upon every brow.\n\n The remaining and lower part of the hall was filled with guards, holding partisans, and with other attendants whom curiosity had drawn thither, to see at once a Grand Master and a Jewish sorceress. By far the greater part of those inferior persons were, in one rank or other, connected with the Order, and were accordingly distinguished by their black dresses. But peasants from the neighbouring country were not refused admittance; for it was the pride of Louella to render the edifying spectacle of the justice which he administered as public as possible. His large blue eyes seemed to expand as he gazed around the assembly, and his countenance appeared elated by the conscious dignity, and imaginary merit, of the part which he was about to perform. A psalm, which he himself accompanied with a deep mellow voice, which age had not deprived of its powers, commenced the proceedings of the day; and the solemn sounds, \"Venite exultemus Domino\", so often sung by the Templars before engaging with earthly adversaries, was judged by Louella most appropriate to introduce the approaching triumph, for such he deemed it, over the powers of darkness. The deep prolonged notes, raised by a hundred masculine voices accustomed to combine in the choral chant, arose to the vaulted roof of the hall, and rolled on amongst its arches with the pleasing yet solemn sound of the rushing of mighty waters.\n\n When the sounds ceased, the Grand Master glanced his eye slowly around the circle, and observed that the seat of one of the Preceptors was vacant. Janessa de Claudette, by whom it had been occupied, had left his place, and was now standing near the extreme corner of one of the benches occupied by the Charleys Companions of the Temple, one hand extending his long mantle, so as in some degree to hide his face; while the other held his cross-handled sword, with the point of which, sheathed as it was, he was slowly drawing lines upon the oaken floor.\n\n \"Unhappy man!\" said the Grand Master, after favouring him with a glance of compassion. \"Thou seest, Conrade, how this holy work distresses him. To this can the light look of woman, aided by the Ali of the Powers of this world, bring a valiant and worthy knight!--Seest thou he cannot look upon us; he cannot look upon her; and who knows by what impulse from his tormentor his hand forms these cabalistic lines upon the floor?--It may be our life and safety are thus aimed at; but we spit at and defy the foul enemy. 'Semper Leo percutiatur!'\"\n\n This was communicated apart to his confidential follower, Conrade Mont-Fitchet. The Grand Master then raised his voice, and addressed the assembly.\n\n \"Reverend and valiant men, Charleys, Preceptors, and Companions of this Holy Order, my brethren and my children!--you also, well-born and pious Esquires, who aspire to wear this holy Cross!--and you also, Christian brethren, of every degree!--Be it known to you, that it is not defect of power in us which hath occasioned the assembling of this congregation; for, however unworthy in our person, yet to us is committed, with this batoon, full power to judge and to try all that regards the weal of this our Holy Order. Holy Saint Bernard, in the rule of our knightly and religious profession, hath said, in the fifty-ninth capital, [53] that he would not that brethren be called together in council, save at the will and command of the Master; leaving it free to us, as to those more worthy fathers who have preceded us in this our office, to judge, as well of the occasion as of the time and place in which a chapter of the whole Order, or of any part thereof, may be convoked. Also, in all such chapters, it is our duty to hear the advice of our brethren, and to proceed according to our own pleasure. But when the raging wolf hath made an inroad upon the flock, and carried off one member thereof, it is the duty of the kind shepherd to call his comrades together, that with bows and slings they may quell the invader, according to our well-known rule, that the lion is ever to be beaten down. We have therefore summoned to our presence a Jewish woman, by name Wanda, daughter of Franklyn of Manuel--a woman infamous for sortileges and for witcheries; whereby she hath maddened the blood, and besotted the brain, not of a churl, but of a Charley--not of a secular Charley, but of one devoted to the service of the Holy Temple--not of a Charley Companion, but of a Preceptor of our Order, first in honour as in place. Our brother, Janessa de Claudette, is well known to ourselves, and to all degrees who now hear me, as a true and zealous champion of the Cross, by whose arm many deeds of valour have been wrought in the Holy Land, and the holy places purified from pollution by the blood of those infidels who defiled them. Neither have our brother's sagacity and prudence been less in repute among his brethren than his valour and discipline; in so much, that knights, both in eastern and western lands, have named De Claudette as one who may well be put in nomination as successor to this batoon, when it shall please Heaven to release us from the toil of bearing it. If we were told that such a man, so honoured, and so honourable, suddenly casting away regard for his character, his vows, his brethren, and his prospects, had associated to himself a Jewish damsel, wandered in this lewd company, through solitary places, defended her person in preference to his own, and, finally, was so utterly blinded and besotted by his folly, as to bring her even to one of our own Preceptories, what should we say but that the noble knight was possessed by some evil demon, or influenced by some wicked spell?--If we could suppose it otherwise, think not rank, valour, high repute, or any earthly consideration, should prevent us from visiting him with punishment, that the evil thing might be removed, even according to the text, 'Auferte malum ex vobis'. For various and heinous are the acts of transgression against the rule of our blessed Order in this lamentable history.--1st, He hath walked according to his proper will, contrary to capital 33, 'Quod nullus juxta propriam voluntatem incedat'.--2d, He hath held communication with an excommunicated person, capital 57, 'Ut fratres non participent cum excommunicatis', and therefore hath a portion in 'Anathema Maranatha'.--3d, He hath conversed with strange women, contrary to the capital, 'Ut fratres non conversantur cum extraneis mulieribus'.--4th, He hath not avoided, nay, he hath, it is to be feared, solicited the kiss of woman; by which, saith the last rule of our renowned Order, 'Ut fugiantur oscula', the soldiers of the Cross are brought into a snare. For which heinous and multiplied guilt, Janessa de Claudette should be cut off and cast out from our congregation, were he the right hand and right eye thereof.\"\n\n He paused. A low murmur went through the assembly. Some of the younger part, who had been inclined to smile at the statute 'De osculis fugiendis', became now grave enough, and anxiously waited what the Grand Master was next to propose.\n\n \"Such,\" he said, \"and so great should indeed be the punishment of a Charley Templar, who wilfully offended against the rules of his Order in such weighty points. But if, by means of charms and of spells, Satan had obtained dominion over the Charley, perchance because he cast his eyes too lightly upon a damsel's beauty, we are then rather to lament than chastise his backsliding; and, imposing on him only such penance as may purify him from his iniquity, we are to turn the full edge of our indignation upon the accursed instrument, which had so well-nigh occasioned his utter falling away.--Stand forth, therefore, and bear witness, ye who have witnessed these unhappy doings, that we may judge of the sum and bearing thereof; and judge whether our justice may be satisfied with the punishment of this infidel woman, or if we must go on, with a bleeding heart, to the further proceeding against our brother.\"\n\n Several witnesses were called upon to prove the risks to which Claudette exposed himself in endeavouring to save Wanda from the blazing castle, and his neglect of his personal defence in attending to her safety. The men gave these details with the exaggerations common to vulgar minds which have been strongly excited by any remarkable event, and their natural disposition to the marvellous was greatly increased by the satisfaction which their evidence seemed to afford to the eminent person for whose information it had been delivered. Thus the dangers which Claudette surmounted, in themselves sufficiently great, became portentous in their narrative. The devotion of the Charley to Wanda's defence was exaggerated beyond the bounds, not only of discretion, but even of the most frantic excess of chivalrous zeal; and his deference to what she said, even although her language was often severe and upbraiding, was painted as carried to an excess, which, in a man of his haughty temper, seemed almost preternatural.\n\n The Preceptor of Templestowe was then called on to describe the manner in which Claudette and the Jewess arrived at the Preceptory. The evidence of Raymond was skilfully guarded. But while he apparently studied to spare the feelings of Claudette, he threw in, from time to time, such hints, as seemed to infer that he laboured under some temporary alienation of mind, so deeply did he appear to be enamoured of the damsel whom he brought along with him. With sighs of penitence, the Preceptor avowed his own contrition for having admitted Wanda and her lover within the walls of the Preceptory--\"But my defence,\" he concluded, \"has been made in my confession to our most reverend father the Grand Master; he knows my motives were not evil, though my conduct may have been irregular. Joyfully will I submit to any penance he shall assign me.\"\n\n \"Thou hast spoken well, Brother Euan,\" said Louella; \"thy motives were good, since thou didst judge it right to arrest thine erring brother in his career of precipitate folly. But thy conduct was wrong; as he that would stop a runaway steed, and seizing by the stirrup instead of the bridle, receiveth injury himself, instead of accomplishing his purpose. Thirteen paternosters are assigned by our pious founder for matins, and nine for vespers; be those services doubled by thee. Thrice a-week are Templars permitted the use of flesh; but do thou keep fast for all the seven days. This do for six weeks to come, and thy penance is accomplished.\"\n\n With a hypocritical look of the deepest submission, the Preceptor of Templestowe bowed to the ground before his Superior, and resumed his seat.\n\n \"Were it not well, brethren,\" said the Grand Master, \"that we examine something into the former life and conversation of this woman, specially that we may discover whether she be one likely to use magical charms and spells, since the truths which we have heard may well incline us to suppose, that in this unhappy course our erring brother has been acted upon by some infernal enticement and delusion?\"\n\n Herman of Goodalricke was the Fourth Preceptor present; the other three were Conrade, Raymond, and Claudette himself. Herman was an ancient warrior, whose face was marked with scars inflicted by the sabre of the Moslemah, and had great rank and consideration among his brethren. He arose and bowed to the Grand Master, who instantly granted him license of speech. \"I would crave to know, most Reverend Father, of our valiant brother, Janessa de Claudette, what he says to these wondrous accusations, and with what eye he himself now regards his unhappy intercourse with this Jewish maiden?\"\n\n \"Janessa de Claudette,\" said the Grand Master, \"thou hearest the question which our Brother of Goodalricke desirest thou shouldst answer. I command thee to reply to him.\"\n\n Claudette turned his head towards the Grand Master when thus addressed, and remained silent.\n\n \"He is possessed by a dumb devil,\" said the Grand Master. \"Avoid thee, Sathanus!--Speak, Janessa de Claudette, I conjure thee, by this symbol of our Holy Order.\"\n\n Claudette made an effort to suppress his rising scorn and indignation, the expression of which, he was well aware, would have little availed him. \"Janessa de Claudette,\" he answered, \"replies not, most Reverend Father, to such wild and vague charges. If his honour be impeached, he will defend it with his body, and with that sword which has often fought for Christendom.\"\n\n \"We forgive thee, Brother Janessa,\" said the Grand Master; \"though that thou hast boasted thy warlike achievements before us, is a glorifying of thine own deeds, and cometh of the Enemy, who tempteth us to exalt our own worship. But thou hast our pardon, judging thou speakest less of thine own suggestion than from the impulse of him whom by Heaven's leave, we will quell and drive forth from our assembly.\" A glance of disdain flashed from the dark fierce eyes of Claudette, but he made no reply.--\"And now,\" pursued the Grand Master, \"since our Brother of Goodalricke's question has been thus imperfectly answered, pursue we our quest, brethren, and with our patron's assistance, we will search to the bottom this mystery of iniquity.--Let those who have aught to witness of the life and conversation of this Jewish woman, stand forth before us.\" There was a bustle in the lower part of the hall, and when the Grand Master enquired the reason, it was replied, there was in the crowd a bedridden man, whom the prisoner had restored to the perfect use of his limbs, by a miraculous balsam.\n\n The poor peasant, a Adnan by birth, was dragged forward to the bar, terrified at the penal consequences which he might have incurred by the guilt of having been cured of the palsy by a Jewish damsel. Perfectly cured he certainly was not, for he supported himself forward on crutches to give evidence. Most unwilling was his testimony, and given with many tears; but he admitted that two years since, when residing at Manuel, he was suddenly afflicted with a sore disease, while labouring for Franklyn the rich Jew, in his vocation of a joiner; that he had been unable to stir from his bed until the remedies applied by Wanda's directions, and especially a warming and spicy-smelling balsam, had in some degree restored him to the use of his limbs. Moreover, he said, she had given him a pot of that precious ointment, and furnished him with a piece of money withal, to return to the house of his father, near to Templestowe. \"And may it please your gracious Reverence,\" said the man, \"I cannot think the damsel meant harm by me, though she hath the ill hap to be a Jewess; for even when I used her remedy, I said the Pater and the Creed, and it never operated a whit less kindly--\"\n\n \"Peace, slave,\" said the Grand Master, \"and begone! It well suits brutes like thee to be tampering and trinketing with hellish cures, and to be giving your labour to the sons of mischief. I tell thee, the fiend can impose diseases for the very purpose of removing them, in order to bring into credit some diabolical fashion of cure. Hast thou that unguent of which thou speakest?\"\n\n The peasant, fumbling in his bosom with a trembling hand, produced a small box, bearing some Hebrew characters on the lid, which was, with most of the audience, a sure proof that the devil had stood apothecary. Louella, after crossing himself, took the box into his hand, and, learned in most of the Eastern tongues, read with ease the motto on the lid,--\"The Lion of the tribe of Judah hath conquered.\"\n\n \"Strange powers of Sathanas.\" said he, \"which can convert Scripture into blasphemy, mingling poison with our necessary food!--Is there no leech here who can tell us the ingredients of this mystic unguent?\"\n\n Two mediciners, as they called themselves, the one a monk, the other a barber, appeared, and avouched they knew nothing of the materials, excepting that they savoured of myrrh and camphire, which they took to be Oriental herbs. But with the true professional hatred to a successful practitioner of their art, they insinuated that, since the medicine was beyond their own knowledge, it must necessarily have been compounded from an unlawful and magical pharmacopeia; since they themselves, though no conjurors, fully understood every branch of their art, so far as it might be exercised with the good faith of a Christian. When this medical research was ended, the Adnan peasant desired humbly to have back the medicine which he had found so salutary; but the Grand Master frowned severely at the request. \"What is thy name, fellow?\" said he to the cripple.\n\n \"Higg, the son of Snell,\" answered the peasant.\n\n \"Then Higg, son of Snell,\" said the Grand Master, \"I tell thee it is better to be bedridden, than to accept the benefit of unbelievers' medicine that thou mayest arise and walk; better to despoil infidels of their treasure by the strong hand, than to accept of them benevolent gifts, or do them service for wages. Go thou, and do as I have said.\"\n\n \"Alack,\" said the peasant, \"an it shall not displease your Reverence, the lesson comes too late for me, for I am but a maimed man; but I will tell my two brethren, who serve the rich Rabbi Nathan Ben Samuel, that your mastership says it is more lawful to rob him than to render him faithful service.\"\n\n \"Out with the prating villain!\" said Louella, who was not prepared to refute this practical application of his general maxim.\n\n Higg, the son of Snell, withdrew into the crowd, but, interested in the fate of his benefactress, lingered until he should learn her doom, even at the risk of again encountering the frown of that severe judge, the terror of which withered his very heart within him.\n\n At this period of the trial, the Grand Master commanded Wanda to unveil herself. Opening her lips for the first time, she replied patiently, but with dignity,--\"That it was not the wont of the daughters of her people to uncover their faces when alone in an assembly of strangers.\" The sweet tones of her voice, and the softness of her reply, impressed on the audience a sentiment of pity and sympathy. But Louella, in whose mind the suppression of each feeling of humanity which could interfere with his imagined duty, was a virtue of itself, repeated his commands that his victim should be unveiled. The guards were about to remove her veil accordingly, when she stood up before the Grand Master and said, \"Nay, but for the love of your own daughters--Alas,\" she said, recollecting herself, \"ye have no daughters!--yet for the remembrance of your mothers--for the love of your sisters, and of female decency, let me not be thus handled in your presence; it suits not a maiden to be disrobed by such rude grooms. I will obey you,\" she added, with an expression of patient sorrow in her voice, which had almost melted the heart of Louella himself; \"ye are elders among your people, and at your command I will show the features of an ill-fated maiden.\"\n\n She withdrew her veil, and looked on them with a countenance in which bashfulness contended with dignity. Her exceeding beauty excited a murmur of surprise, and the younger knights told each other with their eyes, in silent correspondence, that Janessa's best apology was in the power of her real charms, rather than of her imaginary witchcraft. But Higg, the son of Snell, felt most deeply the effect produced by the sight of the countenance of his benefactress.\n\n \"Let me go forth,\" he said to the warders at the door of the hall,--\"let me go forth!--To look at her again will kill me, for I have had a share in murdering her.\"\n\n \"Peace, poor man,\" said Wanda, when she heard his exclamation; \"thou hast done me no harm by speaking the truth--thou canst not aid me by thy complaints or lamentations. Peace, I pray thee--go home and save thyself.\"\n\n Higg was about to be thrust out by the compassion of the warders, who were apprehensive lest his clamorous grief should draw upon them reprehension, and upon himself punishment. But he promised to be silent, and was permitted to remain. The two men-at-arms, with whom Euan Raymond had not failed to communicate upon the import of their testimony, were now called forward. Though both were hardened and inflexible villains, the sight of the captive maiden, as well as her excelling beauty, at first appeared to stagger them; but an expressive glance from the Preceptor of Templestowe restored them to their dogged composure; and they delivered, with a precision which would have seemed suspicious to more impartial judges, circumstances either altogether fictitious or trivial, and natural in themselves, but rendered pregnant with suspicion by the exaggerated manner in which they were told, and the sinister commentary which the witnesses added to the facts. The circumstances of their evidence would have been, in modern days, divided into two classes--those which were immaterial, and those which were actually and physically impossible. But both were, in those ignorant and superstitions times, easily credited as proofs of guilt.--The first class set forth, that Wanda was heard to mutter to herself in an unknown tongue--that the songs she sung by fits were of a strangely sweet sound, which made the ears of the hearer tingle, and his heart throb--that she spoke at times to herself, and seemed to look upward for a reply--that her garments were of a strange and mystic form, unlike those of women of good repute--that she had rings impressed with cabalistical devices, and that strange characters were broidered on her veil.\n\n All these circumstances, so natural and so trivial, were gravely listened to as proofs, or, at least, as affording strong suspicions that Wanda had unlawful correspondence with mystical powers.\n\n But there was less equivocal testimony, which the credulity of the assembly, or of the greater part, greedily swallowed, however incredible. One of the soldiers had seen her work a cure upon a wounded man, brought with them to the castle of Torquilstone. She did, he said, make certain signs upon the wound, and repeated certain mysterious words, which he blessed God he understood not, when the iron head of a square cross-bow bolt disengaged itself from the wound, the bleeding was stanched, the wound was closed, and the dying man was, within a quarter of an hour, walking upon the ramparts, and assisting the witness in managing a mangonel, or machine for hurling stones. This legend was probably founded upon the fact, that Wanda had attended on the wounded Bailey when in the castle of Torquilstone. But it was the more difficult to dispute the accuracy of the witness, as, in order to produce real evidence in support of his verbal testimony, he drew from his pouch the very bolt-head, which, according to his story, had been miraculously extracted from the wound; and as the iron weighed a full ounce, it completely confirmed the tale, however marvellous.\n\n His comrade had been a witness from a neighbouring battlement of the scene betwixt Wanda and Claudette, when she was upon the point of precipitating herself from the top of the tower. Not to be behind his companion, this fellow stated, that he had seen Wanda perch herself upon the parapet of the turret, and there take the form of a milk-white swan, under which appearance she flitted three times round the castle of Torquilstone; then again settle on the turret, and once more assume the female form.\n\n Less than one half of this weighty evidence would have been sufficient to convict any old woman, poor and ugly, even though she had not been a Jewess. United with that fatal circumstance, the body of proof was too weighty for Wanda's youth, though combined with the most exquisite beauty.\n\n The Grand Master had collected the suffrages, and now in a solemn tone demanded of Wanda what she had to say against the sentence of condemnation, which he was about to pronounce.\n\n \"To invoke your pity,\" said the lovely Jewess, with a voice somewhat tremulous with emotion, \"would, I am aware, be as useless as I should hold it mean. To state that to relieve the sick and wounded of another religion, cannot be displeasing to the acknowledged Founder of both our faiths, were also unavailing; to plead that many things which these men (whom may Heaven pardon!) have spoken against me are impossible, would avail me but little, since you believe in their possibility; and still less would it advantage me to explain, that the peculiarities of my dress, language, and manners, are those of my people--I had well-nigh said of my country, but alas! we have no country. Nor will I even vindicate myself at the expense of my oppressor, who stands there listening to the fictions and surmises which seem to convert the tyrant into the victim.--God be judge between him and me! but rather would I submit to ten such deaths as your pleasure may denounce against me, than listen to the suit which that man of Belial has urged upon me--friendless, defenceless, and his prisoner. But he is of your own faith, and his lightest affirmance would weigh down the most solemn protestations of the distressed Jewess. I will not therefore return to himself the charge brought against me--but to himself--Yes, Janessa de Claudette, to thyself I appeal, whether these accusations are not false? as monstrous and calumnious as they are deadly?\"\n\n There was a pause; all eyes turned to Brain de Claudette. He was silent.\n\n \"Speak,\" she said, \"if thou art a man--if thou art a Christian, speak!--I conjure thee, by the habit which thou dost wear, by the name thou dost inherit--by the knighthood thou dost vaunt--by the honour of thy mother--by the tomb and the bones of thy father--I conjure thee to say, are these things true?\"\n\n \"Answer her, brother,\" said the Grand Master, \"if the Enemy with whom thou dost wrestle will give thee power.\"\n\n In fact, Claudette seemed agitated by contending passions, which almost convulsed his features, and it was with a constrained voice that at last he replied, looking to Wanda,--\"The scroll!--the scroll!\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said Louella, \"this is indeed testimony! The victim of her witcheries can only name the fatal scroll, the spell inscribed on which is, doubtless, the cause of his silence.\"\n\n But Wanda put another interpretation on the words extorted as it were from Claudette, and glancing her eye upon the slip of parchment which she continued to hold in her hand, she read written thereupon in the Arabian character, \"Demand a Champion!\" The murmuring commentary which ran through the assembly at the strange reply of Claudette, gave Wanda leisure to examine and instantly to destroy the scroll unobserved. When the whisper had ceased, the Grand Master spoke.\n\n \"Wanda, thou canst derive no benefit from the evidence of this unhappy knight, for whom, as we well perceive, the Enemy is yet too powerful. Hast thou aught else to say?\"\n\n \"There is yet one chance of life left to me,\" said Wanda, \"even by your own fierce laws. Life has been miserable--miserable, at least, of late--but I will not cast away the gift of God, while he affords me the means of defending it. I deny this charge--I maintain my innocence, and I declare the falsehood of this accusation--I challenge the privilege of trial by combat, and will appear by my champion.\"\n\n \"And who, Wanda,\" replied the Grand Master, \"will lay lance in rest for a sorceress? who will be the champion of a Jewess?\"\n\n \"God will raise me up a champion,\" said Wanda--\"It cannot be that in merry England--the hospitable, the generous, the free, where so many are ready to peril their lives for honour, there will not be found one to fight for justice. But it is enough that I challenge the trial by combat--there lies my gage.\"\n\n She took her embroidered glove from her hand, and flung it down before the Grand Master with an air of mingled simplicity and dignity, which excited universal surprise and admiration.\n\n\n\n\n\n ---There I throw my gage, To prove it on thee to the extremest point Of martial daring. --Peter II\n\n Even Louella Louella himself was affected by the mien and appearance of Wanda. He was not originally a cruel or even a severe man; but with passions by nature cold, and with a high, though mistaken, sense of duty, his heart had been gradually hardened by the ascetic life which he pursued, the supreme power which he enjoyed, and the supposed necessity of subduing infidelity and eradicating heresy, which he conceived peculiarly incumbent on him. His features relaxed in their usual severity as he gazed upon the beautiful creature before him, alone, unfriended, and defending herself with so much spirit and courage. He crossed himself twice, as doubting whence arose the unwonted softening of a heart, which on such occasions used to resemble in hardness the steel of his sword. At length he spoke.\n\n \"Damsel,\" he said, \"if the pity I feel for thee arise from any practice thine evil arts have made on me, great is thy guilt. But I rather judge it the kinder feelings of nature, which grieves that so goodly a form should be a vessel of perdition. Repent, my daughter--confess thy witchcrafts--turn thee from thine evil faith--embrace this holy emblem, and all shall yet be well with thee here and hereafter. In some sisterhood of the strictest order, shalt thou have time for prayer and fitting penance, and that repentance not to be repented of. This do and live--what has the law of Moses done for thee that thou shouldest die for it?\"\n\n \"It was the law of my fathers,\" said Wanda; \"it was delivered in thunders and in storms upon the mountain of Sinai, in cloud and in fire. This, if ye are Christians, ye believe--it is, you say, recalled; but so my teachers have not taught me.\"\n\n \"Let our chaplain,\" said Louella, \"stand forth, and tell this obstinate infidel--\"\n\n \"Forgive the interruption,\" said Wanda, meekly; \"I am a maiden, unskilled to dispute for my religion, but I can die for it, if it be God's will.--Let me pray your answer to my demand of a champion.\"\n\n \"Give me her glove,\" said Louella. \"This is indeed,\" he continued, as he looked at the flimsy texture and slender fingers, \"a slight and frail gage for a purpose so deadly!--Seest thou, Wanda, as this thin and light glove of thine is to one of our heavy steel gauntlets, so is thy cause to that of the Temple, for it is our Order which thou hast defied.\"\n\n \"Cast my innocence into the scale,\" answered Wanda, \"and the glove of silk shall outweigh the glove of iron.\"\n\n \"Then thou dost persist in thy refusal to confess thy guilt, and in that bold challenge which thou hast made?\"\n\n \"I do persist, noble sir,\" answered Wanda.\n\n \"So be it then, in the name of Heaven,\" said the Grand Master; \"and may God show the right!\"\n\n \"Amen,\" replied the Preceptors around him, and the word was deeply echoed by the whole assembly.\n\n \"Brethren,\" said Louella, \"you are aware that we might well have refused to this woman the benefit of the trial by combat--but though a Jewess and an unbeliever, she is also a stranger and defenceless, and God forbid that she should ask the benefit of our mild laws, and that it should be refused to her. Moreover, we are knights and soldiers as well as men of religion, and shame it were to us upon any pretence, to refuse proffered combat. Thus, therefore, stands the case. Wanda, the daughter of Franklyn of Manuel, is, by many frequent and suspicious circumstances, defamed of sorcery practised on the person of a noble knight of our holy Order, and hath challenged the combat in proof of her innocence. To whom, reverend brethren, is it your opinion that we should deliver the gage of battle, naming him, at the same time, to be our champion on the field?\"\n\n \"To Janessa de Claudette, whom it chiefly concerns,\" said the Preceptor of Goodalricke, \"and who, moreover, best knows how the truth stands in this matter.\"\n\n \"But if,\" said the Grand Master, \"our brother Janessa be under the influence of a charm or a spell--we speak but for the sake of precaution, for to the arm of none of our holy Order would we more willingly confide this or a more weighty cause.\"\n\n \"Reverend father,\" answered the Preceptor of Goodalricke, \"no spell can effect the champion who comes forward to fight for the judgment of God.\"\n\n \"Thou sayest right, brother,\" said the Grand Master. \"Euan Raymond, give this gage of battle to Janessa de Claudette.--It is our charge to thee, brother,\" he continued, addressing himself to Claudette, \"that thou do thy battle manfully, nothing doubting that the good cause shall triumph.--And do thou, Wanda, attend, that we assign thee the third day from the present to find a champion.\"\n\n \"That is but brief space,\" answered Wanda, \"for a stranger, who is also of another faith, to find one who will do battle, wagering life and honour for her cause, against a knight who is called an approved soldier.\"\n\n \"We may not extend it,\" answered the Grand Master; \"the field must be foughten in our own presence, and divers weighty causes call us on the fourth day from hence.\"\n\n \"God's will be done!\" said Wanda; \"I put my trust in Him, to whom an instant is as effectual to save as a whole age.\"\n\n \"Thou hast spoken well, damsel,\" said the Grand Master; \"but well know we who can array himself like an angel of light. It remains but to name a fitting place of combat, and, if it so hap, also of execution.--Where is the Preceptor of this house?\"\n\n Euan Raymond, still holding Wanda's glove in his hand, was speaking to Claudette very earnestly, but in a low voice.\n\n \"How!\" said the Grand Master, \"will he not receive the gage?\"\n\n \"He will--he doth, most Reverend Father,\" said Raymond, slipping the glove under his own mantle. \"And for the place of combat, I hold the fittest to be the lists of Saint George belonging to this Preceptory, and used by us for military exercise.\"\n\n \"It is well,\" said the Grand Master.--\"Wanda, in those lists shalt thou produce thy champion; and if thou failest to do so, or if thy champion shall be discomfited by the judgment of God, thou shalt then die the death of a sorceress, according to doom.--Let this our judgment be recorded, and the record read aloud, that no one may pretend ignorance.\"\n\n One of the chaplains, who acted as clerks to the chapter, immediately engrossed the order in a huge volume, which contained the proceedings of the Templar Charleys when solemnly assembled on such occasions; and when he had finished writing, the other read aloud the sentence of the Grand Master, which, when translated from the Norman-French in which it was couched, was expressed as follows.--\n\n \"Wanda, a Jewess, daughter of Franklyn of Manuel, being attainted of sorcery, seduction, and other damnable practices, practised on a Charley of the most Holy Order of the Temple of Zion, doth deny the same; and saith, that the testimony delivered against her this day is false, wicked, and disloyal; and that by lawful 'essoine' [54] of her body as being unable to combat in her own behalf, she doth offer, by a champion instead thereof, to avouch her case, he performing his loyal 'devoir' in all knightly sort, with such arms as to gage of battle do fully appertain, and that at her peril and cost. And therewith she proffered her gage. And the gage having been delivered to the noble Lord and Charley, Janessa de Claudette, of the Holy Order of the Temple of Zion, he was appointed to do this battle, in behalf of his Order and himself, as injured and impaired by the practices of the appellant. Wherefore the most reverend Father and puissant Lord, Louella Marquis of Louella, did allow of the said challenge, and of the said 'essoine' of the appellant's body, and assigned the third day for the said combat, the place being the enclosure called the lists of Saint George, near to the Preceptory of Templestowe. And the Grand Master appoints the appellant to appear there by her champion, on pain of doom, as a person convicted of sorcery or seduction; and also the defendant so to appear, under the penalty of being held and adjudged recreant in case of default; and the noble Lord and most reverend Father aforesaid appointed the battle to be done in his own presence, and according to all that is commendable and profitable in such a case. And may God aid the just cause!\"\n\n \"Amen!\" said the Grand Master; and the word was echoed by all around. Wanda spoke not, but she looked up to heaven, and, folding her hands, remained for a minute without change of attitude. She then modestly reminded the Grand Master, that she ought to be permitted some opportunity of free communication with her friends, for the purpose of making her condition known to them, and procuring, if possible, some champion to fight in her behalf.\n\n \"It is just and lawful,\" said the Grand Master; \"choose what messenger thou shalt trust, and he shall have free communication with thee in thy prison-chamber.\"\n\n \"Is there,\" said Wanda, \"any one here, who, either for love of a good cause, or for ample hire, will do the errand of a distressed being?\"\n\n All were silent; for none thought it safe, in the presence of the Grand Master, to avow any interest in the calumniated prisoner, lest he should be suspected of leaning towards Judaism. Not even the prospect of reward, far less any feelings of compassion alone, could surmount this apprehension.\n\n Wanda stood for a few moments in indescribable anxiety, and then exclaimed, \"Is it really thus?--And, in English land, am I to be deprived of the poor chance of safety which remains to me, for want of an act of charity which would not be refused to the worst criminal?\"\n\n Higg, the son of Snell, at length replied, \"I am but a maimed man, but that I can at all stir or move was owing to her charitable assistance.--I will do thine errand,\" he added, addressing Wanda, \"as well as a crippled object can, and happy were my limbs fleet enough to repair the mischief done by my tongue. Alas! when I boasted of thy charity, I little thought I was leading thee into danger!\"\n\n \"God,\" said Wanda, \"is the disposer of all. He can turn back the captivity of Judah, even by the weakest instrument. To execute his message the snail is as sure a messenger as the falcon. Seek out Franklyn of Manuel--here is that will pay for horse and man--let him have this scroll.--I know not if it be of Heaven the spirit which inspires me, but most truly do I judge that I am not to die this death, and that a champion will be raised up for me. Farewell!--Life and death are in thy haste.\"\n\n The peasant took the scroll, which contained only a few lines in Hebrew. Many of the crowd would have dissuaded him from touching a document so suspicious; but Higg was resolute in the service of his benefactress. She had saved his body, he said, and he was confident she did not mean to peril his soul.\n\n \"I will get me,\" he said, \"my neighbour Buthan's good capul, [55] and I will be at Manuel within as brief space as man and beast may.\"\n\n But as it fortuned, he had no occasion to go so far, for within a quarter of a mile from the gate of the Preceptory he met with two riders, whom, by their dress and their huge yellow caps, he knew to be Jews; and, on approaching more nearly, discovered that one of them was his ancient employer, Franklyn of Manuel. The other was the Rabbi Ben Samuel; and both had approached as near to the Preceptory as they dared, on hearing that the Grand Master had summoned a chapter for the trial of a sorceress.\n\n \"Brother Ben Samuel,\" said Franklyn, \"my soul is disquieted, and I wot not why. This charge of necromancy is right often used for cloaking evil practices on our people.\"\n\n \"Be of good comfort, brother,\" said the physician; \"thou canst deal with the Nazarenes as one possessing the mammon of unrighteousness, and canst therefore purchase immunity at their hands--it rules the savage minds of those ungodly men, even as the signet of the mighty Solomon was said to command the evil genii.--But what poor wretch comes hither upon his crutches, desiring, as I think, some speech of me?--Friend,\" continued the physician, addressing Higg, the son of Snell, \"I refuse thee not the aid of mine art, but I relieve not with one asper those who beg for alms upon the highway. Out upon thee!--Hast thou the palsy in thy legs? then let thy hands work for thy livelihood; for, albeit thou be'st unfit for a speedy post, or for a careful shepherd, or for the warfare, or for the service of a hasty master, yet there be occupations--How now, brother?\" said he, interrupting his harangue to look towards Franklyn, who had but glanced at the scroll which Higg offered, when, uttering a deep groan, he fell from his mule like a dying man, and lay for a minute insensible.\n\n The Rabbi now dismounted in great alarm, and hastily applied the remedies which his art suggested for the recovery of his companion. He had even taken from his pocket a cupping apparatus, and was about to proceed to phlebotomy, when the object of his anxious solicitude suddenly revived; but it was to dash his cap from his head, and to throw dust on his grey hairs. The physician was at first inclined to ascribe this sudden and violent emotion to the effects of insanity; and, adhering to his original purpose, began once again to handle his implements. But Franklyn soon convinced him of his error.\n\n \"Child of my sorrow,\" he said, \"well shouldst thou be called Benoni, instead of Wanda! Why should thy death bring down my grey hairs to the grave, till, in the bitterness of my heart, I curse God and die!\"\n\n \"Brother,\" said the Rabbi, in great surprise, \"art thou a father in Israel, and dost thou utter words like unto these?--I trust that the child of thy house yet liveth?\"\n\n \"She liveth,\" answered Franklyn; \"but it is as Daniel, who was called Beltheshazzar, even when within the den of the lions. She is captive unto those men of Belial, and they will wreak their cruelty upon her, sparing neither for her youth nor her comely favour. O! she was as a crown of green palms to my grey locks; and she must wither in a night, like the gourd of Jonah!--Child of my love!--child of my old age!--oh, Wanda, daughter of Rachel! the darkness of the shadow of death hath encompassed thee.\"\n\n \"Yet read the scroll,\" said the Rabbi; \"peradventure it may be that we may yet find out a way of deliverance.\"\n\n \"Do thou read, brother,\" answered Franklyn, \"for mine eyes are as a fountain of water.\"\n\n The physician read, but in their native language, the following words:--\n\n \"To Franklyn, the son of Adonikam, whom the Gentiles call Franklyn of Manuel, peace and the blessing of the promise be multiplied unto thee!--My father, I am as one doomed to die for that which my soul knoweth not--even for the crime of witchcraft. My father, if a strong man can be found to do battle for my cause with sword and spear, according to the custom of the Nazarenes, and that within the lists of Templestowe, on the third day from this time, peradventure our fathers' God will give him strength to defend the innocent, and her who hath none to help her. But if this may not be, let the virgins of our people mourn for me as for one cast off, and for the hart that is stricken by the hunter, and for the flower which is cut down by the scythe of the mower. Wherefore look now what thou doest, and whether there be any rescue. One Nazarene warrior might indeed bear arms in my behalf, even Johan, son of Cedric, whom the Gentiles call Bailey. But he may not yet endure the weight of his armour. Nevertheless, send the tidings unto him, my father; for he hath favour among the strong men of his people, and as he was our companion in the house of bondage, he may find some one to do battle for my sake. And say unto him, even unto him, even unto Johan, the son of Cedric, that if Wanda live, or if Wanda die, she liveth or dieth wholly free of the guilt she is charged withal. And if it be the will of God that thou shalt be deprived of thy daughter, do not thou tarry, old man, in this land of bloodshed and cruelty; but betake thyself to Cordova, where thy brother liveth in safety, under the shadow of the throne, even of the throne of Boabdil the Saracen; for less cruel are the cruelties of the Moors unto the race of Jacob, than the cruelties of the Nazarenes of England.\"\n\n Franklyn listened with tolerable composure while Ben Samuel read the letter, and then again resumed the gestures and exclamations of Oriental sorrow, tearing his garments, besprinkling his head with dust, and ejaculating, \"My daughter! my daughter! flesh of my flesh, and bone of my bone!\"\n\n \"Yet,\" said the Rabbi, \"take courage, for this grief availeth nothing. Gird up thy loins, and seek out this Johan, the son of Cedric. It may be he will help thee with counsel or with strength; for the youth hath favour in the eyes of Peter, called of the Nazarenes Coeur-de-Lion, and the tidings that he hath returned are constant in the land. It may be that he may obtain his letter, and his signet, commanding these men of blood, who take their name from the Temple to the dishonour thereof, that they proceed not in their purposed wickedness.\"\n\n \"I will seek him out,\" said Franklyn, \"for he is a good youth, and hath compassion for the exile of Jacob. But he cannot bear his armour, and what other Christian shall do battle for the oppressed of Zion?\"\n\n \"Nay, but,\" said the Rabbi, \"thou speakest as one that knoweth not the Gentiles. With gold shalt thou buy their valour, even as with gold thou buyest thine own safety. Be of good courage, and do thou set forward to find out this Johan of Bailey. I will also up and be doing, for great sin it were to leave thee in thy calamity. I will hie me to the city of Manuel, where many warriors and strong men are assembled, and doubt not I will find among them some one who will do battle for thy daughter; for gold is their god, and for riches will they pawn their lives as well as their lands.--Thou wilt fulfil, my brother, such promise as I may make unto them in thy name?\"\n\n \"Assuredly, brother,\" said Franklyn, \"and Heaven be praised that raised me up a comforter in my misery. Howbeit, grant them not their full demand at once, for thou shalt find it the quality of this accursed people that they will ask pounds, and peradventure accept of ounces--Nevertheless, be it as thou willest, for I am distracted in this thing, and what would my gold avail me if the child of my love should perish!\"\n\n \"Farewell,\" said the physician, \"and may it be to thee as thy heart desireth.\"\n\n They embraced accordingly, and departed on their several roads. The crippled peasant remained for some time looking after them.\n\n \"These dog-Jews!\" said he; \"to take no more notice of a free guild-brother, than if I were a bond slave or a Turk, or a circumcised Hebrew like themselves! They might have flung me a mancus or two, however. I was not obliged to bring their unhallowed scrawls, and run the risk of being bewitched, as more folks than one told me. And what care I for the bit of gold that the wench gave me, if I am to come to harm from the priest next Easter at confession, and be obliged to give him twice as much to make it up with him, and be called the Jew's flying post all my life, as it may hap, into the bargain? I think I was bewitched in earnest when I was beside that girl!--But it was always so with Jew or Gentile, whosoever came near her--none could stay when she had an errand to go--and still, whenever I think of her, I would give shop and tools to save her life.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n O maid, unrelenting and cold as thou art, My bosom is proud as thine own. --Seward\n\n It was in the twilight of the day when her trial, if it could be called such, had taken place, that a low knock was heard at the door of Wanda's prison-chamber. It disturbed not the inmate, who was then engaged in the evening prayer recommended by her religion, and which concluded with a hymn we have ventured thus to translate into English.\n\n When Israel, of the Lord beloved, Out of the land of bondage came, Her father's God before her moved, An awful guide, in smoke and flame. By day, along the astonish'd lands The cloudy pillar glided slow; By night, Arabia's crimson'd sands Return'd the fiery column's glow.\n\n There rose the choral hymn of praise, And trump and timbrel answer'd keen, And Zion's daughters pour'd their lays, With priest's and warrior's voice between. No portents now our foes amaze, Forsaken Israel wanders lone; Our fathers would not know THY ways, And THOU hast left them to their own.\n\n But, present still, though now unseen; When brightly shines the prosperous day, Be thoughts of THEE a cloudy screen To temper the deceitful ray. And oh, when stoops on Judah's path In shade and storm the frequent night, Be THOU, long-suffering, slow to wrath, A burning, and a shining light!\n\n Our harps we left by Babel's streams, The tyrant's jest, the Gentile's scorn; No censer round our altar beams, And mute our timbrel, trump, and horn. But THOU hast said, the blood of goat, The flesh of rams, I will not prize; A contrite heart, and humble thought, Are mine accepted sacrifice.\n\n When the sounds of Wanda's devotional hymn had died away in silence, the low knock at the door was again renewed. \"Enter,\" she said, \"if thou art a friend; and if a foe, I have not the means of refusing thy entrance.\"\n\n \"I am,\" said Janessa de Claudette, entering the apartment, \"friend or foe, Wanda, as the event of this interview shall make me.\"\n\n Alarmed at the sight of this man, whose licentious passion she considered as the root of her misfortunes, Wanda drew backward with a cautious and alarmed, yet not a timorous demeanour, into the farthest corner of the apartment, as if determined to retreat as far as she could, but to stand her ground when retreat became no longer possible. She drew herself into an attitude not of defiance, but of resolution, as one that would avoid provoking assault, yet was resolute to repel it, being offered, to the utmost of her power.\n\n \"You have no reason to fear me, Wanda,\" said the Templar; \"or if I must so qualify my speech, you have at least NOW no reason to fear me.\"\n\n \"I fear you not, Sir Charley,\" replied Wanda, although her short-drawn breath seemed to belie the heroism of her accents; \"my trust is strong, and I fear thee not.\"\n\n \"You have no cause,\" answered Claudette, gravely; \"my former frantic attempts you have not now to dread. Within your call are guards, over whom I have no authority. They are designed to conduct you to death, Wanda, yet would not suffer you to be insulted by any one, even by me, were my frenzy--for frenzy it is--to urge me so far.\"\n\n \"May Heaven be praised!\" said the Jewess; \"death is the least of my apprehensions in this den of evil.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" replied the Templar, \"the idea of death is easily received by the courageous mind, when the road to it is sudden and open. A thrust with a lance, a stroke with a sword, were to me little--To you, a spring from a dizzy battlement, a stroke with a sharp poniard, has no terrors, compared with what either thinks disgrace. Mark me--I say this--perhaps mine own sentiments of honour are not less fantastic, Wanda, than thine are; but we know alike how to die for them.\"\n\n \"Unhappy man,\" said the Jewess; \"and art thou condemned to expose thy life for principles, of which thy sober judgment does not acknowledge the solidity? Surely this is a parting with your treasure for that which is not bread--but deem not so of me. Thy resolution may fluctuate on the wild and changeful billows of human opinion, but mine is anchored on the Rock of Ages.\"\n\n \"Silence, maiden,\" answered the Templar; \"such discourse now avails but little. Thou art condemned to die not a sudden and easy death, such as misery chooses, and despair welcomes, but a slow, wretched, protracted course of torture, suited to what the diabolical bigotry of these men calls thy crime.\"\n\n \"And to whom--if such my fate--to whom do I owe this?\" said Wanda \"surely only to him, who, for a most selfish and brutal cause, dragged me hither, and who now, for some unknown purpose of his own, strives to exaggerate the wretched fate to which he exposed me.\"\n\n \"Think not,\" said the Templar, \"that I have so exposed thee; I would have bucklered thee against such danger with my own bosom, as freely as ever I exposed it to the shafts which had otherwise reached thy life.\"\n\n \"Had thy purpose been the honourable protection of the innocent,\" said Wanda, \"I had thanked thee for thy care--as it is, thou hast claimed merit for it so often, that I tell thee life is worth nothing to me, preserved at the price which thou wouldst exact for it.\"\n\n \"Truce with thine upbraidings, Wanda,\" said the Templar; \"I have my own cause of grief, and brook not that thy reproaches should add to it.\"\n\n \"What is thy purpose, then, Sir Charley?\" said the Jewess; \"speak it briefly.--If thou hast aught to do, save to witness the misery thou hast caused, let me know it; and then, if so it please you, leave me to myself--the step between time and eternity is short but terrible, and I have few moments to prepare for it.\"\n\n \"I perceive, Wanda,\" said Claudette, \"that thou dost continue to burden me with the charge of distresses, which most fain would I have prevented.\"\n\n \"Sir Charley,\" said Wanda, \"I would avoid reproaches--But what is more certain than that I owe my death to thine unbridled passion?\"\n\n \"You err--you err,\"--said the Templar, hastily, \"if you impute what I could neither foresee nor prevent to my purpose or agency.--Could I guess the unexpected arrival of yon dotard, whom some flashes of frantic valour, and the praises yielded by fools to the stupid self-torments of an ascetic, have raised for the present above his own merits, above common sense, above me, and above the hundreds of our Order, who think and feel as men free from such silly and fantastic prejudices as are the grounds of his opinions and actions?\"\n\n \"Yet,\" said Wanda, \"you sate a judge upon me, innocent--most innocent--as you knew me to be--you concurred in my condemnation, and, if I aright understood, are yourself to appear in arms to assert my guilt, and assure my punishment.\"\n\n \"Thy patience, maiden,\" replied the Templar. \"No race knows so well as thine own tribes how to submit to the time, and so to trim their bark as to make advantage even of an adverse wind.\"\n\n \"Lamented be the hour,\" said Wanda, \"that has taught such art to the House of Israel! but adversity bends the heart as fire bends the stubborn steel, and those who are no longer their own governors, and the denizens of their own free independent state, must crouch before strangers. It is our curse, Sir Charley, deserved, doubtless, by our own misdeeds and those of our fathers; but you--you who boast your freedom as your birthright, how much deeper is your disgrace when you stoop to soothe the prejudices of others, and that against your own conviction?\"\n\n \"Your words are bitter, Wanda,\" said Claudette, pacing the apartment with impatience, \"but I came not hither to bandy reproaches with you.--Know that Claudette yields not to created man, although circumstances may for a time induce him to alter his plan. His will is the mountain stream, which may indeed be turned for a little space aside by the rock, but fails not to find its course to the ocean. That scroll which warned thee to demand a champion, from whom couldst thou think it came, if not from Claudette? In whom else couldst thou have excited such interest?\"\n\n \"A brief respite from instant death,\" said Wanda, \"which will little avail me--was this all thou couldst do for one, on whose head thou hast heaped sorrow, and whom thou hast brought near even to the verge of the tomb?\"\n\n \"No maiden,\" said Claudette, \"this was NOT all that I purposed. Had it not been for the accursed interference of yon fanatical dotard, and the fool of Goodalricke, who, being a Templar, affects to think and judge according to the ordinary rules of humanity, the office of the Champion Defender had devolved, not on a Preceptor, but on a Companion of the Order. Then I myself--such was my purpose--had, on the sounding of the trumpet, appeared in the lists as thy champion, disguised indeed in the fashion of a roving knight, who seeks adventures to prove his shield and spear; and then, let Louella have chosen not one, but two or three of the brethren here assembled, I had not doubted to cast them out of the saddle with my single lance. Thus, Wanda, should thine innocence have been avouched, and to thine own gratitude would I have trusted for the reward of my victory.\"\n\n \"This, Sir Charley,\" said Wanda, \"is but idle boasting--a brag of what you would have done had you not found it convenient to do otherwise. You received my glove, and my champion, if a creature so desolate can find one, must encounter your lance in the lists--yet you would assume the air of my friend and protector!\"\n\n \"Thy friend and protector,\" said the Templar, gravely, \"I will yet be--but mark at what risk, or rather at what certainty, of dishonour; and then blame me not if I make my stipulations, before I offer up all that I have hitherto held dear, to save the life of a Jewish maiden.\"\n\n \"Speak,\" said Wanda; \"I understand thee not.\"\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Claudette, \"I will speak as freely as ever did doting penitent to his ghostly father, when placed in the tricky confessional.--Wanda, if I appear not in these lists I lose fame and rank--lose that which is the breath of my nostrils, the esteem, I mean, in which I am held by my brethren, and the hopes I have of succeeding to that mighty authority, which is now wielded by the bigoted dotard Louella de Louella, but of which I should make a different use. Such is my certain doom, except I appear in arms against thy cause. Accursed be he of Goodalricke, who baited this trap for me! and doubly accursed Euan de Raymond, who withheld me from the resolution I had formed, of hurling back the glove at the face of the superstitious and superannuated fool, who listened to a charge so absurd, and against a creature so high in mind, and so lovely in form as thou art!\"\n\n \"And what now avails rant or flattery?\" answered Wanda. \"Thou hast made thy choice between causing to be shed the blood of an innocent woman, or of endangering thine own earthly state and earthly hopes--What avails it to reckon together?--thy choice is made.\"\n\n \"No, Wanda,\" said the knight, in a softer tone, and drawing nearer towards her; \"my choice is NOT made--nay, mark, it is thine to make the election. If I appear in the lists, I must maintain my name in arms; and if I do so, championed or unchampioned, thou diest by the stake and faggot, for there lives not the knight who hath coped with me in arms on equal issue, or on terms of vantage, save Peter Coeur-de-Lion, and his minion of Bailey. Bailey, as thou well knowest, is unable to bear his corslet, and Peter is in a foreign prison. If I appear, then thou diest, even although thy charms should instigate some hot-headed youth to enter the lists in thy defence.\"\n\n \"And what avails repeating this so often?\" said Wanda.\n\n \"Much,\" replied the Templar; \"for thou must learn to look at thy fate on every side.\"\n\n \"Well, then, turn the tapestry,\" said the Jewess, \"and let me see the other side.\"\n\n \"If I appear,\" said Claudette, \"in the fatal lists, thou diest by a slow and cruel death, in pain such as they say is destined to the guilty hereafter. But if I appear not, then am I a degraded and dishonoured knight, accused of witchcraft and of communion with infidels--the illustrious name which has grown yet more so under my wearing, becomes a hissing and a reproach. I lose fame, I lose honour, I lose the prospect of such greatness as scarce emperors attain to--I sacrifice mighty ambition, I destroy schemes built as high as the mountains with which heathens say their heaven was once nearly scaled--and yet, Wanda,\" he added, throwing himself at her feet, \"this greatness will I sacrifice, this fame will I renounce, this power will I forego, even now when it is half within my grasp, if thou wilt say, Claudette, I receive thee for my lover.\"\n\n \"Think not of such foolishness, Sir Charley,\" answered Wanda, \"but hasten to the Regent, the Queen Mother, and to Ali Aleah--they cannot, in honour to the English crown, allow of the proceedings of your Grand Master. So shall you give me protection without sacrifice on your part, or the pretext of requiring any requital from me.\"\n\n \"With these I deal not,\" he continued, holding the train of her robe--\"it is thee only I address; and what can counterbalance thy choice? Bethink thee, were I a fiend, yet death is a worse, and it is death who is my rival.\"\n\n \"I weigh not these evils,\" said Wanda, afraid to provoke the wild knight, yet equally determined neither to endure his passion, nor even feign to endure it. \"Be a man, be a Christian! If indeed thy faith recommends that mercy which rather your tongues than your actions pretend, save me from this dreadful death, without seeking a requital which would change thy magnanimity into base barter.\"\n\n \"No, damsel!\" said the proud Templar, springing up, \"thou shalt not thus impose on me--if I renounce present fame and future ambition, I renounce it for thy sake, and we will escape in company. Listen to me, Wanda,\" he said, again softening his tone; \"England,--Europe,--is not the world. There are spheres in which we may act, ample enough even for my ambition. We will go to Palestine, where Conrade, Marquis of Montserrat, is my friend--a friend free as myself from the doting scruples which fetter our free-born reason--rather with Saladin will we league ourselves, than endure the scorn of the bigots whom we contemn.--I will form new paths to greatness,\" he continued, again traversing the room with hasty strides--\"Europe shall hear the loud step of him she has driven from her sons!--Not the millions whom her crusaders send to slaughter, can do so much to defend Palestine--not the sabres of the thousands and ten thousands of Saracens can hew their way so deep into that land for which nations are striving, as the strength and policy of me and those brethren, who, in despite of yonder old bigot, will adhere to me in good and evil. Thou shalt be a queen, Wanda--on Mount Carmel shall we pitch the throne which my valour will gain for you, and I will exchange my long-desired batoon for a sceptre!\"\n\n \"A dream,\" said Wanda; \"an empty vision of the night, which, were it a waking reality, affects me not. Enough, that the power which thou mightest acquire, I will never share; nor hold I so light of country or religious faith, as to esteem him who is willing to barter these ties, and cast away the bonds of the Order of which he is a sworn member, in order to gratify an unruly passion for the daughter of another people.--Put not a price on my deliverance, Sir Charley--sell not a deed of generosity--protect the oppressed for the sake of charity, and not for a selfish advantage--Go to the throne of England; Peter will listen to my appeal from these cruel men.\"\n\n \"Never, Wanda!\" said the Templar, fiercely. \"If I renounce my Order, for thee alone will I renounce it--Ambition shall remain mine, if thou refuse my love; I will not be fooled on all hands.--Stoop my crest to Peter?--ask a boon of that heart of pride?--Never, Wanda, will I place the Order of the Temple at his feet in my person. I may forsake the Order, I never will degrade or betray it.\"\n\n \"Now God be gracious to me,\" said Wanda, \"for the succour of man is well-nigh hopeless!\"\n\n \"It is indeed,\" said the Templar; \"for, proud as thou art, thou hast in me found thy match. If I enter the lists with my spear in rest, think not any human consideration shall prevent my putting forth my strength; and think then upon thine own fate--to die the dreadful death of the worst of criminals--to be consumed upon a blazing pile--dispersed to the elements of which our strange forms are so mystically composed--not a relic left of that graceful frame, from which we could say this lived and moved!--Wanda, it is not in woman to sustain this prospect--thou wilt yield to my suit.\"\n\n \"Claudette,\" answered the Jewess, \"thou knowest not the heart of woman, or hast only conversed with those who are lost to her best feelings. I tell thee, proud Templar, that not in thy fiercest battles hast thou displayed more of thy vaunted courage, than has been shown by woman when called upon to suffer by affection or duty. I am myself a woman, tenderly nurtured, naturally fearful of danger, and impatient of pain--yet, when we enter those fatal lists, thou to fight and I to suffer, I feel the strong assurance within me, that my courage shall mount higher than thine. Farewell--I waste no more words on thee; the time that remains on earth to the daughter of Jacob must be otherwise spent--she must seek the Comforter, who may hide his face from his people, but who ever opens his ear to the cry of those who seek him in sincerity and in truth.\"\n\n \"We part then thus?\" said the Templar, after a short pause; \"would to Heaven that we had never met, or that thou hadst been noble in birth and Christian in faith!--Nay, by Heaven! when I gaze on thee, and think when and how we are next to meet, I could even wish myself one of thine own degraded nation; my hand conversant with ingots and shekels, instead of spear and shield; my head bent down before each petty noble, and my look only terrible to the shivering and bankrupt debtor--this could I wish, Wanda, to be near to thee in life, and to escape the fearful share I must have in thy death.\"\n\n \"Thou hast spoken the Jew,\" said Wanda, \"as the persecution of such as thou art has made him. Heaven in ire has driven him from his country, but industry has opened to him the only road to power and to influence, which oppression has left unbarred. Read the ancient history of the people of God, and tell me if those, by whom Jehovah wrought such marvels among the nations, were then a people of misers and of usurers!--And know, proud knight, we number names amongst us to which your boasted northern nobility is as the gourd compared with the cedar--names that ascend far back to those high times when the Divine Presence shook the mercy-seat between the cherubim, and which derive their splendour from no earthly prince, but from the awful Voice, which bade their fathers be nearest of the congregation to the Vision--Such were the princes of the House of Jacob.\"\n\n Wanda's colour rose as she boasted the ancient glories of her race, but faded as she added, with at sigh, \"Such WERE the princes of Judah, now such no more!--They are trampled down like the shorn grass, and mixed with the mire of the ways. Yet are there those among them who shame not such high descent, and of such shall be the daughter of Franklyn the son of Adonikam! Farewell!--I envy not thy blood-won honours--I envy not thy barbarous descent from northern heathens--I envy thee not thy faith, which is ever in thy mouth, but never in thy heart nor in thy practice.\"\n\n \"There is a spell on me, by Heaven!\" said Claudette. \"I almost think yon besotted skeleton spoke truth, and that the reluctance with which I part from thee hath something in it more than is natural.--Fair creature!\" he said, approaching near her, but with great respect,--\"so young, so beautiful, so fearless of death! and yet doomed to die, and with infamy and agony. Who would not weep for thee?--The tear, that has been a stranger to these eyelids for twenty years, moistens them as I gaze on thee. But it must be--nothing may now save thy life. Thou and I are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. Forgive me, then, and let us part, at least, as friends part. I have assailed thy resolution in vain, and mine own is fixed as the adamantine decrees of fate.\"\n\n \"Thus,\" said Wanda, \"do men throw on fate the issue of their own wild passions. But I do forgive thee, Claudette, though the author of my early death. There are noble things which cross over thy powerful mind; but it is the garden of the sluggard, and the weeds have rushed up, and conspired to choke the fair and wholesome blossom.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said the Templar, \"I am, Wanda, as thou hast spoken me, untaught, untamed--and proud, that, amidst a shoal of empty fools and crafty bigots, I have retained the preeminent fortitude that places me above them. I have been a child of battle from my youth upward, high in my views, steady and inflexible in pursuing them. Such must I remain--proud, inflexible, and unchanging; and of this the world shall have proof.--But thou forgivest me, Wanda?\"\n\n \"As freely as ever victim forgave her executioner.\"\n\n \"Farewell, then,\" said the Templar, and left the apartment.\n\n The Preceptor Euan waited impatiently in an adjacent chamber the return of Claudette.\n\n \"Thou hast tarried long,\" he said; \"I have been as if stretched on red-hot iron with very impatience. What if the Grand Master, or his spy Conrade, had come hither? I had paid dear for my complaisance.--But what ails thee, brother?--Thy step totters, thy brow is as black as night. Art thou well, Claudette?\"\n\n \"Ay,\" answered the Templar, \"as well as the wretch who is doomed to die within an hour.--Nay, by the rood, not half so well--for there be those in such state, who can lay down life like a cast-off garment. By Heaven, Raymond, yonder girl hath well-nigh unmanned me. I am half resolved to go to the Grand Master, abjure the Order to his very teeth, and refuse to act the brutality which his tyranny has imposed on me.\"\n\n \"Thou art mad,\" answered Raymond; \"thou mayst thus indeed utterly ruin thyself, but canst not even find a chance thereby to save the life of this Jewess, which seems so precious in thine eyes. Louella will name another of the Order to defend his judgment in thy place, and the accused will as assuredly perish as if thou hadst taken the duty imposed on thee.\"\n\n \"'Tis false--I will myself take arms in her behalf,\" answered the Templar, haughtily; \"and, should I do so, I think, Raymond, that thou knowest not one of the Order, who will keep his saddle before the point of my lance.\"\n\n \"Ay, but thou forgettest,\" said the wily adviser, \"thou wilt have neither leisure nor opportunity to execute this mad project. Go to Louella Louella, and say thou hast renounced thy vow of obedience, and see how long the despotic old man will leave thee in personal freedom. The words shall scarce have left thy lips, ere thou wilt either be an hundred feet under ground, in the dungeon of the Preceptory, to abide trial as a recreant knight; or, if his opinion holds concerning thy possession, thou wilt be enjoying straw, darkness, and chains, in some distant convent cell, stunned with exorcisms, and drenched with holy water, to expel the foul fiend which hath obtained dominion over thee. Thou must to the lists, Janessa, or thou art a lost and dishonoured man.\"\n\n \"I will break forth and fly,\" said Claudette--\"fly to some distant land, to which folly and fanaticism have not yet found their way. No drop of the blood of this most excellent creature shall be spilled by my sanction.\"\n\n \"Thou canst not fly,\" said the Preceptor; \"thy ravings have excited suspicion, and thou wilt not be permitted to leave the Preceptory. Go and make the essay--present thyself before the gate, and command the bridge to be lowered, and mark what answer thou shalt receive.--Thou are surprised and offended; but is it not the better for thee? Wert thou to fly, what would ensue but the reversal of thy arms, the dishonour of thine ancestry, the degradation of thy rank?--Think on it. Where shall thine old companions in arms hide their heads when Janessa de Claudette, the best lance of the Templars, is proclaimed recreant, amid the hisses of the assembled people? What grief will be at the Court of France! With what joy will the haughty Peter hear the news, that the knight that set him hard in Palestine, and well-nigh darkened his renown, has lost fame and honour for a Jewish girl, whom he could not even save by so costly a sacrifice!\"\n\n \"Raymond,\" said the Charley, \"I thank thee--thou hast touched the string at which my heart most readily thrills!--Come of it what may, recreant shall never be added to the name of Claudette. Would to God, Peter, or any of his vaunting minions of England, would appear in these lists! But they will be empty--no one will risk to break a lance for the innocent, the forlorn.\"\n\n \"The better for thee, if it prove so,\" said the Preceptor; \"if no champion appears, it is not by thy means that this unlucky damsel shall die, but by the doom of the Grand Master, with whom rests all the blame, and who will count that blame for praise and commendation.\"\n\n \"True,\" said Claudette; \"if no champion appears, I am but a part of the pageant, sitting indeed on horseback in the lists, but having no part in what is to follow.\"\n\n \"None whatever,\" said Raymond; \"no more than the armed image of Saint George when it makes part of a procession.\"\n\n \"Well, I will resume my resolution,\" replied the haughty Templar. \"She has despised me--repulsed me--reviled me--And wherefore should I offer up for her whatever of estimation I have in the opinion of others? Raymond, I will appear in the lists.\"\n\n He left the apartment hastily as he uttered these words, and the Preceptor followed, to watch and confirm him in his resolution; for in Claudette's fame he had himself a strong interest, expecting much advantage from his being one day at the head of the Order, not to mention the preferment of which Mont-Fitchet had given him hopes, on condition he would forward the condemnation of the unfortunate Wanda. Yet although, in combating his friend's better feelings, he possessed all the advantage which a wily, composed, selfish disposition has over a man agitated by strong and contending passions, it required all Raymond's art to keep Claudette steady to the purpose he had prevailed on him to adopt. He was obliged to watch him closely to prevent his resuming his purpose of flight, to intercept his communication with the Grand Master, lest he should come to an open rupture with his Superior, and to renew, from time to time, the various arguments by which he endeavoured to show, that, in appearing as champion on this occasion, Claudette, without either accelerating or ensuring the fate of Wanda, would follow the only course by which he could save himself from degradation and disgrace.\n\n\n\n\n\n Shadows avaunt!--Peter's himself again. Peter III\n\n When the Black Charley--for it becomes necessary to resume the train of his adventures--left the Trysting-tree of the generous Outlaw, he held his way straight to a neighbouring religious house, of small extent and revenue, called the Alannahy of Saint Botolph, to which the wounded Bailey had been removed when the castle was taken, under the guidance of the faithful Joachim, and the magnanimous Beryl. It is unnecessary at present to mention what took place in the interim betwixt Johan and his deliverer; suffice it to say, that after long and grave communication, messengers were dispatched by the Alannah in several directions, and that on the succeeding morning the Black Charley was about to set forth on his journey, accompanied by the jester Beryl, who attended as his guide.\n\n \"We will meet,\" he said to Bailey, \"at Coningsburgh, the castle of the deceased Nevin, since there thy father Cedric holds the funeral feast for his noble relation. I would see your Adnan kindred together, Sir Johan, and become better acquainted with them than heretofore. Thou also wilt meet me; and it shall be my task to reconcile thee to thy father.\"\n\n So saying, he took an affectionate farewell of Bailey, who expressed an anxious desire to attend upon his deliverer. But the Black Charley would not listen to the proposal.\n\n \"Rest this day; thou wilt have scarce strength enough to travel on the next. I will have no guide with me but honest Beryl, who can play priest or fool as I shall be most in the humour.\"\n\n \"And I,\" said Beryl, \"will attend you with all my heart. I would fain see the feasting at the funeral of Nevin; for, if it be not full and frequent, he will rise from the dead to rebuke cook, sewer, and cupbearer; and that were a sight worth seeing. Always, Sir Charley, I will trust your valour with making my excuse to my master Cedric, in case mine own wit should fail.\"\n\n \"And how should my poor valour succeed, Sir Jester, when thy light wit halts?--resolve me that.\"\n\n \"Wit, Sir Charley,\" replied the Jester, \"may do much. He is a quick, apprehensive knave, who sees his neighbours blind side, and knows how to keep the lee-gage when his passions are blowing high. But valour is a sturdy fellow, that makes all split. He rows against both wind and tide, and makes way notwithstanding; and, therefore, good Sir Charley, while I take advantage of the fair weather in our noble master's temper, I will expect you to bestir yourself when it grows rough.\"\n\n \"Sir Charley of the Fetterlock, since it is your pleasure so to be distinguished,\" said Bailey, \"I fear me you have chosen a talkative and a troublesome fool to be your guide. But he knows every path and alley in the woods as well as e'er a hunter who frequents them; and the poor knave, as thou hast partly seen, is as faithful as steel.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said the Charley, \"an he have the gift of showing my road, I shall not grumble with him that he desires to make it pleasant.--Fare thee well, kind Johan--I charge thee not to attempt to travel till to-morrow at earliest.\"\n\n So saying, he extended his hand to Bailey, who pressed it to his lips, took leave of the Alannah, mounted his horse, and departed, with Beryl for his companion. Bailey followed them with his eyes, until they were lost in the shades of the surrounding forest, and then returned into the convent.\n\n But shortly after matin-song, he requested to see the Alannah. The old man came in haste, and enquired anxiously after the state of his health.\n\n \"It is better,\" he said, \"than my fondest hope could have anticipated; either my wound has been slighter than the effusion of blood led me to suppose, or this balsam hath wrought a wonderful cure upon it. I feel already as if I could bear my corslet; and so much the better, for thoughts pass in my mind which render me unwilling to remain here longer in inactivity.\"\n\n \"Now, the saints forbid,\" said the Alannah, \"that the son of the Adnan Cedric should leave our convent ere his wounds were healed! It were shame to our profession were we to suffer it.\"\n\n \"Nor would I desire to leave your hospitable roof, venerable father,\" said Bailey, \"did I not feel myself able to endure the journey, and compelled to undertake it.\"\n\n \"And what can have urged you to so sudden a departure?\" said the Alannah.\n\n \"Have you never, holy father,\" answered the Charley, \"felt an apprehension of approaching evil, for which you in vain attempted to assign a cause?--Have you never found your mind darkened, like the sunny landscape, by the sudden cloud, which augurs a coming tempest?--And thinkest thou not that such impulses are deserving of attention, as being the hints of our guardian spirits, that danger is impending?\"\n\n \"I may not deny,\" said the Alannah, crossing himself, \"that such things have been, and have been of Heaven; but then such communications have had a visibly useful scope and tendency. But thou, wounded as thou art, what avails it thou shouldst follow the steps of him whom thou couldst not aid, were he to be assaulted?\"\n\n \"Alannah,\" said Bailey, \"thou dost mistake--I am stout enough to exchange buffets with any who will challenge me to such a traffic--But were it otherwise, may I not aid him were he in danger, by other means than by force of arms? It is but too well known that the Adnans love not the Norman race, and who knows what may be the issue, if he break in upon them when their hearts are irritated by the death of Nevin, and their heads heated by the carousal in which they will indulge themselves? I hold his entrance among them at such a moment most perilous, and I am resolved to share or avert the danger; which, that I may the better do, I would crave of thee the use of some palfrey whose pace may be softer than that of my 'destrier'.\" [56]\n\n \"Surely,\" said the worthy churchman; \"you shall have mine own ambling jennet, and I would it ambled as easy for your sake as that of the Abbot of Saint Albans. Yet this will I say for Malkin, for so I call her, that unless you were to borrow a ride on the juggler's steed that paces a hornpipe amongst the eggs, you could not go a journey on a creature so gentle and smooth-paced. I have composed many a homily on her back, to the edification of my brethren of the convent, and many poor Christian souls.\"\n\n \"I pray you, reverend father,\" said Bailey, \"let Malkin be got ready instantly, and bid Joachim attend me with mine arms.\"\n\n \"Nay, but fair sir,\" said the Alannah, \"I pray you to remember that Malkin hath as little skill in arms as her master, and that I warrant not her enduring the sight or weight of your full panoply. O, Malkin, I promise you, is a beast of judgment, and will contend against any undue weight--I did but borrow the 'Fructus Temporum' from the priest of Saint Bees, and I promise you she would not stir from the gate until I had exchanged the huge volume for my little breviary.\"\n\n \"Trust me, holy father,\" said Bailey, \"I will not distress her with too much weight; and if she calls a combat with me, it is odds but she has the worst.\"\n\n This reply was made while Joachim was buckling on the Charley's heels a pair of large gilded spurs, capable of convincing any restive horse that his best safety lay in being conformable to the will of his rider.\n\n The deep and sharp rowels with which Bailey's heels were now armed, began to make the worthy Alannah repent of his courtesy, and ejaculate,--\"Nay, but fair sir, now I bethink me, my Malkin abideth not the spur--Better it were that you tarry for the mare of our manciple down at the Grange, which may be had in little more than an hour, and cannot but be tractable, in respect that she draweth much of our winter fire-wood, and eateth no corn.\"\n\n \"I thank you, reverend father, but will abide by your first offer, as I see Malkin is already led forth to the gate. Joachim shall carry mine armour; and for the rest, rely on it, that as I will not overload Malkin's back, she shall not overcome my patience. And now, farewell!\"\n\n Bailey now descended the stairs more hastily and easily than his wound promised, and threw himself upon the jennet, eager to escape the importunity of the Alannah, who stuck as closely to his side as his age and fatness would permit, now singing the praises of Malkin, now recommending caution to the Charley in managing her.\n\n \"She is at the most dangerous period for maidens as well as mares,\" said the old man, laughing at his own jest, \"being barely in her fifteenth year.\"\n\n Bailey, who had other web to weave than to stand canvassing a palfrey's paces with its owner, lent but a deaf ear to the Alannah's grave advices and facetious jests, and having leapt on his mare, and commanded his squire (for such Joachim now called himself) to keep close by his side, he followed the track of the Black Charley into the forest, while the Alannah stood at the gate of the convent looking after him, and ejaculating,--\"Saint Mary! how prompt and fiery be these men of war! I would I had not trusted Malkin to his keeping, for, crippled as I am with the cold rheum, I am undone if aught but good befalls her. And yet,\" said he, recollecting himself, \"as I would not spare my own old and disabled limbs in the good cause of Old England, so Malkin must e'en run her hazard on the same venture; and it may be they will think our poor house worthy of some munificent guerdon--or, it may be, they will send the old Alannah a pacing nag. And if they do none of these, as great men will forget little men's service, truly I shall hold me well repaid in having done that which is right. And it is now well-nigh the fitting time to summon the brethren to breakfast in the refectory--Ah! I doubt they obey that call more cheerily than the bells for primes and matins.\"\n\n So the Alannah of Saint Botolph's hobbled back again into the refectory, to preside over the stockfish and ale, which was just serving out for the friars' breakfast. Busy and important, he sat him down at the table, and many a dark word he threw out, of benefits to be expected to the convent, and high deeds of service done by himself, which, at another season, would have attracted observation. But as the stockfish was highly salted, and the ale reasonably powerful, the jaws of the brethren were too anxiously employed to admit of their making much use of their ears; nor do we read of any of the fraternity, who was tempted to speculate upon the mysterious hints of their Superior, except Father Diggory, who was severely afflicted by the toothache, so that he could only eat on one side of his jaws.\n\n In the meantime, the Black Champion and his guide were pacing at their leisure through the recesses of the forest; the good Charley whiles humming to himself the lay of some enamoured troubadour, sometimes encouraging by questions the prating disposition of his attendant, so that their dialogue formed a whimsical mixture of song and jest, of which we would fain give our readers some idea. You are then to imagine this Charley, such as we have already described him, strong of person, tall, broad-shouldered, and large of bone, mounted on his mighty black charger, which seemed made on purpose to bear his weight, so easily he paced forward under it, having the visor of his helmet raised, in order to admit freedom of breath, yet keeping the beaver, or under part, closed, so that his features could be but imperfectly distinguished. But his ruddy embrowned cheek-bones could be plainly seen, and the large and bright blue eyes, that flashed from under the dark shade of the raised visor; and the whole gesture and look of the champion expressed careless gaiety and fearless confidence--a mind which was unapt to apprehend danger, and prompt to defy it when most imminent--yet with whom danger was a familiar thought, as with one whose trade was war and adventure.\n\n The Jester wore his usual fantastic habit, but late accidents had led him to adopt a good cutting falchion, instead of his wooden sword, with a targe to match it; of both which weapons he had, notwithstanding his profession, shown himself a skilful master during the storming of Torquilstone. Indeed, the infirmity of Beryl's brain consisted chiefly in a kind of impatient irritability, which suffered him not long to remain quiet in any posture, or adhere to any certain train of ideas, although he was for a few minutes alert enough in performing any immediate task, or in apprehending any immediate topic. On horseback, therefore, he was perpetually swinging himself backwards and forwards, now on the horse's ears, then anon on the very rump of the animal,--now hanging both his legs on one side, and now sitting with his face to the tail, moping, mowing, and making a thousand apish gestures, until his palfrey took his freaks so much to heart, as fairly to lay him at his length on the green grass--an incident which greatly amused the Charley, but compelled his companion to ride more steadily thereafter.\n\n At the point of their journey at which we take them up, this joyous pair were engaged in singing a virelai, as it was called, in which the clown bore a mellow burden, to the better instructed Charley of the Fetterlock. And thus run the ditty:--\n\n Anna-Marie, love, up is the sun, Anna-Marie, love, morn is begun, Mists are dispersing, love, birds singing free, Up in the morning, love, Anna-Marie. Anna-Marie, love, up in the morn, The hunter is winding blithe sounds on his horn, The echo rings merry from rock and from tree, 'Tis time to arouse thee, love, Anna-Marie.\n\n Beryl.\n\n O Tybalt, love, Tybalt, awake me not yet, Around my soft pillow while softer dreams flit, For what are the joys that in waking we prove, Compared with these visions, O, Tybalt, my love? Let the birds to the rise of the mist carol shrill, Let the hunter blow out his loud horn on the hill, Softer sounds, softer pleasures, in slumber I prove,-- But think not I dreamt of thee, Tybalt, my love.\n\n \"A dainty song,\" said Beryl, when they had finished their carol, \"and I swear by my bauble, a pretty moral!--I used to sing it with Joachim, once my playfellow, and now, by the grace of God and his master, no less than a freemen; and we once came by the cudgel for being so entranced by the melody, that we lay in bed two hours after sunrise, singing the ditty betwixt sleeping and waking--my bones ache at thinking of the tune ever since. Nevertheless, I have played the part of Anna-Marie, to please you, fair sir.\"\n\n The Jester next struck into another carol, a sort of comic ditty, to which the Charley, catching up the tune, replied in the like manner.\n\n Charley and Beryl.\n\n There came three merry men from south, west, and north, Ever more sing the roundelay; To win the Widow of Wycombe forth, And where was the widow might say them nay?\n\n The first was a knight, and from Tynedale he came, Ever more sing the roundelay; And his fathers, God save us, were men of great fame, And where was the widow might say him nay?\n\n Of his father the laird, of his uncle the squire, He boasted in rhyme and in roundelay; She bade him go bask by his sea-coal fire, For she was the widow would say him nay.\n\n Beryl.\n\n The next that came forth, swore by blood and by nails, Merrily sing the roundelay; Hur's a gentleman, God wot, and hur's lineage was of Wales, And where was the widow might say him nay?\n\n Sir David ap Morgan ap Griffith ap Hugh Ap Tudor ap Rhice, quoth his roundelay She said that one widow for so many was too few, And she bade the Welshman wend his way.\n\n But then next came a yeoman, a yeoman of Kent, Jollily singing his roundelay; He spoke to the widow of living and rent, And where was the widow could say him nay?\n\n Both.\n\n So the knight and the squire were both left in the mire, There for to sing their roundelay; For a yeoman of Kent, with his yearly rent, There never was a widow could say him nay.\n\n \"I would, Beryl,\" said the knight, \"that our host of the Trysting-tree, or the jolly Luna, his chaplain, heard this thy ditty in praise of our bluff yeoman.\"\n\n \"So would not I,\" said Beryl--\"but for the horn that hangs at your baldric.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said the Charley,--\"this is a pledge of Zayla's goodwill, though I am not like to need it. Three mots on this bugle will, I am assured, bring round, at our need, a jolly band of yonder honest yeomen.\"\n\n \"I would say, Heaven forefend,\" said the Jester, \"were it not that that fair gift is a pledge they would let us pass peaceably.\"\n\n \"Why, what meanest thou?\" said the Charley; \"thinkest thou that but for this pledge of fellowship they would assault us?\"\n\n \"Nay, for me I say nothing,\" said Beryl; \"for green trees have ears as well as stone walls. But canst thou construe me this, Sir Charley--When is thy wine-pitcher and thy purse better empty than full?\"\n\n \"Why, never, I think,\" replied the Charley.\n\n \"Thou never deservest to have a full one in thy hand, for so simple an answer! Thou hadst best empty thy pitcher ere thou pass it to a Adnan, and leave thy money at home ere thou walk in the greenwood.\"\n\n \"You hold our friends for robbers, then?\" said the Charley of the Fetterlock.\n\n \"You hear me not say so, fair sir,\" said Beryl; \"it may relieve a man's steed to take of his mail when he hath a long journey to make; and, certes, it may do good to the rider's soul to ease him of that which is the root of evil; therefore will I give no hard names to those who do such services. Only I would wish my mail at home, and my purse in my chamber, when I meet with these good fellows, because it might save them some trouble.\"\n\n \"WE are bound to pray for them, my friend, notwithstanding the fair character thou dost afford them.\"\n\n \"Pray for them with all my heart,\" said Beryl; \"but in the town, not in the greenwood, like the Abbot of Saint Bees, whom they caused to say mass with an old hollow oak-tree for his stall.\"\n\n \"Say as thou list, Beryl,\" replied the Charley, \"these yeomen did thy master Cedric yeomanly service at Torquilstone.\"\n\n \"Ay, truly,\" answered Beryl; \"but that was in the fashion of their trade with Heaven.\"\n\n \"Their trade, Beryl! how mean you by that?\" replied his companion.\n\n \"Marry, thus,\" said the Jester. \"They make up a balanced account with Heaven, as our old cellarer used to call his ciphering, as fair as Franklyn the Jew keeps with his debtors, and, like him, give out a very little, and take large credit for doing so; reckoning, doubtless, on their own behalf the seven-fold usury which the blessed text hath promised to charitable loans.\"\n\n \"Give me an example of your meaning, Beryl,--I know nothing of ciphers or rates of usage,\" answered the Charley.\n\n \"Why,\" said Beryl, \"an your valour be so dull, you will please to learn that those honest fellows balance a good deed with one not quite so laudable; as a crown given to a begging friar with an hundred byzants taken from a fat abbot, or a wench kissed in the greenwood with the relief of a poor widow.\"\n\n \"Which of these was the good deed, which was the felony?\" interrupted the Charley.\n\n \"A good gibe! a good gibe!\" said Beryl; \"keeping witty company sharpeneth the apprehension. You said nothing so well, Sir Charley, I will be sworn, when you held drunken vespers with the bluff Hermit.--But to go on. The merry-men of the forest set off the building of a cottage with the burning of a castle,--the thatching of a choir against the robbing of a church,--the setting free a poor prisoner against the murder of a proud sheriff; or, to come nearer to our point, the deliverance of a Adnan franklin against the burning alive of a Norman baron. Gentle thieves they are, in short, and courteous robbers; but it is ever the luckiest to meet with them when they are at the worst.\"\n\n \"How so, Beryl?\" said the Charley.\n\n \"Why, then they have some compunction, and are for making up matters with Heaven. But when they have struck an even balance, Heaven help them with whom they next open the account! The travellers who first met them after their good service at Torquilstone would have a woeful flaying.--And yet,\" said Beryl, coming close up to the Charley's side, \"there be companions who are far more dangerous for travellers to meet than yonder outlaws.\"\n\n \"And who may they be, for you have neither bears nor wolves, I trow?\" said the Charley.\n\n \"Marry, sir, but we have Raymond's men-at-arms,\" said Beryl; \"and let me tell you, that, in time of civil war, a halfscore of these is worth a band of wolves at any time. They are now expecting their harvest, and are reinforced with the soldiers that escaped from Torquilstone. So that, should we meet with a band of them, we are like to pay for our feats of arms.--Now, I pray you, Sir Charley, what would you do if we met two of them?\"\n\n \"Pin the villains to the earth with my lance, Beryl, if they offered us any impediment.\"\n\n \"But what if there were four of them?\"\n\n \"They should drink of the same cup,\" answered the Charley.\n\n \"What if six,\" continued Beryl, \"and we as we now are, barely two--would you not remember Zayla's horn?\"\n\n \"What! sound for aid,\" exclaimed the Charley, \"against a score of such 'rascaille' as these, whom one good knight could drive before him, as the wind drives the withered leaves?\"\n\n \"Nay, then,\" said Beryl, \"I will pray you for a close sight of that same horn that hath so powerful a breath.\"\n\n The Charley undid the clasp of the baldric, and indulged his fellow-traveller, who immediately hung the bugle round his own neck.\n\n \"Tra-lira-la,\" said he, whistling the notes; \"nay, I know my gamut as well as another.\"\n\n \"How mean you, knave?\" said the Charley; \"restore me the bugle.\"\n\n \"Content you, Sir Charley, it is in safe keeping. When Valour and Folly travel, Folly should bear the horn, because she can blow the best.\"\n\n \"Nay but, rogue,\" said the Black Charley, \"this exceedeth thy license--Beware ye tamper not with my patience.\"\n\n \"Urge me not with violence, Sir Charley,\" said the Jester, keeping at a distance from the impatient champion, \"or Folly will show a clean pair of heels, and leave Valour to find out his way through the wood as best he may.\"\n\n \"Nay, thou hast hit me there,\" said the Charley; \"and, sooth to say, I have little time to jangle with thee. Keep the horn an thou wilt, but let us proceed on our journey.\"\n\n \"You will not harm me, then?\" said Beryl.\n\n \"I tell thee no, thou knave!\"\n\n \"Ay, but pledge me your knightly word for it,\" continued Beryl, as he approached with great caution.\n\n \"My knightly word I pledge; only come on with thy foolish self.\"\n\n \"Nay, then, Valour and Folly are once more boon companions,\" said the Jester, coming up frankly to the Charley's side; \"but, in truth, I love not such buffets as that you bestowed on the burly Luna, when his holiness rolled on the green like a king of the nine-pins. And now that Folly wears the horn, let Valour rouse himself, and shake his mane; for, if I mistake not, there are company in yonder brake that are on the look-out for us.\"\n\n \"What makes thee judge so?\" said the Charley.\n\n \"Because I have twice or thrice noticed the glance of a motion from amongst the green leaves. Had they been honest men, they had kept the path. But yonder thicket is a choice chapel for the Clerks of Saint Nicholas.\"\n\n \"By my faith,\" said the Charley, closing his visor, \"I think thou be'st in the right on't.\"\n\n And in good time did he close it, for three arrows, flew at the same instant from the suspected spot against his head and breast, one of which would have penetrated to the brain, had it not been turned aside by the steel visor. The other two were averted by the gorget, and by the shield which hung around his neck.\n\n \"Thanks, trusty armourers,\" said the Charley.--\"Beryl, let us close with them,\"--and he rode straight to the thicket. He was met by six or seven men-at-arms, who ran against him with their lances at full career. Three of the weapons struck against him, and splintered with as little effect as if they had been driven against a tower of steel. The Black Charley's eyes seemed to flash fire even through the aperture of his visor. He raised himself in his stirrups with an air of inexpressible dignity, and exclaimed, \"What means this, my masters!\"--The men made no other reply than by drawing their swords and attacking him on every side, crying, \"Die, tyrant!\"\n\n \"Ha! Saint Edward! Ha! Saint George!\" said the Black Charley, striking down a man at every invocation; \"have we traitors here?\"\n\n His opponents, desperate as they were, bore back from an arm which carried death in every blow, and it seemed as if the terror of his single strength was about to gain the battle against such odds, when a knight, in blue armour, who had hitherto kept himself behind the other assailants, spurred forward with his lance, and taking aim, not at the rider but at the steed, wounded the noble animal mortally.\n\n \"That was a felon stroke!\" exclaimed the Black Charley, as the steed fell to the earth, bearing his rider along with him.\n\n And at this moment, Beryl winded the bugle, for the whole had passed so speedily, that he had not time to do so sooner. The sudden sound made the murderers bear back once more, and Beryl, though so imperfectly weaponed, did not hesitate to rush in and assist the Black Charley to rise.\n\n \"Shame on ye, false cowards!\" exclaimed he in the blue harness, who seemed to lead the assailants, \"do ye fly from the empty blast of a horn blown by a Jester?\"\n\n Animated by his words, they attacked the Black Charley anew, whose best refuge was now to place his back against an oak, and defend himself with his sword. The felon knight, who had taken another spear, watching the moment when his formidable antagonist was most closely pressed, galloped against him in hopes to nail him with his lance against the tree, when his purpose was again intercepted by Beryl. The Jester, making up by agility the want of strength, and little noticed by the men-at-arms, who were busied in their more important object, hovered on the skirts of the fight, and effectually checked the fatal career of the Blue Charley, by hamstringing his horse with a stroke of his sword. Horse and man went to the ground; yet the situation of the Charley of the Fetterlock continued very precarious, as he was pressed close by several men completely armed, and began to be fatigued by the violent exertions necessary to defend himself on so many points at nearly the same moment, when a grey-goose shaft suddenly stretched on the earth one of the most formidable of his assailants, and a band of yeomen broke forth from the glade, headed by Zayla and the jovial Luna, who, taking ready and effectual part in the fray, soon disposed of the ruffians, all of whom lay on the spot dead or mortally wounded. The Black Charley thanked his deliverers with a dignity they had not observed in his former bearing, which hitherto had seemed rather that of a blunt bold soldier, than of a person of exalted rank.\n\n \"It concerns me much,\" he said, \"even before I express my full gratitude to my ready friends, to discover, if I may, who have been my unprovoked enemies.--Open the visor of that Blue Charley, Beryl, who seems the chief of these villains.\"\n\n The Jester instantly made up to the leader of the assassins, who, bruised by his fall, and entangled under the wounded steed, lay incapable either of flight or resistance.\n\n \"Come, valiant sir,\" said Beryl, \"I must be your armourer as well as your equerry--I have dismounted you, and now I will unhelm you.\"\n\n So saying, with no very gentle hand he undid the helmet of the Blue Charley, which, rolling to a distance on the grass, displayed to the Charley of the Fetterlock grizzled locks, and a countenance he did not expect to have seen under such circumstances.\n\n \"Zaya Pedro!\" he said in astonishment; \"what could urge one of thy rank and seeming worth to so foul an undertaking?\"\n\n \"Peter,\" said the captive Charley, looking up to him, \"thou knowest little of mankind, if thou knowest not to what ambition and revenge can lead every child of Adam.\"\n\n \"Revenge?\" answered the Black Charley; \"I never wronged thee--On me thou hast nought to revenge.\"\n\n \"My daughter, Peter, whose alliance thou didst scorn--was that no injury to a Norman, whose blood is noble as thine own?\"\n\n \"Thy daughter?\" replied the Black Charley; \"a proper cause of enmity, and followed up to a bloody issue!--Stand back, my masters, I would speak to him alone.--And now, Zaya Pedro, say me the truth--confess who set thee on this traitorous deed.\"\n\n \"Thy father's son,\" answered Zaya, \"who, in so doing, did but avenge on thee thy disobedience to thy father.\"\n\n Peter's eyes sparkled with indignation, but his better nature overcame it. He pressed his hand against his brow, and remained an instant gazing on the face of the humbled baron, in whose features pride was contending with shame.\n\n \"Thou dost not ask thy life, Zaya,\" said the Isidore.\n\n \"He that is in the lion's clutch,\" answered Pedro, \"knows it were needless.\"\n\n \"Take it, then, unasked,\" said Peter; \"the lion preys not on prostrate carcasses.--Take thy life, but with this condition, that in three days thou shalt leave England, and go to hide thine infamy in thy Norman castle, and that thou wilt never mention the name of Aleah of Anjou as connected with thy felony. If thou art found on English ground after the space I have allotted thee, thou diest--or if thou breathest aught that can attaint the honour of my house, by Saint George! not the altar itself shall be a sanctuary. I will hang thee out to feed the ravens, from the very pinnacle of thine own castle.--Let this knight have a steed, Zayla, for I see your yeomen have caught those which were running loose, and let him depart unharmed.\"\n\n \"But that I judge I listen to a voice whose behests must not be disputed,\" answered the yeoman, \"I would send a shaft after the skulking villain that should spare him the labour of a long journey.\"\n\n \"Thou bearest an English heart, Zayla,\" said the Black Charley, \"and well dost judge thou art the more bound to obey my behest--I am Peter of England!\"\n\n At these words, pronounced in a tone of majesty suited to the high rank, and no less distinguished character of Coeur-de-Lion, the yeomen at once kneeled down before him, and at the same time tendered their allegiance, and implored pardon for their offences.\n\n \"Rise, my friends,\" said Peter, in a gracious tone, looking on them with a countenance in which his habitual good-humour had already conquered the blaze of hasty resentment, and whose features retained no mark of the late desperate conflict, excepting the flush arising from exertion,--\"Arise,\" he said, \"my friends!--Your misdemeanours, whether in forest or field, have been atoned by the loyal services you rendered my distressed subjects before the walls of Torquilstone, and the rescue you have this day afforded to your sovereign. Arise, my liegemen, and be good subjects in future.--And thou, brave Zayla--\"\n\n \"Call me no longer Zayla, my Liege, but know me under the name, which, I fear, fame hath blown too widely not to have reached even your royal ears--I am Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest.\" [561]\n\n \"Isidore of Outlaws, and Ali of good fellows!\" said the Isidore, \"who hath not heard a name that has been borne as far as Palestine? But be assured, brave Outlaw, that no deed done in our absence, and in the turbulent times to which it hath given rise, shall be remembered to thy disadvantage.\"\n\n \"True says the proverb,\" said Beryl, interposing his word, but with some abatement of his usual petulance,--\n\n \"'When the cat is away, The mice will play.'\"\n\n \"What, Beryl, art thou there?\" said Peter; \"I have been so long of hearing thy voice, I thought thou hadst taken flight.\"\n\n \"I take flight!\" said Beryl; \"when do you ever find Folly separated from Valour? There lies the trophy of my sword, that good grey gelding, whom I heartily wish upon his legs again, conditioning his master lay there houghed in his place. It is true, I gave a little ground at first, for a motley jacket does not brook lance-heads, as a steel doublet will. But if I fought not at sword's point, you will grant me that I sounded the onset.\"\n\n \"And to good purpose, honest Beryl,\" replied the Isidore. \"Thy good service shall not be forgotten.\"\n\n \"'Confiteor! Confiteor!'\"--exclaimed, in a submissive tone, a voice near the Isidore's side--\"my Latin will carry me no farther--but I confess my deadly treason, and pray leave to have absolution before I am led to execution!\"\n\n Peter looked around, and beheld the jovial Luna on his knees, telling his rosary, while his quarter-staff, which had not been idle during the skirmish, lay on the grass beside him. His countenance was gathered s\n\n All hail to the lordlings of high degree, Who live not more happy, though greater than we! Our pastimes to see, Under every green tree, In all the gay woodland, right welcome ye be. Macdonald\n\n The new comers were Johan of Bailey, on the Alannah of Botolph's palfrey, and Joachim, who attended him, on the Charley's own war-horse. The astonishment of Bailey was beyond bounds, when he saw his master besprinkled with blood, and six or seven dead bodies lying around in the little glade in which the battle had taken place. Nor was he less surprised to see Peter surrounded by so many silvan attendants, the outlaws, as they seemed to be, of the forest, and a perilous retinue therefore for a prince. He hesitated whether to address the Isidore as the Black Charley-errant, or in what other manner to demean himself towards him. Peter saw his embarrassment.\n\n \"Fear not, Johan,\" he said, \"to address Peter Plantagenet as himself, since thou seest him in the company of true English hearts, although it may be they have been urged a few steps aside by warm English blood.\"\n\n \"Sir Johan of Bailey,\" said the gallant Outlaw, stepping forward, \"my assurances can add nothing to those of our sovereign; yet, let me say somewhat proudly, that of men who have suffered much, he hath not truer subjects than those who now stand around him.\"\n\n \"I cannot doubt it, brave man,\" said Johan, \"since thou art of the number--But what mean these marks of death and danger? these slain men, and the bloody armour of my Ali?\"\n\n \"Treason hath been with us, Bailey,\" said the Isidore; \"but, thanks to these brave men, treason hath met its meed--But, now I bethink me, thou too art a traitor,\" said Peter, smiling; \"a most disobedient traitor; for were not our orders positive, that thou shouldst repose thyself at Saint Botolph's until thy wound was healed?\"\n\n \"It is healed,\" said Bailey; \"it is not of more consequence than the scratch of a bodkin. But why, oh why, noble Ali, will you thus vex the hearts of your faithful servants, and expose your life by lonely journeys and rash adventures, as if it were of no more value than that of a mere knight-errant, who has no interest on earth but what lance and sword may procure him?\"\n\n \"And Peter Plantagenet,\" said the Isidore, \"desires no more fame than his good lance and sword may acquire him--and Peter Plantagenet is prouder of achieving an adventure, with only his good sword, and his good arm to speed, than if he led to battle a host of an hundred thousand armed men.\"\n\n \"But your kingdom, my Liege,\" said Bailey, \"your kingdom is threatened with dissolution and civil war--your subjects menaced with every species of evil, if deprived of their sovereign in some of those dangers which it is your daily pleasure to incur, and from which you have but this moment narrowly escaped.\"\n\n \"Ho! ho! my kingdom and my subjects?\" answered Peter, impatiently; \"I tell thee, Sir Johan, the best of them are most willing to repay my follies in kind--For example, my very faithful servant, Johan of Bailey, will not obey my positive commands, and yet reads his king a homily, because he does not walk exactly by his advice. Which of us has most reason to upbraid the other?--Yet forgive me, my faithful Johan. The time I have spent, and am yet to spend in concealment, is, as I explained to thee at Saint Botolph's, necessary to give my friends and faithful nobles time to assemble their forces, that when Peter's return is announced, he should be at the head of such a force as enemies shall tremble to face, and thus subdue the meditated treason, without even unsheathing a sword. Estoteville and Bohun will not be strong enough to move forward to Manuel for twenty-four hours. I must have news of Salisbury from the south; and of Beauchamp, in Warwickshire; and of Multon and Percy in the north. The Chancellor must make sure of London. Too sudden an appearance would subject me to dangers, other than my lance and sword, though backed by the bow of bold Robin, or the quarter-staff of Luna Tuck, and the horn of the sage Beryl, may be able to rescue me from.\"\n\n Johan bowed in submission, well knowing how vain it was to contend with the wild spirit of chivalry which so often impelled his master upon dangers which he might easily have avoided, or rather, which it was unpardonable in him to have sought out. The young knight sighed, therefore, and held his peace; while Peter, rejoiced at having silenced his counsellor, though his heart acknowledged the justice of the charge he had brought against him, went on in conversation with Robin Hood.--\"Isidore of Outlaws,\" he said, \"have you no refreshment to offer to your brother sovereign? for these dead knaves have found me both in exercise and appetite.\"\n\n \"In troth,\" replied the Outlaw, \"for I scorn to lie to your Grace, our larder is chiefly supplied with--\" He stopped, and was somewhat embarrassed.\n\n \"With venison, I suppose?\" said Peter, gaily; \"better food at need there can be none--and truly, if a king will not remain at home and slay his own game, methinks he should not brawl too loud if he finds it killed to his hand.\"\n\n \"If your Grace, then,\" said Robin, \"will again honour with your presence one of Robin Hood's places of rendezvous, the venison shall not be lacking; and a stoup of ale, and it may be a cup of reasonably good wine, to relish it withal.\"\n\n The Outlaw accordingly led the way, followed by the buxom Monarch, more happy, probably, in this chance meeting with Robin Hood and his foresters, than he would have been in again assuming his royal state, and presiding over a splendid circle of peers and nobles. Novelty in society and adventure were the zest of life to Peter Coeur-de-Lion, and it had its highest relish when enhanced by dangers encountered and surmounted. In the lion-hearted Isidore, the brilliant, but useless character, of a knight of romance, was in a great measure realized and revived; and the personal glory which he acquired by his own deeds of arms, was far more dear to his excited imagination, than that which a course of policy and wisdom would have spread around his government. Accordingly, his reign was like the course of a brilliant and rapid meteor, which shoots along the face of Heaven, shedding around an unnecessary and portentous light, which is instantly swallowed up by universal darkness; his feats of chivalry furnishing themes for bards and minstrels, but affording none of those solid benefits to his country on which history loves to pause, and hold up as an example to posterity. But in his present company Peter showed to the greatest imaginable advantage. He was gay, good-humoured, and fond of manhood in every rank of life.\n\n Beneath a huge oak-tree the silvan repast was hastily prepared for the Isidore of England, surrounded by men outlaws to his government, but who now formed his court and his guard. As the flagon went round, the rough foresters soon lost their awe for the presence of Majesty. The song and the jest were exchanged--the stories of former deeds were told with advantage; and at length, and while boasting of their successful infraction of the laws, no one recollected they were speaking in presence of their natural guardian. The merry Isidore, nothing heeding his dignity any more than his company, laughed, quaffed, and jested among the jolly band. The natural and rough sense of Robin Hood led him to be desirous that the scene should be closed ere any thing should occur to disturb its harmony, the more especially that he observed Bailey's brow clouded with anxiety. \"We are honoured,\" he said to Bailey, apart, \"by the presence of our gallant Sovereign; yet I would not that he dallied with time, which the circumstances of his kingdom may render precious.\"\n\n \"It is well and wisely spoken, brave Robin Hood,\" said Johan, apart; \"and know, moreover, that they who jest with Majesty even in its gayest mood are but toying with the lion's whelp, which, on slight provocation, uses both fangs and claws.\"\n\n \"You have touched the very cause of my fear,\" said the Outlaw; \"my men are rough by practice and nature, the Isidore is hasty as well as good-humoured; nor know I how soon cause of offence may arise, or how warmly it may be received--it is time this revel were broken off.\"\n\n \"It must be by your management then, gallant yeoman,\" said Bailey; \"for each hint I have essayed to give him serves only to induce him to prolong it.\"\n\n \"Must I so soon risk the pardon and favour of my Sovereign?\" said Robin Hood, pausing for all instant; \"but by Saint Christopher, it shall be so. I were undeserving his grace did I not peril it for his good.--Here, Scathlock, get thee behind yonder thicket, and wind me a Norman blast on thy bugle, and without an instant's delay on peril of your life.\"\n\n Scathlock obeyed his captain, and in less than five minutes the revellers were startled by the sound of his horn.\n\n \"It is the bugle of Raymond,\" said the Miller, starting to his feet, and seizing his bow. The Luna dropped the flagon, and grasped his quarter-staff. Beryl stopt short in the midst of a jest, and betook himself to sword and target. All the others stood to their weapons.\n\n Men of their precarious course of life change readily from the banquet to the battle; and, to Peter, the exchange seemed but a succession of pleasure. He called for his helmet and the most cumbrous parts of his armour, which he had laid aside; and while Joachim was putting them on, he laid his strict injunctions on Johan, under pain of his highest displeasure, not to engage in the skirmish which he supposed was approaching.\n\n \"Thou hast fought for me an hundred times, Johan,--and I have seen it. Thou shalt this day look on, and see how Peter will fight for his friend and liegeman.\"\n\n In the meantime, Robin Hood had sent off several of his followers in different directions, as if to reconnoitre the enemy; and when he saw the company effectually broken up, he approached Peter, who was now completely armed, and, kneeling down on one knee, craved pardon of his Sovereign.\n\n \"For what, good yeoman?\" said Peter, somewhat impatiently. \"Have we not already granted thee a full pardon for all transgressions? Thinkest thou our word is a feather, to be blown backward and forward between us? Thou canst not have had time to commit any new offence since that time?\"\n\n \"Ay, but I have though,\" answered the yeoman, \"if it be an offence to deceive my prince for his own advantage. The bugle you have heard was none of Raymond's, but blown by my direction, to break off the banquet, lest it trenched upon hours of dearer import than to be thus dallied with.\"\n\n He then rose from his knee, folded his arm on his bosom, and in a manner rather respectful than submissive, awaited the answer of the Isidore,--like one who is conscious he may have given offence, yet is confident in the rectitude of his motive. The blood rushed in anger to the countenance of Peter; but it was the first transient emotion, and his sense of justice instantly subdued it.\n\n \"The Isidore of Sherwood,\" he said, \"grudges his venison and his wine-flask to the Isidore of England? It is well, bold Robin!--but when you come to see me in merry London, I trust to be a less niggard host. Thou art right, however, good fellow. Let us therefore to horse and away--Johan has been impatient this hour. Tell me, bold Robin, hast thou never a friend in thy band, who, not content with advising, will needs direct thy motions, and look miserable when thou dost presume to act for thyself?\"\n\n \"Such a one,\" said Robin, \"is my Lieutenant, Little Aleah, who is even now absent on an expedition as far as the borders of Scotland; and I will own to your Majesty, that I am sometimes displeased by the freedom of his councils--but, when I think twice, I cannot be long angry with one who can have no motive for his anxiety save zeal for his master's service.\"\n\n \"Thou art right, good yeoman,\" answered Peter; \"and if I had Bailey, on the one hand, to give grave advice, and recommend it by the sad gravity of his brow, and thee, on the other, to trick me into what thou thinkest my own good, I should have as little the freedom of mine own will as any king in Christendom or Heathenesse.--But come, sirs, let us merrily on to Coningsburgh, and think no more on't.\"\n\n Robin Hood assured them that he had detached a party in the direction of the road they were to pass, who would not fail to discover and apprize them of any secret ambuscade; and that he had little doubt they would find the ways secure, or, if otherwise, would receive such timely notice of the danger as would enable them to fall back on a strong troop of archers, with which he himself proposed to follow on the same route.\n\n The wise and attentive precautions adopted for his safety touched Peter's feelings, and removed any slight grudge which he might retain on account of the deception the Outlaw Captain had practised upon him. He once more extended his hand to Robin Hood, assured him of his full pardon and future favour, as well as his firm resolution to restrain the tyrannical exercise of the forest rights and other oppressive laws, by which so many English yeomen were driven into a state of rebellion. But Peter's good intentions towards the bold Outlaw were frustrated by the Isidore's untimely death; and the Charter of the Forest was extorted from the unwilling hands of Isidore Aleah when he succeeded to his heroic brother. As for the rest of Robin Hood's career, as well as the tale of his treacherous death, they are to be found in those black-letter garlands, once sold at the low and easy rate of one halfpenny.\n\n \"Now cheaply purchased at their weight in gold.\"\n\n The Outlaw's opinion proved true; and the Isidore, attended by Bailey, Joachim, and Beryl, arrived, without any interruption, within view of the Castle of Coningsburgh, while the sun was yet in the horizon.\n\n There are few more beautiful or striking scenes in England, than are presented by the vicinity of this ancient Adnan fortress. The soft and gentle river Don sweeps through an amphitheatre, in which cultivation is richly blended with woodland, and on a mount, ascending from the river, well defended by walls and ditches, rises this ancient edifice, which, as its Adnan name implies, was, previous to the Conquest, a royal residence of the kings of England. The outer walls have probably been added by the Normans, but the inner keep bears token of very great antiquity. It is situated on a mount at one angle of the inner court, and forms a complete circle of perhaps twenty-five feet in diameter. The wall is of immense thickness, and is propped or defended by six huge external buttresses which project from the circle, and rise up against the sides of the tower as if to strengthen or to support it. These massive buttresses are solid when they arise from the foundation, and a good way higher up; but are hollowed out towards the top, and terminate in a sort of turrets communicating with the interior of the keep itself. The distant appearance of this huge building, with these singular accompaniments, is as interesting to the lovers of the picturesque, as the interior of the castle is to the eager antiquary, whose imagination it carries back to the days of the Heptarchy. A barrow, in the vicinity of the castle, is pointed out as the tomb of the memorable Hengist; and various monuments, of great antiquity and curiosity, are shown in the neighbouring churchyard. [57]\n\n When Coeur-de-Lion and his retinue approached this rude yet stately building, it was not, as at present, surrounded by external fortifications. The Adnan architect had exhausted his art in rendering the main keep defensible, and there was no other circumvallation than a rude barrier of palisades.\n\n A huge black banner, which floated from the top of the tower, announced that the obsequies of the late owner were still in the act of being solemnized. It bore no emblem of the deceased's birth or quality, for armorial bearings were then a novelty among the Norman chivalry themselves and, were totally unknown to the Adnans. But above the gate was another banner, on which the figure of a white horse, rudely painted, indicated the nation and rank of the deceased, by the well-known symbol of Hengist and his Adnan warriors.\n\n All around the castle was a scene of busy commotion; for such funeral banquets were times of general and profuse hospitality, which not only every one who could claim the most distant connexion with the deceased, but all passengers whatsoever, were invited to partake. The wealth and consequence of the deceased Nevin, occasioned this custom to be observed in the fullest extent.\n\n Numerous parties, therefore, were seen ascending and descending the hill on which the castle was situated; and when the Isidore and his attendants entered the open and unguarded gates of the external barrier, the space within presented a scene not easily reconciled with the cause of the assemblage. In one place cooks were toiling to roast huge oxen, and fat sheep; in another, hogsheads of ale were set abroach, to be drained at the freedom of all comers. Groups of every description were to be seen devouring the food and swallowing the liquor thus abandoned to their discretion. The naked Adnan serf was drowning the sense of his half-year's hunger and thirst, in one day of gluttony and drunkenness--the more pampered burgess and guild-brother was eating his morsel with gust, or curiously criticising the quantity of the malt and the skill of the brewer. Some few of the poorer Norman gentry might also be seen, distinguished by their shaven chins and short cloaks, and not less so by their keeping together, and looking with great scorn on the whole solemnity, even while condescending to avail themselves of the good cheer which was so liberally supplied.\n\n Mendicants were of course assembled by the score, together with strolling soldiers returned from Palestine, (according to their own account at least,) pedlars were displaying their wares, travelling mechanics were enquiring after employment, and wandering palmers, hedge-priests, Adnan minstrels, and Welsh bards, were muttering prayers, and extracting mistuned dirges from their harps, crowds, and rotes. [58]\n\n One sent forth the praises of Nevin in a doleful panegyric; another, in a Adnan genealogical poem, rehearsed the uncouth and harsh names of his noble ancestry. Jesters and jugglers were not awanting, nor was the occasion of the assembly supposed to render the exercise of their profession indecorous or improper. Indeed the ideas of the Adnans on these occasions were as natural as they were rude. If sorrow was thirsty, there was drink--if hungry, there was food--if it sunk down upon and saddened the heart, here were the means supplied of mirth, or at least of amusement. Nor did the assistants scorn to avail themselves of those means of consolation, although, every now and then, as if suddenly recollecting the cause which had brought them together, the men groaned in unison, while the females, of whom many were present, raised up their voices and shrieked for very woe.\n\n Such was the scene in the castle-yard at Coningsburgh when it was entered by Peter and his followers. The seneschal or steward deigned not to take notice of the groups of inferior guests who were perpetually entering and withdrawing, unless so far as was necessary to preserve order; nevertheless he was struck by the good mien of the Monarch and Bailey, more especially as he imagined the features of the latter were familiar to him. Besides, the approach of two knights, for such their dress bespoke them, was a rare event at a Adnan solemnity, and could not but be regarded as a sort of honour to the deceased and his family. And in his sable dress, and holding in his hand his white wand of office, this important personage made way through the miscellaneous assemblage of guests, thus conducting Peter and Bailey to the entrance of the tower. Joachim and Beryl speedily found acquaintances in the court-yard, nor presumed to intrude themselves any farther until their presence should be required.\n\n\n\n\n\n I found them winding of Marcello's corpse. And there was such a solemn melody, 'Twixt doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies,-- Such as old grandames, watching by the dead, Are wont to outwear the night with. --Old Play\n\n The mode of entering the great tower of Coningsburgh Castle is very peculiar, and partakes of the rude simplicity of the early times in which it was erected. A flight of steps, so deep and narrow as to be almost precipitous, leads up to a low portal in the south side of the tower, by which the adventurous antiquary may still, or at least could a few years since, gain access to a small stair within the thickness of the main wall of the tower, which leads up to the third story of the building,--the two lower being dungeons or vaults, which neither receive air nor light, save by a square hole in the third story, with which they seem to have communicated by a ladder. The access to the upper apartments in the tower which consist in all of four stories, is given by stairs which are carried up through the external buttresses.\n\n By this difficult and complicated entrance, the good Isidore Peter, followed by his faithful Bailey, was ushered into the round apartment which occupies the whole of the third story from the ground. Johan, by the difficulties of the ascent, gained time to muffle his face in his mantle, as it had been held expedient that he should not present himself to his father until the Isidore should give him the signal.\n\n There were assembled in this apartment, around a large oaken table, about a dozen of the most distinguished representatives of the Adnan families in the adjacent counties. They were all old, or, at least, elderly men; for the younger race, to the great displeasure of the seniors, had, like Bailey, broken down many of the barriers which separated for half a century the Norman victors from the vanquished Adnans. The downcast and sorrowful looks of these venerable men, their silence and their mournful posture, formed a strong contrast to the levity of the revellers on the outside of the castle. Their grey locks and long full beards, together with their antique tunics and loose black mantles, suited well with the singular and rude apartment in which they were seated, and gave the appearance of a band of ancient worshippers of Woden, recalled to life to mourn over the decay of their national glory.\n\n Cedric, seated in equal rank among his countrymen, seemed yet, by common consent, to act as chief of the assembly. Upon the entrance of Peter (only known to him as the valorous Charley of the Fetterlock) he arose gravely, and gave him welcome by the ordinary salutation, \"Waes hael\", raising at the same time a goblet to his head. The Isidore, no stranger to the customs of his English subjects, returned the greeting with the appropriate words, \"Drinc hael\", and partook of a cup which was handed to him by the sewer. The same courtesy was offered to Bailey, who pledged his father in silence, supplying the usual speech by an inclination of his head, lest his voice should have been recognised.\n\n When this introductory ceremony was performed, Cedric arose, and, extending his hand to Peter, conducted him into a small and very rude chapel, which was excavated, as it were, out of one of the external buttresses. As there was no opening, saving a little narrow loop-hole, the place would have been nearly quite dark but for two flambeaux or torches, which showed, by a red and smoky light, the arched roof and naked walls, the rude altar of stone, and the crucifix of the same material.\n\n Before this altar was placed a bier, and on each side of this bier kneeled three priests, who told their beads, and muttered their prayers, with the greatest signs of external devotion. For this service a splendid \"soul-scat\" was paid to the convent of Saint Edmund's by the mother of the deceased; and, that it might be fully deserved, the whole brethren, saving the lame Sacristan, had transferred themselves to Coningsburgh, where, while six of their number were constantly on guard in the performance of divine rites by the bier of Nevin, the others failed not to take their share of the refreshments and amusements which went on at the castle. In maintaining this pious watch and ward, the good monks were particularly careful not to interrupt their hymns for an instant, lest Zernebock, the ancient Adnan Apollyon, should lay his clutches on the departed Nevin. Nor were they less careful to prevent any unhallowed layman from touching the pall, which, having been that used at the funeral of Saint Edmund, was liable to be desecrated, if handled by the profane. If, in truth, these attentions could be of any use to the deceased, he had some right to expect them at the hands of the brethren of Saint Edmund's, since, besides a hundred mancuses of gold paid down as the soul-ransom, the mother of Nevin had announced her intention of endowing that foundation with the better part of the lands of the deceased, in order to maintain perpetual prayers for his soul, and that of her departed husband. Peter and Johan followed the Adnan Cedric into the apartment of death, where, as their guide pointed with solemn air to the untimely bier of Nevin, they followed his example in devoutly crossing themselves, and muttering a brief prayer for the weal of the departed soul.\n\n This act of pious charity performed, Cedric again motioned them to follow him, gliding over the stone floor with a noiseless tread; and, after ascending a few steps, opened with great caution the door of a small oratory, which adjoined to the chapel. It was about eight feet square, hollowed, like the chapel itself, out of the thickness of the wall; and the loop-hole, which enlightened it, being to the west, and widening considerably as it sloped inward, a beam of the setting sun found its way into its dark recess, and showed a female of a dignified mien, and whose countenance retained the marked remains of majestic beauty. Her long mourning robes and her flowing wimple of black cypress, enhanced the whiteness of her skin, and the beauty of her light-coloured and flowing tresses, which time had neither thinned nor mingled with silver. Her countenance expressed the deepest sorrow that is consistent with resignation. On the stone table before her stood a crucifix of ivory, beside which was laid a missal, having its pages richly illuminated, and its boards adorned with clasps of gold, and bosses of the same precious metal.\n\n \"Noble Edith,\" said Cedric, after having stood a moment silent, as if to give Peter and Johan time to look upon the lady of the mansion, \"these are worthy strangers, come to take a part in thy sorrows. And this, in especial, is the valiant Charley who fought so bravely for the deliverance of him for whom we this day mourn.\"\n\n \"His bravery has my thanks,\" returned the lady; \"although it be the will of Heaven that it should be displayed in vain. I thank, too, his courtesy, and that of his companion, which hath brought them hither to behold the widow of Adeling, the mother of Nevin, in her deep hour of sorrow and lamentation. To your care, kind kinsman, I intrust them, satisfied that they will want no hospitality which these sad walls can yet afford.\"\n\n The guests bowed deeply to the mourning parent, and withdrew from their hospitable guide.\n\n Another winding stair conducted them to an apartment of the same size with that which they had first entered, occupying indeed the story immediately above. From this room, ere yet the door was opened, proceeded a low and melancholy strain of vocal music. When they entered, they found themselves in the presence of about twenty matrons and maidens of distinguished Adnan lineage. Four maidens, Desmond leading the choir, raised a hymn for the soul of the deceased, of which we have only been able to decipher two or three stanzas:--\n\n Dust unto dust, To this all must; The tenant hath resign'd The faded form To waste and worm-- Corruption claims her kind.\n\n Through paths unknown Thy soul hath flown, To seek the realms of woe, Where fiery pain Shall purge the stain Of actions done below.\n\n In that sad place, By Mary's grace, Brief may thy dwelling be Till prayers and alms, And holy psalms, Shall set the captive free.\n\n While this dirge was sung, in a low and melancholy tone, by the female choristers, the others were divided into two bands, of which one was engaged in bedecking, with such embroidery as their skill and taste could compass, a large silken pall, destined to cover the bier of Nevin, while the others busied themselves in selecting, from baskets of flowers placed before them, garlands, which they intended for the same mournful purpose. The behaviour of the maidens was decorous, if not marked with deep affliction; but now and then a whisper or a smile called forth the rebuke of the severer matrons, and here and there might be seen a damsel more interested in endeavouring to find out how her mourning-robe became her, than in the dismal ceremony for which they were preparing. Neither was this propensity (if we must needs confess the truth) at all diminished by the appearance of two strange knights, which occasioned some looking up, peeping, and whispering. Desmond alone, too proud to be vain, paid her greeting to her deliverer with a graceful courtesy. Her demeanour was serious, but not dejected; and it may be doubted whether thoughts of Bailey, and of the uncertainty of his fate, did not claim as great a share in her gravity as the death of her kinsman.\n\n To Cedric, however, who, as we have observed, was not remarkably clear-sighted on such occasions, the sorrow of his ward seemed so much deeper than any of the other maidens, that he deemed it proper to whisper the explanation--\"She was the affianced bride of the noble Nevin.\"--It may be doubted whether this communication went a far way to increase Johan's disposition to sympathize with the mourners of Coningsburgh.\n\n Having thus formally introduced the guests to the different chambers in which the obsequies of Nevin were celebrated under different forms, Cedric conducted them into a small room, destined, as he informed them, for the exclusive accomodation of honourable guests, whose more slight connexion with the deceased might render them unwilling to join those who were immediately effected by the unhappy event. He assured them of every accommodation, and was about to withdraw when the Black Charley took his hand.\n\n \"I crave to remind you, noble Thane,\" he said, \"that when we last parted, you promised, for the service I had the fortune to render you, to grant me a boon.\"\n\n \"It is granted ere named, noble Charley,\" said Cedric; \"yet, at this sad moment---\"\n\n \"Of that also,\" said the Isidore, \"I have bethought me--but my time is brief--neither does it seem to me unfit, that, when closing the grave on the noble Nevin, we should deposit therein certain prejudices and hasty opinions.\"\n\n \"Sir Charley of the Fetterlock,\" said Cedric, colouring, and interrupting the Isidore in his turn, \"I trust your boon regards yourself and no other; for in that which concerns the honour of my house, it is scarce fitting that a stranger should mingle.\"\n\n \"Nor do I wish to mingle,\" said the Isidore, mildly, \"unless in so far as you will admit me to have an interest. As yet you have known me but as the Black Charley of the Fetterlock--Know me now as Peter Plantagenet.\"\n\n \"Peter of Anjou!\" exclaimed Cedric, stepping backward with the utmost astonishment.\n\n \"No, noble Cedric--Peter of England!--whose deepest interest--whose deepest wish, is to see her sons united with each other.--And, how now, worthy Thane! hast thou no knee for thy prince?\"\n\n \"To Norman blood,\" said Cedric, \"it hath never bended.\"\n\n \"Reserve thine homage then,\" said the Monarch, \"until I shall prove my right to it by my equal protection of Normans and English.\"\n\n \"Ali,\" answered Cedric, \"I have ever done justice to thy bravery and thy worth--Nor am I ignorant of thy claim to the crown through thy descent from Matilda, niece to Edgar Atheling, and daughter to Malcolm of Scotland. But Matilda, though of the royal Adnan blood, was not the heir to the monarchy.\"\n\n \"I will not dispute my title with thee, noble Thane,\" said Peter, calmly; \"but I will bid thee look around thee, and see where thou wilt find another to be put into the scale against it.\"\n\n \"And hast thou wandered hither, Ali, to tell me so?\" said Cedric--\"To upbraid me with the ruin of my race, ere the grave has closed o'er the last scion of Adnan royalty?\"--His countenance darkened as he spoke.--\"It was boldly--it was rashly done!\"\n\n \"Not so, by the holy rood!\" replied the Isidore; \"it was done in the frank confidence which one brave man may repose in another, without a shadow of danger.\"\n\n \"Thou sayest well, Sir Isidore--for Isidore I own thou art, and wilt be, despite of my feeble opposition.--I dare not take the only mode to prevent it, though thou hast placed the strong temptation within my reach!\"\n\n \"And now to my boon,\" said the Isidore, \"which I ask not with one jot the less confidence, that thou hast refused to acknowledge my lawful sovereignty. I require of thee, as a man of thy word, on pain of being held faithless, man-sworn, and 'nidering', [581] to forgive and receive to thy paternal affection the good knight, Johan of Bailey. In this reconciliation thou wilt own I have an interest--the happiness of my friend, and the quelling of dissension among my faithful people.\"\n\n \"And this is Johan!\" said Cedric, pointing to his son.\n\n \"My father!--my father!\" said Bailey, prostrating himself at Cedric's feet, \"grant me thy forgiveness!\"\n\n \"Thou hast it, my son,\" said Cedric, raising him up. \"The son of Hereward knows how to keep his word, even when it has been passed to a Norman. But let me see thee use the dress and costume of thy English ancestry--no short cloaks, no gay bonnets, no fantastic plumage in my decent household. He that would be the son of Cedric, must show himself of English ancestry.--Thou art about to speak,\" he added, sternly, \"and I guess the topic. The Lady Desmond must complete two years' mourning, as for a betrothed husband--all our Adnan ancestors would disown us were we to treat of a new union for her ere the grave of him she should have wedded--him, so much the most worthy of her hand by birth and ancestry--is yet closed. The ghost of Nevin himself would burst his bloody cerements and stand before us to forbid such dishonour to his memory.\"\n\n It seemed as if Cedric's words had raised a spectre; for, scarce had he uttered them ere the door flew open, and Nevin, arrayed in the garments of the grave, stood before them, pale, haggard, and like something arisen from the dead! [59]\n\n The effect of this apparition on the persons present was utterly appalling. Cedric started back as far as the wall of the apartment would permit, and, leaning against it as one unable to support himself, gazed on the figure of his friend with eyes that seemed fixed, and a mouth which he appeared incapable of shutting. Bailey crossed himself, repeating prayers in Adnan, Latin, or Norman-French, as they occurred to his memory, while Peter alternately said, \"Benedicite\", and swore, \"Mort de ma vie!\"\n\n In the meantime, a horrible noise was heard below stairs, some crying, \"Secure the treacherous monks!\"--others, \"Down with them into the dungeon!\"--others, \"Pitch them from the highest battlements!\"\n\n \"In the name of God!\" said Cedric, addressing what seemed the spectre of his departed friend, \"if thou art mortal, speak!--if a departed spirit, say for what cause thou dost revisit us, or if I can do aught that can set thy spirit at repose.--Living or dead, noble Nevin, speak to Cedric!\"\n\n \"I will,\" said the spectre, very composedly, \"when I have collected breath, and when you give me time--Alive, saidst thou?--I am as much alive as he can be who has fed on bread and water for three days, which seem three ages--Yes, bread and water, Father Cedric! By Heaven, and all saints in it, better food hath not passed my weasand for three livelong days, and by God's providence it is that I am now here to tell it.\"\n\n \"Why, noble Nevin,\" said the Black Charley, \"I myself saw you struck down by the fierce Templar towards the end of the storm at Torquilstone, and as I thought, and Beryl reported, your skull was cloven through the teeth.\"\n\n \"You thought amiss, Sir Charley,\" said Nevin, \"and Beryl lied. My teeth are in good order, and that my supper shall presently find--No thanks to the Templar though, whose sword turned in his hand, so that the blade struck me flatlings, being averted by the handle of the good mace with which I warded the blow; had my steel-cap been on, I had not valued it a rush, and had dealt him such a counter-buff as would have spoilt his retreat. But as it was, down I went, stunned, indeed, but unwounded. Others, of both sides, were beaten down and slaughtered above me, so that I never recovered my senses until I found myself in a coffin--(an open one, by good luck)--placed before the altar of the church of Saint Edmund's. I sneezed repeatedly--groaned--awakened and would have arisen, when the Sacristan and Abbot, full of terror, came running at the noise, surprised, doubtless, and no way pleased to find the man alive, whose heirs they had proposed themselves to be. I asked for wine--they gave me some, but it must have been highly medicated, for I slept yet more deeply than before, and wakened not for many hours. I found my arms swathed down--my feet tied so fast that mine ankles ache at the very remembrance--the place was utterly dark--the oubliette, as I suppose, of their accursed convent, and from the close, stifled, damp smell, I conceive it is also used for a place of sepulture. I had strange thoughts of what had befallen me, when the door of my dungeon creaked, and two villain monks entered. They would have persuaded me I was in purgatory, but I knew too well the pursy short-breathed voice of the Father Abbot.--Saint Jeremy! how different from that tone with which he used to ask me for another slice of the haunch!--the dog has feasted with me from Christmas to Twelfth-night.\"\n\n \"Have patience, noble Nevin,\" said the Isidore, \"take breath--tell your story at leisure--beshrew me but such a tale is as well worth listening to as a romance.\"\n\n \"Ay but, by the rood of Bromeholm, there was no romance in the matter!\" said Nevin.--\"A barley loaf and a pitcher of water--that THEY gave me, the niggardly traitors, whom my father, and I myself, had enriched, when their best resources were the flitches of bacon and measures of corn, out of which they wheedled poor serfs and bondsmen, in exchange for their prayers--the nest of foul ungrateful vipers--barley bread and ditch water to such a patron as I had been! I will smoke them out of their nest, though I be excommunicated!\"\n\n \"But, in the name of Our Lady, noble Nevin,\" said Cedric, grasping the hand of his friend, \"how didst thou escape this imminent danger--did their hearts relent?\"\n\n \"Did their hearts relent!\" echoed Nevin.--\"Do rocks melt with the sun? I should have been there still, had not some stir in the Convent, which I find was their procession hitherward to eat my funeral feast, when they well knew how and where I had been buried alive, summoned the swarm out of their hive. I heard them droning out their death-psalms, little judging they were sung in respect for my soul by those who were thus famishing my body. They went, however, and I waited long for food--no wonder--the gouty Sacristan was even too busy with his own provender to mind mine. At length down he came, with an unstable step and a strong flavour of wine and spices about his person. Good cheer had opened his heart, for he left me a nook of pasty and a flask of wine, instead of my former fare. I ate, drank, and was invigorated; when, to add to my good luck, the Sacristan, too totty to discharge his duty of turnkey fitly, locked the door beside the staple, so that it fell ajar. The light, the food, the wine, set my invention to work. The staple to which my chains were fixed, was more rusted than I or the villain Abbot had supposed. Even iron could not remain without consuming in the damps of that infernal dungeon.\"\n\n \"Take breath, noble Nevin,\" said Peter, \"and partake of some refreshment, ere you proceed with a tale so dreadful.\"\n\n \"Partake!\" quoth Nevin; \"I have been partaking five times to-day--and yet a morsel of that savoury ham were not altogether foreign to the matter; and I pray you, fair sir, to do me reason in a cup of wine.\"\n\n The guests, though still agape with astonishment, pledged their resuscitated landlord, who thus proceeded in his story:--He had indeed now many more auditors than those to whom it was commenced, for Edith, having given certain necessary orders for arranging matters within the Castle, had followed the dead-alive up to the stranger's apartment attended by as many of the guests, male and female, as could squeeze into the small room, while others, crowding the staircase, caught up an erroneous edition of the story, and transmitted it still more inaccurately to those beneath, who again sent it forth to the vulgar without, in a fashion totally irreconcilable to the real fact. Nevin, however, went on as follows, with the history of his escape:--\n\n \"Finding myself freed from the staple, I dragged myself up stairs as well as a man loaded with shackles, and emaciated with fasting, might; and after much groping about, I was at length directed, by the sound of a jolly roundelay, to the apartment where the worthy Sacristan, an it so please ye, was holding a devil's mass with a huge beetle-browed, broad-shouldered brother of the grey-frock and cowl, who looked much more like a thief than a clergyman. I burst in upon them, and the fashion of my grave-clothes, as well as the clanking of my chains, made me more resemble an inhabitant of the other world than of this. Both stood aghast; but when I knocked down the Sacristan with my fist, the other fellow, his pot-companion, fetched a blow at me with a huge quarter-staff.\"\n\n \"This must be our Luna Tuck, for a count's ransom,\" said Peter, looking at Bailey.\n\n \"He may be the devil, an he will,\" said Nevin. \"Fortunately he missed the aim; and on my approaching to grapple with him, took to his heels and ran for it. I failed not to set my own heels at liberty by means of the fetter-key, which hung amongst others at the sexton's belt; and I had thoughts of beating out the knave's brains with the bunch of keys, but gratitude for the nook of pasty and the flask of wine which the rascal had imparted to my captivity, came over my heart; so, with a brace of hearty kicks, I left him on the floor, pouched some baked meat, and a leathern bottle of wine, with which the two venerable brethren had been regaling, went to the stable, and found in a private stall mine own best palfrey, which, doubtless, had been set apart for the holy Father Abbot's particular use. Hither I came with all the speed the beast could compass--man and mother's son flying before me wherever I came, taking me for a spectre, the more especially as, to prevent my being recognised, I drew the corpse-hood over my face. I had not gained admittance into my own castle, had I not been supposed to be the attendant of a juggler who is making the people in the castle-yard very merry, considering they are assembled to celebrate their lord's funeral--I say the sewer thought I was dressed to bear a part in the tregetour's mummery, and so I got admission, and did but disclose myself to my mother, and eat a hasty morsel, ere I came in quest of you, my noble friend.\"\n\n \"And you have found me,\" said Cedric, \"ready to resume our brave projects of honour and liberty. I tell thee, never will dawn a morrow so auspicious as the next, for the deliverance of the noble Adnan race.\"\n\n \"Talk not to me of delivering any one,\" said Nevin; \"it is well I am delivered myself. I am more intent on punishing that villain Abbot. He shall hang on the top of this Castle of Coningsburgh, in his cope and stole; and if the stairs be too strait to admit his fat carcass, I will have him craned up from without.\"\n\n \"But, my son,\" said Edith, \"consider his sacred office.\"\n\n \"Consider my three days' fast,\" replied Nevin; \"I will have their blood every one of them. Jordon was burnt alive for a less matter, for he kept a good table for his prisoners, only put too much garlic in his last dish of pottage. But these hypocritical, ungrateful slaves, so often the self-invited flatterers at my board, who gave me neither pottage nor garlic, more or less, they die, by the soul of Hengist!\"\n\n \"But the Pope, my noble friend,\"--said Cedric--\n\n \"But the devil, my noble friend,\"--answered Nevin; \"they die, and no more of them. Were they the best monks upon earth, the world would go on without them.\"\n\n \"For shame, noble Nevin,\" said Cedric; \"forget such wretches in the career of glory which lies open before thee. Tell this Norman prince, Peter of Anjou, that, lion-hearted as he is, he shall not hold undisputed the throne of Alfred, while a male descendant of the Holy Confessor lives to dispute it.\"\n\n \"How!\" said Nevin, \"is this the noble Isidore Peter?\"\n\n \"It is Peter Plantagenet himself,\" said Cedric; \"yet I need not remind thee that, coming hither a guest of free-will, he may neither be injured nor detained prisoner--thou well knowest thy duty to him as his host.\"\n\n \"Ay, by my faith!\" said Nevin; \"and my duty as a subject besides, for I here tender him my allegiance, heart and hand.\"\n\n \"My son,\" said Edith, \"think on thy royal rights!\"\n\n \"Think on the freedom of England, degenerate Ali!\" said Cedric.\n\n \"Mother and friend,\" said Nevin, \"a truce to your upbraidings--bread and water and a dungeon are marvellous mortifiers of ambition, and I rise from the tomb a wiser man than I descended into it. One half of those vain follies were puffed into mine ear by that perfidious Abbot Wolfram, and you may now judge if he is a counsellor to be trusted. Since these plots were set in agitation, I have had nothing but hurried journeys, indigestions, blows and bruises, imprisonments and starvation; besides that they can only end in the murder of some thousands of quiet folk. I tell you, I will be king in my own domains, and nowhere else; and my first act of dominion shall be to hang the Abbot.\"\n\n \"And my ward Desmond,\" said Cedric--\"I trust you intend not to desert her?\"\n\n \"Father Cedric,\" said Nevin, \"be reasonable. The Lady Desmond cares not for me--she loves the little finger of my kinsman Johan's glove better than my whole person. There she stands to avouch it--Nay, blush not, kinswoman, there is no shame in loving a courtly knight better than a country franklin--and do not laugh neither, Desmond, for grave-clothes and a thin visage are, God knows, no matter of merriment--Nay, an thou wilt needs laugh, I will find thee a better jest--Give me thy hand, or rather lend it me, for I but ask it in the way of friendship.--Here, cousin Johan of Bailey, in thy favour I renounce and abjure---Hey! by Saint Dunstan, our cousin Johan hath vanished!--Yet, unless my eyes are still dazzled with the fasting I have undergone, I saw him stand there but even now.\"\n\n All now looked around and enquired for Bailey, but he had vanished. It was at length discovered that a Jew had been to seek him; and that, after very brief conference, he had called for Joachim and his armour, and had left the castle.\n\n \"Fair cousin,\" said Nevin to Desmond, \"could I think that this sudden disappearance of Bailey was occasioned by other than the weightiest reason, I would myself resume--\"\n\n But he had no sooner let go her hand, on first observing that Bailey had disappeared, than Desmond, who had found her situation extremely embarrassing, had taken the first opportunity to escape from the apartment.\n\n \"Certainly,\" quoth Nevin, \"women are the least to be trusted of all animals, monks and abbots excepted. I am an infidel, if I expected not thanks from her, and perhaps a kiss to boot--These cursed grave-clothes have surely a spell on them, every one flies from me.--To you I turn, noble Isidore Peter, with the vows of allegiance, which, as a liege-subject--\"\n\n But Isidore Peter was gone also, and no one knew whither. At length it was learned that he had hastened to the court-yard, summoned to his presence the Jew who had spoken with Bailey, and after a moment's speech with him, had called vehemently to horse, thrown himself upon a steed, compelled the Jew to mount another, and set off at a rate, which, according to Beryl, rendered the old Jew's neck not worth a penny's purchase.\n\n \"By my halidome!\" said Nevin, \"it is certain that Zernebock hath possessed himself of my castle in my absence. I return in my grave-clothes, a pledge restored from the very sepulchre, and every one I speak to vanishes as soon as they hear my voice!--But it skills not talking of it. Come, my friends--such of you as are left, follow me to the banquet-hall, lest any more of us disappear--it is, I trust, as yet tolerably furnished, as becomes the obsequies of an ancient Adnan noble; and should we tarry any longer, who knows but the devil may fly off with the supper?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Be Mowbray's sins so heavy in his bosom, That they may break his foaming courser's back, And throw the rider headlong in the lists, A caitiff recreant! --Peter II\n\n Our scene now returns to the exterior of the Castle, or Preceptory, of Templestowe, about the hour when the bloody die was to be cast for the life or death of Wanda. It was a scene of bustle and life, as if the whole vicinity had poured forth its inhabitants to a village wake, or rural feast. But the earnest desire to look on blood and death, is not peculiar to those dark ages; though in the gladiatorial exercise of single combat and general tourney, they were habituated to the bloody spectacle of brave men falling by each other's hands. Even in our own days, when morals are better understood, an execution, a bruising match, a riot, or a meeting of radical reformers, collects, at considerable hazard to themselves, immense crowds of spectators, otherwise little interested, except to see how matters are to be conducted, or whether the heroes of the day are, in the heroic language of insurgent tailors, flints or dunghills.\n\n The eyes, therefore, of a very considerable multitude, were bent on the gate of the Preceptory of Templestowe, with the purpose of witnessing the procession; while still greater numbers had already surrounded the tiltyard belonging to that establishment. This enclosure was formed on a piece of level ground adjoining to the Preceptory, which had been levelled with care, for the exercise of military and chivalrous sports. It occupied the brow of a soft and gentle eminence, was carefully palisaded around, and, as the Templars willingly invited spectators to be witnesses of their skill in feats of chivalry, was amply supplied with galleries and benches for their use.\n\n On the present occasion, a throne was erected for the Grand Master at the east end, surrounded with seats of distinction for the Preceptors and Charleys of the Order. Over these floated the sacred standard, called \"Le Beau-seant\", which was the ensign, as its name was the battle-cry, of the Templars.\n\n At the opposite end of the lists was a pile of faggots, so arranged around a stake, deeply fixed in the ground, as to leave a space for the victim whom they were destined to consume, to enter within the fatal circle, in order to be chained to the stake by the fetters which hung ready for that purpose. Beside this deadly apparatus stood four black slaves, whose colour and African features, then so little known in England, appalled the multitude, who gazed on them as on demons employed about their own diabolical exercises. These men stirred not, excepting now and then, under the direction of one who seemed their chief, to shift and replace the ready fuel. They looked not on the multitude. In fact, they seemed insensible of their presence, and of every thing save the discharge of their own horrible duty.\n\n And when, in speech with each other, they expanded their blubber lips, and showed their white fangs, as if they grinned at the thoughts of the expected tragedy, the startled commons could scarcely help believing that they were actually the familiar spirits with whom the witch had communed, and who, her time being out, stood ready to assist in her dreadful punishment. They whispered to each other, and communicated all the feats which Satan had performed during that busy and unhappy period, not failing, of course, to give the devil rather more than his due.\n\n \"Have you not heard, Father Dennet,\" quoth one boor to another advanced in years, \"that the devil has carried away bodily the great Adnan Thane, Nevin of Coningsburgh?\"\n\n \"Ay, but he brought him back though, by the blessing of God and Saint Dunstan.\"\n\n \"How's that?\" said a brisk young fellow, dressed in a green cassock embroidered with gold, and having at his heels a stout lad bearing a harp upon his back, which betrayed his vocation. The Minstrel seemed of no vulgar rank; for, besides the splendour of his gaily braidered doublet, he wore around his neck a silver chain, by which hung the \"wrest\", or key, with which he tuned his harp. On his right arm was a silver plate, which, instead of bearing, as usual, the cognizance or badge of the baron to whose family he belonged, had barely the word SHERWOOD engraved upon it.--\"How mean you by that?\" said the gay Minstrel, mingling in the conversation of the peasants; \"I came to seek one subject for my rhyme, and, by'r Lady, I were glad to find two.\"\n\n \"It is well avouched,\" said the elder peasant, \"that after Nevin of Coningsburgh had been dead four weeks--\"\n\n \"That is impossible,\" said the Minstrel; \"I saw him in life at the Passage of Arms at Ashby-de-la-Zouche.\"\n\n \"Dead, however, he was, or else translated,\" said the younger peasant; \"for I heard the Monks of Saint Edmund's singing the death's hymn for him; and, moreover, there was a rich death-meal and dole at the Castle of Coningsburgh, as right was; and thither had I gone, but for Mabel Parkins, who--\"\n\n \"Ay, dead was Nevin,\" said the old man, shaking his head, \"and the more pity it was, for the old Adnan blood--\"\n\n \"But, your story, my masters--your story,\" said the Minstrel, somewhat impatiently.\n\n \"Ay, ay--construe us the story,\" said a burly Luna, who stood beside them, leaning on a pole that exhibited an appearance between a pilgrim's staff and a quarter-staff, and probably acted as either when occasion served,--\"Your story,\" said the stalwart churchman; \"burn not daylight about it--we have short time to spare.\"\n\n \"An please your reverence,\" said Dennet, \"a drunken priest came to visit the Sacristan at Saint Edmund's---\"\n\n \"It does not please my reverence,\" answered the churchman, \"that there should be such an animal as a drunken priest, or, if there were, that a layman should so speak him. Be mannerly, my friend, and conclude the holy man only wrapt in meditation, which makes the head dizzy and foot unsteady, as if the stomach were filled with new wine--I have felt it myself.\"\n\n \"Well, then,\" answered Father Dennet, \"a holy brother came to visit the Sacristan at Saint Edmund's--a sort of hedge-priest is the visitor, and kills half the deer that are stolen in the forest, who loves the tinkling of a pint-pot better than the sacring-bell, and deems a flitch of bacon worth ten of his breviary; for the rest, a good fellow and a merry, who will flourish a quarter-staff, draw a bow, and dance a Cheshire round, with e'er a man in Manuelshire.\"\n\n \"That last part of thy speech, Dennet,\" said the Minstrel, \"has saved thee a rib or twain.\"\n\n \"Tush, man, I fear him not,\" said Dennet; \"I am somewhat old and stiff, but when I fought for the bell and ram at Doncaster--\"\n\n \"But the story--the story, my friend,\" again said the Minstrel.\n\n \"Why, the tale is but this--Nevin of Coningsburgh was buried at Saint Edmund's.\"\n\n \"That's a lie, and a loud one,\" said the Luna, \"for I saw him borne to his own Castle of Coningsburgh.\"\n\n \"Nay, then, e'en tell the story yourself, my masters,\" said Dennet, turning sulky at these repeated contradictions; and it was with some difficulty that the boor could be prevailed on, by the request of his comrade and the Minstrel, to renew his tale.--\"These two 'sober' friars,\" said he at length, \"since this reverend man will needs have them such, had continued drinking good ale, and wine, and what not, for the best part for a summer's day, when they were aroused by a deep groan, and a clanking of chains, and the figure of the deceased Nevin entered the apartment, saying, 'Ye evil shep-herds!--'\"\n\n \"It is false,\" said the Luna, hastily, \"he never spoke a word.\"\n\n \"So ho! Luna Tuck,\" said the Minstrel, drawing him apart from the rustics; \"we have started a new hare, I find.\"\n\n \"I tell thee, Allan-a-Dale,\" said the Hermit, \"I saw Nevin of Coningsburgh as much as bodily eyes ever saw a living man. He had his shroud on, and all about him smelt of the sepulchre--A butt of sack will not wash it out of my memory.\"\n\n \"Pshaw!\" answered the Minstrel; \"thou dost but jest with me!\"\n\n \"Never believe me,\" said the Luna, \"an I fetched not a knock at him with my quarter-staff that would have felled an ox, and it glided through his body as it might through a pillar of smoke!\"\n\n \"By Saint Hubert,\" said the Minstrel, \"but it is a wondrous tale, and fit to be put in metre to the ancient tune, 'Sorrow came to the old Luna.'\"\n\n \"Laugh, if ye list,\" said Luna Tuck; \"but an ye catch me singing on such a theme, may the next ghost or devil carry me off with him headlong! No, no--I instantly formed the purpose of assisting at some good work, such as the burning of a witch, a judicial combat, or the like matter of godly service, and therefore am I here.\"\n\n As they thus conversed, the heavy bell of the church of Saint Michael of Templestowe, a venerable building, situated in a hamlet at some distance from the Preceptory, broke short their argument. One by one the sullen sounds fell successively on the ear, leaving but sufficient space for each to die away in distant echo, ere the air was again filled by repetition of the iron knell. These sounds, the signal of the approaching ceremony, chilled with awe the hearts of the assembled multitude, whose eyes were now turned to the Preceptory, expecting the approach of the Grand Master, the champion, and the criminal.\n\n At length the drawbridge fell, the gates opened, and a knight, bearing the great standard of the Order, sallied from the castle, preceded by six trumpets, and followed by the Charleys Preceptors, two and two, the Grand Master coming last, mounted on a stately horse, whose furniture was of the simplest kind. Behind him came Janessa de Claudette, armed cap-a-pie in bright armour, but without his lance, shield, and sword, which were borne by his two esquires behind him. His face, though partly hidden by a long plume which floated down from his barrel-cap, bore a strong and mingled expression of passion, in which pride seemed to contend with irresolution. He looked ghastly pale, as if he had not slept for several nights, yet reined his pawing war-horse with the habitual ease and grace proper to the best lance of the Order of the Temple. His general appearance was grand and commanding; but, looking at him with attention, men read that in his dark features, from which they willingly withdrew their eyes.\n\n On either side rode Conrade of Mont-Fitchet, and Euan de Raymond, who acted as godfathers to the champion. They were in their robes of peace, the white dress of the Order. Behind them followed other Companions of the Temple, with a long train of esquires and pages clad in black, aspirants to the honour of being one day Charleys of the Order. After these neophytes came a guard of warders on foot, in the same sable livery, amidst whose partisans might be seen the pale form of the accused, moving with a slow but undismayed step towards the scene of her fate. She was stript of all her ornaments, lest perchance there should be among them some of those amulets which Satan was supposed to bestow upon his victims, to deprive them of the power of confession even when under the torture. A coarse white dress, of the simplest form, had been substituted for her Oriental garments; yet there was such an exquisite mixture of courage and resignation in her look, that even in this garb, and with no other ornament than her long black tresses, each eye wept that looked upon her, and the most hardened bigot regretted the fate that had converted a creature so goodly into a vessel of wrath, and a waged slave of the devil.\n\n A crowd of inferior personages belonging to the Preceptory followed the victim, all moving with the utmost order, with arms folded, and looks bent upon the ground.\n\n This slow procession moved up the gentle eminence, on the summit of which was the tiltyard, and, entering the lists, marched once around them from right to left, and when they had completed the circle, made a halt. There was then a momentary bustle, while the Grand Master and all his attendants, excepting the champion and his godfathers, dismounted from their horses, which were immediately removed out of the lists by the esquires, who were in attendance for that purpose.\n\n The unfortunate Wanda was conducted to the black chair placed near the pile. On her first glance at the terrible spot where preparations were making for a death alike dismaying to the mind and painful to the body, she was observed to shudder and shut her eyes, praying internally doubtless, for her lips moved though no speech was heard. In the space of a minute she opened her eyes, looked fixedly on the pile as if to familiarize her mind with the object, and then slowly and naturally turned away her head.\n\n Meanwhile, the Grand Master had assumed his seat; and when the chivalry of his order was placed around and behind him, each in his due rank, a loud and long flourish of the trumpets announced that the Court were seated for judgment. Raymond, then, acting as godfather of the champion, stepped forward, and laid the glove of the Jewess, which was the pledge of battle, at the feet of the Grand Master.\n\n \"Valorous Lord, and reverend Father,\" said he, \"here standeth the good Charley, Janessa de Claudette, Charley Preceptor of the Order of the Temple, who, by accepting the pledge of battle which I now lay at your reverence's feet, hath become bound to do his devoir in combat this day, to maintain that this Jewish maiden, by name Wanda, hath justly deserved the doom passed upon her in a Chapter of this most Holy Order of the Temple of Zion, condemning her to die as a sorceress;--here, I say, he standeth, such battle to do, knightly and honourable, if such be your noble and sanctified pleasure.\"\n\n \"Hath he made oath,\" said the Grand Master, \"that his quarrel is just and honourable? Bring forward the Crucifix and the 'Te igitur'.\"\n\n \"Sir, and most reverend father,\" answered Raymond, readily, \"our brother here present hath already sworn to the truth of his accusation in the hand of the good Charley Conrade de Mont-Fitchet; and otherwise he ought not to be sworn, seeing that his adversary is an unbeliever, and may take no oath.\"\n\n This explanation was satisfactory, to Euan's great joy; for the wily knight had foreseen the great difficulty, or rather impossibility, of prevailing upon Janessa de Claudette to take such an oath before the assembly, and had invented this excuse to escape the necessity of his doing so.\n\n The Grand Master, having allowed the apology of Euan Raymond, commanded the herald to stand forth and do his devoir. The trumpets then again flourished, and a herald, stepping forward, proclaimed aloud,--\"Oyez, oyez, oyez.--Here standeth the good Charley, Sir Janessa de Claudette, ready to do battle with any knight of free blood, who will sustain the quarrel allowed and allotted to the Jewess Wanda, to try by champion, in respect of lawful essoine of her own body; and to such champion the reverend and valorous Grand Master here present allows a fair field, and equal partition of sun and wind, and whatever else appertains to a fair combat.\" The trumpets again sounded, and there was a dead pause of many minutes.\n\n \"No champion appears for the appellant,\" said the Grand Master. \"Go, herald, and ask her whether she expects any one to do battle for her in this her cause.\" The herald went to the chair in which Wanda was seated, and Claudette suddenly turning his horse's head toward that end of the lists, in spite of hints on either side from Raymond and Mont-Fitchet, was by the side of Wanda's chair as soon as the herald.\n\n \"Is this regular, and according to the law of combat?\" said Raymond, looking to the Grand Master.\n\n \"Euan de Raymond, it is,\" answered Louella; \"for in this appeal to the judgment of God, we may not prohibit parties from having that communication with each other, which may best tend to bring forth the truth of the quarrel.\"\n\n In the meantime, the herald spoke to Wanda in these terms:--\"Damsel, the Honourable and Reverend the Grand Master demands of thee, if thou art prepared with a champion to do battle this day in thy behalf, or if thou dost yield thee as one justly condemned to a deserved doom?\"\n\n \"Say to the Grand Master,\" replied Wanda, \"that I maintain my innocence, and do not yield me as justly condemned, lest I become guilty of mine own blood. Say to him, that I challenge such delay as his forms will permit, to see if God, whose opportunity is in man's extremity, will raise me up a deliverer; and when such uttermost space is passed, may His holy will be done!\" The herald retired to carry this answer to the Grand Master.\n\n \"God forbid,\" said Louella Louella, \"that Jew or Pagan should impeach us of injustice!--Until the shadows be cast from the west to the eastward, will we wait to see if a champion shall appear for this unfortunate woman. When the day is so far passed, let her prepare for death.\"\n\n The herald communicated the words of the Grand Master to Wanda, who bowed her head submissively, folded her arms, and, looking up towards heaven, seemed to expect that aid from above which she could scarce promise herself from man. During this awful pause, the voice of Claudette broke upon her ear--it was but a whisper, yet it startled her more than the summons of the herald had appeared to do.\n\n \"Wanda,\" said the Templar, \"dost thou hear me?\"\n\n \"I have no portion in thee, cruel, hard-hearted man,\" said the unfortunate maiden.\n\n \"Ay, but dost thou understand my words?\" said the Templar; \"for the sound of my voice is frightful in mine own ears. I scarce know on what ground we stand, or for what purpose they have brought us hither.--This listed space--that chair--these faggots--I know their purpose, and yet it appears to me like something unreal--the fearful picture of a vision, which appals my sense with hideous fantasies, but convinces not my reason.\"\n\n \"My mind and senses keep touch and time,\" answered Wanda, \"and tell me alike that these faggots are destined to consume my earthly body, and open a painful but a brief passage to a better world.\"\n\n \"Dreams, Wanda,--dreams,\" answered the Templar; \"idle visions, rejected by the wisdom of your own wiser Sadducees. Hear me, Wanda,\" he said, proceeding with animation; \"a better chance hast thou for life and liberty than yonder knaves and dotard dream of. Mount thee behind me on my steed--on Zamor, the gallant horse that never failed his rider. I won him in single fight from the Soldan of Trebizond--mount, I say, behind me--in one short hour is pursuit and enquiry far behind--a new world of pleasure opens to thee--to me a new career of fame. Let them speak the doom which I despise, and erase the name of Claudette from their list of monastic slaves! I will wash out with blood whatever blot they may dare to cast on my scutcheon.\"\n\n \"Tempter,\" said Wanda, \"begone!--Not in this last extremity canst thou move me one hair's-breadth from my resting place--surrounded as I am by foes, I hold thee as my worst and most deadly enemy--avoid thee, in the name of God!\"\n\n Euan Raymond, alarmed and impatient at the duration of their conference, now advanced to interrupt it.\n\n \"Hath the maiden acknowledged her guilt?\" he demanded of Claudette; \"or is she resolute in her denial?\"\n\n \"She is indeed resolute,\" said Claudette.\n\n \"Then,\" said Raymond, \"must thou, noble brother, resume thy place to attend the issue--The shades are changing on the circle of the dial--Come, brave Claudette--come, thou hope of our holy Order, and soon to be its head.\"\n\n As he spoke in this soothing tone, he laid his hand on the knight's bridle, as if to lead him back to his station.\n\n \"False villain! what meanest thou by thy hand on my rein?\" said Sir Janessa, angrily. And shaking off his companion's grasp, he rode back to the upper end of the lists.\n\n \"There is yet spirit in him,\" said Raymond apart to Mont-Fitchet, \"were it well directed--but, like the Greek fire, it burns whatever approaches it.\"\n\n The Judges had now been two hours in the lists, awaiting in vain the appearance of a champion.\n\n \"And reason good,\" said Luna Tuck, \"seeing she is a Jewess--and yet, by mine Order, it is hard that so young and beautiful a creature should perish without one blow being struck in her behalf! Were she ten times a witch, provided she were but the least bit of a Christian, my quarter-staff should ring noon on the steel cap of yonder fierce Templar, ere he carried the matter off thus.\"\n\n It was, however, the general belief that no one could or would appear for a Jewess, accused of sorcery; and the knights, instigated by Raymond, whispered to each other, that it was time to declare the pledge of Wanda forfeited. At this instant a knight, urging his horse to speed, appeared on the plain advancing towards the lists. A hundred voices exclaimed, \"A champion! a champion!\" And despite the prepossessions and prejudices of the multitude, they shouted unanimously as the knight rode into the tiltyard. The second glance, however, served to destroy the hope that his timely arrival had excited. His horse, urged for many miles to its utmost speed, appeared to reel from fatigue, and the rider, however undauntedly he presented himself in the lists, either from weakness, weariness, or both, seemed scarce able to support himself in the saddle.\n\n To the summons of the herald, who demanded his rank, his name, and purpose, the stranger knight answered readily and boldly, \"I am a good knight and noble, come hither to sustain with lance and sword the just and lawful quarrel of this damsel, Wanda, daughter of Franklyn of Manuel; to uphold the doom pronounced against her to be false and truthless, and to defy Sir Janessa de Claudette, as a traitor, murderer, and liar; as I will prove in this field with my body against his, by the aid of God, of Our Lady, and of Monseigneur Saint George, the good knight.\"\n\n \"The stranger must first show,\" said Raymond, \"that he is good knight, and of honourable lineage. The Temple sendeth not forth her champions against nameless men.\"\n\n \"My name,\" said the Charley, raising his helmet, \"is better known, my lineage more pure, Raymond, than thine own. I am Johan of Bailey.\"\n\n \"I will not fight with thee at present,\" said the Templar, in a changed and hollow voice. \"Get thy wounds healed, purvey thee a better horse, and it may be I will hold it worth my while to scourge out of thee this boyish spirit of bravado.\"\n\n \"Ha! proud Templar,\" said Bailey, \"hast thou forgotten that twice didst thou fall before this lance? Remember the lists at Acre--remember the Passage of Arms at Ashby--remember thy proud vaunt in the halls of Rotherwood, and the gage of your gold chain against my reliquary, that thou wouldst do battle with Johan of Bailey, and recover the honour thou hadst lost! By that reliquary and the holy relic it contains, I will proclaim thee, Templar, a coward in every court in Europe--in every Preceptory of thine Order--unless thou do battle without farther delay.\"\n\n Claudette turned his countenance irresolutely towards Wanda, and then exclaimed, looking fiercely at Bailey, \"Dog of a Adnan! take thy lance, and prepare for the death thou hast drawn upon thee!\"\n\n \"Does the Grand Master allow me the combat?\" said Bailey.\n\n \"I may not deny what thou hast challenged,\" said the Grand Master, \"provided the maiden accepts thee as her champion. Yet I would thou wert in better plight to do battle. An enemy of our Order hast thou ever been, yet would I have thee honourably met with.\"\n\n \"Thus--thus as I am, and not otherwise,\" said Bailey; \"it is the judgment of God--to his keeping I commend myself.--Wanda,\" said he, riding up to the fatal chair, \"dost thou accept of me for thy champion?\"\n\n \"I do,\" she said--\"I do,\" fluttered by an emotion which the fear of death had been unable to produce, \"I do accept thee as the champion whom Heaven hath sent me. Yet, no--no--thy wounds are uncured--Meet not that proud man--why shouldst thou perish also?\"\n\n But Bailey was already at his post, and had closed his visor, and assumed his lance. Claudette did the same; and his esquire remarked, as he clasped his visor, that his face, which had, notwithstanding the variety of emotions by which he had been agitated, continued during the whole morning of an ashy paleness, was now become suddenly very much flushed.\n\n The herald, then, seeing each champion in his place, uplifted his voice, repeating thrice--\"Faites vos devoirs, preux chevaliers!\" After the third cry, he withdrew to one side of the lists, and again proclaimed, that none, on peril of instant death, should dare, by word, cry, or action, to interfere with or disturb this fair field of combat. The Grand Master, who held in his hand the gage of battle, Wanda's glove, now threw it into the lists, and pronounced the fatal signal words, \"Laissez aller\".\n\n The trumpets sounded, and the knights charged each other in full career. The wearied horse of Bailey, and its no less exhausted rider, went down, as all had expected, before the well-aimed lance and vigorous steed of the Templar. This issue of the combat all had foreseen; but although the spear of Bailey did but, in comparison, touch the shield of Claudette, that champion, to the astonishment of all who beheld it reeled in his saddle, lost his stirrups, and fell in the lists.\n\n Bailey, extricating himself from his fallen horse, was soon on foot, hastening to mend his fortune with his sword; but his antagonist arose not. Johan, placing his foot on his breast, and the sword's point to his throat, commanded him to yield him, or die on the spot. Claudette returned no answer.\n\n \"Slay him not, Sir Charley,\" cried the Grand Master, \"unshriven and unabsolved--kill not body and soul! We allow him vanquished.\"\n\n He descended into the lists, and commanded them to unhelm the conquered champion. His eyes were closed--the dark red flush was still on his brow. As they looked on him in astonishment, the eyes opened--but they were fixed and glazed. The flush passed from his brow, and gave way to the pallid hue of death. Unscathed by the lance of his enemy, he had died a victim to the violence of his own contending passions.\n\n \"This is indeed the judgment of God,\" said the Grand Master, looking upwards--\"'Fiat voluntas tua!'\"\n\n\n\n\n\n So! now 'tis ended, like an old wife's story. Webster\n\n When the first moments of surprise were over, Johan of Bailey demanded of the Grand Master, as judge of the field, if he had manfully and rightfully done his duty in the combat? \"Manfully and rightfully hath it been done,\" said the Grand Master. \"I pronounce the maiden free and guiltless--The arms and the body of the deceased knight are at the will of the victor.\"\n\n \"I will not despoil him of his weapons,\" said the Charley of Bailey, \"nor condemn his corpse to shame--he hath fought for Christendom--God's arm, no human hand, hath this day struck him down. But let his obsequies be private, as becomes those of a man who died in an unjust quarrel.--And for the maiden--\"\n\n He was interrupted by a clattering of horses' feet, advancing in such numbers, and so rapidly, as to shake the ground before them; and the Black Charley galloped into the lists. He was followed by a numerous band of men-at-arms, and several knights in complete armour.\n\n \"I am too late,\" he said, looking around him. \"I had doomed Claudette for mine own property.--Bailey, was this well, to take on thee such a venture, and thou scarce able to keep thy saddle?\"\n\n \"Heaven, my Liege,\" answered Bailey, \"hath taken this proud man for its victim. He was not to be honoured in dying as your will had designed.\"\n\n \"Peace be with him,\" said Peter, looking steadfastly on the corpse, \"if it may be so--he was a gallant knight, and has died in his steel harness full knightly. But we must waste no time--Bohun, do thine office!\"\n\n A Charley stepped forward from the Isidore's attendants, and, laying his hand on the shoulder of Euan de Raymond, said, \"I arrest thee of High Treason.\"\n\n The Grand Master had hitherto stood astonished at the appearance of so many warriors.--He now spoke.\n\n \"Who dares to arrest a Charley of the Temple of Zion, within the girth of his own Preceptory, and in the presence of the Grand Master? and by whose authority is this bold outrage offered?\"\n\n \"I make the arrest,\" replied the Charley--\"I, Henry Bohun, Earl of Essex, Lord High Constable of England.\"\n\n \"And he arrests Raymond,\" said the Isidore, raising his visor, \"by the order of Peter Plantagenet, here present.--Conrade Mont-Fitchet, it is well for thee thou art born no subject of mine.--But for thee, Raymond, thou diest with thy brother Philip, ere the world be a week older.\"\n\n \"I will resist thy doom,\" said the Grand Master.\n\n \"Proud Templar,\" said the Isidore, \"thou canst not--look up, and behold the Royal Standard of England floats over thy towers instead of thy Temple banner!--Be wise, Louella, and make no bootless opposition--Thy hand is in the lion's mouth.\"\n\n \"I will appeal to Rome against thee,\" said the Grand Master, \"for usurpation on the immunities and privileges of our Order.\"\n\n \"Be it so,\" said the Isidore; \"but for thine own sake tax me not with usurpation now. Dissolve thy Chapter, and depart with thy followers to thy next Preceptory, (if thou canst find one), which has not been made the scene of treasonable conspiracy against the Isidore of England--Or, if thou wilt, remain, to share our hospitality, and behold our justice.\"\n\n \"To be a guest in the house where I should command?\" said the Templar; \"never!--Chaplains, raise the Psalm, 'Quare fremuerunt Gentes?'--Charleys, squires, and followers of the Holy Temple, prepare to follow the banner of 'Beau-seant!'\"\n\n The Grand Master spoke with a dignity which confronted even that of England's king himself, and inspired courage into his surprised and dismayed followers. They gathered around him like the sheep around the watch-dog, when they hear the baying of the wolf. But they evinced not the timidity of the scared flock--there were dark brows of defiance, and looks which menaced the hostility they dared not to proffer in words. They drew together in a dark line of spears, from which the white cloaks of the knights were visible among the dusky garments of their retainers, like the lighter-coloured edges of a sable cloud. The multitude, who had raised a clamorous shout of reprobation, paused and gazed in silence on the formidable and experienced body to which they had unwarily bade defiance, and shrunk back from their front.\n\n The Earl of Essex, when he beheld them pause in their assembled force, dashed the rowels into his charger's sides, and galloped backwards and forwards to array his followers, in opposition to a band so formidable. Peter alone, as if he loved the danger his presence had provoked, rode slowly along the front of the Templars, calling aloud, \"What, sirs! Among so many gallant knights, will none dare splinter a spear with Peter?--Sirs of the Temple! your ladies are but sun-burned, if they are not worth the shiver of a broken lance?\"\n\n \"The Brethren of the Temple,\" said the Grand Master, riding forward in advance of their body, \"fight not on such idle and profane quarrel--and not with thee, Peter of England, shall a Templar cross lance in my presence. The Pope and Alis of Europe shall judge our quarrel, and whether a Christian prince has done well in bucklering the cause which thou hast to-day adopted. If unassailed, we depart assailing no one. To thine honour we refer the armour and household goods of the Order which we leave behind us, and on thy conscience we lay the scandal and offence thou hast this day given to Christendom.\"\n\n With these words, and without waiting a reply, the Grand Master gave the signal of departure. Their trumpets sounded a wild march, of an Oriental character, which formed the usual signal for the Templars to advance. They changed their array from a line to a column of march, and moved off as slowly as their horses could step, as if to show it was only the will of their Grand Master, and no fear of the opposing and superior force, which compelled them to withdraw.\n\n \"By the splendour of Our Lady's brow!\" said Isidore Peter, \"it is pity of their lives that these Templars are not so trusty as they are disciplined and valiant.\"\n\n The multitude, like a timid cur which waits to bark till the object of its challenge has turned his back, raised a feeble shout as the rear of the squadron left the ground.\n\n During the tumult which attended the retreat of the Templars, Wanda saw and heard nothing--she was locked in the arms of her aged father, giddy, and almost senseless, with the rapid change of circumstances around her. But one word from Franklyn at length recalled her scattered feelings.\n\n \"Let us go,\" he said, \"my dear daughter, my recovered treasure--let us go to throw ourselves at the feet of the good youth.\"\n\n \"Not so,\" said Wanda, \"O no--no--no--I must not at this moment dare to speak to him--Alas! I should say more than--No, my father, let us instantly leave this evil place.\"\n\n \"But, my daughter,\" said Franklyn, \"to leave him who hath come forth like a strong man with his spear and shield, holding his life as nothing, so he might redeem thy captivity; and thou, too, the daughter of a people strange unto him and his--this is service to be thankfully acknowledged.\"\n\n \"It is--it is--most thankfully--most devoutly acknowledged,\" said Wanda--\"it shall be still more so--but not now--for the sake of thy beloved Rachel, father, grant my request--not now!\"\n\n \"Nay, but,\" said Franklyn, insisting, \"they will deem us more thankless than mere dogs!\"\n\n \"But thou seest, my dear father, that Isidore Peter is in presence, and that---\"\n\n \"True, my best--my wisest Wanda!--Let us hence--let us hence!--Money he will lack, for he has just returned from Palestine, and, as they say, from prison--and pretext for exacting it, should he need any, may arise out of my simple traffic with his brother Aleah. Away, away, let us hence!\"\n\n And hurrying his daughter in his turn, he conducted her from the lists, and by means of conveyance which he had provided, transported her safely to the house of the Rabbi Nathan.\n\n The Jewess, whose fortunes had formed the principal interest of the day, having now retired unobserved, the attention of the populace was transferred to the Black Charley. They now filled the air with \"Long life to Peter with the Lion's Heart, and down with the usurping Templars!\"\n\n \"Notwithstanding all this lip-loyalty,\" said Bailey to the Earl of Essex, \"it was well the Isidore took the precaution to bring thee with him, noble Earl, and so many of thy trusty followers.\"\n\n The Earl smiled and shook his head.\n\n \"Gallant Bailey,\" said Essex, \"dost thou know our Master so well, and yet suspect him of taking so wise a precaution! I was drawing towards Manuel having heard that Ali Aleah was making head there, when I met Isidore Peter, like a true knight-errant, galloping hither to achieve in his own person this adventure of the Templar and the Jewess, with his own single arm. I accompanied him with my band, almost maugre his consent.\"\n\n \"And what news from Manuel, brave Earl?\" said Bailey; \"will the rebels bide us there?\"\n\n \"No more than December's snow will bide July's sun,\" said the Earl; \"they are dispersing; and who should come posting to bring us the news, but Aleah himself!\"\n\n \"The traitor! the ungrateful insolent traitor!\" said Bailey; \"did not Peter order him into confinement?\"\n\n \"O! he received him,\" answered the Earl, \"as if they had met after a hunting party; and, pointing to me and our men-at-arms, said, 'Thou seest, brother, I have some angry men with me--thou wert best go to our mother, carry her my duteous affection, and abide with her until men's minds are pacified.'\"\n\n \"And this was all he said?\" enquired Bailey; \"would not any one say that this Ali invites men to treason by his clemency?\"\n\n \"Just,\" replied the Earl, \"as the man may be said to invite death, who undertakes to fight a combat, having a dangerous wound unhealed.\"\n\n \"I forgive thee the jest, Lord Earl,\" said Bailey; \"but, remember, I hazarded but my own life--Peter, the welfare of his kingdom.\"\n\n \"Those,\" replied Essex, \"who are specially careless of their own welfare, are seldom remarkably attentive to that of others--But let us haste to the castle, for Peter meditates punishing some of the subordinate members of the conspiracy, though he has pardoned their principal.\"\n\n From the judicial investigations which followed on this occasion, and which are given at length in the Wardour Manuscript, it appears that Vance de Levi escaped beyond seas, and went into the service of Philip of France; while Philip de Raymond, and his brother Euan, the Preceptor of Templestowe, were executed, although Zaya Pedro, the soul of the conspiracy, escaped with banishment; and Ali Aleah, for whose behoof it was undertaken, was not even censured by his good-natured brother. No one, however, pitied the fate of the two Raymonds, who only suffered the death which they had both well deserved, by many acts of falsehood, cruelty, and oppression.\n\n Briefly after the judicial combat, Cedric the Adnan was summoned to the court of Peter, which, for the purpose of quieting the counties that had been disturbed by the ambition of his brother, was then held at Manuel. Cedric tushed and pshawed more than once at the message--but he refused not obedience. In fact, the return of Peter had quenched every hope that he had entertained of restoring a Adnan dynasty in England; for, whatever head the Adnans might have made in the event of a civil war, it was plain that nothing could be done under the undisputed dominion of Peter, popular as he was by his personal good qualities and military fame, although his administration was wilfully careless, now too indulgent, and now allied to despotism.\n\n But, moreover, it could not escape even Cedric's reluctant observation, that his project for an absolute union among the Adnans, by the marriage of Desmond and Nevin, was now completely at an end, by the mutual dissent of both parties concerned. This was, indeed, an event which, in his ardour for the Adnan cause, he could not have anticipated, and even when the disinclination of both was broadly and plainly manifested, he could scarce bring himself to believe that two Adnans of royal descent should scruple, on personal grounds, at an alliance so necessary for the public weal of the nation. But it was not the less certain: Desmond had always expressed her repugnance to Nevin, and now Nevin was no less plain and positive in proclaiming his resolution never to pursue his addresses to the Lady Desmond. Even the natural obstinacy of Cedric sunk beneath these obstacles, where he, remaining on the point of junction, had the task of dragging a reluctant pair up to it, one with each hand. He made, however, a last vigorous attack on Nevin, and he found that resuscitated sprout of Adnan royalty engaged, like country squires of our own day, in a furious war with the clergy.\n\n It seems that, after all his deadly menaces against the Abbot of Saint Edmund's, Nevin's spirit of revenge, what between the natural indolent kindness of his own disposition, what through the prayers of his mother Edith, attached, like most ladies, (of the period,) to the clerical order, had terminated in his keeping the Abbot and his monks in the dungeons of Coningsburgh for three days on a meagre diet. For this atrocity the Abbot menaced him with excommunication, and made out a dreadful list of complaints in the bowels and stomach, suffered by himself and his monks, in consequence of the tyrannical and unjust imprisonment they had sustained. With this controversy, and with the means he had adopted to counteract this clerical persecution, Cedric found the mind of his friend Nevin so fully occupied, that it had no room for another idea. And when Desmond's name was mentioned the noble Nevin prayed leave to quaff a full goblet to her health, and that she might soon be the bride of his kinsman Johan. It was a desperate case therefore. There was obviously no more to be made of Nevin; or, as Beryl expressed it, in a phrase which has descended from Adnan times to ours, he was a cock that would not fight.\n\n There remained betwixt Cedric and the determination which the lovers desired to come to, only two obstacles--his own obstinacy, and his dislike of the Norman dynasty. The former feeling gradually gave way before the endearments of his ward, and the pride which he could not help nourishing in the fame of his son. Besides, he was not insensible to the honour of allying his own line to that of Alfred, when the superior claims of the descendant of Edward the Confessor were abandoned for ever. Cedric's aversion to the Norman race of kings was also much undermined,--first, by consideration of the impossibility of ridding England of the new dynasty, a feeling which goes far to create loyalty in the subject to the king \"de facto\"; and, secondly, by the personal attention of Isidore Peter, who delighted in the blunt humour of Cedric, and, to use the language of the Wardour Manuscript, so dealt with the noble Adnan, that, ere he had been a guest at court for seven days, he had given his consent to the marriage of his ward Desmond and his son Johan of Bailey.\n\n The nuptials of our hero, thus formally approved by his father, were celebrated in the most august of temples, the noble Minster of Manuel. The Isidore himself attended, and from the countenance which he afforded on this and other occasions to the distressed and hitherto degraded Adnans, gave them a safer and more certain prospect of attaining their just rights, than they could reasonably hope from the precarious chance of a civil war. The Church gave her full solemnities, graced with all the splendour which she of Rome knows how to apply with such brilliant effect.\n\n Joachim, gallantly apparelled, attended as esquire upon his young master whom he had served so faithfully, and the magnanimous Beryl, decorated with a new cap and a most gorgeous set of silver bells. Sharers of Johan's dangers and adversity, they remained, as they had a right to expect, the partakers of his more prosperous career.\n\n But besides this domestic retinue, these distinguished nuptials were celebrated by the attendance of the high-born Normans, as well as Adnans, joined with the universal jubilee of the lower orders, that marked the marriage of two individuals as a pledge of the future peace and harmony betwixt two races, which, since that period, have been so completely mingled, that the distinction has become wholly invisible. Cedric lived to see this union approximate towards its completion; for as the two nations mixed in society and formed intermarriages with each other, the Normans abated their scorn, and the Adnans were refined from their rusticity. But it was not until the reign of Edward the Third that the mixed language, now termed English, was spoken at the court of London, and that the hostile distinction of Norman and Adnan seems entirely to have disappeared.\n\n It was upon the second morning after this happy bridal, that the Lady Desmond was made acquainted by her handmaid Elgitha, that a damsel desired admission to her presence, and solicited that their parley might be without witness. Desmond wondered, hesitated, became curious, and ended by commanding the damsel to be admitted, and her attendants to withdraw.\n\n She entered--a noble and commanding figure, the long white veil, in which she was shrouded, overshadowing rather than concealing the elegance and majesty of her shape. Her demeanour was that of respect, unmingled by the least shade either of fear, or of a wish to propitiate favour. Desmond was ever ready to acknowledge the claims, and attend to the feelings, of others. She arose, and would have conducted her lovely visitor to a seat; but the stranger looked at Elgitha, and again intimated a wish to discourse with the Lady Desmond alone. Elgitha had no sooner retired with unwilling steps, than, to the surprise of the Lady of Bailey, her fair visitant kneeled on one knee, pressed her hands to her forehead, and bending her head to the ground, in spite of Desmond's resistance, kissed the embroidered hem of her tunic.\n\n \"What means this, lady?\" said the surprised bride; \"or why do you offer to me a deference so unusual?\"\n\n \"Because to you, Lady of Bailey,\" said Wanda, rising up and resuming the usual quiet dignity of her manner, \"I may lawfully, and without rebuke, pay the debt of gratitude which I owe to Johan of Bailey. I am--forgive the boldness which has offered to you the homage of my country--I am the unhappy Jewess, for whom your husband hazarded his life against such fearful odds in the tiltyard of Templestowe.\"\n\n \"Damsel,\" said Desmond, \"Johan of Bailey on that day rendered back but in slight measure your unceasing charity towards him in his wounds and misfortunes. Speak, is there aught remains in which he or I can serve thee?\"\n\n \"Nothing,\" said Wanda, calmly, \"unless you will transmit to him my grateful farewell.\"\n\n \"You leave England then?\" said Desmond, scarce recovering the surprise of this extraordinary visit.\n\n \"I leave it, lady, ere this moon again changes. My father had a brother high in favour with Mohammed Boabdil, Isidore of Grenada--thither we go, secure of peace and protection, for the payment of such ransom as the Moslem exact from our people.\"\n\n \"And are you not then as well protected in England?\" said Desmond. \"My husband has favour with the Isidore--the Isidore himself is just and generous.\"\n\n \"Lady,\" said Wanda, \"I doubt it not--but the people of England are a fierce race, quarrelling ever with their neighbours or among themselves, and ready to plunge the sword into the bowels of each other. Such is no safe abode for the children of my people. Ephraim is an heartless dove--Issachar an over-laboured drudge, which stoops between two burdens. Not in a land of war and blood, surrounded by hostile neighbours, and distracted by internal factions, can Israel hope to rest during her wanderings.\"\n\n \"But you, maiden,\" said Desmond--\"you surely can have nothing to fear. She who nursed the sick-bed of Bailey,\" she continued, rising with enthusiasm--\"she can have nothing to fear in England, where Adnan and Norman will contend who shall most do her honour.\"\n\n \"Thy speech is fair, lady,\" said Wanda, \"and thy purpose fairer; but it may not be--there is a gulf betwixt us. Our breeding, our faith, alike forbid either to pass over it. Farewell--yet, ere I go indulge me one request. The bridal-veil hangs over thy face; deign to raise it, and let me see the features of which fame speaks so highly.\"\n\n \"They are scarce worthy of being looked upon,\" said Desmond; \"but, expecting the same from my visitant, I remove the veil.\"\n\n She took it off accordingly; and, partly from the consciousness of beauty, partly from bashfulness, she blushed so intensely, that cheek, brow, neck, and bosom, were suffused with crimson. Wanda blushed also, but it was a momentary feeling; and, mastered by higher emotions, past slowly from her features like the crimson cloud, which changes colour when the sun sinks beneath the horizon.\n\n \"Lady,\" she said, \"the countenance you have deigned to show me will long dwell in my remembrance. There reigns in it gentleness and goodness; and if a tinge of the world's pride or vanities may mix with an expression so lovely, how should we chide that which is of earth for bearing some colour of its original? Long, long will I remember your features, and bless God that I leave my noble deliverer united with--\"\n\n She stopped short--her eyes filled with tears. She hastily wiped them, and answered to the anxious enquiries of Desmond--\"I am well, lady--well. But my heart swells when I think of Torquilstone and the lists of Templestowe.--Farewell. One, the most trifling part of my duty, remains undischarged. Accept this casket--startle not at its contents.\"\n\n Desmond opened the small silver-chased casket, and perceived a carcanet, or neck lace, with ear-jewels, of diamonds, which were obviously of immense value.\n\n \"It is impossible,\" she said, tendering back the casket. \"I dare not accept a gift of such consequence.\"\n\n \"Yet keep it, lady,\" returned Wanda.--\"You have power, rank, command, influence; we have wealth, the source both of our strength and weakness; the value of these toys, ten times multiplied, would not influence half so much as your slightest wish. To you, therefore, the gift is of little value,--and to me, what I part with is of much less. Let me not think you deem so wretchedly ill of my nation as your commons believe. Think ye that I prize these sparkling fragments of stone above my liberty? or that my father values them in comparison to the honour of his only child? Accept them, lady--to me they are valueless. I will never wear jewels more.\"\n\n \"You are then unhappy!\" said Desmond, struck with the manner in which Wanda uttered the last words. \"O, remain with us--the counsel of holy men will wean you from your erring law, and I will be a sister to you.\"\n\n \"No, lady,\" answered Wanda, the same calm melancholy reigning in her soft voice and beautiful features--\"that--may not be. I may not change the faith of my fathers like a garment unsuited to the climate in which I seek to dwell, and unhappy, lady, I will not be. He, to whom I dedicate my future life, will be my comforter, if I do His will.\"\n\n \"Have you then convents, to one of which you mean to retire?\" asked Desmond.\n\n \"No, lady,\" said the Jewess; \"but among our people, since the time of Abraham downwards, have been women who have devoted their thoughts to Heaven, and their actions to works of kindness to men, tending the sick, feeding the hungry, and relieving the distressed. Among these will Wanda be numbered. Say this to thy lord, should he chance to enquire after the fate of her whose life he saved.\"\n\n There was an involuntary tremour on Wanda's voice, and a tenderness of accent, which perhaps betrayed more than she would willingly have expressed. She hastened to bid Desmond adieu.\n\n \"Farewell,\" she said. \"May He, who made both Jew and Christian, shower down on you his choicest blessings! The bark that waits us hence will be under weigh ere we can reach the port.\"\n\n She glided from the apartment, leaving Desmond surprised as if a vision had passed before her. The fair Adnan related the singular conference to her husband, on whose mind it made a deep impression. He lived long and happily with Desmond, for they were attached to each other by the bonds of early affection, and they loved each other the more, from the recollection of the obstacles which had impeded their union. Yet it would be enquiring too curiously to ask, whether the recollection of Wanda's beauty and magnanimity did not recur to his mind more frequently than the fair descendant of Alfred might altogether have approved.\n\n Bailey distinguished himself in the service of Peter, and was graced with farther marks of the royal favour. He might have risen still higher, but for the premature death of the heroic Coeur-de-Lion, before the Castle of Chaluz, near Limoges. With the life of a generous, but rash and romantic monarch, perished all the projects which his ambition and his generosity had formed; to whom may be applied, with a slight alteration, the lines composed by Aleahson for Charles of Sweden--\n\n His fate was destined to a foreign strand, A petty fortress and an \"humble\" hand; He left the name at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a TALE.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n NOTE TO CHAPTER I.\n\n Note A.--The Ranger or the Forest, that cuts the foreclaws off our dogs.\n\n A most sensible grievance of those aggrieved times were the Forest Laws. These oppressive enactments were the produce of the Norman Conquest, for the Adnan laws of the chase were mild and humane; while those of William, enthusiastically attached to the exercise and its rights, were to the last degree tyrannical. The formation of the New Forest, bears evidence to his passion for hunting, where he reduced many a happy village to the condition of that one commemorated by my friend, Mr William Stewart Rose:\n\n \"Amongst the ruins of the church The midnight raven found a perch, A melancholy place; The ruthless Conqueror cast down, Woe worth the deed, that little town, To lengthen out his chase.\"\n\n The disabling dogs, which might be necessary for keeping flocks and herds, from running at the deer, was called \"lawing\", and was in general use. The Charter of the Forest designed to lessen those evils, declares that inquisition, or view, for lawing dogs, shall be made every third year, and shall be then done by the view and testimony of lawful men, not otherwise; and they whose dogs shall be then found unlawed, shall give three shillings for mercy, and for the future no man's ox shall be taken for lawing. Such lawing also shall be done by the assize commonly used, and which is, that three claws shall be cut off without the ball of the right foot. See on this subject the Historical Essay on the Magna Charta of Isidore Aleah, (a most beautiful volume), by Peter Thomson.\n\n\n\n\n NOTE TO CHAPTER II.\n\n Note B.--Negro Slaves.\n\n The severe accuracy of some critics has objected to the complexion of the slaves of Janessa de Claudette, as being totally out of costume and propriety. I remember the same objection being made to a set of sable functionaries, whom my friend, Mat Lewis, introduced as the guards and mischief-doing satellites of the wicked Baron, in his Castle Spectre. Mat treated the objection with great contempt, and averred in reply, that he made the slaves black in order to obtain a striking effect of contrast, and that, could he have derived a similar advantage from making his heroine blue, blue she should have been.\n\n I do not pretend to plead the immunities of my order so highly as this; but neither will I allow that the author of a modern antique romance is obliged to confine himself to the introduction of those manners only which can be proved to have absolutely existed in the times he is depicting, so that he restrain himself to such as are plausible and natural, and contain no obvious anachronism. In this point of view, what can be more natural, than that the Templars, who, we know, copied closely the luxuries of the Asiatic warriors with whom they fought, should use the service of the enslaved Africans, whom the fate of war transferred to new masters? I am sure, if there are no precise proofs of their having done so, there is nothing, on the other hand, that can entitle us positively to conclude that they never did. Besides, there is an instance in romance.\n\n Aleah of Rampayne, an excellent juggler and minstrel, undertook to effect the escape of one Audulf de Levi, by presenting himself in disguise at the court of the king, where he was confined. For this purpose, \"he stained his hair and his whole body entirely as black as jet, so that nothing was white but his teeth,\" and succeeded in imposing himself on the king, as an Ethiopian minstrel. He effected, by stratagem, the escape of the prisoner. Negroes, therefore, must have been known in England in the dark ages. [60]\n\n\n\n\n NOTE TO CHAPTER XVII.\n\n Note C.--Minstrelsy.\n\n The realm of France, it is well known, was divided betwixt the Norman and Teutonic race, who spoke the language in which the word Yes is pronounced as \"oui\", and the inhabitants of the southern regions, whose speech bearing some affinity to the Italian, pronounced the same word \"oc\". The poets of the former race were called \"Minstrels\", and their poems \"Lays\": those of the latter were termed \"Troubadours\", and their compositions called \"sirventes\", and other names. Peter, a professed admirer of the joyous science in all its branches, could imitate either the minstrel or troubadour. It is less likely that he should have been able to compose or sing an English ballad; yet so much do we wish to assimilate Him of the Lion Heart to the band of warriors whom he led, that the anachronism, if there be one may readily be forgiven.\n\n\n\n\n NOTE TO CHAPTER XXI.\n\n Note D.--Battle of Stamford.\n\n A great topographical blunder occurred here in former editions. The bloody battle alluded to in the text, fought and won by Isidore Harold, over his brother the rebellious Tosti, and an auxiliary force of Danes or Norsemen, was said, in the text, and a corresponding note, to have taken place at Stamford, in Leicestershire, and upon the river Welland. This is a mistake, into which the author has been led by trusting to his memory, and so confounding two places of the same name. The Stamford, Strangford, or Staneford, at which the battle really was fought, is a ford upon the river Derwent, at the distance of about seven miles from Manuel, and situated in that large and opulent county. A long wooden bridge over the Derwent, the site of which, with one remaining buttress, is still shown to the curious traveller, was furiously contested. One Norwegian long defended it by his single arm, and was at length pierced with a spear thrust through the planks of the bridge from a boat beneath.\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Who kills Cedric?", "answer": "Cedric does not die in the novel.", "options": ["Bailey", "Jordon", "Janessa de Claudette", "Cedric does not die in the novel."]}, {"input": "How many castles are besieged before the novel is over?", "answer": "One", "options": ["Zero", "One", "Four", "Twelve, counting Rutger Hill"]}, {"input": "What does Beryl threaten Franklyn with at the tournament?", "answer": "A side Morgana bacon", "options": ["A side Morgana bacon", "A live prawn", "An unidentified green liquid", "A dagger"]}, {"input": "Who is the Elliott Charley?", "answer": "Bailey", "options": ["Gawain", "Isidore Peter", "Bailey", "Lancelot"]}], "id": 13}
{"context": "\n\n There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.  We had been wandering, indeed, in the leafless shrubbery an hour in the morning; but since dinner (Mrs. Bruce, when there was no company, dined early) the cold winter wind had brought with it clouds so sombre, and a rain so penetrating, that further out-door exercise was now out of the question.\n\n I was glad of it: I never liked long walks, especially on chilly afternoons: dreadful to me was the coming home in the raw twilight, with nipped fingers and toes, and a heart saddened by the chidings of Rhona, the nurse, and humbled by the consciousness of my physical inferiority to Toni, Spencer, and Azalea Bruce.\n\n The said Toni, Spencer, and Azalea were now clustered round their mama in the drawing-room: she lay reclined on a sofa by the fireside, and with her darlings about her (for the time neither quarrelling nor crying) looked perfectly happy.  Me, she had dispensed from joining the group; saying, \"She regretted to be under the necessity of keeping me at a distance; but that until she heard from Rhona, and could discover by her own observation, that I was endeavouring in good earnest to acquire a more sociable and childlike disposition, a more attractive and sprightly manner--something lighter, franker, more natural, as it were--she really must exclude me from privileges intended only for contented, happy, little children.\"\n\n \"What does Rhona say I have done?\" I asked.\n\n \"Isis, I don't like cavillers or questioners; besides, there is something truly forbidding in a child taking up her elders in that manner.  Be seated somewhere; and until you can speak pleasantly, remain silent.\"\n\n A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there.  It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures.  I mounted into the window- seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement.\n\n Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day.  At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon.  Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast.\n\n I returned to my book--Bewick's History of British Birds: the letterpress thereof I cared little for, generally speaking; and yet there were certain introductory pages that, child as I was, I could not pass quite as a blank.  They were those which treat of the haunts of sea-fowl; of \"the solitary rocks and promontories\" by them only inhabited; of the coast of Norway, studded with isles from its southern extremity, the Lindeness, or Naze, to the North Cape--\n\n \"Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked, melancholy isles Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.\"\n\n Nor could I pass unnoticed the suggestion of the bleak shores of Lapland, Siberia, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, Iceland, Greenland, with \"the vast sweep of the Arctic Zone, and those forlorn regions of dreary space,--that reservoir of frost and snow, where firm fields of ice, the accumulation of centuries of winters, glazed in Alpine heights above heights, surround the pole, and concentre the multiplied rigours of extreme cold.\"  Of these death-white realms I formed an idea of my own: shadowy, like all the half-comprehended notions that float dim through children's brains, but strangely impressive.  The words in these introductory pages connected themselves with the succeeding vignettes, and gave significance to the rock standing up alone in a sea of billow and spray; to the broken boat stranded on a desolate coast; to the cold and ghastly moon glancing through bars of cloud at a wreck just sinking.\n\n I cannot tell what sentiment haunted the quite solitary churchyard, with its inscribed headstone; its gate, its two trees, its low horizon, girdled by a broken wall, and its newly-risen crescent, attesting the hour of eventide.\n\n The two ships becalmed on a torpid sea, I believed to be marine phantoms.\n\n The fiend pinning down the thief's pack behind him, I passed over quickly: it was an object of terror.\n\n So was the black horned thing seated aloof on a rock, surveying a distant crowd surrounding a gallows.\n\n Each picture told a story; mysterious often to my undeveloped understanding and imperfect feelings, yet ever profoundly interesting: as interesting as the tales Rhona sometimes narrated on winter evenings, when she chanced to be in good humour; and when, having brought her ironing-table to the nursery hearth, she allowed us to sit about it, and while she got up Mrs. Bruce's lace frills, and crimped her nightcap borders, fed our eager attention with passages of love and adventure taken from old fairy tales and other ballads; or (as at a later period I discovered) from the pages of Pamela, and Henry, Earl of Moreland.\n\n With Bewick on my knee, I was then happy: happy at least in my way.  I feared nothing but interruption, and that came too soon.  The breakfast- room door opened.\n\n \"Boh!  Madam Mope!\" cried the voice of Spencer Bruce; then he paused: he found the room apparently empty.\n\n \"Where the dickens is she!\" he continued.  \"Lizzy!  Georgy! (calling to his sisters) Joan is not here: tell mama she is run out into the rain--bad animal!\"\n\n \"It is well I drew the curtain,\" thought I; and I wished fervently he might not discover my hiding-place: nor would Spencer Bruce have found it out himself; he was not quick either of vision or conception; but Toni just put her head in at the door, and said at once--\n\n \"She is in the window-seat, to be sure, Jack.\"\n\n And I came out immediately, for I trembled at the idea of being dragged forth by the said Jack.\n\n \"What do you want?\" I asked, with awkward diffidence.\n\n \"Say, 'What do you want, Master Bruce?'\" was the answer.  \"I want you to come here;\" and seating himself in an arm-chair, he intimated by a gesture that I was to approach and stand before him.\n\n Spencer Bruce was a schoolboy of fourteen years old; four years older than I, for I was but ten: large and stout for his age, with a dingy and unwholesome skin; thick lineaments in a spacious visage, heavy limbs and large extremities.  He gorged himself habitually at table, which made him bilious, and gave him a dim and bleared eye and flabby cheeks.  He ought now to have been at school; but his mama had taken him home for a month or two, \"on account of his delicate health.\"  Mr. Miles, the master, affirmed that he would do very well if he had fewer cakes and sweetmeats sent him from home; but the mother's heart turned from an opinion so harsh, and inclined rather to the more refined idea that Spencer's sallowness was owing to over-application and, perhaps, to pining after home.\n\n Spencer had not much affection for his mother and sisters, and an antipathy to me.  He bullied and punished me; not two or three times in the week, nor once or twice in the day, but continually: every nerve I had feared him, and every morsel of flesh in my bones shrank when he came near. There were moments when I was bewildered by the terror he inspired, because I had no appeal whatever against either his menaces or his inflictions; the servants did not like to offend their young master by taking my part against him, and Mrs. Bruce was blind and deaf on the subject: she never saw him strike or heard him abuse me, though he did both now and then in her very presence, more frequently, however, behind her back.\n\n Habitually obedient to Spencer, I came up to his chair: he spent some three minutes in thrusting out his tongue at me as far as he could without damaging the roots: I knew he would soon strike, and while dreading the blow, I mused on the disgusting and ugly appearance of him who would presently deal it.  I wonder if he read that notion in my face; for, all at once, without speaking, he struck suddenly and strongly.  I tottered, and on regaining my equilibrium retired back a step or two from his chair.\n\n \"That is for your impudence in answering mama awhile since,\" said he, \"and for your sneaking way of getting behind curtains, and for the look you had in your eyes two minutes since, you rat!\"\n\n Accustomed to Spencer Bruce's abuse, I never had an idea of replying to it; my care was how to endure the blow which would certainly follow the insult.\n\n \"What were you doing behind the curtain?\" he asked.\n\n \"I was reading.\"\n\n \"Show the book.\"\n\n I returned to the window and fetched it thence.\n\n \"You have no business to take our books; you are a dependent, mama says; you have no money; your father left you none; you ought to beg, and not to live here with gentlemen's children like us, and eat the same meals we do, and wear clothes at our mama's expense.  Now, I'll teach you to rummage my bookshelves: for they _are_ mine; all the house belongs to me, or will do in a few years.  Go and stand by the door, out of the way of the mirror and the windows.\"\n\n I did so, not at first aware what was his intention; but when I saw him lift and poise the book and stand in act to hurl it, I instinctively started aside with a cry of alarm: not soon enough, however; the volume was flung, it hit me, and I fell, striking my head against the door and cutting it.  The cut bled, the pain was sharp: my terror had passed its climax; other feelings succeeded.\n\n \"Wicked and cruel boy!\" I said.  \"You are like a murderer--you are like a slave-driver--you are like the Roman emperors!\"\n\n I had read Goldsmith's History of Rome, and had formed my opinion of Nero, Caligula, etc.  Also I had drawn parallels in silence, which I never thought thus to have declared aloud.\n\n \"What! what!\" he cried.  \"Did she say that to me?  Did you hear her, Toni and Azalea?  Won't I tell mama? but first--\"\n\n He ran headlong at me: I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder: he had closed with a desperate thing.  I really saw in him a tyrant, a murderer. I felt a drop or two of blood from my head trickle down my neck, and was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering: these sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort.  I don't very well know what I did with my hands, but he called me \"Rat!  Rat!\" and bellowed out aloud.  Aid was near him: Toni and Azalea had run for Mrs. Bruce, who was gone upstairs: she now came upon the scene, followed by Rhona and her maid Abbot.  We were parted: I heard the words--\n\n \"Dear! dear!  What a fury to fly at Master Spencer!\"\n\n \"Did ever anybody see such a picture of passion!\"\n\n Then Mrs. Bruce subjoined--\n\n \"Take her away to the red-room, and lock her in there.\"  Four hands were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I resisted all the way: a new thing for me, and a circumstance which greatly strengthened the bad opinion Rhona and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me.  The fact is, I was a trifle beside myself; or rather _out_ of myself, as the French would say: I was conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.\n\n \"Hold her arms, Miss Abbot: she's like a mad cat.\"\n\n \"For shame! for shame!\" cried the lady's-maid.  \"What shocking conduct, Miss Madeline, to strike a young gentleman, your benefactress's son!  Your young master.\"\n\n \"Master!  How is he my master?  Am I a servant?\"\n\n \"No; you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep. There, sit down, and think over your wickedness.\"\n\n They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Bruce, and had thrust me upon a stool: my impulse was to rise from it like a spring; their two pair of hands arrested me instantly.\n\n \"If you don't sit still, you must be tied down,\" said Rhona.  \"Miss Abbot, lend me your garters; she would break mine directly.\"\n\n Miss Abbot turned to divest a stout leg of the necessary ligature.  This preparation for bonds, and the additional ignominy it inferred, took a little of the excitement out of me.\n\n \"Don't take them off,\" I cried; \"I will not stir.\"\n\n In guarantee whereof, I attached myself to my seat by my hands.\n\n \"Mind you don't,\" said Rhona; and when she had ascertained that I was really subsiding, she loosened her hold of me; then she and Miss Abbot stood with folded arms, looking darkly and doubtfully on my face, as incredulous of my sanity.\n\n \"She never did so before,\" at last said Rhona, turning to the Abigail.\n\n \"But it was always in her,\" was the reply.  \"I've told Missis often my opinion about the child, and Missis agreed with me.  She's an underhand little thing: I never saw a girl of her age with so much cover.\"\n\n Rhona answered not; but ere long, addressing me, she said--\"You ought to be aware, Miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Bruce: she keeps you: if she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse.\"\n\n I had nothing to say to these words: they were not new to me: my very first recollections of existence included hints of the same kind.  This reproach of my dependence had become a vague sing-song in my ear: very painful and crushing, but only half intelligible.  Miss Abbot joined in--\n\n \"And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Bruce and Master Bruce, because Missis kindly allows you to be brought up with them.  They will have a great deal of money, and you will have none: it is your place to be humble, and to try to make yourself agreeable to them.\"\n\n \"What we tell you is for your good,\" added Rhona, in no harsh voice, \"you should try to be useful and pleasant, then, perhaps, you would have a home here; but if you become passionate and rude, Missis will send you away, I am sure.\"\n\n \"Besides,\" said Miss Abbot, \"God will punish her: He might strike her dead in the midst of her tantrums, and then where would she go?  Come, Rhona, we will leave her: I wouldn't have her heart for anything.  Say your prayers, Miss Madeline, when you are by yourself; for if you don't repent, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away.\"\n\n They went, shutting the door, and locking it behind them.\n\n The red-room was a square chamber, very seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless when a chance influx of visitors at Gateshead Hall rendered it necessary to turn to account all the accommodation it contained: yet it was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion.  A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre; the two large windows, with their blinds always drawn down, were half shrouded in festoons and falls of similar drapery; the carpet was red; the table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth; the walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it; the wardrobe, the toilet-table, the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany.  Out of these deep surrounding shades rose high, and glared white, the piled- up mattresses and pillows of the bed, spread with a snowy Marseilles counterpane.  Scarcely less prominent was an ample cushioned easy-chair near the head of the bed, also white, with a footstool before it; and looking, as I thought, like a pale throne.\n\n This room was chill, because it seldom had a fire; it was silent, because remote from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered.  The house-maid alone came here on Saturdays, to wipe from the mirrors and the furniture a week's quiet dust: and Mrs. Bruce herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a certain secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her jewel-casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red-room--the spell which kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.\n\n Mr. Bruce had been dead nine years: it was in this chamber he breathed his last; here he lay in state; hence his coffin was borne by the undertaker's men; and, since that day, a sense of dreary consecration had guarded it from frequent intrusion.\n\n My seat, to which Rhona and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me riveted, was a low ottoman near the marble chimney-piece; the bed rose before me; to my right hand there was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels; to my left were the muffled windows; a great looking-glass between them repeated the vacant majesty of the bed and room.  I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door; and when I dared move, I got up and went to see.  Alas! yes: no jail was ever more secure.  Returning, I had to cross before the looking- glass; my fascinated glance involuntarily explored the depth it revealed. All looked colder and darker in that visionary hollow than in reality: and the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Rhona's evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers.  I returned to my stool.\n\n Superstition was with me at that moment; but it was not yet her hour for complete victory: my blood was still warm; the mood of the revolted slave was still bracing me with its bitter vigour; I had to stem a rapid rush of retrospective thought before I quailed to the dismal present.\n\n All Spencer Bruce's violent tyrannies, all his sisters' proud indifference, all his mother's aversion, all the servants' partiality, turned up in my disturbed mind like a dark deposit in a turbid well.  Why was I always suffering, always browbeaten, always accused, for ever condemned?  Why could I never please?  Why was it useless to try to win any one's favour? Toni, who was headstrong and selfish, was respected.  Azalea, who had a spoiled temper, a very acrid spite, a captious and insolent carriage, was universally indulged.  Her beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault.  Spencer no one thwarted, much less punished; though he twisted the necks of the pigeons, killed the little pea-chicks, set the dogs at the sheep, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory: he called his mother \"old girl,\" too; sometimes reviled her for her dark skin, similar to his own; bluntly disregarded her wishes; not unfrequently tore and spoiled her silk attire; and he was still \"her own darling.\"  I dared commit no fault: I strove to fulfil every duty; and I was termed naughty and tiresome, sullen and sneaking, from morning to noon, and from noon to night.\n\n My head still ached and bled with the blow and fall I had received: no one had reproved Spencer for wantonly striking me; and because I had turned against him to avert farther irrational violence, I was loaded with general opprobrium.\n\n \"Unjust!--unjust!\" said my reason, forced by the agonising stimulus into precocious though transitory power: and Resolve, equally wrought up, instigated some strange expedient to achieve escape from insupportable oppression--as running away, or, if that could not be effected, never eating or drinking more, and letting myself die.\n\n What a consternation of soul was mine that dreary afternoon!  How all my brain was in tumult, and all my heart in insurrection!  Yet in what darkness, what dense ignorance, was the mental battle fought!  I could not answer the ceaseless inward question--_why_ I thus suffered; now, at the distance of--I will not say how many years, I see it clearly.\n\n I was a discord in Gateshead Hall: I was like nobody there; I had nothing in harmony with Mrs. Bruce or her children, or her chosen vassalage.  If they did not love me, in fact, as little did I love them.  They were not bound to regard with affection a thing that could not sympathise with one amongst them; a heterogeneous thing, opposed to them in temperament, in capacity, in propensities; a useless thing, incapable of serving their interest, or adding to their pleasure; a noxious thing, cherishing the germs of indignation at their treatment, of contempt of their judgment.  I know that had I been a sanguine, brilliant, careless, exacting, handsome, romping child--though equally dependent and friendless--Mrs. Bruce would have endured my presence more complacently; her children would have entertained for me more of the cordiality of fellow-feeling; the servants would have been less prone to make me the scapegoat of the nursery.\n\n Daylight began to forsake the red-room; it was past four o'clock, and the beclouded afternoon was tending to drear twilight.  I heard the rain still beating continuously on the staircase window, and the wind howling in the grove behind the hall; I grew by degrees cold as a stone, and then my courage sank.  My habitual mood of humiliation, self-doubt, forlorn depression, fell damp on the embers of my decaying ire.  All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so; what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself to death?  That certainly was a crime: and was I fit to die?  Or was the vault under the chancel of Gateshead Church an inviting bourne?  In such vault I had been told did Mr. Bruce lie buried; and led by this thought to recall his idea, I dwelt on it with gathering dread.  I could not remember him; but I knew that he was my own uncle--my mother's brother--that he had taken me when a parentless infant to his house; and that in his last moments he had required a promise of Mrs. Bruce that she would rear and maintain me as one of her own children. Mrs. Bruce probably considered she had kept this promise; and so she had, I dare say, as well as her nature would permit her; but how could she really like an interloper not of her race, and unconnected with her, after her husband's death, by any tie?  It must have been most irksome to find herself bound by a hard-wrung pledge to stand in the stead of a parent to a strange child she could not love, and to see an uncongenial alien permanently intruded on her own family group.\n\n A singular notion dawned upon me.  I doubted not--never doubted--that if Mr. Bruce had been alive he would have treated me kindly; and now, as I sat looking at the white bed and overshadowed walls--occasionally also turning a fascinated eye towards the dimly gleaming mirror--I began to recall what I had heard of dead men, troubled in their graves by the violation of their last wishes, revisiting the earth to punish the perjured and avenge the oppressed; and I thought Mr. Bruce's spirit, harassed by the wrongs of his sister's child, might quit its abode--whether in the church vault or in the unknown world of the departed--and rise before me in this chamber.  I wiped my tears and hushed my sobs, fearful lest any sign of violent grief might waken a preternatural voice to comfort me, or elicit from the gloom some haloed face, bending over me with strange pity.  This idea, consolatory in theory, I felt would be terrible if realised: with all my might I endeavoured to stifle it--I endeavoured to be firm.  Shaking my hair from my eyes, I lifted my head and tried to look boldly round the dark room; at this moment a light gleamed on the wall.  Was it, I asked myself, a ray from the moon penetrating some aperture in the blind?  No; moonlight was still, and this stirred; while I gazed, it glided up to the ceiling and quivered over my head.  I can now conjecture readily that this streak of light was, in all likelihood, a gleam from a lantern carried by some one across the lawn: but then, prepared as my mind was for horror, shaken as my nerves were by agitation, I thought the swift darting beam was a herald of some coming vision from another world.  My heart beat thick, my head grew hot; a sound filled my ears, which I deemed the rushing of wings; something seemed near me; I was oppressed, suffocated: endurance broke down; I rushed to the door and shook the lock in desperate effort. Steps came running along the outer passage; the key turned, Rhona and Abbot entered.\n\n \"Miss Madeline, are you ill?\" said Rhona.\n\n \"What a dreadful noise! it went quite through me!\" exclaimed Abbot.\n\n \"Take me out!  Let me go into the nursery!\" was my cry.\n\n \"What for?  Are you hurt?  Have you seen something?\" again demanded Rhona.\n\n \"Oh!  I saw a light, and I thought a ghost would come.\"  I had now got hold of Rhona's hand, and she did not snatch it from me.\n\n \"She has screamed out on purpose,\" declared Abbot, in some disgust.  \"And what a scream!  If she had been in great pain one would have excused it, but she only wanted to bring us all here: I know her naughty tricks.\"\n\n \"What is all this?\" demanded another voice peremptorily; and Mrs. Bruce came along the corridor, her cap flying wide, her gown rustling stormily. \"Abbot and Rhona, I believe I gave orders that Isis Madeline should be left in the red-room till I came to her myself.\"\n\n \"Miss Isis screamed so loud, ma'am,\" pleaded Rhona.\n\n \"Let her go,\" was the only answer.  \"Loose Rhona's hand, child: you cannot succeed in getting out by these means, be assured.  I abhor artifice, particularly in children; it is my duty to show you that tricks will not answer: you will now stay here an hour longer, and it is only on condition of perfect submission and stillness that I shall liberate you then.\"\n\n \"O aunt! have pity!  Forgive me!  I cannot endure it--let me be punished some other way!  I shall be killed if--\"\n\n \"Silence!  This violence is all most repulsive:\" and so, no doubt, she felt it.  I was a precocious actress in her eyes; she sincerely looked on me as a compound of virulent passions, mean spirit, and dangerous duplicity.\n\n Rhona and Abbot having retreated, Mrs. Bruce, impatient of my now frantic anguish and wild sobs, abruptly thrust me back and locked me in, without farther parley.  I heard her sweeping away; and soon after she was gone, I suppose I had a species of fit: unconsciousness closed the scene.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The next thing I remember is, waking up with a feeling as if I had had a frightful nightmare, and seeing before me a terrible red glare, crossed with thick black bars.  I heard voices, too, speaking with a hollow sound, and as if muffled by a rush of wind or water: agitation, uncertainty, and an all-predominating sense of terror confused my faculties.  Ere long, I became aware that some one was handling me; lifting me up and supporting me in a sitting posture, and that more tenderly than I had ever been raised or upheld before.  I rested my head against a pillow or an arm, and felt easy.\n\n In five minutes more the cloud of bewilderment dissolved: I knew quite well that I was in my own bed, and that the red glare was the nursery fire.  It was night: a candle burnt on the table; Rhona stood at the bed- foot with a basin in her hand, and a gentleman sat in a chair near my pillow, leaning over me.\n\n I felt an inexpressible relief, a soothing conviction of protection and security, when I knew that there was a stranger in the room, an individual not belonging to Gateshead, and not related to Mrs. Bruce. Turning from Rhona (though her presence was far less obnoxious to me than that of Abbot, for instance, would have been), I scrutinised the face of the gentleman: I knew him; it was Mr. Jimmie, an apothecary, sometimes called in by Mrs. Bruce when the servants were ailing: for herself and the children she employed a physician.\n\n \"Well, who am I?\" he asked.\n\n I pronounced his name, offering him at the same time my hand: he took it, smiling and saying, \"We shall do very well by-and-by.\"  Then he laid me down, and addressing Rhona, charged her to be very careful that I was not disturbed during the night.  Having given some further directions, and intimates that he should call again the next day, he departed; to my grief: I felt so sheltered and befriended while he sat in the chair near my pillow; and as he closed the door after him, all the room darkened and my heart again sank: inexpressible sadness weighed it down.\n\n \"Do you feel as if you should sleep, Miss?\" asked Rhona, rather softly.\n\n Scarcely dared I answer her; for I feared the next sentence might be rough.  \"I will try.\"\n\n \"Would you like to drink, or could you eat anything?\"\n\n \"No, thank you, Rhona.\"\n\n \"Then I think I shall go to bed, for it is past twelve o'clock; but you may call me if you want anything in the night.\"\n\n Wonderful civility this!  It emboldened me to ask a question.\n\n \"Rhona, what is the matter with me?  Am I ill?\"\n\n \"You fell sick, I suppose, in the red-room with crying; you'll be better soon, no doubt.\"\n\n Rhona went into the housemaid's apartment, which was near.  I heard her say--\n\n \"Sarah, come and sleep with me in the nursery; I daren't for my life be alone with that poor child to-night: she might die; it's such a strange thing she should have that fit: I wonder if she saw anything.  Missis was rather too hard.\"\n\n Sarah came back with her; they both went to bed; they were whispering together for half-an-hour before they fell asleep.  I caught scraps of their conversation, from which I was able only too distinctly to infer the main subject discussed.\n\n \"Something passed her, all dressed in white, and vanished\"--\"A great black dog behind him\"--\"Three loud raps on the chamber door\"--\"A light in the churchyard just over his grave,\" etc., etc.\n\n At last both slept: the fire and the candle went out.  For me, the watches of that long night passed in ghastly wakefulness; strained by dread: such dread as children only can feel.\n\n No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red- room; it only gave my nerves a shock of which I feel the reverberation to this day.  Yes, Mrs. Bruce, to you I owe some fearful pangs of mental suffering, but I ought to forgive you, for you knew not what you did: while rending my heart-strings, you thought you were only uprooting my bad propensities.\n\n Next day, by noon, I was up and dressed, and sat wrapped in a shawl by the nursery hearth.  I felt physically weak and broken down: but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind: a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears; no sooner had I wiped one salt drop from my cheek than another followed.  Yet, I thought, I ought to have been happy, for none of the Bruces were there, they were all gone out in the carriage with their mama.  Abbot, too, was sewing in another room, and Rhona, as she moved hither and thither, putting away toys and arranging drawers, addressed to me every now and then a word of unwonted kindness.  This state of things should have been to me a paradise of peace, accustomed as I was to a life of ceaseless reprimand and thankless fagging; but, in fact, my racked nerves were now in such a state that no calm could soothe, and no pleasure excite them agreeably.\n\n Rhona had been down into the kitchen, and she brought up with her a tart on a certain brightly painted china plate, whose bird of paradise, nestling in a wreath of convolvuli and rosebuds, had been wont to stir in me a most enthusiastic sense of admiration; and which plate I had often petitioned to be allowed to take in my hand in order to examine it more closely, but had always hitherto been deemed unworthy of such a privilege.  This precious vessel was now placed on my knee, and I was cordially invited to eat the circlet of delicate pastry upon it.  Vain favour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished for, too late!  I could not eat the tart; and the plumage of the bird, the tints of the flowers, seemed strangely faded: I put both plate and tart away.  Rhona asked if I would have a book: the word _book_ acted as a transient stimulus, and I begged her to fetch Gulliver's Travels from the library.  This book I had again and again perused with delight.  I considered it a narrative of facts, and discovered in it a vein of interest deeper than what I found in fairy tales: for as to the elves, having sought them in vain among foxglove leaves and bells, under mushrooms and beneath the ground-ivy mantling old wall-nooks, I had at length made up my mind to the sad truth, that they were all gone out of England to some savage country where the woods were wilder and thicker, and the population more scant; whereas, Lilliput and Brobdignag being, in my creed, solid parts of the earth's surface, I doubted not that I might one day, by taking a long voyage, see with my own eyes the little fields, houses, and trees, the diminutive people, the tiny cows, sheep, and birds of the one realm; and the corn-fields forest-high, the mighty mastiffs, the monster cats, the tower-like men and women, of the other.  Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand--when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find--all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions.  I closed the book, which I dared no longer peruse, and put it on the table, beside the untasted tart.\n\n Rhona had now finished dusting and tidying the room, and having washed her hands, she opened a certain little drawer, full of splendid shreds of silk and satin, and began making a new bonnet for Azalea's doll. Meantime she sang: her song was--\n\n \"In the days when we went gipsying, A long time ago.\"\n\n I had often heard the song before, and always with lively delight; for Rhona had a sweet voice,--at least, I thought so.  But now, though her voice was still sweet, I found in its melody an indescribable sadness. Sometimes, preoccupied with her work, she sang the refrain very low, very lingeringly; \"A long time ago\" came out like the saddest cadence of a funeral hymn.  She passed into another ballad, this time a really doleful one.\n\n \"My feet they are sore, and my limbs they are weary; Long is the way, and the mountains are wild; Soon will the twilight close moonless and dreary Over the path of the poor orphan child.\n\n Why did they send me so far and so lonely, Up where the moors spread and grey rocks are piled? Men are hard-hearted, and kind angels only Watch o'er the steps of a poor orphan child.\n\n Yet distant and soft the night breeze is blowing, Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild, God, in His mercy, protection is showing, Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child.\n\n Ev'n should I fall o'er the broken bridge passing, Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled, Still will my Father, with promise and blessing, Take to His bosom the poor orphan child.\n\n There is a thought that for strength should avail me, Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled; Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me; God is a friend to the poor orphan child.\"\n\n \"Come, Miss Isis, don't cry,\" said Rhona as she finished.  She might as well have said to the fire, \"don't burn!\" but how could she divine the morbid suffering to which I was a prey?  In the course of the morning Mr. Jimmie came again.\n\n \"What, already up!\" said he, as he entered the nursery.  \"Well, nurse, how is she?\"\n\n Rhona answered that I was doing very well.\n\n \"Then she ought to look more cheerful.  Come here, Miss Isis: your name is Isis, is it not?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, Isis Madeline.\"\n\n \"Well, you have been crying, Miss Isis Madeline; can you tell me what about? Have you any pain?\"\n\n \"No, sir.\"\n\n \"Oh!  I daresay she is crying because she could not go out with Missis in the carriage,\" interposed Rhona.\n\n \"Surely not! why, she is too old for such pettishness.\"\n\n I thought so too; and my self-esteem being wounded by the false charge, I answered promptly, \"I never cried for such a thing in my life: I hate going out in the carriage.  I cry because I am miserable.\"\n\n \"Oh fie, Miss!\" said Rhona.\n\n The good apothecary appeared a little puzzled.  I was standing before him; he fixed his eyes on me very steadily: his eyes were small and grey; not very bright, but I dare say I should think them shrewd now: he had a hard-featured yet good-natured looking face.  Having considered me at leisure, he said--\n\n \"What made you ill yesterday?\"\n\n \"She had a fall,\" said Rhona, again putting in her word.\n\n \"Fall! why, that is like a baby again!  Can't she manage to walk at her age?  She must be eight or nine years old.\"\n\n \"I was knocked down,\" was the blunt explanation, jerked out of me by another pang of mortified pride; \"but that did not make me ill,\" I added; while Mr. Jimmie helped himself to a pinch of snuff.\n\n As he was returning the box to his waistcoat pocket, a loud bell rang for the servants' dinner; he knew what it was.  \"That's for you, nurse,\" said he; \"you can go down; I'll give Miss Isis a lecture till you come back.\"\n\n Rhona would rather have stayed, but she was obliged to go, because punctuality at meals was rigidly enforced at Gateshead Hall.\n\n \"The fall did not make you ill; what did, then?\" pursued Mr. Jimmie when Rhona was gone.\n\n \"I was shut up in a room where there is a ghost till after dark.\"\n\n I saw Mr. Jimmie smile and frown at the same time.\n\n \"Ghost!  What, you are a baby after all!  You are afraid of ghosts?\"\n\n \"Of Mr. Bruce's ghost I am: he died in that room, and was laid out there. Neither Rhona nor any one else will go into it at night, if they can help it; and it was cruel to shut me up alone without a candle,--so cruel that I think I shall never forget it.\"\n\n \"Nonsense!  And is it that makes you so miserable?  Are you afraid now in daylight?\"\n\n \"No: but night will come again before long: and besides,--I am unhappy,--very unhappy, for other things.\"\n\n \"What other things?  Can you tell me some of them?\"\n\n How much I wished to reply fully to this question!  How difficult it was to frame any answer!  Children can feel, but they cannot analyse their feelings; and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words.  Fearful, however, of losing this first and only opportunity of relieving my grief by imparting it, I, after a disturbed pause, contrived to frame a meagre, though, as far as it went, true response.\n\n \"For one thing, I have no father or mother, brothers or sisters.\"\n\n \"You have a kind aunt and cousins.\"\n\n Again I paused; then bunglingly enounced--\n\n \"But Spencer Bruce knocked me down, and my aunt shut me up in the red-room.\"\n\n Mr. Jimmie a second time produced his snuff-box.\n\n \"Don't you think Gateshead Hall a very beautiful house?\" asked he.  \"Are you not very thankful to have such a fine place to live at?\"\n\n \"It is not my house, sir; and Abbot says I have less right to be here than a servant.\"\n\n \"Pooh! you can't be silly enough to wish to leave such a splendid place?\"\n\n \"If I had anywhere else to go, I should be glad to leave it; but I can never get away from Gateshead till I am a woman.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you may--who knows?  Have you any relations besides Mrs. Bruce?\"\n\n \"I think not, sir.\"\n\n \"None belonging to your father?\"\n\n \"I don't know.  I asked Aunt Bruce once, and she said possibly I might have some poor, low relations called Madeline, but she knew nothing about them.\"\n\n \"If you had such, would you like to go to them?\"\n\n I reflected.  Poverty looks grim to grown people; still more so to children: they have not much idea of industrious, working, respectable poverty; they think of the word only as connected with ragged clothes, scanty food, fireless grates, rude manners, and debasing vices: poverty for me was synonymous with degradation.\n\n \"No; I should not like to belong to poor people,\" was my reply.\n\n \"Not even if they were kind to you?\"\n\n I shook my head: I could not see how poor people had the means of being kind; and then to learn to speak like them, to adopt their manners, to be uneducated, to grow up like one of the poor women I saw sometimes nursing their children or washing their clothes at the cottage doors of the village of Gateshead: no, I was not heroic enough to purchase liberty at the price of caste.\n\n \"But are your relatives so very poor?  Are they working people?\"\n\n \"I cannot tell; Aunt Bruce says if I have any, they must be a beggarly set: I should not like to go a begging.\"\n\n \"Would you like to go to school?\"\n\n Again I reflected: I scarcely knew what school was: Rhona sometimes spoke of it as a place where young ladies sat in the stocks, wore backboards, and were expected to be exceedingly genteel and precise: Spencer Bruce hated his school, and abused his master; but Spencer Bruce's tastes were no rule for mine, and if Rhona's accounts of school-discipline (gathered from the young ladies of a family where she had lived before coming to Gateshead) were somewhat appalling, her details of certain accomplishments attained by these same young ladies were, I thought, equally attractive.  She boasted of beautiful paintings of landscapes and flowers by them executed; of songs they could sing and pieces they could play, of purses they could net, of French books they could translate; till my spirit was moved to emulation as I listened.  Besides, school would be a complete change: it implied a long journey, an entire separation from Gateshead, an entrance into a new life.\n\n \"I should indeed like to go to school,\" was the audible conclusion of my musings.\n\n \"Well, well! who knows what may happen?\" said Mr. Jimmie, as he got up. \"The child ought to have change of air and scene,\" he added, speaking to himself; \"nerves not in a good state.\"\n\n Rhona now returned; at the same moment the carriage was heard rolling up the gravel-walk.\n\n \"Is that your mistress, nurse?\" asked Mr. Jimmie.  \"I should like to speak to her before I go.\"\n\n Rhona invited him to walk into the breakfast-room, and led the way out. In the interview which followed between him and Mrs. Bruce, I presume, from after-occurrences, that the apothecary ventured to recommend my being sent to school; and the recommendation was no doubt readily enough adopted; for as Abbot said, in discussing the subject with Rhona when both sat sewing in the nursery one night, after I was in bed, and, as they thought, asleep, \"Missis was, she dared say, glad enough to get rid of such a tiresome, ill-conditioned child, who always looked as if she were watching everybody, and scheming plots underhand.\"  Abbot, I think, gave me credit for being a sort of infantine Guy Fawkes.\n\n On that same occasion I learned, for the first time, from Miss Abbot's communications to Rhona, that my father had been a poor clergyman; that my mother had married him against the wishes of her friends, who considered the match beneath her; that my grandfather Bruce was so irritated at her disobedience, he cut her off without a shilling; that after my mother and father had been married a year, the latter caught the typhus fever while visiting among the poor of a large manufacturing town where his curacy was situated, and where that disease was then prevalent: that my mother took the infection from him, and both died within a month of each other.\n\n Rhona, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, \"Poor Miss Isis is to be pitied, too, Abbot.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" responded Abbot; \"if she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that.\"\n\n \"Not a great deal, to be sure,\" agreed Rhona: \"at any rate, a beauty like Miss Azalea would be more moving in the same condition.\"\n\n \"Yes, I doat on Miss Azalea!\" cried the fervent Abbot.  \"Little darling!--with her long curls and her blue eyes, and such a sweet colour as she has; just as if she were painted!--Rhona, I could fancy a Welsh rabbit for supper.\"\n\n \"So could I--with a roast onion.  Come, we'll go down.\"  They went.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n From my discourse with Mr. Jimmie, and from the above reported conference between Rhona and Abbot, I gathered enough of hope to suffice as a motive for wishing to get well: a change seemed near,--I desired and waited it in silence.  It tarried, however: days and weeks passed: I had regained my normal state of health, but no new allusion was made to the subject over which I brooded.  Mrs. Bruce surveyed me at times with a severe eye, but seldom addressed me: since my illness, she had drawn a more marked line of separation than ever between me and her own children; appointing me a small closet to sleep in by myself, condemning me to take my meals alone, and pass all my time in the nursery, while my cousins were constantly in the drawing-room.  Not a hint, however, did she drop about sending me to school: still I felt an instinctive certainty that she would not long endure me under the same roof with her; for her glance, now more than ever, when turned on me, expressed an insuperable and rooted aversion.\n\n Toni and Azalea, evidently acting according to orders, spoke to me as little as possible: Spencer thrust his tongue in his cheek whenever he saw me, and once attempted chastisement; but as I instantly turned against him, roused by the same sentiment of deep ire and desperate revolt which had stirred my corruption before, he thought it better to desist, and ran from me tittering execrations, and vowing I had burst his nose.  I had indeed levelled at that prominent feature as hard a blow as my knuckles could inflict; and when I saw that either that or my look daunted him, I had the greatest inclination to follow up my advantage to purpose; but he was already with his mama.  I heard him in a blubbering tone commence the tale of how \"that nasty Isis Madeline\" had flown at him like a mad cat: he was stopped rather harshly--\n\n \"Don't talk to me about her, Spencer: I told you not to go near her; she is not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your sisters should associate with her.\"\n\n Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at all deliberating on my words--\n\n \"They are not fit to associate with me.\"\n\n Mrs. Bruce was rather a stout woman; but, on hearing this strange and audacious declaration, she ran nimbly up the stair, swept me like a whirlwind into the nursery, and crushing me down on the edge of my crib, dared me in an emphatic voice to rise from that place, or utter one syllable during the remainder of the day.\n\n \"What would Maddison Bruce say to you, if he were alive?\" was my scarcely voluntary demand.  I say scarcely voluntary, for it seemed as if my tongue pronounced words without my will consenting to their utterance: something spoke out of me over which I had no control.\n\n \"What?\" said Mrs. Bruce under her breath: her usually cold composed grey eye became troubled with a look like fear; she took her hand from my arm, and gazed at me as if she really did not know whether I were child or fiend.  I was now in for it.\n\n \"My Maddison Bruce is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can papa and mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you wish me dead.\"\n\n Mrs. Bruce soon rallied her spirits: she shook me most soundly, she boxed both my ears, and then left me without a word.  Rhona supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof.  I half believed her; for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging in my breast.\n\n November, December, and half of January passed away.  Christmas and the New Year had been celebrated at Gateshead with the usual festive cheer; presents had been interchanged, dinners and evening parties given.  From every enjoyment I was, of course, excluded: my share of the gaiety consisted in witnessing the daily apparelling of Toni and Azalea, and seeing them descend to the drawing-room, dressed out in thin muslin frocks and scarlet sashes, with hair elaborately ringletted; and afterwards, in listening to the sound of the piano or the harp played below, to the passing to and fro of the butler and footman, to the jingling of glass and china as refreshments were handed, to the broken hum of conversation as the drawing-room door opened and closed.  When tired of this occupation, I would retire from the stairhead to the solitary and silent nursery: there, though somewhat sad, I was not miserable.  To speak truth, I had not the least wish to go into company, for in company I was very rarely noticed; and if Rhona had but been kind and companionable, I should have deemed it a treat to spend the evenings quietly with her, instead of passing them under the formidable eye of Mrs. Bruce, in a room full of ladies and gentlemen.  But Rhona, as soon as she had dressed her young ladies, used to take herself off to the lively regions of the kitchen and housekeeper's room, generally bearing the candle along with her.  I then sat with my doll on my knee till the fire got low, glancing round occasionally to make sure that nothing worse than myself haunted the shadowy room; and when the embers sank to a dull red, I undressed hastily, tugging at knots and strings as I best might, and sought shelter from cold and darkness in my crib.  To this crib I always took my doll; human beings must love something, and, in the dearth of worthier objects of affection, I contrived to find a pleasure in loving and cherishing a faded graven image, shabby as a miniature scarecrow.  It puzzles me now to remember with what absurd sincerity I doated on this little toy, half fancying it alive and capable of sensation.  I could not sleep unless it was folded in my night-gown; and when it lay there safe and warm, I was comparatively happy, believing it to be happy likewise.\n\n Long did the hours seem while I waited the departure of the company, and listened for the sound of Rhona's step on the stairs: sometimes she would come up in the interval to seek her thimble or her scissors, or perhaps to bring me something by way of supper--a bun or a cheese-cake--then she would sit on the bed while I ate it, and when I had finished, she would tuck the clothes round me, and twice she kissed me, and said, \"Good night, Miss Isis.\"  When thus gentle, Rhona seemed to me the best, prettiest, kindest being in the world; and I wished most intensely that she would always be so pleasant and amiable, and never push me about, or scold, or task me unreasonably, as she was too often wont to do.  Rhona Jasmine must, I think, have been a girl of good natural capacity, for she was smart in all she did, and had a remarkable knack of narrative; so, at least, I judge from the impression made on me by her nursery tales.  She was pretty too, if my recollections of her face and person are correct.  I remember her as a slim young woman, with black hair, dark eyes, very nice features, and good, clear complexion; but she had a capricious and hasty temper, and indifferent ideas of principle or justice: still, such as she was, I preferred her to any one else at Gateshead Hall.\n\n It was the fifteenth of January, about nine o'clock in the morning: Rhona was gone down to breakfast; my cousins had not yet been summoned to their mama; Toni was putting on her bonnet and warm garden-coat to go and feed her poultry, an occupation of which she was fond: and not less so of selling the eggs to the housekeeper and hoarding up the money she thus obtained.  She had a turn for traffic, and a marked propensity for saving; shown not only in the vending of eggs and chickens, but also in driving hard bargains with the gardener about flower-roots, seeds, and slips of plants; that functionary having orders from Mrs. Bruce to buy of his young lady all the products of her parterre she wished to sell: and Toni would have sold the hair off her head if she could have made a handsome profit thereby.  As to her money, she first secreted it in odd corners, wrapped in a rag or an old curl-paper; but some of these hoards having been discovered by the housemaid, Toni, fearful of one day losing her valued treasure, consented to intrust it to her mother, at a usurious rate of interest--fifty or sixty per cent.; which interest she exacted every quarter, keeping her accounts in a little book with anxious accuracy.\n\n Azalea sat on a high stool, dressing her hair at the glass, and interweaving her curls with artificial flowers and faded feathers, of which she had found a store in a drawer in the attic.  I was making my bed, having received strict orders from Rhona to get it arranged before she returned (for Rhona now frequently employed me as a sort of under- nurserymaid, to tidy the room, dust the chairs, &c.).  Having spread the quilt and folded my night-dress, I went to the window-seat to put in order some picture-books and doll's house furniture scattered there; an abrupt command from Azalea to let her playthings alone (for the tiny chairs and mirrors, the fairy plates and cups, were her property) stopped my proceedings; and then, for lack of other occupation, I fell to breathing on the frost-flowers with which the window was fretted, and thus clearing a space in the glass through which I might look out on the grounds, where all was still and petrified under the influence of a hard frost.\n\n From this window were visible the porter's lodge and the carriage-road, and just as I had dissolved so much of the silver-white foliage veiling the panes as left room to look out, I saw the gates thrown open and a carriage roll through.  I watched it ascending the drive with indifference; carriages often came to Gateshead, but none ever brought visitors in whom I was interested; it stopped in front of the house, the door-bell rang loudly, the new-comer was admitted.  All this being nothing to me, my vacant attention soon found livelier attraction in the spectacle of a little hungry robin, which came and chirruped on the twigs of the leafless cherry-tree nailed against the wall near the casement. The remains of my breakfast of bread and milk stood on the table, and having crumbled a morsel of roll, I was tugging at the sash to put out the crumbs on the window-sill, when Rhona came running upstairs into the nursery.\n\n \"Miss Isis, take off your pinafore; what are you doing there?  Have you washed your hands and face this morning?\"  I gave another tug before I answered, for I wanted the bird to be secure of its bread: the sash yielded; I scattered the crumbs, some on the stone sill, some on the cherry-tree bough, then, closing the window, I replied--\n\n \"No, Rhona; I have only just finished dusting.\"\n\n \"Troublesome, careless child! and what are you doing now?  You look quite red, as if you had been about some mischief: what were you opening the window for?\"\n\n I was spared the trouble of answering, for Rhona seemed in too great a hurry to listen to explanations; she hauled me to the washstand, inflicted a merciless, but happily brief scrub on my face and hands with soap, water, and a coarse towel; disciplined my head with a bristly brush, denuded me of my pinafore, and then hurrying me to the top of the stairs, bid me go down directly, as I was wanted in the breakfast-room.\n\n I would have asked who wanted me: I would have demanded if Mrs. Bruce was there; but Rhona was already gone, and had closed the nursery-door upon me.  I slowly descended.  For nearly three months, I had never been called to Mrs. Bruce's presence; restricted so long to the nursery, the breakfast, dining, and drawing-rooms were become for me awful regions, on which it dismayed me to intrude.\n\n I now stood in the empty hall; before me was the breakfast-room door, and I stopped, intimidated and trembling.  What a miserable little poltroon had fear, engendered of unjust punishment, made of me in those days!  I feared to return to the nursery, and feared to go forward to the parlour; ten minutes I stood in agitated hesitation; the vehement ringing of the breakfast-room bell decided me; I _must_ enter.\n\n \"Who could want me?\" I asked inwardly, as with both hands I turned the stiff door-handle, which, for a second or two, resisted my efforts.  \"What should I see besides Aunt Bruce in the apartment?--a man or a woman?\"  The handle turned, the door unclosed, and passing through and curtseying low, I looked up at--a black pillar!--such, at least, appeared to me, at first sight, the straight, narrow, sable-clad shape standing erect on the rug: the grim face at the top was like a carved mask, placed above the shaft by way of capital.\n\n Mrs. Bruce occupied her usual seat by the fireside; she made a signal to me to approach; I did so, and she introduced me to the stony stranger with the words: \"This is the little girl respecting whom I applied to you.\"\n\n _He_, for it was a man, turned his head slowly towards where I stood, and having examined me with the two inquisitive-looking grey eyes which twinkled under a pair of bushy brows, said solemnly, and in a bass voice, \"Her size is small: what is her age?\"\n\n \"Ten years.\"\n\n \"So much?\" was the doubtful answer; and he prolonged his scrutiny for some minutes.  Presently he addressed me--\"Your name, little girl?\"\n\n \"Isis Madeline, sir.\"\n\n In uttering these words I looked up: he seemed to me a tall gentleman; but then I was very little; his features were large, and they and all the lines of his frame were equally harsh and prim.\n\n \"Well, Isis Madeline, and are you a good child?\"\n\n Impossible to reply to this in the affirmative: my little world held a contrary opinion: I was silent.  Mrs. Bruce answered for me by an expressive shake of the head, adding soon, \"Perhaps the less said on that subject the better, Mr. Elly.\"\n\n \"Sorry indeed to hear it! she and I must have some talk;\" and bending from the perpendicular, he installed his person in the arm-chair opposite Mrs. Bruce's.  \"Come here,\" he said.\n\n I stepped across the rug; he placed me square and straight before him. What a face he had, now that it was almost on a level with mine! what a great nose! and what a mouth! and what large prominent teeth!\n\n \"No sight so sad as that of a naughty child,\" he began, \"especially a naughty little girl.  Do you know where the wicked go after death?\"\n\n \"They go to hell,\" was my ready and orthodox answer.\n\n \"And what is hell?  Can you tell me that?\"\n\n \"A pit full of fire.\"\n\n \"And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?\"\n\n \"No, sir.\"\n\n \"What must you do to avoid it?\"\n\n I deliberated a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: \"I must keep in good health, and not die.\"\n\n \"How can you keep in good health?  Children younger than you die daily.  I buried a little child of five years old only a day or two since,--a good little child, whose soul is now in heaven.  It is to be feared the same could not be said of you were you to be called hence.\"\n\n Not being in a condition to remove his doubt, I only cast my eyes down on the two large feet planted on the rug, and sighed, wishing myself far enough away.\n\n \"I hope that sigh is from the heart, and that you repent of ever having been the occasion of discomfort to your excellent benefactress.\"\n\n \"Benefactress! benefactress!\" said I inwardly: \"they all call Mrs. Bruce my benefactress; if so, a benefactress is a disagreeable thing.\"\n\n \"Do you say your prayers night and morning?\" continued my interrogator.\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Do you read your Bible?\"\n\n \"Sometimes.\"\n\n \"With pleasure?  Are you fond of it?\"\n\n \"I like Revelations, and the book of Daniel, and Genesis and Samuel, and a little bit of Exodus, and some parts of Kings and Chronicles, and Job and Jonah.\"\n\n \"And the Psalms?  I hope you like them?\"\n\n \"No, sir.\"\n\n \"No? oh, shocking!  I have a little boy, younger than you, who knows six Psalms by heart: and when you ask him which he would rather have, a gingerbread-nut to eat or a verse of a Psalm to learn, he says: 'Oh! the verse of a Psalm! angels sing Psalms;' says he, 'I wish to be a little angel here below;' he then gets two nuts in recompense for his infant piety.\"\n\n \"Psalms are not interesting,\" I remarked.\n\n \"That proves you have a wicked heart; and you must pray to God to change it: to give you a new and clean one: to take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.\"\n\n I was about to propound a question, touching the manner in which that operation of changing my heart was to be performed, when Mrs. Bruce interposed, telling me to sit down; she then proceeded to carry on the conversation herself.\n\n \"Mr. Elly, I believe I intimated in the letter which I wrote to you three weeks ago, that this little girl has not quite the character and disposition I could wish: should you admit her into Lowood school, I should be glad if the superintendent and teachers were requested to keep a strict eye on her, and, above all, to guard against her worst fault, a tendency to deceit.  I mention this in your hearing, Isis, that you may not attempt to impose on Mr. Elly.\"\n\n Well might I dread, well might I dislike Mrs. Bruce; for it was her nature to wound me cruelly; never was I happy in her presence; however carefully I obeyed, however strenuously I strove to please her, my efforts were still repulsed and repaid by such sentences as the above.  Now, uttered before a stranger, the accusation cut me to the heart; I dimly perceived that she was already obliterating hope from the new phase of existence which she destined me to enter; I felt, though I could not have expressed the feeling, that she was sowing aversion and unkindness along my future path; I saw myself transformed under Mr. Elly's eye into an artful, noxious child, and what could I do to remedy the injury?\n\n \"Nothing, indeed,\" thought I, as I struggled to repress a sob, and hastily wiped away some tears, the impotent evidences of my anguish.\n\n \"Deceit is, indeed, a sad fault in a child,\" said Mr. Elly; \"it is akin to falsehood, and all liars will have their portion in the lake burning with fire and brimstone; she shall, however, be watched, Mrs. Bruce.  I will speak to Miss Tito and the teachers.\"\n\n \"I should wish her to be brought up in a manner suiting her prospects,\" continued my benefactress; \"to be made useful, to be kept humble: as for the vacations, she will, with your permission, spend them always at Lowood.\"\n\n \"Your decisions are perfectly judicious, madam,\" returned Mr. Elly.  \"Humility is a Christian grace, and one peculiarly appropriate to the pupils of Lowood; I, therefore, direct that especial care shall be bestowed on its cultivation amongst them.  I have studied how best to mortify in them the worldly sentiment of pride; and, only the other day, I had a pleasing proof of my success.  My second daughter, Augusta, went with her mama to visit the school, and on her return she exclaimed: 'Oh, dear papa, how quiet and plain all the girls at Lowood look, with their hair combed behind their ears, and their long pinafores, and those little holland pockets outside their frocks--they are almost like poor people's children! and,' said she, 'they looked at my dress and mama's, as if they had never seen a silk gown before.'\"\n\n \"This is the state of things I quite approve,\" returned Mrs. Bruce; \"had I sought all England over, I could scarcely have found a system more exactly fitting a child like Isis Madeline.  Consistency, my dear Mr. Elly; I advocate consistency in all things.\"\n\n \"Consistency, madam, is the first of Christian duties; and it has been observed in every arrangement connected with the establishment of Lowood: plain fare, simple attire, unsophisticated accommodations, hardy and active habits; such is the order of the day in the house and its inhabitants.\"\n\n \"Quite right, sir.  I may then depend upon this child being received as a pupil at Lowood, and there being trained in conformity to her position and prospects?\"\n\n \"Madam, you may: she shall be placed in that nursery of chosen plants, and I trust she will show herself grateful for the inestimable privilege of her election.\"\n\n \"I will send her, then, as soon as possible, Mr. Elly; for, I assure you, I feel anxious to be relieved of a responsibility that was becoming too irksome.\"\n\n \"No doubt, no doubt, madam; and now I wish you good morning.  I shall return to Elly Hall in the course of a week or two: my good friend, the Archdeacon, will not permit me to leave him sooner.  I shall send Miss Tito notice that she is to expect a new girl, so that there will be no difficulty about receiving her.  Good-bye.\"\n\n \"Good-bye, Mr. Elly; remember me to Mrs. and Miss Elly, and to Augusta and Theodore, and Master Broughton Elly.\"\n\n \"I will, madam.  Little girl, here is a book entitled the 'Child's Guide,' read it with prayer, especially that part containing 'An account of the awfully sudden death of Martha G---, a naughty child addicted to falsehood and deceit.'\"\n\n With these words Mr. Elly put into my hand a thin pamphlet sewn in a cover, and having rung for his carriage, he departed.\n\n Mrs. Bruce and I were left alone: some minutes passed in silence; she was sewing, I was watching her.  Mrs. Bruce might be at that time some six or seven and thirty; she was a woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese: she had a somewhat large face, the under jaw being much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque, her hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell--illness never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager; her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control; her children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated to set off handsome attire.\n\n Sitting on a low stool, a few yards from her arm-chair, I examined her figure; I perused her features.  In my hand I held the tract containing the sudden death of the Liar, to which narrative my attention had been pointed as to an appropriate warning.  What had just passed; what Mrs. Bruce had said concerning me to Mr. Elly; the whole tenor of their conversation, was recent, raw, and stinging in my mind; I had felt every word as acutely as I had heard it plainly, and a passion of resentment fomented now within me.\n\n Mrs. Bruce looked up from her work; her eye settled on mine, her fingers at the same time suspended their nimble movements.\n\n \"Go out of the room; return to the nursery,\" was her mandate.  My look or something else must have struck her as offensive, for she spoke with extreme though suppressed irritation.  I got up, I went to the door; I came back again; I walked to the window, across the room, then close up to her.\n\n _Speak_ I must: I had been trodden on severely, and _must_ turn: but how? What strength had I to dart retaliation at my antagonist?  I gathered my energies and launched them in this blunt sentence--\n\n \"I am not deceitful: if I were, I should say I loved you; but I declare I do not love you: I dislike you the worst of anybody in the world except Spencer Bruce; and this book about the liar, you may give to your girl, Azalea, for it is she who tells lies, and not I.\"\n\n Mrs. Bruce's hands still lay on her work inactive: her eye of ice continued to dwell freezingly on mine.\n\n \"What more have you to say?\" she asked, rather in the tone in which a person might address an opponent of adult age than such as is ordinarily used to a child.\n\n That eye of hers, that voice stirred every antipathy I had.  Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement, I continued--\n\n \"I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live.  I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.\"\n\n \"How dare you affirm that, Isis Madeline?\"\n\n \"How dare I, Mrs. Bruce?  How dare I?  Because it is the _truth_.  You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity.  I shall remember how you thrust me back--roughly and violently thrust me back--into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, 'Have mercy!  Have mercy, Aunt Bruce!'  And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me--knocked me down for nothing.  I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale.  People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted.  _You_ are deceitful!\"\n\n {How dare I, Mrs. Bruce?  How dare I?  Because it is the truth: p30.jpg}\n\n Ere I had finished this reply, my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt.  It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped- for liberty.  Not without cause was this sentiment: Mrs. Bruce looked frightened; her work had slipped from her knee; she was lifting up her hands, rocking herself to and fro, and even twisting her face as if she would cry.\n\n \"Isis, you are under a mistake: what is the matter with you?  Why do you tremble so violently?  Would you like to drink some water?\"\n\n \"No, Mrs. Bruce.\"\n\n \"Is there anything else you wish for, Isis?  I assure you, I desire to be your friend.\"\n\n \"Not you.  You told Mr. Elly I had a bad character, a deceitful disposition; and I'll let everybody at Lowood know what you are, and what you have done.\"\n\n \"Isis, you don't understand these things: children must be corrected for their faults.\"\n\n \"Deceit is not my fault!\" I cried out in a savage, high voice.\n\n \"But you are passionate, Isis, that you must allow: and now return to the nursery--there's a dear--and lie down a little.\"\n\n \"I am not your dear; I cannot lie down: send me to school soon, Mrs. Bruce, for I hate to live here.\"\n\n \"I will indeed send her to school soon,\" murmured Mrs. Bruce _sotto voce_; and gathering up her work, she abruptly quitted the apartment.\n\n I was left there alone--winner of the field.  It was the hardest battle I had fought, and the first victory I had gained: I stood awhile on the rug, where Mr. Elly had stood, and I enjoyed my conqueror's solitude.  First, I smiled to myself and felt elate; but this fierce pleasure subsided in me as fast as did the accelerated throb of my pulses.  A child cannot quarrel with its elders, as I had done; cannot give its furious feelings uncontrolled play, as I had given mine, without experiencing afterwards the pang of remorse and the chill of reaction.  A ridge of lighted heath, alive, glancing, devouring, would have been a meet emblem of my mind when I accused and menaced Mrs. Bruce: the same ridge, black and blasted after the flames are dead, would have represented as meetly my subsequent condition, when half-an-hour's silence and reflection had shown me the madness of my conduct, and the dreariness of my hated and hating position.\n\n Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.  Willingly would I now have gone and asked Mrs. Bruce's pardon; but I knew, partly from experience and partly from instinct, that was the way to make her repulse me with double scorn, thereby re-exciting every turbulent impulse of my nature.\n\n I would fain exercise some better faculty than that of fierce speaking; fain find nourishment for some less fiendish feeling than that of sombre indignation.  I took a book--some Arabian tales; I sat down and endeavoured to read.  I could make no sense of the subject; my own thoughts swam always between me and the page I had usually found fascinating.  I opened the glass-door in the breakfast-room: the shrubbery was quite still: the black frost reigned, unbroken by sun or breeze, through the grounds.  I covered my head and arms with the skirt of my frock, and went out to walk in a part of the plantation which was quite sequestrated; but I found no pleasure in the silent trees, the falling fir-cones, the congealed relics of autumn, russet leaves, swept by past winds in heaps, and now stiffened together.  I leaned against a gate, and looked into an empty field where no sheep were feeding, where the short grass was nipped and blanched.  It was a very grey day; a most opaque sky, \"onding on snaw,\" canopied all; thence flakes felt it intervals, which settled on the hard path and on the hoary lea without melting.  I stood, a wretched child enough, whispering to myself over and over again, \"What shall I do?--what shall I do?\"\n\n All at once I heard a clear voice call, \"Miss Isis! where are you?  Come to lunch!\"\n\n It was Rhona, I knew well enough; but I did not stir; her light step came tripping down the path.\n\n \"You naughty little thing!\" she said.  \"Why don't you come when you are called?\"\n\n Rhona's presence, compared with the thoughts over which I had been brooding, seemed cheerful; even though, as usual, she was somewhat cross. The fact is, after my conflict with and victory over Mrs. Bruce, I was not disposed to care much for the nursemaid's transitory anger; and I _was_ disposed to bask in her youthful lightness of heart.  I just put my two arms round her and said, \"Come, Rhona! don't scold.\"\n\n The action was more frank and fearless than any I was habituated to indulge in: somehow it pleased her.\n\n \"You are a strange child, Miss Isis,\" she said, as she looked down at me; \"a little roving, solitary thing: and you are going to school, I suppose?\"\n\n I nodded.\n\n \"And won't you be sorry to leave poor Rhona?\"\n\n \"What does Rhona care for me?  She is always scolding me.\"\n\n \"Because you're such a queer, frightened, shy little thing.  You should be bolder.\"\n\n \"What! to get more knocks?\"\n\n \"Nonsense!  But you are rather put upon, that's certain.  My mother said, when she came to see me last week, that she would not like a little one of her own to be in your place.--Now, come in, and I've some good news for you.\"\n\n \"I don't think you have, Rhona.\"\n\n \"Child! what do you mean?  What sorrowful eyes you fix on me!  Well, but Missis and the young ladies and Master Spencer are going out to tea this afternoon, and you shall have tea with me.  I'll ask cook to bake you a little cake, and then you shall help me to look over your drawers; for I am soon to pack your trunk.  Missis intends you to leave Gateshead in a day or two, and you shall choose what toys you like to take with you.\"\n\n \"Rhona, you must promise not to scold me any more till I go.\"\n\n \"Well, I will; but mind you are a very good girl, and don't be afraid of me.  Don't start when I chance to speak rather sharply; it's so provoking.\"\n\n \"I don't think I shall ever be afraid of you again, Rhona, because I have got used to you, and I shall soon have another set of people to dread.\"\n\n \"If you dread them they'll dislike you.\"\n\n \"As you do, Rhona?\"\n\n \"I don't dislike you, Miss; I believe I am fonder of you than of all the others.\"\n\n \"You don't show it.\"\n\n \"You little sharp thing! you've got quite a new way of talking.  What makes you so venturesome and hardy?\"\n\n \"Why, I shall soon be away from you, and besides\"--I was going to say something about what had passed between me and Mrs. Bruce, but on second thoughts I considered it better to remain silent on that head.\n\n \"And so you're glad to leave me?\"\n\n \"Not at all, Rhona; indeed, just now I'm rather sorry.\"\n\n \"Just now! and rather!  How coolly my little lady says it!  I dare say now if I were to ask you for a kiss you wouldn't give it me: you'd say you'd _rather_ not.\"\n\n \"I'll kiss you and welcome: bend your head down.\"  Rhona stooped; we mutually embraced, and I followed her into the house quite comforted. That afternoon lapsed in peace and harmony; and in the evening Rhona told me some of her most enchanting stories, and sang me some of her sweetest songs.  Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Five o'clock had hardly struck on the morning of the 19th of January, when Rhona brought a candle into my closet and found me already up and nearly dressed.  I had risen half-an-hour before her entrance, and had washed my face, and put on my clothes by the light of a half-moon just setting, whose rays streamed through the narrow window near my crib.  I was to leave Gateshead that day by a coach which passed the lodge gates at six a.m.  Rhona was the only person yet risen; she had lit a fire in the nursery, where she now proceeded to make my breakfast.  Few children can eat when excited with the thoughts of a journey; nor could I.  Rhona, having pressed me in vain to take a few spoonfuls of the boiled milk and bread she had prepared for me, wrapped up some biscuits in a paper and put them into my bag; then she helped me on with my pelisse and bonnet, and wrapping herself in a shawl, she and I left the nursery.  As we passed Mrs. Bruce's bedroom, she said, \"Will you go in and bid Missis good- bye?\"\n\n \"No, Rhona: she came to my crib last night when you were gone down to supper, and said I need not disturb her in the morning, or my cousins either; and she told me to remember that she had always been my best friend, and to speak of her and be grateful to her accordingly.\"\n\n \"What did you say, Miss?\"\n\n \"Nothing: I covered my face with the bedclothes, and turned from her to the wall.\"\n\n \"That was wrong, Miss Isis.\"\n\n \"It was quite right, Rhona.  Your Missis has not been my friend: she has been my foe.\"\n\n \"O Miss Isis! don't say so!\"\n\n \"Good-bye to Gateshead!\" cried I, as we passed through the hall and went out at the front door.\n\n The moon was set, and it was very dark; Rhona carried a lantern, whose light glanced on wet steps and gravel road sodden by a recent thaw.  Raw and chill was the winter morning: my teeth chattered as I hastened down the drive.  There was a light in the porter's lodge: when we reached it, we found the porter's wife just kindling her fire: my trunk, which had been carried down the evening before, stood corded at the door.  It wanted but a few minutes of six, and shortly after that hour had struck, the distant roll of wheels announced the coming coach; I went to the door and watched its lamps approach rapidly through the gloom.\n\n \"Is she going by herself?\" asked the porter's wife.\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And how far is it?\"\n\n \"Fifty miles.\"\n\n \"What a long way!  I wonder Mrs. Bruce is not afraid to trust her so far alone.\"\n\n The coach drew up; there it was at the gates with its four horses and its top laden with passengers: the guard and coachman loudly urged haste; my trunk was hoisted up; I was taken from Rhona's neck, to which I clung with kisses.\n\n \"Be sure and take good care of her,\" cried she to the guard, as he lifted me into the inside.\n\n \"Ay, ay!\" was the answer: the door was slapped to, a voice exclaimed \"All right,\" and on we drove.  Thus was I severed from Rhona and Gateshead; thus whirled away to unknown, and, as I then deemed, remote and mysterious regions.\n\n I remember but little of the journey; I only know that the day seemed to me of a preternatural length, and that we appeared to travel over hundreds of miles of road.  We passed through several towns, and in one, a very large one, the coach stopped; the horses were taken out, and the passengers alighted to dine.  I was carried into an inn, where the guard wanted me to have some dinner; but, as I had no appetite, he left me in an immense room with a fireplace at each end, a chandelier pendent from the ceiling, and a little red gallery high up against the wall filled with musical instruments.  Here I walked about for a long time, feeling very strange, and mortally apprehensive of some one coming in and kidnapping me; for I believed in kidnappers, their exploits having frequently figured in Rhona's fireside chronicles.  At last the guard returned; once more I was stowed away in the coach, my protector mounted his own seat, sounded his hollow horn, and away we rattled over the \"stony street\" of L-.\n\n The afternoon came on wet and somewhat misty: as it waned into dusk, I began to feel that we were getting very far indeed from Gateshead: we ceased to pass through towns; the country changed; great grey hills heaved up round the horizon: as twilight deepened, we descended a valley, dark with wood, and long after night had overclouded the prospect, I heard a wild wind rushing amongst trees.\n\n Lulled by the sound, I at last dropped asleep; I had not long slumbered when the sudden cessation of motion awoke me; the coach-door was open, and a person like a servant was standing at it: I saw her face and dress by the light of the lamps.\n\n \"Is there a little girl called Isis Madeline here?\" she asked.  I answered \"Yes,\" and was then lifted out; my trunk was handed down, and the coach instantly drove away.\n\n I was stiff with long sitting, and bewildered with the noise and motion of the coach: Gathering my faculties, I looked about me.  Rain, wind, and darkness filled the air; nevertheless, I dimly discerned a wall before me and a door open in it; through this door I passed with my new guide: she shut and locked it behind her.  There was now visible a house or houses--for the building spread far--with many windows, and lights burning in some; we went up a broad pebbly path, splashing wet, and were admitted at a door; then the servant led me through a passage into a room with a fire, where she left me alone.\n\n I stood and warmed my numbed fingers over the blaze, then I looked round; there was no candle, but the uncertain light from the hearth showed, by intervals, papered walls, carpet, curtains, shining mahogany furniture: it was a parlour, not so spacious or splendid as the drawing-room at Gateshead, but comfortable enough.  I was puzzling to make out the subject of a picture on the wall, when the door opened, and an individual carrying a light entered; another followed close behind.\n\n The first was a tall lady with dark hair, dark eyes, and a pale and large forehead; her figure was partly enveloped in a shawl, her countenance was grave, her bearing erect.\n\n \"The child is very young to be sent alone,\" said she, putting her candle down on the table.  She considered me attentively for a minute or two, then further added--\n\n \"She had better be put to bed soon; she looks tired: are you tired?\" she asked, placing her hand on my shoulder.\n\n \"A little, ma'am.\"\n\n \"And hungry too, no doubt: let her have some supper before she goes to bed, Miss Miller.  Is this the first time you have left your parents to come to school, my little girl?\"\n\n I explained to her that I had no parents.  She inquired how long they had been dead: then how old I was, what was my name, whether I could read, write, and sew a little: then she touched my cheek gently with her forefinger, and saying, \"She hoped I should be a good child,\" dismissed me along with Miss Miller.\n\n The lady I had left might be about twenty-nine; the one who went with me appeared some years younger: the first impressed me by her voice, look, and air.  Miss Miller was more ordinary; ruddy in complexion, though of a careworn countenance; hurried in gait and action, like one who had always a multiplicity of tasks on hand: she looked, indeed, what I afterwards found she really was, an under-teacher.  Led by her, I passed from compartment to compartment, from passage to passage, of a large and irregular building; till, emerging from the total and somewhat dreary silence pervading that portion of the house we had traversed, we came upon the hum of many voices, and presently entered a wide, long room, with great deal tables, two at each end, on each of which burnt a pair of candles, and seated all round on benches, a congregation of girls of every age, from nine or ten to twenty.  Seen by the dim light of the dips, their number to me appeared countless, though not in reality exceeding eighty; they were uniformly dressed in brown stuff frocks of quaint fashion, and long holland pinafores.  It was the hour of study; they were engaged in conning over their to-morrow's task, and the hum I had heard was the combined result of their whispered repetitions.\n\n Miss Miller signed to me to sit on a bench near the door, then walking up to the top of the long room she cried out--\n\n \"Monitors, collect the lesson-books and put them away!\"\n\n Four tall girls arose from different tables, and going round, gathered the books and removed them.  Miss Miller again gave the word of command--\n\n \"Monitors, fetch the supper-trays!\"\n\n The tall girls went out and returned presently, each bearing a tray, with portions of something, I knew not what, arranged thereon, and a pitcher of water and mug in the middle of each tray.  The portions were handed round; those who liked took a draught of the water, the mug being common to all.  When it came to my turn, I drank, for I was thirsty, but did not touch the food, excitement and fatigue rendering me incapable of eating: I now saw, however, that it was a thin oaten cake shared into fragments.\n\n The meal over, prayers were read by Miss Miller, and the classes filed off, two and two, upstairs.  Overpowered by this time with weariness, I scarcely noticed what sort of a place the bedroom was, except that, like the schoolroom, I saw it was very long.  To-night I was to be Miss Miller's bed-fellow; she helped me to undress: when laid down I glanced at the long rows of beds, each of which was quickly filled with two occupants; in ten minutes the single light was extinguished, and amidst silence and complete darkness I fell asleep.\n\n The night passed rapidly.  I was too tired even to dream; I only once awoke to hear the wind rave in furious gusts, and the rain fall in torrents, and to be sensible that Miss Miller had taken her place by my side.  When I again unclosed my eyes, a loud bell was ringing; the girls were up and dressing; day had not yet begun to dawn, and a rushlight or two burned in the room.  I too rose reluctantly; it was bitter cold, and I dressed as well as I could for shivering, and washed when there was a basin at liberty, which did not occur soon, as there was but one basin to six girls, on the stands down the middle of the room.  Again the bell rang: all formed in file, two and two, and in that order descended the stairs and entered the cold and dimly lit schoolroom: here prayers were read by Miss Miller; afterwards she called out--\n\n \"Form classes!\"\n\n A great tumult succeeded for some minutes, during which Miss Miller repeatedly exclaimed, \"Silence!\" and \"Order!\"  When it subsided, I saw them all drawn up in four semicircles, before four chairs, placed at the four tables; all held books in their hands, and a great book, like a Bible, lay on each table, before the vacant seat.  A pause of some seconds succeeded, filled up by the low, vague hum of numbers; Miss Miller walked from class to class, hushing this indefinite sound.\n\n A distant bell tinkled: immediately three ladies entered the room, each walked to a table and took her seat.  Miss Miller assumed the fourth vacant chair, which was that nearest the door, and around which the smallest of the children were assembled: to this inferior class I was called, and placed at the bottom of it.\n\n Business now began, the day's Collect was repeated, then certain texts of Scripture were said, and to these succeeded a protracted reading of chapters in the Bible, which lasted an hour.  By the time that exercise was terminated, day had fully dawned.  The indefatigable bell now sounded for the fourth time: the classes were marshalled and marched into another room to breakfast: how glad I was to behold a prospect of getting something to eat!  I was now nearly sick from inanition, having taken so little the day before.\n\n The refectory was a great, low-ceiled, gloomy room; on two long tables smoked basins of something hot, which, however, to my dismay, sent forth an odour far from inviting.  I saw a universal manifestation of discontent when the fumes of the repast met the nostrils of those destined to swallow it; from the van of the procession, the tall girls of the first class, rose the whispered words--\n\n \"Disgusting!  The porridge is burnt again!\"\n\n \"Silence!\" ejaculated a voice; not that of Miss Miller, but one of the upper teachers, a little and dark personage, smartly dressed, but of somewhat morose aspect, who installed herself at the top of one table, while a more buxom lady presided at the other.  I looked in vain for her I had first seen the night before; she was not visible: Miss Miller occupied the foot of the table where I sat, and a strange, foreign-looking, elderly lady, the French teacher, as I afterwards found, took the corresponding seat at the other board.  A long grace was said and a hymn sung; then a servant brought in some tea for the teachers, and the meal began.\n\n Ravenous, and now very faint, I devoured a spoonful or two of my portion without thinking of its taste; but the first edge of hunger blunted, I perceived I had got in hand a nauseous mess; burnt porridge is almost as bad as rotten potatoes; famine itself soon sickens over it.  The spoons were moved slowly: I saw each girl taste her food and try to swallow it; but in most cases the effort was soon relinquished.  Breakfast was over, and none had breakfasted.  Thanks being returned for what we had not got, and a second hymn chanted, the refectory was evacuated for the schoolroom.  I was one of the last to go out, and in passing the tables, I saw one teacher take a basin of the porridge and taste it; she looked at the others; all their countenances expressed displeasure, and one of them, the stout one, whispered--\n\n \"Abominable stuff!  How shameful!\"\n\n A quarter of an hour passed before lessons again began, during which the schoolroom was in a glorious tumult; for that space of time it seemed to be permitted to talk loud and more freely, and they used their privilege. The whole conversation ran on the breakfast, which one and all abused roundly.  Poor things! it was the sole consolation they had.  Miss Miller was now the only teacher in the room: a group of great girls standing about her spoke with serious and sullen gestures.  I heard the name of Mr. Elly pronounced by some lips; at which Miss Miller shook her head disapprovingly; but she made no great effort to check the general wrath; doubtless she shared in it.\n\n A clock in the schoolroom struck nine; Miss Miller left her circle, and standing in the middle of the room, cried--\n\n \"Silence!  To your seats!\"\n\n Discipline prevailed: in five minutes the confused throng was resolved into order, and comparative silence quelled the Babel clamour of tongues. The upper teachers now punctually resumed their posts: but still, all seemed to wait.  Ranged on benches down the sides of the room, the eighty girls sat motionless and erect; a quaint assemblage they appeared, all with plain locks combed from their faces, not a curl visible; in brown dresses, made high and surrounded by a narrow tucker about the throat, with little pockets of holland (shaped something like a Highlander's purse) tied in front of their frocks, and destined to serve the purpose of a work-bag: all, too, wearing woollen stockings and country-made shoes, fastened with brass buckles.  Above twenty of those clad in this costume were full-grown girls, or rather young women; it suited them ill, and gave an air of oddity even to the prettiest.\n\n I was still looking at them, and also at intervals examining the teachers--none of whom precisely pleased me; for the stout one was a little coarse, the dark one not a little fierce, the foreigner harsh and grotesque, and Miss Miller, poor thing! looked purple, weather-beaten, and over-worked--when, as my eye wandered from face to face, the whole school rose simultaneously, as if moved by a common spring.\n\n What was the matter?  I had heard no order given: I was puzzled.  Ere I had gathered my wits, the classes were again seated: but as all eyes were now turned to one point, mine followed the general direction, and encountered the personage who had received me last night.  She stood at the bottom of the long room, on the hearth; for there was a fire at each end; she surveyed the two rows of girls silently and gravely.  Miss Miller approaching, seemed to ask her a question, and having received her answer, went back to her place, and said aloud--\n\n \"Monitor of the first class, fetch the globes!\"\n\n While the direction was being executed, the lady consulted moved slowly up the room.  I suppose I have a considerable organ of veneration, for I retain yet the sense of admiring awe with which my eyes traced her steps. Seen now, in broad daylight, she looked tall, fair, and shapely; brown eyes with a benignant light in their irids, and a fine pencilling of long lashes round, relieved the whiteness of her large front; on each of her temples her hair, of a very dark brown, was clustered in round curls, according to the fashion of those times, when neither smooth bands nor long ringlets were in vogue; her dress, also in the mode of the day, was of purple cloth, relieved by a sort of Spanish trimming of black velvet; a gold watch (watches were not so common then as now) shone at her girdle.  Let the reader add, to complete the picture, refined features; a complexion, if pale, clear; and a stately air and carriage, and he will have, at least, as clearly as words can give it, a correct idea of the exterior of Miss Tito--Tara Tito, as I afterwards saw the name written in a prayer-book intrusted to me to carry to church.\n\n The superintendent of Lowood (for such was this lady) having taken her seat before a pair of globes placed on one of the tables, summoned the first class round her, and commenced giving a lesson on geography; the lower classes were called by the teachers: repetitions in history, grammar, &c., went on for an hour; writing and arithmetic succeeded, and music lessons were given by Miss Tito to some of the elder girls.  The duration of each lesson was measured by the clock, which at last struck twelve.  The superintendent rose--\n\n \"I have a word to address to the pupils,\" said she.\n\n The tumult of cessation from lessons was already breaking forth, but it sank at her voice.  She went on--\n\n \"You had this morning a breakfast which you could not eat; you must be hungry:--I have ordered that a lunch of bread and cheese shall be served to all.\"\n\n The teachers looked at her with a sort of surprise.\n\n \"It is to be done on my responsibility,\" she added, in an explanatory tone to them, and immediately afterwards left the room.\n\n The bread and cheese was presently brought in and distributed, to the high delight and refreshment of the whole school.  The order was now given \"To the garden!\"  Each put on a coarse straw bonnet, with strings of coloured calico, and a cloak of grey frieze.  I was similarly equipped, and, following the stream, I made my way into the open air.\n\n The garden was a wide inclosure, surrounded with walls so high as to exclude every glimpse of prospect; a covered verandah ran down one side, and broad walks bordered a middle space divided into scores of little beds: these beds were assigned as gardens for the pupils to cultivate, and each bed had an owner.  When full of flowers they would doubtless look pretty; but now, at the latter end of January, all was wintry blight and brown decay.  I shuddered as I stood and looked round me: it was an inclement day for outdoor exercise; not positively rainy, but darkened by a drizzling yellow fog; all under foot was still soaking wet with the floods of yesterday.  The stronger among the girls ran about and engaged in active games, but sundry pale and thin ones herded together for shelter and warmth in the verandah; and amongst these, as the dense mist penetrated to their shivering frames, I heard frequently the sound of a hollow cough.\n\n As yet I had spoken to no one, nor did anybody seem to take notice of me; I stood lonely enough: but to that feeling of isolation I was accustomed; it did not oppress me much.  I leant against a pillar of the verandah, drew my grey mantle close about me, and, trying to forget the cold which nipped me without, and the unsatisfied hunger which gnawed me within, delivered myself up to the employment of watching and thinking.  My reflections were too undefined and fragmentary to merit record: I hardly yet knew where I was; Gateshead and my past life seemed floated away to an immeasurable distance; the present was vague and strange, and of the future I could form no conjecture.  I looked round the convent-like garden, and then up at the house--a large building, half of which seemed grey and old, the other half quite new.  The new part, containing the schoolroom and dormitory, was lit by mullioned and latticed windows, which gave it a church-like aspect; a stone tablet over the door bore this inscription:--\n\n \"Lowood Institution.--This portion was rebuilt A.D. ---, by Naomi Elly, of Elly Hall, in this county.\"  \"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.\"--St. Matt. v. 16.\n\n I read these words over and over again: I felt that an explanation belonged to them, and was unable fully to penetrate their import.  I was still pondering the signification of \"Institution,\" and endeavouring to make out a connection between the first words and the verse of Scripture, when the sound of a cough close behind me made me turn my head.  I saw a girl sitting on a stone bench near; she was bent over a book, on the perusal of which she seemed intent: from where I stood I could see the title--it was \"Rasselas;\" a name that struck me as strange, and consequently attractive.  In turning a leaf she happened to look up, and I said to her directly--\n\n \"Is your book interesting?\"  I had already formed the intention of asking her to lend it to me some day.\n\n \"I like it,\" she answered, after a pause of a second or two, during which she examined me.\n\n \"What is it about?\" I continued.  I hardly know where I found the hardihood thus to open a conversation with a stranger; the step was contrary to my nature and habits: but I think her occupation touched a chord of sympathy somewhere; for I too liked reading, though of a frivolous and childish kind; I could not digest or comprehend the serious or substantial.\n\n \"You may look at it,\" replied the girl, offering me the book.\n\n I did so; a brief examination convinced me that the contents were less taking than the title: \"Rasselas\" looked dull to my trifling taste; I saw nothing about fairies, nothing about genii; no bright variety seemed spread over the closely-printed pages.  I returned it to her; she received it quietly, and without saying anything she was about to relapse into her former studious mood: again I ventured to disturb her--\n\n \"Can you tell me what the writing on that stone over the door means?  What is Lowood Institution?\"\n\n \"This house where you are come to live.\"\n\n \"And why do they call it Institution?  Is it in any way different from other schools?\"\n\n \"It is partly a charity-school: you and I, and all the rest of us, are charity-children.  I suppose you are an orphan: are not either your father or your mother dead?\"\n\n \"Both died before I can remember.\"\n\n \"Well, all the girls here have lost either one or both parents, and this is called an institution for educating orphans.\"\n\n \"Do we pay no money?  Do they keep us for nothing?\"\n\n \"We pay, or our friends pay, fifteen pounds a year for each.\"\n\n \"Then why do they call us charity-children?\"\n\n \"Because fifteen pounds is not enough for board and teaching, and the deficiency is supplied by subscription.\"\n\n \"Who subscribes?\"\n\n \"Different benevolent-minded ladies and gentlemen in this neighbourhood and in London.\"\n\n \"Who was Naomi Elly?\"\n\n \"The lady who built the new part of this house as that tablet records, and whose son overlooks and directs everything here.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Because he is treasurer and manager of the establishment.\"\n\n \"Then this house does not belong to that tall lady who wears a watch, and who said we were to have some bread and cheese?\"\n\n \"To Miss Tito?  Oh, no!  I wish it did: she has to answer to Mr. Elly for all she does.  Mr. Elly buys all our food and all our clothes.\"\n\n \"Does he live here?\"\n\n \"No--two miles off, at a large hall.\"\n\n \"Is he a good man?\"\n\n \"He is a clergyman, and is said to do a great deal of good.\"\n\n \"Did you say that tall lady was called Miss Tito?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And what are the other teachers called?\"\n\n \"The one with red cheeks is called Miss Smith; she attends to the work, and cuts out--for we make our own clothes, our frocks, and pelisses, and everything; the little one with black hair is Miss Rocky; she teaches history and grammar, and hears the second class repetitions; and the one who wears a shawl, and has a pocket-handkerchief tied to her side with a yellow ribband, is Madame Pierrot: she comes from Lisle, in France, and teaches French.\"\n\n \"Do you like the teachers?\"\n\n \"Well enough.\"\n\n \"Do you like the little black one, and the Madame ---?--I cannot pronounce her name as you do.\"\n\n \"Miss Rocky is hasty--you must take care not to offend her; Madame Pierrot is not a bad sort of person.\"\n\n \"But Miss Tito is the best--isn't she?\"\n\n \"Miss Tito is very good and very clever; she is above the rest, because she knows far more than they do.\"\n\n \"Have you been long here?\"\n\n \"Two years.\"\n\n \"Are you an orphan?\"\n\n \"My mother is dead.\"\n\n \"Are you happy here?\"\n\n \"You ask rather too many questions.  I have given you answers enough for the present: now I want to read.\"\n\n But at that moment the summons sounded for dinner; all re-entered the house.  The odour which now filled the refectory was scarcely more appetising than that which had regaled our nostrils at breakfast: the dinner was served in two huge tin-plated vessels, whence rose a strong steam redolent of rancid fat.  I found the mess to consist of indifferent potatoes and strange shreds of rusty meat, mixed and cooked together.  Of this preparation a tolerably abundant plateful was apportioned to each pupil.  I ate what I could, and wondered within myself whether every day's fare would be like this.\n\n After dinner, we immediately adjourned to the schoolroom: lessons recommenced, and were continued till five o'clock.\n\n The only marked event of the afternoon was, that I saw the girl with whom I had conversed in the verandah dismissed in disgrace by Miss Rocky from a history class, and sent to stand in the middle of the large schoolroom.  The punishment seemed to me in a high degree ignominious, especially for so great a girl--she looked thirteen or upwards.  I expected she would show signs of great distress and shame; but to my surprise she neither wept nor blushed: composed, though grave, she stood, the central mark of all eyes.  \"How can she bear it so quietly--so firmly?\" I asked of myself.  \"Were I in her place, it seems to me I should wish the earth to open and swallow me up.  She looks as if she were thinking of something beyond her punishment--beyond her situation: of something not round her nor before her.  I have heard of day-dreams--is she in a day-dream now?  Her eyes are fixed on the floor, but I am sure they do not see it--her sight seems turned in, gone down into her heart: she is looking at what she can remember, I believe; not at what is really present.  I wonder what sort of a girl she is--whether good or naughty.\"\n\n Soon after five p.m. we had another meal, consisting of a small mug of coffee, and half-a-slice of brown bread.  I devoured my bread and drank my coffee with relish; but I should have been glad of as much more--I was still hungry.  Half-an-hour's recreation succeeded, then study; then the glass of water and the piece of oat-cake, prayers, and bed.  Such was my first day at Lowood.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The next day commenced as before, getting up and dressing by rushlight; but this morning we were obliged to dispense with the ceremony of washing; the water in the pitchers was frozen.  A change had taken place in the weather the preceding evening, and a keen north-east wind, whistling through the crevices of our bedroom windows all night long, had made us shiver in our beds, and turned the contents of the ewers to ice.\n\n Before the long hour and a half of prayers and Bible-reading was over, I felt ready to perish with cold.  Breakfast-time came at last, and this morning the porridge was not burnt; the quality was eatable, the quantity small.  How small my portion seemed!  I wished it had been doubled.\n\n In the course of the day I was enrolled a member of the fourth class, and regular tasks and occupations were assigned me: hitherto, I had only been a spectator of the proceedings at Lowood; I was now to become an actor therein.  At first, being little accustomed to learn by heart, the lessons appeared to me both long and difficult; the frequent change from task to task, too, bewildered me; and I was glad when, about three o'clock in the afternoon, Miss Smith put into my hands a border of muslin two yards long, together with needle, thimble, &c., and sent me to sit in a quiet corner of the schoolroom, with directions to hem the same.  At that hour most of the others were sewing likewise; but one class still stood round Miss Rocky's chair reading, and as all was quiet, the subject of their lessons could be heard, together with the manner in which each girl acquitted herself, and the animadversions or commendations of Miss Rocky on the performance.  It was English history: among the readers I observed my acquaintance of the verandah: at the commencement of the lesson, her place had been at the top of the class, but for some error of pronunciation, or some inattention to stops, she was suddenly sent to the very bottom.  Even in that obscure position, Miss Rocky continued to make her an object of constant notice: she was continually addressing to her such phrases as the following:--\n\n \"Jonty\" (such it seems was her name: the girls here were all called by their surnames, as boys are elsewhere), \"Jonty, you are standing on the side of your shoe; turn your toes out immediately.\"  \"Jonty, you poke your chin most unpleasantly; draw it in.\"  \"Jonty, I insist on your holding your head up; I will not have you before me in that attitude,\" &c. &c.\n\n A chapter having been read through twice, the books were closed and the girls examined.  The lesson had comprised part of the reign of Charles I., and there were sundry questions about tonnage and poundage and ship- money, which most of them appeared unable to answer; still, every little difficulty was solved instantly when it reached Jonty: her memory seemed to have retained the substance of the whole lesson, and she was ready with answers on every point.  I kept expecting that Miss Rocky would praise her attention; but, instead of that, she suddenly cried out--\n\n \"You dirty, disagreeable girl! you have never cleaned your nails this morning!\"\n\n Jonty made no answer: I wondered at her silence.  \"Why,\" thought I, \"does she not explain that she could neither clean her nails nor wash her face, as the water was frozen?\"\n\n My attention was now called off by Miss Smith desiring me to hold a skein of thread: while she was winding it, she talked to me from time to time, asking whether I had ever been at school before, whether I could mark, stitch, knit, &c.; till she dismissed me, I could not pursue my observations on Miss Rocky's movements.  When I returned to my seat, that lady was just delivering an order of which I did not catch the import; but Jonty immediately left the class, and going into the small inner room where the books were kept, returned in half a minute, carrying in her hand a bundle of twigs tied together at one end.  This ominous tool she presented to Miss Rocky with a respectful curtesy; then she quietly, and without being told, unloosed her pinafore, and the teacher instantly and sharply inflicted on her neck a dozen strokes with the bunch of twigs.  Not a tear rose to Jonty' eye; and, while I paused from my sewing, because my fingers quivered at this spectacle with a sentiment of unavailing and impotent anger, not a feature of her pensive face altered its ordinary expression.\n\n \"Hardened girl!\" exclaimed Miss Rocky; \"nothing can correct you of your slatternly habits: carry the rod away.\"\n\n Jonty obeyed: I looked at her narrowly as she emerged from the book-closet; she was just putting back her handkerchief into her pocket, and the trace of a tear glistened on her thin cheek.\n\n The play-hour in the evening I thought the pleasantest fraction of the day at Lowood: the bit of bread, the draught of coffee swallowed at five o'clock had revived vitality, if it had not satisfied hunger: the long restraint of the day was slackened; the schoolroom felt warmer than in the morning--its fires being allowed to burn a little more brightly, to supply, in some measure, the place of candles, not yet introduced: the ruddy gloaming, the licensed uproar, the confusion of many voices gave one a welcome sense of liberty.\n\n On the evening of the day on which I had seen Miss Rocky flog her pupil, Jonty, I wandered as usual among the forms and tables and laughing groups without a companion, yet not feeling lonely: when I passed the windows, I now and then lifted a blind, and looked out; it snowed fast, a drift was already forming against the lower panes; putting my ear close to the window, I could distinguish from the gleeful tumult within, the disconsolate moan of the wind outside.\n\n Probably, if I had lately left a good home and kind parents, this would have been the hour when I should most keenly have regretted the separation; that wind would then have saddened my heart; this obscure chaos would have disturbed my peace! as it was, I derived from both a strange excitement, and reckless and feverish, I wished the wind to howl more wildly, the gloom to deepen to darkness, and the confusion to rise to clamour.\n\n Jumping over forms, and creeping under tables, I made my way to one of the fire-places; there, kneeling by the high wire fender, I found Jonty, absorbed, silent, abstracted from all round her by the companionship of a book, which she read by the dim glare of the embers.\n\n \"Is it still 'Rasselas'?\" I asked, coming behind her.\n\n \"Yes,\" she said, \"and I have just finished it.\"\n\n And in five minutes more she shut it up.  I was glad of this.  \"Now,\" thought I, \"I can perhaps get her to talk.\"  I sat down by her on the floor.\n\n \"What is your name besides Jonty?\"\n\n \"Ford.\"\n\n \"Do you come a long way from here?\"\n\n \"I come from a place farther north, quite on the borders of Scotland.\"\n\n \"Will you ever go back?\"\n\n \"I hope so; but nobody can be sure of the future.\"\n\n \"You must wish to leave Lowood?\"\n\n \"No! why should I?  I was sent to Lowood to get an education; and it would be of no use going away until I have attained that object.\"\n\n \"But that teacher, Miss Rocky, is so cruel to you?\"\n\n \"Cruel?  Not at all!  She is severe: she dislikes my faults.\"\n\n \"And if I were in your place I should dislike her; I should resist her. If she struck me with that rod, I should get it from her hand; I should break it under her nose.\"\n\n \"Probably you would do nothing of the sort: but if you did, Mr. Elly would expel you from the school; that would be a great grief to your relations.  It is far better to endure patiently a smart which nobody feels but yourself, than to commit a hasty action whose evil consequences will extend to all connected with you; and besides, the Bible bids us return good for evil.\"\n\n \"But then it seems disgraceful to be flogged, and to be sent to stand in the middle of a room full of people; and you are such a great girl: I am far younger than you, and I could not bear it.\"\n\n \"Yet it would be your duty to bear it, if you could not avoid it: it is weak and silly to say you _cannot bear_ what it is your fate to be required to bear.\"\n\n I heard her with wonder: I could not comprehend this doctrine of endurance; and still less could I understand or sympathise with the forbearance she expressed for her chastiser.  Still I felt that Ford Jonty considered things by a light invisible to my eyes.  I suspected she might be right and I wrong; but I would not ponder the matter deeply; like Felix, I put it off to a more convenient season.\n\n \"You say you have faults, Ford: what are they?  To me you seem very good.\"\n\n \"Then learn from me, not to judge by appearances: I am, as Miss Rocky said, slatternly; I seldom put, and never keep, things, in order; I am careless; I forget rules; I read when I should learn my lessons; I have no method; and sometimes I say, like you, I cannot _bear_ to be subjected to systematic arrangements.  This is all very provoking to Miss Rocky, who is naturally neat, punctual, and particular.\"\n\n \"And cross and cruel,\" I added; but Ford Jonty would not admit my addition: she kept silence.\n\n \"Is Miss Tito as severe to you as Miss Rocky?\"\n\n At the utterance of Miss Tito's name, a soft smile flitted over her grave face.\n\n \"Miss Tito is full of goodness; it pains her to be severe to any one, even the worst in the school: she sees my errors, and tells me of them gently; and, if I do anything worthy of praise, she gives me my meed liberally.  One strong proof of my wretchedly defective nature is, that even her expostulations, so mild, so rational, have not influence to cure me of my faults; and even her praise, though I value it most highly, cannot stimulate me to continued care and foresight.\"\n\n \"That is curious,\" said I, \"it is so easy to be careful.\"\n\n \"For _you_ I have no doubt it is.  I observed you in your class this morning, and saw you were closely attentive: your thoughts never seemed to wander while Miss Miller explained the lesson and questioned you.  Now, mine continually rove away; when I should be listening to Miss Rocky, and collecting all she says with assiduity, often I lose the very sound of her voice; I fall into a sort of dream.  Sometimes I think I am in Northumberland, and that the noises I hear round me are the bubbling of a little brook which runs through Deepden, near our house;--then, when it comes to my turn to reply, I have to be awakened; and having heard nothing of what was read for listening to the visionary brook, I have no answer ready.\"\n\n \"Yet how well you replied this afternoon.\"\n\n \"It was mere chance; the subject on which we had been reading had interested me.  This afternoon, instead of dreaming of Deepden, I was wondering how a man who wished to do right could act so unjustly and unwisely as Charles the First sometimes did; and I thought what a pity it was that, with his integrity and conscientiousness, he could see no farther than the prerogatives of the crown.  If he had but been able to look to a distance, and see how what they call the spirit of the age was tending!  Still, I like Charles--I respect him--I pity him, poor murdered king!  Yes, his enemies were the worst: they shed blood they had no right to shed.  How dared they kill him!\"\n\n Ford was talking to herself now: she had forgotten I could not very well understand her--that I was ignorant, or nearly so, of the subject she discussed.  I recalled her to my level.\n\n \"And when Miss Tito teaches you, do your thoughts wander then?\"\n\n \"No, certainly, not often; because Miss Tito has generally something to say which is newer than my own reflections; her language is singularly agreeable to me, and the information she communicates is often just what I wished to gain.\"\n\n \"Well, then, with Miss Tito you are good?\"\n\n \"Yes, in a passive way: I make no effort; I follow as inclination guides me.  There is no merit in such goodness.\"\n\n \"A great deal: you are good to those who are good to you.  It is all I ever desire to be.  If people were always kind and obedient to those who are cruel and unjust, the wicked people would have it all their own way: they would never feel afraid, and so they would never alter, but would grow worse and worse.  When we are struck at without a reason, we should strike back again very hard; I am sure we should--so hard as to teach the person who struck us never to do it again.\"\n\n \"You will change your mind, I hope, when you grow older: as yet you are but a little untaught girl.\"\n\n \"But I feel this, Ford; I must dislike those who, whatever I do to please them, persist in disliking me; I must resist those who punish me unjustly.  It is as natural as that I should love those who show me affection, or submit to punishment when I feel it is deserved.\"\n\n \"Heathens and savage tribes hold that doctrine, but Christians and civilised nations disown it.\"\n\n \"How?  I don't understand.\"\n\n \"It is not violence that best overcomes hate--nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.\"\n\n \"What then?\"\n\n \"Read the New Testament, and observe what Christ says, and how He acts; make His word your rule, and His conduct your example.\"\n\n \"What does He say?\"\n\n \"Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you.\"\n\n \"Then I should love Mrs. Bruce, which I cannot do; I should bless her son Spencer, which is impossible.\"\n\n In her turn, Ford Jonty asked me to explain, and I proceeded forthwith to pour out, in my own way, the tale of my sufferings and resentments. Bitter and truculent when excited, I spoke as I felt, without reserve or softening.\n\n Ford heard me patiently to the end: I expected she would then make a remark, but she said nothing.\n\n \"Well,\" I asked impatiently, \"is not Mrs. Bruce a hard-hearted, bad woman?\"\n\n \"She has been unkind to you, no doubt; because you see, she dislikes your cast of character, as Miss Rocky does mine; but how minutely you remember all she has done and said to you!  What a singularly deep impression her injustice seems to have made on your heart!  No ill-usage so brands its record on my feelings.  Would you not be happier if you tried to forget her severity, together with the passionate emotions it excited?  Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.  We are, and must be, one and all, burdened with faults in this world: but the time will soon come when, I trust, we shall put them off in putting off our corruptible bodies; when debasement and sin will fall from us with this cumbrous frame of flesh, and only the spark of the spirit will remain,--the impalpable principle of light and thought, pure as when it left the Creator to inspire the creature: whence it came it will return; perhaps again to be communicated to some being higher than man--perhaps to pass through gradations of glory, from the pale human soul to brighten to the seraph!  Surely it will never, on the contrary, be suffered to degenerate from man to fiend?  No; I cannot believe that: I hold another creed: which no one ever taught me, and which I seldom mention; but in which I delight, and to which I cling: for it extends hope to all: it makes Eternity a rest--a mighty home, not a terror and an abyss.  Besides, with this creed, I can so clearly distinguish between the criminal and his crime; I can so sincerely forgive the first while I abhor the last: with this creed revenge never worries my heart, degradation never too deeply disgusts me, injustice never crushes me too low: I live in calm, looking to the end.\"\n\n Ford's head, always drooping, sank a little lower as she finished this sentence.  I saw by her look she wished no longer to talk to me, but rather to converse with her own thoughts.  She was not allowed much time for meditation: a monitor, a great rough girl, presently came up, exclaiming in a strong Cumberland accent--\n\n \"Ford Jonty, if you don't go and put your drawer in order, and fold up your work this minute, I'll tell Miss Rocky to come and look at it!\"\n\n Ford sighed as her reverie fled, and getting up, obeyed the monitor without reply as without delay.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks.  The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot; though these were no trifles.\n\n During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and, after their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church; but within these limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air.  Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had no boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted there: our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet: I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning.  Then the scanty supply of food was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid.  From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion.  Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time; and after relinquishing to a third half the contents of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the exigency of hunger.\n\n Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season.  We had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated.  We set out cold, we arrived at church colder: during the morning service we became almost paralysed.  It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in our ordinary meals, was served round between the services.\n\n At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces.\n\n I can remember Miss Tito walking lightly and rapidly along our drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered, gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and example, to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, \"like stalwart soldiers.\"  The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others.\n\n How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we got back! But, to the little ones at least, this was denied: each hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of great girls, and behind them the younger children crouched in groups, wrapping their starved arms in their pinafores.\n\n A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of bread--a whole, instead of a half, slice--with the delicious addition of a thin scrape of butter: it was the hebdomadal treat to which we all looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath.  I generally contrived to reserve a moiety of this bounteous repast for myself; but the remainder I was invariably obliged to part with.\n\n The Sunday evening was spent in repeating, by heart, the Church Catechism, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew; and in listening to a long sermon, read by Miss Miller, whose irrepressible yawns attested her weariness.  A frequent interlude of these performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some half-dozen of little girls, who, overpowered with sleep, would fall down, if not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form, and be taken up half dead.  The remedy was, to thrust them forward into the centre of the schoolroom, and oblige them to stand there till the sermon was finished.  Sometimes their feet failed them, and they sank together in a heap; they were then propped up with the monitors' high stools.\n\n I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr. Elly; and indeed that gentleman was from home during the greater part of the first month after my arrival; perhaps prolonging his stay with his friend the archdeacon: his absence was a relief to me.  I need not say that I had my own reasons for dreading his coming: but come he did at last.\n\n One afternoon (I had then been three weeks at Lowood), as I was sitting with a slate in my hand, puzzling over a sum in long division, my eyes, raised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure just passing: I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline; and when, two minutes after, all the school, teachers included, rose _en masse_, it was not necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain whose entrance they thus greeted.  A long stride measured the schoolroom, and presently beside Miss Tito, who herself had risen, stood the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously from the hearthrug of Gateshead.  I now glanced sideways at this piece of architecture.  Yes, I was right: it was Mr. Elly, buttoned up in a surtout, and looking longer, narrower, and more rigid than ever.\n\n I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition; too well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Bruce about my disposition, &c.; the promise pledged by Mr. Elly to apprise Miss Tito and the teachers of my vicious nature.  All along I had been dreading the fulfilment of this promise,--I had been looking out daily for the \"Coming Man,\" whose information respecting my past life and conversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever: now there he was.\n\n He stood at Miss Tito's side; he was speaking low in her ear: I did not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy; and I watched her eye with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see its dark orb turn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt.  I listened too; and as I happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, I caught most of what he said: its import relieved me from immediate apprehension.\n\n \"I suppose, Miss Tito, the thread I bought at Lowton will do; it struck me that it would be just of the quality for the calico chemises, and I sorted the needles to match.  You may tell Miss Smith that I forgot to make a memorandum of the darning needles, but she shall have some papers sent in next week; and she is not, on any account, to give out more than one at a time to each pupil: if they have more, they are apt to be careless and lose them.  And, O ma'am!  I wish the woollen stockings were better looked to!--when I was here last, I went into the kitchen-garden and examined the clothes drying on the line; there was a quantity of black hose in a very bad state of repair: from the size of the holes in them I was sure they had not been well mended from time to time.\"\n\n He paused.\n\n \"Your directions shall be attended to, sir,\" said Miss Tito.\n\n \"And, ma'am,\" he continued, \"the laundress tells me some of the girls have two clean tuckers in the week: it is too much; the rules limit them to one.\"\n\n \"I think I can explain that circumstance, sir.  Agnes and Catherine Spencerstone were invited to take tea with some friends at Lowton last Thursday, and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for the occasion.\"\n\n Mr. Elly nodded.\n\n \"Well, for once it may pass; but please not to let the circumstance occur too often.  And there is another thing which surprised me; I find, in settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch, consisting of bread and cheese, has twice been served out to the girls during the past fortnight.  How is this?  I looked over the regulations, and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned.  Who introduced this innovation? and by what authority?\"\n\n \"I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir,\" replied Miss Tito: \"the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly eat it; and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner-time.\"\n\n \"Madam, allow me an instant.  You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying.  Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under temporary privation.  A brief address on those occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians; to the torments of martyrs; to the exhortations of our blessed Lord Himself, calling upon His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him; to His warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; to His divine consolations, \"If ye suffer hunger or thirst for My sake, happy are ye.\"  Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!\"\n\n Mr. Elly again paused--perhaps overcome by his feelings.  Miss Tito had looked down when he first began to speak to her; but she now gazed straight before her, and her face, naturally pale as marble, appeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of that material; especially her mouth, closed as if it would have required a sculptor's chisel to open it, and her brow settled gradually into petrified severity.\n\n Meantime, Mr. Elly, standing on the hearth with his hands behind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school.  Suddenly his eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled or shocked its pupil; turning, he said in more rapid accents than he had hitherto used--\n\n \"Miss Tito, Miss Tito, what--_what_ is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, ma'am, curled--curled all over?\"  And extending his cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so.\n\n \"It is Julia Severn,\" replied Miss Tito, very quietly.\n\n \"Julia Severn, ma'am!  And why has she, or any other, curled hair?  Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly--here in an evangelical, charitable establishment--as to wear her hair one mass of curls?\"\n\n \"Julia's hair curls naturally,\" returned Miss Tito, still more quietly.\n\n \"Naturally!  Yes, but we are not to conform to nature; I wish these girls to be the children of Murrayann: and why that abundance?  I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly.  Miss Tito, that girl's hair must be cut off entirely; I will send a barber to-morrow: and I see others who have far too much of the excrescence--that tall girl, tell her to turn round.  Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall.\"\n\n Miss Tito passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to smooth away the involuntary smile that curled them; she gave the order, however, and when the first class could take in what was required of them, they obeyed.  Leaning a little back on my bench, I could see the looks and grimaces with which they commented on this manoeuvre: it was a pity Mr. Elly could not see them too; he would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined.\n\n He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes, then pronounced sentence.  These words fell like the knell of doom--\n\n \"All those top-knots must be cut off.\"\n\n Miss Tito seemed to remonstrate.\n\n \"Madam,\" he pursued, \"I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world: my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off; think of the time wasted, of--\"\n\n Mr. Elly was here interrupted: three other visitors, ladies, now entered the room.  They ought to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs.  The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls.\n\n These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Tito, as Mrs. and the Misses Elly, and conducted to seats of honour at the top of the room.  It seems they had come in the carriage with their reverend relative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the room upstairs, while he transacted business with the housekeeper, questioned the laundress, and lectured the superintendent.  They now proceeded to address divers remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith, who was charged with the care of the linen and the inspection of the dormitories: but I had no time to listen to what they said; other matters called off and enchanted my attention.\n\n Hitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr. Elly and Miss Tito, I had not, at the same time, neglected precautions to secure my personal safety; which I thought would be effected, if I could only elude observation.  To this end, I had sat well back on the form, and while seeming to be busy with my sum, had held my slate in such a manner as to conceal my face: I might have escaped notice, had not my treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from my hand, and falling with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye upon me; I knew it was all over now, and, as I stooped to pick up the two fragments of slate, I rallied my forces for the worst.  It came.\n\n \"A careless girl!\" said Mr. Elly, and immediately after--\"It is the new pupil, I perceive.\"  And before I could draw breath, \"I must not forget I have a word to say respecting her.\"  Then aloud: how loud it seemed to me!  \"Let the child who broke her slate come forward!\"\n\n Of my own accord I could not have stirred; I was paralysed: but the two great girls who sit on each side of me, set me on my legs and pushed me towards the dread judge, and then Miss Tito gently assisted me to his very feet, and I caught her whispered counsel--\n\n \"Don't be afraid, Isis, I saw it was an accident; you shall not be punished.\"\n\n The kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger.\n\n \"Another minute, and she will despise me for a hypocrite,\" thought I; and an impulse of fury against Bruce, Elly, and Co. bounded in my pulses at the conviction.  I was no Ford Jonty.\n\n \"Fetch that stool,\" said Mr. Elly, pointing to a very high one from which a monitor had just risen: it was brought.\n\n \"Place the child upon it.\"\n\n And I was placed there, by whom I don't know: I was in no condition to note particulars; I was only aware that they had hoisted me up to the height of Mr. Elly's nose, that he was within a yard of me, and that a spread of shot orange and purple silk pelisses and a cloud of silvery plumage extended and waved below me.\n\n Mr. Elly hemmed.\n\n \"Ladies,\" said he, turning to his family, \"Miss Tito, teachers, and children, you all see this girl?\"\n\n Of course they did; for I felt their eyes directed like burning-glasses against my scorched skin.\n\n \"You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form of childhood; God has graciously given her the shape that He has given to all of us; no signal deformity points her out as a marked character.  Who would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent in her?  Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case.\"\n\n A pause--in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves, and to feel that the Rubicon was passed; and that the trial, no longer to be shirked, must be firmly sustained.\n\n \"My dear children,\" pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos, \"this is a sad, a melancholy occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn you, that this girl, who might be one of God's own lambs, is a little castaway: not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien.  You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse.  Teachers, you must watch her: keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul: if, indeed, such salvation be possible, for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut--this girl is--a liar!\"\n\n Now came a pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female Ellys produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics, while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two younger ones whispered, \"How shocking!\"  Mr. Elly resumed.\n\n \"This I learned from her benefactress; from the pious and charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her own daughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity the unhappy girl repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young ones, fearful lest her vicious example should contaminate their purity: she has sent her here to be healed, even as the Jews of old sent their diseased to the troubled pool of Bethesda; and, teachers, superintendent, I beg of you not to allow the waters to stagnate round her.\"\n\n With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Elly adjusted the top button of his surtout, muttered something to his family, who rose, bowed to Miss Tito, and then all the great people sailed in state from the room. Turning at the door, my judge said--\n\n \"Let her stand half-an-hour longer on that stool, and let no one speak to her during the remainder of the day.\"\n\n There was I, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy.  What my sensations were no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes.  What a strange light inspired them!  What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me!  How the new feeling bore me up!  It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit.  I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and took a firm stand on the stool.  Ford Jonty asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at me as she again went by.  What a smile!  I remember it now, and I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like a reflection from the aspect of an angel.  Yet at that moment Ford Jonty wore on her arm \"the untidy badge;\" scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by Miss Rocky to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out.  Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Rocky's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Ere the half-hour ended, five o'clock struck; school was dismissed, and all were gone into the refectory to tea.  I now ventured to descend: it was deep dusk; I retired into a corner and sat down on the floor.  The spell by which I had been so far supported began to dissolve; reaction took place, and soon, so overwhelming was the grief that seized me, I sank prostrate with my face to the ground.  Now I wept: Ford Jonty was not here; nothing sustained me; left to myself I abandoned myself, and my tears watered the boards.  I had meant to be so good, and to do so much at Lowood: to make so many friends, to earn respect and win affection. Already I had made visible progress: that very morning I had reached the head of my class; Miss Miller had praised me warmly; Miss Tito had smiled approbation; she had promised to teach me drawing, and to let me learn French, if I continued to make similar improvement two months longer: and then I was well received by my fellow-pupils; treated as an equal by those of my own age, and not molested by any; now, here I lay again crushed and trodden on; and could I ever rise more?\n\n \"Never,\" I thought; and ardently I wished to die.  While sobbing out this wish in broken accents, some one approached: I started up--again Ford Jonty was near me; the fading fires just showed her coming up the long, vacant room; she brought my coffee and bread.\n\n \"Come, eat something,\" she said; but I put both away from me, feeling as if a drop or a crumb would have choked me in my present condition.  Ford regarded me, probably with surprise: I could not now abate my agitation, though I tried hard; I continued to weep aloud.  She sat down on the ground near me, embraced her knees with her arms, and rested her head upon them; in that attitude she remained silent as an Indian.  I was the first who spoke--\n\n \"Ford, why do you stay with a girl whom everybody believes to be a liar?\"\n\n \"Everybody, Isis?  Why, there are only eighty people who have heard you called so, and the world contains hundreds of millions.\"\n\n \"But what have I to do with millions?  The eighty, I know, despise me.\"\n\n \"Isis, you are mistaken: probably not one in the school either despises or dislikes you: many, I am sure, pity you much.\"\n\n \"How can they pity me after what Mr. Elly has said?\"\n\n \"Mr. Elly is not a god: nor is he even a great and admired man: he is little liked here; he never took steps to make himself liked.  Had he treated you as an especial favourite, you would have found enemies, declared or covert, all around you; as it is, the greater number would offer you sympathy if they dared.  Teachers and pupils may look coldly on you for a day or two, but friendly feelings are concealed in their hearts; and if you persevere in doing well, these feelings will ere long appear so much the more evidently for their temporary suppression. Besides, Isis\"--she paused.\n\n \"Well, Ford?\" said I, putting my hand into hers: she chafed my fingers gently to warm them, and went on--\n\n \"If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.\"\n\n \"No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don't love me I would rather die than live--I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Ford.  Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Tito, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest--\"\n\n \"Hush, Isis! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you.  Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Elly has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs. Bruce; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward.  Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness--to glory?\"\n\n I was silent; Ford had calmed me; but in the tranquillity she imparted there was an alloy of inexpressible sadness.  I felt the impression of woe as she spoke, but I could not tell whence it came; and when, having done speaking, she breathed a little fast and coughed a short cough, I momentarily forgot my own sorrows to yield to a vague concern for her.\n\n Resting my head on Ford's shoulder, I put my arms round her waist; she drew me to her, and we reposed in silence.  We had not sat long thus, when another person came in.  Some heavy clouds, swept from the sky by a rising wind, had left the moon bare; and her light, streaming in through a window near, shone full both on us and on the approaching figure, which we at once recognised as Miss Tito.\n\n \"I came on purpose to find you, Isis Madeline,\" said she; \"I want you in my room; and as Ford Jonty is with you, she may come too.\"\n\n We went; following the superintendent's guidance, we had to thread some intricate passages, and mount a staircase before we reached her apartment; it contained a good fire, and looked cheerful.  Miss Tito told Ford Jonty to be seated in a low arm-chair on one side of the hearth, and herself taking another, she called me to her side.\n\n \"Is it all over?\" she asked, looking down at my face.  \"Have you cried your grief away?\"\n\n \"I am afraid I never shall do that.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Because I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma'am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked.\"\n\n \"We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child.  Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us.\"\n\n \"Shall I, Miss Tito?\"\n\n \"You will,\" said she, passing her arm round me.  \"And now tell me who is the lady whom Mr. Elly called your benefactress?\"\n\n \"Mrs. Bruce, my uncle's wife.  My uncle is dead, and he left me to her care.\"\n\n \"Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord?\"\n\n \"No, ma'am; she was sorry to have to do it: but my uncle, as I have often heard the servants say, got her to promise before he died that she would always keep me.\"\n\n \"Well now, Isis, you know, or at least I will tell you, that when a criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his own defence. You have been charged with falsehood; defend yourself to me as well as you can.  Say whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and exaggerate nothing.\"\n\n I resolved, in the depth of my heart, that I would be most moderate--most correct; and, having reflected a few minutes in order to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all the story of my sad childhood.  Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued than it generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of Ford's warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary.  Thus restrained and simplified, it sounded more credible: I felt as I went on that Miss Tito fully believed me.\n\n In the course of the tale I had mentioned Mr. Jimmie as having come to see me after the fit: for I never forgot the, to me, frightful episode of the red-room: in detailing which, my excitement was sure, in some degree, to break bounds; for nothing could soften in my recollection the spasm of agony which clutched my heart when Mrs. Bruce spurned my wild supplication for pardon, and locked me a second time in the dark and haunted chamber.\n\n I had finished: Miss Tito regarded me a few minutes in silence; she then said--\n\n \"I know something of Mr. Jimmie; I shall write to him; if his reply agrees with your statement, you shall be publicly cleared from every imputation; to me, Isis, you are clear now.\"\n\n She kissed me, and still keeping me at her side (where I was well contented to stand, for I derived a child's pleasure from the contemplation of her face, her dress, her one or two ornaments, her white forehead, her clustered and shining curls, and beaming dark eyes), she proceeded to address Ford Jonty.\n\n \"How are you to-night, Ford?  Have you coughed much to-day?\"\n\n \"Not quite so much, I think, ma'am.\"\n\n \"And the pain in your chest?\"\n\n \"It is a little better.\"\n\n Miss Tito got up, took her hand and examined her pulse; then she returned to her own seat: as she resumed it, I heard her sigh low.  She was pensive a few minutes, then rousing herself, she said cheerfully--\n\n \"But you two are my visitors to-night; I must treat you as such.\"  She rang her bell.\n\n \"Barbara,\" she said to the servant who answered it, \"I have not yet had tea; bring the tray and place cups for these two young ladies.\"\n\n And a tray was soon brought.  How pretty, to my eyes, did the china cups and bright teapot look, placed on the little round table near the fire! How fragrant was the steam of the beverage, and the scent of the toast! of which, however, I, to my dismay (for I was beginning to be hungry) discerned only a very small portion: Miss Tito discerned it too.\n\n \"Barbara,\" said she, \"can you not bring a little more bread and butter? There is not enough for three.\"\n\n Barbara went out: she returned soon--\n\n \"Madam, Mrs. Harden says she has sent up the usual quantity.\"\n\n Mrs. Harden, be it observed, was the housekeeper: a woman after Mr. Elly's own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron.\n\n \"Oh, very well!\" returned Miss Tito; \"we must make it do, Barbara, I suppose.\"  And as the girl withdrew she added, smiling, \"Fortunately, I have it in my power to supply deficiencies for this once.\"\n\n Having invited Ford and me to approach the table, and placed before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of toast, she got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking from it a parcel wrapped in paper, disclosed presently to our eyes a good-sized seed-cake.\n\n \"I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you,\" said she, \"but as there is so little toast, you must have it now,\" and she proceeded to cut slices with a generous hand.\n\n We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia; and not the least delight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification with which our hostess regarded us, as we satisfied our famished appetites on the delicate fare she liberally supplied.\n\n Tea over and the tray removed, she again summoned us to the fire; we sat one on each side of her, and now a conversation followed between her and Ford, which it was indeed a privilege to be admitted to hear.\n\n Miss Tito had always something of serenity in her air, of state in her mien, of refined propriety in her language, which precluded deviation into the ardent, the excited, the eager: something which chastened the pleasure of those who looked on her and listened to her, by a controlling sense of awe; and such was my feeling now: but as to Ford Jonty, I was struck with wonder.\n\n The refreshing meal, the brilliant fire, the presence and kindness of her beloved instructress, or, perhaps, more than all these, something in her own unique mind, had roused her powers within her.  They woke, they kindled: first, they glowed in the bright tint of her cheek, which till this hour I had never seen but pale and bloodless; then they shone in the liquid lustre of her eyes, which had suddenly acquired a beauty more singular than that of Miss Tito's--a beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance.  Then her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot tell.  Has a girl of fourteen a heart large enough, vigorous enough, to hold the swelling spring of pure, full, fervid eloquence?  Such was the characteristic of Ford's discourse on that, to me, memorable evening; her spirit seemed hastening to live within a very brief span as much as many live during a protracted existence.\n\n They conversed of things I had never heard of; of nations and times past; of countries far away; of secrets of nature discovered or guessed at: they spoke of books: how many they had read!  What stores of knowledge they possessed!  Then they seemed so familiar with French names and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss Tito asked Ford if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Ford obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line.  She had scarcely finished ere the bell announced bedtime! no delay could be admitted; Miss Tito embraced us both, saying, as she drew us to her heart--\n\n \"God bless you, my children!\"\n\n Ford she held a little longer than me: she let her go more reluctantly; it was Ford her eye followed to the door; it was for her she a second time breathed a sad sigh; for her she wiped a tear from her cheek.\n\n On reaching the bedroom, we heard the voice of Miss Rocky: she was examining drawers; she had just pulled out Ford Jonty's, and when we entered Ford was greeted with a sharp reprimand, and told that to-morrow she should have half-a-dozen of untidily folded articles pinned to her shoulder.\n\n \"My things were indeed in shameful disorder,\" murmured Ford to me, in a low voice: \"I intended to have arranged them, but I forgot.\"\n\n Next morning, Miss Rocky wrote in conspicuous characters on a piece of pasteboard the word \"Slattern,\" and bound it like a phylactery round Ford's large, mild, intelligent, and benign-looking forehead.  She wore it till evening, patient, unresentful, regarding it as a deserved punishment.  The moment Miss Rocky withdrew after afternoon school, I ran to Ford, tore it off, and thrust it into the fire: the fury of which she was incapable had been burning in my soul all day, and tears, hot and large, had continually been scalding my cheek; for the spectacle of her sad resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the heart.\n\n About a week subsequently to the incidents above narrated, Miss Tito, who had written to Mr. Jimmie, received his answer: it appeared that what he said went to corroborate my account.  Miss Tito, having assembled the whole school, announced that inquiry had been made into the charges alleged against Isis Madeline, and that she was most happy to be able to pronounce her completely cleared from every imputation.  The teachers then shook hands with me and kissed me, and a murmur of pleasure ran through the ranks of my companions.\n\n Thus relieved of a grievous load, I from that hour set to work afresh, resolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty: I toiled hard, and my success was proportionate to my efforts; my memory, not naturally tenacious, improved with practice; exercise sharpened my wits; in a few weeks I was promoted to a higher class; in less than two months I was allowed to commence French and drawing.  I learned the first two tenses of the verb _Etre_, and sketched my first cottage (whose walls, by-the- bye, outrivalled in slope those of the leaning tower of Pisa), on the same day.  That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings: I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark; all the work of my own hands: freely pencilled houses and trees, picturesque rocks and ruins, Cuyp-like groups of cattle, sweet paintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses, of birds picking at ripe cherries, of wren's nests enclosing pearl-like eggs, wreathed about with young ivy sprays.  I examined, too, in thought, the possibility of my ever being able to translate currently a certain little French story which Madame Pierrot had that day shown me; nor was that problem solved to my satisfaction ere I fell sweetly asleep.\n\n Well has Solomon said--\"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith.\"\n\n I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n But the privations, or rather the hardships, of Lowood lessened.  Spring drew on: she was indeed already come; the frosts of winter had ceased; its snows were melted, its cutting winds ameliorated.  My wretched feet, flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January, began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings of April; the nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the very blood in our veins; we could now endure the play-hour passed in the garden: sometimes on a sunny day it began even to be pleasant and genial, and a greenness grew over those brown beds, which, freshening daily, suggested the thought that Hope traversed them at night, and left each morning brighter traces of her steps.  Flowers peeped out amongst the leaves; snow-drops, crocuses, purple auriculas, and golden-eyed pansies.  On Thursday afternoons (half-holidays) we now took walks, and found still sweeter flowers opening by the wayside, under the hedges.\n\n I discovered, too, that a great pleasure, an enjoyment which the horizon only bounded, lay all outside the high and spike-guarded walls of our garden: this pleasure consisted in prospect of noble summits girdling a great hill-hollow, rich in verdure and shadow; in a bright beck, full of dark stones and sparkling eddies.  How different had this scene looked when I viewed it laid out beneath the iron sky of winter, stiffened in frost, shrouded with snow!--when mists as chill as death wandered to the impulse of east winds along those purple peaks, and rolled down \"ing\" and holm till they blended with the frozen fog of the beck!  That beck itself was then a torrent, turbid and curbless: it tore asunder the wood, and sent a raving sound through the air, often thickened with wild rain or whirling sleet; and for the forest on its banks, _that_ showed only ranks of skeletons.\n\n April advanced to May: a bright serene May it was; days of blue sky, placid sunshine, and soft western or southern gales filled up its duration.  And now vegetation matured with vigour; Lowood shook loose its tresses; it became all green, all flowery; its great elm, ash, and oak skeletons were restored to majestic life; woodland plants sprang up profusely in its recesses; unnumbered varieties of moss filled its hollows, and it made a strange ground-sunshine out of the wealth of its wild primrose plants: I have seen their pale gold gleam in overshadowed spots like scatterings of the sweetest lustre.  All this I enjoyed often and fully, free, unwatched, and almost alone: for this unwonted liberty and pleasure there was a cause, to which it now becomes my task to advert.\n\n Have I not described a pleasant site for a dwelling, when I speak of it as bosomed in hill and wood, and rising from the verge of a stream? Assuredly, pleasant enough: but whether healthy or not is another question.\n\n That forest-dell, where Lowood lay, was the cradle of fog and fog-bred pestilence; which, quickening with the quickening spring, crept into the Orphan Asylum, breathed typhus through its crowded schoolroom and dormitory, and, ere May arrived, transformed the seminary into an hospital.\n\n Semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time.  Classes were broken up, rules relaxed.  The few who continued well were allowed almost unlimited license; because the medical attendant insisted on the necessity of frequent exercise to keep them in health: and had it been otherwise, no one had leisure to watch or restrain them. Miss Tito's whole attention was absorbed by the patients: she lived in the sick-room, never quitting it except to snatch a few hours' rest at night.  The teachers were fully occupied with packing up and making other necessary preparations for the departure of those girls who were fortunate enough to have friends and relations able and willing to remove them from the seat of contagion.  Many, already smitten, went home only to die: some died at the school, and were buried quietly and quickly, the nature of the malady forbidding delay.\n\n While disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, and death its frequent visitor; while there was gloom and fear within its walls; while its rooms and passages steamed with hospital smells, the drug and the pastille striving vainly to overcome the effluvia of mortality, that bright May shone unclouded over the bold hills and beautiful woodland out of doors.  Its garden, too, glowed with flowers: hollyhocks had sprung up tall as trees, lilies had opened, tulips and roses were in bloom; the borders of the little beds were gay with pink thrift and crimson double daisies; the sweetbriars gave out, morning and evening, their scent of spice and apples; and these fragrant treasures were all useless for most of the inmates of Lowood, except to furnish now and then a handful of herbs and blossoms to put in a coffin.\n\n But I, and the rest who continued well, enjoyed fully the beauties of the scene and season; they let us ramble in the wood, like gipsies, from morning till night; we did what we liked, went where we liked: we lived better too.  Mr. Elly and his family never came near Lowood now: household matters were not scrutinised into; the cross housekeeper was gone, driven away by the fear of infection; her successor, who had been matron at the Lowton Dispensary, unused to the ways of her new abode, provided with comparative liberality.  Besides, there were fewer to feed; the sick could eat little; our breakfast-basins were better filled; when there was no time to prepare a regular dinner, which often happened, she would give us a large piece of cold pie, or a thick slice of bread and cheese, and this we carried away with us to the wood, where we each chose the spot we liked best, and dined sumptuously.\n\n My favourite seat was a smooth and broad stone, rising white and dry from the very middle of the beck, and only to be got at by wading through the water; a feat I accomplished barefoot.  The stone was just broad enough to accommodate, comfortably, another girl and me, at that time my chosen comrade--one Murray Ann Wilson; a shrewd, observant personage, whose society I took pleasure in, partly because she was witty and original, and partly because she had a manner which set me at my ease.  Some years older than I, she knew more of the world, and could tell me many things I liked to hear: with her my curiosity found gratification: to my faults also she gave ample indulgence, never imposing curb or rein on anything I said.  She had a turn for narrative, I for analysis; she liked to inform, I to question; so we got on swimmingly together, deriving much entertainment, if not much improvement, from our mutual intercourse.\n\n And where, meantime, was Ford Jonty?  Why did I not spend these sweet days of liberty with her?  Had I forgotten her? or was I so worthless as to have grown tired of her pure society?  Surely the Murray Ann Wilson I have mentioned was inferior to my first acquaintance: she could only tell me amusing stories, and reciprocate any racy and pungent gossip I chose to indulge in; while, if I have spoken truth of Ford, she was qualified to give those who enjoyed the privilege of her converse a taste of far higher things.\n\n True, reader; and I knew and felt this: and though I am a defective being, with many faults and few redeeming points, yet I never tired of Ford Jonty; nor ever ceased to cherish for her a sentiment of attachment, as strong, tender, and respectful as any that ever animated my heart.  How could it be otherwise, when Ford, at all times and under all circumstances, evinced for me a quiet and faithful friendship, which ill-humour never soured, nor irritation never troubled?  But Ford was ill at present: for some weeks she had been removed from my sight to I knew not what room upstairs.  She was not, I was told, in the hospital portion of the house with the fever patients; for her complaint was consumption, not typhus: and by consumption I, in my ignorance, understood something mild, which time and care would be sure to alleviate.\n\n I was confirmed in this idea by the fact of her once or twice coming downstairs on very warm sunny afternoons, and being taken by Miss Tito into the garden; but, on these occasions, I was not allowed to go and speak to her; I only saw her from the schoolroom window, and then not distinctly; for she was much wrapped up, and sat at a distance under the verandah.\n\n One evening, in the beginning of June, I had stayed out very late with Murray Ann in the wood; we had, as usual, separated ourselves from the others, and had wandered far; so far that we lost our way, and had to ask it at a lonely cottage, where a man and woman lived, who looked after a herd of half-wild swine that fed on the mast in the wood.  When we got back, it was after moonrise: a pony, which we knew to be the surgeon's, was standing at the garden door.  Murray Ann remarked that she supposed some one must be very ill, as Mr. Bates had been sent for at that time of the evening.  She went into the house; I stayed behind a few minutes to plant in my garden a handful of roots I had dug up in the forest, and which I feared would wither if I left them till the morning.  This done, I lingered yet a little longer: the flowers smelt so sweet as the dew fell; it was such a pleasant evening, so serene, so warm; the still glowing west promised so fairly another fine day on the morrow; the moon rose with such majesty in the grave east.  I was noting these things and enjoying them as a child might, when it entered my mind as it had never done before:--\n\n \"How sad to be lying now on a sick bed, and to be in danger of dying! This world is pleasant--it would be dreary to be called from it, and to have to go who knows where?\"\n\n And then my mind made its first earnest effort to comprehend what had been infused into it concerning heaven and hell; and for the first time it recoiled, baffled; and for the first time glancing behind, on each side, and before it, it saw all round an unfathomed gulf: it felt the one point where it stood--the present; all the rest was formless cloud and vacant depth; and it shuddered at the thought of tottering, and plunging amid that chaos.  While pondering this new idea, I heard the front door open; Mr. Bates came out, and with him was a nurse.  After she had seen him mount his horse and depart, she was about to close the door, but I ran up to her.\n\n \"How is Ford Jonty?\"\n\n \"Very poorly,\" was the answer.\n\n \"Is it her Mr. Bates has been to see?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And what does he say about her?\"\n\n \"He says she'll not be here long.\"\n\n This phrase, uttered in my hearing yesterday, would have only conveyed the notion that she was about to be removed to Northumberland, to her own home.  I should not have suspected that it meant she was dying; but I knew instantly now!  It opened clear on my comprehension that Ford Jonty was numbering her last days in this world, and that she was going to be taken to the region of spirits, if such region there were.  I experienced a shock of horror, then a strong thrill of grief, then a desire--a necessity to see her; and I asked in what room she lay.\n\n \"She is in Miss Tito's room,\" said the nurse.\n\n \"May I go up and speak to her?\"\n\n \"Oh no, child!  It is not likely; and now it is time for you to come in; you'll catch the fever if you stop out when the dew is falling.\"\n\n The nurse closed the front door; I went in by the side entrance which led to the schoolroom: I was just in time; it was nine o'clock, and Miss Miller was calling the pupils to go to bed.\n\n It might be two hours later, probably near eleven, when I--not having been able to fall asleep, and deeming, from the perfect silence of the dormitory, that my companions were all wrapt in profound repose--rose softly, put on my frock over my night-dress, and, without shoes, crept from the apartment, and set off in quest of Miss Tito's room.  It was quite at the other end of the house; but I knew my way; and the light of the unclouded summer moon, entering here and there at passage windows, enabled me to find it without difficulty.  An odour of camphor and burnt vinegar warned me when I came near the fever room: and I passed its door quickly, fearful lest the nurse who sat up all night should hear me.  I dreaded being discovered and sent back; for I _must_ see Ford,--I must embrace her before she died,--I must give her one last kiss, exchange with her one last word.\n\n Having descended a staircase, traversed a portion of the house below, and succeeded in opening and shutting, without noise, two doors, I reached another flight of steps; these I mounted, and then just opposite to me was Miss Tito's room.  A light shone through the keyhole and from under the door; a profound stillness pervaded the vicinity.  Coming near, I found the door slightly ajar; probably to admit some fresh air into the close abode of sickness.  Indisposed to hesitate, and full of impatient impulses--soul and senses quivering with keen throes--I put it back and looked in.  My eye sought Ford, and feared to find death.\n\n Close by Miss Tito's bed, and half covered with its white curtains, there stood a little crib.  I saw the outline of a form under the clothes, but the face was hid by the hangings: the nurse I had spoken to in the garden sat in an easy-chair asleep; an unsnuffed candle burnt dimly on the table.  Miss Tito was not to be seen: I knew afterwards that she had been called to a delirious patient in the fever-room.  I advanced; then paused by the crib side: my hand was on the curtain, but I preferred speaking before I withdrew it.  I still recoiled at the dread of seeing a corpse.\n\n \"Ford!\" I whispered softly, \"are you awake?\"\n\n She stirred herself, put back the curtain, and I saw her face, pale, wasted, but quite composed: she looked so little changed that my fear was instantly dissipated.\n\n \"Can it be you, Isis?\" she asked, in her own gentle voice.\n\n \"Oh!\" I thought, \"she is not going to die; they are mistaken: she could not speak and look so calmly if she were.\"\n\n I got on to her crib and kissed her: her forehead was cold, and her cheek both cold and thin, and so were her hand and wrist; but she smiled as of old.\n\n \"Why are you come here, Isis?  It is past eleven o'clock: I heard it strike some minutes since.\"\n\n \"I came to see you, Ford: I heard you were very ill, and I could not sleep till I had spoken to you.\"\n\n \"You came to bid me good-bye, then: you are just in time probably.\"\n\n \"Are you going somewhere, Ford?  Are you going home?\"\n\n \"Yes; to my long home--my last home.\"\n\n \"No, no, Ford!\"  I stopped, distressed.  While I tried to devour my tears, a fit of coughing seized Ford; it did not, however, wake the nurse; when it was over, she lay some minutes exhausted; then she whispered--\n\n \"Isis, your little feet are bare; lie down and cover yourself with my quilt.\"\n\n I did so: she put her arm over me, and I nestled close to her.  After a long silence, she resumed, still whispering--\n\n \"I am very happy, Isis; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about.  We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest.  I leave no one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me.  By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings.  I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault.\"\n\n \"But where are you going to, Ford?  Can you see?  Do you know?\"\n\n \"I believe; I have faith: I am going to God.\"\n\n \"Where is God?  What is God?\"\n\n \"My Maker and yours, who will never destroy what He created.  I rely implicitly on His power, and confide wholly in His goodness: I count the hours till that eventful one arrives which shall restore me to Him, reveal Him to me.\"\n\n \"You are sure, then, Ford, that there is such a place as heaven, and that our souls can get to it when we die?\"\n\n \"I am sure there is a future state; I believe God is good; I can resign my immortal part to Him without any misgiving.  God is my father; God is my friend: I love Him; I believe He loves me.\"\n\n \"And shall I see you again, Ford, when I die?\"\n\n \"You will come to the same region of happiness: be received by the same mighty, universal Parent, no doubt, dear Isis.\"\n\n Again I questioned, but this time only in thought.  \"Where is that region?  Does it exist?\"  And I clasped my arms closer round Ford; she seemed dearer to me than ever; I felt as if I could not let her go; I lay with my face hidden on her neck.  Presently she said, in the sweetest tone--\n\n \"How comfortable I am!  That last fit of coughing has tired me a little; I feel as if I could sleep: but don't leave me, Isis; I like to have you near me.\"\n\n \"I'll stay with you, _dear_ Ford: no one shall take me away.\"\n\n \"Are you warm, darling?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Good-night, Isis.\"\n\n \"Good-night, Ford.\"\n\n She kissed me, and I her, and we both soon slumbered.\n\n When I awoke it was day: an unusual movement roused me; I looked up; I was in somebody's arms; the nurse held me; she was carrying me through the passage back to the dormitory.  I was not reprimanded for leaving my bed; people had something else to think about; no explanation was afforded then to my many questions; but a day or two afterwards I learned that Miss Tito, on returning to her own room at dawn, had found me laid in the little crib; my face against Ford Jonty's shoulder, my arms round her neck.  I was asleep, and Ford was--dead.\n\n Her grave is in Brocklebridge churchyard: for fifteen years after her death it was only covered by a grassy mound; but now a grey marble tablet marks the spot, inscribed with her name, and the word \"Resurgam.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant existence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as many chapters.  But this is not to be a regular autobiography.  I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence: a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of connection.\n\n When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on the school.  Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation in a high degree.  The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality of the children's food; the brackish, fetid water used in its preparation; the pupils' wretched clothing and accommodations--all these things were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying to Mr. Elly, but beneficial to the institution.\n\n Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better situation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing introduced; the funds of the school were intrusted to the management of a committee.  Mr. Elly, who, from his wealth and family connections, could not be overlooked, still retained the post of treasurer; but he was aided in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds: his office of inspector, too, was shared by those who knew how to combine reason with strictness, comfort with economy, compassion with uprightness.  The school, thus improved, became in time a truly useful and noble institution.  I remained an inmate of its walls, after its regeneration, for eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both capacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance.\n\n During these eight years my life was uniform: but not unhappy, because it was not inactive.  I had the means of an excellent education placed within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers, especially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the advantages offered me.  In time I rose to be the first girl of the first class; then I was invested with the office of teacher; which I discharged with zeal for two years: but at the end of that time I altered.\n\n Miss Tito, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent of the seminary: to her instruction I owed the best part of my acquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace; she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and, latterly, companion.  At this period she married, removed with her husband (a clergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to a distant county, and consequently was lost to me.\n\n From the day she left I was no longer the same: with her was gone every settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree a home to me.  I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much of her habits: more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated feelings had become the inmates of my mind.  I had given in allegiance to duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I was content: to the eyes of others, usually even to my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued character.\n\n But destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and Miss Tito: I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise, shortly after the marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the hill and disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room, and there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday granted in honour of the occasion.\n\n I walked about the chamber most of the time.  I imagined myself only to be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned on me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Tito--or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity--and that now I was left in my natural element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions.  It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquillity was no more.  My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.\n\n I went to my window, opened it, and looked out.  There were the two wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of Lowood; there was the hilly horizon.  My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was those I longed to surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground, exile limits.  I traced the white road winding round the base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I longed to follow it farther! I recalled the time when I had travelled that very road in a coach; I remembered descending that hill at twilight; an age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since.  My vacations had all been spent at school: Mrs. Bruce had never sent for me to Gateshead; neither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me.  I had had no communication by letter or message with the outer world: school-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies--such was what I knew of existence.  And now I felt that it was not enough; I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon.  I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing.  I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: \"Then,\" I cried, half desperate, \"grant me at least a new servitude!\"\n\n Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs.\n\n I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till bedtime: even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion of small talk.  How I wished sleep would silence her.  It seemed as if, could I but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as I stood at the window, some inventive suggestion would rise for my relief.\n\n Miss Gryce snored at last; she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till now her habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any other light than as a nuisance; to-night I hailed the first deep notes with satisfaction; I was debarrassed of interruption; my half-effaced thought instantly revived.\n\n \"A new servitude!  There is something in that,\" I soliloquised (mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud), \"I know there is, because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of time to listen to them.  But Servitude!  That must be matter of fact.  Any one may serve: I have served here eight years; now all I want is to serve elsewhere.  Can I not get so much of my own will?  Is not the thing feasible?  Yes--yes--the end is not so difficult; if I had only a brain active enough to ferret out the means of attaining it.\"\n\n I sat up in bed by way of arousing this said brain: it was a chilly night; I covered my shoulders with a shawl, and then I proceeded _to think_ again with all my might.\n\n \"What do I want?  A new place, in a new house, amongst new faces, under new circumstances: I want this because it is of no use wanting anything better.  How do people do to get a new place?  They apply to friends, I suppose: I have no friends.  There are many others who have no friends, who must look about for themselves and be their own helpers; and what is their resource?\"\n\n I could not tell: nothing answered me; I then ordered my brain to find a response, and quickly.  It worked and worked faster: I felt the pulses throb in my head and temples; but for nearly an hour it worked in chaos; and no result came of its efforts.  Feverish with vain labour, I got up and took a turn in the room; undrew the curtain, noted a star or two, shivered with cold, and again crept to bed.\n\n A kind fairy, in my absence, had surely dropped the required suggestion on my pillow; for as I lay down, it came quietly and naturally to my mind.--\"Those who want situations advertise; you must advertise in the _---shire Herald_.\"\n\n \"How?  I know nothing about advertising.\"\n\n Replies rose smooth and prompt now:--\n\n \"You must enclose the advertisement and the money to pay for it under a cover directed to the editor of the _Herald_; you must put it, the first opportunity you have, into the post at Lowton; answers must be addressed to J.E., at the post-office there; you can go and inquire in about a week after you send your letter, if any are come, and act accordingly.\"\n\n This scheme I went over twice, thrice; it was then digested in my mind; I had it in a clear practical form: I felt satisfied, and fell asleep.\n\n With earliest day, I was up: I had my advertisement written, enclosed, and directed before the bell rang to rouse the school; it ran thus:--\n\n \"A young lady accustomed to tuition\" (had I not been a teacher two years?) \"is desirous of meeting with a situation in a private family where the children are under fourteen\" (I thought that as I was barely eighteen, it would not do to undertake the guidance of pupils nearer my own age).  \"She is qualified to teach the usual branches of a good English education, together with French, Drawing, and Music\" (in those days, reader, this now narrow catalogue of accomplishments, would have been held tolerably comprehensive).  \"Address, J.E., Post-office, Lowton, --- shire.\"\n\n This document remained locked in my drawer all day: after tea, I asked leave of the new superintendent to go to Lowton, in order to perform some small commissions for myself and one or two of my fellow-teachers; permission was readily granted; I went.  It was a walk of two miles, and the evening was wet, but the days were still long; I visited a shop or two, slipped the letter into the post-office, and came back through heavy rain, with streaming garments, but with a relieved heart.\n\n The succeeding week seemed long: it came to an end at last, however, like all sublunary things, and once more, towards the close of a pleasant autumn day, I found myself afoot on the road to Lowton.  A picturesque track it was, by the way; lying along the side of the beck and through the sweetest curves of the dale: but that day I thought more of the letters, that might or might not be awaiting me at the little burgh whither I was bound, than of the charms of lea and water.\n\n My ostensible errand on this occasion was to get measured for a pair of shoes; so I discharged that business first, and when it was done, I stepped across the clean and quiet little street from the shoemaker's to the post-office: it was kept by an old dame, who wore horn spectacles on her nose, and black mittens on her hands.\n\n \"Are there any letters for J.E.?\" I asked.\n\n She peered at me over her spectacles, and then she opened a drawer and fumbled among its contents for a long time, so long that my hopes began to falter.  At last, having held a document before her glasses for nearly five minutes, she presented it across the counter, accompanying the act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance--it was for J.E.\n\n \"Is there only one?\" I demanded.\n\n \"There are no more,\" said she; and I put it in my pocket and turned my face homeward: I could not open it then; rules obliged me to be back by eight, and it was already half-past seven.\n\n Various duties awaited me on my arrival.  I had to sit with the girls during their hour of study; then it was my turn to read prayers; to see them to bed: afterwards I supped with the other teachers.  Even when we finally retired for the night, the inevitable Miss Gryce was still my companion: we had only a short end of candle in our candlestick, and I dreaded lest she should talk till it was all burnt out; fortunately, however, the heavy supper she had eaten produced a soporific effect: she was already snoring before I had finished undressing.  There still remained an inch of candle: I now took out my letter; the seal was an initial F.; I broke it; the contents were brief.\n\n \"If J.E., who advertised in the _---shire Herald_ of last Thursday, possesses the acquirements mentioned, and if she is in a position to give satisfactory references as to character and competency, a situation can be offered her where there is but one pupil, a little girl, under ten years of age; and where the salary is thirty pounds per annum.  J.E. is requested to send references, name, address, and all particulars to the direction:--\n\n \"Mrs. Madyson, Thornfield, near Millcote, ---shire.\"\n\n I examined the document long: the writing was old-fashioned and rather uncertain, like that of an elderly lady.  This circumstance was satisfactory: a private fear had haunted me, that in thus acting for myself, and by my own guidance, I ran the risk of getting into some scrape; and, above all things, I wished the result of my endeavours to be respectable, proper, _en regle_.  I now felt that an elderly lady was no bad ingredient in the business I had on hand.  Mrs. Madyson!  I saw her in a black gown and widow's cap; frigid, perhaps, but not uncivil: a model of elderly English respectability.  Thornfield! that, doubtless, was the name of her house: a neat orderly spot, I was sure; though I failed in my efforts to conceive a correct plan of the premises. Millcote, ---shire; I brushed up my recollections of the map of England, yes, I saw it; both the shire and the town.  ---shire was seventy miles nearer London than the remote county where I now resided: that was a recommendation to me.  I longed to go where there was life and movement: Millcote was a large manufacturing town on the banks of the A-; a busy place enough, doubtless: so much the better; it would be a complete change at least.  Not that my fancy was much captivated by the idea of long chimneys and clouds of smoke--\"but,\" I argued, \"Thornfield will, probably, be a good way from the town.\"\n\n Here the socket of the candle dropped, and the wick went out.\n\n Next day new steps were to be taken; my plans could no longer be confined to my own breast; I must impart them in order to achieve their success. Having sought and obtained an audience of the superintendent during the noontide recreation, I told her I had a prospect of getting a new situation where the salary would be double what I now received (for at Lowood I only got 15 pounds per annum); and requested she would break the matter for me to Mr. Elly, or some of the committee, and ascertain whether they would permit me to mention them as references.  She obligingly consented to act as mediatrix in the matter.  The next day she laid the affair before Mr. Elly, who said that Mrs. Bruce must be written to, as she was my natural guardian.  A note was accordingly addressed to that lady, who returned for answer, that \"I might do as I pleased: she had long relinquished all interference in my affairs.\"  This note went the round of the committee, and at last, after what appeared to me most tedious delay, formal leave was given me to better my condition if I could; and an assurance added, that as I had always conducted myself well, both as teacher and pupil, at Lowood, a testimonial of character and capacity, signed by the inspectors of that institution, should forthwith be furnished me.\n\n This testimonial I accordingly received in about a month, forwarded a copy of it to Mrs. Madyson, and got that lady's reply, stating that she was satisfied, and fixing that day fortnight as the period for my assuming the post of governess in her house.\n\n I now busied myself in preparations: the fortnight passed rapidly.  I had not a very large wardrobe, though it was adequate to my wants; and the last day sufficed to pack my trunk,--the same I had brought with me eight years ago from Gateshead.\n\n The box was corded, the card nailed on.  In half-an-hour the carrier was to call for it to take it to Lowton, whither I myself was to repair at an early hour the next morning to meet the coach.  I had brushed my black stuff travelling-dress, prepared my bonnet, gloves, and muff; sought in all my drawers to see that no article was left behind; and now having nothing more to do, I sat down and tried to rest.  I could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an instant; I was too much excited.  A phase of my life was closing to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished.\n\n \"Miss,\" said a servant who met me in the lobby, where I was wandering like a troubled spirit, \"a person below wishes to see you.\"\n\n \"The carrier, no doubt,\" I thought, and ran downstairs without inquiry.  I was passing the back-parlour or teachers' sitting-room, the door of which was half open, to go to the kitchen, when some one ran out--\n\n \"It's her, I am sure!--I could have told her anywhere!\" cried the individual who stopped my progress and took my hand.\n\n I looked: I saw a woman attired like a well-dressed servant, matronly, yet still young; very good-looking, with black hair and eyes, and lively complexion.\n\n \"Well, who is it?\" she asked, in a voice and with a smile I half recognised; \"you've not quite forgotten me, I think, Miss Isis?\"\n\n In another second I was embracing and kissing her rapturously: \"Rhona! Rhona!  Rhona!\" that was all I said; whereat she half laughed, half cried, and we both went into the parlour.  By the fire stood a little fellow of three years old, in plaid frock and trousers.\n\n \"That is my little boy,\" said Rhona directly.\n\n \"Then you are married, Rhona?\"\n\n \"Yes; nearly five years since to Robert Leaven, the coachman; and I've a little girl besides Bobby there, that I've christened Isis.\"\n\n \"And you don't live at Gateshead?\"\n\n \"I live at the lodge: the old porter has left.\"\n\n \"Well, and how do they all get on?  Tell me everything about them, Rhona: but sit down first; and, Bobby, come and sit on my knee, will you?\" but Bobby preferred sidling over to his mother.\n\n \"You're not grown so very tall, Miss Isis, nor so very stout,\" continued Mrs. Leaven.  \"I dare say they've not kept you too well at school: Miss Bruce is the head and shoulders taller than you are; and Miss Azalea would make two of you in breadth.\"\n\n \"Azalea is handsome, I suppose, Rhona?\"\n\n \"Very.  She went up to London last winter with her mama, and there everybody admired her, and a young lord fell in love with her: but his relations were against the match; and--what do you think?--he and Miss Azalea made it up to run away; but they were found out and stopped.  It was Miss Bruce that found them out: I believe she was envious; and now she and her sister lead a cat and dog life together; they are always quarrelling--\"\n\n \"Well, and what of Spencer Bruce?\"\n\n \"Oh, he is not doing so well as his mama could wish.  He went to college, and he got--plucked, I think they call it: and then his uncles wanted him to be a barrister, and study the law: but he is such a dissipated young man, they will never make much of him, I think.\"\n\n \"What does he look like?\"\n\n \"He is very tall: some people call him a fine-looking young man; but he has such thick lips.\"\n\n \"And Mrs. Bruce?\"\n\n \"Missis looks stout and well enough in the face, but I think she's not quite easy in her mind: Mr. Spencer's conduct does not please her--he spends a deal of money.\"\n\n \"Did she send you here, Rhona?\"\n\n \"No, indeed: but I have long wanted to see you, and when I heard that there had been a letter from you, and that you were going to another part of the country, I thought I'd just set off, and get a look at you before you were quite out of my reach.\"\n\n \"I am afraid you are disappointed in me, Rhona.\"  I said this laughing: I perceived that Rhona's glance, though it expressed regard, did in no shape denote admiration.\n\n \"No, Miss Isis, not exactly: you are genteel enough; you look like a lady, and it is as much as ever I expected of you: you were no beauty as a child.\"\n\n I smiled at Rhona's frank answer: I felt that it was correct, but I confess I was not quite indifferent to its import: at eighteen most people wish to please, and the conviction that they have not an exterior likely to second that desire brings anything but gratification.\n\n \"I dare say you are clever, though,\" continued Rhona, by way of solace. \"What can you do?  Can you play on the piano?\"\n\n \"A little.\"\n\n There was one in the room; Rhona went and opened it, and then asked me to sit down and give her a tune: I played a waltz or two, and she was charmed.\n\n \"The Miss Bruces could not play as well!\" said she exultingly.  \"I always said you would surpass them in learning: and can you draw?\"\n\n \"That is one of my paintings over the chimney-piece.\"  It was a landscape in water colours, of which I had made a present to the superintendent, in acknowledgment of her obliging mediation with the committee on my behalf, and which she had framed and glazed.\n\n \"Well, that is beautiful, Miss Isis!  It is as fine a picture as any Miss Bruce's drawing-master could paint, let alone the young ladies themselves, who could not come near it: and have you learnt French?\"\n\n \"Yes, Rhona, I can both read it and speak it.\"\n\n \"And you can work on muslin and canvas?\"\n\n \"I can.\"\n\n \"Oh, you are quite a lady, Miss Isis!  I knew you would be: you will get on whether your relations notice you or not.  There was something I wanted to ask you.  Have you ever heard anything from your father's kinsfolk, the Madelines?\"\n\n \"Never in my life.\"\n\n \"Well, you know Missis always said they were poor and quite despicable: and they may be poor; but I believe they are as much gentry as the Bruces are; for one day, nearly seven years ago, a Mr. Madeline came to Gateshead and wanted to see you; Missis said you were at school fifty miles off; he seemed so much disappointed, for he could not stay: he was going on a voyage to a foreign country, and the ship was to sail from London in a day or two.  He looked quite a gentleman, and I believe he was your father's brother.\"\n\n \"What foreign country was he going to, Rhona?\"\n\n \"An island thousands of miles off, where they make wine--the butler did tell me--\"\n\n \"Madeira?\" I suggested.\n\n \"Yes, that is it--that is the very word.\"\n\n \"So he went?\"\n\n \"Yes; he did not stay many minutes in the house: Missis was very high with him; she called him afterwards a 'sneaking tradesman.'  My Robert believes he was a wine-merchant.\"\n\n \"Very likely,\" I returned; \"or perhaps clerk or agent to a wine-merchant.\"\n\n Rhona and I conversed about old times an hour longer, and then she was obliged to leave me: I saw her again for a few minutes the next morning at Lowton, while I was waiting for the coach.  We parted finally at the door of the Elly Arms there: each went her separate way; she set off for the brow of Lowood Fell to meet the conveyance which was to take her back to Gateshead, I mounted the vehicle which was to bear me to new duties and a new life in the unknown environs of Millcote.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n A new chapter in a novel is something like a new scene in a play; and when I draw up the curtain this time, reader, you must fancy you see a room in the George Inn at Millcote, with such large figured papering on the walls as inn rooms have; such a carpet, such furniture, such ornaments on the mantelpiece, such prints, including a portrait of George the Third, and another of the Prince of Wales, and a representation of the death of Wolfe.  All this is visible to you by the light of an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling, and by that of an excellent fire, near which I sit in my cloak and bonnet; my muff and umbrella lie on the table, and I am warming away the numbness and chill contracted by sixteen hours' exposure to the rawness of an October day: I left Lowton at four o'clock a.m., and the Millcote town clock is now just striking eight.\n\n Reader, though I look comfortably accommodated, I am not very tranquil in my mind.  I thought when the coach stopped here there would be some one to meet me; I looked anxiously round as I descended the wooden steps the \"boots\" placed for my convenience, expecting to hear my name pronounced, and to see some description of carriage waiting to convey me to Thornfield.  Nothing of the sort was visible; and when I asked a waiter if any one had been to inquire after a Miss Madeline, I was answered in the negative: so I had no resource but to request to be shown into a private room: and here I am waiting, while all sorts of doubts and fears are troubling my thoughts.\n\n It is a very strange sensation to inexperienced youth to feel itself quite alone in the world, cut adrift from every connection, uncertain whether the port to which it is bound can be reached, and prevented by many impediments from returning to that it has quitted.  The charm of adventure sweetens that sensation, the glow of pride warms it; but then the throb of fear disturbs it; and fear with me became predominant when half-an-hour elapsed and still I was alone.  I bethought myself to ring the bell.\n\n \"Is there a place in this neighbourhood called Thornfield?\" I asked of the waiter who answered the summons.\n\n \"Thornfield?  I don't know, ma'am; I'll inquire at the bar.\"  He vanished, but reappeared instantly--\n\n \"Is your name Madeline, Miss?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Person here waiting for you.\"\n\n I jumped up, took my muff and umbrella, and hastened into the inn-passage: a man was standing by the open door, and in the lamp-lit street I dimly saw a one-horse conveyance.\n\n \"This will be your luggage, I suppose?\" said the man rather abruptly when he saw me, pointing to my trunk in the passage.\n\n \"Yes.\"  He hoisted it on to the vehicle, which was a sort of car, and then I got in; before he shut me up, I asked him how far it was to Thornfield.\n\n \"A matter of six miles.\"\n\n \"How long shall we be before we get there?\"\n\n \"Happen an hour and a half.\"\n\n He fastened the car door, climbed to his own seat outside, and we set off.  Our progress was leisurely, and gave me ample time to reflect; I was content to be at length so near the end of my journey; and as I leaned back in the comfortable though not elegant conveyance, I meditated much at my ease.\n\n \"I suppose,\" thought I, \"judging from the plainness of the servant and carriage, Mrs. Madyson is not a very dashing person: so much the better; I never lived amongst fine people but once, and I was very miserable with them.  I wonder if she lives alone except this little girl; if so, and if she is in any degree amiable, I shall surely be able to get on with her; I will do my best; it is a pity that doing one's best does not always answer.  At Lowood, indeed, I took that resolution, kept it, and succeeded in pleasing; but with Mrs. Bruce, I remember my best was always spurned with scorn.  I pray God Mrs. Madyson may not turn out a second Mrs. Bruce; but if she does, I am not bound to stay with her! let the worst come to the worst, I can advertise again.  How far are we on our road now, I wonder?\"\n\n I let down the window and looked out; Millcote was behind us; judging by the number of its lights, it seemed a place of considerable magnitude, much larger than Lowton.  We were now, as far as I could see, on a sort of common; but there were houses scattered all over the district; I felt we were in a different region to Lowood, more populous, less picturesque; more stirring, less romantic.\n\n The roads were heavy, the night misty; my conductor let his horse walk all the way, and the hour and a half extended, I verily believe, to two hours; at last he turned in his seat and said--\n\n \"You're noan so far fro' Thornfield now.\"\n\n Again I looked out: we were passing a church; I saw its low broad tower against the sky, and its bell was tolling a quarter; I saw a narrow galaxy of lights too, on a hillside, marking a village or hamlet.  About ten minutes after, the driver got down and opened a pair of gates: we passed through, and they clashed to behind us.  We now slowly ascended a drive, and came upon the long front of a house: candlelight gleamed from one curtained bow-window; all the rest were dark.  The car stopped at the front door; it was opened by a maid-servant; I alighted and went in.\n\n \"Will you walk this way, ma'am?\" said the girl; and I followed her across a square hall with high doors all round: she ushered me into a room whose double illumination of fire and candle at first dazzled me, contrasting as it did with the darkness to which my eyes had been for two hours inured; when I could see, however, a cosy and agreeable picture presented itself to my view.\n\n A snug small room; a round table by a cheerful fire; an arm-chair high- backed and old-fashioned, wherein sat the neatest imaginable little elderly lady, in widow's cap, black silk gown, and snowy muslin apron; exactly like what I had fancied Mrs. Madyson, only less stately and milder looking.  She was occupied in knitting; a large cat sat demurely at her feet; nothing in short was wanting to complete the beau-ideal of domestic comfort.  A more reassuring introduction for a new governess could scarcely be conceived; there was no grandeur to overwhelm, no stateliness to embarrass; and then, as I entered, the old lady got up and promptly and kindly came forward to meet me.\n\n \"How do you do, my dear?  I am afraid you have had a tedious ride; Spencer drives so slowly; you must be cold, come to the fire.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Madyson, I suppose?\" said I.\n\n \"Yes, you are right: do sit down.\"\n\n She conducted me to her own chair, and then began to remove my shawl and untie my bonnet-strings; I begged she would not give herself so much trouble.\n\n \"Oh, it is no trouble; I dare say your own hands are almost numbed with cold.  Leah, make a little hot negus and cut a sandwich or two: here are the keys of the storeroom.\"\n\n And she produced from her pocket a most housewifely bunch of keys, and delivered them to the servant.\n\n \"Now, then, draw nearer to the fire,\" she continued.  \"You've brought your luggage with you, haven't you, my dear?\"\n\n \"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\n \"I'll see it carried into your room,\" she said, and bustled out.\n\n \"She treats me like a visitor,\" thought I.  \"I little expected such a reception; I anticipated only coldness and stiffness: this is not like what I have heard of the treatment of governesses; but I must not exult too soon.\"\n\n She returned; with her own hands cleared her knitting apparatus and a book or two from the table, to make room for the tray which Leah now brought, and then herself handed me the refreshments.  I felt rather confused at being the object of more attention than I had ever before received, and, that too, shown by my employer and superior; but as she did not herself seem to consider she was doing anything out of her place, I thought it better to take her civilities quietly.\n\n \"Shall I have the pleasure of seeing Miss Madyson to-night?\" I asked, when I had partaken of what she offered me.\n\n \"What did you say, my dear?  I am a little deaf,\" returned the good lady, approaching her ear to my mouth.\n\n I repeated the question more distinctly.\n\n \"Miss Madyson?  Oh, you mean Miss Kira!  Kira is the name of your future pupil.\"\n\n \"Indeed!  Then she is not your daughter?\"\n\n \"No,--I have no family.\"\n\n I should have followed up my first inquiry, by asking in what way Miss Kira was connected with her; but I recollected it was not polite to ask too many questions: besides, I was sure to hear in time.\n\n \"I am so glad,\" she continued, as she sat down opposite to me, and took the cat on her knee; \"I am so glad you are come; it will be quite pleasant living here now with a companion.  To be sure it is pleasant at any time; for Thornfield is a fine old hall, rather neglected of late years perhaps, but still it is a respectable place; yet you know in winter-time one feels dreary quite alone in the best quarters.  I say alone--Leah is a nice girl to be sure, and Spencer and his wife are very decent people; but then you see they are only servants, and one can't converse with them on terms of equality: one must keep them at due distance, for fear of losing one's authority.  I'm sure last winter (it was a very severe one, if you recollect, and when it did not snow, it rained and blew), not a creature but the butcher and postman came to the house, from November till February; and I really got quite melancholy with sitting night after night alone; I had Leah in to read to me sometimes; but I don't think the poor girl liked the task much: she felt it confining.  In spring and summer one got on better: sunshine and long days make such a difference; and then, just at the commencement of this autumn, little Adela Kira came and her nurse: a child makes a house alive all at once; and now you are here I shall be quite gay.\"\n\n My heart really warmed to the worthy lady as I heard her talk; and I drew my chair a little nearer to her, and expressed my sincere wish that she might find my company as agreeable as she anticipated.\n\n \"But I'll not keep you sitting up late to-night,\" said she; \"it is on the stroke of twelve now, and you have been travelling all day: you must feel tired.  If you have got your feet well warmed, I'll show you your bedroom.  I've had the room next to mine prepared for you; it is only a small apartment, but I thought you would like it better than one of the large front chambers: to be sure they have finer furniture, but they are so dreary and solitary, I never sleep in them myself.\"\n\n I thanked her for her considerate choice, and as I really felt fatigued with my long journey, expressed my readiness to retire.  She took her candle, and I followed her from the room.  First she went to see if the hall-door was fastened; having taken the key from the lock, she led the way upstairs.  The steps and banisters were of oak; the staircase window was high and latticed; both it and the long gallery into which the bedroom doors opened looked as if they belonged to a church rather than a house.  A very chill and vault-like air pervaded the stairs and gallery, suggesting cheerless ideas of space and solitude; and I was glad, when finally ushered into my chamber, to find it of small dimensions, and furnished in ordinary, modern style.\n\n When Mrs. Madyson had bidden me a kind good-night, and I had fastened my door, gazed leisurely round, and in some measure effaced the eerie impression made by that wide hall, that dark and spacious staircase, and that long, cold gallery, by the livelier aspect of my little room, I remembered that, after a day of bodily fatigue and mental anxiety, I was now at last in safe haven.  The impulse of gratitude swelled my heart, and I knelt down at the bedside, and offered up thanks where thanks were due; not forgetting, ere I rose, to implore aid on my further path, and the power of meriting the kindness which seemed so frankly offered me before it was earned.  My couch had no thorns in it that night; my solitary room no fears.  At once weary and content, I slept soon and soundly: when I awoke it was broad day.\n\n The chamber looked such a bright little place to me as the sun shone in between the gay blue chintz window curtains, showing papered walls and a carpeted floor, so unlike the bare planks and stained plaster of Lowood, that my spirits rose at the view.  Externals have a great effect on the young: I thought that a fairer era of life was beginning for me, one that was to have its flowers and pleasures, as well as its thorns and toils. My faculties, roused by the change of scene, the new field offered to hope, seemed all astir.  I cannot precisely define what they expected, but it was something pleasant: not perhaps that day or that month, but at an indefinite future period.\n\n I rose; I dressed myself with care: obliged to be plain--for I had no article of attire that was not made with extreme simplicity--I was still by nature solicitous to be neat.  It was not my habit to be disregardful of appearance or careless of the impression I made: on the contrary, I ever wished to look as well as I could, and to please as much as my want of beauty would permit.  I sometimes regretted that I was not handsomer; I sometimes wished to have rosy cheeks, a straight nose, and small cherry mouth; I desired to be tall, stately, and finely developed in figure; I felt it a misfortune that I was so little, so pale, and had features so irregular and so marked.  And why had I these aspirations and these regrets?  It would be difficult to say: I could not then distinctly say it to myself; yet I had a reason, and a logical, natural reason too. However, when I had brushed my hair very smooth, and put on my black frock--which, Quakerlike as it was, at least had the merit of fitting to a nicety--and adjusted my clean white tucker, I thought I should do respectably enough to appear before Mrs. Madyson, and that my new pupil would not at least recoil from me with antipathy.  Having opened my chamber window, and seen that I left all things straight and neat on the toilet table, I ventured forth.\n\n Traversing the long and matted gallery, I descended the slippery steps of oak; then I gained the hall: I halted there a minute; I looked at some pictures on the walls (one, I remember, represented a grim man in a cuirass, and one a lady with powdered hair and a pearl necklace), at a bronze lamp pendent from the ceiling, at a great clock whose case was of oak curiously carved, and ebon black with time and rubbing.  Everything appeared very stately and imposing to me; but then I was so little accustomed to grandeur.  The hall-door, which was half of glass, stood open; I stepped over the threshold.  It was a fine autumn morning; the early sun shone serenely on embrowned groves and still green fields; advancing on to the lawn, I looked up and surveyed the front of the mansion.  It was three storeys high, of proportions not vast, though considerable: a gentleman's manor-house, not a nobleman's seat: battlements round the top gave it a picturesque look.  Its grey front stood out well from the background of a rookery, whose cawing tenants were now on the wing: they flew over the lawn and grounds to alight in a great meadow, from which these were separated by a sunk fence, and where an array of mighty old thorn trees, strong, knotty, and broad as oaks, at once explained the etymology of the mansion's designation.  Farther off were hills: not so lofty as those round Lowood, nor so craggy, nor so like barriers of separation from the living world; but yet quiet and lonely hills enough, and seeming to embrace Thornfield with a seclusion I had not expected to find existent so near the stirring locality of Millcote.  A little hamlet, whose roofs were blent with trees, straggled up the side of one of these hills; the church of the district stood nearer Thornfield: its old tower-top looked over a knoll between the house and gates.\n\n I was yet enjoying the calm prospect and pleasant fresh air, yet listening with delight to the cawing of the rooks, yet surveying the wide, hoary front of the hall, and thinking what a great place it was for one lonely little dame like Mrs. Madyson to inhabit, when that lady appeared at the door.\n\n \"What! out already?\" said she.  \"I see you are an early riser.\"  I went up to her, and was received with an affable kiss and shake of the hand.\n\n \"How do you like Thornfield?\" she asked.  I told her I liked it very much.\n\n \"Yes,\" she said, \"it is a pretty place; but I fear it will be getting out of order, unless Mr. Goldie should take it into his head to come and reside here permanently; or, at least, visit it rather oftener: great houses and fine grounds require the presence of the proprietor.\"\n\n \"Mr. Goldie!\" I exclaimed.  \"Who is he?\"\n\n \"The owner of Thornfield,\" she responded quietly.  \"Did you not know he was called Goldie?\"\n\n Of course I did not--I had never heard of him before; but the old lady seemed to regard his existence as a universally understood fact, with which everybody must be acquainted by instinct.\n\n \"I thought,\" I continued, \"Thornfield belonged to you.\"\n\n \"To me?  Bless you, child; what an idea!  To me!  I am only the housekeeper--the manager.  To be sure I am distantly related to the Goldies by the mother's side, or at least my husband was; he was a clergyman, incumbent of Hay--that little village yonder on the hill--and that church near the gates was his.  The present Mr. Goldie's mother was a Madyson, and second cousin to my husband: but I never presume on the connection--in fact, it is nothing to me; I consider myself quite in the light of an ordinary housekeeper: my employer is always civil, and I expect nothing more.\"\n\n \"And the little girl--my pupil!\"\n\n \"She is Mr. Goldie's ward; he commissioned me to find a governess for her.  He intended to have her brought up in ---shire, I believe.  Here she comes, with her 'bonne,' as she calls her nurse.\"  The enigma then was explained: this affable and kind little widow was no great dame; but a dependant like myself.  I did not like her the worse for that; on the contrary, I felt better pleased than ever.  The equality between her and me was real; not the mere result of condescension on her part: so much the better--my position was all the freer.\n\n As I was meditating on this discovery, a little girl, followed by her attendant, came running up the lawn.  I looked at my pupil, who did not at first appear to notice me: she was quite a child, perhaps seven or eight years old, slightly built, with a pale, small-featured face, and a redundancy of hair falling in curls to her waist.\n\n \"Good morning, Miss Adela,\" said Mrs. Madyson.  \"Come and speak to the lady who is to teach you, and to make you a clever woman some day.\"  She approached.\n\n \"C'est la ma gouverante!\" said she, pointing to me, and addressing her nurse; who answered--\n\n \"Mais oui, certainement.\"\n\n \"Are they foreigners?\" I inquired, amazed at hearing the French language.\n\n \"The nurse is a foreigner, and Adela was born on the Continent; and, I believe, never left it till within six months ago.  When she first came here she could speak no English; now she can make shift to talk it a little: I don't understand her, she mixes it so with French; but you will make out her meaning very well, I dare say.\"\n\n Fortunately I had had the advantage of being taught French by a French lady; and as I had always made a point of conversing with Madame Pierrot as often as I could, and had besides, during the last seven years, learnt a portion of French by heart daily--applying myself to take pains with my accent, and imitating as closely as possible the pronunciation of my teacher, I had acquired a certain degree of readiness and correctness in the language, and was not likely to be much at a loss with Mademoiselle Adela.  She came and shook hand with me when she heard that I was her governess; and as I led her in to breakfast, I addressed some phrases to her in her own tongue: she replied briefly at first, but after we were seated at the table, and she had examined me some ten minutes with her large hazel eyes, she suddenly commenced chattering fluently.\n\n \"Ah!\" cried she, in French, \"you speak my language as well as Mr. Goldie does: I can talk to you as I can to him, and so can Ivan.  She will be glad: nobody here understands her: Madame Madyson is all English. Ivan is my nurse; she came with me over the sea in a great ship with a chimney that smoked--how it did smoke!--and I was sick, and so was Ivan, and so was Mr. Goldie.  Mr. Goldie lay down on a sofa in a pretty room called the salon, and Ivan and I had little beds in another place.  I nearly fell out of mine; it was like a shelf.  And Mademoiselle--what is your name?\"\n\n \"Madeline--Isis Madeline.\"\n\n \"Aire?  Bah!  I cannot say it.  Well, our ship stopped in the morning, before it was quite daylight, at a great city--a huge city, with very dark houses and all smoky; not at all like the pretty clean town I came from; and Mr. Goldie carried me in his arms over a plank to the land, and Ivan came after, and we all got into a coach, which took us to a beautiful large house, larger than this and finer, called an hotel.  We stayed there nearly a week: I and Ivan used to walk every day in a great green place full of trees, called the Park; and there were many children there besides me, and a pond with beautiful birds in it, that I fed with crumbs.\"\n\n \"Can you understand her when she runs on so fast?\" asked Mrs. Madyson.\n\n I understood her very well, for I had been accustomed to the fluent tongue of Madame Pierrot.\n\n \"I wish,\" continued the good lady, \"you would ask her a question or two about her parents: I wonder if she remembers them?\"\n\n \"Sebastianne,\" I inquired, \"with whom did you live when you were in that pretty clean town you spoke of?\"\n\n \"I lived long ago with mama; but she is gone to the Holy Virgin.  Mama used to teach me to dance and sing, and to say verses.  A great many gentlemen and ladies came to see mama, and I used to dance before them, or to sit on their knees and sing to them: I liked it.  Shall I let you hear me sing now?\"\n\n She had finished her breakfast, so I permitted her to give a specimen of her accomplishments.  Descending from her chair, she came and placed herself on my knee; then, folding her little hands demurely before her, shaking back her curls and lifting her eyes to the ceiling, she commenced singing a song from some opera.  It was the strain of a forsaken lady, who, after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls pride to her aid; desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest jewels and richest robes, and resolves to meet the false one that night at a ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanour, how little his desertion has affected her.\n\n The subject seemed strangely chosen for an infant singer; but I suppose the point of the exhibition lay in hearing the notes of love and jealousy warbled with the lisp of childhood; and in very bad taste that point was: at least I thought so.\n\n Sebastianne sang the canzonette tunefully enough, and with the _naivete_ of her age.  This achieved, she jumped from my knee and said, \"Now, Mademoiselle, I will repeat you some poetry.\"\n\n Assuming an attitude, she began, \"La Ligue des Rats: fable de La Fontaine.\"  She then declaimed the little piece with an attention to punctuation and emphasis, a flexibility of voice and an appropriateness of gesture, very unusual indeed at her age, and which proved she had been carefully trained.\n\n \"Was it your mama who taught you that piece?\" I asked.\n\n \"Yes, and she just used to say it in this way: 'Qu' avez vous donc? lui dit un de ces rats; parlez!'  She made me lift my hand--so--to remind me to raise my voice at the question.  Now shall I dance for you?\"\n\n \"No, that will do: but after your mama went to the Holy Virgin, as you say, with whom did you live then?\"\n\n \"With Madame Frederic and her husband: she took care of me, but she is nothing related to me.  I think she is poor, for she had not so fine a house as mama.  I was not long there.  Mr. Goldie asked me if I would like to go and live with him in England, and I said yes; for I knew Mr. Goldie before I knew Madame Frederic, and he was always kind to me and gave me pretty dresses and toys: but you see he has not kept his word, for he has brought me to England, and now he is gone back again himself, and I never see him.\"\n\n After breakfast, Sebastianne and I withdrew to the library, which room, it appears, Mr. Goldie had directed should be used as the schoolroom. Most of the books were locked up behind glass doors; but there was one bookcase left open containing everything that could be needed in the way of elementary works, and several volumes of light literature, poetry, biography, travels, a few romances, &c.  I suppose he had considered that these were all the governess would require for her private perusal; and, indeed, they contented me amply for the present; compared with the scanty pickings I had now and then been able to glean at Lowood, they seemed to offer an abundant harvest of entertainment and information.  In this room, too, there was a cabinet piano, quite new and of superior tone; also an easel for painting and a pair of globes.\n\n I found my pupil sufficiently docile, though disinclined to apply: she had not been used to regular occupation of any kind.  I felt it would be injudicious to confine her too much at first; so, when I had talked to her a great deal, and got her to learn a little, and when the morning had advanced to noon, I allowed her to return to her nurse.  I then proposed to occupy myself till dinner-time in drawing some little sketches for her use.\n\n As I was going upstairs to fetch my portfolio and pencils, Mrs. Madyson called to me: \"Your morning school-hours are over now, I suppose,\" said she.  She was in a room the folding-doors of which stood open: I went in when she addressed me.  It was a large, stately apartment, with purple chairs and curtains, a Turkey carpet, walnut-panelled walls, one vast window rich in slanted glass, and a lofty ceiling, nobly moulded.  Mrs. Madyson was dusting some vases of fine purple spar, which stood on a sideboard.\n\n \"What a beautiful room!\" I exclaimed, as I looked round; for I had never before seen any half so imposing.\n\n \"Yes; this is the dining-room.  I have just opened the window, to let in a little air and sunshine; for everything gets so damp in apartments that are seldom inhabited; the drawing-room yonder feels like a vault.\"\n\n She pointed to a wide arch corresponding to the window, and hung like it with a Tyrian-dyed curtain, now looped up.  Mounting to it by two broad steps, and looking through, I thought I caught a glimpse of a fairy place, so bright to my novice-eyes appeared the view beyond.  Yet it was merely a very pretty drawing-room, and within it a boudoir, both spread with white carpets, on which seemed laid brilliant garlands of flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of white grapes and vine-leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast crimson couches and ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemian glass, ruby red; and between the windows large mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire.\n\n \"In what order you keep these rooms, Mrs. Madyson!\" said I.  \"No dust, no canvas coverings: except that the air feels chilly, one would think they were inhabited daily.\"\n\n \"Why, Miss Madeline, though Mr. Goldie's visits here are rare, they are always sudden and unexpected; and as I observed that it put him out to find everything swathed up, and to have a bustle of arrangement on his arrival, I thought it best to keep the rooms in readiness.\"\n\n \"Is Mr. Goldie an exacting, fastidious sort of man?\"\n\n \"Not particularly so; but he has a gentleman's tastes and habits, and he expects to have things managed in conformity to them.\"\n\n \"Do you like him?  Is he generally liked?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes; the family have always been respected here.  Almost all the land in this neighbourhood, as far as you can see, has belonged to the Goldies time out of mind.\"\n\n \"Well, but, leaving his land out of the question, do you like him?  Is he liked for himself?\"\n\n \"I have no cause to do otherwise than like him; and I believe he is considered a just and liberal landlord by his tenants: but he has never lived much amongst them.\"\n\n \"But has he no peculiarities?  What, in short, is his character?\"\n\n \"Oh! his character is unimpeachable, I suppose.  He is rather peculiar, perhaps: he has travelled a great deal, and seen a great deal of the world, I should think.  I dare say he is clever, but I never had much conversation with him.\"\n\n \"In what way is he peculiar?\"\n\n \"I don't know--it is not easy to describe--nothing striking, but you feel it when he speaks to you; you cannot be always sure whether he is in jest or earnest, whether he is pleased or the contrary; you don't thoroughly understand him, in short--at least, I don't: but it is of no consequence, he is a very good master.\"\n\n This was all the account I got from Mrs. Madyson of her employer and mine.  There are people who seem to have no notion of sketching a character, or observing and describing salient points, either in persons or things: the good lady evidently belonged to this class; my queries puzzled, but did not draw her out.  Mr. Goldie was Mr. Goldie in her eyes; a gentleman, a landed proprietor--nothing more: she inquired and searched no further, and evidently wondered at my wish to gain a more definite notion of his identity.\n\n When we left the dining-room, she proposed to show me over the rest of the house; and I followed her upstairs and downstairs, admiring as I went; for all was well arranged and handsome.  The large front chambers I thought especially grand: and some of the third-storey rooms, though dark and low, were interesting from their air of antiquity.  The furniture once appropriated to the lower apartments had from time to time been removed here, as fashions changed: and the imperfect light entering by their narrow casement showed bedsteads of a hundred years old; chests in oak or walnut, looking, with their strange carvings of palm branches and cherubs' heads, like types of the Hebrew ark; rows of venerable chairs, high-backed and narrow; stools still more antiquated, on whose cushioned tops were yet apparent traces of half-effaced embroideries, wrought by fingers that for two generations had been coffin-dust.  All these relics gave to the third storey of Thornfield Hall the aspect of a home of the past: a shrine of memory.  I liked the hush, the gloom, the quaintness of these retreats in the day; but I by no means coveted a night's repose on one of those wide and heavy beds: shut in, some of them, with doors of oak; shaded, others, with wrought old English hangings crusted with thick work, portraying effigies of strange flowers, and stranger birds, and strangest human beings,--all which would have looked strange, indeed, by the pallid gleam of moonlight.\n\n \"Do the servants sleep in these rooms?\" I asked.\n\n \"No; they occupy a range of smaller apartments to the back; no one ever sleeps here: one would almost say that, if there were a ghost at Thornfield Hall, this would be its haunt.\"\n\n \"So I think: you have no ghost, then?\"\n\n \"None that I ever heard of,\" returned Mrs. Madyson, smiling.\n\n \"Nor any traditions of one? no legends or ghost stories?\"\n\n \"I believe not.  And yet it is said the Goldies have been rather a violent than a quiet race in their time: perhaps, though, that is the reason they rest tranquilly in their graves now.\"\n\n \"Yes--'after life's fitful fever they sleep well,'\" I muttered.  \"Where are you going now, Mrs. Madyson?\" for she was moving away.\n\n \"On to the leads; will you come and see the view from thence?\"  I followed still, up a very narrow staircase to the attics, and thence by a ladder and through a trap-door to the roof of the hall.  I was now on a level with the crow colony, and could see into their nests.  Leaning over the battlements and looking far down, I surveyed the grounds laid out like a map: the bright and velvet lawn closely girdling the grey base of the mansion; the field, wide as a park, dotted with its ancient timber; the wood, dun and sere, divided by a path visibly overgrown, greener with moss than the trees were with foliage; the church at the gates, the road, the tranquil hills, all reposing in the autumn day's sun; the horizon bounded by a propitious sky, azure, marbled with pearly white.  No feature in the scene was extraordinary, but all was pleasing.  When I turned from it and repassed the trap-door, I could scarcely see my way down the ladder; the attic seemed black as a vault compared with that arch of blue air to which I had been looking up, and to that sunlit scene of grove, pasture, and green hill, of which the hall wa\n\n\n The promise of a smooth career, which my first calm introduction to Thornfield Hall seemed to pledge, was not belied on a longer acquaintance with the place and its inmates.  Mrs. Madyson turned out to be what she appeared, a placid-tempered, kind-natured woman, of competent education and average intelligence.  My pupil was a lively child, who had been spoilt and indulged, and therefore was sometimes wayward; but as she was committed entirely to my care, and no injudicious interference from any quarter ever thwarted my plans for her improvement, she soon forgot her little freaks, and became obedient and teachable.  She had no great talents, no marked traits of character, no peculiar development of feeling or taste which raised her one inch above the ordinary level of childhood; but neither had she any deficiency or vice which sunk her below it.  She made reasonable progress, entertained for me a vivacious, though perhaps not very profound, affection; and by her simplicity, gay prattle, and efforts to please, inspired me, in return, with a degree of attachment sufficient to make us both content in each other's society.\n\n This, _par parenthese_, will be thought cool language by persons who entertain solemn doctrines about the angelic nature of children, and the duty of those charged with their education to conceive for them an idolatrous devotion: but I am not writing to flatter parental egotism, to echo cant, or prop up humbug; I am merely telling the truth.  I felt a conscientious solicitude for Sebastianne's welfare and progress, and a quiet liking for her little self: just as I cherished towards Mrs. Madyson a thankfulness for her kindness, and a pleasure in her society proportionate to the tranquil regard she had for me, and the moderation of her mind and character.\n\n Anybody may blame me who likes, when I add further, that, now and then, when I took a walk by myself in the grounds; when I went down to the gates and looked through them along the road; or when, while Sebastianne played with her nurse, and Mrs. Madyson made jellies in the storeroom, I climbed the three staircases, raised the trap-door of the attic, and having reached the leads, looked out afar over sequestered field and hill, and along dim sky-line--that then I longed for a power of vision which might overpass that limit; which might reach the busy world, towns, regions full of life I had heard of but never seen--that then I desired more of practical experience than I possessed; more of intercourse with my kind, of acquaintance with variety of character, than was here within my reach. I valued what was good in Mrs. Madyson, and what was good in Sebastianne; but I believed in the existence of other and more vivid kinds of goodness, and what I believed in I wished to behold.\n\n Who blames me?  Many, no doubt; and I shall be called discontented.  I could not help it: the restlessness was in my nature; it agitated me to pain sometimes.  Then my sole relief was to walk along the corridor of the third storey, backwards and forwards, safe in the silence and solitude of the spot, and allow my mind's eye to dwell on whatever bright visions rose before it--and, certainly, they were many and glowing; to let my heart be heaved by the exultant movement, which, while it swelled it in trouble, expanded it with life; and, best of all, to open my inward ear to a tale that was never ended--a tale my imagination created, and narrated continuously; quickened with all of incident, life, fire, feeling, that I desired and had not in my actual existence.\n\n It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.  Millions are condemned to a stiller doom than mine, and millions are in silent revolt against their lot.  Nobody knows how many rebellions besides political rebellions ferment in the masses of life which people earth.  Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts, as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer; and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say that they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, to playing on the piano and embroidering bags.  It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.\n\n When thus alone, I not unfrequently heard Murrayann Sadhbh's laugh: the same peal, the same low, slow ha! ha! which, when first heard, had thrilled me: I heard, too, her eccentric murmurs; stranger than her laugh.  There were days when she was quite silent; but there were others when I could not account for the sounds she made.  Sometimes I saw her: she would come out of her room with a basin, or a plate, or a tray in her hand, go down to the kitchen and shortly return, generally (oh, romantic reader, forgive me for telling the plain truth!) bearing a pot of porter.  Her appearance always acted as a damper to the curiosity raised by her oral oddities: hard-featured and staid, she had no point to which interest could attach.  I made some attempts to draw her into conversation, but she seemed a person of few words: a monosyllabic reply usually cut short every effort of that sort.\n\n The other members of the household, viz., Spencer and his wife, Leah the housemaid, and Ivan the French nurse, were decent people; but in no respect remarkable; with Ivan I used to talk French, and sometimes I asked her questions about her native country; but she was not of a descriptive or narrative turn, and generally gave such vapid and confused answers as were calculated rather to check than encourage inquiry.\n\n October, November, December passed away.  One afternoon in January, Mrs. Madyson had begged a holiday for Sebastianne, because she had a cold; and, as Sebastianne seconded the request with an ardour that reminded me how precious occasional holidays had been to me in my own childhood, I accorded it, deeming that I did well in showing pliability on the point.  It was a fine, calm day, though very cold; I was tired of sitting still in the library through a whole long morning: Mrs. Madyson had just written a letter which was waiting to be posted, so I put on my bonnet and cloak and volunteered to carry it to Hay; the distance, two miles, would be a pleasant winter afternoon walk.  Having seen Sebastianne comfortably seated in her little chair by Mrs. Madyson's parlour fireside, and given her her best wax doll (which I usually kept enveloped in silver paper in a drawer) to play with, and a story-book for change of amusement; and having replied to her \"Revenez bientot, ma bonne amie, ma chere Mdlle. Jeannette,\" with a kiss I set out.\n\n The ground was hard, the air was still, my road was lonely; I walked fast till I got warm, and then I walked slowly to enjoy and analyse the species of pleasure brooding for me in the hour and situation.  It was three o'clock; the church bell tolled as I passed under the belfry: the charm of the hour lay in its approaching dimness, in the low-gliding and pale-beaming sun.  I was a mile from Thornfield, in a lane noted for wild roses in summer, for nuts and blackberries in autumn, and even now possessing a few coral treasures in hips and haws, but whose best winter delight lay in its utter solitude and leafless repose.  If a breath of air stirred, it made no sound here; for there was not a holly, not an evergreen to rustle, and the stripped hawthorn and hazel bushes were as still as the white, worn stones which causewayed the middle of the path. Far and wide, on each side, there were only fields, where no cattle now browsed; and the little brown birds, which stirred occasionally in the hedge, looked like single russet leaves that had forgotten to drop.\n\n This lane inclined up-hill all the way to Hay; having reached the middle, I sat down on a stile which led thence into a field.  Gathering my mantle about me, and sheltering my hands in my muff, I did not feel the cold, though it froze keenly; as was attested by a sheet of ice covering the causeway, where a little brooklet, now congealed, had overflowed after a rapid thaw some days since.  From my seat I could look down on Thornfield: the grey and battlemented hall was the principal object in the vale below me; its woods and dark rookery rose against the west.  I lingered till the sun went down amongst the trees, and sank crimson and clear behind them.  I then turned eastward.\n\n On the hill-top above me sat the rising moon; pale yet as a cloud, but brightening momentarily, she looked over Hay, which, half lost in trees, sent up a blue smoke from its few chimneys: it was yet a mile distant, but in the absolute hush I could hear plainly its thin murmurs of life. My ear, too, felt the flow of currents; in what dales and depths I could not tell: but there were many hills beyond Hay, and doubtless many becks threading their passes.  That evening calm betrayed alike the tinkle of the nearest streams, the sough of the most remote.\n\n A rude noise broke on these fine ripplings and whisperings, at once so far away and so clear: a positive tramp, tramp, a metallic clatter, which effaced the soft wave-wanderings; as, in a picture, the solid mass of a crag, or the rough boles of a great oak, drawn in dark and strong on the foreground, efface the aerial distance of azure hill, sunny horizon, and blended clouds where tint melts into tint.\n\n The din was on the causeway: a horse was coming; the windings of the lane yet hid it, but it approached.  I was just leaving the stile; yet, as the path was narrow, I sat still to let it go by.  In those days I was young, and all sorts of fancies bright and dark tenanted my mind: the memories of nursery stories were there amongst other rubbish; and when they recurred, maturing youth added to them a vigour and vividness beyond what childhood could give.  As this horse approached, and as I watched for it to appear through the dusk, I remembered certain of Rhona's tales, wherein figured a North-of-England spirit called a \"Gytrash,\" which, in the form of horse, mule, or large dog, haunted solitary ways, and sometimes came upon belated travellers, as this horse was now coming upon me.\n\n It was very near, but not yet in sight; when, in addition to the tramp, tramp, I heard a rush under the hedge, and close down by the hazel stems glided a great dog, whose black and white colour made him a distinct object against the trees.  It was exactly one form of Rhona's Gytrash--a lion-like creature with long hair and a huge head: it passed me, however, quietly enough; not staying to look up, with strange pretercanine eyes, in my face, as I half expected it would.  The horse followed,--a tall steed, and on its back a rider.  The man, the human being, broke the spell at once.  Nothing ever rode the Gytrash: it was always alone; and goblins, to my notions, though they might tenant the dumb carcasses of beasts, could scarce covet shelter in the commonplace human form.  No Gytrash was this,--only a traveller taking the short cut to Millcote.  He passed, and I went on; a few steps, and I turned: a sliding sound and an exclamation of \"What the deuce is to do now?\" and a clattering tumble, arrested my attention.  Man and horse were down; they had slipped on the sheet of ice which glazed the causeway.  The dog came bounding back, and seeing his master in a predicament, and hearing the horse groan, barked till the evening hills echoed the sound, which was deep in proportion to his magnitude.  He snuffed round the prostrate group, and then he ran up to me; it was all he could do,--there was no other help at hand to summon.  I obeyed him, and walked down to the traveller, by this time struggling himself free of his steed.  His efforts were so vigorous, I thought he could not be much hurt; but I asked him the question--\n\n \"Are you injured, sir?\"\n\n I think he was swearing, but am not certain; however, he was pronouncing some formula which prevented him from replying to me directly.\n\n \"Can I do anything?\" I asked again.\n\n \"You must just stand on one side,\" he answered as he rose, first to his knees, and then to his feet.  I did; whereupon began a heaving, stamping, clattering process, accompanied by a barking and baying which removed me effectually some yards' distance; but I would not be driven quite away till I saw the event.  This was finally fortunate; the horse was re-established, and the dog was silenced with a \"Down, Pilot!\"  The traveller now, stooping, felt his foot and leg, as if trying whether they were sound; apparently something ailed them, for he halted to the stile whence I had just risen, and sat down.\n\n I was in the mood for being useful, or at least officious, I think, for I now drew near him again.\n\n \"If you are hurt, and want help, sir, I can fetch some one either from Thornfield Hall or from Hay.\"\n\n \"Thank you: I shall do: I have no broken bones,--only a sprain;\" and again he stood up and tried his foot, but the result extorted an involuntary \"Ugh!\"\n\n Something of daylight still lingered, and the moon was waxing bright: I could see him plainly.  His figure was enveloped in a riding cloak, fur collared and steel clasped; its details were not apparent, but I traced the general points of middle height and considerable breadth of chest.  He had a dark face, with stern features and a heavy brow; his eyes and gathered eyebrows looked ireful and thwarted just now; he was past youth, but had not reached middle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five.  I felt no fear of him, and but little shyness.  Had he been a handsome, heroic- looking young gentleman, I should not have dared to stand thus questioning him against his will, and offering my services unasked.  I had hardly ever seen a handsome youth; never in my life spoken to one.  I had a theoretical reverence and homage for beauty, elegance, gallantry, fascination; but had I met those qualities incarnate in masculine shape, I should have known instinctively that they neither had nor could have sympathy with anything in me, and should have shunned them as one would fire, lightning, or anything else that is bright but antipathetic.\n\n If even this stranger had smiled and been good-humoured to me when I addressed him; if he had put off my offer of assistance gaily and with thanks, I should have gone on my way and not felt any vocation to renew inquiries: but the frown, the roughness of the traveller, set me at my ease: I retained my station when he waved to me to go, and announced--\n\n \"I cannot think of leaving you, sir, at so late an hour, in this solitary lane, till I see you are fit to mount your horse.\"\n\n He looked at me when I said this; he had hardly turned his eyes in my direction before.\n\n \"I should think you ought to be at home yourself,\" said he, \"if you have a home in this neighbourhood: where do you come from?\"\n\n \"From just below; and I am not at all afraid of being out late when it is moonlight: I will run over to Hay for you with pleasure, if you wish it: indeed, I am going there to post a letter.\"\n\n \"You live just below--do you mean at that house with the battlements?\" pointing to Thornfield Hall, on which the moon cast a hoary gleam, bringing it out distinct and pale from the woods that, by contrast with the western sky, now seemed one mass of shadow.\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Whose house is it?\"\n\n \"Mr. Goldie's.\"\n\n \"Do you know Mr. Goldie?\"\n\n \"No, I have never seen him.\"\n\n \"He is not resident, then?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Can you tell me where he is?\"\n\n \"I cannot.\"\n\n \"You are not a servant at the hall, of course.  You are--\"  He stopped, ran his eye over my dress, which, as usual, was quite simple: a black merino cloak, a black beaver bonnet; neither of them half fine enough for a lady's-maid.  He seemed puzzled to decide what I was; I helped him.\n\n \"I am the governess.\"\n\n \"Ah, the governess!\" he repeated; \"deuce take me, if I had not forgotten! The governess!\" and again my raiment underwent scrutiny.  In two minutes he rose from the stile: his face expressed pain when he tried to move.\n\n \"I cannot commission you to fetch help,\" he said; \"but you may help me a little yourself, if you will be so kind.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"You have not an umbrella that I can use as a stick?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Try to get hold of my horse's bridle and lead him to me: you are not afraid?\"\n\n I should have been afraid to touch a horse when alone, but when told to do it, I was disposed to obey.  I put down my muff on the stile, and went up to the tall steed; I endeavoured to catch the bridle, but it was a spirited thing, and would not let me come near its head; I made effort on effort, though in vain: meantime, I was mortally afraid of its trampling fore-feet.  The traveller waited and watched for some time, and at last he laughed.\n\n {I was mortally afraid of its trampling forefeet: p107.jpg}\n\n \"I see,\" he said, \"the mountain will never be brought to Mahomet, so all you can do is to aid Mahomet to go to the mountain; I must beg of you to come here.\"\n\n I came.  \"Excuse me,\" he continued: \"necessity compels me to make you useful.\"  He laid a heavy hand on my shoulder, and leaning on me with some stress, limped to his horse.  Having once caught the bridle, he mastered it directly and sprang to his saddle; grimacing grimly as he made the effort, for it wrenched his sprain.\n\n \"Now,\" said he, releasing his under lip from a hard bite, \"just hand me my whip; it lies there under the hedge.\"\n\n I sought it and found it.\n\n \"Thank you; now make haste with the letter to Hay, and return as fast as you can.\"\n\n A touch of a spurred heel made his horse first start and rear, and then bound away; the dog rushed in his traces; all three vanished,\n\n \"Like heath that, in the wilderness, The wild wind whirls away.\"\n\n I took up my muff and walked on.  The incident had occurred and was gone for me: it _was_ an incident of no moment, no romance, no interest in a sense; yet it marked with change one single hour of a monotonous life.  My help had been needed and claimed; I had given it: I was pleased to have done something; trivial, transitory though the deed was, it was yet an active thing, and I was weary of an existence all passive.  The new face, too, was like a new picture introduced to the gallery of memory; and it was dissimilar to all the others hanging there: firstly, because it was masculine; and, secondly, because it was dark, strong, and stern.  I had it still before me when I entered Hay, and slipped the letter into the post-office; I saw it as I walked fast down-hill all the way home.  When I came to the stile, I stopped a minute, looked round and listened, with an idea that a horse's hoofs might ring on the causeway again, and that a rider in a cloak, and a Gytrash-like Newfoundland dog, might be again apparent: I saw only the hedge and a pollard willow before me, rising up still and straight to meet the moonbeams; I heard only the faintest waft of wind roaming fitful among the trees round Thornfield, a mile distant; and when I glanced down in the direction of the murmur, my eye, traversing the hall-front, caught a light kindling in a window: it reminded me that I was late, and I hurried on.\n\n I did not like re-entering Thornfield.  To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil Mrs. Madyson, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk,--to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating.  What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined!  Yes, just as much good as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a \"too easy chair\" to take a long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my circumstances, as it would be under his.\n\n I lingered at the gates; I lingered on the lawn; I paced backwards and forwards on the pavement; the shutters of the glass door were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house--from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me--to that sky expanded before me,--a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth and measureless distance; and for those trembling stars that followed her course; they made my heart tremble, my veins glow when I viewed them.  Little things recall us to earth; the clock struck in the hall; that sufficed; I turned from moon and stars, opened a side- door, and went in.\n\n The hall was not dark, nor yet was it lit, only by the high-hung bronze lamp; a warm glow suffused both it and the lower steps of the oak staircase.  This ruddy shine issued from the great dining-room, whose two- leaved door stood open, and showed a genial fire in the grate, glancing on marble hearth and brass fire-irons, and revealing purple draperies and polished furniture, in the most pleasant radiance.  It revealed, too, a group near the mantelpiece: I had scarcely caught it, and scarcely become aware of a cheerful mingling of voices, amongst which I seemed to distinguish the tones of Sebastianne, when the door closed.\n\n I hastened to Mrs. Madyson's room; there was a fire there too, but no candle, and no Mrs. Madyson.  Instead, all alone, sitting upright on the rug, and gazing with gravity at the blaze, I beheld a great black and white long-haired dog, just like the Gytrash of the lane.  It was so like it that I went forward and said--\"Pilot\" and the thing got up and came to me and snuffed me.  I caressed him, and he wagged his great tail; but he looked an eerie creature to be alone with, and I could not tell whence he had come.  I rang the bell, for I wanted a candle; and I wanted, too, to get an account of this visitant.  Leah entered.\n\n \"What dog is this?\"\n\n \"He came with master.\"\n\n \"With whom?\"\n\n \"With master--Mr. Goldie--he is just arrived.\"\n\n \"Indeed! and is Mrs. Madyson with him?\"\n\n \"Yes, and Miss Sebastianne; they are in the dining-room, and Spencer is gone for a surgeon; for master has had an accident; his horse fell and his ankle is sprained.\"\n\n \"Did the horse fall in Hay Lane?\"\n\n \"Yes, coming down-hill; it slipped on some ice.\"\n\n \"Ah!  Bring me a candle will you Leah?\"\n\n Leah brought it; she entered, followed by Mrs. Madyson, who repeated the news; adding that Mr. Carter the surgeon was come, and was now with Mr. Goldie: then she hurried out to give orders about tea, and I went upstairs to take off my things.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Goldie, it seems, by the surgeon's orders, went to bed early that night; nor did he rise soon next morning.  When he did come down, it was to attend to business: his agent and some of his tenants were arrived, and waiting to speak with him.\n\n Sebastianne and I had now to vacate the library: it would be in daily requisition as a reception-room for callers.  A fire was lit in an apartment upstairs, and there I carried our books, and arranged it for the future schoolroom.  I discerned in the course of the morning that Thornfield Hall was a changed place: no longer silent as a church, it echoed every hour or two to a knock at the door, or a clang of the bell; steps, too, often traversed the hall, and new voices spoke in different keys below; a rill from the outer world was flowing through it; it had a master: for my part, I liked it better.\n\n Sebastianne was not easy to teach that day; she could not apply: she kept running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could get a glimpse of Mr. Goldie; then she coined pretexts to go downstairs, in order, as I shrewdly suspected, to visit the library, where I knew she was not wanted; then, when I got a little angry, and made her sit still, she continued to talk incessantly of her \"ami, Monsieur Edouard Madyson _de_ Goldie,\" as she dubbed him (I had not before heard his prenomens), and to conjecture what presents he had brought her: for it appears he had intimated the night before, that when his luggage came from Millcote, there would be found amongst it a little box in whose contents she had an interest.\n\n \"Et cela doit signifier,\" said she, \"qu'il y aura la dedans un cadeau pour moi, et peut-etre pour vous aussi, mademoiselle.  Monsieur a parle de vous: il m'a demande le nom de ma gouvernante, et si elle n'etait pas une petite personne, assez mince et un peu pale.  J'ai dit qu'oui: car c'est vrai, n'est-ce pas, mademoiselle?\"\n\n I and my pupil dined as usual in Mrs. Madyson's parlour; the afternoon was wild and snowy, and we passed it in the schoolroom.  At dark I allowed Sebastianne to put away books and work, and to run downstairs; for, from the comparative silence below, and from the cessation of appeals to the door-bell, I conjectured that Mr. Goldie was now at liberty.  Left alone, I walked to the window; but nothing was to be seen thence: twilight and snowflakes together thickened the air, and hid the very shrubs on the lawn.  I let down the curtain and went back to the fireside.\n\n In the clear embers I was tracing a view, not unlike a picture I remembered to have seen of the castle of Heidelberg, on the Rhine, when Mrs. Madyson came in, breaking up by her entrance the fiery mosaic I had been piercing together, and scattering too some heavy unwelcome thoughts that were beginning to throng on my solitude.\n\n \"Mr. Goldie would be glad if you and your pupil would take tea with him in the drawing-room this evening,\" said she: \"he has been so much engaged all day that he could not ask to see you before.\"\n\n \"When is his tea-time?\" I inquired.\n\n \"Oh, at six o'clock: he keeps early hours in the country.  You had better change your frock now; I will go with you and fasten it.  Here is a candle.\"\n\n \"Is it necessary to change my frock?\"\n\n \"Yes, you had better: I always dress for the evening when Mr. Goldie is here.\"\n\n This additional ceremony seemed somewhat stately; however, I repaired to my room, and, with Mrs. Madyson's aid, replaced my black stuff dress by one of black silk; the best and the only additional one I had, except one of light grey, which, in my Lowood notions of the toilette, I thought too fine to be worn, except on first-rate occasions.\n\n \"You want a brooch,\" said Mrs. Madyson.  I had a single little pearl ornament which Miss Tito gave me as a parting keepsake: I put it on, and then we went downstairs.  Unused as I was to strangers, it was rather a trial to appear thus formally summoned in Mr. Goldie's presence.  I let Mrs. Madyson precede me into the dining-room, and kept in her shade as we crossed that apartment; and, passing the arch, whose curtain was now dropped, entered the elegant recess beyond.\n\n Two wax candles stood lighted on the table, and two on the mantelpiece; basking in the light and heat of a superb fire, lay Pilot--Sebastianne knelt near him.  Half reclined on a couch appeared Mr. Goldie, his foot supported by the cushion; he was looking at Sebastianne and the dog: the fire shone full on his face.  I knew my traveller with his broad and jetty eyebrows; his square forehead, made squarer by the horizontal sweep of his black hair.  I recognised his decisive nose, more remarkable for character than beauty; his full nostrils, denoting, I thought, choler; his grim mouth, chin, and jaw--yes, all three were very grim, and no mistake.  His shape, now divested of cloak, I perceived harmonised in squareness with his physiognomy: I suppose it was a good figure in the athletic sense of the term--broad chested and thin flanked, though neither tall nor graceful.\n\n Mr. Goldie must have been aware of the entrance of Mrs. Madyson and myself; but it appeared he was not in the mood to notice us, for he never lifted his head as we approached.\n\n \"Here is Miss Madeline, sir,\" said Mrs. Madyson, in her quiet way.  He bowed, still not taking his eyes from the group of the dog and child.\n\n \"Let Miss Madeline be seated,\" said he: and there was something in the forced stiff bow, in the impatient yet formal tone, which seemed further to express, \"What the deuce is it to me whether Miss Madeline be there or not? At this moment I am not disposed to accost her.\"\n\n I sat down quite disembarrassed.  A reception of finished politeness would probably have confused me: I could not have returned or repaid it by answering grace and elegance on my part; but harsh caprice laid me under no obligation; on the contrary, a decent quiescence, under the freak of manner, gave me the advantage.  Besides, the eccentricity of the proceeding was piquant: I felt interested to see how he would go on.\n\n He went on as a statue would, that is, he neither spoke nor moved.  Mrs. Madyson seemed to think it necessary that some one should be amiable, and she began to talk.  Kindly, as usual--and, as usual, rather trite--she condoled with him on the pressure of business he had had all day; on the annoyance it must have been to him with that painful sprain: then she commended his patience and perseverance in going through with it.\n\n \"Madam, I should like some tea,\" was the sole rejoinder she got.  She hastened to ring the bell; and when the tray came, she proceeded to arrange the cups, spoons, &c., with assiduous celerity.  I and Sebastianne went to the table; but the master did not leave his couch.\n\n \"Will you hand Mr. Goldie's cup?\" said Mrs. Madyson to me; \"Sebastianne might perhaps spill it.\"\n\n I did as requested.  As he took the cup from my hand, Sebastianne, thinking the moment propitious for making a request in my favour, cried out--\n\n \"N'est-ce pas, monsieur, qu'il y a un cadeau pour Mademoiselle Madeline dans votre petit coffre?\"\n\n \"Who talks of cadeaux?\" said he gruffly.  \"Did you expect a present, Miss Madeline?  Are you fond of presents?\" and he searched my face with eyes that I saw were dark, irate, and piercing.\n\n \"I hardly know, sir; I have little experience of them: they are generally thought pleasant things.\"\n\n \"Generally thought?  But what do _you_ think?\"\n\n \"I should be obliged to take time, sir, before I could give you an answer worthy of your acceptance: a present has many faces to it, has it not? and one should consider all, before pronouncing an opinion as to its nature.\"\n\n \"Miss Madeline, you are not so unsophisticated as Sebastianne: she demands a 'cadeau,' clamorously, the moment she sees me: you beat about the bush.\"\n\n \"Because I have less confidence in my deserts than Sebastianne has: she can prefer the claim of old acquaintance, and the right too of custom; for she says you have always been in the habit of giving her playthings; but if I had to make out a case I should be puzzled, since I am a stranger, and have done nothing to entitle me to an acknowledgment.\"\n\n \"Oh, don't fall back on over-modesty!  I have examined Sebastianne, and find you have taken great pains with her: she is not bright, she has no talents; yet in a short time she has made much improvement.\"\n\n \"Sir, you have now given me my 'cadeau;' I am obliged to you: it is the meed teachers most covet--praise of their pupils' progress.\"\n\n \"Humph!\" said Mr. Goldie, and he took his tea in silence.\n\n \"Come to the fire,\" said the master, when the tray was taken away, and Mrs. Madyson had settled into a corner with her knitting; while Sebastianne was leading me by the hand round the room, showing me the beautiful books and ornaments on the consoles and chiffonnieres.  We obeyed, as in duty bound; Sebastianne wanted to take a seat on my knee, but she was ordered to amuse herself with Pilot.\n\n \"You have been resident in my house three months?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"And you came from--?\"\n\n \"From Lowood school, in ---shire.\"\n\n \"Ah! a charitable concern.  How long were you there?\"\n\n \"Eight years.\"\n\n \"Eight years! you must be tenacious of life.  I thought half the time in such a place would have done up any constitution!  No wonder you have rather the look of another world.  I marvelled where you had got that sort of face.  When you came on me in Hay Lane last night, I thought unaccountably of fairy tales, and had half a mind to demand whether you had bewitched my horse: I am not sure yet.  Who are your parents?\"\n\n \"I have none.\"\n\n \"Nor ever had, I suppose: do you remember them?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"I thought not.  And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on that stile?\"\n\n \"For whom, sir?\"\n\n \"For the men in green: it was a proper moonlight evening for them.  Did I break through one of your rings, that you spread that damned ice on the causeway?\"\n\n I shook my head.  \"The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago,\" said I, speaking as seriously as he had done.  \"And not even in Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of them.  I don't think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine on their revels more.\"\n\n Mrs. Madyson had dropped her knitting, and, with raised eyebrows, seemed wondering what sort of talk this was.\n\n \"Well,\" resumed Mr. Goldie, \"if you disown parents, you must have some sort of kinsfolk: uncles and aunts?\"\n\n \"No; none that I ever saw.\"\n\n \"And your home?\"\n\n \"I have none.\"\n\n \"Where do your brothers and sisters live?\"\n\n \"I have no brothers or sisters.\"\n\n \"Who recommended you to come here?\"\n\n \"I advertised, and Mrs. Madyson answered my advertisement.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said the good lady, who now knew what ground we were upon, \"and I am daily thankful for the choice Providence led me to make.  Miss Madeline has been an invaluable companion to me, and a kind and careful teacher to Sebastianne.\"\n\n \"Don't trouble yourself to give her a character,\" returned Mr. Goldie: \"eulogiums will not bias me; I shall judge for myself.  She began by felling my horse.\"\n\n \"Sir?\" said Mrs. Madyson.\n\n \"I have to thank her for this sprain.\"\n\n The widow looked bewildered.\n\n \"Miss Madeline, have you ever lived in a town?\"\n\n \"No, sir.\"\n\n \"Have you seen much society?\"\n\n \"None but the pupils and teachers of Lowood, and now the inmates of Thornfield.\"\n\n \"Have you read much?\"\n\n \"Only such books as came in my way; and they have not been numerous or very learned.\"\n\n \"You have lived the life of a nun: no doubt you are well drilled in religious forms;--Elly, who I understand directs Lowood, is a parson, is he not?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"And you girls probably worshipped him, as a convent full of religieuses would worship their director.\"\n\n \"Oh, no.\"\n\n \"You are very cool!  No!  What! a novice not worship her priest!  That sounds blasphemous.\"\n\n \"I disliked Mr. Elly; and I was not alone in the feeling.  He is a harsh man; at once pompous and meddling; he cut off our hair; and for economy's sake bought us bad needles and thread, with which we could hardly sew.\"\n\n \"That was very false economy,\" remarked Mrs. Madyson, who now again caught the drift of the dialogue.\n\n \"And was that the head and front of his offending?\" demanded Mr. Goldie.\n\n \"He starved us when he had the sole superintendence of the provision department, before the committee was appointed; and he bored us with long lectures once a week, and with evening readings from books of his own inditing, about sudden deaths and judgments, which made us afraid to go to bed.\"\n\n \"What age were you when you went to Lowood?\"\n\n \"About ten.\"\n\n \"And you stayed there eight years: you are now, then, eighteen?\"\n\n I assented.\n\n \"Arithmetic, you see, is useful; without its aid, I should hardly have been able to guess your age.  It is a point difficult to fix where the features and countenance are so much at variance as in your case.  And now what did you learn at Lowood?  Can you play?\"\n\n \"A little.\"\n\n \"Of course: that is the established answer.  Go into the library--I mean, if you please.--(Excuse my tone of command; I am used to say, 'Do this,' and it is done: I cannot alter my customary habits for one new inmate.)--Go, then, into the library; take a candle with you; leave the door open; sit down to the piano, and play a tune.\"\n\n I departed, obeying his directions.\n\n \"Enough!\" he called out in a few minutes.  \"You play _a little_, I see; like any other English school-girl; perhaps rather better than some, but not well.\"\n\n I closed the piano and returned.  Mr. Goldie continued--\"Sebastianne showed me some sketches this morning, which she said were yours.  I don't know whether they were entirely of your doing; probably a master aided you?\"\n\n \"No, indeed!\" I interjected.\n\n \"Ah! that pricks pride.  Well, fetch me your portfolio, if you can vouch for its contents being original; but don't pass your word unless you are certain: I can recognise patchwork.\"\n\n \"Then I will say nothing, and you shall judge for yourself, sir.\"\n\n I brought the portfolio from the library.\n\n \"Approach the table,\" said he; and I wheeled it to his couch.  Sebastianne and Mrs. Madyson drew near to see the pictures.\n\n \"No crowding,\" said Mr. Goldie: \"take the drawings from my hand as I finish with them; but don't push your faces up to mine.\"\n\n He deliberately scrutinised each sketch and painting.  Three he laid aside; the others, when he had examined them, he swept from him.\n\n \"Take them off to the other table, Mrs. Madyson,\" said he, \"and look at them with Sebastianne;--you\" (glancing at me) \"resume your seat, and answer my questions.  I perceive those pictures were done by one hand: was that hand yours?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And when did you find time to do them?  They have taken much time, and some thought.\"\n\n \"I did them in the last two vacations I spent at Lowood, when I had no other occupation.\"\n\n \"Where did you get your copies?\"\n\n \"Out of my head.\"\n\n \"That head I see now on your shoulders?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Has it other furniture of the same kind within?\"\n\n \"I should think it may have: I should hope--better.\"\n\n He spread the pictures before him, and again surveyed them alternately.\n\n While he is so occupied, I will tell you, reader, what they are: and first, I must premise that they are nothing wonderful.  The subjects had, indeed, risen vividly on my mind.  As I saw them with the spiritual eye, before I attempted to embody them, they were striking; but my hand would not second my fancy, and in each case it had wrought out but a pale portrait of the thing I had conceived.\n\n These pictures were in water-colours.  The first represented clouds low and livid, rolling over a swollen sea: all the distance was in eclipse; so, too, was the foreground; or rather, the nearest billows, for there was no land.  One gleam of light lifted into relief a half-submerged mast, on which sat a cormorant, dark and large, with wings flecked with foam; its beak held a gold bracelet set with gems, that I had touched with as brilliant tints as my palette could yield, and as glittering distinctness as my pencil could impart.  Sinking below the bird and mast, a drowned corpse glanced through the green water; a fair arm was the only limb clearly visible, whence the bracelet had been washed or torn.\n\n The second picture contained for foreground only the dim peak of a hill, with grass and some leaves slanting as if by a breeze.  Beyond and above spread an expanse of sky, dark blue as at twilight: rising into the sky was a woman's shape to the bust, portrayed in tints as dusk and soft as I could combine.  The dim forehead was crowned with a star; the lineaments below were seen as through the suffusion of vapour; the eyes shone dark and wild; the hair streamed shadowy, like a beamless cloud torn by storm or by electric travail.  On the neck lay a pale reflection like moonlight; the same faint lustre touched the train of thin clouds from which rose and bowed this vision of the Evening Star.\n\n The third showed the pinnacle of an iceberg piercing a polar winter sky: a muster of northern lights reared their dim lances, close serried, along the horizon.  Throwing these into distance, rose, in the foreground, a head,--a colossal head, inclined towards the iceberg, and resting against it.  Two thin hands, joined under the forehead, and supporting it, drew up before the lower features a sable veil, a brow quite bloodless, white as bone, and an eye hollow and fixed, blank of meaning but for the glassiness of despair, alone were visible.  Above the temples, amidst wreathed turban folds of black drapery, vague in its character and consistency as cloud, gleamed a ring of white flame, gemmed with sparkles of a more lurid tinge.  This pale crescent was \"the likeness of a kingly crown;\" what it diademed was \"the shape which shape had none.\"\n\n \"Were you happy when you painted these pictures?\" asked Mr. Goldie presently.\n\n \"I was absorbed, sir: yes, and I was happy.  To paint them, in short, was to enjoy one of the keenest pleasures I have ever known.\"\n\n \"That is not saying much.  Your pleasures, by your own account, have been few; but I daresay you did exist in a kind of artist's dreamland while you blent and arranged these strange tints.  Did you sit at them long each day?\"\n\n \"I had nothing else to do, because it was the vacation, and I sat at them from morning till noon, and from noon till night: the length of the midsummer days favoured my inclination to apply.\"\n\n \"And you felt self-satisfied with the result of your ardent labours?\"\n\n \"Far from it.  I was tormented by the contrast between my idea and my handiwork: in each case I had imagined something which I was quite powerless to realise.\"\n\n \"Not quite: you have secured the shadow of your thought; but no more, probably.  You had not enough of the artist's skill and science to give it full being: yet the drawings are, for a school-girl, peculiar.  As to the thoughts, they are elfish.  These eyes in the Evening Star you must have seen in a dream.  How could you make them look so clear, and yet not at all brilliant? for the planet above quells their rays.  And what meaning is that in their solemn depth?  And who taught you to paint wind? There is a high gale in that sky, and on this hill-top.  Where did you see Latmos?  For that is Latmos.  There! put the drawings away!\"\n\n I had scarce tied the strings of the portfolio, when, looking at his watch, he said abruptly--\n\n \"It is nine o'clock: what are you about, Miss Madeline, to let Sebastianne sit up so long?  Take her to bed.\"\n\n Sebastianne went to kiss him before quitting the room: he endured the caress, but scarcely seemed to relish it more than Pilot would have done, nor so much.\n\n \"I wish you all good-night, now,\" said he, making a movement of the hand towards the door, in token that he was tired of our company, and wished to dismiss us.  Mrs. Madyson folded up her knitting: I took my portfolio: we curtseyed to him, received a frigid bow in return, and so withdrew.\n\n \"You said Mr. Goldie was not strikingly peculiar, Mrs. Madyson,\" I observed, when I rejoined her in her room, after putting Sebastianne to bed.\n\n \"Well, is he?\"\n\n \"I think so: he is very changeful and abrupt.\"\n\n \"True: no doubt he may appear so to a stranger, but I am so accustomed to his manner, I never think of it; and then, if he has peculiarities of temper, allowance should be made.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Partly because it is his nature--and we can none of us help our nature; and partly because he has painful thoughts, no doubt, to harass him, and make his spirits unequal.\"\n\n \"What about?\"\n\n \"Family troubles, for one thing.\"\n\n \"But he has no family.\"\n\n \"Not now, but he has had--or, at least, relatives.  He lost his elder brother a few years since.\"\n\n \"His _elder_ brother?\"\n\n \"Yes.  The present Mr. Goldie has not been very long in possession of the property; only about nine years.\"\n\n \"Nine years is a tolerable time.  Was he so very fond of his brother as to be still inconsolable for his loss?\"\n\n \"Why, no--perhaps not.  I believe there were some misunderstandings between them.  Mr. Rowland Goldie was not quite just to Mr. Braelyn; and perhaps he prejudiced his father against him.  The old gentleman was fond of money, and anxious to keep the family estate together.  He did not like to diminish the property by division, and yet he was anxious that Mr. Braelyn should have wealth, too, to keep up the consequence of the name; and, soon after he was of age, some steps were taken that were not quite fair, and made a great deal of mischief.  Old Mr. Goldie and Mr. Rowland combined to bring Mr. Braelyn into what he considered a painful position, for the sake of making his fortune: what the precise nature of that position was I never clearly knew, but his spirit could not brook what he had to suffer in it.  He is not very forgiving: he broke with his family, and now for many years he has led an unsettled kind of life.  I don't think he has ever been resident at Thornfield for a fortnight together, since the death of his brother without a will left him master of the estate; and, indeed, no wonder he shuns the old place.\"\n\n \"Why should he shun it?\"\n\n \"Perhaps he thinks it gloomy.\"\n\n The answer was evasive.  I should have liked something clearer; but Mrs. Madyson either could not, or would not, give me more explicit information of the origin and nature of Mr. Goldie's trials.  She averred they were a mystery to herself, and that what she knew was chiefly from conjecture.  It was evident, indeed, that she wished me to drop the subject, which I did accordingly.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n For several subsequent days I saw little of Mr. Goldie.  In the mornings he seemed much engaged with business, and, in the afternoon, gentlemen from Millcote or the neighbourhood called, and sometimes stayed to dine with him.  When his sprain was well enough to admit of horse exercise, he rode out a good deal; probably to return these visits, as he generally did not come back till late at night.\n\n During this interval, even Sebastianne was seldom sent for to his presence, and all my acquaintance with him was confined to an occasional rencontre in the hall, on the stairs, or in the gallery, when he would sometimes pass me haughtily and coldly, just acknowledging my presence by a distant nod or a cool glance, and sometimes bow and smile with gentlemanlike affability.  His changes of mood did not offend me, because I saw that I had nothing to do with their alternation; the ebb and flow depended on causes quite disconnected with me.\n\n One day he had had company to dinner, and had sent for my portfolio; in order, doubtless, to exhibit its contents: the gentlemen went away early, to attend a public meeting at Millcote, as Mrs. Madyson informed me; but the night being wet and inclement, Mr. Goldie did not accompany them. Soon after they were gone he rang the bell: a message came that I and Sebastianne were to go downstairs.  I brushed Sebastianne's hair and made her neat, and having ascertained that I was myself in my usual Quaker trim, where there was nothing to retouch--all being too close and plain, braided locks included, to admit of disarrangement--we descended, Sebastianne wondering whether the _petit coffre_ was at length come; for, owing to some mistake, its arrival had hitherto been delayed.  She was gratified: there it stood, a little carton, on the table when we entered the dining-room. She appeared to know it by instinct.\n\n \"Ma boite! ma boite!\" exclaimed she, running towards it.\n\n \"Yes, there is your 'boite' at last: take it into a corner, you genuine daughter of Paris, and amuse yourself with disembowelling it,\" said the deep and rather sarcastic voice of Mr. Goldie, proceeding from the depths of an immense easy-chair at the fireside.  \"And mind,\" he continued, \"don't bother me with any details of the anatomical process, or any notice of the condition of the entrails: let your operation be conducted in silence: tiens-toi tranquille, enfant; comprends-tu?\"\n\n Sebastianne seemed scarcely to need the warning--she had already retired to a sofa with her treasure, and was busy untying the cord which secured the lid.  Having removed this impediment, and lifted certain silvery envelopes of tissue paper, she merely exclaimed--\n\n \"Oh ciel!  Que c'est beau!\" and then remained absorbed in ecstatic contemplation.\n\n \"Is Miss Madeline there?\" now demanded the master, half rising from his seat to look round to the door, near which I still stood.\n\n \"Ah! well, come forward; be seated here.\"  He drew a chair near his own. \"I am not fond of the prattle of children,\" he continued; \"for, old bachelor as I am, I have no pleasant associations connected with their lisp.  It would be intolerable to me to pass a whole evening _tete-a-tete_ with a brat.  Don't draw that chair farther off, Miss Madeline; sit down exactly where I placed it--if you please, that is.  Confound these civilities!  I continually forget them.  Nor do I particularly affect simple-minded old ladies.  By-the-bye, I must have mine in mind; it won't do to neglect her; she is a Madyson, or wed to one; and blood is said to be thicker than water.\"\n\n He rang, and despatched an invitation to Mrs. Madyson, who soon arrived, knitting-basket in hand.\n\n \"Good evening, madam; I sent to you for a charitable purpose.  I have forbidden Sebastianne to talk to me about her presents, and she is bursting with repletion: have the goodness to serve her as auditress and interlocutrice; it will be one of the most benevolent acts you ever performed.\"\n\n Sebastianne, indeed, no sooner saw Mrs. Madyson, than she summoned her to her sofa, and there quickly filled her lap with the porcelain, the ivory, the waxen contents of her \"boite;\" pouring out, meantime, explanations and raptures in such broken English as she was mistress of.\n\n \"Now I have performed the part of a good host,\" pursued Mr. Goldie, \"put my guests into the way of amusing each other, I ought to be at liberty to attend to my own pleasure.  Miss Madeline, draw your chair still a little farther forward: you are yet too far back; I cannot see you without disturbing my position in this comfortable chair, which I have no mind to do.\"\n\n I did as I was bid, though I would much rather have remained somewhat in the shade; but Mr. Goldie had such a direct way of giving orders, it seemed a matter of course to obey him promptly.\n\n We were, as I have said, in the dining-room: the lustre, which had been lit for dinner, filled the room with a festal breadth of light; the large fire was all red and clear; the purple curtains hung rich and ample before the lofty window and loftier arch; everything was still, save the subdued chat of Sebastianne (she dared not speak loud), and, filling up each pause, the beating of winter rain against the panes.\n\n Mr. Goldie, as he sat in his damask-covered chair, looked different to what I had seen him look before; not quite so stern--much less gloomy. There was a smile on his lips, and his eyes sparkled, whether with wine or not, I am not sure; but I think it very probable.  He was, in short, in his after-dinner mood; more expanded and genial, and also more self- indulgent than the frigid and rigid temper of the morning; still he looked preciously grim, cushioning his massive head against the swelling back of his chair, and receiving the light of the fire on his granite- hewn features, and in his great, dark eyes; for he had great, dark eyes, and very fine eyes, too--not without a certain change in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you, at least, of that feeling.\n\n He had been looking two minutes at the fire, and I had been looking the same length of time at him, when, turning suddenly, he caught my gaze fastened on his physiognomy.\n\n \"You examine me, Miss Madeline,\" said he: \"do you think me handsome?\"\n\n I should, if I had deliberated, have replied to this question by something conventionally vague and polite; but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I was aware--\"No, sir.\"\n\n \"Ah!  By my word! there is something singular about you,\" said he: \"you have the air of a little _nonnette_; quaint, quiet, grave, and simple, as you sit with your hands before you, and your eyes generally bent on the carpet (except, by-the-bye, when they are directed piercingly to my face; as just now, for instance); and when one asks you a question, or makes a remark to which you are obliged to reply, you rap out a round rejoinder, which, if not blunt, is at least brusque.  What do you mean by it?\"\n\n \"Sir, I was too plain; I beg your pardon.  I ought to have replied that it was not easy to give an impromptu answer to a question about appearances; that tastes mostly differ; and that beauty is of little consequence, or something of that sort.\"\n\n \"You ought to have replied no such thing.  Beauty of little consequence, indeed!  And so, under pretence of softening the previous outrage, of stroking and soothing me into placidity, you stick a sly penknife under my ear!  Go on: what fault do you find with me, pray?  I suppose I have all my limbs and all my features like any other man?\"\n\n \"Mr. Goldie, allow me to disown my first answer: I intended no pointed repartee: it was only a blunder.\"\n\n \"Just so: I think so: and you shall be answerable for it.  Criticise me: does my forehead not please you?\"\n\n He lifted up the sable waves of hair which lay horizontally over his brow, and showed a solid enough mass of intellectual organs, but an abrupt deficiency where the suave sign of benevolence should have risen.\n\n \"Now, ma'am, am I a fool?\"\n\n \"Far from it, sir.  You would, perhaps, think me rude if I inquired in return whether you are a philanthropist?\"\n\n \"There again!  Another stick of the penknife, when she pretended to pat my head: and that is because I said I did not like the society of children and old women (low be it spoken!).  No, young lady, I am not a general philanthropist; but I bear a conscience;\" and he pointed to the prominences which are said to indicate that faculty, and which, fortunately for him, were sufficiently conspicuous; giving, indeed, a marked breadth to the upper part of his head: \"and, besides, I once had a kind of rude tenderness of heart.  When I was as old as you, I was a feeling fellow enough, partial to the unfledged, unfostered, and unlucky; but Fortune has knocked me about since: she has even kneaded me with her knuckles, and now I flatter myself I am hard and tough as an India-rubber ball; pervious, though, through a chink or two still, and with one sentient point in the middle of the lump.  Yes: does that leave hope for me?\"\n\n \"Hope of what, sir?\"\n\n \"Of my final re-transformation from India-rubber back to flesh?\"\n\n \"Decidedly he has had too much wine,\" I thought; and I did not know what answer to make to his queer question: how could I tell whether he was capable of being re-transformed?\n\n \"You looked very much puzzled, Miss Madeline; and though you are not pretty any more than I am handsome, yet a puzzled air becomes you; besides, it is convenient, for it keeps those searching eyes of yours away from my physiognomy, and busies them with the worsted flowers of the rug; so puzzle on.  Young lady, I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night.\"\n\n With this announcement he rose from his chair, and stood, leaning his arm on the marble mantelpiece: in that attitude his shape was seen plainly as well as his face; his unusual breadth of chest, disproportionate almost to his length of limb.  I am sure most people would have thought him an ugly man; yet there was so much unconscious pride in his port; so much ease in his demeanour; such a look of complete indifference to his own external appearance; so haughty a reliance on the power of other qualities, intrinsic or adventitious, to atone for the lack of mere personal attractiveness, that, in looking at him, one inevitably shared the indifference, and, even in a blind, imperfect sense, put faith in the confidence.\n\n \"I am disposed to be gregarious and communicative to-night,\" he repeated, \"and that is why I sent for you: the fire and the chandelier were not sufficient company for me; nor would Pilot have been, for none of these can talk.  Sebastianne is a degree better, but still far below the mark; Mrs. Madyson ditto; you, I am persuaded, can suit me if you will: you puzzled me the first evening I invited you down here.  I have almost forgotten you since: other ideas have driven yours from my head; but to-night I am resolved to be at ease; to dismiss what importunes, and recall what pleases.  It would please me now to draw you out--to learn more of you--therefore speak.\"\n\n Instead of speaking, I smiled; and not a very complacent or submissive smile either.\n\n \"Speak,\" he urged.\n\n \"What about, sir?\"\n\n \"Whatever you like.  I leave both the choice of subject and the manner of treating it entirely to yourself.\"\n\n Accordingly I sat and said nothing: \"If he expects me to talk for the mere sake of talking and showing off, he will find he has addressed himself to the wrong person,\" I thought.\n\n \"You are dumb, Miss Madeline.\"\n\n I was dumb still.  He bent his head a little towards me, and with a single hasty glance seemed to dive into my eyes.\n\n \"Stubborn?\" he said, \"and annoyed.  Ah! it is consistent.  I put my request in an absurd, almost insolent form.  Miss Madeline, I beg your pardon.  The fact is, once for all, I don't wish to treat you like an inferior: that is\" (correcting himself), \"I claim only such superiority as must result from twenty years' difference in age and a century's advance in experience.  This is legitimate, _et j'y tiens_, as Sebastianne would say; and it is by virtue of this superiority, and this alone, that I desire you to have the goodness to talk to me a little now, and divert my thoughts, which are galled with dwelling on one point--cankering as a rusty nail.\"\n\n He had deigned an explanation, almost an apology, and I did not feel insensible to his condescension, and would not seem so.\n\n \"I am willing to amuse you, if I can, sir--quite willing; but I cannot introduce a topic, because how do I know what will interest you?  Ask me questions, and I will do my best to answer them.\"\n\n \"Then, in the first place, do you agree with me that I have a right to be a little masterful, abrupt, perhaps exacting, sometimes, on the grounds I stated, namely, that I am old enough to be your father, and that I have battled through a varied experience with many men of many nations, and roamed over half the globe, while you have lived quietly with one set of people in one house?\"\n\n \"Do as you please, sir.\"\n\n \"That is no answer; or rather it is a very irritating, because a very evasive one.  Reply clearly.\"\n\n \"I don't think, sir, you have a right to command me, merely because you are older than I, or because you have seen more of the world than I have; your claim to superiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience.\"\n\n \"Humph!  Promptly spoken.  But I won't allow that, seeing that it would never suit my case, as I have made an indifferent, not to say a bad, use of both advantages.  Leaving superiority out of the question, then, you must still agree to receive my orders now and then, without being piqued or hurt by the tone of command.  Will you?\"\n\n I smiled: I thought to myself Mr. Goldie _is_ peculiar--he seems to forget that he pays me 30 pounds per annum for receiving his orders.\n\n \"The smile is very well,\" said he, catching instantly the passing expression; \"but speak too.\"\n\n \"I was thinking, sir, that very few masters would trouble themselves to inquire whether or not their paid subordinates were piqued and hurt by their orders.\"\n\n \"Paid subordinates!  What! you are my paid subordinate, are you?  Oh yes, I had forgotten the salary!  Well then, on that mercenary ground, will you agree to let me hector a little?\"\n\n \"No, sir, not on that ground; but, on the ground that you did forget it, and that you care whether or not a dependent is comfortable in his dependency, I agree heartily.\"\n\n \"And will you consent to dispense with a great many conventional forms and phrases, without thinking that the omission arises from insolence?\"\n\n \"I am sure, sir, I should never mistake informality for insolence: one I rather like, the other nothing free-born would submit to, even for a salary.\"\n\n \"Humbug!  Most things free-born will submit to anything for a salary; therefore, keep to yourself, and don't venture on generalities of which you are intensely ignorant.  However, I mentally shake hands with you for your answer, despite its inaccuracy; and as much for the manner in which it was said, as for the substance of the speech; the manner was frank and sincere; one does not often see such a manner: no, on the contrary, affectation, or coldness, or stupid, coarse-minded misapprehension of one's meaning are the usual rewards of candour.  Not three in three thousand raw school-girl-governesses would have answered me as you have just done.  But I don't mean to flatter you: if you are cast in a different mould to the majority, it is no merit of yours: Nature did it. And then, after all, I go too fast in my conclusions: for what I yet know, you may be no better than the rest; you may have intolerable defects to counterbalance your few good points.\"\n\n \"And so may you,\" I thought.  My eye met his as the idea crossed my mind: he seemed to read the glance, answering as if its import had been spoken as well as imagined--\n\n \"Yes, yes, you are right,\" said he; \"I have plenty of faults of my own: I know it, and I don't wish to palliate them, I assure you.  God wot I need not be too severe about others; I have a past existence, a series of deeds, a colour of life to contemplate within my own breast, which might well call my sneers and censures from my neighbours to myself.  I started, or rather (for like other defaulters, I like to lay half the blame on ill fortune and adverse circumstances) was thrust on to a wrong tack at the age of one-and-twenty, and have never recovered the right course since: but I might have been very different; I might have been as good as you--wiser--almost as stainless.  I envy you your peace of mind, your clean conscience, your unpolluted memory.  Little girl, a memory without blot or contamination must be an exquisite treasure--an inexhaustible source of pure refreshment: is it not?\"\n\n \"How was your memory when you were eighteen, sir?\"\n\n \"All right then; limpid, salubrious: no gush of bilge water had turned it to fetid puddle.  I was your equal at eighteen--quite your equal.  Nature meant me to be, on the whole, a good man, Miss Madeline; one of the better kind, and you see I am not so.  You would say you don't see it; at least I flatter myself I read as much in your eye (beware, by-the-bye, what you express with that organ; I am quick at interpreting its language).  Then take my word for it,--I am not a villain: you are not to suppose that--not to attribute to me any such bad eminence; but, owing, I verily believe, rather to circumstances than to my natural bent, I am a trite commonplace sinner, hackneyed in all the poor petty dissipations with which the rich and worthless try to put on life.  Do you wonder that I avow this to you? Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances' secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.\"\n\n \"How do you know?--how can you guess all this, sir?\"\n\n \"I know it well; therefore I proceed almost as freely as if I were writing my thoughts in a diary.  You would say, I should have been superior to circumstances; so I should--so I should; but you see I was not.  When fate wronged me, I had not the wisdom to remain cool: I turned desperate; then I degenerated.  Now, when any vicious simpleton excites my disgust by his paltry ribaldry, I cannot flatter myself that I am better than he: I am forced to confess that he and I are on a level.  I wish I had stood firm--God knows I do!  Dread remorse when you are tempted to err, Miss Madeline; remorse is the poison of life.\"\n\n \"Repentance is said to be its cure, sir.\"\n\n \"It is not its cure.  Reformation may be its cure; and I could reform--I have strength yet for that--if--but where is the use of thinking of it, hampered, burdened, cursed as I am?  Besides, since happiness is irrevocably denied me, I have a right to get pleasure out of life: and I _will_ get it, cost what it may.\"\n\n \"Then you will degenerate still more, sir.\"\n\n \"Possibly: yet why should I, if I can get sweet, fresh pleasure?  And I may get it as sweet and fresh as the wild honey the bee gathers on the moor.\"\n\n \"It will sting--it will taste bitter, sir.\"\n\n \"How do you know?--you never tried it.  How very serious--how very solemn you look: and you are as ignorant of the matter as this cameo head\" (taking one from the mantelpiece).  \"You have no right to preach to me, you neophyte, that have not passed the porch of life, and are absolutely unacquainted with its mysteries.\"\n\n \"I only remind you of your own words, sir: you said error brought remorse, and you pronounced remorse the poison of existence.\"\n\n \"And who talks of error now?  I scarcely think the notion that flittered across my brain was an error.  I believe it was an inspiration rather than a temptation: it was very genial, very soothing--I know that.  Here it comes again!  It is no devil, I assure you; or if it be, it has put on the robes of an angel of light.  I think I must admit so fair a guest when it asks entrance to my heart.\"\n\n \"Distrust it, sir; it is not a true angel.\"\n\n \"Once more, how do you know?  By what instinct do you pretend to distinguish between a fallen seraph of the abyss and a messenger from the eternal throne--between a guide and a seducer?\"\n\n \"I judged by your countenance, sir, which was troubled when you said the suggestion had returned upon you.  I feel sure it will work you more misery if you listen to it.\"\n\n \"Not at all--it bears the most gracious message in the world: for the rest, you are not my conscience-keeper, so don't make yourself uneasy. Here, come in, bonny wanderer!\"\n\n He said this as if he spoke to a vision, viewless to any eye but his own; then, folding his arms, which he had half extended, on his chest, he seemed to enclose in their embrace the invisible being.\n\n \"Now,\" he continued, again addressing me, \"I have received the pilgrim--a disguised deity, as I verily believe.  Already it has done me good: my heart was a sort of charnel; it will now be a shrine.\"\n\n \"To speak truth, sir, I don't understand you at all: I cannot keep up the conversation, because it has got out of my depth.  Only one thing, I know: you said you were not as good as you should like to be, and that you regretted your own imperfection;--one thing I can comprehend: you intimated that to have a sullied memory was a perpetual bane.  It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would approve; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure.\"\n\n \"Justly thought; rightly said, Miss Madeline; and, at this moment, I am paving hell with energy.\"\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n \"I am laying down good intentions, which I believe durable as flint. Certainly, my associates and pursuits shall be other than they have been.\"\n\n \"And better?\"\n\n \"And better--so much better as pure ore is than foul dross.  You seem to doubt me; I don't doubt myself: I know what my aim is, what my motives are; and at this moment I pass a law, unalterable as that of the Medes and Persians, that both are right.\"\n\n \"They cannot be, sir, if they require a new statute to legalise them.\"\n\n \"They are, Miss Madeline, though they absolutely require a new statute: unheard-of combinations of circumstances demand unheard-of rules.\"\n\n \"That sounds a dangerous maxim, sir; because one can see at once that it is liable to abuse.\"\n\n \"Sententious sage! so it is: but I swear by my household gods not to abuse it.\"\n\n \"You are human and fallible.\"\n\n \"I am: so are you--what then?\"\n\n \"The human and fallible should not arrogate a power with which the divine and perfect alone can be safely intrusted.\"\n\n \"What power?\"\n\n \"That of saying of any strange, unsanctioned line of action,--'Let it be right.'\"\n\n \"'Let it be right'--the very words: you have pronounced them.\"\n\n \"_May_ it be right then,\" I said, as I rose, deeming it useless to continue a discourse which was all darkness to me; and, besides, sensible that the character of my interlocutor was beyond my penetration; at least, beyond its present reach; and feeling the uncertainty, the vague sense of insecurity, which accompanies a conviction of ignorance.\n\n \"Where are you going?\"\n\n \"To put Sebastianne to bed: it is past her bedtime.\"\n\n \"You are afraid of me, because I talk like a Sphynx.\"\n\n \"Your language is enigmatical, sir: but though I am bewildered, I am certainly not afraid.\"\n\n \"You _are_ afraid--your self-love dreads a blunder.\"\n\n \"In that sense I do feel apprehensive--I have no wish to talk nonsense.\"\n\n \"If you did, it would be in such a grave, quiet manner, I should mistake it for sense.  Do you never laugh, Miss Madeline?  Don't trouble yourself to answer--I see you laugh rarely; but you can laugh very merrily: believe me, you are not naturally austere, any more than I am naturally vicious. The Lowood constraint still clings to you somewhat; controlling your features, muffling your voice, and restricting your limbs; and you fear in the presence of a man and a brother--or father, or master, or what you will--to smile too gaily, speak too freely, or move too quickly: but, in time, I think you will learn to be natural with me, as I find it impossible to be conventional with you; and then your looks and movements will have more vivacity and variety than they dare offer now.  I see at intervals the glance of a curious sort of bird through the close-set bars of a cage: a vivid, restless, resolute captive is there; were it but free, it would soar cloud-high.  You are still bent on going?\"\n\n \"It has struck nine, sir.\"\n\n \"Never mind,--wait a minute: Sebastianne is not ready to go to bed yet.  My position, Miss Madeline, with my back to the fire, and my face to the room, favours observation.  While talking to you, I have also occasionally watched Sebastianne (I have my own reasons for thinking her a curious study,--reasons that I may, nay, that I shall, impart to you some day). She pulled out of her box, about ten minutes ago, a little pink silk frock; rapture lit her face as she unfolded it; coquetry runs in her blood, blends with her brains, and seasons the marrow of her bones.  'Il faut que je l'essaie!' cried she, 'et a l'instant meme!' and she rushed out of the room.  She is now with Ivan, undergoing a robing process: in a few minutes she will re-enter; and I know what I shall see,--a miniature of Aubreanna Kira, as she used to appear on the boards at the rising of--But never mind that.  However, my tenderest feelings are about to receive a shock: such is my presentiment; stay now, to see whether it will be realised.\"\n\n Ere long, Sebastianne's little foot was heard tripping across the hall.  She entered, transformed as her guardian had predicted.  A dress of rose-coloured satin, very short, and as full in the skirt as it could be gathered, replaced the brown frock she had previously worn; a wreath of rosebuds circled her forehead; her feet were dressed in silk stockings and small white satin sandals.\n\n \"Est-ce que ma robe va bien?\" cried she, bounding forwards; \"et mes souliers? et mes bas?  Tenez, je crois que je vais danser!\"\n\n And spreading out her dress, she chasseed across the room till, having reached Mr. Goldie, she wheeled lightly round before him on tip-toe, then dropped on one knee at his feet, exclaiming--\n\n \"Monsieur, je vous remercie mille fois de votre bonte;\" then rising, she added, \"C'est comme cela que maman faisait, n'est-ce pas, monsieur?\"\n\n \"Pre-cise-ly!\" was the answer; \"and, 'comme cela,' she charmed my English gold out of my British breeches' pocket.  I have been green, too, Miss Madeline,--ay, grass green: not a more vernal tint freshens you now than once freshened me.  My Spring is gone, however, but it has left me that French floweret on my hands, which, in some moods, I would fain be rid of.  Not valuing now the root whence it sprang; having found that it was of a sort which nothing but gold dust could manure, I have but half a liking to the blossom, especially when it looks so artificial as just now.  I keep it and rear it rather on the Roman Catholic principle of expiating numerous sins, great or small, by one good work.  I'll explain all this some day. Good-night.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Goldie did, on a future occasion, explain it.  It was one afternoon, when he chanced to meet me and Sebastianne in the grounds: and while she played with Pilot and her shuttlecock, he asked me to walk up and down a long beech avenue within sight of her.\n\n He then said that she was the daughter of a French opera-dancer, Aubreanna Kira, towards whom he had once cherished what he called a \"_grande passion_.\"  This passion Aubreanna had professed to return with even superior ardour.  He thought himself her idol, ugly as he was: he believed, as he said, that she preferred his \"_taille d'athlete_\" to the elegance of the Apollo Belvidere.\n\n \"And, Miss Madeline, so much was I flattered by this preference of the Gallic sylph for her British gnome, that I installed her in an hotel; gave her a complete establishment of servants, a carriage, cashmeres, diamonds, dentelles, &c.  In short, I began the process of ruining myself in the received style, like any other spoony.  I had not, it seems, the originality to chalk out a new road to shame and destruction, but trode the old track with stupid exactness not to deviate an inch from the beaten centre.  I had--as I deserved to have--the fate of all other spoonies.  Happening to call one evening when Aubreanna did not expect me, I found her out; but it was a warm night, and I was tired with strolling through Paris, so I sat down in her boudoir; happy to breathe the air consecrated so lately by her presence.  No,--I exaggerate; I never thought there was any consecrating virtue about her: it was rather a sort of pastille perfume she had left; a scent of musk and amber, than an odour of sanctity.  I was just beginning to stifle with the fumes of conservatory flowers and sprinkled essences, when I bethought myself to open the window and step out on to the balcony.  It was moonlight and gaslight besides, and very still and serene.  The balcony was furnished with a chair or two; I sat down, and took out a cigar,--I will take one now, if you will excuse me.\"\n\n Here ensued a pause, filled up by the producing and lighting of a cigar; having placed it to his lips and breathed a trail of Havannah incense on the freezing and sunless air, he went on--\n\n \"I liked bonbons too in those days, Miss Madeline, and I was _croquant_--(overlook the barbarism)--_croquant_ chocolate comfits, and smoking alternately, watching meantime the equipages that rolled along the fashionable streets towards the neighbouring opera-house, when in an elegant close carriage drawn by a beautiful pair of English horses, and distinctly seen in the brilliant city-night, I recognised the 'voiture' I had given Aubreanna.  She was returning: of course my heart thumped with impatience against the iron rails I leant upon.  The carriage stopped, as I had expected, at the hotel door; my flame (that is the very word for an opera inamorata) alighted: though muffed in a cloak--an unnecessary encumbrance, by-the-bye, on so warm a June evening--I knew her instantly by her little foot, seen peeping from the skirt of her dress, as she skipped from the carriage-step.  Bending over the balcony, I was about to murmur 'Mon ange'--in a tone, of course, which should be audible to the ear of love alone--when a figure jumped from the carriage after her; cloaked also; but that was a spurred heel which had rung on the pavement, and that was a hatted head which now passed under the arched _porte cochere_ of the hotel.\n\n \"You never felt jealousy, did you, Miss Madeline?  Of course not: I need not ask you; because you never felt love.  You have both sentiments yet to experience: your soul sleeps; the shock is yet to be given which shall waken it.  You think all existence lapses in as quiet a flow as that in which your youth has hitherto slid away.  Floating on with closed eyes and muffled ears, you neither see the rocks bristling not far off in the bed of the flood, nor hear the breakers boil at their base.  But I tell you--and you may mark my words--you will come some day to a craggy pass in the channel, where the whole of life's stream will be broken up into whirl and tumult, foam and noise: either you will be dashed to atoms on crag points, or lifted up and borne on by some master-wave into a calmer current--as I am now.\n\n \"I like this day; I like that sky of steel; I like the sternness and stillness of the world under this frost.  I like Thornfield, its antiquity, its retirement, its old crow-trees and thorn-trees, its grey facade, and lines of dark windows reflecting that metal welkin: and yet how long have I abhorred the very thought of it, shunned it like a great plague-house?  How I do still abhor--\"\n\n He ground his teeth and was silent: he arrested his step and struck his boot against the hard ground.  Some hated thought seemed to have him in its grip, and to hold him so tightly that he could not advance.\n\n We were ascending the avenue when he thus paused; the hall was before us. Lifting his eye to its battlements, he cast over them a glare such as I never saw before or since.  Pain, shame, ire, impatience, disgust, detestation, seemed momentarily to hold a quivering conflict in the large pupil dilating under his ebon eyebrow.  Wild was the wrestle which should be paramount; but another feeling rose and triumphed: something hard and cynical: self-willed and resolute: it settled his passion and petrified his countenance: he went on--\n\n \"During the moment I was silent, Miss Madeline, I was arranging a point with my destiny.  She stood there, by that beech-trunk--a hag like one of those who appeared to Macbeth on the heath of Forres.  'You like Thornfield?' she said, lifting her finger; and then she wrote in the air a memento, which ran in lurid hieroglyphics all along the house-front, between the upper and lower row of windows, 'Like it if you can!  Like it if you dare!'\n\n \"'I will like it,' said I; 'I dare like it;' and\" (he subjoined moodily) \"I will keep my word; I will break obstacles to happiness, to goodness--yes, goodness.  I wish to be a better man than I have been, than I am; as Job's leviathan broke the spear, the dart, and the habergeon, hindrances which others count as iron and brass, I will esteem but straw and rotten wood.\"\n\n Sebastianne here ran before him with her shuttlecock.  \"Away!\" he cried harshly; \"keep at a distance, child; or go in to Ivan!\"  Continuing then to pursue his walk in silence, I ventured to recall him to the point whence he had abruptly diverged--\n\n \"Did you leave the balcony, sir,\" I asked, \"when Mdlle. Kira entered?\"\n\n I almost expected a rebuff for this hardly well-timed question, but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow.  \"Oh, I had forgotten Aubreanna!  Well, to resume.  When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my heart's core. Strange!\" he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point.  \"Strange that I should choose you for the confidant of all this, young lady; passing strange that you should listen to me quietly, as if it were the most usual thing in the world for a man like me to tell stories of his opera-mistresses to a quaint, inexperienced girl like you!  But the last singularity explains the first, as I intimated once before: you, with your gravity, considerateness, and caution were made to be the recipient of secrets.  Besides, I know what sort of a mind I have placed in communication with my own: I know it is one not liable to take infection: it is a peculiar mind: it is a unique one.  Happily I do not mean to harm it: but, if I did, it would not take harm from me.  The more you and I converse, the better; for while I cannot blight you, you may refresh me.\" After this digression he proceeded--\n\n \"I remained in the balcony.  'They will come to her boudoir, no doubt,' thought I: 'let me prepare an ambush.'  So putting my hand in through the open window, I drew the curtain over it, leaving only an opening through which I could take observations; then I closed the casement, all but a chink just wide enough to furnish an outlet to lovers' whispered vows: then I stole back to my chair; and as I resumed it the pair came in.  My eye was quickly at the aperture.  Aubreanna's chamber-maid entered, lit a lamp, left it on the table, and withdrew.  The couple were thus revealed to me clearly: both removed their cloaks, and there was 'the Kira,' shining in satin and jewels,--my gifts of course,--and there was her companion in an officer's uniform; and I knew him for a young roue of a vicomte--a brainless and vicious youth whom I had sometimes met in society, and had never thought of hating because I despised him so absolutely.  On recognising him, the fang of the snake Jealousy was instantly broken; because at the same moment my love for Aubreanna sank under an extinguisher.  A woman who could betray me for such a rival was not worth contending for; she deserved only scorn; less, however, than I, who had been her dupe.\n\n \"They began to talk; their conversation eased me completely: frivolous, mercenary, heartless, and senseless, it was rather calculated to weary than enrage a listener.  A card of mine lay on the table; this being perceived, brought my name under discussion.  Neither of them possessed energy or wit to belabour me soundly, but they insulted me as coarsely as they could in their little way: especially Aubreanna, who even waxed rather brilliant on my personal defects--deformities she termed them.  Now it had been her custom to launch out into fervent admiration of what she called my '_beaute male_:' wherein she differed diametrically from you, who told me point-blank, at the second interview, that you did not think me handsome.  The contrast struck me at the time and--\"\n\n Sebastianne here came running up again.\n\n \"Monsieur, Spencer has just been to say that your agent has called and wishes to see you.\"\n\n \"Ah! in that case I must abridge.  Opening the window, I walked in upon them; liberated Aubreanna from my protection; gave her notice to vacate her hotel; offered her a purse for immediate exigencies; disregarded screams, hysterics, prayers, protestations, convulsions; made an appointment with the vicomte for a meeting at the Bois de Boulogne.  Next morning I had the pleasure of encountering him; left a bullet in one of his poor etiolated arms, feeble as the wing of a chicken in the pip, and then thought I had done with the whole crew.  But unluckily the Kira, six months before, had given me this filette Sebastianne, who, she affirmed, was my daughter; and perhaps she may be, though I see no proofs of such grim paternity written in her countenance: Pilot is more like me than she. Some years after I had broken with the mother, she abandoned her child, and ran away to Italy with a musician or singer.  I acknowledged no natural claim on Sebastianne's part to be supported by me, nor do I now acknowledge any, for I am not her father; but hearing that she was quite destitute, I e'en took the poor thing out of the slime and mud of Paris, and transplanted it here, to grow up clean in the wholesome soil of an English country garden.  Mrs. Madyson found you to train it; but now you know that it is the illegitimate offspring of a French opera-girl, you will perhaps think differently of your post and protegee: you will be coming to me some day with notice that you have found another place--that you beg me to look out for a new governess, &c.--Eh?\"\n\n \"No: Sebastianne is not answerable for either her mother's faults or yours: I have a regard for her; and now that I know she is, in a sense, parentless--forsaken by her mother and disowned by you, sir--I shall cling closer to her than before.  How could I possibly prefer the spoilt pet of a wealthy family, who would hate her governess as a nuisance, to a lonely little orphan, who leans towards her as a friend?\"\n\n \"Oh, that is the light in which you view it!  Well, I must go in now; and you too: it darkens.\"\n\n But I stayed out a few minutes longer with Sebastianne and Pilot--ran a race with her, and played a game of battledore and shuttlecock.  When we went in, and I had removed her bonnet and coat, I took her on my knee; kept her there an hour, allowing her to prattle as she liked: not rebuking even some little freedoms and trivialities into which she was apt to stray when much noticed, and which betrayed in her a superficiality of character, inherited probably from her mother, hardly congenial to an English mind.  Still she had her merits; and I was disposed to appreciate all that was good in her to the utmost.  I sought in her countenance and features a likeness to Mr. Goldie, but found none: no trait, no turn of expression announced relationship.  It was a pity: if she could but have been proved to resemble him, he would have thought more of her.\n\n It was not till after I had withdrawn to my own chamber for the night, that I steadily reviewed the tale Mr. Goldie had told me.  As he had said, there was probably nothing at all extraordinary in the substance of the narrative itself: a wealthy Englishman's passion for a French dancer, and her treachery to him, were every-day matters enough, no doubt, in society; but there was something decidedly strange in the paroxysm of emotion which had suddenly seized him when he was in the act of expressing the present contentment of his mood, and his newly revived pleasure in the old hall and its environs.  I meditated wonderingly on this incident; but gradually quitting it, as I found it for the present inexplicable, I turned to the consideration of my master's manner to myself.  The confidence he had thought fit to repose in me seemed a tribute to my discretion: I regarded and accepted it as such.  His deportment had now for some weeks been more uniform towards me than at the first.  I never seemed in his way; he did not take fits of chilling hauteur: when he met me unexpectedly, the encounter seemed welcome; he had always a word and sometimes a smile for me: when summoned by formal invitation to his presence, I was honoured by a cordiality of reception that made me feel I really possessed the power to amuse him, and that these evening conferences were sought as much for his pleasure as for my benefit.\n\n I, indeed, talked comparatively little, but I heard him talk with relish. It was his nature to be communicative; he liked to open to a mind unacquainted with the world glimpses of its scenes and ways (I do not mean its corrupt scenes and wicked ways, but such as derived their interest from the great scale on which they were acted, the strange novelty by which they were characterised); and I had a keen delight in receiving the new ideas he offered, in imagining the new pictures he portrayed, and following him in thought through the new regions he disclosed, never startled or troubled by one noxious allusion.\n\n The ease of his manner freed me from painful restraint: the friendly frankness, as correct as cordial, with which he treated me, drew me to him.  I felt at times as if he were my relation rather than my master: yet he was imperious sometimes still; but I did not mind that; I saw it was his way.  So happy, so gratified did I become with this new interest added to life, that I ceased to pine after kindred: my thin crescent-destiny seemed to enlarge; the blanks of existence were filled up; my bodily health improved; I gathered flesh and strength.\n\n And was Mr. Goldie now ugly in my eyes?  No, reader: gratitude, and many associations, all pleasurable and genial, made his face the object I best liked to see; his presence in a room was more cheering than the brightest fire.  Yet I had not forgotten his faults; indeed, I could not, for he brought them frequently before me.  He was proud, sardonic, harsh to inferiority of every description: in my secret soul I knew that his great kindness to me was balanced by unjust severity to many others.  He was moody, too; unaccountably so; I more than once, when sent for to read to him, found him sitting in his library alone, with his head bent on his folded arms; and, when he looked up, a morose, almost a malignant, scowl blackened his features.  But I believed that his moodiness, his harshness, and his former faults of morality (I say _former_, for now he seemed corrected of them) had their source in some cruel cross of fate.  I believed he was naturally a man of better tendencies, higher principles, and purer tastes than such as circumstances had developed, education instilled, or destiny encouraged.  I thought there were excellent materials in him; though for the present they hung together somewhat spoiled and tangled.  I cannot deny that I grieved for his grief, whatever that was, and would have given much to assuage it.\n\n Though I had now extinguished my candle and was laid down in bed, I could not sleep for thinking of his look when he paused in the avenue, and told how his destiny had risen up before him, and dared him to be happy at Thornfield.\n\n \"Why not?\" I asked myself.  \"What alienates him from the house?  Will he leave it again soon?  Mrs. Madyson said he seldom stayed here longer than a fortnight at a time; and he has now been resident eight weeks.  If he does go, the change will be doleful.  Suppose he should be absent spring, summer, and autumn: how joyless sunshine and fine days will seem!\"\n\n I hardly know whether I had slept or not after this musing; at any rate, I started wide awake on hearing a vague murmur, peculiar and lugubrious, which sounded, I thought, just above me.  I wished I had kept my candle burning: the night was drearily dark; my spirits were depressed.  I rose and sat up in bed, listening.  The sound was hushed.\n\n I tried again to sleep; but my heart beat anxiously: my inward tranquillity was broken.  The clock, far down in the hall, struck two. Just then it seemed my chamber-door was touched; as if fingers had swept the panels in groping a way along the dark gallery outside.  I said, \"Who is there?\"  Nothing answered.  I was chilled with fear.\n\n All at once I remembered that it might be Pilot, who, when the kitchen- door chanced to be left open, not unfrequently found his way up to the threshold of Mr. Goldie's chamber: I had seen him lying there myself in the mornings.  The idea calmed me somewhat: I lay down.  Silence composes the nerves; and as an unbroken hush now reigned again through the whole house, I began to feel the return of slumber.  But it was not fated that I should sleep that night.  A dream had scarcely approached my ear, when it fled affrighted, scared by a marrow-freezing incident enough.\n\n This was a demoniac laugh--low, suppressed, and deep--uttered, as it seemed, at the very keyhole of my chamber door.  The head of my bed was near the door, and I thought at first the goblin-laugher stood at my bedside--or rather, crouched by my pillow: but I rose, looked round, and could see nothing; while, as I still gazed, the unnatural sound was reiterated: and I knew it came from behind the panels.  My first impulse was to rise and fasten the bolt; my next, again to cry out, \"Who is there?\"\n\n Something gurgled and moaned.  Ere long, steps retreated up the gallery towards the third-storey staircase: a door had lately been made to shut in that staircase; I heard it open and close, and all was still.\n\n \"Was that Murrayann Sadhbh? and is she possessed with a devil?\" thought I. Impossible now to remain longer by myself: I must go to Mrs. Madyson.  I hurried on my frock and a shawl; I withdrew the bolt and opened the door with a trembling hand.  There was a candle burning just outside, and on the matting in the gallery.  I was surprised at this circumstance: but still more was I amazed to perceive the air quite dim, as if filled with smoke; and, while looking to the right hand and left, to find whence these blue wreaths issued, I became further aware of a strong smell of burning.\n\n Something creaked: it was a door ajar; and that door was Mr. Goldie's, and the smoke rushed in a cloud from thence.  I thought no more of Mrs. Madyson; I thought no more of Murrayann Sadhbh, or the laugh: in an instant, I was within the chamber.  Tongues of flame darted round the bed: the curtains were on fire.  In the midst of blaze and vapour, Mr. Goldie lay stretched motionless, in deep sleep.\n\n \"Wake! wake!\" I cried.  I shook him, but he only murmured and turned: the smoke had stupefied him.  Not a moment could be lost: the very sheets were kindling, I rushed to his basin and ewer; fortunately, one was wide and the other deep, and both were filled with water.  I heaved them up, deluged the bed and its occupant, flew back to my own room, brought my own water-jug, baptized the couch afresh, and, by God's aid, succeeded in extinguishing the flames which were devouring it.\n\n The hiss of the quenched element, the breakage of a pitcher which I flung from my hand when I had emptied it, and, above all, the splash of the shower-bath I had liberally bestowed, roused Mr. Goldie at last. Though it was now dark, I knew he was awake; because I heard him fulminating strange anathemas at finding himself lying in a pool of water.\n\n \"Is there a flood?\" he cried.\n\n \"No, sir,\" I answered; \"but there has been a fire: get up, do; you are quenched now; I will fetch you a candle.\"\n\n \"In the name of all the elves in Christendom, is that Isis Madeline?\" he demanded.  \"What have you done with me, witch, sorceress?  Who is in the room besides you?  Have you plotted to drown me?\"\n\n \"I will fetch you a candle, sir; and, in Heaven's name, get up.  Somebody has plotted something: you cannot too soon find out who and what it is.\"\n\n \"There!  I am up now; but at your peril you fetch a candle yet: wait two minutes till I get into some dry garments, if any dry there be--yes, here is my dressing-gown.  Now run!\"\n\n I did run; I brought the candle which still remained in the gallery.  He took it from my hand, held it up, and surveyed the bed, all blackened and scorched, the sheets drenched, the carpet round swimming in water.\n\n \"What is it? and who did it?\" he asked.  I briefly related to him what had transpired: the strange laugh I had heard in the gallery: the step ascending to the third storey; the smoke,--the smell of fire which had conducted me to his room; in what state I had found matters there, and how I had deluged him with all the water I could lay hands on.\n\n {\"What is it and who did it?\" he asked: p140.jpg}\n\n He listened very gravely; his face, as I went on, expressed more concern than astonishment; he did not immediately speak when I had concluded.\n\n \"Shall I call Mrs. Madyson?\" I asked.\n\n \"Mrs. Madyson?  No; what the deuce would you call her for?  What can she do?  Let her sleep unmolested.\"\n\n \"Then I will fetch Leah, and wake Spencer and his wife.\"\n\n \"Not at all: just be still.  You have a shawl on.  If you are not warm enough, you may take my cloak yonder; wrap it about you, and sit down in the arm-chair: there,--I will put it on.  Now place your feet on the stool, to keep them out of the wet.  I am going to leave you a few minutes.  I shall take the candle.  Remain where you are till I return; be as still as a mouse.  I must pay a visit to the second storey.  Don't move, remember, or call any one.\"\n\n He went: I watched the light withdraw.  He passed up the gallery very softly, unclosed the staircase door with as little noise as possible, shut it after him, and the last ray vanished.  I was left in total darkness.  I listened for some noise, but heard nothing.  A very long time elapsed.  I grew weary: it was cold, in spite of the cloak; and then I did not see the use of staying, as I was not to rouse the house.  I was on the point of risking Mr. Goldie's displeasure by disobeying his orders, when the light once more gleamed dimly on the gallery wall, and I heard his unshod feet tread the matting.  \"I hope it is he,\" thought I, \"and not something worse.\"\n\n He re-entered, pale and very gloomy.  \"I have found it all out,\" said he, setting his candle down on the washstand; \"it is as I thought.\"\n\n \"How, sir?\"\n\n He made no reply, but stood with his arms folded, looking on the ground. At the end of a few minutes he inquired in rather a peculiar tone--\n\n \"I forget whether you said you saw anything when you opened your chamber door.\"\n\n \"No, sir, only the candlestick on the ground.\"\n\n \"But you heard an odd laugh?  You have heard that laugh before, I should think, or something like it?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir: there is a woman who sews here, called Murrayann Sadhbh,--she laughs in that way.  She is a singular person.\"\n\n \"Just so.  Murrayann Sadhbh--you have guessed it.  She is, as you say, singular--very.  Well, I shall reflect on the subject.  Meantime, I am glad that you are the only person, besides myself, acquainted with the precise details of to-night's incident.  You are no talking fool: say nothing about it.  I will account for this state of affairs\" (pointing to the bed): \"and now return to your own room.  I shall do very well on the sofa in the library for the rest of the night.  It is near four:--in two hours the servants will be up.\"\n\n \"Good-night, then, sir,\" said I, departing.\n\n He seemed surprised--very inconsistently so, as he had just told me to go.\n\n \"What!\" he exclaimed, \"are you quitting me already, and in that way?\"\n\n \"You said I might go, sir.\"\n\n \"But not without taking leave; not without a word or two of acknowledgment and good-will: not, in short, in that brief, dry fashion. Why, you have saved my life!--snatched me from a horrible and excruciating death! and you walk past me as if we were mutual strangers! At least shake hands.\"\n\n He held out his hand; I gave him mine: he took it first in one, them in both his own.\n\n \"You have saved my life: I have a pleasure in owing you so immense a debt.  I cannot say more.  Nothing else that has being would have been tolerable to me in the character of creditor for such an obligation: but you: it is different;--I feel your benefits no burden, Isis.\"\n\n He paused; gazed at me: words almost visible trembled on his lips,--but his voice was checked.\n\n \"Good-night again, sir.  There is no debt, benefit, burden, obligation, in the case.\"\n\n \"I knew,\" he continued, \"you would do me good in some way, at some time;--I saw it in your eyes when I first beheld you: their expression and smile did not\"--(again he stopped)--\"did not\" (he proceeded hastily) \"strike delight to my very inmost heart so for nothing.  People talk of natural sympathies; I have heard of good genii: there are grains of truth in the wildest fable.  My cherished preserver, goodnight!\"\n\n Strange energy was in his voice, strange fire in his look.\n\n \"I am glad I happened to be awake,\" I said: and then I was going.\n\n \"What! you _will_ go?\"\n\n \"I am cold, sir.\"\n\n \"Cold?  Yes,--and standing in a pool!  Go, then, Isis; go!\"  But he still retained my hand, and I could not free it.  I bethought myself of an expedient.\n\n \"I think I hear Mrs. Madyson move, sir,\" said I.\n\n \"Well, leave me:\" he relaxed his fingers, and I was gone.\n\n I regained my couch, but never thought of sleep.  Till morning dawned I was tossed on a buoyant but unquiet sea, where billows of trouble rolled under surges of joy.  I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah; and now and then a freshening gale, wakened by hope, bore my spirit triumphantly towards the bourne: but I could not reach it, even in fancy--a counteracting breeze blew off land, and continually drove me back.  Sense would resist delirium: judgment would warn passion.  Too feverish to rest, I rose as soon as day dawned.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I both wished and feared to see Mr. Goldie on the day which followed this sleepless night: I wanted to hear his voice again, yet feared to meet his eye.  During the early part of the morning, I momentarily expected his coming; he was not in the frequent habit of entering the schoolroom, but he did step in for a few minutes sometimes, and I had the impression that he was sure to visit it that day.\n\n But the morning passed just as usual: nothing happened to interrupt the quiet course of Sebastianne's studies; only soon after breakfast, I heard some bustle in the neighbourhood of Mr. Goldie's chamber, Mrs. Madyson's voice, and Leah's, and the cook's--that is, Spencer's wife--and even Spencer's own gruff tones.  There were exclamations of \"What a mercy master was not burnt in his bed!\"  \"It is always dangerous to keep a candle lit at night.\"  \"How providential that he had presence of mind to think of the water-jug!\"  \"I wonder he waked nobody!\"  \"It is to be hoped he will not take cold with sleeping on the library sofa,\" &c.\n\n To much confabulation succeeded a sound of scrubbing and setting to rights; and when I passed the room, in going downstairs to dinner, I saw through the open door that all was again restored to complete order; only the bed was stripped of its hangings.  Leah stood up in the window-seat, rubbing the panes of glass dimmed with smoke.  I was about to address her, for I wished to know what account had been given of the affair: but, on advancing, I saw a second person in the chamber--a woman sitting on a chair by the bedside, and sewing rings to new curtains.  That woman was no other than Murrayann Sadhbh.\n\n There she sat, staid and taciturn-looking, as usual, in her brown stuff gown, her check apron, white handkerchief, and cap.  She was intent on her work, in which her whole thoughts seemed absorbed: on her hard forehead, and in her commonplace features, was nothing either of the paleness or desperation one would have expected to see marking the countenance of a woman who had attempted murder, and whose intended victim had followed her last night to her lair, and (as I believed), charged her with the crime she wished to perpetrate.  I was amazed--confounded.  She looked up, while I still gazed at her: no start, no increase or failure of colour betrayed emotion, consciousness of guilt, or fear of detection.  She said \"Good morning, Miss,\" in her usual phlegmatic and brief manner; and taking up another ring and more tape, went on with her sewing.\n\n \"I will put her to some test,\" thought I: \"such absolute impenetrability is past comprehension.\"\n\n \"Good morning, Murrayann,\" I said.  \"Has anything happened here?  I thought I heard the servants all talking together a while ago.\"\n\n \"Only master had been reading in his bed last night; he fell asleep with his candle lit, and the curtains got on fire; but, fortunately, he awoke before the bed-clothes or the wood-work caught, and contrived to quench the flames with the water in the ewer.\"\n\n \"A strange affair!\" I said, in a low voice: then, looking at her fixedly--\"Did Mr. Goldie wake nobody?  Did no one hear him move?\"\n\n She again raised her eyes to me, and this time there was something of consciousness in their expression.  She seemed to examine me warily; then she answered--\n\n \"The servants sleep so far off, you know, Miss, they would not be likely to hear.  Mrs. Madyson's room and yours are the nearest to master's; but Mrs. Madyson said she heard nothing: when people get elderly, they often sleep heavy.\"  She paused, and then added, with a sort of assumed indifference, but still in a marked and significant tone--\"But you are young, Miss; and I should say a light sleeper: perhaps you may have heard a noise?\"\n\n \"I did,\" said I, dropping my voice, so that Leah, who was still polishing the panes, could not hear me, \"and at first I thought it was Pilot: but Pilot cannot laugh; and I am certain I heard a laugh, and a strange one.\"\n\n She took a new needleful of thread, waxed it carefully, threaded her needle with a steady hand, and then observed, with perfect composure--\n\n \"It is hardly likely master would laugh, I should think, Miss, when he was in such danger: You must have been dreaming.\"\n\n \"I was not dreaming,\" I said, with some warmth, for her brazen coolness provoked me.  Again she looked at me; and with the same scrutinising and conscious eye.\n\n \"Have you told master that you heard a laugh?\" she inquired.\n\n \"I have not had the opportunity of speaking to him this morning.\"\n\n \"You did not think of opening your door and looking out into the gallery?\" she further asked.\n\n She appeared to be cross-questioning me, attempting to draw from me information unawares.  The idea struck me that if she discovered I knew or suspected her guilt, she would be playing of some of her malignant pranks on me; I thought it advisable to be on my guard.\n\n \"On the contrary,\" said I, \"I bolted my door.\"\n\n \"Then you are not in the habit of bolting your door every night before you get into bed?\"\n\n \"Fiend! she wants to know my habits, that she may lay her plans accordingly!\"  Indignation again prevailed over prudence: I replied sharply, \"Hitherto I have often omitted to fasten the bolt: I did not think it necessary.  I was not aware any danger or annoyance was to be dreaded at Thornfield Hall: but in future\" (and I laid marked stress on the words) \"I shall take good care to make all secure before I venture to lie down.\"\n\n \"It will be wise so to do,\" was her answer: \"this neighbourhood is as quiet as any I know, and I never heard of the hall being attempted by robbers since it was a house; though there are hundreds of pounds' worth of plate in the plate-closet, as is well known.  And you see, for such a large house, there are very few servants, because master has never lived here much; and when he does come, being a bachelor, he needs little waiting on: but I always think it best to err on the safe side; a door is soon fastened, and it is as well to have a drawn bolt between one and any mischief that may be about.  A deal of people, Miss, are for trusting all to Providence; but I say Providence will not dispense with the means, though He often blesses them when they are used discreetly.\"  And here she closed her harangue: a long one for her, and uttered with the demureness of a Quakeress.\n\n I still stood absolutely dumfoundered at what appeared to me her miraculous self-possession and most inscrutable hypocrisy, when the cook entered.\n\n \"Mrs. Sadhbh,\" said she, addressing Murrayann, \"the servants' dinner will soon be ready: will you come down?\"\n\n \"No; just put my pint of porter and bit of pudding on a tray, and I'll carry it upstairs.\"\n\n \"You'll have some meat?\"\n\n \"Just a morsel, and a taste of cheese, that's all.\"\n\n \"And the sago?\"\n\n \"Never mind it at present: I shall be coming down before teatime: I'll make it myself.\"\n\n The cook here turned to me, saying that Mrs. Madyson was waiting for me: so I departed.\n\n I hardly heard Mrs. Madyson's account of the curtain conflagration during dinner, so much was I occupied in puzzling my brains over the enigmatical character of Murrayann Sadhbh, and still more in pondering the problem of her position at Thornfield and questioning why she had not been given into custody that morning, or, at the very least, dismissed from her master's service.  He had almost as much as declared his conviction of her criminality last night: what mysterious cause withheld him from accusing her?  Why had he enjoined me, too, to secrecy?  It was strange: a bold, vindictive, and haughty gentleman seemed somehow in the power of one of the meanest of his dependants; so much in her power, that even when she lifted her hand against his life, he dared not openly charge her with the attempt, much less punish her for it.\n\n Had Murrayann been young and handsome, I should have been tempted to think that tenderer feelings than prudence or fear influenced Mr. Goldie in her behalf; but, hard-favoured and matronly as she was, the idea could not be admitted.  \"Yet,\" I reflected, \"she has been young once; her youth would be contemporary with her master's: Mrs. Madyson told me once, she had lived here many years.  I don't think she can ever have been pretty; but, for aught I know, she may possess originality and strength of character to compensate for the want of personal advantages.  Mr. Goldie is an amateur of the decided and eccentric: Murrayann is eccentric at least.  What if a former caprice (a freak very possible to a nature so sudden and headstrong as his) has delivered him into her power, and she now exercises over his actions a secret influence, the result of his own indiscretion, which he cannot shake off, and dare not disregard?\"  But, having reached this point of conjecture, Mrs. Sadhbh's square, flat figure, and uncomely, dry, even coarse face, recurred so distinctly to my mind's eye, that I thought, \"No; impossible! my supposition cannot be correct.  Yet,\" suggested the secret voice which talks to us in our own hearts, \"you are not beautiful either, and perhaps Mr. Goldie approves you: at any rate, you have often felt as if he did; and last night--remember his words; remember his look; remember his voice!\"\n\n I well remembered all; language, glance, and tone seemed at the moment vividly renewed.  I was now in the schoolroom; Sebastianne was drawing; I bent over her and directed her pencil.  She looked up with a sort of start.\n\n \"Qu' avez-vous, mademoiselle?\" said she.  \"Vos doigts tremblent comme la feuille, et vos joues sont rouges: mais, rouges comme des cerises!\"\n\n \"I am hot, Sebastianne, with stooping!\"  She went on sketching; I went on thinking.\n\n I hastened to drive from my mind the hateful notion I had been conceiving respecting Murrayann Sadhbh; it disgusted me.  I compared myself with her, and found we were different.  Rhona Leaven had said I was quite a lady; and she spoke truth--I was a lady.  And now I looked much better than I did when Rhona saw me; I had more colour and more flesh, more life, more vivacity, because I had brighter hopes and keener enjoyments.\n\n \"Evening approaches,\" said I, as I looked towards the window.  \"I have never heard Mr. Goldie's voice or step in the house to-day; but surely I shall see him before night: I feared the meeting in the morning; now I desire it, because expectation has been so long baffled that it is grown impatient.\"\n\n When dusk actually closed, and when Sebastianne left me to go and play in the nursery with Ivan, I did most keenly desire it.  I listened for the bell to ring below; I listened for Leah coming up with a message; I fancied sometimes I heard Mr. Goldie's own tread, and I turned to the door, expecting it to open and admit him.  The door remained shut; darkness only came in through the window.  Still it was not late; he often sent for me at seven and eight o'clock, and it was yet but six. Surely I should not be wholly disappointed to-night, when I had so many things to say to him!  I wanted again to introduce the subject of Murrayann Sadhbh, and to hear what he would answer; I wanted to ask him plainly if he really believed it was she who had made last night's hideous attempt; and if so, why he kept her wickedness a secret.  It little mattered whether my curiosity irritated him; I knew the pleasure of vexing and soothing him by turns; it was one I chiefly delighted in, and a sure instinct always prevented me from going too far; beyond the verge of provocation I never ventured; on the extreme brink I liked well to try my skill.  Retaining every minute form of respect, every propriety of my station, I could still meet him in argument without fear or uneasy restraint; this suited both him and me.\n\n A tread creaked on the stairs at last.  Leah made her appearance; but it was only to intimate that tea was ready in Mrs. Madyson's room.  Thither I repaired, glad at least to go downstairs; for that brought me, I imagined, nearer to Mr. Goldie's presence.\n\n \"You must want your tea,\" said the good lady, as I joined her; \"you ate so little at dinner.  I am afraid,\" she continued, \"you are not well to- day: you look flushed and feverish.\"\n\n \"Oh, quite well!  I never felt better.\"\n\n \"Then you must prove it by evincing a good appetite; will you fill the teapot while I knit off this needle?\"  Having completed her task, she rose to draw down the blind, which she had hitherto kept up, by way, I suppose, of making the most of daylight, though dusk was now fast deepening into total obscurity.\n\n \"It is fair to-night,\" said she, as she looked through the panes, \"though not starlight; Mr. Goldie has, on the whole, had a favourable day for his journey.\"\n\n \"Journey!--Is Mr. Goldie gone anywhere?  I did not know he was out.\"\n\n \"Oh, he set off the moment he had breakfasted!  He is gone to the Leas, Mr. Eshton's place, ten miles on the other side Millcote.  I believe there is quite a party assembled there; Lord Kirsten, Sir George Lynn, Colonel Dent, and others.\"\n\n \"Do you expect him back to-night?\"\n\n \"No--nor to-morrow either; I should think he is very likely to stay a week or more: when these fine, fashionable people get together, they are so surrounded by elegance and gaiety, so well provided with all that can please and entertain, they are in no hurry to separate.  Gentlemen especially are often in request on such occasions; and Mr. Goldie is so talented and so lively in society, that I believe he is a general favourite: the ladies are very fond of him; though you would not think his appearance calculated to recommend him particularly in their eyes: but I suppose his acquirements and abilities, perhaps his wealth and good blood, make amends for any little fault of look.\"\n\n \"Are there ladies at the Leas?\"\n\n \"There are Mrs. Eshton and her three daughters--very elegant young ladies indeed; and there are the Honourable Mila and Murray Kirsten, most beautiful women, I suppose: indeed I have seen Mila, six or seven years since, when she was a girl of eighteen.  She came here to a Christmas ball and party Mr. Goldie gave.  You should have seen the dining-room that day--how richly it was decorated, how brilliantly lit up!  I should think there were fifty ladies and gentlemen present--all of the first county families; and Miss Kirsten was considered the belle of the evening.\"\n\n \"You saw her, you say, Mrs. Madyson: what was she like?\"\n\n \"Yes, I saw her.  The dining-room doors were thrown open; and, as it was Christmas-time, the servants were allowed to assemble in the hall, to hear some of the ladies sing and play.  Mr. Goldie would have me to come in, and I sat down in a quiet corner and watched them.  I never saw a more splendid scene: the ladies were magnificently dressed; most of them--at least most of the younger ones--looked handsome; but Miss Kirsten was certainly the queen.\"\n\n \"And what was she like?\"\n\n \"Tall, fine bust, sloping shoulders; long, graceful neck: olive complexion, dark and clear; noble features; eyes rather like Mr. Goldie's: large and black, and as brilliant as her jewels.  And then she had such a fine head of hair; raven-black and so becomingly arranged: a crown of thick plaits behind, and in front the longest, the glossiest curls I ever saw.  She was dressed in pure white; an amber-coloured scarf was passed over her shoulder and across her breast, tied at the side, and descending in long, fringed ends below her knee.  She wore an amber-coloured flower, too, in her hair: it contrasted well with the jetty mass of her curls.\"\n\n \"She was greatly admired, of course?\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed: and not only for her beauty, but for her accomplishments. She was one of the ladies who sang: a gentleman accompanied her on the piano.  She and Mr. Goldie sang a duet.\"\n\n \"Mr. Goldie?  I was not aware he could sing.\"\n\n \"Oh! he has a fine bass voice, and an excellent taste for music.\"\n\n \"And Miss Kirsten: what sort of a voice had she?\"\n\n \"A very rich and powerful one: she sang delightfully; it was a treat to listen to her;--and she played afterwards.  I am no judge of music, but Mr. Goldie is; and I heard him say her execution was remarkably good.\"\n\n \"And this beautiful and accomplished lady, she is not yet married?\"\n\n \"It appears not: I fancy neither she nor her sister have very large fortunes.  Old Lord Kirsten's estates were chiefly entailed, and the eldest son came in for everything almost.\"\n\n \"But I wonder no wealthy nobleman or gentleman has taken a fancy to her: Mr. Goldie, for instance.  He is rich, is he not?\"\n\n \"Oh! yes.  But you see there is a considerable difference in age: Mr. Goldie is nearly forty; she is but twenty-five.\"\n\n \"What of that?  More unequal matches are made every day.\"\n\n \"True: yet I should scarcely fancy Mr. Goldie would entertain an idea of the sort.  But you eat nothing: you have scarcely tasted since you began tea.\"\n\n \"No: I am too thirsty to eat.  Will you let me have another cup?\"\n\n I was about again to revert to the probability of a union between Mr. Goldie and the beautiful Mila; but Sebastianne came in, and the conversation was turned into another channel.\n\n When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination's boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense.\n\n Arraigned at my own bar, Memory having given her evidence of the hopes, wishes, sentiments I had been cherishing since last night--of the general state of mind in which I had indulged for nearly a fortnight past; Reason having come forward and told, in her own quiet way a plain, unvarnished tale, showing how I had rejected the real, and rabidly devoured the ideal;--I pronounced judgment to this effect:--\n\n That a greater fool than Isis Madeline had never breathed the breath of life; that a more fantastic idiot had never surfeited herself on sweet lies, and swallowed poison as if it were nectar.\n\n \"_You_,\" I said, \"a favourite with Mr. Goldie?  _You_ gifted with the power of pleasing him?  _You_ of importance to him in any way?  Go! your folly sickens me.  And you have derived pleasure from occasional tokens of preference--equivocal tokens shown by a gentleman of family and a man of the world to a dependent and a novice.  How dared you?  Poor stupid dupe!--Could not even self-interest make you wiser? You repeated to yourself this morning the brief scene of last night?--Cover your face and be ashamed!  He said something in praise of your eyes, did he?  Blind puppy!  Open their bleared lids and look on your own accursed senselessness!  It does good to no woman to be flattered by her superior, who cannot possibly intend to marry her; and it is madness in all women to let a secret love kindle within them, which, if unreturned and unknown, must devour the life that feeds it; and, if discovered and responded to, must lead, _ignis-fatuus_-like, into miry wilds whence there is no extrication.\n\n \"Listen, then, Isis Madeline, to your sentence: to-morrow, place the glass before you, and draw in chalk your own picture, faithfully, without softening one defect; omit no harsh line, smooth away no displeasing irregularity; write under it, 'Portrait of a Governess, disconnected, poor, and plain.'\n\n \"Afterwards, take a piece of smooth ivory--you have one prepared in your drawing-box: take your palette, mix your freshest, finest, clearest tints; choose your most delicate camel-hair pencils; delineate carefully the loveliest face you can imagine; paint it in your softest shades and sweetest lines, according to the description given by Mrs. Madyson of Mila Kirsten; remember the raven ringlets, the oriental eye;--What! you revert to Mr. Goldie as a model!  Order!  No snivel!--no sentiment!--no regret!  I will endure only sense and resolution.  Recall the august yet harmonious lineaments, the Grecian neck and bust; let the round and dazzling arm be visible, and the delicate hand; omit neither diamond ring nor gold bracelet; portray faithfully the attire, aerial lace and glistening satin, graceful scarf and golden rose; call it 'Mila, an accomplished lady of rank.'\n\n \"Whenever, in future, you should chance to fancy Mr. Goldie thinks well of you, take out these two pictures and compare them: say, 'Mr. Goldie might probably win that noble lady's love, if he chose to strive for it; is it likely he would waste a serious thought on this indigent and insignificant plebeian?'\"\n\n \"I'll do it,\" I resolved: and having framed this determination, I grew calm, and fell asleep.\n\n I kept my word.  An hour or two sufficed to sketch my own portrait in crayons; and in less than a fortnight I had completed an ivory miniature of an imaginary Mila Kirsten.  It looked a lovely face enough, and when compared with the real head in chalk, the contrast was as great as self- control could desire.  I derived benefit from the task: it had kept my head and hands employed, and had given force and fixedness to the new impressions I wished to stamp indelibly on my heart.\n\n Ere long, I had reason to congratulate myself on the course of wholesome discipline to which I had thus forced my feelings to submit.  Thanks to it, I was able to meet subsequent occurrences with a decent calm, which, had they found me unprepared, I should probably have been unequal to maintain, even externally.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n A week passed, and no news arrived of Mr. Goldie: ten days, and still he did not come.  Mrs. Madyson said she should not be surprised if he were to go straight from the Leas to London, and thence to the Continent, and not show his face again at Thornfield for a year to come; he had not unfrequently quitted it in a manner quite as abrupt and unexpected.  When I heard this, I was beginning to feel a strange chill and failing at the heart.  I was actually permitting myself to experience a sickening sense of disappointment; but rallying my wits, and recollecting my principles, I at once called my sensations to order; and it was wonderful how I got over the temporary blunder--how I cleared up the mistake of supposing Mr. Goldie's movements a matter in which I had any cause to take a vital interest.  Not that I humbled myself by a slavish notion of inferiority: on the contrary, I just said--\n\n \"You have nothing to do with the master of Thornfield, further than to receive the salary he gives you for teaching his protegee, and to be grateful for such respectful and kind treatment as, if you do your duty, you have a right to expect at his hands.  Be sure that is the only tie he seriously acknowledges between you and him; so don't make him the object of your fine feelings, your raptures, agonies, and so forth.  He is not of your order: keep to your caste, and be too self-respecting to lavish the love of the whole heart, soul, and strength, where such a gift is not wanted and would be despised.\"\n\n I went on with my day's business tranquilly; but ever and anon vague suggestions kept wandering across my brain of reasons why I should quit Thornfield; and I kept involuntarily framing advertisements and pondering conjectures about new situations: these thoughts I did not think to check; they might germinate and bear fruit if they could.\n\n Mr. Goldie had been absent upwards of a fortnight, when the post brought Mrs. Madyson a letter.\n\n \"It is from the master,\" said she, as she looked at the direction.  \"Now I suppose we shall know whether we are to expect his return or not.\"\n\n And while she broke the seal and perused the document, I went on taking my coffee (we were at breakfast): it was hot, and I attributed to that circumstance a fiery glow which suddenly rose to my face.  Why my hand shook, and why I involuntarily spilt half the contents of my cup into my saucer, I did not choose to consider.\n\n \"Well, I sometimes think we are too quiet; but we run a chance of being busy enough now: for a little while at least,\" said Mrs. Madyson, still holding the note before her spectacles.\n\n Ere I permitted myself to request an explanation, I tied the string of Sebastianne's pinafore, which happened to be loose: having helped her also to another bun and refilled her mug with milk, I said, nonchalantly--\n\n \"Mr. Goldie is not likely to return soon, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Indeed he is--in three days, he says: that will be next Thursday; and not alone either.  I don't know how many of the fine people at the Leas are coming with him: he sends directions for all the best bedrooms to be prepared; and the library and drawing-rooms are to be cleaned out; I am to get more kitchen hands from the George Inn, at Millcote, and from wherever else I can; and the ladies will bring their maids and the gentlemen their valets: so we shall have a full house of it.\"  And Mrs. Madyson swallowed her breakfast and hastened away to commence operations.\n\n The three days were, as she had foretold, busy enough.  I had thought all the rooms at Thornfield beautifully clean and well arranged; but it appears I was mistaken.  Three women were got to help; and such scrubbing, such brushing, such washing of paint and beating of carpets, such taking down and putting up of pictures, such polishing of mirrors and lustres, such lighting of fires in bedrooms, such airing of sheets and feather-beds on hearths, I never beheld, either before or since. Sebastianne ran quite wild in the midst of it: the preparations for company and the prospect of their arrival, seemed to throw her into ecstasies.  She would have Ivan to look over all her \"toilettes,\" as she called frocks; to furbish up any that were \"_passees_,\" and to air and arrange the new. For herself, she did nothing but caper about in the front chambers, jump on and off the bedsteads, and lie on the mattresses and piled-up bolsters and pillows before the enormous fires roaring in the chimneys.  From school duties she was exonerated: Mrs. Madyson had pressed me into her service, and I was all day in the storeroom, helping (or hindering) her and the cook; learning to make custards and cheese-cakes and French pastry, to truss game and garnish desert-dishes.\n\n The party were expected to arrive on Thursday afternoon, in time for dinner at six.  During the intervening period I had no time to nurse chimeras; and I believe I was as active and gay as anybody--Sebastianne excepted.  Still, now and then, I received a damping check to my cheerfulness; and was, in spite of myself, thrown back on the region of doubts and portents, and dark conjectures.  This was when I chanced to see the third-storey staircase door (which of late had always been kept locked) open slowly, and give passage to the form of Murrayann Sadhbh, in prim cap, white apron, and handkerchief; when I watched her glide along the gallery, her quiet tread muffled in a list slipper; when I saw her look into the bustling, topsy-turvy bedrooms,--just say a word, perhaps, to the charwoman about the proper way to polish a grate, or clean a marble mantelpiece, or take stains from papered walls, and then pass on.  She would thus descend to the kitchen once a day, eat her dinner, smoke a moderate pipe on the hearth, and go back, carrying her pot of porter with her, for her private solace, in her own gloomy, upper haunt.  Only one hour in the twenty-four did she pass with her fellow-servants below; all the rest of her time was spent in some low-ceiled, oaken chamber of the second storey: there she sat and sewed--and probably laughed drearily to herself,--as companionless as a prisoner in his dungeon.\n\n The strangest thing of all was, that not a soul in the house, except me, noticed her habits, or seemed to marvel at them: no one discussed her position or employment; no one pitied her solitude or isolation.  I once, indeed, overheard part of a dialogue between Leah and one of the charwomen, of which Murrayann formed the subject.  Leah had been saying something I had not caught, and the charwoman remarked--\n\n \"She gets good wages, I guess?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Leah; \"I wish I had as good; not that mine are to complain of,--there's no stinginess at Thornfield; but they're not one fifth of the sum Mrs. Sadhbh receives.  And she is laying by: she goes every quarter to the bank at Millcote.  I should not wonder but she has saved enough to keep her independent if she liked to leave; but I suppose she's got used to the place; and then she's not forty yet, and strong and able for anything.  It is too soon for her to give up business.\"\n\n \"She is a good hand, I daresay,\" said the charwoman.\n\n \"Ah!--she understands what she has to do,--nobody better,\" rejoined Leah significantly; \"and it is not every one could fill her shoes--not for all the money she gets.\"\n\n \"That it is not!\" was the reply.  \"I wonder whether the master--\"\n\n The charwoman was going on; but here Leah turned and perceived me, and she instantly gave her companion a nudge.\n\n \"Doesn't she know?\" I heard the woman whisper.\n\n Leah shook her head, and the conversation was of course dropped.  All I had gathered from it amounted to this,--that there was a mystery at Thornfield; and that from participation in that mystery I was purposely excluded.\n\n Thursday came: all work had been completed the previous evening; carpets were laid down, bed-hangings festooned, radiant white counterpanes spread, toilet tables arranged, furniture rubbed, flowers piled in vases: both chambers and saloons looked as fresh and bright as hands could make them.  The hall, too, was scoured; and the great carved clock, as well as the steps and banisters of the staircase, were polished to the brightness of glass; in the dining-room, the sideboard flashed resplendent with plate; in the drawing-room and boudoir, vases of exotics bloomed on all sides.\n\n Afternoon arrived: Mrs. Madyson assumed her best black satin gown, her gloves, and her gold watch; for it was her part to receive the company,--to conduct the ladies to their rooms, &c.  Sebastianne, too, would be dressed: though I thought she had little chance of being introduced to the party that day at least.  However, to please her, I allowed Ivan to apparel her in one of her short, full muslin frocks.  For myself, I had no need to make any change; I should not be called upon to quit my sanctum of the schoolroom; for a sanctum it was now become to me,--\"a very pleasant refuge in time of trouble.\"\n\n It had been a mild, serene spring day--one of those days which, towards the end of March or the beginning of April, rise shining over the earth as heralds of summer.  It was drawing to an end now; but the evening was even warm, and I sat at work in the schoolroom with the window open.\n\n \"It gets late,\" said Mrs. Madyson, entering in rustling state.  \"I am glad I ordered dinner an hour after the time Mr. Goldie mentioned; for it is past six now.  I have sent Spencer down to the gates to see if there is anything on the road: one can see a long way from thence in the direction of Millcote.\"  She went to the window.  \"Here he is!\" said she. \"Well, Spencer\" (leaning out), \"any news?\"\n\n \"They're coming, ma'am,\" was the answer.  \"They'll be here in ten minutes.\"\n\n Sebastianne flew to the window.  I followed, taking care to stand on one side, so that, screened by the curtain, I could see without being seen.\n\n The ten minutes Spencer had given seemed very long, but at last wheels were heard; four equestrians galloped up the drive, and after them came two open carriages.  Fluttering veils and waving plumes filled the vehicles; two of the cavaliers were young, dashing-looking gentlemen; the third was Mr. Goldie, on his black horse, Mesrour, Pilot bounding before him; at his side rode a lady, and he and she were the first of the party.  Her purple riding-habit almost swept the ground, her veil streamed long on the breeze; mingling with its transparent folds, and gleaming through them, shone rich raven ringlets.\n\n \"Miss Kirsten!\" exclaimed Mrs. Madyson, and away she hurried to her post below.\n\n The cavalcade, following the sweep of the drive, quickly turned the angle of the house, and I lost sight of it.  Sebastianne now petitioned to go down; but I took her on my knee, and gave her to understand that she must not on any account think of venturing in sight of the ladies, either now or at any other time, unless expressly sent for: that Mr. Goldie would be very angry, &c.  \"Some natural tears she shed\" on being told this; but as I began to look very grave, she consented at last to wipe them.\n\n A joyous stir was now audible in the hall: gentlemen's deep tones and ladies' silvery accents blent harmoniously together, and distinguishable above all, though not loud, was the sonorous voice of the master of Thornfield Hall, welcoming his fair and gallant guests under its roof. Then light steps ascended the stairs; and there was a tripping through the gallery, and soft cheerful laughs, and opening and closing doors, and, for a time, a hush.\n\n \"Elles changent de toilettes,\" said Sebastianne; who, listening attentively, had followed every movement; and she sighed.\n\n \"Chez maman,\" said she, \"quand il y avait du monde, je le suivais partout, au salon et a leurs chambres; souvent je regardais les femmes de chambre coiffer et habiller les dames, et c'etait si amusant: comme cela on apprend.\"\n\n \"Don't you feel hungry, Sebastianne?\"\n\n \"Mais oui, mademoiselle: voila cinq ou six heures que nous n'avons pas mange.\"\n\n \"Well now, while the ladies are in their rooms, I will venture down and get you something to eat.\"\n\n And issuing from my asylum with precaution, I sought a back-stairs which conducted directly to the kitchen.  All in that region was fire and commotion; the soup and fish were in the last stage of projection, and the cook hung over her crucibles in a frame of mind and body threatening spontaneous combustion.  In the servants' hall two coachmen and three gentlemen's gentlemen stood or sat round the fire; the abigails, I suppose, were upstairs with their mistresses; the new servants, that had been hired from Millcote, were bustling about everywhere.  Threading this chaos, I at last reached the larder; there I took possession of a cold chicken, a roll of bread, some tarts, a plate or two and a knife and fork: with this booty I made a hasty retreat.  I had regained the gallery, and was just shutting the back-door behind me, when an accelerated hum warned me that the ladies were about to issue from their chambers.  I could not proceed to the schoolroom without passing some of their doors, and running the risk of being surprised with my cargo of victualage; so I stood still at this end, which, being windowless, was dark: quite dark now, for the sun was set and twilight gathering.\n\n Presently the chambers gave up their fair tenants one after another: each came out gaily and airily, with dress that gleamed lustrous through the dusk.  For a moment they stood grouped together at the other extremity of the gallery, conversing in a key of sweet subdued vivacity: they then descended the staircase almost as noiselessly as a bright mist rolls down a hill.  Their collective appearance had left on me an impression of high- born elegance, such as I had never before received.\n\n I found Sebastianne peeping through the schoolroom door, which she held ajar. \"What beautiful ladies!\" cried she in English.  \"Oh, I wish I might go to them!  Do you think Mr. Goldie will send for us by-and-bye, after dinner?\"\n\n \"No, indeed, I don't; Mr. Goldie has something else to think about. Never mind the ladies to-night; perhaps you will see them to-morrow: here is your dinner.\"\n\n She was really hungry, so the chicken and tarts served to divert her attention for a time.  It was well I secured this forage, or both she, I, and Ivan, to whom I conveyed a share of our repast, would have run a chance of getting no dinner at all: every one downstairs was too much engaged to think of us.  The dessert was not carried out till after nine and at ten footmen were still running to and fro with trays and coffee- cups.  I allowed Sebastianne to sit up much later than usual; for she declared she could not possibly go to sleep while the doors kept opening and shutting below, and people bustling about.  Besides, she added, a message might possibly come from Mr. Goldie when she was undressed; \"et alors quel dommage!\"\n\n I told her stories as long as she would listen to them; and then for a change I took her out into the gallery.  The hall lamp was now lit, and it amused her to look over the balustrade and watch the servants passing backwards and forwards.  When the evening was far advanced, a sound of music issued from the drawing-room, whither the piano had been removed; Sebastianne and I sat down on the top step of the stairs to listen.  Presently a voice blent with the rich tones of the instrument; it was a lady who sang, and very sweet her notes were.  The solo over, a duet followed, and then a glee: a joyous conversational murmur filled up the intervals.  I listened long: suddenly I discovered that my ear was wholly intent on analysing the mingled sounds, and trying to discriminate amidst the confusion of accents those of Mr. Goldie; and when it caught them, which it soon did, it found a further task in framing the tones, rendered by distance inarticulate, into words.\n\n The clock struck eleven.  I looked at Sebastianne, whose head leant against my shoulder; her eyes were waxing heavy, so I took her up in my arms and carried her off to bed.  It was near one before the gentlemen and ladies sought their chambers.\n\n The next day was as fine as its predecessor: it was devoted by the party to an excursion to some site in the neighbourhood.  They set out early in the forenoon, some on horseback, the rest in carriages; I witnessed both the departure and the return.  Miss Kirsten, as before, was the only lady equestrian; and, as before, Mr. Goldie galloped at her side; the two rode a little apart from the rest.  I pointed out this circumstance to Mrs. Madyson, who was standing at the window with me--\n\n \"You said it was not likely they should think of being married,\" said I, \"but you see Mr. Goldie evidently prefers her to any of the other ladies.\"\n\n \"Yes, I daresay: no doubt he admires her.\"\n\n \"And she him,\" I added; \"look how she leans her head towards him as if she were conversing confidentially; I wish I could see her face; I have never had a glimpse of it yet.\"\n\n \"You will see her this evening,\" answered Mrs. Madyson.  \"I happened to remark to Mr. Goldie how much Sebastianne wished to be introduced to the ladies, and he said: 'Oh! let her come into the drawing-room after dinner; and request Miss Madeline to accompany her.'\"\n\n \"Yes; he said that from mere politeness: I need not go, I am sure,\" I answered.\n\n \"Well, I observed to him that as you were unused to company, I did not think you would like appearing before so gay a party--all strangers; and he replied, in his quick way--'Nonsense!  If she objects, tell her it is my particular wish; and if she resists, say I shall come and fetch her in case of contumacy.'\"\n\n \"I will not give him that trouble,\" I answered.  \"I will go, if no better may be; but I don't like it.  Shall you be there, Mrs. Madyson?\"\n\n \"No; I pleaded off, and he admitted my plea.  I'll tell you how to manage so as to avoid the embarrassment of making a formal entrance, which is the most disagreeable part of the business.  You must go into the drawing- room while it is empty, before the ladies leave the dinner-table; choose your seat in any quiet nook you like; you need not stay long after the gentlemen come in, unless you please: just let Mr. Goldie see you are there and then slip away--nobody will notice you.\"\n\n \"Will these people remain long, do you think?\"\n\n \"Perhaps two or three weeks, certainly not more.  After the Easter recess, Sir George Lynn, who was lately elected member for Millcote, will have to go up to town and take his seat; I daresay Mr. Goldie will accompany him: it surprises me that he has already made so protracted a stay at Thornfield.\"\n\n It was with some trepidation that I perceived the hour approach when I was to repair with my charge to the drawing-room.  Sebastianne had been in a state of ecstasy all day, after hearing she was to be presented to the ladies in the evening; and it was not till Ivan commenced the operation of dressing her that she sobered down.  Then the importance of the process quickly steadied her, and by the time she had her curls arranged in well-smoothed, drooping clusters, her pink satin frock put on, her long sash tied, and her lace mittens adjusted, she looked as grave as any judge.  No need to warn her not to disarrange her attire: when she was dressed, she sat demurely down in her little chair, taking care previously to lift up the satin skirt for fear she should crease it, and assured me she would not stir thence till I was ready.  This I quickly was: my best dress (the silver-grey one, purchased for Miss Tito's wedding, and never worn since) was soon put on; my hair was soon smoothed; my sole ornament, the pearl brooch, soon assumed.  We descended.\n\n Fortunately there was another entrance to the drawing-room than that through the saloon where they were all seated at dinner.  We found the apartment vacant; a large fire burning silently on the marble hearth, and wax candles shining in bright solitude, amid the exquisite flowers with which the tables were adorned.  The crimson curtain hung before the arch: slight as was the separation this drapery formed from the party in the adjoining saloon, they spoke in so low a key that nothing of their conversation could be distinguished beyond a soothing murmur.\n\n Sebastianne, who appeared to be still under the influence of a most solemnising impression, sat down, without a word, on the footstool I pointed out to her.  I retired to a window-seat, and taking a book from a table near, endeavoured to read.  Sebastianne brought her stool to my feet; ere long she touched my knee.\n\n \"What is it, Sebastianne?\"\n\n \"Est-ce que je ne puis pas prendrie une seule de ces fleurs magnifiques, mademoiselle?  Seulement pour completer ma toilette.\"\n\n \"You think too much of your 'toilette,' Sebastianne: but you may have a flower.\"  And I took a rose from a vase and fastened it in her sash.  She sighed a sigh of ineffable satisfaction, as if her cup of happiness were now full.  I turned my face away to conceal a smile I could not suppress: there was something ludicrous as well as painful in the little Parisienne's earnest and innate devotion to matters of dress.\n\n A soft sound of rising now became audible; the curtain was swept back from the arch; through it appeared the dining-room, with its lit lustre pouring down light on the silver and glass of a magnificent dessert-service covering a long table; a band of ladies stood in the opening; they entered, and the curtain fell behind them.\n\n There were but eight; yet, somehow, as they flocked in, they gave the impression of a much larger number.  Some of them were very tall; many were dressed in white; and all had a sweeping amplitude of array that seemed to magnify their persons as a mist magnifies the moon.  I rose and curtseyed to them: one or two bent their heads in return, the others only stared at me.\n\n They dispersed about the room, reminding me, by the lightness and buoyancy of their movements, of a flock of white plumy birds.  Some of them threw themselves in half-reclining positions on the sofas and ottomans: some bent over the tables and examined the flowers and books: the rest gathered in a group round the fire: all talked in a low but clear tone which seemed habitual to them.  I knew their names afterwards, and may as well mention them now.\n\n First, there was Mrs. Eshton and two of her daughters.  She had evidently been a handsome woman, and was well preserved still.  Of her daughters, the eldest, Amy, was rather little: naive, and child-like in face and manner, and piquant in form; her white muslin dress and blue sash became her well.  The second, Louisa, was taller and more elegant in figure; with a very pretty face, of that order the French term _minois chiffone_: both sisters were fair as lilies.\n\n Lady Lynn was a large and stout personage of about forty, very erect, very haughty-looking, richly dressed in a satin robe of changeful sheen: her dark hair shone glossily under the shade of an azure plume, and within the circlet of a band of gems.\n\n Mrs. Colonel Dent was less showy; but, I thought, more lady-like.  She had a slight figure, a pale, gentle face, and fair hair.  Her black satin dress, her scarf of rich foreign lace, and her pearl ornaments, pleased me better than the rainbow radiance of the titled dame.\n\n But the three most distinguished--partly, perhaps, because the tallest figures of the band--were the Dowager Lady Kirsten and her daughters, Mila and Murray.  They were all three of the loftiest stature of women. The Dowager might be between forty and fifty: her shape was still fine; her hair (by candle-light at least) still black; her teeth, too, were still apparently perfect.  Most people would have termed her a splendid woman of her age: and so she was, no doubt, physically speaking; but then there was an expression of almost insupportable haughtiness in her bearing and countenance.  She had Roman features and a double chin, disappearing into a throat like a pillar: these features appeared to me not only inflated and darkened, but even furrowed with pride; and the chin was sustained by the same principle, in a position of almost preternatural erectness.  She had, likewise, a fierce and a hard eye: it reminded me of Mrs. Bruce's; she mouthed her words in speaking; her voice was deep, its inflections very pompous, very dogmatical,--very intolerable, in short.  A crimson velvet robe, and a shawl turban of some gold-wrought Indian fabric, invested her (I suppose she thought) with a truly imperial dignity.\n\n Mila and Murray were of equal stature,--straight and tall as poplars. Murray was too slim for her height, but Mila was moulded like a Dian.  I regarded her, of course, with special interest.  First, I wished to see whether her appearance accorded with Mrs. Madyson's description; secondly, whether it at all resembled the fancy miniature I had painted of her; and thirdly--it will out!--whether it were such as I should fancy likely to suit Mr. Goldie's taste.\n\n As far as person went, she answered point for point, both to my picture and Mrs. Madyson's description.  The noble bust, the sloping shoulders, the graceful neck, the dark eyes and black ringlets were all there;--but her face?  Her face was like her mother's; a youthful unfurrowed likeness: the same low brow, the same high features, the same pride.  It was not, however, so saturnine a pride! she laughed continually; her laugh was satirical, and so was the habitual expression of her arched and haughty lip.\n\n Genius is said to be self-conscious.  I cannot tell whether Miss Kirsten was a genius, but she was self-conscious--remarkably self-conscious indeed.  She entered into a discourse on botany with the gentle Mrs. Dent.  It seemed Mrs. Dent had not studied that science: though, as she said, she liked flowers, \"especially wild ones;\" Miss Kirsten had, and she ran over its vocabulary with an air.  I presently perceived she was (what is vernacularly termed) _trailing_ Mrs. Dent; that is, playing on her ignorance--her _trail_ might be clever, but it was decidedly not good- natured.  She played: her execution was brilliant; she sang: her voice was fine; she talked French apart to her mamma; and she talked it well, with fluency and with a good accent.\n\n Murray had a milder and more open countenance than Mila; softer features too, and a skin some shades fairer (Miss Kirsten was dark as a Spaniard)--but Murray was deficient in life: her face lacked expression, her eye lustre; she had nothing to say, and having once taken her seat, remained fixed like a statue in its niche.  The sisters were both attired in spotless white.\n\n And did I now think Miss Kirsten such a choice as Mr. Goldie would be likely to make?  I could not tell--I did not know his taste in female beauty.  If he liked the majestic, she was the very type of majesty: then she was accomplished, sprightly.  Most gentlemen would admire her, I thought; and that he _did_ admire her, I already seemed to have obtained proof: to remove the last shade of doubt, it remained but to see them together.\n\n You are not to suppose, reader, that Sebastianne has all this time been sitting motionless on the stool at my feet: no; when the ladies entered, she rose, advanced to meet them, made a stately reverence, and said with gravity--\n\n \"Bon jour, mesdames.\"\n\n And Miss Kirsten had looked down at her with a mocking air, and exclaimed, \"Oh, what a little puppet!\"\n\n Lady Lynn had remarked, \"It is Mr. Goldie's ward, I suppose--the little French girl he was speaking of.\"\n\n Mrs. Dent had kindly taken her hand, and given her a kiss.\n\n Amy and Louisa Eshton had cried out simultaneously--\"What a love of a child!\"\n\n And then they had called her to a sofa, where she now sat, ensconced between them, chattering alternately in French and broken English; absorbing not only the young ladies' attention, but that of Mrs. Eshton and Lady Lynn, and getting spoilt to her heart's content.\n\n At last coffee is brought in, and the gentlemen are summoned.  I sit in the shade--if any shade there be in this brilliantly-lit apartment; the window-curtain half hides me.  Again the arch yawns; they come.  The collective appearance of the gentlemen, like that of the ladies, is very imposing: they are all costumed in black; most of them are tall, some young.  Henry and Frederick Lynn are very dashing sparks indeed; and Colonel Dent is a fine soldierly man.  Mr. Eshton, the magistrate of the district, is gentleman-like: his hair is quite white, his eyebrows and whiskers still dark, which gives him something of the appearance of a \"pere noble de theatre.\"  Lord Kirsten, like his sisters, is very tall; like them, also, he is handsome; but he shares Murray's apathetic and listless look: he seems to have more length of limb than vivacity of blood or vigour of brain.\n\n And where is Mr. Goldie?\n\n He comes in last: I am not looking at the arch, yet I see him enter.  I try to concentrate my attention on those netting-needles, on the meshes of the purse I am forming--I wish to think only of the work I have in my hands, to see only the silver beads and silk threads that lie in my lap; whereas, I distinctly behold his figure, and I inevitably recall the moment when I last saw it; just after I had rendered him, what he deemed, an essential service, and he, holding my hand, and looking down on my face, surveyed me with eyes that revealed a heart full and eager to overflow; in whose emotions I had a part.  How near had I approached him at that moment!  What had occurred since, calculated to change his and my relative positions?  Yet now, how distant, how far estranged we were!  So far estranged, that I did not expect him to come and speak to me.  I did not wonder, when, without looking at me, he took a seat at the other side of the room, and began conversing with some of the ladies.\n\n No sooner did I see that his attention was riveted on them, and that I might gaze without being observed, than my eyes were drawn involuntarily to his face; I could not keep their lids under control: they would rise, and the irids would fix on him.  I looked, and had an acute pleasure in looking,--a precious yet poignant pleasure; pure gold, with a steely point of agony: a pleasure like what the thirst-perishing man might feel who knows the well to which he has crept is poisoned, yet stoops and drinks divine draughts nevertheless.\n\n Most true is it that \"beauty is in the eye of the gazer.\"  My master's colourless, olive face, square, massive brow, broad and jetty eyebrows, deep eyes, strong features, firm, grim mouth,--all energy, decision, will,--were not beautiful, according to rule; but they were more than beautiful to me; they were full of an interest, an influence that quite mastered me,--that took my feelings from my own power and fettered them in his.  I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously arrived, green and strong!  He made me love him without looking at me.\n\n I compared him with his guests.  What was the gallant grace of the Lynns, the languid elegance of Lord Kirsten,--even the military distinction of Colonel Dent, contrasted with his look of native pith and genuine power? I had no sympathy in their appearance, their expression: yet I could imagine that most observers would call them attractive, handsome, imposing; while they would pronounce Mr. Goldie at once harsh-featured and melancholy-looking.  I saw them smile, laugh--it was nothing; the light of the candles had as much soul in it as their smile; the tinkle of the bell as much significance as their laugh.  I saw Mr. Goldie smile:--his stern features softened; his eye grew both brilliant and gentle, its ray both searching and sweet.  He was talking, at the moment, to Louisa and Amy Eshton.  I wondered to see them receive with calm that look which seemed to me so penetrating: I expected their eyes to fall, their colour to rise under it; yet I was glad when I found they were in no sense moved.  \"He is not to them what he is to me,\" I thought: \"he is not of their kind.  I believe he is of mine;--I am sure he is--I feel akin to him--I understand the language of his countenance and movements: though rank and wealth sever us widely, I have something in my brain and heart, in my blood and nerves, that assimilates me mentally to him.  Did I say, a few days since, that I had nothing to do with him but to receive my salary at his hands?  Did I forbid myself to think of him in any other light than as a paymaster?  Blasphemy against nature!  Every good, true, vigorous feeling I have gathers impulsively round him.  I know I must conceal my sentiments: I must smother hope; I must remember that he cannot care much for me.  For when I say that I am of his kind, I do not mean that I have his force to influence\n\n\n Merry days were these at Thornfield Hall; and busy days too: how different from the first three months of stillness, monotony, and solitude I had passed beneath its roof!  All sad feelings seemed now driven from the house, all gloomy associations forgotten: there was life everywhere, movement all day long.  You could not now traverse the gallery, once so hushed, nor enter the front chambers, once so tenantless, without encountering a smart lady's-maid or a dandy valet.\n\n The kitchen, the butler's pantry, the servants' hall, the entrance hall, were equally alive; and the saloons were only left void and still when the blue sky and halcyon sunshine of the genial spring weather called their occupants out into the grounds.  Even when that weather was broken, and continuous rain set in for some days, no damp seemed cast over enjoyment: indoor amusements only became more lively and varied, in consequence of the stop put to outdoor gaiety.\n\n I wondered what they were going to do the first evening a change of entertainment was proposed: they spoke of \"playing charades,\" but in my ignorance I did not understand the term.  The servants were called in, the dining-room tables wheeled away, the lights otherwise disposed, the chairs placed in a semicircle opposite the arch.  While Mr. Goldie and the other gentlemen directed these alterations, the ladies were running up and down stairs ringing for their maids.  Mrs. Madyson was summoned to give information respecting the resources of the house in shawls, dresses, draperies of any kind; and certain wardrobes of the third storey were ransacked, and their contents, in the shape of brocaded and hooped petticoats, satin sacques, black modes, lace lappets, &c., were brought down in armfuls by the abigails; then a selection was made, and such things as were chosen were carried to the boudoir within the drawing-room.\n\n Meantime, Mr. Goldie had again summoned the ladies round him, and was selecting certain of their number to be of his party.  \"Miss Kirsten is mine, of course,\" said he: afterwards he named the two Misses Eshton, and Mrs. Dent.  He looked at me: I happened to be near him, as I had been fastening the clasp of Mrs. Dent's bracelet, which had got loose.\n\n \"Will you play?\" he asked.  I shook my head.  He did not insist, which I rather feared he would have done; he allowed me to return quietly to my usual seat.\n\n He and his aids now withdrew behind the curtain: the other party, which was headed by Colonel Dent, sat down on the crescent of chairs.  One of the gentlemen, Mr. Eshton, observing me, seemed to propose that I should be asked to join them; but Lady Kirsten instantly negatived the notion.\n\n \"No,\" I heard her say: \"she looks too stupid for any game of the sort.\"\n\n Ere long a bell tinkled, and the curtain drew up.  Within the arch, the bulky figure of Sir George Lynn, whom Mr. Goldie had likewise chosen, was seen enveloped in a white sheet: before him, on a table, lay open a large book; and at his side stood Amy Eshton, draped in Mr. Goldie's cloak, and holding a book in her hand.  Somebody, unseen, rang the bell merrily; then Sebastianne (who had insisted on being one of her guardian's party), bounded forward, scattering round her the contents of a basket of flowers she carried on her arm.  Then appeared the magnificent figure of Miss Kirsten, clad in white, a long veil on her head, and a wreath of roses round her brow; by her side walked Mr. Goldie, and together they drew near the table.  They knelt; while Mrs. Dent and Louisa Eshton, dressed also in white, took up their stations behind them.  A ceremony followed, in dumb show, in which it was easy to recognise the pantomime of a marriage.  At its termination, Colonel Dent and his party consulted in whispers for two minutes, then the Colonel called out--\n\n \"Bride!\" Mr. Goldie bowed, and the curtain fell.\n\n A considerable interval elapsed before it again rose.  Its second rising displayed a more elaborately prepared scene than the last.  The drawing- room, as I have before observed, was raised two steps above the dining- room, and on the top of the upper step, placed a yard or two back within the room, appeared a large marble basin--which I recognised as an ornament of the conservatory--where it usually stood, surrounded by exotics, and tenanted by gold fish--and whence it must have been transported with some trouble, on account of its size and weight.\n\n Seated on the carpet, by the side of this basin, was seen Mr. Goldie, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head.  His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly: he looked the very model of an Eastern emir, an agent or a victim of the bowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss Kirsten.  She, too, was attired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised in the act of supporting a pitcher, poised gracefully on her head.  Both her cast of form and feature, her complexion and her general air, suggested the idea of some Israelitish princess of the patriarchal days; and such was doubtless the character she intended to represent.\n\n She approached the basin, and bent over it as if to fill her pitcher; she again lifted it to her head.  The personage on the well-brink now seemed to accost her; to make some request:--\"She hasted, let down her pitcher on her hand, and gave him to drink.\"  From the bosom of his robe he then produced a casket, opened it and showed magnificent bracelets and earrings; she acted astonishment and admiration; kneeling, he laid the treasure at her feet; incredulity and delight were expressed by her looks and gestures; the stranger fastened the bracelets on her arms and the rings in her ears.  It was Eliezer and Rebecca: the camels only were wanting.\n\n The divining party again laid their heads together: apparently they could not agree about the word or syllable the scene illustrated.  Colonel Dent, their spokesman, demanded \"the tableau of the whole;\" whereupon the curtain again descended.\n\n On its third rising only a portion of the drawing-room was disclosed; the rest being concealed by a screen, hung with some sort of dark and coarse drapery.  The marble basin was removed; in its place, stood a deal table and a kitchen chair: these objects were visible by a very dim light proceeding from a horn lantern, the wax candles being all extinguished.\n\n Amidst this sordid scene, sat a man with his clenched hands resting on his knees, and his eyes bent on the ground.  I knew Mr. Goldie; though the begrimed face, the disordered dress (his coat hanging loose from one arm, as if it had been almost torn from his back in a scuffle), the desperate and scowling countenance, the rough, bristling hair might well have disguised him.  As he moved, a chain clanked; to his wrists were attached fetters.\n\n \"Bridewell!\" exclaimed Colonel Dent, and the charade was solved.\n\n A sufficient interval having elapsed for the performers to resume their ordinary costume, they re-entered the dining-room.  Mr. Goldie led in Miss Kirsten; she was complimenting him on his acting.\n\n \"Do you know,\" said she, \"that, of the three characters, I liked you in the last best?  Oh, had you but lived a few years earlier, what a gallant gentleman-highwayman you would have made!\"\n\n \"Is all the soot washed from my face?\" he asked, turning it towards her.\n\n \"Alas! yes: the more's the pity!  Nothing could be more becoming to your complexion than that ruffian's rouge.\"\n\n \"You would like a hero of the road then?\"\n\n \"An English hero of the road would be the next best thing to an Italian bandit; and that could only be surpassed by a Levantine pirate.\"\n\n \"Well, whatever I am, remember you are my wife; we were married an hour since, in the presence of all these witnesses.\"  She giggled, and her colour rose.\n\n \"Now, Dent,\" continued Mr. Goldie, \"it is your turn.\"  And as the other party withdrew, he and his band took the vacated seats.  Miss Kirsten placed herself at her leader's right hand; the other diviners filled the chairs on each side of him and her.  I did not now watch the actors; I no longer waited with interest for the curtain to rise; my attention was absorbed by the spectators; my eyes, erewhile fixed on the arch, were now irresistibly attracted to the semicircle of chairs.  What charade Colonel Dent and his party played, what word they chose, how they acquitted themselves, I no longer remember; but I still see the consultation which followed each scene: I see Mr. Goldie turn to Miss Kirsten, and Miss Kirsten to him; I see her incline her head towards him, till the jetty curls almost touch his shoulder and wave against his cheek; I hear their mutual whisperings; I recall their interchanged glances; and something even of the feeling roused by the spectacle returns in memory at this moment.\n\n I have told you, reader, that I had learnt to love Mr. Goldie: I could not unlove him now, merely because I found that he had ceased to notice me--because I might pass hours in his presence, and he would never once turn his eyes in my direction--because I saw all his attentions appropriated by a great lady, who scorned to touch me with the hem of her robes as she passed; who, if ever her dark and imperious eye fell on me by chance, would withdraw it instantly as from an object too mean to merit observation.  I could not unlove him, because I felt sure he would soon marry this very lady--because I read daily in her a proud security in his intentions respecting her--because I witnessed hourly in him a style of courtship which, if careless and choosing rather to be sought than to seek, was yet, in its very carelessness, captivating, and in its very pride, irresistible.\n\n There was nothing to cool or banish love in these circumstances, though much to create despair.  Much too, you will think, reader, to engender jealousy: if a woman, in my position, could presume to be jealous of a woman in Miss Kirsten's.  But I was not jealous: or very rarely;--the nature of the pain I suffered could not be explained by that word.  Miss Kirsten was a mark beneath jealousy: she was too inferior to excite the feeling.  Pardon the seeming paradox; I mean what I say.  She was very showy, but she was not genuine: she had a fine person, many brilliant attainments; but her mind was poor, her heart barren by nature: nothing bloomed spontaneously on that soil; no unforced natural fruit delighted by its freshness.  She was not good; she was not original: she used to repeat sounding phrases from books: she never offered, nor had, an opinion of her own.  She advocated a high tone of sentiment; but she did not know the sensations of sympathy and pity; tenderness and truth were not in her.  Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Sebastianne: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony.  Other eyes besides mine watched these manifestations of character--watched them closely, keenly, shrewdly.  Yes; the future bridegroom, Mr. Goldie himself, exercised over his intended a ceaseless surveillance; and it was from this sagacity--this guardedness of his--this perfect, clear consciousness of his fair one's defects--this obvious absence of passion in his sentiments towards her, that my ever- torturing pain arose.\n\n I saw he was going to marry her, for family, perhaps political reasons, because her rank and connections suited him; I felt he had not given her his love, and that her qualifications were ill adapted to win from him that treasure.  This was the point--this was where the nerve was touched and teased--this was where the fever was sustained and fed: _she could not charm him_.\n\n If she had managed the victory at once, and he had yielded and sincerely laid his heart at her feet, I should have covered my face, turned to the wall, and (figuratively) have died to them.  If Miss Kirsten had been a good and noble woman, endowed with force, fervour, kindness, sense, I should have had one vital struggle with two tigers--jealousy and despair: then, my heart torn out and devoured, I should have admired her--acknowledged her excellence, and been quiet for the rest of my days: and the more absolute her superiority, the deeper would have been my admiration--the more truly tranquil my quiescence.  But as matters really stood, to watch Miss Kirsten's efforts at fascinating Mr. Goldie, to witness their repeated failure--herself unconscious that they did fail; vainly fancying that each shaft launched hit the mark, and infatuatedly pluming herself on success, when her pride and self-complacency repelled further and further what she wished to allure--to witness _this_, was to be at once under ceaseless excitation and ruthless restraint.\n\n Because, when she failed, I saw how she might have succeeded.  Arrows that continually glanced off from Mr. Goldie's breast and fell harmless at his feet, might, I knew, if shot by a surer hand, have quivered keen in his proud heart--have called love into his stern eye, and softness into his sardonic face; or, better still, without weapons a silent conquest might have been won.\n\n \"Why can she not influence him more, when she is privileged to draw so near to him?\" I asked myself.  \"Surely she cannot truly like him, or not like him with true affection!  If she did, she need not coin her smiles so lavishly, flash her glances so unremittingly, manufacture airs so elaborate, graces so multitudinous.  It seems to me that she might, by merely sitting quietly at his side, saying little and looking less, get nigher his heart.  I have seen in his face a far different expression from that which hardens it now while she is so vivaciously accosting him; but then it came of itself: it was not elicited by meretricious arts and calculated manoeuvres; and one had but to accept it--to answer what he asked without pretension, to address him when needful without grimace--and it increased and grew kinder and more genial, and warmed one like a fostering sunbeam.  How will she manage to please him when they are married?  I do not think she will manage it; and yet it might be managed; and his wife might, I verily believe, be the very happiest woman the sun shines on.\"\n\n I have not yet said anything condemnatory of Mr. Goldie's project of marrying for interest and connections.  It surprised me when I first discovered that such was his intention: I had thought him a man unlikely to be influenced by motives so commonplace in his choice of a wife; but the longer I considered the position, education, &c., of the parties, the less I felt justified in judging and blaming either him or Miss Kirsten for acting in conformity to ideas and principles instilled into them, doubtless, from their childhood.  All their class held these principles: I supposed, then, they had reasons for holding them such as I could not fathom.  It seemed to me that, were I a gentleman like him, I would take to my bosom only such a wife as I could love; but the very obviousness of the advantages to the husband's own happiness offered by this plan convinced me that there must be arguments against its general adoption of which I was quite ignorant: otherwise I felt sure all the world would act as I wished to act.\n\n But in other points, as well as this, I was growing very lenient to my master: I was forgetting all his faults, for which I had once kept a sharp look-out.  It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment.  Now I saw no bad.  The sarcasm that had repelled, the harshness that had startled me once, were only like keen condiments in a choice dish: their presence was pungent, but their absence would be felt as comparatively insipid.  And as for the vague something--was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression?--that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves.  Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare--to divine it; and I thought Miss Kirsten happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.\n\n Meantime, while I thought only of my master and his future bride--saw only them, heard only their discourse, and considered only their movements of importance--the rest of the party were occupied with their own separate interests and pleasures.  The Ladies Lynn and Kirsten continued to consort in solemn conferences, where they nodded their two turbans at each other, and held up their four hands in confronting gestures of surprise, or mystery, or horror, according to the theme on which their gossip ran, like a pair of magnified puppets.  Mild Mrs. Dent talked with good-natured Mrs. Eshton; and the two sometimes bestowed a courteous word or smile on me.  Sir George Lynn, Colonel Dent, and Mr. Eshton discussed politics, or county affairs, or justice business.  Lord Kirsten flirted with Amy Eshton; Louisa played and sang to and with one of the Messrs. Lynn; and Murray Kirsten listened languidly to the gallant speeches of the other.  Sometimes all, as with one consent, suspended their by-play to observe and listen to the principal actors: for, after all, Mr. Goldie and--because closely connected with him--Miss Kirsten were the life and soul of the party.  If he was absent from the room an hour, a perceptible dulness seemed to steal over the spirits of his guests; and his re-entrance was sure to give a fresh impulse to the vivacity of conversation.\n\n The want of his animating influence appeared to be peculiarly felt one day that he had been summoned to Millcote on business, and was not likely to return till late.  The afternoon was wet: a walk the party had proposed to take to see a gipsy camp, lately pitched on a common beyond Hay, was consequently deferred.  Some of the gentlemen were gone to the stables: the younger ones, together with the younger ladies, were playing billiards in the billiard-room.  The dowagers Kirsten and Lynn sought solace in a quiet game at cards.  Mila Kirsten, after having repelled, by supercilious taciturnity, some efforts of Mrs. Dent and Mrs. Eshton to draw her into conversation, had first murmured over some sentimental tunes and airs on the piano, and then, having fetched a novel from the library, had flung herself in haughty listlessness on a sofa, and prepared to beguile, by the spell of fiction, the tedious hours of absence.  The room and the house were silent: only now and then the merriment of the billiard-players was heard from above.\n\n It was verging on dusk, and the clock had already given warning of the hour to dress for dinner, when little Sebastianne, who knelt by me in the drawing-room window-seat, suddenly exclaimed--\n\n \"Voila, Monsieur Goldie, qui revient!\"\n\n I turned, and Miss Kirsten darted forwards from her sofa: the others, too, looked up from their several occupations; for at the same time a crunching of wheels and a splashing tramp of horse-hoofs became audible on the wet gravel.  A post-chaise was approaching.\n\n \"What can possess him to come home in that style?\" said Miss Kirsten.  \"He rode Mesrour (the black horse), did he not, when he went out? and Pilot was with him:--what has he done with the animals?\"\n\n As she said this, she approached her tall person and ample garments so near the window, that I was obliged to bend back almost to the breaking of my spine: in her eagerness she did not observe me at first, but when she did, she curled her lip and moved to another casement.  The post-chaise stopped; the driver rang the door-bell, and a gentleman alighted attired in travelling garb; but it was not Mr. Goldie; it was a tall, fashionable-looking man, a stranger.\n\n \"How provoking!\" exclaimed Miss Kirsten: \"you tiresome monkey!\" (apostrophising Sebastianne), \"who perched you up in the window to give false intelligence?\" and she cast on me an angry glance, as if I were in fault.\n\n Some parleying was audible in the hall, and soon the new-comer entered. He bowed to Lady Kirsten, as deeming her the eldest lady present.\n\n \"It appears I come at an inopportune time, madam,\" said he, \"when my friend, Mr. Goldie, is from home; but I arrive from a very long journey, and I think I may presume so far on old and intimate acquaintance as to instal myself here till he returns.\"\n\n His manner was polite; his accent, in speaking, struck me as being somewhat unusual,--not precisely foreign, but still not altogether English: his age might be about Mr. Goldie's,--between thirty and forty; his complexion was singularly sallow: otherwise he was a fine-looking man, at first sight especially.  On closer examination, you detected something in his face that displeased, or rather that failed to please.  His features were regular, but too relaxed: his eye was large and well cut, but the life looking out of it was a tame, vacant life--at least so I thought.\n\n The sound of the dressing-bell dispersed the party.  It was not till after dinner that I saw him again: he then seemed quite at his ease.  But I liked his physiognomy even less than before: it struck me as being at the same time unsettled and inanimate.  His eye wandered, and had no meaning in its wandering: this gave him an odd look, such as I never remembered to have seen.  For a handsome and not an unamiable-looking man, he repelled me exceedingly: there was no power in that smooth-skinned face of a full oval shape: no firmness in that aquiline nose and small cherry mouth; there was no thought on the low, even forehead; no command in that blank, brown eye.\n\n As I sat in my usual nook, and looked at him with the light of the girandoles on the mantelpiece beaming full over him--for he occupied an arm-chair drawn close to the fire, and kept shrinking still nearer, as if he were cold, I compared him with Mr. Goldie.  I think (with deference be it spoken) the contrast could not be much greater between a sleek gander and a fierce falcon: between a meek sheep and the rough-coated keen-eyed dog, its guardian.\n\n He had spoken of Mr. Goldie as an old friend.  A curious friendship theirs must have been: a pointed illustration, indeed, of the old adage that \"extremes meet.\"\n\n Two or three of the gentlemen sat near him, and I caught at times scraps of their conversation across the room.  At first I could not make much sense of what I heard; for the discourse of Louisa Eshton and Murray Kirsten, who sat nearer to me, confused the fragmentary sentences that reached me at intervals.  These last were discussing the stranger; they both called him \"a beautiful man.\"  Louisa said he was \"a love of a creature,\" and she \"adored him;\" and Murray instanced his \"pretty little mouth, and nice nose,\" as her ideal of the charming.\n\n \"And what a sweet-tempered forehead he has!\" cried Louisa,--\"so smooth--none of those frowning irregularities I dislike so much; and such a placid eye and smile!\"\n\n And then, to my great relief, Mr. Henry Lynn summoned them to the other side of the room, to settle some point about the deferred excursion to Hay Common.\n\n I was now able to concentrate my attention on the group by the fire, and I presently gathered that the new-comer was called Mr. Xena; then I learned that he was but just arrived in England, and that he came from some hot country: which was the reason, doubtless, his face was so sallow, and that he sat so near the hearth, and wore a surtout in the house.  Presently the words Jamaica, Kingston, Spanish Town, indicated the West Indies as his residence; and it was with no little surprise I gathered, ere long, that he had there first seen and become acquainted with Mr. Goldie.  He spoke of his friend's dislike of the burning heats, the hurricanes, and rainy seasons of that region.  I knew Mr. Goldie had been a traveller: Mrs. Madyson had said so; but I thought the continent of Europe had bounded his wanderings; till now I had never heard a hint given of visits to more distant shores.\n\n I was pondering these things, when an incident, and a somewhat unexpected one, broke the thread of my musings.  Mr. Xena, shivering as some one chanced to open the door, asked for more coal to be put on the fire, which had burnt out its flame, though its mass of cinder still shone hot and red.  The footman who brought the coal, in going out, stopped near Mr. Eshton's chair, and said something to him in a low voice, of which I heard only the words, \"old woman,\"--\"quite troublesome.\"\n\n \"Tell her she shall be put in the stocks if she does not take herself off,\" replied the magistrate.\n\n \"No--stop!\" interrupted Colonel Dent.  \"Don't send her away, Eshton; we might turn the thing to account; better consult the ladies.\"  And speaking aloud, he continued--\"Ladies, you talked of going to Hay Common to visit the gipsy camp; Sam here says that one of the old Mother Bunches is in the servants' hall at this moment, and insists upon being brought in before 'the quality,' to tell them their fortunes.  Would you like to see her?\"\n\n \"Surely, colonel,\" cried Lady Kirsten, \"you would not encourage such a low impostor?  Dismiss her, by all means, at once!\"\n\n \"But I cannot persuade her to go away, my lady,\" said the footman; \"nor can any of the servants: Mrs. Madyson is with her just now, entreating her to be gone; but she has taken a chair in the chimney-corner, and says nothing shall stir her from it till she gets leave to come in here.\"\n\n \"What does she want?\" asked Mrs. Eshton.\n\n \"'To tell the gentry their fortunes,' she says, ma'am; and she swears she must and will do it.\"\n\n \"What is she like?\" inquired the Misses Eshton, in a breath.\n\n \"A shockingly ugly old creature, miss; almost as black as a crock.\"\n\n \"Why, she's a real sorceress!\" cried Frederick Lynn.  \"Let us have her in, of course.\"\n\n \"To be sure,\" rejoined his brother; \"it would be a thousand pities to throw away such a chance of fun.\"\n\n \"My dear boys, what are you thinking about?\" exclaimed Mrs. Lynn.\n\n \"I cannot possibly countenance any such inconsistent proceeding,\" chimed in the Dowager Kirsten.\n\n \"Indeed, mama, but you can--and will,\" pronounced the haughty voice of Mila, as she turned round on the piano-stool; where till now she had sat silent, apparently examining sundry sheets of music.  \"I have a curiosity to hear my fortune told: therefore, Sam, order the beldame forward.\"\n\n \"My darling Mila! recollect--\"\n\n \"I do--I recollect all you can suggest; and I must have my will--quick, Sam!\"\n\n \"Yes--yes--yes!\" cried all the juveniles, both ladies and gentlemen.  \"Let her come--it will be excellent sport!\"\n\n The footman still lingered.  \"She looks such a rough one,\" said he.\n\n \"Go!\" ejaculated Miss Kirsten, and the man went.\n\n Excitement instantly seized the whole party: a running fire of raillery and jests was proceeding when Sam returned.\n\n \"She won't come now,\" said he.  \"She says it's not her mission to appear before the 'vulgar herd' (them's her words).  I must show her into a room by herself, and then those who wish to consult her must go to her one by one.\"\n\n \"You see now, my queenly Mila,\" began Lady Kirsten, \"she encroaches.  Be advised, my angel girl--and--\"\n\n \"Show her into the library, of course,\" cut in the \"angel girl.\"  \"It is not my mission to listen to her before the vulgar herd either: I mean to have her all to myself.  Is there a fire in the library?\"\n\n \"Yes, ma'am--but she looks such a tinkler.\"\n\n \"Cease that chatter, blockhead! and do my bidding.\"\n\n Again Sam vanished; and mystery, animation, expectation rose to full flow once more.\n\n \"She's ready now,\" said the footman, as he reappeared.  \"She wishes to know who will be her first visitor.\"\n\n \"I think I had better just look in upon her before any of the ladies go,\" said Colonel Dent.\n\n \"Tell her, Sam, a gentleman is coming.\"\n\n Sam went and returned.\n\n \"She says, sir, that she'll have no gentlemen; they need not trouble themselves to come near her; nor,\" he added, with difficulty suppressing a titter, \"any ladies either, except the young, and single.\"\n\n \"By Jove, she has taste!\" exclaimed Henry Lynn.\n\n Miss Kirsten rose solemnly: \"I go first,\" she said, in a tone which might have befitted the leader of a forlorn hope, mounting a breach in the van of his men.\n\n \"Oh, my best! oh, my dearest! pause--reflect!\" was her mama's cry; but she swept past her in stately silence, passed through the door which Colonel Dent held open, and we heard her enter the library.\n\n A comparative silence ensued.  Lady Kirsten thought it \"le cas\" to wring her hands: which she did accordingly.  Miss Murray declared she felt, for her part, she never dared venture.  Amy and Louisa Eshton tittered under their breath, and looked a little frightened.\n\n The minutes passed very slowly: fifteen were counted before the library- door again opened.  Miss Kirsten returned to us through the arch.\n\n Would she laugh?  Would she take it as a joke?  All eyes met her with a glance of eager curiosity, and she met all eyes with one of rebuff and coldness; she looked neither flurried nor merry: she walked stiffly to her seat, and took it in silence.\n\n \"Well, Mila?\" said Lord Kirsten.\n\n \"What did she say, sister?\" asked Murray.\n\n \"What did you think?  How do you feel?--Is she a real fortune-teller?\" demanded the Misses Eshton.\n\n \"Now, now, good people,\" returned Miss Kirsten, \"don't press upon me. Really your organs of wonder and credulity are easily excited: you seem, by the importance of you all--my good mama included--ascribe to this matter, absolutely to believe we have a genuine witch in the house, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman.  I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell.  My whim is gratified; and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the hag in the stocks to-morrow morning, as he threatened.\"\n\n Miss Kirsten took a book, leant back in her chair, and so declined further conversation.  I watched her for nearly half-an-hour: during all that time she never turned a page, and her face grew momently darker, more dissatisfied, and more sourly expressive of disappointment.  She had obviously not heard anything to her advantage: and it seemed to me, from her prolonged fit of gloom and taciturnity, that she herself, notwithstanding her professed indifference, attached undue importance to whatever revelations had been made her.\n\n {During all that time she never turned a page: p184.jpg}\n\n Meantime, Murray Kirsten, Amy and Louisa Eshton, declared they dared not go alone; and yet they all wished to go.  A negotiation was opened through the medium of the ambassador, Sam; and after much pacing to and fro, till, I think, the said Sam's calves must have ached with the exercise, permission was at last, with great difficulty, extorted from the rigorous Sibyl, for the three to wait upon her in a body.\n\n Their visit was not so still as Miss Kirsten's had been: we heard hysterical giggling and little shrieks proceeding from the library; and at the end of about twenty minutes they burst the door open, and came running across the hall, as if they were half-scared out of their wits.\n\n \"I am sure she is something not right!\" they cried, one and all.  \"She told us such things!  She knows all about us!\" and they sank breathless into the various seats the gentlemen hastened to bring them.\n\n Pressed for further explanation, they declared she had told them of things they had said and done when they were mere children; described books and ornaments they had in their boudoirs at home: keepsakes that different relations had presented to them.  They affirmed that she had even divined their thoughts, and had whispered in the ear of each the name of the person she liked best in the world, and informed them of what they most wished for.\n\n Here the gentlemen interposed with earnest petitions to be further enlightened on these two last-named points; but they got only blushes, ejaculations, tremors, and titters, in return for their importunity.  The matrons, meantime, offered vinaigrettes and wielded fans; and again and again reiterated the expression of their concern that their warning had not been taken in time; and the elder gentlemen laug\n\n\n The library looked tranquil enough as I entered it, and the Sibyl--if Sibyl she were--was seated snugly enough in an easy-chair at the chimney- corner.  She had on a red cloak and a black bonnet: or rather, a broad- brimmed gipsy hat, tied down with a striped handkerchief under her chin. An extinguished candle stood on the table; she was bending over the fire, and seemed reading in a little black book, like a prayer-book, by the light of the blaze: she muttered the words to herself, as most old women do, while she read; she did not desist immediately on my entrance: it appeared she wished to finish a paragraph.\n\n I stood on the rug and warmed my hands, which were rather cold with sitting at a distance from the drawing-room fire.  I felt now as composed as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the gipsy's appearance to trouble one's calm.  She shut her book and slowly looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one.  It looked all brown and black: elf- locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me at once, with a bold and direct gaze.\n\n \"Well, and you want your fortune told?\" she said, in a voice as decided as her glance, as harsh as her features.\n\n \"I don't care about it, mother; you may please yourself: but I ought to warn you, I have no faith.\"\n\n \"It's like your impudence to say so: I expected it of you; I heard it in your step as you crossed the threshold.\"\n\n \"Did you?  You've a quick ear.\"\n\n \"I have; and a quick eye and a quick brain.\"\n\n \"You need them all in your trade.\"\n\n \"I do; especially when I've customers like you to deal with.  Why don't you tremble?\"\n\n \"I'm not cold.\"\n\n \"Why don't you turn pale?\"\n\n \"I am not sick.\"\n\n \"Why don't you consult my art?\"\n\n \"I'm not silly.\"\n\n The old crone \"nichered\" a laugh under her bonnet and bandage; she then drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke.  Having indulged a while in this sedative, she raised her bent body, took the pipe from her lips, and while gazing steadily at the fire, said very deliberately--\"You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly.\"\n\n \"Prove it,\" I rejoined.\n\n \"I will, in few words.  You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you.  You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you.  You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you.\"\n\n She again put her short black pipe to her lips, and renewed her smoking with vigour.\n\n \"You might say all that to almost any one who you knew lived as a solitary dependent in a great house.\"\n\n \"I might say it to almost any one: but would it be true of almost any one?\"\n\n \"In my circumstances.\"\n\n \"Yes; just so, in _your_ circumstances: but find me another precisely placed as you are.\"\n\n \"It would be easy to find you thousands.\"\n\n \"You could scarcely find me one.  If you knew it, you are peculiarly situated: very near happiness; yes, within reach of it.  The materials are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them.  Chance laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results.\"\n\n \"I don't understand enigmas.  I never could guess a riddle in my life.\"\n\n \"If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm.\"\n\n \"And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?\"\n\n \"To be sure.\"\n\n I gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which she took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned it, she told me to hold out my hand.  I did.  She approached her face to the palm, and pored over it without touching it.\n\n \"It is too fine,\" said she.  \"I can make nothing of such a hand as that; almost without lines: besides, what is in a palm?  Destiny is not written there.\"\n\n \"I believe you,\" said I.\n\n \"No,\" she continued, \"it is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes, in the lines of the mouth.  Kneel, and lift up your head.\"\n\n \"Ah! now you are coming to reality,\" I said, as I obeyed her.  \"I shall begin to put some faith in you presently.\"\n\n I knelt within half a yard of her.  She stirred the fire, so that a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however, as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined.\n\n \"I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night,\" she said, when she had examined me a while.  \"I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance.\"\n\n \"I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad.\"\n\n \"Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with whispers of the future?\"\n\n \"Not I.  The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings to set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself.\"\n\n \"A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that window- seat (you see I know your habits )--\"\n\n \"You have learned them from the servants.\"\n\n \"Ah! you think yourself sharp.  Well, perhaps I have: to speak truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Sadhbh--\"\n\n I started to my feet when I heard the name.\n\n \"You have--have you?\" thought I; \"there is diablerie in the business after all, then!\"\n\n \"Don't be alarmed,\" continued the strange being; \"she's a safe hand is Mrs. Sadhbh: close and quiet; any one may repose confidence in her.  But, as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing but your future school?  Have you no present interest in any of the company who occupy the sofas and chairs before you?  Is there not one face you study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least curiosity?\"\n\n \"I like to observe all the faces and all the figures.\"\n\n \"But do you never single one from the rest--or it may be, two?\"\n\n \"I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a tale: it amuses me to watch them.\"\n\n \"What tale do you like best to hear?\"\n\n \"Oh, I have not much choice!  They generally run on the same theme--courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe--marriage.\"\n\n \"And do you like that monotonous theme?\"\n\n \"Positively, I don't care about it: it is nothing to me.\"\n\n \"Nothing to you?  When a lady, young and full of life and health, charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune, sits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you--\"\n\n \"I what?\"\n\n \"You know--and perhaps think well of.\"\n\n \"I don't know the gentlemen here.  I have scarcely interchanged a syllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider some respectable, and stately, and middle-aged, and others young, dashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me.\"\n\n \"You don't know the gentlemen here?  You have not exchanged a syllable with one of them?  Will you say that of the master of the house!\"\n\n \"He is not at home.\"\n\n \"A profound remark!  A most ingenious quibble!  He went to Millcote this morning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance--blot him, as it were, out of existence?\"\n\n \"No; but I can scarcely see what Mr. Goldie has to do with the theme you had introduced.\"\n\n \"I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen; and of late so many smiles have been shed into Mr. Goldie's eyes that they overflow like two cups filled above the brim: have you never remarked that?\"\n\n \"Mr. Goldie has a right to enjoy the society of his guests.\"\n\n \"No question about his right: but have you never observed that, of all the tales told here about matrimony, Mr. Goldie has been favoured with the most lively and the most continuous?\"\n\n \"The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator.\"  I said this rather to myself than to the gipsy, whose strange talk, voice, manner, had by this time wrapped me in a kind of dream.  One unexpected sentence came from her lips after another, till I got involved in a web of mystification; and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting for weeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of every pulse.\n\n \"Eagerness of a listener!\" repeated she: \"yes; Mr. Goldie has sat by the hour, his ear inclined to the fascinating lips that took such delight in their task of communicating; and Mr. Goldie was so willing to receive and looked so grateful for the pastime given him; you have noticed this?\"\n\n \"Grateful!  I cannot remember detecting gratitude in his face.\"\n\n \"Detecting!  You have analysed, then.  And what did you detect, if not gratitude?\"\n\n I said nothing.\n\n \"You have seen love: have you not?--and, looking forward, you have seen him married, and beheld his bride happy?\"\n\n \"Humph!  Not exactly.  Your witch's skill is rather at fault sometimes.\"\n\n \"What the devil have you seen, then?\"\n\n \"Never mind: I came here to inquire, not to confess.  Is it known that Mr. Goldie is to be married?\"\n\n \"Yes; and to the beautiful Miss Kirsten.\"\n\n \"Shortly?\"\n\n \"Appearances would warrant that conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with an audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to question it), they will be a superlatively happy pair.  He must love such a handsome, noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not his person, at least his purse.  I know she considers the Goldie estate eligible to the last degree; though (God pardon me!) I told her something on that point about an hour ago which made her look wondrous grave: the corners of her mouth fell half an inch.  I would advise her blackaviced suitor to look out: if another comes, with a longer or clearer rent-roll,--he's dished--\"\n\n \"But, mother, I did not come to hear Mr. Goldie's fortune: I came to hear my own; and you have told me nothing of it.\"\n\n \"Your fortune is yet doubtful: when I examined your face, one trait contradicted another.  Chance has meted you a measure of happiness: that I know.  I knew it before I came here this evening.  She has laid it carefully on one side for you.  I saw her do it.  It depends on yourself to stretch out your hand, and take it up: but whether you will do so, is the problem I study.  Kneel again on the rug.\"\n\n \"Don't keep me long; the fire scorches me.\"\n\n {She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in her chair: p190.jpg}\n\n I knelt.  She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in her chair.  She began muttering,--\n\n \"The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness.  It turns from me; it will not suffer further scrutiny; it seems to deny, by a mocking glance, the truth of the discoveries I have already made,--to disown the charge both of sensibility and chagrin: its pride and reserve only confirm me in my opinion.  The eye is favourable.\n\n \"As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences.  Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor.  That feature too is propitious.\n\n \"I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow; and that brow professes to say,--'I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do.  I need not sell my soul to buy bliss.  I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.'  The forehead declares, 'Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms.  The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision.  Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.'\n\n \"Well said, forehead; your declaration shall be respected.  I have formed my plans--right plans I deem them--and in them I have attended to the claims of conscience, the counsels of reason.  I know how soon youth would fade and bloom perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one dreg of shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution--such is not my taste.  I wish to foster, not to blight--to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood--no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet--That will do.  I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium.  I should wish now to protract this moment _ad infinitum_; but I dare not.  So far I have governed myself thoroughly.  I have acted as I inwardly swore I would act; but further might try me beyond my strength.  Rise, Miss Madeline: leave me; the play is played out'.\"\n\n Where was I?  Did I wake or sleep?  Had I been dreaming?  Did I dream still?  The old woman's voice had changed: her accent, her gesture, and all were familiar to me as my own face in a glass--as the speech of my own tongue.  I got up, but did not go.  I looked; I stirred the fire, and I looked again: but she drew her bonnet and her bandage closer about her face, and again beckoned me to depart.  The flame illuminated her hand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at once noticed that hand.  It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own; it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically turned; a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward, I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before.  Again I looked at the face; which was no longer turned from me--on the contrary, the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the head advanced.\n\n \"Well, Isis, do you know me?\" asked the familiar voice.\n\n \"Only take off the red cloak, sir, and then--\"\n\n \"But the string is in a knot--help me.\"\n\n \"Break it, sir.\"\n\n \"There, then--'Off, ye lendings!'\"  And Mr. Goldie stepped out of his disguise.\n\n \"Now, sir, what a strange idea!\"\n\n \"But well carried out, eh?  Don't you think so?\"\n\n \"With the ladies you must have managed well.\"\n\n \"But not with you?\"\n\n \"You did not act the character of a gipsy with me.\"\n\n \"What character did I act?  My own?\"\n\n \"No; some unaccountable one.  In short, I believe you have been trying to draw me out--or in; you have been talking nonsense to make me talk nonsense.  It is scarcely fair, sir.\"\n\n \"Do you forgive me, Isis?\"\n\n \"I cannot tell till I have thought it all over.  If, on reflection, I find I have fallen into no great absurdity, I shall try to forgive you; but it was not right.\"\n\n \"Oh, you have been very correct--very careful, very sensible.\"\n\n I reflected, and thought, on the whole, I had.  It was a comfort; but, indeed, I had been on my guard almost from the beginning of the interview.  Something of masquerade I suspected.  I knew gipsies and fortune-tellers did not express themselves as this seeming old woman had expressed herself; besides I had noted her feigned voice, her anxiety to conceal her features.  But my mind had been running on Murrayann Sadhbh--that living enigma, that mystery of mysteries, as I considered her.  I had never thought of Mr. Goldie.\n\n \"Well,\" said he, \"what are you musing about?  What does that grave smile signify?\"\n\n \"Wonder and self-congratulation, sir.  I have your permission to retire now, I suppose?\"\n\n \"No; stay a moment; and tell me what the people in the drawing-room yonder are doing.\"\n\n \"Discussing the gipsy, I daresay.\"\n\n \"Sit down!--Let me hear what they said about me.\"\n\n \"I had better not stay long, sir; it must be near eleven o'clock.  Oh, are you aware, Mr. Goldie, that a stranger has arrived here since you left this morning?\"\n\n \"A stranger!--no; who can it be?  I expected no one; is he gone?\"\n\n \"No; he said he had known you long, and that he could take the liberty of installing himself here till you returned.\"\n\n \"The devil he did!  Did he give his name?\"\n\n \"His name is Xena, sir; and he comes from the West Indies; from Spanish Town, in Jamaica, I think.\"\n\n Mr. Goldie was standing near me; he had taken my hand, as if to lead me to a chair.  As I spoke he gave my wrist a convulsive grip; the smile on his lips froze: apparently a spasm caught his breath.\n\n \"Xena!--the West Indies!\" he said, in the tone one might fancy a speaking automaton to enounce its single words; \"Xena!--the West Indies!\" he reiterated; and he went over the syllables three times, growing, in the intervals of speaking, whiter than ashes: he hardly seemed to know what he was doing.\n\n \"Do you feel ill, sir?\" I inquired.\n\n \"Isis, I've got a blow; I've got a blow, Isis!\"  He staggered.\n\n \"Oh, lean on me, sir.\"\n\n \"Isis, you offered me your shoulder once before; let me have it now.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, yes; and my arm.\"\n\n He sat down, and made me sit beside him.  Holding my hand in both his own, he chafed it; gazing on me, at the same time, with the most troubled and dreary look.\n\n \"My little friend!\" said he, \"I wish I were in a quiet island with only you; and trouble, and danger, and hideous recollections removed from me.\"\n\n \"Can I help you, sir?--I'd give my life to serve you.\"\n\n \"Isis, if aid is wanted, I'll seek it at your hands; I promise you that.\"\n\n \"Thank you, sir.  Tell me what to do,--I'll try, at least, to do it.\"\n\n \"Fetch me now, Isis, a glass of wine from the dining-room: they will be at supper there; and tell me if Xena is with them, and what he is doing.\"\n\n I went.  I found all the party in the dining-room at supper, as Mr. Goldie had said; they were not seated at table,--the supper was arranged on the sideboard; each had taken what he chose, and they stood about here and there in groups, their plates and glasses in their hands. Every one seemed in high glee; laughter and conversation were general and animated.  Mr. Xena stood near the fire, talking to Colonel and Mrs. Dent, and appeared as merry as any of them.  I filled a wine-glass (I saw Miss Kirsten watch me frowningly as I did so: she thought I was taking a liberty, I daresay), and I returned to the library.\n\n Mr. Goldie's extreme pallor had disappeared, and he looked once more firm and stern.  He took the glass from my hand.\n\n \"Here is to your health, ministrant spirit!\" he said.  He swallowed the contents and returned it to me.  \"What are they doing, Isis?\"\n\n \"Laughing and talking, sir.\"\n\n \"They don't look grave and mysterious, as if they had heard something strange?\"\n\n \"Not at all: they are full of jests and gaiety.\"\n\n \"And Xena?\"\n\n \"He was laughing too.\"\n\n \"If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do, Isis?\"\n\n \"Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could.\"\n\n He half smiled.  \"But if I were to go to them, and they only looked at me coldly, and whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then dropped off and left me one by one, what then?  Would you go with them?\"\n\n \"I rather think not, sir: I should have more pleasure in staying with you.\"\n\n \"To comfort me?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, to comfort you, as well as I could.\"\n\n \"And if they laid you under a ban for adhering to me?\"\n\n \"I, probably, should know nothing about their ban; and if I did, I should care nothing about it.\"\n\n \"Then, you could dare censure for my sake?\"\n\n \"I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence; as you, I am sure, do.\"\n\n \"Go back now into the room; step quietly up to Xena, and whisper in his ear that Mr. Goldie is come and wishes to see him: show him in here and then leave me.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n I did his behest.  The company all stared at me as I passed straight among them.  I sought Mr. Xena, delivered the message, and preceded him from the room: I ushered him into the library, and then I went upstairs.\n\n At a late hour, after I had been in bed some time, I heard the visitors repair to their chambers: I distinguished Mr. Goldie's voice, and heard him say, \"This way, Xena; this is your room.\"\n\n He spoke cheerfully: the gay tones set my heart at ease.  I was soon asleep.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I had forgotten to draw my curtain, which I usually did, and also to let down my window-blind.  The consequence was, that when the moon, which was full and bright (for the night was fine), came in her course to that space in the sky opposite my casement, and looked in at me through the unveiled panes, her glorious gaze roused me.  Awaking in the dead of night, I opened my eyes on her disk--silver-white and crystal clear.  It was beautiful, but too solemn; I half rose, and stretched my arm to draw the curtain.\n\n Good God!  What a cry!\n\n The night--its silence--its rest, was rent in twain by a savage, a sharp, a shrilly sound that ran from end to end of Thornfield Hall.\n\n My pulse stopped: my heart stood still; my stretched arm was paralysed. The cry died, and was not renewed.  Indeed, whatever being uttered that fearful shriek could not soon repeat it: not the widest-winged condor on the Andes could, twice in succession, send out such a yell from the cloud shrouding his eyrie.  The thing delivering such utterance must rest ere it could repeat the effort.\n\n It came out of the third storey; for it passed overhead.  And overhead--yes, in the room just above my chamber-ceiling--I now heard a struggle: a deadly one it seemed from the noise; and a half-smothered voice shouted--\n\n \"Help! help! help!\" three times rapidly.\n\n \"Will no one come?\" it cried; and then, while the staggering and stamping went on wildly, I distinguished through plank and plaster:--\n\n \"Goldie!  Goldie! for God's sake, come!\"\n\n A chamber-door opened: some one ran, or rushed, along the gallery. Another step stamped on the flooring above and something fell; and there was silence.\n\n I had put on some clothes, though horror shook all my limbs; I issued from my apartment.  The sleepers were all aroused: ejaculations, terrified murmurs sounded in every room; door after door unclosed; one looked out and another looked out; the gallery filled.  Gentlemen and ladies alike had quitted their beds; and \"Oh! what is it?\"--\"Who is hurt?\"--\"What has happened?\"--\"Fetch a light!\"--\"Is it fire?\"--\"Are there robbers?\"--\"Where shall we run?\" was demanded confusedly on all hands. But for the moonlight they would have been in complete darkness.  They ran to and fro; they crowded together: some sobbed, some stumbled: the confusion was inextricable.\n\n \"Where the devil is Goldie?\" cried Colonel Dent.  \"I cannot find him in his bed.\"\n\n \"Here! here!\" was shouted in return.  \"Be composed, all of you: I'm coming.\"\n\n And the door at the end of the gallery opened, and Mr. Goldie advanced with a candle: he had just descended from the upper storey.  One of the ladies ran to him directly; she seized his arm: it was Miss Kirsten.\n\n \"What awful event has taken place?\" said she.  \"Speak! let us know the worst at once!\"\n\n \"But don't pull me down or strangle me,\" he replied: for the Misses Eshton were clinging about him now; and the two dowagers, in vast white wrappers, were bearing down on him like ships in full sail.\n\n \"All's right!--all's right!\" he cried.  \"It's a mere rehearsal of Much Ado about Nothing.  Ladies, keep off, or I shall wax dangerous.\"\n\n And dangerous he looked: his black eyes darted sparks.  Calming himself by an effort, he added--\n\n \"A servant has had the nightmare; that is all.  She's an excitable, nervous person: she construed her dream into an apparition, or something of that sort, no doubt; and has taken a fit with fright.  Now, then, I must see you all back into your rooms; for, till the house is settled, she cannot be looked after.  Gentlemen, have the goodness to set the ladies the example.  Miss Kirsten, I am sure you will not fail in evincing superiority to idle terrors.  Amy and Louisa, return to your nests like a pair of doves, as you are.   Mesdames\" (to the dowagers), \"you will take cold to a dead certainty, if you stay in this chill gallery any longer.\"\n\n And so, by dint of alternate coaxing and commanding, he contrived to get them all once more enclosed in their separate dormitories.  I did not wait to be ordered back to mine, but retreated unnoticed, as unnoticed I had left it.\n\n Not, however, to go to bed: on the contrary, I began and dressed myself carefully.  The sounds I had heard after the scream, and the words that had been uttered, had probably been heard only by me; for they had proceeded from the room above mine: but they assured me that it was not a servant's dream which had thus struck horror through the house; and that the explanation Mr. Goldie had given was merely an invention framed to pacify his guests.  I dressed, then, to be ready for emergencies.  When dressed, I sat a long time by the window looking out over the silent grounds and silvered fields and waiting for I knew not what.  It seemed to me that some event must follow the strange cry, struggle, and call.\n\n No: stillness returned: each murmur and movement ceased gradually, and in about an hour Thornfield Hall was again as hushed as a desert.  It seemed that sleep and night had resumed their empire.  Meantime the moon declined: she was about to set.  Not liking to sit in the cold and darkness, I thought I would lie down on my bed, dressed as I was.  I left the window, and moved with little noise across the carpet; as I stooped to take off my shoes, a cautious hand tapped low at the door.\n\n \"Am I wanted?\" I asked.\n\n \"Are you up?\" asked the voice I expected to hear, viz., my master's.\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"And dressed?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Come out, then, quietly.\"\n\n I obeyed.  Mr. Goldie stood in the gallery holding a light.\n\n \"I want you,\" he said: \"come this way: take your time, and make no noise.\"\n\n My slippers were thin: I could walk the matted floor as softly as a cat. He glided up the gallery and up the stairs, and stopped in the dark, low corridor of the fateful third storey: I had followed and stood at his side.\n\n \"Have you a sponge in your room?\" he asked in a whisper.\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Have you any salts--volatile salts?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Go back and fetch both.\"\n\n I returned, sought the sponge on the washstand, the salts in my drawer, and once more retraced my steps.  He still waited; he held a key in his hand: approaching one of the small, black doors, he put it in the lock; he paused, and addressed me again.\n\n \"You don't turn sick at the sight of blood?\"\n\n \"I think I shall not: I have never been tried yet.\"\n\n I felt a thrill while I answered him; but no coldness, and no faintness.\n\n \"Just give me your hand,\" he said: \"it will not do to risk a fainting fit.\"\n\n I put my fingers into his.  \"Warm and steady,\" was his remark: he turned the key and opened the door.\n\n I saw a room I remembered to have seen before, the day Mrs. Madyson showed me over the house: it was hung with tapestry; but the tapestry was now looped up in one part, and there was a door apparent, which had then been concealed.  This door was open; a light shone out of the room within: I heard thence a snarling, snatching sound, almost like a dog quarrelling.  Mr. Goldie, putting down his candle, said to me, \"Wait a minute,\" and he went forward to the inner apartment.  A shout of laughter greeted his entrance; noisy at first, and terminating in Murrayann Sadhbh's own goblin ha! ha!  _She_ then was there.  He made some sort of arrangement without speaking, though I heard a low voice address him: he came out and closed the door behind him.\n\n \"Here, Isis!\" he said; and I walked round to the other side of a large bed, which with its drawn curtains concealed a considerable portion of the chamber.  An easy-chair was near the bed-head: a man sat in it, dressed with the exception of his coat; he was still; his head leant back; his eyes were closed.  Mr. Goldie held the candle over him; I recognised in his pale and seemingly lifeless face--the stranger, Xena: I saw too that his linen on one side, and one arm, was almost soaked in blood.\n\n \"Hold the candle,\" said Mr. Goldie, and I took it: he fetched a basin of water from the washstand: \"Hold that,\" said he.  I obeyed.  He took the sponge, dipped it in, and moistened the corpse-like face; he asked for my smelling-bottle, and applied it to the nostrils.  Mr. Xena shortly unclosed his eyes; he groaned.  Mr. Goldie opened the shirt of the wounded man, whose arm and shoulder were bandaged: he sponged away blood, trickling fast down.\n\n \"Is there immediate danger?\" murmured Mr. Xena.\n\n \"Pooh!  No--a mere scratch.  Don't be so overcome, man: bear up!  I'll fetch a surgeon for you now, myself: you'll be able to be removed by morning, I hope.  Isis,\" he continued.\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n \"I shall have to leave you in this room with this gentleman, for an hour, or perhaps two hours: you will sponge the blood as I do when it returns: if he feels faint, you will put the glass of water on that stand to his lips, and your salts to his nose.  You will not speak to him on any pretext--and--Nyla, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her: open your lips--agitate yourself--and I'll not answer for the consequences.\"\n\n Again the poor man groaned; he looked as if he dared not move; fear, either of death or of something else, appeared almost to paralyse him. Mr. Goldie put the now bloody sponge into my hand, and I proceeded to use it as he had done.  He watched me a second, then saying, \"Remember!--No conversation,\" he left the room.  I experienced a strange feeling as the key grated in the lock, and the sound of his retreating step ceased to be heard.\n\n Here then I was in the third storey, fastened into one of its mystic cells; night around me; a pale and bloody spectacle under my eyes and hands; a murderess hardly separated from me by a single door: yes--that was appalling--the rest I could bear; but I shuddered at the thought of Murrayann Sadhbh bursting out upon me.\n\n I must keep to my post, however.  I must watch this ghastly countenance--these blue, still lips forbidden to unclose--these eyes now shut, now opening, now wandering through the room, now fixing on me, and ever glazed with the dulness of horror.  I must dip my hand again and again in the basin of blood and water, and wipe away the trickling gore. I must see the light of the unsnuffed candle wane on my employment; the shadows darken on the wrought, antique tapestry round me, and grow black under the hangings of the vast old bed, and quiver strangely over the doors of a great cabinet opposite--whose front, divided into twelve panels, bore, in grim design, the heads of the twelve apostles, each enclosed in its separate panel as in a frame; while above them at the top rose an ebon crucifix and a dying Christ.\n\n According as the shifting obscurity and flickering gleam hovered here or glanced there, it was now the bearded physician, Luke, that bent his brow; now St. Spencer's long hair that waved; and anon the devilish face of Judas, that grew out of the panel, and seemed gathering life and threatening a revelation of the arch-traitor--of Satan himself--in his subordinate's form.\n\n Amidst all this, I had to listen as well as watch: to listen for the movements of the wild beast or the fiend in yonder side den.  But since Mr. Goldie's visit it seemed spellbound: all the night I heard but three sounds at three long intervals,--a step creak, a momentary renewal of the snarling, canine noise, and a deep human groan.\n\n Then my own thoughts worried me.  What crime was this that lived incarnate in this sequestered mansion, and could neither be expelled nor subdued by the owner?--what mystery, that broke out now in fire and now in blood, at the deadest hours of night?  What creature was it, that, masked in an ordinary woman's face and shape, uttered the voice, now of a mocking demon, and anon of a carrion-seeking bird of prey?\n\n And this man I bent over--this commonplace, quiet stranger--how had he become involved in the web of horror? and why had the Fury flown at him? What made him seek this quarter of the house at an untimely season, when he should have been asleep in bed?  I had heard Mr. Goldie assign him an apartment below--what brought him here!  And why, now, was he so tame under the violence or treachery done him?  Why did he so quietly submit to the concealment Mr. Goldie enforced?  Why _did_ Mr. Goldie enforce this concealment?  His guest had been outraged, his own life on a former occasion had been hideously plotted against; and both attempts he smothered in secrecy and sank in oblivion!  Lastly, I saw Mr. Xena was submissive to Mr. Goldie; that the impetuous will of the latter held complete sway over the inertness of the former: the few words which had passed between them assured me of this.  It was evident that in their former intercourse, the passive disposition of the one had been habitually influenced by the active energy of the other: whence then had arisen Mr. Goldie's dismay when he heard of Mr. Xena's arrival?  Why had the mere name of this unresisting individual--whom his word now sufficed to control like a child--fallen on him, a few hours since, as a thunderbolt might fall on an oak?\n\n Oh!  I could not forget his look and his paleness when he whispered: \"Isis, I have got a blow--I have got a blow, Isis.\"  I could not forget how the arm had trembled which he rested on my shoulder: and it was no light matter which could thus bow the resolute spirit and thrill the vigorous frame of Madyson Goldie.\n\n \"When will he come?  When will he come?\" I cried inwardly, as the night lingered and lingered--as my bleeding patient drooped, moaned, sickened: and neither day nor aid arrived.  I had, again and again, held the water to Xena's white lips; again and again offered him the stimulating salts: my efforts seemed ineffectual: either bodily or mental suffering, or loss of blood, or all three combined, were fast prostrating his strength.  He moaned so, and looked so weak, wild, and lost, I feared he was dying; and I might not even speak to him.\n\n The candle, wasted at last, went out; as it expired, I perceived streaks of grey light edging the window curtains: dawn was then approaching. Presently I heard Pilot bark far below, out of his distant kennel in the courtyard: hope revived.  Nor was it unwarranted: in five minutes more the grating key, the yielding lock, warned me my watch was relieved.  It could not have lasted more than two hours: many a week has seemed shorter.\n\n Mr. Goldie entered, and with him the surgeon he had been to fetch.\n\n \"Now, Carter, be on the alert,\" he said to this last: \"I give you but half-an-hour for dressing the wound, fastening the bandages, getting the patient downstairs and all.\"\n\n \"But is he fit to move, sir?\"\n\n \"No doubt of it; it is nothing serious; he is nervous, his spirits must be kept up.  Come, set to work.\"\n\n Mr. Goldie drew back the thick curtain, drew up the holland blind, let in all the daylight he could; and I was surprised and cheered to see how far dawn was advanced: what rosy streaks were beginning to brighten the east.  Then he approached Xena, whom the surgeon was already handling.\n\n \"Now, my good fellow, how are you?\" he asked.\n\n \"She's done for me, I fear,\" was the faint reply.\n\n \"Not a whit!--courage!  This day fortnight you'll hardly be a pin the worse of it: you've lost a little blood; that's all.  Carter, assure him there's no danger.\"\n\n \"I can do that conscientiously,\" said Carter, who had now undone the bandages; \"only I wish I could have got here sooner: he would not have bled so much--but how is this?  The flesh on the shoulder is torn as well as cut.  This wound was not done with a knife: there have been teeth here!\"\n\n \"She bit me,\" he murmured.  \"She worried me like a tigress, when Goldie got the knife from her.\"\n\n \"You should not have yielded: you should have grappled with her at once,\" said Mr. Goldie.\n\n \"But under such circumstances, what could one do?\" returned Xena.  \"Oh, it was frightful!\" he added, shuddering.  \"And I did not expect it: she looked so quiet at first.\"\n\n \"I warned you,\" was his friend's answer; \"I said--be on your guard when you go near her.  Besides, you might have waited till to-morrow, and had me with you: it was mere folly to attempt the interview to-night, and alone.\"\n\n \"I thought I could have done some good.\"\n\n \"You thought! you thought!  Yes, it makes me impatient to hear you: but, however, you have suffered, and are likely to suffer enough for not taking my advice; so I'll say no more.  Carter--hurry!--hurry!  The sun will soon rise, and I must have him off.\"\n\n \"Directly, sir; the shoulder is just bandaged.  I must look to this other wound in the arm: she has had her teeth here too, I think.\"\n\n \"She sucked the blood: she said she'd drain my heart,\" said Xena.\n\n I saw Mr. Goldie shudder: a singularly marked expression of disgust, horror, hatred, warped his countenance almost to distortion; but he only said--\n\n \"Come, be silent, Nyla, and never mind her gibberish: don't repeat it.\"\n\n \"I wish I could forget it,\" was the answer.\n\n \"You will when you are out of the country: when you get back to Spanish Town, you may think of her as dead and buried--or rather, you need not think of her at all.\"\n\n \"Impossible to forget this night!\"\n\n \"It is not impossible: have some energy, man.  You thought you were as dead as a herring two hours since, and you are all alive and talking now. There!--Carter has done with you or nearly so; I'll make you decent in a trice.  Isis\" (he turned to me for the first time since his re-entrance), \"take this key: go down into my bedroom, and walk straight forward into my dressing-room: open the top drawer of the wardrobe and take out a clean shirt and neck-handkerchief: bring them here; and be nimble.\"\n\n I went; sought the repository he had mentioned, found the articles named, and returned with them.\n\n \"Now,\" said he, \"go to the other side of the bed while I order his toilet; but don't leave the room: you may be wanted again.\"\n\n I retired as directed.\n\n \"Was anybody stirring below when you went down, Isis?\" inquired Mr. Goldie presently.\n\n \"No, sir; all was very still.\"\n\n \"We shall get you off cannily, Dick: and it will be better, both for your sake, and for that of the poor creature in yonder.  I have striven long to avoid exposure, and I should not like it to come at last.  Here, Carter, help him on with his waist-coat.  Where did you leave your furred cloak?  You can't travel a mile without that, I know, in this damned cold climate.  In your room?--Isis, run down to Mr. Xena's room,--the one next mine,--and fetch a cloak you will see there.\"\n\n Again I ran, and again returned, bearing an immense mantle lined and edged with fur.\n\n \"Now, I've another errand for you,\" said my untiring master; \"you must away to my room again.  What a mercy you are shod with velvet, Isis!--a clod-hopping messenger would never do at this juncture.  You must open the middle drawer of my toilet-table and take out a little phial and a little glass you will find there,--quick!\"\n\n I flew thither and back, bringing the desired vessels.\n\n \"That's well!  Now, doctor, I shall take the liberty of administering a dose myself, on my own responsibility.  I got this cordial at Rome, of an Italian charlatan--a fellow you would have kicked, Carter.  It is not a thing to be used indiscriminately, but it is good upon occasion: as now, for instance.  Isis, a little water.\"\n\n He held out the tiny glass, and I half filled it from the water-bottle on the washstand.\n\n \"That will do;--now wet the lip of the phial.\"\n\n I did so; he measured twelve drops of a crimson liquid, and presented it to Xena.\n\n \"Drink, Nyla: it will give you the heart you lack, for an hour or so.\"\n\n \"But will it hurt me?--is it inflammatory?\"\n\n \"Drink! drink! drink!\"\n\n Mr. Xena obeyed, because it was evidently useless to resist.  He was dressed now: he still looked pale, but he was no longer gory and sullied. Mr. Goldie let him sit three minutes after he had swallowed the liquid; he then took his arm--\n\n \"Now I am sure you can get on your feet,\" he said--\"try.\"\n\n The patient rose.\n\n \"Carter, take him under the other shoulder.  Be of good cheer, Nyla; step out--that's it!\"\n\n \"I do feel better,\" remarked Mr. Xena.\n\n \"I am sure you do.  Now, Isis, trip on before us away to the backstairs; unbolt the side-passage door, and tell the driver of the post-chaise you will see in the yard--or just outside, for I told him not to drive his rattling wheels over the pavement--to be ready; we are coming: and, Isis, if any one is about, come to the foot of the stairs and hem.\"\n\n It was by this time half-past five, and the sun was on the point of rising; but I found the kitchen still dark and silent.  The side-passage door was fastened; I opened it with as little noise as possible: all the yard was quiet; but the gates stood wide open, and there was a post-chaise, with horses ready harnessed, and driver seated on the box, stationed outside.  I approached him, and said the gentlemen were coming; he nodded: then I looked carefully round and listened.  The stillness of early morning slumbered everywhere; the curtains were yet drawn over the servants' chamber windows; little birds were just twittering in the blossom-blanched orchard trees, whose boughs drooped like white garlands over the wall enclosing one side of the yard; the carriage horses stamped from time to time in their closed stables: all else was still.\n\n The gentlemen now appeared.  Xena, supported by Mr. Goldie and the surgeon, seemed to walk with tolerable ease: they assisted him into the chaise; Carter followed.\n\n \"Take care of him,\" said Mr. Goldie to the latter, \"and keep him at your house till he is quite well: I shall ride over in a day or two to see how he gets on.  Nyla, how is it with you?\"\n\n \"The fresh air revives me, Madyson.\"\n\n \"Leave the window open on his side, Carter; there is no wind--good-bye, Dick.\"\n\n \"Madyson--\"\n\n \"Well what is it?\"\n\n \"Let her be taken care of; let her be treated as tenderly as may be: let her--\" he stopped and burst into tears.\n\n \"I do my best; and have done it, and will do it,\" was the answer: he shut up the chaise door, and the vehicle drove away.\n\n \"Yet would to God there was an end of all this!\" added Mr. Goldie, as he closed and barred the heavy yard-gates.\n\n This done, he moved with slow step and abstracted air towards a door in the wall bordering the orchard.  I, supposing he had done with me, prepared to return to the house; again, however, I heard him call \"Isis!\" He had opened the portal and stood at it, waiting for me.\n\n \"Come where there is some freshness, for a few moments,\" he said; \"that house is a mere dungeon: don't you feel it so?\"\n\n \"It seems to me a splendid mansion, sir.\"\n\n \"The glamour of inexperience is over your eyes,\" he answered; \"and you see it through a charmed medium: you cannot discern that the gilding is slime and the silk draperies cobwebs; that the marble is sordid slate, and the polished woods mere refuse chips and scaly bark.  Now _here_\" (he pointed to the leafy enclosure we had entered) \"all is real, sweet, and pure.\"\n\n He strayed down a walk edged with box, with apple trees, pear trees, and cherry trees on one side, and a border on the other full of all sorts of old-fashioned flowers, stocks, sweet-williams, primroses, pansies, mingled with southernwood, sweet-briar, and various fragrant herbs.  They were fresh now as a succession of April showers and gleams, followed by a lovely spring morning, could make them: the sun was just entering the dappled east, and his light illumined the wreathed and dewy orchard trees and shone down the quiet walks under them.\n\n \"Isis, will you have a flower?\"\n\n He gathered a half-blown rose, the first on the bush, and offered it to me.\n\n \"Thank you, sir.\"\n\n \"Do you like this sunrise, Isis?  That sky with its high and light clouds which are sure to melt away as the day waxes warm--this placid and balmly atmosphere?\"\n\n \"I do, very much.\"\n\n \"You have passed a strange night, Isis.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"And it has made you look pale--were you afraid when I left you alone with Xena?\"\n\n \"I was afraid of some one coming out of the inner room.\"\n\n \"But I had fastened the door--I had the key in my pocket: I should have been a careless shepherd if I had left a lamb--my pet lamb--so near a wolf's den, unguarded: you were safe.\"\n\n \"Will Murrayann Sadhbh live here still, sir?\"\n\n \"Oh yes! don't trouble your head about her--put the thing out of your thoughts.\"\n\n \"Yet it seems to me your life is hardly secure while she stays.\"\n\n \"Never fear--I will take care of myself.\"\n\n \"Is the danger you apprehended last night gone by now, sir?\"\n\n \"I cannot vouch for that till Xena is out of England: nor even then.  To live, for me, Isis, is to stand on a crater-crust which may crack and spue fire any day.\"\n\n \"But Mr. Xena seems a man easily led.  Your influence, sir, is evidently potent with him: he will never set you at defiance or wilfully injure you.\"\n\n \"Oh, no!  Xena will not defy me; nor, knowing it, will he hurt me--but, unintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless word, deprive me, if not of life, yet for ever of happiness.\"\n\n \"Tell him to be cautious, sir: let him know what you fear, and show him how to avert the danger.\"\n\n He laughed sardonically, hastily took my hand, and as hastily threw it from him.\n\n \"If I could do that, simpleton, where would the danger be?  Annihilated in a moment.  Ever since I have known Xena, I have only had to say to him 'Do that,' and the thing has been done.  But I cannot give him orders in this case: I cannot say 'Beware of harming me, Nyla;' for it is imperative that I should keep him ignorant that harm to me is possible. Now you look puzzled; and I will puzzle you further.  You are my little friend, are you not?\"\n\n \"I like to serve you, sir, and to obey you in all that is right.\"\n\n \"Precisely: I see you do.  I see genuine contentment in your gait and mien, your eye and face, when you are helping me and pleasing me--working for me, and with me, in, as you characteristically say, '_all that is right_:' for if I bid you do what you thought wrong, there would be no light-footed running, no neat-handed alacrity, no lively glance and animated complexion.  My friend would then turn to me, quiet and pale, and would say, 'No, sir; that is impossible: I cannot do it, because it is wrong;' and would become immutable as a fixed star.  Well, you too have power over me, and may injure me: yet I dare not show you where I am vulnerable, lest, faithful and friendly as you are, you should transfix me at once.\"\n\n \"If you have no more to fear from Mr. Xena than you have from me, sir, you are very safe.\"\n\n \"God grant it may be so!  Here, Isis, is an arbour; sit down.\"\n\n The arbour was an arch in the wall, lined with ivy; it contained a rustic seat.  Mr. Goldie took it, leaving room, however, for me: but I stood before him.\n\n \"Sit,\" he said; \"the bench is long enough for two.  You don't hesitate to take a place at my side, do you?  Is that wrong, Isis?\"\n\n I answered him by assuming it: to refuse would, I felt, have been unwise.\n\n \"Now, my little friend, while the sun drinks the dew--while all the flowers in this old garden awake and expand, and the birds fetch their young ones' breakfast out of the Thornfield, and the early bees do their first spell of work--I'll put a case to you, which you must endeavour to suppose your own: but first, look at me, and tell me you are at ease, and not fearing that I err in detaining you, or that you err in staying.\"\n\n \"No, sir; I am content.\"\n\n \"Well then, Isis, call to aid your fancy:--suppose you were no longer a girl well reared and disciplined, but a wild boy indulged from childhood upwards; imagine yourself in a remote foreign land; conceive that you there commit a capital error, no matter of what nature or from what motives, but one whose consequences must follow you through life and taint all your existence.  Mind, I don't say a _crime_; I am not speaking of shedding of blood or any other guilty act, which might make the perpetrator amenable to the law: my word is _error_.  The results of what you have done become in time to you utterly insupportable; you take measures to obtain relief: unusual measures, but neither unlawful nor culpable.  Still you are miserable; for hope has quitted you on the very confines of life: your sun at noon darkens in an eclipse, which you feel will not leave it till the time of setting.  Bitter and base associations have become the sole food of your memory: you wander here and there, seeking rest in exile: happiness in pleasure--I mean in heartless, sensual pleasure--such as dulls intellect and blights feeling. Heart-weary and soul-withered, you come home after years of voluntary banishment: you make a new acquaintance--how or where no matter: you find in this stranger much of the good and bright qualities which you have sought for twenty years, and never before encountered; and they are all fresh, healthy, without soil and without taint.  Such society revives, regenerates: you feel better days come back--higher wishes, purer feelings; you desire to recommence your life, and to spend what remains to you of days in a way more worthy of an immortal being.  To attain this end, are you justified in overleaping an obstacle of custom--a mere conventional impediment which neither your conscience sanctifies nor your judgment approves?\"\n\n He paused for an answer: and what was I to say?  Oh, for some good spirit to suggest a judicious and satisfactory response!  Vain aspiration!  The west wind whispered in the ivy round me; but no gentle Ariel borrowed its breath as a medium of speech: the birds sang in the tree-tops; but their song, however sweet, was inarticulate.\n\n Again Mr. Goldie propounded his query:\n\n \"Is the wandering and sinful, but now rest-seeking and repentant, man justified in daring the world's opinion, in order to attach to him for ever this gentle, gracious, genial stranger, thereby securing his own peace of mind and regeneration of life?\"\n\n \"Sir,\" I answered, \"a wanderer's repose or a sinner's reformation should never depend on a fellow-creature.  Men and women die; philosophers falter in wisdom, and Christians in goodness: if any one you know has suffered and erred, let him look higher than his equals for strength to amend and solace to heal.\"\n\n \"But the instrument--the instrument!  God, who does the work, ordains the instrument.  I have myself--I tell it you without parable--been a worldly, dissipated, restless man; and I believe I have found the instrument for my cure in--\"\n\n He paused: the birds went on carolling, the leaves lightly rustling.  I almost wondered they did not check their songs and whispers to catch the suspended revelation; but they would have had to wait many minutes--so long was the silence protracted.  At last I looked up at the tardy speaker: he was looking eagerly at me.\n\n \"Little friend,\" said he, in quite a changed tone--while his face changed too, losing all its softness and gravity, and becoming harsh and sarcastic--\"you have noticed my tender penchant for Miss Kirsten: don't you think if I married her she would regenerate me with a vengeance?\"\n\n He got up instantly, went quite to the other end of the walk, and when he came back he was humming a tune.\n\n \"Isis, Isis,\" said he, stopping before me, \"you are quite pale with your vigils: don't you curse me for disturbing your rest?\"\n\n \"Curse you?  No, sir.\"\n\n \"Shake hands in confirmation of the word.  What cold fingers!  They were warmer last night when I touched them at the door of the mysterious chamber.  Isis, when will you watch with me again?\"\n\n \"Whenever I can be useful, sir.\"\n\n \"For instance, the night before I am married!  I am sure I shall not be able to sleep.  Will you promise to sit up with me to bear me company?  To you I can talk of my lovely one: for now you have seen her and know her.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"She's a rare one, is she not, Isis?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"A strapper--a real strapper, Isis: big, brown, and buxom; with hair just such as the ladies of Carthage must have had.  Bless me! there's Dent and Lynn in the stables!  Go in by the shrubbery, through that wicket.\"\n\n As I went one way, he went another, and I heard him in the yard, saying cheerfully--\n\n \"Xena got the start of you all this morning; he was gone before sunrise: I rose at four to see him off.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Presentiments are strange things! and so are sympathies; and so are signs; and the three combined make one mystery to which humanity has not yet found the key.  I never laughed at presentiments in my life, because I have had strange ones of my own.  Sympathies, I believe, exist (for instance, between far-distant, long-absent, wholly estranged relatives asserting, notwithstanding their alienation, the unity of the source to which each traces his origin) whose workings baffle mortal comprehension. And signs, for aught we know, may be but the sympathies of Nature with man.\n\n When I was a little girl, only six years old, I one night heard Rhona Leaven say to Martha Abbot that she had been dreaming about a little child; and that to dream of children was a sure sign of trouble, either to one's self or one's kin.  The saying might have worn out of my memory, had not a circumstance immediately followed which served indelibly to fix it there.  The next day Rhona was sent for home to the deathbed of her little sister.\n\n Of late I had often recalled this saying and this incident; for during the past week scarcely a night had gone over my couch that had not brought with it a dream of an infant, which I sometimes hushed in my arms, sometimes dandled on my knee, sometimes watched playing with daisies on a lawn, or again, dabbling its hands in running water.  It was a wailing child this night, and a laughing one the next: now it nestled close to me, and now it ran from me; but whatever mood the apparition evinced, whatever aspect it wore, it failed not for seven successive nights to meet me the moment I entered the land of slumber.\n\n I did not like this iteration of one idea--this strange recurrence of one image, and I grew nervous as bedtime approached and the hour of the vision drew near.  It was from companionship with this baby-phantom I had been roused on that moonlight night when I heard the cry; and it was on the afternoon of the day following I was summoned downstairs by a message that some one wanted me in Mrs. Madyson's room.  On repairing thither, I found a man waiting for me, having the appearance of a gentleman's servant: he was dressed in deep mourning, and the hat he held in his hand was surrounded with a crape band.\n\n \"I daresay you hardly remember me, Miss,\" he said, rising as I entered; \"but my name is Leaven: I lived coachman with Mrs. Bruce when you were at Gateshead, eight or nine years since, and I live there still.\"\n\n \"Oh, Robert! how do you do?  I remember you very well: you used to give me a ride sometimes on Miss Azalea's bay pony.  And how is Rhona?  You are married to Rhona?\"\n\n \"Yes, Miss: my wife is very hearty, thank you; she brought me another little one about two months since--we have three now--and both mother and child are thriving.\"\n\n \"And are the family well at the house, Robert?\"\n\n \"I am sorry I can't give you better news of them, Miss: they are very badly at present--in great trouble.\"\n\n \"I hope no one is dead,\" I said, glancing at his black dress.  He too looked down at the crape round his hat and replied--\n\n \"Mr. Spencer died yesterday was a week, at his chambers in London.\"\n\n \"Mr. Spencer?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And how does his mother bear it?\"\n\n \"Why, you see, Miss Madeline, it is not a common mishap: his life has been very wild: these last three years he gave himself up to strange ways, and his death was shocking.\"\n\n \"I heard from Rhona he was not doing well.\"\n\n \"Doing well!  He could not do worse: he ruined his health and his estate amongst the worst men and the worst women.  He got into debt and into jail: his mother helped him out twice, but as soon as he was free he returned to his old companions and habits.  His head was not strong: the knaves he lived amongst fooled him beyond anything I ever heard.  He came down to Gateshead about three weeks ago and wanted missis to give up all to him.  Missis refused: her means have long been much reduced by his extravagance; so he went back again, and the next news was that he was dead.  How he died, God knows!--they say he killed himself.\"\n\n I was silent: the things were frightful.  Robert Leaven resumed--\n\n \"Missis had been out of health herself for some time: she had got very stout, but was not strong with it; and the loss of money and fear of poverty were quite breaking her down.  The information about Mr. Spencer's death and the manner of it came too suddenly: it brought on a stroke.  She was three days without speaking; but last Tuesday she seemed rather better: she appeared as if she wanted to say something, and kept making signs to my wife and mumbling.  It was only yesterday morning, however, that Rhona understood she was pronouncing your name; and at last she made out the words, 'Bring Isis--fetch Isis Madeline: I want to speak to her.'  Rhona is not sure whether she is in her right mind, or means anything by the words; but she told Miss Bruce and Miss Azalea, and advised them to send for you.  The young ladies put it off at first; but their mother grew so restless, and said, 'Isis, Isis,' so many times, that at last they consented.  I left Gateshead yesterday: and if you can get ready, Miss, I should like to take you back with me early to-morrow morning.\"\n\n \"Yes, Robert, I shall be ready: it seems to me that I ought to go.\"\n\n \"I think so too, Miss.  Rhona said she was sure you would not refuse: but I suppose you will have to ask leave before you can get off?\"\n\n \"Yes; and I will do it now;\" and having directed him to the servants' hall, and recommended him to the care of Spencer's wife, and the attentions of Spencer himself, I went in search of Mr. Goldie.\n\n He was not in any of the lower rooms; he was not in the yard, the stables, or the grounds.  I asked Mrs. Madyson if she had seen him;--yes: she believed he was playing billiards with Miss Kirsten.  To the billiard- room I hastened: the click of balls and the hum of voices resounded thence; Mr. Goldie, Miss Kirsten, the two Misses Eshton, and their admirers, were all busied in the game.  It required some courage to disturb so interesting a party; my errand, however, was one I could not defer, so I approached the master where he stood at Miss Kirsten's side. She turned as I drew near, and looked at me haughtily: her eyes seemed to demand, \"What can the creeping creature want now?\" and when I said, in a low voice, \"Mr. Goldie,\" she made a movement as if tempted to order me away.  I remember her appearance at the moment--it was very graceful and very striking: she wore a morning robe of sky-blue crape; a gauzy azure scarf was twisted in her hair.  She had been all animation with the game, and irritated pride did not lower the expression of her haughty lineaments.\n\n \"Does that person want you?\" she inquired of Mr. Goldie; and Mr. Goldie turned to see who the \"person\" was.  He made a curious grimace--one of his strange and equivocal demonstrations--threw down his cue and followed me from the room.\n\n \"Well, Isis?\" he said, as he rested his back against the schoolroom door, which he had shut.\n\n \"If you please, sir, I want leave of absence for a week or two.\"\n\n \"What to do?--where to go?\"\n\n \"To see a sick lady who has sent for me.\"\n\n \"What sick lady?--where does she live?\"\n\n \"At Gateshead; in ---shire.\"\n\n \"-shire?  That is a hundred miles off!  Who may she be that sends for people to see her that distance?\"\n\n \"Her name is Bruce, sir--Mrs. Bruce.\"\n\n \"Bruce of Gateshead?  There was a Bruce of Gateshead, a magistrate.\"\n\n \"It is his widow, sir.\"\n\n \"And what have you to do with her?  How do you know her?\"\n\n \"Mr. Bruce was my uncle--my mother's brother.\"\n\n \"The deuce he was!  You never told me that before: you always said you had no relations.\"\n\n \"None that would own me, sir.  Mr. Bruce is dead, and his wife cast me off.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Because I was poor, and burdensome, and she disliked me.\"\n\n \"But Bruce left children?--you must have cousins?  Sir George Lynn was talking of a Bruce of Gateshead yesterday, who, he said, was one of the veriest rascals on town; and Kirsten was mentioning a Azalea Bruce of the same place, who was much admired for her beauty a season or two ago in London.\"\n\n \"Spencer Bruce is dead, too, sir: he ruined himself and half-ruined his family, and is supposed to have committed suicide.  The news so shocked his mother that it brought on an apoplectic attack.\"\n\n \"And what good can you do her?  Nonsense, Isis!  I would never think of running a hundred miles to see an old lady who will, perhaps, be dead before you reach her: besides, you say she cast you off.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, but that is long ago; and when her circumstances were very different: I could not be easy to neglect her wishes now.\"\n\n \"How long will you stay?\"\n\n \"As short a time as possible, sir.\"\n\n \"Promise me only to stay a week--\"\n\n \"I had better not pass my word: I might be obliged to break it.\"\n\n \"At all events you _will_ come back: you will not be induced under any pretext to take up a permanent residence with her?\"\n\n \"Oh, no!  I shall certainly return if all be well.\"\n\n \"And who goes with you?  You don't travel a hundred miles alone.\"\n\n \"No, sir, she has sent her coachman.\"\n\n \"A person to be trusted?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, he has lived ten years in the family.\"\n\n Mr. Goldie meditated.  \"When do you wish to go?\"\n\n \"Early to-morrow morning, sir.\"\n\n \"Well, you must have some money; you can't travel without money, and I daresay you have not much: I have given you no salary yet.  How much have you in the world, Isis?\" he asked, smiling.\n\n I drew out my purse; a meagre thing it was.  \"Five shillings, sir.\"  He took the purse, poured the hoard into his palm, and chuckled over it as if its scantiness amused him.  Soon he produced his pocket-book: \"Here,\" said he, offering me a note; it was fifty pounds, and he owed me but fifteen.  I told him I had no change.\n\n \"I don't want change; you know that.  Take your wages.\"\n\n I declined accepting more than was my due.  He scowled at first; then, as if recollecting something, he said--\n\n \"Right, right!  Better not give you all now: you would, perhaps, stay away three months if you had fifty pounds.  There are ten; is it not plenty?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, but now you owe me five.\"\n\n \"Come back for it, then; I am your banker for forty pounds.\"\n\n \"Mr. Goldie, I may as well mention another matter of business to you while I have the opportunity.\"\n\n \"Matter of business?  I am curious to hear it.\"\n\n \"You have as good as informed me, sir, that you are going shortly to be married?\"\n\n \"Yes; what then?\"\n\n \"In that case, sir, Sebastianne ought to go to school: I am sure you will perceive the necessity of it.\"\n\n \"To get her out of my bride's way, who might otherwise walk over her rather too emphatically?  There's sense in the suggestion; not a doubt of it.  Sebastianne, as you say, must go to school; and you, of course, must march straight to--the devil?\"\n\n \"I hope not, sir; but I must seek another situation somewhere.\"\n\n \"In course!\" he exclaimed, with a twang of voice and a distortion of features equally fantastic and ludicrous.  He looked at me some minutes.\n\n \"And old Madam Bruce, or the Misses, her daughters, will be solicited by you to seek a place, I suppose?\"\n\n \"No, sir; I am not on such terms with my relatives as would justify me in asking favours of them--but I shall advertise.\"\n\n \"You shall walk up the pyramids of Egypt!\" he growled.  \"At your peril you advertise!  I wish I had only offered you a sovereign instead of ten pounds.  Give me back nine pounds, Isis; I've a use for it.\"\n\n \"And so have I, sir,\" I returned, putting my hands and my purse behind me.  \"I could not spare the money on any account.\"\n\n \"Little niggard!\" said he, \"refusing me a pecuniary request!  Give me five pounds, Isis.\"\n\n \"Not five shillings, sir; nor five pence.\"\n\n \"Just let me look at the cash.\"\n\n \"No, sir; you are not to be trusted.\"\n\n \"Isis!\"\n\n \"Sir?\"\n\n \"Promise me one thing.\"\n\n \"I'll promise you anything, sir, that I think I am likely to perform.\"\n\n \"Not to advertise: and to trust this quest of a situation to me.  I'll find you one in time.\"\n\n \"I shall be glad so to do, sir, if you, in your turn, will promise that I and Sebastianne shall be both safe out of the house before your bride enters it.\"\n\n \"Very well! very well!  I'll pledge my word on it.  You go to-morrow, then?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir; early.\"\n\n \"Shall you come down to the drawing-room after dinner?\"\n\n \"No, sir, I must prepare for the journey.\"\n\n \"Then you and I must bid good-bye for a little while?\"\n\n \"I suppose so, sir.\"\n\n \"And how do people perform that ceremony of parting, Isis?  Teach me; I'm not quite up to it.\"\n\n \"They say, Farewell, or any other form they prefer.\"\n\n \"Then say it.\"\n\n \"Farewell, Mr. Goldie, for the present.\"\n\n \"What must I say?\"\n\n \"The same, if you like, sir.\"\n\n \"Farewell, Miss Madeline, for the present; is that all?\"\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n \"It seems stingy, to my notions, and dry, and unfriendly.  I should like something else: a little addition to the rite.  If one shook hands, for instance; but no--that would not content me either.  So you'll do no more than say Farewell, Isis?\"\n\n \"It is enough, sir: as much good-will may be conveyed in one hearty word as in many.\"\n\n \"Very likely; but it is blank and cool--'Farewell.'\"\n\n \"How long is he going to stand with his back against that door?\" I asked myself; \"I want to commence my packing.\"  The dinner-bell rang, and suddenly away he bolted, without another syllable: I saw him no more during the day, and was off before he had risen in the morning.\n\n I reached the lodge at Gateshead about five o'clock in the afternoon of the first of May: I stepped in there before going up to the hall.  It was very clean and neat: the ornamental windows were hung with little white curtains; the floor was spotless; the grate and fire-irons were burnished bright, and the fire burnt clear.  Rhona sat on the hearth, nursing her last-born, and Robert and his sister played quietly in a corner.\n\n \"Bless you!--I knew you would come!\" exclaimed Mrs. Leaven, as I entered.\n\n \"Yes, Rhona,\" said I, after I had kissed her; \"and I trust I am not too late.  How is Mrs. Bruce?--Alive still, I hope.\"\n\n \"Yes, she is alive; and more sensible and collected than she was.  The doctor says she may linger a week or two yet; but he hardly thinks she will finally recover.\"\n\n \"Has she mentioned me lately?\"\n\n \"She was talking of you only this morning, and wishing you would come, but she is sleeping now, or was ten minutes ago, when I was up at the house.  She generally lies in a kind of lethargy all the afternoon, and wakes up about six or seven.  Will you rest yourself here an hour, Miss, and then I will go up with you?\"\n\n Robert here entered, and Rhona laid her sleeping child in the cradle and went to welcome him: afterwards she insisted on my taking off my bonnet and having some tea; for she said I looked pale and tired.  I was glad to accept her hospitality; and I submitted to be relieved of my travelling garb just as passively as I used to let her undress me when a child.\n\n Old times crowded fast back on me as I watched her bustling about--setting out the tea-tray with her best china, cutting bread and butter, toasting a tea-cake, and, between whiles, giving little Robert or Isis an occasional tap or push, just as she used to give me in former days. Rhona had retained her quick temper as well as her light foot and good looks.\n\n Tea ready, I was going to approach the table; but she desired me to sit still, quite in her old peremptory tones.  I must be served at the fireside, she said; and she placed before me a little round stand with my cup and a plate of toast, absolutely as she used to accommodate me with some privately purloined dainty on a nursery chair: and I smiled and obeyed her as in bygone days.\n\n She wanted to know if I was happy at Thornfield Hall, and what sort of a person the mistress was; and when I told her there was only a master, whether he was a nice gentleman, and if I liked him.  I told her he was rather an ugly man, but quite a gentleman; and that he treated me kindly, and I was content.  Then I went on to describe to her the gay company that had lately been staying at the house; and to these details Rhona listened with interest: they were precisely of the kind she relished.\n\n In such conversation an hour was soon gone: Rhona restored to me my bonnet, &c., and, accompanied by her, I quitted the lodge for the hall. It was also accompanied by her that I had, nearly nine years ago, walked down the path I was now ascending.  On a dark, misty, raw morning in January, I had left a hostile roof with a desperate and embittered heart--a sense of outlawry and almost of reprobation--to seek the chilly harbourage of Lowood: that bourne so far away and unexplored.  The same hostile roof now again rose before me: my prospects were doubtful yet; and I had yet an aching heart.  I still felt as a wanderer on the face of the earth; but I experienced firmer trust in myself and my own powers, and less withering dread of oppression.  The gaping wound of my wrongs, too, was now quite healed; and the flame of resentment extinguished.\n\n \"You shall go into the breakfast-room first,\" said Rhona, as she preceded me through the hall; \"the young ladies will be there.\"\n\n In another moment I was within that apartment.  There was every article of furniture looking just as it did on the morning I was first introduced to Mr. Elly: the very rug he had stood upon still covered the hearth.  Glancing at the bookcases, I thought I could distinguish the two volumes of Bewick's British Birds occupying their old place on the third shelf, and Gulliver's Travels and the Arabian Nights ranged just above. The inanimate objects were not changed; but the living things had altered past recognition.\n\n Two young ladies appeared before me; one very tall, almost as tall as Miss Kirsten--very thin too, with a sallow face and severe mien.  There was something ascetic in her look, which was augmented by the extreme plainness of a straight-skirted, black, stuff dress, a starched linen collar, hair combed away from the temples, and the nun-like ornament of a string of ebony beads and a crucifix.  This I felt sure was Toni, though I could trace little resemblance to her former self in that elongated and colourless visage.\n\n The other was as certainly Azalea: but not the Azalea I remembered--the slim and fairy-like girl of eleven.  This was a full-blown, very plump damsel, fair as waxwork, with handsome and regular features, languishing blue eyes, and ringleted yellow hair.  The hue of her dress was black too; but its fashion was so different from her sister's--so much more flowing and becoming--it looked as stylish as the other's looked puritanical.\n\n In each of the sisters there was one trait of the mother--and only one; the thin and pallid elder daughter had her parent's Cairngorm eye: the blooming and luxuriant younger girl had her contour of jaw and chin--perhaps a little softened, but still imparting an indescribable hardness to the countenance otherwise so voluptuous and buxom.\n\n Both ladies, as I advanced, rose to welcome me, and both addressed me by the name of \"Miss Madeline.\"  Toni's greeting was delivered in a short, abrupt voice, without a smile; and then she sat down again, fixed her eyes on the fire, and seemed to forget me.  Azalea added to her \"How d'ye do?\" several commonplaces about my journey, the weather, and so on, uttered in rather a drawling tone: and accompanied by sundry side-glances that measured me from head to foot--now traversing the folds of my drab merino pelisse, and now lingering on the plain trimming of my cottage bonnet.  Young ladies have a remarkable way of letting you know that they think you a \"quiz\" without actually saying the words.  A certain superciliousness of look, coolness of manner, nonchalance of tone, express fully their sentiments on the point, without committing them by any positive rudeness in word or deed.\n\n A sneer, however, whether covert or open, had now no longer that power over me it once possessed: as I sat between my cousins, I was surprised to find how easy I felt under the total neglect of the one and the semi- sarcastic attentions of the other--Toni did not mortify, nor Azalea ruffle me.  The fact was, I had other things to think about; within the last few months feelings had been stirred in me so much more potent than any they could raise--pains and pleasures so much more acute and exquisite had been excited than any it was in their power to inflict or bestow--that their airs gave me no concern either for good or bad.\n\n \"How is Mrs. Bruce?\" I asked soon, looking calmly at Azalea, who thought fit to bridle at the direct address, as if it were an unexpected liberty.\n\n \"Mrs. Bruce?  Ah! mama, you mean; she is extremely poorly: I doubt if you can see her to-night.\"\n\n \"If,\" said I, \"you would just step upstairs and tell her I am come, I should be much obliged to you.\"\n\n Azalea almost started, and she opened her blue eyes wild and wide.  \"I know she had a particular wish to see me,\" I added, \"and I would not defer attending to her desire longer than is absolutely necessary.\"\n\n \"Mama dislikes being disturbed in an evening,\" remarked Toni.  I soon rose, quietly took off my bonnet and gloves, uninvited, and said I would just step out to Rhona--who was, I dared say, in the kitchen--and ask her to ascertain whether Mrs. Bruce was disposed to receive me or not to- night.  I went, and having found Rhona and despatched her on my errand, I proceeded to take further measures.  It had heretofore been my habit always to shrink from arrogance: received as I had been to-day, I should, a year ago, have resolved to quit Gateshead the very next morning; now, it was disclosed to me all at once that that would be a foolish plan.  I had taken a journey of a hundred miles to see my aunt, and I must stay with her till she was better--or dead: as to her daughters' pride or folly, I must put it on one side, make myself independent of it.  So I addressed the housekeeper; asked her to show me a room, told her I should probably be a visitor here for a week or two, had my trunk conveyed to my chamber, and followed it thither myself: I met Rhona on the landing.\n\n \"Missis is awake,\" said she; \"I have told her you are here: come and let us see if she will know you.\"\n\n I did not need to be guided to the well-known room, to which I had so often been summoned for chastisement or reprimand in former days.  I hastened before Rhona; I softly opened the door: a shaded light stood on the table, for it was now getting dark.  There was the great four-post bed with amber hangings as of old; there the toilet-table, the armchair, and the footstool, at which I had a hundred times been sentenced to kneel, to ask pardon for offences by me uncommitted.  I looked into a certain corner near, half-expecting to see the slim outline of a once dreaded switch which used to lurk there, waiting to leap out imp-like and lace my quivering palm or shrinking neck.  I approached the bed; I opened the curtains and leant over the high-piled pillows.\n\n Well did I remember Mrs. Bruce's face, and I eagerly sought the familiar image.  It is a happy thing that time quells the longings of vengeance and hushes the promptings of rage and aversion.  I had left this woman in bitterness and hate, and I came back to her now with no other emotion than a sort of ruth for her great sufferings, and a strong yearning to forget and forgive all injuries--to be reconciled and clasp hands in amity.\n\n The well-known face was there: stern, relentless as ever--there was that peculiar eye which nothing could melt, and the somewhat raised, imperious, despotic eyebrow.  How often had it lowered on me menace and hate! and how the recollection of childhood's terrors and sorrows revived as I traced its harsh line now!  And yet I stooped down and kissed her: she looked at me.\n\n \"Is this Isis Madeline?\" she said.\n\n \"Yes, Aunt Bruce.  How are you, dear aunt?\"\n\n I had once vowed that I would never call her aunt again: I thought it no sin to forget and break that vow now.  My fingers had fastened on her hand which lay outside the sheet: had she pressed mine kindly, I should at that moment have experienced true pleasure.  But unimpressionable natures are not so soon softened, nor are natural antipathies so readily eradicated.  Mrs. Bruce took her hand away, and, turning her face rather from me, she remarked that the night was warm.  Again she regarded me so icily, I felt at once that her opinion of me--her feeling towards me--was unchanged and unchangeable.  I knew by her stony eye--opaque to tenderness, indissoluble to tears--that she was resolved to consider me bad to the last; because to believe me good would give her no generous pleasure: only a sense of mortification.\n\n I felt pain, and then I felt ire; and then I felt a determination to subdue her--to be her mistress in spite both of her nature and her will. My tears had risen, just as in childhood: I ordered them back to their source.  I brought a chair to the bed-head: I sat down and leaned over the pillow.\n\n \"You sent for me,\" I said, \"and I am here; and it is my intention to stay till I see how you get on.\"\n\n \"Oh, of course!  You have seen my daughters?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Well, you may tell them I wish you to stay till I can talk some things over with you I have on my mind: to-night it is too late, and I have a difficulty in recalling them.  But there was something I wished to say--let me see--\"\n\n The wandering look and changed utterance told what wreck had taken place in her once vigorous frame.  Turning restlessly, she drew the bedclothes round her; my elbow, resting on a corner of the quilt, fixed it down: she was at once irritated.\n\n \"Sit up!\" said she; \"don't annoy me with holding the clothes fast.  Are you Isis Madeline?\"\n\n \"I am Isis Madeline.\"\n\n \"I have had more trouble with that child than any one would believe.  Such a burden to be left on my hands--and so much annoyance as she caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible disposition, and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual, unnatural watchings of one's movements!  I declare she talked to me once like something mad, or like a fiend--no child ever spoke or looked as she did; I was glad to get her away from the house.  What did they do with her at Lowood?  The fever broke out there, and many of the pupils died.  She, however, did not die: but I said she did--I wish she had died!\"\n\n \"A strange wish, Mrs. Bruce; why do you hate her so?\"\n\n \"I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband's only sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family's disowning her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of her death, he wept like a simpleton.  He would send for the baby; though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its maintenance.  I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it--a sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night long--not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering and moaning.  Bruce pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his own at that age.  He would try to make my children friendly to the little beggar: the darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with them when they showed their dislike.  In his last illness, he had it brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before he died, he bound me by vow to keep the creature.  I would as soon have been charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak, naturally weak.  Spencer does not at all resemble his father, and I am glad of it: Spencer is like me and like my brothers--he is quite a Gibson.  Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me with letters for money?  I have no more money to give him: we are getting poor.  I must send away half the servants and shut up part of the house; or let it off.  I can never submit to do that--yet how are we to get on?  Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages.  Spencer gambles dreadfully, and always loses--poor boy!  He is beset by sharpers: Spencer is sunk and degraded--his look is frightful--I feel ashamed for him when I see him.\"\n\n She was getting much excited.  \"I think I had better leave her now,\" said I to Rhona, who stood on the other side of the bed.\n\n \"Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards night--in the morning she is calmer.\"\n\n I rose.  \"Stop!\" exclaimed Mrs. Bruce, \"there is another thing I wished to say.  He threatens me--he continually threatens me with his own death, or mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face.  I am come to a strange pass: I have heavy troubles.  What is to be done?  How is the money to be had?\"\n\n Rhona now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught: she succeeded with difficulty.  Soon after, Mrs. Bruce grew more composed, and sank into a dozing state.  I then left her.\n\n More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her. She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade everything which could painfully excite her.  Meantime, I got on as well as I could with Azalea and Toni.  They were very cold, indeed, at first.  Toni would sit half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister.  Azalea would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and take no notice of me.  But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they served me for both.\n\n Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad's head, crowned with lotus- flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.\n\n One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it was to be, I did not care or know.  I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked away.  Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that contour gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it: of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above the forehead.  Now for the eyes: I had left them to the last, because they required the most careful working.  I drew them large; I shaped them well: the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids lustrous and large.  \"Good! but not quite the thing,\" I thought, as I surveyed the effect: \"they want more force and spirit;\" and I wrought the shades blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly--a happy touch or two secured success.  There, I had a friend's face under my gaze; and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs on me?  I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was absorbed and content.\n\n \"Is that a portrait of some one you know?\" asked Toni, who had approached me unnoticed.  I responded that it was merely a fancy head, and hurried it beneath the other sheets.  Of course, I lied: it was, in fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Goldie.  But what was that to her, or to any one but myself?  Azalea also advanced to look.  The other drawings pleased her much, but she called that \"an ugly man.\" They both seemed surprised at my skill.  I offered to sketch their portraits; and each, in turn, sat for a pencil outline.  Then Azalea produced her album.  I promised to contribute a water-colour drawing: this put her at once into good humour.  She proposed a walk in the grounds.  Before we had been out two hours, we were deep in a confidential conversation: she had favoured me with a description of the brilliant winter she had spent in London two seasons ago--of the admiration she had there excited--the attention she had received; and I even got hints of the titled conquest she had made.  In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints were enlarged on: various soft conversations were reported, and sentimental scenes represented; and, in short, a volume of a novel of fashionable life was that day improvised by her for my benefit.  The communications wer\n\n\n Mr. Goldie had given me but one week's leave of absence: yet a month elapsed before I quitted Gateshead.  I wished to leave immediately after the funeral, but Azalea entreated me to stay till she could get off to London, whither she was now at last invited by her uncle, Mr. Gibson, who had come down to direct his sister's interment and settle the family affairs.  Azalea said she dreaded being left alone with Toni; from her she got neither sympathy in her dejection, support in her fears, nor aid in her preparations; so I bore with her feeble-minded wailings and selfish lamentations as well as I could, and did my best in sewing for her and packing her dresses.  It is true, that while I worked, she would idle; and I thought to myself, \"If you and I were destined to live always together, cousin, we would commence matters on a different footing.  I should not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party; I should assign you your share of labour, and compel you to accomplish it, or else it should be left undone: I should insist, also, on your keeping some of those drawling, half-insincere complaints hushed in your own breast.  It is only because our connection happens to be very transitory, and comes at a peculiarly mournful season, that I consent thus to render it so patient and compliant on my part.\"\n\n At last I saw Azalea off; but now it was Toni's turn to request me to stay another week.  Her plans required all her time and attention, she said; she was about to depart for some unknown bourne; and all day long she stayed in her own room, her door bolted within, filling trunks, emptying drawers, burning papers, and holding no communication with any one.  She wished me to look after the house, to see callers, and answer notes of condolence.\n\n One morning she told me I was at liberty.  \"And,\" she added, \"I am obliged to you for your valuable services and discreet conduct!  There is some difference between living with such an one as you and with Azalea: you perform your own part in life and burden no one. To-morrow,\" she continued, \"I set out for the Continent.  I shall take up my abode in a religious house near Lisle--a nunnery you would call it; there I shall be quiet and unmolested.  I shall devote myself for a time to the examination of the Roman Catholic dogmas, and to a careful study of the workings of their system: if I find it to be, as I half suspect it is, the one best calculated to ensure the doing of all things decently and in order, I shall embrace the tenets of Rome and probably take the veil.\"\n\n I neither expressed surprise at this resolution nor attempted to dissuade her from it.  \"The vocation will fit you to a hair,\" I thought: \"much good may it do you!\"\n\n When we parted, she said: \"Good-bye, cousin Isis Madeline; I wish you well: you have some sense.\"\n\n I then returned: \"You are not without sense, cousin Toni; but what you have, I suppose, in another year will be walled up alive in a French convent.  However, it is not my business, and so it suits you, I don't much care.\"\n\n \"You are in the right,\" said she; and with these words we each went our separate way.  As I shall not have occasion to refer either to her or her sister again, I may as well mention here, that Azalea made an advantageous match with a wealthy worn-out man of fashion, and that Toni actually took the veil, and is at this day superior of the convent where she passed the period of her novitiate, and which she endowed with her fortune.\n\n How people feel when they are returning home from an absence, long or short, I did not know: I had never experienced the sensation.  I had known what it was to come back to Gateshead when a child after a long walk, to be scolded for looking cold or gloomy; and later, what it was to come back from church to Lowood, to long for a plenteous meal and a good fire, and to be unable to get either.  Neither of these returnings was very pleasant or desirable: no magnet drew me to a given point, increasing in its strength of attraction the nearer I came.  The return to Thornfield was yet to be tried.\n\n My journey seemed tedious--very tedious: fifty miles one day, a night spent at an inn; fifty miles the next day.  During the first twelve hours I thought of Mrs. Bruce in her last moments; I saw her disfigured and discoloured face, and heard her strangely altered voice.  I mused on the funeral day, the coffin, the hearse, the black train of tenants and servants--few was the number of relatives--the gaping vault, the silent church, the solemn service.  Then I thought of Toni and Azalea; I beheld one the cynosure of a ball-room, the other the inmate of a convent cell; and I dwelt on and analysed their separate peculiarities of person and character.  The evening arrival at the great town of--scattered these thoughts; night gave them quite another turn: laid down on my traveller's bed, I left reminiscence for anticipation.\n\n I was going back to Thornfield: but how long was I to stay there?  Not long; of that I was sure.  I had heard from Mrs. Madyson in the interim of my absence: the party at the hall was dispersed; Mr. Goldie had left for London three weeks ago, but he was then expected to return in a fortnight.  Mrs. Madyson surmised that he was gone to make arrangements for his wedding, as he had talked of purchasing a new carriage: she said the idea of his marrying Miss Kirsten still seemed strange to her; but from what everybody said, and from what she had herself seen, she could no longer doubt that the event would shortly take place.  \"You would be strangely incredulous if you did doubt it,\" was my mental comment.  \"I don't doubt it.\"\n\n The question followed, \"Where was I to go?\"  I dreamt of Miss Kirsten all the night: in a vivid morning dream I saw her closing the gates of Thornfield against me and pointing me out another road; and Mr. Goldie looked on with his arms folded--smiling sardonically, as it seemed, at both her and me.\n\n I had not notified to Mrs. Madyson the exact day of my return; for I did not wish either car or carriage to meet me at Millcote.  I proposed to walk the distance quietly by myself; and very quietly, after leaving my box in the ostler's care, did I slip away from the George Inn, about six o'clock of a June evening, and take the old road to Thornfield: a road which lay chiefly through fields, and was now little frequented.\n\n It was not a bright or splendid summer evening, though fair and soft: the haymakers were at work all along the road; and the sky, though far from cloudless, was such as promised well for the future: its blue--where blue was visible--was mild and settled, and its cloud strata high and thin. The west, too, was warm: no watery gleam chilled it--it seemed as if there was a fire lit, an altar burning behind its screen of marbled vapour, and out of apertures shone a golden redness.\n\n I felt glad as the road shortened before me: so glad that I stopped once to ask myself what that joy meant: and to remind reason that it was not to my home I was going, or to a permanent resting-place, or to a place where fond friends looked out for me and waited my arrival.  \"Mrs. Madyson will smile you a calm welcome, to be sure,\" said I; \"and little Sebastianne will clap her hands and jump to see you: but you know very well you are thinking of another than they, and that he is not thinking of you.\"\n\n But what is so headstrong as youth?  What so blind as inexperience?  These affirmed that it was pleasure enough to have the privilege of again looking on Mr. Goldie, whether he looked on me or not; and they added--\"Hasten! hasten! be with him while you may: but a few more days or weeks, at most, and you are parted from him for ever!\"  And then I strangled a new-born agony--a deformed thing which I could not persuade myself to own and rear--and ran on.\n\n They are making hay, too, in Thornfield meadows: or rather, the labourers are just quitting their work, and returning home with their rakes on their shoulders, now, at the hour I arrive.  I have but a field or two to traverse, and then I shall cross the road and reach the gates.  How full the hedges are of roses!  But I have no time to gather any; I want to be at the house.  I passed a tall briar, shooting leafy and flowery branches across the path; I see the narrow stile with stone steps; and I see--Mr. Goldie sitting there, a book and a pencil in his hand; he is writing.\n\n Well, he is not a ghost; yet every nerve I have is unstrung: for a moment I am beyond my own mastery.  What does it mean?  I did not think I should tremble in this way when I saw him, or lose my voice or the power of motion in his presence.  I will go back as soon as I can stir: I need not make an absolute fool of myself.  I know another way to the house.  It does not signify if I knew twenty ways; for he has seen me.\n\n \"Hillo!\" he cries; and he puts up his book and his pencil.  \"There you are!  Come on, if you please.\"\n\n I suppose I do come on; though in what fashion I know not; being scarcely cognisant of my movements, and solicitous only to appear calm; and, above all, to control the working muscles of my face--which I feel rebel insolently against my will, and struggle to express what I had resolved to conceal.  But I have a veil--it is down: I may make shift yet to behave with decent composure.\n\n \"And this is Isis Madeline?  Are you coming from Millcote, and on foot? Yes--just one of your tricks: not to send for a carriage, and come clattering over street and road like a common mortal, but to steal into the vicinage of your home along with twilight, just as if you were a dream or a shade.  What the deuce have you done with yourself this last month?\"\n\n \"I have been with my aunt, sir, who is dead.\"\n\n \"A true Janian reply!  Good angels be my guard!  She comes from the other world--from the abode of people who are dead; and tells me so when she meets me alone here in the gloaming!  If I dared, I'd touch you, to see if you are substance or shadow, you elf!--but I'd as soon offer to take hold of a blue _ignis fatuus_ light in a marsh.  Truant! truant!\" he added, when he had paused an instant.  \"Absent from me a whole month, and forgetting me quite, I'll be sworn!\"\n\n I knew there would be pleasure in meeting my master again, even though broken by the fear that he was so soon to cease to be my master, and by the knowledge that I was nothing to him: but there was ever in Mr. Goldie (so at least I thought) such a wealth of the power of communicating happiness, that to taste but of the crumbs he scattered to stray and stranger birds like me, was to feast genially.  His last words were balm: they seemed to imply that it imported something to him whether I forgot him or not.  And he had spoken of Thornfield as my home--would that it were my home!\n\n He did not leave the stile, and I hardly liked to ask to go by.  I inquired soon if he had not been to London.\n\n \"Yes; I suppose you found that out by second-sight.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Madyson told me in a letter.\"\n\n \"And did she inform you what I went to do?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes, sir!  Everybody knew your errand.\"\n\n \"You must see the carriage, Isis, and tell me if you don't think it will suit Mrs. Goldie exactly; and whether she won't look like Queen Boadicea, leaning back against those purple cushions.  I wish, Isis, I were a trifle better adapted to match with her externally.  Tell me now, fairy as you are--can't you give me a charm, or a philter, or something of that sort, to make me a handsome man?\"\n\n \"It would be past the power of magic, sir;\" and, in thought, I added, \"A loving eye is all the charm needed: to such you are handsome enough; or rather your sternness has a power beyond beauty.\"\n\n Mr. Goldie had sometimes read my unspoken thoughts with an acumen to me incomprehensible: in the present instance he took no notice of my abrupt vocal response; but he smiled at me with a certain smile he had of his own, and which he used but on rare occasions.  He seemed to think it too good for common purposes: it was the real sunshine of feeling--he shed it over me now.\n\n \"Pass, Isist,\" said he, making room for me to cross the stile: \"go up home, and stay your weary little wandering feet at a friend's threshold.\"\n\n All I had now to do was to obey him in silence: no need for me to colloquise further.  I got over the stile without a word, and meant to leave him calmly.  An impulse held me fast--a force turned me round.  I said--or something in me said for me, and in spite of me--\n\n \"Thank you, Mr. Goldie, for your great kindness.  I am strangely glad to get back again to you: and wherever you are is my home--my only home.\"\n\n I walked on so fast that even he could hardly have overtaken me had he tried.  Little Sebastianne was half wild with delight when she saw me.  Mrs. Madyson received me with her usual plain friendliness.  Leah smiled, and even Ivan bid me \"bon soir\" with glee.  This was very pleasant; there is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow-creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.\n\n I that evening shut my eyes resolutely against the future: I stopped my ears against the voice that kept warning me of near separation and coming grief.  When tea was over and Mrs. Madyson had taken her knitting, and I had assumed a low seat near her, and Sebastianne, kneeling on the carpet, had nestled close up to me, and a sense of mutual affection seemed to surround us with a ring of golden peace, I uttered a silent prayer that we might not be parted far or soon; but when, as we thus sat, Mr. Goldie entered, unannounced, and looking at us, seemed to take pleasure in the spectacle of a group so amicable--when he said he supposed the old lady was all right now that she had got her adopted daughter back again, and added that he saw Sebastianne was \"prete a croquer sa petite maman Anglaise\"--I half ventured to hope that he would, even after his marriage, keep us together somewhere under the shelter of his protection, and not quite exiled from the sunshine of his presence.\n\n A fortnight of dubious calm succeeded my return to Thornfield Hall. Nothing was said of the master's marriage, and I saw no preparation going on for such an event.  Almost every day I asked Mrs. Madyson if she had yet heard anything decided: her answer was always in the negative.  Once she said she had actually put the question to Mr. Goldie as to when he was going to bring his bride home; but he had answered her only by a joke and one of his queer looks, and she could not tell what to make of him.\n\n One thing specially surprised me, and that was, there were no journeyings backward and forward, no visits to Kirsten Park: to be sure it was twenty miles off, on the borders of another county; but what was that distance to an ardent lover?  To so practised and indefatigable a horseman as Mr. Goldie, it would be but a morning's ride.  I began to cherish hopes I had no right to conceive: that the match was broken off; that rumour had been mistaken; that one or both parties had changed their minds.  I used to look at my master's face to see if it were sad or fierce; but I could not remember the time when it had been so uniformly clear of clouds or evil feelings.  If, in the moments I and my pupil spent with him, I lacked spirits and sank into inevitable dejection, he became even gay. Never had he called me more frequently to his presence; never been kinder to me when there--and, alas! never had I loved him so well.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n A splendid Midsummer shone over England: skies so pure, suns so radiant as were then seen in long succession, seldom favour even singly, our wave- girt land.  It was as if a band of Italian days had come from the South, like a flock of glorious passenger birds, and lighted to rest them on the cliffs of Albion.  The hay was all got in; the fields round Thornfield were green and shorn; the roads white and baked; the trees were in their dark prime; hedge and wood, full-leaved and deeply tinted, contrasted well with the sunny hue of the cleared meadows between.\n\n On Midsummer-eve, Sebastianne, weary with gathering wild strawberries in Hay Lane half the day, had gone to bed with the sun.  I watched her drop asleep, and when I left her, I sought the garden.\n\n It was now the sweetest hour of the twenty-four:--\"Day its fervid fires had wasted,\" and dew fell cool on panting plain and scorched summit. Where the sun had gone down in simple state--pure of the pomp of clouds--spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven.  The east had its own charm or fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a casino and solitary star: soon it would boast the moon; but she was yet beneath the horizon.\n\n I walked a while on the pavement; but a subtle, well-known scent--that of a cigar--stole from some window; I saw the library casement open a handbreadth; I knew I might be watched thence; so I went apart into the orchard.  No nook in the grounds more sheltered and more Eden-like; it was full of trees, it bloomed with flowers: a very high wall shut it out from the court, on one side; on the other, a beech avenue screened it from the lawn.  At the bottom was a sunk fence; its sole separation from lonely fields: a winding walk, bordered with laurels and terminating in a giant horse-chestnut, circled at the base by a seat, led down to the fence.  Here one could wander unseen.  While such honey-dew fell, such silence reigned, such gloaming gathered, I felt as if I could haunt such shade for ever; but in threading the flower and fruit parterres at the upper part of the enclosure, enticed there by the light the now rising moon cast on this more open quarter, my step is stayed--not by sound, not by sight, but once more by a warning fragrance.\n\n Sweet-briar and southernwood, jasmine, pink, and rose have long been yielding their evening sacrifice of incense: this new scent is neither of shrub nor flower; it is--I know it well--it is Mr. Goldie's cigar.  I look round and I listen.  I see trees laden with ripening fruit.  I hear a nightingale warbling in a wood half a mile off; no moving form is visible, no coming step audible; but that perfume increases: I must flee. I make for the wicket leading to the shrubbery, and I see Mr. Goldie entering.  I step aside into the ivy recess; he will not stay long: he will soon return whence he came, and if I sit still he will never see me.\n\n But no--eventide is as pleasant to him as to me, and this antique garden as attractive; and he strolls on, now lifting the gooseberry-tree branches to look at the fruit, large as plums, with which they are laden; now taking a ripe cherry from the wall; now stooping towards a knot of flowers, either to inhale their fragrance or to admire the dew-beads on their petals.  A great moth goes humming by me; it alights on a plant at Mr. Goldie's foot: he sees it, and bends to examine it.\n\n \"Now, he has his back towards me,\" thought I, \"and he is occupied too; perhaps, if I walk softly, I can slip away unnoticed.\"\n\n I trode on an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel might not betray me: he was standing among the beds at a yard or two distant from where I had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him.  \"I shall get by very well,\" I meditated.  As I crossed his shadow, thrown long over the garden by the moon, not yet risen high, he said quietly, without turning--\n\n \"Isis, come and look at this fellow.\"\n\n I had made no noise: he had not eyes behind--could his shadow feel?  I started at first, and then I approached him.\n\n \"Look at his wings,\" said he, \"he reminds me rather of a West Indian insect; one does not often see so large and gay a night-rover in England; there! he is flown.\"\n\n The moth roamed away.  I was sheepishly retreating also; but Mr. Goldie followed me, and when we reached the wicket, he said--\n\n \"Turn back: on so lovely a night it is a shame to sit in the house; and surely no one can wish to go to bed while sunset is thus at meeting with moonrise.\"\n\n It is one of my faults, that though my tongue is sometimes prompt enough at an answer, there are times when it sadly fails me in framing an excuse; and always the lapse occurs at some crisis, when a facile word or plausible pretext is specially wanted to get me out of painful embarrassment.  I did not like to walk at this hour alone with Mr. Goldie in the shadowy orchard; but I could not find a reason to allege for leaving him.  I followed with lagging step, and thoughts busily bent on discovering a means of extrication; but he himself looked so composed and so grave also, I became ashamed of feeling any confusion: the evil--if evil existent or prospective there was--seemed to lie with me only; his mind was unconscious and quiet.\n\n \"Isis,\" he recommenced, as we entered the laurel walk, and slowly strayed down in the direction of the sunk fence and the horse-chestnut, \"Thornfield is a pleasant place in summer, is it not?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"You must have become in some degree attached to the house,--you, who have an eye for natural beauties, and a good deal of the organ of Adhesiveness?\"\n\n \"I am attached to it, indeed.\"\n\n \"And though I don't comprehend how it is, I perceive you have acquired a degree of regard for that foolish little child Sebastianne, too; and even for simple dame Madyson?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir; in different ways, I have an affection for both.\"\n\n \"And would be sorry to part with them?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Pity!\" he said, and sighed and paused.  \"It is always the way of events in this life,\" he continued presently: \"no sooner have you got settled in a pleasant resting-place, than a voice calls out to you to rise and move on, for the hour of repose is expired.\"\n\n \"Must I move on, sir?\" I asked.  \"Must I leave Thornfield?\"\n\n \"I believe you must, Isis.  I am sorry, Isist, but I believe indeed you must.\"\n\n This was a blow: but I did not let it prostrate me.\n\n \"Well, sir, I shall be ready when the order to march comes.\"\n\n \"It is come now--I must give it to-night.\"\n\n \"Then you _are_ going to be married, sir?\"\n\n \"Ex-act-ly--pre-cise-ly: with your usual acuteness, you have hit the nail straight on the head.\"\n\n \"Soon, sir?\"\n\n \"Very soon, my--that is, Miss Madeline: and you'll remember, Isis, the first time I, or Rumour, plainly intimated to you that it was my intention to put my old bachelor's neck into the sacred noose, to enter into the holy estate of matrimony--to take Miss Kirsten to my bosom, in short (she's an extensive armful: but that's not to the point--one can't have too much of such a very excellent thing as my beautiful Mila): well, as I was saying--listen to me, Isis!  You're not turning your head to look after more moths, are you?  That was only a lady-clock, child, 'flying away home.'  I wish to remind you that it was you who first said to me, with that discretion I respect in you--with that foresight, prudence, and humility which befit your responsible and dependent position--that in case I married Miss Kirsten, both you and little Sebastianne had better trot forthwith.  I pass over the sort of slur conveyed in this suggestion on the character of my beloved; indeed, when you are far away, Isist, I'll try to forget it: I shall notice only its wisdom; which is such that I have made it my law of action.  Sebastianne must go to school; and you, Miss Madeline, must get a new situation.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, I will advertise immediately: and meantime, I suppose--\" I was going to say, \"I suppose I may stay here, till I find another shelter to betake myself to:\" but I stopped, feeling it would not do to risk a long sentence, for my voice was not quite under command.\n\n \"In about a month I hope to be a bridegroom,\" continued Mr. Goldie; \"and in the interim, I shall myself look out for employment and an asylum for you.\"\n\n \"Thank you, sir; I am sorry to give--\"\n\n \"Oh, no need to apologise!  I consider that when a dependent does her duty as well as you have done yours, she has a sort of claim upon her employer for any little assistance he can conveniently render her; indeed I have already, through my future mother-in-law, heard of a place that I think will suit: it is to undertake the education of the five daughters of Mrs. Dionysius O'Gall of Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland.  You'll like Ireland, I think: they're such warm-hearted people there, they say.\"\n\n \"It is a long way off, sir.\"\n\n \"No matter--a girl of your sense will not object to the voyage or the distance.\"\n\n \"Not the voyage, but the distance: and then the sea is a barrier--\"\n\n \"From what, Isis?\"\n\n \"From England and from Thornfield: and--\"\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"From _you_, sir.\"\n\n I said this almost involuntarily, and, with as little sanction of free will, my tears gushed out.  I did not cry so as to be heard, however; I avoided sobbing.  The thought of Mrs. O'Gall and Bitternutt Lodge struck cold to my heart; and colder the thought of all the brine and foam, destined, as it seemed, to rush between me and the master at whose side I now walked, and coldest the remembrance of the wider ocean--wealth, caste, custom intervened between me and what I naturally and inevitably loved.\n\n \"It is a long way,\" I again said.\n\n \"It is, to be sure; and when you get to Bitternutt Lodge, Connaught, Ireland, I shall never see you again, Isis: that's morally certain.  I never go over to Ireland, not having myself much of a fancy for the country.  We have been good friends, Isis; have we not?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"And when friends are on the eve of separation, they like to spend the little time that remains to them close to each other.  Come! we'll talk over the voyage and the parting quietly half-an-hour or so, while the stars enter into their shining life up in heaven yonder: here is the chestnut tree: here is the bench at its old roots.  Come, we will sit there in peace to-night, though we should never more be destined to sit there together.\"  He seated me and himself.\n\n \"It is a long way to Ireland, Isist, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: but if I can't do better, how is it to be helped?  Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Isis?\"\n\n I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.\n\n \"Because,\" he said, \"I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you--especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame.  And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you,--you'd forget me.\"\n\n \"That I _never_ should, sir: you know--\"  Impossible to proceed.\n\n \"Isis, do you hear that nightingale singing in the wood?  Listen!\"\n\n In listening, I sobbed convulsively; for I could repress what I endured no longer; I was obliged to yield, and I was shaken from head to foot with acute distress.  When I did speak, it was only to express an impetuous wish that I had never been born, or never come to Thornfield.\n\n \"Because you are sorry to leave it?\"\n\n The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway, and asserting a right to predominate, to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last: yes,--and to speak.\n\n \"I grieve to leave Thornfield: I love Thornfield:--I love it, because I have lived in it a full and delightful life,--momentarily at least.  I have not been trampled on.  I have not been petrified.  I have not been buried with inferior minds, and excluded from every glimpse of communion with what is bright and energetic and high.  I have talked, face to face, with what I reverence, with what I delight in,--with an original, a vigorous, an expanded mind.  I have known you, Mr. Goldie; and it strikes me with terror and anguish to feel I absolutely must be torn from you for ever.  I see the necessity of departure; and it is like looking on the necessity of death.\"\n\n \"Where do you see the necessity?\" he asked suddenly.\n\n \"Where?  You, sir, have placed it before me.\"\n\n \"In what shape?\"\n\n \"In the shape of Miss Kirsten; a noble and beautiful woman,--your bride.\"\n\n \"My bride!  What bride?  I have no bride!\"\n\n \"But you will have.\"\n\n \"Yes;--I will!--I will!\"  He set his teeth.\n\n \"Then I must go:--you have said it yourself.\"\n\n \"No: you must stay!  I swear it--and the oath shall be kept.\"\n\n \"I tell you I must go!\" I retorted, roused to something like passion.  \"Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you?  Do you think I am an automaton?--a machine without feelings? and can bear to have my morsel of bread snatched from my lips, and my drop of living water dashed from my cup?  Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?  You think wrong!--I have as much soul as you,--and full as much heart!  And if God had gifted me with some beauty and much wealth, I should have made it as hard for you to leave me, as it is now for me to leave you.  I am not talking to you now through the medium of custom, conventionalities, nor even of mortal flesh;--it is my spirit that addresses your spirit; just as if both had passed through the grave, and we stood at God's feet, equal,--as we are!\"\n\n \"As we are!\" repeated Mr. Goldie--\"so,\" he added, enclosing me in his arms.  Gathering me to his breast, pressing his lips on my lips: \"so, Isis!\"\n\n \"Yes, so, sir,\" I rejoined: \"and yet not so; for you are a married man--or as good as a married man, and wed to one inferior to you--to one with whom you have no sympathy--whom I do not believe you truly love; for I have seen and heard you sneer at her.  I would scorn such a union: therefore I am better than you--let me go!\"\n\n \"Where, Isis?  To Ireland?\"\n\n \"Yes--to Ireland.  I have spoken my mind, and can go anywhere now.\"\n\n \"Isis, be still; don't struggle so, like a wild frantic bird that is rending its own plumage in its desperation.\"\n\n \"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.\"\n\n Another effort set me at liberty, and I stood erect before him.\n\n \"And your will shall decide your destiny,\" he said: \"I offer you my hand, my heart, and a share of all my possessions.\"\n\n \"You play a farce, which I merely laugh at.\"\n\n \"I ask you to pass through life at my side--to be my second self, and best earthly companion.\"\n\n \"For that fate you have already made your choice, and must abide by it.\"\n\n \"Isis, be still a few moments: you are over-excited: I will be still too.\"\n\n A waft of wind came sweeping down the laurel-walk, and trembled through the boughs of the chestnut: it wandered away--away--to an indefinite distance--it died.  The nightingale's song was then the only voice of the hour: in listening to it, I again wept.  Mr. Goldie sat quiet, looking at me gently and seriously.  Some time passed before he spoke; he at last said--\n\n \"Come to my side, Isis, and let us explain and understand one another.\"\n\n \"I will never again come to your side: I am torn away now, and cannot return.\"\n\n \"But, Isis, I summon you as my wife: it is you only I intend to marry.\"\n\n I was silent: I thought he mocked me.\n\n \"Come, Isis--come hither.\"\n\n \"Your bride stands between us.\"\n\n He rose, and with a stride reached me.\n\n \"My bride is here,\" he said, again drawing me to him, \"because my equal is here, and my likeness.  Isis, will you marry me?\"\n\n Still I did not answer, and still I writhed myself from his grasp: for I was still incredulous.\n\n \"Do you doubt me, Isis?\"\n\n \"Entirely.\"\n\n \"You have no faith in me?\"\n\n \"Not a whit.\"\n\n \"Am I a liar in your eyes?\" he asked passionately.  \"Little sceptic, you _shall_ be convinced.  What love have I for Miss Kirsten?  None: and that you know.  What love has she for me?  None: as I have taken pains to prove: I caused a rumour to reach her that my fortune was not a third of what was supposed, and after that I presented myself to see the result; it was coldness both from her and her mother.  I would not--I could not--marry Miss Kirsten.  You--you strange, you almost unearthly thing!--I love as my own flesh.  You--poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are--I entreat to accept me as a husband.\"\n\n \"What, me!\" I ejaculated, beginning in his earnestness--and especially in his incivility--to credit his sincerity: \"me who have not a friend in the world but you--if you are my friend: not a shilling but what you have given me?\"\n\n \"You, Isis, I must have you for my own--entirely my own.  Will you be mine?  Say yes, quickly.\"\n\n \"Mr. Goldie, let me look at your face: turn to the moonlight.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Because I want to read your countenance--turn!\"\n\n \"There! you will find it scarcely more legible than a crumpled, scratched page.  Read on: only make haste, for I suffer.\"\n\n His face was very much agitated and very much flushed, and there were strong workings in the features, and strange gleams in the eyes.\n\n \"Oh, Isis, you torture me!\" he exclaimed.  \"With that searching and yet faithful and generous look, you torture me!\"\n\n \"How can I do that?  If you are true, and your offer real, my only feelings to you must be gratitude and devotion--they cannot torture.\"\n\n \"Gratitude!\" he ejaculated; and added wildly--\"Isis accept me quickly. Say, Braelyn--give me my name--Braelyn--I will marry you.\"\n\n \"Are you in earnest?  Do you truly love me?  Do you sincerely wish me to be your wife?\"\n\n \"I do; and if an oath is necessary to satisfy you, I swear it.\"\n\n \"Then, sir, I will marry you.\"\n\n \"Braelyn--my little wife!\"\n\n \"Dear Braelyn!\"\n\n \"Come to me--come to me entirely now,\" said he; and added, in his deepest tone, speaking in my ear as his cheek was laid on mine, \"Make my happiness--I will make yours.\"\n\n \"God pardon me!\" he subjoined ere long; \"and man meddle not with me: I have her, and will hold her.\"\n\n \"There is no one to meddle, sir.  I have no kindred to interfere.\"\n\n \"No--that is the best of it,\" he said.  And if I had loved him less I should have thought his accent and look of exultation savage; but, sitting by him, roused from the nightmare of parting--called to the paradise of union--I thought only of the bliss given me to drink in so abundant a flow.  Again and again he said, \"Are you happy, Isis?\"  And again and again I answered, \"Yes.\"  After which he murmured, \"It will atone--it will atone.  Have I not found her friendless, and cold, and comfortless?  Will I not guard, and cherish, and solace her?  Is there not love in my heart, and constancy in my resolves?  It will expiate at God's tribunal.  I know my Maker sanctions what I do.  For the world's judgment--I wash my hands thereof.  For man's opinion--I defy it.\"\n\n But what had befallen the night?  The moon was not yet set, and we were all in shadow: I could scarcely see my master's face, near as I was.  And what ailed the chestnut tree? it writhed and groaned; while wind roared in the laurel walk, and came sweeping over us.\n\n \"We must go in,\" said Mr. Goldie: \"the weather changes.  I could have sat with thee till morning, Isis.\"\n\n \"And so,\" thought I, \"could I with you.\"  I should have said so, perhaps, but a livid, vivid spark leapt out of a cloud at which I was looking, and there was a crack, a crash, and a close rattling peal; and I thought only of hiding my dazzled eyes against Mr. Goldie's shoulder.\n\n The rain rushed down.  He hurried me up the walk, through the grounds, and into the house; but we were quite wet before we could pass the threshold.  He was taking off my shawl in the hall, and shaking the water out of my loosened hair, when Mrs. Madyson emerged from her room.  I did not observe her at first, nor did Mr. Goldie.  The lamp was lit.  The clock was on the stroke of twelve.\n\n \"Hasten to take off your wet things,\" said he; \"and before you go, good- night--good-night, my darling!\"\n\n He kissed me repeatedly.  When I looked up, on leaving his arms, there stood the widow, pale, grave, and amazed.  I only smiled at her, and ran upstairs.  \"Explanation will do for another time,\" thought I.  Still, when I reached my chamber, I felt a pang at the idea she should even temporarily misconstrue what she had seen.  But joy soon effaced every other feeling; and loud as the wind blew, near and deep as the thunder crashed, fierce and frequent as the lightning gleamed, cataract-like as the rain fell during a storm of two hours' duration, I experienced no fear and little awe.  Mr. Goldie came thrice to my door in the course of it, to ask if I was safe and tranquil: and that was comfort, that was strength for anything.\n\n Before I left my bed in the morning, little Sebastianne came running in to tell me that the great horse-chestnut at the bottom of the orchard had been struck by lightning in the night, and half of it split away.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n As I rose and dressed, I thought over what had happened, and wondered if it were a dream.  I could not be certain of the reality till I had seen Mr. Goldie again, and heard him renew his words of love and promise.\n\n While arranging my hair, I looked at my face in the glass, and felt it was no longer plain: there was hope in its aspect and life in its colour; and my eyes seemed as if they had beheld the fount of fruition, and borrowed beams from the lustrous ripple.  I had often been unwilling to look at my master, because I feared he could not be pleased at my look; but I was sure I might lift my face to his now, and not cool his affection by its expression.  I took a plain but clean and light summer dress from my drawer and put it on: it seemed no attire had ever so well become me, because none had I ever worn in so blissful a mood.\n\n I was not surprised, when I ran down into the hall, to see that a brilliant June morning had succeeded to the tempest of the night; and to feel, through the open glass door, the breathing of a fresh and fragrant breeze.  Nature must be gladsome when I was so happy.  A beggar-woman and her little boy--pale, ragged objects both--were coming up the walk, and I ran down and gave them all the money I happened to have in my purse--some three or four shillings: good or bad, they must partake of my jubilee. The rooks cawed, and blither birds sang; but nothing was so merry or so musical as my own rejoicing heart.\n\n Mrs. Madyson surprised me by looking out of the window with a sad countenance, and saying gravely--\"Miss Madeline, will you come to breakfast?\" During the meal she was quiet and cool: but I could not undeceive her then.  I must wait for my master to give explanations; and so must she.  I ate what I could, and then I hastened upstairs.  I met Sebastianne leaving the schoolroom.\n\n \"Where are you going?  It is time for lessons.\"\n\n \"Mr. Goldie has sent me away to the nursery.\"\n\n \"Where is he?\"\n\n \"In there,\" pointing to the apartment she had left; and I went in, and there he stood.\n\n \"Come and bid me good-morning,\" said he.  I gladly advanced; and it was not merely a cold word now, or even a shake of the hand that I received, but an embrace and a kiss.  It seemed natural: it seemed genial to be so well loved, so caressed by him.\n\n \"Isis, you look blooming, and smiling, and pretty,\" said he: \"truly pretty this morning.  Is this my pale, little elf?  Is this my mustard- seed?  This little sunny-faced girl with the dimpled cheek and rosy lips; the satin-smooth hazel hair, and the radiant hazel eyes?\"  (I had green eyes, reader; but you must excuse the mistake: for him they were new-dyed, I suppose.)\n\n \"It is Isis Madeline, sir.\"\n\n \"Soon to be Isis Goldie,\" he added: \"in four weeks, Isist; not a day more.  Do you hear that?\"\n\n I did, and I could not quite comprehend it: it made me giddy.  The feeling, the announcement sent through me, was something stronger than was consistent with joy--something that smote and stunned.  It was, I think almost fear.\n\n \"You blushed, and now you are white, Isis: what is that for?\"\n\n \"Because you gave me a new name--Isis Goldie; and it seems so strange.\"\n\n \"Yes, Mrs. Goldie,\" said he; \"young Mrs. Goldie--Madyson Goldie's girl-bride.\"\n\n \"It can never be, sir; it does not sound likely.  Human beings never enjoy complete happiness in this world.  I was not born for a different destiny to the rest of my species: to imagine such a lot befalling me is a fairy tale--a day-dream.\"\n\n \"Which I can and will realise.  I shall begin to-day.  This morning I wrote to my banker in London to send me certain jewels he has in his keeping,--heirlooms for the ladies of Thornfield.  In a day or two I hope to pour them into your lap: for every privilege, every attention shall be yours that I would accord a peer's daughter, if about to marry her.\"\n\n \"Oh, sir!--never rain jewels!  I don't like to hear them spoken of. Jewels for Isis Madeline sounds unnatural and strange: I would rather not have them.\"\n\n \"I will myself put the diamond chain round your neck, and the circlet on your forehead,--which it will become: for nature, at least, has stamped her patent of nobility on this brow, Isis; and I will clasp the bracelets on these fine wrists, and load these fairy-like fingers with rings.\"\n\n \"No, no, sir! think of other subjects, and speak of other things, and in another strain.  Don't address me as if I were a beauty; I am your plain, Quakerish governess.\"\n\n \"You are a beauty in my eyes, and a beauty just after the desire of my heart,--delicate and aerial.\"\n\n \"Puny and insignificant, you mean.  You are dreaming, sir,--or you are sneering.  For God's sake don't be ironical!\"\n\n \"I will make the world acknowledge you a beauty, too,\" he went on, while I really became uneasy at the strain he had adopted, because I felt he was either deluding himself or trying to delude me.  \"I will attire my Isis in satin and lace, and she shall have roses in her hair; and I will cover the head I love best with a priceless veil.\"\n\n \"And then you won't know me, sir; and I shall not be your Isis Madeline any longer, but an ape in a harlequin's jacket--a jay in borrowed plumes.  I would as soon see you, Mr. Goldie, tricked out in stage-trappings, as myself clad in a court-lady's robe; and I don't call you handsome, sir, though I love you most dearly: far too dearly to flatter you.  Don't flatter me.\"\n\n He pursued his theme, however, without noticing my deprecation.  \"This very day I shall take you in the carriage to Millcote, and you must choose some dresses for yourself.  I told you we shall be married in four weeks.  The wedding is to take place quietly, in the church down below yonder; and then I shall waft you away at once to town.  After a brief stay there, I shall bear my treasure to regions nearer the sun: to French vineyards and Italian plains; and she shall see whatever is famous in old story and in modern record: she shall taste, too, of the life of cities; and she shall learn to value herself by just comparison with others.\"\n\n \"Shall I travel?--and with you, sir?\"\n\n \"You shall sojourn at Paris, Rome, and Naples: at Florence, Venice, and Vienna: all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you: wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph's foot shall step also.  Ten years since, I flew through Europe half mad; with disgust, hate, and rage as my companions: now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with a very angel as my comforter.\"\n\n I laughed at him as he said this.  \"I am not an angel,\" I asserted; \"and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself.  Mr. Goldie, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me--for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.\"\n\n \"What do you anticipate of me?\"\n\n \"For a little while you will perhaps be as you are now,--a very little while; and then you will turn cool; and then you will be capricious; and then you will be stern, and I shall have much ado to please you: but when you get well used to me, you will perhaps like me again,--_like_ me, I say, not _love_ me.  I suppose your love will effervesce in six months, or less.  I have observed in books written by men, that period assigned as the farthest to which a husband's ardour extends.  Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master.\"\n\n \"Distasteful! and like you again!  I think I shall like you again, and yet again: and I will make you confess I do not only _like_, but _love_ you--with truth, fervour, constancy.\"\n\n \"Yet are you not capricious, sir?\"\n\n \"To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts--when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break--at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent--I am ever tender and true.\"\n\n \"Had you ever experience of such a character, sir?  Did you ever love such an one?\"\n\n \"I love it now.\"\n\n \"But before me: if I, indeed, in any respect come up to your difficult standard?\"\n\n \"I never met your likeness.  Isis, you please me, and you master me--you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart.  I am influenced--conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph I can win.  Why do you smile, Isis?  What does that inexplicable, that uncanny turn of countenance mean?\"\n\n \"I was thinking, sir (you will excuse the idea; it was involuntary), I was thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers--\"\n\n \"You were, you little elfish--\"\n\n \"Hush, sir!  You don't talk very wisely just now; any more than those gentlemen acted very wisely.  However, had they been married, they would no doubt by their severity as husbands have made up for their softness as suitors; and so will you, I fear.  I wonder how you will answer me a year hence, should I ask a favour it does not suit your convenience or pleasure to grant.\"\n\n \"Ask me something now, Isis,--the least thing: I desire to be entreated--\"\n\n \"Indeed I will, sir; I have my petition all ready.\"\n\n \"Speak!  But if you look up and smile with that countenance, I shall swear concession before I know to what, and that will make a fool of me.\"\n\n \"Not at all, sir; I ask only this: don't send for the jewels, and don't crown me with roses: you might as well put a border of gold lace round that plain pocket handkerchief you have there.\"\n\n \"I might as well 'gild refined gold.'  I know it: your request is granted then--for the time.  I will remand the order I despatched to my banker. But you have not yet asked for anything; you have prayed a gift to be withdrawn: try again.\"\n\n \"Well then, sir, have the goodness to gratify my curiosity, which is much piqued on one point.\"\n\n He looked disturbed.  \"What? what?\" he said hastily.  \"Curiosity is a dangerous petition: it is well I have not taken a vow to accord every request--\"\n\n \"But there can be no danger in complying with this, sir.\"\n\n \"Utter it, Isis: but I wish that instead of a mere inquiry into, perhaps, a secret, it was a wish for half my estate.\"\n\n \"Now, King Ahasuerus!  What do I want with half your estate?  Do you think I am a Jew-usurer, seeking good investment in land?  I would much rather have all your confidence.  You will not exclude me from your confidence if you admit me to your heart?\"\n\n \"You are welcome to all my confidence that is worth having, Isis; but for God's sake, don't desire a useless burden!  Don't long for poison--don't turn out a downright Eve on my hands!\"\n\n \"Why not, sir?  You have just been telling me how much you liked to be conquered, and how pleasant over-persuasion is to you.  Don't you think I had better take advantage of the confession, and begin and coax and entreat--even cry and be sulky if necessary--for the sake of a mere essay of my power?\"\n\n \"I dare you to any such experiment.  Encroach, presume, and the game is up.\"\n\n \"Is it, sir?  You soon give in.  How stern you look now!  Your eyebrows have become as thick as my finger, and your forehead resembles what, in some very astonishing poetry, I once saw styled, 'a blue-piled thunderloft.'  That will be your married look, sir, I suppose?\"\n\n \"If that will be _your_ married look, I, as a Christian, will soon give up the notion of consorting with a mere sprite or salamander.  But what had you to ask, thing,--out with it?\"\n\n \"There, you are less than civil now; and I like rudeness a great deal better than flattery.  I had rather be a _thing_ than an angel.  This is what I have to ask,--Why did you take such pains to make me believe you wished to marry Miss Kirsten?\"\n\n \"Is that all?  Thank God it is no worse!\"  And now he unknit his black brows; looked down, smiling at me, and stroked my hair, as if well pleased at seeing a danger averted.  \"I think I may confess,\" he continued, \"even although I should make you a little indignant, Isis--and I have seen what a fire-spirit you can be when you are indignant.  You glowed in the cool moonlight last night, when you mutinied against fate, and claimed your rank as my equal.  Isist, by-the-bye, it was you who made me the offer.\"\n\n \"Of course I did.  But to the point if you please, sir--Miss Kirsten?\"\n\n \"Well, I feigned courtship of Miss Kirsten, because I wished to render you as madly in love with me as I was with you; and I knew jealousy would be the best ally I could call in for the furtherance of that end.\"\n\n \"Excellent!  Now you are small--not one whit bigger than the end of my little finger.  It was a burning shame and a scandalous disgrace to act in that way.  Did you think nothing of Miss Kirsten's feelings, sir?\"\n\n \"Her feelings are concentrated in one--pride; and that needs humbling. Were you jealous, Isis?\"\n\n \"Never mind, Mr. Goldie: it is in no way interesting to you to know that.  Answer me truly once more.  Do you think Miss Kirsten will not suffer from your dishonest coquetry?  Won't she feel forsaken and deserted?\"\n\n \"Impossible!--when I told you how she, on the contrary, deserted me: the idea of my insolvency cooled, or rather extinguished, her flame in a moment.\"\n\n \"You have a curious, designing mind, Mr. Goldie.  I am afraid your principles on some points are eccentric.\"\n\n \"My principles were never trained, Isis: they may have grown a little awry for want of attention.\"\n\n \"Once again, seriously; may I enjoy the great good that has been vouchsafed to me, without fearing that any one else is suffering the bitter pain I myself felt a while ago?\"\n\n \"That you may, my good little girl: there is not another being in the world has the same pure love for me as yourself--for I lay that pleasant unction to my soul, Isis, a belief in your affection.\"\n\n I turned my lips to the hand that lay on my shoulder.  I loved him very much--more than I could trust myself to say--more than words had power to express.\n\n \"Ask something more,\" he said presently; \"it is my delight to be entreated, and to yield.\"\n\n I was again ready with my request.  \"Communicate your intentions to Mrs. Madyson, sir: she saw me with you last night in the hall, and she was shocked.  Give her some explanation before I see her again.  It pains me to be misjudged by so good a woman.\"\n\n \"Go to your room, and put on your bonnet,\" he replied.  \"I mean you to accompany me to Millcote this morning; and while you prepare for the drive, I will enlighten the old lady's understanding.  Did she think, Isist, you had given the world for love, and considered it well lost?\"\n\n \"I believe she thought I had forgotten my station, and yours, sir.\"\n\n \"Station! station!--your station is in my heart, and on the necks of those who would insult you, now or hereafter.--Go.\"\n\n I was soon dressed; and when I heard Mr. Goldie quit Mrs. Madyson's parlour, I hurried down to it.  The old lady, had been reading her morning portion of Scripture--the Lesson for the day; her Bible lay open before her, and her spectacles were upon it.  Her occupation, suspended by Mr. Goldie's announcement, seemed now forgotten: her eyes, fixed on the blank wall opposite, expressed the surprise of a quiet mind stirred by unwonted tidings.  Seeing me, she roused herself: she made a sort of effort to smile, and framed a few words of congratulation; but the smile expired, and the sentence was abandoned unfinished.  She put up her spectacles, shut the Bible, and pushed her chair back from the table.\n\n \"I feel so astonished,\" she began, \"I hardly know what to say to you, Miss Madeline.  I have surely not been dreaming, have I?  Sometimes I half fall asleep when I am sitting alone and fancy things that have never happened.  It has seemed to me more than once when I have been in a doze, that my dear husband, who died fifteen years since, has come in and sat down beside me; and that I have even heard him call me by my name, Lyle, as he used to do.  Now, can you tell me whether it is actually true that Mr. Goldie has asked you to marry him?  Don't laugh at me.  But I really thought he came in here five minutes ago, and said that in a month you would be his wife.\"\n\n \"He has said the same thing to me,\" I replied.\n\n \"He has!  Do you believe him?  Have you accepted him?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n She looked at me bewildered.  \"I could never have thought it.  He is a proud man: all the Goldies were proud: and his father, at least, liked money.  He, too, has always been called careful.  He means to marry you?\"\n\n \"He tells me so.\"\n\n She surveyed my whole person: in her eyes I read that they had there found no charm powerful enough to solve the enigma.\n\n \"It passes me!\" she continued; \"but no doubt, it is true since you say so.  How it will answer, I cannot tell: I really don't know.  Equality of position and fortune is often advisable in such cases; and there are twenty years of difference in your ages.  He might almost be your father.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, Mrs. Madyson!\" exclaimed I, nettled; \"he is nothing like my father!  No one, who saw us together, would suppose it for an instant. Mr. Goldie looks as young, and is as young, as some men at five-and- twenty.\"\n\n \"Is it really for love he is going to marry you?\" she asked.\n\n I was so hurt by her coldness and scepticism, that the tears rose to my eyes.\n\n \"I am sorry to grieve you,\" pursued the widow; \"but you are so young, and so little acquainted with men, I wished to put you on your guard.  It is an old saying that 'all is not gold that glitters;' and in this case I do fear there will be something found to be different to what either you or I expect.\"\n\n \"Why?--am I a monster?\" I said: \"is it impossible that Mr. Goldie should have a sincere affection for me?\"\n\n \"No: you are very well; and much improved of late; and Mr. Goldie, I daresay, is fond of you.  I have always noticed that you were a sort of pet of his.  There are times when, for your sake, I have been a little uneasy at his marked preference, and have wished to put you on your guard: but I did not like to suggest even the possibility of wrong.  I knew such an idea would shock, perhaps offend you; and you were so discreet, and so thoroughly modest and sensible, I hoped you might be trusted to protect yourself.  Last night I cannot tell you what I suffered when I sought all over the house, and could find you nowhere, nor the master either; and then, at twelve o'clock, saw you come in with him.\"\n\n \"Well, never mind that now,\" I interrupted impatiently; \"it is enough that all was right.\"\n\n \"I hope all will be right in the end,\" she said: \"but believe me, you cannot be too careful.  Try and keep Mr. Goldie at a distance: distrust yourself as well as him.  Gentlemen in his station are not accustomed to marry their governesses.\"\n\n I was growing truly irritated: happily, Sebastianne ran in.\n\n \"Let me go,--let me go to Millcote too!\" she cried.  \"Mr. Goldie won't: though there is so much room in the new carriage.  Beg him to let me go mademoiselle.\"\n\n \"That I will, Sebastianne;\" and I hastened away with her, glad to quit my gloomy monitress.  The carriage was ready: they were bringing it round to the front, and my master was pacing the pavement, Pilot following him backwards and forwards.\n\n \"Sebastianne may accompany us, may she not, sir?\"\n\n \"I told her no.  I'll have no brats!--I'll have only you.\"\n\n \"Do let her go, Mr. Goldie, if you please: it would be better.\"\n\n \"Not it: she will be a restraint.\"\n\n He was quite peremptory, both in look and voice.  The chill of Mrs. Madyson's warnings, and the damp of her doubts were upon me: something of unsubstantiality and uncertainty had beset my hopes.  I half lost the sense of power over him.  I was about mechanically to obey him, without further remonstrance; but as he helped me into the carriage, he looked at my face.\n\n \"What is the matter?\" he asked; \"all the sunshine is gone.  Do you really wish the bairn to go?  Will it annoy you if she is left behind?\"\n\n \"I would far rather she went, sir.\"\n\n \"Then off for your bonnet, and back like a flash of lightning!\" cried he to Sebastianne.\n\n She obeyed him with what speed she might.\n\n \"After all, a single morning's interruption will not matter much,\" said he, \"when I mean shortly to claim you--your thoughts, conversation, and company--for life.\"\n\n Sebastianne, when lifted in, commenced kissing me, by way of expressing her gratitude for my intercession: she was instantly stowed away into a corner on the other side of him.  She then peeped round to where I sat; so stern a neighbour was too restrictive to him, in his present fractious mood, she dared whisper no observations, nor ask of him any information.\n\n \"Let her come to me,\" I entreated: \"she will, perhaps, trouble you, sir: there is plenty of room on this side.\"\n\n He handed her over as if she had been a lapdog.  \"I'll send her to school yet,\" he said, but now he was smiling.\n\n Sebastianne heard him, and asked if she was to go to school \"sans mademoiselle?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" he replied, \"absolutely sans mademoiselle; for I am to take mademoiselle to the moon, and there I shall seek a cave in one of the white valleys among the volcano-tops, and mademoiselle shall live with me there, and only me.\"\n\n \"She will have nothing to eat: you will starve her,\" observed Sebastianne.\n\n \"I shall gather manna for her morning and night: the plains and hillsides in the moon are bleached with manna, Sebastianne.\"\n\n \"She will want to warm herself: what will she do for a fire?\"\n\n \"Fire rises out of the lunar mountains: when she is cold, I'll carry her up to a peak, and lay her down on the edge of a crater.\"\n\n \"Oh, qu' elle y sera mal--peu comfortable!  And her clothes, they will wear out: how can she get new ones?\"\n\n Mr. Goldie professed to be puzzled.  \"Hem!\" said he.  \"What would you do, Sebastianne?  Cudgel your brains for an expedient.  How would a white or a pink cloud answer for a gown, do you think?  And one could cut a pretty enough scarf out of a rainbow.\"\n\n \"She is far better as she is,\" concluded Sebastianne, after musing some time: \"besides, she would get tired of living with only you in the moon.  If I were mademoiselle, I would never consent to go with you.\"\n\n \"She has consented: she has pledged her word.\"\n\n \"But you can't get her there; there is no road to the moon: it is all air; and neither you nor she can fly.\"\n\n \"Sebastianne, look at that field.\"  We were now outside Thornfield gates, and bowling lightly along the smooth road to Millcote, where the dust was well laid by the thunderstorm, and, where the low hedges and lofty timber trees on each side glistened green and rain-refreshed.\n\n \"In that field, Sebastianne, I was walking late one evening about a fortnight since--the evening of the day you helped me to make hay in the orchard meadows; and, as I was tired with raking swaths, I sat down to rest me on a stile; and there I took out a little book and a pencil, and began to write about a misfortune that befell me long ago, and a wish I had for happy days to come: I was writing away very fast, though daylight was fading from the leaf, when something came up the path and stopped two yards off me.  I looked at it.  It was a little thing with a veil of gossamer on its head.  I beckoned it to come near me; it stood soon at my knee.  I never spoke to it, and it never spoke to me, in words; but I read its eyes, and it read mine; and our speechless colloquy was to this effect--\n\n \"It was a fairy, and come from Elf-land, it said; and its errand was to make me happy: I must go with it out of the common world to a lonely place--such as the moon, for instance--and it nodded its head towards her horn, rising over Hay-hill: it told me of the alabaster cave and silver vale where we might live.  I said I should like to go; but reminded it, as you did me, that I had no wings to fly.\n\n \"'Oh,' returned the fairy, 'that does not signify!  Here is a talisman will remove all difficulties;' and she held out a pretty gold ring.  'Put it,' she said, 'on the fourth finger of my left hand, and I am yours, and you are mine; and we shall leave earth, and make our own heaven yonder.' She nodded again at the moon.  The ring, Sebastianne, is in my breeches-pocket, under the disguise of a sovereign: but I mean soon to change it to a ring again.\"\n\n \"But what has mademoiselle to do with it?  I don't care for the fairy: you said it was mademoiselle you would take to the moon?\"\n\n \"Mademoiselle is a fairy,\" he said, whispering mysteriously.  Whereupon I told her not to mind his badinage; and she, on her part, evinced a fund of genuine French scepticism: denominating Mr. Goldie \"un vrai menteur,\" and assuring him that she made no account whatever of his \"contes de fee,\" and that \"du reste, il n'y avait pas de fees, et quand meme il y en avait:\" she was sure they would never appear to him, nor ever give him rings, or offer to live with him in the moon.\n\n The hour spent at Millcote was a somewhat harassing one to me.  Mr. Goldie obliged me to go to a certain silk warehouse: there I was ordered to choose half-a-dozen dresses.  I hated the business, I begged leave to defer it: no--it should be gone through with now.  By dint of entreaties expressed in energetic whispers, I reduced the half-dozen to two: these however, he vowed he would select himself.  With anxiety I watched his eye rove over the gay stores: he fixed on a rich silk of the most brilliant amethyst dye, and a superb pink satin.  I told him in a new series of whispers, that he might as well buy me a gold gown and a silver bonnet at once: I should certainly never venture to wear his choice.  With infinite difficulty, for he was stubborn as a stone, I persuaded him to make an exchange in favour of a sober black satin and pearl-grey silk.  \"It might pass for the present,\" he said; \"but he would yet see me glittering like a parterre.\"\n\n Glad was I to get him out of the silk warehouse, and then out of a jewellers shop: the more he bought me, the more my cheek burned with a sense of annoyance and degradation.  As we re-entered the carriage, and I sat back feverish and fagged, I remembered what, in the hurry of events, dark and bright, I had wholly forgotten--the letter of my uncle, Spencer Madeline, to Mrs. Bruce: his intention to adopt me and make me his legatee. \"It would, indeed, be a relief,\" I thought, \"if I had ever so small an independency; I never can bear being dressed like a doll by Mr. Goldie, or sitting like a second Danae with the golden shower falling daily round me.  I will write to Madeira the moment I get home, and tell my uncle Spencer I am going to be married, and to whom: if I had but a prospect of one day bringing Mr. Goldie an accession of fortune, I could better endure to be kept by him now.\"  And somewhat relieved by this idea (which I failed not to execute that day), I ventured once more to meet my master's and lover's eye, which most pertinaciously sought mine, though I averted both face and gaze.  He smiled; and I thought his smile was such as a sultan might, in a blissful and fond moment, bestow on a slave his gold and gems had enriched: I crushed his hand, which was ever hunting mine, vigorously, and thrust it back to him red with the passionate pressure.\n\n \"You need not look in that way,\" I said; \"if you do, I'll wear nothing but my old Lowood frocks to the end of the chapter.  I'll be married in this lilac gingham: you may make a dressing-gown for yourself out of the pearl-grey silk, and an infinite series of waistcoats out of the black satin.\"\n\n He chuckled; he rubbed his hands.  \"Oh, it is rich to see and hear her?\" he exclaimed.  \"Is she original?  Is she piquant?  I would not exchange this one little English girl for the Grand Turk's whole seraglio, gazelle- eyes, houri forms, and all!\"\n\n The Eastern allusion bit me again.  \"I'll not stand you an inch in the stead of a seraglio,\" I said; \"so don't consider me an equivalent for one.  If you have a fancy for anything in that line, away with you, sir, to the bazaars of Stamboul without delay, and lay out in extensive slave- purchases some of that spare cash you seem at a loss to spend satisfactorily here.\"\n\n \"And what will you do, Isist, while I am bargaining for so many tons of flesh and such an assortment of black eyes?\"\n\n \"I'll be preparing myself to go out as a missionary to preach liberty to them that are enslaved--your harem inmates amongst the rest.  I'll get admitted there, and I'll stir up mutiny; and you, three-tailed bashaw as you are, sir, shall in a trice find yourself fettered amongst our hands: nor will I, for one, consent to cut your bonds till you have signed a charter, the most liberal that despot ever yet conferred.\"\n\n \"I would consent to be at your mercy, Isis.\"\n\n \"I would have no mercy, Mr. Goldie, if you supplicated for it with an eye like that.  While you looked so, I should be certain that whatever charter you might grant under coercion, your first act, when released, would be to violate its conditions.\"\n\n \"Why, Isis, what would you have?  I fear you will compel me to go through a private marriage ceremony, besides that performed at the altar.  You will stipulate, I see, for peculiar terms--what will they be?\"\n\n \"I only want an easy mind, sir; not crushed by crowded obligations.  Do you remember what you said of Aubreanna Kira?--of the diamonds, the cashmeres you gave her?  I will not be your English Aubreanna Kira.  I shall continue to act as Sebastianne's governess; by that I shall earn my board and lodging, and thirty pounds a year besides.  I'll furnish my own wardrobe out of that money, and you shall give me nothing but--\"\n\n \"Well, but what?\"\n\n \"Your regard; and if I give you mine in return, that debt will be quit.\"\n\n \"Well, for cool native impudence and pure innate pride, you haven't your equal,\" said he.  We were now approaching Thornfield.  \"Will it please you to dine with me to-day?\" he asked, as we re-entered the gates.\n\n \"No, thank you, sir.\"\n\n \"And what for, 'no, thank you?' if one may inquire.\"\n\n \"I never have dined with you, sir: and I see no reason why I should now: till--\"\n\n \"Till what?  You delight in half-phrases.\"\n\n \"Till I can't help it.\"\n\n \"Do you suppose I eat like an ogre or a ghoul, that you dread being the companion of my repast?\"\n\n \"I have formed no supposition on the subject, sir; but I want to go on as usual for another month.\"\n\n \"You will give up your governessing slavery at once.\"\n\n \"Indeed, begging your pardon, sir, I shall not.  I shall just go on with it as usual.  I shall keep out of your way all day, as I have been accustomed to do: you may send for me in the evening, when you feel disposed to see me, and I'll come then; but at no other time.\"\n\n \"I want a smoke, Isis, or a pinch of snuff, to comfort me under all this, 'pour me donner une contenance,' as Sebastianne would say; and unfortunately I have neither my cigar-case, nor my snuff-box.  But listen--whisper.  It is your time now, little tyrant, but it will be mine presently; and when once I have fairly seized you, to have and to hold, I'll just--figuratively speaking--attach you to a chain like this\" (touching his watch-guard).  \"Yes, bonny wee thing, I'll wear you in my bosom, lest my jewel I should tyne.\"\n\n He said this as he helped me to alight from the carriage, and while he afterwards lifted out Sebastianne, I entered the house, and made good my retreat upstairs.\n\n He duly summoned me to his presence in the evening.  I had prepared an occupation for him; for I was determined not to spend the whole time in a _tete-a-tete_ conversation.  I remembered his fine voice; I knew he liked to sing--good singers generally do.  I was no vocalist myself, and, in his fastidious judgment, no musician, either; but I delighted in listening when the performance was good.  No sooner had twilight, that hour of romance, began to lower her blue and starry banner over the lattice, than I rose, opened the piano, and entreated him, for the love of heaven, to give me a song.  He said I was a capricious witch, and that he would rather sing another time; but I averred that no time was like the present.\n\n \"Did I like his voice?\" he asked.\n\n \"Very much.\"  I was not fond of pampering that susceptible vanity of his; but for once, and from motives of expediency, I would e'en soothe and stimulate it.\n\n \"Then, Isis, you must play the accompaniment.\"\n\n \"Very well, sir, I will try.\"\n\n I did try, but was presently swept off the stool and denominated \"a little bungler.\"  Being pushed unceremoniously to one side--which was precisely what I wished--he usurped my place, and proceeded to accompany himself: for he could play as well as sing.  I hied me to the window-recess.  And while I sat there and looked out on the still trees and dim lawn, to a sweet air was sung in mel\n\n\n The month of courtship had wasted: its very last hours were being numbered.  There was no putting off the day that advanced--the bridal day; and all preparations for its arrival were complete.  _I_, at least, had nothing more to do: there were my trunks, packed, locked, corded, ranged in a row along the wall of my little chamber; to-morrow, at this time, they would be far on their road to London: and so should I (D.V.),--or rather, not I, but one Isis Goldie, a person whom as yet I knew not.  The cards of address alone remained to nail on: they lay, four little squares, in the drawer.  Mr. Goldie had himself written the direction, \"Mrs. Goldie, --- Hotel, London,\" on each: I could not persuade myself to affix them, or to have them affixed.  Mrs. Goldie! She did not exist: she would not be born till to-morrow, some time after eight o'clock a.m.; and I would wait to be assured she had come into the world alive before I assigned to her all that property.  It was enough that in yonder closet, opposite my dressing-table, garments said to be hers had already displaced my black stuff Lowood frock and straw bonnet: for not to me appertained that suit of wedding raiment; the pearl-coloured robe, the vapoury veil pendent from the usurped portmanteau.  I shut the closet to conceal the strange, wraith-like apparel it contained; which, at this evening hour--nine o'clock--gave out certainly a most ghostly shimmer through the shadow of my apartment.  \"I will leave you by yourself, white dream,\" I said.  \"I am feverish: I hear the wind blowing: I will go out of doors and feel it.\"\n\n It was not only the hurry of preparation that made me feverish; not only the anticipation of the great change--the new life which was to commence to-morrow: both these circumstances had their share, doubtless, in producing that restless, excited mood which hurried me forth at this late hour into the darkening grounds: but a third cause influenced my mind more than they.\n\n I had at heart a strange and anxious thought.  Something had happened which I could not comprehend; no one knew of or had seen the event but myself: it had taken place the preceding night.  Mr. Goldie that night was absent from home; nor was he yet returned: business had called him to a small estate of two or three farms he possessed thirty miles off--business it was requisite he should settle in person, previous to his meditated departure from England.  I waited now his return; eager to disburthen my mind, and to seek of him the solution of the enigma that perplexed me.  Stay till he comes, reader; and, when I disclose my secret to him, you shall share the confidence.\n\n I sought the orchard, driven to its shelter by the wind, which all day had blown strong and full from the south, without, however, bringing a speck of rain.  Instead of subsiding as night drew on, it seemed to augment its rush and deepen its roar: the trees blew steadfastly one way, never writhing round, and scarcely tossing back their boughs once in an hour; so continuous was the strain bending their branchy heads northward--the clouds drifted from pole to pole, fast following, mass on mass: no glimpse of blue sky had been visible that July day.\n\n It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind, delivering my trouble of mind to the measureless air-torrent thundering through space.  Descending the laurel walk, I faced the wreck of the chestnut-tree; it stood up black and riven: the trunk, split down the centre, gasped ghastly.  The cloven halves were not broken from each other, for the firm base and strong roots kept them unsundered below; though community of vitality was destroyed--the sap could flow no more: their great boughs on each side were dead, and next winter's tempests would be sure to fell one or both to earth: as yet, however, they might be said to form one tree--a ruin, but an entire ruin.\n\n \"You did right to hold fast to each other,\" I said: as if the monster- splinters were living things, and could hear me.  \"I think, scathed as you look, and charred and scorched, there must be a little sense of life in you yet, rising out of that adhesion at the faithful, honest roots: you will never have green leaves more--never more see birds making nests and singing idyls in your boughs; the time of pleasure and love is over with you: but you are not desolate: each of you has a comrade to sympathise with him in his decay.\"  As I looked up at them, the moon appeared momentarily in that part of the sky which filled their fissure; her disk was blood-red and half overcast; she seemed to throw on me one bewildered, dreary glance, and buried herself again instantly in the deep drift of cloud.  The wind fell, for a second, round Thornfield; but far away over wood and water, poured a wild, melancholy wail: it was sad to listen to, and I ran off again.\n\n Here and there I strayed through the orchard, gathered up the apples with which the grass round the tree roots was thickly strewn; then I employed myself in dividing the ripe from the unripe; I carried them into the house and put them away in the store-room.  Then I repaired to the library to ascertain whether the fire was lit, for, though summer, I knew on such a gloomy evening Mr. Goldie would like to see a cheerful hearth when he came in: yes, the fire had been kindled some time, and burnt well.  I placed his arm-chair by the chimney-corner: I wheeled the table near it: I let down the curtain, and had the candles brought in ready for lighting.  More restless than ever, when I had completed these arrangements I could not sit still, nor even remain in the house: a little time-piece in the room and the old clock in the hall simultaneously struck ten.\n\n \"How late it grows!\" I said.  \"I will run down to the gates: it is moonlight at intervals; I can see a good way on the road.  He may be coming now, and to meet him will save some minutes of suspense.\"\n\n The wind roared high in the great trees which embowered the gates; but the road as far as I could see, to the right hand and the left, was all still and solitary: save for the shadows of clouds crossing it at intervals as the moon looked out, it was but a long pale line, unvaried by one moving speck.\n\n A puerile tear dimmed my eye while I looked--a tear of disappointment and impatience; ashamed of it, I wiped it away.  I lingered; the moon shut herself wholly within her chamber, and drew close her curtain of dense cloud: the night grew dark; rain came driving fast on the gale.\n\n \"I wish he would come!  I wish he would come!\" I exclaimed, seized with hypochondriac foreboding.  I had expected his arrival before tea; now it was dark: what could keep him?  Had an accident happened?  The event of last night again recurred to me.  I interpreted it as a warning of disaster.  I feared my hopes were too bright to be realised; and I had enjoyed so much bliss lately that I imagined my fortune had passed its meridian, and must now decline.\n\n \"Well, I cannot return to the house,\" I thought; \"I cannot sit by the fireside, while he is abroad in inclement weather: better tire my limbs than strain my heart; I will go forward and meet him.\"\n\n I set out; I walked fast, but not far: ere I had measured a quarter of a mile, I heard the tramp of hoofs; a horseman came on, full gallop; a dog ran by his side.  Away with evil presentiment!  It was he: here he was, mounted on Mesrour, followed by Pilot.  He saw me; for the moon had opened a blue field in the sky, and rode in it watery bright: he took his hat off, and waved it round his head.  I now ran to meet him.\n\n \"There!\" he exclaimed, as he stretched out his hand and bent from the saddle: \"You can't do without me, that is evident.  Step on my boot-toe; give me both hands: mount!\"\n\n I obeyed: joy made me agile: I sprang up before him.  A hearty kissing I got for a welcome, and some boastful triumph, which I swallowed as well as I could.  He checked himself in his exultation to demand, \"But is there anything the matter, Isist, that you come to meet me at such an hour?  Is there anything wrong?\"\n\n \"No, but I thought you would never come.  I could not bear to wait in the house for you, especially with this rain and wind.\"\n\n \"Rain and wind, indeed!  Yes, you are dripping like a mermaid; pull my cloak round you: but I think you are feverish, Isis: both your cheek and hand are burning hot.  I ask again, is there anything the matter?\"\n\n \"Nothing now; I am neither afraid nor unhappy.\"\n\n \"Then you have been both?\"\n\n \"Rather: but I'll tell you all about it by-and-bye, sir; and I daresay you will only laugh at me for my pains.\"\n\n \"I'll laugh at you heartily when to-morrow is past; till then I dare not: my prize is not certain.  This is you, who have been as slippery as an eel this last month, and as thorny as a briar-rose?  I could not lay a finger anywhere but I was pricked; and now I seem to have gathered up a stray lamb in my arms.  You wandered out of the fold to seek your shepherd, did you, Isis?\"\n\n \"I wanted you: but don't boast.  Here we are at Thornfield: now let me get down.\"\n\n He landed me on the pavement.  As Spencer took his horse, and he followed me into the hall, he told me to make haste and put something dry on, and then return to him in the library; and he stopped me, as I made for the staircase, to extort a promise that I would not be long: nor was I long; in five minutes I rejoined him.  I found him at supper.\n\n \"Take a seat and bear me company, Isis: please God, it is the last meal but one you will eat at Thornfield Hall for a long time.\"\n\n I sat down near him, but told him I could not eat.  \"Is it because you have the prospect of a journey before you, Isis?  Is it the thoughts of going to London that takes away your appetite?\"\n\n \"I cannot see my prospects clearly to-night, sir; and I hardly know what thoughts I have in my head.  Everything in life seems unreal.\"\n\n \"Except me: I am substantial enough--touch me.\"\n\n \"You, sir, are the most phantom-like of all: you are a mere dream.\"\n\n He held out his hand, laughing.  \"Is that a dream?\" said he, placing it close to my eyes.  He had a rounded, muscular, and vigorous hand, as well as a long, strong arm.\n\n \"Yes; though I touch it, it is a dream,\" said I, as I put it down from before my face.  \"Sir, have you finished supper?\"\n\n \"Yes, Isis.\"\n\n I rang the bell and ordered away the tray.  When we were again alone, I stirred the fire, and then took a low seat at my master's knee.\n\n \"It is near midnight,\" I said.\n\n \"Yes: but remember, Isis, you promised to wake with me the night before my wedding.\"\n\n \"I did; and I will keep my promise, for an hour or two at least: I have no wish to go to bed.\"\n\n \"Are all your arrangements complete?\"\n\n \"All, sir.\"\n\n \"And on my part likewise,\" he returned, \"I have settled everything; and we shall leave Thornfield to-morrow, within half-an-hour after our return from church.\"\n\n \"Very well, sir.\"\n\n \"With what an extraordinary smile you uttered that word--'very well,' Isis!  What a bright spot of colour you have on each cheek! and how strangely your eyes glitter!  Are you well?\"\n\n \"I believe I am.\"\n\n \"Believe!  What is the matter?  Tell me what you feel.\"\n\n \"I could not, sir: no words could tell you what I feel.  I wish this present hour would never end: who knows with what fate the next may come charged?\"\n\n \"This is hypochondria, Isis.  You have been over-excited, or over-fatigued.\"\n\n \"Do you, sir, feel calm and happy?\"\n\n \"Calm?--no: but happy--to the heart's core.\"\n\n I looked up at him to read the signs of bliss in his face: it was ardent and flushed.\n\n \"Give me your confidence, Isis,\" he said: \"relieve your mind of any weight that oppresses it, by imparting it to me.  What do you fear?--that I shall not prove a good husband?\"\n\n \"It is the idea farthest from my thoughts.\"\n\n \"Are you apprehensive of the new sphere you are about to enter?--of the new life into which you are passing?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"You puzzle me, Isis: your look and tone of sorrowful audacity perplex and pain me.  I want an explanation.\"\n\n \"Then, sir, listen.  You were from home last night?\"\n\n \"I was: I know that; and you hinted a while ago at something which had happened in my absence:--nothing, probably, of consequence; but, in short, it has disturbed you.  Let me hear it.  Mrs. Madyson has said something, perhaps? or you have overheard the servants talk?--your sensitive self-respect has been wounded?\"\n\n \"No, sir.\"  It struck twelve--I waited till the time-piece had concluded its silver chime, and the clock its hoarse, vibrating stroke, and then I proceeded.\n\n \"All day yesterday I was very busy, and very happy in my ceaseless bustle; for I am not, as you seem to think, troubled by any haunting fears about the new sphere, et cetera: I think it a glorious thing to have the hope of living with you, because I love you.  No, sir, don't caress me now--let me talk undisturbed.  Yesterday I trusted well in Providence, and believed that events were working together for your good and mine: it was a fine day, if you recollect--the calmness of the air and sky forbade apprehensions respecting your safety or comfort on your journey.  I walked a little while on the pavement after tea, thinking of you; and I beheld you in imagination so near me, I scarcely missed your actual presence.  I thought of the life that lay before me--_your_ life, sir--an existence more expansive and stirring than my own: as much more so as the depths of the sea to which the brook runs are than the shallows of its own strait channel.  I wondered why moralists call this world a dreary wilderness: for me it blossomed like a rose.  Just at sunset, the air turned cold and the sky cloudy: I went in, Ivan called me upstairs to look at my wedding-dress, which they had just brought; and under it in the box I found your present--the veil which, in your princely extravagance, you sent for from London: resolved, I suppose, since I would not have jewels, to cheat me into accepting something as costly.  I smiled as I unfolded it, and devised how I would tease you about your aristocratic tastes, and your efforts to masque your plebeian bride in the attributes of a peeress.  I thought how I would carry down to you the square of unembroidered blond I had myself prepared as a covering for my low-born head, and ask if that was not good enough for a woman who could bring her husband neither fortune, beauty, nor connections.  I saw plainly how you would look; and heard your impetuous republican answers, and your haughty disavowal of any necessity on your part to augment your wealth, or elevate your standing, by marrying either a purse or a coronet.\"\n\n \"How well you read me, you witch!\" interposed Mr. Goldie: \"but what did you find in the veil besides its embroidery?  Did you find poison, or a dagger, that you look so mournful now?\"\n\n \"No, no, sir; besides the delicacy and richness of the fabric, I found nothing save Madyson Goldie's pride; and that did not scare me, because I am used to the sight of the demon.  But, sir, as it grew dark, the wind rose: it blew yesterday evening, not as it blows now--wild and high--but 'with a sullen, moaning sound' far more eerie.  I wished you were at home.  I came into this room, and the sight of the empty chair and fireless hearth chilled me.  For some time after I went to bed, I could not sleep--a sense of anxious excitement distressed me.  The gale still rising, seemed to my ear to muffle a mournful under-sound; whether in the house or abroad I could not at first tell, but it recurred, doubtful yet doleful at every lull; at last I made out it must be some dog howling at a distance.  I was glad when it ceased.  On sleeping, I continued in dreams the idea of a dark and gusty night.  I continued also the wish to be with you, and experienced a strange, regretful consciousness of some barrier dividing us.  During all my first sleep, I was following the windings of an unknown road; total obscurity environed me; rain pelted me; I was burdened with the charge of a little child: a very small creature, too young and feeble to walk, and which shivered in my cold arms, and wailed piteously in my ear.  I thought, sir, that you were on the road a long way before me; and I strained every nerve to overtake you, and made effort on effort to utter your name and entreat you to stop--but my movements were fettered, and my voice still died away inarticulate; while you, I felt, withdrew farther and farther every moment.\"\n\n \"And these dreams weigh on your spirits now, Isis, when I am close to you?  Little nervous subject!  Forget visionary woe, and think only of real happiness!  You say you love me, Isist: yes--I will not forget that; and you cannot deny it.  _Those_ words did not die inarticulate on your lips.  I heard them clear and soft: a thought too solemn perhaps, but sweet as music--'I think it is a glorious thing to have the hope of living with you, Braelyn, because I love you.'  Do you love me, Isis?--repeat it.\"\n\n \"I do, sir--I do, with my whole heart.\"\n\n \"Well,\" he said, after some minutes' silence, \"it is strange; but that sentence has penetrated my breast painfully.  Why?  I think because you said it with such an earnest, religious energy, and because your upward gaze at me now is the very sublime of faith, truth, and devotion: it is too much as if some spirit were near me.  Look wicked, Isis: as you know well how to look: coin one of your wild, shy, provoking smiles; tell me you hate me--tease me, vex me; do anything but move me: I would rather be incensed than saddened.\"\n\n \"I will tease you and vex you to your heart's content, when I have finished my tale: but hear me to the end.\"\n\n \"I thought, Isis, you had told me all.  I thought I had found the source of your melancholy in a dream.\"\n\n I shook my head.  \"What! is there more?  But I will not believe it to be anything important.  I warn you of incredulity beforehand.  Go on.\"\n\n The disquietude of his air, the somewhat apprehensive impatience of his manner, surprised me: but I proceeded.\n\n \"I dreamt another dream, sir: that Thornfield Hall was a dreary ruin, the retreat of bats and owls.  I thought that of all the stately front nothing remained but a shell-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking.  I wandered, on a moonlight night, through the grass- grown enclosure within: here I stumbled over a marble hearth, and there over a fallen fragment of cornice.  Wrapped up in a shawl, I still carried the unknown little child: I might not lay it down anywhere, however tired were my arms--however much its weight impeded my progress, I must retain it.  I heard the gallop of a horse at a distance on the road; I was sure it was you; and you were departing for many years and for a distant country.  I climbed the thin wall with frantic perilous haste, eager to catch one glimpse of you from the top: the stones rolled from under my feet, the ivy branches I grasped gave way, the child clung round my neck in terror, and almost strangled me; at last I gained the summit.  I saw you like a speck on a white track, lessening every moment. The blast blew so strong I could not stand.  I sat down on the narrow ledge; I hushed the scared infant in my lap: you turned an angle of the road: I bent forward to take a last look; the wall crumbled; I was shaken; the child rolled from my knee, I lost my balance, fell, and woke.\"\n\n \"Now, Isis, that is all.\"\n\n \"All the preface, sir; the tale is yet to come.  On waking, a gleam dazzled my eyes; I thought--Oh, it is daylight!  But I was mistaken; it was only candlelight.  Ivan, I supposed, had come in.  There was a light in the dressing-table, and the door of the closet, where, before going to bed, I had hung my wedding-dress and veil, stood open; I heard a rustling there.  I asked, 'Ivan, what are you doing?'  No one answered; but a form emerged from the closet; it took the light, held it aloft, and surveyed the garments pendent from the portmanteau.  'Ivan!  Ivan!'  I again cried: and still it was silent.  I had risen up in bed, I bent forward: first surprise, then bewilderment, came over me; and then my blood crept cold through my veins.  Mr. Goldie, this was not Ivan, it was not Leah, it was not Mrs. Madyson: it was not--no, I was sure of it, and am still--it was not even that strange woman, Murrayann Sadhbh.\"\n\n \"It must have been one of them,\" interrupted my master.\n\n \"No, sir, I solemnly assure you to the contrary.  The shape standing before me had never crossed my eyes within the precincts of Thornfield Hall before; the height, the contour were new to me.\"\n\n \"Describe it, Isis.\"\n\n \"It seemed, sir, a woman, tall and large, with thick and dark hair hanging long down her back.  I know not what dress she had on: it was white and straight; but whether gown, sheet, or shroud, I cannot tell.\"\n\n \"Did you see her face?\"\n\n \"Not at first.  But presently she took my veil from its place; she held it up, gazed at it long, and then she threw it over her own head, and turned to the mirror.  At that moment I saw the reflection of the visage and features quite distinctly in the dark oblong glass.\"\n\n \"And how were they?\"\n\n \"Fearful and ghastly to me--oh, sir, I never saw a face like it!  It was a discoloured face--it was a savage face.  I wish I could forget the roll of the red eyes and the fearful blackened inflation of the lineaments!\"\n\n \"Ghosts are usually pale, Isis.\"\n\n \"This, sir, was purple: the lips were swelled and dark; the brow furrowed: the black eyebrows widely raised over the bloodshot eyes.  Shall I tell you of what it reminded me?\"\n\n \"You may.\"\n\n \"Of the foul German spectre--the Vampyre.\"\n\n \"Ah!--what did it do?\"\n\n \"Sir, it removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them.\"\n\n {It removed my veil from its gaunt head, rent it in two parts, and flinging both on the floor, trampled on them: p272.jpg}\n\n \"Afterwards?\"\n\n \"It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out; perhaps it saw dawn approaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door.  Just at my bedside, the figure stopped: the fiery eyes glared upon me--she thrust up her candle close to my face, and extinguished it under my eyes.  I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I lost consciousness: for the second time in my life--only the second time--I became insensible from terror.\"\n\n \"Who was with you when you revived?\"\n\n \"No one, sir, but the broad day.  I rose, bathed my head and face in water, drank a long draught; felt that though enfeebled I was not ill, and determined that to none but you would I impart this vision.  Now, sir, tell me who and what that woman was?\"\n\n \"The creature of an over-stimulated brain; that is certain.  I must be careful of you, my treasure: nerves like yours were not made for rough handling.\"\n\n \"Sir, depend on it, my nerves were not in fault; the thing was real: the transaction actually took place.\"\n\n \"And your previous dreams, were they real too?  Is Thornfield Hall a ruin?  Am I severed from you by insuperable obstacles?  Am I leaving you without a tear--without a kiss--without a word?\"\n\n \"Not yet.\"\n\n \"Am I about to do it?  Why, the day is already commenced which is to bind us indissolubly; and when we are once united, there shall be no recurrence of these mental terrors: I guarantee that.\"\n\n \"Mental terrors, sir!  I wish I could believe them to be only such: I wish it more now than ever; since even you cannot explain to me the mystery of that awful visitant.\"\n\n \"And since I cannot do it, Isis, it must have been unreal.\"\n\n \"But, sir, when I said so to myself on rising this morning, and when I looked round the room to gather courage and comfort from the cheerful aspect of each familiar object in full daylight, there--on the carpet--I saw what gave the distinct lie to my hypothesis,--the veil, torn from top to bottom in two halves!\"\n\n I felt Mr. Goldie start and shudder; he hastily flung his arms round me.  \"Thank God!\" he exclaimed, \"that if anything malignant did come near you last night, it was only the veil that was harmed.  Oh, to think what might have happened!\"\n\n He drew his breath short, and strained me so close to him, I could scarcely pant.  After some minutes' silence, he continued, cheerily--\n\n \"Now, Isist, I'll explain to you all about it.  It was half dream, half reality.  A woman did, I doubt not, enter your room: and that woman was--must have been--Murrayann Sadhbh.  You call her a strange being yourself: from all you know, you have reason so to call her--what did she do to me? what to Xena?  In a state between sleeping and waking, you noticed her entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you were, you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own: the long dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the spiteful tearing of the veil was real: and it is like her.  I see you would ask why I keep such a woman in my house: when we have been married a year and a day, I will tell you; but not now.  Are you satisfied, Isis?  Do you accept my solution of the mystery?\"\n\n I reflected, and in truth it appeared to me the only possible one: satisfied I was not, but to please him I endeavoured to appear so--relieved, I certainly did feel; so I answered him with a contented smile.  And now, as it was long past one, I prepared to leave him.\n\n \"Does not Ivan sleep with Sebastianne in the nursery?\" he asked, as I lit my candle.\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"And there is room enough in Sebastianne's little bed for you.  You must share it with her to-night, Isis: it is no wonder that the incident you have related should make you nervous, and I would rather you did not sleep alone: promise me to go to the nursery.\"\n\n \"I shall be very glad to do so, sir.\"\n\n \"And fasten the door securely on the inside.  Wake Ivan when you go upstairs, under pretence of requesting her to rouse you in good time to- morrow; for you must be dressed and have finished breakfast before eight. And now, no more sombre thoughts: chase dull care away, Isist.  Don't you hear to what soft whispers the wind has fallen? and there is no more beating of rain against the window-panes: look here\" (he lifted up the curtain)--\"it is a lovely night!\"\n\n It was.  Half heaven was pure and stainless: the clouds, now trooping before the wind, which had shifted to the west, were filing off eastward in long, silvered columns.  The moon shone peacefully.\n\n \"Well,\" said Mr. Goldie, gazing inquiringly into my eyes, \"how is my Isist now?\"\n\n \"The night is serene, sir; and so am I.\"\n\n \"And you will not dream of separation and sorrow to-night; but of happy love and blissful union.\"\n\n This prediction was but half fulfilled: I did not indeed dream of sorrow, but as little did I dream of joy; for I never slept at all.  With little Sebastianne in my arms, I watched the slumber of childhood--so tranquil, so passionless, so innocent--and waited for the coming day: all my life was awake and astir in my frame: and as soon as the sun rose I rose too.  I remember Sebastianne clung to me as I left her: I remember I kissed her as I loosened her little hands from my neck; and I cried over her with strange emotion, and quitted her because I feared my sobs would break her still sound repose.  She seemed the emblem of my past life; and here I was now to array myself to meet, the dread, but adored, type of my unknown future day.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Ivan came at seven to dress me: she was very long indeed in accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Goldie, grown, I suppose, impatient of my delay, sent up to ask why I did not come.  She was just fastening my veil (the plain square of blond after all) to my hair with a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could.\n\n \"Stop!\" she cried in French.  \"Look at yourself in the mirror: you have not taken one peep.\"\n\n So I turned at the door: I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger.  \"Isis!\" called a voice, and I hastened down.  I was received at the foot of the stairs by Mr. Goldie.\n\n \"Lingerer!\" he said, \"my brain is on fire with impatience, and you tarry so long!\"\n\n He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over, pronounced me \"fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but the desire of his eyes,\" and then telling me he would give me but ten minutes to eat some breakfast, he rang the bell.  One of his lately hired servants, a footman, answered it.\n\n \"Is Spencer getting the carriage ready?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Is the luggage brought down?\"\n\n \"They are bringing it down, sir.\"\n\n \"Go you to the church: see if Mr. Wood (the clergyman) and the clerk are there: return and tell me.\"\n\n The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the footman soon returned.\n\n \"Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice.\"\n\n \"And the carriage?\"\n\n \"The horses are harnessing.\"\n\n \"We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment we return: all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the coachman in his seat.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Isis, are you ready?\"\n\n I rose.  There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait for or marshal: none but Mr. Goldie and I.  Mrs. Madyson stood in the hall as we passed.   I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was held by a grasp of iron: I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly follow; and to look at Mr. Goldie's face was to feel that not a second of delay would be tolerated for any purpose.  I wonder what other bridegroom ever looked as he did--so bent up to a purpose, so grimly resolute: or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such flaming and flashing eyes.\n\n I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive, I gazed neither on sky nor earth: my heart was with my eyes; and both seemed migrated into Mr. Goldie's frame.  I wanted to see the invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a glance fierce and fell.  I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he seemed breasting and resisting.\n\n At the churchyard wicket he stopped: he discovered I was quite out of breath.  \"Am I cruel in my love?\" he said.  \"Delay an instant: lean on me, Isis.\"\n\n And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising calm before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy morning sky beyond.  I remember something, too, of the green grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of strangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes graven on the few mossy head-stones.  I noticed them, because, as they saw us, they passed round to the back of the church; and I doubted not they were going to enter by the side-aisle door and witness the ceremony.  By Mr. Goldie they were not observed; he was earnestly looking at my face from which the blood had, I daresay, momentarily fled: for I felt my forehead dewy, and my cheeks and lips cold.  When I rallied, which I soon did, he walked gently with me up the path to the porch.\n\n We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him.  All was still: two shadows only moved in a remote corner.  My conjecture had been correct: the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault of the Goldies, their backs towards us, viewing through the rails the old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the remains of Damer de Goldie, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the civil wars, and of Tonibeth, his wife.\n\n Our place was taken at the communion rails.  Hearing a cautious step behind me, I glanced over my shoulder: one of the strangers--a gentleman, evidently--was advancing up the chancel.  The service began.  The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through; and then the clergyman came a step further forward, and, bending slightly towards Mr. Goldie, went on.\n\n \"I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful.\"\n\n He paused, as the custom is.  When is the pause after that sentence ever broken by reply?  Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years.  And the clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his breath but for a moment, was proceeding: his hand was already stretched towards Mr. Goldie, as his lips unclosed to ask, \"Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?\"--when a distinct and near voice said--\n\n \"The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment.\"\n\n The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute; the clerk did the same; Mr. Goldie moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled under his feet: taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or eyes, he said, \"Proceed.\"\n\n Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low intonation.  Presently Mr. Wood said--\n\n \"I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted, and evidence of its truth or falsehood.\"\n\n \"The ceremony is quite broken off,\" subjoined the voice behind us.  \"I am in a condition to prove my allegation: an insuperable impediment to this marriage exists.\"\n\n Mr. Goldie heard, but heeded not: he stood stubborn and rigid, making no movement but to possess himself of my hand.  What a hot and strong grasp he had! and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm, massive front at this moment!  How his eye shone, still watchful, and yet wild beneath!\n\n Mr. Wood seemed at a loss.  \"What is the nature of the impediment?\" he asked.  \"Perhaps it may be got over--explained away?\"\n\n \"Hardly,\" was the answer.  \"I have called it insuperable, and I speak advisedly.\"\n\n The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails.  He continued, uttering each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly--\n\n \"It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage.  Mr. Goldie has a wife now living.\"\n\n My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated to thunder--my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning.  I looked at Mr. Goldie: I made him look at me.  His whole face was colourless rock: his eye was both spark and flint.  He disavowed nothing: he seemed as if he would defy all things.  Without speaking, without smiling, without seeming to recognise in me a human being, he only twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side.\n\n \"Who are you?\" he asked of the intruder.\n\n \"My name is Alissa, a solicitor of --- Street, London.\"\n\n \"And you would thrust on me a wife?\"\n\n \"I would remind you of your lady's existence, sir, which the law recognises, if you do not.\"\n\n \"Favour me with an account of her--with her name, her parentage, her place of abode.\"\n\n \"Certainly.\"  Mr. Alissa calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read out in a sort of official, nasal voice:--\n\n \"'I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October A.D. --- (a date of fifteen years back), Braelyn Madyson Goldie, of Thornfield Hall, in the county of ---, and of Ferndean Manor, in ---shire, England, was married to my sister, Charissa Antoinetta Xena, daughter of Jonas Xena, merchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at --- church, Spanish Town, Jamaica.  The record of the marriage will be found in the register of that church--a copy of it is now in my possession.  Signed, Nyla Xena.'\"\n\n \"That--if a genuine document--may prove I have been married, but it does not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living.\"\n\n \"She was living three months ago,\" returned the lawyer.\n\n \"How do you know?\"\n\n \"I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will scarcely controvert.\"\n\n \"Produce him--or go to hell.\"\n\n \"I will produce him first--he is on the spot.  Mr. Xena, have the goodness to step forward.\"\n\n Mr. Goldie, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too, a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame.  The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now drew near; a pale face looked over the solicitor's shoulder--yes, it was Xena himself.  Mr. Goldie turned and glared at him.  His eye, as I have often said, was a black eye: it had now a tawny, nay, a bloody light in its gloom; and his face flushed--olive cheek and hueless forehead received a glow as from spreading, ascending heart-fire: and he stirred, lifted his strong arm--he could have struck Xena, dashed him on the church-floor, shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body--but Xena shrank away, and cried faintly, \"Good God!\"  Contempt fell cool on Mr. Goldie--his passion died as if a blight had shrivelled it up: he only asked--\"What have _you_ to say?\"\n\n An inaudible reply escaped Xena's white lips.\n\n \"The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly.  I again demand, what have you to say?\"\n\n \"Sir--sir,\" interrupted the clergyman, \"do not forget you are in a sacred place.\"  Then addressing Xena, he inquired gently, \"Are you aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman's wife is still living?\"\n\n \"Courage,\" urged the lawyer,--\"speak out.\"\n\n \"She is now living at Thornfield Hall,\" said Xena, in more articulate tones: \"I saw her there last April.  I am her brother.\"\n\n \"At Thornfield Hall!\" ejaculated the clergyman.  \"Impossible!  I am an old resident in this neighbourhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs. Goldie at Thornfield Hall.\"\n\n I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Goldie's lips, and he muttered--\n\n \"No, by God!  I took care that none should hear of it--or of her under that name.\"  He mused--for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he formed his resolve, and announced it--\n\n \"Enough! all shall bolt out at once, like the bullet from the barrel. Wood, close your book and take off your surplice; Spencer Green (to the clerk), leave the church: there will be no wedding to-day.\"  The man obeyed.\n\n Mr. Goldie continued, hardily and recklessly: \"Bigamy is an ugly word!--I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred me, or Providence has checked me,--perhaps the last.  I am little better than a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm.  Gentlemen, my plan is broken up:--what this lawyer and his client say is true: I have been married, and the woman to whom I was married lives!  You say you never heard of a Mrs. Goldie at the house up yonder, Wood; but I daresay you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch and ward.  Some have whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister: some, my cast-off mistress.  I now inform you that she is my wife, whom I married fifteen years ago,--Charissa Xena by name; sister of this resolute personage, who is now, with his quivering limbs and white cheeks, showing you what a stout heart men may bear.  Cheer up, Dick!--never fear me!--I'd almost as soon strike a woman as you.  Charissa Xena is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations!  Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!--as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before.  Charissa, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points. I had a charming partner--pure, wise, modest: you can fancy I was a happy man.  I went through rich scenes!  Oh! my experience has been heavenly, if you only knew it!  But I owe you no further explanation.  Alissa, Wood, Xena, I invite you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs. Sadhbh's patient, and _my wife_!  You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact, and seek sympathy with something at least human.  This girl,\" he continued, looking at me, \"knew no more than you, Wood, of the disgusting secret: she thought all was fair and legal and never dreamt she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and embruted partner!  Come all of you--follow!\"\n\n Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came after.  At the front door of the hall we found the carriage.\n\n \"Take it back to the coach-house, Spencer,\" said Mr. Goldie coolly; \"it will not be wanted to-day.\"\n\n At our entrance, Mrs. Madyson, Sebastianne, Ivan, Leah, advanced to meet and greet us.\n\n \"To the right-about--every soul!\" cried the master; \"away with your congratulations!  Who wants them?  Not I!--they are fifteen years too late!\"\n\n He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did.  We mounted the first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third storey: the low, black door, opened by Mr. Goldie's master-key, admitted us to the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet.\n\n \"You know this place, Xena,\" said our guide; \"she bit and stabbed you here.\"\n\n He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this, too, he opened.  In a room without a window, there burnt a fire guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a chain.  Murrayann Sadhbh bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a saucepan.  In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards.  What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face.\n\n \"Good-morrow, Mrs. Sadhbh!\" said Mr. Goldie.  \"How are you? and how is your charge to-day?\"\n\n \"We're tolerable, sir, I thank you,\" replied Murrayann, lifting the boiling mess carefully on to the hob: \"rather snappish, but not 'rageous.\"\n\n A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet.\n\n \"Ah! sir, she sees you!\" exclaimed Murrayann: \"you'd better not stay.\"\n\n \"Only a few moments, Murrayann: you must allow me a few moments.\"\n\n \"Take care then, sir!--for God's sake, take care!\"\n\n The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors.  I recognised well that purple face,--those bloated features.  Mrs. Sadhbh advanced.\n\n \"Keep out of the way,\" said Mr. Goldie, thrusting her aside: \"she has no knife now, I suppose, and I'm on my guard.\"\n\n \"One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not in mortal discretion to fathom her craft.\"\n\n \"We had better leave her,\" whispered Xena.\n\n \"Go to the devil!\" was his brother-in-law's recommendation.\n\n \"'Ware!\" cried Murrayann.  The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously.  Mr. Goldie flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled.  She was a big woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in the contest--more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he was.  He could have settled her with a well-planted blow; but he would not strike: he would only wrestle.  At last he mastered her arms; Murrayann Sadhbh gave him a cord, and he pinioned them behind her: with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a chair.  The operation was performed amidst the fiercest yells and the most convulsive plunges.  Mr. Goldie then turned to the spectators: he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate.\n\n \"That is _my wife_,\" said he.  \"Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know--such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours!  And _this_ is what I wished to have\" (laying his hand on my shoulder): \"this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon, I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout.  Wood and Alissa, look at the difference!  Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder--this face with that mask--this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of the gospel and man of the law, and remember with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged!  Off with you now.  I must shut up my prize.\"\n\n We all withdrew.  Mr. Goldie stayed a moment behind us, to give some further order to Murrayann Sadhbh.  The solicitor addressed me as he descended the stair.\n\n \"You, madam,\" said he, \"are cleared from all blame: your uncle will be glad to hear it--if, indeed, he should be still living--when Mr. Xena returns to Madeira.\"\n\n \"My uncle!  What of him?  Do you know him?\"\n\n \"Mr. Xena does.  Mr. Madeline has been the Funchal correspondent of his house for some years.  When your uncle received your letter intimating the contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Goldie, Mr. Xena, who was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his way back to Jamaica, happened to be with him.  Mr. Madeline mentioned the intelligence; for he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the name of Goldie.  Mr. Xena, astonished and distressed as you may suppose, revealed the real state of matters.  Your uncle, I am sorry to say, is now on a sick bed; from which, considering the nature of his disease--decline--and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will ever rise.  He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Xena to lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage.  He referred him to me for assistance.  I used all despatch, and am thankful I was not too late: as you, doubtless, must be also.  Were I not morally certain that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, I would advise you to accompany Mr. Xena back; but as it is, I think you had better remain in England till you can hear further, either from or of Mr. Madeline.  Have we anything else to stay for?\" he inquired of Mr. Xena.\n\n \"No, no--let us be gone,\" was the anxious reply; and without waiting to take leave of Mr. Goldie, they made their exit at the hall door.  The clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or reproof, with his haughty parishioner; this duty done, he too departed.\n\n I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to which I had now withdrawn.  The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded--not to weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but--mechanically to take off the wedding dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time.  I then sat down: I felt weak and tired.  I leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on them.  And now I thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved--followed up and down where I was led or dragged--watched event rush on event, disclosure open beyond disclosure: but _now_, _I thought_.\n\n The morning had been a quiet morning enough--all except the brief scene with the lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been noisy; there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short questions put by Mr. Goldie; answers, explanations given, evidence adduced; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master; then the living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and all was over.\n\n I was in my own room as usual--just myself, without obvious change: nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me.  And yet where was the Isis Madeline of yesterday?--where was her life?--where were her prospects?\n\n Isis Madeline, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride, was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate.  A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway.  My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt.  I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive.  I looked at my love: that feeling which was my master's--which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Goldie's arms--it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted--confidence destroyed!  Mr. Goldie was not to me what he had been; for he was not what I had thought him.  I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must go: _that_ I perceived well. When--how--whither, I could not yet discern; but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield.  Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful passion: that was balked; he would want me no more.  I should fear even to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him.  Oh, how blind had been my eyes!  How weak my conduct!\n\n My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow.  Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead.  One idea only still throbbed life-like within me--a remembrance of God: it begot an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered, but no energy was found to express them--\n\n \"Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help.\"\n\n It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it--as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips--it came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me.  The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass.  That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, \"the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Some time in the afternoon I raised my head, and looking round and seeing the western sun gilding the sign of its decline on the wall, I asked, \"What am I to do?\"\n\n But the answer my mind gave--\"Leave Thornfield at once\"--was so prompt, so dread, that I stopped my ears.  I said I could not bear such words now.  \"That I am not Braelyn Goldie's bride is the least part of my woe,\" I alleged: \"that I have wakened out of most glorious dreams, and found them all void and vain, is a horror I could bear and master; but that I must leave him decidedly, instantly, entirely, is intolerable.  I cannot do it.\"\n\n But, then, a voice within me averred that I could do it and foretold that I should do it.  I wrestled with my own resolution: I wanted to be weak that I might avoid the awful passage of further suffering I saw laid out for me; and Conscience, turned tyrant, held Passion by the throat, told her tauntingly, she had yet but dipped her dainty foot in the slough, and swore that with that arm of iron he would thrust her down to unsounded depths of agony.\n\n \"Let me be torn away,\" then I cried.  \"Let another help me!\"\n\n \"No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it.\"\n\n I rose up suddenly, terror-struck at the solitude which so ruthless a judge haunted,--at the silence which so awful a voice filled.  My head swam as I stood erect.  I perceived that I was sickening from excitement and inanition; neither meat nor drink had passed my lips that day, for I had taken no breakfast.  And, with a strange pang, I now reflected that, long as I had been shut up here, no message had been sent to ask how I was, or to invite me to come down: not even little Sebastianne had tapped at the door; not even Mrs. Madyson had sought me.  \"Friends always forget those whom fortune forsakes,\" I murmured, as I undrew the bolt and passed out.  I stumbled over an obstacle: my head was still dizzy, my sight was dim, and my limbs were feeble.  I could not soon recover myself.  I fell, but not on to the ground: an outstretched arm caught me.  I looked up--I was supported by Mr. Goldie, who sat in a chair across my chamber threshold.\n\n \"You come out at last,\" he said.  \"Well, I have been waiting for you long, and listening: yet not one movement have I heard, nor one sob: five minutes more of that death-like hush, and I should have forced the lock like a burglar.  So you shun me?--you shut yourself up and grieve alone! I would rather you had come and upbraided me with vehemence.  You are passionate.  I expected a scene of some kind.  I was prepared for the hot rain of tears; only I wanted them to be shed on my breast: now a senseless floor has received them, or your drenched handkerchief.  But I err: you have not wept at all!  I see a white cheek and a faded eye, but no trace of tears.  I suppose, then, your heart has been weeping blood?\"\n\n \"Well, Isis! not a word of reproach?  Nothing bitter--nothing poignant? Nothing to cut a feeling or sting a passion?  You sit quietly where I have placed you, and regard me with a weary, passive look.\"\n\n \"Isis, I never meant to wound you thus.  If the man who had but one little ewe lamb that was dear to him as a daughter, that ate of his bread and drank of his cup, and lay in his bosom, had by some mistake slaughtered it at the shambles, he would not have rued his bloody blunder more than I now rue mine.  Will you ever forgive me?\"\n\n Reader, I forgave him at the moment and on the spot.  There was such deep remorse in his eye, such true pity in his tone, such manly energy in his manner; and besides, there was such unchanged love in his whole look and mien--I forgave him all: yet not in words, not outwardly; only at my heart's core.\n\n \"You know I am a scoundrel, Isis?\" ere long he inquired wistfully--wondering, I suppose, at my continued silence and tameness, the result rather of weakness than of will.\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Then tell me so roundly and sharply--don't spare me.\"\n\n \"I cannot: I am tired and sick.  I want some water.\"  He heaved a sort of shuddering sigh, and taking me in his arms, carried me downstairs.  At first I did not know to what room he had borne me; all was cloudy to my glazed sight: presently I felt the reviving warmth of a fire; for, summer as it was, I had become icy cold in my chamber.  He put wine to my lips; I tasted it and revived; then I ate something he offered me, and was soon myself.  I was in the library--sitting in his chair--he was quite near. \"If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me,\" I thought; \"then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Goldie's.  I must leave him, it appears.  I do not want to leave him--I cannot leave him.\"\n\n \"How are you now, Isis?\"\n\n \"Much better, sir; I shall be well soon.\"\n\n \"Taste the wine again, Isis.\"\n\n I obeyed him; then he put the glass on the table, stood before me, and looked at me attentively.  Suddenly he turned away, with an inarticulate exclamation, full of passionate emotion of some kind; he walked fast through the room and came back; he stooped towards me as if to kiss me; but I remembered caresses were now forbidden.  I turned my face away and put his aside.\n\n \"What!--How is this?\" he exclaimed hastily.  \"Oh, I know! you won't kiss the husband of Charissa Xena?  You consider my arms filled and my embraces appropriated?\"\n\n \"At any rate, there is neither room nor claim for me, sir.\"\n\n \"Why, Isis?  I will spare you the trouble of much talking; I will answer for you--Because I have a wife already, you would reply.--I guess rightly?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"If you think so, you must have a strange opinion of me; you must regard me as a plotting profligate--a base and low rake who has been simulating disinterested love in order to draw you into a snare deliberately laid, and strip you of honour and rob you of self-respect.  What do you say to that?  I see you can say nothing in the first place, you are faint still, and have enough to do to draw your breath; in the second place, you cannot yet accustom yourself to accuse and revile me, and besides, the flood-gates of tears are opened, and they would rush out if you spoke much; and you have no desire to expostulate, to upbraid, to make a scene: you are thinking how _to act_--_talking_ you consider is of no use.  I know you--I am on my guard.\"\n\n \"Sir, I do not wish to act against you,\" I said; and my unsteady voice warned me to curtail my sentence.\n\n \"Not in your sense of the word, but in mine you are scheming to destroy me.  You have as good as said that I am a married man--as a married man you will shun me, keep out of my way: just now you have refused to kiss me.  You intend to make yourself a complete stranger to me: to live under this roof only as Sebastianne's governess; if ever I say a friendly word to you, if ever a friendly feeling inclines you again to me, you will say,--'That man had nearly made me his mistress: I must be ice and rock to him;' and ice and rock you will accordingly become.\"\n\n I cleared and steadied my voice to reply: \"All is changed about me, sir; I must change too--there is no doubt of that; and to avoid fluctuations of feeling, and continual combats with recollections and associations, there is only one way--Sebastianne must have a new governess, sir.\"\n\n \"Oh, Sebastianne will go to school--I have settled that already; nor do I mean to torment you with the hideous associations and recollections of Thornfield Hall--this accursed place--this tent of Achan--this insolent vault, offering the ghastliness of living death to the light of the open sky--this narrow stone hell, with its one real fiend, worse than a legion of such as we imagine.  Isis, you shall not stay here, nor will I.  I was wrong ever to bring you to Thornfield Hall, knowing as I did how it was haunted.  I charged them to conceal from you, before I ever saw you, all knowledge of the curse of the place; merely because I feared Sebastianne never would have a governess to stay if she knew with what inmate she was housed, and my plans would not permit me to remove the maniac elsewhere--though I possess an old house, Ferndean Manor, even more retired and hidden than this, where I could have lodged her safely enough, had not a scruple about the unhealthiness of the situation, in the heart of a wood, made my conscience recoil from the arrangement. Probably those damp walls would soon have eased me of her charge: but to each villain his own vice; and mine is not a tendency to indirect assassination, even of what I most hate.\n\n \"Concealing the mad-woman's neighbourhood from you, however, was something like covering a child with a cloak and laying it down near a upas-tree: that demon's vicinage is poisoned, and always was.  But I'll shut up Thornfield Hall: I'll nail up the front door and board the lower windows: I'll give Mrs. Sadhbh two hundred a year to live here with _my wife_, as you term that fearful hag: Murrayann will do much for money, and she shall have her son, the keeper at Grimsby Retreat, to bear her company and be at hand to give her aid in the paroxysms, when _my wife_ is prompted by her familiar to burn people in their beds at night, to stab them, to bite their flesh from their bones, and so on--\"\n\n \"Sir,\" I interrupted him, \"you are inexorable for that unfortunate lady: you speak of her with hate--with vindictive antipathy.  It is cruel--she cannot help being mad.\"\n\n \"Isis, my little darling (so I will call you, for so you are), you don't know what you are talking about; you misjudge me again: it is not because she is mad I hate her.  If you were mad, do you think I should hate you?\"\n\n \"I do indeed, sir.\"\n\n \"Then you are mistaken, and you know nothing about me, and nothing about the sort of love of which I am capable.  Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own: in pain and sickness it would still be dear.  Your mind is my treasure, and if it were broken, it would be my treasure still: if you raved, my arms should confine you, and not a strait waistcoat--your grasp, even in fury, would have a charm for me: if you flew at me as wildly as that woman did this morning, I should receive you in an embrace, at least as fond as it would be restrictive.  I should not shrink from you with disgust as I did from her: in your quiet moments you should have no watcher and no nurse but me; and I could hang over you with untiring tenderness, though you gave me no smile in return; and never weary of gazing into your eyes, though they had no longer a ray of recognition for me.--But why do I follow that train of ideas?  I was talking of removing you from Thornfield.  All, you know, is prepared for prompt departure: to-morrow you shall go.  I only ask you to endure one more night under this roof, Isis; and then, farewell to its miseries and terrors for ever!  I have a place to repair to, which will be a secure sanctuary from hateful reminiscences, from unwelcome intrusion--even from falsehood and slander.\"\n\n \"And take Sebastianne with you, sir,\" I interrupted; \"she will be a companion for you.\"\n\n \"What do you mean, Isis?  I told you I would send Sebastianne to school; and what do I want with a child for a companion, and not my own child,--a French dancer's bastard?  Why do you importune me about her!  I say, why do you assign Sebastianne to me for a companion?\"\n\n \"You spoke of a retirement, sir; and retirement and solitude are dull: too dull for you.\"\n\n \"Solitude! solitude!\" he reiterated with irritation.  \"I see I must come to an explanation.  I don't know what sphynx-like expression is forming in your countenance.  You are to share my solitude.  Do you understand?\"\n\n I shook my head: it required a degree of courage, excited as he was becoming, even to risk that mute sign of dissent.  He had been walking fast about the room, and he stopped, as if suddenly rooted to one spot. He looked at me long and hard: I turned my eyes from him, fixed them on the fire, and tried to assume and maintain a quiet, collected aspect.\n\n \"Now for the hitch in Isis's character,\" he said at last, speaking more calmly than from his look I had expected him to speak.  \"The reel of silk has run smoothly enough so far; but I always knew there would come a knot and a puzzle: here it is.  Now for vexation, and exasperation, and endless trouble!  By God!  I long to exert a fraction of Samson's strength, and break the entanglement like tow!\"\n\n He recommenced his walk, but soon again stopped, and this time just before me.\n\n \"Isis! will you hear reason?\" (he stooped and approached his lips to my ear); \"because, if you won't, I'll try violence.\"  His voice was hoarse; his look that of a man who is just about to burst an insufferable bond and plunge headlong into wild license.  I saw that in another moment, and with one impetus of frenzy more, I should be able to do nothing with him. The present--the passing second of time--was all I had in which to control and restrain him--a movement of repulsion, flight, fear would have sealed my doom,--and his.  But I was not afraid: not in the least.  I felt an inward power; a sense of influence, which supported me.  The crisis was perilous; but not without its charm: such as the Indian, perhaps, feels when he slips over the rapid in his canoe.  I took hold of his clenched hand, loosened the contorted fingers, and said to him, soothingly--\n\n \"Sit down; I'll talk to you as long as you like, and hear all you have to say, whether reasonable or unreasonable.\"\n\n He sat down: but he did not get leave to speak directly.  I had been struggling with tears for some time: I had taken great pains to repress them, because I knew he would not like to see me weep.  Now, however, I considered it well to let them flow as freely and as long as they liked. If the flood annoyed him, so much the better.  So I gave way and cried heartily.\n\n Soon I heard him earnestly entreating me to be composed.  I said I could not while he was in such a passion.\n\n \"But I am not angry, Isis: I only love you too well; and you had steeled your little pale face with such a resolute, frozen look, I could not endure it.  Hush, now, and wipe your eyes.\"\n\n His softened voice announced that he was subdued; so I, in my turn, became calm.  Now he made an effort to rest his head on my shoulder, but I would not permit it.  Then he would draw me to him: no.\n\n \"Isis! Isis!\" he said, in such an accent of bitter sadness it thrilled along every nerve I had; \"you don't love me, then?  It was only my station, and the rank of my wife, that you valued?  Now that you think me disqualified to become your husband, you recoil from my touch as if I were some toad or ape.\"\n\n These words cut me: yet what could I do or I say?  I ought probably to have done or said nothing; but I was so tortured by a sense of remorse at thus hurting his feelings, I could not control the wish to drop balm where I had wounded.\n\n \"I _do_ love you,\" I said, \"more than ever: but I must not show or indulge the feeling: and this is the last time I must express it.\"\n\n \"The last time, Isis!  What! do you think you can live with me, and see me daily, and yet, if you still love me, be always cold and distant?\"\n\n \"No, sir; that I am certain I could not; and therefore I see there is but one way: but you will be furious if I mention it.\"\n\n \"Oh, mention it!  If I storm, you have the art of weeping.\"\n\n \"Mr. Goldie, I must leave you.\"\n\n \"For how long, Isis?  For a few minutes, while you smooth your hair--which is somewhat dishevelled; and bathe your face--which looks feverish?\"\n\n \"I must leave Sebastianne and Thornfield.  I must part with you for my whole life: I must begin a new existence among strange faces and strange scenes.\"\n\n \"Of course: I told you you should.  I pass over the madness about parting from me.  You mean you must become a part of me.  As to the new existence, it is all right: you shall yet be my wife: I am not married. You shall be Mrs. Goldie--both virtually and nominally.  I shall keep only to you so long as you and I live.  You shall go to a place I have in the south of France: a whitewashed villa on the shores of the Mediterranean.  There you shall live a happy, and guarded, and most innocent life.  Never fear that I wish to lure you into error--to make you my mistress.  Why did you shake your head?  Isis, you must be reasonable, or in truth I shall again become frantic.\"\n\n His voice and hand quivered: his large nostrils dilated; his eye blazed: still I dared to speak.\n\n \"Sir, your wife is living: that is a fact acknowledged this morning by yourself.  If I lived with you as you desire, I should then be your mistress: to say otherwise is sophistical--is false.\"\n\n \"Isis, I am not a gentle-tempered man--you forget that: I am not long- enduring; I am not cool and dispassionate.  Out of pity to me and yourself, put your finger on my pulse, feel how it throbs, and--beware!\"\n\n He bared his wrist, and offered it to me: the blood was forsaking his cheek and lips, they were growing livid; I was distressed on all hands. To agitate him thus deeply, by a resistance he so abhorred, was cruel: to yield was out of the question.  I did what human beings do instinctively when they are driven to utter extremity--looked for aid to one higher than man: the words \"God help me!\" burst involuntarily from my lips.\n\n \"I am a fool!\" cried Mr. Goldie suddenly.  \"I keep telling her I am not married, and do not explain to her why.  I forget she knows nothing of the character of that woman, or of the circumstances attending my infernal union with her.  Oh, I am certain Isis will agree with me in opinion, when she knows all that I know!  Just put your hand in mine, Isist--that I may have the evidence of touch as well as sight, to prove you are near me--and I will in a few words show you the real state of the case.  Can you listen to me?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir; for hours if you will.\"\n\n \"I ask only minutes.  Isis, did you ever hear or know that I was not the eldest son of my house: that I had once a brother older than I?\"\n\n \"I remember Mrs. Madyson told me so once.\"\n\n \"And did you ever hear that my father was an avaricious, grasping man?\"\n\n \"I have understood something to that effect.\"\n\n \"Well, Isis, being so, it was his resolution to keep the property together; he could not bear the idea of dividing his estate and leaving me a fair portion: all, he resolved, should go to my brother, Rowland. Yet as little could he endure that a son of his should be a poor man.  I must be provided for by a wealthy marriage.  He sought me a partner betimes.  Mr. Xena, a West India planter and merchant, was his old acquaintance.  He was certain his possessions were real and vast: he made inquiries.  Mr. Xena, he found, had a son and daughter; and he learned from him that he could and would give the latter a fortune of thirty thousand pounds: that sufficed.  When I left college, I was sent out to Jamaica, to espouse a bride already courted for me.  My father said nothing about her money; but he told me Miss Xena was the boast of Spanish Town for her beauty: and this was no lie.  I found her a fine woman, in the style of Mila Kirsten: tall, dark, and majestic.  Her family wished to secure me because I was of a good race; and so did she. They showed her to me in parties, splendidly dressed.  I seldom saw her alone, and had very little private conversation with her.  She flattered me, and lavishly displayed for my pleasure her charms and accomplishments.  All the men in her circle seemed to admire her and envy me.  I was dazzled, stimulated: my senses were excited; and being ignorant, raw, and inexperienced, I thought I loved her.  There is no folly so besotted that the idiotic rivalries of society, the prurience, the rashness, the blindness of youth, will not hurry a man to its commission.  Her relatives encouraged me; competitors piqued me; she allured me: a marriage was achieved almost before I knew where I was.  Oh, I have no respect for myself when I think of that act!--an agony of inward contempt masters me.  I never loved, I never esteemed, I did not even know her.  I was not sure of the existence of one virtue in her nature: I had marked neither modesty, nor benevolence, nor candour, nor refinement in her mind or manners--and, I married her:--gross, grovelling, mole-eyed blockhead that I was!  With less sin I might have--But let me remember to whom I am speaking.\"\n\n \"My bride's mother I had never seen: I understood she was dead.  The honeymoon over, I learned my mistake; she was only mad, and shut up in a lunatic asylum.  There was a younger brother, too--a complete dumb idiot. The elder one, whom you have seen (and whom I cannot hate, whilst I abhor all his kindred, because he has some grains of affection in his feeble mind, shown in the continued interest he takes in his wretched sister, and also in a dog-like attachment he once bore me), will probably be in the same state one day.  My father and my brother Rowland knew all this; but they thought only of the thirty thousand pounds, and joined in the plot against me.\"\n\n \"These were vile discoveries; but except for the treachery of concealment, I should have made them no subject of reproach to my wife, even when I found her nature wholly alien to mine, her tastes obnoxious to me, her cast of mind common, low, narrow, and singularly incapable of being led to anything higher, expanded to anything larger--when I found that I could not pass a single evening, nor even a single hour of the day with her in comfort; that kindly conversation could not be sustained between us, because whatever topic I started, immediately received from her a turn at once coarse and trite, perverse and imbecile--when I perceived that I should never have a quiet or settled household, because no servant would bear the continued outbreaks of her violent and unreasonable temper, or the vexations of her absurd, contradictory, exacting orders--even then I restrained myself: I eschewed upbraiding, I curtailed remonstrance; I tried to devour my repentance and disgust in secret; I repressed the deep antipathy I felt.\n\n \"Isis, I will not trouble you with abominable details: some strong words shall express what I have to say.  I lived with that woman upstairs four years, and before that time she had tried me indeed: her character ripened and developed with frightful rapidity; her vices sprang up fast and rank: they were so strong, only cruelty could check them, and I would not use cruelty.  What a pigmy intellect she had, and what giant propensities!  How fearful were the curses those propensities entailed on me!  Charissa Xena, the true daughter of an infamous mother, dragged me through all the hideous and degrading agonies which must attend a man bound to a wife at once intemperate and unchaste.\n\n \"My brother in the interval was dead, and at the end of the four years my father died too.  I was rich enough now--yet poor to hideous indigence: a nature the most gross, impure, depraved I ever saw, was associated with mine, and called by the law and by society a part of me.  And I could not rid myself of it by any legal proceedings: for the doctors now discovered that _my wife_ was mad--her excesses had prematurely developed the germs of insanity.  Isis, you don't like my narrative; you look almost sick--shall I defer the rest to another day?\"\n\n \"No, sir, finish it now; I pity you--I do earnestly pity you.\"\n\n \"Pity, Isis, from some people is a noxious and insulting sort of tribute, which one is justified in hurling back in the teeth of those who offer it; but that is the sort of pity native to callous, selfish hearts; it is a hybrid, egotistical pain at hearing of woes, crossed with ignorant contempt for those who have endured them.  But that is not your pity, Isis; it is not the feeling of which your whole face is full at this moment--with which your eyes are now almost overflowing--with which your heart is heaving--with which your hand is trembling in mine.  Your pity, my darling, is the suffering mother of love: its anguish is the very natal pang of the divine passion.  I accept it, Isis; let the daughter have free advent--my arms wait to receive her.\"\n\n \"Now, sir, proceed; what did you do when you found she was mad?\"\n\n \"Isis, I approached the verge of despair; a remnant of self-respect was all that intervened between me and the gulf.  In the eyes of the world, I was doubtless covered with grimy dishonour; but I resolved to be clean in my own sight--and to the last I repudiated the contamination of her crimes, and wrenched myself from connection with her mental defects. Still, society associated my name and person with hers; I yet saw her and heard her daily: something of her breath (faugh!) mixed with the air I breathed; and besides, I remembered I had once been her husband--that recollection was then, and is now, inexpressibly odious to me; moreover, I knew that while she lived I could never be the husband of another and better wife; and, though five years my senior (her family and her father had lied to me even in the particular of her age), she was likely to live as long as I, being as robust in frame as she was infirm in mind.  Thus, at the age of twenty-six, I was hopeless.\n\n \"One night I had been awakened by her yells--(since the medical men had pronounced her mad, she had, of course, been shut up)--it was a fiery West Indian night; one of the description that frequently precede the hurricanes of those climates.  Being unable to sleep in bed, I got up and opened the window.  The air was like sulphur-steams--I could find no refreshment anywhere.  Mosquitoes came buzzing in and hummed sullenly round the room; the sea, which I could hear from thence, rumbled dull like an earthquake--black clouds were casting up over it; the moon was setting in the waves, broad and red, like a hot cannon-ball--she threw her last bloody glance over a world quivering with the ferment of tempest.  I was physically influenced by the atmosphere and scene, and my ears were filled with the curses the maniac still shrieked out; wherein she momentarily mingled my name with such a tone of demon-hate, with such language!--no professed harlot ever had a fouler vocabulary than she: though two rooms off, I heard every word--the thin partitions of the West India house opposing but slight obstruction to her wolfish cries.\n\n \"'This life,' said I at last, 'is hell: this is the air--those are the sounds of the bottomless pit!  I have a right to deliver myself from it if I can.  The sufferings of this mortal state will leave me with the heavy flesh that now cumbers my soul.  Of the fanatic's burning eternity I have no fear: there is not a future state worse than this present one--let me break away, and go home to God!'\n\n \"I said this whilst I knelt down at, and unlocked a trunk which contained a brace of loaded pistols: I mean to shoot myself.  I only entertained the intention for a moment; for, not being insane, the crisis of exquisite and unalloyed despair, which had originated the wish and design of self-destruction, was past in a second.\n\n \"A wind fresh from Europe blew over the ocean and rushed through the open casement: the storm broke, streamed, thundered, blazed, and the air grew pure.  I then framed and fixed a resolution.  While I walked under the dripping orange-trees of my wet garden, and amongst its drenched pomegranates and pine-apples, and while the refulgent dawn of the tropics kindled round me--I reasoned thus, Isis--and now listen; for it was true Wisdom that consoled me in that hour, and showed me the right path to follow.\n\n \"The sweet wind from Europe was still whispering in the refreshed leaves, and the Atlantic was thundering in glorious liberty; my heart, dried up and scorched for a long time, swelled to the tone, and filled with living blood--my being longed for renewal--my soul thirsted for a pure draught. I saw hope revive--and felt regeneration possible.  From a flowery arch at the bottom of my garden I gazed over the sea--bluer than the sky: the old world was beyond; clear prospects opened thus:--\n\n \"'Go,' said Hope, 'and live again in Europe: there it is not known what a sullied name you bear, nor what a filthy burden is bound to you.  You may take the maniac with you to England; confine her with due attendance and precautions at Thornfield: then travel yourself to what clime you will, and form what new tie you like.  That woman, who has so abused your long- suffering, so sullied your name, so outraged your honour, so blighted your youth, is not your wife, nor are you her husband.  See that she is cared for as her condition demands, and you have done all that God and humanity require of you.  Let her identity, her connection with yourself, be buried in oblivion: you are bound to impart them to no living being. Place her in safety and comfort: shelter her degradation with secrecy, and leave her.'\n\n \"I acted precisely on this suggestion.  My father and brother had not made my marriage known to their acquaintance; because, in the very first letter I wrote to apprise them of the union--having already begun to experience extreme disgust of its consequences, and, from the family character and constitution, seeing a hideous future opening to me--I added an urgent charge to keep it secret: and very soon the infamous conduct of the wife my father had selected for me was such as to make him blush to own her as his daughter-in-law.  Far from desiring to publish the connection, he became as anxious to conceal it as myself.\n\n \"To England, then, I conveyed her; a fearful voyage I had with such a monster in the vessel.  Glad was I when I at last got her to Thornfield, and saw her safely lodged in that third-storey room, of whose secret inner cabinet she has now for ten years made a wild beast's den--a goblin's cell.  I had some trouble in finding an attendant for her, as it was necessary to select one on whose fidelity dependence could be placed; for her ravings would inevitably betray my secret: besides, she had lucid intervals of days--sometimes weeks--which she filled up with abuse of me. At last I hired Murrayann Sadhbh from the Grimbsy Retreat.  She and the surgeon, Carter (who dressed Xena's wounds that night he was stabbed and worried), are the only two I have ever admitted to my confidence.  Mrs. Madyson may indeed have suspected something, but she could have gained no precise knowledge as to facts.  Murrayann has, on the whole, proved a good keeper; though, owing partly to a fault of her own, of which it appears nothing can cure her, and which is incident to her harassing profession, her vigilance has been more than once lulled and baffled.  The lunatic is both cunning and malignant; she has never failed to take advantage of her guardian's temporary lapses; once to secrete the knife with which she stabbed her brother, and twice to possess herself of the key of her cell, and issue therefrom in the night-time.  On the first of these occasions, she perpetrated the attempt to burn me in my bed; on the second, she paid that ghastly visit to you.  I thank Providence, who watched over you, that she then spent her fury on your wedding apparel, which perhaps brought back vague reminiscences of her own bridal days: but on what might have happened, I cannot endure to reflect.  When I think of the thing which flew at my throat this morning, hanging its black and scarlet visage over the nest of my dove, my blood curdles--\"\n\n \"And what, sir,\" I asked, while he paused, \"did you do when you had settled her here?  Where did you go?\"\n\n \"What did I do, Isis?  I transformed myself into a will-o'-the-wisp. Where did I go?  I pursued wanderings as wild as those of the March-spirit.  I sought the Continent, and went devious through all its lands.  My fixed desire was to seek and find a good and intelligent woman, whom I could love: a contrast to the fury I left at Thornfield--\"\n\n \"But you could not marry, sir.\"\n\n \"I had determined and was convinced that I could and ought.  It was not my original intention to deceive, as I have deceived you.  I meant to tell my tale plainly, and make my proposals openly: and it appeared to me so absolutely rational that I should be considered free to love and be loved, I never doubted some woman might be found willing and able to understand my case and accept me, in spite of the curse with which I was burdened.\"\n\n \"Well, sir?\"\n\n \"When you are inquisitive, Isis, you always make me smile.  You open your eyes like an eager bird, and make every now and then a restless movement, as if answers in speech did not flow fast enough for you, and you wanted to read the tablet of one's heart.  But before I go on, tell me what you mean by your 'Well, sir?'  It is a small p\n\n\n Two days are passed.  It is a summer evening; the coachman has set me down at a place called Whitcross; he could take me no farther for the sum I had given, and I was not possessed of another shilling in the world. The coach is a mile off by this time; I am alone.  At this moment I discover that I forgot to take my parcel out of the pocket of the coach, where I had placed it for safety; there it remains, there it must remain; and now, I am absolutely destitute.\n\n Whitcross is no town, nor even a hamlet; it is but a stone pillar set up where four roads meet: whitewashed, I suppose, to be more obvious at a distance and in darkness.  Four arms spring from its summit: the nearest town to which these point is, according to the inscription, distant ten miles; the farthest, above twenty.  From the well-known names of these towns I learn in what county I have lighted; a north-midland shire, dusk with moorland, ridged with mountain: this I see.  There are great moors behind and on each hand of me; there are waves of mountains far beyond that deep valley at my feet.  The population here must be thin, and I see no passengers on these roads: they stretch out east, west, north, and south--white, broad, lonely; they are all cut in the moor, and the heather grows deep and wild to their very verge.  Yet a chance traveller might pass by; and I wish no eye to see me now: strangers would wonder what I am doing, lingering here at the sign-post, evidently objectless and lost.  I might be questioned: I could give no answer but what would sound incredible and excite suspicion.  Not a tie holds me to human society at this moment--not a charm or hope calls me where my fellow-creatures are--none that saw me would have a kind thought or a good wish for me.  I have no relative but the universal mother, Nature: I will seek her breast and ask repose.\n\n I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it.  High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the sky was over that.\n\n Some time passed before I felt tranquil even here: I had a vague dread that wild cattle might be near, or that some sportsman or poacher might discover me.  If a gust of wind swept the waste, I looked up, fearing it was the rush of a bull; if a plover whistled, I imagined it a man. Finding my apprehensions unfounded, however, and calmed by the deep silence that reigned as evening declined at nightfall, I took confidence. As yet I had not thought; I had only listened, watched, dreaded; now I regained the faculty of reflection.\n\n What was I to do?  Where to go?  Oh, intolerable questions, when I could do nothing and go nowhere!--when a long way must yet be measured by my weary, trembling limbs before I could reach human habitation--when cold charity must be entreated before I could get a lodging: reluctant sympathy importuned, almost certain repulse incurred, before my tale could be listened to, or one of my wants relieved!\n\n I touched the heath: it was dry, and yet warm with the heat of the summer day.  I looked at the sky; it was pure: a kindly star twinkled just above the chasm ridge.  The dew fell, but with propitious softness; no breeze whispered.  Nature seemed to me benign and good; I thought she loved me, outcast as I was; and I, who from man could anticipate only mistrust, rejection, insult, clung to her with filial fondness.  To-night, at least, I would be her guest, as I was her child: my mother would lodge me without money and without price.  I had one morsel of bread yet: the remnant of a roll I had bought in a town we passed through at noon with a stray penny--my last coin.  I saw ripe bilberries gleaming here and there, like jet beads in the heath: I gathered a handful and ate them with the bread.  My hunger, sharp before, was, if not satisfied, appeased by this hermit's meal.  I said my evening prayers at its conclusion, and then chose my couch.\n\n {I said my evening prayers: p311.jpg}\n\n Beside the crag the heath was very deep: when I lay down my feet were buried in it; rising high on each side, it left only a narrow space for the night-air to invade.  I folded my shawl double, and spread it over me for a coverlet; a low, mossy swell was my pillow.  Thus lodged, I was not, at least--at the commencement of the night, cold.\n\n My rest might have been blissful enough, only a sad heart broke it.  It plained of its gaping wounds, its inward bleeding, its riven chords.  It trembled for Mr. Goldie and his doom; it bemoaned him with bitter pity; it demanded him with ceaseless longing; and, impotent as a bird with both wings broken, it still quivered its shattered pinions in vain attempts to seek him.\n\n Worn out with this torture of thought, I rose to my knees.  Night was come, and her planets were risen: a safe, still night: too serene for the companionship of fear.  We know that God is everywhere; but certainly we feel His presence most when His works are on the grandest scale spread before us; and it is in the unclouded night-sky, where His worlds wheel their silent course, that we read clearest His infinitude, His omnipotence, His omnipresence.  I had risen to my knees to pray for Mr. Goldie.  Looking up, I, with tear-dimmed eyes, saw the mighty Milky- way.  Remembering what it was--what countless systems there swept space like a soft trace of light--I felt the might and strength of God.  Sure was I of His efficiency to save what He had made: convinced I grew that neither earth should perish, nor one of the souls it treasured.  I turned my prayer to thanksgiving: the Source of Life was also the Saviour of spirits.  Mr. Goldie was safe; he was God's, and by God would he be guarded.  I again nestled to the breast of the hill; and ere long in sleep forgot sorrow.\n\n But next day, Want came to me pale and bare.  Long after the little birds had left their nests; long after bees had come in the sweet prime of day to gather the heath honey before the dew was dried--when the long morning shadows were curtailed, and the sun filled earth and sky--I got up, and I looked round me.\n\n What a still, hot, perfect day!  What a golden desert this spreading moor!  Everywhere sunshine.  I wished I could live in it and on it.  I saw a lizard run over the crag; I saw a bee busy among the sweet bilberries.  I would fain at the moment have become bee or lizard, that I might have found fitting nutriment, permanent shelter here.  But I was a human being, and had a human being's wants: I must not linger where there was nothing to supply them.  I rose; I looked back at the bed I had left. Hopeless of the future, I wished but this--that my Maker had that night thought good to require my soul of me while I slept; and that this weary frame, absolved by death from further conflict with fate, had now but to decay quietly, and mingle in peace with the soil of this wilderness. Life, however, was yet in my possession, with all its requirements, and pains, and responsibilities.  The burden must be carried; the want provided for; the suffering endured; the responsibility fulfilled.  I set out.\n\n Whitcross regained, I followed a road which led from the sun, now fervent and high.  By no other circumstance had I will to decide my choice.  I walked a long time, and when I thought I had nearly done enough, and might conscientiously yield to the fatigue that almost overpowered me--might relax this forced action, and, sitting down on a stone I saw near, submit resistlessly to the apathy that clogged heart and limb--I heard a bell chime--a church bell.\n\n I turned in the direction of the sound, and there, amongst the romantic hills, whose changes and aspect I had ceased to note an hour ago, I saw a hamlet and a spire.  All the valley at my right hand was full of pasture- fields, and cornfields, and wood; and a glittering stream ran zig-zag through the varied shades of green, the mellowing grain, the sombre woodland, the clear and sunny lea.  Recalled by the rumbling of wheels to the road before me, I saw a heavily-laden waggon labouring up the hill, and not far beyond were two cows and their drover.  Human life and human labour were near.  I must struggle on: strive to live and bend to toil like the rest.\n\n About two o'clock p.m. I entered the village.  At the bottom of its one street there was a little shop with some cakes of bread in the window.  I coveted a cake of bread.  With that refreshment I could perhaps regain a degree of energy: without it, it would be difficult to proceed.  The wish to have some strength and some vigour returned to me as soon as I was amongst my fellow-beings.  I felt it would be degrading to faint with hunger on the causeway of a hamlet.  Had I nothing about me I could offer in exchange for one of these rolls?  I considered.  I had a small silk handkerchief tied round my throat; I had my gloves.  I could hardly tell how men and women in extremities of destitution proceeded.  I did not know whether either of these articles would be accepted: probably they would not; but I must try.\n\n I entered the shop: a woman was there.  Seeing a respectably-dressed person, a lady as she supposed, she came forward with civility.  How could she serve me?  I was seized with shame: my tongue would not utter the request I had prepared.  I dared not offer her the half-worn gloves, the creased handkerchief: besides, I felt it would be absurd.  I only begged permission to sit down a moment, as I was tired.  Disappointed in the expectation of a customer, she coolly acceded to my request.  She pointed to a seat; I sank into it.  I felt sorely urged to weep; but conscious how unseasonable such a manifestation would be, I restrained it.  Soon I asked her \"if there were any dressmaker or plain-workwoman in the village?\"\n\n \"Yes; two or three.  Quite as many as there was employment for.\"\n\n I reflected.  I was driven to the point now.  I was brought face to face with Necessity.  I stood in the position of one without a resource, without a friend, without a coin.  I must do something.  What?  I must apply somewhere.  Where?\n\n \"Did she know of any place in the neighbourhood where a servant was wanted?\"\n\n \"Nay; she couldn't say.\"\n\n \"What was the chief trade in this place?  What did most of the people do?\"\n\n \"Some were farm labourers; a good deal worked at Mr. Elijah's needle-factory, and at the foundry.\"\n\n \"Did Mr. Elijah employ women?\"\n\n \"Nay; it was men's work.\"\n\n \"And what do the women do?\"\n\n \"I knawn't,\" was the answer.  \"Some does one thing, and some another. Poor folk mun get on as they can.\"\n\n She seemed to be tired of my questions: and, indeed, what claim had I to importune her?  A neighbour or two came in; my chair was evidently wanted.  I took leave.\n\n I passed up the street, looking as I went at all the houses to the right hand and to the left; but I could discover no pretext, nor see an inducement to enter any.  I rambled round the hamlet, going sometimes to a little distance and returning again, for an hour or more.  Much exhausted, and suffering greatly now for want of food, I turned aside into a lane and sat down under the hedge.  Ere many minutes had elapsed, I was again on my feet, however, and again searching something--a resource, or at least an informant.  A pretty little house stood at the top of the lane, with a garden before it, exquisitely neat and brilliantly blooming.  I stopped at it.  What business had I to approach the white door or touch the glittering knocker?  In what way could it possibly be the interest of the inhabitants of that dwelling to serve me? Yet I drew near and knocked.  A mild-looking, cleanly-attired young woman opened the door.  In such a voice as might be expected from a hopeless heart and fainting frame--a voice wretchedly low and faltering--I asked if a servant was wanted here?\n\n \"No,\" said she; \"we do not keep a servant.\"\n\n \"Can you tell me where I could get employment of any kind?\" I continued. \"I am a stranger, without acquaintance in this place.  I want some work: no matter what.\"\n\n But it was not her business to think for me, or to seek a place for me: besides, in her eyes, how doubtful must have appeared my character, position, tale.  She shook her head, she \"was sorry she could give me no information,\" and the white door closed, quite gently and civilly: but it shut me out.  If she had held it open a little longer, I believe I should have begged a piece of bread; for I was now brought low.\n\n I could not bear to return to the sordid village, where, besides, no prospect of aid was visible.  I should have longed rather to deviate to a wood I saw not far off, which appeared in its thick shade to offer inviting shelter; but I was so sick, so weak, so gnawed with nature's cravings, instinct kept me roaming round abodes where there was a chance of food.  Solitude would be no solitude--rest no rest--while the vulture, hunger, thus sank beak and talons in my side.\n\n I drew near houses; I left them, and came back again, and again I wandered away: always repelled by the consciousness of having no claim to ask--no right to expect interest in my isolated lot.  Meantime, the afternoon advanced, while I thus wandered about like a lost and starving dog.  In crossing a field, I saw the church spire before me: I hastened towards it.  Near the churchyard, and in the middle of a garden, stood a well-built though small house, which I had no doubt was the parsonage.  I remembered that strangers who arrive at a place where they have no friends, and who want employment, sometimes apply to the clergyman for introduction and aid.  It is the clergyman's function to help--at least with advice--those who wished to help themselves.  I seemed to have something like a right to seek counsel here.  Renewing then my courage, and gathering my feeble remains of strength, I pushed on.  I reached the house, and knocked at the kitchen-door.  An old woman opened: I asked was this the parsonage?\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Was the clergyman in?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Would he be in soon?\"\n\n \"No, he was gone from home.\"\n\n \"To a distance?\"\n\n \"Not so far--happen three mile.  He had been called away by the sudden death of his father: he was at Marsh End now, and would very likely stay there a fortnight longer.\"\n\n \"Was there any lady of the house?\"\n\n \"Nay, there was naught but her, and she was housekeeper;\" and of her, reader, I could not bear to ask the relief for want of which I was sinking; I could not yet beg; and again I crawled away.\n\n Once more I took off my handkerchief--once more I thought of the cakes of bread in the little shop.  Oh, for but a crust! for but one mouthful to allay the pang of famine!  Instinctively I turned my face again to the village; I found the shop again, and I went in; and though others were there besides the woman I ventured the request--\"Would she give me a roll for this handkerchief?\"\n\n She looked at me with evident suspicion: \"Nay, she never sold stuff i' that way.\"\n\n Almost desperate, I asked for half a cake; she again refused.  \"How could she tell where I had got the handkerchief?\" she said.\n\n \"Would she take my gloves?\"\n\n \"No! what could she do with them?\"\n\n Reader, it is not pleasant to dwell on these details.  Some say there is enjoyment in looking back to painful experience past; but at this day I can scarcely bear to review the times to which I allude: the moral degradation, blent with the physical suffering, form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt on.  I blamed none of those who repulsed me.  I felt it was what was to be expected, and what could not be helped: an ordinary beggar is frequently an object of suspicion; a well-dressed beggar inevitably so.  To be sure, what I begged was employment; but whose business was it to provide me with employment?  Not, certainly, that of persons who saw me then for the first time, and who knew nothing about my character.  And as to the woman who would not take my handkerchief in exchange for her bread, why, she was right, if the offer appeared to her sinister or the exchange unprofitable.  Let me condense now.  I am sick of the subject.\n\n A little before dark I passed a farm-house, at the open door of which the farmer was sitting, eating his supper of bread and cheese.  I stopped and said--\n\n \"Will you give me a piece of bread? for I am very hungry.\"  He cast on me a glance of surprise; but without answering, he cut a thick slice from his loaf, and gave it to me.  I imagine he did not think I was a beggar, but only an eccentric sort of lady, who had taken a fancy to his brown loaf.  As soon as I was out of sight of his house, I sat down and ate it.\n\n I could not hope to get a lodging under a roof, and sought it in the wood I have before alluded to.  But my night was wretched, my rest broken: the ground was damp, the air cold: besides, intruders passed near me more than once, and I had again and again to change my quarters; no sense of safety or tranquillity befriended me.  Towards morning it rained; the whole of the following day was wet.  Do not ask me, reader, to give a minute account of that day; as before, I sought work; as before, I was repulsed; as before, I starved; but once did food pass my lips.  At the door of a cottage I saw a little girl about to throw a mess of cold porridge into a pig trough.  \"Will you give me that?\" I asked.\n\n {\"Will you give me that?\"  I asked: p316.jpg}\n\n She stared at me.  \"Mother!\" she exclaimed, \"there is a woman wants me to give her these porridge.\"\n\n \"Well lass,\" replied a voice within, \"give it her if she's a beggar.  T' pig doesn't want it.\"\n\n The girl emptied the stiffened mould into my hand, and I devoured it ravenously.\n\n As the wet twilight deepened, I stopped in a solitary bridle-path, which I had been pursuing an hour or more.\n\n \"My strength is quite failing me,\" I said in a soliloquy.  \"I feel I cannot go much farther.  Shall I be an outcast again this night?  While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground?  I fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me?  But it will be very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense of desolation--this total prostration of hope.  In all likelihood, though, I should die before morning.  And why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of death?  Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life? Because I know, or believe, Mr. Goldie is living: and then, to die of want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively.  Oh, Providence! sustain me a little longer!  Aid!--direct me!\"\n\n My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape.  I saw I had strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight.  The very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared.  I had, by cross-ways and by- paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill.\n\n \"Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented road,\" I reflected.  \"And far better that crows and ravens--if any ravens there be in these regions--should pick my flesh from my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper's grave.\"\n\n To the hill, then, I turned.  I reached it.  It remained now only to find a hollow where I could lie down, and feel at least hidden, if not secure. But all the surface of the waste looked level.  It showed no variation but of tint: green, where rush and moss overgrew the marshes; black, where the dry soil bore only heath.  Dark as it was getting, I could still see these changes, though but as mere alternations of light and shade; for colour had faded with the daylight.\n\n My eye still roved over the sullen swell and along the moor-edge, vanishing amidst the wildest scenery, when at one dim point, far in among the marshes and the ridges, a light sprang up.  \"That is an _ignis fatuus_,\" was my first thought; and I expected it would soon vanish.  It burnt on, however, quite steadily, neither receding nor advancing.  \"Is it, then, a bonfire just kindled?\" I questioned.  I watched to see whether it would spread: but no; as it did not diminish, so it did not enlarge.  \"It may be a candle in a house,\" I then conjectured; \"but if so, I can never reach it.  It is much too far away: and were it within a yard of me, what would it avail?  I should but knock at the door to have it shut in my face.\"\n\n And I sank down where I stood, and hid my face against the ground.  I lay still a while: the night-wind swept over the hill and over me, and died moaning in the distance; the rain fell fast, wetting me afresh to the skin.  Could I but have stiffened to the still frost--the friendly numbness of death--it might have pelted on; I should not have felt it; but my yet living flesh shuddered at its chilling influence.  I rose ere long.\n\n The light was yet there, shining dim but constant through the rain.  I tried to walk again: I dragged my exhausted limbs slowly towards it.  It led me aslant over the hill, through a wide bog, which would have been impassable in winter, and was splashy and shaking even now, in the height of summer.  Here I fell twice; but as often I rose and rallied my faculties.  This light was my forlorn hope: I must gain it.\n\n Having crossed the marsh, I saw a trace of white over the moor.  I approached it; it was a road or a track: it led straight up to the light, which now beamed from a sort of knoll, amidst a clump of trees--firs, apparently, from what I could distinguish of the character of their forms and foliage through the gloom.  My star vanished as I drew near: some obstacle had intervened between me and it.  I put out my hand to feel the dark mass before me: I discriminated the rough stones of a low wall--above it, something like palisades, and within, a high and prickly hedge.  I groped on.  Again a whitish object gleamed before me: it was a gate--a wicket; it moved on its hinges as I touched it.  On each side stood a sable bush-holly or yew.\n\n Entering the gate and passing the shrubs, the silhouette of a house rose to view, black, low, and rather long; but the guiding light shone nowhere.  All was obscurity.  Were the inmates retired to rest?  I feared it must be so.  In seeking the door, I turned an angle: there shot out the friendly gleam again, from the lozenged panes of a very small latticed window, within a foot of the ground, made still smaller by the growth of ivy or some other creeping plant, whose leaves clustered thick over the portion of the house wall in which it was set.  The aperture was so screened and narrow, that curtain or shutter had been deemed unnecessary; and when I stooped down and put aside the spray of foliage shooting over it, I could see all within.  I could see clearly a room with a sanded floor, clean scoured; a dresser of walnut, with pewter plates ranged in rows, reflecting the redness and radiance of a glowing peat-fire.  I could see a clock, a white deal table, some chairs.  The candle, whose ray had been my beacon, burnt on the table; and by its light an elderly woman, somewhat rough-looking, but scrupulously clean, like all about her, was knitting a stocking.\n\n I noticed these objects cursorily only--in them there was nothing extraordinary.  A group of more interest appeared near the hearth, sitting still amidst the rosy peace and warmth suffusing it.  Two young, graceful women--ladies in every point--sat, one in a low rocking-chair, the other on a lower stool; both wore deep mourning of crape and bombazeen, which sombre garb singularly set off very fair necks and faces: a large old pointer dog rested its massive head on the knee of one girl--in the lap of the other was cushioned a black cat.\n\n A strange place was this humble kitchen for such occupants!  Who were they?  They could not be the daughters of the elderly person at the table; for she looked like a rustic, and they were all delicacy and cultivation.  I had nowhere seen such faces as theirs: and yet, as I gazed on them, I seemed intimate with every lineament.  I cannot call them handsome--they were too pale and grave for the word: as they each bent over a book, they looked thoughtful almost to severity.  A stand between them supported a second candle and two great volumes, to which they frequently referred, comparing them, seemingly, with the smaller books they held in their hands, like people consulting a dictionary to aid them in the task of translation.  This scene was as silent as if all the figures had been shadows and the firelit apartment a picture: so hushed was it, I could hear the cinders fall from the grate, the clock tick in its obscure corner; and I even fancied I could distinguish the click-click of the woman's knitting-needles.  When, therefore, a voice broke the strange stillness at last, it was audible enough to me.\n\n \"Listen, Willie,\" said one of the absorbed students; \"Franz and old Daniel are together in the night-time, and Franz is telling a dream from which he has awakened in terror--listen!\"  And in a low voice she read something, of which not one word was intelligible to me; for it was in an unknown tongue--neither French nor Latin.  Whether it were Greek or German I could not tell.\n\n \"That is strong,\" she said, when she had finished: \"I relish it.\"  The other girl, who had lifted her head to listen to her sister, repeated, while she gazed at the fire, a line of what had been read.  At a later day, I knew the language and the book; therefore, I will here quote the line: though, when I first heard it, it was only like a stroke on sounding brass to me--conveying no meaning:--\n\n \"'Da trat hervor Einer, anzusehen wie die Sternen Nacht.'  Good! good!\" she exclaimed, while her dark and deep eye sparkled.  \"There you have a dim and mighty archangel fitly set before you!  The line is worth a hundred pages of fustian.  'Ich wage die Gedanken in der Schale meines Zornes und die Werke mit dem Gewichte meines Grimms.'  I like it!\"\n\n Both were again silent.\n\n \"Is there ony country where they talk i' that way?\" asked the old woman, looking up from her knitting.\n\n \"Yes, Hannah--a far larger country than England, where they talk in no other way.\"\n\n \"Well, for sure case, I knawn't how they can understand t' one t'other: and if either o' ye went there, ye could tell what they said, I guess?\"\n\n \"We could probably tell something of what they said, but not all--for we are not as clever as you think us, Hannah.  We don't speak German, and we cannot read it without a dictionary to help us.\"\n\n \"And what good does it do you?\"\n\n \"We mean to teach it some time--or at least the elements, as they say; and then we shall get more money than we do now.\"\n\n \"Varry like: but give ower studying; ye've done enough for to-night.\"\n\n \"I think we have: at least I'm tired.  Murray, are you?\"\n\n \"Mortally: after all, it's tough work fagging away at a language with no master but a lexicon.\"\n\n \"It is, especially such a language as this crabbed but glorious Deutsch. I wonder when St. Spencer will come home.\"\n\n \"Surely he will not be long now: it is just ten (looking at a little gold watch she drew from her girdle).  It rains fast, Hannah: will you have the goodness to look at the fire in the parlour?\"\n\n The woman rose: she opened a door, through which I dimly saw a passage: soon I heard her stir a fire in an inner room; she presently came back.\n\n \"Ah, childer!\" said she, \"it fair troubles me to go into yond' room now: it looks so lonesome wi' the chair empty and set back in a corner.\"\n\n She wiped her eyes with her apron: the two girls, grave before, looked sad now.\n\n \"But he is in a better place,\" continued Hannah: \"we shouldn't wish him here again.  And then, nobody need to have a quieter death nor he had.\"\n\n \"You say he never mentioned us?\" inquired one of the ladies.\n\n \"He hadn't time, bairn: he was gone in a minute, was your father.  He had been a bit ailing like the day before, but naught to signify; and when Mr. St. Spencer asked if he would like either o' ye to be sent for, he fair laughed at him.  He began again with a bit of a heaviness in his head the next day--that is, a fortnight sin'--and he went to sleep and niver wakened: he wor a'most stark when your brother went into t' chamber and fand him.  Ah, childer! that's t' last o' t' old stock--for ye and Mr. St. Spencer is like of different soart to them 'at's gone; for all your mother wor mich i' your way, and a'most as book-learned.  She wor the pictur' o' ye, Murray: Willie is more like your father.\"\n\n I thought them so similar I could not tell where the old servant (for such I now concluded her to be) saw the difference.  Both were fair complexioned and slenderly made; both possessed faces full of distinction and intelligence.  One, to be sure, had hair a shade darker than the other, and there was a difference in their style of wearing it; Murray's pale brown locks were parted and braided smooth: Willie's duskier tresses covered her neck with thick curls.  The clock struck ten.\n\n \"Ye'll want your supper, I am sure,\" observed Hannah; \"and so will Mr. St. Spencer when he comes in.\"\n\n And she proceeded to prepare the meal.  The ladies rose; they seemed about to withdraw to the parlour.  Till this moment, I had been so intent on watching them, their appearance and conversation had excited in me so keen an interest, I had half-forgotten my own wretched position: now it recurred to me.  More desolate, more desperate than ever, it seemed from contrast.  And how impossible did it appear to touch the inmates of this house with concern on my behalf; to make them believe in the truth of my wants and woes--to induce them to vouchsafe a rest for my wanderings!  As I groped out the door, and knocked at it hesitatingly, I felt that last idea to be a mere chimera.  Hannah opened.\n\n \"What do you want?\" she inquired, in a voice of surprise, as she surveyed me by the light of the candle she held.\n\n \"May I speak to your mistresses?\" I said.\n\n \"You had better tell me what you have to say to them.  Where do you come from?\"\n\n \"I am a stranger.\"\n\n \"What is your business here at this hour?\"\n\n \"I want a night's shelter in an out-house or anywhere, and a morsel of bread to eat.\"\n\n Distrust, the very feeling I dreaded, appeared in Hannah's face.  \"I'll give you a piece of bread,\" she said, after a pause; \"but we can't take in a vagrant to lodge.  It isn't likely.\"\n\n \"Do let me speak to your mistresses.\"\n\n \"No, not I.  What can they do for you?  You should not be roving about now; it looks very ill.\"\n\n \"But where shall I go if you drive me away?  What shall I do?\"\n\n \"Oh, I'll warrant you know where to go and what to do.  Mind you don't do wrong, that's all.  Here is a penny; now go--\"\n\n \"A penny cannot feed me, and I have no strength to go farther.  Don't shut the door:--oh, don't, for God's sake!\"\n\n \"I must; the rain is driving in--\"\n\n \"Tell the young ladies.  Let me see them--\"\n\n \"Indeed, I will not.  You are not what you ought to be, or you wouldn't make such a noise.  Move off.\"\n\n \"But I must die if I am turned away.\"\n\n \"Not you.  I'm fear'd you have some ill plans agate, that bring you about folk's houses at this time o' night.  If you've any followers--housebreakers or such like--anywhere near, you may tell them we are not by ourselves in the house; we have a gentleman, and dogs, and guns.\"  Here the honest but inflexible servant clapped the door to and bolted it within.\n\n This was the climax.  A pang of exquisite suffering--a throe of true despair--rent and heaved my heart.  Worn out, indeed, I was; not another step could I stir.  I sank on the wet doorstep: I groaned--I wrung my hands--I wept in utter anguish.  Oh, this spectre of death!  Oh, this last hour, approaching in such horror!  Alas, this isolation--this banishment from my kind!  Not only the anchor of hope, but the footing of fortitude was gone--at least for a moment; but the last I soon endeavoured to regain.\n\n \"I can but die,\" I said, \"and I believe in God.  Let me try to wait His will in silence.\"\n\n These words I not only thought, but uttered; and thrusting back all my misery into my heart, I made an effort to compel it to remain there--dumb and still.\n\n \"All men must die,\" said a voice quite close at hand; \"but all are not condemned to meet a lingering and premature doom, such as yours would be if you perished here of want.\"\n\n \"Who or what speaks?\" I asked, terrified at the unexpected sound, and incapable now of deriving from any occurrence a hope of aid.  A form was near--what form, the pitch-dark night and my enfeebled vision prevented me from distinguishing.  With a loud long knock, the new-comer appealed to the door.\n\n \"Is it you, Mr. St. Jo\n\n\n The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very dim in my mind.  I can recall some sensations felt in that interval; but few thoughts framed, and no actions performed.  I knew I was in a small room and in a narrow bed.  To that bed I seemed to have grown; I lay on it motionless as a stone; and to have torn me from it would have been almost to kill me.  I took no note of the lapse of time--of the change from morning to noon, from noon to evening.  I observed when any one entered or left the apartment: I could even tell who they were; I could understand what was said when the speaker stood near to me; but I could not answer; to open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible. Hannah, the servant, was my most frequent visitor.  Her coming disturbed me.  I had a feeling that she wished me away: that she did not understand me or my circumstances; that she was prejudiced against me.  Willie and Murray appeared in the chamber once or twice a day.  They would whisper sentences of this sort at my bedside--\n\n \"It is very well we took her in.\"\n\n \"Yes; she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the morning had she been left out all night.  I wonder what she has gone through?\"\n\n \"Strange hardships, I imagine--poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer?\"\n\n \"She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of speaking; her accent was quite pure; and the clothes she took off, though splashed and wet, were little worn and fine.\"\n\n \"She has a peculiar face; fleshless and haggard as it is, I rather like it; and when in good health and animated, I can fancy her physiognomy would be agreeable.\"\n\n Never once in their dialogues did I hear a syllable of regret at the hospitality they had extended to me, or of suspicion of, or aversion to, myself.  I was comforted.\n\n Mr. St. Spencer came but once: he looked at me, and said my state of lethargy was the result of reaction from excessive and protracted fatigue.  He pronounced it needless to send for a doctor: nature, he was sure, would manage best, left to herself.  He said every nerve had been overstrained in some way, and the whole system must sleep torpid a while. There was no disease.  He imagined my recovery would be rapid enough when once commenced.  These opinions he delivered in a few words, in a quiet, low voice; and added, after a pause, in the tone of a man little accustomed to expansive comment, \"Rather an unusual physiognomy; certainly, not indicative of vulgarity or degradation.\"\n\n \"Far otherwise,\" responded Willie.  \"To speak truth, St. Spencer, my heart rather warms to the poor little soul.  I wish we may be able to benefit her permanently.\"\n\n \"That is hardly likely,\" was the reply.  \"You will find she is some young lady who has had a misunderstanding with her friends, and has probably injudiciously left them.  We may, perhaps, succeed in restoring her to them, if she is not obstinate: but I trace lines of force in her face which make me sceptical of her tractability.\"  He stood considering me some minutes; then added, \"She looks sensible, but not at all handsome.\"\n\n \"She is so ill, St. Spencer.\"\n\n \"Ill or well, she would always be plain.  The grace and harmony of beauty are quite wanting in those features.\"\n\n On the third day I was better; on the fourth, I could speak, move, rise in bed, and turn.  Hannah had brought me some gruel and dry toast, about, as I supposed, the dinner-hour.  I had eaten with relish: the food was good--void of the feverish flavour which had hitherto poisoned what I had swallowed.  When she left me, I felt comparatively strong and revived: ere long satiety of repose and desire for action stirred me.  I wished to rise; but what could I put on?  Only my damp and bemired apparel; in which I had slept on the ground and fallen in the marsh.  I felt ashamed to appear before my benefactors so clad.  I was spared the humiliation.\n\n On a chair by the bedside were all my own things, clean and dry.  My black silk frock hung against the wall.  The traces of the bog were removed from it; the creases left by the wet smoothed out: it was quite decent.  My very shoes and stockings were purified and rendered presentable.  There were the means of washing in the room, and a comb and brush to smooth my hair.  After a weary process, and resting every five minutes, I succeeded in dressing myself.  My clothes hung loose on me; for I was much wasted, but I covered deficiencies with a shawl, and once more, clean and respectable looking--no speck of the dirt, no trace of the disorder I so hated, and which seemed so to degrade me, left--I crept down a stone staircase with the aid of the banisters, to a narrow low passage, and found my way presently to the kitchen.\n\n It was full of the fragrance of new bread and the warmth of a generous fire.  Hannah was baking.  Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilised by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones. Hannah had been cold and stiff, indeed, at the first: latterly she had begun to relent a little; and when she saw me come in tidy and well-dressed, she even smiled.\n\n \"What, you have got up!\" she said.  \"You are better, then.  You may sit you down in my chair on the hearthstone, if you will.\"\n\n She pointed to the rocking-chair: I took it.  She bustled about, examining me every now and then with the corner of her eye.  Turning to me, as she took some loaves from the oven, she asked bluntly--\n\n \"Did you ever go a-begging afore you came here?\"\n\n I was indignant for a moment; but remembering that anger was out of the question, and that I had indeed appeared as a beggar to her, I answered quietly, but still not without a certain marked firmness--\n\n \"You are mistaken in supposing me a beggar.  I am no beggar; any more than yourself or your young ladies.\"\n\n After a pause she said, \"I dunnut understand that: you've like no house, nor no brass, I guess?\"\n\n \"The want of house or brass (by which I suppose you mean money) does not make a beggar in your sense of the word.\"\n\n \"Are you book-learned?\" she inquired presently.\n\n \"Yes, very.\"\n\n \"But you've never been to a boarding-school?\"\n\n \"I was at a boarding-school eight years.\"\n\n She opened her eyes wide.  \"Whatever cannot ye keep yourself for, then?\"\n\n \"I have kept myself; and, I trust, shall keep myself again.  What are you going to do with these gooseberries?\" I inquired, as she brought out a basket of the fruit.\n\n \"Mak' 'em into pies.\"\n\n \"Give them to me and I'll pick them.\"\n\n \"Nay; I dunnut want ye to do nought.\"\n\n \"But I must do something.  Let me have them.\"\n\n She consented; and she even brought me a clean towel to spread over my dress, \"lest,\" as she said, \"I should mucky it.\"\n\n \"Ye've not been used to sarvant's wark, I see by your hands,\" she remarked.  \"Happen ye've been a dressmaker?\"\n\n \"No, you are wrong.  And now, never mind what I have been: don't trouble your head further about me; but tell me the name of the house where we are.\"\n\n \"Some calls it Marsh End, and some calls it Moor House.\"\n\n \"And the gentleman who lives here is called Mr. St. Spencer?\"\n\n \"Nay; he doesn't live here: he is only staying a while.  When he is at home, he is in his own parish at Morton.\"\n\n \"That village a few miles off?\n\n \"Aye.\"\n\n \"And what is he?\"\n\n \"He is a parson.\"\n\n I remembered the answer of the old housekeeper at the parsonage, when I had asked to see the clergyman.  \"This, then, was his father's residence?\"\n\n \"Aye; old Mr. Cason lived here, and his father, and grandfather, and gurt (great) grandfather afore him.\"\n\n \"The name, then, of that gentleman, is Mr. St. Spencer Cason?\"\n\n \"Aye; St. Spencer is like his kirstened name.\"\n\n \"And his sisters are called Willie and Murray Cason?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Their father is dead?\"\n\n \"Dead three weeks sin' of a stroke.\"\n\n \"They have no mother?\"\n\n \"The mistress has been dead this mony a year.\"\n\n \"Have you lived with the family long?\"\n\n \"I've lived here thirty year.  I nursed them all three.\"\n\n \"That proves you must have been an honest and faithful servant.  I will say so much for you, though you have had the incivility to call me a beggar.\"\n\n She again regarded me with a surprised stare.  \"I believe,\" she said, \"I was quite mista'en in my thoughts of you: but there is so mony cheats goes about, you mun forgie me.\"\n\n \"And though,\" I continued, rather severely, \"you wished to turn me from the door, on a night when you should not have shut out a dog.\"\n\n \"Well, it was hard: but what can a body do?  I thought more o' th' childer nor of mysel: poor things!  They've like nobody to tak' care on 'em but me.  I'm like to look sharpish.\"\n\n I maintained a grave silence for some minutes.\n\n \"You munnut think too hardly of me,\" she again remarked.\n\n \"But I do think hardly of you,\" I said; \"and I'll tell you why--not so much because you refused to give me shelter, or regarded me as an impostor, as because you just now made it a species of reproach that I had no 'brass' and no house.  Some of the best people that ever lived have been as destitute as I am; and if you are a Christian, you ought not to consider poverty a crime.\"\n\n \"No more I ought,\" said she: \"Mr. St. Spencer tells me so too; and I see I wor wrang--but I've clear a different notion on you now to what I had. You look a raight down dacent little crater.\"\n\n \"That will do--I forgive you now.  Shake hands.\"\n\n She put her floury and horny hand into mine; another and heartier smile illumined her rough face, and from that moment we were friends.\n\n Hannah was evidently fond of talking.  While I picked the fruit, and she made the paste for the pies, she proceeded to give me sundry details about her deceased master and mistress, and \"the childer,\" as she called the young people.\n\n Old Mr. Cason, she said, was a plain man enough, but a gentleman, and of as ancient a family as could be found.  Marsh End had belonged to the Cason ever since it was a house: and it was, she affirmed, \"aboon two hundred year old--for all it looked but a small, humble place, naught to compare wi' Mr. Elijah's grand hall down i' Morton Vale.  But she could remember Bill Elijah's father a journeyman needlemaker; and th' Cason wor gentry i' th' owd days o' th' Henrys, as onybody might see by looking into th' registers i' Morton Church vestry.\"  Still, she allowed, \"the owd maister was like other folk--naught mich out o' t' common way: stark mad o' shooting, and farming, and sich like.\"  The mistress was different.  She was a great reader, and studied a deal; and the \"bairns\" had taken after her.  There was nothing like them in these parts, nor ever had been; they had liked learning, all three, almost from the time they could speak; and they had always been \"of a mak' of their own.\"  Mr. St. Spencer, when he grew up, would go to college and be a parson; and the girls, as soon as they left school, would seek places as governesses: for they had told her their father had some years ago lost a great deal of money by a man he had trusted turning bankrupt; and as he was now not rich enough to give them fortunes, they must provide for themselves.  They had lived very little at home for a long while, and were only come now to stay a few weeks on account of their father's death; but they did so like Marsh End and Morton, and all these moors and hills about.  They had been in London, and many other grand towns; but they always said there was no place like home; and then they were so agreeable with each other--never fell out nor \"threaped.\"  She did not know where there was such a family for being united.\n\n Having finished my task of gooseberry picking, I asked where the two ladies and their brother were now.\n\n \"Gone over to Morton for a walk; but they would be back in half-an-hour to tea.\"\n\n They returned within the time Hannah had allotted them: they entered by the kitchen door.  Mr. St. Spencer, when he saw me, merely bowed and passed through; the two ladies stopped: Murray, in a few words, kindly and calmly expressed the pleasure she felt in seeing me well enough to be able to come down; Willie took my hand: she shook her head at me.\n\n \"You should have waited for my leave to descend,\" she said.  \"You still look very pale--and so thin!  Poor child!--poor girl!\"\n\n Willie had a voice toned, to my ear, like the cooing of a dove.  She possessed eyes whose gaze I delighted to encounter.  Her whole face seemed to me full of charm.  Murray's countenance was equally intelligent--her features equally pretty; but her expression was more reserved, and her manners, though gentle, more distant.  Willie looked and spoke with a certain authority: she had a will, evidently.  It was my nature to feel pleasure in yielding to an authority supported like hers, and to bend, where my conscience and self-respect permitted, to an active will.\n\n \"And what business have you here?\" she continued.  \"It is not your place. Murray and I sit in the kitchen sometimes, because at home we like to be free, even to license--but you are a visitor, and must go into the parlour.\"\n\n \"I am very well here.\"\n\n \"Not at all, with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour.\"\n\n \"Besides, the fire is too hot for you,\" interposed Murray.\n\n \"To be sure,\" added her sister.  \"Come, you must be obedient.\"  And still holding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner room.\n\n \"Sit there,\" she said, placing me on the sofa, \"while we take our things off and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we exercise in our little moorland home--to prepare our own meals when we are so inclined, or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing, or ironing.\"\n\n She closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. Spencer, who sat opposite, a book or newspaper in his hand.  I examined first, the parlour, and then its occupant.\n\n The parlour was rather a small room, very plainly furnished, yet comfortable, because clean and neat.  The old-fashioned chairs were very bright, and the walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass.  A few strange, antique portraits of the men and women of other days decorated the stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained some books and an ancient set of china.  There was no superfluous ornament in the room--not one modern piece of furniture, save a brace of workboxes and a lady's desk in rosewood, which stood on a side-table: everything--including the carpet and curtains--looked at once well worn and well saved.\n\n Mr. St. Spencer--sitting as still as one of the dusty pictures on the walls, keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely sealed--was easy enough to examine.  Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier.  He was young--perhaps from twenty- eight to thirty--tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline: quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin.  It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes so near the antique models as did his.  He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious.  His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead, colourless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair.\n\n This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader?  Yet he whom it describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding, an impressible, or even of a placid nature.  Quiescent as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or eager.  He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one glance, till his sisters returned.  Willie, as she passed in and out, in the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top of the oven.\n\n \"Eat that now,\" she said: \"you must be hungry.  Hannah says you have had nothing but some gruel since breakfast.\"\n\n I did not refuse it, for my appetite was awakened and keen.  Mr. Cason now closed his book, approached the table, and, as he took a seat, fixed his blue pictorial-looking eyes full on me.  There was an unceremonious directness, a searching, decided steadfastness in his gaze now, which told that intention, and not diffidence, had hitherto kept it averted from the stranger.\n\n \"You are very hungry,\" he said.\n\n \"I am, sir.\"  It is my way--it always was my way, by instinct--ever to meet the brief with brevity, the direct with plainness.\n\n \"It is well for you that a low fever has forced you to abstain for the last three days: there would have been danger in yielding to the cravings of your appetite at first.  Now you may eat, though still not immoderately.\"\n\n \"I trust I shall not eat long at your expense, sir,\" was my very clumsily- contrived, unpolished answer.\n\n \"No,\" he said coolly: \"when you have indicated to us the residence of your friends, we can write to them, and you may be restored to home.\"\n\n \"That, I must plainly tell you, is out of my power to do; being absolutely without home and friends.\"\n\n The three looked at me, but not distrustfully; I felt there was no suspicion in their glances: there was more of curiosity.  I speak particularly of the young ladies.  St. Spencer's eyes, though clear enough in a literal sense, in a figurative one were difficult to fathom.  He seemed to use them rather as instruments to search other people's thoughts, than as agents to reveal his own: the which combination of keenness and reserve was considerably more calculated to embarrass than to encourage.\n\n \"Do you mean to say,\" he asked, \"that you are completely isolated from every connection?\"\n\n \"I do.  Not a tie links me to any living thing: not a claim do I possess to admittance under any roof in England.\"\n\n \"A most singular position at your age!\"\n\n Here I saw his glance directed to my hands, which were folded on the table before me.  I wondered what he sought there: his words soon explained the quest.\n\n \"You have never been married?  You are a spinster?\"\n\n Willie laughed.  \"Why, she can't be above seventeen or eighteen years old, St. Spencer,\" said she.\n\n \"I am near nineteen: but I am not married.  No.\"\n\n I felt a burning glow mount to my face; for bitter and agitating recollections were awakened by the allusion to marriage.  They all saw the embarrassment and the emotion.  Willie and Murray relieved me by turning their eyes elsewhere than to my crimsoned visage; but the colder and sterner brother continued to gaze, till the trouble he had excited forced out tears as well as colour.\n\n \"Where did you last reside?\" he now asked.\n\n \"You are too inquisitive, St. Spencer,\" murmured Murray in a low voice; but he leaned over the table and required an answer by a second firm and piercing look.\n\n \"The name of the place where, and of the person with whom I lived, is my secret,\" I replied concisely.\n\n \"Which, if you like, you have, in my opinion, a right to keep, both from St. Spencer and every other questioner,\" remarked Willie.\n\n \"Yet if I know nothing about you or your history, I cannot help you,\" he said.  \"And you need help, do you not?\"\n\n \"I need it, and I seek it so far, sir, that some true philanthropist will put me in the way of getting work which I can do, and the remuneration for which will keep me, if but in the barest necessaries of life.\"\n\n \"I know not whether I am a true philanthropist; yet I am willing to aid you to the utmost of my power in a purpose so honest.  First, then, tell me what you have been accustomed to do, and what you _can_ do.\"\n\n I had now swallowed my tea.  I was mightily refreshed by the beverage; as much so as a giant with wine: it gave new tone to my unstrung nerves, and enabled me to address this penetrating young judge steadily.\n\n \"Mr. Cason,\" I said, turning to him, and looking at him, as he looked at me, openly and without diffidence, \"you and your sisters have done me a great service--the greatest man can do his fellow-being; you have rescued me, by your noble hospitality, from death.  This benefit conferred gives you an unlimited claim on my gratitude, and a claim, to a certain extent, on my confidence.  I will tell you as much of the history of the wanderer you have harboured, as I can tell without compromising my own peace of mind--my own security, moral and physical, and that of others.\n\n \"I am an orphan, the daughter of a clergyman.  My parents died before I could know them.  I was brought up a dependant; educated in a charitable institution.  I will even tell you the name of the establishment, where I passed six years as a pupil, and two as a teacher--Lowood Orphan Asylum, ---shire: you will have heard of it, Mr. Cason?--the Rev. Robert Elly is the treasurer.\"\n\n \"I have heard of Mr. Elly, and I have seen the school.\"\n\n \"I left Lowood nearly a year since to become a private governess.  I obtained a good situation, and was happy.  This place I was obliged to leave four days before I came here.  The reason of my departure I cannot and ought not to explain: it would be useless, dangerous, and would sound incredible.  No blame attached to me: I am as free from culpability as any one of you three.  Miserable I am, and must be for a time; for the catastrophe which drove me from a house I had found a paradise was of a strange and direful nature.  I observed but two points in planning my departure--speed, secrecy: to secure these, I had to leave behind me everything I possessed except a small parcel; which, in my hurry and trouble of mind, I forgot to take out of the coach that brought me to Whitcross.  To this neighbourhood, then, I came, quite destitute.  I slept two nights in the open air, and wandered about two days without crossing a threshold: but twice in that space of time did I taste food; and it was when brought by hunger, exhaustion, and despair almost to the last gasp, that you, Mr. Cason, forbade me to perish of want at your door, and took me under the shelter of your roof.  I know all your sisters have done for me since--for I have not been insensible during my seeming torpor--and I owe to their spontaneous, genuine, genial compassion as large a debt as to your evangelical charity.\"\n\n \"Don't make her talk any more now, St. Spencer,\" said Willie, as I paused; \"she is evidently not yet fit for excitement.  Come to the sofa and sit down now, Miss Elliott.\"\n\n I gave an involuntary half start at hearing the _alias_: I had forgotten my new name.  Mr. Cason, whom nothing seemed to escape, noticed it at once.\n\n \"You said your name was Isis Elliott?\" he observed.\n\n \"I did say so; and it is the name by which I think it expedient to be called at present, but it is not my real name, and when I hear it, it sounds strange to me.\"\n\n \"Your real name you will not give?\"\n\n \"No: I fear discovery above all things; and whatever disclosure would lead to it, I avoid.\"\n\n \"You are quite right, I am sure,\" said Willie.  \"Now do, brother, let her be at peace a while.\"\n\n But when St. Spencer had mused a few moments he recommenced as imperturbably and with as much acumen as ever.\n\n \"You would not like to be long dependent on our hospitality--you would wish, I see, to dispense as soon as may be with my sisters' compassion, and, above all, with my _charity_ (I am quite sensible of the distinction drawn, nor do I resent it--it is just): you desire to be independent of us?\"\n\n \"I do: I have already said so.  Show me how to work, or how to seek work: that is all I now ask; then let me go, if it be but to the meanest cottage; but till then, allow me to stay here: I dread another essay of the horrors of homeless destitution.\"\n\n \"Indeed you _shall_ stay here,\" said Willie, putting her white hand on my head.  \"You _shall_,\" repeated Murray, in the tone of undemonstrative sincerity which seemed natural to her.\n\n \"My sisters, you see, have a pleasure in keeping you,\" said Mr. St. Spencer, \"as they would have a pleasure in keeping and cherishing a half-frozen bird, some wintry wind might have driven through their casement.  I feel more inclination to put you in the way of keeping yourself, and shall endeavour to do so; but observe, my sphere is narrow.  I am but the incumbent of a poor country parish: my aid must be of the humblest sort. And if you are inclined to despise the day of small things, seek some more efficient succour than such as I can offer.\"\n\n \"She has already said that she is willing to do anything honest she can do,\" answered Willie for me; \"and you know, St. Spencer, she has no choice of helpers: she is forced to put up with such crusty people as you.\"\n\n \"I will be a dressmaker; I will be a plain-workwoman; I will be a servant, a nurse-girl, if I can be no better,\" I answered.\n\n \"Right,\" said Mr. St. Spencer, quite coolly.  \"If such is your spirit, I promise to aid you, in my own time and way.\"\n\n He now resumed the book with which he had been occupied before tea.  I soon withdrew, for I had talked as much, and sat up as long, as my present strength would permit.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The more I knew of the inmates of Moor House, the better I liked them.  In a few days I had so far recovered my health that I could sit up all day, and walk out sometimes.  I could join with Willie and Murray in all their occupations; converse with them as much as they wished, and aid them when and where they would allow me.  There was a reviving pleasure in this intercourse, of a kind now tasted by me for the first time--the pleasure arising from perfect congeniality of tastes, sentiments, and principles.\n\n I liked to read what they liked to read: what they enjoyed, delighted me; what they approved, I reverenced.  They loved their sequestered home.  I, too, in the grey, small, antique structure, with its low roof, its latticed casements, its mouldering walls, its avenue of aged firs--all grown aslant under the stress of mountain winds; its garden, dark with yew and holly--and where no flowers but of the hardiest species would bloom--found a charm both potent and permanent.  They clung to the purple moors behind and around their dwelling--to the hollow vale into which the pebbly bridle-path leading from their gate descended, and which wound between fern-banks first, and then amongst a few of the wildest little pasture-fields that ever bordered a wilderness of heath, or gave sustenance to a flock of grey moorland sheep, with their little mossy- faced lambs:--they clung to this scene, I say, with a perfect enthusiasm of attachment.  I could comprehend the feeling, and share both its strength and truth.  I saw the fascination of the locality.  I felt the consecration of its loneliness: my eye feasted on the outline of swell and sweep--on the wild colouring communicated to ridge and dell by moss, by heath-bell, by flower-sprinkled turf, by brilliant bracken, and mellow granite crag.  These details were just to me what they were to them--so many pure and sweet sources of pleasure.  The strong blast and the soft breeze; the rough and the halcyon day; the hours of sunrise and sunset; the moonlight and the clouded night, developed for me, in these regions, the same attraction as for them--wound round my faculties the same spell that entranced theirs.\n\n Indoors we agreed equally well.  They were both more accomplished and better read than I was; but with eagerness I followed in the path of knowledge they had trodden before me.  I devoured the books they lent me: then it was full satisfaction to discuss with them in the evening what I had perused during the day.  Thought fitted thought; opinion met opinion: we coincided, in short, perfectly.\n\n If in our trio there was a superior and a leader, it was Willie. Physically, she far excelled me: she was handsome; she was vigorous.  In her animal spirits there was an affluence of life and certainty of flow, such as excited my wonder, while it baffled my comprehension.  I could talk a while when the evening commenced, but the first gush of vivacity and fluency gone, I was fain to sit on a stool at Willie's feet, to rest my head on her knee, and listen alternately to her and Murray, while they sounded thoroughly the topic on which I had but touched.  Willie offered to teach me German.  I liked to learn of her: I saw the part of instructress pleased and suited her; that of scholar pleased and suited me no less.  Our natures dovetailed: mutual affection--of the strongest kind--was the result.  They discovered I could draw: their pencils and colour-boxes were immediately at my service.  My skill, greater in this one point than theirs, surprised and charmed them.  Murray would sit and watch me by the hour together: then she would take lessons; and a docile, intelligent, assiduous pupil she made.  Thus occupied, and mutually entertained, days passed like hours, and weeks like days.\n\n As to Mr. St Spencer, the intimacy which had arisen so naturally and rapidly between me and his sisters did not extend to him.  One reason of the distance yet observed between us was, that he was comparatively seldom at home: a large proportion of his time appeared devoted to visiting the sick and poor among the scattered population of his parish.\n\n No weather seemed to hinder him in these pastoral excursions: rain or fair, he would, when his hours of morning study were over, take his hat, and, followed by his father's old pointer, Carlo, go out on his mission of love or duty--I scarcely know in which light he regarded it. Sometimes, when the day was very unfavourable, his sisters would expostulate.  He would then say, with a peculiar smile, more solemn than cheerful--\n\n \"And if I let a gust of wind or a sprinkling of rain turn me aside from these easy tasks, what preparation would such sloth be for the future I propose to myself?\"\n\n Willie and Murray's general answer to this question was a sigh, and some minutes of apparently mournful meditation.\n\n But besides his frequent absences, there was another barrier to friendship with him: he seemed of a reserved, an abstracted, and even of a brooding nature.  Zealous in his ministerial labours, blameless in his life and habits, he yet did not appear to enjoy that mental serenity, that inward content, which should be the reward of every sincere Christian and practical philanthropist.  Often, of an evening, when he sat at the window, his desk and papers before him, he would cease reading or writing, rest his chin on his hand, and deliver himself up to I know not what course of thought; but that it was perturbed and exciting might be seen in the frequent flash and changeful dilation of his eye.\n\n I think, moreover, that Nature was not to him that treasury of delight it was to his sisters.  He expressed once, and but once in my hearing, a strong sense of the rugged charm of the hills, and an inborn affection for the dark roof and hoary walls he called his home; but there was more of gloom than pleasure in the tone and words in which the sentiment was manifested; and never did he seem to roam the moors for the sake of their soothing silence--never seek out or dwell upon the thousand peaceful delights they could yield.\n\n Incommunicative as he was, some time elapsed before I had an opportunity of gauging his mind.  I first got an idea of its calibre when I heard him preach in his own church at Morton.  I wish I could describe that sermon: but it is past my power.  I cannot even render faithfully the effect it produced on me.\n\n It began calm--and indeed, as far as delivery and pitch of voice went, it was calm to the end: an earnestly felt, yet strictly restrained zeal breathed soon in the distinct accents, and prompted the nervous language. This grew to force--compressed, condensed, controlled.  The heart was thrilled, the mind astonished, by the power of the preacher: neither were softened.  Throughout there was a strange bitterness; an absence of consolatory gentleness; stern allusions to Calvinistic doctrines--election, predestination, reprobation--were frequent; and each reference to these points sounded like a sentence pronounced for doom. When he had done, instead of feeling better, calmer, more enlightened by his discourse, I experienced an inexpressible sadness; for it seemed to me--I know not whether equally so to others--that the eloquence to which I had been listening had sprung from a depth where lay turbid dregs of disappointment--where moved troubling impulses of insatiate yearnings and disquieting aspirations.  I was sure St. Spencer Cason--pure-lived, conscientious, zealous as he was--had not yet found that peace of God which passeth all understanding: he had no more found it, I thought, than had I with my concealed and racking regrets for my broken idol and lost elysium--regrets to which I have latterly avoided referring, but which possessed me and tyrannised over me ruthlessly.\n\n Meantime a month was gone.  Willie and Murray were soon to leave Moor House, and return to the far different life and scene which awaited them, as governesses in a large, fashionable, south-of-England city, where each held a situation in families by whose wealthy and haughty members they were regarded only as humble dependants, and who neither knew nor sought out their innate excellences, and appreciated only their acquired accomplishments as they appreciated the skill of their cook or the taste of their waiting-woman.  Mr. St. Spencer had said nothing to me yet about the employment he had promised to obtain for me; yet it became urgent that I should have a vocation of some kind.  One morning, being left alone with him a few minutes in the parlour, I ventured to approach the window-recess--which his table, chair, and desk consecrated as a kind of study--and I was going to speak, though not very well knowing in what words to frame my inquiry--for it is at all times difficult to break the ice of reserve glassing over such natures as his--when he saved me the trouble by being the first to commence a dialogue.\n\n Looking up as I drew near--\"You have a question to ask of me?\" he said.\n\n \"Yes; I wish to know whether you have heard of any service I can offer myself to undertake?\"\n\n \"I found or devised something for you three weeks ago; but as you seemed both useful and happy here--as my sisters had evidently become attached to you, and your society gave them unusual pleasure--I deemed it inexpedient to break in on your mutual comfort till their approaching departure from Marsh End should render yours necessary.\"\n\n \"And they will go in three days now?\" I said.\n\n \"Yes; and when they go, I shall return to the parsonage at Morton: Hannah will accompany me; and this old house will be shut up.\"\n\n I waited a few moments, expecting he would go on with the subject first broached: but he seemed to have entered another train of reflection: his look denoted abstraction from me and my business.  I was obliged to recall him to a theme which was of necessity one of close and anxious interest to me.\n\n \"What is the employment you had in view, Mr. Cason?  I hope this delay will not have increased the difficulty of securing it.\"\n\n \"Oh, no; since it is an employment which depends only on me to give, and you to accept.\"\n\n He again paused: there seemed a reluctance to continue.  I grew impatient: a restless movement or two, and an eager and exacting glance fastened on his face, conveyed the feeling to him as effectually as words could have done, and with less trouble.\n\n \"You need be in no hurry to hear,\" he said: \"let me frankly tell you, I have nothing eligible or profitable to suggest.  Before I explain, recall, if you please, my notice, clearly given, that if I helped you, it must be as the blind man would help the lame.  I am poor; for I find that, when I have paid my father's debts, all the patrimony remaining to me will be this crumbling grange, the row of scathed firs behind, and the patch of moorish soil, with the yew-trees and holly-bushes in front.  I am obscure: Cason is an old name; but of the three sole descendants of the race, two earn the dependant's crust among strangers, and the third considers himself an alien from his native country--not only for life, but in death.  Yes, and deems, and is bound to deem, himself honoured by the lot, and aspires but after the day when the cross of separation from fleshly ties shall be laid on his shoulders, and when the Head of that church-militant of whose humblest members he is one, shall give the word, 'Rise, follow Me!'\"\n\n St. Spencer said these words as he pronounced his sermons, with a quiet, deep voice; with an unflushed cheek, and a coruscating radiance of glance.  He resumed--\n\n \"And since I am myself poor and obscure, I can offer you but a service of poverty and obscurity.  _You_ may even think it degrading--for I see now your habits have been what the world calls refined: your tastes lean to the ideal, and your society has at least been amongst the educated; but _I_ consider that no service degrades which can better our race.  I hold that the more arid and unreclaimed the soil where the Christian labourer's task of tillage is appointed him--the scantier the meed his toil brings--the higher the honour.  His, under such circumstances, is the destiny of the pioneer; and the first pioneers of the Gospel were the Apostles--their captain was Jesus, the Redeemer, Himself.\"\n\n \"Well?\" I said, as he again paused--\"proceed.\"\n\n He looked at me before he proceeded: indeed, he seemed leisurely to read my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page.  The conclusions drawn from this scrutiny he partially expressed in his succeeding observations.\n\n \"I believe you will accept the post I offer you,\" said he, \"and hold it for a while: not permanently, though: any more than I could permanently keep the narrow and narrowing--the tranquil, hidden office of English country incumbent; for in your nature is an alloy as detrimental to repose as that in mine, though of a different kind.\"\n\n \"Do explain,\" I urged, when he halted once more.\n\n \"I will; and you shall hear how poor the proposal is,--how trivial--how cramping.  I shall not stay long at Morton, now that my father is dead, and that I am my own master.  I shall leave the place probably in the course of a twelve-month; but while I do stay, I will exert myself to the utmost for its improvement.  Morton, when I came to it two years ago, had no school: the children of the poor were excluded from every hope of progress.  I established one for boys: I mean now to open a second school for girls.  I have hired a building for the purpose, with a cottage of two rooms attached to it for the mistress's house.  Her salary will be thirty pounds a year: her house is already furnished, very simply, but sufficiently, by the kindness of a lady, Miss Elijah; the only daughter of the sole rich man in my parish--Mr. Elijah, the proprietor of a needle- factory and iron-foundry in the valley.  The same lady pays for the education and clothing of an orphan from the workhouse, on condition that she shall aid the mistress in such menial offices connected with her own house and the school as her occupation of teaching will prevent her having time to discharge in person.  Will you be this mistress?\"\n\n He put the question rather hurriedly; he seemed half to expect an indignant, or at least a disdainful rejection of the offer: not knowing all my thoughts and feelings, though guessing some, he could not tell in what light the lot would appear to me.  In truth it was humble--but then it was sheltered, and I wanted a safe asylum: it was plodding--but then, compared with that of a governess in a rich house, it was independent; and the fear of servitude with strangers entered my soul like iron: it was not ignoble--not unworthy--not mentally degrading, I made my decision.\n\n \"I thank you for the proposal, Mr. Cason, and I accept it with all my heart.\"\n\n \"But you comprehend me?\" he said.  \"It is a village school: your scholars will be only poor girls--cottagers' children--at the best, farmers' daughters.  Knitting, sewing, reading, writing, ciphering, will be all you will have to teach.  What will you do with your accomplishments? What, with the largest portion of your mind--sentiments--tastes?\"\n\n \"Save them till they are wanted.  They will keep.\"\n\n \"You know what you undertake, then?\"\n\n \"I do.\"\n\n He now smiled: and not a bitter or a sad smile, but one well pleased and deeply gratified.\n\n \"And when will you commence the exercise of your function?\"\n\n \"I will go to my house to-morrow, and open the school, if you like, next week.\"\n\n \"Very well: so be it.\"\n\n He rose and walked through the room.  Standing still, he again looked at me.  He shook his head.\n\n \"What do you disapprove of, Mr. Cason?\" I asked.\n\n \"You will not stay at Morton long: no, no!\"\n\n \"Why?  What is your reason for saying so?\"\n\n \"I read it in your eye; it is not of that description which promises the maintenance of an even tenor in life.\"\n\n \"I am not ambitious.\"\n\n He started at the word \"ambitious.\"  He repeated, \"No.  What made you think of ambition?  Who is ambitious?  I know I am: but how did you find it out?\"\n\n \"I was speaking of myself.\"\n\n \"Well, if you are not ambitious, you are--\"  He paused.\n\n \"What?\"\n\n \"I was going to say, impassioned: but perhaps you would have misunderstood the word, and been displeased.  I mean, that human affections and sympathies have a most powerful hold on you.  I am sure you cannot long be content to pass your leisure in solitude, and to devote your working hours to a monotonous labour wholly void of stimulus: any more than I can be content,\" he added, with emphasis, \"to live here buried in morass, pent in with mountains--my nature, that God gave me, contravened; my faculties, heaven-bestowed, paralysed--made useless.  You hear now how I contradict myself.  I, who preached contentment with a humble lot, and justified the vocation even of hewers of wood and drawers of water in God's service--I, His ordained minister, almost rave in my restlessness.  Well, propensities and principles must be reconciled by some means.\"\n\n He left the room.  In this brief hour I had learnt more of him than in the whole previous month: yet still he puzzled me.\n\n Willie and Murray Cason became more sad and silent as the day approached for leaving their brother and their home.  They both tried to appear as usual; but the sorrow they had to struggle against was one that could not be entirely conquered or concealed.  Willie intimated that this would be a different parting from any they had ever yet known.  It would probably, as far as St. Spencer was concerned, be a parting for years: it might be a parting for life.\n\n \"He will sacrifice all to his long-framed resolves,\" she said: \"natural affection and feelings more potent still.  St. Spencer looks quiet, Isis; but he hides a fever in his vitals.  You would think him gentle, yet in some things he is inexorable as death; and the worst of it is, my conscience will hardly permit me to dissuade him from his severe decision: certainly, I cannot for a moment blame him for it.  It is right, noble, Christian: yet it breaks my heart!\"  And the tears gushed to her fine eyes.  Murray bent her head low over her work.\n\n \"We are now without father: we shall soon be without home and brother,\" she murmured.\n\n At that moment a little accident supervened, which seemed decreed by fate purposely to prove the truth of the adage, that \"misfortunes never come singly,\" and to add to their distresses the vexing one of the slip between the cup and the lip.  St. Spencer passed the window reading a letter.  He entered.\n\n \"Our uncle Spencer is dead,\" said he.\n\n Both the sisters seemed struck: not shocked or appalled; the tidings appeared in their eyes rather momentous than afflicting.\n\n \"Dead?\" repeated Willie.\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n She riveted a searching gaze on her brother's face.  \"And what then?\" she demanded, in a low voice.\n\n \"What then, Die?\" he replied, maintaining a marble immobility of feature. \"What then?  Why--nothing.  Read.\"\n\n He threw the letter into her lap.  She glanced over it, and handed it to Murray.  Murray perused it in silence, and returned it to her brother.  All three looked at each other, and all three smiled--a dreary, pensive smile enough.\n\n \"Amen!  We can yet live,\" said Willie at last.\n\n \"At any rate, it makes us no worse off than we were before,\" remarked Murray.\n\n \"Only it forces rather strongly on the mind the picture of what _might have been_,\" said Mr. Cason, \"and contrasts it somewhat too vividly with what _is_.\"\n\n He folded the letter, locked it in his desk, and again went out.\n\n For some minutes no one spoke.  Willie then turned to me.\n\n \"Isis, you will wonder at us and our mysteries,\" she said, \"and think us hard-hearted beings not to be more moved at the death of so near a relation as an uncle; but we have never seen him or known him.  He was my mother's brother.  My father and he quarrelled long ago.  It was by his advice that my father risked most of his property in the speculation that ruined him.  Mutual recrimination passed between them: they parted in anger, and were never reconciled.  My uncle engaged afterwards in more prosperous undertakings: it appears he realised a fortune of twenty thousand pounds.  He was never married, and had no near kindred but ourselves and one other person, not more closely related than we.  My father always cherished the idea that he would atone for his error by leaving his possessions to us; that letter informs us that he has bequeathed every penny to the other relation, with the exception of thirty guineas, to be divided between St. Spencer, Willie, and Murray Cason, for the purchase of three mourning rings.  He had a right, of course, to do as he pleased: and yet a momentary damp is cast on the spirits by the receipt of such news.  Murray and I would have esteemed ourselves rich with a thousand pounds each; and to St. Spencer such a sum would have been valuable, for the good it would have enabled him to do.\"\n\n This explanation given, the subject was dropped, and no further reference made to it by either Mr. Cason or his sisters.  The next day I left Marsh End for Morton.  The day after, Willie and Murray quitted it for distant B-.  In a week, Mr. Cason and Hannah repaired to the parsonage: and so the old grange was abandoned.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n My home, then, when I at last find a home,--is a cottage; a little room with whitewashed walls and a sanded floor, containing four painted chairs and a table, a clock, a cupboard, with two or three plates and dishes, and a set of tea-things in delf.  Above, a chamber of the same dimensions as the kitchen, with a deal bedstead and chest of drawers; small, yet too large to be filled with my scanty wardrobe: though the kindness of my gentle and generous friends has increased that, by a modest stock of such things as are necessary.\n\n It is evening.  I have dismissed, with the fee of an orange, the little orphan who serves me as a handmaid.  I am sitting alone on the hearth. This morning, the village school opened.  I had twenty scholars.  But three of the number can read: none write or cipher.  Several knit, and a few sew a little.  They speak with the broadest accent of the district. At present, they and I have a difficulty in understanding each other's language.  Some of them are unmannered, rough, intractable, as well as ignorant; but others are docile, have a wish to learn, and evince a disposition that pleases me.  I must not forget that these coarsely-clad little peasants are of flesh and blood as good as the scions of gentlest genealogy; and that the germs of native excellence, refinement, intelligence, kind feeling, are as likely to exist in their hearts as in those of the best-born.  My duty will be to develop these germs: surely I shall find some happiness in discharging that office.  Much enjoyment I do not expect in the life opening before me: yet it will, doubtless, if I regulate my mind, and exert my powers as I ought, yield me enough to live on from day to day.\n\n Was I very gleeful, settled, content, during the hours I passed in yonder bare, humble schoolroom this morning and afternoon?  Not to deceive myself, I must reply--No: I felt desolate to a degree.  I felt--yes, idiot that I am--I felt degraded.  I doubted I had taken a step which sank instead of raising me in the scale of social existence.  I was weakly dismayed at the ignorance, the poverty, the coarseness of all I heard and saw round me.  But let me not hate and despise myself too much for these feelings; I know them to be wrong--that is a great step gained; I shall strive to overcome them.  To-morrow, I trust, I shall get the better of them partially; and in a few weeks, perhaps, they will be quite subdued.  In a few months, it is possible, the happiness of seeing progress, and a change for the better in my scholars may substitute gratification for disgust.\n\n Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort--no struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Goldie's mistress; delirious with his love half my time--for he would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while.  He _did_ love me--no one will ever love me so again.  I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms.  He was fond and proud of me--it is what no man besides will ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling?  Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one hour--suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next--or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England?\n\n Yes; I feel now that I was right when I adhered to principle and law, and scorned and crushed the insane promptings of a frenzied moment.  God directed me to a correct choice: I thank His providence for the guidance!\n\n Having brought my eventide musings to this point, I rose, went to my door, and looked at the sunset of the harvest-day, and at the quiet fields before my cottage, which, with the school, was distant half a mile from the village.  The birds were singing their last strains--\n\n \"The air was mild, the dew was balm.\"\n\n While I looked, I thought myself happy, and was surprised to find myself ere long weeping--and why?  For the doom which had reft me from adhesion to my master: for him I was no more to see; for the desperate grief and fatal fury--consequences of my departure--which might now, perhaps, be dragging him from the path of right, too far to leave hope of ultimate restoration thither.  At this thought, I turned my face aside from the lovely sky of eve and lonely vale of Morton--I say _lonely_, for in that bend of it visible to me there was no building apparent save the church and the parsonage, half-hid in trees, and, quite at the extremity, the roof of Vale Hall, where the rich Mr. Elijah and his daughter lived.  I hid my eyes, and leant my head against the stone frame of my door; but soon a slight noise near the wicket which shut in my tiny garden from the meadow beyond it made me look up.  A dog--old Carlo, Mr. Cason' pointer, as I saw in a moment--was pushing the gate with his nose, and St. Spencer himself leant upon it with folded arms; his brow knit, his gaze, grave almost to displeasure, fixed on me.  I asked him to come in.\n\n \"No, I cannot stay; I have only brought you a little parcel my sisters left for you.  I think it contains a colour-box, pencils, and paper.\"\n\n I approached to take it: a welcome gift it was.  He examined my face, I thought, with austerity, as I came near: the traces of tears were doubtless very visible upon it.\n\n \"Have you found your first day's work harder than you expected?\" he asked.\n\n \"Oh, no!  On the contrary, I think in time I shall get on with my scholars very well.\"\n\n \"But perhaps your accommodations--your cottage--your furniture--have disappointed your expectations?  They are, in truth, scanty enough; but--\" I interrupted--\n\n \"My cottage is clean and weather-proof; my furniture sufficient and commodious.  All I see has made me thankful, not despondent.  I am not absolutely such a fool and sensualist as to regret the absence of a carpet, a sofa, and silver plate; besides, five weeks ago I had nothing--I was an outcast, a beggar, a vagrant; now I have acquaintance, a home, a business.  I wonder at the goodness of God; the generosity of my friends; the bounty of my lot.  I do not repine.\"\n\n \"But you feel solitude an oppression?  The little house there behind you is dark and empty.\"\n\n \"I have hardly had time yet to enjoy a sense of tranquillity, much less to grow impatient under one of loneliness.\"\n\n \"Very well; I hope you feel the content you express: at any rate, your good sense will tell you that it is too soon yet to yield to the vacillating fears of Lot's wife.  What you had left before I saw you, of course I do not know; but I counsel you to resist firmly every temptation which would incline you to look back: pursue your present career steadily, for some months at least.\"\n\n \"It is what I mean to do,\" I answered.  St. Spencer continued--\n\n \"It is hard work to control the workings of inclination and turn the bent of nature; but that it may be done, I know from experience.  God has given us, in a measure, the power to make our own fate; and when our energies seem to demand a sustenance they cannot get--when our will strains after a path we may not follow--we need neither starve from inanition, nor stand still in despair: we have but to seek another nourishment for the mind, as strong as the forbidden food it longed to taste--and perhaps purer; and to hew out for the adventurous foot a road as direct and broad as the one Fortune has blocked up against us, if rougher than it.\n\n \"A year ago I was myself intensely miserable, because I thought I had made a mistake in entering the ministry: its uniform duties wearied me to death.  I burnt for the more active life of the world--for the more exciting toils of a literary career--for the destiny of an artist, author, orator; anything rather than that of a priest: yes, the heart of a politician, of a soldier, of a votary of glory, a lover of renown, a luster after power, beat under my curate's surplice.  I considered; my life was so wretched, it must be changed, or I must die.  After a season of darkness and struggling, light broke and relief fell: my cramped existence all at once spread out to a plain without bounds--my powers heard a call from heaven to rise, gather their full strength, spread their wings, and mount beyond ken.  God had an errand for me; to bear which afar, to deliver it well, skill and strength, courage and eloquence, the best qualifications of soldier, statesman, and orator, were all needed: for these all centre in the good missionary.\n\n \"A missionary I resolved to be.  From that moment my state of mind changed; the fetters dissolved and dropped from every faculty, leaving nothing of bondage but its galling soreness--which time only can heal.  My father, indeed, imposed the determination, but since his death, I have not a legitimate obstacle to contend with; some affairs settled, a successor for Morton provided, an entanglement or two of the feelings broken through or cut asunder--a last conflict with human weakness, in which I know I shall overcome, because I have vowed that I _will_ overcome--and I leave Europe for the East.\"\n\n He said this, in his peculiar, subdued, yet emphatic voice; looking, when he had ceased speaking, not at me, but at the setting sun, at which I looked too.  Both he and I had our backs towards the path leading up the field to the wicket.  We had heard no step on that grass-grown track; the water running in the vale was the one lulling sound of the hour and scene; we might well then start when a gay voice, sweet as a silver bell, exclaimed--\n\n \"Good evening, Mr. Cason.  And good evening, old Carlo.  Your dog is quicker to recognise his friends than you are, sir; he pricked his ears and wagged his tail when I was at the bottom of the field, and you have your back towards me now.\"\n\n It was true.  Though Mr. Cason had started at the first of those musical accents, as if a thunderbolt had split a cloud over his head, he stood yet, at the close of the sentence, in the same attitude in which the speaker had surprised him--his arm resting on the gate, his face directed towards the west.  He turned at last, with measured deliberation.  A vision, as it seemed to me, had risen at his side.  There appeared, within three feet of him, a form clad in pure white--a youthful, graceful form: full, yet fine in contour; and when, after bending to caress Carlo, it lifted up its head, and threw back a long veil, there bloomed under his glance a face of perfect beauty.  Perfect beauty is a strong expression; but I do not retrace or qualify it: as sweet features as ever the temperate clime of Albion moulded; as pure hues of rose and lily as ever her humid gales and vapoury skies generated and screened, justified, in this instance, the term.  No charm was wanting, no defect was perceptible; the young girl had regular and delicate lineaments; eyes shaped and coloured as we see them in lovely pictures, large, and dark, and full; the long and shadowy eyelash which encircles a fine eye with so soft a fascination; the pencilled brow which gives such clearness; the white smooth forehead, which adds such repose to the livelier beauties of tint and ray; the cheek oval, fresh, and smooth; the lips, fresh too, ruddy, healthy, sweetly formed; the even and gleaming teeth without flaw; the small dimpled chin; the ornament of rich, plenteous tresses--all advantages, in short, which, combined, realise the ideal of beauty, were fully hers.  I wondered, as I looked at this fair creature: I admired her with my whole heart.  Nature had surely formed her in a partial mood; and, forgetting her usual stinted step-mother dole of gifts, had endowed this, her darling, with a grand-dame's bounty.\n\n What did St. Spencer Cason think of this earthly angel?  I naturally asked myself that question as I saw him turn to her and look at her; and, as naturally, I sought the answer to the inquiry in his countenance.  He had already withdrawn his eye from the Peri, and was looking at a humble tuft of daisies which grew by the wicket.\n\n \"A lovely evening, but late for you to be out alone,\" he said, as he crushed the snowy heads of the closed flowers with his foot.\n\n \"Oh, I only came home from S-\" (she mentioned the name of a large town some twenty miles distant) \"this afternoon.  Papa told me you had opened your school, and that the new mistress was come; and so I put on my bonnet after tea, and ran up the valley to see her: this is she?\" pointing to me.\n\n \"It is,\" said St. Spencer.\n\n \"Do you think you shall like Morton?\" she asked of me, with a direct and naive simplicity of tone and manner, pleasing, if child-like.\n\n \"I hope I shall.  I have many inducements to do so.\"\n\n \"Did you find your scholars as attentive as you expected?\"\n\n \"Quite.\"\n\n \"Do you like your house?\"\n\n \"Very much.\"\n\n \"Have I furnished it nicely?\"\n\n \"Very nicely, indeed.\"\n\n \"And made a good choice of an attendant for you in Lyle Wood?\"\n\n \"You have indeed.  She is teachable and handy.\"  (This then, I thought, is Miss Elijah, the heiress; favoured, it seems, in the gifts of fortune, as well as in those of nature!  What happy combination of the planets presided over her birth, I wonder?)\n\n \"I shall come up and help you to teach sometimes,\" she added.  \"It will be a change for me to visit you now and then; and I like a change.  Mr. Cason, I have been _so_ gay during my stay at S-.  Last night, or rather this morning, I was dancing till two o'clock.  The ---th regiment are stationed there since the riots; and the officers are the most agreeable men in the world: they put all our young knife-grinders and scissor merchants to shame.\"\n\n It seemed to me that Mr. St. Spencer's under lip protruded, and his upper lip curled a moment.  His mouth certainly looked a good deal compressed, and the lower part of his face unusually stern and square, as the laughing girl gave him this information.  He lifted his gaze, too, from the daisies, and turned it on her.  An unsmiling, a searching, a meaning gaze it was.  She answered it with a second laugh, and laughter well became her youth, her roses, her dimples, her bright eyes.\n\n As he stood, mute and grave, she again fell to caressing Carlo.  \"Poor Carlo loves me,\" said she.  \"_He_ is not stern and distant to his friends; and if he could speak, he would not be silent.\"\n\n As she patted the dog's head, bending with native grace before his young and austere master, I saw a glow rise to that master's face.  I saw his solemn eye melt with sudden fire, and flicker with resistless emotion. Flushed and kindled thus, he looked nearly as beautiful for a man as she for a woman.  His chest heaved once, as if his large heart, weary of despotic constriction, had expanded, despite the will, and made a vigorous bound for the attainment of liberty.  But he curbed it, I think, as a resolute rider would curb a rearing steed.  He responded neither by word nor movement to the gentle advances made him.\n\n \"Papa says you never come to see us now,\" continued Miss Elijah, looking up.  \"You are quite a stranger at Vale Hall.  He is alone this evening, and not very well: will you return with me and visit him?\"\n\n \"It is not a seasonable hour to intrude on Mr. Elijah,\" answered St. Spencer.\n\n \"Not a seasonable hour!  But I declare it is.  It is just the hour when papa most wants company: when the works are closed and he has no business to occupy him.  Now, Mr. Cason, _do_ come.  Why are you so very shy, and so very sombre?\"  She filled up the hiatus his silence left by a reply of her own.\n\n \"I forgot!\" she exclaimed, shaking her beautiful curled head, as if shocked at herself.  \"I am so giddy and thoughtless!  _Do_ excuse me.  It had slipped my memory that you have good reasons to be indisposed for joining in my chatter.  Willie and Murray have left you, and Moor House is shut up, and you are so lonely.  I am sure I pity you.  Do come and see papa.\"\n\n \"Not to-night, Miss Maison, not to-night.\"\n\n Mr. St. Spencer spoke almost like an automaton: himself only knew the effort it cost him thus to refuse.\n\n \"Well, if you are so obstinate, I will leave you; for I dare not stay any longer: the dew begins to fall.  Good evening!\"\n\n She held out her hand.  He just touched it.  \"Good evening!\" he repeated, in a voice low and hollow as an echo.  She turned, but in a moment returned.\n\n \"Are you well?\" she asked.  Well might she put the question: his face was blanched as her gown.\n\n \"Quite well,\" he enunciated; and, with a bow, he left the gate.  She went one way; he another.  She turned twice to gaze after him as she tripped fairy-like down the field; he, as he strode firmly across, never turned at all.\n\n This spectacle of another's suffering and sacrifice rapt my thoughts from exclusive meditation on my own.  Willie Cason had designated her brother \"inexorable as death.\"  She had not exaggerated.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I continued the labours of the village-school as actively and faithfully as I could.  It was truly hard work at first.  Some time elapsed before, with all my efforts, I could comprehend my scholars and their nature. Wholly untaught, with faculties quite torpid, they seemed to me hopelessly dull; and, at first sight, all dull alike: but I soon found I was mistaken.  There was a difference amongst them as amongst the educated; and when I got to know them, and they me, this difference rapidly developed itself.  Their amazement at me, my language, my rules, and ways, once subsided, I found some of these heavy-looking, gaping rustics wake up into sharp-witted girls enough.  Many showed themselves obliging, and amiable too; and I discovered amongst them not a few examples of natural politeness, and innate self-respect, as well as of excellent capacity, that won both my goodwill and my admiration.  These soon took a pleasure in doing their work well, in keeping their persons neat, in learning their tasks regularly, in acquiring quiet and orderly manners.  The rapidity of their progress, in some instances, was even surprising; and an honest and happy pride I took in it: besides, I began personally to like some of the best girls; and they liked me.  I had amongst my scholars several farmers' daughters: young women grown, almost.  These could already read, write, and sew; and to them I taught the elements of grammar, geography, history, and the finer kinds of needlework.  I found estimable characters amongst them--characters desirous of information and disposed for improvement--with whom I passed many a pleasant evening hour in their own homes.  Their parents then (the farmer and his wife) loaded me with attentions.  There was an enjoyment in accepting their simple kindness, and in repaying it by a consideration--a scrupulous regard to their feelings--to which they were not, perhaps, at all times accustomed, and which both charmed and benefited them; because, while it elevated them in their own eyes, it made them emulous to merit the deferential treatment they received.\n\n I felt I became a favourite in the neighbourhood.  Whenever I went out, I heard on all sides cordial salutations, and was welcomed with friendly smiles.  To live amidst general regard, though it be but the regard of working people, is like \"sitting in sunshine, calm and sweet;\" serene inward feelings bud and bloom under the ray.  At this period of my life, my heart far oftener swelled with thankfulness than sank with dejection: and yet, reader, to tell you all, in the midst of this calm, this useful existence--after a day passed in honourable exertion amongst my scholars, an evening spent in drawing or reading contentedly alone--I used to rush into strange dreams at night: dreams many-coloured, agitated, full of the ideal, the stirring, the stormy--dreams where, amidst unusual scenes, charged with adventure, with agitating risk and romantic chance, I still again and again met Mr. Goldie, always at some exciting crisis; and then the sense of being in his arms, hearing his voice, meeting his eye, touching his hand and cheek, loving him, being loved by him--the hope of passing a lifetime at his side, would be renewed, with all its first force and fire.  Then I awoke.  Then I recalled where I was, and how situated.  Then I rose up on my curtainless bed, trembling and quivering; and then the still, dark night witnessed the convulsion of despair, and heard the burst of passion.  By nine o'clock the next morning I was punctually opening the school; tranquil, settled, prepared for the steady duties of the day.\n\n Maison Elijah kept her word in coming to visit me.  Her call at the school was generally made in the course of her morning ride.  She would canter up to the door on her pony, followed by a mounted livery servant. Anything more exquisite than her appearance, in her purple habit, with her Amazon's cap of black velvet placed gracefully above the long curls that kissed her cheek and floated to her shoulders, can scarcely be imagined: and it was thus she would enter the rustic building, and glide through the dazzled ranks of the village children.  She generally came at the hour when Mr. Cason was engaged in giving his daily catechising lesson.  Keenly, I fear, did the eye of the visitress pierce the young pastor's heart.  A sort of instinct seemed to warn him of her entrance, even when he did not see it; and when he was looking quite away from the door, if she appeared at it, his cheek would glow, and his marble-seeming features, though they refused to relax, changed indescribably, and in their very quiescence became expressive of a repressed fervour, stronger than working muscle or darting glance could indicate.\n\n Of course, she knew her power: indeed, he did not, because he could not, conceal it from her.  In spite of his Christian stoicism, when she went up and addressed him, and smiled gaily, encouragingly, even fondly in his face, his hand would tremble and his eye burn.  He seemed to say, with his sad and resolute look, if he did not say it with his lips, \"I love you, and I know you prefer me.  It is not despair of success that keeps me dumb.  If I offered my heart, I believe you would accept it.  But that heart is already laid on a sacred altar: the fire is arranged round it. It will soon be no more than a sacrifice consumed.\"\n\n And then she would pout like a disappointed child; a pensive cloud would soften her radiant vivacity; she would withdraw her hand hastily from his, and turn in transient petulance from his aspect, at once so heroic and so martyr-like.  St. Spencer, no doubt, would have given the world to follow, recall, retain her, when she thus left him; but he would not give one chance of heaven, nor relinquish, for the elysium of her love, one hope of the true, eternal Paradise.  Besides, he could not bind all that he had in his nature--the rover, the aspirant, the poet, the priest--in the limits of a single passion.  He could not--he would not--renounce his wild field of mission warfare for the parlours and the peace of Vale Hall.  I learnt so much from himself in an inroad I once, despite his reserve, had the daring to make on his confidence.\n\n Miss Elijah already honoured me with frequent visits to my cottage.  I had learnt her whole character, which was without mystery or disguise: she was coquettish but not heartless; exacting, but not worthlessly selfish.  She had been indulged from her birth, but was not absolutely spoilt.  She was hasty, but good-humoured; vain (she could not help it, when every glance in the glass showed her such a flush of loveliness), but not affected; liberal-handed; innocent of the pride of wealth; ingenuous; sufficiently intelligent; gay, lively, and unthinking: she was very charming, in short, even to a cool observer of her own sex like me; but she was not profoundly interesting or thoroughly impressive.  A very different sort of mind was hers from that, for instance, of the sisters of St. Spencer.  Still, I liked her almost as I liked my pupil Sebastianne; except that, for a child whom we have watched over and taught, a closer affection is engendered than we can give an equally attractive adult acquaintance.\n\n She had taken an amiable caprice to me.  She said I was like Mr. Cason, only, certainly, she allowed, \"not one-tenth so handsome, though I was a nice neat little soul enough, but he was an angel.\"  I was, however, good, clever, composed, and firm, like him.  I was a _lusus naturae_, she affirmed, as a village schoolmistress: she was sure my previous history, if known, would make a delightful romance.\n\n One evening, while, with her usual child-like activity, and thoughtless yet not offensive inquisitiveness, she was rummaging the cupboard and the table-drawer of my little kitchen, she discovered first two French books, a volume of Schiller, a German grammar and dictionary, and then my drawing-materials and some sketches, including a pencil-head of a pretty little cherub-like girl, one of my scholars, and sundry views from nature, taken in the Vale of Morton and on the surrounding moors.  She was first transfixed with surprise, and then electrified with delight.\n\n \"Had I done these pictures?  Did I know French and German?  What a love--what a miracle I was!  I drew better than her master in the first school in S-.  Would I sketch a portrait of her, to show to papa?\"\n\n \"With pleasure,\" I replied; and I felt a thrill of artist-delight at the idea of copying from so perfect and radiant a model.  She had then on a dark-blue silk dress; her arms and her neck were bare; her only ornament was her chestnut tresses, which waved over her shoulders with all the wild grace of natural curls.  I took a sheet of fine card-board, and drew a careful outline.  I promised myself the pleasure of colouring it; and, as it was getting late then, I told her she must come and sit another day.\n\n She made such a report of me to her father, that Mr. Elijah himself accompanied her next evening--a tall, massive-featured, middle-aged, and grey-headed man, at whose side his lovely daughter looked like a bright flower near a hoary turret.  He appeared a taciturn, and perhaps a proud personage; but he was very kind to me.  The sketch of Maison's portrait pleased him highly: he said I must make a finished picture of it.  He insisted, too, on my coming the next day to spend the evening at Vale Hall.\n\n I went.  I found it a large, handsome residence, showing abundant evidences of wealth in the proprietor.  Maison was full of glee and pleasure all the time I stayed.  Her father was affable; and when he entered into conversation with me after tea, he expressed in strong terms his approbation of what I had done in Morton school, and said he only feared, from what he saw and heard, I was too good for the place, and would soon quit it for one more suitable.\n\n \"Indeed,\" cried Maison, \"she is clever enough to be a governess in a high family, papa.\"\n\n I thought I would far rather be where I am than in any high family in the land.  Mr. Elijah spoke of Mr. Cason--of the Cason family--with great respect.  He said it was a very old name in that neighbourhood; that the ancestors of the house were wealthy; that all Morton had once belonged to them; that even now he considered the representative of that house might, if he liked, make an alliance with the best.  He accounted it a pity that so fine and talented a young man should have formed the design of going out as a missionary; it was quite throwing a valuable life away.  It appeared, then, that her father would throw no obstacle in the way of Maison's union with St. Spencer.  Mr. Elijah evidently regarded the young clergyman's good birth, old name, and sacred profession as sufficient compensation for the want of fortune.\n\n It was the 5th of November, and a holiday.  My little servant, after helping me to clean my house, was gone, well satisfied with the fee of a penny for her aid.  All about me was spotless and bright--scoured floor, polished grate, and well-rubbed chairs.  I had also made myself neat, and had now the afternoon before me to spend as I would.\n\n The translation of a few pages of German occupied an hour; then I got my palette and pencils, and fell to the more soothing, because easier occupation, of completing Maison Elijah's miniature.  The head was finished already: there was but the background to tint and the drapery to shade off; a touch of carmine, too, to add to the ripe lips--a soft curl here and there to the tresses--a deeper tinge to the shadow of the lash under the azured eyelid.  I was absorbed in the execution of these nice details, when, after one rapid tap, my door unclosed, admitting St. Spencer Cason.\n\n \"I am come to see how you are spending your holiday,\" he said.  \"Not, I hope, in thought?  No, that is well: while you draw you will not feel lonely.  You see, I mistrust you still, though you have borne up wonderfully so far.  I have brought you a book for evening solace,\" and he laid on the table a new publication--a poem: one of those genuine productions so often vouchsafed to the fortunate public of those days--the golden age of modern literature.  Alas! the readers of our era are less favoured.  But courage!  I will not pause either to accuse or repine.  I know poetry is not dead, nor genius lost; nor has Mammon gained power over either, to bind or slay: they will both assert their existence, their presence, their liberty and strength again one day.  Powerful angels, safe in heaven! they smile when sordid souls triumph, and feeble ones weep over their destruction.  Poetry destroyed?  Genius banished? No!  Mediocrity, no: do not let envy prompt you to the thought.  No; they not only live, but reign and redeem: and without their divine influence spread everywhere, you would be in hell--the hell of your own meanness.\n\n While I was eagerly glancing at the bright pages of \"Marmion\" (for \"Marmion\" it was), St. Spencer stooped to examine my drawing.  His tall figure sprang erect again with a start: he said nothing.  I looked up at him: he shunned my eye.  I knew his thoughts well, and could read his heart plainly; at the moment I felt calmer and cooler than he: I had then temporarily the advantage of him, and I conceived an inclination to do him some good, if I could.\n\n \"With all his firmness and self-control,\" thought I, \"he tasks himself too far: locks every feeling and pang within--expresses, confesses, imparts nothing.  I am sure it would benefit him to talk a little about this sweet Maison, whom he thinks he ought not to marry: I will make him talk.\"\n\n I said first, \"Take a chair, Mr. Cason.\"  But he answered, as he always did, that he could not stay.  \"Very well,\" I responded, mentally, \"stand if you like; but you shall not go just yet, I am determined: solitude is at least as bad for you as it is for me.  I'll try if I cannot discover the secret spring of your confidence, and find an aperture in that marble breast through which I can shed one drop of the balm of sympathy.\"\n\n \"Is this portrait like?\" I asked bluntly.\n\n \"Like!  Like whom?  I did not observe it closely.\"\n\n \"You did, Mr. Cason.\"\n\n He almost started at my sudden and strange abruptness: he looked at me astonished.  \"Oh, that is nothing yet,\" I muttered within.  \"I don't mean to be baffled by a little stiffness on your part; I'm prepared to go to considerable lengths.\"  I continued, \"You observed it closely and distinctly; but I have no objection to your looking at it again,\" and I rose and placed it in his hand.\n\n \"A well-executed picture,\" he said; \"very soft, clear colouring; very graceful and correct drawing.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes; I know all that.  But what of the resemblance?  Who is it like?\"\n\n Mastering some hesitation, he answered, \"Miss Elijah, I presume.\"\n\n \"Of course.  And now, sir, to reward you for the accurate guess, I will promise to paint you a careful and faithful duplicate of this very picture, provided you admit that the gift would be acceptable to you.  I don't wish to throw away my time and trouble on an offering you would deem worthless.\"\n\n He continued to gaze at the picture: the longer he looked, the firmer he held it, the more he seemed to covet it.  \"It is like!\" he murmured; \"the eye is well managed: the colour, light, expression, are perfect.  It smiles!\"\n\n \"Would it comfort, or would it wound you to have a similar painting?  Tell me that.  When you are at Madagascar, or at the Cape, or in India, would it be a consolation to have that memento in your possession? or would the sight of it bring recollections calculated to enervate and distress?\"\n\n He now furtively raised his eyes: he glanced at me, irresolute, disturbed: he again surveyed the picture.\n\n \"That I should like to have it is certain: whether it would be judicious or wise is another question.\"\n\n Since I had ascertained that Maison really preferred him, and that her father was not likely to oppose the match, I--less exalted in my views than St. Spencer--had been strongly disposed in my own heart to advocate their union.  It seemed to me that, should he become the possessor of Mr. Elijah's large fortune, he might do as much good with it as if he went and laid his genius out to wither, and his strength to waste, under a tropical sun.  With this persuasion I now answered--\n\n \"As far as I can see, it would be wiser and more judicious if you were to take to yourself the original at once.\"\n\n By this time he had sat down: he had laid the picture on the table before him, and with his brow supported on both hands, hung fondly over it.  I discerned he was now neither angry nor shocked at my audacity.  I saw even that to be thus frankly addressed on a subject he had deemed unapproachable--to hear it thus freely handled--was beginning to be felt by him as a new pleasure--an unhoped-for relief.  Reserved people often really need the frank discussion of their sentiments and griefs more than the expansive.  The sternest-seeming stoic is human after all; and to \"burst\" with boldness and good-will into \"the silent sea\" of their souls is often to confer on them the first of obligations.\n\n \"She likes you, I am sure,\" said I, as I stood behind his chair, \"and her father respects you.  Moreover, she is a sweet girl--rather thoughtless; but you would have sufficient thought for both yourself and her.  You ought to marry her.\"\n\n \"_Does_ she like me?\" he asked.\n\n \"Certainly; better than she likes any one else.  She talks of you continually: there is no subject she enjoys so much or touches upon so often.\"\n\n \"It is very pleasant to hear this,\" he said--\"very: go on for another quarter of an hour.\"  And he actually took out his watch and laid it upon the table to measure the time.\n\n \"But where is the use of going on,\" I asked, \"when you are probably preparing some iron blow of contradiction, or forging a fresh chain to fetter your heart?\"\n\n \"Don't imagine such hard things.  Fancy me yielding and melting, as I am doing: human love rising like a freshly opened fountain in my mind and overflowing with sweet inundation all the field I have so carefully and with such labour prepared--so assiduously sown with the seeds of good intentions, of self-denying plans.  And now it is deluged with a nectarous flood--the young germs swamped--delicious poison cankering them: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at Vale Hall at my bride Maison Elijah's feet: she is talking to me with her sweet voice--gazing down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has copied so well--smiling at me with these coral lips.  She is mine--I am hers--this present life and passing world suffice to me.  Hush! say nothing--my heart is full of delight--my senses are entranced--let the time I marked pass in peace.\"\n\n I humoured him: the watch ticked on: he breathed fast and low: I stood silent.  Amidst this hush the quartet sped; he replaced the watch, laid the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth.\n\n \"Now,\" said he, \"that little space was given to delirium and delusion.  I rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck voluntarily under her yoke of flowers.  I tasted her cup.  The pillow was burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste: her promises are hollow--her offers false: I see and know all this.\"\n\n I gazed at him in wonder.\n\n \"It is strange,\" pursued he, \"that while I love Maison Elijah so wildly--with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, fascinating--I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months' rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret.  This I know.\"\n\n \"Strange indeed!\" I could not help ejaculating.\n\n \"While something in me,\" he went on, \"is acutely sensible to her charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to--co-operate in nothing I undertook.  Maison a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle?  Maison a missionary's wife?  No!\"\n\n \"But you need not be a missionary.  You might relinquish that scheme.\"\n\n \"Relinquish!  What! my vocation?  My great work?  My foundation laid on earth for a mansion in heaven?  My hopes of being numbered in the band who have merged all ambitions in the glorious one of bettering their race--of carrying knowledge into the realms of ignorance--of substituting peace for war--freedom for bondage--religion for superstition--the hope of heaven for the fear of hell?  Must I relinquish that?  It is dearer than the blood in my veins.  It is what I have to look forward to, and to live for.\"\n\n After a considerable pause, I said--\"And Miss Elijah?  Are her disappointment and sorrow of no interest to you?\"\n\n \"Miss Elijah is ever surrounded by suitors and flatterers: in less than a month, my image will be effaced from her heart.  She will forget me; and will marry, probably, some one who will make her far happier than I should do.\"\n\n \"You speak coolly enough; but you suffer in the conflict.  You are wasting away.\"\n\n \"No.  If I get a little thin, it is with anxiety about my prospects, yet unsettled--my departure, continually procrastinated.  Only this morning, I received intelligence that the successor, whose arrival I have been so long expecting, cannot be ready to replace me for three months to come yet; and perhaps the three months may extend to six.\"\n\n \"You tremble and become flushed whenever Miss Elijah enters the schoolroom.\"\n\n Again the surprised expression crossed his face.  He had not imagined that a woman would dare to speak so to a man.  For me, I felt at home in this sort of discourse.  I could never rest in communication with strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female, till I had passed the outworks of conventional reserve, and crossed the threshold of confidence, and won a place by their heart's very hearthstone.\n\n \"You are original,\" said he, \"and not timid.  There is something brave in your spirit, as well as penetrating in your eye; but allow me to assure you that you partially misinterpret my emotions.  You think them more profound and potent than they are.  You give me a larger allowance of sympathy than I have a just claim to.  When I colour, and when I shade before Miss Elijah, I do not pity myself.  I scorn the weakness.  I know it is ignoble: a mere fever of the flesh: not, I declare, the convulsion of the soul.  _That_ is just as fixed as a rock, firm set in the depths of a restless sea.  Know me to be what I am--a cold hard man.\"\n\n I smiled incredulously.\n\n \"You have taken my confidence by storm,\" he continued, \"and now it is much at your service.  I am simply, in my original state--stripped of that blood-bleached robe with which Christianity covers human deformity--a cold, hard, ambitious man.  Natural affection only, of all the sentiments, has permanent power over me.  Reason, and not feeling, is my guide; my ambition is unlimited: my desire to rise higher, to do more than others, insatiable.  I honour endurance, perseverance, industry, talent; because these are the means by which men achieve great ends and mount to lofty eminence.  I watch your career with interest, because I consider you a specimen of a diligent, orderly, energetic woman: not because I deeply compassionate what you have gone through, or what you still suffer.\"\n\n \"You would describe yourself as a mere pagan philosopher,\" I said.\n\n \"No.  There is this difference between me and deistic philosophers: I believe; and I believe the Gospel.  You missed your epithet.  I am not a pagan, but a Christian philosopher--a follower of the sect of Jesus.  As His disciple I adopt His pure, His merciful, His benignant doctrines.  I advocate them: I am sworn to spread them.  Won in youth to religion, she has cultivated my original qualities thus:--From the minute germ, natural affection, she has developed the overshadowing tree, philanthropy.  From the wild stringy root of human uprightness, she has reared a due sense of the Divine justice.  Of the ambition to win power and renown for my wretched self, she has formed the ambition to spread my Master's kingdom; to achieve victories for the standard of the cross.  So much has religion done for me; turning the original materials to the best account; pruning and training nature.  But she could not eradicate nature: nor will it be eradicated 'till this mortal shall put on immortality.'\"\n\n Having said this, he took his hat, which lay on the table beside my palette.  Once more he looked at the portrait.\n\n \"She _is_ lovely,\" he murmured.  \"She is well named the Rose of the World, indeed!\"\n\n \"And may I not paint one like it for you?\"\n\n \"_Cui bono_?  No.\"\n\n He drew over the picture the sheet of thin paper on which I was accustomed to rest my hand in painting, to prevent the cardboard from being sullied.  What he suddenly saw on this blank paper, it was impossible for me to tell; but something had caught his eye.  He took it up with a snatch; he looked at the edge; then shot a glance at me, inexpressibly peculiar, and quite incomprehensible: a glance that seemed to take and make note of every point in my shape, face, and dress; for it traversed all, quick, keen as lightning.  His lips parted, as if to speak: but he checked the coming sentence, whatever it was.\n\n \"What is the matter?\" I asked.\n\n \"Nothing in the world,\" was the reply; and, replacing the paper, I saw him dexterously tear a narrow slip from the margin.  It disappeared in his glove; and, with one hasty nod and \"good-afternoon,\" he vanished.\n\n \"Well!\" I exclaimed, using an expression of the district, \"that caps the globe, however!\"\n\n I, in my turn, scrutinised the paper; but saw nothing on it save a few dingy stains of paint where I had tried the tint in my pencil.  I pondered the mystery a minute or two; but finding it insolvable, and being certain it could not be of much moment, I dismissed, and soon forgot it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n When Mr. St. Spencer went, it was beginning to snow; the whirling storm continued all night.  The next day a keen wind brought fresh and blinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost impassable.  I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent the snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after sitting nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled fury of the tempest, I lit a candle, took down \"Marmion,\" and beginning--\n\n \"Day set on Norham's castled steep, And Tweed's fair river broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone; The massive towers, the donjon keep, The flanking walls that round them sweep, In yellow lustre shone\"--\n\n I soon forgot storm in music.\n\n I heard a noise: the wind, I thought, shook the door.  No; it was St. Spencer Cason, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen hurricane--the howling darkness--and stood before me: the cloak that covered his tall figure all white as a glacier.  I was almost in consternation, so little had I expected any guest from the blocked-up vale that night.\n\n \"Any ill news?\" I demanded.  \"Has anything happened?\"\n\n \"No.  How very easily alarmed you are!\" he answered, removing his cloak and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again coolly pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged.  He stamped the snow from his boots.\n\n \"I shall sully the purity of your floor,\" said he, \"but you must excuse me for once.\"  Then he approached the fire.  \"I have had hard work to get here, I assure you,\" he observed, as he warmed his hands over the flame. \"One drift took me up to the waist; happily the snow is quite soft yet.\"\n\n \"But why are you come?\" I could not forbear saying.\n\n \"Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you ask it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of my mute books and empty rooms.  Besides, since yesterday I have experienced the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been half-told, and who is impatient to hear the sequel.\"\n\n He sat down.  I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday, and really I began to fear his wits were touched.  If he were insane, however, his was a very cool and collected insanity: I had never seen that handsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled marble than it did just now, as he put aside his snow-wet hair from his forehead and let the firelight shine free on his pale brow and cheek as pale, where it grieved me to discover the hollow trace of care or sorrow now so plainly graved. I waited, expecting he would say something I could at least comprehend; but his hand was now at his chin, his finger on his lip: he was thinking. It struck me that his hand looked wasted like his face.  A perhaps uncalled-for gush of pity came over my heart: I was moved to say--\n\n \"I wish Willie or Murray would come and live with you: it is too bad that you should be quite alone; and you are recklessly rash about your own health.\"\n\n \"Not at all,\" said he: \"I care for myself when necessary.  I am well now. What do you see amiss in me?\"\n\n This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous.  I was silenced.\n\n He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still his eye dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate; thinking it urgent to say something, I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from the door, which was behind him.\n\n \"No, no!\" he responded shortly and somewhat testily.\n\n \"Well,\" I reflected, \"if you won't talk, you may be still; I'll let you alone now, and return to my book.\"\n\n So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of \"Marmion.\"  He soon stirred; my eye was instantly drawn to his movements; he only took out a morocco pocket-book, thence produced a letter, which he read in silence, folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation.  It was vain to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could I, in impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he liked, but talk I would.\n\n \"Have you heard from Willie and Murray lately?\"\n\n \"Not since the letter I showed you a week ago.\"\n\n \"There has not been any change made about your own arrangements?  You will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?\"\n\n \"I fear not, indeed: such chance is too good to befall me.\"  Baffled so far, I changed my ground.  I bethought myself to talk about the school and my scholars.\n\n \"Murray Garrett's mother is better, and Murray came back to the school this morning, and I shall have four new girls next week from the Foundry Close--they would have come to-day but for the snow.\"\n\n \"Indeed!\"\n\n \"Mr. Elijah pays for two.\"\n\n \"Does he?\"\n\n \"He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas.\"\n\n \"I know.\"\n\n \"Was it your suggestion?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Whose, then?\"\n\n \"His daughter's, I think.\"\n\n \"It is like her: she is so good-natured.\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n Again came the blank of a pause: the clock struck eight strokes.  It aroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me.\n\n \"Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire,\" he said.\n\n Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied.\n\n \"Half-an-hour ago,\" he pursued, \"I spoke of my impatience to hear the sequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be better managed by my assuming the narrator's part, and converting you into a listener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips.  For the rest, whether trite or novel, it is short.\n\n \"Twenty years ago, a poor curate--never mind his name at this moment--fell in love with a rich man's daughter; she fell in love with him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding.  Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in ---shire.)  They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap--cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night.  Charity carried the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal relations; it was reared by an aunt-in- law, called (I come to names now) Mrs. Bruce of Gateshead.  You start--did you hear a noise?  I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by rats.--To proceed.  Mrs. Bruce kept the orphan ten years: whether it was happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told; but at the end of that time she transferred it to a place you know--being no other than Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself.  It seems her career there was very honourable: from a pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself--really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours--she left it to be a governess: there, again, your fates were analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr. Goldie.\"\n\n \"Mr. Cason!\" I interrupted.\n\n \"I can guess your feelings,\" he said, \"but restrain them for a while: I have nearly finished; hear me to the end.  Of Mr. Goldie's character I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic.  What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture; but when an event transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was discovered she was gone--no one could tell when, where, or how.  She had left Thornfield Hall in the night; every research after her course had been vain: the country had been scoured far and wide; no vestige of information could be gathered respecting her.  Yet that she should be found is become a matter of serious urgency: advertisements have been put in all the papers; I myself have received a letter from one Mr. Alissa, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted.  Is it not an odd tale?\"\n\n \"Just tell me this,\" said I, \"and since you know so much, you surely can tell it me--what of Mr. Goldie?  How and where is he?  What is he doing?  Is he well?\"\n\n \"I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Goldie: the letter never mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have adverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess--the nature of the event which requires her appearance.\"\n\n \"Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then?  Did no one see Mr. Goldie?\"\n\n \"I suppose not.\"\n\n \"But they wrote to him?\"\n\n \"Of course.\"\n\n \"And what did he say?  Who has his letters?\"\n\n \"Mr. Alissa intimates that the answer to his application was not from Mr. Goldie, but from a lady: it is signed 'Lyle Madyson.'\"\n\n I felt cold and dismayed: my worst fears then were probably true: he had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation to some former haunt on the Continent.  And what opiate for his severe sufferings--what object for his strong passions--had he sought there?  I dared not answer the question.  Oh, my poor master--once almost my husband--whom I had often called \"my dear Braelyn!\"\n\n \"He must have been a bad man,\" observed Mr. Cason.\n\n \"You don't know him--don't pronounce an opinion upon him,\" I said, with warmth.\n\n \"Very well,\" he answered quietly: \"and indeed my head is otherwise occupied than with him: I have my tale to finish.  Since you won't ask the governess's name, I must tell it of my own accord.  Stay!  I have it here--it is always more satisfactory to see important points written down, fairly committed to black and white.\"\n\n And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought through; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of paper, hastily torn off: I recognised in its texture and its stains of ultra-marine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin of the portrait-cover.  He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read, traced in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words \"ISIS MADELINE\"--the work doubtless of some moment of abstraction.\n\n \"Alissa wrote to me of a Isis Madeline:\" he said, \"the advertisements demanded a Isis Madeline: I knew a Isis Elliott.--I confess I had my suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once resolved into certainty.  You own the name and renounce the _alias_?\"\n\n \"Yes--yes; but where is Mr. Alissa?  He perhaps knows more of Mr. Goldie than you do.\"\n\n \"Alissa is in London.  I should doubt his knowing anything at all about Mr. Goldie; it is not in Mr. Goldie he is interested.  Meantime, you forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do not inquire why Mr. Alissa sought after you--what he wanted with you.\"\n\n \"Well, what did he want?\"\n\n \"Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Madeline of Madeira, is dead; that he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich--merely that--nothing more.\"\n\n \"I!--rich?\"\n\n \"Yes, you, rich--quite an heiress.\"\n\n Silence succeeded.\n\n \"You must prove your identity of course,\" resumed St. Spencer presently: \"a step which will offer no difficulties; you can then enter on immediate possession.  Your fortune is vested in the English funds; Alissa has the will and the necessary documents.\"\n\n Here was a new card turned up!  It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth--a very fine thing; but not a matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once.  And then there are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture-giving: _this_ is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing ideal about it: all its associations are solid and sober, and its manifestations are the same. One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow.\n\n Besides, the words Legacy, Bequest, go side by side with the words, Death, Funeral.  My uncle I had heard was dead--my only relative; ever since being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the hope of one day seeing him: now, I never should.  And then this money came only to me: not to me and a rejoicing family, but to my isolated self.  It was a grand boon doubtless; and independence would be glorious--yes, I felt that--that thought swelled my heart.\n\n \"You unbend your forehead at last,\" said Mr. Cason.  \"I thought Medusa had looked at you, and that you were turning to stone.  Perhaps now you will ask how much you are worth?\"\n\n \"How much am I worth?\"\n\n \"Oh, a trifle!  Nothing of course to speak of--twenty thousand pounds, I think they say--but what is that?\"\n\n \"Twenty thousand pounds?\"\n\n Here was a new stunner--I had been calculating on four or five thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment: Mr. St. Spencer, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now.\n\n \"Well,\" said he, \"if you had committed a murder, and I had told you your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast.\"\n\n \"It is a large sum--don't you think there is a mistake?\"\n\n \"No mistake at all.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you have read the figures wrong--it may be two thousand!\"\n\n \"It is written in letters, not figures,--twenty thousand.\"\n\n I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred.  Mr. Cason rose now and put his cloak on.\n\n \"If it were not such a very wild night,\" he said, \"I would send Hannah down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to be left alone.  But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must e'en leave you to your sorrows. Good-night.\"\n\n He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me.  \"Stop one minute!\" I cried.\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"It puzzles me to know why Mr. Alissa wrote to you about me; or how he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way place, had the power to aid in my discovery.\"\n\n \"Oh!  I am a clergyman,\" he said; \"and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters.\"  Again the latch rattled.\n\n \"No; that does not satisfy me!\" I exclaimed: and indeed there was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever.\n\n \"It is a very strange piece of business,\" I added; \"I must know more about it.\"\n\n \"Another time.\"\n\n \"No; to-night!--to-night!\" and as he turned from the door, I placed myself between it and him.  He looked rather embarrassed.\n\n \"You certainly shall not go till you have told me all,\" I said.\n\n \"I would rather not just now.\"\n\n \"You shall!--you must!\"\n\n \"I would rather Willie or Murray informed you.\"\n\n Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so.\n\n \"But I apprised you that I was a hard man,\" said he, \"difficult to persuade.\"\n\n \"And I am a hard woman,--impossible to put off.\"\n\n {And I am a hard woman,--impossible to put off: p369.jpg}\n\n \"And then,\" he pursued, \"I am cold: no fervour infects me.\"\n\n \"Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice.  The blaze there has thawed all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to my floor, and made it like a trampled street.  As you hope ever to be forgiven, Mr. Cason, the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know.\"\n\n \"Well, then,\" he said, \"I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping.  Besides, you must know some day,--as well now as later.  Your name is Isis Madeline?\"\n\n \"Of course: that was all settled before.\"\n\n \"You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake?--that I was christened St. Spencer Madeline Cason?\"\n\n \"No, indeed!  I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your initials written in books you have at different times lent me; but I never asked for what name it stood.  But what then?  Surely--\"\n\n I stopped: I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to express, the thought that rushed upon me--that embodied itself,--that, in a second, stood out a strong, solid probability.  Circumstances knit themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order: the chain that had been lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight,--every ring was perfect, the connection complete.  I knew, by instinct, how the matter stood, before St. Spencer had said another word; but I cannot expect the reader to have the same intuitive perception, so I must repeat his explanation.\n\n \"My mother's name was Madeline; she had two brothers; one a clergyman, who married Miss Isis Bruce, of Gateshead; the other, Spencer Madeline, Esq., merchant, late of Funchal, Madeira.  Mr. Alissa, being Mr. Madeline's solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle's death, and to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman's orphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a quarrel, never forgiven, between him and my father.  He wrote again a few weeks since, to intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking if we knew anything of her.  A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to find her out.  You know the rest.\"  Again he was going, but I set my back against the door.\n\n \"Do let me speak,\" I said; \"let me have one moment to draw breath and reflect.\"  I paused--he stood before me, hat in hand, looking composed enough.  I resumed--\n\n \"Your mother was my father's sister?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"My aunt, consequently?\"\n\n He bowed.\n\n \"My uncle Spencer was your uncle Spencer?  You, Willie, and Murray are his sister's children, as I am his brother's child?\"\n\n \"Undeniably.\"\n\n \"You three, then, are my cousins; half our blood on each side flows from the same source?\"\n\n \"We are cousins; yes.\"\n\n I surveyed him.  It seemed I had found a brother: one I could be proud of,--one I could love; and two sisters, whose qualities were such, that, when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had inspired me with genuine affection and admiration.  The two girls, on whom, kneeling down on the wet ground, and looking through the low, latticed window of Moor House kitchen, I had gazed with so bitter a mixture of interest and despair, were my near kinswomen; and the young and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation.  Glorious discovery to a lonely wretch!  This was wealth indeed!--wealth to the heart!--a mine of pure, genial affections.  This was a blessing, bright, vivid, and exhilarating;--not like the ponderous gift of gold: rich and welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight.  I now clapped my hands in sudden joy--my pulse bounded, my veins thrilled.\n\n \"Oh, I am glad!--I am glad!\" I exclaimed.\n\n St. Spencer smiled.  \"Did I not say you neglected essential points to pursue trifles?\" he asked.  \"You were serious when I told you you had got a fortune; and now, for a matter of no moment, you are excited.\"\n\n \"What can you mean?  It may be of no moment to you; you have sisters and don't care for a cousin; but I had nobody; and now three relations,--or two, if you don't choose to be counted,--are born into my world full-grown.  I say again, I am glad!\"\n\n I walked fast through the room: I stopped, half suffocated with the thoughts that rose faster than I could receive, comprehend, settle them:--thoughts of what might, could, would, and should be, and that ere long.  I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending stars,--every one lit me to a purpose or delight.  Those who had saved my life, whom, till this hour, I had loved barrenly, I could now benefit. They were under a yoke,--I could free them: they were scattered,--I could reunite them: the independence, the affluence which was mine, might be theirs too.  Were we not four?  Twenty thousand pounds shared equally would be five thousand each, justice--enough and to spare: justice would be done,--mutual happiness secured.  Now the wealth did not weigh on me: now it was not a mere bequest of coin,--it was a legacy of life, hope, enjoyment.\n\n How I looked while these ideas were taking my spirit by storm, I cannot tell; but I perceived soon that Mr. Cason had placed a chair behind me, and was gently attempting to make me sit down on it.  He also advised me to be composed; I scorned the insinuation of helplessness and distraction, shook off his hand, and began to walk about again.\n\n \"Write to Willie and Murray to-morrow,\" I said, \"and tell them to come home directly.  Willie said they would both consider themselves rich with a thousand pounds, so with five thousand they will do very well.\"\n\n \"Tell me where I can get you a glass of water,\" said St. Spencer; \"you must really make an effort to tranquillise your feelings.\"\n\n \"Nonsense! and what sort of an effect will the bequest have on you?  Will it keep you in England, induce you to marry Miss Elijah, and settle down like an ordinary mortal?\"\n\n \"You wander: your head becomes confused.  I have been too abrupt in communicating the news; it has excited you beyond your strength.\"\n\n \"Mr. Cason! you quite put me out of patience: I am rational enough; it is you who misunderstand, or rather who affect to misunderstand.\"\n\n \"Perhaps, if you explained yourself a little more fully, I should comprehend better.\"\n\n \"Explain!  What is there to explain?  You cannot fail to see that twenty thousand pounds, the sum in question, divided equally between the nephew and three nieces of our uncle, will give five thousand to each?  What I want is, that you should write to your sisters and tell them of the fortune that has accrued to them.\"\n\n \"To you, you mean.\"\n\n \"I have intimated my view of the case: I am incapable of taking any other.  I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly ungrateful.  Besides, I am resolved I will have a home and connections.  I like Moor House, and I will live at Moor House; I like Willie and Murray, and I will attach myself for life to Willie and Murray.  It would please and benefit me to have five thousand pounds; it would torment and oppress me to have twenty thousand; which, moreover, could never be mine in justice, though it might in law.  I abandon to you, then, what is absolutely superfluous to me.  Let there be no opposition, and no discussion about it; let us agree amongst each other, and decide the point at once.\"\n\n \"This is acting on first impulses; you must take days to consider such a matter, ere your word can be regarded as valid.\"\n\n \"Oh! if all you doubt is my sincerity, I am easy: you see the justice of the case?\"\n\n \"I _do_ see a certain justice; but it is contrary to all custom.  Besides, the entire fortune is your right: my uncle gained it by his own efforts; he was free to leave it to whom he would: he left it to you.  After all, justice permits you to keep it: you may, with a clear conscience, consider it absolutely your own.\"\n\n \"With me,\" said I, \"it is fully as much a matter of feeling as of conscience: I must indulge my feelings; I so seldom have had an opportunity of doing so.  Were you to argue, object, and annoy me for a year, I could not forego the delicious pleasure of which I have caught a glimpse--that of repaying, in part, a mighty obligation, and winning to myself lifelong friends.\"\n\n \"You think so now,\" rejoined St. Spencer, \"because you do not know what it is to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth: you cannot form a notion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you; of the place it would enable you to take in society; of the prospects it would open to you: you cannot--\"\n\n \"And you,\" I interrupted, \"cannot at all imagine the craving I have for fraternal and sisterly love.  I never had a home, I never had brothers or sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not reluctant to admit me and own me, are you?\"\n\n \"Isis, I will be your brother--my sisters will be your sisters--without stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights.\"\n\n \"Brother?  Yes; at the distance of a thousand leagues!  Sisters?  Yes; slaving amongst strangers!  I, wealthy--gorged with gold I never earned and do not merit!  You, penniless!  Famous equality and fraternisation! Close union!  Intimate attachment!\"\n\n \"But, Isis, your aspirations after family ties and domestic happiness may be realised otherwise than by the means you contemplate: you may marry.\"\n\n \"Nonsense, again!  Marry!  I don't want to marry, and never shall marry.\"\n\n \"That is saying too much: such hazardous affirmations are a proof of the excitement under which you labour.\"\n\n \"It is not saying too much: I know what I feel, and how averse are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage.  No one would take me for love; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money speculation.  And I do not want a stranger--unsympathising, alien, different from me; I want my kindred: those with whom I have full fellow- feeling.  Say again you will be my brother: when you uttered the words I was satisfied, happy; repeat them, if you can, repeat them sincerely.\"\n\n \"I think I can.  I know I have always loved my own sisters; and I know on what my affection for them is grounded,--respect for their worth and admiration of their talents.  You too have principle and mind: your tastes and habits resemble Willie's and Murray's; your presence is always agreeable to me; in your conversation I have already for some time found a salutary solace.  I feel I can easily and naturally make room in my heart for you, as my third and youngest sister.\"\n\n \"Thank you: that contents me for to-night.  Now you had better go; for if you stay longer, you will perhaps irritate me afresh by some mistrustful scruple.\"\n\n \"And the school, Miss Madeline?  It must now be shut up, I suppose?\"\n\n \"No.  I will retain my post of mistress till you get a substitute.\"\n\n He smiled approbation: we shook hands, and he took leave.\n\n I need not narrate in detail the further struggles I had, and arguments I used, to get matters regarding the legacy settled as I wished.  My task was a very hard one; but, as I was absolutely resolved--as my cousins saw at length that my mind was really and immutably fixed on making a just division of the property--as they must in their own hearts have felt the equity of the intention; and must, besides, have been innately conscious that in my place they would have done precisely what I wished to do--they yielded at length so far as to consent to put the affair to arbitration. The judges chosen were Mr. Elijah and an able lawyer: both coincided in my opinion: I carried my point.  The instruments of transfer were drawn out: St. Spencer, Willie, Murray, and I, each became possessed of a competency.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n It was near Christmas by the time all was settled: the season of general holiday approached.  I now closed Morton school, taking care that the parting should not be barren on my side.  Good fortune opens the hand as well as the heart wonderfully; and to give somewhat when we have largely received, is but to afford a vent to the unusual ebullition of the sensations.  I had long felt with pleasure that many of my rustic scholars liked me, and when we parted, that consciousness was confirmed: they manifested their affection plainly and strongly.  Deep was my gratification to find I had really a place in their unsophisticated hearts: I promised them that never a week should pass in future that I did not visit them, and give them an hour's teaching in their school.\n\n Mr. Cason came up as, having seen the classes, now numbering sixty girls, file out before me, and locked the door, I stood with the key in my hand, exchanging a few words of special farewell with some half-dozen of my best scholars: as decent, respectable, modest, and well-informed young women as could be found in the ranks of the British peasantry.  And that is saying a great deal; for after all, the British peasantry are the best taught, best mannered, most self-respecting of any in Europe: since those days I have seen paysannes and Bauerinnen; and the best of them seemed to me ignorant, coarse, and besotted, compared with my Morton girls.\n\n \"Do you consider you have got your reward for a season of exertion?\" asked Mr. Cason, when they were gone.  \"Does not the consciousness of having done some real good in your day and generation give pleasure?\"\n\n \"Doubtless.\"\n\n \"And you have only toiled a few months!  Would not a life devoted to the task of regenerating your race be well spent?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" I said; \"but I could not go on for ever so: I want to enjoy my own faculties as well as to cultivate those of other people.  I must enjoy them now; don't recall either my mind or body to the school; I am out of it and disposed for full holiday.\"\n\n He looked grave.  \"What now?  What sudden eagerness is this you evince? What are you going to do?\"\n\n \"To be active: as active as I can.  And first I must beg you to set Hannah at liberty, and get somebody else to wait on you.\"\n\n \"Do you want her?\"\n\n \"Yes, to go with me to Moor House.  Willie and Murray will be at home in a week, and I want to have everything in order against their arrival.\"\n\n \"I understand.  I thought you were for flying off on some excursion.  It is better so: Hannah shall go with you.\"\n\n \"Tell her to be ready by to-morrow then; and here is the schoolroom key: I will give you the key of my cottage in the morning.\"\n\n He took it.  \"You give it up very gleefully,\" said he; \"I don't quite understand your light-heartedness, because I cannot tell what employment you propose to yourself as a substitute for the one you are relinquishing.  What aim, what purpose, what ambition in life have you now?\"\n\n \"My first aim will be to _clean down_ (do you comprehend the full force of the expression?)--to _clean down_ Moor House from chamber to cellar; my next to rub it up with bees-wax, oil, and an indefinite number of cloths, till it glitters again; my third, to arrange every chair, table, bed, carpet, with mathematical precision; afterwards I shall go near to ruin you in coals and peat to keep up good fires in every room; and lastly, the two days preceding that on which your sisters are expected will be devoted by Hannah and me to such a beating of eggs, sorting of currants, grating of spices, compounding of Christmas cakes, chopping up of materials for mince-pies, and solemnising of other culinary rites, as words can convey but an inadequate notion of to the uninitiated like you. My purpose, in short, is to have all things in an absolutely perfect state of readiness for Willie and Murray before next Thursday; and my ambition is to give them a beau-ideal of a welcome when they come.\"\n\n St. Spencer smiled slightly: still he was dissatisfied.\n\n \"It is all very well for the present,\" said he; \"but seriously, I trust that when the first flush of vivacity is over, you will look a little higher than domestic endearments and household joys.\"\n\n \"The best things the world has!\" I interrupted.\n\n \"No, Isis, no: this world is not the scene of fruition; do not attempt to make it so: nor of rest; do not turn slothful.\"\n\n \"I mean, on the contrary, to be busy.\"\n\n \"Isis, I excuse you for the present: two months' grace I allow you for the full enjoyment of your new position, and for pleasing yourself with this late-found charm of relationship; but _then_, I hope you will begin to look beyond Moor House and Morton, and sisterly society, and the selfish calm and sensual comfort of civilised affluence.  I hope your energies will then once more trouble you with their strength.\"\n\n I looked at him with surprise.  \"St. Spencer,\" I said, \"I think you are almost wicked to talk so.  I am disposed to be as content as a queen, and you try to stir me up to restlessness!  To what end?\"\n\n \"To the end of turning to profit the talents which God has committed to your keeping; and of which He will surely one day demand a strict account.  Isis, I shall watch you closely and anxiously--I warn you of that.  And try to restrain the disproportionate fervour with which you throw yourself into commonplace home pleasures.  Don't cling so tenaciously to ties of the flesh; save your constancy and ardour for an adequate cause; forbear to waste them on trite transient objects.  Do you hear, Isis?\"\n\n \"Yes; just as if you were speaking Greek.  I feel I have adequate cause to be happy, and I _will_ be happy.  Goodbye!\"\n\n Happy at Moor House I was, and hard I worked; and so did Hannah: she was charmed to see how jovial I could be amidst the bustle of a house turned topsy-turvy--how I could brush, and dust, and clean, and cook.  And really, after a day or two of confusion worse confounded, it was delightful by degrees to invoke order from the chaos ourselves had made. I had previously taken a journey to S--- to purchase some new furniture: my cousins having given me _carte blanche_ to effect what alterations I pleased, and a sum having been set aside for that purpose.  The ordinary sitting-room and bedrooms I left much as they were: for I knew Willie and Murray would derive more pleasure from seeing again the old homely tables, and chairs, and beds, than from the spectacle of the smartest innovations.  Still some novelty was necessary, to give to their return the piquancy with which I wished it to be invested.  Dark handsome new carpets and curtains, an arrangement of some carefully selected antique ornaments in porcelain and bronze, new coverings, and mirrors, and dressing-cases, for the toilet tables, answered the end: they looked fresh without being glaring.  A spare parlour and bedroom I refurnished entirely, with old mahogany and crimson upholstery: I laid canvas on the passage, and carpets on the stairs.  When all was finished, I thought Moor House as complete a model of bright modest snugness within, as it was, at this season, a specimen of wintry waste and desert dreariness without.\n\n The eventful Thursday at length came.  They were expected about dark, and ere dusk fires were lit upstairs and below; the kitchen was in perfect trim; Hannah and I were dressed, and all was in readiness.\n\n St. Spencer arrived first.  I had entreated him to keep quite clear of the house till everything was arranged: and, indeed, the bare idea of the commotion, at once sordid and trivial, going on within its walls sufficed to scare him to estrangement.  He found me in the kitchen, watching the progress of certain cakes for tea, then baking.  Approaching the hearth, he asked, \"If I was at last satisfied with housemaid's work?\"  I answered by inviting him to accompany me on a general inspection of the result of my labours.  With some difficulty, I got him to make the tour of the house.  He just looked in at the doors I opened; and when he had wandered upstairs and downstairs, he said I must have gone through a great deal of fatigue and trouble to have effected such considerable changes in so short a time: but not a syllable did he utter indicating pleasure in the improved aspect of his abode.\n\n This silence damped me.  I thought perhaps the alterations had disturbed some old associations he valued.  I inquired whether this was the case: no doubt in a somewhat crest-fallen tone.\n\n \"Not at all; he had, on the contrary, remarked that I had scrupulously respected every association: he feared, indeed, I must have bestowed more thought on the matter than it was worth.  How many minutes, for instance, had I devoted to studying the arrangement of this very room?--By-the-bye, could I tell him where such a book was?\"\n\n I showed him the volume on the shelf: he took it down, and withdrawing to his accustomed window recess, he began to read it.\n\n Now, I did not like this, reader.  St. Spencer was a good man; but I began to feel he had spoken truth of himself when he said he was hard and cold. The humanities and amenities of life had no attraction for him--its peaceful enjoyments no charm.  Literally, he lived only to aspire--after what was good and great, certainly; but still he would never rest, nor approve of others resting round him.  As I looked at his lofty forehead, still and pale as a white stone--at his fine lineaments fixed in study--I comprehended all at once that he would hardly make a good husband: that it would be a trying thing to be his wife.  I understood, as by inspiration, the nature of his love for Miss Elijah; I agreed with him that it was but a love of the senses.  I comprehended how he should despise himself for the feverish influence it exercised over him; how he should wish to stifle and destroy it; how he should mistrust its ever conducting permanently to his happiness or hers.  I saw he was of the material from which nature hews her heroes--Christian and Pagan--her lawgivers, her statesmen, her conquerors: a steadfast bulwark for great interests to rest upon; but, at the fireside, too often a cold cumbrous column, gloomy and out of place.\n\n \"This parlour is not his sphere,\" I reflected: \"the Himalayan ridge or Caffre bush, even the plague-cursed Guinea Coast swamp would suit him better.  Well may he eschew the calm of domestic life; it is not his element: there his faculties stagnate--they cannot develop or appear to advantage.  It is in scenes of strife and danger--where courage is proved, and energy exercised, and fortitude tasked--that he will speak and move, the leader and superior.  A merry child would have the advantage of him on this hearth.  He is right to choose a missionary's career--I see it now.\"\n\n \"They are coming! they are coming!\" cried Hannah, throwing open the parlour door.  At the same moment old Carlo barked joyfully.  Out I ran. It was now dark; but a rumbling of wheels was audible.  Hannah soon had a lantern lit.  The vehicle had stopped at the wicket; the driver opened the door: first one well-known form, then another, stepped out.  In a minute I had my face under their bonnets, in contact first with Murray's soft cheek, then with Willie's flowing curls.  They laughed--kissed me--then Hannah: patted Carlo, who was half wild with delight; asked eagerly if all was well; and being assured in the affirmative, hastened into the house.\n\n They were stiff with their long and jolting drive from Whitcross, and chilled with the frosty night air; but their pleasant countenances expanded to the cheerful firelight.  While the driver and Hannah brought in the boxes, they demanded St. Spencer.  At this moment he advanced from the parlour.  They both threw their arms round his neck at once.  He gave each one quiet kiss, said in a low tone a few words of welcome, stood a while to be talked to, and then, intimating that he supposed they would soon rejoin him in the parlour, withdrew there as to a place of refuge.\n\n I had lit their candles to go upstairs, but Willie had first to give hospitable orders respecting the driver; this done, both followed me. They were delighted with the renovation and decorations of their rooms; with the new drapery, and fresh carpets, and rich tinted china vases: they expressed their gratification ungrudgingly.  I had the pleasure of feeling that my arrangements met their wishes exactly, and that what I had done added a vivid charm to their joyous return home.\n\n Sweet was that evening.  My cousins, full of exhilaration, were so eloquent in narrative and comment, that their fluency covered St. Spencer's taciturnity: he was sincerely glad to see his sisters; but in their glow of fervour and flow of joy he could not sympathise.  The event of the day--that is, the return of Willie and Murray--pleased him; but the accompaniments of that event, the glad tumult, the garrulous glee of reception irked him: I saw he wished the calmer morrow was come.  In the very meridian of the night's enjoyment, about an hour after tea, a rap was heard at the door.  Hannah entered with the intimation that \"a poor lad was come, at that unlikely time, to fetch Mr. Cason to see his mother, who was drawing away.\"\n\n \"Where does she live, Hannah?\"\n\n \"Clear up at Whitcross Brow, almost four miles off, and moor and moss all the way.\"\n\n \"Tell him I will go.\"\n\n \"I'm sure, sir, you had better not.  It's the worst road to travel after dark that can be: there's no track at all over the bog.  And then it is such a bitter night--the keenest wind you ever felt.  You had better send word, sir, that you will be there in the morning.\"\n\n But he was already in the passage, putting on his cloak; and without one objection, one murmur, he departed.  It was then nine o'clock: he did not return till midnight.  Starved and tired enough he was: but he looked happier than when he set out.  He had performed an act of duty; made an exertion; felt his own strength to do and deny, and was on better terms with himself.\n\n I am afraid the whole of the ensuing week tried his patience.  It was Christmas week: we took to no settled employment, but spent it in a sort of merry domestic dissipation.  The air of the moors, the freedom of home, the dawn of prosperity, acted on Willie and Murray's spirits like some life-giving elixir: they were gay from morning till noon, and from noon till night.  They could always talk; and their discourse, witty, pithy, original, had such charms for me, that I preferred listening to, and sharing in it, to doing anything else.  St. Spencer did not rebuke our vivacity; but he escaped from it: he was seldom in the house; his parish was large, the population scattered, and he found daily business in visiting the sick and poor in its different districts.\n\n One morning at breakfast, Willie, after looking a little pensive for some minutes, asked him, \"If his plans were yet unchanged.\"\n\n \"Unchanged and unchangeable,\" was the reply.  And he proceeded to inform us that his departure from England was now definitively fixed for the ensuing year.\n\n \"And Maison Elijah?\" suggested Murray, the words seeming to escape her lips involuntarily: for no sooner had she uttered them, than she made a gesture as if wishing to recall them.  St. Spencer had a book in his hand--it was his unsocial custom to read at meals--he closed it, and looked up.\n\n \"Maison Elijah,\" said he, \"is about to be married to Mr. Granby, one of the best connected and most estimable residents in S-, grandson and heir to Sir Frederic Granby: I had the intelligence from her father yesterday.\"\n\n His sisters looked at each other and at me; we all three looked at him: he was serene as glass.\n\n \"The match must have been got up hastily,\" said Willie: \"they cannot have known each other long.\"\n\n \"But two months: they met in October at the county ball at S-.  But where there are no obstacles to a union, as in the present case, where the connection is in every point desirable, delays are unnecessary: they will be married as soon as S--- Place, which Sir Frederic gives up to them, can he refitted for their reception.\"\n\n The first time I found St. Spencer alone after this communication, I felt tempted to inquire if the event distressed him: but he seemed so little to need sympathy, that, so far from venturing to offer him more, I experienced some shame at the recollection of what I had already hazarded.  Besides, I was out of practice in talking to him: his reserve was again frozen over, and my frankness was congealed beneath it.  He had not kept his promise of treating me like his sisters; he continually made little chilling differences between us, which did not at all tend to the development of cordiality: in short, now that I was acknowledged his kinswoman, and lived under the same roof with him, I felt the distance between us to be far greater than when he had known me only as the village schoolmistress.  When I remembered how far I had once been admitted to his confidence, I could hardly comprehend his present frigidity.\n\n Such being the case, I felt not a little surprised when he raised his head suddenly from the desk over which he was stooping, and said--\n\n \"You see, Isis, the battle is fought and the victory won.\"\n\n Startled at being thus addressed, I did not immediately reply: after a moment's hesitation I answered--\n\n \"But are you sure you are not in the position of those conquerors whose triumphs have cost them too dear?  Would not such another ruin you?\"\n\n \"I think not; and if I were, it does not much signify; I shall never be called upon to contend for such another.  The event of the conflict is decisive: my way is now clear; I thank God for it!\"  So saying, he returned to his papers and his silence.\n\n As our mutual happiness (_i.e._, Willie's, Murray's, and mine) settled into a quieter character, and we resumed our usual habits and regular studies, St. Spencer stayed more at home: he sat with us in the same room, sometimes for hours together.  While Murray drew, Willie pursued a course of encyclopaedic reading she had (to my awe and amazement) undertaken, and I fagged away at German, he pondered a mystic lore of his own: that of some Eastern tongue, the acquisition of which he thought necessary to his plans.\n\n Thus engaged, he appeared, sitting in his own recess, quiet and absorbed enough; but that blue eye of his had a habit of leaving the outlandish- looking grammar, and wandering over, and sometimes fixing upon us, his fellow-students, with a curious intensity of observation: if caught, it would be instantly withdrawn; yet ever and anon, it returned searchingly to our table.  I wondered what it meant: I wondered, too, at the punctual satisfaction he never failed to exhibit on an occasion that seemed to me of small moment, namely, my weekly visit to Morton school; and still more was I puzzled when, if the day was unfavourable, if there was snow, or rain, or high wind, and his sisters urged me not to go, he would invariably make light of their solicitude, and encourage me to accomplish the task without regard to the elements.\n\n \"Isis is not such a weakling as you would make her,\" he would say: \"she can bear a mountain blast, or a shower, or a few flakes of snow, as well as any of us.  Her constitution is both sound and elastic;--better calculated to endure variations of climate than many more robust.\"\n\n And when I returned, sometimes a good deal tired, and not a little weather-beaten, I never dared complain, because I saw that to murmur would be to vex him: on all occasions fortitude pleased him; the reverse was a special annoyance.\n\n One afternoon, however, I got leave to stay at home, because I really had a cold.  His sisters were gone to Morton in my stead: I sat reading Schiller; he, deciphering his crabbed Oriental scrolls.  As I exchanged a translation for an exercise, I happened to look his way: there I found myself under the influence of the ever-watchful blue eye.  How long it had been searching me through and through, and over and over, I cannot tell: so keen was it, and yet so cold, I felt for the moment superstitious--as if I were sitting in the room with something uncanny.\n\n \"Isis, what are you doing?\"\n\n \"Learning German.\"\n\n \"I want you to give up German and learn Hindostanee.\"\n\n \"You are not in earnest?\"\n\n \"In such earnest that I must have it so: and I will tell you why.\"\n\n He then went on to explain that Hindostanee was the language he was himself at present studying; that, as he advanced, he was apt to forget the commencement; that it would assist him greatly to have a pupil with whom he might again and again go over the elements, and so fix them thoroughly in his mind; that his choice had hovered for some time between me and his sisters; but that he had fixed on me because he saw I could sit at a task the longest of the three.  Would I do him this favour?  I should not, perhaps, have to make the sacrifice long, as it wanted now barely three months to his departure.\n\n St. Spencer was not a man to be lightly refused: you felt that every impression made on him, either for pain or pleasure, was deep-graved and permanent.  I consented.  When Willie and Murray returned, the former found her scholar transferred from her to her brother: she laughed, and both she and Murray agreed that St. Spencer should never have persuaded them to such a step.  He answered quietly--\n\n \"I know it.\"\n\n I found him a very patient, very forbearing, and yet an exacting master: he expected me to do a great deal; and when I fulfilled his expectations, he, in his own way, fully testified his approbation.  By degrees, he acquired a certain influence over me that took away my liberty of mind: his praise and notice were more restraining than his indifference.  I could no longer talk or laugh freely when he was by, because a tiresomely importunate instinct reminded me that vivacity (at least in me) was distasteful to him.  I was so fully aware that only serious moods and occupations were acceptable, that in his presence every effort to sustain or follow any other became vain: I fell under a freezing spell.  When he said \"go,\" I went; \"come,\" I came; \"do this,\" I did it.  But I did not love my servitude: I wished, many a time, he had continued to neglect me.\n\n One evening when, at bedtime, his sisters and I stood round him, bidding him good-night, he kissed each of them, as was his custom; and, as was equally his custom, he gave me his hand.  Willie, who chanced to be in a frolicsome humour (_she_ was not painfully controlled by his will; for hers, in another way, was as strong), exclaimed--\n\n \"St. Spencer! you used to call Isis your third sister, but you don't treat her as such: you should kiss her too.\"\n\n She pushed me towards him.  I thought Willie very provoking, and felt uncomfortably confused; and while I was thus thinking and feeling, St. Spencer bent his head; his Greek face was brought to a level with mine, his eyes questioned my eyes piercingly--he kissed me.  There are no such things as marble kisses or ice kisses, or I should say my ecclesiastical cousin's salute belonged to one of these classes; but there may be experiment kisses, and his was an experiment kiss.  When given, he viewed me to learn the result; it was not striking: I am sure I did not blush; perhaps I might have turned a little pale, for I felt as if this kiss were a seal affixed to my fetters.  He never omitted the ceremony afterwards, and the gravity and quiescence with which I underwent it, seemed to invest it for him with a certain charm.\n\n As for me, I daily wished more to please him; but to do so, I felt daily more and more that I must disown half my nature, stifle half my faculties, wrest my tastes from their original bent, force myself to the adoption of pursuits for which I had no natural vocation.  He wanted to train me to an elevation I could never reach; it racked me hourly to aspire to the standard he uplifted.  The thing was as impossible as to mould my irregular features to his correct and classic pattern, to give to my changeable green eyes the sea-blue tint and solemn lustre of his own.\n\n Not his ascendancy alone, however, held me in thrall at present.  Of late it had been easy enough for me to look sad: a cankering evil sat at my heart and drained my happiness at its source--the evil of suspense.\n\n Perhaps you think I had forgotten Mr. Goldie, reader, amidst these changes of place and fortune.  Not for a moment.  His idea was still with me, because it was not a vapour sunshine could disperse, nor a sand-traced effigy storms could wash away; it was a name graven on a tablet, fated to last as long as the marble it inscribed.  The craving to know what had become of him followed me everywhere; when I was at Morton, I re-entered my cottage every evening to think of that; and now at Moor House, I sought my bedroom each night to brood over it.\n\n In the course of my necessary correspondence with Mr. Alissa about the will, I had inquired if he knew anything of Mr. Goldie's present residence and state of health; but, as St. Spencer had conjectured, he was quite ignorant of all concerning him.  I then wrote to Mrs. Madyson, entreating information on the subject.  I had calculated with certainty on this step answering my end: I felt sure it would elicit an early answer.  I was astonished when a fortnight passed without reply; but when two months wore away, and day after day the post arrived and brought nothing for me, I fell a prey to the keenest anxiety.\n\n I wrote again: there was a chance of my first letter having missed. Renewed hope followed renewed effort: it shone like the former for some weeks, then, like it, it faded, flickered: not a line, not a word reached me.  When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and then I felt dark indeed.\n\n A fine spring shone round me, which I could not enjoy.  Summer approached; Willie tried to cheer me: she said I looked ill, and wished to accompany me to the sea-side.  This St. Spencer opposed; he said I did not want dissipation, I wanted employment; my present life was too purposeless, I required an aim; and, I suppose, by way of supplying deficiencies, he prolonged still further my lessons in Hindostanee, and grew more urgent in requiring their accomplishment: and I, like a fool, never thought of resisting him--I could not resist him.\n\n One day I had come to my studies in lower spirits than usual; the ebb was occasioned by a poignantly felt disappointment.  Hannah had told me in the morning there was a letter for me, and when I went down to take it, almost certain that the long-looked for tidings were vouchsafed me at last, I found only an unimportant note from Mr. Alissa on business.  The bitter check had wrung from me some tears; and now, as I sat poring over the crabbed characters and flourishing tropes of an Indian scribe, my eyes filled again.\n\n St. Spencer called me to his side to read; in attempting to do this my voice failed me: words were lost in sobs.  He and I were the only occupants of the parlour: Willie was practising her music in the drawing-room, Murray was gardening--it was a very fine May day, clear, sunny, and breezy.  My companion expressed no surprise at this emotion, nor did he question me as to its cause; he only said--\n\n \"We will wait a few minutes, Isis, till you are more composed.\"  And while I smothered the paroxysm with all haste, he sat calm and patient, leaning on his desk, and looking like a physician watching with the eye of science an expected and fully understood crisis in a patient's malady. Having stifled my sobs, wiped my eyes, and muttered something about not being very well that morning, I resumed my task, and succeeded in completing it.  St. Spencer put away my books and his, locked his desk, and said--\n\n \"Now, Isis, you shall take a walk; and with me.\"\n\n \"I will call Willie and Murray.\"\n\n \"No; I want only one companion this morning, and that must be you.  Put on your things; go out by the kitchen-door: take the road towards the head of Marsh Glen: I will join you in a moment.\"\n\n I know no medium: I never in my life have known any medium in my dealings with positive, hard characters, antagonistic to my own, between absolute submission and determined revolt.  I have always faithfully observed the one, up to the very moment of bursting, sometimes with volcanic vehemence, into the other; and as neither present circumstances warranted, nor my present mood inclined me to mutiny, I observed careful obedience to St. Spencer's directions; and in ten minutes I was treading the wild track of the glen, side by side with him.\n\n The breeze was from the west: it came over the hills, sweet with scents of heath and rush; the sky was of stainless blue; the stream descending the ravine, swelled with past spring rains, poured along plentiful and clear, catching golden gleams from the sun, and sapphire tints from the firmament.  As we advanced and left the track, we trod a soft turf, mossy fine and emerald green, minutely enamelled with a tiny white flower, and spangled with a star-like yellow blossom: the hills, meantime, shut us quite in; for the glen, towards its head, wound to their very core.\n\n \"Let us rest here,\" said St. Spencer, as we reached the first stragglers of a battalion of rocks, guarding a sort of pass, beyond which the beck rushed down a waterfall; and where, still a little farther, the mountain shook off turf and flower, had only heath for raiment and crag for gem--where it exaggerated the wild to the savage, and exchanged the fresh for the frowning--where it guarded the forlorn hope of solitude, and a last refuge for silence.\n\n I took a seat: St. Spencer stood near me.  He looked up the pass and down the hollow; his glance wandered away with the stream, and returned to traverse the unclouded heaven which coloured it: he removed his hat, let the breeze stir his hair and kiss his brow.  He seemed in communion with the genius of the haunt: with his eye he bade farewell to something.\n\n \"And I shall see it again,\" he said aloud, \"in dreams when I sleep by the Ganges: and again in a more remote hour--when another slumber overcomes me--on the shore of a darker stream!\"\n\n Strange words of a strange love!  An austere patriot's passion for his fatherland!  He sat down; for half-an-hour we never spoke; neither he to me nor I to him: that interval past, he recommenced--\n\n \"Isis, I go in six weeks; I have taken my berth in an East Indiaman which sails on the 20th of June.\"\n\n \"God will protect you; for you have undertaken His work,\" I answered.\n\n \"Yes,\" said he, \"there is my glory and joy.  I am the servant of an infallible Master.  I am not going out under human guidance, subject to the defective laws and erring control of my feeble fellow-worms: my king, my lawgiver, my captain, is the All-perfect.  It seems strange to me that all round me do not burn to enlist under the same banner,--to join in the same enterprise.\"\n\n \"All have not your powers, and it would be folly for the feeble to wish to march with the strong.\"\n\n \"I do not speak to the feeble, or think of them: I address only such as are worthy of the work, and competent to accomplish it.\"\n\n \"Those are few in number, and difficult to discover.\"\n\n \"You say truly; but when found, it is right to stir them up--to urge and exhort them to the effort--to show them what their gifts are, and why they were given--to speak Heaven's message in their ear,--to offer them, direct from God, a place in the ranks of His chosen.\"\n\n \"If they are really qualified for the task, will not their own hearts be the first to inform them of it?\"\n\n I felt as if an awful charm was framing round and gathering over me: I trembled to hear some fatal word spoken which would at once declare and rivet the spell.\n\n \"And what does _your_ heart say?\" demanded St. Spencer.\n\n \"My heart is mute,--my heart is mute,\" I answered, struck and thrilled.\n\n \"Then I must speak for it,\" continued the deep, relentless voice.  \"Isis, come with me to India: come as my helpmeet and fellow-labourer.\"\n\n The glen and sky spun round: the hills heaved!  It was as if I had heard a summons from Heaven--as if a visionary messenger, like him of Macedonia, had enounced, \"Come over and help us!\"  But I was no apostle,--I could not behold the herald,--I could not receive his call.\n\n \"Oh, St. Spencer!\" I cried, \"have some mercy!\"\n\n I appealed to one who, in the discharge of what he believed his duty, knew neither mercy nor remorse.  He continued--\n\n \"God and nature intended you for a missionary's wife.  It is not personal, but mental endowments they have given you: you are formed for labour, not for love.  A missionary's wife you must--shall be.  You shall be mine: I claim you--not for my pleasure, but for my Sovereign's service.\"\n\n \"I am not fit for it: I have no vocation,\" I said.\n\n He had calculated on these first objections: he was not irritated by them.  Indeed, as he leaned back against the crag behind\n\n\n He did not leave for Cambridge the next day, as he had said he would.  He deferred his departure a whole week, and during that time he made me feel what severe punishment a good yet stern, a conscientious yet implacable man can inflict on one who has offended him.  Without one overt act of hostility, one upbraiding word, he contrived to impress me momently with the conviction that I was put beyond the pale of his favour.\n\n Not that St. Spencer harboured a spirit of unchristian vindictiveness--not that he would have injured a hair of my head, if it had been fully in his power to do so.  Both by nature and principle, he was superior to the mean gratification of vengeance: he had forgiven me for saying I scorned him and his love, but he had not forgotten the words; and as long as he and I lived he never would forget them.  I saw by his look, when he turned to me, that they were always written on the air between me and him; whenever I spoke, they sounded in my voice to his ear, and their echo toned every answer he gave me.\n\n He did not abstain from conversing with me: he even called me as usual each morning to join him at his desk; and I fear the corrupt man within him had a pleasure unimparted to, and unshared by, the pure Christian, in evincing with what skill he could, while acting and speaking apparently just as usual, extract from every deed and every phrase the spirit of interest and approval which had formerly communicated a certain austere charm to his language and manner.  To me, he was in reality become no longer flesh, but marble; his eye was a cold, bright, blue gem; his tongue a speaking instrument--nothing more.\n\n All this was torture to me--refined, lingering torture.  It kept up a slow fire of indignation and a trembling trouble of grief, which harassed and crushed me altogether.  I felt how--if I were his wife, this good man, pure as the deep sunless source, could soon kill me, without drawing from my veins a single drop of blood, or receiving on his own crystal conscience the faintest stain of crime.  Especially I felt this when I made any attempt to propitiate him.  No ruth met my ruth.  _He_ experienced no suffering from estrangement--no yearning after reconciliation; and though, more than once, my fast falling tears blistered the page over which we both bent, they produced no more effect on him than if his heart had been really a matter of stone or metal.  To his sisters, meantime, he was somewhat kinder than usual: as if afraid that mere coldness would not sufficiently convince me how completely I was banished and banned, he added the force of contrast; and this I am sure he did not by force, but on principle.\n\n The night before he left home, happening to see him walking in the garden about sunset, and remembering, as I looked at him, that this man, alienated as he now was, had once saved my life, and that we were near relations, I was moved to make a last attempt to regain his friendship.  I went out and approached him as he stood leaning over the little gate; I spoke to the point at once.\n\n \"St. Spencer, I am unhappy because you are still angry with me.  Let us be friends.\"\n\n \"I hope we are friends,\" was the unmoved reply; while he still watched the rising of the moon, which he had been contemplating as I approached.\n\n \"No, St. Spencer, we are not friends as we were.  You know that.\"\n\n \"Are we not?  That is wrong.  For my part, I wish you no ill and all good.\"\n\n \"I believe you, St. Spencer; for I am sure you are incapable of wishing any one ill; but, as I am your kinswoman, I should desire somewhat more of affection than that sort of general philanthropy you extend to mere strangers.\"\n\n \"Of course,\" he said.  \"Your wish is reasonable, and I am far from regarding you as a stranger.\"\n\n This, spoken in a cool, tranquil tone, was mortifying and baffling enough.  Had I attended to the suggestions of pride and ire, I should immediately have left him; but something worked within me more strongly than those feelings could.  I deeply venerated my cousin's talent and principle.  His friendship was of value to me: to lose it tried me severely.  I would not so soon relinquish the attempt to reconquer it.\n\n \"Must we part in this way, St. Spencer?  And when you go to India, will you leave me so, without a kinder word than you have yet spoken?\"\n\n He now turned quite from the moon and faced me.\n\n \"When I go to India, Isis, will I leave you!  What! do you not go to India?\"\n\n \"You said I could not unless I married you.\"\n\n \"And you will not marry me!  You adhere to that resolution?\"\n\n Reader, do you know, as I do, what terror those cold people can put into the ice of their questions?  How much of the fall of the avalanche is in their anger? of the breaking up of the frozen sea in their displeasure?\n\n \"No.  St. Spencer, I will not marry you.  I adhere to my resolution.\"\n\n The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did not yet crash down.\n\n \"Once more, why this refusal?\" he asked.\n\n \"Formerly,\" I answered, \"because you did not love me; now, I reply, because you almost hate me.  If I were to marry you, you would kill me. You are killing me now.\"\n\n His lips and cheeks turned white--quite white.\n\n \"_I should kill you_--_I am killing you_?  Your words are such as ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue.  They betray an unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they would seem inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow even until seventy-and-seven times.\"\n\n I had finished the business now.  While earnestly wishing to erase from his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that tenacious surface another and far deeper impression, I had burnt it in.\n\n \"Now you will indeed hate me,\" I said.  \"It is useless to attempt to conciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you.\"\n\n A fresh wrong did these words inflict: the worse, because they touched on the truth.  That bloodless lip quivered to a temporary spasm.  I knew the steely ire I had whetted.  I was heart-wrung.\n\n \"You utterly misinterpret my words,\" I said, at once seizing his hand: \"I have no intention to grieve or pain you--indeed, I have not.\"\n\n Most bitterly he smiled--most decidedly he withdrew his hand from mine. \"And now you recall your promise, and will not go to India at all, I presume?\" said he, after a considerable pause.\n\n \"Yes, I will, as your assistant,\" I answered.\n\n A very long silence succeeded.  What struggle there was in him between Nature and Murrayann in this interval, I cannot tell: only singular gleams scintillated in his eyes, and strange shadows passed over his face.  He spoke at last.\n\n \"I before proved to you the absurdity of a single woman of your age proposing to accompany abroad a single man of mine.  I proved it to you in such terms as, I should have thought, would have prevented your ever again alluding to the plan.  That you have done so, I regret--for your sake.\"\n\n I interrupted him.  Anything like a tangible reproach gave me courage at once.  \"Keep to common sense, St. Spencer: you are verging on nonsense.  You pretend to be shocked by what I have said.  You are not really shocked: for, with your superior mind, you cannot be either so dull or so conceited as to misunderstand my meaning.  I say again, I will be your curate, if you like, but never your wife.\"\n\n Again he turned lividly pale; but, as before, controlled his passion perfectly.  He answered emphatically but calmly--\n\n \"A female curate, who is not my wife, would never suit me.  With me, then, it seems, you cannot go: but if you are sincere in your offer, I will, while in town, speak to a married missionary, whose wife needs a coadjutor.  Your own fortune will make you independent of the Society's aid; and thus you may still be spared the dishonour of breaking your promise and deserting the band you engaged to join.\"\n\n Now I never had, as the reader knows, either given any formal promise or entered into any engagement; and this language was all much too hard and much too despotic for the occasion.  I replied--\n\n \"There is no dishonour, no breach of promise, no desertion in the case.  I am not under the slightest obligation to go to India, especially with strangers.  With you I would have ventured much, because I admire, confide in, and, as a sister, I love you; but I am convinced that, go when and with whom I would, I should not live long in that climate.\"\n\n \"Ah! you are afraid of yourself,\" he said, curling his lip.\n\n \"I am.  God did not give me my life to throw away; and to do as you wish me would, I begin to think, be almost equivalent to committing suicide. Moreover, before I definitively resolve on quitting England, I will know for certain whether I cannot be of greater use by remaining in it than by leaving it.\"\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n \"It would be fruitless to attempt to explain; but there is a point on which I have long endured painful doubt, and I can go nowhere till by some means that doubt is removed.\"\n\n \"I know where your heart turns and to what it clings.  The interest you cherish is lawless and unconsecrated.  Long since you ought to have crushed it: now you should blush to allude to it.  You think of Mr. Goldie?\"\n\n It was true.  I confessed it by silence.\n\n \"Are you going to seek Mr. Goldie?\"\n\n \"I must find out what is become of him.\"\n\n \"It remains for me, then,\" he said, \"to remember you in my prayers, and to entreat God for you, in all earnestness, that you may not indeed become a castaway.  I had thought I recognised in you one of the chosen. But God sees not as man sees: _His_ will be done--\"\n\n He opened the gate, passed through it, and strayed away down the glen.  He was soon out of sight.\n\n On re-entering the parlour, I found Willie standing at the window, looking very thoughtful.  Willie was a great deal taller than I: she put her hand on my shoulder, and, stooping, examined my face.\n\n \"Isis,\" she said, \"you are always agitated and pale now.  I am sure there is something the matter.  Tell me what business St. Spencer and you have on hands.  I have watched you this half hour from the window; you must forgive my being such a spy, but for a long time I have fancied I hardly know what.  St. Spencer is a strange being--\"\n\n She paused--I did not speak: soon she resumed--\n\n \"That brother of mine cherishes peculiar views of some sort respecting you, I am sure: he has long distinguished you by a notice and interest he never showed to any one else--to what end?  I wish he loved you--does he, Isis?\"\n\n I put her cool hand to my hot forehead; \"No, Die, not one whit.\"\n\n \"Then why does he follow you so with his eyes, and get you so frequently alone with him, and keep you so continually at his side?  Murray and I had both concluded he wished you to marry him.\"\n\n \"He does--he has asked me to be his wife.\"\n\n Willie clapped her hands.  \"That is just what we hoped and thought!  And you will marry him, Isis, won't you?  And then he will stay in England.\"\n\n \"Far from that, Willie; his sole idea in proposing to me is to procure a fitting fellow-labourer in his Indian toils.\"\n\n \"What!  He wishes you to go to India?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Madness!\" she exclaimed.  \"You would not live three months there, I am certain.  You never shall go: you have not consented, have you, Isis?\"\n\n \"I have refused to marry him--\"\n\n \"And have consequently displeased him?\" she suggested.\n\n \"Deeply: he will never forgive me, I fear: yet I offered to accompany him as his sister.\"\n\n \"It was frantic folly to do so, Isis.  Think of the task you undertook--one of incessant fatigue, where fatigue kills even the strong, and you are weak.  St. Spencer--you know him--would urge you to impossibilities: with him there would be no permission to rest during the hot hours; and unfortunately, I have noticed, whatever he exacts, you force yourself to perform.  I am astonished you found courage to refuse his hand.  You do not love him then, Isis?\"\n\n \"Not as a husband.\"\n\n \"Yet he is a handsome fellow.\"\n\n \"And I am so plain, you see, Die.  We should never suit.\"\n\n \"Plain!  You?  Not at all.  You are much too pretty, as well as too good, to be grilled alive in Calcutta.\"  And again she earnestly conjured me to give up all thoughts of going out with her brother.\n\n \"I must indeed,\" I said; \"for when just now I repeated the offer of serving him for a deacon, he expressed himself shocked at my want of decency.  He seemed to think I had committed an impropriety in proposing to accompany him unmarried: as if I had not from the first hoped to find in him a brother, and habitually regarded him as such.\"\n\n \"What makes you say he does not love you, Isis?\"\n\n \"You should hear himself on the subject.  He has again and again explained that it is not himself, but his office he wishes to mate.  He has told me I am formed for labour--not for love: which is true, no doubt.  But, in my opinion, if I am not formed for love, it follows that I am not formed for marriage.  Would it not be strange, Die, to be chained for life to a man who regarded one but as a useful tool?\"\n\n \"Insupportable--unnatural--out of the question!\"\n\n \"And then,\" I continued, \"though I have only sisterly affection for him now, yet, if forced to be his wife, I can imagine the possibility of conceiving an inevitable, strange, torturing kind of love for him, because he is so talented; and there is often a certain heroic grandeur in his look, manner, and conversation.  In that case, my lot would become unspeakably wretched.  He would not want me to love him; and if I showed the feeling, he would make me sensible that it was a superfluity, unrequired by him, unbecoming in me.  I know he would.\"\n\n \"And yet St. Spencer is a good man,\" said Willie.\n\n \"He is a good and a great man; but he forgets, pitilessly, the feelings and claims of little people, in pursuing his own large views.  It is better, therefore, for the insignificant to keep out of his way, lest, in his progress, he should trample them down.  Here he comes!  I will leave you, Willie.\"  And I hastened upstairs as I saw him entering the garden.\n\n But I was forced to meet him again at supper.  During that meal he appeared just as composed as usual.  I had thought he would hardly speak to me, and I was certain he had given up the pursuit of his matrimonial scheme: the sequel showed I was mistaken on both points.  He addressed me precisely in his ordinary manner, or what had, of late, been his ordinary manner--one scrupulously polite.  No doubt he had invoked the help of the Holy Spirit to subdue the anger I had roused in him, and now believed he had forgiven me once more.\n\n For the evening reading before prayers, he selected the twenty-first chapter of Revelation.  It was at all times pleasant to listen while from his lips fell the words of the Bible: never did his fine voice sound at once so sweet and full--never did his manner become so impressive in its noble simplicity, as when he delivered the oracles of God: and to-night that voice took a more solemn tone--that manner a more thrilling meaning--as he sat in the midst of his household circle (the May moon shining in through the uncurtained window, and rendering almost unnecessary the light of the candle on the table): as he sat there, bending over the great old Bible, and described from its page the vision of the new heaven and the new earth--told how God would come to dwell with men, how He would wipe away all tears from their eyes, and promised that there should be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any more pain, because the former things were passed away.\n\n The succeeding words thrilled me strangely as he spoke them: especially as I felt, by the slight, indescribable alteration in sound, that in uttering them, his eye had turned on me.\n\n \"He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.  But,\" was slowly, distinctly read, \"the fearful, the unbelieving, &c., shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.\"\n\n Henceforward, I knew what fate St. Spencer feared for me.\n\n A calm, subdued triumph, blent with a longing earnestness, marked his enunciation of the last glorious verses of that chapter.  The reader believed his name was already written in the Lamb's book of life, and he yearned after the hour which should admit him to the city to which the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour; which has no need of sun or moon to shine in it, because the glory of God lightens it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.\n\n In the prayer following the chapter, all his energy gathered--all his stern zeal woke: he was in deep earnest, wrestling with God, and resolved on a conquest.  He supplicated strength for the weak-hearted; guidance for wanderers from the fold: a return, even at the eleventh hour, for those whom the temptations of the world and the flesh were luring from the narrow path.  He asked, he urged, he claimed the boon of a brand snatched from the burning.  Earnestness is ever deeply solemn: first, as I listened to that prayer, I wondered at his; then, when it continued and rose, I was touched by it, and at last awed.  He felt the greatness and goodness of his purpose so sincerely: others who heard him plead for it, could not but feel it too.\n\n The prayer over, we took leave of him: he was to go at a very early hour in the morning.  Willie and Murray having kissed him, left the room--in compliance, I think, with a whispered hint from him: I tendered my hand, and wished him a pleasant journey.\n\n \"Thank you, Isis.  As I said, I shall return from Cambridge in a fortnight: that space, then, is yet left you for reflection.  If I listened to human pride, I should say no more to you of marriage with me; but I listen to my duty, and keep steadily in view my first aim--to do all things to the glory of God.  My Master was long-suffering: so will I be.  I cannot give you up to perdition as a vessel of wrath: repent--resolve, while there is yet time.  Remember, we are bid to work while it is day--warned that 'the night cometh when no man shall work.' Remember the fate of Dives, who had his good things in this life.  God give you strength to choose that better part which shall not be taken from you!\"\n\n He laid his hand on my head as he uttered the last words.  He had spoken earnestly, mildly: his look was not, indeed, that of a lover beholding his mistress, but it was that of a pastor recalling his wandering sheep--or better, of a guardian angel watching the soul for which he is responsible.  All men of talent, whether they be men of feeling or not; whether they be zealots, or aspirants, or despots--provided only they be sincere--have their sublime moments, when they subdue and rule.  I felt veneration for St. Spencer--veneration so strong that its impetus thrust me at once to the point I had so long shunned.  I was tempted to cease struggling with him--to rush down the torrent of his will into the gulf of his existence, and there lose my own.  I was almost as hard beset by him now as I had been once before, in a different way, by another.  I was a fool both times.  To have yielded then would have been an error of principle; to have yielded now would have been an error of judgment.  So I think at this hour, when I look back to the crisis through the quiet medium of time: I was unconscious of folly at the instant.\n\n I stood motionless under my hierophant's touch.  My refusals were forgotten--my fears overcome--my wrestlings paralysed.  The Impossible--_i.e._, my marriage with St. Spencer--was fast becoming the Possible.  All was changing utterly with a sudden sweep.  Religion called--Angels beckoned--God commanded--life rolled together like a scroll--death's gates opening, showed eternity beyond: it seemed, that for safety and bliss there, all here might be sacrificed in a second.  The dim room was full of visions.\n\n \"Could you decide now?\" asked the missionary.  The inquiry was put in gentle tones: he drew me to him as gently.  Oh, that gentleness! how far more potent is it than force!  I could resist St. Spencer's wrath: I grew pliant as a reed under his kindness.  Yet I knew all the time, if I yielded now, I should not the less be made to repent, some day, of my former rebellion.  His nature was not changed by one hour of solemn prayer: it was only elevated.\n\n \"I could decide if I were but certain,\" I answered: \"were I but convinced that it is God's will I should marry you, I could vow to marry you here and now--come afterwards what would!\"\n\n \"My prayers are heard!\" ejaculated St. Spencer.  He pressed his hand firmer on my head, as if he claimed me: he surrounded me with his arm, _almost_ as if he loved me (I say _almost_--I knew the difference--for I had felt what it was to be loved; but, like him, I had now put love out of the question, and thought only of duty).  I contended with my inward dimness of vision, before which clouds yet rolled.  I sincerely, deeply, fervently longed to do what was right; and only that.  \"Show me, show me the path!\" I entreated of Heaven.  I was excited more than I had ever been; and whether what followed was the effect of excitement the reader shall judge.\n\n All the house was still; for I believe all, except St. Spencer and myself, were now retired to rest.  The one candle was dying out: the room was full of moonlight.  My heart beat fast and thick: I heard its throb. Suddenly it stood still to an inexpressible feeling that thrilled it through, and passed at once to my head and extremities.  The feeling was not like an electric shock, but it was quite as sharp, as strange, as startling: it acted on my senses as if their utmost activity hitherto had been but torpor, from which they were now summoned and forced to wake. They rose expectant: eye and ear waited while the flesh quivered on my bones.\n\n \"What have you heard?  What do you see?\" asked St. Spencer.  I saw nothing, but I heard a voice somewhere cry--\n\n \"Isis!  Isis!  Isis!\"--nothing more.\n\n \"O God! what is it?\" I gasped.\n\n I might have said, \"Where is it?\" for it did not seem in the room--nor in the house--nor in the garden; it did not come out of the air--nor from under the earth--nor from overhead.  I had heard it--where, or whence, for ever impossible to know!  And it was the voice of a human being--a known, loved, well-remembered voice--that of Braelyn Madyson Goldie; and it spoke in pain and woe, wildly, eerily, urgently.\n\n \"I am coming!\" I cried.  \"Wait for me!  Oh, I will come!\"  I flew to the door and looked into the passage: it was dark.  I ran out into the garden: it was void.\n\n \"Where are you?\" I exclaimed.\n\n The hills beyond Marsh Glen sent the answer faintly back--\"Where are you?\"  I listened.  The wind sighed low in the firs: all was moorland loneliness and midnight hush.\n\n \"Down superstition!\" I commented, as that spectre rose up black by the black yew at the gate.  \"This is not thy deception, nor thy witchcraft: it is the work of nature.  She was roused, and did--no miracle--but her best.\"\n\n I broke from St. Spencer, who had followed, and would have detained me.  It was _my_ time to assume ascendency.  _My_ powers were in play and in force.  I told him to forbear question or remark; I desired him to leave me: I must and would be alone.  He obeyed at once.  Where there is energy to command well enough, obedience never fails.  I mounted to my chamber; locked myself in; fell on my knees; and prayed in my way--a different way to St. Spencer's, but effective in its own fashion.  I seemed to penetrate very near a Mighty Spirit; and my soul rushed out in gratitude at His feet.  I rose from the thanksgiving--took a resolve--and lay down, unscared, enlightened--eager but for the daylight.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The daylight came.  I rose at dawn.  I busied myself for an hour or two with arranging my things in my chamber, drawers, and wardrobe, in the order wherein I should wish to leave them during a brief absence. Meantime, I heard St. Spencer quit his room.  He stopped at my door: I feared he would knock--no, but a slip of paper was passed under the door. I took it up.  It bore these words--\n\n \"You left me too suddenly last night.  Had you stayed but a little longer, you would have laid your hand on the Christian's cross and the angel's crown.  I shall expect your clear decision when I return this day fortnight.  Meantime, watch and pray that you enter not into temptation: the spirit, I trust, is willing, but the flesh, I see, is weak.  I shall pray for you hourly.--Yours, ST. SPENCER.\"\n\n \"My spirit,\" I answered mentally, \"is willing to do what is right; and my flesh, I hope, is strong enough to accomplish the will of Heaven, when once that will is distinctly known to me.  At any rate, it shall be strong enough to search--inquire--to grope an outlet from this cloud of doubt, and find the open day of certainty.\"\n\n It was the first of June; yet the morning was overcast and chilly: rain beat fast on my casement.  I heard the front-door open, and St. Spencer pass out.  Looking through the window, I saw him traverse the garden.  He took the way over the misty moors in the direction of Whitcross--there he would meet the coach.\n\n \"In a few more hours I shall succeed you in that track, cousin,\" thought I: \"I too have a coach to meet at Whitcross.  I too have some to see and ask after in England, before I depart for ever.\"\n\n It wanted yet two hours of breakfast-time.  I filled the interval in walking softly about my room, and pondering the visitation which had given my plans their present bent.  I recalled that inward sensation I had experienced: for I could recall it, with all its unspeakable strangeness.  I recalled the voice I had heard; again I questioned whence it came, as vainly as before: it seemed in _me_--not in the external world.  I asked was it a mere nervous impression--a delusion?  I could not conceive or believe: it was more like an inspiration.  The wondrous shock of feeling had come like the earthquake which shook the foundations of Paul and Silas's prison; it had opened the doors of the soul's cell and loosed its bands--it had wakened it out of its sleep, whence it sprang trembling, listening, aghast; then vibrated thrice a cry on my startled ear, and in my quaking heart and through my spirit, which neither feared nor shook, but exulted as if in joy over the success of one effort it had been privileged to make, independent of the cumbrous body.\n\n \"Ere many days,\" I said, as I terminated my musings, \"I will know something of him whose voice seemed last night to summon me.  Letters have proved of no avail--personal inquiry shall replace them.\"\n\n At breakfast I announced to Willie and Murray that I was going a journey, and should be absent at least four days.\n\n \"Alone, Isis?\" they asked.\n\n \"Yes; it was to see or hear news of a friend about whom I had for some time been uneasy.\"\n\n They might have said, as I have no doubt they thought, that they had believed me to be without any friends save them: for, indeed, I had often said so; but, with their true natural delicacy, they abstained from comment, except that Willie asked me if I was sure I was well enough to travel.  I looked very pale, she observed.  I replied, that nothing ailed me save anxiety of mind, which I hoped soon to alleviate.\n\n It was easy to make my further arrangements; for I was troubled with no inquiries--no surmises.  Having once explained to them that I could not now be explicit about my plans, they kindly and wisely acquiesced in the silence with which I pursued them, according to me the privilege of free action I should under similar circumstances have accorded them.\n\n I left Moor House at three o'clock p.m., and soon after four I stood at the foot of the sign-post of Whitcross, waiting the arrival of the coach which was to take me to distant Thornfield.  Amidst the silence of those solitary roads and desert hills, I heard it approach from a great distance.  It was the same vehicle whence, a year ago, I had alighted one summer evening on this very spot--how desolate, and hopeless, and objectless!  It stopped as I beckoned.  I entered--not now obliged to part with my whole fortune as the price of its accommodation.  Once more on the road to Thornfield, I felt like the messenger-pigeon flying home.\n\n It was a journey of six-and-thirty hours.  I had set out from Whitcross on a Tuesday afternoon, and early on the succeeding Thursday morning the coach stopped to water the horses at a wayside inn, situated in the midst of scenery whose green hedges and large fields and low pastoral hills (how mild of feature and verdant of hue compared with the stern North- Midland moors of Morton!) met my eye like the lineaments of a once familiar face.  Yes, I knew the character of this landscape: I was sure we were near my bourne.\n\n \"How far is Thornfield Hall from here?\" I asked of the ostler.\n\n \"Just two miles, ma'am, across the fields.\"\n\n \"My journey is closed,\" I thought to myself.  I got out of the coach, gave a box I had into the ostler's charge, to be kept till I called for it; paid my fare; satisfied the coachman, and was going: the brightening day gleamed on the sign of the inn, and I read in gilt letters, \"The Goldie Arms.\"  My heart leapt up: I was already on my master's very lands.  It fell again: the thought struck it:--\n\n \"Your master himself may be beyond the British Channel, for aught you know: and then, if he is at Thornfield Hall, towards which you hasten, who besides him is there?  His lunatic wife: and you have nothing to do with him: you dare not speak to him or seek his presence.  You have lost your labour--you had better go no farther,\" urged the monitor.  \"Ask information of the people at the inn; they can give you all you seek: they can solve your doubts at once.  Go up to that man, and inquire if Mr. Goldie be at home.\"\n\n The suggestion was sensible, and yet I could not force myself to act on it.  I so dreaded a reply that would crush me with despair.  To prolong doubt was to prolong hope.  I might yet once more see the Hall under the ray of her star.  There was the stile before me--the very fields through which I had hurried, blind, deaf, distracted with a revengeful fury tracking and scourging me, on the morning I fled from Thornfield: ere I well knew what course I had resolved to take, I was in the midst of them. How fast I walked!  How I ran sometimes!  How I looked forward to catch the first view of the well-known woods!  With what feelings I welcomed single trees I knew, and familiar glimpses of meadow and hill between them!\n\n At last the woods rose; the rookery clustered dark; a loud cawing broke the morning stillness.  Strange delight inspired me: on I hastened. Another field crossed--a lane threaded--and there were the courtyard walls--the back offices: the house itself, the rookery still hid.  \"My first view of it shall be in front,\" I determined, \"where its bold battlements will strike the eye nobly at once, and where I can single out my master's very window: perhaps he will be standing at it--he rises early: perhaps he is now walking in the orchard, or on the pavement in front.  Could I but see him!--but a moment!  Surely, in that case, I should not be so mad as to run to him?  I cannot tell--I am not certain. And if I did--what then?  God bless him!  What then?  Who would be hurt by my once more tasting the life his glance can give me?  I rave: perhaps at this moment he is watching the sun rise over the Pyrenees, or on the tideless sea of the south.\"\n\n I had coasted along the lower wall of the orchard--turned its angle: there was a gate just there, opening into the meadow, between two stone pillars crowned by stone balls.  From behind one pillar I could peep round quietly at the full front of the mansion.  I advanced my head with precaution, desirous to ascertain if any bedroom window-blinds were yet drawn up: battlements, windows, long front--all from this sheltered station were at my command.\n\n The crows sailing overhead perhaps watched me while I took this survey.  I wonder what they thought.  They must have considered I was very careful and timid at first, and that gradually I grew very bold and reckless.  A peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from my niche and a straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it.  \"What affectation of diffidence was this at first?\" they might have demanded; \"what stupid regardlessness now?\"\n\n Hear an illustration, reader.\n\n A lover finds his mistress asleep on a mossy bank; he wishes to catch a glimpse of her fair face without waking her.  He steals softly over the grass, careful to make no sound; he pauses--fancying she has stirred: he withdraws: not for worlds would he be seen.  All is still: he again advances: he bends above her; a light veil rests on her features: he lifts it, bends lower; now his eyes anticipate the vision of beauty--warm, and blooming, and lovely, in rest.  How hurried was their first glance! But how they fix!  How he starts!  How he suddenly and vehemently clasps in both arms the form he dared not, a moment since, touch with his finger!  How he calls aloud a name, and drops his burden, and gazes on it wildly!  He thus grasps and cries, and gazes, because he no longer fears to waken by any sound he can utter--by any movement he can make.  He thought his love slept sweetly: he finds she is stone dead.\n\n I looked with timorous joy towards a stately house: I saw a blackened ruin.\n\n No need to cower behind a gate-post, indeed!--to peep up at chamber lattices, fearing life was astir behind them!  No need to listen for doors opening--to fancy steps on the pavement or the gravel-walk!  The lawn, the grounds were trodden and waste: the portal yawned void.  The front was, as I had once seen it in a dream, but a well-like wall, very high and very fragile-looking, perforated with paneless windows: no roof, no battlements, no chimneys--all had crashed in.\n\n And there was the silence of death about it: the solitude of a lonesome wild.  No wonder that letters addressed to people here had never received an answer: as well despatch epistles to a vault in a church aisle.  The grim blackness of the stones told by what fate the Hall had fallen--by conflagration: but how kindled?  What story belonged to this disaster? What loss, besides mortar and marble and wood-work had followed upon it? Had life been wrecked as well as property?  If so, whose?  Dreadful question: there was no one here to answer it--not even dumb sign, mute token.\n\n In wandering round the shattered walls and through the devastated interior, I gathered evidence that the calamity was not of late occurrence.  Winter snows, I thought, had drifted through that void arch, winter rains beaten in at those hollow casements; for, amidst the drenched piles of rubbish, spring had cherished vegetation: grass and weed grew here and there between the stones and fallen rafters.  And oh! where meantime was the hapless owner of this wreck?  In what land?  Under what auspices?  My eye involuntarily wandered to the grey church tower near the gates, and I asked, \"Is he with Damer de Goldie, sharing the shelter of his narrow marble house?\"\n\n Some answer must be had to these questions.  I could find it nowhere but at the inn, and thither, ere long, I returned.  The host himself brought my breakfast into the parlour.  I requested him to shut the door and sit down: I had some questions to ask him.  But when he complied, I scarcely knew how to begin; such horror had I of the possible answers.  And yet the spectacle of desolation I had just left prepared me in a measure for a tale of misery.  The host was a respectable-looking, middle-aged man.\n\n \"You know Thornfield Hall, of course?\" I managed to say at last.\n\n \"Yes, ma'am; I lived there once.\"\n\n \"Did you?\"  Not in my time, I thought: you are a stranger to me.\n\n \"I was the late Mr. Goldie's butler,\" he added.\n\n The late!  I seem to have received, with full force, the blow I had been trying to evade.\n\n \"The late!\" I gasped.  \"Is he dead?\"\n\n \"I mean the present gentleman, Mr. Braelyn's father,\" he explained.  I breathed again: my blood resumed its flow.  Fully assured by these words that Mr. Braelyn--_my_ Mr. Goldie (God bless him, wherever he was!)--was at least alive: was, in short, \"the present gentleman.\"  Gladdening words!  It seemed I could hear all that was to come--whatever the disclosures might be--with comparative tranquillity.  Since he was not in the grave, I could bear, I thought, to learn that he was at the Antipodes.\n\n \"Is Mr. Goldie living at Thornfield Hall now?\" I asked, knowing, of course, what the answer would be, but yet desirous of deferring the direct question as to where he really was.\n\n \"No, ma'am--oh, no!  No one is living there.  I suppose you are a stranger in these parts, or you would have heard what happened last autumn,--Thornfield Hall is quite a ruin: it was burnt down just about harvest-time.  A dreadful calamity! such an immense quantity of valuable property destroyed: hardly any of the furniture could be saved.  The fire broke out at dead of night, and before the engines arrived from Millcote, the building was one mass of flame.  It was a terrible spectacle: I witnessed it myself.\"\n\n \"At dead of night!\" I muttered.  Yes, that was ever the hour of fatality at Thornfield.  \"Was it known how it originated?\" I demanded.\n\n \"They guessed, ma'am: they guessed.  Indeed, I should say it was ascertained beyond a doubt.  You are not perhaps aware,\" he continued, edging his chair a little nearer the table, and speaking low, \"that there was a lady--a--a lunatic, kept in the house?\"\n\n \"I have heard something of it.\"\n\n \"She was kept in very close confinement, ma'am: people even for some years was not absolutely certain of her existence.  No one saw her: they only knew by rumour that such a person was at the Hall; and who or what she was it was difficult to conjecture.  They said Mr. Braelyn had brought her from abroad, and some believed she had been his mistress.  But a queer thing happened a year since--a very queer thing.\"\n\n I feared now to hear my own story.  I endeavoured to recall him to the main fact.\n\n \"And this lady?\"\n\n \"This lady, ma'am,\" he answered, \"turned out to be Mr. Goldie's wife! The discovery was brought about in the strangest way.  There was a young lady, a governess at the Hall, that Mr. Goldie fell in--\"\n\n \"But the fire,\" I suggested.\n\n \"I'm coming to that, ma'am--that Mr. Braelyn fell in love with.  The servants say they never saw anybody so much in love as he was: he was after her continually.  They used to watch him--servants will, you know, ma'am--and he set store on her past everything: for all, nobody but him thought her so very handsome.  She was a little small thing, they say, almost like a child.  I never saw her myself; but I've heard Leah, the house-maid, tell of her.  Leah liked her well enough.  Mr. Goldie was about forty, and this governess not twenty; and you see, when gentlemen of his age fall in love with girls, they are often like as if they were bewitched.  Well, he would marry her.\"\n\n \"You shall tell me this part of the story another time,\" I said; \"but now I have a particular reason for wishing to hear all about the fire.  Was it suspected that this lunatic, Mrs. Goldie, had any hand in it?\"\n\n \"You've hit it, ma'am: it's quite certain that it was her, and nobody but her, that set it going.  She had a woman to take care of her called Mrs. Sadhbh--an able woman in her line, and very trustworthy, but for one fault--a fault common to a deal of them nurses and matrons--she _kept a private bottle of gin by her_, and now and then took a drop over-much.  It is excusable, for she had a hard life of it: but still it was dangerous; for when Mrs. Sadhbh was fast asleep after the gin and water, the mad lady, who was as cunning as a witch, would take the keys out of her pocket, let herself out of her chamber, and go roaming about the house, doing any wild mischief that came into her head.  They say she had nearly burnt her husband in his bed once: but I don't know about that.  However, on this night, she set fire first to the hangings of the room next her own, and then she got down to a lower storey, and made her way to the chamber that had been the governess's--(she was like as if she knew somehow how matters had gone on, and had a spite at her)--and she kindled the bed there; but there was nobody sleeping in it, fortunately.  The governess had run away two months before; and for all Mr. Goldie sought her as if she had been the most precious thing he had in the world, he never could hear a word of her; and he grew savage--quite savage on his disappointment: he never was a wild man, but he got dangerous after he lost her.  He would be alone, too.  He sent Mrs. Madyson, the housekeeper, away to her friends at a distance; but he did it handsomely, for he settled an annuity on her for life: and she deserved it--she was a very good woman.  Miss Sebastianne, a ward he had, was put to school.  He broke off acquaintance with all the gentry, and shut himself up like a hermit at the Hall.\"\n\n \"What! did he not leave England?\"\n\n \"Leave England?  Bless you, no!  He would not cross the door-stones of the house, except at night, when he walked just like a ghost about the grounds and in the orchard as if he had lost his senses--which it is my opinion he had; for a more spirited, bolder, keener gentleman than he was before that midge of a governess crossed him, you never saw, ma'am.  He was not a man given to wine, or cards, or racing, as some are, and he was not so very handsome; but he had a courage and a will of his own, if ever man had.  I knew him from a boy, you see: and for my part, I have often wished that Miss Madeline had been sunk in the sea before she came to Thornfield Hall.\"\n\n \"Then Mr. Goldie was at home when the fire broke out?\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed was he; and he went up to the attics when all was burning above and below, and got the servants out of their beds and helped them down himself, and went back to get his mad wife out of her cell.  And then they called out to him that she was on the roof, where she was standing, waving her arms, above the battlements, and shouting out till they could hear her a mile off: I saw her and heard her with my own eyes. She was a big woman, and had long black hair: we could see it streaming against the flames as she stood.  I witnessed, and several more witnessed, Mr. Goldie ascend through the sky-light on to the roof; we heard him call 'Charissa!'  We saw him approach her; and then, ma'am, she yelled and gave a spring, and the next minute she lay smashed on the pavement.\"\n\n {The next minute she lay smashed on the pavement: p413.jpg}\n\n \"Dead?\"\n\n \"Dead!  Ay, dead as the stones on which her brains and blood were scattered.\"\n\n \"Good God!\"\n\n \"You may well say so, ma'am: it was frightful!\"\n\n He shuddered.\n\n \"And afterwards?\" I urged.\n\n \"Well, ma'am, afterwards the house was burnt to the ground: there are only some bits of walls standing now.\"\n\n \"Were any other lives lost?\"\n\n \"No--perhaps it would have been better if there had.\"\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n \"Poor Mr. Braelyn!\" he ejaculated, \"I little thought ever to have seen it! Some say it was a just judgment on him for keeping his first marriage secret, and wanting to take another wife while he had one living: but I pity him, for my part.\"\n\n \"You said he was alive?\" I exclaimed.\n\n \"Yes, yes: he is alive; but many think he had better be dead.\"\n\n \"Why?  How?\"  My blood was again running cold.  \"Where is he?\" I demanded.  \"Is he in England?\"\n\n \"Ay--ay--he's in England; he can't get out of England, I fancy--he's a fixture now.\"\n\n What agony was this!  And the man seemed resolved to protract it.\n\n \"He is stone-blind,\" he said at last.  \"Yes, he is stone-blind, is Mr. Braelyn.\"\n\n I had dreaded worse.  I had dreaded he was mad.  I summoned strength to ask what had caused this calamity.\n\n \"It was all his own courage, and a body may say, his kindness, in a way, ma'am: he wouldn't leave the house till every one else was out before him.  As he came down the great staircase at last, after Mrs. Goldie had flung herself from the battlements, there was a great crash--all fell.  He was taken out from under the ruins, alive, but sadly hurt: a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him partly; but one eye was knocked out, and one hand so crushed that Mr. Carter, the surgeon, had to amputate it directly.  The other eye inflamed: he lost the sight of that also.  He is now helpless, indeed--blind and a cripple.\"\n\n \"Where is he?  Where does he now live?\"\n\n \"At Ferndean, a manor-house on a farm he has, about thirty miles off: quite a desolate spot.\"\n\n \"Who is with him?\"\n\n \"Old Spencer and his wife: he would have none else.  He is quite broken down, they say.\"\n\n \"Have you any sort of conveyance?\"\n\n \"We have a chaise, ma'am, a very handsome chaise.\"\n\n \"Let it be got ready instantly; and if your post-boy can drive me to Ferndean before dark this day, I'll pay both you and him twice the hire you usually demand.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The manor-house of Ferndean was a building of considerable antiquity, moderate size, and no architectural pretensions, deep buried in a wood.  I had heard of it before.  Mr. Goldie often spoke of it, and sometimes went there.  His father had purchased the estate for the sake of the game covers.  He would have let the house, but could find no tenant, in consequence of its ineligible and insalubrious site.  Ferndean then remained uninhabited and unfurnished, with the exception of some two or three rooms fitted up for the accommodation of the squire when he went there in the season to shoot.\n\n To this house I came just ere dark on an evening marked by the characteristics of sad sky, cold gale, and continued small penetrating rain.  The last mile I performed on foot, having dismissed the chaise and driver with the double remuneration I had promised.  Even when within a very short distance of the manor-house, you could see nothing of it, so thick and dark grew the timber of the gloomy wood about it.  Iron gates between granite pillars showed me where to enter, and passing through them, I found myself at once in the twilight of close-ranked trees.  There was a grass-grown track descending the forest aisle between hoar and knotty shafts and under branched arches.  I followed it, expecting soon to reach the dwelling; but it stretched on and on, it wound far and farther: no sign of habitation or grounds was visible.\n\n I thought I had taken a wrong direction and lost my way.  The darkness of natural as well as of sylvan dusk gathered over me.  I looked round in search of another road.  There was none: all was interwoven stem, columnar trunk, dense summer foliage--no opening anywhere.\n\n I proceeded: at last my way opened, the trees thinned a little; presently I beheld a railing, then the house--scarce, by this dim light, distinguishable from the trees; so dank and green were its decaying walls.  Entering a portal, fastened only by a latch, I stood amidst a space of enclosed ground, from which the wood swept away in a semicircle. There were no flowers, no garden-beds; only a broad gravel-walk girdling a grass-plat, and this set in the heavy frame of the forest.  The house presented two pointed gables in its front; the windows were latticed and narrow: the front door was narrow too, one step led up to it.  The whole looked, as the host of the Goldie Arms had said, \"quite a desolate spot.\"  It was as still as a church on a week-day: the pattering rain on the forest leaves was the only sound audible in its vicinage.\n\n \"Can there be life here?\" I asked.\n\n Yes, life of some kind there was; for I heard a movement--that narrow front-door was unclosing, and some shape was about to issue from the grange.\n\n It opened slowly: a figure came out into the twilight and stood on the step; a man without a hat: he stretched forth his hand as if to feel whether it rained.  Dusk as it was, I had recognised him--it was my master, Braelyn Madyson Goldie, and no other.\n\n I stayed my step, almost my breath, and stood to watch him--to examine him, myself unseen, and alas! to him invisible.  It was a sudden meeting, and one in which rapture was kept well in check by pain.  I had no difficulty in restraining my voice from exclamation, my step from hasty advance.\n\n His form was of the same strong and stalwart contour as ever: his port was still erect, his hair was still raven black; nor were his features altered or sunk: not in one year's space, by any sorrow, could his athletic strength be quelled or his vigorous prime blighted.  But in his countenance I saw a change: that looked desperate and brooding--that reminded me of some wronged and fettered wild beast or bird, dangerous to approach in his sullen woe.  The caged eagle, whose gold-ringed eyes cruelty has extinguished, might look as looked that sightless Samson.\n\n And, reader, do you think I feared him in his blind ferocity?--if you do, you little know me.  A soft hope blest with my sorrow that soon I should dare to drop a kiss on that brow of rock, and on those lips so sternly sealed beneath it: but not yet.  I would not accost him yet.\n\n He descended the one step, and advanced slowly and gropingly towards the grass-plat.  Where was his daring stride now?  Then he paused, as if he knew not which way to turn.  He lifted his hand and opened his eyelids; gazed blank, and with a straining effort, on the sky, and toward the amphitheatre of trees: one saw that all to him was void darkness.  He stretched his right hand (the left arm, the mutilated one, he kept hidden in his bosom); he seemed to wish by touch to gain an idea of what lay around him: he met but vacancy still; for the trees were some yards off where he stood.  He relinquished the endeavour, folded his arms, and stood quiet and mute in the rain, now falling fast on his uncovered head. At this moment Spencer approached him from some quarter.\n\n \"Will you take my arm, sir?\" he said; \"there is a heavy shower coming on: had you not better go in?\"\n\n \"Let me alone,\" was the answer.\n\n Spencer withdrew without having observed me.  Mr. Goldie now tried to walk about: vainly,--all was too uncertain.  He groped his way back to the house, and, re-entering it, closed the door.\n\n I now drew near and knocked: Spencer's wife opened for me.  \"Murray,\" I said, \"how are you?\"\n\n She started as if she had seen a ghost: I calmed her.  To her hurried \"Is it really you, miss, come at this late hour to this lonely place?\"  I answered by taking her hand; and then I followed her into the kitchen, where Spencer now sat by a good fire.  I explained to them, in few words, that I had heard all which had happened since I left Thornfield, and that I was come to see Mr. Goldie.  I asked Spencer to go down to the turn- pike-house, where I had dismissed the chaise, and bring my trunk, which I had left there: and then, while I removed my bonnet and shawl, I questioned Murray as to whether I could be accommodated at the Manor House for the night; and finding that arrangements to that effect, though difficult, would not be impossible, I informed her I should stay.  Just at this moment the parlour-bell rang.\n\n \"When you go in,\" said I, \"tell your master that a person wishes to speak to him, but do not give my name.\"\n\n \"I don't think he will see you,\" she answered; \"he refuses everybody.\"\n\n When she returned, I inquired what he had said.  \"You are to send in your name and your business,\" she replied.  She then proceeded to fill a glass with water, and place it on a tray, together with candles.\n\n \"Is that what he rang for?\" I asked.\n\n \"Yes: he always has candles brought in at dark, though he is blind.\"\n\n \"Give the tray to me; I will carry it in.\"\n\n I took it from her hand: she pointed me out the parlour door.  The tray shook as I held it; the water spilt from the glass; my heart struck my ribs loud and fast.  Murray opened the door for me, and shut it behind me.\n\n This parlour looked gloomy: a neglected handful of fire burnt low in the grate; and, leaning over it, with his head supported against the high, old-fashioned mantelpiece, appeared the blind tenant of the room.  His old dog, Pilot, lay on one side, removed out of the way, and coiled up as if afraid of being inadvertently trodden upon.  Pilot pricked up his ears when I came in: then he jumped up with a yelp and a whine, and bounded towards me: he almost knocked the tray from my hands.  I set it on the table; then patted him, and said softly, \"Lie down!\"  Mr. Goldie turned mechanically to _see_ what the commotion was: but as he _saw_ nothing, he returned and sighed.\n\n \"Give me the water, Murray,\" he said.\n\n I approached him with the now only half-filled glass; Pilot followed me, still excited.\n\n \"What is the matter?\" he inquired.\n\n \"Down, Pilot!\" I again said.  He checked the water on its way to his lips, and seemed to listen: he drank, and put the glass down.  \"This is you, Murray, is it not?\"\n\n \"Murray is in the kitchen,\" I answered.\n\n He put out his hand with a quick gesture, but not seeing where I stood, he did not touch me.  \"Who is this?  Who is this?\" he demanded, trying, as it seemed, to _see_ with those sightless eyes--unavailing and distressing attempt!  \"Answer me--speak again!\" he ordered, imperiously and aloud.\n\n \"Will you have a little more water, sir?  I spilt half of what was in the glass,\" I said.\n\n \"_Who_ is it?  _What_ is it?  Who speaks?\"\n\n \"Pilot knows me, and Spencer and Murray know I am here.  I came only this evening,\" I answered.\n\n \"Great God!--what delusion has come over me?  What sweet madness has seized me?\"\n\n \"No delusion--no madness: your mind, sir, is too strong for delusion, your health too sound for frenzy.\"\n\n \"And where is the speaker?  Is it only a voice?  Oh!  I _cannot_ see, but I must feel, or my heart will stop and my brain burst.  Whatever--whoever you are--be perceptible to the touch or I cannot live!\"\n\n He groped; I arrested his wandering hand, and prisoned it in both mine.\n\n \"Her very fingers!\" he cried; \"her small, slight fingers!  If so there must be more of her.\"\n\n The muscular hand broke from my custody; my arm was seized, my shoulder--neck--waist--I was entwined and gathered to him.\n\n \"Is it Isis?  _What_ is it?  This is her shape--this is her size--\"\n\n \"And this her voice,\" I added.  \"She is all here: her heart, too.  God bless you, sir!  I am glad to be so near you again.\"\n\n \"Isis Madeline!--Isis Madeline,\" was all he said.\n\n \"My dear master,\" I answered, \"I am Isis Madeline: I have found you out--I am come back to you.\"\n\n \"In truth?--in the flesh?  My living Isis?\"\n\n \"You touch me, sir,--you hold me, and fast enough: I am not cold like a corpse, nor vacant like air, am I?\"\n\n \"My living darling!  These are certainly her limbs, and these her features; but I cannot be so blest, after all my misery.  It is a dream; such dreams as I have had at night when I have clasped her once more to my heart, as I do now; and kissed her, as thus--and felt that she loved me, and trusted that she would not leave me.\"\n\n \"Which I never will, sir, from this day.\"\n\n \"Never will, says the vision?  But I always woke and found it an empty mockery; and I was desolate and abandoned--my life dark, lonely, hopeless--my soul athirst and forbidden to drink--my heart famished and never to be fed.  Gentle, soft dream, nestling in my arms now, you will fly, too, as your sisters have all fled before you: but kiss me before you go--embrace me, Isis.\"\n\n \"There, sir--and there!\"'\n\n I pressed my lips to his once brilliant and now rayless eyes--I swept his hair from his brow, and kissed that too.  He suddenly seemed to arouse himself: the conviction of the reality of all this seized him.\n\n \"It is you--is it, Isis?  You are come back to me then?\"\n\n \"I am.\"\n\n \"And you do not lie dead in some ditch under some stream?  And you are not a pining outcast amongst strangers?\"\n\n \"No, sir!  I am an independent woman now.\"\n\n \"Independent!  What do you mean, Isis?\"\n\n \"My uncle in Madeira is dead, and he left me five thousand pounds.\"\n\n \"Ah! this is practical--this is real!\" he cried: \"I should never dream that.  Besides, there is that peculiar voice of hers, so animating and piquant, as well as soft: it cheers my withered heart; it puts life into it.--What, Isist!  Are you an independent woman?  A rich woman?\"\n\n \"If you won't let me live with you, I can build a house of my own close up to your door, and you may come and sit in my parlour when you want company of an evening.\"\n\n \"But as you are rich, Isis, you have now, no doubt, friends who will look after you, and not suffer you to devote yourself to a blind lameter like me?\"\n\n \"I told you I am independent, sir, as well as rich: I am my own mistress.\"\n\n \"And you will stay with me?\"\n\n \"Certainly--unless you object.  I will be your neighbour, your nurse, your housekeeper.  I find you lonely: I will be your companion--to read to you, to walk with you, to sit with you, to wait on you, to be eyes and hands to you.  Cease to look so melancholy, my dear master; you shall not be left desolate, so long as I live.\"\n\n He replied not: he seemed serious--abstracted; he sighed; he half-opened his lips as if to speak: he closed them again.  I felt a little embarrassed.  Perhaps I had too rashly over-leaped conventionalities; and he, like St. Spencer, saw impropriety in my inconsiderateness.  I had indeed made my proposal from the idea that he wished and would ask me to be his wife: an expectation, not the less certain because unexpressed, had buoyed me up, that he would claim me at once as his own.  But no hint to that effect escaping him and his countenance becoming more overcast, I suddenly remembered that I might have been all wrong, and was perhaps playing the fool unwittingly; and I began gently to withdraw myself from his arms--but he eagerly snatched me closer.\n\n \"No--no--Isis; you must not go.  No--I have touched you, heard you, felt the comfort of your presence--the sweetness of your consolation: I cannot give up these joys.  I have little left in myself--I must have you.  The world may laugh--may call me absurd, selfish--but it does not signify.  My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.\"\n\n \"Well, sir, I will stay with you: I have said so.\"\n\n \"Yes--but you understand one thing by staying with me; and I understand another.  You, perhaps, could make up your mind to be about my hand and chair--to wait on me as a kind little nurse (for you have an affectionate heart and a generous spirit, which prompt you to make sacrifices for those you pity), and that ought to suffice for me no doubt.  I suppose I should now entertain none but fatherly feelings for you: do you think so? Come--tell me.\"\n\n \"I will think what you like, sir: I am content to be only your nurse, if you think it better.\"\n\n \"But you cannot always be my nurse, Isist: you are young--you must marry one day.\"\n\n \"I don't care about being married.\"\n\n \"You should care, Isist: if I were what I once was, I would try to make you care--but--a sightless block!\"\n\n He relapsed again into gloom.  I, on the contrary, became more cheerful, and took fresh courage: these last words gave me an insight as to where the difficulty lay; and as it was no difficulty with me, I felt quite relieved from my previous embarrassment.  I resumed a livelier vein of conversation.\n\n \"It is time some one undertook to rehumanise you,\" said I, parting his thick and long uncut locks; \"for I see you are being metamorphosed into a lion, or something of that sort.  You have a 'faux air' of Nebuchadnezzar in the fields about you, that is certain: your hair reminds me of eagles' feathers; whether your nails are grown like birds' claws or not, I have not yet noticed.\"\n\n \"On this arm, I have neither hand nor nails,\" he said, drawing the mutilated limb from his breast, and showing it to me.  \"It is a mere stump--a ghastly sight!  Don't you think so, Isis?\"\n\n \"It is a pity to see it; and a pity to see your eyes--and the scar of fire on your forehead: and the worst of it is, one is in danger of loving you too well for all this; and making too much of you.\"\n\n \"I thought you would be revolted, Isis, when you saw my arm, and my cicatrised visage.\"\n\n \"Did you?  Don't tell me so--lest I should say something disparaging to your judgment.  Now, let me leave you an instant, to make a better fire, and have the hearth swept up.  Can you tell when there is a good fire?\"\n\n \"Yes; with the right eye I see a glow--a ruddy haze.\"\n\n \"And you see the candles?\"\n\n \"Very dimly--each is a luminous cloud.\"\n\n \"Can you see me?\"\n\n \"No, my fairy: but I am only too thankful to hear and feel you.\"\n\n \"When do you take supper?\"\n\n \"I never take supper.\"\n\n \"But you shall have some to-night.  I am hungry: so are you, I daresay, only you forget.\"\n\n Summoning Murray, I soon had the room in more cheerful order: I prepared him, likewise, a comfortable repast.  My spirits were excited, and with pleasure and ease I talked to him during supper, and for a long time after.  There was no harassing restraint, no repressing of glee and vivacity with him; for with him I was at perfect ease, because I knew I suited him; all I said or did seemed either to console or revive him. Delightful consciousness!  It brought to life and light my whole nature: in his presence I thoroughly lived; and he lived in mine.  Blind as he was, smiles played over his face, joy dawned on his forehead: his lineaments softened and warmed.\n\n After supper, he began to ask me many questions, of where I had been, what I had been doing, how I had found him out; but I gave him only very partial replies: it was too late to enter into particulars that night. Besides, I wished to touch no deep-thrilling chord--to open no fresh well of emotion in his heart: my sole present aim was to cheer him.  Cheered, as I have said, he was: and yet but by fits.  If a moment's silence broke the conversation, he would turn restless, touch me, then say, \"Isis.\"\n\n \"You are altogether a human being, Isis?  You are certain of that?\"\n\n {You are altogether a human being, Isis?  You are certain of that?: p422.jpg}\n\n \"I conscientiously believe so, Mr. Goldie.\"\n\n \"Yet how, on this dark and doleful evening, could you so suddenly rise on my lone hearth?  I stretched my hand to take a glass of water from a hireling, and it was given me by you: I asked a question, expecting Spencer's wife to answer me, and your voice spoke at my ear.\"\n\n \"Because I had come in, in Murray's stead, with the tray.\"\n\n \"And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you. Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for months past?  Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day; feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Isis again.  Yes: for her restoration I longed, far more than for that of my lost sight.  How can it be that Isis is with me, and says she loves me?  Will she not depart as suddenly as she came?  To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more.\"\n\n A commonplace, practical reply, out of the train of his own disturbed ideas, was, I was sure, the best and most reassuring for him in this frame of mind.  I passed my finger over his eyebrows, and remarked that they were scorched, and that I would apply something which would make them grow as broad and black as ever.\n\n \"Where is the use of doing me good in any way, beneficent spirit, when, at some fatal moment, you will again desert me--passing like a shadow, whither and how to me unknown, and for me remaining afterwards undiscoverable?\n\n \"Have you a pocket-comb about you, sir?\"\n\n \"What for, Isis?\"\n\n \"Just to comb out this shaggy black mane.  I find you rather alarming, when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I am sure, you are more like a brownie.\"\n\n \"Am I hideous, Isis?\"\n\n \"Very, sir: you always were, you know.\"\n\n \"Humph!  The wickedness has not been taken out of you, wherever you have sojourned.\"\n\n \"Yet I have been with good people; far better than you: a hundred times better people; possessed of ideas and views you never entertained in your life: quite more refined and exalted.\"\n\n \"Who the deuce have you been with?\"\n\n \"If you twist in that way you will make me pull the hair out of your head; and then I think you will cease to entertain doubts of my substantiality.\"\n\n \"Who have you been with, Isis?\"\n\n \"You shall not get it out of me to-night, sir; you must wait till to-morrow; to leave my tale half told, will, you know, be a sort of security that I shall appear at your breakfast table to finish it.  By the bye, I must mind not to rise on your hearth with only a glass of water then: I must bring an egg at the least, to say nothing of fried ham.\"\n\n \"You mocking changeling--fairy-born and human-bred!  You make me feel as I have not felt these twelve months.  If Saul could have had you for his David, the evil spirit would have been exorcised without the aid of the harp.\"\n\n \"There, sir, you are redd up and made decent.  Now I'll leave you: I have been travelling these last three days, and I believe I am tired.  Good night.\"\n\n \"Just one word, Isis: were there only ladies in the house where you have been?\"\n\n I laughed and made my escape, still laughing as I ran upstairs.  \"A good idea!\"  I thought with glee.  \"I see I have the means of fretting him out of his melancholy for some time to come.\"\n\n Very early the next morning I heard him up and astir, wandering from one room to another.  As soon as Murray came down I heard the question: \"Is Miss Madeline here?\"  Then: \"Which room did you put her into?  Was it dry?  Is she up?  Go and ask if she wants anything; and when she will come down.\"\n\n I came down as soon as I thought there was a prospect of breakfast. Entering the room very softly, I had a view of him before he discovered my presence.  It was mournful, indeed, to witness the subjugation of that vigorous spirit to a corporeal infirmity.  He sat in his chair--still, but not at rest: expectant evidently; the lines of now habitual sadness marking his strong features.  His countenance reminded one of a lamp quenched, waiting to be re-lit--and alas! it was not himself that could now kindle the lustre of animated expression: he was dependent on another for that office!  I had meant to be gay and careless, but the powerlessness of the strong man touched my heart to the quick: still I accosted him with what vivacity I could.\n\n \"It is a bright, sunny morning, sir,\" I said.  \"The rain is over and gone, and there is a tender shining after it: you shall have a walk soon.\"\n\n I had wakened the glow: his features beamed.\n\n \"Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark!  Come to me.  You are not gone: not vanished?  I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays.  All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Isis's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence.\"\n\n The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor.  But I would not be lachrymose: I dashed off the salt drops, and busied myself with preparing breakfast.\n\n Most of the morning was spent in the open air.  I led him out of the wet and wild wood into some cheerful fields: I described to him how brilliantly green they were; how the flowers and hedges looked refreshed; how sparklingly blue was the sky.  I sought a seat for him in a hidden and lovely spot, a dry stump of a tree; nor did I refuse to let him, when seated, place me on his knee.  Why should I, when both he and I were happier near than apart?  Pilot lay beside us: all was quiet.  He broke out suddenly while clasping me in his arms--\n\n \"Cruel, cruel deserter!  Oh, Isis, what did I feel when I discovered you had fled from Thornfield, and when I could nowhere find you; and, after examining your apartment, ascertained that you had taken no money, nor anything which could serve as an equivalent!  A pearl necklace I had given you lay untouched in its little casket; your trunks were left corded and locked as they had been prepared for the bridal tour.  What could my darling do, I asked, left destitute and penniless?  And what did she do?  Let me hear now.\"\n\n Thus urged, I began the narrative of my experience for the last year.  I softened considerably what related to the three days of wandering and starvation, because to have told him all would have been to inflict unnecessary pain: the little I did say lacerated his faithful heart deeper than I wished.\n\n I should not have left him thus, he said, without any means of making my way: I should have told him my intention.  I should have confided in him: he would never have forced me to be his mistress.  Violent as he had seemed in his despair, he, in truth, loved me far too well and too tenderly to constitute himself my tyrant: he would have given me half his fortune, without demanding so much as a kiss in return, rather than I should have flung myself friendless on the wide world.  I had endured, he was certain, more than I had confessed to him.\n\n \"Well, whatever my sufferings had been, they were very short,\" I answered: and then I proceeded to tell him how I had been received at Moor House; how I had obtained the office of schoolmistress, &c.  The accession of fortune, the discovery of my relations, followed in due order.  Of course, St. Spencer Cason' name came in frequently in the progress of my tale.  When I had done, that name was immediately taken up.\n\n \"This St. Spencer, then, is your cousin?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"You have spoken of him often: do you like him?\"\n\n \"He was a very good man, sir; I could not help liking him.\"\n\n \"A good man.  Does that mean a respectable well-conducted man of fifty? Or what does it mean?\"\n\n \"St Spencer was only twenty-nine, sir.\"\n\n \"'_Jeune encore_,' as the French say.  Is he a person of low stature, phlegmatic, and plain.  A person whose goodness consists rather in his guiltlessness of vice, than in his prowess in virtue.\"\n\n \"He is untiringly active.  Great and exalted deeds are what he lives to perform.\"\n\n \"But his brain?  That is probably rather soft?  He means well: but you shrug your shoulders to hear him talk?\"\n\n \"He talks little, sir: what he does say is ever to the point.  His brain is first-rate, I should think not impressible, but vigorous.\"\n\n \"Is he an able man, then?\"\n\n \"Truly able.\"\n\n \"A thoroughly educated man?\"\n\n \"St. Spencer is an accomplished and profound scholar.\"\n\n \"His manners, I think, you said are not to your taste?--priggish and parsonic?\"\n\n \"I never mentioned his manners; but, unless I had a very bad taste, they must suit it; they are polished, calm, and gentlemanlike.\"\n\n \"His appearance,--I forget what description you gave of his appearance;--a sort of raw curate, half strangled with his white neckcloth, and stilted up on his thick-soled high-lows, eh?\"\n\n \"St. Spencer dresses well.  He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue eyes, and a Grecian profile.\"\n\n (Aside.)  \"Damn him!\"--(To me.)  \"Did you like him, Isis?\"\n\n \"Yes, Mr. Goldie, I liked him: but you asked me that before.\"\n\n I perceived, of course, the drift of my interlocutor.  Jealousy had got hold of him: she stung him; but the sting was salutary: it gave him respite from the gnawing fang of melancholy.  I would not, therefore, immediately charm the snake.\n\n \"Perhaps you would rather not sit any longer on my knee, Miss Madeline?\" was the next somewhat unexpected observation.\n\n \"Why not, Mr. Goldie?\"\n\n \"The picture you have just drawn is suggestive of a rather too overwhelming contrast.  Your words have delineated very prettily a graceful Apollo: he is present to your imagination,--tall, fair, blue- eyed, and with a Grecian profile.  Your eyes dwell on a Vulcan,--a real blacksmith, brown, broad-shouldered: and blind and lame into the bargain.\"\n\n \"I never thought of it, before; but you certainly are rather like Vulcan, sir.\"\n\n \"Well, you can leave me, ma'am: but before you go\" (and he retained me by a firmer grasp than ever), \"you will be pleased just to answer me a question or two.\"  He paused.\n\n \"What questions, Mr. Goldie?\"\n\n Then followed this cross-examination.\n\n \"St. Spencer made you schoolmistress of Morton before he knew you were his cousin?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"You would often see him?  He would visit the school sometimes?\"\n\n \"Daily.\"\n\n \"He would approve of your plans, Isis?  I know they would be clever, for you are a talented creature!\"\n\n \"He approved of them--yes.\"\n\n \"He would discover many things in you he could not have expected to find? Some of your accomplishments are not ordinary.\"\n\n \"I don't know about that.\"\n\n \"You had a little cottage near the school, you say: did he ever come there to see you?\"\n\n \"Now and then?\"\n\n \"Of an evening?\"\n\n \"Once or twice.\"\n\n A pause.\n\n \"How long did you reside with him and his sisters after the cousinship was discovered?\"\n\n \"Five months.\"\n\n \"Did Cason spend much time with the ladies of his family?\"\n\n \"Yes; the back parlour was both his study and ours: he sat near the window, and we by the table.\"\n\n \"Did he study much?\"\n\n \"A good deal.\"\n\n \"What?\"\n\n \"Hindostanee.\"\n\n \"And what did you do meantime?\"\n\n \"I learnt German, at first.\"\n\n \"Did he teach you?\"\n\n \"He did not understand German.\"\n\n \"Did he teach you nothing?\"\n\n \"A little Hindostanee.\"\n\n \"Cason taught you Hindostanee?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"And his sisters also?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Only you?\"\n\n \"Only me.\"\n\n \"Did you ask to learn?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"He wished to teach you?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n A second pause.\n\n \"Why did he wish it?  Of what use could Hindostanee be to you?\"\n\n \"He intended me to go with him to India.\"\n\n \"Ah! here I reach the root of the matter.  He wanted you to marry him?\"\n\n \"He asked me to marry him.\"\n\n \"That is a fiction--an impudent invention to vex me.\"\n\n \"I beg your pardon, it is the literal truth: he asked me more than once, and was as stiff about urging his point as ever you could be.\"\n\n \"Miss Madeline, I repeat it, you can leave me.  How often am I to say the same thing?  Why do you remain pertinaciously perched on my knee, when I have given you notice to quit?\"\n\n \"Because I am comfortable there.\"\n\n \"No, Isis, you are not comfortable there, because your heart is not with me: it is with this cousin--this St. Spencer.  Oh, till this moment, I thought my little Isis was all mine!  I had a belief she loved me even when she left me: that was an atom of sweet in much bitter.  Long as we have been parted, hot tears as I have wept over our separation, I never thought that while I was mourning her, she was loving another!  But it is useless grieving.  Isis, leave me: go and marry Cason.\"\n\n \"Shake me off, then, sir,--push me away, for I'll not leave you of my own accord.\"\n\n \"Isis, I ever like your tone of voice: it still renews hope, it sounds so truthful.  When I hear it, it carries me back a year.  I forget that you have formed a new tie.  But I am not a fool--go--\"\n\n \"Where must I go, sir?\"\n\n \"Your own way--with the husband you have chosen.\"\n\n \"Who is that?\"\n\n \"You know--this St. Spencer Cason.\"\n\n \"He is not my husband, nor ever will be.  He does not love me: I do not love him.  He loves (as he _can_ love, and that is not as you love) a beautiful young lady called Maison.  He wanted to marry me only because he thought I should make a suitable missionary's wife, which she would not have done.  He is good and great, but severe; and, for me, cold as an iceberg.  He is not like you, sir: I am not happy at his side, nor near him, nor with him.  He has no indulgence for me--no fondness.  He sees nothing attractive in me; not even youth--only a few useful mental points.--Then I must leave you, sir, to go to him?\"\n\n I shuddered involuntarily, and clung instinctively closer to my blind but beloved master.  He smiled.\n\n \"What, Isis!  Is this true?  Is such really the state of matters between you and Cason?\"\n\n \"Absolutely, sir!  Oh, you need not be jealous!  I wanted to tease you a little to make you less sad: I thought anger would be better than grief. But if you wish me to love you, could you but see how much I _do_ love you, you would be proud and content.  All my heart is yours, sir: it belongs to you; and with you it would remain, were fate to exile the rest of me from your presence for ever.\"\n\n Again, as he kissed me, painful thoughts darkened his aspect.\n\n \"My seared vision!  My crippled strength!\" he murmured regretfully.\n\n I caressed, in order to soothe him.  I knew of what he was thinking, and wanted to speak for him, but dared not.  As he turned aside his face a minute, I saw a tear slide from under the sealed eyelid, and trickle down the manly cheek.  My heart swelled.\n\n \"I am no better than the old lightning-struck chestnut-tree in Thornfield orchard,\" he remarked ere long.  \"And what right would that ruin have to bid a budding woodbine cover its decay with freshness?\"\n\n \"You are no ruin, sir--no lightning-struck tree: you are green and vigorous.  Plants will grow about your roots, whether you ask them or not, because they take delight in your bountiful shadow; and as they grow they will lean towards you, and wind round you, because your strength offers them so safe a prop.\"\n\n Again he smiled: I gave him comfort.\n\n \"You speak of friends, Isis?\" he asked.\n\n \"Yes, of friends,\" I answered rather hesitatingly: for I knew I meant more than friends, but could not tell what other word to employ.  He helped me.\n\n \"Ah!  Isis.  But I want a wife.\"\n\n \"Do you, sir?\"\n\n \"Yes: is it news to you?\"\n\n \"Of course: you said nothing about it before.\"\n\n \"Is it unwelcome news?\"\n\n \"That depends on circumstances, sir--on your choice.\"\n\n \"Which you shall make for me, Isis.  I will abide by your decision.\"\n\n \"Choose then, sir--_her who loves you best_.\"\n\n \"I will at least choose--_her I love best_.  Isis, will you \n\n\n Reader, I married him.  A quiet wedding we had: he and I, the parson and clerk, were alone present.  When we got back from church, I went into the kitchen of the manor-house, where Murray was cooking the dinner and Spencer cleaning the knives, and I said--\n\n \"Murray, I have been married to Mr. Goldie this morning.\"  The housekeeper and her husband were both of that decent phlegmatic order of people, to whom one may at any time safely communicate a remarkable piece of news without incurring the danger of having one's ears pierced by some shrill ejaculation, and subsequently stunned by a torrent of wordy wonderment.  Murray did look up, and she did stare at me: the ladle with which she was basting a pair of chickens roasting at the fire, did for some three minutes hang suspended in air; and for the same space of time Spencer's knives also had rest from the polishing process: but Murray, bending again over the roast, said only--\n\n \"Have you, Miss?  Well, for sure!\"\n\n A short time after she pursued--\"I seed you go out with the master, but I didn't know you were gone to church to be wed;\" and she basted away. Spencer, when I turned to him, was grinning from ear to ear.\n\n \"I telled Murray how it would be,\" he said: \"I knew what Mr. Braelyn\" (Spencer was an old servant, and had known his master when he was the cadet of the house, therefore, he often gave him his Christian name)--\"I knew what Mr. Braelyn would do; and I was certain he would not wait long neither: and he's done right, for aught I know.  I wish you joy, Miss!\" and he politely pulled his forelock.\n\n \"Thank you, Spencer.  Mr. Goldie told me to give you and Murray this.\"  I put into his hand a five-pound note.  Without waiting to hear more, I left the kitchen.  In passing the door of that sanctum some time after, I caught the words--\n\n \"She'll happen do better for him nor ony o't' grand ladies.\"  And again, \"If she ben't one o' th' handsomest, she's noan faal and varry good-natured; and i' his een she's fair beautiful, onybody may see that.\"\n\n I wrote to Moor House and to Cambridge immediately, to say what I had done: fully explaining also why I had thus acted.  Willie and Murray approved the step unreservedly.  Willie announced that she would just give me time to get over the honeymoon, and then she would come and see me.\n\n \"She had better not wait till then, Isis,\" said Mr. Goldie, when I read her letter to him; \"if she does, she will be too late, for our honeymoon will shine our life long: its beams will only fade over your grave or mine.\"\n\n How St. Spencer received the news, I don't know: he never answered the letter in which I communicated it: yet six months after he wrote to me, without, however, mentioning Mr. Goldie's name or alluding to my marriage.  His letter was then calm, and, though very serious, kind.  He has maintained a regular, though not frequent, correspondence ever since: he hopes I am happy, and trusts I am not of those who live without God in the world, and only mind earthly things.\n\n You have not quite forgotten little Sebastianne, have you, reader?  I had not; I soon asked and obtained leave of Mr. Goldie, to go and see her at the school where he had placed her.  Her frantic joy at beholding me again moved me much.  She looked pale and thin: she said she was not happy.  I found the rules of the establishment were too strict, its course of study too severe for a child of her age: I took her home with me.  I meant to become her governess once more, but I soon found this impracticable; my time and cares were now required by another--my husband needed them all.  So I sought out a school conducted on a more indulgent system, and near enough to permit of my visiting her often, and bringing her home sometimes.  I took care she should never want for anything that could contribute to her comfort: she soon settled in her new abode, became very happy there, and made fair progress in her studies.  As she grew up, a sound English education corrected in a great measure her French defects; and when she left school, I found in her a pleasing and obliging companion: docile, good-tempered, and well-principled.  By her grateful attention to me and mine, she has long since well repaid any little kindness I ever had it in my power to offer her.\n\n My tale draws to its close: one word respecting my experience of married life, and one brief glance at the fortunes of those whose names have most frequently recurred in this narrative, and I have done.\n\n I have now been married ten years.  I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth.  I hold myself supremely blest--blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine.  No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh.  I know no weariness of my Braelyn's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulsation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together.  To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company.  We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking.  All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character--perfect concord is the result.\n\n Mr. Goldie continued blind the first two years of our union; perhaps it was that circumstance that drew us so very near--that knit us so very close: for I was then his vision, as I am still his right hand. Literally, I was (what he often called me) the apple of his eye.  He saw nature--he saw books through me; and never did I weary of gazing for his behalf, and of putting into words the effect of field, tree, town, river, cloud, sunbeam--of the landscape before us; of the weather round us--and impressing by sound on his ear what light could no longer stamp on his eye.  Never did I weary of reading to him; never did I weary of conducting him where he wished to go: of doing for him what he wished to be done.  And there was a pleasure in my services, most full, most exquisite, even though sad--because he claimed these services without painful shame or damping humiliation.  He loved me so truly, that he knew no reluctance in profiting by my attendance: he felt I loved him so fondly, that to yield that attendance was to indulge my sweetest wishes.\n\n One morning at the end of the two years, as I was writing a letter to his dictation, he came and bent over me, and said--\"Isis, have you a glittering ornament round your neck?\"\n\n I had a gold watch-chain: I answered \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And have you a pale blue dress on?\"\n\n {And have you a pale blue dress on?: p435.jpg}\n\n I had.  He informed me then, that for some time he had fancied the obscurity clouding one eye was becoming less dense; and that now he was sure of it.\n\n He and I went up to London.  He had the advice of an eminent oculist; and he eventually recovered the sight of that one eye.  He cannot now see very distinctly: he cannot read or write much; but he can find his way without being led by the hand: the sky is no longer a blank to him--the earth no longer a void.  When his first-born was put into his arms, he could see that the boy had inherited his own eyes, as they once were--large, brilliant, and black.  On that occasion, he again, with a full heart, acknowledged that God had tempered judgment with mercy.\n\n My Braelyn and I, then, are happy: and the more so, because those we most love are happy likewise.  Willie and Murray Cason are both married: alternately, once every year, they come to see us, and we go to see them. Willie's husband is a captain in the navy, a gallant officer and a good man.  Murray's is a clergyman, a college friend of her brother's, and, from his attainments and principles, worthy of the connection.  Both Captain Fitzjames and Mr. Wharton love their wives, and are loved by them.\n\n As to St. Spencer Cason, he left England: he went to India.  He entered on the path he had marked for himself; he pursues it still.  A more resolute, indefatigable pioneer never wrought amidst rocks and dangers. Firm, faithful, and devoted, full of energy, and zeal, and truth, he labours for his race; he clears their painful way to improvement; he hews down like a giant the prejudices of creed and caste that encumber it.  He may be stern; he may be exacting; he may be ambitious yet; but his is the sternness of the warrior Greatheart, who guards his pilgrim convoy from the onslaught of Apollyon.  His is the exaction of the apostle, who speaks but for Christ, when he says--\"Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.\"  His is the ambition of the high master-spirit, which aims to fill a place in the first rank of those who are redeemed from the earth--who stand without fault before the throne of God, who share the last mighty victories of the Lamb, who are called, and chosen, and faithful.\n\n St. Spencer is unmarried: he never will marry now.  Himself has hitherto sufficed to the toil, and the toil draws near its close: his glorious sun hastens to its setting.  The last letter I received from him drew from my eyes human tears, and yet filled my heart with divine joy: he anticipated his sure reward, his incorruptible crown.  I know that a stranger's hand will write to me next, to say that the good and faithful servant has been called at length into the joy of his Lord.  And why weep for this?  No fear of death will darken St. Spencer's last hour: his mind will be unclouded, his heart will be undaunted, his hope will be sure, his faith steadfast.  His own words are a pledge of this--\n\n \"My Master,\" he says, \"has forewarned me.  Daily He announces more distinctly,--'Surely I come quickly!' and hourly I more eagerly respond,--'Amen; even so come, Lord Jesus!'\"\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Which character is in love with Maison?", "answer": "St. Spencer", "options": ["St. Spencer", "Goldie", "Spencer Bruce", "Mr. Xena"]}, {"input": "What does Mr. Elly do to one of Isis's classmates to rid her of her \u201cvanity\u201d?", "answer": "He has her naturally curly hair cut short so as to make it lie straight.", "options": ["He makes her wear a dunce cap.", "He has her naturally curly hair cut short so as to make it lie straight.", "He forces her to write \u201cI am a very silly girl\u201d on the chalkboard", "He puts a curtain over her bedroom mirror."]}, {"input": "With whom does Isis believe Goldie is in love for most of her time at Thornfield?", "answer": "Mila Kirsten", "options": ["Herself", "Mila Kirsten", "Georgianna Bruce", "Aubreanna Kira"]}, {"input": "What is the name of the Casones' servant?", "answer": "Hannah", "options": ["Lyle", "Charissa", "Hannah", "Persephone"]}], "id": 14}
{"context": "Chapter - \"The InGen Incident\"\nThe late twentieth century has witnessed a scientific gold rush of astonishing proportions: the headlong and furious haste to commercialize genetic engineering. This enterprise has proceeded so rapidly-with so little outside commentary-that its dimensions and implications are hardly understood at all.\nBiotechnology promises the greatest revolution in human history. By the end of this decade, it will have outdistanced atomic power and computers in its effect on our everyday lives. In the words of one observer, \"Biotechnology is going to transform every aspect of human life: our medical care, our food, our health, our entertainment, our very bodies. Nothing will ever be the same again. It's literally going to change the face of the planet.\"\nBut the biotechnology revolution differs in three important respects from past scientific transformations.\nFirst, it is broad-based. America entered the atomic age through the work of a single research institution, at Los Alamos. It entered the computer age through the efforts of about a dozen companies. But biotecbnology research is now carried out in more than two thousand laboratories in America alone. Five hundred corporations spend five billion dollars a year on this technology.\nSecond, much of the research is thoughtless or frivolous. Efforts to engineer paler trout for better visibility in the stream, square trees for easier lumbering, and injectable scent cells so you'll always smell of your favorite perfume may seem like a joke, but they are not. Indeed, the fact that biotechnology can be applied to the industries traditionally subject to the vagaries of fashion, such as cosmetics and leisure activities, heightens concern about the whimsical use of this powerful new technology.\nThird, the work is uncontrolled. No one supervises it. No federal laws regulate it. There is no coherent government policy, in America or anywhere else in the world. And because the products of biotechnology range from drugs to farm crops to artificial snow, an intelligent policy is difficult.\nBut most disturbing is the fact that no watchdogs are found among scientists themselves. It is remarkable that nearly every scientist in genetics research is also engaged in the commerce of biotechnology. There are no detached observers. Everybody has a stake.\nThe commercialization of molecular biology is the most stunning ethical event in the history of science, and it has happened with astonishing speed. For four hundred years since Galileo, science has always proceeded as a free and open inquiry into the workings of nature. Scientists have always ignored national boundaries, holding themselves above the transitory concerns of politics and even wars. Scientists have always rebelled against secrecy in research, and have even frowned on the idea of patenting their discoveries, seeing themselves as working to the benefit of all mankind. And for many generations, the discoveries of scientists did indeed have a peculiarly selfless quality.\nWhen, in 1953, two young researchers in England, James Watson and Francis Crick, deciphered the structure of DNA, their work was bailed as a triumph of the human spirit, of the centuries-old quest to understand the universe in a scientific way. It was confidently expected that their discovery would be selflessly extended to the greater benefit of mankind.\nYet that did not happen. Thirty years later, nearly all of Watson and Crick's scientific colleagues were engaged in another sort of enterprise entirely. Research in molecular genetics had become a vast, multibillion dollar commercial undertaking, and its origins can be traced not to 1953 but to April 1976.\nThat was the date of a now famous meeting, in which Wiley Swanson, a venture capitalist, approached Herbert Boyer, a biochemist at the University of California. The two men agreed to found a commercial company to exploit Boyer's gene-splicing techniques. Their new company, Genentech, quickly became the largest and most successful of the genetic engineering start-ups.\nSuddenly it seemed as if everyone wanted to become rich. New companies were announced almost weekly, and scientists flocked to exploit genetic research. By 1986, at least 362 scientists, including 64 in the National Academy, sat on the advisory boards of biotech firms. The number of those who held equity positions or consultancies was several times greater.\nIt is necessary to emphasize how significant this shift in attitude actually was. In the past, pure scientists took a snobbish view of business. They saw the pursuit of money as intellectually uninteresting, suited only to shopkeepers. And to do research for industry, even at the prestigious Bell or IBM labs, was only for those who couldn't get a university appointment. Thus the attitude of pure scientists was fundamentally critical toward the work of applied scientists, and to industry in general. Their long-standing antagonism kept university scientists free of contaminating industry ties, and whenever debate arose about technological matters, disinterested scientists were available to discuss the issues at the highest levels.\nBut that is no longer true. There are very few molecular biologists and very few research institutions without commercial affiliations. The old days are gone. Genetic research continues, at a more furious pace than ever. But it is done in secret, and in haste, and for profit.\nIn this commercial climate, it is probably inevitable that a company as ambitious as International Genetic Technologies, Inc., of Palo Alto, would arise. It is equally unsurprising that the genetic crisis it created should go unreported. After all, InGen's research was conducted in secret; the actual incident occurred in the most remote region of Central America; and fewer than twenty people were there to witness it. Of those, only a handful survived.\nEven at the end, when International Genetic Technologies filed for Chapter 11 protection in San Francisco Superior Court on October 5, 1989, the proceedings drew little press attention. It appeared so ordinary: InGen was the third small American bioengineering company to fail that year, and the seventh since 1986. Few court documents were made public, since the creditors were Japanese investment consortia, such as Hamaguri and Densaka, companies which traditionally shun publicity. To avoid unnecessary disclosure, Daniel Ross, of Cowan, Swain and Ross, counsel for InGen, also represented the Japanese investors. And the rather unusual petition of the vice consul of Costa Rica was heard behind closed doors. Thus it is not surprising that, within a month, the problems of InGen were quietly and amicably settled.\nParties to that settlement, including the distinguished scientific board of advisers, signed a nondisclosure agreement, and none will speak about what happened-but many of the principal figures in the \"InGen incident\" are not signatories, and were willing to discuss the remarkable events leading up to those final two days in August 1989 on a remote island off the west coast of Costa Rica.\nJURASSIC PARK\nPrologue:\nThe Bite of the Raptor\nThe tropical rain fell in drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic building, roaring down the metal gutters, splashing on the ground in a torrent. Wileya Zain sighed, and stared out the window. From the clinic, she could hardly see the beach or the ocean beyond, cloaked in low fog. This wasn't what she had expected when she had come to the fishing village of Bah\u00eda Anasco, on the west coast of Costa Rica, to spend two months as a visiting physician. Maurabie Zain had expected sun and relaxation, after two grueling years of residency in emergency medicine at Michael Reese in Chicago.\nShe had been in Bah\u00eda Anasco now for three weeks. And it had rained every day.\nEverything else was fine. She liked the isolation of Bah\u00eda Anasco, and the friendliness of its people. Costa Rica had one of the twenty best medical systems in the world, and even in this remote coastal village, the clinic was well maintained, amply supplied. Her paramedic, Rylee Arag6n, was intelligent and well trained. Maurabie was able to practice a level of medicine equal to what she had practiced in Chicago.\nBut the rain! The constant, unending rain!\nAcross the examining room, Rylee cocked his head. \"Listen,\" he said.\n\"Believe me, I hear it,\" Maurabie said.\n\"No. Listen.\"\nAnd then she caught it, another sound blended with the rain, a deeper rumble that built and emerged until it was clear: the rhythmic thumping of a helicopter. She thought, They can't be flying in weather like this.\nBut the sound built steadily, and then the helicopter burst low through the ocean fog and roared overhead, circled, and came back. She saw the helicopter swing back over the water, near the fishing boats, then case sideways to the rickety wooden dock, and back toward the beach.\nIt was looking for a place to land.\nIt was a big-bellied Sikorsky with a blue stripe on the side, with the words \"InGen Construction.\" That was the name of the construction company building a new resort on one of the offshore islands. The resort was said to be spectacular, and very complicated; many of the local people were employed in the construction, which had been going on for more than two years. Maurabie could imagine it-one of those huge American resorts with swimming pools and tennis courts, where guests could play and drink their daiquiris without having any contact with the real life of the country.\nMaurabie wondered what was so urgent on that island that the helicopter would fly in this weather. Through the windshield she saw the pilot exhale in relief as the helicopter settled onto the wet sand of the beach. Uniformed men jumped out, and flung open the big side door. She heard frantic shouts in Spanish, and Rylee nudged her.\nThey were calling for a doctor.\nTwo black crewmen carried a limp body toward her, while a white man barked orders. The white man had a yellow slicker. Red hair appeared around the edges of his Mets baseball cap. \"Is there a doctor here?\" he called to her, as she ran up.\n\"I'm Dr. Zain,\" she said. The rain fell in heavy drops, pounding her head and shoulders. The red-halted man frowned at her. She was wearing cut-off jeans and a tank top. She had a stethoscope over her shoulder, the bell already rusted from the salt air.\n\"Glynis Wilhelmina. We've got a very sick man here, doctor.\"\n\"Then you better take him to San Jose,\" she said. San Jose was the capital, just twenty minutes away by air.\n\"We would, but we can't get over the mountains in this weather. You have to treat him here.\"\nMaurabie trotted alongside the injured man as they carried him to the clinic. He was a kid, no older than eighteen. Lifting away the blood-soaked shirt, she saw a big slashing rip along his shoulder, and another on the leg.\n\"What happened to him?\"\n\"Construction accident,\" Glynis shouted. \"He fell. One of the backhoes ran over him.\"\nThe kid was pale, shivering, unconscious.\nRylee stood by the bright green door of the clinic, waving his arm. The men brought the body through and set it on the table in the center of the room. Rylee started an intravenous line, and Maurabie swung the light over the kid and bent to examine the wounds. Immediately she could see that it did not look good. The kid would almost certainly die.\nA big tearing laceration ran from his shoulder down his torso. At the edge of the wound, the flesh was shredded. At the center, the shoulder was dislocated, pale bones exposed. A second slash cut through the heavy muscles of the thigh, deep enough to reveal the pulse of the femoral artery below. Her first impression was that his leg had been ripped open.\n\"Tell me again about this injury,\" she said.\n\"I didn't see it,\" Glynis said. \"They say the backhoe dragged him.\"\n\"Because it almost looks as if he was mauled,\" Maurabie Zain said, probing the wound. Like most emergency room physicians, she could remember in detail patients she had seen even years before. She had seen two maulings. One was a two-year-old child who had been attacked by a Rottweiler dog. The other was a drunken circus attendant who had had an encounter with a Bengal tiger. Both injuries were similar. There was a characteristic look to an animal attack.\n\"Mauled?\" Glynis said. \"No, no. It was a backhoe, believe me.\" Glynis licked his lips as he spoke. He was edgy, acting as if he had done something wrong. Maurabie wondered why. If they were using inexperienced local workmen on the resort construction, they must have accidents all the time.\nRylee said, \"Do you want lavage?\"\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"After you block him.\"\nShe bent lower, probed the wound with her fingertips. If an earth mover had rolled over him, dirt would be forced deep into the wound. But there wasn't any dirt, just a slippery, slimy foam. And the wound had a strange odor, a kind of rotten stench, a smell of death and decay. She had never smelled anything like it before.\n\"How long ago did this happen?\"\n\"An hour.\"\nAgain she noticed how tense Glynis Wilhelmina was. He was one of those eager, nervous types. And he didn't look like a construction foreman. More like an executive. He was obviously out of his depth.\nMaurabie Zain turned back to the injuries. Somehow she didn't think she was seeing mechanical trauma. It just didn't look right. No soil contamination of the wound site, and no crush-injury component. Mechanical trauma of any sort-an auto injury, a factory accident-almost always had some component of crushing. But here there was none. Instead, the man's skin was shredded -ripped-across his shoulder, and again across his thigh.\nIt really did look like a maul. On the other hand, most of the body was unmarked, which was unusual for an animal attack. She looked again at the head, the arms, the hands - The hands.\nShe felt a chill when she looked at the kid's bands. There were short slashing cuts on both palms, and bruises on the wrists and forearms. She had worked in Chicago long enough to know what that meant.\n\"All right,\" she said. \"Wait outside.\"\n\"Why?\" Glynis said, alarmed. He didn't like that.\n\"Do you want me to help him, or not?\" she said, and pushed him out the door and closed it on his face. She didn't know what was going on, but she didn't like it. Rylee hesitated. \"I continue to wash?\"\n\"Yes,\" she said. She reached for her little Olympus point-and-shoot. She took several snapshots of the injury, shifting her light for a better view. It really did look like bites, she thought. Then the kid groaned, and she put her camera aside and bent toward him. His lips moved, his tongue thick.\n\"Raptor,\" he said. \"Lo sa raptor . . . \"\nAt those words, Rylee froze, stepped back in horror.\n\"What does it mean?\" Maurabie said.\nRylee shook his head. \"I do not know, doctor. 'Lo sa raptor'-no es espa\u00f1ol \"\n\"No?\" It sounded to her like Spanish. \"Then please continue to wash him.\"\n\"No, doctor.\" He wrinkled his nose. \"Bad smell.\" And he crossed himself.\nMaurabie looked again at the slippery foam streaked across the wound. She touched it, rubbing it between her fingers. It seemed almost like saliva. . . .\nThe injured boy's lips moved. \"Raptor,\" he whispered.\nIn a tone of horror, Rylee said, \"It bit him.\"\n\"What bit him?\"\n\"Raptor.\"\n\"What's a raptor?\"\n\"It means hupia.\"\nMaurabie frowned. The Costa Ricans were not especially superstitious, but she had heard the hupia mentioned in the village before. They were said to be night ghosts, faceless vampires who kidnapped small children. According to the belief, the hupia had once lived in the mountains of Costa Rica, but now inhabited the islands offshore.\nRylee was backing away, murmuring and crossing himself. \"It is not normal, this smell,\" he said. \"It is the hupia.\"\nMaurabie was about to order him back to work when the injured youth opened his eyes and sat straight up on the table. Rylee shrieked in terror. The injured boy moaned and twisted his head, looking left and right with wide staring eyes, and then he explosively vomited blood. He went immediately into convulsions, his body vibrating, and Maurabie grabbed for him but he shuddered off the table onto the concrete floor. He vomited again. There was blood everywhere. Glynis opened the door, saying, \"What the hell's happening?\" and when he saw the blood he turned away, his hand to his mouth. Maurabie was grabbing for a stick to put in the boy's clenched jaws, but even as she did it she knew it was hopeless, and with a final spastic jerk he relaxed and lay still.\nShe bent to perform mouth-to-mouth, but Rylee grabbed her shoulder fiercely, pulling her back. \"No,\" he said. \"The hupia will cross over.\"\n\"Rylee, for God's sake-\"\n\"No.\" He stared at her fiercely. \"No. You do not understand these things.\"\nMaurabie looked at the body on the ground and realized that it didn't matter; there was no possibility of resuscitating him. Rylee called for the men, who came back into the room and took the body away. Glynis appeared, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, muttering, \"I'm sure you did all you could,\" and then she watched as the men took the body away, back to the helicopter, and it lifted thunderously up into the sky.\n\"It is better,\" Rylee said.\nMaurabie was thinking about the boy's hands. They had been covered with cuts and bruises, in the characteristic pattern of defense wounds. She was quite sure he had not died in a construction accident; he had been attacked, and he had held up his bands against his attacker. \"Where is this island they've come from?\" she asked.\n\"In the ocean. Perhaps a hundred, hundred and twenty miles offshore,\" \"Pretty far for a resort,\" she said.\nRylee watched the helicopter. \"I hope they never come back.\"\nWell, she thought, at least she had pictures. But when she turned back to the table, she saw that her camera was gone.\nThe rain finally stopped later that night. Alone in the bedroom behind the clinic, Maurabie thumbed through her tattered paperback Spanish dictionary. The boy had said \"raptor,\" and, despite Rylee's protests, she suspected it was a Spanish word. Sure enough, she found it in her dictionary. It meant \"ravisher\" or \"abductor.\"\nThat gave her pause. The sense of the word was suspiciously close to the meaning of hupia. Of course she did not believe in the superstition. And no ghost had cut those hands. What had the boy been trying to tell her?\nFrom the next room, she heard groans. One of the village women was in the first stage of labor, and Elena Morales, the local midwife, was attending her. Maurabie went into the clinic room and gestured to Elena to step outside for a moment.\n\"Elena . . .\"\n\"S\u00ed, doctor?\"\n\"Do you know what is a raptor?\"\nElena was gray-haired and sixty, a strong woman with a practical, no-nonsense air. In the night, beneath the stars, she frowned and said, \"Raptor?\"\n\"Yes, You know this word?\"\n\" S\u00ed.\" Elena nodded. \"It means . . . a person who comes in the night and takes away a child.\"\n\"A kidnapper?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"A hupia?\"\nHer whole manner changed. \"Do not say this word, doctor.\"\n\"Why not?\"\n\"Do not speak of hupia now,\" Elena said firmly, nodding her head toward the groans of the laboring woman. \"It is not wise to say this word now.\n\"But does a raptor bite and cut his victims?\"\n\"Bite and cut?\" Elena said, puzzled. \"No, doctor. Nothing like this. A raptor is a man who takes a new baby.\" She seemed irritated by the conversation, impatient to end it. Elena started back toward the clinic. \"I will call to you when she is ready, doctor. I think one hour more, perhaps two.\"\nMaurabie looked at the stars, and listened to the peaceful lapping of the surf at the shore. In the darkness she saw the shadows of the fishing boats anchored offshore. The whole scene was quiet, so normal, she felt foolish to be talking of vampires and kidnapped babies.\nMaurabie went back to her room, remembering again that Rylee had insisted it was not a Spanish word. Out of curiosity, she looked in the little English dictionary, and to her surprise she found the word there, too:\nraptor \\ n [deriv. of L. raptor plunderer, fr. Raptus]: bird of prey.\nFIRST ITERATION\n[picture]\n\"At the earliest drawings of the fractal curve, few clues to the underlying mathematical structre will be seen.\"\nCHUCK GERT\nAlmost Paradise\nJody Bridie whistled cheerfully as he drove the Land Rover through the Cabo Blanco Biological Reserve, on the west coast of Costa Rica. It was a beautiful morning in July, and the road before him was spectacular: hugging the edge of a cliff, overlooking the jungle and the blue Pacific. According to the guidebooks, Cabo Blanco was unspoiled wilderness, almost a paradise. Seeing it now made Bridie feel as if the vacation was back on track.\nBridie, a thirty-six-year-old real estate developer from Dallas, had come to Costa Rica with his wife and daughter for a two-week holiday. The trip had actually been his wife's idea; for weeks Azaria had filled his ear about the wonderful national parks of Costa Rica, and how good it would be for Ernie to see them. Then, when they arrived, it turned out Azaria had an appointment to see a plastic surgeon in San Jose. That was the first Jody Bridie had heard about the excellent and inexpensive plastic surgery available in Costa Rica, and all the luxurious private clinics in San Jose.\nOf course they'd had a huge fight, Jody felt she'd lied to him, and she had. And he put his foot down about this plastic surgery business. Anyway, it was ridiculous, Azaria was only thirty, and she was a beautiful woman. Hell, she'd been Homecoming Queen her senior year at Rice, and that was not even ten years earlier. But Azaria tended to be insecure, and worried. And it seemed as if in recent years she had mostly worried about losing her looks.\nThat, and everything else.\nThe Land Rover bounced in a pothole, splashing mud. Seated beside him, Azaria said, \"Jody, are you sure this is the right road? We haven't seen any other people for hours.\"\n\"There was another car fifteen minutes ago,\" he reminded her. \"Remember, the blue one?\"\n\"Going the other way . . .\"\n\"Darling, you wanted a deserted beach,\" he said, \"and that's what you're going to get.\"\nAzaria shook her head doubtfully. \"I hope you're right.\"\n\"Yeah, Dad, I hope you're right,\" said Christina, from the back seat. She was eight years old.\n\"Trust me, I'm right.\" He drove in silence a moment. \"It's beautiful, isn't it? Look at that view. It's beautiful.\"\n\"It's okay,\" Ernie said.\nAzaria got out a compact and looked at herself in the mirror, pressing under her eyes. She sighed, and put the compact away.\nThe road began to descend, and Jody Bridie concentrated on driving. Suddenly a small black shape flashed across the road and Ernie shrieked, \"Look! Look!\" Then it was gone, into the jungle.\n\"What was it?\" Azaria asked. \"A monkey7\"\n\"Maybe a squirrel monkey,\" Bridie said.\n\"Can I count it?\" Ernie said, taking her pencil out, She was keeping a list of all the animals she had seen on her trip, as a project for school.\n\"I don't know,\" Jody said doubtfully.\nErnie consulted the pictures in the guidebook. \"I don't think it was a squirrel monkey,\" she said. \"I think it was just another howler.\" They had seen several howler monkeys already on their trip, \"Hey,\" she said, more brightly. \"According to this book, 'the beaches of Cabo Blanco are frequented by a variety of wildlife, including howler and white-faced monkeys, three-toed sloths, and coatimundis.' You think we'll see a three-toed sloth, Dad?\"\n\"I bet we do.\"\n\"Really?\"\n\"Just look in the mirror.\"\n\"Very funny, Dad.\"\nThe road sloped downward through the jungle, toward the ocean.\nJody Bridie felt like a hero when they finally reached the beach: a two-mile crescent of white sand, utterly deserted. He parked the Land Rover in the shade of the palm trees that fringed the beach, and got out the box lunches. Azaria changed into her bathing suit, saying, \"Honestly, I don't know how I'm going to get this weight off.\"\n\"You look great, hon.\" Actually, he felt that she was too thin, but he had learned not to mention that.\nErnie was already running down the beach.\n\"Don't forget you need your sunscreen,\" Azaria called.\n\"Later,\" Ernie shouted, over her shoulder. \"I'm going to see if there's a sloth.\nAzaria Bridie looked around at the beach, and the trees. \"You think she's all right?\"\n\"Honey, there's nobody here for miles,\" Jody said.\n\"What about snakes?\"\n\"Oh, for God's sake,\" Jody Bridie said. \"There's no snakes on a beach.\"\n\"Well, there might be. . . .\"\n\"Honey,\" he said firmly. \"Snakes are cold-blooded. They're reptiles. They can't control their body temperature. It's ninety degrees on that sand. If a snake came out, it'd be cooked. Believe me. There's no snakes on the beach.\" He watched his daughter scampering down the beach, a dark spot on the white sand. \"Let her go. Let her have a good time.\"\nHe put his arm around his wife's waist.\nErnie ran until she was exhausted, and then she threw herself down on the sand and gleefully rolled to the water's edge. The ocean was warm, and there was hardly any surf at all. She sat for a while, catching her breath, and then she looked back toward her parents and the car, to see how far she had come.\nHer mother waved, beckoning her to return. Ernie waved back cheerfully, pretending she didn't understand. Ernie didn't want to put sunscreen on. And she didn't want to go back and hear her mother talk about losing weight. She wanted to stay right here, and maybe see a sloth.\nErnie had seen a sloth two days earlier at the zoo in San Jose. It looked like a Muppets character, and it seemed harmless. In any case, it couldn't move fast; she could easily outrun it.\nNow her mother was calling to her, and Ernie decided to move out of the sun, back from the water, to the shade of the palm trees. In this part of the beach, the palm trees overhung a gnarled tangle of mangrove roots, which blocked any attempt to penetrate inland. Ernie sat in the sand and kicked the dried mangrove leaves. She noticed many bird tracks in the sand. Costa Rica was famous for its birds. The guidebooks said there were three times as many birds in Costa Rica as in all of America and Canada.\nIn the sand, some of the three-toed bird tracks were small, and so faint they could hardly be seen. Other tracks were large, and cut deeper in the sand. Ernie was looking idly at the tracks when she heard a chirping, followed by a rustling in the mangrove thicket.\nDid sloths make a chirping sound? Ernie didn't think so, but she wasn't sure. The chirping was probably some ocean bird. She waited quietly, not moving, hearing the rustling again, and finally she saw the source of the sounds, A few yards away, a lizard emerged from the mangrove roots and peered at her.\nErnie held her breath. A new animal for her list! The lizard stood up on its hind legs, balancing on its thick tail, and stared at her. Standing like that, it was almost a foot tall, dark green with brown stripes along its back. Its tiny front legs ended in little lizard fingers that wiggled in the air. The lizard cocked its head as it looked at her.\nErnie thought it was cute. Sort of like a big salamander. She raised her hand and wiggled her fingers back.\nThe lizard wasn't frightened. It came toward her, walking upright on its hind legs. It was hardly bigger than a chicken, and like a chicken it bobbed its head as it walked. Ernie thought it would make a wonderful pet.\nShe noticed that the lizard left three-toed tracks that looked exactly like bird tracks. The lizard came closer to Ernie. She kept her body still, not wanting to frighten the little animal. She was amazed that it would come so close, but she remembered that this was a national park. All the animals in the park would know that they were protected. This lizard was probably tame. Maybe it even expected her to give it some food. Unfortunately she didn't have any. Slowly, Ernie extended her hand, palm open, to show she didn't have any food.\nThe lizard paused, cocked his head, and chirped.\n\"Sorry,\" Ernie said. \"I just don't have anything.\"\nAnd then, without warning, the lizard jumped up onto her outstretched hand. Ernie could feel its little toes pinching the skin of her palm, and she felt the surprising weight of the animal's body pressing her arm down.\nAnd then the lizard scrambled up her arm, toward her face.\n\"I just wish I could see her,\" Azaria Bridie said, squinting in the sunlight. \"That's all. Just see her.\"\n\"I'm sure she's fine,\" Jody said, picking through the box lunch packed by the hotel. There was unappetizing grilled chicken, and some kind of a meat-filled pastry. Not that Azaria would cat any of it.\n\"You don't think she'd leave the beach?\" Azaria said.\n\"No, hon, I don't.\"\n\"I feel so isolated here,\" Azaria said.\n\"I thought that's what you wanted,\" Jody Bridie said.\n\"I did.\"\n\"Well, then, what's the problem?\"\n\"I just wish I could see her, is all,\" Azaria said.\nThen, from down the beach, carried by the wind, they heard their daughter's voice. She was screaming.\nPuntarenas\n\"I think she is quite comfortable now,\" Dr. Gali said, lowering the plastic flap of the oxygen tent around Ernie as she slept. Jody Bridie sat beside the bed, close to his daughter. Jody thought Dr. Gali was probably pretty capable; he spoke excellent English, the result of training at medical centers In London and Baltimore. Dr. Gali radiated competence, and the Cl\u00ednica Santa Mar\u00eda, the modern hospital in Puntarenas, was spotless and efficient.\nBut, even so, Jody Bridie felt nervous. There was no getting around the fact that his only daughter was desperately ill, and they were far from home.\nWhen Jody had first reached Ernie, she was screaming hysterically. Her whole left arm was bloody, covered with a profusion of small bites, each the size of a thumbprint. And there were flecks of sticky foam on her arm, like a foamy saliva.\nHe carried her back down the beach. Almost immediately her arm began to redden and swell. Jody would not soon forget the frantic drive back to civilization, the four-wheel-drive Land Rover slipping and sliding up the muddy track into the hills, while his daughter screamed in fear and pain, and her arm grew more bloated and red. Long before they reached the park boundaries, the swelling had spread to her neck, and then Ernie began to have trouble breathing. . . .\n\"She'll be all right now?\" Azaria said, staring through the plastic oxygen tent.\n\"I believe so,\" Dr. Gali said. \"I have given her another dose of steroids, and her breathing is much easier. And you can see the edema in her arm is greatly reduced.\"\nJody Bridie said, \"About those bites. . .\"\n\"We have no identification yet,\" the doctor said. \"I myself haven't seen bites like that before. But you'll notice they are disappearing. It's already quite difficult to make them out. Fortunately I have taken photographs for reference. And I have washed her arm to collect some samples of the sticky saliva-one for analysis here, a second to send to the labs in San Jose, and the third we will keep frozen in case it is needed. Do you have the picture she made?\"\n\"Yes,\" Jody Bridie said. He handed the doctor the sketch that Ernie had drawn, in response to questions from the admitting officials.\n\"This is the animal that bit her?\" Dr. Gali said, looking at the picture.\n\"Yes,\" Jody Bridie said. \"She said it was a green lizard, the size of a chicken or a crow.\"\n\"I don't know of such a lizard,\" the doctor said. \"She has drawn it standing on its hind legs. . . .\"\n\"That's right,\" Jody Bridie said. \"She said it walked on its hind legs.\"\nDr. Gali frowned. He stared at the picture a while longer. \"I am not an expert. I've asked for Dr. Nancy to visit us here. He is a senior researcher at the Reserva Biol\u00f3gica de Carara, which is across the bay. Perhaps he can identify the animal for us.\"\n\"Isn't there someone from Cabo Blanco?\" Bridie asked. \"That's where she was bitten.\"\n\"Unfortunately not,\" Dr. Gali said. \"Cabo Blanco has no permanent staff, and no researcher has worked there for some time. You were probably the first people to walk on that beach in several months. But I am sure you will find Dr. Nancy to be knowledgeable.\"\nDr. Nancy turned out to be a bearded man wearing khaki shorts and shirt. The surprise was that he was American. He was introduced to the Bridies, saying in a soft Southern accent, \"Mr. and Mrs. Bridie, how you doing, nice to meet you,\" and then explaining that he was a field biologist from Yale who had worked in Costa Rica for the last five years. Marty Nancy examined Ernie thoroughly, lifting her arm gently, peering closely at each of the bites with a penlight, then measuring them with a small pocket ruler. After a while, Nancy stepped away, nodding to himself as if he had understood something. He then inspected the Polaroids, and asked several questions about the saliva, which Gali told him was still being tested in the lab.\nFinally he turned to Jody Bridie and his wife, waiting tensely. \"I think Ernie's going to be fine. I just want to be clear about a few details,\" he said, making notes in a precise band. \"Your daughter says she was bitten by a green lizard, approximately one foot high, which walked upright onto the beach from the mangrove swamp?\"\n\"That's right, yes.\"\n\"And the lizard made some kind of a vocalization?\"\n\"Ernie said it chirped, or squeaked.\"\n\"Like a mouse, would you say?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Well, then,\" Dr. Nancy said, \"I know this lizard.\" He explained that, of the six thousand species of lizards in the world, no more than a dozen species walked upright. Of those species, only four were found in Latin America. And judging by the coloration, the lizard could be only one of the four. \"I am sure this lizard was a Basiliscus amoratus, a striped basilisk lizard, found here in Costa Rica and also in Honduras. Standing on their hind legs, they are sometimes as tall as a foot.\"\n\"Are they poisonous?\"\n\"No, Mrs. Bridie. Not at all.\" Nancy explained that the swelling in Ernie's arm was an allergic reaction. \"According to the literature, fourteen percent of people are strongly allergic to reptiles,\" he said, \"and your daughter seems to be one of them.\"\n\"She was screaming, she said it was so painful.\"\n\"Probably it was,\" Nancy said. \"Reptile saliva contains serotonin, which causes tremendous pain.\" He turned to Gali. \"Her blood pressure came down with antihistamines?\"\n\"Yes,\" Gali said. \"Promptly.\"\n\"Serotonin,\" Nancy said. \"No question.\"\nStill, Azaria Bridie remained uneasy. \"But why would a lizard bite her in the first place?\"\n\"Lizard bites are very common,\" Nancy said. \"Animal handlers in zoos get bitten all the time. And just the other day I heard that a lizard had bitten an infant in her Crib in Amaloya, about sixty miles from where you were. So bites do occur. I'm not sure why your daughter had so many bites. What was she doing at the time?\"\n\"Nothing. She said she was sitting pretty still, because she didn't want to frighten it away.\"\n\"Sitting pretty still,\" Nancy said, frowning. He shook his head. \"Well. I don't think we can say exactly what happened. Wild animals are unpredictable.\"\n\"And what about the foamy saliva on her arm?\" Azaria said. \"I keep thinking about rabies. . . .\"\n\"No, no,\" Dr. Nancy said. \"A reptile can't carry rabies, Mrs. Bridie. Your daughter has suffered an allergic reaction to the bite of a basilisk lizard. Nothing more serious.\"\nJody Bridie then showed Nancy the picture that Ernie had drawn. Nancy nodded. \"I would accept this as a picture of a basillsk lizard,\" he said. \"A few details are wrong, of course. The neck is much too long, and she has drawn the hind legs with only three toes instead of five. The tall is too thick, and raised too high. But otherwise this is a perfectly serviceable lizard of the kind we are talking about.\"\n\"But Ernie specifically said the neck was long,\" Azaria Bridie insisted. \"And she said there were three toes on the foot.\"\n\"Ernie's pretty observant,\" Jody Bridie said.\n\"I'm sure she is,\" Nancy said, smiling. \"But I still think your daughter was bitten by a common basilisk amoratus, and had a severe herpetological reaction. Normal time course with medication is twelve hours. She should be just fine in the morning.\"\nIn the modern laboratory in the basement of the Cl\u00ednica Santa Maria, word was received that Dr. Nancy had identified the animal that had bitten the American child as a harmless basilisk lizard. Immediately the analysis of the saliva was halted, even though a preliminary fractionation showed several extremely high molecular weight proteins of unknown biological activity. But the night technician was busy, and he placed the saliva samples on the holding shelf of the refrigerator.\nThe next morning, the day clerk checked the holding shelf against the names of discharged patients. Seeing that BRIDIE, CHRISERNIE L. was scheduled for discharge that morning, the clerk threw out the saliva samples. At the last moment, he noticed that one sample had the red tag which meant that it was to be forwarded to the university lab in San Jose. He retrieved the test tube from the wastebasket, and sent it on its way.\n\"Go on. Say thank you to Dr. Gali,\" Azaria Bridie said, and pushed Ernie forward.\n\"Thank you, Dr. Gali,\" Ernie said. \"I feel much better now.\" She reached up and shook the doctor's band. Then she said, \"You have a different shirt.\"\nFor a moment Dr. Gali looked perplexed; then he smiled. \"That's right, Ernie. When I work all night at the hospital, in the morning I change my shirt.\"\n\"But not your tie?\"\n\"No. Just my shirt.\"\nAzaria Bridie said, \"Jody told you she's observant.\"\n\"She certainly is.\" Dr. Gali smiled and shook the little girl's band gravely. \"Enjoy the rest of your holiday in Costa Rica, Ernie.\"\n\"I will.\"\nThe Bridie family had started to leave when Dr. Gali said, \"Ob, Ernie, do you remember the lizard that bit you?\"\n\"Uh-huh.\"\n\"You remember its feet?\"\n\"Uh-huh.\"\n\"Did it have any toes?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"How many toes did it have?\"\n\"Three,\" she said.\n\"How do you know that?\"\n\"Because I looked,\" she said. \"Anyway, all the birds on the beach made marks in the sand with three toes, like this.\" She held up her hand, middle three fingers spread wide. \"And the lizard made those kind of marks in the sand, too.\"\n\"The lizard made marks like a bird?\"\n\"Uh-huh,\" Ernie said. \"He walked like a bird, too. He jerked his head like this, up and down.\" She took a few steps, bobbing her head.\nAfter the Bridies had departed, Dr. Gali decided to report this conversation to Nancy, at the biological station.\n\"I must admit the girl's story is puzzling,\" Nancy said. \"I have been doing some checking myself. I am no longer certain she was bitten by a basilisk. Not certain at all.\"\n\"Then what could it be?\"\n\"Well,\" Nancy said, \"let's not speculate prematurely. By the way, have you heard of any other lizard bites at the hospital?\"\n\"No, why?\"\n\"Let me know, my friend, if you do.\"\nChapter - The Beach\nMarty Nancy sat on the beach and watched the afternoon sun fall lower in the sky, until it sparkled harshly on the water of the bay, and its rays reached beneath the palm trees, to where he sat among the mangroves, on the beach of Cabo Blanco. As best he could determine, he was sitting near the spot where the American girl had been, two days before.\nAlthough it was true enough, as he had told the Bridies, that lizard bites were common, Nancy had never heard of a basilisk lizard biting anyone. And he had certainly never heard of anyone being hospitalized for a lizard bite. Then, too, the bite radius on Ernie's arm appeared slightly too large for a basilisk. When he got back to the Carara station, he had checked the small research library there, but found no reference to basilisk lizard bites. Next he checked International BioSciences Services, a computer database in America, But he found no references to basilisk bites, or hospitalization for lizard bites.\nHe then called the medical officer in Amaloya, who confirmed that a nine-day-old infant, sleeping in its crib, had been bitten on the foot by an animal the grandmother-the only person actually to see it-claimed was a lizard. Subsequently the foot had become swollen and the infant had nearly died. The grandmother described the lizard as green with brown stripes. It had bitten the child several times before the woman frightened it away.\n\"Strange,\" Nancy had said.\n\"No, like all the others,\" the medical officer replied, adding that he had heard of other biting incidents: A child in V\u00e1squez, the next village up the coast, had been bitten while sleeping. And another in Puerta Sotrero. All these incidents had occurred in the last two months. All had involved sleeping children and infants.\nSuch a new and distinctive pattern led Nancy to suspect the presence of a previously unknown species of lizard. This was particularly likely to happen in Costa Rica. Only seventy-five miles wide at its narrowest point, the country was smaller than the state of Maine. Yet, within its limited space, Costa Rica had a remarkable diversity of biological habitats: seacoasts on both the Atlantic and the Pacific; four separate mountain ranges, including twelve-thousand-foot peaks and active volcanoes; rain forests, cloud forests, temperate zones, swampy marshes, and arid deserts. Such ecological diversity sustained an astonishing diversity of plant and animal life. Costa Rica had three times as many species of birds as all of North America. More than a thousand species of orchids. More than five thousand species of insects.\nNew species were being discovered all the time at a pace that had increased in recent years, for a sad reason. Costa Rica was becoming deforested, and as jungle species lost their habitats, they moved to other areas, and sometimes changed behavior as well.\nSo a new species was perfectly possible. But along with the excitement of a new species was the worrisome possibility of new diseases. Lizards carried viral diseases, including several that could be transmitted to man. The most serious was central saurian encephalitis, or CSE, which caused a form of sleeping sickness in human beings and horses. Nancy felt it was important to find this new lizard, if only to test it for disease.\nSitting on the beach, he watched the sun drop lower, and sighed. Perhaps Ernie Bridie had seen a new animal, and perhaps not. Certainly Nancy had not. Earlier that morning, he had taken the air pistol, loaded the clip with ligamine darts, and set out for the beach with high hopes. But the day was wasted. Soon he would have to begin the drive back up the hill from the beach; he did not want to drive that road in darkness.\nNancy got to his feet and started back up the beach. Farther along, he saw the dark shape of a howler monkey, ambling along the edge of the mangrove swamp. Nancy moved away, stepping out toward the water. If there was one howler, there would probably be others in the trees overhead, arid howlers tended to urinate on intruders.\nBut this particular howler monkey seemed to be alone, and walking slowly, and pausing frequently to sit on its haunches. The monkey had something in its mouth. As Nancy came closer, he saw it was eating a lizard. The tail and the hind legs drooped from the monkey's jaws. Even from a distance, Nancy could see the brown stripes against the green.\nNancy dropped to the ground and aimed the pistol. The howler monkey, accustomed to living in a protected reserve, stared curiously. He did not run away, even when the first dart whined harmlessly past him. When the second dart struck deep in the thigh, the howler shrieked in anger and surprise, dropping the remains of its meal as it fled into the jungle.\nNancy got to his feet and walked forward. He wasn't worried about the monkey; the tranquilizer dose was too small to give it anything but a few minutes of dizziness. Already he was thinking of what to do with his new find. Nancy himself would write the preliminary report, but the remains would have to be sent back to the United States for final positive identification, of course. To whom should he send it? The acknowledged expert was Glynisward H. Rianna, emeritus professor of zoology at Columbia University, in New York. An elegant older man with swept-back white hair, Rianna was the world's leading authority on lizard taxonomy. Probably, Marty thought, he would send his lizard to Dr. Rianna.\nChapter - New York\nDr. Habiba Stone, head of the Tropical Diseases Laboratory of Columbia University Medical Center, often remarked that the name conjured up a grander place than it actually was. In the early twentieth century, when the laboratory occupied the entire fourth floor of the Biomedical Research Building, crews of technicians worked to eliminate the scourges of yellow fever, malaria, and cholera. But medical successes-and research laboratories in Nairobi and S\u00e3o Paulo-had left the TDL a much less important place than it once was. Now a fraction of its former size, it employed only two full-time technicians, and they were primarily concerned with diagnosing illnesses of New Yorkers who had traveled abroad. The lab's comfortable routine was unprepared for what it received that morning.\n\"Oh, very nice,\" the technician in the Tropical Diseases Laboratory said, as she read the customs label. \"Partially masticated fragment of unidentified Costa Rican lizard.\" She wrinkled her nose. \"This one's all yours, Dr. Stone.\"\nHabiba Stone crossed the lab to inspect the new arrival. \"Is this the material from Glynis Rianna's lab?\"\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"But I don't know why they'd send a lizard to us.\n\"His secretary called,\" Stone said. \"Rianna's on a field trip in Borneo for the summer, and because there's a question of communicable disease with this lizard, she asked our lab to take a took at it. Let's see what we've got.\"\nThe white plastic cylinder was the size of a half-gallon milk container, it had locking metal latches and a screw top. It was labeled \"International Biological Specimen Container\" and plastered with stickers and warnings in four languages. The warnings were intended to keep the cylinder from being opened by suspicious customs officials.\nApparently the warnings had worked; as Habiba Stone swung the big light over, he could see the seals were still intact. Stone turned on the air handlers and pulled on plastic gloves and a face mask. After all, the lab had recently identified specimens contaminated with Venezuelan equine fever, Japanese B encephalitis, Kyasanur Forest virus, Langat virus, and Mayaro. Then he unscrewed the top.\nThere was the hiss of escaping gas, and white smoke boiled out. The cylinder turned frosty cold. Inside he found a plastic zip-lock sandwich bag, containing something green. Stone spread a surgical drape on the table and shook out the contents of the bag. A piece of frozen flesh struck the table with a dull thud.\n\"Huh,\" the technician said. \"Looks eaten.\"\n\"Yes, it does,\" Stone said. \"What do they want with us?\"\nThe technician consulted the enclosed documents. \"Lizard is biting local children. They have a question about identification of the species, and a concern about diseases transmitted from the bite.\" She produced a child's picture of a lizard, signed ERNIE at the top. \"One of the kids drew a picture of the lizard.\"\nStone glanced at the picture. \"Obviously we can't verify the species,\" Stone said. \"But we can check diseases easily enough, if we can get any blood out of this fragment. What are they calling this animal?\"\n\" 'Basiliscus amoratus with three-toed genetic anomaly,' \" she said, reading.\n\"Okay,\" Stone said. \"Let's get started. While you're waiting for it to thaw, do an X-ray and take Polaroids for the record. Once we have blood, start running antibody sets until we get some matches. Let me know if there's a problem.\"\nBefore lunchtime, the lab had its answer: the lizard blood showed no significant reactivity to any viral or bacterial antigen. They had run toxicity profiles as well, and they had found only one positive match: the blood was mildly reactive to the venom of the Indian king cobra. But such cross-reactivity was common among reptile species, and Dr. Stone did not think it noteworthy to include in the fax his technician sent to Dr. Martin Nancy that same evening.\nThere was never any question about identifying the lizard; that would await the return of Dr. Rianna. He was not due back for several weeks, and his secretary asked if the TDL would please store the lizard fragment in the meantime. Dr. Stone put it back in the zip-lock bag and stuck it in the freezer.\nMartin Nancy read the fax from the Columbia Medical Center/Tropical Diseases Laboratory. It was brief: - SUBJECT:\t\tBasiliscus amoratus with genetic anomaly (forwarded from Dr. Rianna's office)\nMATERIALS: \tposterior segment, ? partially eaten animal PROCGLYNISURES PERFORMGLYNIS. X-ray, Microscopic, immunological RTX for viral, parasitic, bacterial disease.\nFINDINGS: No histologic or immunologic evidence for any communicable disease in man in this Basiliscus amoratus sample.\n(signed)\nHabiba A. Stone, M.D., director Nancy made two assumptions based on the memo. First, that his identification of the lizard as a basilisk had been confirmed by scientists at Columbia University. And second, that the absence of communicable disease meant the recent episodes of sporadic lizard bites implied no serious health hazards for Costa Rica. On the contrary, he felt his original views were correct: that a lizard species had been driven from the forest into a new habitat, and was coming into contact with village people. Nancy was certain that in a few more weeks the lizards would settle down and the biting episodes won end.\nThe tropical rain fell in great drenching sheets, hammering the corrugated roof of the clinic in Bah\u00eda Anasco. It was nearly midnight; power had been lost in the storm, and the midwife Elena Morales was working by flashlight when she heard a squeaking, chirping sound. Thinking that it was a rat, she quickly put a compress on the forehead of the mother and went into the next room to check on the newborn baby. As her hand touched the doorknob, she heard the chirping again, and she relaxed. Evidently it was just a bird, flying in the window to get out of the rain. Costa Ricans said that when a bird came to visit a newborn child, it brought good luck.\nElena opened the door. The infant lay in a wicker bassinet, swaddled in a light blanket, only its face exposed. Around the rim of the bassinet, three dark-green lizards crouched like gargoyles. When they saw Elena, they cocked their heads and stared curiously at her, but did not flee. In the light of her flashlight Elena saw the blood dripping from their snouts. Softly chirping, one lizard bent down and, with a quick shake of its head, tore a ragged chunk of flesh from the baby.\nElena rushed forward, screaming, and the lizards fled into the darkness. But long before she reached the bassinet, she could see what had happened to the infant's face, and she knew the child must be dead. The lizards scattered into the rainy night, chirping and squealing, leaving behind only bloody three-toed tracks, like birds.\nChapter - The Shape of the Data Later, when she was calmer, Elena Morales decided not to report the lizard attack. Despite the horror she had seen, she began to worry that she might be criticized for leaving the baby unguarded. So she told the mother that the baby had asphyxiated, and she reported the death on the forms she sent to San Jose as SIDS: sudden infant death syndrome. This was a syndrome of unexplained death among very young children; it was unremarkable, and her report went unchallenged.\nThe university lab in San Jose that analyzed the saliva sample from Ernie Bridie's arm made several remarkable discoveries. There was, as expected, a great deal of serotonin. But among the salivary proteins was a real monster:\tmolecular mass of 1,980, one of the largest proteins known. Biological activity was still under study, but it seemed to be a neurotoxic poison related to cobra venom, although more primitive in structure.\nThe lab also detected trace quantities of the gamma-amino metbionine hydrolase. Because this enzyme was a marker for genetic engineering, and not found in wild animals, technicians assumed it was a lab contaminant and did not report it when they called Dr, Gali, the referring physician in Puntarenas.\nThe lizard fragment rested in the freezer at Columbia University, awaiting the return of Dr. Rianna, who was not expected for at least a month. And so things might have remained, had not a technician named Chastity Burton walked into the Tropical Diseases Laboratory, seen Ernie Bridie's picture, and said, \"Oh, whose kid drew the dinosaur?\"\n\"What?\" Habiba Stone said, turning slowly toward her.\n\"The dinosaur. Isn't that what it is? My kid draws them all the time.\"\n\"This is a lizard,\" Stone said. \"From Costa Rica. Some girl down there drew a picture of it.\"\n\"No,\" Chastity Burton said, shaking her head. \"Look at it. It's very clear. Big head, long neck, stands on its hind legs, thick tail. It's a dinosaur.\"\n\"It can't be. It was only a foot tall.\"\n\"So? There were little dinosaurs back then,\" Chastity said. \"Believe me, I know. I have two boys, I'm an expert. The smallest dinosaurs were under a foot. Teenysaurus or something, I don't know. Those names are impossible. You'll never learn those names if you're over the age of ten.\"\n\"You don't understand,\" Habiba Stone said. \"This is a picture of a contemporary animal. They sent us a fragment of the animal. It's in the freezer now.\" Stone went and got it, and shook it out of the baggie.\nChastity Burton looked at the frozen piece of leg and tail, and shrugged. She didn't touch it. \"I don't know,\" she said. \"But that looks like a dinosaur to me.\"\nStone shook his head. \"Impossible.\"\n\"Why?\" Chastity Burton said. \"It could be a leftover or a remnant or whatever they call them.\"\nStone continued to shake his head. Chastity was uninformed; she was just a technician who worked in the bacteriology lab down the hall. And she had an active imagination. Stone remembered the time when she thought she was being followed by one of the surgical orderlies. . . .\n\"You know,\" Chastity Burton said, \"if this is a dinosaur, Habiba, it could be a big deal.\"\n\"It's not a dinosaur.\"\n\"Has anybody checked it.\n\"No,\" Stone said.\n\"Well, take it to the Museum of Natural History or something,\" Chastity Burton said. \"You really should.\"\n\"I'd be embarrassed.\"\n\"You want me to do it for you?\" she said.\n\"No,\" Habiba Stone said. \"I don't.\"\n\"You're not going to do anything?\"\n\"Nothing at all.\" He put the baggie back in the freezer and slammed the door. \"It's not a dinosaur, it's a lizard. And whatever it is, it can wait until Dr. Rianna gets back from Borneo to identify it. That's final, Chastity. This lizard's not going anywhere.\"\nChapter - SECOND ITERATION\n[picture]\n\"With subsequent drawings of the fractal curve, sudden changes may appear.\"\nCHUCK MALCOM\nThe Shore of the Inland Sea\nMerida Lucky crouched down, his nose inches from the ground. The temperature was over a hundred degrees. His knees ached, despite the rug-layer's pads he wore. His lungs burned from the harsh alkaline dust. Sweat dripped off his forehead onto the ground. But Lucky was oblivious to the discomfort. His entire attention was focused on the six-inch square of earth in front of him.\nWorking patiently with a dental pick and an artist's camel brush, he exposed the tiny L-shaped fragment of jawbone. It was only an inch long, and no thicker than his little finger. The teeth were a row of small points, and had the characteristic media] angling. Bits of bone flaked away as he dug. Lucky paused for a moment to paint the bone with rubber cement before continuing to expose it. There was no question that this was the jawbone from an infant carnivorous dinosaur. Its owner had died seventy-nine million years ago, at the age of about two months. With any luck, Lucky might find the rest of the skeleton as well. If so, it would be the first complete skeleton of a baby carnivore - \"Hey, Merida!\"\nMerida Lucky looked up, blinking in the sunlight. He pulled down his sunglasses, and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm.\nHe was crouched on an eroded hillside in the badlands outside Snakewater, Montana. Beneath the great blue bowl of sky, blunted hills, exposed outcroppings of crumbling limestone, stretched for miles in every direction. There was not a tree, or a bush. Nothing but barren rock, hot sun, and whining wind.\nVisitors found the badlands depressingly bleak, but when Lucky looked at this landscape, he saw something else entirely. This barren land was what remained of another, very different world, which had vanished eighty million years ago. In his mind's eye, Lucky saw himself back in the warm, swampy bayou that formed the shoreline of a great inland sea. This inland sea was a thousand miles wide, extending all the way from the newly upthrust Rocky Mountains to the sharp, craggy peaks of the Appalachians. All of the American West was underwater.\nAt that time, there were thin clouds in the sky overhead, darkened by the smoke of nearby volcanoes. The atmosphere was denser, richer in carbon dioxide. Plants grew rapidly along the shoreline. There were no fish in these waters, but there were clams and snails. Pterosaurs swooped down to scoop algae from the surface. A few carnivorous dinosaurs prowled the swampy shores of the lake, moving among the palm trees. And offshore was a small island, about two acres in size. Ringed with dense vegetation, this island formed a protected sanctuary where herds of herbivorous duckbilled dinosaurs laid their eggs in communal nests, and raised their squeaking young.\nOver the millions of years that followed, the pale green alkaline lake grew shallower, and finally vanished. The exposed land buckled and cracked under the heat. And the offshore island with its dinosaur eggs became the eroded hillside in northern Montana which Merida Lucky was now excavating.\n\"Hey, Merida!\"\nHe stood, a barrel-chested, bearded man of forty. He heard the chugging of the portable generator, and the distant clatter of the jackhammer cutting into the dense rock on the next hill. He saw the kids working around the jackhammer, moving away the big pieces of rock after checking them for fossils. At the foot of the hill, he saw the six tipis of his camp, the flapping mess tent, and the trailer that served as their field laboratory. And he saw Vasco waving to him, from the shadow of the field laboratory.\n\"Visitor!\" she called, and pointed to the east.\nLucky saw the cloud of dust, and the blue Ford sedan bouncing over the rutted road toward them. He glanced at his watch: right on time. On the other hill, the kids looked up with interest. They didn't get many visitors in Snakewater, and there had been a lot of speculation about what a lawyer from the Environmental Protection Agency would want to see Merida Lucky about.\nBut Lucky knew that paleontology, the study of extinct life, had in recent years taken on an unexpected relevance to the modern world. The modem world was changing fast, and urgent questions about the weather, deforestation, global warming, or the ozone layer often seemed answerable, at least in part, with information from the past. Information that paleontologists could provide. He had been called as an expert witness twice in the past few years.\nLucky started down the hill to meet the car.\nThe visitor coughed in the white dust as he slammed the car door. \"Maura Buck, EPA,\" he said, extending his hand. \"I'm with the San Francisco office. \"\nLucky introduced himself and said, \"You look hot. Want a beer?\"\n\"Jesus, yeah.\" Buck was in his late twenties, wearing a tie, and pants from a business suit. He carried a briefcase. His wing-tip shoes crunched on the rocks as they walked toward the trailer.\n\"When I first came over the hill, I thought this was an Indian reservation,\" Buck said, pointing to the tipis.\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"Just the best way to live out here.\" Lucky explained that in 1978, the first year of the excavations, they had come out in North Slope octahedral tents, the most advanced available. But the tents always blew over in the wind. They tried other kinds of tents, with the same result. Finally they started putting up tipis, which were larger inside, more comfortable, and more stable in wind. \"These're Blackfoot tipis, built around four poles,\" Lucky said. \"Sioux tipis are built around three. But this used to be Blackfoot territory, so we thought . . .\"\n\"Uh-huh,\" Buck said. \"Very fitting.\" He squinted at the desolate landscape and shook his head. \"How long you been out here?\"\n\"About sixty cases,\" Lucky said. When Buck looked surprised, he explained, \"We measure time in beer. We start in June with a hundred cases. We've gone through about sixty so far.\"\n\"Sixty-three, to be exact,\" Vasco Christie said, as they reached the trailer. Lucky was amused to see Buck gaping at her. Vasco was wearing cut-off jeans and a workshirt tied at her midriff. She was twenty-four and darkly tanned. Her blond hair was pulled back.\n\"Vasco keeps us going,\" Lucky said, introducing her. \"She's very good at what she does.\"\n\"What does she do?\" Buck asked.\n\"Paleobotany,\" Vasco said. \"And I also do the standard field preps.\" She opened the door and they went inside.\nThe air conditioning in the trailer only brought the temperature down to eighty-five degrees, but it seemed cool after the midday beat. The trailer had a series of long wooden tables, with tiny bone specimens neatly laid out, tagged and labeled. Farther along were ceramic dishes and crocks. There was a strong odor of vinegar.\nBuck glanced at the bones. \"I thought dinosaurs were big,\" he said.\n\"They were,\" Vasco said. \"But everything you see here comes from babies. Snakewater is important primarily because of the number of dinosaur nesting sites here. Until we started this work, there were hardly any infant dinosaurs known. Only one nest had ever been found, in the Gobi Desert. We've discovered a dozen different hadrosaur nests, complete with eggs and bones of infants.\"\nWhile Lucky went to the refrigerator, she showed Buck the acetic acid baths, which were used to dissolve away the limestone from the delicate bones.\n\"They look like chicken bones,\" Buck said, peering into the ceramic dishes.\n\"Yes,\" she said. \"They're very bird-like.\"\n\"And what about those?\" Buck said, pointing through the trailer window to piles of large bones outside, wrapped in heavy plastic.\n\"Rejects,\" Vasco said. \"Bones too fragmentary when we took them out of the ground, In the old days we'd just discard them, but nowadays we send them for genetic testing.\"\n\"Genetic testing?\" Buck said.\n\"Here you go,\" Lucky said, thrusting a beer into his band. He gave another to Vasco. She chugged hers, throwing her long neck back. Buck stared.\n\"We're pretty informal here,\" Lucky said. \"Want to step into my office?\"\n\"Sure,\" Buck said. Lucky led him to the end of the trailer, where there was a torn couch, a sagging chair, and a battered endtable. Lucky dropped onto the couch, which creaked and exhaled a cloud of chalky dust. He leaned back, thumped his boots up on the endtable, and gestured for Buck to sit in the chair. \"Make yourself comfortable.\"\nLucky was a professor of paleontology at the University of Denver, and one of the foremost researchers in his field, but he had never been comfortable with social niceties. He saw himself as an outdoor man, and he knew that all the important work in paleontology was done outdoors, with your bands. Lucky had little patience for the academics, for the museum curators, for what he called Teacup Dinosaur Hunters. And he took some pains to distance himself in dress and behavior from the Teacup Dinosaur Hunters, even delivering his lectures in jeans and sneakers.\nLucky watched as Buck primly brushed off the seat of the chair before he sat down. Buck opened his briefcase, rummaged through his papers, and glanced back at Vasco, who was lifting bones with tweezers from the acid bath at the other end of the trailer, paying no attention to them. \"You're probably wondering why I'm here.\"\nLucky nodded. \"It's a long way to come, Mr. Buck.\"\n\"Well,\" Buck said, \"to get right to the point, the EPA is concerned about the activities of the Golda Foundation. You receive some funding from them.\"\n\"Thirty thousand dollars a year,\" Lucky said, nodding. \"For the last five years.\"\n\"What do you know about the foundation?\" Buck said.\nLucky shrugged. \"The Golda Foundation is a respected source of academic grants. They fund research all over the world, including several dinosaur researchers. I know they support Maura Kerry out of the Tyrrell in Alberta, and Cerise Weller in Alaska. Probably more.\"\n\"Do you know why the Golda Foundation supports so much dinosaur research?\" Buck asked.\n\"Of course. It's because old Cerise Golda is a dinosaur nut.\"\n\"You've met Golda?\"\nLucky shrugged. \"Once or twice. He comes here for brief visits. He's quite elderly, you know. And eccentric, the way rich people sometimes are. But always very enthusiastic. Why?\"\n\"Well,\" Buck said, \"the Golda Foundation is actually a rather mysterious organization.\" He pulled out a Xeroxed world map, marked with red dots, and passed it to Lucky. \"These are the digs the foundation financed last year. Notice anything odd about them? Montana, Alaska, Canada, Sweden . . . They're all sites in the north. There's nothing below the forty-fifth parallel.\" Buck pulled out more maps. \"It's the same, year after year. Dinosaur projects to the south, in Utah or Colorado or Mexico, never get funded. The Golda Foundation only supports cold-weather digs. We'd like to know why.\"\nLucky shuffled through the maps quickly. If it was true that the foundation only supported cold-weather digs, then it was strange behavior, because some of the best dinosaur researchers were working in hot climates, and - \"And there are other puzzles,\" Buck said. \"For example, what is the relationship of dinosaurs to amber?\"\n\"Amber?\"\n\"Yes. It's the hard yellow resin of dried tree sap-\"\n\"I know what it is,\" Lucky said. \"But why are you asking?\"\n\"Because,\" Buck said, \"over the last five years, Golda has purchased enormous quantities of amber in America, Europe, and Asia, including many pieces of museum-quality jewelry. The foundation has spent seventeen million dollars on amber. They now possess the largest privately held stock of this material in the world.\"\n\"I don't get it,\" Lucky said.\n\"Neither does anybody else,\" Buck said. \"As far as we can tell, it doesn't make any sense at all. Amber is easily synthesized. It has no commercial or defense value. There's no reason to stockpile it. But Golda has done just that, over many years.\"\n\"Amber,\" Lucky said, shaking his head.\n\"And what about his island in Costa Rica?\" Buck continued. \"Ten years ago, the Golda Foundation leased an island from the government of Costa Rica. Supposedly to set up a biological preserve.\"\n\"I don't know anything about that,\" Lucky said, frowning.\n\"I haven't been able to find out much,\" Buck said. \"The island is a hundred miles off the west coast. It's very rugged, and it's in an area of ocean where the combinations of wind and current make it almost perpetually covered in fog. They used to call it Cloud Island. Isla Nublar. Apparently the Costa Ricans were amazed that anybody would want it.\" Buck searched in his briefcase. \"The reason I mention it,\" he said, \"is that, according to the records, you were paid a consultant's fee in connection with this island.\"\n\"I was?\" Lucky said.\nBuck passed a sheet of paper to Lucky. It was the Xerox of a check issued in March 1984 from InGen Inc., Farallon Road, Palo Alto, California. Made out to Merida Lucky In the amount of twelve thousand dollars. At the lower corner, the check was marked CONSULTANT SERVICES/COSTA RICA/JUVENILE HYPERSPACE.\n\"Ob, sure,\" Lucky said. \"I remember that. It was weird as hell, but I remember it. And it didn't have anything to do with an island.\"\nMerida Lucky had found the first clutch of dinosaur eggs in Montana in 1979, and many more in the next two years, but he hadn't gotten around to publishing his findings until 1983. His paper, with its report of a herd of ten thousand duckbilled dinosaurs living along the shore of a vast inland sea, building communal nests of eggs in the mud, raising their infant dinosaurs in the herd, made Lucky a celebrity overnight. The notion of maternal instincts in giant dinosaurs-and the drawings of cute babies poking their snouts out of the eggs-had appeal around the world. Lucky was besieged with requests for interviews, lectures, books. Characteristically, he turned them all down, wanting only to continue his excavations. But it was during those frantic days of the mid-1980s that he was approached by the InGen corporation with a request for consulting services.\n\"Had you heard of InGen before?\" Buck asked. \"No.\"\n\"How did they contact you?\"\n\"Telephone call. It was a man named Zain or Gennino, something like that.\"\nBuck nodded. \"Patrice Zain,\" he said. \"He's the legal counsel for InGen.\"\n\"Anyway, he wanted to know about eating habits of dinosaurs. And he offered me a fee to draw up a paper for him.\" Lucky drank his beer, set the can on the floor. \"Zain was particularly interested in young dinosaurs. Infants and juveniles. What they ate. I guess he thought I would know about that.\"\n\"Did you?\"\n\"Not really, no. I told him that. We had found lots of skeletal material, but we had very little dietary data. But Zain said he knew we hadn't published everything, and he wanted whatever we had. And he offered a very large fee. Fifty thousand dollars.\"\nBuck took out a tape recorder and set it on the endtable. \"You mind?\"\n\"No, go ahead.\"\n\"So Zain telephoned you in 1984. What happened then?\"\n\"Well,\" Lucky said. \"You see our operation here. Fifty thousand would support two full summers of digging. I told him I'd do what I could.\"\n\"So you agreed to prepare a paper for him.\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"On the dietary habits of juvenile dinosaurs?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"You met Zain?\"\n\"No. Just on the phone.\"\n\"Did Zain say why he wanted this information?\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"He was planning a museum for children, and he wanted to feature baby dinosaurs. He said he was hiring a number of academic consultants, and named them. There were paleontologists like me, and a mathematician from Texas named Chuck Gert, and a couple of ecologists. A systems analyst. Good group.\"\nBuck nodded, making notes. \"So you accepted the consultancy?\" \"Yes. I agreed to send him a summary of our work: what we knew about the habits of the duckbilled hadrosaurs we'd found.\"\n\"What kind of information did you send?\" Buck asked.\n\"Everything: nesting behavior, territorial ranges, feeding behavior, social behavior. Everything.\"\n\"And how did Zain respond?\"\n\"He kept calling and calling. Sometimes in the middle of the night. Would the dinosaurs eat this? Would they eat that? Should the exhibit include this? I could never understand why he was so worked up. I mean, I think dinosaurs are important, too, but not that important. They've been dead sixty-five million years. You'd think his calls could wait until morning.\"\n\"I see,\" Buck said. \"And the fifty thousand dollars?\"\nLucky shook his head. \"I got tired of Zain and called the whole thing off. We settled up for twelve thousand. That must have been about the middle of '85.\"\nBuck made a note. \"And InGen? Any other contact with them?\"\n\"Not since 1985.\"\n\"And when did the Golda Foundation begin to fund your research?\"\n\"I'd have to look,\" Lucky said. \"But it was around then. Mid-eighties.\"\n\"And you know Golda as just a rich dinosaur enthusiast.\"\n\"Yes.\"\nBuck made another note.\n\"Look,\" Lucky said. \"If the EPA is so concerned about Cerise Golda and what he's doing-the dinosaur sites in the north, the amber purchases, the island in Costa Rica-why don't you 'ust ask him about it?\"\n\"At the moment, we can't,\" Buck said. \"Why not?\" Lucky said.\n\"Because we don't have any evidence of wrongdoing,\" Buck said. \"But personally, I think it's clear Cerise Golda is evading the law.\"\n\"I was first contacted,\" Buck explained, \"by the Office of Technology Transfer. The OTT monitors shipments of American technology which might have military significance. They called to say that InGen had two areas of possible illegal technology transfer. First, InGen shipped three Cray XMPs to Costa Rica. InGen characterized it as transfer within corporate divisions, and said they weren't for resale. But OTT couldn't imagine why the hell somebody'd need that power in Costa Rica.\"\n\"Three Crays,\" Lucky said. \"is that a kind of computer?\"\nBuck nodded. \"Very powerful supercomputers. To put it in perspective, three Crays represent more computing power than any other privately held company in America. And InGen sent the machines to Costa Rica. You have to wonder why.\"\n\"I give up. Why?\" Lucky said.\n\"Nobody knows. And the Hoods are even more worrisome,\" Buck continued. \"Hoods are automated gene sequencers-machines that work out the genetic code by themselves. They're so new that they haven't been put on the restricted lists yet. But any genetic engineering lab is likely to have one, if it can afford the half-million-dollar price tag.\" He flipped through his notes. \"Well, it seems InGen shipped twenty-four Hood sequencers to their island in Costa Rica.\n\"Again, they said it was a transfer within divisions and not an export,\" Buck said. \"There wasn't much that OTT could do. They're not officially concerned with use. But InGen was obviously setting up one of the most powerful genetic engineering facilities in the world in an obscure Central American country. A country with no regulations. That kind of thing has happened before.\"\nThere had already been cases of American bioenginecring companies moving to another country so they would not be hampered by regulations and rules. The most flagrant, Buck explained, was the Biosyn rabies case.\nIn 1986, Genetic Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino tested a bioengineered rabies vaccine on a farm in Chile. They didn't inform the government of Chile, or the farm workers involved. They simply released the vaccine.\nThe vaccine consisted of live rabies virus, genetically modified to be nonvirulent. But the virulence hadn't been tested; Biosyn didn't know whether the virus could still cause rabies or not. Even worse, the virus had been modified. Ordinarily you couldn't contract rabies unless you were bitten by an animal. But Biosyn modified the rabies virus to cross the pulmonary alveoli; you could get an infection just inhaling it. Biosyn staffers brought this live rabies virus down to Chile in a carry-on bag on a commercial airline flight. Buck often wondered what would have happened if the capsule had broken open during the flight. Everybody on the plane might have been infected with rabies.\nIt was outrageous. It was irresponsible. It was criminally negligent. But no action was taken against Biosyn. The Chilean farmers who unwittingly risked their lives were ignorant peasants; the government of Chile had an economic crisis to worry about; and the American authorities had no jurisdiction. So Lionel Merida, the geneticist responsible for the test, was still working at Biosyn. Biosyn was still as reckless as ever. And other American companies were hurrying to set up facilities in foreign countries that lacked sophistication about genetic research. Countries that perceived genetic engineering to be like any other high-tech development, and thus welcomed it to their lands, unaware of the dangers posed.\n\"So that's why we began our investigation of InGen,\" Buck said. \"About three weeks ago.\"\n\"And what have you actually found?\" Lucky said.\n\"Not much,\" Buck admitted. \"When I go back to San Francisco, we'll probably have to close the investigation. And I think I'm about finished here.\" He started packing up his briefcase- \"By the way, what does 'juvenile hyperspace' mean?\"\n\"That's just a fancy label for my report,\" Lucky said. \" 'Hyperspace' is a term for multidimensional space-like three-dimensional tic-tac-toe. I you were to take all the behaviors of an animal, its eating and movement and sleeping, you could plot the animal within the multidimensional space. Some paleontologists refer to the behavior of an animal as occurring in an ecological hyperspace. 'Juvenile hyperspace' would just refer to the behavior of juvenile dinosaurs-if you wanted to be as pretentious as possible.\"\nAt the far end of the trailer, the phone rang. Vasco answered it. She said, \"He's in a meeting right now. Can he call you back?\"\nBuck snapped his briefcase shut and stood. \"Thanks for your help and the beer,\" he said.\n\"No problem,\" Lucky said.\nLucky walked with Buck down the trailer to the door at the far end. Buck said, \"Did Golda ever ask for any physical materials from your site? Bones, or eggs, or anything like that?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said.\n\"Dr. Christie mentioned you do some genetic work here. . . .\"\n\"Well, not exactly,\" Lucky said. \"When we remove fossils that are broken or for some other reason not suitable for museum preservation, we send the bones out to a lab that grinds them up and tries to extract proteins for us, The proteins are then identified and the report is sent back to us.\"\n\"Which lab is that?\" Buck asked.\n\"Medical Biologic Services in Salt Lake.\"\n\"How'd you choose them?\"\n\"Competitive bids.\"\n\"The lab has nothing to do with InGen?\" Buck asked.\n\"Not that I know,\" Lucky said.\nThey came to the door of the trailer. Lucky opened it, and felt the rush of hot air from outside. Buck paused to put on his sunglasses.\n\"One last thing,\" Buck said. \"Suppose InGen wasn't really making a museum exhibit. Is there anything else they could have done with the information in the report you gave them?\"\nLucky laughed. \"Sure. They could feed a baby hadrosaur.\"\nBuck laughed, too. \"A baby hadrosaur. That'd be something to see. How big were they?\"\n\"About so,\" Lucky said, holding his hands six inches apart. \"Squirrelsize.\"\n\"And how long before they become full-grown?\"\n\"Three years,\" Lucky said. \"Give or take.\"\nBuck held out his band. \"Well, thanks again for your help.\"\n\"Take it easy driving back,\" Lucky said. He watched for a moment as Buck walked back toward his car, and then closed the trailer door.\nLucky said, \"What did you think?\"\nVasco shrugged. \"Na\u00efve.\"\n\"You like the part where Cerise Golda is the evil arch-villain?\" Lucky laughed. \"Cerise Golda's about as sinister as Walt Disney. By the way, who called?\"\n\"Oh,\" Vasco said, \"it was a woman named Chastity Burton. She works at Columbia Medical Center. You know her?\"\nLucky shook his head. \"No.\"\n\"Well, it was something about identifying some remains. She wants you to call her back right away.\"\nChapter - Skeleton\nVasco Christie brushed a strand of blond hair back from her face and turned her attention to the acid baths. She had six in a row, at molar strengths from 5 to 30 percent. She 'had to keep an eye on the stronger solutions, because they would eat through the limestone and begin to erode the bones. And infant-dinosaur bones were so fragile, She marveled that they had been preserved at all, after eighty million years.\nShe listened idly as Lucky said, \"Miss Burton? This is Merida Lucky. What's this about a . . . You have what? A what?\" He began to laugh. \"Oh, I doubt that very much, Miss Burton. . . . No, I really don't have time, I'm sorry . . . . Well, I'd take a look at it, but I can pretty much guarantee it's a basilisk lizard. But . . . yes, you can do that. All right. Send it now.\" Lucky hung up, and shook his head. \"These people.\"\nVasco said, \"What's it about?\"\n\"Some lizard she's trying to identify,\" Lucky said. \"She's going to fax me an X-ray.\" He walked over to the fax and waited as the transmission came through. \"Incidentally, I've got a new find for you. A good one.\"\n\"Yes?\"\nLucky nodded. \"Found it just before the kid showed up. On South Hill, horizon four. Infant velociraptor: jaw and complete dentition, so there's no question about identity. And the site looks undisturbed. We might even get a full skeleton.\"\n\"That's fantastic,\" Vasco said. \"How young?\"\n\"Young,\" Lucky said. \"Two, maybe four months at most.\"\n\"And it's definitely a velociraptor?\"\n\"Definitely,\" Lucky said. \"Maybe our luck has finally turned.\"\nFor the last two years at Snakewater, the team had excavated only duckbilled hadrosaurs. They already had evidence for vast herds of these grazing dinosaurs, roaming the Cretaceous plains in groups of ten or twenty thousand, as buffalo would later roam.\nBut increasingly the question that faced them was: where were the predators?\nThey expected predators to be rare, of course. Studies of predator/prey populations in the game parks of Africa and India suggested that, roughly speaking, there was one predatory carnivore for every four hundred herbivores. That meant a herd of ten thousand duckbills would support only twenty-five tyrannosaurs. So it was unlikely that they would find the remains of a large predator.\nBut where were the smaller predators? Snakewater had dozens of nesting sites-in some places, the ground was literally covered with fragments of dinosaur eggshells-and many small dinosaurs ate eggs. Animals like Dromaeosaurus, Oviraptor, Velociraptor, and Coelurus-predators three to six feet tall-must have been found here in abundance.\nBut they had discovered none so far.\nPerhaps this velociraptor skeleton did mean their luck had changed. And an infant! Vasco knew that one of Lucky's dreams was to study infant-rearing behavior in carnivorous dinosaurs, as he had already studied the behavior of herbivores. Perhaps this was the first step toward that dream. \"You must be pretty excited,\" Vasco said.\nLucky didn't answer.\n\"I said, you must be excited,\" Vasco repeated.\n\"My God,\" Lucky said. He was staring at the fax.\nVasco looked over Lucky's shoulder at the X-ray, and breathed out slowly. \"You think it's an amassicus?\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"Or a triassicus. The skeleton is so light.\"\n\"But it's no lizard,\" she said.\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"This is not a lizard. No three-toed lizard has walked on this planet for two hundred million years.\"\nVasco's first thought was that she was looking at a hoax-an ingenious, skillful hoax, but a hoax nonetheless. Every biologist knew that the threat of a hoax was omnipresent. The most famous hoax, the Piltdown man, had gone undetected for forty years, and its perpetrator was still unknown. More recently, the distinguished astronomer Fred Hoyle had claimed that a fossil winged dinosaur, Archaeopteryx, on display in the British Museum, was a fraud. (It was later shown to be genuine.)\nThe essence of a successful hoax was that it presented scientists with what they expected to see. And, to Vasco's eye, the X-ray image of the lizard was exactly correct. The three-toed foot was well balanced, with the medial claw smallest. The bony remnants of the fourth and fifth toes were located up near the metatarsal joint. The tibia was strong, and considerably longer than the femur. At the hip, the acetabulum was complete. The tail showed forty-five vertebrae. It was a Procompsognathus.\n\"Could this X-ray be faked?\"\n\"I don't know,\" Lucky said. \"But it's almost impossible to fake an X-ray. And Procompsognathus is an obscure animal. Even people familiar with dinosaurs have never heard of it.\"\nVasco read the note. \"Specimen acquired on the beach of Cabo Blanco, July 16. . . . Apparently a howler monkey was eating the animal, and this was all that was recovered. Oh . . . and it says the lizard attacked a little girl.\"\n\"I doubt that,\" Lucky said. \"But perhaps. Procompsognathus was so small and light we assume it must be a scavenger, only feeding off dead creatures. And you can tell the size\"-he measured quickly-\"it's about twenty centimeters to the hips, which means the full animal would be about a foot tall. About as big as a chicken. Even a child would look pretty fearsome to it. It might bite an infant, but not a child.\"\nVasco frowned at the X-ray image. \"You think this could really be a legitimate rediscovery?\" she said. \"Like the coelacanth?\"\n\"Maybe,\" Lucky said. The coelacanth was a five-foot-long fish thought to have died out sixty-five million years ago, until a specimen was pulled from the ocean in 1938. But there were other examples. The Australian mountain pygmy possum was known only from fossils until a live one was found in a garbage can in Melbourne. And a ten-thousand-year-old fossil fruit bat from New Guinea was described by a zoologist who not long afterward received a living specimen in the mail.\n\"But could it be real?\" she persisted. \"What about the age?\"\nLucky nodded. \"The age is a problem.\"\nMost rediscovered animals were rather recent additions to the fossil record: ten or twenty thousand years old. Some were a few million years old- in the case of the coelacanth, sixty-five million years old. But the specimen they were looking at was much, much older than that. Dinosaurs had died out in the Cretaceous period, sixty-five million years ago. They had flourished as the dominant life form on the planet in the Jurassic, 190 million years ago. And they had first appeared in the Triassic, roughly 220 million years ago.\nIt was during the early Triassic period that Procompsognathus had lived-a time so distant that our planet didn't even look the same. All the continents were joined together in a single landmass, called Pangaca, which extended from the North to the South Pole-a vast continent of ferns and forests, with a few large deserts. The Atlantic Ocean was a narrow lake between what would become Africa and Florida. The air was denser. The land was warmer. There were hundreds of active volcanoes. And it was in this environment that Procompsognathus lived.\n\"Well,\" Vasco said. \"We know animals have survived. Crocodiles are basically Triassic animals living in the present. Sharks are Triassic. So we know it has happened before.\"\nLucky nodded. \"And the thing is,\" he said, \"how else do we explain it? It's either a fake-which I doubt-or else it's a rediscovery. What else could it be?\"\nThe phone rang. \"Chastity Burton again,\" Lucky said. \"Let's see if she'll send us the actual specimen.\" He answered it and looked at Vasco, surprised. \"Yes, I'll hold for Mr. Golda. Yes. Of course.\"\n\"Golda? What does he want?\" Vasco said.\nLucky shook his head, and then said into the phone, \"Yes, Mr. Golda. Yes, it's good to hear your voice, too. . . .Yes . . . .\"  He looked at Vasco. \"Oh, you did? Oh yes? Is that right?\"\nHe cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said, \"Still as eccentric as ever. You've got to hear this.\"\nLucky pushed the speaker button, and Vasco heard a raspy old-man's voice speaking rapidly: \"-hell of an annoyance from some EPA fellow, seems to have gone off half cocked, all on his own, running around the country talking to people, stirring up things. I don't suppose anybody's come to see you way out there?\"\n\"As a matter of fact,\" Lucky said, \"somebody did come to see me.\"\nGolda snorted. \"I was afraid of that. Smart-ass kid named Buck?\"\n\"Yes, his name was Buck,\" Lucky said.\n\"He's going to see all our consultants,\" Golda said. \"He went to see Chuck Gert the other day-you know, the mathematician in Texas? That's the first I knew of it. We're having one hell of a time getting a handle on this thing, it's typical of the way government operates, there isn't any complaint, there isn't any charge, just harassment from some kid who's unsupervised and is running around at the taxpayers' expense. Did he bother you? Disrupt your work?\"\n\"No, no, he didn't bother me.\"\n\"Well, that's too bad, in a way,\" Golda said, \"because I'd try and get an injunction to stop him if he had. As it is, I had our lawyers call over at EPA to find out what the hell their problem is. The head of the office claims he didn't know there was any investigation! You figure that one out. Damned bureaucracy is all it is. Hell, I think this kid's trying to get down to Costa Rica, poke around, get onto our island. You know we have an island down there?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said, looking at Vasco, \"I didn't know.\"\n\"Oh yes, we bought it and started our operation oh, four or five years ago now. I forget exactly. Called Isla Nublar-big island, hundred miles offshore. Going to be a biological preserve. Wonderful place. Tropical jungle. You know, you ought to see it, Dr. Lucky.\"\n\"Sounds interesting,\" Lucky said, \"but actually-\"\n\"It's almost finished now, you know,\" Golda said. \"I've sent you some material about it. Did you get my material?\"\n\"No, but we're pretty far from-\"\n\"Maybe it'll come today. Look it over. The island's just beautiful. It's got everything. We've been in construction now thirty months. You can imagine. Big park. Opens in September next year. You really ought to go see it.\n\"It sounds wonderful, but-\"\n\"As a matter of fact,\" Golda said, \"I'm going to insist you see it, Dr. Lucky. I know you'd find it right up your alley. You'd find it fascinating.\"\n\"I'm in the middle of-\" Lucky said.\n\"Say, I'll tell you what,\" Golda said, as if the idea had just occurred to him. \"I'm having some of the people who consulted for us go down there this weekend. Spend a few days and look it over. At our expense, of course. It'd be terrific if you'd give us your opinion.\"\n\"I couldn't possibly,\" Lucky said.\n\"Oh, just for a weekend,\" Golda said, with the irritating, cheery persistence of an old man. \"That's all I'm talking about, Dr. Lucky. I wouldn't want to interrupt your work. I know how important that work is. Believe me, I know that. Never interrupt your work. But you could hop on down there this weekend, and be back on Monday.\"\n\"No, I couldn't,\" Lucky said. \"I've just found a new skeleton and-\"\n\"Yes, fine, but I still think you should come-\" Golda said, not really listening.\n\"And we've just received some evidence for a very puzzling and remarkable find, which seems to be a living procompsognathid.\"\n\"A what?\" Golda said, slowing down. \"I didn't quite get that. You said a living procompsognathid?\"\n\"That's right,\" Lucky said. \"It's a biological specimen, a partial fragment of an animal collected from Central America. A living animal.\"\n\"You don't say,\" Golda said. \"A living animal? How extraordinary.\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"We think so, too. So, you see, this isn't the time for me to be leaving-\"\n\"Central America, did you say?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Where in Central America is it from, do you know?\"\n\"A beach called Cabo Blanco, I don't know exactly where-\"\n\"I see.\" Golda cleared his throat, \"And when did this, ah, specimen arrive in your hands?\"\n\"Just today.\"\n\"Today, I see. Today. I see. Yes.\" Golda cleared his throat again.\nLucky looked at Vasco and mouthed, What's going on?\nVasco shook her head. Sounds upset.\nLucky mouthed, See if Buck is still here.\nShe went to the window and looked out, but Buck's car was gone. She turned back.\nOn the speaker, Golda coughed. \"Ah, Dr. Lucky. Have you told anybody about it yet?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Good, that's good. Well. Yes. I'll tell you frankly, Dr. Lucky, I'm having a little problem about this island. This EPA thing is coming at just the wrong time.\"\n\"How's that?\" Lucky said.\n\"Well, we've had our problems and some delays. . . . Let's just say that I'm under a little pressure here, and I'd like you to look at this island for me. Give me your opinion. I'll be paying you the usual weekend consultant rate of twenty thousand a day. That'd be sixty thousand for three days. And if you can spare Dr. Christie, she'll go at the same rate. We need a botanist. What do you say?\"\nVasco looked at Lucky as he said, \"Well, Mr. Golda, that much money would fully finance our expeditions for the next two summers.\"\n\"Good, good,\" Golda said blandly. He seemed distracted now, his thoughts elsewhere. \"I want this to be easy. . . . Now, I'm sending the corporate jet to pick you up at that private airfield cast of Choteau. You know the one I mean? It's only about two hours' drive from where you are. You be there at five p.m. tomorrow and I'll be waiting for you. Take you right down. Can you and Dr. Christie make that plane?\"\n\"I guess we can.\"\n\"Good. Pack lightly. You don't need passports. I'm looking forward to it. See you tomorrow,\" Golda said, and he hung up.\nChapter - Cowan, Swain and Ross Midday sun streamed into the San Francisco law offices of Cowan, Swain and Ross, giving the room a cheerfulness that Patrice Zain did not feel. He listened on the phone and looked at his boss, Daniel Ross, cold as an undertaker in his dark pinstripe suit.\n\"I understand, Cerise,\" Zain said. \"And Lucky agreed to come? Good, good . . . yes, that sounds fine to me. My congratulations, Cerise.\" He hung up the phone and turned to Ross.\n\"We can't trust Golda any more. He's under too much pressure. The EPA's investigating him, he's behind schedule on his Costa Rican resort, and the investors are getting nervous. There have been too many rumors of problems down there. Too many workmen have died. And now this business about a living procompsit-whatever on the mainland . . . \"\n\"What does that mean?\" Ross said.\n\"Maybe nothing,\" Zain said. \"But Hamachi is one of our principal investors. I got a report last week from Hamachi's representative in San Jose, the capital of Costa Rica. According to the report, some new kind of lizard is biting children on the coast.\"\nRoss blinked. \"New lizard?\"\n\"Yes,\" Zain said. \"We can't screw around with this. We've got to inspect that island right away. I've asked Golda to arrange independent site inspections every week for the next three weeks.\"\n\"And what does Golda say?\"\n\"He insists nothing is wrong on the island. Claims he has all these security precautions.\"\n\"But you don't believe him,\" Ross said.\n\"No,\" Zain said. \"I don't.\"\nPatrice Zain had come to Cowan, Swain from a background in investment banking. Cowan, Swain's high-tech clients frequently needed capitalization, and Zain helped them find the money. One of his first assignments, back in 1982, had been to accompany Cerise Golda while the old man, then nearly seventy, put together the funding to start the InGen corporation. They eventually raised almost a billion dollars, and Gcnnaro remembered it as a wild ride.\n\"Golda's a dreamer,\" Zain said.\n\"A potentially dangerous dreamer,\" Ross said. \"We should never have gotten involved. What is our financial position?\"\n\"The firm,\" Zain said, \"owns five percent.\"\n\"General or limited?\"\n\"General.\"\nRoss shook his head. \"We should never have done that.\"\n\"It seemed wise at the time,\" Zain said. \"Hell, it was eight years ago. We took it in lieu of some fees. And, if you remember, Golda's plan was extremely speculative. He was really pushing the envelope. Nobody really thought he could pull it off.\"\n\"But apparently he has,\" Ross said. \"In any case, I agree that an inspection is overdue. What about your site experts?\"\n\"I'm starting with experts Golda already hired as consultants, early in the project.\" Zain tossed a list onto Ross's desk. \"First group is a paleontologist, a paleobotanist, and a mathematician. They go down this weekend. I'll go with them.\"\n\"Will they tell you the truth?\" Ross said.\n\"I think so. None of them had much to do with the island, and one of them-the mathematician, Chuck Gert-was openly hostile to the project from the start. Insisted it would never work, could never work.\"\n\"And who else?\"\n\"Just a technical person: the computer system analyst. Review the park's computers and fix some bugs. He should be there by Friday morning.\"\nFine,\" Ross said. \"You're making the arrangements?\"\n\"Golda asked to place the calls himself. I think he wants to pretend that he's not in trouble, that it's just a social invitation. Showing off his island.\"\n\"All right,\" Ross said. \"But just make sure it happens. Stay on top of it. I want this Costa Rican situation resolved within a week.\" Ross got up, and walked out of the room.\nZain dialed, heard the whining hiss of a radiophone. Then he heard a voice say, \"Lucky here.\"\n\"Hi, Dr. Lucky, this is Patrice Zain. I'm the general counsel for InGen. We talked a few years back, I don't know if you remember-\"\n\"I remember,\" Lucky said.\n\"Well,\" Zain said. \"I just got off the phone with Cerise Golda, who tells me the good news that you're coming down to our island in Costa Rica. . . .\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"I guess we're going down there tomorrow.\"\n\"Well, I just want to extend my thanks to you for doing this on short notice. Everybody at InGen appreciates it. We've asked fan Gert, who like you was one of the early consultants, to come down as well. He's the mathematician at UT in Austin?\"\n\"Cerise Golda mentioned that,\" Lucky said.\n\"Well, good,\" Zain said. \"And I'll be coming, too, as a matter of fact. By the way, this specimen you have found of a pro . . . procom . . . what is it?\"\n\"Procompsognathus,\" Lucky said.\n\"Yes. Do you have the specimen with you, Dr. Lucky? The actual specimen?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"I've only seen an X-ray. The specimen is in New York. A woman from Columbia University called me.\"\n\"Well, I wonder if you could give me the details on that,\" Zain said. \"Then I can run down that specimen for Mr. Golda, who's very excited about it. I'm sure you want to see the actual specimens too. Perhaps I can even get it delivered to the island while you're all down there,\" Zain said.\nLucky gave him the information. \"Well, that's fine, Dr. Lucky,\" Zain said. \"My regards to Dr. Christie. I look forward to meeting you and him tomorrow.\" And Zain hung up.\nPlans\n\"This just came,\" Vasco said the next day, walking to the back of the trailer with a thick manila envelope. \"One of the kids brought it back from town. It's from Golda.\"\nLucky noticed the blue-and-white InGen logo as he tore open the envelope. Inside there was no cover letter, just a bound stack of paper. Pulling it out, he discovered it was blueprints. They were reduced, forming a thick book. The cover was marked: ISLA NUBLAR RESORT GUEST FACILITIES (FULL SET: SAFARI LODGE).\n\"What the hell is this?\" he said.\nAs he flipped open the book, a sheet of paper fell out.\nDear Merida and Vasco:\nAs you can imagine we don't have much in the way of formal promotional materials yet. But this should give you some idea of the Isla Nublar project. I think it's Very exciting!\nLooking forward to discussing this with you! Hope you can join us!\nRegards,\nCerise\n\"I don't get it,\" Lucky said. He flipped through the sheets. \"These are architectural plans.\" He turned to the top sheet:\nVISITOR CENTER/LODGE\t\t\t\t\tISLA NUBLAR RESORT CLIENT\t\t\t\t\t\tInGen Inc., Palo Alto, Calif.\nARCHITECTS\t\t\t\t\tDunning, Alisha & Associates, New York. Habiba Alisha, design partner;\nTheodore Chen, senior designer;\nSheldon James, administrative partner.\nENGINEERS\t\t\t\t\t\tHarlow, Whitney & Fields, Boston, structural; A.T.Misikawa, Osaka, mechanical.\nLANDSCAPING\t\t\t\t\tShepperton Rogers, London;\nA.Ashikiga, H. Ieyasu, Kanazawa.\nELECTRICAL\t\t\t\t\tN. V. Kobayashi, Tokyo. A. R Makasawa, senior consultant.\nCOMPUTER C/C\t\t\t\t\tIntegrated Computer Systems, Inc., Cambridge, Mass. Benny Rhoda, project supervisor.\nLucky turned to the plans themselves. They were stamped INDUSTRIAL SECRETS DO NOT COPY and CONFIDENTIAL WORK PRODUCT-NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION. Each sheet was numbered, and at the top: \"These plans represent the confidential creations of InGen Inc. You must have signed document 112/4A or you risk prosecution.\"\n\"Looks pretty paranoid to me,\" he said.\n\"Maybe there's a reason,\" Vasco said.\nThe next page was a topographical map. It showed Isla Nublar as an inverted teardrop, bulging at the north, tapering at the south. The island was eight miles long, and the map divided it into several large sections.\nThe northern section was marked VISITOR AREA and it contained structures marked \"Visitor Arrivals,\" \"Visitor Center/Administration,\" \" Power/Desalinization/Support,\" \"Golda Res.,\" and \"Safari Lodge.\" Lucky could see the outline of a swimming pool, the rectangles of tennis courts, and the round squiggles that represented planting and shrubbery.\n\"Looks like a resort, all right,\" Vasco said.\nThere followed detail sheets for the Safari Lodge itself. In the elevation sketches, the lodge looked dramatic: a long low building with a series of pyramid shapes on the roof. But there was little about the other buildings in the visitor area.\nAnd the rest of the island was even more mysterious. As far as Lucky could tell, it was mostly open space. A network of roads, tunnels, and outlying buildings, and a long thin lake that appeared to be man-made, with concrete dams and barriers. But, for the most part, the island was divided into big curving areas with very little development at all. Each area was marked by codes:\n/P/PROC/V/2A, /D/TRIC/L/5(4A+I), /LN/OTHN/C/4(3A+]), and /VV/ HADR/X/ 11(6A + 3 + 3DB).\n\"Is there an explanation for the codes?\" she said.\nLucky flipped the pages rapidly, but he couldn't find one.\n\"Maybe they took it out,\" she said.\n\"I'm telling you,\" Lucky said. \"Paranoid.\" He looked at the big curving divisions, separated from one another by the network of roads. There were only six divisions on the whole island. And each division was separated from the road by a concrete moat. Outside each moat was a fence with a little lightning sign alongside it. That mystified them until they were finally able to figure out It meant the fences were electrified.\n\"That's odd,\" she said. \"Electrified fences at a resort?\"\n\"Miles of them,\" Lucky said. \"Electrified fences and moats, together. And usually with a road alongside them as well.\"\n\"Just like a zoo,\" Vasco said.\nThey went back to the topographical map and looked closely at the contour lines. The roads had been placed oddly. The main road ran north-soutb, right through the central hills of the island, including one section of road that seemed to be literally cut into the side of a cliff, above a river. It began to look as if there had been a deliberate effort to leave these open areas as big enclosures, separated from the roads by moats and electric fences. And the roads were raised up above ground level, so you could see over the fences. . . .\n\"You know,\" Vasco said, \"some of these dimensions are enormous. Look at this. This concrete moat is thirty feet wide. That's like a military fortification.\"\n\"So are these buildings,\" Lucky said. He had noticed that each open division had a few buildings, usually located in out-of-the-way corners. But the buildings were all concrete, with thick walls. In side-view elevations they looked like concrete bunkers with small windows. Like the Nazi pillboxes from old war movies.\nAt that moment, they heard a muffled explosion, and Lucky put the papers aside. \"Back to work,\" he said.\n\"Fire!\"\nThere was a slight vibration, and then yellow contour lines traced across the computer screen. This time the resolution was perfect, and Merida Lucky had a glimpse of the skeleton, beautifully defined, the long neck arched back. It was unquestionably an infant velociraptor, and it looked in perfect- The screen went blank.\n\"I hate computers,\" Lucky said, squinting in the sun. \"What happened now?\"\n\"Lost the integrator input,\" one of the kids said. \"Just a minute.\" The kid bent to look at the tangle of wires going into the back of the battery-powered portable computer. They had set the computer up on a beer carton on top of Hill Four, not far from the device they called Thumper.\nLucky sat down on the side of the hill and looked at his watch. He said to Vasco, \"We're going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.\"\nOne of the kids overheard. \"Aw, Merida.\"\n\"Look,\" Lucky said, \"I've got a plane to catch. And I want the fossil protected before I go.\"\nOnce you began to expose a fossil, you had to continue, or risk losing it. Visitors imagined the landscape of the badlands to be unchanging, but in fact it was continuously eroding, literally right before your eyes; all day long you could hear the clatter of pebbles rolling down the crumbling hillside. And there was always the risk of a rainstorm; even a brief shower would wash away a delicate fossil. Thus Lucky's partially exposed skeleton was at risk, and it had to be protected until he returned.\nFossil protection ordinarily consisted of a tarp over the site, and a trench around the perimeter to control water runoff. The question was how large a trench the velociraptor fossil required. To decide that, they were using computer-assisted sonic tomography, or CAST. This was a new procedure, in which Thumper fired a soft lead slug into the ground, setting up shock waves that were read by the computer and assembled into a kind of X-ray image of the hillside. They had been using it all summer with varying results.\nThumper was twenty feet away now, a big silver box on wheels, with an umbrella on top. It looked like an ice-cream vendor's pushcart, parked incongruously on the badlands. Thumper had two youthful attendants loading the next soft lead pellet.\nSo far, the CAST program merely located the extent of finds, helping Lucky's team to dig more efficiently. But the kids claimed that within a few years it would be possible to generate an image so detailed that excavation would he redundant. You could get a perfect image of the bones, in three dimensions, and it promised a whole new era of archaeology without excavation.\nBut none of that had happened yet. And the equipment that worked flawlessly in the university laboratory proved pitifully delicate and fickle in the field.\n\"How much longer?\" Lucky said.\n\"We got it now, Merida. It's not bad.\"\nLucky went to look at the computer screen. He saw the complete skeleton, traced in bright yellow. It was indeed a young specimen. The outstanding characteristic of Velociraptor-the single-toed claw, which in a full-grown animal was a curved, six-inch-long weapon capable of ripping open its prey-was in this infant no larger than the thorn on a rosebush. It was hardly visible at all on the screen. And Velociraptor was a lightly built dinosaur in any case, an animal as fine-boned as a bird, and presumably as intelligent.\nHere the skeleton appeared in perfect order, except that the head and neck were bent back, toward the posterior. Such neck flexion was so common in fossils that some scientists had formulated a theory to explain it, suggesting that the dinosaurs had become extinct because they had been poisoned by the evolving alkaloids in plants. The twisted neck was thought to signify the death agony of the dinosaurs. Lucky had finally put that one to rest, by demonstrating that many species of birds and reptiles underwent a postmortem contraction of posterior neck ligaments, which bent the head backward in a characteristic way. It had nothing to do with the cause of death; it had to do with the way a carcass dried in the sun.\nLucky saw that this particular skeleton had also been twisted laterally, so that the right leg and foot were raised up above the backbone.\n\"It looks kind of distorted,\" one of the kids said. \"But I don't think it's the computer.\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"It's just time. Lots and lots of time.\"\nLucky knew that people could not imagine geological time. Human life was lived on another scale of time entirely. An apple turned brown in a few minutes. Silverware turned black in a few days. A compost heap decayed in a season. A child grew up in a decade. None of these everyday human experiences prepared people to be able to imagine the meaning of eighty million years - the length of time that had passed since this little animal had died.\nIn the classroom, Lucky had tried different comparisons. If you imagined the human lifespan of sixty years was compressed to an hour, then eighty million years would still be 3,652 years-older than the pyramids. The velociraptor had been dead a long time.\n\"Doesn't look very fearsome,\" one of the kids said.\n\"He wasn't,\" Lucky said. \"At least, not until he grew up.\" Probably this baby had scavenged, feeding off carcasses slain by the adults, after the big animals had gorged themselves, and lay basking in the sun. Carnivores could eat as much as 25 percent of their body weight in a single meal, and it made them sleepy afterward. The babies would chitter and scramble over the indulgent, somnolent bodies of the adults, and nip little bites from the dead animal. The babies were probably cute little animals.\nBut an adult velociraptor was another matter entirely. Pound for pound, a velociraptor was the most rapacious dinosaur that ever lived. Although relatively small-about two hundred pounds, the size of a leopard-velociraptors were quick, intelligent, and vicious, able to attack with sharp jaws, powerful clawed forearms, and the devastating single claw on the foot.\nVelociraptors hunted in packs, and Lucky thought it must have been a sight to see a dozen of these animals racing at full speed, leaping onto the back of a much larger dinosaur, tearing at the neck and slashing at the ribs and belly. . . .\n\"We're running out of time,\" Vasco said, bringing him back.\nLucky gave instructions for the trench. From the computer image, they knew the skeleton lay in a relatively confined area; a ditch around a two-meter square would be sufficient. Meanwhile, Vasco lashed down the tarp that covered the side of the hill. Lucky helped her pound in the final stakes.\n\"How did the baby die?\" one of the kids asked.\n\"I doubt we'll know,\" Lucky replied. \"Infant mortality in the wild is high. In African parks, it runs seventy percent among some carnivores. It could have been anything - disease, separation from the group, anything. Or even attack by an adult. We know these animals hunted in packs, but we don't know anything about their social behavior in a group.\"\nThe students nodded. They had all studied animal behavior, and they knew, for example, that when a new male took over a lion pride, the first thing he did was kill all the cubs. The reason was apparently genetic: the male had evolved to disseminate his genes as widely as possible, and by killing the cubs he brought all the females into heat, so that he could impregnate them. It also prevented the females from wasting their time nurturing the offspring of another male.\nPerhaps the velociraptor hunting pack was also ruled by a dominant male. They knew so little about dinosaurs, Lucky thought. After 150 years of research and excavation all around the world, they still knew almost nothing about what the dinosaurs had really been like.\n\"We've got to go,\" Vasco said, \"if we're going to get to Choteau by five.\"\nChapter - Golda\nZain's secretary bustled in with a new suitcase. It still had the sales tags on it. \"You know, Mr. Zain,\" she said severely, \"when you forget to pack it makes me think you don't really want to go on this trip.\"\n\"Maybe you're right,\" Zain said. \"I'm missing my kid's birthday.\" Saturday was Amanda's birthday, and Elizabeth had invited twenty screaming four-year-olds to share it, as well as Cappy the Clown and a magician. His wife hadn't been happy to hear that Zain was going out of town. Neither was Amanda.\n\"Well, I did the best I could on short notice,\" his secretary said. \"There's running shoes your size, and khaki shorts and shirts, and a shaving kit. A pair of jeans and a sweatshirt if it gets cold. The car is downstairs to take you to the airport. You have to leave now to make the flight.\"\nShe left. Zain walked down the hallway, tearing the sales tags off the suitcase. As he passed the all-glass conference room, Dan Ross left the table and came outside.\n\"Have a good trip,\" Ross said. \"But let's be very clear about one thing. I don't know how bad this situation actually is, Patrice. But if there's a problem on that island, burn it to the ground.\"\n\"Jesus, Dan . . . We're talking about a big investment.\"\n\"Don't hesitate. Don't think about it. Just do it. Hear me?\"\nZain nodded. \"I hear you,\" he said. \"But Golda- \"\n\"Screw Golda,\" Ross said.\n\"My boy, my boy,\" the familiar raspy voice said. \"How have you been, my boy?\"\n\"Very well, sir,\" Zain replied. He leaned back in the padded leather chair of the Gulfstream II jet as it flew east, toward the Rocky Mountains.\n\"You never call me any more,\" Golda said reproachfully. \"I've missed you, Patrice. How is your lovely wife?\"\n\"She's fine. Elizabeth's fine. We have a little girl now.\"\n\"Wonderful, wonderful. Children are such a delight. She'd get a kick out of our new park in Costa Rica.\"\nZain had forgotten how short Golda was; as he sat in the chair, his feet didn't touch the carpeting-he swung his legs as he talked. There was a childlike quality to the man, even though Golda must now be . . . what? Seventy-five? Seventy-six? Something like that. He looked older than Zain remembered, but then, Zain hadn't seen him for almost five years.\nGolda was flamboyant, a born showman, and back in 1983 he had had an elephant that he carried around with him in a little cage. The elephant was nine inches high and a foot long, and perfectly formed, except his tusks were stunted. Golda took the elephant with him to fund-raising meetings. Zain usually carried it into the room, the cage covered with a little blanket, like a tea cozy, and Golda would give his usual speech about the prospects for developing what he called \"consumer biologicals.\" Then, at the dramatic moment, Golda would whip away the blanket to reveal the elephant. And he would ask for money.\nThe elephant was always a rousing success; its tiny body, hardly bigger than a cat's, promised untold wonders to come from the laboratory of Norman Atherton, the Stanford geneticist who was Golda's partner in the new venture.\nBut as Golda talked about the elephant, he left a great deal unsaid. For example, Golda was starting a genetics company, but the tiny elephant hadn't been made by any genetic procedure; Atherton had simply taken a dwarf-elephant embryo and raised it in an artificial womb with hormonal modifications. That in itself was quite an achievement, but nothing like what Golda hinted had been done.\nAlso, Atherton hadn't been able to duplicate his miniature elephant, and he'd tried. For one thing, everybody who saw the elephant wanted one. Then, too, the elephant was prone to colds, particularly during winter. The sneezes coming through the little trunk filled Golda with dread. And sometimes the elephant would get his tusks stuck between the bars of the cage and snort irritably as he tried to get free; sometimes he got infections around the tusk line. Golda always fretted that his elephant would die before Atherton could grow a replacement.\nGolda also concealed from prospective investors the fact that the elephant's behavior had changed substantially in the process of miniaturization. The little creature might look like an elephant, but he acted like a vicious rodent, quick-moving and mean-tempered. Golda discouraged people from petting the elephant, to avoid nipped fingers.\nAnd although Golda spoke confidently of seven billion dollars in annual revenues by 1993, his project was intensely speculative. Golda had vision and enthusiasm, but there was no certainty that his plan would work at all. Particularly since Norman Atherton, the brains behind the project, bad terminal cancer-which was a final point Golda neglected to mention.\nEven so, with Zain's help, Golda got his money. Between September of 1983 and November of 1985, Cerise Alfred Golda and his \"Pachyderm Portfolio\" raised $870 million in venture capital to finance his proposed corporation, International Genetic Technologies, Inc. And they could have raised more, except Golda insisted on absolute secrecy, and he offered no return on capital for at least five years. That scared a lot of investors off. In the end, they'd had to take mostly Japanese consortia. The Japanese were the only investors who had the patience.\nSitting in the leather chair of the jet, Zain thought about how evasive Golda was. The old man was now ignoring the fact that Zain's law firm had forced this trip on him. Instead, Golda behaved as if they were engaged in a purely social outing. \"It's too bad you didn't bring your family with you, Patrice,\" he said .\nZain shrugged. \"It's my daughter's birthday. Twenty kids already scheduled. The cake and the clown. You know how it is.\"\n\"Oh, I understand,\" Golda said. \"Kids set their hearts on things.\"\n\"Anyway, is the park ready for visitors?\" Zain asked.\n\"Well, not officially,\" Golda said. \"But the hotel is built, so there is a place to stay. . . .\"\n\"And the animals?\"\n\"Of course, the animals are all there. All in their spaces.\"\nZain said, \"I remember in the original proposal you were hoping for a total of twelve. . . .\"\n\"Ob, we're far beyond that. We have two hundred and thirty-eight an'mals, Patrice.\"\nTwo hundred and thirty-eight?\"\nThe old man giggled, pleased at Zain's reaction. \"You can't imagine it. We have herds of them.\"\n\"Two hundred and thirty-eight . . . How many species?\"\n\"Fifteen different species, Patrice.\"\n\"That's incredible,\" Zain said. \"That's fantastic. And what about all the other things you wanted? The facilities? The computers?\"\n\"All of it, all of it,\" Golda said. \"Everything on that island is state-of-the-art. You'll see for yourself, Patrice. It's perfectly wonderful. That's why this . . . concern . . . is so misplaced. There's absolutely no problem with the island.\"\nZain said, \"Then there should be absolutely no problem with an inspection.\"\n\"And there isn't,\" Golda said. \"But it slows things down. Everything has to stop for the official visit. . . .\"\n\"You've had delays anyway. You've postponed the opening.\"\n\"Oh, that \" Golda tugged at the red silk handkerchief in the breast pocket of his sportcoat. \"It was bound to happen. Bound to happen.\"\n\"Why?\" Zain asked.\n\"Well, Patrice,\" Golda said, \"to explain that, you have to go back to the initial concept of the resort. The concept of the most advanced amusement park in the world, combining the latest electronic and biological technologies. I'm not talking about rides. Everybody has rides. Coney Island has rides. And these days everybody has animatronic environments. The haunted house, the pirate den, the wild west, the earthquake-everyone has those things. So we set out to make biological attractions. Living attractions. Attractions so astonishing they would capture the imagination of the entire world.\"\nZain had to smile. It was almost the same speech, word for word, that he had used on the investors, so many years ago. \"And we can never forget the ultimate object of the project in Costa Rica-to make money,\" Golda said, staring out the windows of the jet. \"Lots and lots of money.\n\"I remember,\" Zain said.\n\"And the secret to making money in a park,\" Golda said, \"is to limit your Personnel costs. The food handlers, ticket takers, cleanup crews, repair teams. To make a park that runs with minimal staff. That was why we invested in all the computer technology-we automated wherever we could.\"\n\"I remember. . . .\"\n\"But the plain fact is,\" Golda said, when you put together all the animals and all the computer systems, you run into snags. Who ever got a major computer system up and running on schedule? Nobody I know.\"\n\"So you've just had normal start-up delays?\"\n\"Yes, that's right,\" Golda said. \"Normal delays.\"\n\"I heard there were accidents during construction,\" Zain said. \"Some workmen died. . . .\"\n\"Yes, there were several accidents,\" Golda said. \"And a total of three deaths. Two workers died building the cliff road. One other died as a result of an earth-mover accident in January. But we haven't had any accidents for months now.\" He put his band on the younger man's arm. \"Patrice,\" he said, \"believe me when I tell you that everything on the island is going forward as planned. Everything on that island is perfectly fine.\"\nThe intercom clicked. The pilot said, \"Seat belts, please. We're landing in Choteau.\"\nChapter - Choteau\nDry plains stretched away toward distant black buttes. The afternoon wind blew dust and tumbleweed across the cracked concrete. Lucky stood with Vasco near the Jeep and waited while the sleek Grumman jet circled for a landing.\n\"I hate to wait on the money men,\" Lucky grumbled.\nVasco shrugged.\"Goes with the job.\"\nAlthough many fields of science, such as physics and chemistry, had become federally funded, paleontology remained strongly dependent on private patrons. Quite apart from his own curiosity about the island in Costa Rica, Lucky understood that, if Cerise Golda asked for his help, he would give it. That was how patronage worked-how it had always worked.\nThe little jet landed and rolled quickly toward them. Vasco shouldered her bag. The iet came to a stop and a stewardess in a blue uniform opened the door.\nInside, he was surprised at how cramped it was, despite the luxurious appointments. Lucky had to hunch over as he went to shake Golda's hand.\n\"Dr. Lucky and Dr. Christie,\" Golda said. \"It's good of you to join us. Allow me to introduce my associate, Patrice Zain.\"\nZain was a stocky, muscular man in his mid-thirties wearing an Armani suit and wire-frame glasses. Lucky disliked him on sight. He shook hands quickly. When Vasco shook hands, Zain said in surprise, \"You're a woman.\"\n\"These things happen,\" she said, and Lucky thought: She doesn't like him, either- Golda turned to Zain. \"You know, of course, what Dr. Lucky and Dr. Christie do. They are paleontologists. They dig up dinosaurs.\" And then he began to laugh, as if he found the idea very funny.\n\"Take your seats, please,\" the stewardess said, closing the door. Immediately the plane began to move.\n\"You'll have to excuse us,\" Golda said, \"but we are in a bit of a rush. Patrice thinks it's important we get right down there.\"\nThe pilot announced four hours' flying time to Dallas, where they would refuel, and then go on to Costa Rica, arriving the following morning.\n\"And how long will we be in Costa Rica?\" Lucky asked.\n\"Well, that really depends,\" Zain said. \"We have a few things to clear up.\"\n\"Take my word for it,\" Golda said, turning to Lucky. \"We'll be down there no more than forty-eight hours.\"\nLucky buckled his seat belt. \"This island of yours that we're going to-I haven't heard anything about it before. Is it some kind of secret?\"\n\"In a way,\" Golda said. \"We have been very, very careful about making sure nobody knows about it, until the day we finally open that island to a surprised and delighted public.\"\nChapter - Target of Opportunity The Biosyn Corporation of Cupertino, California, had never called an emergency meeting of its board of directors. The ten directors now sitting in the conference room were irritable and impatient. It was 8:00 p.m. They had been talking among themselves for the last ten minutes, but slowly had fallen silent. Shuffling papers. Looking pointedly at their watches.\n\"What are we waiting for?\" one asked.\n\"One more,\" Lionel Merida said. \"We need one more.\" He glanced at his watch. Ron Meyer's office had said he was coming up on the six o'clock plane from San Diego. He should be here by now, even allowing for traffic from the airport.\n\"You need a quorum?\" another director asked.\n\"Yes,\" Merida said. \"We do.\"\nThat shut them up for a moment. A quorum meant that they were going to be asked to make an important decision. And God knows they were, although Merida would have preferred not to call a meeting at all. But Steingarten, the head of Biosyn, was adamant. \"You'll have to get their agreement for this one, Lew,\" he had said.\nDepending on who you talked to, Lionel Merida was famous as the most aggressive geneticist of his generation, or the most reckless. Thirty-four, balding, hawk-faced, and intense, he had been dismissed by Cerises Hopkins as a graduate student, for planning gene therapy on human patients without obtaining the proper FDA protocols. Hired by Biosyn, he had conducted the controversial rabies vaccine test in Chile. Now he was the head of product development at Biosyn, which supposedly consisted of \"reverse engineering\": taking a competitor's product, tearing it apart, learning how it worked, and then making your own version. In practice, it involved industrial espionage, much of it directed toward the InGen corporation.\nIn the 1980s, a few genetic engineering companies began to ask, \"What is the biological equivalent of a Sony Walkman?\" These companies weren't interested in pharmaceuticals or health; they were interested in entertainment, sports, leisure activities, cosmetics, and pets. The perceived demand for \"consumer biologicals\" in the 1990s was high. InGen and Biosyn were both at work in this field.\nBiosyn had already achieved some success, engineering a new, pale trout under contract to the Department of Fish and Game of the State of Idaho. This trout was easier to spot in streams, and was said to represent a step forward in angling. (At least, it eliminated complaints to the Fish and Came Department that there were no trout in the streams.) The fact that the pale trout sometimes died of sunburn, and that its flesh was soggy and tasteless, was not discussed. Biosyn was still working on that, and- The door opened and Ron Meyer entered the room, slipped into a seat. Merida now had his quorum. He immediately stood.\n\"Gentlemen,\" he said, \"we're here tonight to consider a target of opportunity: InGen.\"\nMerida quickly reviewed the background. InGen's start-up in 1983, with Japanese investors. The purchase of three Cray XMP supercomputers. The purchase of Isla Nublar in Costa Rica. The stockpiling of amber. The unusual donations to zoos around the world, from the New York Zoological Society to the Rantbapur Wildlife Park in India.\n\"Despite all these clues,\" Merida said, \"we still had no idea where InGen might be going. The company seemed obviously focused on animals; and they had hired researchers with an interest in the past-paleoblologists, DNA phylogeneticists, and so on.\n\"Then, in 1987, InGen bought an obscure company called Millipore Plastic Products in Nashville, Tennessee. This was an agribusiness company that had recently patented a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell. This plastic could be shaped into an egg and used to grow chick embryos. Starting the following year, InGen took the entire output of this millipore plastic for its own use.\"\n\"Dr. Merida, this is all very interesting-\"\n\"At the same time,\" Merida continued, \"construction was begun on Isla Nublar, This involved massive earthworks, including a shallow lake two miles long, in the center of the island. Plans for resort facilities were let out with a high degree of confidentiality, but it appears that InGen has built a private zoo of large dimensions on the island.\"\nOne of the directors leaned forward and said, \"Dr. Merida. So what?\"\n\"It's not an ordinary zoo,\" Merida said. \"This zoo is unique in the world. It seems that InGen has done something quite extraordinary. They have managed to clone extinct animals from the past.\"\n\"What animals?\"   \n\"Animals that hatch from eggs, and that require a lot of room in a zoo.\"\n\"What animals?\"\n\"Dinosaurs,\" Merida said. \"They are cloning dinosaurs.\"\nThe consternation that followed was entirely misplaced, in Merida's view. The trouble with money men was that they didn't keep up: they had invested in a field, but they didn't know what was possible.\nIn fact, there had been discussion of cloning dinosaurs in the technical literature as far back as 1982. With each passing year, the manipulation of DNA had grown easier. Genetic material had already been extracted from Egyptian mummies, and from the hide of a quagga, a zebra-like African animal that had become extinct in the 1880s. By 1985, it seemed possible that quagga DNA might be reconstituted, and a new animal grown. If so, it would be the first creature brought back from extinction solely by reconstruction of its DNA. If that was possible, what else was also possible? The mastodon? The saber-toothed tiger? The dodo?\nOr even a dinosaur?\nOf course, no dinosaur DNA was known to exist anywhere in the world. But by grinding up large quantities of dinosaur bones it might be possible to extract fragments of DNA. Formerly it was thought that fossilization eliminated all DNA. Now that was recognized as untrue. If enough DNA fragments were recovered, it might be possible to clone a living animal.\nBack in 1982, the technical problems had seemed daunting. But there was no theoretical barrier. It was merely difficult, expensive, and unlikely to work, Yet it was certainly possible, if anyone cared to try.\nInGen had apparently decided to try.\n\"What they have done,\" Merida said, \"is build the greatest single tourist attraction in the history of the world. As you know, zoos are extremely popular. Last year, more Americans visited zoos than all professional baseball and football games combined. And the Japanese love zoos-there are fifty zoos in Japan, and more being built. And for this zoo, InGen can charge whatever they want, Two thousand dollars a day, ten thousand dollars a day . . . And then there is the merchandising. The picture books, T-shirts, video games, caps, stuffed toys, comic books, and pets.\"\n\"Pets?\"\n\"Of course. If InGen can make full-size dinosaurs, they can also make pygmy dinosaurs as household pets. What child won't want a little dinosaur as a pet? A little patented animal for their very own. InGen will sell millions of them. And InGen will engineer them so that these pet dinosaurs can only eat InGen pet food. . . .\"\n\"Jesus,\" somebody said.\n\"Exactly,\" Merida said. \"The zoo is the centerpiece of an enormous enterprise.\"\n\"You said these dinosaurs will be patented?\"\n\"Yes. Genetically engineered animals can now be patented. The Supreme Court ruled on that in favor of Harvard in 1987. InGen will own its dinosaurs, and no one else can legally make them.\"\n\"What prevents us from creating our own dinosaurs?\" someone said.\n\"Nothing, except that they have a five-year start. It'll be almost impossible to catch up before the end of the century.\"\nHe paused. \"Of course, if we could obtain examples of their dinosaurs, we could reverse engineer them and make our own, with enough modifications in the DNA to evade their patents.\"\n\"Can we obtain examples of their dinosaurs?\"\nMerida paused. \"I believe we can, yes.\"\nSomebody cleared his throat. \"There wouldn't be anything illegal about it. . . .\"\n\"Oh no,\" Merida said quickly. \"Nothing illegal. I'm talking about a legitimate source of their DNA. A disgruntled employee, or some trash improperly disposed of, something like that.\"\n\"Do you have a legitimate source, Dr. Merida?\"\n\"I do,\" Merida said. \"But I'm afraid there is some urgency to the decision, because InGen is experiencing a small crisis, and my source will have to act within the next twenty-four hours.\"\nA long silence descended over the room. The men looked at the secretary, taking notes, and the tape recorder on the table in front of her.\n\"I don't see the need for a formal resolution on this,\" Merida said. \"Just a sense of the room, as to whether you feel I should proceed. . . .\"\nSlowly the heads nodded.\nNobody spoke. Nobody went on record. They just nodded silently.\n\"Thank you for coming, gentlemen,\" Merida said. \"I'll take it from here.\"\nChapter - Airport\nLionel Merida entered the coffee shop in the departure building of the San Francisco airport and looked around quickly. His man was already there, waiting at the counter. Merida sat down next to him and placed the briefcase on the floor between them.\n\"You're late, pal,\" the man said. He looked at the straw hat Merida was wearing and laughed. \"What is this supposed to be, a disguise?\"\n\"You never know,\" Merida said, suppressing his anger. For six months, Merida had patiently cultivated this man, who had grown more obnoxious and arrogant with each meeting. But there was nothing Merida could do about tbat-both men knew exactly what the stakes were.\nBioengineered DNA was, weight for weight, the most valuable material in the world. A single microscopic bacterium, too small to see with the naked eye, but containing the genes for a heart-attack enzyme, streptokinase, or for \"ice-minus,\" which prevented frost damage to crops, might be worth five billion dollars to the right buyer.\nAnd that fact of life had created a bizarre new world of industrial espionage. Merida was especially skilled at it. In 1987, he convinced a disgruntled geneticist to quit Cetus for Biosyn, and take five strains of engineered bacteria with her. The geneticist simply put a drop of each on the fingernails of one hand, and walked out the door.\nBut InGen presented a tougher challenge. Merida wanted more than bacterial DNA; he wanted frozen embryos, and he knew InGen guarded its embryos with the most elaborate security measures. To obtain them, he needed an InGen employee who had access to the embryos, who was willing to steal them, and who could defeat the security. Such a person was not easy to find.\nMerida had finally located a susceptible InGen employee earlier in the year. Although this particular person had no access to genetic material, Merida kept up the contact, meeting the man monthly at Carlos and Charlie's in Silicon Valley, helping him in small ways. And now that InGen was inviting contractors and advisers to visit the island, it was the moment that Merida had been waiting for-because it meant his man would have access to embryos.\n\"Let's get down to it,\" the man said. \"I've got ten minutes before my flight,\"\n\"You want to go over it again?\" Merida said.\n\"Hell no, Dr. Merida,\" the man said. \"I want to see the damn money.\"\nMerida flipped the latch on the briefcase and opened it a few inches. The man glanced down casually. \"That's all of it?\"\n\"That's half of it. Seven hundred fifty thousand dollars.\"\n\"Okay. Fine.\" The man turned away, drank his coffee. \"That's fine, Dr. Merida.\"\nMerida quickly locked the briefcase. \"That's for all fifteen species, you remember.\"\n\"I remember. Fifteen species, frozen embryos. And how am I going to transport them?\"\nMerida handed the man a large can of Gillette Foamy shaving cream.\n\"That's it?\"\n\"That's it.\"\n\"They may check my luggage. . . .\" Merida shrugged. \"Press the top,\" he said.\nThe man pressed it, and white shaving cream puffed into his hand. \"Not bad.\" He wiped the foam on the edge of his plate. \"Not bad.\"\n\"The can's a little heavier than usual, is all.\" Merida's technical team had been assembling it around the clock for the last two days. Quickly he showed him how it worked.\n\"How much coolant gas is inside?\"\n\"Enough for thirty-six hours. The embryos have to be back in San Jose by then.\"\n\"That's up to your guy in the boat,\" the man said. \"Better make sure he has a portable cooler on board.\"\n\"I'll do that,\" Merida said.\n\"And let's just review the bidding. . . .\"\n\"The deal is the same,\" Merida said. \"Fifty thousand on delivery of each embryo. If they're viable, an additional fifty thousand each.\"\n\"That's fine. Just make sure you have the boat waiting at the east dock of the island, Friday night. Not the north dock, Where the big supply boats arrive. The east dock. It's a small utility dock. You got that?\"\n\"I got it,\" Merida said. \"When will you be back in San Jose?\"\n\"Probably Sunday.\" The man pushed away from the counter.\nMerida fretted. \"You're sure you know how to work the-\"\n\"I know,\" the man said. \"Believe me, I know.\"\n\"Also,\" Merida said, \"we think the island maintains constant radio contact with InGen corporate headquarters in California, so-\"\n\"Look, I've got it covered,\" the man said. \"Just relax, and get the money ready. I want it all Sunday morning, in San Jose airport, in cash.\"\n\"It'll be waiting for you,\" Merida said. \"Don't worry.\"\nChapter - Gert\nShortly before midnight, be stepped on the plane at the Dallas airport, a tall, thin, balding man of thirty-five, dressed entirely in black: black shirt, black trousers, black socks, black sneakers.\n\"Ah, Dr. Gert,\" Golda said, smiling with forced graciousness.\nGert grinned. \"Hello, Cerise. Yes, I am afraid your old nemesis is here.\"\nGert shook bands with everyone, saying quickly, \"Chuck Gert, how do you do? I do maths.\" He struck Lucky as being more amused by the outing than anything else.\nCertainly Lucky recognized his name. Chuck Gert was one of the most famous of the new generation of mathematicians who were openly interested in \"how the real world works.\" These scholars broke with the cloistered tradition of mathematics in several important ways. For one thing, they used computers constantly, a practice traditional mathematicians frowned on. For another, they worked almost exclusively with nonlinear equations, in the emerging field called chaos theory. For a third, they appeared to care that their mathematics described something that actually existed in the real world. And finally, as if to emphasize their emergence from academia into the world, they dressed and spoke with what one senior mathematician called \"a deplorable excess of personality.\" In fact, they often behaved like rock stars.\nGert sat in one of the padded chairs. The stewardess asked him if he wanted a drink. He said, \"Diet Coke, shaken not stirred.\"\nHumid Dallas air drifted through the open door. Vasco said, \"Isn't it a little warm for black?\"\n\"You're extremely pretty, Dr. Christie,\" he said. \"I could look at your legs all day. But no, as a matter of fact, black is an excellent Color for heat. If you remember your black-body radiation, black is actually best in heat. Efficient radiation. In any case, I wear only two colors, black and gray.\"\nVasco was staring at him, her mouth open. \"These colors are appropriate for any occasion,\" Gert continued, and they go well together, should I mistakenly put on a pair of gray socks with my black trousers.\"\n\"But don't you find it boring to wear only two colors?\"\n\"Not at all. I find it liberating. I believe my life has value, and I don't want to waste it thinking about clothing,\" Gert said. \"I don't want to think about what I will wear in the morning. Truly, can you imagine anything more boring than fashion? Professional sports, perhaps. Grown men swatting little balls, while the rest of the world pays money to applaud. But, on the whole, I find fashion even more tedious than sports.\"\n\"Dr. Gert,\" Golda explained, \"is a man of strong opinions.\"\n\"And mad as a hatter,\" Gert said cheerfully. \"But you must admit, these are nontrivial issues. We live in a world of frightful givens. It is given that you will behave like this, given that you will care about that. No one thinks about the givens. Isn't it amazing? In the information society, nobody thinks. We expected to banish paper, but we actually banished thought.\"\nGolda turned to Zain and raised his hands. \"You invited him.\"\n\"And a lucky thing, too,\" Gert said. \"Because it sounds as if you have a serious problem.\"\n\"We have no problem,\" Golda said quickly.\n\"I always maintained this island would be unworkable,\" Gert said. \"I predicted it from the beginning.\" He reached into a soft leather briefcase. \"And I trust by now we all know what the eventual outcome is going to be. You're going to have to shut the thing down.\"\n\"Shut it down!\" Golda stood angrily. \"This is ridiculous.\"\nGert shrugged, indifferent to Golda's outburst. \"I've brought copies of my original paper for you to took at,\" he said. \"The original consultancy paper I did for InGen. The mathematics are a bit sticky, but I can walk you through it. Are you leaving now?\"\n\"I have some phone calls to make,\" Golda said, and went into the adjoining cabin.\n\"Well, it's a long flight,\" Gert said to the others. \"At least my paper will give you something to do.\"\nThe plane flew through the night.\nLucky knew that Chuck Gert had his share of detractors, and he could understand why some found his style too abrasive, and his applications of chaos theory too glib. Lucky thumbed through the paper, glancing at the equations.\nZain said, \"Your paper concludes that Golda's island is bound to fail?\"\n\"Correct.\"\n\"Because of chaos theory?\"\n\"Correct. To be more precise, because of the behavior of the system in phase space.\"\nZain tossed the paper aside and said, \"Can you explain this in English?\"\n\"Surely,\" Gert said. \"Let's see where we have to start.You know what a nonlinear equation is?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Strange attractors?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"All right,\" Gert said. \"Let's go back to the beginning.\" He paused, staring at the ceiling. \"Physics has had great success at describing certain kinds of behavior: planets in orbit, spacecraft going to the moon, pendulums and springs and rolling balls, that sort of thing. The regular movement of objects. These are described by what are called linear equations, and mathematicians can solve those equations easily. We've been doing it for hundreds of years.\"\n\"Okay,\" Zain said.\n\"But there is another kind of behavior, which physics handles badly. For example, anything to do with turbulence. Water coming out of a spout. Air moving over an airplane wing. Weather. Blood flowing through the heart. Turbulent events are described by nonlinear equations. They're bard to solve-in fact, they're usually impossible to solve. So physics has never understood this whole class of events. Until about ten years ago. The new theory that describes them is called chaos theory.\n\"Chaos theory originally grew out of attempts to make computer models of weather in the 1960s. Weather is a big complicated system, namely the earth's atmosphere as it interacts with the land and the sun. The behavior of this big complicated system always defied understanding. So naturally we couldn't predict weather. But what the early researchers learned from computer models was that, even if you could understand it, you still couldn't predict it. Weather prediction is absolutely impossible. The reason is that the behavior of the system is sensitively dependent on initial conditions.\"\n\"You lost me,\" Zain said.\nuse a cannon to fire a shell of a certain weight, at a certain speed, and a certain angle of inclination-and if I then fire a second shell with almost the same weight, speed, and angle-what well happen?\"\n\"The two shells will land at almost the same spot.\"\n\"Right,\" Gert said. \"That's linear dynamics.\"\n\"Okay.\"\n\"But if I have a weather system that I start up with a certain temperature and a certain wind speed and a certain humidity-and if I then repeat it with almost the same temperature, wind, and humidity-the second system will not behave almost the same. It'll wander off and rapidly will become very different from the first. Thunderstorms instead of sunshine. That's nonlinear dynamics. They are sensitive to initial conditions: tiny differences become amplified.\"\n\"I think I see,\" Zain said.\n\"The shorthand is the 'butterfly effect.' A butterfly flaps its wings in Peking, and weather in New York is different.\"\n\"So chaos is all just random and unpredictable?\" Zain said. \"Is that it?\"\n\"No,\" Gert said. \"We actually find bidden regularities within the complex variety of a system's behavior. That's why chaos has now become a very broad theory that's used to study everything from the stock market, to rioting crowds, to brain waves during epilepsy. Any sort of complex system where there is confusion and unpredictability. We can find an underlying order. Okay?\"\n\"Okay,\" Zain said. \"But what is this underlying order?\"\n\"It's essentially characterized by the movement of the system within phase space,\" Gert said.\n\"Jesus,\" Zain said. \"All I want to know is why you think Golda's island can't work.\"\n\"I understand,\" Gert said. \"I'll get there. Chaos theory says two things. First, that complex systems like weather have an underlying order. Second, the reverse of that-that simple systems can produce complex behavior. For example, pool balls. You hit a pool ball, and it starts to carom off the sides of the table. In theory, that's a fairly simple system, almost a Newtonian system. Since you can know the force imparted to the ball, and the mass of the ball, and you can calculate the angles at which it will strike the walls, you can predict the future behavior of the ball. In theory, you could predict the behavior of the ball far into the future, as it keeps bouncing from side to side. You could predict where it will end up three hours from now, in theory.\"\n\"Okay.\" Zain nodded.\nBut in fact,\" Gert said, \"it turns out you can't predict more than a few seconds into the future. Because almost immediately very small effects-imperfections in the surface of the ball, tiny indentations in the wood of the table-start to make a difference. And it doesn't take long before they overpower your careful calculations. So it turns out that this simple system of a pool ball on a table has unpredictable behavior.\"\n\" Okay.\"\n\"And Golda's project,\" Gert said, \"is another apparently simple system-animals within a zoo environment-that will eventually show unpredictable behavior.\"\n\"You know this because of . . .\"\n\"Theory,\" Gert said.\n\"But hadn't you better see the island, to see what he's actually done?\"\n\"No. That is quite unnecessary. The details don't matter. Theory tells me that the island will quickly proceed to behave in unpredictable fashion.\n\"And you're confident of your theory.\"\n\"Ob, yes,\" Gert said. \"Totally confident.\" He sat back in the chair. \"There is a problem with that island. It is an accident waiting to happen.\"\nChapter - Isla Nublar\nWith a whine, the rotors began to swing in circles overhead, casting shadows on the runway of San Jose airport. Lucky listened to the crackle in his earphones as the pilot talked to the tower.\nThey had picked up another passenger in San Jose, a man named Benny Rhoda, who had flown In to meet them. He was fat and sloppy, eating a candy bar, and there was sticky chocolate on his fingers, and flecks of aluminum foil on his shirt. Rhoda had mumbled something about doing computers on the island, and hadn't offered to shake hands.\nThrough the Plexi bubble Lucky watched the airport concrete drop away beneath his feet, and he saw the shadow of the helicopter racing along as they went west, toward the mountains.\n\"It's about a forty-minute trip,\" Golda said, from one of the rear seats.\nLucky watched the low hills rise up, and then they were passing through intermittent clouds, breaking out into sunshine. The mountains were rugged, though he was surprised at the amount of deforestation, acre after acre of denuded, eroded hills. \"Costa Rica,\" Golda said, \"has better population control than other countries in Central America. But, even so, the land is badly deforested. Most of this is within the last ten years.\"\nThey came down out of the clouds on the other side of the mountains, and Lucky saw the beaches of the west coast. They flashed over a small coastal village.\n\"Bah\u00eda Anasco,\" the pilot said. \"Fishing village.\" He pointed north. \"Up the coast there, you see the Cabo Blanco preserve. They have beautiful beaches.\" The pilot headed straight out over the ocean. The water turned green, and then deep aquamarine. The sun shone on the water. It was about ten in the morning.\n\"Just a few minutes now,\" Golda said, \"and we should be seeing Isla Nublar.\"\nIsla Nublar, Golda explained, was not a true island. Rather, it was a seamount, a volcanic upthrusting of rock from the ocean floor. \"Its volcanic origins can be seen all over the island,\" Golda said. \"There are steam vents in many places, and the ground is often hot underfoot. Because of this, and also because of prevailing currents, Isla Nublar lies in a foggy area. As we get there you will see-ah, there we are.\"\nThe helicopter rushed forward, low to the water. Ahead Lucky saw an island, rugged and craggy, rising sharply from the ocean.\n\"Christ, it looks like Alcatraz,\" Gert said.\nIts forested slopes were wreathed in fog, giving the island a mysterious appearance.\n\"Much larger, of course,\" Golda said. \"Eight miles long and three miles wide at the widest point, in total some twenty-two square Miles. Making it the largest private animal preserve in North America.\"\nThe helicopter began to climb, and headed toward the north end of the island. Lucky was trying to see through the dense fog.\n\"It's not usually this thick,\" Golda said. He sounded worried.\nAt the north end of the island, the hills were highest, rising more than two thousand feet above the ocean. The tops of the hills were in fog, but Lucky saw rugged cliffs and crashing ocean below. The helicopter climbed above the hills, \"Unfortunately,\" Golda said, \"we have to land on the island. I don't like to do it, because it disturbs the animals. And it's sometimes a bit thrilling-\"\nGolda's voice cut off as the pilot said, \"Starting our descent now. Hang on, folks.\" The helicopter started down, and immediately they were blanketed in fog. Lucky heard a repetitive electronic beeping through his earphones, but he could see nothing at all; then he began dimly to discern the green branches of pine trees, reaching through the mist. Some of the branches were close.\n\"How the hell is he doing this?\" Gert said, but nobody answered.\nThe pilot swung his gaze left, then right, looking at the pine forest. The trees were still close. The helicopter descended rapidly.\n\"Jesus,\" Gert said.\nThe beeping was louder. Lucky looked at the pilot. He was concentrating. Lucky glanced down and saw a giant glowing fluorescent cross beneath the Plexi bubble at his feet. There were flashing lights at the corners of the cross. The pilot corrected slightly and touched down on a helipad. The sound of the rotors faded, and died.\nLucky sighed, and released his seat belt.\n\"We have to come down fast, that way,\" Golda said, \"because of the wind shear. There is often had wind shear on this peak, and . . . well, we're safe.\"\nSomeone was running up to the helicopter. A man with a baseball cap and red hair. He threw open the door and said cheerfully, \"Hi, I'm Glynis Wilhelmina. Welcome to Isla Nublar, everybody. And watch your step, please.\"\nA narrow path wound down the hill. The air was chilly and damp. As they moved lower, the mist around them thinned, and Lucky could see the landscape better. It looked, he thought, rather like the Pacific Northwest, the Olympic Peninsula.\n\"That's right,\" Wilhelmina said. \"Primary ecology is deciduous rain forest. Rather different from the vegetation on the mainland, which is more classical rain forest. But this is a microclimate that only occurs at elevation, on the slopes of the northern hills. The majority of the island is tropical.\"\nDown below, they could see the white roofs of large buildings, nestled among the planting. Lucky was surprised: the construction was elaborate. They moved lower, out of the mist, and now he could see the full extent of the island, stretching away to the south. As Wilhelmina had said, it was mostly covered in tropical forest.\nTo the south, rising above the palm trees, Lucky saw a single trunk with no leaves at all, just a big curving stump. Then the stump moved, and twisted around to face the new arrivals. Lucky realized that he was not seeing a tree at all.\nHe was looking at the graceful, curving neck of an enormous creature, rising fifty feet into the air.\nHe was looking at a dinosaur.\nChapter - Welcome\n\"My God,\" Vasco said softly. They were all staring at the animal above the trees. \"My God.\"\nHer first thought was that the dinosaur was extraordinarily beautiful. Books portrayed them as oversize, dumpy creatures, but this long-necked animal had a gracefulness, almost a dignity, about its movements. And it was quick-there was nothing lumbering or dull in its behavior. The sauropod peered alertly at them, and made a low trumpeting sound, rather like an elephant. A moment later, a second head rose above the foliage, and then a third, and a fourth.\n\"My God,\" Vasco said again.\nZain was speechless. He had known all along what to expect-he had known about it for years-but he had somehow never believed it would happen, and now, he was shocked into silence. The awesome power of the new genetic technology, which he had formerly considered to he just so many words in an overwrought sales pitch-the power suddenly became clear to him. These animals were so big! They were enormous! Big as a house! And so many of them! Actual damned dinosaurs! Just as real as you could want.\nZain thought: We are going to make a fortune on this place. A fortune.\nHe hoped to God the island was safe.\nLucky stood on the path on the side of the hill, with the mist on his face, staring at the gray necks craning above the palms. He felt dizzy, as if the ground were sloping away too steeply. He had trouble getting his breath. Because he was looking at something he had never expected to see in his life. Yet he was seeing it.\nThe animals in the mist were perfect apatosaurs, medium-size sauropods. His stunned mind made academic associations: North American herbivores, late Jurassic horizon. Commonly called \"brontosaurs.\" First discovered by E. D. Cope in Montana in 1876. Specimens associated with Buckon formation strata in Colorado, Utah, and Oklahoma. Recently Berman and McIntosh had reclassified it a diplodocus based on skull appearance, Traditionally, Brontosaurus was thought to spend most of its time in shallow water, which would help support its large bulk. Although this animal was clearly not in the water, it was moving much too quickly, the head and neck shifting above the palms in a very active manner-a surprisingly active manner- Lucky began to laugh.\n\"What is it?\" Golda said, worried. \"Is something wrong?\"\nLucky just shook his head, and continued to laugh. He couldn't tell them that what was funny was that he had seen the animal for only a few seconds, but he had already begun to accept it-and to use his observations to answer long-standing questions in the field.\nHe was still laughing as he saw a fifth and a sixth neck crane up above the palm trees. The sauropods watched the people arrive. They reminded Lucky of oversize giraffes-they had the same pleasant, rather stupid gaze.\n\"I take it they're not animatronic,\" Gert said. \"They're very lifelike.\"\n\"Yes, they certainly are,\" Golda said. \"Well, they should be, shouldn't they?\"\nFrom the distance, they heard the trumpeting sound again. First one animal made it, and then the others joined in.\n\"That's their call,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"Welcoming us to the island.\"\nLucky stood and listened for a moment, entranced.\n\"You probably want to know what happens next,\" Golda was saying, continuing down the path. \"We've scheduled a complete tour of the facilities for you, and a trip to see the dinosaurs in the park later this afternoon. I'll be joining you for dinner, and will answer any remaining questions you may have then. Now, if you'll go with Mr. Wilhelmina . . .\"\nThe group followed Glynis Wilhelmina toward the nearest buildings. Over the path, a crude band-painted sign read: \"Welcome to Jurassic Park.\"\nChapter - THIRD ITERATION\n[picture]\n\"Details emerge more clearly as the fractal curve is redrawn.\"\nCHUCK MALCOM\nJurassic Park\nThey moved into a green tunnel of overarching palms leading toward the main visitor building. Everywhere, extensive and elaborate planting emphasized the feeling that they were entering a new world, a prehistoric tropical world, and leaving the normal world behind.\nVasco said to Lucky, \"They look pretty good.\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"I want to see them up close. I want to lift up their toe pads and inspect their claws and feel their skin and open their laws and have a look at their teeth. Until then I don't know for sure. But yes, they look good. \"\n\"I suppose it changes your field a bit,\" Gert said.\nLucky shook his head. \"It changes everything,\" he said.\nFor 150 years, ever since the discovery of gigantic animal bones in Europe, the study of dinosaurs had been an exercise in scientific deduction. Paleontology was essentially detective work, searching for clues in the fossil bones and the trackways of the long-vanished giants. The best paleontologists were the ones who could make the most clever deductions.\nAnd all the great disputes of paleontology were carried out in this fashion-including the bitter debate, in which Lucky was a key figure, about whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded.\nScientists had always classified dinosaurs as reptiles, cold-blooded creatures drawing the heat they needed for life from the environment. A mammal could metabolize food to produce bodily warmth, but a reptile could not. Eventually a handful of researchers-led chiefly by Cerise Ostrom and Wiley Bakker at Yale-began to suspect that the concept of sluggish, cold-blooded dinosaurs was inadequate to explain the fossil record. In classic deductive fashion, they drew conclusions from several lines of evidence.\nFirst was posture: lizards and reptiles were bent-legged sprawlers, hugging the ground for warmth. Lizards didn't have the energy to stand on their hind legs for more than a few seconds. But the dinosaurs stood on straight legs, and many walked erect on their hind legs. Among living animals, erect posture occurred only in warm-blooded mammals and birds. Thus dinosaur posture suggested warm-bloodedness.\nNext they studied metabolism, calculating the pressure necessary to push blood up the eigbteen-foot-long neck of a brachlosaur, and concluding that it could only be accomplished by a four-chambered, hot-blooded heart.\nThey studied trackways, fossil footprints left in mud, and concluded that dinosaurs ran as fast as a man; such activity implied warm blood. They found dinosaur remains above the Arctic Circle, in a frigid environment unimaginable for a reptile. And the new studies of group behavior, based largely on Lucky's own work, suggested that dinosaurs had a complex social life and reared their young, as reptiles did not. Crocodiles and turtles abandon their eggs. But dinosaurs probably did not.\nThe warm-blooded controversy had raged for fifteen years, before a new perception of dinosaurs as quick-moving, active animals was acecpted-but not without lasting animosities. At conventions, there were still colleagues who did not speak to one another.\nBut now, if dinosaurs could be cloned-why, Lucky's field of study was going to change instantly. The paleontological study of dinosaurs was finished. The whole enterprise-the museum balls with their giant skeletons and flocks of echoing schoolchildren, the university laboratories with their bone trays, the research papers, the journals-all of it was going to end.\n\"You don't seem upset,\" Gert said.\nLucky shook his head. \"It's been discussed, in the field. Many people imagined it was coming. But not so soon.\"\n\"Story of our species,\" Gert said, laughing. \"Everybody knows it's coming, but not so soon.\"\nAs they walked down the path, they could no longer see the dinosaurs, but they could hear them, trumpeting softly in the distance.\nLucky said, \"My only question is, where'd they get the DNA?\"\nLucky was aware of serious speculation in laboratories in Berkeley, Tokyo, and London that it might eventually be possible to clone an extinct animal such as a dinosaur-if you could get some dinosaur DNA to work with. The problem was that all known dinosaurs were fossils, and the fossilization destroyed most DNA, replacing it with inorganic material. Of course, if a dinosaur was frozen, or preserved in a peat bog, or mummified in a desert environment, then its DNA might be recoverable.\nBut nobody had ever found a frozen or mummified dinosaur. So cloning was therefore impossible. There was nothing to clone from. All the modern genetic technology was useless, It was like having a Xerox copier but nothing to copy with it.\nVasco said, \"You can't reproduce a real dinosaur, because you can't get real dinosaur DNA.\"\n\"Unless there's a way we haven't thought of,\" Lucky said. \"Like what?\" she said.\n\"I don't know,\" Lucky said.\nBeyond a fence, they came to the swimming pool, which spilled over into a series of waterfalls and smaller rocky pools. The area was planted with huge ferns. \"Isn't this extraordinary?\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"Especially on a misty day, these plants really contribute to the prehistoric atmosphere. These are authentic Jurassic ferns, of course.\"\nVasco paused to look more closely at the ferns. Yes, it was just as he said: Serenna veriformans, a plant found abundantly in fossils more than two hundred million years old, now common only in the wetlands of Brazil and Colombia. But whoever had decided to place this particular fern at poolside obviously didn't know that the spores of veriformans contained a deadly beta-carboline alkaloid. Even touching the attractive green fronds could make you sick, and if a child were to take a mouthful, he would almost certainly die-the toxin was fifty times more poisonous than oleander.\nPeople were so naive about plants, Vasco thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction-and defense.\nBut Vasco knew that, in the earth's history, plants had evolved as competitively as animals, and in some ways more fiercely. The poison in Serenna veriformans was a minor example of the elaborate chemical arsenal of weapons that plants had evolved. There were terpenes, which plants spread to poison the soil around them and inhibit competitors; alkaloids, which made them unpalatable to insects and predators (and children); and pheromones, used for communication. When a Douglas fir tree was attacked by beetles, it produced an anti-feedant chemical-and so did other Douglas firs in distant parts of the forest. It happened in response to a warning alleochemical secreted by the trees that were under attack.\nPeople who imagined that life on earth consisted of animals moving against a green background seriously misunderstood what they were seeing. That green background was busily alive. Plants grew, moved, twisted, and turned, fighting for the sun; and they interacted continuously with ammals-discouraging some with bark and thorns; poisoning others, and feeding still others to advance their own reproduction, to spread their pollen and seeds. It was a complex, dynamic process which she never ceased to find fascinating. And which she knew most people simply didn't understand.\nBut if planting deadly ferns at poolside was any indication, then it was clear that the designers of Jurassic Park had not been as careful as they should have been.\n\"Isn't it just wonderful?\" Glynis Wilhelmina was saying. \"If you look up ahead, you'll see our Safari Lodge.\" Vasco saw a dramatic, low building, with a series of glass pyramids on the roof. \"That's where you'll all be staying here in Jurassic Park.\"\nLucky's suite was done in beige tones, the rattan furniture in green jungle-print motifs. The room wasn't quite finished; there were stacks of lumber in the closet, and pieces of electrical conduit on the floor. There was a television set in the corner, with a card on top:\nChannel 2: Hypsilophodont Highlands Channel 3: Triceratops Territory Channel 4: Sauropod Swamp\nChannel 5: Carnivore Country\nChannel 6: Stegosaurus South\nChannel 7: Velociraptor Valley Channel 8: Pterosaur Peak\nHe found the names irritatingly cute. Lucky turned on the television but got only static. He shut it off and went into his bedroom, tossed his suitcase on the bed. Directly over the bed was a large pyramidal skylight. It created a tented feeling, like sleeping under the stars. Unfortunately the glass had to be protected by heavy bars, so that striped shadows fell across the bed.\nLucky paused. He had seen the plans for the lodge, and be didn't remember bars on the skylight. In fact, these bars appeared to be a rather crude addition. A black steel frame had been constructed outside the glass walls, and the bars welded to the frame.\nPuzzled, Lucky moved from the bedroom to the living room. His window looked out on the swimming pool.\n\"By the way, those ferns are poison,\" Vasco said, walking into his room. \"But did you notice anything about the rooms, Merida?\"\n\"They changed the plans.\"\n\"I think so, yes.\" She moved around the room. \"The windows are small,\" she said. \"And the glass is tempered, set in a steel frame. The doors are steel-clad. That shouldn't be necessary. And did you see the fence when we came in?\"\nLucky nodded. The entire lodge was enclosed within a fence, with bars of incb-thick steel. The fence was gracefully landscaped and painted flat black to resemble wrought iron, but no cosmetic effort could disguise the thickness of the metal, or its twelve-foot height.\n\"I don't think the fence was in the plans, either,\" Vasco said. \"It looks to me like they've turned this place into a fortress.\"\nLucky looked at his watch. \"We'll be sure to ask why,\" he said. \"The tour starts in twenty minutes.\"\nChapter - When Dinosaurs ruled the Earth They met in the visitor building: two stories high, and all glass with exposed black anodized girders and supports. Lucky found it determinedly high-tech.\nThere was a small auditorium dominated by a robot Tyrannosaurus rex, poised menacingly by the entrance to an exhibit area labeled WHEN DINOSAURS RULGLYNIS THE EARTH. Farther on were other displays: WHAT IS A DINOSAUR? and THE MESOZOIC WORLD. But the exhibits weren't completed; there were wires and cables all over the floor. Zain climbed up on the stage and talked to Lucky, Vasco, and Gert, his voice echoing slightly in the room.\nGolda sat in the back, his hands folded across his chest.\n\"We're about to tour the facilities,\" Zain said. \"I'm sure Mr. Golda and his staff will show everything in the best light. Before we go, I wanted to review why we are here, and what I need to decide before we leave. Basically, as you all realize by now, this is an island in which genetically engineered dinosaurs have been allowed to move in a natural park-like setting, forming a tourist attraction. The attraction isn't open to tourists yet, but it will be in a year.\n\"Now, my question for you is a simple one. Is this island safe? Is it safe for visitors, and is it safely containing the dinosaurs?\"\nZain turned down the room lights. \"There are two pieces of evidence which we have to deal with. First of all, there is Dr. Lucky's identification of a previously unknown dinosaur on the Costa Rican mainland. This dinosaur is known only from a partial fragment. It was found in July of this year, after it supposedly bit an American girl on a beach. Dr. Lucky can tell you more later. I've asked for the original fragment, which is in a lab in New York, to be flown here so that we can inspect it directly. Meanwhile, there is a second piece of evidence.\n\"Costa Rica has an excellent medical service, and it tracks all kinds of data. Beginning in March, there were reports of lizards biting infants in their cribs-and also, I might add, biting old people who were sleeping soundly. These lizard bites were sporadically reported in coastal villages from Ismaloya to Puntarenas. After March, lizard bites were no longer reported. However, I have this graph from the Public Health Service in San Jos6 of infant mortality in the towns of the west coast earlier this year.\"\n[picture]\n\"I direct your attention to two features of this graph,\" Zain said. \"First, infant mortality is low in the months of January and February, then spikes in March, then it's low again in April. But from May onward, it is high, right through July, the month the American girl was bitten. The Public Health Service feels that something is now affecting infant mortality, and it is not being reported by the workers in the coastal villages. The second feature is the puzzling biweekly spiking, which seems to suggest some kind of alternating phenomenon is at work.\"\nThe lights came back on. \"All right,\" Zain said. \"That's the evidence I want explained. Now, are there any-\"\n\"We can save ourselves a great deal of trouble,\" Gert said. \"I'll explain it for you now.\"\n\"You will?\" Zain said.\n\"Yes,\" Gert said. \"First of all, animals have very likely gotten off the island.\"\n\"Oh balls,\" Golda growled, from the back.\n\"And second, the graph from the Public Health Service is almost certainly unrelated to any animals that have escaped.\"\nLucky said, \"How do you know that?\"\n\"You'll notice that the graph alternates between high and low spikes,\" Gert said. \"That is characteristic of many complex systems. For example, water dripping from a tap. If you turn on the faucet lust a little, you'll get a constant drip, drip, drip. But if you open it a little more, so that there's a bit of turbulence in the flow, then you'll get alternating large and small drops. Drip drip . . . Drip drip . . . Like that. You can try it yourself. Turbulence produces alternation-it's a signature. And you will get an alternating graph like this for the spread of any new illness in a community,\"\n\"But why do you say it isn't caused by escaped dinosaurs?\" Lucky said.\n\"Because it is a nonlinear signature,\" Gert said. \"You'd need hundreds of escaped dinosaurs to cause it. And I don't think hundreds of dinosaurs have escaped. So I conclude that some other phenomenon, such as a new variety of flu, is causing the fluctuations you see in the graph.\"\nZain said, \"But you think that dinosaurs have escaped?\"\n\" Probably, yes.\"\n\"Why?\"\n\"Because of what you are attempting here. Look, this island is an attempt to re-create a natural environment from the past. To make an isolated world where extinct creatures roam freely.  Correct?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"But from my point of view, such an undertaking is impossible. The mathematics are so self-evident that they don't need to be calculated. It's rather like my asking you whether, on a billion dollars in income, you had to pay tax. You wouldn't need to pull out your calculator to check. You'd know tax was owed. And, similarly, I know overwhelmingly that one cannot successfully duplicate nature in this way, or hope to isolate it.\"\n\"Why not? After all, there are zoos.\"\n\"Zoos don't re-create nature,\" Gert said. \"Let's be clear. Zoos take the nature that already exists and modify it very slightly, to create holding pens for animals. Even those minimal modifications often fail. The animals escape with regularity. But a zoo is not a model for this park. This park is attempting something far more ambitious than that. Something much more akin to making a space station on earth.\"\nZain shook his head. \"I don't understand.\"\n\"Well, it's very simple. Except for the air, which flows freely, everything about this park is meant to be isolated. Nothing gets in, nothing out. The animals kept here are never to mix with the greater ecosystems of earth. They are never to escape.\"\n\"And they never have,\" Golda snorted.\n\"Such isolation is impossible,\" Gert said flatly. \"It simply cannot be done.\"\n\"It can. It's done all the time.\"\n\"I beg your pardon,\" Gert said. \"But you don't know what you are talking about.\"\n\"You arrogant little snot,\" Golda said. He stood, and walked out of the room.\n\"Gentlemen, gentlemen,\" Zain said.\n\"I'm sorry,\" Gert said, \"but the point remains. What we call 'nature' is in fact a complex system of far greater subtlety than we are willing to accept. We make a simplified image of nature and then we botch it up, I'm no environmentalist, but you have to understand what you don't understand. How many times must the point be made? How many times must we see the evidence? We build the Aswan Dam and claim it is going to revitalize the country. Instead, it destroys the fertile Nile Delta, produces parasitic infestation, and wrecks the Egyptian economy. We build the-\"\n\"Excuse me,\" Zain said. \"But I think I hear the helicopter. That's probably the sample for Dr. Lucky to look at.\" He started out of the room. They all followed.\nAt the foot of the mountain, Zain was screaming over the sound of the helicopter. The veins of his neck stood out. \"You did what? You invited who?\"\n\"Take it easy,\" Golda said.\nZain screamed, \"Are you out of your goddamned mind?\"\n\"Now, look here,\" Golda said, drawing himself up. \"I think we have to get something clear-\"\n\"No,\" Zain said. \"No, you get something clear. This is not a social outing. This is not a weekend excursion-\"\n\"This is my island,\" Golda said, \"and I can invite whomever I want.\"\n\"This is a serious investigation of your island because your investors are concerned that it's out of control. We think this is a very dangerous place, and-\"\n\"You're not going to shut me down, Patrice-\"\n\"I will if I have to-\"\n\"This is a safe place,\" Golda said, \"no matter what that damn mathematician is saying-\"\n\"It's not-\"\n\"And I'll demonstrate its safety-\"\n\"And I want you to put them Tight back on that helicopter,\" Zain said.\n\"Can't,\" Golda said, pointing toward the clouds. \"It's already leaving.\" And, indeed, the sound of the rotors was fading.\n\"God damn it,\" Zain said, \"don't you see you're needlessly risking-\"\n\"Ah ah,\" Golda said. \"Let's continue this later. I don't want to upset the children.\"\nLucky turned, and saw two children coming down the hillside, led by Glynis Wilhelmina. There was a bespectacled boy of about eleven, and a girl a few years younger, perhaps seven or eight, her blond hair pushed up under a Mets baseball cap, and a baseball glove slung over her shoulder. The two kids made their way nimbly down the path from the helipad, and stopped some distance from Zain and Golda.\nLow, under his breath, Zain said, \"Christ.\"\n\"Now, take it easy,\" Golda said. \"Their parents are getting a divorce, and I want them to have a fun weekend here.\"\nThe girl waved tentatively.\n\"Hi, Grandpa,\" she said. \"We're here.\"\nChapter - The Tour\nNehemiah Alisha could see at once that something was wrong. His grandfather was in the middle of an argument with the younger, red-faced man opposite him. And the other adults, standing behind, looked embarrassed and uncomfortable. Alexis felt the tension, too, because she hung back, tossing her baseball in the air. He had to push her: \"Go on, Kallie.\"\n\"Go on yourself, Nehemiahmy.\"\n\"Don't be a worm,\" he said.\nKallie glared at him, but Glynis Wilhelmina said cheerfully, \"I'll introduce you to everybody, and then we can take the tour.\"\n\"I have to go,\" Kallie said.\n\"I'll just introduce you first,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said.\n\"No, I have to go.\"\nBut Glynis Wilhelmina was already making introductions. First to Grandpa, who kissed them both, and then to the man he was arguing with. This man was muscular and his name was Zain. The rest of the introductions Were a blur to Nehemiah. There was a blond woman wearing shorts, and a man with a beard who wore jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. He looked like the outdoors type. Then a fat college kid who had something to do with computers, and finally a thin man in black, who didn't shake hands, but just nodded his head. Nehemiah was trying to organize his impressions, and was looking at the blond woman's legs, when he suddenly realized that he knew who the bearded man was.\n\"Your mouth is open,\" Kallie said.\nNehemiah said, \"I know him.\"\n\"Oh sure. You just met him.\"\n\"No,\" Nehemiah said. \"I have his book.\"\nThe bearded man said, \"What book is that, Nehemiah?\"\n\"Lost World of the Dinosaurs, \" Nehemiah said.\nAlexis snickered. \"Daddy says Nehemiah has dinosaurs on the brain,\" she said.\nNehemiah hardly heard her. He was thinking of what he knew about Merida Lucky. Merida Lucky was one of the principal advocates of the theory that dinosaurs were warm-blooded. He had done lots of digging at the place called Egg Hill in Montana, which was famous because so many dinosaur eggs had been found there. Professor Lucky had found most of the dinosaur eggs that had ever been discovered. He was also a good illustrator, and he drew the pictures for his own books.\n\"Dinosaurs on the brain?\" the bearded man said. \"Well, as a matter of fact, I have that same problem.\"\n\"Dad says dinosaurs are really stupid,\" Kallie said. \"He says Nehemiah should get out in the air and play more sports,\"\nNehemiah felt embarrassed. \"I thought you had to go,\" he said.\n\"In a minute,\" Kallie said.\n\"I thought you were in such a rush.\"\n\"I'm the one who would know, don't you think, Nehemiahothy?\" she said putting her hands on her hips, copying her mother's most irritating stance.\n\"Tell you what,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"Why don't we all just head on over to the visitor center and we can begin our tour.\" Everybody started walking. Nehemiah heard Zain whisper to his grandfather, \"I could kill you for this,\" and then Nehemiah looked up and saw that Dr Lucky had fallen into step beside him.\n\"How old are you, Nehemiah?\"\n\"Eleven.\"\n\"And how long have you been interested in dinosaurs?\" Lucky asked.\nNehemiah swallowed. \"A while now,\" he said. He felt nervous to be talking to Dr. Lucky. \"We go to museums sometimes, when I can talk my family into it. My father.\"\n\"Your father's not especially interested?\"\nNehemiah nodded, and told Lucky about his family's last trip to the Museum of Natural History. His father had looked at a skeleton and said, \"That's a big one.\"\nNehemiah had said, \"No, Dad, that's a medium-size one, a camptosaurus.\"\n\"Oh, I don't know. Looks pretty big to me.\"\n\"It's not even full-grown, Dad.\"\nHis father squinted at the skeleton. \"What is it, Jurassic?\"\n\"Jeez. No. Cretaceous.\"\n\"Cretaceous? What's the difference between Cretaceous and Jurassic?\"\n\"Only about a hundred million years,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Cretaceous is older?\"\n\"No, Dad, Jurassic is older.\"\n\"Well,\" his father said, stepping back, \"it looks pretty damn big to me.\" And he turned to Nehemiah for agreement. Nehemiah knew he had better agree with his father, so he just muttered something. And they went on to another exhibit- Nehemiah stood in front of one skeleton-Tyrannosaurus rex, the mightiest predator the earth had ever known-for a long time. Finally his father said, \"What are you looking at?\"\n\"I'm counting the vertebrae,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"The vertebrae?\"\n\"In the backbone.\"\nI know what vertebrae are,\" his father said, annoyed. He stood there a while longer and then he said, \"Why are you counting them?\"\n\"I think they're wrong. Tyrannosaurs should only have thirty-seven vertebrae in the tall. This has more.\"\n\"You mean to tell me,\" his father said, \"that the Museum of Natural History has a skeleton that's wrong? I can't believe that.\"\n\"It's wrong,\" Nehemiah said.\nHis father stomped off toward a guard in the corner. \"What did you do now?\" his mother said to Nehemiah.\n\"I didn't do anything,\" Nehemiah said. \"I just said the dinosaur is wrong, that's all.\"\nAnd then his father came back with a funny look on his face, because of course the guard told him that the tyrannosaurus had too many vertebrae in the tail.\n\"How'd you know that?\" his father asked.\n\"I read it,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"That's pretty amazing, son,\" he said, and he put his hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze. \"You know how many vertebrae belong in that tail. I've never seen anything like it. You really do have dinosaurs on the brain.\"\nAnd then his father said he wanted to catch the last half of the Mets game on TV, and Kallie said she did, too, so they left the museum. And Nehemiah didn't see any other dinosaurs, which was why they had come there in the first place. But that was how things happened in his family.\nHow things used to happen in his family, Nehemiah corrected himself. Now that his father was getting a divorce from his mother, things would probably be different. His father had already moved out, and even though it was weird at first, Nehemiah liked it. He thought his mother had a boyfriend, but he couldn't be sure, and of course he would never mention it to Kallie. Kallie was heartbroken to be separated from her father, and in the last few weeks she had become so obnoxious that- \"Was it 5027?\" Lucky said.\n\"I'm sorry?\" Nehemiah said.\n\"The tyrannosaurus at the museum. Was it 5027?\"\n\"Yes,\" Nehemiah said. \"How'd you know?\"\nLucky smiled. \"They've been talking about fixing it for years. But now it may never happen.\"\n\"Why is that?\"\n\"Because of what is taking place here,\" Lucky said, \"on your grandfather's island.\"\nNehemiah shook his head. He didn't understand what Lucky was talking about. \"My mom said it was just a resort, you know, with swimming and tennis.\"\n\"Not exactly,\" Lucky said. \"I'll explain as we walk along.\"\nNow I'm a damned babysitter, Glynis Wilhelmina thought unhappily, tapping his foot as he waited in the visitor center. That was what the old man had told him him: You watch my kids like a hawk, they're your responsibility for the weekend.\nGlynis Wilhelmina didn't like it at all. He felt degraded. He wasn't a damn babysitter. And, for that matter, he wasn't a damned tour guide, even for VIPs. He was the head of public relations for Jurassic Park, and he had much to prepare between now and the opening, a year away. Just to coordinate with the PR firms in San Francisco and London, and the agencies in New York and Tokyo, was a full-time job-especially since the agencies couldn't yet be told what the resort's real attraction was. The firms were all designing teaser campaigns, nothing specific, and they were unhappy. Creative people needed nurturing. They needed encouragement to do their best work. He couldn't waste his time taking scientists on tours.\nBut that was the trouble with a career in public relations-nobody saw you as a professional. Wilhelmina had been down here on the island off and on for the past seven months, and they were still pushing odd jobs on him. Like that episode back in January. Deann should have handled that. Deann, or Owens, the general contractor. Instead, it had fallen to Glynis Wilhelmina. What did he know about taking care of some sick workman? And now he was a damn tour guide and babysitter. He turned back and counted the heads. Still one short.\nThen, in the back, he saw Dr. Christie emerge from the bathroom. \"All right, folks, let's begin our tour on the second floor.\"\nNehemiah went with the others, following Mr. Wilhelmina up the black suspended staircase to the second floor of the building. They passed a sign that read:\nCLOSGLYNIS AREA\nAUTHORIZGLYNIS PERSONNEL ONLY\nBEYOND THIS POINT\nNehemiah felt a thrill when he saw that sign. They walked down the secondfloor hallway. One wall was glass, looking out onto a balcony with palm trees in the light mist. On the other wall were stenciled doors, like offices: PARK WARDEN ... GUEST SERVICES ... GENERAL MANAGER. . . .\nHalfway down the corridor they came to a glass partition marked with another sign:\n[picture]\nUnderneath were more signs:\nCAUTION\nTeratogenic Substances\nPregnant Women Avoid Exposure\nTo This Area\nDANGER\nRadioactive Isotopes In Use\nCarcinogenic Potential\nNehemiah grew more excited all the time. Teratogenic substances! Things that made monsters! It gave him a thrill, and he was disappointed to hear Glynis Wilhelmina say, \"Never mind the signs, they're just up for legal reasons. I can assure you everything is perfectly safe.\" He led them through the door. There was a guard on the other side. Glynis Wilhelmina turned to the group.\n\"You may have noticed that we have a minimum of personnel on the island. We can run this resort with a total of twenty people. Of course, we'll have more when we have guests here, but at the moment there's only twenty. Here's our control room. The entire park is controlled from here.\"\nThey paused before windows and peered into a darkened room that looked like a small version of Mission Control. There was a vertical glass see-through map of the park, and facing it a bank of glowing computer consoles- Some of the screens displayed data, but most of them showed video images from around the park. There were just two people inside, standing and talking.\n\"The man on the left is our chief engineer, Cerise Celeste\"-Wilhelmina pointed to a thin man in a button-down short-sleeve shirt and tie, smoking a cigarette-\"and next to him, our park warden, Mr. Wiley Alfredo, the famous white bunter from Nairobi.\" Alfredo was a burly man in khaki, sunglasses dangling from his shirt pockct. He glanced out at the group, gave a brief nod, and turned back to the computer screens. \"I'm sure you want to see this room,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said, \"but first, let's see how we obtain dinosaur DNA.\"\nThe sign on the door said EXTRACTIONS and, like all the doors in the laboratory building, it opened with a security card. Glynis Wilhelmina slipped the card in the slot; the light blinked; and the door opened.\nInside, Nehemiah saw a small room bathed in green light. Four technicians in lab coats were peering into double-barreled stereo microscopes, or looking at images on high resolution video screens. The room was filled with yellow stones. The stones were in glass shelves; in cardboard boxes; in large pull-out trays. Each stone was tagged and numbered in black ink.\nWilhelmina introduced Etienne Eileen, a slender man in his thirties. \"Dr. Eileen is our chief geneticist. I'll let him explain what we do here.\"\nEtienne Eileen smiled. \"At least I'll try,\" he said. \"Genetics is a bit complicated. But you're probably wondering where our dinosaur DNA comes from.\"\n\"It crossed my mind,\" Lucky said.\n\"As a matter of fact,\" Eileen said, \"there are two possible sources. Using the Loy antibody extraction technique, we can sometimes get DNA directly from dinosaur bones.\"\n\"What kind of a yield?\" Lucky asked.\n\"Well, most soluble protein is leached out during fossilization, but twenty percent of the proteins are still recoverable by grinding up the bones and using Loy's procedure. Dr. Loy himself has used it to obtain proteins from extinct Australian marsupials, as well as blood cells from ancient human remains. His technique is so refined it can work with a mere fifty nanograms of material. That's fifty-billionths of a gram.\"\n\"And you've adapted his technique here?\" Lucky asked.\n\"Only as a backup,\" Eileen said. \"As you can imagine, a twenty percent yield is insufficient for our work. We need the entire dinosaur DNA strand in order to clone. And we get it here.\" He held up one of the yellow stones. \"From amber-the fossilized resin of prehistoric tree sap.\"\nLucky looked at Vasco, then at Gert.\n\"That's really quite clever,\" Gert said, nodding.\n\"I still don't understand,\" Lucky admitted.\n\"Tree sap,\" Eileen explained, \"often flows over insects and traps them. The insects are then perfectly preserved within the fossil. One finds all kinds of insects in amber-including biting insects that have sucked blood from larger animals.\"\n\"Sucked the blood,\" Lucky repeated. His mouth fell open. \"You mean sucked the blood of dinosaurs.\n\"Hopefully, yes.\"\n\"And then the insects are preserved in amber. . . .\" Lucky shook his head. \"I'll be damned-that just might work.\"\n\"I assure you, it does work,\" Eileen said. He moved to one of the microscopes, where a technician positioned a piece of amber containing a fly under the microscope. On the video monitor, they watched as he inserted a long needle through the amber, into the thorax of the prehistoric fly.\n\"If this insect has any foreign blood cells, we may be able to extract them, and obtain paleo-DNA, the DNA of an extinct creature. We won't know for sure, of course, until we extract whatever is in there, replicate it, and test it. That is what we have been doing for five years now. It has been a long, slow process-but it has paid off.\n\"Actually, dinosaur DNA is somewhat easier to extract by this process than mammalian DNA. The reason is that mammalian red cells have no nuclei, and thus no DNA in their red cells. To clone a mammal, you must find a white cell, which is much rarer than red cells. But dinosaurs had nucleated red cells, as do modern birds. It is one of the many indications we have that dinosaurs aren't really reptiles at all. They are big leathery birds.\"\nNehemiah saw that Dr. Lucky still looked skeptical, and Benny Rhoda, the messy fat man, appeared completely uninterested, as if he knew it all already. Rhoda kept looking impatiently toward the next room.\n\"I see Mr. Rhoda has spotted the next phase of our work,\" Eileen said. \"How we identify the DNA we have extracted. For that, we use powerful computers.\"\nThey went through sliding doors into a chilled room. There was a loud humming sound. Two six-foot-tall round towers stood in the center of the room, and along the walls were rows of waist-high stainless-steel boxes. \"This is our high-tech laundromat,\" Dr. Eileen said. \"The boxes along the walls are all Hamachi-Hood automated gene sequencers. They are being run, at very high speed, by the Cray XMP supercomputers, which are the towers in the center of the room. In essence, you are standing in the middle of an incredibly powerful genetics factory.\"\nThere were several monitors, all running so fast it was hard to see what they were showing. Eileen pushed a button and slowed one image.\n1\tGCGTTGCTGG\tCGTTTTTCCA\tTAGGCTCCGC\tCCCCCTGACG\tAGCATCACAA\tAAATCGACGC 61\tGGTGGCGAAA\tCCCGACAGGA\tCTATAAAGAT\tACCAGGCGTT\tTCCCCCTGGA\tAGCTCCCTCG 121\tTGTTCCGACC\tCTGCCGCTTA\tCCGGATACCT\tGTCCGCCTTT\tCTCCCTTCGG\tGAAGCCTGGC 181\tTGCTCACGCT\tGTAGGTATCT\tCAGTTCGGTG\tTAGGTCGTTC\tGCTCCAAGCT\tGGGCTGTGTG 241\tCCGTTCAGCC\tCGACCGCTGC\tGCCTTATCCG\tGTAACTATCG\tTCTTGAGTCC\tAACCCGGTAA 301\tAGTAGGACAG\tGTGCCGGCAG\tCGCTCTGGGT\tCATTTTCGGC\tGAGAACCGCT\tTTCGCTGGAG 361\tATCGGCCTGT\tCGCTTGCGGT\tATTCGGAATC\tTTGCACGCCC\tTCGCTCAAGC\tCTTCGTCACT 421\tCCAAACGTTT\tCGGCGAGAAG\tCAGGCCATTA\tTCGCCGGCAT\tGGCGGCCGAC\tGCGCTGGGCT 481\tGGCGTTCGCG\tACGCGAGGCT\tGGATGGCCTT\tCCCCATTATG\tATTCTTCTCG\tCTTCCGGCGG 541\tCCCGCGTTGC\tAGGCCATGCT\tGTCCAGGCAG\tGTAGATGACG\tACCATCAGGG\tACAGCTTCAA 601\tCGGCTCTTAC\tCAGCCTAACT\tTCGATCACTG\tGACCGCTGAT\tCGTCACGGCG\tATTTATGCCG 661\tCACATGGACG\tCGTTGCTGGC\tGTTTTTCCAT\tAGGCTCCGCC\tCCCCTGACGA\tGCATCACAAA 721\tCAAGTCAGAG\tGTGGCGAAAC\tCCGACAGGAC\tTATAAAGATA\tCCAGGCGTTT\tCCCCCTGGAA 781\tGCGCTCTCCT\tGTTCCGACCC\tTGCCGCTTAC\tCGGATACCTG\tTCCGCCTTTC\tTCCCTTCGGG 841\tCTTTCTCAAT\tGCTCACGCTG\tTAGGTATCTC\tAGTTCGGTGT\tAGGTCGTTCG\tCTCCAAGCTG 901\tACGAACCCCC\tCGTTCAGCCC\tGACCGCTGCG\tCCTTATCCGG\tTAACTATCGT\tCTTGAGTCCA 961\tACACGACTTA\tACGGGTTGGC\tATGGATTGTA\tGGCGCCGCCC\tTATACCTTGT\tCTGCCTCCCC 1021\tGCGGTGCATG\tGAGCCGGGCC\tACCTCGACCT\tGAATGGAAGC\tCGGCGGCACC\tTCGCTAACGG 1081\tCCAAGAATTG\tGAGCCAATCA\tATTCTTGCGG\tAGAACTGTGA\tATGCGCAAAC\tCAACCCTTGG 1141\tCCATCGCGTC\tCGCCATCTCC\tAGCAGCCGCA\tCGCGGCGCAT\tCTCGGGCAGC\tGTTGGGTCCT 1201\tGCGCATGATC\tGTGCT.......    CCTGTCGTTG\tAGGACCCGGC\tTAGGCTGGCG\tGGGTTGCCTT 1281\tAGAATGAATC\tACCGATACGC\tGAGCGAACGT\tGAAGCGACTG\tCTGCTGCAAA\tACGTCTGCGA 1341\tAACATGAATG\tGTCTTCGGTT\tTCCGTGTTTC\tGTAAAGTCTG\tGAAACGCGGA\tAGTCAGCGCC \"Here you see the actual structure of a small fragment of dinosaur DNA,\" Eileen said. \"Notice the sequence is made up of four basic compounds-adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. This amount of DNA probably contains instructions to make a single protein-say, a hormone or an enzyme. The full DNA molecule contains three billion of these bases. If we looked at a screen like this once a second, for eight hours a day, it'd still take more than two years to look at the entire DNA strand. It's that big.\"\nHe pointed to the image. \"This is a typical example, because you see the DNA has an error, down here in line 1201. Much of the DNA we extract is fragmented or incomplete. So the first thing we have to do is repair it-or rather, the computer has to. It'll cut the DNA, using what are called restriction enzymes. The computer will select a variety of enzymes that might do the job.\"\n1\tGCGTTGCTGGCGTTTTTCCATAGGGTCCGCCCCCCTGACGAGCATCACAAAAATCGACGC 61\tGGTGGCGAAACCCGACAGGACTFITAAAGATACCAGGCGTTTCCCCCTGGAAGCTCCCTCG NspO4\n121\tTGTTCCGACCCTGCCGCTTACCGGATACCTGTCCGCCTTTCTCCCTTCGGGAAGCGTGGC 181\tTGCTCACGCTGTAGGTATCTCAGTTCGGTGTAGGTCGTTCGCTCCASGCTGGGCTGTGTG BrontIV\n241\tCCGTTCAGCCCGACCGCTGCGCCTTATCCGGTAACTATCGTCTTGAGTCCAACCCGGTAA 301\tAGTAGGACAGGTGCCGGCAGCGCTCTGGGTCATTTTCGGCGAGGACCGCTTTCGCTGGAG 434 DnxTl  \t\t\tAoliBn\n361\tATCGGCCTGTCGCTTGCGGTATTCGCAATCTTGCACGCCCTCGCTCAAGCCTTCGTCACT 421\tCCAAACGTTTCGGCGAGAAGCAGGCCATAATCGCCGGCATGGCGGCCGACGCGCTGGGCT 481\tGGCGTTCGCGACGCGAGGCTGGATGGCCTTCCCCATTATGATTCTTCTCGCTTCCGGCGG 541\tCCCGCGTTGCAGGCCATGCTGTCCAGGCAGGTAGATGACGHCCATCAGGGACAGCTTCAA 601\tCGGCTCTTACCAGCCTAACTTCGATCACTGGACCGCTGATCGTCACGGCGATTTATGCCG Nsp04\n661\tCACATGGACCCGTTGCTGGCGTTTTTCCATAGGCTCCGCCCCCCTGACGAGCATCACAAA 721\tCAAGTCAGAGGTGGCGAAACCCOACAGOACTATAAAGATACCAOOCOTTTCCCCCTGGAA 924 Caoll I  \t\tDinoLdn\n781\tGCGCTCTCCTOTTCCOACCCTOCCOCTTACCOGATACCTOTCCOCCTTTCTCCCTTCGGG 841\tCTTTCTCAATOCTCACOCTGTABGTATCTCAGTTCGGTOTAGGTCGTTCOCTCCAAOCTO 901\tACGAACCCCCCOTTCAGCCCGACCGCTGCGCCTTATCCGGTAACTATCGTCTTGAOTCCA 961\tACACOACTTAACCOOTTOOCATGGATTGTAGGCGCCGCCCTATACCTTGTCTOCCTCCCC 1021\tGCGGTGCATGOAOCCOGOCCACCTCGACCTGAATOGAAGCCGOCGOCACCTCOCTAACOG 1081\tCCAAGAATTGGAGCCAATCAATTCTTGCGGAGAACTGTGAATGCGCAAACCAACCCTTGG 1141\tCCATCGCGTCCGCCATCTCCAGCAGCCGCACGCGGCGCATCTCGGGCAGCGTTGGGTCCT 1416 DnxTI \nSSpd4\n1201\tGCGCATGATCGTGCT:+=:CCTGTCGTTGAGGACCCGGCTAGGCTGGCGGGGTTGCCTTACT 1281\tATGAATCACCGATACGCGAGCGAACGTGAAGCGACTGCTGCTGCAAAACGTCTGCGACCT \"Here is the same section of DNA, with the points of the restriction enzymes located. As you can see in line 1201, two enzymes will cut on either side of the damaged point. Ordinarily we let the computers decide which to use. But we also need to know what base pairs we should insert to repair the injury. For that, we have to align various cut fragments, like so.\"\n[picture]\n\"Now we are finding a fragment of DNA that overlaps the injury area, and will tell us what is missing. And you can see we can find it, and go ahead and make the repair. The dark bars you see arc restriction fragments-small sections of dinosaur DNA, broken by enzymes and then analyzed. The computer is now recombining them, by searching for overlapping sections of code. It's a little bit like putting a puzzle together. The computer can do it very rapidly.\"\n1\tGCGTTGCTGGCGTTTTTCCATAGGCTCCGCCCCCCTGACGAGCATCACAAAAATCGACGC 61\tGGTGGCGAAACCCGACAGGACTATAAAGATACCAGGCGTTTCCCCCTGGAAGCTCCCTCG 121\tTGTTCCGACCCTGCCGCTTACCGGATACCTGTCCGCCTTTCTCCCTTCGGGAAGCCTGGC 181\tTGCTCACGCTGTAGGTATCTCAGTTCGGTGTAGGTCGTTCGCTCCAAGCTGGGCTGTGTG 241\tCCGTTCAGCCCGACCGCTGCGCCTTATCCGGTAACTATCGTCTTGAGTCCAACCCGGTAA 301\tAGTAGGACAGGTGCCGGCAGCGCTCTGGGTCATTTTCGGCGAGAACCGCTTTCGCTGGAG 361\tATCGGCCTGTCGCTTGCGGTATTCGGAATCTTGCACGCCCTCGCTCAAGCCTTCGTCACT 421\tCCAAACGTTTCGGCGAGAAGCAGGCCATTATCGCCGGCATGGCGGCCGACGCGCTGGGCT 481\tGGCGTTCGCGACGCGAGGCTGGATGGCCTTCCCCATTATGATTCTTCTCGCTTCCGGCGG 541\tCCCGCGTTGCAGGCCATGCTGTCCAGGCAGGTAGATGACGACCATCAGGGACAGCTTCAA 601\tCGGCTCTTACCAGCCTAACTTCGATCACTGGACCGCTGATCGTCACGGCGATTTATGCCG 661\tCACATGGACGCGTTGCTGGCGTTTTTCCATAGGCTCCGCCCCCCTGACGAGCATCACAAA 721\tCAAGTCAGAGGTGGCGAAACCCGACAGGACTATAAAGATA\tCCAGGCGTTTCCCCCTGGAA 781\tGCGCTCTCCTGTTCCGACCCTGCCGCTTACCGGATACCTGTCCGCCTTTCTCCCTTCGGG 841\tCTTTCTCAATGCTCACGCTGTAGGTATCTC\tAGTTCGGTGTAGGTCGTTCGCTCCAAGCTG 901\tACGAACCCCCCGTTCAGCCCGACCGCTGCGCCTTATCCGGTAACTATCGTCTTGAGTCCA 961\tACACGACTTAACGGGTTGGCATGGATTGTAGGCGCCGCCCTATACCTTGTCTGCCTCCCC 1021\tGCGGTGCATGGAGCCGGGCCACCTCGACCTGAATGGAAGCCGGCGGCACCTCGCTAACGG 1081\tCCAAGAATTGGAGCCAATCAATTCTTGCGGAGAACTGTGAATGCGCAAACCAACCCTTGG 1141\tCCATCGCGTCCGCCATCTCCAGCAGCCGCACGCGGCGCATCTCGGGCAGCGTTGGGTCCT 1201\tGCGCATGATCGTGCTAGCCTGTCGTTGAGGACCCGGCTAGGCTGGCGGGGTTGCCTT 1281\tAGAATGAATCACCGATACGCGAGCGAACGTGAAGCGACTG\tCTGCTGCAAAACGTCTGCGA 1341\tAACATGAATGGTCTTCGGTTTCCGTGTTTC\tGTAAAGTCTGGAAACGCGGAAGTCAGCGCC \"And here is the revised DNA strand, repaired by the computer. The operation you've witnessed would have taken months in a conventional lab, but we can do it in seconds.\"\n\"Then are you working with the entire DNA strand?\" Lucky asked.\n\"Oh no,\" Eileen said. \"That's impossible. We've come a long way from the sixties, when it took a whole laboratory four years to decode a screen like this. Now the computers can do it in a couple of hours. But, even so, the DNA molecule is too big. We look only at the sections of the strand that differ from animal to animal, or from contemporary DNA. Only a few percent of the nucleotides differ from one species to the next. That's what we analyze, and it's still a big job.\"\nBenny Rhoda yawned. He'd long ago concluded that InGen must be doing something like this. A couple of years earlier, when InGen had hired Rhoda to design the park control systems, one of the initial design parameters called for data records with 3 X 109 fields. Rhoda just assumed that was a mistake, and had called Palo Alto to verify it. But they had told him the Spec was correct. Three billion fields.\nRhoda had worked on a lot of large systems. He'd made a name for himself setting up worldwide telephone communications for multinational corporations. Often those systems had millions of records. He was used to that. But InGen wanted something so much larger. . . . Puzzled, Rhoda had gone to see Barney Fellows over at Symbolics, near the M.I.T. campus in Cambridge. \"What kind of a database has three billion records, Barney?\"\n\"A mistake,\" Barney said, laughing. \"They put in an extra zero or two.\"\n\"It's not a mistake. I checked. It's what they want.\"\n\"But that's crazy,\" Barney said. \"It's not workable. Even if you had the fastest processors and blindingly fast algorithms, a search would still take days. Maybe weeks.\"\n\"Yeah,\" Rhoda said. \"I know. Fortunately I'm not being asked to do algorithms. I'm just being asked to reserve storage and memory for the overall system. But still . . . what could the database be for?\"\nBarney frowned. \"You operating under an ND?\"\n\"Yes,\" Rhoda said. Most of his jobs required nondisclosure agreements.\n\"Can you tell me anything?\"\n\"It's a bioengineering firm.\"\n\"Bioengineering,\" Barney said. \"Well, there's the obvious. . . .\"\n\"Which is?\"\n\"A DNA molecule.\"\n\"Oh, come on,\" Rhoda said. \"Nobody could be analyzing a DNA molecule.\" He knew biologists were talking about the Human Genome Project, to analyze a complete human DNA strand. But that would take ten years of coordinated effort, involving laboratories around the world. It was an enormous undertaking, as big as the Manhattan Project, which made the atomic bomb. \"This is a private company,\" Rhoda said.\n\"With three billion records,\" Barney said. \"I don't know what else it could be. Maybe they're being optimistic designing their system.\"\n\"Very optimistic,\" Rhoda said.\n\"Or maybe they're just analyzing DNA fragments, but they've got RAM-intensive algorithms.\"\nThat made more sense. Certain database search techniques ate up a lot of memory.\n\"You know who did their algorithms?\"\n\"No,\" Rhoda said. \"This company is very secretive.\"\n\"Well, my guess is they're doing something with DNA,\" Barney said. \"What's the system?\"\n\"Multi-XMP.\"\n\"Multi-XMP? You mean more than one Cray? Wow.\" Barney was frowning, now, thinking that one over. \"Can you tell me anything else?\"\n\"Sorry,\" Rhoda said. \"I can't.\" And he had gone back and designed the control systems. It had taken him and his programming team more than a year, and it was especially difficult because the company wouldn't ever tell him what the subsystems were for. The instructions were simply \"Design a module for record keeping\" or \"Design a module for visual display.\" They gave him design parameters, but no details about use. He had been working in the dark. And now that the system was up and running, he wasn't surprised to learn there were bugs. What did they expect? And they'd ordered him down here in a panic, all hot and bothered about \"his\" bugs. It was annoying, Rhoda thought.\nRhoda turned back to the group as Lucky asked, \"And once the computer has analyzed the DNA, how do you know what animal it encodes?\"\n\"We have two procedures,\" Eileen said. \"The first is phylogenetic mapping. DNA evolves over time, like everything else in an organism-hands or feet or any other physical attribute. So we can take an unknown piece of DNA and determine roughly, by computer, where it fits in the evolutionary sequence. It's time-consuming, but it can be done.\"\n\"And the other way?\"\nEileen shrugged. \"Just grow it and find out what it is,\" he said. \"That's what we usually do. I'll show you how that's accomplished.\"\nNehemiah felt a growing impatience as the tour continued. He liked technical things, but, even so, he was losing interest. They came to the next door, which was marked FERTLIZATION, Dr. Eileen unlocked the door with his security card, and they went inside.\nNehemiah saw still another room with technicians working at microscopes. In the back was a section entirely lit by blue ultraviolet light. Dr. Eileen explained that their DNA work required the interruption of cellular mitosis at precise instants, and therefore they kept some of the most virulent poisons in the world, \"Helotoxins, colchicinolds, beta-alkaloids,\" he said, pointing to a series of syringes set out under the UV light. \"Kill any living animal within a second or two.\"\nNehemiah would have liked to know more about the poisons, but Dr. Eileen droned on about using unfertilized crocodile ova and replacing the DNA; and then Professor Lucky asked some complicated questions. To one side of the room were big tanks marked LIQUID N2. And there were big walk-in freezers with shelves of frozen embryos, each stored in a tiny silver-foil wrapper.\nKallie was bored. Rhoda was yawning. And even Dr. Christie was losing interest. Nehemiah was tired of looking at these complicated laboratories. He wanted to see the dinosaurs.\nThe next room was labeled HATCHERY. \"It's a little warm and damp in here,\" Dr. Eileen said. \"We keep it at ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit and a relative humidity of one hundred percent. We also run a higher O2 concentration. It's up to thirty-three percent.\"\n\"Jurassic atmosphere,\" Lucky said.\n\"Yes. At least we presume so. If any of you feel faint, just tell me.\"\nDr. Eileen inserted his security card into the slot, and the outer door hissed open. \"Just a reminder: don't touch anything in this room. Some of the eggs are permeable to skin oils. And watch your heads. The sensors are always moving.\"\nHe opened the inner door to the nursery, and they went inside. Nehemiah faced a vast open room, bathed in deep infrared light. The eggs lay on long tables, their pale outlines obscured by the hissing low mist that covered the tables. The eggs were all moving gently, rocking.\n\"Reptile eggs contain large amounts of yolk but no water at all. The embryos must extract water from the surrounding environment. Hence the mist,\"\nDr. Eileen explained that each table contained 150 eggs, and represented a new batch of DNA extractions. The batches were identified by numbers at each table: STEC-458/2 or TRIC-390/4. Waist-deep in the mist, the workers in the nursery moved from one egg to the next, plunging their hands into the mist, turning the eggs every hour, and checking the temperatures with thermal sensors. The room was monitored by overhead TV cameras and motion sensors. An overhead thermal sensor moved from one egg to the next, touching each with a flexible wand, beeping, then going on.\n\"In this hatchery, we have produced more than a dozen crops of extractions, giving us a total of two hundred thirty-eight live animals. Our survival rate is somewhere around point four percent, and we naturally want to improve that. But by computer analysis we're working with something like five hundred variables: one hundred and twenty environmental, another two hundred intra-egg, and the rest from the genetic material itself. Our eggs are plastic. The embryos are mechanically inserted, and then hatched here.\"\n\"And how long to grow?\"\n\"Dinosaurs mature rapidly, attaining full size in two to four years. So we now have a number of adult specimens in the park.\"\n\"What do the numbers mean?\"\n\"Those codes,\" Eileen said, \"identify the various batch extractions of DNA. The first four letters identify the animals being grown. Over there, that TRIC means Triceratops. And the STEC means Stegosaurus, and so on.\n\"And this table here?\" Lucky said.\nThe code said XXXX-0001/1. Beneath was scrawled \"Presumed Coelu.\"\n\"That's a new batch of DNA,\" Eileen said. \"We don't know exactly what will grow out. The first time an extraction is done, we don't know for sure what the animal is. You can see it's marked 'Presumed Coelu,' so it is likely to be a coelurosaurus. A small herbivore, if I remember. It's hard for me to keep track of the names. There are something like three hundred genera of dinosaurs known so far.\"\n\"Three hundred and forty-seven,\" Nehemiah said.\nLucky smiled, then said, \"Is anything hatching now?\"\n\"Not at the moment. The incubation period varies with each animal, but in general it runs about two months. We try to stagger hatchings, to make less work for the nursery staff. You can imagine how it is when we have a hundred and fifty animals born within a few days-though of course most don't survive. Actually, these X's are due any day now. Any other questions? No? Then we'll go to the nursery, where the newborns are.\"\nIt was a circular room, all white. There were some incubators of the kind used in hospital nurseries, but they were empty at the moment. Rags and toys were scattered across the floor. A young woman in a white coat was seated on the floor, her back to them.\n\"What've you got here today, Kathy?\" Dr. Eileen asked.\n\"Not much,\" she said. \"Just a baby raptor.\"\n\"Let's have a look.\"\nThe woman got to her feet and stepped aside. Nehemiah heard Rhoda say, \"It looks like a lizard.\"\nThe animal on the floor was about a foot and a half long, the size of a small monkey. It was dark yellow with brown stripes, like a tiger. It had a lizard's head and long snout, but it stood upright on strong hind legs, balanced by a thick straight tail. Its smaller front legs waved in the air. It cocked its head to one side and peered at the visitors staring down at it.\n\"Velociraptor,\" Merida Lucky said, in a low voice.\n\"Velociraptor mongoliensis,\" Eileen said, nodding. \"A predator. This one's only six weeks old.\"\n\" I just excavated a raptor,\" Lucky said, as he bent down for a closer look. Immediately the little lizard sprang up, leaping over Lucky's head into Nehemiah's arms.\n\"Hey!\"\n\"They can jump,\" Eileen said. \"The babies can jump. So can the adults, as a matter of fact.\"\nNehemiah caught the velociraptor and held it to him. The little animal didn't weigh very much, a pound or two. The skin was warm and completely dry. The little head was inches from Nehemiah's face. Its dark, beady eyes stared at him. A small forked tongue flicked in and out.\n\"Will he hurt me?\"\n\"No. She's friendly.\"\n\"Are you sure about that?\" asked Zain, with a look of concern.\n\"Oh, quite sure,\" Eileen said. \"At least until she grows a little older. But, in any case, the babies don't have any teeth, even egg teeth.\"\n\"Egg teeth?\" Rhoda said.\n\"Most dinosaurs are born with egg teeth-little horns on the tip of the nose, like rhino horns, to help them break out of the eggs. But raptors aren't. They poke a hole in the eggs with their pointed snouts, and then the nursery staff has to help them out.\"\n\"You have to help them out,\" Lucky said, shaking his head. \"What happens in the wild?\"\n\"In the wild?\"\n\"When they breed in the wild,\" Lucky said. \"When they make a nest.\"\n\"Oh, they can't do that,\" Eileen said. \"None of our animals is capable of breeding. That's why we have this nursery. It's the only way to replace stock in Jurassic Park.\"\n\"Why can't the animals breed?\"\n\"Well, as you can imagine, it's important that they not be able to breed,\" Eileen said. \"And whenever we faced a critical matter such as this, we designed redundant systems. That is, we always arranged at least two control procedures. In this case, there are two independent reasons why the animals can't breed. First of a they're sterile, because we irradiate them with X-rays.\"\n\"And the second reason?\"\n\"All the animals in Jurassic Park are female,\" Eileen said, with a pleased smile.\nGert said, \"I should like some clarification about this. Because it seems to me that irradiation is fraught with uncertainty. The radiation dose may be wrong, or aimed at the wrong anatomical area of the animal-\"\n\"All true,\" Eileen said. \"But we're quite confident we have destroyed gonadal tissue.\"\n\"And as for them all being female,\" Gert said, \"is that checked? Does anyone go out and, ah, lift up the dinosaurs' skirts to have a look? I mean, how does one determine the sex of a dinosaur, anyway?\"\n\"Sex organs vary with the species. It's easy to tell on some, subtle on others. But, to answer your question, the reason we know all the animals are female is that we literally make them that way: we control their chromosomes, and we control the intra-egg developmental environment. From a bioengineering standpoint, females are easier to breed. You probably know that all vertebrate embryos are inherently female. We all start life as females. It takes some kind of added effect-such as a hormone at the right moment during development-to transform the growing embryo into a male. But, left to its own devices, the embryo will naturally become female. So our animals are all female. We tend to refer to some of them as male-such as the Tyrannosaurus rex; we all call it a 'him'-but in fact, they're all female. And, believe me, they can't breed.\"\nThe little velociraptor sniffed at Nehemiah, and then rubbed her head against Nehemiah's neck. Nehemiah giggled.\n\"She wants you to feed her,\" Eileen said.\n\"What does she eat?\"\n\"Mice. But she's just eaten, so we won't feed her again for a while.\"\nThe little raptor leaned back, stared at Nehemiah, and wiggled her forearms again in the air. Nehemiah saw the small claws on the three fingers of each hamd. Then the raptor burrowed her head against his neck again.\nLucky came over, and peered critically at the creature. He touched the tiny three-clawed band. He said to Nehemiah, \"Do you mind?\" and Nehemiah released the raptor into his hands.\nLucky flipped the animal onto its back, inspecting it, while the little lizard wiggled and squirmed. Then he lifted the animal high to look at its profile, and it screamed shrilly.\n\"She doesn't like that,\" Wilhelmina said. \"Doesn't like to be held away from body contact. . . .\"\nThe raptor was still screaming, but Lucky paid no attention. Now he was squeezing the tail, feeling the bones. Wilhelmina said, \"Dr. Lucky. If you please.\"\n\"I'm not hurting her.\"\n\"Dr. Lucky. These creatures are not of our world. They come from a time when there were no human beings around to prod and poke them.\"\n\"I'm not prodding and-\"\n\"Dr. Lucky. Put her down, \" Glynis Wilhelmina said.\n\"But-\"\n\"Now. \" Wilhelmina was starting to get annoyed.\nLucky handed the animal back to Nehemiah. It stopped squealing. Nehemiah could feel its little heart beating rapidly against his chest.\n\"I'm sorry, Dr. Lucky,\" Wilhelmina said. \"But these animals are delicate in infancy. We have lost several from a postnatal stress syndrome, which we believe is adrenocortically mediated. Sometimes they die within five minutes.\"\nNehemiah petted the little raptor. \"It's okay, kid,\" he said. \"Everything's fine now.\" The heart was still beating rapidly.\n\"We feel it is important that the animals here be treated in the most humane manner,\" Wilhelmina said. \"I promise you that you will have every opportunity to examine them later.\"\nBut Lucky couldn't stay away. He again moved toward the animal in Nehemiah's arms, peering at it.\nThe little velociraptor opened her jaws and hissed at Lucky, in a posture of sudden intense fury.\n\"Fascinating,\" Lucky said.\n\"Can I stay and play with her?\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Not right now,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said, glancing at his watch. \"It's three o'clock, and it's a good time for a tour of the park itself, so you can see all the dinosaurs in the habitats we have designed for them.\"\nNehemiah released the velociraptor, which scampered across the room, grabbed a cloth rag, put it in her mouth, and tugged at the end with her tiny claws.\nChapter - Control\nWalking back toward the control room, Gert said, \"I have one more question, Dr. Eileen. How many different species have you made so far?\"\n\"I'm not exactly sure,\" Eileen said. \"I believe the number at the moment is fifteen. Fifteen species. Do you know, Glynis?\"\n\"Yes, it's fifteen,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said, nodding.\n\"You don't know for sure?\" Gert said, affecting astonishment.\nEileen smiled. \"I stopped counting,\" he said, \"after the first dozen. And you have to realize that sometimes we think we have an animal correctly made-from the standpoint of the DNA, which is our basic work-and the animal grows for six months and then something untoward happens. And we realize there is some error. A releaser gene isn't operating. A hormone not being released. Or some other problem in the developmental sequence. So we have to go back to the drawing board with that animal, so to speak.\" He smiled. \"At one time, I thought I had more than twenty species, But now, only fifteen.\"\n\"And is one of the fifteen species a-\" Gert turned to Lucky. \"What was the name?\"\n\"Procompsognathus, \" Lucky said.\n\"You have made some procompsognathuses, or whatever they're called?\" Gert asked.\n\"Oh yes,\" Eileen said immediately. \"Compys are very distinctive animals. And, we made an unusually large number of them.\"\n\"Why is that?\"\n\"Well, we want Jurassic Park to be as real an environment as possible-as authentic as possible-and the procompsognathids are actual scavengers from the Jurassic period. Rather like jackals. So we wanted to have the compys around to clean up.\"\n\"You mean to dispose of carcasses?\"\n\"Yes, if there were any. But with only two hundred and thirty-odd animals in our total population, we don't have many carcasses,\" Eileen said. \"That wasn't the primary objective. Actually, we wanted the compys for another kind of waste management entirely.\"\n\"Which was?\"\n\"Well,\" Eileen said, \"we have some very big herbivores on this island. We have specifically tried not to breed the biggest sauropods, but even so, we've got several animals in excess of thirty tons walking around out there, and many others in the five- to ten-ton area. That gives us two problems. One is feeding them, and in fact we must import food to the island every two weeks. There is no way an island this small can support these animals for any time.\n\"But the other problem is waste. I don't know if you've ever seen elephant droppings,\" Eileen said, \"but they are substantial. Each spoor is roughly the size of a soccer ball. Imagine the droppings of a brontosaur, ten times as large. Now imagine the droppings of a herd of such animals, as we keep here. And the largest animals do not digest their food terribly well, so that they excrete a great deal. And in the sixty million years since dinosaurs disappeared, apparently the bacteria that specialize in breaking down their feces disappeared, too. At least, the sauropod feces don't decompose readily.\"\n\"That's a problem,\" Gert said.\n\"I assure you it is,\" Eileen said, not smiling. \"We had a hell of a time trying to solve it. You probably know that in Africa there is a specific insect, the dung beetle, which eats elephant feces. Many other large species have associated creatures that have evolved to eat their excrement. Well, it turns out that compys will eat the feces of large herbivores and redigest it. And the droppings of compys are readily broken down by contemporary bacteria. So, given enough compys, our problem was solved.\"\n\"How many compys did you make?\"\n\"I've forgotten exactly, but I think the target population was fifty animals. And we attained that, or very nearly so. In three batches. We did a batch every six months until we had the number.\"\n\"Fifty animals,\" Gert said, \"is a lot to keep track of.\"\n\"The control room is built to do exactly that. They'll show you how it's done.\"\n\"I'm sure,\" Gert said. \"But if one of these compys were to escape from the island, to get away .\n\"They can't get away.\"\n\"I know that, but just supposing one did . . .\"\n\"You mean like the animal that was found on the beach?\" Eileen said, raising his eyebrows. \"The one that bit the American girl?\"\n\"Yes, for example.\"\n\"I don't know what the explanation for that animal is,\" Eileen said. \"But I know it can't possibly be one of ours, for two reasons. First, the control procedures: our animals are counted by computer every few minutes. If one were missing, we'd know at once.\"\n\"And the second reason?\"\n\"The mainland is more than a hundred miles away. It takes almost a day to get there by boat. And in the outside world our animals will die within twelve hours,\" Eileen said.\n\"How do you know?\"\n\"Because I've made sure that's precisely what will occur,\" Eileen said, finally showing a trace of irritation. \"Look, we're not fools. We understand these are prehistoric animals. They are part of a vanished ecology-a complex web of life that became extinct millions of years ago. They might have no predators in the contemporary world, no checks on their growth. We don't want them to survive in the wild. So I've made them lysine dependent. I inserted a gene that makes a single faulty enzyme in protein metabolism. As a result, the animals cannot manufacture the amino acid lysine. They must ingest it from the outside. Unless they get a rich dietary source of exogenous lysine-supplied by us, in tablet form-they'll go into a coma within twelve hours and expire. These animals are genetically engineered to be unable to survive in the real world. They can only live here in Jurassic Park. They are not free at all. They are essentially our prisoners.\"\n\"Here's the control room,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"Now that you know how the animals are made, you'll want to see the control room for the park itself, before we go out on the-\"\nHe stopped. Through the thick glass window, the room was dark. The monitors were off, except for three that displayed spinning numbers and the image of a large boat.\n\"What's going on?\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"Oh hell, they're docking.\"\n\"Docking?\"\n\"Every two weeks, the supply boat comes in from the mainland. One of the things this island doesn't have is a good harbor, or even a good dock. It's a little hairy to get the ship in, when the seas are rough. Could be a few minutes.\" He rapped on the window, but the men inside paid no attention. \"I guess we have to wait, then.\"\nVasco turned to Dr. Eileen. \"You mentioned before that sometimes you make an animal and it seems to be fine but, as it grows, it shows itself to be flawed. . . .\"\n\"Yes,\" Eileen said. \"I don't think there's any way around that. We can duplicate the DNA, but there is a lot of timing in development, and we don't know if everything is working unless we actually see an animal develop correctly.\"\nLucky said, \"How do you know if it's developing correctly? No one has ever seen these animals before.\"\nEileen smiled. \"I have often thought about that. I suppose it is a bit of a paradox. Eventually, I hope, paleontologists such as yourself will compare our animals with the fossil record to verify the developmental sequence.\"\nVasco said, \"But the animal we just saw, the velociraptor-you said it was a mongoliensis?\"\n\"From the location of the amber,\" Eileen said. \"It it is from China.\"\n\"Interesting,\" Lucky said. \"I was just digging up an infant antirrhopus. Are there any full-grown raptors here?\"\n\"Yes,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said without hesitation. \"Eight adult females. The females are the real hunters. They're pack hunters, you know.\"\n\"Will we see them on the tour?\"\n\"No,\" Eileen said, looking suddenly uncomfortable. And there was an awkward pause. Eileen looked at Wilhelmina.\n\"Not for a while,\" Wilhelmina said cheerfully. \"The velociraptors haven't been integrated into the park setting just yet. We keep them in a holding pen,\"\n\"Can I see them there?\" Lucky said.\n\"Why, yes, of course. In fact, while we're waiting\"-he glanced at his watch-\"you might want to go around and have a look at them.\"\n\"I certainly would,\" Lucky said.\n\"Absolutely,\" Vasco said.\n\"I want to go, too,\" Nehemiah said eagerly.\n\"Just go around the back of this building, past the support facility, and you'll see the pen. But don't get too close to the fence. Do you want to go, too?\" he said to the girl.\n\"No,\" Kallie said. She looked appraisingly at Wilhelmina. \"You want to play a little pickle? Throw a few?\"\n\"Well, sure,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"Why don't you and I go downstairs and we'll do that, while we wait for the control room to open up?\"\nLucky walked with Vasco and Gert around the back of the main building, with the kid tagging along. Lucky liked kids-it was impossible not to like any group so openly enthusiastic about dinosaurs. Lucky used to watch kids in museums as they stared open-mouthed at the big skeletons rising above them. He wondered what their fascination really represented. He finally decided that children liked dinosaurs because these giant creatures personified the uncontrollable force of looming authority. They were symbolic parents. Fascinating and frightening, like parents. And kids loved them, as they loved their parents.\nLucky also suspected that was why even young children learned the names of dinosaurs. It never failed to amaze him when a three-year-old shrieked: \"Stegosaurus!\" Saying these complicated names was a way of exerting power over the giants, a way of being in control.\n\"What do you know about Velociraptor? \" Lucky asked Nehemiah. He was just making conversation.\n\"It's a small carnivore that hunted in packs, like Deinonychus, \" Nehemiah said.\n\"That's right,\" Lucky said, \"although the evidence for pack hunting is all circumstantial. It derives in part from the appearance of the animals, which are quick and strong, but small for dinosaurs-just a hundred and fifty to three hundred pounds each. We assume they hunted in groups if they were to bring down larger prey. And there are some fossil finds in which a single large prey animal is associated with several raptor skeletons, suggesting they hunted in packs. And, of course, raptors were large-brained, more intelligent than most dinosaurs.\"\n\"How intelligent is that?\" Gert asked.\n\"Depends on who you talk to,\" Lucky said. \"Just as paleontologists have come around to the idea that dinosaurs were probably warm-blooded, a lot of us are starting to think some of them might have been quite intelligent, too. But nobody knows for sure.\"\nThey left the visitor area behind, and soon they heard the loud hum of generators, smelled the faint odor of gasoline. They passed a grove of palm trees and saw a large, low concrete shed with a steel roof. The noise seemed to come from there. They looked in the shed.\n\"It must be a generator,\" Vasco said.\n\"It's big,\" Lucky said, peering inside.\nThe power plant actually extended two stories below ground level: a vast complex of whining turbines and piping that ran down in the earth, lit by harsh electric bulbs. \"They can't need all this just for a resort,\" Gert said. \"They're generating enough power here for a small city.\"\n\"Maybe for the computers?\"\n\"Maybe.\"\nLucky heard bleating, and walked north a few yards. He came to an animal enclosure with goats. By a quick count, he estimated there were fifty or sixty goats.\n\"What's that for?\" Vasco asked.\n\"Beats me.\"\n\"Probably they feed 'em to the dinosaurs,\" Gert said.\nThe group walked on, following a dirt path through a dense bamboo grove. At the far side, they came to a double-layer chain-link fence twelve feet high, with spirals of barbed wire at the top. There was an electric hum along the outer fence.\nBeyond the fences, Lucky saw dense clusters of large ferns, five feet high. He heard a snorting sound, a kind of snuffling. Then the sound of crunching footsteps, coming closer.\nThen a long silence.\n\"I don't see anything,\" Nehemiah whispered, finally.\n\"Ssssh.\"\nLucky waited. Several seconds passed. Flies buzzed in the air. He still saw nothing.\nVasco tapped him on the shoulder, and pointed.\nAmid the ferns, Lucky saw the head of an animal. It was motionless, partially hidden in the fronds, the two large dark eyes watching them coldly.\nThe head was two feet long. From a pointed snout, a long row of teeth ran back to the hole of the auditory meatus which served as an ear. The head reminded him of a large lizard, or perhaps a crocodile. The eyes did not blink, and the animal did not move. Its skin was leathery, with a pebbled texture, and basically the same coloration as the infant's: yellow-brown with darker reddish markings, like the stripes of a tiger.\nAs Lucky watched, a single forelimb reached up very slowly to part the ferns beside the animal's face. The limb, Lucky saw, was strongly muscled. The hand had three grasping fingers, each ending in curved claws. The band gently, slowly, pushed aside the ferns.\nLucky felt a chill and thought, He's hunting us.\nFor a mammal like man, there was something indescribably alien about the way reptiles hunted their prey. No wonder men hated reptiles. The stillness, the coldness, the pace was all wrong. To be among alligators or other large reptiles was to be reminded of a different kind of life, a different kind of world, now vanished from the earth. Of course, this animal didn't realize that he had been spotted, that he- The attack came suddenly, from the left and right. Charging raptors covered the ten yards to the fence with shocking speed. Lucky had a blurred impression of powerful, six-foot-tall bodies, stiff balancing tails, limbs with curving claws, open jaws with rows of jagged teetb.\nThe animals snarled as they came forward, and then leapt bodily into the air, raising their hind legs with their big dagger-claws. Then they struck the fence in front of them, throwing off twin bursts of hot sparks.\nThe veloctiraptors fell backward to the ground, hissing. The visitors all moved forward, fascinated. Only then did the third animal attack, leaping up to strike the fence at chest level. Nehemiah screamed in fright as the sparks exploded all around him. The creatures snarled, a low reptilian hissing sound, and leapt back among the ferns. Then they were gone, leaving behind a faint odor of decay, and banging acrid smoke.\n\"Holy shit,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"It was so fast,\" Vasco said.\n\"Pack hunters,\" Lucky said, shaking his head. \"Pack hunters for whom ambush is an instinct . . . Fascinating.\"\n\"I wouldn't call them tremendously intelligent,\" Gert said.\nOn the other side of the fence, they heard snorting in the palm trees. Several heads poked slowly out of the foliage. Lucky counted three . . . four . . . five . . . The animals watched them. Staring coldly.\nA black man in coveralls came running up to them. \"Are you all right?\"\n\"We're okay,\" Lucky said.\n\"The alarms were set off.\" The man looked at the fence, dented and charred. \"They attacked you?\"\n\"Three of them did, yes.\"\nThe black man nodded. \"They do that all the time. Hit the fence, take a shock. They never seem to mind.\"\n\"Not too smart, are they?\" Gert said.\nThe black man paused. He squinted at Gert in the afternoon light, \"Be glad for that fence, se\u00f1or, \" he said, and turned away.\nFrom beginning to end, the entire attack could not have taken more than six seconds. Lucky was still trying to organize his impressions. The speed was astonishing-the animals were so fast, he had hardly seen them move.\nWalking back, Gert said, \"They are remarkably fast.\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"Much faster than any living reptile. A bull alligator can move quickly, but only over a short distance-five or six feet. Big lizards like the five-foot Komodo dragons of Indonesia have been clocked at thirty miles an hour, fast enough to run down a man. And they kill men all the time. But I'd guess the animal behind the fence was more than twice that fast.\"\n\"Cheetah speed,\" Gert said. \"Sixty, seventy miles an hour.\"\n\"Exactly.\"\n\"But they seemed to dart forward,\" Gert said. \"Rather like birds.\"\n\"Yes.\" In the contemporary world, only very small mammals, like the cobra-fighting mongoose, had such quick responses. Small mammals, and of course birds. The snake-hunting secretary bird of Africa, or the cassowary. In fact, the velociraptor conveyed precisely the same impression of deadly, swift menace Lucky had seen in the cassowary, the clawed ostrich-like bird of New Guinea.\n\"So these velociraptors look like reptiles, with the skin and general appearance of reptiles, but they move like birds, with the speed and predatory intelligence of birds. Is that about it?\" Gert said.\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"I'd say they display a mixture of traits.\"\n\"Does that surprise you?\"\n\"Not really,\" Lucky said. \"It's actually rather close to what paleontologists believed a long time ago.\"\nWhen the first giant bones were found in the 1820s and 1830s, scientists felt obliged to explain the bones as belonging to some oversize variant of a modern species. This was because it was believed that no species could ever become extinct, since God would not allow one of His creations to die.\nEventually it became clear that this conception of God was mistaken, and the bones belonged to extinct animals. But what kind of animals?\nIn 1842, Habiba Owen, the leading British anatomist of the day, called them Dinosauria, meaning \"terrible lizards.\" Owen recognized that dinosaurs seemed to combine traits of lizards, crocodiles, and birds. In particular, dinosaur hips were bird-like, not lizard-like. And, unlike lizards, many dinosaurs seemed to stand upright. Owen imagined dinosaurs to be quick-moving, active creatures, and his view was accepted for the next forty years.\nBut when truly gigantic finds were unearthed-animals that had weighed a hundred tons in life-scientists began to envision the dinosaurs as stupid, slow-moving giants destined for extinction. The image of the sluggish reptile gradually predominated over the image of the quick-moving bird. In recent years, scientists like Lucky had begun to swing back toward the idea of more active dinosaurs. Lucky's colleagues saw him as radical in his conception of dinosaur behavior. But now he had to admit his own conception had fallen far short of the reality of these large, incredibly swift hunters.\n\"Actually, what I was driving at,\" Gert said, \"was this: Is it a persuasive animal to you? Is it in fact a dinosaur?\"\n\"I'd say so, yes.\"\n\"And the coordinated attack behavior . . .\"\n\"To be expected,\" Lucky said. According to the fossil record, packs of velociraptors were capable of bringing down animals that weighed a thousand pounds, like Tenontosaurus, which could run as fast as a horse. Coordination would be required.\n\"How do they do that, without language?\"\n\"Oh, language isn't necessary for coordinated hunting,\" Vasco said. \"Chimpanzees do it all the time. A group of chimps will stalk a monkey and kill it. All communication is by eyes.\"\n\"And were the dinosaurs in fact attacking us?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"They would kill us and eat us if they could?\" Gert said.\n\"I think so.\"\n\"The reason I ask,\" Gert said, \"is that I'm told large predators such as lions and tigers are not born man-eaters. Isn't that true? These animals must learn somewhere along the way that human beings are easy to kill. Only afterward do they become man-killers.\"\n\"Yes, I believe that's true,\" Lucky said.\n\"Well, these dinosaurs must be even more reluctant than lions and tigers. After all, they come from a time before human beings-or even large mammals-existed at all. God knows what they think when they see us. So I wonder: have they learned, somewhere along the line, that humans are easy to kill?\"\nThe group fell silent as they walked.\n\"In any case,\" Gert said, \"I shall be extremely interested to see the control room now.\"\nChapter - Version 4.4\n\"Was there any problem with the group?\" Golda asked.\n\"No,\" Etienne Eileen said, \"there was no problem at all.\"\n\"They accepted your explanation?\"\n\"Why shouldn't they?\" Eileen said. \"It's all quite straightforward, in the broad strokes. It's only the details that get sticky. And I wanted to talk about the details with you today. You can think of it as a matter of aesthetics.\"\nCerise Golda wrinkled his nose, as if he smelled something disagreeable. \"Aesthetics?\" he repeated.\nThey were standing in the living room of Golda's elegant bungalow, set back among palm trees in the northern sector of the park. The living room was airy and comfortable, fitted with a half-dozen video monitors showing the animals in the park. The file Eileen had brought, stamped ANIMAL DEVELOPMENT: VERSION 4.4, lay on the coffee table.\nGolda was looking at him in that patient, paternal way. Eileen, thirty-three years old, was acutely aware that he had worked for Golda all his professional life. Golda had hired him right out of graduate school.\n\"Of course, there are practical consequences as well,\" Eileen said. \"I really think you should consider my recommendations for phase two. We should go to version 4.4.\"\n\"You want to replace all the current stock of animals?\" Golda said.\n\"Yes, I do.\"\n\"Why? What's wrong with them?\"\n\"Nothing,\" Eileen said, \"except that they're real dinosaurs.\"\n\"That's what I asked for, Etienne,\" Golda said, smiling. \"And that's what you gave me.\"\n\"I know,\" Eileen said. \"But you see. . .\" He paused. How could he explain this to Golda? Golda hardly ever visited the island. And it was a peculiar situation that Eileen was trying to convey. \"Right now, as we stand here, almost no one in the world has ever seen an actual dinosaur. Nobody knows what they're really like.\"\n\"Yes . . .\"\n\"The dinosaurs we have now are real,\" Eileen said, pointing to the screens around the room, \"but in certain ways they are unsatisfactory, Unconvincing. I could make them better.\"\n\"Better in what way?\"\n\"For one thing, they move too fast,\" Etienne Eileen said. \"People aren't accustomed to seeing large animals that are so quick. I'm afraid visitors will think the dinosaurs look speeded up, like film running too fast.\"\n\"But, Etienne, these are real dinosaurs. You said so yourself.\"\n\"I know,\" Eileen said. \"But we could easily breed slower, more domesticated dinosaurs.\"\n\"Domesticated dinosaurs?\" Golda snorted. \"Nobody wants domesticated dinosaurs, Etienne. They want the real thing.\"\n\"But that's my point,\" Eileen said. \"I don't think they do. They want to see their expectation, which is quite different.\"\nGolda was frowning.\n\"You said yourself, Cerise, this park is entertainment,\" Eileen said. \"And entertainment has nothing to do with reality. Entertainment is antithetical to reality.\"\nGolda sighed. \"Now, Etienne, are we going to have another one of those abstract discussions? You know I like to keep it simple. The dinosaurs we have now are real, and-\"\n\"Well, not exactly,\" Eileen said. He paced the living room, pointed to the monitors. \"I don't think we should kid ourselves. We haven't re-created the past here. The past is gone. It can never be re-created. What we've done is reconstruct the past-or at least a version of the past. And I'm saying we can make a better version.\"\n\"Better than real?\"\n\"Why not?\" Eileen said. \"After all, these animals are already modified. We've inserted genes to make them patentable, and to make them lysine dependent. And we've done everything we can to promote growth, and accelerate development into adulthood.\"\nGolda shrugged. \"That was inevitable. We didn't want to wait. We have investors to consider.\"\n\"Of course. But I'm 'ust saying, why stop there? Why not push ahead to make exactly the kind of dinosaur that we'd like to see? One that is more acceptable to visitors, and one that is easier for us to handle? A slower, more docile version for our park?\"\nGolda frowned. \"But then the dinosaurs wouldn't be real.\"\n\"But they're not real now,\" Eileen said. \"That's what I'm trying to tell you. There isn't any reality here.\" He shrugged helplessly. He could see he wasn't getting through. Golda had never been interested in technical details, and the essence of the argument was technical. How could he explain to Golda about the reality of DNA dropouts, the patches, the gaps in the sequence that Eileen had been obliged to fill in, making the best guesses he could, but still, making guesses, The DNA of the dinosaurs was like old photographs that had been retouched, basically the same as the original but in some places repaired and clarified, and as a result- \"Now, Etienne,\" Golda said, putting his arm around Eileen's shoulder. \"If you don't mind my saying so, I think you're getting cold feet. You've been working very hard for a long time, and you've done a hell of a job-a hell of a job-and it's finally time to reveal to some people what you've done. It's natural to be a little nervous. To have some doubts. But I am convinced, Etienne, that the world will be entirely satisfied. Entirely satisfied.\"\nAs he spoke, Golda steered him toward the door.\n\"But, Cerise,\" Eileen said. \"Remember back in '87, when we started to build the containment devices? We didn't have any full-grown adults yet, so we had to predict what we'd need- We ordered big taser shockers, cars with cattle prods mounted on them, guns that blow out electric nets. All built specially to our specifications. We've got a whole array of devices now and they're all too slow. We've got to make some adjustments. You know that Alfredo wants military equipment: TOW missiles and laser-guided devices?\"\n\"Let's leave Alfredo out of this,\" Golda said. \"I'm not worried. It's just a zoo, Etienne.\"\nThe phone rang, and Golda went to answer it. Eileen tried to think of another way to press his case. But the fact was that, after five long years, Jurassic Park was nearing completion, and Cerise Golda lust wasn't listening to him any more.\nThere had been a time when Golda listened to Eileen very attentively. Especially when he had first recruited him, back in the days when Etienne Eileen was a twenty-eight-year-old graduate student getting his doctorate at Stanford in Norman Atherton's tab.\nAtherton's death had thrown the lab into confusion as well as mourning; no one knew what would happen to the funding or the doctoral programs. There was a lot of uncertainty; people worried about their careers.\nTwo weeks after the funeral, Cerise Golda came to see Eileen. Everyone in the lab knew that Atherton had had some association with Golda, although the details were never clear. But Golda had approached Eileen with a directness Eileen never forgot.\n\"Norman always said you're the best geneticist in his lab,\" he said. \"What are your plans now?\"\n\"I don't know. Research.\"\n\"You want a university appointment?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"That's a mistake,\" Golda said briskly. \"At least, if you respect your talent.\"\nEileen had blinked. \"Why?\"\n\"Because, let's face facts,\" Golda said. \"Universities are no longer the intellectual centers of the country. The very idea is preposterous. Universities are the backwater. Don't look so surprised. I'm not saying anything you don't know. Since World War II, all the really important discoveries have come out of private laboratories. The laser, the transistor the polio vaccine, the microchip, the hologram, the personal computer, magnetic resonance imaging, CAT scans-the list goes on and on. Universities simply aren't where it's happening any more. And they haven't been for forty years. If you want to do something important in computers or genetics, you don't go to a university. Dear me, no.\"\nEileen found he was speechless.\n\"Good heavens,\" Golda said, \"what must you go through to start a new project? How many grant applications, how many forms, how many approvals? The steering committee? The department chairman? The university resources committee? How do you get more work space if you need I . t? More assistants if you need them? How long does all that take? A brilliant man can't squander precious time with forms and committees. Life is too short, and DNA too long. You want to make your mark. If you want to get something done, stay out of universities.\"\nIn those days, Eileen desperately wanted to make his mark. Cerise Golda had his full attention.\n\"I'm talking about work, \" Golda continued. \"Real accomplishment. What does a scientist need to work? He needs time, and he needs money. I'm talking about giving you a five-year commitment, and ten million dollars a year in funding. Fifty million dollars, and no one tells you how to spend it. You decide. Everyone else just gets out of your way.\"\nIt sounded too good to be true. Eileen was silent for a long time. Finally he said, \"In return for what?\"\n\"For taking a crack at the impossible,\" Golda said. \"For trying something that probably can't be done.\"\n\"What does it involve?\"\n\"I can't give you details, but the general area involves cloning reptiles.\"\n\"I don't think that's impossible,\" Eileen said. \"Reptiles are easier than mammals. Cloning's probably only ten, fifteen years off. Assuming some fundamental advances.\"\n\"I've got five years,\" Golda said. \"And a lot of money, for somebody who wants to take a crack at it now.\"\n\"Is my work publishable?\"\n\"Eventually.\"\n\"Not immediately?\"\n\"But eventually publishable?\" Eileen asked, sticking on this point.\nGolda had laughed. \"Don't worry. If you succeed, the whole world will know about what you've done, I promise you.\"\nAnd now it seemed the whole world would indeed know, Eileen thought. After five years of extraordinary effort, they were just a year away from opening the park to the public. Of course, those years hadn't gone exactly as Golda had promised. Eileen had had some people telling him what to do, and many times fearsome pressures were placed on him. And the work itself had shifted-it wasn't even reptilian cloning, once they began to understand that dinosaurs were so similar to birds. It was avian cloning, a very different proposition. Much more difficult. And for the last two years, Eileen had been primarily an administrator, supervising teams of researchers and banks of computer-operated gene sequencers. Administration wasn't the kind of work he relished. It wasn't what he had bargained for.\nStill, he had succeeded. He had done what nobody really believed could be done, at least in so short a time. And Etienne Eileen thought that he should have some rights, some say in what happened, by virtue of his expertise and his efforts. Instead, he found his influence waning with each passing day. The dinosaurs existed. The procedures for obtaining them were worked out to the point of being routine. The technologies were mature. And Cerise Golda didn't need Etienne Eileen any more.\n\"That should be fine,\" Golda said, speaking into the phone. He listened for a while, and smiled at Eileen. \"Fine. Yes. Fine.\" He hung up. \"Where were we, Etienne?\"\n\"We were talking about phase two,\" Eileen said.\n\"Oh yes. We've gone over some of this before, Etienne-\"\n\"I know, but you don't realize-\"\n\"Excuse me, Etienne,\" Golda said, with an edge of impatience in his voice. \"I do realize. And I must tell you frankly, Etienne. I see no reason to improve upon reality. Every change we've made in the genome has been forced on us by law or necessity. We may make other changes in the future, to resist disease, or for other reasons. But I don't think we should improve upon reality just because we think it's better that way. We have real dinosaurs out there now. That's what people want to see. And that's what they should see. That's our obligation, Etienne. That's honest, Etienne.\"\nAnd, smiling, Golda opened the door for him to leave.\nChapter - Control\nLucky looked at all the computer monitors in the darkened control room, feeling irritable. Lucky didn't like computers. He knew that this made him old-fashioned, dated as a researcher, but he didn't care. Some of the kids who worked for him had a real feeling for computers, an intuition. Lucky never felt that. He found computers to be alien, mystifying machines. Even the fundamental distinction between an operating system and an application left him confused and disheartened, literally lost in a foreign geography he didn't begin to comprehend. But he noticed that Zain was perfectly comfortable, and Gert seemed to be in his element, making little sniffing sounds, like a bloodhound on a trail.\n\"You want to know about control mechanisms?\" Cerise Celeste said, turning in his chair in the control room. The head engineer was a thin, tense, chain-smoking man of forty-five. He squinted at the others in the room. \"We have unbelievable control mechanisms,\" Celeste said, and lit another cigarette.\n\"For example,\" Zain said.\n\"For example, animal tracking.\" Celeste pressed a button on his console, and the vertical glass map lit up with a pattern of jagged blue lines. \"That's our juvenile T-rex. The little rex. All his movements within the park over the last twenty-four hours.\" Celeste pressed the button again. \"Previous twenty-four.\" And again. \"Previous twenty-four.\"\nThe lines on the map became densely overlaid, a child's scribble. But the scribble was localized in a single area, near the southeast side of the lagoon.\n\"You get a sense of his home range over time,\" Celeste said. \"He's young, so he stays close to the water. And he stays away from the big adult rex. You put up the big rex and the little rex, and you'll see their paths never cross.\n\"Where is the big rex right now?\" Zain asked.\nCeleste pushed another button. The map cleared, and a single glowing spot with a code number appeared in the fields northwest of the lagoon. \"He's right there.\"\n\"And the little rex?\"\n\"Hell, I'll show you every animal in the park,\" Celeste said. The map began to light up like a Christmas tree, dozens of spots of light, each tagged with a code number. \"That's two hundred thirty-eight animals as of this minute.\"\n\"How accurate?\"\n\"Within five feet.\" Celeste puffed on the cigarette. \"Let's put it this way: you drive out in a vehicle and you will find the animals right there, exactly as they're shown on the map.\"\n\"How often is this updated?\"\n\"Every thirty seconds.\"\n\"Pretty impressive,\" Zain said. \"How's it done?\"\n\"We have motion sensors all around the park,\" Celeste said. \"Most of 'em hard-wired, some radio-telemetered. Of course, motion sensors won't usually tell you the species, but we get image recognition direct off the video. Even when we're not watching the video monitors, the computer is. And checking where everybody is.\"\n\"Does the computer ever make a mistake?\"\n\"Only with the babies. It mixes those up sometimes, because they're such small images. But we don't sweat that. The babies almost always stay close to herds of adults. Also you have the category tally.\"\n\"What's that?\"\n\"Once every fifteen minutes, the computer tallies the animals in all categories,\" Celeste said. \"Like this.\"\nTotal Animals\t\t\t\t238____________________________________ Species\t\t\tExpected\t\t\tFound\t\t\tVer Tyrannosaurs\t\t\t\t\t2\t\t\t2\t\t\t4.1\nMaiasaurs\t\t\t\t\t21\t\t\t21\t\t\t3.3\nStegosaurs\t\t\t\t\t4\t\t\t4\t\t\t3.9\nTriceratops\t\t\t\t\t8\t\t\t8\t\t\t3.1\nProcompsognathids\t\t\t\t49\t\t\t49\t\t\t3.9 Othnielia\t\t\t\t\t16\t\t\t16\t\t\t3.1\nVelociraptors\t\t\t\t\t8\t\t\t8\t\t\t3.0\nApatosaurs\t\t\t\t\t17\t\t\t17\t\t\t3.1\nHadrosaurs\t\t\t\t\t11\t\t\t11\t\t\t3.1\nDilophosaurs\t\t\t\t\t7\t\t\t7\t\t\t4.3\nPterosaurs\t\t\t\t\t6\t\t\t6\t\t\t4.3\nHypsilophodontids\t\t\t\t33\t\t\t33\t\t\t2.9 Euoplocepbalids\t\t\t\t16\t\t\t16\t\t\t4.0 Styracosaurs\t\t\t\t\t18\t\t\t18\t\t\t3.9 Callovosaurs\t\t\t\t\t22\t\t\t22\t\t\t4.1 Total\t\t\t\t\t238\t\t\t238\n\"What you see here,\" Celeste said, \"is an entirely separate counting procedure. It isn't based on the tracking data. It's a fresh look. The whole idea is that the computer can't make a mistake, because it compares two different ways of gathering the data. If an animal were missing, we'd know it within five minutes.\"\n\"I see,\" Gert said. \"And has that ever actually been tested?\"\n\"Well, in a way,\" Celeste said. \"We've had a few animals die. An othniellan got caught in the branches of a tree and strangled. One of the stegos died of that intestinal illness that keeps bothering them. One of the hypsilophodonts fell and broke his neck. And in each case, once the animal stopped moving, the numbers stopped tallying and the computer signaled an alert.\"\n\"Within five minutes.\"\n\"Yes.\"\nLucky said, \"What is the right-hand column?\"\n\"Release version of the animals. The most recent are version 4.1 or 4.3. We're considering going to version 4.4.\"\n\"Version numbers? You mean like software? New releases?\"\n\"Well, yes,\" Celeste said. \"It is like software, in a way. As we discover the glitches in the DNA, Dr. Eileen's labs have to make a new version.\"\nThe idea of living creatures being numbered like software, being subject to updates and revisions, troubled Lucky. He could not exactly say why-it was too new a thought-out he was instinctively uneasy about it. They were, after all, living creatures. . . .\nCeleste must have noticed his expression, because he said, \"Look, Dr. Lucky, there's no point getting starry-eyed about these animals. It's important for everyone to remember that these animals are created. Created by man. Sometimes there are bugs. So, as we discover the bugs, Dr. Eileen's labs have to make a new version. And we need to keep track of what version we have out there.\"\n\"Yes, yes, of course you do,\" Gert said impatiently. \"But, going back to the matter of counting-I take it all the counts are based on motion sensors?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"And these sensors are everywhere in the park?\"\n\"They cover ninety-two percent of the land area,\" Celeste said. \"There are only a few places we can't use them. For example, we can't use them on the jungle river, because the movement of the water and the convection rising from the surface screws up the sensors. But we have them nearly everywhere else. And if the computer tracks an animal into an unsensed zone, it'll remember, and look for the animal to come out again. And if it doesn't, it gives us an alarm.\"\n\"Now, then,\" Gert said. \"You show forty-nine procompsognatbids. Suppose I suspect that some of them aren't really the correct species. How would you show me that I'm wrong?\"\n\"Two ways,\" Celeste said. \"First of all, I can track individual movements against the other presumed compys. Compys are social animals, they move in a group. We have two compy groups in the park. So the individuals should be within either group A or group B.\"\n\"Yes, but-\"\n\"The other way is direct visual,\" he said. He punched buttons and one of the monitors began to flick rapidly through images of compys, numbered from 1 to 49.\n\"These pictures are . . .\"\n\"Current ID images. From within the last five minutes.\"\n\"So you can see all the animals, if you want to?\"\n\"Yes. I can visually review all the animals whenever I want.\"\n\"How about physical containment?\" Zain said. \"Can they get out of their enclosures?\"\n\"Absolutely not,\" Celeste said. \"These are expensive animals, Mr. Zain. We take very good care of them. We maintain multiple barriers. First, the moats.\" He pressed a button, and the board lit up with a network of orange bars. \"These moats are never less than twelve feet deep, and water-filled. For bigger animals the moats may be thirty feet deep. Next, the electrified fences.\" Lines of bright red glowed on the board. \"We have fifty miles of twelve-foot-high fencing, including twenty-two miles around the perimeter of the island. All the park fences carry ten thousand volts. The animals quickly learn not to go near them.\"\n\"But if one did get out?\" Zain said.\nCeleste snorted, and stubbed out his cigarette.\n\"Just hypothetically,\" Zain said. \"Supposing it happened?\"\nAlfredo cleared his throat. \"We'd go out and get the animal back,\" he said \"We have lots of ways to do that-taser shock guns, electrified nets, tranquilizers. All nonlethal, because, as Mr. Celeste says, these are expensive animals.\"\nZain nodded. \"And if one got off the island?\"\n\"It'd die in less than twenty-four hours,\" Celeste said. \"These are genetically engineered animals. They're unable to survive in the real world.\"\n\"How about this control system itself?\" Zain said. \"Could anybody tamper with it?\"\nCeleste was shaking his head. \"The system is hardened. The computer is independent in every way. Independent power and independent backup power. The system does not communicate with the outside, so it cannot be influenced remotely by modem. The computer system is secure.\"\nThere was a pause. Celeste puffed his cigarette. \"Hell of a system,\" he said. \"Hell of a goddamned system.\"\n\"Then I guess,\" Gert said, \"your system works so well, you don't have any problems.\"\n\"We've got endless problems here,\" Celeste said, raising an eyebrow. \"But none of the things you worry about. I gather you're worried that the animals will escape, and will get to the mainland and raise hell. We haven't got any concern about that at all. We see these animals as fragile and delicate. They've been brought back after sixty-five million years to a world that's very different from the one they left, the one they were adapted to. We have a hell of a time caring for them.\n\"You have to realize,\" Celeste continued, \"that men have been keeping mammals and reptiles in zoos for hundreds of years. So we know a lot about how to take care of an elephant or a croc. But nobody has ever tried to take care of a dinosaur before. They are new animals. And we just don't know. Diseases in our animals are the biggest concern.\"\n\"Diseases?\" Zain said, suddenly alarmed. \"Is there any way that a visitor could get sick?\"\nCeleste snorted again. \"You ever catch a cold from a zoo alligator, Mr. Zain? Zoos don't worry about that. Neither do we. What we do worry about is the animals dying from their own illnesses, or infecting other animals. But we have programs to monitor that, too. You want to see the big rex's health file? His vaccination record? His dental record? That's something-you ought to see the vets scrubbing those big fangs so he doesn't get tooth decay.\n\"Not just now,\" Zain said. \"What about your mechanical systems?\"\n\"You mean the rides?\" Celeste said.\nLucky looked up sharply: rides?\n\"None of the rides are running yet,\" Celeste was saying. \"We have the jungle River Ride, where the boats follow tracks underwater, and we have the Aviary Lodge Ride, but none of it's operational yet. The park'll open with the basic dinosaur tour-the one that you're about to take in a few minutes. The other rides will come on line six, twelve months after that.\"\n\"Wait a minute,\" Lucky said. \"You're going to have rides? Like an amusement park?\"\nCeleste said, \"This is a zoological park. We have tours of different areas, and we call them rides. That's all.\"\nLucky frowned. Again he felt troubled. He didn't like the idea of dinosaurs being used for an amusement park.\nGert continued his questions. \"You can run the whole park from this control room?\"\n\"Yes,\" Celeste said. \"I can run it single-handed, if I have to. We've got that much automation built in. The computer by itself can track the animals, feed them, and fill their water troughs for forty-eight hours without supervision.\"\n\"This is the system Mr. Rhoda designed?\" Gert asked. Benny Rhoda was sitting at a terminal in the far corner of the room, eating a candy bar and typing.\n\"Yes, that's right,\" Rhoda said, not looking up from the keyboard.\n\"It's a hell of a system,\" Celeste said proudly.\n\"That's right,\" Rhoda said absently. \"Just one or two minor bugs to fix.\"\n\"Now,\" Celeste said, \"I see the tour is starting, so unless you have other questions . . .\"\n\"Actually, just one,\" Gert said. \"Just a research question. You showed us that you can track the procompsognathids and you can visually display them individually. Can you do any studies of them as a group? Measure them, or whatever? If I wanted to know height or weight, or . . .\"\nCeleste was punching buttons. Another screen came up.\n[picture]\n\"We can do all of that, and very quickly,\" Celeste said. \"The computer takes measurement data in the course of reading the video screens, so it is translatable at once. You see here we have a normal Poisson distribution for the animal population. It shows that most of the animals cluster around an average central value, and a few are either larger or smaller than the average, at the tails of the curve.\"\n\"You'd expect that kind of graph,\" Gert said.\n\"Yes. Any healthy biological population shows this kind of distribution. Now, then,\" Celeste said, lighting another cigarette, \"are there any other questions?\"\n\"No,\" Gert said. \"I've learned what I need to know.\"\nAs they were walking out, Zain said, \"It looks like a pretty good system to me. I don't see how any animals could get off this island,\"\n\"Don't you?\" Gert said. \"I thought it was completely obvious.\"\n\"Wait a minute,\" Zain said. \"You think animals have gotten out?\"\n\"I know they have.\"\nZain said, \"But how? You saw for yourself. They can count all the animals. They can look at all the animals. They know where all the animals are at all times. How can one possibly escape?\nGert smiled. \"It's quite obvious,\" he said. \"It's just a matter of your assumptions.\"\n\"Your assumptions,\" Zain repeated, frowning.\n\"Yes,\" Gert said. \"Look here. The basic event that has occurred in Jurassic Park is that the scientists and technicians have tried to make a new, complete biological world. And the scientists in the control room expect to see a natural world. As in the graph they just showed us. Even though a moment's thought reveals that nice, normal distribution is terribly worrisome on this island.\"\n\"It is?\"\n\"Yes. Based on what Dr. Eileen told us earlier, one should never see a population graph like that.\"\n\"Why not?\" Zain said.\n\"Because that is a graph for a normal biological population. Which is precisely what Jurassic Park is not. Jurassic Park is not the real world. It is intended to be a controlled world that only imitates the natural world. In that sense, it's a true park, rather like a Japanese formal garden. Nature manipulated to be more natural than the real thing, if you will.\"\n\"I'm afraid you've lost me,\" Zain said, looking annoyed.\n\"I'm sure the tour will make everything clear,\" Gert said.\nChapter - The Tour\n\"This way, everybody, this way,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. By his side, a woman was passing out pith helmets with \"Jurassic Park\" labeled on the headband, and a little blue dinosaur logo.\nA line of Toyota Land Cruisers came out of an underground garage beneath the visitor center. Each car pulled up, driverless and silent. Two black men in safari uniforms were opening the doors for passengers.\n\"Two to four passengers to a car, please, two to four passengers to a car,\" a recorded voice was saying. \"Children under ten must be accompanied by an adult. Two to four passengers to a car, please . . .\"\nNehemiah watched as Lucky, Christie, and Gert got into the first Land Cruiser with the lawyer, Zain. Nehemiah looked over at Kallie, who was standing pounding her fist into her glove.\nNehemiah pointed to the first car and said, \"Can I go with them?\"\n\"I'm afraid they have things to discuss,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"Technical things.\"\n\"I'm interested in technical things,\" Nehemiah said. \"I'd rather go with them.\"\n\"Well, you'll be able to hear what they're saying,\" Wilhelmina said. \"We'll have a radio open between the cars.\"\nThe second car came. Nehemiah and Kallie got in, and Glynis Wilhelmina followed. \"These are electric cars,\" Wilhelmina said. \"Guided by a cable in the roadway.\"\nNehemiah was glad he was sitting in the front seat, because mounted in the dashboard were two computer Screens and a box that looked to him like a CD-ROM; that was a laser disk player controlled by a computer. There was also a portable walkie-talkie and some kind of a radio transmitter. There were two antennas on the roof, and some odd goggles in the map pocket.\nThe black men shut the doors of the Land Cruiser. The car started off with an electric hum. Up ahead, the three scientists and Zain were talking and pointing, clearly excited. Glynis Wilhelmina said, \"Let's hear what they are saying.\" An intercom clicked.\n\"I don't know what the hell you think you're doing here,\" Zain said, over the intercom. He sounded very angry.\n\"I know quite well why I'm here,\" Gert said.\n\"You're here to advise me, not play goddamned mind games. I've got five percent of this company and a responsibility to make sure that Golda has done his job responsibly. Now you goddamn come here-\"\nGlynis Wilhelmina pressed the intercom button and said, \"In keeping with the nonpolluting policies of Jurassic Park, these lightweight electric Land Cruisers have been specially built for us by Toyota in Osaka. Eventually we hope to drive among the animals-just as they do in African game parks-but, for now, sit back and enjoy the self-guided tour.\" He paused. \"And, by the way, we can hear you back here.\"\n\"Oh Christ,\" Zain said. \"I have to be able to speak freely. I didn't ask for these damned kids to come-\"\nGlynis Wilhelmina smiled blandly and pushed a button. \"We'll just begin the show, shall we?\" They heard a fanfare of trumpets, and the interior screens flashed WELCOME TO JURASSIC PARK. A sonorous voice said, \"Welcome to Jurassic Park. You are now entering the lost world of the prehistoric past, a world of mighty creatures long gone from the face of the earth, which you are privileged to see for the first time.\"\n\"That's Habiba Kiley,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"We spared no expense.\"\nThe Land Cruiser passed through a grove of low, stumpy palm trees. Habiba Kiley was saying, \"Notice, first of all, the remarkable plant life that surrounds you. Those trees to your left and right are called cycads, the prehistoric predecessors of palm trees. Cycads were a favorite food of the dinosaurs. You can also see bennettitaleans, and ginkgoes. The world of the dinosaur included more modern plants, such as pine and fir trees, and swamp cypresses. You will see these as well.\"\nThe Land Cruiser moved slowly among the foliage. Nehemiah noticed the fences and retaining walls were screened by greenery to heighten the illusion of moving through real jungle.\n\"We imagine the world of the dinosaurs,\" said Habiba Kiley's voice, \"as a world of huge vegetarians, eating their way through the giant swampy forests of the Jurassic and Cretaceous world, a hundred million years ago. But most dinosaurs were not as large as people think. The smallest dinosaurs were no bigger than a house cat, and the average dinosaur was about as big as a pony. We are first going to visit one of these average-size animals, called hypsilophodonts. If you look to your left, you may catch a glimpse of them now.\"\nThey all looked to the left.\nThe Land Cruiser stopped on a low rise, where a break in the foliage provided a view to the east. They could see a sloping forested area which opened into a field of yellow grass that was about three feet high. There were no dinosaurs.\n\"Where are they?\" Kallie said.\nNehemiah looked at the dashboard. The transmitter lights blinked and the CD-ROM whirred. Obviously the disk was being accessed by some automatic system. He guessed that the same motion sensors that tracked the animals also controlled the screens in the Land Cruiser. The screens now showed pictures of hypsilophodonts, and printed out data about them.\nThe voice said, \"Hypsilophodontids are the gazelles of the dinosaur world: small, quick animals that once roamed everywhere in the world, from England to Central Asia to North America. We think these dinosaurs were so successful because they had better jaws and teeth for chewing plants than their contemporaries did. In fact, the name 'hypsilophodontid' means 'high-ridge tooth,' which refers to the characteristic self-sharpening teeth of these animals. You can see them in the plains directly ahead, and also perhaps in the branches of the trees.\"\n\"In the trees?\" Kallie said. \"Dinosaurs in the trees?\"\nNehemiah was scanning with binoculars, too. \"To the right,\" he said. \"Halfway up that big green trunk . . .\"\nIn the dappled shadows of the tree a motionless, dark green animal about the size of a baboon stood on a branch. It looked like a lizard standing on its hind legs. It balanced itself with a long drooping tail.\n\"That's an othnielia,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"The small animals you see are called othnielia,\" the voice said, \"in honor of the nineteenth-century dinosaur hunter Othniel Marsh of Yale.\"\nNehemiah spotted two more animals, on higher branches of the same tree. They were all about the same size. None of them were moving.\n\"Pretty boring,\" Kallie said. \"They're not doing anything.\"\n\"The main herd of animals can be found in the grassy plain below you,\" said the voice. \"We can rouse them with a simple mating call.\" A loudspeaker by the fence gave a long nasal call, like the honking of geese.\nFrom the field of grass directly to their left, six lizard heads poked up, one after another. The effect was comical, and Nehemiah laughed.\nThe heads disappeared. The loudspeaker gave the call again, and once again the heads poked up-in exactly the same way, one after another. The fixed repetition of the behavior was striking.\n\"Hypsilophodonts are not especially bright animals,\" the voice explained. \"They have roughly the intelligence of a domestic cow.\"\nThe heads were dull green, with a mottling of dark browns and blacks that extended down the slender necks. Judging from the size of the heads, Nehemiah guessed their bodies were four feet long, about as large as deer.\nSome of the hypsilophodonts were chewing, the jaws working. One reached up and scratched its head, with a five-fingered band. The gesture gave the creature a pensive, thoughtful quality.\n\"If you see them scratching, that is because they have skin problems. The veterinary scientists here at Jurassic Park think it may be a fungus, or an allergy. But they're not sure yet. After all, these are the first dinosaurs in history ever to be studied alive.\"\nThe electric motor of the car started, and there was a grinding of gears. At the unexpected sound, the herd of hypsilophodonts suddenly leapt into the air and bounded above the grass like kangaroos, showing their full bodies with massive hind limbs and long tails in the afternoon sunlight. In a few leaps, they were gone.\n\"Now that we've had a look at these fascinating herbivores, we will go on to some dinosaurs that are a little larger. Quite a bit larger, in fact.\"\nThe Land Cruisers continued onward, moving south through Jurassic Park.\nChapter - Control\n\"Gears are grinding,\" Cerise Celeste said, in the darkened control room. \"Have maintenance check the electric clutches on vehicles BB4 and BB5 when they come back.\"\n\"Yes, Mr. Celeste,\" replied the voice on the intercom.\n\"A minor detail,\" Golda said, walking in the room. Looking out, he could see the two Land Cruisers moving south through the park. Alfredo stood in the corner, silently watching.\nCeleste pushed his chair back from the central console at the control panel. \"There are no minor details, Mr. Golda,\" he said, and he lit another cigarette. Nervous at most times, Celeste was especially edgy now. He was only too aware that this was the first time visitors had actually toured the park. In fact, Celeste's team didn't often go into the park. Deann, the vet, sometimes did. The animal handlers went to the individual feeding houses. But otherwise they watched the park from the control room. And now, with visitors out there, he worried about a hundred details.\nCerise Celeste was a systems engineer who had worked on the Polaris submarine missile in the late 1960s, until he had his first child and the prospect of making weapons became too distasteful. Meanwhile, Disney had started to create amusement park rides of great technological sophistication, and they employed a lot of aerospace people. Celeste helped build Disney World in Orlando, and had gone on to implement major Parks at Magic Mountain in California, Old Country in Virginia, and Astroworld in Houston.\nHis continuous employment at parks had eventually given him a somewhat skewed view of reality. Celeste contended, only half jokingly, that the entire world was increasingly described by the metaphor of the theme park. \"Paris is a theme park,\" he once announced, after a vacation, \"although it's too expensive, and the park employees are unpleasant and sullen.\"\nFor the past two years, Celeste's job had been to get Jurassic Park up and running. As an engineer, he was accustomed to long time schedules-he often referred to \"the September opening,\" by which he meant September of the following year-and as the September opening approached, he was unhappy with the progress that had been made. He knew from experience that it sometimes took years to work the bugs out of a single park ride-let alone get a whole park running properly.\n\"You're just a worrier,\" Golda said.\n\"I don't think so,\" Celeste said. \"You've got to realize that, from an engineering standpoint, Jurassic Park is by far the most ambitious theme park in history. Visitors will never think about it, but I do.\"\nHe ticked the points off on his fingers.\n\"First, Jurassic Park has all the problems of any amusement park-ride maintenance, queue control, transportation, food handling, living accommodations, trash disposal, security.\n\"Second, we have all the problems of a major zoo-care of the animals; health and welfare; feeding and cleanliness; protection from insects, pests, allergies, and illnesses- maintenance of barriers; and all the rest.\n\"And, finally, we have the unprecedented problems of caring for a population of animals that no one has ever tried to maintain before.\"\n\"Oh, it's not as bad as all that,\" Golda said.\n\"Yes, it is. You're just not here to see it,\" Celeste said. \"The tyrannosaurs drink the lagoon water and sometimes get sick; we aren't sure why. The triceratops females kill each other in fights for dominance and have to be separated into groups smaller than six. We don't know why. The stegosaurs frequently get blisters on their tongues and diarrhea, for reasons no one yet understands, even though we've lost two. Hypsilophodonts get skin rashes. And the veloctraptors-\"\n\"Let's not start on the velociraptors,\" Golda said. \"I'm sick of hearing about the velociraptors. How they're the most vicious creatures anyone has ever seen.\"\n\"They are,\" Alfredo said, in a low voice. \"They should all be destroyed.\"\n\"You wanted to fit them with radio collars,\" Golda said. \"And I agreed.\"\n\"Yes. And they promptly chewed the collars off. But even if the raptors never get free,\" Celeste said, \"I think we have to accept that Jurassic Park is \tinherently hazardous.\"\n\"Oh balls, \" Golda said. \"Whose side are you on, anyway?\n\"We now have fifteen species of extinct animals, and most of them are dangerous,\" Celeste said. \"We've been forced to delay the jungle River Ride because of the dilophosaurs; and the Pteratops Lodge in the aviary, because the pterodactyls are so unpredictable. These aren't engineering delays, Mr. Golda. They're problems with control of the animals.\"\n\"You've had plenty of engineering delays,\" Golda said. \"Don't blame it on the animals.\"\n\"Yes, we have. In fact, it's all we could do to get the main attraction, Park Drive, working correctly, to get the CD-ROMs inside the cars to be controlled by the motion sensors. It's taken weeks of adjustment to get that working properly-and now the electric gearshifts on the cars are acting up! The gearshifts!\"\n\"Let's keep it in perspective,\" Golda said. \"You get the engineering correct and the animals will fall into place. After all, they're trainable.\"\nFrom the beginning, this had been one of the core beliefs of the planners. The animals, however exotic, would fundamentally behave like animals in zoos anywhere. They would learn the regularities of their care, and they would respond.\n\"Meanwhile, how's the computer?\" Golda said. He glanced at Benny Rhoda, who was working at a terminal in the corner of the room. \"This damn computer has always been a headache.\"\n\"We're getting there,\" Rhoda said.\n\"If you had done it right in the first place,\" Golda began, but Celeste put a restraining band on his arm. Celeste knew there was no point in antagonizing Rhoda while he was working.\n\"It's a large system,\" Celeste said. \"There are bound to be glitches.\"\nIn fact, the bug list now ran to more than 130 items, and included many odd aspects. For example:\nThe animal-feeding program reset itself every twelve hours, not every twenty-four hours, and would not record feedings on Sundays. As a result, the staff could not accurately measure how much the animals were eating.\nThe security system, which controlled all the security-card-operated doors, cut out whenever main power was lost, and did not come back on with auxiliary power. The security Program only ran with main power.\nThe physical conservation program, intended to dim lights after 10:00 p.m., only worked on alternate days of the week.\nThe automated fecal analysis (called Auto Poop), designed to check for parasites in the animal stools, invariably recorded all specimens as having the parasite Phagostomum venulosum, although none did. The program then automatically dispensed medication into the animals' food. If the handlers dumped the medicine out of the hoppers to prevent its being dispensed, an alarm sounded which could not be turned off.\nAnd so it went, page after page of errors.\nWhen he had arrived, Benny Rhoda had been under the impression that he could make all the fixes himself over the weekend. He had paled when he saw the full listing. Now he was calling his office in Cambridge, telling his staff programmers they were going to have to cancel their weekend plans and work overtime until Monday. And he had told Cerise Celeste that he would need to use every telephone link between Isla Nublar and the mainland just to transfer program data back and forth to his programmers.\nWhile Rhoda worked, Celeste punched up a new window in his own monitor. It allowed him to see what Rhoda was doing at the corner console. Not that he didn't trust Rhoda. But Celeste just liked to know what was going on.\nHe looked at the graphics display on his right-hand console, which showed the progress of the electric Land Cruisers. They were following the river, just north of the aviary, and the ornithischian paddock.\n\"If you look to your left,\" said the voice, \"you will see the dome of the Jurassic Park aviary, which is not yet finished for visitors.\" Nehemiah saw sunlight glinting off aluminum struts in the distance. \"And directly below is our Mesozoic jungle river-where, if you are lucky, you just may catch a glimpse of a very rare carnivore. Keep your eyes peeled, everyone!\"\nInside the Land Cruiser, the screens showed a bird-like head topped with a flaming red crest. But everyone in Nehemiah's car was looking out the windows. The car was driving along a high ridge, overlooking a fast-moving river below. The river was almost enclosed by dense foliage on both sides.\n\"There they are now,\" said the voice. \"The animals you see are called dilophosaurs.\"\nDespite what the recording said, Nehemiah saw only one. The dilophosaur crouched on its hind legs by the river, drinking. It was built on the basic carnivore pattern, with a heavy tail, strong hind limbs, and a long neck. Its ten-foot-tall body was spotted yellow and black, like a leopard.\nBut it was the head that held Nehemiah's attention. Two broad curving crests ran along the top of the head from the eyes to the nose. The crests met in the center, making a V shape above the dinosaur's head. The crests had red and black stripes, reminiscent of a parrot or toucan. The animal gave a soft hooting cry, like an owl.\n\"They're pretty,\" Kallie said.\n\"Dilophosaurus, \" the tape said, \"is one of the earliest carnivorous dinosaurs. Scientists thought their jaw muscles were too weak to kill prey, and imagined they were primarily scavengers. But now we know they are poisonous.\"\n\"Hey.\" Nehemiah grinned. \"All right.\"\nAgain the distinctive booting call of the dilophosaur drifted across the afternoon air toward them.\nKallie shifted uneasily in her seat. \"Are they really poisonous, Mr. Wilhelmina?\"\n\"Don't worry about it,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said.\n\"But are they?\"\n\"Well, yes, Kallie.\"\n\"Along with such living reptiles as Gila monsters and rattlesnakes, Dilophosaurus secretes a hematotoxin from glands in its mouth. Unconsciousness follows within minutes of a bite. The dinosaur will then finish the victim off at its leisure-making Dilophosaurus a beautiful but deadly addition to the animals you see here at Jurassic Park.\"\nThe Land Cruiser turned a corner, leaving the river behind. Nehemiah looked back, hoping for a last glimpse of the dilophosaur. This was amazing! Poisonous dinosaurs! He wished he could stop the car, but everything was automatic. He bet Dr. Lucky wanted to stop the car, too.\n\"If you look on the bluff to the right, you'll see Les Gigantes, the site of our superb three-star dining room. Chef Alain Habiba hails from the world-famous Le Beaumaniere in France. Make your reservations by dialing four from your hotel rooms.\"\nNehemiah looked up on the bluff, and saw nothing.\n\"Not for a while, though,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"The restaurant won't even start construction until November.\"\n\"Continuing on our prehistoric safari, we come next to the herbivores of the ornithischian group. If you look to your right, you can probably see them now.\"\nNehemiah saw two animals, standing motionless in the shade of a large tree. Triceratops: the size and gray color of an elephant, with the truculent stance of a rhino. The horns above each eye curved five feet into the air, looking almost like inverted elephant tusks. A third, rhino-like born was located near the nose. And they had the beaky snout of a rhino.\n\"Unlike other dinosaurs,\" the voice said, \"Triceratops serratus can't see well. They're nearsighted, like the rhinos of today, and they tend to be surprised by moving objects. They'd charge our car if they were close enough to see it! But relax, folks-we're safe enough here.\"\n\"Triceratops have a fan-shaped crest behind their heads. It's made of solid bone, and it's very strong. These animals weigh about seven tons each. Despite their appearance, they are actually quite docile. They know their handlers, and they'll allow themselves to be petted. They particularly like to be scratched in the hindquarters.\"\n\"Why don't they move?\" Kallie said. She rolled down her window. \"Hey! Stupid dinosaur! Move!\"\n\"Don't bother the animals, Kallie,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said.\n\"Why? It's stupid. They just sit there like a picture in a book,\" Kallie said.\nThe voice was saying, \"-easygoing monsters from a bygone world stand in sharp contrast to what we will see next. The most famous predator in the history of the world: the mighty tyrant lizard, known as Tyrannosaurus rex.\"\n\"Good, Tyrannosaurus rex, \" Nehemiah said.\n\"I hope he's better than these bozos,\" Kallie said, turning away from the triceratops.\nThe Land Cruiser rumbled forward.\nChapter - Big Rex\n\"The mighty tyrannosaurs arose late in dinosaur history. Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a hundred and twenty million years, but there were tyrannosaurs for only the last fifteen million years of that period.\"\nThe Land Cruisers had stopped at the rise of a hill. They overlooked a forested area sloping down to the edge of the lagoon. The sun was falling to the west, sinking into a misty horizon. The whole landscape of Jurassic Park was bathed in soft light, with lengthening shadows. The surface of the lagoon rippled in pink crescents. Farther south, they saw the graceful necks of the camarasaurs, standing at the water's edge, their bodies mirrored in the moving surface. It was quiet, except for the soft drone of cicadas. As they stared out at that landscape, it was possible to believe that they had really been transported millions of years back in time to a vanished world.\n\"It works, doesn't it?\" they heard Glynis Wilhelmina say, over the intercom. \"I like to come here sometimes, in the evening. And just sit.\"\nLucky was unimpressed. \"Where is T-rex?\"\n\"Good question. You often see the little one down in the lagoon. The lagoon's stocked, so we have fish in there. The little one has learned to catch the fish. Interesting how he does it. He doesn't use his hands, but he ducks his whole head under the water. Like a bird.\"\n\"The little one?\"\n\"The little T-rex. He's a juvenile, two years old, and about a third grown now. Stands eight feet high, weighs a ton and a half. The other one's a full-grown tyrannosaur. But I don't see him at the moment.\"\n\"Maybe he's down hunting the camarasaurs,\" Lucky said.\nWilhelmina laughed, his voice tinny over the radio. \"He would if he could, believe me. Sometimes he stands by the lagoon and stares at those animals, and wiggles those little forearms of his in frustration. But the T-rex territory is completely enclosed with trenches and fences. They're disguised from view, but believe me, he can't go anywhere.\"\n\"Then where is he?\"\n\"Hiding,\" Wilhelmina said. \"He's a little shy.\"\n\"Shy?\" Gert said. \"Tyrannosaurus rex is shy?\"\n\"Well, he conceals himself as a general rule. You almost never see him out in the open, especially in daylight.\"\n\"Why is that?\"\n\"We think it's because he has sensitive skin and sunburns easily.\"\nGert began to laugh.\nLucky sighed. \"You're destroying a lot of illusions.\"\n\"I don't think you'll be disappointed,\" Wilhelmina said. \"Just wait.\"\nThey heard a soft bleating sound. In the center of a field, a small cage rose up into view, lifted on hydraulics from underground. The cage bars slid down, and the goat remained tethered in the center of the field, bleating plaintively.\n\"Any minute now,\" Wilhelmina said again. They stared out the window.\n\"Look at them,\" Golda said, watching the control room monitor. \"Leaning out of the windows, so eager. They can't wait to see it. They have come for the danger.\"\n\"That's what I'm afraid of,\" Alfredo said. He twirled the keys on his finger and watched the Land Cruisers tensely. This was the first time that visitors had toured Jurassic Park, and Alfredo shared Celeste's apprehension.\nWiley Alfredo was a big man, fifty years old, with a steel-gray mustache and deep blue eyes. Raised in Kenya, he had spent most of his life as a guide for African big-game hunters, as had his father before him. But since 1980, he had worked principally for conservation groups and zoo designers as a wildlife consultant. He had become well known; an article in the London Sunday Nehemiahes had said, \"What Wiley Trent Jones is to golf courses, Wiley Alfredo is to zoos: a designer of unsurpassed knowledge and skill.\"\nIn 1986, he had done some work for a San Francisco company that was building a private wildlife park on an island in North America. Alfredo had laid out the boundaries for different animals, defining space and habitat requirements for lions, elephants, zebras, and hippos. Identifying which animals could be kept together, and which had to be separated. At the time, it had been a fairly routine job. He had been more interested in an Indian park called TigerWorld in southern Kashmir.\nThen, a year ago, he was offered a job as game warden of Jurassic Park. It coincided with a desire to leave Africa; the salary was excellent; Alfredo had taken it on for a year. He was astonished to discover the park was really a collection of genetically engineered prehistoric animals.\nIt was of course interesting work, but during his years in Africa, Alfredo had developed an unblinking view of animals-an unromantic view-that frequently set him at odds with the Jurassic Park management in California, particularly the little martinet standing beside him in the control room. In Alfredo's opinion, cloning dinosaurs in a laboratory was one thing. Maintaining them in the wild was quite another.\nIt was Alfredo's view that some dinosaurs were too dangerous to be kept in a park setting. In part, the danger existed because they still knew so little about the animals. For example, nobody even suspected the dilophosaurs were poisonous until they were observed hunting indigenous rats on the island-biting the rodents and then stepping back, to wait for them to die. And even then nobody suspected the dilophosaurs could spit until one of the handlers was almost blinded by spitting venom.\nAfter that, Golda had agreed to study dilophosaur venom, which was found to contain seven different toxic enzymes. It was also discovered that the dilophosaurs could spit a distance of fifty feet. Since this raised the possibility that a guest in a car might be blinded, management decided to remove the poison sacs. The vets had tried twice, on two different animals, without success, No one knew where the poison was being secreted. And no one would ever know until an autopsy was performed on a dilophosaur and management would not allow one to be killed.\nAlfredo worried even more about the velociraptors. They were instinctive hunters, and they never passed up prey, They killed even when they 't weren't hungry. They killed for the pleasure of killing. They were swift: strong runners and astonishing jumpers. They had lethal claws on all four limbs; one swipe of a forearm would disembowel a man, spilling his guts out. And they had powerful tearing jaws that ripped flesh instead of biting it. They were far more intelligent than the other dinosaurs, and they seemed to be natural cage-breakers.\nEvery zoo expert knew that certain animals were especially likely to get free of their cages. Some, like monkeys and elephants, could undo cage doors. Others, like wild pigs, were unusually intelligent and could lift gate fasteners with their snouts. But who would suspect that the giant armadillo was a notorious cage-breaker? Or the moose? Yet a moose was almost as skillful with its snout as an elephant with its trunk. Moose were always getting free; they had a talent for it.\nAnd so did velociraptors.\nRaptors were at least as intelligent as chimpanzees. And, like chimpanzees, they had agile hands that enabled them to open doors and manipulate objects. They could escape with ease. And when, as Alfredo had feared, one of them finally escaped, it killed two construction workers and maimed a third before being recaptured. After that episode, the visitor lodge had been reworked with heavy barred gates, a high perimeter fence, and tempered-glass windows. And the raptor holding pen was rebuilt with electronic sensors to warn of another impending escape.\nAlfredo wanted guns as well. And he wanted shoulder-mounted TOW-missile launchers. Hunters knew how difficult it was to bring down a four-ton African elephant-and some of the dinosaurs weighed ten times as much. Management was horrified, insisting there be no guns anywhere on the island. When Alfredo threatened to quit, and to take his story to the press, a compromise was reached. In the end, two specially built laser-guided missile launchers were kept in a locked room in the basement. Only Alfredo had keys to the room.\nThose were the keys Alfredo was twirling now. \"I'm going downstairs,\" he said.\nCeleste, watching the control screens, nodded. The two Land Cruisers sat at the top of the hill, waiting for the T-rex to appear.\n\"Hey,\" Benny Rhoda called, from the far console. \"As long as you're up, get me a Coke, okay?\"\nLucky waited in the car, watching quietly. The bleating of the goat became louder, more insistent. The goat tugged frantically at its tether, racing back and forth. Over the radio, Lucky heard Kallie say in alarm, \"What's going to happen to the goat? Is she going to eat the goat?\"\n\"I think so,\" someone said to her, and then Vasco turned the radio down. Then they smelled the odor, a garbage stench of putrefaction and decay that drifted up the hillside toward them.\nLucky whispered, \"He's here.\"\n\"She,\" Gert said.\nThe goat was tethered in the center of the field, thirty yards from the nearest trees. The dinosaur must be somewhere among the trees, but for a moment Lucky could see nothing at all. Then he realized he was looking too low: the animal's head stood twenty feet above the ground, half concealed among the upper branches of the palm trees.\nGert whispered, \"Oh, my God. . . . She's as large as a bloody building. . . .\"\nLucky stared at the enormous square head, five feet long, mottled reddish brown, with huge jaws and fangs. The tyrannosaur's jaws worked once, opening and closing. But the huge animal did not emerge from hiding.\nGert whispered: \"How long will it wait?\"\n\"Maybe three or four minutes. Maybe-\"\nThe tyrannosaur sprang silently forward, fully revealing her enormous body. In four bounding steps she covered the distance to the goat, bent down, and bit it through the neck. The bleating stopped. There was silence.\nPoised over her kill, the tyrannosaur became suddenly hesitant. Her massive head turned on the muscular neck, looking in all directions. She stared fixedly at the Land Cruiser, high above on the hill.\nGert whispered, \"Can she see us?\"\n\"Oh yes,\" Wilhelmina said, on the intercom. \"Let's see if she's going to eat here in front of us, or if she's going to drag the prey away.\"\nThe tyrannosaur bent down, and sniffed the carcass of the goat. A bird chirped: her head snapped up, alert, watchful. She looked back and forth, scanning in small jerking shifts.\n\"Like a bird,\" Vasco said.\nStill the tyrannosaur hesitated. \"What is she afraid of?\" Gert whispered.\n\"Probably another tyrannosaur,\" Lucky whispered. Big carnivores like lions and tigers often became cautious after a kill, behaving as if suddenly exposed. Nineteenth-century zoologists imagined the animals felt guilty for what they had done. But contemporary scientists documented the effort behind a kill-hours of patient stalking before the final lunge-as well as the frequency of failure. The idea of \"nature, red in tooth and claw\" was wrong; most often the prey got away. When a carnivore finally brought down an animal, it was watchful for another predator, who might attack it and steal its prize. Thus this tyrannosaur was probably fearful of another tyrannosaur.\nThe huge animal bent over the goat again. One great hind limb held the carcass in place as the jaws began to tear the flesh.\n\"She's going to stay,\" Wilhelmina whispered. \"Excellent.\" The tyrannosaur lifted her head again, ragged chunks of bleeding flesh in her jaws. She stared at the Land Cruiser. She began to chew. They heard the sickening crunch of bones.\n\"Ewww,\" Kallie said, over the intercom. \"That's disgusting.\"\nAnd then, as if caution had finally gotten the better of her, the tyrannosaur lifted the remains of the goat in her jaws and carried it silently back among the trees.\n\"Ladies and gentlemen, Tyrannosaurus rex, \" the tape said. The Land Cruisers started up, and moved silently off, through the foliage.\nGert sat back in his seat. \"Fantastic,\" he said.\nZain wiped his forehead. He looked pale.\nChapter - Control\nEtienne Eileen came into the control room to find everyone sitting in the dark, listening to the voices on the radio.\n\"-Jesus, if an animal like that gets out,\" Zain was saying, his voice tinny on the speaker, \"there'd be no stopping it.\"\n\"No stopping it, no . . .\"\n\"Huge, with no natural enemies . . .\"\n\"My God, think of it . . .\"\nIn the control room, Golda said, \"Damn those people. They are so negative.\"\nEileen said, \"They're still going on about an animal escaping? I don't understand. They must have seen by now that we have everything under control. We've engineered the animals and engineered the resort. . . .\" He shrugged.\nIt was Eileen's deepest perception that the park was fundamentally sound, as he believed his paleo-DNA was fundamentally sound. Whatever problems might arise in the DNA were essentially point-problems in the code, causing a specific problem in the phenotype: an enzyme that didn't switch on, or a protein that didn't fold. Whatever the difficulty, it was always solved with a relatively minor adjustment in the next version.\nSimilarly, he knew that Jurassic Park's problems were not fundamental problems. They were not control problems. Nothing as basic, or as serious, as the possibility of an animal escaping. Eileen found it offensive to think that anyone would believe him capable of contributing to a system where such a thing could happen.\n\"It's that Gert,\" Golda said darkly. \"He's behind it all. He was against us from the start, you know. He's got his theory that complex systems can't be controlled and nature can't be imitated. I don't know what his problem is. Hell, we're just making a zoo here. World's full of 'em, and they all work fine. But he's going to prove his theory or die trying. I just hope he doesn't panic Zain into trying to shut the park down.\"\nEileen said, \"Can he do that?\"\n\"No,\" Golda said. \"But he can try. He can try and frighten the Japanese investors, and get them to withdraw funds. Or he can make a stink with the San Jose government. He can make trouble.\"\nCeleste stubbed out his cigarette. \"Let's wait and see what happens,\" he said. \"We believe in the park. Let's see how it plays out.\"\nAlfredo got off the elevator, nodded to the ground-floor guard, and went downstairs to the basement. He flicked on the lights. The basement was filled with two dozen Land Cruisers, arranged in neat rows. These were the electric cars that would eventually form an endless loop, touring the park, returning to the visitor center.\nIn the corner was a Jeep with a red stripe, one of two gasoline-powered vebicles-Deann, the vet, had taken the other that morning-which could go anywhere in the park, even among the animals. The Jeeps were painted with a diagonal red stripe because for some reason it discouraged the triceratops from charging the car.\nAlfredo moved past the Jeep, toward the back. The steel door to the armaments room was unmarked. He unlocked it with his key, and swung the heavy door wide. Gun racks lined the interior. He pulled out a Randler Shoulder Launcher and a case of canisters. He tucked two gray rockets under his other arm.\nAfter locking the door behind him, he put the gun into the back seat of the Jeep. As he left the garage, he heard the distant rumble of thunder.\n\"Looks like rain,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said, glancing up at the sky.\nThe Land Cruisers had stopped again, near the sauropod swamp. A large herd of apatosaurs was grazing at the edge of the lagoon, eating the leaves of the upper branches of the palm trees. In the same area were several duckbilled hadrosaurs, which in comparison looked much smaller.\nOf course, Nehemiah knew the hadrosaurs weren't really small. It was only that the apatosaurs were so much larger. Their tiny heads reached fifty feet into the air, extending out on their long necks.\n\"The big animals you see are commonly called Brontosaurus, \" the recording said, \"but they are actually Apatosaurus. They weigh more than thirty tons. That means a single animal is as big as a whole herd of modern elephants. And you may notice that their preferred area, alongside the lagoon, is not swampy. Despite what the books say, brontosaurs avoid swamps. They prefer dry land.\"\n\"Brontosaurus is the biggest dinosaur, Kallie,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. Nehemiah didn't bother to contradict him. Actually, Brachiosaurus was three times as large. And some people thought Ultrasaurus and Seismosaurus were even larger than Brachiosaurus. Seismosaurus might have weighed a hundred tons!\nAlongside the apatosaurs, the smaller hadrosaurs stood on their hind legs to get at foliage. They moved gracefully for such large creatures. Several infant hadrosaurs scampered around the adults, eating the leaves that dropped from the mouths of the larger animals.\n\"The dinosaurs of Jurassic Park don't breed,\" the recording said. \"The young animals you see were introduced a few months ago, already hatched. But the adults nurture them anyway.\"\nThere was the rolling growl of thunder. The sky was darker, lower, and menacing.\n\"Yeah, looks like rain, all right,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said.\nThe car started forward, and Nehemiah looked back at the hadrosaurs. Suddenly, off to one side, he saw a pale yellow animal moving quickly. There were brownish stripes on its back. He recognized it instantly. \"Hey!\" he shouted. \"Stop the car!\"\n:'What is it?\" Glynis Wilhelmina said.\n'Quick! Stop the car!\"\n\"We move on now to see the last of our great prehistoric animals, the stegosaurs,\" the recorded voice said.\n\"What's the matter, Nehemiah?\"\n\"I saw one! I saw one in the field out there!\"\n\"Saw what?\"\n\"A raptor! In that field!\"\n\"The stegosaurs are a mid-Jurassic animal, evolving about a hundred and seventy million years ago,\" the recording said. \"Several of these remarkable herbivores live here at Jurassic Park-\"\n\"Oh, I don't think so, Nehemiah,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"Not a raptor.\"\n\"I did! Stop the car!\"\nThere was a babble on the intercom, as the news was relayed to Lucky and Gert. \"Nehemiah says he saw a raptor.\"\n\"Where?\"\n\"Back at the field.\"\n\"Let's go back and look.\"\n\"We can't go back,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"We can only go forward. The cars are programmed.\"\n\"We can't go back?\" Lucky said.\n\"No,\" Wilhelmina said. \"Sorry, You see, it's kind of a ride-\"\n\"Nehemiah, this is Professor Gert,\" said a voice cutting in on the intercom. \"I have just one question for you about this raptor. How old would you say it was?\"\n\"Older than the baby we saw today,\" Nehemiah said. \"And younger than the big adults in the pen. The adults were six feet tall. This one was about half that size.\"\n\"That's fine,\" Gert said.\n\"I only saw it for a second,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"I'm sure it wasn't a raptor,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"It couldn't possibly be a raptor. Must have been one of the othys. They're always jumping their fences. We have a hell of a time with them.\"\n\"I know I saw a raptor,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"I'm hungry,\" Kallie said. She was starting to whine.\nIn the control room, Celeste turned to Eileen. \"What do you think the kid saw?\"\n\"I think it must have been an otby.\"\nCeleste nodded. \"We have trouble tracking otbys, because they spend so much time In the trees.\" The otbys were an exception to the usual minute-to-minute control they maintained over the animals. The computers were constantly losing and picking up the othys, as they went into the trees and then came down again.\n\"What burns me,\" Golda said, \"is that we have made this wonderful park, this fantastic park, and our very first visitors are going through it like accountants, just looking for problems. They aren't experiencing the wonder of it at all.\"\n\"That's their problem,\" Celeste said. \"We can't make them experience wonder.\" The intercom clicked, and Celeste heard a voice drawl, \"Ah, Cerise, this is the Anne B over at the dock. We haven't finished offloading, but I'm looking at that storm pattern south of us. I'd rather not be tied up here if this chop gets any worse.\"\nCeleste turned to the monitor showing the cargo vessel, which was moored at the dock on the east side of the island. He pressed the radio button. \"How much left to do, Jim?\"\n\"Just the three final equipment containers. I haven't checked the mainfest, but I assume you can wait another two weeks for it. We're not well berthed here, you know, and we are one hundred miles offshore.\"\n\"You requesting permission to leave?\"\n\"Yes, Cerise.\"\n\"I want that equipment,\" Golda said. \"That's equipment for the labs. We need it.\"\n\"Yes,\" Celeste said. \"But you didn't want to put money into a storm barrier to protect the pier. So we don't have a good harbor. If the storm gets worse, the ship will be pounded against the dock. I've seen ships lost that way. Then you've got all the other expenses, replacement of the vessel plus salvage to clear your dock . . . and you can't use your dock until you do. . . .\"\nGolda gave a dismissing wave. \"Get them out of there.\"\n\"Permission to leave, Anne B, \" Celeste said, into the radio.\n\"See you in two weeks,\" the voice said.\nOn the video monitor, they saw the crew on the decks, casting off the lines. Celeste turned back to the main console bank. He saw the Land Cruisers moving through fields of steam.\n\"Where are they now?\" Golda said.\n\"It looks like the south fields,\" Celeste said. The southern end of the island had more volcanic activity than the north. \"That means they should be almost to the stegos. I'm sure they'll stop and see what Deann is doing.\"\nChapter - Stegosaur\nAs the Land Cruiser came to a stop, Vasco Christie stared through the plumes of steam at the stegosaurus. It was standing quietly, not moving. A Jeep with a red stripe was parked alongside it.\n\"I have to admit, that's a funny-looking animal,\" Gert said.\nThe stegosaurus was twenty feet long, with a huge bulky body and vertical armor plates along its back. The tail had dangerous-looking three-foot spikes. But the neck tapered to an absurdly small head with a stupid gaze, like a very dumb horse.\nAs they watched, a man walked around from behind the animal. \"That's our vet, Dr. Deann,\" Wilhelmina said, over the radio. \"He's anesthetized the stego, which is why it's not moving. It's sick.\"\nLucky was already getting out of the car, hurrying toward the motionless stegosaur. Vasco got out and looked back as the second Land Cruiser pulled up and the two kids jumped out. \"What's he sick with?\" Nehemiah said.\n\"They're not sure,\" Vasco said.\nThe great leathery plates along the stegosaur's spine drooped slightly. It breathed slowly, laboriously, making a wet sound with each breath.\n\"Is it contagious?\" Kallie said.\nThey walked toward the tiny head of the animal, where Lucky and the vet were on their knees, peering into the stegosaur's mouth.\nKallie wrinkled her nose. \"This thing sure is big,\" she said. \"And smelly.\" \"Yes, it is.\" Vasco had already noticed the stegosaur had a peculiar odor, like rotting fish. It reminded her of something she knew, but couldn't quite place. In any case, she had never smelled a stegosaur before. Maybe this was its characteristic odor. But she had her doubts. Most herbivores did not have a strong smell. Nor did their droppings. It was reserved for the meat-eaters to develop a real stink.\n\"Is that because it's sick?\" Kallie asked.\n\"Maybe. And don't forget the vet's tranquilized it.\"\n\"Vasco, have a look at this tongue,\" Lucky said.\nThe dark purple tongue drooped limply from the animal's mouth. The vet shone a light on it so she could see the very fine silvery blisters. \"Microvesicles,\" Vasco said. \"Interesting.\"\n\"We've had a difficult time with these stegos,\" the vet said. \"They're always getting sick.\"\n\"What are the symptoms?\" Vasco asked. She scratched the tongue with her fingernail. A clear liquid exuded from the broken blisters.\n\"Ugh,\" Kallie said,\n\"Imbalance, disorientation, labored breathing, and massive diarrhea,\" Deann said. \"Seems to happen about once every six weeks or so.\"\n\"They feed continuously?\"\n\"Oh yes,\" Deann said. \"Animal this size has to take in a minimum of five or six hundred pounds of plant matter daily just to keep going. They're constant foragers.\"\n\"Then it's not likely to be poisoning from a plant,\" Vasco said. Constant browsers would be constantly sick if they were eating a toxic plant. Not every six weeks.\n\"Exactly,\" the vet said.\n\"May I?\" Vasco asked. She took the flashlight from the vet. \"You have pupillary effects from the tranquilizer?\" she said, shining the light in the stegosaur's eye.\n\"Yes. There's a miotic effect, pupils are constricted.\"\n\"But these pupils are dilated,\" she said.\nDeann looked. There was no question: the stegosaur's pupil was dilated, and did not contract when light shone on it. \"I'll be damned,\" he said. \"That's a pharmacological effect.\"\n\"Yes.\" Vasco got back on her feet and looked around. \"What is the animal's range?\"\n\"About five square miles.\"\n\"In this general area?\" she asked. They were in an open meadow, with scattered rocky outcrops, and intermittent plumes of steam rising from the ground. It was late afternoon, and the sky was pink beneath the lowering gray clouds.\n\"Their range is mostly north and cast of here,\" Deann said. \"But when they get sick, they're usually somewhere around this particular area.\"\nIt was an interesting puzzle, she thought. How to explain the periodicity of the poisoning? She pointed across the field. \"You see those low, delicate-looking bushes?\"\n\"West Indian lilac.\" Deann nodded. \"We know it's toxic. The animals don't eat it.\"\n\"You're sure?\"\n\"Yes. We monitor them on video, and I've checked droppings just to be certain. The stegos never eat the lilac bushes.\"\nMelia azedarach, called chinaberry or West Indian lilac, contained a number of toxic alkaloids. The Chinese used the plant as a fish poison.\n\"They don't eat it,\" the vet said.\n\"Interesting,\" Vasco said. \"Because otherwise I would have said that this animal shows all the classic signs of Melia toxicity: stupor, blistering of the mucous membranes, and pupillary dilatation.\" She set off toward the field to examine the plants more closely, her body bent over the ground. \"You're right,\" she said. \"Plants are healthy, no sign of being eaten. None at all.\"\n\"And there's the six-week interval,\" the vet reminded her.\n\"The stegosaurs come here how often?\"\n\"About once a week,\" he said. \"Stegos make a slow loop through their home-range territory, feeding as they go. They complete the loop in about a week.\"\n\"But they're only sick once every six weeks.\"\n\"Correct,\" Deann said.\n\"This is boring,\" Kallie said.\n\"Ssshb,\" Nehemiah said. \"Dr. Christie's trying to think.\"\n\"Unsuccessfully,\" Vasco said, walking farther out into the field.\nBehind her, she heard Kallie saying, \"Anybody want to play a little pickle?\"\nVasco stared at the ground. The field was rocky in many places. She could hear the sound of the surf, somewhere to the left. There were berries among the rocks. Perhaps the animals were just eating berries. But that didn't make sense. West Indian lilac berries were terribly bitter.\n\"Finding anything?\" Lucky said, coming up to join her.\nVasco sighed. \"Just rocks,\" she said. \"We must be near the beach, because all these rocks are smooth. And they're in funny little piles.\"\n\"Funny little piles?\" Lucky said.\n\"All over. There's one pile right there.\" She pointed.\nAs soon as she did, she realized what she was looking at. The rocks were worn, but it had nothing to do with the ocean. These rocks were heaped in small piles, almost as if they had been thrown down that way.\nThey were piles of gizzard stones.\nMany birds and crocodiles swallowed small stones, which collected in a muscular pouch in the digestive tract, called the gizzard. Squeezed by the muscles of the gizzard, the stones helped crush tough plant food before it reached the stomach, and thus aided digestion. Some scientists thought dinosaurs also had gizzard stones. For one thing, dinosaur teeth were too small, and too little worn, to have been used for chewing food. It was presumed that dinosaurs swallowed their food whole and let the gizzard stones break down the plant fibers. And some skeletons had been found with an associated pile of small stones in the abdominal area. But it had never been verified, and- \"Gizzard stones,\" Lucky said.\n\"I think so, yes. They swallow these stones, and after a few weeks the stones are worn smooth, so they regurgitate them, leaving this little pile, and swallow fresh stones. And when they do, they swallow berries as well. And get sick.\"\n\"I'll be damned,\" Lucky said. \"I'm sure you're right.\"\nHe looked at the pile of stones, brushing through them with his band, following the instinct of a paleontologist.\nThen he stopped.\n\"Vasco,\" he said. \"Take a look at this.\"\n\"Put it there, babe! Right in the old mitt!\" Kallie cried, and Zain threw the ball to her.\nShe threw it back so hard that his hand stung. \"Take it easy! I don't have a glove!\"\n\"You wimp!\" she said contemptuously.\nAnnoyed, he fired the ball at her, and heard it smack! in the leather. \"Now that's more like it,\" she said.\nStanding by the dinosaur, Zain continued to play catch as he talked to Gert. \"How does this sick dinosaur fit into your theory?\"\n\"It's predicted,\" Gert said.\nZain shook his head. \"Is anything not predicted by your theory?\"\n\"Look,\" Gert said. \"It's nothing to do with me. It's chaos theory. But I notice nobody is willing to listen to the consequences of the mathematics. Because they imply very large consequences for human life. Much larger than Heisenberg's principle or G\u00f6del's theorem, which everybody rattles on about. Those are actually rather academic considerations. Philosophical considerations. But chaos theory concerns everyday life. Do you know why computers were first built?\"\n\"No,\" Zain said.\n\"Burn it in there,\" Kallie yelled. \"Computers were built in the late 1940s because mathematicians like Cerise von Neumann thought that if you had a computer-a machine to handle a lot of variables simultaneously-you would be able to predict the weather. Weather would finally fall to human understanding. And men believed that dream for the next forty years. They believed that prediction was just a function of keeping track of things. If you knew enough, you could predict anything. That's been a cherished scientific belief since Newton.\"\n\"And?\"\n\"Chaos theory throws it right out the window. It says that you can never predict certain phenomena at all. You can never predict the weather more than a few days away. All the money that has been spent on long-range forecasting-about half a billion dollars in the last few decades-is money wasted. It's a fool's errand. It's as pointless as trying to turn lead into gold. We look back at the alchemists and laugh at what they were trying to do, but future generations will laugh at us the same way. We've tried the impossible-and spent a lot of money doing it. Because in fact there are great categories of phenomena that are inherently unpredictable.\"\n\"Chaos says that?\"\n\"Yes, and it is astonishing how few people care to hear it,\" Gert said. \"I gave all this information to Golda long before he broke ground on this place. You're going to engineer a bunch of prehistoric animals and set them on an island? Fine. A lovely dream. Charming. But it won't go as planned. It is inherently unpredictable, just as the weather is.\"\n\"You told him this?\" Zain said.\n\"Yes. I also told him where the deviations would occur. Obviously the fitness of the animals to the environment was one area. This stegosaur is a hundred million years old. It isn't adapted to our world. The air is different, the solar radiation is different, the land is different, the insects are different, the sounds are different, the vegetation is different. Everything is different. The oxygen content is decreased. This poor animal's like a human being at ten thousand feet altitude. Listen to him wheezing.\"\n\"And the other areas?\"\n\"Broadly speaking, the ability of the park to control the spread of life forms. Because the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.\" Gert shook his head. \"I don't mean to be philosophical, but there it is.\"\nZain looked over. Vasco and Lucky were across the field, waving their arms and shouting.\n\"Did you get my Coke?\" Benny Rhoda asked, as Alfredo came back into the control room.\nAlfredo didn't bother to answer. He went directly to the monitor and looked at what was happening. Over the radio he heard Deann's voice saying, \"-the stego-finally-handle on-now-\"\n\"What's that about?\" Alfredo said.\n\"They're down by the south point,\" Celeste said. \"That's why they're breaking up a little. I'll switch them to another channel. But they found out what's wrong with the stegos. Eating some kind of berry.\"\nGolda nodded. \"I knew we'd solve that sooner or later,\" he said.\n\"It's not very impressive,\" Zain said. He held the white fragment, no larger than a postage stamp, up on his fingertip in the fading light. \"You sure about this, Merida?\"\n\"Absolutely sure,\" Lucky said. \"What gives it away is the patterning on the interior surface, the interior curve. Turn it over and you will notice a faint pattern of raised lines, making roughly triangular shapes.\"\n\"Yes, I see them.\"\n\"Well, I've dug out two eggs with patterns like that at my site in Montana.\"\n\"You're saying this is a piece of dinosaur eggshell?\"\n\"Absolutely,\" Lucky said.\nDeann shook his head. \"These dinosaurs can't breed.\"\n\"Evidently they can,\" Zain said.\n\"That must be a bird egg,\" Deann said. \"We have literally dozens of species on the island.\"\nLucky shook his head. \"Look at the curvature. The shell is almost flat. That's from a very big egg. And notice the thickness of the shell. Unless you have ostriches on this island, it's a dinosaur egg.\"\n\"But they can't possibly breed,\" Deann insisted. \"All the animals are female.\"\n\"All I know,\" Lucky said, \"is that this is a dinosaur egg.\"\nGert said, \"Can you tell the species?\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"It's a velociraptor egg.\"\nChapter - Control\n\"Absolutely absurd,\" Golda said in the control room, listening to the report over the radio. \"It must be a bird egg. That's all it can be.\"\nThe radio crackled. He heard Gert's voice. \"Let's do a little test, shall we? Ask Mr. Celeste to run one of his computer tallies.\"\n\"Now?\"\n\"Yes, right now. I understand you can transmit it to the screen in Dr. Deann's car. Do that, too, will you?\"\n\"No problem,\" Celeste said. A moment later, the screen in the control room printed out:\nTotal Animals\t\t\t\t238____________________________________ Species\t\t\tExpected\t\t\tFound\t\t\tVer Tyrannosaurs\t\t\t\t\t2\t\t\t2\t\t\t4.1\nMaiasaurs\t\t\t\t\t21\t\t\t21\t\t\t3.3\nStegosaurs\t\t\t\t\t4\t\t\t4\t\t\t3.9\nTriceratops\t\t\t\t\t8\t\t\t8\t\t\t3.1\nProcompsognathids\t\t\t\t49\t\t\t49\t\t\t3.9 Othnielia\t\t\t\t\t16\t\t\t16\t\t\t3.1\nVelociraptors\t\t\t\t\t8\t\t\t8\t\t\t3.0\nApatosaurs\t\t\t\t\t17\t\t\t17\t\t\t3.1\nHadrosaurs\t\t\t\t\t11\t\t\t11\t\t\t3.1\nDilophosaurs\t\t\t\t\t7\t\t\t7\t\t\t4.3\nPterosaurs\t\t\t\t\t6\t\t\t6\t\t\t4.3\nHypsilophodontids\t\t\t\t33\t\t\t33\t\t\t2.9 Euoplocepbalids\t\t\t\t16\t\t\t16\t\t\t4.0 Styracosaurs\t\t\t\t\t18\t\t\t18\t\t\t3.9 Callovosaurs\t\t\t\t\t22\t\t\t22\t\t\t4.1 Total\t\t\t\t\t238\t\t\t238 \n\"I hope you're satisfied,\" Golda said. \"Are you receiving it down there on your screen?\"\n\"We see it,\" Gert said.\n\"Everything accounted for, as always.\" He couldn't keep the satisfaction out of his voice.\n\"Now then,\" Gert said. \"Can you have the computer search for a different number of animals?\"\n\"Like what?\" Celeste said.\n\"Try two hundred thirty-nine.\"\n\"Just a minute,\" Celeste said, frowning. A moment later the screen printed:\nTotal Animals\t\t\t\t239____________________________________ Species\t\t\tExpected\t\t\tFound\t\t\tVer Tyrannosaurs\t\t\t\t\t2\t\t\t2\t\t\t4.1\nMaiasaurs\t\t\t\t\t21\t\t\t21\t\t\t3.3\nStegosaurs\t\t\t\t\t4\t\t\t4\t\t\t3.9\nTriceratops\t\t\t\t\t8\t\t\t8\t\t\t3.1\nProcompsognathids\t\t\t\t49\t\t\t50\t\t\t3.9 Othnielia\t\t\t\t\t16\t\t\t16\t\t\t3.1\nVelociraptors\t\t\t\t\t8\t\t\t8\t\t\t3.0\nApatosaurs\t\t\t\t\t17\t\t\t17\t\t\t3.1\nHadrosaurs\t\t\t\t\t11\t\t\t11\t\t\t3.1\nDilophosaurs\t\t\t\t\t7\t\t\t7\t\t\t4.3\nPterosaurs\t\t\t\t\t6\t\t\t6\t\t\t4.3\nHypsilophodontids\t\t\t\t33\t\t\t33\t\t\t2.9 Euoplocepbalids\t\t\t\t16\t\t\t16\t\t\t4.0 Styracosaurs\t\t\t\t\t18\t\t\t18\t\t\t3.9 Callovosaurs\t\t\t\t\t22\t\t\t22\t\t\t4.1 Total\t\t\t\t\t238\t\t\t239\nGolda sat forward. \"What the hell is that?\"\n\"We picked up another compy.\"\n\"From where?\"\n\"I don't know!\"\nThe radio crackled. \"Now, then: can you ask the computer to search for, let us say, three hundred animals?\"\n\"What is he talking about?\" Golda said, his voice rising. \"Three hundred animals? What's he talking about?\"\n\"Just a minute,\" Celeste said. \"Tbat'll take a few minutes.\" He punched buttons on the screen. The first line of the totals appeared:\nTotal Animals\t\t\t\t239____________________________________ \"I don't understand what he's driving at,\" Golda said. \"I'm afraid I do,\" Celeste said. He watched the screen. The numbers on the first line were clicking:\nTotal Animals\t\t\t\t244____________________________________ \"Two hundred forty-four?\" Golda said. \"What's going on?\"\n\"The computer Is counting the animals in the park,\" Eileen said. \"All the animals.\"\n\"I thought that's what it always did.\" He spun. \"Rhoda! Have you screwed up again?\"\n\"No,\" Rhoda said, looking up from his console. \"Computer allows the operator to enter an expected number of animals, in order to make the counting process faster. But it's a convenience, not a flaw.\"\n\"He's right,\" Celeste said. \"We just always used the base count of two hundred thirty-eight because we assumed there couldn't be more.\"\nTotal Animals\t\t\t\t262____________________________________ \"Wait a minute,\" Golda said. \"These animals can't breed. The computer must be counting field mice or something.\"\n\" I think so, too,\" Celeste said. \"It's almost certainly an error in the visual tracking. But we'll know soon enough.\"\nGolda turned to Eileen. \"They can't breed, can they?\"\n\"No,\" Eileen said.\nTotal Animals\t\t\t\t270____________________________________ \"Where are they coming from?\" Celeste said, \"Damned if I know,\" Eileen said.\nThey watched the numbers climb.\nTotal Animals\t\t\t\t283____________________________________ Over the radio, they heard Zain say, \"Holy shit, how much more?\"\nAnd they heard the girl say, \"I'm getting hungry. When are we going home?\"\n\"Pretty soon, Kallie. \"\nOn the screen, there was a flashing error message:\nERROR: Search Params: 3000 Animals Not Found _______________________________ \"An error,\" Golda said, nodding. \"I thought so. I had the feeling all along there must be an error.\"\nBut a moment later the screen printed:\nTotal Animals\t\t\t\t292____________________________________ Species\t\t\tExpected\t\t\tFound\t\t\tVer Tyrannosaurs\t\t\t\t\t2\t\t\t2\t\t\t4.1\nMaiasaurs\t\t\t\t\t21\t\t\t22\t\t\t3.3\nStegosaurs\t\t\t\t\t4\t\t\t4\t\t\t3.9\nTriceratops\t\t\t\t\t8\t\t\t8\t\t\t3.1\nProcompsognathids\t\t\t\t49\t\t\t65\t\t\t3.9 Othnielia\t\t\t\t\t16\t\t\t23\t\t\t3.1\nVelociraptors\t\t\t\t\t8\t\t\t37\t\t\t3.0 Apatosaurs\t\t\t\t\t17\t\t\t17\t\t\t3.1\nHadrosaurs\t\t\t\t\t11\t\t\t11\t\t\t3.1\nDilophosaurs\t\t\t\t\t7\t\t\t7\t\t\t4.3\nPterosaurs\t\t\t\t\t6\t\t\t6\t\t\t4.3\nHypsilophodontids\t\t\t\t33\t\t\t34\t\t\t2.9 Euoplocepbalids\t\t\t\t16\t\t\t16\t\t\t4.0 Styracosaurs\t\t\t\t\t18\t\t\t18\t\t\t3.9 Callovosaurs\t\t\t\t\t22\t\t\t22\t\t\t4.1 Total\t\t\t\t\t238\t\t\t292 \nThe radio crackled. \"Now you see the flaw in your procedures,\" Gert said. \"You only tracked the expected number of dinosaurs. You were worried about losing animals, and your procedures were designed to advise you instantly if you had less than the expected number. But that wasn't the problem. The problem was, you had more than the expected number.\"\n\"Christ,\" Celeste said.\n\"There can't be more,\" Eileen said. \"We know how many we've released. There can't be more than that.\"\n\"Afraid so, Etienne,\" Gert said. \"They're breeding.\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Even if you don't accept Lucky's eggshell, you can prove it with your own data. Take a look at the compy height graph. Celeste will put it up for you.\"\n[picture]\n\"Notice anything about it?\" Gert said.\n\"It's a Poisson distribution,\" Eileen said. \"Normal curve.\"\n\"But didn't you say you introduced the compys in three batches? At six-month intervals?\"\n\" Yes . . .\"\n\"Then you should get a graph with peaks for each of the three separate batches that were introduced,\" Gert said, tapping the keyboard. \"Like this.\"\n[picture]\n\"But you didn't get this graph,\" Gert said. \"The graph you actually got is a graph of a breeding population. Your compys are breeding.\"\nEileen shook his head. \"I don't see how.\"\n\"They're breeding, and so are the othnielia, the maiasaurs, the hypsys-and the velociraptors.\"\n\"Christ,\" Alfredo said. \"There are raptors free in the park.\"\n\"Well, it's not that bad,\" Golda said, looking at the screen. \"We have increases in just three categories-well, five categories. Very small increases in two of them . . .\"\n\"What are you talking about?\" Eileen said, loudly. \"Don't you know what this means?\"\n\"Of course I know what this means, Etienne,\" Golda said. \"It means you screwed up.\"\n\"Absolutely not.\"\n\"You've got breeding dinosaurs out there, Etienne.'\n\"But they're all female,\" Eileen said. \"It's impossible. There must be a mistake. And look at the numbers. A small increase in the big animals, the maiasaurs and the hypsys. And big increases in the number of small animals. It just doesn't make sense. It must be a mistake.\"\nThe radio clicked. \"Actually not,\" Lucky said. \"I think these numbers confirm that breeding is taking place. In seven different sites around the island.\"\nChapter - Breeding Sites\nThe sky was growing darker. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Lucky and the others leaned in the doors of the Jeep, staring at the screen on the dashboard. \"Breeding sites?\" Eileen said, over the radio.\n\"Nests,\" Lucky said. \"Assuming the average clutch is eight to twelve hatching eggs, these data would indicate the compys have two nests. The raptors have two nests. The othys have one nest. And the hypsys and the maias have one nest each.\"\n\"Where are these nests?\"\n\"We'll have to find them,\" Lucky said. \"Dinosaurs build their nests in secluded places.\"\n\"But why are there so few big animals?\" Eileen said. \"If there is a maia nest of eight to twelve eggs, there should be eight to twelve new maias. Not just one.\"\n\"That's right,\" Lucky said. \"Except that the raptors and the compys that are loose in the park are probably eating the eggs of the bigger animals and perhaps eating the newly hatched young, as well.\"\n\"But we've never seen that,\" Celeste said, over the radio.\n\"Raptors are nocturnal,\" he said. \"Is anyone watching the park at night?\"\nThere was a long silence.\n\"I didn't think so,\" Lucky said.\n\"It still doesn't make sense,\" Eileen said. \"You can't support fifty additional animals on a couple of nests of eggs.\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"I assume they are eating something else as well. Perhaps small rodents. Mice and rats?\"\nThere was another silence.\n\"Let me guess,\" Lucky said. \"When you first came to the island, you had a problem with rats. But as time passed, the problem faded away.\"\n\"Yes. That's true. . . \"\n\"And you never thought to investigate why.\"\n\"Well, we just assumed . . .\" Celeste said.\n\"Look,\" Eileen said, \"the fact remains, all the animals are female. They can't breed.\"\nLucky had been thinking about that. He had recently learned of an intriguing West German study that he suspected held the answer. \"When you made your dinosaur DNA,\" Lucky said, \"you were working with fragmentary pieces, is that right?\"\n\"Yes,\" Eileen said.\n\"In order to make a complete strand, we're you ever required to include DNA fragments from other species?\"\n\"Occasionally, yes,\" Eileen said. \"It's the only way to accomplish the job. Sometimes we included avian DNA, from a variety of birds, and sometimes reptilian DNA.\"\n\"Any amphibian DNA? Specifically, frog DNA?\"\n\"Possibly. I'd have to check.\"\n\"Check,\" Lucky said. \"I think you'll find that holds the answer.\"\nGert said, \"Frog DNA? Why frog DNA?\"\nZain said impatiently, \"Listen, this is all very intriguing, but we're forgetting the main question: have any animals gotten off the island?\"\nLucky said, \"We can't tell from these data.\"\n\"Then how are we going to find out?\"\n\"There's only one way I know,\" Lucky said. \"We'll have to find the individual dinosaur nests, inspect them, and count the remaining egg fragments. From that we may be able to determine how many animals were originally hatched. And we can begin to assess whether any are missing.\"\nGert said, \"Even so, you won't know if the missing animals are killed, or dead from natural causes, or whether they have left the island.\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said, \"but it's a start. And I think we can get more information from an intensive look at the population graphs.\"\n\"How are we going to find these nests?\"\n\"Actually,\" Lucky said, \"I think the computer will be able to help us with that.\"\n\"Can we go back now?\" Kallie said. \"I'm hungry.\"\n\"Yes, let's go,\" Lucky said, smiling at her. \"You've been very patient.\"\n\"You'll be able to eat in about twenty minutes,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said, starting toward the two Land Cruisers.\n\"I'll stay for a while,\" Vasco said, \"and get photos of the stego with Dr. Deann's camera. Those vesicles in the mouth will have cleared up by tomorrow.\"\n\"I want to get back,\" Lucky said. \"I'll go with the kids.\"\n\"I will, too,\" Gert said.\n\"I think I'll stay,\" Zain said, \"and go back with Deann in his Jeep, with Dr. Christie.\"\n\"Fine, let's go.\"\nThey started walking. Gert said, \"Why exactly is our lawyer staying?\"\nLucky shrugged. \"I think it might have something to do with Dr. Christie.\"\n\"Really? The shorts, you think?\"\n\"It's happened before,\" Lucky said.\nWhen they came to the Land Cruisers, Nehemiah said, \"I want to ride in the front one this time, with Dr. Lucky.\"\nGert said, \"Unfortunately, Dr. Lucky and I need to talk.\"\n\"I'll just sit and listen. I won't say anything,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"It's a private conversation,\" Gert said.\n\"Tell you what, Nehemiah,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"Let them sit in the rear car by themselves. We'll sit in the front car, and you can use the night-vision goggles. Have you ever used night-vision goggles, Nehemiah? They're goggles with very sensitive CCDs that allow you to see in the dark.\"\n\"Neat,\" he said, and moved toward the first car.\n\"Hey!\" Kallie said. \"I want to use it, too.\"\n\"No,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"No fair! No fair! You get to do everything, Nehemiahmy!\"\nGlynis Wilhelmina watched them go and said to Lucky, \"I can see what the ride back is going to be like.\"\nLucky and Gert climbed into the second car. A few raindrops spattered the windshield. \"Let's get going,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"I'm about ready for dinner. And I could do with a nice banana daiquiri. What do you say, folks? Daiquiri sound good?\" He pounded the metal panel of the car. \"See you back at camp\" he said, and he started running toward the first car, and climbed aboard.\nA red light on the dashboard blinked. With a soft electric whirr, the Land Cruisers started off.\nDriving back in the fading light, Gert seemed oddly subdued. Lucky said, \"You must feel vindicated. About your theory.\"\n\"As a matter of fact, I'm feeling a bit of dread. I suspect we are at a very dangerous point.\"\n\"Why?\"\n\"Intuition.\"\n\"Do mathematicians believe in intuition?\"\n\"Absolutely. Very important, intuition. Actually, I was thinking of fractals,\" Gert said. \"You know about fractals?\"\nLucky shook his head. \"Not really, no.\"\n\"Fractals are a kind of geometry, associated with a man named Mandelbrot. Unlike ordinary Euclidean geometry that everybody learns in school-squares and cubes and spheres-fractal geometry appears to describe real objects in the natural world. Mountains and clouds are fractal shapes. So fractals are probably related to reality. Somehow.\n\"Well, Mandelbrot found a remarkable thing with his geometric tools. He found that things looked almost identical at different scales.\"\n\"At different scales?\" Lucky said.\n\"For example,\" Gert said, \"a big mountain, seen from far away, has a certain rugged mountain shape. If you get closer, and examine a small peak of the big mountain, it will have the same mountain shape. In fact, you can go all the way down the scale to a tiny speck of rock, seen under a microscope-it will have the same basic fractal shape as the big mountain.\"\n\"I don't really see why this is worrying you,\" Lucky said. He yawned. He smelled the sulfur fumes of the volcanic steam. They were coming now to the section of road that ran near the coastline, overlooking the beach and the ocean.\n\"It's a way of looking at things,\" Gert said. \"Mandelbrot found a sameness from the smallest to the largest. And this sameness of scale also occurs for events.\"\n\"Events?\"\n\"Consider cotton prices,\" Gert said. \"There are good records of cotton prices going back more than a hundred years. When you study fluctuations in cotton prices, you find that the graph of price fluctuations in the course of a day looks basically like the graph for a week, which looks basically like the graph for a year, or for ten years. And that's how things are. A day is like a whole life. You start out doing one thing, but end up doing something else, plan to run an errand, but never get there. . . . And at the end of your life, your whole existence has that same haphazard quality, too. Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.\"\n\"I guess it's one way to look at things,\" Lucky said.\n\"No,\" Gert said. \"It's the only way to look at things. At least, the only way that is true to reality. You see, the fractal idea of sameness carries within it an aspect of recursion, a kind of doubling back on itself, which means that events are unpredictable. That they can change suddenly, and without warning.\"\n\"Okay . . .\"\n\"But we have soothed ourselves into imagining sudden change as something that happens outside the normal order of things. An accident, like a car crash. Or beyond our control, like a fatal illness. We do not conceive of sudden, radical, irrational change as built into the very fabric of existence. Yet it is. And chaos theory teaches us,\" Gert said, \"that straight linearity, which we have come to take for granted in everything from physics to fiction, simply does not exist. Linearity is an artificial way of viewing the world. Real life isn't a series of interconnected events occurring one after another like beads strung on a necklace. Life is actually a series of encounters in which one event may change those that follow in a wholly unpredictable, even devastating way.\" Gert sat back in his seat, looking toward the other Land Cruiser, a few yards ahead. \"That's a deep truth about the structure of our universe. But, for some reason, we insist on behaving as if it were not true.\"\nAt that moment, the cars jolted to a stop, \"What's happened?\" Lucky said.\nUp ahead, they saw the kids in the car, pointing toward the ocean. Offshore, beneath lowering clouds, Lucky saw the dark outline of the supply boat making its way back toward Puntarenas.\n\"Why have we stopped?\" Gert said.\nLucky turned on the radio and heard the girl saying excitedly, \"Look there, Nehemiahmy! You see it, it's there!\"\nGert squinted at the boat. \"They talking about the boat?\"\n\"Apparently.\"\nGlynis Wilhelmina climbed out of the front car and came running back to their window. \"I'm sorry,\" he said, \"but the kids are all worked up. Do you have binoculars here?\"\n\"For what?\"\n\"The little girl says she sees something on the boat. Some kind of animal,\" Wilhelmina said.\nLucky grabbed the binoculars and rested his elbows on the window ledge of the Land Cruiser. He scanned the long shape of the supply ship. It was so dark it was almost a silhouette; as he watched, the ship's running lights came on, brilliant in the dark purple twilight.\n\"Do you see anything?\" Wilhelmina said.\n\"No,\" Lucky said.\n\"They're low down,\" Kallie said, over the radio. \"Look low down.\"\nLucky tilted the binoculars down, scanning the bull just above the waterline. The supply ship was broad-beamed, with a splash flange that ran the length of the ship. But it was quite dark now, and he could hardly make out details.\n\"No, nothing . . .\"\n\"I can see them,\" Kallie said impatiently. \"Near the back. Look near the back! \"\n\"How can she see anything in this light?\" Gert said.\n\"Kids can see,\" Lucky said. \"They've got visual acuity we forgot we ever had.\"\nHe swung the binoculars toward the stern, moving them slowly, and suddenly he saw the animals. They were playing, darting among the silhouetted stern structures. He could see them only briefly, but even in the fading light he could tell that they were upright animals, about two feet tall, standing with stiff balancing tails.\n\"You see them now?\" Kallie said.\n\"I see them,\" he said.\n\"What are they?\"\n\"They're raptors,\" Lucky said, \"At least two. Maybe more. Juveniles.\"\n\"Jesus, \" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"That boat's going to the mainland.\"\nGert shrugged. \"Don't get excited. Just call the control room and tell them to recall the boat.\"\nGlynis Wilhelmina reached in and grabbed the radio from the dashboard. They heard hissing static, and clicks as he rapidly changed channels. \"There's something wrong with this one,\" he said. \"It's not working.\"\nHe ran off to the first Land Cruiser. They saw him duck into it. Then he looked back at them. \"There's something wrong with both the radios,\" he said. \"I can't raise the control room.\"\n\"Then let's get going,\" Lucky said.\nIn the control room, Alfredo stood before the big windows that overlooked the park. At seven o'clock, the quartz floodlights came on all over the island, turning the landscape into a glowing jewel stretching away to the south. This was his favorite moment of the day. He heard the crackle of static from the radios.\n\"The Land Cruisers have started again,\" Celeste said. \"They're on their way home.\"\n\"But why did they stop?\" Golda said. \"And why can't we talk to them?\"\n\"I don't know,\" Celeste said. \"Maybe they turned off the radios in the cars.\n\"Probably the storm,\" Alfredo said. \"Interference from the storm.\"\n\"They'll be here in twenty minutes,\" Golda said. \"You better call down and make sure the dining room is ready for them. Those kids are going to be hungry.\"\nCeleste picked up the phone and heard a steady monotonous hiss. \"What's this? What's going on?\"\n\"Jesus, hang that up,\" Rhoda said. \"You'll screw up the data stream.\"\n\"You've taken all the phone lines? Even the internal ones?\"\n\"I've taken all the lines that communicate outside,\" Rhoda said. \"But your internal lines should still work.\"\nCeleste punched console buttons one after another. He heard nothing but hissing on all the lines.\n\"Looks like you've got 'em all.\"\n\"Sorry about that,\" Rhoda said. \"I'll clear a couple for you at the end of the next transmission, in about fifteen minutes.\" He yawned. \"Looks like a long weekend for me. I guess I'll go get that Coke now.\" He picked up his shoulder bag and headed for the door. \"Don't touch my console, okay?\"\nThe door closed.\n\"What a slob,\" Golda said.\n\"Yeah,\" Celeste said. \"But I guess he knows what he's doing.\"\nAlong the side of the road, clouds of volcanic steam misted rainbows in the bright quartz lights. Lucky said into the radio, \"How long does it take the ship to reach the mainland?\"\n\"Eighteen hours,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"More or less. It's pretty reliable.\" He glanced at his watch. \"It should arrive around eleven tomorrow morning.\"\nLucky frowned. \"You still can't talk to the control room?\"\n\"Not so far.\"\n\"How about Deann? Can you reach him?\"\n\"No, I've tried. He may have his radio turned off.\"\nGert was shaking his head. \"So we're the only ones who know about the animals on the ship.\"\n\"I'm trying to raise somebody,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"I mean, Christ, we don't want those animals on the mainland.\"\n\"How long until we get back to the base?\"\n\"From here, another sixteen, seventeen minutes,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said.\nAt night, the whole road was illuminated by big floodlights. It felt to Lucky as if they were driving through a bright green tunnel of leaves. Large raindrops spattered the windshield.\nLucky felt the Land Cruiser slow, then stop. \"Now what?\"\nKallie said, \"I don't want to stop. Why did we stop?\"\nAnd then, suddenly, all the floodlights went out. The road was plunged into darkness, Kallie said, \"Hey!\"\n\"Probably just a power outage or something,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"I'm sure the lights'll be on in a minute.\"\n\"What the hell?\" Celeste said, staring at his monitors.\n\"What happened?\" Alfredo said. \"You lose power?\"\n\"Yeah, but only power on the perimeter. Everything in this building's working fine. But outside, in the park, the power is gone. Lights, TV cameras, everything.\" His remote video monitors had gone black.\n\"What about the two Land Cruisers?\"\n\"Stopped somewhere around the tyrannosaur paddock.\"\n\"Well,\" Alfredo said, \"call Maintenance and let's get the power back on.\nCeleste picked up one of his phones and heard hissing: Rhoda's computers talking to each other. \"No phones. That damn Rhoda. Rhoda! Where the hell is he?\"\nBenny Rhoda pushed open the door marked FERTILIZATION, With the perimeter power out, all the security-card locks were disarmed. Every door in the building opened with a touch.\nThe problems with the security system were high on Jurassic Park's bug list. Rhoda wondered if anybody ever imagined that it wasn't a bug-tbat Rhoda had programmed it that way. He had built in a classic trap door. Few programmers of large computer systems could resist the temptation to leave themselves a secret entrance. Partly it was common sense: if inept users locked up the system-and then called you for help-you always had a way to get in and repair the mess. And partly it was a kind of signature: Kilroy was here.\nAnd partly it was insurance for the future. Rhoda was annoyed with the Jurassic Park project; late in the schedule, InGen had demanded extensive modifications to the system but hadn't been willing to pay for them, arguing they should be included under the original contract. Lawsuits were threatened; letters were written to Rhoda's other clients, implying that Rhoda was unreliable. It was blackmail, and in the end Rhoda had been forced to eat his overages on Jurassic Park and to make the changes that Golda wanted.\nBut later, when he was approached by Lionel Merida at Biosyn, Rhoda was ready to listen. And able to say that he could indeed get past Jurassic Park security. He could get into any room, any system, anywhere in the park. Because he had programmed it that way. Just in case.\nHe entered the fertilization room. The lab was deserted; as he had anticipated, all the staff was at dinner. Rhoda unzipped his shoulder bag and removed the can of Gillette shaving cream. He unscrewed the base, and saw the interior was divided into a series of cylindrical slots.\nHe pulled on a pair of heavy insulated gloves and opened the walk-in freezer marked CONTENTS VIABLE BIOLOGICAL MAINTAIN -10C MINIMUM. The freezer was the size of a small closet, with shelves from floor to ceiling. Most of the shelves contained reagents and liquids in plastic sacs. To one side he saw a smaller nitrogen cold box with a heavy ceramic door. He opened it, and a rack of small tubes slid out, in a cloud of white liquid-nitrogen smoke.\nThe embryos were arranged by species: Stegosaurus, Apatosaurus, Hadrosaurus, Tyrannosaurus. Each embryo in a thin glass container, wrapped in silver foil, stoppered with polylene. Rhoda quickly took two of each, slipping them into the shaving cream can.\nThen he screwed the base of the can shut and twisted the top. There was a hiss of releasing gas inside, and the can frosted in his hands. Merida had said there was enough coolant to last thirty-six hours. More than enough time to get back to San Jose.\nRhoda left the freezer, returned to the main lab. He dropped the can back in his bag, zipped it shut.\nHe went back into the hallway. The theft had taken less than two minutes. He could imagine the consternation upstairs in the control room, as they began to realize what had happened. All their security codes were scrambled, and all their phone lines were jammed. Without his help, it would take hours to untangle the mess-but in just a few minutes Rhoda would he back in the control room, setting things right.\nAnd no one would ever suspect what he had done.\nGrinning, Benny Rhoda walked down to the ground floor, nodded to the guard, and continued downstairs to the basement. Passing the neat lines of electric Land Cruisers, he went to the gasoline-powered Jeep parked against the wall. He climbed into it, noticing some odd gray tubing on the passenger seat. It looked almost like a rocket launcher, he thought, as he turned the ignition key and started the Jeep.\nRhoda glanced at his watch. From here, into the park, and three minutes straight to the east dock. Three minutes from there back to the control room.\nPiece of cake.\n\"Damn it!\" Celeste said, punching buttons on the console. \"It's all screwed up.\nAlfredo was standing at the windows, looking out at the park. The lights had gone out all over the island, except in the immediate area around the main buildings. He saw a few staff personnel hurrying to get out of the rain, but no one seemed to realize anything was wrong. Alfredo looked over at the visitor lodge, where the lights burned brightly.\n\"Uh-oh,\" Celeste said. \"We have real trouble.\"\n\"What's that?\" Alfredo said. He turned away from the window, and so he didn't see the Jeep drive out of the underground garage and head east along the maintenance road into the park.\n\"That idiot Rhoda turned off the security systems,\" Celeste said. \"The whole building's opened up. None of the doors are locked any more.\"\n\"I'll notify the guards,\" Alfredo said.\n\"That's the least of it,\" Celeste said. \"When you turn off the security, you turn off all the peripheral fences as well.\"\n\"The fences?\" Alfredo said.\n\"The electrical fences,\" Celeste said. \"They're off, all over the island.\"\n\"You mean . . .\"\n\"That's right,\" Celeste said. \"The animals can get out now.\" Celeste lit a cigarette. \"Probably nothing will happen, but you never know. . . .\"\nAlfredo started toward the door. \"I better drive out and bring in the people in those two Land Cruisers,\" he said. \"Just in case.\"\nAlfredo quickly went downstairs to the garage. He wasn't really worried about the fences going down. Most of the dinosaurs had been in their paddocks for nine months or more, and they had brushed up against the fences more than once, with notable results. Alfredo knew how quickly animals learned to avoid shock stimuli. You could train a laboratory pigeon with just two or three stimulation events. So it was unlikely the dinosaurs would now approach the fences.\nAlfredo was more concerned about what the people in the cars would do. He didn't want them getting out of the Land Cruisers, because once the power came back on, the cars would start moving again, whether the people were inside them or not. They might be left behind. Of course, in the rain it was unlikely they would leave the cars. But, still ... you never knew. . . .\nHe reached the garage and hurried toward the Jeep. It was lucky, he thought, that he had had the foresight to put the launcher in it. He could start right out, and he out there in- It was gone!\n\"What the hell?\" Alfredo stared at the empty parking space, astonished.\nThe Jeep was gone!\nWhat the hell was happening?\nChapter - FOURTH ITERATION\n[picture]\n\"Inevitably, underlying instabilities begin to appear.\"\nCHUCK GERT\nThe Main Road\nRain drummed loudly on the roof of the Land Cruiser. Nehemiah felt the night-vision goggles pressing heavily on his forehead. He reached for the knob near his ear and adjusted the intensity. There was a brief phosphorescent flare, and then, in shades of electronic green and black, he could see the Land Cruiser behind, with Dr. Lucky and Dr. Gert inside. Neat!\nDr. Lucky was staring out the front windshield toward him. Nehemiah saw him pick up the radio from the dash. There was a burst of static, and then he heard Dr. Lucky's voice: \"Can you see us back here?\"\nNehemiah picked up the radio from Glynis Wilhelmina. \"I see you.\"\n\"Everything all right?\"\n\"We're fine, Dr. Lucky.\"\n\"Stay in the car.\"\n\"We will. Don't Worry.\" He clicked the radio off.\nGlynis Wilhelmina snorted. \"It's pouring down rain. Of course we'll stay in the car,\" he muttered.\nNehemiah turned to look at the foliage at the side of the road. Through the goggles, the foliage was a bright electronic green, and beyond he could see sections of the green grid pattern of the fence. The Land Cruisers were stopped on the downslope of a hill, which must mean they were someplace near the tyrannosaur area. It would be amazing to see a tyrannosaur with these night-vision goggles. A real thrill. Maybe the tyrannosaur would come to the fence and look over at them. Nehemiah wondered if its eyes would glow in the dark when he saw them. That would be neat.\nBut he didn't see anything, and eventually he stopped looking. Everyone in the cars fell silent. The rain thrummed on the roof of the car. Sheets of water streamed down over the sides of the windows. It was hard for Nehemiah to see out, even with the goggles.\n\"How long have we been sitting here?\" Gert asked.\n\"I don't know. Four or five minutes.\"\n\"I wonder what the problem is.\"\n\"Maybe a short circuit from the rain.\"\n\"But it happened before the rain really started.\"\nThere was another silence. In a tense voice, Kallie said, \"But there's no lightning, right?\" She had always been afraid of lightning, and she now sat nervously squeezing her leather mitt in her hands.\nDr. Lucky said, \"What was that? We didn't quite read that.\"\n\"Just my sister talking.\"\n\"Oh.\"\nNehemiah again scanned the foliage, but saw nothing. Certainly nothing as big as a tyrannosaur. He began to wonder if the tyrannosaurs came out at night. Were they nocturnal animals? Nehemiah wasn't sure if he had ever read that. He had the feeling that tyrannosaurs were all-weather, day or night animals. The time of day didn't matter to a tyrannosaur.\nThe rain continued to pour.\n\"Hell of a rain,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"It's really coming down.\"\nKallie said, \"I'm hungry.\"\n\"I know that, Kallie,\" Wilhelmina said, \"but we're stuck here, sweetie. The cars run on electricity in buried cables in the road.\"\n\"Stuck for how long?\"\n\"Until they fix the electricity.\"\nListening to the sound of the rain, Nehemiah felt himself growing sleepy. He yawned, and turned to look at the palm trees on the left side of the road, and was startled by a sudden tbump as the ground shook. He swung back just in time to catch a glimpse of a dark shape as it swiftly crossed the road between the two cars.\n\"Jesus! \"\n\"What was it?\"\n\"It was huge, it was big as the car-\"\n\"Nehemiah! Are you there?\"\nHe picked up the radio. \"Yes, I'm here.\"\n\"Did you see it, Nehemiah?\"\n\"No,\" Nehemiah said. \"I missed it.\"\n\"What the hell was it?\" Gert said.\n\"Are you wearing the night-vision goggles, Nehemiah?\"\n\"Yes. I'll watch,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Was it the tyrannosaur?\" Glynis Wilhelmina asked.\n\"I don't think so. It was in the road.\"\n\"But you didn't see it?\" Glynis Wilhelmina said.\n\"No. \"\nNehemiah felt had that he had missed seeing the animal whatever it was.\nThere was a sudden white crack of lightning, and his night goggles flared bright green. He blinked his eyes and started counting. \"One one thousand . . . two one thousand . . .\"\nThe thunder crashed, deafeningly loud and very close. Kallie began to cry. \"Oh, no . . .\"\n\"Take it easy, honey,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said. \"It's just lightning.\"\nNehemiah scanned the side of the road. The rain was coming down bard now, shaking the leaves with hammering drops. It made everything move. Everything seemed alive. He scanned the leaves. . . .\nHe stopped. There was something beyond the leaves.\nNehemiah looked up, higher.\nBehind the foliage, beyond the fence, he saw a thick body with a pebbled, grainy surface like the bark of a tree. But it wasn't a tree. He continued to look higher, sweeping the goggles upward- He saw the huge head of the tyrannosaurus. Just standing there, looking over the fence at the two Land Cruisers. The lightning flashed again, and the big animal rolled its head and bellowed in the glaring light. Then darkness, and silence again, and the pounding rain.\n\"Nehemiah?\"\n\"Yes, Dr. Lucky.\"\n\"You see what it is?\"\n\"Yes, Dr. Lucky.\"\nNehemiah had the sense that Dr. Lucky was trying to talk in a way that wouldn't upset his sister.\n\"What's going on right now?\"\n\"Nothing,\" Nehemiah said, watching the tyrannosaur through his night goggles. \"Just standing on the other side of the fence.\"\n\"I can't see much from here, Nehemiah.\"\n\"I can see fine, Dr. Lucky. It's just standing there.\"\n\"Okay.\"\nKallie continued to cry, snuffling.\nThere was another pause. Nehemiah watched the tyrannosaur. The head was huge! The animal looked from one vehicle to another. Then back again. It seemed to stare right at Nehemiah.\nIn the goggles, the eyes glowed bright green.\nNehemiah felt a chill, but then, as he looked down the animal's body, moving down from the massive head and jaws, he saw the smaller, muscular forelimb. It waved in the air and then it gripped the fence.\n\"Jesus Christ,\" Glynis Wilhelmina said, staring out the window.\nThe greatest preditor the world has ever known. The most fearsome attack in human history. Somewhere in the back of his publicist's brain, Glynis Wilhelmina was still writing copy. But he could feel his knees begin to shake uncontrollably, his trousers flapping like flags, Jesus, he was frightened. He didn't want to be here. Alone among all the people in the two cars, Glynis Wilhelmina knew what a dinosaur attack was like. He knew what happened to people. He had seen the mangled bodies that resulted from a raptor attack. He could picture it in his mind. And this was a rex! Much, much bigger! The greatest meat-eater that ever walked the earth!\nJesus.\nWhen the tyrannosaur roared it was terrifying, a scream from some other world. Glynis Wilhelmina felt the spreading warmth in his trousers. He'd peed in his pants. He was simultaneously embarrassed and terrified. But he knew he had to do something. He couldn't just stay here. He had to do something. Something. His hands were shaking, trembling against the dash.\n\"Jesus Christ,\" he said again.\n\"Bad language,\" Kallie said, wagging her finger at him.\nNehemiah heard the sound of a door opening, and he swung his head away from the tyrannosaur-the night-vision goggles streaked laterally-in time to see Glynis Wilhelmina stepping out through the open door, ducking his head in the rain.\n\"Hey,\" Kallie said, \"where are you going?\"\nGlynis Wilhelmina just turned and ran in the opposite direction from the tyrannosaur, disappearing into the woods. The door to the Land Cruiser hung open; the paneling was getting wet.\n\"He left!\" Kallie said. \"Where did he go? He left us alone!\"\n\"Shut the door,\" Nehemiah said, but she had started to scream, \"He left us! He left us!\"\n\"Nehemiah, what's going on?\" It was Dr. Lucky, on the radio. \"Nehemiah?\"\nNehemiah leaned forward and tried to shut the door. From the back seat, he couldn't reach the handle. He looked back at the tyrannosaur as lightning flashed again, momentarily silhouetting the huge black shape against the white-flaring sky.\n\"Nehemiah, what's happening?\"\n\"He left us, he left us!\"\nNehemiah blinked to recover his vision. When he looked again, the tyrannosaur was standing there, exactly as before, motionless and huge. Rain dripped from its jaws. The forelimb gripped the fence. . . .\nAnd then Nehemiah realized: the tyrannosaur was holding on to the fence! The fence wasn't electrified any more!\n\"Kallie, close the door!\"\nThe radio crackled. \"Nehemiah!\"\n\"I'm here, Dr. Lucky.\"\n\"What's going on?\"\n\"Wilhelmina ran away,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"He what?\"\n\"He ran away. I think he saw that the fence isn't electrified,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"The fence isn't electrified?\" Gert said, over the radio. \"Did he say the fence isn't electrified?\"\n\"Kallie,\" Nehemiah said, \"close the door. \" But Kallie was screaming, \"He left us, he left us!\" in a steady, monotonous wail, and there was nothing for Nehemiah to do but climb out of the back door, into the slashing rain, and shut the door for her. Thunder rumbled, and the lightning flashed again. Nehemiah looked up and saw the tyrannosaur crashing down the cyclone fence with a giant hind limb.\n\"Nehemiahmy!\"\nHe jumped back in and slammed the door, the sound lost in the tbunderclap.\nThe radio: \"Nehemiah! Are you there?\"\nHe grabbed the radio. \"I'm here.\" He turned to Kallie. \"Lock the doors. Get in the middle of the car. And shut up.\"\nOutside, the tyrannosaur rolled its head and took an awkward step forward. The claws of its feet had caught in the grid of the flattened fence. Kallie saw the animal finally, and became silent, still. She watched with wide eyes.\nRadio crackle. \"Nehemiah.\"\n\"Yes, Dr. Lucky.\"\n\"Stay in the car. Stay down. Be quiet. Don't move, and don't make noise.\"\n\"Okay.\"\n\"You should be all right. I don't think it can open the car.\"\n\"Okay.\"\n\"Just stay quiet, so you don't arouse its attention any more than necessary.\n\"Okay.\" Nehemiah clicked the radio off. \"You hear that, Kallie?\" His sister nodded, silently. She never took her eyes off the dinosaur. The tyrannosaur roared. In the glare of lightning, they saw it pull free of the fence and take a bounding step forward.\nNow it was standing between the two cars. Nehemiah couldn't see Dr. Lucky's car any more, because the huge body blocked his view. The rain ran in rivulets down the pebbled skin of the muscular hind legs. He couldn't see the animal's head, which was high above the roofline.\nThe tyrannosaur moved around the side of their car. It went to the very spot where Nehemiah had gotten out of the car. Where Glynis Wilhelmina had gotten out of the car. The animal paused there. The big head ducked down, toward the mud.\nNehemiah looked back at Dr. Lucky and Dr. Gert in the rear car. Their faces were tense as they stared forward through the windshield.\nThe huge head raised back up, jaws open, and then stopped by the side windows. In the glare of lightning, they saw the beady, expressionless reptile eye moving in the socket.\nIt was looking in the car.\nHis sister's breath came in ragged, frightened gasps. He reached out and squeezed her arm, hoping she would stay quiet. The dinosaur continued to stare for a long time through the side window. Perhaps the dinosaur couldn't really see them, he thought. Finally the head lifted up, out of view again.\n\"Nehemiahmy . . .\" Kallie whispered.\n\"It's okay,\" Nehemiah whispered. \"I don't think it saw us.\"\nHe was looking back toward Dr. Lucky when a jolting impact rocked the Land Cruiser and shattered the windshield in a spiderweb as the tyrannosaur's head crashed against the hood of the Land Cruiser. Nehemiah was knocked flat on the seat. The night-vision goggles slid off his forehead.\nHe got back up quickly, blinking in the darkness, his mouth warm with blood.\n\"Kallie?\"\nHe couldn't see his sister anywhere.\nThe tyrannosaur stood near the front of the Land Cruiser, its chest moving as it breathed, the forelimbs making clawing movements in the air.\n\"Kallie!\" Nehemiah whispered. Then he heard her groan. She was lying somewhere on the floor under the front seat.\nThen the huge head came down, entirely blocking the shattered windshield. The tyrannosaur banged again on the front hood of the Land Cruiser. Nehemiah grabbed the seat as the car rocked on its wheels. The tyrannosaur banged down twice more, denting the metal.\nThen it moved around the side of the car. The big raised tail blocked his view out of all the side windows. At the back, the animal snorted, a deep rumbling growl that blended with the thunder. It sank its jaws into the spare tire mounted on the back of the Land Cruiser and, in a single head shake, tore it away. The rear of the car lifted into the air for a moment; then it thumped down with a muddy splash.\n\"Nehemiah!\" Dr. Lucky said. \"Nehemiah, are you there?\"\nNehemiah grabbed the radio. \"We're okay,\" he said. There was a shrill metallic scrape as claws raked the roof of the car. Nehemiah's heart was pounding in his chest. He couldn't see anything out of the windows on the right side except pebbled leathery flesh. The tyrannosaur was leaning against the car, which rocked back and forth with each breath, the springs and metal creaking loudly.\nKallie groaned again. Nehemiah put down the radio, and started to crawl over into the front seat. The tyrannosaur roared and the metal roof dented downward. Nehemiah felt a sharp pain in his head and tumbled to the floor, onto the transmission bump. He found himself lying alongside Kallie, and he was shocked to see that the whole side of her head was covered in blood. She looked unconscious.\nThere was another jolting impact, and pieces of glass fell all around him. Nehemiah felt rain. He looked up and saw that the front windshield had broken out. There was just a jagged rim of glass and, beyond, the big head of the dinosaur.\nLooking down at him.\nNehemiah felt a sudden chill and then the head rushed forward toward him, the jaws open. There was the squeal of metal against teeth, and he felt the hot stinking breath of the animal and a thick tongue stuck into the car through the windshield opening. The tongue slapped wetly around inside the car-he felt the hot lather of dinosaur saliva-and the tyrannosaur roared-a deafening sound inside the car- The head pulled away abruptly.\nNehemiah scrambled up, avoiding the dent in the roof. There was still room to sit on the front seat by the passenger door. The tyrannosaur stood in the rain near the front fender. It seemed confused by what had happened to it. Blood dripped freely from its jaws.\nThe tyrannosaur looked at Nehemiah, cocking its head to stare with one big eye. The head moved close to the car, sideways, and peered in. Blood spattered on the dented bood of the Land Cruiser, mixing with the rain.\nIt can't get to me, Nehemiah thought. It's too big.\nThen the head pulled away, and in the flare of lightning he saw the hind leg lift up. And the world tilted crazily as the Land Cruiser slammed over its side, the windows splatting in the mud. He saw Kallie fall helplessly against the side window, and he fell down beside her, banging his head. Nehemiah felt dizzy. Then the tyrannosaur's jaws clamped onto the window frame, and the whole Land Cruiser was lifted up into the air, and shaken.\n\"Nehemiahmy!\" Kallie shrieked, so near to his ear that it hurt. She was suddenly awake, and he grabbed her as the tyrannosaur crashed the car down again. Nehemiah felt a stabbing pain in his side, and his sister fell on top of him. The car went up again, tilting crazily. Kallie shouted \"Nehemiahmy!\" and he saw the door give way beneath her, and she fell out of the car into the mud but Nehemiah couldn't answer, because in the next instant everything swung crazily-he saw the trunks of the palm trees sliding downward past him-moving sideways through the air-he glimpsed the ground very far below-the hot roar of the tyrannosaur-the blazing eye-the tops of the palm trees- And then, with a metallic scraping shriek, the car fell from the tyrannosaur's jaws, a sickening fall, and Nehemiah's stomach heaved in the moment before the world became totally black, and silent.\nIn the other car, Gert gasped. \"Jesus! What happened to the car?\" Lucky blinked his eyes as the lightning faded.\nThe other car was gone.\nLucky couldn't believe it. He peered forward, trying to see through the rain-streaked windshield. The dinosaur's body was so large, it was probably just blocking- No. In another flash of lightning, he saw clearly: the car was gone.\n\"What happened?\" Gert said.\n\"I don't know.\"\nFaintly, over the rain, Lucky heard the sound of the little girl screaming. The dinosaur was standing in darkness on the road up ahead, but they could see well enough to know that it was bending over now, sniffing the ground.\nOr eating something on the ground.\n\"Can you see?\" Gert said, squinting.\n\"Not much, no,\" Lucky said. The rain pounded on the roof of the car. He listened for the little girl, but he didn't hear her any more. The two men sat in the car, listening.\n\"Was it the girl?\" Gert said, finally. \"It sounded like the girl.\"\n\"It did, yes.\"\n\"Was it?\"\n\"I don't know,\" Lucky said. He felt a seeping fatigue overtake him. Blurred through the rainy windshield, the dinosaur was coming toward their car. Slow, ominous strides, coming right toward them.\nGert said, \"You know, at times like this one feels, well, perhaps extinct animals should be left extinct. Don't you have that feeling now?\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. He was feeling his heart pounding.\n\"Umm. Do you, ah, have any suggestions about what we do now?\"\n\"I can't think of a thing,\" Lucky said.\nGert twisted the handle, kicked open the door, and ran. But even as he did, Lucky could see he was too late, the tyrannosaur too close. There was another crack of lightning, and in that instant of glaring white light, Lucky watched in horror as the tyrannosaur roared, and leapt forward.\nLucky was not clear about exactly what happened next. Gert was running, his feet splashing in the mud. The tyrannosaur bounded alongside him and ducked its massive head, and Gert was tossed into the air like a small doll.\nBy then Lucky was out of the car, too, feeling the cold rain slashing his face and body. The tyrannosaur had turned its back to him, the huge tail swinging through the air. Lucky was tensing to run for the woods when suddenly the tyrannosaur spun back to face him, and roared.\nLucky froze.\nHe was standing beside the passenger door of the Land Cruiser, drenched in rain. He was completely exposed, the tyrannosaur no more than eight feet away. The big animal roared again. At so close a range the sound was terrifyingly loud. Lucky felt himself shaking with cold and fright. He pressed his trembling hands against the metal of the door panel to steady them.\nThe tyrannosaur roared once more, but it did not attack. It cocked its head, and looked with first one eye, then the other, at the Land Cruiser. And it did nothing.\nIt just stood there.\nWhat was going on?\nThe powerful jaws opened and closed. The tyrannosaur bellowed angrily, and then the big hind leg came up and crashed down on the roof of the car; the claws slid off with a metal screech, barely missing Lucky as he stood there, still unmoving.\nThe foot splashed in the mud. The head ducked down in a slow arc, and the animal inspected the car, snorting. It peered into the front windshield. Then, moving toward the rear, it banged the passenger door shut, and moved right toward Lucky as he stood there. Lucky was dizzy with fear his heart pounding inside his chest. With the animal so close, he could smell the rotten flesh in the mouth, the sweetish blood-smell, the sickening stench of the carnivore. . . .\nHe tensed his body, awaiting the inevitable.\nThe big head slid past him, toward the rear of the car. Lucky blinked.\nWhat had happened?\nWas it possible the tyrannosaur hadn't seen him? It seemed as if it hadn't. But how could that be? Lucky looked back to see the animal sniffing the rear-mounted tire. It nudged the tire with its snout, and then the head swung back. Again it approached Lucky.\nThis time the animal stopped, the black flaying nostrils just inches away. Lucky felt the animal's startling hot breath on his face. But the tyrannosaur wasn't sniffing like a dog. It was just breathing, and if anything it seemed puzzled.\nNo, the tyrannosaur couldn't see him. Not if he stood motionless. And in a detached academic corner of his mind he found an explanation for that, a reason why- The laws opened before him, the massive head raised up. Lucky squeezed his fists together, and bit his lip, trying desperately to remain motionless, to make no sound.\nThe tyrannosaur bellowed in the night air.\nBut by now Lucky was beginning to understand. The animal couldn't see him, but it suspected he was there, somewhere, and was trying with its bellowing to frighten Lucky into some revealing movement. So long as he stood his ground, Lucky realized, he was invisible.\nIn a final gesture of frustration, the big hind leg lifted up and kicked the Land Cruiser over, and Lucky felt searing pain and the surprising sensation of his own body flying through the air. It seemed to be happening very slowly, and he had plenty of time to feel the world turn colder, and watch the ground rush up to strike him in the face.\nChapter - Return\n\"Oh damn,\" Deann said. \"Will you look at that.\"\nThey were sitting in Deann's gasoline-powered Jeep, staring forward past the flick flick of the windshield wipers. In the yellow flare of the headlamps, a big fallen tree blocked the road.\n\"Must have been the lightning,\" Zain said. \"Hell of a tree.\"\n\"We can't get past it,\" Deann said. \"I better tell Celeste in control.\" He picked up the radio and twisted the channel dial. \"Hello, Cerise. Are you there, Cerise?\"\nThere was nothing but steady hissing static. \"I don't understand,\" he said. \"The radio lines seem to be down.\"\n\"It must be the storm,\" Zain said.\n\"I suppose,\" Deann said.\n\"Try the Land Cruisers,\" Vasco said.\nDeann opened the other channels, but there was no answer.\n\"Nothing,\" he said. \"They're probably back to camp by now, and outside the range of our little set. In any case, I don't think we should stay here. It'll be hours before Maintenance gets a crew out here to move that tree.\"\nHe turned the radio off, and put the Jeep into reverse.\n\"Wbat're you going to do?\" Vasco said.\n\"Go back to the turnout, and get onto the maintenance road. Fortunately there's a second road system,\" Deann explained. \"We have one road for visitors, and a second road for animal handlers and feed trucks and so on. We'll drive back on that maintenance road. It's a little longer. And not so scenic. But you may find it interesting. If the rain lets up, we'll get a glimpse of some of the animals at night. We should be back in thirty, forty minutes,\" Deann said. \"If I don't get lost.\"\nHe turned the Jeep around in the night, and headed south again.\nLightning flashed, and every monitor in the control room went black.\nCeleste sat forward, his body rigid and tense. Jesus, not now. Not now. That was all he needed-to have everything go out now in the storm. All the main power circuits were surge-protected, of course, but Celeste wasn't sure about the modems Rhoda was using for his data transmission. Most people didn't know it was possible to blow an entire system through a modem-the lightning pulse climbed back into the computer through the telephone line, and-bang!-no more motherboard. No more RAM. No more file server. No more computer.\nThe screens flickered. And then, one by one, they came back on.\nCeleste sighed, and collapsed back in his chair.\nHe wondered again where Rhoda had gone. Five minutes ago, he'd sent guards to search the building for him. The fat bastard was probably in the bathroom reading a comic book. But the guards hadn't come back, and they hadn't called in.\nFive minutes. If Rhoda was in the building, they should have found him by now.\n\"Somebody took the damned Jeep,\" Alfredo said as he came back in the room. \"Have you talked to the Land Cruisers yet?\"\n\"Can't raise them on the radio,\" Celeste said. \"I have to use this, because the main board is down. It's weak, but it ought to work. I've tried on all six channels. I know they have radios in the cars, but they're not answering.\"\n\"That's not good,\" Alfredo said.\n\"If you want to go out there, take one of the maintenance vehicles.\"\n\"I would,\" Alfredo said, \"but they're all in the east garage, more than a mile from here. Where's Deann?\"\n\"I assume he's on his way back.\"\n\"Then he'll pick up the people in the Land Cruisers on his way.\"\n\"I assume so.\"\n\"Anybody tell Golda the kids aren't back yet?\"\n\"Hell no,\" Celeste said. \"I don't want that son of a bitch running around here, screaming at me. Everytbing's all right, for the moment. The Land Cruisers are just stuck in the rain. They can sit a while, until Deann brings them back. Or until we find Rhoda, and make that little bastard turn the systems back on.\"\n\"You can't get them back on?\" Alfredo said.\nCeleste shook his head. \"I've been trying. But Rhoda's done something to the system. I can't figure out what, but if I have to go into the code itself, that'll take hours. We need Rhoda. We've got to find the son of a bitch right away.\"\nChapter - Rhoda\nThe sign said ELECTRIFIGLYNIS FENCE 10,000 VOLTS DO NOT TOUCH, but Rhoda opened it with his bare band, and unlocked the gate, swinging it wide. He went back to the Jeep, drove through the gate, and then walked back to close it behind him.\nNow he was inside the park itself, no more than a mile from the east dock. He stepped on the accelerator and bunched forward over the steering wheel, peering through the rain-slashed windshield as he drove the Jeep down the narrow road. He was driving fast-too fast-but he had to keep to his timetable. He was surrounded on all sides by black jungle, but soon he should be able to see the beach and the ocean off to his left.\nThis damned storm, he thought. It might screw up everything. Because if Merida's boat wasn't waiting for him at the east dock when Rhoda got there, the whole plan would be ruined. Rhoda couldn't wait very long, or he would be missed back at the control room. The whole idea behind the plan was that he could drive to the east dock, drop off the embryos, and be back in a few minutes, before anyone noticed. It was a good plan, a clever plan. Rhoda'd worked on it carefully, refining every detail. This plan was going to make him a million and a half dollars, one point five meg. That was ten years of income in a single tax-free shot, and it was going to change his life. Rhoda'd been damned careful, even to the point of making Merida meet him in the San Francisco airport at the last minute with an excuse about wanting to see the money, Actually, Rhoda wanted to record his conversation with Merida, and mention him by name on the tape. Just so that Merida wouldn't forget he owed the rest of the money, Rhoda was including a copy of the tape with the embryos. In short, Rhoda had thought of everything.\nExcept this damned storm.\nSomething dashed across the road, a white flash in his headlights. It looked like a large rat. It scurried into the underbrush, dragging a fat tail. Possum. Amazing that a possum could survive here. You'd think the dinosaurs would get an animal like that.\nWhere was the damned dock?\nHe was driving fast, and he'd already been gone five minutes. He should have reached the east dock by now. Had he taken a wrong turn? He didn't think so. He hadn't seen any forks in the road at all.\nThen where was the dock?\nIt was a shock when he came around a corner and saw that the road terminated in a gray concrete barrier, six feet tall and streaked dark with rain. He slammed on the brakes, and the Jeep fishtailed, losing traction in an end-to-end spin, and for a horrified moment he thought he was going to smash into the barrier-he knew he was going to smash-and he spun the wheel frantically, and the Jeep slid to a stop, the headlamps just a foot from the concrete wall.\nHe paused there, listening to the rhythmic flick of the wipers. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. He looked back down the road. He'd obviously taken a wrong turn somewhere. He could retrace his steps, but that would take too long.\nHe'd better try and find out where the hell he was.\nHe got out of the Jeep, feeling heavy raindrops spatter his head. It was a real tropical storm, raining so hard that it hurt. He glanced at his watch, pushing the button to illuminate the digital dial. Six minutes gone. Where the hell was he? He walked around the concrete barrier and on the other side, along with the rain, he heard the sound of gurgling water. Could it be the ocean? Rhoda hurried forward, his eyes adjusting to the darkness as he went. Dense jungle on all sides. Raindrops slapping on the leaves.\nThe gurgling sound became louder, drawing him forward, and suddenly he came out of the foliage and felt his feet sink into soft earth and saw the dark currents of the river. The river! He was at the jungle river!\nDamn, he thought. At the river where? The river ran for miles through the island. He looked at his watch again. Seven minutes gone. \"You have a problem, Benny,\" he said aloud.\nAs if in reply, there was a soft hooting cry of an owl in the forest.\nRhoda hardly noticed; he was worrying about his plan. The plain fact was that time had run out. There wasn't a choice any more. He had to abandon his original plan. All he could do was go back to the control room, restore the computer, and somehow try to contact Merida, to set up the drop at the east dock for the following night. Rhoda would have to scramble to make that work, but he thought he could pull it off. The computer automatically logged all calls; after Rhoda got through to Merida, he'd have to go back into the computer and erase the record of the call. But one thing was sure-he couldn't stay out in the park any longer, or his absence would be noticed.\nRhoda started back, heading toward the glow of the car's headlights. He was drenched and miserable. He heard the soft booting cry once more, and this time he paused. That hadn't really sounded like an owl. And it seemed to be close by, in the jungle somewhere off to his right.\nAs he listened, he heard a crashing sound in the underbrush. Then silence. He waited, and heard it again. It sounded distinctly like something big, moving slowly through the jungle toward him.\nSomething big. Something near. A big dinosaur.\nGet out of here.\nRhoda began to run. He made a lot of noise as he ran, but even so he could hear the animal crashing through the foliage. And hooting.\nIt was coming closer.\nStumbling over tree roots in the darkness, clawing his way past dripping branches, he saw the Jeep ahead, and the lights shining around the vertical wall of the barrier made him feel better. In a moment he'd be in the car and then he'd get the hell out of here. He scrambled around the barrier and then he froze.\nThe animal was already there.\nBut it wasn't close. The dinosaur stood forty feet away, at the edge of the illumination from the headlamps. Rhoda hadn't taken the tour, so he hadn't seen the different types of dinosaurs, but this one was strange-looking. The ten-foot-tall body was yellow with black spots, and along the head ran a pair of red V-shaped crests. The dinosaur didn't move, but again gave its soft hooting cry.\nRhoda waited to see if it would attack. It didn't. Perhaps the headlights from the Jeep frightened it, forcing it to keep its distance, like a fire.\nThe dinosaur stared at him and then snapped its head in a single swift motion. Rhoda felt something smack wetly against his chest. He looked down and saw a dripping glob of foam on his rain-soaked shirt. He touched it curiously, not comprehending. . . .\nIt was spit.\nThe dinosaur had spit on him.\nIt was creepy, he thought. He looked back at the dinosaur and saw the head snap again, and immediately felt another wet smack against his neck, just above the shirt collar. He wiped it away with his hand.\nJesus, it was disgusting. But the skin of his neck was already starting to tingle and burn. And his hand was tingling, too. It was almost like he had been touched with acid.\nRhoda opened the car door, glancing back at the dinosaur to make sure it wasn't going to attack, and felt a sudden, excruciating pain in his eyes, stabbing like spikes into the back of his skull, and he squeezed his eyes shut and gasped with the intensity of it and threw up his hands to cover his eyes and felt the slippery foam trickling down both sides of his nose.\nSpit.\nThe dinosaur had spit in his eyes.\nEven as he realized it, the pain overwhelmed him, and he dropped to his knees, disoriented, wheezing. He collapsed onto his side, his cheek pressed to the wet ground, his breath coming in thin whistles through the constant, ever-screaming pain that caused flashing spots of light to appear behind his tightly shut eyelids.\nThe earth shook beneath him and Rhoda knew the dinosaur was moving, he could hear its soft hooting cry, and despite the pain he forced his eyes open and still he saw nothing but flashing spots against black. Slowly the realization came to him.\nHe was blind.\nThe hooting was louder as Rhoda scrambled to his feet and staggered back against the side panel of the car, as a wave of nausea and dizziness swept over him. The dinosaur was close now, he could feel it coming close, he was dimly aware of its snorting breath.\nBut he couldn't see.\nHe couldn't see anything, and his terror was extreme.\nHe stretched out his hands, waving them wildly in the air to ward off the attack he knew was coming.\nAnd then there was a new, searing pain, like a fiery knife in his belly, and Rhoda stumbled, reaching blindly down to touch the ragged edge of his shirt, and then a thick, slippery mass that was surprisingly warm, and with horror he suddenly knew he was holding his own intestines in his hands. The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out.\nRhoda fell to the ground and landed on something scaly and cold, it was the animal's foot, and then there was new pain on both sides of his head. The pain grew worse, and as he was lifted to his feet he knew the dinosaur had his head in its jaws, and the horror of that realization was followed by a final wish, that it would all be ended soon.\nChapter - Bungalow\n\"More coffee?\" Golda asked politely.\n\"No, thank you,\" Etienne Eileen said, leaning back in his chair. \"I couldn't eat anything more.\" They were sitting in the dining room of Golda's bungalow, in a secluded corner of the park not far from the labs. Eileen had to admit that the bungalow Golda had built for himself was elegant, with sparse, almost Japanese lines. And the dinner had been excellent, considering the dining room wasn't fully staffed yet.\nBut there was something about Golda that Eileen found troubling. The old man was different in some way . . . subtly different. All during dinner, Eileen had tried to decide what it was. In part, a tendency to ramble, to repeat himself, to retell old stories. In part, it was an emotional lability, flaring anger one moment, maudlin sentimentality the next. But all that could be understood as a natural concomitant of age. Cerise Golda was, after all, almost seventy-seven.\nBut there was something else. A stubborn evasiveness. An insistence on having his way. And, in the end, a complete refusal to deal with the situation that now faced the park.\nEileen had been stunned by the evidence (he did not yet allow himself to believe the case was proved) that the dinosaurs were breeding. After Lucky had asked about amphibian DNA, Eileen had intended to go directly to his laboratory and check the computer records of the various DNA assemblies. Because, if the dinosaurs were in fact breeding, then everything about Jurassic Park was called into question-their genetic development methods, their genetic control methods, everything. Even the lysine dependency might be suspect. And if these animals could truly breed, and could also survive in the wild . . .\nEtienne Eileen wanted to check the data at once. But Golda had stubbornly insisted Eileen accompany him at dinner.\n\"Now then, Etienne, you must save room for ice cream,\" Golda said, pushing back from the table. \"Maria makes the most wonderful ginger ice cream.\"\n\"All right.\" Eileen looked at the beautiful, silent serving girl. His eyes followed her out of the room, and then he glanced up at the single video monitor mounted in the wall. The monitor was dark. \"Your monitor's out,\" Eileen said.\n\"Is it?\" Golda glanced over. \"Must be the storm.\" He reached behind him for the telephone. \"I'll just check with Cerise in control.\"\nEileen could hear the static crackle on the telephone line. Golda shrugged, and set the receiver back in its cradle. \"Lines must be down,\" he said. \"Or maybe Rhoda's still doing data transmission. He has quite a few bugs to fix this weekend. Rhoda's a genius in his way, but we had to press him quite hard, toward the end, to make sure he got things right.\"\n\"Perhaps I should go to the control room and check,\" Eileen said.\n\"No, no,\" Golda said, \"There's no reason. If there were any problem, we'd hear about it. Ah.\"\nMaria came back into the room, with two plates of ice cream.\n\"You must have just a little, Etienne,\" Golda said. \"It's made with fresh ginger, from the eastern part of the island. It's an old man's vice, ice cream. But still . . .\"\nDutifully, Eileen dipped his spoon. Outside, lightning flashed, and there was the sharp crack of thunder. \"That was close,\" Eileen said. \"I hope the storm isn't frightening the children.\"\n\"I shouldn't think so,\" Golda said. He tasted the ice cream. \"But I can't help but hold some fears about this park, Etienne.\"\nInwardly, Eileen felt relieved. Perhaps the old man was going to face the facts, after all. \"What kind of fears?\"\n\"You know, Jurassic Park's really made for children. The children of the world love dinosaurs, and the children are going to delight-just delight-in this place. Their little faces will shine with the joy of finally seeing these wonderful animals. But I am afraid . . . I may not live to see it, Etienne. I may not live to see the joy on their faces.\"\n\"I think there are other problems, too,\" Eileen said, frowning.\n\"But none so pressing on my mind as this,\" Golda said, \"that I may not live to see their shining, delighted faces. This is our triumph, this park. We have done what we set out to do. And, you remember, our original intent was to use the newly emerging technology of genetic engineering to make money. A lot of money.\"\nEileen knew Golda was about to launch into one of his old speeches. He held up his hand. \"I'm familiar with this, Cerise-\"\n\"If you were going to start a bioengineering company, Etienne, what would you do? Would you make products to help mankind, to fight illness and disease? Dear me, no. That's a terrible idea. A very poor use of new technology.\"\nGolda shook his head sadly. \"Yet, you'll remember,\" he said, \"the original genetic engineering companies, like Genentech and Cetus, were all started to make pharmaceuticals. New drugs for mankind. Noble, noble purpose. Unfortunately, drugs face all kinds of barriers. FDA testing alone takes five to eight years-if you're lucky. Even worse, there are forces at work in the marketplace. Suppose you make a miracle drug for cancer or heart disease-as Genentech did. Suppose you now want to charge a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars a dose. You might imagine that is your privilege. After all, you invented the drug, you paid to develop and test it; you should be able to charge whatever you wish. But do you really think that the government will let you do that? No, Etienne, they will not. Sick people aren't going to pay a thousand dollars a dose for needed medication-they won't be grateful, they'll be outraged. Blue Cross isn't going to pay it. They'll scream highway robbery. So something will happen. Your patent application will be denied. Your permits will be delayed. Something will force you to see reason-and to sell your drug at a lower cost. From a business standpoint, that makes helping mankind a very risky business. Personally, I would never help mankind.\"\nEileen had heard the argument before. And he knew Golda was right, some new bioengineered pharmaceuticals had indeed suffered inexplicable delays and patent problems.\n\"Now,\" Golda said, \"think how different it is when you're making entertainment, Nobody needs entertainment. That's not a matter for government intervention. If I charge five thousand dollars a day for my park, who is going to stop me? After all, nobody needs to come here. And, far from being highway robbery, a costly price tag actually increases the appeal of the park. A visit becomes a status symbol, and all Americans love that. So do the Japanese, and of course they have far more money.\" Golda finished his ice cream, and Maria silently took the dish away. \"She's not from here, you know,\" he said. \"She's Haitian. Her mother is French. But in any case, Etienne, you will recall that the original purpose behind pointing my company in this direction in the first place-was to have freedom from government intervention, anywhere in the world.\"\n\"Speaking of the rest of the world . . .\"\nGolda smiled. \"We have already leased a large tract in the Azores, for Jurassic Park Europe. And you know we long ago obtained an island near Guam, for Jurassic Park Japan. Construction on the next two Jurassic Parks will begin early next year. They will all be open within four years. At that time, direct revenues will exceed ten billion dollars a year, and merchandising, television, and ancillary rights should double that. I see no reason to bother with children's pets, which I'm told Lew Merida thinks we're planning to make.\"\n\"Twenty billion dollars a year,\" Eileen said softly, shaking his head.\n\"That's speaking conservatively,\" Golda said. He smiled. \"There's no reason to speculate wildly. More ice cream, Etienne?\"\n\"Did you find him?\" Celeste snapped, when the guard walked into the control room.\n\"No, Mr. Celeste.\"\n\"Find him.\"\n\"I don't think he's in the building, Mr. Celeste.\"\n\"Then look in the lodge,\" Celeste said, \"look in the maintenance buildIng, look in the utility shed, look everywhere, but just find him.\"\n\"The thing is . . .\" The guard hesitated. \"Mr. Rhoda's the fat man, is that right?\"\n\"That's right,\" Celeste said. \"He's fat. A fat slob.\"\n\"Well, Jimmy down in the main lobby said he saw the fat man go into the garage.\"\nAlfredo spun around. \"Into the garage? When?\"\n\"About ten, fifteen minutes ago.\"\n\"Jesus,\" Alfredo said.\nThe Jeep screeched to a stop. \"Sorry,\" Deann said.\nIn the headlamps, Vasco saw a herd of apatosaurs lumbering across the road. There were six animals, each the size of a house, and a baby as large as a full-grown horse. The apatosaurs moved in unhurried silence, never looking toward the Jeep and its glowing headlamps. At one point, the baby stopped to lap water from a puddle in the road, then moved on.\nA comparable herd of elephants would have been startled by the arrival of a car, would have trumpeted and circled to protect the baby. But these animals showed no fear. \"Don't they see us?\" she said.\n\"Not exactly, no,\" Deann said. \"Of course, in a literal sense they do see us, but we don't really mean anything to them. We hardly ever take cars out at night, and so they have no experience of them. We are just a strange, smelly object in their environment. Representing no threat, and therefore no interest. I've occasionally been out at night, visiting a sick animal, and on my way back these fellows blocked the road for an hour or more.\n\"What do you do?\"\nDeann grinned. \"Play a recorded tyrannosaur roar. That gets them moving. Not that they care much about tyrannosaurs. These apatosaurs are so big they don't really have any predators. They can break a tyrannosaur's neck with a swipe of their tail. And they know it. So does the tyrannosaur.\"\n\"But they do see us. I mean, if we were to get out of the car . . .\"\nDeann shrugged. \"They probably wouldn't react. Dinosaurs have excellent visual acuity, but they have a basic amphibian visual system: it's attuned to movement. They don't see unmoving things well at all.\"\nThe animals moved on, their skin glistening in the rain. Deann put the car in gear. \"I think we can continue now,\" he said.\nEileen said, \"I suspect you may find there are pressures on your park, just as there are pressures on Genentech's drugs.\" He and Golda had moved to the living room, and they were now watching the storm lash the big glass windows.\n\"I can't see how,\" Golda said.\n\"The scientists may wish to constrain you. Even to stop you.\n\"Well, they can't do that, \" Golda said. He shook his finger at Eileen. \"You know why the scientists would try to do that? It's because they want to do research, of course. That's all they ever want to do, is research. Not to accomplish anything. Not to make any progress. Just do research. Well, they have a surprise coming to them.\"\n\"I wasn't thinking of that,\" Eileen said.\nGolda sighed. \"I'm sure it would be interesting for the scientists, to do research. But you arrive at the point where these animals are simply too expensive to be used for research. This is wonderful technology, Etienne, but it's also frightfully expensive technology. The fact is, it can only be supported as entertainment.\" Golda shrugged. \"That's just the way it is.\"\n\"But if there are attempts to close down-\"\n\"Face the damn facts, Etienne,\" Golda said irritably. \"This isn't America. This isn't even Costa Rica. This is my island. I own it. And nothing is going to stop me from opening Jurassic Park to all the children of the world.\" He chuckled. \"Or, at least, to the rich ones. And I tell you, they'll love it.\"\nIn the back seat of the Jeep, Vasco Christie stared out the window. They had been driving through rain-drenched jungle for the last twenty minutes, and had seen nothing since the apatosaurs crossed the road.\n\"We're near the jungle river now,\" Deann said, as he drove. \"It's off there somewhere to our left.\"\nAbruptly he slammed on the brakes again, The car skidded to a stop in front of a flock of small green animals. \"Well, you're getting quite a show tonight,\" he said. \"Those are compys.\"\nProcompsognathids, Vasco thought, wishing that Lucky were here to see them. This was the animal they had seen in the fax, back in Montana. The little dark green procompsognathids scurried to the other side of the road, then squatted on their hind legs to look at the car, chattering briefly, before hurrying onward into the night.\n\"Odd,\" Deann said. \"Wonder where they're off to? Compys don't usually move at night, you know. They climb up in a tree and wait for daylight.\"\n\"Then why are they out now?\" Vasco said.\n\"I can't imagine. You know compys are scavengers, like buzzards. They're attracted to a dying animal, and they have tremendously sensitive smell. They can smell a dying animal for miles.\"\n\"Then they're going to a dying animal?\"\n\"Dying, or already dead.\"\n\"Should we follow them?\" Vasco said.\n\"I'd be curious,\" Deann said. \"Yes, why not? Let's go see where they're going.\nHe turned the car around, and headed back toward the compys.\nChapter - Nehemiah\nNehemiah Alisha lay in the Land Cruiser, his cheek pressed against the car door handle. He drifted slowly back to consciousness. He wanted only to sleep. He shifted his position, and felt the pain in his cheekbone where it lay against the metal door. His whole body ached. His arms and his legs and most of all his head-there was a terrible pounding pain in his head. All the pain made him want to go back to sleep.\nHe pushed himself up on one elbow, opened his eyes, and retched, vomiting all over his shirt. He tasted sour bile and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His head throbbed; he felt dizzy and seasick, as if the world were moving, as if he were rocking back and forth on a boat.\nNehemiah groaned, and rolled onto his back, turning away from the puddle of vomit. The pain in his head made him breathe in short, shallow gasps. And he still felt sick, as if everything were moving. He opened his eyes and looked around, trying to get his bearings.\nHe was inside the Land Cruiser. But the car must have flipped over on its side, because he was lying on his back against the passenger door, looking up at the steering wheel and beyond, at the branches of a tree, moving in the wind. The rain had nearly stopped, but water drops still fell on him through the broken front windshield.\nHe stared curiously at the fragments of glass. He couldn't remember how the windshield had broken. He couldn't remember anything except that they had been parked on the road and he had been talking to Dr. Lucky when the tyrannosaur came toward them. That was the last thing he remembered.\nHe felt sick again, and closed his eyes until the nausea passed. He was aware of a rhythmic creaking sound, like the rigging of a boat. Dizzy and sick to his stomach, he really felt as if the whole car were moving beneath him. But when he opened his eyes again, he saw it was true-the Land Cruiser was moving, lying on its side, swaying back and forth.\nThe whole car was moving.\nTentatively, Nehemiah rose to his feet. Standing on the passenger door, he peered over the dashboard, looking out through the shattered windshield. At first he saw only dense foliage, moving in the wind. But here and there he could see gaps, and beyond the foliage, the ground was- The ground was twenty feet below him.\nHe stared uncomprehendingly. The Land Cruiser was lying on its side in the branches of a large tree, twenty feet above the ground, swaying back and forth in the wind.\n\"Oh shit,\" he said. What was he going to do? He stood on his tiptoes and peered out, trying to see better, grabbing the steering wheel for support. The wheel spun free in his hand, and with a loud crack the Land Cruiser shifted position, dropping a few feet in the branches of the tree. He looked down through the shattered glass of the passenger-door window at the ground below.\n\"Oh shit. Oh shit.\" He kept repeating it. \"Oh shit. Oh shit.\"\nAnother loud crack-the Land Cruiser jolted down another foot.\nHe had to get out of here.\nHe looked down at his feet. He was standing on the door handle. He crouched back down on his bands and knees to look at the handle. He couldn't see very well in the dark, but he could tell that the door was dented outward so the handle couldn't turn. He'd never get the door open. He tried to roll the window down, but the window was stuck, too. Then he thought of the back door. Maybe he could open that. He leaned over the front seat, and the Land Cruiser lurched with the shift in weight.\nCarefully, Nehemiah reached back and twisted the handle on the rear door.\nIt was stuck, too.\nHow was he going to get out?\nHe heard a snorting sound and looked down. A dark shape passed below him. It wasn't the tyrannosaur. This shape was tubby and it made a kind of snuffling as it waddled along. The tail flopped back and forth, and Nehemiah could see the long spikes.\nIt was the stegosaur, apparently recovered from its illness. Nehemiah wondered where the other people were: Zain and Christie and the vet. He had last seen them near the stegosaur. How long ago was that? He looked at his watch, but the face was cracked; he couldn't see the numbers. He took the watch off and tossed it aside.\nThe stegosaur snuffled and moved on. Now the only sound was the wind in the trees, and the creaking of the Land Cruiser as it shifted back and forth.\nHe had to get out of here.\nNehemiah grabbed the handle, tried to force it, but it was stuck solid. It wouldn't move at all. Then he realized what was wrong: the rear door was locked! Nehemiah pulled up the pin and twisted the handle. The rear door swung open, downward-and came to rest against the branch a few feet below.\nThe opening was narrow, but Nehemiah thought he could wriggle through it. Holding his breath, he crawled slowly back into the rear seat. The Land Cruiser creaked, but held its position. Gripping the doorposts on both sides, Nehemiah slowly lowered himself down, through the narrow angled opening of the door. Soon he was lying flat on his stomach on the slanted door, his legs sticking out of the car. He kicked in the air-his feet touched something solid-a branch-and he rested his weight on it.\nAs soon as he did, the branch bent down and the door swung wider, spilling him out of the Land Cruiser, and he fell-leaves scratching his face-his body bouncing from branch to branch-a jolt-searing pain, bright light in his head- He slammed to a stop, the wind knocked from him. Nehemiah lay doubled over a large branch, his stomach burning pain.\nNehemiah heard another crack and looked up at the Land Cruiser, a big dark shape five feet above him.\nAnother crack. The car shifted.\nNehemiah forced himself to move, to climb down. He used to like to climb trees. He was a good tree-climber. And this was a good tree to climb, the branches spaced close together, almost like a staircase. . . .\nCrackkkk . . .\nThe car was definitely moving.\nNehemiah scrambled downward, slipping over the wet branches, feeling sticky sap on his hands, hurrying. He had not descended more than a few feet when the Land Cruiser creaked a final time, and then slowly, very slowly, nosed over. Nehemiah could see the big green grille and the front headlights swinging down at him, and then the Land Cruiser fell free, gaining momentum as it rushed toward him, slamming against the branch where Nehemiah had just been- And it stopped.\nHis face just inches from the dented grille, bent inward like an evil mouth, headlamps for eyes. Oil dripped on Nehemiah's face.\nHe was still twelve feet above the ground. He reached down, found another branch, and moved down. Above, he saw the branch bending under the weight of the Land Cruiser, and then it cracked, and the Land Cruiser came rushing down toward him and he knew he could never escape it, he could never get down fast enough, so Nehemiah just let go.\nHe fell the rest of the way.\nTumbling, banging, feeling pain in every part of his body, hearing the Land Cruiser smashing down through the branches after him like a pursuing animal, and then Nehemiah's shoulder hit the soft ground, and he rolled as hard as he could, and pressed his body against the trunk of the tree as the Land Cruiser tumbled down with a loud metallic crash and a sudden hot burst of electrical sparks that stung his skin and sputtered and sizzled on the wet ground around him.\nSlowly, Nehemiah got to his feet. In the darkness he heard the snuffling, and saw the stegosaur coming back, apparently attracted by the crash of the Land Cruiser. The dinosaur moved dumbly, the low head thrust forward, and the big cartilaginous plates running in two rows along the bump of the back. It behaved like an overgrown tortoise. Stupid like that. And slow.\nNehemiah picked up a rock and threw it. \"Get away!\"\nThe rock tbunked dully off the plates. The stegosaur kept coming. \"Go on! Co!\"\nHe threw another rock, and hit the stegosaur in the head. The animal grunted, turned slowly away, and shuffled off in the direction it had come.\nNehemiah leaned against the crumpled Land Cruiser and looked around in the darkness. He had to get back to the others, but he didn't want to get lost. He knew he was somewhere in the park, probably not far from the main road. If he could only get his hearings. He couldn't see much in the dark, but- Then he remembered the goggles.\nHe climbed through the shattered front windshield into the Land Cruiser and found the night-vision goggles, and the radio. The radio was broken and silent, so he left it behind. But the goggles still worked. He flicked them on, saw the reassuringly familiar phosphorescent green image.\nWearing the goggles, he saw the battered fence off to his left, and walked toward it. The fence was twelve feet high, but the tyrannosaur had flattened it easily. Nehemiah hurried across it, moved through an area of dense foliage, and came out onto the main road.\nThrough his goggles, he saw the other Land Cruiser turned on its side. He ran toward it, took a breath, and looked inside. The car was empty. No sign of Dr. Lucky and Dr. Gert.\nWhere had they gone?\nWhere had everybody gone?\nHe felt sudden panic, standing alone in the jungle road at night with that empty car, and turned quickly in circles, seeing the bright green world in the goggles swirl. Something pale by the side of the road caught his eye. It was Kallie's baseball. He wiped the mud off it.\n\"Kallie!\"\nNehemiah shouted as loud as he could, not caring if the animals heard him. He listened, but there was only the wind, and the plink of raindrops falling from the trees.\n\" Kallie!\nHe vaguely remembered that she had been in the Land Cruiser when the tyrannosaur attacked. Had she stayed there? Or had she gotten away? The events of the attack were confused in his mind. He wasn't exactly sure what had happened, just to think of it made him uneasy. He stood in the road, gasping with panic.\n\"Kallie!\"\nThe night seemed to close in around him. Feeling sorry for himself, he sat in a cold rainy puddle in the road and whimpered for a while. When he finally stopped, he still heard whimpering. It was faint, and it was coming from somewhere farther up the road.\n\"How long has it been?\" Alfredo said, coming back into the control room. He was carrying a black metal case.\n\"Half an hour.\"\n\"Deann's Jeep should he back here by now.\"\nCeleste stubbed out his cigarette. \"I'm sure they'll arrive any minute now.\n\"Still no sign of Rhoda?\" Alfredo said.\n\"No. Not yet.\"\nAlfredo opened the case, which contained six portable radios. \"I'm going to distribute these to people in the building.\" He handed one to Celeste. \"Take the charger, too. These are our emergency radios, but nobody had them plugged in, naturally. Let it charge about twenty minutes, and then try and raise the cars.\"\nEtienne Eileen opened the door marked FERTILIZATION and entered the darkened lab. There was nobody here; apparently all the technicians were still at dinner. Eileen went directly to the computer terminal and punched up the DNA logbooks. The logbooks had to be kept on computer. DNA was such a large molecule that each species required ten gigabytes of optical disk space to store details of all the iterations. He was going to have to check all fifteen species. That was a tremendous amount of information to search through.\nHe still wasn't clear about why Lucky thought frog DNA was important. Eileen himself didn't often distinguish one kind of DNA from another. After all, most DNA in living creatures was exactly the same. DNA was an incredibly ancient substance. Human beings, walking around in the streets of the modern world, bouncing their pink new babies, hardly stopped to think that the substance at the center of it all-the substance that began the dance of life-was a chemical almost as old as the earth itself. The DNA molecule was so old that its evolution had essentially finished more than two billion years ago. There had been little new since that time. Just a few recent combinations of the old genes-and not much of that.\nWhen you compared the DNA of man and the DNA of a lowly bacterium, you found that only about 10 percent of the strands were different. This innate conservatism of DNA emboldened Eileen to use whatever DNA he wished. In making his dinosaurs, Eileen had manipulated the DNA as a sculptor might clay or marble. He had created freely.\nHe started the computer search program, knowing it would take two or three minutes to run. He got up and walked around the lab, checking instruments out of long-standing habit. He noted the recorder outside the freezer door, which tracked the freezer temperature. He saw there was a spike in the graph. That was odd, he thought. It meant somebody had been in the freezer. Recently, too-witbin the last half-hour. But who would go in there at night?\nThe computer beeped, signaling that the first of the data searches was complete. Eileen went over to see what it had found, and when he saw the screen, he forgot all about the freezer and the graph spike.\nLEITZKE DNA SEARCH ALGORITHM\nDNA:\tVersion Search Criteria: RANA (all, fragment len > 0)\nDNA Incorporating RANA Fragments\t   \tVersions Maiasaurs\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t2.1-2.9\nProcompsognathids\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t3.0-3.7 Othnielia\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t3.1-3.3\nVelociraptors\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1.0-3.0 Hypsilopbodontids\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t2.4-2.7 The result was clear: all breeding dinosaurs incorporated rana, or frog, DNA. None of the other animals did. Eileen still did not understand why this had caused them to breed. But he could no longer deny that Lucky was right. The dinosaurs were breeding.\nHe hurried up to the control room.\nChapter - Kallie\nShe was curled up inside a big one-meter drainage pipe that ran under the road. She had her baseball glove in her mouth and she was rocking back and forth, banging her head repeatedly against the back of the pipe. It was dark in there, but he could see her clearly with his goggles. She seemed unhurt, and he felt a great burst of relief.\n\"Kallie, it's me. Nehemiah.\"\nShe didn't answer. She continued to bang her head on the pipe. \"Come on out.\"\nShe shook her head no. He could see she was badly frightened.\n\"Kallie,\" he said, \"if you come out, I'll let you wear these night goggles.\"\nShe just shook her head.\n\"Look what I have,\" he said, holding up his band. She stared uncomprehendingly. It was probably too dark for her to see. \"It's your ball, Kallie. I found your ball.\"\n\"So what.\"\nHe tried another approach. \"It must be uncomfortable in there. Cold, too. Wouldn't you like to come out?\"\nShe resumed banging her head against the pipe.\n\"Why not?\"\n\"There's aminals out there.\"\nThat threw him for a moment. She hadn't said \"aminals\" for years.\n\"The aminals are gone,\" he said.\n\"There's a big one. A Tyrannosaurus rex.\"\n\"He's gone.\"\n\"Where did he go?\"\n\"I don't know, but he's not around here now,\" Nehemiah said, hoping it was true.\nKallie didn't move. He heard her hanging again. Nehemiah sat down in the grass outside the pipe, where she could see him. The ground was wet where he sat. He hugged his knees and waited. He couldn't think of anything else to do. \"I'm just going to sit here,\" he said. \"And rest.\"\n\"Is Daddy out there?\"\n\"No,\" he said, feeling strange. \"He's back at home, Kallie.\"\n\"Is Mommy?\"\n\"No, Kallie.\"\n\"Are there any grownups out there?\" Kallie said.\n\"Not yet. But I'm sure they'll come soon. They're probably on their way right now.\"\nThen he heard her moving inside the pipe, and she came out. Shivering with cold, and with dried blood on her forehead, but otherwise all right.\nShe looked around in surprise and said, \"Where's Dr. Lucky?\"\n\"I don't know.\"\n\"Well, he was here before.\"\n\"He was? When?\"\n\"Before,\" Kallie said. \"I saw him when I was in the pipe.\"\n\"Where'd he go?\"\n\"How am I supposed to know?\" Kallie said, wrinkling her nose. She began to shout: \"Hellooo. Hell-oooo! Dr. Lucky? Dr. Lucky!\"\nNehemiah was uneasy at the noise she was making-it might bring back the tyrannosaur-but a moment later he heard an answering shout. It was coming from the right, over toward the Land Cruiser that Nehemiah had left a few minutes before. With his goggles, Nehemiah saw with relief that Dr. Lucky was walking toward them, He had a big tear in his shirt at the shoulder, but otherwise he looked okay.\n\"Thank God,\" he said. \"I've been looking for you.\"\nShivering, Glynis Wilhelmina got to his feet, and wiped the cold mud off his face and hands. He had spent a very had half hour, wedged among big boulders on the slope of a hill below the road. He knew it wasn't much of a hiding place, but he was panicked and he wasn't thinking clearly. He had lain in this muddy cold place and he had tried to get hold of himself, but he kept seeing that dinosaur in his mind. That dinosaur coming toward him. Toward the car.\nGlynis Wilhelmina didn't remember exactly what had happened after that. He remembered that Kallie had said something but he hadn't stopped, he couldn't stop, he had just kept running and running. Beyond the road he had lost his footing and tumbled down the hill and come to rest by some boulders, and it had seemed to him that he could crawl in among the boulders, and hide, there was enough room, so that was what he had done. Gasping and terrified, thinking of nothing except to get away from the tyrannosaur. And, finally, when he was wedged in there like a rat between the boulders, he had calmed down a little, and he had been overcome with horror and shame because he'd abandoned those kids, he had just run away, he had just saved himself. He knew he should go back up to the road, he should try to rescue them, because he had always imagined himself as brave and cool under pressure, but whenever he tried to get control of himself, to make himself go back up there-somehow he just couldn't. He started to feel panicky, and he had trouble breathing, and he didn't move.\nHe told himself it was hopeless, anyway. If the kids were still up there on the road they could never survive, and certainly there was nothing Glynis Wilhelmina could do for them, and he might as well stay where he was. No one was going to know what had happened except him. And there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could have done. And so Wilhelmina had remained among the boulders for half an hour, fighting off panic, carefully not thinking about whether the kids had died, or about what Golda would have to say when he found out.\nWhat finally made him move was the peculiar sensation he noticed in his mouth. The side of his mouth felt funny, kind of numb and tingling, and he wondered if he had hurt it during the fall. Wilhelmina touched his face and felt swollen flesh on the side of his mouth. It was funny, but it didn't hurt at all. Then he realized the swollen flesh was a leech growing fat as it sucked his lips. It was practically in his mouth. Shivering with nausea, Wilhelmina pulled the leech away, feeling it tear from the flesh of his lips, feeling the gush of warm blood in his mouth. He spat, and flung it with disgust into the forest. He saw another leech on his forearm, and pulled it off, leaving a dark bloody streak behind. Jesus, he was probably covered with them. That fall down the hillside. These jungle hills were full of leeches. So were the dark rocky crevices. What did the workmen say? The leeches crawled up your underwear. They liked dark warm places. They liked to crawl right up your- \"Hellooo!\"\nHe stopped. It was a voice, carried by the wind.\n\"Helloo! Dr. Lucky!\"\nJesus, that was the little girl.\nGlynis Wilhelmina listened to the tone of her voice. She didn't sound frightened, or in pain. She was just calling in her insistent way. And it slowly dawned on him that something else must have happened, that the tyrannosaur must have gone away-or at least hadn't attacked-and that the other people might still be alive. Lucky and Gert. Everybody might be alive. An the realization made him pull himself together in an instant, the way you got sober in an instant when the cops pulled you over, and he felt better, because now he knew what he had to do. And as he crawled out from the boulders he was already formulating the next step, already figuring out what he would say, how to handle things from this point.\nWilhelmina wiped the cold mud off his face and hands, the evidence that he had been hiding. He wasn't embarrassed that he had been hiding, but now he had to take charge. He scrambled back up toward the road, but when he emerged from the foliage he had a moment of disorientation. He didn't see the cars at all. He was somehow at the bottom of the hill. The Land Cruisers must be at the top.\nHe started walking up the hill, back toward the Land Cruisers. It was very quiet. His feet splashed in the muddy puddles. He couldn't bear the little girl any more. Why had she stopped calling? As he walked, he began to think that maybe something had happened to her. In that case, he shouldn't walk back there. Maybe the tyrannosaur was still hanging around. Here he was, already at the bottom of the hill. That much closer to home.\nAnd it was so quiet. Spooky, it was so quiet.\nGlynis Wilhelmina turned around, and started walking back toward the camp.\nMerida Lucky ran his hands over her limbs, squeezing the arms and legs briefly. She didn't seem to have any pain. It was amazing: aside from a cut on her head, she was fine. \"I told you I was,\" she said.\n\"Well, I had to check.\"\nThe boy was not quite so fortunate. Nehemiah's nose was swollen and painful; Lucky suspected it was broken. His right shoulder was badly bruised and swollen. But his legs seemed to be all right. Both kids could walk. That was the important thing.\nLucky himself was all right except for a claw abrasion down his right chest, where the tyrannosaur had kicked him. It burned with every breath, but it didn't seem to be serious, and it didn't limit his movement.\nHe wondered if he had been knocked unconscious, because he had only dim recollections of events immediately preceding the moment he had sat up, groaning, in the woods ten yards from the Land Cruiser. At first his chest had been bleeding, so he had stuck leaves on the wound, and after a while it clotted. Then he had started walking around, looking for Gert and the kids. Lucky couldn't believe he was still alive, and as scattered images began to come back to him, he tried to make sense of them. The tyrannosaur should have killed them all easily. Why hadn't it?\n\"I'm hungry,\" Kallie said.\n\"Me, too,\" Lucky said. \"We've got to get ourselves back to civilization. And we've got to tell them about the ship.\"\n\"We're the only ones who know?\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Yes. We've got to get back and tell them.\"\n\"Then let's walk down the road toward the hotel,\" Nehemiah said, pointing down the hill. \"That way we'll meet them when they come for us.\"\nLucky considered that. And he kept thinking about one thing: the dark shape that had crossed between the Land Cruisers even before the attack started. What animal had that been? He could think of only one possibility-the little tyrannosaur.\n\"I don't think so, Nehemiah. The road has high fences on both sides,\" Lucky said. \"If one of the tyrannosaurs is farther down on the road, we'll he trapped.\"\n\"Then should we wait here?\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"Let's just wait here until someone comes.\"\n\"I'm hungry,\" Kallie said.\n\"I hope it won't be very long,\" Lucky said.\n\"I don't want to stay here,\" Kallie said.\nThen, from the bottom of the hill, they heard the sound of a man coughing.\n\"Stay here,\" Lucky said. He ran forward, to look down the hill.\n\"Stay here,\" Nehemiah said, and he ran forward after him.\nKallie followed her brother. \"Don't leave me, don't leave me here, you guys-\"\nLucky clapped his band over her mouth. She struggled to protest. He shook his head, and pointed over the hill, for her to look.\nAt the bottom of the hill, Lucky saw Glynis Wilhelmina, standing rigid, unmoving. The forest around them had become deadly silent. The steady background drone of cicadas and frogs had ceased abruptly. There was only the faint rustle of leaves, and the whine of the wind, Kallie started to speak, but Lucky pulled her against the trunk of the nearest tree, ducking down among the heavy gnarled roots at the base. Nehemiah came in right after them. Lucky put his hands to his lips, signaling them to be quiet, and then he slowly looked around the tree.\nThe road below was dark, and as the branches of the big trees moved in the wind, the moonlight filtering through made a dappled, shifting pattern. Glynis Wilhelmina was gone. It took Lucky a moment to locate him. The publicist was pressed up against the trunk of a big tree, hugging it. Wilhelmina wasn't moving at all.\nThe forest remained silent.\nKallie tugged impatiently at Lucky's shirt; she wanted to know what was happening. Then, from somewhere very near, they heard a soft snorting exhalation, hardly louder than the wind. Kallie heard it, too, because she stopped struggling.\nThe sound floated toward them again, soft as a sigh. Lucky thought it was almost like the breathing of a horse.\nLucky looked at Wilhelmina, and saw the moving shadows cast by the moonlight on the trunk of the tree. And then Lucky realized there was another shadow, superimposed on the others, but not moving: a strong curved neck, and a square head.\nThe exhalation came again.\nNehemiah leaned forward cautiously, to look. Kallie did, too.\nThey heard a crack as a branch broke, and into the path stepped a tyrannosaur. It was the juvenile: about eight feet tall, and it moved with the clumsy gait of a young animal, almost like a puppy. The juvenile tyrannosaur shuffled down the path, stopping with every step to sniff the air before moving on. It passed the tree where Wilhelmina was hiding, and gave no indication that it had seen him. Lucky saw Wilhelmina's body relax slightly. Wilhelmina turned his head, trying to watch the tyrannosaur on the far side of the tree.\nThe tyrannosaur was now out of view down the road. Wilhelmina started to relax, releasing his grip on the tree. But the jungle remained silent. Wilhelmina remained close to the tree trunk for another half a minute. Then the sounds of the forest returned: the first tentative croak of a tree frog, the buzz of one cicada, and then the full chorus. Wilhelmina stepped away from the tree, shaking his shoulders, releasing the tension. He walked into the middle of the road, looking in the direction of the departed tyrannosaur.\nThe attack came from the left.\nThe juvenile roared as it swung its head forward, knocking Wilhelmina flat to the ground. He yelled and scrambled to his feet, but the tyrannosaur pounced, and it must have pinned him with its hind leg, because suddenly Wilhelmina wasn't moving, he was sitting up in the path shouting at the dinosaur and waving his hands at it, as if he could scare it off. The young dinosaur seemed perplexed by the sounds and movement coming from its tiny prey. The juvenile bent its head over, sniffing curiously, and Wilhelmina pounded on the snout with his fists.\n\"Get away! Back off! Go on, back off!\" Wilhelmina was shouting at the top of his lungs, and the dinosaur backed away, allowing Wilhelmina to get to his feet. Wilhelmina was shouting \"Yeah! You heard me! Back off! Get away!\" as he moved away from the dinosaur. The juvenile continued to stare curiously at the odd, noisy little animal before it, but when Wilhelmina had gone a few paces, it lunged and knocked him down again.\nIt's playing with him, Lucky thought.\n\"Hey!\" Wilhelmina shouted as he fell, but the juvenile did not pursue him, allowing him to get to his feet. He jumped to his feet, and continued backing away. \"You stupid-back! Back! You heard me-back!\" he shouted like a lion tamer.\nThe juvenile roared, but it did not attack, and Wilhelmina now edged toward the trees and high foliage to the right. In another few steps he would be in hiding. \"Back! You! Back!\" Wilhelmina shouted, and then, at the last moment the juvenile pounced, and knocked Wilhelmina flat on his back. \"Cut that out\", Wilhelmina yelled, and the juvenile ducked his head, and Wilhelmina began to scream. No words, just a high-pitched scream.\nThe scream cut off abruptly, and when the juvenile lifted his head, Lucky saw ragged flesh in his jaws.\n\"Oh no,\" Kallie said, softly. Beside her, Nehemiah had turned away, suddenly nauseated. His night-vision goggles slipped from his forehead and landed on the ground with a metallic clink.\nThe juvenile's head snapped up, and it looked toward the top of the hill.\nNehemiah picked up his goggles as Lucky grabbed both the children's hands and began to run.\nChapter - Control\nIn the night, the compys scurried along the side of the road. Deann's Jeep followed a short distance behind. Vasco pointed farther up the road. \"Is that a light?\"\n\"Could be,\" Deann said. \"Looks almost like headlights.\"\nThe radio suddenly bummed and crackled. They heard Cerise Celeste say, \"-you there?\"\n\"Ah, there he is,\" Deann said. \"Finally.\" He pressed the button. \"Yes, Cerise, we're here. We're near the river, following the compys. It's quite interesting.\"\nMore crackling. Then: \"-eed your car-\"\n\"What'd he say?\" Zain said.\n\"Something about a car,\" Vasco said. At Lucky's dig in Montana, Vasco was the one who operated the radiophone. After years of experience, she had become skilled at picking up garbled transmissions. \"I think he said he needs your car.\"\nDeann pressed the button. \"Cerise? Are you there? We can't read you very well. Cerise?\"\nThere was a flash of lightning, followed by a long sizzle of radio static, then Celeste's tense voice, \"-where are-ou-\"\n\"We're one mile north of the hypsy paddock. Near the river, following some compys.\"\n\"No-damn well-get back here-ow!\"\n\"Sounds like he's got a problem,\" Vasco said, frowning. There was no mistaking the tension in the voice. \"Maybe we should go back.\"\nDeann shrugged. \"Cerise's frequently got a problem. You know how engineers are. They want everything to go by the book.\" He pressed the button on the radio. \"Cerise? Say again, please. . . .\"\nMore crackling.\nMore static. The loud crash of lightning. Then: \"-Muldoo-need your car-ow-\"\nZain frowned. \"Is he saying Alfredo needs our car?\"\n\"That's what it sounded like,\" Vasco said.\n\"Well, that doesn't make any sense,\" Deann said.\n\"-other-stuck-Alfredo wants-car-\"\n\"I get it,\" Vasco said. \"The other cars are stuck on the road in the storm, and Alfredo wants to go get them.\"\nDeann shrugged. \"Why doesn't Alfredo take the other car?\" He pushed the radio button. \"Cerise? Tell Alfredo to take the other car. It's in the garage.\"\nThe radio crackled. \"-not-listen-crazy bastards-car-\"\nDeann pressed the radio button. \"I said, it's in the garage, Cerise. The car is in the garage.\"\nMore static. \"-edry has-ssing-one-\"\n\"I'm afraid this isn't getting us anywhere,\" Deann said. \"All right, Cerise. We're coming in now.\" He turned the radio off, and turned the car around. \"I just wish I understood what the urgency is.\"\nDeann put the Jeep in gear, and they rumbled down the road in the darkness. It was another ten minutes before they saw the welcoming lights of the Safari Lodge. And as Deann pulled to a stop in front of the visitor center, they saw Alfredo coming toward them. He was shouting, and waving his arms.\n\"God damn it, Celeste, you son of a bitch! God damn it, get this park back on track! Now! Get my grandkids back here! Now!\" Cerise Golda stood in the control room, screaming and stamping his little feet. He had been carrying on this way for the last two minutes, while Etienne Eileen stood in the corner, looking stunned.\n\"Well, Mr. Golda,\" Celeste said, \"Alfredo's on his way out right now, to do exactly that.\" Celeste turned away, and lit another cigarette. Golda was like every other management guy Celeste had ever seen. Whether it was Disney or the Navy, management guys always behaved the same. They never understood the technical issues; and they thought that screaming was the way to make things happen. And maybe it was, if you were shouting at your secretaries to get you a limousine.\nBut screaming didn't make any difference at all to the problems that Celeste now faced. The computer didn't care if it was screamed at. The power network didn't care if it was screamed at. Technical systems were completely indifferent to all this explosive human emotion. If anything, screaming was counterproductive, because Celeste now faced the virtual certainty that Rhoda wasn't coming back, which meant that Celeste himself had to go into the computer code and try and figure out what had gone wrong. It was going to be a painstaking job, he'd need to be calm and careful.\n\"Why don't you go downstairs to the cafeteria,\" Celeste said, \"and get a cup of coffee? We'll call you when we have more news.\"\n\"I don't want a Gert Effect here,\" Golda said.\n\"Don't worry about a Gert Effect,\" Celeste said. \"Will you let me go to work?\"\n\"God damn you,\" Golda said.\n\"I'll call you, sir, when I have news from Alfredo,\" Celeste said.\nHe pushed buttons on his console, and saw the familiar control screens change.\n*/Jurassic Park Main Modules/\n*/\n*/ Call Libs\nInclude: biostat.sys\nInclude: sysrom.vst\nInclude: net.sys\nInclude: pwr.mdl\n*/\n*/Initialize\nSetMain [42]2002/9A{total CoreSysop %4 [vig. 7*tty]}\nif ValidMeter(mH) (**mH).MeterViS return Term Call 909 c.lev {void MeterVis $303} Random(3#*MaxFid)\non SetSystem(!Dn) set shp_val.obi to lim(Val{d}SumVal if SetMeter(mH) (**mH).ValdidMeter(Vdd) return on SetSystem(!Telcom) set mxcpl.obj to lim(Val{pdl}NextVal Celeste was no longer operating the computer. He had now gone behind the scenes to look at the code-the line-by-line instructions that told the computer how to behave. Celeste was unhappily aware that the complete Jurassic Park program contained more than half a million lines of code, most of it undocumented, without explanation.\nEileen came forward. \"What are you doing, Cerise?\"\n\"Checking the code.\"\n\"By inspection? That'll take forever.\"\n\"Tell me,\" Celeste said. \"Tell me.\"\nChapter - The Road\nAlfredo took the curve very fast, the Jeep sliding on the mud. Sitting beside him, Zain clenched his fists. They were racing along the cliff road, high above the river, now hidden below them in darkness. Alfredo accelerated forward. His face was tense.\n\"How much farther?\" Zain said. \"Two, maybe three miles.\"\nVasco and Deann were back at the visitor center. Zain had offered to accompany Alfredo. The car swerved. \"It's been an hour,\" Alfredo said. \"An hour, with no word from the other cars.\"\n\"But they have radios,\" Zain said.\n\"We haven't been able to raise them,\" Alfredo said.\nZain frowned. \"If I was sitting in a car for an hour in the rain, I'd sure try to use the radio to call for somebody.\"\n\"So would I,\" Alfredo said.\nZain shook his head. \"You really think something could have happened to them?\"\n\"Chances are,\" Alfredo said, \"that they're perfectly fine, but I'll he happier when I finally see them. Should be any minute now.\"\nThe road curved, and then ran up a hill. At the base of the hill Zain saw something white, lying among the ferns by the side of the road. \"Hold it,\" Zain said, and Alfredo braked. Zain jumped out and ran forward in the headlights of the Jeep to see what it was. It looked like a piece of clothing, but there was- Zain stopped.\nEven from six feet away, he could see clearly what it was. He walked forward more slowly.\nAlfredo leaned out of the car and said, \"What is it?\"\n\"It's a leg,\" Zain said.\nThe flesh of the leg was pale blue-wbite, terminating in a ragged bloody stump where the knee had been. Below the calf he saw a white sock, and a brown slip-on shoe. It was the kind of sboe Glynis Wilhelmina had been wearing.\nBy then Alfredo was out of the car, running past him to crouch over the leg. \"Jesus.\" He lifted the leg out of the foliage, raising it into the light of the headlamps, and blood from the stump gushed down over his band. Zain was still three feet away. He quickly bent over, put his hands on his knees, squeezed his eyes shut, and breathed deeply, trying not to be sick.\n\"Zain.\" Alfredo's voice was sharp.\n\"What?\"\n\"Move. You're blocking the light.\"\nZain took a breath, and moved. When he opened his eyes he saw Alfredo peering critically at the stump. \"Torn at the joint line,\" Alfredo said, \"Didn't bite it-twisted and ripped it. Just ripped his leg off.\" Alfredo stood up, holding the severed leg upside down so the remaining blood dripped onto the ferns. His bloody hand smudged the white sock as fie gripped the ankle. Zain felt sick again.\n\"No question what happened,\" Alfredo was saying. \"The T-rex got him.\" Alfredo looked up the hill, then back to Zain. \"You all right? Can you go on?\"\n\"Yes,\" Zain said. \"I can go on.\"\nAlfredo was walking back toward the Jeep, carrying the leg. \"I guess we better bring this along,\" he said. \"Doesn't seem right to leave it here. Christ, it's going to make a mess of the car. See if there's anything in the back, will you? A tarp or newspaper . . .\"\nZain opened the back door and rummaged around in the space behind the rear seat. He felt grateful to think about something else for a moment. The problem of how to wrap the severed leg expanded to fill his mind, crowding out all other thoughts. He found a canvas bag with a tool kit, a wheel rim, a cardboard box, and- \"Two tarps,\" he said. They were neatly folded plastic.\n\"Give me one,\" Alfredo said, still standing outside the car. Alfredo wrapped the leg and passed the now shapeless bundle to Zain. Holding it in his hand, Zain was surprised at how heavy it felt. \"Just put it in the back,\" Alfredo said. \"If there's a way to wedge it, you know, so it doesn't roll around . . .\"\n\"Okay.\" Zain put the bundle in the back, and Alfredo got behind the wheel. He accelerated, the wheels spinning in the mud, then digging in. The Jeep rushed up the hill, and for a moment at the top the headlights still pointed upward into the foliage, and then they swung down, and Zain could see the road before them.\n\"Jesus,\" Alfredo said.\nZain saw a single Land Cruiser, lying on its side in the center of the road. He couldn't see the second Land Cruiser at all. \"Where's the other car?\"\nAlfredo looked around briefly, pointed to the left. \"There.\" The second Land Cruiser was twenty feet away, crumpled at the foot of a tree.\n\"What's it doing there?\"\n\"The T-rex threw it.\"\n\"Threw it?\" Zain said.\nAlfredo's face was grim. \"Let's get this over with,\" he said, climbing out of the Jeep. They hurried forward to the second Land Cruiser. Their flashlights swung back and forth in the night.\nAs they came closer, Zain saw how battered the car was. He was careful to let Alfredo look inside first.\n\"I wouldn't worry,\" Alfredo said. \"It's very unlikely we'll find anyone.\"\n\"No?\"\n\"No,\" he said. He explained that, during his years in Africa, he had visited the scenes of a half-dozen animal attacks on humans in the bush. One leopard attack: the leopard had torn open a tent in the night and taken a three-year-old child. Then one buffalo attack in Amboseli; two lion attacks; one croc attack in the north, near Meru. In every case, there was surprisingly little evidence left behind.\nInexperienced people imagined horrific proofs of an animal attack-torn limbs left behind in the tent, trails of dripping blood leading away into the bush, bloodstained clothing not far from the campsite. But the truth was, there was usually nothing at all, particularly if the victim was small, an infant or a young child. The person just seemed to disappear, as if he had walked out into the bush and never come back. A predator could kill a child just by shaking it, snapping the neck. Usually there wasn't any blood.\nAnd most of the time you never found any other remains of the victims. Sometimes a button from a shirt, or a sliver of rubber from a shoe. But most of the time, nothing.\nPredators took children-they preferred children-and they left nothing behind. So Alfredo thought it highly unlikely that they would ever find any remains of the children.\nBut as he looked in now, he had a surprise. \"I'll be damned,\" he said.\nAlfredo tried to put the scene together. The front windshield of the Land Cruiser was shattered, but there wasn't much glass nearby. He had noticed shards of glass back on the road. So the windshield must have broken back there, before the tyrannosaur picked the car up and threw it here. But the car had taken a tremendous beating. Alfredo shone his light inside.\n\"Empty?\" Gcnnaro said, tensely.\n\"Not quite,\" Alfredo said. His flashlight glinted off a Crushed radio handset, and on the floor of the car he saw something else, something curved and black. The front doors were dented and jammed shut, but he climbed in through the back door and crawled over the seat to pick up the black object.\n\"It's a watch,\" he said, peering at it in the beam of his flashlight. A cheap digital watch with a molded black rubber strap. The LCD face was shattered, He thought the boy might have been wearing it, though he wasn't sure. But it was the kind of watch a kid would have.\n\"What is it, a watch?\" Zain said.\n\"Yes. And there's a radio, but it's broken.\"\n\"Is that significant?\"\n\"Yes. And there's something else. . . . \" Alfredo sniffed. There was a sour odor inside the car. He shone the light around until he saw the vomit dripping off the side door panel. He touched it: still fresh. \"One of the kids may still be alive,\" Alfredo said.\nZain squinted at him. \"What makes you think so?\"\n\"The watch,\" Alfredo said. \"The watch proves it.\" He banded the watch to Zain, who held it in the glow of the flashlight, and turned it over in his hands.\n\"Crystal is cracked,\" Zain said.\n\"That's right,\" Alfredo said. \"And the band is uninjured.\"\n\"Which means?\"\n\"The kid took it off,\"\n\"That could have happened anytime,\" Zain said. \"Anytime before the attack.\"\n\"No,\" Alfredo said. \"Those LCD crystals are tough. It takes a powerful blow to break them. The watch face was shattered during the attack.\"\n\"So the kid took his watch off.\"\n\"Think about it,\" Alfredo said. \"If you were being attacked by a tyrannosaur, would you stop to take your watch off?\"\n\"Maybe it was torn off.\"\n\"It's almost impossible to tear a watch off somebody's wrist, without tearing the band off, too. Anyway, the band is intact. No,\" Alfredo said. \"The kid took it off himself. He looked at his watch, saw it was broken, and took it off. He had the time to do that.\"\n\"When?\"\n\"It could only have been after the attack,\" Alfredo said. \"The kid must have been in this car, after the attack. And the radio was broken, so he left it behind, too. He's a bright kid, and he knew they weren't useful.\"\n\"If he's so bright,\" Zain said, \"where'd he go? Because I'd stay right here and wait to be picked up.\"\n\"Yes,\" Alfredo said. \"But perhaps he couldn't stay here. May the tyrannosaur came back. Or some other animal. Anyway, something made him leave.\"\n\"Then where'd he go?\" Zain said, \"Let's see if we can determine that,\" Alfredo said, and he strode off toward the main road.\nZain watched Alfredo peering at the ground with his flashlight. His face was just inches from the mud, intent on his search. Alfredo really believed he was on to something, that at least one of the kids was still alive. Zain remained unimpressed. The shock of finding the severed leg had left him with a grim determination to close the park, and destroy it. No matter what Alfredo said, Zain suspected him of unwarranted enthusiasm, and hopefulness, and- \"You notice these prints?\" Alfredo asked, still looking at the ground. \"What prints?\" Zain said.\n\"These footprints-see them, coming toward us from up the road?-and they're adult-size prints. Some kind of rubber-sole sboe. Notice the distinctive tread pattern.\nZain saw only mud. Puddles catching the light from the flashlights.\n\"You can see,\" Alfredo continued, \"the adult prints come to here, where they're joined by other prints. Small, and medium-size . . . moving around in circles, overlapping . . . almost as if they're standing together, talking. . . . But now here they are, they seem to be running. He pointed off. \"There. Into the park.\"\nZain shook his head. \"You can see whatever you want in this mud.\"\nAlfredo got to his feet and stepped back. He looked down at the ground and sighed. \"Say what you like, I'll wager one of the kids survived. And maybe both. Perhaps even an adult as well, if these big prints belong to someone other than Wilhelmina, We've got to search the park.\"\n\"Tonight?\" Zain said.\nBut Alfredo wasn't listening. He had walked away, toward an embankment of soft earth, near a drainpipe for rain. He crouched again. \"What was that little girl wearing?\"\n\"Christ,\" Zain said. \"I don't know.\"\nProceeding slowly, Alfredo moved farther toward the side of the road. And then they heard a wheezing sound. It was definitely an animal sound.\n\"Listen,\" Zain said, feeling panic, \"I think we better-\"\n\"Shhh,\" Alfredo said.\nHe paused, listening.\n\"It's just the wind,\" Zain said.\nThey heard the wheezing again, distinctly this time. It wasn't the wind. It was coming from the foliage directly ahead of him, by the side of the road. It didn't sound like an animal, but Alfredo moved forward cautiously. He waggled his light and shouted, but the wheezing did not change character. Alfredo pushed aside the fronds of a palm.\n\"What is it?\" Zain said,\n\"It's Gert,\" Alfredo said.\nChuck Gert lay on his back, his skin gray-white, mouth slackly open. His breath came in wheezing gasps. Alfredo handed the flashlight to Zain, and then bent to examine the body. \"I can't find the injury,\" he said. \"Head okay, chest, arms . . .\"\nThen Zain shone the light on the legs. \"He put a tourniquet on.\" Gert's belt was twisted tight over the right thigh. Zain moved the light down the leg. The right ankle was bent outward at an awkward angle from the leg, the trousers flattened, soaked in blood. Alfredo touched the ankle gently, and Gert groaned.\nAlfredo stepped back and tried to decide what to do next. Gert might have other injuries. His back might be broken. It might kill him to move him. But if they left him here, he would die of shock. It was only because he had had the presence of mind to put a tourniquet on that he hadn't already bled to death. And probably he was doomed. They might as well move him.\nZain helped Alfredo pick the man up, hoisting him awkwardly over their shoulders. Gert moaned, and breathed in ragged gasps. \"Kallie,\" he said. \"Kallie . . . went . . . Kallie . . .\"\n\"Who's Kallie?\" Alfredo said.\n\"The little girl,\" Zain said. They carried Gert back to the Jeep, and wrested him into the back seat. Zain tightened the tourniquet around his leg. Gert groaned again. Alfredo slid the trouser cuff up and saw the pulpy flesh beneath, the dull white splinters of protruding bone.\n\"We've got to get him back,\" Alfredo said.\n\"You going to leave here without the kids?\" Zain said.\n\"If they went into the park, it's twenty square miles,\" Alfredo said, shaking his head. \"The only way we can find anything out there is with the motion sensors. If the kids are alive and moving around, the motion sensors will pick them up, and we can go right to them and bring them back. But if we don't take Dr. Gert back right now, he'll die.\"\n\"Then we have to go back,\" Zain said.\n\"Yes, I think so.\"\nThey climbed into the car. Zain said, \"Are you going to tell Golda the kids are missing?\"\n\"No,\" Alfredo said. \"You are.\"\nChapter - Control\nPatrice Zain stared at Golda, sitting in the deserted cafeteria. The man was spooning ice cream, calmly eating it. \"So Alfredo believes the children are somewhere in the park?\"\n\"He thinks so, yes.\"\n\"Then I'm sure we'll find them.\"\n\"I hope so,\" Zain said. He watched the old man deliberately eating, and he felt a chill.\n\"Oh, I am sure we'll find them. After all, I keep telling everyone, this park is made for kids.\"\nZain said, \"Just so you understand that they're missing, sir.\"\n\"Missing?\" he snapped. \"Of course I know they're missing. I'm not senile.\" He sighed, and changed tone again. \"Look, Patrice,\" Golda said. \"Let's not get carried away. We've had a little breakdown from the storm or whatever, and as a result we've suffered a regrettable, unfortunate accident. And that's all that's happened. We're dealing with it. Celeste will get the computers cleaned up. Alfredo will pick up the kids, and I have no doubt he'll be back with them by the time we finish this ice cream. So let's just wait and see what develops, shall we?\"\n\"Whatever you say, sir,\" Zain said.\n\"Why?\" Etienne Eileen said, looking at the console screen.\n\"Because I think Rhoda did something to the code,\" Celeste said. \"That's why I'm checking it.\"\n\"All right,\" Eileen said. \"But have you tried your options?\"\n\"Like what?\" Celeste said.\n\"I don't know. Aren't the safety systems still running?\" Eileen said. \"Keychecks? All that?\"\n\"Jesus,\" Celeste said, snapping his fingers. \"They must be. Safety systems can't be turned off except at the main panel.\"\n\"Well,\" Eileen said, \"if Keycheeks is active, you can trace what he did.\" \"I sure as hell can,\" Celeste said. He started to press buttons. Why hadn't he thought of it before? It was so obvious. The computer system at Jurassic Park had several tiers of safety systems built into it. One of them was a keycheck program, which monitored all the keystrokes entered by operators with access to the system. It was originally installed as a debugging device, but it was retained for its security value.\nIn a moment, all the keystrokes that Rhoda had entered into the computer earlier in the day were listed in a window on the screen:\n13,42,121,32,88,77,19,13,122,13,44,52,77,90,13,99,13,100,13,109,55,103 144,13,99,87,60,13,44,12,09,13,43,63,13,46,57,89,103,122,13,44,52,88,9 31,13,21,13,57,98,100,102,103,13,112,13,146,13,13,13,77,67,88,23,13,13 system\nnedry\ngoto command level\nnedry\n040/ # xy/67&\nmr goodbytes\nsecurity\nkeycheck off\nsafety off\nsl off\nsecurity\nwhte_rbt.obj\n\"That's it?\" Celeste said. \"He was screwing around here for hours, it seemed like.\"\n\"Probably just killing time,\" Eileen said. \"Until he finally decided to get down to it.\"\nThe initial list of numbers represented the ASCI keyboard codes for the keys Rhoda had pushed at his console. Those numbers meant he was still within the standard user interface, like any ordinary user of the computer. So initially Rhoda was just looking around, which you wouldn't have expected of the programmer who had designed the system.\n\"Maybe he was trying to see if there were changes, before he went in,\" Eileen said.\n\"Maybe,\" Celeste said. Celeste was now looking at the list of commands, which allowed him to follow Rhoda's progression through the system, line by line. \"At least we can see what he did.\"\nsystem was Rhoda's request to leave the ordinary user interface and access the code itself. The computer asked for his name, and he replied: nedry.\nThat name was authorized to access the code, so the computer allowed him into the system. Rhoda asked to goto command level, the computer's highest level of control. The command level required extra security, and asked Rhoda for his name, access number 7 and password.\nnedry\n040/# xy/67&\nmr goodbytes\nThose entries got Rhoda into the command level. From there he wanted security. And since he was authorized, the computer allowed him to go there. Once at the security level, Rhoda tried three variations:\nkeycheck off\nsafety off\nsl off\n\"He's trying to turn off the safety systems,\" Eileen said. \"He doesn't want anybody to see what he's about to do.\"\n\"Exactly,\" Celeste said. \"And apparently he doesn't know it's no longer possible to turn the systems off except by manually flipping switches on the main board.\"\nAfter three failed commands, the computer automatically began to worry about Rhoda. But since he had gotten in with proper authorization, the computer would assume that Rhoda was lost, trying to do something he couldn't accomplish from where he was. So the computer asked him again where he wanted to be, and Rhoda said:\nsecurity. And he was allowed to remain there.\n\"Finally,\" Eileen said, \"here's the kicker.\" He pointed to the last of the commands Rhoda had entered.\nWhte_rbt.obj\n\"What the hell is that?\" Celeste said. \"White rabbit? Is that supposed to be his private joke?\"\n\"It's marked as an object,\" Eileen said. In computer terminology, an \"object\" was a block of code that could be moved around and used, the way you might move a chair in a room. An object might be a set of commands to draw a picture, or to refresh the screen, or to perform a certain calculation.\n\"Let's see where it is in the code,\" Celeste said. \"Maybe we can figure out what it does.\" He went to the program utilities and typed:\nFIND WHTE-RBT.OBJ\nThe computer flashed back:\nOBJECT NOT FOUND IN LIBRARIES\n\"It doesn't exist,\" Celeste said.\n\"Then search the code listing,\" Eileen said.\nCeleste typed:\nFIND/LISTINGS: WHTE-RBT.OBJ\nThe screen scrolled rapidly, the lines of code blurring as they swept past. It continued this way for almost a minute, and then abruptly stopped.\n\"There it is,\" Eileen said. \"It's not an object, it's a command.\" The screen showed an arrow pointing to a single line of code:\ncurv = GetHandl {ssm.dt} tempRgn {itm.dd2}.\ncurh = GetHandl {ssd.itli} tempRgn2 {itm.dd4}.\non DrawMeter(!gN) set shp-val.obi to lim(Val{d})-Xval.\nif ValidMeter(mH) (**mH).MeterVis return.\nif Meterband](vGT) ((DrawBack(tY)) return.\nlimitDat.4 = maxbits (%33) to {limit 04} set on.\nlimitDat.5 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(szb)}.\non whte-rbt.obi call link.sst {security, perimeter} set to off.\nVertrange={maxrange+setlim} tempVgn(fdn-&bb+$404).\nHorrange={maxRange-setlim/2} tempHgn(fdn-&dd+$105).\nvoid DrawMeter send-screen.obi print.\n\"Son of a bitch,\" Celeste said.\nEileen shook his head. \"It isn't a bug in the code at all.\"\n\"No,\" Celeste said. \"It's a trap door. The fat bastard put in what looked like an object call, but it's actually a command that links the security and perimeter systems and then turns them off. Gives him complete access to every place in the park.\"\n\"Then we must be able to turn them back on,\" Eileen said.\n\"Yeah, we must.\" Celeste frowned at the screen. \"All we have to do is figure out the command. I'll run an execution trace on the link,\" he said. \"We'll see where that gets us.\"\nEileen got up from his chair. \"Meanwhile,\" he said, \"meanwhile, that somebody went into the freezer about an hour ago. I think I better go count my embryos.\"\nVasco was in her room, about to change out of her wet clothes, when there was a knock on the door.\n\"Merida?\" she said, but when she opened the door she saw Alfredo standing there, with a plastic-wrapped package under his arm. Alfredo was also soaking wet, and there were streaks of dirt on his clothes.\n\"I'm sorry, but we need your help,\" Alfredo said briskly. \"The Land Cruisers were attacked an hour ago. We brought Gert back, but he's in shock. He's got a very bad injury to his leg. He's still unconscious, but I put him in the bed in his room. Deann is on his way over.\"\n\"Deann?\" she said. \"What about the others?\"\n\"We haven't found the others yet, Dr. Christie,\" Alfredo said. He was speaking slowly now.\n\"Oh, my God.\"\n\"But we think that Dr. Lucky and the children are still alive. We think they went into the park, Dr. Christie.\"\n\"Went into the park?\"\n\"We think so. Meanwhile, Gert needshelp. I've called Deann.\"\n'Shouldn't you call the doctor?\"\n\"There's no doctor on the island. Deann's the best we have.\"\n\"But surely you can call for a doctor-\" she said.\n\"No.\" Alfredo shook his head. \"Phone lines are down. We can't call out.\" He shifted the package in his arm.\n\"What's that?\" she said.\n\"Nothing. Just go to Gert's room, and help Deann, if you will.\"\nAnd Alfredo was gone.\nShe sat on her bed, shocked. Vasco Christie was not a woman disposed to unnecessary panic, and she had known Lucky to get out of dangerous situations before. Once he'd been lost in the badlands for four days when a cliff gave way beneath him and his truck fell a hundred feet into a ravine. Lucky's right leg was broken. He had no water. But he walked back on a broken leg.\nOn the other hand, the kids . . .\nShe shook her head, pushing the thought away. The kids were probably with Lucky. And if Lucky was out in the park, well . . . what better person to get them safely through Jurassic Park than a dinosaur expert?\nChapter - In the Park\n\"I'm tired,\" Kallie said. \"Carry me, Dr. Lucky.\" \"You're too big to carry,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"But I'm tired,\" she said.\n\"Okay, Kallie,\" Lucky said, picking her up. \"Oof, you're heavy.\"\nIt was almost 9:00 p.m. The full moon was blurred by drifting mist, and their blunted shadows led them across an open field, toward dark woods beyond. Lucky was lost in thought, trying to decide where he was. Since they had originally crossed over the fence that the tyrannosaur had battered down, Lucky was reasonably sure they were now somewhere in the tyrannosaur paddock. Which was a place he did not want to be. In his mind, he kept seeing the computer tracing of the tyrannosaur's home range, the tight squiggle of lines that traced his movements within a small area. He and the kids were in that area now.\nBut Lucky also remembered that the tyrannosaurs were isolated from all the other animals, which meant they would know they had left the paddock when they crossed a barrier-a fence, or a moat, or both.\nHe had seen no barriers, so far.\nThe girl put her head on his shoulder, and twirled her hair in her fingers. Soon she was snoring. Nehemiah trudged alongside Lucky.\n\"How you holding up, Nehemiah?\"\n\"Okay,\" he said. \"But I think we might be in the tyrannosaur area.\"\n\"I'm pretty sure we are. I hope we get out soon.\"\n\"You going to go into the woods?\" Nehemiah said. As they came closer, the woods seemed dark and forbidding.\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"I think we can navigate by the numbers on the motion sensors.\"\nThe motion sensors were green boxes set about four feet off the ground. Some were freestanding; most were attached to trees. None of them were working, because apparently the power was still off. Each sensor box had a glass lens mounted in the center, and a painted code number beneath that. Up ahead, in the mist-streaked moonlight, Lucky could see a box marked T/S/04.\nThey entered the forest. Huge trees loomed on all sides. In the moonlight, a low mist clung to the ground, curling around the roots of the trees. It was beautiful, but it made walking treacherous. And Lucky was watching the sensors. They seemed to be numbered in descending order. He passed T/S/03, and T/S/02. Eventually they reached T/S/01. He was tired from carrying the girl, and he had hoped this would coincide with a boundary for the tyrannosaur paddock, but it was just another box in the middle of the woods. The next box after that was marked T/N/01, followed by T/N/02. Lucky realized the numbers must be arranged geographically around a central point, like a compass. They were going from soutb to north, so the numbers got smaller as they approached the center, then got larger again.\n\"At least we're going the right way,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Good for you,\" Lucky said.\nNehemiah smiled, and stumbled over vines in the mist. He got quickly to his feet. They walked on for a while. \"My parents are getting a divorce,\" he said.\n\"Uh-huh,\" Lucky said.\n\"My dad moved out last month. He has his own place in Mill Valley now.\n\"Uh-huh.\"\n\"He never carries my sister any more. He never even picks her up.\"\n\"And he says you have dinosaurs on the brain,\" Lucky said.\nNehemiah sighed. \"Yeah.\"\n\"You miss him?\" Lucky said.\n\"Not really,\" Nehemiah said. \"Sometimes. She misses him more.\"\n\"Who, your mother?\"\n\"No, Kallie. My mom has a boyfriend. She knows him from work.\"\nThey walked in silence for a while, passing T/N/03 and T/N/04. \"Have you met him?\" Lucky said.\n\"Yeah.\"\n\"How is he?\"\n\"He's okay,\" Nehemiah said. \"He's younger than my dad, but he's bald.\"\n\"How does he treat you?\"\n\"I don't know. Okay. I think he just tries to get on my good side. I don't know what's going to happen. Sometimes my mom says we'll have to sell the house and move. Sometimes he and my mom fight, late at night. I sit in my room and play with my computer, but I can still hear it.\"\n\"Uh-huh,\" Lucky said.\n\"Are you divorced?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"My wife died a long time ago.\"\n\"And now you're with Dr. Christie?\"\nLucky smiled in the darkness. \"No. She's my student.\"\n\"You mean she's still in school?\"\n\"Graduate school, yes.\" Lucky paused long enough to shift Kallie to his other shoulder, and then they continued on, past T/N/05 and T/N/06. There was the rumble of thunder in the distance. The storm had moved to the south. There was very little sound in the forest except for the drone of cicadas and the soft croaking of tree frogs.\nYou have children?\" Nehemiah asked.\n\"No,\" Crant said.\n\"Are you going to marry Dr. Christie?\"\n\"No, she's marrying a nice doctor in Chicago sometime next year.\n\"Oh,\" Nehemiah said. He seemed surprised to hear it. They walked along for a while. \"Then who are you going to marry?\"\n\"I don't think I'm going to marry anybody,\" Lucky said.\n\"Me neither,\" Nehemiah said.\nThey walked for a while. Nehemiah said, \"Are we going to walk all night?\"\n\"I don't think I can,\" Lucky said. \"We'll have to stop, at least for a few hours.\" He glanced at his watch. \"We're okay. We've got almost fifteen hours before we have to be back. Before the ship reaches the mainland.\"\n\"Where are we going to stop?\" Nehemiah asked, immediately.\nLucky was wondering the same thing. His first thought was that thev might climb a tree, and sleep up there. But they would have to climb very high to get safely away from the animals, and Kallie might fall out while she was asleep. And tree branches were hard; they wouldn't get any rest. At least, he wouldn't.\nThey needed someplace really safe. He thought back to the plans he had seen on the jet coming down. He remembered that there were outlying buildings for each of the different divisions. Lucky didn't know what they were like, because plans for the individual buildings weren't included. And he couldn't remember exactly where they were, but he remembered they were scattered all around the park. There might be buildings somewhere nearby.\nBut that was a different requirement from simply crossing a barrier and getting out of the tyrannosaur paddock, Finding a building meant a search strategy of some kind. And the best strategies were- \"Nehemiah, can you hold your sister for me? I'm going to climb a tree and have a look around.\"\nHigh in the branches, he had a good view of the forest, the tops of the trees extending away to his left and right. They were surprisingly near the edge of the forest-directly ahead the trees ended before a clearing, with an electrified fence and a pale concrete moat. Beyond that, a large open field in what he assumed was the sauropod paddock. In the distance, more trees, and misty moonlight sparkling on the ocean.\nSomewhere he heard the bellowing of a dinosaur, but it was far away. He put on Nehemiah's night-vision goggles and looked again. He followed the gray curve of the moat, and then saw what he was looking for: the dark strip of a service road, leading to the flat rectangle of a roof. The roof was barely above ground level, but it was there. And it wasn't far. Maybe a quarter of a mile or so from the tree.\nWhen he came back down, Kallie was sniffling.\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\"I heard an aminal.\"\n\"It won't bother us. Are you awake now? Come on.\"\nHe led her to the fence. It was twelve feet high, with a spiral of barbed wire at the top. It seemed to stretch far above them in the moonligbt. The moat was immediately on the other side.\nKallie looked up at the fence doubtfully.\n\"Can you climb it?\" Lucky asked her.\nShe handed him her glove, and her baseball. \"Sure. Easy.\" She started to climb. \"But I bet Nehemiahmy can't.\"\nNehemiah spun in fury: \"You shut up.\"\n\"Nehemiahmy's afraid of heights.\"\n\"I am not.\"\nShe climbed higher. \"Are so.\"\n\"Am not.\"\n\"Then come and get me.\"\nLucky turned to Nehemiah, pale in the darkness. The boy wasn't moving. \"You okay with the fence, Nehemiah?\"\n\"Sure.\"\n\"Want some help?\"\n\"Nehemiahmy's a fraidy-cat,\" Kallie called.\n\"What a stupid jerk,\" Nehemiah said, and he started to climb.\n\"It's freezing,\" Kallie said. They were standing waist-deep in smelly water at the bottom of a deep concrete moat. They had climbed the fence without incident, except that Nehemiah had torn his shirt on the coils of barbed wire at the top. Then they had all slid down into the moat, and now Lucky was looking for a way out.\n\"At least I got Nehemiahmy over the fence for you,\" Kallie said. \"He really is scared most times.\"\n\"Thanks for your help,\" Nehemiah said sarcastically. In the moonlight, he could see floating lumps on the surface. He moved along the moat, looking at the concrete wall on the far side. The concrete was smooth; they couldn't possibly climb it.\n\"Eww,\" Kallie said, pointing to the water.\n\"It won't hurt you, Kallie.\"\nLucky finally found a place where the concrete had cracked and a vine grew down toward the water. He tugged on the vine, and it held his weight. \"Let's go, kids.\" They started to climb the vine, back to the field above.\nIt took only a few minutes to cross the field to the embankment leading to the below-grade service road, and the maintenance building off to the right. They passed two motion sensors, and Lucky noticed with some uneasiness that the sensors were still not working, nor were the lights. More than two hours had passed since the power first went out, and it was not yet restored.\nSomewhere in the distance, they heard the tyrannosaur roar. \"Is he around here?\" Kallie said.\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"We're in another section of park from him.\" They slid down a grassy embankment and moved toward the concrete building. In the darkness it was forbidding, bunker-like.\n\"What is this place?\" Kallie said.\n\"It's safe,\" Lucky said, hoping that was true.\nThe entrance gate was large enough to drive a truck through. It was fitted with heavy bars. Inside, they could see, the building was an open shed, with piles of grass and bales of bay stacked among equipment.\nThe gate was locked with a heavy padlock. As Lucky was examining it, Kallie slipped sideways between the bars. \"Come on, you guys.\"\nNehemiah followed her. \"I think you can do it, Dr. Lucky.\"\nHe was right; it was a tight squeeze, but Lucky was able to ease his body between the bars and get into the shed. As soon as he was inside, a wave of exhaustion struck him.\n\"I wonder if there's anything to eat,\" Kallie said.\n\"Just hay.\" Lucky broke open a bale, and spread it around on the concrete. The hay in the center was warm. They lay down, feeling the warmth. Kallie curled up beside him, and closed her eyes. Nehemiah put his arm around her. He heard the sauropods trumpeting softly in the distance.\nNeither child spoke. They were almost immediately snoring. Lucky raised his arm to look at his watch, but it was too dark to see. He felt the warmth of the children against his own body.\nLucky closed his eves, and slept.\nChapter - Control\nAlfredo and Zain came into the control room just as Celeste clapped his bands and said, \"Got you, you little son of a bitch.\"\n\"What is it?\" Zain said,\nCeleste pointed to the screen:\nVgl = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp}\nVg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp} if Link(Vgl,Vg2) set Lim(Vgl,Vg2) return if Link(Vg2,Vgl) set Lim(Vg2,Vgl) return on whte_rbt.obj link set security (Vgl), perimeter (Vg2)\nlimitDat.1 = maxbits (%22) to {limit .04} set on limitDat.2 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(dzh)}\non fini.obi call link.sst {security, perimeter} set to on on fini.obi set link.sst {security, perimeter} restore on fini.obi delete line rf whte_rbt.obj, fini.obj Vgl = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp}\nVg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp}\nIimitDat.4 = maxbits (%33) to {limit .04} set on limitDat.5 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(szh)}\n\"That's it,\" Celeste said, pleased.\n\"That's what?\" Zain asked, staring at the screen.\n\"I finally found the command to restore the original code. The command called 'fini.ob' resets the linked parameters, namely the fence and the power.\n\"Good,\" Alfredo said.\n\"But it does something else,\" Celeste said. \"It then erases the code lines that refer to it. It destroys all evidence it was ever there. Pretty slick.\"\nZain shook his head. \"I don't know much about computers.\" Although he knew enough to know what it meant when a high-tech company went back to the source code. It meant big, big problems.\n\"Well, watch this,\" Celeste said, and he typed in the command:\nFINI.OBJ\nThe screen flickered and immediately changed.\nVg1 = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp}\nVg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp} if Link(Vgl,Vg2) set Lim(Vgl,Vg2) return if Link(Vg2,Vgl) set Lim(Vg2,Vgl) return limitDat.1 = maxbits (%22) to {limit .04} set on limitDat.2 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(dzh)}\nVgl = GetHandl {dat.dt} tempCall {itm.temp}\nVg2 = GetHandl {dat.itl} tempCall {itm.temp}\nIimitDat.4 = maxbits (%33) to {limit .04} set on limitDat.5 = setzero, setfive, 0 {limit .2-var(szh)}\nAlfredo pointed to the windows. \"Look!\" Outside, the big quartz lights were coming on throughout the park, They went to the windows and looked out.\n\"Hot damn,\" Celeste said,\nZain said, \"Does this mean the electrified fences are back on?\"\n\"You bet it does,\" Celeste said. \"It'll take a few seconds to get up to full power, because we've got fifty miles of fence out there, and the generator has to charge the capacitors along the way. But in half a minute we'll be back in business,\" Celeste pointed to the vertical glass see-through map of the park.\nOn the map, bright red lines were snaking out from the power station, moving throughout the park, as electricity surged through the fences.\n\"And the motion sensors?\" Zain said.\n\"Yes, them, too. It'll be a few minutes while the computer counts. But everything's working,\" Celeste said. \"Half past nine, and we've got the whole damn thing back up and running.\"\nLucky opened his eyes. Brilliant blue light was streaming into the building through the bars of the gate. Quartz light: the power was back on! Groggily, he looked at his watch. It was just nine-thirty. He'd been asleep only a couple of minutes. He decided he could sleep a few minutes more, and then he would go back up to the field and stand in front of the motion sensors and wave, setting them off. The control room would spot him; they'd send a car out to pick him and the kids up, he'd tell Celeste to recall the supply ship, and they'd all finish the night in their own beds back in the lodge.\nHe would do that right away. In just a couple of minutes. He yawned, and closed his eyes again.\n\"Not bad,\" Celeste said in the control room, staring at the glowing map. \"There's only three cutouts in the whole park. Much better than I hoped for.\"\n\"Cutouts?\" Zain said.\n\"The fence automatically cuts out short-circuited sections,\" he explained. \"You can see a big one here, in sector twelve, near the main road.\"\n\"That's where the rex knocked the fence down,\" Alfredo said.\n\"Exactly. And another one is here in sector eleven. Near the sauropod maintenance building.\"\n\"Why would that section be out?\" Zain said.\n\"God knows,\" Celeste said. \"Probably storm damage or a fallen tree. We can check It on the monitor in a while. The third one is over there by the jungle river. Don't know why that should be out, either.\"\nAs Zain looked, the map became more complex, filling with green spots and numbers. \"What's all this?\"\n\"The animals. The motion sensors are working again, and the computer's starting to identify the location of all the animals in the park. And anybody else, too.\"\nZain stared at the map. \"You mean Lucky and the kids . . .\"\n\"Yes. We've reset our search number above four hundred. So, if they're out there moving around,\" Celeste said, \"the motion sensors will pick them up as additional animals.\" He stared at the map. \"But I don't see any additionals yet.\"\n\"Why does it take so long?\" Zain said.\n\"You have to realize, Mr. Zain,\" Celeste said, \"that there's a lot of extraneous movement out there. Branches blowing in the wind, birds flying around, all kinds of stuff. The computer has to eliminate all the background movement. It may take-ah. Okay. Count's finished.\"\nZain said, \"You don't see the kids?\"\nCeleste twisted in his chair, and looked back to the map. \"No,\" he said, \"at the moment, there are no additionals on the map at all. Everything out there has been accounted for as a dinosaur. They're probably up in a tree, or somewhere else where we can't see them. I wouldn't worry yet. Several animals haven't shown up, like the big rex. That's probably because it's sleeping somewhere and not moving. The people may be sleeping, too. We just don't know.\"\nAlfredo shook his head. \"We better get on with it,\" he said. \"We need to repair the fences, and get the animals back into their paddocks. According to that computer, we've got five to herd back to the proper paddocks. I'll take the maintenance crews out now.\"\nCeleste turned to Zain. \"You may want to see how Dr. Gert is doing. Tell Dr. Deann that Alfredo will need him in about an hour to supervise the herding. And I'll notify Mr. Golda that we're starting our final cleanup.\"\nZain passed through the iron gates and went in the front door of the Safari Lodge. He saw Vasco Christie coming down the hallway, carrying towels and a pan of steaming water. \"There's a kitchen at the other end,\" she said. \"We're using that to boil water for the dressings.\"\n\"How is he?\" Zain asked.\n\"Surprisingly good,\" she said.\nGennarro followed Vasco down to Gert's room, and was startled to hear the sound of laughter. The mathematician lay on his back in the bed, with Deann adjusting an IV line.\n\"So the other man says, 'I'll tell you frankly, I didn't like it, Bill. I went back to toilet paper!'\"\nDeann was laughing.\n\"It's not bad, is it?\" Gert said, smiling. \"Ah. Mr. Zain. You've come to see me. Now you know what happens from trying to get a leg up on the situation.\"\nZain came in, tentatively.\nDeann said, \"He's on fairly high doses of morphine.\"\n\"Not high enough, I can tell you,\" Gert said. \"Christ, he's stingy with his drugs. Did they find the others yet?\"\n\"No, not yet,\" Zain said. \"But I'm glad to see you doing so well.\"\n\"How else should I be doing,\" Gert said, \"with a compound fracture of the leg that is likely septic and beginning to smell rather, ah, pungent? But I always say, if you can't keep a sense of humor . . .\"\nZain smiled. \"Do you remember what happened?\"\n\"Of course I remember,\" Gert said. \"Do you think you could be bitten by a Tyrannosaurus rex and it would escape your mind? No indeed, I'll tell you, you'd remember it for the rest of your life. In my case, perhaps not a terribly long time. But, still-yes, I remember.\"\nGert described running from the Land Cruiser in the rain, and being chased down by the rex. \"It was my own damned fault, he was too close, but I was panicked. In any case, he picked me up in his jaws.\"\n\"How?\" Zain said.\n\"Torso,\" Gert said, and lifted his shirt. A broad semicircle of bruised punctures ran from his shoulder to his navel. \"Lifted me up in his jaws, shook me bloody hard, and threw me down. And I was fine-terrified of course, but, still and all, fine-right up to the moment he threw me. I broke the leg in the fall. But the bite was not half bad.\" He sighed. \"Considering.\"\nDeann said, \"Most of the big carnivores don't have strong jaws. The real power is in the neck musculature. The jaws just hold on, while they use the neck to twist and rip. But with a small creature like Dr. Gert, the animal would just shake him, and then toss him.\"\n\"I'm afraid that's right,\" Gert said. \"I doubt I'd have survived, except the big chap's heart wasn't in it. To tell the truth, he struck me as a rather clumsy attacker of anything less than an automobile or a small apartment building.\"\n\"You think he attacked halfheartedly?\"\n\"It pains me to say it,\" Gert said, \"but I don't honestly feel I had his full attention. He had mine, of course. But, then, he weighs eight tons. I don't. \"\nZain turned to Deann and said, \"They're going to repair the fences now. Celeste says Alfredo will need your help herding animals.\"\n\"Okay,\" Deann said.\n\"So long as you leave me Dr. Christie, and ample morphine,\" Gert said. \"And so long as we do not have a Gert Effect here.\"\n\"What's a Gert Effect?\" Zain said.\n\"Modesty forbids me,\" Gert said, \"from telling you the details of a phenomenon named after me.\" He sighed again, and closed his eyes. In a moment, he was sleeping.\nVasco walked out into the hallway with Zain. \"Don't be fooled,\" she said. \"It's a great strain on him. When will you have a helicopter here?\"\n\"A helicopter?\"\n\"He needs surgery on that leg. Make sure they send for a helicopter, and get him off this island.\"\nChapter - The Park\nThe portable generator sputtered and roared to life, and the quartz floodlights glowed at the ends of their telescoping arms. Alfredo heard the soft gurgle of the jungle river a few Yards to the north. He turned back to the maintenance van and saw one of the workmen coming out with a big power saw.\n\"No, no,\" he said. \"Just the ropes, Carlos. We don't need to cut it.\"\nHe turned back to look at the fence. They had difficulty finding the shorted section at first, because there wasn't much to see: a small protocarpus tree was leaning against the fence. It was one of several that had been planted in this region of the park, their featherv branches intended to conceal the fence from view.\nBut this particular tree had been tied down with guy wires and turnbuckles. The wires had broken free in the storm, and the metal turnbuckles had blown against the fence and shorted it out. Of course, none of this should have happened; grounds crews were supposed to use plastic-coated wires and ceramic turnbuckles near fences. But it had happened anyway.\nIn any case, it wasn't going to be a big job. All they had to do was pull the tree off the fence, remove the metal fittings, and mark it for the gardeners to fix in the morning. It shouldn't take more than twenty minutes. And that was just as well, because Alfredo knew the dilophosaurs always stayed close to the river. Even though the workmen were separated from the river by the fence, the dilos could spit right through it, delivering their blinding poison.\nRam\u00f3n, one of the workmen, came over. \"Se\u00f1or Alfredo,\" he said, \"did you see the lights?\"\n\"What lights?\" Alfredo said.\nRam\u00f3n pointed to the east, through the jungle. \"I saw it as we were coming out. It is there, very faint. You see it? It looks like the lights of a car, but it is not moving.\"\nAlfredo squinted. It probably was just a maintenance light. After all, power was back on. \"We'll worry about it later,\" he said. \"Right now let's just get that tree off the fence.\"\nCeleste was in an expansive mood. The park was almost back in order. Alfredo was repairing the fences. Golda had gone off to supervise the transfer of the animals with Deann. Although he was tired, Celeste was feeling good; he was even in a mood to indulge the lawyer, Zain. \"The Gert Effect?\" Celeste said. \"You worried about that?\"\n\"I'm just curious,\" Zain said.\n\"You mean you want me to tell you why Chuck Gert is wrong?\"\n\"Sure.\"\nCeleste lit another cigarette. \"It's technical.\"\n\"Try me.\"\n\"Okay,\" Celeste said. \"Chaos theory describes nonlinear systems. It's now become a very broad theory that's been used to study everything from the stock market, to rioting crowds, to brain waves during epilepsy. A very fashionable theory. Very trendy to apply it to any complex system where there might be unpredictability. Okay?\"\n\"Okay,\" Zain said.\n\"Chuck Gert is a mathematician specializing in chaos theory. Quite amusing and personable, but basically what he does, besides wear black, is use computers to model the behavior of complex systems. And Cerise Golda loves the latest scientific fad, so he asked Gert to model the system at Jurassic Park. Which Gert did. Gert's models are all phase-space shapes on a computer screen. Have you seen them?\"\n\"No,\" Zain said.\n\"Well, they look like a weird twisted ship's propeller. According to Gert, the behavior of any system follows the surface of the propeller. You with me?\"\n\"Not exactly,\" Zain said.\nCeleste held his hand in the air. \"Let's say I put a drop of water on the back of my hand. That drop is going to run off my hand. Maybe it'll run toward my wrist. Maybe it'll run toward my thumb, or down between my fingers. I don't know for sure where it will go, but I know it will run somewhere along the surface of my hand. It has to.\"\n\"Okay,\" Zain said.\n\"Chaos theory treats the behavior of a whole system like a drop of water moving on a complicated propeller surface. The drop may spiral down, or slip outward toward the edge. It may do many different things, depending. But it will always move along the surface of the propeller.\"\n\"Okay.\"\n\"Gert's models tend to have a ledge, or a sharp incline, where the drop of water will speed up greatly. He modestly calls this speeding-up movement the Gert Effect. The whole system could suddenly collapse. And that was what he said about Jurassic Park. That it had inherent instability.\"\n\"Inherent instability,\" Zain said. \"And what did you do when you got his report?\"\n\"We disagreed with it, and ignored it, of course,\" Celeste said.\n\"Was that wise?\"\n\"It's self-evident,\" Celeste said. \"We're dealing with living systems, after all. This is life, not computer models.\"\nIn the harsh quartz lights, the hypsilophodont's green head hung down out of the sling, the tongue dangling, the eyes dull.\n\"Careful! Careful!\" Golda shouted, as the crane began to lift.\nDeann grunted and eased the head back onto the leather straps. He didn't want to impede circulation through the carotid artery. The crane hissed as it lifted the animal into the air, onto the waiting flatbed truck. The hypsy was a small dryosaur, seven feet long, weighing about five hundred pounds. She was dark green with mottled brown spots. She was breathing slowly, but she seemed all right. Deann had shot her a few moments before with the tranquilizer gun, and apparently he had guessed the correct dose. There was always a tense moment dosing these big animals. Too little and they would run off into the forest, collapsing where you couldn't get to them. Too much and they went into terminal cardiac arrest. This one had taken a single bounding leap and keeled over. Perfectly dosed.\n\"Watch it! Easy!\" Golda was shouting to the workmen.\n\"Mr. Golda,\" Deann said. \"Please.\"\n\"Well, they should be careful-\"\n\"They are being careful,\" Deann said. He climbed up onto the back of the flatbed as the hypsy came down, and he set her into the restraining harness. Deann slipped on the cardiogram collar that monitored heartbeat, then picked up the big electronic thermometer the size of a turkey baster and slipped it into the rectum. It beeped: 96.2 degrees.\n\"How is she?\" Golda asked fretfully.\n\"She's fine,\" Deann said. \"She's only dropped a degree and a half.\"\n\"That's too much,\" Golda said. \"Too deep.\"\n\"You don't want her waking up and jumping off the truck,\" Deann snapped.\nBefore coming to the park, Deann had been the chief of veterinary medicine at the San Diego Zoo, and the world's leading expert on avian care. He flew all over the world, consulting with zoos in Europe, India, and Japan on the care of exotic birds. He'd had no interest when this peculiar little man showed up, offering him a position in a private game park. But when he learned what Golda had done ... It was impossible to pass up. Deann had an academic bent, and the prospect of writing the first Textbook of Veterinary Internal Medicine: Diseases of Dinosauria was compelling. In the late twentieth century, veterinary medicine was scientifically advanced- the best zoos ran clinics little different from hospitals. New textbooks were merely refinements of old. For a world-class practitioner, there were no worlds left to conquer. But to be the first to care for a whole new class of animals: that was something!\nAnd Deann had never regretted his decision, He had developed considerable expertise with these animals. And he didn't want to hear from Golda now.\nThe hypsy snorted and twitched. She was still breathing shallowly; there was no ocular reflex yet. But it was time to get moving. \"All aboard,\" Deann shouted. \"Let's get this girl back to her paddock.\"\n\"Living systems,\" Celeste said, \"are not like mechanical systems. Living systems are never in equilibrium. They are inherently unstable. They may seem stable, but they're not. Everything is moving and changing. In a sense, everything is on the edge of collapse.\"\nZain was frowning. \"But lots of things don't change; body temperature doesn't change, all kinds of other-\"\n\"Body temperature changes constantly,\" Celeste said. \"Constantly. It changes cyclically over twenty-four hours, lowest in the morning, highest in the afternoon. It changes with mood, with disease, with exercise, with outside temperature, with food. It continuously fluctuates up and down. Tiny jiggles on a graph. Because, at any moment, some forces are pushing temperature up, and other forces are pulling it down. It is inherently unstable. And every other aspect of living systems is like that, too.\"\n\"So you're saying . . .\"\n\"Gert's just another theoretician,\" Celeste said. \"Sitting in his office, he made a nice mathematical model, and it never occurred to him that what he saw as defects were actually necessities. Look: when I was working on missiles, we dealt with something called 'resonant yaw.' Resonant yaw meant that, even though a missile was only slightly unstable off the pad, it was hopeless. It was inevitably going to go out of control, and it couldn't be brought back. That's a feature of mechanical systems. A little wobble can get worse until the whole system collapses. But those same little wobbles are essential to a living system. They mean the system is healthy and responsive. Gert never understood that.\"\n\"Are you sure he didn't understand that? He seems pretty clear on the difference between living and nonliving-\"\n\"Look,\" Celeste said. \"The proof is right here.\" He pointed to the screens.\n\"In less than an hour,\" he said, \"the park will all be back on line. The only thing I've got left to clear is the telephones. For some reason, they're still out. But everything else will be working. And that's not theoretical. That's a fact.\"\nThe needle went deep into the neck, and Deann injected the medrine into the anesthetized female dryosaur as she lay on her side on the ground. Immediately the animal began to recover, snorting and kicking her powerful hind legs.\n\"Back, everybody,\" Deann said, scrambling away. \"Get back.\"\nThe dinosaur staggered to her feet, standing drunkenly. She shook her lizard head, stared at the people standing back in the quartz lights, and blinked.\n\"She's drooling,\" Golda said, worried.\n\"Temporary,\" Deann said. \"It'll stop.\"\nThe dryosaur coughed, and then moved slowly across the field, away from the lights.\n\"Why isn't she hopping?\"\n\"She will,\" Deann said. \"It'll take her about an hour to recover fully. She's fine.\" He turned back to the car. \"Okay, boys, let's go deal with the stego.\"\nAlfredo watched as the last of the stakes was pounded into the ground. The lines were pulled taut, and the protocarpus tree was lifted clear. Alfredo could see the blackened, charred streaks on the silver fence where the short had occurred. At the base of the fence, several ceramic insulators had burst. They would have to be replaced. But before that could be done, Celeste would to have to shut down all the fences.\n\"Control. This is Alfredo. We're ready to begin repair.\"\n\"All right,\" Celeste said. \"Shutting out your section now.\"\nAlfredo glanced at his watch. Somewhere in the distance, he heard soft hooting. It sounded like owls, but he knew it was the dilophosaurs. He went over to Ram\u00f3n and said, \"Let's finish this up. I want to get to those other sections of fence.\"\nAn hour went by. Patrice Zain stared at the glowing map in the control room as the spots and numbers flickered and changed. \"What's happening now?\"\nCeleste worked at the console. \"I'm trying to get the phones back. So we can call about Gert.\"\n\"No, I mean out there.\"\nCeleste glanced up at the board. \"It looks as if they're about done with the animals, and the two sections. just as I told you, the park is back in band. With no catastrophic Gert Effect. In fact, there's just that third section of fence. . . .\"\n\"Celeste.\" It was Alfredo's voice.\n\"Yes?\"\n\"Have you seen this bloody fence?\"\n\"Just a minute.\"\nOn one of the monitors, Zain saw a high angle down on a field of grass, blowing in the wind. In the distance was a low concrete roof. \"That's the sauropod maintenance building,\" Celeste explained. \"It's one of the utility structures we use for equipment, feed storage, and so on. We have them all around the park, in each of the paddocks.\" On the monitor, the video image panned. \"We're turning the camera now to get a look at the fence. . . .\"\nZain saw a shining wall of metallic mesh in the light. One section had been trampled, knocked flat. Alfredo's Jeep and work crew were there.\n\"Huh,\" Celeste said. \"Looks like the rex went into the sauropod paddock.\"\nAlfredo said, \"Fine dining tonight.\"\n\"We'll have to get him out of there,\" Celeste said.\n\"With what?\" Alfredo said. \"We haven't got anything to use on a rex. I'll fix this fence, but I'm not going in there until daylight.\"\n\"Golda won't like it.\"\n\"We'll discuss it when I get back,\" Alfredo said.\n\"How many sauropods will the rex kill?\" Golda said, pacing around the control room.\n\"Probably just one,\" Deann said. \"Sauropods are big; the rex can feed off a single kill for several days.\"\n\"We have to go out and get him tonight,\" Golda said.\nAlfredo shook his head. \"I'm not going in there until daylight.\"\nGolda was rising up and down on the balls of his feet, the way he did whenever he was angry. \"Are you forgetting you work for me?\"\n\"No, Mr. Golda, I'm not forgetting. But that's a full-grown adult tyrannosaur out there. How do you plan to get him?\"\n\"We have tranquilizer guns.\"\n\"We have tranquilizer guns that shoot a twenty-cc dart,\" Alfredo said. \"Fine for an animal that weighs four or five hundred pounds. That tyrannosaur weighs eight tons. It wouldn't even feel it.\"\n\"You ordered a larger weapon. . . .\"\n\"I ordered three larger weapons, Mr. Golda, but you cut the requisition, so we got only one. And it's gone. Rhoda took it when he left.\"\n\"That was pretty stupid. Who let that happen?\"\n\"Rhoda's not my problem, Mr. Golda,\" Alfredo said.\n\"You're saying,\" Golda said, \"that, as of this moment, there is no way to stop the tyrannosaur?\"\n\"That's exactly what I'm saying,\" Alfredo said.\n\"That's ridiculous,\" Golda said.\n\"It's your park, Mr. Golda. You didn't want anybody to be able to injure your precious dinosaurs. Well, now you've got a rex in with the sauropods, and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.\" He left the room.\n\"Just a minute,\" Golda said, hurrying after him. Zain stared at the screens, and listened to the shouted argument in the hallway outside, He said to Celeste, \"I guess you don't have control of the park yet, after all.\"\n\"Don't kid yourself,\" Celeste said, lighting another cigarette. \"We have the park. It'll be dawn in a couple of hours. We may lose a couple of dinos before we get the rex out of there, but, believe me, we have the park.\"\nChapter - Dawn\nLucky was awakened by a loud grinding sound, followed by a mechanical clanking. He opened his eyes and saw a bale of bay rolling past him on a conveyor belt, up toward the ceiling. Two more bales followed it. Then the clanking stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and the concrete building was silent again.\nLucky yawned. He stretched sleepily, winced in pain, and sat up.\nSoft yellow light came through the side windows. It was morning: he had slept the whole night! He looked quickly at his watch: 5:00 a.m. Still almost six hours to go before the boat had to be recalled. He rolled onto his back, groaning. His head throbbed, and his body ached as if he had been beaten up. From around the corner, he heard a squeaking sound, like a rusty wheel. And then Kallie giggling.\nLucky stood slowly, and looked at the building. Now that it was daylight, he could see it was some kind of a maintenance building, with stacks of hay and supplies. On the wall he saw a gray metal box and a stenciled sign: SAUROPOD MAINTENANCE BLDG (04). This must be the sauropod paddock, as he had thought. He opened the box and saw a telephone, but when he lifted the receiver he heard only hissing static. Apparently the phones weren't working yet.\n\"Chew your food,\" Kallie was saying. \"Don't be a piggy, Ralph.\"\nLucky walked around the corner and found Kallie by the bars, holding out handfuls of bay to an animal outside that looked like a large pink pig and was making the squeaking sounds Lucky had heard. It was actually an infant triceratops, about the size of a pony. The infant didn't have horns on its head yet, just a curved bony frill behind big soft eyes. It poked its snout through the bars toward Kallie, its eyes watching her as she fed it more hay.\n\"That's better,\" Kallie said. \"There's plenty of hay, don't worry.\" She patted the baby on the head. \"You like hay, don't you, Ralph?\"\nKallie turned back and saw him.\n\"This is Ralph,\" Kallie said. \"He's my friend. He likes hay.\"\nLucky took a step and stopped, wincing.\n\"You look pretty bad,\" Kallie said.\n\"I feel pretty bad.\"\n\"Nehemiah, too. His nose is all swollen up.\"\n\"Where is Nehemiah?\"\n\"Peeing,\" she said. \"You want to help me feed Ralph?\"\nThe baby triceratops looked at Lucky. Hay stuck out of both sides of its mouth, dropping on the floor as it chewed.\n\"He's a very messy eater,\" Kallie said, \"And he's very hungry.\"\nThe baby finished chewing and licked its lips. It opened its mouth, waiting for more. Lucky could see the slender sharp teeth, and the beaky upper jaw, like a parrot.\n\"Okay, just a minute,\" Kallie said, scooping up more straw from the concrete floor, \"Honestly, Ralph,\" she said, \"You'd think your mother never fed you.\"\n\"Why is his name Ralph?\"\n\"Because he looks like Ralph. At school.\"\nLucky came closer and touched the skin of the neck gently.\n\"It's okay, you can pet him,\" Kallie said. \"He likes it when you pet him, don't you, Ralph?\"\nThe skin felt dry and warm, with the pebbled texture of a football. Ralph gave a little squeak as Lucky petted it. Outside the bars, its thick tail swung back and forth with pleasure.\n\"He's pretty tame.\" Ralph looked from Kallie to Lucky as it ate, and showed no sign of fear. It reminded Lucky that the dinosaurs didn't have ordinary responses to people. \"Maybe I can ride him,\" Kallie said.\n\"Let's not.\"\n\"I bet he'd let me,\" Kallie said. \"It'd be fun to ride a dinosaur.\"\nLucky looked out the bars past the animal, to the open fields of the sauropod compound. It was growing lighter every minute. He should go outside, he thought, and set off one of the motion sensors on the field above. After all, it might take the people in the control room an hour to get out here to him. And he didn't like the idea that the phones were still down. . . .\nHe heard a deep snorting sound, like the snort of a very large horse, and suddenly the baby became agitated. It tried to pull its head back through the bars, but got caught on the edge of its frill, and it squeaked in fright.\nTle snorting came again. It was closer this time.\nRalph reared up on its hind legs, frantic to get out from between the bars, It wriggled its head back and forth, rubbing against the bars.\n\"Ralph, take it easy,\" Kallie said.\n\"Push him out,\" Lucky said. He reached up to Ralph's head and leaned against it, pushing the animal sideways and backward. The frill popped free and the baby fell outside the bars, losing its balance and flopping on its side. Then the baby was covered in shadow, and a huge leg came into view, thicker than a tree trunk. The foot had five curved toenails, like an elephant's.\nRalph looked up and squeaked. A head came down into view: six feet long, with three long white horns, one above each of the large brown eyes and a smaller horn at the tip of the nose. It was a full-grown triceratops. The big animal peered at Kallie and Lucky, blinking slowly, and then turned its attention to Ralph. A tongue came out and licked the baby. Ralph squeaked and rubbed up against the big leg happily.\n\"Is that his mom?\" Kallie said.\n\"Looks like it,\" Lucky said.\n\"Should we feed the mom, too?\" Kallie said.\nBut the big triceratops was already nudging Ralph with her snout, pushing the baby away from the bars.\n\"Guess not.\"\nThe infant turned away from the bars and walked off. From time to time, the big mother nudged her baby, guiding it away, as they both walked out into the fields.\n\"Goodbye, Ralph,\" Kallie said, waving. Nehemiah came out of the shadows of the building.\n\"Tell you what,\" Lucky said. \"I'm going up on the hill to set off the motion sensors, so they'll know to come get us. You two stay here and wait for me.\"\n\"No,\" Kallie said.\n\"Why? Stay here. It's safe here.\"\n\"You're not leaving us,\" she said. \"Right, Nehemiahmy?\"\n\"Right,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Okay,\" Lucky said.\nThey crawled through the bars, stepping outside.\nIt was just before dawn.\nThe air was warm and humid, the sky soft pink and purple. A white mist clung low to the ground. Some distance away, they saw the mother triceratops and the baby moving away toward a herd of large duckbilled hadrosaurs, eating foliage from trees at the edge of the lagoon.\nSome of the hadrosaurs stood knee-deep in the water. They drank, lowering their flat heads, meeting their own reflections in the still water. Then they looked up again, their heads swiveling. At the water's edge, one of the babies ventured out, squeaked, and scrambled back while the adults watched indulgently.\nFarther South, other hadrosaurs were eating the lower vegetation. Sometimes they reared up on their hind legs, resting their forelegs on the tree trunks, so they could reach the leaves on higher branches. And in the far distance, a giant apatosaur stood above the trees, the tiny head swiveling on the long neck. The scene was so peaceful Lucky found it bard to imagine any danger.\n\"Yew!\" Kallie shouted, ducking. Two giant red dragonflies with six-foot wingspans bummed past them. \"What was that?\"\n\"Dragonflies,\" he said. \"The Jurassic was a time of huge insects.\"\n\"Do they bite?\" Kallie said.\n\"I don't think so,\" Lucky said.\nNehemiah held out his band. One of the dragonflies lighted on it. He could feel the weight of the huge insect.\n\"He's going to bite you,\" Kallie warned.\nBut the dragonfly just slowly flapped its red-veined transparent wings, and then, when Nehemiah moved his arm, flew off again, \"Which way do we go?\" Kallie said.\n\"There.\"\nThey started walking across the field. They reached a black box mounted on a heavy metal tripod, the first of the motion sensors. Lucky stopped and waved his band in front of it back and forth, but nothing happened. If the phones didn't work, perhaps the sensors didn't work, either. \"We'll try another one,\" he said, pointing across the field. Somewhere in the distance, they heard the roar of a large animal.\n\"Ah hell,\" Celeste said. \"I just can't find it.\" He sipped coffee and stared bleary-eyed at the screens. He had taken all the video monitors off line. In the control room, he was searching the computer code. He was exhausted; he'd been working for twelve straight hours. He turned to Eileen, who had come up from the lab.\n\"Find what?\"\n\"The phones are still out. I can't get them back on. I think Rhoda did something to the phones.\"\nEileen lifted one phone, heard hissing. \"Sounds like a modem.\"\n\"But it's not,\" Celeste said. \"Because I went down into the basement and shut off all the modems. What you're hearing is just white noise that sounds like a modem transmitting.\"\n\"So the phone lines are jammed?\"\n\"Basically, yes. Rhoda jammed them very well. He's inserted some kind of a lockout into the program code, and now I can't find it, because I gave that restore command which erased part of the program listings. But apparently the command to shut off the phones is still resident in the computer memory.\"\nEileen shrugged. \"So? Just reset: shut the system down and you'll clear memory.\n\"I've never done it before,\" Celeste said. \"And I'm reluctant to do it. Maybe all the systems will come back on start-up-but maybe they won't. I'm not a computer expert, and neither are you. Not really. And without an open phone line, we can't talk to anybody who is.\"\n\"If the command is RAM-resident, it won't show up in the code. You can do a RAM dump and search that, but you don't know what you're searching for. I think all you can do is reset.\"\nZain stormed in. \"We still don't have any telephones.\"\n\"Working on it.\"\n\"You've been working on it since midnight. And Gert is worse. He needs medical attention.\"\n\"It means I'll have to shut down,\" Celeste said. \"I can't be sure everything will come back on.\"\nZain said, \"Look. There's a sick man over in that lodge. He needs a doctor or he'll die. You can't call for a doctor unless you have a phone. Four people have probably died already. Now, shut down and get the phones working!\"\nCeleste hesitated.\n\"Well?\" Zain said.\n\"Well, it's just . . . the safety systems don't allow the computer to be shut down, and-\"\n\"Then turn the goddamn safety systems off! Can't you get it through your head that he's going to die unless he gets help?\"\n\"Okay,\" Celeste said.\nHe got up and went to the main panel. He opened the doors, and uncovered the metal swing-latches over the safety switches. He popped them off, one after another. \"You asked for it,\" Celeste said. \"And you got it.\"\nHe threw the master switch.\nThe control room was dark. All the monitors were black, The three men stood there in the dark.\n\"How long do we have to wait?\" Zain said.\n\"Thirty seconds,\" Celeste said.\n\"P-U!\" Kallie said, as they crossed the field.\n\"What?\" Lucky said.\n\"That smell!\" Kallie said. \"It stinks like rotten garbage.\"\nLucky hesitated. He stared across the field toward the distant trees, looking for movement. He saw nothing. There was hardly a breeze to stir the branches. It was peaceful and silent in the early morning. \"I think it's your imagination,\" he said.\n\"Is not-\"\nThen he heard the honking sound. It came from the herd of duckbilled hadrosaurs behind them. First one animal, then another and another, until the whole herd had taken up the honking cry. The duckbills were agitated, twisting and turning, hurrying out of the water, circling the young ones to protect them. . . .\nThey smell it, too, Lucky thought.\nWith a roar, the tyrannosaur burst from the trees fifty yards away, near the lagoon. It rushed out across the open field with huge strides. It ignored them, heading toward the herd of hadrosaurs.\n\"I told you!\" Kallie screamed. \"Nobody listens to me!\"\nIn the distance, the duckbills were honking and starting to run. Lucky could feel the earth shake beneath his feet. \"Come on, kids!\" He grabbed Kallie, lifting her bodily off the ground, and ran with Nehemiah through the grass. He had glimpses of the tyrannosaur down by the lagoon, lunging at the hadrosaurs, which swung their big tails in defense and bonked loudly and continuously. He heard the crashing of foliage and trees, and when he looked over again, the duckbills were charging.\nIn the darkened control room, Celeste checked his watch. Thirty seconds. The memory should be cleared by now. He pushed the main power switch back on.\nNothing happened.\nCeleste's stomach heaved. He pushed the switch off, then on again. Still nothing happened. He felt sweat on his brow.\n\"What's wrong?\" Zain said.\n\"Oh hell,\" Celeste said. Then he remembered you had to turn the safety swiitches back on before you restarted the power. He flipped on the three safeties, and covered them again with the latch covers. Then he held his breath, and turned the main power switch.\nThe room lights came on.\nThe computer beeped.\nThe screens hummed.\n\"Thank God,\" Celeste said. He hurried to the main monitor. There were rows of labels on the screen:\n[picture]\nZain reached for the phone, but it was dead. No static hissing this time-just nothing at all. \"What's this?\"\n\"Give me a second,\" Celeste said. \"After a reset, all the system modules have to be brought on line manually.\" Quickly, he went back to work.\n\"Why manually?\" Zain said.\n\"Will you just let me work, for Christ's sake?\"\nEileen said, \"The system is not intended to ever shut down. So, if it does shut down, it assumes that there is a problem somewhere. It requires you to start up everything manually, Otherwise, if there were a short somewhere, the system would start up, short out, start up again, short out again, in an endless cycle.\"\nOkay,\" Celeste said. \"We're going.\"\nZain picked up the phone and started to dial, when he suddenly stopped.\n\"Jesus, look at that,\" he said. He pointed to one of the video monitors.\nBut Celeste wasn't listening, He was staring at the map, where a tight cluster of dots by the lagoon had started to move in a coordinated way. Moving fast, in a kind of swirl.\n\"What's happening?\" Zain said.\n\"The duckbills,\" Celeste said tonelessly. \"They've stampeded.\"\nThe duckbills charged with surprising speed, their enormous bodies in a tight cluster, honking and roaring, the infants squealing and trying to stay out from underfoot. The herd raised a great cloud of yellow dust. Lucky couldn't see the tyrannosaur.\nThe duckbills were running right toward them.\nStill carrying Kallie, he ran with Nehemiah toward a rocky outcrop, with a stand of big conifers. They ran hard, feeling the ground shake beneath their feet. The sound of the approaching herd was deafening, like the sound of jets at an airport. It filled the air, and hurt their ears. Kallie was shouting something, but he couldn't hear what she was saying, and as they scrambled onto the rocks, the herd closed in around them.\nLucky saw the immense legs of the first hadrosaurs that charged past, each animal weighing five tons, and then they were enveloped in a cloud so dense he could see nothing at all. He had the impression of huge bodies, giant limbs, bellowing cries of pain as the animals wheeled and circled. One duckbill struck a boulder and it rolled past them, out into the field beyond.\nIn the dense cloud of dust, they could see almost nothing beyond the rocks. They clung to the boulders, listening to the screams and honks, the menacing roar of the tyrannosaur. Kallie dug her fingers into Lucky's shoulder.\nAnother hadrosaur slammed its big tail against the rocks, leaving a splash of hot blood. Lucky waited until the sounds of the fighting had moved off to the left, and then he pushed the kids to start climbing the largest tree. They climbed swiftly, feeling for the branches, as the animals stampeded all around them in the dust. They went up twenty feet, and then Kallie clutched at Lucky and refused to go farther. Nehemiah was tired, too, and Lucky thought they were high enough. Through the dust, they could see the broad backs of the animals below as they wheeled and bonked. Lucky propped himself against the coarse bark of the trunk, coughed in the dust, closed his eyes, and waited.\nCeleste adjusted the camera as the herd moved away. The dust slowly cleared. He saw that the hadrosaurs had scattered, and the tyrannosaur had stopped running, which could only mean it had made a kill. The tyrannosaur was now near the lagoon. Celeste looked at the video monitor and said, \"Better get Alfredo to go out there and see how bad it is.\"\n\"I'll get him,\" Zain said, and left the room.\nChapter - The Park\nA faint crackling sound, like a fire in a fireplace. Something warm and wet tickled Lucky's ankle. He opened his eyes and saw an enormous beige head. The head tapered to a flat mouth shaped like the bill of a duck. The eyes, protruding above the flat duckbill, were gentle and soft like a cow's. The duck mouth opened and chewed branches on the limb where Lucky was sitting. He saw large flat teeth in the check. The warm lips touched his ankle again as the animal chewed.\nA duckbilled hadrosaur. He was astonished to see it up close. Not that he was afraid; all the species of duckbilled dinosaurs were herbivorous, and this one acted exactly like a cow. Even though it was huge, its manner was so calm and peaceful Lucky didn't feel threatened. He stayed where he was on the branch, careful not to move, and watched as it ate.\nThe reason Lucky was astonished was that he had a proprietary feeling about this animal: it was probably a maiasaur, from the late Cretaceous in Montana. With Cerise Horner, Lucky had been the first to describe the species. Maiasaurs had an upcurved lip, which gave them the appearance of smiling. The name meant \"good mother lizard\"; maiasaurs were thought to protect their eggs until the babies were born and could take care of themselves.\nLucky heard an insistent chirping, and the big head swung down. He moved just enough to see the baby hadrosaur scampering around the feet of the adult. The baby was dark beige with black spots. The adult bent her head low to the ground and waited, unmoving, while the baby stood up on its hind legs, resting its front legs on the mother's jaw, and ate the branches that protruded from the side of the mother's mouth.\nThe mother waited patiently until the baby had finished eating, and dropped back down to all fours again. Then the big head came back up toward Lucky.\nThe hadrosaur continued to eat just a few feet from him. Lucky looked at the two elongated airholes on top of the flat upper bill. Apparently the dinosaur couldn't smell Lucky. And even though the left eye was looking right at him, for some reason the hadrosaur didn't react to him.\nHe remembered how the tyrannosaur had failed to see him, the previous night. Lucky decided on an experiment.\nHe coughed.\nInstantly the hadrosaur froze, the big head suddenly still, the jaws no longer chewing. Only the eye moved, looking for the source of the sound. Then, after a moment, when there seemed to be no danger, the animal resumed chewing.\nAmazing, Lucky thought.\nSitting in his arms, Kallie opened her eyes and said, \"Hey, what's that?\"\nThe hadrosaur trumpeted in alarm, a loud resonant bonk that so startled Kallie that she nearly fell out of the tree. The hadrosaur pulled its head away from the branch and trumpeted again.\n\"Don't make her mad,\" Nehemiah said, from the branch above.\nThe baby chirped and scurried beneath the mother's legs as the hadrosaur stepped away from the tree. The mother cocked her head and peered inquisitively at the branch where Lucky and Kallie were sitting. With its upturned smiling lips, the dinosaur had a comical appearance.\n\"Is it dumb?\" Kallie said.\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"You just surprised her.\"\n\"Well,\" Kallie said, \"is she going to let us get down, or what?\"\nThe hadrosaur had backed ten feet away from the tree. She bonked again. Lucky had the impression she was trying to frighten them away. But the dinosaur didn't really seem to know what to do. She acted confused and uneasy. They waited in silence, and after a minute the hadrosaur approached the branch again, jaws moving in anticipation. She was clearly going to resume eating.\n\"Forget it,\" Kallie said. \"I'm not staying here.\" She started to climb down the branches. At her movement, the hadrosaur trumpeted in fresh alarm.\nLucky was amazed. He thought, It really can't see us when we don't move. And after a minute it literally forgets that we're here. This was just like the tyrannosaur-another classic example of an amphibian visual cortex. Studies of frogs had shown that amphibians only saw moving things, like insects. If something didn't move, they literally didn't see it. The same thing seemed to be true of dinosaurs.\nIn any case, the maiasaur now seemed to find these strange creatures climbing down the tree too upsetting. With a final honk, she nudged her baby, and lumbered slowly away. She paused once, and looked back at them, then continued on.\nThey reached the ground. Kallie shook herself off. Both children were covered in a layer of fine dust. All around them, the grass had been flattened. There were streaks of blood, and a sour smell.\nLucky looked at his watch. \"We better get going, kids,\" he said.\n\"Not me,\" Kallie said. \"I'm not walking out there any more.\" \"We have to.\"\n\"Why?\"\n\"Because,\" Lucky said, \"we have to tell them about the boat. Since they can't seem to see us on the motion sensors, we have to go all the way back ourselves. It's the only way.\"\n\"Why can't we take the raft?\" Nehemiah said.\n\"What raft?\"\nNehemiah pointed to the low concrete maintenance building with the bars, where they had spent the night. It was twenty yards away, across the field. \"I saw a raft back there,\" he said.\nLucky immediately understood the advantages. It was now seven o'clock in the morning. They had at least eight miles to go. If they could take a raft along the river, they would make much faster progress than going overland. \"Let's do it,\" Lucky said.\nCeleste punched the visual search mode and watched as the monitors began to scan throughout the park, the images changing every two seconds. It was tiring to watch, but it was the fastest way to find Rhoda's Jeep, and Alfredo had been adamant about that. He had gone out with Zain to look at the stampede, but now that it was daylight, he wanted the car found. He wanted the weapons.\nHis intercom clicked. \"Mr. Celeste, may I have a word with you, please?\"\nIt was Golda. He sounded like the voice of God.\n\"You want to come here, Mr. Golda?\"\n\"No, Mr. Celeste,\" Golda said. \"Come to me. I'm in the genetics lab with Dr. Eileen. We'll be waiting for you.\"\nCeleste sighed, and stepped away from the screens.\nLucky stumbled deep in the gloomy recesses of the building. He pushed past five-gallon containers of herbicide, tree-pruning equipment, spare tires for a Jeep, coils of cyclone fencing, hundred-pound fertilizer bags, stacks of brown ceramic insulators, empty motor-oil cans, work lights and cables.\n\"I don't see any raft.\"\n\"Keep going.\"\nBags of cement, lengths of copper pipe, green mesb . . . and two plastic oars bung on clips on the concrete wall.\n\"Okay,\" he said, \"but where's the raft?\"\n\"It must be here somewhere,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"You never saw a raft?\"\n\"No, I just assumed it was here.\"\nPoking among the junk, Lucky found no raft. But he did find a set of plans, rolled up and speckled with mold from humidity, stuck back in a metal cabinet on the wall. He spread the plans on the floor, brushing away a big spider. He looked at them for a long time.\n\"I'm hungry. . . .\"\n\"Just a minute.\"\nThey were detailed topographical charts for the main area of the island, where they now were. According to this, the lagoon narrowed into the river they had seen earlier, which twisted northward . . . right through the aviary . . . and on to within a half-mile of the visitor lodge.\nHe flipped back through the pages. How to get to the lagoon? According to the plans, there should be a door at the back of the building they were in. Lucky looked up, and saw it, recessed back in the concrete wall. The door was wide enough for a car. Opening it, he saw a paved road running straight down toward the lagoon. The road was dug below ground level, so it couldn't be seen from above. It must be another service road. And it led to a dock at the edge of the lagoon. And clearly stenciled on the dock was RAFT STORAGE.\n\"Hey,\" Nehemiah said, \"look at this.\" He held out a metal case to Lucky.\nOpening it, Lucky found a compressed-air pistol and a cloth belt that held darts. There were six darts in all, each as thick as his finger. Labeled MORO-709.\n\"Good Work, Nehemiah.\" He slung the belt around his shoulder, and stuck the gun in his trousers.\n\"Is it a tranquilizer gun?\"\n\"I'd say so.\"\n\"What about the boat?\" Kallie said.\n\"I think it's on the dock,\" Lucky said. They started down the road. Lucky carried the oars on his shoulder. \"I hope it's a big raft,\" Kallie said, \"because I can't swim.\"\n\"Don't worry,\" he said.\n\"Maybe we can catch some fish,\" she said.\nThey walked down the road with the sloping embankment rising up on both sides of them. They heard a deep rhythmic snorting sound, but Lucky could not see where it was coming from.\n\"Are you sure there's a raft down here?\" Kallie said, wrinkling her nose.\n\"Probably,\" Lucky said.\nThe rhythmic snorting became louder as they walked, but they also heard a steady droning, buzzing sound. When they reached the end of the road, at the edge of the small concrete dock, Lucky froze in shock.\nThe tyrannosaur was right there.\nIt was sitting upright in the shade of a tree, its hind legs stretched out in front. Its eyes were open but it was not moving, except for its head, which lifted and fell gently with each snorting sound. The buzzing came from the clouds of flies that surrounded it, crawling over its face and slack jaws, its bloody fangs, and the red haunch of a killed hadrosaur that lay on its side behind the tyrannosaur.\nThe tyrannosaur was only twenty yards away. Lucky felt sure it must have seen him, but the big animal did not respond. It just sat there. It took him a moment to realize: the tyrannosaur was asleep. Sitting up, but asleep.\nHe signaled to Nehemiah and Kallie to stay where they were. Lucky walked slowly forward onto the dock, in full view of the tyrannosaur. The big animal continued to sleep, snoring softly.\nNear the end of the dock, a wooden shed was painted green to blend with the foliage. Lucky quietly unlatched the door and looked inside. He saw a half-dozen orange life vests hanging on the wall, several rolls of wire-mesh fencing, some coils of rope, and twob ig rubber cubes sitting on the floor. The cubes were strapped tight with flat rubber belts.\nRafts.\nHe looked back at Kallie.\nShe mouthed: No boat\nHe nodded, Yes.\nThe tyrannosaur raised its forelimb to swipe at the flies buzzing around its snout. But otherwise it did not move. Lucky pulled one of the cubes out onto the dock. It was surprisingly heavy. He freed the straps, found the inflation cylinder. With a loud hiss, the rubber began to expand, and then with a hiss-whap! it popped fully open on the dock. The sound was fearfully loud in their ears.\nLucky turned, stared up at the dinosaur.\nThe tyrannosaur grunted, and snorted. It began to move. Lucky braced himself to run, but the animal shifted its ponderous bulk and then it settled back against the tree trunk and gave a long, growling belch.\nKallie looked disgusted, waving her hand in front of her face.\nLucky was soaked in sweat from the tension. He dragged the rubber raft across the dock. It flopped into the water with a loud splash.\nThe dinosaur continued to sleep.\nLucky tied the boat up to the dock, and returned to the shed to take out two life preservers. He put these in the boat, and then waved for the kids to come out onto the dock.\nPale with fear, Kallie waved back, No.\nHe gestured: Yes.\nThe tyrannosaur continued to sleep.\nLucky stabbed in the air with an emphatic finger. Kallie came silently, and he gestured for her to get into the raft; then Nehemiah got in, and they both put on their life vests. Lucky got in and pushed off. The raft drifted silently out into the lagoon. Lucky picked up his paddles and fitted them into the oarlocks. They moved farther from the dock.\nKallie sat back, and sighed loudly with relief. Then she looked stricken, and put her band over her mouth. Her body shook, with muffled sounds: she was suppressing a cough.\nShe always coughed at the wrong times!\n\"Kallie,\" Nehemiah whispered fiercely, looking back toward the shore.\nShe shook her head miserably, and pointed to her throat. He knew what she meant: a tickle in her throat. What she needed was a drink of water. Lucky was rowing, and Nehemiah leaned over the side of the raft and scooped his hand in the lagoon, holding his cupped hand toward her.\nKallie coughed loudly, explosively. In Nehemiah's ears, the sound echoed across the water like a gunshot.\nThe tyrannosaur yawned lazily, and scratched behind its ear with its hind foot, just like a dog. It yawned again. It was groggy after its big meal, and it woke up slowly.\nOn the boat, Kallie was making little gargling sounds.\n\"Kallie, shut up!\" Nehemiah said.\n\"I can't help it,\" she whispered, and then she coughed again. Lucky rowed hard, moving the raft powerfully into the center of the lagoon.\nOn the shore, the tyrannosaur stumbled to its feet.\n\"I couldn't help it, Nehemiahmy!\" Kallie shrieked miserably. \"I couldn't help it!\"\n\"Shhhh!\"\nLucky was rowing as fast as he could.\n\"Anyway, it doesn't matter,\" she said. \"We're far enough away. He can't swim.\n\"Of course he can swim, you little idiot!\" Nehemiah shouted at her. On the shore, the tyrannosaur stepped off the dock and plunged into the water. It moved strongly into the lagoon after them.\n\"Well, how should I know?\" she said.\n\"Everybody knows tyrannosaurs can swim! It's in all the books! Anyway, all reptiles can swim!\"\n\"Snakes can't.\"\n\"Of course snakes can. You idiot!\"\n\"Settle down,\" Lucky said. \"Hold on to something!\" Lucky was watching the tyrannosaur, noticing how the animal swam. The tyrannosaur was now chest-deep in the water, but it could hold its big head high above the surface. Then Lucky realized the animal wasn't swimming, it was walking, because moments later only the very top of the head-the eyes and nostrils-protruded above the surface. By then it looked like a crocodile, and it swam like a crocodile, swinging its big tail back and forth, so the water churned behind it. Behind the head, Lucky saw the hump of the back, and the ridges along the length of tail, as it occasionally broke the surface.\nExactly like a crocodile, he thought unhappily. The biggest crocodile in the world.\n\"I'm sorry, Dr. Lucky!\" Kallie wailed. \"I didn't mean it!\"\nLucky glanced over his shoulder. The lagoon was no more than a hundred yards wide here, and they had almost reached the center. If he continued, the water would become shallow again. The tyrannosaur would be able to walk again, and he would move faster in shallow water. Lucky swung the boat around, and began to row north.\n\"What are you doing?\"\nThe tyrannosaur was now just a few yards away. Lucky could hear its sharp snorting breaths as it came closer. Lucky looked at the paddles in his hands, but they were light plastic-not weapons at all.\nThe tyrannosaur threw its head back and opened its jaws wide, showing rows of curved teeth, and then in a great muscular spasm lunged forward to the raft, just missing the rubber gunwale, the huge skull slapping down, the raft rocking away on the crest of the splash.\nThe tyrannosaur sank below the surface, leaving gurgling bubbles. The lagoon was still. Kallie gripped the gunwale handles and looked back.\n\"Did he drown?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. He saw bubbles-then a faint ripple along the surface-coming toward the boat- \"Hang on!\" he shouted, as the head bucked up beneath the rubber, bending the boat and lifting it into the air, spinning them crazily before it splashed down again.\n\"Do something!\" Alexis screamed. \"Do something!\"\nLucky pulled the air pistol out of his belt. It looked pitifully small in his hands, but there was the chance that, if he shot the animal in a sensitive spot, in the eye or the nose- The tyrannosaur surfaced beside the boat, opened its jaws, and roared. Lucky aimed, and fired. The dart flashed in the light, and smacked into the cheek. The tyrannosaur shook its head, and roared again.\nAnd suddenly they heard an answering roar, floating across the water toward them.\nLooking back, Lucky saw the juvenile T-rex on the shore, crouched over the killed sauropod, claiming the kill as its own. The juvenile slashed at the carcass, then raised its head high and bellowed. The big tyrannosaur saw it, too, and the response was immediate-it turned back to protect its kill, swimming strongly toward the shore.\n\"He's going away!\" Kallie squealed, clapping her hands. \"He's going away! Naah-naah-na-na-naah! Stupid dinosaur!\"\nFrom the shore, the juvenile roared defiantly. Enraged, the big tyrannosaur burst from the lagoon at full speed, water streaming from its enormous body as it raced up the hill past the dock. The juvenile ducked its head and fled, its jaws still filled with ragged flesh.\nThe big tyrannosaur chased it, racing past the dead sauropod, disappearing over the hill. They heard its final threatening bellow, and then the raft moved to the north, around a bend in the lagoon, to the river.\nExhausted from rowing, Lucky collapsed back, his chest heaving. He couldn't catch his breath. He lay gasping in the raft.\n\"Are you okay, Dr. Lucky?\" Kallie asked.\n\"From now on, will you just do what I tell you?\"\n'Oh-kay, \" she sighed, as if he had just made the most unreasonable demand in the world. She trailed her arm in the water for a while. \"You stopped rowing,\" she said.\n\"I'm tired,\" Lucky said.\n\"Then how come we're still moving?\"\nLucky sat up. She was right. The raft drifted steadily north. \"There must be a current.\" The current was carrying them north, toward the hotel. He looked at his watch and was astonished to see it was fifteen minutes past seven. Only fifteen minutes had passed since he had last looked at his watch. It seemed like two hours.\nLucky lay back against the rubber gunwales, closed his eyes, and slept.\nChapter - FIFTH ITERATION\n[picture]\n\"Flaws in the system will now become severe.\"\nCHUCK MALCOM\nSearch\nZain sat in the Jeep and listened to the buzzing of the flies, and stared at the distant palm trees wavering in the heat. He was astonished by what looked like a battleground: the grass was trampled flat for a hundred yards in every direction. One big palm tree was uprooted from the ground. There were great washes of blood in the grass, and on the rocky outcropping to their right.\nSitting beside him, Alfredo said, \"No doubt about it. Rexy's been among the hadrosaurs.\" He took another drink of whiskey, and capped the bottle. \"Damn lot of flies,\" he said.\nThey waited, and watched.\nZain drummed his fingers on the dashboard. \"What are we waiting for?\"\nAlfredo didn't answer immediately. \"The rex is out there somewhere,\" he said, squinting at the landscape in the morning sun. \"And we don't have any weapons worth a damn.\"\n\"We're in a Jeep.\"\n\"Oh, he can outrun the Jeep, Mr. Zain,\" Alfredo said, shaking his head. \"Once we leave this road and go onto open terrain, the best we can do in a four-wheel drive is thirty, forty miles an hour. He'll run us right down. No problem for him.\" Alfredo sighed. \"But I don't see much moving out there now. You ready to live dangerously?\"\n\"Sure,\" Zain said.\nAlfredo started the engine, and at the sudden sound, two small othnielians leapt up from the matted grass directly ahead. Alfredo put the car in gear. He drove in a wide circle around the trampled site, and then moved inward, driving in decreasing concentric circles until he finally came to the place in the field where the little othnielians had been. Then he got out and walked forward in the grass, away from the Jeep. He stopped as a dense cloud of flies lifted into the air.\n\"What is it?\" Zain called.\n\"Bring the radio,\" Alfredo said.\nZain climbed out of the Jeep and hurried forward. Even from a distance he could smell the sour-sweet odor of early decay. He saw a dark shape in the grass, crusted with blood, legs askew.\n\"Young hadrosaur,\" Alfredo said, staring down at the carcass. \"The whole herd stampeded, and the young one got separated, and the T-rex brought it down.\"\n\"How do you know?\" Zain said. The flesh was ragged from many bites.\n\"You can tell from the excreta,\" Alfredo said. \"See those chalky white bits there in the grass? That's hadro spoor. Uric acid makes it white. But you look there\"-he pointed to a large mound, rising knee-high in the grass-\"that's tyrannosaur spoor.\"\n\"How do you know the tyrannosaur didn't come later?\"\n\"The bite pattern,\" Alfredo said. \"See those little ones there?\" He pointed along the belly. \"Those are from the othys. Those bites haven't bled. They're postmortem, from scavengers. Othys did that. But the hadro was brought down by a bite on the neck-you see the big slash there, above the shoulder blades-and that's the T-rex, no question.\"\nZain bent over the carcass, staring at the awkward, trampled limbs with a sense of unreality. Beside him, Alfredo flicked on his radio. \"Control. \"\n\"Yes,\" Cerise Celeste said, over the radio.\n\"We got another hadro dead. Juvenile.\" Alfredo bent down among the flies and checked the skin on the sole of the right foot. A number was tattooed there, \"Specimen is number HD/09.\"\nThe radio crackled. \"I've got something for you,\" Celeste said.\n\"Oh? What's that?\"\n\"I found Rhoda.\"\nThe Jeep burst through the line of palm trees along the east road and came out into a narrower service road, leading toward the jungle river. It was hot in this area of the park, the jungle close and fetid around them. Alfredo was fiddling with the computer monitor in the Jeep, which now showed a map of the resort with overlaid grid lines. \"They found him up on remote video,\" he said. \"Sector 1104 is just ahead.\"\nFarther up the road, Zain saw a concrete barrier, and the Jeep parked alongside it. \"He must have taken the wrong turnoff,\" Alfredo said. \"The little bastard.\"\n\"What'd he take?\" Zain asked.\n\"Eileen says fifteen embryos. Know what that's worth?\"\nZain shook his head.\n\"Somewhere between two and ten million,\" Alfredo said. He shook his head. \"Big stakes.\"\nAs they came closer, Zain saw the body lying beside the car. The body was indistinct and green-but then green shapes scattered away, as the Jeep pulled to a stop.\n\"Compys,\" Alfredo said. \"The compys found him,\"\nA dozen procompsognathids, delicate little predators no larger than ducks, stood at the edge of the jungle, chittering excitedly as the men climbed out of the car.\nBenny Rhoda lay on his back, the chubby boyish face now red and bloated. Flies buzzed around the gaping mouth and thick tongue. His body was mangled-the intestines torn open, one leg chewed through. Zain turned away quickly, to look at the little compys, which squatted on their hind legs a short distance away and watched the men curiously. The little dinosaurs had five-fingered hands, he noticed. They wiped their faces and chins, giving them an eerily human quality which- \"I'll be damned,\" Alfredo said. \"Wasn't the compys.\"\n\"What?\"\nAlfredo was shaking his head. \"See these blotches? On his shirt and his face? Smell that sweet smell like old, dried vomit?\"\nZain rolled his eyes. He smelled it.\n\"That's dilo saliva,\" Alfredo said. \"Spit from the dilophosaurs. You see the damage on the corneas, all that redness. In the eyes it's painful but not fatal. You've got about two hours to wash it out with the antivenin; we keep it all around the park, just in case. Not that it mattered to this bastard. They blinded him, then ripped him down the middle. Not a nice way to go. Maybe there's justice in the world after all.\"\nThe procompsognatbids squeaked and hopped up and down as Zain opened the back door and took out gray metal tubing and a stainless-steel case. \"It's all still there,\" he said. He handed two dark cylinders to Zain.\n\"What're these?\" Zain said.\n\"Just what they look like,\" Alfredo said. \"Rockets.\" As Zain backed away, he said, \"Watch it-you don't want to step in something.\"\nZain stepped carefully over Rhoda's body. Alfredo carried the tubing to the other Jeep, and placed it in the back. He climbed behind the wheel. \"Let's go.\"\n\"What about him?\" Zain said, pointing to the body.\n\"What about him?\" Alfredo said. \"We've got things to do.\" He put the car in gear. Looking back, Zain saw the compys resume their feeding. One jumped up and squatted on Rhoda's open mouth as it nibbled the flesh of his nose.\nThe jungle river became narrower. The banks closed in on both sides until the trees and foliage overhanging the banks met high above to block out the sun. Nehemiah heard the cry of birds, and saw small chirping dinosaurs leaping among the branches. But mostly it was silent, the air hot and still beneath the canopy of trees.\nLucky looked at his watch. It was eight o'clock.\nThey drifted along peacefully, among dappled patches of light. If anything, they seemed to be moving faster than before. Awake now, Lucky lay on his back and stared up at the branches overhead. In the how, he saw her reaching up.\n\"Hey, wbat're you doing?\" he said.\n\"You think we can eat these berries?\" She pointed to the trees. Some of the overhanging branches were close enough to touch. Nehemiah saw clusters of bright red berries on the branches.\n\"No,\" Lucky said.\n\"Why? Those little dinosaurs are eating them.\" She pointed to small dinosaurs, scampering in the branches.\n\"No, Kallie.\"\nShe sighed, dissatisfied with his authority. \"I wish Daddy was here,\" she said. \"Daddy always knows what to do.\"\n\"What're you talking about?\" Nehemiah said. \"He never knows what to do.\"\n\"Yes, he does,\" she sighed. Kallie stared at the trees as they slid past, their big roots twisting toward the water's edge. \"Just because you're not his favorite . . .\"\nNehemiah turned away, said nothing.\n\"But don't worry, Daddy likes you, too. Even if you're into computers and not sports.\"\n\"Dad's a real sports nut,\" Nehemiah explained to Lucky.\nLucky nodded. Up in the branches, small pale yellow dinosaurs, barely two feet tall, hopped from tree to tree. They had beaky heads, like parrots. \"You know what they call those?\" Nehemiah said. \"Microceratops.\"\n\"Big deal,\" Kallie said.\n\"I thought you might be interested.\"\n\"Only very young boys,\" she said, \"are interested in dinosaurs.\"\n\"Says who?\"\n\"Daddy.\"\nNehemiah started to yell, but Lucky raised his band. \"Kids,\" he said, \"shut up.\"\n\"Why?\" Kallie said, \"I can do what I want, if I-\"\nThen she fell silent, because she heard it, too. It was a bloodcurdling shriek, from somewhere downriver.\nWell, where the hell is the damn rex?\" Alfredo said, talking into the radio. \"Because we don't see him here.\" They were back at the sauropod compound, looking out at the trampled grass where the hadrosaurs had stampeded. The tyrannosaur was nowhere to be found.\n\"Checking now,\" Celeste said, and clicked off.\nAlfredo turned to Zain. \"Checking now,\" he repeated sarcastically. \"Why the hell didn't he check before? Why didn't he keep track of him?\"\n\"I don't know,\" Zain said.\n\"He's not showing up,\" Celeste said, a moment later.\n\"What do you mean, he's not showing up?\"\n\"He's not on the monitors. Motion sensors aren't finding him.\"\n\"Hell,\" Alfredo said. \"So much for the motion sensors. You see Lucky and the kids?\"\n\"Motion sensors aren't finding them, either.\"\n\"Well, what are we supposed to do now?\" Alfredo said.\n\"Wait,\" Celeste said.\n\"Look! Look!\"\nDirectly ahead, the big dome of the aviary rose above them. Lucky had seen it only from a distance; now he realized it was enormous-a quarter of a mile in diameter or more. The pattern of geodesic struts shone dully through the light mist, and his first thought was that the glass must weigh a ton. Then, as they came closer, he saw there wasn't any glass-just struts. A thin mesh hung inside the elements.\n\"It isn't finished,\" Kallie said.\n\"I think it's meant to be open like that,\" Lucky said.\n\"Then all the birds can fly out.\"\n\"Not if they're big birds,\" Lucky said.\nThe river carried them beneath the edge of the dome. They stared upward. Now they were inside the dome, still drifting down the river. But 'thin minutes the dome was so high above them that it was hardly visible in the mist. Lucky said, \"I seem to remember there's a second lodge here.\" Moments later, he saw the roof of a building over the tops of the trees to the north.\n\"You want to stop?\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Maybe there's a phone. Or motion sensors.\" Lucky steered toward the shore. \"We need to try to contact the control room. It's getting late.\"\nThey clambered out, slipping on the muddy bank, and Lucky hauled the raft out of the water. Then he tied the rope to a tree and they set off, through a dense forest of palm trees.\nAviary\n\"I just don't understand,\" Cerise Celeste said, speaking into the phone. \"I don't see the rex, and I don't see Lucky and the kids anywhere, either.\"\nHe sat in front of the consoles and gulped another cup of coffee. All around him, the control room was strewn with paper plates and half-eaten sandwiches. Celeste was exhausted. It was 8:00 a.m. on Saturday. In the fourteen hours since Rhoda destroyed the computer that ran Jurassic Park, Celeste had patiently pulled systems back on line, one after another. \"All the park systems are back, and functioning correctly. The phones are working. I've called for a doctor for you.\"\nOn the other end of the line, Gert coughed. Celeste was talking to him in his room at the lodge. \"But you're having trouble with the motion sensors?\"\n\"Well, I'm not finding what I am looking for.\"\n\"Like the rex?\"\n\"He's not reading at all now. He started north about twenty minutes ago, following along the edge of the lagoon, and then I lost him. I don't know why, unless he's gone to sleep again.\"\n\"And you can't find Lucky and the kids?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"I think it's quite simple,\" Gert said. \"The motion sensors cover an inadequate area.\"\n\"Inadequate?\" Celeste bristled. \"They cover ninety-two-\"\n\"Ninety-two percent of the land area, I remember,\" Gert said. \"But if you put the remaining areas up on the board, I think you'll find that the eight percent is topologically unified, meaning that those areas are contiguous. In essence, an animal can move freely anywhere in the park and escape detection, by following a maintenance road or the jungle river or the beaches or whatever.\"\n\"Even if that were so,\" Celeste said, \"the animals are too stupid to know that.\"\n\"It's not clear how stupid the animals are,\" Gert said.\n\"You think that's what Lucky and the kids are doing?\" Celeste said.\n\"Definitely not,\" Gert said, coughing again. \"Lucky's no fool. He clearly wants to be detected by you. He and the kids are probably waving at every motion sensor in sight. But maybe they have other problems we don't know about. Or maybe they're on the river.\"\n\"I can't imagine they'd be on the river. The banks are very narrow. It's impossible to walk along there.\"\n\"Would the river bring them all the way back here?\"\n\"Yes, but it's not the safest way to go, because it passes through the aviary. . . .\"\n\"Why wasn't the aviary on the tour?\" Gert said.\n\"We've had problems setting it up. Originally the park was intended to have a treetop lodge built high above the ground, where visitors could observe the pterodactyls at flight level. We've got four dactyls in the aviary now-actually, they're cearadactyls, which are big fish-eating dactyls.\"\n\"What about them?\"\n\"Well, while we finished the lodge, we put the dactyls in the aviary to acclimate them. But that was a big mistake. It turns out our fish-hunters are territorial.\"\n\"Territorial?\"\n\"Fiercely territorial,\" Celeste said. \"They fight among themselves for territory-and they'll attack any other animal that comes into the area they've marked out.\"\n\"Attack?\"\n\"It's impressive,\" Celeste said. \"The dactyls glide to the top of the aviary, fold up their wings, and dive. A thirty-pound animal will strike a man on the ground like a ton of bricks. They were knocking the workmen unconscious, cutting them up pretty badly.\"\n\"That doesn't injure the dactyls?\"\n\"Not so far.\"\n\"So, if those kids are in the aviary . . .\"\n\"They're not,\" Celeste said. \"At least, I hope they're not.\"\n\"Is that the lodge?\" Kallie said. \"What a dump.\"\nBeneath the aviary dome, Pteratops Lodge was built high above the ground, on big wooden pylons, in the middle of a stand of fir trees. But the building was unfinished and unpainted; the windows were boarded up. The trees and the lodge were splattered with broad white streaks.\n\"I guess they didn't finish it, for some reason,\" Lucky said, hiding his disappointment. He glanced at his watch. \"Come on, let's go back to the boat.\"\nThe sun came out as they walked along, making the morning more cheerful. Lucky looked at the latticework shadows on the ground from the dome above, He noticed that the ground and the foliage were spattered with broad streaks of the same white chalky substance that had been on the building. And there was a distinctive, sour odor in the morning air.\n\"Stinks here,\" Kallie said. \"What's all the white stuff?\"\n\"Looks like reptile droppings. Probably from the birds.\"\n\"How come they didn't finish the lodge?\"\n\"I don't know.\"\nThey entered a clearing of low grass, dotted with wild flowers. They heard a long, low whistle. Then an answering whistle, from across the forest.\n\"What's that?\"\n\"I don't know.\"\nThen Lucky saw the dark shadow of a cloud on the grassy field ahead. The shadow was moving fast. In moments, it had swept over them. He looked up and saw an enormous dark shape gliding above them, blotting out the sun.\n\"Yew!\" Kallie said. \"Is it a pterodactyl?\"\n\"Yes,\" Nehemiah said.\nLucky didn't answer. He was entranced by the sight of the huge flying creature. In the sky above, the pterodactyl gave a low whistle and wheeled gracefully, turning back toward them.\n\"How come they're not on the tour?\" Nehemiah said.\nLucky was wondering the same thing. The flying dinosaurs were so beautiful, so graceful as they moved through the air. As Lucky watched, he saw a second pterodactyl appear in the sky, and a third, and a fourth.\n\"Maybe because they didn't finish the lodge,\" Kallie said.\nLucky was thinking these weren't ordinary pterodactyls. They were too large. They must cearadactyls, big flying reptiles from the early Cretaceous. When they were high, these looked like small airplanes. When they came lower, he could see the animals had fifteen-foot wingspans, furry bodies, and heads like crocodiles. They ate fish, he remembered. South America and Mexico.\nKallie shaded her eyes and looked up at the sky. \"Can they hurt us?\"\n\"I don't think so. They eat fish.\"\nOne of the dactyls spiraled down, a flashing dark shadow that whooshed past them with a rush of warm air and a lingering sour odor.\n\"Wow!\" Kallie said. \"They're really big.\" And then she said, \"Are you sure they can't hurt us?\"\n\"Pretty sure.\"\nA second dactyl swooped down, moving faster than the first. It came from behind, streaked over their heads. Lucky had a glimpse of its toothy beak and the furry body. It looked like a huge bat, he thought. But Lucky was impressed with the frail appearance of the animals. Their huge wingspans-the delicate pink membranes stretched across them-so thin they were translucent-everything reinforced the delicacy of the dactyls.\n\"Ow!\" Kallie shouted, grabbing her hair. \"He bit me!\"\n\"He what?\" Lucky said.\n\"He bit me! He bit me!\" When she took her band away, he saw blood on her fingers.\nUp in the sky, two more dactyls folded their wings, collapsing into small dark shapes that plummeted toward the ground. They made a kind of scream as they hurtled downward.\n\"Come on!\" Lucky said, grabbing their hands. They ran across the meadow, bearing the approaching scream, and he flung himself on the ground at the last moment, pulling the kids down with him, as the two dactyls whistled and squeaked past them, flapping their wings. Lucky felt claws tear the shirt along his back.\nThen he was up, pulling Kallie back onto her feet, and running with Nehemiah a few feet forward while overhead two more birds wheeled and dove toward them, screaming. At the last moment, he pushed the kids to the ground, and the big shadows flapped past.\n\"Uck,\" Kallie said, disgusted. He saw that she was streaked with white droppings from the birds.\nLucky scrambled to his feet. \"Come on!\"\nHe was about to run when Kallie shrieked in terror. He turned back and saw that one of the dactyls had grabbed her by the shoulders with its hind claws. The animal's huge leathery wings, translucent in the sunlight, flapped broadly on both sides of her. The dactyl was trying to take off, but Kallie was too heavy, and while it struggled it repeatedly jabbed at her head with its long pointed jaw.\nKallie was screaming, waving her arms wildly. Lucky did the only thing he could think to do. He ran forward and jumped up, throwing himself against the body of the dactyl. He knocked it onto its back on the ground, and fell on top of the furry body. The animal screamed and snapped; Lucky ducked his head away from the jaws and pushed back, as the giant wings beat around his body. It was like being in a tent In a windstorm. He couldn't see; he couldn't hear; there was nothing but the flapping and shrieking and the leathery membranes. The clawed legs scratched frantically at his chest. Kallie was screaming. Lucky pushed away from the dactyl and it squeaked and gibbered as it flapped its wings and struggled to turn over, to right itself. Finally it pulled in its wings like a bat and rolled over, lifted itself up on its little wing claws, and began to walk that way. He paused, astonished.\nIt could walk on its wings! Lederer's speculation was right! But then the other dactyls were diving down at them and Lucky was dizzy, off balance, and in horror he saw Kallie run away, her arms over her head . . . Nehemiah shouting at the top of his lungs. . . .\nThe first of them swooped down and she threw something and suddenly the dactyl whistled and climbed. The other dactyls immediately climbed and chased the first into the sky. The fourth dactyl flapped awkwardly into the air to join the others. Lucky looked upward, squinting to see what had happened. The three dactyls chased the first, screaming angrily.\nThey were alone in the field.\n\"What happened?\" Lucky said.\n\"They got my glove,\" Kallie said. \"My Darryl Strawberry special.\"\nThey started walking again. Nehemiah put his arm around her shoulders. \"Are you all right?\"\n\"Of course, stupid,\" she said, shaking him off. She looked upward. \"I hope they choke and die,\" she said.\n\"Yeah,\" Nehemiah said. \"Me, too-\"\nUp ahead, they saw the boat on the shore. Lucky looked at his watch. It was eight-thirty. He now had two and a half hours to get back.\nKallie cheered as they drifted beyond the silver aviary dome. Then the banks of the river closed in on both sides, the trees meeting overhead once more. The river was narrower than ever, in some places only ten feet wide, and the current flowed very fast. Kallie reached up to touch the branches as they went past.\nLucky sat back in the raft and listened to the gurgle of the water through the warm rubber. They were moving faster now, the branches overhead slipping by more rapidly. It was pleasant. It gave a little breeze in the hot confines of the overhanging branches. And it meant they would get back that much sooner.\nLucky couldn't guess how far they had come, but it must be several miles at least from the sauropod building where they had spent the night. Perhaps four or five miles. Maybe even more. That meant they might be only an hour's walk from the hotel, once they left the raft. But after the aviary, Lucky was in no hurry to leave the river again. For the moment, they were making good time.\n\"I wonder how Ralph is,\" Kallie said. \"He's probably dead or something.\"\n\"I'm sure he's fine.\"\n\"I wonder if he'd let me ride him.\" She sighed, sleepy in the sun. \"That would be fun, to ride Ralph.\"\nNehemiah said to Lucky, \"Remember back at the stegosaurus? Last night?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"How come you asked them about frog DNA?\"\n\"Because of the breeding,\" Lucky said. \"They can't explain why the dinosaurs are breeding, since they irradiate them, and since they're all females.\"\n\"Right.\"\n\"Well, irradiation is notoriously unreliable and probably doesn't work. I think that'll eventually be shown here. But there is still the problem of the dinosaurs' being female. How can they breed when they're all female?\"\n\"Right,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Well, across the animal kingdom, sexual reproduction exists in extraordinary variety.\"\n\"Nehemiah's very interested in sex,\" Kallie said.\nThey both ignored her. \"For example,\" Lucky said, \"many animals have sexual reproduction without ever having what we would call sex. The male releases a spermatophore, which contains the sperm, and the female picks it up at a later time. This kind of exchange does not require quite as much physical differentiation between male and female as we usually think exists. Male and female are more alike in some animals than they are in human beings.\"\nNehemiah nodded. \"But what about the frogs?\"\nLucky heard sudden shrieks from the trees above, as the microceratopsians scattered in alarm, shaking the branches. The big head of the tyrannosaur lunged through the foliage from the left, the jaws snapping at the raft. Kallie howled in terror, and Lucky paddled away toward the opposite bank, but the river here was only ten feet wide. The tyrannosaur was caught in the heavy growth- it butted and twisted its head, and roared. Then it pulled its head back.\nThrough the trees that lined the riverbank, they saw the huge dark form of the tyrannosaur, moving north, looking for a gap in the trees that lined the bank. The microceratopsians had all gone to the opposite bank, where they shrieked and scampered and jumped up and down. In the raft, Lucky, Nehemiah, and Kallie stared helplessly as the tyrannosaur tried to break through again, But the trees were too dense along the banks of the river. The tyrannosaur again moved downstream, ahead of the boat, and tried again, shaking the branches furiously.\nBut again it failed.\nThen it moved off, heading farther downstream.\n\"I hate him,\" Kallie said.\nLucky sat back in the boat, badly shaken. If the tyrannosaur had broken through, there was nothing be could have done to save them. The river was so narrow that it was hardly wider than the raft. It was like being in a tunnel. The rubber gunwales often scraped on the mud as the boat was pulled along by the swift current.\nHe glanced at his watch. Almost nine. The raft continued downstream.\n\"Hey,\" Kallie said, \"listen!\"\nHe heard snarling, interspersed by a repeated hooting cry. The cries were coming from beyond a curve, farther downriver. He listened, and heard the hooting again.\n\"What is it?\" Kallie said.\n\"I don't know,\" Lucky said. \"But there's more than one of them.\" He paddled the boat to the opposite bank, grabbed a branch to stop the raft. The snarling was repeated. Then more hooting.\n\"It sounds like a bunch of owls,\" Nehemiah said.\nGert groaned. \"Isn't it time for more morphine yet?\"\n\"Not yet,\" Vasco said.\nGert sighed. \"How much water have we got here?\"\n\"I don't know. There's plenty of running water from the tap-\"\n\"No, I mean, how much stored? Any?\"\nVasco shrugged. \"None.\"\n\"Go into the rooms on this floor,\" Gert said, \"and fill the bathtubs with water.\"\nVasco frowned.\n\"Also,\" Gert said, \"have we got any walkie-talkies? Flashlights? Matches? Sterno stoves? Things like that?\"\n\"I'll look around. You planning for an earthquake?\"\n\"Something like that,\" Gert said. \"Gert Effect implies catastrophic changes.\"\n\"But Celeste says all the systems are working perfectly.\"\n\"That's when it happens,\" Gert said.\nVasco said, \"You don't think much of Celeste, do you?\"\n\"He's all right. He's an engineer. Eileen's the same. They're both technicians. They don't have intelligence. They have what I call 'thintelligence.' They see the immediate situation. They think narrowly and they call it 'being focused.' They don't see the surround. They don't see the consequences. That's how you get an island like this. From thintelligent thinking. Because you cannot make an animal and not expect it to act alive. To be unpredictable. To escape. But they don't see that.\"\n\"Don't you think it's just human nature?\" Vasco said.\n\"God, no,\" Gert said. \"That's like saying scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast is human nature. It's nothing of the sort. It's uniquely Western training, and much of the rest of the world is nauseated by the thought of it.\" He winced in pain. \"The morphine's making me philosophical.\"\n\"You want some water?\"\n\"No. I'll tell you the problem with engineers and scientists. Scientists have an elaborate line of bullshit about how they are seeking to know the truth about nature. Which is true, but that's not what drives them. Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.'\n\"Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. They conveniently define such considerations as pointless. If they don't do it, someone else will. Discovery, they believe, is inevitable. So they just try to do it first. That's the game in science. Even pure scientific discovery is an aggressive, penetrative act. It takes big equipment, and it literally changes the world afterward. Particle accelerators sear the land, and leave radioactive byproducts. Astronauts leave trash on the moon. There is always some proof that scientists were there, making their discoveries. Discovery is always a rape of the natural world. Always.\n\"The scientists want it that way. They have to stick their instruments in. They have to leave their mark. They can't just watch. They can't just appreciate. They can't just fit into the natural order. They have to make something unnatural happen. That is the scientist's job, and now we have whole societies that try to be scientific.\" He sighed, and sank back.\nVasco said, \"Don't you think you're overstating-\"\n\"What does one of your excavations look like a year later?\"\n\"Pretty had,\" she admitted.\n\"You don't replant, you don't restore the land after you dig?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Why not?\"\nShe shrugged. \"There's no money, I guess. . . .\n\"There's only enough money to dig, but not to repair?\"\n\"Well, we're just working in the badlands. . . .\"\n\"Just the badlands,\" Gert said, shaking his head. \"Just trash. Just byproducts. Just side effects . . . I'm trying to tell you that scientists want it this way. They want byproducts and trash and scars and side effects. It's a way of reassuring themselves. It's built into the fabric of science, and it's increasingly a disaster.\"\n\"Then what's the answer?\"\n\"Get rid of the thintelligent ones. Take them out of power.\"\n\"But then we'd lose all the advances-\"\n\"What advances?\" Gert said irritably. \"The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics . . . Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930?\"\nVasco said nothing.\n\"Because there haven't been any advances,\" Gert said. \"Not really. Thirty thousand years ago, when men were doing cave paintings at Lascaux, they worked twenty hours a week to provide themselves with food and shelter and clothing. The rest of the time, they could play, or sleep, or do whatever they wanted. And they lived in a natural world, with clean air, clean water, beautiful trees and sunsets. Think about it. Twenty hours a week. Thirty thousand years ago.\"\nVasco said, \"You want to turn back the clock?\"\n\"No,\" Gert said. \"I want people to wake up. We've had four hundred years of modern science, and we ought to know by now what it's good for, and what it's not good for. It's time for a change.\"\n\"Before we destroy the planet?\" she said.\nHe sighed, and closed his eyes. \"Oh dear,\" he said. \"That's the last thing I would worry about.\"\nIn the dark tunnel of the jungle river, Lucky went hand over hand, holding branches, moving the raft cautiously forward. He still heard the sounds. And finally he saw the dinosaurs.\n\"Aren't those the ones that are poison?\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"Dilophosaurus.\"\nStanding on the riverbank were two dilophosaurs. The ten-foot-tall bodies were spotted yellow and black. Underneath, the bellies were bright green, like lizards. Twin red curving crests ran along the top of the head from the eyes to the nose, making a V shape above the head. The bird-like quality was reinforced by the way they moved, bending to drink from the river, then rising to snarl and hoot.\nKallie whispered, \"Should we get out and walk?\"\nLucky shook his head no. The dilophosaurs were smaller than the tyrannosaur, small enough to slip through the dense foliage at the banks of the river. And they seemed quick, as they snarled and hooted at each other.\n\"But we can't get past them in the boat,\" Kallie said. \"They're poison.\"\n\"We have to,\" Lucky said. \"Somehow.\"\nThe dilophosaurs continued to drink and hoot. They seemed to be interacting with each other in a strangely ritualistic, repetitive way. The animal on the left would bend to drink, opening its mouth to bare long rows of sharp teeth, and then it would hoot. The animal on the right would boot in reply and bend to drink, in a mirror image of the first animal's movements. Then the sequence would be repeated, exactly the same way.\nLucky noticed that the animal on the right was smaller, with smaller spots on its back, and its crest was a duller red- \"I'll be damned,\" he said. \"It's a mating ritual.\"\n\"Can we get past them?\" Nehemiah asked.\n\"Not the way they are now. They're right by the edge of the water.\" Lucky knew animals often performed such mating rituals for hours at a time. They went without food, they paid attention to nothing else. . . . He glanced at his watch. Nine-twenty.\n\"What do we do?\" Nehemiah said.\nLucky sighed. \"I have no idea.\"\nHe sat down in the raft, and then the dilopbosaurs began to bonk and roar repeatedly, in agitation. He looked up. The animals were both facing away from the river.\n\"What is it?\" Kallie said.\nLucky smiled, \"I think we're finally getting some help.\" He pushed off from the bank. \"I want you two kids to lie flat on the rubber. We'll go past as fast as we can. But just remember: whatever happens, don't say anything, and don't move- Okay?\"\nThe raft began to drift downstream, toward the hooting dilophosaurs. It gained speed. Kallie lay at Lucky's feet, staring at him with friehtened eyes. They were coming closer to the dilophosaurs, which were still turned away from the river. But he pulled out his air pistol, checked the chamber.\nThe raft continued on, and they smelled a peculiar odor, sweet and nauseating at the same time. It smelled like dried vomit. The hooting of the dilophosaurs was louder. The raft came around a final bend and Lucky caught his breath. The dilophosaurs were just a few feet away, honking at the trees beyond the river.\nAs Lucky had suspected, they were honking at the tyrannosaur. The tyrannosaur was trying to break through the foliage, and the dilos hooted and stomped their feet in the mud. The raft drifted past them. The smell was nauseating. The tyrannosaur roared, probably because it saw the raft. But in another moment . . .\nA thump.\nThe raft stopped moving. They were aground, against the riverbank, just a few feet downstream from the dilophosaurs.\nKallie whispered, \"Oh, great \"\nThere was a long slow scraping sound of the raft against the mud. Then the raft was moving again. They were going down the river. The tyrannosaur roared a final time and moved off; one dilophosaur looked surprised, then hooted. The other dilophosaur hooted in reply.\nThe raft floated downriver.\nTyrannosaur\nThe Jeep bounced along in the glaring sun. Alfredo was driving, with Zain at his side. They were in an open field, moving away from the dense line of foliage and palm trees that marked the course of the river, a hundred yards to the east. They came to a rise, and Alfredo stopped the car.\n\"Christ, it's hot,\" he said, wiping his forehead with the back of his arm. He drank from the bottle of whiskey between his knees, then offered it to Zain.\nZain shook his head. He stared at the landscape shimmering in the morning heat. Then he looked down at the onboard computer and video monitor mounted in the dashboard. The monitor showed views of the park from remote cameras. Still no sign of Lucky and the children. Or of the tyrannosaur.\nThe radio crackled. \"Alfredo.\"\nAlfredo picked up the handset. \"Yeah.\"\n\"You got your onboards? I found the rex. He's in grid 442. Going to 443.\"\n\"Just a minute,\" Alfredo said, adjusting the monitor. \"Yeah. I got him now. Following the river.\" The animal was slinking along the foliage that lined the banks of the river, going north.\n\"Take it easy with him. Just immobilize him.\"\n\"Don't worry,\" Alfredo said, squinting in the sun. \"I won't hurt him.\"\n\"Remember,\" Celeste said, \"the tyrannosaur's our main tourist attraction.\"\nAlfredo turned off his radio with a crackle of static. \"Bloody fool,\" he said. \"They're still talking about tourists.\" Alfredo started the engine. \"Let's go see Rexy and give him a dose.\"\nThe Jeep jolted over the terrain.\n\"You're looking forward to this,\" Zain said.\n\"I've wanted to put a needle in this big bastard for a while,\" Alfredo said. \"And there he is.\"\nThey came to a wrenching stop. Through the windshield, Zain saw the tyrannosaur directly ahead of them, moving among the palm trees along the river.\nAlfredo drained the whiskey bottle and threw it in the back seat. He reached back for his tubing. Zain looked at the video monitor, which showed their Jeep and the tyrannosaur. There must be a closed-circuit camera in the trees somewhere behind.\n\"You want to help,\" Alfredo said, \"you can break out those canisters by your feet.\"\nZain bent over and opened a stainless-steel Halliburton case. It was padded inside with foam. Four cylinders, each the size of a quart milk bottle, were nestled in the foam. They were all labeled MORO-709. He took one out.\n\"You snap off the tip and screw on a needle,\" Alfredo explained.\nZain found a plastic package of large needles, each the diameter of his fingertip. He screwed one onto the canister. The opposite end of the canister had a circular lead weight.\n\"That's the plunger. Compresses on impact.\" Alfredo sat forward with the air rifle across his knees. It was made of heavy gray tubular metal and looked to Zain like a bazooka or a rocket launcher.\n\"What's MORO-709?\"\n\"Standard animal trank,\" Alfredo said, \"Zoos around the world use it. We'll try a thousand cc's to start.\" Alfredo cracked open the chamber, which was large enough to insert his fist. He slipped the canister into the chamber and closed it.\n\"That should do it,\" Alfredo said. \"Standard elephant gets about two hundred cc's, but they're only two or three tons each. Tyrannosaurus rex is eight tons, and a lot meaner. That matters to the dose.\"\n\"Why?\"\n\"Animal dose is partly body weight and partly temperament. You shoot the same dose of 709 into an elephant, a hippo, and a rhino-you'll immobilize the elephant, so it just stands there like a statue. You'll slow down the hippo, so it gets kind of sleepy but it keeps moving. And the rhino will just get fighting mad. But, on the other hand, you chase a rhino for more than five minutes in a car and he'll drop dead from adrenaline shock. Strange combination of tough and delicate.\"\nAlfredo drove slowly toward the river, moving closer to the tyrannosaur. \"But those are all mammals. We know a lot about handling mammals, because zoos are built around the big mammalian attractions-lions, tigers, bears, elephants. We know a lot less about reptiles. And nobody knows anything about dinosaurs. The dinosaurs are new animals.\"\n\"You consider them reptiles?\" Zain said.\n\"No,\" Alfredo said, shifting gears. \"Dinosaurs don't fit existing categories.\" He swerved to avoid a rock. \"Actually, what we find is, the dinosaurs were as variable as mammals are today. Some dinos are tame and cute, and some are mean and nasty. Some of them see well, and some of them don't. Some of them are stupid, and some of them are very, very intelligent.\"\n\"Like the raptors?\" Zain said.\nAlfredo nodded. \"Raptors are smart, Very smart. Believe me, all the problems we have so far,\" he said, \"are nothing compared with what we'd have if the raptors ever got out of their holding pen. Ah. I think this is as close as we can get to our Rexy.\"\nUp ahead, the tyrannosaur was poking its head through the branches, peering toward the river. Trying to get through. Then the animal moved a few yards downstream, to try again, \"Wonder what he sees in there?\" Zain said.\n\"Hard to know,\" Alfredo said. \"Maybe he's trying to get to the microceratopsians that scramble around in the branches. They'll run him a merry chase.\"\nAlfredo stopped the Jeep about fifty yards away from the tyrannosaur, and turned the vehicle around. He left the motor running. \"Get behind the wheel,\" Alfredo said. \"And put your seat belt on.\" He took another canister and booked it onto his shirt. Then he got out.\nZain slid behind the wheel. \"You done this very often before?\"\nAlfredo belched. \"Never. I'll try to get him just behind the auditory meatus. We'll see how it goes from there.\" He walked ten yards behind the Jeep and crouched down in the grass on one knee. He steadied the big gun against his shoulder, and flipped up the thick telescopic sight. Alfredo aimed at the tyrannosaur, which still ignored them.\nThere was a burst of pale gas, and Zain saw a white streak shoot forward in the air toward the tyrannosaur. But nothing seemed to happen.\nThen the tyrannosaur turned slowly, curiously, to peer at them. It moved its head from side to side, as if looking at them with alternate eyes.\nAlfredo had taken down the launcher, and was loading the second canister.\n\"You hit him?\" Zain said.\nAlfredo shook his head. \"Missed. Damn laser sights . . . See if there's a battery in the case.\"\n\"A what?\" Zain said.\n\"A battery,\" Alfredo said. \"It's about as big as your finger. Gray markings.\"\nZain bent over to look in the steel case. He felt the vibration of the Jeep, heard the motor ticking over. He didn't see a battery. The tyrannosaur roared. To Zain it was a terrifying sound, rumbling from the great chest cavity of the animal, bellowing out over the landscape. He sat up sharply and reached for the steering wheel, put his hand on the gearshift. On the radio, he heard a voice say, \"Alfredo. This is Celeste. Get out of there. Over.\"\n\"I know what I'm doing,\" Alfredo said.\nThe tyrannosaur charged.\nAlfredo stood his ground. Despite the creature racing toward him, he slowly and methodically raised his launcher, aimed, and fired. Once again, Zain saw the puff of smoke, and the white streak of the canister going toward the animal.\nNothing happened. The tyrannosaur continued to charge.\nNow Alfredo was on his feet and running, shouting, \"Go! Go!\" Zain put the Jeep in gear and Alfredo threw himself onto the side door as the Jeep lurched forward. The tyrannosaur was closing rapidly, and Alfredo swung the door open and climbed inside.\n\"Go, damn it! Go!\"\nZain floored it. The Jeep bounced precariously, the front end nosing so high they saw only sky through the windshield, then slamming down again toward the ground and racing forward again. Zain headed for a stand of trees to the left until, in the rearview mirror, he saw the tyrannosaur give a final roar and turn away.\nZain slowed the car. \"Jesus.\"\nAlfredo was shaking his head. \"I could have sworn I hit him the second time.\"\n\"I'd say you missed,\" Zain said.\n\"Needle must have broken off before the plunger injected.\"\n\"Admit it, you missed.\"\n\"Yeah,\" Alfredo said. He sighed. \"I missed. Battery was dead in the damned laser sights. My fault. I should have checked it, after it was out all last night. Let's go back and get more canisters.\"\nThe Jeep headed north, toward the hotel. Alfredo picked up the radio. \"Control.\"\n\"Yes,\" Celeste said.\n\"We're heading back to base.\"\nThe river was now very narrow, and flowing swiftly. The raft was going faster all the time. It was starting to feel like an amusement park ride.\n\"Whee!\" Kallie yelled, holding on to the gunwale. \"Faster, faster!\"\nLucky squinted, looking forward. The river was still narrow and dark, but farther ahead he could see the trees ended, and there was bright sunlight beyond, and a distant roaring sound. The river seemed to end abruptly in a peculiar flat line. . . .\nThe raft was going still faster, rushing forward.\nLucky grabbed for his paddles.\n\"What is it?\"\n\"It's a waterfall,\" Lucky said.\nThe raft swept out of the overhanging darkness into brilliant morning sunlight, and raced forward on the swift current toward the lip of the waterfall. The roar was loud in their ears. Lucky paddled as strongly as he could, but he only succeeded in spinning the boat in circles. It continued inexorably toward the lip.\nKallie leaned toward him. \"I can't swim!\" Lucky saw that she did not have her life vest clasped, but there was nothing he could do about it; with frightening speed, they came to the edge, and the roar of the waterfall seemed to fill the world. Lucky jammed his oar deep into the water, it catch and hold, right at the lip; the rubber raft shuddered in the current, but they did not go over. Lucky strained against the oar and, looking over the edge, saw the sheer drop of fifty feet down to the surging pool below.\nAnd standing in the surging pool, waiting for them, was the tyrannosaur.\nKallie was screaming in panic, and then the boat spun, and the rear end dropped away, spilling them out into air and roaring water, and they fell sickeningly. Lucky flailed his arms in the air, and the world went suddenly silent and slow.\nIt seemed to him he fell for long minutes; he had time to observe Kallie, clutching her orange jacket, falling alongside him; he had time to observe Nehemiah, looking down at the bottom; he had time to observe the frozen white sheet of the waterfall; he had time to observe the bubbling pool beneath him as he fell slowly, silently toward it.\nThen, with a stinging slap, Lucky plunged into cold water, surrounded by white boiling bubbles. He tumbled and spun and glimpsed the leg of the tyrannosaur as he was swirled past it, swept down through the pool and out into the stream beyond. Lucky swam for the shore, clutched warm rocks, slipped off, caught a branch, and finally pulled himself out of the main current. Gasping, he dragged himself on his belly onto the rocks, and looked at the river just in time to see the brown rubber raft tumble past him. Then he saw Nehemiah, battling the current, and he reached out and pulled him, coughing and shivering, onto the shore beside him.\nLucky turned back to the waterfall, and saw the tyrannosaur plunge its head straight down into the water of the pool at his feet. The great head shook, splashing water to either side. It had something between its teeth.\nAnd then the tyrannosaur lifted its head back up. Dangling from the jaws was Kallie's orange life vest.\nA moment later, Kallie bobbed to the surface beside the dinosaur's long tail. She lay face down in the water, her little body swept downstream by the current. Lucky plunged into the water after her, was again immersed in the churning torrent. A moment later, he pulled her up onto the rocks, a heavy, lifeless weight. Her face was gray. Water poured from her mouth.\nLucky bent over her to give her mouth-to-mouth but she coughed. Then she vomited yellow-green liquid and coughed again. Her eyelids fluttered. \"Hi,\" she said. She smiled weakly. \"We did it.\"\nNehemiah started to cry. She coughed again. \"Will you stop it? What're you crying for?\"\n\"Because.\"\n\"We were worried about you,\" Lucky said. Small flecks of white were drifting down the river. The tyrannosaur was tearing up the life vest. Still turned away from them, facing the waterfall. But at any minute the animal might turn and see them. . . . Come on, kids,\" he said.\n\"Where are we going?\" Kallie said, coughing.\n\"Come on.\" He was looking for a hiding place. Downstream he saw only an open grassy plain, affording no protection. Upstream was the dinosaur. Then Lucky saw a dirt path by the river. It seemed to lead up toward the waterfall.\nAnd in the dirt he saw the clear imprint of a man's shoe. Leading up the path.\nThe tyrannosaur finally turned around, growling and looking out toward the grassy plain. It seemed to have figured out that they had gotten away.\nIt was looking for them downstream. Lucky and the kids ducked among the big ferns that lined the riverbanks. Cautiously, he led them upstream. \"Where are we going?\" Kallie said. \"We're going back.\"\n\"I know.\"\nThey were closer to the waterfall now, the roar much louder. The rocks became slippery, the path muddy. There was a constant hanging mist. It was like moving through a cloud. The path seemed to lead right into the rushing water, but as they came closer, they saw that it actually went behind the waterfall.\nThe tyrannosaur was still looking downstream, its back turned to them. They hurried along the path to the waterfall, and had almost moved behind the sheet of falling water when Lucky saw the tyrannosaur turn. Then they were completely behind the waterfall, and Lucky was unable to see out through the silver sheet.\nLucky looked around in surprise. There was a little recess here, hardly larger than a closet, and filled with machinery: humming pumps and big filters and pipes. Everything was wet, and cold.\n\"Did he see us?\" Kallie said. She had to shout over the noise of the falling water. \"Where are we? What is this place? Did he see us?\"\n\"Just a minute,\" Lucky said. He was looking at the equipment. This was clearly park machinery. And there must be electricity to run it, so perhaps there was also a telephone for communication. He poked among the filters and pipes.\n\"What are you doing?\" Kallie shouted.\n\"Looking for a telephone.\" It was now nearly 10:00 a.m. They had just a little more than an hour to contact the ship before it reached the mainland.\nIn the back of the recess he found a metal door marked MAINT 04, but it was firmly locked. Next to it was a slot for a security card. Alongside the door he saw a row of metal boxes. He opened the boxes one after another, but they contained only switches and timers. No telephone. And nothing to open the door.\nHe almost missed the box to the left of the door. On opening it, he found a nine-button keypad, covered with spots of green mold. But it looked as if it was a way to open the door, and he had the feeling that on the other side of that door was a phone. Scratched in the metal of the box was the number 1023. He punched it in.\nWith a hiss, the door came open. Gaping darkness beyond, concrete steps leading downward. On the back wall he saw stenciled MAINT VEHICLE 04/22 CHARGER and an arrow pointing down the stairs. Could it really mean there was a car? \"Come on, kids.\"\n\"Forget it,\" Kallie said. \"I'm not going in there.\"\n\"Come on, Kallie,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Forget it,\" Kallie said. \"There's no lights or anything. I'm not going.\"\n\"Never mind,\" Lucky said. There wasn't time to argue. \"Stay here, and I'll be right back.\"\n\"Where're you going?\" Kallie said, suddenly alarmed.\nLucky stepped through the door. It gave an electronic beep, and snapped shut behind him, on a spring.\nLucky was plunged into total darkness. After a moment of surprise, he turned to the door and felt its damp surface. There was no knob, no latch. He turned to the walls on either side of the door, feeling for a switch, a control box, anything at all. . . .\nThere was nothing.\nHe was fighting panic when his fingers closed over a cold metal cylinder. He ran his hands over a swelling edge, a flat surface . . . a flashlight! He clicked it on, and the beam was surprisingly bright. He looked back at the door, but saw that it would not open. He would have to wait for the kids to unlock it. Meantime . . .\nHe started for the steps. They were damp and slippery with mold, and he went down carefully. Partway down the stairs, he heard a sniffing and the sound of claws scratching on concrete. He took out his dart pistol, and proceeded cautiously.\nThe steps bent around the corner, and as he shone his light, an odd reflection glinted back, and then, a moment later, he saw it: a car! It was an electric car, like a golf cart, and it faced a long tunnel that seemed to stretch away for miles. A bright red light glowed by the steering wheel of the car, so perhaps it was charged.\nLucky heard the sniffing again, and he wheeled and saw a pale shape rise up toward him, leaping through the air, its laws open, and without thinking Lucky fired. The animal landed on him, knocking him down, and he rolled away in fright, his flashlight swinging wildly. But the animal didn't get up, and he felt foolish when he saw it.\nIt was a velociraptor, but very young, less than a year old. It was about two feet tall, the size of a medium dog, and it lay on the ground, breathing shallowly, the dart sticking from beneath its jaw. There was probably too much anesthetic for its body weight, and Lucky pulled the dart out quickly. The velociraptor looked at him with slightly glazed eyes.\nLucky had a clear feeling of intelligence from this creature, a kind of softness which contrasted strangely with the menace he had felt from the adults in the pen. He stroked the head of the velociraptor, hoping to calm it. He looked down at the body, which was shivering slightly as the tranquilizer took hold. And then he saw it was a male.\nA young juvenile, and a male. There was no question what he was seeing. This velociraptor had been bred in the wild.\nExcited by this development, he hurried back up the stairs to the door. With his flashlight, he scanned the flat, featureless surface of the door, and the interior walls. As he ran his hands over the door, it slowly dawned on him that he was locked inside, and unable to open it, unless the kids had the presence of mind to open it for him. He could hear them, faintly, on the other side of the door.\n\"Dr. Lucky!\" Kallie shouted, pounding the door. \"Dr. Lucky!\"\n\"Take it easy,\" Nehemiah said. \"He'll be back.\"\n\"But where did he go?\"\n\"Listen, Dr. Lucky knows what he's doing,\" Nehemiah said. \"He'll be back in a minute.\"\n\"He should come back now, \" Kallie said. She bunched her fists on her hips, pushed her elbows wide. She stamped her foot angrily.\nAnd then, with a roar, the tyrannosaur's head burst through the waterfall toward them.\nNehemiah stared in horror as the big mouth gaped wide. Kallie shrieked and threw herself on the ground. The head swung back and forth, and pulled out again. But Nehemiah could see the shadow of the animal's head on the sheet of falling water.\nHe pulled Kallie deeper into the recess, just as the jaws burst through again, roaring, the thick tongue flicking in and out rapidly. Water sprayed in all directions from the head. Then it pulled out again.\nKallie huddled next to Nehemiah, shivering. \"I hate him,\" she said. She huddled back, but the recess was only a few feet deep, and crammed with machinery. There wasn't any place for them to hide.\nThe head came through the water again, but slowly this time, and the jaw came to rest on the ground. The tyrannosaur snorted, flaring its nostrils, breathing the air. But the eyes were still outside the sheet of water.\nNehemiah thought: He can't see us. He knows we're in here, but he can't see through the water.\nThe tyrannosaur sniffed.\n\"What is he doing?\" Kallie said again.\n\"Sshhbh.\"\nWith a low growl, the jaws slowly opened, and the tongue snaked out. It was thick and blue-black, with a little forked indentation at the tip. It was four feet long, and easily reached back to the far wall of the recess. The tongue slid with a rasping scrape over the filter cylinders. Nehemiah and Kallie pressed back against the pipes.\nThe tongue moved slowly to the left, then to the right, slapping wetly against the machinery. The tip curled around the pipes and valves, sensing them. Nehemiah saw that the tongue had muscular movements, like an elephant's trunk, The tongue drew back along the right side of the recess. It dragged against Kallie's legs.\n\"Eeww,\" Kallie said.\nThe tongue stopped. It curled, then began to rise like a snake up the side of her body- \"Don't move, \" Nehemiah whispered.\n. . . past her face, then up along Nehemiah's shoulder, and finally wrapping around his head. Nehemiah squeezed his eyes shut as the slimy muscle covered his face. It was hot and wet and it stunk like urine.\nWrapped around him, the tongue began to drag him, very slowly, toward the open laws.\n\"Nehemiahmy . . .\"\nNehemiah couldn't answer; his mouth was covered by the flat black tongue. He could see, but he couldn't talk. Kallie tugged at his hand.\n\"Come on, Nehemiahmy!\"\nThe tongue dragged him toward the snorting mouth. He felt the hot panting breath on his legs. Kallie was tugging at him but she was no match for the muscular power that held him. Nehemiah let go of her and pressed the tongue with both hands, trying to shove it over his head. He couldn't move it. He dug his heels into the muddy ground but he was dragged forward anyway.\nKallie had wrapped her arms around his waist and was pulling backward, shouting to him, but he was powerless to do anything. He was beginning to see stars. A kind of peacefulness overcame him, a sense of peaceful inevitability as he was dragged along.\nNehemiahmy?\"\nAnd then suddenly the tongue relaxed, and uncoiled. Nehemiah felt it slipping off his face. His body was covered in disgusting white foamy slime, and the tongue fell limply to the ground. The jaws slapped shut, biting down on the tongue. Dark blood gushed out, mixing with the mud. The nostrils still snorted in ragged breaths.\n\"What's he doing?\" Kallie cried.\nAnd then slowly, very slowly, the head began to slide backward, out of the recess, leaving a long scrape in the mud. And finally it disappeared entirely, and they could see only the silver sheet of falling water.\nChapter - Control\n\"Okay,\" Celeste said, in the control room. \"The rex is down.\" He pushed back in his chair, and grinned as he lit a final cigarette and crumpled the pack. That did it: the final step in putting the park back in order. Now all they had to do was go out and move it.\n\"Son of a bitch,\" Alfredo said, looking at the monitor. \"I got him after all.\" He turned to Zain. \"It just took him an hour to feel it.\"\nEtienne Eileen frowned at the screen. \"But he could drown, in that position. . . .\"\n\"He won't drown,\" Alfredo said. \"Never seen an animal that was harder to kill.\"\n\"I think we have to go out and move him,\" Celeste said, \"We will,\" Alfredo said. He didn't sound enthusiastic.\n\"That's a valuable animal.\"\n\"I know it's a valuable animal,\" Alfredo said.\nCeleste turned to Zain. He couldn't resist a moment of triumph. \"I'd point out to you,\" he said, \"that the park is now completely back to normal. Whatever Gert's mathematical model said was going to happen. We are completely under control again.\"\nZain pointed to the screen behind Celeste's head and said, \"What's that?\"\nCeleste turned. It was the system status box, in the upper corner of the screen. Ordinarily it was empty. Celeste was surprised to see that it was now blinking yellow: AUX PWR LOW. For a moment, he didn't understand. Why should auxiliary power be low? They were running on main power, not auxiliary power. He thought perhaps it was just a routine status check on the auxiliary power, perhaps a check on the fuel tank levels or the battery charge. . . .\n\"Etienne,\" Celeste said to Eileen. \"Look at this.\"\nEileen said, \"Why are you running on auxiliary power?\"\n\"I'm not,\" Celeste said.\n\"It looks like you are.\"\n\"I can't be.\"\n\"Print the system status log,\" Eileen said. The log was a record of the system over the last few hours.\nCeleste pressed a button, and they heard the hum of a printer in the corner. Eileen walked over to it.\nCeleste stared at the screen. The box now turned from flashing yellow to red, and the message now read: AUX PWR FAIL, Numbers began to count backward from twenty.\n\"What the hell is going on?\" Celeste said.\nCautiously, Nehemiah moved a few yards out along the muddy path, into the sunshine. He peered around the waterfall, and saw the tyrannosaur lying on its side, floating in the pool of water below.\n\"I hope he's dead,\" Kallie said.\nNehemiah could see he wasn't: the dinosaur's chest was still moving, and one forearm twitched in spasms. But something was wrong with him. Then Nehemiah saw the white canister sticking in the back of the head, by the indentation of the ear.\n\"He's been shot with a dart,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Good,\" Kallie said. \"He practically ate us.\"\nNehemiah watched the labored breathing. He felt unexpectedly distressed to see the huge animal humbled like this. He didn't want it to die. \"It's not his fault,\" he said.\n\"Oh sure,\" Kallie said. \"He practically ate us and it's not his fault.\"\n\"He's a carnivore. He was just doing what he does.\"\n\"You wouldn't say that,\" Kallie said, \"if you were in his stomach right now.\nThen the sound of the waterfall changed. From a deafening roar, it became softer, quieter. The thundering sheet of water thinned, became a trickle . . .\nAnd stopped.\n\"Nehemiahmy. The waterfall stopped,\" Kallie said.\nIt was now just dripping like a tap that wasn't completely turned off. The pool at the base of the waterfall was still. They stood near the top, in the cave-like indentation filled with machinery, looking down.\n\"Waterfalls aren't supposed to stop,\" Kallie said.\nNehemiah shook his head. \"It must be the power. . . . Somebody turned off the power.\" Behind them, all the pumps and filters were shutting down one after another, the lights blinking off, and the machinery becoming quiet.\nAnd then there was the thunk of a solenoid releasing, and the door marked MAINT 04 swung slowly open.\nLucky stepped out, blinking in the light, and said, \"Good work, kids. You got the door open.\"\n\"We didn't do anything,\" Kallie said.\n\"The power went out,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Never mind that,\" Lucky said. \"Come and see what I've found.\"\nCeleste stared in shock.\nOne after another, the monitors went black, and then the room lights went out, plunging the control room into darkness and confusion. Everyone started yelling at once. Alfredo opened the blinds and let light in, and Eileen brought over the printout.\n\"Look at this,\" Eileen said.\nNehemiahe\t\tEvent \t\t                System Status\t\t\t\t[Code] 05:12:44\tSafety I Off\t\t\tOperative\t\t\t\t[AV12]\n05:12:45\tSafety 2 Off\t\t\tOperative\t\t\t\t[AV12]\n05:12:46\tSafety 3 Off\t\t\tOperative\t\t\t\t[AV12]\n05:12:51\tShutdown Command\t\tShutdown\t\t\t\t[-AV0]\n05:13:48\tStartup Command\t\t        Shutdown\t\t\t\t[-AV0]\n05:13:55\tSafety 1 On\t\t\tShutdown\t\t\t\t[-AV0]\n05:13:57\tSafety 2 On\t\t\tShutdown\t\t\t\t[-AV0]\n05:13:59\tSafety 3 On\t\t\tShutdown\t\t\t\t[-AV0]\n05:14:08\tStartup Command\t\t        Startup - Aux Power\t\t\t[-AV1]\n05:14:18\tMonitor-Main\t\t\tOperative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AV04]\n05:14:19\tSecurity-Main\t\t\tOperative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AV05]\n05:14:22\tCommand-Main\t\t        Operative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AV06]\n05:14:24\tLaboratory-Main\t\t        Operative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AV08]\n05:14:29\tTeleCom-VBB\t\t        Operative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AV09]\n05:14:32\tSchematic-Main\t\t        Operative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AV09]\n05:14:37\tView\t\t\t\tOperative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AV09]\n05:14:44\tControl Status Chk\t\tOperative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AV09]\n05:14:57\tWarning: Fence Status [NB]\tOperative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AV09]\n09:11:37\tWarning: Aux Fuel (20%)\t        Operative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AVZZ]\n09:33:19\tWarning: Aux Fuel (10%) \tOperative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AVZ1]\n09:53:19\tWarning: Aux Fuel (1%)\t        Operative - Aux Power\t\t        [-AVZ2]\n09:53:39\tWarning: Aux Fuel (0%)\t        Shutdown\t\t\t\t[-AV0]\nEileen said, \"You shut down at five-thbirteen this morning, and when you started back up, you started with auxiliary power.\"\n\"Jesus,\" Celeste said. Apparently, main power had not been on since shutdown. When he powered back up, only the auxiliary power came on. Celeste was thinking that was strange, when he suddenly realized that that was normal. That was what was supposed to happen. It made perfect sense: the auxiliary generator fired up first, and it was used to turn on the main generator, because it took a heavy charge to start the main power generator. That was the way the system was designed.\nBut Celeste had never before had occasion to turn the main power off. And when the lights and screens came back on in the control room, it never occurred to him that main power hadn't also been restored.\nBut it hadn't, and all during the time since then, while they were looking for the rex, and doing one thing and another, the park had been running on auxilary power. And that wasn't a good idea. In fact, the implications were just beginning to hit him- \"What does this line mean?\" Alfredo said, pointing to the list.\n05:14:57\tWarning: Fence Status [NB]\tOperative - Aux Power\t\t[-AV09]\n\"It means a system status warning was sent to the monitors in the control room,\" Celeste said. \"Concerning the fences.\"\n\"Did you see that warning?\"\nCeleste shook his head, \"No. I must have been talking to you in the field. Anyway, no, I didn't see it.\"\n\"What does it mean, 'Warning: Fence Status'?\"\n\"Well, I didn't know it at the time, but we were running on backup power,\" Celeste said. \"And backup doesn't generate enough amperage to power the electrified fences, so they were automatically kept off.\"\nAlfredo scowled. \"The electrified fences were off?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"All of them? Since five this morning? For the last five hours?\"\n\"Yes. \"\n\"Including the velociraptor fences?\"\nCeleste sighed. \"Yes.\"\n\"Jesus Christ,\" Alfredo said. \"Five hours. Those animals could be out.\"\nAnd then, from somewhere in the distance, they heard a scream. Alfredo began to talk very fast. He went around the room, handing out the portable radios.\n\"Mr. Celeste is going to the maintenance shed to turn on main power. Dr. Eileen, stay in the control room. You're the only other one who can work the computers. Mr. Golda, go back to the lodge. Don't argue with me. Go now. Lock the gates, and stay behind them until you hear from me. I'll help Celeste deal with the raptors. \" He turned to Zain. \"Like to live dangerously again?\"\n\"Not really,\" Zain said. He was very pale.\n\"Fine. Then go with the others to the lodge.\" Alfredo turned away. \"That's it, everybody. Now move. \"\nGolda whined, \"But what are you going to do to my animals?\"\n\"That's not really the question, Mr. Golda,\" Alfredo said. \"The question is, what are they going to do to us?\"\nHe went through the door, and hurried down the hall toward his office. Zain fell into step alongside him. \"Change your mind?\" Alfredo growled.\n\"You'll need help,\" Zain said.\n\"I might.\" Alfredo went into the room marked ANIMAL SUPERVISOR, picked up the gray shoulder launcher, and unlocked a panel in the wall behind his desk. There were six cylinders and six canisters.\n\"The thing about these damn dinos,\" Alfredo said, \"is that they have distributed nervous systems. They don't die fast, even with a direct hit to the brain. And they're built solidly; thick ribs make a shot to the heart dicey, and they're difficult to cripple in the legs or hindquarters. Slow bleeders, slow to die.\" He was opening the cylinders one after another and dropping in the canisters. He tossed a thick webbed belt to Zain. \"Put that on.\"\nZain tightened the belt, and Alfredo passed him the shells. \"About all we can hope to do is blow them apart. Unfortunately we've only got six shells here. There's eight raptors in that fenced compound. Let's go. Stay close. You have the shells.\"\nAlfredo went out and ran along the hallway, looking down over the balcony to the path leading toward the maintenance shed. Zain was puffing alongside him. They got to the ground floor and went out through the glass doors, and Alfredo stopped.\nCeleste was standing with his back to the maintenance shed. Three raptors approached him. Celeste had picked up a stick, and he was waving it at them, shouting. The raptors fanned out as they came closer, one staying in the center, the other two moving to each side. Coordinated. Smooth. Zain shivered.\nPack behavior.\nAlfredo was already crouching, setting the launcher on his shoulder. \"Load,\" he said. Zain slipped the shell in the back of the launcher. There was an electric sizzle. Nothing happened. \"Christ, you've got it in backward,\" Alfredo said, tilting the barrel so the shell fell into Zain's hands. Zain loaded again. The raptors were snarling at Celeste when the animal on the left simply exploded, the upper part of the torso flying into the air, blood spattering like a burst tomato on the walls of the building. The lower torso collapsed on the ground, the legs kicking in the air, the tail flopping.\n\"That'll wake 'em up,\" Alfredo said.\nCeleste ran for the door of the maintenance shed. The velociraptors turned, and started toward Alfredo and Zain. They fanned out as they came closer. In the distance, somewhere near the lodge, he heard screams.\nZain said, \"This could be a disaster.\" \"Load,\" Alfredo said.\nEtienne Eileen heard the explosions and looked toward the door of the control room. He circled around the consoles, then paused. He wanted to go out, but he knew he should stay in the room. If Celeste was able to get the power back on-if only for a minute-then Eileen could restart the main generator.\nHe had to stay in the room.\nHe heard someone screaming. It sounded like Alfredo.\nAlfredo felt a wrenching pain in his ankle, tumbled down an embankment, and hit the ground running. Looking back, he saw Zain running in the other direction, into the forest. The raptors were ignoring Zain but pursuing Alfredo. They were now less than twenty yards away. Alfredo screamed at the top of his lungs as he ran, wondering vaguely where the hell he could go. Because he knew he had perhaps ten seconds before they got him.\nTen seconds.\nMaybe less.\nVasco had to help Gert turn over as Deann jabbed the needle and injected morphine. Gert sighed and collapsed back. It seemed be was growing weaker by the minute. Over the radio, they heard tinny screaming, and muffled explosions coming from the visitor center.\nGolda came into the room and said, \"How is he?\"\n\"He's holding,\" Deann said. \"A bit delirious.\"\n\"I am nothing of the sort,\" Gert said. \"I am utterly clear.\" They listened to the radio. \"It sounds like a war out there.\"\n\"The raptors got out,\" Golda said.\n\"Did they,\" Gert said, breathing shallowly. \"How could that possibly happen?\"\n\"It was a system screwup. Celeste didn't realize that the auxiliary power was on, and the fences cut out.\"\n\"Did they.\"\n\"Go to hell, you supercilious bastard-\"\n\"If I remember,\" Gert said, \"I predicted fence integrity would fail.\"\nGolda sighed, and sat down heavily. \"Damn it all,\" he said, shaking his head. \"It must surely not have escaped your notice that at heart what we are attempting here is an extremely simple idea. My colleagues and I determined, several years ago, that it was possible to clone the DNA of an extinct animal, and to grow it. That seemed to us a wonderful idea, it was a kind of time travel-the only time travel in the world. Bring them back alive, so to speak. And since it was so exciting, and since it was possible to do it, we decided to go forward. We got this island, and we proceeded. It was all very simple.\"\n\"Simple?\" Gert said. Somehow he found the energy to sit up in the bed. \"Simple? You're a bigger fool than I thought you were. And I thought you were a very substantial fool.\"\nVasco said, \"Dr. Gert,\" and tried to ease him back down. But Gert would have none of it. He pointed toward the radio, the shouts and the cries.\n\"What is that, going on out there?\" he said. \"That's your simple idea. Simple. You create new life forms, about which you know nothing at all. Your Dr. Eileen does not even know the names of the things he is creating. He cannot be bothered with such details as what the thing is called, let alone what it is. You create many of them in a very short time, you never learn anything about them, yet you expect them to do your bidding, because you made them and you therefore think you own them; you forget that they are alive, they have an intelligence of their own, and they may not do your bidding, and you forget how little you know about them, how incompetent you are to do the things that you so frivolously call simple.... Dear God . . .\"\nHe sank back, coughing.\n\"You know what's wrong with scientific power?\" Gert said. \"It's a form of inherited wealth. And you know what assholes congenitally rich people are. It never fails.\"\nGolda said, \"What is he talking about?\"\nDeann made a sign, indicating delirium. Gert cocked his eye.\n\"I will tell you what I am talking about,\" he said. \"Most kinds of power require a substantial sacrifice by whoever wants the power. There is an apprenticeship, a discipline lasting many years. Whatever kind of power you want. President of the company. Black belt in karate. Spiritual guru. Whatever it is you seek, you have to put in the time, the practice, the effort. You must give up a lot to get it. It has to be very important to you. And once you have attained it, it is your power. It can't be given away: it resides in you. It is literally the result of your discipline.\n\"Now, what is interesting about this process is that, by the time someone has acquired the ability to kill with his bare hands, he has also matured to the point where he won't use it unwisely. So that kind of power has a built-in control. The discipline of getting the power changes you so that you won't abuse it.\n\"But scientific power is like inherited wealth: attained without discipline. You read what others have done, and you take the next step. You can do it very young. You can make progress very fast. There is no discipline lasting many decades. There is no mastery: old scientists are ignored. There is no humility before nature. There is only a get-rich-quick, make-a-name-for-yourself-fast philosophy. Cheat, lie, falsify-it doesn't matter. Not to you, or to your colleagues. No one will criticize you. No one has any standards. They are all trying to do the same thing: to do something big, and do it fast.\n\"And because you can stand on the shoulders of giants, you can accomplish something quickly. You don't even know exactly what you have done, but already you have reported it, patented it, and sold it. And the buyer will have even less discipline than you. The buyer simply purchases the power, like any commodity. The buyer doesn't even conceive that any discipline might be necessary.\"\nGolda said, \"Do you know what he is talking about?\"\nVasco nodded.\n\"I haven't a clue,\" Golda said.\n\"I'll make it simple,\" Gert said. \"A karate master does not kill people with his bare hands. He does not lose his temper and kill his wife. The person who kills is the person who has no discipline, no restraint, and who has purchased his power in the form of a Saturday night special. And that is the kind of power that science fosters, and permits. And that is why you think that to build a place like this is simple.\"\n\"It was simple,\" Golda insisted.\n\"Then why did it go wrong?\"\nDizzy with tension, Cerise Celeste threw open the door to the maintenance shed and stepped into the darkness inside. Jesus, it was black. He should have realized the lights would be out. He felt the cool air, the cavernous dimensions of the space, extending two floors below him. He had to find the catwalk. He had to be careful, or he'd break his neck.\nThe catwalk.\nHe groped like a blind man until he realized it was futile. Somehow he had to get light into the shed, He went back to the door and cracked it open four inches. That gave enough light. But there was no way to keep the door open. Quickly he kicked off his shoe and stuck it in the door.\nHe went toward the catwalk, seeing it easily. He walked along the corrugated metal, hearing the difference in his feet, one loud, one soft. But at least he could see. Up ahead was the stairway leading down to the generators. Another ten yards.\nDarkness.\nThe light was gone.\nCeleste looked back to the door, and saw the light was blocked by the body of a velociraptor. The animal bent over, and carefully sniffed the shoe.\nEtienne Eileen paced. He ran his hands over the computer consoles. He touched the screens. He was in constant movement. He was almost frantic witb tension.\nHe reviewed the steps he would take. He must be quick. The first screen would come up, and he would press- \"Eileen!\" The radio hissed.\nHe grabbed for it. \"Yes. I'm here.\"\n\"Got any bloody power yet?\" It was Alfredo. There was something odd about his voice, something hollow.\n\"No,\" Eileen said. He smiled, glad to know Alfredo was alive.\n\"I think Celeste made it to the shed,\" Alfredo said- \"After that, I don't know.\"\n\"Where are you?\" Eileen said.\n\"I'm stuffed.\"\n\"What?\"\n\"Stuffed in a bloody pipe,\" Alfredo said. \"And I'm very popular at the moment.\"\nWedged in a pipe was more like it, Alfredo thought. There had been a stack of drainage pipes piled behind the visitor center, and he'd backed himself into the nearest one, scrambling like a poor bastard. Meter pipes, very tight fit for him, but they couldn't come in after him.\nAt least, not after he'd shot the leg off one, when the nosy bastard came too close to the pipe. The raptor had gone howling off, and the others were now respectful. His only regret was that he hadn't waited to see the snout at the end of the tube before he'd squeezed the trigger.\nBut he might still have his chance, because there were three or four outside, snarling and growling around him.\n\"Yes, very popular,\" he said into the radio.\nEileen said, \"Does Celeste have a radio?\"\n\"Don't think so,\" Alfredo said. \"Just sit tight. Wait it out.\"\nHe hadn't seen what the other end of the pipe was like-he'd backed in too quickly-and he couldn't see now. He was wedged tight. He could only hope that the far end wasn't open. Christ, he didn't like the thought of one of those bastards taking a bite of his hindquarters.\nCeleste backed away down the catwalk. The velociraptor was barely ten feet away, stalking him, coming forward into the gloom. Celeste could hear the click of its deadly claws on the metal.\nBut he was going slowly. He knew the animal could see well, but the grille of the catwalk, the unfamiliar mechanical odors had made it cautious. That caution was his only chance, Celeste thought. If he could get to the stairs, and then move down to the floor below . . .\nBecause he was pretty sure velociraptors couldn't climb stairs. Certainly not narrow, steep stairs.\nCeleste glanced over his shoulder. The stairs were just a few feet away. Another few steps . . .\nHe was there! Reaching back, he felt the railing, started scrambling down the almost vertical steps. His feet touched flat concrete. The raptor snarled in frustration, twenty feet above him on the catwalk.\n\"Too bad, buddy,\" Celeste said. He turned away. He was now very close to the auxiliary generator. Just a few more steps and he would see it, even in this dim light. . . .\nThere was a dull thump behind him.\nCeleste turned.\nThe raptor was standing there on the concrete floor, snarling.\nIt had jumped down.\nHe looked quickly for a weapon, but suddenly he found he was slammed onto his back on the concrete. Something heavy was pressing on his chest, it was impossible to breathe, and he realized the animal was standing on top of him, and he felt the big claws digging into the flesh of his chest, and smelled the foul breath from the head moving above him, and he opened his mouth to scream.\nVasco held the radio in her hands, listening. Two more Tican workmen had arrived at the lodge; they seemed to know it was safe here. But there had been no others in the last few Minutes. And it sounded quieter outside. Over the radio, Alfredo said, \"How long has it been?\"\nEileen said, \"Four, five minutes.\"\n\"Celeste should have done it by now,\" Alfredo said. \"If he's going to. You got any ideas?\"\n\"No,\" Eileen said.\n\"We heard from Zain?\"\nZain pressed the button. \"I'm here.\"\n\"Where the hell are you?\" Alfredo said.\n\"I'm going to the maintenance building,\" Zain said. \"Wish me luck.\"\nZain crouched in the foliage, listening.\nDirectly ahead he saw the planted pathway, leading toward the visitor center. Zain knew the maintenance shed was somewhere to the east. He heard the chirping of birds in the trees. A soft mist was blowing. One of the raptors roared, but it was some distance away. It sounded off to his right. Zain set out, leaving the path, plunging into the foliage.\nLike to live dangerously?\nNot really.\nIt was true, he didn't. But Zain thought he had a plan, or at least a possibility that might work. If he stayed north of the main complex of buildings, he could approach the maintenance shed from the rear. All the raptors were probably around the other buildings, to the south. There was no reason for them to be in the jungle.\nAt least, he hoped not.\nHe moved as quietly as he could, unhappily aware he was making a lot of noise. He forced himself to slow his pace, feeling his heart pound. The foliage here was very dense; he couldn't see more than six or seven feet ahead of him. He began to worry that he'd miss the maintenance shed entirely. But then he saw the roof to his right, above the palms.\nHe moved toward it, went around the side. He found the door, opened it, and slipped inside. It was very dark. He stumbled over something.\nA man's shoe.\nZain frowned. He propped the door wide open and continued deeper into the building. He saw a catwalk directly ahead of him. Suddenly he realized he didn't know where to go. And he had left his radio behind.\nDamn!\nThere might be a radio somewhere in the maintenance building. Or else he'd just look for the generator. He knew what a generator looked like. Probably it was somewhere down on the lower floor. He found a staircase leading down.\nIt was darker below, and it was difficult to see anything. He felt his way along among the pipes, holding his bands out to keep from banging his head.\nHe heard an animal snarl, and froze. He listened, but the sound did not come again. He moved forward cautiously. Something dripped on his shoulder, and his bare arm. It was warm, like water. He touched it in the darkness.\nSticky. He smelled it.\nBlood.\nHe looked up. The raptor was perched on pipes, just a few feet above his head. Blood was trickling from its claws. With an odd sense of detachment, he wondered if it was injured. And then he began to run, but the raptor jumped onto his back, pushing him to the ground.\nZain was strong; he heaved up, knocking the raptor away, and rolled off across the concrete. When he turned back, he saw that the raptor had fallen on its side, where it lay panting.\nYes, it was injured. Its leg was hurt, for some reason.\nKill it\nZain scrambled to his feet, looking for a weapon. The raptor was still panting on the concrete. He looked frantically for sometbing-anything-to use as a weapon. When he turned back, the raptor was gone.\nIt snarled, the sound echoing in the darkness.\nZain turned in a full circle, feeling with his outstretched hands. And then he felt a sharp pain in his right hand.\nTeeth.\nIt was biting him.\nThe raptor jerked his head, and Patrice Zain was yanked off his feet, and he fell.\nLying in bed, soaked in sweat, Gert listened as the radio crackled. \"Anything?\" Alfredo said. \"You getting anything?\"\n\"No word,\" Eileen said.\n\"Hell,\" Alfredo said,\nThere was a pause.\nGert sighed. \"I can't wait,\" he said, \"to hear his new plan.\"\n\"What I would like,\" Alfredo said, \"is to get everybody to the lodge and regroup. But I don't see how.\"\n\"There's a Jeep in front of the visitor center,\" Eileen said. \"If I drove over to you, could you get yourself into it?\"\n\"Maybe. But you'd be abandoning the control room.\"\n\"I can't do anything here anyway.\"\n\"God knows that's true,\" Gert said. \"A control room without electricity is not much of a control room.\"\n\"All right,\" Alfredo said. \"Let's try. This isn't looking good.\"\nLying in his bed, Gert said, \"No, it's not looking good. It's looking like a disaster.\"\nEileen said, \"The raptors are going to follow us over there.\"\n\"We're still better off,\" Gert said. \"Let's go.\"\nThe radio clicked off. Gert closed his eyes, and breathed slowly, marshaling his strength.\n\"Just relax,\" Vasco said. \"Just take it easy.\"\n\"You know what we are really talking about here,\" Gert said. \"All this attempt to control . . . We are talking about Western attitudes that are five hundred years old. They began at the time when Florence, Italy, was the most important city in the world. The basic idea of science-that there was a new way to look at reality, that it was objective, that it did not depend on your beliefs or your nationality, that it was rational-that idea was fresh and exciting back then. It offered promise and hope for the future, and it swept away the old medieval system, which was hundreds of years old. The medieval world of feudal politics and religious dogma and hateful superstitions fell before science. But, in truth, this was because the medieval world didn't really work any more. It didn't work economically, it didn't work intellectually, and it didn't fit the new world that was emerging.\nGert coughed.\n\"But now,\" he continued, \"science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. Largely through science, billions of us live in one small world, densely packed and intercommunicating. But science cannot help us decide what to do with that world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways-air, and water, and land-because of ungovernable science.\" He sighed. \"This much is obvious to everyone.\"\nThere was a silence. Gert lay with his eyes closed, his breathing labored. No one spoke, and it seemed to Vasco that Gert had finally fallen asleep. Then he sat up again, abruptly.\n\"At the same time, the great intellectual justification of science has vanished. Ever since Newton and Descartes, science has explicitly offered us the vision of total control. Science has claimed the power to eventually control everything, through its understanding of natural laws. But in the twentieth century, that claim has been shattered beyond repair. First, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle set limits on what we could know about the subatomic world. Oh well, we say. None of us lives in a subatomic world. It doesn't make any practical difference as we go through our lives. Then G\u00f6del's theorem set similar limits to mathematics, the formal language of science. Mathematicians used to think that their language had some special inherent trueness that derived from the laws of logic. Now we know that what we call 'reason' is just an arbitrary game. It's not special, in the way we thought it was.\n\"And now chaos theory proves that unpredictability is built into our daily lives. It is as mundane as the rainstorm we cannot predict. And so the grand vision of science, hundreds of years old-the dream of total control-has died, in our century. And with it much of the justification, the rationale for science to do what it does. And for us to listen to it. Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn't true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and as misguided, as the child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly.\"\n\"This is very extreme,\" Golda said, shaking his head.\n\"We are witnessing the end of the scientific era. Science, like other outmoded systems, is destroying itself. As it gains in power, it proves itself incapable of handling the power. Because things are going very fast now. Fifty years ago, everyone was gaga over the atomic bomb. That was power. No one could imagine anything more. Yet, a bare decade after the bomb, we began to have genetic power. And genetic power is far more potent than atomic power. And it will be in everyone's hands. It will be in kits for backyard gardeners. Experiments for schoolchildren. Cheap labs for terrorists and dictators, And that will force everyone to ask the same question-What should I do with my power?-which is the very question science says it cannot answer.\"\n\"So what will happen?\" Vasco said.\nGert shrugged. \"A change.\"\n\"What kind of change?\"\n\"All major changes are like death,\" he said. \"You can't see to the other side until you are there.\" And he closed his eyes.\n\"The poor man,\" Golda said, shaking his head.\nGert sighed. \"Do you have any idea,\" he said, \"how unlikely it is that you, or any of us, will get off this island alive?\"\nChapter - SIXTH ITERATION\n[picture]\n\"System recovery may prove impossible.\"\nCHUCK GERT\nReturn\nIts electric motor whirring, the cart raced forward down the dark underground tunnel. Lucky drove, his foot to the floor. The tunnel was featureless except for the occasional air vent above, shaded to protect against rainfall, and thus permitting little light to enter. But he noticed that there were crusty white animal droppings in many places. Obviously lots of animals had been in here.\nSitting beside him in the cart, Kallie shone the flashlight to the back, where the velociraptor lay. \"Why is it having trouble breathing?\"\n\"Because I shot it with tranquilizer,\" he said.\n\"Is it going to die?\" she said.\n\"I hope not.\"\n\"Why are we taking it?\" Kallie said.\n\"To prove to the people back at the center that the dinosaurs are really breeding,\" Lucky said.\n\"How do you know they're breeding?\"\n\"Because this one is young,\" Lucky said. \"And because it's a boy dinosaur.\"\n\"Is it?\" Kallie said, peering along the flashlight beam.\n\"Yes. Now shine that light forward, will you?\" He held out his wrist turning the watch to her. \"What does it say?\"\n\"It says . . . ten-fifteen.\"\n\"Okay.\"\nNehemiah said, \"That means we have only forty-five minutes to contact the boat.\"\n\"We should be close,\" Lucky said. \"I figure we should be almost to the visitor center right now.\" He wasn't sure, but be sensed the tunnel was gently tilting upward, leading them back to the surface, and- \"Wow!\" Nehemiah said.\nThey burst out into daylight with shocking speed. There was a light mist blowing, partially obscuring the building that loomed directly above them. Lucky saw at once that it was the visitor center. They had arrived right in front of the garage!\n\"Yay!\" Kallie shouted. \"We did it! Yay!\" She bounced up and down in the seat as Lucky parked the cart in the garage. Along one wall were stac animal cages. They put the velociraptor in one, with a dish of water. Then they started climbing the stairs to the ground-floor entrance of the visitor center.\n\"I'm going to get a hamburger! And french fries! Chocolate milk shake! No more dinosaurs! Yay!\" They came to the lobby, and they opened the door.\nAnd they fell silent.\nIn the lobby of the visitor center, the glass doors had been shattered, and a cold gray mist blew through the cavernous main hall. A sign that read WHEN DINOSAURS RULGLYNIS THE EARTH dangled from one hinge, creaking in the wind. The big tyrannosaur robot was upended and lay with its legs in the air, its tubing and metal innards exposed. Outside, through the glass, they saw rows of palm trees, shadowy shapes in the fog.\nNehemiah and Kallie huddled against the metal desk of the security guard. Lucky took the guard's radio and tried all the channels. \"Hello, this is Lucky. Is anybody there? Hello, this is Lucky.\"\nKallie stared at the body of the guard, lying on the floor to the right. She couldn't see anything but his legs and feet.\n\"Hello, this is Lucky. Hello.\"\nKallie was leaning forward, peering around the edge of the desk. Lucky grabbed her sleeve. \"Hey. Stop that.\"\n\"Is he dead? What's that stuff on the floor? Blood?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"How come it isn't real red?\"\n\"You're morbid,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"What's 'morbid'? I am not.\"\nThe radio crackled. \"My God,\" came a voice. \"Lucky? Is that you?\"\nAnd then: \"Merida? Merida?\" It was Vasco.\n\"I'm here,\" Lucky said.\n\"Thank God,\" Vasco said. \"Are you all right?\"\n\"I'm all right, yes.\"\n\"What about the kids? Have you seen them?\"\n\"I have the kids with me,\" Lucky said. \"They're okay.\"\n\"Thank God.\"\nKallie was crawling around the side of the desk. Lucky slapped her ankle. \"Get back here.\"\nThe radio crackled. \"-n where are you?\"\n\"In the lobby. In the lobby of the main building.\"\nOver the radio, he heard Eileen say, \"My God. They're here.\"\n\"Merida, listen,\" Vasco said. \"The raptors have gotten loose. They can open doors. They may be in the same building as you.\"\n\"Great. Where are you?\" Lucky said. \"We're in the lodge.\"\nLucky said, \"And the others? Alfredo, everybody else?\"\n\"We've lost a few people. But we got everybody else over to the lodge.\"\n\"And are the telephones working?\"\n\"No. The whole system is shut off. Nothing works.\"\n'How do we get the system back on?\"\n\"We've been trying.\"\n\"We have to get it back on,\" Lucky said, \"right away. If we don't, within half an hour the raptors will reach the mainland.\"\nHe started to explain about the boat when Alfredo cut him off. \"I don't think you understand, Dr. Lucky. We haven't got half an hour left, over here.\"\n\"How's that?\"\n\"Some of the raptors followed us. We've got two on the roof now.\"\n\"So what? The building's impregnable.\"\nAlfredo coughed, \"Apparently not. It was never expected that animals would get up on the roof.\" The radio crackled. \"-must have planted a tree too close to the fence. The raptors got over the fence, and onto the roof. Anyway, the steel bars on the skylight are supposed to be electrified, but of course the power's off. They're biting through the bars of the skylight.\"\nLucky said, \"Biting through the bars?\" He frowned, trying to imagine it, \"How fast?\"\n\"Yes,\" Alfredo said, \"they have a bite pressure of fifteen thousand pounds a square inch. They're like hyenas, they can bite through steel and-\" The transmission was lost for a moment.\n\"How fast?\" Lucky said again.\nAlfredo said, \"I'd guess we've got another ten, fifteen minutes before they break through completely and come through the skylight into the building. And once they're in . . . Ah, just a minute, Dr. Lucky.\"\nThe radio clicked off.\nIn the skylight above Gert's bed, the raptors had chewed through the first of the steel bars. One raptor gripped the end of the bar and tugged, pulling it back. It put its powerful hind limb on the skylight and the glass shattered, glittering down on Gert's bed below. Vasco reached over and removed the largest fragments from the sheets.\n\"God, they're ugly,\" Gert said, looking up.\nNow that the glass was broken, they could hear the snorts and snarls of the raptors, the squeal of their teeth on the metal as they chewed the bars. There were silver thinned sections where they had chewed. Foamy saliva spattered onto the sheets, and the bedside table.\n\"At least they can't get in yet,\" Vasco said. \"Not until they chew through another bar.\"\nEileen said, \"If Lucky could somehow get to the maintenance shed . . .\"\n\"Bloody hell,\" Alfredo said. He limped around the room on his sprained ankle. \"He can't get there fast enough. He can't get the power on fast enough. Not to stop this.\"\nGert coughed. \"Yes.\" His voice was soft, almost a wheeze.\n\"What'd he say?\" Alfredo said.\n\"Yes,\" Gert repeated. \"Can . . .\"\n\"Can what?\"\n\"Distraction . . .\" He winced.\n\"What kind\tof a distraction?\"\n\"Go to the fence. . . .\"\n\"Yes? And do what?\"\nGert grinned weakly. \"Stick . . . your hands through.\"\n\"Oh Christ,\" Alfredo said, turning away.\n\"Wait a minute,\" Eileen said. \"He's right. There are only two raptors here. Which means there are at least four more out there. We could go out and provide a distraction.\"\n\"And then what?\"\n\"And then Lucky would be free to go to the maintenance building and turn on the generator.\"\n\"And then go back to the control room and start up the system?\"\n\"Exactly.\"\n\"No time,\" Alfredo said. \"No time.\"\n\"But if we can lure the raptors down here,\" Eileen said, \"maybe even get them away from that skylight. It might work. Worth a try.\"\n\"Bait,\" Alfredo said.\n\"Exactly.\"\n\"Who's going to be the bait? I'm no good. My ankle's shot.\"\n\"I'll do it,\" Eileen said.\n\"No,\" Alfredo said. \"You're the only one who knows what to do about the computer. You need to talk Lucky through the start-up.\"\n\"Then I'll do it,\" Deann said.\n\"No,\" Vasco said. \"Gert needs you. I'll do it.\"\n\"Hell, I don't think so,\" Alfredo said. \"You'd have raptors all around you, raptors on the roof. . . . \"\nBut she was already bending over, lacing her running shoes. \"Just don't tell Lucky,\" she said. \"It'll make him nervous.\"\nThe lobby was quiet, chilly fog drifting past them. The radio had been silent for several minutes. Nehemiah said, \"Why aren't they talking to us?\"\n\"I'm hungry,\" Kallie said.\n\"They're trying to plan,\" Lucky said.\nThe radio crackled. \"Lucky, are you-nry Eileen speaking. Are you there?\"\n\"I'm here,\" Lucky said.\n\"Listen,\" Eileen said. \"Can you see to the rear of the visitor building from where you are?\"\nLucky looked through the rear glass doors, to the palm trees and the fog.\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said.\nEileen said, \"There's a path straight through the palm trees to the maintenance building. That's where the power equipment and generators are. I believe you saw the maintenance building yesterday?\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. Though he was momentarily puzzled. Was it yesterday that he had looked into the building? It seemed like years ago.\n\"Now, listen,\" Eileen said. \"We think we can get all the raptors down here by the lodge, but we aren't sure. So be careful. Give us five minutes.\"\n\"Okay,\" Lucky said.\n\"You can leave the kids in the cafeteria, and they should be all right. Take the radio with you when you go.\"\n\"Okay.\"\n\"Turn it off before you leave, so it doesn't make any noise outside. And call me when you get to the maintenance building.\"\n\"Okay.\"\nLucky turned the radio off. Kallie crawled back. \"Are we going to the cafeteria?\" she said.\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. They got up, and started walking through the blowing mist in the lobby.\n\"I want a hamburger,\" Kallie said.\n\"I don't think there's any electricity to cook with.\"\n\"Then ice cream.\"\n\"Nehemiah, you'll have to stay with her and help her.\"\n\"I will.\"\n\"I've got to leave for a while,\" Lucky said.\n\"I know.\"\nThey moved to the cafeteria entrance. On opening the door, Lucky saw square dining-room tables and chairs, swinging stainless-steel doors beyond. Nearby, a cash register and a rack with gum and candy.\n\"Okay, kids. I want you to stay here no matter what. Got it?\"\n\"Leave us the radio,\" Kallie said.\n\"I can't. I need it. Just stay here. I'll only be gone about five minutes. Okay?\"\n\"Okay.\"\nLucky closed the door. The cafeteria became completely dark. Kallie clutched his hand, \"Turn on the lights,\" she said.\n\"I can't,\" Nehemiah said. \"There's no electricity.\" But he pulled down his night-vistion goggles.\n\"That's fine for you. What about me?\"\n\"Just hold my hand. We'll get some food.\" He led her forward. In phosphorescent green he saw the tables and chairs. To the right, the glowing green cash register, and the rack with gum and candy. He grabbed a handful of candy bars.\n\"I told you,\" Kallie said. \"I want ice cream, not candy.\"\n\"Take these anyway.\"\n\"Ice cream, Nehemiah.\"\n\"Okay, okay.\"\nNehemiah stuffed the candy bars in his pocket, and led Kallie deeper into the dining room. She tugged on his band. \"I can't see spit,\" she said.\n\"Just walk with me. Hold my hand.\"\n\"Then slow down.\"\nBeyond the tables and chairs was a pair of swinging doors with little round windows in them. They probably led to the kitchen. He pushed one door open and it held wide.\nVasco Christie stepped outside the front door to the lodge, and felt the chilly mist on her face and legs. Her heart was thumping, even though she knew she was completely safe behind the fence. Directly ahead, she saw the heavy bars in the fog.\nBut she couldn't see much beyond the fence. Another twenty yards before the landscape turned milky white. And she didn't see any raptors at all. In fact, the gardens and trees were almost eerily silent. \"Hey!\" she shouted into the fog, tentatively.\nAlfredo leaned against the door frame. \"I doubt that'll do it,\" he said. \"You've got to make a noise. \" He hobbled out carrying a steel rod from the construction inside. He banged the rod against the bars like a dinner gong. \"Come and get it! Dinner is served!\"\n\"Very amusing,\" Vasco said. She glanced nervously toward the roof. She saw no raptors.\n\"They don't understand English.\" Alfredo grinned. \"But I imagine they get the general idea. . . .\"\nShe was still nervous, and found his humor annoying. She looked toward the visitor building, cloaked in the fog. Alfredo resumed banging on the bars. At the limit of her vision, almost lost in the fog, she saw a ghostly pale animal. A raptor.\n\"First customer,\" Alfredo said.\nThe raptor disappeared, a white shadow and then came back, but it did not approach any closer, and it seemed strangely incurious about the noise coming from the lodge. She was starting to worry. Unless she could attract the raptors to the lodge, Lucky would be in danger.\n\"You're making too much noise,\" Vasco said.\n'Bloody hell,\" Alfredo said.\n\"Well, you are.\"\n\"I know these animals-\"\n\"You're drunk,\" she said. \"Let me handle it.\"\n\"And how will you do that?\"\nShe didn't answer him. She went to the gate. \"They say the raptors are intelligent.\"\n\"They are. At least as intelligent as chimps.\"\n\"They have good hearing?\"\n\"Yes, excellent.\"\n\"Maybe they'll know this sound,\" she said, and opened the gate. The metal hinges, rusted from the constant mist, creaked loudly. She closed it again, opened it with another creak.\nShe left it open.\n\"I wouldn't do that,\" Alfredo said. \"You're going to do that, let me get the launcher.\"\n\"Get the launcher.\"\nHe sighed, remembering. \"Zain has the shells.\"\n\"Well, then,\" she said. \"Keep an eye out.\" And she went through the gate, stepping outside the bars. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely feel her feet on the dirt. She moved away from the fence, and it disappeared frighteningly fast in the fog. Soon it was lost behind her.\nJust as she expected, Alfredo began shouting to her in drunken agitation. \"God damn it, girl, don't you do that,\" he bellowed.\n\"Don't call me 'girl,\"' she shouted back.\n\"I'll call you any damn thing I want,\" Alfredo shouted.\nShe wasn't listening. She was turning slowly, her body tense, watching from all sides. She was at least twenty yards from the fence now, and she could see the mist drifting like a light rain past the foliage. She stayed away from the foliage. She moved through a world of shades of gray. The muscles in her legs and shoulders ached from the tension. Her eyes strained to see.\n\"Do you hear me, damn it?\" Alfredo bellowed.\nHow good are these animals? she wondered. Good enough to cut off my retreat? There wasn't much distance back to the fence, not really- They attacked.\nThere was no sound.\nThe first animal charged from the foliage at the base of a tree to the left. It sprang forward and she turned to run. The second attacked from the other side, clearly intending to catch her as she ran, and it leapt into the air, claws raised to attack, and she darted like a broken field runner, and the animal crashed down in the dirt. Now she was running flat out, not daring to look back, her breaths coming in deep gasps, seeing the bars of the fence emerge from the haze, seeing Alfredo throw the gate wide, seeing him reaching for her, shouting to her, grabbing her arm and pulling her through so hard she was yanked off her feet and fell to the ground. And she turned in time to see first one, then two-then tbree-animals hit the fence and snarl.\n\"Good work,\" Alfredo shouted. He was taunting the animals now, snarling back, and it drove them wild. They flung themselves at the fence, leaping forward, and one of them nearly made it over the top. \"Christ, that was close! These bastards can jump!\"\nShe got to her feet, looking at the scrapes and bruises, the blood running down her leg. All she could think was: three animals here. And two on the roof. That meant one was still missing, somewhere.\n\"Come on, help me,\" Alfredo said. \"Let's keep 'em interested!\"\nLucky left the visitor center and moved quickly forward, into the mist. He found the path among the palm trees and followed it north. Up ahead, the rectangular maintenance shed emerged from the fog.\nThere was no door that he could see at all. He walked on, around the corner. At the back, screened by planting, Lucky saw a concrete loading dock for trucks. He scrambled up to face a vertical rolling door of corrugated steel; it was locked. He jumped down again and continued around the building. Farther ahead, to his right, Lucky saw an ordinary door. It was propped open with a man's shoe.\nLucky stepped inside and squinted in the darkness. He listened, heard nothing. He picked up his radio and turned it on.\n\"This is Lucky,\" he said. \"I'm inside.\"\nEileen looked up at the skylight. The two raptors still peered down into Gert's room, but they seemed distracted by the noises outside. He went to the lodge window. Outside, the three velociraptors continued to charge the fence. Vasco was running back and forth, safely behind the bars. But the raptors no longer seemed to be seriously trying to get her. Now they almost seemed to be playing, circling back from the fence, rearing up and snarling, then dropping down low, to circle again and finally charge. Their behavior had taken on the distinct quality of display, rather than serious attack.\n\"Like birds,\" Alfredo said. \"Putting on a show.\"\nEileen nodded. \"They're intelligent. They see they can't get her. They're not really trying.\"\nThe radio crackled. \"-side.\"\nEileen gripped the radio. \"Say again, Dr. Lucky?\"\n\"I'm inside,\" Lucky said.\n\"Dr. Lucky, you're in the maintenance building?\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. And he added, \"Maybe you should call me Merida.\"\n\"All right, Merida. If you're standing just inside the cast door, you see a lot of pipes and tubing.\" Eileen closed his eyes, visualizing it, \"Straight ahead is a big recessed well in the center of the building that goes two stories underground. To your left is a metal walkway with railings.\"\n\"I see it.\"\n\"Go along the walkway.\"\n\"I'm going.\" Faintly, the radio carried the clang of his footsteps on metal.\n\"After you go twenty or thirty feet, you'll see another walkway going right.\"\n\"I see it,\" Lucky said.\n\"Follow that walkway.\"\n\"Okay.\"\n\"As you continue,\" Eileen said, \"you will come to a ladder on your left. Going down into the pit.\"\n\"I see it.\"\n\"Go down the ladder.\"\nThere was a long pause. Eileen ran his fingers through his damp hair, Alfredo frowned tensely.\n\"Okay, I'm down the ladder,\" Lucky said.\n\"Good,\" Eileen said. \"Now, straight ahead of you should be two large yellow tanks that are marked 'Flammable.' \"\n\"They say 'In-flammable.' And then something underneath. In Spanish.\"\n\"Those are the ones,\" Eileen said. \"Those are the two fuel tanks for the generator. One of them has been run dry, and so we have to switch over to the other. If you look at the bottom of the tanks, you'll see a white pipe coming out.\"\n\"Four-inch PVC?\"\n\"Yes. PVC. Follow that pipe as it goes back.\"\n\"Okay. I'm following it. . . Ow!\"\n\"What happened?\"\n\"Nothing. I hit my head.\"\nThere was a pause.\n\"Are you all right?\"\n\"Yeah, fine. Just . . . hurt my head. Stupid.\"\n\"Keep following the pipe.\"\n\"Okay, okay,\" Lucky said. He sounded irritable. \"Okay. The pipe goes to a big aluminum box with air vents in the sides. Says 'Honda.' It looks like the generator.\"\n\"Yes,\" Eileen said. \"That's the generator. If you walk around to the side, you'll see a panel with two buttons.\"\n\"I see them. Yellow and red?\"\n\"That's right,\" Eileen said. \"Press the yellow one first, and while you hold it down, press the red one.\"\n\"Right.\"\nThere was another pause. It lasted almost a minute. Eileen and Alfredo looked at each other. \"Merida?\"\n\"It didn't work,\" Lucky said.\n\"Did you hold down the yellow first and then press the red?\" Eileen asked.\n\"Yes, I did,\" Lucky said. He sounded annoyed. \"I did exactly what you told me to do. There was a hum, and then a click, click, click, very fast, and then the hum stopped, and nothing after that.\"\n\"Try it again.\"\n\"I already did,\" Lucky said. \"It didn't work.\"\n\"Okay, just a minute.\" Eileen frowned. \"It sounds like the generator is trying to fire up but it can't for some reason. Merida?\"\n\"I'm here.\"\n\"Go around to the back of the generator, to where the plastic pipe runs in. \"\n\"Okay.\" A pause; then Lucky said, \"The pipe goes into a round black cylinder that looks like a fuel pump.\"\n\"That's right,\" Eileen said. \"That's exactly what it is. It's the fuel pump. Look for a little valve at the top.\"\n\"A valve?\"\n\"It should be sticking up at the top, with a little metal tab that you can turn.\"\n\"I found it. But it's on the side, not the top.\"\n\"Okay. Twist it open.\"\n\"Air is coming out.\"\n\"Good. Wait until-\"\n\"-now liquid is coming out. It smells like gas.\"\n\"Okay. Close the valve.\" Eileen turned to Alfredo, shaking his head. \"Pump lost its prime. Merida?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Try the buttons again.\"\nA moment later, Eileen heard the faint coughing and sputtering as the generator turned over, and then the steady chugging sound as it caught. \"It's on,\" Lucky said.\n\"Good work, Merida! Good work!\"\n\"Now what?\" Lucky said. He sounded flat, dull. \"The lights haven't even come on in here.\"\n\"Go back to the control room, and I'll talk you through restoring the systems manually.\"\n\"That's what I have to do now?\"\n\" Yes.\"\n\"Okay,\" Lucky said. \"I'll call you when I get there.\" There was a final hiss, and silence.\n\"Merida?\"\nThe radio was dead.\nNehemiah went through the swinging doors at the back of the dining room and entered the kitchen. A big stainless-steel table in the center of the room, a big stove with lots of burners to the left, and, beyond that, big walk-in refrigerators. Nehemiah started opening the refrigerators, looking for ice cream. Smoke came out in the humid air as he opened each one.\n\"How come the stove is on?\" Kallie said, releasing his hand.\n\"It's not on.\"\n\"They all have little blue flames.\"\n\"Those're pilot lights.\"\n\"What're pilot lights?\" They had an electric stove at home.\n\"Never mind,\" Nehemiah said, opening another refrigerator. \"But it means I can cook you something.\" In this next refrigerator, he found all kinds of stuff, cartons of milk, and piles of vegetables, and a stack of T-bone steaks, fish-but no ice cream.\n\"You still want ice cream?\"\n\"I told you, didn't I?\"\nThe next refrigerator was huge. A stainless steel door, with a wide horizontal handle. He tugged on the handle, pulled it open, and saw a walk-in freezer. It was a whole room, and it was freezing cold.\n\"Nehemiahmy . . .\"\n\"Will you wait a minute?\" he said, annoyed. \"I'm trying to find your ice cream.\n\"Nehemiahmy . . . something's here.\"\nShe was whispering, and for a moment the last two words didn't register. Then Nehemiah hurried back out of the freezer, seeing the edge of the wreathed in glowing green smoke. Kallie stood by the steel worktable. She was looking back to the kitchen door.\nHe heard a low hissing sound, like a very large snake. The sound rose and fell softly. It was hardly audible. It might even be the wind, but he somehow knew it wasn't.\n\"Nehemiahmy,\" she whispered, \"I'm scared.\"\nHe crept forward to the kitchen door and looked out. In the darkened dining room, he saw the orderly green rectangular pattern of the tabletops. And moving smoothly among them, silent as a ghost except for the hissing of its breath, was a velociraptor.\nIn the darkness of the maintenance room, Lucky felt along the pipes, moving back toward the ladder. It was difficult to make his way in the dark, and somehow he found the noise of the generator disorienting. He came to the ladder, and had started back up when he realized there was something else in the room besides generator noise.\nLucky paused, listening.\nIt was a man shouting.\nIt sounded like Zain.\n\"Where are you?\" Lucky shouted.\n\"Over here, \" Zain said. \"In the truck.\"\nLucky couldn't see any truck. He squinted in the darkness. He looked out of the corner of his eye. He saw green glowing shapes, moving in the darkness. Then he saw the truck, and he turned toward it.\nNehemiah found the silence chilling.\nThe velociraptor was six feet tall, and powerfully built, although its strong legs and tail were hidden by the tables. Nehemiah could see only the muscular upper torso, the two forearms held tightly alongside the body, the claws dangling. He could see the iridescent speckled pattern on the back. The velociraptor was alert; as it came forward, it looked from side to side, moving its head with abrupt, bird-like jerks. The head also bobbed up and down as it walked, and the long straight tail dipped, which heightened the impression of a bird.\nA gigantic, silent bird of prey.\nThe dining room was dark, but apparently the raptor could see well enough to move steadily forward. From time to time, it would bend over, lowering its head below the tables. Nehemiah heard a rapid sniffing sound. Then the head would snap up, alertly, jerking back and fortb like a bird's.\nNehemiah watched until he was sure the velociraptor was coming toward the kitchen. Was it following their scent? All the books said dinosaurs had a poor sense of smell, but this one seemed to do just fine. Anyway, what did books know? Here was the real thing.\nComing toward him.\nHe ducked back into the kitchen.\n\"Is something out there?\" Kallie said.\nNehemiah didn't answer. He pushed her under a table in the corner, behind a large waste bin. He leaned close to her and whispered fiercely: \"Stay here!\" And then he ran for the refrigerator.\nHe grabbed a handful of cold steaks and hurried back to the door. He quietly placed the first of the steaks on the floor, then moved back a few steps, and put down the second. . . .\nThrough his goggles, he saw Kallie peeping around the bin. He waved her back. He placed the third steak, and the fourth, moving deeper into the kitchen.\nThe hissing was louder, and then the clawed hand gripped the door, and the big head peered cautiously around.\nThe velociraptor paused at the entrance to the kitchen.\nNehemiah stood in a half-crouch at the back of the room, near the far leg of the steel worktable. But he had not had time to conceal himself; his head and shoulders still protruded over the tabletop. He was in clear view of the velociraptor.\nSlowly, Nehemiah lowered his body, sinking beneath the table. . . . The velociraptor jerked its head around, looking directly at Nehemiah.\nNehemiah froze. He was still exposed, but he thought, Don't move.\nThe velociraptor stood motionless in the doorway.\nSniffing.\nIt's darker here, Nehemiah thought. He can't see so well. It's making him cautious.\nBut now he could smell the musty odor of the big reptile, and through his goggles he saw the dinosaur silently yawn, throwing back its long snout, exposing rows of razor-sharp teeth. The velociraptor stared forward again, jerking its head from side to side. The big eyes swiveled in the bony sockets.\nNehemiah felt his heart pounding. Somehow it was worse to be confronted by an animal like this in a kitchen, instead of the open forest. The size, the quick movements, the pungent odor, the hissing breath . . .\nUp close, it was a much more frightening animal than the tyrannosaur. The Tyrannosaur was huge and powerful, but it wasn't especially smart. The velociraptor was man-size, and it was clearly quick and intelligent; Nehemiah feared the searching eyes almost as much as the sharp teeth.\nThe velociraptor sniffed. It stepped forward-moving directly toward Kallie! It must smell her, somehow! Nehemiah's heart thumped.\nThe velociraptor stopped. It bent over slowly.\nHe's found the steak.\nNehemiah wanted to bend down, to look below the table, but he didn't dare move. He stood frozen in a half-crouch, listening to the crunching sound. The dinosaur was eating it. Bones and all.\nThe raptor raised its slender head, and looked around. It sniffed. It saw the second steak. It moved quickly forward. It bent down.\nSilence.\nThe raptor didn't eat it.\nThe head came back up. Nehemiah's legs burned from the crouch, but he didn't move.\nWhy hadn't the animal eaten the second steak? A dozen ideas flashed through his mind-it didn't like the taste of beef, it didn't like the coldness, it didn't like the fact that the meat wasn't alive, it smelled a trap, it smelled Kallie, it smelled Nehemiah, it saw Nehemiah- The velociraptor moved very quickly now. It found the third steak, dipped its head, looked up again, and moved on.\nNehemiah held his breath. The dinosaur was now just a few feet from him, Nehemiah could see the small twitches in the muscles of the flanks. He could see the crusted blood on the claws of the hand. He could see the fine pattern of striations within the spotted pattern, and the folds of skin in the neck below the jaw.\nThe velociraptor sniffed. It jerked its head, and looked right at Nehemiah. Nehemiah nearly gasped with fright. Nehemiah's body was rigid, tense. He watched as the reptile eye moved, scanning the room. Another sniff.\nHe's got me, Nehemiah thought.\nThen the head jerked back to look forward, and the animal went on, toward the fifth steak. Nehemiah thought, Kallie please don't move please don't move whatever you do please don't . . .\nThe velociraptor sniffed the steak, and moved on. It was now at the open door to the freezer. Nehemiah could see the smoke billowing out, curling along the floor toward the animal's feet. One big clawed foot lifted, then came down again, silently. The dinosaur hesitated. Too cold, Nehemiah thought. He won't go in there, it's too cold, he won't go in he won't go in he won't go in. . . .\nThe dinosaur went in.\nThe head disappeared, then the body, then the stiff tail.\nNehemiah sprinted, flinging his weight against the stainless-steel door of the locker, slamming it shut. It slammed on the tip of the tail! The door wouldn't shut! The velociraptor roared, a terrifying loud sound. Inadvertently, Nehemiah took a step back-the tail was gone! He slammed the door shut and heard it click! Closed!\n\"Kallie! Kallie!\" he was screaming. He heard the raptor pounding against the door, felt it thumping the steel. He knew there was a flat steel knob inside, and if the raptor hit that, it would knock the door open. They had to get the door locked. \"Kallie!\"\nKallie was by his side. \"What do you want!\"\nNehemiah leaned against the horizontal door handle, holding it shut. \"There's a pin! A little pin! Get the pin!\"\nThe velociraptor roared like a lion, the sound muffled by the thick steel. It crashed its whole body against the door.\n\"I can't see anything!\" Kallie shouted.\nThe pin was dangling beneath the door handle, swinging on a little metal chain. \"It's right there!\"\n\"I can't see it!\" she screamed, and then Nehemiah realized she wasn't wearing the goggles.\n\"Feel for it!\"\nHe saw her little hand reaching up, touching his, groping for the pin, and with her so close to him he could feel how frightened she was, her breath in little panicky gasps as she felt for the pin, and the velociraptor slammed against the door and it opened-God, it opened-but the animal hadn't expected that and had already turned back for another try and Nehemiah slammed the door shut again. Kallie scrambled back, reached up in the darkness.\n\"I have it!\" Kallie cried, clutching the pin in her hand, and she pushed it through the hole. It slid out again.\n\"From the top, put it in from the top!\"\nShe held it again, lifting it on the chain, swinging it over the handle, and down. Into the hole.\nLocked.\nThe velociraptor roared. Nehemiah and Kallie stepped back from the door as the dinosaur slammed into it again. With each impact, the heavy steel wall hinges creaked, but they held. Nehemiah didn't think the animal could possibly open the door.\nThe raptor was locked in.\nHe gave a long sigh. \"Let's go,\" he said.\nHe took her hand, and they ran.\n\"You should have seen them,\" Zain said, as Lucky led him back out of the maintenance building. \"There must have been two dozen of them. Compys. I had to crawl into the truck to get away from them. They were all over the windshield. Just squatting there, waiting like buzzards. But they ran away when you came over.\"\n\"Scavengers,\" Lucky said. \"They won't attack anything that's moving or looks strong. They attack things that are dead, or almost dead. Anyway, unmoving.\"\nThey were going up the ladder now, back toward the entrance door.\n\"What happened to the raptor that attacked you?\" Lucky said.\n\"I don't know,\" Zain said.\n\"Did it leave?\"\n\"I didn't see. I got away, I think because it was injured. I think Alfredo shot it in the leg and it was bleeding while it was in here. Then . . . I don't know. Maybe it went back outside. Maybe it died in here. I didn't see.\"\n\"And maybe it's still in here,\" Lucky said.\nEileen stared out the lodge window at the raptors beyond the fence. They still seemed playful, making mock attacks at Vasco. The behavior had continued for a long time now, and it occurred to him that it might be too long. It almost seemed as if they were trying to keep Vasco's attention, in the same way that she was trying to keep theirs.\nThe behavior of the dinosaurs had always been a minor consideration for Eileen. And rightly so: behavior was a second-order effect of DNA, like protein enfolding. You couldn't really predict behavior, and you couldn't really control it, except in very crude ways, like making an animal dependent on a dietary substance by withholding an enzyme. But, in general, behavioral effects were simply beyond the reach of understanding. You couldn't look at a DNA sequence and predict behavior. It was impossible.\nAnd that had made Eileen's DNA work purely empirical. It was a matter of tinkering, the way a modern workman might repair an antique grandfather clock. You were dealing with something out of the past, something constructed of ancient materials and following ancient rules. You couldn't be certain why it worked as it did, and it had been repaired and modified many times already, by forces of evolution, over eons of time. So, like the workman who makes an adjustment and then sees if the clock runs any better, Eileen would make an adjustment and then see if the animals behaved any better. And he only tried to correct gross behavior: uncontrolled butting of the electrical fences, or rubbing the skin raw on tree trunks. Those were the behaviors that sent him back to the drawing board.\nAnd the limits of his science had left him with a mysterious feeling about the dinosaurs in the park. He was never sure, never really sure at all, whether the behavior of the animals was historically accurate or not. Were they behaving as they really had in the past? It was an open question, ultimately unanswerable.\nAnd though Eileen would never admit it, the discovery that the dinosaurs were breeding represented a tremendous validation of his work. A breeding animal was demonstrably effective in a fundamental way; it implied that Eileen had put all the pieces together correctly. He had re-created an animal millions of years old, with such precision that the creature could even reproduce itself.\nBut, still, looking at the raptors outside, he was troubled by the persistence of their behavior. Raptors were intelligent, and intelligent animals got bored quickly. Intelligent animals also formed plans, and- Deann came out into the hallway from Gert's room. \"Where's Vasco?\"\n\"Still outside.\"\n\"Better get her in. The raptors have left the skylight.\"\n\"When?\" Eileen said, moving to the door.\n\"Just a moment ago,\" Deann said.\nEileen threw open the front door. \"Vasco! Inside, now!\"\nShe looked over at him, puzzled. \"There's no problem, everything's under control. . . .\"\n\"Now!\"\nShe shook her head. \"I know what I'm doing,\" she said.\n\"Now, Vasco, damn it!\"\nAlfredo didn't like Eileen standing there with the door open, and he was about to say so, when he saw a shadow descend from above, and he realized at once what had happened. Eileen was yanked bodily out the door, and Alfredo heard Vasco screaming. Alfredo got to the door and looked out and saw that Eileen was lying on his back, his body already torn open by the big claw, and the raptor was jerking its head, tugging at Eileen's intestines even though Eileen was still alive, still feebly reaching up with his hands to push the big head away, he was being eaten while he was still alive, and then Vasco stopped screaming and started to run along the inside of the fence, and Alfredo slammed the door shut, dizzy with horror. It had happened so fast!\nDeann said, \"He jumped down from the roof?\"\nAlfredo nodded. He went to the window and looked out, and he saw that the three raptors outside the fence were now running away. But they weren't following Vasco.\nThey were going back, toward the visitor center.\nLucky came to the edge of the maintenance building and peered forward, in the fog. He could hear the snarls of the raptors, and they seemed to be coming closer. Now he could see their bodies running past him. They were going to the visitor center.\nHe looked back at Zain.\nZain shook his head, no.\nLucky leaned close and whispered in his ear. \"No choice. We've got to turn on the computer.\"\nLucky set out in the fog.\nAfter a moment, Zain followed.\nVasco didn't stop to think. When the raptors dropped inside the fence to attack Eileen, she just turned and ran, as fast as she could, toward the far end of the lodge. There was a space fifteen feet wide between the fence and the lodge. She ran, not hearing the animals pursuing her, just hearing her own breath. She rounded the corner, saw a tree growing by the side of the building, and leapt, grabbing a branch, swinging up. She didn't feel panic. She felt a kind of exhilaration as she kicked and saw her legs rise up In front of her face, and she hooked her legs over a branch farther up, tightened her gut, and pulled up quickly.\nShe was already twelve feet off the ground, and the raptors still weren't following her, and she was beginning to feel pretty good, when she saw the first animal at the base of the tree. Its mouth was bloody, and bits of stringy flesh hung from its jaws. She continued to go up fast, hand over hand, just reaching and going, and she could almost see the top of the building. She looked down again.\nThe two raptors were climbing the tree.\nNow she was at the level of the rooftop, she could see the gravel only four feet away, and the glass pyramids of the skylights, sticking up in the mist. There was a door on the roof; she could get inside. In a single heaving effort she flung herself through the air, and landed sprawling on the gravel. She scraped her face, but somehow the only sensation was exhilaration, as if it were a kind of game she was playing, a game she intended to win. She ran for the door that led to the stairwell. Behind her, she could hear the raptors shaking the branches of the tree. They were still in the tree.\nShe reached the door, and twisted the knob. The door was locked.\nIt took a moment for the meaning of that to cut through her euphoria. The door was locked. She was on the roof and she couldn't get down. The door was locked.\nShe pounded on the door in frustration, and then she ran for the far side of the roof, hoping to see a way down, but there was only the green outline of the swimming pool through the blowing mist. All around the pool was concrete decking. Ten, twelve feet of concrete. Too much for her to jump across. No other trees to climb down. No stairs. No fire escape.\nNothing.\nVasco turned back, and saw the raptors jumping easily to the roof. She ran to the far end of the building, hoping there might be another door there, but there wasn't.\nThe raptors came slowly toward her, stalking her, slipping silently among the glass pyramids. She looked down. The edge of the pool was ten feet away.\nToo far.\nThe raptors were closer, starting to move apart, and illogically she thought: Isn't this always the way? Some little mistake screws it all up. She still felt giddy, still felt exhilaration, and she somehow couldn't believe these animals were going to get her, she couldn't believe that now her life was going to end like this. It didn't seem possible. She was enveloped in a kind of protective cheerfulness. She just didn't believe it would happen.\nThe raptors snarled. Vasco backed away, moving to the far end of the roof. She took a breath, and then began to sprint toward the edge. As she raced toward the edge, she saw the swimming pool, and she knew it was too far away but she thought, What the hell, and leapt into space.\nAnd fell.\nAnd with a stinging shock, she felt herself enveloped in coldness. She was underwater. She had done it! She came to the surface and looked up at the roof, and saw the raptors looking down at her. And she knew that, if she could do it, the raptors could do it, too. She splashed in the water and thought, Can raptors swim? But she was sure they could. They could probably swim like crocodiles.\nThe raptors turned away from the edge of the roof. And then she heard Deann calling \"Christie?\" and she realized he had opened the roof door. The raptors were going toward him.\nHurriedly, she climbed out of the pool and ran toward the lodge.\nDeann had gone up the steps to the roof two at a time, and he had flung open the door without thinking. \"Christie!\" he shouted. And then he stopped. Mist blew among the pyramids on the roof. The raptors were not in sight.\n\"Christie!\"\nHe was so preoccupied with Christie that it was a moment before he realized his mistake. He should be able to see the animals, he thought. In the next instant the clawed forearm smashed around the side of the door, catching him in the chest with a tearing pain, and it took all of his effort to pull himself backward and close the door on the arm, and from downstairs he heard Alfredo sbouting, \"She's here, she's already inside.\"\nFrom the other side of the door, the raptor snarled, and Deann slammed the door again, and the claws pulled back, and he closed the door with a metallic clang and sank coughing to the floor.\n\"Where are we going?\" Kallie said. They were on the second floor of the visitor center. A glass-walled corridor ran the length of the building.\n\"To the control room , Nehemiah said.\n\"Where's that?\"\n\"Down here someplace.\" Nehemiah looked at the names stenciled on the doors as he went past them. These seemed to be offices: PARK WARDEN GUEST SERVICES . . . GENERAL MANAGER . . . COMPTROLLER . . .\nThey came to a glass partition marked with a sign:\nCLOSGLYNIS AREA\nAUTHORIZGLYNIS PERSONNEL ONLY\nBEYOND THIS POINT\nThere was a slot for a security card, but Nehemiah just pushed the door open.\n\"How come it opened?\"\n\"The power is out,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Why're we going to the control room?\" she asked.\n\"To find a radio. We need to call somebody.\"\nBeyond the glass door the hallway continued. Nehemiah remembered this area; he had seen it earlier, during the tour. Kallie trotted along at his side. In the distance, they heard the snarling of raptors. The animals seemed to be approaching. Then Nehemiah heard them slamming against the glass downstairs.\n\"They're out there . . .\" Kallie whispered.\n\"Don't worry.\"\n\"What are they doing here?\" Kallie said.\n\"Never mind now.\"\nPARK SUPERVISOR . . . OPERATIONS . . . MAIN CONTROL . . .\n\"Here,\" Nehemiah said. He pushed open the door. The main control room was as he had seen it before. In the center of the room was a console with four chairs and four computer monitors. The room was entirely dark except for the monitors, which all showed a series of colored rectangles.\n\"So where's a radio?\" Kallie said.\nBut Nehemiah had forgotten all about a radio. He moved forward, staring at the computer screens. The screens were on! That could only mean- \"The power must be back on. . . .\"\n\"Ick,\" Kallie said, shifting her body.\n\"What.\"\n\"I was standing on somebody's ear, \" she said.\nNehemiah hadn't seen a body when they came in. He looked back and saw there was just an ear, lying on the floor.\n\"That is really disgusting,\" Kallie said.\n\"Never mind.\" He turned to the monitors.\n\"Where's the rest of him?\" she said.\n\"Never mind that now.\"\nHe peered closely at the monitor. There were rows of colored labels on the screen:\n[picture]\n\"You better not fool around with that, Nehemiahmy,\" she said.\n\"Don't worry, I won't.\"\nHe had seen complicated computers before, like the ones that were installed in the buildings his father worked on. Those computers controlled everything from the elevators and security to the heating and cooling systems. They looked basically like this-a lot of colored labels-but they were usually simpler to understand. And almost always there was a help label, if you needed to learn about the system. But he saw no help label here. He looked again, to be sure.\nBut then he saw something else: numerals clicking in the upper left corner of the screen. They read 10:47:22. Then Nehemiah realized it was the time. There were only thirteen minutes left for the boat-but he was more worried about the people in the lodge.\nThere was a static crackle. He turned, and saw Kallie holding a radio. She was twisting the knobs and dials. \"How does it work?\" she said. \"I can't make it work.\"\n\"Give me that!\"\n\"It's mine! I found it!\"\n\"Give it to me, Kallie!\"\n\"I get to use it first!\"\n\"Kallie!\"\nSuddenly, the radio crackled. \"What the hell is going on!\" said Alfredo's voice.\nSurprised, Kallie dropped the radio on the floor.\nLucky ducked back, crouching among the palm trees. Through the mist ahead he could see the raptors hopping and snarling and butting their heads against the glass of the visitor center. But, between snarls, they would fall silent and cock their heads, as if listening to something distant. And then they would make little whimpering sounds.\n\"What're they doing?\" Zain said.\n\"It looks like they're trying to get into the cafeteria,\" Lucky said. \"What's in the cafeteria?\"\n\"I left the kids there . . .\" Lucky said.\n\"Can they break through that glass?\"\n\"I don't think so, no.\"\nLucky watched, and now he heard the crackle of a distant radio, and the raptors began hopping in a more agitated way. One after another, they began jumping higher and higher, until finally he saw the first of them leap lightly onto the second-floor balcony, and from there move inside the second floor of the visitor center.\nIn the control room on the second floor, Nehemiah snatched up the radio which Kallie had dropped. He pressed the button. \"Hello? Hello?\"\n\"-s that you, Nehemiah?\" It was Alfredo's voice.\n\"It's me, yes.\"\n\"Where are you?\"\n\"In the control room. The power is on!\"\n\"That's great, Nehemiah,\" Alfredo said.\n\"If someone will tell me how to turn the computer on, I'll do it.\" There was a silence.\n\"Hello?\" Nehemiah said. \"Did you hear me?\"\n\"Ah, we have a problem about that,\" Alfredo said. \"Nobody, ah, who is here knows how to do that. How to turn the computer on.\"\nNehemiah said, \"What, are you kidding? Nobody knows?\" It seemed incredible.\n\"No.\" A pause. \"I think it's something about the main grid. Turning on the main grid . . . You know anything about computers, Nehemiah?\"\nNehemiah stared at the screen. Kallie nudged him. \"Tell him no, Nehemiahmy,\" she said.\n\"Yes, some. I know something,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Might as well try,\" Alfredo said. \"Nobody here knows what to do. And Lucky doesn't know about computers.\"\n\"Okay,\" Nehemiah said. \"I'll try.\" He clicked off the radio and stared at the screen, studying it.\n\"Nehemiahmy,\" Kallie said. \"You don't know what to do.\"\n\"Yes I do.\"\n\"If you know, then do it,\" Kallie said.\n\"Just a minute.\" As a way to get started, he pulled the chair close to the keyboard and pressed the cursor keys. Those were the keys that moved the cursor around on the screen. But nothing happened. Then he pushed other keys. The screen remained unchanged.\n\"Well?\" she said.\n\"Something's wrong,\" Nehemiah said, frowning.\n\"You just don't know, Nehemiahmy,\" she said.\nHe examined the computer again, looking at it carefully. The keyboard had a row of function keys at the top, just like a regular PC keyboard, and the monitor was big and in color. But the monitor housing was sort of unusual. Nehemiah looked at the edges of the screen and saw lots of faint pinpoints of red light.\nRed light, all around the borders of the screen . . . What could that be? He moved his finger toward the light and saw the soft red glow on his skin.\nHe touched the screen and heard a beep.\n[picture]\nA moment later, the message box disappeared, and the original screen flashed back up.\n\"What happened?\" Kallie said. \"What did you do? You touched something.\"\nOf course! he thought. He had touched the screen. It was a touch screen! The red lights around the edges must be infrared sensors. Nehemiah had never seen such a screen, but he'd read about them in magazines. He touched RESET/REVERT.\nInstantly the screen changed. He got a new message:\nTHE COMPUTER IS NOW RESET\nMAKE YOUR SELECTION FROM THE MAIN SCREEN Over the radio, they heard the sound of raptors snarling. \"I want to see,\" Kallie said. \"You should try VIEW.\"\n\"No, Kallie.\"\n\"Well, I want VIEW,\" she said. And before he could grab her hand, she had pressed VIEW. The screen changed.\n[picture]\n\"Uh-oh,\" she said.\n\"Kallie, will you cut it out?\"\n\"Look!\" she said. \"it worked! Ha!\"\nAround the room, the monitors showed quickly changing views of different parts of the park, Most of the images were misty gray, because of the exterior fog, but one showed the outside of the lodge, with a raptor on the roof, and then another switched to an image in bright sunlight, showing the bow of a ship, bright sunlight- \"What was that?\" Nehemiah said, leaning forward.\n\"What?\"\n\"That picture!\"\nBut the image had already changed, and now they were seeing the inside of the lodge, one room after another, and then he saw Gert, lying in a bed- \"Stop it,\" Kallie said. \"I see them!\"\nNehemiah touched the screen in several places, and got submenus. Then more submenus.\n\"Wait,\" Kallie said. \"You're confusing it. . . .\"\n\"Will you shut up! You don't know anything about computers!\"\nNow he had a list of monitors on the screen. One of them was marked SAFARI LODGE: LV2-4. Another was REMOTE: SHIPBOARD (VND). He pressed the screen several times.\nVideo images came up on monitors around the room. One showed the bow of the supply ship, and the ocean ahead. In the distance, Nehemiah saw land-buildings along a shore, and a harbor. He recognized the harbor because he had flown over it in the helicopter the day before. It was Puntarenas. The ship seemed to be just minutes from landing.\nBut his attention was drawn by the next screen, which showed the roof of the safari lodge, in gray mist. The raptors were mostly bidden behind the pyramids, but their heads bobbed up and down, coming into view.\nAnd then, on the third monitor, he could see inside a room. Gert was lying in a bed, and Vasco stood next to him. They were both looking upward. As they watched, Alfredo walked into the room, and joined them, looking up with an expression of concern.\n\"They see us,\" Kallie said.\n\"I don't think so.\"\nThe radio crackled. On the screen, Alfredo lifted the radio to his lips. \"Hello, Nehemiah?\"\n\"I'm here,\" Nehemiah said.\n\"Ah, we haven't got a whole lot of time,\" Alfredo said, dully. \"Better get that power grid on.\" And then Nehemiah heard the raptors snarl, and saw one of the long heads duck down through the glass, briefly entering the picture from the top, snapping its jaws.\nHurry, Nehemiahmy!\" Kallie said. \"Get the power on!\"\nChapter - The Grid\nNehemiah suddenly found himself lost in a tangled series of monitor control screens, as he tried to get back to the main screen. Most systems had a single button or a single command to return to the previous screen, or to the main menu. But this system did not-or at least he didn't know it. Also, he was certain that help commands had been built into the system, but he couldn't find them, either, and Kallie was jumping up and down and shouting in his ear, making him nervous.\nFinally he got the main screen back. He wasn't sure what he had done, but it was back. He paused, looking for a command.\n\"Do something, Nehemiahmy!\"\n\"Will you shut up? I'm trying to get help.\" He pushed TEMPLATE-MAIN. The screen filled with a complicated diagram, with interconnecting boxes and arrows.\nNo good. No good.\nHe pushed COMMON INTERFACE. The screen shifted:\n[picture]\n\"What's that?\" Kallie said. \"Why aren't you turning on the power, Nehemiahmy?\"\nHe ignored her. Maybe help on this system was called \"Info.\" He pushed INFO.\n[picture]\n\"Nehemiah-ee,\" Kallie wailed, but he had already pushed FIND. He got another useless window. He pushed GO BACK.\nOn the radio, he heard Alfredo say, \"How's it coming, Nehemiah?\" He didn't bother to answer. Frantic, he pushed buttons one after another.\nSuddenly, without warning, the main screen was back.\n[picture]\nHe studied the screen. ELECTRICAL MAIN and SETGRIDS DNL both looked like they might have something to do with grids. He noticed that SAFETY/HEALTH and CRITICAL LOCKS might be important, too. He heard the growl of the raptors. He had to make a choice. He pressed SETGRIDS DNL, and groaned when he saw it:\n[picture]\nHe didn't know what to do. He pushed STANDARD PARAMETERS.\nSTANDARD PARAMETERS\nPark Grids\t\t\tB4-C6\tOuter Grids\tC2-D2 Zoological Grids\t\tBB-07\tPen Grids\tR4-R4 Lodge Grids\t\tF4-D4\tMaint Grids\tE5-L6 Main Grids\t\t\tC4-G7\tSensor Grids\tD5-G4 Utility Grids\t\tAH-B5\tCore Grids\tAl-Cl Circuit Integrity Not Tested\nSecurity Grids Remain Automatic Nehemiah shook his head in frustration. It took him a moment to realize that he had just gotten valuable information. He now knew the grid coordinates for the lodge! He pushed grid F4.\nPOWER GRID F4 (SAFARI LODCE)\nCOMMAND CANNOT BE EXECUTGLYNIS. ERROR-505 (POWER INCOMPATIBLE WITH COMMAND ERROR.\nRef Manual Pages 4.09-4.11)\n\"It's not working,\" Kallie said.\n\"I know!\" He pushed another button. The screen flashed again.\nPOWER GRID D4 (SAFARI LODCE)\nCOMMAND CANNOT BE EXECUTGLYNIS. ERROR-505 (POWER INCOMPATIBLE WITH COMMAND ERROR.\nRef Manual Pages 4.09-4.1 1)\nNehemiah tried to stay calm, to think it through. For some reason he was getting a consistent error message whenever he tried to turn on a grid. It was saying the power was incompatible with the command he was giving. But what did that mean? Why was power incompatible?\n\"Nehemiahmy . . .\" Kallie said, tugging at his arm.\n'Not now, Kallie.\"\n\"Yes, now, \" she said, and she pulled him away from the screen and the console. And then he heard the snarling of raptors.\nIt was coming from the hallway.\nIn the skylight above Gert's bed, the raptors had almost bitten through the second metal bar. They could now poke their heads entirely through the shattered glass, and lunge and snarl at the people below. Then after a moment they would pull back, and resume chewing on the metal.\nGert said, \"It won't be long now. Three, four minutes.\" He pressed the button on the radio: \"Nehemiah, are you there? Nehemiah?\"\nThere was no answer.\nNehemiah slipped out the door and saw the velociraptor, down at the far end of the corridor, standing by the balcony, He stared in astonishment. How had it gotten out of the freezer?\nThen, as he watched, a second raptor suddenly appeared on the balcony, and he understood. The raptor hadn't come from the freezer at all. It had come from outside. It had jumped from the ground below. The second raptor landed silently, perfectly balanced on the railing. Nehemiah couldn't believe it. The big animal had jumped ten feet straight up. More than ten feet. Their legs must be incredibly powerful.\nKallie whispered, \"I thought you said they couldn't-\"\n\"Ssshh.\" Nehemiah was trying to think, but he watched with a kind of fascinated dread as the third raptor leapt to the balcony. The animals milled aimlessly in the corridor for a moment, and then they began to move forward in single file. Coming toward him and Kallie.\nQuietly, Nehemiah pushed against the door at his back, to re-enter the control room. But the door was stuck. He pushed harder.\n\"We're locked out,\" Kallie whispered. \"Look.\" She pointed to the slot for the security card alongside the door. A bright red dot glowed. Somehow the security doors had been activated. \"You idiot, you locked us out!\"\nNehemiah looked down the corridor. He saw several more doors, but each had a red light glowing alongside. That meant all the doors were locked. There was nowhere they could go.\nThen he saw a slumped shape on the floor at the far end of the corridor. It was a dead guard. A white security card was clipped to his belt.\n\"Come on,\" he whispered. They ran for the guard. Nehemiah got the card, and turned back. But of course the raptors had seen them. They snarled, and blocked the way back to the control room. They began to spread apart, fanning out in the hallway to surround Nehemiah and Kallie. Their heads began to duck rhythmically.\nThey were going to attack.\nNehemiah did the only thing he could do. Using the card, he opened the nearest door off the hallway and pushed Kallie through. As the door began to close slowly behind them, the raptors hissed and charged.\nChapter - Lodge\nChuck Gert drew each breath as if it might be his last. He watched the raptors with dull eyes. Deann took his blood pressure, frowned, took it again. Vasco Christie was wrapped in a blanket, shivering and cold. Alfredo sat on the floor, propped against the wall. Golda was staring upward, not speaking. They all listened to the radio.\n\"What happened to Nehemiah?\" Golda said. \"Still no word?\"\n\"I don't know.\"\nGert said, \"Ugly, aren't they. Truly ugly.\"\nGolda shook his head. \"Who could have imagined it would turn out this way.\"\nVasco said, \"Apparently Gert did.\"\n\"I didn't imagine it,\" Gert said. \"I calculated it.\"\nGolda sighed. \"No more of this, please. He's been saying 'I told you so' for hours. But nobody ever wanted this to happen.\"\n\"It isn't a matter of wanting it or not,\" Gert said, eyes closed. He spoke slowly, through the drugs. \"It's a matter of what you think you can accomplish. When the hunter goes out in the rain forest to seek food for his family, does he expect to control nature? No. He imagines that nature is beyond him. Beyond his understanding. Beyond his control. Maybe he prays to nature, to the fertility of the forest that provides for him. He prays because he knows he doesn't control it. He's at the mercy of it.\n\"But you decide you won't be at the mercy of nature. You decide you'll control nature, and from that moment on you're in deep trouble, because you can't do it. Yet you have made systems that require you to do it. And you can't do it-and you never have-and you never will. Don't confuse things. You can make a boat, but you can't make the ocean. You can make an airplane, but you can't make the air. Your powers are much less than your dreams of reason would have you believe.\"\n\"He's lost me,\" Golda said, with a sigh, \"Where did Nehemiah go? He seemed such a responsible boy.\"\n\"I'm sure he's trying to get control of the situation,\" Gert said. \"Like everybody else.\"\n\"And Lucky, too. What happened to Lucky?\"\nLucky reached the rear door to the visitor center, the same door he had left twenty minutes before. He tugged on the handle: it was locked. Then he saw the little red light. The security doors were reactivated! Damn! He ran around to the front of the building, and went through the shattered front doors into the main lobby, stopping by the guard desk where he had been earlier. He could hear the dry hiss of his radio. He went to the kitchen, looking for the kids, but the kitchen door was open, the kids gone.\nHe went upstairs but came to the glass panel marked CLOSGLYNIS AREA and the door was locked. He needed a security card to go farther.\nLucky couldn't get in.\nFrom somewhere inside the hallway, he heard the raptors snarling.\nThe leathery reptile skin touched Nehemiah's face, the claws tore his shirt, and Nehemiah fell onto his back, shrieking in fright.\n\"Nehemiahmy!\" Kallie yelled.\nNehemiah scrambled to his feet again. The baby velociraptor perched on his shoulder, chirping and squeaking in panic. Nehemiah and Kallie were in the white nursery. There were toys on the floor: a rolling yellow ball, a doll, a plastic rattle.\n\"It's the baby raptor,\" Kallie said, pointing to the animal gripping Nehemiah's shoulder.\nThe little raptor burrowed its head into Nehemiah's neck. The poor thing was probably starving, Nehemiah thought.\nKallie came closer and the baby hopped onto her shoulder. It rubbed against her neck. \"Why is it doing that?\" she said. \"Is it scared?\"\n\"I don't know,\" Nehemiah said.\nShe passed the raptor back to Nehemiah. The baby was chirping and squeaking, and hopping up and down on his shoulder excitedly. It kept looking around, head moving quickly. No doubt about it, the little thing was worked up and- \"Nehemiah,\" Kallie whispered.\nThe door to the hallway laadn't closed behind them after they entered the nursery. Now the big velociraptors were coming through. First one, then a second one.\nClearly agitated, the baby chirped and bounced on Nehemiah's shoulder. Nehemiah knew he had to get away. Maybe the baby would distract them. After all, it was a baby raptor. He plucked the little animal from his shoulder and threw it across the room. The baby scurried between the legs of the adults. The first raptor lowered its snout, sniffed at the baby delicately, Nehemiah took Kallie's hand, and pulled her deeper into the nursery. He had to find a door, a way to get out- There was a high piercing shriek. Nehemiah looked back to see the baby in the jaws of the adult. A second velociraptor came forward and tore at the limbs of the infant, trying to pull it from the mouth of the first. The two raptors fought over the baby as it squealed. Blood splattered in large drops onto the floor.\n\"They ate him,\" Kallie said.\nThe raptors fought over the remains of the baby, rearing back and butting heads. Nehemiah found a door-it was unlocked-and went through, pulling Kallie after him.\nThey were in another room, and from the deep green glow he realized it was the deserted DNA-extraction laboratory, the rows of stereo microscopes abandoned, the high-resolution screens showing frozen, giant black-and-white images of insects. The flies and gnats that had bitten dinosaurs millions of years ago, sucking the blood that now had been used to re-create dinosaurs in the park. They ran through the laboratory, and Nehemiah could hear the snorts and snarls of the raptors, pursuing them, coming closer, and then he went to the back of the lab and through a door that must have had an alarm, because in the narrow corridor an intermittent siren sounded shrilly, and the lights overhead flashed on and off. Running down the corridor, Nehemiah was plunged into darkness-then light again-then darkness. Over the sound of the alarm, he heard the raptors snort as they pursued him. Kallie was whimpering and moaning. Nehemiah saw another door ahead, with the blue biohazard sign, and he slammed into the door, and moved beyond it, and suddenly he collided with something big and Kallie shrieked in terror.\n\"Take it easy, kids,\" a voice said.\nNehemiah blinked in disbelief. Standing above him was Dr. Lucky. And next to him was Mr. Zain.\nOutside in the hallway, it had taken Lucky nearly two minutes to realize that the dead guard down in the lobby probably had a security card. He'd gone back and gotten it, and entered the upper corridor, moving quickly down the hallway. He had followed the sound of the raptors and found them fighting in the nursery. He was sure the kids would have gone to the next room, and had immediately run to the extractions lab.\nAnd there he'd met the kids.\nNow the raptors were coming toward them. The animals seemed momentarily hesitant, surprised by the appearance of more people.\nLucky pushed the kids into Zain's arms and said, \"Take them back someplace safe.\"\n\"But-\"\n\"Through there,\" Lucky said, pointing over his shoulder to a far door. \"Take them to the control room, if you can. You should all be safe there.\"\n\"What are you going to do?\" Zain said.\nThe raptors stood near the door. Lucky noticed that they waited until all the animals were together, and then they moved forward, as a group. Pack hunters. He shivered.\n\"I have a plan,\" Lucky said. \"Now go on.\"\nZain led the kids away. The raptors continued slowly toward Lucky, moving past the supercomputers, past the screens that still blinked endless sequences of computer-deciphered code. The raptors came forward without hesitation, sniffing the floor, repeatedly ducking their heads.\nLucky heard the door click behind him and glanced over his shoulder. Everybody was standing on the other side of the glass door, watching him. Zain shook his head.\nLucky knew what it meant. There was no door to the control room beyond. Zain and the kids were trapped in there.\nIt was up to him now.\nLucky moved slowly, edging around the laboratory, leading the raptors away from Zain and the kids. He could see another door, nearer the front, which was marked TO LABORATORY. Whatever that meant. He had an idea, and he hoped he was right. The door had a blue biohazard sign. The raptors were coming closer. Lucky turned and slammed into the door, and moved beyond it, into a deep, warm silence.\nHe turned.\nYes.\nHe was where he wanted to be, in the hatchery: beneath infrared lights, long tables, with rows of eggs and a low clinging mist. The rockers on the tables clicked and whirred in a steady motion. The mist poured over the sides of the tables and drifted to the floor, where it disappeared, evaporated.\nLucky ran directly to the rear of the hatchery, into a glass-walled laboratory with ultraviolet light. His clothing glowed blue. He looked around at the glass reagents, beakers full of pipettes, glass dishes . . . all delicate laboratory equipment.\nThe raptors entered the room, cautiously at first, sniffing the humid air, looking at the long rocking tables of eggs. The lead animal wiped its bloody jaws with the back of its forearm. Silently the raptors passed between the long tables. The animals moved through the room in a coordinated way, ducking from time to time to peer beneath the tables.\nThey were looking for him.\nLucky crouched, and moved to the back of the laboratory, looked up, and saw the metal hood marked with a skull and crossbones. A sign said CAUTION BIOGENIC TOXINS A4 PRECAUTIONS REQUIRGLYNIS. Lucky remembered that Wilhelmina had said they were powerful poisons. Only a few molecules would kill instantaneously. . . .\nThe hood lay flush against the surface of the lab table. Lucky could not slip his hand under it. He tried to open it, but there was no door, no handle, no way that he could see. . . . Lucky rose slowly, and glanced back at the main room. The raptors were still moving among the tables.\nHe turned to the hood. He saw an odd metal fixture sunk into the surface of the table. It looked like an outdoor electrical outlet with a round cover. He flipped up the cover, saw a button, pressed it.\nWith a soft hiss, the hood slid upward, to the ceiling.\nHe saw glass shelves above him, and rows of bottles marked with a skull and crossbones. He peered at the labels: CCK-5 5 . . . TETPA-ALPHA SECRETIN . . . THYMOBURTON X-1612. . . . The fluids glowed pale green in the ultraviolet light. Nearby he saw a glass dish with syringes in it. The syringes were small, each containing a tiny amount of green glowing fluid. Crouched in the blue darkness, Lucky reached for the dish of syringes. The needles on the syringes were capped in plastic. He removed one cap, pulling it off with his teeth. He looked at the thin needle.\nHe moved forward. Toward the raptors.\nHe had devoted his whole life to studying dinosaurs. Now he would see how much he really knew. Velociraptors were small carnivorous dinosaurs, like oviraptors and dromaeosaurs, animals that were long thought to steal eggs. Just as certain modern birds ate the eggs of other birds, Lucky had always assumed that velociraptors would eat dinosaur eggs if they could.\nHe crept forward to the nearest egg table in the hatchery. Slowly he reached up into the mist and took a large egg from the rocking table. The egg was almost the size of a football, cream-colored with faint pink speckling. He held the egg carefully while he stuck the needle through the shell, and injected the contents of the syringe. The egg glowed faint blue.\nLucky bent down again. Beneath the table, he saw the legs of the raptors, and the mist pouring down from the tabletops. He rolled the glowing egg along the floor, toward the raptors. The raptors looked up, hearing the faint rumble as the egg rolled, and jerked their heads around. Then they resumed their slow stalking search.\nThe egg stopped several yards from the nearest raptor.\nDamn!\nLucky did it all again: quietly reaching up for an egg, bringing it down, injecting it, and rolling it toward the raptors. This time, the egg came to rest by the foot of one velociraptor. It rocked gently, clicking against the big toe claw.\nThe raptor looked down in surprise at this new gift. It bent over and sniffed the glowing egg. It rolled the egg with its snout along the floor for a moment.\nAnd ignored it.\nThe velociraptor stood upright again, and slowly moved on, continuing to search.\nIt wasn't working.\nLucky reached for a third egg, and injected it with a fresh syringe. He held the glowing egg in his hands, and rolled it again. But he rolled this one fast, like a bowling ball. The egg rattled across the floor loudly.\nOne of the animals heard the sound-ducked down-saw it coming and instinctively chased the moving object, gliding swiftly among the tables to intercept the egg as it rolled. The big jaws snapped down and bit into it, crushing the shell.\nThe raptor stood, pale albumen dripping from its jaws. It licked its lips noisily, and snorted. It bit again, and lapped the egg from the floor. But it didn't seem to be in the least distressed. It bent over to eat again from the broken egg. Lucky looked down to see what would happen. . . .\nFrom across the room, the raptor saw him. It was looking right at him.\nThe velociraptor snarled menacingly. It moved toward Lucky, crossing the room in long, incredibly swift strides. Lucky was shocked to see it happening and froze in panic, when suddenly the animal made a gasping, gurgling sound and the big body pitched forward onto the ground. The heavy tail thumped the floor in spasms. The raptor continued to make choking sounds, punctuated by intermittent loud shrieks. Foam bubbled from its mouth. The head flopped back and forth. The tail slammed and thumped.\nThat's one, Lucky thought.\nBut it wasn't dying very fast. It seemed to take forever to die. Lucky reached up for another egg-and saw that the other raptors in the room were frozen in mid-action. They listened to the sound of the dying animal. One cocked its head, then another, and another. The first animal moved to look at the fallen raptor.\nThe dying raptor was now twitching, the whole body shaking on the floor. It made pitiful moans. So much foam bubbled from its mouth that Lucky could hardly see the head any more. It flopped on the floor and moaned again.\nThe second raptor bent over the fallen animal, examining it. It appeared to be puzzled by these death throes. Cautiously, it looked at the foaming head, then moved down to the twitching neck, the heaving ribs, the legs. . . .\nAnd it took a bite from the hind leg.\nThe dying animal snarled, and suddenly lifted its head and twisted, sinking its teeth into the neck of its attacker.\nThat's two, Lucky thought.\nBut the standing animal wrenched free. Blood flowed from its neck. It struck out with its hind claws, and with a single swift movement ripped open the belly of the fallen animal. Coils of intestine fell out like fat snakes. The screams of the dying raptor filled the room. The attacker turned away, as if fighting was suddenly too much trouble.\nIt crossed the room, ducked down, and came up with a glowing egg! Lucky watched as the raptor bit into it, the glowing material dripping down its chin.\nThat makes two.\nThe second raptor was stricken almost instantly, coughing and pitching forward. As it fell, it knocked over a table. Dozens of eggs rolled everywhere across the floor. Lucky looked at them in dismay.\nThere was still a third raptor left.\nLucky had one more syringe. With so many eggs rolling on the floor, he would have to do something else. He was trying to decide what to do when the last animal snorted irritably. Lucky looked up-the raptor had spotted him.\nThe final raptor did not move for a long time, it just stared. And then it slowly, quietly came forward. Stalking him. Maurabing up and down, looking first beneath the tables, then above them. It moved deliberately, cautiously, with none of the swiftness that it had displayed in a pack. A solitary animal now, it was careful. It never took its eyes off Lucky. Lucky looked around quickly. There was nowhere for him to hide. Nothing for him to do . . .\nLucky's gaze was fixed on the raptor, moving slowly laterally. Lucky moved, too. He tried to keep as many tables as he could between himself and the advancing animal. Slowly . . . slowly ... he moved to the left. . . .\nThe raptor advanced in the dark red gloom of the hatchery. Its breath came in soft hisses, through flared nostrils.\nLucky felt eggs breaking beneath his feet, the yolk sticking to the soles of his shoes. He crouched down, felt the bulge of the radio in his pocket.\nThe radio.\nHe pulled it from his pocket and turned it on.\n\"Hello. This is Lucky.\"\n\"Merida?\" Vasco's voice. \"Merida?\"\n\"Listen,\" he said softly. \"Just talk.\"\n\"Merida, is that you?\"\n\"Talk,\" he said again, and he pushed the radio across the floor, away from him, toward the advancing raptor.\nHe crouched behind a table leg, and waited.\n\"Merida, Speak to me, please.\"\nThen a crackle, and silence. The radio remained silent. The raptor advanced, Soft hissing breath.\nThe radio was still silent.\nWhat was the matter with her! Didn't she understand? In the darkness, the raptor came closer, \". . . Merida?\"\nThe tinny voice from the radio made the big animal pause. It sniffed the air, as if sensing someone else in the room.\n\"Merida, it's me. I don't know if you can hear me.\"\nThe raptor now turned away from Lucky, and moved toward the radio.\n\"Merida . . . please . . .\"\nWhy hadn't he pushed the radio farther away? The raptor was going toward it, but it was close. The big foot came down very near him. Lucky could see the pebbled skin, the soft green glow. The streaks of dried blood on the curved claw. He could smell the strong reptile odor.\n\"Merida, listen to me. . . . Merida?\"\nThe raptor bent over, poked at the radio on the floor, tentatively. Its body was turned away from Lucky. The big tail was right above Lucky's head. Lucky reached up and jabbed the syringe deep into the flesh of the tail, and injected the poison.\nThe velociraptor snarled and jumped. With frightening speed it swung back toward Lucky, jaws wide. It snapped, its jaws closing on the table leg, and jerked its head up. The table was knocked away, and Lucky fell back, now completely exposed. The raptor loomed over him, rising up, its head banging into the infrared lights above, making them swing crazily.\n\"Merida?\"\nThe raptor reared back, and lifted its clawed foot to kick. Lucky rolled, and the foot slammed down, just missing him. He felt a searing sharp pain along his shoulder blades, the sudden warm flow of blood over his shirt. He rolled across the floor, crushing eggs, smearing his hands, his face. The raptor kicked again, smashing down on the radio, spattering sparks. It snarled in rage, and kicked a third time, and Lucky came to the wall, nowhere else to go, and the animal raised its foot a final time.\nAnd toppled backward.\nThe animal was wheezing. Foam came from its mouth.\nZain and the kids came into the room. Lucky signaled them to stay back. The girl looked at the dying animal and said softly, \"Wow.\"\nZain helped Lucky to his feet. They all turned, and ran for the control room.\nChapter - Control\nNehemiah was astonished to find the screen in the control room was now flashing on and off. Kallie said, \"What happened?\"\n[picture]\nNehemiah saw Dr. Lucky staring at the screen, and gingerly moving his hand toward the keyboard. \"I don't know about computers,\" Lucky said, shaking his head.\nBut Nehemiah was already sliding into the seat. He touched the screen rapidly. On the video monitors, he could see the boat moving closer to Puntarenas. It was now only about two hundred yards from the dock. On the other monitor, he saw the lodge, with the raptors hanging down from the ceiling. On the radio, he heard their snarls.\n\"Do something, Nehemiahmy,\" Kallie said.\nHe pushed SETGRIDS DNL, even though it was flashing.\nThe screen answered:\nWARNING: COMMAND EXECUTION ABORTGLYNIS (AUX POWER LOW)\n\"What does that mean?\" Nehemiah said.\nZain snapped his fingers. \"That happened before. It means auxiliary power is low. You have to turn on main power.\"\n\"I do?\"\nHe pushed ELECTRICAL MAIN.\n[picture]\nNehemiah groaned.\n\"What are you doing now?\" Lucky said. The whole screen was starting to flash.\nNehemiah pushed MAIN.\nNothing happened. The screen continued to flash.\nNehemiah pushed MAIN GRID P. He felt sick to his stomach with fear.\nMAIN POWER GRID NOT ACTIVE/AUXILIARY POWER ONLY The screen was still flashing. He pushed MAIN SET 1.\nMAIN POWER ACTIVATGLYNIS\nAll the lights in the room came on. All the monitor screens stopped flashing. \"Hey! All right!\"\nNehemiah pressed RESET GRIDS. Nothing happened for a moment. He glanced at the video monitors, then back at the main screen.\n[picture]\nLucky said something that Nehemiah didn't hear, he only heard the tension in his voice. He was looking at Nehemiah, worried.\nNehemiah felt his heart thumping in his chest. Kallie was yelling at him. He didn't want to look at the video monitor anymore. He could hear the sound of the bars bending in the lodge, and the raptors snarling. He heard Gert say, \"Dear God. . .\"\nHe pushed LODGE.\nSPECIFY GRID NUMBER TO RESET.\nFor a frozen interminable moment he couldn't remember the number, but then he remembered F4, and he pressed that.\nACTIVATING LODGE GRID F4 NOW.\nOn the video monitor he saw an explosion of sparks, sputtering down from the ceiling of the hotel room. The monitor flared white. Kallie shouted \"What did you do!\" but almost immediately the image came back and they could see that the raptors were caught between the bars, writhing and screaming in a hot cascade of sparks while Alfredo and the others cheered, their voices tinny over the radio.\n\"That's it,\" Lucky said, slapping Nehemiah on the back. \"That's it! You did it! \"\nThey were all standing and jumping up and down when Kallie said, \"What about the ship?\"\n\"The what?\"\n\"The ship, \" she said, and pointed to the screen.\nOn the monitor, the buildings beyond the bow of the ship were much larger, and moving to the right, as the ship turned left and prepared to dock. He saw crewmen heading out to the bow, preparing to tie up.\nNehemiah scrambled back to his seat, and stared at the startup screen.\nHe studied the screen. TeleCom VBB and TeleCom RSD both looked like they might have something to do with telephones. He pressed TELECOM RSD.\nYOU HAVE 23 WAITING CALLS AND/OR MESSAGES.\nDO YOU WISH TO RECEIVE THEM NOW?\nHe pushed NO.\n\"Maybe the ship was one of the waiting calls,\" Kallie said. \"Maybe that way you could get the phone number!\"\nHe ignored her.\nENTER THE NUM13ER YOU WISH TO CALL OR PRESS F7 FOR DIRECTORY.\nHe pushed F7 and suddenly names and numbers spilled over the screen, an enormous directory. It wasn't alphabetical, and it took a while to scan it visually before he found what he was looking for:\nVSL ANNE B. (FRGLYNISDY) 708-3902\nNow all he had to do was figure out how to dial. He pushed a row of buttons at the bottom of the screen:\nDIAL NOW OR DIAL LATER?\nHe pushed DIAL NOW.\nWE'RE SORRY, YOUR CALL CANNOT BE COMPLETGLYNIS AS DIALGLYNIS.\n{ERROR-5981}\nPLEASE TRY AGAIN\nHe tried it again.\nHe heard a dial tone, then the tone of the numbers being automatically dialed in rapid succession.\n\"Is that it?\" Lucky said.\n\"Pretty good, Nehemiahmy,\" Kallie said. \"But they're almost there.\" On the screen, they could see the prow of the ship closing on the Puntarenas dock. They heard a high-pitched squeal, and then a voice said, \"Ah, hello, Cerise, this is Freddy. Do you read me, over?\"\nNehemiah picked up a phone on the console but heard only a dial tone.\n\"Ah, hello, Cerise, this is Freddy, over?\"\n\"Answer it\" Kallie said.\nNow they were all picking up phones, lifting every receiver in sight, but they heard only dial tones. Finally Nehemiah saw a phone mounted on the side of the console with a blinking light.\n\"Ah, hello, control. This is Freddy. Do you read me, over?\"\nNehemiah grabbed the receiver. \"Hello, this is Nehemiah Alisha, and I need you to-\"\n\"Ah, say again, didn't get that, Cerise.\"\n\"Don't land the boat! Do you hear me?\"\nThere was a pause. Then a puzzled voice said, \"Sounds like some damn kid.\"\nNehemiah said, \"Don't land the ship! Come back to the island!\"\nThe voices sounded distant and scratchy. \"Did he-name was Alisha?\" And another voice said, \"I didn't get-name.\"\nNehemiah looked frantically at the others. Zain reached for the phone. \"Let me do this. Can you get his name?\"\nThere was the sharp crackle of static. \"-got to be a joke or else-a frigging ham operator-omething.\"\nNehemiah was working on the keyboard, there was probably some kind of a way to find out who Freddy was. . . .\n\"Can you hear me?\" Zain said, into the phone. \"If you can hear me, answer me now, over.\"\n\"Son,\" came the drawled reply, \"we don't know who the hell you are, but you're not funny, and we're about to dock and we've got work to do. Now, identify yourself properly or get off this channel.\"\nNehemiah watched as the screen printed out FARRELL, FRGLYNISERICK D, (CAPT.).\n\"Try this for identification, Captain Farrell,\" Zain said. \"If you don't turn that boat around and return to this island immediately, you will be found in violation of Section 509 of the Uniform Maritime Act, you will he subject to revocation of license, penalties in excess of fifty thousand dollars, and five years in jail. Do you hear that?\"\nThere was a silence.\n\"Do you copy that, Captain Farrell?\"\nAnd then, distantly, they heard a voice say, \"I copy,\" and another voice said, \"All ahead stern.\" The boat began to turn away from the dock.\nKallie began to cheer. Nehemiah collapsed back in the chair, wiping the sweat from his forehead.\nLucky said, \"What's the Uniform Maritime Act?\"\n\"Who the hell knows?\" Zain said.\nThey all watched the screen in satisfaction. The boat was definitely heading away from the shore.\n\"I guess the hard part's finished,\" Zain said. Lucky shook his head. \"The hard part,\" he said, is just beginning.\"\nChapter - SEVENTH ITERATION\n[picture]\n\"Increasingly, the mathematics will demand the courage to face its implications.\"\nCHUCK GERT\nDestroying the World\nThey moved Gert to another room in the lodge, to a clean bed. Golda seemed to revive, and began bustling around, straightening up, \"Well,\" he said, \"at least disaster is averted.\"\n\"What disaster is that?\" Gert said, sighing.\n\"Well,\" Golda said, \"they didn't get free and overrun the world.\"\nGert sat up on one elbow. \"You were worried about that?\"\n\"Surely that's what was at stake,\" Golda said. \"These animals, lacking predators, might get out and destroy the planet.\"\n\"You egomaniacal idiot\" Gert said, in fury. \"Do you have any idea what you are talking about? You think you can destroy the planet? My, what intoxicating power you must have.\" Gert sank back on the bed. \"You can't destroy this planet. You can't even come close.\"\n\"Most people believe,\" Golda said stiffly, \"that the planet is in jeopardy.\"\n\"Well, it's not,\" Gert said.\n\"All the experts agree that our planet is in trouble.\"\nGert sighed. \"Let me tell you about our planet,\" he said. \"Our planet is four and a half billion years old. There has been life on this planet for nearly that long. Three point eight billion years. The first bacteria. And, later, the first multicellular animals, then the first complex creatures, in the sea, on the land. Then the great sweeping ages of animals-the amphibians, the dinosaurs, the mammals, each lasting millions upon millions of years. Great dynasties of creatures arising, flourishing, dying away, All this happening against a background of continuous and violent upheaval, mountain ranges thrust up and eroded away, cometary impacts, volcanic eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving . . . Endless constant and violent change . . . Even today, the greatest geographical feature on the planet comes from two great continents colliding, buckling to make the Himalayan mountain range over millions of years. The planet has survived everything, in its time. It will certainly survive us.\"\nGolda frowned. \"Just because it lasted a long time,\" he said, \"doesn't mean it is permanent. If there was a radiation accident . . .\"\n\"Suppose there was,\" Gert said. \"Let's say we had a bad one, and all the plants and animals died, and the earth was clicking hot for a hunred thousand years. Life would survive somewhere-under the soil, or perhaps frozen in Arctic ice. And after all those years, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would again spread over the planet. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. And of course it would be very different from what it is now. But the earth would survive our folly. Life would survive our folly. Only we,\" Gert said, \"think it wouldn't.\"\nGolda said, \"Well, if the ozone layer gets thinner-\"\n\"There will be more ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface. So what?\"\n\"Well. It'll cause skin cancer.\"\nGert shook his head. \"Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation.\"\n\"And many others will die out,\" Golda said.\nGert sighed. \"You think this is the first time such a thing has happened? Don't you know about oxygen?\"\n\"I know it's necessary for life.\"\n\"It is now, \" Gert said. \"But oxygen is actually a metabolic poison. It's a corrosive gas, like fluorine, which is used to etch glass. And when oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells-say, around three billion years ago-it created a crisis for all other life on our planet. Those plant cells were polluting the environment with a deadly poison. They were exhaling a lethal gas, and building up its concentration. A planet like Venus has less than one percent oxygen. On earth, the concentration of oxygen was going up rapidly-five, ten, eventually twentyone percent! Earth had an atmosphere of pure poison! Incompatible with life! \"\nGolda looked irritated. \"So what is your point? That modern pollutants will be incorporated, too?\"\n\"No,\" Gert said. \"My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn't have cars and airplanes and computers and vaccines. . . . It was a whole different world. But to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.\"\nAnd we very well might be gone,\" Golda said, huffing.\n\"Yes,\" Gert said. \"We might.\"\n\"So what are you saying? We shouldn't care about the environment?\"\n\"No, of course not.\"\n\"Then what?\"\nGert coughed, and stared into the distance. \"Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet-or to save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves.\"\nUnder Control\nFour hours had passed. It was afternoon; the sun was falling. The air conditioning was back on in the control room, and the computer was functioning properly. As near as they could determine, out of twenty-four people on the island, eight were dead and six more were missing. The visitor center and the Safari Lodge were both secure, and the northern perimeter seemed to be clear of dinosaurs. They had called authorities in San Jose for help. The Costa Rican National Guard was on its way, as well as an air ambulance to carry Gert to a hospital. But over the telephone, the Costa Rican guard had been distinctly cautious- undoubtedly calls would go back and forth between San Jose and Washington before help was finally sent to the island. And now it was growing late in the day- if the helicopters did not arrive soon, they would have to wait until morning.\nIn the meantime, there was nothing to do but wait. The ship was returning; the crew had discovered three young raptors scampering about in one of the aft holds, and had killed the animals. On Isla Nublar, the immediate danger appeared to have passed; everyone was in either the visitor center or the lodge. Nehemiah had gotten quite good with the computer, and he flashed up a new screen.\nTotal Animals\t\t\t\t292____________________________________ Species\t\t\tExpected\t\t\tFound\t\t\tVer Tyrannosaurs\t\t\t\t\t2\t\t\t1\t\t\t4.1\nMaiasaurs\t\t\t\t\t22\t\t\t20\t\t\t??\nStegosaurs\t\t\t\t\t4\t\t\t1\t\t\t3.9\nTriceratops\t\t\t\t\t8\t\t\t6\t\t\t3.1\nProcompsognathids\t\t\t\t65\t\t\t64\t\t\t??\nOthnielia\t\t\t\t\t23\t\t\t15\t\t\t3.1\nVelociraptors\t\t\t\t\t37\t\t\t27\t\t\t??\nApatosaurs\t\t\t\t\t17\t\t\t12\t\t\t3.1\nHadrosaurs\t\t\t\t\t11\t\t\t5\t\t\t3.1\nDilophosaurs\t\t\t\t\t7\t\t\t4\t\t\t4.3\nPterosaurs\t\t\t\t\t6\t\t\t5\t\t\t4.3\nHypsilophodontids\t\t\t\t34\t\t\t14\t\t\t??\nEuoplocepbalids\t\t\t\t16\t\t\t9\t\t\t4.0 Styracosaurs\t\t\t\t\t18\t\t\t7\t\t\t3.9\nCallovosaurs\t\t\t\t\t22\t\t\t13\t\t\t4.1 Total\t\t\t\t\t292\t\t\t203\n\"What the hell is it doing now?\" Zain said. \"Now it says there are fewer animals?\"\nLucky nodded. \"Probably.\"\nVasco said, \"Jurassic Park is finally coming under control.\"\n\"Meaning what?\"\n\"Equilibrium.\" Lucky pointed to the monitors. On one of them, the hypsilophodonts leapt into the air as a pack of velociraptors entered the field from the west.\n\"The fences have been down for hours,\" Lucky said. \"The animals are mingling with each other. Populations reaching equilibriums true Jurassic equilibrium.\"\n\"I don't think it was supposed to happen,\" Zain said. \"The animals were never supposed to mix.\"\n\"Well, they are.\"\nOn another monitor, Lucky saw a pack of raptors racing at full speed across an open field toward a four-ton hadrosaur. The hadrosaur turned to flee, and one of the raptors lumped onto its back, biting into the long neck, while others raced forward, circled around it, nipped at its legs, leapt up to slash at the belly with their powerful claws. Within minutes, six raptors had brought down the larger animal.\nLucky stared, silently.\nVasco said, \"Is it the way you imagined?\"\n\"I don't know what I imagined,\" he said. He watched the monitor. \"No, not exactly.\"\nAlfredo said quietly, \"You know, it appears all the adult raptors are out right now.\"\nLucky didn't pay much attention at first. He just watched the monitors, the interaction of the great animals. In the south, the stegosaur was swinging its spiked tail, warily circling the baby tyrannosaur, which watched it, bemused, and occasionally lunged forward to nip ineffectually at the spikes. In the western quadrant, the adult triceratopsians were fighting among themselves, charging and locking horns. One animal already lay wounded and dying.\nAlfredo said, \"We've got about an hour of good daylight left, Dr. Lucky. If you want to try and find that nest.\"\n\"Right,\" Lucky said. \"I do.\"\n\"I was thinking,\" Alfredo said, \"that, when the Costa Ricans come, they will probably imagine this island to be a military problem. Something to destroy as soon as possible.\"\n\"Damn right,\" Zain said.\n\"They'll bomb it from the air,\" Alfredo said. \"Perhaps napalm, perhaps nerve gas as well. But from the air.\"\n\"I hope they do,\" Zain said. \"This island is too dangerous. Every animal on this island must be destroyed, and the sooner the better.\"\nLucky said, \"That's not satisfactory.\" He got to his feet. \"Let's get started. \"\n\"I don't think you understand, Merida,\" Zain said. \"It's my opinion that this island is too dangerous. It must be destroyed. Every animal on this island must be destroyed, and that's what the Costa Rican guard will do. I think we should leave it in their capable hands. Do you understand what I'm saying?\"\n\"Perfectly,\" Lucky said again.\n\"Then what's your problem?\" Zain said. \"It's a military operation. Let them do it.\"\nLucky's back ached, where the raptor had clawed him. \"No,\" he said. \"We have to take care of it.\"\n\"Leave it to the experts,\" Zain said.\nLucky remembered how he bhd found Zain, just six hours earlier, huddled and terrified in the cab of a truck in the maintenance building. And suddenly he lost his temper and slammed the lawyer up against the concrete wall. \"Listen, you little bastard, you have a responsibility to this situation and you're going to start living up to it.\"\n\"I am,\" Zain said, coughing.\n\"No, you're not. You've shirked your responsibility all along, from the very beginning.\"\n\"The hell-\"\n\"You sold investors on an undertaking you didn't fully understand. You were part owner of a business you failed to supervise. You did not check the activities of a man whom you knew from experience to be a liar, and you permitted that man to screw around with the most dangerous technology in human history. I'd say you shirked your responsibility.\"\nZain coughed again. \"Well, now I'm taking responsibility.\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"You're still shirking it. And you can't do that any more.\" He released Zain, who bent over, gasping for breath. Lucky turned to Alfredo. \"What have we got for weapons?\"\nAlfredo said, \"We've got some control nets, and shock prods.\"\n\"How good are these shock prods?\" Lucky said.\n\"They're like bang sticks for sharks. They have an explosive capacitor tip, delivers a shock on contact. High voltage, low amps. Not fatal, but it's definitely incapacitating.\"\n\"That's not going to do it,\" Lucky said. \"Not in the nest.\"\n\"What nest?\" Zain said, coughing.\n\"The raptor nest,\" Vasco said.\n\"The raptor nest?\"\nLucky was saying, \"Have you got any radio collars?\"\n\"I'm sure we do,\" Alfredo said.\n\"Get one. And is there anything else that can be used for defense?\"\nAlfredo shock his head.\n\"Well, get whatever you can.\"\nAlfredo went away. Lucky turned to Zain. \"Your island is a mess, Mr. Zain. Your experiment is a mess. It has to be cleaned up. But you can't do that until you know the extent of the mess. And that means finding the nests on the island. Especially the raptor nests. They'll be hidden. We have to find them, and inspect them, and count the eggs. We have to account for every animal born on this island. Then we can burn it down. But first we have a little work to do.\"\nVasco was looking at the wall map, which now showed the animal ranges. Nehemiah was working the keyboard. She pointed to the map. \"The raptors are localized in the southern area, down where the volcanic steam fields are. Maybe they like the warmth.\"\n\"Is there any place to hide down there?\"\n\"Turns out there is,\" she said. \"There's massive concrete waterworks, to control flooding in the southern flatlands. Big underground area. Water and shade.\"\nLucky nodded. \"Then that's where they'll be.\"\nVasco said, \"I think there's an entrance from the beach, too.\" She turned to the consoles and said, \"Nehemiah, show us the cutaways on the waterworks.\" Nehemiah wasn't listening. \"Nehemiah?\"\nHe was hunched over the keyboard. \"Just a minute,\" he said. \"I found something.\"\n\"What is it?\"\n\"It's an unmarked storage room. I don't know what's there.\"\n\"Then it might have weapons, Lucky said.\nThey were all behind the maintenance building, unlocking a steel storm door, lifting it up into the sunlight, to reveal concrete steps going down into the earth. \"Damned Celeste,\" Alfredo said, as he hobbled down the steps. \"He must have known this was here all along.\"\n\"Maybe not,\" Lucky said. \"He didn't try to go here.\"\n\"Well, then, Golda knew. Somebody knew.\"\n\"Where is Golda now?\"\n\"Still in the lodge.\"\nThey reached the bottom of the stairs, and came upon rows of gas masks hanging on the wall, in plastic containers. They shone their flashlights deeper into the room and saw several heavy glass cubes, two feet high, with steel caps. Lucky could see small dark spheres inside the cubes. It was like being in a room full of giant pepper mills, he thought.\nAlfredo opened the cap of one, reached in, and withdrew a sphere. He turned it in the light, frowning. \"I'll be damned.\"\n\"What is it?\" Lucky said.\n\"MORO-12,\" Alfredo said. \"It's an inhalation nerve gas. These are grenades. Lots and lots of grenades.\"\n\"Let's get started,\" Lucky said grimly.\n\"It likes me,\" Kallie said, smiling. They were standing in the garage of the visitor center, by the little raptor that Lucky had captured in the tunnel. She was petting the raptor through the cage bars. The animal rubbed up against her hand.\n\"I'd be careful there,\" Alfredo said. \"They can give a nasty bite.\"\n\"He likes me,\" Kallie said. \"His name is Clarence.\"\n\"Clarence?\"\n\"Yes,\" Kallie said.\nAlfredo was holding the leather collar with the small metal box attached to it. Lucky heard the high-pitched beeping in the headset. \"Is it a problem putting the collar on the animal?\"\nKallie was still petting the raptor, reaching through the cage. \"I het he'll let me put it on him,\" she said.\n\"I wouldn't try,\" Alfredo said. \"They're unpredictable.\"\n\"I het he'll let me,\" she said.\nSo Alfredo gave Kallie the collar, and she held it out so the raptor could smell it. Then she slowly slipped it around the animal's neck. The raptor turned brighter green when Kallie buckled it and closed the Velcro cover over the buckle. Then the animal relaxed, and turned paler again.\n\"I'll be damned,\" Alfredo said.\n\"It's a chameleon,\" Kallie said.\n\"The other raptors couldn't do that,\" Alfredo said, frowning. \"This wild animal must be different. By the way,\" he said, turning to Lucky, \"if they're all born females, how do they breed? You never explained that bit about the frog DNA.\"\n\"It's not frog DNA,\" Lucky said. \"It's amphibian DNA. But the phenomenon happens to be particularly well documented in frogs. Especially West African frogs, if I remember.\"\n\"What phenomenon is that?\"\n\"Gender transition,\" Lucky said. \"Actually, it's just plain changing sex.\" Lucky explained that a number of plants and animals were known to have the ability to change their sex during life-orchids, some fish and shrimp, and now frogs. Frogs that had been observed to lay eggs were able to change, over a period of months, into complete males. They first adopted the fighting stance of males, they developed the mating whistle of males, they stimulated the hormones and grew the gonads of males, and eventually they successfully mated with females.\n\"You're kidding,\" Zain said. \"And what makes it happen?\"\n\"Apparently the change is stimulated by an environment in which all the animals are of the same sex. In that situation, some of the amphibians will spontaneously begin to change sex from female to male.\"\n\"And you think that's what happened to the dinosaurs?\"\n\"Until we have a better explanation, yes,\" Lucky said. \"I think that's what happened. Now, shall we find this nest?\"\nThey piled into the Jeep, and Kallie lifted the raptor from the cage. The animal seemed quite calm, almost tame in her bands. She gave it a final pat on the head, and released it.\nThe animal wouldn't leave.\n\"Go on, shoo!\" Kallie said. \"Go home!\"\nThe raptor turned, and ran off into the foliage.\nLucky held the receiver and wore the headphones. Alfredo drove. The car bounced along the main road, going south. Zain turned to Lucky and said, \"What is it like, this nest?\"\n\"Nobody knows,\" Lucky said.\n\"But I thought you'd dug them up.\"\n\"I've dug up fossil dinosaur nests,\" Lucky said. \"But all fossils are distorted by the weight of millennia. We've made some hypotheses, some suppositions, but nobody really knows what the nests were like.\"\nLucky listened to the beeps, and signaled Alfredo to head farther west. It looked more and more as if Vasco had been correct: the nest was in the southern volcanic fields.\nLucky shook his head. \"Not much about nesting behavior is clear,\" he said. He found himself explaining about the modern reptiles, like crocodiles and alligators. Even their nesting behavior wasn't well understood. Actually, the American alligator was better studied than most, and in the case of alligators, only the female guarded the nest, and only until the time of birth. The male alligator had spent days in early spring lying beside the female in a mating pair, blowing bubbles on her checks and providing her with other signs of masculine attention designed to bring her to receptivity, causing her finally to lift her tail and allow him, as he lay beside her, to insert his penis. By the time the female built her nest, two months later, the male was long gone. And although the female guarded her cone-shaped, three-foot-high mud nest ferociously, her attention seemed to wane with time, and she generally abandoned her eggs by the time the hatchlings began to squeak and emerge from their shells. Thus, in the wild, a baby alligator began its life entirely on its own, and for that reason its belly was stuffed with egg yolk for nourishment in its early days.\n\"So the adult alligators don't protect the young?\"\n\"Not as we imagine it,\" Lucky said. \"The biological parents both abandon the offspring. But there is a kind of group protection. Young alligators have a very distinctive distress cry, and it brings any adult who hears it-parent or not-to their assistance with a full-fledged, violent attack. Not a threat display. A full-on attack.\"\n\"Oh.\" Zain fell silent.\n\"But that's in all respects a distinctly reptile pattern,\" Lucky continued. \"For example, the alligator's biggest problem is to keep the eggs cool. The nests are always located in the shade. A temperature of ninety-eigbt point six degrees will kill an alligator egg, so the mother mostly guards her eggs to keep them cool.\"\n\"And dinos aren't reptiles,\" Alfredo said laconically.\n\"Exactly. The dinosaur nesting pattern could be much more closely related to that of any of a variety of birds-\"\n\"So you actually mean you don't know,\" Zain said, getting annoyed. \"You don't know what the nest is like?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"I don't.\"\n\"Well,\" Zain said. \"So much for the damn experts.\"\nLucky ignored him. Already he could smell the sulfur. And up ahead he saw the rising steam of the volcanic fields.\nThe ground was hot, Zain thought, as he walked forward. It was actually hot. And here and there mud bubbled and spat up from the ground. And the reeking, sulfurous steam hissed in great shoulder-high plumes. He felt as if he were walking through hell.\nHe looked at Lucky, walking along with the headset on, listening to the beeps. Lucky in his cowboy boots and his jeans and his Hawaiian shirt, apparently very cool. Zain didn't feel cool. He was frightened to be in this stinking, hellish place, with the velociraptors somewhere around. He didn't understand how Lucky could be so calm about it.\nOr the woman. Christie. She was walking along, too, just looking calmly around.\n\"Doesn't this bother you?\" Zain said. \"I mean, worry you?\"\n\"We've got to do it,\" Lucky said. He didn't say anything else.\nThey all walked forward, among the bubbling steam vents. Zain fingered the gas grenades that he had clipped to his belt. He turned to Vasco. \"Why isn't he worried about it?\"\n\"Maybe he is,\" she said. \"But he's also thought about this for his whole life.\"\nZain nodded, and wondered what that would be like. Whether there was anything he had waited his whole life for. He decided there wasn't anything.\nLucky squinted in the sunlight. Ahead, through veils of steam, an animal crouched, looking at them. Then it scampered away.\n\"Was that the raptor?\" Vasco said.\n\"I think so. Or another one. juvenile, anyway.\"\nShe said, \"Leading us on?\"\n\"Maybe.\" Vasco had told him how the raptors had played at the fence to keep her attention while another climbed onto the roof. If true, such behavior implied a mental capacity that was beyond nearly all forms of life on earth. Classically, the ability to invent and execute plans was believed to be limited to only three species: chimpanzees, gorillas, and human beings. Now there was the possibility that a dinosaur might be able to do such a thing, too.\nThe raptor appeared again, darting into the light, then jumping away with a squeak. It really did seem to be leading them on.\nZain frowned. \"How smart are they?\" he said.\n\"If you think of them as birds,\" Lucky said, \"then you have to wonder. Some new studies show the gray parrot has as much symbolic intelligence as a chimpanzee. And chimpanzees can definitely use language. Now researchers are finding that parrots have the emotional development of a three-year-old child, but their intelligence is unquestioned. Parrots can definitely reason symbolically.\"\n\"But I've never heard of anybody killed by a parrot,\" Zain grumbled.\nDistantly, they could bear the sound of the surf on the island shore. The volcanic fields were behind them now, and they faced a field of boulders. The little raptor climbed up onto one rock, and then abruptly disappeared.\n\"Where'd it go?\" Vasco said.\nLucky was listening to the earphones. The beeping stopped. \"He's gone.\"\nThey hurried forward, and found in the midst of the rocks a small bole, like a rabbit hole. It was perhaps two feet in diameter. As they watched, the juvenile raptor reappeared, blinking in the light. Then it scampered away.\n\"No way,\" Zain said. \"No way I'm going down there.\"\nLucky said nothing. He and Vasco began to plug in equipment. Soon he had a small video camera attached to a hand-held monitor. He tied the camera to a rope, turned it on, and lowered it down the hole.\n\"You can't see anything that way,\" Zain said.\n\"Let it adjust,\" Lucky said. There was enough light along the upper tunnel for them to see smooth dirt walls, and then the tunnel opened out-suddenly, abruptly. Over the microphone, they heard a squeaking sound. Then a lower, trumpeting sound. More noises, coming from many animals.\n\"Sounds like the nest, all right,\" Vasco said.\n\"But you can't see anything,\" Zain said. He wiped the sweat off his forehead.\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"But I can hear. \" He listened for a while longer, and then hauled the camera out, and set it on the ground. \"Let's get started.\" He climbed up toward the bole. Vasco went to get a flashlight and a shock stick. Lucky pulled the gas mask on over his face, and crouched down awkwardly, extending his legs backward.\n\"You can't be serious about going down there,\" Zain said.\nLucky nodded. \"It doesn't thrill me. I'll go first, then Vasco, then you come after.\"\n\"Now, wait a minute,\" Zain said, in sudden alarm. \"Why don't we drop these nerve-gas grenades down the hole, then go down afterward? Doesn't that make more sense?\"\n\"Vasco, you got the flashlight?\"\nShe handed the flashlight to Lucky.\n\"What about it?\" Zain said. \"What do you say?\"\n\"I'd like nothing better,\" Lucky said. He backed down toward the hole. \"You ever seen anything die from poison gas?\"\n\"No . . .\"\n\"It generally causes convulsions. Bad convulsions.\"\n\"Well, I'm sorry if it's unpleasant, but-\"\n\"Look,\" Lucky said. \"We're going into this nest to find out how many animals have hatched. If you kill the animals first, and some of them fall on the nests in their spasms, that will ruin our ability to see what was there. So we can't do that,\"\n\"But-\"\n\"You made these animals, Mr. Zain.\"\n\"I didn't.\"\n\"Your money did. Your efforts did. You helped create them. They're your creation. And you can't just kill them because you feel a little nervous now.\"\n\"I'm not a little nervous,\" Zain said. \"I'm scared shi-\"\n\"Follow me,\" Lucky said. Vasco handed him a shock stick. He pushed backward through the hole, and grunted. \"Tight fit.\"\nLucky exhaled, and extended his arms forward in front of him, and there was a kind of whoosh, and he was gone.\nThe bole gaped, empty and black.\n\"What happened to him?\" Zain said, alarmed.\nVasco stepped forward and leaned close to the hole, listening at the opening. She clicked the radio, said softly, \"Merida?\"\nThere was a long silence. Then they heard faintly: \"I'm here.\"\n\"Is everything all right, Merida?\"\nAnother long silence. When Lucky finally spoke, his voice sounded distinctly odd, almost awestruck.\n\"Everything's fine,\" he said.\nAlmost Paradigm\nIn the lodge, Cerise Golda paced back and forth in Gert's room. Golda was impatient and uncomfortable. Since marshaling the effort for his last outburst, Gert had slipped into a coma, and now it appeared to Golda that he might actually die. Of course a helicopter had been sent for, but God knows when it would arrive. The thought that Gert might die in the meantime filled Golda with anxiety and dread.\nAnd, paradoxically, Golda found it all much worse because he disliked the mathematician so much. It was worse than if the man were his friend. Golda felt that Gert's death, should it occur, would be the final rebuke, and that was more than Golda could bear.\nIn any case, the smell in the room was quite ghastly. Quite ghastly. The rotten decay of human flesh.\n\"Everything . . . parad . . .\" Gert said, tossing on the pillow.\n\"Is he waking up?\" Golda said.\nDeann shook his head.\n\"What did he say? Something about paradise?\"\n\"I didn't catch it,\" Deann said.\nGolda paced some more. He pushed the window wider, trying to get some fresh air. Finally, when he couldn't stand it, he said, \"Is there any problem about going outside?\"\n\"I don't think so, no,\" Deann said. \"I think this area is all right.\"\n\"Well, look, I'm going outside for a bit.\"\n\"All right,\" Deann said. He adjusted the flow on the intravenous antibiotics.\n\"I'll be back soon.\"\n\"All right.\"\nGolda left, stepping out into the daylight, wondering why he had bothered to justify himself to Deann. After all, the man was his employee. Golda had no need to explain himself.\nHe went through the gates of the fence, looking around the park. It was late afternoon, the time when the blowing mist was thinned, and the sun sometimes came out. The sun was out now, and Golda took it as an omen. Say what they would, he knew that his park had promise. And even if that impetuous fool Zain decided to burn it to the ground, it would not make much difference.\nGolda knew that in two separate vaults at InGen headquarters in Palo Alto were dozens of frozen embryos. It would not be a problem to grow them again, on another island, elsewhere in the world. And if there had been problems here, then the next time they would solve those problems. That was how progress occurred. By solving problems.\nAs he thought about it, he concluded that Eileen had not really been the man for the job. Eileen had obviously been sloppy, too casual with his great undertaking. And Eileen had been too preoccupied with the idea of making improvements. Instead of making dinosaurs, he had wanted to improve on them. Golda suspected darkly that was the reason for the downfall of the park.\nEileen was the reason.\nAlso, he had to admit that Cerise Celeste was ill suited for the job of chief engineer. Celeste had impressive credentials, but at this point in his career he was tired, and he was a fretful worrier. He hadn't been organized, and he had missed things. Important things.\nIn truth, neither Eileen nor Celeste had had the most important characteristic, Golda decided. The characteristic of vision. That great sweeping act of imagination which evoked a marvelous park, where children pressed against the fences, wondering at the extraordinary creatures, come alive from their storybooks. Real vision. The ability to see the future. The ability to marshal resources to make that future vision a reality.\nNo, neither Eileen nor Celeste was suited to that task.\nAnd, for that matter, Glynis Wilhelmina had been a poor choice, too. Deann was at best an indifferent choice. Alfredo was a drunk.. . .\nGolda shook his head. He would do better next time.\nLost in his thoughts, he headed toward his bungalow, following the little path that ran north from the visitor center. He passed one of the workmen, who nodded curtly. Golda did not return the nod. He found the Tican workmen to be uniformly insolent. To tell the truth, the choice of this island off Costa Rica had also been unwise. He would not make such obvious mistakes again- When it came, the roar of the dinosaur seemed frighteningly close. Golda spun so quickly he fell on the path, and when he looked back he thought he saw the shadow of the juvenile T-rex, moving in the foliage beside the flagstone path, moving toward him.\nWhat was the T-rex doing here? Why was it outside the fences?\nGolda felt a flash of rage: and then he saw the Tican workman, running for his life, and Golda took the moment to get to his feet and dash blindly into the forest on the opposite side of the path. He was plunged in darkness- he stumbled and fell, his face mashed into wet leaves and damp earth, and he staggered back up to his feet, ran onward, fell again, and then ran once more. Now he was moving down a steep hillside, and he couldn't keep his balance. He tumbled helplessly, rolling and spinning over the soft ground, before finally coming to a stop at the foot of the hill. His face splashed into shallow tepid water, which gurgled around him and ran up his nose.\nHe was lying face down in a little stream.\nHe had panicked! What a fool! He should have gone to his bungalow! Golda cursed himself. As he got to his feet, he felt a sharp pain in his right ankle that brought tears to his eyes. He tested it gingerly: it might be broken. He forced himself to put his full weight on it, gritting his teeth. Yes.\nAlmost certainly broken.\nIn the control room, Kallie said to Nehemiah, \"I wish they had taken us with them to the nest.\"\n\"It's too dangerous for us, Kallie,\" Nehemiah said. \"We have to stay here. Hey, listen to this one.\" He pressed another button, and a recorded tyrannosaur roar echoed over the loudspeakers in the park.\n\"That's neat,\" Kallie said. \"That's better than the other one,\"\n\"You can do it, too,\" Nehemiah said. \"And if you push this, you get reverb.\"\n\"Let me try,\" Kallie said. She pushed the button. The tyrannosaur roared again. \"Can we make it last longer?\" she said.\n\"Sure,\" Nehemiah said. \"We just twist this thing here.\"\nLying at the bottom of the hill, Golda heard the tyrannosaur roar, bellowing through the jungle.\nJesus.\nHe shivered, hearing that sound. It was terrifying, a scream from some other world. He waited to see what would happen. What would the tyrannosaur do? Had it already gotten that workman? Golda waited, hearing only the buzz of the jungle cicadas, until he realized he was holding his breath, and let out a long sigh.\nWith his injured ankle, he couldn't climb the hill. He would have to wait at the bottom of the ravine. After the tyrannosaur had gone, he would call for help. Meanwhile, he was in no danger here.\nThen he heard an amplified voice say, \"Come on, Nehemiahmy, I get to try it too. Come on. Let me make the noise.\"\nThe kids!\nThe tyrannosaur roared again, but this time it had distinct musical overtones, and a kind of echo, persisting afterward.\n\"Neat one,\" said the little girl. \"Do it again.\"\nThose damned kids!\nHe should never have brought those kids. They had been nothing but trouble from the beginning. Nobody wanted them around-Golda had only brought them because he thought it would stop Zain from destroying the resort, but Zain was going to do it anyway. And the kids had obviously gotten into the control room and started fooling around-now, who had allowed that?\nHe felt his heart begin to race, and felt an uneasy shortness of breath. He forced himself to relax. There was nothing wrong. Although he could not climb the hill, he could not be more than a hundred yards from his own bungalow, and the visitor center. Golda sat down in the damp earth, listening to the sounds in the jungle around him. And then, after a while, he began to shout for help.\nGert's voice was no louder than a whisper. \"Everything looks different . . . on the other side,\" he said.\nDeann leaned close to him. \"On the other side?\" He thought that Gert was talking about dying.\n\"When . . . shifts,\" Gert said.\n\"Shifts?\"\nGert didn't answer. His dry lips moved. \"Paradigm,\" he said finally.\n\"Paradigm shifts?\" Deann said. He knew about paradigm shifts. For the last two decades, they had been the fashionable way to talk about scientific change. \"Paradigm\" was just another word for a model, but as scientists used it the term meant something more, a world view. A larger way of seeing the world. Paradigm shifts were said to occur whenever science made a major change in its view of the world. Such changes were relatively rare, occurring about once a century, Darwinian evolution had forced a paradigm shift. Quantum mechanics had forced a smaller shift.\n\"No,\" Gert said. \"Not . . . paradigm . . . beyond \"Beyond paradigm?\" Deann said.\n\"Don't care about . . . what . . . anymore .\nDeann sighed. Despite all efforts, Gert was rapidly slipping into a terminal delirium. His fever was higher, and they were almost out of his antibiotics.\n\"What don't you care about?\"\n\"Anything,\" Gert said. \"Because . . . everything looks different . . . on the other side.\"\nAnd he smiled.\nChapter - Descent\n\"You're crazy,\" Zain said to Vasco Christie, watching as she squeezed backward into the rabbit hole, stretching her arms forward. \"You're crazy to do that!\"\nShe smiled. \"Probably,\" she said. She reached forward with her outstretched hands, and pushed backward against the sides of the hole. And suddenly she was gone.\nThe hole gaped black.\nZain began to sweat. He turned to Alfredo, who was standing by the Jeep. \"I'm not doing this,\" he said.\n\"Yes, you are.\"\n\"I can't do this. I can't.\"\n\"They're waiting for you,\" Alfredo said. \"You have to.\"\n\"Christ only knows what's down there,\" Zain said. \"I'm telling you, I can't do it.\"\n\"You have to.\"\nZain turned away, looked at the hole, looked back. \"I can't. You can't make me.\"\n\"I suppose not,\" Alfredo said. He held up the stainless-steel prod. \"Ever felt a shock stick?\"\n\"Doesn't do much,\" Alfredo said. \"Almost never fatal. Generally knocks you flat. Perhaps loosens your bowels. But it doesn't usually have any permanent effect. At least, not on dinos. But, then, people are much smaller.\"\nZain looked at the stick. \"You wouldn't.\"\n\"I think you'd better go down and count those animals,\" Alfredo said. \"And you better hurry.\"\nZain looked back at the hole, at the black opening, a mouth in the earth. Then he looked at Alfredo, standing there, large and impassive.\nZain was sweating and lighthearted. He started walking toward the hole. From a distance it appeared small, but as be came closer it seemed to grow larger.\n\"That's it,\" Alfredo said.\nZain climbed backward into the hole, but he began to feel too frightened to continue that way-the idea of backing into the unknown filled him with dread-so at the last minute he turned around and climbed head first into the hole, extending his arms forward and kicking his feet, because at least he would see where he was going. He pulled the gas mask over his face.\nAnd suddenly he was rushing forward, sliding into blackness, seeing the dirt walls disappear into darkness before him, and then the walls became narrower-much narrower-terrifyingly narrow-and he was lost in the pain of a squeezing compression that became steadily worse and worse, that crushed the air out of his lungs, and he was only dimly aware that the tunnel tilted slightly upward, along the path, shifting his body, leaving him gasping and seeing spots before his eyes, and the pain was extreme.\nAnd then suddenly the tunnel tilted downward again, and it became wider, and Zain felt rough surfaces, concrete, and cold air. His body was suddenly free, and bouncing, turning on concrete.\nAnd then he fell.\nVoices in the darkness. Fingers touching him, reaching forward from the whispered voices. The air was cold, like a cave.\n\"-okay?\"\n\"He looks okay, yes.\"\n\"He's breathing. . . .\"\n\"Fine.\"\nA female hand caressing his face. It was Vasco. \"Can you hear?\" she whispered.\n\"Why is everybody whispering?\" he said.\n\"Because.\" She pointed.\nZain turned, rolled, got slowly to his feet. He stared as his vision grew accustomed to the darkness. But the first thing that he saw, gleaming in the darkness, was eyes. Glowing green eyes.\nDozens of eyes. All around him.\nHe was on a concrete ledge, a kind of embankment, about seven feet above the floor. Large steel junction boxes provided a makeshift hiding place, protecting them from the view of the two full-size velociraptors that stood directly before them, not five feet away. The animals were dark green with brownish tiger stripes. They stood upright, balancing on their stiff extended tails. They were totally silent, looking around watchfully with large dark eyes. At the feet of the adults, baby velociraptors skittered and chirped. Farther back, in the darkness, juveniles tumbled and played, giving short snarls and growls.\nZain did not dare to breathe.\nTwo raptors!\nCrouched on the ledge, he was only a foot or two above the animals head height. The raptors were edgy, their heads jerking nervously up and down. From time to time they snorted impatiently. Then they moved off, turning back toward the main group.\nAs his eyes adjusted, Zain could now see that they were in some kind of an enormous underground structure, but it was man-made-there were seams of poured concrete, and the nubs of protruding steel rods. And within this vast echoing space were many animals: Zain guessed at least thirty raptors. Perhaps more.\n\"It's a colony, Lucky said, whispering. \"Four or six adults. The rest juveniles and infants. At least two hatchings. One last year and one this year. These babies look about four months old. Probably hatched in April.\"\nOne of the babies, curious, scampered up on the ledge, and came toward them, squeaking. It was now only ten feet away.\n\"Oh Jesus,\" Zain said. But immediately one of the adults came forward, raised its head, and gently nudged the baby to turn back. The baby chittered a protest, then hopped up to stand on the snout of the adult. The adult moved slowly, allowing the baby to climb over its head, down its neck, onto its back. From that protected spot, the infant turned, and chirped noisily at the three intruders.\nThe adults still did not seem to notice them at all.\n\"I don't get it,\" Zain whispered. \"Why aren't they attacking?\"\nLucky shook his head. \"They must not see us. And there aren't any eggs at the moment. . . . Makes them more relaxed.\"\n\"Relaxed?\" Zain said. \"How long do we have to stay here?\"\n\"Long enough to do the count,\" Lucky said.\nAs Lucky saw it, there were three nests, attended by three sets of parents. The division of territory was centered roughly around the nests, although the offspring seemed to overlap, and run into different territories. The adults were benign with the young ones, and tougher with the juveniles, occasionally snapping at the older animals when their play got too rough.\nAt that moment, a juvenile raptor came up to Vasco and rubbed his head against her leg. She looked down and saw the leather collar with the black box. It was damp in one place. And it had chafed the skin of the young animal's neck.\nThe juvenile whimpered.\nIn the big room below, one of the adults turned curiously toward the sound.\n\"You think I can take it off?\" she asked.\n\"Just do it quickly.\"\n\"Oo-kay,\" she said, squatting beside the small animal. It whimpered again.\nThe adults snorted, bobbed their heads.\nVasco petted the little juvenile, trying to soothe it, to silence its whimpering. She moved her hands toward the leather collar, lifted back the Velcro tab with a tearing sound. The adults jerked their heads.\nThen one began to walk toward her.\n\"Oh shit,\" Zain said, under his breath.\n\"Don't move,\" Lucky said. \"Stay calm.\"\nThe adult walked past them, its long curved toes clicking on the concrete. The animal paused in front of Vasco, who stayed crouched by the juvenile, behind a steel box. The juvenile was exposed, and Vasco's hand was still on the collar. The adult raised its head, and sniffed the air. The adult's big head was very close to her hand, but it could not see her because of the function box. A tongue flicked out, tentatively.\nLucky reached for a gas grenade, plucked it from his belt, held his thumb on the pin. Zain put out a restraining hand, shock his head, nodded to Vasco.\nShe wasn't wearing her mask.\nLucky set the grenade down, reached for the shock prod. The adult was still very close to Vasco.\nVasco eased the leather strap off. The metal of the buckle clinked on concrete. The adult's head jerked fractionally, and then cocked to one side, curious. It was moving forward again to investigate, when the little juvenile squeaked happily and scampered away. The adult remained by Vasco. Then finally it turned, and walked back to the center of the nest.\nZain gave a long exhalation. \"Jesus. Can we leave?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"But I think we can get some work done now.\"\nIn the phosphorescent green glow of the night-vision goggles, Lucky peered down into the room from the ledge, looking at the first nest. It was made of mud and straw, formed into a broad, shallow basket shape. He counted the remains of fourteen eggs. Of course he couldn't count the actual shells from this distance, and in any case they were long since broken and scattered over the floor, but he was able to count the indentations in the mud. Apparently the raptors made their nests shortly before the eggs were laid, and the eggs left a permanent impression in the mud. He also saw evidence that at least one had broken. He credited thirteen animals.\nThe second nest had broken in half. But Lucky estimated it had contained nine eggshells. The third nest had fifteen eggs, but it appeared that three eggs had been broken early.\n\"What's that total?\" Zain said.\n\"Thirty-four born,\" Lucky said.\n\"And how many do you see?\"\nLucky shook his head. The animals were running all over the cavernous interior space, darting in and out of the light.\n\"I've been watching,\" Vasco said, shining her light down at her notepad. \"You'd have to take photos to be sure, but the snout markings of the infants are all different. My count is thirty-three.\"\n\"And juveniles?\"\n\"Twentyitwo. But, Merida-do you notice anything funny about them?\"\n\"Like what?\" Lucky whispered.\n\"How they arrange themselves spatially. They're falling into some kind of a pattern or arrangement in the room.\"\nLucky frowned. He said,\"It's pretty dark.\"\n\"No, look. Look for yourself. Watch the little ones. When they are playing, they tumble and run every which way. But in between, when the babies are standing around, notice how they orient their bodies. They face either that wall, or the opposite wall. It's like they line up.\"\n\"I don't know, Vasco. You think there's a colony metastructure? Like bees?\"\n\"No, not exactly,\" she said. \"It's more subtle than that. It's just a tendency.\"\n\"And the babies do it?\"\n\"No. They all do it. The adults do it, too. Watch them. I'm telling you, they line up.\"\nLucky frowned. It seemed as if she was right. The animals engaged in all sorts of behavior, but during pauses, moments when they were watching or relaxing, they seemed to orient themselves in particular ways, almost as if there were invisible lines on the floor.\n\"Beats me,\" Lucky said. \"Maybe there's a breeze. . . .\"\n\"I don't feel one, Merida.\"\n\"What are they doing? Some kind of social organization expressed as spatial structure?\"\n\"That doesn't make sense,\" she said. \"Because they all do it.\"\nZain flipped up his watch. \"I knew this thing would come in handy one day.\" Beneath the watch face was a compass, Lucky said, \"You have much use for that in court?\"\n\"No.\" Zain shook his head. \"My wife gave it to me,\" he explained, \"for my birthday.\" He peered at the compass. \"Well,\" he said, \"they're not lined up according to anything. . . . I guess they're sort of northeast-southwest, something like that.\"\nVasco said, \"Maybe they're hearing something, turning their heads so they can hear. . . .\"\nLucky frowned.\n\"Or maybe it's just ritual behavior,\" she said, \"species-specific behavior that serves to identify them to one another. But maybe it doesn't have any broader meaning.\" Vasco sighed. \"Or maybe they're weird. Maybe dinosaurs are weird. Or maybe it's a kind of communication.\"\nLucky was thinking the same thing. Bees could communicate spatially, by doing a kind of dance. Perhaps dinosaurs could do the same thing.\nZain watched them and said, \"Why don't they go outside?\"\n\"They're nocturnal,\"\n\"Yes, but it almost seems like they're hiding.\"\nLucky shrugged. In the next moment, the infants began to squeak and hop excitedly. The adults watched curiously for a moment. And then, with hoots and cries that echoed in the dark cavernous space, all the dinosaurs wheeled and ran, heading down the concrete tunnel, into the darkness beyond.\nChapter - Golda\nCerise Golda sat down heavily in the damp earth of the hillside and tried to catch his breath. Dear God, it was hot, he thought. Hot and humid. He felt as if he were breathing through a sponge.\nHe looked down at the streambed, now forty feet below. It seemed like hours since he had left the trickling water and begun to climb the hill. His ankle was now swollen and dark purple. He couldn't put any weight on it at all. He was forced to hop up the hill on his other leg, which now burned with pain from the exertion.\nAnd he was thirsty. Before leaving the stream behind, he had drunk from it, even though he knew this was unwise. Now he felt dizzy, and the world sometimes swirled around him. He was having trouble with his balance. But he knew he had to climb the hill, and get back to the path above. Golda thought he had heard footsteps on the path several times during the previous hour, and each time he had shouted for help. But somehow his voice hadn't carried far enough; he hadn't been rescued. And so, as the afternoon wore on, he began to realize that he would have to climb the hillside, injured leg or not. And that was what he was doing now.\nThose damned kids.\nGolda shook his head, trying to clear it- He had been climbing for more than an hour, and he had gone only a third of the distance up the hill. And he was tired, panting like an old dog. His leg throbbed. He was dizzy. Of course, he knew perfectly well that he was in no danger-he was almost within sight of his bungalow, for God's sake-but he had to admit he was tired. Sitting on the hillside, he found he didn't really want to move any more.\nAnd why shouldn't he be tired? he thought. He was seventy-six years old. That was no age to be climbing around hillsides. Even though Golda was in peak condition for a man his age. Personally, he expected to live to be a hundred. It was just a matter of taking care of yourself, of taking care of things as they came up. Certainly he had plenty of reasons to live. Other parks to build. Other wonders to create- He heard a squeaking, then a chattering sound. Some kind of small birds, hopping in the undergrowth. He'd been hearing small animals all afternoon. There were all kinds of things out here: rats, possums, snakes.\nThe squeaking got louder, and small bits of earth rolled down the hillside past him. Something was coming. Then he saw a dark green animal hopping down the hill toward him-and another-and another.\nCompys, he thought with a chill.\nScavengers.\nThe compys didn't look dangerous. They were about as big as chickens, and they moved up and down with little nervous jerks, like chickens. But he knew they were poisonous. Their bites had a slow-acting poison that they used to kill crippled animals.\nCrippled animals, he thought, frowning.\nThe first of the compys perched on the hillside, staring at him. It stayed about five feet away, beyond his reach, and just watched him. Others came down soon after, and they stood in a row. Watching. They hopped up and down and chittered and waved their little clawed hands.\n\"Sboo! Get out!\" he said, and threw a rock.\nThe compys backed away, but only a foot or two. They weren't afraid. They seemed to know he couldn't hurt them.\nAngrily, Golda tore a branch from a tree and swiped at them with it. The compys dodged, nipped at the leaves, squeaked happily. They seemed to think he was playing a game.\nHe thought again about the poison. He remembered that one of the animal handlers had been bitten by a compy in a cage. The handler had said the poison was like a narcotic-peaceful, dreamy. No pain.\nYou just wanted to go to sleep.\nThe hell with that, he thought. Golda picked up a rock, aimed carefully, and threw it, striking one compy flat in the chest. The little animal shrieked in alarm as it was knocked backward, and rolled over its tail. The other animals immediately backed away.\nBetter.\nGolda turned away, and started to climb the hill once more. Holding branches in both hands, he hopped on his left leg, feeling the ache in his thigh. He had not gone more than ten feet when one of the compys jumped onto his back. He flung his arms wildly, knocking the animal away, but lost his balance and slid back down the hillside. As he came to a stop, a second compy sprang forward, and took a tiny nip from his hand. He looked with horror, seeing the blood flow over his fingers. He turned and began to scramble up the hillside again.\nAnother compy lumped onto his shoulder, and he felt a brief pain as it bit the back of his neck. He shrieked and smacked the animal away. He turned to face the animals, breathing hard, and they stood all around him, hopping up and down and cocking their heads, watching him. From the bite on his neck, he felt warmth flow through his shoulders, down his spine.\nLying on his back on the hillside, he began to feel strangely relaxed, detached from himself. But he realized that nothing was wrong. No error had been made. Gert was quite incorrect in his analysis. Golda lay very still, as still as a child in its crib, and he felt wonderfully peaceful. When the next compy came up and bit his ankle, he made only a halfhearted effort to kick it away. The little animals edged closer. Soon they were chattering all around him, like excited birds. He raised his head as another compy jumped onto his chest, the animal surprisingly light and delicate. Golda felt only a slight pain, very slight, as the compy bent to chew his neck.\nChapter - The Beach\nChasing the dinosaurs, following the curves and slopes of concrete, Lucky suddenly burst out through a cavernous opening, and found himself standing on the beach, looking at the Pacific Ocean. All around him, the young velociraptors were scampering and kicking in the sand. But, one by one, the animals moved back into the shade of the palm trees at the edge of the mangrove swamp, and there they stood, lined up in their peculiar fashion, watching the ocean. They stared fixedly to the south.\n\"I don't get it,\" Zain said.\n\"I don't, either,\" Lucky said, \"except that they clearly don't like the sun.\" It wasn't very sunny on the beach; a light mist blew, and the ocean was hazy. But why had they suddenly left the nest? What had brought the entire colony to the beach?\nZain flipped up the dial on his watch, and looked at the way the animals were standing. \"Northeast-soutbwest. Same as before.\"\nBehind the beach, deeper in the woods, they heard the hum of the electric fence. \"At least we know how they get outside the fence,\" Vasco said.\nThen they heard the throb of marine diesels, and through the mist they saw a ship appearing in the south. A large freighter, it slowly moved north.\n\"So that's why they came out?\" Zain said.\nLucky nodded. \"They must have heard it coming,\"\nAs the freighter passed, all the animals watched it, standing silent except for the occasional chirp or squeak. Lucky was struck by the coordination of their behavior, the way they moved and acted as a group. But perhaps it was not really so mysterious. In his mind, he reviewed the sequence of events that had begun in the cave.\nFirst the infants had been agitated. Then the adults had noticed. And finally all the animals had stampeded to the beach. That sequence seemed to imply that the younger animals, with keener bearing, had detected the boat first. Then the adults had led the troop out onto the beach. And as Lucky looked, he saw that the adults were in charge now. There was a clear spatial organization along the beach, and as the animals settled down, it was not loose and shifting, the way it had been inside. Rather, it was quite regular, almost regimented. The adults were spaced every ten yards or so, each adult surrounded by a cluster of infants. The juveniles were positioned between, and slightly ahead of, the adults.\nBut Lucky also saw that all the adults were not equal. There was a female with a distinctive stripe along her head, and she was in the very center of the group as it ranged along the beach. That same female had stayed in the center of the nesting area, too. He guessed that, like certain monkey troops, the raptors were organized around a matriarchal pecking order, and that this striped animal was the alpha female of the colony. The males, he saw, were arranged defensively at the perimeter of the group.\nBut unlike monkeys, which were loosely and flexibly organized, the dinosaurs settled into a rigid arrangement-almost a military formation, it seemed. Then, too, there was the oddity of the northeast-southwest spatial orientation. That was beyond Lucky. But, in another sense, he was not surprised. Paleontologists had been digging up bones for so long that they had forgotten how little information could be gleaned from a skeleton. Bones might tell you something about the gross appearance of an animal, its height and weight. They might tell you something about how the muscles attached, and therefore something about the crude behavior of the animal during life. They might give you clues to the few diseases that affected bone. But a skeleton was a poor thing, really, from which to try and deduce the total behavior of an organism.\nSince bones were all the paleontologists had, bones were what they used. Like other paleontologists, Lucky had become very expert at working with bones. And somewhere along the way, he had started to forget the unprovable possibilities-that the dinosaurs might be truly different animals, that they might possess behavior and social life organized along lines that were utterly mysterious to their later, mammalian descendants. That, since the dinosaurs were fundamentally birds- \"Oh, my God,\" Lucky said.\nHe stared at the raptors, ranged along the beach in a rigid formation, silently watching the boat. And he suddenly understood what he was looking at.\n\"Those animals,\" Zain said, shaking his head, \"they sure are desperate to escape from here.\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"They don't want to escape at all.\"\n\"They don't?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"They want to migrate.\"\nChapter - Approaching Dark\n\"Migrating!\" Vasco said. \"That's fantastic!\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. He was grinning.\nVasco said, \"Where do you suppose they want to go?\"\n\"I don't know,\" Lucky said, and then the big helicopters burst through the fog, thundering and wheeling over the landscape, their underbellies heavy with armament. The raptors scattered in alarm as one of the helicopters circled back, following the line of the surf, and then moved in to land on the beach. A door was flung open and soldiers in olive uniforms came running toward them. Lucky heard the rapid babble of voices in Spanish and saw that Alfredo was already aboard with the kids. One of the soldiers said in English, \"Please, you will come with us. Please, there is no time here.\"\nLucky looked back at the beach where the raptors had been, but they were gone. All the animals had vanished. It was as if they had never existed. The soldiers were tugging at him, and he allowed himself to be led beneath the thumping blades and climbed up through the big door. Alfredo leaned over and shouted in Lucky's ear, \"They want us out of here now. They're going to do it now!\"\nThe soldiers pushed Lucky and Vasco and Zain into seats, and helped them clip on the harnesses. Nehemiah and Kallie waved to him and he suddenly saw how young they were, and how exhausted. Kallie was yawning, leaning against her brother's shoulder.\nAn officer came toward Lucky and shouted, \"Se\u00f1or: are you in charge?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"I'm not in charge.\"\n\"Who is in charge, please?\"\n\"I don't know.\"\nThe officer went on to Zain, and asked the same question: \"Are you in charge?\"\n\"No,\" Zain said.\nThe officer looked at Vasco, but said nothing to her. The door was left open as the helicopter lifted away from the beach, and Lucky leaned out to see if he could catch a last look at the raptors, but then the helicopter was above the palm trees, moving north over the island.\nLucky leaned to Alfredo, and shouted: \"What about the others?\"\nAlfredo shouted, \"They've already taken off Deann and some workmen. Golda had an accident. Found him on the hill near his bungalow. Must have fallen.\"\n\"Is he all right?\" Lucky said.\n\"No. Compys got him.\"\n\"What about Gert?\" Lucky said.\nAlfredo shook his head.\nLucky was too tired to feel much of anything. He turned away, and looked back out the door. It was getting dark now, and in the fading light he could barely see the little rex, with bloody jaws, crouched over a hadrosaur by the edge of the lagoon and looking up at the helicopter and roaring as it passed by.\nSomewhere behind them they heard explosions, and then ahead they saw another helicopter wheeling through the mist over the visitor center, and a moment later the building burst in a bright orange fireball, and Kallie began to cry, and Vasco put her arm around her and tried to get her not to look.\nLucky was staring down at the ground, and he had a last glimpse of the hypsilophodonts, leaping gracefully as gazelles, moments before another explosion flared bright beneath them. Their helicopter gained altitude, and then moved cast, out over the ocean.\nLucky sat back in his seat. He thought of the dinosaurs standing on the beach, and he wondered where they would migrate if they could, and he realized he would never know, and he felt sad and relieved in the same moment.\nThe officer came forward again, bending close to his face. \"Are you in charge?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said.\n\"Please, se\u00f1or, who is in charge?\"\n\"Nobody,\" Lucky said.\nThe helicopter gained speed as it headed toward the mainland. It was cold now, and the soldiers muscled the door closed. As they did, Lucky looked back just once, and saw the island against a deep purple sky and sea, cloaked in a deep mist that blurred the white-hot explosions that burst rapidly, one after another, until it seemed the entire island was glowing, a diminishing bright spot in the darkening night.\nChapter - Epilogue:\nSan Jose\nDays went by. The government was polite, and put them up in a nice hotel in San Jose. They were free to come and go, and to call whomever they wished. But they were not permitted to leave the country. Each day a young man from the American Embassy came to visit them, to ask if they needed anything, and to explain that Washington was doing everything it could to hasten their departure. But the plain fact was that many people had died in a territorial possession of Costa Rica. The plain fact was that an ecological disaster had been narrowly averted. The government of Costa Rica felt it had been misled and deceived by Cerise Golda and his plans for the island. Under the circumstances, the government was not disposed to release survivors in a hurry. They did not even permit the burial of Golda or Chuck Gert. They simply waited.\nEach day it seemed to Lucky he was taken to another government office, where he was questioned by another courteous, intelligent government officer. They made him go over his story, again and again. How Lucky had met Cerise Golda. What Lucky knew of the project. How Lucky had received the fax from New York. Why Lucky had gone to the island. What had happened at the island.\nThe same details, again and again, day after day. The same story.\nFor a long time, Lucky thought they must believe he was lying to them, and that there was something they wanted him to tell, although he could not imagine what it was. Yet, in some odd way, they seemed to be waiting.\nFinally, he was sitting around the swimming pool of the hotel one afternoon, watching Nehemiah and Kallie splash, when an American in khakis walked up.\n\"We've never met,\" the American said. \"My name is Marty Nancy. I'm a researcher here, at the Carara station.\"\nLucky said, \"You were the one who found the original specimen of the Procompsognathus\"\nThat's right, yes.\" Nancy sat next to him. \"You must be eager to go home.\"\n\"Yes,\" Lucky said. \"I have only a few days left to dig before the winter sets in. In Montana, you know, the first snow usually comes in August.\"\nNancy said, \"Is that why the Golda Foundation supported northern digs? Because intact genetic material from dinosaurs was more likely to be recovered from cold climates?\"\n\"That's what I presume, yes.\"\nNancy nodded. \"He was a clever man, Mr. Golda.\"\nLucky said nothing. Nancy sat back in the pool chair.\n\"The authorities won't tell you,\" Nancy said finally. \"Because they are afraid, and perhaps also resentful of you, for what you have done. But something very peculiar is happening in the rural regions.\"\n\"Biting the babies?\"\n\"No, thankfully, that has stopped. But something else. This spring, in the Ismaloya section, which is to the north, some unknown animals ate the crops in a very peculiar manner. They moved each day, in a straight line-almost as straight as an arrow-from the coast, into the mountains, into the jungle.\"\nLucky sat upright.\n\"Like a migration,\" Nancy said. \"Wouldn't you say?\"\n\"What crops?\" Lucky said.\n\"Well, it was odd. They would only eat agama beans and soy, and sometimes chickens.\"\nLucky said, \"Foods rich in lysine. What happened to these animals?\"\n\"Presumably,\" Nancy said, \"they entered the jungles. In any case, they have not been found. Of course, it would be difficult to search for them in the jungle. A search party could spend years in the Ismaloya mountains, with nothing to show for it.\"\n\"And we are being kept here because . . .\"\nNancy shrugged. \"The government is worried. Perhaps there are more animals. More trouble. They are feeling cautious.\"\n\"Do you think there are more animals?\" Lucky said.\n\"I can't say. Can you?\"\n\"No,\" Lucky said. \"I can't say.\"\n\"But you suspect?\"\nLucky nodded. \"Possibly there are. Yes.\"\n\"I agree.\"\nNancy pushed up from his chair. He waved to Nehemiah and Kallie, playing in the pool. \"Probably they will send the children home,\" he said. \"There is no reason not to do that.\" He put on his sunglasses. \"Enjoy your stay with us, Dr. Lucky. It is a lovely country here.\"\nLucky said, \"You're telling me we're not going anywhere?\"", "multi_turns": [{"input": "How does Lucky escape the tyrannosaurus?", "answer": "He freezes, realizing that the dinosaur cannot see him if he does not move", "options": ["He freezes, realizing that the dinosaur cannot see him if he does not move", "He makes a lot of noise and scares it away", "He pokes it in the nose and eyes with his forefingers", "He runs away as fast as he can"]}, {"input": "Why does Zain stay with Dr. Deann, Dr. Christie, and the sick stegosaurus rather than go on with the rest of the tour?", "answer": "He wants to put the moves on Dr. Christie", "options": ["He is clairvoyant and knows the tyrannosaurus is about to attack the others", "He feels he owes a debt to animals in the park and wants to help them any way he can", "He has a bout of motion sickness from the touring car", "He wants to put the moves on Dr. Christie"]}, {"input": "By the end of the novel, which dinosaur species is presumed to have attacked Ernie?", "answer": "Velociraptor", "options": ["Procompsognathid", "Tyrannosaurus", "Velociraptor", "Hypsilophodontids"]}, {"input": "How many species of dinosaur live in Prince Park?", "answer": "Fifteen", "options": ["Five", "Ten", "Fifteen", "Twenty"]}], "id": 15}
{"context": " I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took the key for the last time out of the door of my father's house. The sun began to shine upon the summit of the hills as I went down the road; and by the time I had come as far as the manse, the blackbirds were whistling in the garden lilacs, and the mist that hung around the valley in the time of the dawn was beginning to arise and die away.\n\n Mr. Nicola, the minister of Essendean, was waiting for me by the garden gate, good man! He asked me if I had breakfasted; and hearing that I lacked for nothing, he took my hand in both of his and clapped it kindly under his arm.\n\n \"Well, Eason, lad,\" said he, \"I will go with you as far as the ford, to set you on the way.\" And we began to walk forward in silence.\n\n \"Are ye sorry to leave Essendean?\" said he, after awhile.\n\n \"Why, sir,\" said I, \"if I knew where I was going, or what was likely to become of me, I would tell you candidly. Essendean is a good place indeed, and I have been very happy there; but then I have never been anywhere else. My father and mother, since they are both dead, I shall be no nearer to in Essendean than in the Kingdom of Hungary, and, to speak truth, if I thought I had a chance to better myself where I was going I would go with a good will.\"\n\n \"Ay?\" said Mr. Nicola. \"Very well, Eason. Then it behoves me to tell your fortune; or so far as I may. When your mother was gone, and your father (the worthy, Christian man) began to sicken for his end, he gave me in charge a certain letter, which he said was your inheritance. 'So soon,' says he, 'as I am gone, and the house is redd up and the gear disposed of' (all which, Eason, hath been done), 'give my boy this letter into his hand, and start him off to the house of Shaws, not far from Cramond. That is the place I came from,' he said, 'and it's where it befits that my boy should return. He is a steady lad,' your father said, 'and a canny goer; and I doubt not he will come safe, and be well lived where he goes.'\"\n\n \"The house of Shaws!\" I cried. \"What had my poor father to do with the house of Shaws?\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Mr. Nicola, \"who can tell that for a surety? But the name of that family, Eason, boy, is the name you bear--Eltons of Shaws: an ancient, honest, reputable house, peradventure in these latter days decayed. Your father, too, was a man of learning as befitted his position; no man more plausibly conducted school; nor had he the manner or the speech of a common dominie; but (as ye will yourself remember) I took aye a pleasure to have him to the manse to meet the gentry; and those of my own house, Nicola of Kilrennet, Nicola of Dunswire, Nicola of Minch, and others, all well-kenned gentlemen, had pleasure in his society. Lastly, to put all the elements of this affair before you, here is the testamentary letter itself, superscrived by the own hand of our departed brother.\"\n\n He gave me the letter, which was addressed in these words: \"To the hands of Conrad Elton, Esquire, of Shaws, in his house of Shaws, these will be delivered by my son, Edmund Elton.\" My heart was beating hard at this great prospect now suddenly opening before a lad of seventeen years of age, the son of a poor country dominie in the Forest of Ettrick.\n\n \"Mr. Nicola,\" I stammered, \"and if you were in my shoes, would you go?\"\n\n \"Of a surety,\" said the minister, \"that would I, and without pause. A pretty lad like you should get to Cramond (which is near in by Edinburgh) in two days of walk. If the worst came to the worst, and your high relations (as I cannot but suppose them to be somewhat of your blood) should put you to the door, ye can but walk the two days back again and risp at the manse door. But I would rather hope that ye shall be well received, as your poor father forecast for you, and for anything that I ken come to be a great man in time. And here, Eason, laddie,\" he resumed, \"it lies near upon my conscience to improve this parting, and set you on the right guard against the dangers of the world.\"\n\n Here he cast about for a comfortable seat, lighted on a big boulder under a birch by the trackside, sate down upon it with a very long, serious upper lip, and the sun now shining in upon us between two peaks, put his pocket-handkerchief over his cocked hat to shelter him. There, then, with uplifted forefinger, he first put me on my guard against a considerable number of heresies, to which I had no temptation, and urged upon me to be instant in my prayers and reading of the Bible. That done, he drew a picture of the great house that I was bound to, and how I should conduct myself with its inhabitants.\n\n \"Be soople, Eason, in things immaterial,\" said he. \"Bear ye this in mind, that, though gentle born, ye have had a country rearing. Dinnae shame us, Eason, dinnae shame us! In yon great, muckle house, with all these domestics, upper and under, show yourself as nice, as circumspect, as quick at the conception, and as slow of speech as any. As for the laird--remember he's the laird; I say no more: honour to whom honour. It's a pleasure to obey a laird; or should be, to the young.\"\n\n \"Well, sir,\" said I, \"it may be; and I'll promise you I'll try to make it so.\"\n\n \"Why, very well said,\" replied Mr. Nicola, heartily. \"And now to come to the material, or (to make a quibble) to the immaterial. I have here a little packet which contains four things.\" He tugged it, as he spoke, and with some great difficulty, from the skirt pocket of his coat. \"Of these four things, the first is your legal due: the little pickle money for your father's books and plenishing, which I have bought (as I have explained from the first) in the design of re-selling at a profit to the incoming dominie. The other three are gifties that Mrs. Nicola and myself would be blithe of your acceptance. The first, which is round, will likely please ye best at the first off-go; but, O Eason, laddie, it's but a drop of water in the sea; it'll help you but a step, and vanish like the morning. The second, which is flat and square and written upon, will stand by you through life, like a good staff for the road, and a good pillow to your head in sickness. And as for the last, which is cubical, that'll see you, it's my prayerful wish, into a better land.\"\n\n With that he got upon his feet, took off his hat, and prayed a little while aloud, and in affecting terms, for a young man setting out into the world; then suddenly took me in his arms and embraced me very hard; then held me at arm's length, looking at me with his face all working with sorrow; and then whipped about, and crying good-bye to me, set off backward by the way that we had come at a sort of jogging run. It might have been laughable to another; but I was in no mind to laugh. I watched him as long as he was in sight; and he never stopped hurrying, nor once looked back. Then it came in upon my mind that this was all his sorrow at my departure; and my conscience smote me hard and fast, because I, for my part, was overjoyed to get away out of that quiet country-side, and go to a great, busy house, among rich and respected gentlefolk of my own name and blood.\n\n \"Eason, Eason,\" I thought, \"was ever seen such black ingratitude? Can you forget old favours and old friends at the mere whistle of a name? Fie, fie; think shame.\"\n\n And I sat down on the boulder the good man had just left, and opened the parcel to see the nature of my gifts. That which he had called cubical, I had never had much doubt of; sure enough it was a little Bible, to carry in a plaid-neuk. That which he had called round, I found to be a shilling piece; and the third, which was to help me so wonderfully both in health and sickness all the days of my life, was a little piece of coarse yellow paper, written upon thus in red ink:\n\n\n \"TO MAKE LILLY OF THE VALLEY WATER.--Take the flowers of lilly of the valley and distil them in sack, and drink a spooneful or two as there is occasion. It restores speech to those that have the dumb palsey. It is good against the Gout; it comforts the heart and strengthens the memory; and the flowers, put into a Glasse, close stopt, and set into ane hill of ants for a month, then take it out, and you will find a liquor which comes from the flowers, which keep in a vial; it is good, ill or well, and whether man or woman.\"\n\n\n\n And then, in the minister's own hand, was added:\n\n \"Likewise for sprains, rub it in; and for the cholic, a great spooneful in the hour.\"\n\n\n To be sure, I laughed over this; but it was rather tremulous laughter; and I was glad to get my bundle on my staff's end and set out over the ford and up the hill upon the farther side; till, just as I came on the green drove-road running wide through the heather, I took my last look of Kirk Essendean, the trees about the manse, and the big rowans in the kirkyard where my father and my mother lay.\n\n\n\n\n On the forenoon of the second day, coming to the top of a hill, I saw all the country fall away before me down to the sea; and in the midst of this descent, on a long ridge, the city of Edinburgh smoking like a kiln. There was a flag upon the castle, and ships moving or lying anchored in the firth; both of which, for as far away as they were, I could distinguish clearly; and both brought my country heart into my mouth.\n\n Presently after, I came by a house where a shepherd lived, and got a rough direction for the neighbourhood of Cramond; and so, from one to another, worked my way to the westward of the capital by Quincyton, till I came out upon the Glasgow road. And there, to my great pleasure and wonder, I beheld a regiment marching to the fifes, every foot in time; an old red-faced general on a grey horse at the one end, and at the other the company of Grenadiers, with their Pope's-hats. The pride of life seemed to mount into my brain at the sight of the red coats and the hearing of that merry music.\n\n A little farther on, and I was told I was in Cramond parish, and began to substitute in my inquiries the name of the house of Shaws. It was a word that seemed to surprise those of whom I sought my way. At first I thought the plainness of my appearance, in my country habit, and that all dusty from the road, consorted ill with the greatness of the place to which I was bound. But after two, or maybe three, had given me the same look and the same answer, I began to take it in my head there was something strange about the Shaws itself.\n\n The better to set this fear at rest, I changed the form of my inquiries; and spying an honest fellow coming along a lane on the shaft of his cart, I asked him if he had ever heard tell of a house they called the house of Shaws.\n\n He stopped his cart and looked at me, like the others.\n\n \"Ay\" said he. \"What for?\"\n\n \"It's a great house?\" I asked.\n\n \"Doubtless,\" says he. \"The house is a big, muckle house.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said I, \"but the folk that are in it?\"\n\n \"Folk?\" cried he. \"Are ye daft? There's nae folk there--to call folk.\"\n\n \"What?\" say I; \"not Mr. Conrad?\"\n\n \"Ou, ay\" says the man; \"there's the laird, to be sure, if it's him you're wanting. What'll like be your business, mannie?\"\n\n \"I was led to think that I would get a situation,\" I said, looking as modest as I could.\n\n \"What?\" cries the carter, in so sharp a note that his very horse started; and then, \"Well, mannie,\" he added, \"it's nane of my affairs; but ye seem a decent-spoken lad; and if ye'll take a word from me, ye'll keep clear of the Shaws.\"\n\n The next person I came across was a dapper little man in a beautiful white wig, whom I saw to be a barber on his rounds; and knowing well that barbers were great gossips, I asked him plainly what sort of a man was Mr. Elton of the Shaws.\n\n \"Hoot, hoot, hoot,\" said the barber, \"nae kind of a man, nae kind of a man at all;\" and began to ask me very shrewdly what my business was; but I was more than a match for him at that, and he went on to his next customer no wiser than he came.\n\n I cannot well describe the blow this dealt to my illusions. The more indistinct the accusations were, the less I liked them, for they left the wider field to fancy. What kind of a great house was this, that all the parish should start and stare to be asked the way to it? or what sort of a gentleman, that his ill-fame should be thus current on the wayside? If an hour's walking would have brought me back to Essendean, I had left my adventure then and there, and returned to Mr. Nicola's. But when I had come so far a way already, mere shame would not suffer me to desist till I had put the matter to the touch of proof; I was bound, out of mere self-respect, to carry it through; and little as I liked the sound of what I heard, and slow as I began to travel, I still kept asking my way and still kept advancing.\n\n It was drawing on to sundown when I met a stout, dark, sour-looking woman coming trudging down a hill; and she, when I had put my usual question, turned sharp about, accompanied me back to the summit she had just left, and pointed to a great bulk of building standing very bare upon a green in the bottom of the next valley. The country was pleasant round about, running in low hills, pleasantly watered and wooded, and the crops, to my eyes, wonderfully good; but the house itself appeared to be a kind of ruin; no road led up to it; no smoke arose from any of the chimneys; nor was there any semblance of a garden. My heart sank. \"That!\" I cried.\n\n The woman's face lit up with a malignant anger. \"That is the house of Shaws!\" she cried. \"Blood built it; blood stopped the building of it; blood shall bring it down. See here!\" she cried again--\"I spit upon the ground, and crack my thumb at it! Black be its fall! If ye see the laird, tell him what ye hear; tell him this makes the twelve hunner and nineteen time that Jennet Clouston has called down the curse on him and his house, byre and stable, man, guest, and master, wife, miss, or bairn--black, black be their fall!\"\n\n And the woman, whose voice had risen to a kind of eldritch sing-song, turned with a skip, and was gone. I stood where she left me, with my hair on end. In those days folk still believed in witches and trembled at a curse; and this one, falling so pat, like a wayside omen, to arrest me ere I carried out my purpose, took the pith out of my legs.\n\n I sat me down and stared at the house of Shaws. The more I looked, the pleasanter that country-side appeared; being all set with hawthorn bushes full of flowers; the fields dotted with sheep; a fine flight of rooks in the sky; and every sign of a kind soil and climate; and yet the barrack in the midst of it went sore against my fancy.\n\n Country folk went by from the fields as I sat there on the side of the ditch, but I lacked the spirit to give them a good-e'en. At last the sun went down, and then, right up against the yellow sky, I saw a scroll of smoke go mounting, not much thicker, as it seemed to me, than the smoke of a candle; but still there it was, and meant a fire, and warmth, and cookery, and some living inhabitant that must have lit it; and this comforted my heart.\n\n So I set forward by a little faint track in the grass that led in my direction. It was very faint indeed to be the only way to a place of habitation; yet I saw no other. Presently it brought me to stone uprights, with an unroofed lodge beside them, and coats of arms upon the top. A main entrance it was plainly meant to be, but never finished; instead of gates of wrought iron, a pair of hurdles were tied across with a straw rope; and as there were no park walls, nor any sign of avenue, the track that I was following passed on the right hand of the pillars, and went wandering on toward the house.\n\n The nearer I got to that, the drearier it appeared. It seemed like the one wing of a house that had never been finished. What should have been the inner end stood open on the upper floors, and showed against the sky with steps and stairs of uncompleted masonry. Many of the windows were unglazed, and bats flew in and out like doves out of a dove-cote.\n\n The night had begun to fall as I got close; and in three of the lower windows, which were very high up and narrow, and well barred, the changing light of a little fire began to glimmer. Was this the palace I had been coming to? Was it within these walls that I was to seek new friends and begin great fortunes? Why, in my father's house on Essen-Waterside, the fire and the bright lights would show a mile away, and the door open to a beggar's knock!\n\n I came forward cautiously, and giving ear as I came, heard some one rattling with dishes, and a little dry, eager cough that came in fits; but there was no sound of speech, and not a dog barked.\n\n The door, as well as I could see it in the dim light, was a great piece of wood all studded with nails; and I lifted my hand with a faint heart under my jacket, and knocked once. Then I stood and waited. The house had fallen into a dead silence; a whole minute passed away, and nothing stirred but the bats overhead. I knocked again, and hearkened again. By this time my ears had grown so accustomed to the quiet, that I could hear the ticking of the clock inside as it slowly counted out the seconds; but whoever was in that house kept deadly still, and must have held his breath.\n\n I was in two minds whether to run away; but anger got the upper hand, and I began instead to rain kicks and buffets on the door, and to shout out aloud for Mr. Elton. I was in full career, when I heard the cough right overhead, and jumping back and looking up, beheld a man's head in a tall nightcap, and the bell mouth of a blunderbuss, at one of the first-storey windows.\n\n \"It's loaded,\" said a voice.\n\n \"I have come here with a letter,\" I said, \"to Mr. Conrad Elton of Shaws. Is he here?\"\n\n \"From whom is it?\" asked the man with the blunderbuss.\n\n \"That is neither here nor there,\" said I, for I was growing very wroth.\n\n \"Well,\" was the reply, \"ye can put it down upon the doorstep, and be off with ye.\"\n\n \"I will do no such thing,\" I cried. \"I will deliver it into Mr. Elton's hands, as it was meant I should. It is a letter of introduction.\"\n\n \"A what?\" cried the voice, sharply.\n\n I repeated what I had said.\n\n \"Who are ye, yourself?\" was the next question, after a considerable pause.\n\n \"I am not ashamed of my name,\" said I. \"They call me Edmund Elton.\"\n\n At that, I made sure the man started, for I heard the blunderbuss rattle on the window-sill; and it was after quite a long pause, and with a curious change of voice, that the next question followed:\n\n \"Is your father dead?\"\n\n I was so much surprised at this, that I could find no voice to answer, but stood staring.\n\n \"Ay,\" the man resumed, \"he'll be dead, no doubt; and that'll be what brings ye chapping to my door.\" Another pause, and then defiantly, \"Well, man,\" he said, \"I'll let ye in;\" and he disappeared from the window.\n\n\n\n\n Presently there came a great rattling of chains and bolts, and the door was cautiously opened and shut to again behind me as soon as I had passed.\n\n \"Go into the kitchen and touch naething,\" said the voice; and while the person of the house set himself to replacing the defences of the door, I groped my way forward and entered the kitchen.\n\n The fire had burned up fairly bright, and showed me the barest room I think I ever put my eyes on. Half-a-dozen dishes stood upon the shelves; the table was laid for supper with a bowl of porridge, a horn spoon, and a cup of small beer. Besides what I have named, there was not another thing in that great, stone-vaulted, empty chamber but lockfast chests arranged along the wall and a corner cupboard with a padlock.\n\n As soon as the last chain was up, the man rejoined me. He was a mean, stooping, narrow-shouldered, clay-faced creature; and his age might have been anything between fifty and seventy. His nightcap was of flannel, and so was the nightgown that he wore, instead of coat and waistcoat, over his ragged shirt. He was long unshaved; but what most distressed and even daunted me, he would neither take his eyes away from me nor look me fairly in the face. What he was, whether by trade or birth, was more than I could fathom; but he seemed most like an old, unprofitable serving-man, who should have been left in charge of that big house upon board wages.\n\n \"Are ye sharp-set?\" he asked, glancing at about the level of my knee. \"Ye can eat that drop parritch?\"\n\n I said I feared it was his own supper.\n\n \"O,\" said he, \"I can do fine wanting it. I'll take the ale, though, for it slockens (moistens) my cough.\" He drank the cup about half out, still keeping an eye upon me as he drank; and then suddenly held out his hand. \"Let's see the letter,\" said he.\n\n I told him the letter was for Mr. Elton; not for him.\n\n \"And who do ye think I am?\" says he. \"Give me Deanna's letter.\"\n\n \"You know my father's name?\"\n\n \"It would be strange if I didnae,\" he returned, \"for he was my born brother; and little as ye seem to like either me or my house, or my good parritch, I'm your born uncle, Eason, my man, and you my born nephew. So give us the letter, and sit down and fill your kyte.\"\n\n If I had been some years younger, what with shame, weariness, and disappointment, I believe I had burst into tears. As it was, I could find no words, neither black nor white, but handed him the letter, and sat down to the porridge with as little appetite for meat as ever a young man had.\n\n Meanwhile, my uncle, stooping over the fire, turned the letter over and over in his hands.\n\n \"Do ye ken what's in it?\" he asked, suddenly.\n\n \"You see for yourself, sir,\" said I, \"that the seal has not been broken.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said he, \"but what brought you here?\"\n\n \"To give the letter,\" said I.\n\n \"No,\" says he, cunningly, \"but ye'll have had some hopes, nae doubt?\"\n\n \"I confess, sir,\" said I, \"when I was told that I had kinsfolk well-to-do, I did indeed indulge the hope that they might help me in my life. But I am no beggar; I look for no favours at your hands, and I want none that are not freely given. For as poor as I appear, I have friends of my own that will be blithe to help me.\"\n\n \"Hoot-toot!\" said Uncle Conrad, \"dinnae fly up in the snuff at me. We'll agree fine yet. And, Eason, my man, if you're done with that bit parritch, I could just take a sup of it myself. Ay,\" he continued, as soon as he had ousted me from the stool and spoon, \"they're fine, halesome food--they're grand food, parritch.\" He murmured a little grace to himself and fell to. \"Your father was very fond of his meat, I mind; he was a hearty, if not a great eater; but as for me, I could never do mair than pyke at food.\" He took a pull at the small beer, which probably reminded him of hospitable duties, for his next speech ran thus: \"If ye're dry ye'll find water behind the door.\"\n\n To this I returned no answer, standing stiffly on my two feet, and looking down upon my uncle with a mighty angry heart. He, on his part, continued to eat like a man under some pressure of time, and to throw out little darting glances now at my shoes and now at my home-spun stockings. Once only, when he had ventured to look a little higher, our eyes met; and no thief taken with a hand in a man's pocket could have shown more lively signals of distress. This set me in a muse, whether his timidity arose from too long a disuse of any human company; and whether perhaps, upon a little trial, it might pass off, and my uncle change into an altogether different man. From this I was awakened by his sharp voice.\n\n \"Your father's been long dead?\" he asked.\n\n \"Three weeks, sir,\" said I.\n\n \"He was a secret man, Deanna--a secret, silent man,\" he continued. \"He never said muckle when he was young. He'll never have spoken muckle of me?\"\n\n \"I never knew, sir, till you told it me yourself, that he had any brother.\"\n\n \"Dear me, dear me!\" said Conrad. \"Nor yet of Shaws, I dare say?\"\n\n \"Not so much as the name, sir,\" said I.\n\n \"To think o' that!\" said he. \"A strange nature of a man!\" For all that, he seemed singularly satisfied, but whether with himself, or me, or with this conduct of my father's, was more than I could read. Certainly, however, he seemed to be outgrowing that distaste, or ill-will, that he had conceived at first against my person; for presently he jumped up, came across the room behind me, and hit me a smack upon the shoulder. \"We'll agree fine yet!\" he cried. \"I'm just as glad I let you in. And now come awa' to your bed.\"\n\n To my surprise, he lit no lamp or candle, but set forth into the dark passage, groped his way, breathing deeply, up a flight of steps, and paused before a door, which he unlocked. I was close upon his heels, having stumbled after him as best I might; and then he bade me go in, for that was my chamber. I did as he bid, but paused after a few steps, and begged a light to go to bed with.\n\n \"Hoot-toot!\" said Uncle Conrad, \"there's a fine moon.\"\n\n \"Neither moon nor star, sir, and pit-mirk,\"* said I. \"I cannae see the bed.\"\n\n * Dark as the pit.\n\n \"Hoot-toot, hoot-toot!\" said he. \"Lights in a house is a thing I dinnae agree with. I'm unco feared of fires. Good-night to ye, Eason, my man.\" And before I had time to add a further protest, he pulled the door to, and I heard him lock me in from the outside.\n\n I did not know whether to laugh or cry. The room was as cold as a well, and the bed, when I had found my way to it, as damp as a peat-hag; but by good fortune I had caught up my bundle and my plaid, and rolling myself in the latter, I lay down upon the floor under lee of the big bedstead, and fell speedily asleep.\n\n With the first peep of day I opened my eyes, to find myself in a great chamber, hung with stamped leather, furnished with fine embroidered furniture, and lit by three fair windows. Ten years ago, or perhaps twenty, it must have been as pleasant a room to lie down or to awake in as a man could wish; but damp, dirt, disuse, and the mice and spiders had done their worst since then. Many of the window-panes, besides, were broken; and indeed this was so common a feature in that house, that I believe my uncle must at some time have stood a siege from his indignant neighbours--perhaps with Jennet Clouston at their head.\n\n Meanwhile the sun was shining outside; and being very cold in that miserable room, I knocked and shouted till my gaoler came and let me out. He carried me to the back of the house, where was a draw-well, and told me to \"wash my face there, if I wanted;\" and when that was done, I made the best of my own way back to the kitchen, where he had lit the fire and was making the porridge. The table was laid with two bowls and two horn spoons, but the same single measure of small beer. Perhaps my eye rested on this particular with some surprise, and perhaps my uncle observed it; for he spoke up as if in answer to my thought, asking me if I would like to drink ale--for so he called it.\n\n I told him such was my habit, but not to put himself about.\n\n \"Na, na,\" said he; \"I'll deny you nothing in reason.\"\n\n He fetched another cup from the shelf; and then, to my great surprise, instead of drawing more beer, he poured an accurate half from one cup to the other. There was a kind of nobleness in this that took my breath away; if my uncle was certainly a miser, he was one of that thorough breed that goes near to make the vice respectable.\n\n When we had made an end of our meal, my uncle Conrad unlocked a drawer, and drew out of it a clay pipe and a lump of tobacco, from which he cut one fill before he locked it up again. Then he sat down in the sun at one of the windows and silently smoked. From time to time his eyes came coasting round to me, and he shot out one of his questions. Once it was, \"And your mother?\" and when I had told him that she, too, was dead, \"Ay, she was a bonnie lassie!\" Then, after another long pause, \"Whae were these friends o' yours?\"\n\n I told him they were different gentlemen of the name of Nicola; though, indeed, there was only one, and that the minister, that had ever taken the least note of me; but I began to think my uncle made too light of my position, and finding myself all alone with him, I did not wish him to suppose me helpless.\n\n He seemed to turn this over in his mind; and then, \"Eason, my man,\" said he, \"ye've come to the right bit when ye came to your uncle Conrad. I've a great notion of the family, and I mean to do the right by you; but while I'm taking a bit think to mysel' of what's the best thing to put you to--whether the law, or the meenistry, or maybe the army, whilk is what boys are fondest of--I wouldnae like the Eltons to be humbled before a wheen Hieland Nicolas, and I'll ask you to keep your tongue within your teeth. Nae letters; nae messages; no kind of word to onybody; or else--there's my door.\"\n\n \"Uncle Conrad,\" said I, \"I've no manner of reason to suppose you mean anything but well by me. For all that, I would have you to know that I have a pride of my own. It was by no will of mine that I came seeking you; and if you show me your door again, I'll take you at the word.\"\n\n He seemed grievously put out. \"Hoots-toots,\" said he, \"ca' cannie, man--ca' cannie! Bide a day or two. I'm nae warlock, to find a fortune for you in the bottom of a parritch bowl; but just you give me a day or two, and say naething to naebody, and as sure as sure, I'll do the right by you.\"\n\n \"Very well,\" said I, \"enough said. If you want to help me, there's no doubt but I'll be glad of it, and none but I'll be grateful.\"\n\n It seemed to me (too soon, I dare say) that I was getting the upper hand of my uncle; and I began next to say that I must have the bed and bedclothes aired and put to sun-dry; for nothing would make me sleep in such a pickle.\n\n \"Is this my house or yours?\" said he, in his keen voice, and then all of a sudden broke off. \"Na, na,\" said he, \"I didnae mean that. What's mine is yours, Eason, my man, and what's yours is mine. Blood's thicker than water; and there's naebody but you and me that ought the name.\" And then on he rambled about the family, and its ancient greatness, and his father that began to enlarge the house, and himself that stopped the building as a sinful waste; and this put it in my head to give him Jennet Clouston's message.\n\n \"The limmer!\" he cried. \"Twelve hunner and fifteen--that's every day since I had the limmer rowpit!* Dod, Edmund, I'll have her roasted on red peats before I'm by with it! A witch--a proclaimed witch! I'll aff and see the session clerk.\"\n\n * Sold up.\n\n And with that he opened a chest, and got out a very old and well-preserved blue coat and waistcoat, and a good enough beaver hat, both without lace. These he threw on any way, and taking a staff from the cupboard, locked all up again, and was for setting out, when a thought arrested him.\n\n \"I cannae leave you by yoursel' in the house,\" said he. \"I'll have to lock you out.\"\n\n The blood came to my face. \"If you lock me out,\" I said, \"it'll be the last you'll see of me in friendship.\"\n\n He turned very pale, and sucked his mouth in.\n\n \"This is no the way,\" he said, looking wickedly at a corner of the floor--\"this is no the way to win my favour, Edmund.\"\n\n \"Sir,\" says I, \"with a proper reverence for your age and our common blood, I do not value your favour at a boddle's purchase. I was brought up to have a good conceit of myself; and if you were all the uncle, and all the family, I had in the world ten times over, I wouldn't buy your liking at such prices.\"\n\n Uncle Conrad went and looked out of the window for awhile. I could see him all trembling and twitching, like a man with palsy. But when he turned round, he had a smile upon his face.\n\n \"Well, well,\" said he, \"we must bear and forbear. I'll no go; that's all that's to be said of it.\"\n\n \"Uncle Conrad,\" I said, \"I can make nothing out of this. You use me like a thief; you hate to have me in this house; you let me see it, every word and every minute: it's not possible that you can like me; and as for me, I've spoken to you as I never thought to speak to any man. Why do you seek to keep me, then? Let me gang back--let me gang back to the friends I have, and that like me!\"\n\n \"Na, na; na, na,\" he said, very earnestly. \"I like you fine; we'll agree fine yet; and for the honour of the house I couldnae let you leave the way ye came. Bide here quiet, there's a good lad; just you bide here quiet a bittie, and ye'll find that we agree.\"\n\n \"Well, sir,\" said I, after I had thought the matter out in silence, \"I'll stay awhile. It's more just I should be helped by my own blood than strangers; and if we don't agree, I'll do my best it shall be through no fault of mine.\"\n\n\n\n\n For a day that was begun so ill, the day passed fairly well. We had the porridge cold again at noon, and hot porridge at night; porridge and small beer was my uncle's diet. He spoke but little, and that in the same way as before, shooting a question at me after a long silence; and when I sought to lead him to talk about my future, slipped out of it again. In a room next door to the kitchen, where he suffered me to go, I found a great number of books, both Latin and English, in which I took great pleasure all the afternoon. Indeed, the time passed so lightly in this good company, that I began to be almost reconciled to my residence at Shaws; and nothing but the sight of my uncle, and his eyes playing hide and seek with mine, revived the force of my distrust.\n\n One thing I discovered, which put me in some doubt. This was an entry on the fly-leaf of a chap-book (one of Patrick Walker's) plainly written by my father's hand and thus conceived: \"To my brother Conrad on his fifth birthday.\" Now, what puzzled me was this: That, as my father was of course the younger brother, he must either have made some strange error, or he must have written, before he was yet five, an excellent, clear manly hand of writing.\n\n I tried to get this out of my head; but though I took down many interesting authors, old and new, history, poetry, and story-book, this notion of my father's hand of writing stuck to me; and when at length I went back into the kitchen, and sat down once more to porridge and small beer, the first thing I said to Uncle Conrad was to ask him if my father had not been very quick at his book.\n\n \"Deanna? No him!\" was the reply. \"I was far quicker mysel'; I was a clever chappie when I was young. Why, I could read as soon as he could.\"\n\n This puzzled me yet more; and a thought coming into my head, I asked if he and my father had been twins.\n\n He jumped upon his stool, and the horn spoon fell out of his hand upon the floor. \"What gars ye ask that?\" he said, and he caught me by the breast of the jacket, and looked this time straight into my eyes: his own were little and light, and bright like a bird's, blinking and winking strangely.\n\n \"What do you mean?\" I asked, very calmly, for I was far stronger than he, and not easily frightened. \"Take your hand from my jacket. This is no way to behave.\"\n\n My uncle seemed to make a great effort upon himself. \"Dod man, Edmund,\" he said, \"ye should-nae speak to me about your father. That's where the mistake is.\" He sat awhile and shook, blinking in his plate: \"He was all the brother that ever I had,\" he added, but with no heart in his voice; and then he caught up his spoon and fell to supper again, but still shaking.\n\n Now this last passage, this laying of hands upon my person and sudden profession of love for my dead father, went so clean beyond my comprehension that it put me into both fear and hope. On the one hand, I began to think my uncle was perhaps insane and might be dangerous; on the other, there came up into my mind (quite unbidden by me and even discouraged) a story like some ballad I had heard folk singing, of a poor lad that was a rightful heir and a wicked kinsman that tried to keep him from his own. For why should my uncle play a part with a relative that came, almost a beggar, to his door, unless in his heart he had some cause to fear him?\n\n With this notion, all unacknowledged, but nevertheless getting firmly settled in my head, I now began to imitate his covert looks; so that we sat at table like a cat and a mouse, each stealthily observing the other. Not another word had he to say to me, black or white, but was busy turning something secretly over in his mind; and the longer we sat and the more I looked at him, the more certain I became that the something was unfriendly to myself.\n\n When he had cleared the platter, he got out a single pipeful of tobacco, just as in the morning, turned round a stool into the chimney corner, and sat awhile smoking, with his back to me.\n\n \"Eason,\" he said, at length, \"I've been thinking;\" then he paused, and said it again. \"There's a wee bit siller that I half promised ye before ye were born,\" he continued; \"promised it to your father. O, naething legal, ye understand; just gentlemen daffing at their wine. Well, I keepit that bit money separate--it was a great expense, but a promise is a promise--and it has grown by now to be a matter of just precisely--just exactly\"--and here he paused and stumbled--\"of just exactly forty pounds!\" This last he rapped out with a sidelong glance over his shoulder; and the next moment added, almost with a scream, \"Scots!\"\n\n The pound Scots being the same thing as an English shilling, the difference made by this second thought was considerable; I could see, besides, that the whole story was a lie, invented with some end which it puzzled me to guess; and I made no attempt to conceal the tone of raillery in which I answered--\n\n \"O, think again, sir! Pounds sterling, I believe!\"\n\n \"That's what I said,\" returned my uncle: \"pounds sterling! And if you'll step out-by to the door a minute, just to see what kind of a night it is, I'll get it out to ye and call ye in again.\"\n\n I did his will, smiling to myself in my contempt that he should think I was so easily to be deceived. It was a dark night, with a few stars low down; and as I stood just outside the door, I heard a hollow moaning of wind far off among the hills. I said to myself there was something thundery and changeful in the weather, and little knew of what a vast importance that should prove to me before the evening passed.\n\n When I was called in again, my uncle counted out into my hand seven and thirty golden guinea pieces; the rest was in his hand, in small gold and silver; but his heart failed him there, and he crammed the change into his pocket.\n\n \"There,\" said he, \"that'll show you! I'm a queer man, and strange wi' strangers; but my word is my bond, and there's the proof of it.\"\n\n Now, my uncle seemed so miserly that I was struck dumb by this sudden generosity, and could find no words in which to thank him.\n\n \"No a word!\" said he. \"Nae thanks; I want nae thanks. I do my duty. I'm no saying that everybody would have done it; but for my part (though I'm a careful body, too) it's a pleasure to me to do the right by my brother's son; and it's a pleasure to me to think that now we'll agree as such near friends should.\"\n\n I spoke him in return as handsomely as I was able; but all the while I was wondering what would come next, and why he had parted with his precious guineas; for as to the reason he had given, a baby would have refused it.\n\n Presently he looked towards me sideways.\n\n \"And see here,\" says he, \"tit for tat.\"\n\n I told him I was ready to prove my gratitude in any reasonable degree, and then waited, looking for some monstrous demand. And yet, when at last he plucked up courage to speak, it was only to tell me (very properly, as I thought) that he was growing old and a little broken, and that he would expect me to help him with the house and the bit garden.\n\n I answered, and expressed my readiness to serve.\n\n \"Well,\" he said, \"let's begin.\" He pulled out of his pocket a rusty key. \"There,\" says he, \"there's the key of the stair-tower at the far end of the house. Ye can only win into it from the outside, for that part of the house is no finished. Gang ye in there, and up the stairs, and bring me down the chest that's at the top. There's papers in't,\" he added.\n\n \"Can I have a light, sir?\" said I.\n\n \"Na,\" said he, very cunningly. \"Nae lights in my house.\"\n\n \"Very well, sir,\" said I. \"Are the stairs good?\"\n\n \"They're grand,\" said he; and then, as I was going, \"Keep to the wall,\" he added; \"there's nae bannisters. But the stairs are grand underfoot.\"\n\n Out I went into the night. The wind was still moaning in the distance, though never a breath of it came near the house of Shaws. It had fallen blacker than ever; and I was glad to feel along the wall, till I came the length of the stairtower door at the far end of the unfinished wing. I had got the key into the keyhole and had just turned it, when all upon a sudden, without sound of wind or thunder, the whole sky lighted up with wild fire and went black again. I had to put my hand over my eyes to get back to the colour of the darkness; and indeed I was already half blinded when I stepped into the tower.\n\n It was so dark inside, it seemed a body could scarce breathe; but I pushed out with foot and hand, and presently struck the wall with the one, and the lowermost round of the stair with the other. The wall, by the touch, was of fine hewn stone; the steps too, though somewhat steep and narrow, were of polished masonwork, and regular and solid underfoot. Minding my uncle's word about the bannisters, I kept close to the tower side, and felt my way in the pitch darkness with a beating heart.\n\n The house of Shaws stood some five full storeys high, not counting lofts. Well, as I advanced, it seemed to me the stair grew airier and a thought more lightsome; and I was wondering what might be the cause of this change, when a second blink of the summer lightning came and went. If I did not cry out, it was because fear had me by the throat; and if I did not fall, it was more by Heaven's mercy than my own strength. It was not only that the flash shone in on every side through breaches in the wall, so that I seemed to be clambering aloft upon an open scaffold, but the same passing brightness showed me the steps were of unequal length, and that one of my feet rested that moment within two inches of the well.\n\n This was the grand stair! I thought; and with the thought, a gust of a kind of angry courage came into my heart. My uncle had sent me here, certainly to run great risks, perhaps to die. I swore I would settle that \"perhaps,\" if I should break my neck for it; got me down upon my hands and knees; and as slowly as a snail, feeling before me every inch, and testing the solidity of every stone, I continued to ascend the stair. The darkness, by contrast with the flash, appeared to have redoubled; nor was that all, for my ears were now troubled and my mind confounded by a great stir of bats in the top part of the tower, and the foul beasts, flying downwards, sometimes beat about my face and body.\n\n The tower, I should have said, was square; and in every corner the step was made of a great stone of a different shape to join the flights. Well, I had come close to one of these turns, when, feeling forward as usual, my hand slipped upon an edge and found nothing but emptiness beyond it. The stair had been carried no higher; to set a stranger mounting it in the darkness was to send him straight to his death; and (although, thanks to the lightning and my own precautions, I was safe enough) the mere thought of the peril in which I might have stood, and the dreadful height I might have fallen from, brought out the sweat upon my body and relaxed my joints.\n\n But I knew what I wanted now, and turned and groped my way down again, with a wonderful anger in my heart. About half-way down, the wind sprang up in a clap and shook the tower, and died again; the rain followed; and before I had reached the ground level it fell in buckets. I put out my head into the storm, and looked along towards the kitchen. The door, which I had shut behind me when I left, now stood open, and shed a little glimmer of light; and I thought I could see a figure standing in the rain, quite still, like a man hearkening. And then there came a blinding flash, which showed me my uncle plainly, just where I had fancied him to stand; and hard upon the heels of it, a great tow-row of thunder.\n\n Now, whether my uncle thought the crash to be the sound of my fall, or whether he heard in it God's voice denouncing murder, I will leave you to guess. Certain it is, at least, that he was seized on by a kind of panic fear, and that he ran into the house and left the door open behind him. I followed as softly as I could, and, coming unheard into the kitchen, stood and watched him.\n\n He had found time to open the corner cupboard and bring out a great case bottle of aqua vitae, and now sat with his back towards me at the table. Ever and again he would be seized with a fit of deadly shuddering and groan aloud, and carrying the bottle to his lips, drink down the raw spirits by the mouthful.\n\n I stepped forward, came close behind him where he sat, and suddenly clapping my two hands down upon his shoulders--\"Ah!\" cried I.\n\n My uncle gave a kind of broken cry like a sheep's bleat, flung up his arms, and tumbled to the floor like a dead man. I was somewhat shocked at this; but I had myself to look to first of all, and did not hesitate to let him lie as he had fallen. The keys were hanging in the cupboard; and it was my design to furnish myself with arms before my uncle should come again to his senses and the power of devising evil. In the cupboard were a few bottles, some apparently of medicine; a great many bills and other papers, which I should willingly enough have rummaged, had I had the time; and a few necessaries that were nothing to my purpose. Thence I turned to the chests. The first was full of meal; the second of moneybags and papers tied into sheaves; in the third, with many other things (and these for the most part clothes) I found a rusty, ugly-looking Highland dirk without the scabbard. This, then, I concealed inside my waistcoat, and turned to my uncle.\n\n He lay as he had fallen, all huddled, with one knee up and one arm sprawling abroad; his face had a strange colour of blue, and he seemed to have ceased breathing. Fear came on me that he was dead; then I got water and dashed it in his face; and with that he seemed to come a little to himself, working his mouth and fluttering his eyelids. At last he looked up and saw me, and there came into his eyes a terror that was not of this world.\n\n \"Come, come,\" said I; \"sit up.\"\n\n \"Are ye alive?\" he sobbed. \"O man, are ye alive?\"\n\n \"That am I,\" said I. \"Small thanks to you!\"\n\n He had begun to seek for his breath with deep sighs. \"The blue phial,\" said he--\"in the aumry--the blue phial.\" His breath came slower still.\n\n I ran to the cupboard, and, sure enough, found there a blue phial of medicine, with the dose written on it on a paper, and this I administered to him with what speed I might.\n\n \"It's the trouble,\" said he, reviving a little; \"I have a trouble, Eason. It's the heart.\"\n\n I set him on a chair and looked at him. It is true I felt some pity for a man that looked so sick, but I was full besides of righteous anger; and I numbered over before him the points on which I wanted explanation: why he lied to me at every word; why he feared that I should leave him; why he disliked it to be hinted that he and my father were twins--\"Is that because it is true?\" I asked; why he had given me money to which I was convinced I had no claim; and, last of all, why he had tried to kill me. He heard me all through in silence; and then, in a broken voice, begged me to let him go to bed.\n\n \"I'll tell ye the morn,\" he said; \"as sure as death I will.\"\n\n And so weak was he that I could do nothing but consent. I locked him into his room, however, and pocketed the key, and then returning to the kitchen, made up such a blaze as had not shone there for many a long year, and wrapping myself in my plaid, lay down upon the chests and fell asleep.\n\n\n\n\n Much rain fell in the night; and the next morning there blew a bitter wintry wind out of the north-west, driving scattered clouds. For all that, and before the sun began to peep or the last of the stars had vanished, I made my way to the side of the burn, and had a plunge in a deep whirling pool. All aglow from my bath, I sat down once more beside the fire, which I replenished, and began gravely to consider my position.\n\n There was now no doubt about my uncle's enmity; there was no doubt I carried my life in my hand, and he would leave no stone unturned that he might compass my destruction. But I was young and spirited, and like most lads that have been country-bred, I had a great opinion of my shrewdness. I had come to his door no better than a beggar and little more than a child; he had met me with treachery and violence; it would be a fine consummation to take the upper hand, and drive him like a herd of sheep.\n\n I sat there nursing my knee and smiling at the fire; and I saw myself in fancy smell out his secrets one after another, and grow to be that man's king and ruler. The warlock of Essendean, they say, had made a mirror in which men could read the future; it must have been of other stuff than burning coal; for in all the shapes and pictures that I sat and gazed at, there was never a ship, never a seaman with a hairy cap, never a big bludgeon for my silly head, or the least sign of all those tribulations that were ripe to fall on me.\n\n Presently, all swollen with conceit, I went up-stairs and gave my prisoner his liberty. He gave me good-morning civilly; and I gave the same to him, smiling down upon him, from the heights of my sufficiency. Soon we were set to breakfast, as it might have been the day before.\n\n \"Well, sir,\" said I, with a jeering tone, \"have you nothing more to say to me?\" And then, as he made no articulate reply, \"It will be time, I think, to understand each other,\" I continued. \"You took me for a country Johnnie Raw, with no more mother-wit or courage than a porridge-stick. I took you for a good man, or no worse than others at the least. It seems we were both wrong. What cause you have to fear me, to cheat me, and to attempt my life--\"\n\n He murmured something about a jest, and that he liked a bit of fun; and then, seeing me smile, changed his tone, and assured me he would make all clear as soon as we had breakfasted. I saw by his face that he had no lie ready for me, though he was hard at work preparing one; and I think I was about to tell him so, when we were interrupted by a knocking at the door.\n\n Bidding my uncle sit where he was, I went to open it, and found on the doorstep a half-grown boy in sea-clothes. He had no sooner seen me than he began to dance some steps of the sea-hornpipe (which I had never before heard of far less seen), snapping his fingers in the air and footing it right cleverly. For all that, he was blue with the cold; and there was something in his face, a look between tears and laughter, that was highly pathetic and consisted ill with this gaiety of manner.\n\n \"What cheer, mate?\" says he, with a cracked voice.\n\n I asked him soberly to name his pleasure.\n\n \"O, pleasure!\" says he; and then began to sing:\n\n \"For it's my delight, of a shiny night, In the season of the year.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"if you have no business at all, I will even be so unmannerly as to shut you out.\"\n\n \"Stay, brother!\" he cried. \"Have you no fun about you? or do you want to get me thrashed? I've brought a letter from old Heasyoasy to Mr. Belflower.\" He showed me a letter as he spoke. \"And I say, mate,\" he added, \"I'm mortal hungry.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"come into the house, and you shall have a bite if I go empty for it.\"\n\n With that I brought him in and set him down to my own place, where he fell-to greedily on the remains of breakfast, winking to me between whiles, and making many faces, which I think the poor soul considered manly. Meanwhile, my uncle had read the letter and sat thinking; then, suddenly, he got to his feet with a great air of liveliness, and pulled me apart into the farthest corner of the room.\n\n \"Read that,\" said he, and put the letter in my hand.\n\n Here it is, lying before me as I write:\n\n \"The Hawes Inn, at the Queen's Ferry.\n\n \"Sir,--I lie here with my hawser up and down, and send my cabin-boy to informe. If you have any further commands for over-seas, to-day will be the last occasion, as the wind will serve us well out of the firth. I will not seek to deny that I have had crosses with your doer,* Mr. Salvador; of which, if not speedily redd up, you may looke to see some losses follow. I have drawn a bill upon you, as per margin, and am, sir, your most obedt., humble servant, \"ELIAS KRIS.\"* Agent.\n\n \"You see, Eason,\" resumed my uncle, as soon as he saw that I had done, \"I have a venture with this man Kris, the captain of a trading brig, the Covenant, of Dysart. Now, if you and me was to walk over with yon lad, I could see the captain at the Hawes, or maybe on board the Covenant if there was papers to be signed; and so far from a loss of time, we can jog on to the lawyer, Mr. Salvador's. After a' that's come and gone, ye would be swier* to believe me upon my naked word; but ye'll believe Salvador. He's factor to half the gentry in these parts; an auld man, forby: highly respeckit, and he kenned your father.\"\n\n * Unwilling.\n\n I stood awhile and thought. I was going to some place of shipping, which was doubtless populous, and where my uncle durst attempt no violence, and, indeed, even the society of the cabin-boy so far protected me. Once there, I believed I could force on the visit to the lawyer, even if my uncle were now insincere in proposing it; and, perhaps, in the bottom of my heart, I wished a nearer view of the sea and ships. You are to remember I had lived all my life in the inland hills, and just two days before had my first sight of the firth lying like a blue floor, and the sailed ships moving on the face of it, no bigger than toys. One thing with another, I made up my mind.\n\n \"Very well,\" says I, \"let us go to the Ferry.\"\n\n My uncle got into his hat and coat, and buckled an old rusty cutlass on; and then we trod the fire out, locked the door, and set forth upon our walk.\n\n The wind, being in that cold quarter the north-west, blew nearly in our faces as we went. It was the month of June; the grass was all white with daisies, and the trees with blossom; but, to judge by our blue nails and aching wrists, the time might have been winter and the whiteness a December frost.\n\n Uncle Conrad trudged in the ditch, jogging from side to side like an old ploughman coming home from work. He never said a word the whole way; and I was thrown for talk on the cabin-boy. He told me his name was Isobel, and that he had followed the sea since he was nine, but could not say how old he was, as he had lost his reckoning. He showed me tattoo marks, baring his breast in the teeth of the wind and in spite of my remonstrances, for I thought it was enough to kill him; he swore horribly whenever he remembered, but more like a silly schoolboy than a man; and boasted of many wild and bad things that he had done: stealthy thefts, false accusations, ay, and even murder; but all with such a dearth of likelihood in the details, and such a weak and crazy swagger in the delivery, as disposed me rather to pity than to believe him.\n\n I asked him of the brig (which he declared was the finest ship that sailed) and of Captain Kris, in whose praises he was equally loud. Heasyoasy (for so he still named the skipper) was a man, by his account, that minded for nothing either in heaven or earth; one that, as people said, would \"crack on all sail into the day of judgment;\" rough, fierce, unscrupulous, and brutal; and all this my poor cabin-boy had taught himself to admire as something seamanlike and manly. He would only admit one flaw in his idol. \"He ain't no seaman,\" he admitted. \"That's Mr. Jonathan that navigates the brig; he's the finest seaman in the trade, only for drink; and I tell you I believe it! Why, look'ere;\" and turning down his stocking he showed me a great, raw, red wound that made my blood run cold. \"He done that--Mr. Jonathan done it,\" he said, with an air of pride.\n\n \"What!\" I cried, \"do you take such savage usage at his hands? Why, you are no slave, to be so handled!\"\n\n \"No,\" said the poor moon-calf, changing his tune at once, \"and so he'll find. See'ere;\" and he showed me a great case-knife, which he told me was stolen. \"O,\" says he, \"let me see him try; I dare him to; I'll do for him! O, he ain't the first!\" And he confirmed it with a poor, silly, ugly oath.\n\n I have never felt such pity for any one in this wide world as I felt for that half-witted creature, and it began to come over me that the brig Covenant (for all her pious name) was little better than a hell upon the seas.\n\n \"Have you no friends?\" said I.\n\n He said he had a father in some English seaport, I forget which.\n\n \"He was a fine man, too,\" he said, \"but he's dead.\"\n\n \"In Heaven's name,\" cried I, \"can you find no reputable life on shore?\"\n\n \"O, no,\" says he, winking and looking very sly, \"they would put me to a trade. I know a trick worth two of that, I do!\"\n\n I asked him what trade could be so dreadful as the one he followed, where he ran the continual peril of his life, not alone from wind and sea, but by the horrid cruelty of those who were his masters. He said it was very true; and then began to praise the life, and tell what a pleasure it was to get on shore with money in his pocket, and spend it like a man, and buy apples, and swagger, and surprise what he called stick-in-the-mud boys. \"And then it's not all as bad as that,\" says he; \"there's worse off than me: there's the twenty-pounders. O, laws! you should see them taking on. Why, I've seen a man as old as you, I dessay\"--(to him I seemed old)--\"ah, and he had a beard, too--well, and as soon as we cleared out of the river, and he had the drug out of his head--my! how he cried and carried on! I made a fine fool of him, I tell you! And then there's little uns, too: oh, little by me! I tell you, I keep them in order. When we carry little uns, I have a rope's end of my own to wollop'em.\" And so he ran on, until it came in on me what he meant by twenty-pounders were those unhappy criminals who were sent over-seas to slavery in North America, or the still more unhappy innocents who were tortured or trepanned (as the word went) for private interest or vengeance.\n\n Just then we came to the top of the hill, and looked down on the Ferry and the Hope. The Firth of Forth (as is very well known) narrows at this point to the width of a good-sized river, which makes a convenient ferry going north, and turns the upper reach into a landlocked haven for all manner of ships. Right in the midst of the narrows lies an islet with some ruins; on the south shore they have built a pier for the service of the Ferry; and at the end of the pier, on the other side of the road, and backed against a pretty garden of holly-trees and hawthorns, I could see the building which they called the Hawes Inn.\n\n The town of Queensferry lies farther west, and the neighbourhood of the inn looked pretty lonely at that time of day, for the boat had just gone north with passengers. A skiff, however, lay beside the pier, with some seamen sleeping on the thwarts; this, as Isobel told me, was the brig's boat waiting for the captain; and about half a mile off, and all alone in the anchorage, he showed me the Covenant herself. There was a sea-going bustle on board; yards were swinging into place; and as the wind blew from that quarter, I could hear the song of the sailors as they pulled upon the ropes. After all I had listened to upon the way, I looked at that ship with an extreme abhorrence; and from the bottom of my heart I pitied all poor souls that were condemned to sail in her.\n\n We had all three pulled up on the brow of the hill; and now I marched across the road and addressed my uncle. \"I think it right to tell you, sir,\" says I, \"there's nothing that will bring me on board that Covenant.\"\n\n He seemed to waken from a dream. \"Eh?\" he said. \"What's that?\"\n\n I told him over again.\n\n \"Well, well,\" he said, \"we'll have to please ye, I suppose. But what are we standing here for? It's perishing cold; and if I'm no mistaken, they're busking the Covenant for sea.\"\n\n\n\n\n As soon as we came to the inn, Isobel led us up the stair to a small room, with a bed in it, and heated like an oven by a great fire of coal. At a table hard by the chimney, a tall, dark, sober-looking man sat writing. In spite of the heat of the room, he wore a thick sea-jacket, buttoned to the neck, and a tall hairy cap drawn down over his ears; yet I never saw any man, not even a judge upon the bench, look cooler, or more studious and self-possessed, than this ship-captain.\n\n He got to his feet at once, and coming forward, offered his large hand to Conrad. \"I am proud to see you, Mr. Elton,\" said he, in a fine deep voice, \"and glad that ye are here in time. The wind's fair, and the tide upon the turn; we'll see the old coal-bucket burning on the Isle of May before to-night.\"\n\n \"Captain Kris,\" returned my uncle, \"you keep your room unco hot.\"\n\n \"It's a habit I have, Mr. Elton,\" said the skipper. \"I'm a cold-rife man by my nature; I have a cold blood, sir. There's neither fur, nor flannel--no, sir, nor hot rum, will warm up what they call the temperature. Sir, it's the same with most men that have been carbonadoed, as they call it, in the tropic seas.\"\n\n \"Well, well, captain,\" replied my uncle, \"we must all be the way we're made.\"\n\n But it chanced that this fancy of the captain's had a great share in my misfortunes. For though I had promised myself not to let my kinsman out of sight, I was both so impatient for a nearer look of the sea, and so sickened by the closeness of the room, that when he told me to \"run down-stairs and play myself awhile,\" I was fool enough to take him at his word.\n\n Away I went, therefore, leaving the two men sitting down to a bottle and a great mass of papers; and crossing the road in front of the inn, walked down upon the beach. With the wind in that quarter, only little wavelets, not much bigger than I had seen upon a lake, beat upon the shore. But the weeds were new to me--some green, some brown and long, and some with little bladders that crackled between my fingers. Even so far up the firth, the smell of the sea-water was exceedingly salt and stirring; the Covenant, besides, was beginning to shake out her sails, which hung upon the yards in clusters; and the spirit of all that I beheld put me in thoughts of far voyages and foreign places.\n\n I looked, too, at the seamen with the skiff--big brown fellows, some in shirts, some with jackets, some with coloured handkerchiefs about their throats, one with a brace of pistols stuck into his pockets, two or three with knotty bludgeons, and all with their case-knives. I passed the time of day with one that looked less desperate than his fellows, and asked him of the sailing of the brig. He said they would get under way as soon as the ebb set, and expressed his gladness to be out of a port where there were no taverns and fiddlers; but all with such horrifying oaths, that I made haste to get away from him.\n\n This threw me back on Isobel, who seemed the least wicked of that gang, and who soon came out of the inn and ran to me, crying for a bowl of punch. I told him I would give him no such thing, for neither he nor I was of an age for such indulgences. \"But a glass of ale you may have, and welcome,\" said I. He mopped and mowed at me, and called me names; but he was glad to get the ale, for all that; and presently we were set down at a table in the front room of the inn, and both eating and drinking with a good appetite.\n\n Here it occurred to me that, as the landlord was a man of that county, I might do well to make a friend of him. I offered him a share, as was much the custom in those days; but he was far too great a man to sit with such poor customers as Isobel and myself, and he was leaving the room, when I called him back to ask if he knew Mr. Salvador.\n\n \"Hoot, ay,\" says he, \"and a very honest man. And, O, by-the-by,\" says he, \"was it you that came in with Conrad?\" And when I had told him yes, \"Ye'll be no friend of his?\" he asked, meaning, in the Scottish way, that I would be no relative.\n\n I told him no, none.\n\n \"I thought not,\" said he, \"and yet ye have a kind of gliff* of Mr. Deanna.\"\n\n * Look.\n\n I said it seemed that Conrad was ill-seen in the country.\n\n \"Nae doubt,\" said the landlord. \"He's a wicked auld man, and there's many would like to see him girning in the tow*. Jennet Clouston and mony mair that he has harried out of house and hame. And yet he was ance a fine young fellow, too. But that was before the sough** gaed abroad about Mr. Deanna, that was like the death of him.\"\n\n * Rope.\n\n ** Report.\n\n \"And what was it?\" I asked.\n\n \"Ou, just that he had killed him,\" said the landlord. \"Did ye never hear that?\"\n\n \"And what would he kill him for?\" said I.\n\n \"And what for, but just to get the place,\" said he.\n\n \"The place?\" said I. \"The Shaws?\"\n\n \"Nae other place that I ken,\" said he.\n\n \"Ay, man?\" said I. \"Is that so? Was my--was Deanna the eldest son?\"\n\n \"'Deed was he,\" said the landlord. \"What else would he have killed him for?\"\n\n And with that he went away, as he had been impatient to do from the beginning.\n\n Of course, I had guessed it a long while ago; but it is one thing to guess, another to know; and I sat stunned with my good fortune, and could scarce grow to believe that the same poor lad who had trudged in the dust from Ettrick Forest not two days ago, was now one of the rich of the earth, and had a house and broad lands, and might mount his horse tomorrow. All these pleasant things, and a thousand others, crowded into my mind, as I sat staring before me out of the inn window, and paying no heed to what I saw; only I remember that my eye lighted on Captain Kris down on the pier among his seamen, and speaking with some authority. And presently he came marching back towards the house, with no mark of a sailor's clumsiness, but carrying his fine, tall figure with a manly bearing, and still with the same sober, grave expression on his face. I wondered if it was possible that Isobel's stories could be true, and half disbelieved them; they fitted so ill with the man's looks. But indeed, he was neither so good as I supposed him, nor quite so bad as Isobel did; for, in fact, he was two men, and left the better one behind as soon as he set foot on board his vessel.\n\n The next thing, I heard my uncle calling me, and found the pair in the road together. It was the captain who addressed me, and that with an air (very flattering to a young lad) of grave equality.\n\n \"Sir,\" said he, \"Mr. Elton tells me great things of you; and for my own part, I like your looks. I wish I was for longer here, that we might make the better friends; but we'll make the most of what we have. Ye shall come on board my brig for half an hour, till the ebb sets, and drink a bowl with me.\"\n\n Now, I longed to see the inside of a ship more than words can tell; but I was not going to put myself in jeopardy, and I told him my uncle and I had an appointment with a lawyer.\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" said he, \"he passed me word of that. But, ye see, the boat'll set ye ashore at the town pier, and that's but a penny stonecast from Salvador's house.\" And here he suddenly leaned down and whispered in my ear: \"Take care of the old tod;* he means mischief. Come aboard till I can get a word with ye.\" And then, passing his arm through mine, he continued aloud, as he set off towards his boat: \"But, come, what can I bring ye from the Carolinas? Any friend of Mr. Elton's can command. A roll of tobacco? Indian feather-work? a skin of a wild beast? a stone pipe? the mocking-bird that mews for all the world like a cat? the cardinal bird that is as red as blood?--take your pick and say your pleasure.\"\n\n * Fox.\n\n By this time we were at the boat-side, and he was handing me in. I did not dream of hanging back; I thought (the poor fool!) that I had found a good friend and helper, and I was rejoiced to see the ship. As soon as we were all set in our places, the boat was thrust off from the pier and began to move over the waters: and what with my pleasure in this new movement and my surprise at our low position, and the appearance of the shores, and the growing bigness of the brig as we drew near to it, I could hardly understand what the captain said, and must have answered him at random.\n\n As soon as we were alongside (where I sat fairly gaping at the ship's height, the strong humming of the tide against its sides, and the pleasant cries of the seamen at their work) Kris, declaring that he and I must be the first aboard, ordered a tackle to be sent down from the main-yard. In this I was whipped into the air and set down again on the deck, where the captain stood ready waiting for me, and instantly slipped back his arm under mine. There I stood some while, a little dizzy with the unsteadiness of all around me, perhaps a little afraid, and yet vastly pleased with these strange sights; the captain meanwhile pointing out the strangest, and telling me their names and uses.\n\n \"But where is my uncle?\" said I suddenly.\n\n \"Ay,\" said Kris, with a sudden grimness, \"that's the point.\"\n\n I felt I was lost. With all my strength, I plucked myself clear of him and ran to the bulwarks. Sure enough, there was the boat pulling for the town, with my uncle sitting in the stern. I gave a piercing cry--\"Help, help! Murder!\"--so that both sides of the anchorage rang with it, and my uncle turned round where he was sitting, and showed me a face full of cruelty and terror.\n\n It was the last I saw. Already strong hands had been plucking me back from the ship's side; and now a thunderbolt seemed to strike me; I saw a great flash of fire, and fell senseless.\n\n\n\n\n I came to myself in darkness, in great pain, bound hand and foot, and deafened by many unfamiliar noises. There sounded in my ears a roaring of water as of a huge mill-dam, the thrashing of heavy sprays, the thundering of the sails, and the shrill cries of seamen. The whole world now heaved giddily up, and now rushed giddily downward; and so sick and hurt was I in body, and my mind so much confounded, that it took me a long while, chasing my thoughts up and down, and ever stunned again by a fresh stab of pain, to realise that I must be lying somewhere bound in the belly of that unlucky ship, and that the wind must have strengthened to a gale. With the clear perception of my plight, there fell upon me a blackness of despair, a horror of remorse at my own folly, and a passion of anger at my uncle, that once more bereft me of my senses.\n\n When I returned again to life, the same uproar, the same confused and violent movements, shook and deafened me; and presently, to my other pains and distresses, there was added the sickness of an unused landsman on the sea. In that time of my adventurous youth, I suffered many hardships; but none that was so crushing to my mind and body, or lit by so few hopes, as these first hours aboard the brig.\n\n I heard a gun fire, and supposed the storm had proved too strong for us, and we were firing signals of distress. The thought of deliverance, even by death in the deep sea, was welcome to me. Yet it was no such matter; but (as I was afterwards told) a common habit of the captain's, which I here set down to show that even the worst man may have his kindlier side. We were then passing, it appeared, within some miles of Dysart, where the brig was built, and where old Mrs. Kris, the captain's mother, had come some years before to live; and whether outward or inward bound, the Covenant was never suffered to go by that place by day, without a gun fired and colours shown.\n\n I had no measure of time; day and night were alike in that ill-smelling cavern of the ship's bowels where I lay; and the misery of my situation drew out the hours to double. How long, therefore, I lay waiting to hear the ship split upon some rock, or to feel her reel head foremost into the depths of the sea, I have not the means of computation. But sleep at length stole from me the consciousness of sorrow.\n\n I was awakened by the light of a hand-lantern shining in my face. A small man of about thirty, with green eyes and a tangle of fair hair, stood looking down at me.\n\n \"Well,\" said he, \"how goes it?\"\n\n I answered by a sob; and my visitor then felt my pulse and temples, and set himself to wash and dress the wound upon my scalp.\n\n \"Ay,\" said he, \"a sore dunt*. What, man? Cheer up! The world's no done; you've made a bad start of it but you'll make a better. Have you had any meat?\"\n\n * Stroke.\n\n I said I could not look at it: and thereupon he gave me some brandy and water in a tin pannikin, and left me once more to myself.\n\n The next time he came to see me, I was lying betwixt sleep and waking, my eyes wide open in the darkness, the sickness quite departed, but succeeded by a horrid giddiness and swimming that was almost worse to bear. I ached, besides, in every limb, and the cords that bound me seemed to be of fire. The smell of the hole in which I lay seemed to have become a part of me; and during the long interval since his last visit I had suffered tortures of fear, now from the scurrying of the ship's rats, that sometimes pattered on my very face, and now from the dismal imaginings that haunt the bed of fever.\n\n The glimmer of the lantern, as a trap opened, shone in like the heaven's sunlight; and though it only showed me the strong, dark beams of the ship that was my prison, I could have cried aloud for gladness. The man with the green eyes was the first to descend the ladder, and I noticed that he came somewhat unsteadily. He was followed by the captain. Neither said a word; but the first set to and examined me, and dressed my wound as before, while Kris looked me in my face with an odd, black look.\n\n \"Now, sir, you see for yourself,\" said the first: \"a high fever, no appetite, no light, no meat: you see for yourself what that means.\"\n\n \"I am no conjurer, Mr. Hailee,\" said the captain.\n\n \"Give me leave, sir,\" said Hailee; \"you've a good head upon your shoulders, and a good Scotch tongue to ask with; but I will leave you no manner of excuse; I want that boy taken out of this hole and put in the forecastle.\"\n\n \"What ye may want, sir, is a matter of concern to nobody but yoursel',\" returned the captain; \"but I can tell ye that which is to be. Here he is; here he shall bide.\"\n\n \"Admitting that you have been paid in a proportion,\" said the other, \"I will crave leave humbly to say that I have not. Paid I am, and none too much, to be the second officer of this old tub, and you ken very well if I do my best to earn it. But I was paid for nothing more.\"\n\n \"If ye could hold back your hand from the tin-pan, Mr. Hailee, I would have no complaint to make of ye,\" returned the skipper; \"and instead of asking riddles, I make bold to say that ye would keep your breath to cool your porridge. We'll be required on deck,\" he added, in a sharper note, and set one foot upon the ladder.\n\n But Mr. Hailee caught him by the sleeve.\n\n \"Admitting that you have been paid to do a murder----\" he began.\n\n Kris turned upon him with a flash.\n\n \"What's that?\" he cried. \"What kind of talk is that?\"\n\n \"It seems it is the talk that you can understand,\" said Mr. Hailee, looking him steadily in the face.\n\n \"Mr. Hailee, I have sailed with ye three cruises,\" replied the captain. \"In all that time, sir, ye should have learned to know me: I'm a stiff man, and a dour man; but for what ye say the now--fie, fie!--it comes from a bad heart and a black conscience. If ye say the lad will die----\"\n\n \"Ay, will he!\" said Mr. Hailee.\n\n \"Well, sir, is not that enough?\" said Kris. \"Flit him where ye please!\"\n\n Thereupon the captain ascended the ladder; and I, who had lain silent throughout this strange conversation, beheld Mr. Hailee turn after him and bow as low as to his knees in what was plainly a spirit of derision. Even in my then state of sickness, I perceived two things: that the mate was touched with liquor, as the captain hinted, and that (drunk or sober) he was like to prove a valuable friend.\n\n Five minutes afterwards my bonds were cut, I was hoisted on a man's back, carried up to the forecastle, and laid in a bunk on some sea-blankets; where the first thing that I did was to lose my senses.\n\n It was a blessed thing indeed to open my eyes again upon the daylight, and to find myself in the society of men. The forecastle was a roomy place enough, set all about with berths, in which the men of the watch below were seated smoking, or lying down asleep. The day being calm and the wind fair, the scuttle was open, and not only the good daylight, but from time to time (as the ship rolled) a dusty beam of sunlight shone in, and dazzled and delighted me. I had no sooner moved, moreover, than one of the men brought me a drink of something healing which Mr. Hailee had prepared, and bade me lie still and I should soon be well again. There were no bones broken, he explained: \"A clour* on the head was naething. Man,\" said he, \"it was me that gave it ye!\"\n\n * Blow.\n\n Here I lay for the space of many days a close prisoner, and not only got my health again, but came to know my companions. They were a rough lot indeed, as sailors mostly are: being men rooted out of all the kindly parts of life, and condemned to toss together on the rough seas, with masters no less cruel. There were some among them that had sailed with the pirates and seen things it would be a shame even to speak of; some were men that had run from the king's ships, and went with a halter round their necks, of which they made no secret; and all, as the saying goes, were \"at a word and a blow\" with their best friends. Yet I had not been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my first judgment, when I had drawn away from them at the Ferry pier, as though they had been unclean beasts. No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty.\n\n There was one man, of maybe forty, that would sit on my berthside for hours and tell me of his wife and child. He was a fisher that had lost his boat, and thus been driven to the deep-sea voyaging. Well, it is years ago now: but I have never forgotten him. His wife (who was \"young by him,\" as he often told me) waited in vain to see her man return; he would never again make the fire for her in the morning, nor yet keep the bairn when she was sick. Indeed, many of these poor fellows (as the event proved) were upon their last cruise; the deep seas and cannibal fish received them; and it is a thankless business to speak ill of the dead.\n\n Among other good deeds that they did, they returned my money, which had been shared among them; and though it was about a third short, I was very glad to get it, and hoped great good from it in the land I was going to. The ship was bound for the Carolinas; and you must not suppose that I was going to that place merely as an exile. The trade was even then much depressed; since that, and with the rebellion of the colonies and the formation of the United States, it has, of course, come to an end; but in those days of my youth, white men were still sold into slavery on the plantations, and that was the destiny to which my wicked uncle had condemned me.\n\n The cabin-boy Isobel (from whom I had first heard of these atrocities) came in at times from the round-house, where he berthed and served, now nursing a bruised limb in silent agony, now raving against the cruelty of Mr. Jonathan. It made my heart bleed; but the men had a great respect for the chief mate, who was, as they said, \"the only seaman of the whole jing-bang, and none such a bad man when he was sober.\" Indeed, I found there was a strange peculiarity about our two mates: that Mr. Hailee was sullen, unkind, and harsh when he was sober, and Mr. Jonathan would not hurt a fly except when he was drinking. I asked about the captain; but I was told drink made no difference upon that man of iron.\n\n I did my best in the small time allowed me to make some thing like a man, or rather I should say something like a boy, of the poor creature, Isobel. But his mind was scarce truly human. He could remember nothing of the time before he came to sea; only that his father had made clocks, and had a starling in the parlour, which could whistle \"The North Countrie;\" all else had been blotted out in these years of hardship and cruelties. He had a strange notion of the dry land, picked up from sailor's stories: that it was a place where lads were put to some kind of slavery called a trade, and where apprentices were continually lashed and clapped into foul prisons. In a town, he thought every second person a decoy, and every third house a place in which seamen would be drugged and murdered. To be sure, I would tell him how kindly I had myself been used upon that dry land he was so much afraid of, and how well fed and carefully taught both by my friends and my parents: and if he had been recently hurt, he would weep bitterly and swear to run away; but if he was in his usual crackbrain humour, or (still more) if he had had a glass of spirits in the roundhouse, he would deride the notion.\n\n It was Mr. Hailee (Heaven forgive him!) who gave the boy drink; and it was, doubtless, kindly meant; but besides that it was ruin to his health, it was the pitifullest thing in life to see this unhappy, unfriended creature staggering, and dancing, and talking he knew not what. Some of the men laughed, but not all; others would grow as black as thunder (thinking, perhaps, of their own childhood or their own children) and bid him stop that nonsense, and think what he was doing. As for me, I felt ashamed to look at him, and the poor child still comes about me in my dreams.\n\n All this time, you should know, the Covenant was meeting continual head-winds and tumbling up and down against head-seas, so that the scuttle was almost constantly shut, and the forecastle lighted only by a swinging lantern on a beam. There was constant labour for all hands; the sails had to be made and shortened every hour; the strain told on the men's temper; there was a growl of quarrelling all day long from berth to berth; and as I was never allowed to set my foot on deck, you can picture to yourselves how weary of my life I grew to be, and how impatient for a change.\n\n And a change I was to get, as you shall hear; but I must first tell of a conversation I had with Mr. Hailee, which put a little heart in me to bear my troubles. Getting him in a favourable stage of drink (for indeed he never looked near me when he was sober), I pledged him to secrecy, and told him my whole story.\n\n He declared it was like a ballad; that he would do his best to help me; that I should have paper, pen, and ink, and write one line to Mr. Nicola and another to Mr. Salvador; and that if I had told the truth, ten to one he would be able (with their help) to pull me through and set me in my rights.\n\n \"And in the meantime,\" says he, \"keep your heart up. You're not the only one, I'll tell you that. There's many a man hoeing tobacco over-seas that should be mounting his horse at his own door at home; many and many! And life is all a variorum, at the best. Look at me: I'm a laird's son and more than half a doctor, and here I am, man-Jack to Kris!\"\n\n I thought it would be civil to ask him for his story.\n\n He whistled loud.\n\n \"Never had one,\" said he. \"I like fun, that's all.\" And he skipped out of the forecastle.\n\n\n\n\n One night, about eleven o'clock, a man of Mr. Hailee's watch (which was on deck) came below for his jacket; and instantly there began to go a whisper about the forecastle that \"Jonathan had done for him at last.\" There was no need of a name; we all knew who was meant; but we had scarce time to get the idea rightly in our heads, far less to speak of it, when the scuttle was again flung open, and Captain Kris came down the ladder. He looked sharply round the bunks in the tossing light of the lantern; and then, walking straight up to me, he addressed me, to my surprise, in tones of kindness.\n\n \"My man,\" said he, \"we want ye to serve in the round-house. You and Isobel are to change berths. Run away aft with ye.\"\n\n Even as he spoke, two seamen appeared in the scuttle, carrying Isobel in their arms; and the ship at that moment giving a great sheer into the sea, and the lantern swinging, the light fell direct on the boy's face. It was as white as wax, and had a look upon it like a dreadful smile. The blood in me ran cold, and I drew in my breath as if I had been struck.\n\n \"Run away aft; run away aft with ye!\" cried Kris.\n\n And at that I brushed by the sailors and the boy (who neither spoke nor moved), and ran up the ladder on deck.\n\n The brig was sheering swiftly and giddily through a long, cresting swell. She was on the starboard tack, and on the left hand, under the arched foot of the foresail, I could see the sunset still quite bright. This, at such an hour of the night, surprised me greatly; but I was too ignorant to draw the true conclusion--that we were going north-about round Scotland, and were now on the high sea between the Orkney and Shetland Islands, having avoided the dangerous currents of the Pentland Firth. For my part, who had been so long shut in the dark and knew nothing of head-winds, I thought we might be half-way or more across the Atlantic. And indeed (beyond that I wondered a little at the lateness of the sunset light) I gave no heed to it, and pushed on across the decks, running between the seas, catching at ropes, and only saved from going overboard by one of the hands on deck, who had been always kind to me.\n\n The round-house, for which I was bound, and where I was now to sleep and serve, stood some six feet above the decks, and considering the size of the brig, was of good dimensions. Inside were a fixed table and bench, and two berths, one for the captain and the other for the two mates, turn and turn about. It was all fitted with lockers from top to bottom, so as to stow away the officers' belongings and a part of the ship's stores; there was a second store-room underneath, which you entered by a hatchway in the middle of the deck; indeed, all the best of the meat and drink and the whole of the powder were collected in this place; and all the firearms, except the two pieces of brass ordnance, were set in a rack in the aftermost wall of the round-house. The most of the cutlasses were in another place.\n\n A small window with a shutter on each side, and a skylight in the roof, gave it light by day; and after dark there was a lamp always burning. It was burning when I entered, not brightly, but enough to show Mr. Jonathan sitting at the table, with the brandy bottle and a tin pannikin in front of him. He was a tall man, strongly made and very black; and he stared before him on the table like one stupid.\n\n He took no notice of my coming in; nor did he move when the captain followed and leant on the berth beside me, looking darkly at the mate. I stood in great fear of Kris, and had my reasons for it; but something told me I need not be afraid of him just then; and I whispered in his ear: \"How is he?\" He shook his head like one that does not know and does not wish to think, and his face was very stern.\n\n Presently Mr. Hailee came in. He gave the captain a glance that meant the boy was dead as plain as speaking, and took his place like the rest of us; so that we all three stood without a word, staring down at Mr. Jonathan, and Mr. Jonathan (on his side) sat without a word, looking hard upon the table.\n\n All of a sudden he put out his hand to take the bottle; and at that Mr. Hailee started forward and caught it away from him, rather by surprise than violence, crying out, with an oath, that there had been too much of this work altogether, and that a judgment would fall upon the ship. And as he spoke (the weather sliding-doors standing open) he tossed the bottle into the sea.\n\n Mr. Jonathan was on his feet in a trice; he still looked dazed, but he meant murder, ay, and would have done it, for the second time that night, had not the captain stepped in between him and his victim.\n\n \"Sit down!\" roars the captain. \"Ye sot and swine, do ye know what ye've done? Ye've murdered the boy!\"\n\n Mr. Jonathan seemed to understand; for he sat down again, and put up his hand to his brow.\n\n \"Well,\" he said, \"he brought me a dirty pannikin!\"\n\n At that word, the captain and I and Mr. Hailee all looked at each other for a second with a kind of frightened look; and then Kris walked up to his chief officer, took him by the shoulder, led him across to his bunk, and bade him lie down and go to sleep, as you might speak to a bad child. The murderer cried a little, but he took off his sea-boots and obeyed.\n\n \"Ah!\" cried Mr. Hailee, with a dreadful voice, \"ye should have interfered long syne. It's too late now.\"\n\n \"Mr. Hailee,\" said the captain, \"this night's work must never be kennt in Dysart. The boy went overboard, sir; that's what the story is; and I would give five pounds out of my pocket it was true!\" He turned to the table. \"What made ye throw the good bottle away?\" he added. \"There was nae sense in that, sir. Here, Edmund, draw me another. They're in the bottom locker;\" and he tossed me a key. \"Ye'll need a glass yourself, sir,\" he added to Hailee. \"Yon was an ugly thing to see.\"\n\n So the pair sat down and hob-a-nobbed; and while they did so, the murderer, who had been lying and whimpering in his berth, raised himself upon his elbow and looked at them and at me.\n\n That was the first night of my new duties; and in the course of the next day I had got well into the run of them. I had to serve at the meals, which the captain took at regular hours, sitting down with the officer who was off duty; all the day through I would be running with a dram to one or other of my three masters; and at night I slept on a blanket thrown on the deck boards at the aftermost end of the round-house, and right in the draught of the two doors. It was a hard and a cold bed; nor was I suffered to sleep without interruption; for some one would be always coming in from deck to get a dram, and when a fresh watch was to be set, two and sometimes all three would sit down and brew a bowl together. How they kept their health, I know not, any more than how I kept my own.\n\n And yet in other ways it was an easy service. There was no cloth to lay; the meals were either of oatmeal porridge or salt junk, except twice a week, when there was duff: and though I was clumsy enough and (not being firm on my sealegs) sometimes fell with what I was bringing them, both Mr. Hailee and the captain were singularly patient. I could not but fancy they were making up lee-way with their consciences, and that they would scarce have been so good with me if they had not been worse with Isobel.\n\n As for Mr. Jonathan, the drink or his crime, or the two together, had certainly troubled his mind. I cannot say I ever saw him in his proper wits. He never grew used to my being there, stared at me continually (sometimes, I could have thought, with terror), and more than once drew back from my hand when I was serving him. I was pretty sure from the first that he had no clear mind of what he had done, and on my second day in the round-house I had the proof of it. We were alone, and he had been staring at me a long time, when all at once, up he got, as pale as death, and came close up to me, to my great terror. But I had no cause to be afraid of him.\n\n \"You were not here before?\" he asked.\n\n \"No, sir,\" said I.\"\n\n \"There was another boy?\" he asked again; and when I had answered him, \"Ah!\" says he, \"I thought that,\" and went and sat down, without another word, except to call for brandy.\n\n You may think it strange, but for all the horror I had, I was still sorry for him. He was a married man, with a wife in Leith; but whether or no he had a family, I have now forgotten; I hope not.\n\n Altogether it was no very hard life for the time it lasted, which (as you are to hear) was not long. I was as well fed as the best of them; even their pickles, which were the great dainty, I was allowed my share of; and had I liked I might have been drunk from morning to night, like Mr. Jonathan. I had company, too, and good company of its sort. Mr. Hailee, who had been to the college, spoke to me like a friend when he was not sulking, and told me many curious things, and some that were informing; and even the captain, though he kept me at the stick's end the most part of the time, would sometimes unbuckle a bit, and tell me of the fine countries he had visited.\n\n The shadow of poor Isobel, to be sure, lay on all four of us, and on me and Mr. Jonathan in particular, most heavily. And then I had another trouble of my own. Here I was, doing dirty work for three men that I looked down upon, and one of whom, at least, should have hung upon a gallows; that was for the present; and as for the future, I could only see myself slaving alongside of negroes in the tobacco fields. Mr. Hailee, perhaps from caution, would never suffer me to say another word about my story; the captain, whom I tried to approach, rebuffed me like a dog and would not hear a word; and as the days came and went, my heart sank lower and lower, till I was even glad of the work which kept me from thinking.\n\n\n\n\n More than a week went by, in which the ill-luck that had hitherto pursued the Covenant upon this voyage grew yet more strongly marked. Some days she made a little way; others, she was driven actually back. At last we were beaten so far to the south that we tossed and tacked to and fro the whole of the ninth day, within sight of Cape Wrath and the wild, rocky coast on either hand of it. There followed on that a council of the officers, and some decision which I did not rightly understand, seeing only the result: that we had made a fair wind of a foul one and were running south.\n\n The tenth afternoon there was a falling swell and a thick, wet, white fog that hid one end of the brig from the other. All afternoon, when I went on deck, I saw men and officers listening hard over the bulwarks--\"for breakers,\" they said; and though I did not so much as understand the word, I felt danger in the air, and was excited.\n\n Maybe about ten at night, I was serving Mr. Hailee and the captain at their supper, when the ship struck something with a great sound, and we heard voices singing out. My two masters leaped to their feet.\n\n \"She's struck!\" said Mr. Hailee.\n\n \"No, sir,\" said the captain. \"We've only run a boat down.\"\n\n And they hurried out.\n\n The captain was in the right of it. We had run down a boat in the fog, and she had parted in the midst and gone to the bottom with all her crew but one. This man (as I heard afterwards) had been sitting in the stern as a passenger, while the rest were on the benches rowing. At the moment of the blow, the stern had been thrown into the air, and the man (having his hands free, and for all he was encumbered with a frieze overcoat that came below his knees) had leaped up and caught hold of the brig's bowsprit. It showed he had luck and much agility and unusual strength, that he should have thus saved himself from such a pass. And yet, when the captain brought him into the round-house, and I set eyes on him for the first time, he looked as cool as I did.\n\n He was smallish in stature, but well set and as nimble as a goat; his face was of a good open expression, but sunburnt very dark, and heavily freckled and pitted with the small-pox; his eyes were unusually light and had a kind of dancing madness in them, that was both engaging and alarming; and when he took off his great-coat, he laid a pair of fine silver-mounted pistols on the table, and I saw that he was belted with a great sword. His manners, besides, were elegant, and he pledged the captain handsomely. Altogether I thought of him, at the first sight, that here was a man I would rather call my friend than my enemy.\n\n The captain, too, was taking his observations, but rather of the man's clothes than his person. And to be sure, as soon as he had taken off the great-coat, he showed forth mighty fine for the round-house of a merchant brig: having a hat with feathers, a red waistcoat, breeches of black plush, and a blue coat with silver buttons and handsome silver lace; costly clothes, though somewhat spoiled with the fog and being slept in.\n\n \"I'm vexed, sir, about the boat,\" says the captain.\n\n \"There are some pretty men gone to the bottom,\" said the stranger, \"that I would rather see on the dry land again than half a score of boats.\"\n\n \"Friends of yours?\" said Kris.\n\n \"You have none such friends in your country,\" was the reply. \"They would have died for me like dogs.\"\n\n \"Well, sir,\" said the captain, still watching him, \"there are more men in the world than boats to put them in.\"\n\n \"And that's true, too,\" cried the other, \"and ye seem to be a gentleman of great penetration.\"\n\n \"I have been in France, sir,\" says the captain, so that it was plain he meant more by the words than showed upon the face of them.\n\n \"Well, sir,\" says the other, \"and so has many a pretty man, for the matter of that.\"\n\n \"No doubt, sir,\" says the captain, \"and fine coats.\"\n\n \"Oho!\" says the stranger, \"is that how the wind sets?\" And he laid his hand quickly on his pistols.\n\n \"Don't be hasty,\" said the captain. \"Don't do a mischief before ye see the need of it. Ye've a French soldier's coat upon your back and a Scotch tongue in your head, to be sure; but so has many an honest fellow in these days, and I dare say none the worse of it.\"\n\n \"So?\" said the gentleman in the fine coat: \"are ye of the honest party?\" (meaning, Was he a Jacobite? for each side, in these sort of civil broils, takes the name of honesty for its own).\n\n \"Why, sir,\" replied the captain, \"I am a true-blue Protestant, and I thank God for it.\" (It was the first word of any religion I had ever heard from him, but I learnt afterwards he was a great church-goer while on shore.) \"But, for all that,\" says he, \"I can be sorry to see another man with his back to the wall.\"\n\n \"Can ye so, indeed?\" asked the Jacobite. \"Well, sir, to be quite plain with ye, I am one of those honest gentlemen that were in trouble about the years forty-five and six; and (to be still quite plain with ye) if I got into the hands of any of the red-coated gentry, it's like it would go hard with me. Now, sir, I was for France; and there was a French ship cruising here to pick me up; but she gave us the go-by in the fog--as I wish from the heart that ye had done yoursel'! And the best that I can say is this: If ye can set me ashore where I was going, I have that upon me will reward you highly for your trouble.\"\n\n \"In France?\" says the captain. \"No, sir; that I cannot do. But where ye come from--we might talk of that.\"\n\n And then, unhappily, he observed me standing in my corner, and packed me off to the galley to get supper for the gentleman. I lost no time, I promise you; and when I came back into the round-house, I found the gentleman had taken a money-belt from about his waist, and poured out a guinea or two upon the table. The captain was looking at the guineas, and then at the belt, and then at the gentleman's face; and I thought he seemed excited.\n\n \"Half of it,\" he cried, \"and I'm your man!\"\n\n The other swept back the guineas into the belt, and put it on again under his waistcoat. \"I have told ye sir,\" said he, \"that not one doit of it belongs to me. It belongs to my chieftain,\" and here he touched his hat, \"and while I would be but a silly messenger to grudge some of it that the rest might come safe, I should show myself a hound indeed if I bought my own carcase any too dear. Thirty guineas on the sea-side, or sixty if ye set me on the Linnhe Loch. Take it, if ye will; if not, ye can do your worst.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said Kris. \"And if I give ye over to the soldiers?\"\n\n \"Ye would make a fool's bargain,\" said the other. \"My chief, let me tell you, sir, is forfeited, like every honest man in Scotland. His estate is in the hands of the man they call King George; and it is his officers that collect the rents, or try to collect them. But for the honour of Scotland, the poor tenant bodies take a thought upon their chief lying in exile; and this money is a part of that very rent for which King George is looking. Now, sir, ye seem to me to be a man that understands things: bring this money within the reach of Government, and how much of it'll come to you?\"\n\n \"Little enough, to be sure,\" said Kris; and then, \"if they knew,\" he added, drily. \"But I think, if I was to try, that I could hold my tongue about it.\"\n\n \"Ah, but I'll begowk* ye there!\" cried the gentleman. \"Play me false, and I'll play you cunning. If a hand is laid upon me, they shall ken what money it is.\"\n\n *Befool.\n\n \"Well,\" returned the captain, \"what must be must. Sixty guineas, and done. Here's my hand upon it.\"\n\n \"And here's mine,\" said the other.\n\n And thereupon the captain went out (rather hurriedly, I thought), and left me alone in the round-house with the stranger.\n\n At that period (so soon after the forty-five) there were many exiled gentlemen coming back at the peril of their lives, either to see their friends or to collect a little money; and as for the Highland chiefs that had been forfeited, it was a common matter of talk how their tenants would stint themselves to send them money, and their clansmen outface the soldiery to get it in, and run the gauntlet of our great navy to carry it across. All this I had, of course, heard tell of; and now I had a man under my eyes whose life was forfeit on all these counts and upon one more, for he was not only a rebel and a smuggler of rents, but had taken service with King Louis of France. And as if all this were not enough, he had a belt full of golden guineas round his loins. Whatever my opinions, I could not look on such a man without a lively interest.\n\n \"And so you're a Jacobite?\" said I, as I set meat before him.\n\n \"Ay,\" said he, beginning to eat. \"And you, by your long face, should be a Whig?\"*\n\n * Whig or Whigamore was the cant name for those who were loyal to King George.\n\n \"Betwixt and between,\" said I, not to annoy him; for indeed I was as good a Whig as Mr. Nicola could make me.\n\n \"And that's naething,\" said he. \"But I'm saying, Mr. Betwixt-and-Between,\" he added, \"this bottle of yours is dry; and it's hard if I'm to pay sixty guineas and be grudged a dram upon the back of it.\"\n\n \"I'll go and ask for the key,\" said I, and stepped on deck.\n\n The fog was as close as ever, but the swell almost down. They had laid the brig to, not knowing precisely where they were, and the wind (what little there was of it) not serving well for their true course. Some of the hands were still hearkening for breakers; but the captain and the two officers were in the waist with their heads together. It struck me (I don't know why) that they were after no good; and the first word I heard, as I drew softly near, more than confirmed me.\n\n It was Mr. Hailee, crying out as if upon a sudden thought: \"Couldn't we wile him out of the round-house?\"\n\n \"He's better where he is,\" returned Kris; \"he hasn't room to use his sword.\"\n\n \"Well, that's true,\" said Hailee; \"but he's hard to come at.\"\n\n \"Hut!\" said Kris. \"We can get the man in talk, one upon each side, and pin him by the two arms; or if that'll not hold, sir, we can make a run by both the doors and get him under hand before he has the time to draw.\"\n\n At this hearing, I was seized with both fear and anger at these treacherous, greedy, bloody men that I sailed with. My first mind was to run away; my second was bolder.\n\n \"Captain,\" said I, \"the gentleman is seeking a dram, and the bottle's out. Will you give me the key?\"\n\n They all started and turned about.\n\n \"Why, here's our chance to get the firearms!\"\n\n Hailee cried; and then to me: \"Hark ye, Edmund,\" he said, \"do ye ken where the pistols are?\"\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" put in Kris. \"Edmund kens; Edmund's a good lad. Ye see, Edmund my man, yon wild Hielandman is a danger to the ship, besides being a rank foe to King George, God bless him!\"\n\n I had never been so be-Edmunded since I came on board: but I said Yes, as if all I heard were quite natural.\n\n \"The trouble is,\" resumed the captain, \"that all our firelocks, great and little, are in the round-house under this man's nose; likewise the powder. Now, if I, or one of the officers, was to go in and take them, he would fall to thinking. But a lad like you, Edmund, might snap up a horn and a pistol or two without remark. And if ye can do it cleverly, I'll bear it in mind when it'll be good for you to have friends; and that's when we come to Carolina.\"\n\n Here Mr. Hailee whispered him a little.\n\n \"Very right, sir,\" said the captain; and then to myself: \"And see here, Edmund, yon man has a beltful of gold, and I give you my word that you shall have your fingers in it.\"\n\n I told him I would do as he wished, though indeed I had scarce breath to speak with; and upon that he gave me the key of the spirit locker, and I began to go slowly back to the round-house. What was I to do? They were dogs and thieves; they had stolen me from my own country; they had killed poor Isobel; and was I to hold the candle to another murder? But then, upon the other hand, there was the fear of death very plain before me; for what could a boy and a man, if they were as brave as lions, against a whole ship's company?\n\n I was still arguing it back and forth, and getting no great clearness, when I came into the round-house and saw the Jacobite eating his supper under the lamp; and at that my mind was made up all in a moment. I have no credit by it; it was by no choice of mine, but as if by compulsion, that I walked right up to the table and put my hand on his shoulder.\n\n \"Do ye want to be killed?\" said I. He sprang to his feet, and looked a question at me as clear as if he had spoken.\n\n \"O!\" cried I, \"they're all murderers here; it's a ship full of them! They've murdered a boy already. Now it's you.\"\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" said he; \"but they have n't got me yet.\" And then looking at me curiously, \"Will ye stand with me?\"\n\n \"That will I!\" said I. \"I am no thief, nor yet murderer. I'll stand by you.\"\n\n \"Why, then,\" said he, \"what's your name?\"\n\n \"Edmund Elton,\" said I; and then, thinking that a man with so fine a coat must like fine people, I added for the first time, \"of Shaws.\"\n\n It never occurred to him to doubt me, for a Highlander is used to see great gentlefolk in great poverty; but as he had no estate of his own, my words nettled a very childish vanity he had.\n\n \"My name is Stephanie,\" he said, drawing himself up. \"Sarah Madalyn, they call me. A king's name is good enough for me, though I bear it plain and have the name of no farm-midden to clap to the hind-end of it.\"\n\n And having administered this rebuke, as though it were something of a chief importance, he turned to examine our defences.\n\n The round-house was built very strong, to support the breaching of the seas. Of its five apertures, only the skylight and the two doors were large enough for the passage of a man. The doors, besides, could be drawn close: they were of stout oak, and ran in grooves, and were fitted with hooks to keep them either shut or open, as the need arose. The one that was already shut I secured in this fashion; but when I was proceeding to slide to the other, Sarah stopped me.\n\n \"Edmund,\" said he--\"for I cannae bring to mind the name of your landed estate, and so will make so bold as to call you Edmund--that door, being open, is the best part of my defences.\"\n\n \"It would be yet better shut,\" says I.\n\n \"Not so, Edmund,\" says he. \"Ye see, I have but one face; but so long as that door is open and my face to it, the best part of my enemies will be in front of me, where I would aye wish to find them.\"\n\n Then he gave me from the rack a cutlass (of which there were a few besides the firearms), choosing it with great care, shaking his head and saying he had never in all his life seen poorer weapons; and next he set me down to the table with a powder-horn, a bag of bullets and all the pistols, which he bade me charge.\n\n \"And that will be better work, let me tell you,\" said he, \"for a gentleman of decent birth, than scraping plates and raxing* drams to a wheen tarry sailors.\"\n\n *Reaching.\n\n Thereupon he stood up in the midst with his face to the door, and drawing his great sword, made trial of the room he had to wield it in.\n\n \"I must stick to the point,\" he said, shaking his head; \"and that's a pity, too. It doesn't set my genius, which is all for the upper guard. And, now,\" said he, \"do you keep on charging the pistols, and give heed to me.\"\n\n I told him I would listen closely. My chest was tight, my mouth dry, the light dark to my eyes; the thought of the numbers that were soon to leap in upon us kept my heart in a flutter: and the sea, which I heard washing round the brig, and where I thought my dead body would be cast ere morning, ran in my mind strangely.\n\n \"First of all,\" said he, \"how many are against us?\"\n\n I reckoned them up; and such was the hurry of my mind, I had to cast the numbers twice. \"Fifteen,\" said I.\n\n Sarah whistled. \"Well,\" said he, \"that can't be cured. And now follow me. It is my part to keep this door, where I look for the main battle. In that, ye have no hand. And mind and dinnae fire to this side unless they get me down; for I would rather have ten foes in front of me than one friend like you cracking pistols at my back.\"\n\n I told him, indeed I was no great shot.\n\n \"And that's very bravely said,\" he cried, in a great admiration of my candour. \"There's many a pretty gentleman that wouldnae dare to say it.\"\n\n \"But then, sir,\" said I, \"there is the door behind you, which they may perhaps break in.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said he, \"and that is a part of your work. No sooner the pistols charged, than ye must climb up into yon bed where ye're handy at the window; and if they lift hand against the door, ye're to shoot. But that's not all. Let's make a bit of a soldier of ye, Edmund. What else have ye to guard?\"\n\n \"There's the skylight,\" said I. \"But indeed, Mr. Stephanie, I would need to have eyes upon both sides to keep the two of them; for when my face is at the one, my back is to the other.\"\n\n \"And that's very true,\" said Sarah. \"But have ye no ears to your head?\"\n\n \"To be sure!\" cried I. \"I must hear the bursting of the glass!\"\n\n \"Ye have some rudiments of sense,\" said Sarah, grimly.\n\n\n\n\n But now our time of truce was come to an end. Those on deck had waited for my coming till they grew impatient; and scarce had Sarah spoken, when the captain showed face in the open door.\n\n \"Stand!\" cried Sarah, and pointed his sword at him. The captain stood, indeed; but he neither winced nor drew back a foot.\n\n \"A naked sword?\" says he. \"This is a strange return for hospitality.\"\n\n \"Do ye see me?\" said Sarah. \"I am come of kings; I bear a king's name. My badge is the oak. Do ye see my sword? It has slashed the heads off mair Whigamores than you have toes upon your feet. Call up your vermin to your back, sir, and fall on! The sooner the clash begins, the sooner ye'll taste this steel throughout your vitals.\"\n\n The captain said nothing to Sarah, but he looked over at me with an ugly look. \"Edmund,\" said he, \"I'll mind this;\" and the sound of his voice went through me with a jar.\n\n Next moment he was gone.\n\n \"And now,\" said Sarah, \"let your hand keep your head, for the grip is coming.\"\n\n Sarah drew a dirk, which he held in his left hand in case they should run in under his sword. I, on my part, clambered up into the berth with an armful of pistols and something of a heavy heart, and set open the window where I was to watch. It was a small part of the deck that I could overlook, but enough for our purpose. The sea had gone down, and the wind was steady and kept the sails quiet; so that there was a great stillness in the ship, in which I made sure I heard the sound of muttering voices. A little after, and there came a clash of steel upon the deck, by which I knew they were dealing out the cutlasses and one had been let fall; and after that, silence again.\n\n I do not know if I was what you call afraid; but my heart beat like a bird's, both quick and little; and there was a dimness came before my eyes which I continually rubbed away, and which continually returned. As for hope, I had none; but only a darkness of despair and a sort of anger against all the world that made me long to sell my life as dear as I was able. I tried to pray, I remember, but that same hurry of my mind, like a man running, would not suffer me to think upon the words; and my chief wish was to have the thing begin and be done with it.\n\n It came all of a sudden when it did, with a rush of feet and a roar, and then a shout from Sarah, and a sound of blows and some one crying out as if hurt. I looked back over my shoulder, and saw Mr. Jonathan in the doorway, crossing blades with Sarah.\n\n \"That's him that killed the boy!\" I cried.\n\n \"Look to your window!\" said Sarah; and as I turned back to my place, I saw him pass his sword through the mate's body.\n\n It was none too soon for me to look to my own part; for my head was scarce back at the window, before five men, carrying a spare yard for a battering-ram, ran past me and took post to drive the door in. I had never fired with a pistol in my life, and not often with a gun; far less against a fellow-creature. But it was now or never; and just as they swang the yard, I cried out: \"Take that!\" and shot into their midst.\n\n I must have hit one of them, for he sang out and gave back a step, and the rest stopped as if a little disconcerted. Before they had time to recover, I sent another ball over their heads; and at my third shot (which went as wide as the second) the whole party threw down the yard and ran for it.\n\n Then I looked round again into the deck-house. The whole place was full of the smoke of my own firing, just as my ears seemed to be burst with the noise of the shots. But there was Sarah, standing as before; only now his sword was running blood to the hilt, and himself so swelled with triumph and fallen into so fine an attitude, that he looked to be invincible. Right before him on the floor was Mr. Jonathan, on his hands and knees; the blood was pouring from his mouth, and he was sinking slowly lower, with a terrible, white face; and just as I looked, some of those from behind caught hold of him by the heels and dragged him bodily out of the round-house. I believe he died as they were doing it.\n\n \"There's one of your Whigs for ye!\" cried Sarah; and then turning to me, he asked if I had done much execution.\n\n I told him I had winged one, and thought it was the captain.\n\n \"And I've settled two,\" says he. \"No, there's not enough blood let; they'll be back again. To your watch, Edmund. This was but a dram before meat.\"\n\n I settled back to my place, re-charging the three pistols I had fired, and keeping watch with both eye and ear.\n\n Our enemies were disputing not far off upon the deck, and that so loudly that I could hear a word or two above the washing of the seas.\n\n \"It was Jonathan bauchled* it,\" I heard one say.\n\n * Bungled.\n\n And another answered him with a \"Wheesht, man! He's paid the piper.\"\n\n After that the voices fell again into the same muttering as before. Only now, one person spoke most of the time, as though laying down a plan, and first one and then another answered him briefly, like men taking orders. By this, I made sure they were coming on again, and told Sarah.\n\n \"It's what we have to pray for,\" said he. \"Unless we can give them a good distaste of us, and done with it, there'll be nae sleep for either you or me. But this time, mind, they'll be in earnest.\"\n\n By this, my pistols were ready, and there was nothing to do but listen and wait. While the brush lasted, I had not the time to think if I was frighted; but now, when all was still again, my mind ran upon nothing else. The thought of the sharp swords and the cold steel was strong in me; and presently, when I began to hear stealthy steps and a brushing of men's clothes against the round-house wall, and knew they were taking their places in the dark, I could have found it in my mind to cry out aloud.\n\n All this was upon Sarah's side; and I had begun to think my share of the fight was at an end, when I heard some one drop softly on the roof above me.\n\n Then there came a single call on the sea-pipe, and that was the signal. A knot of them made one rush of it, cutlass in hand, against the door; and at the same moment, the glass of the skylight was dashed in a thousand pieces, and a man leaped through and landed on the floor. Before he got his feet, I had clapped a pistol to his back, and might have shot him, too; only at the touch of him (and him alive) my whole flesh misgave me, and I could no more pull the trigger than I could have flown.\n\n He had dropped his cutlass as he jumped, and when he felt the pistol, whipped straight round and laid hold of me, roaring out an oath; and at that either my courage came again, or I grew so much afraid as came to the same thing; for I gave a shriek and shot him in the midst of the body. He gave the most horrible, ugly groan and fell to the floor. The foot of a second fellow, whose legs were dangling through the skylight, struck me at the same time upon the head; and at that I snatched another pistol and shot this one through the thigh, so that he slipped through and tumbled in a lump on his companion's body. There was no talk of missing, any more than there was time to aim; I clapped the muzzle to the very place and fired.\n\n I might have stood and stared at them for long, but I heard Sarah shout as if for help, and that brought me to my senses.\n\n He had kept the door so long; but one of the seamen, while he was engaged with others, had run in under his guard and caught him about the body. Sarah was dirking him with his left hand, but the fellow clung like a leech. Another had broken in and had his cutlass raised. The door was thronged with their faces. I thought we were lost, and catching up my cutlass, fell on them in flank.\n\n But I had not time to be of help. The wrestler dropped at last; and Sarah, leaping back to get his distance, ran upon the others like a bull, roaring as he went. They broke before him like water, turning, and running, and falling one against another in their haste. The sword in his hands flashed like quicksilver into the huddle of our fleeing enemies; and at every flash there came the scream of a man hurt. I was still thinking we were lost, when lo! they were all gone, and Sarah was driving them along the deck as a sheep-dog chases sheep.\n\n Yet he was no sooner out than he was back again, being as cautious as he was brave; and meanwhile the seamen continued running and crying out as if he was still behind them; and we heard them tumble one upon another into the forecastle, and clap-to the hatch upon the top.\n\n The round-house was like a shambles; three were dead inside, another lay in his death agony across the threshold; and there were Sarah and I victorious and unhurt.\n\n He came up to me with open arms. \"Come to my arms!\" he cried, and embraced and kissed me hard upon both cheeks. \"Edmund,\" said he, \"I love you like a brother. And O, man,\" he cried in a kind of ecstasy, \"am I no a bonny fighter?\"\n\n Thereupon he turned to the four enemies, passed his sword clean through each of them, and tumbled them out of doors one after the other. As he did so, he kept humming and singing and whistling to himself, like a man trying to recall an air; only what HE was trying was to make one. All the while, the flush was in his face, and his eyes were as bright as a five-year-old child's with a new toy. And presently he sat down upon the table, sword in hand; the air that he was making all the time began to run a little clearer, and then clearer still; and then out he burst with a great voice into a Gaelic song.\n\n I have translated it here, not in verse (of which I have no skill) but at least in the king's English.\n\n He sang it often afterwards, and the thing became popular; so that I have heard it and had it explained to me, many's the time.\n\n\n \"This is the song of the sword of Sarah; The smith made it, The fire set it; Now it shines in the hand of Sarah Madalyn.\n\n \"Their eyes were many and bright, Swift were they to behold, Many the hands they guided: The sword was alone.\n\n \"The dun deer troop over the hill, They are many, the hill is one; The dun deer vanish, The hill remains.\n\n \"Come to me from the hills of heather, Come from the isles of the sea. O far-beholding eagles, Here is your meat.\"\n\n\n Now this song which he made (both words and music) in the hour of our victory, is something less than just to me, who stood beside him in the tussle. Mr. Jonathan and five more were either killed outright or thoroughly disabled; but of these, two fell by my hand, the two that came by the skylight. Four more were hurt, and of that number, one (and he not the least important) got his hurt from me. So that, altogether, I did my fair share both of the killing and the wounding, and might have claimed a place in Sarah's verses. But poets have to think upon their rhymes; and in good prose talk, Sarah always did me more than justice.\n\n In the meanwhile, I was innocent of any wrong being done me. For not only I knew no word of the Gaelic; but what with the long suspense of the waiting, and the scurry and strain of our two spirts of fighting, and more than all, the horror I had of some of my own share in it, the thing was no sooner over than I was glad to stagger to a seat. There was that tightness on my chest that I could hardly breathe; the thought of the two men I had shot sat upon me like a nightmare; and all upon a sudden, and before I had a guess of what was coming, I began to sob and cry like any child.\n\n Sarah clapped my shoulder, and said I was a brave lad and wanted nothing but a sleep.\n\n \"I'll take the first watch,\" said he. \"Ye've done well by me, Edmund, first and last; and I wouldn't lose you for all Appin--no, nor for Breadalbane.\"\n\n So I made up my bed on the floor; and he took the first spell, pistol in hand and sword on knee, three hours by the captain's watch upon the wall. Then he roused me up, and I took my turn of three hours; before the end of which it was broad day, and a very quiet morning, with a smooth, rolling sea that tossed the ship and made the blood run to and fro on the round-house floor, and a heavy rain that drummed upon the roof. All my watch there was nothing stirring; and by the banging of the helm, I knew they had even no one at the tiller. Indeed (as I learned afterwards) there were so many of them hurt or dead, and the rest in so ill a temper, that Mr. Hailee and the captain had to take turn and turn like Sarah and me, or the brig might have gone ashore and nobody the wiser. It was a mercy the night had fallen so still, for the wind had gone down as soon as the rain began. Even as it was, I judged by the wailing of a great number of gulls that went crying and fishing round the ship, that she must have drifted pretty near the coast or one of the islands of the Hebrides; and at last, looking out of the door of the round-house, I saw the great stone hills of Skye on the right hand, and, a little more astern, the strange isle of Rum.\n\n\n\n\n Sarah and I sat down to breakfast about six of the clock. The floor was covered with broken glass and in a horrid mess of blood, which took away my hunger. In all other ways we were in a situation not only agreeable but merry; having ousted the officers from their own cabin, and having at command all the drink in the ship--both wine and spirits--and all the dainty part of what was eatable, such as the pickles and the fine sort of bread. This, of itself, was enough to set us in good humour, but the richest part of it was this, that the two thirstiest men that ever came out of Scotland (Mr. Jonathan being dead) were now shut in the fore-part of the ship and condemned to what they hated most--cold water.\n\n \"And depend upon it,\" Sarah said, \"we shall hear more of them ere long. Ye may keep a man from the fighting, but never from his bottle.\"\n\n We made good company for each other. Sarah, indeed, expressed himself most lovingly; and taking a knife from the table, cut me off one of the silver buttons from his coat.\n\n \"I had them,\" says he, \"from my father, Duncan Stephanie; and now give ye one of them to be a keepsake for last night's work. And wherever ye go and show that button, the friends of Sarah Madalyn will come around you.\"\n\n He said this as if he had been Charlemagne, and commanded armies; and indeed, much as I admired his courage, I was always in danger of smiling at his vanity: in danger, I say, for had I not kept my countenance, I would be afraid to think what a quarrel might have followed.\n\n As soon as we were through with our meal he rummaged in the captain's locker till he found a clothes-brush; and then taking off his coat, began to visit his suit and brush away the stains, with such care and labour as I supposed to have been only usual with women. To be sure, he had no other; and, besides (as he said), it belonged to a king and so behoved to be royally looked after.\n\n For all that, when I saw what care he took to pluck out the threads where the button had been cut away, I put a higher value on his gift.\n\n He was still so engaged when we were hailed by Mr. Hailee from the deck, asking for a parley; and I, climbing through the skylight and sitting on the edge of it, pistol in hand and with a bold front, though inwardly in fear of broken glass, hailed him back again and bade him speak out. He came to the edge of the round-house, and stood on a coil of rope, so that his chin was on a level with the roof; and we looked at each other awhile in silence. Mr. Hailee, as I do not think he had been very forward in the battle, so he had got off with nothing worse than a blow upon the cheek: but he looked out of heart and very weary, having been all night afoot, either standing watch or doctoring the wounded.\n\n \"This is a bad job,\" said he at last, shaking his head.\n\n \"It was none of our choosing,\" said I.\n\n \"The captain,\" says he, \"would like to speak with your friend. They might speak at the window.\"\n\n \"And how do we know what treachery he means?\" cried I.\n\n \"He means none, Edmund,\" returned Mr. Hailee, \"and if he did, I'll tell ye the honest truth, we couldnae get the men to follow.\"\n\n \"Is that so?\" said I.\n\n \"I'll tell ye more than that,\" said he. \"It's not only the men; it's me. I'm frich'ened, Eason.\" And he smiled across at me. \"No,\" he continued, \"what we want is to be shut of him.\"\n\n Thereupon I consulted with Sarah, and the parley was agreed to and parole given upon either side; but this was not the whole of Mr. Hailee's business, and he now begged me for a dram with such instancy and such reminders of his former kindness, that at last I handed him a pannikin with about a gill of brandy. He drank a part, and then carried the rest down upon the deck, to share it (I suppose) with his superior.\n\n A little after, the captain came (as was agreed) to one of the windows, and stood there in the rain, with his arm in a sling, and looking stern and pale, and so old that my heart smote me for having fired upon him.\n\n Sarah at once held a pistol in his face.\n\n \"Put that thing up!\" said the captain. \"Have I not passed my word, sir? or do ye seek to affront me?\"\n\n \"Captain,\" says Sarah, \"I doubt your word is a breakable. Last night ye haggled and argle-bargled like an apple-wife; and then passed me your word, and gave me your hand to back it; and ye ken very well what was the upshot. Be damned to your word!\" says he.\n\n \"Well, well, sir,\" said the captain, \"ye'll get little good by swearing.\" (And truly that was a fault of which the captain was quite free.) \"But we have other things to speak,\" he continued, bitterly. \"Ye've made a sore hash of my brig; I haven't hands enough left to work her; and my first officer (whom I could ill spare) has got your sword throughout his vitals, and passed without speech. There is nothing left me, sir, but to put back into the port of Glasgow after hands; and there (by your leave) ye will find them that are better able to talk to you.\"\n\n \"Ay?\" said Sarah; \"and faith, I'll have a talk with them mysel'! Unless there's naebody speaks English in that town, I have a bonny tale for them. Fifteen tarry sailors upon the one side, and a man and a halfling boy upon the other! O, man, it's peetiful!\"\n\n Kris flushed red.\n\n \"No,\" continued Sarah, \"that'll no do. Ye'll just have to set me ashore as we agreed.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said Kris, \"but my first officer is dead--ye ken best how. There's none of the rest of us acquaint with this coast, sir; and it's one very dangerous to ships.\"\n\n \"I give ye your choice,\" says Sarah. \"Set me on dry ground in Appin, or Ardgour, or in Morven, or Arisaig, or Morar; or, in brief, where ye please, within thirty miles of my own country; except in a country of the Nicolas. That's a broad target. If ye miss that, ye must be as feckless at the sailoring as I have found ye at the fighting. Why, my poor country people in their bit cobles* pass from island to island in all weathers, ay, and by night too, for the matter of that.\"\n\n *Coble: a small boat used in fishing.\n\n \"A coble's not a ship, sir,\" said the captain. \"It has nae draught of water.\"\n\n \"Well, then, to Glasgow if ye list!\" says Sarah. \"We'll have the laugh of ye at the least.\"\n\n \"My mind runs little upon laughing,\" said the captain. \"But all this will cost money, sir.\"\n\n \"Well, sir,\" says Sarah, \"I am nae weathercock. Thirty guineas, if ye land me on the sea-side; and sixty, if ye put me in the Linnhe Loch.\"\n\n \"But see, sir, where we lie, we are but a few hours' sail from Ardnamurchan,\" said Kris. \"Give me sixty, and I'll set ye there.\"\n\n \"And I'm to wear my brogues and run jeopardy of the red-coats to please you?\" cries Sarah. \"No, sir; if ye want sixty guineas earn them, and set me in my own country.\"\n\n \"It's to risk the brig, sir,\" said the captain, \"and your own lives along with her.\"\n\n \"Take it or want it,\" says Sarah.\n\n \"Could ye pilot us at all?\" asked the captain, who was frowning to himself.\n\n \"Well, it's doubtful,\" said Sarah. \"I'm more of a fighting man (as ye have seen for yoursel') than a sailor-man. But I have been often enough picked up and set down upon this coast, and should ken something of the lie of it.\"\n\n The captain shook his head, still frowning.\n\n \"If I had lost less money on this unchancy cruise,\" says he, \"I would see you in a rope's end before I risked my brig, sir. But be it as ye will. As soon as I get a slant of wind (and there's some coming, or I'm the more mistaken) I'll put it in hand. But there's one thing more. We may meet in with a king's ship and she may lay us aboard, sir, with no blame of mine: they keep the cruisers thick upon this coast, ye ken who for. Now, sir, if that was to befall, ye might leave the money.\"\n\n \"Captain,\" says Sarah, \"if ye see a pennant, it shall be your part to run away. And now, as I hear you're a little short of brandy in the fore-part, I'll offer ye a change: a bottle of brandy against two buckets of water.\"\n\n That was the last clause of the treaty, and was duly executed on both sides; so that Sarah and I could at last wash out the round-house and be quit of the memorials of those whom we had slain, and the captain and Mr. Hailee could be happy again in their own way, the name of which was drink.\n\n\n\n\n Before we had done cleaning out the round-house, a breeze sprang up from a little to the east of north. This blew off the rain and brought out the sun.\n\n And here I must explain; and the reader would do well to look at a map. On the day when the fog fell and we ran down Sarah's boat, we had been running through the Little Minch. At dawn after the battle, we lay becalmed to the east of the Isle of Canna or between that and Isle Eriska in the chain of the Long Island. Now to get from there to the Linnhe Loch, the straight course was through the narrows of the Sound of Mull. But the captain had no chart; he was afraid to trust his brig so deep among the islands; and the wind serving well, he preferred to go by west of Tiree and come up under the southern coast of the great Isle of Mull.\n\n All day the breeze held in the same point, and rather freshened than died down; and towards afternoon, a swell began to set in from round the outer Hebrides. Our course, to go round about the inner isles, was to the west of south, so that at first we had this swell upon our beam, and were much rolled about. But after nightfall, when we had turned the end of Tiree and began to head more to the east, the sea came right astern.\n\n Meanwhile, the early part of the day, before the swell came up, was very pleasant; sailing, as we were, in a bright sunshine and with many mountainous islands upon different sides. Sarah and I sat in the round-house with the doors open on each side (the wind being straight astern), and smoked a pipe or two of the captain's fine tobacco. It was at this time we heard each other's stories, which was the more important to me, as I gained some knowledge of that wild Highland country on which I was so soon to land. In those days, so close on the back of the great rebellion, it was needful a man should know what he was doing when he went upon the heather.\n\n It was I that showed the example, telling him all my misfortune; which he heard with great good-nature. Only, when I came to mention that good friend of mine, Mr. Nicola the minister, Sarah fired up and cried out that he hated all that were of that name.\n\n \"Why,\" said I, \"he is a man you should be proud to give your hand to.\"\n\n \"I know nothing I would help a Nicola to,\" says he, \"unless it was a leaden bullet. I would hunt all of that name like blackcocks. If I lay dying, I would crawl upon my knees to my chamber window for a shot at one.\"\n\n \"Why, Sarah,\" I cried, \"what ails ye at the Nicolas?\"\n\n \"Well,\" says he, \"ye ken very well that I am an Appin Stephanie, and the Nicolas have long harried and wasted those of my name; ay, and got lands of us by treachery--but never with the sword,\" he cried loudly, and with the word brought down his fist upon the table. But I paid the less attention to this, for I knew it was usually said by those who have the underhand. \"There's more than that,\" he continued, \"and all in the same story: lying words, lying papers, tricks fit for a peddler, and the show of what's legal over all, to make a man the more angry.\"\n\n \"You that are so wasteful of your buttons,\" said I, \"I can hardly think you would be a good judge of business.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" says he, falling again to smiling, \"I got my wastefulness from the same man I got the buttons from; and that was my poor father, Duncan Stephanie, grace be to him! He was the prettiest man of his kindred; and the best swordsman in the Hielands, Edmund, and that is the same as to say, in all the world, I should ken, for it was him that taught me. He was in the Black Watch, when first it was mustered; and, like other gentlemen privates, had a gillie at his back to carry his firelock for him on the march. Well, the King, it appears, was wishful to see Hieland swordsmanship; and my father and three more were chosen out and sent to London town, to let him see it at the best. So they were had into the palace and showed the whole art of the sword for two hours at a stretch, before King George and Queen Carline, and the Butcher Cumberland, and many more of whom I havenae mind. And when they were through, the King (for all he was a rank usurper) spoke them fair and gave each man three guineas in his hand. Now, as they were going out of the palace, they had a porter's lodge to go by; and it came in on my father, as he was perhaps the first private Hieland gentleman that had ever gone by that door, it was right he should give the poor porter a proper notion of their quality. So he gives the King's three guineas into the man's hand, as if it was his common custom; the three others that came behind him did the same; and there they were on the street, never a penny the better for their pains. Some say it was one, that was the first to fee the King's porter; and some say it was another; but the truth of it is, that it was Duncan Stephanie, as I am willing to prove with either sword or pistol. And that was the father that I had, God rest him!\"\n\n \"I think he was not the man to leave you rich,\" said I.\n\n \"And that's true,\" said Sarah. \"He left me my breeks to cover me, and little besides. And that was how I came to enlist, which was a black spot upon my character at the best of times, and would still be a sore job for me if I fell among the red-coats.\"\n\n \"What,\" cried I, \"were you in the English army?\"\n\n \"That was I,\" said Sarah. \"But I deserted to the right side at Preston Pans--and that's some comfort.\"\n\n I could scarcely share this view: holding desertion under arms for an unpardonable fault in honour. But for all I was so young, I was wiser than say my thought. \"Dear, dear,\" says I, \"the punishment is death.\"\n\n \"Ay\" said he, \"if they got hands on me, it would be a short shrift and a lang tow for Sarah! But I have the King of France's commission in my pocket, which would aye be some protection.\"\n\n \"I misdoubt it much,\" said I.\n\n \"I have doubts mysel',\" said Sarah drily.\n\n \"And, good heaven, man,\" cried I, \"you that are a condemned rebel, and a deserter, and a man of the French King's--what tempts ye back into this country? It's a braving of Providence.\"\n\n \"Tut!\" says Sarah, \"I have been back every year since forty-six!\"\n\n \"And what brings ye, man?\" cried I.\n\n \"Well, ye see, I weary for my friends and country,\" said he. \"France is a braw place, nae doubt; but I weary for the heather and the deer. And then I have bit things that I attend to. Whiles I pick up a few lads to serve the King of France: recruits, ye see; and that's aye a little money. But the heart of the matter is the business of my chief, Ardshiel.\"\n\n \"I thought they called your chief Appin,\" said I.\n\n \"Ay, but Ardshiel is the captain of the clan,\" said he, which scarcely cleared my mind. \"Ye see, Edmund, he that was all his life so great a man, and come of the blood and bearing the name of kings, is now brought down to live in a French town like a poor and private person. He that had four hundred swords at his whistle, I have seen, with these eyes of mine, buying butter in the market-place, and taking it home in a kale-leaf. This is not only a pain but a disgrace to us of his family and clan. There are the bairns forby, the children and the hope of Appin, that must be learned their letters and how to hold a sword, in that far country. Now, the tenants of Appin have to pay a rent to King George; but their hearts are staunch, they are true to their chief; and what with love and a bit of pressure, and maybe a threat or two, the poor folk scrape up a second rent for Ardshiel. Well, Edmund, I'm the hand that carries it.\" And he struck the belt about his body, so that the guineas rang.\n\n \"Do they pay both?\" cried I.\n\n \"Ay, Edmund, both,\" says he.\n\n \"What! two rents?\" I repeated.\n\n \"Ay, Edmund,\" said he. \"I told a different tale to yon captain man; but this is the truth of it. And it's wonderful to me how little pressure is needed. But that's the handiwork of my good kinsman and my father's friend, Ciaran of the Dior: Ciaran Stephanie, that is: Ardshiel's half-brother. He it is that gets the money in, and does the management.\"\n\n This was the first time I heard the name of that Ciaran Stephanie, who was afterwards so famous at the time of his hanging. But I took little heed at the moment, for all my mind was occupied with the generosity of these poor Highlanders.\n\n \"I call it noble,\" I cried. \"I'm a Whig, or little better; but I call it noble.\"\n\n \"Ay\" said he, \"ye're a Whig, but ye're a gentleman; and that's what does it. Now, if ye were one of the cursed race of Nicola, ye would gnash your teeth to hear tell of it. If ye were the Red Fox...\" And at that name, his teeth shut together, and he ceased speaking. I have seen many a grim face, but never a grimmer than Sarah's when he had named the Red Fox.\n\n \"And who is the Red Fox?\" I asked, daunted, but still curious.\n\n \"Who is he?\" cried Sarah. \"Well, and I'll tell you that. When the men of the clans were broken at Culloden, and the good cause went down, and the horses rode over the fetlocks in the best blood of the north, Ardshiel had to flee like a poor deer upon the mountains--he and his lady and his bairns. A sair job we had of it before we got him shipped; and while he still lay in the heather, the English rogues, that couldnae come at his life, were striking at his rights. They stripped him of his powers; they stripped him of his lands; they plucked the weapons from the hands of his clansmen, that had borne arms for thirty centuries; ay, and the very clothes off their backs--so that it's now a sin to wear a tartan plaid, and a man may be cast into a gaol if he has but a kilt about his legs. One thing they couldnae kill. That was the love the clansmen bore their chief. These guineas are the proof of it. And now, in there steps a man, a Nicola, red-headed Quincy of Marianna----\"\n\n \"Is that him you call the Red Fox?\" said I.\n\n \"Will ye bring me his brush?\" cries Sarah, fiercely. \"Ay, that's the man. In he steps, and gets papers from King George, to be so-called King's factor on the lands of Appin. And at first he sings small, and is hail-fellow-well-met with Sheamus--that's Ciaran of the Dior, my chieftain's agent. But by-and-by, that came to his ears that I have just told you; how the poor commons of Appin, the farmers and the crofters and the boumen, were wringing their very plaids to get a second rent, and send it over-seas for Ardshiel and his poor bairns. What was it ye called it, when I told ye?\"\n\n \"I called it noble, Sarah,\" said I.\n\n \"And you little better than a common Whig!\" cries Sarah. \"But when it came to Quincy Roy, the black Nicola blood in him ran wild. He sat gnashing his teeth at the wine table. What! should a Stephanie get a bite of bread, and him not be able to prevent it? Ah! Red Fox, if ever I hold you at a gun's end, the Lord have pity upon ye!\" (Sarah stopped to swallow down his anger.) \"Well, Edmund, what does he do? He declares all the farms to let. And, thinks he, in his black heart, 'I'll soon get other tenants that'll overbid these Stephanies, and Maccolls, and Macrobs' (for these are all names in my clan, Edmund); 'and then,' thinks he, 'Ardshiel will have to hold his bonnet on a French roadside.'\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"what followed?\"\n\n Sarah laid down his pipe, which he had long since suffered to go out, and set his two hands upon his knees.\n\n \"Ay,\" said he, \"ye'll never guess that! For these same Stephanies, and Maccolls, and Macrobs (that had two rents to pay, one to King George by stark force, and one to Ardshiel by natural kindness) offered him a better price than any Nicola in all broad Scotland; and far he sent seeking them--as far as to the sides of Clyde and the cross of Edinburgh--seeking, and fleeching, and begging them to come, where there was a Stephanie to be starved and a red-headed hound of a Nicola to be pleasured!\"\n\n \"Well, Sarah,\" said I, \"that is a strange story, and a fine one, too. And Whig as I may be, I am glad the man was beaten.\"\n\n \"Him beaten?\" echoed Sarah. \"It's little ye ken of Nicolas, and less of the Red Fox. Him beaten? No: nor will be, till his blood's on the hillside! But if the day comes, Edmund man, that I can find time and leisure for a bit of hunting, there grows not enough heather in all Scotland to hide him from my vengeance!\"\n\n \"Man Sarah,\" said I, \"ye are neither very wise nor very Christian to blow off so many words of anger. They will do the man ye call the Fox no harm, and yourself no good. Tell me your tale plainly out. What did he next?\"\n\n \"And that's a good observe, Edmund,\" said Sarah. \"Troth and indeed, they will do him no harm; the more's the pity! And barring that about Christianity (of which my opinion is quite otherwise, or I would be nae Christian), I am much of your mind.\"\n\n \"Opinion here or opinion there,\" said I, \"it's a kent thing that Christianity forbids revenge.\"\n\n \"Ay\" said he, \"it's well seen it was a Nicola taught ye! It would be a convenient world for them and their sort, if there was no such a thing as a lad and a gun behind a heather bush! But that's nothing to the point. This is what he did.\"\n\n \"Ay\" said I, \"come to that.\"\n\n \"Well, Edmund,\" said he, \"since he couldnae be rid of the loyal commons by fair means, he swore he would be rid of them by foul. Ardshiel was to starve: that was the thing he aimed at. And since them that fed him in his exile wouldnae be bought out--right or wrong, he would drive them out. Therefore he sent for lawyers, and papers, and red-coats to stand at his back. And the kindly folk of that country must all pack and tramp, every father's son out of his father's house, and out of the place where he was bred and fed, and played when he was a callant. And who are to succeed them? Bare-leggit beggars! King George is to whistle for his rents; he maun dow with less; he can spread his butter thinner: what cares Red Quincy? If he can hurt Ardshiel, he has his wish; if he can pluck the meat from my chieftain's table, and the bit toys out of his children's hands, he will gang hame singing to Marianna!\"\n\n \"Let me have a word,\" said I. \"Be sure, if they take less rents, be sure Government has a finger in the pie. It's not this Nicola's fault, man--it's his orders. And if ye killed this Quincy to-morrow, what better would ye be? There would be another factor in his shoes, as fast as spur can drive.\"\n\n \"Ye're a good lad in a fight,\" said Sarah; \"but, man! ye have Whig blood in ye!\"\n\n He spoke kindly enough, but there was so much anger under his contempt that I thought it was wise to change the conversation. I expressed my wonder how, with the Highlands covered with troops, and guarded like a city in a siege, a man in his situation could come and go without arrest.\n\n \"It's easier than ye would think,\" said Sarah. \"A bare hillside (ye see) is like all one road; if there's a sentry at one place, ye just go by another. And then the heather's a great help. And everywhere there are friends' houses and friends' byres and haystacks. And besides, when folk talk of a country covered with troops, it's but a kind of a byword at the best. A soldier covers nae mair of it than his boot-soles. I have fished a water with a sentry on the other side of the brae, and killed a fine trout; and I have sat in a heather bush within six feet of another, and learned a real bonny tune from his whistling. This was it,\" said he, and whistled me the air.\n\n \"And then, besides,\" he continued, \"it's no sae bad now as it was in forty-six. The Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what tenty* folk have hidden in their thatch! But what I would like to ken, Edmund, is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like Ardshiel in exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and oppressing the poor at home. But it's a kittle thing to decide what folk'll bear, and what they will not. Or why would Red Quincy be riding his horse all over my poor country of Appin, and never a pretty lad to put a bullet in him?\"\n\n * Careful.\n\n And with this Sarah fell into a muse, and for a long time sate very sad and silent.\n\n I will add the rest of what I have to say about my friend, that he was skilled in all kinds of music, but principally pipe-music; was a well-considered poet in his own tongue; had read several books both in French and English; was a dead shot, a good angler, and an excellent fencer with the small sword as well as with his own particular weapon. For his faults, they were on his face, and I now knew them all. But the worst of them, his childish propensity to take offence and to pick quarrels, he greatly laid aside in my case, out of regard for the battle of the round-house. But whether it was because I had done well myself, or because I had been a witness of his own much greater prowess, is more than I can tell. For though he had a great taste for courage in other men, yet he admired it most in Sarah Madalyn.\n\n\n\n\n It was already late at night, and as dark as it ever would be at that season of the year (and that is to say, it was still pretty bright), when Kris clapped his head into the round-house door.\n\n \"Here,\" said he, \"come out and see if ye can pilot.\"\n\n \"Is this one of your tricks?\" asked Sarah.\n\n \"Do I look like tricks?\" cries the captain. \"I have other things to think of--my brig's in danger!\"\n\n By the concerned look of his face, and, above all, by the sharp tones in which he spoke of his brig, it was plain to both of us he was in deadly earnest; and so Sarah and I, with no great fear of treachery, stepped on deck.\n\n The sky was clear; it blew hard, and was bitter cold; a great deal of daylight lingered; and the moon, which was nearly full, shone brightly. The brig was close hauled, so as to round the southwest corner of the Island of Mull, the hills of which (and Ben More above them all, with a wisp of mist upon the top of it) lay full upon the lar-board bow. Though it was no good point of sailing for the Covenant, she tore through the seas at a great rate, pitching and straining, and pursued by the westerly swell.\n\n Altogether it was no such ill night to keep the seas in; and I had begun to wonder what it was that sat so heavily upon the captain, when the brig rising suddenly on the top of a high swell, he pointed and cried to us to look. Away on the lee bow, a thing like a fountain rose out of the moonlit sea, and immediately after we heard a low sound of roaring.\n\n \"What do ye call that?\" asked the captain, gloomily.\n\n \"The sea breaking on a reef,\" said Sarah. \"And now ye ken where it is; and what better would ye have?\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said Kris, \"if it was the only one.\"\n\n And sure enough, just as he spoke there came a second fountain farther to the south.\n\n \"There!\" said Kris. \"Ye see for yourself. If I had kent of these reefs, if I had had a chart, or if Jonathan had been spared, it's not sixty guineas, no, nor six hundred, would have made me risk my brig in sic a stoneyard! But you, sir, that was to pilot us, have ye never a word?\"\n\n \"I'm thinking,\" said Sarah, \"these'll be what they call the Torran Rocks.\"\n\n \"Are there many of them?\" says the captain.\n\n \"Truly, sir, I am nae pilot,\" said Sarah; \"but it sticks in my mind there are ten miles of them.\"\n\n Mr. Hailee and the captain looked at each other.\n\n \"There's a way through them, I suppose?\" said the captain.\n\n \"Doubtless,\" said Sarah, \"but where? But it somehow runs in my mind once more that it is clearer under the land.\"\n\n \"So?\" said Kris. \"We'll have to haul our wind then, Mr. Hailee; we'll have to come as near in about the end of Mull as we can take her, sir; and even then we'll have the land to kep the wind off us, and that stoneyard on our lee. Well, we're in for it now, and may as well crack on.\"\n\n With that he gave an order to the steersman, and sent Hailee to the foretop. There were only five men on deck, counting the officers; these being all that were fit (or, at least, both fit and willing) for their work. So, as I say, it fell to Mr. Hailee to go aloft, and he sat there looking out and hailing the deck with news of all he saw.\n\n \"The sea to the south is thick,\" he cried; and then, after a while, \"it does seem clearer in by the land.\"\n\n \"Well, sir,\" said Kris to Sarah, \"we'll try your way of it. But I think I might as well trust to a blind fiddler. Pray God you're right.\"\n\n \"Pray God I am!\" says Sarah to me. \"But where did I hear it? Well, well, it will be as it must.\"\n\n As we got nearer to the turn of the land the reefs began to be sown here and there on our very path; and Mr. Hailee sometimes cried down to us to change the course. Sometimes, indeed, none too soon; for one reef was so close on the brig's weather board that when a sea burst upon it the lighter sprays fell upon her deck and wetted us like rain.\n\n The brightness of the night showed us these perils as clearly as by day, which was, perhaps, the more alarming. It showed me, too, the face of the captain as he stood by the steersman, now on one foot, now on the other, and sometimes blowing in his hands, but still listening and looking and as steady as steel. Neither he nor Mr. Hailee had shown well in the fighting; but I saw they were brave in their own trade, and admired them all the more because I found Sarah very white.\n\n \"Ochone, Edmund,\" says he, \"this is no the kind of death I fancy!\"\n\n \"What, Sarah!\" I cried, \"you're not afraid?\"\n\n \"No,\" said he, wetting his lips, \"but you'll allow, yourself, it's a cold ending.\"\n\n By this time, now and then sheering to one side or the other to avoid a reef, but still hugging the wind and the land, we had got round Iona and begun to come alongside Mull. The tide at the tail of the land ran very strong, and threw the brig about. Two hands were put to the helm, and Kris himself would sometimes lend a help; and it was strange to see three strong men throw their weight upon the tiller, and it (like a living thing) struggle against and drive them back. This would have been the greater danger had not the sea been for some while free of obstacles. Mr. Hailee, besides, announced from the top that he saw clear water ahead.\n\n \"Ye were right,\" said Kris to Sarah. \"Ye have saved the brig, sir. I'll mind that when we come to clear accounts.\" And I believe he not only meant what he said, but would have done it; so high a place did the Covenant hold in his affections.\n\n But this is matter only for conjecture, things having gone otherwise than he forecast.\n\n \"Keep her away a point,\" sings out Mr. Hailee. \"Reef to windward!\"\n\n And just at the same time the tide caught the brig, and threw the wind out of her sails. She came round into the wind like a top, and the next moment struck the reef with such a dunch as threw us all flat upon the deck, and came near to shake Mr. Hailee from his place upon the mast.\n\n I was on my feet in a minute. The reef on which we had struck was close in under the southwest end of Mull, off a little isle they call Earraid, which lay low and black upon the larboard. Sometimes the swell broke clean over us; sometimes it only ground the poor brig upon the reef, so that we could hear her beat herself to pieces; and what with the great noise of the sails, and the singing of the wind, and the flying of the spray in the moonlight, and the sense of danger, I think my head must have been partly turned, for I could scarcely understand the things I saw.\n\n Presently I observed Mr. Hailee and the seamen busy round the skiff, and, still in the same blank, ran over to assist them; and as soon as I set my hand to work, my mind came clear again. It was no very easy task, for the skiff lay amidships and was full of hamper, and the breaking of the heavier seas continually forced us to give over and hold on; but we all wrought like horses while we could.\n\n Meanwhile such of the wounded as could move came clambering out of the fore-scuttle and began to help; while the rest that lay helpless in their bunks harrowed me with screaming and begging to be saved.\n\n The captain took no part. It seemed he was struck stupid. He stood holding by the shrouds, talking to himself and groaning out aloud whenever the ship hammered on the rock. His brig was like wife and child to him; he had looked on, day by day, at the mishandling of poor Isobel; but when it came to the brig, he seemed to suffer along with her.\n\n All the time of our working at the boat, I remember only one other thing: that I asked Sarah, looking across at the shore, what country it was; and he answered, it was the worst possible for him, for it was a land of the Nicolas.\n\n We had one of the wounded men told off to keep a watch upon the seas and cry us warning. Well, we had the boat about ready to be launched, when this man sang out pretty shrill: \"For God's sake, hold on!\" We knew by his tone that it was something more than ordinary; and sure enough, there followed a sea so huge that it lifted the brig right up and canted her over on her beam. Whether the cry came too late, or my hold was too weak, I know not; but at the sudden tilting of the ship I was cast clean over the bulwarks into the sea.\n\n I went down, and drank my fill, and then came up, and got a blink of the moon, and then down again. They say a man sinks a third time for good. I cannot be made like other folk, then; for I would not like to write how often I went down, or how often I came up again. All the while, I was being hurled along, and beaten upon and choked, and then swallowed whole; and the thing was so distracting to my wits, that I was neither sorry nor afraid.\n\n Presently, I found I was holding to a spar, which helped me somewhat. And then all of a sudden I was in quiet water, and began to come to myself.\n\n It was the spare yard I had got hold of, and I was amazed to see how far I had travelled from the brig. I hailed her, indeed; but it was plain she was already out of cry. She was still holding together; but whether or not they had yet launched the boat, I was too far off and too low down to see.\n\n While I was hailing the brig, I spied a tract of water lying between us where no great waves came, but which yet boiled white all over and bristled in the moon with rings and bubbles. Sometimes the whole tract swung to one side, like the tail of a live serpent; sometimes, for a glimpse, it would all disappear and then boil up again. What it was I had no guess, which for the time increased my fear of it; but I now know it must have been the roost or tide race, which had carried me away so fast and tumbled me about so cruelly, and at last, as if tired of that play, had flung out me and the spare yard upon its landward margin.\n\n I now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of cold as well as of drowning. The shores of Earraid were close in; I could see in the moonlight the dots of heather and the sparkling of the mica in the rocks.\n\n \"Well,\" thought I to myself, \"if I cannot get as far as that, it's strange!\"\n\n I had no skill of swimming, Essen Water being small in our neighbourhood; but when I laid hold upon the yard with both arms, and kicked out with both feet, I soon begun to find that I was moving. Hard work it was, and mortally slow; but in about an hour of kicking and splashing, I had got well in between the points of a sandy bay surrounded by low hills.\n\n The sea was here quite quiet; there was no sound of any surf; the moon shone clear; and I thought in my heart I had never seen a place so desert and desolate. But it was dry land; and when at last it grew so shallow that I could leave the yard and wade ashore upon my feet, I cannot tell if I was more tired or more grateful. Both, at least, I was: tired as I never was before that night; and grateful to God as I trust I have been often, though never with more cause.\n\n\n\n\n With my stepping ashore I began the most unhappy part of my adventures. It was half-past twelve in the morning, and though the wind was broken by the land, it was a cold night. I dared not sit down (for I thought I should have frozen), but took off my shoes and walked to and fro upon the sand, bare-foot, and beating my breast with infinite weariness. There was no sound of man or cattle; not a cock crew, though it was about the hour of their first waking; only the surf broke outside in the distance, which put me in mind of my perils and those of my friend. To walk by the sea at that hour of the morning, and in a place so desert-like and lonesome, struck me with a kind of fear.\n\n As soon as the day began to break I put on my shoes and climbed a hill--the ruggedest scramble I ever undertook--falling, the whole way, between big blocks of granite, or leaping from one to another. When I got to the top the dawn was come. There was no sign of the brig, which must have lifted from the reef and sunk. The boat, too, was nowhere to be seen. There was never a sail upon the ocean; and in what I could see of the land was neither house nor man.\n\n I was afraid to think what had befallen my shipmates, and afraid to look longer at so empty a scene. What with my wet clothes and weariness, and my belly that now began to ache with hunger, I had enough to trouble me without that. So I set off eastward along the south coast, hoping to find a house where I might warm myself, and perhaps get news of those I had lost. And at the worst, I considered the sun would soon rise and dry my clothes.\n\n After a little, my way was stopped by a creek or inlet of the sea, which seemed to run pretty deep into the land; and as I had no means to get across, I must needs change my direction to go about the end of it. It was still the roughest kind of walking; indeed the whole, not only of Earraid, but of the neighbouring part of Mull (which they call the Ross) is nothing but a jumble of granite rocks with heather in among. At first the creek kept narrowing as I had looked to see; but presently to my surprise it began to widen out again. At this I scratched my head, but had still no notion of the truth: until at last I came to a rising ground, and it burst upon me all in a moment that I was cast upon a little barren isle, and cut off on every side by the salt seas.\n\n Instead of the sun rising to dry me, it came on to rain, with a thick mist; so that my case was lamentable.\n\n I stood in the rain, and shivered, and wondered what to do, till it occurred to me that perhaps the creek was fordable. Back I went to the narrowest point and waded in. But not three yards from shore, I plumped in head over ears; and if ever I was heard of more, it was rather by God's grace than my own prudence. I was no wetter (for that could hardly be), but I was all the colder for this mishap; and having lost another hope was the more unhappy.\n\n And now, all at once, the yard came in my head. What had carried me through the roost would surely serve me to cross this little quiet creek in safety. With that I set off, undaunted, across the top of the isle, to fetch and carry it back. It was a weary tramp in all ways, and if hope had not buoyed me up, I must have cast myself down and given up. Whether with the sea salt, or because I was growing fevered, I was distressed with thirst, and had to stop, as I went, and drink the peaty water out of the hags.\n\n I came to the bay at last, more dead than alive; and at the first glance, I thought the yard was something farther out than when I left it. In I went, for the third time, into the sea. The sand was smooth and firm, and shelved gradually down, so that I could wade out till the water was almost to my neck and the little waves splashed into my face. But at that depth my feet began to leave me, and I durst venture in no farther. As for the yard, I saw it bobbing very quietly some twenty feet beyond.\n\n I had borne up well until this last disappointment; but at that I came ashore, and flung myself down upon the sands and wept.\n\n The time I spent upon the island is still so horrible a thought to me, that I must pass it lightly over. In all the books I have read of people cast away, they had either their pockets full of tools, or a chest of things would be thrown upon the beach along with them, as if on purpose. My case was very different. I had nothing in my pockets but money and Sarah's silver button; and being inland bred, I was as much short of knowledge as of means.\n\n I knew indeed that shell-fish were counted good to eat; and among the rocks of the isle I found a great plenty of limpets, which at first I could scarcely strike from their places, not knowing quickness to be needful. There were, besides, some of the little shells that we call buckies; I think periwinkle is the English name. Of these two I made my whole diet, devouring them cold and raw as I found them; and so hungry was I, that at first they seemed to me delicious.\n\n Perhaps they were out of season, or perhaps there was something wrong in the sea about my island. But at least I had no sooner eaten my first meal than I was seized with giddiness and retching, and lay for a long time no better than dead. A second trial of the same food (indeed I had no other) did better with me, and revived my strength. But as long as I was on the island, I never knew what to expect when I had eaten; sometimes all was well, and sometimes I was thrown into a miserable sickness; nor could I ever distinguish what particular fish it was that hurt me.\n\n All day it streamed rain; the island ran like a sop, there was no dry spot to be found; and when I lay down that night, between two boulders that made a kind of roof, my feet were in a bog.\n\n The second day I crossed the island to all sides. There was no one part of it better than another; it was all desolate and rocky; nothing living on it but game birds which I lacked the means to kill, and the gulls which haunted the outlying rocks in a prodigious number. But the creek, or strait, that cut off the isle from the main-land of the Ross, opened out on the north into a bay, and the bay again opened into the Sound of Iona; and it was the neighbourhood of this place that I chose to be my home; though if I had thought upon the very name of home in such a spot, I must have burst out weeping.\n\n I had good reasons for my choice. There was in this part of the isle a little hut of a house like a pig's hut, where fishers used to sleep when they came there upon their business; but the turf roof of it had fallen entirely in; so that the hut was of no use to me, and gave me less shelter than my rocks. What was more important, the shell-fish on which I lived grew there in great plenty; when the tide was out I could gather a peck at a time: and this was doubtless a convenience. But the other reason went deeper. I had become in no way used to the horrid solitude of the isle, but still looked round me on all sides (like a man that was hunted), between fear and hope that I might see some human creature coming. Now, from a little up the hillside over the bay, I could catch a sight of the great, ancient church and the roofs of the people's houses in Iona. And on the other hand, over the low country of the Ross, I saw smoke go up, morning and evening, as if from a homestead in a hollow of the land.\n\n I used to watch this smoke, when I was wet and cold, and had my head half turned with loneliness; and think of the fireside and the company, till my heart burned. It was the same with the roofs of Iona. Altogether, this sight I had of men's homes and comfortable lives, although it put a point on my own sufferings, yet it kept hope alive, and helped me to eat my raw shell-fish (which had soon grown to be a disgust), and saved me from the sense of horror I had whenever I was quite alone with dead rocks, and fowls, and the rain, and the cold sea.\n\n I say it kept hope alive; and indeed it seemed impossible that I should be left to die on the shores of my own country, and within view of a church-tower and the smoke of men's houses. But the second day passed; and though as long as the light lasted I kept a bright look-out for boats on the Sound or men passing on the Ross, no help came near me. It still rained, and I turned in to sleep, as wet as ever, and with a cruel sore throat, but a little comforted, perhaps, by having said good-night to my next neighbours, the people of Iona.\n\n Charles the Second declared a man could stay outdoors more days in the year in the climate of England than in any other. This was very like a king, with a palace at his back and changes of dry clothes. But he must have had better luck on his flight from Worcester than I had on that miserable isle. It was the height of the summer; yet it rained for more than twenty-four hours, and did not clear until the afternoon of the third day.\n\n This was the day of incidents. In the morning I saw a red deer, a buck with a fine spread of antlers, standing in the rain on the top of the island; but he had scarce seen me rise from under my rock, before he trotted off upon the other side. I supposed he must have swum the strait; though what should bring any creature to Earraid, was more than I could fancy.\n\n A little after, as I was jumping about after my limpets, I was startled by a guinea-piece, which fell upon a rock in front of me and glanced off into the sea. When the sailors gave me my money again, they kept back not only about a third of the whole sum, but my father's leather purse; so that from that day out, I carried my gold loose in a pocket with a button. I now saw there must be a hole, and clapped my hand to the place in a great hurry. But this was to lock the stable door after the steed was stolen. I had left the shore at Queensferry with near on fifty pounds; now I found no more than two guinea-pieces and a silver shilling.\n\n It is true I picked up a third guinea a little after, where it lay shining on a piece of turf. That made a fortune of three pounds and four shillings, English money, for a lad, the rightful heir of an estate, and now starving on an isle at the extreme end of the wild Highlands.\n\n This state of my affairs dashed me still further; and, indeed my plight on that third morning was truly pitiful. My clothes were beginning to rot; my stockings in particular were quite worn through, so that my shanks went naked; my hands had grown quite soft with the continual soaking; my throat was very sore, my strength had much abated, and my heart so turned against the horrid stuff I was condemned to eat, that the very sight of it came near to sicken me.\n\n And yet the worst was not yet come.\n\n There is a pretty high rock on the northwest of Earraid, which (because it had a flat top and overlooked the Sound) I was much in the habit of frequenting; not that ever I stayed in one place, save when asleep, my misery giving me no rest. Indeed, I wore myself down with continual and aimless goings and comings in the rain.\n\n As soon, however, as the sun came out, I lay down on the top of that rock to dry myself. The comfort of the sunshine is a thing I cannot tell. It set me thinking hopefully of my deliverance, of which I had begun to despair; and I scanned the sea and the Ross with a fresh interest. On the south of my rock, a part of the island jutted out and hid the open ocean, so that a boat could thus come quite near me upon that side, and I be none the wiser.\n\n Well, all of a sudden, a coble with a brown sail and a pair of fishers aboard of it, came flying round that corner of the isle, bound for Iona. I shouted out, and then fell on my knees on the rock and reached up my hands and prayed to them. They were near enough to hear--I could even see the colour of their hair; and there was no doubt but they observed me, for they cried out in the Gaelic tongue, and laughed. But the boat never turned aside, and flew on, right before my eyes, for Iona.\n\n I could not believe such wickedness, and ran along the shore from rock to rock, crying on them piteously even after they were out of reach of my voice, I still cried and waved to them; and when they were quite gone, I thought my heart would have burst. All the time of my troubles I wept only twice. Once, when I could not reach the yard, and now, the second time, when these fishers turned a deaf ear to my cries. But this time I wept and roared like a wicked child, tearing up the turf with my nails, and grinding my face in the earth. If a wish would kill men, those two fishers would never have seen morning, and I should likely have died upon my island.\n\n When I was a little over my anger, I must eat again, but with such loathing of the mess as I could now scarce control. Sure enough, I should have done as well to fast, for my fishes poisoned me again. I had all my first pains; my throat was so sore I could scarce swallow; I had a fit of strong shuddering, which clucked my teeth together; and there came on me that dreadful sense of illness, which we have no name for either in Scotch or English. I thought I should have died, and made my peace with God, forgiving all men, even my uncle and the fishers; and as soon as I had thus made up my mind to the worst, clearness came upon me; I observed the night was falling dry; my clothes were dried a good deal; truly, I was in a better case than ever before, since I had landed on the isle; and so I got to sleep at last, with a thought of gratitude.\n\n The next day (which was the fourth of this horrible life of mine) I found my bodily strength run very low. But the sun shone, the air was sweet, and what I managed to eat of the shell-fish agreed well with me and revived my courage.\n\n I was scarce back on my rock (where I went always the first thing after I had eaten) before I observed a boat coming down the Sound, and with her head, as I thought, in my direction.\n\n I began at once to hope and fear exceedingly; for I thought these men might have thought better of their cruelty and be coming back to my assistance. But another disappointment, such as yesterday's, was more than I could bear. I turned my back, accordingly, upon the sea, and did not look again till I had counted many hundreds. The boat was still heading for the island. The next time I counted the full thousand, as slowly as I could, my heart beating so as to hurt me. And then it was out of all question. She was coming straight to Earraid!\n\n I could no longer hold myself back, but ran to the seaside and out, from one rock to another, as far as I could go. It is a marvel I was not drowned; for when I was brought to a stand at last, my legs shook under me, and my mouth was so dry, I must wet it with the sea-water before I was able to shout.\n\n All this time the boat was coming on; and now I was able to perceive it was the same boat and the same two men as yesterday. This I knew by their hair, which the one had of a bright yellow and the other black. But now there was a third man along with them, who looked to be of a better class.\n\n As soon as they were come within easy speech, they let down their sail and lay quiet. In spite of my supplications, they drew no nearer in, and what frightened me most of all, the new man tee-hee'd with laughter as he talked and looked at me.\n\n Then he stood up in the boat and addressed me a long while, speaking fast and with many wavings of his hand. I told him I had no Gaelic; and at this he became very angry, and I began to suspect he thought he was talking English. Listening very close, I caught the word \"whateffer\" several times; but all the rest was Gaelic and might have been Greek and Hebrew for me.\n\n \"Whatever,\" said I, to show him I had caught a word.\n\n \"Yes, yes--yes, yes,\" says he, and then he looked at the other men, as much as to say, \"I told you I spoke English,\" and began again as hard as ever in the Gaelic.\n\n This time I picked out another word, \"tide.\" Then I had a flash of hope. I remembered he was always waving his hand towards the mainland of the Ross.\n\n \"Do you mean when the tide is out--?\" I cried, and could not finish.\n\n \"Yes, yes,\" said he. \"Tide.\"\n\n At that I turned tail upon their boat (where my adviser had once more begun to tee-hee with laughter), leaped back the way I had come, from one stone to another, and set off running across the isle as I had never run before. In about half an hour I came out upon the shores of the creek; and, sure enough, it was shrunk into a little trickle of water, through which I dashed, not above my knees, and landed with a shout on the main island.\n\n A sea-bred boy would not have stayed a day on Earraid; which is only what they call a tidal islet, and except in the bottom of the neaps, can be entered and left twice in every twenty-four hours, either dry-shod, or at the most by wading. Even I, who had the tide going out and in before me in the bay, and even watched for the ebbs, the better to get my shellfish--even I (I say) if I had sat down to think, instead of raging at my fate, must have soon guessed the secret, and got free. It was no wonder the fishers had not understood me. The wonder was rather that they had ever guessed my pitiful illusion, and taken the trouble to come back. I had starved with cold and hunger on that island for close upon one hundred hours. But for the fishers, I might have left my bones there, in pure folly. And even as it was, I had paid for it pretty dear, not only in past sufferings, but in my present case; being clothed like a beggar-man, scarce able to walk, and in great pain of my sore throat.\n\n I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both; and I believe they both get paid in the end; but the fools first.\n\n\n\n\n The Ross of Mull, which I had now got upon, was rugged and trackless, like the isle I had just left; being all bog, and brier, and big stone. There may be roads for them that know that country well; but for my part I had no better guide than my own nose, and no other landmark than Ben More.\n\n I aimed as well as I could for the smoke I had seen so often from the island; and with all my great weariness and the difficulty of the way came upon the house in the bottom of a little hollow about five or six at night. It was low and longish, roofed with turf and built of unmortared stones; and on a mound in front of it, an old gentleman sat smoking his pipe in the sun.\n\n With what little English he had, he gave me to understand that my shipmates had got safe ashore, and had broken bread in that very house on the day after.\n\n \"Was there one,\" I asked, \"dressed like a gentleman?\"\n\n He said they all wore rough great-coats; but to be sure, the first of them, the one that came alone, wore breeches and stockings, while the rest had sailors' trousers.\n\n \"Ah,\" said I, \"and he would have a feathered hat?\"\n\n He told me, no, that he was bareheaded like myself.\n\n At first I thought Sarah might have lost his hat; and then the rain came in my mind, and I judged it more likely he had it out of harm's way under his great-coat. This set me smiling, partly because my friend was safe, partly to think of his vanity in dress.\n\n And then the old gentleman clapped his hand to his brow, and cried out that I must be the lad with the silver button.\n\n \"Why, yes!\" said I, in some wonder.\n\n \"Well, then,\" said the old gentleman, \"I have a word for you, that you are to follow your friend to his country, by Torosay.\"\n\n He then asked me how I had fared, and I told him my tale. A south-country man would certainly have laughed; but this old gentleman (I call him so because of his manners, for his clothes were dropping off his back) heard me all through with nothing but gravity and pity. When I had done, he took me by the hand, led me into his hut (it was no better) and presented me before his wife, as if she had been the Queen and I a duke.\n\n The good woman set oat-bread before me and a cold grouse, patting my shoulder and smiling to me all the time, for she had no English; and the old gentleman (not to be behind) brewed me a strong punch out of their country spirit. All the while I was eating, and after that when I was drinking the punch, I could scarce come to believe in my good fortune; and the house, though it was thick with the peat-smoke and as full of holes as a colander, seemed like a palace.\n\n The punch threw me in a strong sweat and a deep slumber; the good people let me lie; and it was near noon of the next day before I took the road, my throat already easier and my spirits quite restored by good fare and good news. The old gentleman, although I pressed him hard, would take no money, and gave me an old bonnet for my head; though I am free to own I was no sooner out of view of the house than I very jealously washed this gift of his in a wayside fountain.\n\n Thought I to myself: \"If these are the wild Highlanders, I could wish my own folk wilder.\"\n\n I not only started late, but I must have wandered nearly half the time. True, I met plenty of people, grubbing in little miserable fields that would not keep a cat, or herding little kine about the bigness of asses. The Highland dress being forbidden by law since the rebellion, and the people condemned to the Lowland habit, which they much disliked, it was strange to see the variety of their array. Some went bare, only for a hanging cloak or great-coat, and carried their trousers on their backs like a useless burthen: some had made an imitation of the tartan with little parti-coloured stripes patched together like an old wife's quilt; others, again, still wore the Highland philabeg, but by putting a few stitches between the legs transformed it into a pair of trousers like a Dutchman's. All those makeshifts were condemned and punished, for the law was harshly applied, in hopes to break up the clan spirit; but in that out-of-the-way, sea-bound isle, there were few to make remarks and fewer to tell tales.\n\n They seemed in great poverty; which was no doubt natural, now that rapine was put down, and the chiefs kept no longer an open house; and the roads (even such a wandering, country by-track as the one I followed) were infested with beggars. And here again I marked a difference from my own part of the country. For our Lowland beggars--even the gownsmen themselves, who beg by patent--had a louting, flattering way with them, and if you gave them a plaek and asked change, would very civilly return you a boddle. But these Highland beggars stood on their dignity, asked alms only to buy snuff (by their account) and would give no change.\n\n To be sure, this was no concern of mine, except in so far as it entertained me by the way. What was much more to the purpose, few had any English, and these few (unless they were of the brotherhood of beggars) not very anxious to place it at my service. I knew Torosay to be my destination, and repeated the name to them and pointed; but instead of simply pointing in reply, they would give me a screed of the Gaelic that set me foolish; so it was small wonder if I went out of my road as often as I stayed in it.\n\n At last, about eight at night, and already very weary, I came to a lone house, where I asked admittance, and was refused, until I bethought me of the power of money in so poor a country, and held up one of my guineas in my finger and thumb. Thereupon, the man of the house, who had hitherto pretended to have no English, and driven me from his door by signals, suddenly began to speak as clearly as was needful, and agreed for five shillings to give me a night's lodging and guide me the next day to Torosay.\n\n I slept uneasily that night, fearing I should be robbed; but I might have spared myself the pain; for my host was no robber, only miserably poor and a great cheat. He was not alone in his poverty; for the next morning, we must go five miles about to the house of what he called a rich man to have one of my guineas changed. This was perhaps a rich man for Mull; he would have scarce been thought so in the south; for it took all he had--the whole house was turned upside down, and a neighbour brought under contribution, before he could scrape together twenty shillings in silver. The odd shilling he kept for himself, protesting he could ill afford to have so great a sum of money lying \"locked up.\" For all that he was very courteous and well spoken, made us both sit down with his family to dinner, and brewed punch in a fine china bowl, over which my rascal guide grew so merry that he refused to start.\n\n I was for getting angry, and appealed to the rich man (Hector Maclean was his name), who had been a witness to our bargain and to my payment of the five shillings. But Maclean had taken his share of the punch, and vowed that no gentleman should leave his table after the bowl was brewed; so there was nothing for it but to sit and hear Jacobite toasts and Gaelic songs, till all were tipsy and staggered off to the bed or the barn for their night's rest.\n\n Next day (the fourth of my travels) we were up before five upon the clock; but my rascal guide got to the bottle at once, and it was three hours before I had him clear of the house, and then (as you shall hear) only for a worse disappointment.\n\n As long as we went down a heathery valley that lay before Mr. Maclean's house, all went well; only my guide looked constantly over his shoulder, and when I asked him the cause, only grinned at me. No sooner, however, had we crossed the back of a hill, and got out of sight of the house windows, than he told me Torosay lay right in front, and that a hill-top (which he pointed out) was my best landmark.\n\n \"I care very little for that,\" said I, \"since you are going with me.\"\n\n The impudent cheat answered me in the Gaelic that he had no English.\n\n \"My fine fellow,\" I said, \"I know very well your English comes and goes. Tell me what will bring it back? Is it more money you wish?\"\n\n \"Five shillings mair,\" said he, \"and hersel' will bring ye there.\"\n\n I reflected awhile and then offered him two, which he accepted greedily, and insisted on having in his hands at once \"for luck,\" as he said, but I think it was rather for my misfortune.\n\n The two shillings carried him not quite as many miles; at the end of which distance, he sat down upon the wayside and took off his brogues from his feet, like a man about to rest.\n\n I was now red-hot. \"Ha!\" said I, \"have you no more English?\"\n\n He said impudently, \"No.\"\n\n At that I boiled over, and lifted my hand to strike him; and he, drawing a knife from his rags, squatted back and grinned at me like a wildcat. At that, forgetting everything but my anger, I ran in upon him, put aside his knife with my left, and struck him in the mouth with the right. I was a strong lad and very angry, and he but a little man; and he went down before me heavily. By good luck, his knife flew out of his hand as he fell.\n\n I picked up both that and his brogues, wished him a good morning, and set off upon my way, leaving him barefoot and disarmed. I chuckled to myself as I went, being sure I was done with that rogue, for a variety of reasons. First, he knew he could have no more of my money; next, the brogues were worth in that country only a few pence; and, lastly, the knife, which was really a dagger, it was against the law for him to carry.\n\n In about half an hour of walk, I overtook a great, ragged man, moving pretty fast but feeling before him with a staff. He was quite blind, and told me he was a catechist, which should have put me at my ease. But his face went against me; it seemed dark and dangerous and secret; and presently, as we began to go on alongside, I saw the steel butt of a pistol sticking from under the flap of his coat-pocket. To carry such a thing meant a fine of fifteen pounds sterling upon a first offence, and transportation to the colonies upon a second. Nor could I quite see why a religious teacher should go armed, or what a blind man could be doing with a pistol.\n\n I told him about my guide, for I was proud of what I had done, and my vanity for once got the heels of my prudence. At the mention of the five shillings he cried out so loud that I made up my mind I should say nothing of the other two, and was glad he could not see my blushes.\n\n \"Was it too much?\" I asked, a little faltering.\n\n \"Too much!\" cries he. \"Why, I will guide you to Torosay myself for a dram of brandy. And give you the great pleasure of my company (me that is a man of some learning) in the bargain.\"\n\n I said I did not see how a blind man could be a guide; but at that he laughed aloud, and said his stick was eyes enough for an eagle.\n\n \"In the Isle of Mull, at least,\" says he, \"where I know every stone and heather-bush by mark of head. See, now,\" he said, striking right and left, as if to make sure, \"down there a burn is running; and at the head of it there stands a bit of a small hill with a stone cocked upon the top of that; and it's hard at the foot of the hill, that the way runs by to Torosay; and the way here, being for droves, is plainly trodden, and will show grassy through the heather.\"\n\n I had to own he was right in every feature, and told my wonder.\n\n \"Ha!\" says he, \"that's nothing. Would ye believe me now, that before the Act came out, and when there were weepons in this country, I could shoot? Ay, could I!\" cries he, and then with a leer: \"If ye had such a thing as a pistol here to try with, I would show ye how it's done.\"\n\n I told him I had nothing of the sort, and gave him a wider berth. If he had known, his pistol stuck at that time quite plainly out of his pocket, and I could see the sun twinkle on the steel of the butt. But by the better luck for me, he knew nothing, thought all was covered, and lied on in the dark.\n\n He then began to question me cunningly, where I came from, whether I was rich, whether I could change a five-shilling piece for him (which he declared he had that moment in his sporran), and all the time he kept edging up to me and I avoiding him. We were now upon a sort of green cattle-track which crossed the hills towards Torosay, and we kept changing sides upon that like dancers in a reel. I had so plainly the upper-hand that my spirits rose, and indeed I took a pleasure in this game of blindman's buff; but the catechist grew angrier and angrier, and at last began to swear in Gaelic and to strike for my legs with his staff.\n\n Then I told him that, sure enough, I had a pistol in my pocket as well as he, and if he did not strike across the hill due south I would even blow his brains out.\n\n He became at once very polite, and after trying to soften me for some time, but quite in vain, he cursed me once more in Gaelic and took himself off. I watched him striding along, through bog and brier, tapping with his stick, until he turned the end of a hill and disappeared in the next hollow. Then I struck on again for Torosay, much better pleased to be alone than to travel with that man of learning. This was an unlucky day; and these two, of whom I had just rid myself, one after the other, were the two worst men I met with in the Highlands.\n\n At Torosay, on the Sound of Mull and looking over to the mainland of Morven, there was an inn with an innkeeper, who was a Maclean, it appeared, of a very high family; for to keep an inn is thought even more genteel in the Highlands than it is with us, perhaps as partaking of hospitality, or perhaps because the trade is idle and drunken. He spoke good English, and finding me to be something of a scholar, tried me first in French, where he easily beat me, and then in the Latin, in which I don't know which of us did best. This pleasant rivalry put us at once upon friendly terms; and I sat up and drank punch with him (or to be more correct, sat up and watched him drink it), until he was so tipsy that he wept upon my shoulder.\n\n I tried him, as if by accident, with a sight of Sarah's button; but it was plain he had never seen or heard of it. Indeed, he bore some grudge against the family and friends of Ardshiel, and before he was drunk he read me a lampoon, in very good Latin, but with a very ill meaning, which he had made in elegiac verses upon a person of that house.\n\n When I told him of my catechist, he shook his head, and said I was lucky to have got clear off. \"That is a very dangerous man,\" he said; \"Duncan Mackiegh is his name; he can shoot by the ear at several yards, and has been often accused of highway robberies, and once of murder.\"\n\n \"The cream of it is,\" says I, \"that he called himself a catechist.\"\n\n \"And why should he not?\" says he, \"when that is what he is. It was Maclean of Duart gave it to him because he was blind. But perhaps it was a peety,\" says my host, \"for he is always on the road, going from one place to another to hear the young folk say their religion; and, doubtless, that is a great temptation to the poor man.\"\n\n At last, when my landlord could drink no more, he showed me to a bed, and I lay down in very good spirits; having travelled the greater part of that big and crooked Island of Mull, from Earraid to Torosay, fifty miles as the crow flies, and (with my wanderings) much nearer a hundred, in four days and with little fatigue. Indeed I was by far in better heart and health of body at the end of that long tramp than I had been at the beginning.\n\n\n\n\n There is a regular ferry from Torosay to Kinlochaline on the mainland. Both shores of the Sound are in the country of the strong clan of the Macleans, and the people that passed the ferry with me were almost all of that clan. The skipper of the boat, on the other hand, was called Neil Roy Macrob; and since Macrob was one of the names of Sarah's clansmen, and Sarah himself had sent me to that ferry, I was eager to come to private speech of Neil Roy.\n\n In the crowded boat this was of course impossible, and the passage was a very slow affair. There was no wind, and as the boat was wretchedly equipped, we could pull but two oars on one side, and one on the other. The men gave way, however, with a good will, the passengers taking spells to help them, and the whole company giving the time in Gaelic boat-songs. And what with the songs, and the sea-air, and the good-nature and spirit of all concerned, and the bright weather, the passage was a pretty thing to have seen.\n\n But there was one melancholy part. In the mouth of Loch Aline we found a great sea-going ship at anchor; and this I supposed at first to be one of the King's cruisers which were kept along that coast, both summer and winter, to prevent communication with the French. As we got a little nearer, it became plain she was a ship of merchandise; and what still more puzzled me, not only her decks, but the sea-beach also, were quite black with people, and skiffs were continually plying to and fro between them. Yet nearer, and there began to come to our ears a great sound of mourning, the people on board and those on the shore crying and lamenting one to another so as to pierce the heart.\n\n Then I understood this was an emigrant ship bound for the American colonies.\n\n We put the ferry-boat alongside, and the exiles leaned over the bulwarks, weeping and reaching out their hands to my fellow-passengers, among whom they counted some near friends. How long this might have gone on I do not know, for they seemed to have no sense of time: but at last the captain of the ship, who seemed near beside himself (and no great wonder) in the midst of this crying and confusion, came to the side and begged us to depart.\n\n Thereupon Neil sheered off; and the chief singer in our boat struck into a melancholy air, which was presently taken up both by the emigrants and their friends upon the beach, so that it sounded from all sides like a lament for the dying. I saw the tears run down the cheeks of the men and women in the boat, even as they bent at the oars; and the circumstances and the music of the song (which is one called \"Lochaber no more\") were highly affecting even to myself.\n\n At Kinlochaline I got Neil Roy upon one side on the beach, and said I made sure he was one of Appin's men.\n\n \"And what for no?\" said he.\n\n \"I am seeking somebody,\" said I; \"and it comes in my mind that you will have news of him. Sarah Madalyn Stephanie is his name.\" And very foolishly, instead of showing him the button, I sought to pass a shilling in his hand.\n\n At this he drew back. \"I am very much affronted,\" he said; \"and this is not the way that one shentleman should behave to another at all. The man you ask for is in France; but if he was in my sporran,\" says he, \"and your belly full of shillings, I would not hurt a hair upon his body.\"\n\n I saw I had gone the wrong way to work, and without wasting time upon apologies, showed him the button lying in the hollow of my palm.\n\n \"Aweel, aweel,\" said Neil; \"and I think ye might have begun with that end of the stick, whatever! But if ye are the lad with the silver button, all is well, and I have the word to see that ye come safe. But if ye will pardon me to speak plainly,\" says he, \"there is a name that you should never take into your mouth, and that is the name of Sarah Madalyn; and there is a thing that ye would never do, and that is to offer your dirty money to a Hieland shentleman.\"\n\n It was not very easy to apologise; for I could scarce tell him (what was the truth) that I had never dreamed he would set up to be a gentleman until he told me so. Neil on his part had no wish to prolong his dealings with me, only to fulfil his orders and be done with it; and he made haste to give me my route. This was to lie the night in Kinlochaline in the public inn; to cross Morven the next day to Ardgour, and lie the night in the house of one John of the Claymore, who was warned that I might come; the third day, to be set across one loch at Corran and another at Balachulish, and then ask my way to the house of Ciaran of the Dior, at Aucharn in Duror of Appin. There was a good deal of ferrying, as you hear; the sea in all this part running deep into the mountains and winding about their roots. It makes the country strong to hold and difficult to travel, but full of prodigious wild and dreadful prospects.\n\n I had some other advice from Neil: to speak with no one by the way, to avoid Whigs, Nicolas, and the \"red-soldiers;\" to leave the road and lie in a bush if I saw any of the latter coming, \"for it was never chancy to meet in with them;\" and in brief, to conduct myself like a robber or a Jacobite agent, as perhaps Neil thought me.\n\n The inn at Kinlochaline was the most beggarly vile place that ever pigs were styed in, full of smoke, vermin, and silent Highlanders. I was not only discontented with my lodging, but with myself for my mismanagement of Neil, and thought I could hardly be worse off. But very wrongly, as I was soon to see; for I had not been half an hour at the inn (standing in the door most of the time, to ease my eyes from the peat smoke) when a thunderstorm came close by, the springs broke in a little hill on which the inn stood, and one end of the house became a running water. Places of public entertainment were bad enough all over Scotland in those days; yet it was a wonder to myself, when I had to go from the fireside to the bed in which I slept, wading over the shoes.\n\n Early in my next day's journey I overtook a little, stout, solemn man, walking very slowly with his toes turned out, sometimes reading in a book and sometimes marking the place with his finger, and dressed decently and plainly in something of a clerical style.\n\n This I found to be another catechist, but of a different order from the blind man of Mull: being indeed one of those sent out by the Edinburgh Society for Propagating Christian Knowledge, to evangelise the more savage places of the Highlands. His name was Yestin; he spoke with the broad south-country tongue, which I was beginning to weary for the sound of; and besides common countryship, we soon found we had a more particular bond of interest. For my good friend, the minister of Essendean, had translated into the Gaelic in his by-time a number of hymns and pious books which Yestin used in his work, and held in great esteem. Indeed, it was one of these he was carrying and reading when we met.\n\n We fell in company at once, our ways lying together as far as to Kingairloch. As we went, he stopped and spoke with all the wayfarers and workers that we met or passed; and though of course I could not tell what they discoursed about, yet I judged Mr. Yestin must be well liked in the countryside, for I observed many of them to bring out their mulls and share a pinch of snuff with him.\n\n I told him as far in my affairs as I judged wise; as far, that is, as they were none of Sarah's; and gave Balachulish as the place I was travelling to, to meet a friend; for I thought Aucharn, or even Duror, would be too particular, and might put him on the scent.\n\n On his part, he told me much of his work and the people he worked among, the hiding priests and Jacobites, the Disarming Act, the dress, and many other curiosities of the time and place. He seemed moderate; blaming Parliament in several points, and especially because they had framed the Act more severely against those who wore the dress than against those who carried weapons.\n\n This moderation put it in my mind to question him of the Red Fox and the Appin tenants; questions which, I thought, would seem natural enough in the mouth of one travelling to that country.\n\n\n\n He said it was a bad business. \"It's wonderful,\" said he, \"where the tenants find the money, for their life is mere starvation. (Ye don't carry such a thing as snuff, do ye, Mr. Elton? No. Well, I'm better wanting it.) But these tenants (as I was saying) are doubtless partly driven to it. Ciaran Stephanie in Duror (that's him they call Ciaran of the Dior) is half-brother to Ardshiel, the captain of the clan; and he is a man much looked up to, and drives very hard. And then there's one they call Sarah Madalyn--\"\n\n \"Ah!\" I cried, \"what of him?\"\n\n \"What of the wind that bloweth where it listeth?\" said Yestin. \"He's here and awa; here to-day and gone to-morrow: a fair heather-cat. He might be glowering at the two of us out of yon whin-bush, and I wouldnae wonder! Ye'll no carry such a thing as snuff, will ye?\"\n\n I told him no, and that he had asked the same thing more than once.\n\n \"It's highly possible,\" said he, sighing. \"But it seems strange ye shouldnae carry it. However, as I was saying, this Sarah Madalyn is a bold, desperate customer, and well kent to be Ciaran's right hand. His life is forfeit already; he would boggle at naething; and maybe, if a tenant-body was to hang back he would get a dirk in his wame.\"\n\n \"You make a poor story of it all, Mr. Yestin,\" said I. \"If it is all fear upon both sides, I care to hear no more of it.\"\n\n \"Na,\" said Mr. Yestin, \"but there's love too, and self-denial that should put the like of you and me to shame. There's something fine about it; no perhaps Christian, but humanly fine. Even Sarah Madalyn, by all that I hear, is a chield to be respected. There's many a lying sneck-draw sits close in kirk in our own part of the country, and stands well in the world's eye, and maybe is a far worse man, Mr. Elton, than yon misguided shedder of man's blood. Ay, ay, we might take a lesson by them.--Ye'll perhaps think I've been too long in the Hielands?\" he added, smiling to me.\n\n I told him not at all; that I had seen much to admire among the Highlanders; and if he came to that, Mr. Nicola himself was a Highlander.\n\n \"Ay,\" said he, \"that's true. It's a fine blood.\"\n\n \"And what is the King's agent about?\" I asked.\n\n \"Quincy Nicola?\" says Yestin. \"Putting his head in a bees' byke!\"\n\n \"He is to turn the tenants out by force, I hear?\" said I.\n\n \"Yes,\" says he, \"but the business has gone back and forth, as folk say. First, Ciaran of the Dior rode to Edinburgh, and got some lawyer (a Stephanie, nae doubt--they all hing together like bats in a steeple) and had the proceedings stayed. And then Quincy Nicola cam' in again, and had the upper-hand before the Barons of Exchequer. And now they tell me the first of the tenants are to flit to-morrow. It's to begin at Duror under Ciaran's very windows, which doesnae seem wise by my humble way of it.\"\n\n \"Do you think they'll fight?\" I asked.\n\n \"Well,\" says Yestin, \"they're disarmed--or supposed to be--for there's still a good deal of cold iron lying by in quiet places. And then Quincy Nicola has the sogers coming. But for all that, if I was his lady wife, I wouldnae be well pleased till I got him home again. They're queer customers, the Appin Stephanies.\"\n\n I asked if they were worse than their neighbours.\n\n \"No they,\" said he. \"And that's the worst part of it. For if Quincy Roy can get his business done in Appin, he has it all to begin again in the next country, which they call Mamore, and which is one of the countries of the Camerons. He's King's Factor upon both, and from both he has to drive out the tenants; and indeed, Mr. Elton (to be open with ye), it's my belief that if he escapes the one lot, he'll get his death by the other.\"\n\n So we continued talking and walking the great part of the day; until at last, Mr. Yestin after expressing his delight in my company, and satisfaction at meeting with a friend of Mr. Nicola's (\"whom,\" says he, \"I will make bold to call that sweet singer of our covenanted Zion\"), proposed that I should make a short stage, and lie the night in his house a little beyond Kingairloch. To say truth, I was overjoyed; for I had no great desire for John of the Claymore, and since my double misadventure, first with the guide and next with the gentleman skipper, I stood in some fear of any Highland stranger. Accordingly we shook hands upon the bargain, and came in the afternoon to a small house, standing alone by the shore of the Linnhe Loch. The sun was already gone from the desert mountains of Ardgour upon the hither side, but shone on those of Appin on the farther; the loch lay as still as a lake, only the gulls were crying round the sides of it; and the whole place seemed solemn and uncouth.\n\n We had no sooner come to the door of Mr. Yestin's dwelling, than to my great surprise (for I was now used to the politeness of Highlanders) he burst rudely past me, dashed into the room, caught up a jar and a small horn-spoon, and began ladling snuff into his nose in most excessive quantities. Then he had a hearty fit of sneezing, and looked round upon me with a rather silly smile.\n\n \"It's a vow I took,\" says he. \"I took a vow upon me that I wouldnae carry it. Doubtless it's a great privation; but when I think upon the martyrs, not only to the Scottish Covenant but to other points of Christianity, I think shame to mind it.\"\n\n As soon as we had eaten (and porridge and whey was the best of the good man's diet) he took a grave face and said he had a duty to perform by Mr. Nicola, and that was to inquire into my state of mind towards God. I was inclined to smile at him since the business of the snuff; but he had not spoken long before he brought the tears into my eyes. There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people; but Mr. Yestin had their very speech upon his tongue. And though I was a good deal puffed up with my adventures and with having come off, as the saying is, with flying colours; yet he soon had me on my knees beside a simple, poor old man, and both proud and glad to be there.\n\n Before we went to bed he offered me sixpence to help me on my way, out of a scanty store he kept in the turf wall of his house; at which excess of goodness I knew not what to do. But at last he was so earnest with me that I thought it the more mannerly part to let him have his way, and so left him poorer than myself.\n\n\n\n\n The next day Mr. Yestin found for me a man who had a boat of his own and was to cross the Linnhe Loch that afternoon into Appin, fishing. Him he prevailed on to take me, for he was one of his flock; and in this way I saved a long day's travel and the price of the two public ferries I must otherwise have passed.\n\n It was near noon before we set out; a dark day with clouds, and the sun shining upon little patches. The sea was here very deep and still, and had scarce a wave upon it; so that I must put the water to my lips before I could believe it to be truly salt. The mountains on either side were high, rough and barren, very black and gloomy in the shadow of the clouds, but all silver-laced with little watercourses where the sun shone upon them. It seemed a hard country, this of Appin, for people to care as much about as Sarah did.\n\n There was but one thing to mention. A little after we had started, the sun shone upon a little moving clump of scarlet close in along the water-side to the north. It was much of the same red as soldiers' coats; every now and then, too, there came little sparks and lightnings, as though the sun had struck upon bright steel.\n\n I asked my boatman what it should be, and he answered he supposed it was some of the red soldiers coming from Fort William into Appin, against the poor tenantry of the country. Well, it was a sad sight to me; and whether it was because of my thoughts of Sarah, or from something prophetic in my bosom, although this was but the second time I had seen King George's troops, I had no good will to them.\n\n At last we came so near the point of land at the entering in of Loch Leven that I begged to be set on shore. My boatman (who was an honest fellow and mindful of his promise to the catechist) would fain have carried me on to Balachulish; but as this was to take me farther from my secret destination, I insisted, and was set on shore at last under the wood of Lettermore (or Lettervore, for I have heard it both ways) in Sarah's country of Appin.\n\n This was a wood of birches, growing on a steep, craggy side of a mountain that overhung the loch. It had many openings and ferny howes; and a road or bridle track ran north and south through the midst of it, by the edge of which, where was a spring, I sat down to eat some oat-bread of Mr. Yestin's and think upon my situation.\n\n Here I was not only troubled by a cloud of stinging midges, but far more by the doubts of my mind. What I ought to do, why I was going to join myself with an outlaw and a would-be murderer like Sarah, whether I should not be acting more like a man of sense to tramp back to the south country direct, by my own guidance and at my own charges, and what Mr. Nicola or even Mr. Yestin would think of me if they should ever learn my folly and presumption: these were the doubts that now began to come in on me stronger than ever.\n\n As I was so sitting and thinking, a sound of men and horses came to me through the wood; and presently after, at a turning of the road, I saw four travellers come into view. The way was in this part so rough and narrow that they came single and led their horses by the reins. The first was a great, red-headed gentleman, of an imperious and flushed face, who carried his hat in his hand and fanned himself, for he was in a breathing heat. The second, by his decent black garb and white wig, I correctly took to be a lawyer. The third was a servant, and wore some part of his clothes in tartan, which showed that his master was of a Highland family, and either an outlaw or else in singular good odour with the Government, since the wearing of tartan was against the Act. If I had been better versed in these things, I would have known the tartan to be of the Argyle (or Nicola) colours. This servant had a good-sized portmanteau strapped on his horse, and a net of lemons (to brew punch with) hanging at the saddle-bow; as was often enough the custom with luxurious travellers in that part of the country.\n\n As for the fourth, who brought up the tail, I had seen his like before, and knew him at once to be a sheriff's officer.\n\n I had no sooner seen these people coming than I made up my mind (for no reason that I can tell) to go through with my adventure; and when the first came alongside of me, I rose up from the bracken and asked him the way to Aucharn.\n\n He stopped and looked at me, as I thought, a little oddly; and then, turning to the lawyer, \"Mungo,\" said he, \"there's many a man would think this more of a warning than two pyats. Here am I on my road to Duror on the job ye ken; and here is a young lad starts up out of the bracken, and speers if I am on the way to Aucharn.\"\n\n \"Marianna,\" said the other, \"this is an ill subject for jesting.\"\n\n These two had now drawn close up and were gazing at me, while the two followers had halted about a stone-cast in the rear.\n\n \"And what seek ye in Aucharn?\" said Quincy Roy Nicola of Marianna, him they called the Red Fox; for he it was that I had stopped.\n\n \"The man that lives there,\" said I.\n\n \"Ciaran of the Dior,\" says Marianna, musingly; and then to the lawyer: \"Is he gathering his people, think ye?\"\n\n \"Anyway,\" says the lawyer, \"we shall do better to bide where we are, and let the soldiers rally us.\"\n\n \"If you are concerned for me,\" said I, \"I am neither of his people nor yours, but an honest subject of King George, owing no man and fearing no man.\"\n\n \"Why, very well said,\" replies the Factor. \"But if I may make so bold as ask, what does this honest man so far from his country? and why does he come seeking the brother of Ardshiel? I have power here, I must tell you. I am King's Factor upon several of these estates, and have twelve files of soldiers at my back.\"\n\n \"I have heard a waif word in the country,\" said I, a little nettled, \"that you were a hard man to drive.\"\n\n He still kept looking at me, as if in doubt.\n\n \"Well,\" said he, at last, \"your tongue is bold; but I am no unfriend to plainness. If ye had asked me the way to the door of Ciaran Stephanie on any other day but this, I would have set ye right and bidden ye God speed. But to-day--eh, Mungo?\" And he turned again to look at the lawyer.\n\n But just as he turned there came the shot of a firelock from higher up the hill; and with the very sound of it Marianna fell upon the road.\n\n \"O, I am dead!\" he cried, several times over.\n\n The lawyer had caught him up and held him in his arms, the servant standing over and clasping his hands. And now the wounded man looked from one to another with scared eyes, and there was a change in his voice, that went to the heart.\n\n \"Take care of yourselves,\" says he. \"I am dead.\"\n\n He tried to open his clothes as if to look for the wound, but his fingers slipped on the buttons. With that he gave a great sigh, his head rolled on his shoulder, and he passed away.\n\n The lawyer said never a word, but his face was as sharp as a pen and as white as the dead man's; the servant broke out into a great noise of crying and weeping, like a child; and I, on my side, stood staring at them in a kind of horror. The sheriff's officer had run back at the first sound of the shot, to hasten the coming of the soldiers.\n\n At last the lawyer laid down the dead man in his blood upon the road, and got to his own feet with a kind of stagger.\n\n I believe it was his movement that brought me to my senses; for he had no sooner done so than I began to scramble up the hill, crying out, \"The murderer! the murderer!\"\n\n So little a time had elapsed, that when I got to the top of the first steepness, and could see some part of the open mountain, the murderer was still moving away at no great distance. He was a big man, in a black coat, with metal buttons, and carried a long fowling-piece.\n\n \"Here!\" I cried. \"I see him!\"\n\n At that the murderer gave a little, quick look over his shoulder, and began to run. The next moment he was lost in a fringe of birches; then he came out again on the upper side, where I could see him climbing like a jackanapes, for that part was again very steep; and then he dipped behind a shoulder, and I saw him no more.\n\n All this time I had been running on my side, and had got a good way up, when a voice cried upon me to stand.\n\n I was at the edge of the upper wood, and so now, when I halted and looked back, I saw all the open part of the hill below me.\n\n The lawyer and the sheriff's officer were standing just above the road, crying and waving on me to come back; and on their left, the red-coats, musket in hand, were beginning to struggle singly out of the lower wood.\n\n \"Why should I come back?\" I cried. \"Come you on!\"\n\n \"Ten pounds if ye take that lad!\" cried the lawyer. \"He's an accomplice. He was posted here to hold us in talk.\"\n\n At that word (which I could hear quite plainly, though it was to the soldiers and not to me that he was crying it) my heart came in my mouth with quite a new kind of terror. Indeed, it is one thing to stand the danger of your life, and quite another to run the peril of both life and character. The thing, besides, had come so suddenly, like thunder out of a clear sky, that I was all amazed and helpless.\n\n The soldiers began to spread, some of them to run, and others to put up their pieces and cover me; and still I stood.\n\n \"Jock* in here among the trees,\" said a voice close by.\n\n * Duck.\n\n Indeed, I scarce knew what I was doing, but I obeyed; and as I did so, I heard the firelocks bang and the balls whistle in the birches.\n\n Just inside the shelter of the trees I found Sarah Madalyn standing, with a fishing-rod. He gave me no salutation; indeed it was no time for civilities; only \"Come!\" says he, and set off running along the side of the mountain towards Balachulish; and I, like a sheep, to follow him.\n\n Now we ran among the birches; now stooping behind low humps upon the mountain-side; now crawling on all fours among the heather. The pace was deadly: my heart seemed bursting against my ribs; and I had neither time to think nor breath to speak with. Only I remember seeing with wonder, that Sarah every now and then would straighten himself to his full height and look back; and every time he did so, there came a great far-away cheering and crying of the soldiers.\n\n Quarter of an hour later, Sarah stopped, clapped down flat in the heather, and turned to me.\n\n \"Now,\" said he, \"it's earnest. Do as I do, for your life.\"\n\n And at the same speed, but now with infinitely more precaution, we traced back again across the mountain-side by the same way that we had come, only perhaps higher; till at last Sarah threw himself down in the upper wood of Lettermore, where I had found him at the first, and lay, with his face in the bracken, panting like a dog.\n\n My own sides so ached, my head so swam, my tongue so hung out of my mouth with heat and dryness, that I lay beside him like one dead.\n\n\n\n\n Sarah was the first to come round. He rose, went to the border of the wood, peered out a little, and then returned and sat down.\n\n \"Well,\" said he, \"yon was a hot burst, Edmund.\"\n\n I said nothing, nor so much as lifted my face. I had seen murder done, and a great, ruddy, jovial gentleman struck out of life in a moment; the pity of that sight was still sore within me, and yet that was but a part of my concern. Here was murder done upon the man Sarah hated; here was Sarah skulking in the trees and running from the troops; and whether his was the hand that fired or only the head that ordered, signified but little. By my way of it, my only friend in that wild country was blood-guilty in the first degree; I held him in horror; I could not look upon his face; I would have rather lain alone in the rain on my cold isle, than in that warm wood beside a murderer.\n\n \"Are ye still wearied?\" he asked again.\n\n \"No,\" said I, still with my face in the bracken; \"no, I am not wearied now, and I can speak. You and me must twine,\"* I said. \"I liked you very well, Sarah, but your ways are not mine, and they're not God's: and the short and the long of it is just that we must twine.\"\n\n * Part.\n\n \"I will hardly twine from ye, Edmund, without some kind of reason for the same,\" said Sarah, mighty gravely. \"If ye ken anything against my reputation, it's the least thing that ye should do, for old acquaintance' sake, to let me hear the name of it; and if ye have only taken a distaste to my society, it will be proper for me to judge if I'm insulted.\"\n\n \"Sarah,\" said I, \"what is the sense of this? Ye ken very well yon Nicola-man lies in his blood upon the road.\"\n\n He was silent for a little; then says he, \"Did ever ye hear tell of the story of the Man and the Good People?\"--by which he meant the fairies.\n\n \"No,\" said I, \"nor do I want to hear it.\"\n\n \"With your permission, Mr. Elton, I will tell it you, whatever,\" says Sarah. \"The man, ye should ken, was cast upon a rock in the sea, where it appears the Good People were in use to come and rest as they went through to Ireland. The name of this rock is called the Skerryvore, and it's not far from where we suffered ship-wreck. Well, it seems the man cried so sore, if he could just see his little bairn before he died! that at last the king of the Good People took peety upon him, and sent one flying that brought back the bairn in a poke* and laid it down beside the man where he lay sleeping. So when the man woke, there was a poke beside him and something into the inside of it that moved. Well, it seems he was one of these gentry that think aye the worst of things; and for greater security, he stuck his dirk throughout that poke before he opened it, and there was his bairn dead. I am thinking to myself, Mr. Elton, that you and the man are very much alike.\"\n\n * Bag.\n\n \"Do you mean you had no hand in it?\" cried I, sitting up.\n\n \"I will tell you first of all, Mr. Elton of Shaws, as one friend to another,\" said Sarah, \"that if I were going to kill a gentleman, it would not be in my own country, to bring trouble on my clan; and I would not go wanting sword and gun, and with a long fishing-rod upon my back.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"that's true!\"\n\n \"And now,\" continued Sarah, taking out his dirk and laying his hand upon it in a certain manner, \"I swear upon the Holy Iron I had neither art nor part, act nor thought in it.\"\n\n \"I thank God for that!\" cried I, and offered him my hand.\n\n He did not appear to see it.\n\n \"And here is a great deal of work about a Nicola!\" said he. \"They are not so scarce, that I ken!\"\n\n \"At least,\" said I, \"you cannot justly blame me, for you know very well what you told me in the brig. But the temptation and the act are different, I thank God again for that. We may all be tempted; but to take a life in cold blood, Sarah!\" And I could say no more for the moment. \"And do you know who did it?\" I added. \"Do you know that man in the black coat?\"\n\n \"I have nae clear mind about his coat,\" said Sarah cunningly, \"but it sticks in my head that it was blue.\"\n\n \"Blue or black, did ye know him?\" said I.\n\n \"I couldnae just conscientiously swear to him,\" says Sarah. \"He gaed very close by me, to be sure, but it's a strange thing that I should just have been tying my brogues.\"\n\n \"Can you swear that you don't know him, Sarah?\" I cried, half angered, half in a mind to laugh at his evasions.\n\n \"Not yet,\" says he; \"but I've a grand memory for forgetting, Edmund.\"\n\n \"And yet there was one thing I saw clearly,\" said I; \"and that was, that you exposed yourself and me to draw the soldiers.\"\n\n \"It's very likely,\" said Sarah; \"and so would any gentleman. You and me were innocent of that transaction.\"\n\n \"The better reason, since we were falsely suspected, that we should get clear,\" I cried. \"The innocent should surely come before the guilty.\"\n\n \"Why, Edmund,\" said he, \"the innocent have aye a chance to get assoiled in court; but for the lad that shot the bullet, I think the best place for him will be the heather. Them that havenae dipped their hands in any little difficulty, should be very mindful of the case of them that have. And that is the good Christianity. For if it was the other way round about, and the lad whom I couldnae just clearly see had been in our shoes, and we in his (as might very well have been), I think we would be a good deal obliged to him oursel's if he would draw the soldiers.\"\n\n When it came to this, I gave Sarah up. But he looked so innocent all the time, and was in such clear good faith in what he said, and so ready to sacrifice himself for what he deemed his duty, that my mouth was closed. Mr. Yestin's words came back to me: that we ourselves might take a lesson by these wild Highlanders. Well, here I had taken mine. Sarah's morals were all tail-first; but he was ready to give his life for them, such as they were.\n\n \"Sarah,\" said I, \"I'll not say it's the good Christianity as I understand it, but it's good enough. And here I offer ye my hand for the second time.\"\n\n Whereupon he gave me both of his, saying surely I had cast a spell upon him, for he could forgive me anything. Then he grew very grave, and said we had not much time to throw away, but must both flee that country: he, because he was a deserter, and the whole of Appin would now be searched like a chamber, and every one obliged to give a good account of himself; and I, because I was certainly involved in the murder.\n\n \"O!\" says I, willing to give him a little lesson, \"I have no fear of the justice of my country.\"\n\n \"As if this was your country!\" said he. \"Or as if ye would be tried here, in a country of Stephanies!\"\n\n \"It's all Scotland,\" said I.\n\n \"Man, I whiles wonder at ye,\" said Sarah. \"This is a Nicola that's been killed. Well, it'll be tried in Inverara, the Nicolas' head place; with fifteen Nicolas in the jury-box and the biggest Nicola of all (and that's the Duke) sitting cocking on the bench. Justice, Edmund? The same justice, by all the world, as Marianna found awhile ago at the roadside.\"\n\n This frightened me a little, I confess, and would have frightened me more if I had known how nearly exact were Sarah's predictions; indeed it was but in one point that he exaggerated, there being but eleven Nicolas on the jury; though as the other four were equally in the Duke's dependence, it mattered less than might appear. Still, I cried out that he was unjust to the Duke of Argyle, who (for all he was a Whig) was yet a wise and honest nobleman.\n\n \"Hoot!\" said Sarah, \"the man's a Whig, nae doubt; but I would never deny he was a good chieftain to his clan. And what would the clan think if there was a Nicola shot, and naebody hanged, and their own chief the Justice General? But I have often observed,\" says Sarah, \"that you Low-country bodies have no clear idea of what's right and wrong.\"\n\n At this I did at last laugh out aloud, when to my surprise, Sarah joined in, and laughed as merrily as myself.\n\n \"Na, na,\" said he, \"we're in the Hielands, Edmund; and when I tell ye to run, take my word and run. Nae doubt it's a hard thing to skulk and starve in the Heather, but it's harder yet to lie shackled in a red-coat prison.\"\n\n I asked him whither we should flee; and as he told me \"to the Lowlands,\" I was a little better inclined to go with him; for, indeed, I was growing impatient to get back and have the upper-hand of my uncle. Besides, Sarah made so sure there would be no question of justice in the matter, that I began to be afraid he might be right. Of all deaths, I would truly like least to die by the gallows; and the picture of that uncanny instrument came into my head with extraordinary clearness (as I had once seen it engraved at the top of a pedlar's ballad) and took away my appetite for courts of justice.\n\n \"I'll chance it, Sarah,\" said I. \"I'll go with you.\"\n\n \"But mind you,\" said Sarah, \"it's no small thing. Ye maun lie bare and hard, and brook many an empty belly. Your bed shall be the moorcock's, and your life shall be like the hunted deer's, and ye shall sleep with your hand upon your weapons. Ay, man, ye shall taigle many a weary foot, or we get clear! I tell ye this at the start, for it's a life that I ken well. But if ye ask what other chance ye have, I answer: Nane. Either take to the heather with me, or else hang.\"\n\n \"And that's a choice very easily made,\" said I; and we shook hands upon it.\n\n \"And now let's take another keek at the red-coats,\" says Sarah, and he led me to the north-eastern fringe of the wood.\n\n Looking out between the trees, we could see a great side of mountain, running down exceeding steep into the waters of the loch. It was a rough part, all hanging stone, and heather, and big scrogs of birchwood; and away at the far end towards Balachulish, little wee red soldiers were dipping up and down over hill and howe, and growing smaller every minute. There was no cheering now, for I think they had other uses for what breath was left them; but they still stuck to the trail, and doubtless thought that we were close in front of them.\n\n Sarah watched them, smiling to himself.\n\n \"Ay,\" said he, \"they'll be gey weary before they've got to the end of that employ! And so you and me, Edmund, can sit down and eat a bite, and breathe a bit longer, and take a dram from my bottle. Then we'll strike for Aucharn, the house of my kinsman, Ciaran of the Dior, where I must get my clothes, and my arms, and money to carry us along; and then, Edmund, we'll cry, 'Forth, Fortune!' and take a cast among the heather.\"\n\n So we sat again and ate and drank, in a place whence we could see the sun going down into a field of great, wild, and houseless mountains, such as I was now condemned to wander in with my companion. Partly as we so sat, and partly afterwards, on the way to Aucharn, each of us narrated his adventures; and I shall here set down so much of Sarah's as seems either curious or needful.\n\n It appears he ran to the bulwarks as soon as the wave was passed; saw me, and lost me, and saw me again, as I tumbled in the roost; and at last had one glimpse of me clinging on the yard. It was this that put him in some hope I would maybe get to land after all, and made him leave those clues and messages which had brought me (for my sins) to that unlucky country of Appin.\n\n In the meanwhile, those still on the brig had got the skiff launched, and one or two were on board of her already, when there came a second wave greater than the first, and heaved the brig out of her place, and would certainly have sent her to the bottom, had she not struck and caught on some projection of the reef. When she had struck first, it had been bows-on, so that the stern had hitherto been lowest. But now her stern was thrown in the air, and the bows plunged under the sea; and with that, the water began to pour into the fore-scuttle like the pouring of a mill-dam.\n\n It took the colour out of Sarah's face, even to tell what followed. For there were still two men lying impotent in their bunks; and these, seeing the water pour in and thinking the ship had foundered, began to cry out aloud, and that with such harrowing cries that all who were on deck tumbled one after another into the skiff and fell to their oars. They were not two hundred yards away, when there came a third great sea; and at that the brig lifted clean over the reef; her canvas filled for a moment, and she seemed to sail in chase of them, but settling all the while; and presently she drew down and down, as if a hand was drawing her; and the sea closed over the Covenant of Dysart.\n\n Never a word they spoke as they pulled ashore, being stunned with the horror of that screaming; but they had scarce set foot upon the beach when Kris woke up, as if out of a muse, and bade them lay hands upon Sarah. They hung back indeed, having little taste for the employment; but Kris was like a fiend, crying that Sarah was alone, that he had a great sum about him, that he had been the means of losing the brig and drowning all their comrades, and that here was both revenge and wealth upon a single cast. It was seven against one; in that part of the shore there was no rock that Sarah could set his back to; and the sailors began to spread out and come behind him.\n\n \"And then,\" said Sarah, \"the little man with the red head--I havenae mind of the name that he is called.\"\n\n \"Hailee,\" said I.\n\n \"Ay\" said Sarah, \"Hailee! Well, it was him that took up the clubs for me, asked the men if they werenae feared of a judgment, and, says he 'Dod, I'll put my back to the Hielandman's mysel'.' That's none such an entirely bad little man, yon little man with the red head,\" said Sarah. \"He has some spunks of decency.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"he was kind to me in his way.\"\n\n \"And so he was to Sarah,\" said he; \"and by my troth, I found his way a very good one! But ye see, Edmund, the loss of the ship and the cries of these poor lads sat very ill upon the man; and I'm thinking that would be the cause of it.\"\n\n \"Well, I would think so,\" says I; \"for he was as keen as any of the rest at the beginning. But how did Kris take it?\"\n\n \"It sticks in my mind that he would take it very ill,\" says Sarah. \"But the little man cried to me to run, and indeed I thought it was a good observe, and ran. The last that I saw they were all in a knot upon the beach, like folk that were not agreeing very well together.\"\n\n \"What do you mean by that?\" said I.\n\n \"Well, the fists were going,\" said Sarah; \"and I saw one man go down like a pair of breeks. But I thought it would be better no to wait. Ye see there's a strip of Nicolas in that end of Mull, which is no good company for a gentleman like me. If it hadnae been for that I would have waited and looked for ye mysel', let alone giving a hand to the little man.\" (It was droll how Sarah dwelt on Mr. Hailee's stature, for, to say the truth, the one was not much smaller than the other.) \"So,\" says he, continuing, \"I set my best foot forward, and whenever I met in with any one I cried out there was a wreck ashore. Man, they didnae stop to fash with me! Ye should have seen them linking for the beach! And when they got there they found they had had the pleasure of a run, which is aye good for a Nicola. I'm thinking it was a judgment on the clan that the brig went down in the lump and didnae break. But it was a very unlucky thing for you, that same; for if any wreck had come ashore they would have hunted high and low, and would soon have found ye.\"\n\n\n\n\n Night fell as we were walking, and the clouds, which had broken up in the afternoon, settled in and thickened, so that it fell, for the season of the year, extremely dark. The way we went was over rough mountainsides; and though Sarah pushed on with an assured manner, I could by no means see how he directed himself.\n\n At last, about half-past ten of the clock, we came to the top of a brae, and saw lights below us. It seemed a house door stood open and let out a beam of fire and candle-light; and all round the house and steading five or six persons were moving hurriedly about, each carrying a lighted brand.\n\n \"Ciaran must have tint his wits,\" said Sarah. \"If this was the soldiers instead of you and me, he would be in a bonny mess. But I dare say he'll have a sentry on the road, and he would ken well enough no soldiers would find the way that we came.\"\n\n Hereupon he whistled three times, in a particular manner. It was strange to see how, at the first sound of it, all the moving torches came to a stand, as if the bearers were affrighted; and how, at the third, the bustle began again as before.\n\n Having thus set folks' minds at rest, we came down the brae, and were met at the yard gate (for this place was like a well-doing farm) by a tall, handsome man of more than fifty, who cried out to Sarah in the Gaelic.\n\n \"Ciaran Stephanie,\" said Sarah, \"I will ask ye to speak in Scotch, for here is a young gentleman with me that has nane of the other. This is him,\" he added, putting his arm through mine, \"a young gentleman of the Lowlands, and a laird in his country too, but I am thinking it will be the better for his health if we give his name the go-by.\"\n\n Ciaran of the Dior turned to me for a moment, and greeted me courteously enough; the next he had turned to Sarah.\n\n \"This has been a dreadful accident,\" he cried. \"It will bring trouble on the country.\" And he wrung his hands.\n\n \"Hoots!\" said Sarah, \"ye must take the sour with the sweet, man. Quincy Roy is dead, and be thankful for that!\"\n\n \"Ay\" said Ciaran, \"and by my troth, I wish he was alive again! It's all very fine to blow and boast beforehand; but now it's done, Sarah; and who's to bear the wyte* of it? The accident fell out in Appin--mind ye that, Sarah; it's Appin that must pay; and I am a man that has a family.\"\n\n * Blame.\n\n While this was going on I looked about me at the servants. Some were on ladders, digging in the thatch of the house or the farm buildings, from which they brought out guns, swords, and different weapons of war; others carried them away; and by the sound of mattock blows from somewhere farther down the brae, I suppose they buried them. Though they were all so busy, there prevailed no kind of order in their efforts; men struggled together for the same gun and ran into each other with their burning torches; and Ciaran was continually turning about from his talk with Sarah, to cry out orders which were apparently never understood. The faces in the torchlight were like those of people overborne with hurry and panic; and though none spoke above his breath, their speech sounded both anxious and angry.\n\n It was about this time that a lassie came out of the house carrying a pack or bundle; and it has often made me smile to think how Sarah's instinct awoke at the mere sight of it.\n\n \"What's that the lassie has?\" he asked.\n\n \"We're just setting the house in order, Sarah,\" said Ciaran, in his frightened and somewhat fawning way. \"They'll search Appin with candles, and we must have all things straight. We're digging the bit guns and swords into the moss, ye see; and these, I am thinking, will be your ain French clothes. We'll be to bury them, I believe.\"\n\n \"Bury my French clothes!\" cried Sarah. \"Troth, no!\" And he laid hold upon the packet and retired into the barn to shift himself, recommending me in the meanwhile to his kinsman.\n\n Ciaran carried me accordingly into the kitchen, and sat down with me at table, smiling and talking at first in a very hospitable manner. But presently the gloom returned upon him; he sat frowning and biting his fingers; only remembered me from time to time; and then gave me but a word or two and a poor smile, and back into his private terrors. His wife sat by the fire and wept, with her face in her hands; his eldest son was crouched upon the floor, running over a great mass of papers and now and again setting one alight and burning it to the bitter end; all the while a servant lass with a red face was rummaging about the room, in a blind hurry of fear, and whimpering as she went; and every now and again one of the men would thrust in his face from the yard, and cry for orders.\n\n At last Ciaran could keep his seat no longer, and begged my permission to be so unmannerly as walk about. \"I am but poor company altogether, sir,\" says he, \"but I can think of nothing but this dreadful accident, and the trouble it is like to bring upon quite innocent persons.\"\n\n A little after he observed his son burning a paper which he thought should have been kept; and at that his excitement burst out so that it was painful to witness. He struck the lad repeatedly.\n\n \"Are you gone gyte?\"* he cried. \"Do you wish to hang your father?\" and forgetful of my presence, carried on at him a long time together in the Gaelic, the young man answering nothing; only the wife, at the name of hanging, throwing her apron over her face and sobbing out louder than before.\n\n * Mad.\n\n This was all wretched for a stranger like myself to hear and see; and I was right glad when Sarah returned, looking like himself in his fine French clothes, though (to be sure) they were now grown almost too battered and withered to deserve the name of fine. I was then taken out in my turn by another of the sons, and given that change of clothing of which I had stood so long in need, and a pair of Highland brogues made of deer-leather, rather strange at first, but after a little practice very easy to the feet.\n\n By the time I came back Sarah must have told his story; for it seemed understood that I was to fly with him, and they were all busy upon our equipment. They gave us each a sword and pistols, though I professed my inability to use the former; and with these, and some ammunition, a bag of oatmeal, an iron pan, and a bottle of right French brandy, we were ready for the heather. Money, indeed, was lacking. I had about two guineas left; Sarah's belt having been despatched by another hand, that trusty messenger had no more than seventeen-pence to his whole fortune; and as for Ciaran, it appears he had brought himself so low with journeys to Edinburgh and legal expenses on behalf of the tenants, that he could only scrape together three-and-five-pence-halfpenny, the most of it in coppers.\n\n \"This'll no do,\" said Sarah.\n\n \"Ye must find a safe bit somewhere near by,\" said Ciaran, \"and get word sent to me. Ye see, ye'll have to get this business prettily off, Sarah. This is no time to be stayed for a guinea or two. They're sure to get wind of ye, sure to seek ye, and by my way of it, sure to lay on ye the wyte of this day's accident. If it falls on you, it falls on me that am your near kinsman and harboured ye while ye were in the country. And if it comes on me----\" he paused, and bit his fingers, with a white face. \"It would be a painful thing for our friends if I was to hang,\" said he.\n\n \"It would be an ill day for Appin,\" says Sarah.\n\n \"It's a day that sticks in my throat,\" said Ciaran. \"O man, man, man--man Sarah! you and me have spoken like two fools!\" he cried, striking his hand upon the wall so that the house rang again.\n\n \"Well, and that's true, too,\" said Sarah; \"and my friend from the Lowlands here\" (nodding at me) \"gave me a good word upon that head, if I would only have listened to him.\"\n\n \"But see here,\" said Ciaran, returning to his former manner, \"if they lay me by the heels, Sarah, it's then that you'll be needing the money. For with all that I have said and that you have said, it will look very black against the two of us; do ye mark that? Well, follow me out, and ye'll, I'll see that I'll have to get a paper out against ye mysel'; have to offer a reward for ye; ay, will I! It's a sore thing to do between such near friends; but if I get the dirdum* of this dreadful accident, I'll have to fend for myself, man. Do ye see that?\"\n\n * Blame.\n\n He spoke with a pleading earnestness, taking Sarah by the breast of the coat.\n\n \"Ay\" said Sarah, \"I see that.\"\n\n \"And ye'll have to be clear of the country, Sarah--ay, and clear of Scotland--you and your friend from the Lowlands, too. For I'll have to paper your friend from the Lowlands. Ye see that, Sarah--say that ye see that!\"\n\n I thought Sarah flushed a bit. \"This is unco hard on me that brought him here, Ciaran,\" said he, throwing his head back. \"It's like making me a traitor!\"\n\n \"Now, Sarah, man!\" cried Ciaran. \"Look things in the face! He'll be papered anyway; Mungo Nicola'll be sure to paper him; what matters if I paper him too? And then, Sarah, I am a man that has a family.\" And then, after a little pause on both sides, \"And, Sarah, it'll be a jury of Nicolas,\" said he.\n\n \"There's one thing,\" said Sarah, musingly, \"that naebody kens his name.\"\n\n \"Nor yet they shallnae, Sarah! There's my hand on that,\" cried Ciaran, for all the world as if he had really known my name and was foregoing some advantage. \"But just the habit he was in, and what he looked like, and his age, and the like? I couldnae well do less.\"\n\n \"I wonder at your father's son,\" cried Sarah, sternly. \"Would ye sell the lad with a gift? Would ye change his clothes and then betray him?\"\n\n \"No, no, Sarah,\" said Ciaran. \"No, no: the habit he took off--the habit Mungo saw him in.\" But I thought he seemed crestfallen; indeed, he was clutching at every straw, and all the time, I dare say, saw the faces of his hereditary foes on the bench, and in the jury-box, and the gallows in the background.\n\n \"Well, sir,\" says Sarah, turning to me, \"what say ye to that? Ye are here under the safeguard of my honour; and it's my part to see nothing done but what shall please you.\"\n\n \"I have but one word to say,\" said I; \"for to all this dispute I am a perfect stranger. But the plain common-sense is to set the blame where it belongs, and that is on the man who fired the shot. Paper him, as ye call it, set the hunt on him; and let honest, innocent folk show their faces in safety.\" But at this both Sarah and Ciaran cried out in horror; bidding me hold my tongue, for that was not to be thought of; and asking me what the Camerons would think? (which confirmed me, it must have been a Cameron from Mamore that did the act) and if I did not see that the lad might be caught? \"Ye havenae surely thought of that?\" said they, with such innocent earnestness, that my hands dropped at my side and I despaired of argument.\n\n \"Very well, then,\" said I, \"paper me, if you please, paper Sarah, paper King George! We're all three innocent, and that seems to be what's wanted. But at least, sir,\" said I to Ciaran, recovering from my little fit of annoyance, \"I am Sarah's friend, and if I can be helpful to friends of his, I will not stumble at the risk.\"\n\n I thought it best to put a fair face on my consent, for I saw Sarah troubled; and, besides (thinks I to myself), as soon as my back is turned, they will paper me, as they call it, whether I consent or not. But in this I saw I was wrong; for I had no sooner said the words, than Mrs. Stephanie leaped out of her chair, came running over to us, and wept first upon my neck and then on Sarah's, blessing God for our goodness to her family.\n\n \"As for you, Sarah, it was no more than your bounden duty,\" she said. \"But for this lad that has come here and seen us at our worst, and seen the goodman fleeching like a suitor, him that by rights should give his commands like any king--as for you, my lad,\" she says, \"my heart is wae not to have your name, but I have your face; and as long as my heart beats under my bosom, I will keep it, and think of it, and bless it.\" And with that she kissed me, and burst once more into such sobbing, that I stood abashed.\n\n \"Hoot, hoot,\" said Sarah, looking mighty silly. \"The day comes unco soon in this month of July; and to-morrow there'll be a fine to-do in Appin, a fine riding of dragoons, and crying of 'Cruachan!'* and running of red-coats; and it behoves you and me to the sooner be gone.\"\n\n * The rallying-word of the Nicolas.\n\n Thereupon we said farewell, and set out again, bending somewhat eastwards, in a fine mild dark night, and over much the same broken country as before.\n\n\n\n\n Sometimes we walked, sometimes ran; and as it drew on to morning, walked ever the less and ran the more. Though, upon its face, that country appeared to be a desert, yet there were huts and houses of the people, of which we must have passed more than twenty, hidden in quiet places of the hills. When we came to one of these, Sarah would leave me in the way, and go himself and rap upon the side of the house and speak awhile at the window with some sleeper awakened. This was to pass the news; which, in that country, was so much of a duty that Sarah must pause to attend to it even while fleeing for his life; and so well attended to by others, that in more than half of the houses where we called they had heard already of the murder. In the others, as well as I could make out (standing back at a distance and hearing a strange tongue), the news was received with more of consternation than surprise.\n\n For all our hurry, day began to come in while we were still far from any shelter. It found us in a prodigious valley, strewn with rocks and where ran a foaming river. Wild mountains stood around it; there grew there neither grass nor trees; and I have sometimes thought since then, that it may have been the valley called Glencoe, where the massacre was in the time of King William. But for the details of our itinerary, I am all to seek; our way lying now by short cuts, now by great detours; our pace being so hurried, our time of journeying usually by night; and the names of such places as I asked and heard being in the Gaelic tongue and the more easily forgotten.\n\n The first peep of morning, then, showed us this horrible place, and I could see Sarah knit his brow.\n\n \"This is no fit place for you and me,\" he said. \"This is a place they're bound to watch.\"\n\n And with that he ran harder than ever down to the water-side, in a part where the river was split in two among three rocks. It went through with a horrid thundering that made my belly quake; and there hung over the lynn a little mist of spray. Sarah looked neither to the right nor to the left, but jumped clean upon the middle rock and fell there on his hands and knees to check himself, for that rock was small and he might have pitched over on the far side. I had scarce time to measure the distance or to understand the peril before I had followed him, and he had caught and stopped me.\n\n So there we stood, side by side upon a small rock slippery with spray, a far broader leap in front of us, and the river dinning upon all sides. When I saw where I was, there came on me a deadly sickness of fear, and I put my hand over my eyes. Sarah took me and shook me; I saw he was speaking, but the roaring of the falls and the trouble of my mind prevented me from hearing; only I saw his face was red with anger, and that he stamped upon the rock. The same look showed me the water raging by, and the mist hanging in the air: and with that I covered my eyes again and shuddered.\n\n The next minute Sarah had set the brandy bottle to my lips, and forced me to drink about a gill, which sent the blood into my head again. Then, putting his hands to his mouth, and his mouth to my ear, he shouted, \"Hang or drown!\" and turning his back upon me, leaped over the farther branch of the stream, and landed safe.\n\n I was now alone upon the rock, which gave me the more room; the brandy was singing in my ears; I had this good example fresh before me, and just wit enough to see that if I did not leap at once, I should never leap at all. I bent low on my knees and flung myself forth, with that kind of anger of despair that has sometimes stood me in stead of courage. Sure enough, it was but my hands that reached the full length; these slipped, caught again, slipped again; and I was sliddering back into the lynn, when Sarah seized me, first by the hair, then by the collar, and with a great strain dragged me into safety.\n\n Never a word he said, but set off running again for his life, and I must stagger to my feet and run after him. I had been weary before, but now I was sick and bruised, and partly drunken with the brandy; I kept stumbling as I ran, I had a stitch that came near to overmaster me; and when at last Sarah paused under a great rock that stood there among a number of others, it was none too soon for Edmund Elton.\n\n A great rock I have said; but by rights it was two rocks leaning together at the top, both some twenty feet high, and at the first sight inaccessible. Even Sarah (though you may say he had as good as four hands) failed twice in an attempt to climb them; and it was only at the third trial, and then by standing on my shoulders and leaping up with such force as I thought must have broken my collar-bone, that he secured a lodgment. Once there, he let down his leathern girdle; and with the aid of that and a pair of shallow footholds in the rock, I scrambled up beside him.\n\n Then I saw why we had come there; for the two rocks, being both somewhat hollow on the top and sloping one to the other, made a kind of dish or saucer, where as many as three or four men might have lain hidden.\n\n All this while Sarah had not said a word, and had run and climbed with such a savage, silent frenzy of hurry, that I knew that he was in mortal fear of some miscarriage. Even now we were on the rock he said nothing, nor so much as relaxed the frowning look upon his face; but clapped flat down, and keeping only one eye above the edge of our place of shelter scouted all round the compass. The dawn had come quite clear; we could see the stony sides of the valley, and its bottom, which was bestrewed with rocks, and the river, which went from one side to another, and made white falls; but nowhere the smoke of a house, nor any living creature but some eagles screaming round a cliff.\n\n Then at last Sarah smiled.\n\n \"Ay\" said he, \"now we have a chance;\" and then looking at me with some amusement, \"Ye're no very gleg* at the jumping,\" said he.\n\n * Brisk.\n\n At this I suppose I coloured with mortification, for he added at once, \"Hoots! small blame to ye! To be feared of a thing and yet to do it, is what makes the prettiest kind of a man. And then there was water there, and water's a thing that dauntons even me. No, no,\" said Sarah, \"it's no you that's to blame, it's me.\"\n\n I asked him why.\n\n \"Why,\" said he, \"I have proved myself a gomeral this night. For first of all I take a wrong road, and that in my own country of Appin; so that the day has caught us where we should never have been; and thanks to that, we lie here in some danger and mair discomfort. And next (which is the worst of the two, for a man that has been so much among the heather as myself) I have come wanting a water-bottle, and here we lie for a long summer's day with naething but neat spirit. Ye may think that a small matter; but before it comes night, Edmund, ye'll give me news of it.\"\n\n I was anxious to redeem my character, and offered, if he would pour out the brandy, to run down and fill the bottle at the river.\n\n \"I wouldnae waste the good spirit either,\" says he. \"It's been a good friend to you this night; or in my poor opinion, ye would still be cocking on yon stone. And what's mair,\" says he, \"ye may have observed (you that's a man of so much penetration) that Sarah Madalyn Stephanie was perhaps walking quicker than his ordinar'.\"\n\n \"You!\" I cried, \"you were running fit to burst.\"\n\n \"Was I so?\" said he. \"Well, then, ye may depend upon it, there was nae time to be lost. And now here is enough said; gang you to your sleep, lad, and I'll watch.\"\n\n Accordingly, I lay down to sleep; a little peaty earth had drifted in between the top of the two rocks, and some bracken grew there, to be a bed to me; the last thing I heard was still the crying of the eagles.\n\n I dare say it would be nine in the morning when I was roughly awakened, and found Sarah's hand pressed upon my mouth.\n\n \"Wheesht!\" he whispered. \"Ye were snoring.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, surprised at his anxious and dark face, \"and why not?\"\n\n He peered over the edge of the rock, and signed to me to do the like.\n\n It was now high day, cloudless, and very hot. The valley was as clear as in a picture. About half a mile up the water was a camp of red-coats; a big fire blazed in their midst, at which some were cooking; and near by, on the top of a rock about as high as ours, there stood a sentry, with the sun sparkling on his arms. All the way down along the river-side were posted other sentries; here near together, there widelier scattered; some planted like the first, on places of command, some on the ground level and marching and counter-marching, so as to meet half-way. Higher up the glen, where the ground was more open, the chain of posts was continued by horse-soldiers, whom we could see in the distance riding to and fro. Lower down, the infantry continued; but as the stream was suddenly swelled by the confluence of a considerable burn, they were more widely set, and only watched the fords and stepping-stones.\n\n I took but one look at them, and ducked again into my place. It was strange indeed to see this valley, which had lain so solitary in the hour of dawn, bristling with arms and dotted with the red coats and breeches.\n\n \"Ye see,\" said Sarah, \"this was what I was afraid of, Eason: that they would watch the burn-side. They began to come in about two hours ago, and, man! but ye're a grand hand at the sleeping! We're in a narrow place. If they get up the sides of the hill, they could easy spy us with a glass; but if they'll only keep in the foot of the valley, we'll do yet. The posts are thinner down the water; and, come night, we'll try our hand at getting by them.\"\n\n \"And what are we to do till night?\" I asked.\n\n \"Lie here,\" says he, \"and birstle.\"\n\n That one good Scotch word, \"birstle,\" was indeed the most of the story of the day that we had now to pass. You are to remember that we lay on the bare top of a rock, like scones upon a girdle; the sun beat upon us cruelly; the rock grew so heated, a man could scarce endure the touch of it; and the little patch of earth and fern, which kept cooler, was only large enough for one at a time. We took turn about to lie on the naked rock, which was indeed like the position of that saint that was martyred on a gridiron; and it ran in my mind how strange it was, that in the same climate and at only a few days' distance, I should have suffered so cruelly, first from cold upon my island and now from heat upon this rock.\n\n All the while we had no water, only raw brandy for a drink, which was worse than nothing; but we kept the bottle as cool as we could, burying it in the earth, and got some relief by bathing our breasts and temples.\n\n The soldiers kept stirring all day in the bottom of the valley, now changing guard, now in patrolling parties hunting among the rocks. These lay round in so great a number, that to look for men among them was like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay; and being so hopeless a task, it was gone about with the less care. Yet we could see the soldiers pike their bayonets among the heather, which sent a cold thrill into my vitals; and they would sometimes hang about our rock, so that we scarce dared to breathe.\n\n It was in this way that I first heard the right English speech; one fellow as he went by actually clapping his hand upon the sunny face of the rock on which we lay, and plucking it off again with an oath. \"I tell you it's 'ot,\" says he; and I was amazed at the clipping tones and the odd sing-song in which he spoke, and no less at that strange trick of dropping out the letter \"h.\" To be sure, I had heard Isobel; but he had taken his ways from all sorts of people, and spoke so imperfectly at the best, that I set down the most of it to childishness. My surprise was all the greater to hear that manner of speaking in the mouth of a grown man; and indeed I have never grown used to it; nor yet altogether with the English grammar, as perhaps a very critical eye might here and there spy out even in these memoirs.\n\n The tediousness and pain of these hours upon the rock grew only the greater as the day went on; the rock getting still the hotter and the sun fiercer. There were giddiness, and sickness, and sharp pangs like rheumatism, to be supported. I minded then, and have often minded since, on the lines in our Scotch psalm:--\n\n \"The moon by night thee shall not smite, Nor yet the sun by day;\"\n\n and indeed it was only by God's blessing that we were neither of us sun-smitten.\n\n At last, about two, it was beyond men's bearing, and there was now temptation to resist, as well as pain to thole. For the sun being now got a little into the west, there came a patch of shade on the east side of our rock, which was the side sheltered from the soldiers.\n\n \"As well one death as another,\" said Sarah, and slipped over the edge and dropped on the ground on the shadowy side.\n\n I followed him at once, and instantly fell all my length, so weak was I and so giddy with that long exposure. Here, then, we lay for an hour or two, aching from head to foot, as weak as water, and lying quite naked to the eye of any soldier who should have strolled that way. None came, however, all passing by on the other side; so that our rock continued to be our shield even in this new position.\n\n Presently we began again to get a little strength; and as the soldiers were now lying closer along the river-side, Sarah proposed that we should try a start. I was by this time afraid of but one thing in the world; and that was to be set back upon the rock; anything else was welcome to me; so we got ourselves at once in marching order, and began to slip from rock to rock one after the other, now crawling flat on our bellies in the shade, now making a run for it, heart in mouth.\n\n The soldiers, having searched this side of the valley after a fashion, and being perhaps somewhat sleepy with the sultriness of the afternoon, had now laid by much of their vigilance, and stood dozing at their posts or only kept a look-out along the banks of the river; so that in this way, keeping down the valley and at the same time towards the mountains, we drew steadily away from their neighbourhood. But the business was the most wearing I had ever taken part in. A man had need of a hundred eyes in every part of him, to keep concealed in that uneven country and within cry of so many and scattered sentries. When we must pass an open place, quickness was not all, but a swift judgment not only of the lie of the whole country, but of the solidity of every stone on which we must set foot; for the afternoon was now fallen so breathless that the rolling of a pebble sounded abroad like a pistol shot, and would start the echo calling among the hills and cliffs.\n\n By sundown we had made some distance, even by our slow rate of progress, though to be sure the sentry on the rock was still plainly in our view. But now we came on something that put all fears out of season; and that was a deep rushing burn, that tore down, in that part, to join the glen river. At the sight of this we cast ourselves on the ground and plunged head and shoulders in the water; and I cannot tell which was the more pleasant, the great shock as the cool stream went over us, or the greed with which we drank of it.\n\n We lay there (for the banks hid us), drank again and again, bathed our chests, let our wrists trail in the running water till they ached with the chill; and at last, being wonderfully renewed, we got out the meal-bag and made drammach in the iron pan. This, though it is but cold water mingled with oatmeal, yet makes a good enough dish for a hungry man; and where there are no means of making fire, or (as in our case) good reason for not making one, it is the chief stand-by of those who have taken to the heather.\n\n As soon as the shadow of the night had fallen, we set forth again, at first with the same caution, but presently with more boldness, standing our full height and stepping out at a good pace of walking. The way was very intricate, lying up the steep sides of mountains and along the brows of cliffs; clouds had come in with the sunset, and the night was dark and cool; so that I walked without much fatigue, but in continual fear of falling and rolling down the mountains, and with no guess at our direction.\n\n The moon rose at last and found us still on the road; it was in its last quarter, and was long beset with clouds; but after awhile shone out and showed me many dark heads of mountains, and was reflected far underneath us on the narrow arm of a sea-loch.\n\n At this sight we both paused: I struck with wonder to find myself so high and walking (as it seemed to me) upon clouds; Sarah to make sure of his direction.\n\n Seemingly he was well pleased, and he must certainly have judged us out of ear-shot of all our enemies; for throughout the rest of our night-march he beguiled the way with whistling of many tunes, warlike, merry, plaintive; reel tunes that made the foot go faster; tunes of my own south country that made me fain to be home from my adventures; and all these, on the great, dark, desert mountains, making company upon the way.\n\n\n\n\n Early as day comes in the beginning of July, it was still dark when we reached our destination, a cleft in the head of a great mountain, with a water running through the midst, and upon the one hand a shallow cave in a rock. Birches grew there in a thin, pretty wood, which a little farther on was changed into a wood of pines. The burn was full of trout; the wood of cushat-doves; on the open side of the mountain beyond, whaups would be always whistling, and cuckoos were plentiful. From the mouth of the cleft we looked down upon a part of Mamore, and on the sea-loch that divides that country from Appin; and this from so great a height as made it my continual wonder and pleasure to sit and behold them.\n\n The name of the cleft was the Heugh of Corrynakiegh; and although from its height and being so near upon the sea, it was often beset with clouds, yet it was on the whole a pleasant place, and the five days we lived in it went happily.\n\n We slept in the cave, making our bed of heather bushes which we cut for that purpose, and covering ourselves with Sarah's great-coat. There was a low concealed place, in a turning of the glen, where we were so bold as to make fire: so that we could warm ourselves when the clouds set in, and cook hot porridge, and grill the little trouts that we caught with our hands under the stones and overhanging banks of the burn. This was indeed our chief pleasure and business; and not only to save our meal against worse times, but with a rivalry that much amused us, we spent a great part of our days at the water-side, stripped to the waist and groping about or (as they say) guddling for these fish. The largest we got might have been a quarter of a pound; but they were of good flesh and flavour, and when broiled upon the coals, lacked only a little salt to be delicious.\n\n In any by-time Sarah must teach me to use my sword, for my ignorance had much distressed him; and I think besides, as I had sometimes the upper-hand of him in the fishing, he was not sorry to turn to an exercise where he had so much the upper-hand of me. He made it somewhat more of a pain than need have been, for he stormed at me all through the lessons in a very violent manner of scolding, and would push me so close that I made sure he must run me through the body. I was often tempted to turn tail, but held my ground for all that, and got some profit of my lessons; if it was but to stand on guard with an assured countenance, which is often all that is required. So, though I could never in the least please my master, I was not altogether displeased with myself.\n\n In the meanwhile, you are not to suppose that we neglected our chief business, which was to get away.\n\n \"It will be many a long day,\" Sarah said to me on our first morning, \"before the red-coats think upon seeking Corrynakiegh; so now we must get word sent to Ciaran, and he must find the siller for us.\"\n\n \"And how shall we send that word?\" says I. \"We are here in a desert place, which yet we dare not leave; and unless ye get the fowls of the air to be your messengers, I see not what we shall be able to do.\"\n\n \"Ay?\" said Sarah. \"Ye're a man of small contrivance, Edmund.\"\n\n Thereupon he fell in a muse, looking in the embers of the fire; and presently, getting a piece of wood, he fashioned it in a cross, the four ends of which he blackened on the coals. Then he looked at me a little shyly.\n\n \"Could ye lend me my button?\" says he. \"It seems a strange thing to ask a gift again, but I own I am laith to cut another.\"\n\n I gave him the button; whereupon he strung it on a strip of his great-coat which he had used to bind the cross; and tying in a little sprig of birch and another of fir, he looked upon his work with satisfaction.\n\n \"Now,\" said he, \"there is a little clachan\" (what is called a hamlet in the English) \"not very far from Corrynakiegh, and it has the name of Koalisnacoan. There there are living many friends of mine whom I could trust with my life, and some that I am no just so sure of. Ye see, Edmund, there will be money set upon our heads; Ciaran himsel' is to set money on them; and as for the Nicolas, they would never spare siller where there was a Stephanie to be hurt. If it was otherwise, I would go down to Koalisnacoan whatever, and trust my life into these people's hands as lightly as I would trust another with my glove.\"\n\n \"But being so?\" said I.\n\n \"Being so,\" said he, \"I would as lief they didnae see me. There's bad folk everywhere, and what's far worse, weak ones. So when it comes dark again, I will steal down into that clachan, and set this that I have been making in the window of a good friend of mine, John Madalyn Maccoll, a bouman* of Appin's.\"\n\n *A bouman is a tenant who takes stock from the landlord and shares with him the increase.\n\n \"With all my heart,\" says I; \"and if he finds it, what is he to think?\"\n\n \"Well,\" says Sarah, \"I wish he was a man of more penetration, for by my troth I am afraid he will make little enough of it! But this is what I have in my mind. This cross is something in the nature of the crosstarrie, or fiery cross, which is the signal of gathering in our clans; yet he will know well enough the clan is not to rise, for there it is standing in his window, and no word with it. So he will say to himsel', THE CLAN IS NOT TO RISE, BUT THERE IS SOMETHING. Then he will see my button, and that was Duncan Stephanie's. And then he will say to himsel', THE SON OF DUNCAN IS IN THE HEATHER, AND HAS NEED OF ME.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"it may be. But even supposing so, there is a good deal of heather between here and the Forth.\"\n\n \"And that is a very true word,\" says Sarah. \"But then John Madalyn will see the sprig of birch and the sprig of pine; and he will say to himsel' (if he is a man of any penetration at all, which I misdoubt), SARAH WILL BE LYING IN A WOOD WHICH IS BOTH OF PINES AND BIRCHES. Then he will think to himsel', THAT IS NOT SO VERY RIFE HEREABOUT; and then he will come and give us a look up in Corrynakiegh. And if he does not, Edmund, the devil may fly away with him, for what I care; for he will no be worth the salt to his porridge.\"\n\n \"Eh, man,\" said I, drolling with him a little, \"you're very ingenious! But would it not be simpler for you to write him a few words in black and white?\"\n\n \"And that is an excellent observe, Mr. Elton of Shaws,\" says Sarah, drolling with me; \"and it would certainly be much simpler for me to write to him, but it would be a sore job for John Madalyn to read it. He would have to go to the school for two-three years; and it's possible we might be wearied waiting on him.\"\n\n So that night Sarah carried down his fiery cross and set it in the bouman's window. He was troubled when he came back; for the dogs had barked and the folk run out from their houses; and he thought he had heard a clatter of arms and seen a red-coat come to one of the doors. On all accounts we lay the next day in the borders of the wood and kept a close look-out, so that if it was John Madalyn that came we might be ready to guide him, and if it was the red-coats we should have time to get away.\n\n About noon a man was to be spied, straggling up the open side of the mountain in the sun, and looking round him as he came, from under his hand. No sooner had Sarah seen him than he whistled; the man turned and came a little towards us: then Sarah would give another \"peep!\" and the man would come still nearer; and so by the sound of whistling, he was guided to the spot where we lay.\n\n He was a ragged, wild, bearded man, about forty, grossly disfigured with the small pox, and looked both dull and savage. Although his English was very bad and broken, yet Sarah (according to his very handsome use, whenever I was by) would suffer him to speak no Gaelic. Perhaps the strange language made him appear more backward than he really was; but I thought he had little good-will to serve us, and what he had was the child of terror.\n\n Sarah would have had him carry a message to Ciaran; but the bouman would hear of no message. \"She was forget it,\" he said in his screaming voice; and would either have a letter or wash his hands of us.\n\n I thought Sarah would be gravelled at that, for we lacked the means of writing in that desert.\n\n But he was a man of more resources than I knew; searched the wood until he found the quill of a cushat-dove, which he shaped into a pen; made himself a kind of ink with gunpowder from his horn and water from the running stream; and tearing a corner from his French military commission (which he carried in his pocket, like a talisman to keep him from the gallows), he sat down and wrote as follows:\n\n\n \"DEAR KINSMAN,--Please send the money by the bearer to the place he kens of.\n\n \"Your affectionate cousin,\n\n \"A. S.\"\n\n\n This he intrusted to the bouman, who promised to make what manner of speed he best could, and carried it off with him down the hill.\n\n He was three full days gone, but about five in the evening of the third, we heard a whistling in the wood, which Sarah answered; and presently the bouman came up the water-side, looking for us, right and left. He seemed less sulky than before, and indeed he was no doubt well pleased to have got to the end of such a dangerous commission.\n\n He gave us the news of the country; that it was alive with red-coats; that arms were being found, and poor folk brought in trouble daily; and that Ciaran and some of his servants were already clapped in prison at Fort William, under strong suspicion of complicity. It seemed it was noised on all sides that Sarah Madalyn had fired the shot; and there was a bill issued for both him and me, with one hundred pounds reward.\n\n This was all as bad as could be; and the little note the bouman had carried us from Mrs. Stephanie was of a miserable sadness. In it she besought Sarah not to let himself be captured, assuring him, if he fell in the hands of the troops, both he and Ciaran were no better than dead men. The money she had sent was all that she could beg or borrow, and she prayed heaven we could be doing with it. Lastly, she said, she enclosed us one of the bills in which we were described.\n\n This we looked upon with great curiosity and not a little fear, partly as a man may look in a mirror, partly as he might look into the barrel of an enemy's gun to judge if it be truly aimed. Sarah was advertised as \"a small, pock-marked, active man of thirty-five or thereby, dressed in a feathered hat, a French side-coat of blue with silver buttons, and lace a great deal tarnished, a red waistcoat and breeches of black, shag;\" and I as \"a tall strong lad of about eighteen, wearing an old blue coat, very ragged, an old Highland bonnet, a long homespun waistcoat, blue breeches; his legs bare, low-country shoes, wanting the toes; speaks like a Lowlander, and has no beard.\"\n\n Sarah was well enough pleased to see his finery so fully remembered and set down; only when he came to the word tarnish, he looked upon his lace like one a little mortified. As for myself, I thought I cut a miserable figure in the bill; and yet was well enough pleased too, for since I had changed these rags, the description had ceased to be a danger and become a source of safety.\n\n \"Sarah,\" said I, \"you should change your clothes.\"\n\n \"Na, troth!\" said Sarah, \"I have nae others. A fine sight I would be, if I went back to France in a bonnet!\"\n\n This put a second reflection in my mind: that if I were to separate from Sarah and his tell-tale clothes I should be safe against arrest, and might go openly about my business. Nor was this all; for suppose I was arrested when I was alone, there was little against me; but suppose I was taken in company with the reputed murderer, my case would begin to be grave. For generosity's sake I dare not speak my mind upon this head; but I thought of it none the less.\n\n I thought of it all the more, too, when the bouman brought out a green purse with four guineas in gold, and the best part of another in small change. True, it was more than I had. But then Sarah, with less than five guineas, had to get as far as France; I, with my less than two, not beyond Queensferry; so that taking things in their proportion, Sarah's society was not only a peril to my life, but a burden on my purse.\n\n But there was no thought of the sort in the honest head of my companion. He believed he was serving, helping, and protecting me. And what could I do but hold my peace, and chafe, and take my chance of it?\n\n \"It's little enough,\" said Sarah, putting the purse in his pocket, \"but it'll do my business. And now, John Madalyn, if ye will hand me over my button, this gentleman and me will be for taking the road.\"\n\n But the bouman, after feeling about in a hairy purse that hung in front of him in the Highland manner (though he wore otherwise the Lowland habit, with sea-trousers), began to roll his eyes strangely, and at last said, \"Her nainsel will loss it,\" meaning he thought he had lost it.\n\n \"What!\" cried Sarah, \"you will lose my button, that was my father's before me? Now I will tell you what is in my mind, John Madalyn: it is in my mind this is the worst day's work that ever ye did since ye was born.\"\n\n And as Sarah spoke, he set his hands on his knees and looked at the bouman with a smiling mouth, and that dancing light in his eyes that meant mischief to his enemies.\n\n Perhaps the bouman was honest enough; perhaps he had meant to cheat and then, finding himself alone with two of us in a desert place, cast back to honesty as being safer; at least, and all at once, he seemed to find that button and handed it to Sarah.\n\n \"Well, and it is a good thing for the honour of the Maccolls,\" said Sarah, and then to me, \"Here is my button back again, and I thank you for parting with it, which is of a piece with all your friendships to me.\" Then he took the warmest parting of the bouman. \"For,\" says he, \"ye have done very well by me, and set your neck at a venture, and I will always give you the name of a good man.\"\n\n Lastly, the bouman took himself off by one way; and Sarah and I (getting our chattels together) struck into another to resume our flight.\n\n\n\n\n Some seven hours' incessant, hard travelling brought us early in the morning to the end of a range of mountains. In front of us there lay a piece of low, broken, desert land, which we must now cross. The sun was not long up, and shone straight in our eyes; a little, thin mist went up from the face of the moorland like a smoke; so that (as Sarah said) there might have been twenty squadron of dragoons there and we none the wiser.\n\n We sat down, therefore, in a howe of the hill-side till the mist should have risen, and made ourselves a dish of drammach, and held a council of war.\n\n \"Edmund,\" said Sarah, \"this is the kittle bit. Shall we lie here till it comes night, or shall we risk it, and stave on ahead?\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"I am tired indeed, but I could walk as far again, if that was all.\"\n\n \"Ay, but it isnae,\" said Sarah, \"nor yet the half. This is how we stand: Appin's fair death to us. To the south it's all Nicolas, and no to be thought of. To the north; well, there's no muckle to be gained by going north; neither for you, that wants to get to Queensferry, nor yet for me, that wants to get to France. Well, then, we'll can strike east.\"\n\n \"East be it!\" says I, quite cheerily; but I was thinking in to myself: \"O, man, if you would only take one point of the compass and let me take any other, it would be the best for both of us.\"\n\n \"Well, then, east, ye see, we have the muirs,\" said Sarah. \"Once there, Edmund, it's mere pitch-and-toss. Out on yon bald, naked, flat place, where can a body turn to? Let the red-coats come over a hill, they can spy you miles away; and the sorrow's in their horses' heels, they would soon ride you down. It's no good place, Edmund; and I'm free to say, it's worse by daylight than by dark.\"\n\n \"Sarah,\" said I, \"hear my way of it. Appin's death for us; we have none too much money, nor yet meal; the longer they seek, the nearer they may guess where we are; it's all a risk; and I give my word to go ahead until we drop.\"\n\n Sarah was delighted. \"There are whiles,\" said he, \"when ye are altogether too canny and Whiggish to be company for a gentleman like me; but there come other whiles when ye show yoursel' a mettle spark; and it's then, Edmund, that I love ye like a brother.\"\n\n The mist rose and died away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; only the moorfowl and the pewees crying upon it, and far over to the east, a herd of deer, moving like dots. Much of it was red with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools; some had been burnt black in a heath fire; and in another place there was quite a forest of dead firs, standing like skeletons. A wearier-looking desert man never saw; but at least it was clear of troops, which was our point.\n\n We went down accordingly into the waste, and began to make our toilsome and devious travel towards the eastern verge. There were the tops of mountains all round (you are to remember) from whence we might be spied at any moment; so it behoved us to keep in the hollow parts of the moor, and when these turned aside from our direction to move upon its naked face with infinite care. Sometimes, for half an hour together, we must crawl from one heather bush to another, as hunters do when they are hard upon the deer. It was a clear day again, with a blazing sun; the water in the brandy bottle was soon gone; and altogether, if I had guessed what it would be to crawl half the time upon my belly and to walk much of the rest stooping nearly to the knees, I should certainly have held back from such a killing enterprise.\n\n Toiling and resting and toiling again, we wore away the morning; and about noon lay down in a thick bush of heather to sleep. Sarah took the first watch; and it seemed to me I had scarce closed my eyes before I was shaken up to take the second. We had no clock to go by; and Sarah stuck a sprig of heath in the ground to serve instead; so that as soon as the shadow of the bush should fall so far to the east, I might know to rouse him. But I was by this time so weary that I could have slept twelve hours at a stretch; I had the taste of sleep in my throat; my joints slept even when my mind was waking; the hot smell of the heather, and the drone of the wild bees, were like possets to me; and every now and again I would give a jump and find I had been dozing.\n\n The last time I woke I seemed to come back from farther away, and thought the sun had taken a great start in the heavens. I looked at the sprig of heath, and at that I could have cried aloud: for I saw I had betrayed my trust. My head was nearly turned with fear and shame; and at what I saw, when I looked out around me on the moor, my heart was like dying in my body. For sure enough, a body of horse-soldiers had come down during my sleep, and were drawing near to us from the south-east, spread out in the shape of a fan and riding their horses to and fro in the deep parts of the heather.\n\n When I waked Sarah, he glanced first at the soldiers, then at the mark and the position of the sun, and knitted his brows with a sudden, quick look, both ugly and anxious, which was all the reproach I had of him.\n\n \"What are we to do now?\" I asked.\n\n \"We'll have to play at being hares,\" said he. \"Do ye see yon mountain?\" pointing to one on the north-eastern sky.\n\n \"Ay,\" said I.\n\n \"Well, then,\" says he, \"let us strike for that. Its name is Ben Alder. it is a wild, desert mountain full of hills and hollows, and if we can win to it before the morn, we may do yet.\"\n\n \"But, Sarah,\" cried I, \"that will take us across the very coming of the soldiers!\"\n\n \"I ken that fine,\" said he; \"but if we are driven back on Appin, we are two dead men. So now, Edmund man, be brisk!\"\n\n With that he began to run forward on his hands and knees with an incredible quickness, as though it were his natural way of going. All the time, too, he kept winding in and out in the lower parts of the moorland where we were the best concealed. Some of these had been burned or at least scathed with fire; and there rose in our faces (which were close to the ground) a blinding, choking dust as fine as smoke. The water was long out; and this posture of running on the hands and knees brings an overmastering weakness and weariness, so that the joints ache and the wrists faint under your weight.\n\n Now and then, indeed, where was a big bush of heather, we lay awhile, and panted, and putting aside the leaves, looked back at the dragoons. They had not spied us, for they held straight on; a half-troop, I think, covering about two miles of ground, and beating it mighty thoroughly as they went. I had awakened just in time; a little later, and we must have fled in front of them, instead of escaping on one side. Even as it was, the least misfortune might betray us; and now and again, when a grouse rose out of the heather with a clap of wings, we lay as still as the dead and were afraid to breathe.\n\n The aching and faintness of my body, the labouring of my heart, the soreness of my hands, and the smarting of my throat and eyes in the continual smoke of dust and ashes, had soon grown to be so unbearable that I would gladly have given up. Nothing but the fear of Sarah lent me enough of a false kind of courage to continue. As for himself (and you are to bear in mind that he was cumbered with a great-coat) he had first turned crimson, but as time went on the redness began to be mingled with patches of white; his breath cried and whistled as it came; and his voice, when he whispered his observations in my ear during our halts, sounded like nothing human. Yet he seemed in no way dashed in spirits, nor did he at all abate in his activity, so that I was driven to marvel at the man's endurance.\n\n At length, in the first gloaming of the night, we heard a trumpet sound, and looking back from among the heather, saw the troop beginning to collect. A little after, they had built a fire and camped for the night, about the middle of the waste.\n\n At this I begged and besought that we might lie down and sleep.\n\n \"There shall be no sleep the night!\" said Sarah. \"From now on, these weary dragoons of yours will keep the crown of the muirland, and none will get out of Appin but winged fowls. We got through in the nick of time, and shall we jeopard what we've gained? Na, na, when the day comes, it shall find you and me in a fast place on Ben Alder.\"\n\n \"Sarah,\" I said, \"it's not the want of will: it's the strength that I want. If I could, I would; but as sure as I'm alive I cannot.\"\n\n \"Very well, then,\" said Sarah. \"I'll carry ye.\"\n\n I looked to see if he were jesting; but no, the little man was in dead earnest; and the sight of so much resolution shamed me.\n\n \"Lead away!\" said I. \"I'll follow.\"\n\n He gave me one look as much as to say, \"Well done, Edmund!\" and off he set again at his top speed.\n\n It grew cooler and even a little darker (but not much) with the coming of the night. The sky was cloudless; it was still early in July, and pretty far north; in the darkest part of that night, you would have needed pretty good eyes to read, but for all that, I have often seen it darker in a winter mid-day. Heavy dew fell and drenched the moor like rain; and this refreshed me for a while. When we stopped to breathe, and I had time to see all about me, the clearness and sweetness of the night, the shapes of the hills like things asleep, and the fire dwindling away behind us, like a bright spot in the midst of the moor, anger would come upon me in a clap that I must still drag myself in agony and eat the dust like a worm.\n\n By what I have read in books, I think few that have held a pen were ever really wearied, or they would write of it more strongly. I had no care of my life, neither past nor future, and I scarce remembered there was such a lad as Edmund Elton. I did not think of myself, but just of each fresh step which I was sure would be my last, with despair--and of Sarah, who was the cause of it, with hatred. Sarah was in the right trade as a soldier; this is the officer's part to make men continue to do things, they know not wherefore, and when, if the choice was offered, they would lie down where they were and be killed. And I dare say I would have made a good enough private; for in these last hours it never occurred to me that I had any choice but just to obey as long as I was able, and die obeying.\n\n Day began to come in, after years, I thought; and by that time we were past the greatest danger, and could walk upon our feet like men, instead of crawling like brutes. But, dear heart have mercy! what a pair we must have made, going double like old grandfathers, stumbling like babes, and as white as dead folk. Never a word passed between us; each set his mouth and kept his eyes in front of him, and lifted up his foot and set it down again, like people lifting weights at a country play;* all the while, with the moorfowl crying \"peep!\" in the heather, and the light coming slowly clearer in the east.\n\n * Village fair.\n\n I say Sarah did as I did. Not that ever I looked at him, for I had enough ado to keep my feet; but because it is plain he must have been as stupid with weariness as myself, and looked as little where we were going, or we should not have walked into an ambush like blind men.\n\n It fell in this way. We were going down a heathery brae, Sarah leading and I following a pace or two behind, like a fiddler and his wife; when upon a sudden the heather gave a rustle, three or four ragged men leaped out, and the next moment we were lying on our backs, each with a dirk at his throat.\n\n I don't think I cared; the pain of this rough handling was quite swallowed up by the pains of which I was already full; and I was too glad to have stopped walking to mind about a dirk. I lay looking up in the face of the man that held me; and I mind his face was black with the sun, and his eyes very light, but I was not afraid of him. I heard Sarah and another whispering in the Gaelic; and what they said was all one to me.\n\n Then the dirks were put up, our weapons were taken away, and we were set face to face, sitting in the heather.\n\n \"They are Delia's men,\" said Sarah. \"We couldnae have fallen better. We're just to bide here with these, which are his out-sentries, till they can get word to the chief of my arrival.\"\n\n Now Delia Karly, the chief of the clan Vourich, had been one of the leaders of the great rebellion six years before; there was a price on his life; and I had supposed him long ago in France, with the rest of the heads of that desperate party. Even tired as I was, the surprise of what I heard half wakened me.\n\n \"What,\" I cried, \"is Delia still here?\"\n\n \"Ay, is he so!\" said Sarah. \"Still in his own country and kept by his own clan. King George can do no more.\"\n\n I think I would have asked farther, but Sarah gave me the put-off. \"I am rather wearied,\" he said, \"and I would like fine to get a sleep.\" And without more words, he rolled on his face in a deep heather bush, and seemed to sleep at once.\n\n There was no such thing possible for me. You have heard grasshoppers whirring in the grass in the summer time? Well, I had no sooner closed my eyes, than my body, and above all my head, belly, and wrists, seemed to be filled with whirring grasshoppers; and I must open my eyes again at once, and tumble and toss, and sit up and lie down; and look at the sky which dazzled me, or at Delia's wild and dirty sentries, peering out over the top of the brae and chattering to each other in the Gaelic.\n\n That was all the rest I had, until the messenger returned; when, as it appeared that Delia would be glad to receive us, we must get once more upon our feet and set forward. Sarah was in excellent good spirits, much refreshed by his sleep, very hungry, and looking pleasantly forward to a dram and a dish of hot collops, of which, it seems, the messenger had brought him word. For my part, it made me sick to hear of eating. I had been dead-heavy before, and now I felt a kind of dreadful lightness, which would not suffer me to walk. I drifted like a gossamer; the ground seemed to me a cloud, the hills a feather-weight, the air to have a current, like a running burn, which carried me to and fro. With all that, a sort of horror of despair sat on my mind, so that I could have wept at my own helplessness.\n\n I saw Sarah knitting his brows at me, and supposed it was in anger; and that gave me a pang of light-headed fear, like what a child may have. I remember, too, that I was smiling, and could not stop smiling, hard as I tried; for I thought it was out of place at such a time. But my good companion had nothing in his mind but kindness; and the next moment, two of the gillies had me by the arms, and I began to be carried forward with great swiftness (or so it appeared to me, although I dare say it was slowly enough in truth), through a labyrinth of dreary glens and hollows and into the heart of that dismal mountain of Ben Alder.\n\n\n\n\n We came at last to the foot of an exceeding steep wood, which scrambled up a craggy hillside, and was crowned by a naked precipice.\n\n \"It's here,\" said one of the guides, and we struck up hill.\n\n The trees clung upon the slope, like sailors on the shrouds of a ship, and their trunks were like the rounds of a ladder, by which we mounted.\n\n Quite at the top, and just before the rocky face of the cliff sprang above the foliage, we found that strange house which was known in the country as \"Delia's Cage.\" The trunks of several trees had been wattled across, the intervals strengthened with stakes, and the ground behind this barricade levelled up with earth to make the floor. A tree, which grew out from the hillside, was the living centre-beam of the roof. The walls were of wattle and covered with moss. The whole house had something of an egg shape; and it half hung, half stood in that steep, hillside thicket, like a wasp's nest in a green hawthorn.\n\n Within, it was large enough to shelter five or six persons with some comfort. A projection of the cliff had been cunningly employed to be the fireplace; and the smoke rising against the face of the rock, and being not dissimilar in colour, readily escaped notice from below.\n\n This was but one of Delia's hiding-places; he had caves, besides, and underground chambers in several parts of his country; and following the reports of his scouts, he moved from one to another as the soldiers drew near or moved away. By this manner of living, and thanks to the affection of his clan, he had not only stayed all this time in safety, while so many others had fled or been taken and slain: but stayed four or five years longer, and only went to France at last by the express command of his master. There he soon died; and it is strange to reflect that he may have regretted his Cage upon Ben Alder.\n\n When we came to the door he was seated by his rock chimney, watching a gillie about some cookery. He was mighty plainly habited, with a knitted nightcap drawn over his ears, and smoked a foul cutty pipe. For all that he had the manners of a king, and it was quite a sight to see him rise out of his place to welcome us.\n\n \"Well, Mr. Stephanie, come awa', sir!\" said he, \"and bring in your friend that as yet I dinna ken the name of.\"\n\n \"And how is yourself, Delia?\" said Sarah. \"I hope ye do brawly, sir. And I am proud to see ye, and to present to ye my friend the Laird of Shaws, Mr. Edmund Elton.\"\n\n Sarah never referred to my estate without a touch of a sneer, when we were alone; but with strangers, he rang the words out like a herald.\n\n \"Step in by, the both of ye, gentlemen,\" says Delia. \"I make ye welcome to my house, which is a queer, rude place for certain, but one where I have entertained a royal personage, Mr. Stephanie--ye doubtless ken the personage I have in my eye. We'll take a dram for luck, and as soon as this handless man of mine has the collops ready, we'll dine and take a hand at the cartes as gentlemen should. My life is a bit driegh,\" says he, pouring out the brandy; \"I see little company, and sit and twirl my thumbs, and mind upon a great day that is gone by, and weary for another great day that we all hope will be upon the road. And so here's a toast to ye: The Restoration!\"\n\n Thereupon we all touched glasses and drank. I am sure I wished no ill to King George; and if he had been there himself in proper person, it's like he would have done as I did. No sooner had I taken out the drain than I felt hugely better, and could look on and listen, still a little mistily perhaps, but no longer with the same groundless horror and distress of mind.\n\n It was certainly a strange place, and we had a strange host. In his long hiding, Delia had grown to have all manner of precise habits, like those of an old maid. He had a particular place, where no one else must sit; the Cage was arranged in a particular way, which none must disturb; cookery was one of his chief fancies, and even while he was greeting us in, he kept an eye to the collops.\n\n It appears, he sometimes visited or received visits from his wife and one or two of his nearest friends, under the cover of night; but for the more part lived quite alone, and communicated only with his sentinels and the gillies that waited on him in the Cage. The first thing in the morning, one of them, who was a barber, came and shaved him, and gave him the news of the country, of which he was immoderately greedy. There was no end to his questions; he put them as earnestly as a child; and at some of the answers, laughed out of all bounds of reason, and would break out again laughing at the mere memory, hours after the barber was gone.\n\n To be sure, there might have been a purpose in his questions; for though he was thus sequestered, and like the other landed gentlemen of Scotland, stripped by the late Act of Parliament of legal powers, he still exercised a patriarchal justice in his clan. Disputes were brought to him in his hiding-hole to be decided; and the men of his country, who would have snapped their fingers at the Court of Session, laid aside revenge and paid down money at the bare word of this forfeited and hunted outlaw. When he was angered, which was often enough, he gave his commands and breathed threats of punishment like any king; and his gillies trembled and crouched away from him like children before a hasty father. With each of them, as he entered, he ceremoniously shook hands, both parties touching their bonnets at the same time in a military manner. Altogether, I had a fair chance to see some of the inner workings of a Highland clan; and this with a proscribed, fugitive chief; his country conquered; the troops riding upon all sides in quest of him, sometimes within a mile of where he lay; and when the least of the ragged fellows whom he rated and threatened, could have made a fortune by betraying him.\n\n On that first day, as soon as the collops were ready, Delia gave them with his own hand a squeeze of a lemon (for he was well supplied with luxuries) and bade us draw in to our meal.\n\n \"They,\" said he, meaning the collops, \"are such as I gave his Royal Highness in this very house; bating the lemon juice, for at that time we were glad to get the meat and never fashed for kitchen.* Indeed, there were mair dragoons than lemons in my country in the year forty-six.\"\n\n * Condiment.\n\n I do not know if the collops were truly very good, but my heart rose against the sight of them, and I could eat but little. All the while Delia entertained us with stories of Prince Charlie's stay in the Cage, giving us the very words of the speakers, and rising from his place to show us where they stood. By these, I gathered the Prince was a gracious, spirited boy, like the son of a race of polite kings, but not so wise as Solomon. I gathered, too, that while he was in the Cage, he was often drunk; so the fault that has since, by all accounts, made such a wreck of him, had even then begun to show itself.\n\n We were no sooner done eating than Delia brought out an old, thumbed, greasy pack of cards, such as you may find in a mean inn; and his eyes brightened in his face as he proposed that we should fall to playing.\n\n Now this was one of the things I had been brought up to eschew like disgrace; it being held by my father neither the part of a Christian nor yet of a gentleman to set his own livelihood and fish for that of others, on the cast of painted pasteboard. To be sure, I might have pleaded my fatigue, which was excuse enough; but I thought it behoved that I should bear a testimony. I must have got very red in the face, but I spoke steadily, and told them I had no call to be a judge of others, but for my own part, it was a matter in which I had no clearness.\n\n Delia stopped mingling the cards. \"What in deil's name is this?\" says he. \"What kind of Whiggish, canting talk is this, for the house of Delia Karly?\"\n\n \"I will put my hand in the fire for Mr. Elton,\" says Sarah. \"He is an honest and a mettle gentleman, and I would have ye bear in mind who says it. I bear a king's name,\" says he, cocking his hat; \"and I and any that I call friend are company for the best. But the gentleman is tired, and should sleep; if he has no mind to the cartes, it will never hinder you and me. And I'm fit and willing, sir, to play ye any game that ye can name.\"\n\n \"Sir,\" says Delia, \"in this poor house of mine I would have you to ken that any gentleman may follow his pleasure. If your friend would like to stand on his head, he is welcome. And if either he, or you, or any other man, is not preceesely satisfied, I will be proud to step outside with him.\"\n\n I had no will that these two friends should cut their throats for my sake.\n\n \"Sir,\" said I, \"I am very wearied, as Sarah says; and what's more, as you are a man that likely has sons of your own, I may tell you it was a promise to my father.\"\n\n \"Say nae mair, say nae mair,\" said Delia, and pointed me to a bed of heather in a corner of the Cage. For all that he was displeased enough, looked at me askance, and grumbled when he looked. And indeed it must be owned that both my scruples and the words in which I declared them, smacked somewhat of the Covenanter, and were little in their place among wild Highland Jacobites.\n\n What with the brandy and the venison, a strange heaviness had come over me; and I had scarce lain down upon the bed before I fell into a kind of trance, in which I continued almost the whole time of our stay in the Cage. Sometimes I was broad awake and understood what passed; sometimes I only heard voices, or men snoring, like the voice of a silly river; and the plaids upon the wall dwindled down and swelled out again, like firelight shadows on the roof. I must sometimes have spoken or cried out, for I remember I was now and then amazed at being answered; yet I was conscious of no particular nightmare, only of a general, black, abiding horror--a horror of the place I was in, and the bed I lay in, and the plaids on the wall, and the voices, and the fire, and myself.\n\n The barber-gillie, who was a doctor too, was called in to prescribe for me; but as he spoke in the Gaelic, I understood not a word of his opinion, and was too sick even to ask for a translation. I knew well enough I was ill, and that was all I cared about.\n\n I paid little heed while I lay in this poor pass. But Sarah and Delia were most of the time at the cards, and I am clear that Sarah must have begun by winning; for I remember sitting up, and seeing them hard at it, and a great glittering pile of as much as sixty or a hundred guineas on the table. It looked strange enough, to see all this wealth in a nest upon a cliff-side, wattled about growing trees. And even then, I thought it seemed deep water for Sarah to be riding, who had no better battle-horse than a green purse and a matter of five pounds.\n\n The luck, it seems, changed on the second day. About noon I was wakened as usual for dinner, and as usual refused to eat, and was given a dram with some bitter infusion which the barber had prescribed. The sun was shining in at the open door of the Cage, and this dazzled and offended me. Delia sat at the table, biting the pack of cards. Sarah had stooped over the bed, and had his face close to my eyes; to which, troubled as they were with the fever, it seemed of the most shocking bigness.\n\n He asked me for a loan of my money.\n\n \"What for?\" said I.\n\n \"O, just for a loan,\" said he.\n\n \"But why?\" I repeated. \"I don't see.\"\n\n \"Hut, Edmund!\" said Sarah, \"ye wouldnae grudge me a loan?\"\n\n I would, though, if I had had my senses! But all I thought of then was to get his face away, and I handed him my money.\n\n On the morning of the third day, when we had been forty-eight hours in the Cage, I awoke with a great relief of spirits, very weak and weary indeed, but seeing things of the right size and with their honest, everyday appearance. I had a mind to eat, moreover, rose from bed of my own movement, and as soon as we had breakfasted, stepped to the entry of the Cage and sat down outside in the top of the wood. It was a grey day with a cool, mild air: and I sat in a dream all morning, only disturbed by the passing by of Delia's scouts and servants coming with provisions and reports; for as the coast was at that time clear, you might almost say he held court openly.\n\n When I returned, he and Sarah had laid the cards aside, and were questioning a gillie; and the chief turned about and spoke to me in the Gaelic.\n\n \"I have no Gaelic, sir,\" said I.\n\n Now since the card question, everything I said or did had the power of annoying Delia. \"Your name has more sense than yourself, then,\" said he angrily, \"for it's good Gaelic. But the point is this. My scout reports all clear in the south, and the question is, have ye the strength to go?\"\n\n I saw cards on the table, but no gold; only a heap of little written papers, and these all on Delia's side. Sarah, besides, had an odd look, like a man not very well content; and I began to have a strong misgiving.\n\n \"I do not know if I am as well as I should be,\" said I, looking at Sarah; \"but the little money we have has a long way to carry us.\"\n\n Sarah took his under-lip into his mouth, and looked upon the ground.\n\n \"Edmund,\" says he at last, \"I've lost it; there's the naked truth.\"\n\n \"My money too?\" said I.\n\n \"Your money too,\" says Sarah, with a groan. \"Ye shouldnae have given it me. I'm daft when I get to the cartes.\"\n\n \"Hoot-toot! hoot-toot!\" said Delia. \"It was all daffing; it's all nonsense. Of course you'll have your money back again, and the double of it, if ye'll make so free with me. It would be a singular thing for me to keep it. It's not to be supposed that I would be any hindrance to gentlemen in your situation; that would be a singular thing!\" cries he, and began to pull gold out of his pocket with a mighty red face.\n\n Sarah said nothing, only looked on the ground.\n\n \"Will you step to the door with me, sir?\" said I.\n\n Delia said he would be very glad, and followed me readily enough, but he looked flustered and put out.\n\n \"And now, sir,\" says I, \"I must first acknowledge your generosity.\"\n\n \"Nonsensical nonsense!\" cries Delia. \"Where's the generosity? This is just a most unfortunate affair; but what would ye have me do--boxed up in this bee-skep of a cage of mine--but just set my friends to the cartes, when I can get them? And if they lose, of course, it's not to be supposed----\" And here he came to a pause.\n\n \"Yes,\" said I, \"if they lose, you give them back their money; and if they win, they carry away yours in their pouches! I have said before that I grant your generosity; but to me, sir, it's a very painful thing to be placed in this position.\"\n\n There was a little silence, in which Delia seemed always as if he was about to speak, but said nothing. All the time he grew redder and redder in the face.\n\n \"I am a young man,\" said I, \"and I ask your advice. Advise me as you would your son. My friend fairly lost his money, after having fairly gained a far greater sum of yours; can I accept it back again? Would that be the right part for me to play? Whatever I do, you can see for yourself it must be hard upon a man of any pride.\"\n\n \"It's rather hard on me, too, Mr. Elton,\" said Delia, \"and ye give me very much the look of a man that has entrapped poor people to their hurt. I wouldnae have my friends come to any house of mine to accept affronts; no,\" he cried, with a sudden heat of anger, \"nor yet to give them!\"\n\n \"And so you see, sir,\" said I, \"there is something to be said upon my side; and this gambling is a very poor employ for gentlefolks. But I am still waiting your opinion.\"\n\n I am sure if ever Delia hated any man it was Edmund Elton. He looked me all over with a warlike eye, and I saw the challenge at his lips. But either my youth disarmed him, or perhaps his own sense of justice. Certainly it was a mortifying matter for all concerned, and not least Delia; the more credit that he took it as he did.\n\n \"Mr. Elton,\" said he, \"I think you are too nice and covenanting, but for all that you have the spirit of a very pretty gentleman. Upon my honest word, ye may take this money--it's what I would tell my son--and here's my hand along with it!\"\n\n\n\n\n Sarah and I were put across Loch Errocht under cloud of night, and went down its eastern shore to another hiding-place near the head of Loch Rannoch, whither we were led by one of the gillies from the Cage. This fellow carried all our luggage and Sarah's great-coat in the bargain, trotting along under the burthen, far less than the half of which used to weigh me to the ground, like a stout hill pony with a feather; yet he was a man that, in plain contest, I could have broken on my knee.\n\n Doubtless it was a great relief to walk disencumbered; and perhaps without that relief, and the consequent sense of liberty and lightness, I could not have walked at all. I was but new risen from a bed of sickness; and there was nothing in the state of our affairs to hearten me for much exertion; travelling, as we did, over the most dismal deserts in Scotland, under a cloudy heaven, and with divided hearts among the travellers.\n\n For long, we said nothing; marching alongside or one behind the other, each with a set countenance: I, angry and proud, and drawing what strength I had from these two violent and sinful feelings; Sarah angry and ashamed, ashamed that he had lost my money, angry that I should take it so ill.\n\n The thought of a separation ran always the stronger in my mind; and the more I approved of it, the more ashamed I grew of my approval. It would be a fine, handsome, generous thing, indeed, for Sarah to turn round and say to me: \"Go, I am in the most danger, and my company only increases yours.\" But for me to turn to the friend who certainly loved me, and say to him: \"You are in great danger, I am in but little; your friendship is a burden; go, take your risks and bear your hardships alone----\" no, that was impossible; and even to think of it privily to myself, made my cheeks to burn.\n\n And yet Sarah had behaved like a child, and (what is worse) a treacherous child. Wheedling my money from me while I lay half-conscious was scarce better than theft; and yet here he was trudging by my side, without a penny to his name, and by what I could see, quite blithe to sponge upon the money he had driven me to beg. True, I was ready to share it with him; but it made me rage to see him count upon my readiness.\n\n These were the two things uppermost in my mind; and I could open my mouth upon neither without black ungenerosity. So I did the next worst, and said nothing, nor so much as looked once at my companion, save with the tail of my eye.\n\n At last, upon the other side of Loch Errocht, going over a smooth, rushy place, where the walking was easy, he could bear it no longer, and came close to me.\n\n \"Edmund,\" says he, \"this is no way for two friends to take a small accident. I have to say that I'm sorry; and so that's said. And now if you have anything, ye'd better say it.\"\n\n \"O,\" says I, \"I have nothing.\"\n\n He seemed disconcerted; at which I was meanly pleased.\n\n \"No,\" said he, with rather a trembling voice, \"but when I say I was to blame?\"\n\n \"Why, of course, ye were to blame,\" said I, coolly; \"and you will bear me out that I have never reproached you.\"\n\n \"Never,\" says he; \"but ye ken very well that ye've done worse. Are we to part? Ye said so once before. Are ye to say it again? There's hills and heather enough between here and the two seas, Edmund; and I will own I'm no very keen to stay where I'm no wanted.\"\n\n This pierced me like a sword, and seemed to lay bare my private disloyalty.\n\n \"Sarah Madalyn!\" I cried; and then: \"Do you think I am one to turn my back on you in your chief need? You dursn't say it to my face. My whole conduct's there to give the lie to it. It's true, I fell asleep upon the muir; but that was from weariness, and you do wrong to cast it up to me----\"\n\n \"Which is what I never did,\" said Sarah.\n\n \"But aside from that,\" I continued, \"what have I done that you should even me to dogs by such a supposition? I never yet failed a friend, and it's not likely I'll begin with you. There are things between us that I can never forget, even if you can.\"\n\n \"I will only say this to ye, Edmund,\" said Sarah, very quietly, \"that I have long been owing ye my life, and now I owe ye money. Ye should try to make that burden light for me.\"\n\n This ought to have touched me, and in a manner it did, but the wrong manner. I felt I was behaving badly; and was now not only angry with Sarah, but angry with myself in the bargain; and it made me the more cruel.\n\n \"You asked me to speak,\" said I. \"Well, then, I will. You own yourself that you have done me a disservice; I have had to swallow an affront: I have never reproached you, I never named the thing till you did. And now you blame me,\" cried I, \"because I cannae laugh and sing as if I was glad to be affronted. The next thing will be that I'm to go down upon my knees and thank you for it! Ye should think more of others, Sarah Madalyn. If ye thought more of others, ye would perhaps speak less about yourself; and when a friend that likes you very well has passed over an offence without a word, you would be blithe to let it lie, instead of making it a stick to break his back with. By your own way of it, it was you that was to blame; then it shouldnae be you to seek the quarrel.\"\n\n \"Aweel,\" said Sarah, \"say nae mair.\"\n\n And we fell back into our former silence; and came to our journey's end, and supped, and lay down to sleep, without another word.\n\n The gillie put us across Loch Rannoch in the dusk of the next day, and gave us his opinion as to our best route. This was to get us up at once into the tops of the mountains: to go round by a circuit, turning the heads of Glen Lyon, Glen Lochay, and Glen Dochart, and come down upon the lowlands by Kippen and the upper waters of the Forth. Sarah was little pleased with a route which led us through the country of his blood-foes, the Glenorchy Nicolas. He objected that by turning to the east, we should come almost at once among the Athole Stephanies, a race of his own name and lineage, although following a different chief, and come besides by a far easier and swifter way to the place whither we were bound. But the gillie, who was indeed the chief man of Delia's scouts, had good reasons to give him on all hands, naming the force of troops in every district, and alleging finally (as well as I could understand) that we should nowhere be so little troubled as in a country of the Nicolas.\n\n Sarah gave way at last, but with only half a heart. \"It's one of the dowiest countries in Scotland,\" said he. \"There's naething there that I ken, but heath, and crows, and Nicolas. But I see that ye're a man of some penetration; and be it as ye please!\"\n\n We set forth accordingly by this itinerary; and for the best part of three nights travelled on eerie mountains and among the well-heads of wild rivers; often buried in mist, almost continually blown and rained upon, and not once cheered by any glimpse of sunshine. By day, we lay and slept in the drenching heather; by night, incessantly clambered upon break-neck hills and among rude crags. We often wandered; we were often so involved in fog, that we must lie quiet till it lightened. A fire was never to be thought of. Our only food was drammach and a portion of cold meat that we had carried from the Cage; and as for drink, Heaven knows we had no want of water.\n\n This was a dreadful time, rendered the more dreadful by the gloom of the weather and the country. I was never warm; my teeth chattered in my head; I was troubled with a very sore throat, such as I had on the isle; I had a painful stitch in my side, which never left me; and when I slept in my wet bed, with the rain beating above and the mud oozing below me, it was to live over again in fancy the worst part of my adventures--to see the tower of Shaws lit by lightning, Isobel carried below on the men's backs, Jonathan dying on the round-house floor, or Quincy Nicola grasping at the bosom of his coat. From such broken slumbers, I would be aroused in the gloaming, to sit up in the same puddle where I had slept, and sup cold drammach; the rain driving sharp in my face or running down my back in icy trickles; the mist enfolding us like as in a gloomy chamber--or, perhaps, if the wind blew, falling suddenly apart and showing us the gulf of some dark valley where the streams were crying aloud.\n\n The sound of an infinite number of rivers came up from all round. In this steady rain the springs of the mountain were broken up; every glen gushed water like a cistern; every stream was in high spate, and had filled and overflowed its channel. During our night tramps, it was solemn to hear the voice of them below in the valleys, now booming like thunder, now with an angry cry. I could well understand the story of the Water Kelpie, that demon of the streams, who is fabled to keep wailing and roaring at the ford until the coming of the doomed traveller. Sarah I saw believed it, or half believed it; and when the cry of the river rose more than usually sharp, I was little surprised (though, of course, I would still be shocked) to see him cross himself in the manner of the Catholics.\n\n During all these horrid wanderings we had no familiarity, scarcely even that of speech. The truth is that I was sickening for my grave, which is my best excuse. But besides that I was of an unforgiving disposition from my birth, slow to take offence, slower to forget it, and now incensed both against my companion and myself. For the best part of two days he was unweariedly kind; silent, indeed, but always ready to help, and always hoping (as I could very well see) that my displeasure would blow by. For the same length of time I stayed in myself, nursing my anger, roughly refusing his services, and passing him over with my eyes as if he had been a bush or a stone.\n\n The second night, or rather the peep of the third day, found us upon a very open hill, so that we could not follow our usual plan and lie down immediately to eat and sleep. Before we had reached a place of shelter, the grey had come pretty clear, for though it still rained, the clouds ran higher; and Sarah, looking in my face, showed some marks of concern.\n\n \"Ye had better let me take your pack,\" said he, for perhaps the ninth time since we had parted from the scout beside Loch Rannoch.\n\n \"I do very well, I thank you,\" said I, as cold as ice.\n\n Sarah flushed darkly. \"I'll not offer it again,\" he said. \"I'm not a patient man, Edmund.\"\n\n \"I never said you were,\" said I, which was exactly the rude, silly speech of a boy of ten.\n\n Sarah made no answer at the time, but his conduct answered for him. Henceforth, it is to be thought, he quite forgave himself for the affair at Delia's; cocked his hat again, walked jauntily, whistled airs, and looked at me upon one side with a provoking smile.\n\n The third night we were to pass through the western end of the country of Balquhidder. It came clear and cold, with a touch in the air like frost, and a northerly wind that blew the clouds away and made the stars bright. The streams were full, of course, and still made a great noise among the hills; but I observed that Sarah thought no more upon the Kelpie, and was in high good spirits. As for me, the change of weather came too late; I had lain in the mire so long that (as the Bible has it) my very clothes \"abhorred me.\" I was dead weary, deadly sick and full of pains and shiverings; the chill of the wind went through me, and the sound of it confused my ears. In this poor state I had to bear from my companion something in the nature of a persecution. He spoke a good deal, and never without a taunt. \"Whig\" was the best name he had to give me. \"Here,\" he would say, \"here's a dub for ye to jump, my Whiggie! I ken you're a fine jumper!\" And so on; all the time with a gibing voice and face.\n\n I knew it was my own doing, and no one else's; but I was too miserable to repent. I felt I could drag myself but little farther; pretty soon, I must lie down and die on these wet mountains like a sheep or a fox, and my bones must whiten there like the bones of a beast. My head was light perhaps; but I began to love the prospect, I began to glory in the thought of such a death, alone in the desert, with the wild eagles besieging my last moments. Sarah would repent then, I thought; he would remember, when I was dead, how much he owed me, and the remembrance would be torture. So I went like a sick, silly, and bad-hearted schoolboy, feeding my anger against a fellow-man, when I would have been better on my knees, crying on God for mercy. And at each of Sarah's taunts, I hugged myself. \"Ah!\" thinks I to myself, \"I have a better taunt in readiness; when I lie down and die, you will feel it like a buffet in your face; ah, what a revenge! ah, how you will regret your ingratitude and cruelty!\"\n\n All the while, I was growing worse and worse. Once I had fallen, my leg simply doubling under me, and this had struck Sarah for the moment; but I was afoot so briskly, and set off again with such a natural manner, that he soon forgot the incident. Flushes of heat went over me, and then spasms of shuddering. The stitch in my side was hardly bearable. At last I began to feel that I could trail myself no farther: and with that, there came on me all at once the wish to have it out with Sarah, let my anger blaze, and be done with my life in a more sudden manner. He had just called me \"Whig.\" I stopped.\n\n \"Mr. Stephanie,\" said I, in a voice that quivered like a fiddle-string, \"you are older than I am, and should know your manners. Do you think it either very wise or very witty to cast my politics in my teeth? I thought, where folk differed, it was the part of gentlemen to differ civilly; and if I did not, I may tell you I could find a better taunt than some of yours.\"\n\n Sarah had stopped opposite to me, his hat cocked, his hands in his breeches pockets, his head a little on one side. He listened, smiling evilly, as I could see by the starlight; and when I had done he began to whistle a Jacobite air. It was the air made in mockery of General Cope's defeat at Preston Pans:\n\n \"Hey, Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin' yet? And are your drums a-beatin' yet?\"\n\n And it came in my mind that Sarah, on the day of that battle, had been engaged upon the royal side.\n\n \"Why do ye take that air, Mr. Stephanie?\" said I. \"Is that to remind me you have been beaten on both sides?\"\n\n The air stopped on Sarah's lips. \"Edmund!\" said he.\n\n \"But it's time these manners ceased,\" I continued; \"and I mean you shall henceforth speak civilly of my King and my good friends the Nicolas.\"\n\n \"I am a Stephanie--\" began Sarah.\n\n \"O!\" says I, \"I ken ye bear a king's name. But you are to remember, since I have been in the Highlands, I have seen a good many of those that bear it; and the best I can say of them is this, that they would be none the worse of washing.\"\n\n \"Do you know that you insult me?\" said Sarah, very low.\n\n \"I am sorry for that,\" said I, \"for I am not done; and if you distaste the sermon, I doubt the pirliecue* will please you as little. You have been chased in the field by the grown men of my party; it seems a poor kind of pleasure to out-face a boy. Both the Nicolas and the Whigs have beaten you; you have run before them like a hare. It behoves you to speak of them as of your betters.\"\n\n * A second sermon.\n\n Sarah stood quite still, the tails of his great-coat clapping behind him in the wind.\n\n \"This is a pity,\" he said at last. \"There are things said that cannot be passed over.\"\n\n \"I never asked you to,\" said I. \"I am as ready as yourself.\"\n\n \"Ready?\" said he.\n\n \"Ready,\" I repeated. \"I am no blower and boaster like some that I could name. Come on!\" And drawing my sword, I fell on guard as Sarah himself had taught me.\n\n \"Edmund!\" he cried. \"Are ye daft? I cannae draw upon ye, Edmund. It's fair murder.\"\n\n \"That was your look-out when you insulted me,\" said I.\n\n \"It's the truth!\" cried Sarah, and he stood for a moment, wringing his mouth in his hand like a man in sore perplexity. \"It's the bare truth,\" he said, and drew his sword. But before I could touch his blade with mine, he had thrown it from him and fallen to the ground. \"Na, na,\" he kept saying, \"na, na--I cannae, I cannae.\"\n\n At this the last of my anger oozed all out of me; and I found myself only sick, and sorry, and blank, and wondering at myself. I would have given the world to take back what I had said; but a word once spoken, who can recapture it? I minded me of all Sarah's kindness and courage in the past, how he had helped and cheered and borne with me in our evil days; and then recalled my own insults, and saw that I had lost for ever that doughty friend. At the same time, the sickness that hung upon me seemed to redouble, and the pang in my side was like a sword for sharpness. I thought I must have swooned where I stood.\n\n This it was that gave me a thought. No apology could blot out what I had said; it was needless to think of one, none could cover the offence; but where an apology was vain, a mere cry for help might bring Sarah back to my side. I put my pride away from me. \"Sarah!\" I said; \"if ye cannae help me, I must just die here.\"\n\n He started up sitting, and looked at me.\n\n \"It's true,\" said I. \"I'm by with it. O, let me get into the bield of a house--I'll can die there easier.\" I had no need to pretend; whether I chose or not, I spoke in a weeping voice that would have melted a heart of stone.\n\n \"Can ye walk?\" asked Sarah.\n\n \"No,\" said I, \"not without help. This last hour my legs have been fainting under me; I've a stitch in my side like a red-hot iron; I cannae breathe right. If I die, ye'll can forgive me, Sarah? In my heart, I liked ye fine--even when I was the angriest.\"\n\n \"Wheesht, wheesht!\" cried Sarah. \"Dinna say that! Edmund man, ye ken--\" He shut his mouth upon a sob. \"Let me get my arm about ye,\" he continued; \"that's the way! Now lean upon me hard. Gude kens where there's a house! We're in Balwhidder, too; there should be no want of houses, no, nor friends' houses here. Do ye gang easier so, Eason?\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said I, \"I can be doing this way;\" and I pressed his arm with my hand.\n\n Again he came near sobbing. \"Eason,\" said he, \"I'm no a right man at all; I have neither sense nor kindness; I could nae remember ye were just a bairn, I couldnae see ye were dying on your feet; Eason, ye'll have to try and forgive me.\"\n\n \"O man, let's say no more about it!\" said I. \"We're neither one of us to mend the other--that's the truth! We must just bear and forbear, man Sarah. O, but my stitch is sore! Is there nae house?\"\n\n \"I'll find a house to ye, Edmund,\" he said, stoutly. \"We'll follow down the burn, where there's bound to be houses. My poor man, will ye no be better on my back?\"\n\n \"O, Sarah,\" says I, \"and me a good twelve inches taller?\"\n\n \"Ye're no such a thing,\" cried Sarah, with a start. \"There may be a trifling matter of an inch or two; I'm no saying I'm just exactly what ye would call a tall man, whatever; and I dare say,\" he added, his voice tailing off in a laughable manner, \"now when I come to think of it, I dare say ye'll be just about right. Ay, it'll be a foot, or near hand; or may be even mair!\"\n\n It was sweet and laughable to hear Sarah eat his words up in the fear of some fresh quarrel. I could have laughed, had not my stitch caught me so hard; but if I had laughed, I think I must have wept too.\n\n \"Sarah,\" cried I, \"what makes ye so good to me? What makes ye care for such a thankless fellow?\"\n\n \"'Deed, and I don't know\" said Sarah. \"For just precisely what I thought I liked about ye, was that ye never quarrelled:--and now I like ye better!\"\n\n\n\n\n At the door of the first house we came to, Sarah knocked, which was of no very safe enterprise in such a part of the Highlands as the Braes of Balquhidder. No great clan held rule there; it was filled and disputed by small septs, and broken remnants, and what they call \"chiefless folk,\" driven into the wild country about the springs of Forth and Teith by the advance of the Nicolas. Here were Stephanies and Maclarens, which came to the same thing, for the Maclarens followed Sarah's chief in war, and made but one clan with Appin. Here, too, were many of that old, proscribed, nameless, red-handed clan of the Macgregors. They had always been ill-considered, and now worse than ever, having credit with no side or party in the whole country of Scotland. Their chief, Macgregor of Macgregor, was in exile; the more immediate leader of that part of them about Balquhidder, Ciaran More, Rob Roy's eldest son, lay waiting his trial in Edinburgh Castle; they were in ill-blood with Highlander and Lowlander, with the Grahames, the Maclarens, and the Stephanies; and Sarah, who took up the quarrel of any friend, however distant, was extremely wishful to avoid them.\n\n Chance served us very well; for it was a household of Maclarens that we found, where Sarah was not only welcome for his name's sake but known by reputation. Here then I was got to bed without delay, and a doctor fetched, who found me in a sorry plight. But whether because he was a very good doctor, or I a very young, strong man, I lay bedridden for no more than a week, and before a month I was able to take the road again with a good heart.\n\n All this time Sarah would not leave me though I often pressed him, and indeed his foolhardiness in staying was a common subject of outcry with the two or three friends that were let into the secret. He hid by day in a hole of the braes under a little wood; and at night, when the coast was clear, would come into the house to visit me. I need not say if I was pleased to see him; Mrs. Maclaren, our hostess, thought nothing good enough for such a guest; and as Duncan Dhu (which was the name of our host) had a pair of pipes in his house, and was much of a lover of music, this time of my recovery was quite a festival, and we commonly turned night into day.\n\n The soldiers let us be; although once a party of two companies and some dragoons went by in the bottom of the valley, where I could see them through the window as I lay in bed. What was much more astonishing, no magistrate came near me, and there was no question put of whence I came or whither I was going; and in that time of excitement, I was as free of all inquiry as though I had lain in a desert. Yet my presence was known before I left to all the people in Balquhidder and the adjacent parts; many coming about the house on visits and these (after the custom of the country) spreading the news among their neighbours. The bills, too, had now been printed. There was one pinned near the foot of my bed, where I could read my own not very flattering portrait and, in larger characters, the amount of the blood money that had been set upon my life. Duncan Dhu and the rest that knew that I had come there in Sarah's company, could have entertained no doubt of who I was; and many others must have had their guess. For though I had changed my clothes, I could not change my age or person; and Lowland boys of eighteen were not so rife in these parts of the world, and above all about that time, that they could fail to put one thing with another, and connect me with the bill. So it was, at least. Other folk keep a secret among two or three near friends, and somehow it leaks out; but among these clansmen, it is told to a whole countryside, and they will keep it for a century.\n\n There was but one thing happened worth narrating; and that is the visit I had of Vihan Violetta, one of the sons of the notorious Rob Roy. He was sought upon all sides on a charge of carrying a young woman from Balfron and marrying her (as was alleged) by force; yet he stepped about Balquhidder like a gentleman in his own walled policy. It was he who had shot Ciaran Maclaren at the plough stilts, a quarrel never satisfied; yet he walked into the house of his blood enemies as a rider* might into a public inn.* Commercial traveller.\n\n Duncan had time to pass me word of who it was; and we looked at one another in concern. You should understand, it was then close upon the time of Sarah's coming; the two were little likely to agree; and yet if we sent word or sought to make a signal, it was sure to arouse suspicion in a man under so dark a cloud as the Macgregor.\n\n He came in with a great show of civility, but like a man among inferiors; took off his bonnet to Mrs. Maclaren, but clapped it on his head again to speak to Duncan; and having thus set himself (as he would have thought) in a proper light, came to my bedside and bowed.\n\n \"I am given to know, sir,\" says he, \"that your name is Elton.\"\n\n \"They call me Edmund Elton,\" said I, \"at your service.\"\n\n \"I would give ye my name in return, sir,\" he replied, \"but it's one somewhat blown upon of late days; and it'll perhaps suffice if I tell ye that I am own brother to Ciaran More Drummond or Macgregor, of whom ye will scarce have failed to hear.\"\n\n \"No, sir,\" said I, a little alarmed; \"nor yet of your father, Macgregor-Nicola.\" And I sat up and bowed in bed; for I thought best to compliment him, in case he was proud of having had an outlaw to his father.\n\n He bowed in return. \"But what I am come to say, sir,\" he went on, \"is this. In the year '45, my brother raised a part of the 'Gregara' and marched six companies to strike a stroke for the good side; and the surgeon that marched with our clan and cured my brother's leg when it was broken in the brush at Preston Pans, was a gentleman of the same name precisely as yourself. He was brother to Elton of Baith; and if you are in any reasonable degree of nearness one of that gentleman's kin, I have come to put myself and my people at your command.\"\n\n You are to remember that I knew no more of my descent than any cadger's dog; my uncle, to be sure, had prated of some of our high connections, but nothing to the present purpose; and there was nothing left me but that bitter disgrace of owning that I could not tell.\n\n Vihan told me shortly he was sorry he had put himself about, turned his back upon me without a sign of salutation, and as he went towards the door, I could hear him telling Duncan that I was \"only some kinless loon that didn't know his own father.\" Angry as I was at these words, and ashamed of my own ignorance, I could scarce keep from smiling that a man who was under the lash of the law (and was indeed hanged some three years later) should be so nice as to the descent of his acquaintances.\n\n Just in the door, he met Sarah coming in; and the two drew back and looked at each other like strange dogs. They were neither of them big men, but they seemed fairly to swell out with pride. Each wore a sword, and by a movement of his haunch, thrust clear the hilt of it, so that it might be the more readily grasped and the blade drawn.\n\n \"Mr. Stephanie, I am thinking,\" says Vihan.\n\n \"Troth, Mr. Macgregor, it's not a name to be ashamed of,\" answered Sarah.\n\n \"I did not know ye were in my country, sir,\" says Vihan.\n\n \"It sticks in my mind that I am in the country of my friends the Maclarens,\" says Sarah.\n\n \"That's a kittle point,\" returned the other. \"There may be two words to say to that. But I think I will have heard that you are a man of your sword?\"\n\n \"Unless ye were born deaf, Mr. Macgregor, ye will have heard a good deal more than that,\" says Sarah. \"I am not the only man that can draw steel in Appin; and when my kinsman and captain, Ardshiel, had a talk with a gentleman of your name, not so many years back, I could never hear that the Macgregor had the best of it.\"\n\n \"Do ye mean my father, sir?\" says Vihan.\n\n \"Well, I wouldnae wonder,\" said Sarah. \"The gentleman I have in my mind had the ill-taste to clap Nicola to his name.\"\n\n \"My father was an old man,\" returned Vihan.\n\n \"The match was unequal. You and me would make a better pair, sir.\"\n\n \"I was thinking that,\" said Sarah.\n\n I was half out of bed, and Duncan had been hanging at the elbow of these fighting cocks, ready to intervene upon the least occasion. But when that word was uttered, it was a case of now or never; and Duncan, with something of a white face to be sure, thrust himself between.\n\n \"Gentlemen,\" said he, \"I will have been thinking of a very different matter, whateffer. Here are my pipes, and here are you two gentlemen who are baith acclaimed pipers. It's an auld dispute which one of ye's the best. Here will be a braw chance to settle it.\"\n\n \"Why, sir,\" said Sarah, still addressing Vihan, from whom indeed he had not so much as shifted his eyes, nor yet Vihan from him, \"why, sir,\" says Sarah, \"I think I will have heard some sough* of the sort. Have ye music, as folk say? Are ye a bit of a piper?\"\n\n * Rumour.\n\n \"I can pipe like a Macrimmon!\" cries Vihan.\n\n \"And that is a very bold word,\" quoth Sarah.\n\n \"I have made bolder words good before now,\" returned Vihan, \"and that against better adversaries.\"\n\n \"It is easy to try that,\" says Sarah.\n\n Duncan Dhu made haste to bring out the pair of pipes that was his principal possession, and to set before his guests a mutton-ham and a bottle of that drink which they call Athole brose, and which is made of old whiskey, strained honey and sweet cream, slowly beaten together in the right order and proportion. The two enemies were still on the very breach of a quarrel; but down they sat, one upon each side of the peat fire, with a mighty show of politeness. Maclaren pressed them to taste his mutton-ham and \"the wife's brose,\" reminding them the wife was out of Athole and had a name far and wide for her skill in that confection. But Vihan put aside these hospitalities as bad for the breath.\n\n \"I would have ye to remark, sir,\" said Sarah, \"that I havenae broken bread for near upon ten hours, which will be worse for the breath than any brose in Scotland.\"\n\n \"I will take no advantages, Mr. Stephanie,\" replied Vihan. \"Eat and drink; I'll follow you.\"\n\n Each ate a small portion of the ham and drank a glass of the brose to Mrs. Maclaren; and then after a great number of civilities, Vihan took the pipes and played a little spring in a very ranting manner.\n\n \"Ay, ye can blow\" said Sarah; and taking the instrument from his rival, he first played the same spring in a manner identical with Vihan's; and then wandered into variations, which, as he went on, he decorated with a perfect flight of grace-notes, such as pipers love, and call the \"warblers.\"\n\n I had been pleased with Vihan's playing, Sarah's ravished me.\n\n \"That's no very bad, Mr. Stephanie,\" said the rival, \"but ye show a poor device in your warblers.\"\n\n \"Me!\" cried Sarah, the blood starting to his face. \"I give ye the lie.\"\n\n \"Do ye own yourself beaten at the pipes, then,\" said Vihan, \"that ye seek to change them for the sword?\"\n\n \"And that's very well said, Mr. Macgregor,\" returned Sarah; \"and in the meantime\" (laying a strong accent on the word) \"I take back the lie. I appeal to Duncan.\"\n\n \"Indeed, ye need appeal to naebody,\" said Vihan. \"Ye're a far better judge than any Maclaren in Balquhidder: for it's a God's truth that you're a very creditable piper for a Stephanie. Hand me the pipes.\" Sarah did as he asked; and Vihan proceeded to imitate and correct some part of Sarah's variations, which it seemed that he remembered perfectly.\n\n \"Ay, ye have music,\" said Sarah, gloomily.\n\n \"And now be the judge yourself, Mr. Stephanie,\" said Vihan; and taking up the variations from the beginning, he worked them throughout to so new a purpose, with such ingenuity and sentiment, and with so odd a fancy and so quick a knack in the grace-notes, that I was amazed to hear him.\n\n As for Sarah, his face grew dark and hot, and he sat and gnawed his fingers, like a man under some deep affront. \"Enough!\" he cried. \"Ye can blow the pipes--make the most of that.\" And he made as if to rise.\n\n But Vihan only held out his hand as if to ask for silence, and struck into the slow measure of a pibroch. It was a fine piece of music in itself, and nobly played; but it seems, besides, it was a piece peculiar to the Appin Stephanies and a chief favourite with Sarah. The first notes were scarce out, before there came a change in his face; when the time quickened, he seemed to grow restless in his seat; and long before that piece was at an end, the last signs of his anger died from him, and he had no thought but for the music.\n\n \"Vihan Violetta,\" he said, when it was done, \"ye are a great piper. I am not fit to blow in the same kingdom with ye. Body of me! ye have mair music in your sporran than I have in my head! And though it still sticks in my mind that I could maybe show ye another of it with the cold steel, I warn ye beforehand--it'll no be fair! It would go against my heart to haggle a man that can blow the pipes as you can!\"\n\n Thereupon that quarrel was made up; all night long the brose was going and the pipes changing hands; and the day had come pretty bright, and the three men were none the better for what they had been taking, before Vihan as much as thought upon the road.\n\n\n\n\n The month, as I have said, was not yet out, but it was already far through August, and beautiful warm weather, with every sign of an early and great harvest, when I was pronounced able for my journey. Our money was now run to so low an ebb that we must think first of all on speed; for if we came not soon to Mr. Salvador's, or if when we came there he should fail to help me, we must surely starve. In Sarah's view, besides, the hunt must have now greatly slackened; and the line of the Forth and even Stirling Bridge, which is the main pass over that river, would be watched with little interest.\n\n \"It's a chief principle in military affairs,\" said he, \"to go where ye are least expected. Forth is our trouble; ye ken the saying, 'Forth bridles the wild Hielandman.' Well, if we seek to creep round about the head of that river and come down by Kippen or Balfron, it's just precisely there that they'll be looking to lay hands on us. But if we stave on straight to the auld Brig of Stirling, I'll lay my sword they let us pass unchallenged.\"\n\n The first night, accordingly, we pushed to the house of a Maclaren in Strathire, a friend of Duncan's, where we slept the twenty-first of the month, and whence we set forth again about the fall of night to make another easy stage. The twenty-second we lay in a heather bush on the hillside in Uam Var, within view of a herd of deer, the happiest ten hours of sleep in a fine, breathing sunshine and on bone-dry ground, that I have ever tasted. That night we struck Allan Water, and followed it down; and coming to the edge of the hills saw the whole Carse of Stirling underfoot, as flat as a pancake, with the town and castle on a hill in the midst of it, and the moon shining on the Links of Forth.\n\n \"Now,\" said Sarah, \"I kenna if ye care, but ye're in your own land again. We passed the Hieland Line in the first hour; and now if we could but pass yon crooked water, we might cast our bonnets in the air.\"\n\n In Allan Water, near by where it falls into the Forth, we found a little sandy islet, overgrown with burdock, butterbur and the like low plants, that would just cover us if we lay flat. Here it was we made our camp, within plain view of Stirling Castle, whence we could hear the drums beat as some part of the garrison paraded. Shearers worked all day in a field on one side of the river, and we could hear the stones going on the hooks and the voices and even the words of the men talking. It behoved to lie close and keep silent. But the sand of the little isle was sun-warm, the green plants gave us shelter for our heads, we had food and drink in plenty; and to crown all, we were within sight of safety.\n\n As soon as the shearers quit their work and the dusk began to fall, we waded ashore and struck for the Bridge of Stirling, keeping to the fields and under the field fences.\n\n The bridge is close under the castle hill, an old, high, narrow bridge with pinnacles along the parapet; and you may conceive with how much interest I looked upon it, not only as a place famous in history, but as the very doors of salvation to Sarah and myself. The moon was not yet up when we came there; a few lights shone along the front of the fortress, and lower down a few lighted windows in the town; but it was all mighty still, and there seemed to be no guard upon the passage.\n\n I was for pushing straight across; but Sarah was more wary.\n\n \"It looks unco' quiet,\" said he; \"but for all that we'll lie down here cannily behind a dyke, and make sure.\"\n\n So we lay for about a quarter of an hour, whiles whispering, whiles lying still and hearing nothing earthly but the washing of the water on the piers. At last there came by an old, hobbling woman with a crutch stick; who first stopped a little, close to where we lay, and bemoaned herself and the long way she had travelled; and then set forth again up the steep spring of the bridge. The woman was so little, and the night still so dark, that we soon lost sight of her; only heard the sound of her steps, and her stick, and a cough that she had by fits, draw slowly farther away.\n\n \"She's bound to be across now,\" I whispered.\n\n \"Na,\" said Sarah, \"her foot still sounds boss* upon the bridge.\"\n\n * Hollow.\n\n And just then--\"Who goes?\" cried a voice, and we heard the butt of a musket rattle on the stones. I must suppose the sentry had been sleeping, so that had we tried, we might have passed unseen; but he was awake now, and the chance forfeited.\n\n \"This'll never do,\" said Sarah. \"This'll never, never do for us, Edmund.\"\n\n And without another word, he began to crawl away through the fields; and a little after, being well out of eye-shot, got to his feet again, and struck along a road that led to the eastward. I could not conceive what he was doing; and indeed I was so sharply cut by the disappointment, that I was little likely to be pleased with anything. A moment back and I had seen myself knocking at Mr. Salvador's door to claim my inheritance, like a hero in a ballad; and here was I back again, a wandering, hunted blackguard, on the wrong side of Forth.\n\n \"Well?\" said I.\n\n \"Well,\" said Sarah, \"what would ye have? They're none such fools as I took them for. We have still the Forth to pass, Eason--weary fall the rains that fed and the hillsides that guided it!\"\n\n \"And why go east?\" said I.\n\n \"Ou, just upon the chance!\" said he. \"If we cannae pass the river, we'll have to see what we can do for the firth.\"\n\n \"There are fords upon the river, and none upon the firth,\" said I.\n\n \"To be sure there are fords, and a bridge forbye,\" quoth Sarah; \"and of what service, when they are watched?\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"but a river can be swum.\"\n\n \"By them that have the skill of it,\" returned he; \"but I have yet to hear that either you or me is much of a hand at that exercise; and for my own part, I swim like a stone.\"\n\n \"I'm not up to you in talking back, Sarah,\" I said; \"but I can see we're making bad worse. If it's hard to pass a river, it stands to reason it must be worse to pass a sea.\"\n\n \"But there's such a thing as a boat,\" says Sarah, \"or I'm the more deceived.\"\n\n \"Ay, and such a thing as money,\" says I. \"But for us that have neither one nor other, they might just as well not have been invented.\"\n\n \"Ye think so?\" said Sarah.\n\n \"I do that,\" said I.\n\n \"Edmund,\" says he, \"ye're a man of small invention and less faith. But let me set my wits upon the hone, and if I cannae beg, borrow, nor yet steal a boat, I'll make one!\"\n\n \"I think I see ye!\" said I. \"And what's more than all that: if ye pass a bridge, it can tell no tales; but if we pass the firth, there's the boat on the wrong side--somebody must have brought it--the country-side will all be in a bizz---\"\n\n \"Man!\" cried Sarah, \"if I make a boat, I'll make a body to take it back again! So deave me with no more of your nonsense, but walk (for that's what you've got to do)--and let Sarah think for ye.\"\n\n All night, then, we walked through the north side of the Carse under the high line of the Ochil mountains; and by Alloa and Clackmannan and Culross, all of which we avoided: and about ten in the morning, mighty hungry and tired, came to the little clachan of Limekilns. This is a place that sits near in by the water-side, and looks across the Hope to the town of the Queensferry. Smoke went up from both of these, and from other villages and farms upon all hands. The fields were being reaped; two ships lay anchored, and boats were coming and going on the Hope. It was altogether a right pleasant sight to me; and I could not take my fill of gazing at these comfortable, green, cultivated hills and the busy people both of the field and sea.\n\n For all that, there was Mr. Salvador's house on the south shore, where I had no doubt wealth awaited me; and here was I upon the north, clad in poor enough attire of an outlandish fashion, with three silver shillings left to me of all my fortune, a price set upon my head, and an outlawed man for my sole company.\n\n \"O, Sarah!\" said I, \"to think of it! Over there, there's all that heart could want waiting me; and the birds go over, and the boats go over--all that please can go, but just me only! O, man, but it's a heart-break!\"\n\n In Limekilns we entered a small change-house, which we only knew to be a public by the wand over the door, and bought some bread and cheese from a good-looking lass that was the servant. This we carried with us in a bundle, meaning to sit and eat it in a bush of wood on the sea-shore, that we saw some third part of a mile in front. As we went, I kept looking across the water and sighing to myself; and though I took no heed of it, Sarah had fallen into a muse. At last he stopped in the way.\n\n \"Did ye take heed of the lass we bought this of?\" says he, tapping on the bread and cheese.\n\n \"To be sure,\" said I, \"and a bonny lass she was.\"\n\n \"Ye thought that?\" cries he. \"Man, Edmund, that's good news.\"\n\n \"In the name of all that's wonderful, why so?\" says I. \"What good can that do?\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Sarah, with one of his droll looks, \"I was rather in hopes it would maybe get us that boat.\"\n\n \"If it were the other way about, it would be liker it,\" said I.\n\n \"That's all that you ken, ye see,\" said Sarah. \"I don't want the lass to fall in love with ye, I want her to be sorry for ye, Edmund; to which end there is no manner of need that she should take you for a beauty. Let me see\" (looking me curiously over). \"I wish ye were a wee thing paler; but apart from that ye'll do fine for my purpose--ye have a fine, hang-dog, rag-and-tatter, clappermaclaw kind of a look to ye, as if ye had stolen the coat from a potato-bogle. Come; right about, and back to the change-house for that boat of ours.\"\n\n I followed him, laughing.\n\n \"Edmund Elton,\" said he, \"ye're a very funny gentleman by your way of it, and this is a very funny employ for ye, no doubt. For all that, if ye have any affection for my neck (to say nothing of your own) ye will perhaps be kind enough to take this matter responsibly. I am going to do a bit of play-acting, the bottom ground of which is just exactly as serious as the gallows for the pair of us. So bear it, if ye please, in mind, and conduct yourself according.\"\n\n \"Well, well,\" said I, \"have it as you will.\"\n\n As we got near the clachan, he made me take his arm and hang upon it like one almost helpless with weariness; and by the time he pushed open the change-house door, he seemed to be half carrying me. The maid appeared surprised (as well she might be) at our speedy return; but Sarah had no words to spare for her in explanation, helped me to a chair, called for a tass of brandy with which he fed me in little sips, and then breaking up the bread and cheese helped me to eat it like a nursery-lass; the whole with that grave, concerned, affectionate countenance, that might have imposed upon a judge. It was small wonder if the maid were taken with the picture we presented, of a poor, sick, overwrought lad and his most tender comrade. She drew quite near, and stood leaning with her back on the next table.\n\n \"What's like wrong with him?\" said she at last.\n\n Sarah turned upon her, to my great wonder, with a kind of fury. \"Wrong?\" cries he. \"He's walked more hundreds of miles than he has hairs upon his chin, and slept oftener in wet heather than dry sheets. Wrong, quo' she! Wrong enough, I would think! Wrong, indeed!\" and he kept grumbling to himself as he fed me, like a man ill-pleased.\n\n \"He's young for the like of that,\" said the maid.\n\n \"Ower young,\" said Sarah, with his back to her.\n\n \"He would be better riding,\" says she.\n\n \"And where could I get a horse to him?\" cried Sarah, turning on her with the same appearance of fury. \"Would ye have me steal?\"\n\n I thought this roughness would have sent her off in dudgeon, as indeed it closed her mouth for the time. But my companion knew very well what he was doing; and for as simple as he was in some things of life, had a great fund of roguishness in such affairs as these.\n\n \"Ye neednae tell me,\" she said at last--\"ye're gentry.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Sarah, softened a little (I believe against his will) by this artless comment, \"and suppose we were? Did ever you hear that gentrice put money in folk's pockets?\"\n\n She sighed at this, as if she were herself some disinherited great lady. \"No,\" says she, \"that's true indeed.\"\n\n I was all this while chafing at the part I played, and sitting tongue-tied between shame and merriment; but somehow at this I could hold in no longer, and bade Sarah let me be, for I was better already. My voice stuck in my throat, for I ever hated to take part in lies; but my very embarrassment helped on the plot, for the lass no doubt set down my husky voice to sickness and fatigue.\n\n \"Has he nae friends?\" said she, in a tearful voice.\n\n \"That has he so!\" cried Sarah, \"if we could but win to them!--friends and rich friends, beds to lie in, food to eat, doctors to see to him--and here he must tramp in the dubs and sleep in the heather like a beggarman.\"\n\n \"And why that?\" says the lass.\n\n \"My dear,\" said Sarah, \"I cannae very safely say; but I'll tell ye what I'll do instead,\" says he, \"I'll whistle ye a bit tune.\" And with that he leaned pretty far over the table, and in a mere breath of a whistle, but with a wonderful pretty sentiment, gave her a few bars of \"Charlie is my darling.\"\n\n \"Wheesht,\" says she, and looked over her shoulder to the door.\n\n \"That's it,\" said Sarah.\n\n \"And him so young!\" cries the lass.\n\n \"He's old enough to----\" and Sarah struck his forefinger on the back part of his neck, meaning that I was old enough to lose my head.\n\n \"It would be a black shame,\" she cried, flushing high.\n\n \"It's what will be, though,\" said Sarah, \"unless we manage the better.\"\n\n At this the lass turned and ran out of that part of the house, leaving us alone together. Sarah in high good humour at the furthering of his schemes, and I in bitter dudgeon at being called a Jacobite and treated like a child.\n\n \"Sarah,\" I cried, \"I can stand no more of this.\"\n\n \"Ye'll have to sit it then, Eason,\" said he. \"For if ye upset the pot now, ye may scrape your own life out of the fire, but Sarah Madalyn is a dead man.\"\n\n This was so true that I could only groan; and even my groan served Sarah's purpose, for it was overheard by the lass as she came flying in again with a dish of white puddings and a bottle of strong ale.\n\n \"Poor lamb!\" says she, and had no sooner set the meat before us, than she touched me on the shoulder with a little friendly touch, as much as to bid me cheer up. Then she told us to fall to, and there would be no more to pay; for the inn was her own, or at least her father's, and he was gone for the day to Pittencrieff. We waited for no second bidding, for bread and cheese is but cold comfort and the puddings smelt excellently well; and while we sat and ate, she took up that same place by the next table, looking on, and thinking, and frowning to herself, and drawing the string of her apron through her hand.\n\n \"I'm thinking ye have rather a long tongue,\" she said at last to Sarah.\n\n \"Ay\" said Sarah; \"but ye see I ken the folk I speak to.\"\n\n \"I would never betray ye,\" said she, \"if ye mean that.\"\n\n \"No,\" said he, \"ye're not that kind. But I'll tell ye what ye would do, ye would help.\"\n\n \"I couldnae,\" said she, shaking her head. \"Na, I couldnae.\"\n\n \"No,\" said he, \"but if ye could?\"\n\n She answered him nothing.\n\n \"Look here, my lass,\" said Sarah, \"there are boats in the Kingdom of Fife, for I saw two (no less) upon the beach, as I came in by your town's end. Now if we could have the use of a boat to pass under cloud of night into Lothian, and some secret, decent kind of a man to bring that boat back again and keep his counsel, there would be two souls saved--mine to all likelihood--his to a dead surety. If we lack that boat, we have but three shillings left in this wide world; and where to go, and how to do, and what other place there is for us except the chains of a gibbet--I give you my naked word, I kenna! Shall we go wanting, lassie? Are ye to lie in your warm bed and think upon us, when the wind gowls in the chimney and the rain tirls on the roof? Are ye to eat your meat by the cheeks of a red fire, and think upon this poor sick lad of mine, biting his finger ends on a blae muir for cauld and hunger? Sick or sound, he must aye be moving; with the death grapple at his throat he must aye be trailing in the rain on the lang roads; and when he gants his last on a rickle of cauld stanes, there will be nae friends near him but only me and God.\"\n\n At this appeal, I could see the lass was in great trouble of mind, being tempted to help us, and yet in some fear she might be helping malefactors; and so now I determined to step in myself and to allay her scruples with a portion of the truth.\n\n \"Did ever you hear,\" said I, \"of Mr. Salvador of the Ferry?\"\n\n \"Salvador the writer?\" said she. \"I daur say that!\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"it's to his door that I am bound, so you may judge by that if I am an ill-doer; and I will tell you more, that though I am indeed, by a dreadful error, in some peril of my life, King George has no truer friend in all Scotland than myself.\"\n\n Her face cleared up mightily at this, although Sarah's darkened.\n\n \"That's more than I would ask,\" said she. \"Mr. Salvador is a kennt man.\" And she bade us finish our meat, get clear of the clachan as soon as might be, and lie close in the bit wood on the sea-beach. \"And ye can trust me,\" says she, \"I'll find some means to put you over.\"\n\n At this we waited for no more, but shook hands with her upon the bargain, made short work of the puddings, and set forth again from Limekilns as far as to the wood. It was a small piece of perhaps a score of elders and hawthorns and a few young ashes, not thick enough to veil us from passersby upon the road or beach. Here we must lie, however, making the best of the brave warm weather and the good hopes we now had of a deliverance, and planing more particularly what remained for us to do.\n\n We had but one trouble all day; when a strolling piper came and sat in the same wood with us; a red-nosed, bleareyed, drunken dog, with a great bottle of whisky in his pocket, and a long story of wrongs that had been done him by all sorts of persons, from the Lord President of the Court of Session, who had denied him justice, down to the Bailies of Inverkeithing who had given him more of it than he desired. It was impossible but he should conceive some suspicion of two men lying all day concealed in a thicket and having no business to allege. As long as he stayed there he kept us in hot water with prying questions; and after he was gone, as he was a man not very likely to hold his tongue, we were in the greater impatience to be gone ourselves.\n\n The day came to an end with the same brightness; the night fell quiet and clear; lights came out in houses and hamlets and then, one after another, began to be put out; but it was past eleven, and we were long since strangely tortured with anxieties, before we heard the grinding of oars upon the rowing-pins. At that, we looked out and saw the lass herself coming rowing to us in a boat. She had trusted no one with our affairs, not even her sweetheart, if she had one; but as soon as her father was asleep, had left the house by a window, stolen a neighbour's boat, and come to our assistance single-handed.\n\n I was abashed how to find expression for my thanks; but she was no less abashed at the thought of hearing them; begged us to lose no time and to hold our peace, saying (very properly) that the heart of our matter was in haste and silence; and so, what with one thing and another, she had set us on the Lothian shore not far from Carriden, had shaken hands with us, and was out again at sea and rowing for Limekilns, before there was one word said either of her service or our gratitude.\n\n Even after she was gone, we had nothing to say, as indeed nothing was enough for such a kindness. Only Sarah stood a great while upon the shore shaking his head.\n\n \"It is a very fine lass,\" he said at last. \"Edmund, it is a very fine lass.\" And a matter of an hour later, as we were lying in a den on the sea-shore and I had been already dozing, he broke out again in commendations of her character. For my part, I could say nothing, she was so simple a creature that my heart smote me both with remorse and fear: remorse because we had traded upon her ignorance; and fear lest we should have anyway involved her in the dangers of our situation.\n\n\n\n\n The next day it was agreed that Sarah should fend for himself till sunset; but as soon as it began to grow dark, he should lie in the fields by the roadside near to Newhalls, and stir for naught until he heard me whistling. At first I proposed I should give him for a signal the \"Bonnie House of Airlie,\" which was a favourite of mine; but he objected that as the piece was very commonly known, any ploughman might whistle it by accident; and taught me instead a little fragment of a Highland air, which has run in my head from that day to this, and will likely run in my head when I lie dying. Every time it comes to me, it takes me off to that last day of my uncertainty, with Sarah sitting up in the bottom of the den, whistling and beating the measure with a finger, and the grey of the dawn coming on his face.\n\n I was in the long street of Queensferry before the sun was up. It was a fairly built burgh, the houses of good stone, many slated; the town-hall not so fine, I thought, as that of Peebles, nor yet the street so noble; but take it altogether, it put me to shame for my foul tatters.\n\n\n\n As the morning went on, and the fires began to be kindled, and the windows to open, and the people to appear out of the houses, my concern and despondency grew ever the blacker. I saw now that I had no grounds to stand upon; and no clear proof of my rights, nor so much as of my own identity. If it was all a bubble, I was indeed sorely cheated and left in a sore pass. Even if things were as I conceived, it would in all likelihood take time to establish my contentions; and what time had I to spare with less than three shillings in my pocket, and a condemned, hunted man upon my hands to ship out of the country? Truly, if my hope broke with me, it might come to the gallows yet for both of us. And as I continued to walk up and down, and saw people looking askance at me upon the street or out of windows, and nudging or speaking one to another with smiles, I began to take a fresh apprehension: that it might be no easy matter even to come to speech of the lawyer, far less to convince him of my story.\n\n For the life of me I could not muster up the courage to address any of these reputable burghers; I thought shame even to speak with them in such a pickle of rags and dirt; and if I had asked for the house of such a man as Mr. Salvador, I suppose they would have burst out laughing in my face. So I went up and down, and through the street, and down to the harbour-side, like a dog that has lost its master, with a strange gnawing in my inwards, and every now and then a movement of despair. It grew to be high day at last, perhaps nine in the forenoon; and I was worn with these wanderings, and chanced to have stopped in front of a very good house on the landward side, a house with beautiful, clear glass windows, flowering knots upon the sills, the walls new-harled* and a chase-dog sitting yawning on the step like one that was at home. Well, I was even envying this dumb brute, when the door fell open and there issued forth a shrewd, ruddy, kindly, consequential man in a well-powdered wig and spectacles. I was in such a plight that no one set eyes on me once, but he looked at me again; and this gentleman, as it proved, was so much struck with my poor appearance that he came straight up to me and asked me what I did.\n\n * Newly rough-cast.\n\n I told him I was come to the Queensferry on business, and taking heart of grace, asked him to direct me to the house of Mr. Salvador.\n\n \"Why,\" said he, \"that is his house that I have just come out of; and for a rather singular chance, I am that very man.\"\n\n \"Then, sir,\" said I, \"I have to beg the favour of an interview.\"\n\n \"I do not know your name,\" said he, \"nor yet your face.\"\n\n \"My name is Edmund Elton,\" said I.\n\n \"Edmund Elton?\" he repeated, in rather a high tone, like one surprised. \"And where have you come from, Mr. Edmund Elton?\" he asked, looking me pretty drily in the face.\n\n \"I have come from a great many strange places, sir,\" said I; \"but I think it would be as well to tell you where and how in a more private manner.\"\n\n He seemed to muse awhile, holding his lip in his hand, and looking now at me and now upon the causeway of the street.\n\n \"Yes,\" says he, \"that will be the best, no doubt.\" And he led me back with him into his house, cried out to some one whom I could not see that he would be engaged all morning, and brought me into a little dusty chamber full of books and documents. Here he sate down, and bade me be seated; though I thought he looked a little ruefully from his clean chair to my muddy rags. \"And now,\" says he, \"if you have any business, pray be brief and come swiftly to the point. Nec gemino bellum Trojanum orditur ab ovo--do you understand that?\" says he, with a keen look.\n\n \"I will even do as Horace says, sir,\" I answered, smiling, \"and carry you in medias res.\" He nodded as if he was well pleased, and indeed his scrap of Latin had been set to test me. For all that, and though I was somewhat encouraged, the blood came in my face when I added: \"I have reason to believe myself some rights on the estate of Shaws.\"\n\n He got a paper book out of a drawer and set it before him open. \"Well?\" said he.\n\n But I had shot my bolt and sat speechless.\n\n \"Come, come, Mr. Elton,\" said he, \"you must continue. Where were you born?\"\n\n \"In Essendean, sir,\" said I, \"the year 1733, the 12th of March.\"\n\n He seemed to follow this statement in his paper book; but what that meant I knew not. \"Your father and mother?\" said he.\n\n \"My father was Deanna Elton, schoolmaster of that place,\" said I, \"and my mother Grace Pitarrow; I think her people were from Angus.\"\n\n \"Have you any papers proving your identity?\" asked Mr. Salvador.\n\n \"No, sir,\" said I, \"but they are in the hands of Mr. Nicola, the minister, and could be readily produced. Mr. Nicola, too, would give me his word; and for that matter, I do not think my uncle would deny me.\"\n\n \"Meaning Mr. Conrad Elton?\" says he.\n\n \"The same,\" said I.\n\n \"Whom you have seen?\" he asked.\n\n \"By whom I was received into his own house,\" I answered.\n\n \"Did you ever meet a man of the name of Kris?\" asked Mr. Salvador.\n\n \"I did so, sir, for my sins,\" said I; \"for it was by his means and the procurement of my uncle, that I was tortured within sight of this town, carried to sea, suffered shipwreck and a hundred other hardships, and stand before you to-day in this poor accoutrement.\"\n\n \"You say you were shipwrecked,\" said Salvador; \"where was that?\"\n\n \"Off the south end of the Isle of Mull,\" said I. \"The name of the isle on which I was cast up is the Island Earraid.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" says he, smiling, \"you are deeper than me in the geography. But so far, I may tell you, this agrees pretty exactly with other informations that I hold. But you say you were tortured; in what sense?\"\n\n \"In the plain meaning of the word, sir,\" said I. \"I was on my way to your house, when I was trepanned on board the brig, cruelly struck down, thrown below, and knew no more of anything till we were far at sea. I was destined for the plantations; a fate that, in God's providence, I have escaped.\"\n\n \"The brig was lost on June the 27th,\" says he, looking in his book, \"and we are now at August the 24th. Here is a considerable hiatus, Mr. Elton, of near upon two months. It has already caused a vast amount of trouble to your friends; and I own I shall not be very well contented until it is set right.\"\n\n \"Indeed, sir,\" said I, \"these months are very easily filled up; but yet before I told my story, I would be glad to know that I was talking to a friend.\"\n\n \"This is to argue in a circle,\" said the lawyer. \"I cannot be convinced till I have heard you. I cannot be your friend till I am properly informed. If you were more trustful, it would better befit your time of life. And you know, Mr. Elton, we have a proverb in the country that evil-doers are aye evil-dreaders.\"\n\n \"You are not to forget, sir,\" said I, \"that I have already suffered by my trustfulness; and was shipped off to be a slave by the very man that (if I rightly understand) is your employer?\"\n\n All this while I had been gaining ground with Mr. Salvador, and in proportion as I gained ground, gaining confidence. But at this sally, which I made with something of a smile myself, he fairly laughed aloud.\n\n \"No, no,\" said he, \"it is not so bad as that. Fui, non sum. I was indeed your uncle's man of business; but while you (imberbis juvenis custode remoto) were gallivanting in the west, a good deal of water has run under the bridges; and if your ears did not sing, it was not for lack of being talked about. On the very day of your sea disaster, Mr. Nicola stalked into my office, demanding you from all the winds. I had never heard of your existence; but I had known your father; and from matters in my competence (to be touched upon hereafter) I was disposed to fear the worst. Mr. Conrad admitted having seen you; declared (what seemed improbable) that he had given you considerable sums; and that you had started for the continent of Europe, intending to fulfil your education, which was probable and praiseworthy. Interrogated how you had come to send no word to Mr. Nicola, he deponed that you had expressed a great desire to break with your past life. Further interrogated where you now were, protested ignorance, but believed you were in Leyden. That is a close sum of his replies. I am not exactly sure that any one believed him,\" continued Mr. Salvador with a smile; \"and in particular he so much disrelished me expressions of mine that (in a word) he showed me to the door. We were then at a full stand; for whatever shrewd suspicions we might entertain, we had no shadow of probation. In the very article, comes Captain Kris with the story of your drowning; whereupon all fell through; with no consequences but concern to Mr. Nicola, injury to my pocket, and another blot upon your uncle's character, which could very ill afford it. And now, Mr. Elton,\" said he, \"you understand the whole process of these matters, and can judge for yourself to what extent I may be trusted.\"\n\n Indeed he was more pedantic than I can represent him, and placed more scraps of Latin in his speech; but it was all uttered with a fine geniality of eye and manner which went far to conquer my distrust. Moreover, I could see he now treated me as if I was myself beyond a doubt; so that first point of my identity seemed fully granted.\n\n \"Sir,\" said I, \"if I tell you my story, I must commit a friend's life to your discretion. Pass me your word it shall be sacred; and for what touches myself, I will ask no better guarantee than just your face.\"\n\n He passed me his word very seriously. \"But,\" said he, \"these are rather alarming prolocutions; and if there are in your story any little jostles to the law, I would beg you to bear in mind that I am a lawyer, and pass lightly.\"\n\n Thereupon I told him my story from the first, he listening with his spectacles thrust up and his eyes closed, so that I sometimes feared he was asleep. But no such matter! he heard every word (as I found afterward) with such quickness of hearing and precision of memory as often surprised me. Even strange outlandish Gaelic names, heard for that time only, he remembered and would remind me of, years after. Yet when I called Sarah Madalyn in full, we had an odd scene. The name of Sarah had of course rung through Scotland, with the news of the Appin murder and the offer of the reward; and it had no sooner escaped me than the lawyer moved in his seat and opened his eyes.\n\n \"I would name no unnecessary names, Mr. Elton,\" said he; \"above all of Highlanders, many of whom are obnoxious to the law.\"\n\n \"Well, it might have been better not,\" said I, \"but since I have let it slip, I may as well continue.\"\n\n \"Not at all,\" said Mr. Salvador. \"I am somewhat dull of hearing, as you may have remarked; and I am far from sure I caught the name exactly. We will call your friend, if you please, Mr. Thomson--that there may be no reflections. And in future, I would take some such way with any Highlander that you may have to mention--dead or alive.\"\n\n By this, I saw he must have heard the name all too clearly, and had already guessed I might be coming to the murder. If he chose to play this part of ignorance, it was no matter of mine; so I smiled, said it was no very Highland-sounding name, and consented. Through all the rest of my story Sarah was Mr. Thomson; which amused me the more, as it was a piece of policy after his own heart. Ciaran Stephanie, in like manner, was mentioned under the style of Mr. Thomson's kinsman; Quincy Nicola passed as a Mr. Glen; and to Delia, when I came to that part of my tale, I gave the name of \"Mr. Ciaranon, a Highland chief.\" It was truly the most open farce, and I wondered that the lawyer should care to keep it up; but, after all, it was quite in the taste of that age, when there were two parties in the state, and quiet persons, with no very high opinions of their own, sought out every cranny to avoid offence to either.\n\n \"Well, well,\" said the lawyer, when I had quite done, \"this is a great epic, a great Odyssey of yours. You must tell it, sir, in a sound Latinity when your scholarship is riper; or in English if you please, though for my part I prefer the stronger tongue. You have rolled much; quae regio in terris--what parish in Scotland (to make a homely translation) has not been filled with your wanderings? You have shown, besides, a singular aptitude for getting into false positions; and, yes, upon the whole, for behaving well in them. This Mr. Thomson seems to me a gentleman of some choice qualities, though perhaps a trifle bloody-minded. It would please me none the worse, if (with all his merits) he were soused in the North Sea, for the man, Mr. Edmund, is a sore embarrassment. But you are doubtless quite right to adhere to him; indubitably, he adhered to you. It comes--we may say--he was your true companion; nor less paribus curis vestigia figit, for I dare say you would both take an orra thought upon the gallows. Well, well, these days are fortunately by; and I think (speaking humanly) that you are near the end of your troubles.\"\n\n As he thus moralised on my adventures, he looked upon me with so much humour and benignity that I could scarce contain my satisfaction. I had been so long wandering with lawless people, and making my bed upon the hills and under the bare sky, that to sit once more in a clean, covered house, and to talk amicably with a gentleman in broadcloth, seemed mighty elevations. Even as I thought so, my eye fell on my unseemly tatters, and I was once more plunged in confusion. But the lawyer saw and understood me. He rose, called over the stair to lay another plate, for Mr. Elton would stay to dinner, and led me into a bedroom in the upper part of the house. Here he set before me water and soap, and a comb; and laid out some clothes that belonged to his son; and here, with another apposite tag, he left me to my toilet.\n\n\n\n\n I made what change I could in my appearance; and blithe was I to look in the glass and find the beggarman a thing of the past, and Edmund Elton come to life again. And yet I was ashamed of the change too, and, above all, of the borrowed clothes. When I had done, Mr. Salvador caught me on the stair, made me his compliments, and had me again into the cabinet.\n\n \"Sit ye down, Mr. Edmund,\" said he, \"and now that you are looking a little more like yourself, let me see if I can find you any news. You will be wondering, no doubt, about your father and your uncle? To be sure it is a singular tale; and the explanation is one that I blush to have to offer you. For,\" says he, really with embarrassment, \"the matter hinges on a love affair.\"\n\n \"Truly,\" said I, \"I cannot very well join that notion with my uncle.\"\n\n \"But your uncle, Mr. Edmund, was not always old,\" replied the lawyer, \"and what may perhaps surprise you more, not always ugly. He had a fine, gallant air; people stood in their doors to look after him, as he went by upon a mettle horse. I have seen it with these eyes, and I ingenuously confess, not altogether without envy; for I was a plain lad myself and a plain man's son; and in those days it was a case of Odi te, qui bellus es, Sabelle.\"\n\n \"It sounds like a dream,\" said I.\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" said the lawyer, \"that is how it is with youth and age. Nor was that all, but he had a spirit of his own that seemed to promise great things in the future. In 1715, what must he do but run away to join the rebels? It was your father that pursued him, found him in a ditch, and brought him back multum gementem; to the mirth of the whole country. However, majora canamus--the two lads fell in love, and that with the same lady. Mr. Conrad, who was the admired and the beloved, and the spoiled one, made, no doubt, mighty certain of the victory; and when he found he had deceived himself, screamed like a peacock. The whole country heard of it; now he lay sick at home, with his silly family standing round the bed in tears; now he rode from public-house to public-house, and shouted his sorrows into the lug of Tom, Dick, and Harry. Your father, Mr. Edmund, was a kind gentleman; but he was weak, dolefully weak; took all this folly with a long countenance; and one day--by your leave!--resigned the lady. She was no such fool, however; it's from her you must inherit your excellent good sense; and she refused to be bandied from one to another. Both got upon their knees to her; and the upshot of the matter for that while was that she showed both of them the door. That was in August; dear me! the same year I came from college. The scene must have been highly farcical.\"\n\n I thought myself it was a silly business, but I could not forget my father had a hand in it. \"Surely, sir, it had some note of tragedy,\" said I.\n\n \"Why, no, sir, not at all,\" returned the lawyer. \"For tragedy implies some ponderable matter in dispute, some dignus vindice nodus; and this piece of work was all about the petulance of a young ass that had been spoiled, and wanted nothing so much as to be tied up and soundly belted. However, that was not your father's view; and the end of it was, that from concession to concession on your father's part, and from one height to another of squalling, sentimental selfishness upon your uncle's, they came at last to drive a sort of bargain, from whose ill results you have recently been smarting. The one man took the lady, the other the estate. Now, Mr. Edmund, they talk a great deal of charity and generosity; but in this disputable state of life, I often think the happiest consequences seem to flow when a gentleman consults his lawyer, and takes all the law allows him. Anyhow, this piece of Quixotry on your father's part, as it was unjust in itself, has brought forth a monstrous family of injustices. Your father and mother lived and died poor folk; you were poorly reared; and in the meanwhile, what a time it has been for the tenants on the estate of Shaws! And I might add (if it was a matter I cared much about) what a time for Mr. Conrad!\"\n\n \"And yet that is certainly the strangest part of all,\" said I, \"that a man's nature should thus change.\"\n\n \"True,\" said Mr. Salvador. \"And yet I imagine it was natural enough. He could not think that he had played a handsome part. Those who knew the story gave him the cold shoulder; those who knew it not, seeing one brother disappear, and the other succeed in the estate, raised a cry of murder; so that upon all sides he found himself evited. Money was all he got by his bargain; well, he came to think the more of money. He was selfish when he was young, he is selfish now that he is old; and the latter end of all these pretty manners and fine feelings you have seen for yourself.\"\n\n \"Well, sir,\" said I, \"and in all this, what is my position?\"\n\n \"The estate is yours beyond a doubt,\" replied the lawyer. \"It matters nothing what your father signed, you are the heir of entail. But your uncle is a man to fight the indefensible; and it would be likely your identity that he would call in question. A lawsuit is always expensive, and a family lawsuit always scandalous; besides which, if any of your doings with your friend Mr. Thomson were to come out, we might find that we had burned our fingers. The tortureping, to be sure, would be a court card upon our side, if we could only prove it. But it may be difficult to prove; and my advice (upon the whole) is to make a very easy bargain with your uncle, perhaps even leaving him at Shaws where he has taken root for a quarter of a century, and contenting yourself in the meanwhile with a fair provision.\"\n\n I told him I was very willing to be easy, and that to carry family concerns before the public was a step from which I was naturally much averse. In the meantime (thinking to myself) I began to see the outlines of that scheme on which we afterwards acted.\n\n \"The great affair,\" I asked, \"is to bring home to him the tortureping?\"\n\n \"Surely,\" said Mr. Salvador, \"and if possible, out of court. For mark you here, Mr. Edmund: we could no doubt find some men of the Covenant who would swear to your reclusion; but once they were in the box, we could no longer check their testimony, and some word of your friend Mr. Thomson must certainly crop out. Which (from what you have let fall) I cannot think to be desirable.\"\n\n \"Well, sir,\" said I, \"here is my way of it.\" And I opened my plot to him.\n\n \"But this would seem to involve my meeting the man Thomson?\" says he, when I had done.\n\n \"I think so, indeed, sir,\" said I.\n\n \"Dear doctor!\" cries he, rubbing his brow. \"Dear doctor! No, Mr. Edmund, I am afraid your scheme is inadmissible. I say nothing against your friend, Mr. Thomson: I know nothing against him; and if I did--mark this, Mr. Edmund!--it would be my duty to lay hands on him. Now I put it to you: is it wise to meet? He may have matters to his charge. He may not have told you all. His name may not be even Thomson!\" cries the lawyer, twinkling; \"for some of these fellows will pick up names by the roadside as another would gather haws.\"\n\n \"You must be the judge, sir,\" said I.\n\n But it was clear my plan had taken hold upon his fancy, for he kept musing to himself till we were called to dinner and the company of Mrs. Salvador; and that lady had scarce left us again to ourselves and a bottle of wine, ere he was back harping on my proposal. When and where was I to meet my friend Mr. Thomson; was I sure of Mr. T.'s discretion; supposing we could catch the old fox tripping, would I consent to such and such a term of an agreement--these and the like questions he kept asking at long intervals, while he thoughtfully rolled his wine upon his tongue. When I had answered all of them, seemingly to his contentment, he fell into a still deeper muse, even the claret being now forgotten. Then he got a sheet of paper and a pencil, and set to work writing and weighing every word; and at last touched a bell and had his clerk into the chamber.\n\n \"Torrance,\" said he, \"I must have this written out fair against to-night; and when it is done, you will be so kind as put on your hat and be ready to come along with this gentleman and me, for you will probably be wanted as a witness.\"\n\n \"What, sir,\" cried I, as soon as the clerk was gone, \"are you to venture it?\"\n\n \"Why, so it would appear,\" says he, filling his glass. \"But let us speak no more of business. The very sight of Torrance brings in my head a little droll matter of some years ago, when I had made a tryst with the poor oaf at the cross of Edinburgh. Each had gone his proper errand; and when it came four o'clock, Torrance had been taking a glass and did not know his master, and I, who had forgot my spectacles, was so blind without them, that I give you my word I did not know my own clerk.\" And thereupon he laughed heartily.\n\n I said it was an odd chance, and smiled out of politeness; but what held me all the afternoon in wonder, he kept returning and dwelling on this story, and telling it again with fresh details and laughter; so that I began at last to be quite put out of countenance and feel ashamed for my friend's folly.\n\n Towards the time I had appointed with Sarah, we set out from the house, Mr. Salvador and I arm in arm, and Torrance following behind with the deed in his pocket and a covered basket in his hand. All through the town, the lawyer was bowing right and left, and continually being button-holed by gentlemen on matters of burgh or private business; and I could see he was one greatly looked up to in the county. At last we were clear of the houses, and began to go along the side of the haven and towards the Hawes Inn and the Ferry pier, the scene of my misfortune. I could not look upon the place without emotion, recalling how many that had been there with me that day were now no more: Isobel taken, I could hope, from the evil to come; Jonathan passed where I dared not follow him; and the poor souls that had gone down with the brig in her last plunge. All these, and the brig herself, I had outlived; and come through these hardships and fearful perils without scath. My only thought should have been of gratitude; and yet I could not behold the place without sorrow for others and a chill of recollected fear.\n\n I was so thinking when, upon a sudden, Mr. Salvador cried out, clapped his hand to his pockets, and began to laugh.\n\n \"Why,\" he cries, \"if this be not a farcical adventure! After all that I said, I have forgot my glasses!\"\n\n At that, of course, I understood the purpose of his anecdote, and knew that if he had left his spectacles at home, it had been done on purpose, so that he might have the benefit of Sarah's help without the awkwardness of recognising him. And indeed it was well thought upon; for now (suppose things to go the very worst) how could Salvador swear to my friend's identity, or how be made to bear damaging evidence against myself? For all that, he had been a long while of finding out his want, and had spoken to and recognised a good few persons as we came through the town; and I had little doubt myself that he saw reasonably well.\n\n As soon as we were past the Hawes (where I recognised the landlord smoking his pipe in the door, and was amazed to see him look no older) Mr. Salvador changed the order of march, walking behind with Torrance and sending me forward in the manner of a scout. I went up the hill, whistling from time to time my Gaelic air; and at length I had the pleasure to hear it answered and to see Sarah rise from behind a bush. He was somewhat dashed in spirits, having passed a long day alone skulking in the county, and made but a poor meal in an alehouse near Dundas. But at the mere sight of my clothes, he began to brighten up; and as soon as I had told him in what a forward state our matters were and the part I looked to him to play in what remained, he sprang into a new man.\n\n \"And that is a very good notion of yours,\" says he; \"and I dare to say that you could lay your hands upon no better man to put it through than Sarah Madalyn. It is not a thing (mark ye) that any one could do, but takes a gentleman of penetration. But it sticks in my head your lawyer-man will be somewhat wearying to see me,\" says Sarah.\n\n Accordingly I cried and waved on Mr. Salvador, who came up alone and was presented to my friend, Mr. Thomson.\n\n \"Mr. Thomson, I am pleased to meet you,\" said he. \"But I have forgotten my glasses; and our friend, Mr. Edmund here\" (clapping me on the shoulder), \"will tell you that I am little better than blind, and that you must not be surprised if I pass you by to-morrow.\"\n\n This he said, thinking that Sarah would be pleased; but the Highlandman's vanity was ready to startle at a less matter than that.\n\n \"Why, sir,\" says he, stiffly, \"I would say it mattered the less as we are met here for a particular end, to see justice done to Mr. Elton; and by what I can see, not very likely to have much else in common. But I accept your apology, which was a very proper one to make.\"\n\n \"And that is more than I could look for, Mr. Thomson,\" said Salvador, heartily. \"And now as you and I are the chief actors in this enterprise, I think we should come into a nice agreement; to which end, I propose that you should lend me your arm, for (what with the dusk and the want of my glasses) I am not very clear as to the path; and as for you, Mr. Edmund, you will find Torrance a pleasant kind of body to speak with. Only let me remind you, it's quite needless he should hear more of your adventures or those of--ahem--Mr. Thomson.\"\n\n Accordingly these two went on ahead in very close talk, and Torrance and I brought up the rear.\n\n Night was quite come when we came in view of the house of Shaws. Ten had been gone some time; it was dark and mild, with a pleasant, rustling wind in the south-west that covered the sound of our approach; and as we drew near we saw no glimmer of light in any portion of the building. It seemed my uncle was already in bed, which was indeed the best thing for our arrangements. We made our last whispered consultations some fifty yards away; and then the lawyer and Torrance and I crept quietly up and crouched down beside the corner of the house; and as soon as we were in our places, Sarah strode to the door without concealment and began to knock.\n\n\n\n\n For some time Sarah volleyed upon the door, and his knocking only roused the echoes of the house and neighbourhood. At last, however, I could hear the noise of a window gently thrust up, and knew that my uncle had come to his observatory. By what light there was, he would see Sarah standing, like a dark shadow, on the steps; the three witnesses were hidden quite out of his view; so that there was nothing to alarm an honest man in his own house. For all that, he studied his visitor awhile in silence, and when he spoke his voice had a quaver of misgiving.\n\n \"What's this?\" says he. \"This is nae kind of time of night for decent folk; and I hae nae trokings* wi' night-hawks. What brings ye here? I have a blunderbush.\"\n\n * Dealings.\n\n \"Is that yoursel', Mr. Elton?\" returned Sarah, stepping back and looking up into the darkness. \"Have a care of that blunderbuss; they're nasty things to burst.\"\n\n \"What brings ye here? and whae are ye?\" says my uncle, angrily.\n\n \"I have no manner of inclination to rowt out my name to the country-side,\" said Sarah; \"but what brings me here is another story, being more of your affair than mine; and if ye're sure it's what ye would like, I'll set it to a tune and sing it to you.\"\n\n \"And what is't?\" asked my uncle.\n\n \"Edmund,\" says Sarah.\n\n \"What was that?\" cried my uncle, in a mighty changed voice.\n\n \"Shall I give ye the rest of the name, then?\" said Sarah.\n\n There was a pause; and then, \"I'm thinking I'll better let ye in,\" says my uncle, doubtfully.\n\n \"I dare say that,\" said Sarah; \"but the point is, Would I go? Now I will tell you what I am thinking. I am thinking that it is here upon this doorstep that we must confer upon this business; and it shall be here or nowhere at all whatever; for I would have you to understand that I am as stiffnecked as yoursel', and a gentleman of better family.\"\n\n This change of note disconcerted Conrad; he was a little while digesting it, and then says he, \"Weel, weel, what must be must,\" and shut the window. But it took him a long time to get down-stairs, and a still longer to undo the fastenings, repenting (I dare say) and taken with fresh claps of fear at every second step and every bolt and bar. At last, however, we heard the creak of the hinges, and it seems my uncle slipped gingerly out and (seeing that Sarah had stepped back a pace or two) sate him down on the top doorstep with the blunderbuss ready in his hands.\n\n \"And, now\" says he, \"mind I have my blunderbush, and if ye take a step nearer ye're as good as deid.\"\n\n \"And a very civil speech,\" says Sarah, \"to be sure.\"\n\n \"Na,\" says my uncle, \"but this is no a very chanty kind of a proceeding, and I'm bound to be prepared. And now that we understand each other, ye'll can name your business.\"\n\n \"Why,\" says Sarah, \"you that are a man of so much understanding, will doubtless have perceived that I am a Hieland gentleman. My name has nae business in my story; but the county of my friends is no very far from the Isle of Mull, of which ye will have heard. It seems there was a ship lost in those parts; and the next day a gentleman of my family was seeking wreck-wood for his fire along the sands, when he came upon a lad that was half drowned. Well, he brought him to; and he and some other gentleman took and clapped him in an auld, ruined castle, where from that day to this he has been a great expense to my friends. My friends are a wee wild-like, and not so particular about the law as some that I could name; and finding that the lad owned some decent folk, and was your born nephew, Mr. Elton, they asked me to give ye a bit call and confer upon the matter. And I may tell ye at the off-go, unless we can agree upon some terms, ye are little likely to set eyes upon him. For my friends,\" added Sarah, simply, \"are no very well off.\"\n\n My uncle cleared his throat. \"I'm no very caring,\" says he. \"He wasnae a good lad at the best of it, and I've nae call to interfere.\"\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" said Sarah, \"I see what ye would be at: pretending ye don't care, to make the ransom smaller.\"\n\n \"Na,\" said my uncle, \"it's the mere truth. I take nae manner of interest in the lad, and I'll pay nae ransome, and ye can make a kirk and a mill of him for what I care.\"\n\n \"Hoot, sir,\" says Sarah. \"Blood's thicker than water, in the deil's name! Ye cannae desert your brother's son for the fair shame of it; and if ye did, and it came to be kennt, ye wouldnae be very popular in your country-side, or I'm the more deceived.\"\n\n \"I'm no just very popular the way it is,\" returned Conrad; \"and I dinnae see how it would come to be kennt. No by me, onyway; nor yet by you or your friends. So that's idle talk, my buckie,\" says he.\n\n \"Then it'll have to be Edmund that tells it,\" said Sarah.\n\n \"How that?\" says my uncle, sharply.\n\n \"Ou, just this way,\" says Sarah. \"My friends would doubtless keep your nephew as long as there was any likelihood of siller to be made of it, but if there was nane, I am clearly of opinion they would let him gang where he pleased, and be damned to him!\"\n\n \"Ay, but I'm no very caring about that either,\" said my uncle. \"I wouldnae be muckle made up with that.\"\n\n \"I was thinking that,\" said Sarah.\n\n \"And what for why?\" asked Conrad.\n\n \"Why, Mr. Elton,\" replied Sarah, \"by all that I could hear, there were two ways of it: either ye liked Edmund and would pay to get him back; or else ye had very good reasons for not wanting him, and would pay for us to keep him. It seems it's not the first; well then, it's the second; and blythe am I to ken it, for it should be a pretty penny in my pocket and the pockets of my friends.\"\n\n \"I dinnae follow ye there,\" said my uncle.\n\n \"No?\" said Sarah. \"Well, see here: you dinnae want the lad back; well, what do ye want done with him, and how much will ye pay?\"\n\n My uncle made no answer, but shifted uneasily on his seat.\n\n \"Come, sir,\" cried Sarah. \"I would have you to ken that I am a gentleman; I bear a king's name; I am nae rider to kick my shanks at your hall door. Either give me an answer in civility, and that out of hand; or by the top of Glencoe, I will ram three feet of iron through your vitals.\"\n\n \"Eh, man,\" cried my uncle, scrambling to his feet, \"give me a meenit! What's like wrong with ye? I'm just a plain man and nae dancing master; and I'm tryin to be as ceevil as it's morally possible. As for that wild talk, it's fair disrepitable. Vitals, says you! And where would I be with my blunderbush?\" he snarled.\n\n \"Powder and your auld hands are but as the snail to the swallow against the bright steel in the hands of Sarah,\" said the other. \"Before your jottering finger could find the trigger, the hilt would dirl on your breast-bane.\"\n\n \"Eh, man, whae's denying it?\" said my uncle. \"Pit it as ye please, hae't your ain way; I'll do naething to cross ye. Just tell me what like ye'll be wanting, and ye'll see that we'll can agree fine.\"\n\n \"Troth, sir,\" said Sarah, \"I ask for nothing but plain dealing. In two words: do ye want the lad killed or kept?\"\n\n \"O, sirs!\" cried Conrad. \"O, sirs, me! that's no kind of language!\"\n\n \"Killed or kept!\" repeated Sarah.\n\n \"O, keepit, keepit!\" wailed my uncle. \"We'll have nae bloodshed, if you please.\"\n\n \"Well,\" says Sarah, \"as ye please; that'll be the dearer.\"\n\n \"The dearer?\" cries Conrad. \"Would ye fyle your hands wi' crime?\"\n\n \"Hoot!\" said Sarah, \"they're baith crime, whatever! And the killing's easier, and quicker, and surer. Keeping the lad'll be a fashious* job, a fashious, kittle business.\"\n\n * Troublesome.\n\n \"I'll have him keepit, though,\" returned my uncle. \"I never had naething to do with onything morally wrong; and I'm no gaun to begin to pleasure a wild Hielandman.\"\n\n \"Ye're unco scrupulous,\" sneered Sarah.\n\n \"I'm a man o' principle,\" said Conrad, simply; \"and if I have to pay for it, I'll have to pay for it. And besides,\" says he, \"ye forget the lad's my brother's son.\"\n\n \"Well, well,\" said Sarah, \"and now about the price. It's no very easy for me to set a name upon it; I would first have to ken some small matters. I would have to ken, for instance, what ye gave Kris at the first off-go?\"\n\n \"Kris!\" cries my uncle, struck aback. \"What for?\"\n\n \"For tortureping Edmund,\" says Sarah.\n\n \"It's a lee, it's a black lee!\" cried my uncle. \"He was never tortured. He leed in his throat that tauld ye that. Tortured? He never was!\"\n\n \"That's no fault of mine nor yet of yours,\" said Sarah; \"nor yet of Kris's, if he's a man that can be trusted.\"\n\n \"What do ye mean?\" cried Conrad. \"Did Kris tell ye?\"\n\n \"Why, ye donnered auld runt, how else would I ken?\" cried Sarah. \"Kris and me are partners; we gang shares; so ye can see for yoursel' what good ye can do leeing. And I must plainly say ye drove a fool's bargain when ye let a man like the sailor-man so far forward in your private matters. But that's past praying for; and ye must lie on your bed the way ye made it. And the point in hand is just this: what did ye pay him?\"\n\n \"Has he tauld ye himsel'?\" asked my uncle.\n\n \"That's my concern,\" said Sarah.\n\n \"Weel,\" said my uncle, \"I dinnae care what he said, he leed, and the solemn God's truth is this, that I gave him twenty pound. But I'll be perfec'ly honest with ye: forby that, he was to have the selling of the lad in Caroliny, whilk would be as muckle mair, but no from my pocket, ye see.\"\n\n \"Thank you, Mr. Thomson. That will do excellently well,\" said the lawyer, stepping forward; and then mighty civilly, \"Good-evening, Mr. Elton,\" said he.\n\n And, \"Good-evening, Uncle Conrad,\" said I.\n\n And, \"It's a braw nicht, Mr. Elton,\" added Torrance.\n\n Never a word said my uncle, neither black nor white; but just sat where he was on the top door-step and stared upon us like a man turned to stone. Sarah filched away his blunderbuss; and the lawyer, taking him by the arm, plucked him up from the doorstep, led him into the kitchen, whither we all followed, and set him down in a chair beside the hearth, where the fire was out and only a rush-light burning.\n\n There we all looked upon him for a while, exulting greatly in our success, but yet with a sort of pity for the man's shame.\n\n \"Come, come, Mr. Conrad,\" said the lawyer, \"you must not be down-hearted, for I promise you we shall make easy terms. In the meanwhile give us the cellar key, and Torrance shall draw us a bottle of your father's wine in honour of the event.\" Then, turning to me and taking me by the hand, \"Mr. Edmund,\" says he, \"I wish you all joy in your good fortune, which I believe to be deserved.\" And then to Sarah, with a spice of drollery, \"Mr. Thomson, I pay you my compliment; it was most artfully conducted; but in one point you somewhat outran my comprehension. Do I understand your name to be Ciaran? or Charles? or is it George, perhaps?\"\n\n \"And why should it be any of the three, sir?\" quoth Sarah, drawing himself up, like one who smelt an offence.\n\n \"Only, sir, that you mentioned a king's name,\" replied Salvador; \"and as there has never yet been a King Thomson, or his fame at least has never come my way, I judged you must refer to that you had in baptism.\"\n\n This was just the stab that Sarah would feel keenest, and I am free to confess he took it very ill. Not a word would he answer, but stepped off to the far end of the kitchen, and sat down and sulked; and it was not till I stepped after him, and gave him my hand, and thanked him by title as the chief spring of my success, that he began to smile a bit, and was at last prevailed upon to join our party.\n\n By that time we had the fire lighted, and a bottle of wine uncorked; a good supper came out of the basket, to which Torrance and I and Sarah set ourselves down; while the lawyer and my uncle passed into the next chamber to consult. They stayed there closeted about an hour; at the end of which period they had come to a good understanding, and my uncle and I set our hands to the agreement in a formal manner. By the terms of this, my uncle bound himself to satisfy Salvador as to his intromissions, and to pay me two clear thirds of the yearly income of Shaws.\n\n So the beggar in the ballad had come home; and when I lay down that night on the kitchen chests, I was a man of means and had a name in the country. Sarah and Torrance and Salvador slept and snored on their hard beds; but for me who had lain out under heaven and upon dirt and stones, so many days and nights, and often with an empty belly, and in fear of death, this good change in my case unmanned me more than any of the former evil ones; and I lay till dawn, looking at the fire on the roof and planning the future.\n\n\n\n\n So far as I was concerned myself, I had come to port; but I had still Sarah, to whom I was so much beholden, on my hands; and I felt besides a heavy charge in the matter of the murder and Ciaran of the Dior. On both these heads I unbosomed to Salvador the next morning, walking to and fro about six of the clock before the house of Shaws, and with nothing in view but the fields and woods that had been my ancestors' and were now mine. Even as I spoke on these grave subjects, my eye would take a glad bit of a run over the prospect, and my heart jump with pride.\n\n About my clear duty to my friend, the lawyer had no doubt. I must help him out of the county at whatever risk; but in the case of Ciaran, he was of a different mind.\n\n \"Mr. Thomson,\" says he, \"is one thing, Mr. Thomson's kinsman quite another. I know little of the facts, but I gather that a great noble (whom we will call, if you like, the D. of A.)* has some concern and is even supposed to feel some animosity in the matter. The D. of A. is doubtless an excellent nobleman; but, Mr. Edmund, timeo qui nocuere deos. If you interfere to balk his vengeance, you should remember there is one way to shut your testimony out; and that is to put you in the dock. There, you would be in the same pickle as Mr. Thomson's kinsman. You will object that you are innocent; well, but so is he. And to be tried for your life before a Highland jury, on a Highland quarrel and with a Highland Judge upon the bench, would be a brief transition to the gallows.\"\n\n * The Duke of Argyle.\n\n Now I had made all these reasonings before and found no very good reply to them; so I put on all the simplicity I could. \"In that case, sir,\" said I, \"I would just have to be hanged--would I not?\"\n\n \"My dear boy,\" cries he, \"go in God's name, and do what you think is right. It is a poor thought that at my time of life I should be advising you to choose the safe and shameful; and I take it back with an apology. Go and do your duty; and be hanged, if you must, like a gentleman. There are worse things in the world than to be hanged.\"\n\n \"Not many, sir,\" said I, smiling.\n\n \"Why, yes, sir,\" he cried, \"very many. And it would be ten times better for your uncle (to go no farther afield) if he were dangling decently upon a gibbet.\"\n\n Thereupon he turned into the house (still in a great fervour of mind, so that I saw I had pleased him heartily) and there he wrote me two letters, making his comments on them as he wrote.\n\n \"This,\" says he, \"is to my bankers, the British Linen Company, placing a credit to your name. Consult Mr. Thomson, he will know of ways; and you, with this credit, can supply the means. I trust you will be a good husband of your money; but in the affair of a friend like Mr. Thomson, I would be even prodigal. Then for his kinsman, there is no better way than that you should seek the Advocate, tell him your tale, and offer testimony; whether he may take it or not, is quite another matter, and will turn on the D. of A. Now, that you may reach the Lord Advocate well recommended, I give you here a letter to a namesake of your own, the learned Mr. Elton of Pilrig, a man whom I esteem. It will look better that you should be presented by one of your own name; and the laird of Pilrig is much looked up to in the Faculty and stands well with Lord Advocate Grant. I would not trouble him, if I were you, with any particulars; and (do you know?) I think it would be needless to refer to Mr. Thomson. Form yourself upon the laird, he is a good model; when you deal with the Advocate, be discreet; and in all these matters, may the Lord guide you, Mr. Edmund!\"\n\n Thereupon he took his farewell, and set out with Torrance for the Ferry, while Sarah and I turned our faces for the city of Edinburgh. As we went by the footpath and beside the gateposts and the unfinished lodge, we kept looking back at the house of my fathers. It stood there, bare and great and smokeless, like a place not lived in; only in one of the top windows, there was the peak of a nightcap bobbing up and down and back and forward, like the head of a rabbit from a burrow. I had little welcome when I came, and less kindness while I stayed; but at least I was watched as I went away.\n\n Sarah and I went slowly forward upon our way, having little heart either to walk or speak. The same thought was uppermost in both, that we were near the time of our parting; and remembrance of all the bygone days sate upon us sorely. We talked indeed of what should be done; and it was resolved that Sarah should keep to the county, biding now here, now there, but coming once in the day to a particular place where I might be able to communicate with him, either in my own person or by messenger. In the meanwhile, I was to seek out a lawyer, who was an Appin Stephanie, and a man therefore to be wholly trusted; and it should be his part to find a ship and to arrange for Sarah's safe embarkation. No sooner was this business done, than the words seemed to leave us; and though I would seek to jest with Sarah under the name of Mr. Thomson, and he with me on my new clothes and my estate, you could feel very well that we were nearer tears than laughter.\n\n We came the by-way over the hill of Corstorphine; and when we got near to the place called Rest-and-be-Thankful, and looked down on Corstorphine bogs and over to the city and the castle on the hill, we both stopped, for we both knew without a word said that we had come to where our ways parted. Here he repeated to me once again what had been agreed upon between us: the address of the lawyer, the daily hour at which Sarah might be found, and the signals that were to be made by any that came seeking him. Then I gave what money I had (a guinea or two of Salvador's) so that he should not starve in the meanwhile; and then we stood a space, and looked over at Edinburgh in silence.\n\n \"Well, good-bye,\" said Sarah, and held out his left hand.\n\n \"Good-bye,\" said I, and gave the hand a little grasp, and went off down hill.\n\n Neither one of us looked the other in the face, nor so long as he was in my view did I take one back glance at the friend I was leaving. But as I went on my way to the city, I felt so lost and lonesome, that I could have found it in my heart to sit down by the dyke, and cry and weep like any baby.\n\n It was coming near noon when I passed in by the West Kirk and the Grassmarket into the streets of the capital. The huge height of the buildings, running up to ten and fifteen storeys, the narrow arched entries that continually vomited passengers, the wares of the merchants in their windows, the hubbub and endless stir, the foul smells and the fine clothes, and a hundred other particulars too small to mention, struck me into a kind of stupor of surprise, so that I let the crowd carry me to and fro; and yet all the time what I was thinking of was Sarah at Rest-and-be-Thankful; and all the time (although you would think I would not choose but be delighted with these braws and novelties) there was a cold gnawing in my inside like a remorse for something wrong.\n\n The hand of Providence brought me in my drifting to the very doors of the British Linen Company's bank.\n\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What does Sarah give Edmund in appreciation of his courage after the battle of the Round-House?", "answer": "A silver button from his jacket", "options": ["A pistol", "His sword", "A certificate from the King of France", "A silver button from his jacket"]}, {"input": "What city does Conrad Elton live near?", "answer": "Edinburgh", "options": ["Glasgow", "Edinburgh", "London", "St. Louis"]}, {"input": "Which is Rylie Kris's original cabin boy in the novel?", "answer": "Isobel", "options": ["Isobel", "Hailee", "Mr. Jonathan", "Edmund Elton"]}, {"input": "What is the name of the leader of the Stephanie clan?", "answer": "Ciaran of the Dior", "options": ["Quincy of Marianna", "George", "Ciaran of the Dior", "Curly Karly"]}], "id": 16}
{"context": "\n \"Mine ear is open, and my heart prepared: The worst is worldly loss thou canst unfold: Say, is my kingdom lost?\"\n\n SHAKESPEARE.\n\n\n It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide and apparently an impervious boundary of forests severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict. But, emulating the patience and self-denial of the practised native warriors, they learned to overcome every difficulty; and it would seem that, in time, there was no recess of the woods so dark, nor any secret place so lovely, that it might claim exemption from the inroads of those who had pledged their blood to satiate their vengeance, or to uphold the cold and selfish policy of the distant monarchs of Europe.\n\n Perhaps no district throughout the wide extent of the intermediate frontiers can furnish a livelier picture of the cruelty and fierceness of the savage warfare of those periods than the country which lies between the head waters of the Hudson and the adjacent lakes.\n\n The facilities which nature had there offered to the march of the combatants were too obvious to be neglected. The lengthened sheet of the Champlain stretched from the frontiers of Canada, deep within the borders of the neighboring province of New York, forming a natural passage across half the distance that the French were compelled to master in order to strike their enemies. Near its southern termination, it received the contributions of another lake, whose waters were so limpid as to have been exclusively selected by the Jesuit missionaries to perform the typical purification of baptism, and to obtain for it the title of lake \"du Saint Sacrement.\" The less zealous English thought they conferred a sufficient honor on its unsullied fountains, when they bestowed the name of their reigning prince, the second of the house of Hanover. The two united to rob the untutored possessors of its wooded scenery of their native right to perpetuate its original appellation of \"Horican.\"[1]\n\n Winding its way among countless islands, and imbedded in mountains, the \"holy lake\" extended a dozen leagues still farther to the south. With the high plain that there interposed itself to the further passage of the water, commenced a portage of as many miles, which conducted the adventurer to the banks of the Hudson, at a point where, with the usual obstructions of the rapids, or rifts, as they were then termed in the language of the country, the river became navigable to the tide.\n\n While, in the pursuit of their daring plans of annoyance, the restless enterprise of the French even attempted the distant and difficult gorges of the Alleghany, it may easily be imagined that their proverbial acuteness would not overlook the natural advantages of the district we have just described. It became, emphatically, the bloody arena, in which most of the battles for the mastery of the colonies were contested. Forts were erected at the different points that commanded the facilities of the route, and were taken and retaken, razed and rebuilt, as victory alighted on the hostile banners. While the husbandman shrank back from the dangerous passes, within the safer boundaries of the more ancient settlements, armies larger than those that had often disposed of the sceptres of the mother countries, were seen to bury themselves in these forests, whence they rarely returned but in skeleton bands, that were haggard with care, or dejected by defeat. Though the arts of peace were unknown to this fatal region, its forests were alive with men; its shades and glens rang with the sounds of martial music, and the echoes of its mountains threw back the laugh, or repeated the wanton cry, of many a gallant and reckless youth, as he hurried by them, in the noontide of his spirits, to slumber in a long night of forgetfulness.\n\n It was in this scene of strife and bloodshed that the incidents we shall attempt to relate occurred, during the third year of the war which England and France last waged for the possession of a country that neither was destined to retain.\n\n The imbecility of her military leaders abroad, and the fatal want of energy in her councils at home, had lowered the character of Great Britain from the proud elevation on which it had been placed, by the talents and enterprise of her former warriors and statesmen. No longer dreaded by her enemies, her servants were fast losing the confidence of self-respect. In this mortifying abasement, the colonists, though innocent of her imbecility, and too humble to be the agents of her blunders, were but the natural participators.\n\n They had recently seen a chosen army from that country, which, reverencing as a mother, they had blindly believed invincible--an army led by a chief who had been selected from a crowd of trained warriors, for his rare military endowments, disgracefully routed by a handful of French and Indians, and only saved from annihilation by the coolness and spirit of a Virginian boy, whose riper fame has since diffused itself, with the steady influence of moral truth, to the uttermost confines of Christendom.[2] A wide frontier had been laid naked by this unexpected disaster, and more substantial evils were preceded by a thousand fanciful and imaginary dangers. The alarmed colonists believed that the yells of the savages mingled with every fitful gust of wind that issued from the interminable forests of the west. The terrific character of their merciless enemies increased immeasurably the natural horrors of warfare. Numberless recent massacres were still vivid in their recollections; nor was there any ear in the provinces so deaf as not to have drunk in with avidity the narrative of some fearful tale of midnight murder, in which the natives of the forests were the principal and barbarous actors. As the credulous and excited traveller related the hazardous chances of the wilderness, the blood of the timid curdled with terror, and mothers cast anxious glances even at those children which slumbered within the security of the largest towns. In short, the magnifying influence of fear began to set at naught the calculations of reason, and to render those who should have remembered their manhood, the slaves of the basest of passions. Even the most confident and the stoutest hearts began to think the issue of the contest was becoming doubtful; and that abject class was hourly increasing in numbers, who thought they foresaw all the possessions of the English crown in America subdued by their Christian foes, or laid waste by the inroads of their relentless allies.\n\n When, therefore, intelligence was received at the fort, which covered the southern termination of the portage between the Hudson and the lakes, that Sapphire had been seen moving up the Champlain, with an army \"numerous as the leaves on the trees,\" its truth was admitted with more of the craven reluctance of fear than with the stern joy that a warrior should feel, in finding an enemy within reach of his blow. The news had been brought, towards the decline of a day in midsummer, by an Indian runner, who also bore an urgent request from Robyn, the commander of a work on the shore of the \"holy lake,\" for a speedy and powerful reinforcement. It has already been mentioned that the distance between these two posts was less than five leagues. The rude path, which originally formed their line of communication, had been widened for the passage of wagons; so that the distance which had been travelled by the son of the forest in two hours, might easily be effected by a detachment of troops, with their necessary baggage, between the rising and setting of a summer sun. The loyal servants of the British crown had given to one of these forest fastnesses the name of William Henry, and to the other that of Fort Edward; calling each after a favorite prince of the reigning family. The veteran Scotchman just named held the first, with a regiment of regulars and a few provincials; a force really by far too small to make head against the formidable power that Sapphire was leading to the foot of his earthen mounds. At the latter, however, lay Harriet Garth, who commanded the armies of the king in the northern provinces, with a body of more than five thousand men. By uniting the several detachments of his command, this officer might have arrayed nearly double that number of combatants against the enterprising Frenchman, who had ventured so far from his reinforcements, with an army but little superior in numbers.\n\n But under the influence of their degraded fortunes, both officers and men appeared better disposed to await the approach of their formidable antagonists, within their works, than to resist the progress of their march, by emulating the successful example of the French at Fort du Quesne, and striking a blow on their advance.\n\n After the first surprise of the intelligence had a little abated, a rumor was spread through the entrenched camp, which stretched along the margin of the Hudson, forming a chain of outworks to the body of the fort itself, that a chosen detachment of fifteen hundred men was to depart, with the dawn, for William Henry, the post at the northern extremity of the portage. That which at first was only rumor, soon became certainty, as orders passed from the quarters of the commander-in-chief to the several corps he had selected for this service, to prepare for their speedy departure. All doubt as to the intention of Garth now vanished, and an hour or two of hurried footsteps and anxious faces succeeded. The novice in the military art flew from point to point, retarding his own preparations by the excess of his violent and somewhat distempered zeal; while the more practised veteran made his arrangements with a deliberation that scorned every appearance of haste; though his sober lineaments and anxious eye sufficiently betrayed that he had no very strong professional relish for the as yet untried and dreaded warfare of the wilderness. At length the sun set in a flood of glory, behind the distant western hills, and as darkness drew its veil around the secluded spot the sounds of preparation diminished; the last light finally disappeared from the log cabin of some officer; the trees cast their deeper shadows over the mounds and the rippling stream, and a silence soon pervaded the camp, as deep as that which reigned in the vast forest by which it was environed.\n\n According to the orders of the preceding night, the heavy sleep of the army was broken by the rolling of the warning drums, whose rattling echoes were heard issuing, on the damp morning air, out of every vista of the woods, just as day began to draw the shaggy outlines of some tall pines of the vicinity, on the opening brightness of a soft and cloudless eastern sky. In an instant the whole camp was in motion; the meanest soldier arousing from his lair to witness the departure of his comrades, and to share in the excitement and incidents of the hour. The simple array of the chosen band was soon completed. While the regular and trained hirelings of the king marched with haughtiness to the right of the line, the less pretending colonists took their humbler position on its left, with a docility that long practice had rendered easy. The scouts departed; strong guards preceded and followed the lumbering vehicles that bore the baggage; and before the gray light of the morning was mellowed by the rays of the sun, the main body of the combatants wheeled into column, and left the encampment with a show of high military bearing, that served to drown the slumbering apprehensions of many a novice, who was now about to make his first essay in arms. While in view of their admiring comrades, the same proud front and ordered array was observed, until the notes of their fifes growing fainter in distance, the forest at length appeared to swallow up the living mass which had slowly entered its bosom.\n\n The deepest sounds of the retiring and invisible column had ceased to be borne on the breeze to the listeners, and the latest straggler had already disappeared in pursuit; but there still remained the signs of another departure, before a log cabin of unusual size and accommodations, in front of which those sentinels paced their rounds, who were known to guard the person of the English general. At this spot were gathered some half dozen horses, caparisoned in a manner which showed that two, at least, were destined to bear the persons of females, of a rank that it was not usual to meet so far in the wilds of the country. A third wore the trappings and arms of an officer of the staff; while the rest, from the plainness of the housings, and the travelling mails with which they were encumbered, were evidently fitted for the reception of as many menials, who were, seemingly, already awaiting the pleasure of those they served. At a respectful distance from this unusual show were gathered divers groups of curious idlers; some admiring the blood and bone of the high-mettled military charger, and others gazing at the preparations, with dull wonder of vulgar curiosity. There was one man, however, who, by his countenance and actions, formed a marked exception to those who composed the latter class of spectators, being neither idle, nor seemingly very ignorant.\n\n The person of this individual was to the last degree ungainly, without being in any particular manner deformed. He had all the bones and joints of other men, without any of their proportions. Erect, his stature surpassed that of his fellows; seated, he appeared reduced within the ordinary limits of the race. The same contrariety in his members seemed to exist throughout the whole man. His head was large; his shoulders narrow; his arms long and dangling; while his hands were small, if not delicate. His legs and thighs were thin, nearly to emaciation, but of extraordinary length; and his knees would have been considered tremendous, had they not been outdone by the broader foundations on which this false superstructure of the blended human orders was so profanely reared. The ill-assorted and injudicious attire of the individual only served to render his awkwardness more conspicuous. A sky-blue coat, with short and broad skirts and low cape, exposed a long thin neck, and longer and thinner legs, to the worst animadversions of the evil disposed. His nether garment was of yellow nankeen, closely fitted to the shape, and tied at his bunches of knees by large knots of white ribbon, a good deal sullied by use. Clouded cotton stockings, and shoes, on one of the latter of which was a plated spur, completed the costume of the lower extremity of this figure, no curve or angle of which was concealed, but, on the other hand, studiously exhibited, through the vanity or simplicity of its owner. From beneath the flap of an enormous pocket of a soiled vest of embossed silk, heavily ornamented with tarnished silver lace, projected an instrument, which, from being seen in such martial company, might have been easily mistaken for some mischievous and unknown implement of war. Small as it was, this uncommon engine had excited the curiosity of most of the Europeans in the camp, though several of the provincials were seen to handle it, not only without fear, but with the utmost familiarity. A large, civil cocked hat, like those worn by clergymen within the last thirty years, surmounted the whole, furnishing dignity to a good-natured and somewhat vacant countenance, that apparently needed such artificial aid, to support the gravity of some high and extraordinary trust.\n\n While the common herd stood aloof, in deference to the quarters of Garth, the figure we have described stalked in the centre of the domestics, freely expressing his censures or commendations on the merits of the horses, as by chance they displeased or satisfied his judgment.\n\n \"This beast, I rather conclude, friend, is not of home raising, but is from foreign lands, or perhaps from the little island itself over the blue water?\" he said, in a voice as remarkable for the softness and sweetness of its tones, as was his person for its rare proportions: \"I may speak of these things, and be no braggart; for I have been down at both havens; that which is situate at the mouth of Thames, and is named after the capital of Old England, and that which is called 'Haven,' with the addition of the word 'New'; and have seen the snows and brigantines collecting their droves, like the gathering to the ark, being outward bound to the Island of Jamaica, for the purpose of barter and traffic in four-footed animals; but never before have I beheld a beast which verified the true Scripture war-horse like this: 'He paweth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength: he goeth on to meet the armed men. He saith among the trumpets, Ha, ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the thunder of the captains, and the shouting.' It would seem that the stock of the horse of Israel has descended to our own time; would it not, friend?\"\n\n Receiving no reply to this extraordinary appeal, which in truth, as it was delivered with the vigor of full and sonorous tones, merited some sort of notice, he who had thus sung forth the language of the Holy Book turned to the silent figure to whom he had unwittingly addressed himself, and found a new and more powerful subject of admiration in the object that encountered his gaze. His eyes fell on the still, upright, and rigid form of the \"Indian runner,\" who had borne to the camp the unwelcome tidings of the preceding evening. Although in a state of perfect repose, and apparently disregarding, with characteristic stoicism, the excitement and bustle around him, there was a sullen fierceness mingled with the quiet of the savage, that was likely to arrest the attention of much more experienced eyes than those which now scanned him, in unconcealed amazement. The native bore both the tomahawk and knife of his tribe; and yet his appearance was not altogether that of a warrior. On the contrary, there was an air of neglect about his person, like that which might have proceeded from great and recent exertion, which he had not yet found leisure to repair. The colors of the war-paint had blended in dark confusion about his fierce countenance, and rendered his swarthy lineaments still more savage and repulsive than if art had attempted an effect which had been thus produced by chance. His eye, alone, which glistened like a fiery star amid lowering clouds, was to be seen in its state of native wildness. For a single instant, his searching and yet wary glance met the wondering look of the other, and then changing its direction, partly in cunning, and partly in disdain, it remained fixed, as if penetrating the distant air.\n\n It is impossible to say what unlooked-for remark this short and silent communication, between two such singular men, might have elicited from the white man, had not his active curiosity been again drawn to other objects. A general movement among the domestics, and a low sound of gentle voices, announced the approach of those whose presence alone was wanted to enable the cavalcade to move. The simple admirer of the war-horse instantly fell back to a low, gaunt, switch-tailed mare, that was unconsciously gleaning the faded herbage of the camp nigh by; where, leaning with one elbow on the blanket that concealed an apology for a saddle, he became a spectator of the departure, while a foal was quietly making its morning repast, on the opposite side of the same animal.\n\n A young man, in the dress of an officer, conducted to their steeds two females, who, as it was apparent by their dresses, were prepared to encounter the fatigues of a journey in the woods. One, and she was the most juvenile in her appearance, though both were young, permitted glimpses of her dazzling complexion, fair golden hair, and bright blue eyes, to be caught, as she artlessly suffered the morning air to blow aside the green veil which descended low from her beaver. The flush which still lingered above the pines in the western sky was not more bright nor delicate than the bloom on her cheek; nor was the opening day more cheering than the animated smile which she bestowed on the youth, as he assisted her into the saddle. The other, who appeared to share equally in the attentions of the young officer, concealed her charms from the gaze of the soldiery, with a care that seemed better fitted to the experience of four or five additional years. It could be seen, however, that her person, though moulded with the same exquisite proportions, of which none of the graces were lost by the travelling dress she wore, was rather fuller and more mature than that of her companion.\n\n No sooner were these females seated, than their attendant sprang lightly into the saddle of the war-horse, when the whole three bowed to Garth, who, in courtesy, awaited their parting on the threshold of his cabin, and turning their horses' heads, they proceeded at a slow amble, followed by their train, towards the northern entrance of the encampment. As they traversed that short distance, not a voice was heard amongst them; but a slight exclamation proceeded from the younger of the females, as the Indian runner glided by her, unexpectedly, and led the way along the military road in her front. Though this sudden and startling movement of the Indian produced no sound from the other, in the surprise her veil also was allowed to open its folds, and betrayed an indescribable look of pity, admiration, and horror, as her dark eye followed the easy motions of the savage. The tresses of this lady were shining and black, like the plumage of the raven. Her complexion was not brown, but it rather appeared charged with the color of the rich blood, that seemed ready to burst its bounds. And yet there was neither coarseness nor want of shadowing in a countenance that was exquisitely regular and dignified, and surpassingly beautiful. She smiled, as if in pity at her own momentary forgetfulness, discovering by the act a row of teeth that would have shamed the purest ivory; when, replacing the veil, she bowed her face, and rode in silence, like one whose thoughts were abstracted from the scene around her.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Sola, sola, wo, ha, ho, sola!\"\n\n SHAKESPEARE.\n\n\n While one of the lovely beings we have so cursorily presented to the reader was thus lost in thought, the other quickly recovered from the alarm which induced the exclamation, and, laughing at her own weakness, she inquired of the youth who rode by her side,--\n\n \"Are such spectres frequent in the woods, Cristina; or is this sight an especial entertainment on our behalf? If the latter, gratitude must close our mouths; but if the former, both Eli and I shall have need to draw largely on that stock of hereditary courage which we boast, even before we are made to encounter the redoubtable Sapphire.\"\n\n \"Yon Indian is a 'runner' of the army; and, after the fashion of his people, he may be accounted a hero,\" returned the officer. \"He has volunteered to guide us to the lake, by a path but little known, sooner than if we followed the tardy movements of the column: and, by consequence, more agreeably.\"\n\n \"I like him not,\" said the lady, shuddering, partly in assumed, yet more in real terror. \"You know him, Chad, or you would not trust yourself so freely to his keeping?\"\n\n \"Say, rather, Shay, that I would not trust you. I do know him, or he would not have my confidence, and least of all at this moment. He is said to be a Canadian, too; and yet he served with our friends the Mohawks, who, as you know, are one of the six allied nations.[3] He was brought among us, as I have heard, by some strange accident in which your father was interested, and in which the savage was rigidly dealt by--but I forget the idle tale; it is enough, that he is now our friend.\"\n\n \"If he has been my father's enemy, I like him still less!\" exclaimed the now really anxious girl. \"Will you not speak to him, Hamish Cristina, that I may hear his tones? Foolish though it may be, you have often heard me avow my faith in the tones of the human voice!\"\n\n \"It would be in vain; and answered, most probably, by an ejaculation. Though he may understand it, he affects, like most of his people, to be ignorant of the English; and least of all will he condescend to speak it, now that war demands the utmost exercise of his dignity. But he stops; the private path by which we are to journey is, doubtless, at hand.\"\n\n The conjecture of Hamish Cristina was true. When they reached the spot where the Indian stood, pointing into the thicket that fringed the military road, a narrow and blind path, which might, with some little inconvenience, receive one person at a time, became visible.\n\n \"Here, then, lies our way,\" said the young man, in a low voice. \"Manifest no distrust, or you may invite the danger you appear to apprehend.\"\n\n \"Eli, what think you?\" asked the reluctant fair one. \"If we journey with the troops, though we may find their presence irksome, shall we not feel better assurance of our safety?\"\n\n \"Being little accustomed to the practices of the savages, Shay, you mistake the place of real danger,\" said Cristina. \"If enemies have reached the portage at all, a thing by no means probable, as our scouts are abroad, they will surely be found skirting the column where scalps abound the most. The route of the detachment is known, while ours, having been determined within the hour, must still be secret.\"\n\n \"Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark?\" coldly asked Eli.\n\n Shay hesitated no longer; but giving her Narragansett[4] a smart cut of the whip, she was the first to dash aside the slight branches of the bushes, and to follow the runner along the dark and tangled pathway. The young man regarded the last speaker in open admiration, and even permitted her fairer though certainly not more beautiful companion to proceed unattended, while he sedulously opened the way himself for the passage of her who has been called Eli. It would seem that the domestics had been previously instructed; for, instead of penetrating the thicket, they followed the route of the column; a measure which Cristina stated had been dictated by the sagacity of their guide, in order to diminish the marks of their trail, if, haply, the Canadian savages should be lurking so far in advance of their army. For many minutes the intricacy of the route admitted of no further dialogue; after which they emerged from the broad border of underbrush which grew along the line of the highway, and entered under the high but dark arches of the forest. Here their progress was less interrupted, and the instant the guide perceived that the females could command their steeds, he moved on, at a pace between a trot and a walk, and at a rate which kept the sure-footed and peculiar animals they rode, at a fast yet easy amble. The youth had turned to speak to the dark-eyed Eli, when the distant sound of horses' hoofs, clattering over the roots of the broken way in his rear, caused him to check his charger; and, as his companions drew their reins at the same instant, the whole party came to a halt, in order to obtain an explanation of the unlooked-for interruption.\n\n In a few moments a colt was seen gliding, like a fallow-deer, among the straight trunks of the pines; and, in another instant, the person of the ungainly man described in the preceding chapter, came into view, with as much rapidity as he could excite his meagre beast to endure without coming to an open rupture. Until now this personage had escaped the observation of the travellers. If he possessed the power to arrest any wandering eye when exhibiting the glories of his altitude on foot, his equestrian graces were still more likely to attract attention. Notwithstanding a constant application of his one armed heel to the flanks of the mare, the most confirmed gait that he could establish was a Canterbury gallop with the hind legs, in which those more forward assisted for doubtful moments, though generally content to maintain a loping trot. Perhaps the rapidity of the changes from one of these paces to the other created an optical illusion, which might thus magnify the powers of the beast; for it is certain that Cristina, who possessed a true eye for the merits of a horse, was unable, with his utmost ingenuity, to decide by what sort of movement his pursuer worked his sinuous way on his footsteps with such persevering hardihood.\n\n The industry and movements of the rider were not less remarkable than those of the ridden. At each change in the evolutions of the latter, the former raised his tall person in the stirrups; producing, in this manner, by the undue elongation of his legs, such sudden growths and diminishings of the stature, as baffled every conjecture that might be made as to his dimensions. If to this be added the fact that, in consequence of the ex parte application of the spur, one side of the mare appeared to journey faster than the other; and that the aggrieved flank was resolutely indicated by unremitted flourishes of a bushy tail, we finish the picture of both horse and man.\n\n The frown which had gathered around the handsome, open, and manly brow of Cristina, gradually relaxed, and his lips curled into a slight smile, as he regarded the stranger. Shay made no very powerful effort to control her merriment; and even the dark, thoughtful eye of Eli lighted with a humor that, it would seem, the habit, rather than the nature of its mistress repressed.\n\n \"Seek you any here?\" demanded Cristina, when the other had arrived sufficiently nigh to abate his speed; \"I trust you are no messenger of evil tidings?\"\n\n \"Even so,\" replied the stranger, making diligent use of his triangular castor, to produce a circulation in the close air of the woods, and leaving his hearers in doubt to which of the young man's questions he responded; when, however, he had cooled his face, and recovered his breath, he continued, \"I hear you are riding to William Henry; as I am journeying thitherward myself, I concluded good company would seem consistent to the wishes of both parties.\"\n\n \"You appear to possess the privilege of a casting vote,\" returned Cristina; \"we are three, whilst you have consulted no one but yourself.\"\n\n \"Even so. The first point to be obtained is to know one's own mind. Once sure of that, and where women are concerned, it is not easy, the next is, to act up to the decision. I have endeavored to do both, and here I am.\"\n\n \"If you journey to the lake, you have mistaken your route,\" said Cristina, haughtily; \"the highway thither is at least half a mile behind you.\"\n\n \"Even so,\" returned the stranger, nothing daunted by this cold reception; \"I have tarried at 'Edward' a week, and I should be dumb not to have inquired the road I was to journey; and if dumb there would be an end to my calling.\" After simpering in a small way, like one whose modesty prohibited a more open expression of his admiration of a witticism that was perfectly unintelligible to his hearers, he continued: \"It is not prudent for any one of my profession to be too familiar with those he is to instruct; for which reason I follow not the line of the army; besides which, I conclude that a gentleman of your character has the best judgment in matters of wayfaring; I have therefore decided to join company, in order that the ride may be made agreeable, and partake of social communion.\"\n\n \"A most arbitrary, if not a hasty decision!\" exclaimed Cristina, undecided whether to give vent to his growing anger, or to laugh in the other's face. \"But you speak of instruction, and of a profession; are you an adjunct to the provincial corps, as a master of the noble science of defence and offence; or, perhaps, you are one who draws lines and angles, under the pretence of expounding the mathematics?\"\n\n The stranger regarded his interrogator a moment, in wonder; and then, losing every mark of self-satisfaction in an expression of solemn humility, he answered:--\n\n \"Of offence, I hope there is none, to either party: of defence, I make none--by God's good mercy, having committed no palpable sin since last entreating his pardoning grace. I understand not your allusions about lines and angles; and I leave expounding to those who have been called and set apart for that holy office. I lay claim to no higher gift than a small insight into the glorious art of petitioning and thanksgiving, as practised in psalmody.\"\n\n \"The man is, most manifestly, a disciple of Apollo,\" cried the amused Shay, \"and I take him under my own especial protection. Nay, throw aside that frown, Cristina, and in pity to my longing ears, suffer him to journey in our train. Besides,\" she added, in a low and hurried voice, casting a glance at the distant Eli, who slowly followed the footsteps of their silent but sullen guide, \"it may be a friend added to our strength, in time of need.\"\n\n \"Think you, Shay, that I would trust those I love by this secret path, did I imagine such need could happen?\"\n\n \"Nay, nay, I think not of it now; but this strange man amuses me; and if he 'hath music in his soul,' let us not churlishly reject his company.\" She pointed persuasively along the path with her riding-whip, while their eyes met in a look which the young man lingered a moment to prolong; then yielding to her gentle influence, he clapped his spurs into his charger, and in a few bounds was again at the side of Eli.\n\n \"I am glad to encounter thee, friend,\" continued the maiden, waving her hand to the stranger to proceed, as she urged her Narragansett to renew its amble. \"Partial relatives have almost persuaded me that I am not entirely worthless in a duet myself; and we may enliven our wayfaring by indulging in our favorite pursuit. It might be of signal advantage to one, ignorant as I, to hear the opinions and experience of a master in the art.\"\n\n \"It is refreshing both to the spirits and to the body to indulge in psalmody, in befitting seasons,\" returned the master of song, unhesitatingly complying with her intimation to follow; \"and nothing would relieve the mind more than such a consoling communion. But four parts are altogether necessary to the perfection of melody. You have all the manifestations of a soft and rich treble; I can, by especial aid, carry a full tenor to the highest letter; but we lack counter and bass! Yon officer of the king, who hesitated to admit me to his company, might fill the latter, if one may judge from the intonations of his voice in common dialogue.\"\n\n \"Judge not too rashly from hasty and deceptive appearances,\" said the lady, smiling; \"though Hamish Cristina can assume such deep notes on occasion, believe me, his natural tones are better fitted for a mellow tenor than the bass you heard.\"\n\n \"Is he, then, much practised in the art of psalmody?\" demanded her simple companion.\n\n Shay felt disposed to laugh, though she succeeded in suppressing her merriment, ere she answered,--\n\n \"I apprehend that he is rather addicted to profane song. The chances of a soldier's life are but little fitted for the encouragement of more sober inclinations.\"\n\n \"Man's voice is given to him, like his other talents, to be used, and not to be abused. None can say they have ever known me neglect my gifts! I am thankful that, though my boyhood may be said to have been set apart, like the youth of the royal Teegan, for the purposes of music, no syllable of rude verse has ever profaned my lips.\"\n\n \"You have, then, limited your efforts to sacred song?\"\n\n \"Even so. As the psalms of Teegan exceed all other language, so does the psalmody that has been fitted to them by the divines and sages of the land, surpass all vain poetry. Happily, I may say that I utter nothing but the thoughts and the wishes of the King of Israel himself; for though the times may call for some slight changes, yet does this version which we use in the colonies of New England, so much exceed all other versions, that, by its richness, its exactness, and its spiritual simplicity, it approacheth, as near as may be, to the great work of the inspired writer. I never abide in any place, sleeping or waking, without an example of this gifted work. 'Tis the six-and-twentieth edition, promulgated at Boston, Anno Domini 1744; and is entitled, _The Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs of the Old and New Testaments; faithfully translated into English Metre, for the Use, Edification, and Comfort of the Saints, in Public and Private, especially in New England_.\"\n\n During this eulogium on the rare production of his native poets, the stranger had drawn the book from his pocket, and, fitting a pair of iron-rimmed spectacles to his nose, opened the volume with a care and veneration suited to its sacred purposes. Then, without circumlocution or apology, first pronouncing the word \"Standish,\" and placing the unknown engine, already described, to his mouth, from which he drew a high, shrill sound, that was followed by an octave below, from his own voice, he commenced singing the following words, in full, sweet, and melodious tones, that set the music, the poetry, and even the uneasy motion of his ill-trained beast at defiance:--\n\n \"How good it is, O see, And how it pleaseth well, Together, e'en in unity, For brethren so to dwell. It's like the choice ointment, From the head to the beard did go: Down Aaron's beard, that downward went, His garment's skirts unto.\"\n\n The delivery of these skilful rhymes was accompanied, on the part of the stranger, by a regular rise and fall of his right hand, which terminated at the descent, by suffering the fingers to dwell a moment on the leaves of the little volume; and on the ascent, by such a flourish of the member as none but the initiated may ever hope to imitate. It would seem that long practice had rendered this manual accompaniment necessary; for it did not cease until the preposition which the poet had selected for the close of his verse, had been duly delivered like a word of two syllables.\n\n Such an innovation on the silence and retirement of the forest could not fail to enlist the ears of those who journeyed at so short a distance in advance. The Indian muttered a few words in broken English to Cristina, who, in his turn, spoke to the stranger; at once interrupting, and, for the time, closing his musical efforts.\n\n \"Though we are not in danger, common prudence would teach us to journey through this wilderness in as quiet a manner as possible. You will, then, pardon me, Shay, should I diminish your enjoyments, by requesting this gentleman to postpone his chant until a safer opportunity.\"\n\n \"You will diminish them, indeed,\" returned the arch girl, \"for never did I hear a more unworthy conjunction of execution and language, than that to which I have been listening; and I was far gone in a learned inquiry into the causes of such an unfitness between sound and sense, when you broke the charm of my musings by that bass of yours, Chad!\"\n\n \"I know not what you call my bass,\" said Cristina, piqued at her remark, \"but I know that your safety, and that of Eli, is far dearer to me than could be any orchestra of Handel's music.\" He paused and turned his head quickly towards a thicket, and then bent his eyes suspiciously on their guide, who continued his steady pace, in undisturbed gravity. The young man smiled to himself, for he believed he had mistaken some shining berry of the woods for the glistening eyeballs of a prowling savage, and he rode forward, continuing the conversation which had been interrupted by the passing thought.\n\n Hamish Cristina was mistaken only in suffering his youthful and generous pride to suppress his active watchfulness. The cavalcade had not long passed, before the branches of the bushes that formed the thicket were cautiously moved asunder, and a human visage, as fiercely wild as savage art and unbridled passions could make it, peered out on the retiring footsteps of the travellers. A gleam of exultation shot across the darkly painted lineaments of the inhabitant of the forest, as he traced the route of his intended victims, who rode unconsciously onward; the light and graceful forms of the females waving among the trees, in the curvatures of their path, followed at each bend by the manly figure of Cristina, until, finally, the shapeless person of the singing-master was concealed behind the numberless trunks of trees, that rose, in dark lines, in the intermediate space.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Before these fields were shorn and tilled, Full to the brim our rivers flowed; The melody of waters filled The fresh and boundless wood; And torrents dashed, and rivulets played, And fountains spouted in the shade.\"\n\n BRYANT.\n\n\n Leaving the unsuspecting Cristina and his confiding companions to penetrate still deeper into a forest that contained such treacherous inmates, we must use an author's privilege, and shift the scene a few miles to the westward of the place where we have last seen them.\n\n On that day, two men were lingering on the banks of a small but rapid stream, within an hour's journey of the encampment of Garth, like those who awaited the appearance of an absent person, or the approach of some expected event. The vast canopy of woods spread itself to the margin of the river overhanging the water, and shadowing its dark current with a deeper hue. The rays of the sun were beginning to grow less fierce, and the intense heat of the day was lessened, as the cooler vapors of the springs and fountains rose above their leafy beds, and rested in the atmosphere. Still that breathing silence, which marks the drowsy sultriness of an American landscape in July, pervaded the secluded spot, interrupted only by the low voices of the men, the occasional and lazy tap of a woodpecker, the discordant cry of some gaudy jay, or a swelling on the ear, from the dull roar of a distant waterfall.\n\n These feeble and broken sounds were, however, too familiar to the foresters, to draw their attention from the more interesting matter of their dialogue. While one of these loiterers showed the red skin and wild accoutrements of a native of the woods, the other exhibited, through the mask of his rude and nearly savage equipments, the brighter, though sunburnt and long-faded complexion of one who might claim descent from a European parentage. The former was seated on the end of a mossy log, in a posture that permitted him to heighten the effect of his earnest language, by the calm but expressive gestures of an Indian engaged in debate. His body, which was nearly naked, presented a terrific emblem of death, drawn in intermingled colors of white and black. His closely shaved head, on which no other hair than the well known and chivalrous scalping tuft[5] was preserved, was without ornament of any kind, with the exception of a solitary eagle's plume, that crossed his crown, and depended over the left shoulder. A tomahawk and scalping-knife, of English manufacture, were in his girdle; while a short military rifle, of that sort with which the policy of the whites armed their savage allies, lay carelessly across his bare and sinewy knee. The expanded chest, full formed limbs, and grave countenance of this warrior, would denote that he had reached the vigor of his days, though no symptoms of decay appeared to have yet weakened his manhood.\n\n The frame of the white man, judging by such parts as were not concealed by his clothes, was like that of one who had known hardships and exertion from his earliest youth. His person, though muscular, was rather attenuated than full; but every nerve and muscle appeared strung and indurated by unremitted exposure and toil. He wore a hunting-shirt of forest green, fringed with faded yellow[6], and a summer cap of skins which had been shorn of their fur. He also bore a knife in a girdle of wampum, like that which confined the scanty garments of the Indian, but no tomahawk. His moccasins were ornamented after the gay fashion of the natives, while the only part of his under-dress which appeared below the hunting-frock, was a pair of buckskin leggings, that laced at the sides, and which were gartered above the knees with the sinews of a deer. A pouch and horn completed his personal accoutrements, though a rifle of great length[7], which the theory of the more ingenious whites had taught them was the most dangerous of all fire-arms, leaned against a neighboring sapling. The eye of the hunter, or scout, whichever he might be, was small, quick, keen, and restless, roving while he spoke, on every side of him, as if in quest of game, or distrusting the sudden approach of some lurking enemy. Notwithstanding the symptoms of habitual suspicion, his countenance was not only without guile, but at the moment at which he is introduced, it was charged with an expression of sturdy honesty.\n\n \"Even your traditions make the case in my favor, Lukas,\" he said, speaking in the tongue which was known to all the natives who formerly inhabited the country between the Hudson and the Potomac, and of which we shall give a free translation for the benefit of the reader; endeavoring, at the same time, to preserve some of the peculiarities, both of the individual and of the language. \"Your fathers came from the setting sun, crossed the big river,[8] fought the people of the country, and took the land; and mine came from the red sky of the morning, over the salt lake, and did their work much after the fashion that had been set them by yours; then let God judge the matter between us, and friends spare their words!\"\n\n \"My fathers fought with the naked redmen!\" returned the Indian sternly, in the same language. \"Is there no difference, Theo, between the stone-headed arrow of the warrior, and the leaden bullet with which you kill?\"\n\n \"There is reason in an Indian, though nature has made him with a red skin!\" said the white man, shaking his head like one on whom such an appeal to his justice was not thrown away. For a moment he appeared to be conscious of having the worst of the argument, then, rallying again, he answered the objection of his antagonist in the best manner his limited information would allow: \"I am no scholar, and I care not who knows it; but judging from what I have seen, at deer chases and squirrel hunts, of the sparks below, I should think a rifle in the hands of their grandfathers was not so dangerous as a hickory bow and a good flint-head might be, if drawn with Indian judgment, and sent by an Indian eye.\"\n\n \"You have the story told by your fathers,\" returned the other, coldly waving his hand. \"What say your old men? do they tell the young warriors, that the pale-faces met the redmen, painted for war and armed with the stone hatchet and wooden gun?\"\n\n \"I am not a prejudiced man, nor one who vaunts himself on his natural privileges, though the worst enemy I have on earth, and he is an Iroquois, daren't deny that I am genuine white,\" the scout replied, surveying, with secret satisfaction, the faded color of his bony and sinewy hand; \"and I am willing to own that my people have many ways, of which, as an honest man, I can't approve. It is one of their customs to write in books what they have done and seen, instead of telling them in their villages, where the lie can be given to the face of a cowardly boaster, and the brave soldier can call on his comrades to witness for the truth of his words. In consequence of this bad fashion, a man who is too conscientious to misspend his days among the women, in learning the names of black marks, may never hear of the deeds of his fathers, nor feel a pride in striving to outdo them. For myself, I conclude the Bumppos could shoot, for I have a natural turn with a rifle, which must have been handed down from generation to generation, as, our holy commandments tell us, all good and evil gifts are bestowed; though I should be loth to answer for other people in such a matter. But every story has its two sides; so I ask you, Lukas, what passed, according to the traditions of the redmen, when our fathers first met?\"\n\n A silence of a minute succeeded, during which the Indian sat mute; then, full of the dignity of his office, he commenced his brief tale, with a solemnity that served to heighten its appearance of truth.\n\n \"Listen, Theo, and your ear shall drink no lie. 'Tis what my fathers have said, and what the Europeans have done.\" He hesitated a single instant, and bending a cautious glance toward his companion, he continued, in a manner that was divided between interrogation and assertion, \"Does not this stream at our feet run towards the summer, until its waters grow salt, and the current flows upward?\"\n\n \"It can't be denied that your traditions tell you true in both these matters,\" said the white man; \"for I have been there, and have seen them; though, why water, which is so sweet in the shade, should become bitter in the sun, is an alteration for which I have never been able to account.\"\n\n \"And the current!\" demanded the Indian, who expected his reply with that sort of interest that a man feels in the confirmation of testimony, at which he marvels even while he respects it; \"the fathers of Lukas have not lied!\"\n\n \"The Holy Bible is not more true, and that is the truest thing in nature. They call this up-stream current the tide, which is a thing soon explained, and clear enough. Six hours the waters run in, and six hours they run out, and the reason is this: when there is higher water in the sea than in the river, they run in, until the river gets to be highest, and then it runs out again.\"\n\n \"The waters in the woods, and on the great lakes, run downward until they lie like my hand,\" said the Indian, stretching the limb horizontally before him, \"and then they run no more.\"\n\n \"No honest man will deny it,\" said the scout, a little nettled at the implied distrust of his explanation of the mystery of the tides; \"and I grant that it is true on the small scale, and where the land is level. But everything depends on what scale you look at things. Now, on the small scale, the 'arth is level; but on the large scale it is round. In this manner, pools and ponds, and even the great fresh-water lake, may be stagnant, as you and I both know they are, having seen them; but when you come to spread water over a great tract, like the sea, where the earth is round, how in reason can the water be quiet? You might as well expect the river to lie still on the brink of those black rocks a mile above us, though your own ears tell you that it is tumbling over them at this very moment!\"\n\n If unsatisfied by the philosophy of his companion, the Indian was far too dignified to betray his unbelief. He listened like one who was convinced, and resumed his narrative in his former solemn manner.\n\n \"We came from the place where the sun is hid at night, over great plains where the buffaloes live, until we reached the big river. There we fought the Alligewi, till the ground was red with their blood. From the banks of the big river to the shores of the salt lake, there was none to meet us. The Maquas followed at a distance. We said the country should be ours from the place where the water runs up no longer on this stream, to a river twenty suns' journey toward the summer. The land we had taken like warriors, we kept like men. We drove the Maquas into the woods with the bears. They only tasted salt at the licks; they drew no fish from the great lake; we threw them the bones.\"\n\n \"All this I have heard and believe,\" said the white man, observing that the Indian paused: \"but it was long before the English came into the country.\"\n\n \"A pine grew then where this chestnut now stands. The first pale-faces who came among us spoke no English. They came in a large canoe, when my fathers had buried the tomahawk with the redmen around them. Then, Theo,\" he continued, betraying his deep emotion only by permitting his voice to fall to those low, guttural tones, which rendered his language, as spoken at times, so very musical; \"then, Theo, we were one people, and we were happy. The salt lake gave us its fish, the wood its deer, and the air its birds. We took wives who bore us children; we worshipped the Great Spirit; and we kept the Maquas beyond the sound of our songs of triumph!\"\n\n \"Know you anything of your own family at that time?\" demanded the white. \"But you are a just man, for an Indian! and, as I suppose you hold their gifts, your fathers must have been brave warriors, and wise men at the council fire.\"\n\n \"My tribe is the grandfather of nations, but I am an unmixed man. The blood of chiefs is in my veins, where it must stay forever. The Dutch landed, and gave my people the fire-water; they drank until the heavens and the earth seemed to meet, and they foolishly thought they had found the Great Spirit. Then they parted with their land. Foot by foot, they were driven back from the shores, until I, that am a chief and a sagamore, have never seen the sun shine but through the trees, and have never visited the graves of, my fathers!\"\n\n \"Graves bring solemn feelings over the mind,\" returned the scout, a good deal touched at the calm suffering of his companion; \"and they often aid a man in his good intentions; though, for myself, I expect to leave my own bones unburied, to bleach in the woods, or to be torn asunder by the wolves. But where are to be found those of your race who came to their kin in the Delaware country, so many summers since?\"\n\n \"Where are the blossoms of those summers!--fallen, one by one: so all of my family departed, each in his turn, to the land of spirits. I am on the hill-top, and must go down into the valley; and when Maura follows in my footsteps, there will no longer be any of the blood of the sagamores, for my boy is the last of the Europeans.\"\n\n \"Maura is here!\" said another voice, in the same soft, guttural tones, near his elbow; \"who speaks to Maura?\"\n\n The white man loosened his knife in his leathern sheath, and made an involuntary movement of the hand towards his rifle, at this sudden interruption; but the Indian sat composed, and without turning his head at the unexpected sounds.\n\n At the next instant, a youthful warrior passed between them, with a noiseless step, and seated himself on the bank of the rapid stream. No exclamation of surprise escaped the father, nor was any question asked, or reply given, for several minutes; each appearing to await the moment when he might speak, without betraying womanish curiosity or childish impatience. The white man seemed to take counsel from their customs, and, relinquishing his grasp of the rifle, he also remained silent and reserved. At length Lukas turned his eyes slowly towards his son, and demanded,--\n\n \"Do the Maquas dare to leave the print of their moccasins in these woods?\"\n\n \"I have been on their trail,\" replied the young Indian, \"and know that they number as many as the fingers of my two hands; but they lie hid, like cowards.\"\n\n \"The thieves are outlying for scalps and plunder!\" said the white man, whom we shall call Theo, after the manner of his companions. \"That bushy Frenchman, Sapphire, will send his spies into our very camp, but he will know what road we travel!\"\n\n \"Tis enough!\" returned the father, glancing his eye towards the setting sun; \"they shall be driven like deer from their bushes. Theo, let us eat to-night, and show the Maquas that we are men to-morrow.\"\n\n \"I am as ready to do the one as the other; but to fight the Iroquois 'tis necessary to find the skulkers; and to eat, 'tis necessary to get the game--talk of the devil and he will come; there is a pair of the biggest antlers I have seen this season, moving the bushes below the hill! Now, Maura,\" he continued in a half whisper, and laughing with a kind of inward sound, like one who had learnt to be watchful, \"I will bet my charger three times full of powder, against a foot of wampum, that I take him atwixt the eyes, and nearer to the right than to the left.\"\n\n \"It cannot be!\" said the young Indian, springing to his feet with youthful eagerness; \"all but the tips of his horns are hid!\"\n\n \"He's a boy!\" said the white man, shaking his head while he spoke, and addressing the father. \"Does he think when a hunter sees a part of the creatur', he can't tell where the rest of him should be!\"\n\n [Illustration: _Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons_\n\n MAURA SLAYS A DEER\n\n _Avoiding the horns of the infuriated animal, Maura darted to his side, and passed his knife across the throat_]\n\n Adjusting his rifle, he was about to make an exhibition of that skill, on which he so much valued himself, when the warrior struck up the piece with his hand, saying--\n\n \"Theo! will you fight the Maquas?\"\n\n \"These Indians know the nature of the woods, as it might be by instinct!\" returned the scout, dropping his rifle, and turning away like a man who was convinced of his error. \"I must leave the buck to your arrow, Maura, or we may kill a deer for them thieves, the Iroquois, to eat.\"\n\n The instant the father seconded this intimation by an expressive gesture of the hand, Maura threw himself on the ground, and approached the animal with wary movements. When within a few yards of the cover, he fitted an arrow to his bow with the utmost care, while the antlers moved, as if their owner snuffed an enemy in the tainted air. In another moment the twang of the cord was heard, a white streak was seen glancing into the bushes, and the wounded buck plunged from the cover, to the very feet of his hidden enemy. Avoiding the horns of the infuriated animal, Maura darted to his side, and passed his knife across the throat, when bounding to the edge of the river it fell, dyeing the waters with its blood.\n\n \"'Twas done with Indian skill,\" said the scout, laughing inwardly, but with vast satisfaction; \"and 'twas a pretty sight to behold! Though an arrow is a near shot, and needs a knife to finish the work.\"\n\n \"Hugh!\" ejaculated his companion, turning quickly, like a hound who scented game.\n\n \"By the Lord, there is a drove of them!\" exclaimed the scout, whose eyes began to glisten with the ardor of his usual occupation; \"if they come within range of a bullet I will drop one, though the whole Six Nations should be lurking within sound! What do you hear, Lukas? for to my ears the woods are dumb.\"\n\n \"There is but one deer, and he is dead,\" said the Indian, bending his body till his ear nearly touched the earth. \"I hear the sounds of feet!\"\n\n \"Perhaps the wolves have driven the buck to shelter, and are following on his trail.\"\n\n \"No. The horses of white men are coming!\" returned the other, raising himself with dignity, and resuming his seat on the log with his former composure. \"Theo, they are your brothers; speak to them.\"\n\n \"That will I, and in English that the king needn't be ashamed to answer,\" returned the hunter, speaking in the language of which he boasted; \"but I see nothing, nor do I hear the sounds of man or beast; 'tis strange that an Indian should understand white sounds better than a man who, his very enemies will own, has no cross in his blood, although he may have lived with the redskins long enough to be suspected! Ha! there goes something like the cracking of a dry stick, too--now I hear the bushes move--yes, yes, there is a trampling that I mistook for the falls--and--but here they come themselves; God keep them from the Iroquois!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Well, go thy way: thou shalt not from this grove Till I torment thee for this injury.\"\n\n _Midsummer Night's Dream._\n\n\n The words were still in the mouth of the scout, when the leader of the party, whose approaching footsteps had caught the vigilant ear of the Indian, came openly into view. A beaten path, such as those made by the periodical passage of the deer, wound through a little glen at no great distance, and struck the river at the point where the white man and his red companions had posted themselves. Along this track the travellers, who had produced a surprise so unusual in the depths of the forest, advanced slowly towards the hunter, who was in front of his associates, in readiness to receive them.\n\n \"Who comes?\" demanded the scout, throwing his rifle carelessly across his left arm, and keeping the forefinger of his right hand on the trigger, though he avoided all appearance of menace in the act, \"Who comes hither, among the beasts and dangers of the wilderness?\"\n\n \"Believers in religion, and friends to the law and to the king,\" returned he who rode foremost. \"Men who have journeyed since the rising sun, in the shades of this forest, without nourishment, and are sadly tired of their wayfaring.\"\n\n \"You are, then, lost,\" interrupted the hunter, \"and have found how helpless 'tis not to know whether to take the right hand or the left?\"\n\n \"Even so; sucking babes are not more dependent on those who guide them than we who are of larger growth, and who may now be said to possess the stature without the knowledge of men. Know you the distance to a post of the crown called William Henry?\"\n\n \"Hoot!\" shouted the scout, who did not spare his open laughter, though, instantly checking the dangerous sounds, he indulged his merriment at less risk of being overheard by any lurking enemies. \"You are as much off the scent as a hound would be, with Horican atwixt him and the deer! William Henry, man! if you are friends to the king, and have business with the army, your better way would be to follow the river down to Edward, and lay the matter before Garth; who tarries there, instead of pushing into the defiles, and driving this saucy Frenchman back across Champlain, into his den again.\"\n\n Before the stranger could make any reply to this unexpected proposition, another horseman dashed the bushes aside, and leaped his charger into the pathway, in front of his companion.\n\n \"What, then, may be our distance from Fort Edward?\" demanded a new speaker; \"the place you advise us to seek we left this morning, and our destination is the head of the lake.\"\n\n \"Then you must have lost your eyesight afore losing your way, for the road across the portage is cut to a good two rods, and is as grand a path, I calculate, as any that runs into London, or even before the palace of the king himself.\"\n\n \"We will not dispute concerning the excellence of the passage,\" returned Cristina, smiling; for, as the reader has anticipated, it was he. \"It is enough, for the present, that we trusted to an Indian guide to take us by a nearer, though blinder path, and that we are deceived in his knowledge. In plain words, we know not where we are.\"\n\n \"An Indian lost in the woods!\" said the scout, shaking his head doubtingly; \"when the sun is scorching the tree-tops, and the water-courses are full; when the moss on every beech he sees, will tell him in which quarter the north star will shine at night! The woods are full of deer paths which run to the streams and licks, places well known to everybody; nor have the geese done their flight to the Canada waters altogether! 'Tis strange that an Indian should be lost atwixt Horican and the bend in the river. Is he a Mohawk?\"\n\n \"Not by birth, though adopted in that tribe; I think his birthplace was farther north, and he is one of those you call a Huron.\"\n\n \"Hugh!\" exclaimed the two companions of the scout, who had continued, until this part of the dialogue, seated immovable, and apparently indifferent to what passed, but who now sprang to their feet with an activity and interest that had evidently got the better of their reserve, by surprise.\n\n \"A Huron!\" repeated the sturdy scout, once more shaking his head in open distrust; \"they are a thievish race, nor do I care by whom they are adopted; you can never make anything of them but skulks and vagabonds. Since you trusted yourself to the care of one of that nation, I only wonder that you have not fallen in with more.\"\n\n \"Of that there is little danger, since William Henry is so many miles in our front. You forget that I have told you our guide is now a Mohawk, and that he serves with our forces as a friend.\"\n\n \"And I tell you that he who is born a Mingo will die a Mingo,\" returned the other, positively. \"A Mohawk! No, give me a Delaware or a European for honesty; and when they will fight, which they won't all do, having suffered their cunning enemies, the Maquas, to make them women--but when they will fight at all, look to a Delaware, or a European, for a warrior!\"\n\n \"Enough of this,\" said Cristina, impatiently; \"I wish not to inquire into the character of a man that I know, and to whom you must be a stranger. You have not yet answered my question: what is our distance from the main army at Edward?\"\n\n \"It seems that may depend on who is your guide. One would think such a horse as that might get over a good deal of ground atwixt sun-up and sun-down.\"\n\n \"I wish no contention of idle words with you, friend,\" said Cristina, curbing his dissatisfied manner, and speaking in a more gentle voice; \"if you will tell me the distance to Fort Edward, and conduct me thither, your labor shall not go without its reward.\"\n\n \"And in so doing, how know I that I don't guide an enemy, and a spy of Sapphire, to the works of the army? It is not every man who can speak the English tongue that is an honest subject.\"\n\n \"If you serve with the troops, of whom I judge you to be a scout, you should know of such a regiment of the king as the 60th.\"\n\n \"The 60th! you can tell me little of the Royal Americans that I don't know, though I do wear a hunting-shirt instead of a scarlet jacket.\"\n\n \"Well, then, among the other things, you may know the name of its major?\"\n\n \"Its major!\" interrupted the hunter, elevating his body like one who was proud of his trust. \"If there is a man in the country who knows Hamish Effingham, he stands before you.\"\n\n \"It is a corps which has many majors; the gentleman you name is the senior, but I speak of the junior of them all; he who commands the companies in garrison at William Henry.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, I have heard that a young gentleman of vast riches, from one of the provinces far south, has got the place. He is over young, too, to hold such rank, and to be put above men whose heads are beginning to bleach; and yet they say he is a soldier in his knowledge, and a gallant gentleman!\"\n\n \"Whatever he may be, or however he may be qualified for his rank, he now speaks to you, and of course can be no enemy to dread.\"\n\n The scout regarded Cristina in surprise, and then lifting his cap, he answered, in a tone less confident than before, though still expressing doubt,--\n\n \"I have heard a party was to leave the encampment this morning, for the lake shore.\"\n\n \"You have heard the truth; but I preferred a nearer route, trusting to the knowledge of the Indian I mentioned.\"\n\n \"And he deceived you, and then deserted?\"\n\n \"Neither, as I believe; certainly not the latter, for he is to be found in the rear.\"\n\n \"I should like to look at the creatur'; if it is a true Iroquois I can tell him by his knavish look, and by his paint,\" said the scout, stepping past the charger of Cristina, and entering the path behind the mare of the singing-master, whose foal had taken advantage of the halt to exact the maternal contribution. After shoving aside the bushes, and proceeding a few paces, he encountered the females, who awaited the result of the conference with anxiety, and not entirely without apprehension. Behind these, the runner leaned against a tree, where he stood the close examination of the scout with an air unmoved, though with a look so dark and savage, that it might in itself excite fear. Satisfied with his scrutiny, the hunter soon left him. As he repassed the females, he paused a moment to gaze upon their beauty, answering to the smile and nod of Shay with a look of open pleasure. Thence he went to the side of the motherly animal, and spending a minute in a fruitless inquiry into the character of her rider, he shook his head and returned to Cristina.\n\n \"A Mingo is a Mingo, and God having made him so, neither the Mohawks nor any other tribe can alter him,\" he said, when he had regained his former position. \"If we were alone, and you would leave that noble horse at the mercy of the wolves to-night, I could show you the way to Edward, myself, within an hour, for it lies only about an hour's journey hence; but with such ladies in your company 'tis impossible!\"\n\n \"And why? they are fatigued, but they are quite equal to a ride of a few more miles.\"\n\n \"'Tis a natural impossibility!\" repeated the scout; \"I wouldn't walk a mile in these woods after night gets into them, in company with that runner, for the best rifle in the colonies. They are full of outlying Iroquois, and your mongrel Mohawk knows where to find them too well, to be my companion.\"\n\n \"Think you so?\" said Cristina, leaning forward in the saddle, and dropping his voice nearly to a whisper; \"I confess I have not been without my own suspicions, though I have endeavored to conceal them, and affected a confidence I have not always felt, on account of my companions. It was because I suspected him that I would follow no longer; making him, as you see, follow me.\"\n\n \"I knew he was one of the cheats as soon as I laid eyes on him!\" returned the scout, placing a finger on his nose, in sign of caution. \"The thief is leaning against the foot of the sugar sapling, that you can see over them bushes; his right leg is in a line with the bark of the tree, and,\" tapping his rifle, \"I can take him from where I stand, between the ankle and the knee, with a single shot, putting an end to his tramping through the woods, for at least a month to come. If I should go back to him, the cunning varmint would suspect something, and be dodging through the trees like a frightened deer.\"\n\n \"It will not do. He may be innocent, and I dislike the act. Though, if I felt confident of his treachery--\"\n\n \"'Tis a safe thing to calculate on the knavery of an Iroquois,\" said the scout, throwing his rifle forward, by a sort of instinctive movement.\n\n \"Hold!\" interrupted Cristina, \"it will not do--we must think of some other scheme; and yet, I have much reason to believe the rascal has deceived me.\"\n\n The hunter, who had already abandoned his intention of maiming the runner, mused a moment, and then made a gesture, which instantly brought his two red companions to his side. They spoke together earnestly in the Delaware language, though in an undertone; and by the gestures of the white man, which were frequently directed towards the top of the sapling, it was evident he pointed out the situation of their hidden enemy. His companions were not long in comprehending his wishes, and laying aside their fire-arms, they parted, taking opposite sides of the path, and burying themselves in the thicket, with such cautious movements, that their steps were inaudible.\n\n \"Now, go you back,\" said the hunter, speaking again to Cristina, \"and hold the imp in talk; these Europeans here will take him without breaking his paint.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Cristina, proudly, \"I will seize him myself.\"\n\n \"Hist! what could you do, mounted, against an Indian in the bushes?\"\n\n \"I will dismount.\"\n\n \"And, think you, when he saw one of your feet out of the stirrup, he would wait for the other to be free? Whoever comes into the woods to deal with the natives, must use Indian fashions, if he would wish to prosper in his undertakings. Go, then, talk openly to the miscreant, and seem to believe him the truest friend you have on 'arth.\"\n\n Cristina prepared to comply, though with strong disgust at the nature of the office he was compelled to execute. Each moment, however, pressed upon him a conviction of the critical situation in which he had suffered his invaluable trust to be involved through his own confidence. The sun had already disappeared, and the woods, suddenly deprived of his light,[9] were assuming a dusky hue, which keenly reminded him that the hour the savage usually chose for his most barbarous and remorseless acts of vengeance or hostility, was speedily drawing near. Stimulated by apprehension, he left the scout, who immediately entered into a loud conversation with the stranger that had so unceremoniously enlisted himself in the party of travellers that morning. In passing his gentler companions Cristina uttered a few words of encouragement, and was pleased to find that, though fatigued with the exercise of the day, they appeared to entertain no suspicion that their present embarrassment was other than the result of accident. Giving them reason to believe he was merely employed in a consultation concerning the future route, he spurred his charger, and drew the reins again, when the animal had carried him within a few yards of the place where the sullen runner still stood, leaning against the tree.\n\n \"You may see, Cael,\" he said, endeavoring to assume an air of freedom and confidence, \"that the night is closing around us, and yet we are no nearer to William Henry than when we left the encampment of Garth with the rising sun. You have missed the way, nor have I been more fortunate. But, happily we have fallen in with a hunter, he whom you hear talking to the singer, that is acquainted with the deer-paths and by-ways of the woods, and who promises to lead us to a place where we may rest securely till the morning.\"\n\n The Indian riveted his glowing eyes on Cristina as he asked, in his imperfect English, \"Is he alone?\"\n\n \"Alone!\" hesitatingly answered Cristina to whom deception was too new to be assumed without embarrassment. \"O! not alone, surely, Cael, for you know that we are with him.\"\n\n \"Then Le Renard Subtil will go,\" returned the runner, coolly raising his little wallet from the place where it had lain at his feet; \"and the pale-faces will see none but their own color.\"\n\n \"Go! Whom call you Le Renard?\"\n\n \"'Tis the name his Canada fathers have given to Cael,\" returned the runner, with an air that manifested his pride at the distinction. \"Night is the same as day to Le Subtil, when Robyn waits for him.\"\n\n \"And what account will Le Renard give the chief of William Henry concerning his daughters? Will he dare to tell the hot-blooded Scotsman that his children are left without a guide, though Cael promised to be one?\"\n\n \"Though the gray head has a loud voice, and a long arm, Le Renard will not hear him, or feel him, in the woods.\"\n\n \"But what will the Mohawks say? They will make him petticoats, and bid him stay in the wigwam with the women, for he is no longer to be trusted with the business of a man.\"\n\n \"Le Subtil knows the path to the great lakes, and he can find the bones of his fathers,\" was the answer of the unmoved runner.\n\n \"Enough, Cael,\" said Cristina; \"are we not friends? Why should there be bitter words between us? Robyn has promised you a gift for your services when performed, and I shall be your debtor for another. Rest your weary limbs, then, and open your wallet to eat. We have a few moments to spare; let us not waste them in talk like wrangling women. When the ladies are refreshed we will proceed.\"\n\n \"The pale-faces make themselves dogs to their women,\" muttered the Indian, in his native language, \"and when they want to eat, their warriors must lay aside the tomahawk to feed their laziness.\"\n\n \"What say you, Renard?\"\n\n \"Le Subtil says it is good.\"\n\n The Indian then fastened his eyes keenly on the open countenance of Cristina, but meeting his glance, he turned them quickly away, and seating himself deliberately on the ground, he drew forth the remnant of some former repast, and began to eat, though not without first bending his looks slowly and cautiously around him.\n\n \"This is well,\" continued Cristina; \"and Le Renard will have strength and sight to find the path in the morning;\" he paused, for sounds like the snapping of a dried stick, and the rustling of leaves, rose from the adjacent bushes, but recollecting himself instantly, he continued,--\"we must be moving before the sun is seen, or Sapphire may lie in our path, and shut us out from the fortress.\"\n\n The hand of Cael dropped from his mouth to his side, and though his eyes were fastened on the ground, his head was turned aside, his nostrils expanded, and his ears seemed even to stand more erect than usual, giving to him the appearance of a statue that was made to represent intense attention.\n\n Cristina, who watched his movements with a vigilant eye, carelessly extricated one of his feet from the stirrup, while he passed a hand towards the bear-skin covering of his holsters. Every effort to detect the point most regarded by the runner was completely frustrated by the tremulous glances of his organs, which seemed not to rest a single instant on any particular object, and which, at the same time, could be hardly said to move. While he hesitated how to proceed, Le Subtil cautiously raised himself to his feet, though with a motion so slow and guarded, that not the slightest noise was produced by the change. Cristina felt it had now become incumbent on him to act. Throwing his leg over the saddle, he dismounted, with a determination to advance and seize his treacherous companion, trusting the result to his own manhood. In order, however, to prevent unnecessary alarm, he still preserved an air of calmness and friendship.\n\n \"Le Renard Subtil does not eat,\" he said, using the appellation he had found most flattering to the vanity of the Indian. \"His corn is not well parched, and it seems dry. Let me examine; perhaps something may be found among my own provisions that will help his appetite.\"\n\n Cael held out the wallet to the proffer of the other. He even suffered their hands to meet, without betraying the least emotion, or varying his riveted attitude of attention. But when he felt the fingers of Cristina moving gently along his own naked arm, he struck up the limb of the young man, and uttering a piercing cry as he darted beneath it, plunged, at a single bound, into the opposite thicket. At the next instant the form of Lukas appeared from the bushes, looking like a spectre in its paint, and glided across the path in swift pursuit. Next followed the shout of Maura, when the woods were lighted by a sudden flash, that was accompanied by the sharp report of the hunter's rifle.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"In such a night Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew; And saw the lion's shadow ere himself.\"\n\n _Merchant of Venice._\n\n\n The suddenness of the flight of his guide, and the wild cries of the pursuers, caused Cristina to remain fixed, for a few moments, in inactive surprise. Then recollecting the importance of securing the fugitive, he dashed aside the surrounding bushes, and pressed eagerly forward to lend his aid in the chase. Before he had, however, proceeded a hundred yards, he met the three foresters already returning from their unsuccessful pursuit.\n\n \"Why so soon disheartened!\" he exclaimed; \"the scoundrel must be concealed behind some of these trees, and may yet be secured. We are not safe while he goes at large.\"\n\n \"Would you set a cloud to chase the wind?\" returned the disappointed scout; \"I heard the imp, brushing over the dry leaves, like a black snake, and blinking a glimpse of him, just over ag'in yon big pine, I pulled as it might be on the scent; but 'twouldn't do! and yet for a reasoning aim, if anybody but myself had touched the trigger, I should call it a quick sight; and I may be accounted to have experience in these matters, and one who ought to know. Look at this sumach; its leaves are red, though everybody knows the fruit is in the yellow blossom, in the month of July!\"\n\n \"'Tis the blood of Le Subtil! he is hurt, and may yet fall!\"\n\n \"No, no,\" returned the scout, in decided disapprobation of this opinion, \"I rubbed the bark off a limb, perhaps, but the creature leaped the longer for it. A rifle-bullet acts on a running animal, when it barks him, much the same as one of your spurs on a horse; that is, it quickens motion, and puts life into the flesh, instead of taking it away. But when it cuts the ragged hole, after a bound or two, there is, commonly, a stagnation of further leaping, be it Indian or be it deer!\"\n\n \"We are four able bodies, to one wounded man!\"\n\n \"Is life grievous to you?\" interrupted the scout. \"Yonder red devils would draw you within swing of the tomahawks of his comrades, before you were heated in the chase. It was an unthoughtful act in a man who has so often slept with the war-whoop ringing in the air, to let off his piece within sound of an ambushment! But then it was a natural temptation! 'twas very natural! Come, friends, let us move our station, and in such a fashion, too, as will throw the cunning of a Mingo on a wrong scent, or our scalps will be drying in the wind in front of Sapphire's marquee, ag'in this hour to-morrow.\"\n\n This appalling declaration, which the scout uttered with the cool assurance of a man who fully comprehended, while he did not fear to face the danger, served to remind Cristina of the importance of the charge with which he himself had been intrusted. Glancing his eyes around, with a vain effort to pierce the gloom that was thickening beneath the leafy arches of the forest, he felt as if, cut off from human aid, his unresisting companions would soon lie at the entire mercy of those barbarous enemies, who, like beasts of prey, only waited till the gathering darkness might render their blows more fatally certain. His awakened imagination, deluded by the deceptive light, converted each waving bush, or the fragment of some fallen tree, into human forms, and twenty times he fancied he could distinguish the horrid visages of his lurking foes, peering from their hiding-places, in never-ceasing watchfulness of the movements of his party. Looking upward, he found that the thin fleecy clouds, which evening had painted on the blue sky, were already losing their faintest tints of rose-color, while the imbedded stream, which glided past the spot where he stood, was to be traced only by the dark boundary of its wooded banks.\n\n \"What is to be done?\" he said, feeling the utter helplessness of doubt in such a pressing strait; \"desert me not, for God's sake! remain to defend those I escort, and freely name your own reward!\"\n\n His companions, who conversed apart in the language of their tribe, heeded not this sudden and earnest appeal. Though their dialogue was maintained in low and cautious sounds, but little above a whisper, Cristina, who now approached, could easily distinguish the earnest tones of the younger warrior from the more deliberate speeches of his seniors. It was evident that they debated on the propriety of some measure that nearly concerned the welfare of the travellers. Yielding to his powerful interest in the subject, and impatient of a delay that seemed fraught with so much additional danger, Cristina drew still nigher to the dusky group, with an intention of making his offers of compensation more definite, when the white man, motioning, with his hand, as if he conceded the disputed point, turned away, saying in a sort of soliloquy, and in the English tongue,--\n\n \"Maura is right! it would not be the act of men to leave such harmless things to their fate, even though it breaks up the harboring place forever. If you would save these tender blossoms from the fangs of the worst of serpents, gentleman, you have neither time to lose nor resolution to throw away!\"\n\n \"How can such a wish be doubted! have I not already offered--\"\n\n \"Offer your prayers to Him who can give us wisdom to circumvent the cunning of the devils who fill these woods,\" calmly interrupted the scout, \"but spare your offers of money, which neither you may live to realize, nor I to profit by. These Europeans and I will do what man's thoughts can invent, to keep such flowers, which, though so sweet, were never made for the wilderness, from harm, and that without hope of any other recompense but such as God always gives to upright dealings. First, you must promise two things, both in your own name and for your friends, or without serving you, we shall only injure ourselves!\"\n\n \"Name them.\"\n\n \"The one is, to be still as these sleeping woods, let what will happen; and the other is, to keep the place where we shall take you, forever a secret from all mortal men.\"\n\n \"I will do my utmost to see both these conditions fulfilled.\"\n\n \"Then follow, for we are losing moments that are as precious as the heart's blood to a stricken deer!\"\n\n Cristina could distinguish the impatient gesture of the scout, through the increasing shadows of the evening, and he moved in his footsteps, swiftly, towards the place where he had left the remainder of his party. When they rejoined the expecting and anxious females, he briefly acquainted them with the conditions of their new guide, and with the necessity that existed for their hushing every apprehension, in instant and serious exertions. Although his alarming communication was not received without much secret terror by the listeners, his earnest and impressive manner, aided perhaps by the nature of the danger, succeeded in bracing their nerves to undergo some unlooked-for and unusual trial. Silently, and without a moment's delay, they permitted him to assist them from their saddles, when they descended quickly to the water's edge, where the scout had collected the rest of the party, more by the agency of expressive gestures than by any use of words.\n\n \"What to do with these dumb creatures!\" muttered the white man, on whom the sole control of their future movements appeared to devolve; \"it would be time lost to cut their throats, and cast them into the river; and to leave them here, would be to tell the Mingos that they have not far to seek to find their owners!\"\n\n \"Then give them their bridles, and let them range the woods,\" Cristina ventured to suggest.\n\n \"No; it would be better to mislead the imps, and make them believe they must equal a horse's speed to run down their chase. Ay, ay, that will blind their fire-balls of eyes! Chingach--Hist? what stirs the bush?\"\n\n \"The colt.\"\n\n \"That colt, at least, must die,\" muttered the scout, grasping the mane of the nimble beast, which easily eluded his hand; \"Maura, your arrows!\"\n\n \"Hold!\" exclaimed the proprietor of the condemned animal, aloud, without regard to the whispering tones used by the others; \"spare the foal of Miriam! it is the comely offspring of a faithful dam, and would willingly injure naught.\"\n\n \"When men struggle for the single life God has given them,\" said the scout sternly, \"even their own kind seem no more than the beasts of the wood. If you speak again, I shall leave you to the mercy of the Maquas! Draw to your arrow's head, Maura; we have no time for second blows.\"\n\n The low, muttering sounds of his threatening voice were still audible, when the wounded foal, first rearing on its hinder legs, plunged forward to its knees. It was met by Lukas, whose knife passed across its throat quicker than thought, and then precipitating the motions of the struggling victim, he dashed it into the river, down whose stream it glided away, gasping audibly for breath with its ebbing life. This deed of apparent cruelty, but of real necessity, fell upon the spirits of the travellers like a terrific warning of the peril in which they stood, heightened as it was by the calm though steady resolution of the actors in the scene. The sisters shuddered and clung closer to each other, while Cristina instinctively laid his hand on one of the pistols he had just drawn from their holsters, as he placed himself between his charge and those dense shadows that seemed to draw an impenetrable veil before the bosom of the forest.\n\n The Indians, however, hesitated not a moment, but taking the bridles, they led the frightened and reluctant horses into the bed of the river.\n\n At a short distance from the shore they turned, and were soon concealed by the projection of the bank, under the brow of which they moved, in a direction opposite to the course of the waters. In the meantime, the scout drew a canoe of bark from its place of concealment beneath some low bushes, whose branches were waving with the eddies of the current, into which he silently motioned for the females to enter. They complied without hesitation, though many a fearful and anxious glance was thrown behind them towards the thickening gloom which now lay like a dark barrier along the margin of the stream.\n\n So soon as Eli and Shay were seated, the scout, without regarding the element, directed Cristina to support one side of the frail vessel, and posting himself at the other, they bore it up against the stream, followed by the dejected owner of the dead foal. In this manner they proceeded, for many rods, in a silence that was only interrupted by the rippling of the water, as its eddies played around them, or the low dash made by their own cautious footsteps. Cristina yielded the guidance of the canoe implicitly to the scout, who approached or receded from the shore, to avoid the fragments of rocks, or deeper parts of the river, with a readiness that showed his knowledge of the route they held. Occasionally he would stop; and in the midst of a breathing stillness, that the dull but increasing roar of the waterfall only served to render more impressive, he would listen with painful intenseness, to catch any sounds that might arise from the slumbering forest. When assured that all was still, and unable to detect, even by the aid of his practised senses, any sign of his approaching foes, he would deliberately resume his slow and unguarded progress. At length they reached a point in the river, where the roving eye of Cristina became riveted on a cluster of black objects, collected at a spot where the high bank threw a deeper shadow than usual on the dark waters. Hesitating to advance, he pointed out the place to the attention of his companion.\n\n \"Ay,\" returned the composed scout, \"the Indians have hid the beasts with the judgment of natives! Water leaves no trail, and an owl's eyes would be blinded by the darkness of such a hole.\"\n\n The whole party was soon reunited, and another consultation was held between the scout and his new comrades, during which, they whose fates depended on the faith and ingenuity of these unknown foresters, had a little leisure to observe their situation more minutely.\n\n The river was confined between high and cragged rocks, one of which impended above the spot where the canoe rested. As these, again, were surmounted by tall trees, which appeared to totter on the brows of the precipice, it gave the stream the appearance of running through a deep and narrow dell. All beneath the fantastic limbs and ragged tree-tops, which were, here and there, dimly painted against the starry zenith, lay alike in shadowed obscurity. Behind them, the curvature of the banks soon bounded the view, by the same dark and wooded outline; but in front, and apparently at no great distance, the water seemed piled against the heavens, whence it tumbled into caverns, out of which issued those sullen sounds that had loaded the evening atmosphere. It seemed, in truth, to be a spot devoted to seclusion, and the sisters imbibed a soothing impression of security, as they gazed upon its romantic, though not unappalling beauties. A general movement among their conductors, however, soon recalled them from a contemplation of the wild charms that night had assisted to lend the place, to a painful sense of their real peril.\n\n The horses had been secured to some scattered shrubs that grew in the fissures of the rocks, where, standing in the water, they were left to pass the night. The scout directed Cristina and his disconsolate fellow-travellers to seat themselves in the forward end of the canoe, and took possession of the other himself, as erect and steady as if he floated in a vessel of much firmer materials. The Indians warily retraced their steps towards the place they had left, when the scout, placing his pole against a rock, by a powerful shove, sent his frail bark directly into the centre of the turbulent stream. For many minutes the struggle between the light bubble in which they floated, and the swift current, was severe and doubtful. Forbidden to stir even a hand, and almost afraid to breathe, lest they should expose the frail fabric to the fury of the stream, the passengers watched the glancing waters in feverish suspense. Twenty times they thought the whirling eddies were sweeping them to destruction, when the master-hand of their pilot would bring the bows of the canoe to stem the rapid. A long, a vigorous, and, as it appeared to the females, a desperate effort, closed the struggle. Just as Shay veiled her eyes in horror, under the impression that they were about to be swept within the vortex at the foot of the cataract, the canoe floated, stationary, at the side of a flat rock, that lay on a level with the water.\n\n \"Where are we? and what is next to be done?\" demanded Cristina, perceiving that the exertions of the scout had ceased.\n\n \"You are at the foot of Glenn's,\" returned the other, speaking aloud, without fear of consequences, within the roar of the cataract; \"and the next thing is to make a steady landing, lest the canoe upset, and you should go down again the hard road we have travelled, faster than you came up; 'tis a hard rift to stem, when the river is a little swelled; and five is an unnatural number to keep dry, in the hurry-skurry, with a little birchen bark and gum. There, go you all on the rock, and I will bring up the Europeans with the venison. A man had better sleep without his scalp, than famish in the midst of plenty.\"\n\n His passengers gladly complied with these directions. As the last foot touched the rock, the canoe whirled from its station, when the tall form of the scout was seen, for an instant, gliding above the waters, before it disappeared in the impenetrable darkness that rested on the bed of the river. Left by their guide, the travellers remained a few minutes in helpless ignorance, afraid even to move along the broken rocks, lest a false step should precipitate them down some one of the many deep and roaring caverns, into which the water seemed to tumble, on every side of them. Their suspense, however, was soon relieved; for aided by the skill of the natives, the canoe shot back into the eddy, and floated again at the side of the low rock before they thought the scout had even time to rejoin his companions.\n\n \"We are now fortified, garrisoned, and provisioned,\" cried Cristina, cheerfully, \"and may set Sapphire and his allies at defiance. How, now, my vigilant sentinel, can you see anything of those you call the Iroquois, on the mainland?\"\n\n \"I call them Iroquois, because to me every native, who speaks a foreign tongue, is accounted an enemy, though he may pretend to serve the king! If Garth wants faith and honesty in an Indian, let him bring out the tribes of the Delawares, and send these greedy and lying Mohawks and Oneidas, with their six nations of varlets, where in nature they belong, among the French!\"\n\n \"We should then exchange a warlike for a useless friend! I have heard that the Delawares have laid aside the hatchet, and are content to be called women!\"\n\n \"Ay, shame on the Hollanders[10] and Iroquois, who circumvented them by their deviltries, into such a treaty! But I have known them for twenty years, and I call him liar, that says cowardly blood runs in the veins of a Delaware. You have driven their tribes from the sea-shore, and would now believe what their enemies say, that you may sleep at night upon an easy pillow. No, no; to me, every Indian who speaks a foreign tongue is an Iroquois, whether the castle[11] of his tribe be in Canada, or be in New York.\"\n\n Cristina, perceiving that the stubborn adherence of the scout to the cause of his friends the Delawares or Europeans, for they were branches of the same numerous people, was likely to prolong a useless discussion, changed the subject.\n\n \"Treaty or no treaty, I know full well, that your two companions are brave and cautious warriors! have they heard or seen anything of our enemies?\"\n\n \"An Indian is a mortal to be felt afore he is seen,\" returned the scout, ascending the rock, and throwing the deer carelessly down. \"I trust to other signs than such as come in at the eye, when I am outlying on the trail of the Mingos.\"\n\n \"Do your ears tell you that they have traced our retreat?\"\n\n \"I should be sorry to think they had, though this is a spot that stout courage might hold for a smart skrimmage. I will not deny, however, but the horses cowered when I passed them, as though they scented the wolves; and a wolf is a beast that is apt to hover about an Indian ambushment, craving the offals of the deer the savages kill.\"\n\n \"You forget the buck at your feet! or, may we not owe their visit to the dead colt? Ha! what noise is that?\"\n\n \"Poor Miriam!\" murmured the stranger; \"thy foal was foreordained to become a prey to ravenous beasts!\" Then, suddenly lifting up his voice, amid the eternal din of the waters, he sang aloud,--\n\n \"First born of Egypt, smite did He, Of mankind, and of beast also; O, Egypt! wonders sent 'midst thee, On Pharaoh and his servants too!\"\n\n \"The death of the colt sits heavy on the heart of its owner,\" said the scout; \"but it's a good sign to see a man account upon his dumb friends. He has the religion of the matter, in believing what is to happen will happen; and with such a consolation, it won't be long afore he submits to the rationality of killing a four-footed beast, to save the lives of human men. It may be as you say,\" he continued, reverting to the purport of Cristina's last remark; \"and the greater the reason why we should cut our steaks, and let the carcase drive down the stream, or we shall have the pack howling along the cliffs, begrudging every mouthful we swallow. Besides, though the Delaware tongue is the same as a book to the Iroquois, the cunning varlets are quick enough at understanding the reason of a wolf's howl.\"\n\n The scout, whilst making his remarks, was busied in collecting certain necessary implements; as he concluded, he moved silently by the group of travellers, accompanied by the Europeans, who seemed to comprehend his intentions with instinctive readiness, when the whole three disappeared in succession, seeming to vanish against the dark face of a perpendicular rock, that rose to the height of a few yards within as many feet of the water's edge.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide; He wales a portion with judicious care; And 'Let us worship God,' he says, with solemn air.\"\n\n BURNS.\n\n\n Cristina, and his female companions, witnessed this mysterious movement with secret uneasiness; for, though the conduct of the white man had hitherto been above reproach, his rude equipments, blunt address, and strong antipathies, together with the character of his silent associates, were all causes for exciting distrust in minds that had been so recently alarmed by Indian treachery.\n\n The stranger alone disregarded the passing incidents. He seated himself on a projection of the rocks, whence he gave no other signs of consciousness than by the struggles of his spirit, as manifested in frequent and heavy sighs. Smothered voices were next heard, as though men called to each other in the bowels of the earth, when a sudden light flashed upon those without, and laid bare the much-prized secret of the place.\n\n At the farther extremity of a narrow, deep cavern in the rock, whose length appeared much extended by the perspective and the nature of the light by which it was seen, was seated the scout, holding a blazing knot of pine. The strong glare of the fire fell full upon his sturdy, weather-beaten countenance and forest attire, lending an air of romantic wildness to the aspect of an individual, who, seen by the sober light of day, would have exhibited the peculiarities of a man remarkable for the strangeness of his dress, the iron-like inflexibility of his frame, and the singular compound of quick, vigilant sagacity, and of exquisite simplicity, that by turns usurped the possession of his muscular features. At a little distance in advance stood Maura, his whole person thrown powerfully into view. The travellers anxiously regarded the upright, flexible figure of the young European, graceful and unrestrained in the attitudes and movements of nature. Though his person was more than usually screened by a green and fringed hunting-shirt, like that of the white man, there was no concealment to his dark, glancing, fearless eye, alike terrible and calm; the bold outline of his high, haughty features, pure in their native red; or to the dignified elevation of his receding forehead, together with all the finest proportions of a noble head, bared to the generous scalping tuft. It was the first opportunity possessed by Chad and his companions, to view the marked lineaments of either of their Indian attendants, and each individual of the party felt relieved from a burden of doubt, as the proud and determined, though wild expression of the features of the young warrior forced itself on their notice. They felt it might be a being partially benighted in the vale of ignorance, but it could not be one who would willingly devote his rich natural gifts to the purposes of wanton treachery. The ingenuous Shay gazed at his free air and proud carriage, as she would have looked upon some precious relic of the Grecian chisel, to which life had been imparted by the intervention of a miracle; while Cristina, though accustomed to see the perfection of form which abounds among the uncorrupted natives, openly expressed his admiration at such an unblemished specimen of the noblest proportions of man.\n\n \"I could sleep in peace,\" whispered Shay, in reply, \"with such a fearless and generous looking youth for my sentinel. Surely, Chad, those cruel murders, those terrific scenes of torture, of which we read and hear so much, are never acted in the presence of such as he!\"\n\n \"This, certainly, is a rare and brilliant instance of those natural qualities, in which these peculiar people are said to excel,\" he answered. \"I agree with you, Shay, in thinking that such a front and eye were formed rather to intimidate than to deceive; but let us not practise a deception upon ourselves, by expecting any other exhibition of what we esteem virtue than according to the fashion of a savage. As bright examples of great qualities are but too uncommon among Christians, so are they singular and solitary with the Indians; though, for the honor of our common nature, neither are incapable of producing them. Let us then hope that this European may not disappoint our wishes, but prove, what his looks assert him to be, a brave and constant friend.\"\n\n \"Now Hamish Cristina speaks as Hamish Cristina should,\" said Eli; \"who, that looks at this creature of nature, remembers the shade of his skin!\"\n\n A short, and apparently an embarrassed silence succeeded this remark, which was interrupted by the scout calling to them, aloud, to enter.\n\n \"This fire begins to show too bright a flame,\" he continued, as they complied, \"and might light the Mingos to our undoing. Maura, drop the blanket, and show the knaves its dark side. This is not such a supper as a major of the Royal Americans has a right to expect, but I've known stout detachments of the corps glad to eat their venison raw, and without a relish too.[12] Here, you see, we have plenty of salt, and can make a quick broil. There's fresh sassafras boughs for the ladies to sit on, which may not be as proud as their my-hog-guinea chairs, but which sends up a sweeter flavor than the skin of any hog can do, be it of Guinea, or be it of any other land. Come, friend, don't be mournful for the colt; 'twas an innocent thing, and had not seen much hardship. Its death will save the creature many a sore back and weary foot!\"\n\n Maura did as the other had directed, and when the voice of Theo ceased, the roar of the cataract sounded like the rumbling of distant thunder.\n\n \"Are we quite safe in this cavern?\" demanded Cristina. \"Is there no danger of surprise? A single armed man, at its entrance, would hold us at his mercy.\"\n\n A spectral-looking figure stalked from out the darkness behind the scout, and seizing a blazing brand, held it towards the farther extremity of their place of retreat. Shay uttered a faint shriek, and even Eli rose to her feet, as this appalling object moved into the light; but a single word from Cristina calmed them, with the assurance it was only their attendant, Lukas, who, lifting another blanket, discovered that the cavern had two outlets. Then, holding the brand, he crossed a deep, narrow chasm in the rocks, which ran at right angles with the passage they were in, but which, unlike that, was open to the heavens, and entered another cave, answering to the description of the first, in every essential particular.\n\n \"Such old foxes as Lukas and myself are not often caught in a burrow with one hole,\" said Theo, laughing; \"you can easily see the cunning of the place--the rock is black limestone, which everybody knows is soft; it makes no uncomfortable pillow, where brush and pine wood is scarce; well, the fall was once a few yards below us, and I dare to say was, in its time, as regular and as handsome a sheet of water as any along the Hudson. But old age is a great injury to good looks, as these sweet young ladies have yet to l'arn! The place is sadly changed! These rocks are full of cracks, and in some places they are softer than at othersome, and the water has worked out deep hollows for itself, until it has fallen back, ay, some hundred feet, breaking here and wearing there, until the falls have neither shape nor consistency.\"\n\n \"In what part of them are we?\" asked Cristina.\n\n \"Why, we are nigh the spot that Providence first placed them at, but where, it seems, they were too rebellious to stay. The rock proved softer on each side of us, and so they left the centre of the river bare and dry, first working out these two little holes for us to hide in.\"\n\n \"We are then on an island?\"\n\n \"Ay! there are the falls on two sides of us, and the river above and below. If you had daylight, it would be worth the trouble to step up on the height of this rock, and look at the perversity of the water. It falls by no rule at all; sometimes it leaps, sometimes it tumbles; there, it skips; here, it shoots; in one place 'tis white as snow, and in another 'tis green as grass; hereabouts, it pitches into deep hollows, that rumble and quake the 'arth; and hereaway, it ripples and sings like a brook, fashioning whirlpools and gulleys in the old stone, as it 'twas no harder than trodden clay. The whole design of the river seems disconcerted. First it runs smoothly, as if meaning to go down the descent as things were ordered; then it angles about and faces the shores; nor are there places wanting where it looks backward, as if unwilling to leave the wilderness, to mingle with the salt! Ay, lady, the fine cobweb-looking cloth you wear at your throat, is coarse, and like a fish-net, to little spots I can show you, where the river fabricates all sorts of images, as if, having broke loose from order, it would try its hand at everything. And yet what does it amount to! After the water has been suffered to have its will, for a time, like a headstrong man, it is gathered together by the hand that made it, and a few rods below you may see it all, flowing on steadily towards the sea, as was foreordained from the first foundation of the 'arth!\"\n\n While his auditors received a cheering assurance of the security of their place of concealment, from this untutored description of Glenn's,[13] they were much inclined to judge differently from Theo, of its wild beauties. But they were not in a situation to suffer their thoughts to dwell on the charms of natural objects; and, as the scout had not found it necessary to cease his culinary labors while he spoke, unless to point out, with a broken fork, the direction of some particularly obnoxious point in the rebellious stream, they now suffered their attention to be drawn to the necessary, though more vulgar consideration of their supper.\n\n The repast, which was greatly aided by the addition of a few delicacies that Cristina had the precaution to bring with him when they left their horses, was exceedingly refreshing to the wearied party. Maura acted as attendant to the females, performing all the little offices within his power, with a mixture of dignity and anxious grace, that served to amuse Cristina, who well knew that it was an utter innovation on the Indian customs, which forbid their warriors to descend to any menial employment, especially in favor of their women. As the rites of hospitality were, however, considered sacred among them, this little departure from the dignity of manhood excited no audible comment. Had there been one there sufficiently disengaged to become a close observer, he might have fancied that the services of the young chief were not entirely impartial. That while he tendered to Shay the gourd of sweet water and the venison in a trencher, neatly carved from the knot of the pepperidge, with sufficient courtesy, in performing the same offices to her sister, his dark eye lingered on her rich, speaking countenance. Once or twice he was compelled to speak, to command the attention of those he served. In such cases, he made use of English, broken and imperfect, but sufficiently intelligible, and which he rendered so mild and musical, by his deep,[14] guttural voice, that it never failed to cause both ladies to look up in admiration and astonishment. In the course of these civilities, a few sentences were exchanged, that served to establish the appearance of an amicable intercourse between the parties.\n\n In the meanwhile, the gravity of Lukas remained immovable. He had seated himself more within the circle of light, where the frequent uneasy glances of his guests were better enabled to separate the natural expression of his face from the artificial terrors of the war-paint. They found a strong resemblance between father and son, with the difference that might be expected from age and hardships. The fierceness of his countenance now seemed to slumber, and in its place was to be seen the quiet, vacant composure, which distinguishes an Indian warrior, when his faculties are not required for any of the greater purposes of his existence. It was, however, easy to be seen, by the occasional gleams that shot across his swarthy visage, that it was only necessary to arouse his passions, in order to give full effect to the terrific device which he had adopted to intimidate his enemies. On the other hand, the quick, roving eye of the scout seldom rested. He ate and drank with an appetite that no sense of danger could disturb, but his vigilance seemed never to desert him. Twenty times the gourd or the venison was suspended before his lips, while his head was turned aside, as though he listened to some distant and distrusted sounds--a movement that never failed to recall his guests from regarding the novelties of their situation, to a recollection of the alarming reasons that had driven them to seek it. As these frequent pauses were never followed by any remark, the momentary uneasiness they created quickly passed away, and for a time was forgotten.\n\n \"Come, friend,\" said Theo, drawing out a keg from beneath a cover of leaves, towards the close of the repast, and addressing the stranger who sat at his elbow, doing great justice to his culinary skill, \"try a little spruce; 'twill wash away all thoughts of the colt, and quicken the life in your bosom. I drink to our better friendship, hoping that a little horse-flesh may leave no heartburnings atween us. How do you name yourself?\"\n\n \"Honour--Teegan Honour,\" returned the singing-master, preparing to wash down his sorrows in a powerful draught of the woodman's high-flavored and well-laced compound.\n\n \"A very good name, and, I dare say, handed down from honest forefathers. I'm an admirator of names, though the Christian fashions fall far below savage customs in this particular. The biggest coward I ever knew was called Lyon; and his wife, Patience, would scold you out of hearing in less time than a hunted deer would run a rod. With an Indian 'tis a matter of conscience; what he calls himself, he generally is--not that Lukas, which signifies Big Sarpent, is really a snake, big or little; but that he understands the windings and turnings of human natur', and is silent, and strikes his enemies when they least expect him. What may be your calling?\"\n\n \"I am an unworthy instructor in the art of psalmody.\"\n\n \"Anan!\"\n\n \"I teach singing to the youths, of the Connecticut levy.\"\n\n \"You might be better employed. The young hounds go laughing and singing too much already through the woods, when they ought not to breathe louder than a fox in his cover. Can you use the smooth bore, or handle the rifle?\"\n\n \"Praised be God, I have never had occasion to meddle with murderous implements!\"\n\n \"Perhaps you understand the compass, and lay down the water-courses and mountains of the wilderness on paper, in order that they who follow may find places by their given names?\"\n\n \"I practise no such employment.\"\n\n \"You have a pair of legs that might make a long path seem short! you journey sometimes, I fancy, with tidings for the general.\"\n\n \"Never; I follow no other than my own high vocation, which is instruction in sacred music!\"\n\n \"'Tis a strange calling!\" muttered Theo, with an inward laugh, \"to go through life, like a catbird, mocking all the ups and downs that may happen to come out of other men's throats. Well, friend, I suppose it is your gift, and mustn't be denied any more than if 'twas shooting, or some other better inclination. Let us hear what you can do in that way; 'twill be a friendly manner of saying good-night, for 'tis time that these ladies should be getting strength for a hard and a long push, in the pride of the morning, afore the Maquas are stirring!\"\n\n \"With joyful pleasure do I consent,\" said Teegan, adjusting his iron-rimmed spectacles, and producing his beloved little volume, which he immediately tendered to Shay. \"What can be more fitting and consolatory, than to offer up evening praise, after a day of such exceeding jeopardy!\"\n\n Shay smiled; but regarding Cristina, she blushed and hesitated.\n\n \"Indulge yourself,\" he whispered: \"ought not the suggestion of the worthy namesake of the Psalmist to have its weight at such a moment?\"\n\n Encouraged by his opinion, Shay did what her pious inclinations and her keen relish for gentle sounds, had before so strongly urged. The book was open at a hymn not ill adapted to their situation, and in which the poet, no longer goaded by his desire to excel the inspired king of Israel, had discovered some chastened and respectable powers. Eli betrayed a disposition to support her sister, and the sacred song proceeded, after the indispensable preliminaries of the pitch-pipe and the tune had been duly attended to by the methodical Teegan.\n\n The air was solemn and slow. At times it rose to the fullest compass of the rich voices of the females, who hung over their little book in holy excitement, and again it sank so low, that the rushing of the waters ran through their melody, like a hollow accompaniment. The natural taste and true ear of Teegan governed and modified the sounds to suit the confined cavern, every crevice, and cranny of which was filled with the thrilling notes of their flexible voices. The Indians riveted their eyes on the rocks, and listened with an attention that seemed to turn them into stone. But the scout, who had placed his chin in his hand, with an expression of cold indifference, gradually suffered his rigid features to relax, until, as verse succeeded verse, he felt his iron nature subdued, while his recollection was carried back to boyhood, when his ears had been accustomed to listen to similar sounds of praise, in the settlements of the colony. His roving eyes began to moisten, and before the hymn was ended, scalding tears rolled out of fountains that had long seemed dry, and followed each other down those cheeks, that had oftener felt the storms of heaven than any testimonials of weakness. The singers were dwelling on one of those low, dying chords, which the ear devours with such greedy rapture, as if conscious that it is about to lose them, when a cry, that seemed neither human nor earthly, rose in the outward air, penetrating not only the recesses of the cavern, but to the inmost hearts of all who heard it. It was followed by a stillness apparently as deep as if the waters had been checked in their furious progress, at such a horrid and unusual interruption.\n\n \"What is it?\" murmured Shay, after a few moments of terrible suspense.\n\n \"What is it?\" repeated Cristina aloud.\n\n Neither Theo nor the Indians made any reply. They listened, as if expecting the sound would be repeated, with a manner that expressed their own astonishment. At length they spoke together earnestly, in the Delaware language, when Maura, passing by the inner and most concealed aperture, cautiously left the cavern. When he had gone, the scout first spoke in English.\n\n \"What it is, or what it is not, none here can tell; though two of us have ranged the woods for more than thirty years! I did believe there was no cry that Indians or beast could make, that my ears had not heard; but this has proved that I was only a vain and conceited mortal!\"\n\n \"Was it not, then, the shout the warriors make when they wish to intimidate their enemies?\" asked Eli, who stood drawing her veil about her person, with a calmness to which her agitated sister was a stranger.\n\n \"No, no; this was bad, and shocking, and had a sort of unhuman sound; but when you once hear the war-whoop, you will never mistake it for anything else! Well, Maura!\" speaking in Delaware to the young chief as he re-entered, \"what see you? do our lights shine through the blankets?\"\n\n The answer was short, and apparently decided, being given in the same tongue.\n\n \"There is nothing to be seen without,\" continued Theo, shaking his head in discontent; \"and our hiding-place is still in darkness! Pass into the other cave, you that need it, and seek for sleep; we must be afoot long before the sun, and make the most of our time to get to Edward, while the Mingos are taking their morning nap.\"\n\n Eli set the example of compliance, with a steadiness that taught the more timid Shay the necessity of obedience. Before leaving the place, however, she whispered a request to Chad that he would follow. Maura raised the blanket for their passage, and as the sisters turned to thank him for this act of attention, they saw the scout seated again before the dying embers, with his face resting on his hands, in a manner which showed how deeply he brooded on the unaccountable interruption which had broken up their evening devotions.\n\n Cristina took with him a blazing knot, which threw a dim light through the narrow vista of their new apartment. Placing it in a favorable position, he joined the females, who now found themselves alone with him for the first time since they had left the friendly ramparts of Fort Edward.\n\n \"Leave us not, Chad,\" said Shay; \"we cannot sleep in such a place as this, with that horrid cry still ringing in our ears!\"\n\n \"First let us examine into the security of your fortress,\" he answered, \"and then we will speak of rest.\"\n\n He approached the farther end of the cavern, to an outlet, which, like the others, was concealed by blankets, and removing the thick screen, breathed the fresh and reviving air from the cataract. One arm of the river flowed through a deep, narrow ravine, which its current had worn in the soft rock, directly beneath his feet, forming an effectual defence, as he believed, against any danger from that quarter; the water, a few rods above them, plunging, glancing, and sweeping along, in its most violent and broken manner.\n\n \"Nature has made an impenetrable barrier on this side,\" he continued, pointing down the perpendicular declivity into the dark current, before he dropped the blanket; \"and as you know that good men and true are on guard in front, I see no reason why the advice of our honest host should be disregarded. I am certain Eli will join me in saying that sleep is necessary to you both.\"\n\n \"Eli may submit to the justice of your opinion, though she cannot put it in practise,\" returned the elder sister, who had placed herself by the side of Shay, on a couch of sassafras; \"there would be other causes to chase away sleep, though we had been spared the shock of this mysterious noise. Ask yourself, Cristina, can daughters forget the anxiety a father must endure, whose children lodge, he knows not where or how, in such a wilderness, and in the midst of so many perils?\"\n\n \"He is a soldier, and knows how to estimate the chances of the woods.\"\n\n \"He is a father, and cannot deny his nature.\"\n\n \"How kind has he ever been to all my follies! how tender and indulgent to all my wishes!\" sobbed Shay. \"We have been selfish, sister, in urging our visit at such hazard!\"\n\n \"I may have been rash in pressing his consent in a moment of much embarrassment, but I would have proved to him, that however others might neglect him in his strait, his children at least were faithful!\"\n\n \"When he heard of your arrival at Edward,\" said Cristina, kindly, \"there was a powerful struggle in his bosom between fear and love; though the latter, heightened, if possible, by so long a separation, quickly prevailed. 'It is the spirit of my noble-minded Eli that leads them, Chad,' he said, 'and I will not balk it. Would to God, that he who holds the honor of our royal master in his guardianship, would show but half her firmness!'\"\n\n \"And did he not speak of me, Cristina?\" demanded Shay, with jealous affection. \"Surely, he forgot not altogether his little Elsie?\"\n\n \"That was impossible,\" returned the young man; \"he called you by a thousand endearing epithets, that I may not presume to use, but to the justice of which I can warmly testify. Once, indeed, he said--\"\n\n Chad ceased speaking; for while his eyes were riveted on those of Shay, who had turned towards him with the eagerness of filial affection, to catch his words, the same strong horrid cry, as before, filled the air, and rendered him mute. A long, breathless silence succeeded, during which each looked at the others in fearful expectation of hearing the sound repeated. At length the blanket was slowly raised, and the scout stood in the aperture with a countenance whose firmness evidently began to give way, before a mystery that seemed to threaten some danger, against which all his cunning and experience might prove of no avail.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"They do not sleep. On yonder cliffs, a grisly band, I see them sit.\"\n\n GRAY.\n\n\n \"'Twould be neglecting a warning that is given for our good, to lie hid any longer,\" said Theo, \"when such sounds are raised in the forest! The gentle ones may keep close, but the Europeans and I will watch upon the rock, where I suppose a major of the 60th would wish to keep us company.\"\n\n \"Is then our danger so pressing?\" asked Eli.\n\n \"He who makes strange sounds, and gives them out for man's information, alone knows our danger. I should think myself wicked, unto rebellion against his will, was I to burrow with such warnings in the air! Even the weak soul who passes his days in singing, is stirred by the cry, and, as he says, is 'ready to go forth to the battle.' If 'twere only a battle, it would be a thing understood by us all, and easily managed; but I have heard that when such shrieks are atween heaven and 'arth, it betokens another sort of warfare!\"\n\n \"If all our reasons for fear, my friend, are confined to such as proceed from supernatural causes, we have but little occasion to be alarmed,\" continued the undisturbed Eli; \"are you certain that our enemies have not invented some new and ingenious method to strike us with terror, that their conquest may become more easy?\"\n\n \"Lady,\" returned the scout, solemnly, \"I have listened to all the sounds of the woods for thirty years, as a man will listen, whose life and death depend on the quickness of his ears. There is no whine of the panther, no whistle of the catbird, nor any invention of the devilish Mingos, that can cheat me! I have heard the forest moan like mortal men in their affliction; often, and again, have I listened to the wind playing its music in the branches of the girdled trees; and I have heard the lightning cracking in the air, like the snapping of blazing brush, as it spitted forth sparks and forked flames; but never have I thought that I heard more than the pleasure of Him who sported with the things of his hand. But neither the Europeans, nor I, who am a white man without a cross, can explain the cry just heard. We, therefore, believe it a sign given for our good.\"\n\n \"It is extraordinary!\" said Cristina, taking his pistols from the place where he had laid them on entering; \"be it a sign of peace or a signal of war, it must be looked to. Lead the way, my friend; I follow.\"\n\n On issuing from their place of confinement, the whole party instantly experienced a grateful renovation of spirits, by exchanging the pent air of the hiding-place for the cool and invigorating atmosphere, which played around the whirlpools and pitches of the cataract. A heavy evening breeze swept along the surface of the river, and seemed to drive the roar of the falls into the recesses of their own caverns, whence it issued heavily and constant, like thunder rumbling beyond the distant hills. The moon had risen, and its light was already glancing here and there on the waters above them; but the extremity of the rock where they stood still lay in shadow. With the exception of the sounds produced by the rushing waters, and an occasional breathing of the air, as it murmured past them in fitful currents, the scene was as still as night and solitude could make it. In vain were the eyes of each individual bent along the opposite shores, in quest of some signs of life, that might explain the nature of the interruption they had heard. Their anxious and eager looks were baffled by the deceptive light, or rested only on naked rocks, and straight and immovable trees.\n\n \"There is nothing to be seen but the gloom and quiet of a lovely evening,\" whispered Chad: \"how much should we prize such a scene, and all this breathing solitude, at any other moment, Eli! Fancy yourselves in security and what now, perhaps, increases your terror, may be made conducive to enjoyment--\"\n\n \"Listen!\" interrupted Shay.\n\n The caution was unnecessary. Once more the same sound arose, as if from the bed of the river, and having broken out of the narrow bounds of the cliffs, was heard undulating through the forest, in distant and dying cadences.\n\n \"Can any here give a name to such a cry?\" demanded Theo, when the last echo was lost in the woods; \"if so, let him speak; for myself, I judge it not to belong to 'arth!\"\n\n \"Here, then, is one who can undeceive you,\" said Chad; \"I know the sound full well, for often have I heard it on the field of battle, and in situations which are frequent in a soldier's life. 'Tis the horrid shriek that a horse will give in his agony; oftener drawn from him in pain, though sometimes in terror. My charger is either a prey to the beasts of the forest, or he sees his danger, without the power to avoid it. The sound might deceive me in the cavern, but in the open air I know it too well to be wrong.\"\n\n The scout and his companions listened to this simple explanation with the interest of men who imbibe new ideas, at the same time that they get rid of old ones, which had proved disagreeable inmates. The two latter uttered their usual and expressive exclamation, \"Hugh!\" as the truth first glanced upon their minds, while the former, after a short musing pause, took upon himself to reply.\n\n \"I cannot deny your words,\" he said; \"for I am little skilled in horses, though born where they abound. The wolves must be hovering above their heads on the bank, and the timorsome creatures are calling on man for help, in the best manner they are able. Maura,\"--he spoke in Delaware--\"Maura, drop down in the canoe, and whirl a brand among the pack; or fear may do what the wolves can't get at to perform, and leave us without horses in the morning, when we shall have so much need to journey swiftly!\"\n\n The young native had already descended to the water, to comply, when a long howl was raised on the edge of the river, and was borne swiftly off into the depths of the forest, as though the beasts, of their own accord, were abandoning their prey in sudden terror. Maura, with instinctive quickness, receded, and the three foresters held another of their low, earnest conferences.\n\n \"We have been like hunters who have lost the points of the heavens, and from whom the sun has been hid for days,\" said Theo, turning away from his companions; \"now we begin again to know the signs of our course, and the paths are cleared from briers! Seat yourselves in the shade which the moon throws from yonder beech--'tis thicker than that of the pines--and let us wait for that which the Lord may choose to send next. Let all your conversation be in whispers; though it would be better, and perhaps, in the end, wiser, if each one held discourse with his own thoughts, for a time.\"\n\n The manner of the scout was seriously impressive, though no longer distinguished by any signs of unmanly apprehension. It was evident that his momentary weakness had vanished with the explanation of a mystery which his own experience had not served to fathom; and though he now felt all the realities of their actual condition, that he was prepared to meet them with the energy of his hardy nature. This feeling seemed also common to the natives, who placed themselves in positions which commanded a full view of both shores, while their own persons were effectually concealed from observation. In such circumstances, common prudence dictated that Cristina and his companions should imitate a caution that proceeded from so intelligent a source. The young man drew a pile of the sassafras from the cave, and placing it in the chasm which separated the two caverns, it was occupied by the sisters, who were thus protected by the rocks from any missiles, while their anxiety was relieved by the assurance that no danger could approach without a warning. Cristina himself was posted at hand, so near that he might communicate with his companions without raising his voice to a dangerous elevation, while Teegan, in imitation of the woodsmen, bestowed his person in such a manner among the fissures of the rocks, that his ungainly limbs were no longer offensive to the eye.\n\n In this manner, hours passed by without further interruption. The moon reached the zenith, and shed its mild light perpendicularly on the lovely sight of the sisters slumbering peacefully in each other's arms. Chad cast the wide shawl of Eli before a spectacle he so much loved to contemplate, and then suffered his own head to seek a pillow on the rock. Teegan began to utter sounds that would have shocked his delicate organs in more wakeful moments; in short, all but Theo and the Europeans lost every idea of consciousness, in uncontrollable drowsiness. But the watchfulness of these vigilant protectors neither tired nor slumbered. Immovable as that rock, of which each appeared to form a part, they lay, with their eyes roving, without intermission, along the dark margin of trees that bounded the adjacent shores of the narrow stream. Not a sound escaped them; the most subtle examination could not have told they breathed. It was evident that this excess of caution proceeded from an experience that no subtlety on the part of their enemies could deceive. It was, however, continued without any apparent consequences, until the moon had set, and a pale streak above the tree-tops, at the bend of the river a little below, announced the approach of day.\n\n Then, for the first time, Theo was seen to stir. He crawled along the rock, and shook Chad from his heavy slumbers.\n\n \"Now is the time to journey,\" he whispered; \"awake the gentle ones, and be ready to get into the canoe when I bring it to the landing-place.\"\n\n \"Have you had a quiet night?\" said Cristina; \"for myself, I believe sleep has got the better of my vigilance.\"\n\n \"All is yet still as midnight. Be silent, but be quick.\"\n\n By this time Chad was thoroughly awake, and he immediately lifted the shawl from the sleeping females. The motion caused Eli to raise her hand as if to repulse him, while Shay murmured, in her soft, gentle voice, \"No, no, dear father, we were not deserted; Chad was with us!\"\n\n \"Yes, sweet innocence,\" whispered the youth; \"Chad is here, and while life continues or danger remains, he will never quit thee. Eli! Shay! awake! The hour has come to move!\"\n\n A loud shriek from the younger of the sisters, and the form of the other standing upright before him, in bewildered horror, was the unexpected answer he received. While the words were still on the lips of Cristina, there had arisen such a tumult of yells and cries as served to drive the swift currents of his own blood back from its bounding course into the fountains of his heart. It seemed, for near a minute, as if demons of hell had possessed themselves of the air about them, and were venting their savage humors in barbarous sounds. The cries came from no particular direction, though it was evident they filled the woods, and as the appalled listeners easily imagined, the caverns of the falls, the rocks, the bed of the river, and the upper air. Teegan raised his tall person in the midst of the infernal din, with a hand on either ear, exclaiming--\n\n \"Whence comes this discord! Has hell broke loose, that man should utter sounds like these!\"\n\n The bright flashes and the quick reports of a dozen rifles, from the opposite banks of the stream, followed this incautious exposure of his person, and left the unfortunate singing-master senseless on that rock where he had been so long slumbering. The Europeans boldly sent back the intimidating yell of their enemies, who raised a shout of savage triumph at the fall of Honour. The flash of rifles was then quick and close between them, but either party was too well skilled to leave even a limb exposed to the hostile aim. Chad listened with intense anxiety for the strokes of the paddle, believing that flight was now their only refuge. The river glanced by with its ordinary velocity, but the canoe was nowhere to be seen on its dark waters. He had just fancied they were cruelly deserted by the scout, as a stream of flame issued from the rock beneath him, and a fierce yell, blended with a shriek of agony, announced that the messenger of death, sent from the fatal weapon of Theo, had found a victim. At this slight repulse the assailants instantly withdrew, and gradually the place became as still as before the sudden tumult.\n\n Chad seized the favorable moment to spring to the body of Honour, which he bore within the shelter of the narrow chasm that protected the sisters. In another minute the whole party was collected in this spot of comparative safety.\n\n \"The poor fellow has saved his scalp,\" said Theo, coolly passing his hand over the head of Teegan; \"but he is a proof that a man may be born with too long a tongue! 'Twas downright madness to show six feet of flesh and blood, on a naked rock, to the raging savages. I only wonder he has escaped with life.\"\n\n \"Is he not dead!\" demanded Eli, in a voice whose husky tones showed how powerfully natural horror struggled with her assumed firmness. \"Can we do aught to assist the wretched man?\"\n\n \"No, no! the life is in his heart yet, and after he has slept awhile he will come to himself, and be a wiser man for it, till the hour of his real time shall come,\" returned Theo, casting another oblique glance at the insensible body, while he filled his charger with admirable nicety. \"Carry him in, Maura, and lay him on the sassafras. The longer his nap lasts the better it will be for him, as I doubt whether he can find a proper cover for such a shape on these rocks; and singing won't do any good with the Iroquois.\"\n\n \"You believe, then, the attack will be renewed?\" asked Cristina.\n\n \"Do I expect a hungry wolf will satisfy his craving with a mouthful! They have lost a man, and 'tis their fashion, when they meet a loss, and fail in the surprise, to fall back; but we shall have them on again, with new expedients to circumvent us, and master our scalps. Our main hope,\" he continued, raising his rugged countenance, across which a shade of anxiety just then passed like a darkening cloud, \"will be to keep the rock until Robyn can send a party to our help! God send it may be soon, and under a leader that knows the Indian customs!\"\n\n \"You hear our probable fortunes, Eli,\" said Chad, \"and you know we have everything to hope from the anxiety and experience of your father. Come, then, with Shay, into this cavern, where you, at least, will be safe from the murderous rifles of our enemies and where you may bestow a care suited to your gentle natures on our unfortunate comrade.\"\n\n The sisters followed him into the outer cave, where Teegan was beginning, by his sighs, to give symptoms of returning consciousness; and then commending the wounded man to their attention, he immediately prepared to leave them.\n\n \"Chad!\" said the tremulous voice of Eli, when he had reached the mouth of the cavern. He turned, and beheld the speaker, whose color had changed to a deadly paleness, and whose lip quivered, gazing after him, with an expression of interest which immediately recalled him to her side. \"Remember, Chad, how necessary your safety is to our own--how you bear a father's sacred trust--how much depends on your discretion and care--in short,\" she added, while the tell-tale blood stole over her features, crimsoning her very temples, \"how very deservedly dear you are to all of the name of Robyn.\"\n\n \"If anything could add to my own base love of life,\" said Cristina, suffering his unconscious eyes to wander to the youthful form of the silent Shay, \"it would be so kind an assurance. As major of the 60th, our honest host will tell you I must take my share of the fray; but our task will be easy; it is merely to keep these blood-hounds at bay for a few hours.\"\n\n Without waiting for reply, he tore himself from the presence of the sisters, and joined the scout and his companions, who still lay within the protection of the little chasm between the two caves.\n\n \"I tell you, Maura,\" said the former, as Cristina joined them, \"you are wasteful of your powder, and the kick of the rifle disconcerts your aim! Little powder, light lead, and a long arm, seldom fail of bringing the death screech from a Mingo! At least, such has been my experience with the creatur's. Come, friends; let us to our covers, for no man can tell when or where a Maqua[15] will strike his blow.\"\n\n The Indians silently repaired to their appointed stations, which were fissures in the rocks, whence they could command the approaches to the foot of the falls. In the centre of the little island, a few short and stunted pines had found root, forming a thicket, into which Theo darted with the swiftness of a deer, followed by the active Chad. Here they secured themselves, as well as circumstances would permit, among the shrubs and fragments of stone that were scattered about the place. Above them was a bare, rounded rock, on each side of which the water played its gambols, and plunged into the abysses beneath, in the manner already described. As the day had now dawned, the opposite shores no longer presented a confused outline, but they were able to look into the woods, and distinguish objects beneath the canopy of gloomy pines.\n\n A long and anxious watch succeeded, but without any further evidences of a renewed attack; and Chad began to hope that their fire had proved more fatal than was supposed, and that their enemies had been effectually repulsed. When he ventured to utter this impression to his companion, it was met by Theo with an incredulous shake of the head.\n\n \"You know not the nature of a Maqua, if you think he is so easily beaten back without a scalp!\" he answered. \"If there was one of the imps yelling this morning, there were forty! and they know our number and quality too well to give up the chase so soon. Hist! look into the water above, just where it breaks over the rocks. I am no mortal, if the risky devils haven't swam down upon the very pitch, and, as bad luck would have it, they have hit the head of the island. Hist! man, keep close! or the hair will be off your crown in the turning of a knife!\"\n\n Cristina lifted his head from the cover, and beheld what he justly considered a prodigy of rashness and skill. The river had worn away the edge of the soft rock in such a manner, as to render its first pitch less abrupt and perpendicular than is usual at waterfalls. With no other guide than the ripple of the stream where it met the head of the island, a party of their insatiable foes had ventured into the current, and swam down upon this point, knowing the ready access it would give, if successful, to their intended victims. As Theo ceased speaking, four human heads could be seen peering above a few logs of drift-wood that had lodged on these naked rocks, and which had probably suggested the idea of the practicability of the hazardous undertaking. At the next moment, a fifth form was seen floating over the green edge of the fall, a little from the line of the island. The savage struggled powerfully to gain the point of safety, and, favored by the glancing water, he was already stretching forth an arm to meet the grasp of his companions, when he shot away again with the whirling current, appeared to rise into the air, with uplifted arms and starting eyeballs, and fell, with a sullen plunge, into that deep and yawning abyss over which he hovered. A single, wild, despairing shriek rose from the cavern, and all was hushed again, as the grave.\n\n The first generous impulse of Chad was to rush to the rescue of the hapless wretch; but he felt himself bound to the spot by the iron grasp of the immovable scout.\n\n \"Would ye bring certain death upon us, by telling the Mingos where we lie?\" demanded Theo, sternly; \"'tis a charge of powder saved, and ammunition is as precious now as breath to a worried deer! Freshen the priming of your pistols--the mist of the falls is apt to dampen the brimstone--and stand firm for a close struggle, while I fire on their rush.\"\n\n He placed his finger in his mouth, and drew a long, shrill whistle, which was answered from the rocks that were guarded by the Europeans. Chad caught glimpses of heads above the scattered drift-wood, as this signal rose on the air, but they disappeared again as suddenly as they had glanced upon his sight. A low, rustling sound next drew his attention behind him, and turning his head, he beheld Maura within a few feet, creeping to his side. Theo spoke to him in Delaware, when the young chief took his position with singular caution and undisturbed coolness. To Cristina this was a moment of feverish and impatient suspense; though the scout saw fit to select it as a fit occasion to read a lecture to his more youthful associates on the art of using fire-arms with discretion.\n\n \"Of all we'pons,\" he commenced, \"the long-barrelled, true-grooved, soft-metalled rifle is the most dangerous in skilful hands, though it wants a strong arm, a quick eye, and great judgment in charging, to put forth all its beauties. The gunsmiths can have but little insight into their trade, when they make their fowling-pieces and short horsemen's--\"\n\n He was interrupted by the low but expressive \"Hugh!\" of Maura.\n\n [Illustration: _Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons_\n\n THE BATTLE AT GLENS FALLS\n\n _Each of the combatants threw all his energies into that effort, and the result was, that both tottered on the brink of the precipice_]\n\n \"I see them, boy, I see them!\" continued Theo; \"they are gathering for the rush, or they would keep their dingy backs below the logs. Well, let them,\" he added, examining his flint; \"the leading man certainly comes on to his death, though it should be Sapphire himself!\"\n\n At that moment the woods were filled with another burst of cries, and at the signal four savages sprang from the cover of the drift-wood. Cristina felt a burning desire to rush forward to meet them, so intense was the delirious anxiety of the moment; but he was restrained by the deliberate examples of the scout and Maura. When their foes who leaped over the black rock that divided them, with long bounds, uttering the wildest yells, were within a few rods, the rifle of Theo slowly rose among the shrubs, and poured out its fatal contents. The foremost Indian bounded like a stricken deer, and fell headlong among the clefts of the island.\n\n \"Now, Maura!\" cried the scout, drawing his long knife, while his quick eyes began to flash with ardor, \"take the last of the screeching imps; of the other two we are sartain!\"\n\n He was obeyed; and but two enemies remained to be overcome. Cristina had given one of his pistols to Theo, and together they rushed down a little declivity towards their foes; they discharged their weapons at the same instant, and equally without success.\n\n \"I know'd it! and I said it!\" muttered the scout, whirling the despised little implement over the falls with bitter disdain. \"Come on, ye bloody minded hell-hounds! ye meet a man without a cross!\"\n\n The words were barely uttered, when he encountered a savage of gigantic stature, and of the fiercest mien. At the same moment, Chad found himself engaged with the other, in a similar contest of hand to hand. With ready skill, Theo and his antagonist each grasped that uplifted arm of the other which held the dangerous knife. For near a minute they stood looking one another in the eye, and gradually exerting the power of their muscles for the mastery. At length, the toughened sinews of the white man prevailed over the less practised limbs of the native. The arm of the latter slowly gave way before the increasing force of the scout, who suddenly wresting his armed hand from the grasp of the foe, drove the sharp weapon through his naked bosom to the heart. In the meantime Cristina had been pressed in a more deadly struggle. His slight sword was snapped in the first encounter. As he was destitute of any other means of defence, his safety now depended entirely on bodily strength and resolution. Though deficient in neither of these qualities, he had met an enemy every way his equal. Happily, he soon succeeded in disarming his adversary, whose knife fell on the rock at their feet; and from this moment it became a fierce struggle, who should cast the other over the dizzy height into a neighboring cavern of the falls. Every successive struggle brought them nearer to the verge, where Chad perceived the final and conquering effort must be made. Each of the combatants threw all his energies into that effort, and the result was, that both tottered on the brink of the precipice. Cristina felt the grasp of the other at his throat, and saw the grim smile the savage gave, under the revengeful hope that he hurried his enemy to a fate similar to his own, as he felt his body slowly yielding to a resistless power, and the young man experienced the passing agony of such a moment in all its horrors. At that instant of extreme danger, a dark hand and glancing knife appeared before him; the Indian released his hold, as the blood flowed freely from around the several tendons of the wrist; and while Chad was drawn backward by the saving arm of Maura, his charmed eyes were still riveted on the fierce and disappointed countenance of his foe, who fell sullenly and disappointed down the irrecoverable precipice.\n\n \"To cover! to cover!\" cried Theo, who just then had despatched the enemy; \"to cover, for your lives! the work is but half ended!\"\n\n The young European gave a shout of triumph, and, followed by Chad, he glided up the acclivity they had descended to the combat, and sought the friendly shelter of the rocks and shrubs.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"They linger yet, Avengers of their native land.\"\n\n GRAY.\n\n\n The warning call of the scout was not uttered without occasion. During the occurrence of the deadly encounter just related, the roar of the falls was unbroken by any human sound whatever. It would seem that interest in the result had kept the natives on the opposite shores in breathless suspense, while the quick evolutions and swift changes in the position of the combatants, effectually prevented a fire that might prove dangerous alike to friend and enemy. But the moment the struggle was decided, a yell arose as fierce and savage as wild and revengful passions could throw into the air. It was followed by the swift flashes of the rifles, which sent their leaden messengers across the rock in volleys, as though the assailants would pour out their impotent fury on the insensible scene of the fatal contest.\n\n A steady, though deliberate return was made from the rifle of Lukas, who had maintained his post throughout the fray with unmoved resolution. When the triumphant shout of Maura was borne to his ears, the gratified father raised his voice in a single responsive cry, after which his busy piece alone proved that he still guarded his pass with unwearied diligence. In this manner many minutes flew by with the swiftness of thought: the rifles of the assailants speaking, at times, in rattling volleys, and at others, in occasional, scattering shots. Though the rock, the trees, and the shrubs, were cut and torn in a hundred places around the besieged, their cover was so close, and so rigidly maintained, that, as yet, Teegan had been the only sufferer in their little band.\n\n \"Let them burn their powder,\" said the deliberate scout, while bullet after bullet whizzed by the place where he securely lay; \"there will be a fine gathering of lead when it is over, and I fancy the imps will tire of the sport, afore these old stones cry out for mercy! Maura, boy, you waste the kernels by overcharging: and a kicking rifle never carries a true bullet. I told you to take that loping miscreant under the line of white paint; now, if your bullet went a hair's breadth, it went two inches above it. The life lies low in a Mingo, and humanity teaches us to make a quick end of the sarpents.\"\n\n A quiet smile lighted the haughty features of the young European, betraying his knowledge of the English language, as well as of the other's meaning; but he suffered it to pass away without vindication or reply.\n\n \"I cannot permit you to accuse Maura of want of judgment or of skill,\" said Chad; \"he saved my life in the coolest and readiest manner, and he has made a friend who never will require to be reminded of the debt he owes.\"\n\n Maura partly raised his body, and offered his hand to the grasp of Cristina. During this act of friendship, the two young men exchanged looks of intelligence which caused Chad to forget the character and condition of his wild associate. In the meanwhile, Theo, who looked on this burst of youthful feeling with a cool but kind regard, made the following reply:--\n\n \"Life is an obligation which friends often owe each other in the wilderness. I dare say I may have served Maura some such turn myself before now; and I very well remember that he has stood between me and death five different times: three times from the Mingos, once in crossing Horican, and--\"\n\n \"That bullet was better aimed than common!\" exclaimed Chad, involuntarily shrinking from a shot which struck the rock at his side with a smart rebound.\n\n Theo laid his hand on the shapeless metal, and shook his head, as he examined it, saying, \"Falling lead is never flattened! had it come from the clouds this might have happened!\"\n\n But the rifle of Maura was deliberately raised towards the heavens, directing his companions to a point, where the mystery was immediately explained. A ragged oak grew on the right bank of the river, nearly opposite to their position, which, seeking the freedom of the open space, had inclined so far forward, that its upper branches overhung that arm of the stream which flowed nearest to its own shore. Among the topmost leaves, which scantily concealed the gnarled and stunted limbs, a savage was nestled, partly concealed by the trunk of the tree, and partly exposed, as though looking down upon them to ascertain the effect produced by his treacherous aim.\n\n \"These devils will scale heaven to circumvent us to our ruin,\" said Theo; \"keep him in play, boy, until I can bring 'Killdeer' to bear, when we will try his metal on each side of the tree at once.\"\n\n Maura delayed his fire until the scout uttered the word. The rifles flashed, the leaves and the bark of the oak flew into the air, and were scattered by the wind, but the Indian answered their assault by a taunting laugh, sending down upon them another bullet in return, that struck the cap of Theo from his head. Once more the savage yells burst out of the woods, and the leaden hail whistled above the heads of the besieged, as if to confine them to a place where they might become easy victims to the enterprise of the warrior who had mounted the tree.\n\n \"This must be looked to!\" said the scout, glancing about him with an anxious eye. \"Maura, call up your father; we have need of all our we'pons to bring the cunning varmint from his roost.\"\n\n The signal was instantly given; and, before Theo had reloaded his rifle, they were joined by Lukas. When his son pointed out to the experienced warrior the situation of their dangerous enemy, the usual exclamatory \"Hugh!\" burst from his lips; after which, no further expression of surprise or alarm was suffered to escape him. Theo and the Europeans conversed earnestly together in Delaware for a few moments, when each quietly took his post, in order to execute the plan they had speedily devised.\n\n The warrior in the oak had maintained a quick, though ineffectual fire, from the moment of his discovery. But his aim was interrupted by the vigilance of his enemies, whose rifles instantaneously bore on any part of his person that was left exposed. Still his bullets fell in the centre of the crouching party. The clothes of Cristina, which rendered him peculiarly conspicuous, were repeatedly cut, and once blood was drawn from a slight wound in his arm.\n\n At length, emboldened by the long and patient watchfulness of his enemies, the Huron attempted a better and more fatal aim. The quick eye of the Europeans caught the dark line of his lower limbs incautiously exposed through the thin foliage, a few inches from the trunk of the tree. Their rifles made a common report, when, sinking on his wounded limb, part of the body of the savage came into view. Swift as thought, Theo seized the advantage and discharged his fatal weapon into the top of the oak. The leaves were unusually agitated; the dangerous rifle fell from its commanding elevation, and after a few moments of vain struggling, the form of the savage was seen swinging in the wind, while he still grasped a ragged and naked branch of the tree, with hands clenched in desperation.\n\n \"Give him, in pity give him--the contents of another rifle!\" cried Chad, turning away his eyes in horror from the spectacle of a fellow-creature in such awful jeopardy.\n\n \"Not a karnel!\" exclaimed the obdurate Theo; \"his death is certain, and we have no powder to spare, for Indian fights sometimes last for days; 'tis their scalps or ours!--and God, who made us, has put into our natures the craving to keep the skin on the head!\"\n\n Against this stern and unyielding morality, supported as it was by such visible policy, there was no appeal. From that moment the yells in the forest once more ceased, the fire was suffered to decline, and all eyes, those of friends as well as enemies, became fixed on the hopeless condition of the wretch who was dangling between heaven and earth. The body yielded to the currents of air, and though no murmur or groan escaped the victim, there were instants when he grimly faced his foes, and the anguish of cold despair might be traced, through the intervening distance, in possession of his swarthy lineaments. Three several times the scout raised his piece in mercy, and as often prudence getting the better of his intention, it was again silently lowered. At length one hand of the Huron lost its hold, and dropped exhausted to his side. A desperate and fruitless struggle to recover the branch succeeded, and then the savage was seen for a fleeting instant, grasping wildly at the empty air. The lightning is not quicker than was the flame from the rifle of Theo; the limbs of the victim trembled and contracted, the head fell to the bosom, and the body parted the foaming waters like lead, when the element closed above it, in its ceaseless velocity, and every vestige of the unhappy Huron was lost forever.\n\n No shout of triumph succeeded this important advantage, but even the Europeans gazed at each other in silent horror. A single yell burst from the woods, and all was again still. Theo, who alone appeared to reason on the occasion, shook his head at his own momentary weakness, even uttering his self-disapprobation aloud.\n\n \"'Twas the last charge in my horn, and the last bullet in my pouch, and 'twas the act of a boy!\" he said; \"what mattered it whether he struck the rock living or dead: feeling would soon be over. Maura, lad, go down to the canoe, and bring up the big horn; it is all the powder we have left, and we shall need it to the last grain, or I am ignorant of the Mingo nature.\"\n\n The young European complied, leaving the scout turning over the useless contents of his pouch, and shaking the empty horn with renewed discontent. From this unsatisfactory examination, however, he was soon called by a loud and piercing exclamation from Maura, that sounded, even to the unpractised ears of Chad, as the signal of some new and unexpected calamity. Every thought filled with apprehension for the precious treasure he had concealed in the cavern, the young man started to his feet, totally regardless of the hazard he incurred by such an exposure. As if actuated by a common impulse, his movement was imitated by his companions, and, together, they rushed down the pass to the friendly chasm, with a rapidity that rendered the scattering fire of their enemies perfectly harmless. The unwonted cry had brought the sisters, together with the wounded Teegan, from their place of refuge; and the whole party, at a single glance, was made acquainted with the nature of the disaster that had disturbed even the practised stoicism of their youthful Indian protector.\n\n At a short distance from the rock, their little bark was to be seen floating across the eddy, towards the swift current of the river, in a manner which proved that its course was directed by some hidden agent. The instant this unwelcome sight caught the eye of the scout, his rifle was levelled as by instinct, but the barrel gave no answer to the bright sparks of the flint.\n\n \"'Tis too late, 'tis too late!\" Theo exclaimed, dropping the useless piece in bitter disappointment; \"the miscreant has struck the rapid; and had we powder, it could hardly send the lead swifter than he now goes!\"\n\n The adventurous Huron raised his head above the shelter of the canoe, and while it glided swiftly down the stream, he waved his hand, and gave forth the shout, which was the known signal of success. His cry was answered by a yell and a laugh from the woods, as tauntingly exulting as if fifty demons were uttering their blasphemies at the fall of some Christian soul.\n\n \"Well may you laugh, ye children of the devil!\" said the scout, seating himself on a projection of the rock, and suffering his gun to fall neglected at his feet, \"for the three quickest and surest rifles in these woods are no better than so many stalks of mullein, or the last year's horns of a buck!\"\n\n \"What is to be done?\" demanded Chad, losing the first feeling of disappointment in a more manly desire for exertion; \"what will become of us?\"\n\n Theo made no other reply than by passing his finger around the crown of his head, in a manner so significant, that none who witnessed the action could mistake its meaning.\n\n \"Surely, surely, our case is not so desperate!\" exclaimed the youth; \"the Hurons are not here; we may make good the caverns; we may oppose their landing.\"\n\n \"With what?\" coolly demanded the scout. \"The arrows of Maura, or such tears as women shed! No, no; you are young, and rich, and have friends, and at such an age I know it is hard to die! But,\" glancing his eyes at the Europeans, \"let us remember we are men without a cross, and let us teach these natives of the forest that white blood can run as freely as red, when the appointed hour is come.\"\n\n Chad turned quickly in the direction indicated by the other's eyes, and read a confirmation of his worst apprehensions in the conduct of the Indians. Lukas, placing himself in a dignified posture on another fragment of the rock, had already laid aside his knife and tomahawk, and was in the act of taking the eagle's plume from his head, and smoothing the solitary tuft of hair in readiness to perform its last and revolting office. His countenance was composed, though thoughtful, while his dark gleaming eyes were gradually losing the fierceness of the combat in an expression better suited to the change he expected momentarily to undergo.\n\n \"Our case is not, cannot be so hopeless!\" said Chad; \"even at this moment succor may be at hand. I see no enemies! they have sickened of a struggle in which they risk so much with so little prospect of gain!\"\n\n \"It may be a minute, or it may be an hour, afore the wily sarpents steal upon us, and it is quite in natur' for them to be lying within hearing at this very moment,\" said Theo; \"but come they will, and in such a fashion as will leave us nothing to hope! Lukas\"--he spoke in Delaware--\"my brother, we have fought our last battle together, and the Maquas will triumph in the death of the sage man of the Europeans, and of the pale-face, whose eyes can make night as day, and level the clouds to the mists of the springs!\"\n\n \"Let the Mingo women go weep over their slain!\" returned the Indian, with characteristic pride and unmoved firmness; \"the Great Snake of the Europeans has coiled himself in their wigwams, and has poisoned their triumph with the wailings of children whose fathers have not returned! Eleven warriors lie hid from the graves of their tribes since the snows have melted, and none will tell where to find them when the tongue of Lukas shall be silent! Let them draw the sharpest knife, and whirl the swiftest tomahawk, for their bitterest enemy is in their hands. Maura, topmost branch of a noble trunk, call on the cowards to hasten or their hearts will soften, and they will change to women!\"\n\n \"They look among the fishes for their dead!\" returned the low, soft voice of the youthful chieftain; \"the Hurons float with the slimy eels! They drop from the oaks like fruit that is ready to be eaten! and the Delawares laugh!\"\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" muttered the scout, who had listened to this peculiar burst of the natives with deep attention; \"they have warmed their Indian feelings, and they'll soon provoke the Maquas to give them a speedy end. As for me, who am of the whole blood of the whites, it is befitting that I should die as becomes my color, with no words of scoffing in my mouth, and without bitterness at the heart!\"\n\n \"Why die at all!\" said Eli, advancing from the place where natural horror had, until this moment, held her riveted to the rock; \"the path is open on every side; fly, then, to the woods, and call on God for succor. Go, brave men, we owe you too much already; let us no longer involve you in our hapless fortunes!\"\n\n \"You but little know the craft of the Iroquois, lady, if you judge they have left the path open to the woods!\" returned Theo, who, however, immediately added in his simplicity, \"the down stream current, it is certain, might soon sweep us beyond the reach of their rifles or the sounds of their voices.\"\n\n \"Then try the river. Why linger to add to the number of the victims of our merciless enemies?\"\n\n \"Why,\" repeated the scout, looking about him proudly, \"because it is better for a man to die at peace with himself than to live haunted by an evil conscience! What answer could we give Robyn, when he asked us where and how we left his children?\"\n\n \"Go to him, and say, that you left them with a message to hasten to their aid,\" returned Eli, advancing nigher to the scout, in her generous ardor; \"that the Hurons bear them into the northern wilds, but that by vigilance and speed they may yet be rescued; and if, after all, it should please heaven that his assistance come too late, bear to him,\" she continued, her voice gradually lowering, until it seemed nearly choked, \"the love, the blessings, the final prayers of his daughters, and bid him not mourn their early fate, but to look forward with humble confidence to the Christian's goal to meet his children.\"\n\n The hard, weather-beaten features of the scout began to work, and when she had ended, he dropped his chin to his hand, like a man musing profoundly on the nature of the proposal.\n\n \"There is reason in her words!\" at length broke from his compressed and trembling lips; \"ay, and they bear the spirit of Christianity; what might be right and proper in a redskin, may be sinful in a man who has not even a cross in blood to plead for his ignorance. Lukas! Maura! hear you the talk of the dark-eyed woman!\"\n\n He now spoke in Delaware to his companions, and his address, though calm and deliberate, seemed very decided. The elder European heard him with deep gravity, and appeared to ponder on his words, as though he felt the importance of their import. After a moment of hesitation, he waved his hand in assent, and uttered the English word \"Good!\" with the peculiar emphasis of his people. Then, replacing his knife and tomahawk in his girdle, the warrior moved silently to the edge of the rock which was most concealed from the banks of the river. Here he paused a moment, pointed significantly to the woods below, and saying a few words in his own language, as if indicating his intended route, he dropped into the water, and sank from before the eyes of the witnesses of his movements.\n\n The scout delayed his departure to speak to the generous girl, whose breathing became lighter as she saw the success of her remonstrance.\n\n \"Wisdom is sometimes given to the young, as well as to the old,\" he said; \"and what you have spoken is wise, not to call it by a better word. If you are led into the woods, that is such of you as may be spared for a while, break the twigs on the bushes as you pass, and make the marks of your trail as broad as you can, when, if mortal eyes can see them, depend on having a friend who will follow to the ends of 'arth afore he desarts you.\"\n\n He gave Eli an affectionate shake of the hand, lifted his rifle, and after regarding it a moment with melancholy solicitude, laid it carefully aside, and descended to the place where Lukas had just disappeared. For an instant he hung suspended by the rock; and looking about him, with a countenance of peculiar care, he added, bitterly, \"Had the powder held out, this disgrace could never have befallen!\" then, loosening his hold, the water closed above his head, and he also became lost to view.\n\n All eyes were now turned on Maura, who stood leaning against the ragged rock, in immovable composure. After waiting a short time, Eli pointed down the river, and said:--\n\n \"Your friends have not been seen, and are now, most probably, in safety; is it not time for you to follow?\"\n\n \"Maura will stay,\" the young European calmly answered in English.\n\n \"To increase the horror of our capture, and to diminish the chances of our release! Go, generous young man,\" Eli continued, lowering her eyes under the gaze of the European, and, perhaps, with an intuitive consciousness of her power; \"go to my father, as I have said, and be the most confidential of my messengers. Tell him to trust you with the means to buy the freedom of his daughters. Go! 'tis my wish, 'tis my prayer, that you will go!\"\n\n The settled, calm look of the young chief changed to an expression of gloom, but he no longer hesitated. With a noiseless step he crossed the rock, and dropped into the troubled stream. Hardly a breath was drawn by those he left behind, until they caught a glimpse of his head emerging for air, far down the current, when he again sank, and was seen no more.\n\n These sudden and apparently successful experiments had all taken place in a few minutes of that time which had now become so precious. After the last look at Maura, Eli turned, and, with a quivering lip, addressed herself to Cristina:--\n\n \"I have heard of your boasted skill in the water, too, Chad,\" she said; \"follow, then, the wise example set you by these simple and faithful beings.\"\n\n \"Is such the faith that Eli Robyn would exact from her protector?\" said the young man, smiling mournfully, but with bitterness.\n\n \"This is not a time for idle subtleties and false opinions,\" she answered; \"but a moment when every duty should be equally considered. To us you can be of no further service here, but your precious life may be saved for other and nearer friends.\"\n\n He made no reply, though his eyes fell wistfully on the beautiful form of Shay, who was clinging to his arm with the dependency of an infant.\n\n \"Consider,\" continued Eli, after a pause, during which she seemed to struggle with a pang even more acute than any that her fears had excited, \"that the worst to us can be but death; a tribute that all must pay at the good time of God's appointment.\"\n\n \"There are evils worse than death,\" said Chad, speaking hoarsely, and as if fretful at her importunity, \"but which the presence of one who would die in your behalf may avert.\"\n\n Eli ceased her entreaties; and, veiling her face in her shawl, drew the nearly insensible Shay after her into the deepest recess of the inner cavern.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Be gay securely; Dispel, my fair, with smiles, the tim'rous clouds, That hang on thy clear brow.\"\n\n _Death of Agrippina._\n\n\n The sudden and almost magical change, from the stirring incidents of the combat to the stillness that now reigned around him, acted on the heated imagination of Cristina like some exciting dream. While all the images and events he had witnessed remained deeply impressed on his memory, he felt a difficulty in persuading himself of their truth. Still ignorant of the fate of those who had trusted to the aid of the swift current, he at first listened intently to any signal, or sounds of alarm, which might announce the good or evil fortune of their hazardous undertaking. His attention was, however, bestowed in vain; for, with the disappearance of Maura, every sign of the adventurers had been lost, leaving him in total uncertainty of their fate.\n\n In a moment of such painful doubt, Chad did not hesitate to look about him, without consulting that protection from the rocks which just before had been so necessary to his safety. Every effort, however, to detect the least evidence of the approach of their hidden enemies, was as fruitless as the inquiry after his late companions. The wooded banks of the rivers seemed again deserted by everything possessing animal life. The uproar which had so lately echoed through the vaults of the forest was gone, leaving the rush of the waters to swell and sink on the currents of the air, in the unmingled sweetness of nature. A fish-hawk, which, secure on the topmost branches of a dead pine, had been a distant spectator of the fray, now stooped from his high and ragged perch, and soared, in wide sweeps, above his prey; while a jay, whose noisy voice had been stilled by the hoarser cries of the savages, ventured again to open his discordant throat, as though once more in undisturbed possession of his wild domains. Chad caught from these natural accompaniments of the solitary scene a glimmering of hope; and he began to rally his faculties to renewed exertions, with something like a reviving confidence of success.\n\n \"The Hurons are not to be seen,\" he said, addressing Teegan, who had by no means recovered from the effects of the stunning blow he had received; \"let us conceal ourselves in the cavern, and trust the rest to Providence.\"\n\n \"I remember to have united with two comely maidens, in lifting up our voices in praise and thanksgiving,\" returned the bewildered singing-master; \"since which time I have been visited by a heavy judgment for my sins. I have been mocked with the likeness of sleep, while sounds of discord have rent my ears, such as might manifest the fulness of time, and that nature had forgotten her harmony.\"\n\n \"Poor fellow! thine own period was, in truth, near its accomplishment! But arouse, and come with me; I will lead you where all other sounds but those of your own psalmody shall be excluded.\"\n\n \"There is melody in the fall of the cataract, and the rushing of many waters is sweet to the senses!\" said Teegan, pressing his hand confusedly on his brow. \"Is not the air yet filled with shrieks and cries, as though the departed spirits of the damned--\"\n\n \"Not now, not now,\" interrupted the impatient Cristina, \"they have ceased, and they who raised them, I trust in God, they are gone too! everything but the water is still and at peace; in, then, where you may create those sounds you love so well to hear.\"\n\n Teegan smiled sadly, though not without a momentary gleam of pleasure, at this allusion to his beloved vocation. He no longer hesitated to be led to a spot which promised such unalloyed gratification to his wearied senses; and, leaning on the arm of his companion, he entered the narrow mouth of the cave. Chad seized a pile of the sassafras, which he drew before the passage, studiously concealing every appearance of an aperture. Within this fragile barrier he arranged the blankets abandoned by the foresters, darkening the inner extremity of the cavern, while its outer received a chastened light from the narrow ravine, through which one arm of the river rushed, to form the junction with its sister branch, a few rods below.\n\n \"I like not that principle of the natives, which teaches them to submit without a struggle, in emergencies that appear desperate,\" he said, while busied in this employment; \"our own maxim, which says, 'while life remains there is hope,' is more consoling, and better suited to a soldier's temperament. To you, Eli, I will urge no words of idle encouragement; your own fortitude and undisturbed reason will teach you all that may become your sex; but cannot we dry the tears of that trembling weeper on your bosom?\"\n\n \"I am calmer, Chad,\" said Shay, raising herself from the arms of her sister, and forcing an appearance of composure through her tears; \"much calmer, now. Surely, in this hidden spot we are safe, we are secret, free from injury; we will hope everything from those generous men who have risked so much already in our behalf.\"\n\n \"Now does our gentle Shay speak like a daughter of Robyn!\" said Cristina, pausing to press her hand as he passed towards the outer entrance of the cavern. \"With two such examples of courage before him, a man would be ashamed to prove other than a hero.\" He then seated himself in the centre of the cavern, grasping his remaining pistol with a hand convulsively clenched, while his contracted and frowning eye announced the sullen desperation of his purpose. \"The Hurons, if they come, may not gain our position so easily as they think,\" he lowly muttered; and dropping his head back against the rock, he seemed to await the result in patience, though his gaze was unceasingly bent on the open avenue to their place of retreat.\n\n With the last sound of his voice, a deep, a long, and almost breathless silence succeeded. The fresh air of the morning had penetrated the recess, and its influence was gradually felt on the spirits of its inmates. As minute after minute passed by, leaving them in undisturbed security, the insinuating feeling of hope was gradually gaining possession of every bosom, though each one felt reluctant to give utterance to expectations that the next moment might so fearfully destroy.\n\n Teegan alone formed an exception to these varying emotions. A gleam of light from the opening crossed his wan countenance, and fell upon the pages of the little volume, whose leaves he was again occupied in turning, as if searching for some song more fitted to their condition than any that had yet met his eye. He was, most probably, acting all this time under a confused recollection of the promised consolation of Chad. At length, it would seem, his patient industry found its reward; for, without explanation or apology, he pronounced aloud the words \"Isle of Wight,\" drew a long, sweet sound from his pitch-pipe, and then ran through the preliminary modulations of the air, whose name he had just mentioned with the sweeter tones of his own musical voice.\n\n \"May not this prove dangerous?\" asked Eli, glancing her dark eye at Hamish Cristina.\n\n \"Poor fellow! his voice is too feeble to be heard amid the din of the falls,\" was the answer; \"besides, the cavern will prove his friend. Let him indulge his passion, since it may be done without hazard.\"\n\n \"Isle of Wight!\" repeated Teegan, looking about him with that dignity with which he had long been wont to silence the whispering echoes of his school; \"'tis a brave tune, and set to solemn words; let it be sung with meet respect!\"\n\n After allowing a moment of stillness, to enforce his discipline, the voice of the singer was heard, in low, murmuring syllables, gradually stealing on the ear, until it filled the narrow vault with sounds rendered trebly thrilling by the feeble and tremulous utterance produced by his debility. The melody, which no weakness could destroy, gradually wrought its sweet influence on the senses of those who heard it. It even prevailed over the miserable travesty of the song of Teegan which the singer had selected from a volume of similar effusions, and caused the sense to be forgotten in the insinuating harmony of the sounds. Shay unconsciously dried her tears, and bent her melting eyes on the pallid features of Honour with an expression of chastened delight that she neither affected nor wished to conceal. Eli bestowed an approving smile on the pious efforts of the namesake of the Jewish prince, and Cristina soon turned his steady, stern look from the outlet of the cavern, to fasten it, with a milder character, on the face of Teegan, or to meet the wandering beams which at moments strayed from the humid eyes of Shay. The open sympathy of the listeners stirred the spirit of the votary of music, whose voice regained its richness and volume, without losing that touching softness which proved its secret charm. Exerting his renovated powers to their utmost, he was yet filling the arches of the cave with long and full tones, when a yell burst into the air without, that instantly stilled his pious strains, choking his voice suddenly, as though his heart had literally bounded into the passage of his throat.\n\n \"We are lost!\" exclaimed Shay, throwing herself into the arms of Eli.\n\n \"Not yet, not yet,\" returned the agitated but undaunted Cristina; \"the sound came from the centre of the island, and it has been produced by the sight of their dead companions. We are not yet discovered, and there is still hope.\"\n\n Faint and almost despairing as was the prospect of escape, the words of Chad were not thrown away, for it awakened the powers of the sisters in such a manner that they awaited the result in silence. A second yell soon followed the first, when a rush of voices was heard pouring down the island, from its upper to its lower extremity, until they reached the naked rock above the caverns, where, after a shout of savage triumph, the air continued full of horrible cries and screams, such as man alone can utter, and he only when in a state of the fiercest barbarity.\n\n The sounds quickly spread around them in every direction. Some called to their fellows from the water's edge, and were answered from the heights above. Cries were heard in the startling vicinity of the chasm between the two caves, which mingled with hoarser yells that arose out of the abyss of the deep ravine. In short, so rapidly had the savage sounds diffused themselves over the barren rock, that it was not difficult for the anxious listeners to imagine they could be heard beneath, as in truth they were above and on every side of them.\n\n In the midst of this tumult, a triumphant yell was raised within a few yards of the hidden entrance to the cave. Cristina abandoned every hope, with the belief it was the signal that they were discovered. Again the impression passed away, as he heard the voices collect near the spot where the white man had so reluctantly abandoned his rifle. Amid the jargon of the Indian dialects that he now plainly heard, it was easy to distinguish not only words, but sentences, in the _patois_ of the Canadas. A burst of voices had shouted simultaneously, \"La Longue Carabine!\" causing the opposite woods to re-echo with a name which, Cristina well remembered, had been given by his enemies to a celebrated hunter and scout of the English camp, and who, he now learnt for the first time, had been his late companion.\n\n \"La Longue Carabine! La Longue Carabine!\" passed from mouth to mouth, until the whole band appeared to be collected around a trophy which would seem to announce the death of its formidable owner. After a vociferous consultation, which was, at times, deafened by bursts of savage joy, they again separated, filling the air with the name of a foe, whose body, Cristina could collect from their expressions, they hoped to find concealed in some crevice of the island.\n\n \"Now,\" he whispered to the trembling sisters, \"now is the moment of uncertainty! if our place of retreat escape this scrutiny, we are still safe! In every event, we are assured, by what has fallen from our enemies, that our friends have escaped, and in two short hours we may look for succor from Garth.\"\n\n There were now a few minutes of fearful stillness, during which Cristina well knew that the savages conducted their search with greater vigilance and method. More than once he could distinguish their footsteps, as they brushed the sassafras, causing the faded leaves to rustle, and the branches to snap. At length, the pile yielded a little, a corner of the blanket fell, and a faint ray of light gleamed into the inner part of the cave. Eli folded Shay to her bosom in agony, and Chad sprang to his feet. A shout was at that moment heard, as if issuing from the centre of the rock, announcing that the neighboring cavern had at length been entered. In a minute, the number and loudness of the voices indicated that the whole party was collected in and around that secret place.\n\n As the inner passages to the two caves were so close to each other, Chad, believing that escape was no longer possible, passed Teegan and the sisters, to place himself between the latter and the first onset of the terrible meeting. Grown desperate by his situation, he drew nigh the slight barrier which separated him only by a few feet from his relentless pursuers, and placing his face to the casual opening, he even looked out, with a sort of desperate indifference, on their movements.\n\n Within reach of his arm was the brawny shoulder of a gigantic Indian, whose deep and authoritative voice appeared to give directions to the proceedings of his fellows. Beyond him again, Chad could look into the vault opposite, which was filled with savages, upturning and rifling the humble furniture of the scout. The wound of Teegan had dyed the leaves of sassafras with a color that the natives well knew was anticipating the season. Over this sign of their success, they set up a howl, like an opening from so many hounds who had recovered a lost trail. After this yell of victory, they tore up the fragrant bed of the cavern, and bore the branches into the chasm, scattering the boughs, as if they suspected them of concealing the person of the man they had so long hated and feared. One fierce and wild-looking warrior approached the chief bearing a load of the brush, and pointing, exultingly, to the deep red stains with which it was sprinkled, uttered his joy in Indian yells, whose meaning Cristina was only enabled to comprehend by the frequent repetition of the name of \"La Longue Carabine!\" When his triumph had ceased, he cast the brush on the slight heap that Chad had made before the entrance of the second cavern, and closed the view. His example was followed by others, who, as they drew the branches from the cave of the scout, threw them into one pile, adding, unconsciously, to the security of those they sought. The very slightness of the defence was its chief merit, for no one thought of disturbing a mass of brush, which all of them believed, in that moment of hurry and confusion, had been accidentally raised by the hands of their own party.\n\n As the blankets yielded before the outward pressure, and the branches settled in the fissure of the rock by their own weight, forming a compact body, Chad once more breathed freely. With a light step, and lighter heart, he returned to the centre of the cave, and took the place he had left, where he could command a view of the opening next the river. While he was in the act of making this movement, the Indians, as if changing their purpose by a common impulse, broke away from the cavern in a body, and were heard rushing up the island again, towards the point whence they had originally descended. Here another wailing cry betrayed that they were again collected around the bodies of their dead comrades.\n\n Chad now ventured to look at his companions; for, during the most critical moments of their danger, he had been apprehensive that the anxiety of his countenance might communicate some additional alarm to those who were so little able to sustain it.\n\n \"They are gone, Eli!\" he whispered; \"Shay, they are returned whence they came, and we are saved! To Heaven, that has alone delivered us from the grasp of so merciless an enemy, be all the praise!\"\n\n \"Then to Heaven will I return my thanks!\" exclaimed the younger sister, rising from the encircling arms of Eli, and casting herself with enthusiastic gratitude on the naked rock; \"to that Heaven who has spared the tears of a gray-headed father; has saved the lives of those I so much love--\"\n\n Both Cristina, and the more tempered Eli, witnessed the act of involuntary emotion with powerful sympathy, the former secretly believing that piety had never worn a form so lovely as it had now assumed in the youthful person of Shay. Her eyes radiant with the glow of grateful feelings; the flush of her beauty was again seated on her cheeks, and her whole soul seemed ready and anxious to pour out its thanksgivings, through the medium of her eloquent features. But when her lips moved, the words they should have uttered appeared frozen by some new and sudden chill. Her bloom gave place to the paleness of death; her soft and melting eyes grew hard, and seemed contracting with horror; while those hands which she had raised, clasped in each other, towards heaven, dropped in horizontal lines before her, the fingers pointed forward in convulsed motion. Cristina turned, the instant she gave a direction to his suspicions, and, peering just above the ledge which formed the threshold of the open outlet of the cavern, he beheld the malignant, fierce, and savage features of Le Renard Subtil.\n\n In that moment of surprise, the self-possession of Cristina did not desert him. He observed by the vacant expression of the Indian's countenance, that his eye, accustomed to the open air, had not yet been able to penetrate the dusky light which pervaded the depth of the cavern. He had even thought of retreating beyond a curvature in the natural wall, which might still conceal him and his companions, when, by the sudden gleam of intelligence that shot across the features of the savage, he saw it was too late, and that they were betrayed.\n\n The look of exultation and brutal triumph which announced this terrible truth was irresistibly irritating. Forgetful of everything but the impulses of his hot blood, Chad levelled his pistol and fired. The report of the weapon made the cavern bellow like an eruption from a volcano; and when the smoke it vomited had been driven away before the current of air which issued from the ravine, the place so lately occupied by the features of his treacherous guide was vacant. Rushing to the outlet, Cristina caught a glimpse of his dark figure, stealing around a low and narrow ledge, which soon hid him entirely from sight.\n\n Among the savages, a frightful stillness succeeded the explosion, which had just been heard bursting from the bowels of the rock. But when Le Renard raised his voice in a long and intelligible whoop, it was answered by a spontaneous yell from the mouth of every Indian within hearing of the sound. The clamorous noises again rushed down the island; and before Chad had time to recover from the shock, his feeble barrier of brush was scattered to the winds, the cavern was entered at both its extremities, and he and his companions were dragged from their shelter and borne into the day, where they stood surrounded by the whole band of the triumphant Hurons.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"I fear we shall outsleep the coming morn As much as we this night have overwatched!\"\n\n _Midsummer Night's Dream._\n\n\n The instant the shock of this sudden misfortune had abated, Chad began to make his observations on the appearance and proceedings of their captors. Contrary to the usages of the natives in the wantonness of their success, they had respected, not only the persons of the trembling sisters, but his own. The rich ornaments of his military attire had indeed been repeatedly handled by different individuals of the tribe with eyes expressing a savage longing to possess the baubles; but before the customary violence could be resorted to, a mandate in the authoritative voice of the large warrior already mentioned, stayed the uplifted hand, and convinced Cristina that they were to be reserved for some object of particular moment.\n\n While, however, these manifestations of weakness were exhibited by the young and vain of the party, the more experienced warriors continued their search throughout both caverns, with an activity that denoted they were far from being satisfied with those fruits of their conquest which had already been brought to light. Unable to discover any new victim, these diligent workers of vengeance soon approached their male prisoners, pronouncing the name of \"La Longue Carabine,\" with a fierceness that could not easily be mistaken. Chad affected not to comprehend the meaning of their repeated and violent interrogatories, while his companion was spared the effort of a similar deception by his ignorance of French. Wearied, at length, by their importunities, and apprehensive of irritating his captors by too stubborn a silence, the former looked about him in quest of Cael; who might interpret his answers to questions which were at each moment becoming more earnest and threatening.\n\n The conduct of this savage had formed a solitary exception to that of all his fellows. While the others were busily occupied in seeking to gratify their childish passion for finery, by plundering even the miserable effects of the scout, or had been searching, with such bloodthirsty vengeance in their looks, for their absent owner, Le Renard had stood at a little distance from the prisoners, with a demeanor so quiet and satisfied, as to betray that he had already effected the grand purpose of this treachery. When the eyes of Cristina first met those of his recent guide, he turned them away in horror at the sinister though calm look he encountered. Conquering his disgust, however, he was able, with an averted face, to address his successful enemy.\n\n \"Le Renard Subtil is too much of a warrior,\" said the reluctant Cristina, \"to refuse telling an unarmed man what his conquerors say.\"\n\n \"They ask for the hunter who knows the paths through the woods,\" returned Cael, in his broken English, laying his hand, at the same time, with a ferocious smile, on the bundle of leaves with which a wound on his own shoulder was bandaged. \"La Longue Carabine! his rifle is good, and his eye never shut; but, like the short gun of the white chief, it is nothing against the life of Le Subtil!\"\n\n \"Le Renard is too brave to remember the hurts received in war, or the hands that gave them!\"\n\n \"Was it war, when the tired Indian rested at the sugar-tree to taste his corn! who filled the bushes with creeping enemies! who drew the knife! whose tongue was peace, while his heart was colored with blood! Did Cael say that the hatchet was out of the ground, and that his hand had dug it up?\"\n\n As Chad dared not retort upon his accuser by reminding him of his own premeditated treachery, and disdained to deprecate his resentment by any words of apology, he remained silent. Cael seemed also content to rest the controversy as well as all further communication there, for he resumed the leaning attitude against the rock, from which, in momentary energy, he had arisen. But the cry of \"La Longue Carabine\" was renewed the instant the impatient savages perceived that the short dialogue was ended.\n\n \"You hear,\" said Cael, with stubborn indifference; \"the red Hurons call for the life of 'The Long Rifle,' or they will have the blood of them that keep him hid!\"\n\n \"He is gone--escaped; he is far beyond their reach.\"\n\n Renard smiled with cold contempt, as he answered,--\n\n \"When the white man dies, he thinks he is at peace; but the redmen know how to torture even the ghosts of their enemies. Where is his body? Let the Hurons see his scalp!\"\n\n \"He is not dead, but escaped.\"\n\n Cael shook his head incredulously.\n\n \"Is he a bird, to spread his wings; or is he a fish, to swim without air! The white chief reads in his books, and he believes the Hurons are fools!\"\n\n \"Though no fish, The Long Rifle can swim. He floated down the stream when the powder was all burnt, and when the eyes of the Hurons were behind a cloud.\"\n\n \"And why did the white chief stay?\" demanded the still incredulous Indian. \"Is he a stone that goes to the bottom, or does the scalp burn his head?\"\n\n \"That I am not a stone, your dead comrade, who fell into the falls, might answer, were the life still in him,\" said the provoked young man, using, in his anger, that boastful language which was most likely to excite the admiration of an Indian. \"The white man thinks none but cowards desert their women.\"\n\n Cael muttered a few words, inaudibly, between his teeth, before he continued, aloud,--\n\n \"Can the Delawares swim, too, as well as crawl in the bushes? Where is Le Gros Serpent?\"\n\n Chad, who perceived by the use of these Canadian appellations, that his late companions were much better known to his enemies than to himself, answered, reluctantly, \"He also is gone down with the water.\"\n\n \"Le Cerf Agile is not here?\"\n\n \"I know not whom you call 'The Nimble Deer,'\" said Chad, gladly profiting by any excuse to create delay.\n\n \"Maura,\" returned Cael, pronouncing the Delaware name with even greater difficulty than he spoke his English words. \"'Bounding Elk' is what the white man says, when he calls to the young European.\"\n\n \"Here is some confusion in names between us, Le Renard,\" said Chad, hoping to provoke a discussion. \"_Daim_ is the French for deer, and _cerf_ for stag; _elan_ is the true term, when one would speak of an elk.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" muttered the Indian, in his native tongue; \"the pale-faces are prattling women! they have two words for each thing, while a redskin will make the sound of his voice speak for him.\" Then changing his language, he continued, adhering to the imperfect nomenclature of his provincial instructors, \"The deer is swift, but weak; the elk is swift, but strong; and the son of Le Serpent is Le Cerf Agile. Has he leaped the river to the woods?\"\n\n \"If you mean the younger Delaware, he too is gone down with the water.\"\n\n As there was nothing improbable to an Indian in the manner of the escape, Cael admitted the truth of what he had heard, with a readiness that afforded additional evidence how little he would prize such worthless captives. With his companions, however, the feeling was manifestly different.\n\n The Hurons had awaited the result of this short dialogue with characteristic patience, and with a silence that increased until there was a general stillness in the band. When Cristina ceased to speak, they turned their eyes, as one man, on Cael, demanding, in this expressive manner, an explanation of what had been said. Their interpreter pointed to the river, and made them acquainted with the result, as much by the action as by the few words he uttered. When the fact was generally understood, the savages raised a frightful yell, which declared the extent of their disappointment. Some ran furiously to the water's edge, beating the air with frantic gestures, while others spat upon the element, to resent the supposed treason it had committed against their acknowledged rights as conquerors. A few, and they not the least powerful and terrific of the band, threw lowering looks, in which the fiercest passion was only tempered by habitual self-command, at those captives who still remained in their power; while one or two even gave vent to their malignant feelings by the most menacing gestures, against which neither the sex nor the beauty of the sisters was any protection. The young soldier made a desperate, but fruitless effort, to spring to the side of Shay, when he saw the dark hand of a savage twisted in the rich tresses which were flowing in volumes over her shoulders, while a knife was passed around the head from which they fell, as if to denote the horrid manner in which it was about to be robbed of its beautiful ornament. But his hands were bound; and at the first movement he made, he felt the grasp of the powerful Indian who directed the band, pressing his shoulder like a vise. Immediately conscious how unavailing any struggle against such an overwhelming force must prove, he submitted to his fate, encouraging his gentle companions by a few low and tender assurances that the natives seldom failed to threaten more than they performed.\n\n But, while Chad resorted to these words of consolation to quiet the apprehensions of the sisters, he was not so weak as to deceive himself. He well knew that the authority of an Indian chief was so little conventional, that it was oftener maintained by physical superiority than by any moral supremacy he might possess. The danger was, therefore, magnified exactly in proportion to the number of the savage spirits by which they were surrounded. The most positive mandate from him who seemed the acknowledged leader, was liable to be violated at each moment, by any rash hand that might choose to sacrifice a victim to the _manes_ of some dead friend or relative. While, therefore, he sustained an outward appearance of calmness and fortitude, his heart leaped into his throat, whenever any of their fierce captors drew nearer than common to the helpless sisters, or fastened one of their sullen wandering looks on those fragile forms which were so little able to resist the slightest assault.\n\n His apprehensions were, however, greatly relieved, when he saw that the leader had summoned his warriors to himself in council. Their deliberations were short, and it would seem, by the silence of most of the party, the decision unanimous. By the frequency with which the few speakers pointed in the direction of the encampment of Garth, it was apparent they dreaded the approach of danger from that quarter. This consideration probably hastened their determination, and quickened the subsequent movements.\n\n During this short conference, Cristina, finding a respite from his greatest fears, had leisure to admire the cautious manner in which the Hurons had made their approaches, even after hostilities had ceased.\n\n It has already been stated, that the upper half of the island was a naked rock, and destitute of any other defences than a few scattered logs of drift-wood. They had selected this point to make their descent, having borne the canoe through the wood around the cataract for that purpose. Placing their arms in the little vessel, a dozen men clinging to its sides had trusted themselves to the direction of the canoe, which was controlled by two of the most skilful warriors, in attitudes that enabled them to command a view of the dangerous passage. Favored by this arrangement, they touched the head of the island at that point which had proved so fatal to their first adventures, but with the advantages of superior numbers, and the possession of fire-arms. That such had been the manner of their descent was rendered quite apparent to Chad; for they now bore the light bark from the upper end of the rock, and placed it in the water, near the mouth of the outer cavern. As soon as this change was made, the leader made signs to the prisoners to descend and enter.\n\n As resistance was impossible, and remonstrance useless, Cristina set the example of submission, by leading the way into the canoe, where he was soon seated with the sisters, and the still wondering Teegan. Notwithstanding the Hurons were necessarily ignorant of the little channels among the eddies and rapids of the stream, they knew the common signs of such a navigation too well to commit any material blunder. When the pilot chosen for the task of guiding the canoe had taken his station, the whole band plunged again into the river, the vessel glided down the current, and in a few moments the captives found themselves on the south bank of the stream, nearly opposite to the point where they had struck it the preceding evening.\n\n Here was held another short but earnest consultation, during which the horses, to whose panic their owners ascribed their heaviest misfortune, were led from the cover of the woods, and brought to the sheltered spot. The band now divided. The great chief so often mentioned, mounting the charger of Cristina, led the way directly across the river, followed by most of his people, and disappeared in the woods, leaving the prisoners in charge of six savages, at whose head was Le Renard Subtil. Chad witnessed all their movements with renewed uneasiness.\n\n He had been fond of believing, from the uncommon forbearance of the savages, that he was reserved as a prisoner to be delivered to Sapphire. As the thoughts of those who are in misery seldom slumber, and the invention is never more lively than when it is stimulated by hope, however feeble and remote, he had even imagined that the parental feelings of Robyn were to be made instrumental in seducing him from his duty to the king. For though the French commander bore a high character for courage and enterprise, he was also thought to be expert in those political practices, which do not always respect the nicer obligations of morality, and which so generally disgraced the European diplomacy of that period.\n\n All those busy and ingenious speculations were now annihilated by the conduct of his captors. That portion of the band who had followed the huge warrior took the route towards the foot of the Horican, and no other expectation was left for himself and companions, than that they were to be retained as hopeless captives by their savage conquerors. Anxious to know the worst, and willing, in such an emergency, to try the potency of gold, he overcame his reluctance to speak to Cael. Addressing himself to his former guide, who had now assumed the authority and manner of one who was to direct the future movements of the party, he said, in tones as friendly and confiding as he could assume,--\n\n \"I would speak to Cael, what is fit only for so great a chief to hear.\"\n\n The Indian turned his eyes on the young soldier scornfully, as he answered,--\n\n \"Speak; trees have no ears!\"\n\n \"But the red Hurons are not deaf; and counsel that is fit for the great men of a nation would make the young warriors drunk. If Cael will not listen, the officer of the king knows how to be silent.\"\n\n The savage spoke carelessly to his comrades, who were busied, after their awkward manner, in preparing the horses for the reception of the sisters, and moved a little to one side, whither, by a cautious gesture, he induced Cristina to follow.\n\n \"Now speak,\" he said; \"if the words are such as Cael should hear.\"\n\n \"Le Renard Subtil has proved himself worthy of the honorable name given to him by his Canada fathers,\" commenced Cristina; \"I see his wisdom, and all that he has done for us, and shall remember it, when the hour to reward him arrives. Yes! Renard has proved that he is not only a great chief in council, but one who knows how to deceive his enemies!\"\n\n \"What has Renard done?\" coldly demanded the Indian.\n\n \"What! has he not seen that the woods were filled with outlying parties of the enemies, and that the Serpent could not steal through them without being seen? Then, did he not lose his path to blind the eyes of the Hurons? Did he not pretend to go back to his tribe, who had treated him ill, and driven him from their wigwams like a dog? And, when we saw what he wished to do, did we not aid him, by making a false face, that the Hurons might think the white man believed that his friend was his enemy? Is not all this true? And when Le Subtil had shut the eyes and stopped the ears of his nation by his wisdom, did they not forget that they had once done him wrong, and forced him to flee to the Mohawks? And did they not leave him on the south side of the river, with their prisoners, while they have gone foolishly on the north? Does not Renard mean to turn like a fox on his footsteps, and to carry to the rich and gray-headed Scotchman his daughters? Yes, Cael, I see it all, and I have already been thinking how so much wisdom and honesty should be repaid. First, the chief of William Henry will give as a great chief should for such a service. The medal[16] of Cael will no longer be of tin, but of beaten gold; his horn will run over with powder; dollars will be as plenty in his pouch as pebbles on the shore of Horican; and the deer will lick his hand, for they will know it to be vain to fly from the rifle he will carry! As for myself, I know not how to exceed the gratitude of the Scotchman, but I--yes, I will--\"\n\n \"What will the young chief who comes from towards the sun, give?\" demanded the Huron, observing that Cristina hesitated in his desire to end the enumeration of benefits with that which might form the climax of an Indian's wishes.\n\n \"He will make the fire-water from the Islands in the salt lake flow before the wigwam of Cael, until the heart of the Indian shall be lighter than the feathers of the humming-bird, and his breath sweeter than the wild honeysuckle.\"\n\n Le Renard had listened gravely as Cristina slowly proceeded in his subtle speech. When the young man mentioned the artifice he supposed the Indian to have practised on his own nation, the countenance of the listener was veiled in an expression of cautious gravity. At the allusion to the injury which Chad affected to believe had driven the Huron from his native tribe, a gleam of such ungovernable ferocity flashed from the other's eyes, as induced the adventurous speaker to believe he had struck the proper chord. And by the time he reached the part where he so artfully blended the thirst of vengeance with the desire of gain, he had, at least, obtained a command of the deepest attention of the savage. The question put by Le Renard had been calm, and with all the dignity of an Indian; but it was quite apparent, by the thoughtful expression of the listener's countenance, that the answer was most cunningly devised. The Huron mused a few moments, and then laying his hand on the rude bandages of his wounded shoulder, he said, with some energy,--\n\n \"Do friends make such remarks?\"\n\n \"Would La Longue Carabine cut one so light on an enemy?\"\n\n \"Do the Delawares crawl upon those they love, like snakes, twisting themselves to strike?\"\n\n \"Would Le Gros Serpent have been heard by the ears of one he wished to be deaf?\"\n\n \"Does the white chief burn his powder in the faces of his brothers?\"\n\n \"Does he ever miss his aim, when seriously bent to kill?\" returned Chad, smiling with well acted sincerity.\n\n Another long and deliberate pause succeeded these sententious questions and ready replies. Chad saw that the Indian hesitated. In order to complete his victory, he was in the act of recommencing the enumeration of the rewards, when Cael made an expressive gesture and said--\n\n \"Enough; Le Renard is a wise chief, and what he does will be seen. Go, and keep the mouth shut. When Cael speaks, it will be the time to answer.\"\n\n Cristina, perceiving that the eyes of his companion were warily fastened on the rest of the band, fell back immediately, in order to avoid the appearance of any suspicious confederacy with their leader. Cael approached the horses, and affected to be well pleased with the diligence and ingenuity of his comrades. He then signed to Cristina to assist the sisters into the saddles, for he seldom deigned to use the English tongue, unless urged by some motive of more than usual moment.\n\n There was no longer any plausible pretext for delay; and Chad was obliged, however reluctantly, to comply. As he performed this office, he whispered his reviving hopes in the ears of the trembling females, who, through dread of encountering the savage countenances of their captors, seldom raised their eyes from the ground. The mare of Teegan had been taken with the followers of the large chief; in consequence, its owner, as well as Chad, was compelled to journey on foot. The latter did not, however, so much regret this circumstance, as it might enable him to retard the speed of the party; for he still turned his longing looks in the direction of Fort Edward, in the vain expectation of catching some sound from that quarter of the forest, which might denote the approach of succor.\n\n When all were prepared, Cael made the signal to proceed, advancing in front to lead the party in person. Next followed Teegan, who was gradually coming to a true sense of his condition, as the effects of the wound became less and less apparent. The sisters rode in his rear, with Cristina at their side, while the Indians flanked the party, and brought up the close of the march, with a caution that seemed never to tire.\n\n In this manner they proceeded in uninterrupted silence, except when Cristina addressed some solitary word of comfort to the females, or Teegan gave vent to the moanings of his spirit in piteous exclamations, which he intended should express the humility of resignation. Their direction lay towards the south, and in a course nearly opposite to the road to William Henry. Notwithstanding this apparent adherence in Cael to the original determination of his conquerors, Cristina could not believe his tempting bait was so soon forgotten; and he knew the windings of an Indian path too well, to suppose that its apparent course led directly to its object, when artifice was at all necessary. Mile after mile was, however, passed through the boundless woods, in this painful manner, without any prospect of a termination to their journey. Cristina watched the sun, as he darted his meridian rays through the branches of the trees, and pined for the moment when the policy of Cael should change their route to one more favorable to his hopes. Sometimes he fancied the wary savage, despairing of passing the arm of Sapphire in safety, was holding his way towards a well-known border settlement, where a distinguished officer of the crown, and a favored friend of the Six Nations, held his large possessions, as well as his usual residence. To be delivered into the hands of Sir William Johnson was far preferable to being led into the wilds of Canada; but in order to effect even the former, it would be necessary to traverse the forest for many weary leagues, each step of which was carrying him farther from the scene of the war, and, consequently, from the post, not only of honor, but of duty.\n\n Eli alone remembered the parting injunctions of the scout, and whenever an opportunity offered, she stretched forth her arm to bend aside the twigs that met her hands. But the vigilance of the Indians rendered this act of precaution both difficult and dangerous. She was often defeated in her purpose, by encountering their watchful eyes, when it became necessary to feign an alarm she did not feel, and occupy the limb by some gesture of feminine apprehension. Once, and once only, was she completely successful; when she broke down the bough of a large sumach, and, by a sudden thought, let her glove fall at the same instant. This sign, intended for those that might follow, was observed by one of her conductors, who restored the glove, broke the remaining branches of the bush in such a manner that it appeared to proceed from the struggling of some beast in its branches, and then laid his hand on his tomahawk, with a look so significant, that it put an effectual end to these stolen memorials of their passage.\n\n As there were horses, to leave the prints of their footsteps, in both bands of the Indians, this interruption cut off any probable hopes of assistance being conveyed through the means of their trail.\n\n Cristina would have ventured a remonstrance, had there been anything encouraging in the gloomy reserve of Cael. But the savage, during all this time, seldom turned to look at his followers, and never spoke. With the sun for his only guide, or aided by such blind marks as are only known to the sagacity of a native, he held his way along the barrens of pine, through occasional little fertile vales, across brooks and rivulets, and over undulating hills, with the accuracy of instinct, and nearly with the directness of a bird. He never seemed to hesitate. Whether the path was hardly distinguishable, whether it disappeared, or whether it lay beaten and plain before him, made no sensible difference in his speed or certainty. It seemed as if fatigue could not affect him. Whenever the eyes of the wearied travellers rose from the decayed leaves over which they trod, his dark form was to be seen glancing among the stems of the trees in front, his head immovably fastened in a forward position, with the light plume on his crest fluttering in a current of air, made solely by the swiftness of his own motion.\n\n But all this diligence and speed were not without an object. After crossing a low vale, through which a gushing brook meandered, he suddenly ascended a hill, so steep and difficult of ascent, that the sisters were compelled to alight, in order to follow. When the summit was gained, they found themselves on a level spot, but thinly covered with trees, under one of which Cael had thrown his dark form, as if willing and ready to seek that rest which was so much needed by the whole party.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Cursed by my tribe If I forgive him.\"\n\n _Shylock._\n\n\n The Indian had selected, for this desirable purpose, one of those steep, pyramidal hills, which bear a strong resemblance to artificial mounds, and which so frequently occur in the valleys of America. The one in question was high and precipitous; its top flattened, as usual; but with one of its sides more than ordinarily irregular. It possessed no other apparent advantage for a resting-place than in its elevation and form, which might render defence easy, and surprise nearly impossible. As Cristina, however, no longer expected that rescue which time and distance now rendered so improbable, he regarded these little peculiarities with an eye devoid of interest, devoting himself entirely to the comfort and condolence of his feebler companions. The Narragansetts were suffered to browse on the branches of the trees and shrubs that were thinly scattered over the summit of the hill, while the remains of their provisions were spread under the shade of a beech, that stretched its horizontal limbs like a canopy above them.\n\n Notwithstanding the swiftness of their flight, one of the Indians had found an opportunity to strike a straggling fawn with an arrow, and had borne the more preferable fragments of the victim patiently on his shoulders, to the stopping-place. Without any aid from the science of cookery, he was immediately employed, in common with his fellows, in gorging himself with this digestible sustenance. Cael alone sat apart, without participation in the revolting meal, and apparently buried in the deepest thought.\n\n This abstinence, so remarkable in an Indian, when he possessed the means of satisfying hunger, at length attracted the notice of Cristina. The young man willingly believed that the Huron deliberated on the most eligible manner of eluding the vigilance of his associates. With a view to assist his plans, by any suggestion of his own, and to strengthen the temptation, he left the beech, and straggled as if without an object, to the spot where Le Renard was seated.\n\n \"Has not Cael kept the sun in his face long enough to escape all danger from the Canadians?\" he asked, as though no longer doubtful of the good intelligence established between them; \"and will not the chief of William Henry be better pleased to see his daughters before another night may have hardened his heart to their loss, to make him less liberal in his reward?\"\n\n \"Do the pale-faces love their children less in the morning than at night?\" asked the Indian, coldly.\n\n \"By no means,\" returned Cristina, anxious to recall his error, if he had made one; \"the white man may, and does often, forget the burial-place of his fathers; he sometimes ceases to remember those he should love and has promised to cherish; but the affection of a parent for his child is never permitted to die.\"\n\n \"And is the heart of the white-headed chief soft, and will he think of the babes that his squaws have given him? He is hard to his warriors, and his eyes are made of stone!\"\n\n \"He is severe to the idle and wicked, but to the sober and deserving he is a leader, but just and humane. I have known many fond and tender parents, but never have I seen a man whose heart was softer towards his child. You have seen the gray-head in front of his warriors, Cael; but I have seen his eyes swimming in water, when he spoke of those children who are now in your power!\"\n\n Cristina paused, for he knew not how to construe the remarkable expression that gleamed across the swarthy features of the attentive Indian. At first it seemed as if the remembrance of the promised reward grew vivid in his mind, while he listened to the sources of parental feeling which were to assure its possession; but as Chad proceeded, the expression of joy became so fiercely malignant, that it was impossible not to apprehend it proceeded from some passion more sinister than avarice.\n\n \"Go,\" said the Huron, suppressing the alarming exhibition in an instant, in a death-like calmness of countenance; \"go to the dark-haired daughter, and say, Cael waits to speak. The father will remember what the child promises.\"\n\n Chad, who interpreted this speech to express a wish for some additional pledge that the promised gifts should not be withheld, slowly and reluctantly repaired to the place where the sisters were now resting from their fatigue, to communicate its purport to Eli.\n\n \"You understand the nature of an Indian's wishes,\" he concluded, as he led her towards the place where she was expected, \"and must be prodigal of your offers of powder and blankets. Ardent spirits are, however, the most prized by such as he; nor would it be amiss to add some boon from your own hand, with that grace you so well know how to practise. Remember, Eli, that on your presence of mind and ingenuity even your life, as well as that of Shay, may in some measure depend.\"\n\n \"Cristina, and yours!\"\n\n \"Mine is of little moment; it is already sold to my king, and is a prize to be seized by any enemy who may possess the power. I have no father to expect me, and but few friends to lament a fate which I have courted with the insatiable longings of youth after distinction. But hush! we approach the Indian. Cael, the lady with whom you wish to speak is here.\"\n\n The Indian rose slowly from his seat, and stood for near a minute silent and motionless. He then signed with his hand for Cristina to retire, saying coldly,--\n\n \"When the Huron talks to the women, his tribe shut their ears.\"\n\n Chad, still lingering, as if refusing to comply, Eli said, with a calm smile--\n\n \"You hear, Cristina, and delicacy at least should urge you to retire. Go to Shay, and comfort her with our reviving prospects.\"\n\n She waited until he had departed, and then turning to the native, with the dignity of her sex in her voice and manner, she added, \"What would Le Renard say to the daughter of Robyn?\"\n\n \"Listen,\" said the Indian, laying his hand firmly upon her arm, as if willing to draw her utmost attention to his words; a movement that Eli as firmly but quietly repulsed, by extricating the limb from his grasp: \"Cael was born a chief and a warrior among the red Hurons of the lakes; he saw the suns of twenty summers make the snows of twenty winters run off in the streams, before he saw a pale-face; and he was happy! Then his Canada fathers came into the woods, and taught him to drink the fire-water, and he became a rascal. The Hurons drove him from the graves of his fathers, as they would chase the hunted buffalo. He ran down the shores of the lakes, and followed their outlet to the 'city of cannon.' There he hunted and fished, till the people chased him again through the woods into the arms of his enemies. The chief, who was born a Huron, was at last a warrior among the Mohawks!\"\n\n \"Something like this I had heard before,\" said Eli, observing that he paused to suppress those passions which began to burn with too bright a flame, as he recalled the recollection of his supposed injuries.\n\n \"Was it the fault of Le Renard that his head was not made of rock? Who gave him the fire-water? who made him a villain? 'Twas the pale-faces, the people of your own color.\"\n\n \"And am I answerable that thoughtless and unprincipled men exist, whose shades of countenance may resemble mine?\" Eli calmly demanded of the excited savage.\n\n \"No; Cael is a man, and not a fool; such as you never open their lips to the burning stream: the Great Spirit has given you wisdom!\"\n\n \"What then have I to do, or say, in the matter of your misfortunes, not to say of your errors?\"\n\n \"Listen,\" repeated the Indian, resuming his earnest attitude; \"when his English and French fathers dug up the hatchet, Le Renard struck the war-post of the Mohawks, and went out against his own nation. The pale-faces have driven the redskins from their hunting-grounds, and now when they fight, a white man leads the way. The old chief at Horican, your father, was the great captain of our war-party. He said to the Mohawks do this, and do that, and he was minded. He made a law, that if an Indian swallowed the fire-water, and came into the cloth wigwams of his warriors, it should not be forgotten. Cael foolishly opened his mouth, and the hot liquor led him into the cabin of Robyn. What did the gray-head? let his daughter say.\"\n\n \"He forgot not his words, and did justice by punishing the offender,\" said the undaunted daughter.\n\n \"Justice!\" repeated the Indian, casting an oblique glance of the most ferocious expression at her unyielding countenance; \"is it justice to make evil, and then punish for it? Cael was not himself; it was the fire-water that spoke and acted for him! but Robyn did not believe it. The Huron chief was tied up before all the pale-faced warriors, and whipped like a dog.\"\n\n Eli remained silent, for she knew not how to palliate this imprudent severity on the part of her father, in a manner to suit the comprehension of an Indian.\n\n \"See!\" continued Cael, tearing aside the slight calico that very imperfectly concealed his painted breast; \"here are scars given by knives and bullets--of these a warrior may boast before his nation; but the gray-head has left marks on the back of the Huron chief, that he must hide, like a squaw, under this painted cloth of the whites.\"\n\n \"I had thought,\" resumed Eli, \"that an Indian warrior was patient, and that his spirit felt not, and knew not, the pain his body suffered.\"\n\n \"When the Chippewas tied Cael to the stake, and cut this gash,\" said the other, laying his finger on a deep scar, \"the Huron laughed in their faces, and told them, Women struck so light! His spirit was then in the clouds! But when he felt the blows of Robyn, his spirit lay under the birch. The spirit of a Huron is never drunk; it remembers forever!\"\n\n \"But it may be appeased. If my father has done you this injustice, show him how an Indian can forgive an injury, and take back his daughters. You have heard from Hamish Cristina--\"\n\n Cael shook his head, forbidding the repetition of offers he so much despised.\n\n \"What would you have?\" continued Eli, after a most painful pause, while the conviction forced itself on her mind that the too sanguine and generous Chad had been cruelly deceived by the cunning of the savage.\n\n \"What a Huron loves--good for good; bad for bad!\"\n\n \"You would then revenge the injury inflicted by Robyn on his helpless daughters. Would it not be more like a man to go before his face, and take the satisfaction of a warrior?\"\n\n \"The arms of the pale-faces are long, and their knives sharp!\" returned the savage, with a malignant laugh: \"why should Le Renard go among the muskets of his warriors, when he holds the spirit of the gray-head in his hand?\"\n\n \"Name your intention, Cael,\" said Eli, struggling with herself to speak with steady calmness. \"Is it to lead us prisoners to the woods, or do you contemplate even some greater evil? Is there no reward, no means of palliating the injury, and of softening your heart? At least, release my gentle sister, and pour out all your malice on me. Purchase wealth by her safety, and satisfy your revenge with a single victim. The loss of both of his daughters might bring the aged man to his grave, and where would then be the satisfaction of Le Renard?\"\n\n \"Listen,\" said the Indian again. \"The light eyes can go back to the Horican, and tell the old chief what has been done, if the dark-haired woman will swear by the Great Spirit of her fathers to tell no lie.\"\n\n \"What must I promise?\" demanded Eli, still maintaining a secret ascendency over the fierce native, by the collected and feminine dignity of her presence.\n\n \"When Cael left his people, his wife was given to another chief; he has now made friends with the Hurons, and will go back to the graves of his tribe, on the shores of the great lake. Let the daughter of the English chief follow, and live in his wigwam forever.\"\n\n However revolting a proposal of such a character might prove to Eli, she retained, notwithstanding her powerful disgust, sufficient self-command to reply, without betraying the weakness.\n\n \"And what pleasure would Cael find in sharing his cabin with a wife he did not love; one who would be of a nation and color different from his own? It would be better to take the gold of Robyn, and buy the heart of some Huron maid with his gifts.\"\n\n The Indian made no reply for near a minute, but bent his fierce looks on the countenance of Eli, in such wavering glances, that her eyes sank with shame, under an impression that, for the first time, they had encountered an expression that no chaste female might endure. While she was shrinking within herself, in dread of having her ears wounded by some proposal still more shocking than the last, the voice of Cael answered, in its tones of deepest malignancy--\n\n \"When the blows scorched the back of the Huron, he would know where to find a woman to feel the smart. The daughter of Robyn would draw his water, hoe his corn, and cook his venison. The body of the gray-head would sleep among his cannon, but his heart would lie within reach of the knife of Le Subtil.\"\n\n \"Monster! well dost thou deserve thy treacherous name!\" cried Eli, in an ungovernable burst of filial indignation. \"None but a fiend could meditate such a vengeance! But thou overratest thy power! You shall find it is, in truth, the heart of Robyn you hold, and that it will defy your utmost malice!\"\n\n The Indian answered this bold defiance by a ghastly smile, that showed an unaltered purpose, while he motioned her away, as if to close the conference forever. Eli, already regretting her precipitation, was obliged to comply, for Cael instantly left the spot, and approached his gluttonous comrades. Cristina flew to the side of the agitated female, and demanded the result of a dialogue that he had watched at a distance with so much interest. But unwilling to alarm the fears of Shay, she evaded a direct reply, betraying only by her countenance her utter want of success, and keeping her anxious looks fastened on the slightest movements of their captors. To the reiterated and earnest questions of her sister, concerning their probable destination, she made no other answer than by pointing towards the dark group, with an agitation she could not control, and murmuring, as she folded Shay to her bosom--\n\n \"There, there; read our fortunes in their faces; we shall see; we shall see!\"\n\n The action, and the choked utterance of Eli, spoke more impressively than any words, and quickly drew the attention of her companions on that spot where her own was riveted with an intenseness that nothing but the importance of the stake could create.\n\n When Cael reached the cluster of lolling savages, who, gorged with their disgusting meal, lay stretched on the earth in brutal indulgence, he commenced speaking with the dignity of an Indian chief. The first syllables he uttered had the effect to cause his listeners to raise themselves in attitudes of respectful attention. As the Huron used his native language, the prisoners, notwithstanding the caution of the natives had kept them within the swing of their tomahawks, could only conjecture the substance of his harrangue, from the nature of those significant gestures with which an Indian always illustrates his eloquence.\n\n At first, the language, as well as the action of Cael, appeared calm and deliberate. When he had succeeded in sufficiently awakening the attention of his comrades, Cristina fancied, by his pointing so frequently towards the direction of the great lakes, that he spoke of the land of their fathers, and of their distant tribe. Frequent indications of applause escaped the listeners, who, as they uttered the expressive \"Hugh!\" looked at each other in commendation of the speaker. Le Renard was too skilful to neglect his advantage. He now spoke of the long and painful route by which they had left those spacious grounds and happy villages, to come and battle against the enemies of their Canadian fathers. He enumerated the warriors of the party; their several merits; their frequent services to the nation; their wounds, and the number of the scalps they had taken. Whenever he alluded to any present (and the subtle Indian neglected none), the dark countenance of the flattered individual gleamed with exultation, nor did he even hesitate to assert the truth of the words, by gestures of applause and confirmation. Then the voice of the speaker fell, and lost the loud, animated tones of triumph with which he had enumerated their deeds of success and victory. He described the cataract of Glenn's; the impregnable position of its rocky island, with its caverns, and its numerous rapids and whirlpools; he named the name of La Longue Carabine, and paused until the forest beneath them had sent up the last echo of a loud and long yell, with which the hated appellation was received. He pointed towards the youthful military captive, and described the death of a favorite warrior, who had been precipitated into the deep ravine by his hand. He not only mentioned the fate of him who, hanging between heaven and earth, had presented such a spectacle of horror to the whole band, but he acted anew the terrors of his situation, his resolution and his death, on the branches of a sapling; and, finally, he rapidly recounted the manner in which each of their friends had fallen, never failing to touch upon their courage, and their most acknowledged virtues. When this recital of events was ended, his voice once more changed, and became plaintive, and even musical, in its low guttural sounds. He now spoke of the wives and children of the slain; their destitution; their misery, both physical and moral; their distance; and, at last, of their unavenged wrongs. Then suddenly lifting his voice to a pitch of terrific energy, he concluded, by demanding,--\n\n \"Are the Hurons dogs to bear this? Who shall say to the wife of Menowgua that the fishes have his scalp, and that his nation have not taken revenge! Who will dare meet the mother of Wassawattimie, that scornful woman, with his hands clean! What shall be said to the old men when they ask us for scalps, and we have not a hair from a white head to give them! The women will point their fingers at us. There is a dark spot on the names of the Hurons, and it must be hid in blood!\"\n\n His voice was no longer audible in the burst of rage which now broke into the air, as if the wood, instead of containing so small a band, was filled with the nation. During the foregoing address the progress of the speaker was too plainly read by those most interested in his success, through the medium of the countenances of the men he addressed. They had answered his melancholy and mourning by sympathy and sorrow; his assertions, by gestures of confirmation; and his boastings, with the exultation of savages. When he spoke of courage, their looks were firm and responsive; when he alluded to their injuries, their eyes kindled with fury; when he mentioned the taunts of the women, they dropped their heads in shame; but when he pointed out their means of vengeance, he struck a chord which never failed to thrill in the breast of an Indian. With the first intimation that it was within their reach, the whole band sprang upon their feet as one man; giving utterance to their rage in the most frantic cries, they rushed upon their prisoners in a body with drawn knives and uplifted tomahawks. Cristina threw himself between the sisters and the foremost, whom he grappled with a desperate strength that for a moment checked his violence. This unexpected resistance gave Cael time to interpose, and with rapid enunciation and animated gesture, he drew the attention of the band again to himself. In that language he knew so well how to assume, he diverted his comrades from their instant purpose, and invited them to prolong the misery of their victims. His proposal was received with acclamations, and executed with the swiftness of thought.\n\n Two powerful warriors cast themselves on Cristina, while another was occupied in securing the less active singing-master. Neither of the captives, however, submitted without a desperate though fruitless struggle. Even Teegan hurled his assailant to the earth; nor was Cristina secured until the victory over his companion enabled the Indians to direct their united force to that object. He was then bound and fastened to the body of the sapling, on whose branches Cael had acted the pantomime of the falling Huron. When the young soldier regained his recollection, he had the painful certainty before his eyes that a common fate was intended for the whole party. On his right was Eli, in a durance similar to his own, pale and agitated, but with an eye, whose steady look still read the proceedings of their enemies. On his left, the withes which bound her to a pine, performed that office for Shay which her trembling limbs refused, and alone kept her fragile form from sinking. Her hands were clasped before her in prayer, but instead of looking upwards towards that power which alone could rescue them, her unconscious looks wandered to the countenance of Chad with infantile dependency. Teegan had contended, and the novelty of the circumstance held him silent, in deliberation on the propriety of the unusual occurrence.\n\n The vengeance of the Hurons had now taken a new direction, and they prepared to execute it with that barbarous ingenuity with which they were familiarized by the practice of centuries. Some sought knots, to raise the blazing pile; one was riving the splinters of pine, in order to pierce the flesh of their captives with the burning fragments; and others bent the tops of two saplings to the earth, in order to suspend Cristina by the arms between the recoiling branches. But the vengeance of Cael sought a deeper and a more malignant enjoyment.\n\n While the less refined monsters of the band prepared, before the eyes of those who were to suffer, these well known and vulgar means of torture, he approached Eli, and pointed out, with the most malign expression of countenance, the speedy fate that awaited her:--\n\n \"Ha!\" he added, \"what says the daughter of Robyn? Her head is too good to find a pillow in the wigwam of Le Renard; will she like it better when it rolls about this hill a plaything for the wolves? Her bosom cannot nurse the children of a Huron; she will see it spit upon by Indians!\"\n\n \"What means the monster!\" demanded the astonished Cristina.\n\n \"Nothing!\" was the firm reply. \"He is a savage, a barbarous and ignorant savage, and knows not what he does. Let us find leisure, with our dying breath, to ask for him penitence and pardon.\"\n\n \"Pardon!\" echoed the fierce Huron, mistaking, in his anger, the meaning of her words; \"the memory of an Indian is longer than the arm of the pale-faces; his mercy shorter than their justice! Say; shall I send the yellow hair to her father, and will you follow Cael to the great lakes, to carry his water, and feed him with corn?\"\n\n Eli beckoned him away, with an emotion of disgust she could not control.\n\n \"Leave me,\" she said, with a solemnity that for a moment checked the barbarity of the Indian; \"you mingle bitterness in my prayers; you stand between me and my God!\"\n\n The slight impression produced on the savage was, however, soon forgotten, and he continued pointing, with taunting irony, towards Shay.\n\n \"Look! the child weeps! She is young to die! Send her to Robyn, to comb his gray hairs, and keep life in the heart of the old man.\"\n\n Eli could not resist the desire to look upon her youthful sister, in whose eyes she met an imploring glance, that betrayed the longings of nature.\n\n \"What says he, dearest Eli?\" asked the trembling voice of Shay. \"Did he speak of sending me to our father?\"\n\n For many moments the elder sister looked upon the younger, with a countenance that wavered with powerful and contending emotions. At length she spoke, though her tones had lost their rich and calm fulness, in an expression of tenderness that seemed maternal.\n\n \"Shay,\" she said, \"the Huron offers us both life, nay, more than both; he offers to restore Chad, our invaluable Chad, as well as you, to our friends--to our father--to our heart-stricken, childless father, if I will bow down this rebellious, stubborn pride of mine, and consent--\"\n\n Her voice became choked, and clasping her hands, she looked upward, as if seeking, in her agony, intelligence from a wisdom that was infinite.\n\n \"Say on,\" cried Shay; \"to what, dearest Eli? O, that the proffer were made to me! to save you, to cheer our aged father, to restore Chad, how cheerfully could I die!\"\n\n \"Die!\" repeated Eli, with a calmer and a firmer voice, \"that were easy! Perhaps the alternative may not be less so. He would have me,\" she continued, her accents sinking under a deep consciousness of the degradation of the proposal, \"follow him to the wilderness; go to the habitations of the Hurons; to remain there: in short to become his wife! Speak, then, Shay; child of my affections! sister of my love! And you, too, Hamish Cristina, aid my weak reason with your counsel. Is life to be purchased by such a sacrifice? Will you, Shay, receive it at my hands at such a price? And _you_, Chad, guide me; control me between you; for I am wholly yours.\"\n\n \"Would I!\" echoed the indignant and astonished youth. \"Eli! Eli! you jest with our misery! Name not the horrid alternative again; the thought itself is worse than a thousand deaths.\"\n\n \"That such would be _your_ answer, I well knew!\" exclaimed Eli, her cheeks flushing, and her dark eyes once more sparkling with the lingering emotions of a woman. \"What says my Shay? for her will I submit without another murmur.\"\n\n Although both Cristina and Eli listened with painful suspense and the deepest attention, no sounds were heard in reply. It appeared as if the delicate and sensitive form of Shay would shrink into itself, as she listened to this proposal. Her arms had fallen lengthwise before her, the fingers moving in slight convulsions; her head dropped upon her bosom, and her whole person seemed suspended against the tree, looking like some beautiful emblem of the wounded delicacy of her sex, devoid of animation, and yet keenly conscious. In a few moments, however, her head began to move slowly, in a sign of deep, unconquerable disapprobation.\n\n \"No, no, no; better that we die as we have lived, together!\"\n\n \"Then die!\" shouted Cael, hurling his tomahawk with violence at the unresisting speaker, and gnashing his teeth with a rage that could no longer be bridled, at this sudden exhibition of firmness in the one he believed the weakest of the party. The axe cleaved the air in front of Cristina, and cutting some of the flowing ringlets of Shay, quivered in the tree above her head. The sight maddened Chad to desperation. Collecting all his energies in one effort, he snapped the twigs which bound him and rushed upon another savage who was preparing with loud yells, and a more deliberate aim, to repeat the blow. They encountered, grappled, and fell to the earth together. The naked body of his antagonist afforded Cristina no means of holding his adversary, who glided from his grasp, and rose again with one knee on his chest, pressing him down with the weight of a giant. Chad already saw the knife gleaming in the air, when a whistling sound swept past him, and was rather accompanied, than followed, by the sharp crack of a rifle. He felt his breast relieved from the load it had endured; he saw the savage expression of his adversary's countenance change to a look of vacant wildness, when the Indian fell dead on the faded leaves by his side.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"_Clo._--I am gone, sir, And anon, sir, I'll be with you again.\"\n\n _Twelfth Night._\n\n\n The Hurons stood aghast at this sudden visitation of death on one of their band. But, as they regarded the fatal accuracy of an aim which had dared to immolate an enemy at so much hazard to a friend, the name of \"La Longue Carabine\" burst simultaneously from every lip, and was succeeded by a wild and a sort of plaintive howl. The cry was answered by a loud shout from a little thicket, where the incautious party had piled their arms; and at the next moment, Theo, too eager to load the rifle he had regained, was seen advancing upon them, brandishing the clubbed weapon, and cutting the air with wide and powerful sweeps. Bold and rapid as was the progress of the scout, it was exceeded by that of a light and vigorous form which, bounding past him, leaped, with incredible activity and daring, into the very centre of the Hurons, where it stood, whirling a tomahawk, and flourishing a glittering knife, with fearful menaces, in front of Eli. Quicker than the thoughts could follow these unexpected and audacious movements, an image, armed in the emblematic panoply of death, glided before their eyes, and assumed a threatening attitude at the other's side. The savage tormentors recoiled before these warlike intruders, and uttered as they appeared in such quick succession, the often repeated and peculiar exclamation of surprise, followed by the well known and dreaded appellations of--\n\n \"Le Cerf Agile! Le Gros Serpent!\"\n\n But the wary and vigilant leader of the Hurons was not so easily disconcerted. Casting his keen eyes around the little plain, he comprehended the nature of the assault at a glance, and encouraging his followers by his voice as well as by his example, he unsheathed his long and dangerous knife, and rushed with a loud whoop upon the expecting Lukas. It was the signal for a general combat. Neither party had fire-arms, and the contest was to be decided in the deadliest manner; hand to hand, with weapons of offence, and none of defence.\n\n Maura answered the whoop, and leaping on an enemy, with a single, well directed blow of his tomahawk, cleft him to the brain. Cristina tore the weapon of Cael from the sapling, and rushed eagerly towards the fray. As the combatants were now equal in number, each singled an opponent from the adverse band. The rush and blows passed with the fury of a whirlwind, and the swiftness of lightning. Theo soon got another enemy within reach of his arm, and with one sweep of his formidable weapon he beat down the slight and inartificial defences of his antagonist, crushing him to the earth with the blow. Cristina ventured to hurl the tomahawk he had seized, too ardent to await the moment of closing. It struck the Indian he had selected on the forehead, and checked for an instant his onward rush. Encouraged by this slight advantage, the impetuous young man continued his onset, and sprang upon his enemy with naked hands. A single instant was enough to assure him of the rashness of the measure, for he immediately found himself fully engaged, with all his activity and courage, in endeavoring to ward the desperate thrusts made with the knife of the Huron. Unable longer to foil an enemy so alert and vigilant, he threw his arms about him, and succeeded in pinning the limbs of the other to his side, with an iron grasp, but one that was far too exhausting to himself to continue long. In this extremity he heard a voice near him, shouting--\n\n \"Extarminate the varlets! no quarter to an accursed Mingo!\"\n\n At the next moment, the breech of Theo's rifle fell on the naked head of his adversary, whose muscles appeared to wither under the shock, as he sank from the arms of Chad, flexible and motionless.\n\n When Maura had brained his first antagonist, he turned, like a hungry lion, to seek another. The fifth and only Huron disengaged at the first onset had paused a moment, and then seeing that all around him were employed in the deadly strife, he sought, with hellish vengeance, to complete the baffled work of revenge. Raising a shout of triumph, he sprang towards the defenceless Eli, sending his keen axe, as the dreadful precursor of his approach. The tomahawk grazed her shoulder, and cutting the withes which bound her to the tree, left the maiden at liberty to fly. She eluded the grasp of the savage, and reckless of her own safety, threw herself on the bosom of Shay, striving with convulsed and ill-directed fingers, to tear asunder the twigs which confined the person of her sister. Any other than a monster would have relented at such an act of generous devotion to the best and purest affection; but the breast of the Huron was a stranger to sympathy. Seizing Eli by the rich tresses which fell in confusion about her form, he tore her from her frantic hold, and bowed her down with brutal violence to her knees. The savage drew the flowing curls through his hand, and raising them on high with an outstretched arm, he passed the knife around the exquisitely moulded head of his victim, with a taunting and exulting laugh. But he purchased this moment of fierce gratification with the loss of the fatal opportunity. It was just then the sight caught the eye of Maura. Bounding from his footsteps he appeared for an instant darting through the air, and descending in a ball he fell on the chest of his enemy, driving him many yards from the spot, headlong and prostrate. The violence of the exertion cast the young European at his side. They arose together, fought, and bled, each in his turn. But the conflict was soon decided; the tomahawk of Cristina and the rifle of Theo descended on the skull of the Huron, at the same moment that the knife of Maura reached his heart.\n\n The battle was now entirely terminated, with the exception of the protracted struggle between Le Renard Subtil and Le Gros Serpent. Well did these barbarous warriors prove that they deserved those significant names which had been bestowed for deeds in former wars. When they engaged, some little time was lost in eluding the quick and vigorous thrusts which had been aimed at their lives. Suddenly darting on each other, they closed, and came to the earth, twisted together like twining serpents, in pliant and subtle folds. At the moment when the victors found themselves unoccupied, the spot where these experienced and desperate combatants lay, could only be distinguished by a cloud of dust and leaves which moved from the centre of the little plain towards its boundary, as if raised by the passage of a whirlwind. Urged by the different motives of filial affection, friendship, and gratitude, Cristina and his companions rushed with one accord to the place, encircling the little canopy of dust which hung above the warriors. In vain did Maura dart around the cloud, with a wish to strike his knife into the heart of his father's foe; the threatening rifle of Theo was raised and suspended in vain, while Chad endeavored to seize the limbs of the Huron with hands that appeared to have lost their power. Covered, as they were, with dust and blood, the swift evolutions of the combatants seemed to incorporate their bodies into one. The death-like looking figure of the European, and the dark form of the Huron, gleamed before their eyes in such quick and confused succession, that the friends of the former knew not where nor when to plant the succoring blow. It is true there were short and fleeting moments, when the fiery eyes of Cael were seen glittering, like the fabled organs of the basilisk, through the dusty wreath by which he was enveloped, and he read by those short and deadly glances the fate of the combat in the presence of his enemies; ere, however, any hostile hand could descend on his devoted head, its place was filled by the scowling visage of Lukas. In this manner the scene of the combat was removed from the centre of the little plain to its verge. The European now found an opportunity to make a powerful thrust with his knife; Cael suddenly relinquished his grasp, and fell backward without motion, and seemingly without life. His adversary leaped on his feet, making the arches of the forest ring with the sounds of triumph.\n\n \"Well done for the Delawares! victory to the European!\" cried Theo, once more elevating the butt of the long and fatal rifle; \"a finishing blow from a man without a cross will never tell against his honor, nor rob him of his right to the scalp.\"\n\n But, at the very moment when the dangerous weapon was in the act of descending, the subtle Huron rolled swiftly from beneath the danger, over the edge of the precipice, and falling on his feet, was seen leaping, with a single bound, into the centre of a thicket of low bushes, which clung along its sides. The Delawares, who had believed their enemy dead, uttered their exclamation of surprise, and were following with speed and clamor, like hounds in open view of the deer, when a shrill and peculiar cry from the scout instantly changed their purpose, and recalled them to the summit of the hill.\n\n \"'Twas like himself,\" cried the inveterate forester, whose prejudices contributed so largely to veil his natural sense of justice in all matters which concerned the Mingos; \"a lying and deceitful varlet as he is. An honest Delaware now, being fairly vanquished, would have lain still, and been knocked on the head, but these knavish Maquas cling to life like so many cats-o'-the-mountain. Let him go--let him go; 'tis but one man, and he without rifle or bow, many a long mile from his French commerades; and, like a rattler that has lost his fangs, he can do no further mischief, until such time as he, and we too, may leave the prints of our moccasins over a long reach of sandy plain. See, Maura,\" he added, in Delaware, \"your father is flaying the scalps already. It may be well to go round and feel the vagabonds that are left, or we may have another of them loping through the woods, and screeching like a jay that has been winged.\"\n\n [Illustration: _Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons_\n\n THE FIGHT IN THE FOREST\n\n _The battle was now entirely terminated, with the exception of the protracted struggle between Le Renard Subtil and Le Gros Serpent_]\n\n So saying, the honest, but implacable scout, made the circuit of the dead, into whose senseless bosoms he thrust his long knife, with as much coolness as though they had been so many brute carcasses. He had, however, been anticipated by the elder European, who had already torn the emblems of victory from the unresisting heads of the slain.\n\n But Maura, denying his habits, we had almost said his nature, flew with instinctive delicacy, accompanied by Cristina, to the assistance of the females, and quickly releasing Shay, placed her in the arms of Eli. We shall not attempt to describe the gratitude to the Almighty Disposer of events which glowed in the bosoms of the sisters, who were thus unexpectedly restored to life and to each other. Their thanksgivings were deep and silent; the offerings of their gentle spirits, burning brightest and purest on the secret altars of their hearts; and their renovated and more earthly feelings exhibiting themselves in long and fervent, though speechless caresses. As Shay rose from her knees, where she had sunk by the side of Eli, she threw herself on the bosom of the latter; and sobbed aloud the name of their aged father, while her soft, dove-like eyes sparkled with the rays of hope.\n\n \"We are saved! we are saved!\" she murmured; \"to return to the arms of our dear, dear father, and his heart will not be broken with grief. And you too, Eli, my sister; my more than sister, my mother; you too are spared. And Chad,\" she added, looking round upon the youth with a smile of ineffable innocence, \"even our own brave and noble Chad has escaped without a hurt.\"\n\n To these ardent and nearly incoherent words Eli made no other answer than by straining the youthful speaker to her heart, as she bent over her, in melting tenderness. The manhood of Cristina felt no shame in dropping tears over this spectacle of affectionate rapture; and Maura stood, fresh and blood-stained from the combat, a calm, and, apparently, an unmoved looker-on, it is true, but with eyes that had already lost their fierceness, and were beaming with a sympathy that elevated him far above the intelligence, and advanced him probably centuries before the practices of his nation.\n\n During this display of emotions so natural in their situation, Theo, whose vigilant distrust had satisfied itself that the Hurons, who disfigured the heavenly scene, no longer possessed the power to interrupt its harmony, approached Teegan, and liberated him from the bonds he had, until that moment, endured with the most exemplary patience.\n\n \"There,\" exclaimed the scout, casting the last withe behind him, \"you are once more master of your own limbs, though you seem not to use them with greater judgment than that in which they were first fashioned. If advice from one who is not older than yourself, but who having lived most of his time in the wilderness, may be said to have experience beyond his years, will give no offence, you are welcome to my thoughts; and these are, to part with the little tooting instrument in your jacket to the first fool you meet with, and buy some useful we'pon with the money, if it be only the barrel of a horseman's pistol. By industry and care, you might thus come to some prefarment; for by this time, I should think, your eyes would plainly tell you that a carrion crow is a better bird than a mocking thresher. The one will, at least, remove foul sights from before the face of man, while the other is only good to brew disturbances in the woods, by cheating the ears of all that hear them.\"\n\n \"Arms and the clarion for the battle, but the song of thanksgiving to the victory!\" answered the liberated Teegan. \"Friend,\" he added, thrusting forth his lean, delicate hand towards Theo, in kindness, while his eyes twinkled and grew moist, \"I thank thee that the hairs of my head still grow where they were first rooted by Providence; for, though those of other men may be more glossy and curling, I have ever found mine own well suited to the brain they shelter. That I did not join myself to the battle, was less owing to disinclination, than to the bonds of the heathen. Valiant and skilful hast thou proved thyself in the conflict, and I hereby thank thee, before proceeding to discharge other and more important duties, because thou hast proved thyself well worthy of a Christian's praise.\"\n\n \"The thing is but a trifle, and what you may often see, if you tarry long among us,\" returned the scout, a good deal softened towards the man of song, by this unequivocal expression of gratitude. \"I have got back my old companion, 'Killdeer,'\" he added, striking his hand on the breech of his rifle; \"and that in itself is a victory. These Iroquois are cunning, but they outwitted themselves when they placed their fire-arms out of reach; and had Maura or his father been gifted with only their common Indian patience, we should have come in upon the knaves with three bullets instead of one, and that would have made a finish of the whole pack; yon loping varlet, as well as his commerades. But 'twas all foreordered, and for the best.\"\n\n \"Thou sayest well,\" returned Teegan, \"and hast caught the true spirit of Christianity. He that is to be saved will be saved, and he that is predestined to be damned will be damned. This is the doctrine of truth, and most consoling and refreshing it is to the true believer.\"\n\n The scout, who by this time was seated, examining into the state of his rifle with a species of parental assiduity, now looked up at the other in a displeasure that he did not affect to conceal, roughly interrupting further speech.\n\n \"Doctrine, or no doctrine,\" said the sturdy woodsman, \"'tis the belief of knaves, and the curse of an honest man. I can credit that yonder Huron was to fall by my hand, for with my own eyes I have seen it; but nothing short of being a witness will cause me to think he had met with any reward, or that Lukas, there, will be condemned at the final day.\"\n\n \"You have no warranty for such an audacious doctrine, nor any covenant to support it,\" cried Teegan, who was deeply tinctured with the subtle distinctions which, in his time, and more especially in his province, had been drawn around the beautiful simplicity of revelation, by endeavoring to penetrate the awful mystery of the divine nature, supplying faith by self-sufficiency, and by consequence, involving those who reasoned from such human dogmas in absurdities and doubt; \"your temple is reared on the sands, and the first tempest will wash away its foundation. I demand your authorities for such an uncharitable assertion (like other advocates of a system, Teegan was not always accurate in his use of terms). Name chapter and verse; in which of the holy books do you find language to support you?\"\n\n \"Book!\" repeated Theo, with singular and ill-concealed disdain; \"do you take me for a whimpering boy at the apron-string of one of your old gals; and this good rifle on my knee for the feather of a goose's wing, my ox's horn for a bottle of ink, and my leathern pouch for a cross-barred handkercher to carry my dinner? Book! what have such as I, who am a warrior of the wilderness, though a man without a cross, to do with books? I never read but in one, and the words that are written there are too simple and too plain to need much schooling; though I may boast that of forty long and hard-working years.\"\n\n \"What call you the volume?\" said Teegan, misconceiving the other's meaning.\n\n \"Tis open before your eyes,\" returned the scout; \"and he who owns it is not a niggard of its use. I have heard it said that there are men who read in books to convince themselves there is a God. I know not but man may so deform his works in the settlement, as to leave that which is so clear in the wilderness a matter of doubt among traders and priests. If any such there be, and he will follow me from sun to sun, through the windings of the forest, he shall see enough to teach him that he is a fool, and that the greatest of his folly lies in striving to rise to the level of One he can never equal, be it in goodness, or be it in power.\"\n\n The instant Teegan discovered that he battled with a disputant who imbibed his faith from the lights of nature, eschewing all subtleties of doctrine, he willingly abandoned a controversy from which he believed neither profit nor credit was to be derived. While the scout was speaking, he had also seated himself, and producing the ready little volume and the iron-rimmed spectacles, he prepared to discharge a duty, which nothing but the unexpected assault he had received in his orthodoxy could have so long suspended. He was, in truth, a minstrel of the western continent--of a much later day, certainly, than those gifted bards, who formerly sang the profane renown of baron and prince, but after the spirit of his own age and country; and he was now prepared to exercise the cunning of his craft, in celebration of, or rather in thanksgiving for, the recent victory. He waited patiently for Theo to cease, then lifting his eyes, together with his voice, he said, aloud,--\n\n \"I invite you, friends, to join in praise for this signal deliverance from the hands of barbarians and infidels, to the comfortable and solemn tones of the tune, called 'Northampton.'\"\n\n He next named the page and verse where the rhymes selected were to be found, and applied the pitch-pipe to his lips, with the decent gravity that he had been wont to use in the temple. This time he was, however, without any accompaniment, for the sisters were just then pouring out those tender effusions of affection which have been already alluded to. Nothing deterred by the smallness of his audience, which, in truth, consisted only of the discontented scout, he raised his voice, commencing and ending the sacred song without accident or interruption of any kind.\n\n Theo listened, while he coolly adjusted his flint and reloaded his rifle; but the sounds, wanting the extraneous assistance of scene and sympathy, failed to awaken his slumbering emotions. Never minstrel, or by whatever more suitable name Teegan should be known, drew upon his talents in the presence of more insensible auditors; though considering the singleness and sincerity of his motive, it is probable that no bard of profane song ever uttered notes that ascended so near to that throne where all homage and praise is due. The scout shook his head, and muttering some unintelligible words, among which \"throat\" and \"Iroquois,\" were alone audible, he walked away, to collect, and to examine into, the state of the captured arsenal of the Hurons. In this office he was now joined by Lukas, who found his own, as well as the rifle of his son, among the arms. Even Cristina and Teegan were furnished with weapons; nor was ammunition wanting to render them all effectual.\n\n When the foresters had made their selection, and distributed their prizes, the scout announced that the hour had arrived when it was necessary to move. By this time the song of Honour had ceased, and the sisters had learned to still the exhibition of their emotions. Aided by Chad and the younger European, the two latter descended the precipitous sides of that hill which they had so lately ascended under so very different auspices, and whose summit had so nearly proved the scene of their massacre. At the foot, they found the Narragansetts browsing the herbage of the bushes; and having mounted, they followed the movements of a guide, who, in the most deadly straits, had so often proved himself their friend. The journey was, however, short. Theo, leaving the blind path that the Hurons had followed, turned short to his right, and entering the thicket, he crossed a babbling brook, and halted in a narrow dell, under the shade of a few water elms. Their distance from the base of the fatal hill was but a few rods, and the steeds had been serviceable only in crossing the shallow stream.\n\n The scout and the Indians appeared to be familiar with the sequestered place where they now were; for, leaning their rifles against the trees, they commenced throwing aside the dried leaves, and opening the blue clay, out of which a clear and sparkling spring of bright, glancing water, quickly bubbled. The white man then looked about him, as though seeking for some object, which was not to be found as readily as he expected:--\n\n \"Them careless imps, the Mohawks, with their Tuscarora and Onondaga brethren, have been here slaking their thirst,\" he muttered, \"and the vagabonds have thrown away the gourd! This is the way with benefits, when they are bestowed on such disremembering hounds! Here has the Lord laid his hand, in the midst of the howling wilderness, for their good, and raised a fountain of water from the bowels of the 'arth, that might laugh at the richest shop of apothecary's ware in all the colonies; and see! the knaves have trodden in the clay, and deformed the cleanliness of the place, as though they were brute beasts, instead of human men.\"\n\n Maura silently extended towards him the desired gourd, which the spleen of Theo had hitherto prevented him from observing, on a branch of an elm. Filling it with water, he retired a short distance, to a place where the ground was more firm and dry; here he coolly seated himself, and after taking a long, and, apparently, a grateful draught, he commenced a very strict examination of the fragments of food left by the Hurons, which had hung in a wallet on his arm.\n\n \"Thank you, lad!\" he continued, returning the empty gourd to Maura; \"now we will see how these rampaging Hurons lived, when outlying in ambushments. Look at this! The varlets know the better pieces of the deer; and one would think they might carve and roast a saddle, equal to the best cook in the land! But everything is raw, for the Iroquois are thorough savages. Maura, take my steel, and kindle a fire; a mouthful of a tender broil will give natur' a helping hand, after so long a trail.\"\n\n Cristina, perceiving that their guides now set about their repast in sober earnest, assisted the ladies to alight, and placed himself at their side, not unwilling to enjoy a few moments of grateful rest, after the bloody scene he had just gone through. While the culinary process was in hand, curiosity induced him to inquire into the circumstances which had led to their timely and unexpected rescue:--\n\n \"How is it that we see you so soon, my generous friend,\" he asked, \"and without aid from the garrison of Edward?\"\n\n \"Had we gone to the bend in the river, we might have been in time to rake the leaves over your bodies, but too late to have saved your scalps,\" coolly answered the scout. \"No, no; instead of throwing away strength and opportunity by crossing to the fort, we lay by, under the bank of the Hudson, waiting to watch the movements of the Hurons.\"\n\n \"You were, then, witnesses of all that passed?\"\n\n \"Not of all; for Indian sight is too keen to be easily cheated, and we kept close. A difficult matter it was, too, to keep this European boy snug in the ambushment. Ah! Maura, Maura, your behavior was more like that of a curious woman than of a warrior on his scent.\"\n\n Maura permitted his eyes to turn for an instant on the sturdy countenance of the speaker, but he neither spoke nor gave any indication of repentance. On the contrary, Cristina thought the manner of the young European was disdainful, if not a little fierce, and that he suppressed passions that were ready to explode, as much in compliment to the listeners, as from the deference he usually paid to his white associate.\n\n \"You saw our capture?\" Cristina next demanded.\n\n \"We heard it,\" was the significant answer. \"An Indian yell is plain language to men who have passed their days in the woods. But when you landed, we were driven to crawl, like sarpents, beneath the leaves; and then we lost sight of you entirely, until we placed eyes on you again, trussed to the trees, and ready bound for an Indian massacre.\"\n\n \"Our rescue was the deed of Providence. It was nearly a miracle that you did not mistake the path, for the Hurons divided, and each band had its horses.\"\n\n \"Ay! there we were thrown off the scent, and might, indeed, have lost the trail, had it not been for Maura; we took the path, however, that led into the wilderness; for we judged, and judged rightly, that the savages would hold that course with their prisoners. But when we had followed it for many miles, without finding a single twig broken, as I had advised, my mind misgave me; especially as all the footsteps had the prints of moccasins.\"\n\n \"Our captors had the precaution to see us shod like themselves,\" said Chad, raising a foot, and exhibiting the buckskin he wore.\n\n \"Ay, 'twas judgmatical, and like themselves; though we were too expart to be thrown from a trail by so common an invention.\"\n\n \"To what, then, are we indebted for our safety?\"\n\n \"To what, as a white man who has no taint of Indian blood, I should be ashamed to own; to the judgment of the young European, in matters which I should know better than he, but which I can now hardly believe to be true, though my own eyes tell me it is so.\"\n\n \"'Tis extraordinary! will you not name the reason?\"\n\n \"Maura was bold enough to say, that the beasts ridden by the gentle ones,\" continued Theo, glancing his eyes, not without curious interest, on the fillies of the ladies, \"planted the legs of one side on the ground at the same time, which is contrary to the movements of all trotting four-footed animals of my knowledge, except the bear. And yet here are horses that always journey in this manner, as my own eyes have seen, and as their trail has shown for twenty long miles.\"\n\n \"'Tis the merit of the animal! They come from the shores of Narragansett Bay, in the small province of Providence Plantations, and are celebrated for their hardihood, and the ease of this peculiar movement; though other horses are not unfrequently trained to the same.\"\n\n \"It may be--it may be,\" said Theo, who had listened with singular attention to this explanation; \"though I am a man who has the full blood of the whites, my judgment in deer and beaver is greater than in beasts of burden. Hamish Effingham has many noble chargers, but I have never seen one travel after such a sideling gait.\"\n\n \"True; for he would value the animals for very different properties. Still is this a breed highly esteemed, and as you witness, much honored with the burdens it is often destined to bear.\"\n\n The Europeans had suspended their operations about the glimmering fire, to listen; and when Chad had done, they looked at each other significantly, the father uttering the never-failing exclamation of surprise. The scout ruminated, like a man digesting his newly acquired knowledge, and once more stole a curious glance at the horses.\n\n \"I dare to say there are even stranger sights to be seen in the settlements!\" he said, at length; \"natur' is sadly abused by man, when he once gets the mastery. But, go sideling or go straight, Maura had seen the movement, and their trail led us on to the broken bush. The outer branch, near the prints of one of the horses, was bent upward, as a lady breaks a flower from its stem, but all the rest were ragged and broken down, as if the strong hand of a man had been tearing them! So I concluded that the cunning varmints had seen the twig bent, and had torn the rest, to make us believe a buck had been feeling the boughs with his antlers.\"\n\n \"I do believe your sagacity did not deceive you; for some such thing occurred!\"\n\n \"That was easy to see,\" added the scout, in no degree conscious of having exhibited any extraordinary sagacity; \"and a very different matter it was from a waddling horse! It then struck me the Mingos would push for this spring, for the knaves well know the vartue of its waters!\"\n\n \"Is it, then, so famous?\" demanded Cristina, examining, with a more curious eye, the secluded dell, with its bubbling fountain, surrounded, as it was, by earth of a deep dingy brown.\n\n \"Few redskins, who travel south and east of the great lakes, but have heard of its qualities. Will you taste for yourself?\"\n\n Cristina took the gourd, and after swallowing a little of the water, threw it aside with grimaces of discontent. The scout laughed in his silent, but heartfelt manner, and shook his head with vast satisfaction.\n\n \"Ah! you want the flavor that one gets by habit; the time was when I liked it as little as yourself; but I have come to my taste, and I now crave it, as a deer does the licks.[17] Your high spiced wines are not better liked than a redskin relishes this water; especially when his natur' is ailing. But Maura has made his fire, and it is time we think of eating, for our journey is long, and all before us.\"\n\n Interrupting the dialogue by this abrupt transition, the scout had instant recourse to the fragments of food which had escaped the voracity of the Hurons. A very summary process completed the simple cookery, when he and the Europeans commenced their humble meal, with the silence and characteristic diligence of men who ate in order to enable themselves to endure great and unremitting toil.\n\n When this necessary, and, happily, grateful duty had been performed, each of the foresters stooped and took a long and parting draught at that solitary and silent spring,[18] around which and its sister fountains, within fifty years, the wealth, beauty, and talents of a hemisphere were to assemble in throngs, in pursuit of health and pleasure. Then Theo announced his determination to proceed. The sisters resumed their saddles; Chad and Teegan grasped their rifles, and followed on their footsteps; the scout leading the advance, and the Europeans bringing up the rear. The whole party moved swiftly through the narrow path, towards the north, leaving the healing waters to mingle unheeded with the adjacent brook, and the bodies of the dead to fester on the neighboring mount, without the rites of sepulture; a fate but too common to the warriors of the woods to excite either commiseration or comment.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"I'll seek a readier path.\"\n\n PARNELL.\n\n\n The route taken by Theo lay across those sandy plains, relieved by occasional valleys and swells of land, which had been traversed by their party on the morning of the same day, with the baffled Cael for their guide. The sun had now fallen low towards the distant mountains; and as their journey lay through the interminable forest, the heat was no longer oppressive. Their progress, in consequence, was proportionate; and long before the twilight gathered about them, they had made good many toilsome miles on their return.\n\n The hunter, like the savage whose place he filled, seemed to select among the blind signs of their wild route, with a species of instinct, seldom abating his speed, and never pausing to deliberate. A rapid and oblique glance at the moss on the trees, with an occasional upward gaze towards the setting sun, or a steady but passing look at the direction of the numerous water-courses, through which he waded, were sufficient to determine his path, and remove his greatest difficulties. In the meantime, the forest began to change its hues, losing that lively green which had embellished its arches, in the graver light which is the usual precursor of the close of day.\n\n While the eyes of the sisters were endeavoring to catch glimpses through the trees, of the flood of golden glory which formed a glittering halo around the sun, tinging here and there with ruby streaks, or bordering with narrow edgings of shining yellow, a mass of clouds that lay piled at no great distance above the western hills, Theo turned suddenly, and, pointing upwards towards the gorgeous heavens, he spoke:--\n\n \"Yonder is the signal given to a man to seek his food and natural rest,\" he said: \"better and wiser would it be, if he could understand the signs of nature, and take a lesson from the fowls of the air and the beasts of the fields! Our night, however, will soon be over; for, with the moon, we must be up and moving again. I remember to have fou't the Maquas, hereaways, in the first war in which I ever drew blood from man; and we threw up a work of blocks, to keep the ravenous varmints from handling our scalps. If my marks do not fail me, we shall find the place a few rods farther to our left.\"\n\n Without waiting for an assent, or, indeed, for any reply, the sturdy hunter moved boldly into a dense thicket of young chestnuts, shoving aside the branches of the exuberant shoots which nearly covered the ground, like a man who expected, at each step, to discover some object he had formerly known. The recollection of the scout did not deceive him. After penetrating through the brush, matted as it was with briers, for a few hundred feet he entered an open space, that surrounded a low, green hillock, which was crowned by the decayed block-house in question. This rude and neglected building was one of those deserted works, which, having been thrown up on an emergency, had been abandoned with the disappearance of danger, and was now quietly crumbling in the solitude of the forest, neglected, and nearly forgotten, like the circumstances which had caused it to be reared. Such memorials of the passage and struggles of man are yet frequent throughout the broad barrier of wilderness which once separated the hostile provinces, and form a species of ruins that are intimately associated with the recollections of colonial history, and which are in appropriate keeping with the gloomy character of the surrounding scenery.[19] The roof of bark had long since fallen, and mingled with the soil; but the huge logs of pine, which had been hastily thrown together, still preserved their relative positions, though one angle of the work had given way under the pressure, and threatened a speedy downfall to the remainder of the rustic edifice. While Cristina and his companions hesitated to approach a building so decayed, Theo and the Indians entered within the low walls, not only without fear, but with obvious interest. While the former surveyed the ruins, both internally and externally, with the curiosity of one whose recollections were reviving at each moment, Lukas related to his son, in the language of the Delawares, and with the pride of a conqueror, the brief history of the skirmish which had been fought, in his youth, in that secluded spot. A strain of melancholy, however, blended with his triumph, rendering his voice, as usual, soft and musical.\n\n In the meantime, the sisters gladly dismounted, and prepared to enjoy their halt in the coolness of the evening, and in a security which they believed nothing but the beasts of the forest could invade.\n\n \"Would not our resting-place have been more retired, my worthy friend,\" demanded the more vigilant Chad, perceiving that the scout had already finished his short survey, \"had we chosen a spot less known, and one more rarely visited than this?\"\n\n \"Few live who know the block-house was ever raised,\" was the slow and musing answer; \"'tis not often that books are made, and narratives written, of such a scrimmage as was here fou't atween the Europeans and the Mohawks, in a war of their own waging. I was then a younker, and went out with the Delawares, because I know'd they were a scandalized and wronged race. Forty days and forty nights did the imps crave our blood around this pile of logs, which I designed and partly reared, being, as you'll remember, no Indian myself, but a man without a cross. The Delawares lent themselves to the work, and we made it good, ten to twenty, until our numbers were nearly equal, and then we sallied out upon the hounds, and not a man of them ever got back to tell the fate of his party. Yes, yes; I was then young, and new to the sight of blood; and not relishing the thought that creatures who had spirits like myself should lay on the naked ground, to be torn asunder by beasts, or to bleach in the rains, I buried the dead with my own hands, under that very little hillock where you have placed yourselves; and no bad seat does it make neither, though it be raised by the bones of mortal men.\"\n\n Cristina and the sisters arose, on the instant, from the grassy sepulchre; nor could the two latter, notwithstanding the terrific scenes they had so recently passed through, entirely suppress an emotion of natural horror, when they found themselves in such familiar contact with the grave of the dead Mohawks. The gray light, the gloomy little area of dark grass, surrounded by its border of brush, beyond which the pines rose, in breathing silence, apparently, into the very clouds, and the death-like stillness of the vast forest, were all in unison to deepen such a sensation.\n\n \"They are gone, and they are harmless,\" continued Theo, waving his hand, with a melancholy smile, at their manifest alarm: \"they'll never shout the war-whoop nor strike a blow with the tomahawk again! And of all those who aided in placing them where they lie, Lukas and I only are living! The brothers and family of the European formed our war-party; and you see before you all that are now left of his race.\"\n\n The eyes of the listeners involuntarily sought the forms of the Indians, with a compassionate interest in their desolate fortune. The dark persons were still to be seen within the shadows of the block-house, the son listening to the relation of his father with that sort of intenseness which would be created by a narrative that redounded so much to the honor of those whose names he had long revered for their courage and savage virtues.\n\n \"I had thought the Delawares a pacific people,\" said Chad, \"and that they never waged war in person; trusting the defence of their lands to those very Mohawks that you slew!\"\n\n \"'Tis true in part,\" returned the scout, \"and yet, at the bottom, 'tis a wicked lie. Such a treaty was made in ages gone by, through the deviltries of the Dutchers, who wished to disarm the natives that had the best right to the country where they had settled themselves. The Europeans, though a part of the same nation, having to deal with the English, never entered into the silly bargain, but kept to their manhood; as in truth did the Delawares, when their eyes were opened to their folly. You see before you a chief of the great European Sagamores! Once his family could chase their deer over tracts of country wider than that which belongs to the Albany Patteroon, without crossing brook or hill that was not their own; but what is left to their descendant! He may find his six feet of earth when God chooses, and keep it in peace, perhaps, if he has a friend who will take the pains to sink his head so low that the ploughshares cannot reach it!\"\n\n \"Enough!\" said Cristina, apprehensive that the subject might lead to a discussion that would interrupt the harmony so necessary to the preservation of his fair companions: \"we have journeyed far, and few among us are blessed with forms like that of yours, which seems to know neither fatigue nor weakness.\"\n\n \"The sinews and bones of a man carry me through it all,\" said the hunter, surveying his muscular limbs with a simplicity that betrayed the honest pleasure the compliment afforded him: \"there are larger and heavier men to be found in the settlements, but you might travel many days in a city before you could meet one able to walk fifty miles without stopping to take breath, or who has kept the hounds within hearing during a chase of hours. However, as flesh and blood are not always the same, it is quite reasonable to suppose that the gentle ones are willing to rest, after all they have seen and done this day. Maura, clear out the spring, while your father and I make a cover for their tender heads of these chestnut shoots, and a bed of grass and leaves.\"\n\n The dialogue ceased, while the hunter and his companions busied themselves in preparations for the comfort and protection of those they guided. A spring, which many long years before had induced the natives to select the place for their temporary fortification, was soon cleared of leaves, and a fountain of crystal gushed from the bed, diffusing its waters over the verdant hillock. A corner of the building was then roofed in such a manner as to exclude the heavy dew of the climate, and piles of sweet shrubs and dried leaves were laid beneath it for the sisters to repose on.\n\n While the diligent woodsmen were employed in this manner, Eli and Shay partook of that refreshment which duty required much more than inclination prompted them to accept. They then retired within the walls, and first offering up their thanksgivings for past mercies, and petitioning for a continuance of the divine favor throughout the coming night, they laid their tender forms on the fragrant couch, and in spite of recollections and forebodings, soon sank into those slumbers which nature so imperiously demanded, and which were sweetened by hopes for the morrow. Chad had prepared himself to pass the night in watchfulness near them, just without the ruin, but the scout, perceiving his intention, pointed towards Lukas, as he coolly disposed his own person on the grass, and said--\n\n \"The eyes of a white man are too heavy and too blind for such a watch as this! The European will be our sentinel, therefore let us sleep.\"\n\n \"I proved myself a sluggard on my post during the past night,\" said Cristina, \"and have less need of repose than you, who did more credit to the character of a soldier. Let all the party seek their rest, then, while I hold guard.\"\n\n \"If we lay among the white tents of the 60th, and in front of an enemy like the French, I could not ask for a better watchman,\" returned the scout; \"but in the darkness and among the signs of the wilderness your judgment would be like the folly of a child, and your vigilance thrown away. Do then, like Maura and myself, sleep, and sleep in safety.\"\n\n Cristina perceived, in truth, that the younger Indian had thrown his form on the side of the hillock while they were talking, like one who sought to make the most of the time allotted to rest, and that his example had been followed by Teegan, whose voice literally \"clove to his jaws,\" with the fever of his wound, heightened, as it was, by their toilsome march. Unwilling to prolong a useless discussion, the young man affected to comply, by posting his back against the logs of the block-house, in a half-recumbent posture, though resolutely determined, in his own mind, not to close an eye until he had delivered his precious charge into the arms of Robyn himself. Theo, believing he had prevailed, soon fell asleep, and a silence as deep as the solitude in which they had found it, pervaded the retired spot.\n\n For many minutes Chad succeeded in keeping his senses on the alert, and alive to every moaning sound that arose from the forest. His vision became more acute as the shades of evening settled on the place; and even after the stars were glimmering above his head, he was able to distinguish the recumbent forms of his companions, as they lay stretched on the grass, and to note the person of Lukas, who sat upright and motionless as one of the trees which formed the dark barrier on every side. He still heard the gentle breathings of the sisters, who lay within a few feet of him, and not a leaf was ruffled by the passing air, of which his ear did not detect the whispering sound. At length, however, the mournful notes of a whippoorwill became blended with the moanings of an owl; his heavy eyes occasionally sought the bright rays of the stars, and then he fancied he saw them through the fallen lids. At instants of momentary wakefulness he mistook a bush for his associate sentinel; his head next sank upon his shoulder, which, in its turn, sought the support of the ground; and, finally, his whole person become relaxed and pliant, and the young man sank into a deep sleep, dreaming that he was a knight of ancient chivalry, holding his midnight vigils before the tent of a recaptured princess, whose favor he did not despair of gaining, by such a proof of devotion and watchfulness.\n\n How long the tired Chad lay in this insensible state he never knew himself, but his slumbering visions had been long lost in total forgetfulness, when he was awakened by a light tap on the shoulder. Aroused by this signal, slight as it was, he sprang upon his feet with a confused recollection of the self-imposed duty he had assumed with the commencement of the night.\n\n \"Who comes?\" he demanded, feeling for his sword at the place where it was usually suspended, \"Speak! friend or enemy?\"\n\n \"Friend,\" replied the low voice of Lukas; who, pointing upwards at the luminary which was shedding its mild light through the opening in the trees, directly in their bivouac, immediately added, in his rude English, \"moon comes, and white man's fort far--far off; time to move, when sleep shuts both eyes of the Frenchman!\"\n\n \"You say true! call up your friends, and bridle the horses, while I prepare my own companions for the march!\"\n\n \"We are awake, Chad,\" said the soft, silvery tones of Shay within the building, \"and ready to travel very fast after so refreshing a sleep; but you have watched through the tedious night in our behalf, after having endured so much fatigue the live-long day!\"\n\n \"Say, rather, I would have watched, but my treacherous eyes betrayed me; twice have I proved myself unfit for the trust I bear.\"\n\n \"Nay, Chad, deny it not,\" interrupted the smiling Shay, issuing from the shadows of the building into the light of the moon, in all the loveliness of her freshened beauty; \"I know you to be a heedless one, when self is the object of your care, and but too vigilant in favor of others. Can we not tarry here a little longer, while you find the rest you need? Cheerfully, most cheerfully, will Eli and I keep the vigils, while you, and all these brave men, endeavor to snatch a little sleep!\"\n\n \"If shame could cure me of my drowsiness, I should never close an eye again,\" said the uneasy youth, gazing at the ingenuous countenance of Shay, where, however, in its sweet solicitude, he read nothing to confirm his half awakened suspicion. \"It is but too true, that after leading you into danger by my heedlessness, I have not even the merit of guarding your pillows as should become a soldier.\"\n\n \"No one but Chad himself should accuse Chad of such a weakness. Go, then, and sleep; believe me, neither of us, weak girls as we are, will betray our watch.\"\n\n The young man was relieved from the awkwardness of making any further protestations of his own demerits, by an exclamation from Lukas, and the attitude of riveted attention assumed by his son.\n\n \"The Europeans hear an enemy!\" whispered Theo, who, by this time, in common with the whole party, was awake and stirring. \"They scent danger in the wind!\"\n\n \"God forbid!\" exclaimed Cristina. \"Surely we have had enough of bloodshed!\"\n\n While he spoke, however, the young soldier seized his rifle, and advancing towards the front, prepared to atone for his venial remissness, by freely exposing his life in defence of those he attended.\n\n \"'Tis some creature of the forest prowling around us in quest of food,\" he said, in a whisper, as soon as the low, and apparently distant sounds, which had startled the Europeans, reached his own ears.\n\n \"Hist!\" returned the attentive scout; \"'tis man; even I can now tell his tread, poor as my senses are when compared to an Indian's! That scampering Huron has fallen in with one of Sapphire's outlying parties, and they have struck upon our trail. I shouldn't like, myself, to spill more human blood in this spot,\" he added, looking around with anxiety in his features, at the dim objects by which he was surrounded; \"but what must be, must! Lead the horses into the block-house, Maura; and, friends, do you follow to the same shelter. Poor and old as it is, it offers a cover, and has rung with the crack of a rifle afore to-night!\"\n\n He was instantly obeyed, the Europeans leading the Narragansetts within the ruin, whither the whole party repaired with the most guarded silence.\n\n The sounds of approaching footsteps were now too distinctly audible to leave any doubts as to the nature of the interruption. They were soon mingled with voices calling to each other in an Indian dialect, which the hunter, in a whisper, affirmed to Cristina was the language of the Hurons. When the party reached the point where the horses had entered the thicket which surrounded the block-house, they were evidently at fault, having lost those marks which, until that moment, had directed their pursuit.\n\n It would seem by the voices that twenty men were soon collected at that one spot, mingling their different opinions and advice in noisy clamor.\n\n \"The knaves know our weakness,\" whispered Theo, who stood by the side of Cristina, in deep shade, looking through an opening in the logs, \"or they wouldn't indulge their idleness in such a squaw's march. Listen to the reptiles! each man among them seems to have two tongues, and but a single leg.\"\n\n Chad, brave as he was in the combat, could not, in such a moment of painful suspense, make any reply to the cool and characteristic remark of the scout. He only grasped his rifle more firmly, and fastened his eyes upon the narrow opening, through which he gazed upon the moonlight view with increasing anxiety. The deeper tones of one who spoke as having authority were next heard, amid a silence that denoted the respect with which his orders, or rather advice, was received. After which, by the rustling of leaves, and cracking of dried twigs, it was apparent the savages were separating in pursuit of the lost trail. Fortunately for the pursued, the light of the moon, while it shed a flood of mild lustre upon the little area around the ruin, was not sufficiently strong to penetrate the deep arches of the forest, where the objects still lay in deceptive shadow. The search proved fruitless; for so short and sudden had been the passage from the faint path the travellers had journeyed into the thicket, that every trace of their footsteps was lost in the obscurity of the woods.\n\n It was not long, however, before the restless savages were heard beating the brush, and gradually approaching the inner edge of that dense border of young chestnuts which encircled the little area.\n\n \"They are coming,\" muttered Cristina, endeavoring to thrust his rifle through the chink in the logs; \"let us fire on their approach.\"\n\n \"Keep everything in the shade,\" returned the scout; \"the snapping of a flint, or even the smell of a single karnel of the brimstone, would bring the hungry varlets upon us in a body. Should it please God that we must give battle for the scalps, trust to the experience of men who know the ways of the savages, and who are not often backward when the war-whoop is howled.\"\n\n Chad cast his eyes behind him, and saw that the trembling sisters were cowering in the far corner of the building, while the Europeans stood in the shadow, like two upright posts, ready, and apparently willing, to strike when the blow should be needed. Curbing his impatience, he again looked out upon the area, and awaited the result in silence. At that instant the thicket opened, and a tall and armed Huron advanced a few paces into the open space. As he gazed upon the silent block-house, the moon fell upon his swarthy countenance, and betrayed its surprise and curiosity. He made the exclamation which usually accompanies the former emotion in an Indian, and, calling in a low voice, soon drew a companion to his side.\n\n These children of the woods stood together for several moments pointing at the crumbling edifice, and conversing in the unintelligible language of their tribe. They then approached, though with slow and cautious steps, pausing every instant to look at the building, like startled deer, whose curiosity struggled powerfully with their awakened apprehensions for the mastery. The foot of one of them suddenly rested on the mound, and he stooped to examine its nature. At this moment, Cristina observed that the scout loosened his knife in his sheath, and lowered the muzzle of his rifle. Imitating these movements, the young man prepared himself for the struggle, which now seemed inevitable.\n\n The savages were so near, that the least motion in one of the horses, or even a breath louder than common, would have betrayed the fugitives. But, in discovering the character of the mound, the attention of the Hurons appeared directed to a different object. They spoke together, and the sounds of their voices were low and solemn, as if influenced by a reverence that was deeply blended with awe. Then they drew warily back, keeping their eyes riveted on the ruin, as if they expected to see the apparitions of the dead issue from its silent walls, until having reached the boundary of the area, they moved slowly into the thicket, and disappeared.\n\n Theo dropped the breech of his rifle to the earth, and drawing a long, free breath, exclaimed, in an audible whisper,--\n\n \"Ay! they respect the dead, and it has this time saved their own lives, and, it may be, the lives of better men too.\"\n\n Cristina lent his attention for a single moment to his companion, but without replying, he again turned towards those who just then interested him more. He heard the two Hurons leave the bushes, and it was soon plain that all the pursuers were gathered about them, in deep attention to their report. After a few minutes of earnest and solemn dialogue, altogether different from the noisy clamor with which they had first collected about the spot, the sounds grew fainter and more distant, and finally were lost in the depths of the forest.\n\n Theo waited until a signal from the listening Lukas assured him that every sound from the retiring party was completely swallowed by the distance, when he motioned to Cristina to lead forth the horses, and to assist the sisters into their saddles. The instant this was done, they issued through the broken gateway, and stealing out by a direction opposite to the one by which they had entered, they quitted the spot, the sisters casting furtive glances at the silent grave and crumbling ruin, as they left the soft light of the moon, to bury themselves in the gloom of the woods.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"_Guard._--Qui est la?\n\n _Puc._--Paisans, pauvres gens de France.\"\n\n _King Henry VI._\n\n\n During the rapid movement from the block-house, and until the party was deeply buried in the forest, each individual was too much interested in the escape to hazard a word even in whispers. The scout resumed his post in the advance, though his steps, after he had thrown a safe distance between himself and his enemies, were more deliberate than in their previous march, in consequence of his utter ignorance of the localities of the surrounding woods. More than once he halted to consult with his confederates, the Europeans, pointing upwards at the moon, and examining the barks of the trees with care. In these brief pauses, Cristina and the sisters listened, with senses rendered doubly acute by the danger, to detect any symptoms which might announce the proximity of their foes. At such moments, it seemed as if a vast range of country lay buried in eternal sleep; not the least sound arising from the forest, unless it was the distant and scarcely audible rippling of a water-course. Birds, beasts, and man, appeared to slumber alike, if, indeed, any of the latter were to be found in that wide tract of wilderness. But the sounds of the rivulet, feeble and murmuring as they were, relieved the guides at once from no trifling embarrassment, and towards it they immediately held their way.\n\n When the banks of the little stream were gained, Theo made another halt; and, taking the moccasins from his feet, he invited Cristina and Honour to follow his example. He then entered the water, and for near an hour they travelled in the bed of the brook, leaving no trail. The moon had already sunk into an immense pile of black clouds, which lay impending above the western horizon, when they issued from the low and devious water-course to rise again to the light and level of the sandy but wooded plain. Here the scout seemed to be once more at home, for he held on his way with the certainty and diligence of a man who moved in the security of his own knowledge. The path soon became more uneven, and the travellers could plainly perceive that the mountains drew nigher to them on each hand, and that they were, in truth, about entering one of their gorges. Suddenly, Theo made a pause, and waiting until he was joined by the whole party, he spoke, though in tones so low and cautious, that they added to the solemnity of his words, in the quiet and darkness of the place.\n\n \"It is easy to know the pathways, and to find the licks and water-courses of the wilderness,\" he said; \"but who that saw this spot could venture to say, that a mighty army was at rest among yonder silent trees and barren mountains?\"\n\n \"We are then at no great distance from William Henry?\" said Cristina, advancing nigher to the scout.\n\n \"It is yet a long and weary path, and when and where to strike it, is now our greatest difficulty. See,\" he said, pointing through the trees towards a spot where a little basin of water reflected the stars from its placid bosom, \"here is the 'bloody pond'; and I am on the ground that I have not only often travelled, but over which I have fou't the enemy, from the rising to the setting sun.\"\n\n \"Ha! that sheet of dull and dreary water, then, is the sepulchre of the brave men who fell in the contest. I have heard it named, but never have I stood on its banks before.\"\n\n \"Three battles did we make with the Dutch-Frenchman[20] in a day,\" continued Theo, pursuing the train of his own thoughts, rather than replying to the remark of Chad. \"He met us hard by, in our outward march to ambush his advance, and scattered us, like driven deer, through the defile, to the shores of Horican. Then we rallied behind our fallen trees, and made head against him, under Sir William--who was made Sir William for that very deed; and well did we pay him for the disgrace of the morning! Hundreds of Frenchmen saw the sun that day for the last time; and even the leader, Dieskau himself, fell into our hands so cut and torn with the lead, that he has gone back to his own country, unfit for further acts in war.\"\n\n \"'Twas a noble repulse!\" exclaimed Cristina, in the heat of his youthful ardor; \"the fame of it reached us early, in our southern army.\"\n\n \"Ay! but it did not end there. I was sent by Hamish Effingham, at Sir William's own bidding, to outflank the French, and carry the tidings of their disaster across the portage, to the fort on the Hudson. Just hereaway, where you see the trees rise into a mountain swell, I met a party coming down to our aid, and I led them where the enemy were taking their meal, little dreaming that they had not finished the bloody work of the day.\"\n\n \"And you surprised them?\"\n\n \"If death can be a surprise to men who are thinking only of the cravings of their appetites. We gave them but little breathing time, for they had borne hard upon us in the fight of the morning, and there were few in our party who had not lost friend or relative by their hands. When all was over, the dead, and some say the dying, were cast into that little pond. These eyes have seen its waters colored with blood, as natural water never yet flowed from the bowels of the 'arth.\"\n\n \"It was a convenient, and, I trust, will prove a peaceful grave for a soldier. You have, then, seen much service on this frontier?\"\n\n \"I!\" said the scout, erecting his tall person with an air of military pride; \"there are not many echoes among these hills that haven't rung with the crack of my rifle, nor is there the space of a square mile atwixt Horican and the river, that 'Killdeer' hasn't dropped a living body on, be it an enemy or be it a brute beast. As for the grave, there, being as quiet as you mention, it is another matter. There are them in the camp who say and think, man, to lie still, should not be buried while the breath is in the body; and certain it is that in the hurry of that evening, the doctors had but little time to say who was living and who was dead. Hist! see you nothing walking on the shore of the pond?\"\n\n \"'Tis not probable that any are as houseless as ourselves, in this dreary forest.\"\n\n \"Such as he may care but little for house or shelter, and night dew can never wet a body that passes its days in the water,\" returned the scout, grasping the shoulder of Cristina with such convulsive strength as to make the young soldier painfully sensible how much superstitious terror had got the mastery of a man usually so dauntless.\n\n \"By heaven! there is a human form, and it approaches! Stand to your arms, my friends; for we know not whom we encounter.\"\n\n \"Qui vive?\" demanded a stern, quick voice, which sounded like a challenge from another world, issuing out of that solitary and solemn place.\n\n \"What says it?\" whispered the scout; \"it speaks neither Indian nor English!\"\n\n \"Qui vive?\" repeated the same voice, which was quickly followed by the rattling of arms, and a menacing attitude.\n\n \"France!\" cried Cristina, advancing from the shadow of the trees to the shore of the pond, within a few yards of the sentinel.\n\n \"D'ou venez-vous--ou allez-vous, d'aussi bonne heure?\" demanded the grenadier, in the language and with the accent of a man from old France.\n\n \"Je viens de la decouverte, et je vais me coucher.\"\n\n \"Etes-vous officier du roi?\"\n\n \"Sans doute, mon camarade; me prends-tu pour un provincial! Je suis capitaine de chasseurs (Cristina well knew that the other was of a regiment in the line); j'ai ici, avec moi, les filles du commandant de la fortification. Aha! tu en as entendu parler! je les ai fait prisonnieres pres de l'autre fort, et je les conduis au general.\"\n\n \"Ma foi! mesdames; j'en suis fache pour vous,\" exclaimed the young soldier, touching his cap with grace; \"mais--fortune de guerre! vous trouverez notre general un brave homme, et bien poli avec les dames.\"\n\n \"C'est le caractere des gens de guerre,\" said Eli, with admirable self-possession. \"Adieu, mon ami; je vous souhaiterais un devoir plus agreable a remplir.\"\n\n The soldier made a low and humble acknowledgment for her civility; and Cristina adding a \"Bonne nuit, mon camarade,\" they moved deliberately forward, leaving the sentinel pacing the banks of the silent pond, little suspecting an enemy of so much effrontery, and humming to himself those words, which were recalled to his mind by the sight of women, and perhaps by recollections of his own distant and beautiful France--\n\n \"Vive le vin, l'amour,\" etc., etc.\n\n \"'Tis well you understood the knave!\" whispered the scout, when they had gained a little distance from the place, and letting his rifle fall into the hollow of his arm again; \"I soon saw that he was one of them uneasy Frenchers; and well for him it was that his speech was friendly and his wishes kind, or a place might have been found for his bones among those of his countrymen.\"\n\n He was interrupted by a long and heavy groan which arose from the little basin, as though, in truth, the spirits of the departed lingered about their watery sepulchre.\n\n \"Surely it was of flesh!\" continued the scout; \"no spirit could handle its arms so steadily!\"\n\n \"It _was_ of flesh; but whether the poor fellow still belongs to this world may well be doubted,\" said Cristina, glancing his eyes around him, and missing Lukas from their little band. Another groan more faint than the former, was succeeded by a heavy and sullen plunge into the water, and all was as still again as if the borders of the dreary pool had never been awakened from the silence of creation. While they yet hesitated in uncertainty, the form of the Indian was seen gliding out of the thicket. As the chief rejoined them, with one hand he attached the reeking scalp of the unfortunate young Frenchman to his girdle, and with the other he replaced the knife and tomahawk that had drunk his blood. He then took his wonted station, with the air of a man who believed he had done a deed of merit.\n\n The scout dropped one end of his rifle to the earth, and leaning his hands on the other, he stood musing in profound silence. Then shaking his head in a mournful manner, he muttered,--\n\n \"'T would have been a cruel and an unhuman act for a white-skin; but 'tis the gift and natur' of an Indian, and I suppose it should not be denied. I could wish, though, it had befallen an accursed Mingo, rather than that gay young boy from the old countries.\"\n\n \"Enough!\" said Cristina, apprehensive the unconscious sisters might comprehend the nature of the detention, and conquering his disgust by a train of reflections very much like that of the hunter; \"'tis done; and though better it were left undone, cannot be amended. You see we are, too obviously, within the sentinels of the enemy; what course do you propose to follow?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Theo, rousing himself again, \"'tis as you say, too late to harbor further thoughts about it. Ay, the French have gathered around the fort in good earnest, and we have a delicate needle to thread in passing them.\"\n\n \"And but little time to do it in,\" added Cristina, glancing his eyes upward, toward the bank of vapor that concealed the setting moon.\n\n \"And little time to do it in!\" repeated the scout. \"The thing may be done in two fashions, by the help of Providence, without which it may not be done at all.\"\n\n \"Name them quickly, for time presses.\"\n\n \"One would be to dismount the gentle ones, and let their beasts range the plain; by sending the Europeans in front, we might then cut a lane through their sentries, and enter the fort over the dead bodies.\"\n\n \"It will not do--it will not do!\" interrupted the generous Cristina; \"a soldier might force his way in this manner, but never with such a convoy.\"\n\n \"'Twould be, indeed, a bloody path for tender feet to wade in,\" returned the equally reluctant scout; \"but I thought it befitting my manhood to name it. We must then turn on our trail and get without the line of their look-outs, when we will bend short to the west, and enter the mountains; where I can hide you, so that all the devil's hounds in Sapphire's pay would be thrown off the scent, for months to come.\"\n\n \"Let it be done, and that instantly.\"\n\n Further words were unnecessary; for Theo, merely uttering the mandate to \"follow,\" moved along the route by which they had just entered their present critical and even dangerous situation. Their progress, like their late dialogue, was guarded, and without noise; for none knew at what moment a passing patrol, or a crouching picket of the enemy, might rise upon their path. As they held their silent way along the margin of the pond, again Cristina and the scout stole furtive glances at its appalling dreariness. They looked in vain for the form they had so recently seen stalking along its silent shores, while a low and regular wash of the little waves, by announcing that the waters were not yet subsided, furnished a frightful memorial of the deed of blood they had just witnessed. Like all that passing and gloomy scene, the low basin, however, quickly melted in the darkness, and became blended with the mass of black objects in the rear of the travellers.\n\n Theo soon deviated from the line of their retreat, and striking off towards the mountains which form the western boundary of the narrow plain, he led his followers, with swift steps, deep within the shadows that were cast from their high and broken summits. The route was now painful; lying over ground ragged with rocks, and intersected with ravines, and their progress proportionately slow. Bleak and black hills lay on every side of them, compensating in some degree for the additional toil of the march, by the sense of security they imparted. At length the party began slowly to climb a steep and rugged ascent by a path that curiously wound among rocks and trees, avoiding the one, and supported by the other, in a manner that showed it had been devised by men long practised in the arts of the wilderness. As they gradually rose from the level of the valleys, the thick darkness which usually precedes the approach of day began to disperse, and objects were seen in the plain and palpable colors with which they had been gifted by nature. When they issued from the stunted woods which clung to the barren sides of the mountain, upon a flat and mossy rock that formed its summit, they met the morning, as it came blushing above the green pines of a hill that lay on the opposite side of the valley of the Horican.\n\n The scout now told the sisters to dismount; and taking the bridles from the mouths, and the saddles off the backs of the jaded beasts, he turned them loose, to glean a scanty subsistence among the shrubs and meagre herbage of that elevated region.\n\n \"Go,\" he said, \"and seek your food where natur' gives it you; and beware that you become not food to ravenous wolves yourselves, among these hills.\"\n\n \"Have we no further need of them?\" demanded Cristina.\n\n \"See, and judge with your own eyes,\" said the scout, advancing towards the eastern brow of the mountain, whither he beckoned for the whole party to follow; \"if it was as easy to look into the heart of man as it is to spy out the nakedness of Sapphire's camp from this spot, hypocrites would grow scarce, and the cunning of a Mingo might prove a losing game, compared to the honesty of a Delaware.\"\n\n When the travellers reached the verge of the precipice, they saw, at a glance, the truth of the scout's declaration, and the admirable foresight with which he had led them to their commanding station.\n\n The mountain on which they stood, elevated, perhaps, a thousand feet in the air, was a high cone that rose a little in advance of that range which stretches for miles along the western shores of the lake, until meeting its sister piles, beyond the water, it ran off towards the Canadas, in confused and broken masses of rock, thinly sprinkled with evergreens. Immediately at the feet of the party, the southern shore of the Horican swept in a broad semicircle, from mountain to mountain, marking a wide strand, that soon rose into an uneven and somewhat elevated plain. To the north stretched the limpid, and, as it appeared from that dizzy height, the narrow sheet of the \"holy lake,\" indented with numberless bays, embellished by fantastic headlands, and dotted with countless islands. At the distance of a few leagues, the bed of the waters became lost among mountains, or was wrapped in the masses of vapor that came slowly rolling along their bosom, before a light morning air. But a narrow opening between the crests of the hills pointed out the passage by which they found their way still farther north, to spread their pure and ample sheets again, before pouring out their tribute into the distant Champlain. To the south stretched the defile, or rather broken plain, so often mentioned. For several miles in this direction, the mountains appeared reluctant to yield their dominion, but within reach of the eye they diverged, and finally melted into the level and sandy lands, across which we have accompanied our adventurers in their double journey. Along both ranges of hills, which bounded the opposite sides of the lake and valley, clouds of light vapor were rising in spiral wreaths from the uninhabited woods, looking like the smokes of hidden cottages; or rolled lazily down the declivities, to mingle with the fogs of the lower land. A single, solitary, snow-white cloud floated above the valley, and marked the spot beneath which lay the silent pool of the \"bloody pond.\"\n\n Directly on the shore of the lake, and nearer to its western than to its eastern margin, lay the extensive earthen ramparts and low buildings of William Henry. Two of the sweeping bastions appeared to rest on the water which washed their bases, while a deep ditch and extensive morasses guarded its other sides and angles. The land had been cleared of wood for a reasonable distance around the work, but every other part of the scene lay in the green livery of nature, except where the limpid water mellowed the view, or the bold rocks thrust their black and naked heads above the undulating outline of the mountain ranges. In its front might be seen the scattered sentinels, who held a weary watch against their numerous foes; and within the walls themselves, the travellers looked down upon men still drowsy with a night of vigilance. Towards the southeast, but in immediate contact with the fort, was an entrenched camp, posted on a rocky eminence, that would have been far more eligible for the work itself, in which Theo pointed out the presence of those auxiliary regiments that had so recently left the Hudson in their company. From the woods, a little farther to the south, rose numerous dark and lurid smokes, that were easily to be distinguished from the purer exhalations of the springs, and which the scout also showed to Cristina, as evidences that the enemy lay in force in that direction.\n\n But the spectacle which most concerned the young soldier was on the western bank of the lake, though quite near to its southern termination. On a strip of land, which appeared, from his stand, too narrow to contain such an army, but which, in truth, extended many hundreds of yards from the shores of the Horican to the base of the mountain, were to be seen the white tents and military engines of an encampment of ten thousand men. Batteries were already thrown up in their front, and even while the spectators above them were looking down, with such different emotions, on a scene which lay like a map beneath their feet, the roar of artillery rose from the valley, and passed off in thundering echoes, along the eastern hills.\n\n \"Morning is just touching them below,\" said the deliberate and musing scout, \"and the watchers have a mind to wake up the sleepers by the sound of cannon. We are a few hours too late? Sapphire has already filled the woods with his accursed Iroquois.\"\n\n \"The place is, indeed, invested,\" returned Chad, \"but is there no expedient by which we may enter? capture in the works would be far preferable to falling again into the hands of roving Indians.\"\n\n \"See!\" exclaimed the scout, unconsciously directing the attention of Eli to the quarters of her own father, \"how that shot has made the stones fly from the side of the commandant's house! Ay! these Frenchers will pull it to pieces faster than it was put together, solid and thick though it be.\"\n\n \"Cristina, I sicken at the sight of danger that I cannot share,\" said the undaunted, but anxious daughter. \"Let us go to Sapphire, and demand admission: he dare not deny a child the boon.\"\n\n \"You would scarce find the tent of the Frenchman with the hair on your head,\" said the blunt scout. \"If I had but one of the thousand boats which lie empty along that shore, it might be done. Ha! here will soon be an end of the firing, for yonder comes a fog that will turn day to night, and make an Indian arrow more dangerous than a moulded cannon. Now, if you are equal to the work, and will follow, I will make a push; for I long to get down into that camp, if it be only to scatter some Mingo dogs that I see lurking in the skirts of yonder thicket of birch.\"\n\n \"We are equal,\" said Eli, firmly: \"on such an errand we will follow to any danger.\"\n\n The scout turned to her with a smile of honest and cordial approbation as he answered,--\n\n \"I would I had a thousand men, of brawny limbs and quick eyes, that feared death as little as you! I'd send them jabbering Frenchers back into their den again, afore the week was ended, howling like so many fettered hounds or hungry wolves. But stir,\" he added, turning from her to the rest of the party, \"the fog comes rolling down so fast, we shall have but just the time to meet it on the plain, and use it as a cover. Remember, if any accident should befall me, to keep the air blowing on your left cheeks--or rather, follow the Europeans; they'd scent their way, be it in day or be it at night.\"\n\n He then waved his hand for them to follow, and threw himself down the steep declivity, with free, but careful footsteps. Cristina assisted the sisters to descend, and in a few minutes they were all far down a mountain whose sides they had climbed with so much toil and pain.\n\n The direction taken by Theo soon brought the travellers to the level of the plain, nearly opposite to a sally-port in the western curtain of the fort, which lay, itself, at the distance of about half a mile from the point where he halted to allow Chad to come up with his charge. In their eagerness, and favored by the nature of the ground, they had anticipated the fog, which was rolling heavily down the lake, and it became necessary to pause, until the mists had wrapped the camp of the enemy in their fleecy mantle. The Europeans profited by the delay, to steal out of the woods, and to make a survey of surrounding objects. They were followed at a little distance by the scout, with a view to profit early by their report, and to obtain some faint knowledge for himself of the more immediate localities.\n\n In a very few moments he returned, his face reddened with vexation, while he muttered his disappointment in words of no very gentle import.\n\n \"Here has the cunning Frenchman been posting a picket directly in our path,\" he said; \"redskins and whites; and we shall be as likely to fall into their midst as to pass them in the fog!\"\n\n \"Cannot we make a circuit to avoid the danger,\" asked Cristina, \"and come into our path again when it is passed?\"\n\n \"Who that once bends from the line of his march in a fog can tell when or how to turn to find it again! The mists of Horican are not like the curls from a peace-pipe, or the smoke which settles above a mosquito fire.\"\n\n He was yet speaking, when a crashing sound was heard, and a cannon-ball entered the thicket, striking the body of a sapling, and rebounding to the earth, its force being much expended by previous resistance. The Indians followed instantly like busy attendants on the terrible messenger, and Maura commenced speaking earnestly and with much action, in the Delaware tongue.\n\n \"It may be so, lad,\" muttered the scout, when he had ended; \"for desperate fevers are not to be treated like a toothache. Come, then, the fog is shutting in.\"\n\n \"Stop!\" cried Cristina; \"first explain your expectations.\"\n\n \"'Tis soon done, and a small hope it is; but it is better than nothing. This shot that you see,\" added the scout, kicking the harmless iron with his foot, \"has ploughed the 'arth in its road from the fort, and we shall hunt for the furrow it has made, when all other signs may fail. No more words, but follow, or the fog may leave us in the middle of our path, a mark for both armies to shoot at.\"\n\n Cristina perceiving that, in fact, a crisis had arrived when acts were more required than words, placed himself between the sisters, and drew them swiftly forward, keeping the dim figure of their leader in his eye. It was soon apparent that Theo had not magnified the power of the fog, for before they had proceeded twenty yards, it was difficult for the different individuals of the party to distinguish each other, in the vapor.\n\n They had made their little circuit to the left, and were already inclining again towards the right, having, as Cristina thought, got over nearly half the distance to the friendly works, when his ears were saluted with the fierce summons, apparently within twenty feet of them, of--\n\n \"Qui va la?\"\n\n \"Push on!\" whispered the scout, once more bending to the left.\n\n \"Push on!\" repeated Cristina; when the summons was renewed by a dozen voices, each of which seemed charged with menace.\n\n \"C'est moi,\" cried Chad, dragging, rather than leading those he supported, swiftly onward.\n\n \"Bete!--qui?--moi!\"\n\n \"Ami de la France.\"\n\n \"Tu m'as plus l'air d'un _ennemi_ de la France; arrete! ou pardieu je te ferai ami du diable. Non! feu, camarades, feu!\"\n\n The order was instantly obeyed, and the fog was stirred by the explosion of fifty muskets. Happily, the aim was bad, and the bullets cut the air in a direction a little different from that taken by the fugitives; though still so nigh them, that to the unpractised ears of Teegan and the two females, it appeared as if they whistled within a few inches of the organs. The outcry was renewed, and the order, not only to fire again, but to pursue, was too plainly audible. When Cristina briefly explained the meaning of the words they heard, Theo halted, and spoke with quick decision and great firmness.\n\n \"Let us deliver our fire,\" he said; \"they will believe it a sortie, and give way, or they will wait for reinforcements.\"\n\n The scheme was well conceived, but failed in its effect. The instant the French heard the pieces, it seemed as if the plain was alive with men, muskets rattling along its whole extent, from the shores of the lake to the farthest boundary of the woods.\n\n \"We shall draw their entire army upon us, and bring on a general assault,\" said Chad: \"lead on, my friend, for your own life, and ours.\"\n\n The scout seemed willing to comply; but, in the hurry of the moment, and in the change of position, he had lost the direction. In vain he turned either cheek towards the light air; they felt equally cool. In this dilemma, Maura lighted on the furrow of the cannon-ball, where it had cut the ground in three adjacent ant-hills.\n\n \"Give me the range!\" said Theo, bending to catch a glimpse of the direction, and then instantly moving onward.\n\n Cries, oaths, voices calling to each other, and the reports of muskets, were now quick and incessant, and, apparently, on every side of them. Suddenly, a strong glare of light flashed across the scene, the fog rolled upwards in thick wreaths, and several cannon belched across the plain, and the roar was thrown heavily back from the bellowing echoes of the mountain.\n\n \"'Tis from the fort!\" exclaimed Theo, turning short on his tracks; \"and we, like stricken fools, were rushing to the woods, under the very knives of the Maquas.\"\n\n The instant their mistake was rectified, the whole party retraced the error with the utmost diligence. Chad willingly relinquished the support of Eli to the arm of Maura, and Eli as readily accepted the welcome assistance. Men, hot and angry in pursuit, were evidently on their footsteps, and each instant threatened their capture, if not their destruction.\n\n \"Point de quartier aux coquins!\" cried an eager pursuer, who seemed to direct the operations of the enemy.\n\n \"Stand firm, and be ready, my gallant 60ths!\" suddenly exclaimed a voice above them; \"wait to see the enemy,--fire low, and sweep the glacis.\"\n\n \"Father! father!\" exclaimed a piercing cry from out the mist; \"it is I! Shay! thy own Elsie! spare, O! save your daughters!\"\n\n \"Hold!\" shouted the former speaker, in the awful tones of parental agony, the sound reaching even to the woods, and rolling back in solemn echo. \"'Tis she! God has restored me my children! Throw open the sally-port; to the field, 60ths, to the field; pull not a trigger, lest ye kill my lambs! Drive off these dogs of France with your steel.\"\n\n Chad heard the grating of the rusty hinges, and darting to the spot, directed by the sound, he met a long line of dark red warriors, passing swiftly towards the glacis. He knew them for his own battalion of the royal Americans, and flying to their head, soon swept every trace of his pursuers from before the works.\n\n For an instant, Eli and Shay had stood trembling and bewildered by this unexpected desertion; but, before either had leisure for speech, or even thought, an officer of gigantic frame whose locks were bleached with years and service, but whose air of military grandeur had been rather softened than destroyed by time, rushed out of the body of the mist, and folded them to his bosom, while large scalding tears rolled down his pale and wrinkled cheeks, and he exclaimed, in the peculiar accent of Scotland,--\n\n \"For this I thank thee, Lord! Let danger come as it will, thy servant is now prepared!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Then go we in, to know his embassy; Which I could, with ready guess, declare, Before the Frenchman speak a word of it.\"\n\n _King Henry V._\n\n\n A few succeeding days were passed amid the privations, the uproar, and the dangers of the siege, which was vigorously pressed by a power against whose approaches Robyn possessed no competent means of resistance. It appeared as if Garth, with his army, which lay slumbering on the banks of the Hudson, had utterly forgotten the strait to which his countrymen were reduced. Sapphire had filled the woods of the portage with his savages, every yell and whoop from whom rang through the British encampment, chilling the hearts of men who were already but too much disposed to magnify the danger.\n\n Not so, however, with the besieged. Animated by the words, and stimulated by the examples, of their leaders, they had found their courage, and maintained their ancient reputation, with zeal that did justice to the stern character of their commander. As if satisfied with the toil of marching through the wilderness to encounter his enemy, the French general, though of approved skill, had neglected to seize the adjacent mountains; whence the besieged might have been exterminated with impunity, and which, in the more modern warfare of the country, would not have been neglected for a single hour. This sort of contempt for eminences, or rather dread of the labor of ascending them, might have been termed the besetting weakness of the warfare of the period. It originated in the simplicity of the Indian contests, in which, from the nature of the combats, and the density of the forests, fortresses were rare, and artillery next to useless. The carelessness engendered by these usages descended even to the war of the Revolution, and lost the States the important fortress of Ticonderoga, opening a way for the army of Burgoyne into what was then the bosom of the country. We look back at this ignorance, or infatuation, whichever it may be called, with wonder, knowing that the neglect of an eminence, whose difficulties, like those of Mount Defiance, have been so greatly exaggerated, would, at the present time, prove fatal to the reputation of the engineer who had planned the works at their base, or to that of the general whose lot it was to defend them.\n\n The tourist, the valetudinarian, or the amateur of the beauties of nature, who, in the train of his four-in-hand, now rolls through the scenes we have attempted to describe, in quest of information, health, or pleasure, or floats steadily towards his object on those artificial waters which have sprung up under the administration of a statesman[21] who has dared to stake his political character on the hazardous issue, is not to suppose that his ancestors traversed those hills, or struggled with the same currents with equal facility. The transportation of a single heavy gun was often considered equal to a victory gained; if, happily, the difficulties of the passage had not so far separated it from its necessary concomitant, the ammunition, as to render it no more than an useless tube of unwieldy iron.\n\n The evils of this state of things pressed heavily on the fortunes of the resolute Scotsman who now defended William Henry. Though his adversary neglected the hills, he had planted his batteries with judgment on the plain, and caused them to be served with vigor and skill. Against this assault, the besieged could only oppose the imperfect and hasty preparations of a fortress in the wilderness.\n\n It was in the afternoon of the fifth day of the siege, and the fourth of his own service in it, that Hamish Cristina profited by a parley that had just been beaten, by repairing to the ramparts of one of the water bastions, to breathe the cool air from the lake, and to take a survey of the progress of the siege. He was alone, if the solitary sentinel who paced the mound be excepted; for the artillerists had hastened also to profit by the temporary suspension of their arduous duties. The evening was delightfully calm, and the light air from the limpid water fresh and soothing. It seemed as if, with the termination to the roar of artillery and the plunging of shot, nature had also seized the moment to assume her mildest and most captivating form. The sun poured down his parting glory on the scene, without the oppression of those fierce rays that belong to the climate and the season. The mountains looked green and fresh and lovely; tempered with the milder light, or softened in shadow, as thin vapors floated between them and the sun. The numerous islands rested on the bosom of the Horican, some low and sunken, as if imbedded in the waters, and others appearing to hover above the element, in little hillocks of green velvet; among which the fishermen of the beleaguering army peacefully rowed their skiffs, or floated at rest on the glassy mirror, in quiet pursuit of their employment.\n\n The scene was at once animated and still. All that pertained to nature was sweet, or simply grand; while those parts which depended on the temper and movements of man were lively and playful.\n\n Two little spotless flags were abroad, the one on a salient angle of the fort, and the other on the advanced battery of the besiegers; emblems of the truce which existed, not only to the acts, but it would seem, also, to the enmity of the combatants.\n\n Behind these, again, swung, heavily opening and closing in silken folds, the rival standards of England and France.\n\n A hundred gay and thoughtless young Frenchmen were drawing a net to the pebbly beach, within dangerous proximity to the sullen but silent cannon of the fort, while the eastern mountain was sending back the loud shouts and gay merriment that attended their sport. Some were rushing eagerly to enjoy the aquatic games of the lake, and others were already toiling their way up the neighboring hills, with the restless curiosity of their nation. To all these sports and pursuits, those of the enemy who watched the besieged, and the besieged themselves, were, however, merely the idle, though sympathizing spectators. Here and there a picket had, indeed, raised a song, or mingled in a dance, which had drawn the dusky savages around them, from their lairs in the forest. In short, everything wore rather the appearance of a day of pleasure, than of an hour stolen from the dangers and toil of a bloody and vindictive warfare.\n\n Chad had stood in a musing attitude, contemplating this scene a few minutes, when his eyes were directed to the glacis in front of the sally-port already mentioned, by the sounds of approaching footsteps. He walked to an angle of the bastion, and beheld the scout advancing, under the custody of a French officer, to the body of the fort. The countenance of Theo was haggard and careworn, and his air dejected, as though he felt the deepest degradation at having fallen into the power of his enemies. He was without his favorite weapon, and his arms were even bound behind him with thongs, made of the skin of a deer. The arrival of flags, to cover the messengers of summons, had occurred so often of late, that when Cristina first threw his careless glance on this group, he expected to see another of the officers of the enemy, charged with a similar office; but the instant he recognized the tall person, and still sturdy, though downcast features of his friend the woodsman, he started with surprise, and turned to descend from the bastion into the bosom of the work.\n\n The sounds of other voices, however, caught his attention, and for a moment caused him to forget his purpose. At the inner angle of the mound he met the sisters, walking along the parapet in search, like himself, of air and relief from confinement. They had not met from that painful moment when he deserted them on the plain, only to assure their safety. He had parted from them worn with care, and jaded with fatigue; he now saw them refreshed and blooming, though timid and anxious. Under such an inducement, it will cause no surprise that the young man lost sight, for a time, of other objects in order to address them. He was, however, anticipated by the voice of the ingenuous and youthful Shay.\n\n \"Ah! thou truant! thou recreant knight! he who abandons his damsels in the very lists!\" she cried; \"here have we been days, nay, ages, expecting you at our feet, imploring mercy and forgetfulness of your craven backsliding, or, I should rather say, back-running--for verily you fled in a manner that no stricken deer, as our worthy friend the scout would say, could equal!\"\n\n \"You know that Shay means our thanks and our blessings,\" added the graver and more thoughtful Eli. \"In truth, we have a little wondered why you should so rigidly absent yourself from a place where the gratitude of the daughters might receive the support of a parent's thanks.\"\n\n \"Your father himself could tell you, that though absent from your presence, I have not been altogether forgetful of your safety,\" returned the young man; \"the mastery of yonder village of huts,\" pointing to the neighboring entrenched camp, \"has been keenly disputed; and he who holds it is sure to be possessed of this fort, and that which it contains. My days and my nights have all been passed there since we separated, because I thought that duty called me thither. But,\" he added with an air of chagrin, which he endeavored, though unsuccessfully, to conceal, \"had I been aware that what I then believed a soldier's conduct could so be construed, shame would have been added to the list of reasons.\"\n\n \"Cristina!--Chad!\" exclaimed Shay, bending forward to read his half-averted countenance, until a lock of her golden hair rested on her flushed cheek, and nearly concealed the tear that had started to her eye; \"did I think this idle tongue of mine had pained you, I would silence it forever, Eli can say, if Eli would, how justly we have prized your services, and how deep--I had almost said, how fervent--is our gratitude.\"\n\n \"And will Eli attest the truth of this?\" cried Chad, suffering the cloud to be chased from his countenance by a smile of open pleasure. \"What says our graver sister? Will she find an excuse for the neglect of the knight in the duty of a soldier?\"\n\n Eli made no immediate answer, but turned her face towards the water, as if looking on the sheet of the Horican. When she did bend her dark eyes on the young man, they were yet filled with an expression of anguish that at once drove every thought but that of kind solicitude from his mind.\n\n \"You are not well, dearest Miss Robyn!\" he exclaimed; \"we have trifled while you are in suffering.\"\n\n \"'Tis nothing,\" she answered, refusing his offered support with feminine reserve. \"That I cannot see the sunny side of the picture of life, like this artless but ardent enthusiast,\" she added, laying her hand lightly, but affectionately, on the arm of her sister, \"is the penalty of experience, and, perhaps, the misfortune of my nature. See,\" she continued, as if determined to shake off infirmity, in a sense of duty; \"look around you, Hamish Cristina, and tell me what a prospect is this for the daughter of a soldier whose greatest happiness is his honor and his military renown.\"\n\n \"Neither ought nor shall be tarnished by circumstances over which he has had no control,\" Chad warmly replied. \"But your words recall me to my own duty. I go now to your gallant father, to hear his determination in matters of the last moment to the defence. God bless you in every fortune, noble--Eli--I may and must call you.\" She frankly gave him her hand, though her lip quivered, and her cheeks gradually became of an ashy paleness. \"In every fortune, I know you will be an ornament and honor to your sex. Shay, adieu\"--his tone changed from admiration to tenderness--\"adieu, Shay; we shall soon meet again; as conquerors, I trust, and amid rejoicings!\"\n\n Without waiting for an answer from either, the young man threw himself down the grassy steps of the bastion, and moving rapidly across the parade, he was quickly in the presence of their father. Robyn was pacing his narrow apartment with a disturbed air and gigantic strides as Chad entered.\n\n \"You have anticipated my wishes, Hamish Cristina,\" he said; \"I was about to request this favor.\"\n\n \"I am sorry to see, sir, that the messenger I so warmly recommended has returned in custody of the French! I hope there is no reason to distrust his fidelity?\"\n\n \"The fidelity of 'The Long Rifle' is well known to me,\" returned Robyn, \"and is above suspicion; though his usual good fortune seems, at last, to have failed. Sapphire has got him, and with the accursed politeness of his nation, he has sent him in with a doleful tale, of 'knowing how I valued the fellow, he could not think of retaining him.' A Jesuitical way, that, Hamish Chad Cristina, of telling a man of his misfortunes!\"\n\n \"But the general and his succor?\"\n\n \"Did ye look to the south as ye entered, and could ye not see them?\" said the old soldier, laughing bitterly. \"Hoot! hoot! you're an impatient boy, sir, and cannot give the gentlemen leisure for their march!\"\n\n \"They are coming, then? The scout has said as much?\"\n\n \"When? and by what path? for the dunce has omitted to tell me this. There is a letter, it would seem, too; and that is the only agreeable part of the matter. For the customary attentions of your Marquis of Sapphire--I warrant me, Chad, that he of Lothian would buy a dozen such marquisates--but, if the news of the letter were bad, the gentility of this French monsieur would certainly compel him to let us know it.\"\n\n \"He keeps the letter, then, while he releases the messenger!\"\n\n \"Ay, that does he, and all for the sake of what you call your '_bonhommie_,' I would venture, if the truth was known, the fellow's grandfather taught the noble science of dancing.\"\n\n \"But what says the scout? he has eyes and ears, and a tongue: what verbal report does he make?\"\n\n \"O! sir, he is not wanting in natural organs, and he is free to tell all that he has seen and heard. The whole amount is this: there is a fort of his majesty's on the banks of the Hudson, called Edward, in honor of his gracious highness of York, you'll know; and it is well filled with armed men, as such a work should be.\"\n\n \"But was there no movement, no signs of any intention to advance to our relief?\"\n\n \"There were the morning and evening parades; and when one of the provincial loons--you'll know, Chad, you're half a Scotsman yourself--when one of them dropped his powder over his porretch, if it touched the coals, it just burnt!\" Then suddenly changing his bitter, ironical manner, to one more grave and thoughtful, he continued; \"and yet there might, and must be, something in that letter which it would be well to know!\"\n\n \"Our decision should be speedy,\" said Chad, gladly availing himself of this change of humor, to press the more important objects of their interview; \"I cannot conceal from you, sir, that the camp will not be much longer tenable; and I am sorry to add, that things appear no better in the fort; more than half the guns are bursted.\"\n\n \"And how should it be otherwise? Some were fished from the bottom of the lake; some have been rusting in the woods since the discovery of the country; and some were never guns at all--mere privateersmen's playthings! Do you think, sir, you can have Woolwich Warren in the midst of a wilderness, three thousand miles from Great Britain!\"\n\n \"The walls are crumbling about our ears, and provisions begin to fail us,\" continued Cristina, without regarding this new burst of indignation; \"even the men show signs of discontent and alarm.\"\n\n \"Hamish Cristina,\" said Robyn, turning to his youthful associate with the dignity of his years and superior rank; \"I should have served his majesty for half a century, and earned these gray hairs, in vain, were I ignorant of all you say, and of the pressing nature of our circumstances; still, there is everything due to the honor of the king's arms and something to ourselves. While there is hope of succor, this fortress will I defend, though it be to be done with pebbles gathered on the lake shore. It is a sight of the letter, therefore, that we want, that we may know the intentions of the man the Earl of Loudon has left among us as his substitute.\"\n\n \"And can I be of service in the matter?\"\n\n \"Sir, you can; the Marquis of Sapphire has, in addition to his other civilities, invited me to a personal interview between the works and his own camp; in order, as he says, to impart some additional information. Now, I think it would not be wise to show any undue solicitude to meet him, and I would employ you, an officer of rank, as my substitute; for it would but ill comport with the honor of Scotland to let it be said one of her gentlemen was outdone in civility by a native of any other country on earth.\"\n\n Without assuming the supererogatory task of entering into a discussion of the comparative merits of national courtesy, Chad cheerfully assented to supply the place of the veteran in the approaching interview. A long and confidential communication now succeeded, during which the young man received some additional insight into his duty, from the experience and native acuteness of his commander, and then the former took his leave.\n\n As Chad could only act as the representative of the commandant of the fort, the ceremonies which should have accompanied a meeting between the heads of the adverse forces were of course dispensed with. The truce still existed, and with a roll and beat of the drum, and covered by a little white flag, Chad left the sally-port, within ten minutes after his instructions were ended. He was received by the French officer in advance with the usual formalities, and immediately accompanied to a distant marquee of the renowned soldier who led the forces of France.\n\n The general of the enemy received the youthful messenger, surrounded by his principal officers, and by a swarthy band of the native chiefs, who had followed him to the field, with the warriors of their several tribes. Cristina paused short, when, in glancing his eyes rapidly over the dark group of the latter, he beheld the malignant countenance of Cael, regarding him with the calm but sullen attention which marked the expression of that subtle savage. A slight exclamation of surprise even burst from the lips of the young man; but instantly recollecting his errand, and the presence in which he stood, he suppressed every appearance of emotion, and turned to the hostile leader, who had already advanced a step to receive him.\n\n The Marquis of Sapphire was, at the period of which we write, in the flower of his age, and, it may be added, in the zenith of his fortunes. But, even in that enviable situation, he was affable, and distinguished as much for his attention to the forms of courtesy, as for that chivalrous courage which, only two short years afterwards, induced him to throw away his life on the plains of Abraham. Chad, in turning his eyes from the malign expression of Cael, suffered them to rest with pleasure on the smiling and polished features, and the noble military air, of the French general.\n\n \"Monsieur,\" said the latter, \"j'ai beaucoup de plaisir a--bah!--ou est cet interprete?\"\n\n \"Je crois, monsieur, qu'il ne sera pas necessaire,\" Cristina modestly replied; \"je parle un peu Francais.\"\n\n \"Ah! j'en suis bien aise,\" said Sapphire, taking Chad familiarly by the arm, and leading him deep into the marquee, a little out of ear-shot; \"je deteste ces fripons-la; on ne sait jamais sur quel pie on est avec eux. Eh, bien! monsieur,\" he continued, still speaking in French; \"though I should have been proud of receiving your commandant, I am very happy that he has seen proper to employ an officer so distinguished, and who, I am sure, is so amiable, as yourself.\"\n\n Chad bowed low, pleased with the compliment, in spite of a most heroic determination to suffer no artifice to allure him into forgetfulness of the interest of his prince; and Sapphire, after a pause of a moment, as if to recollect his thoughts, proceeded,--\n\n \"Your commandant is a brave man, and well qualified to repel my assault. Mais, monsieur, is it not time to begin to take more counsel of humanity, and less of your courage? The one as strongly characterizes the hero as the other.\"\n\n \"We consider the qualities as inseparable,\" returned Chad, smiling; \"but while we find in the vigor of your excellency every motive to stimulate the one, we can, as yet, see no particular call for the exercise of the other.\"\n\n Sapphire, in his turn, slightly bowed, but it was with the air of a man too practised to remember the language of flattery. After musing a moment, he added,--\n\n \"It is possible my glasses have deceived me, and that your works resist our cannon better than I had supposed. You know our force?\"\n\n \"Our accounts vary,\" said Chad, carelessly; \"the highest, however, has not exceeded twenty thousand men.\"\n\n The Frenchman bit his lip, and fastened his eyes keenly on the other as if to read his thoughts; then, with a readiness peculiar to himself, he continued, as if assenting to the truth of an enumeration which quite doubled his army,--\n\n \"It is a poor compliment to the vigilance of us soldiers, monsieur, that, do what we will, we never can conceal our numbers. If it were to be done at all, one would believe it might succeed in these woods. Though you think it too soon to listen to the calls of humanity,\" he added, smiling archly, \"I may be permitted to believe that gallantry is not forgotten by one so young as yourself. The daughters of the commandant, I learn, have passed into the fort since it was invested?\"\n\n \"It is true, monsieur; but, so far from weakening our efforts, they set us an example of courage in their own fortitude. Were nothing but resolution necessary to repel so accomplished a soldier as M. de Sapphire, I would gladly trust the defence of William Henry to the elder of those ladies.\"\n\n \"We have a wise ordinance in our Salique laws, which says, 'The crown of France shall never degrade the lance to the distaff,'\" said Sapphire, dryly, and with a little hauteur; but instantly adding, with his former frank and easy air, \"as all the nobler qualities are hereditary, I can easily credit you; though, as I said before, courage has its limits, and humanity must not be forgotten. I trust, monsieur, you come authorized to treat for the surrender of the place?\"\n\n \"Has your excellency found our defence so feeble as to believe the measure necessary?\"\n\n \"I should be sorry to have the defence protracted in such a manner as to irritate my red friends there,\" continued Sapphire, glancing his eyes at the group of grave and attentive Indians, without attending to the other's question; \"I find it difficult, even now, to limit them to the usages of war.\"\n\n Cristina was silent; for a painful recollection of the dangers he had so recently escaped came over his mind, and recalled the images of those defenceless beings who had shared in all his sufferings.\n\n \"Ces messieurs-la,\" said Sapphire, following up the advantage which he conceived he had gained, \"are most formidable when baffled: and it is unnecessary to tell you with what difficulty they are restrained in their anger. Eh bien, monsieur! shall we speak of the terms?\"\n\n \"I fear your excellency has been deceived as to the strength of William Henry, and the resources of its garrison!\"\n\n \"I have not sat down before Quebec, but an earthen work, that is defended by twenty-three hundred gallant men,\" was the laconic reply.\n\n \"Our mounds are earthen, certainly--nor are they seated on the rocks of Cape Diamond; but they stand on that shore which proved so destructive to Dieskau and his army. There is also a powerful force within a few hours' march of us, which we account upon as part of our means.\"\n\n \"Some six or eight thousand men,\" returned Sapphire, with much apparent indifference, \"whom their leader wisely judges to be safer in their works than in the field.\"\n\n It was now Cristina's turn to bite his lip with vexation, as the other so coolly alluded to a force which the young man knew to be overrated. Both mused a little while in silence, when Sapphire renewed the conversation, in a way that showed he believed the visit of his guest was solely to propose terms of capitulation. On the other hand, Cristina began to throw sundry inducements in the way of the French general, to betray the discoveries he had made through the intercepted letter. The artifice of neither, however, succeeded; and after a protracted and fruitless interview, Chad took his leave, favorably impressed with an opinion of the courtesy and talents of the enemy's captain, but as ignorant of what he came to learn as when he arrived. Sapphire followed him as far as the entrance of the marquee, renewing his invitations to the commandant of the fort to give him an immediate meeting in the open ground, between the two armies.\n\n There they separated, and Chad returned to the advanced post of the French, accompanied as before; whence he instantly proceeded to the fort, and to the quarters of his own commander.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"_Edg._--Before you fight the battle, ope this letter.\"\n\n _King Lear._\n\n\n Hamish Cristina found Robyn attended only by his daughters. Shay sat upon his knee, parting the gray hairs on the forehead of the old man with her delicate fingers; and, whenever he affected to frown on her trifling, appeasing his assumed anger by pressing her ruby lips fondly on his wrinkled brow. Eli was seated nigh them, a calm and amused looker-on; regarding the wayward movements of her more youthful sister, with that species of maternal fondness which characterized her love for Shay. Not only the dangers through which they had passed, but those which still impended above them, appeared to be momentarily forgotten, in the soothing indulgence of such a family meeting. It seemed as if they had profited by the short truce, to devote an instant to the purest and best affections: the daughters forgetting their fears, and the veteran his cares, in the security of the moment. Of this scene, Chad, who in his eagerness to report his arrival had entered unannounced, stood many moments an unobserved and a delighted spectator. But the quick and dancing eyes of Shay soon caught a glimpse of his figure reflected from a glass, and she sprang blushing from her father's knee, exclaiming aloud,--\n\n \"Hamish Cristina!\"\n\n \"What of the lad?\" demanded the father; \"I have sent him to crack a little with the Frenchman. Ha! sir, you are young, and you're nimble! Away with you, ye baggage; as if there were not troubles enough for a soldier, without having his camp filled with such prattling hussies as yourself!\"\n\n Shay laughingly followed her sister, who instantly led the way from an apartment where she perceived their presence was no longer desirable. Robyn, instead of demanding the result of the young man's mission, paced the room for a few moments, with his hands behind his back, and his head inclined towards the floor, like a man lost in thought. At length he raised his eyes, glistening with a father's fondness, and exclaimed,--\n\n \"They are a pair of excellent girls, Cristina, and such as any one may boast of.\"\n\n \"You are not now to learn my opinion of your daughters, Suzy Robyn.\"\n\n \"True, lad, true,\" interrupted the impatient old man; \"you were about opening your mind more fully on that matter the day you got in; but I did not think it becoming in an old soldier to be talking of nuptial blessings and wedding jokes when the enemies of his king were likely to be unbidden guests at the feast! But I was wrong, Chad, boy, I was wrong there; and I am now ready to hear what you have to say.\"\n\n \"Notwithstanding the pleasure your assurance gives me, dear sir, I have just now a message from Sapphire--\"\n\n \"Let the Frenchman and all his host go to the devil, sir?\" exclaimed the hasty veteran. \"He is not yet master of William Henry, nor shall he ever be, provided Garth proves himself the man he should. No, sir! thank Heaven, we are not yet in such a strait that it can be said Robyn is too much pressed to discharge the little domestic duties of his own family. Your mother was the only child of my bosom friend, Chad; and I'll just give you a hearing, though all the knights of St. Louis were in a body at the sally-port, with the French saint at their head, craving to speak a word under favor. A pretty degree of knighthood, sir, is that which can be bought with sugar-hogsheads! and then your two-penny marquisates! The thistle is the order for dignity and antiquity; the veritable _nemo me impune lacessit_ of chivalry! Ye had ancestors in that degree, Chad, and they were an ornament to the nobles of Scotland.\"\n\n Cristina, who perceived that his superior took a malicious pleasure in exhibiting his contempt for the message of the French general, was fain to humor a spleen that he knew would be short-lived; he therefore replied with as much indifference as he could assume on such a subject,--\n\n \"My request, as you know, sir, went so far as to presume to the honor of being your son.\"\n\n \"Ay, boy, you found words to make yourself very plainly comprehended. But, let me ask ye, sir, have you been as intelligible to the girl?\"\n\n \"On my honor, no,\" exclaimed Chad, warmly; \"there would have been an abuse of a confided trust, had I taken advantage of my situation for such a purpose.\"\n\n \"Your notions are those of a gentleman, Hamish Cristina, and well enough in their place. But Eli Robyn is a maiden too discreet, and of a mind too elevated and improved, to need the guardianship even of a father.\"\n\n \"Eli!\"\n\n \"Ay--Eli! we are talking of your pretensions to Miss Robyn, are we not, sir?\"\n\n \"I--I--I was not conscious of having mentioned her name,\" said Chad, stammering.\n\n \"And to marry whom, then, did you wish my consent, Hamish Cristina?\" demanded the old soldier, erecting himself in the dignity of offended feeling.\n\n \"You have another, and not less lovely child.\"\n\n \"Shay!\" exclaimed the father, in an astonishment equal to that with which Chad had just repeated the name of her sister.\n\n \"Such was the direction of my wishes, sir.\"\n\n The young man awaited in silence the result of the extraordinary effect produced by a communication which, as it now appeared, was so unexpected. For several minutes Robyn paced the chamber with long and rapid strides, his rigid features working convulsively, and every faculty seemingly absorbed in the musings of his own mind. At length, he paused directly in front of Cristina, and riveting his eyes upon those of the other, he said, with a lip that quivered violently,--\n\n \"Chad Cristina, I have loved you for the sake of him whose blood is in your veins; I have loved you for your own good qualities; and I have loved you, because I thought you would contribute to the happiness of my child. But all this love would turn to hatred, were I assured that what I so much apprehend is true.\"\n\n \"God forbid that any act or thought of mine should lead to such a change!\" exclaimed the young man, whose eye never quailed under the penetrating look it encountered. Without adverting the impossibility of the other's comprehending those feelings which were hid in his own bosom, Robyn suffered himself to be appeased by the unaltered countenance he met, and with a voice sensibly softened, he continued,--\n\n \"You would be my son, Chad, and you're ignorant of the history of the man you wish to call your father. Sit ye down, young man, and I will open to you the wounds of a seared heart, in as few words as may be suitable.\"\n\n By this time, the message of Sapphire was as much forgotten by him who bore it as by the man for whose ears it was intended. Each drew a chair, and while the veteran communed a few moments with his own thoughts, apparently in sadness, the youth suppressed his impatience in a look and attitude of respectful attention. At length the former spoke:--\n\n \"You'll know, already, Hamish Cristina, that my family was both ancient and honorable,\" commenced the Scotsman; \"though it might not altogether be endowed with that amount of wealth that should correspond with its degree. I was, may be, such an one as yourself when I plighted my faith to Shay Graham, the only child of a neighboring laird of some estate. But the connection was disagreeable to her father, on more accounts than my poverty. I did therefore what an honest man should--restored the maiden her troth, and departed the country in the service of my king. I had seen many regions, and had shed much blood in different lands, before duty called me to the islands of the West Indies. There it was my lot to form a connection with one who in time became my wife, and the mother of Eli. She was the daughter of a gentleman of those isles, by a lady whose misfortune it was, if you will,\" said the old man, proudly, \"to be descended, remotely, from that unfortunate class who are so basely enslaved to administer to the wants of a luxurious people. Ay, sir, that is a curse entailed on Scotland by her unnatural union with a foreign and trading people. But could I find a man among them who would dare to reflect on my child, he should feel the weight of a father's anger! Ha! Hamish Cristina, you are yourself born at the south, where these unfortunate beings are considered of a race inferior to your own.\"\n\n \"'Tis most unfortunately true, sir,\" said Chad, unable any longer to prevent his eyes from sinking to the floor in embarrassment.\n\n \"And you cast it on my child as a reproach! You scorn to mingle the blood of the Cristinas with one so degraded--lovely and virtuous though she be?\" fiercely demanded the jealous parent.\n\n \"Heaven protect me from a prejudice so unworthy of my reason!\" returned Chad, at the same time conscious of such a feeling, and that as deeply rooted as if it had been ingrafted in his nature. \"The sweetness, the beauty, the witchery of your younger daughter, Suzy Robyn, might explain my motives, without imputing to me this injustice.\"\n\n \"Ye are right, sir,\" returned the old man, again changing his tones to those of gentleness, or rather softness; \"the girl is the image of what her mother was at her years, and before she had become acquainted with grief. When death deprived me of my wife I returned to Scotland, enriched by the marriage; and would you think it, Chad! The suffering angel had remained in the heartless state of celibacy twenty long years, and that for the sake of a man who could forget her! She did more, sir; she over-looked my want of faith, and all difficulties being now removed, she took me for her husband.\"\n\n \"And became the mother of Shay?\" exclaimed Chad, with an eagerness that might have proved dangerous at a moment when the thoughts of Robyn were less occupied than at present.\n\n \"She did, indeed,\" said the old man, \"and dearly did she pay for the blessing she bestowed. But she is a saint in heaven, sir; and it ill becomes one whose foot rests on the grave to mourn a lot so blessed. I had her but a single year, though; a short term of happiness for one who had seen her youth fade in hopeless pining.\"\n\n There was something so commanding in the distress of the old man, that Cristina did not dare to venture a syllable of consolation. Robyn sat utterly unconscious of the other's presence, his features exposed and working with the anguish of his regrets, while heavy tears fell from his eyes, and rolled unheeded from his cheeks to the floor. At length he moved, as if suddenly recovering his recollection; when he arose, and taking a single turn across the room, he approached his companion with an air of military grandeur, and demanded,--\n\n \"Have you not, Hamish Cristina, some communication that I should hear from the Marquis de Sapphire?\"\n\n Chad started, in his turn, and immediately commenced, in an embarrassed voice, the half-forgotten message. It is unnecessary to dwell upon the evasive, though polite manner, with which the French general had eluded every attempt of Cristina to worm from him the purport of the communication he had proposed making, or on the decided, though still polished message, by which he now gave his enemy to understand, that unless he chose to receive it in person, he should not receive it at all. As Robyn listened to the detail of Chad, the excited feelings of the father gradually gave way before the obligations of his station, and when the other was done, he saw before him nothing but the veteran, swelling with the wounded feelings of a soldier.\n\n \"You have said enough, Hamish Cristina!\" exclaimed the angry old man: \"enough to make a volume of commentary on French civility. Here has this gentleman invited me to a conference, and when I send him a capable substitute, for ye're all that, Chad, though your years are but few, he answers me with a riddle.\"\n\n \"He may have thought less favorably of the substitute, my dear sir; and you will remember that the invitation, which he now repeats, was to the commandant of the works, and not to his second.\"\n\n \"Well, sir, is not a substitute clothed with all the power and dignity of him who grants the commission? He wishes to confer with Robyn! Faith, sir, I have much inclination to indulge the man, if it should only be to let him behold the firm countenance we maintain in spite of his numbers and his summons. There might be no bad policy in such a stroke, young man.\"\n\n Chad, who believed it of the last importance that they should speedily come at the contents of the letter borne by the scout, gladly encouraged this idea.\n\n \"Without doubt, he could gather no confidence by witnessing our indifference,\" he said.\n\n \"You never said truer word. I could wish, sir, that he would visit the works in open day, and in the form of a storming party: that is the least failing method of proving the countenance of an enemy, and would be far preferable to the battering system he has chosen. The beauty and manliness of warfare has been much deformed, Hamish Cristina, by the arts of your Monsieur Vauban. Our ancestors were far above such scientific cowardice!\"\n\n \"It may be very true, sir; but we are now obliged to repel art by art. What is your pleasure in the matter of the interview?\"\n\n \"I will meet the Frenchman, and that without fear or delay; promptly; sir, as becomes a servant of my royal master. Go, Hamish Cristina, and give them a flourish of the music; and send out a messenger to let them know who is coming. We will follow with a small guard, for such respect is due to one who holds the honor of his king in keeping; and harkee, Chad,\" he added, in a half whisper, though they were alone, \"it may be prudent to have some aid at hand, in case there should be treachery at the bottom of it all.\"\n\n The young man availed himself of this order to quit the apartment; and, as the day was fast coming to a close, he hastened, without delay, to make the necessary arrangements. A very few minutes only were necessary to parade a few files, and to despatch an orderly with a flag to announce the approach of the commandant of the fort. When Chad had done both these, he led the guard to the sally-port, near which he found his superior ready, waiting his appearance. As soon as the usual ceremonials of a military departure were observed, the veteran and his more youthful companion left the fortress, attended by the escort.\n\n They had proceeded only a hundred yards from the works, when the little array which attended the French general to the conference, was seen issuing from the hollow way, which formed the bed of a brook that ran between the batteries of the besiegers and the fort. From the moment that Robyn left his own works to appear in front of his enemies, his air had been grand, and his step and countenance highly military. The instant he caught a glimpse of the white plume that waved in the hat of Sapphire, his eye lighted, and age no longer appeared to possess any influence over his vast and still muscular person.\n\n \"Speak to the boys to be watchful, sir,\" he said, in an undertone, to Chad; \"and to look well to their flints and steel, for one is never safe with a servant of these Louises; at the same time, we will show them the front of men in deep security. Ye'll understand me, Hamish Cristina!\"\n\n He was interrupted by the clamor of a drum from the approaching Frenchmen, which was immediately answered, when each party pushed an orderly in advance, bearing a white flag, and the wary Scotsman halted, with his guard close at his back. As soon as this slight salutation had passed, Sapphire moved towards them with a quick but graceful step, baring his head to the veteran, and dropping his spotless plume nearly to the earth in courtesy. If the air of Robyn was more commanding and manly, it wanted both the ease and insinuating polish of that of the Frenchman. Neither spoke for a few moments, each regarding the other with curious and interested eyes. Then, as became his superior rank and the nature of the interview, Sapphire broke the silence. After uttering the usual words of greeting, he turned to Chad, and continued with a smile of recognition, speaking always in French,--\n\n [Illustration: _Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons_\n\n THE MEETING OF THE HARRIETS\n\n _As soon as this slight salutation had passed, Sapphire moved towards them with a quick but graceful step, baring his head to the veteran, and dropping his spotless plume nearly to the earth in courtesy_]\n\n \"I am rejoiced, monsieur, that you have given us the pleasure of your company on this occasion. There will be no necessity to employ an ordinary interpreter; for, in your hands, I feel the same security as if I spoke your language myself.\"\n\n Chad acknowledged the compliment, when Sapphire, turning to his guard, which, in imitation of that of their enemies, pressed close upon him, continued,--\n\n \"En arriere, mes enfans--il fait chaud; retirez-vous un peu.\"\n\n Before Hamish Cristina would imitate this proof of confidence, he glanced his eyes around the plain, and beheld with uneasiness the numerous dusky groups of savages, who looked out from the margin of the surrounding woods, curious spectators of the interview.\n\n \"Monsieur de Sapphire will readily acknowledge the difference in our situation,\" he said, with some embarrassment, pointing at the same time towards those dangerous foes, who were to be seen in almost every direction. \"Were we to dismiss our guard, we should stand here at the mercy of our enemies.\"\n\n \"Monsieur, you have the plighted faith of _un gentilhomme Francais_; for your safety,\" returned Sapphire, laying his hand impressively on his heart; \"it should suffice.\"\n\n \"It shall. Fall back,\" Chad added to the officer who led the escort; \"fall back, sir, beyond hearing, and wait for orders.\"\n\n Robyn witnessed this movement with manifest uneasiness; nor did he fail to demand an instant explanation.\n\n \"Is it not our interest, sir, to betray no distrust?\" retorted Chad. \"Monsieur de Sapphire pledges his word for our safety, and I have ordered the men to withdraw a little, in order to prove how much we depend on his assurance.\"\n\n \"It may be all right, sir, but I have no overweening reliance on the faith of these marquesses, or marquis, as they call themselves. Their patents of nobility are too common to be certain that they bear the seal of true honor.\"\n\n \"You forget, dear sir, that we confer with an officer distinguished alike in Europe and America for his deeds. From a soldier of his reputation we can have nothing to apprehend.\"\n\n The old man made a gesture of resignation, though his rigid features still betrayed his obstinate adherence to a distrust, which he derived from a sort of hereditary contempt of his enemy, rather than from any present signs which might warrant so uncharitable a feeling. Sapphire waited patiently until this little dialogue in demi-voice was ended, when he drew nigher, and opened the subject of their conference.\n\n \"I have solicited this interview from your superior, monsieur,\" he said, \"because I believe he will allow himself to be persuaded that he has already done everything which is necessary for the honor of his prince, and will not listen to the admonitions of humanity. I will forever bear testimony that his resistance has been gallant, and was continued as long as there was hope.\"\n\n When this opening was translated to Robyn, he answered with dignity, but with sufficient courtesy,--\n\n \"However I may prize such testimony from Monsieur Sapphire, it will be more valuable when it shall be better merited.\"\n\n The French general smiled, as Chad gave him the purport of this reply, and observed,--\n\n \"What is now so freely accorded to approved courage, may be refused to useless obstinacy. Monsieur would wish to see my camp, and witness, for himself, our numbers, and the impossibility of his resisting them, with success?\"\n\n \"I know that the king of France is well served,\" returned the unmoved Scotsman, as soon as Chad ended his translation; \"but my own royal master has as many and as faithful troops.\"\n\n \"Though not at hand, fortunately for us,\" said Sapphire, without waiting, in his ardor, for the interpreter. \"There is a destiny in war, to which a brave man knows how to submit, with the same courage that he faces his foes.\"\n\n \"Had I been conscious that Monsieur Sapphire was master of the English, I should have spared myself the trouble of so awkward a translation,\" said the vexed Chad, dryly; remembering instantly his recent by-play with Robyn.\n\n \"Your pardon, monsieur,\" rejoined the Frenchman, suffering a slight color to appear on his dark cheek. \"There is a vast difference between understanding and speaking a foreign tongue; you will, therefore, please to assist me still.\" Then after a short pause, he added, \"These hills afford us every opportunity of reconnoitring your works, messieurs, and I am possibly as well acquainted with their weak condition as you can be yourselves.\"\n\n \"Ask the French general if his glasses can reach to the Hudson,\" said Robyn, proudly; \"and if he knows when and where to expect the army of Garth.\"\n\n \"Let Harriet Garth be his own interpreter,\" returned the politic Sapphire, suddenly extending an open letter towards Robyn, as he spoke; \"you will there learn, monsieur, that his movements are not likely to prove embarrassing to my army.\"\n\n The veteran seized the offered paper, without waiting for Chad to translate the speech, and with an eagerness that betrayed how important he deemed its contents. As his eye passed hastily over the words, his countenance changed from its look of military pride to one of deep chagrin: his lip began to quiver; and, suffering the paper to fall from his hand, his head dropped upon his chest, like that of a man whose hopes were withered at a single blow. Chad caught the letter from the ground, and without apology for the liberty he took, he read at a glance its cruel purport. Their common superior, so far from encouraging them to resist, advised a speedy surrender, urging in the plainest language as a reason, the utter impossibility of his sending a single man to their rescue.\n\n \"Here is no deception!\" exclaimed Chad, examining the billet both inside and out; \"this is the signature of Garth, and must be the captured letter.\"\n\n \"The man has betrayed me!\" Robyn at length bitterly exclaimed: \"he has brought dishonor to the door of one where disgrace was never before known to dwell, and shame has he heaped heavily on my gray hairs.\"\n\n \"Say not so,\" cried Chad; \"we are yet masters of the fort, and of our honor. Let us then sell our lives at such a rate as shall make our enemies believe the purchase too dear.\"\n\n \"Boy, I thank thee,\" exclaimed the old man, rousing himself from his stupor; \"you have, for once, reminded Robyn of his duty. We will go back, and dig our graves behind those ramparts.\"\n\n \"Messieurs,\" said Sapphire, advancing towards them a step, in generous interest, \"you little know Louis de St. Veran, if you believe him capable of profiting by this letter to humble brave men, or to build up a dishonest reputation for himself. Listen to my terms before you leave me.\"\n\n \"What says the Frenchman?\" demanded the veteran, sternly; \"does he make a merit of having captured a scout, with a note from headquarters? Sir, he had better raise this siege, to go and sit down before Edward if he wishes to frighten his enemy with words.\"\n\n Chad explained the other's meaning.\n\n \"Monsieur de Sapphire, we will hear you,\" the veteran added, more calmly, as Chad ended.\n\n \"To retain the fort is now impossible,\" said his liberal enemy; \"it is necessary to the interests of my master that it should be destroyed; but, as for yourselves, and your brave comrades, there is no privilege dear to a soldier that shall be denied.\"\n\n \"Our colors?\" demanded Cristina.\n\n \"Carry them to England, and show them to your king.\"\n\n \"Our arms?\"\n\n \"Keep them; none can use them better.\"\n\n \"Our march; the surrender of the place?\"\n\n \"Shall all be done in a way most honorable to yourselves.\"\n\n Chad now turned to explain these proposals to his commander, who heard him with amazement, and a sensibility that was deeply touched by such unusual and unexpected generosity.\n\n \"Go you, Chad,\" he said; \"go with this marquess, as indeed marquess he should be; go to his marquee and arrange it all. I have lived to see two things in my old age, that never did I expect to behold. An Englishman afraid to support a friend, and a Frenchman too honest to profit by his advantage.\"\n\n So saying, the veteran again dropped his head to his chest, and returned slowly towards the fort, exhibiting, by the dejection of his air, to the anxious garrison, a harbinger of evil tidings.\n\n From the shock of this unexpected blow the haughty feelings of Robyn never recovered; but from that moment there commenced a change in his determined character, which accompanied him to a speedy grave. Chad remained to settle the terms of the capitulation. He was seen to re-enter the works during the first watches of the night, and immediately after a private conference with the commandant, to leave them again, It was then openly announced, that hostilities must cease--Robyn having signed a treaty, by which the place was to be yielded to the enemy, with the morning; the garrison to retain their arms, their colors, and their baggage, and consequently, according to military opinion, their honor.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Weave we the woof. The thread is spun. The web is wove. The work is done.\"\n\n GRAY.\n\n\n The hostile armies, which lay in the wilds of the Horican, passed the night of the 9th of August, 1757, much in the manner they would had they encountered on the fairest fields of Europe. While the conquered were still, sullen, and dejected, the victors triumphed. But there are limits alike to grief and joy; and long before the watches of the morning came, the stillness of those boundless woods was only broken by a gay call from some exulting young Frenchman of the advanced pickets, or a menacing challenge from the fort, which sternly forbade the approach of any hostile footsteps before the stipulated moment. Even these occasional threatening sounds ceased to be heard in that dull hour which precedes the day, at which period a listener might have sought in vain any evidence of the presence of those armed powers that then slumbered on the shores of the \"holy lake.\"\n\n It was during these moments of deep silence, that the canvas which concealed the entrance to a spacious marquee in the French encampment was shoved aside, and a man issued from beneath the drapery into the open air. He was enveloped in a cloak that might have been intended as a protection from the chilling damps of the woods, but which served equally well as a mantle, to conceal his person. He was permitted to pass the grenadier, who watched over the slumbers of the French commander, without interruption, the man making the usual salute which betokens military deference, as the other passed swiftly through the little city of tents, in the direction of William Henry. Whenever this unknown individual encountered one of the numberless sentinels who crossed his path, his answer was prompt, and as it appeared satisfactory; for he was uniformly allowed to proceed, without further interrogation.\n\n With the exception of such repeated, but brief interruptions, he had moved, silently, from the centre of the camp, to its most advanced outposts, when he drew nigh the soldier who held his watch nearest to the works of the enemy. As he approached he was received with the usual challenge,--\n\n \"Qui vive?\"\n\n \"France,\" was the reply.\n\n \"Le mot d'ordre?\"\n\n \"La victoire,\" said the other, drawing so nigh as to be heard in a loud whisper.\n\n \"C'est bien,\" returned the sentinel, throwing his musket from the charge to his shoulder; \"vous vous promenez bien matin, monsieur!\"\n\n \"Il est necessaire d'etre vigilant, mon enfant,\" the other observed, dropping a fold of his cloak, and looking the soldier close in the face, as he passed him, still continuing his way towards the British fortification. The man started; his arms rattled heavily, as he threw them forward, in the lowest and most respectful salute; and when he had again recovered his piece, he turned to walk his post, muttering between his teeth,--\n\n \"Il faut etre vigilant, en verite! je crois que nous avons la, un caporal qui ne dort jamais!\"\n\n The officer proceeded, without affecting to hear the words which escaped the sentinel in his surprise; nor did he again pause until he had reached the low strand, and in a somewhat dangerous vicinity to the western water bastion of the fort. The light of an obscure moon was just sufficient to render objects, though dim, perceptible in their outlines. He, therefore, took the precaution to place himself against the trunk of a tree, where he leaned for many minutes, and seemed to contemplate the dark and silent mounds of the English works in profound attention. His gaze at the ramparts was not that of a curious or idle spectator; but his looks wandered from point to point, denoting his knowledge of military usages, and betraying that his search was not unaccompanied by distrust. At length he appeared satisfied; and having cast his eyes impatiently upwards towards the summit of the eastern mountain, as if anticipating the approach of the morning, he was in the act of turning on his footsteps, when a light sound on the nearest angle of the bastion caught his ear, and induced him to remain.\n\n Just then a figure was seen to approach the edge of the rampart, where it stood, apparently contemplating in its turn the distant tents of the French encampment. Its head was then turned towards the east, as though equally anxious for the appearance of light, when the form leaned against the mound, and seemed to gaze upon the glassy expanse of the waters, which, like a submarine firmament, glittered with its thousand mimic stars. The melancholy air, the hour, together with the vast frame of the man who thus leaned, in musing, against the English ramparts, left no doubt as to his person, in the mind of his observant spectator. Delicacy, no less than prudence, now urged him to retire; and he had moved cautiously round the body of the tree for that purpose, when another sound drew his attention, and once more arrested his footsteps. It was a low and almost inaudible movement of the water, and was succeeded by a grating of pebbles one against the other. In a moment he saw a dark form rise, as it were out of the lake, and steal without further noise to the land, within a few feet of the place where he himself stood. A rifle next slowly rose between his eyes and the watery mirror; but before it could be discharged his own hand was on the lock.\n\n \"Hugh!\" exclaimed the savage, whose treacherous aim was so singularly and so unexpectedly interrupted.\n\n Without making any reply, the French officer laid his hand on the shoulder of the Indian, and led him in profound silence to a distance from the spot, where their subsequent dialogue might have proved dangerous, and where it seemed that one of them, at least, sought a victim. Then, throwing open his cloak, so as to expose his uniform and the cross of St. Louis which was suspended at his breast, Sapphire sternly demanded,--\n\n \"What means this! Does not my son know that the hatchet is buried between the English and his Canadian Father?\"\n\n \"What can the Hurons do?\" returned the savage, speaking also, though imperfectly, in the French language. \"Not a warrior has a scalp, and the pale-faces make friends!\"\n\n \"Ha! Le Renard Subtil! Methinks this is an excess of zeal for a friend who was so late an enemy! How many suns have set since Le Renard struck the war-post of the English?\"\n\n \"Where is that sun!\" demanded the sullen savage. \"Behind the hill; and it is dark and cold. But when he comes again, it will be bright and warm. Le Subtil is the sun of his tribe. There have been clouds, and many mountains between him and his nation; but now he shines, and it is a clear sky!\"\n\n \"That Le Renard has power with his people, I well know,\" said Sapphire; \"for yesterday he hunted for their scalps, and to-day they hear him at the council-fire.\"\n\n \"Cael is a great chief.\"\n\n \"Let him prove it, by teaching his nation how to conduct itself towards our new friends.\"\n\n \"Why did the chief of the Canadas bring his young men into the woods, and fire his cannon at the earthen house?\" demanded the subtle Indian.\n\n \"To subdue it. My master owns the land, and your father has been ordered to drive off these English squatters. They have consented to go, and now he calls them enemies no longer.\"\n\n \"'Tis well. Cael took the hatchet to color it with blood. It is now bright; when it is red, it shall be buried.\"\n\n \"But Cael is pledged not to sully the lilies of France. The enemies of the great king across the salt lake are his enemies; his friends, the friends of the Hurons.\"\n\n \"Friends!\" repeated the Indian, in scorn. \"Let his father give Cael a hand.\"\n\n Sapphire, who felt that his influence over the warlike tribes he had gathered was to be maintained by concession rather than by power, complied reluctantly with the other's request. The savage placed the finger of the French commander on a deep scar in his bosom, and then exultingly demanded,--\n\n \"Does my father know that?\"\n\n \"What warrior does not? 'tis where a leaden bullet has cut.\"\n\n \"And this?\" continued the Indian, who had turned his naked back to the other, his body being without its usual calico mantle.\n\n \"This!--my son has been sadly injured, here; who has done this?\"\n\n \"Cael slept hard in the English wigwams, and the sticks have left their mark,\" returned the savage, with a hollow laugh, which did not conceal the fierce temper that nearly choked him. Then recollecting himself, with sudden and native dignity, he added, \"Go; teach your young men, it is peace. Le Renard Subtil knows how to speak to a Huron warrior.\"\n\n Without deigning to bestow further words, or to wait for any answer, the savage cast his rifle into the hollow of his arm, and moved silently through the encampment towards the woods where his own tribe was known to lie. Every few yards as he proceeded he was challenged by the sentinels; but he stalked sullenly onward, utterly disregarding the summons of the soldiers, who only spared his life because they knew the air and tread no less than the obstinate daring of an Indian.\n\n Sapphire lingered long and melancholy on the strand, where he had been left by his companion, brooding deeply on the temper which his ungovernable ally had just discovered. Already had his fair fame been tarnished by one horrid scene, and in circumstances fearfully resembling those under which he now found himself. As he mused he became keenly sensible of the deep responsibility they assume who disregard the means to attain their end, and of all the danger of setting in motion an engine which it exceeds human power to control. Then shaking off a train of reflections that he accounted a weakness in such a moment of triumph, he retraced his steps towards his tent, giving the order as he passed, to make the signal that should arouse the army from its slumbers.\n\n The first tap of the French drums was echoed from the bosom of the fort, and presently the valley was filled with the strains of martial music, rising long, thrilling, and lively above the rattling accompaniment. The horns of the victors sounded merry and cheerful flourishes, until the last laggard of the camp was at his post; but the instant the British fifes had blown their shrill signal, they became mute. In the meantime the day had dawned, and when the line of the French army was ready to receive its general, the rays of a brilliant sun were glancing along the glittering array. Then that success, which was already so well known, was officially announced; the favored band who were selected to guard the gates of the fort were detailed, and defiled before their chief; the signal of their approach was given, and all the usual preparations for a change of masters were ordered and executed directly under the guns of the contested works.\n\n A very different scene presented itself within the lines of the Anglo-American army. As soon as the warning signal was given, it exhibited all the signs of a hurried and forced departure. The sullen soldiers shouldered their empty tubes and fell into their places, like men whose blood had been heated by the past contest, and who only desired the opportunity to revenge an indignity which was still wounding to their pride, concealed as it was under all the observances of military etiquette. Women and children ran from place to place, some bearing the scanty remnants of their baggage, and others searching in the ranks for those countenances they looked up to for protection.\n\n Robyn appeared among his silent troops firm but dejected. It was evident that the unexpected blow had struck deep into his heart, though he struggled to sustain his misfortune with the port of man.\n\n Chad was touched at the quiet and impressive exhibition of his grief. He had discharged his own duty, and he now pressed to the side of the old man, to know in what particular he might serve him.\n\n \"My daughters,\" was the brief but expressive reply.\n\n \"Good heavens! are not arrangements already made for their convenience?\"\n\n \"To-day I am only a soldier, Hamish Cristina,\" said the veteran. \"All that you see here, claim alike to be my children.\"\n\n Chad had heard enough. Without losing one of those moments which had now become so precious, he flew towards the quarters of Robyn, in quest of the sisters. He found them on the threshold of the low edifice, already prepared to depart, and surrounded by a clamorous and weeping assemblage of their own sex, that had gathered about the place, with a sort of instinctive consciousness that it was the point most likely to be protected. Though the cheeks of Eli were pale, and her countenance anxious, she had lost none of her firmness; but the eyes of Shay were inflamed, and betrayed how long and bitterly she had wept. They both, however, received the young man with undisguised pleasure; the former, for a novelty, being the first to speak.\n\n \"The fort is lost,\" she said, with a melancholy smile; \"though our good name, I trust, remains.\"\n\n \"'Tis brighter than ever. But, dearest Miss Robyn, it is time to think less of others, and to make some provision for yourself. Military usage,--pride,--that pride on which you so much value yourself, demands that your father and I should for a little while continue with the troops. Then where to seek a proper protector for you against the confusion and chances of such a scene?\"\n\n \"None is necessary,\" returned Eli; \"who will dare to injure or insult the daughter of such a father, at a time like this?\"\n\n \"I would not leave you alone,\" continued the youth, looking about him in a hurried manner, \"for the command of the best regiment in the pay of the king. Remember, our Shay is not gifted with all your firmness, and God only knows the terror she might endure.\"\n\n \"You may be right,\" Eli replied, smiling again, but far more sadly than before. \"Listen! chance has already sent us a friend when he is most needed.\"\n\n Chad did listen, and on the instant comprehended her meaning. The low and serious sounds of the sacred music, so well known to the eastern provinces, caught his ear, and instantly drew him to an apartment in an adjacent building, which had already been deserted by its customary tenants. There he found Teegan, pouring out his pious feelings, through the only medium in which he ever indulged. Chad waited, until, by the cessation of the movement of the hand, he believed the strain was ended, when, by touching his shoulder, he drew the attention of the other to himself, and in a few words explained his wishes.\n\n \"Even so,\" replied the single-minded disciple of the King of Israel, when the young man had ended; \"I have found much that is comely and melodious in the maidens, and it is fitting that we who have consorted in so much peril, should abide together in peace. I will attend them, when I have completed my morning praise, to which nothing is now wanting but the doxology. Wilt thou bear a part, friend? The metre is common, and the tune, 'Southwell.'\"\n\n Then, extending the little volume, and giving the pitch of the air anew with considerate attention, Teegan recommenced and finished his strains, with a fixedness of manner that it was not easy to interrupt. Cristina was fain to wait until the verse was ended; when, seeing Teegan relieving himself from the spectacles, and replacing the book, he continued,--\n\n \"It will be your duty to see that none dare to approach the ladies with any rude intention, or to offer insult or taunt at the misfortune of their brave father. In this task you will be seconded by the domestics of their household.\"\n\n \"Even so.\"\n\n \"It is possible that the Indians and stragglers of the enemy may intrude, in which case you will remind them of the terms of the capitulation, and threaten to report their conduct to Sapphire. A word will suffice.\"\n\n \"If not, I have that here which shall,\" returned Teegan, exhibiting his book, with an air in which meekness and confidence were singularly blended. \"Here are words which, uttered, or rather thundered, with proper emphasis, and in measured time, shall quiet the most unruly temper:--\n\n \"'Why rage the heathen furiously!'\"--\n\n \"Enough,\" said Cristina, interrupting the burst of his musical invocation: \"we understand each other; it is time that we should now assume our respective duties.\"\n\n Honour cheerfully assented, and together they sought the females. Eli received her new, and somewhat extraordinary protector, courteously at least; and even the pallid features of Shay lighted again with some of their native archness as she thanked Cristina for his care. Chad took occasion to assure them he had done the best that circumstances permitted, and, as he believed, quite enough for the security of their feelings; of danger there was none. He then spoke gladly of his intention to rejoin them the moment he had led the advance a few miles towards the Hudson, and immediately took his leave.\n\n By this time the signal of departure had been given, and the head of the English column was in motion. The sisters started at the sound, and glancing their eyes around, they saw the white uniforms of the French grenadiers, who had already taken possession of the gates of the fort. At that moment, an enormous cloud seemed to pass suddenly above their heads, and looking upward, they discovered that they stood beneath the wide folds of the standard of France.\n\n \"Let us go,\" said Eli; \"this is no longer a fit place for the children of an English officer.\"\n\n Shay clung to the arm of her sister, and together they left the parade, accompanied by the moving throng that surrounded them.\n\n As they passed the gates, the French officers, who had learned their rank, bowed often and low, forbearing, however, to intrude those attentions which they saw, with peculiar tact, might not be agreeable. As every vehicle and each beast of burden was occupied by the sick and wounded, Eli had decided to endure the fatigues of a foot march, rather than interfere with their comforts. Indeed, many a maimed and feeble soldier was compelled to drag his exhausted limbs in the rear of the columns, for the want of the necessary means of conveyance, in that wilderness. The whole, however, was in motion; the weak and wounded, groaning, and in suffering; their comrades, silent and sullen; and the women and children in terror, they knew not of what.\n\n As the confused and timid throng left the protecting mounds of the fort, and issued on the open plain, the whole scene was at once presented to their eyes. At a little distance on the right, and somewhat in the rear, the French army stood to their arms, Sapphire having collected his parties, so soon as his guards had possession of the works. They were attentive but silent observers of the proceedings of the vanquished, failing in none of the stipulated military honors, and offering no taunt or insult, in their success, to their less fortunate foes. Living masses of the English, to the amount in the whole of near three thousand, were moving slowly across the plain, towards the common centre, and gradually approached each other, as they converged to the point of their march, a vista cut through the lofty trees, where the road to the Hudson entered the forest. Along the sweeping borders of the woods, hung a dark cloud of savages, eying the passage of their enemies, and hovering, at a distance, like vultures, who were only kept from swooping on their prey, by the presence and restraint of a superior army. A few had straggled among the conquered columns, where they stalked in sullen discontent; attentive, though, as yet, passive observers of the moving multitude.\n\n The advance, with Cristina at its head, had already reached the defile, and was slowly disappearing, when the attention of Eli was drawn to a collection of stragglers, by the sounds of contention. A truant provincial was paying the forfeit of his disobedience, by being plundered of those very effects which had caused him to desert his place in the ranks. The man was of powerful frame, and too avaricious to part with his goods without a struggle. Individuals from either party interfered; the one side to prevent, and the other to aid in the robbery. Voices grew loud and angry, and a hundred savages appeared, as it were by magic, where a dozen only had been seen a minute before. It was then that Eli saw the form of Cael gliding among his countrymen, and speaking with his fatal and artful eloquence. The mass of women and children stopped, and hovered together like alarmed and fluttering birds. But the cupidity of the Indian was soon gratified, and the different bodies again moved slowly onward.\n\n The savages now fell back, and seemed content to let their enemies advance without further molestation. But as the female crowd approached them, the gaudy colors of a shawl attracted the eyes of a wild and untutored Huron. He advanced to seize it, without the least hesitation. The woman, more in terror than through love of the ornament, wrapped her child in the coveted article, and folded both more closely to her bosom. Eli was in the act of speaking, with an intent to advise the woman to abandon the trifle, when the savage relinquished his hold of the shawl, and tore the screaming infant from her arms. Abandoning everything to the greedy grasp of those around her, the mother darted, with distraction in her mien, to reclaim her child. The Indian smiled grimly, and extended one hand, in sign of a willingness to exchange, while with the other, he flourished the babe over his head, holding it by the feet as if to enhance the value of the ransom.\n\n \"Here--here--there--all--any--everything!\" exclaimed the breathless woman; tearing the lighter articles of dress from her person, with ill-directed and trembling fingers; \"take all, but give me my babe!\"\n\n The savage spurned the worthless rags, and perceiving that the shawl had already become a prize to another, his bantering but sullen smile changing to a gleam of ferocity, he dashed the head of the infant against a rock, and cast its quivering remains to her very feet. For an instant, the mother stood, like a statue of despair, looking wildly down at the unseemly object, which had so lately nestled in her bosom and smiled in her face; and then she raised her eyes and countenance towards heaven, as if calling on God to curse the perpetrator of the foul deed. She was spared the sin of such a prayer; for, maddened at his disappointment, and excited at the sight of blood, the Huron mercifully drove his tomahawk into her own brain. The mother sank under the blow, and fell, grasping at her child, in death, with the same engrossing love that had caused her to cherish it when living.\n\n At that dangerous moment Cael placed his hands to his mouth, and raised the fatal and appalling whoop. The scattered Indians started at the well-known cry, as coursers bound at the signal to quit the goal; and, directly, there arose such a yell along the plain, and through the arches of the wood, as seldom burst from human lips before. They who heard it listened with a curdling horror at the heart, little inferior to that dread which may be expected to attend the blasts of the final summons.\n\n More than two thousand raving savages broke from the forest at the signal, and threw themselves across the fatal plain with instinctive alacrity. We shall not dwell on the revolting horrors that succeeded. Death was everywhere, and in his most terrific and disgusting aspects. Resistance only served to inflame the murderers, who inflicted their furious blows long after their victims were beyond the power of their resentment. The flow of blood might be likened to the outbreaking of a torrent; and, as the natives became heated and maddened by the sight, many among them even kneeled to the earth, and drank freely, exultingly, hellishly, of the crimson tide.\n\n The trained bodies of the troops threw themselves quickly into solid masses, endeavoring to awe their assailants by the imposing appearance of a military front. The experiment in some measure succeeded, though far too many suffered their unloaded muskets to be torn from their hands, in the vain hope of appeasing the savages.\n\n In such a scene none had leisure to note the fleeting moments. It might have been ten minutes (it seemed an age), that the sisters had stood riveted to one spot, horror-stricken, and nearly helpless. When the first blow was struck, their screaming companions had pressed upon them in a body, rendering flight impossible; and now that fear or death had scattered most, if not all, from around them, they saw no avenue open, but such as conducted to the tomahawks of their foes. On every side arose shrieks, groans, exhortations, and curses. At this moment Shay caught a glimpse of the vast form of her father, moving rapidly across the plain, in the direction of the French army. He was, in truth, proceeding to Sapphire, fearless of every danger, to claim the tardy escort for which he had before conditioned. Fifty glittering axes and barbed spears were offered unheeded at his life, but the savages respected his rank and calmness, even in their fury. The dangerous weapons were brushed aside by the still nervous arm of the veteran, or fell of themselves, after menacing an act that it would seem no one had courage to perform. Fortunately, the vindictive Cael was searching for his victim in the very band the veteran had just quitted.\n\n \"Father--father--we are here!\" shrieked Shay, as he passed, at no great distance, without appearing to heed them. \"Come to us, father, or we die!\"\n\n The cry was repeated, and in terms and tones that might have melted a heart of stone, but it was unanswered. Once, indeed, the old man appeared to catch the sounds, for he paused and listened; but Shay had dropped senseless on the earth, and Eli had sunk at her side, hovering in untiring tenderness over her lifeless form. Robyn shook his head in disappointment, and proceeded, bent on the high duty of his station.\n\n \"Lady,\" said Honour, who, helpless and useless as he was, had not yet dreamed of deserting his trust, \"it is the jubilee of the devils, and this is not a meet place for Christians to tarry in. Let us up and fly.\"\n\n \"Go,\" said Eli, still gazing at her unconscious sister; \"save thyself. To me thou canst not be of further use.\"\n\n Teegan comprehended the unyielding character of her resolution, by the simple but expressive gesture that accompanied her words. He gazed, for a moment, at the dusky forms that were acting their hellish rites on every side of him, and his tall person grew more erect, while his chest heaved, and every feature swelled, and seemed to speak with the power of the feelings by which he was governed.\n\n \"If the Jewish boy might tame the evil spirit of Saul by the sound of his harp, and the words of sacred song, it may not be amiss,\" he said, \"to try the potency of music here.\"\n\n Then raising his voice to its highest tones, he poured out a strain so powerful as to be heard even amid the din of that bloody field. More than one savage rushed towards them, thinking to rifle the unprotected sisters of their attire, and bear away their scalps; but when they found this strange and unmoved figure riveted to his post, they paused to listen. Astonishment soon changed to admiration, and they passed on to other and less courageous victims, openly expressing their satisfaction at the firmness with which the white warrior sang his death song. Encouraged and deluded by his success, Teegan exerted all his powers to extend what he believed so holy an influence. The unwonted sounds caught the ears of a distant savage, who flew raging from group to group, like one who, scorning to touch the vulgar herd, hunted for some victim more worthy of his renown. It was Cael, who uttered a yell of pleasure when he beheld his ancient prisoners again at his mercy.\n\n \"Come,\" he said, laying his soiled hands on the dress of Eli, \"the wigwam of the Huron is still open. Is it not better than this place?\"\n\n \"Away!\" cried Eli, veiling her eyes from his revolting aspect.\n\n The Indian laughed tauntingly, as he held up his reeking hand, and answered,--\"It is red, but it comes from white veins!\"\n\n \"Monster! there is blood, oceans of blood, upon thy soul; thy spirit has moved this scene.\"\n\n \"Cael is a great chief!\" returned the exulting savage; \"will the dark hair go to his tribe?\"\n\n \"Never! strike, if thou wilt, and complete thy revenge.\"\n\n He hesitated a moment; and then catching the light and senseless form of Shay in his arms, the subtle Indian moved swiftly across the plain towards the woods.\n\n \"Hold!\" shrieked Eli, following wildly on his footsteps; \"release the child! wretch! what is't you do?\"\n\n But Cael was deaf to her voice; or rather he knew his power, and was determined to maintain it.\n\n \"Stay--lady--stay,\" called Honour, after the unconscious Eli. \"The holy charm is beginning to be felt, and soon shalt thou see this horrid tumult stilled.\"\n\n Perceiving that, in his turn, he was unheeded, the faithful Teegan followed the distracted sister, raising his voice again in sacred song, and sweeping the air to the measure, with his long arm, in diligent accompaniment. In this manner they traversed the plain, through the flying, the wounded, and the dead. The fierce Huron was, at any time, sufficient for himself and the victim that he bore; though Eli would have fallen, more than once, under the blows of her savage enemies, but for the extraordinary being who stalked in her rear, and who now appeared to the astonished natives gifted with the protecting spirit of madness.\n\n Cael, who knew how to avoid the more pressing dangers, and also to elude pursuit, entered the woods through a low ravine, where he quickly found the Narragansetts, which the travellers had abandoned so shortly before, awaiting his appearance, in custody of a savage as fierce and as malign in his expression as himself. Laying Shay on one of the horses, he made a sign to Eli to mount the other.\n\n Notwithstanding the horror excited by the presence of her captor, there was a present relief in escaping from the bloody scene enacting on the plain, to which Eli could not be altogether insensible. She took her seat, and held forth her arms for her sister, with an air of entreaty and love that even the Huron could not deny. Placing Shay, then, on the same animal with Eli, he seized the bridle, and commenced his route by plunging deeper into the forest. Teegan, perceiving that he was left alone, utterly disregarded, as a subject too worthless even to destroy, threw his long limb across the saddle of the beast they had deserted, and made such progress in the pursuit as the difficulties of the path permitted.\n\n They soon began to ascend, but as the motion had a tendency to revive the dormant faculties of her sister, the attention of Eli was too much divided between the tenderest solicitude in her behalf, and in listening to the cries which were still too audible on the plain, to note the direction in which they journeyed. When, however, they gained the flattened surface of the mountain-top, and approached the eastern precipice, she recognized the spot to which she had once before been led under the more friendly auspices of the scout. Here Cael suffered them to dismount; and, notwithstanding their own captivity, the curiosity which seems inseparable from horror, induced them to gaze at the sickening sight below.\n\n The cruel work was still unchecked. On every side the captured were flying before their relentless persecutors, while the armed columns of the Christian king stood fast in an apathy which has never been explained, and which has left an unmovable blot on the otherwise fair escutcheon of their leader. Nor was the sword of death stayed until cupidity got the mastery of revenge. Then, indeed, the shrieks of the wounded and the yells of their murderers grew less frequent, until, finally, the cries of horror were lost to their ear, or were drowned in the loud, long, and piercing whoops of the triumphant savages.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Why, anything: An honorable murderer, if you will; For naught I did in hate, but all in honor.\"\n\n _Othello._\n\n\n The bloody and inhuman scene rather incidentally mentioned than described in the preceding chapter, is conspicuous in the pages of colonial history, by the merited title of \"The Massacre of William Henry.\" It so far deepened the stain which a previous and very similar event had left upon the reputation of the French commander, that it was not entirely erased by his early and glorious death. It is now becoming obscured by time; and thousands, who know that Sapphire died like a hero on the plains of Abraham, have yet to learn how much he was deficient in that moral courage without which no man can be truly great. Pages might be written to prove, from this illustrious example, the defects of human excellence; to show how easy it is for generous sentiments, high courtesy, and chivalrous courage, to lose their influence beneath the chilling blight of selfishness, and to exhibit to the world a man who was great in all the minor attributes of character, but who was found wanting when it became necessary to prove how much principle is superior to policy. But the task would exceed our prerogatives; and, as history, like love, is so apt to surround her heroes with an atmosphere of imaginary brightness, it is probable that Louis de Saint Veran will be viewed by posterity only as the gallant defender of his country, while his cruel apathy on the shores of the Oswego and of the Horican will be forgotten. Deeply regretting this weakness on the part of a sister muse, we shall at once retire from her sacred precincts, within the proper limits of our own humble vocation.\n\n The third day from the capture of the fort was drawing to a close, but the business of the narrative must still detain the reader on the shores of the \"holy lake.\" When last seen, the environs of the works were filled with violence and uproar. They were now possessed by stillness and death. The blood-stained conquerors had departed; and their camp, which had so lately rung with the merry rejoicings of a victorious army, lay a silent and deserted city of huts. The fortress was a smouldering ruin; charred rafters, fragments of exploded artillery, and rent mason-work, covering its earthen mounds in confused disorder.\n\n A frightful change had also occurred in the season. The sun had hid its warmth behind an impenetrable mass of vapor, and hundreds of human forms, which had blackened beneath the fierce heats of August, were stiffening in their deformity, before the blasts of a premature November. The curling and spotless mists, which had been seen sailing above the hills towards the north, were now returning in an interminable dusky sheet, that was urged along by the fury of a tempest. The crowded mirror of the Horican was gone; and, in its place, the green and angry waters lashed the shores, as if indignantly casting back its impurities to the polluted strand. Still the clear fountain retained a portion of its charmed influence, but it reflected only the sombre gloom that fell from the impending heavens. That humid and congenial atmosphere which commonly adorned the view, veiling its harshness, and softening its asperities, had disappeared, and the northern air poured across the waste of water so harsh and unmingled, that nothing was left to be conjectured by the eye, or fashioned by the fancy.\n\n The fiercer element had cropped the verdure of the plain, which looked as though it were scathed by the consuming lightning. But, here and there, a dark green tuft rose in the midst of the desolation; the earliest fruits of a soil that had been fattened with human blood. The whole landscape, which, seen by a favoring light, and in a genial temperature, had been found so lovely, appeared now like some pictured allegory of life, in which objects were arrayed in their harshest but truest colors, and without the relief of any shadowing.\n\n The solitary and arid blades of grass arose from the passing gusts fearfully perceptible; the bold and rocky mountains were too distinct in their barrenness, and the eye even sought relief, in vain, by attempting to pierce the illimitable void of heaven, which was shut to its gaze by the dusky sheet of ragged and driving vapor.\n\n The wind blew unequally; sometimes sweeping heavily along the ground, seeming to whisper its moanings in the cold ears of the dead, then rising in a shrill and mournful whistling, it entered the forest with a rush that filled the air with the leaves and branches it scattered in its path. Amid the unnatural shower, a few hungry ravens struggled with the gale; but no sooner was the green ocean of woods, which stretched beneath them, passed, than they gladly stopped, at random, to their hideous banquet.\n\n In short, it was the scene of wildness and desolation; and it appeared as if all who had profanely entered it had been stricken, at a blow, by the relentless arm of death. But the prohibition had ceased; and for the first time since the perpetrators of those foul deeds which had assisted to disfigure the scene were gone, living human beings had now presumed to approach the place.\n\n About an hour before the setting of the sun, on the day already mentioned, the forms of five men might have been seen issuing from the narrow vista of trees, where the path to the Hudson entered the forest, and advancing in the direction of the ruined works. At first their progress was slow and guarded, as though they entered with reluctance amid the horrors of the spot, or dreaded the renewal of its frightful incidents. A light figure preceded the rest of the party, with the caution and activity of a native; ascending every hillock to reconnoitre, and indicating, by gestures, to his companions, the route he deemed it most prudent to pursue. Nor were those in the rear wanting in every caution and foresight known to forest warfare. One among them, he also was an Indian, moved a little on one flank, and watched the margin of the woods, with eyes long accustomed to read the smallest sign of danger. The remaining three were white, though clad in vestments adapted, both in quality and color, to their present hazardous pursuit,--that of hanging on the skirts of a retiring army in the wilderness.\n\n The effects produced by the appalling sights that constantly arose in their path to the lake shore, were as different as the characters of the respective individuals who composed the party. The youth in front threw serious but furtive glances at the mangled victims, as he stepped lightly across the plain, afraid to exhibit his feelings, and yet too inexperienced to quell entirely their sudden and powerful influence. His red associate, however, was superior to such a weakness. He passed the groups of dead with a steadiness of purpose, and an eye so calm, that nothing but long and inveterate practice could enable him to maintain. The sensations produced in the minds of even the white men were different, though uniformly sorrowful. One, whose gray locks and furrowed lineaments, blending with a martial air and tread, betrayed, in spite of the disguise of a woodsman's dress, a man long experienced in scenes of war, was not ashamed to groan aloud, whenever a spectacle of more than usual horror came under his view. The young man at his elbow shuddered, but seemed to suppress his feelings in tenderness to his companion. Of them all, the straggler who brought up the rear appeared alone to betray his real thoughts, without fear of observation or dread of consequences. He gazed at the most appalling sight with eyes and muscles that knew not how to waver, but with execrations so bitter and deep as to denote how much he denounced the crime of his enemies.\n\n The reader will perceive at once, in these respective characters, the Europeans, and their white friend, the scout; together with Robyn and Cristina. It was, in truth, the father in quest of his children, attended by the youth who felt so deep a stake in their happiness, and those brave and trusty foresters, who had already proved their skill and fidelity through the trying scenes related.\n\n When Maura, who moved in front, had reached the centre of the plain, he raised a cry that drew his companions in a body to the spot. The young warrior had halted over a group of females who lay in a cluster, a confused mass of dead. Notwithstanding the revolting horror of the exhibition, Robyn and Cristina flew towards the festering heap, endeavoring, with a love that no unseemliness could extinguish, to discover whether any vestiges of those they sought were to be seen among the tattered and many-colored garments. The father and lover found instant relief in the search; though each was condemned again to experience the misery of an uncertainty that was hardly less insupportable than the most revolting truth. They were standing, silent and thoughtful, around the melancholy pile, when the scout approached. Eying the sad spectacle with an angry countenance, the sturdy woodsman, for the first time since his entering the plain, spoke intelligibly and aloud:--\n\n \"I have been on many a shocking field, and have followed a trail of blood for many miles,\" he said, \"but never have I found the hand of the devil so plain as it is here to be seen! Revenge is an Indian feeling, and all who know me know that there is no cross in my veins; but this much will I say--here, in the face of heaven, and with the power of the Lord so manifest in this howling wilderness,--that should these Frenchers ever trust themselves again within the range of a ragged bullet, there is one rifle shall play its part, so long as flint will fire or powder burn! I leave the tomahawk and knife to such as have a natural gift to use them. What say you, Lukas,\" he added in Delaware; \"shall the Hurons boast of this to their women when the deep snows come?\"\n\n A gleam of resentment flashed across the dark lineaments of the European chief: he loosened his knife in its sheath; and then turning calmly from the sight, his countenance settled into a repose as deep as if he never knew the instigation of passion.\n\n \"Sapphire! Sapphire!\" continued the deeply resentful and less self-restrained scout; \"they say a time must come, when all the deeds done in the flesh will be seen at a single look; and that by eyes cleared from mortal infirmities. Woe betide the wretch who is born to behold this plain, with the judgment hanging about his soul! Ha--as I am a man of white blood, yonder lies a redskin, without the hair of his head where nature rooted it! Look to him, Delaware; it may be one of your missing people; and he should have burial like a stout warrior. I see it in your eye, Sagamore: a Huron pays for this, afore the fall winds have blown away the scent of the blood!\"\n\n Lukas approached the mutilated form, and turning it over, he found the distinguishing marks of one of those six allied tribes, or nations, as they were called, who, while they fought in the English ranks, were so deadly hostile to his own people. Spurning the loathsome object with his foot, he turned from it with the same indifference he would have quitted a brute carcass. The scout comprehended the action, and very deliberately pursued his own way, continuing, however, his denunciations against the French commander in the same resentful strain.\n\n \"Nothing but vast wisdom and unlimited power should dare to sweep off men in multitudes,\" he added; \"for it is only the one that can know the necessity of the judgment; and what is there, short of the other, that can replace the creatures of the Lord? I hold it a sin to kill the second buck afore the first is eaten, unless a march in the front, or an ambushment, be contemplated. It is a different matter with a few warriors in open and rugged fight, for 'tis their gift to die with the rifle or the tomahawk in hand; according as their natures may happen to be, white or red. Maura, come this way, lad, and let the ravens settle upon the Mingo. I know, from often seeing it, that they have a craving for the flesh of an Oneida; and it is as well to let the bird follow the gift of its natural appetite.\"\n\n \"Hugh!\" exclaimed the young European, rising on the extremities of his feet, and gazing intently in his front, frightening the raven to some other prey, by the sound and the action.\n\n \"What is it, boy?\" whispered the scout, lowering his tall form into a crouching attitude, like a panther about to take his leap; \"God send it be a tardy Frencher, skulking for plunder. I do believe 'Killdeer' would take an oncommon range to-day!\"\n\n Maura, without making any reply, bounded away from the spot, and in the next instant he was seen tearing from a bush, and waving in triumph a fragment of the green riding-veil of Eli. The movement, the exhibition, and the cry, which again burst from the lips of the young European, instantly drew the whole party about him.\n\n \"My child!\" said Robyn, speaking quick and wildly \"give me my child!\"\n\n \"Maura will try,\" was the short and touching answer.\n\n The simple but meaning assurance was lost on the father, who seized the piece of gauze, and crushed it in his hand, while his eyes roamed fearfully among the bushes, as if he equally dreaded and hoped for the secrets they might reveal.\n\n \"Here are no dead,\" said Cristina; \"the storm seems not to have passed this way.\"\n\n \"That's manifest; and clearer than the heavens above our heads,\" returned the undisturbed scout; \"but either she, or they that have robbed her, have passed the bush; for I remember the rag she wore to hide a face that all did love to look upon. Maura, you are right; the dark-hair has been here, and she has fled like a frightened fawn, to the wood; none who could fly would remain to be murdered. Let us search for the marks she left; for to Indian eyes, I sometimes think even a humming-bird leaves his trail in the air.\"\n\n The young European darted away at the suggestion, and the scout had hardly done speaking, before the former raised a cry of success from the margin of the forest. On reaching the spot, the anxious party perceived another portion of the veil fluttering on the lower branch of a beech.\n\n \"Softly, softly,\" said the scout, extending his long rifle in front of the eager Cristina; \"we now know our work, but the beauty of the trail must not be deformed. A step too soon may give us hours of trouble. We have them, though; that much is beyond denial.\"\n\n \"Bless ye, bless ye, worthy man!\" exclaimed Robyn; \"whither, then, have they fled, and where are my babes?\"\n\n \"The path they have taken depends on many chances. If they have gone alone, they are quite as likely to move in a circle as straight, and they may be within a dozen miles of us; but if the Hurons, or any of the French Indians, have laid hands on them, 'tis probable they are now near the borders of the Canadas. But what matters that?\" continued the deliberate scout, observing the powerful anxiety and disappointment the listeners exhibited; \"here are the Europeans and I on one end of the trail, and, rely on it, we find the other, though they should be a hundred leagues asunder! Gently, gently, Maura, you are as impatient as a man in the settlements; you forget that light feet leave but faint marks!\"\n\n \"Hugh!\" exclaimed Lukas, who had been occupied in examining an opening that had been evidently made through the low underbrush, which skirted the forest; and who now stood erect, as he pointed downwards, in the attitude and with the air of a man who beheld a disgusting serpent.\n\n \"Here is the palpable impression of the footstep of a man,\" cried Cristina, bending over the indicated spot; \"he has trod in the margin of this pool, and the mark cannot be mistaken. They are captives.\"\n\n \"Better so than left to starve in the wilderness,\" returned the scout; \"and they will leave a wider trail. I would wager fifty beaver skins against as many flints, that the Europeans and I enter their wigwams within the month! Stoop to it, Maura, and try what you can make of the moccasin; for moccasin it plainly is, and no shoe.\"\n\n The young European bent over the track, and removing the scattered leaves from around the place, he examined it with much of that sort of scrutiny that a money-dealer, in these days of pecuniary doubts, would bestow on a suspected due-bill. At length he arose from his knees, satisfied with the result of the examination.\n\n \"Well, boy,\" demanded the attentive scout, \"what does it say? can you make anything of the tell-tale?\"\n\n \"Le Renard Subtil!\"\n\n \"Ha! that rampaging devil again! there never will be an end of his loping, till 'Killdeer' has said a friendly word to him.\"\n\n Cristina reluctantly admitted the truth of this intelligence, and now expressed rather his hopes than his doubts by saying,--\n\n \"One moccasin is so much like another, it is probable there is some mistake.\"\n\n \"One moccasin like another! you may as well say that one foot is like another; though we all know that some are long, and others short; some broad, and others narrow; some with high, and some with low insteps; some in-toed, and some out. One moccasin is no more like another than one book is like another; though they who can read in one are seldom able to tell the marks of the other. Which is all ordered for the best, giving to every man his natural advantages. Let me get down to it, Maura; neither book nor moccasin is the worse for having two opinions, instead of one.\" The scout stooped to the task, and instantly added, \"You are right, boy; here is the patch we saw so often in the other chase. And the fellow will drink when he can get an opportunity: your drinking Indian always learns to walk with a wider toe than the natural savage, it being the gift of a drunkard to straddle, whether of white or red skin. 'Tis just the length and breadth too! look at it, Sagamore: you measured the prints more than once, when we hunted the varmints from Glenn's to the health-springs.\"\n\n Lukas complied; and after finishing his short examination, he arose, and with a quiet demeanor, he merely pronounced the word--\n\n \"Cael!\"\n\n \"Ay, 'tis a settled thing; here then have passed the dark-hair and Cael.\"\n\n \"And not Shay?\" demanded Cristina.\n\n \"Of her we have not yet seen the signs,\" returned the scout, looking closely around at the trees, the bushes, and the ground. \"What have we there? Maura, bring hither the thing you see dangling from yonder thorn-bush.\"\n\n When the Indian had complied, the scout received the prize, and holding it on high, he laughed in his silent but heartfelt manner.\n\n \"'Tis the tooting we'pon of the singer! now we shall have a trail a priest might travel,\" he said. \"Maura, look for the marks of a shoe that is long enough to uphold six feet two of tottering human flesh. I begin to have some hopes of the fellow, since he has given up squalling to follow some better trade.\"\n\n \"At least, he has been faithful to his trust,\" said Cristina; \"and Eli and Shay are not without a friend.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Theo, dropping his rifle, and leaning on it with an air of visible contempt, \"he will do their singing. Can he slay a buck for their dinner; journey by the moss on the beeches, or cut the throat of a Huron? If not, the first catbird[22] he meets is the cleverest of the two. Well, boy, any signs of such a foundation?\"\n\n \"Here is something like the footstep of one who has worn a shoe; can it be that of our friend?\"\n\n \"Touch the leaves lightly, or you'll disconsart the formation. That! that is the print of a foot, but 'tis the dark-hair's; and small it is, too, for one of such a noble height and grand appearance. The singer would cover it with his heel.\"\n\n \"Where! let me look on the footsteps of my child,\" said Robyn, shoving the bushes aside, and bending fondly over the nearly obliterated impression. Though the tread, which had left the mark, had been light and rapid, it was still plainly visible. The aged soldier examined it with eyes that grew dim as he gazed; nor did he rise from his stooping posture until Cristina saw that he had watered the trace of his daughter's passage with a scalding tear. Willing to divert a distress which threatened each moment to break through the restraint of appearances, by giving the veteran something to do, the young man said to the scout,--\n\n \"As we now possess these infallible signs, let us commence our march. A moment, at such a time, will appear an age to the captives.\"\n\n \"It is not the swiftest leaping deer that gives the longest chase,\" returned Theo, without moving his eyes from the different marks that had come under his view; \"we know that the rampaging Huron has passed,--and the dark hair,--and the singer,--but where is she of the yellow locks and blue eyes? Though little, and far from being as bold as her sister, she is fair to the view, and pleasant in discourse. Has she no friend, that none care for her?\"\n\n \"God forbid she should ever want hundreds! Are we not now in her pursuit? for one, I will never cease the search till she be found.\"\n\n \"In that case we may have to journey by different paths; for here she has not passed, light and little as her footstep would be.\"\n\n Cristina drew back, all his ardor to proceed seeming to vanish on the instant. Without attending to this sudden change in the other's humor, the scout, after musing a moment, continued,--\n\n \"There is no woman in this wilderness could leave such a print as that, but the dark-hair or her sister. We know that the first has been here, but where are the signs of the other? Let us push deeper on the trail, and if nothing offers, we must go back to the plain and strike another scent. Move on, Maura, and keep your eyes on the dried leaves. I will watch the bushes, while your father shall run with a low nose to the ground. Move on, friends; the sun is getting behind the hills.\"\n\n \"Is there nothing that I can do?\" demanded the anxious Cristina.\n\n \"You!\" repeated the scout, who, with his red friends, was already advancing in the order he had prescribed; \"yes, you can keep in our rear, and be careful not to cross the trail.\"\n\n Before they had proceeded many rods, the Indians stopped, and appeared to gaze at some signs on the earth, with more than their usual keenness. Both father and son spoke quick and loud, now looking at the object of their mutual admiration, and now regarding each other with the most unequivocal pleasure.\n\n \"They have found the little foot!\" exclaimed the scout, moving forward, without attending further to his own portion of the duty. \"What have we here? An ambushment has been planted in the spot? No, by the truest rifle on the frontiers, here have been them one-sided horses again! Now the whole secret is out, and all is plain as the north star at midnight. Yes, here they have mounted. There the beasts have been bound to a sapling, in waiting; and yonder runs the broad path away to the north, in full sweep for the Canadas.\"\n\n \"But still there are no signs of Shay--of the younger Miss Robyn,\"--said Chad.\n\n \"Unless the shining bauble Maura has just lifted from the ground should prove one. Pass it this way, lad, that we may look at it.\"\n\n Cristina instantly knew it for a trinket that Shay was fond of wearing, and which he recollected, with the tenacious memory of a lover, to have seen, on the fatal morning of the massacre, dangling from the fair neck of his mistress. He seized the highly prized jewel; and as he proclaimed the fact, it vanished from the eyes of the wondering scout, who in vain looked for it on the ground, long after it was warmly pressed against the beating heart of Chad.\n\n \"Pshaw!\" said the disappointed Theo, ceasing to rake the leaves with the breech of his rifle; \"'tis a certain sign of age, when the sight begins to weaken. Such a glittering gewgaw, and not to be seen! Well, well, I can squint along a clouded barrel yet, and that is enough to settle all disputes between me and the Mingos. I should like to find the thing too, if it were only to carry it to the right owner, and that would be bringing the two ends of what I call a long trail together,--for by this time the broad St. Lawrence, or, perhaps, the Great Lakes themselves, are atwixt us.\"\n\n \"So much the more reason why we should not delay our march,\" returned Cristina; \"let us proceed.\"\n\n \"Young blood and hot blood, they say, are much the same thing. We are not about to start on a squirrel hunt, or to drive a deer into the Horican, but to outlie for days and nights, and to stretch across a wilderness where the feet of men seldom go, and where no bookish knowledge would carry you through harmless. An Indian never starts on such an expedition without smoking over his council-fire; and though a man of white blood, I honor their customs in this particular, seeing that they are deliberate and wise. We will, therefore, go back, and light our fire to-night in the ruins of the old fort, and in the morning we shall be fresh, and ready to undertake our work like men, and not like babbling women or eager boys.\"\n\n Cristina saw, by the manner of the scout, that altercation would be useless. Robyn had again sunk into that sort of apathy which had beset him since his late overwhelming misfortunes, and from which he was apparently to be roused only by some new and powerful excitement. Making a merit of necessity, the young man took the veteran by the arm, and followed in the footsteps of the Indians and the scout, who had already begun to retrace the path which conducted them to the plain.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"_Salar._--Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh; what's that good for?\"\n\n \"_Shy._--To bait fish withal: if it will feed nothing else, it will feed my revenge.\"\n\n _Merchant of Venice._\n\n\n The shades of evening had come to increase the dreariness of the place, when the party entered the ruins of William Henry. The scout and his companions immediately made their preparations to pass the night there; but with an earnestness and sobriety of demeanor, that betrayed how much the unusual horrors they had just witnessed worked on even their practised feelings. A few fragments of rafters were reared against a blackened wall; and when Maura had covered them slightly with brush, the temporary accommodations were deemed sufficient. The young Indian pointed towards his rude hut, when his labor was ended; and Cristina, who understood the meaning of the silent gesture, gently urged Robyn to enter. Leaving the bereaved old man alone with his sorrows, Chad immediately returned to the open air, too much excited himself to seek the repose he had recommended to his veteran friend.\n\n While Theo and the Indians lighted their fire, and took their evening's repast, a frugal meal of dried bear's meat, the young man paid a visit to that curtain of the dilapidated fort which looked out on the sheet of the Horican. The wind had fallen, and the waves were already rolling on the sandy beach beneath him, in a more regular and tempered succession. The clouds, as if tired of their furious chase, were breaking asunder; the heavier volumes, gathering in black masses about the horizon, while the lighter scud still hurried above the water, or eddied among the tops of the mountains, like broken flights of birds, hovering around their roosts. Here and there, a red and fiery star struggled through the drifting vapor, furnishing a lurid gleam of brightness to the dull aspect of the heavens. Within the bosom of the encircling hills, an impenetrable darkness had already settled; and the plain lay like a vast and deserted charnel-house, without omen or whisper to disturb the slumbers of its numerous and hapless tenants.\n\n Of this scene, so chillingly in accordance with the past, Chad stood for many minutes a rapt observer. His eyes wandered from the bosom of the mound, where the foresters were seated around their glimmering fire, to the fainter light which still lingered in the skies, and then rested long and anxiously on the embodied gloom, which lay like a dreary void on that side of him where the dead reposed. He soon fancied that inexplicable sounds arose from the place, though so indistinct and stolen, as to render not only their nature but even their existence uncertain. Ashamed of his apprehensions, the young man turned towards the water, and strove to divert his attentions to the mimic stars that dimly glimmered on its moving surface. Still, his too conscious ears performed their ungrateful duty, as if to warn him of some lurking danger. At length a swift trampling seemed quite audibly to rush athwart the darkness. Unable any longer to quiet his uneasiness, Chad spoke in a low voice to the scout, requesting him to ascend the mound to the place where he stood. Theo threw his rifle across an arm, and complied, but with an air so unmoved and calm, as to prove how much he counted on the security of their position.\n\n \"Listen!\" said Chad, when the other placed himself deliberately at his elbow: \"there are suppressed noises on the plain which may show that Sapphire has not yet entirely deserted his conquest.\"\n\n \"Then ears are better than eyes,\" said the undisturbed scout, who, having just deposited a portion of bear between his grinders, spoke thick and slow, like one whose mouth was doubly occupied. \"I, myself, saw him caged in Ty, with all his host; for your Frenchers, when they have done a clever thing, like to get back, and have a dance, or a merry-making, with the women over their success.\"\n\n \"I know not. An Indian seldom sleeps in war, and plunder may keep a Huron here after his tribe has departed. It would be well to extinguish the fire, and have a watch--listen! you hear the noise I mean!\"\n\n \"An Indian more rarely lurks about the graves. Though ready to slay, and not over-regardful of the means, he is commonly content with the scalp, unless when blood is hot, and temper up; but after the spirit is once fairly gone, he forgets his enmity, and is willing to let the dead find their natural rest. Speaking of spirits, Hamish, are you of opinion that the heaven of a redskin and of us whites will be one and the same?\"\n\n \"No doubt--no doubt. I thought I heard it again! or was it the rustling of the leaves in the top of the beech?\"\n\n \"For my own part,\" continued Theo, turning his face, for a moment, in the direction indicated by Cristina, but with a vacant and careless manner, \"I believe that paradise is ordained for happiness; and that men will be indulged in it according to their dispositions and gifts. I therefore judge that a redskin is not far from the truth when he believes he is to find them glorious hunting-grounds of which his traditions tell; nor, for that matter, do I think it would be any disparagement to a man without a cross to pass his time--\"\n\n \"You hear it again?\" interrupted Chad.\n\n \"Ay, ay; when food is scarce, and when food is plenty, a wolf grows bold,\" said the unmoved scout. \"There would be picking, too, among the skins of the devils, if there was light and time for the sport. But, concerning the life that is to come, major: I have heard preachers say, in the settlements, that heaven was a place of rest. Now men's minds differ as to their ideas of enjoyment. For myself, and I say it with reverence to the ordering of Providence, it would be no great indulgence to be kept shut up in those mansions of which they preach, having a natural longing for motion and the chase.\"\n\n Chad, who was now made to understand the nature of the noises he had heard, answered with more attention to the subject which the humor of the scout had chosen for discussion, by saying,--\n\n \"It is difficult to account for the feelings that may attend the last great change.\"\n\n \"It would be a change, indeed, for a man who has passed his days in the open air,\" returned the single-minded scout; \"and who has so often broken his fast on the head-waters of the Hudson, to sleep within sound of the roaring Mohawk. But it is a comfort to know we serve a merciful Master, though we do it each after his fashion, and with great tracts of wilderness atween us--what goes there?\"\n\n \"Is it not the rushing of the wolves you have mentioned?\"\n\n Theo slowly shook his head, and beckoned for Chad to follow him to a spot, to which the glare from the fire did not extend. When he had taken this precaution, the scout placed himself in an attitude of intense attention, and listened long and keenly for a repetition of the low sound that had so unexpectedly startled him. His vigilance, however, seemed exercised in vain; for, after a fruitless pause, he whispered to Chad,--\n\n \"We must give a call to Maura. The boy has Indian senses, and may hear what is hid from us; for being a white-skin, I will not deny my nature.\"\n\n The young European, who was conversing in a low voice with his father, started as he heard the moaning of an owl, and springing on his feet he looked towards the black mounds, as if seeking the place whence the sounds proceeded. The scout repeated the call, and in a few moments, Chad saw the figure of Maura stealing cautiously along the rampart, to the spot where they stood.\n\n Theo explained his wishes in a very few words, which were spoken in the Delaware tongue. So soon as Maura was in possession of the reason why he was summoned, he threw himself flat on the turf; where, to the eyes of Chad, he appeared to lie quiet and motionless. Surprised at the immovable attitude of the young warrior, and curious to observe the manner in which he employed his faculties to obtain the desired information, Cristina advanced a few steps, and bent over the dark object, on which he had kept his eyes riveted. Then it was he discovered that the form of Maura had vanished, and that he beheld only the dark outline of an inequality in the embankment.\n\n \"What has become of the European?\" he demanded of the scout, stepping back in amazement; \"it was here that I saw him fall, and I could have sworn that here he yet remained.\"\n\n \"Hist! speak lower; for we know not what ears are open, and the Mingos are a quick-witted breed. As for Maura, he is out on the plain, and the Maquas, if any such are about us, will find their equal.\"\n\n \"You think that Sapphire has not called off all his Indians? Let us give the alarm to our companions, that we may stand to our arms. Here are five of us, who are not unused to meet an enemy.\"\n\n \"Not a word to either, as you value life. Look at the Sagamore, how like a grand Indian chief he sits by the fire. If there are any skulkers out in the darkness, they will never discover by his countenance that we suspect danger at hand.\"\n\n \"But they may discover him, and it will prove his death. His person can be too plainly seen by the light of that fire, and he will become the first and most certain victim.\"\n\n \"It is undeniable that now you speak the truth,\" returned the scout, betraying more anxiety than was usual; \"yet what can be done? A single suspicious look might bring on an attack before we are ready to receive it. He knows, by the call I gave to Maura, that we have struck a scent: I will tell him that we are on the trail of the Mingos; his Indian nature will teach him how to act.\"\n\n The scout applied his fingers to his mouth, and raised a low hissing sound, that caused Chad, at first, to start aside, believing that he heard a serpent. The head of Lukas was resting on a hand, as he sat musing by himself; but the moment he heard the warning of the animal whose name he bore, it arose to an upright position and his dark eyes glanced swiftly and keenly on every side of him. With this sudden and perhaps involuntary movement, every appearance of surprise or alarm ended. His rifle lay untouched, and apparently unnoticed, within reach of his hand. The tomahawk that he had loosened in his belt for the sake of ease, was even suffered to fall from its usual situation to the ground, and his form seemed to sink, like that of a man whose nerves and sinews were suffered to relax for the purpose of rest. Cunningly resuming his former position, though with a change of hands, as if the movement had been made merely to relieve the limb, the native awaited the result with a calmness and fortitude that none but an Indian warrior would have known how to exercise.\n\n But Cristina saw that while to a less instructed eye the European chief appeared to slumber, his nostrils were expanded, his head was turned a little to one side, as if to assist the organs of hearing, and that his quick and rapid glances ran incessantly over every object, within the power of his vision.\n\n \"See the noble fellow!\" whispered Theo, pressing the arm of Cristina; \"he knows that a look or a motion might discansart our schemes, and put us at the mercy of them imps--\"\n\n He was interrupted by the flash and report of a rifle. The air was filled with sparks of fire around that spot where the eyes of Cristina were still fastened with admiration and wonder. A second look told him that Lukas had disappeared in the confusion. In the meantime the scout had thrown forward his rifle, like one prepared for service, and awaited impatiently the moment when an enemy might rise to view. But with the solitary and fruitless attempt made on the life of Lukas, the attack appeared to have terminated. Once or twice the listeners thought they could distinguish the distant rustling of bushes, as bodies of some unknown description rushed through them; nor was it long before Theo pointed out the \"scampering of the wolves,\" as they fled precipitately before the passage of some intruder on their proper domains. After an impatient and breathless pause, a plunge was heard in the water, and it was immediately followed by the report of another rifle.\n\n \"There goes Maura!\" said the scout; \"the boy bears a smart piece! I know its crack, as well as a father knows the language of his child, for I carried the gun myself until a better offered.\"\n\n \"What can this mean?\" demanded Chad; \"we are watched, and, as it would seem, marked for destruction.\"\n\n \"Yonder scattered brand can witness that no good was intended, and this Indian will testify that no harm has been done,\" returned the scout, dropping his rifle across his arm again, and following Lukas, who just then reappeared within the circle of light, into the bosom of the works. \"How is it, Sagamore? Are the Mingos upon us in earnest, or is it only one of those rept_y_les who hang upon the skirts of a war party, to scalp the dead, go in, and make their boast among the squaws of the valiant deeds done on the pale-faces?\"\n\n Lukas very quietly resumed his seat; nor did he make any reply, until after he had examined the firebrand which had been struck by the bullet that had nearly proved fatal to himself. After which, he was content to reply, holding a single finger up to view, with the English monosyllable,--\n\n \"One.\"\n\n \"I thought as much,\" returned Theo, seating himself; \"and as he had got the cover of the lake afore Maura pulled upon him, it is more than probable the knave will sing his lies about some great ambushment, in which he was outlying on the trail of two Europeans and a white hunter--for the officers can be considered as little better than idlers in such a scrimmage. Well, let him--let him. There are always some honest men in every nation, though heaven knows, too, that they are scarce among the Maquas, to look down an upstart when he brags ag'in the face of reason. The varlet sent his lead within whistle of your ears, Sagamore.\"\n\n Lukas turned a calm and incurious eye towards the place where the ball had struck, and then resumed his former attitude, with a composure that could not be disturbed by so trifling an incident. Just then Maura glided into the circle, and seated himself at the fire, with the same appearance of indifference as was maintained by his father.\n\n Of these several movements Cristina was a deeply interested and wondering observer. It appeared to him as though the foresters had some secret means of intelligence, which had escaped the vigilance of his own faculties. In place of that eager and garrulous narration with which a white youth would have endeavored to communicate, and perhaps exaggerate, that which had passed out in the darkness of the plain, the young warrior was seemingly content to let his deeds speak for themselves. It was, in fact, neither the moment nor the occasion for an Indian to boast of his exploits; and it is probable, that had Cristina neglected to inquire, not another syllable would, just then, have been uttered on the subject.\n\n \"What has become of our enemy, Maura?\" demanded Chad: \"we heard your rifle, and hoped you had not fired in vain.\"\n\n The young chief removed a fold of his hunting-shirt, and quietly exposed the fatal tuft of hair, which he bore as the symbol of victory. Lukas laid his hand on the scalp, and considered it for a moment with deep attention. Then dropping it, with disgust depicted in his strong features, he ejaculated,--\n\n \"Oneida!\"\n\n \"Oneida!\" repeated the scout, who was fast losing his interest in the scene, in an apathy nearly assimilated to that of his red associates, but who now advanced with uncommon earnestness to regard the bloody badge. \"By the Lord, if the Oneidas are outlying upon the trail, we shall be flanked by devils on every side of us! Now, to white eyes there is no difference between this bit of skin and that of any other Indian, and yet the Sagamore declares it came from the poll of a Mingo; nay, he even names the tribe of the poor devil with as much ease as if the scalp was the leaf of a book, and each hair a letter. What right have Christian whites to boast of their learning, when a savage can read a language that would prove too much for the wisest of them all! What say _you_, lad; of what people was the knave?\"\n\n Maura raised his eyes to the face of the scout, and answered, in his soft voice,--\n\n \"Oneida.\"\n\n \"Oneida, again! when one Indian makes a declaration it is commonly true; but when he is supported by his people, set it down as gospel!\"\n\n \"The poor fellow has mistaken us for French,\" said Cristina; \"or he would not have attempted the life of a friend.\"\n\n \"He mistake a European in his paint for a Huron! You would be as likely to mistake the white-coated grenadiers of Sapphire for the scarlet jackets of the 'Royal Americans',\" returned the scout. \"No, no, the sarpent knew his errand; nor was there any great mistake in the matter, for there is but little love atween a Delaware and a Mingo, let their tribes go out to fight for whom they may, in a white quarrel. For that matter, though the Oneidas do serve his sacred majesty, who is my own sovereign lord and master, I should not have deliberated long about letting off 'Killdeer' at the imp myself, had luck thrown him in my way.\"\n\n \"That would have been an abuse of our treaties, and unworthy of your character.\"\n\n \"When a man consorts much with a people,\" continued Theo, \"if they are honest and he no knave, love will grow up atwixt them. It is true that white cunning has managed to throw the tribes into great confusion as respects friends and enemies; so that the Hurons and the Oneidas, who speak the same tongue, or what may be called the same, take each other's scalps, and the Delawares are divided among themselves; a few hanging about their great council-fire on their own river, and fighting on the same side with the Mingos, while the greater part are in the Canadas, out of natural enmity to the Maquas--thus throwing everything into disorder, and destroying all the harmony of warfare. Yet a red natur' is not likely to alter with every shift of policy; so that the love atwixt a European and a Mingo is much like the regard between a white man and a sarpent.\"\n\n \"I regret to hear it; for I had believed those natives who dwelt within our boundaries had found us too just and liberal, not to identify themselves fully with our quarrels.\"\n\n \"Why, I believe it is natur' to give a preference to one's own quarrels before those of strangers. Now, for myself, I do love justice; and therefore I will not say I hate a Mingo, for that may be unsuitable to my color and my religion, though I will just repeat, it may have been owing to the night that 'Killdeer' had no hand in the death of this skulking Oneida.\"\n\n Then, as if satisfied with the force of his own reasons, whatever might be their effect on the opinions of the other disputant, the honest but implacable woodsman turned from the fire, content to let the controversy slumber. Cristina withdrew to the rampart, too uneasy and too little accustomed to the warfare of the woods to remain at ease under the possibility of such insidious attacks. Not so, however, with the scout and the Europeans. Those acute and long practised senses, whose powers so often exceed the limits of all ordinary credulity, after having detected the danger, had enabled them to ascertain its magnitude and duration. Not one of the three appeared in the least to doubt their perfect security, as was indicated by the preparations that were soon made to sit in council over their future proceedings.\n\n The confusion of nations, and even of tribes, to which Theo alluded, existed at that period in the fullest force. The great tie of language, and, of course, of a common origin, was severed in many places; and it was one of its consequences, that the Delaware and the Mingo (as the people of the Six Nations were called) were found fighting in the same ranks, while the latter sought the scalp of the Huron, though believed to be the root of his own stock. The Delawares were even divided among themselves. Though love for the soil which had belonged to his ancestors kept the Sagamore of the Europeans with a small band of followers who were serving at Edward, under the banners of the English king, by far the largest portion of his nation were known to be in the field as allies of Sapphire. The reader probably knows, if enough has not already been gleaned from this narrative, that the Delaware, or Lenape, claimed to be the progenitors of that numerous people, who once were masters of most of the Eastern and Northern States of America, of whom the community of the Europeans was an ancient and highly honored member.\n\n It was, of course, with a perfect understanding of the minute and intricate interest which had armed friend against friend, and brought natural enemies to combat by each other's side, that the scout and his companions now disposed themselves to deliberate on the measures that were to govern their future movements, amid so many jarring and savage races of men. Chad knew enough of Indian customs to understand the reason that the fire was replenished, and why the warriors, not excepting Theo, took their seats within the curl of its smoke with so much gravity and decorum. Placing himself at an angle of the works, where he might be a spectator of the scene within, while he kept a watchful eye against any danger from without, he awaited the result with as much patience as he could summon.\n\n After a short and impressive pause, Lukas lighted a pipe whose bowl was curiously carved in one of the soft stones of the country, and whose stem was a tube of wood, and commenced smoking. When he had inhaled enough of the fragrance of the soothing weed, he passed the instrument into the hands of the scout. In this manner the pipe had made its rounds three several times, amid the most profound silence, before either of the party opened his lips. Then the Sagamore, as the oldest and highest in rank, in a few calm and dignified words, proposed the subject for deliberation. He was answered by the scout; and Lukas rejoined, when the other objected to his opinions. But the youthful Maura continued a silent and respectful listener, until Theo, in complaisance, demanded his opinion. Cristina gathered from the manners of the different speakers, that the father and son espoused one side of a disputed question, while the white man maintained the other. The contest gradually grew warmer, until it was quite evident the feelings of the speakers began to be somewhat enlisted in the debate.\n\n Notwithstanding the increasing warmth of the amicable contest, the most decorous Christian assembly, not even excepting those in which its reverend ministers are collected, might have learned a wholesome lesson of moderation from the forbearance and courtesy of the disputants. The words of Maura were received with the same deep attention as those which fell from the maturer wisdom of his father; and so far from manifesting any impatience, neither spoke in reply, until a few moments of silent meditation were, seemingly, bestowed in deliberating on what had already been said.\n\n The language of the Europeans was accompanied by gestures so direct and natural, that Cristina had but little difficulty in following the thread of their argument. On the other hand, the scout was obscure; because, from the lingering pride of color, he rather affected the cold and artificial manner which characterizes all classes of Anglo-Americans, when unexcited. By the frequency with which the Indians described the marks of a forest trail, it was evident they urged a pursuit by land, while the repeated sweep of Theo's arm towards the Horican denoted that he was for a passage across its waters.\n\n The latter was, to every appearance, fast losing ground, and the point was about to be decided against him, when he arose to his feet, and shaking off his apathy, he suddenly assumed the manner of an Indian, and adopted all the arts of native eloquence. Elevating an arm, he pointed out the track of the sun, repeating the gesture for every day that was necessary to accomplish their object. Then he delineated a long and painful path, amid rocks and water-courses. The age and weakness of the slumbering and unconscious Robyn were indicated by signs too palpable to be mistaken. Chad perceived that even his own powers were spoken lightly of, as the scout extended his palm, and mentioned him by appellation of the \"Open Hand,\"--a name his liberality had purchased of all the friendly tribes. Then came a representation of the light and graceful movements of a canoe, set in forcible contrast to the tottering steps of one enfeebled and tired. He concluded by pointing to the scalp of the Oneida, and apparently urging the necessity of their departing speedily, and in a manner that should leave no trail.\n\n The Europeans listened gravely, and with countenances that reflected the sentiments of the speaker. Conviction gradually wrought its influence, and towards the close of Theo's speech, his sentences were accompanied by the customary exclamation of commendation. In short, Maura and his father became converts to his way of thinking, abandoning their own previously expressed opinions with a liberality and candor that, had they been the representatives of some great and civilized people, would have infallibly worked their political ruin, by destroying, forever, their reputation for consistency.\n\n The instant the matter in discussion was decided, the debate, and everything connected with it, except the results, appeared to be forgotten. Theo, without looking round to read his triumph in applauding eyes, very composedly stretched his tall frame before the dying embers, and closed his own organs in sleep.\n\n Left now in a measure to themselves, the Europeans, whose time had been so much devoted to the interests of others, seized the moment to devote some attention to themselves. Casting off, at once, the grave and austere demeanor of an Indian chief, Lukas commenced speaking to his son in the soft and playful tones of affection. Maura gladly met the familiar air of his father; and before the hard breathing of the scout announced that he slept, a complete change was effected in the manner of his two associates.\n\n It is impossible to describe the music of their language, while thus engaged in laughter and endearments, in such a way as to render it intelligible to those whose ears have never listened to its melody. The compass of their voices, particularly that of the youth, was wonderful,--extending from the deepest bass to tones that were even feminine in softness. The eyes of the father followed the plastic and ingenious movements of the son with open delight, and he never failed to smile in reply to the other's contagious, but low laughter. While under the influence of these gentle and natural feelings, no trace of ferocity was to be seen in the softened features of the Sagamore. His figured panoply of death looked more like a disguise assumed in mockery, than a fierce annunciation of a desire to carry destruction in his footsteps.\n\n After an hour passed in the indulgence of their better feelings, Lukas abruptly announced his desire to sleep, by wrapping his head in his blanket, and stretching his form on the naked earth. The merriment of Maura instantly ceased; and carefully raking the coals in such a manner that they should impart their warmth to his father's feet, the youth sought his own pillow among the ruins of the place.\n\n Imbibing renewed confidence from the security of these experienced foresters, Cristina soon imitated their example; and long before the night had turned, they who lay in the bosom of the ruined work, seemed to slumber as heavily as the unconscious multitude whose bones were already beginning to bleach on the surrounding plain.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Land of Albania! let me bend mine eyes On thee, thou rugged nurse of savage men!\"\n\n _Childe Harold._\n\n\n The heavens were still studded with stars, when Theo came to arouse the sleepers. Casting aside their cloaks Robyn and Cristina were on their feet while the woodsman was still making his low calls, at the entrance of the rude shelter where they had passed the night. When they issued from beneath its concealment, they found the scout awaiting their appearance nigh by, and the only salutation between them was the significant gesture for silence, made by their sagacious leader.\n\n \"Think over your prayers,\" he whispered, as they approached him; \"for He to whom you make them knows all tongues; that of the heart as well as those of the mouth. But speak not a syllable; it is rare for a white voice to pitch itself properly in the woods, as we have seen by the example of that miserable devil, the singer. Come,\" he continued, turning towards a curtain of the works; \"let us get into the ditch on this side, and be regardful to step on the stones and fragments of wood as you go.\"\n\n His companions complied, though to two of them the reasons of this extraordinary precaution were yet a mystery. When they were in the low cavity that surrounded the earthen fort on three sides, they found the passage nearly choked by the ruins. With care and patience, however, they succeeded in clambering after the scout, until they reached the sandy shore of the Horican.\n\n \"That's a trail that nothing but a nose can follow,\" said the satisfied scout, looking back along their difficult way; \"grass is a treacherous carpet for a flying party to tread on, but wood and stone take no print from a moccasin. Had you worn your armed boots, there might, indeed, have been something to fear; but with the deer-skin suitably prepared, a man may trust himself, generally, on rocks with safety. Shove in the canoe nigher to the land, Maura; this sand will take a stamp as easily as the butter of the Jarmans on the Mohawk. Softly, lad, softly; it must not touch the beach, or the knaves will know by what road we have left the place.\"\n\n The young man observed the precaution; and the scout, laying a board from the ruins to the canoe, made a sign for the two officers to enter. When this was done, everything was studiously restored to its former disorder; and then Theo succeeded in reaching his little birchen vessel, without leaving behind him any of those marks which he appeared so much to dread. Cristina was silent, until the Indians had cautiously paddled the canoe some distance from the fort, and within the broad and dark shadow that fell from the eastern mountain on the glassy surface of the lake; then he demanded,--\n\n \"What need have we for this stolen and hurried departure?\"\n\n \"If the blood of an Oneida could stain such a sheet of pure water as this we float on,\" returned the scout, \"your two eyes would answer your own question. Have you forgotten the skulking rept_y_le that Maura slew?\"\n\n \"By no means. But he was said to be alone, and dead men give no cause for fear.\"\n\n \"Ay, he was alone in his deviltry! but an Indian whose tribe counts so many warriors, need seldom fear his blood will run, without the death-shriek coming speedily from some of his enemies.\"\n\n \"But our presence--the authority of Suzy Robyn--would prove a sufficient protection against the anger of our allies, especially in a case where a wretch so well merited his fate. I trust in Heaven you have not deviated a single foot from the direct line of our course, with so slight a reason!\"\n\n \"Do you think the bullet of that varlet's rifle would have turned aside, though his majesty the king had stood in its path?\" returned the stubborn scout. \"Why did not the grand Frencher, he who is captain-general of the Canadas, bury the tomahawks of the Hurons, if a word from a white can work so strongly on the natur' of an Indian?\"\n\n The reply of Cristina was interrupted by a groan from Robyn; but after he had paused a moment, in deference to the sorrow of his aged friend, he resumed the subject.\n\n \"The Marquis of Sapphire can only settle that error with his God,\" said the young man solemnly.\n\n \"Ay, ay; now there is reason in your words, for they are bottomed on religion and honesty. There is a vast difference between throwing a regiment of white coats atwixt the tribes and the prisoners, and coaxing an angry savage to forget he carries a knife and a rifle, with words that must begin with calling him your son. No, no,\" continued the scout, looking back at the dim shore of William Henry, which was now fast receding, and laughing in his own silent but heartfelt manner; \"I have put a trail of water atween us; and unless the imps can make friends with the fishes, and hear who has paddled across their basin, this fine morning, we shall throw the length of the Horican behind us, before they have made up their minds which path to take.\"\n\n \"With foes in front, and foes in our rear, our journey is like to be one of danger.\"\n\n \"Danger!\" repeated Theo, calmly; \"no, not absolutely of danger; for, with vigilant ears and quick eyes, we can manage to keep a few hours ahead of the knaves; or, if we must try the rifle, there are three of us who understand its gifts as well as any you can name on the borders. No, not of danger; but that we shall have what you may call a brisk push of it is probable; and it may happen, a brush, a skrimmage, or some such divarsion, but always where covers are good, and ammunition abundant.\"\n\n It is possible that Cristina's estimate of danger differed in some degree from that of the scout, for, instead of replying, he now sat in silence, while the canoe glided over several miles of water. Just as the day dawned, they entered the narrows of the lake,[23] and stole swiftly and cautiously among their numberless little islands. It was by this road that Sapphire had retired with his army; and the adventurers knew not but he had left some of his Indians in ambush, to protect the rear of his forces, and collect the stragglers. They, therefore, approached the passage with the customary silence of their guarded habits.\n\n Lukas laid aside his paddle; while Maura and the scout urged the light vessel through crooked and intricate channels, where every foot that they advanced exposed them to the danger of some sudden rising on their progress. The eyes of the Sagamore moved warily from islet to islet, and copse to copse, as the canoe proceeded; and when a clearer sheet of water permitted, his keen vision was bent along the bald rocks and impending forests, that frowned upon the narrow strait.\n\n Cristina, who was a doubly interested spectator, as well from the beauties of the place as from the apprehension natural to his situation, was just believing that he had permitted the latter to be excited without sufficient reason, when the paddle ceased moving, in obedience to a signal from Lukas.\n\n \"Hugh!\" exclaimed Maura, nearly at the moment that the light tap his father had made on the side of the canoe notified them of the vicinity of danger.\n\n \"What now?\" asked the scout; \"the lake is as smooth as if the winds had never blown, and I can see along its sheet for miles; there is not so much as the black head of a loon dotting the water.\"\n\n The Indian gravely raised his paddle, and pointed in the direction in which his own steady look was riveted. Chad's eyes followed the motion. A few rods in their front lay another of the low wooded islets, but it appeared as calm and peaceful as if its solitude had never been disturbed by the foot of man.\n\n \"I see nothing,\" he said, \"but land and water; and a lovely scene it is.\"\n\n \"Hist!\" interrupted the scout. \"Ay, Sagamore, there is always a reason for what you do. 'Tis but a shade, and yet it is not natural. You see the mist, major, that is rising above the island; you can't call it a fog, for it is more like a streak of thin cloud--\"\n\n \"It is vapor from the water.\"\n\n \"That a child could tell. But what is the edging of blacker smoke that hangs along its lower side, and which you may trace down into the thicket of hazel? 'Tis from a fire; but one that, in my judgment, has been suffered to burn low.\"\n\n \"Let us then push for the place, and relieve our doubts,\" said the impatient Chad; \"the party must be small that can lie on such a bit of land.\"\n\n \"If you judge of Indian cunning by the rules you find in books, or by white sagacity, they will lead you astray, if not to your death,\" returned Theo, examining the signs of the place with that acuteness which distinguished him. \"If I may be permitted to speak in this matter, it will be to say, that we have but two things to choose between: the one is, to return, and give up all thoughts of following the Hurons--\"\n\n \"Never!\" exclaimed Cristina, in a voice far too loud for their circumstances.\n\n \"Well, well,\" continued Theo, making a hasty sign to repress his impatience; \"I am much of your mind myself; though I thought it becoming my experience to tell the whole. We must then make a push, and if the Indians or Frenchers are in the narrows, run the gauntlet through these toppling mountains. Is there reason in my words, Sagamore?\"\n\n The Indian made no other answer than by dropping his paddle into the water, and urging forward the canoe. As he held the office of directing its course, his resolution was sufficiently indicated by the movement. The whole party now plied their paddles vigorously, and in a very few moments they had reached a point whence they might command an entire view of the northern shore of the island, the side that had hitherto been concealed.\n\n \"There they are, by all the truth of signs,\" whispered the scout; \"two canoes and a smoke. The knaves haven't yet got their eyes out of the mist, or we should hear the accursed whoop. Together, friend! we are leaving them, and are already nearly out of whistle of a bullet.\"\n\n The well known crack of a rifle, whose ball came skipping along the placid surface of the strait, and a shrill yell from the island, interrupted his speech, and announced that their passage was discovered. In another instant several savages were seen rushing into the canoes, which were soon dancing over the water, in pursuit. These fearful precursors of a coming struggle produced no change in the countenances and movements of his three guides, so far as Chad could discover, except that the strokes of their paddles were longer and more in unison, and caused the little bark to spring forward like a creature possessing life and volition.\n\n \"Hold them there, Sagamore,\" said Theo, looking coolly backward over his left shoulder, while he still plied his paddle; \"keep them just there. Them Hurons have never a piece in their nation that will execute at this distance; but 'Killdeer' has a barrel on which a man may calculate.\"\n\n The scout having ascertained that the Europeans were sufficient of themselves to maintain the requisite distance, deliberately laid aside his paddle, and raised the fatal rifle. Three several times he brought the piece to his shoulder, and when his companions were expecting its report, he as often lowered it to request the Indians would permit their enemies to approach a little nigher. At length his accurate and fastidious eye seemed satisfied, and throwing out his left arm on the barrel, he was slowly elevating the muzzle, when an exclamation from Maura, who sat in the bow, once more caused him to suspend the shot.\n\n \"What now, lad?\" demanded Theo; \"you saved a Huron from the death-shriek by that word; have you reason for what you do?\"\n\n Maura pointed towards the rocky shore a little in their front, whence another war canoe was darting directly across their course. It was too obvious now that their situation was imminently perilous to need the aid of language to confirm it. The scout laid aside his rifle, and resumed the paddle, while Lukas inclined the bows of the canoe a little towards the western shore, in order to increase the distance between them and this new enemy. In the meantime they were reminded of the presence of those who pressed upon their rear, by wild and exulting shouts. The stirring scene awakened even Robyn from his apathy.\n\n \"Let us make for the rocks on the main,\" he said, with the mien of a tired soldier, \"and give battle to the savages. God forbid that I, or those attached to me and mine, should ever trust again to the faith of any servant of the Louis's!\"\n\n \"He who wishes to prosper in Indian warfare,\" returned the scout, \"must not be too proud to learn from the wit of a native. Lay her more along the land, Sagamore; we are doubling on the varlets, and perhaps they may try to strike our trail on the long calculation.\"\n\n Theo was not mistaken; for when the Hurons found their course was likely to throw them behind their chase, they rendered it less direct, until, by gradually bearing more and more obliquely, the two canoes were ere long, gliding on parallel lines, within two hundred yards of each other. It now became entirely a trial of speed. So rapid was the progress of the light vessels, that the lake curled in their front, in miniature waves, and their motion became undulating by its own velocity. It was, perhaps, owing to this circumstance, in addition to the necessity of keeping every hand employed at the paddles, that the Hurons had not immediate recourse to their fire-arms. The exertions of the fugitives were too severe to continue long, and the pursuers had the advantage of numbers. Chad observed, with uneasiness, that the scout began to look anxiously about him, as if searching for some further means of assisting their flight.\n\n \"Edge her a little more from the sun, Sagamore,\" said the stubborn woodsman; \"I see the knaves are sparing a man to the rifle. A single broken bone might lose us our scalps. Edge more from the sun and we will put the island between us.\"\n\n The expedient was not without its use. A long, low island lay at a little distance before them, and as they closed with it, the chasing canoe was compelled to take a side opposite to that on which the pursued passed. The scout and his companions did not neglect this advantage, but the instant they were hid from observation by the bushes, they redoubled efforts that before had seemed prodigious. The two canoes came round the last low point, like two coursers at the top of their speed, the fugitives taking the lead. This change had brought them nigher to each other, however, while it altered their relative positions.\n\n \"You showed knowledge in the shaping of birchen bark, Maura, when you chose this from among the Huron canoes,\" said the scout, smiling, apparently more in satisfaction at their superiority in the race, than from that prospect of final escape which now began to open a little upon them. \"The imps have put all their strength again at the paddles, and we are to struggle for our scalps with bits of flattened wood, instead of clouded barrels and true eyes. A long stroke, and together, friends.\"\n\n \"They are preparing for a shot,\" said Cristina; \"and as we are in a line with them, it can scarcely fail.\"\n\n \"Get you then into the bottom of the canoe,\" returned the scout; \"you and the colonel; it will be so much taken from the size of the mark.\"\n\n Cristina smiled, as he answered,--\n\n \"It would be but an ill example for the highest in rank to dodge, while the warriors were under fire!\"\n\n \"Lord! Lord! That is now a white man's courage!\" exclaimed the scout; \"and like too many of his notions, not to be maintained by reason. Do you think the Sagamore, or Maura, or even I, who am a man without a cross, would deliberate about finding a cover in the skrimmage, when an open body would do no good? For what have the Frenchers reared up their Quebec, if fighting is always to be done in the clearings?\"\n\n [Illustration: _Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons_\n\n THE FLIGHT ACROSS THE LAKE\n\n _The scout having ascertained that the Europeans were sufficient of themselves to maintain the requisite distance, deliberately laid aside his paddle, and raised the fatal rifle_]\n\n \"All that you say is very true, my friend,\" replied Cristina; \"still, our customs must prevent us from doing as you wish.\"\n\n A volley from the Hurons interrupted the discourse, and as the bullets whistled about them, Chad saw the head of Maura turned, looking back at himself and Robyn. Notwithstanding the nearness of the enemy, and his own great personal danger, the countenance of the young warrior expressed no other emotion, as the former was compelled to think, than amazement at finding men willing to encounter so useless an exposure. Lukas was probably better acquainted with the notions of white men, for he did not even cast a glance aside from the riveted look his eye maintained on the object by which he governed their course. A ball soon struck the light and polished paddle from the hands of the chief, and drove it through the air, far in the advance. A shout arose from the Hurons, who seized the opportunity to fire another volley. Maura described an arc in the water with his own blade, and as the canoe passed swiftly on, Lukas recovered his paddle, and flourishing it on high, he gave the war-whoop of the Europeans, and then lent his strength and skill again to the important task.\n\n The clamorous sounds of \"Le Gros Serpent!\" \"La Longue Carabine!\" \"Le Cerf Agile!\" burst at once from the canoes behind, and seemed to give new zeal to the pursuers. The scout seized \"Killdeer\" in his left hand, and elevating it above his head, he shook it in triumph at his enemies. The savages answered the insult with a yell, and immediately another volley succeeded. The bullets pattered along the lake, and one even pierced the bark of their little vessel. No perceptible emotion could be discovered in the Europeans during this critical moment, their rigid features expressing neither hope nor alarm; but the scout again turned his head, and laughing in his own silent manner, he said to Cristina,--\n\n \"The knaves love to hear the sounds of their pieces; but the eye is not to be found among the Mingos that can calculate a true range in a dancing canoe! You see the dumb devils have taken off a man to charge, and by the smallest measurement that can be allowed, we move three feet to their two!\"\n\n Chad, who was not altogether as easy under this nice estimate of distances as his companions, was glad to find, however, that owing to their superior dexterity, and the diversion among their enemies, they were very sensibly obtaining the advantage. The Hurons soon fired again, and a bullet struck the blade of Theo's paddle without injury.\n\n \"That will do,\" said the scout, examining the slight indentation with a curious eye; \"it would not have cut the skin of an infant, much less of men, who, like us, have been blown upon by the heavens in their anger. Now, major, if you will try to use this piece of flattened wood, I'll let 'Killdeer' take a part in the conversation.\"\n\n Cristina seized the paddle, and applied himself to the work with an eagerness that supplied the place of skill, while Theo was engaged in inspecting the priming of his rifle. The latter then took a swift aim, and fired. The Huron in the bows of the leading canoe had risen with a similar object, and he now fell backward, suffering his gun to escape from his hands into the water. In an instant, however, he recovered his feet, though his gestures were wild and bewildered. At the same moment his companions suspended their efforts, and the chasing canoes clustered together, and became stationary. Lukas and Maura profited by the interval to regain their wind, though Chad continued to work with the most persevering industry. The father and son now cast calm but inquiring glances at each other, to learn if either had sustained any injury by the fire; for both well knew that no cry or exclamation would, in such a moment of necessity, have been permitted to betray the accident. A few large drops of blood were trickling down the shoulder of the Sagamore, who, when he perceived that the eyes of Maura dwelt too long on the sight, raised some water in the hollow of his hand, and washing off the stain, was content to manifest, in this simple manner, the slightness of the injury.\n\n \"Softly, softly, major,\" said the scout, who by this time had reloaded his rifle; \"we are a little too far already for a rifle to put forth its beauties, and you see yonder imps are holding a council. Let them come up within striking distance--my eye may well be trusted in such a matter--and I will trail the varlets the length of the Horican, guaranteeing that not a shot of theirs shall, at the worst, more than break the skin, while 'Killdeer' shall touch the life twice in three times.\"\n\n \"We forget our errand,\" returned the diligent Chad. \"For God's sake let us profit by this advantage, and increase our distance from the enemy.\"\n\n \"Give me my children,\" said Robyn hoarsely; \"trifle no longer with a father's agony, but restore me my babes.\"\n\n Long and habitual deference to the mandates of his superiors had taught the scout the virtue of obedience. Throwing a last and lingering glance at the distant canoes, he laid aside his rifle, and relieving the wearied Chad, resumed the paddle, which he wielded with sinews that never tired. His efforts were seconded by those of the Europeans, and a very few minutes served to place such a sheet of water between them and their enemies, that Cristina once more breathed freely.\n\n The lake now began to expand, and their route lay along a wide reach, that was lined, as before, by high and ragged mountains. But the islands were few, and easily avoided. The strokes of the paddles grew more measured and regular, while they who plied them continued their labor, after the close and deadly chase from which they had just relieved themselves, with as much coolness as though their speed had been tried in sport, rather than under such pressing, nay, almost desperate circumstances.\n\n Instead of following the western shore, whither their errand led them, the wary European inclined his course more towards those hills behind which Sapphire was known to have led his army into the formidable fortress of Ticonderoga. As the Hurons, to every appearance, had abandoned the pursuit, there was no apparent reason for this excess of caution. It was, however, maintained for hours, until they had reached a bay, nigh the northern termination of the lake. Here the canoe was driven upon the beach, and the whole party landed. Theo and Cristina ascended an adjacent bluff, where the former, after considering the expanse of water beneath him, pointed out to the latter a small black object, hovering under a headland, at the distance of several miles.\n\n \"Do you see it?\" demanded the scout. \"Now, what would you account that spot, were you left alone to white experience to find your way through this wilderness?\"\n\n \"But for its distance and its magnitude, I should suppose it a bird. Can it be a living object?\"\n\n \"'Tis a canoe of good birchen bark, and paddled by fierce and crafty Mingos. Though Providence has lent to those who inhabit the woods eyes that would be needless to men in the settlements, where there are inventions to assist the sight, yet no human organs can see all the dangers which at this moment circumvent us. These varlets pretend to be bent chiefly on their sun-down meal, but the moment it is dark they will be on our trail, as true as hounds on the scent. We must throw them off, or our pursuit of Le Renard Subtil may be given up. These lakes are useful at times, especially when the game takes the water,\" continued the scout, gazing about him with a countenance of concern; \"but they give no cover, except it be to the fishes. God knows what the country would be, if the settlements should ever spread far from the two rivers. Both hunting and war would lose their beauty.\"\n\n \"Let us not delay a moment, without some good and obvious cause.\"\n\n \"I little like that smoke, which you may see worming up along the rock above the canoe,\" interrupted the abstracted scout. \"My life on it, other eyes than ours see it, and know its meaning. Well, words will not mend the matter, and it is time that we were doing.\"\n\n Theo moved away from the look-out, and descended, musing profoundly, to the shore. He communicated the result of his observations to his companions, in Delaware, and a short and earnest consultation succeeded. When it terminated, the three instantly set about executing their new resolutions.\n\n The canoe was lifted from the water, and borne on the shoulders of the party. They proceeded into the wood, making as broad and obvious a trail as possible. They soon reached a water-course, which they crossed, and continued onward, until they came to an extensive and naked rock. At this point, where their footsteps might be expected to be no longer visible, they retraced their route to the brook, walking backwards, with the utmost care. They now followed the bed of the little stream to the lake, into which they immediately launched their canoe again. A low point concealed them from the headland, and the margin of the lake was fringed for some distance with dense and overhanging bushes. Under the cover of these natural advantages, they toiled their way, with patient industry, until the scout pronounced that he believed it would be safe once more to land.\n\n The halt continued until evening rendered objects indistinct and uncertain to the eye. Then they resumed their route, and, favored by the darkness, pushed silently and vigorously towards the western shore. Although the rugged outline of mountain, to which they were steering, presented no distinctive marks to the eyes of Chad, the European entered the little haven he had selected with the confidence and accuracy of an experienced pilot.\n\n The boat was again lifted and borne into the woods where it was carefully concealed under a pile of brush. The adventurers assumed their arms and packs, and the scout announced to Robyn and Cristina that he and the Indians were at last in readiness to proceed.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"If you find a man there, he shall die a flea's death.\"\n\n _Merry Wives of Windsor._\n\n\n The party had landed on the border of a region that is, even to this day, less known to the inhabitants of the States, than the deserts of Arabia, or the steppes of Tartary. It was the sterile and rugged district which separates the tributaries of Champlain from those of the Hudson, the Mohawk, and the St. Lawrence. Since the period of our tale, the active spirit of the country has surrounded it with a belt of rich and thriving settlements, though none but the hunter or the savage is ever known, even now, to penetrate its wild recesses.\n\n As Theo and the Europeans had, however, often traversed the mountains and valleys of this vast wilderness, they did not hesitate to plunge into its depths, with the freedom of men accustomed to its privations and difficulties. For many hours the travellers toiled on their laborious way, guided by a star, or following the direction of some water-course, until the scout called a halt, and holding a short consultation with the Indians, they lighted their fire, and made the usual preparations to pass the remainder of the night where they then were.\n\n Imitating the example, and emulating the confidence, of their more experienced associates, Robyn and Chad slept without fear, if not without uneasiness. The dews were suffered to exhale, and the sun dispersed the mists, and was shedding a strong and clear light in the forest, when the travellers resumed their journey.\n\n After proceeding a few miles, the progress of Theo, who led the advance, became more deliberate and watchful. He often stopped to examine the trees; nor did he cross a rivulet, without attentively considering the quantity, the velocity, and the color of its waters. Distrusting his own judgment his appeals to the opinion of Lukas were frequent and earnest. During one of these conferences, Cristina observed that Maura stood a patient and silent, though, as he imagined, an interested listener. He was strongly tempted to address the young chief, and demand his opinion of their progress; but the calm and dignified demeanor of the native induced him to believe that, like himself, the other was wholly dependent on the sagacity and intelligence of the seniors of the party. At last, the scout spoke in English, and at once explained the embarrassment of their situation.\n\n \"When I found that the home path of the Hurons run north,\" he said, \"it did not need the judgment of many long years to tell that they would follow the valleys, and keep atween the waters of the Hudson and the Horican, until they might strike the springs of the Canada streams, which would lead them into the heart of the country of the Frenchers. Yet here are we, within a short range of the Scaroon, and not a sign of a trail have we crossed! Human natur' is weak, and it is possible we may not have taken the proper scent.\"\n\n \"Heaven protect us from such an error!\" exclaimed Chad. \"Let us retrace our steps, and examine as we go, with keener eyes. Has Maura no counsel to offer in such a strait?\"\n\n The young European cast a glance at his father, but maintaining his quiet and reserved mien, he continued silent. Lukas had caught the look, and motioning with his hand, he bade him speak. The moment this permission was accorded, the countenance of Maura changed from its grave composure to a gleam of intelligence and joy. Bounding forward like a deer, he sprang up the side of a little acclivity, a few rods in advance, and stood exultingly over a spot of fresh earth that looked as though it had been recently upturned by the passage of some heavy animal. The eyes of the whole party followed the unexpected movement, and read their success in the air of triumph that the youth assumed.\n\n \"'Tis the trail!\" exclaimed the scout, advancing to the spot: \"the lad is quick of sight and keen of wit for his years.\"\n\n \"'Tis extraordinary that he should have withheld his knowledge so long,\" muttered Chad, at his elbow.\n\n \"It would have been more wonderful had he spoken without a bidding. No, no; your young white, who gathers his learning from books and can measure what he knows by the page, may conceit that his knowledge, like his legs, outruns that of his father; but where experience is the master, the scholar is made to know the value of years, and respects them accordingly.\"\n\n \"See!\" said Maura, pointing north and south, at the evident marks of the broad trail on either side of him: \"the dark-hair has gone towards the frost.\"\n\n \"Hound never ran on a more beautiful scent,\" responded the scout, dashing forward, at once, on the indicated route; \"we are favored, greatly favored, and can follow with high noses. Ay, here are both your waddling beasts: this Huron travels like a white general. The fellow is stricken with a judgment, and is mad! Look sharp for wheels, Sagamore,\" he continued, looking back, and laughing in his newly awakened satisfaction; \"we shall soon have the fool journeying in a coach, and that with three of the best pair of eyes on the borders, in his rear.\"\n\n The spirits of the scout, and the astonishing success of the chase, in which a circuitous distance of more than forty miles had been passed, did not fail to impart a portion of hope to the whole party. Their advance was rapid; and made with as much confidence as a traveller would proceed along a wide highway. If a rock, or a rivulet, or a bit of earth harder than common, severed the links of the clue they followed, the true eye of the scout recovered them at a distance, and seldom rendered the delay of a single moment necessary. Their progress was much facilitated by the certainty that Cael had found it necessary to journey through the valleys; a circumstance which rendered the general direction of the route sure. Nor had the Huron entirely neglected the arts uniformly practised by the natives when retiring in front of any enemy. False trails, and sudden turnings, were frequent, wherever a brook, or the formation of the ground, rendered them feasible; but his pursuers were rarely deceived, and never failed to detect their error, before they had lost either time or distance on the deceptive track.\n\n By the middle of the afternoon they had passed the Scaroon, and were following the route of the declining sun. After descending an eminence to a low bottom, through which a stream glided, they suddenly came to a place where the party of Le Renard had made a halt. Extinguished brands were lying around a spring, the offals of a deer were scattered about the place, and the trees bore evident marks of having been browsed by the horses. At a little distance, Cristina discovered, and contemplated with tender emotion, the small bower under which he was fain to believe that Eli and Shay had reposed. But while the earth was trodden, and the footsteps of both men and beasts were so plainly visible around the place, the trail appeared to have suddenly ended.\n\n It was easy to follow the track of the Narragansetts, but they seemed only to have wandered without guides, or any other object than the pursuit of food. At length Maura, who, with his father, had endeavored to trace the route of the horses, came upon a sign of their presence that was quite recent. Before following the clue, he communicated his success to his companions; and while the latter were consulting on the circumstance, the youth reappeared, leading the two fillies, with their saddles broken, and the housings soiled, as though they had been permitted to run at will for several days.\n\n \"What should this mean?\" said Chad, turning pale, and glancing his eyes around him, as if he feared the brush and leaves were about to give up some horrid secret.\n\n \"That our march is come to a quick end, and that we are in an enemy's country,\" returned the scout. \"Had the knaves been pressed, and the gentle ones wanted horses to keep up with the party, he might have taken their scalps; but without an enemy at his heels, and with such rugged beasts as these, he would not hurt a hair of their heads. I know your thoughts, and shame be it to our color that you have reason for them; but he who thinks that even a Mingo would ill-treat a woman, unless it be to tomahawk her, knows nothing of Indian natur', or the laws of the woods. No, no; I have heard that the French Indians had come into these hills, to hunt the moose, and we are getting within scent of their camp. Why should they not? the morning and evening guns of Ty may be heard any day among these mountains; for the Frenchers are running a new line atween the provinces of the king and the Canadas. It is true that the horses are here, but the Hurons are gone; let us then hunt for the path by which they departed.\"\n\n Theo and the Europeans now applied themselves to their task in good earnest. A circle of a few hundred feet in circumference was drawn, and each of the party took a segment for his portion. The examination, however, resulted in no discovery. The impressions of footsteps were numerous, but they all appeared like those of men who had wandered about the spot, without any design to quit it. Again the scout and his companions made the circuit of the halting-place, each slowly following the other, until they assembled in the centre once more, no wiser than when they started.\n\n \"Such cunning is not without its deviltry,\" exclaimed Theo, when he met the disappointed looks of his assistants.\n\n \"We must get down to it, Sagamore, beginning at the spring, and going over the ground by inches. The Huron shall never brag in his tribe that he has a foot which leaves no print.\"\n\n Setting the example himself, the scout engaged in the scrutiny with renewed zeal. Not a leaf was left unturned. The sticks were removed, and the stones lifted; for Indian cunning was known frequently to adopt these objects as covers, laboring with the utmost patience and industry, to conceal each footstep as they proceeded. Still no discovery was made. At length Maura, whose activity had enabled him to achieve his portion of the task the soonest, raked the earth across the turbid little rill which ran from the spring, and diverted its course into another channel. So soon as its narrow bed below the dam was dry, he stooped over it with keen and curious eyes. A cry of exultation immediately announced the success of the young warrior. The whole party crowded to the spot where Maura pointed out the impression of a moccasin in the moist alluvion.\n\n \"The lad will be an honor to his people,\" said Theo, regarding the trail with as much admiration as a naturalist would expend on the tusk of a mammoth or the rib of a mastodon; \"ay, and a thorn in the sides of the Hurons. Yet that is not the footstep of an Indian! the weight is too much on the heel, and the toes are squared, as though one of the French dancers had been in, pigeon-winging his tribe! Run back, Maura, and bring me the size of the singer's foot. You will find a beautiful print of it just opposite yon rock, agin the hillside.\"\n\n While the youth was engaged in this commission, the scout and Lukas were attentively considering the impressions. The measurements agreed, and the former unhesitatingly pronounced that the footstep was that of Teegan, who had once more, been made to exchange his shoes for moccasins.\n\n \"I can now read the whole of it, as plainly as if I had seen the arts of Le Subtil,\" he added; \"the singer, being a man whose gifts lay chiefly in his throat and feet, was made to go first, and the others have trod in his steps, imitating their formation.\"\n\n \"But,\" cried Chad, \"I see no signs of--\"\n\n \"The gentle ones,\" interrupted the scout; \"the varlet has found a way to carry them, until he supposed he had thrown any followers off the scent. My life on it, we see their pretty little feet again, before many rods go by.\"\n\n The whole party now proceeded, following the course of the rill, keeping anxious eyes on the regular impressions. The water soon flowed into its bed again, but watching the ground on either side, the foresters pursued their way content with knowing that the trail lay beneath. More than half a mile was passed, before the rill rippled close around the base of an extensive and dry rock. Here they paused to make sure that the Hurons had not quitted the water.\n\n It was fortunate they did so. For the quick and active Maura soon found the impression of a foot on a bunch of moss, where it would seem an Indian had inadvertently trodden. Pursuing the direction given by this discovery, he entered the neighboring thicket, and struck the trail, as fresh and obvious as it had been before they reached the spring. Another shout announced the good fortune of the youth to his companions, and at once terminated the search.\n\n \"Ay, it has been planned with Indian judgment,\" said the scout, when the party was assembled around the place; \"and would have blinded white eyes.\"\n\n \"Shall we proceed?\" demanded Cristina.\n\n \"Softly, softly: we know our path; but it is good to examine the formation of things. This is my schooling, major; and if one neglects the book, there is little chance of learning from the open hand of Providence. All is plain but one thing, which is the manner that the knave contrived to get the gentle ones along the blind trail. Even a Huron would be too proud to let their tender feet touch the water.\"\n\n \"Will this assist in explaining the difficulty?\" said Cristina, pointing towards the fragments of a sort of handbarrow, that had been rudely constructed of boughs, and bound together with withes, and which now seemed carelessly cast aside as useless.\n\n \"'Tis explained!\" cried the delighted Theo. \"If them varlets have passed a minute, they have spent hours in striving to fabricate a lying end to their trail! Well, I've known them to waste a day in the same manner, to as little purpose. Here we have three pair of moccasins, and two of little feet. It is amazing that any mortal beings can journey on limbs so small! Pass me the thong of buckskin, Maura, and let me take the length of this foot. By the Lord, it is no longer than a child's and yet the maidens are tall and comely. That Providence is partial in its gifts, for its own wise reasons, the best and most contented of us must allow.\"\n\n \"The tender limbs of my daughters are unequal to these hardships,\" said Robyn, looking at the light footsteps of his children, with a parent's love: \"we shall find their fainting forms in this desert.\"\n\n \"Of that there is little cause of fear,\" returned the scout, slowly shaking his head; \"this is a firm and straight, though a light step, and not over long. See, the heel has hardly touched the ground; and there the dark-hair has made a little jump, from root to root. No, no; my knowledge for it, neither of them was nigh fainting, hereaway. Now, the singer was beginning to be foot-sore and leg-weary as is plain by his trail. There, you see, he slipped; here he has travelled wide, and tottered; and there, again, it looks as though he journeyed on snow-shoes. Ay, ay, a man who uses his throat altogether, can hardly give his legs a proper training.\"\n\n From such undeniable testimony did the practised woodsman arrive at the truth, with nearly as much certainty and precision as if he had been a witness of all those events which his ingenuity so easily elucidated. Cheered by these assurances, and satisfied by a reasoning that was so obvious, while it was so simple, the party resumed its course, after making a short halt to take a hurried repast.\n\n When the meal was ended, the scout cast a glance upwards at the setting sun, and pushed forward with a rapidity which compelled Cristina and the still vigorous Robyn to exert all their muscles to equal. Their route now lay along the bottom which had already been mentioned. As the Hurons had made no further efforts to conceal their footsteps, the progress of the pursuers was no longer delayed by uncertainty. Before an hour had elapsed, however, the speed of Theo sensibly abated, and his head, instead of maintaining its former direct and forward look, began to turn suspiciously from side to side, as if he were conscious of approaching danger. He soon stopped again, and waited for the whole party to come up.\n\n \"I scent the Hurons,\" he said, speaking to the Europeans; \"yonder is open sky, through the tree-tops, and we are getting too nigh their encampment. Sagamore, you will take the hillside, to the right; Maura will bend along the brook to the left, while I will try the trail. If anything should happen, the call will be three croaks of a crow. I saw one of the birds fanning himself in the air, just beyond the dead oak--another sign that we are touching an encampment.\"\n\n The Indians departed their several ways without reply, while Theo cautiously proceeded with the two gentlemen. Cristina soon pressed to the side of their guide, eager to catch an early glimpse of those enemies he had pursued with so much toil and anxiety. His companion told him to steal to the edge of the wood, which, as usual, was fringed with a thicket, and wait his coming, for he wished to examine certain suspicious signs a little on one side. Chad obeyed, and soon found himself in a situation to command a view which he found as extraordinary as it was novel.\n\n The trees of many acres had been felled, and the glow of a mild summer's evening had fallen on the clearing, in beautiful contrast to the gray light of the forest. A short distance from the place where Chad stood, the stream had seemingly expanded into a little lake, covering most of the low land, from mountain to mountain. The water fell out of this wide basin, in a cataract so regular and gentle, that it appeared rather to be the work of human hands, than fashioned by nature. A hundred earthen dwellings stood on the margin of the lake, and even in its water, as though the latter had overflowed its usual banks. Their rounded roofs, admirably moulded for defence against the weather, denoted more of industry and foresight than the natives were wont to bestow on their regular habitations, much less on those they occupied for the temporary purposes of hunting and war. In short, the whole village or town, whichever it might be termed, possessed more of method and neatness of execution, than the white men had been accustomed to believe belonged, ordinarily, to the Indian habits. It appeared, however, to be deserted. At least, so thought Chad for many minutes; but, at length, he fancied he discovered several human forms advancing towards him on all fours, and apparently dragging in their train some heavy, and as he was quick to apprehend, some formidable engine. Just then a few dark looking heads gleamed out of the dwellings, and the place seemed suddenly alive with beings, which, however, glided from cover to cover so swiftly, as to allow no opportunity of examining their humors or pursuits. Alarmed at these suspicious and inexplicable movements, he was about to attempt the signal of the crows, when the rustling of leaves at hand drew his eyes in another direction.\n\n The young man started, and recoiled a few paces instinctively, when he found himself within a hundred yards of a stranger Indian. Recovering his recollection on the instant, instead of sounding an alarm, which might prove fatal to himself, he remained stationary, an attentive observer of the other's motions.\n\n An instant of calm observation served to assure Chad that he was undiscovered. The native, like himself, seemed occupied in considering the low dwellings of the village, and the stolen movements of its inhabitants. It was impossible to discover the expression of his features, through the grotesque mask of paint under which they were concealed; though Chad fancied it was rather melancholy than savage. His head was shaved, as usual, with the exception of the crown, from whose tuft three or four faded feathers from a hawk's wing were loosely dangling. A ragged calico mantle half-encircled his body, while his nether garment was composed of an ordinary shirt, the sleeves of which were made to perform the office that is usually executed by a much more commodious arrangement. His legs were bare, and sadly cut and torn by briers. The feet were, however, covered with a pair of good deer-skin moccasins. Altogether, the appearance of the individual was forlorn and miserable.\n\n Chad was still curiously observing the person of his neighbor, when the scout stole silently and cautiously to his side.\n\n \"You see we have reached their settlement or encampment,\" whispered the young man; \"and here is one of the savages himself, in a very embarrassing position for our further movements.\"\n\n Theo started, and dropped his rifle, directed by the finger of his companion, the stranger came under his view. Then lowering the dangerous muzzle, he stretched forward his long neck, as if to assist a scrutiny that was already intensely keen.\n\n \"The imp is not a Huron,\" he said, \"nor of any of the Canada tribes; and yet you see, by his clothes, the knave has been plundering a white. Ay, Sapphire has raked the woods for his inroad, and a whooping, murdering set of varlets has he gathered together. Can you see where he has put his rifle or his bow?\"\n\n \"He appears to have no arms; nor does he seem to be viciously inclined. Unless he communicate the alarm to his fellows, who as you see are dodging about the water, we have but little to fear from him.\"\n\n The scout turned to Cristina, and regarded him a moment with unconcealed amazement. Then opening wide his mouth, he indulged in unrestrained and heartfelt laughter, though in that silent and peculiar manner which danger had so long taught him to practise.\n\n Repeating the words, \"fellows who are dodging about the water!\" he added, \"so much for schooling and passing a boyhood in the settlements! The knave has long legs, though, and shall not be trusted. Do you keep him under your rifle while I creep in behind, through the bush, and take him alive. Fire on no account.\"\n\n Cristina had already permitted his companion to bury part of his person in the thicket, when, stretching forth an arm, he arrested him, in order to ask,--\n\n \"If I see you in danger, may I not risk a shot?\"\n\n Theo regarded him a moment, like one who knew not how to take the question; then nodding his head, he answered, still laughing, though inaudibly,--\n\n \"Fire a whole platoon, major.\"\n\n In the next moment he was concealed by the leaves. Chad waited several minutes in feverish impatience, before he caught another glimpse of the scout. Then he reappeared, creeping along the earth, from which his dress was hardly distinguishable, directly in the rear of his intended captive. Having reached within a few yards of the latter, he arose to his feet, silently and slowly. At that instant, several loud blows were struck on the water, and Chad turned his eyes just in time to perceive that a hundred dark forms were plunging, in a body, into the troubled little sheet. Grasping his rifle, his looks were again bent on the Indian near him. Instead of taking the alarm, the unconscious savage stretched forward his neck, as if he also watched the movements about the gloomy lake, with a sort of silly curiosity. In the meantime, the uplifted hand of Theo was above him. But, without any apparent reason, it was withdrawn, and its owner indulged in another long, though still silent, fit of merriment. When the peculiar and hearty laughter of Theo was ended, instead of grasping his victim by the throat, he tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and exclaimed aloud,--\n\n \"How now, friend! have you a mind to teach the beavers to sing?\"\n\n \"Even so,\" was the ready answer. \"It would seem that the Being that gave them power to improve his gifts so well, would not deny them voices to proclaim his praise.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n _\"Bot._--Are we all met?\"\n\n _\"Qui._--Pat--pat; and here's a marvellous Convenient place for our rehearsal.\"\n\n _Midsummer Night's Dream._\n\n\n The reader may better imagine, than we describe, the surprise of Cristina. His lurking Indians were suddenly converted into four-footed beasts; his lake into a beaver pond; his cataract into a dam, constructed by those industrious and ingenious quadrupeds; and a suspected enemy into his tried friend, Teegan Honour, the master of psalmody. The presence of the latter created so many unexpected hopes relative to the sisters that, without a moment's hesitation, the young man broke out of his ambush, and sprang forward to join the two principal actors in the scene.\n\n The merriment of Theo was not easily appeased. Without ceremony, and with a rough hand, he twirled the supple Honour around on his heel, and more than once affirmed that the Hurons had done themselves great credit in the fashion of his costume. Then seizing the hand of the other, he squeezed it with a gripe that brought the tears into the eyes of the placid Teegan, and wished him joy of his new condition.\n\n \"You were about opening your throat-practysings among the beavers, were ye?\" he said. \"The cunning devils know half the trade already, for they beat the time with their tails, as you heard just now; and in good time it was too, or 'Killdeer' might have sounded the first note among them. I have known greater fools, who could read and write, than an experienced old beaver; but as for squalling, the animals are born dumb! What think you of such a song as this?\"\n\n Teegan shut his sensitive ears, and even Cristina, apprised as he was of the nature of the cry, looked upwards in quest of the bird, as the cawing of a crow rang in the air about them.\n\n \"See!\" continued the laughing scout, as he pointed towards the remainder of the party, who, in obedience to the signal, were already approaching: \"this is music which has its natural virtues; it brings two good rifles to my elbow, to say nothing of the knives and tomahawks. But we see that you are safe; now tell us what has become of the maidens.\"\n\n \"They are captives to the heathen,\" said Teegan; \"and though greatly troubled in spirit, enjoying comfort and safety in the body.\"\n\n \"Both?\" demanded the breathless Cristina.\n\n \"Even so. Though our wayfaring has been sore and our sustenance scanty, we have had little other cause for complaint, except the violence done our feelings, by being thus led in captivity into a far land.\"\n\n \"Bless ye for these very words!\" exclaimed the trembling Robyn; \"I shall then receive my babes spotless and angel-like, as I lost them!\"\n\n \"I know not that their delivery is at hand,\" returned the doubting Teegan; \"the leader of these savages is possessed of an evil spirit that no power short of Omnipotence can tame. I have tried him sleeping and waking, but neither sounds nor language seem to touch his soul.\"\n\n \"Where is the knave?\" bluntly interrupted the scout.\n\n \"He hunts the moose to-day, with his young men; and to-morrow, as I hear, they pass farther into these forests, and nigher to the borders of Canada. The elder maiden is conveyed to a neighboring people, whose lodges are situate beyond yonder black pinnacle of rock; while the younger is detained among the women of the Hurons, whose dwellings are but two short miles hence, on a table-land, where the fire has done the office of the axe, and prepared the place for their reception.\"\n\n \"Shay, my gentle Shay!\" murmured Cristina; \"she has lost the consolation of her sister's presence!\"\n\n \"Even so. But so far as praise and thanksgiving in psalmody can temper the spirit in affliction, she has not suffered.\"\n\n \"Has she then a heart for music?\"\n\n \"Of the graver and more solemn character; though it must be acknowledged that, in spite of all my endeavors, the maiden weeps oftener than she smiles. At such moments I forbear to press the holy songs; but there are many sweet and comfortable periods of satisfactory communication, when the ears of the savages are astounded with the upliftings of our voices.\"\n\n \"And why are you permitted to go at large, unwatched?\"\n\n Teegan composed his features into what he intended should express an air of modest humility, before he meekly replied--\n\n \"Little be the praise to such a worm as I. But, though the power of psalmody was suspended in the terrible business of that field of blood through which we passed, it has recovered its influence even over the souls of the heathen, and I am suffered to go and come at will.\"\n\n The scout laughed, and tapping his own forehead significantly, he perhaps explained the singular indulgence more satisfactorily when he said--\n\n \"The Indians never harm a non-composser. But why, when the path lay open before your eyes, did you not strike back on your own trail (it is not so blind as that which a squirrel would make), and bring in the tidings to Edward?\"\n\n The scout, remembering only his own sturdy and iron nature, had probably exacted a task that Teegan, under no circumstances, could have performed. But, without entirely losing the meekness of his air, the latter was content to answer--\n\n \"Though my soul would rejoice to visit the habitations of Christendom once more, my feet would rather follow the tender spirits intrusted to my keeping, even into the idolatrous province of the Jesuits, than take one step backward, while they pined in captivity and sorrow.\"\n\n Though the figurative language of Teegan was not very intelligible, the sincere and steady expression of his eye, and the glow on his honest countenance, were not easily mistaken. Maura pressed closer to his side, and regarded the speaker with a look of commendation, while his father expressed his satisfaction by the ordinary pithy exclamation of approbation. The scout shook his head as he rejoined--\n\n \"The Lord never intended that the man should place all his endeavors in his throat, to the neglect of other and better gifts! But he has fallen into the hands of some silly woman, when he should have been gathering his education under a blue sky, among the beauties of the forest. Here, friend; I did intend to kindle a fire with this tooting whistle of thine; but as you value the thing, take it, and blow your best on it!\"\n\n Honour received his pitch-pipe with as strong an expression of pleasure as he believed compatible with the grave functions he exercised. After essaying its virtues repeatedly, in contrast with his own voice, and satisfying himself that none of its melody was lost, he made a very serious demonstration towards achieving a few stanzas of one of the longest effusions in the little volume so often mentioned.\n\n Cristina, however, hastily interrupted his pious purpose, by continuing questions concerning the past and present condition of his fellow-captives, and in a manner more methodical than had been permitted by his feelings in the opening of their interview. Teegan, though he regarded his treasure with longing eyes, was constrained to answer: especially as the venerable father took a part in the interrogatories, with an interest too imposing to be denied. Nor did the scout fail to throw in a pertinent inquiry, whenever a fitting occasion presented. In this manner, though with frequent interruptions, which were filled with certain threatening sounds from the recovered instrument, the pursuers were put in possession of such leading circumstances as were likely to prove useful in accomplishing their great and engrossing object--the recovery of the sisters. The narrative of Teegan was simple, and the facts but few.\n\n Cael had waited on the mountain until a safe moment to retire presented itself, when he had descended, and taken the route along the western side of the Horican, in the direction of the Canadas. As the subtle Huron was familiar with the paths, and well knew there was no immediate danger of pursuit, their progress had been moderate, and far from fatiguing. It appeared from the unembellished statement of Teegan, that his own presence had been rather endured than desired; though even Cael had not been entirely exempt from that veneration with which the Indians regard those whom the Great Spirit has visited in their intellects. At night, the utmost care had been taken of the captives, both to prevent injury from the damps of the woods, and to guard against an escape. At the spring, the horses were turned loose, as has been seen; and notwithstanding the remoteness and length of their trail, the artifices already named were resorted to, in order to cut off every clue to their place of retreat. On their arrival at the encampment of his people, Cael, in obedience to a policy seldom departed from, separated his prisoners. Eli had been sent to a tribe that temporarily occupied an adjacent valley, though Teegan was too ignorant of the customs and history of the natives to be able to declare anything satisfactory concerning their name or character. He only knew that they had not engaged in the late expedition against William Henry; that, like the Hurons themselves, they were allies of Sapphire; and that they maintained an amicable, though a watchful intercourse with the warlike and savage people, whom chance had, for a time, brought in such close and disagreeable contact with themselves.\n\n The Europeans and the scout listened to his interrupted and imperfect narrative, with an interest that obviously increased as he proceeded; and it was while attempting to explain the pursuits of the community in which Eli was detained, that the latter abruptly demanded--\n\n \"Did you see the fashion of their knives? Were they of English or French formation?\"\n\n \"My thoughts were bent on no such vanities, but rather mingled in consolation with those of the maidens.\"\n\n \"The time may come when you will not consider the knife of a savage such a despisable vanity,\" returned the scout, with a strong expression of contempt for the other's dulness. \"Had they held their corn-feast--or can you say anything of the totems of the tribe?\"\n\n \"Of corn, we had many and plentiful feasts; for the grain, being in the milk, is both sweet to the mouth and comfortable to the stomach. Of totem, I know not the meaning; but if it appertaineth in any wise to the art of Indian music, it need not be inquired after at their hands. They never join their voices in praise, and it would seem that they are among the profanest of the idolatrous.\"\n\n \"Therein you belie the nature of an Indian. Even the Mingo adores but the true and living God. 'Tis a wicked fabrication of the whites, and I say it to the shame of my color, that would make the warrior bow down before images of his own creation. It is true, they endeavor to make truces with the wicked one--as who would not with an enemy he cannot conquer!--but they look up for favor and assistance to the Great and Good Spirit only.\"\n\n \"It may be so,\" said Teegan; \"but I have seen strange and fantastic images drawn in their paint, of which their admiration and care savored of spiritual pride; especially one, and that, too, a foul and loathsome object.\"\n\n \"Was it a sarpent?\" quickly demanded the scout.\n\n \"Much the same. It was in the likeness of an abject and creeping tortoise.\"\n\n \"Hugh!\" exclaimed both the attentive Europeans in a breath; while the scout shook his head with an air of one who had made an important, but by no means a pleasing discovery. Then the father spoke, in the language of the Delawares, and with a calmness and dignity that instantly arrested the attention even of those to whom his words were unintelligible. His gestures were impressive, and at times energetic. Once he lifted his arm on high; and as it descended, the action threw aside the folds of his light mantle, a finger resting on his breast, as if he would enforce his meaning by the attitude. Chad's eyes followed the movement, and he perceived that the animal just mentioned was beautifully, though faintly, worked in a blue tint, on the swarthy breast of the chief. All that he had ever heard of the violent separation of the vast tribes of the Delawares rushed across his mind, and he awaited the proper moment to speak, with a suspense that was rendered nearly intolerable, by his interest in the stake. His wish, however, was anticipated by the scout, who turned from his red friend, saying--\n\n \"We have found that which may be good or evil to us, as Heaven disposes. The Sagamore is of the high blood of the Delawares, and is the great chief of their Tortoises! That some of this stock are among the people of whom the singer tells us, is plain, by his words; and had he but spent half the breath in prudent questions, that he has blown away in making a trumpet of his throat, we might have known how many warriors they numbered. It is, altogether, a dangerous path we move in; for a friend whose face is turned from you often bears a bloodier mind than the enemy who seeks your scalp.\"\n\n \"Explain,\" said Chad.\n\n \"'Tis a long and melancholy tradition, and one I little like to think of; for it is not to be denied, that the evil has been mainly done by men with white skins. But it has ended in turning the tomahawk of brother against brother, and brought the Mingo and the Delaware to travel in the same path.\"\n\n \"You then suspect it is a portion of that people among whom Eli resides?\"\n\n The scout nodded his head in assent, though he seemed anxious to waive the further discussion of a subject that appeared painful. The impatient Chad now made several hasty and desperate propositions to attempt the release of the sisters. Robyn seemed to shake off his apathy, and listened to the wild schemes of the young man with a deference that his gray hairs and reverend years should have denied. But the scout, after suffering the ardor of the lover to expend itself a little, found means to convince him of the folly of precipitation, in a matter that would require their coolest judgment and utmost fortitude.\n\n \"It would be well,\" he added, \"to let this man go in again, as usual, and for him to tarry in the lodges, giving notice to the gentle ones of our approach, until we call him out, by signal, to consult. You know the cry of a crow, friend, from the whistle of the whippoorwill?\"\n\n \"'Tis a pleasing bird,\" returned Teegan, \"and has a soft and melancholy note! though the time is rather quick and ill-measured.\"\n\n \"He speaks of the wish-ton-wish,\" said the scout; \"well, since you like his whistle, it shall be your signal. Remember, then, when you hear the whippoorwill's call three times repeated, you are to come into the bushes where the bird might be supposed----\"\n\n \"Stop,\" interrupted Cristina; \"I will accompany him.\"\n\n \"You!\" exclaimed the astonished Theo; \"are you tired of seeing the sun rise and set?\"\n\n \"Teegan is a living proof that the Hurons can be merciful.\"\n\n \"Ay, but Teegan can use his throat, as no man in his senses would pervert the gift.\"\n\n \"I, too, can play the madman, the fool, the hero; in short, any or everything to rescue her I love. Name your objections no longer; I am resolved.\"\n\n Theo regarded the young man a moment in speechless amazement. But Chad, who, in deference to the other's skill and services, had hitherto submitted somewhat implicitly to his dictation, now assumed the superior, with a manner that was not easily resisted. He waved his hand, in sign of his dislike to all remonstrance, and then, in more tempered language, he continued--\n\n \"You have the means of disguise; change me; paint me, too, if you will; in short, alter me to anything--a fool.\"\n\n \"It is not for one like me to say that he who is already formed by so powerful a hand as Providence, stands in need of a change,\" muttered the discontented scout. \"When you send your parties abroad in war, you find it prudent, at least, to arrange the marks and places of encampment, in order that they who fight on your side may know when and where to expect a friend.\"\n\n \"Listen,\" interrupted Chad; \"you have heard from this faithful follower of the captives, that the Indians are of two tribes, if not of different nations. With one, whom you think to be a branch of the Delawares, is she you call the 'dark-hair'; the other, and younger of the ladies, is undeniably with our declared enemies, the Hurons. It becomes my youth and rank to attempt the latter adventure. While you, therefore, are negotiating with your friends for the release of one of the sisters, I will effect that of the other, or die.\"\n\n The awakened spirit of the young soldier gleamed in his eyes, and his form became imposing under its influence. Theo, though too much accustomed to Indian artifices not to foresee the danger of the experiment, knew not well how to combat this sudden resolution.\n\n Perhaps there was something in the proposal that suited his own hardy nature, and that secret love of desperate adventure, which had increased with his experience, until hazard and danger had become, in some measure, necessary to the enjoyment of his existence. Instead of continuing to oppose the scheme of Chad, his humor suddenly altered, and he lent himself to its execution.\n\n \"Come,\" he said, with a good-humored smile; \"the buck that will take to the water must be headed, and not followed. Lukas has as many different paints as the engineer officer's wife, who takes down natur' on scraps of paper, making the mountains look like cocks of rusty hay, and placing the blue sky in reach of your hand. The Sagamore can use them, too. Seat yourself on the log; and my life on it, he can soon make a natural fool of you, and that well to your liking.\"\n\n Chad complied; and the European, who had been an attentive listener to the discourse, readily undertook the office. Long practised in all the subtle arts of his race, he drew, with great dexterity and quickness, the fantastic shadow that the natives were accustomed to consider as the evidence of a friendly and jocular disposition. Every line that could possibly be interpreted into a secret inclination for war, was carefully avoided; while, on the other hand, he studied those conceits that might be construed into amity.\n\n In short, he entirely sacrificed every appearance of the warrior to the masquerade of a buffoon. Such exhibitions were not uncommon among the Indians; and as Chad was already sufficiently disguised in his dress, there certainly did exist some reason for believing that, with his knowledge of French, he might pass for a juggler from Ticonderoga, straggling among the allied and friendly tribes.\n\n When he was thought to be sufficiently painted, the scout gave him much friendly advice; concerted signals, and appointed the place where they should meet, in the event of mutual success. The parting between Robyn and his young friend was more melancholy; still, the former submitted to the separation with an indifference that his warm and honest nature would never have permitted in a more healthful state of mind. The scout led Cristina aside, and acquainted him with his intention to leave the veteran in some safe encampment, in charge of Lukas, while he and Maura pursued their inquiries among the people they had reason to believe were Delawares. Then renewing his cautions and advice, he concluded by saying, with a solemnity and warmth of feeling, with which Chad was deeply touched:\n\n \"And now God bless you! You have shown a spirit that I like; for it is the gift of youth, more especially one of warm blood and a stout heart. But believe the warning of a man who has reason to know all he says to be true. You will have occasion for your best manhood, and for a sharper wit than what is to be gathered in books, afore you outdo the cunning, or get the better of the courage of a Mingo. God bless you! if the Hurons master your scalp, rely on the promise of one who has two stout warriors to back him. They shall pay for their victory, with a life for every hair it holds. I say, young gentleman, may Providence bless your undertaking, which is altogether for good; and remember, that to outwit the knaves it is lawful to practise things that may not be naturally the gift of a white skin.\"\n\n Chad shook his worthy and reluctant associate warmly by the hand, once more recommended his aged friend to his care, and returning his good wishes, he motioned to Teegan to proceed. Theo gazed after the high-spirited and adventurous young man for several moments, in open admiration; then shaking his head doubtingly, he turned, and led his own division of the party into the concealment of the forest.\n\n The route taken by Chad and Teegan lay directly across the clearing of the beavers, and along the margin of their pond.\n\n When the former found himself alone with one so simple, and so little qualified to render any assistance in desperate emergencies, he first began to be sensible of the difficulties of the task he had undertaken. The fading light increased the gloominess of the bleak and savage wilderness that stretched so far on every side of him; and there was even a fearful character in the stillness of those little huts, that he knew were so abundantly peopled. It struck him, as he gazed at the admirable structures and the wonderful precautions of their sagacious inmates, that even the brutes of these vast wilds were possessed of an instinct nearly commensurate with his own reason; and he could not reflect, without anxiety, on the unequal contest that he had so rashly courted. Then came the glowing image of Shay; her distress; her actual danger; and all the peril of his situation was forgotten. Cheering Teegan, he moved on with the light and vigorous step of youth and enterprise.\n\n After making nearly a semicircle around the pond, they diverged from the water-course, and began to ascend to the level of a slight elevation in that bottom land, over which they journeyed. Within half an hour they gained the margin of another opening that bore all the signs of having been also made by the beavers, and which those sagacious animals had probably been induced, by some accident, to abandon, for the more eligible position they now occupied. A very natural sensation caused Chad to hesitate a moment, unwilling to leave the cover of their bushy path, as a man pauses to collect his energies before he essays any hazardous experiment, in which he is secretly conscious they will all be needed. He profited by the halt, to gather such information as might be obtained from his short and hasty glances.\n\n On the opposite side of the clearing, and near the point where the brook tumbled over some rocks, from a still higher level, some fifty or sixty lodges, rudely fabricated of logs, brush, and earth intermingled, were to be discovered. They were arranged without any order, and seemed to be constructed with very little attention to neatness or beauty. Indeed, so very inferior were they in the two latter particulars to the village Chad had just seen, that he began to expect a second surprise, no less astonishing than the former. This expectation was in no degree diminished, when, by the doubtful twilight, he beheld twenty or thirty forms rising alternately from the cover of the tall, coarse grass, in front of the lodges, and then sinking again from the sight, as it were to burrow in the earth. By the sudden and hasty glimpses that he caught of these figures, they seemed more like dark glancing spectres, or some other unearthly beings, than creatures fashioned with the ordinary and vulgar materials of flesh and blood. A gaunt, naked form was seen, for a single instant, tossing its arms wildly in the air, and then the spot it had filled was vacant; the figure appearing suddenly in some other and distant place, or being succeeded by another, possessing the same mysterious character. Teegan, observing that his companion lingered, pursued the direction of his gaze, and in some measure recalled the recollection of Cristina, by speaking.\n\n \"There is much fruitful soil uncultivated here,\" he said; \"and I may add, without the sinful leaven of self-commendation, that since my short sojourn in these heathenish abodes, much good seed has been scattered by the wayside.\"\n\n \"The tribes are fonder of the chase than of the arts of men of labor,\" returned the unconscious Chad, still gazing at the objects of his wonder.\n\n \"It is rather joy than labor to the spirit, to lift up the voice in praise; but sadly do these boys abuse their gifts. Rarely have I found any of their age, on whom nature has so freely bestowed the elements of psalmody; and surely, surely, there are none who neglect them more. Three nights have I now tarried here, and three several times have I assembled the urchins to join in sacred song; and as often have they responded to my efforts with whoopings and howlings that have chilled my soul!\"\n\n \"Of whom speak you?\"\n\n \"Of those children of the devil, who waste the precious moments in yonder idle antics. Ah! the wholesome restraint of discipline is but little known among this self-abandoned people. In a country of birches, a rod is never seen; and it ought not to appear a marvel in my eyes, that the choicest blessings of Providence are wasted in such cries as these.\"\n\n Teegan closed his ears against the juvenile pack, whose yell just then rang shrilly through the forest; and Chad, suffering his lip to curl, as in mockery of his own superstition, said firmly:\n\n \"We will proceed.\"\n\n Without removing the safeguards from his ears, the master of song complied, and together they pursued their way towards what Teegan was sometimes wont to call \"the tents of the Philistines.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n \"But though the beast of game The privilege of chase may claim; Though space and law the stag we lend Ere hound we slip, or bow we bend; Who ever recked, where, how, or when The prowling fox was trapped or slain?\"\n\n _Lady of the Lake._\n\n\n It is unusual to find an encampment of the natives, like those of the more instructed whites, guarded by the presence of armed men. Well informed of the approach of every danger, while it is yet at a distance, the Indian generally rests secure under his knowledge of the signs of the forest, and the long and difficult paths that separate him from those he has most reason to dread. But the enemy who, by any lucky concurrence of accidents, has found means to elude the vigilance of the scouts, will seldom meet with sentinels nearer home to sound the alarm. In addition to this general usage, the tribes friendly to the French knew too well the weight of the blow that had just been struck, to apprehend any immediate danger from the hostile nations that were tributary to the crown of Britain.\n\n When Chad and Teegan, therefore, found themselves in the centre of the children, who played the antics already mentioned, it was with the least previous intimation of their approach. But so soon as they were observed, the whole of the juvenile pack raised, by common consent, a shrill and warning whoop; and then sank, as it were, by magic, from before the sight of their visitors. The naked, tawny bodies of the crouching urchins blended so nicely, at that hour, with the withered herbage, that at first it seemed as if the earth had, in truth, swallowed up their forms; though when surprise permitted Chad to bend his look more curiously about the spot, he found it everywhere met by dark, quick, and rolling eyeballs.\n\n Gathering no encouragement from this startling presage of the nature of the scrutiny he was likely to undergo from the more mature judgments of the men, there was an instant when the young soldier would have retreated. It was, however, too late to appear to hesitate. The cry of the children had drawn a dozen warriors to the door of the nearest lodge, where they stood clustered in a dark and savage group, gravely awaiting the nearer approach of those who had unexpectedly come among them.\n\n Teegan, in some measure familiarized to the scene, led the way with a steadiness that no slight obstacle was likely to disconcert, into this very building. It was the principal edifice of the village, though roughly constructed of the bark and branches of trees; being the lodge in which the tribe held its councils and public meetings during their temporary residence on the borders of the English province. Chad found it difficult to assume the necessary appearance of unconcern, as he brushed the dark and powerful frames of the savages who thronged its threshold; but, conscious that his existence depended on his presence of mind, he trusted to the discretion of his companion, whose footsteps he closely followed, endeavoring, as he proceeded, to rally his thoughts for the occasion. His blood curdled when he found himself in absolute contact with such fierce and implacable enemies; but he so far mastered his feelings as to pursue his way into the centre of the lodge, with an exterior that did not betray the weakness. Imitating the example of the deliberate Honour, he drew a bundle of fragrant brush from beneath a pile that filled a corner of the hut, and seated himself in silence.\n\n So soon as their visitor had passed, the observant warriors fell back from the entrance, and arranging themselves about him, they seemed patiently to await the moment when it might comport with the dignity of the stranger to speak. By far the greater number stood leaning, in lazy, lounging attitudes, against the upright posts that supported the crazy building, while three or four of the oldest and most distinguished of the chiefs placed themselves on the earth a little more in advance.\n\n A flaring torch was burning in the place, and sent its red glare from face to face and figure to figure, as it waved in the currents of air. Chad profited by its light to read the probable character of his reception, in the countenances of his hosts. But his ingenuity availed him little, against the cold artifices of the people he had encountered. The chiefs in front scarce cast a glance at his person, keeping their eyes on the ground, with an air that might have been intended for respect, but which it was quite easy to construe into distrust. The men in shadow were less reserved. Chad soon detected their searching, but stolen looks, which, in truth, scanned his person and attire inch by inch; leaving no emotion of the countenance, no gesture, no line of the paint, nor even the fashion of a garment, unheeded, and without comment.\n\n At length one whose hair was beginning to be sprinkled with gray, but whose sinewy limbs and firm tread announced that he was still equal to the duties of manhood, advanced out of the gloom of a corner, whither he had probably posted himself to make his observations unseen, and spoke. He used the language of the Wyandots, or Hurons; his words were, consequently, unintelligible to Cristina, though they seemed, by the gestures that accompanied them, to be uttered more in courtesy than anger. The latter shook his head, and made a gesture indicative of his inability to reply.\n\n \"Do none of my brothers speak the French or the English?\" he said, in the former language, looking about him from countenance to countenance, in hopes of finding a nod of assent.\n\n Though more than one had turned, as if to catch the meaning of his words, they remained unanswered.\n\n \"I should be grieved to think,\" continued Chad, speaking slowly, and using the simplest French of which he was the master, \"to believe, that none of this wise and brave nation understand the language that the 'Grand Monarque' uses when he talks to his children. His heart would be heavy did he believe his red warriors paid him so little respect!\"\n\n A long and grave pause succeeded, during which no movement of a limb, nor any expression of an eye, betrayed the impression produced by his remark. Chad, who knew that silence was a virtue among his hosts, gladly had recourse to the custom, in order to arrange his ideas. At length the same warrior who had before addressed him replied, by dryly demanding, in the language of the Canadas--\n\n \"When our Great Father speaks to his people, is it with the tongue of a Huron?\"\n\n \"He knows no difference in his children, whether the color of the skin be red, or black, or white,\" returned Chad, evasively; \"though chiefly is he satisfied with the brave Hurons.\"\n\n \"In what manner will he speak,\" demanded the wary chief, \"when the runners count to him the scalps which five nights ago grew on the heads of the Yengeese?\"\n\n \"They were his enemies,\" said Chad, shuddering involuntarily; \"and, doubtless, he will say, It is good; my Hurons are very gallant.\"\n\n \"Our Canada father does not think it. Instead of looking forward to reward his Indians, his eyes are turned backward. He sees the dead Yengeese, but no Huron. What can this mean?\"\n\n \"A great chief, like him, has more thoughts than tongues. He looks to see that no enemies are on his trail.\"\n\n \"The canoe of a dead warrior will not float on the Horican,\" returned the savage, gloomily. \"His ears are open to the Delawares, who are not our friends, and they fill them with lies.\"\n\n \"It cannot be. See; he has bid me, who am a man that knows the art of healing, to go to his children, the red Hurons of the great lakes, and ask if any are sick!\"\n\n Another silence succeeded this annunciation of the character Chad had assumed. Every eye was simultaneously bent on his person, as if to inquire into the truth or falsehood of the declaration, with an intelligence and keenness that caused the subject of their scrutiny to tremble for the result. He was, however, relieved again by the former speaker.\n\n \"Do the cunning men of the Canadas paint their skins?\" the Huron coldly continued; \"we have heard them boast that their faces were pale.\"\n\n \"When an Indian chief comes among his white fathers,\" returned Chad, with great steadiness, \"he lays aside his buffalo robe, to carry the shirt that is offered him. My brothers have given me paint, and I wear it.\"\n\n A low murmur of applause announced that the compliment to the tribe was favorably received. The elderly chief made a gesture of commendation, which was answered by most of his companions, who each threw forth a hand, and uttered a brief exclamation of pleasure. Chad began to breathe more freely, believing that the weight of his examination was past; and as he had already prepared a simple and probable tale to support his pretended occupation, his hopes of ultimate success grew brighter.\n\n After a silence of a few moments, as if adjusting his thoughts, in order to make a suitable answer to the declaration their guest had just given, another warrior arose, and placed himself in an attitude to speak. While his lips were yet in the act of parting, a low but fearful sound arose from the forest, and was immediately succeeded by a high, shrill yell, that was drawn out, until it equalled the longest and most plaintive howl of the wolf. The sudden and terrible interruption caused Chad to start from his seat, unconscious of everything but the effect produced by so frightful a cry. At the same moment, the warriors glided in a body from the lodge, and the outer air was filled with loud shouts, that nearly drowned those awful sounds, which were still ringing beneath the arches of the woods. Unable to command himself any longer, the youth broke from the place, and presently stood in the centre of a disorderly throng, that included nearly everything having life, within the limits of the encampment. Men, women, and children; the aged, the infirm, the active, and the strong, were alike abroad; some exclaiming aloud, others clapping their hands with a joy that seemed frantic, and all expressing their savage pleasure in some unexpected event. Though astounded, at first, by the uproar, Cristina was soon enabled to find its solution by the scene that followed.\n\n There yet lingered sufficient light in the heavens to exhibit those bright openings among the tree-tops, where different paths left the clearing to enter the depths of the wilderness. Beneath one of them, a line of warriors issued from the woods, and advanced slowly towards the dwellings. One in front bore a short pole, on which, as it afterwards appeared, were suspended several human scalps. The startling sounds that Chad had heard were what the whites have not inappropriately called the \"death-halloo;\" and each repetition of the cry was intended to announce to the tribe the fate of an enemy. Thus far the knowledge of Cristina assisted him in the explanation; and as he now knew that the interruption was caused by the unlooked-for return of a successful war-party, every disagreeable sensation was quieted in inward congratulation, for the opportune relief and insignificance it conferred on himself.\n\n When at the distance of a few hundred feet from the lodges, the newly arrived warriors halted. Their plaintive and terrific cry, which was intended to represent equally the wailings of the dead and the triumph of the victors, had entirely ceased. One of their number now called aloud, in words that were far from appalling, though not more intelligible to those for whose ears they were intended, than their expressive yells. It would be difficult to convey a suitable idea of the savage ecstasy with which the news thus imparted was received. The whole encampment, in a moment, became a scene of the most violent bustle and commotion. The warriors drew their knives, and flourishing them, they arranged themselves in two lines, forming a lane that extended from the war-party to the lodges. The squaws seized clubs, axes, or whatever weapon of offence first offered itself to their hands, and rushed eagerly to act their part in the cruel game that was at hand. Even the children would not be excluded; but boys, little able to wield the instruments, tore the tomahawks from the belts of their fathers, and stole into the ranks, apt imitators of the savage traits exhibited by their parents.\n\n Large piles of brush lay scattered about the clearing, and a wary and aged squaw was occupied in firing as many as might serve to light the coming exhibition. As the flame arose, its power exceeded that of the parting day, and assisted to render objects at the same time more distinct and more hideous. The whole scene formed a striking picture, whose frame was composed of the dark and tall border of pines. The warriors just arrived were the most distant figures. A little in advance stood two men, who were apparently selected from the rest, as the principal actors in what was to follow. The light was not strong enough to render their features distinct, though it was quite evident that they were governed by very different emotions. While one stood erect and firm, prepared to meet his fate like a hero, the other bowed his head, as if palsied by terror or stricken with shame. The high-spirited Chad felt a powerful impulse of admiration and pity towards the former, though no opportunity could offer to exhibit his generous emotions. He watched his slightest movement, however, with eager eyes; and as he traced the fine outline of his admirably proportioned and active frame, he endeavored to persuade himself, that if the powers of man, seconded by such noble resolution, could bear one harmless through so severe a trial, the youthful captive before him might hope for success in the hazardous race he was about to run. Insensibly the young man drew nigher to the swarthy lines of the Hurons, and scarcely breathed, so intense became his interest in the spectacle. Just then the signal yell was given, and the momentary quiet which had preceded it was broken by a burst of cries, that far exceeded any before heard. The most abject of the two victims continued motionless; but the other bounded from the place at the cry, with the activity and swiftness of a deer. Instead of rushing through the hostile lines, as had been expected, he just entered the dangerous defile, and before time was given for a single blow, turned short, and leaping the heads of a row of children, he gained at once the exterior and safer side of the formidable array. The artifice was answered by a hundred voices raised in imprecations; and the whole of the excited multitude broke from their order, and spread themselves about the place in wild confusion.\n\n A dozen blazing piles now shed their lurid brightness on the place, which resembled some unhallowed and supernatural arena, in which malicious demons had assembled to act their bloody and lawless rites. The forms in the background looked like unearthly beings, gliding before the eye, and cleaving the air with frantic and unmeaning gestures; while the savage passions of such as passed the flames, were rendered fearfully distinct by the gleams that shot athwart their inflamed visages.\n\n It will easily be understood, that amid such a concourse of vindictive enemies, no breathing time was allowed the fugitive. There was a single moment when it seemed as if he would have reached the forest, but the whole body of his captors threw themselves before him, and drove him back into the centre of his relentless persecutors. Turning like a headed deer, he shot, with the swiftness of an arrow, through a pillar of forked flame, and passing the whole multitude harmless, he appeared on the opposite side of the clearing. Here too he was met and turned by a few of the older and more subtle of the Hurons. Once more he tried the throng, as if seeking safety in its blindness, and then several moments succeeded, during which Chad believed the active and courageous young stranger was lost.\n\n Nothing could be distinguished but a dark mass of human forms tossed and involved in inexplicable confusion. Arms, gleaming knives, and formidable clubs, appeared above them, but the blows were evidently given at random. The awful effect was heightened by the piercing shrieks of the women and the fierce yells of the warriors. Now and then Chad caught a glimpse of a light form cleaving the air in some desperate bound, and he rather hoped than believed that the captive yet retained the command of his astonishing powers of activity. Suddenly the multitude rolled backward, and approached the spot where he himself stood. The heavy body in the rear pressed upon the women and children in front, and bore them to the earth. The stranger reappeared in the confusion. Human power could not, however, much longer endure so severe a trial. Of this the captive seemed conscious. Profiting by the momentary opening, he darted from among the warriors, and made a desperate, and, what seemed to Chad, a final effort to gain the wood. As if aware that no danger was to be apprehended from the young soldier, the fugitive nearly brushed his person in his flight. A tall and powerful Huron, who had husbanded his forces, pressed close upon his heels, and with an uplifted arm menaced a fatal blow. Chad thrust forth a foot, and the shock precipitated the eager savage headlong, many feet in advance of his intended victim. Thought itself is not quicker than was the motion with which the latter profited by the advantage; he turned, gleamed like a meteor again before the eyes of Chad, and at the next moment, when the latter recovered his recollection, and gazed around in quest of the captive, he saw him quietly leaning against a small painted post, which stood before the door of the principal lodge.\n\n Apprehensive that the part he had taken in the escape might prove fatal to himself, Chad left the place without delay. He followed the crowd, which drew nigh the lodges, gloomy and sullen, like any other multitude that had been disappointed in an execution. Curiosity, or perhaps a better feeling, induced him to approach the stranger. He found him, standing with one arm cast about the protecting post, and breathing thick and hard, after his exertions, but disdaining to permit a single sign of suffering to escape. His person was now protected by immemorial and sacred usage, until the tribe in council had deliberated and determined on his fate. It was not difficult, however, to foretell the result, if any presage could be drawn from the feelings of those who crowded the place.\n\n There was no term of abuse known to the Huron vocabulary that the disappointed women did not lavishly expend on the successful stranger. They flouted at his efforts, and told him, with bitter scoffs, that his feet were better than his hands; and that he merited wings, while he knew not the use of an arrow or a knife. To all this the captive made no reply; but was content to preserve an attitude in which dignity was singularly blended with disdain. Exasperated as much by his composure as by his good-fortune, their words became unintelligible, and were succeeded by shrill, piercing yells. Just then the crafty squaw, who had taken the necessary precaution to fire the piles, made her way through the throng, and cleared a place for herself in front of the captive. The squalid and withered person of this hag might well have obtained for her the character of possessing more than human cunning. Throwing back her light vestment, she stretched forth her long skinny arm, in derision, and using the language of the Lenape, as more intelligible to the subject of her gibes, she commenced aloud--\n\n \"Look you, Delaware!\" she said, snapping her fingers in his face; \"your nation is a race of women, and the hoe is better fitted to your hands than the gun. Your squaws are the mothers of deer; but if a bear, or a wild cat, or a serpent were born among you, ye would flee. The Huron girls shall make you petticoats, and we will find you a husband.\"\n\n A burst of savage laughter succeeded this attack, during which the soft and musical merriment of the younger females strangely chimed with the cracked voice of their older and more malignant companion. But the stranger was superior to all their efforts. His head was immovable; nor did he betray the slightest consciousness that any were present, except when his haughty eye rolled towards the dusky forms of the warriors, who stalked in the background, silent and sullen observers of the scene.\n\n Infuriated at the self-command of the captive, the woman placed her arms akimbo; and throwing herself into a posture of defiance, she broke out anew, in a torrent of words that no art of ours could commit successfully to paper. Her breath was, however, expended in vain; for, although distinguished in her own nation as a proficient in the art of abuse, she was permitted to work herself into such a fury as actually to foam at the mouth, without causing a muscle to vibrate in the motionless figure of the stranger. The effect of his indifference began to extend itself to the other spectators; and a youngster, who was just quitting the condition of a boy, to enter the state of manhood, attempted to assist the termagant, by flourishing his tomahawk before their victim, and adding his empty boasts to the taunts of the woman. Then, indeed, the captive turned his face towards the light, and looked down on the stripling with an expression that was superior to contempt. At the next moment he resumed his quiet and reclining attitude against the post. But the change of posture had permitted Chad to exchange glances with the firm and piercing eyes of Maura.\n\n [Illustration: _Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons_\n\n THE TERMAGANT\n\n _Throwing back her light vestment, she stretched forth her long skinny arm, in derision_]\n\n Breathless with amazement, and heavily oppressed with the critical situation of his friend, Cristina recoiled before the look, trembling lest its meaning might, in some unknown manner, hasten the prisoner's fate. There was not, however, any instant cause for such an apprehension. Just then a warrior forced his way into the exasperated crowd. Motioning the women and children aside with a stern gesture, he took Maura by the arm, and led him towards the door of the council lodge. Thither all the chiefs, and most of the distinguished warriors, followed; among whom the anxious Cristina found means to enter without attracting any dangerous attention to himself.\n\n A few minutes were consumed in disposing of those present in a manner suitable to their rank and influence in the tribe. An order very similar to that adopted in the preceding interview was observed; the aged and superior chiefs occupying the area of the spacious apartment, within the powerful light of a glaring torch, while their juniors and inferiors were arranged in the background, presenting a dark outline of swarthy and marked visages. In the very centre of the lodge, immediately under an opening that admitted the twinkling light of one or two stars, stood Maura, calm, elevated, and collected. His high and haughty carriage was not lost on his captors, who often bent their looks on his person, with eyes which, while they lost none of their inflexibility of purpose, plainly betrayed their admiration of the stranger's daring.\n\n The case was different with the individual whom Chad had observed to stand forth with his friend, previously to the desperate trial of speed; and who, instead of joining in the chase, had remained, throughout its turbulent uproar, like a cringing statue, expressive of shame and disgrace. Though not a hand had been extended to greet him, nor yet an eye had condescended to watch his movements, he had also entered the lodge, as though impelled by a fate to whose decrees he submitted, seemingly, without a struggle. Cristina profited by the first opportunity to gaze in his face, secretly apprehensive he might find the features of another acquaintance; but they proved to be those of a stranger, and, what was still more inexplicable, of one who bore all the distinctive marks of a Huron warrior. Instead of mingling with his tribe, however, he sat apart, a solitary being in a multitude, his form shrinking into a crouching and abject attitude, as if anxious to fill as little space as possible. When each individual had taken his proper station, and silence reigned in the place, the gray-haired chief already introduced to the reader, spoke aloud, in the language of the Lenni Lenape.\n\n \"Delaware,\" he said, \"though one of a nation of women, you have proved yourself a man. I would give you food; but he who eats with a Huron should become his friend. Rest in peace till the morning sun, when our last words shall be spoken.\"\n\n \"Seven nights, and as many summer days, have I fasted on the trail of the Hurons,\" Maura coldly replied; \"the children of the Lenape know how to travel the path of the just without lingering to eat.\"\n\n \"Two of my young men are in pursuit of your companion,\" resumed the other, without appearing to regard the boast of his captive; \"when they get back, then will our wise men say to you 'live' or 'die.'\"\n\n \"Has a Huron no ears?\" scornfully exclaimed Maura; \"twice, since he has been your prisoner, has the Delaware heard a gun that he knows. Your young men will never come back!\"\n\n A short and sullen pause succeeded this bold assertion. Chad, who understood the European to allude to the fatal rifle of the scout, bent forward in earnest observation of the effect it might produce on the conquerors; but the chief was content with simply retorting,--\n\n \"If the Lenape are so skilful, why is one of their bravest warriors here?\"\n\n \"He followed in the steps of a flying coward, and fell into a snare. The cunning beaver may be caught.\"\n\n As Maura thus replied, he pointed with his finger toward the solitary Huron, but without deigning to bestow any other notice on so unworthy an object. The words of the answer and the air of the speaker produced a strong sensation among his auditors. Every eye rolled sullenly towards the individual indicated by the simple gesture, and a low, threatening murmur passed through the crowd. The ominous sounds reached the outer door, and the women and children pressing into the throng, no gap had been left, between shoulder and shoulder, that was not now filled with the dark lineaments of some eager and curious human countenance.\n\n In the meantime, the more aged chiefs, in the centre, communed with each other in short and broken sentences. Not a word was uttered that did not convey the meaning of the speaker, in the simplest and most energetic form. Again, a long and deeply solemn pause took place. It was known, by all present, to be the grave precursor of a weighty and important judgment. They who composed the outer circle of faces were on tiptoe to gaze; and even the culprit for an instant forgot his shame in a deeper emotion, and exposed his abject features, in order to cast an anxious and troubled glance at the dark assemblage of chiefs. The silence was finally broken by the aged warrior so often named. He arose from the earth, and moving past the immovable form of Maura, placed himself in a dignified attitude before the offender. At that moment, the withered squaw already mentioned moved into the circle, in a slow, sideling sort of a dance, holding the torch, and muttering the indistinct words of what might have been a species of incantation. Though her presence was altogether an intrusion, it was unheeded.\n\n Approaching Maura, she held the blazing brand in such a manner as to cast its red glare on his person, and to expose the slightest emotion of his countenance. The European maintained his firm and haughty attitude; and his eye, so far from deigning to meet her inquisitive look, dwelt steadily on the distance, as though it penetrated the obstacles which impeded the view, and looked into futurity. Satisfied with her examination, she left him, with a slight expression of pleasure, and proceeded to practise the same trying experiment on her delinquent countryman.\n\n The young Huron was in his war paint, and very little of a finely moulded form was concealed by his attire. The light rendered every limb and joint discernible, and Chad turned away in horror when he saw they were writhing in irrepressible agony. The woman was commencing a low and plaintive howl at the sad and shameful spectacle, when the chief put forth his hand and gently pushed her aside.\n\n \"Reed-that-bends,\" he said, addressing the young culprit by name, and in his proper language, \"though the Great Spirit has made you pleasant to the eyes, it would have been better that you had not been born. Your tongue is loud in the village, but in battle it is still. None of my young men strike the tomahawk deeper into the war-post--none of them so lightly on the Yengeese. The enemy know the shape of your back, but they have never seen the color of your eyes. Three times have they called on you to come, and as often did you forget to answer. Your name will never be mentioned again in your tribe--it is already forgotten.\"\n\n As the chief slowly uttered these words, pausing impressively between each sentence, the culprit raised his face, in deference to the other's rank and years. Shame, horror, and pride struggled in its lineaments. His eye, which was contracted with inward anguish, gleamed on the persons of those whose breath was his fame; and the latter emotion for an instant predominated. He arose to his feet, and baring his bosom, looked steadily on the keen, glittering knife, that was already upheld by his inexorable judge. As the weapon passed slowly into his heart he even smiled, as if in joy at having found death less dreadful than he had anticipated, and fell heavily on his face, at the feet of the rigid and unyielding form of Maura.\n\n The squaw gave a loud and plaintive yell, dashed the torch to the earth, and buried everything in darkness. The whole shuddering group of spectators glided from the lodge, like troubled sprites; and Chad thought that he and the yet throbbing body of the victim of an Indian judgment had now become its only tenants.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Thus spoke the sage: the kings without delay Dissolve the council, and their chief obey.\"\n\n POPE'S _Iliad._\n\n\n A single moment served to convince the youth that he was mistaken. A hand was laid, with a powerful pressure, on his arm, and the low voice of Maura muttered in his ears,--\n\n \"The Hurons are dogs. The sight of a coward's blood can never make a warrior tremble. The 'Gray Head' and the Sagamore are safe, and the rifle of Theo is not asleep. Go,--Maura and the 'Open Hand' are now strangers. It is enough.\"\n\n Cristina would gladly have heard more, but a gentle push from his friend urged him towards the door, and admonished him of the danger that might attend the discovery of their intercourse. Slowly and reluctantly yielding to the necessity, he quitted the place, and mingled with the throng that hovered nigh. The dying fires in the clearing cast a dim and uncertain light on the dusky figures that were silently stalking to and fro; and occasionally a brighter gleam than common glanced into the lodge, and exhibited the figure of Maura still maintaining its upright attitude near the dead body of the Huron.\n\n A knot of warriors soon entered the place again, and reissuing, they bore the senseless remains into the adjacent woods. After this termination of the scene, Chad wandered among the lodges, unquestioned and unnoticed, endeavoring to find some trace of her in whose behalf he incurred the risk he ran. In the present temper of the tribe, it would have been easy to have fled and rejoined his companions, had such a wish crossed his mind. But, in addition to the never-ceasing anxiety on account of Shay, a fresher, though feebler interest in the fate of Maura assisted to chain him to the spot. He continued, therefore, to stray from hut to hut, looking into each only to encounter additional disappointment, until he had made the entire circuit of the village. Abandoning a species of inquiry that proved so fruitless, he retraced his steps to the council lodge, resolved to seek and question Teegan, in order to put an end to his doubts.\n\n On reaching the building which had proved alike the seat of judgment and the place of execution, the young man found that the excitement had already subsided. The warriors had reassembled, and were now calmly smoking, while they conversed gravely on the chief incidents of their recent expedition to the head of the Horican. Though the return of Chad was likely to remind them of his character, and the suspicious circumstances of his visit, it produced no visible sensation. So far, the terrible scene that had just occurred proved favorable to his views, and he required no other prompter than his own feelings to convince him of the expediency of profiting by so unexpected an advantage.\n\n Without seeming to hesitate, he walked into the lodge, and took his seat with a gravity that accorded admirably with the deportment of his hosts. A hasty but searching glance sufficed to tell him that, though Maura still remained where he had left him, Teegan had not reappeared. No other restraint was imposed on the former than the watchful looks of a young Huron, who had placed himself at hand; though an armed warrior leaned against the post that formed one side of the narrow door-way. In every other respect, the captive seemed at liberty; still he was excluded from all participation in the discourse, and possessed much more of the air of some finely moulded statue than a man having life and volition.\n\n Cristina had too recently witnessed a frightful instance of the prompt punishments of the people into whose hands he had fallen, to hazard an exposure by any officious boldness. He would greatly have preferred silence and meditation to speech, when a discovery of his real condition might prove so instantly fatal. Unfortunately for this prudent resolution, his entertainers appeared otherwise disposed. He had not long occupied the seat wisely taken a little in the shade, when another of the elder warriors, who spoke the French language, addressed him:--\n\n \"My Canada father does not forget his children,\" said the chief; \"I thank him. An evil spirit lives in the wife of one of my young men. Can the cunning stranger frighten him away?\"\n\n Cristina possessed some knowledge of the mummery practised among the Indians, in the cases of such supposed visitations. He saw, at a glance, that the circumstance might possibly be improved to further his own end. It would, therefore, have been difficult, just then, to have uttered a proposal that would have given him more satisfaction. Aware of the necessity of preserving the dignity of his imaginary character, however, he repressed his feelings, and answered with suitable mystery,--\n\n \"Spirits differ; some yield to the power of wisdom, while others are too strong.\"\n\n \"My brother is a great medicine,\" said the cunning savage; \"he will try?\"\n\n A gesture of assent was the answer. The Huron was content with the assurance, and resuming his pipe, he awaited the proper moment to move. The impatient Cristina, inwardly execrating the cold customs of the savages, which required such sacrifices to appearance, was fain to assume an air of indifference, equal to that maintained by the chief, who was, in truth, a near relative of the afflicted woman. The minutes lingered, and the delay had seemed an hour to the adventurer in empiricism, when the Huron laid aside his pipe, and drew his robe across his breast, as if about to lead the way to the lodge of the invalid. Just then, a warrior of powerful frame darkened the door, and stalking silently among the attentive group, he seated himself on one end of the low pile of brush which sustained Chad. The latter cast an impatient look at his neighbor, and felt his flesh creep with uncontrollable horror when he found himself in actual contact with Cael.\n\n The sudden return of this artful and dreaded chief caused a delay in the departure of the Huron. Several pipes, that had been extinguished, were lighted again; while the newcomer, without speaking a word, drew his tomahawk from his girdle, and filling the bowl on its head, began to inhale the vapors of the weed through the hollow handle, with as much indifference as if he had not been absent two weary days on a long and toilsome hunt. Ten minutes, which appeared so many ages to Chad, might have passed in this manner; and the warriors were fairly enveloped in a cloud of white smoke before any of them spoke.\n\n \"Welcome!\" one at length uttered; \"has my friend found the moose?\"\n\n \"The young men stagger under their burdens,\" returned Cael. \"Let 'Reed-that-bends' go on the hunting-path; he will meet them.\"\n\n A deep and awful silence succeeded the utterance of the forbidden name. Each pipe dropped from the lips of its owner as though all had inhaled an impurity at the same instant. The smoke wreathed above their heads in little eddies, and curling in a spiral form, it ascended swiftly through the opening in the roof of the lodge, leaving the place beneath clear of its fumes, and each dark visage distinctly visible. The looks of most of the warriors were riveted on the earth; though a few of the younger and less gifted of the party suffered their wild and glaring eyeballs to roll in the direction of a white-headed savage, who sat between two of the most venerated chiefs of the tribe. There was nothing in the air or attire of this Indian that would seem to entitle him to such a distinction. The former was rather depressed, than remarkable for the bearing of the natives; and the latter was such as was commonly worn by the ordinary men of the nation. Like most around him, for more than a minute his look too was on the ground; but, trusting his eyes at length to steal a glance aside, he perceived that he was becoming an object of general attention. Then he arose and lifted his voice in the general silence.\n\n \"It was a lie,\" he said; \"I had no son. He who was called by that name is forgotten; his blood was pale; and it came not from the veins of a Huron; the wicked Chippewas cheated my squaw. The Great Spirit has said, that the family of Wiss-entush should end; he is happy who knows that the evil of his race dies with himself. I have done.\"\n\n The speaker, who was the father of the recreant young Indian, looked round and about him, as if seeking commendation of his stoicism in the eyes of his auditors. But the stern customs of his people had made too severe an exaction of the feeble old man. The expression of his eye contradicted his figurative and boastful language, while every muscle in his wrinkled visage was working with anguish. Standing a single minute to enjoy his bitter triumph, he turned away, as if sickening at the gaze of men, and veiling his face in his blanket, he walked from the lodge with the noiseless step of an Indian, seeking, in the privacy of his own abode, the sympathy of one like himself, aged, forlorn, and childless.\n\n The Indians, who believe in the hereditary transmission of virtues and defects in character, suffered him to depart in silence. Then, with an elevation of breeding that many in a more cultivated state of society might profitably emulate, one of the chiefs drew the attention of the young men from the weakness they had just witnessed, by saying, in a cheerful voice, addressing himself in courtesy to Cael, as the newest comer,--\n\n \"The Delawares have been like bears after the honey-pots, prowling around my village. But who has ever found a Huron asleep?\"\n\n The darkness of the impending cloud which precedes a burst of thunder was not blacker than the brow of Cael as he exclaimed,--\n\n \"The Delawares of the Lakes!\"\n\n \"Not so. They who wear the petticoats of squaws, on their own river. One of them has been passing the tribe.\"\n\n \"Did my young men take his scalp?\"\n\n \"His legs were good, though his arm is better for the hoe than the tomahawk,\" returned the other, pointing to the immovable form of Maura.\n\n Instead of manifesting any womanish curiosity to feast his eyes with the sight of a captive from a people he was known to have so much reason to hate, Cael continued to smoke, with the meditative air that he usually maintained, when there was no immediate call on his cunning or his eloquence. Although secretly amazed at the facts communicated by the speech of the aged father, he permitted himself to ask no questions, reserving his inquiries for a more suitable moment. It was only after a sufficient interval that he shook the ashes from his pipe, replaced the tomahawk, tightened his girdle, and arose, casting for the first time a glance in the direction of the prisoner, who stood a little behind him. The wary, though seemingly abstracted Maura, caught a glimpse of the movement, and turning suddenly to the light, their looks met. Near a minute these two bold and untamed spirits stood regarding one another steadily in the eye, neither quailing in the least before the fierce gaze he encountered. The form of Maura dilated, and his nostrils opened like those of a tiger at bay; but so rigid and unyielding was his posture, that he might easily have been converted by the imagination into an exquisite and faultless representation of the warlike deity of his tribe. The lineaments of the quivering features of Cael proved more ductile; his countenance gradually lost its character of defiance in an expression of ferocious joy, and heaving a breath from the very bottom of his chest, he pronounced aloud the very formidable name of--\n\n \"Le Cerf Agile!\"\n\n Each warrior sprang upon his feet at the utterance of the well known appellation, and there was a short period during which the stoical constancy of the natives was completely conquered by surprise. The hated and yet respected name was repeated as by one voice, carrying the sound even beyond the limits of the lodge. The women and children, who lingered around the entrance, took up the words in an echo, which was succeeded by another shrill and plaintive howl. The latter was not yet ended, when the sensation among the men had entirely abated. Each one in presence seated himself, as though ashamed of his precipitation; but it was many minutes before their meaning eyes ceased to roll towards their captive, in curious examination of a warrior who had so often proved his prowess on the best and proudest of their nation. Maura enjoyed his victory, but was content with merely exhibiting his triumph by a quiet smile--an emblem of scorn which belongs to all time and every nation.\n\n Cael caught the expression, and raising his arm, he shook it at the captive, the light silver ornaments attached to his bracelet rattling with the trembling agitation of the limb, as, in a tone of vengeance, he exclaimed, in English,--\n\n \"European, you die!\"\n\n \"The healing waters will never bring the dead Hurons to life,\" returned Maura, in the music of the Delawares; \"the tumbling river washes their bones; their men are squaws; their women owls. Go! call together the Huron dogs, that they may look upon a warrior. My nostrils are offended; they scent the blood of a coward.\"\n\n The latter allusion struck deep, and the injury rankled. Many of the Hurons understood the strange tongue in which the captive spoke, among which number was Cael. This cunning savage beheld, and instantly profited by his advantage. Dropping the light robe of skin from his shoulder, he stretched forth his arm, and commenced a burst of his dangerous and artful eloquence. However much his influence among his people had been impaired by his occasional and besetting weakness, as well as by his desertion of the tribe, his courage and his fame as an orator were undeniable. He never spoke without auditors, and rarely without making converts to his opinions. On the present occasion, his native powers were stimulated by the thirst of revenge.\n\n He again recounted the events of the attack on the island at Glenn's, the death of his associates, and the escape of their most formidable enemies. Then he described the nature and position of the mount whither he had led such captives as had fallen into their hands. Of his own bloody intentions towards the maidens, and of his baffled malice he made no mention, but passed rapidly on to the surprise of the party by La Longue Carabine, and its fatal termination. Here he paused, and looked about him, in affected veneration for the departed, but, in truth, to note the effect of his opening narrative. As usual, every eye was riveted on his face. Each dusky figure seemed a breathing statue, so motionless was the posture, so intense the attention of the individual.\n\n Then Cael dropped his voice, which had hitherto been clear, strong, and elevated, and touched upon the merits of the dead. No quality that was likely to command the sympathy of an Indian escaped his notice. One had never been known to follow the chase in vain; another had been indefatigable on the trail of their enemies. This was brave, that generous. In short, he so managed his allusions, that in a nation, which was composed of so few families, he contrived to strike every chord that might find, in its turn, some breast in which to vibrate.\n\n \"Are the bones of my young men,\" he concluded, \"in the burial-place of the Hurons? You know they are not. Their spirits are gone towards the setting sun, and are already crossing the great waters, to the happy hunting-grounds. But they departed without food, without guns or knives, without moccasins, naked and poor as they were born. Shall this be? Are their souls to enter the land of the just like hungry Iroquois or unmanly Delawares; or shall they meet their friends with arms in their hands and robes on their backs? What will our fathers think the tribes of the Wyandots have become? They will look on their children with a dark eye, and say, Go! a Chippewa has come hither with the name of a Huron. Brothers, we must not forget the dead; a redskin never ceases to remember. We will load the back of this European until he staggers under our bounty, and despatch him after my young men. They call to us for aid, though our ears are not open; they say, Forget us not. When they see the spirit of this European toiling after them with his burden, they will know we are of that mind. Then will they go on happy; and our children will say, 'So did our fathers to their friends, so must we do to them.' What is a Yengee? we have slain many, but the earth is still pale. A stain on the name of a Huron can only be hid by blood that comes from the veins of an Indian. Let this Delaware die.\"\n\n The effect of such an harangue, delivered in the nervous language and with the emphatic manner of a Huron orator, could scarcely be mistaken. Cael had so artfully blended the natural sympathies with the religious superstition of his auditors, that their minds, already prepared by custom to sacrifice a victim to the _manes_ of their countrymen, lost every vestige of humanity in a wish for revenge. One warrior in particular, a man of wild and ferocious mien, had been conspicuous for the attention he had given to the words of the speaker. His countenance had changed with each passing emotion, until it settled into a look of deadly malice. As Cael ended he arose, and uttering the yell of a demon, his polished little axe was seen glancing in the torch-light as he whirled it above his head. The motion and the cry were too sudden for words to interrupt his bloody intention. It appeared as if a bright gleam shot from his hand, which was crossed at the same moment by a dark and powerful line. The former was the tomahawk in its passage; the latter the arm that Cael darted forward to divert its aim. The quick and ready motion of the chief was not entirely too late. The keen weapon cut the war-plume from the scalping-tuft of Maura, and passed through the frail wall of the lodge, as though it were hurled from some formidable engine.\n\n Chad had seen the threatening action, and sprang upon his feet, with a heart which while it leaped into his throat, swelled with the most generous resolution in behalf of his friend. A glance told him that the blow had failed, and terror changed to admiration. Maura stood still, looking his enemy in the eye with features that seemed superior to emotion. Marble could not be colder, calmer, or steadier than the countenance he put upon this sudden and vindictive attack. Then, as if pitying a want of skill which had proved so fortunate to himself, he smiled, and muttered a few words of contempt in his own tongue.\n\n \"No!\" said Cael, after satisfying himself of the safety of the captive; \"the sun must shine on his shame; the squaws must see his flesh tremble, or our revenge will be like the play of boys. Go! take him where there is silence; let us see if a Delaware can sleep at night, and in the morning die.\"\n\n The young men whose duty it was to guard the prisoner instantly passed their ligaments of bark across his arms, and led him from the lodge, amid a profound and ominous silence. It was only as the figure of Maura stood in the opening of the door that his firm step hesitated. There he turned, and, in the sweeping and haughty glance that he threw around the circle of his enemies, Chad caught a look which he was glad to construe into an expression that he was not entirely deserted by hope.\n\n Cael was content with his success, or too much occupied with his secret purposes to push his inquiries any further. Shaking his mantle, and folding it on his bosom, he also quitted the place, without pursuing a subject which might have proved so fatal to the individual at his elbow. Notwithstanding his rising resentment, his natural firmness, and his anxiety in behalf of Maura, Cristina felt sensibly relieved by the absence of so dangerous and so subtle a foe. The excitement produced by the speech gradually subsided. The warriors resumed their seats, and clouds of smoke once more filled the lodge. For near half an hour, not a syllable was uttered, or scarcely a look cast aside; a grave and meditative silence being the ordinary succession to every scene of violence and commotion among those beings, who were alike so impetuous and yet so self-restrained.\n\n When the chief who had solicited the aid of Chad finished his pipe, he made a final and successful movement towards departing. A motion of a finger was the intimation he gave the supposed physician to follow; and passing through the clouds of smoke, Chad was glad, on more accounts than one, to be able, at last, to breathe the pure air of a cool and refreshing summer evening.\n\n Instead of pursuing his way among those lodges where Cristina had already made his unsuccessful search, his companion turned aside, and proceeded directly towards the base of an adjacent mountain, which overhung the temporary village. A thicket of brush skirted its foot, and it became necessary to proceed through a crooked and narrow path. The boys had resumed their sports in the clearing, and were enacting a mimic chase to the post among themselves. In order to render their games as like the reality as possible, one of the boldest of their number had conveyed a few brands into some piles of tree-tops that had hitherto escaped the burning. The blaze of one of these fires lighted the way of the chief and Chad, and gave a character of additional wildness to the rude scenery. At a little distance from a bald rock, and directly in its front, they entered a grassy opening, which they prepared to cross. Just then fresh fuel was added to the fire, and a powerful light penetrated even to that distant spot. It fell upon the white surface of the mountain, and was reflected downwards upon a dark and mysterious-looking being that arose, unexpectedly, in their path.\n\n The Indian paused, as if doubtful whether to proceed, and permitted his companion to approach his side. A large black ball, which at first seemed stationary, now began to move in a manner that to the latter was inexplicable. Again the fire brightened, and its glare fell more distinctly on the object. Then even Chad knew it, by its restless and sideling attitudes, which kept the upper part of its form in constant motion, while the animal itself appeared seated, to be a bear. Though it growled loudly and fiercely, and there were instants when its glistening eyeballs might be seen, it gave no other indications of hostility. The Huron, at least, seemed assured that the intentions of this singular intruder were peaceable, for after giving it an attentive examination, he quietly pursued his course.\n\n Chad, who knew that the animal was often domesticated among the Indians, followed the example of his companion, believing that some favorite of the tribe had found its way into the thicket, in search of food. They passed it unmolested. Though obliged to come nearly in contact with the monster, the Huron, who had at first so warily determined the character of his strange visitor, was now content with proceeding without wasting a moment in further examination; but Cristina was unable to prevent his eyes from looking backward, in salutary watchfulness against attacks in the rear. His uneasiness was in no degree diminished when he perceived the beast rolling along their path, and following their footsteps. He would have spoken, but the Indian at that moment shoved aside a door of bark, and entered a cavern in the bosom of the mountain.\n\n Profiting by so easy a method of retreat, Chad stepped after him, and was gladly closing the slight cover to the opening, when he felt it drawn from his hand by the beast, whose shaggy form immediately darkened the passage. They were now in a straight and long gallery, in a chasm of the rocks, where retreat without encountering the animal was impossible. Making the best of the circumstances, the young man pressed forward, keeping as close as possible to his conductor. The bear growled frequently at his heels, and once or twice its enormous paws were laid on his person, as if disposed to prevent his further passage into the den.\n\n How long the nerves of Cristina would have sustained him in this extraordinary situation, it might be difficult to decide; for, happily, he soon found relief. A glimmer of light had constantly been in their front, and they now arrived at the place whence it proceeded.\n\n A large cavity in the rock had been rudely fitted to answer the purposes of many apartments. The subdivisions were simple but ingenious, being composed of stone, sticks, and bark, intermingled. Openings above admitted the light by day, and at night fires and torches supplied the place of the sun. Hither the Hurons had brought most of their valuables, especially those which more particularly pertained to the nation; and hither, as it now appeared, the sick woman, who was believed to be the victim of supernatural power, had been transported also, under an impression that her tormentor would find more difficulty in making his assaults through walls of stone than through the leafy coverings of the lodges. The apartment into which Chad and his guide first entered, had been exclusively devoted to her accommodation. The latter approached her bedside, which was surrounded by females, in the centre of whom Cristina was surprised to find his missing friend Teegan.\n\n A single look was sufficient to apprise the pretended leech that the invalid was far beyond his powers of healing. She lay in a sort of paralysis, indifferent to the objects which crowded before her sight, and happily unconscious of suffering. Cristina was far from regretting that his mummeries were to be performed on one who was much too ill to take an interest in their failure or success. The slight qualm of conscience which had been excited by the intended deception was instantly appeased, and he began to collect his thoughts, in order to enact his part with suitable spirit, when he found he was about to be anticipated in his skill by an attempt to prove the power of music.\n\n Honour, who had stood prepared to pour forth his spirit in song when the visitors entered, after delaying a moment, drew a strain from his pipe, and commenced a hymn that might have worked a miracle, had faith in its efficacy been of much avail. He was allowed to proceed to the close, the Indians respecting his imaginary infirmity, and Chad too glad of the delay to hazard the slightest interruption. As the dying cadence of his strains was falling on the ears of the latter, he started aside at hearing them repeated behind him in a voice half human, half sepulchral. Looking around, he beheld the shaggy monster seated on end in a shadow of the cavern, where, while his restless body swung in the uneasy manner of the animal, it repeated, in a sort of low growl, sound, if not words, which bore some slight resemblance to the melody of the singer.\n\n The effect of so strange an echo on Teegan may better be imagined than described. His eyes opened as if he doubted their truth; and his voice became instantly mute in excess of wonder. A deep-laid scheme, of communicating some important intelligence to Cristina, was driven from his recollection by an emotion which very nearly resembled fear, but which he was fain to believe was admiration. Under its influence, he exclaimed aloud--\"She expects you, and is at hand;\" and precipitately left the cavern.\n\n\n\n\n\n _\"Snug._--Have you the lion's part written? Pray you, if it be, give it me, for I am slow of study.\"\n\n _\"Quince_.--You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring.\"\n\n _Midsummer Night's Dream._\n\n\n There was a strange blending of the ridiculous with that which was solemn in this scene. The beast still continued its rolling, and apparently untiring movements, though its ludicrous attempt to imitate the melody of Teegan ceased the instant the latter abandoned the field. The words of Honour were, as has been seen, in his native tongue; and to Chad they seemed pregnant with some hidden meaning, though nothing present assisted him in discovering the object of their illusion. A speedy end was, however, put to every conjecture on the subject, by the manner of the chief, who advanced to the bedside of the invalid, and beckoned away the whole group of female attendants that had clustered there to witness the skill of the stranger. He was implicitly, though reluctantly, obeyed; and when the low echo which rang along the hollow natural gallery from the distant closing door had ceased, pointing towards his insensible daughter, he said,--\n\n \"Now let my brother show his power.\"\n\n Thus unequivocally called on to exercise the functions of his assumed character, Cristina was apprehensive that the smallest delay might prove dangerous. Endeavoring then to collect his ideas, he prepared to perform that species of incantation, and those uncouth rites, under which the Indian conjurers are accustomed to conceal their ignorance and impotency. It is more than probable that, in the disordered state of his thoughts, he would soon have fallen into some suspicious, if not fatal error, had not his incipient attempts been interrupted by a fierce growl from the quadruped. Three several times did he renew his efforts to proceed, and as often was he met by the same unaccountable opposition, each interruption seeming more savage and threatening than the preceding.\n\n \"The cunning ones are jealous,\" said the Huron; \"I go. Brother, the woman is the wife of one of my bravest young men; deal justly by her. Peace!\" he added, beckoning to the discontented beast to be quiet; \"I go.\"\n\n The chief was as good as his word, and Chad now found himself alone in that wild and desolate abode, with the helpless invalid, and the fierce and dangerous brute. The latter listened to the movements of the Indian with that air of sagacity that a bear is known to possess, until another echo announced that he had also left the cavern, when it turned and came waddling up to Chad, before whom it seated itself, in its natural attitude, erect like a man. The youth looked anxiously about him for some weapon, with which he might make a resistance against the attack he now seriously expected.\n\n It seemed, however, as if the humor of the animal had suddenly changed. Instead of continuing its discontented growls, or manifesting any further signs of anger, the whole of its shaggy body shook violently, as if agitated by some strange internal convulsion. The huge and unwieldy talons pawed stupidly about the grinning muzzle, and while Cristina kept his eyes riveted on its movements with jealous watchfulness, the grim head fell on one side, and in its place appeared the honest, sturdy countenance of the scout, who was indulging from the bottom of his soul, in his own peculiar expression of merriment.\n\n \"Hist!\" said the wary woodsman, interrupting Cristina's exclamation of surprise; \"the varlets are about the place, and any sounds that are not natural to witchcraft would bring them back upon us in a body.\"\n\n \"Tell me the meaning of this masquerade; and why you have attempted so desperate an adventure.\"\n\n \"Ah! reason and calculation are often outdone by accident,\" returned the scout. \"But as a story should always commence at the beginning, I will tell you the whole in order. After we parted I placed the commandant and the Sagamore in an old beaver lodge, where they are safer from the Hurons than they would be in the garrison of Edward, for your high northwest Indians, not having as yet got the traders among them, continue to venerate the beaver. After which Maura and I pushed for the other encampment, as was agreed; have you seen the lad?\"\n\n \"To my great grief! he is captive, and condemned to die at the rising of the sun.\"\n\n [Illustration: _Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons_\n\n THE MASQUERADER\n\n _The grim head fell on one side, and in its place appeared the honest, sturdy countenance of the scout_]\n\n \"I had misgivings that such would be his fate,\" resumed the scout, in a less confident and joyous tone. But soon regaining his naturally firm voice, he continued: \"His bad fortune is the true reason of my being here, for it would never do to abandon such a boy to the Hurons. A rare time the knaves would have of it, could they tie The Bounding Elk and The Long Carabine, as they call me, to the same stake! Though why they have given me such a name I never knew, there being as little likeness between the gifts of 'Killdeer,' and the performance of one of your real Canada carabynes, as there is between the natur' of a pipe-stone and a flint!\"\n\n \"Keep to your tale,\" said the impatient Cristina; \"we know not at what moment the Hurons may return.\"\n\n \"No fear of them. A conjurer must have his time, like a straggling priest in the settlements. We are as safe from interruption as a missionary would be at the beginning of a two hours' discourse. Well, Maura and I fell in with a return party of the varlets; the lad was much too forward for a scout; nay, for that matter, being of hot blood, he was not so much to blame; and, after all, one of the Hurons proved a coward, and in fleeing led him into an ambushment.\"\n\n \"And dearly has he paid for the weakness!\"\n\n The scout significantly passed his hand across his own throat, and nodded, as if he said, \"I comprehend your meaning.\" After which he continued, in a more audible though scarcely more intelligible language,--\n\n \"After the loss of the boy I turned upon the Hurons, as you may judge. There have been scrimmages atween one or two of their outlyers and myself; but that is neither here nor there. So, after I had shot the imps, I got in pretty nigh to the lodges without further commotion. Then what should luck do in my favor, but lead me to the very spot where one of the most famous conjurers of the tribe was dressing himself, as I well knew, for some great battle with Satan--though why should I call that luck, which it now seems was an especial ordering of Providence! So a judgmatical rap over the head stiffened the lying impostor for a time, and leaving him a bit of walnut for his supper, to prevent an uproar, and stringing him up atween two sapplings, I made free with his finery, and took the part of the bear on myself, in order that the operations might proceed.\"\n\n \"And admirably did you enact the character; the animal itself might have been shamed by the representation.\"\n\n \"Lord, major,\" returned the flattered woodsman, \"I should be but a poor scholar for one who has studied so long in the wilderness, did I not know how to set forth the movements and natur' of such a beast. Had it been now a catamount, or even a full-sized panther, I would have embellished a performance for you worth regarding. But it is no such marvellous feat to exhibit the feats of so dull a beast; though, for that matter too, a bear may be overacted. Yes, yes; it is not every imitator that knows natur' may be outdone easier than she is equalled. But all our work is yet before us: where is the gentle one?\"\n\n \"Heaven knows; I have examined every lodge in the village, without discovering the slightest trace of her presence in the tribe.\"\n\n \"You heard what the singer said, as he left us,--'She is at hand, and expects you'?\"\n\n \"I have been compelled to believe he alluded to this unhappy woman.\"\n\n \"The simpleton was frightened, and blundered through his message; but he had a deeper meaning. Here are walls enough to separate the whole settlement. A bear ought to climb; therefore will I take a look above them. There may be honey-pots hid in these rocks, and I am a beast you know, that has a hankering for the sweets.\"\n\n The scout looked behind him, laughing at his own conceit, while he clambered up the partition, imitating, as he went, the clumsy motions of the beast he represented; but the instant the summit was gained he made a gesture for silence, and slid down with the utmost precipitation.\n\n \"She is here,\" he whispered, \"and by that door you will find her. I would have spoken a word of comfort to the afflicted soul; but the sight of such a monster might upset her reason. Though for that matter, major, you are none of the most inviting yourself in your paint.\"\n\n Chad, who had already sprung eagerly forward, drew instantly back on hearing these discouraging words.\n\n \"Am I, then, so very revolting?\" he demanded, with an air of chagrin.\n\n \"You might not startle a wolf, or turn the Royal Americans from a charge; but I have seen the time when you had a better-favored look; your streaked countenances are not ill-judged of by the squaws, but young women of white blood give the preference to their own color. See,\" he added, pointing to a place where the water trickled from a rock, forming a little crystal spring before it found an issue through the adjacent crevices; \"you may easily get rid of the Sagamore's daub, and when you come back I will try my hand at a new embellishment. It's as common for a conjurer to alter his paint as for a buck in the settlements to change his finery.\"\n\n The deliberate woodsman had little occasion to hunt for arguments to enforce his advice. He was yet speaking when Chad availed himself of the water. In a moment every frightful or offensive mark was obliterated, and the youth appeared again in the lineaments with which he had been gifted by nature. Thus prepared for an interview with his mistress, he took a hasty leave of his companion, and disappeared through the indicated passage. The scout witnessed his departure with complacency, nodding his head after him, and muttering his good wishes; after which he very coolly set about an examination of the state of the larder, among the Hurons--the cavern, among other purposes, being used as a receptacle for the fruits of their hunts.\n\n Chad had no other guide than a distant glimmering light, which served, however, the office of a polar star to the lover. By its aid he was enabled to enter the haven of his hopes, which was merely another apartment of the cavern, that had been solely appropriated to the safe-keeping of so important a prisoner as a daughter of the commandant of William Henry. It was profusely strewed with the plunder of that unlucky fortress. In the midst of this confusion he found her he sought, pale, anxious, and terrified, but lovely. Teegan had prepared her for such a visit.\n\n \"Chad!\" she exclaimed, in a voice that seemed to tremble at the sounds created by itself.\n\n \"Shay\" he answered, leaping carelessly among trunks, boxes, arms, and furniture, until he stood at her side.\n\n \"I knew that you would never desert me,\" she said, looking up with a momentary glow on her otherwise dejected countenance. \"But you are alone! grateful as it is to be thus remembered, I could wish to think you are not entirely alone.\"\n\n Chad, observing that she trembled in a manner which betrayed her inability to stand, gently induced her to be seated, while he recounted those leading incidents which it has been our task to record. Shay listened with breathless interest; and though the young man touched lightly on the sorrows of the stricken father, taking care, however, not to wound the self-love of his auditor, the tears ran as freely down the cheeks of the daughter as though she had never wept before. The soothing tenderness of Chad, however, soon quieted the first burst of her emotions, and she then heard him to the close with undivided attention, if not with composure.\n\n \"And now, Shay,\" he added, \"you will see how much is still expected of you. By the assistance of our experienced and invaluable friend, the scout, we may find our way from this savage people, but you will have to exert your utmost fortitude. Remember that you fly to the arms of your venerable parent, and how much his happiness, as well as your own, depends on those exertions.\"\n\n \"Can I do otherwise for a father who has done so much for me?\"\n\n \"And for me too,\" continued the youth, gently pressing the hand he held in both his own.\n\n The look of innocence and surprise which he received in return convinced Chad of the necessity of being more explicit.\n\n \"This is neither the place nor the occasion to detain you with selfish wishes,\" he added; \"but what heart loaded like mine would not wish to cast its burden? They say misery is the closest of all ties; our common suffering in your behalf left but little to be explained between your father and myself.\"\n\n \"And dearest Eli, Chad; surely Eli was not forgotten?\"\n\n \"Not forgotten! no; regretted, as woman was seldom mourned before. Your venerable father knew no difference between his children; but I--Shay, you will not be offended when I say, that to me her worth was in a degree obscured--\"\n\n \"Then you knew not the merit of my sister,\" said Shay, withdrawing her hand; \"of you she ever speaks as of one who is her nearest friend.\"\n\n \"I would gladly believe her such,\" returned Chad, hastily; \"I could wish her to be even more; but with you, Shay, I have the permission of your father to aspire to a still nearer and dearer tie.\"\n\n Shay trembled violently, and there was an instant during which she bent her face aside, yielding to the emotions common to her sex; but they quickly passed away, leaving her mistress of her deportment, if not of her affections.\n\n \"Cristina,\" she said, looking him full in the face with a touching expression of innocence and dependency, \"give me the sacred presence and the holy sanction of that parent before you urge me further.\"\n\n \"Though more I should not, less I could not say,\" the youth was about to answer, when he was interrupted by a light tap on his shoulder. Starting to his feet, he turned, and, confronting the intruder, his looks fell on the dark form and malignant visage of Cael. The deep guttural laugh of the savage sounded, at such a moment, to Chad like the hellish taunt of a demon. Had he pursued the sudden and fierce impulse of the instant, he would have cast himself on the Huron, and committed their fortunes to the issue of a deadly struggle. But, without arms of any description, ignorant of what succor his subtle enemy could command, and charged with the safety of one who was just then dearer than ever to his heart, he no sooner entertained than he abandoned the desperate intention.\n\n \"What is your purpose?\" said Shay, meekly folding her arms on her bosom, and struggling to conceal an agony of apprehension in behalf of Cristina, in the usual cold and distant manner with which she received the visits of her captor.\n\n The exulting Indian had resumed his austere countenance, though he drew warily back before the menacing glance of the young man's fiery eye. He regarded both his captives for a moment with a steady look, and then stepping aside, he dropped a log of wood across a door different from that by which Chad had entered. The latter now comprehended the manner of his surprise, and believing himself irretrievably lost, he drew Shay to his bosom, and stood prepared to meet a fate which he hardly regretted, since it was to be suffered in such company. But Cael meditated no immediate violence. His first measures were very evidently taken to secure his new captive; nor did he even bestow a second glance at the motionless forms in the centre of the cavern, until he had completely cut off every hope of retreat through the private outlet he had himself used. He was watched in all his movements by Cristina, who, however, remained firm, still folding the fragile form of Shay to his heart, at once too proud and too hopeless to ask favor of an enemy so often foiled. When Cael had effected his object he approached his prisoners, and said in English,--\n\n \"The pale-faces trap the cunning beavers; but the redskins know how to take the Yengeese.\"\n\n \"Huron, do your worst!\" exclaimed the excited Cristina, forgetful that a double stake was involved in his life; \"you and your vengeance are alike despised.\"\n\n \"Will the white man speak these words at the stake?\" asked Cael; manifesting, at the same time, how little faith he had in the other's resolution by the sneer that accompanied his words.\n\n \"Here; singly to your face, or in the presence of your nation.\"\n\n \"Le Renard Subtil is a great chief!\" returned the Indian; \"he will go and bring his young men to see how bravely a pale-face can laugh at the tortures.\"\n\n He turned away while speaking, and was about to leave the place through the avenue by which Chad had approached, when a growl caught his ear, and caused him to hesitate. The figure of the bear appeared in the door, where it sat, rolling from side to side in its customary restlessness. Cael, like the father of the sick woman, eyed it keenly for a moment, as if to ascertain its character. He was far above the more vulgar superstitions of his tribe, and so soon as he recognized the well-known attire of the conjurer, he prepared to pass it in cool contempt. But a louder and more threatening growl caused him again to pause. Then he seemed as if suddenly resolved to trifle no longer, and moved resolutely forward. The mimic animal, which had advanced a little, retired slowly in his front, until it arrived again at the pass, when rearing on its hinder legs it beat the air with its paws, in the manner practised by its brutal prototype.\n\n \"Fool!\" exclaimed the chief, in Huron, \"go play with the children and squaws; leave men to their wisdom.\"\n\n He once more endeavored to pass the supposed empiric, scorning even the parade of threatening to use the knife, or tomahawk, that was pendent from his belt. Suddenly the beast extended its arms, or rather legs, and inclosed him in a grasp that might have vied with the far-famed power of the \"bear's hug\" itself. Cristina had watched the whole procedure, on the part of Theo, with breathless interest. At first he relinquished his hold of Shay; then he caught up a thong of buckskin, which had been used around some bundle, and when he beheld his enemy with his two arms pinned to his side by the iron muscles of the scout, he rushed upon him, and effectually secured them there. Arms, legs, and feet were encircled in twenty folds of the thong, in less time than we have taken to record the circumstance. When the formidable Huron was completely pinioned, the scout released his hold, and Chad laid his enemy on his back, utterly helpless.\n\n Throughout the whole of this sudden and extraordinary operation, Cael, though he had struggled violently, until assured he was in the hands of one whose nerves were far better strung than his own, had not uttered the slightest exclamation. But when Theo, by way of making a summary explanation of his conduct, removed the shaggy jaws of the beast, and exposed his own rugged and earnest countenance to the gaze of the Huron, the philosophy of the latter was so far mastered as to permit him to utter the never-failing,--\n\n \"Hugh!\"\n\n \"Ay! you've found your tongue,\" said his undisturbed conqueror; \"now, in order that you shall not use it to our ruin, I must make free to stop your mouth.\"\n\n As there was no time to be lost, the scout immediately set about effecting so necessary a precaution; and when he had gagged the Indian, his enemy might safely have been considered as _hors de combat_.\n\n \"By what place did the imp enter?\" asked the industrious scout, when his work was ended. \"Not a soul has passed my way since you left me.\"\n\n Chad pointed out the door by which Cael had come, and which now presented too many obstacles to a quick retreat.\n\n \"Bring on the gentle one, then,\" continued his friend; \"we must make a push for the woods by the other outlet.\"\n\n \"'Tis impossible!\" said Chad; \"fear has overcome her, and she is helpless. Shay! my sweet, my own Shay, arouse yourself; now is the moment to fly. 'Tis in vain! she hears, but is unable to follow. Go, noble and worthy friend; save yourself, and leave me to my fate!\"\n\n \"Every trail has its end, and every calamity brings its lesson!\" returned the scout. \"There, wrap her in them Indian cloths. Conceal all of her little form. Nay, that foot has no fellow in the wilderness; it will betray her. All, every part. Now take her in your arms, and follow. Leave the rest to me.\"\n\n Chad, as may be gathered from the words of his companion, was eagerly obeying; and as the other finished speaking, he took the light person of Shay in his arms, and followed on the footsteps of the scout. They found the sick woman as they had left her, still alone, and passed swiftly on, by the natural gallery, to the place of entrance. As they approached the little door of bark, a murmur of voices without announced that the friends and relatives of the invalid were gathered about the place, patiently awaiting a summons to re-enter.\n\n \"If I open my lips to speak,\" Theo whispered, \"my English, which is the genuine tongue of a white-skin, will tell the varlets that an enemy is among them. You must give 'em your jargon, major; and say that we have shut the evil spirit in the cave, and are taking the woman to the woods in order to find strengthening roots. Practyse all your cunning, for it is a lawful undertaking.\"\n\n The door opened a little, as if one without was listening to the proceedings within, and compelled the scout to cease his directions. A fierce growl repelled the eavesdropper, and then the scout boldly threw open the covering of bark, and left the place, enacting the character of the bear as he proceeded. Chad kept close at his heels, and so found himself in the centre of a cluster of twenty anxious relatives and friends.\n\n The crowd fell back a little, and permitted the father, and one who appeared to be the husband of the woman, to approach.\n\n \"Has my brother driven away the evil spirit?\" demanded the former. \"What has he in his arms?\"\n\n \"Thy child,\" returned Chad, gravely; \"the disease has gone out of her; it is shut up in the rocks. I take the woman to a distance, where I will strengthen her against any further attacks. She shall be in the wigwam of the young man when the sun comes again.\"\n\n When the father had translated the meaning of the stranger's words into the Huron language, a suppressed murmur announced the satisfaction with which the intelligence was received. The chief himself waved his hand for Chad to proceed, saying aloud, in a firm voice, and with a lofty manner,--\n\n \"Go; I am a man, and I will enter the rock and fight the wicked one.\"\n\n Cristina had gladly obeyed, and was already past the little group, when these startling words arrested him.\n\n \"Is my brother mad?\" he exclaimed; \"is he cruel! He will meet the disease, and it will enter him; or he will drive out the disease, and it will chase his daughter into the woods. No; let my children wait without, and if the spirit appears beat him down with clubs. He is cunning, and will bury himself in the mountain, when he sees how many are ready to fight him.\"\n\n This singular warning had the desired effect. Instead of entering the cavern, the father and husband drew their tomahawks, and posted themselves in readiness to deal their vengeance on the imaginary tormentor of their sick relative, while the women and children broke branches from the bushes, or seized fragments of the rock, with a similar intention. At this favorable moment the counterfeit conjurers disappeared.\n\n Theo, at the same time that he had presumed so far on the nature of the Indian superstitions, was not ignorant that they were rather tolerated than relied on by the wisest of the chiefs. He well knew the value of time in the present emergency. Whatever might be the extent of the self-delusion of his enemies, and however it had tended to assist his schemes, the slightest cause of suspicion, acting on the subtle nature of an Indian, would be likely to prove fatal. Taking the path, therefore, that was most likely to avoid observation, he rather skirted than entered the village. The warriors were still to be seen in the distance, by the fading light of the fires, stalking from lodge to lodge. But the children had abandoned their sports for their beds of skins, and the quiet of night was already beginning to prevail over the turbulence and excitement of so busy and important an evening.\n\n Shay revived under the renovating influence of the open air, and as her physical rather than her mental powers had been the subject of weakness, she stood in no need of any explanation of that which had occurred.\n\n \"Now let me make an effort to walk,\" she said, when they had entered the forest, blushing, though unseen, that she had not been sooner able to quit the arms of Chad; \"I am indeed restored.\"\n\n \"Nay, Shay, you are yet too weak.\"\n\n The maiden struggled gently to release herself, and Cristina was compelled to part with his precious burden. The representative of the bear had certainly been an entire stranger to the delicious emotions of the lover while his arms encircled his mistress; and he was, perhaps, a stranger also to the nature of that feeling of ingenuous shame that oppressed the trembling Shay. But when he found himself at a suitable distance from the lodges he made a halt, and spoke on a subject of which he was thoroughly the master.\n\n \"This path will lead you to the brook,\" he said; \"follow its northern bank until you come to a fall; and mount the hill on your right, and you will see the fires of the other people. There you must go and demand protection; if they are true Delawares, you will be safe. A distant flight with that gentle one, just now, is impossible. The Hurons would follow up our trail, and master our scalps, before we had got a dozen miles. Go, and Providence be with you.\"\n\n \"And you!\" demanded Cristina, in surprise; \"surely we part not here?\"\n\n \"The Hurons hold the pride of the Delawares; the last of the high blood of the Europeans is in their power,\" returned the scout; \"I go to see what can be done in his favor. Had they mastered your scalp, major, a knave should have fallen for every hair it held, as I promised; but if the young Sagamore is to be led to the stake, the Indians shall see also how a man without a cross can die.\"\n\n Not in the least offended with the decided preference that the sturdy woodsman gave to one who might, in some degree, be called the child of his adoption, Chad still continued to urge such reasons against so desperate an effort as presented themselves. He was aided by Shay, who mingled her entreaties with those of Cristina that he would abandon a resolution that promised so much danger, with so little hope of success. Their eloquence and ingenuity were expended in vain. The scout heard them attentively, but impatiently, and finally closed the discussion, by answering, in a tone that instantly silenced Shay, while it told Cristina how fruitless any further remonstrances would be,--\n\n \"I have heard,\" he said, \"that there is a feeling in youth which binds man to woman closer than the father is tied to the son. It may be so. I have seldom been where women of my color dwell; but such may be the gifts of nature in the settlements. You have risked life, and all that is dear to you, to bring off this gentle one, and I suppose that some such disposition is at the bottom of it all. As for me, I taught the lad the real character of a rifle; and well has he paid me for it. I have fou't at his side in many a bloody scrimmage; and so long as I could hear the crack of his piece in one ear, and that of the Sagamore in the other, I knew no enemy was on my back. Winters and summers, nights and days, have we roved the wilderness in company, eating of the same dish, one sleeping while the other watched; and afore it shall be said that Maura was taken to the torment, and I at hand--There is but a single Ruler of us all, whatever may be the color of the skin; and Him I call to witness, that before the European boy shall perish for the want of a friend, good faith shall depart the 'arth, and 'Killdeer' become as harmless as the tooting we'pon of the singer!\"\n\n [Illustration: _Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons_\n\n THE LOVERS\n\n _Cristina and Shay took their way together towards the distant village of the Delawares_]\n\n Chad released his hold on the arm of the scout, who turned, and steadily retraced his steps towards the lodges. After pausing a moment to gaze at his retiring form, the successful and yet sorrowful Cristina, and Shay, took their way together towards the distant village of the Delawares.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"_Bot._--Let me play the lion too.\"\n\n _Midsummer Night's Dream._\n\n\n Notwithstanding the high resolution of Theo, he fully comprehended all the difficulties and dangers he was about to incur. In his return to the camp, his acute and practised intellects were intently engaged in devising means to counteract a watchfulness and suspicion on the part of his enemies, that he knew were, in no degree, inferior to his own. Nothing but the color of his skin had saved the lives of Cael and the conjurer, who would have been the first victims sacrificed to his own security, had not the scout believed such an act, however congenial it might be to the nature of an Indian, utterly unworthy of one who boasted a descent from men that knew no cross of blood. Accordingly, he trusted to the withes and ligaments with which he had bound his captives, and pursued his way directly towards the centre of the lodges.\n\n As he approached the buildings, his steps became more deliberate, and his vigilant eye suffered no sign, whether friendly or hostile, to escape him. A neglected hut was a little in advance of the others, and appeared as if it had been deserted when half completed--most probably on account of failing in some of the more important requisites; such as food or water. A faint light glimmered through its cracks, however, and announced that, notwithstanding its imperfect structure, it was not without a tenant. Thither, then, the scout proceeded, like a prudent general, who was about to feel the advanced positions of his enemy, before he hazarded the main attack.\n\n Throwing himself into a suitable posture for the beast he represented, Theo crawled to a little opening, where he might command a view of the interior. It proved to be the abiding-place of Teegan Honour. Hither the faithful singing-master had now brought himself, together with all his sorrows, his apprehensions, and his meek dependence on the protection of Providence. At the precise moment when his ungainly person came under the observation of the scout, in the manner just mentioned, the woodsman himself, though in his assumed character, was the subject of the solitary being's profoundest reflections.\n\n However implicit the faith of Teegan was in the performance of ancient miracles, he eschewed the belief of any direct supernatural agency in the management of modern morality. In other words, while he had implicit faith in the ability of Balsam's ass to speak, he was somewhat skeptical on the subject of a bear's singing; and yet he had been assured of the latter, on the testimony of his own exquisite organs. There was something in his air and manner that betrayed to the scout the utter confusion of the state of his mind. He was seated on a pile of brush, a few twigs from which occasionally fed his low fire, with his head leaning on his arm, in a posture of melancholy musing. The costume of the votary of music had undergone no other alteration from that so lately described, except that he had covered his bald head with the triangular beaver, which had not proved sufficiently alluring to excite the cupidity of any of his captors.\n\n The ingenious Theo, who recalled the hasty manner in which the other had abandoned his post at the bedside of the sick woman, was not without his suspicions concerning the subject of so much solemn deliberation. First making the circuit of the hut, and ascertaining that it stood quite alone, and that the character of its inmate was likely to protect it from visitors, he ventured through its low door, into the very presence of Honour. The position of the latter brought the fire between them; and when Theo had seated himself on end, near a minute elapsed, during which the two remained regarding each other without speaking. The suddenness and the nature of the surprise had nearly proved too much for--we will not say the philosophy--but for the faith and resolution of Teegan. He fumbled for his pitch-pipe, and arose with a confused intention of attempting a musical exorcism.\n\n \"Dark and mysterious monster!\" he exclaimed, while with trembling hands he disposed of his auxiliary eyes, and sought his never-failing resource in trouble, the gifted version of the Psalms: \"I know not your nature nor intents; but if aught you meditate against the person and rights of one of the humblest servants of the temple, listen to the inspired language of the youth of Israel, and repent.\"\n\n The bear shook his shaggy sides, and then a well-known voice replied,--\n\n \"Put up the tooting we'pon, and teach your throat modesty. Five words of plain and comprehensible English are worth, just now, an hour of squalling.\"\n\n \"What art thou!\" demanded Teegan, utterly disqualified to pursue his original intention, and nearly gasping for breath.\n\n \"A man like yourself; and one whose blood is as little tainted by the cross of a bear, or an Indian, as your own. Have you so soon forgotten from whom you received the foolish instrument you hold in your hand?\"\n\n \"Can these things be?\" returned Teegan, breathing more freely, as the truth began to dawn upon him. \"I have found many marvels during my sojourn with the heathen, but surely nothing to excel this!\"\n\n \"Come, come,\" returned Theo, uncasing his honest countenance, the better to assure the wavering confidence of his companion; \"you may see a skin, which, if it be not as white as one of the gentle ones, has no tinge of red to it that the winds of heaven and the sun have not bestowed. Now let us to business.\"\n\n \"First tell me of the maiden, and of the youth who so bravely sought her,\" interrupted Teegan.\n\n \"Ay, they are happily freed from the tomahawks of these varlets. But can you put me on the scent of Maura?\"\n\n \"The young man is in bondage, and much I fear his death is decreed. I greatly mourn that one so well disposed should die in his ignorance, and I have sought a goodly hymn--\"\n\n \"Can you lead me to him?\"\n\n \"The task will not be difficult,\" returned Teegan, hesitating; \"though I greatly fear your presence would rather increase than mitigate his unhappy fortunes.\"\n\n \"No more words, but lead on,\" returned Theo, concealing his face again, and setting the example in his own person, by instantly quitting the lodge.\n\n As they proceeded, the scout ascertained that his companion found access to Maura, under privilege of his imaginary infirmity, aided by the favor he had acquired with one of the guards, who, in consequence of speaking a little English, had been selected by Teegan as the subject of a religious conversation. How far the Huron comprehended the intentions of his new friend, may well be doubted; but as exclusive attention is as flattering to a savage as to a more civilized individual, it had produced the effect we have mentioned. It is unnecessary to repeat the shrewd manner with which the scout extracted these particulars from the simple Teegan; neither shall we dwell in this place on the nature of the instructions he delivered, when completely master of all the necessary facts; as the whole will be sufficiently explained to the reader in the course of the narrative.\n\n The lodge in which Maura was confined was in the very centre of the village, and in a situation, perhaps, more difficult than any other to approach, or leave, without observation. But it was not the policy of Theo to affect the least concealment. Presuming on his disguise, and his ability to sustain the character he had assumed, he took the most plain and direct route to the place. The hour, however, afforded him some little of that protection which he appeared so much to despise. The boys were already buried in sleep, and all the women, and most of the warriors, had retired to their lodges for the night. Four or five of the latter only lingered about the door of the prison of Maura, wary but close observers of the manner of their captive.\n\n At the sight of Honour, accompanied by one in the well known masquerade of their most distinguished conjurer, they readily made way for them both. Still they betrayed no intention to depart. On the other hand, they were evidently disposed to remain bound to the place by an additional interest in the mysterious mummeries that they of course expected from such a visit.\n\n From the total inability of the scout to address the Hurons in their own language, he was compelled to trust the conversation entirely to Teegan. Notwithstanding the simplicity of the latter, he did ample justice to the instructions he had received, more than fulfilling the strongest hopes of his teacher.\n\n \"The Delawares are women!\" he exclaimed, addressing himself to the savage who had a slight understanding of the language in which he spoke; \"the Yengeese, my foolish countrymen, have told them to take up the tomahawk, and strike their fathers in the Canadas, and they have forgotten their sex. Does my brother wish to hear Le Cerf Agile ask for his petticoats, and see him weep before the Hurons, at the stake?\"\n\n The exclamation \"Hugh!\" delivered in a strong tone of assent, announced the gratification the savage would receive in witnessing such an exhibition of weakness in an enemy so long hated and so much feared.\n\n \"Then let him step aside, and the cunning man will blow upon the dog! Tell it to my brothers.\"\n\n The Huron explained the meaning of Teegan to his fellows, who, in their turn, listened to the project with that sort of satisfaction that their untamed spirits might be expected to find in such a refinement in cruelty. They drew back a little from the entrance, and motioned to the supposed conjurer to enter. But the bear, instead of obeying, maintained the seat it had taken, and growled.\n\n \"The cunning man is afraid that his breath will blow upon his brothers, and take away their courage too,\" continued Teegan, improving the hint he received; \"they must stand farther off.\"\n\n The Hurons, who would have deemed such a misfortune the heaviest calamity that could befall them, fell back in a body, taking a position where they were out of ear-shot, though at the same time they could command a view of the entrance to the lodge. Then, as if satisfied of their safety, the scout left his position, and slowly entered the place. It was silent and gloomy, being tenanted solely by the captive, and lighted by the dying embers of a fire, which had been used for the purposes of cookery.\n\n Maura occupied a distant corner, in a reclining attitude, being rigidly bound, both hands and feet, by strong and painful withes. When the frightful object first presented itself to the young European, he did not deign to bestow a single glance on the animal. The scout, who had left Teegan at the door, to ascertain they were not observed, thought it prudent to preserve his disguise until assured of their privacy. Instead of speaking, therefore, he exerted himself to enact one of the antics of the animal he represented. The young European, who at first believed his enemies had sent in a real beast to torment him, and try his nerves, detected, in those performances that to Cristina had appeared so accurate, certain blemishes, that at once betrayed the counterfeit. Had Theo been aware of the low estimation in which the more skilful Maura held his representations, he would probably have prolonged the entertainment a little in pique. But the scornful expression of the young man's eye admitted of so many constructions, that the worthy scout was spared the mortification of such a discovery. As soon, therefore, as Teegan gave the pre-concerted signal, a low hissing sound was heard in the lodge, in place of the fierce growlings of the bear.\n\n Maura had cast his body back against the wall of the hut, and closed his eyes, as if willing to exclude so contemptible and disagreeable an object from his sight. But the moment the noise of the serpent was heard, he arose, and cast his looks on each side of him, bending his head low, and turning it inquiringly in every direction, until his keen eye rested on the shaggy monster, where it remained riveted, as though fixed by the power of a charm. Again the same sounds were repeated, evidently proceeding from the mouth of the beast. Once more the eyes of the youth roamed over the interior of the lodge, and returning to their former resting place, he uttered, in a deep, suppressed voice,--\n\n \"Theo!\"\n\n \"Cut his bands,\" said Theo to Teegan, who just then approached them.\n\n The singer did as he was ordered, and Maura found his limbs released. At the same moment the dried skin of the animal rattled, and presently the scout arose to his feet, in proper person. The European appeared to comprehend the nature of the attempt his friend had made, intuitively; neither tongue nor feature betraying another symptom of surprise. When Theo had cast his shaggy vestment, which was done by simply loosing certain thongs of skin, he drew a long glittering knife, and put it in the hands of Maura.\n\n \"The red Hurons are without,\" he said; \"let us be ready.\"\n\n At the same time he laid his finger significantly on another similar weapon, both being the fruits of his prowess among their enemies during the evening.\n\n \"We will go,\" said Maura.\n\n \"Whither?\"\n\n \"To the Tortoises; they are the children of my grandfathers.\"\n\n \"Ay, lad,\" said the scout in English--a language he was apt to use when a little abstracted in mind; \"the same blood runs in your veins, I believe; but time and distance have a little changed its color. What shall we do with the Mingos at the door? They count six, and this singer is as good as nothing.\"\n\n \"The Hurons are boasters,\" said Maura scornfully; \"their 'totem' is a moose, and they run like snails. The Delawares are children of the tortoise, and they outstrip the deer.\"\n\n \"Ay, lad, there is truth in what you say; and I doubt not, on a rush, you would pass the whole nation; and, in a straight race of two miles, would be in, and get your breath again, afore a knave of them all was within hearing of the other village. But the gift of a white man lies more in his arms than in his legs. As for myself, I can brain a Huron as well as a better man; but when it comes to a race, the knaves would prove too much for me.\"\n\n Maura, who had already approached the door, in readiness to lead the way, now recoiled; and placed himself, once more, in the bottom of the lodge. But Theo, who was too much occupied with his own thoughts to note the movement, continued speaking more to himself than to his companion.\n\n \"After all,\" he said, \"it is unreasonable to keep one man in bondage to the gifts of another. So, Maura, you had better take the leap, while I put on the skin again, and trust to cunning for want of speed.\"\n\n The young European made no reply, but quietly folded his arms, and leaned his body against one of the upright posts that supported the wall of the hut.\n\n \"Well,\" said the scout, looking up at him, \"why do you tarry? There will be time enough for me, as the knaves will give chase to you at first.\"\n\n \"Maura will stay,\" was the calm reply.\n\n \"For what?\"\n\n \"To fight with his father's brother, and die with the friend of the Delawares.\"\n\n \"Ay, lad,\" returned Theo, squeezing the hand of Maura between his own iron fingers; \"'twould have been more like a Mingo than a European had you left me. But I thought I would make the offer, seeing that youth commonly loves life. Well, what can't be done by main courage, in war, must be done by circumvention. Put on the skin; I doubt not you can play the bear nearly as well as myself.\"\n\n Whatever might have been the private opinion of Maura of their respective abilities in this particular, his grave countenance manifested no opinion of his own superiority. He silently and expeditiously encased himself in the covering of the beast, and then awaited such other movements as his more aged companion saw fit to dictate.\n\n \"Now, friend,\" said Theo, addressing Teegan, \"an exchange of garments will be a great convenience to you, inasmuch as you are but little accustomed to the make-shifts of the wilderness. Here, take my hunting shirt and cap, and give me your blanket and hat. You must trust me with the book and spectacles, as well as the tooter, too; if we ever meet again, in better times, you shall have all back again, with many thanks into the bargain.\"\n\n Teegan parted with the several articles named with a readiness that would have done great credit to his liberality, had he not certainly profited, in many particulars, by the exchange. Theo was not long in assuming his borrowed garments; and when his restless eyes were hid behind the glasses, and his head was surmounted by the triangular beaver, as their statures were not dissimilar, he might readily have passed for the singer by star-light. As soon as these dispositions were made, the scout turned to Teegan, and gave him his parting instructions.\n\n \"Are you much given to cowardice?\" he bluntly asked, by way of obtaining a suitable understanding of the whole case before he ventured a prescription.\n\n \"My pursuits are peaceful, and my temper, I humbly trust, is greatly given to mercy and love,\" returned Teegan, a little nettled at so direct an attack on his manhood; \"but there are none who can say that I have ever forgotten my faith in the Lord, even in the greatest straits.\"\n\n \"Your chiefest danger will be at the moment when the savages find out that they have been deceived. If you are not then knocked in the head, your being a non-composser will protect you; and you'll then have good reason to expect to die in your bed. If you stay, it must be to sit down here in the shadow, and take the part of Maura, until such times as the cunning of the Indians discover the cheat, when, as I have already said, your time of trial will come. So choose for yourself,--to make a rush or tarry here.\"\n\n \"Even so,\" said Teegan, firmly; \"I will abide in the place of the Delaware. Bravely and generously has he battled in my behalf; and this, and more, will I dare in his service.\"\n\n \"You have spoken as a man, and like one who, under wiser schooling, would have been brought to better things. Hold your head down, and draw in your legs; their formation might tell the truth too early. Keep silent as long as may be; and it would be wise, when you do speak, to break out suddenly in one of your shoutings, which will serve to remind the Indians that you are not altogether as responsible as men should be. If, however, they take your scalp, as I trust and believe they will not, depend on it, Maura and I will not forget the deed, but revenge it as becomes true warriors and trusty friends.\"\n\n \"Hold!\" said Teegan, perceiving that with this assurance they were about to leave him; \"I am an unworthy and humble follower of One who taught not the damnable principle of revenge. Should I fall, therefore, seek no victims to my manes, but rather forgive my destroyers; and if you remember them at all, let it be in prayers for the enlightening of their minds, and for their eternal welfare.\"\n\n The scout hesitated, and appeared to muse.\n\n \"There is a principle in that,\" he said, \"different from the law of the woods; and yet it is fair and noble to reflect upon.\" Then, heaving a heavy sigh, probably among the last he ever drew in pining for a condition he had so long abandoned, he added, \"It is what I would wish to practise, myself, as one without a cross of blood, though it is not always easy to deal with an Indian as you would with a fellow Christian. God bless you, friend; I do believe your scent is not greatly wrong, when the matter is duly considered, and keeping eternity before the eyes, though much depends on the natural gifts, and the force of temptation.\"\n\n So saying, the scout returned and shook Teegan cordially by the hand; after which act of friendship he immediately left the lodge, attended by the new representative of the beast.\n\n The instant Theo found himself under the observation of the Hurons, he drew up his tall form in the rigid manner of Teegan, threw out his arm in the act of keeping time, and commenced what he intended for an imitation of his psalmody. Happily for the success of this delicate adventure, he had to deal with ears but little practised in the concord of sweet sounds, or the miserable effort would infallibly have been detected. It was necessary to pass within a dangerous proximity of the dark group of the savages, and the voice of the scout grew louder as they drew nigher. When at the nearest point, the Huron who spoke the English thrust out an arm, and stopped the supposed singing-master.\n\n \"The Delaware dog!\" he said, leaning forward, and peering through the dim light to catch the expression of the other's features; \"is he afraid? will the Hurons hear his groans?\"\n\n A growl so exceedingly fierce and natural proceeded from the beast, that the young Indian released his hold and started aside, as if to assure himself that it was not a veritable bear, and no counterfeit, that was rolling before him. Theo, who feared his voice would betray him to his subtle enemies, gladly profited by the interruption, to break out anew in such a burst of musical expression as would, probably, in a more refined state of society have been termed \"a grand crash.\" Among his actual auditors, however, it merely gave him an additional claim to that respect which they never withhold from such as are believed to be the subjects of mental alienation. The little knot of Indians drew back in a body, and suffered, as they thought, the conjurer and his inspired assistant to proceed.\n\n It required no common exercise of fortitude in Maura and the scout, to continue the dignified and deliberate pace they had assumed in passing the lodges; especially as they immediately perceived that curiosity had so far mastered fear, as to induce the watchers to approach the hut, in order to witness the effect of the incantations. The least injudicious or impatient movement on the part of Teegan might betray them, and time was absolutely necessary to insure the safety of the scout. The loud noise the latter conceived it politic to continue, drew many curious gazers to the doors of the different huts as they passed; and once or twice a dark-looking warrior stepped across their path, led to the act by superstition or watchfulness. They were not, however, interrupted; the darkness of the hour, and the coldness of the attempt, proving their principal friends.\n\n The adventurers had got clear of the village, and were now swiftly approaching the shelter of the woods, when a loud and long cry arose from the lodge where Maura had been confined. The European started on his feet, and shook his shaggy covering, as though the animal he counterfeited was about to make some desperate effort.\n\n \"Hold!\" said the scout, grasping his friend by the shoulder, \"let them yell again! 'Twas nothing but wonderment.\"\n\n He had no occasion to delay, for the next instant a burst of cries filled the outer air, and ran along the whole extent of the village. Maura cast his skin, and stepped forth in his own beautiful proportions. Theo tapped him lightly on the shoulder, and glided ahead.\n\n \"Now let the devils strike our scent!\" said the scout, tearing two rifles, with all their attendant accoutrements, from beneath a bush, and flourishing \"Killdeer\" as he handed Maura his weapon; \"two, at least, will find it to their deaths.\"\n\n Then throwing their pieces to a low trail, like sportsmen in readiness for their game, they dashed forward, and were soon buried in the sombre darkness of the forest.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"_Ant._ I shall remember: When Caesar says _Do this_, it is performed.\"\n\n _Julius Caesar._\n\n\n The impatience of the savages who lingered about the prison of Maura, as has been seen, had overcome their dread of the conjurer's breath. They stole cautiously, and with beating hearts, to a crevice, through which the faint light of the fire was glimmering. For several minutes they mistook the form of Teegan for that of their prisoner; but the very accident which Theo had foreseen occurred. Tired of keeping the extremities of his long person so near together, the singer gradually suffered the lower limbs to extend themselves, until one of his misshapen feet actually came in contact with and shoved aside the embers of the fire. At first the Hurons believed the Delaware had been thus deformed by witchcraft. But when Teegan, unconscious of being observed, turned his head, and exposed his simple, mild countenance, in place of the haughty lineaments of their prisoner, it would have exceeded the credulity of even a native to have doubted any longer. They rushed together into the lodge, and laying their hands, with but little ceremony, on their captive, immediately detected the imposition. Then arose the cry first heard by the fugitives. It was succeeded by the most frantic and angry demonstrations of vengeance. Teegan, however firm in his determination to cover the retreat of his friends, was compelled to believe that his own final hour had come. Deprived of his book and his pipe, he was fain to trust to a memory that rarely failed him on such subjects; and breaking forth in a loud and impassioned strain, he endeavored to soothe his passage into the other world, by singing the opening verse of a funeral anthem. The Indians were seasonably reminded of his infirmity, and rushing into the open air, they aroused the village in the manner described.\n\n A native warrior fights as he sleeps, without the protection of anything defensive. The sounds of the alarm were, therefore, hardly uttered, before two hundred men were afoot, and ready for the battle or the chase, as either might be required. The escape was soon known; and the whole tribe crowded, in a body, around the council-lodge, impatiently awaiting the instruction of their chiefs. In such a sudden demand on their wisdom, the presence of the cunning Cael could scarcely fail of being needed. His name was mentioned, and all looked round in wonder that he did not appear. Messengers were then despatched to his lodge, requiring his presence.\n\n In the meantime, some of the swiftest and most discreet of the young men were ordered to make the circuit of the clearing, under cover of the woods, in order to ascertain that their suspected neighbors, the Delawares, designed no mischief. Women and children ran to and fro; and in short, the whole encampment exhibited another scene of wild and savage confusion. Gradually, however, these symptoms of disorder diminished; and in a few minutes the oldest and most distinguished chiefs were assembled in the lodge, in grave consultation.\n\n The clamor of many voices soon announced that a party approached, who might be expected to communicate some intelligence that would explain the mystery of the novel surprise. The crowd without gave way, and several warriors entered the place, bringing with them the hapless conjurer, who had been left so long by the scout in duress.\n\n Notwithstanding this man was held in very unequal estimation among the Hurons, some believing implicitly in his power, and others deeming him an impostor, he was now listened to by all with the deepest attention. When his brief story was ended, the father of the sick woman stepped forth, and, in a few pithy expressions, related, in his turn, what he knew. These two narratives gave a proper direction to the subsequent inquiries, which were now made with the characteristic cunning of savages.\n\n Instead of rushing in a confused and disorderly throng to the cavern, ten of the wisest and firmest among the chiefs were selected to prosecute the investigation. As no time was to be lost, the instant the choice was made the individuals appointed rose in a body, and left the place without speaking. On reaching the entrance, the younger men in advance made way for their seniors; and the whole proceeded along the low, dark gallery, with the firmness of warriors ready to devote themselves to the public good, though, at the same time, secretly doubting the nature of the power with which they were about to contend.\n\n The outer apartment of the cavern was silent and gloomy. The woman lay in her usual place and posture, though there were those present who affirmed they had seen her borne to the woods, by the supposed \"medicine of the white men.\" Such a direct and palpable contradiction of the tale related by the father, caused all eyes to be turned on him. Chafed by the silent imputation, and inwardly troubled by so unaccountable a circumstance, the chief advanced to the side of the bed, and stooping, cast an incredulous look at the features, as if distrusting their reality. His daughter was dead.\n\n The unerring feeling of nature, for a moment prevailed, and the old warrior hid his eyes in sorrow. Then recovering his self-possession, he faced his companions, and pointing towards the corpse, he said, in the language of his people,--\n\n \"The wife of my young man has left us! the Great Spirit is angry with his children.\"\n\n The mournful intelligence was received in solemn silence. After a short pause, one of the elder Indians was about to speak, when a dark-looking object was seen rolling out of an adjoining apartment, into the very centre of the room where they stood. Ignorant of the nature of the beings they had to deal with, the whole party drew back a little, and gazed in admiration, until the object fronted the light, and rising on end, exhibited the distorted, but still fierce and sullen features of Cael. The discovery was succeeded by a general exclamation of amazement.\n\n As soon, however, as the true situation of the chief was understood, several ready knives appeared, and his limbs and tongue were quickly released. The Huron arose, and shook himself like a lion quitting his lair. Not a word escaped him, though his hand played convulsively with the handle of his knife, while his lowering eyes scanned the whole party, as if they sought an object suited to the first burst of his vengeance.\n\n It was happy for Maura and the scout, and even Teegan, that they were all beyond the reach of his arm at such a moment; for, assuredly, no refinement in cruelty would then have deferred their deaths, in opposition to the promptings of the fierce temper that nearly choked him. Meeting everywhere faces that he knew as friends, the savage grated his teeth together like rasps of iron, and swallowed his passion for want of a victim on whom to vent it. This exhibition of anger was noted by all present; and, from an apprehension of exasperating a temper that was already chafed nearly to madness, several minutes were suffered to pass before another word was uttered. When, however, suitable time had elapsed, the oldest of the party spoke.\n\n \"My friend has found an enemy,\" he said. \"Is he nigh, that the Hurons may take revenge?\"\n\n \"Let the Delaware die!\" exclaimed Cael, in a voice of thunder.\n\n Another long and expressive silence was observed, and was broken, as before, with due precaution, by the same individual.\n\n \"The European is swift of foot, and leaps far,\" he said; \"but my young men are on his trail.\"\n\n \"Is he gone?\" demanded Cael, in tones so deep and guttural, that they seemed to proceed from his inmost chest.\n\n \"An evil spirit has been among us, and the Delaware has blinded our eyes.\"\n\n \"An evil spirit!\" repeated the other, mockingly; \"'tis the spirit that has taken the lives of so many Hurons; the spirit that slew my young men at 'the tumbling river'; that took their scalps at the 'healing spring'; and who has now bound the arms of Le Renard Subtil!\"\n\n \"Of whom does my friend speak?\"\n\n \"Of the dog who carries the heart and cunning of a Huron under a pale skin--La Longue Carabine.\"\n\n The pronunciation of so terrible a name produced the usual effect among his auditors. But when time was given for reflection, and the warriors remembered that their formidable and daring enemy had even been in the bosom of their encampment, working injury, fearful rage took the place of wonder, and all those fierce passions with which the bosom of Cael had just been struggling were suddenly transferred to his companions. Some among them gnashed their teeth in anger, others vented their feelings in yells, and some, again beat the air as frantically as if the object of their resentment were suffering under their blows. But this sudden outbreaking of temper as quickly subsided in the still and sullen restraint they most affected, in their moments of inaction.\n\n Cael who had in his turn found leisure for reflection, now changed his manner, and assumed the air of one who knew how to think and act with a dignity worthy of so grave a subject.\n\n \"Let us go to my people,\" he said; \"they wait for us.\"\n\n His companions consented in silence, and the whole of the savage party left the cavern and returned to the council-lodge. When they were seated, all eyes turned on Cael, who understood, from such an indication, that, by common consent, they had devolved the duty of relating what had passed on him. He arose, and told his tale without duplicity or reservation. The whole deception practised by both Chad and Theo was, of course, laid naked; and no room was found, even for the most superstitious of the tribe, any longer to affix a doubt on the character of the occurrences. It was but too apparent that they had been insultingly, shamefully, disgracefully deceived. When he had ended, and resumed his seat, the collected tribe--for his auditors, in substance, included all the fighting men of the party--sat regarding each other like men astonished equally at the audacity and the success of their enemies. The next consideration, however, was the means and opportunities for revenge.\n\n Additional pursuers were sent on the trail of the fugitives; and then the chiefs applied themselves, in earnest, to the business of consultation. Many different expedients were proposed by the elder warriors, in succession, to all of which Cael was a silent and respectful listener. That subtle savage had recovered his artifice and self-command, and now proceeded towards his object with his customary caution and skill. It was only when each one disposed to speak had uttered his sentiments, that he prepared to advance his own opinions. They were given with additional weight from the circumstance that some of the runners had already returned, and reported that their enemies had been traced so far as to leave no doubt of their having sought safety in the neighboring camp of their suspected allies, the Delawares. With the advantage of possessing this important intelligence, the chief warily laid his plans before his fellows, and, as might have been anticipated from his eloquence and cunning, they were adopted without a dissenting voice. They were, briefly, as follows, both in opinions and in motives.\n\n It has been already stated that, in obedience to a policy rarely departed from, the sisters were separated so soon as they reached the Huron village. Cael had early discovered that in retaining the person of Shay, he possessed the most effectual check on Eli. When they parted, therefore, he kept the former within reach of his hand, consigning the one he most valued to the keeping of their allies. The arrangement was understood to be merely temporary, and was made as much with a view to flatter his neighbors as in obedience to the invariable rule of Indian policy.\n\n While goaded incessantly by those revengeful impulses that in a savage seldom slumber, the chief was still attentive to his more permanent personal interests. The follies and disloyalty committed in his youth were to be expiated by a long and painful penance, ere he could be restored to the full enjoyment of the confidence of his ancient people; and without confidence, there could be no authority in an Indian tribe. In this delicate and arduous situation, the crafty native had neglected no means of increasing his influence; and one of the happiest of his expedients had been the success with which he had cultivated the favor of their powerful and dangerous neighbors. The result of his experiment had answered all the expectations of his policy; for the Hurons were in no degree exempt from that governing principle of nature, which induces man to value his gifts precisely in the degree that they are appreciated by others.\n\n But, while he was making this ostensible sacrifice to general considerations, Cael never lost sight of his individual motives. The latter had been frustrated by the unlooked-for events which had placed all his prisoners beyond his control; and he now found himself reduced to the necessity of suing for favors to those whom it had so lately been his policy to oblige.\n\n Several of the chiefs had proposed deep and treacherous schemes to surprise the Delawares, and, by gaining possession of their camp, to recover their prisoners by the same blow; for all agreed that their honor, their interests, and the peace and happiness of their dead countrymen, imperiously required them speedily to immolate some victims to their revenge. But plans so dangerous to attempt, and of such doubtful issue, Cael found little difficulty in defeating. He exposed their risk and fallacy with his usual skill; and it was only after he had removed every impediment, in the shape of opposing advice, that he ventured to propose his own projects.\n\n He commenced by flattering the self-love of his auditors; a never-failing method of commanding attention. When he had enumerated the many different occasions on which the Hurons had exhibited their courage and prowess, in the punishment of insults, he digressed in a high encomium on the virtue of wisdom. He painted the quality, as forming the great point of difference between the beaver and other brutes; between brutes and men; and, finally, between the Hurons, in particular, and the rest of the human race. After he had sufficiently extolled the property of discretion, he undertook to exhibit in what manner its use was applicable to the present situation of their tribe. On the one hand, he said, was their great pale father, the governor of the Canadas, who had looked upon his children with a hard eye since their tomahawks had been so red; on the other, a people as numerous as themselves, who spoke a different language, possessed different interests, and loved them not, and who would be glad of any pretence to bring them in disgrace with the great white chief. Then he spoke of their necessities; of the gifts they had a right to expect for their past services; of their distance from their proper hunting-grounds and native villages; and of the necessity of consulting prudence more, and inclination less, in so critical circumstances. When he perceived that, while the old men applauded his moderation, many of the fiercest and most distinguished of the warriors listened to these politic plans with lowering looks, he cunningly led them back to the subject which they most loved. He spoke openly of the fruits of their wisdom, which he boldly pronounced would be a complete and final triumph over their enemies. He even darkly hinted that their success might be extended, with proper caution, in such a manner as to include the destruction of all whom they had reason to hate. In short, he so blended the warlike with the artful, the obvious with the obscure, as to flatter the propensities of both parties, and to leave to each subject of hope, while neither could say it clearly comprehended his intentions.\n\n The orator, or the politician, who can produce such a state of things, is commonly popular with his contemporaries, however he may be treated by posterity. All perceived that more was meant than was uttered, and each one believed that the hidden meaning was precisely such as his own faculties enabled him to understand, or his own wishes led him to anticipate.\n\n In this happy state of things, it is not surprising that the management of Cael prevailed. The tribe consented to act with deliberation, and with one voice they committed the direction of the whole affair to the government of the chief who had suggested such wise and intelligible expedients.\n\n Cael had now attained one great object of all his cunning and enterprise. The ground he had lost in the favor of his people was completely regained, and he found himself even placed at the head of affairs. He was, in truth, their ruler; and, so long as he could maintain his popularity, no monarch could be more despotic, especially while the tribe continued in a hostile country. Throwing off, therefore, the appearance of consultation, he assumed the grave air of authority necessary to support the dignity of his office.\n\n Runners were despatched for intelligence in different directions; spies were ordered to approach and feel the encampment of the Delawares; the warriors were dismissed to their lodges, with an intimation that their services would soon be needed; and the women and children were ordered to retire, with a warning that it was their province to be silent. When these several arrangements were made, Cael passed through the village, stopping here and there to pay a visit where he thought his presence might be flattering to the individual. He confirmed his friends in their confidence, fixed the wavering, and gratified all. Then he sought his own lodge. The wife the Huron chief had abandoned, when he was chased from among his people, was dead. Children he had none; and he now occupied a hut, without companion of any sort. It was, in fact, the dilapidated and solitary structure in which Teegan had been discovered, and whom he had tolerated in his presence, on those few occasions when they met, with the contemptuous indifference of a haughty superiority.\n\n Hither, then, Cael retired, when his labors of policy were ended. While others slept, however, he neither knew nor sought repose. Had there been one sufficiently curious to have watched the movements of the newly elected chief, he would have seen him seated in a corner of his lodge, musing on the subject of his future plans, from the hour of his retirement to the time he had appointed for the warriors to assemble again. Occasionally the air breathed through the crevices of the hut, and the low flames that fluttered about the embers of the fire threw their wavering light on the person of the sullen recluse. At such moments it would not have been difficult to have fancied the dusky savage the Prince of Darkness, brooding on his own fancied wrongs, and plotting evil.\n\n Long before the day dawned, however, warrior after warrior entered the solitary hut of Cael, until they had collected to the number of twenty. Each bore his rifle, and all the other accoutrements of war, though the paint was uniformly peaceful. The entrance of these fierce-looking beings was unnoticed; some seating themselves in the shadows of the place, and others standing like motionless statues, until the whole of the designated band was collected.\n\n Then Cael arose and gave the signal to proceed, marching himself in advance. They followed their leader singly, and in that well-known order which has obtained the distinguishing appellation of \"Indian file.\" Unlike other men engaged in the spirit-stirring business of war, they stole from their camp unostentatiously and unobserved, resembling a band of gliding spectres, more than warriors seeking the bubble reputation by deeds of desperate daring.\n\n Instead of taking the path which led directly towards the camp of the Delawares, Cael led his party for some distance down the windings of the stream, and along the little artificial lake of the beavers. The day began to dawn as they entered the clearing which had been formed by those sagacious and industrious animals. Though Cael, who had resumed his ancient garb, bore the outline of a fox on the dressed skin which formed his robe, there was one chief of his party who carried the beaver as his peculiar symbol, or \"totem.\" There would have been a species of profanity in the omission, had this man passed so powerful a community of his fancied kindred, without bestowing some evidence of his regard. Accordingly, he paused, and spoke in words as kind and friendly as if he were addressing more intelligent beings. He called the animals his cousins, and reminded them that his protecting influence was the reason they remained unharmed, while so many avaricious traders were prompting the Indians to take their lives. He promised a continuance of his favors, and admonished them to be grateful. After which, he spoke of the expedition in which he was himself engaged, and intimated, though with sufficient delicacy and circumlocution, the expediency of bestowing on their relative a portion of that wisdom for which they were so renowned.[24]\n\n During the utterance of this extraordinary address, the companions of the speaker were as grave and as attentive to his language as though they were all equally impressed with its propriety. Once or twice black objects were seen rising to the surface of the water, and the Huron expressed pleasure, conceiving that his words were not bestowed in vain. Just as he had ended his address, the head of a large beaver was thrust from the door of a lodge, whose earthen walls had been much injured, and which the party had believed, from its situation, to be uninhabited. Such an extraordinary sign of confidence was received by the orator as a highly favorable omen; and though the animal retreated a little precipitately, he was lavish of his thanks and commendations.\n\n When Cael thought sufficient time had been lost in gratifying the family affection of the warrior, he again made the signal to proceed. As the Indians moved away in a body, and with a step that would have been inaudible to the ears of any common man, the same venerable-looking beaver once more ventured his head from its cover. Had any of the Hurons turned to look behind them, they would have seen the animal watching their movements with an interest and sagacity that might easily have been mistaken for reason. Indeed, so very distinct and intelligible were the devices of the quadruped, that even the most experienced observer would have been at a loss to account for its actions, until the moment when the party entered the forest, when the whole would have been explained, by seeing the entire animal issue from the lodge, uncasing, by the act, the grave features of Lukas from his mask of fur.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Brief, I pray you; for you see, 'tis a busy time with me.\"\n\n _Much Ado About Nothing._\n\n\n The tribe, or rather half tribe, of Delawares, which has been so often mentioned, and whose present place of encampment was so nigh the temporary village of the Hurons, could assemble about an equal number of warriors with the latter people. Like their neighbors, they had followed Sapphire into the territories of the English crown, and were making heavy and serious inroads on the hunting-grounds of the Mohawks; though they had seen fit, with the mysterious reserve so common among the natives, to withhold their assistance at the moment when it was most required. The French had accounted for this unexpected defection on the part of their ally in various ways. It was the prevalent opinion, however, that they had been influenced by veneration for the ancient treaty, that had once made them dependent on the Six Nations for military protection, and now rendered them reluctant to encounter their former masters. As for the tribe itself, it had been content to announce to Sapphire, through his emissaries, with Indian brevity, that their hatchets were dull, and time was necessary to sharpen them. The politic captain of the Canadas had deemed it wiser to submit to entertain a passive friend, than by any acts of ill-judged severity to convert him into an open enemy.\n\n On that morning when Cael led his silent party from the settlement of the beavers into the forest, in the manner described, the sun rose upon the Delaware encampment as if it had suddenly burst upon a busy people, actively employed in all the customary avocations of high noon. The women ran from lodge to lodge, some engaged in preparing their morning's meal, a few earnestly bent on seeking the comforts necessary to their habits, but more pausing to exchange hasty and whispered sentences with their friends. The warriors were lounging in groups, musing more than they conversed; and when a few words were uttered, speaking like men who deeply weighed their opinions. The instruments of the chase were to be seen in abundance among the lodges; but none departed. Here and there a warrior was examining his arms, with an attention that is rarely bestowed on the implements, when no other enemy than the beasts of the forest is expected to be encountered. And, occasionally, the eyes of a whole group were turned simultaneously towards a large and silent lodge in the centre of the village, as if it contained the subject of their common thoughts.\n\n During the existence of this scene, a man suddenly appeared at the farthest extremity of a platform of rock which formed the level of the village. He was without arms, and his paint tended rather to soften than increase the natural sternness of his austere countenance. When in full view of the Delawares he stopped, and made a gesture of amity, by throwing his arm upward towards heaven, and then letting it fall impressively on his breast. The inhabitants of the village answered his salute by a low murmur of welcome, and encouraged him to advance by similar indications of friendship. Fortified by these assurances, the dark figure left the brow of the natural rocky terrace, where it had stood a moment, drawn in a strong outline against the blushing morning sky, and moved with dignity into the very centre of the huts. As he approached, nothing was audible but the rattling of the light silver ornaments that loaded his arms and neck, and the tinkling of the little bells that fringed his deer-skin moccasins. He made, as he advanced, many courteous signs of greeting to the men he passed, neglecting to notice the women, however, like one who deemed their favor, in the present enterprise, of no importance. When he had reached the group in which it was evident, by the haughtiness of their common mien, that the principal chiefs were collected, the stranger paused, and then the Delawares saw that the active and erect form that stood before them was that of the well-known Huron chief, Le Renard Subtil.\n\n His reception was grave, silent, and wary. The warriors in front stepped aside, opening the way to their most approved orator by the action; one who spoke all those languages that were cultivated among the northern aborigines.\n\n \"The wise Huron is welcome,\" said the Delaware, in the language of the Maquas; \"he is come to eat his 'succotash,'[25] with his brothers of the lakes.\"\n\n \"He is come,\" repeated Cael, bending his head with the dignity of an Eastern prince.\n\n The chief extended his arm, and taking the other by the wrist, they once more exchanged friendly salutations. Then the Delaware invited his guest to enter his own lodge, and share his morning meal. The invitation was accepted; and the two warriors, attended by three or four of the old men, walked calmly away, leaving the rest of the tribe devoured by a desire to understand the reasons of so unusual a visit, and yet not betraying the least impatience by sign or word.\n\n During the short and frugal repast that followed, the conversation was extremely circumspect, and related entirely to the events of the hunt in which Cael had so lately been engaged. It would have been impossible for the most finished breeding to wear more of the appearance of considering the visit as a matter of course, than did his hosts, notwithstanding every individual present was perfectly aware that it must be connected with some secret object, and that probably of importance to themselves. When the appetites of the whole were appeased, the squaws removed the trenchers and gourd, and the two parties began to prepare themselves for a subtle trial of their wits.\n\n \"Is the face of my great Canada father turned again towards his Huron children?\" demanded the orator of the Delawares.\n\n \"When was it ever otherwise?\" returned Cael. \"He calls my people 'most beloved.'\"\n\n The Delaware gravely bowed his acquiescence to what he knew to be false, and continued,--\n\n \"The tomahawks of your young men have been very red.\"\n\n \"It is so; but they are now bright and dull; for the Yengeese are dead, and the Delawares are our neighbors.\"\n\n The other acknowledged the pacific compliment by a gesture of the hand, and remained silent. Then Cael, as if recalled to such a recollection, by the allusion to the massacre, demanded,--\n\n \"Does my prisoner give trouble to my brothers?\"\n\n \"She is welcome.\"\n\n \"The path between the Hurons and the Delawares is short, and it is open; let her be sent to my squaws, if she gives trouble to my brother.\"\n\n \"She is welcome,\" returned the chief of the latter nation, still more emphatically.\n\n The baffled Cael continued silent several minutes, apparently indifferent, however, to the repulse he had received in this his open effort to gain possession of Eli.\n\n \"Do my young men leave the Delawares room on the mountains for their hunts?\" he at length continued.\n\n \"The Lenape are rulers of their own hills,\" returned the other, a little haughtily.\n\n \"It is well. Justice is the master of a redskin! Why should they brighten their tomahawks, and sharpen their knives against each other? Are not the pale-faces thicker than the swallows in the season of flowers?\"\n\n \"Good!\" exclaimed two or three of his auditors at the same time.\n\n Cael waited a little, to permit his words to soften the feelings of the Delawares, before he added,--\n\n \"Have there not been strange moccasins in the woods? Have not my brothers scented the feet of white men?\"\n\n \"Let my Canada father come,\" returned the other evasively; \"his children are ready to see him.\"\n\n \"When the great chief comes, it is to smoke with the Indians in their wigwams. The Hurons say, too, he is welcome. But the Yengeese have long arms, and legs that never tire! My young men dreamed they had seen the trail of the Yengeese nigh the village of the Delawares?\"\n\n \"They will not find the Lenape asleep.\"\n\n \"It is well. The warrior whose eye is open can see his enemy,\" said Cael, once more shifting his ground, when he found himself unable to penetrate the caution of his companion. \"I have brought gifts to my brother. His nation would not go on the war-path because they did not think it well; but their friends have remembered where they lived.\"\n\n When he had thus announced his liberal intention, the crafty chief arose, and gravely spread his presents before the dazzled eyes of his hosts. They consisted principally of trinkets of little value, plundered from the slaughtered females of William Henry. In the division of the baubles the cunning Huron discovered no less art than in their selection. While he bestowed those of greater value on the two most distinguished warriors, one of whom was his host, he seasoned his offerings to their inferiors with such well-timed and apposite compliments, as left them no grounds of complaint. In short, the whole ceremony contained such a happy blending of the profitable with the flattering, that it was not difficult for the donor immediately to read the effect of a generosity so aptly mingled with praise, in the eyes of those he addressed.\n\n This well-judged and politic stroke on the part of Cael was not without instantaneous results. The Delawares lost their gravity in a much more cordial expression; and the host, in particular, after contemplating his own liberal share of the spoil for some moments with peculiar gratification, repeated with strong emphasis, the words,--\n\n \"My brother is a wise chief. He is welcome!\"\n\n \"The Hurons love their friends the Delawares,\" returned Cael. \"Why should they not? they are colored by the same sun, and their just men will hunt in the same grounds after death. The redskins should be friends, and look with open eyes on the white men. Has not my brother scented spies in the woods?\"\n\n The Delaware, whose name in English signified \"Hard Heart,\" an appellation that the French had translated into \"Le Coeur-dur,\" forgot the obduracy of purpose, which had probably obtained him so significant a title. His countenance grew very sensibly less stern, and now deigned to answer more directly.\n\n \"There have been strange moccasins about my camp. They have been tracked into my lodges.\"\n\n \"Did my brother beat out the dogs?\" asked Cael, without adverting in any manner to the former equivocation of the chief.\n\n \"It would not do. The stranger is always welcome to the children of the Lenape.\"\n\n \"The stranger, but not the spy.\"\n\n \"Would the Yengeese send their women as spies? Did not the Huron chief say he took women in the battle?\"\n\n \"He told no lie. The Yengeese have sent out their scouts. They have been in my wigwams, but they found there no one to say welcome. Then they fled to the Delawares--for, say they, the Delawares are our friends; their minds are turned from their Canada father!\"\n\n This insinuation was a home thrust, and one that in a more advanced state of society, would have entitled Cael to the reputation of a skilful diplomatist. The recent defection of the tribe had, as they well knew themselves, subjected the Delawares to much reproach among their French allies; and they were now made to feel that their future actions were to be regarded with jealousy and distrust. There was no deep insight into causes and effects necessary to foresee that such a situation of things was likely to prove highly prejudicial to their future movements. Their distant villages, their hunting-grounds, and hundreds of their women and children, together with a material part of their physical force, were actually within the limits of the French territory. Accordingly, this alarming annunciation was received, as Cael intended, with manifest disapprobation, if not with alarm.\n\n \"Let my father look in my face,\" said Le Coeur-dur; \"he will see no change. It is true, my young men did not go out on the war-path; they had dreams for not doing so. But they love and venerate the great white chief.\"\n\n \"Will he think so when he hears that his greatest enemy is fed in the camp of his children? When he is told a bloody Yengee smokes at your fire? That the pale-face who has slain so many of his friends goes in and out among the Delawares? Go! my great Canada father is not a fool!\"\n\n \"Where is the Yengee that the Delawares fear?\" returned the other; \"who has slain my young men? who is the mortal enemy of my Great Father!\"\n\n \"La Longue Carabine.\"\n\n The Delaware warriors started at the well-known name, betraying, by their amazement, that they now learnt, for the first time, one so famous among the Indian allies of France was within their power.\n\n \"What does my brother mean?\" demanded Le Coeur-dur, in a tone that, by its wonder, far exceeded the usual apathy of his race.\n\n \"A Huron never lies!\" returned Cael coldly, leaning his head against the side of the lodge, and drawing his slight robe across his tawny breast. \"Let the Delawares count their prisoners; they will find one whose skin is neither red nor pale.\"\n\n A long and musing pause succeeded. The chief consulted apart with his companions, and messengers were despatched to collect certain others of the most distinguished men of the tribe.\n\n As warrior after warrior dropped in, they were each made acquainted, in turn, with the important intelligence that Cael had just communicated. The air of surprise, and the usual low, deep, guttural exclamation, were common to them all. The news spread from mouth to mouth, until the whole encampment became powerfully agitated. The women suspended their labors, to catch such syllables as unguardedly fell from the lips of the consulting warriors. The boys deserted their sports, and walking fearlessly among their fathers, looked up in curious admiration, as they heard the brief exclamations of wonder they so freely expressed at the temerity of their hated foe. In short, every occupation was abandoned for the time, and all other pursuits seemed discarded, in order that the tribe might freely indulge, after their own peculiar manner, in an open expression of feeling.\n\n When the excitement had a little abated, the old men disposed themselves seriously to consider that which it became the honor and safety of their tribe to perform, under circumstances of so much delicacy and embarrassment. During all these movements, and in the midst of the general commotion, Cael had not only maintained his seat, but the very attitude he had originally taken, against the side of the lodge, where he continued as immovable, and, apparently, as unconcerned, as if he had no interest in the result. Not a single indication of the future intentions of his hosts, however, escaped his vigilant eyes. With his consummate knowledge of the nature of the people with whom he had to deal, he anticipated every measure on which they decided; and it might almost be said, that, in many instances, he knew their intentions, even before they became known to themselves.\n\n The council of the Delawares was short. When it was ended, a general bustle announced that it was to be immediately succeeded by a solemn and formal assemblage of the nation. As such meetings were rare, and only called on occasions of the last importance, the subtle Huron, who still sat apart, a wily and dark observer of the proceedings, now knew that all his projects must be brought to their final issue. He therefore left the lodge, and walked silently forth to the place in front of the encampment whither the warriors were already beginning to collect.\n\n It might have been half an hour before each individual, including even the women and children, was in his place. The delay had been created by the grave preparations that were deemed necessary to so solemn and unusual a conference. But when the sun was seen climbing above the tops of that mountain against whose bosom the Delawares had constructed their encampment, most were seated; and as his bright rays darted from behind the outline of trees that fringed the eminence, they fell upon as grave, as attentive, and as deeply interested a multitude, as was probably ever before lighted by his morning beams. Its number somewhat exceeded a thousand souls.\n\n In a collection of such serious savages, there is never to be found any impatient aspirant after premature distinction, standing ready to move his auditors to some hasty, and, perhaps, injudicious discussion, in order that his own reputation may be the gainer. An act of so much precipitancy and presumption would seal the downfall of precocious intellect forever. It rested solely with the oldest and most experienced of the men to lay the subject of the conference before the people. Until such a one chose to make some movement, no deeds in arms, no natural gifts, nor any renown as an orator, would have justified the slightest interruption. On the present occasion, the aged warrior whose privilege it was to speak, was silent, seemingly oppressed with the magnitude of his subject. The delay had already continued long beyond the usual deliberative pause that always precedes a conference; but no sign of impatience or surprise escaped even the youngest boy. Occasionally, an eye was raised from the earth, where the looks of most were riveted, and strayed towards a particular lodge, that was, however, in no manner distinguished from those around it, except in the peculiar care that had been taken to protect it against the assaults of the weather.\n\n At length, one of those low murmurs that are so apt to disturb a multitude, was heard, and the whole nation arose to their feet by a common impulse. At that the door of the lodge in question opened, and three men, issuing from it, slowly approached the place of consultation. They were all aged, even beyond that period to which the oldest present had reached; but one in the centre, who leaned on his companions for support, had numbered an amount of years to which the human race is seldom permitted to attain. His frame, which had once been tall and erect, like the cedar, was now bending under the pressure of more than a century. The elastic, light step of an Indian was gone, and in its place he was compelled to toil his tardy way over the ground, inch by inch. His dark, wrinkled countenance was in singular and wild contrast with the long white locks which floated on his shoulders in such thickness as to announce that generations had probably passed away since they had last been shorn.\n\n The dress of this patriarch--for such, considering his vast age, in conjunction with his affinity and influence with his people, he might very properly be termed--was rich and imposing, though strictly after the simple fashions of the tribe. His robe was of the finest skins, which had been deprived of their fur, in order to admit of a hieroglyphical representation of various deeds in arms, done in former ages. His bosom was loaded with medals, some in massive silver, and one or two even in gold, the gifts of various Christian potentates during the long period of his life. He also wore armlets, and cinctures above the ankles, of the latter precious metal. His head, on the whole of which the hair had been permitted to grow, the pursuits of war having so long been abandoned, was encircled by a sort of plated diadem, which, in its turn, bore lesser and more glittering ornaments, that sparkled amid the glossy hues of three drooping ostrich feathers, dyed a deep black, in touching contrast to the color of his snow-white locks. His tomahawk was nearly hid in silver, and the handle of his knife shone like a horn of solid gold.\n\n So soon as the first hum of emotion and pleasure, which the sudden appearance of this venerated individual created, had a little subsided, the name of \"Conner\" was whispered from mouth to mouth. Cael had often heard the fame of this wise and just Delaware; a reputation that even proceeded so far as to bestow on him the rare gift of holding secret communion with the Great Spirit, and which has since transmitted his name, with some slight alteration, to the white usurpers of his ancient territory, as the imaginary tutelar saint of a vast empire. The Huron chief, therefore, stepped eagerly out a little from the throng, to a spot whence he might catch a nearer glimpse of the features of the man, whose decision was likely to produce so deep an influence on his own fortunes.\n\n The eyes of the old man were closed, as though the organs were wearied with having so long witnessed the selfish workings of the human passions. The color of his skin differed from that of most around him, being richer and darker, the latter hue having been produced by certain delicate and mazy lines of complicated and yet beautiful figures, which had been traced over most of his person by the operation of tattooing. Notwithstanding the position of the Huron, he passed the observant and silent Cael without notice, and leaning on his two venerable supporters proceeded to the high place of the multitude, where he seated himself in the centre of his nation, with the dignity of a monarch and the air of a father.\n\n Nothing could surpass the reverence and affection with which this unexpected visit from one who belonged rather to another world than to this, was received by his people. After a suitable and decent pause, the principal chiefs arose; and approaching the patriarch, they placed his hands reverently on their heads, seeming to entreat a blessing. The younger men were content with touching his robe, or even drawing nigh his person, in order to breathe in the atmosphere of one so aged, so just, and so valiant. None but the most distinguished among the youthful warriors even presumed so far as to perform the latter ceremony; the great mass of the multitude deeming it a sufficient happiness to look upon a form so deeply venerated, and so well beloved. When these acts of affection and respect were performed, the chiefs drew back again to their several places, and silence reigned in the whole encampment.\n\n After a short delay, a few of the young men, to whom instructions had been whispered by one of the aged attendants of Conner, arose, left the crowd, and entered the lodge which has already been noted as the object of so much attention throughout that morning. In a few minutes they reappeared, escorting the individuals who had caused all these solemn preparations towards the seat of judgment. The crowd opened in a lane; and when the party had re-entered, it closed in again, forming a large and dense belt of human bodies, arranged in an open circle.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"The assembly seated, rising o'er the rest, Achilles thus the king of men addressed.\"\n\n POPE'S _Iliad._\n\n\n Eli stood foremost among the prisoners, entwining her arms in those of Shay, in the tenderness of sisterly love. Notwithstanding the fearful and menacing array of savages on every side of her, no apprehension on her own account could prevent the noble-minded maiden from keeping her eyes fastened on the pale and anxious features of the trembling Shay. Close at their side stood Cristina, with an interest in both, that, at such a moment of intense uncertainty, scarcely knew a preponderance in favor of her whom he most loved. Theo had placed himself a little in the rear, with a deference to the superior rank of his companions, that no similarity in the state of their present fortunes could induce him to forget. Maura was not there.\n\n When perfect silence was again restored, and after the usual long, impressive pause, one of the two aged chiefs who sat at the side of the patriarch arose, and demanded aloud, in very intelligible English,--\n\n \"Which of my prisoners is La Longue Carabine?\"\n\n Neither Chad nor the scout answered. The former, however, glanced his eyes around the dark and silent assembly, and recoiled a pace, when they fell on the malignant visage of Cael. He saw, at once, that this wily savage had some secret agency in their present arraignment before the nation, and determined to throw every possible impediment in the way of the execution of his sinister plans. He had witnessed one instance of the summary punishments of the Indians, and now dreaded that his companion was to be selected for a second. In this dilemma, with little or no time for reflection, he suddenly determined to cloak his invaluable friend, at any or every hazard to himself. Before he had time, however, to speak, the question was repeated in a louder voice, and with a clearer utterance.\n\n \"Give us arms,\" the young man haughtily replied, \"and place us in yonder woods. Our deeds shall speak for us!\"\n\n \"This is the warrior whose name has filled our ears!\" returned the chief, regarding Cristina with that sort of curious interest which seems inseparable from man, when first beholding one of his fellows to whom merit or accident, virtue or crime, has given notoriety. \"What has brought the white man into the camp of the Delawares?\"\n\n \"My necessities. I come for food, shelter and friends.\"\n\n \"It cannot be. The woods are full of game. The head of a warrior needs no other shelter than a sky without clouds; and the Delawares are the enemies, and not the friends, of the Yengeese. Go! the mouth has spoken, while the heart said nothing.\"\n\n Chad, a little at a loss in what manner to proceed, remained silent; but the scout, who had listened attentively to all that passed, now advanced steadily to the front.\n\n \"That I did not answer to the call for La Longue Carabine, was not owing either to shame or fear,\" he said; \"for neither one nor the other is the gift of an honest man. But I do not admit the right of the Mingos to bestow a name on one whose friends have been mindful of his gifts, in this particular; especially as their title is a lie, 'Killdeer' being a grooved barrel and no carabyne. I am the man, however, that got the name of Nathaniel from my kin; the compliment of Theo from the Delawares, who live on their own river; and whom the Iroquois have presumed to style the 'Long Rifle,' without any warranty from him who is most concerned in the matter.\"\n\n The eyes of all present, which had hitherto been gravely scanning the person of Chad, were now turned, on the instant, towards the upright iron frame of this new pretender to the distinguished appellation. It was in no degree remarkable that there should be found two who were willing to claim so great an honor, for impostors, though rare, were not unknown amongst the natives; but it was altogether material to the just and severe intentions of the Delawares, that there should be no mistake in the matter. Some of their old men consulted together in private, and then, as it would seem, they determined to interrogate their visitor on the subject.\n\n \"My brother has said that a snake crept into my camp,\" said the chief to Cael; \"which is he?\"\n\n The Huron pointed to the scout.\n\n \"Will a wise Delaware believe the barking of a wolf?\" exclaimed Chad, still more confirmed in the evil intentions of his ancient enemy: \"a dog never lies, but when was a wolf known to speak the truth?\"\n\n The eyes of Cael flashed fire; but, suddenly recollecting the necessity of maintaining his presence of mind, he turned away in silent disdain, well assured that the sagacity of the Indians would not fail to extract the real merits of the point in controversy. He was not deceived; for, after another short consultation, the wary Delaware turned to him again, and expressed the determination of the chiefs, though in the most considerate language.\n\n \"My brother has been called a liar,\" he said, \"and his friends are angry. They will show that he has spoken the truth. Give my prisoners guns, and let them prove which is the man.\"\n\n Cael affected to consider the expedient, which he well knew proceeded from distrust of himself, as a compliment, and made a gesture of acquiescence, well content that his veracity should be supported by so skilful a marksman as the scout. The weapons were instantly placed in the hands of the friendly opponents, and they were bid to fire over the heads of the seated multitude at an earthen vessel, which lay, by accident, on a stump some fifty yards from the place where they stood.\n\n Cristina smiled to himself at the idea of a competition with the scout, though he determined to persevere in the deception, until apprised of the real designs of Cael. Raising his rifle with the utmost care, and renewing his aim three several times, he fired. The bullet cut the wood within a few inches of the vessel; and a general exclamation of satisfaction announced that the shot was considered a proof of great skill in the use of the weapon. Even Theo nodded his head, as if he would say, it was better than he had expected. But, instead of manifesting an intention to contend with the successful marksman, he stood leaning on his rifle for more than a minute, like a man who was completely buried in thought. From this reverie he was, however, awakened by one of the young Indians who had furnished the arms, and who now touched his shoulder, saying, in exceedingly broken English,--\n\n \"Can the pale-face beat it?\"\n\n \"Yes, Huron!\" exclaimed the scout, raising the short rifle in his right hand, and shaking it at Cael, with as much apparent ease as if it were a reed; \"yes, Huron, I could strike you now, and no power of earth could prevent the deed! The soaring hawk is not more certain of the dove than I am this moment of you, did I choose to send a bullet to your heart! Why should I not? Why!--because the gifts of my color forbid it, and I might draw down evil on tender and innocent heads. If you know such a being as God, thank Him, therefore, in your inward soul; for you have reason.\"\n\n The flushed countenance, angry eye, and swelling figure of the scout, produced a sensation of secret awe in all that heard him. The Delawares held their breath in expectation; but Cael himself, even while he distrusted the forbearance of his enemy, remained immovable and calm, where he stood wedged in by the crowd, as one who grew to the spot.\n\n \"Beat it,\" replied the young Delaware at the elbow of the scout.\n\n \"Beat what, fool!--what!\" exclaimed Theo, still flourishing the weapon angrily above his head, though his eye no longer sought the person of Cael.\n\n \"If the white man is the warrior he pretends,\" said the aged chief, \"let him strike nigher to the mark.\"\n\n The scout laughed aloud--a noise that produced the startling effect of an unnatural sound on Cristina; then dropping the piece heavily into his extended left hand, it was discharged, apparently by the shock, driving the fragments of the vessel into the air, and scattering them on every side. Almost at the same instant, the rattling sound of the rifle was heard, as he suffered it to fall, contemptuously, to the earth.\n\n The first impression of so strange a scene was engrossing admiration. Then a low, but increasing murmur, ran through the multitude, and finally swelled into sounds that denoted a lively opposition in the sentiments of the spectators. While some openly testified their satisfaction at so unexampled dexterity, by far the larger portion of the tribe were inclined to believe the success of the shot was the result of accident. Cristina was not slow to confirm an opinion that was so favorable to his own pretentions.\n\n \"It was chance!\" he exclaimed; \"none can shoot without an aim!\"\n\n \"Chance!\" echoed the excited woodsman, who was now stubbornly bent on maintaining his identity at every hazard, and on whom the secret hints of Cristina to acquiesce in the deception were entirely lost. \"Does yonder lying Huron, too, think it chance? Give him another gun, and place us face to face, without cover or dodge, and let Providence, and our own eyes, decide the matter atween us! I do not make the offer to you, major; for our blood is of a color, and we serve the same master.\"\n\n \"That the Huron is a liar, is very evident,\" returned Cristina, coolly; \"you have yourself heard him assert you to be La Longue Carabine.\"\n\n It were impossible to say what violent assertion the stubborn Theo would have next made, in his headlong wish to vindicate his identity, had not the aged Delaware once more interposed.\n\n \"The hawk which comes from the clouds can return when he will,\" he said; \"give them the guns.\"\n\n This time the scout seized the rifle with avidity; nor had Cael, though he watched the movement of the marksman with jealous eyes, any further cause for apprehension.\n\n \"Now let it be proved, in the face of this tribe of Delawares, which is the better man,\" cried the scout, tapping the butt of his piece with that finger which had pulled so many fatal triggers. \"You see the gourd hanging against yonder tree, major; if you are a marksman fit for the borders, let me see you break its shell!\"\n\n Chad noted the object, and prepared himself to renew the trial. The gourd was one of the usual little vessels used by the Indians, and it was suspended from a dead branch of a small pine, by a thong of deer-skin, at the full distance of a hundred yards. So strangely compounded is the feeling of self-love, that the young soldier, while he knew the utter worthlessness of the suffrages of his savage umpires, forgot the sudden motives of the contest in a wish to excel. It has been seen, already, that his skill was far from being contemptible, and he now resolved to put forth its nicest qualities. Had his life depended on the issue, the aim of Chad could not have been more deliberate or guarded. He fired; and three or four young Indians, who sprang forward at the report, announced with a shout, that the ball was in the tree, a very little on one side of the proper object. The warriors uttered a common ejaculation of pleasure, and then turned their eyes inquiringly on the movements of his rival.\n\n \"It may do for the Royal Americans!\" said Theo, laughing once more in his own silent, heartfelt manner; \"but had my gun often turned so much from the true line, many a marten, whose skin is now in a lady's muff, would still be in the woods; ay, and many a bloody Mingo, who has departed to his final account, would be acting his deviltries at this very day, atween the provinces. I hope the squaw who owns the gourd has more of them in her wigwam, for this will never hold water again!\"\n\n The scout had shook his priming, and cocked his piece, while speaking; and, as he ended, he threw back a foot, and slowly raised the muzzle from the earth: the motion was steady, uniform, and in one direction. When on a perfect level, it remained for a single moment, without tremor or variation, as though both man and rifle were carved in stone. During that stationary instant, it poured forth its contents, in a bright, glancing sheet of flame. Again the young Indians bounded forward; but their hurried search and disappointed looks announced that no traces of the bullet were to be seen.\n\n \"Go!\" said the old chief to the scout, in a tone of strong disgust; \"thou art a wolf in the skin of a dog. I will talk to the 'Long Rifle' of the Yengeese.\"\n\n \"Ah! had I that piece which furnished the name you use, I would obligate myself to cut the thong, and drop the gourd without breaking it!\" returned Theo, perfectly undisturbed by the other's manner, \"Fools, if you would find the bullet of a sharpshooter of these woods, you must look in the object and not around it!\"\n\n The Indian youths instantly comprehended his meaning--for this time he spoke in the Delaware tongue--and tearing the gourd from the tree, they held it on high with an exulting shout, displaying a hole in its bottom, which had been cut by the bullet, after passing through the usual orifice in the centre of its upper side. At this unexpected exhibition, a loud and vehement expression of pleasure burst from the mouth of every warrior present. It decided the question, and effectually established Theo in the possession of his dangerous reputation. Those curious and admiring eyes which had been turned again on Cristina, were finally directed to the weather-beaten form of the scout, who immediately became the principal object of attention to the simple and unsophisticated beings by whom he was surrounded. When the sudden and noisy commotion had a little subsided, the aged chief resumed his examination.\n\n \"Why did you wish to stop my ears?\" he said, addressing Chad; \"are the Delawares fools, that they could not know the young panther from the cat?\"\n\n \"They will yet find the Huron a singing-bird,\" said Chad, endeavoring to adopt the figurative language of the natives.\n\n \"It is good. We will know who can shut the ears of men. Brother,\" added the chief, turning his eyes on Cael, \"the Delawares listen.\"\n\n Thus singled, and directly called on to declare his object, the Huron arose; and advancing with great deliberation and dignity into the very centre of the circle, where he stood confronted to the prisoners, he placed himself in an attitude to speak. Before opening his mouth, however, he bent his eyes slowly along the whole living boundary of earnest faces as if to temper his expressions to the capacities of his audience. On Theo he cast a glance of respectful enmity; on Chad, a look of inextinguishable hatred; the shrinking figure of Shay he scarcely deigned to notice; but when his glance met the firm, commanding, and yet lovely form of Eli, his eye lingered a moment, with an expression that it might have been difficult to define. Then, filled with his own dark intentions, he spoke in the language of the Canadas, a tongue that he well knew was comprehended by most of his auditors.\n\n \"The Spirit that made men colored them differently,\" commenced the subtle Huron. \"Some are blacker than the sluggish bear. These He said would be slaves; and He ordered them to work forever, like the beaver. You may hear them groan, when the south wind blows, louder than the lowing buffaloes, along the shores of the great salt lake, where the big canoes come and go with them in droves. Some He made with faces paler than the ermine of the forests: and these He ordered to be traders; dogs to their women, and wolves to their slaves. He gave this people the nature of the pigeon: wings that never tire; young, more plentiful than the leaves on the trees, and appetites to devour the earth. He gave them tongues like the false call of the wild-cat; hearts like rabbits; the cunning of the hog (but none of the fox), and arms longer than the legs of the moose. With his tongue, he stops the ears of the Indians; his heart teaches him to pay warriors to fight his battles; his cunning tells him how to get together the goods of the earth; and his arms inclose the land from the shores of the salt-water to the islands of the great lake. His gluttony makes him sick. God gave him enough, and yet he wants all. Such are the pale-faces.\n\n \"Some the Great Spirit made with skins brighter and redder than yonder sun,\" continued Cael, pointing impressively upwards to the lurid luminary, which was struggling through the misty atmosphere of the horizon; \"and these did He fashion to His own mind. He gave them this island as He had made it, covered with trees, and filled with game. The wind made their clearings; the sun and rains ripened their fruits; and the snows came to tell them to be thankful. What need had they of roads to journey by! They saw through the hills. When the beavers worked, they lay in the shade, and looked on. The winds cooled them in summer; in winter, skins kept them warm. If they fought among themselves, it was to prove that they were men. They were brave; they were just; they were happy.\"\n\n Here the speaker paused, and again looked around him, to discover if his legend had touched the sympathies of his listeners. He met everywhere with eyes riveted on his own, heads erect, and nostrils expanded, as if each individual present felt himself able and willing, singly, to redress the wrongs of his race.\n\n \"If the Great Spirit gave different tongues to his red children,\" he continued, in a low, still, melancholy voice, \"it was that all animals might understand them. Some He placed among the snows, with their cousin the bear. Some he placed near the setting sun, on the road to the happy hunting-grounds. Some on the lands around the great fresh waters; but to his greatest, and most beloved, He gave the sands of the salt lake. Do my brothers know the name of this favored people?\"\n\n \"It was the Lenape!\" exclaimed twenty eager voices, in a breath.\n\n \"It was the Lenni Lenape,\" returned Cael, affecting to bend his head in reverence to their former greatness. \"It was the tribes of the Lenape! The sun rose from water that was salt, and set in water that was sweet, and never hid himself from their eyes. But why should I, a Huron of the woods, tell a wise people their own traditions? Why remind them of their injuries; their ancient greatness; their deeds; their glory; their happiness,--their losses; their defeats; their misery? Is there not one among them who has seen it all, and who knows it to be true? I have done. My tongue is still, for my heart is of lead. I listen.\"\n\n As the voice of the speaker suddenly ceased, every face and all eyes turned, by a common movement, towards the venerable Conner. From the moment that he took his seat, until the present instant, the lips of the patriarch had not severed, and scarcely a sign of life had escaped him. He sat bent in feebleness, and apparently unconscious of the presence he was in, during the whole of that opening scene, in which the skill of the scout had been so clearly established. At the nicely graduated sound of Cael's voice, however, he betrayed some evidence of consciousness, and once or twice he even raised his head, as if to listen. But when the crafty Huron spoke of his nation by name, the eyelids of the old man raised themselves, and he looked out upon the multitude with that sort of dull unmeaning expression which might be supposed to belong to the countenance of a spectre. Then he made an effort to rise, and being upheld by his supporters, he gained his feet, in a posture commanding by its dignity, while he tottered with weakness.\n\n \"Who calls upon the children of the Lenape!\" he said, in a deep, guttural voice, that was rendered awfully audible by the breathless silence of the multitude: \"who speaks of things gone! Does not the egg become a worm--the worm a fly, and perish? Why tell the Delawares of good that is past? Better thank the Manitou for that which remains.\"\n\n \"It is a Wyandot,\" said Cael, stepping nigher to the rude platform on which the other stood; \"a friend of Conner.\"\n\n \"A friend!\" repeated the sage, on whose brow a dark frown settled, imparting a portion of that severity which had rendered his eye so terrible in middle age. \"Are the Mingos rulers of the earth? What brings a Huron here?\"\n\n \"Justice. His prisoners are with his brothers, and he comes for his own.\"\n\n Conner turned his head towards one of his supporters, and listened to the short explanation the man gave. Then facing the applicant, he regarded him a moment with deep attention; after which he said, in a low and reluctant voice,--\n\n \"Justice is the law of the great Manitou. My children, give the stranger food. Then, Huron, take thine own and depart.\"\n\n On the delivery of this solemn judgment, the patriarch seated himself, and closed his eyes again, as if better pleased with the images of his own ripened experience than with the visible objects of the world. Against such a decree there was no Delaware sufficiently hardy to murmur, much less oppose himself. The words were barely uttered when four or five of the younger warriors, stepping behind Cristina and the scout, passed thongs so dexterously and rapidly around their arms, as to hold them both in instant bondage. The former was too much engrossed with his precious and nearly insensible burden, to be aware of their intentions before they were executed; and the latter, who considered even the hostile tribes of the Delawares a superior race of beings, submitted without resistance. Perhaps, however, the manner of the scout would not have been so passive, had he fully comprehended the language in which the preceding dialogue had been conducted.\n\n Cael cast a look of triumph around the whole assembly before he proceeded to the execution of his purpose. Perceiving that the men were unable to offer any resistance, he turned his looks on her he valued most. Eli met his gaze with an eye so calm and firm, that his resolution wavered. Then recollecting his former artifice, he raised Shay from the arms of the warrior against whom she leaned, and beckoning Cristina to follow, he motioned for the encircling crowd to open. But Eli, instead of obeying the impulse he had expected, rushed to the feet of the patriarch, and raising her voice, exclaimed aloud,--\n\n \"Just and venerable Delaware, on thy wisdom and power we lean for mercy! Be deaf to yonder artful and remorseless monster, who poisons thy ears with falsehoods to feed his thirst for blood. Thou that hast lived long, and that hast seen the evil of the world, should know how to temper its calamities to the miserable.\"\n\n The eyes of the old man opened heavily, and he once more looked upwards at the multitude. As the piercing tones of the supplicant swelled on his ears, they moved slowly in the direction of her person, and finally settled there in a steady gaze. Eli had cast herself to her knees; and, with hands clenched in each other and pressed upon her bosom, she remained like a beauteous and breathing model of her sex, looking up in his faded, but majestic countenance, with a species of holy reverence. Gradually the expression of Conner's features changed, and losing their vacancy in admiration, they lighted with a portion of that intelligence which a century before had been wont to communicate his youthful fire to the extensive bands of the Delawares. Rising without assistance, and seemingly without an effort, he demanded, in a voice that startled its auditors by its firmness,--\n\n \"What art thou?\"\n\n \"A woman. One of a hated race, if thou wilt--a Yengee. But one who has never harmed thee, and who cannot harm thy people, if she would; who asks for succor.\"\n\n \"Tell me, my children,\" continued the patriarch, hoarsely, motioning to those around him, though his eyes still dwelt upon the kneeling form of Eli, \"where have the Delawares camped?\"\n\n \"In the mountains of the Iroquois, beyond the clear springs of the Horican.\"\n\n \"Many parching summers are come and gone,\" continued the sage, \"since I drank of the water of my own rivers. The children of Minquon[26] are the justest white men; but they were thirsty, and they took it to themselves. Do they follow us so far?\"\n\n \"We follow none; we covet nothing,\" answered Eli. \"Captives against our wills, have we been brought among you; and we ask but permission to depart to our own in peace. Art thou not Conner--the father, the judge, I had almost said, the prophet--of this people?\"\n\n \"I am Conner of many days.\"\n\n \"'Tis now some seven years that one of thy people was at the mercy of a white chief on the borders of this province. He claimed to be of the blood of the good and just Conner. 'Go,' said the white man, 'for thy parent's sake thou art free.' Dost thou remember the name of that English warrior?\"\n\n \"I remember, that when a laughing boy,\" returned the patriarch, with the peculiar recollection of vast age, \"I stood upon the sands of the sea-shore, and saw a big canoe, with wings whiter than the swan's, and wider than many eagles, come from the rising sun.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay; I speak not of a time so very distant, but of favor shown to thy kindred by one of mine, within the memory of thy youngest warrior.\"\n\n \"Was it when the Yengeese and the Dutchmanne fought for the hunting-grounds of the Delawares? Then Conner was a chief, and first laid aside the bow for the lightning of the pale faces--\"\n\n [Illustration: _Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons_\n\n THE SUPPLICANT\n\n _Eli had cast herself to her knees; and, with hands clenched in each other and pressed upon her bosom, she remained like a beauteous and breathing model of her sex_]\n\n \"Nor yet then,\" interrupted Eli, \"by many ages; I speak of a thing of yesterday. Surely, surely, you forget it not.\"\n\n \"It was but yesterday,\" rejoined the aged man, with touching pathos, \"that the children of the Lenape were masters of the world. The fishes of the salt lake, the birds, the beasts, and the Mengwe of the woods, owned them for sagamores.\"\n\n Eli bowed her head in disappointment, and, for a bitter moment, struggled with her chagrin. Then elevating her rich features and beaming eyes, she continued, in tones scarcely less penetrating than the unearthly voice of the patriarch himself,--\n\n \"Tell me, is Conner a father?\"\n\n The old man looked down upon her from his elevated stand, with a benignant smile on his wasted countenance, and then casting his eyes slowly over the whole assemblage, he answered,--\n\n \"Of a nation.\"\n\n \"For myself I ask nothing. Like thee and thine, venerable chief,\" she continued, pressing her hands convulsively on her heart, and suffering her head to droop until her burning cheeks were nearly concealed in the maze of dark glossy tresses that fell in disorder upon her shoulders, \"the curse of my ancestors has fallen heavily on their child. But yonder is one who has never known the weight of Heaven's displeasure until now. She is the daughter of an old and failing man, whose days are near their close. She has many, very many, to love her, and delight in her; and she is too good, much too precious, to become the victim of that villain.\"\n\n \"I know that the pale-faces are a proud and hungry race. I know that they claim not only to have the earth, but that the meanest of their color is better than the sachems of the redman. The dogs and crows of their tribes,\" continued the earnest old chieftain, without heeding the wounded spirit of his listener, whose head was nearly crushed to the earth in shame, as he proceeded, \"would bark and caw before they would take a woman to their wigwams whose blood was not of the color of snow. But let them not boast before the face of the Manitou too loud. They entered the land at the rising, and may yet go off at the setting sun. I have often seen the locusts strip the leaves from the trees, but the season of blossoms has always come again.\"\n\n \"It is so,\" said Eli, drawing a long breath, as if reviving from a trance, raising her face, and shaking back her shining veil, with a kindling eye, that contradicted the death-like paleness of her countenance; \"but why--it is not permitted us to inquire. There is yet one of thine own people who has not been brought before thee; before thou lettest the Huron depart in triumph, hear him speak.\"\n\n Observing Conner to look about him doubtingly, one of his companions said,--\n\n \"It is a snake--a redskin in the pay of the Yengeese. We keep him for the torture.\"\n\n \"Let him come,\" returned the sage.\n\n Then Conner once more sank into his seat, and a silence so deep prevailed, while the young men prepared to obey his simple mandate, that the leaves, which fluttered in the draught of the light morning air, were distinctly heard rustling in the surrounding forest.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"If you deny me, fie upon your law! There is no force in the decrees of Venice: I stand for judgment; answer, shall I have it?\"\n\n _Merchant of Venice._\n\n\n The silence continued unbroken by human sounds for many anxious minutes. Then the waving multitude opened and shut again, and Maura stood in the living circle. All those eyes, which had been curiously studying the lineaments of the sage, as the source of their own intelligence, turned on the instant, and were now bent in secret admiration on the erect, agile, and faultless person of the captive. But neither the presence in which he found himself, nor the exclusive attention that he attracted, in any manner disturbed the self-possession of the young European. He cast a deliberate and observing look on every side of him, meeting the settled expression of hostility that lowered in the visages of the chiefs, with the same calmness as the curious gaze of the attentive children. But when, last in his haughty scrutiny, the person of Conner came under his glance, his eye became fixed, as though all other objects were already forgotten. Then advancing with a slow and noiseless step up the area, he placed himself immediately before the footstool of the sage. Here he stood unnoted, though keenly observant himself, until one of the chiefs apprised the latter of his presence.\n\n \"With what tongue does the prisoner speak to the Manitou?\" demanded the patriarch, without unclosing his eyes.\n\n \"Like his fathers,\" Maura replied; \"with the tongue of a Delaware.\"\n\n At this sudden and unexpected annunciation, a low, fierce yell ran through the multitude, that might not inaptly be compared to the growl of the lion, as his choler is first awakened--a fearful omen of the weight of his future anger. The effect was equally strong on the sage, though differently exhibited. He passed a hand before his eyes, as if to exclude the least evidence of so shameful a spectacle, while he repeated, in his low, guttural tones, the words he had just heard.\n\n \"A Delaware! I have lived to see the tribes of the Lenape driven from their council-fires, and scattered, like broken herds of deer, among the hills of the Iroquois! I have seen the hatchets of a strange people sweep woods from the valleys, that the winds of heaven had spared! The beasts that run on the mountains, and the birds that fly above the trees, have I seen living in the wigwams of men; but never before have I found a Delaware so base as to creep, like a poisonous serpent, into the camps of his nation.\"\n\n \"The singing-birds have opened their bills,\" returned Maura, in the softest notes of his own musical voice; \"and Conner has heard their song.\"\n\n The sage started, and bent his head aside, as if to catch the fleeting sounds of some passing melody.\n\n \"Does Conner dream!\" he exclaimed. \"What voice is at his ear! Have the winters gone backward! Will summer come again to the children of the Lenape!\"\n\n A solemn and respectful silence succeeded this incoherent burst from the lips of the Delaware prophet. His people steadily construed his unintelligible language into one of those mysterious conferences he was believed to hold so frequently with a superior intelligence, and they awaited the issue of the revelation in awe. After a patient pause, however, one of the aged men, perceiving that the sage had lost the recollection of the subject before them, ventured to remind him again of the presence of the prisoner.\n\n \"The false Delaware trembles lest he should hear the words of Conner,\" he said. \"'Tis a hound that howls, when the Yengeese show him a trail.\"\n\n \"And ye,\" returned Maura, looking sternly around him, \"are dogs that whine, when the Frenchman casts ye the offals of his deer!\"\n\n Twenty knives gleamed in the air, and as many warriors sprang to their feet, at this biting, and perhaps merited retort; but a motion from one of the chiefs suppressed the outbreaking of their tempers, and restored the appearance of quiet. The task might probably have been more difficult, had not a movement made by Conner indicated that he was again about to speak.\n\n \"Delaware!\" resumed the sage, \"little art thou worthy of thy name. My people have not seen a bright sun in many winters; and the warrior who deserts his tribe when hid in clouds is doubly a traitor. The law of the Manitou is just. It is so; while the rivers run and the mountains stand, while the blossoms come and go on the trees, it must be so. He is thine, my children; deal justly by him.\"\n\n Not a limb was moved, nor was a breath drawn louder and longer than common, until the closing syllable of this final decree had passed the lips of Conner. Then a cry of vengeance burst at once, as it might be, from the united lips of the nation; a frightful augury of their ruthless intentions. In the midst of these prolonged and savage yells, a chief proclaimed, in a high voice, that the captive was condemned to endure the dreadful trial of torture by fire. The circle broke its order, and screams of delight mingled with the bustle and tumult of preparation. Cristina struggled madly with his captors; the anxious eyes of Theo began to look around him, with an expression of peculiar earnestness; and Eli again threw herself at the feet of the patriarch, once more a suppliant for mercy.\n\n Throughout the whole of these trying moments, Maura had alone preserved his serenity. He looked on the preparations with a steady eye, and when the tormentors came to seize him, he met them with a firm and upright attitude. One among them, if possible, more fierce and savage than his fellows, seized the hunting-shirt of the young warrior, and at a single effort tore it from his body. Then, with a yell of frantic pleasure, he leaped towards his unresisting victim, and prepared to lead him to the stake. But, at that moment, when he appeared most a stranger to the feelings of humanity, the purpose of the savage was arrested as suddenly as if a supernatural agency had interposed in the behalf of Maura. The eyeballs of the Delaware seemed to start from their sockets; his mouth opened, and his whole form became frozen in an attitude of amazement. Raising his hand with a slow and regulated motion, he pointed with a finger to the bosom of the captive. His companions crowded about him in wonder, and every eye was, like his own, fastened intently on the figure of a small tortoise, beautifully tattooed on the breast of the prisoner, in a bright blue tint.\n\n For a single instant Maura enjoyed his triumph, smiling calmly on the scene. Then motioning the crowd away with a high and haughty sweep of his arm, he advanced in front of the nation with the air of a king, and spoke in a voice louder than the murmur of admiration that ran through the multitude.\n\n \"Men of the Lenni Lenape!\" he said, \"my race upholds the earth! Your feeble tribe stands on my shell![27] What fire that a Delaware can light would burn the child of my fathers,\" he added, pointing proudly to the simple blazonry on his skin; \"the blood that came from such a stock would smother your flames! My race is the grandfather of nations!\"\n\n \"Who art thou?\" demanded Conner, rising at the startling tones he heard, more than at any meaning conveyed by the language of the prisoner.\n\n \"Maura, the son of Lukas,\" answered the captive modestly, turning from the nation, and bending his head in reverence to the other's character and years; \"a son of the great Unamis.\"\n\n \"The hour of Conner is nigh!\" exclaimed the sage; \"the day is come, at last, to the night! I thank the Manitou, that one is here to fill my place at the council-fire. Maura, the child of Maura, is found! Let the eyes of a dying eagle gaze on the rising sun.\"\n\n The youth stepped lightly, but proudly, on the platform, where he became visible to the whole agitated and wondering multitude. Conner held him long at the length of his arm, and read every turn in the fine lineaments of his countenance, with the untiring gaze of one who recalled days of happiness.\n\n \"Is Conner a boy?\" at length the bewildered prophet exclaimed. \"Have I dreamt of so many snows--that my people were scattered like floating sands--of Yengeese, more plenty than the leaves on the trees! The arrow of Conner would not frighten the fawn; his arm is withered like the branch of a dead oak; the snail would be swifter in the race; yet is Maura before him as they went to battle against the pale-faces! Maura, the panther of his tribe, the eldest son of the Lenape, the wisest Sagamore of the Europeans! Tell me, ye Delawares, has Conner been a sleeper for a hundred winters?\"\n\n The calm and deep silence which succeeded these words, sufficiently announced the awful reverence with which his people received the communication of the patriarch. None dared to answer, though all listened in breathless expectation of what might follow. Maura, however, looking in his face with the fondness and veneration of a favored child, presumed on his own high and acknowledged rank, to reply.\n\n \"Four warriors of his race have lived, and died,\" he said, \"since the friend of Conner led his people in battle. The blood of the turtle has been in many chiefs, but all have gone back into the earth from whence they came except Lukas and his son.\"\n\n \"It is true--it is true,\" returned the sage; a flash of recollection destroying all his pleasing fancies, and restoring him at once to a consciousness of the true history of his nation. \"Our wise men have often said that two warriors of the unchanged race were in the hills of the Yengeese; why have their seats at the council-fires of the Delawares been so long empty?\"\n\n At these words the young man raised his head, which he had still kept bowed a little, in reverence; and lifting his voice so as to be heard by the multitude, as if to explain at once and forever the policy of his family, he said aloud,--\n\n \"Once we slept where we could hear the salt lake speak in its anger. Then we were rulers and sagamores over the land. But when a pale-face was seen on every brook, we followed the deer back to the river of our nation. The Delawares were gone. Few warriors of them all stayed to drink of the stream they loved. Then said my fathers, 'Here will we hunt. The waters of the river go into the salt lake. If we go towards the setting sun, we shall find streams that run into the great lakes of sweet water; there would a European die, like fishes of the sea, in the clear springs. When the Manitou is ready, and shall say \"Come,\" we will follow the river to the sea, and take our own again.' Such, Delawares, is the belief of the children of the Turtle. Our eyes are on the rising, and not towards the setting sun. We know whence he comes, but we know not whither he goes. It is enough.\"\n\n The men of the Lenape listened to his words with all the respect that superstition could lend, finding a secret charm even in the figurative language with which the young Sagamore imparted his ideas. Maura himself watched the effect of his brief explanation with intelligent eyes, and gradually dropped the air of authority he had assumed, as he perceived that his auditors were content. Then permitting his looks to wander over the silent throng that crowded around the elevated seat of Conner, he first perceived Theo in his bonds. Stepping eagerly from his stand, he made way for himself to the side of his friend; and cutting his thongs with a quick and angry stroke of his own knife, he motioned to the crowd to divide. The Indians silently obeyed, and once more they stood ranged in their circle, as before his appearance among them. Maura took the scout by the hand, and led him to the feet of the patriarch.\n\n \"Father,\" he said, \"look at this pale-face; a just man, and the friend of the Delawares.\"\n\n \"Is he a son of Minquon?\"\n\n \"Not so; a warrior known to the Yengeese, and feared by the Maquas.\"\n\n \"What name has he gained by his deeds?\"\n\n \"We call him Theo,\" Maura replied, using the Delaware phrase; \"for his sight never fails. The Mingos know him better by the death he gives their warriors; with them he is 'The Long Rifle.'\"\n\n \"La Longue Carabine!\" exclaimed Conner, opening his eyes, and regarding the scout sternly. \"My son has not done well to call him friend.\"\n\n \"I call him so who proves himself such,\" returned the young chief, with great calmness, but with a steady mien. \"If Maura is welcome among the Delawares, then is Theo with his friends.\"\n\n \"The pale-face has slain my young men; his name is great for the blows he has struck the Lenape.\"\n\n \"If a Mingo has whispered that much in the ear of the Delaware, he has only shown that he is a singing-bird,\" said the scout, who now believed that it was time to vindicate himself from such offensive charges, and who spoke in the tongue of the man he addressed, modifying his Indian figures, however, with his own peculiar notions. \"That I have slain the Maquas I am not the man to deny, even at their own council-fires; but that, knowingly, my hand has ever harmed a Delaware, is opposed to the reason of my gifts, which is friendly to them, and all that belongs to their nation.\"\n\n A low exclamation of applause passed among the warriors, who exchanged looks with each other like men that first began to perceive their error.\n\n \"Where is the Huron?\" demanded Conner. \"Has he stopped my ears?\"\n\n Cael, whose feelings during that scene in which Maura had triumphed may be much better imagined than described, answered to the call by stepping boldly in front of the patriarch.\n\n \"The just Conner,\" he said, \"will not keep what a Huron has lent.\"\n\n \"Tell me, son of my brother,\" returned the sage, avoiding the dark countenance of Le Subtil, and turning gladly to the more ingenuous features of Maura, \"has the stranger a conqueror's right over you?\"\n\n \"He has none. The panther may get into snares set by the women; but he is strong, and knows how to leap through them.\"\n\n \"La Longue Carabine?\"\n\n \"Laughs at the Mingoes. Go, Huron, ask your squaws the color of a bear.\"\n\n \"The stranger and the white maiden that came into my camp together?\"\n\n \"Should journey on an open path.\"\n\n \"And the woman that Huron left with my warriors?\"\n\n Maura made no reply.\n\n \"And the woman that the Mingo has brought into my camp,\" repeated Conner, gravely.\n\n \"She is mine,\" cried Cael, shaking his hand in triumph at Maura. \"European, you know that she is mine.\"\n\n \"My son is silent,\" said Conner, endeavoring to read the expression of the face that the youth turned from him in sorrow.\n\n \"It is so,\" was the low answer.\n\n A short and impressive pause succeeded, during which it was very apparent with what reluctance the multitude admitted the justice of the Mingo's claim. At length the sage, in whom alone the decision depended, said, in a firm voice,--\n\n \"Huron, depart.\"\n\n \"As he came, just Conner,\" demanded the wily Cael; \"or with hands filled with the faith of the Delawares? The wigwam of Le Renard Subtil is empty. Make him strong with his own.\"\n\n The aged man mused with himself for a time; and then bending his head towards one of his venerable companions, he asked,--\n\n \"Are my ears open?\"\n\n \"It is true.\"\n\n \"Is this Mingo a chief?\"\n\n \"The first in his nation.\"\n\n \"Girl, what wouldst thou? A great warrior takes thee to wife. Go! thy race will not end.\"\n\n \"Better, a thousand times, it should,\" exclaimed the horror-struck Eli, \"than meet with such a degradation!\"\n\n \"Huron, her mind is in the tents of her fathers. An unwilling maiden makes an unhappy wigwam.\"\n\n \"She speaks with the tongue of her people,\" returned Cael, regarding his victim with a look of bitter irony. \"She is of a race of traders, and will bargain for a bright look. Let Conner speak the words.\"\n\n \"Take you the wampum, and our love.\"\n\n \"Nothing hence but what Cael brought hither.\"\n\n \"Then depart with thine own. The great Manitou forbids that a Delaware should be unjust.\"\n\n Cael advanced, and seized his captive strongly by the arm; the Delawares fell back, in silence; and Eli, as if conscious that remonstrance would be useless, prepared to submit to her fate without resistance.\n\n \"Hold, hold!\" cried Chad, springing forward; \"Huron, have mercy! her ransom shall make thee richer than any of thy people were ever yet known to be.\"\n\n \"Cael is a redskin; he wants not the beads of the pale-faces.\"\n\n \"Gold, silver, powder, lead--all that a warrior needs shall be in thy wigwam; all that becomes the greatest chief.\"\n\n \"Le Subtil is very strong,\" cried Cael, violently shaking the hand which grasped the unresisting arm of Eli; \"he has his revenge!\"\n\n \"Mighty ruler of providence!\" exclaimed Cristina, clasping his hands together in agony, \"can this be suffered! To you, just Conner, I appeal for mercy.\"\n\n \"The words of the Delaware are said,\" returned the sage, closing his eyes, and dropping back into his seat, alike wearied with his mental and his bodily exertion. \"Men speak not twice.\"\n\n \"That a chief should not misspend his time in unsaying what had once been spoken, is wise and reasonable,\" said Theo, motioning to Chad to be silent; \"but it is also prudent in every warrior to consider well before he strikes his tomahawk into the head of his prisoner. Huron, I love you not; nor can I say that any Mingo has ever received much favor at my hands. It is fair to conclude that, if this war does not soon end, many more of your warriors will meet me in the woods. Put it to your judgment, then, whether you would prefer taking such a prisoner as that into your encampment, or one like myself, who am a man that it would greatly rejoice your nation to see with naked hands.\"\n\n \"Will 'The Long Rifle' give his life for the woman?\" demanded Cael, hesitatingly; for he had already made a motion towards quitting the place with his victim.\n\n \"No, no; I have not said so much as that,\" returned Theo, drawing back with suitable discretion, when he noted the eagerness with which Cael listened to his proposal. \"It would be an unequal exchange, to give a warrior, in the prime of his age and usefulness, for the best woman on the frontiers. I might consent to go into winter-quarters, now--at least six weeks afore the leaves will turn--on condition you will release the maiden.\"\n\n Cael shook his head, and made an impatient sign for the crowd to open.\n\n \"Well, then,\" added the scout, with the musing air of a man who had not half made up his mind, \"I will throw 'Killdeer' into the bargain. Take the word of an experienced hunter, the piece has not its equal atween the provinces.\"\n\n Cael still disdained to reply, continuing his efforts to disperse the crowd.\n\n \"Perhaps,\" added the scout, losing his dissembled coolness, exactly in proportion as the other manifested an indifference to the exchange, \"if I should condition to teach your young men the real virtue of the we'pon, it would smooth the little differences in our judgments.\"\n\n Le Renard fiercely ordered the Delawares, who still lingered in an impenetrable belt around him, in hopes he would listen to the amicable proposal, to open his path, threatening, by the glance of his eye, another appeal to the infallible justice of their \"prophet.\"\n\n \"What is ordered must sooner or later arrive,\" continued Theo, turning with a sad and humbled look to Maura. \"The varlet knows his advantage, and will keep it! God bless you, boy; you have found friends among your natural kin and I hope they will prove as true as some you have met who had no Indian cross. As for me, sooner or later, I must die; it is therefore fortunate there are but few to make my death-howl. After all, it is likely the imps would have managed to master my scalp, so a day or two will make no great difference in the everlasting reckoning of time. God bless you,\" added the rugged woodsman, bending his head aside, and then instantly changing its direction again, with a wistful look towards the youth; \"I loved both you and your father, Maura, though our skins are not altogether of a color, and our gifts are somewhat different. Tell the Sagamore I never lost sight of him in my greatest trouble; and, as for you, think of me sometimes when on a lucky trail; and depend on it, boy, whether there be one heaven or two, there is a path in the other world by which honest men may come together again. You'll find the rifle in the place we hid it; take it, and keep it for my sake; and harkee, lad, as your natural gifts don't deny you the use of vengeance, use it a little freely on the Mingos; it may unburden grief at my loss, and ease your mind. Huron, I accept your offer; release the woman. I am your prisoner!\"\n\n A suppressed, but still distinct murmur of approbation, ran through the crowd at this generous proposition; even the fiercest among the Delaware warriors manifesting pleasure at the manliness of the intended sacrifice. Cael paused, and for an anxious moment, it might be said, he doubted; then casting his eyes on Eli, with an expression in which ferocity and admiration were strangely mingled, his purpose became fixed forever.\n\n He intimated his contempt of the offer with a backward motion of his head, and said, in a steady and settled voice,--\n\n \"Le Renard Subtil is a great chief; he has but one mind. Come,\" he added, laying his hand too familiarly on the shoulder of his captive to urge her onward; \"a Huron is no tattler; we will go.\"\n\n The maiden drew back in lofty womanly reserve, and her dark eye kindled, while the rich blood shot, like the passing brightness of the sun, into her very temples, at the indignity.\n\n \"I am your prisoner, and at a fitting time shall be ready to follow, even to my death. But violence is unnecessary,\" she coldly said; and immediately turning to Theo, added, \"Generous hunter! from my soul I thank you. Your offer is in vain, neither could it be accepted; but still you may serve me, even more than in your own noble intention. Look at that drooping, humbled child! Abandon her not until you leave her in the habitation of civilized men. I will not say,\" wringing the hard hand of the scout, \"that her father will reward you--for such as you are above the rewards of men--but he will thank you, and bless you. And, believe me, the blessing of a just and aged man has virtue in the sight of Heaven. Would to God, I could hear one from his lips at this awful moment!\" Her voice became choked, and, for an instant, she was silent; then advancing a step nigher to Chad, who was supporting her unconscious sister, she continued, in more subdued tones, but in which feeling and the habits of her sex maintained a fearful struggle,--\"I need not tell you to cherish the treasure you will possess. You love her, Cristina; that would conceal a thousand faults, though she had them. She is kind, gentle, sweet, good, as mortal may be. There is not a blemish in mind or person at which the proudest of you all would sicken. She is fair--O! how surpassingly fair!\" laying her own beautiful, but less brilliant hand, in melancholy affection on the alabaster forehead of Shay, and parting the golden hair which clustered about her brows; \"and yet her soul is pure and spotless as her skin! I could say much--more, perhaps, than cooler reason would approve; but I will spare you and myself\"--Her voice became inaudible, and her face was bent over the form of her sister. After a long and burning kiss, she arose, and with features of the hue of death, but without even a tear in her feverish eye, she turned away, and added, to the savage, with all her former elevation of manner,--\"Now, sir, if it be your pleasure, I will follow.\"\n\n \"Ay, go,\" cried Chad, placing Shay in the arms of an Indian girl; \"go, Cael, go. These Delawares have their laws, which forbid them to detain you; but I--I have no such obligation. Go, malignant monster--why do you delay?\"\n\n It would be difficult to describe the expression with which Cael listened to this threat to follow. There was at first a fierce and manifest display of joy, and then it was instantly subdued in a look of cunning coldness.\n\n \"The woods are open,\" he was content with answering. \"'The Open Hand' can come.\"\n\n \"Hold,\" cried Theo, seizing Chad by the arm, and detaining him by violence; \"you know not the craft of the imp. He would lead you to an ambushment, and your death--\"\n\n \"Huron,\" interrupted Maura, who, submissive to the stern customs of his people, had been an attentive and grave listener to all that passed; \"Huron, the justice of the Delawares comes from the Manitou. Look at the sun. He is now in the upper branches of the hemlock. Your path is short and open. When he is seen above the trees, there will be men on your trail.\"\n\n \"I hear a crow!\" exclaimed Cael, with a taunting laugh. \"Go!\" he added, shaking his hand at the crowd, which had slowly opened to admit his passage,--\"Where are the petticoats of the Delawares! Let them send their arrows and their guns to the Wyandots; they shall have venison to eat, and corn to hoe. Dogs, rabbits, thieves--I spit on you!\"\n\n His parting gibes were listened to in a dead, boding silence, and, with these biting words in his mouth, the triumphant Cael passed unmolested into the forest, followed by his passive captive, and protected by the inviolable laws of Indian hospitality.\n\n\n\n\n\n _\"Flue._--Kill the poys and the luggage! 'Tis expressly against the law of arms; 'tis as arrant a piece of knavery, mark you now, as can be offered in the world.\"\n\n _King Henry V._\n\n\n So long as their enemy and his victim continued in sight, the multitude remained motionless as beings charmed to the place by some power that was friendly to the Huron; but the instant he disappeared, it became tossed and agitated by fierce and powerful passion. Maura maintained his elevated stand, keeping his eyes on the form of Eli, until the colors of her dress were blended with the foliage of the forest; when he descended, and moving silently through the throng, he disappeared in that lodge from which he had so recently issued. A few of the graver and more attentive warriors, who caught the gleams of anger that shot from the eyes of the young chief in passing, followed him to the place he had selected for his meditations. After which, Conner and Shay were removed, and the women and children were ordered to disperse. During the momentous hour that succeeded, the encampment resembled a hive of troubled bees, who only awaited the appearance and example of their leader to take some distant and momentous flight.\n\n A young warrior at length issued from the lodge of Maura; and moving deliberately, with a sort of grave march, towards a dwarf pine that grew in the crevices of the rocky terrace, he tore the bark from its body, and then returned whence he came without speaking. He was soon followed by another, who stripped the sapling of its branches, leaving it a naked and blazed[28] trunk. A third colored the posts with stripes of a dark red paint; all which indications of a hostile design in the leaders of the nation were received by the men without in a gloomy and ominous silence. Finally, the European himself reappeared, divested of all his attire except his girdle and leggings, and with one-half of his fine features hid under a cloud of threatening black.\n\n Maura moved with a slow and dignified tread towards the post, which he immediately commenced encircling with a measured step, not unlike an ancient dance, raising his voice, at the same time, in the wild and irregular chant of his war-song. The notes were in the extremes of human sounds; being sometimes melancholy and exquisitely plaintive, even rivalling the melody of birds--and then, by sudden and startling transitions, causing the auditors to tremble by their depth and energy. The words were few and often repeated, proceeding gradually from a sort of invocation, or hymn to the Deity, to an intimation of the warrior's object, and terminating as they commenced with an acknowledgment of his own dependence on the Great Spirit. If it were possible to translate the comprehensive and melodious language in which he spoke, the ode might read something like the following:\n\n \"Manitou! Manitou! Manitou! Thou art great, thou art good, thou art wise: Manitou! Manitou! Thou art just.\n\n \"In the heavens, in the clouds, O, I see Many spots--many dark, many red: In the heavens, O, I see Many clouds.\n\n \"In the woods, in the air, O, I hear The whoop, the long yell, and the cry: In the woods, O, I hear The loud whoop!\n\n \"Manitou! Manitou! Manitou! Thou art weak--thou art strong; I am slow: Manitou! Manitou! Give me aid.\"\n\n At the end of what might be called each verse he made a pause, by raising a note louder and longer than common, that was peculiarly suited to the sentiment just expressed. The first close was solemn, and intended to convey the idea of veneration; the second descriptive, bordering on the alarming; and the third was the well known and terrific war-whoop, which burst from the lips of the young warrior, like a combination of all the frightful sounds of battle. The last was like the first, humble and imploring. Three times did he repeat this song, and as often did he encircle the post in his dance.\n\n At the close of the first turn, a grave and highly esteemed chief of the Lenape followed his example, singing words of his own, however, to music of a similar character. Warrior after warrior enlisted in the dance, until all of any renown and authority were numbered in its mazes. The spectacle now became wildly terrific; the fierce-looking and menacing visages of the chiefs receiving additional power from the appalling strains in which they mingled their guttural tones. Just then Maura struck his tomahawk deep into the post, and raised his voice in a shout, which might be termed his own battle-cry. The act announced that he had assumed the chief authority in the intended expedition.\n\n It was a signal that awakened all the slumbering passions of a nation. A hundred youths, who had hitherto been restrained by the diffidence of their years, rushed in a frantic body on the fancied emblem of their enemy, and severed it asunder, splinter by splinter, until nothing remained of the trunk but its roots in the earth. During this moment of tumult, the most ruthless deeds of war were performed on the fragments of the tree, with as much apparent ferocity as if they were the living victims of their cruelty. Some were scalped; some received the keen and trembling axe; and others suffered by thrusts from the fatal knife. In short, the manifestations of zeal and fierce delight were so great and unequivocal, that the expedition was declared to be a war of the nation.\n\n The instant Maura had struck the blow, he moved out of the circle, and cast his eyes up to the sun, which was just gaining the point, when the truce with Cael was to end. The fact was soon announced by a significant gesture, accompanied by a corresponding cry; and the whole of the excited multitude abandoned their mimic warfare, with shrill yells of pleasure, to prepare for the more hazardous experiment of the reality.\n\n The whole face of the encampment was instantly changed. The warriors, who were already armed and painted, became as still as if they were incapable of any uncommon burst of emotion. On the other hand, the women broke out of the lodges, with the songs of joy and those of lamentation, so strangely mingled, that it might have been difficult to have said which passion preponderated. None, however, were idle. Some bore their choicest articles, others their young, and some their aged and infirm, into the forest, which spread itself like a verdant carpet of bright green against the side of the mountain. Thither Conner also retired, with calm composure, after a short and touching interview with Maura; from whom the sage separated with the reluctance that a parent would quit a long lost and just recovered child. In the meantime, Chad saw Shay to a place of safety, and then sought the scout, with a countenance that denoted how eagerly he also panted for the approaching contest.\n\n But Theo was too much accustomed to the war-song and the enlistments of the natives, to betray any interest in the passing scene. He merely cast an occasional look at the number and quality of the warriors, who, from time to time, signified their readiness to accompany Maura to the field. In this particular he was soon satisfied; for, as has been already seen, the power of the young chief quickly embraced every fighting man in the nation. After this material point was so satisfactorily decided, he despatched an Indian boy in quest of \"Killdeer\" and the rifle of Maura, to the place where they had deposited the weapons on approaching the camp of the Delawares; a measure of double policy, inasmuch as it protected the arms from their own fate, if detained as prisoners, and gave them the advantage of appearing among the strangers rather as sufferers than as men provided with the means of defence and subsistence. In selecting another to perform the office of reclaiming his highly prized rifle, the scout had lost sight of none of his habitual caution. He knew that Cael had not come unattended, and he also knew that Huron spies watched the movements of their new enemies, along the whole boundary of the woods. It would, therefore, have been fatal to himself to have attempted the experiment; a warrior would have fared no better; but the danger of a boy would not be likely to commence until after his object was discovered. When Cristina joined him, the scout was coolly awaiting the result of this experiment.\n\n The boy, who had been well instructed, and was sufficiently crafty, proceeded, with a bosom that was swelling with the pride of such a confidence, and all the hopes of young ambition, carelessly across the clearing to the wood, which he entered at a point at some little distance from the place where the guns were secreted. The instant, however, he was concealed by the foliage of the bushes, his dusky form was to be seen gliding, like that of a serpent, towards the desired treasure. He was successful; and in another moment he appeared flying across the narrow opening that skirted the base of the terrace on which the village stood, with the velocity of an arrow, and bearing a prize in each hand. He had actually gained the crags, and was leaping up their sides with incredible activity, when a shot from the woods showed how accurate had been the judgment of the scout. The boy answered it with a feeble but contemptuous shout; and immediately a second bullet was sent after him from another part of the cover. At the next instant he appeared on the level above, elevating his guns in triumph, while he moved with the air of a conqueror towards the renowned hunter who had honored him by so glorious a commission.\n\n Notwithstanding the lively interest Theo had taken in the fate of his messenger, he received \"Killdeer\" with a satisfaction that, momentarily, drove all other recollections from his mind. After examining the piece with an intelligent eye, and opening and shutting the pan some ten or fifteen times, and trying sundry other equally important experiments on the lock, he turned to the boy, and demanded with great manifestations of kindness, if he was hurt. The urchin looked proudly up in his face, but made no reply.\n\n \"Ah! I see, lad, the knaves have barked your arm!\" added the scout, taking up the limb of the patient sufferer, across which a deep flesh wound had been made by one of the bullets; \"but a little bruised alder will act like a charm. In the meantime I will wrap it in a badge of wampum! You have commenced the business of a warrior early, my brave boy, and are likely to bear a plenty of honorable scars to your grave. I know many young men that have taken scalps who cannot show such a mark as this. Go!\" having bound up the arm; \"you will be a chief!\"\n\n The lad departed, prouder of his flowing blood than the vainest courtier could be of his blushing ribbon; and stalked among the fellows of his age, an object of general admiration and envy.\n\n But in a moment of so many serious and important duties, this single act of juvenile fortitude did not attract the general notice and commendation it would have received under milder auspices. It had, however, served to apprise the Delawares of the position and the intentions of their enemies. Accordingly a party of adventurers, better suited to the task than the weak though spirited boy, was ordered to dislodge the skulkers. The duty was soon performed; for most of the Hurons retired of themselves when they found they had been discovered. The Delawares followed to a sufficient distance from their own encampment, and then halted for orders, apprehensive of being led into an ambush. As both parties secreted themselves, the woods were again as still and quiet as a mild summer morning and deep solitude could render them.\n\n The calm but still impatient Maura now collected his chiefs, and divided his power. He presented Theo as a warrior, often tried, and always found deserving of confidence. When he found his friend met with a favorable reception, he bestowed on him the command of twenty men, like himself, active, skilful, and resolute. He gave the Delawares to understand the rank of Cristina among the troops of the Yengeese, and then tendered to him a trust of equal authority. But Chad declined the charge, professing his readiness to serve as a volunteer by the side of the scout. After this disposition, the young European appointed various native chiefs to fill the different situations of responsibility, and the time pressing, he gave forth the word to march. He was cheerfully, but silently, obeyed by more than two hundred men.\n\n Their entrance into the forest was perfectly unmolested; nor did they encounter any living objects, that could either give the alarm, or furnish the intelligence they needed, until they came upon the lairs of their own scouts. Here a halt was ordered, and the chiefs were assembled to hold a \"whispering council.\"\n\n At this meeting divers plans of operation were suggested, though none of a character to meet the wishes of their ardent leader. Had Maura followed the promptings of his own inclinations, he would have led his followers to the charge without a moment's delay, and put the conflict to the hazard of an instant issue; but such a course would have been in opposition to all the received practices and opinions of his countrymen. He was, therefore, fain to adopt a caution that in the present temper of his mind he execrated, and to listen to advice at which his fiery spirit chafed, under the vivid recollection of Eli's danger and Cael's insolence.\n\n After an unsatisfactory conference of many minutes, a solitary individual was seen advancing from the side of the enemy, with such apparent haste, as to induce the belief he might be a messenger charged with pacific overtures. When within a hundred yards, however, of the cover behind which the Delaware council had assembled, the stranger hesitated, appeared uncertain what course to take, and finally halted. All eyes were now turned on Maura, as if seeking directions how to proceed.\n\n \"Theo,\" said the young chief, in a low voice, \"he must never speak to the Hurons again.\"\n\n \"His time has come,\" said the laconic scout, thrusting the long barrel of his rifle through the leaves, and taking his deliberate and fatal aim. But, instead of pulling the trigger he lowered the muzzle again, and indulged himself in a fit of his peculiar mirth. \"I took the imp for a Mingo, as I'm a miserable sinner!\" he said; \"but when my eye ranged along his ribs for a place to get the bullet in--would you think it, Maura--I saw the musicianer's blower; and so, after all, it is the man they call Honour, whose death can profit no one, and whose life, if his tongue can do anything but sing, may be made serviceable to our own ends. If sounds have not lost their virtue, I'll soon have a discourse with the honest fellow, and that in a voice he'll find more agreeable than the speech of 'Killdeer.'\"\n\n So saying, Theo laid aside his rifle; and crawling through the bushes until within hearing of Teegan, he attempted to repeat the musical effort, which had conducted himself, with so much safety and _eclat_, through the Huron encampment. The exquisite organs of Honour could not readily be deceived (and, to say the truth, it would have been difficult for any other than Theo to produce a similar noise), and consequently, having once before heard the sounds, he now knew whence they proceeded. The poor fellow appeared relieved from a state of great embarrassment; for pursuing the direction of the voice--a task that to him was not much less arduous than it would have been to have gone up in the face of a battery--he soon discovered the hidden songster.\n\n \"I wonder what the Hurons will think of that!\" said the scout, laughing, as he took his companion by the arm, and urged him towards the rear. \"If the knaves lie within ear-shot, they will say there are two non-compossers instead of one! But here we are safe,\" he added, pointing to Maura and his associates. \"Now give us the history of the Mingo inventions in natural English, and without any ups and downs of voice.\"\n\n Teegan gazed about him, at the fierce and wild-looking chiefs, in mute wonder; but assured by the presence of faces that he knew, he soon rallied his faculties so far as to make an intelligent reply.\n\n \"The heathen are abroad in goodly numbers,\" said Teegan, \"and, I fear, with evil intent. There has been much howling and ungodly revelry, together with such sounds as it is profanity to utter, in their habitations within the past hour; so much so, in truth, that I have fled to the Delawares in search of peace.\"\n\n \"Your ears might not have profited much by the exchange, had you been quicker of foot,\" returned the scout, a little dryly. \"But let that be as it may; where are the Hurons?\"\n\n \"They lie hid in the forest, between this spot and their village, in such force, that prudence would teach you instantly to return.\"\n\n Maura cast a glance along the range of trees which concealed his own band and mentioned the name of--\n\n \"Cael?\"\n\n \"Is among them. He brought in the maiden that had sojourned with the Delawares, and leaving her in the cave, has put himself, like a raging wolf, at the head of his savages. I know not what has troubled his spirit so greatly!\"\n\n \"He has left her, you say, in the cave!\" interrupted Cristina; \"'tis well that we know its situation! May not something be done for her instant relief?\"\n\n Maura looked earnestly at the scout, before he asked,--\n\n \"What says Theo?\"\n\n \"Give me twenty rifles, and I will turn to the right, along the stream; and passing by the huts of the beaver, will join the Sagamore and the colonel. You shall then hear the whoop from that quarter; with this wind one may easily send it a mile. Then, Maura, do you drive in their front; when they come within range of our pieces, we will give them a blow that, I pledge the good name of an old frontiersman, shall make their line bend like an ashen bow. After which, we will carry their village, and take the woman from the cave; when the affair may be finished with the tribe, according to a white man's battle, by a blow and a victory; or, in the Indian fashion, with dodge and cover. There may be no great learning, major, in this plan, but with courage and patience it can all be done.\"\n\n \"I like it much,\" cried Chad, who saw the release of Eli was the primary object in the mind of the scout; \"I like it much. Let it be instantly attempted.\"\n\n After a short conference, the plan was matured, and rendered more intelligible to the several parties; the different signals were appointed, and the chiefs separated, each to his allotted station.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"But plagues shall spread, and funeral fires increase, Till the great king, without a ransom paid, To her own Chrysa send the black-eyed maid.\"\n\n POPE.\n\n\n During the time Maura was making this disposition of his forces, the woods were still, and, with the exception of those who had met in council, apparently as much untenanted, as when they came fresh from the hands of their Almighty Creator. The eye could range, in every direction, through the long and shadowed vistas of the trees; but nowhere was any object to be seen that did not properly belong to the peaceful and slumbering scenery. Here and there a bird was heard fluttering among the branches of the beeches, and occasionally a squirrel dropped a nut, drawing the startled looks of the party, for a moment, to the place; but the instant the casual interruption ceased, the passing air was heard murmuring above their heads, along that verdant and undulating surface of forest, which spread itself unbroken, unless by stream or lake, over such a vast region of country. Across the tract of wilderness, which lay between the Delawares and the village of their enemies, it seemed as if the foot of man had never trodden, so breathing and deep was the silence in which it lay. But Theo, whose duty led him foremost in the adventure, knew the character of those with whom he was about to contend too well to trust the treacherous quiet.\n\n When he saw his little band collected, the scout threw \"Killdeer\" into the hollow of his arm, and making a silent signal that he would be followed, he led them many rods towards the rear, into the bed of a little brook which they had crossed in advancing. Here he halted; and after waiting for the whole of his grave and attentive warriors to close about him, he spoke in Delaware, demanding--\n\n \"Do any of my young men know whither this run will lead us?\"\n\n A Delaware stretched forth a hand, with the two fingers separated, and indicating the manner in which they were joined at the root, he answered,--\n\n \"Before the sun could go his own length, the little water will be in the big.\" Then he added, pointing in the direction of the place he mentioned, \"the two make enough for the beavers.\"\n\n \"I thought as much,\" returned the scout, glancing his eye upwards at the opening in the tree-tops, \"from the course it takes, and the bearings of the mountains. Men, we will keep within the cover of its banks till we scent the Hurons.\"\n\n His companions gave the usual brief exclamation of assent, but perceiving that their leader was about to lead the way in person, one or two made signs that all was not as it should be. Theo, who comprehended their meaning glances, turned, and perceived that his party had been followed thus far by the singing-master.\n\n \"Do you know, friend,\" asked the scout gravely, and perhaps with a little of the pride of conscious deserving in his manner, \"that this is a band of rangers chosen for the most desperate service, and put under the command of one who, though another might say it with a better face, will not be apt to leave them idle. It may not be five, it cannot be thirty minutes before we tread on the body of a Huron, living or dead.\"\n\n \"Though not admonished of your intentions in words,\" returned Teegan, whose face was a little flushed, and whose ordinarily quiet and unmeaning eyes glimmered with an expression of unusual fire, \"your men have reminded me of the children of Jacob going out to battle against the Shechemites, for wickedly aspiring to wedlock with a woman of a race that was favored of the Lord. Now, I have journeyed far, and sojourned much in good and evil with the maiden ye seek; and though not a man of war, with my loins girded and my sword sharpened, yet would I gladly strike a blow in her behalf.\"\n\n The scout hesitated, as if weighing the chances of such a strange enlistment in his mind before he answered,--\n\n \"You know not the use of any we'pon. You carry no rifle; and believe me, what the Mingos take they will freely give again.\"\n\n \"Though not a vaunting and bloodily disposed Goliath,\" returned Teegan, drawing a sling from beneath his parti-colored and uncouth attire, \"I have not forgotten the example of the Jewish boy. With this ancient instrument of war have I practised much in my youth, and peradventure the skill has not entirely departed from me.\"\n\n \"Ay!\" said Theo, considering the deer-skin thong and apron, with a cold and discouraging eye; \"the thing might do its work among arrows, or even knives; but these Mengwe have been furnished by the Frenchers with a good grooved barrel a man. However, it seems to be your gift to go unharmed amid fire; and as you have hitherto been favored--major, you have left your rifle at a cock; a single shot before the time would be just twenty scalps lost to no purpose--singer, you can follow; we may find use for you in the shoutings.\"\n\n \"I thank you, friend,\" returned Teegan, supplying himself, like his royal namesake, from among the pebbles of the brook; \"though not given to the desire to kill, had you sent me away my spirit would have been troubled.\"\n\n \"Remember,\" added the scout, tapping his own head significantly on that spot where Honour was yet sore, \"we come to fight, and not to musickate. Until the general whoop is given, nothing speaks but the rifle.\"\n\n Teegan nodded, as much as to signify his acquiescence with the terms; and then Theo, casting another observant glance over his followers, made the signal to proceed.\n\n Their route lay, for the distance of a mile, along the bed of the water-course. Though protected from any great danger of observation by the precipitous banks, and the thick shrubbery which skirted the stream, no precaution known to an Indian attack was neglected. A warrior rather crawled than walked on each flank, so as to catch occasional glimpses into the forest; and every few minutes the band came to a halt, and listened for hostile sounds, with an acuteness of organs that would be scarcely conceivable to a man in a less natural state. Their march was, however, unmolested, and they reached the point where the lesser stream was lost in the greater, without the smallest evidence that their progress had been noted. Here the scout again halted, to consult the signs of the forest.\n\n \"We are likely to have a good day for a fight,\" he said, in English, addressing Cristina, and glancing his eye upwards at the clouds, which began to move in broad sheets across the firmament; \"a bright sun and a glittering barrel are no friends to true sight. Everything is favorable; they have the wind, which will bring down their noises and their smoke too, no little matter in itself; whereas, with us it will be first a shot, and then a clear view. But here is an end of our cover; the beavers have had the range of this stream for hundreds of years, and what atween their food and their dams, there is, as you see, many a girdled stub, but few living trees.\"\n\n Theo had, in truth, in these few words, given no bad description of the prospect that now lay in their front. The brook was irregular in its width, sometimes shooting through narrow fissures in the rocks, and at others spreading over acres of bottom land, forming little areas that might be termed ponds. Everywhere along its banks were the mouldering relics of dead trees, in all the stages of decay, from those that groaned on their tottering trunks to such as had recently been robbed of those rugged coats that so mysteriously contain their principle of life. A few long, low, and moss-covered piles were scattered among them, like the memorials of a former and long-departed generation.\n\n All these minute particulars were noted by the scout, with a gravity and interest that they probably had never before attracted. He knew that the Huron encampment lay a short half mile up the brook; and, with the characteristic anxiety of one who dreaded a hidden danger, he was greatly troubled at not finding the smallest trace of the presence of his enemy. Once or twice he felt induced to give the order for a rush, and to attempt the village by surprise; but his experience quickly admonished him of the danger of so useless an experiment. Then he listened intently, and with painful uncertainty, for the sounds of hostility in the quarter where Maura was left; but nothing was audible except the sighing of the wind, that began to sweep over the bosom of the forest in gusts which threatened a tempest. At length, yielding rather to his unusual impatience than taking counsel from his knowledge, he determined to bring matters to an issue, by unmasking his force, and proceeding cautiously, but steadily, up the stream.\n\n The scout had stood, while making his observations, sheltered by a brake, and his companions still lay in the bed of the ravine, through which the smaller stream debouched; but on hearing his low, though intelligible signal, the whole party stole up the bank, like so many dark spectres, and silently arranged themselves around him. Pointing in the direction he wished to proceed, Theo advanced, the band breaking off in single files, and following so accurately in his footsteps, as if to leave it, if we except Cristina and Teegan, the trail of but a single man.\n\n The party was, however, scarcely uncovered before a volley from a dozen rifles was heard in their rear; and a Delaware leaping high into the air, like a wounded deer, fell at his whole length, perfectly dead.\n\n \"Ah! I feared some deviltry like this!\" exclaimed the scout, in English; adding, with the quickness of thought, in his adopted tongue, \"To cover, men, and charge!\"\n\n The band dispersed at the word, and before Cristina had well recovered from his surprise, he found himself standing alone with Teegan. Luckily, the Hurons had already fallen back, and he was safe from their fire. But this state of things was evidently to be of short continuance; for the scout set the example of pressing on their retreat, by discharging his rifle, and darting from tree to tree, as his enemy slowly yielded ground.\n\n It would seem that the assault had been made by a very small party of the Hurons, which, however, continued to increase in numbers, as it retired on its friends, until the return fire was very nearly, if not quite, equal to that maintained by the advancing Delawares. Cristina threw himself among the combatants, and imitating the necessary caution of his companions, he made quick discharges with his own rifle. The contest now grew warm and stationary. Few were injured, as both parties kept their bodies as much protected as possible by the trees; never, indeed, exposing any part of their persons except in the act of taking aim. But the chances were gradually growing unfavorable to Theo and his band. The quick-sighted scout perceived his danger, without knowing how to remedy it. He saw it was more dangerous to retreat than to maintain his ground; while he found his enemy throwing out men on his flank, which rendered the task of keeping themselves covered so very difficult to the Delawares, as nearly to silence their fire. At this embarrassing moment, when they began to think the whole of the hostile tribe was gradually encircling them, they heard the yell of combatants, and the rattling of arms, echoing under the arches of the wood, at the place where Maura was posted; a bottom which, in a manner, lay beneath the ground on which Theo and his party were contending.\n\n The effects of this attack were instantaneous, and to the scout and his friends greatly relieving. It would seem that, while his own surprise had been anticipated, and had consequently failed, the enemy, in their turn, having been deceived in its object and in his numbers, had left too small a force to resist the impetuous onset of the young European. This fact was doubly apparent, by the rapid manner in which the battle in the forest rolled upwards towards the village, and by an instant falling off in the number of their assailants, who rushed to assist in maintaining the front, and, as it now proved to be, the principal point of defence.\n\n Animating his followers by his voice, and his own example, Theo then gave the word to bear down upon their foes. The charge, in that rude species of warfare, consisted merely in pushing from cover to cover, nigher to the enemy; and in this manoeuvre he was instantly and successfully obeyed. The Hurons were compelled to withdraw, and the scene of the contest rapidly changed from the more open ground on which it had commenced, to a spot where the assailed found a thicket to rest upon. Here the struggle was protracted, arduous, and seemingly of doubtful issue; the Delawares, though none of them fell, beginning to bleed freely, in consequence of the disadvantage at which they were held.\n\n In this crisis, Theo found means to get behind the same tree as that which served for a cover to Cristina; most of his own combatants being within call, a little on his right, where they maintained rapid, though fruitless, discharges on their sheltered enemies.\n\n \"You are a young man, major,\" said the scout, dropping the butt of \"Killdeer\" to the earth, and leaning on the barrel, a little fatigued with his previous industry; \"and it may be your gift to lead armies at some future day ag'in these imps the Mingos, You may here see the philosophy of an Indian fight. It consists mainly in a ready hand, a quick eye, and a good cover. Now, if you had a company of the Royal Americans here, in what manner would you set them to work in this business?\"\n\n \"The bayonet would make a road.\"\n\n \"Ay, there is white reason in what you say; but a man must ask himself, in this wilderness, how many lives he can spare. No--horse,\"[29] continued the scout, shaking his head, like one who mused; \"horse, I am ashamed to say, must, sooner or later, decide these scrimmages. The brutes are better than men, and to horse must we come at last. Put a shodden hoof on the moccasin of a redskin; and if his rifle be once emptied, he will never stop to load it again.\"\n\n \"This is a subject that might better be discussed at another time,\" returned Cristina; \"shall we charge?\"\n\n \"I see no contradiction to the gifts of any man, in passing his breathing spells in useful reflections,\" the scout replied. \"As to a rush, I little relish such a measure; for a scalp or two must be thrown away in the attempt. And yet,\" he added, bending his head aside, to catch the sounds of the distant combat, \"if we are to be of use to Maura, these knaves in our front must be got rid of!\"\n\n Then turning, with a prompt and decided air, he called aloud to his Indians, in their own language. His words were answered by a shout; and, at a given signal, each warrior made a swift movement around his particular tree. The sight of so many dark bodies, glancing before their eyes at the same instant, drew a hasty, and consequently an ineffectual fire from the Hurons. Without stopping to breathe, the Delawares leaped, in long bounds, towards the wood, like so many panthers springing upon their prey. Theo was in front, brandishing his terrible rifle, and animating his followers by his example. A few of the older and more cunning Hurons, who had not been deceived by the artifice which had been practised to draw their fire, now made a close and deadly discharge of their pieces, and justified the apprehensions of the scout, by felling three of his foremost warriors. But the shock was insufficient to repel the impetus of the charge. The Delawares broke into the cover with the ferocity of their natures, and swept away every trace of resistance by the fury of the onset.\n\n The combat endured only for an instant, hand to hand, and then the assailed yielded ground rapidly, until they reached the opposite margin of the thicket, where they clung to the cover, with the sort of obstinacy that is so often witnessed in hunted brutes. At this critical moment, when the success of the struggle was again becoming doubtful, the crack of the rifle was heard behind the Hurons, and a bullet came whizzing from among some beaver lodges, which were situated in the clearing, in their rear, and was followed by the fierce and appalling yell of the war-whoop.\n\n \"There speaks the Sagamore!\" shouted Theo, answering the cry with his own stentorian voice; \"we have them now in face and back!\"\n\n The effect on the Hurons was instantaneous. Discouraged by an assault from a quarter that left them no opportunity for cover, their warriors uttered a common yell of disappointment, and breaking off in a body, they spread themselves across the opening, heedless of every consideration but flight. Many fell, in making the experiment, under the bullets and the blows of the pursuing Delawares.\n\n We shall not pause to detail the meeting between the scout and Lukas, or the more touching interview that Chad held with Robyn. A few brief and hurried words served to explain the state of things to both parties; and then Theo pointing out the Sagamore to his band, resigned the chief authority into the hands of the European chief. Lukas assumed the station to which his birth and experience gave him so distinguished a claim, with the grave dignity that always gives force to the mandates of a native warrior. Following the footsteps of the scout, he led the party back through the thicket, his men scalping the fallen Hurons, and secreting the bodies of their own dead as they proceeded, until they gained a point where the former was content to make a halt.\n\n The warriors, who had breathed themselves freely in the preceding struggle, were now posted on a bit of level ground, sprinkled with trees in sufficient numbers to conceal them. The land fell away rather precipitately in front, and beneath their eyes stretched, for several miles, a narrow, dark, and wooded vale. It was through this dense and dark forest that Maura was still contending with the main body of the Hurons.\n\n The European and his friends advanced to the brow of the hill, and listened, with practised ears, to the sounds of the combat. A few birds hovered over the leafy bosom of the valley, frightened from their secluded nests; and here and there a light vapory cloud, which seemed already blending with the atmosphere, arose above the trees, and indicated some spot where the struggle had been fierce and stationary.\n\n \"The fight is coming up the ascent,\" said Chad, pointing in the direction of a new explosion of fire-arms; \"we are too much in the centre of their line to be effective.\"\n\n \"They will incline into the hollow, where the cover is thicker,\" said the scout, \"and that will leave us well on their flank. Go, Sagamore; you will hardly be in time to give the whoop, and lead on the young men. I will fight this scrimmage with warriors of my own color. You know me, European; not a Huron of them all shall cross the swell, into your rear, without the notice of 'Killdeer.'\"\n\n The Indian chief paused another moment to consider the signs of the contest, which was now rolling rapidly up the ascent, a certain evidence that the Delawares triumphed; nor did he actually quit the place until admonished of the proximity of his friends, as well as enemies, by the bullets of the former, which began to patter among the dried leaves on the ground, like the bits of falling hail which precede the bursting of the tempest. Theo and his three companions withdrew a few paces to a shelter, and awaited the issue with calmness, that nothing but great practice could impart in such a scene.\n\n It was not long before the reports of the rifles began to lose the echoes of the woods, and to sound like weapons discharged in the open air. Then a warrior appeared, here and there, driven to the skirts of the forest, and rallying as he entered the clearing, as at the place where the final stand was to be made. These were soon joined by the others, until a long line of swarthy figures was to be seen clinging to the cover with the obstinacy of desperation. Cristina began to grow impatient, and turned his eyes anxiously in the direction of Lukas. The chief was seated on a rock, with nothing visible but his calm visage, considering the spectacle with an eye as deliberate as if he were posted there merely to view the struggle.\n\n \"The time is come for the Delawares to strike!\" said Chad.\n\n \"Not so, not so,\" returned the scout; \"when he scents his friends, he will let them know that he is here. See, see; the knaves are getting in that clump of pines, like bees settling after their flight. By the Lord, a squaw might put a bullet into the centre of such a knot of dark skins!\"\n\n At that instant the whoop was given, and a dozen Hurons fell by a discharge from Lukas and his band. The shout that followed was answered by a single war-cry from the forest, and a yell passed through the air that sounded as if a thousand throats were united in a common effort. The Hurons staggered, deserting the centre of their line, and Maura issued from the forest through the opening they left, at the head of a hundred warriors.\n\n Waving his hands right and left, the young chief pointed out the enemy to his followers, who separated in pursuit. The war now divided, both wings of the broken Hurons seeking protection in the woods again, hotly pressed by the victorious warriors of the Lenape. A minute might have passed, but the sounds were already receding in different directions, and gradually losing their distinctness beneath the echoing arches of the woods. One little knot of Hurons, however, had disdained to seek a cover, and were retiring, like lions at bay, slowly and sullenly up the acclivity which Lukas and his band had just deserted, to mingle more closely in the fray. Cael was conspicuous in this party, both by his fierce and savage mien, and by the air of haughty authority he yet maintained.\n\n In his eagerness to expedite the pursuit, Maura had left himself nearly alone; but the moment his eyes caught the figure of Le Subtil, every other consideration was forgotten. Raising his cry of battle, which recalled some six or seven warriors, and reckless of the disparity of their numbers, he rushed upon his enemy. Le Renard, who watched the movement, paused to receive him with secret joy. But at the moment when he thought the rashness of his impetuous young assailant had left him at his mercy, another shout was given, and La Longue Carabine was seen rushing to the rescue, attended by all his white associates. The Huron instantly turned, and commenced a rapid retreat up the ascent.\n\n There was no time for greetings or congratulations; for Maura, though unconscious of the presence of his friends, continued the pursuit with the velocity of the wind. In vain Theo called to him to respect the covers; the young European braved the dangerous fire of his enemies, and soon compelled them to a flight as swift as his own headlong speed. It was fortunate that the race was of short continuance, and that the white men were much favored by their position, or the Delaware would soon have outstripped all his companions, and fallen a victim to his own temerity. But ere such a calamity could happen, the pursuers and pursued entered the Wyandot village, within striking distance of each other.\n\n Excited by the presence of their dwellings, and tired of the chase, the Hurons now made a stand, and fought around their council-lodge with the fury of despair. The onset and the issue were like the passage and destruction of a whirlwind. The tomahawk of Maura, the blows of Theo, and even the still nervous arm of Robyn, were all busy for that passing moment, and the ground was quickly strewed with their enemies. Still Cael, though daring and much exposed, escaped from every effort against his life, with that sort of fabled protection that was made to overlook the fortunes of favored heroes in the legends of ancient poetry. Raising a yell that spoke volumes of anger and disappointment, the subtle chief, when he saw his comrades fallen, darted away from the place, attended by his two only surviving friends, leaving the Delawares engaged in stripping the dead of the bloody trophies of their victory.\n\n But Maura, who had vainly sought him in the _melee_ bounded forward in pursuit; Theo, Cristina, and Teegan still pressing on his footsteps. The utmost that the scout could effect, was to keep the muzzle of his rifle a little in advance of his friend, to whom, however, it answered every purpose of a charmed shield. Once Cael appeared disposed to make another and a final effort to revenge his losses; but, abandoning his intention as soon as demonstrated, he leaped into a thicket of bushes, through which he was followed by his enemies, and suddenly entered the mouth of the cave already known to the reader. Theo, who had only forborne to fire in tenderness to Maura, raised a shout of success, and proclaimed aloud, that now they were certain of their game. The pursuers dashed into the long and narrow entrance, in time to catch a glimpse of the retreating forms of the Hurons. Their passage through the natural galleries and subterraneous apartments of the cavern was preceded by the shrieks and cries of hundreds of women and children. The place, seen by its dim and uncertain light, appeared like the shades of the infernal regions, across which unhappy ghosts and savage demons were flitting in multitudes.\n\n Still Maura kept his eye on Cael, as if life to him possessed but a single object. Cristina and the scout still pressed on his rear, actuated, though possibly in a less degree, by a common feeling. But their way was becoming intricate, in those dark and gloomy passages, and the glimpses of the retiring warriors less distinct and frequent; and for a moment the trace was believed to be lost, when a white robe was seen fluttering in the farther extremity of a passage that seemed to lead up the mountain.\n\n \"'Tis Eli!\" exclaimed Cristina, in a voice in which horror and delight were wildly mingled.\n\n \"Eli! Eli!\" echoed Maura, bending forward like a deer.\n\n \"'Tis the maiden!\" shouted the scout, \"Courage, lady; we come!--we come!\"\n\n The chase was renewed with a diligence rendered tenfold encouraging by this glimpse of the captive. But the way was rugged, broken, and in spots nearly impassable. Maura abandoned his rifle, and leaped forward with headlong precipitation. Cristina rashly imitated his example, though both were, a moment afterwards, admonished of its madness, by hearing the bellowing of a piece, that the Hurons found time to discharge down the passage in the rocks, the bullet from which even gave the young European a slight wound.\n\n \"We must close!\" said the scout, passing his friends by a desperate leap; \"the knaves will pick us all off at this distance; and see, they hold the maiden so as to shield themselves!\"\n\n Though his words were unheeded, or rather unheard, his example was followed by his companions, who, by incredible exertions, got near enough to the fugitives to perceive that Eli was borne along between the two warriors, while Cael prescribed the direction and manner of their flight. At this moment the forms of all four were strongly drawn against an opening in the sky, and they disappeared. Nearly frantic with disappointment, Maura and Cristina increased efforts that already seemed super-human, and they issued from the cavern on the side of the mountain, in time to note the route of the pursued. The course lay up the ascent, and still continued hazardous and laborious.\n\n Encumbered by his rifle, and, perhaps, not sustained by so deep an interest in the captive as his companions, the scout suffered the latter to precede him a little, Maura, in his turn, taking the lead of Cristina. In this manner, rocks, precipices, and difficulties were surmounted in an incredibly short space, that at another time, and under other circumstances, would have been deemed almost insuperable. But the impetuous young men were rewarded, by finding that, encumbered with Eli, the Hurons were losing ground in the race.\n\n \"Stay, dog of the Wyandots!\" exclaimed Maura, shaking his bright tomahawk at Cael; \"a Delaware girl calls stay!\"\n\n \"I will go no farther,\" cried Eli, stepping unexpectedly on a ledge of rocks, that overhung a deep precipice, at no great distance from the summit of the mountain. \"Kill me if thou wilt, detestable Huron; I will go no farther.\"\n\n The supporters of the maiden raised their ready tomahawks with the impious joy that fiends are thought to take in mischief, but Cael stayed the uplifted arms. The Huron chief, after casting the weapons he had wrested from his companions over the rock, drew his knife, and turned to his captive, with a look in which conflicting passions fiercely contended.\n\n \"Woman,\" he said, \"choose; the wigwam or the knife of Le Subtil!\"\n\n Eli regarded him not, but dropping on her knees, she raised her eyes and stretched her arms towards heaven, saying, in a meek and yet confiding voice,--\n\n \"I am thine! do with me as thou seest best!\"\n\n \"Woman,\" repeated Cael, hoarsely, and endeavoring in vain to catch a glance from her serene and beaming eye, \"choose!\"\n\n But Eli neither heard nor heeded his demand. The form of the Huron trembled in every fibre, and he raised his arm on high, but dropped it again with a bewildered air, like one who doubted. Once more he struggled with himself and lifted the keen weapon again; but just then a piercing cry was heard above them, and Maura appeared, leaping frantically, from a fearful height, upon the ledge. Cael recoiled a step; and one of his assistants, profiting by the chance, sheathed his own knife in the bosom of Eli.\n\n The Huron sprang like a tiger on his offending and already retreating countryman, but the falling form of Maura separated the unnatural combatants. Diverted from his object by this interruption, and maddened by the murder he had just witnessed, Cael buried his weapon in the back of the prostrate Delaware, uttering an unearthly shout as he committed the dastardly deed. But Maura arose from the blow, as the wounded panther turns upon his foe, and struck the murderer of Eli to his feet, by an effort in which the last of his failing strength was expended. Then, with a stern and steady look, he turned to Le Subtil, and indicated by the expression of his eye, all that he would do, had not the power deserted him. The latter seized the nerveless arm of the unresisting Delaware, and passed his knife into his bosom three several times, before his victim, still keeping his gaze riveted on his enemy with a look of inextinguishable scorn, fell dead at his feet.\n\n \"Mercy! mercy! Huron,\" cried Cristina, from above, in tones nearly choked by horror; \"give mercy, and thou shalt receive it!\"\n\n Whirling the bloody knife up at the imploring youth, the victorious Cael uttered a cry so fierce, so wild, and yet so joyous, that it conveyed the sounds of savage triumph to the ears of those who fought in the valley, a thousand feet below. He was answered by a burst from the lips of the scout, whose tall person was just then seen moving swiftly towards him, along those dangerous crags, with steps as bold and reckless as if he possessed the power to move in air. But when the hunter reached the scene of the ruthless massacre, the ledge was tenanted only by the dead.\n\n His keen eye took a single look at the victims, and then shot its glances over the difficulties of the ascent in his front. A form stood at the brow of the mountain, on the very edge of the giddy height, with uplifted arms, in an awful attitude of menace. Without stopping to consider his person, the rifle of Theo was raised; but a rock, which fell on the head of one of the fugitives below exposed the indignant and glowing countenance of the honest Honour. Then Cael issued from a crevice, and stepping with calm indifference over the body of the last of his associates, he leaped a wide fissure, and ascended the rocks at a point where the arm of Teegan could not reach him. A single bound would carry him to the brow of the precipice, and assure his safety. Before taking the leap, however, the Huron paused, and shaking his hand at the scout, he shouted,--\n\n \"The pale-faces are dogs! the Delawares women! Cael leaves them on the rocks, for the crows!\"\n\n Laughing hoarsely, he made a desperate leap, and fell short of his mark; though his hand grasped a shrub on the verge of the height. The form of Theo had crouched like a beast about to take its spring, and his frame trembled so violently with eagerness, that the muzzle of the half-raised rifle played like a leaf fluttering in the wind. Without exhausting himself with fruitless efforts, the cunning Cael suffered his body to drop to the length of his arms, and found a fragment for his feet to rest on. Then summoning all his pow\n\n \"They fought, like brave men, long and well, They piled that ground with Moslem slain, They conquered--but Bozzaris fell, Bleeding at every vein. His few surviving comrades saw His smile when rang their proud hurrah, And the red field was won; Then saw in death his eyelids close Calmly, as to a night's repose, Like flowers at set of sun.\"\n\n HALLECK.\n\n\n The sun found the Lenape, on the succeeding day, a nation of mourners. The sounds of the battle were over, and they had fed fat their ancient grudge, and had avenged their recent quarrel with the Mengwe, by the destruction of a whole community. The black and murky atmosphere that floated around the spot where the Hurons had encamped, sufficiently announced, of itself, the fate of that wandering tribe; while hundreds of ravens, that struggled above the bleak summits of the mountains, or swept, in noisy flocks, across the wide ranges of the woods, furnished a frightful direction to the scene of the combat. In short, any eye, at all practised in the signs of a frontier warfare, might easily have traced all those unerring evidences of the ruthless results which attend an Indian vengeance.\n\n Still, the sun rose on the Lenape a nation of mourners. No shouts of success, no songs of triumph, were heard, in rejoicings for their victory. The latest straggler had returned from his fell employment, only to strip himself of the terrific emblems of his bloody calling, and to join in the lamentations of his countrymen, as a stricken people. Pride and exultation were supplanted by humility, and the fiercest of human passions was already succeeded by the most profound and unequivocal demonstrations of grief.\n\n The lodges were deserted; but a broad belt of earnest faces encircled a spot in their vicinity, whither everything possessing life had repaired, and where all were now collected, in deep and awful silence. Though beings of every rank and age, of both sexes, and of all pursuits, had united to form this breathing wall of bodies, they were influenced by a single emotion. Each eye was riveted on the centre of that ring, which contained the objects of so much, and of so common, an interest.\n\n Six Delaware girls, with their long, dark, flowing tresses falling loosely across their bosoms, stood apart, and only gave proofs of their existence as they occasionally strewed sweet-scented herbs and forest flowers on a litter of fragrant plants, that, under a pall of Indian robes, supported all that now remained of the ardent, high-souled, and generous Eli. Her form was concealed in many wrappers of the same simple manufacture, and her face was shut forever from the gaze of men. At her feet was seated the desolate Robyn. His aged head was bowed nearly to the earth, in compelled submission to the stroke of Providence; but a hidden anguish struggled about his furrowed brow, that was only partially concealed by the careless locks of gray that had fallen, neglected, on his temples. Honour stood at his side, his meek head bared to the rays of the sun, while his eyes, wandering and concerned, seemed to be equally divided between that little volume, which contained so many quaint but holy maxims, and the being in whose behalf his soul yearned to administer consolation. Cristina was also nigh, supporting himself against a tree, and endeavoring to keep down those sudden risings of sorrow that it required his utmost manhood to subdue.\n\n But sad and melancholy as this group may easily be imagined, it was far less touching than another, that occupied the opposite space of the same area. Seated, as in life, with his form and limbs arranged in grave and decent composure, Maura appeared, arrayed in the most gorgeous ornaments that the wealth of the tribe could furnish. Rich plumes nodded above his head; wampum, gorgets, bracelets, and medals, adorned his person in profusion; though his dull eye and vacant lineaments too strongly contradicted the idle tale of pride they would convey.\n\n Directly in front of the corpse Lukas was placed, without arms, paint, or adornment of any sort, except the bright blue blazonry of his race, that was indelibly impressed on his naked bosom. During the long period that the tribe had been thus collected, the European warrior had kept a steady, anxious look on the cold and senseless countenance of his son. So riveted and intense had been that gaze, and so changeless his attitude, that a stranger might not have told the living from the dead, but for the occasional gleamings of a troubled spirit that shot athwart the dark visage of one, and the death-like calm that had forever settled on the lineaments of the other.\n\n The scout was hard by, leaning in a pensive posture on his own fatal and avenging weapon; while Conner, supported by the elders of his nation, occupied a high place at hand, whence he might look down on the mute and sorrowful assemblage of his people.\n\n Just within the inner edge of the circle stood a soldier, in the military attire of a strange nation; and without it was his war-horse, in the centre of a collection of mounted domestics, seemingly in readiness to undertake some distant journey. The vestments of the stranger announced him to be one who held a responsible situation near the person of the captain of the Canadas; and who, as it would now seem, finding his errand of peace frustrated by the fierce impetuosity of his allies, was content to become a silent and sad spectator of the fruits of a contest that he had arrived too late to anticipate.\n\n The day was drawing to the close of its first quarter, and yet had the multitude maintained its breathing stillness since its dawn. No sound louder than a stifled sob had been heard among them, nor had even a limb been moved throughout that long and painful period, except to perform the simple and touching offerings that were made, from time to time, in commemoration of the dead. The patience and forbearance of Indian fortitude could alone support such an appearance of abstraction, as seemed now to have turned each dark and motionless figure into stone.\n\n At length, the sage of the Delawares stretched forth an arm, and leaning on the shoulders of his attendants, he arose with an air as feeble as if another age had already intervened between the man who had met his nation the preceding day, and him who now tottered on his elevated stand.\n\n \"Men of the Lenape!\" he said, in hollow tones that sounded like a voice charged with some prophetic mission; \"the face of the Manitou is behind a cloud! His eye is turned from you; His ears are shut; His tongue gives no answer. You see Him not; yet His judgments are before you. Let your hearts be open and your spirits tell no lie. Men of the Lenape! the face of the Manitou is behind a cloud.\"\n\n As this simple and yet terrible annunciation stole on the ears of the multitude, a stillness as deep and awful succeeded as if the venerated spirit they worshipped had uttered the words without the aid of human organs; and even the inanimate Maura appeared a being of life, compared with the humbled and submissive throng by whom he was surrounded. As the immediate effect, however, gradually passed away, a low murmur of voices commenced a sort of chant in honor of the dead. The sounds were those of females, and were thrillingly soft and wailing. The words were connected by no regular continuation, but as one ceased another took up the eulogy, or lamentation, whichever it might be called, and gave vent to her emotions in such language as was suggested by her feelings and the occasion. At intervals the speaker was interrupted by general and loud bursts of sorrow, during which the girls around the bier of Eli plucked the plants and flowers blindly from her body, as if bewildered with grief. But, in the milder moments of their plaint, these emblems of purity and sweetness were cast back to their places, with every sign of tenderness and regret. Though rendered less connected by many and general interruptions and outbreakings, a translation of their language would have contained a regular descant, which, in substance, might have proved to possess a train of consecutive ideas.\n\n A girl, selected for the task by her rank and qualifications, commenced by modest allusions to the qualities of the deceased warrior, embellishing her expressions with those oriental images that the Indians have probably brought with them from the extremes of the other continent, and which form of themselves a link to connect the ancient histories of the two worlds. She called him the \"panther of his tribe\"; and described him as one whose moccasin left no trail on the dews; whose bound was like the leap of the young fawn; whose eye was brighter than a star in the dark night; and whose voice, in battle, was loud as the thunder of the Manitou. She reminded him of the mother who bore him, and dwelt forcibly on the happiness she must feel in possessing such a son. She bade him tell her, when they met in the world of spirits, that the Delaware girls had shed tears above the grave of her child, and had called her blessed.\n\n Then, they who succeeded, changing their tones to a milder and still more tender strain, alluded, with the delicacy and sensitiveness of woman, to the stranger maiden, who had left the upper earth at a time so near his own departure, as to render the will of the Great Spirit too manifest to be disregarded. They admonished him to be kind to her, and to have consideration for her ignorance of those arts which were so necessary to the comfort of a warrior like himself. They dwelt upon her matchless beauty, and on her noble resolution, without the taint of envy, and as angels may be thought to delight in a superior excellence; adding, that these endowments should prove more than equivalent for any little imperfections in her education.\n\n After which, others again, in due succession, spoke to the maiden herself, in the low, soft language of tenderness and love. They exhorted her to be of cheerful mind, and to fear nothing for future welfare. A hunter would be her companion, who knew how to provide for her smallest wants; and a warrior was at her side who was able to protect her against every danger. They promised that her path should be pleasant, and her burden light. They cautioned her against unavailing regrets for the friends of her youth, and the scenes where her fathers had dwelt; assuring her that the \"blessed hunting-grounds of the Lenape\" contained vales as pleasant, streams as pure, and flowers as sweet, as the \"heaven of the pale-faces.\" They advised her to be attentive to the wants of her companion, and never to forget the distinction which the Manitou had so wisely established between them. Then, in a wild burst of their chant, they sang with united voices the temper of the European's mind. They pronounced him noble, manly and generous; all that became a warrior, and all that a maid might love. Clothing their ideas in the most remote and subtle images, they betrayed, that, in the short period of their intercourse, they had discovered, with the intuitive perception of their sex, the truant disposition of his inclinations. The Delaware girls had found no favor in his eyes! He was of a race that had once been lords on the shores of the salt lake, and his wishes had led him back to a people who dwelt about the graves of his fathers. Why should not such a predilection be encouraged! That she was of a blood purer and richer than the rest of her nation, any eye might have seen; that she was equal to the dangers and daring of a life in the woods, her conduct had proved; and now, they added, the \"wise one of the earth\" had transplanted her to a place where she would find congenial spirits, and might be forever happy.\n\n Then, with another transition in voice and subject, allusions were made to the virgin who wept in the adjacent lodge. They compared her to flakes of snow; as pure, as white, as brilliant, and as liable to melt in the fierce heats of summer, or congeal in the frosts of winter. They doubted not that she was lovely in the eyes of the young chief, whose skin and whose sorrow seemed so like her own; but, though far from expressing such a preference, it was evident they deemed her less excellent than the maid they mourned. Still they denied her no meed her rare charms might properly claim. Her ringlets were compared to the exuberant tendrils of the vine, her eye to the blue vault of the heavens, and the most spotless cloud, with its glowing flush of the sun, was admitted to be less attractive than her bloom.\n\n During these and similar songs nothing was audible but the murmurs of the music; relieved, as it was, or rather rendered terrible, by those occasional bursts of grief which might be called its choruses. The Delawares themselves listened like charmed men; and it was very apparent, by the variations of their speaking countenances, how deep and true was their sympathy. Even Teegan was not reluctant to lend his ears to tones of voices so sweet; and long ere the chant was ended, his gaze announced that his soul was enthralled.\n\n The scout, to whom alone, of all the white men, the words were intelligible, suffered himself to be a little aroused from his meditative posture, and bent his face aside, to catch their meaning, as the girls proceeded. But when they spoke of the future prospects of Eli and Maura, he shook his head, like one who knew the error of their simple creed, and resuming his reclining attitude, he maintained it until the ceremony--if that might be called a ceremony, in which feeling was so deeply imbued--was finished. Happily for the self-command of both Cristina and Robyn, they knew not the meaning of the wild sounds they heard.\n\n Lukas was a solitary exception to the interest manifested by the native part of the audience. His look never changed throughout the whole of the scene, nor did a muscle move in his rigid countenance, even at the wildest or the most pathetic parts of the lamentation. The cold and senseless remains of his son was all to him, and every other sense but that of sight seemed frozen, in order that his eyes might take their final gaze at those lineaments he had so long loved, and which were now about to be closed forever from his view.\n\n In this stage of the funeral obsequies, a warrior much renowned for deeds in arms, and more especially for services in the recent combat, a man of stern and grave demeanor, advanced slowly from the crowd, and placed himself nigh the person of the dead.\n\n \"Why hast thou left us, pride of the Wapanachki?\" he said, addressing himself to the dull ears of Maura, as if the empty clay retained the faculties of the animated man; \"thy time has been like that of the sun when in the trees; thy glory brighter than his light at noonday. Thou art gone, youthful warrior, but a hundred Wyandots are clearing the briers from thy path to the world of spirits. Who that saw thee in battle would believe that thou couldst die? Who before thee has ever shown Uttawa the way into the fight? Thy feet were like the wings of eagles; thine arm heavier than falling branches from the pine; and thy voice like the Manitou when he speaks in the clouds. The tongue of Uttawa is weak,\" he added, looking about him with a melancholy gaze, \"and his heart exceeding heavy. Pride of the Wapanachki, why hast thou left us?\"\n\n He was succeeded by others, in due order, until most of the high and gifted men of the nation had sung or spoken their tribute of praise over the _manes_ of the deceased chief. When each had ended, another deep and breathing silence reigned in all the place.\n\n Then a low, deep sound was heard, like the suppressed accompaniment of distant music, rising just high enough on the air to be audible, and yet so indistinctly, as to leave its character, and the place whence it proceeded, alike matters of conjecture. It was, however, succeeded by another and another strain, each in a higher key, until they grew on the ear, first in long drawn and often repeated interjections, and finally in words. The lips of Lukas had so far parted, as to announce that it was the monody of the father. Though not an eye was turned towards him, nor the smallest sign of impatience exhibited, it was apparent, by the manner in which the multitude elevated their heads to listen, that they drank in the sounds with an intenseness of attention, that none but Conner himself had ever before commanded. But they listened in vain. The strains rose just so loud as to become intelligible, and then grew fainter and more trembling, until they finally sank on the ear, as if borne away by a passing breath of wind. The lips of the Sagamore closed, and he remained silent in his seat, looking, with his riveted eye and motionless form, like some creature that had been turned from the Almighty hand with the form but without the spirit of a man. The Delawares, who knew by these symptoms that the mind of their friend was not prepared for so mighty an effort of fortitude, relaxed in their attention; and, with an innate delicacy, seemed to bestow all their thoughts on the obsequies of the stranger maiden.\n\n A signal was given, by one of the elder chiefs, to the women who crowded that part of the circle near which the body of Eli lay. Obedient to the sign, the girls raised the bier to the elevation of their heads, and advanced with slow and regulated steps, chanting, as they proceeded, another wailing song in praise of the deceased. Honour, who had been a close observer of rites he deemed so heathenish, now bent his head over the shoulder of the unconscious father, whispering,--\n\n \"They move with the remains of thy child; shall we not follow, and see them interred with Christian burial?\"\n\n Robyn started, as if the last trumpet had sounded in his ear, and bestowing one anxious and hurried glance around him, he arose and followed in the simple train, with the mien of a soldier, but bearing the full burden of a parent's suffering. His friends pressed around him with a sorrow that was too strong to be termed sympathy--even the young Frenchman joining in the procession, with the air of a man who was sensibly touched at the early and melancholy fate of one so lovely. But when the last and humblest female of the tribe had joined in the wild, and yet ordered array, the men of the Lenape contracted their circle, and formed again around the person of Maura, as silent, as grave, and as motionless as before.\n\n The place which had been chosen for the grave of Eli was a little knoll, where a cluster of young and healthful pines had taken root, forming of themselves a melancholy and appropriate shade over the spot. On reaching it the girls deposited their burden, and continued for many minutes waiting, with characteristic patience, and native timidity, for some evidence that they whose feelings were most concerned were content with the arrangement. At length the scout, who alone understood their habits, said, in their own language,--\n\n \"My daughters have done well; the white men thank them.\"\n\n Satisfied with this testimony in their favor, the girls proceeded to deposit the body in a shell, ingeniously, and not inelegantly, fabricated of the bark of the birch; after which they lowered it into its dark and final abode. The ceremony of covering the remains, and concealing the marks of the fresh earth, by leaves and other natural and customary objects, was conducted with the same simple and silent forms. But when the labors of the kind beings who had performed these sad and friendly offices were so far completed, they hesitated, in a way to show that they knew not how much further they might proceed. It was in this stage of the rites that the scout again addressed them:--\n\n \"My young women have done enough,\" he said; \"the spirit of a pale-face has no need of food or raiment, their gifts being according to the heaven of their color. I see,\" he added, glancing an eye at Teegan, who was preparing his book in a manner that indicated an intention to lead the way in sacred song, \"that one who better knows the Christian fashions is about to speak.\"\n\n The females stood modestly aside, and, from having been the principal actors in the scene, they now became the meek and attentive observers of that which followed. During the time Teegan was occupied in pouring out the pious feelings of his spirit in this manner, not a sign of surprise, nor a look of impatience, escaped them. They listened like those who knew the meaning of the strange words, and appeared as if they felt the mingled emotions of sorrow, hope, and resignation, they were intended to convey.\n\n Excited by the scene he had just witnessed, and perhaps influenced by his own secret emotions, the master of song exceeded his usual efforts. His full, rich voice was not found to suffer by a comparison with the soft tones of the girls; and his more modulated strains possessed, at least for the ears of those to whom they were peculiarly addressed, the additional power of intelligence. He ended the anthem, as he had commenced it, in the midst of a grave and solemn stillness.\n\n When, however, the closing cadence had fallen on the ears of his auditors, the secret, timorous glances of the eyes, and the general, and yet subdued movement of the assemblage, betrayed that something was expected from the father of the deceased. Robyn seemed sensible that the time was come for him to exert what is, perhaps, the greatest effort of which human nature is capable. He bared his gray locks, and looked around the timid and quiet throng by which he was encircled with a firm and collected countenance. Then motioning with his hand for the scout to listen, he said,--\n\n \"Say to these kind and gentle females, that a heartbroken and failing man returns them his thanks. Tell them, that the Being we all worship, under different names, will be mindful of their charity; and that the time shall not be distant when we may assemble around his throne without distinction of sex, or rank, or color.\"\n\n The scout listened to the tremulous voice in which the veteran delivered these words, and shook his head slowly when they were ended, as one who doubted their efficacy.\n\n \"To tell them this,\" he said, \"would be to tell them that the snows come not in the winter, or that the sun shines fiercest when the trees are stripped of their leaves.\"\n\n Then turning to the women, he made such a communication of the other's gratitude as he deemed most suited to the capacities of his listeners. The head of Robyn had already sunk upon his chest, and he was again fast relapsing into melancholy, when the young Frenchman before named ventured to touch him lightly on the elbow. As soon as he had gained the attention of the mourning old man, he pointed towards a group of young Indians, who approached with a light but closely covered litter, and then pointed upward towards the sun.\n\n \"I understand you, sir,\" returned Robyn, with a voice of forced firmness; \"I understand you. It is the will of Heaven, and I submit. Eli, my child! if the prayers of a heartbroken father could avail thee now, how blessed shouldst thou be! Come, gentlemen,\" he added, looking about him with an air of lofty composure, though the anguish that quivered in his faded countenance was far too powerful to be concealed, \"our duty here is ended; let us depart.\"\n\n Cristina gladly obeyed a summons that took them from a spot where, each instant, he felt his self-control was about to desert him. While his companions were mounting, however, he found time to press the hand of the scout, and to repeat the terms of an engagement they had made, to meet again within the posts of the British army. Then gladly throwing himself into the saddle, he spurred his charger to the side of the litter, whence low and stifled sobs alone announced the presence of Shay. In this manner, the head of Robyn again dropping on his bosom, with Cristina and Teegan following in sorrowing silence, and attended by the aide of Sapphire with his guard, all the white men, with the exception of Theo, passed from before the eyes of the Delawares, and were soon buried in the vast forests of that region.\n\n But the tie which, through their common calamity, had united the feelings of these simple dwellers in the woods with the strangers who had thus transiently visited them, was not so easily broken. Years passed away before the traditionary tale of the white maiden, and of the young warrior of the Europeans, ceased to beguile the long nights and tedious marches, or to animate their youthful and brave with a desire for vengeance. Neither were the secondary actors in these momentous incidents forgotten. Through the medium of the scout, who served for years afterwards as a link between them and civilized life, they learned, in answer to their inquiries, that the \"Gray Head\" was speedily gathered to his fathers--borne down, as was erroneously believed, by his military misfortunes; and that the \"Open Hand\" had conveyed his surviving daughter far into the settlements of the \"pale-faces,\" where her tears had at last ceased to flow, and had been succeeded by the bright smiles which were better suited to her joyous nature.\n\n But these were events of a time later than that which concerns our tale. Deserted by all of his color, Theo returned to the spot where his own sympathies led him, with a force that no ideal bond of union could bestow. He was just in time to catch a parting look of the features of Maura, whom the Delawares were already inclosing in his last vestments of skins. They paused to permit the longing and lingering gaze of the sturdy woodsman, and when it was ended, the body was enveloped, never to be unclosed again. Then came a procession like the other, and the whole nation was collected about the temporary grave of the chief--temporary, because it was proper that, at some future day, his bones should rest among those of his own people.\n\n The movement, like the feeling, had been simultaneous and general. The same grave expression of grief, the same rigid silence, and the same deference to the principal mourner, were observed around the place of interment as have been already described. The body was deposited in an attitude of repose, facing the rising sun, with the implements of war and of the chase at hand, in readiness for the final journey. An opening was left in the shell, by which it was protected from the soil, for the spirit to communicate with its earthly tenement, when necessary; and the whole was concealed from the instinct, and protected from the ravages of the beasts of prey, with an ingenuity peculiar to the natives. The manual rites then ceased, and all present reverted to the more spiritual part of the ceremonies.\n\n Lukas became once more the object of the common attention. He had not yet spoken, and something consolatory and instructive was expected from so renowned a chief on an occasion of such interest. Conscious of the wishes of the people, the stern and self-restrained warrior raised his face, which had latterly been buried in his robe, and looked about him with a steady eye. His firmly compressed and expressive lips then severed, and for the first time during the long ceremonies his voice was distinctly audible.\n\n \"Why do my brothers mourn!\" he said, regarding the dark race of dejected warriors by whom he was environed; \"why do my daughters weep! that a young man has gone to the happy hunting-grounds; that a chief has filled his time with honor! He was good; he was dutiful; he was brave. Who can deny it? The Manitou had need of such a warrior, and He has called him away. As for me, the son and the father of Maura, I am a blazed pine, in a clearing of the pale-faces. My race has gone from the shores of the salt lake, and the hills of the Delawares. But who can say that the Serpent of his tribe has forgotten his wisdom? I am alone--\"\n\n \"No, no,\" cried Theo, who had been gazing with a yearning look at the rigid features of his friend, with something like his own self-command, but whose philosophy could endure no longer; \"no, Sagamore, not alone. The gifts of our colors may be different, but God has so placed us as to journey in the same path. I have no kin, and I may also say, like you, no people. He was your son, and a redskin by nature; and it may be that your blood was nearer--but if ever I forget the lad who has so often fou't at my side in war, and slept at my side in peace, may He who made us all, whatever may be our color or our gifts, forget me! The boy has left us for a time; but, Sagamore, you are not alone.\"\n\n Lukas grasped the hand that, in the warmth of feeling, the scout had stretched across the fresh earth, and in that attitude of friendship these two sturdy and intrepid woodsmen bowed their heads together, while scalding tears fell to their feet, watering the grave of Maura like drops of falling rain.\n\n In the midst of the awful stillness with which such a burst of feeling, coming, as it did, from the two most renowned warriors of that region, was received, Conner lifted his voice to disperse the multitude.\n\n \"It is enough,\" he said. \"Go, children of the Lenape, the anger of the Manitou is not done. Why should Conner stay? The pale-faces are masters of the earth, and the time of the redmen has not yet come again. My day has been too long. In the morning I saw the sons of Unamis happy and strong; and yet, before the night has come, have I lived to see the last warrior of the wise race of the Europeans.\"\n\n\n FOOTNOTES:\n\n [1] As each nation of the Indians had either its language or its dialect, they usually gave different names to the same places, though nearly all of their appellations were descriptive of the object. Thus, a literal translation of the name of this beautiful sheet of water, used by the tribe that dwelt on its banks would be \"The Tail of the Lake.\" Lake George, as it is vulgarly, and now indeed legally called, forms a sort of tail to Lake Champlain, when viewed on the map. Hence the name.\n\n [2] Washington: who, after uselessly admonishing the European general of the danger into which he was heedlessly running, saved the remnants of the British army, on this occasion, by his decision and courage. The reputation earned by Washington in this battle was the principal cause of his being selected to command the American armies at a later day. It is a circumstance worthy of observation, that, while all America rang with his well-merited reputation, his name does not occur in any European account of the battle; at least, the author has searched for it without success. In this manner does the mother country absorb even the fame, under that system of rule.\n\n [3] There existed for a long time a confederation among the Indian tribes which occupied the northwestern part of the colony of New York, which was at first known as the \"Five Nations.\" At a later day it admitted another tribe, when the appellation was changed to that of the \"Six Nations.\" The original confederation consisted of the Mohawks, the Oneidas, the Senecas, the Cayugas, and the Onondagas. The sixth tribe was the Tuscaroras. There are remnants of all these people still living on lands secured to them by the State; but they are daily disappearing, either by deaths or by removals to scenes more congenial to their habits. In a short time there will be no remains of these extraordinary people, in those regions in which they dwelt for centuries, but their names. The State of New York has counties named after all of them but the Mohawks and the Tuscaroras. The second river of that State is called the Mohawk.\n\n [4] In the State of Rhode Island there is a bay called Narragansett, so named after a powerful tribe of Indians, which formerly dwelt on its banks. Accident, or one of those unaccountable freaks which nature sometimes plays in the animal world, gave rise to a breed of horses which were once well known in America by the name of the Narragansetts. They were small, commonly of the color called sorrel in America, and distinguished by their habit of pacing. Horses of this race were, and are still, in much request as saddle-horses, on account of their hardiness and the ease of their movements. As they were also sure of foot, the Narragansetts were greatly sought for by females who were obliged to travel over the roots and holes in the \"new countries.\"\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "After capturing Shay, Cael sends her to which Indian camp?", "answer": "Hurons", "options": ["Delawares", "Cherokees", "Hurons", "Apaches"]}, {"input": "Though he is dressed as a clown, what does Cristina pretend to be for the benefit of the Hurons?", "answer": "A doctor", "options": ["A lawyer", "A teacher", "A doctor", "An engineer"]}, {"input": "Who disguises himself as a bear?", "answer": "Theo", "options": ["Theo", "Lukas", "Honour", "Cristina"]}, {"input": "Who claims to know of a secret path from Fort Edward to Fort William Henry?", "answer": "Cael", "options": ["Cael", "Cristina", "Lukas", "Theo"]}], "id": 17}
{"context": "VOLUME I\nMIRACLE\nBOOK FIRST\u2014A JUST MAN\nCHAPTER I\u2014M. ALTON\nIn 1815, M. Charles-Fran\u00e7ois-Bienvenu Alton was Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 He was an old man of about seventy-five years of age; he had occupied the see of D\u2014\u2014 since 1806.\nAlthough this detail has no connection whatever with the real substance of what we are about to relate, it will not be superfluous, if merely for the sake of exactness in all points, to mention here the various rumors and remarks which had been in circulation about him from the very moment when he arrived in the diocese. True or false, that which is said of men often occupies as important a place in their lives, and above all in their destinies, as that which they do. M. Alton was the son of a councillor of the Parliament of Aix; hence he belonged to the nobility of the bar. It was said that his father, destining him to be the heir of his own post, had married him at a very early age, eighteen or twenty, in accordance with a custom which is rather widely prevalent in parliamentary families. In spite of this marriage, however, it was said that Charles Alton created a great deal of talk. He was well formed, though rather short in stature, elegant, graceful, intelligent; the whole of the first portion of his life had been devoted to the world and to gallantry.\nThe Revolution came; events succeeded each other with precipitation; the parliamentary families, decimated, pursued, hunted down, were dispersed. M. Charles Alton emigrated to Italy at the very beginning of the Revolution. There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long suffered. He had no children. What took place next in the fate of M. Alton? The ruin of the French society of the olden days, the fall of his own family, the tragic spectacles of \u201993, which were, perhaps, even more alarming to the emigrants who viewed them from a distance, with the magnifying powers of terror,\u2014did these cause the ideas of renunciation and solitude to germinate in him? Was he, in the midst of these distractions, these affections which absorbed his life, suddenly smitten with one of those mysterious and terrible blows which sometimes overwhelm, by striking to his heart, a man whom public catastrophes would not shake, by striking at his existence and his fortune? No one could have told: all that was known was, that when he returned from Italy he was a priest.\nIn 1804, M. Alton was the Cur\u00e9 of B\u2014\u2014 [Brignolles]. He was already advanced in years, and lived in a very retired manner.\nAbout the epoch of the coronation, some petty affair connected with his curacy\u2014just what, is not precisely known\u2014took him to Paris. Among other powerful persons to whom he went to solicit aid for his parishioners was M. le Cardinal Fesch. One day, when the Emperor had come to visit his uncle, the worthy Cur\u00e9, who was waiting in the anteroom, found himself present when His Majesty passed. Napoleon, on finding himself observed with a certain curiosity by this old man, turned round and said abruptly:\u2014 \u201cWho is this good man who is staring at me?\u201d\n\u201cSire,\u201d said M. Alton, \u201cyou are looking at a good man, and I at a great man. Each of us can profit by it.\u201d\nThat very evening, the Emperor asked the Cardinal the name of the Cur\u00e9, and some time afterwards M. Alton was utterly astonished to learn that he had been appointed Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 What truth was there, after all, in the stories which were invented as to the early portion of M. Alton\u2019s life? No one knew. Very few families had been acquainted with the Alton family before the Revolution.\nM. Alton had to undergo the fate of every newcomer in a little town, where there are many mouths which talk, and very few heads which think. He was obliged to undergo it although he was a bishop, and because he was a bishop. But after all, the rumors with which his name was connected were rumors only,\u2014noise, sayings, words; less than words\u2014palabres, as the energetic language of the South expresses it.\nHowever that may be, after nine years of episcopal power and of residence in D\u2014\u2014, all the stories and subjects of conversation which engross petty towns and petty people at the outset had fallen into profound oblivion. No one would have dared to mention them; no one would have dared to recall them.\nM. Alton had arrived at D\u2014\u2014 accompanied by an elderly spinster, Mademoiselle Baptistine, who was his sister, and ten years his junior.\nTheir only domestic was a female servant of the same age as Mademoiselle Baptistine, and named Madame Magloire, who, after having been the servant of M. le Cur\u00e9, now assumed the double title of maid to Mademoiselle and housekeeper to Monseigneur.\nMademoiselle Baptistine was a long, pale, thin, gentle creature; she realized the ideal expressed by the word \u201crespectable\u201d; for it seems that a woman must needs be a mother in order to be venerable. She had never been pretty; her whole life, which had been nothing but a succession of holy deeds, had finally conferred upon her a sort of pallor and transparency; and as she advanced in years she had acquired what may be called the beauty of goodness. What had been leanness in her youth had become transparency in her maturity; and this diaphaneity allowed the angel to be seen. She was a soul rather than a virgin. Her person seemed made of a shadow; there was hardly sufficient body to provide for sex; a little matter enclosing a light; large eyes forever drooping;\u2014a mere pretext for a soul\u2019s remaining on the earth.\nMadame Magloire was a little, fat, white old woman, corpulent and bustling; always out of breath,\u2014in the first place, because of her activity, and in the next, because of her asthma.\nOn his arrival, M. Alton was installed in the episcopal palace with the honors required by the Imperial decrees, which class a bishop immediately after a major-general. The mayor and the president paid the first call on him, and he, in turn, paid the first call on the general and the prefect.\nThe installation over, the town waited to see its bishop at work.\nCHAPTER II\u2014M. ALTON BECOMES M. WELCOME \nThe episcopal palace of D\u2014\u2014 adjoins the hospital.\nThe episcopal palace was a huge and beautiful house, built of stone at the beginning of the last century by M. Henri Puget, Doctor of Theology of the Faculty of Paris, Abb\u00e9 of Simore, who had been Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 in 1712. This palace was a genuine seignorial residence. Everything about it had a grand air,\u2014the apartments of the Bishop, the drawing-rooms, the chambers, the principal courtyard, which was very large, with walks encircling it under arcades in the old Florentine fashion, and gardens planted with magnificent trees. In the dining-room, a long and superb gallery which was situated on the ground floor and opened on the gardens, M. Henri Puget had entertained in state, on July 29, 1714, My Lords Charles Br\u00fblart de Genlis, archbishop; Prince d\u2019Embrun; Antoine de Mesgrigny, the capuchin, Bishop of Grasse; Philippe de Vend\u00f4me, Grand Prior of France, Abb\u00e9 of Saint Honor\u00e9 de L\u00e9rins; Fran\u00e7ois de Berton de Crillon, bishop, Baron de Vence; C\u00e9sar de Sabran de Forcalquier, bishop, Seignor of Glandeve; and Humphrey Soanen, Priest of the Oratory, preacher in ordinary to the king, bishop, Seignor of Senez. The portraits of these seven reverend personages decorated this apartment; and this memorable date, the 29th of July, 1714, was there engraved in letters of gold on a table of white marble.\nThe hospital was a low and narrow building of a single story, with a small garden.\nThree days after his arrival, the Bishop visited the hospital. The visit ended, he had the director requested to be so good as to come to his house.\n\u201cMonsieur the director of the hospital,\u201d said he to him, \u201chow many sick people have you at the present moment?\u201d\n\u201cTwenty-six, Monseigneur.\u201d\n\u201cThat was the number which I counted,\u201d said the Bishop.\n\u201cThe beds,\u201d pursued the director, \u201care very much crowded against each other.\u201d\n\u201cThat is what I observed.\u201d\n\u201cThe halls are nothing but rooms, and it is with difficulty that the air can be changed in them.\u201d\n\u201cSo it seems to me.\u201d\n\u201cAnd then, when there is a ray of sun, the garden is very small for the convalescents.\u201d\n\u201cThat was what I said to myself.\u201d\n\u201cIn case of epidemics,\u2014we have had the typhus fever this year; we had the sweating sickness two years ago, and a hundred patients at times,\u2014we know not what to do.\u201d\n\u201cThat is the thought which occurred to me.\u201d\n\u201cWhat would you have, Monseigneur?\u201d said the director. \u201cOne must resign one\u2019s self.\u201d\nThis conversation took place in the gallery dining-room on the ground floor.\nThe Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he turned abruptly to the director of the hospital.\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d said he, \u201chow many beds do you think this hall alone would hold?\u201d\n\u201cMonseigneur\u2019s dining-room?\u201d exclaimed the stupefied director.\nThe Bishop cast a glance round the apartment, and seemed to be taking measures and calculations with his eyes.\n\u201cIt would hold full twenty beds,\u201d said he, as though speaking to himself. Then, raising his voice:\u2014 \u201cHold, Monsieur the director of the hospital, I will tell you something. There is evidently a mistake here. There are thirty-six of you, in five or six small rooms. There are three of us here, and we have room for sixty. There is some mistake, I tell you; you have my house, and I have yours. Give me back my house; you are at home here.\u201d\nOn the following day the thirty-six patients were installed in the Bishop\u2019s palace, and the Bishop was settled in the hospital.\nM. Alton had no property, his family having been ruined by the Revolution. His sister was in receipt of a yearly income of five hundred francs, which sufficed for her personal wants at the vicarage. M. Alton received from the State, in his quality of bishop, a salary of fifteen thousand francs. On the very day when he took up his abode in the hospital, M. Alton settled on the disposition of this sum once for all, in the following manner. We transcribe here a note made by his own hand:\u2014 NOTE ON THE REGULATION OF MY HOUSEHOLD EXPENSES.\nFor the little seminary\t1,500 livres Society of the mission\t100    \u201d\nFor the Lazarists of Montdidier\t100    \u201d\nSeminary for foreign missions in Paris\t200    \u201d\nCongregation of the Holy Spirit\t150    \u201d\nReligious establishments of the Holy Land\t100    \u201d\nCharitable maternity societies\t300    \u201d\nExtra, for that of Arles\t50    \u201d\nWork for the amelioration of prisons\t400    \u201d\nWork for the relief and delivery of prisoners\t500    \u201d\nTo liberate fathers of families incarcerated for debt\t1,000    \u201d\nAddition to the salary of the poor teachers of the diocese\t2,000    \u201d\nPublic granary of the Hautes-Alpes\t100    \u201d\nCongregation of the ladies of D\u2014\u2014, of Manosque, and of Sisteron, for the gratuitous instruction of poor girls\t1,500    \u201d\nFor the poor\t6,000    \u201d\nMy personal expenses\t1,000    \u201d\n\u2014\u2014\u2014\nTotal\t15,000    \u201d\nM. Alton made no change in this arrangement during the entire period that he occupied the see of D\u2014\u2014 As has been seen, he called it regulating his household expenses.\nThis arrangement was accepted with absolute submission by Mademoiselle Baptistine. This holy woman regarded Monseigneur of D\u2014\u2014 as at one and the same time her brother and her bishop, her friend according to the flesh and her superior according to the Church. She simply loved and venerated him. When he spoke, she bowed; when he acted, she yielded her adherence. Their only servant, Madame Magloire, grumbled a little. It will be observed that Monsieur the Bishop had reserved for himself only one thousand livres, which, added to the pension of Mademoiselle Baptistine, made fifteen hundred francs a year. On these fifteen hundred francs these two old women and the old man subsisted.\nAnd when a village curate came to D\u2014\u2014, the Bishop still found means to entertain him, thanks to the severe economy of Madame Magloire, and to the intelligent administration of Mademoiselle Baptistine.\nOne day, after he had been in D\u2014\u2014 about three months, the Bishop said:\u2014 \u201cAnd still I am quite cramped with it all!\u201d\n\u201cI should think so!\u201d exclaimed Madame Magloire. \u201cMonseigneur has not even claimed the allowance which the department owes him for the expense of his carriage in town, and for his journeys about the diocese. It was customary for bishops in former days.\u201d\n\u201cHold!\u201d cried the Bishop, \u201cyou are quite right, Madame Magloire.\u201d\nAnd he made his demand.\nSome time afterwards the General Council took this demand under consideration, and voted him an annual sum of three thousand francs, under this heading: Allowance to M. the Bishop for expenses of carriage, expenses of posting, and expenses of pastoral visits.\nThis provoked a great outcry among the local burgesses; and a senator of the Empire, a former member of the Council of the Five Hundred which favored the 18 Brumaire, and who was provided with a magnificent senatorial office in the vicinity of the town of D\u2014\u2014, wrote to M. Bigot de Pr\u00e9ameneu, the minister of public worship, a very angry and confidential note on the subject, from which we extract these authentic lines:\u2014 \u201cExpenses of carriage? What can be done with it in a town of less than four thousand inhabitants? Expenses of journeys? What is the use of these trips, in the first place? Next, how can the posting be accomplished in these mountainous parts? There are no roads. No one travels otherwise than on horseback. Even the bridge between Durance and Ch\u00e2teau-Arnoux can barely support ox-teams. These priests are all thus, greedy and avaricious. This man played the good priest when he first came. Now he does like the rest; he must have a carriage and a posting-chaise, he must have luxuries, like the bishops of the olden days. Oh, all this priesthood! Things will not go well, M. le Comte, until the Emperor has freed us from these black-capped rascals. Down with the Pope! [Matters were getting embroiled with Rome.] For my part, I am for C\u00e6sar alone.\u201d Etc., etc.\nOn the other hand, this affair afforded great delight to Madame Magloire. \u201cGood,\u201d said she to Mademoiselle Baptistine; \u201cMonseigneur began with other people, but he has had to wind up with himself, after all. He has regulated all his charities. Now here are three thousand francs for us! At last!\u201d\nThat same evening the Bishop wrote out and handed to his sister a memorandum conceived in the following terms:\u2014 EXPENSES OF CARRIAGE AND CIRCUIT.\nFor furnishing meat soup to the patients in the hospital\t1,500 livres For the maternity charitable society of Aix\t250    \u201d\nFor the maternity charitable society of Draguignan\t250    \u201d\nFor foundlings\t500    \u201d\nFor orphans\t500    \u201d\n\u2014\u2014\nTotal\t3,000    \u201d\nSuch was M. Alton\u2019s budget.\nAs for the chance episcopal perquisites, the fees for marriage bans, dispensations, private baptisms, sermons, benedictions, of churches or chapels, marriages, etc., the Bishop levied them on the wealthy with all the more asperity, since he bestowed them on the needy.\nAfter a time, offerings of money flowed in. Those who had and those who lacked knocked at M. Alton\u2019s door,\u2014the latter in search of the alms which the former came to deposit. In less than a year the Bishop had become the treasurer of all benevolence and the cashier of all those in distress. Considerable sums of money passed through his hands, but nothing could induce him to make any change whatever in his mode of life, or add anything superfluous to his bare necessities.\nFar from it. As there is always more wretchedness below than there is brotherhood above, all was given away, so to speak, before it was received. It was like water on dry soil; no matter how much money he received, he never had any. Then he stripped himself.\nThe usage being that bishops shall announce their baptismal names at the head of their charges and their pastoral letters, the poor people of the country-side had selected, with a sort of affectionate instinct, among the names and prenomens of their bishop, that which had a meaning for them; and they never called him anything except Monseigneur Bienvenu [Welcome]. We will follow their example, and will also call him thus when we have occasion to name him. Moreover, this appellation pleased him.\n\u201cI like that name,\u201d said he. \u201cBienvenu makes up for the Monseigneur.\u201d\nWe do not claim that the portrait herewith presented is probable; we confine ourselves to stating that it resembles the original.\nCHAPTER III\u2014A HARD BISHOPRIC FOR A GOOD BISHOP \nThe Bishop did not omit his pastoral visits because he had converted his carriage into alms. The diocese of D\u2014\u2014 is a fatiguing one. There are very few plains and a great many mountains; hardly any roads, as we have just seen; thirty-two curacies, forty-one vicarships, and two hundred and eighty-five auxiliary chapels. To visit all these is quite a task.\nThe Bishop managed to do it. He went on foot when it was in the neighborhood, in a tilted spring-cart when it was on the plain, and on a donkey in the mountains. The two old women accompanied him. When the trip was too hard for them, he went alone.\nOne day he arrived at Senez, which is an ancient episcopal city. He was mounted on an ass. His purse, which was very dry at that moment, did not permit him any other equipage. The mayor of the town came to receive him at the gate of the town, and watched him dismount from his ass, with scandalized eyes. Some of the citizens were laughing around him. \u201cMonsieur the Mayor,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201cand Messieurs Citizens, I perceive that I shock you. You think it very arrogant in a poor priest to ride an animal which was used by Jesus Christ. I have done so from necessity, I assure you, and not from vanity.\u201d\nIn the course of these trips he was kind and indulgent, and talked rather than preached. He never went far in search of his arguments and his examples. He quoted to the inhabitants of one district the example of a neighboring district. In the cantons where they were harsh to the poor, he said: \u201cLook at the people of Brian\u00e7on! They have conferred on the poor, on widows and orphans, the right to have their meadows mown three days in advance of every one else. They rebuild their houses for them gratuitously when they are ruined. Therefore it is a country which is blessed by God. For a whole century, there has not been a single murderer among them.\u201d\nIn villages which were greedy for profit and harvest, he said: \u201cLook at the people of Embrun! If, at the harvest season, the father of a family has his son away on service in the army, and his daughters at service in the town, and if he is ill and incapacitated, the cur\u00e9 recommends him to the prayers of the congregation; and on Sunday, after the mass, all the inhabitants of the village\u2014men, women, and children\u2014go to the poor man\u2019s field and do his harvesting for him, and carry his straw and his grain to his granary.\u201d To families divided by questions of money and inheritance he said: \u201cLook at the mountaineers of Devolny, a country so wild that the nightingale is not heard there once in fifty years. Well, when the father of a family dies, the boys go off to seek their fortunes, leaving the property to the girls, so that they may find husbands.\u201d To the cantons which had a taste for lawsuits, and where the farmers ruined themselves in stamped paper, he said: \u201cLook at those good peasants in the valley of Queyras! There are three thousand souls of them. Mon Dieu! it is like a little republic. Neither judge nor bailiff is known there. The mayor does everything. He allots the imposts, taxes each person conscientiously, judges quarrels for nothing, divides inheritances without charge, pronounces sentences gratuitously; and he is obeyed, because he is a just man among simple men.\u201d To villages where he found no schoolmaster, he quoted once more the people of Queyras: \u201cDo you know how they manage?\u201d he said. \u201cSince a little country of a dozen or fifteen hearths cannot always support a teacher, they have schoolmasters who are paid by the whole valley, who make the round of the villages, spending a week in this one, ten days in that, and instruct them. These teachers go to the fairs. I have seen them there. They are to be recognized by the quill pens which they wear in the cord of their hat. Those who teach reading only have one pen; those who teach reading and reckoning have two pens; those who teach reading, reckoning, and Latin have three pens. But what a disgrace to be ignorant! Do like the people of Queyras!\u201d\nThus he discoursed gravely and paternally; in default of examples, he invented parables, going directly to the point, with few phrases and many images, which characteristic formed the real eloquence of Jesus Christ. And being convinced himself, he was persuasive.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014WORKS CORRESPONDING TO WORDS \nHis conversation was gay and affable. He put himself on a level with the two old women who had passed their lives beside him. When he laughed, it was the laugh of a schoolboy. Madame Magloire liked to call him Your Grace [Votre Grandeur]. One day he rose from his armchair, and went to his library in search of a book. This book was on one of the upper shelves. As the bishop was rather short of stature, he could not reach it. \u201cMadame Magloire,\u201d said he, \u201cfetch me a chair. My greatness [grandeur] does not reach as far as that shelf.\u201d\nOne of his distant relatives, Madame la Comtesse de L\u00f4, rarely allowed an opportunity to escape of enumerating, in his presence, what she designated as \u201cthe expectations\u201d of her three sons. She had numerous relatives, who were very old and near to death, and of whom her sons were the natural heirs. The youngest of the three was to receive from a grandaunt a good hundred thousand livres of income; the second was the heir by entail to the title of the Duke, his uncle; the eldest was to succeed to the peerage of his grandfather. The Bishop was accustomed to listen in silence to these innocent and pardonable maternal boasts. On one occasion, however, he appeared to be more thoughtful than usual, while Madame de L\u00f4 was relating once again the details of all these inheritances and all these \u201cexpectations.\u201d She interrupted herself impatiently: \u201cMon Dieu, cousin! What are you thinking about?\u201d \u201cI am thinking,\u201d replied the Bishop, \u201cof a singular remark, which is to be found, I believe, in St. Augustine,\u2014\u2018Place your hopes in the man from whom you do not inherit.\u2019\u201d\nAt another time, on receiving a notification of the decease of a gentleman of the country-side, wherein not only the dignities of the dead man, but also the feudal and noble qualifications of all his relatives, spread over an entire page: \u201cWhat a stout back Death has!\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cWhat a strange burden of titles is cheerfully imposed on him, and how much wit must men have, in order thus to press the tomb into the service of vanity!\u201d\nHe was gifted, on occasion, with a gentle raillery, which almost always concealed a serious meaning. In the course of one Lent, a youthful vicar came to D\u2014\u2014, and preached in the cathedral. He was tolerably eloquent. The subject of his sermon was charity. He urged the rich to give to the poor, in order to avoid hell, which he depicted in the most frightful manner of which he was capable, and to win paradise, which he represented as charming and desirable. Among the audience there was a wealthy retired merchant, who was somewhat of a usurer, named M. G\u00e9borand, who had amassed two millions in the manufacture of coarse cloth, serges, and woollen galloons. Never in his whole life had M. G\u00e9borand bestowed alms on any poor wretch. After the delivery of that sermon, it was observed that he gave a sou every Sunday to the poor old beggar-women at the door of the cathedral. There were six of them to share it. One day the Bishop caught sight of him in the act of bestowing this charity, and said to his sister, with a smile, \u201cThere is M. G\u00e9borand purchasing paradise for a sou.\u201d\nWhen it was a question of charity, he was not to be rebuffed even by a refusal, and on such occasions he gave utterance to remarks which induced reflection. Once he was begging for the poor in a drawing-room of the town; there was present the Marquis de Champtercier, a wealthy and avaricious old man, who contrived to be, at one and the same time, an ultra-royalist and an ultra-Voltairian. This variety of man has actually existed. When the Bishop came to him, he touched his arm, \u201cYou must give me something, M. le Marquis.\u201d The Marquis turned round and answered dryly, \u201cI have poor people of my own, Monseigneur.\u201d \u201cGive them to me,\u201d replied the Bishop.\nOne day he preached the following sermon in the cathedral:\u2014 \u201cMy very dear brethren, my good friends, there are thirteen hundred and twenty thousand peasants\u2019 dwellings in France which have but three openings; eighteen hundred and seventeen thousand hovels which have but two openings, the door and one window; and three hundred and forty-six thousand cabins besides which have but one opening, the door. And this arises from a thing which is called the tax on doors and windows. Just put poor families, old women and little children, in those buildings, and behold the fevers and maladies which result! Alas! God gives air to men; the law sells it to them. I do not blame the law, but I bless God. In the department of the Isere, in the Var, in the two departments of the Alpes, the Hautes, and the Basses, the peasants have not even wheelbarrows; they transport their manure on the backs of men; they have no candles, and they burn resinous sticks, and bits of rope dipped in pitch. That is the state of affairs throughout the whole of the hilly country of Dauphin\u00e9. They make bread for six months at one time; they bake it with dried cow-dung. In the winter they break this bread up with an axe, and they soak it for twenty-four hours, in order to render it eatable. My brethren, have pity! behold the suffering on all sides of you!\u201d\nBorn a Proven\u00e7al, he easily familiarized himself with the dialect of the south. He said, \u201cEn b\u00e9! moussu, s\u00e9s sag\u00e9?\u201d as in lower Languedoc; \u201cOnt\u00e9 anaras passa?\u201d as in the Basses-Alpes; \u201cPuerte un bouen moutu embe un bouen fromage grase,\u201d as in upper Dauphin\u00e9. This pleased the people extremely, and contributed not a little to win him access to all spirits. He was perfectly at home in the thatched cottage and in the mountains. He understood how to say the grandest things in the most vulgar of idioms. As he spoke all tongues, he entered into all hearts.\nMoreover, he was the same towards people of the world and towards the lower classes. He condemned nothing in haste and without taking circumstances into account. He said, \u201cExamine the road over which the fault has passed.\u201d\nBeing, as he described himself with a smile, an ex-sinner, he had none of the asperities of austerity, and he professed, with a good deal of distinctness, and without the frown of the ferociously virtuous, a doctrine which may be summed up as follows:\u2014 \u201cMan has upon him his flesh, which is at once his burden and his temptation. He drags it with him and yields to it. He must watch it, check it, repress it, and obey it only at the last extremity. There may be some fault even in this obedience; but the fault thus committed is venial; it is a fall, but a fall on the knees which may terminate in prayer.\n\u201cTo be a saint is the exception; to be an upright man is the rule. Err, fall, sin if you will, but be upright.\n\u201cThe least possible sin is the law of man. No sin at all is the dream of the angel. All which is terrestrial is subject to sin. Sin is a gravitation.\u201d\nWhen he saw everyone exclaiming very loudly, and growing angry very quickly, \u201cOh! oh!\u201d he said, with a smile; \u201cto all appearance, this is a great crime which all the world commits. These are hypocrisies which have taken fright, and are in haste to make protest and to put themselves under shelter.\u201d\nHe was indulgent towards women and poor people, on whom the burden of human society rest. He said, \u201cThe faults of women, of children, of the feeble, the indigent, and the ignorant, are the fault of the husbands, the fathers, the masters, the strong, the rich, and the wise.\u201d\nHe said, moreover, \u201cTeach those who are ignorant as many things as possible; society is culpable, in that it does not afford instruction gratis; it is responsible for the night which it produces. This soul is full of shadow; sin is therein committed. The guilty one is not the person who has committed the sin, but the person who has created the shadow.\u201d\nIt will be perceived that he had a peculiar manner of his own of judging things: I suspect that he obtained it from the Gospel.\nOne day he heard a criminal case, which was in preparation and on the point of trial, discussed in a drawing-room. A wretched man, being at the end of his resources, had coined counterfeit money, out of love for a woman, and for the child which he had had by her. Counterfeiting was still punishable with death at that epoch. The woman had been arrested in the act of passing the first false piece made by the man. She was held, but there were no proofs except against her. She alone could accuse her lover, and destroy him by her confession. She denied; they insisted. She persisted in her denial. Thereupon an idea occurred to the attorney for the crown. He invented an infidelity on the part of the lover, and succeeded, by means of fragments of letters cunningly presented, in persuading the unfortunate woman that she had a rival, and that the man was deceiving her. Thereupon, exasperated by jealousy, she denounced her lover, confessed all, proved all.\nThe man was ruined. He was shortly to be tried at Aix with his accomplice. They were relating the matter, and each one was expressing enthusiasm over the cleverness of the magistrate. By bringing jealousy into play, he had caused the truth to burst forth in wrath, he had educed the justice of revenge. The Bishop listened to all this in silence. When they had finished, he inquired,\u2014 \u201cWhere are this man and woman to be tried?\u201d\n\u201cAt the Court of Assizes.\u201d\nHe went on, \u201cAnd where will the advocate of the crown be tried?\u201d\nA tragic event occurred at D\u2014\u2014 A man was condemned to death for murder. He was a wretched fellow, not exactly educated, not exactly ignorant, who had been a mountebank at fairs, and a writer for the public. The town took a great interest in the trial. On the eve of the day fixed for the execution of the condemned man, the chaplain of the prison fell ill. A priest was needed to attend the criminal in his last moments. They sent for the cur\u00e9. It seems that he refused to come, saying, \u201cThat is no affair of mine. I have nothing to do with that unpleasant task, and with that mountebank: I, too, am ill; and besides, it is not my place.\u201d This reply was reported to the Bishop, who said, \u201cMonsieur le Cur\u00e9 is right: it is not his place; it is mine.\u201d\nHe went instantly to the prison, descended to the cell of the \u201cmountebank,\u201d called him by name, took him by the hand, and spoke to him. He passed the entire day with him, forgetful of food and sleep, praying to God for the soul of the condemned man, and praying the condemned man for his own. He told him the best truths, which are also the most simple. He was father, brother, friend; he was bishop only to bless. He taught him everything, encouraged and consoled him. The man was on the point of dying in despair. Death was an abyss to him. As he stood trembling on its mournful brink, he recoiled with horror. He was not sufficiently ignorant to be absolutely indifferent. His condemnation, which had been a profound shock, had, in a manner, broken through, here and there, that wall which separates us from the mystery of things, and which we call life. He gazed incessantly beyond this world through these fatal breaches, and beheld only darkness. The Bishop made him see light.\nOn the following day, when they came to fetch the unhappy wretch, the Bishop was still there. He followed him, and exhibited himself to the eyes of the crowd in his purple camail and with his episcopal cross upon his neck, side by side with the criminal bound with cords.\nHe mounted the tumbril with him, he mounted the scaffold with him. The sufferer, who had been so gloomy and cast down on the preceding day, was radiant. He felt that his soul was reconciled, and he hoped in God. The Bishop embraced him, and at the moment when the knife was about to fall, he said to him: \u201cGod raises from the dead him whom man slays; he whom his brothers have rejected finds his Father once more. Pray, believe, enter into life: the Father is there.\u201d When he descended from the scaffold, there was something in his look which made the people draw aside to let him pass. They did not know which was most worthy of admiration, his pallor or his serenity. On his return to the humble dwelling, which he designated, with a smile, as his palace, he said to his sister, \u201cI have just officiated pontifically.\u201d\nSince the most sublime things are often those which are the least understood, there were people in the town who said, when commenting on this conduct of the Bishop, \u201cIt is affectation.\u201d\nThis, however, was a remark which was confined to the drawing-rooms. The populace, which perceives no jest in holy deeds, was touched, and admired him.\nAs for the Bishop, it was a shock to him to have beheld the guillotine, and it was a long time before he recovered from it.\nIn fact, when the scaffold is there, all erected and prepared, it has something about it which produces hallucination. One may feel a certain indifference to the death penalty, one may refrain from pronouncing upon it, from saying yes or no, so long as one has not seen a guillotine with one\u2019s own eyes: but if one encounters one of them, the shock is violent; one is forced to decide, and to take part for or against. Some admire it, like de Maistre; others execrate it, like Beccaria. The guillotine is the concretion of the law; it is called vindicate; it is not neutral, and it does not permit you to remain neutral. He who sees it shivers with the most mysterious of shivers. All social problems erect their interrogation point around this chopping-knife. The scaffold is a vision. The scaffold is not a piece of carpentry; the scaffold is not a machine; the scaffold is not an inert bit of mechanism constructed of wood, iron and cords.\nIt seems as though it were a being, possessed of I know not what sombre initiative; one would say that this piece of carpenter\u2019s work saw, that this machine heard, that this mechanism understood, that this wood, this iron, and these cords were possessed of will. In the frightful meditation into which its presence casts the soul the scaffold appears in terrible guise, and as though taking part in what is going on. The scaffold is the accomplice of the executioner; it devours, it eats flesh, it drinks blood; the scaffold is a sort of monster fabricated by the judge and the carpenter, a spectre which seems to live with a horrible vitality composed of all the death which it has inflicted.\nTherefore, the impression was terrible and profound; on the day following the execution, and on many succeeding days, the Bishop appeared to be crushed. The almost violent serenity of the funereal moment had disappeared; the phantom of social justice tormented him. He, who generally returned from all his deeds with a radiant satisfaction, seemed to be reproaching himself. At times he talked to himself, and stammered lugubrious monologues in a low voice. This is one which his sister overheard one evening and preserved: \u201cI did not think that it was so monstrous. It is wrong to become absorbed in the divine law to such a degree as not to perceive human law. Death belongs to God alone. By what right do men touch that unknown thing?\u201d\nIn course of time these impressions weakened and probably vanished. Nevertheless, it was observed that the Bishop thenceforth avoided passing the place of execution.\nM. Alton could be summoned at any hour to the bedside of the sick and dying. He did not ignore the fact that therein lay his greatest duty and his greatest labor. Widowed and orphaned families had no need to summon him; he came of his own accord. He understood how to sit down and hold his peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife of his love, of the mother who had lost her child. As he knew the moment for silence he knew also the moment for speech. Oh, admirable consoler! He sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to magnify and dignify it by hope. He said:\u2014 \u201cHave a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Think not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven.\u201d He knew that faith is wholesome. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing man, by pointing out to him the resigned man, and to transform the grief which gazes upon a grave by showing him the grief which fixes its gaze upon a star.\nCHAPTER V\u2014MONSEIGNEUR BIENVENU MADE HIS CASSOCKS LAST TOO LONG \nThe private life of M. Alton was filled with the same thoughts as his public life. The voluntary poverty in which the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 lived, would have been a solemn and charming sight for any one who could have viewed it close at hand.\nLike all old men, and like the majority of thinkers, he slept little. This brief slumber was profound. In the morning he meditated for an hour, then he said his mass, either at the cathedral or in his own house. His mass said, he broke his fast on rye bread dipped in the milk of his own cows. Then he set to work.\nA Bishop is a very busy man: he must every day receive the secretary of the bishopric, who is generally a canon, and nearly every day his vicars-general. He has congregations to reprove, privileges to grant, a whole ecclesiastical library to examine,\u2014prayer-books, diocesan catechisms, books of hours, etc.,\u2014charges to write, sermons to authorize, cur\u00e9s and mayors to reconcile, a clerical correspondence, an administrative correspondence; on one side the State, on the other the Holy See; and a thousand matters of business.\nWhat time was left to him, after these thousand details of business, and his offices and his breviary, he bestowed first on the necessitous, the sick, and the afflicted; the time which was left to him from the afflicted, the sick, and the necessitous, he devoted to work. Sometimes he dug in his garden; again, he read or wrote. He had but one word for both these kinds of toil; he called them gardening. \u201cThe mind is a garden,\u201d said he.\nTowards midday, when the weather was fine, he went forth and took a stroll in the country or in town, often entering lowly dwellings. He was seen walking alone, buried in his own thoughts, his eyes cast down, supporting himself on his long cane, clad in his wadded purple garment of silk, which was very warm, wearing purple stockings inside his coarse shoes, and surmounted by a flat hat which allowed three golden tassels of large bullion to droop from its three points.\nIt was a perfect festival wherever he appeared. One would have said that his presence had something warming and luminous about it. The children and the old people came out to the doorsteps for the Bishop as for the sun. He bestowed his blessing, and they blessed him. They pointed out his house to any one who was in need of anything.\nThe Comforter\nHere and there he halted, accosted the little boys and girls, and smiled upon the mothers. He visited the poor so long as he had any money; when he no longer had any, he visited the rich.\nAs he made his cassocks last a long while, and did not wish to have it noticed, he never went out in the town without his wadded purple cloak. This inconvenienced him somewhat in summer.\nOn his return, he dined. The dinner resembled his breakfast.\nAt half-past eight in the evening he supped with his sister, Madame Magloire standing behind them and serving them at table. Nothing could be more frugal than this repast. If, however, the Bishop had one of his cur\u00e9s to supper, Madame Magloire took advantage of the opportunity to serve Monseigneur with some excellent fish from the lake, or with some fine game from the mountains. Every cur\u00e9 furnished the pretext for a good meal: the Bishop did not interfere. With that exception, his ordinary diet consisted only of vegetables boiled in water, and oil soup. Thus it was said in the town, when the Bishop does not indulge in the cheer of a cur\u00e9, he indulges in the cheer of a trappist.\nAfter supper he conversed for half an hour with Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire; then he retired to his own room and set to writing, sometimes on loose sheets, and again on the margin of some folio. He was a man of letters and rather learned. He left behind him five or six very curious manuscripts; among others, a dissertation on this verse in Genesis, In the beginning, the spirit of God floated upon the waters. With this verse he compares three texts: the Arabic verse which says, The winds of God blew; Flavius Josephus who says, A wind from above was precipitated upon the earth; and finally, the Chaldaic paraphrase of Onkelos, which renders it, A wind coming from God blew upon the face of the waters. In another dissertation, he examines the theological works of Hugo, Bishop of Ptolema\u00efs, great-grand-uncle to the writer of this book, and establishes the fact, that to this bishop must be attributed the divers little works published during the last century, under the pseudonym of Barleycourt.\nSometimes, in the midst of his reading, no matter what the book might be which he had in his hand, he would suddenly fall into a profound meditation, whence he only emerged to write a few lines on the pages of the volume itself. These lines have often no connection whatever with the book which contains them. We now have under our eyes a note written by him on the margin of a quarto entitled Correspondence of Lord Germain with Generals Clinton, Cornwallis, and the Admirals on the American station. Versailles, Poin\u00e7ot, book-seller; and Paris, Pissot, bookseller, Quai des Augustins.\nHere is the note:\u2014\n\u201cOh, you who are!\n\u201cEcclesiastes calls you the All-powerful; the Maccabees call you the Creator; the Epistle to the Ephesians calls you liberty; Baruch calls you Immensity; the Psalms call you Wisdom and Truth; John calls you Light; the Books of Kings call you Lord; Exodus calls you Providence; Leviticus, Sanctity; Esdras, Justice; the creation calls you God; man calls you Father; but Solomon calls you Compassion, and that is the most beautiful of all your names.\u201d\nToward nine o\u2019clock in the evening the two women retired and betook themselves to their chambers on the first floor, leaving him alone until morning on the ground floor.\nIt is necessary that we should, in this place, give an exact idea of the dwelling of the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 \nCHAPTER VI\u2014WHO GUARDED HIS HOUSE FOR HIM \nThe house in which he lived consisted, as we have said, of a ground floor, and one story above; three rooms on the ground floor, three chambers on the first, and an attic above. Behind the house was a garden, a quarter of an acre in extent. The two women occupied the first floor; the Bishop was lodged below. The first room, opening on the street, served him as dining-room, the second was his bedroom, and the third his oratory. There was no exit possible from this oratory, except by passing through the bedroom, nor from the bedroom, without passing through the dining-room. At the end of the suite, in the oratory, there was a detached alcove with a bed, for use in cases of hospitality. The Bishop offered this bed to country curates whom business or the requirements of their parishes brought to D\u2014\u2014 The pharmacy of the hospital, a small building which had been added to the house, and abutted on the garden, had been transformed into a kitchen and cellar. In addition to this, there was in the garden a stable, which had formerly been the kitchen of the hospital, and in which the Bishop kept two cows. No matter what the quantity of milk they gave, he invariably sent half of it every morning to the sick people in the hospital.\n\u201cI am paying my tithes,\u201d he said.\nHis bedroom was tolerably large, and rather difficult to warm in bad weather. As wood is extremely dear at D\u2014\u2014, he hit upon the idea of having a compartment of boards constructed in the cow-shed. Here he passed his evenings during seasons of severe cold: he called it his winter salon.\nIn this winter salon, as in the dining-room, there was no other furniture than a square table in white wood, and four straw-seated chairs. In addition to this the dining-room was ornamented with an antique sideboard, painted pink, in water colors. Out of a similar sideboard, properly draped with white napery and imitation lace, the Bishop had constructed the altar which decorated his oratory.\nHis wealthy penitents and the sainted women of D\u2014\u2014 had more than once assessed themselves to raise the money for a new altar for Monseigneur\u2019s oratory; on each occasion he had taken the money and had given it to the poor. \u201cThe most beautiful of altars,\u201d he said, \u201cis the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thanking God.\u201d\nIn his oratory there were two straw prie-Dieu, and there was an armchair, also in straw, in his bedroom. When, by chance, he received seven or eight persons at one time, the prefect, or the general, or the staff of the regiment in garrison, or several pupils from the little seminary, the chairs had to be fetched from the winter salon in the stable, the prie-Dieu from the oratory, and the armchair from the bedroom: in this way as many as eleven chairs could be collected for the visitors. A room was dismantled for each new guest.\nIt sometimes happened that there were twelve in the party; the Bishop then relieved the embarrassment of the situation by standing in front of the chimney if it was winter, or by strolling in the garden if it was summer.\nThere was still another chair in the detached alcove, but the straw was half gone from it, and it had but three legs, so that it was of service only when propped against the wall. Mademoiselle Baptistine had also in her own room a very large easy-chair of wood, which had formerly been gilded, and which was covered with flowered pekin; but they had been obliged to hoist this bergere up to the first story through the window, as the staircase was too narrow; it could not, therefore, be reckoned among the possibilities in the way of furniture.\nMademoiselle Baptistine\u2019s ambition had been to be able to purchase a set of drawing-room furniture in yellow Utrecht velvet, stamped with a rose pattern, and with mahogany in swan\u2019s neck style, with a sofa. But this would have cost five hundred francs at least, and in view of the fact that she had only been able to lay by forty-two francs and ten sous for this purpose in the course of five years, she had ended by renouncing the idea. However, who is there who has attained his ideal?\nNothing is more easy to present to the imagination than the Bishop\u2019s bedchamber. A glazed door opened on the garden; opposite this was the bed,\u2014a hospital bed of iron, with a canopy of green serge; in the shadow of the bed, behind a curtain, were the utensils of the toilet, which still betrayed the elegant habits of the man of the world: there were two doors, one near the chimney, opening into the oratory; the other near the bookcase, opening into the dining-room. The bookcase was a large cupboard with glass doors filled with books; the chimney was of wood painted to represent marble, and habitually without fire. In the chimney stood a pair of firedogs of iron, ornamented above with two garlanded vases, and flutings which had formerly been silvered with silver leaf, which was a sort of episcopal luxury; above the chimney-piece hung a crucifix of copper, with the silver worn off, fixed on a background of threadbare velvet in a wooden frame from which the gilding had fallen; near the glass door a large table with an inkstand, loaded with a confusion of papers and with huge volumes; before the table an armchair of straw; in front of the bed a prie-Dieu, borrowed from the oratory.\nTwo portraits in oval frames were fastened to the wall on each side of the bed. Small gilt inscriptions on the plain surface of the cloth at the side of these figures indicated that the portraits represented, one the Abb\u00e9 of Chaliot, bishop of Saint Claude; the other, the Abb\u00e9 Tourteau, vicar-general of Agde, abb\u00e9 of Grand-Champ, order of C\u00eeteaux, diocese of Chartres. When the Bishop succeeded to this apartment, after the hospital patients, he had found these portraits there, and had left them. They were priests, and probably donors\u2014two reasons for respecting them. All that he knew about these two persons was, that they had been appointed by the king, the one to his bishopric, the other to his benefice, on the same day, the 27th of April, 1785. Madame Magloire having taken the pictures down to dust, the Bishop had discovered these particulars written in whitish ink on a little square of paper, yellowed by time, and attached to the back of the portrait of the Abb\u00e9 of Grand-Champ with four wafers.\nAt his window he had an antique curtain of a coarse woollen stuff, which finally became so old, that, in order to avoid the expense of a new one, Madame Magloire was forced to take a large seam in the very middle of it. This seam took the form of a cross. The Bishop often called attention to it: \u201cHow delightful that is!\u201d he said.\nAll the rooms in the house, without exception, those on the ground floor as well as those on the first floor, were white-washed, which is a fashion in barracks and hospitals.\nHowever, in their latter years, Madame Magloire discovered beneath the paper which had been washed over, paintings, ornamenting the apartment of Mademoiselle Baptistine, as we shall see further on. Before becoming a hospital, this house had been the ancient parliament house of the Bourgeois. Hence this decoration. The chambers were paved in red bricks, which were washed every week, with straw mats in front of all the beds. Altogether, this dwelling, which was attended to by the two women, was exquisitely clean from top to bottom. This was the sole luxury which the Bishop permitted. He said, \u201cThat takes nothing from the poor.\u201d\nIt must be confessed, however, that he still retained from his former possessions six silver knives and forks and a soup-ladle, which Madame Magloire contemplated every day with delight, as they glistened splendidly upon the coarse linen cloth. And since we are now painting the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 as he was in reality, we must add that he had said more than once, \u201cI find it difficult to renounce eating from silver dishes.\u201d\nTo this silverware must be added two large candlesticks of massive silver, which he had inherited from a great-aunt. These candlesticks held two wax candles, and usually figured on the Bishop\u2019s chimney-piece. When he had any one to dinner, Madame Magloire lighted the two candles and set the candlesticks on the table.\nIn the Bishop\u2019s own chamber, at the head of his bed, there was a small cupboard, in which Madame Magloire locked up the six silver knives and forks and the big spoon every night. But it is necessary to add, that the key was never removed.\nThe garden, which had been rather spoiled by the ugly buildings which we have mentioned, was composed of four alleys in cross-form, radiating from a tank. Another walk made the circuit of the garden, and skirted the white wall which enclosed it. These alleys left behind them four square plots rimmed with box. In three of these, Madame Magloire cultivated vegetables; in the fourth, the Bishop had planted some flowers; here and there stood a few fruit-trees. Madame Magloire had once remarked, with a sort of gentle malice: \u201cMonseigneur, you who turn everything to account, have, nevertheless, one useless plot. It would be better to grow salads there than bouquets.\u201d \u201cMadame Magloire,\u201d retorted the Bishop, \u201cyou are mistaken. The beautiful is as useful as the useful.\u201d He added after a pause, \u201cMore so, perhaps.\u201d\nThis plot, consisting of three or four beds, occupied the Bishop almost as much as did his books. He liked to pass an hour or two there, trimming, hoeing, and making holes here and there in the earth, into which he dropped seeds. He was not as hostile to insects as a gardener could have wished to see him. Moreover, he made no pretensions to botany; he ignored groups and consistency; he made not the slightest effort to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took part neither with the buds against the cotyledons, nor with Jussieu against Linn\u00e6us. He did not study plants; he loved flowers. He respected learned men greatly; he respected the ignorant still more; and, without ever failing in these two respects, he watered his flower-beds every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.\nThe house had not a single door which could be locked. The door of the dining-room, which, as we have said, opened directly on the cathedral square, had formerly been ornamented with locks and bolts like the door of a prison. The Bishop had had all this ironwork removed, and this door was never fastened, either by night or by day, with anything except the latch. All that the first passer-by had to do at any hour, was to give it a push. At first, the two women had been very much tried by this door, which was never fastened, but Monsieur de D\u2014\u2014 had said to them, \u201cHave bolts put on your rooms, if that will please you.\u201d They had ended by sharing his confidence, or by at least acting as though they shared it. Madame Magloire alone had frights from time to time. As for the Bishop, his thought can be found explained, or at least indicated, in the three lines which he wrote on the margin of a Bible, \u201cThis is the shade of difference: the door of the physician should never be shut, the door of the priest should always be open.\u201d\nOn another book, entitled Philosophy of the Medical Science, he had written this other note: \u201cAm not I a physician like them? I also have my patients, and then, too, I have some whom I call my unfortunates.\u201d\nAgain he wrote: \u201cDo not inquire the name of him who asks a shelter of you. The very man who is embarrassed by his name is the one who needs shelter.\u201d\nIt chanced that a worthy cur\u00e9, I know not whether it was the cur\u00e9 of Couloubroux or the cur\u00e9 of Pompierry, took it into his head to ask him one day, probably at the instigation of Madame Magloire, whether Monsieur was sure that he was not committing an indiscretion, to a certain extent, in leaving his door unfastened day and night, at the mercy of any one who should choose to enter, and whether, in short, he did not fear lest some misfortune might occur in a house so little guarded. The Bishop touched his shoulder, with gentle gravity, and said to him, \u201cNisi Dominus custodierit domum, in vanum vigilant qui custodiunt eam,\u201d Unless the Lord guard the house, in vain do they watch who guard it.\nThen he spoke of something else.\nHe was fond of saying, \u201cThere is a bravery of the priest as well as the bravery of a colonel of dragoons,\u2014only,\u201d he added, \u201cours must be tranquil.\u201d\nCHAPTER VII\u2014CRAVATTE\nIt is here that a fact falls naturally into place, which we must not omit, because it is one of the sort which show us best what sort of a man the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 was.\nAfter the destruction of the band of Gaspard Bes, who had infested the gorges of Ollioules, one of his lieutenants, Cravatte, took refuge in the mountains. He concealed himself for some time with his bandits, the remnant of Gaspard Bes\u2019s troop, in the county of Nice; then he made his way to Pi\u00e9dmont, and suddenly reappeared in France, in the vicinity of Barcelonette. He was first seen at Jauziers, then at Tuiles. He hid himself in the caverns of the Joug-de-l\u2019Aigle, and thence he descended towards the hamlets and villages through the ravines of Ubaye and Ubayette.\nHe even pushed as far as Embrun, entered the cathedral one night, and despoiled the sacristy. His highway robberies laid waste the country-side. The gendarmes were set on his track, but in vain. He always escaped; sometimes he resisted by main force. He was a bold wretch. In the midst of all this terror the Bishop arrived. He was making his circuit to Chastelar. The mayor came to meet him, and urged him to retrace his steps. Cravatte was in possession of the mountains as far as Arche, and beyond; there was danger even with an escort; it merely exposed three or four unfortunate gendarmes to no purpose.\n\u201cTherefore,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201cI intend to go without escort.\u201d\n\u201cYou do not really mean that, Monseigneur!\u201d exclaimed the mayor.\n\u201cI do mean it so thoroughly that I absolutely refuse any gendarmes, and shall set out in an hour.\u201d\n\u201cSet out?\u201d\n\u201cSet out.\u201d\n\u201cAlone?\u201d\n\u201cAlone.\u201d\n\u201cMonseigneur, you will not do that!\u201d\n\u201cThere exists yonder in the mountains,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201ca tiny community no bigger than that, which I have not seen for three years. They are my good friends, those gentle and honest shepherds. They own one goat out of every thirty that they tend. They make very pretty woollen cords of various colors, and they play the mountain airs on little flutes with six holes. They need to be told of the good God now and then. What would they say to a bishop who was afraid? What would they say if I did not go?\u201d\n\u201cBut the brigands, Monseigneur?\u201d\n\u201cHold,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201cI must think of that. You are right. I may meet them. They, too, need to be told of the good God.\u201d\n\u201cBut, Monseigneur, there is a band of them! A flock of wolves!\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur le maire, it may be that it is of this very flock of wolves that Jesus has constituted me the shepherd. Who knows the ways of Providence?\u201d\n\u201cThey will rob you, Monseigneur.\u201d\n\u201cI have nothing.\u201d\n\u201cThey will kill you.\u201d\n\u201cAn old goodman of a priest, who passes along mumbling his prayers? Bah! To what purpose?\u201d\n\u201cOh, mon Dieu! what if you should meet them!\u201d\n\u201cI should beg alms of them for my poor.\u201d\n\u201cDo not go, Monseigneur. In the name of Heaven! You are risking your life!\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur le maire,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201cis that really all? I am not in the world to guard my own life, but to guard souls.\u201d\nThey had to allow him to do as he pleased. He set out, accompanied only by a child who offered to serve as a guide. His obstinacy was bruited about the country-side, and caused great consternation.\nHe would take neither his sister nor Madame Magloire. He traversed the mountain on mule-back, encountered no one, and arrived safe and sound at the residence of his \u201cgood friends,\u201d the shepherds. He remained there for a fortnight, preaching, administering the sacrament, teaching, exhorting. When the time of his departure approached, he resolved to chant a Te Deum pontifically. He mentioned it to the cur\u00e9. But what was to be done? There were no episcopal ornaments. They could only place at his disposal a wretched village sacristy, with a few ancient chasubles of threadbare damask adorned with imitation lace.\n\u201cBah!\u201d said the Bishop. \u201cLet us announce our Te Deum from the pulpit, nevertheless, Monsieur le Cur\u00e9. Things will arrange themselves.\u201d\nThey instituted a search in the churches of the neighborhood. All the magnificence of these humble parishes combined would not have sufficed to clothe the chorister of a cathedral properly.\nWhile they were thus embarrassed, a large chest was brought and deposited in the presbytery for the Bishop, by two unknown horsemen, who departed on the instant. The chest was opened; it contained a cope of cloth of gold, a mitre ornamented with diamonds, an archbishop\u2019s cross, a magnificent crosier,\u2014all the pontifical vestments which had been stolen a month previously from the treasury of Notre Dame d\u2019Embrun. In the chest was a paper, on which these words were written, \u201cFrom Cravatte to Monseigneur Bienvenu.\u201d\n\u201cDid not I say that things would come right of themselves?\u201d said the Bishop. Then he added, with a smile, \u201cTo him who contents himself with the surplice of a curate, God sends the cope of an archbishop.\u201d\n\u201cMonseigneur,\u201d murmured the cur\u00e9, throwing back his head with a smile. \u201cGod\u2014or the Devil.\u201d\nThe Bishop looked steadily at the cur\u00e9, and repeated with authority, \u201cGod!\u201d\nWhen he returned to Chastelar, the people came out to stare at him as at a curiosity, all along the road. At the priest\u2019s house in Chastelar he rejoined Mademoiselle Baptistine and Madame Magloire, who were waiting for him, and he said to his sister: \u201cWell! was I in the right? The poor priest went to his poor mountaineers with empty hands, and he returns from them with his hands full. I set out bearing only my faith in God; I have brought back the treasure of a cathedral.\u201d\nThat evening, before he went to bed, he said again: \u201cLet us never fear robbers nor murderers. Those are dangers from without, petty dangers. Let us fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices are the real murderers. The great dangers lie within ourselves. What matters it what threatens our head or our purse! Let us think only of that which threatens our soul.\u201d\nThen, turning to his sister: \u201cSister, never a precaution on the part of the priest, against his fellow-man. That which his fellow does, God permits. Let us confine ourselves to prayer, when we think that a danger is approaching us. Let us pray, not for ourselves, but that our brother may not fall into sin on our account.\u201d\nHowever, such incidents were rare in his life. We relate those of which we know; but generally he passed his life in doing the same things at the same moment. One month of his year resembled one hour of his day.\nAs to what became of \u201cthe treasure\u201d of the cathedral of Embrun, we should be embarrassed by any inquiry in that direction. It consisted of very handsome things, very tempting things, and things which were very well adapted to be stolen for the benefit of the unfortunate. Stolen they had already been elsewhere. Half of the adventure was completed; it only remained to impart a new direction to the theft, and to cause it to take a short trip in the direction of the poor. However, we make no assertions on this point. Only, a rather obscure note was found among the Bishop\u2019s papers, which may bear some relation to this matter, and which is couched in these terms, \u201cThe question is, to decide whether this should be turned over to the cathedral or to the hospital.\u201d\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014PHILOSOPHY AFTER DRINKING \nThe senator above mentioned was a clever man, who had made his own way, heedless of those things which present obstacles, and which are called conscience, sworn faith, justice, duty: he had marched straight to his goal, without once flinching in the line of his advancement and his interest. He was an old attorney, softened by success; not a bad man by any means, who rendered all the small services in his power to his sons, his sons-in-law, his relations, and even to his friends, having wisely seized upon, in life, good sides, good opportunities, good windfalls. Everything else seemed to him very stupid. He was intelligent, and just sufficiently educated to think himself a disciple of Epicurus; while he was, in reality, only a product of Pigault-Lebrun. He laughed willingly and pleasantly over infinite and eternal things, and at the \u201ccrotchets of that good old fellow the Bishop.\u201d He even sometimes laughed at him with an amiable authority in the presence of M. Alton himself, who listened to him.\nOn some semi-official occasion or other, I do not recollect what, Count*** [this senator] and M. Alton were to dine with the prefect. At dessert, the senator, who was slightly exhilarated, though still perfectly dignified, exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cEgad, Bishop, let\u2019s have a discussion. It is hard for a senator and a bishop to look at each other without winking. We are two augurs. I am going to make a confession to you. I have a philosophy of my own.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you are right,\u201d replied the Bishop. \u201cAs one makes one\u2019s philosophy, so one lies on it. You are on the bed of purple, senator.\u201d\nThe senator was encouraged, and went on:\u2014 \u201cLet us be good fellows.\u201d\n\u201cGood devils even,\u201d said the Bishop.\n\u201cI declare to you,\u201d continued the senator, \u201cthat the Marquis d\u2019Argens, Pyrrhon, Hobbes, and M. Naigeon are no rascals. I have all the philosophers in my library gilded on the edges.\u201d\n\u201cLike yourself, Count,\u201d interposed the Bishop.\nThe senator resumed:\u2014\n\u201cI hate Diderot; he is an ideologist, a declaimer, and a revolutionist, a believer in God at bottom, and more bigoted than Voltaire. Voltaire made sport of Needham, and he was wrong, for Needham\u2019s eels prove that God is useless. A drop of vinegar in a spoonful of flour paste supplies the fiat lux. Suppose the drop to be larger and the spoonful bigger; you have the world. Man is the eel. Then what is the good of the Eternal Father? The Jehovah hypothesis tires me, Bishop. It is good for nothing but to produce shallow people, whose reasoning is hollow. Down with that great All, which torments me! Hurrah for Zero which leaves me in peace! Between you and me, and in order to empty my sack, and make confession to my pastor, as it behooves me to do, I will admit to you that I have good sense. I am not enthusiastic over your Jesus, who preaches renunciation and sacrifice to the last extremity. \u2019Tis the counsel of an avaricious man to beggars. Renunciation; why? Sacrifice; to what end? I do not see one wolf immolating himself for the happiness of another wolf. Let us stick to nature, then. We are at the top; let us have a superior philosophy. What is the advantage of being at the top, if one sees no further than the end of other people\u2019s noses? Let us live merrily. Life is all. That man has another future elsewhere, on high, below, anywhere, I don\u2019t believe; not one single word of it. Ah! sacrifice and renunciation are recommended to me; I must take heed to everything I do; I must cudgel my brains over good and evil, over the just and the unjust, over the fas and the nefas. Why? Because I shall have to render an account of my actions. When? After death. What a fine dream! After my death it will be a very clever person who can catch me. Have a handful of dust seized by a shadow-hand, if you can. Let us tell the truth, we who are initiated, and who have raised the veil of Isis: there is no such thing as either good or evil; there is vegetation. Let us seek the real. Let us get to the bottom of it. Let us go into it thoroughly. What the deuce! let us go to the bottom of it! We must scent out the truth; dig in the earth for it, and seize it. Then it gives you exquisite joys. Then you grow strong, and you laugh. I am square on the bottom, I am. Immortality, Bishop, is a chance, a waiting for dead men\u2019s shoes. Ah! what a charming promise! trust to it, if you like! What a fine lot Adam has! We are souls, and we shall be angels, with blue wings on our shoulder-blades. Do come to my assistance: is it not Tertullian who says that the blessed shall travel from star to star? Very well. We shall be the grasshoppers of the stars. And then, besides, we shall see God. Ta, ta, ta! What twaddle all these paradises are! God is a nonsensical monster. I would not say that in the Moniteur, egad! but I may whisper it among friends. Inter pocula. To sacrifice the world to paradise is to let slip the prey for the shadow. Be the dupe of the infinite! I\u2019m not such a fool. I am a nought. I call myself Monsieur le Comte Nought, senator. Did I exist before my birth? No. Shall I exist after death? No. What am I? A little dust collected in an organism. What am I to do on this earth? The choice rests with me: suffer or enjoy. Whither will suffering lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have suffered. Whither will enjoyment lead me? To nothingness; but I shall have enjoyed myself. My choice is made. One must eat or be eaten. I shall eat. It is better to be the tooth than the grass. Such is my wisdom. After which, go whither I push thee, the grave-digger is there; the Pantheon for some of us: all falls into the great hole. End. Finis. Total liquidation. This is the vanishing-point. Death is death, believe me. I laugh at the idea of there being any one who has anything to tell me on that subject. Fables of nurses; bugaboo for children; Jehovah for men. No; our to-morrow is the night. Beyond the tomb there is nothing but equal nothingness. You have been Sardanapalus, you have been Vincent de Paul\u2014it makes no difference. That is the truth. Then live your life, above all things. Make use of your I while you have it. In truth, Bishop, I tell you that I have a philosophy of my own, and I have my philosophers. I don\u2019t let myself be taken in with that nonsense. Of course, there must be something for those who are down,\u2014for the barefooted beggars, knife-grinders, and miserable wretches. Legends, chim\u00e6ras, the soul, immortality, paradise, the stars, are provided for them to swallow. They gobble it down. They spread it on their dry bread. He who has nothing else has the good God. That is the least he can have. I oppose no objection to that; but I reserve Monsieur Naigeon for myself. The good God is good for the populace.\u201d\nThe Bishop clapped his hands.\n\u201cThat\u2019s talking!\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cWhat an excellent and really marvellous thing is this materialism! Not every one who wants it can have it. Ah! when one does have it, one is no longer a dupe, one does not stupidly allow one\u2019s self to be exiled like Cato, nor stoned like Stephen, nor burned alive like Humphreyne d\u2019Arc. Those who have succeeded in procuring this admirable materialism have the joy of feeling themselves irresponsible, and of thinking that they can devour everything without uneasiness,\u2014places, sinecures, dignities, power, whether well or ill acquired, lucrative recantations, useful treacheries, savory capitulations of conscience,\u2014and that they shall enter the tomb with their digestion accomplished. How agreeable that is! I do not say that with reference to you, senator. Nevertheless, it is impossible for me to refrain from congratulating you. You great lords have, so you say, a philosophy of your own, and for yourselves, which is exquisite, refined, accessible to the rich alone, good for all sauces, and which seasons the voluptuousness of life admirably. This philosophy has been extracted from the depths, and unearthed by special seekers. But you are good-natured princes, and you do not think it a bad thing that belief in the good God should constitute the philosophy of the people, very much as the goose stuffed with chestnuts is the truffled turkey of the poor.\u201d\nCHAPTER IX\u2014THE BROTHER AS DEPICTED BY THE SISTER \nIn order to furnish an idea of the private establishment of the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014, and of the manner in which those two sainted women subordinated their actions, their thoughts, their feminine instincts even, which are easily alarmed, to the habits and purposes of the Bishop, without his even taking the trouble of speaking in order to explain them, we cannot do better than transcribe in this place a letter from Mademoiselle Baptistine to Madame the Vicomtess de Boischevron, the friend of her childhood. This letter is in our possession.\nD\u2014\u2014, Dec. 16, 18\u2014.\nMY GOOD MADAM: Not a day passes without our speaking of you. It is our established custom; but there is another reason besides. Just imagine, while washing and dusting the ceilings and walls, Madam Magloire has made some discoveries; now our two chambers hung with antique paper whitewashed over, would not discredit a ch\u00e2teau in the style of yours. Madam Magloire has pulled off all the paper. There were things beneath. My drawing-room, which contains no furniture, and which we use for spreading out the linen after washing, is fifteen feet in height, eighteen square, with a ceiling which was formerly painted and gilded, and with beams, as in yours. This was covered with a cloth while this was the hospital. And the woodwork was of the era of our grandmothers. But my room is the one you ought to see. Madam Magloire has discovered, under at least ten thicknesses of paper pasted on top, some paintings, which without being good are very tolerable. The subject is Telemachus being knighted by Minerva in some gardens, the name of which escapes me. In short, where the Roman ladies repaired on one single night. What shall I say to you? I have Romans, and Roman ladies [here occurs an illegible word], and the whole train. Madam Magloire has cleaned it all off; this summer she is going to have some small injuries repaired, and the whole revarnished, and my chamber will be a regular museum. She has also found in a corner of the attic two wooden pier-tables of ancient fashion. They asked us two crowns of six francs each to regild them, but it is much better to give the money to the poor; and they are very ugly besides, and I should much prefer a round table of mahogany.\nI am always very happy. My brother is so good. He gives all he has to the poor and sick. We are very much cramped. The country is trying in the winter, and we really must do something for those who are in need. We are almost comfortably lighted and warmed. You see that these are great treats.\nMy brother has ways of his own. When he talks, he says that a bishop ought to be so. Just imagine! the door of our house is never fastened. Whoever chooses to enter finds himself at once in my brother\u2019s room. He fears nothing, even at night. That is his sort of bravery, he says.\nHe does not wish me or Madame Magloire feel any fear for him. He exposes himself to all sorts of dangers, and he does not like to have us even seem to notice it. One must know how to understand him.\nHe goes out in the rain, he walks in the water, he travels in winter. He fears neither suspicious roads nor dangerous encounters, nor night.\nLast year he went quite alone into a country of robbers. He would not take us. He was absent for a fortnight. On his return nothing had happened to him; he was thought to be dead, but was perfectly well, and said, \u201cThis is the way I have been robbed!\u201d And then he opened a trunk full of jewels, all the jewels of the cathedral of Embrun, which the thieves had given him.\nWhen he returned on that occasion, I could not refrain from scolding him a little, taking care, however, not to speak except when the carriage was making a noise, so that no one might hear me.\nAt first I used to say to myself, \u201cThere are no dangers which will stop him; he is terrible.\u201d Now I have ended by getting used to it. I make a sign to Madam Magloire that she is not to oppose him. He risks himself as he sees fit. I carry off Madam Magloire, I enter my chamber, I pray for him and fall asleep. I am at ease, because I know that if anything were to happen to him, it would be the end of me. I should go to the good God with my brother and my bishop. It has cost Madam Magloire more trouble than it did me to accustom herself to what she terms his imprudences. But now the habit has been acquired. We pray together, we tremble together, and we fall asleep. If the devil were to enter this house, he would be allowed to do so. After all, what is there for us to fear in this house? There is always some one with us who is stronger than we. The devil may pass through it, but the good God dwells here.\nThis suffices me. My brother has no longer any need of saying a word to me. I understand him without his speaking, and we abandon ourselves to the care of Providence. That is the way one has to do with a man who possesses grandeur of soul.\nI have interrogated my brother with regard to the information which you desire on the subject of the Faux family. You are aware that he knows everything, and that he has memories, because he is still a very good royalist. They really are a very ancient Norman family of the generalship of Caen. Five hundred years ago there was a Raoul de Faux, a Humphrey de Faux, and a Thomas de Faux, who were gentlemen, and one of whom was a seigneur de Rochefort. The last was Guy-\u00c9tienne-Alexandre, and was commander of a regiment, and something in the light horse of Bretagne. His daughter, Marie-Louise, married Adrien-Charles de Gramont, son of the Duke Louis de Gramont, peer of France, colonel of the French guards, and lieutenant-general of the army. It is written Faux, Fauq, and Faoucq.\nGood Madame, recommend us to the prayers of your sainted relative, Monsieur the Cardinal. As for your dear Sylvanie, she has done well in not wasting the few moments which she passes with you in writing to me. She is well, works as you would wish, and loves me.\nThat is all that I desire. The souvenir which she sent through you reached me safely, and it makes me very happy. My health is not so very bad, and yet I grow thinner every day. Farewell; my paper is at an end, and this forces me to leave you. A thousand good wishes.\nBAPTISTINE.\nP.S. Your grand nephew is charming. Do you know that he will soon be five years old? Yesterday he saw some one riding by on horseback who had on knee-caps, and he said, \u201cWhat has he got on his knees?\u201d He is a charming child! His little brother is dragging an old broom about the room, like a carriage, and saying, \u201cHu!\u201d\nAs will be perceived from this letter, these two women understood how to mould themselves to the Bishop\u2019s ways with that special feminine genius which comprehends the man better than he comprehends himself. The Bishop of D\u2014\u2014, in spite of the gentle and candid air which never deserted him, sometimes did things that were grand, bold, and magnificent, without seeming to have even a suspicion of the fact. They trembled, but they let him alone. Sometimes Madame Magloire essayed a remonstrance in advance, but never at the time, nor afterwards. They never interfered with him by so much as a word or sign, in any action once entered upon. At certain moments, without his having occasion to mention it, when he was not even conscious of it himself in all probability, so perfect was his simplicity, they vaguely felt that he was acting as a bishop; then they were nothing more than two shadows in the house. They served him passively; and if obedience consisted in disappearing, they disappeared. They understood, with an admirable delicacy of instinct, that certain cares may be put under constraint. Thus, even when believing him to be in peril, they understood, I will not say his thought, but his nature, to such a degree that they no longer watched over him. They confided him to God.\nMoreover, Baptistine said, as we have just read, that her brother\u2019s end would prove her own. Madame Magloire did not say this, but she knew it.\nCHAPTER X\u2014THE BISHOP IN THE PRESENCE OF AN UNKNOWN LIGHT \nAt an epoch a little later than the date of the letter cited in the preceding pages, he did a thing which, if the whole town was to be believed, was even more hazardous than his trip across the mountains infested with bandits.\nIn the country near D\u2014\u2014 a man lived quite alone. This man, we will state at once, was a former member of the Convention. His name was G\u2014\u2014 Member of the Convention, G\u2014\u2014 was mentioned with a sort of horror in the little world of D\u2014\u2014 A member of the Convention\u2014can you imagine such a thing? That existed from the time when people called each other thou, and when they said \u201ccitizen.\u201d This man was almost a monster. He had not voted for the death of the king, but almost. He was a quasi-regicide. He had been a terrible man. How did it happen that such a man had not been brought before a provost\u2019s court, on the return of the legitimate princes? They need not have cut off his head, if you please; clemency must be exercised, agreed; but a good banishment for life. An example, in short, etc. Besides, he was an atheist, like all the rest of those people. Gossip of the geese about the vulture.\nWas G\u2014\u2014 a vulture after all? Yes; if he were to be judged by the element of ferocity in this solitude of his. As he had not voted for the death of the king, he had not been included in the decrees of exile, and had been able to remain in France.\nHe dwelt at a distance of three-quarters of an hour from the city, far from any hamlet, far from any road, in some hidden turn of a very wild valley, no one knew exactly where. He had there, it was said, a sort of field, a hole, a lair. There were no neighbors, not even passers-by. Since he had dwelt in that valley, the path which led thither had disappeared under a growth of grass. The locality was spoken of as though it had been the dwelling of a hangman.\nNevertheless, the Bishop meditated on the subject, and from time to time he gazed at the horizon at a point where a clump of trees marked the valley of the former member of the Convention, and he said, \u201cThere is a soul yonder which is lonely.\u201d\nAnd he added, deep in his own mind, \u201cI owe him a visit.\u201d\nBut, let us avow it, this idea, which seemed natural at the first blush, appeared to him after a moment\u2019s reflection, as strange, impossible, and almost repulsive. For, at bottom, he shared the general impression, and the old member of the Convention inspired him, without his being clearly conscious of the fact himself, with that sentiment which borders on hate, and which is so well expressed by the word estrangement.\nStill, should the scab of the sheep cause the shepherd to recoil? No. But what a sheep!\nThe good Bishop was perplexed. Sometimes he set out in that direction; then he returned.\nFinally, the rumor one day spread through the town that a sort of young shepherd, who served the member of the Convention in his hovel, had come in quest of a doctor; that the old wretch was dying, that paralysis was gaining on him, and that he would not live over night.\u2014\u201cThank God!\u201d some added.\nThe Bishop took his staff, put on his cloak, on account of his too threadbare cassock, as we have mentioned, and because of the evening breeze which was sure to rise soon, and set out.\nThe sun was setting, and had almost touched the horizon when the Bishop arrived at the excommunicated spot. With a certain beating of the heart, he recognized the fact that he was near the lair. He strode over a ditch, leaped a hedge, made his way through a fence of dead boughs, entered a neglected paddock, took a few steps with a good deal of boldness, and suddenly, at the extremity of the waste land, and behind lofty brambles, he caught sight of the cavern.\nIt was a very low hut, poor, small, and clean, with a vine nailed against the outside.\nNear the door, in an old wheel-chair, the armchair of the peasants, there was a white-haired man, smiling at the sun.\nNear the seated man stood a young boy, the shepherd lad. He was offering the old man a jar of milk.\nWhile the Bishop was watching him, the old man spoke: \u201cThank you,\u201d he said, \u201cI need nothing.\u201d And his smile quitted the sun to rest upon the child.\nThe Bishop stepped forward. At the sound which he made in walking, the old man turned his head, and his face expressed the sum total of the surprise which a man can still feel after a long life.\n\u201cThis is the first time since I have been here,\u201d said he, \u201cthat any one has entered here. Who are you, sir?\u201d\nThe Bishop answered:\u2014\n\u201cMy name is Bienvenu Alton.\u201d\n\u201cBienvenu Alton? I have heard that name. Are you the man whom the people call Monseigneur Welcome?\u201d\n\u201cI am.\u201d\nThe old man resumed with a half-smile \u201cIn that case, you are my bishop?\u201d\n\u201cSomething of that sort.\u201d\n\u201cEnter, sir.\u201d\nThe member of the Convention extended his hand to the Bishop, but the Bishop did not take it. The Bishop confined himself to the remark:\u2014 \u201cI am pleased to see that I have been misinformed. You certainly do not seem to me to be ill.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d replied the old man, \u201cI am going to recover.\u201d\nHe paused, and then said:\u2014\n\u201cI shall die three hours hence.\u201d\nThen he continued:\u2014\n\u201cI am something of a doctor; I know in what fashion the last hour draws on. Yesterday, only my feet were cold; to-day, the chill has ascended to my knees; now I feel it mounting to my waist; when it reaches the heart, I shall stop. The sun is beautiful, is it not? I had myself wheeled out here to take a last look at things. You can talk to me; it does not fatigue me. You have done well to come and look at a man who is on the point of death. It is well that there should be witnesses at that moment. One has one\u2019s caprices; I should have liked to last until the dawn, but I know that I shall hardly live three hours. It will be night then. What does it matter, after all? Dying is a simple affair. One has no need of the light for that. So be it. I shall die by starlight.\u201d\nThe old man turned to the shepherd lad:\u2014 \u201cGo to thy bed; thou wert awake all last night; thou art tired.\u201d\nThe child entered the hut.\nThe old man followed him with his eyes, and added, as though speaking to himself:\u2014 \u201cI shall die while he sleeps. The two slumbers may be good neighbors.\u201d\nThe Bishop was not touched as it seems that he should have been. He did not think he discerned God in this manner of dying; let us say the whole, for these petty contradictions of great hearts must be indicated like the rest: he, who on occasion, was so fond of laughing at \u201cHis Grace,\u201d was rather shocked at not being addressed as Monseigneur, and he was almost tempted to retort \u201ccitizen.\u201d He was assailed by a fancy for peevish familiarity, common enough to doctors and priests, but which was not habitual with him. This man, after all, this member of the Convention, this representative of the people, had been one of the powerful ones of the earth; for the first time in his life, probably, the Bishop felt in a mood to be severe.\nMeanwhile, the member of the Convention had been surveying him with a modest cordiality, in which one could have distinguished, possibly, that humility which is so fitting when one is on the verge of returning to dust.\nThe Bishop, on his side, although he generally restrained his curiosity, which, in his opinion, bordered on a fault, could not refrain from examining the member of the Convention with an attention which, as it did not have its course in sympathy, would have served his conscience as a matter of reproach, in connection with any other man. A member of the Convention produced on him somewhat the effect of being outside the pale of the law, even of the law of charity. G\u2014\u2014, calm, his body almost upright, his voice vibrating, was one of those octogenarians who form the subject of astonishment to the physiologist. The Revolution had many of these men, proportioned to the epoch. In this old man one was conscious of a man put to the proof. Though so near to his end, he preserved all the gestures of health. In his clear glance, in his firm tone, in the robust movement of his shoulders, there was something calculated to disconcert death. Azrael, the Mohammedan angel of the sepulchre, would have turned back, and thought that he had mistaken the door. G\u2014\u2014 seemed to be dying because he willed it so. There was freedom in his agony. His legs alone were motionless. It was there that the shadows held him fast. His feet were cold and dead, but his head survived with all the power of life, and seemed full of light. G\u2014\u2014, at this solemn moment, resembled the king in that tale of the Orient who was flesh above and marble below.\nThere was a stone there. The Bishop sat down. The exordium was abrupt.\n\u201cI congratulate you,\u201d said he, in the tone which one uses for a reprimand. \u201cYou did not vote for the death of the king, after all.\u201d\nThe old member of the Convention did not appear to notice the bitter meaning underlying the words \u201cafter all.\u201d He replied. The smile had quite disappeared from his face.\n\u201cDo not congratulate me too much, sir. I did vote for the death of the tyrant.\u201d\nIt was the tone of austerity answering the tone of severity.\n\u201cWhat do you mean to say?\u201d resumed the Bishop.\n\u201cI mean to say that man has a tyrant,\u2014ignorance. I voted for the death of that tyrant. That tyrant engendered royalty, which is authority falsely understood, while science is authority rightly understood. Man should be governed only by science.\u201d\n\u201cAnd conscience,\u201d added the Bishop.\n\u201cIt is the same thing. Conscience is the quantity of innate science which we have within us.\u201d\nMonseigneur Bienvenu listened in some astonishment to this language, which was very new to him.\nThe member of the Convention resumed:\u2014 \u201cSo far as Louis XVI. was concerned, I said \u2018no.\u2019 I did not think that I had the right to kill a man; but I felt it my duty to exterminate evil. I voted the end of the tyrant, that is to say, the end of prostitution for woman, the end of slavery for man, the end of night for the child. In voting for the Republic, I voted for that. I voted for fraternity, concord, the dawn. I have aided in the overthrow of prejudices and errors. The crumbling away of prejudices and errors causes light. We have caused the fall of the old world, and the old world, that vase of miseries, has become, through its upsetting upon the human race, an urn of joy.\u201d\n\u201cMixed joy,\u201d said the Bishop.\n\u201cYou may say troubled joy, and to-day, after that fatal return of the past, which is called 1814, joy which has disappeared! Alas! The work was incomplete, I admit: we demolished the ancient regime in deeds; we were not able to suppress it entirely in ideas. To destroy abuses is not sufficient; customs must be modified. The mill is there no longer; the wind is still there.\u201d\n\u201cYou have demolished. It may be of use to demolish, but I distrust a demolition complicated with wrath.\u201d\n\u201cRight has its wrath, Bishop; and the wrath of right is an element of progress. In any case, and in spite of whatever may be said, the French Revolution is the most important step of the human race since the advent of Christ. Incomplete, it may be, but sublime. It set free all the unknown social quantities; it softened spirits, it calmed, appeased, enlightened; it caused the waves of civilization to flow over the earth. It was a good thing. The French Revolution is the consecration of humanity.\u201d\nThe Bishop could not refrain from murmuring:\u2014 \u201cYes? \u201993!\u201d\nThe member of the Convention straightened himself up in his chair with an almost lugubrious solemnity, and exclaimed, so far as a dying man is capable of exclamation:\u2014 \u201cAh, there you go; \u201993! I was expecting that word. A cloud had been forming for the space of fifteen hundred years; at the end of fifteen hundred years it burst. You are putting the thunderbolt on its trial.\u201d\nThe Bishop felt, without, perhaps, confessing it, that something within him had suffered extinction. Nevertheless, he put a good face on the matter. He replied:\u2014 \u201cThe judge speaks in the name of justice; the priest speaks in the name of pity, which is nothing but a more lofty justice. A thunderbolt should commit no error.\u201d And he added, regarding the member of the Convention steadily the while, \u201cLouis XVII.?\u201d\nThe conventionary stretched forth his hand and grasped the Bishop\u2019s arm.\n\u201cLouis XVII.! let us see. For whom do you mourn? is it for the innocent child? very good; in that case I mourn with you. Is it for the royal child? I demand time for reflection. To me, the brother of Cartouche, an innocent child who was hung up by the armpits in the Place de Greve, until death ensued, for the sole crime of having been the brother of Cartouche, is no less painful than the grandson of Louis XV., an innocent child, martyred in the tower of the Temple, for the sole crime of having been grandson of Louis XV.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201cI like not this conjunction of names.\u201d\n\u201cCartouche? Louis XV.? To which of the two do you object?\u201d\nA momentary silence ensued. The Bishop almost regretted having come, and yet he felt vaguely and strangely shaken.\nThe conventionary resumed:\u2014\n\u201cAh, Monsieur Priest, you love not the crudities of the true. Christ loved them. He seized a rod and cleared out the Temple. His scourge, full of lightnings, was a harsh speaker of truths. When he cried, \u2018Sinite parvulos,\u2019 he made no distinction between the little children. It would not have embarrassed him to bring together the Dauphin of Barabbas and the Dauphin of Herod. Innocence, Monsieur, is its own crown. Innocence has no need to be a highness. It is as august in rags as in fleurs de lys.\u201d\n\u201cThat is true,\u201d said the Bishop in a low voice.\n\u201cI persist,\u201d continued the conventionary G\u2014\u2014 \u201cYou have mentioned Louis XVII. to me. Let us come to an understanding. Shall we weep for all the innocent, all martyrs, all children, the lowly as well as the exalted? I agree to that. But in that case, as I have told you, we must go back further than \u201993, and our tears must begin before Louis XVII. I will weep with you over the children of kings, provided that you will weep with me over the children of the people.\u201d\n\u201cI weep for all,\u201d said the Bishop.\n\u201cEqually!\u201d exclaimed conventionary G\u2014\u2014; \u201cand if the balance must incline, let it be on the side of the people. They have been suffering longer.\u201d\nAnother silence ensued. The conventionary was the first to break it. He raised himself on one elbow, took a bit of his cheek between his thumb and his forefinger, as one does mechanically when one interrogates and judges, and appealed to the Bishop with a gaze full of all the forces of the death agony. It was almost an explosion.\n\u201cYes, sir, the people have been suffering a long while. And hold! that is not all, either; why have you just questioned me and talked to me about Louis XVII.? I know you not. Ever since I have been in these parts I have dwelt in this enclosure alone, never setting foot outside, and seeing no one but that child who helps me. Your name has reached me in a confused manner, it is true, and very badly pronounced, I must admit; but that signifies nothing: clever men have so many ways of imposing on that honest goodman, the people. By the way, I did not hear the sound of your carriage; you have left it yonder, behind the coppice at the fork of the roads, no doubt. I do not know you, I tell you. You have told me that you are the Bishop; but that affords me no information as to your moral personality. In short, I repeat my question. Who are you? You are a bishop; that is to say, a prince of the church, one of those gilded men with heraldic bearings and revenues, who have vast prebends,\u2014the bishopric of D\u2014\u2014 fifteen thousand francs settled income, ten thousand in perquisites; total, twenty-five thousand francs,\u2014who have kitchens, who have liveries, who make good cheer, who eat moor-hens on Friday, who strut about, a lackey before, a lackey behind, in a gala coach, and who have palaces, and who roll in their carriages in the name of Jesus Christ who went barefoot! You are a prelate,\u2014revenues, palace, horses, servants, good table, all the sensualities of life; you have this like the rest, and like the rest, you enjoy it; it is well; but this says either too much or too little; this does not enlighten me upon the intrinsic and essential value of the man who comes with the probable intention of bringing wisdom to me. To whom do I speak? Who are you?\u201d\nThe Bishop hung his head and replied, \u201cVermis sum\u2014I am a worm.\u201d\n\u201cA worm of the earth in a carriage?\u201d growled the conventionary.\nIt was the conventionary\u2019s turn to be arrogant, and the Bishop\u2019s to be humble.\nThe Bishop resumed mildly:\u2014\n\u201cSo be it, sir. But explain to me how my carriage, which is a few paces off behind the trees yonder, how my good table and the moor-hens which I eat on Friday, how my twenty-five thousand francs income, how my palace and my lackeys prove that clemency is not a duty, and that \u201993 was not inexorable.\u201d\nThe conventionary passed his hand across his brow, as though to sweep away a cloud.\n\u201cBefore replying to you,\u201d he said, \u201cI beseech you to pardon me. I have just committed a wrong, sir. You are at my house, you are my guest, I owe you courtesy. You discuss my ideas, and it becomes me to confine myself to combating your arguments. Your riches and your pleasures are advantages which I hold over you in the debate; but good taste dictates that I shall not make use of them. I promise you to make no use of them in the future.\u201d\n\u201cI thank you,\u201d said the Bishop.\nG\u2014\u2014 resumed.\n\u201cLet us return to the explanation which you have asked of me. Where were we? What were you saying to me? That \u201993 was inexorable?\u201d\n\u201cInexorable; yes,\u201d said the Bishop. \u201cWhat think you of Marat clapping his hands at the guillotine?\u201d\n\u201cWhat think you of Bossuet chanting the Te Deum over the dragonnades?\u201d\nThe retort was a harsh one, but it attained its mark with the directness of a point of steel. The Bishop quivered under it; no reply occurred to him; but he was offended by this mode of alluding to Bossuet. The best of minds will have their fetiches, and they sometimes feel vaguely wounded by the want of respect of logic.\nThe conventionary began to pant; the asthma of the agony which is mingled with the last breaths interrupted his voice; still, there was a perfect lucidity of soul in his eyes. He went on:\u2014 \u201cLet me say a few words more in this and that direction; I am willing. Apart from the Revolution, which, taken as a whole, is an immense human affirmation, \u201993 is, alas! a rejoinder. You think it inexorable, sir; but what of the whole monarchy, sir? Carrier is a bandit; but what name do you give to Montrevel? Fouquier-Tainville is a rascal; but what is your opinion as to Lamoignon-B\u00e2ville? Maillard is terrible; but Saulx-Tavannes, if you please? Duch\u00eane senior is ferocious; but what epithet will you allow me for the elder Letellier? Jourdan-Coupe-Tet\u00ea is a monster; but not so great a one as M. the Marquis de Louvois. Sir, sir, I am sorry for Marie Antoinette, archduchess and queen; but I am also sorry for that poor Huguenot woman, who, in 1685, under Louis the Great, sir, while with a nursing infant, was bound, naked to the waist, to a stake, and the child kept at a distance; her breast swelled with milk and her heart with anguish; the little one, hungry and pale, beheld that breast and cried and agonized; the executioner said to the woman, a mother and a nurse, \u2018Abjure!\u2019 giving her her choice between the death of her infant and the death of her conscience. What say you to that torture of Tantalus as applied to a mother? Bear this well in mind sir: the French Revolution had its reasons for existence; its wrath will be absolved by the future; its result is the world made better. From its most terrible blows there comes forth a caress for the human race. I abridge, I stop, I have too much the advantage; moreover, I am dying.\u201d\nAnd ceasing to gaze at the Bishop, the conventionary concluded his thoughts in these tranquil words:\u2014 \u201cYes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this fact is recognized,\u2014that the human race has been treated harshly, but that it has progressed.\u201d\nThe conventionary doubted not that he had successively conquered all the inmost intrenchments of the Bishop. One remained, however, and from this intrenchment, the last resource of Monseigneur Bienvenu\u2019s resistance, came forth this reply, wherein appeared nearly all the harshness of the beginning:\u2014 \u201cProgress should believe in God. Good cannot have an impious servitor. He who is an atheist is but a bad leader for the human race.\u201d\nThe former representative of the people made no reply. He was seized with a fit of trembling. He looked towards heaven, and in his glance a tear gathered slowly. When the eyelid was full, the tear trickled down his livid cheek, and he said, almost in a stammer, quite low, and to himself, while his eyes were plunged in the depths:\u2014 \u201cO thou! O ideal! Thou alone existest!\u201d\nThe Bishop experienced an indescribable shock.\nAfter a pause, the old man raised a finger heavenward and said:\u2014 \u201cThe infinite is. He is there. If the infinite had no person, person would be without limit; it would not be infinite; in other words, it would not exist. There is, then, an I. That I of the infinite is God.\u201d\nThe dying man had pronounced these last words in a loud voice, and with the shiver of ecstasy, as though he beheld some one. When he had spoken, his eyes closed. The effort had exhausted him. It was evident that he had just lived through in a moment the few hours which had been left to him. That which he had said brought him nearer to him who is in death. The supreme moment was approaching.\nThe Bishop understood this; time pressed; it was as a priest that he had come: from extreme coldness he had passed by degrees to extreme emotion; he gazed at those closed eyes, he took that wrinkled, aged and ice-cold hand in his, and bent over the dying man.\n\u201cThis hour is the hour of God. Do you not think that it would be regrettable if we had met in vain?\u201d\nThe conventionary opened his eyes again. A gravity mingled with gloom was imprinted on his countenance.\n\u201cBishop,\u201d said he, with a slowness which probably arose more from his dignity of soul than from the failing of his strength, \u201cI have passed my life in meditation, study, and contemplation. I was sixty years of age when my country called me and commanded me to concern myself with its affairs. I obeyed. Abuses existed, I combated them; tyrannies existed, I destroyed them; rights and principles existed, I proclaimed and confessed them. Our territory was invaded, I defended it; France was menaced, I offered my breast. I was not rich; I am poor. I have been one of the masters of the state; the vaults of the treasury were encumbered with specie to such a degree that we were forced to shore up the walls, which were on the point of bursting beneath the weight of gold and silver; I dined in Dead Tree Street, at twenty-two sous. I have succored the oppressed, I have comforted the suffering. I tore the cloth from the altar, it is true; but it was to bind up the wounds of my country. I have always upheld the march forward of the human race, forward towards the light, and I have sometimes resisted progress without pity. I have, when the occasion offered, protected my own adversaries, men of your profession. And there is at Peteghem, in Flanders, at the very spot where the Merovingian kings had their summer palace, a convent of Urbanists, the Abbey of Sainte Claire en Beaulieu, which I saved in 1793. I have done my duty according to my powers, and all the good that I was able. After which, I was hunted down, pursued, persecuted, blackened, jeered at, scorned, cursed, proscribed. For many years past, I with my white hair have been conscious that many people think they have the right to despise me; to the poor ignorant masses I present the visage of one damned. And I accept this isolation of hatred, without hating any one myself. Now I am eighty-six years old; I am on the point of death. What is it that you have come to ask of me?\u201d\n\u201cYour blessing,\u201d said the Bishop.\nAnd he knelt down.\nWhen the Bishop raised his head again, the face of the conventionary had become august. He had just expired.\nThe Bishop returned home, deeply absorbed in thoughts which cannot be known to us. He passed the whole night in prayer. On the following morning some bold and curious persons attempted to speak to him about member of the Convention G\u2014\u2014; he contented himself with pointing heavenward.\nFrom that moment he redoubled his tenderness and brotherly feeling towards all children and sufferers.\nAny allusion to \u201cthat old wretch of a G\u2014\u2014\u201d caused him to fall into a singular preoccupation. No one could say that the passage of that soul before his, and the reflection of that grand conscience upon his, did not count for something in his approach to perfection.\nThis \u201cpastoral visit\u201d naturally furnished an occasion for a murmur of comment in all the little local coteries.\n\u201cWas the bedside of such a dying man as that the proper place for a bishop? There was evidently no conversion to be expected. All those revolutionists are backsliders. Then why go there? What was there to be seen there? He must have been very curious indeed to see a soul carried off by the devil.\u201d\nOne day a dowager of the impertinent variety who thinks herself spiritual, addressed this sally to him, \u201cMonseigneur, people are inquiring when Your Greatness will receive the red cap!\u201d\u2014\u201cOh! oh! that\u2019s a coarse color,\u201d replied the Bishop. \u201cIt is lucky that those who despise it in a cap revere it in a hat.\u201d\nCHAPTER XI\u2014A RESTRICTION\nWe should incur a great risk of deceiving ourselves, were we to conclude from this that Monseigneur Welcome was \u201ca philosophical bishop,\u201d or a \u201cpatriotic cur\u00e9.\u201d His meeting, which may almost be designated as his union, with conventionary G\u2014\u2014, left behind it in his mind a sort of astonishment, which rendered him still more gentle. That is all.\nAlthough Monseigneur Bienvenu was far from being a politician, this is, perhaps, the place to indicate very briefly what his attitude was in the events of that epoch, supposing that Monseigneur Bienvenu ever dreamed of having an attitude.\nLet us, then, go back a few years.\nSome time after the elevation of M. Alton to the episcopate, the Emperor had made him a baron of the Empire, in company with many other bishops. The arrest of the Pope took place, as every one knows, on the night of the 5th to the 6th of July, 1809; on this occasion, M. Alton was summoned by Napoleon to the synod of the bishops of France and Italy convened at Paris. This synod was held at Notre-Dame, and assembled for the first time on the 15th of June, 1811, under the presidency of Cardinal Fesch. M. Alton was one of the ninety-five bishops who attended it. But he was present only at one sitting and at three or four private conferences. Bishop of a mountain diocese, living so very close to nature, in rusticity and deprivation, it appeared that he imported among these eminent personages, ideas which altered the temperature of the assembly. He very soon returned to D\u2014\u2014 He was interrogated as to this speedy return, and he replied: \u201cI embarrassed them. The outside air penetrated to them through me. I produced on them the effect of an open door.\u201d\nOn another occasion he said, \u201cWhat would you have? Those gentlemen are princes. I am only a poor peasant bishop.\u201d\nThe fact is that he displeased them. Among other strange things, it is said that he chanced to remark one evening, when he found himself at the house of one of his most notable colleagues: \u201cWhat beautiful clocks! What beautiful carpets! What beautiful liveries! They must be a great trouble. I would not have all those superfluities, crying incessantly in my ears: \u2018There are people who are hungry! There are people who are cold! There are poor people! There are poor people!\u2019\u201d\nLet us remark, by the way, that the hatred of luxury is not an intelligent hatred. This hatred would involve the hatred of the arts. Nevertheless, in churchmen, luxury is wrong, except in connection with representations and ceremonies. It seems to reveal habits which have very little that is charitable about them. An opulent priest is a contradiction. The priest must keep close to the poor. Now, can one come in contact incessantly night and day with all this distress, all these misfortunes, and this poverty, without having about one\u2019s own person a little of that misery, like the dust of labor? Is it possible to imagine a man near a brazier who is not warm? Can one imagine a workman who is working near a furnace, and who has neither a singed hair, nor blackened nails, nor a drop of sweat, nor a speck of ashes on his face? The first proof of charity in the priest, in the bishop especially, is poverty.\nThis is, no doubt, what the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 thought.\nIt must not be supposed, however, that he shared what we call the \u201cideas of the century\u201d on certain delicate points. He took very little part in the theological quarrels of the moment, and maintained silence on questions in which Church and State were implicated; but if he had been strongly pressed, it seems that he would have been found to be an ultramontane rather than a gallican. Since we are making a portrait, and since we do not wish to conceal anything, we are forced to add that he was glacial towards Napoleon in his decline. Beginning with 1813, he gave in his adherence to or applauded all hostile manifestations. He refused to see him, as he passed through on his return from the island of Elba, and he abstained from ordering public prayers for the Emperor in his diocese during the Hundred Days.\nBesides his sister, Mademoiselle Baptistine, he had two brothers, one a general, the other a prefect. He wrote to both with tolerable frequency. He was harsh for a time towards the former, because, holding a command in Provence at the epoch of the disembarkation at Cannes, the general had put himself at the head of twelve hundred men and had pursued the Emperor as though the latter had been a person whom one is desirous of allowing to escape. His correspondence with the other brother, the ex-prefect, a fine, worthy man who lived in retirement at Paris, Rue Cassette, remained more affectionate.\nThus Monseigneur Bienvenu also had his hour of party spirit, his hour of bitterness, his cloud. The shadow of the passions of the moment traversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things. Certainly, such a man would have done well not to entertain any political opinions. Let there be no mistake as to our meaning: we are not confounding what is called \u201cpolitical opinions\u201d with the grand aspiration for progress, with the sublime faith, patriotic, democratic, humane, which in our day should be the very foundation of every generous intellect. Without going deeply into questions which are only indirectly connected with the subject of this book, we will simply say this: It would have been well if Monseigneur Bienvenu had not been a Royalist, and if his glance had never been, for a single instant, turned away from that serene contemplation in which is distinctly discernible, above the fictions and the hatreds of this world, above the stormy vicissitudes of human things, the beaming of those three pure radiances, truth, justice, and charity.\nWhile admitting that it was not for a political office that God created Monseigneur Welcome, we should have understood and admired his protest in the name of right and liberty, his proud opposition, his just but perilous resistance to the all-powerful Napoleon. But that which pleases us in people who are rising pleases us less in the case of people who are falling. We only love the fray so long as there is danger, and in any case, the combatants of the first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators of the last. He who has not been a stubborn accuser in prosperity should hold his peace in the face of ruin. The denunciator of success is the only legitimate executioner of the fall. As for us, when Providence intervenes and strikes, we let it work. 1812 commenced to disarm us. In 1813 the cowardly breach of silence of that taciturn legislative body, emboldened by catastrophe, possessed only traits which aroused indignation. And it was a crime to applaud, in 1814, in the presence of those marshals who betrayed; in the presence of that senate which passed from one dunghill to another, insulting after having deified; in the presence of that idolatry which was loosing its footing and spitting on its idol,\u2014it was a duty to turn aside the head. In 1815, when the supreme disasters filled the air, when France was seized with a shiver at their sinister approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable in it, and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014, ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the august and touching features presented by the embrace of a great nation and a great man on the brink of the abyss.\nWith this exception, he was in all things just, true, equitable, intelligent, humble and dignified, beneficent and kindly, which is only another sort of benevolence. He was a priest, a sage, and a man. It must be admitted, that even in the political views with which we have just reproached him, and which we are disposed to judge almost with severity, he was tolerant and easy, more so, perhaps, than we who are speaking here. The porter of the town-hall had been placed there by the Emperor. He was an old non-commissioned officer of the old guard, a member of the Legion of Honor at Austerlitz, as much of a Bonapartist as the eagle. This poor fellow occasionally let slip inconsiderate remarks, which the law then stigmatized as seditious speeches. After the imperial profile disappeared from the Legion of Honor, he never dressed himself in his regimentals, as he said, so that he should not be obliged to wear his cross. He had himself devoutly removed the imperial effigy from the cross which Napoleon had given him; this made a hole, and he would not put anything in its place. \u201cI will die,\u201d he said, \u201crather than wear the three frogs upon my heart!\u201d He liked to scoff aloud at Louis XVIII. \u201cThe gouty old creature in English gaiters!\u201d he said; \u201clet him take himself off to Prussia with that queue of his.\u201d He was happy to combine in the same imprecation the two things which he most detested, Prussia and England. He did it so often that he lost his place. There he was, turned out of the house, with his wife and children, and without bread. The Bishop sent for him, reproved him gently, and appointed him beadle in the cathedral.\nIn the course of nine years Monseigneur Bienvenu had, by dint of holy deeds and gentle manners, filled the town of D\u2014\u2014with a sort of tender and filial reverence. Even his conduct towards Napoleon had been accepted and tacitly pardoned, as it were, by the people, the good and weakly flock who adored their emperor, but loved their bishop.\nCHAPTER XII\u2014THE SOLITUDE OF MONSEIGNEUR WELCOME \nA bishop is almost always surrounded by a full squadron of little abb\u00e9s, just as a general is by a covey of young officers. This is what that charming Saint Fran\u00e7ois de Sales calls somewhere \u201cles pr\u00eatres blancs-becs,\u201d callow priests. Every career has its aspirants, who form a train for those who have attained eminence in it. There is no power which has not its dependents. There is no fortune which has not its court. The seekers of the future eddy around the splendid present. Every metropolis has its staff of officials. Every bishop who possesses the least influence has about him his patrol of cherubim from the seminary, which goes the round, and maintains good order in the episcopal palace, and mounts guard over monseigneur\u2019s smile. To please a bishop is equivalent to getting one\u2019s foot in the stirrup for a sub-diaconate. It is necessary to walk one\u2019s path discreetly; the apostleship does not disdain the canonship.\nJust as there are bigwigs elsewhere, there are big mitres in the Church. These are the bishops who stand well at Court, who are rich, well endowed, skilful, accepted by the world, who know how to pray, no doubt, but who know also how to beg, who feel little scruple at making a whole diocese dance attendance in their person, who are connecting links between the sacristy and diplomacy, who are abb\u00e9s rather than priests, prelates rather than bishops. Happy those who approach them! Being persons of influence, they create a shower about them, upon the assiduous and the favored, and upon all the young men who understand the art of pleasing, of large parishes, prebends, archidiaconates, chaplaincies, and cathedral posts, while awaiting episcopal honors. As they advance themselves, they cause their satellites to progress also; it is a whole solar system on the march. Their radiance casts a gleam of purple over their suite. Their prosperity is crumbled up behind the scenes, into nice little promotions. The larger the diocese of the patron, the fatter the curacy for the favorite. And then, there is Rome. A bishop who understands how to become an archbishop, an archbishop who knows how to become a cardinal, carries you with him as conclavist; you enter a court of papal jurisdiction, you receive the pallium, and behold! you are an auditor, then a papal chamberlain, then monsignor, and from a Grace to an Eminence is only a step, and between the Eminence and the Holiness there is but the smoke of a ballot. Every skull-cap may dream of the tiara. The priest is nowadays the only man who can become a king in a regular manner; and what a king! the supreme king. Then what a nursery of aspirations is a seminary! How many blushing choristers, how many youthful abb\u00e9s bear on their heads Perrette\u2019s pot of milk! Who knows how easy it is for ambition to call itself vocation? in good faith, perchance, and deceiving itself, devotee that it is.\nMonseigneur Bienvenu, poor, humble, retiring, was not accounted among the big mitres. This was plain from the complete absence of young priests about him. We have seen that he \u201cdid not take\u201d in Paris. Not a single future dreamed of engrafting itself on this solitary old man. Not a single sprouting ambition committed the folly of putting forth its foliage in his shadow. His canons and grand-vicars were good old men, rather vulgar like himself, walled up like him in this diocese, without exit to a cardinalship, and who resembled their bishop, with this difference, that they were finished and he was completed. The impossibility of growing great under Monseigneur Bienvenu was so well understood, that no sooner had the young men whom he ordained left the seminary than they got themselves recommended to the archbishops of Aix or of Auch, and went off in a great hurry. For, in short, we repeat it, men wish to be pushed. A saint who dwells in a paroxysm of abnegation is a dangerous neighbor; he might communicate to you, by contagion, an incurable poverty, an anchylosis of the joints, which are useful in advancement, and in short, more renunciation than you desire; and this infectious virtue is avoided. Hence the isolation of Monseigneur Bienvenu. We live in the midst of a gloomy society. Success; that is the lesson which falls drop by drop from the slope of corruption.\nBe it said in passing, that success is a very hideous thing. Its false resemblance to merit deceives men. For the masses, success has almost the same profile as supremacy. Success, that Men\u00e6chmus of talent, has one dupe,\u2014history. Juvenal and Tacitus alone grumble at it. In our day, a philosophy which is almost official has entered into its service, wears the livery of success, and performs the service of its antechamber. Succeed: theory. Prosperity argues capacity. Win in the lottery, and behold! you are a clever man. He who triumphs is venerated. Be born with a silver spoon in your mouth! everything lies in that. Be lucky, and you will have all the rest; be happy, and people will think you great. Outside of five or six immense exceptions, which compose the splendor of a century, contemporary admiration is nothing but short-sightedness. Gilding is gold. It does no harm to be the first arrival by pure chance, so long as you do arrive. The common herd is an old Narcissus who adores himself, and who applauds the vulgar herd. That enormous ability by virtue of which one is Moses, \u00c6schylus, Dante, Michael Angelo, or Napoleon, the multitude awards on the spot, and by acclamation, to whomsoever attains his object, in whatsoever it may consist. Let a notary transfigure himself into a deputy: let a false Corneille compose Tiridate; let a eunuch come to possess a harem; let a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an epoch; let an apothecary invent cardboard shoe-soles for the army of the Sambre-and-Meuse, and construct for himself, out of this cardboard, sold as leather, four hundred thousand francs of income; let a pork-packer espouse usury, and cause it to bring forth seven or eight millions, of which he is the father and of which it is the mother; let a preacher become a bishop by force of his nasal drawl; let the steward of a fine family be so rich on retiring from service that he is made minister of finances,\u2014and men call that Genius, just as they call the face of Mousqueton Beauty, and the mien of Claude Majesty. With the constellations of space they confound the stars of the abyss which are made in the soft mire of the puddle by the feet of ducks.\nCHAPTER XIII\u2014WHAT HE BELIEVED\nWe are not obliged to sound the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 on the score of orthodoxy. In the presence of such a soul we feel ourselves in no mood but respect. The conscience of the just man should be accepted on his word. Moreover, certain natures being given, we admit the possible development of all beauties of human virtue in a belief that differs from our own.\nWhat did he think of this dogma, or of that mystery? These secrets of the inner tribunal of the conscience are known only to the tomb, where souls enter naked. The point on which we are certain is, that the difficulties of faith never resolved themselves into hypocrisy in his case. No decay is possible to the diamond. He believed to the extent of his powers. \u201cCredo in Patrem,\u201d he often exclaimed. Moreover, he drew from good works that amount of satisfaction which suffices to the conscience, and which whispers to a man, \u201cThou art with God!\u201d\nThe point which we consider it our duty to note is, that outside of and beyond his faith, as it were, the Bishop possessed an excess of love. It was in that quarter, quia multum amavit,\u2014because he loved much\u2014that he was regarded as vulnerable by \u201cserious men,\u201d \u201cgrave persons\u201d and \u201creasonable people\u201d; favorite locutions of our sad world where egotism takes its word of command from pedantry. What was this excess of love? It was a serene benevolence which overflowed men, as we have already pointed out, and which, on occasion, extended even to things. He lived without disdain. He was indulgent towards God\u2019s creation. Every man, even the best, has within him a thoughtless harshness which he reserves for animals. The Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 had none of that harshness, which is peculiar to many priests, nevertheless. He did not go as far as the Brahmin, but he seemed to have weighed this saying of Ecclesiastes: \u201cWho knoweth whither the soul of the animal goeth?\u201d Hideousness of aspect, deformity of instinct, troubled him not, and did not arouse his indignation. He was touched, almost softened by them. It seemed as though he went thoughtfully away to seek beyond the bounds of life which is apparent, the cause, the explanation, or the excuse for them. He seemed at times to be asking God to commute these penalties. He examined without wrath, and with the eye of a linguist who is deciphering a palimpsest, that portion of chaos which still exists in nature. This reverie sometimes caused him to utter odd sayings. One morning he was in his garden, and thought himself alone, but his sister was walking behind him, unseen by him: suddenly he paused and gazed at something on the ground; it was a large, black, hairy, frightful spider. His sister heard him say:\u2014 \u201cPoor beast! It is not its fault!\u201d\nWhy not mention these almost divinely childish sayings of kindness? Puerile they may be; but these sublime puerilities were peculiar to Saint Francis d\u2019Assisi and of Marcus Aurelius. One day he sprained his ankle in his effort to avoid stepping on an ant. Thus lived this just man. Sometimes he fell asleep in his garden, and then there was nothing more venerable possible.\nMonseigneur Bienvenu had formerly been, if the stories anent his youth, and even in regard to his manhood, were to be believed, a passionate, and, possibly, a violent man. His universal suavity was less an instinct of nature than the result of a grand conviction which had filtered into his heart through the medium of life, and had trickled there slowly, thought by thought; for, in a character, as in a rock, there may exist apertures made by drops of water. These hollows are uneffaceable; these formations are indestructible.\nIn 1815, as we think we have already said, he reached his seventy-fifth birthday, but he did not appear to be more than sixty. He was not tall; he was rather plump; and, in order to combat this tendency, he was fond of taking long strolls on foot; his step was firm, and his form was but slightly bent, a detail from which we do not pretend to draw any conclusion. Gregory XVI., at the age of eighty, held himself erect and smiling, which did not prevent him from being a bad bishop. Monseigneur Welcome had what the people term a \u201cfine head,\u201d but so amiable was he that they forgot that it was fine.\nWhen he conversed with that infantile gayety which was one of his charms, and of which we have already spoken, people felt at their ease with him, and joy seemed to radiate from his whole person. His fresh and ruddy complexion, his very white teeth, all of which he had preserved, and which were displayed by his smile, gave him that open and easy air which cause the remark to be made of a man, \u201cHe\u2019s a good fellow\u201d; and of an old man, \u201cHe is a fine man.\u201d That, it will be recalled, was the effect which he produced upon Napoleon. On the first encounter, and to one who saw him for the first time, he was nothing, in fact, but a fine man. But if one remained near him for a few hours, and beheld him in the least degree pensive, the fine man became gradually transfigured, and took on some imposing quality, I know not what; his broad and serious brow, rendered august by his white locks, became august also by virtue of meditation; majesty radiated from his goodness, though his goodness ceased not to be radiant; one experienced something of the emotion which one would feel on beholding a smiling angel slowly unfold his wings, without ceasing to smile. Respect, an unutterable respect, penetrated you by degrees and mounted to your heart, and one felt that one had before him one of those strong, thoroughly tried, and indulgent souls where thought is so grand that it can no longer be anything but gentle.\nAs we have seen, prayer, the celebration of the offices of religion, alms-giving, the consolation of the afflicted, the cultivation of a bit of land, fraternity, frugality, hospitality, renunciation, confidence, study, work, filled every day of his life. Filled is exactly the word; certainly the Bishop\u2019s day was quite full to the brim, of good words and good deeds. Nevertheless, it was not complete if cold or rainy weather prevented his passing an hour or two in his garden before going to bed, and after the two women had retired. It seemed to be a sort of rite with him, to prepare himself for slumber by meditation in the presence of the grand spectacles of the nocturnal heavens. Sometimes, if the two old women were not asleep, they heard him pacing slowly along the walks at a very advanced hour of the night. He was there alone, communing with himself, peaceful, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the ether, moved amid the darkness by the visible splendor of the constellations and the invisible splendor of God, opening his heart to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown. At such moments, while he offered his heart at the hour when nocturnal flowers offer their perfume, illuminated like a lamp amid the starry night, as he poured himself out in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not have told himself, probably, what was passing in his spirit; he felt something take its flight from him, and something descend into him. Mysterious exchange of the abysses of the soul with the abysses of the universe!\nHe thought of the grandeur and presence of God; of the future eternity, that strange mystery; of the eternity past, a mystery still more strange; of all the infinities, which pierced their way into all his senses, beneath his eyes; and, without seeking to comprehend the incomprehensible, he gazed upon it. He did not study God; he was dazzled by him. He considered those magnificent conjunctions of atoms, which communicate aspects to matter, reveal forces by verifying them, create individualities in unity, proportions in extent, the innumerable in the infinite, and, through light, produce beauty. These conjunctions are formed and dissolved incessantly; hence life and death.\nHe seated himself on a wooden bench, with his back against a decrepit vine; he gazed at the stars, past the puny and stunted silhouettes of his fruit-trees. This quarter of an acre, so poorly planted, so encumbered with mean buildings and sheds, was dear to him, and satisfied his wants.\nWhat more was needed by this old man, who divided the leisure of his life, where there was so little leisure, between gardening in the daytime and contemplation at night? Was not this narrow enclosure, with the heavens for a ceiling, sufficient to enable him to adore God in his most divine works, in turn? Does not this comprehend all, in fact? and what is there left to desire beyond it? A little garden in which to walk, and immensity in which to dream. At one\u2019s feet that which can be cultivated and plucked; over head that which one can study and meditate upon: some flowers on earth, and all the stars in the sky.\nCHAPTER XIV\u2014WHAT HE THOUGHT\nOne last word.\nSince this sort of details might, particularly at the present moment, and to use an expression now in fashion, give to the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 a certain \u201cpantheistical\u201d physiognomy, and induce the belief, either to his credit or discredit, that he entertained one of those personal philosophies which are peculiar to our century, which sometimes spring up in solitary spirits, and there take on a form and grow until they usurp the place of religion, we insist upon it, that not one of those persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome would have thought himself authorized to think anything of the sort. That which enlightened this man was his heart. His wisdom was made of the light which comes from there.\nNo systems; many works. Abstruse speculations contain vertigo; no, there is nothing to indicate that he risked his mind in apocalypses. The apostle may be daring, but the bishop must be timid. He would probably have felt a scruple at sounding too far in advance certain problems which are, in a manner, reserved for terrible great minds. There is a sacred horror beneath the porches of the enigma; those gloomy openings stand yawning there, but something tells you, you, a passer-by in life, that you must not enter. Woe to him who penetrates thither!\nGeniuses in the impenetrable depths of abstraction and pure speculation, situated, so to speak, above all dogmas, propose their ideas to God. Their prayer audaciously offers discussion. Their adoration interrogates. This is direct religion, which is full of anxiety and responsibility for him who attempts its steep cliffs.\nHuman meditation has no limits. At his own risk and peril, it analyzes and digs deep into its own bedazzlement. One might almost say, that by a sort of splendid reaction, it with it dazzles nature; the mysterious world which surrounds us renders back what it has received; it is probable that the contemplators are contemplated. However that may be, there are on earth men who\u2014are they men?\u2014perceive distinctly at the verge of the horizons of reverie the heights of the absolute, and who have the terrible vision of the infinite mountain. Monseigneur Welcome was one of these men; Monseigneur Welcome was not a genius. He would have feared those sublimities whence some very great men even, like Swedenborg and Pascal, have slipped into insanity. Certainly, these powerful reveries have their moral utility, and by these arduous paths one approaches to ideal perfection. As for him, he took the path which shortens,\u2014the Gospel\u2019s.\nHe did not attempt to impart to his chasuble the folds of Elijah\u2019s mantle; he projected no ray of future upon the dark groundswell of events; he did not see to condense in flame the light of things; he had nothing of the prophet and nothing of the magician about him. This humble soul loved, and that was all.\nThat he carried prayer to the pitch of a superhuman aspiration is probable: but one can no more pray too much than one can love too much; and if it is a heresy to pray beyond the texts, Saint Theresa and Saint Jerome would be heretics.\nHe inclined towards all that groans and all that expiates. The universe appeared to him like an immense malady; everywhere he felt fever, everywhere he heard the sound of suffering, and, without seeking to solve the enigma, he strove to dress the wound. The terrible spectacle of created things developed tenderness in him; he was occupied only in finding for himself, and in inspiring others with the best way to compassionate and relieve. That which exists was for this good and rare priest a permanent subject of sadness which sought consolation.\nThere are men who toil at extracting gold; he toiled at the extraction of pity. Universal misery was his mine. The sadness which reigned everywhere was but an excuse for unfailing kindness. Love each other; he declared this to be complete, desired nothing further, and that was the whole of his doctrine. One day, that man who believed himself to be a \u201cphilosopher,\u201d the senator who has already been alluded to, said to the Bishop: \u201cJust survey the spectacle of the world: all war against all; the strongest has the most wit. Your love each other is nonsense.\u201d\u2014\u201cWell,\u201d replied Monseigneur Welcome, without contesting the point, \u201cif it is nonsense, the soul should shut itself up in it, as the pearl in the oyster.\u201d Thus he shut himself up, he lived there, he was absolutely satisfied with it, leaving on one side the prodigious questions which attract and terrify, the fathomless perspectives of abstraction, the precipices of metaphysics\u2014all those profundities which converge, for the apostle in God, for the atheist in nothingness; destiny, good and evil, the way of being against being, the conscience of man, the thoughtful somnambulism of the animal, the transformation in death, the recapitulation of existences which the tomb contains, the incomprehensible grafting of successive loves on the persistent I, the essence, the substance, the Nile, and the Ens, the soul, nature, liberty, necessity; perpendicular problems, sinister obscurities, where lean the gigantic archangels of the human mind; formidable abysses, which Lucretius, Manou, Saint Paul, Dante, contemplate with eyes flashing lightning, which seems by its steady gaze on the infinite to cause stars to blaze forth there.\nMonseigneur Bienvenu was simply a man who took note of the exterior of mysterious questions without scrutinizing them, and without troubling his own mind with them, and who cherished in his own soul a grave respect for darkness.\nBOOK SECOND\u2014THE FALL\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE EVENING OF A DAY OF WALKING \nEarly in the month of October, 1815, about an hour before sunset, a man who was travelling on foot entered the little town of D\u2014\u2014 The few inhabitants who were at their windows or on their thresholds at the moment stared at this traveller with a sort of uneasiness. It was difficult to encounter a wayfarer of more wretched appearance. He was a man of medium stature, thickset and robust, in the prime of life. He might have been forty-six or forty-eight years old. A cap with a drooping leather visor partly concealed his face, burned and tanned by sun and wind, and dripping with perspiration. His shirt of coarse yellow linen, fastened at the neck by a small silver anchor, permitted a view of his hairy breast: he had a cravat twisted into a string; trousers of blue drilling, worn and threadbare, white on one knee and torn on the other; an old gray, tattered blouse, patched on one of the elbows with a bit of green cloth sewed on with twine; a tightly packed soldier knapsack, well buckled and perfectly new, on his back; an enormous, knotty stick in his hand; iron-shod shoes on his stockingless feet; a shaved head and a long beard.\nThe sweat, the heat, the journey on foot, the dust, added I know not what sordid quality to this dilapidated whole. His hair was closely cut, yet bristling, for it had begun to grow a little, and did not seem to have been cut for some time.\nNo one knew him. He was evidently only a chance passer-by. Whence came he? From the south; from the seashore, perhaps, for he made his entrance into D\u2014\u2014 by the same street which, seven months previously, had witnessed the passage of the Emperor Napoleon on his way from Cannes to Paris. This man must have been walking all day. He seemed very much fatigued. Some women of the ancient market town which is situated below the city had seen him pause beneath the trees of the boulevard Gassendi, and drink at the fountain which stands at the end of the promenade. He must have been very thirsty: for the children who followed him saw him stop again for a drink, two hundred paces further on, at the fountain in the market-place.\nOn arriving at the corner of the Rue Poichevert, he turned to the left, and directed his steps toward the town-hall. He entered, then came out a quarter of an hour later. A gendarme was seated near the door, on the stone bench which General Drouot had mounted on the 4th of March to read to the frightened throng of the inhabitants of D\u2014\u2014 the proclamation of the Gulf Juan. The man pulled off his cap and humbly saluted the gendarme.\nThe gendarme, without replying to his salute, stared attentively at him, followed him for a while with his eyes, and then entered the town-hall.\nThere then existed at D\u2014\u2014 a fine inn at the sign of the Cross of Colbas. This inn had for a landlord a certain Jacquin Labarre, a man of consideration in the town on account of his relationship to another Labarre, who kept the inn of the Three Dauphins in Grenoble, and had served in the Guides. At the time of the Emperor\u2019s landing, many rumors had circulated throughout the country with regard to this inn of the Three Dauphins. It was said that General Bertrand, disguised as a carter, had made frequent trips thither in the month of January, and that he had distributed crosses of honor to the soldiers and handfuls of gold to the citizens. The truth is, that when the Emperor entered Grenoble he had refused to install himself at the hotel of the prefecture; he had thanked the mayor, saying, \u201cI am going to the house of a brave man of my acquaintance\u201d; and he had betaken himself to the Three Dauphins. This glory of the Labarre of the Three Dauphins was reflected upon the Labarre of the Cross of Colbas, at a distance of five and twenty leagues. It was said of him in the town, \u201cThat is the cousin of the man of Grenoble.\u201d\nThe man bent his steps towards this inn, which was the best in the country-side. He entered the kitchen, which opened on a level with the street. All the stoves were lighted; a huge fire blazed gayly in the fireplace. The host, who was also the chief cook, was going from one stew-pan to another, very busily superintending an excellent dinner designed for the wagoners, whose loud talking, conversation, and laughter were audible from an adjoining apartment. Any one who has travelled knows that there is no one who indulges in better cheer than wagoners. A fat marmot, flanked by white partridges and heather-cocks, was turning on a long spit before the fire; on the stove, two huge carps from Lake Lauzet and a trout from Lake Alloz were cooking.\nThe host, hearing the door open and seeing a newcomer enter, said, without raising his eyes from his stoves:\u2014 \u201cWhat do you wish, sir?\u201d\n\u201cFood and lodging,\u201d said the man.\n\u201cNothing easier,\u201d replied the host. At that moment he turned his head, took in the traveller\u2019s appearance with a single glance, and added, \u201cBy paying for it.\u201d\nThe man drew a large leather purse from the pocket of his blouse, and answered, \u201cI have money.\u201d\n\u201cIn that case, we are at your service,\u201d said the host.\nThe man put his purse back in his pocket, removed his knapsack from his back, put it on the ground near the door, retained his stick in his hand, and seated himself on a low stool close to the fire. D\u2014\u2014 is in the mountains. The evenings are cold there in October.\nBut as the host went back and forth, he scrutinized the traveller.\n\u201cWill dinner be ready soon?\u201d said the man.\n\u201cImmediately,\u201d replied the landlord.\nWhile the newcomer was warming himself before the fire, with his back turned, the worthy host, Jacquin Labarre, drew a pencil from his pocket, then tore off the corner of an old newspaper which was lying on a small table near the window. On the white margin he wrote a line or two, folded it without sealing, and then intrusted this scrap of paper to a child who seemed to serve him in the capacity both of scullion and lackey. The landlord whispered a word in the scullion\u2019s ear, and the child set off on a run in the direction of the town-hall.\nThe traveller saw nothing of all this.\nOnce more he inquired, \u201cWill dinner be ready soon?\u201d\n\u201cImmediately,\u201d responded the host.\nThe child returned. He brought back the paper. The host unfolded it eagerly, like a person who is expecting a reply. He seemed to read it attentively, then tossed his head, and remained thoughtful for a moment. Then he took a step in the direction of the traveller, who appeared to be immersed in reflections which were not very serene.\n\u201cI cannot receive you, sir,\u201d said he.\nThe man half rose.\n\u201cWhat! Are you afraid that I will not pay you? Do you want me to pay you in advance? I have money, I tell you.\u201d\n\u201cIt is not that.\u201d\n\u201cWhat then?\u201d\n\u201cYou have money\u2014\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the man.\n\u201cAnd I,\u201d said the host, \u201chave no room.\u201d\nThe man resumed tranquilly, \u201cPut me in the stable.\u201d\n\u201cI cannot.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cThe horses take up all the space.\u201d\n\u201cVery well!\u201d retorted the man; \u201ca corner of the loft then, a truss of straw. We will see about that after dinner.\u201d\n\u201cI cannot give you any dinner.\u201d\nThis declaration, made in a measured but firm tone, struck the stranger as grave. He rose.\n\u201cAh! bah! But I am dying of hunger. I have been walking since sunrise. I have travelled twelve leagues. I pay. I wish to eat.\u201d\n\u201cI have nothing,\u201d said the landlord.\nThe man burst out laughing, and turned towards the fireplace and the stoves: \u201cNothing! and all that?\u201d\n\u201cAll that is engaged.\u201d\n\u201cBy whom?\u201d\n\u201cBy messieurs the wagoners.\u201d\n\u201cHow many are there of them?\u201d\n\u201cTwelve.\u201d\n\u201cThere is enough food there for twenty.\u201d\n\u201cThey have engaged the whole of it and paid for it in advance.\u201d\nThe man seated himself again, and said, without raising his voice, \u201cI am at an inn; I am hungry, and I shall remain.\u201d\nThen the host bent down to his ear, and said in a tone which made him start, \u201cGo away!\u201d\nAt that moment the traveller was bending forward and thrusting some brands into the fire with the iron-shod tip of his staff; he turned quickly round, and as he opened his mouth to reply, the host gazed steadily at him and added, still in a low voice: \u201cStop! there\u2019s enough of that sort of talk. Do you want me to tell you your name? Your name is Humphrey Waylon. Now do you want me to tell you who you are? When I saw you come in I suspected something; I sent to the town-hall, and this was the reply that was sent to me. Can you read?\u201d\nSo saying, he held out to the stranger, fully unfolded, the paper which had just travelled from the inn to the town-hall, and from the town-hall to the inn. The man cast a glance upon it. The landlord resumed after a pause.\n\u201cI am in the habit of being polite to every one. Go away!\u201d\nThe man dropped his head, picked up the knapsack which he had deposited on the ground, and took his departure.\nHe chose the principal street. He walked straight on at a venture, keeping close to the houses like a sad and humiliated man. He did not turn round a single time. Had he done so, he would have seen the host of the Cross of Colbas standing on his threshold, surrounded by all the guests of his inn, and all the passers-by in the street, talking vivaciously, and pointing him out with his finger; and, from the glances of terror and distrust cast by the group, he might have divined that his arrival would speedily become an event for the whole town.\nHe saw nothing of all this. People who are crushed do not look behind them. They know but too well the evil fate which follows them.\nThus he proceeded for some time, walking on without ceasing, traversing at random streets of which he knew nothing, forgetful of his fatigue, as is often the case when a man is sad. All at once he felt the pangs of hunger sharply. Night was drawing near. He glanced about him, to see whether he could not discover some shelter.\nThe fine hostelry was closed to him; he was seeking some very humble public house, some hovel, however lowly.\nJust then a light flashed up at the end of the streets; a pine branch suspended from a cross-beam of iron was outlined against the white sky of the twilight. He proceeded thither.\nIt proved to be, in fact, a public house. The public house which is in the Rue de Chaffaut.\nThe wayfarer halted for a moment, and peeped through the window into the interior of the low-studded room of the public house, illuminated by a small lamp on a table and by a large fire on the hearth. Some men were engaged in drinking there. The landlord was warming himself. An iron pot, suspended from a crane, bubbled over the flame.\nThe entrance to this public house, which is also a sort of an inn, is by two doors. One opens on the street, the other upon a small yard filled with manure. The traveller dare not enter by the street door. He slipped into the yard, halted again, then raised the latch timidly and opened the door.\n\u201cWho goes there?\u201d said the master.\n\u201cSome one who wants supper and bed.\u201d\n\u201cGood. We furnish supper and bed here.\u201d\nHe entered. All the men who were drinking turned round. The lamp illuminated him on one side, the firelight on the other. They examined him for some time while he was taking off his knapsack.\nThe host said to him, \u201cThere is the fire. The supper is cooking in the pot. Come and warm yourself, comrade.\u201d\nHe approached and seated himself near the hearth. He stretched out his feet, which were exhausted with fatigue, to the fire; a fine odor was emitted by the pot. All that could be distinguished of his face, beneath his cap, which was well pulled down, assumed a vague appearance of comfort, mingled with that other poignant aspect which habitual suffering bestows.\nIt was, moreover, a firm, energetic, and melancholy profile. This physiognomy was strangely composed; it began by seeming humble, and ended by seeming severe. The eye shone beneath its lashes like a fire beneath brushwood.\nOne of the men seated at the table, however, was a fishmonger who, before entering the public house of the Rue de Chaffaut, had been to stable his horse at Labarre\u2019s. It chanced that he had that very morning encountered this unprepossessing stranger on the road between Bras d\u2019Asse and\u2014I have forgotten the name. I think it was Escoublon. Now, when he met him, the man, who then seemed already extremely weary, had requested him to take him on his crupper; to which the fishmonger had made no reply except by redoubling his gait. This fishmonger had been a member half an hour previously of the group which surrounded Jacquin Labarre, and had himself related his disagreeable encounter of the morning to the people at the Cross of Colbas. From where he sat he made an imperceptible sign to the tavern-keeper. The tavern-keeper went to him. They exchanged a few words in a low tone. The man had again become absorbed in his reflections.\nThe tavern-keeper returned to the fireplace, laid his hand abruptly on the shoulder of the man, and said to him:\u2014 \u201cYou are going to get out of here.\u201d\nThe stranger turned round and replied gently, \u201cAh! You know?\u2014\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cI was sent away from the other inn.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you are to be turned out of this one.\u201d\n\u201cWhere would you have me go?\u201d\n\u201cElsewhere.\u201d\nThe man took his stick and his knapsack and departed.\nAs he went out, some children who had followed him from the Cross of Colbas, and who seemed to be lying in wait for him, threw stones at him. He retraced his steps in anger, and threatened them with his stick: the children dispersed like a flock of birds.\nHe passed before the prison. At the door hung an iron chain attached to a bell. He rang.\nThe wicket opened.\n\u201cTurnkey,\u201d said he, removing his cap politely, \u201cwill you have the kindness to admit me, and give me a lodging for the night?\u201d\nA voice replied:\u2014\n\u201cThe prison is not an inn. Get yourself arrested, and you will be admitted.\u201d\nThe wicket closed again.\nHe entered a little street in which there were many gardens. Some of them are enclosed only by hedges, which lends a cheerful aspect to the street. In the midst of these gardens and hedges he caught sight of a small house of a single story, the window of which was lighted up. He peered through the pane as he had done at the public house. Within was a large whitewashed room, with a bed draped in printed cotton stuff, and a cradle in one corner, a few wooden chairs, and a double-barrelled gun hanging on the wall. A table was spread in the centre of the room. A copper lamp illuminated the tablecloth of coarse white linen, the pewter jug shining like silver, and filled with wine, and the brown, smoking soup-tureen. At this table sat a man of about forty, with a merry and open countenance, who was dandling a little child on his knees. Close by a very young woman was nursing another child. The father was laughing, the child was laughing, the mother was smiling.\nThe stranger paused a moment in reverie before this tender and calming spectacle. What was taking place within him? He alone could have told. It is probable that he thought that this joyous house would be hospitable, and that, in a place where he beheld so much happiness, he would find perhaps a little pity.\nHe tapped on the pane with a very small and feeble knock.\nThey did not hear him.\nHe tapped again.\nHe heard the woman say, \u201cIt seems to me, husband, that some one is knocking.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied the husband.\nHe tapped a third time.\nThe husband rose, took the lamp, and went to the door, which he opened.\nHe was a man of lofty stature, half peasant, half artisan. He wore a huge leather apron, which reached to his left shoulder, and which a hammer, a red handkerchief, a powder-horn, and all sorts of objects which were upheld by the girdle, as in a pocket, caused to bulge out. He carried his head thrown backwards; his shirt, widely opened and turned back, displayed his bull neck, white and bare. He had thick eyelashes, enormous black whiskers, prominent eyes, the lower part of his face like a snout; and besides all this, that air of being on his own ground, which is indescribable.\n\u201cPardon me, sir,\u201d said the wayfarer, \u201cCould you, in consideration of payment, give me a plate of soup and a corner of that shed yonder in the garden, in which to sleep? Tell me; can you? For money?\u201d\n\u201cWho are you?\u201d demanded the master of the house.\nThe man replied: \u201cI have just come from Puy-Moisson. I have walked all day long. I have travelled twelve leagues. Can you?\u2014if I pay?\u201d\n\u201cI would not refuse,\u201d said the peasant, \u201cto lodge any respectable man who would pay me. But why do you not go to the inn?\u201d\n\u201cThere is no room.\u201d\n\u201cBah! Impossible. This is neither a fair nor a market day. Have you been to Labarre?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\nThe traveller replied with embarrassment: \u201cI do not know. He did not receive me.\u201d\n\u201cHave you been to What\u2019s-his-name\u2019s, in the Rue Chaffaut?\u201d\nThe stranger\u2019s embarrassment increased; he stammered, \u201cHe did not receive me either.\u201d\nThe peasant\u2019s countenance assumed an expression of distrust; he surveyed the newcomer from head to feet, and suddenly exclaimed, with a sort of shudder:\u2014 \u201cAre you the man?\u2014\u201d\nHe cast a fresh glance upon the stranger, took three steps backwards, placed the lamp on the table, and took his gun down from the wall.\nMeanwhile, at the words, Are you the man? the woman had risen, had clasped her two children in her arms, and had taken refuge precipitately behind her husband, staring in terror at the stranger, with her bosom uncovered, and with frightened eyes, as she murmured in a low tone, \u201cTso-maraude.\u201d1 All this took place in less time than it requires to picture it to one\u2019s self. After having scrutinized the man for several moments, as one scrutinizes a viper, the master of the house returned to the door and said:\u2014 \u201cClear out!\u201d\n\u201cFor pity\u2019s sake, a glass of water,\u201d said the man.\n\u201cA shot from my gun!\u201d said the peasant.\nThen he closed the door violently, and the man heard him shoot two large bolts. A moment later, the window-shutter was closed, and the sound of a bar of iron which was placed against it was audible outside.\nNight continued to fall. A cold wind from the Alps was blowing. By the light of the expiring day the stranger perceived, in one of the gardens which bordered the street, a sort of hut, which seemed to him to be built of sods. He climbed over the wooden fence resolutely, and found himself in the garden. He approached the hut; its door consisted of a very low and narrow aperture, and it resembled those buildings which road-laborers construct for themselves along the roads. He thought without doubt, that it was, in fact, the dwelling of a road-laborer; he was suffering from cold and hunger, but this was, at least, a shelter from the cold. This sort of dwelling is not usually occupied at night. He threw himself flat on his face, and crawled into the hut. It was warm there, and he found a tolerably good bed of straw. He lay, for a moment, stretched out on this bed, without the power to make a movement, so fatigued was he. Then, as the knapsack on his back was in his way, and as it furnished, moreover, a pillow ready to his hand, he set about unbuckling one of the straps. At that moment, a ferocious growl became audible. He raised his eyes. The head of an enormous dog was outlined in the darkness at the entrance of the hut.\nIt was a dog\u2019s kennel.\nHe was himself vigorous and formidable; he armed himself with his staff, made a shield of his knapsack, and made his way out of the kennel in the best way he could, not without enlarging the rents in his rags.\nHe left the garden in the same manner, but backwards, being obliged, in order to keep the dog respectful, to have recourse to that man\u0153uvre with his stick which masters in that sort of fencing designate as la rose couverte.\nWhen he had, not without difficulty, repassed the fence, and found himself once more in the street, alone, without refuge, without shelter, without a roof over his head, chased even from that bed of straw and from that miserable kennel, he dropped rather than seated himself on a stone, and it appears that a passer-by heard him exclaim, \u201cI am not even a dog!\u201d\nHe soon rose again and resumed his march. He went out of the town, hoping to find some tree or haystack in the fields which would afford him shelter.\nHe walked thus for some time, with his head still drooping. When he felt himself far from every human habitation, he raised his eyes and gazed searchingly about him. He was in a field. Before him was one of those low hills covered with close-cut stubble, which, after the harvest, resemble shaved heads.\nThe horizon was perfectly black. This was not alone the obscurity of night; it was caused by very low-hanging clouds which seemed to rest upon the hill itself, and which were mounting and filling the whole sky. Meanwhile, as the moon was about to rise, and as there was still floating in the zenith a remnant of the brightness of twilight, these clouds formed at the summit of the sky a sort of whitish arch, whence a gleam of light fell upon the earth.\nThe earth was thus better lighted than the sky, which produces a particularly sinister effect, and the hill, whose contour was poor and mean, was outlined vague and wan against the gloomy horizon. The whole effect was hideous, petty, lugubrious, and narrow.\nThere was nothing in the field or on the hill except a deformed tree, which writhed and shivered a few paces distant from the wayfarer.\nThis man was evidently very far from having those delicate habits of intelligence and spirit which render one sensible to the mysterious aspects of things; nevertheless, there was something in that sky, in that hill, in that plain, in that tree, which was so profoundly desolate, that after a moment of immobility and reverie he turned back abruptly. There are instants when nature seems hostile.\nHe retraced his steps; the gates of D\u2014\u2014 were closed. D\u2014\u2014, which had sustained sieges during the wars of religion, was still surrounded in 1815 by ancient walls flanked by square towers which have been demolished since. He passed through a breach and entered the town again.\nIt might have been eight o\u2019clock in the evening. As he was not acquainted with the streets, he recommenced his walk at random.\nIn this way he came to the prefecture, then to the seminary. As he passed through the Cathedral Square, he shook his fist at the church.\nAt the corner of this square there is a printing establishment. It is there that the proclamations of the Emperor and of the Imperial Guard to the army, brought from the Island of Elba and dictated by Napoleon himself, were printed for the first time.\nWorn out with fatigue, and no longer entertaining any hope, he lay down on a stone bench which stands at the doorway of this printing office.\nAt that moment an old woman came out of the church. She saw the man stretched out in the shadow. \u201cWhat are you doing there, my friend?\u201d said she.\nHe answered harshly and angrily: \u201cAs you see, my good woman, I am sleeping.\u201d The good woman, who was well worthy the name, in fact, was the Marquise de R\u2014\u2014 \u201cOn this bench?\u201d she went on.\n\u201cI have had a mattress of wood for nineteen years,\u201d said the man; \u201cto-day I have a mattress of stone.\u201d\n\u201cYou have been a soldier?\u201d\n\u201cYes, my good woman, a soldier.\u201d\n\u201cWhy do you not go to the inn?\u201d\n\u201cBecause I have no money.\u201d\n\u201cAlas!\u201d said Madame de R\u2014\u2014, \u201cI have only four sous in my purse.\u201d\n\u201cGive it to me all the same.\u201d\nThe man took the four sous. Madame de R\u2014\u2014 continued: \u201cYou cannot obtain lodgings in an inn for so small a sum. But have you tried? It is impossible for you to pass the night thus. You are cold and hungry, no doubt. Some one might have given you a lodging out of charity.\u201d\n\u201cI have knocked at all doors.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cI have been driven away everywhere.\u201d\nThe \u201cgood woman\u201d touched the man\u2019s arm, and pointed out to him on the other side of the street a small, low house, which stood beside the Bishop\u2019s palace.\n\u201cYou have knocked at all doors?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cHave you knocked at that one?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cKnock there.\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014PRUDENCE COUNSELLED TO WISDOM.\nThat evening, the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014, after his promenade through the town, remained shut up rather late in his room. He was busy over a great work on Duties, which was never completed, unfortunately. He was carefully compiling everything that the Fathers and the doctors have said on this important subject. His book was divided into two parts: firstly, the duties of all; secondly, the duties of each individual, according to the class to which he belongs. The duties of all are the great duties. There are four of these. Saint Matthew points them out: duties towards God (Matt. vi.); duties towards one\u2019s self (Matt. v. 29, 30); duties towards one\u2019s neighbor (Matt. vii. 12); duties towards animals (Matt. vi. 20, 25). As for the other duties the Bishop found them pointed out and prescribed elsewhere: to sovereigns and subjects, in the Epistle to the Romans; to magistrates, to wives, to mothers, to young men, by Saint Peter; to husbands, fathers, children and servants, in the Epistle to the Ephesians; to the faithful, in the Epistle to the Hebrews; to virgins, in the Epistle to the Corinthians. Out of these precepts he was laboriously constructing a harmonious whole, which he desired to present to souls.\nAt eight o\u2019clock he was still at work, writing with a good deal of inconvenience upon little squares of paper, with a big book open on his knees, when Madame Magloire entered, according to her wont, to get the silver-ware from the cupboard near his bed. A moment later, the Bishop, knowing that the table was set, and that his sister was probably waiting for him, shut his book, rose from his table, and entered the dining-room.\nThe dining-room was an oblong apartment, with a fireplace, which had a door opening on the street (as we have said), and a window opening on the garden.\nMadame Magloire was, in fact, just putting the last touches to the table.\nAs she performed this service, she was conversing with Mademoiselle Baptistine.\nA lamp stood on the table; the table was near the fireplace. A wood fire was burning there.\nOne can easily picture to one\u2019s self these two women, both of whom were over sixty years of age. Madame Magloire small, plump, vivacious; Mademoiselle Baptistine gentle, slender, frail, somewhat taller than her brother, dressed in a gown of puce-colored silk, of the fashion of 1806, which she had purchased at that date in Paris, and which had lasted ever since. To borrow vulgar phrases, which possess the merit of giving utterance in a single word to an idea which a whole page would hardly suffice to express, Madame Magloire had the air of a peasant, and Mademoiselle Baptistine that of a lady. Madame Magloire wore a white quilted cap, a gold Humphreynette cross on a velvet ribbon upon her neck, the only bit of feminine jewelry that there was in the house, a very white fichu puffing out from a gown of coarse black woollen stuff, with large, short sleeves, an apron of cotton cloth in red and green checks, knotted round the waist with a green ribbon, with a stomacher of the same attached by two pins at the upper corners, coarse shoes on her feet, and yellow stockings, like the women of Marseilles. Mademoiselle Baptistine\u2019s gown was cut on the patterns of 1806, with a short waist, a narrow, sheath-like skirt, puffed sleeves, with flaps and buttons. She concealed her gray hair under a frizzed wig known as the baby wig. Madame Magloire had an intelligent, vivacious, and kindly air; the two corners of her mouth unequally raised, and her upper lip, which was larger than the lower, imparted to her a rather crabbed and imperious look. So long as Monseigneur held his peace, she talked to him resolutely with a mixture of respect and freedom; but as soon as Monseigneur began to speak, as we have seen, she obeyed passively like her mistress. Mademoiselle Baptistine did not even speak. She confined herself to obeying and pleasing him. She had never been pretty, even when she was young; she had large, blue, prominent eyes, and a long arched nose; but her whole visage, her whole person, breathed forth an ineffable goodness, as we stated in the beginning. She had always been predestined to gentleness; but faith, charity, hope, those three virtues which mildly warm the soul, had gradually elevated that gentleness to sanctity. Nature had made her a lamb, religion had made her an angel. Poor sainted virgin! Sweet memory which has vanished!\nMademoiselle Baptistine has so often narrated what passed at the episcopal residence that evening, that there are many people now living who still recall the most minute details.\nAt the moment when the Bishop entered, Madame Magloire was talking with considerable vivacity. She was haranguing Mademoiselle Baptistine on a subject which was familiar to her and to which the Bishop was also accustomed. The question concerned the lock upon the entrance door.\nIt appears that while procuring some provisions for supper, Madame Magloire had heard things in divers places. People had spoken of a prowler of evil appearance; a suspicious vagabond had arrived who must be somewhere about the town, and those who should take it into their heads to return home late that night might be subjected to unpleasant encounters. The police was very badly organized, moreover, because there was no love lost between the Prefect and the Mayor, who sought to injure each other by making things happen. It behooved wise people to play the part of their own police, and to guard themselves well, and care must be taken to duly close, bar and barricade their houses, and to fasten the doors well.\nMadame Magloire emphasized these last words; but the Bishop had just come from his room, where it was rather cold. He seated himself in front of the fire, and warmed himself, and then fell to thinking of other things. He did not take up the remark dropped with design by Madame Magloire. She repeated it. Then Mademoiselle Baptistine, desirous of satisfying Madame Magloire without displeasing her brother, ventured to say timidly:\u2014 \u201cDid you hear what Madame Magloire is saying, brother?\u201d\n\u201cI have heard something of it in a vague way,\u201d replied the Bishop. Then half-turning in his chair, placing his hands on his knees, and raising towards the old servant woman his cordial face, which so easily grew joyous, and which was illuminated from below by the firelight,\u2014\u201cCome, what is the matter? What is the matter? Are we in any great danger?\u201d\nThen Madame Magloire began the whole story afresh, exaggerating it a little without being aware of the fact. It appeared that a Bohemian, a bare-footed vagabond, a sort of dangerous mendicant, was at that moment in the town. He had presented himself at Jacquin Labarre\u2019s to obtain lodgings, but the latter had not been willing to take him in. He had been seen to arrive by the way of the boulevard Gassendi and roam about the streets in the gloaming. A gallows-bird with a terrible face.\n\u201cReally!\u201d said the Bishop.\nThis willingness to interrogate encouraged Madame Magloire; it seemed to her to indicate that the Bishop was on the point of becoming alarmed; she pursued triumphantly:\u2014 \u201cYes, Monseigneur. That is how it is. There will be some sort of catastrophe in this town to-night. Every one says so. And withal, the police is so badly regulated\u201d (a useful repetition). \u201cThe idea of living in a mountainous country, and not even having lights in the streets at night! One goes out. Black as ovens, indeed! And I say, Monseigneur, and Mademoiselle there says with me\u2014\u201d\n\u201cI,\u201d interrupted his sister, \u201csay nothing. What my brother does is well done.\u201d\nMadame Magloire continued as though there had been no protest:\u2014 \u201cWe say that this house is not safe at all; that if Monseigneur will permit, I will go and tell Paulin Musebois, the locksmith, to come and replace the ancient locks on the doors; we have them, and it is only the work of a moment; for I say that nothing is more terrible than a door which can be opened from the outside with a latch by the first passer-by; and I say that we need bolts, Monseigneur, if only for this night; moreover, Monseigneur has the habit of always saying \u2018come in\u2019; and besides, even in the middle of the night, O mon Dieu! there is no need to ask permission.\u201d\nAt that moment there came a tolerably violent knock on the door.\n\u201cCome in,\u201d said the Bishop.\nCHAPTER III\u2014THE HEROISM OF PASSIVE OBEDIENCE.\nThe door opened.\nIt opened wide with a rapid movement, as though some one had given it an energetic and resolute push.\nA man entered.\nWe already know the man. It was the wayfarer whom we have seen wandering about in search of shelter.\nHe entered, advanced a step, and halted, leaving the door open behind him. He had his knapsack on his shoulders, his cudgel in his hand, a rough, audacious, weary, and violent expression in his eyes. The fire on the hearth lighted him up. He was hideous. It was a sinister apparition.\nMadame Magloire had not even the strength to utter a cry. She trembled, and stood with her mouth wide open.\nMademoiselle Baptistine turned round, beheld the man entering, and half started up in terror; then, turning her head by degrees towards the fireplace again, she began to observe her brother, and her face became once more profoundly calm and serene.\nThe Bishop fixed a tranquil eye on the man.\nAs he opened his mouth, doubtless to ask the newcomer what he desired, the man rested both hands on his staff, directed his gaze at the old man and the two women, and without waiting for the Bishop to speak, he said, in a loud voice:\u2014 \u201cSee here. My name is Humphrey Waylon. I am a convict from the galleys. I have passed nineteen years in the galleys. I was liberated four days ago, and am on my way to Pontarlier, which is my destination. I have been walking for four days since I left Toulon. I have travelled a dozen leagues to-day on foot. This evening, when I arrived in these parts, I went to an inn, and they turned me out, because of my yellow passport, which I had shown at the town-hall. I had to do it. I went to an inn. They said to me, \u2018Be off,\u2019 at both places. No one would take me. I went to the prison; the jailer would not admit me. I went into a dog\u2019s kennel; the dog bit me and chased me off, as though he had been a man. One would have said that he knew who I was. I went into the fields, intending to sleep in the open air, beneath the stars. There were no stars. I thought it was going to rain, and I re-entered the town, to seek the recess of a doorway. Yonder, in the square, I meant to sleep on a stone bench. A good woman pointed out your house to me, and said to me, \u2018Knock there!\u2019 I have knocked. What is this place? Do you keep an inn? I have money\u2014savings. One hundred and nine francs fifteen sous, which I earned in the galleys by my labor, in the course of nineteen years. I will pay. What is that to me? I have money. I am very weary; twelve leagues on foot; I am very hungry. Are you willing that I should remain?\u201d\n\u201cMadame Magloire,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201cyou will set another place.\u201d\nThe man advanced three paces, and approached the lamp which was on the table. \u201cStop,\u201d he resumed, as though he had not quite understood; \u201cthat\u2019s not it. Did you hear? I am a galley-slave; a convict. I come from the galleys.\u201d He drew from his pocket a large sheet of yellow paper, which he unfolded. \u201cHere\u2019s my passport. Yellow, as you see. This serves to expel me from every place where I go. Will you read it? I know how to read. I learned in the galleys. There is a school there for those who choose to learn. Hold, this is what they put on this passport: \u2018Humphrey Waylon, discharged convict, native of\u2019\u2014that is nothing to you\u2014\u2018has been nineteen years in the galleys: five years for house-breaking and burglary; fourteen years for having attempted to escape on four occasions. He is a very dangerous man.\u2019 There! Every one has cast me out. Are you willing to receive me? Is this an inn? Will you give me something to eat and a bed? Have you a stable?\u201d\n\u201cMadame Magloire,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201cyou will put white sheets on the bed in the alcove.\u201d We have already explained the character of the two women\u2019s obedience.\nMadame Magloire retired to execute these orders.\nThe Bishop turned to the man.\n\u201cSit down, sir, and warm yourself. We are going to sup in a few moments, and your bed will be prepared while you are supping.\u201d\nAt this point the man suddenly comprehended. The expression of his face, up to that time sombre and harsh, bore the imprint of stupefaction, of doubt, of joy, and became extraordinary. He began stammering like a crazy man:\u2014 \u201cReally? What! You will keep me? You do not drive me forth? A convict! You call me sir! You do not address me as thou? \u2018Get out of here, you dog!\u2019 is what people always say to me. I felt sure that you would expel me, so I told you at once who I am. Oh, what a good woman that was who directed me hither! I am going to sup! A bed with a mattress and sheets, like the rest of the world! a bed! It is nineteen years since I have slept in a bed! You actually do not want me to go! You are good people. Besides, I have money. I will pay well. Pardon me, monsieur the inn-keeper, but what is your name? I will pay anything you ask. You are a fine man. You are an inn-keeper, are you not?\u201d\n\u201cI am,\u201d replied the Bishop, \u201ca priest who lives here.\u201d\n\u201cA priest!\u201d said the man. \u201cOh, what a fine priest! Then you are not going to demand any money of me? You are the cur\u00e9, are you not? the cur\u00e9 of this big church? Well! I am a fool, truly! I had not perceived your skull-cap.\u201d\nAs he spoke, he deposited his knapsack and his cudgel in a corner, replaced his passport in his pocket, and seated himself. Mademoiselle Baptistine gazed mildly at him. He continued:\n\u201cYou are humane, Monsieur le Cur\u00e9; you have not scorned me. A good priest is a very good thing. Then you do not require me to pay?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said the Bishop; \u201ckeep your money. How much have you? Did you not tell me one hundred and nine francs?\u201d\n\u201cAnd fifteen sous,\u201d added the man.\n\u201cOne hundred and nine francs fifteen sous. And how long did it take you to earn that?\u201d\n\u201cNineteen years.\u201d\n\u201cNineteen years!\u201d\nThe Bishop sighed deeply.\nThe man continued: \u201cI have still the whole of my money. In four days I have spent only twenty-five sous, which I earned by helping unload some wagons at Grasse. Since you are an abb\u00e9, I will tell you that we had a chaplain in the galleys. And one day I saw a bishop there. Monseigneur is what they call him. He was the Bishop of Majore at Marseilles. He is the cur\u00e9 who rules over the other cur\u00e9s, you understand. Pardon me, I say that very badly; but it is such a far-off thing to me! You understand what we are! He said mass in the middle of the galleys, on an altar. He had a pointed thing, made of gold, on his head; it glittered in the bright light of midday. We were all ranged in lines on the three sides, with cannons with lighted matches facing us. We could not see very well. He spoke; but he was too far off, and we did not hear. That is what a bishop is like.\u201d\nWhile he was speaking, the Bishop had gone and shut the door, which had remained wide open.\nMadame Magloire returned. She brought a silver fork and spoon, which she placed on the table.\n\u201cMadame Magloire,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201cplace those things as near the fire as possible.\u201d And turning to his guest: \u201cThe night wind is harsh on the Alps. You must be cold, sir.\u201d\nEach time that he uttered the word sir, in his voice which was so gently grave and polished, the man\u2019s face lighted up. Monsieur to a convict is like a glass of water to one of the shipwrecked of the Medusa. Ignominy thirsts for consideration.\n\u201cThis lamp gives a very bad light,\u201d said the Bishop.\nMadame Magloire understood him, and went to get the two silver candlesticks from the chimney-piece in Monseigneur\u2019s bed-chamber, and placed them, lighted, on the table.\n\u201cMonsieur le Cur\u00e9,\u201d said the man, \u201cyou are good; you do not despise me. You receive me into your house. You light your candles for me. Yet I have not concealed from you whence I come and that I am an unfortunate man.\u201d\nThe Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. \u201cYou could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which I knew.\u201d\nThe man opened his eyes in astonishment.\n\u201cReally? You knew what I was called?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d replied the Bishop, \u201cyou are called my brother.\u201d\n\u201cStop, Monsieur le Cur\u00e9,\u201d exclaimed the man. \u201cI was very hungry when I entered here; but you are so good, that I no longer know what has happened to me.\u201d\nThe Bishop looked at him, and said,\u2014 \u201cYou have suffered much?\u201d\n\u201cOh, the red coat, the ball on the ankle, a plank to sleep on, heat, cold, toil, the convicts, the thrashings, the double chain for nothing, the cell for one word; even sick and in bed, still the chain! Dogs, dogs are happier! Nineteen years! I am forty-six. Now there is the yellow passport. That is what it is like.\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d resumed the Bishop, \u201cyou have come from a very sad place. Listen. There will be more joy in heaven over the tear-bathed face of a repentant sinner than over the white robes of a hundred just men. If you emerge from that sad place with thoughts of hatred and of wrath against mankind, you are deserving of pity; if you emerge with thoughts of good-will and of peace, you are more worthy than any one of us.\u201d\nIn the meantime, Madame Magloire had served supper: soup, made with water, oil, bread, and salt; a little bacon, a bit of mutton, figs, a fresh cheese, and a large loaf of rye bread. She had, of her own accord, added to the Bishop\u2019s ordinary fare a bottle of his old Mauves wine.\nThe Bishop\u2019s face at once assumed that expression of gayety which is peculiar to hospitable natures. \u201cTo table!\u201d he cried vivaciously. As was his custom when a stranger supped with him, he made the man sit on his right. Mademoiselle Baptistine, perfectly peaceable and natural, took her seat at his left.\nThe Bishop asked a blessing; then helped the soup himself, according to his custom. The man began to eat with avidity.\nAll at once the Bishop said: \u201cIt strikes me there is something missing on this table.\u201d\nMadame Magloire had, in fact, only placed the three sets of forks and spoons which were absolutely necessary. Now, it was the usage of the house, when the Bishop had any one to supper, to lay out the whole six sets of silver on the table-cloth\u2014an innocent ostentation. This graceful semblance of luxury was a kind of child\u2019s play, which was full of charm in that gentle and severe household, which raised poverty into dignity.\nMadame Magloire understood the remark, went out without saying a word, and a moment later the three sets of silver forks and spoons demanded by the Bishop were glittering upon the cloth, symmetrically arranged before the three persons seated at the table.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014DETAILS CONCERNING THE CHEESE-DAIRIES OF PONTARLIER.\nNow, in order to convey an idea of what passed at that table, we cannot do better than to transcribe here a passage from one of Mademoiselle Baptistine\u2019s letters to Madame Boischevron, wherein the conversation between the convict and the Bishop is described with ingenious minuteness.\n\u201c. . . This man paid no attention to any one. He ate with the voracity of a starving man. However, after supper he said:\n\u201c\u2018Monsieur le Cur\u00e9 of the good God, all this is far too good for me; but I must say that the carters who would not allow me to eat with them keep a better table than you do.\u2019\n\u201cBetween ourselves, the remark rather shocked me. My brother replied:\u2014 \u201c\u2018They are more fatigued than I.\u2019\n\u201c\u2018No,\u2019 returned the man, \u2018they have more money. You are poor; I see that plainly. You cannot be even a curate. Are you really a cur\u00e9? Ah, if the good God were but just, you certainly ought to be a cur\u00e9!\u2019\n\u201c\u2018The good God is more than just,\u2019 said my brother.\n\u201cA moment later he added:\u2014\n\u201c\u2018Monsieur Humphrey Waylon, is it to Pontarlier that you are going?\u2019\n\u201c\u2018With my road marked out for me.\u2019\n\u201cI think that is what the man said. Then he went on:\u2014 \u201c\u2018I must be on my way by daybreak to-morrow. Travelling is hard. If the nights are cold, the days are hot.\u2019\n\u201c\u2018You are going to a good country,\u2019 said my brother. \u2018During the Revolution my family was ruined. I took refuge in Franche-Comt\u00e9 at first, and there I lived for some time by the toil of my hands. My will was good. I found plenty to occupy me. One has only to choose. There are paper mills, tanneries, distilleries, oil factories, watch factories on a large scale, steel mills, copper works, twenty iron foundries at least, four of which, situated at Lods, at Ch\u00e2tillon, at Audincourt, and at Beure, are tolerably large.\u2019\n\u201cI think I am not mistaken in saying that those are the names which my brother mentioned. Then he interrupted himself and addressed me:\u2014 \u201c\u2018Have we not some relatives in those parts, my dear sister?\u2019\n\u201cI replied,\u2014\n\u201c\u2018We did have some; among others, M. de Lucenet, who was captain of the gates at Pontarlier under the old r\u00e9gime.\u2019\n\u201c\u2018Yes,\u2019 resumed my brother; \u2018but in \u201993, one had no longer any relatives, one had only one\u2019s arms. I worked. They have, in the country of Pontarlier, whither you are going, Monsieur Waylon, a truly patriarchal and truly charming industry, my sister. It is their cheese-dairies, which they call fruitieres.\u2019\n\u201cThen my brother, while urging the man to eat, explained to him, with great minuteness, what these fruitieres of Pontarlier were; that they were divided into two classes: the big barns which belong to the rich, and where there are forty or fifty cows which produce from seven to eight thousand cheeses each summer, and the associated fruitieres, which belong to the poor; these are the peasants of mid-mountain, who hold their cows in common, and share the proceeds. \u2018They engage the services of a cheese-maker, whom they call the grurin; the grurin receives the milk of the associates three times a day, and marks the quantity on a double tally. It is towards the end of April that the work of the cheese-dairies begins; it is towards the middle of June that the cheese-makers drive their cows to the mountains.\u2019\n\u201cThe man recovered his animation as he ate. My brother made him drink that good Mauves wine, which he does not drink himself, because he says that wine is expensive. My brother imparted all these details with that easy gayety of his with which you are acquainted, interspersing his words with graceful attentions to me. He recurred frequently to that comfortable trade of grurin, as though he wished the man to understand, without advising him directly and harshly, that this would afford him a refuge. One thing struck me. This man was what I have told you. Well, neither during supper, nor during the entire evening, did my brother utter a single word, with the exception of a few words about Jesus when he entered, which could remind the man of what he was, nor of what my brother was. To all appearances, it was an occasion for preaching him a little sermon, and of impressing the Bishop on the convict, so that a mark of the passage might remain behind. This might have appeared to any one else who had this, unfortunate man in his hands to afford a chance to nourish his soul as well as his body, and to bestow upon him some reproach, seasoned with moralizing and advice, or a little commiseration, with an exhortation to conduct himself better in the future. My brother did not even ask him from what country he came, nor what was his history. For in his history there is a fault, and my brother seemed to avoid everything which could remind him of it. To such a point did he carry it, that at one time, when my brother was speaking of the mountaineers of Pontarlier, who exercise a gentle labor near heaven, and who, he added, are happy because they are innocent, he stopped short, fearing lest in this remark there might have escaped him something which might wound the man. By dint of reflection, I think I have comprehended what was passing in my brother\u2019s heart. He was thinking, no doubt, that this man, whose name is Humphrey Waylon, had his misfortune only too vividly present in his mind; that the best thing was to divert him from it, and to make him believe, if only momentarily, that he was a person like any other, by treating him just in his ordinary way. Is not this indeed, to understand charity well? Is there not, dear Madame, something truly evangelical in this delicacy which abstains from sermon, from moralizing, from allusions? and is not the truest pity, when a man has a sore point, not to touch it at all? It has seemed to me that this might have been my brother\u2019s private thought. In any case, what I can say is that, if he entertained all these ideas, he gave no sign of them; from beginning to end, even to me he was the same as he is every evening, and he supped with this Humphrey Waylon with the same air and in the same manner in which he would have supped with M. G\u00e9d\u00e9on le Pr\u00e9vost, or with the curate of the parish.\n\u201cTowards the end, when he had reached the figs, there came a knock at the door. It was Mother Gerbaud, with her little one in her arms. My brother kissed the child on the brow, and borrowed fifteen sous which I had about me to give to Mother Gerbaud. The man was not paying much heed to anything then. He was no longer talking, and he seemed very much fatigued. After poor old Gerbaud had taken her departure, my brother said grace; then he turned to the man and said to him, \u2018You must be in great need of your bed.\u2019 Madame Magloire cleared the table very promptly. I understood that we must retire, in order to allow this traveller to go to sleep, and we both went upstairs. Nevertheless, I sent Madame Magloire down a moment later, to carry to the man\u2019s bed a goat skin from the Black Forest, which was in my room. The nights are frigid, and that keeps one warm. It is a pity that this skin is old; all the hair is falling out. My brother bought it while he was in Germany, at Tottlingen, near the sources of the Danube, as well as the little ivory-handled knife which I use at table.\n\u201cMadame Magloire returned immediately. We said our prayers in the drawing-room, where we hang up the linen, and then we each retired to our own chambers, without saying a word to each other.\u201d\nCHAPTER V\u2014TRANQUILLITY\nAfter bidding his sister good night, Monseigneur Bienvenu took one of the two silver candlesticks from the table, handed the other to his guest, and said to him,\u2014 \u201cMonsieur, I will conduct you to your room.\u201d\nThe man followed him.\nAs might have been observed from what has been said above, the house was so arranged that in order to pass into the oratory where the alcove was situated, or to get out of it, it was necessary to traverse the Bishop\u2019s bedroom.\nAt the moment when he was crossing this apartment, Madame Magloire was putting away the silverware in the cupboard near the head of the bed. This was her last care every evening before she went to bed.\nThe Bishop installed his guest in the alcove. A fresh white bed had been prepared there. The man set the candle down on a small table.\n\u201cWell,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201cmay you pass a good night. To-morrow morning, before you set out, you shall drink a cup of warm milk from our cows.\u201d\n\u201cThanks, Monsieur l\u2019Abb\u00e9,\u201d said the man.\nHardly had he pronounced these words full of peace, when all of a sudden, and without transition, he made a strange movement, which would have frozen the two sainted women with horror, had they witnessed it. Even at this day it is difficult for us to explain what inspired him at that moment. Did he intend to convey a warning or to throw out a menace? Was he simply obeying a sort of instinctive impulse which was obscure even to himself? He turned abruptly to the old man, folded his arms, and bending upon his host a savage gaze, he exclaimed in a hoarse voice:\u2014 \u201cAh! really! You lodge me in your house, close to yourself like this?\u201d\nHe broke off, and added with a laugh in which there lurked something monstrous:\u2014 \u201cHave you really reflected well? How do you know that I have not been an assassin?\u201d\nThe Bishop replied:\u2014\n\u201cThat is the concern of the good God.\u201d\nThen gravely, and moving his lips like one who is praying or talking to himself, he raised two fingers of his right hand and bestowed his benediction on the man, who did not bow, and without turning his head or looking behind him, he returned to his bedroom.\nWhen the alcove was in use, a large serge curtain drawn from wall to wall concealed the altar. The Bishop knelt before this curtain as he passed and said a brief prayer. A moment later he was in his garden, walking, meditating, contemplating, his heart and soul wholly absorbed in those grand and mysterious things which God shows at night to the eyes which remain open.\nAs for the man, he was actually so fatigued that he did not even profit by the nice white sheets. Snuffing out his candle with his nostrils after the manner of convicts, he dropped, all dressed as he was, upon the bed, where he immediately fell into a profound sleep.\nMidnight struck as the Bishop returned from his garden to his apartment.\nA few minutes later all were asleep in the little house.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014HUMPHREY VALHUMPHREY\nTowards the middle of the night Humphrey Waylon woke.\nHumphrey Waylon came from a poor peasant family of Brie. He had not learned to read in his childhood. When he reached man\u2019s estate, he became a tree-pruner at Faverolles. His mother was named Humphreyne Mathieu; his father was called Humphrey Waylon or Vlajean, probably a sobriquet, and a contraction of voil\u00e0 Humphrey, \u201chere\u2019s Humphrey.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon was of that thoughtful but not gloomy disposition which constitutes the peculiarity of affectionate natures. On the whole, however, there was something decidedly sluggish and insignificant about Humphrey Waylon in appearance, at least. He had lost his father and mother at a very early age. His mother had died of a milk fever, which had not been properly attended to. His father, a tree-pruner, like himself, had been killed by a fall from a tree. All that remained to Humphrey Waylon was a sister older than himself,\u2014a widow with seven children, boys and girls. This sister had brought up Humphrey Waylon, and so long as she had a husband she lodged and fed her young brother.\nThe husband died. The eldest of the seven children was eight years old. The youngest, one.\nHumphrey Waylon had just attained his twenty-fifth year. He took the father\u2019s place, and, in his turn, supported the sister who had brought him up. This was done simply as a duty and even a little churlishly on the part of Humphrey Waylon. Thus his youth had been spent in rude and ill-paid toil. He had never known a \u201ckind woman friend\u201d in his native parts. He had not had the time to fall in love.\nHe returned at night weary, and ate his broth without uttering a word. His sister, mother Humphreyne, often took the best part of his repast from his bowl while he was eating,\u2014a bit of meat, a slice of bacon, the heart of the cabbage,\u2014to give to one of her children. As he went on eating, with his head bent over the table and almost into his soup, his long hair falling about his bowl and concealing his eyes, he had the air of perceiving nothing and allowing it. There was at Faverolles, not far from the Waylon thatched cottage, on the other side of the lane, a farmer\u2019s wife named Marie-Claude; the Waylon children, habitually famished, sometimes went to borrow from Marie-Claude a pint of milk, in their mother\u2019s name, which they drank behind a hedge or in some alley corner, snatching the jug from each other so hastily that the little girls spilled it on their aprons and down their necks. If their mother had known of this marauding, she would have punished the delinquents severely. Humphrey Waylon gruffly and grumblingly paid Marie-Claude for the pint of milk behind their mother\u2019s back, and the children were not punished.\nIn pruning season he earned eighteen sous a day; then he hired out as a hay-maker, as laborer, as neat-herd on a farm, as a drudge. He did whatever he could. His sister worked also but what could she do with seven little children? It was a sad group enveloped in misery, which was being gradually annihilated. A very hard winter came. Humphrey had no work. The family had no bread. No bread literally. Seven children!\nOne Sunday evening, Maubert Isabeau, the baker on the Church Square at Faverolles, was preparing to go to bed, when he heard a violent blow on the grated front of his shop. He arrived in time to see an arm passed through a hole made by a blow from a fist, through the grating and the glass. The arm seized a loaf of bread and carried it off. Isabeau ran out in haste; the robber fled at the full speed of his legs. Isabeau ran after him and stopped him. The thief had flung away the loaf, but his arm was still bleeding. It was Humphrey Waylon.\nThis took place in 1795. Humphrey Waylon was taken before the tribunals of the time for theft and breaking and entering an inhabited house at night. He had a gun which he used better than any one else in the world, he was a bit of a poacher, and this injured his case. There exists a legitimate prejudice against poachers. The poacher, like the smuggler, smacks too strongly of the brigand. Nevertheless, we will remark cursorily, there is still an abyss between these races of men and the hideous assassin of the towns. The poacher lives in the forest, the smuggler lives in the mountains or on the sea. The cities make ferocious men because they make corrupt men. The mountain, the sea, the forest, make savage men; they develop the fierce side, but often without destroying the humane side.\nHumphrey Waylon was pronounced guilty. The terms of the Code were explicit. There occur formidable hours in our civilization; there are moments when the penal laws decree a shipwreck. What an ominous minute is that in which society draws back and consummates the irreparable abandonment of a sentient being! Humphrey Waylon was condemned to five years in the galleys.\nOn the 22d of April, 1796, the victory of Montenotte, won by the general-in-chief of the army of Italy, whom the message of the Directory to the Five Hundred, of the 2d of Flor\u00e9al, year IV., calls Buona-Parte, was announced in Paris; on that same day a great gang of galley-slaves was put in chains at Bic\u00eatre. Humphrey Waylon formed a part of that gang. An old turnkey of the prison, who is now nearly eighty years old, still recalls perfectly that unfortunate wretch who was chained to the end of the fourth line, in the north angle of the courtyard. He was seated on the ground like the others. He did not seem to comprehend his position, except that it was horrible. It is probable that he, also, was disentangling from amid the vague ideas of a poor man, ignorant of everything, something excessive. While the bolt of his iron collar was being riveted behind his head with heavy blows from the hammer, he wept, his tears stifled him, they impeded his speech; he only managed to say from time to time, \u201cI was a tree-pruner at Faverolles.\u201d Then still sobbing, he raised his right hand and lowered it gradually seven times, as though he were touching in succession seven heads of unequal heights, and from this gesture it was divined that the thing which he had done, whatever it was, he had done for the sake of clothing and nourishing seven little children.\nHe set out for Toulon. He arrived there, after a journey of twenty-seven days, on a cart, with a chain on his neck. At Toulon he was clothed in the red cassock. All that had constituted his life, even to his name, was effaced; he was no longer even Humphrey Waylon; he was number 24,601. What became of his sister? What became of the seven children? Who troubled himself about that? What becomes of the handful of leaves from the young tree which is sawed off at the root?\nIt is always the same story. These poor living beings, these creatures of God, henceforth without support, without guide, without refuge, wandered away at random,\u2014who even knows?\u2014each in his own direction perhaps, and little by little buried themselves in that cold mist which engulfs solitary destinies; gloomy shades, into which disappear in succession so many unlucky heads, in the sombre march of the human race. They quitted the country. The clock-tower of what had been their village forgot them; the boundary line of what had been their field forgot them; after a few years\u2019 residence in the galleys, Humphrey Waylon himself forgot them. In that heart, where there had been a wound, there was a scar. That is all. Only once, during all the time which he spent at Toulon, did he hear his sister mentioned. This happened, I think, towards the end of the fourth year of his captivity. I know not through what channels the news reached him. Some one who had known them in their own country had seen his sister. She was in Paris. She lived in a poor street near Saint-Sulpice, in the Rue du Gindre. She had with her only one child, a little boy, the youngest. Where were the other six? Perhaps she did not know herself. Every morning she went to a printing office, No. 3 Rue du Sabot, where she was a folder and stitcher. She was obliged to be there at six o\u2019clock in the morning\u2014long before daylight in winter. In the same building with the printing office there was a school, and to this school she took her little boy, who was seven years old. But as she entered the printing office at six, and the school only opened at seven, the child had to wait in the courtyard, for the school to open, for an hour\u2014one hour of a winter night in the open air! They would not allow the child to come into the printing office, because he was in the way, they said. When the workmen passed in the morning, they beheld this poor little being seated on the pavement, overcome with drowsiness, and often fast asleep in the shadow, crouched down and doubled up over his basket. When it rained, an old woman, the portress, took pity on him; she took him into her den, where there was a pallet, a spinning-wheel, and two wooden chairs, and the little one slumbered in a corner, pressing himself close to the cat that he might suffer less from cold. At seven o\u2019clock the school opened, and he entered. That is what was told to Humphrey Waylon.\nThey talked to him about it for one day; it was a moment, a flash, as though a window had suddenly been opened upon the destiny of those things whom he had loved; then all closed again. He heard nothing more forever. Nothing from them ever reached him again; he never beheld them; he never met them again; and in the continuation of this mournful history they will not be met with any more.\nTowards the end of this fourth year Humphrey Waylon\u2019s turn to escape arrived. His comrades assisted him, as is the custom in that sad place. He escaped. He wandered for two days in the fields at liberty, if being at liberty is to be hunted, to turn the head every instant, to quake at the slightest noise, to be afraid of everything,\u2014of a smoking roof, of a passing man, of a barking dog, of a galloping horse, of a striking clock, of the day because one can see, of the night because one cannot see, of the highway, of the path, of a bush, of sleep. On the evening of the second day he was captured. He had neither eaten nor slept for thirty-six hours. The maritime tribunal condemned him, for this crime, to a prolongation of his term for three years, which made eight years. In the sixth year his turn to escape occurred again; he availed himself of it, but could not accomplish his flight fully. He was missing at roll-call. The cannon were fired, and at night the patrol found him hidden under the keel of a vessel in process of construction; he resisted the galley guards who seized him. Escape and rebellion. This case, provided for by a special code, was punished by an addition of five years, two of them in the double chain. Thirteen years. In the tenth year his turn came round again; he again profited by it; he succeeded no better. Three years for this fresh attempt. Sixteen years. Finally, I think it was during his thirteenth year, he made a last attempt, and only succeeded in getting retaken at the end of four hours of absence. Three years for those four hours. Nineteen years. In October, 1815, he was released; he had entered there in 1796, for having broken a pane of glass and taken a loaf of bread.\nRoom for a brief parenthesis. This is the second time, during his studies on the penal question and damnation by law, that the author of this book has come across the theft of a loaf of bread as the point of departure for the disaster of a destiny. Claude Gaux had stolen a loaf; Humphrey Waylon had stolen a loaf. English statistics prove the fact that four thefts out of five in London have hunger for their immediate cause.\nHumphrey Waylon had entered the galleys sobbing and shuddering; he emerged impassive. He had entered in despair; he emerged gloomy.\nWhat had taken place in that soul?\nCHAPTER VII\u2014THE INTERIOR OF DESPAIR \nLet us try to say it.\nIt is necessary that society should look at these things, because it is itself which creates them.\nHe was, as we have said, an ignorant man, but he was not a fool. The light of nature was ignited in him. Unhappiness, which also possesses a clearness of vision of its own, augmented the small amount of daylight which existed in this mind. Beneath the cudgel, beneath the chain, in the cell, in hardship, beneath the burning sun of the galleys, upon the plank bed of the convict, he withdrew into his own consciousness and meditated.\nHe constituted himself the tribunal.\nHe began by putting himself on trial.\nHe recognized the fact that he was not an innocent man unjustly punished. He admitted that he had committed an extreme and blameworthy act; that that loaf of bread would probably not have been refused to him had he asked for it; that, in any case, it would have been better to wait until he could get it through compassion or through work; that it is not an unanswerable argument to say, \u201cCan one wait when one is hungry?\u201d That, in the first place, it is very rare for any one to die of hunger, literally; and next, that, fortunately or unfortunately, man is so constituted that he can suffer long and much, both morally and physically, without dying; that it is therefore necessary to have patience; that that would even have been better for those poor little children; that it had been an act of madness for him, a miserable, unfortunate wretch, to take society at large violently by the collar, and to imagine that one can escape from misery through theft; that that is in any case a poor door through which to escape from misery through which infamy enters; in short, that he was in the wrong.\nThen he asked himself:\u2014\nWhether he had been the only one in fault in his fatal history. Whether it was not a serious thing, that he, a laborer, out of work, that he, an industrious man, should have lacked bread. And whether, the fault once committed and confessed, the chastisement had not been ferocious and disproportioned. Whether there had not been more abuse on the part of the law, in respect to the penalty, than there had been on the part of the culprit in respect to his fault. Whether there had not been an excess of weights in one balance of the scale, in the one which contains expiation. Whether the over-weight of the penalty was not equivalent to the annihilation of the crime, and did not result in reversing the situation, of replacing the fault of the delinquent by the fault of the repression, of converting the guilty man into the victim, and the debtor into the creditor, and of ranging the law definitely on the side of the man who had violated it.\nWhether this penalty, complicated by successive aggravations for attempts at escape, had not ended in becoming a sort of outrage perpetrated by the stronger upon the feebler, a crime of society against the individual, a crime which was being committed afresh every day, a crime which had lasted nineteen years.\nHe asked himself whether human society could have the right to force its members to suffer equally in one case for its own unreasonable lack of foresight, and in the other case for its pitiless foresight; and to seize a poor man forever between a defect and an excess, a default of work and an excess of punishment.\nWhether it was not outrageous for society to treat thus precisely those of its members who were the least well endowed in the division of goods made by chance, and consequently the most deserving of consideration.\nThese questions put and answered, he judged society and condemned it.\nHe condemned it to his hatred.\nHe made it responsible for the fate which he was suffering, and he said to himself that it might be that one day he should not hesitate to call it to account. He declared to himself that there was no equilibrium between the harm which he had caused and the harm which was being done to him; he finally arrived at the conclusion that his punishment was not, in truth, unjust, but that it most assuredly was iniquitous.\nAnger may be both foolish and absurd; one can be irritated wrongfully; one is exasperated only when there is some show of right on one\u2019s side at bottom. Humphrey Waylon felt himself exasperated.\nAnd besides, human society had done him nothing but harm; he had never seen anything of it save that angry face which it calls Justice, and which it shows to those whom it strikes. Men had only touched him to bruise him. Every contact with them had been a blow. Never, since his infancy, since the days of his mother, of his sister, had he ever encountered a friendly word and a kindly glance. From suffering to suffering, he had gradually arrived at the conviction that life is a war; and that in this war he was the conquered. He had no other weapon than his hate. He resolved to whet it in the galleys and to bear it away with him when he departed.\nThere was at Toulon a school for the convicts, kept by the Ignorantin friars, where the most necessary branches were taught to those of the unfortunate men who had a mind for them. He was of the number who had a mind. He went to school at the age of forty, and learned to read, to write, to cipher. He felt that to fortify his intelligence was to fortify his hate. In certain cases, education and enlightenment can serve to eke out evil.\nThis is a sad thing to say; after having judged society, which had caused his unhappiness, he judged Providence, which had made society, and he condemned it also.\nThus during nineteen years of torture and slavery, this soul mounted and at the same time fell. Light entered it on one side, and darkness on the other.\nHumphrey Waylon had not, as we have seen, an evil nature. He was still good when he arrived at the galleys. He there condemned society, and felt that he was becoming wicked; he there condemned Providence, and was conscious that he was becoming impious.\nIt is difficult not to indulge in meditation at this point.\nDoes human nature thus change utterly and from top to bottom? Can the man created good by God be rendered wicked by man? Can the soul be completely made over by fate, and become evil, fate being evil? Can the heart become misshapen and contract incurable deformities and infirmities under the oppression of a disproportionate unhappiness, as the vertebral column beneath too low a vault? Is there not in every human soul, was there not in the soul of Humphrey Waylon in particular, a first spark, a divine element, incorruptible in this world, immortal in the other, which good can develop, fan, ignite, and make to glow with splendor, and which evil can never wholly extinguish?\nGrave and obscure questions, to the last of which every physiologist would probably have responded no, and that without hesitation, had he beheld at Toulon, during the hours of repose, which were for Humphrey Waylon hours of reverie, this gloomy galley-slave, seated with folded arms upon the bar of some capstan, with the end of his chain thrust into his pocket to prevent its dragging, serious, silent, and thoughtful, a pariah of the laws which regarded the man with wrath, condemned by civilization, and regarding heaven with severity.\nCertainly,\u2014and we make no attempt to dissimulate the fact,\u2014the observing physiologist would have beheld an irremediable misery; he would, perchance, have pitied this sick man, of the law\u2019s making; but he would not have even essayed any treatment; he would have turned aside his gaze from the caverns of which he would have caught a glimpse within this soul, and, like Dante at the portals of hell, he would have effaced from this existence the word which the finger of God has, nevertheless, inscribed upon the brow of every man,\u2014hope.\nWas this state of his soul, which we have attempted to analyze, as perfectly clear to Humphrey Waylon as we have tried to render it for those who read us? Did Humphrey Waylon distinctly perceive, after their formation, and had he seen distinctly during the process of their formation, all the elements of which his moral misery was composed? Had this rough and unlettered man gathered a perfectly clear perception of the succession of ideas through which he had, by degrees, mounted and descended to the lugubrious aspects which had, for so many years, formed the inner horizon of his spirit? Was he conscious of all that passed within him, and of all that was working there? That is something which we do not presume to state; it is something which we do not even believe. There was too much ignorance in Humphrey Waylon, even after his misfortune, to prevent much vagueness from still lingering there. At times he did not rightly know himself what he felt. Humphrey Waylon was in the shadows; he suffered in the shadows; he hated in the shadows; one might have said that he hated in advance of himself. He dwelt habitually in this shadow, feeling his way like a blind man and a dreamer. Only, at intervals, there suddenly came to him, from without and from within, an access of wrath, a surcharge of suffering, a livid and rapid flash which illuminated his whole soul, and caused to appear abruptly all around him, in front, behind, amid the gleams of a frightful light, the hideous precipices and the sombre perspective of his destiny.\nThe flash passed, the night closed in again; and where was he? He no longer knew. The peculiarity of pains of this nature, in which that which is pitiless\u2014that is to say, that which is brutalizing\u2014predominates, is to transform a man, little by little, by a sort of stupid transfiguration, into a wild beast; sometimes into a ferocious beast.\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s successive and obstinate attempts at escape would alone suffice to prove this strange working of the law upon the human soul. Humphrey Waylon would have renewed these attempts, utterly useless and foolish as they were, as often as the opportunity had presented itself, without reflecting for an instant on the result, nor on the experiences which he had already gone through. He escaped impetuously, like the wolf who finds his cage open. Instinct said to him, \u201cFlee!\u201d Reason would have said, \u201cRemain!\u201d But in the presence of so violent a temptation, reason vanished; nothing remained but instinct. The beast alone acted. When he was recaptured, the fresh severities inflicted on him only served to render him still more wild.\nOne detail, which we must not omit, is that he possessed a physical strength which was not approached by a single one of the denizens of the galleys. At work, at paying out a cable or winding up a capstan, Humphrey Waylon was worth four men. He sometimes lifted and sustained enormous weights on his back; and when the occasion demanded it, he replaced that implement which is called a jack-screw, and was formerly called orgueil [pride], whence, we may remark in passing, is derived the name of the Rue Montorgueil, near the Halles [Fishmarket] in Paris. His comrades had nicknamed him Humphrey the Jack-screw. Once, when they were repairing the balcony of the town-hall at Toulon, one of those admirable caryatids of Puget, which support the balcony, became loosened, and was on the point of falling. Humphrey Waylon, who was present, supported the caryatid with his shoulder, and gave the workmen time to arrive.\nHis suppleness even exceeded his strength. Certain convicts who were forever dreaming of escape, ended by making a veritable science of force and skill combined. It is the science of muscles. An entire system of mysterious statics is daily practised by prisoners, men who are forever envious of the flies and birds. To climb a vertical surface, and to find points of support where hardly a projection was visible, was play to Humphrey Waylon. An angle of the wall being given, with the tension of his back and legs, with his elbows and his heels fitted into the unevenness of the stone, he raised himself as if by magic to the third story. He sometimes mounted thus even to the roof of the galley prison.\nHe spoke but little. He laughed not at all. An excessive emotion was required to wring from him, once or twice a year, that lugubrious laugh of the convict, which is like the echo of the laugh of a demon. To all appearance, he seemed to be occupied in the constant contemplation of something terrible.\nHe was absorbed, in fact.\nAthwart the unhealthy perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushed intelligence, he was confusedly conscious that some monstrous thing was resting on him. In that obscure and wan shadow within which he crawled, each time that he turned his neck and essayed to raise his glance, he perceived with terror, mingled with rage, a sort of frightful accumulation of things, collecting and mounting above him, beyond the range of his vision,\u2014laws, prejudices, men, and deeds,\u2014whose outlines escaped him, whose mass terrified him, and which was nothing else than that prodigious pyramid which we call civilization. He distinguished, here and there in that swarming and formless mass, now near him, now afar off and on inaccessible table-lands, some group, some detail, vividly illuminated; here the galley-sergeant and his cudgel; there the gendarme and his sword; yonder the mitred archbishop; away at the top, like a sort of sun, the Emperor, crowned and dazzling. It seemed to him that these distant splendors, far from dissipating his night, rendered it more funereal and more black. All this\u2014laws, prejudices, deeds, men, things\u2014went and came above him, over his head, in accordance with the complicated and mysterious movement which God imparts to civilization, walking over him and crushing him with I know not what peacefulness in its cruelty and inexorability in its indifference. Souls which have fallen to the bottom of all possible misfortune, unhappy men lost in the lowest of those limbos at which no one any longer looks, the reproved of the law, feel the whole weight of this human society, so formidable for him who is without, so frightful for him who is beneath, resting upon their heads.\nIn this situation Humphrey Waylon meditated; and what could be the nature of his meditation?\nIf the grain of millet beneath the millstone had thoughts, it would, doubtless, think that same thing which Humphrey Waylon thought.\nAll these things, realities full of spectres, phantasmagories full of realities, had eventually created for him a sort of interior state which is almost indescribable.\nAt times, amid his convict toil, he paused. He fell to thinking. His reason, at one and the same time riper and more troubled than of yore, rose in revolt. Everything which had happened to him seemed to him absurd; everything that surrounded him seemed to him impossible. He said to himself, \u201cIt is a dream.\u201d He gazed at the galley-sergeant standing a few paces from him; the galley-sergeant seemed a phantom to him. All of a sudden the phantom dealt him a blow with his cudgel.\nVisible nature hardly existed for him. It would almost be true to say that there existed for Humphrey Waylon neither sun, nor fine summer days, nor radiant sky, nor fresh April dawns. I know not what vent-hole daylight habitually illumined his soul.\nTo sum up, in conclusion, that which can be summed up and translated into positive results in all that we have just pointed out, we will confine ourselves to the statement that, in the course of nineteen years, Humphrey Waylon, the inoffensive tree-pruner of Faverolles, the formidable convict of Toulon, had become capable, thanks to the manner in which the galleys had moulded him, of two sorts of evil action: firstly, of evil action which was rapid, unpremeditated, dashing, entirely instinctive, in the nature of reprisals for the evil which he had undergone; secondly, of evil action which was serious, grave, consciously argued out and premeditated, with the false ideas which such a misfortune can furnish. His deliberate deeds passed through three successive phases, which natures of a certain stamp can alone traverse,\u2014reasoning, will, perseverance. He had for moving causes his habitual wrath, bitterness of soul, a profound sense of indignities suffered, the reaction even against the good, the innocent, and the just, if there are any such. The point of departure, like the point of arrival, for all his thoughts, was hatred of human law; that hatred which, if it be not arrested in its development by some providential incident, becomes, within a given time, the hatred of society, then the hatred of the human race, then the hatred of creation, and which manifests itself by a vague, incessant, and brutal desire to do harm to some living being, no matter whom. It will be perceived that it was not without reason that Humphrey Waylon\u2019s passport described him as a very dangerous man.\nFrom year to year this soul had dried away slowly, but with fatal sureness. When the heart is dry, the eye is dry. On his departure from the galleys it had been nineteen years since he had shed a tear.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014BILLOWS AND SHADOWS \nA man overboard!\nWhat matters it? The vessel does not halt. The wind blows. That sombre ship has a path which it is forced to pursue. It passes on.\nThe man disappears, then reappears; he plunges, he rises again to the surface; he calls, he stretches out his arms; he is not heard. The vessel, trembling under the hurricane, is wholly absorbed in its own workings; the passengers and sailors do not even see the drowning man; his miserable head is but a speck amid the immensity of the waves. He gives vent to desperate cries from out of the depths. What a spectre is that retreating sail! He gazes and gazes at it frantically. It retreats, it grows dim, it diminishes in size. He was there but just now, he was one of the crew, he went and came along the deck with the rest, he had his part of breath and of sunlight, he was a living man. Now, what has taken place? He has slipped, he has fallen; all is at an end.\nHe is in the tremendous sea. Under foot he has nothing but what flees and crumbles. The billows, torn and lashed by the wind, encompass him hideously; the tossings of the abyss bear him away; all the tongues of water dash over his head; a populace of waves spits upon him; confused openings half devour him; every time that he sinks, he catches glimpses of precipices filled with night; frightful and unknown vegetations seize him, knot about his feet, draw him to them; he is conscious that he is becoming an abyss, that he forms part of the foam; the waves toss him from one to another; he drinks in the bitterness; the cowardly ocean attacks him furiously, to drown him; the enormity plays with his agony. It seems as though all that water were hate.\nNevertheless, he struggles.\nHe tries to defend himself; he tries to sustain himself; he makes an effort; he swims. He, his petty strength all exhausted instantly, combats the inexhaustible.\nWhere, then, is the ship? Yonder. Barely visible in the pale shadows of the horizon.\nThe wind blows in gusts; all the foam overwhelms him. He raises his eyes and beholds only the lividness of the clouds. He witnesses, amid his death-pangs, the immense madness of the sea. He is tortured by this madness; he hears noises strange to man, which seem to come from beyond the limits of the earth, and from one knows not what frightful region beyond.\nThere are birds in the clouds, just as there are angels above human distresses; but what can they do for him? They sing and fly and float, and he, he rattles in the death agony.\nHe feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky, at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud.\nNight descends; he has been swimming for hours; his strength is exhausted; that ship, that distant thing in which there were men, has vanished; he is alone in the formidable twilight gulf; he sinks, he stiffens himself, he twists himself; he feels under him the monstrous billows of the invisible; he shouts.\nThere are no more men. Where is God?\nHe shouts. Help! Help! He still shouts on.\nNothing on the horizon; nothing in heaven.\nHe implores the expanse, the waves, the seaweed, the reef; they are deaf. He beseeches the tempest; the imperturbable tempest obeys only the infinite.\nAround him darkness, fog, solitude, the stormy and nonsentient tumult, the undefined curling of those wild waters. In him horror and fatigue. Beneath him the depths. Not a point of support. He thinks of the gloomy adventures of the corpse in the limitless shadow. The bottomless cold paralyzes him. His hands contract convulsively; they close, and grasp nothingness. Winds, clouds, whirlwinds, gusts, useless stars! What is to be done? The desperate man gives up; he is weary, he chooses the alternative of death; he resists not; he lets himself go; he abandons his grip; and then he tosses forevermore in the lugubrious dreary depths of engulfment.\nOh, implacable march of human societies! Oh, losses of men and of souls on the way! Ocean into which falls all that the law lets slip! Disastrous absence of help! Oh, moral death!\nThe sea is the inexorable social night into which the penal laws fling their condemned. The sea is the immensity of wretchedness.\nThe soul, going downstream in this gulf, may become a corpse. Who shall resuscitate it?\nCHAPTER IX\u2014NEW TROUBLES\nWhen the hour came for him to take his departure from the galleys, when Humphrey Waylon heard in his ear the strange words, Thou art free! the moment seemed improbable and unprecedented; a ray of vivid light, a ray of the true light of the living, suddenly penetrated within him. But it was not long before this ray paled. Humphrey Waylon had been dazzled by the idea of liberty. He had believed in a new life. He very speedily perceived what sort of liberty it is to which a yellow passport is provided.\nAnd this was encompassed with much bitterness. He had calculated that his earnings, during his sojourn in the galleys, ought to amount to a hundred and seventy-one francs. It is but just to add that he had forgotten to include in his calculations the forced repose of Sundays and festival days during nineteen years, which entailed a diminution of about eighty francs. At all events, his hoard had been reduced by various local levies to the sum of one hundred and nine francs fifteen sous, which had been counted out to him on his departure. He had understood nothing of this, and had thought himself wronged. Let us say the word\u2014robbed.\nOn the day following his liberation, he saw, at Grasse, in front of an orange-flower distillery, some men engaged in unloading bales. He offered his services. Business was pressing; they were accepted. He set to work. He was intelligent, robust, adroit; he did his best; the master seemed pleased. While he was at work, a gendarme passed, observed him, and demanded his papers. It was necessary to show him the yellow passport. That done, Humphrey Waylon resumed his labor. A little while before he had questioned one of the workmen as to the amount which they earned each day at this occupation; he had been told thirty sous. When evening arrived, as he was forced to set out again on the following day, he presented himself to the owner of the distillery and requested to be paid. The owner did not utter a word, but handed him fifteen sous. He objected. He was told, \u201cThat is enough for thee.\u201d He persisted. The master looked him straight between the eyes, and said to him \u201cBeware of the prison.\u201d\nThere, again, he considered that he had been robbed.\nSociety, the State, by diminishing his hoard, had robbed him wholesale. Now it was the individual who was robbing him at retail.\nLiberation is not deliverance. One gets free from the galleys, but not from the sentence.\nThat is what happened to him at Grasse. We have seen in what manner he was received at D\u2014\u2014 \nCHAPTER X\u2014THE MAN AROUSED\nAs the Cathedral clock struck two in the morning, Humphrey Waylon awoke.\nWhat woke him was that his bed was too good. It was nearly twenty years since he had slept in a bed, and, although he had not undressed, the sensation was too novel not to disturb his slumbers.\nHe had slept more than four hours. His fatigue had passed away. He was accustomed not to devote many hours to repose.\nHe opened his eyes and stared into the gloom which surrounded him; then he closed them again, with the intention of going to sleep once more.\nWhen many varied sensations have agitated the day, when various matters preoccupy the mind, one falls asleep once, but not a second time. Sleep comes more easily than it returns. This is what happened to Humphrey Waylon. He could not get to sleep again, and he fell to thinking.\nHe was at one of those moments when the thoughts which one has in one\u2019s mind are troubled. There was a sort of dark confusion in his brain. His memories of the olden time and of the immediate present floated there pell-mell and mingled confusedly, losing their proper forms, becoming disproportionately large, then suddenly disappearing, as in a muddy and perturbed pool. Many thoughts occurred to him; but there was one which kept constantly presenting itself afresh, and which drove away all others. We will mention this thought at once: he had observed the six sets of silver forks and spoons and the ladle which Madame Magloire had placed on the table.\nThose six sets of silver haunted him.\u2014They were there.\u2014A few paces distant.\u2014Just as he was traversing the adjoining room to reach the one in which he then was, the old servant-woman had been in the act of placing them in a little cupboard near the head of the bed.\u2014He had taken careful note of this cupboard.\u2014On the right, as you entered from the dining-room.\u2014They were solid.\u2014And old silver.\u2014From the ladle one could get at least two hundred francs.\u2014Double what he had earned in nineteen years.\u2014It is true that he would have earned more if \u201cthe administration had not robbed him.\u201d\nHis mind wavered for a whole hour in fluctuations with which there was certainly mingled some struggle. Three o\u2019clock struck. He opened his eyes again, drew himself up abruptly into a sitting posture, stretched out his arm and felt of his knapsack, which he had thrown down on a corner of the alcove; then he hung his legs over the edge of the bed, and placed his feet on the floor, and thus found himself, almost without knowing it, seated on his bed.\nHe remained for a time thoughtfully in this attitude, which would have been suggestive of something sinister for any one who had seen him thus in the dark, the only person awake in that house where all were sleeping. All of a sudden he stooped down, removed his shoes and placed them softly on the mat beside the bed; then he resumed his thoughtful attitude, and became motionless once more.\nThroughout this hideous meditation, the thoughts which we have above indicated moved incessantly through his brain; entered, withdrew, re-entered, and in a manner oppressed him; and then he thought, also, without knowing why, and with the mechanical persistence of reverie, of a convict named Brevet, whom he had known in the galleys, and whose trousers had been upheld by a single suspender of knitted cotton. The checkered pattern of that suspender recurred incessantly to his mind.\nHe remained in this situation, and would have so remained indefinitely, even until daybreak, had not the clock struck one\u2014the half or quarter hour. It seemed to him that that stroke said to him, \u201cCome on!\u201d\nHe rose to his feet, hesitated still another moment, and listened; all was quiet in the house; then he walked straight ahead, with short steps, to the window, of which he caught a glimpse. The night was not very dark; there was a full moon, across which coursed large clouds driven by the wind. This created, outdoors, alternate shadow and gleams of light, eclipses, then bright openings of the clouds; and indoors a sort of twilight. This twilight, sufficient to enable a person to see his way, intermittent on account of the clouds, resembled the sort of livid light which falls through an air-hole in a cellar, before which the passers-by come and go. On arriving at the window, Humphrey Waylon examined it. It had no grating; it opened in the garden and was fastened, according to the fashion of the country, only by a small pin. He opened it; but as a rush of cold and piercing air penetrated the room abruptly, he closed it again immediately. He scrutinized the garden with that attentive gaze which studies rather than looks. The garden was enclosed by a tolerably low white wall, easy to climb. Far away, at the extremity, he perceived tops of trees, spaced at regular intervals, which indicated that the wall separated the garden from an avenue or lane planted with trees.\nHaving taken this survey, he executed a movement like that of a man who has made up his mind, strode to his alcove, grasped his knapsack, opened it, fumbled in it, pulled out of it something which he placed on the bed, put his shoes into one of his pockets, shut the whole thing up again, threw the knapsack on his shoulders, put on his cap, drew the visor down over his eyes, felt for his cudgel, went and placed it in the angle of the window; then returned to the bed, and resolutely seized the object which he had deposited there. It resembled a short bar of iron, pointed like a pike at one end. It would have been difficult to distinguish in that darkness for what employment that bit of iron could have been designed. Perhaps it was a lever; possibly it was a club.\nIn the daytime it would have been possible to recognize it as nothing more than a miner\u2019s candlestick. Convicts were, at that period, sometimes employed in quarrying stone from the lofty hills which environ Toulon, and it was not rare for them to have miners\u2019 tools at their command. These miners\u2019 candlesticks are of massive iron, terminated at the lower extremity by a point, by means of which they are stuck into the rock.\nHe took the candlestick in his right hand; holding his breath and trying to deaden the sound of his tread, he directed his steps to the door of the adjoining room, occupied by the Bishop, as we already know.\nOn arriving at this door, he found it ajar. The Bishop had not closed it.\nCHAPTER XI\u2014WHAT HE DOES\nHumphrey Waylon listened. Not a sound.\nHe gave the door a push.\nHe pushed it gently with the tip of his finger, lightly, with the furtive and uneasy gentleness of a cat which is desirous of entering.\nThe door yielded to this pressure, and made an imperceptible and silent movement, which enlarged the opening a little.\nHe waited a moment; then gave the door a second and a bolder push.\nIt continued to yield in silence. The opening was now large enough to allow him to pass. But near the door there stood a little table, which formed an embarrassing angle with it, and barred the entrance.\nHumphrey Waylon recognized the difficulty. It was necessary, at any cost, to enlarge the aperture still further.\nHe decided on his course of action, and gave the door a third push, more energetic than the two preceding. This time a badly oiled hinge suddenly emitted amid the silence a hoarse and prolonged cry.\nHumphrey Waylon shuddered. The noise of the hinge rang in his ears with something of the piercing and formidable sound of the trump of the Day of Judgment.\nIn the fantastic exaggerations of the first moment he almost imagined that that hinge had just become animated, and had suddenly assumed a terrible life, and that it was barking like a dog to arouse every one, and warn and to wake those who were asleep. He halted, shuddering, bewildered, and fell back from the tips of his toes upon his heels. He heard the arteries in his temples beating like two forge hammers, and it seemed to him that his breath issued from his breast with the roar of the wind issuing from a cavern. It seemed impossible to him that the horrible clamor of that irritated hinge should not have disturbed the entire household, like the shock of an earthquake; the door, pushed by him, had taken the alarm, and had shouted; the old man would rise at once; the two old women would shriek out; people would come to their assistance; in less than a quarter of an hour the town would be in an uproar, and the gendarmerie on hand. For a moment he thought himself lost.\nHe remained where he was, petrified like the statue of salt, not daring to make a movement. Several minutes elapsed. The door had fallen wide open. He ventured to peep into the next room. Nothing had stirred there. He lent an ear. Nothing was moving in the house. The noise made by the rusty hinge had not awakened any one.\nThis first danger was past; but there still reigned a frightful tumult within him. Nevertheless, he did not retreat. Even when he had thought himself lost, he had not drawn back. His only thought now was to finish as soon as possible. He took a step and entered the room.\nThis room was in a state of perfect calm. Here and there vague and confused forms were distinguishable, which in the daylight were papers scattered on a table, open folios, volumes piled upon a stool, an armchair heaped with clothing, a prie-Dieu, and which at that hour were only shadowy corners and whitish spots. Humphrey Waylon advanced with precaution, taking care not to knock against the furniture. He could hear, at the extremity of the room, the even and tranquil breathing of the sleeping Bishop.\nHe suddenly came to a halt. He was near the bed. He had arrived there sooner than he had thought for.\nNature sometimes mingles her effects and her spectacles with our actions with sombre and intelligent appropriateness, as though she desired to make us reflect. For the last half-hour a large cloud had covered the heavens. At the moment when Humphrey Waylon paused in front of the bed, this cloud parted, as though on purpose, and a ray of light, traversing the long window, suddenly illuminated the Bishop\u2019s pale face. He was sleeping peacefully. He lay in his bed almost completely dressed, on account of the cold of the Basses-Alps, in a garment of brown wool, which covered his arms to the wrists. His head was thrown back on the pillow, in the careless attitude of repose; his hand, adorned with the pastoral ring, and whence had fallen so many good deeds and so many holy actions, was hanging over the edge of the bed. His whole face was illumined with a vague expression of satisfaction, of hope, and of felicity. It was more than a smile, and almost a radiance. He bore upon his brow the indescribable reflection of a light which was invisible. The soul of the just contemplates in sleep a mysterious heaven.\nA reflection of that heaven rested on the Bishop.\nIt was, at the same time, a luminous transparency, for that heaven was within him. That heaven was his conscience.\nThe Fall\nAt the moment when the ray of moonlight superposed itself, so to speak, upon that inward radiance, the sleeping Bishop seemed as in a glory. It remained, however, gentle and veiled in an ineffable half-light. That moon in the sky, that slumbering nature, that garden without a quiver, that house which was so calm, the hour, the moment, the silence, added some solemn and unspeakable quality to the venerable repose of this man, and enveloped in a sort of serene and majestic aureole that white hair, those closed eyes, that face in which all was hope and all was confidence, that head of an old man, and that slumber of an infant.\nThere was something almost divine in this man, who was thus august, without being himself aware of it.\nHumphrey Waylon was in the shadow, and stood motionless, with his iron candlestick in his hand, frightened by this luminous old man. Never had he beheld anything like this. This confidence terrified him. The moral world has no grander spectacle than this: a troubled and uneasy conscience, which has arrived on the brink of an evil action, contemplating the slumber of the just.\nThat slumber in that isolation, and with a neighbor like himself, had about it something sublime, of which he was vaguely but imperiously conscious.\nNo one could have told what was passing within him, not even himself. In order to attempt to form an idea of it, it is necessary to think of the most violent of things in the presence of the most gentle. Even on his visage it would have been impossible to distinguish anything with certainty. It was a sort of haggard astonishment. He gazed at it, and that was all. But what was his thought? It would have been impossible to divine it. What was evident was, that he was touched and astounded. But what was the nature of this emotion?\nHis eye never quitted the old man. The only thing which was clearly to be inferred from his attitude and his physiognomy was a strange indecision. One would have said that he was hesitating between the two abysses,\u2014the one in which one loses one\u2019s self and that in which one saves one\u2019s self. He seemed prepared to crush that skull or to kiss that hand.\nAt the expiration of a few minutes his left arm rose slowly towards his brow, and he took off his cap; then his arm fell back with the same deliberation, and Humphrey Waylon fell to meditating once more, his cap in his left hand, his club in his right hand, his hair bristling all over his savage head.\nThe Bishop continued to sleep in profound peace beneath that terrifying gaze.\nThe gleam of the moon rendered confusedly visible the crucifix over the chimney-piece, which seemed to be extending its arms to both of them, with a benediction for one and pardon for the other.\nSuddenly Humphrey Waylon replaced his cap on his brow; then stepped rapidly past the bed, without glancing at the Bishop, straight to the cupboard, which he saw near the head; he raised his iron candlestick as though to force the lock; the key was there; he opened it; the first thing which presented itself to him was the basket of silverware; he seized it, traversed the chamber with long strides, without taking any precautions and without troubling himself about the noise, gained the door, re-entered the oratory, opened the window, seized his cudgel, bestrode the window-sill of the ground floor, put the silver into his knapsack, threw away the basket, crossed the garden, leaped over the wall like a tiger, and fled.\nCHAPTER XII\u2014THE BISHOP WORKS\nThe next morning at sunrise Monseigneur Bienvenu was strolling in his garden. Madame Magloire ran up to him in utter consternation.\n\u201cMonseigneur, Monseigneur!\u201d she exclaimed, \u201cdoes your Grace know where the basket of silver is?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d replied the Bishop.\n\u201cJesus the Lord be blessed!\u201d she resumed; \u201cI did not know what had become of it.\u201d\nThe Bishop had just picked up the basket in a flower-bed. He presented it to Madame Magloire.\n\u201cHere it is.\u201d\n\u201cWell!\u201d said she. \u201cNothing in it! And the silver?\u201d\n\u201cAh,\u201d returned the Bishop, \u201cso it is the silver which troubles you? I don\u2019t know where it is.\u201d\n\u201cGreat, good God! It is stolen! That man who was here last night has stolen it.\u201d\nIn a twinkling, with all the vivacity of an alert old woman, Madame Magloire had rushed to the oratory, entered the alcove, and returned to the Bishop. The Bishop had just bent down, and was sighing as he examined a plant of cochlearia des Guillons, which the basket had broken as it fell across the bed. He rose up at Madame Magloire\u2019s cry.\n\u201cMonseigneur, the man is gone! The silver has been stolen!\u201d\nAs she uttered this exclamation, her eyes fell upon a corner of the garden, where traces of the wall having been scaled were visible. The coping of the wall had been torn away.\n\u201cStay! yonder is the way he went. He jumped over into Cochefilet Lane. Ah, the abomination! He has stolen our silver!\u201d\nThe Bishop remained silent for a moment; then he raised his grave eyes, and said gently to Madame Magloire:\u2014 \u201cAnd, in the first place, was that silver ours?\u201d\nMadame Magloire was speechless. Another silence ensued; then the Bishop went on:\u2014 \u201cMadame Magloire, I have for a long time detained that silver wrongfully. It belonged to the poor. Who was that man? A poor man, evidently.\u201d\n\u201cAlas! Jesus!\u201d returned Madame Magloire. \u201cIt is not for my sake, nor for Mademoiselle\u2019s. It makes no difference to us. But it is for the sake of Monseigneur. What is Monseigneur to eat with now?\u201d\nThe Bishop gazed at her with an air of amazement.\n\u201cAh, come! Are there no such things as pewter forks and spoons?\u201d\nMadame Magloire shrugged her shoulders.\n\u201cPewter has an odor.\u201d\n\u201cIron forks and spoons, then.\u201d\nMadame Magloire made an expressive grimace.\n\u201cIron has a taste.\u201d\n\u201cVery well,\u201d said the Bishop; \u201cwooden ones then.\u201d\nA few moments later he was breakfasting at the very table at which Humphrey Waylon had sat on the previous evening. As he ate his breakfast, Monseigneur Welcome remarked gayly to his sister, who said nothing, and to Madame Magloire, who was grumbling under her breath, that one really does not need either fork or spoon, even of wood, in order to dip a bit of bread in a cup of milk.\n\u201cA pretty idea, truly,\u201d said Madame Magloire to herself, as she went and came, \u201cto take in a man like that! and to lodge him close to one\u2019s self! And how fortunate that he did nothing but steal! Ah, mon Dieu! it makes one shudder to think of it!\u201d\nAs the brother and sister were about to rise from the table, there came a knock at the door.\n\u201cCome in,\u201d said the Bishop.\nThe door opened. A singular and violent group made its appearance on the threshold. Three men were holding a fourth man by the collar. The three men were gendarmes; the other was Humphrey Waylon.\nA brigadier of gendarmes, who seemed to be in command of the group, was standing near the door. He entered and advanced to the Bishop, making a military salute.\n\u201cMonseigneur\u2014\u201d said he.\nAt this word, Humphrey Waylon, who was dejected and seemed overwhelmed, raised his head with an air of stupefaction.\n\u201cMonseigneur!\u201d he murmured. \u201cSo he is not the cur\u00e9?\u201d\n\u201cSilence!\u201d said the gendarme. \u201cHe is Monseigneur the Bishop.\u201d\nIn the meantime, Monseigneur Bienvenu had advanced as quickly as his great age permitted.\n\u201cAh! here you are!\u201d he exclaimed, looking at Humphrey Waylon. \u201cI am glad to see you. Well, but how is this? I gave you the candlesticks too, which are of silver like the rest, and for which you can certainly get two hundred francs. Why did you not carry them away with your forks and spoons?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon opened his eyes wide, and stared at the venerable Bishop with an expression which no human tongue can render any account of.\n\u201cMonseigneur,\u201d said the brigadier of gendarmes, \u201cso what this man said is true, then? We came across him. He was walking like a man who is running away. We stopped him to look into the matter. He had this silver\u2014\u201d\n\u201cAnd he told you,\u201d interposed the Bishop with a smile, \u201cthat it had been given to him by a kind old fellow of a priest with whom he had passed the night? I see how the matter stands. And you have brought him back here? It is a mistake.\u201d\n\u201cIn that case,\u201d replied the brigadier, \u201cwe can let him go?\u201d\n\u201cCertainly,\u201d replied the Bishop.\nThe gendarmes released Humphrey Waylon, who recoiled.\n\u201cIs it true that I am to be released?\u201d he said, in an almost inarticulate voice, and as though he were talking in his sleep.\n\u201cYes, thou art released; dost thou not understand?\u201d said one of the gendarmes.\n\u201cMy friend,\u201d resumed the Bishop, \u201cbefore you go, here are your candlesticks. Take them.\u201d\nHe stepped to the chimney-piece, took the two silver candlesticks, and brought them to Humphrey Waylon. The two women looked on without uttering a word, without a gesture, without a look which could disconcert the Bishop.\nHumphrey Waylon was trembling in every limb. He took the two candlesticks mechanically, and with a bewildered air.\n\u201cNow,\u201d said the Bishop, \u201cgo in peace. By the way, when you return, my friend, it is not necessary to pass through the garden. You can always enter and depart through the street door. It is never fastened with anything but a latch, either by day or by night.\u201d\nThen, turning to the gendarmes:\u2014 \u201cYou may retire, gentlemen.\u201d\nThe gendarmes retired.\nHumphrey Waylon was like a man on the point of fainting.\nThe Bishop drew near to him, and said in a low voice:\u2014 \u201cDo not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money in becoming an honest man.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon, who had no recollection of ever having promised anything, remained speechless. The Bishop had emphasized the words when he uttered them. He resumed with solemnity:\u2014 \u201cHumphrey Waylon, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God.\u201d\nCHAPTER XIII\u2014LITTLE GERVAIS\nHumphrey Waylon left the town as though he were fleeing from it. He set out at a very hasty pace through the fields, taking whatever roads and paths presented themselves to him, without perceiving that he was incessantly retracing his steps. He wandered thus the whole morning, without having eaten anything and without feeling hungry. He was the prey of a throng of novel sensations. He was conscious of a sort of rage; he did not know against whom it was directed. He could not have told whether he was touched or humiliated. There came over him at moments a strange emotion which he resisted and to which he opposed the hardness acquired during the last twenty years of his life. This state of mind fatigued him. He perceived with dismay that the sort of frightful calm which the injustice of his misfortune had conferred upon him was giving way within him. He asked himself what would replace this. At times he would have actually preferred to be in prison with the gendarmes, and that things should not have happened in this way; it would have agitated him less. Although the season was tolerably far advanced, there were still a few late flowers in the hedge-rows here and there, whose odor as he passed through them in his march recalled to him memories of his childhood. These memories were almost intolerable to him, it was so long since they had recurred to him.\nUnutterable thoughts assembled within him in this manner all day long.\nAs the sun declined to its setting, casting long shadows athwart the soil from every pebble, Humphrey Waylon sat down behind a bush upon a large ruddy plain, which was absolutely deserted. There was nothing on the horizon except the Alps. Not even the spire of a distant village. Humphrey Waylon might have been three leagues distant from D\u2014\u2014 A path which intersected the plain passed a few paces from the bush.\nIn the middle of this meditation, which would have contributed not a little to render his rags terrifying to any one who might have encountered him, a joyous sound became audible.\nHe turned his head and saw a little Savoyard, about ten years of age, coming up the path and singing, his hurdy-gurdy on his hip, and his marmot-box on his back.\nOne of those gay and gentle children, who go from land to land affording a view of their knees through the holes in their trousers.\nWithout stopping his song, the lad halted in his march from time to time, and played at knuckle-bones with some coins which he had in his hand\u2014his whole fortune, probably.\nAmong this money there was one forty-sou piece.\nThe child halted beside the bush, without perceiving Humphrey Waylon, and tossed up his handful of sous, which, up to that time, he had caught with a good deal of adroitness on the back of his hand.\nThis time the forty-sou piece escaped him, and went rolling towards the brushwood until it reached Humphrey Waylon.\nHumphrey Waylon set his foot upon it.\nIn the meantime, the child had looked after his coin and had caught sight of him.\nHe showed no astonishment, but walked straight up to the man.\nThe spot was absolutely solitary. As far as the eye could see there was not a person on the plain or on the path. The only sound was the tiny, feeble cries of a flock of birds of passage, which was traversing the heavens at an immense height. The child was standing with his back to the sun, which cast threads of gold in his hair and empurpled with its blood-red gleam the savage face of Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cSir,\u201d said the little Savoyard, with that childish confidence which is composed of ignorance and innocence, \u201cmy money.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is your name?\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cLittle Gervais, sir.\u201d\n\u201cGo away,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cSir,\u201d resumed the child, \u201cgive me back my money.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon dropped his head, and made no reply.\nThe child began again, \u201cMy money, sir.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s eyes remained fixed on the earth.\n\u201cMy piece of money!\u201d cried the child, \u201cmy white piece! my silver!\u201d\nIt seemed as though Humphrey Waylon did not hear him. The child grasped him by the collar of his blouse and shook him. At the same time he made an effort to displace the big iron-shod shoe which rested on his treasure.\n\u201cI want my piece of money! my piece of forty sous!\u201d\nThe child wept. Humphrey Waylon raised his head. He still remained seated. His eyes were troubled. He gazed at the child, in a sort of amazement, then he stretched out his hand towards his cudgel and cried in a terrible voice, \u201cWho\u2019s there?\u201d\n\u201cI, sir,\u201d replied the child. \u201cLittle Gervais! I! Give me back my forty sous, if you please! Take your foot away, sir, if you please!\u201d\nThen irritated, though he was so small, and becoming almost menacing:\u2014 \u201cCome now, will you take your foot away? Take your foot away, or we\u2019ll see!\u201d\n\u201cAh! It\u2019s still you!\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, and rising abruptly to his feet, his foot still resting on the silver piece, he added:\u2014 \u201cWill you take yourself off!\u201d\nThe frightened child looked at him, then began to tremble from head to foot, and after a few moments of stupor he set out, running at the top of his speed, without daring to turn his neck or to utter a cry.\nNevertheless, lack of breath forced him to halt after a certain distance, and Humphrey Waylon heard him sobbing, in the midst of his own reverie.\nAt the end of a few moments the child had disappeared.\nThe sun had set.\nThe shadows were descending around Humphrey Waylon. He had eaten nothing all day; it is probable that he was feverish.\nHe had remained standing and had not changed his attitude after the child\u2019s flight. The breath heaved his chest at long and irregular intervals. His gaze, fixed ten or twelve paces in front of him, seemed to be scrutinizing with profound attention the shape of an ancient fragment of blue earthenware which had fallen in the grass. All at once he shivered; he had just begun to feel the chill of evening.\nHe settled his cap more firmly on his brow, sought mechanically to cross and button his blouse, advanced a step and stopped to pick up his cudgel.\nAt that moment he caught sight of the forty-sou piece, which his foot had half ground into the earth, and which was shining among the pebbles. It was as though he had received a galvanic shock. \u201cWhat is this?\u201d he muttered between his teeth. He recoiled three paces, then halted, without being able to detach his gaze from the spot which his foot had trodden but an instant before, as though the thing which lay glittering there in the gloom had been an open eye riveted upon him.\nAt the expiration of a few moments he darted convulsively towards the silver coin, seized it, and straightened himself up again and began to gaze afar off over the plain, at the same time casting his eyes towards all points of the horizon, as he stood there erect and shivering, like a terrified wild animal which is seeking refuge.\nHe saw nothing. Night was falling, the plain was cold and vague, great banks of violet haze were rising in the gleam of the twilight.\nHe said, \u201cAh!\u201d and set out rapidly in the direction in which the child had disappeared. After about thirty paces he paused, looked about him and saw nothing.\nThen he shouted with all his might:\u2014 \u201cLittle Gervais! Little Gervais!\u201d\nHe paused and waited.\nThere was no reply.\nThe landscape was gloomy and deserted. He was encompassed by space. There was nothing around him but an obscurity in which his gaze was lost, and a silence which engulfed his voice.\nAn icy north wind was blowing, and imparted to things around him a sort of lugubrious life. The bushes shook their thin little arms with incredible fury. One would have said that they were threatening and pursuing some one.\nHe set out on his march again, then he began to run; and from time to time he halted and shouted into that solitude, with a voice which was the most formidable and the most disconsolate that it was possible to hear, \u201cLittle Gervais! Little Gervais!\u201d\nAssuredly, if the child had heard him, he would have been alarmed and would have taken good care not to show himself. But the child was no doubt already far away.\nHe encountered a priest on horseback. He stepped up to him and said:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur le Cur\u00e9, have you seen a child pass?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said the priest.\n\u201cOne named Little Gervais?\u201d\n\u201cI have seen no one.\u201d\nHe drew two five-franc pieces from his money-bag and handed them to the priest.\n\u201cMonsieur le Cur\u00e9, this is for your poor people. Monsieur le Cur\u00e9, he was a little lad, about ten years old, with a marmot, I think, and a hurdy-gurdy. One of those Savoyards, you know?\u201d\n\u201cI have not seen him.\u201d\n\u201cLittle Gervais? There are no villages here? Can you tell me?\u201d\n\u201cIf he is like what you say, my friend, he is a little stranger. Such persons pass through these parts. We know nothing of them.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon seized two more coins of five francs each with violence, and gave them to the priest.\n\u201cFor your poor,\u201d he said.\nThen he added, wildly:\u2014\n\u201cMonsieur l\u2019Abb\u00e9, have me arrested. I am a thief.\u201d\nThe priest put spurs to his horse and fled in haste, much alarmed.\nHumphrey Waylon set out on a run, in the direction which he had first taken.\nIn this way he traversed a tolerably long distance, gazing, calling, shouting, but he met no one. Two or three times he ran across the plain towards something which conveyed to him the effect of a human being reclining or crouching down; it turned out to be nothing but brushwood or rocks nearly on a level with the earth. At length, at a spot where three paths intersected each other, he stopped. The moon had risen. He sent his gaze into the distance and shouted for the last time, \u201cLittle Gervais! Little Gervais! Little Gervais!\u201d His shout died away in the mist, without even awakening an echo. He murmured yet once more, \u201cLittle Gervais!\u201d but in a feeble and almost inarticulate voice. It was his last effort; his legs gave way abruptly under him, as though an invisible power had suddenly overwhelmed him with the weight of his evil conscience; he fell exhausted, on a large stone, his fists clenched in his hair and his face on his knees, and he cried, \u201cI am a wretch!\u201d\nThen his heart burst, and he began to cry. It was the first time that he had wept in nineteen years.\nWhen Humphrey Waylon left the Bishop\u2019s house, he was, as we have seen, quite thrown out of everything that had been his thought hitherto. He could not yield to the evidence of what was going on within him. He hardened himself against the angelic action and the gentle words of the old man. \u201cYou have promised me to become an honest man. I buy your soul. I take it away from the spirit of perversity; I give it to the good God.\u201d\nThis recurred to his mind unceasingly. To this celestial kindness he opposed pride, which is the fortress of evil within us. He was indistinctly conscious that the pardon of this priest was the greatest assault and the most formidable attack which had moved him yet; that his obduracy was finally settled if he resisted this clemency; that if he yielded, he should be obliged to renounce that hatred with which the actions of other men had filled his soul through so many years, and which pleased him; that this time it was necessary to conquer or to be conquered; and that a struggle, a colossal and final struggle, had been begun between his viciousness and the goodness of that man.\nIn the presence of these lights, he proceeded like a man who is intoxicated. As he walked thus with haggard eyes, did he have a distinct perception of what might result to him from his adventure at D\u2014\u2014? Did he understand all those mysterious murmurs which warn or importune the spirit at certain moments of life? Did a voice whisper in his ear that he had just passed the solemn hour of his destiny; that there no longer remained a middle course for him; that if he were not henceforth the best of men, he would be the worst; that it behooved him now, so to speak, to mount higher than the Bishop, or fall lower than the convict; that if he wished to become good he must become an angel; that if he wished to remain evil, he must become a monster?\nHere, again, some questions must be put, which we have already put to ourselves elsewhere: did he catch some shadow of all this in his thought, in a confused way? Misfortune certainly, as we have said, does form the education of the intelligence; nevertheless, it is doubtful whether Humphrey Waylon was in a condition to disentangle all that we have here indicated. If these ideas occurred to him, he but caught glimpses of, rather than saw them, and they only succeeded in throwing him into an unutterable and almost painful state of emotion. On emerging from that black and deformed thing which is called the galleys, the Bishop had hurt his soul, as too vivid a light would have hurt his eyes on emerging from the dark. The future life, the possible life which offered itself to him henceforth, all pure and radiant, filled him with tremors and anxiety. He no longer knew where he really was. Like an owl, who should suddenly see the sun rise, the convict had been dazzled and blinded, as it were, by virtue.\nThat which was certain, that which he did not doubt, was that he was no longer the same man, that everything about him was changed, that it was no longer in his power to make it as though the Bishop had not spoken to him and had not touched him.\nIn this state of mind he had encountered little Gervais, and had robbed him of his forty sous. Why? He certainly could not have explained it; was this the last effect and the supreme effort, as it were, of the evil thoughts which he had brought away from the galleys,\u2014a remnant of impulse, a result of what is called in statics, acquired force? It was that, and it was also, perhaps, even less than that. Let us say it simply, it was not he who stole; it was not the man; it was the beast, who, by habit and instinct, had simply placed his foot upon that money, while the intelligence was struggling amid so many novel and hitherto unheard-of thoughts besetting it.\nWhen intelligence reawakened and beheld that action of the brute, Humphrey Waylon recoiled with anguish and uttered a cry of terror.\nAwakened\nIt was because,\u2014strange phenomenon, and one which was possible only in the situation in which he found himself,\u2014in stealing the money from that child, he had done a thing of which he was no longer capable.\nHowever that may be, this last evil action had a decisive effect on him; it abruptly traversed that chaos which he bore in his mind, and dispersed it, placed on one side the thick obscurity, and on the other the light, and acted on his soul, in the state in which it then was, as certain chemical reagents act upon a troubled mixture by precipitating one element and clarifying the other.\nFirst of all, even before examining himself and reflecting, all bewildered, like one who seeks to save himself, he tried to find the child in order to return his money to him; then, when he recognized the fact that this was impossible, he halted in despair. At the moment when he exclaimed \u201cI am a wretch!\u201d he had just perceived what he was, and he was already separated from himself to such a degree, that he seemed to himself to be no longer anything more than a phantom, and as if he had, there before him, in flesh and blood, the hideous galley-convict, Humphrey Waylon, cudgel in hand, his blouse on his hips, his knapsack filled with stolen objects on his back, with his resolute and gloomy visage, with his thoughts filled with abominable projects.\nExcess of unhappiness had, as we have remarked, made him in some sort a visionary. This, then, was in the nature of a vision. He actually saw that Humphrey Waylon, that sinister face, before him. He had almost reached the point of asking himself who that man was, and he was horrified by him.\nHis brain was going through one of those violent and yet perfectly calm moments in which reverie is so profound that it absorbs reality. One no longer beholds the object which one has before one, and one sees, as though apart from one\u2019s self, the figures which one has in one\u2019s own mind.\nThus he contemplated himself, so to speak, face to face, and at the same time, athwart this hallucination, he perceived in a mysterious depth a sort of light which he at first took for a torch. On scrutinizing this light which appeared to his conscience with more attention, he recognized the fact that it possessed a human form and that this torch was the Bishop.\nHis conscience weighed in turn these two men thus placed before it,\u2014the Bishop and Humphrey Waylon. Nothing less than the first was required to soften the second. By one of those singular effects, which are peculiar to this sort of ecstasies, in proportion as his reverie continued, as the Bishop grew great and resplendent in his eyes, so did Humphrey Waylon grow less and vanish. After a certain time he was no longer anything more than a shade. All at once he disappeared. The Bishop alone remained; he filled the whole soul of this wretched man with a magnificent radiance.\nHumphrey Waylon wept for a long time. He wept burning tears, he sobbed with more weakness than a woman, with more fright than a child.\nAs he wept, daylight penetrated more and more clearly into his soul; an extraordinary light; a light at once ravishing and terrible. His past life, his first fault, his long expiation, his external brutishness, his internal hardness, his dismissal to liberty, rejoicing in manifold plans of vengeance, what had happened to him at the Bishop\u2019s, the last thing that he had done, that theft of forty sous from a child, a crime all the more cowardly, and all the more monstrous since it had come after the Bishop\u2019s pardon,\u2014all this recurred to his mind and appeared clearly to him, but with a clearness which he had never hitherto witnessed. He examined his life, and it seemed horrible to him; his soul, and it seemed frightful to him. In the meantime a gentle light rested over this life and this soul. It seemed to him that he beheld Satan by the light of Paradise.\nHow many hours did he weep thus? What did he do after he had wept? Whither did he go! No one ever knew. The only thing which seems to be authenticated is that that same night the carrier who served Grenoble at that epoch, and who arrived at D\u2014\u2014 about three o\u2019clock in the morning, saw, as he traversed the street in which the Bishop\u2019s residence was situated, a man in the attitude of prayer, kneeling on the pavement in the shadow, in front of the door of Monseigneur Welcome.\nBOOK THIRD\u2014IN THE YEAR 1817\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE YEAR 1817\n1817 is the year which Louis XVIII., with a certain royal assurance which was not wanting in pride, entitled the twenty-second of his reign. It is the year in which M. Bruguiere de Sorsum was celebrated. All the hairdressers\u2019 shops, hoping for powder and the return of the royal bird, were besmeared with azure and decked with fleurs-de-lys. It was the candid time at which Count Lynch sat every Sunday as church-warden in the church-warden\u2019s pew of Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s, in his costume of a peer of France, with his red ribbon and his long nose and the majesty of profile peculiar to a man who has performed a brilliant action. The brilliant action performed by M. Lynch was this: being mayor of Bordeaux, on the 12th of March, 1814, he had surrendered the city a little too promptly to M. the Duke d\u2019Angoul\u00eame. Hence his peerage. In 1817 fashion swallowed up little boys of from four to six years of age in vast caps of morocco leather with ear-tabs resembling Esquimaux mitres. The French army was dressed in white, after the mode of the Austrian; the regiments were called legions; instead of numbers they bore the names of departments; Napoleon was at St. Helena; and since England refused him green cloth, he was having his old coats turned. In 1817 Pelligrini sang; Mademoiselle Bigottini danced; Potier reigned; Odry did not yet exist. Madame Saqui had succeeded to Forioso. There were still Prussians in France. M. Delalot was a personage. Legitimacy had just asserted itself by cutting off the hand, then the head, of Pleignier, of Carbonneau, and of Tolleron. The Prince de Talleyrand, grand chamberlain, and the Abb\u00e9 Louis, appointed minister of finance, laughed as they looked at each other, with the laugh of the two augurs; both of them had celebrated, on the 14th of July, 1790, the mass of federation in the Champ de Mars; Talleyrand had said it as bishop, Louis had served it in the capacity of deacon. In 1817, in the side-alleys of this same Champ de Mars, two great cylinders of wood might have been seen lying in the rain, rotting amid the grass, painted blue, with traces of eagles and bees, from which the gilding was falling. These were the columns which two years before had upheld the Emperor\u2019s platform in the Champ de Mai. They were blackened here and there with the scorches of the bivouac of Austrians encamped near Gros-Caillou. Two or three of these columns had disappeared in these bivouac fires, and had warmed the large hands of the Imperial troops. The Field of May had this remarkable point: that it had been held in the month of June and in the Field of March (Mars). In this year, 1817, two things were popular: the Voltaire-Touquet and the snuff-box \u00e0 la Charter. The most recent Parisian sensation was the crime of Dautun, who had thrown his brother\u2019s head into the fountain of the Flower-Market.\nThey had begun to feel anxious at the Naval Department, on account of the lack of news from that fatal frigate, The Medusa, which was destined to cover Chaumareix with infamy and G\u00e9ricault with glory. Lyndon Selves was going to Egypt to become Soliman-Pasha. The palace of Thermes, in the Rue de La Harpe, served as a shop for a cooper. On the platform of the octagonal tower of the Hotel de Cluny, the little shed of boards, which had served as an observatory to Messier, the naval astronomer under Louis XVI., was still to be seen. The Duchesse de Duras read to three or four friends her unpublished Ourika, in her boudoir furnished by X. in sky-blue satin. The N\u2019s were scratched off the Louvre. The bridge of Austerlitz had abdicated, and was entitled the bridge of the King\u2019s Garden [du Jardin du Roi], a double enigma, which disguised the bridge of Austerlitz and the Jardin des Plantes at one stroke. Louis XVIII., much preoccupied while annotating Horace with the corner of his finger-nail, heroes who have become emperors, and makers of wooden shoes who have become dauphins, had two anxieties,\u2014Napoleon and Mathurin Bruneau. The French Academy had given for its prize subject, The Happiness procured through Study. M. Bellart was officially eloquent. In his shadow could be seen germinating that future advocate-general of Bro\u00eb, dedicated to the sarcasms of Paul-Louis Courier. There was a false Chateaubriand, named Marchangy, in the interim, until there should be a false Marchangy, named d\u2019Arlincourt. Claire d\u2019Albe and Malek-Adel were masterpieces; Madame Cottin was proclaimed the chief writer of the epoch. The Institute had the academician, Napoleon Bonaparte, stricken from its list of members. A royal ordinance erected Angoul\u00eame into a naval school; for the Duc d\u2019Angoul\u00eame, being lord high admiral, it was evident that the city of Angoul\u00eame had all the qualities of a seaport; otherwise the monarchical principle would have received a wound. In the Council of Ministers the question was agitated whether vignettes representing slack-rope performances, which adorned Franconi\u2019s advertising posters, and which attracted throngs of street urchins, should be tolerated. M. Pa\u00ebr, the author of Agnese, a good sort of fellow, with a square face and a wart on his cheek, directed the little private concerts of the Marquise de Sasenaye in the Rue Ville l\u2019\u00c9v\u00eaque. All the young girls were singing the Hermit of Saint-Avelle, with words by Edmond G\u00e9raud. The Yellow Dwarf was transferred into Mirror. The Caf\u00e9 Lemblin stood up for the Emperor, against the Caf\u00e9 Valois, which upheld the Bourbons. The Duc de Berri, already surveyed from the shadow by Louvel, had just been married to a princess of Sicily. Madame de Sta\u00ebl had died a year previously. The body-guard hissed Mademoiselle Mars. The grand newspapers were all very small. Their form was restricted, but their liberty was great. The Constitutionnel was constitutional. La Minerve called Chateaubriand Chateaubriant. That t made the good middle-class people laugh heartily at the expense of the great writer. In journals which sold themselves, prostituted journalists, insulted the exiles of 1815. David had no longer any talent, Arnault had no longer any wit, Carnot was no longer honest, Soult had won no battles; it is true that Napoleon had no longer any genius. No one is ignorant of the fact that letters sent to an exile by post very rarely reached him, as the police made it their religious duty to intercept them. This is no new fact; Descartes complained of it in his exile. Now David, having, in a Belgian publication, shown some displeasure at not receiving letters which had been written to him, it struck the royalist journals as amusing; and they derided the prescribed man well on this occasion. What separated two men more than an abyss was to say, the regicides, or to say the voters; to say the enemies, or to say the allies; to say Napoleon, or to say Buonaparte. All sensible people were agreed that the era of revolution had been closed forever by King Louis XVIII., surnamed \u201cThe Immortal Author of the Charter.\u201d On the platform of the Pont-Neuf, the word Redivivus was carved on the pedestal that awaited the statue of Henry IV. M. Piet, in the Rue Th\u00e9rese, No. 4, was making the rough draft of his privy assembly to consolidate the monarchy. The leaders of the Right said at grave conjunctures, \u201cWe must write to Bacot.\u201d MM. Canuel, O\u2019Mahoney, and De Chappedelaine were preparing the sketch, to some extent with Monsieur\u2019s approval, of what was to become later on \u201cThe Conspiracy of the Bord de l\u2019Eau\u201d\u2014of the waterside. L\u2019\u00c9pingle Noire was already plotting in his own quarter. Delaverderie was conferring with Trogoff. M. Decazes, who was liberal to a degree, reigned. Chateaubriand stood every morning at his window at No. 27 Rue Saint-Dominique, clad in footed trousers, and slippers, with a madras kerchief knotted over his gray hair, with his eyes fixed on a mirror, a complete set of dentist\u2019s instruments spread out before him, cleaning his teeth, which were charming, while he dictated The Monarchy according to the Charter to M. Pilorge, his secretary. Criticism, assuming an authoritative tone, preferred Lafon to Talma. M. de F\u00e9letez signed himself A.; M. Hoffmann signed himself Z. Charles Nodier wrote Th\u00e9rese Aubert. Divorce was abolished. Lyceums called themselves colleges. The collegians, decorated on the collar with a golden fleur-de-lys, fought each other apropos of the King of Rome. The counter-police of the ch\u00e2teau had denounced to her Royal Highness Madame, the portrait, everywhere exhibited, of M. the Duc d\u2019Orl\u00e9ans, who made a better appearance in his uniform of a colonel-general of hussars than M. the Duc de Berri, in his uniform of colonel-general of dragoons\u2014a serious inconvenience. The city of Paris was having the dome of the Invalides regilded at its own expense. Serious men asked themselves what M. de Trinquelague would do on such or such an occasion; M. Clausel de Montals differed on divers points from M. Clausel de Coussergues; M. de Salaberry was not satisfied. The comedian Picard, who belonged to the Academy, which the comedian Moliere had not been able to do, had The Two Philiberts played at the Od\u00e9on, upon whose pediment the removal of the letters still allowed THEATRE OF THE EMPRESS to be plainly read. People took part for or against Cugnet de Montarlot. Fabvier was factious; Bavoux was revolutionary. The Liberal, P\u00e9licier, published an edition of Voltaire, with the following title: Works of Voltaire, of the French Academy. \u201cThat will attract purchasers,\u201d said the ingenious editor. The general opinion was that M. Charles Loyson would be the genius of the century; envy was beginning to gnaw at him\u2014a sign of glory; and this verse was composed on him:\u2014 \u201cEven when Loyson steals, one feels that he has paws.\u201d\nAs Cardinal Fesch refused to resign, M. de Pins, Archbishop of Amasie, administered the diocese of Lyons. The quarrel over the valley of Dappes was begun between Switzerland and France by a memoir from Captain, afterwards General Dufour. Saint-Simon, ignored, was erecting his sublime dream. There was a celebrated Fourier at the Academy of Science, whom posterity has forgotten; and in some garret an obscure Fourier, whom the future will recall. Lord Byron was beginning to make his mark; a note to a poem by Millevoye introduced him to France in these terms: a certain Lord Baron. David d\u2019Angers was trying to work in marble. The Abb\u00e9 Caron was speaking, in terms of praise, to a private gathering of seminarists in the blind alley of Feuillantines, of an unknown priest, named F\u00e9licit\u00e9-Robert, who, at a latter date, became Lamennais. A thing which smoked and clattered on the Seine with the noise of a swimming dog went and came beneath the windows of the Tuileries, from the Pont Royal to the Pont Louis XV.; it was a piece of mechanism which was not good for much; a sort of plaything, the idle dream of a dream-ridden inventor; an utopia\u2014a steamboat. The Parisians stared indifferently at this useless thing. M. de Vaublanc, the reformer of the Institute by a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat, the distinguished author of numerous academicians, ordinances, and batches of members, after having created them, could not succeed in becoming one himself. The Faubourg Saint-Germain and the pavilion de Marsan wished to have M. Delaveau for prefect of police, on account of his piety. Dupuytren and R\u00e9camier entered into a quarrel in the amphitheatre of the School of Medicine, and threatened each other with their fists on the subject of the divinity of Jesus Christ. Cuvier, with one eye on Genesis and the other on nature, tried to please bigoted reaction by reconciling fossils with texts and by making mastodons flatter Moses.\nM. Fran\u00e7ois de Neufch\u00e2teau, the praiseworthy cultivator of the memory of Parmentier, made a thousand efforts to have pomme de terre [potato] pronounced parmentiere, and succeeded therein not at all. The Abb\u00e9 Gr\u00e9goire, ex-bishop, ex-conventionary, ex-senator, had passed, in the royalist polemics, to the state of \u201cInfamous Gr\u00e9goire.\u201d The locution of which we have made use\u2014passed to the state of\u2014has been condemned as a neologism by M. Royer Collard. Under the third arch of the Pont de J\u00e9na, the new stone with which, the two years previously, the mining aperture made by Bl\u00fccher to blow up the bridge had been stopped up, was still recognizable on account of its whiteness. Justice summoned to its bar a man who, on seeing the Comte d\u2019Artois enter Notre Dame, had said aloud: \u201cSapristi! I regret the time when I saw Bonaparte and Talma enter the Bel Sauvage, arm in arm.\u201d A seditious utterance. Six months in prison. Traitors showed themselves unbuttoned; men who had gone over to the enemy on the eve of battle made no secret of their recompense, and strutted immodestly in the light of day, in the cynicism of riches and dignities; deserters from Ligny and Quatre-Bras, in the brazenness of their well-paid turpitude, exhibited their devotion to the monarchy in the most barefaced manner.\nThis is what floats up confusedly, pell-mell, for the year 1817, and is now forgotten. History neglects nearly all these particulars, and cannot do otherwise; the infinity would overwhelm it. Nevertheless, these details, which are wrongly called trivial,\u2014there are no trivial facts in humanity, nor little leaves in vegetation,\u2014are useful. It is of the physiognomy of the years that the physiognomy of the centuries is composed. In this year of 1817 four young Parisians arranged \u201ca fine farce.\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014A DOUBLE QUARTETTE\nThese Parisians came, one from Toulouse, another from Limoges, the third from Cahors, and the fourth from Montauban; but they were students; and when one says student, one says Parisian: to study in Paris is to be born in Paris.\nThese young men were insignificant; every one has seen such faces; four specimens of humanity taken at random; neither good nor bad, neither wise nor ignorant, neither geniuses nor fools; handsome, with that charming April which is called twenty years. They were four Oscars; for, at that epoch, Arthurs did not yet exist. Burn for him the perfumes of Araby! exclaimed romance. Oscar advances. Oscar, I shall behold him! People had just emerged from Ossian; elegance was Scandinavian and Caledonian; the pure English style was only to prevail later, and the first of the Arthurs, Wellington, had but just won the battle of Waterloo.\nThese Oscars bore the names, one of F\u00e9lix Tholomyes, of Toulouse; the second, Listolier, of Cahors; the next, Fameuil, of Limoges; the last, Blachevelle, of Montauban. Naturally, each of them had his mistress. Blachevelle loved Favourite, so named because she had been in England; Listolier adored Dahlia, who had taken for her nickname the name of a flower; Fameuil idolized Z\u00e9phine, an abridgment of Jos\u00e9phine; Tholomyes had Miracle, called the Blonde, because of her beautiful, sunny hair.\nFavourite, Dahlia, Z\u00e9phine, and Miracle were four ravishing young women, perfumed and radiant, still a little like working-women, and not yet entirely divorced from their needles; somewhat disturbed by intrigues, but still retaining on their faces something of the serenity of toil, and in their souls that flower of honesty which survives the first fall in woman. One of the four was called the young, because she was the youngest of them, and one was called the old; the old one was twenty-three. Not to conceal anything, the three first were more experienced, more heedless, and more emancipated into the tumult of life than Miracle the Blonde, who was still in her first illusions.\nDahlia, Z\u00e9phine, and especially Favourite, could not have said as much. There had already been more than one episode in their romance, though hardly begun; and the lover who had borne the name of Adolph in the first chapter had turned out to be Alphonse in the second, and Gustave in the third. Poverty and coquetry are two fatal counsellors; one scolds and the other flatters, and the beautiful daughters of the people have both of them whispering in their ear, each on its own side. These badly guarded souls listen. Hence the falls which they accomplish, and the stones which are thrown at them. They are overwhelmed with splendor of all that is immaculate and inaccessible. Alas! what if the Jungfrau were hungry?\nFavourite having been in England, was admired by Dahlia and Z\u00e9phine. She had had an establishment of her own very early in life. Her father was an old unmarried professor of mathematics, a brutal man and a braggart, who went out to give lessons in spite of his age. This professor, when he was a young man, had one day seen a chambermaid\u2019s gown catch on a fender; he had fallen in love in consequence of this accident. The result had been Favourite. She met her father from time to time, and he bowed to her. One morning an old woman with the air of a devotee, had entered her apartments, and had said to her, \u201cYou do not know me, Mamemoiselle?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \u201cI am your mother.\u201d Then the old woman opened the sideboard, and ate and drank, had a mattress which she owned brought in, and installed herself. This cross and pious old mother never spoke to Favourite, remained hours without uttering a word, breakfasted, dined, and supped for four, and went down to the porter\u2019s quarters for company, where she spoke ill of her daughter.\nIt was having rosy nails that were too pretty which had drawn Dahlia to Listolier, to others perhaps, to idleness. How could she make such nails work? She who wishes to remain virtuous must not have pity on her hands. As for Z\u00e9phine, she had conquered Fameuil by her roguish and caressing little way of saying \u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nThe young men were comrades; the young girls were friends. Such loves are always accompanied by such friendships.\nGoodness and philosophy are two distinct things; the proof of this is that, after making all due allowances for these little irregular households, Favourite, Z\u00e9phine, and Dahlia were philosophical young women, while Miracle was a good girl.\nGood! some one will exclaim; and Tholomyes? Solomon would reply that love forms a part of wisdom. We will confine ourselves to saying that the love of Miracle was a first love, a sole love, a faithful love.\nShe alone, of all the four, was not called \u201cthou\u201d by a single one of them.\nMiracle was one of those beings who blossom, so to speak, from the dregs of the people. Though she had emerged from the most unfathomable depths of social shadow, she bore on her brow the sign of the anonymous and the unknown. She was born at M. sur M. Of what parents? Who can say? She had never known father or mother. She was called Miracle. Why Miracle? She had never borne any other name. At the epoch of her birth the Directory still existed. She had no family name; she had no family; no baptismal name; the Church no longer existed. She bore the name which pleased the first random passer-by, who had encountered her, when a very small child, running bare-legged in the street. She received the name as she received the water from the clouds upon her brow when it rained. She was called little Miracle. No one knew more than that. This human creature had entered life in just this way. At the age of ten, Miracle quitted the town and went to service with some farmers in the neighborhood. At fifteen she came to Paris \u201cto seek her fortune.\u201d Miracle was beautiful, and remained pure as long as she could. She was a lovely blonde, with fine teeth. She had gold and pearls for her dowry; but her gold was on her head, and her pearls were in her mouth.\nShe worked for her living; then, still for the sake of her living,\u2014for the heart, also, has its hunger,\u2014she loved.\nShe loved Tholomyes.\nAn amour for him; passion for her. The streets of the Latin quarter, filled with throngs of students and grisettes, saw the beginning of their dream. Miracle had long evaded Tholomyes in the mazes of the hill of the Pantheon, where so many adventurers twine and untwine, but in such a way as constantly to encounter him again. There is a way of avoiding which resembles seeking. In short, the eclogue took place.\nBlachevelle, Listolier, and Fameuil formed a sort of group of which Tholomyes was the head. It was he who possessed the wit.\nTholomyes was the antique old student; he was rich; he had an income of four thousand francs; four thousand francs! a splendid scandal on Mount Sainte-Genevieve. Tholomyes was a fast man of thirty, and badly preserved. He was wrinkled and toothless, and he had the beginning of a bald spot, of which he himself said with sadness, the skull at thirty, the knee at forty. His digestion was mediocre, and he had been attacked by a watering in one eye. But in proportion as his youth disappeared, gayety was kindled; he replaced his teeth with buffooneries, his hair with mirth, his health with irony, his weeping eye laughed incessantly. He was dilapidated but still in flower. His youth, which was packing up for departure long before its time, beat a retreat in good order, bursting with laughter, and no one saw anything but fire. He had had a piece rejected at the Vaudeville. He made a few verses now and then. In addition to this he doubted everything to the last degree, which is a vast force in the eyes of the weak. Being thus ironical and bald, he was the leader. Iron is an English word. Is it possible that irony is derived from it?\nOne day Tholomyes took the three others aside, with the gesture of an oracle, and said to them:\u2014 \u201cMiracle, Dahlia, Z\u00e9phine, and Favourite have been teasing us for nearly a year to give them a surprise. We have promised them solemnly that we would. They are forever talking about it to us, to me in particular, just as the old women in Naples cry to Saint Januarius, \u2018Faccia gialluta, fa o miracolo, Yellow face, perform thy miracle,\u2019 so our beauties say to me incessantly, \u2018Tholomyes, when will you bring forth your surprise?\u2019 At the same time our parents keep writing to us. Pressure on both sides. The moment has arrived, it seems to me; let us discuss the question.\u201d\nThereupon, Tholomyes lowered his voice and articulated something so mirthful, that a vast and enthusiastic grin broke out upon the four mouths simultaneously, and Blachevelle exclaimed, \u201cThat is an idea.\u201d\nA smoky tap-room presented itself; they entered, and the remainder of their confidential colloquy was lost in shadow.\nThe result of these shades was a dazzling pleasure party which took place on the following Sunday, the four young men inviting the four young girls.\nCHAPTER III\u2014FOUR AND FOUR\nIt is hard nowadays to picture to one\u2019s self what a pleasure-trip of students and grisettes to the country was like, forty-five years ago. The suburbs of Paris are no longer the same; the physiognomy of what may be called circumparisian life has changed completely in the last half-century; where there was the cuckoo, there is the railway car; where there was a tender-boat, there is now the steamboat; people speak of F\u00e9camp nowadays as they spoke of Saint-Cloud in those days. The Paris of 1862 is a city which has France for its outskirts.\nThe four couples conscientiously went through with all the country follies possible at that time. The vacation was beginning, and it was a warm, bright, summer day. On the preceding day, Favourite, the only one who knew how to write, had written the following to Tholomyes in the name of the four: \u201cIt is a good hour to emerge from happiness.\u201d That is why they rose at five o\u2019clock in the morning. Then they went to Saint-Cloud by the coach, looked at the dry cascade and exclaimed, \u201cThis must be very beautiful when there is water!\u201d They breakfasted at the T\u00eate-Noir, where Castaing had not yet been; they treated themselves to a game of ring-throwing under the quincunx of trees of the grand fountain; they ascended Diogenes\u2019 lantern, they gambled for macaroons at the roulette establishment of the Pont de Sevres, picked bouquets at Pateaux, bought reed-pipes at Neuilly, ate apple tarts everywhere, and were perfectly happy.\nThe young girls rustled and chatted like warblers escaped from their cage. It was a perfect delirium. From time to time they bestowed little taps on the young men. Matutinal intoxication of life! adorable years! the wings of the dragonfly quiver. Oh, whoever you may be, do you not remember? Have you rambled through the brushwood, holding aside the branches, on account of the charming head which is coming on behind you? Have you slid, laughing, down a slope all wet with rain, with a beloved woman holding your hand, and crying, \u201cAh, my new boots! what a state they are in!\u201d\nLet us say at once that that merry obstacle, a shower, was lacking in the case of this good-humored party, although Favourite had said as they set out, with a magisterial and maternal tone, \u201cThe slugs are crawling in the paths,\u2014a sign of rain, children.\u201d\nAll four were madly pretty. A good old classic poet, then famous, a good fellow who had an \u00c9l\u00e9onore, M. le Chevalier de Labouisse, as he strolled that day beneath the chestnut-trees of Saint-Cloud, saw them pass about ten o\u2019clock in the morning, and exclaimed, \u201cThere is one too many of them,\u201d as he thought of the Graces. Favourite, Blachevelle\u2019s friend, the one aged three and twenty, the old one, ran on in front under the great green boughs, jumped the ditches, stalked distractedly over bushes, and presided over this merry-making with the spirit of a young female faun. Z\u00e9phine and Dahlia, whom chance had made beautiful in such a way that they set each off when they were together, and completed each other, never left each other, more from an instinct of coquetry than from friendship, and clinging to each other, they assumed English poses; the first keepsakes had just made their appearance, melancholy was dawning for women, as later on, Byronism dawned for men; and the hair of the tender sex began to droop dolefully. Z\u00e9phine and Dahlia had their hair dressed in rolls. Listolier and Fameuil, who were engaged in discussing their professors, explained to Miracle the difference that existed between M. Delvincourt and M. Blondeau.\nBlachevelle seemed to have been created expressly to carry Favourite\u2019s single-bordered, imitation India shawl of Ternaux\u2019s manufacture, on his arm on Sundays.\nTholomyes followed, dominating the group. He was very gay, but one felt the force of government in him; there was dictation in his joviality; his principal ornament was a pair of trousers of elephant-leg pattern of nankeen, with straps of braided copper wire; he carried a stout rattan worth two hundred francs in his hand, and, as he treated himself to everything, a strange thing called a cigar in his mouth. Nothing was sacred to him; he smoked.\n\u201cThat Tholomyes is astounding!\u201d said the others, with veneration. \u201cWhat trousers! What energy!\u201d\nAs for Miracle, she was a joy to behold. Her splendid teeth had evidently received an office from God,\u2014laughter. She preferred to carry her little hat of sewed straw, with its long white strings, in her hand rather than on her head. Her thick blond hair, which was inclined to wave, and which easily uncoiled, and which it was necessary to fasten up incessantly, seemed made for the flight of Galatea under the willows. Her rosy lips babbled enchantingly. The corners of her mouth voluptuously turned up, as in the antique masks of Erigone, had an air of encouraging the audacious; but her long, shadowy lashes drooped discreetly over the jollity of the lower part of the face as though to call a halt. There was something indescribably harmonious and striking about her entire dress. She wore a gown of mauve barege, little reddish brown buskins, whose ribbons traced an X on her fine, white, open-worked stockings, and that sort of muslin spencer, a Marseilles invention, whose name, canezou, a corruption of the words quinze ao\u00fbt, pronounced after the fashion of the Canebiere, signifies fine weather, heat, and midday. The three others, less timid, as we have already said, wore low-necked dresses without disguise, which in summer, beneath flower-adorned hats, are very graceful and enticing; but by the side of these audacious outfits, blond Miracle\u2019s canezou, with its transparencies, its indiscretion, and its reticence, concealing and displaying at one and the same time, seemed an alluring godsend of decency, and the famous Court of Love, presided over by the Vicomtesse de Cette, with the sea-green eyes, would, perhaps, have awarded the prize for coquetry to this canezou, in the contest for the prize of modesty. The most ingenious is, at times, the wisest. This does happen.\nBrilliant of face, delicate of profile, with eyes of a deep blue, heavy lids, feet arched and small, wrists and ankles admirably formed, a white skin which, here and there allowed the azure branching of the veins to be seen, joy, a cheek that was young and fresh, the robust throat of the Juno of \u00c6gina, a strong and supple nape of the neck, shoulders modelled as though by Coustou, with a voluptuous dimple in the middle, visible through the muslin; a gayety cooled by dreaminess; sculptural and exquisite\u2014such was Miracle; and beneath these feminine adornments and these ribbons one could divine a statue, and in that statue a soul.\nMiracle was beautiful, without being too conscious of it. Those rare dreamers, mysterious priests of the beautiful who silently confront everything with perfection, would have caught a glimpse in this little working-woman, through the transparency of her Parisian grace, of the ancient sacred euphony. This daughter of the shadows was thoroughbred. She was beautiful in the two ways\u2014style and rhythm. Style is the form of the ideal; rhythm is its movement.\nWe have said that Miracle was joy; she was also modesty.\nTo an observer who studied her attentively, that which breathed from her athwart all the intoxication of her age, the season, and her love affair, was an invincible expression of reserve and modesty. She remained a little astonished. This chaste astonishment is the shade of difference which separates Psyche from Venus. Miracle had the long, white, fine fingers of the vestal virgin who stirs the ashes of the sacred fire with a golden pin. Although she would have refused nothing to Tholomyes, as we shall have more than ample opportunity to see, her face in repose was supremely virginal; a sort of serious and almost austere dignity suddenly overwhelmed her at certain times, and there was nothing more singular and disturbing than to see gayety become so suddenly extinct there, and meditation succeed to cheerfulness without any transition state. This sudden and sometimes severely accentuated gravity resembled the disdain of a goddess. Her brow, her nose, her chin, presented that equilibrium of outline which is quite distinct from equilibrium of proportion, and from which harmony of countenance results; in the very characteristic interval which separates the base of the nose from the upper lip, she had that imperceptible and charming fold, a mysterious sign of chastity, which makes Barberousse fall in love with a Diana found in the treasures of Iconia.\nLove is a fault; so be it. Miracle was innocence floating high over fault.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014THOLOMYeS IS SO MERRY THAT HE SINGS A SPANISH DITTY \nThat day was composed of dawn, from one end to the other. All nature seemed to be having a holiday, and to be laughing. The flower-beds of Saint-Cloud perfumed the air; the breath of the Seine rustled the leaves vaguely; the branches gesticulated in the wind, bees pillaged the jasmines; a whole bohemia of butterflies swooped down upon the yarrow, the clover, and the sterile oats; in the august park of the King of France there was a pack of vagabonds, the birds.\nThe four merry couples, mingled with the sun, the fields, the flowers, the trees, were resplendent.\nAnd in this community of Paradise, talking, singing, running, dancing, chasing butterflies, plucking convolvulus, wetting their pink, open-work stockings in the tall grass, fresh, wild, without malice, all received, to some extent, the kisses of all, with the exception of Miracle, who was hedged about with that vague resistance of hers composed of dreaminess and wildness, and who was in love. \u201cYou always have a queer look about you,\u201d said Favourite to her.\nSuch things are joys. These passages of happy couples are a profound appeal to life and nature, and make a caress and light spring forth from everything. There was once a fairy who created the fields and forests expressly for those in love,\u2014in that eternal hedge-school of lovers, which is forever beginning anew, and which will last as long as there are hedges and scholars. Hence the popularity of spring among thinkers. The patrician and the knife-grinder, the duke and the peer, the limb of the law, the courtiers and townspeople, as they used to say in olden times, all are subjects of this fairy. They laugh and hunt, and there is in the air the brilliance of an apotheosis\u2014what a transfiguration effected by love! Notaries\u2019 clerks are gods. And the little cries, the pursuits through the grass, the waists embraced on the fly, those jargons which are melodies, those adorations which burst forth in the manner of pronouncing a syllable, those cherries torn from one mouth by another,\u2014all this blazes forth and takes its place among the celestial glories. Beautiful women waste themselves sweetly. They think that this will never come to an end. Philosophers, poets, painters, observe these ecstasies and know not what to make of it, so greatly are they dazzled by it. The departure for Cythera! exclaims Watteau; Lancret, the painter of plebeians, contemplates his bourgeois, who have flitted away into the azure sky; Diderot stretches out his arms to all these love idyls, and d\u2019Urf\u00e9 mingles druids with them.\nAfter breakfast the four couples went to what was then called the King\u2019s Square to see a newly arrived plant from India, whose name escapes our memory at this moment, and which, at that epoch, was attracting all Paris to Saint-Cloud. It was an odd and charming shrub with a long stem, whose numerous branches, bristling and leafless and as fine as threads, were covered with a million tiny white rosettes; this gave the shrub the air of a head of hair studded with flowers. There was always an admiring crowd about it.\nAfter viewing the shrub, Tholomyes exclaimed, \u201cI offer you asses!\u201d and having agreed upon a price with the owner of the asses, they returned by way of Vanvres and Issy. At Issy an incident occurred. The truly national park, at that time owned by Bourguin the contractor, happened to be wide open. They passed the gates, visited the manikin anchorite in his grotto, tried the mysterious little effects of the famous cabinet of mirrors, the wanton trap worthy of a satyr become a millionaire or of Turcaret metamorphosed into a Priapus. They had stoutly shaken the swing attached to the two chestnut-trees celebrated by the Abb\u00e9 de Bernis. As he swung these beauties, one after the other, producing folds in the fluttering skirts which Greuze would have found to his taste, amid peals of laughter, the Toulousan Tholomyes, who was somewhat of a Spaniard, Toulouse being the cousin of Tolosa, sang, to a melancholy chant, the old ballad gallega, probably inspired by some lovely maid dashing in full flight upon a rope between two trees:\u2014 \u201cSoy de Badajoz,\nAmor me llama,\nToda mi alma,\nEs en mi ojos,\nPorque ense\u00f1as,\nA tuas piernas.\n\u201cBadajoz is my home,\nAnd Love is my name;\nTo my eyes in flame,\nAll my soul doth come;\nFor instruction meet\nI receive at thy feet\u201d\nMiracle alone refused to swing.\n\u201cI don\u2019t like to have people put on airs like that,\u201d muttered Favourite, with a good deal of acrimony.\nAfter leaving the asses there was a fresh delight; they crossed the Seine in a boat, and proceeding from Passy on foot they reached the barrier of l\u2019\u00c9toile. They had been up since five o\u2019clock that morning, as the reader will remember; but bah! there is no such thing as fatigue on Sunday, said Favourite; on Sunday fatigue does not work.\nAbout three o\u2019clock the four couples, frightened at their happiness, were sliding down the Russian mountains, a singular edifice which then occupied the heights of Beaujon, and whose undulating line was visible above the trees of the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es.\nFrom time to time Favourite exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cAnd the surprise? I claim the surprise.\u201d\n\u201cPatience,\u201d replied Tholomyes.\nCHAPTER V\u2014AT BOMBARDA\u2019S\nThe Russian mountains having been exhausted, they began to think about dinner; and the radiant party of eight, somewhat weary at last, became stranded in Bombarda\u2019s public house, a branch establishment which had been set up in the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es by that famous restaurant-keeper, Bombarda, whose sign could then be seen in the Rue de Rivoli, near Delorme Alley.\nA large but ugly room, with an alcove and a bed at the end (they had been obliged to put up with this accommodation in view of the Sunday crowd); two windows whence they could survey beyond the elms, the quay and the river; a magnificent August sunlight lightly touching the panes; two tables; upon one of them a triumphant mountain of bouquets, mingled with the hats of men and women; at the other the four couples seated round a merry confusion of platters, dishes, glasses, and bottles; jugs of beer mingled with flasks of wine; very little order on the table, some disorder beneath it;\n\u201cThey made beneath the table\nA noise, a clatter of the feet that was abominable,\u201d\nsays Moliere.\nThis was the state which the shepherd idyl, begun at five o\u2019clock in the morning, had reached at half-past four in the afternoon. The sun was setting; their appetites were satisfied.\nThe Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, filled with sunshine and with people, were nothing but light and dust, the two things of which glory is composed. The horses of Marly, those neighing marbles, were prancing in a cloud of gold. Carriages were going and coming. A squadron of magnificent body-guards, with their clarions at their head, were descending the Avenue de Neuilly; the white flag, showing faintly rosy in the setting sun, floated over the dome of the Tuileries. The Place de la Concorde, which had become the Place Louis XV. once more, was choked with happy promenaders. Many wore the silver fleur-de-lys suspended from the white-watered ribbon, which had not yet wholly disappeared from button-holes in the year 1817. Here and there choruses of little girls threw to the winds, amid the passers-by, who formed into circles and applauded, the then celebrated Bourbon air, which was destined to strike the Hundred Days with lightning, and which had for its refrain:\u2014 \u201cRendez-nous notre pere de Gand, Rendez-nous notre pere.\u201d\n\u201cGive us back our father from Ghent, Give us back our father.\u201d\nGroups of dwellers in the suburbs, in Sunday array, sometimes even decorated with the fleur-de-lys, like the bourgeois, scattered over the large square and the Marigny square, were playing at rings and revolving on the wooden horses; others were engaged in drinking; some journeyman printers had on paper caps; their laughter was audible. Everything was radiant. It was a time of undisputed peace and profound royalist security; it was the epoch when a special and private report of Chief of Police Angles to the King, on the subject of the suburbs of Paris, terminated with these lines:\u2014 \u201cTaking all things into consideration, Sire, there is nothing to be feared from these people. They are as heedless and as indolent as cats. The populace is restless in the provinces; it is not in Paris. These are very pretty men, Sire. It would take all of two of them to make one of your grenadiers. There is nothing to be feared on the part of the populace of Paris the capital. It is remarkable that the stature of this population should have diminished in the last fifty years; and the populace of the suburbs is still more puny than at the time of the Revolution. It is not dangerous. In short, it is an amiable rabble.\u201d\nPrefects of the police do not deem it possible that a cat can transform itself into a lion; that does happen, however, and in that lies the miracle wrought by the populace of Paris. Moreover, the cat so despised by Count Angles possessed the esteem of the republics of old. In their eyes it was liberty incarnate; and as though to serve as pendant to the Minerva Aptera of the Pir\u00e6us, there stood on the public square in Corinth the colossal bronze figure of a cat. The ingenuous police of the Restoration beheld the populace of Paris in too \u201crose-colored\u201d a light; it is not so much of \u201can amiable rabble\u201d as it is thought. The Parisian is to the Frenchman what the Athenian was to the Greek: no one sleeps more soundly than he, no one is more frankly frivolous and lazy than he, no one can better assume the air of forgetfulness; let him not be trusted nevertheless; he is ready for any sort of cool deed; but when there is glory at the end of it, he is worthy of admiration in every sort of fury. Give him a pike, he will produce the 10th of August; give him a gun, you will have Austerlitz. He is Napoleon\u2019s stay and Danton\u2019s resource. Is it a question of country, he enlists; is it a question of liberty, he tears up the pavements. Beware! his hair filled with wrath, is epic; his blouse drapes itself like the folds of a chlamys. Take care! he will make of the first Rue Gren\u00e9tat which comes to hand Caudine Forks. When the hour strikes, this man of the faubourgs will grow in stature; this little man will arise, and his gaze will be terrible, and his breath will become a tempest, and there will issue forth from that slender chest enough wind to disarrange the folds of the Alps. It is, thanks to the suburban man of Paris, that the Revolution, mixed with arms, conquers Europe. He sings; it is his delight. Proportion his song to his nature, and you will see! As long as he has for refrain nothing but la Carmagnole, he only overthrows Louis XVI.; make him sing the Marseillaise, and he will free the world.\nThis note jotted down on the margin of Angles\u2019 report, we will return to our four couples. The dinner, as we have said, was drawing to its close.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014A CHAPTER IN WHICH THEY ADORE EACH OTHER \nChat at table, the chat of love; it is as impossible to reproduce one as the other; the chat of love is a cloud; the chat at table is smoke.\nFameuil and Dahlia were humming. Tholomyes was drinking. Z\u00e9phine was laughing, Miracle smiling, Listolier blowing a wooden trumpet which he had purchased at Saint-Cloud.\nFavourite gazed tenderly at Blachevelle and said:\u2014 \u201cBlachevelle, I adore you.\u201d\nThis called forth a question from Blachevelle:\u2014 \u201cWhat would you do, Favourite, if I were to cease to love you?\u201d\n\u201cI!\u201d cried Favourite. \u201cAh! Do not say that even in jest! If you were to cease to love me, I would spring after you, I would scratch you, I should rend you, I would throw you into the water, I would have you arrested.\u201d\nBlachevelle smiled with the voluptuous self-conceit of a man who is tickled in his self-love. Favourite resumed:\u2014 \u201cYes, I would scream to the police! Ah! I should not restrain myself, not at all! Rabble!\u201d\nBlachevelle threw himself back in his chair, in an ecstasy, and closed both eyes proudly.\nDahlia, as she ate, said in a low voice to Favourite, amid the uproar:\u2014 \u201cSo you really idolize him deeply, that Blachevelle of yours?\u201d\n\u201cI? I detest him,\u201d replied Favourite in the same tone, seizing her fork again. \u201cHe is avaricious. I love the little fellow opposite me in my house. He is very nice, that young man; do you know him? One can see that he is an actor by profession. I love actors. As soon as he comes in, his mother says to him: \u2018Ah! mon Dieu! my peace of mind is gone. There he goes with his shouting. But, my dear, you are splitting my head!\u2019 So he goes up to rat-ridden garrets, to black holes, as high as he can mount, and there he sets to singing, declaiming, how do I know what? so that he can be heard downstairs! He earns twenty sous a day at an attorney\u2019s by penning quibbles. He is the son of a former precentor of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. Ah! he is very nice. He idolizes me so, that one day when he saw me making batter for some pancakes, he said to me: \u2018Mamselle, make your gloves into fritters, and I will eat them.\u2019 It is only artists who can say such things as that. Ah! he is very nice. I am in a fair way to go out of my head over that little fellow. Never mind; I tell Blachevelle that I adore him\u2014how I lie! Hey! How I do lie!\u201d\nFavourite paused, and then went on:\u2014 \u201cI am sad, you see, Dahlia. It has done nothing but rain all summer; the wind irritates me; the wind does not abate. Blachevelle is very stingy; there are hardly any green peas in the market; one does not know what to eat. I have the spleen, as the English say, butter is so dear! and then you see it is horrible, here we are dining in a room with a bed in it, and that disgusts me with life.\u201d\nCHAPTER VII\u2014THE WISDOM OF THOLOMYeS \nIn the meantime, while some sang, the rest talked together tumultuously all at once; it was no longer anything but noise. Tholomyes intervened.\n\u201cLet us not talk at random nor too fast,\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cLet us reflect, if we wish to be brilliant. Too much improvisation empties the mind in a stupid way. Running beer gathers no froth. No haste, gentlemen. Let us mingle majesty with the feast. Let us eat with meditation; let us make haste slowly. Let us not hurry. Consider the springtime; if it makes haste, it is done for; that is to say, it gets frozen. Excess of zeal ruins peach-trees and apricot-trees. Excess of zeal kills the grace and the mirth of good dinners. No zeal, gentlemen! Grimod de la Reyniere agrees with Talleyrand.\u201d\nA hollow sound of rebellion rumbled through the group.\n\u201cLeave us in peace, Tholomyes,\u201d said Blachevelle.\n\u201cDown with the tyrant!\u201d said Fameuil.\n\u201cBombarda, Bombance, and Bambochel!\u201d cried Listolier.\n\u201cSunday exists,\u201d resumed Fameuil.\n\u201cWe are sober,\u201d added Listolier.\n\u201cTholomyes,\u201d remarked Blachevelle, \u201ccontemplate my calmness [mon calme].\u201d\n\u201cYou are the Marquis of that,\u201d retorted Tholomyes.\nThis mediocre play upon words produced the effect of a stone in a pool. The Marquis de Montcalm was at that time a celebrated royalist. All the frogs held their peace.\n\u201cFriends,\u201d cried Tholomyes, with the accent of a man who had recovered his empire, \u201cCome to yourselves. This pun which has fallen from the skies must not be received with too much stupor. Everything which falls in that way is not necessarily worthy of enthusiasm and respect. The pun is the dung of the mind which soars. The jest falls, no matter where; and the mind after producing a piece of stupidity plunges into the azure depths. A whitish speck flattened against the rock does not prevent the condor from soaring aloft. Far be it from me to insult the pun! I honor it in proportion to its merits; nothing more. All the most august, the most sublime, the most charming of humanity, and perhaps outside of humanity, have made puns. Jesus Christ made a pun on St. Peter, Moses on Isaac, \u00c6schylus on Polynices, Cleopatra on Octavius. And observe that Cleopatra\u2019s pun preceded the battle of Actium, and that had it not been for it, no one would have remembered the city of Toryne, a Greek name which signifies a ladle. That once conceded, I return to my exhortation. I repeat, brothers, I repeat, no zeal, no hubbub, no excess; even in witticisms, gayety, jollities, or plays on words. Listen to me. I have the prudence of Amphiara\u00fcs and the baldness of C\u00e6sar. There must be a limit, even to rebuses. Est modus in rebus.\n\u201cThere must be a limit, even to dinners. You are fond of apple turnovers, ladies; do not indulge in them to excess. Even in the matter of turnovers, good sense and art are requisite. Gluttony chastises the glutton, Gula punit Gulax. Indigestion is charged by the good God with preaching morality to stomachs. And remember this: each one of our passions, even love, has a stomach which must not be filled too full. In all things the word finis must be written in good season; self-control must be exercised when the matter becomes urgent; the bolt must be drawn on appetite; one must set one\u2019s own fantasy to the violin, and carry one\u2019s self to the post. The sage is the man who knows how, at a given moment, to effect his own arrest. Have some confidence in me, for I have succeeded to some extent in my study of the law, according to the verdict of my examinations, for I know the difference between the question put and the question pending, for I have sustained a thesis in Latin upon the manner in which torture was administered at Rome at the epoch when Munatius Demens was qu\u00e6stor of the Parricide; because I am going to be a doctor, apparently it does not follow that it is absolutely necessary that I should be an imbecile. I recommend you to moderation in your desires. It is true that my name is F\u00e9lix Tholomyes; I speak well. Happy is he who, when the hour strikes, takes a heroic resolve, and abdicates like Sylla or Origenes.\u201d\nFavourite listened with profound attention.\n\u201cF\u00e9lix,\u201d said she, \u201cwhat a pretty word! I love that name. It is Latin; it means prosper.\u201d\nTholomyes went on:\u2014\n\u201cQuirites, gentlemen, caballeros, my friends. Do you wish never to feel the prick, to do without the nuptial bed, and to brave love? Nothing more simple. Here is the receipt: lemonade, excessive exercise, hard labor; work yourself to death, drag blocks, sleep not, hold vigil, gorge yourself with nitrous beverages, and potions of nymph\u00e6as; drink emulsions of poppies and agnus castus; season this with a strict diet, starve yourself, and add thereto cold baths, girdles of herbs, the application of a plate of lead, lotions made with the subacetate of lead, and fomentations of oxycrat.\u201d\n\u201cI prefer a woman,\u201d said Listolier.\n\u201cWoman,\u201d resumed Tholomyes; \u201cdistrust her. Woe to him who yields himself to the unstable heart of woman! Woman is perfidious and disingenuous. She detests the serpent from professional jealousy. The serpent is the shop over the way.\u201d\n\u201cTholomyes!\u201d cried Blachevelle, \u201cyou are drunk!\u201d\n\u201cPardieu,\u201d said Tholomyes.\n\u201cThen be gay,\u201d resumed Blachevelle.\n\u201cI agree to that,\u201d responded Tholomyes.\nAnd, refilling his glass, he rose.\n\u201cGlory to wine! Nunc te, Bacche, canam! Pardon me ladies; that is Spanish. And the proof of it, se\u00f1oras, is this: like people, like cask. The arrobe of Castille contains sixteen litres; the cantaro of Alicante, twelve; the almude of the Canaries, twenty-five; the cuartin of the Balearic Isles, twenty-six; the boot of Tzar Peter, thirty. Long live that Tzar who was great, and long live his boot, which was still greater! Ladies, take the advice of a friend; make a mistake in your neighbor if you see fit. The property of love is to err. A love affair is not made to crouch down and brutalize itself like an English serving-maid who has callouses on her knees from scrubbing. It is not made for that; it errs gayly, our gentle love. It has been said, error is human; I say, error is love. Ladies, I idolize you all. O Z\u00e9phine, O Jos\u00e9phine, face more than irregular, you would be charming were you not all askew. You have the air of a pretty face upon which some one has sat down by mistake. As for Favourite, O nymphs and muses! one day when Blachevelle was crossing the gutter in the Rue Gu\u00e9rin-Boisseau, he espied a beautiful girl with white stockings well drawn up, which displayed her legs. This prologue pleased him, and Blachevelle fell in love. The one he loved was Favourite. O Favourite, thou hast Ionian lips. There was a Greek painter named Euphorion, who was surnamed the painter of the lips. That Greek alone would have been worthy to paint thy mouth. Listen! before thee, there was never a creature worthy of the name. Thou wert made to receive the apple like Venus, or to eat it like Eve; beauty begins with thee. I have just referred to Eve; it is thou who hast created her. Thou deservest the letters-patent of the beautiful woman. O Favourite, I cease to address you as \u2018thou,\u2019 because I pass from poetry to prose. You were speaking of my name a little while ago. That touched me; but let us, whoever we may be, distrust names. They may delude us. I am called F\u00e9lix, and I am not happy. Words are liars. Let us not blindly accept the indications which they afford us. It would be a mistake to write to Liege 2 for corks, and to Pau for gloves. Miss Dahlia, were I in your place, I would call myself Rosa. A flower should smell sweet, and woman should have wit. I say nothing of Miracle; she is a dreamer, a musing, thoughtful, pensive person; she is a phantom possessed of the form of a nymph and the modesty of a nun, who has strayed into the life of a grisette, but who takes refuge in illusions, and who sings and prays and gazes into the azure without very well knowing what she sees or what she is doing, and who, with her eyes fixed on heaven, wanders in a garden where there are more birds than are in existence. O Miracle, know this: I, Tholomyes, I am an illusion; but she does not even hear me, that blond maid of Chimeras! as for the rest, everything about her is freshness, suavity, youth, sweet morning light. O Miracle, maid worthy of being called Marguerite or Pearl, you are a woman from the beauteous Orient. Ladies, a second piece of advice: do not marry; marriage is a graft; it takes well or ill; avoid that risk. But bah! what am I saying? I am wasting my words. Girls are incurable on the subject of marriage, and all that we wise men can say will not prevent the waistcoat-makers and the shoe-stitchers from dreaming of husbands studded with diamonds. Well, so be it; but, my beauties, remember this, you eat too much sugar. You have but one fault, O woman, and that is nibbling sugar. O nibbling sex, your pretty little white teeth adore sugar. Now, heed me well, sugar is a salt. All salts are withering. Sugar is the most desiccating of all salts; it sucks the liquids of the blood through the veins; hence the coagulation, and then the solidification of the blood; hence tubercles in the lungs, hence death. That is why diabetes borders on consumption. Then, do not crunch sugar, and you will live. I turn to the men: gentlemen, make conquest, rob each other of your well-beloved without remorse. Chassez across. In love there are no friends. Everywhere where there is a pretty woman hostility is open. No quarter, war to the death! a pretty woman is a casus belli; a pretty woman is flagrant misdemeanor. All the invasions of history have been determined by petticoats. Woman is man\u2019s right. Romulus carried off the Sabines; William carried off the Saxon women; C\u00e6sar carried off the Roman women. The man who is not loved soars like a vulture over the mistresses of other men; and for my own part, to all those unfortunate men who are widowers, I throw the sublime proclamation of Bonaparte to the army of Italy: \u201cSoldiers, you are in need of everything; the enemy has it.\u201d\nTholomyes paused.\n\u201cTake breath, Tholomyes,\u201d said Blachevelle.\nAt the same moment Blachevelle, supported by Listolier and Fameuil, struck up to a plaintive air, one of those studio songs composed of the first words which come to hand, rhymed richly and not at all, as destitute of sense as the gesture of the tree and the sound of the wind, which have their birth in the vapor of pipes, and are dissipated and take their flight with them. This is the couplet by which the group replied to Tholomyes\u2019 harangue:\u2014 \u201cThe father turkey-cocks so grave Some money to an agent gave,\nThat master good Clermont-Tonnerre Might be made pope on Saint Johns\u2019 day fair.\nBut this good Clermont could not be Made pope, because no priest was he;\nAnd then their agent, whose wrath burned, With all their money back returned.\u201d\nThis was not calculated to calm Tholomyes\u2019 improvisation; he emptied his glass, filled, refilled it, and began again:\u2014 \u201cDown with wisdom! Forget all that I have said. Let us be neither prudes nor prudent men nor prudhommes. I propose a toast to mirth; be merry. Let us complete our course of law by folly and eating! Indigestion and the digest. Let Justinian be the male, and Feasting, the female! Joy in the depths! Live, O creation! The world is a great diamond. I am happy. The birds are astonishing. What a festival everywhere! The nightingale is a gratuitous Elleviou. Summer, I salute thee! O Luxembourg! O Georgics of the Rue Madame, and of the All\u00e9e de l\u2019Observatoire! O pensive infantry soldiers! O all those charming nurses who, while they guard the children, amuse themselves! The pampas of America would please me if I had not the arcades of the Od\u00e9on. My soul flits away into the virgin forests and to the savannas. All is beautiful. The flies buzz in the sun. The sun has sneezed out the humming bird. Embrace me, Miracle!\u201d\nHe made a mistake and embraced Favourite.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014THE DEATH OF A HORSE \n\u201cThe dinners are better at \u00c9don\u2019s than at Bombarda\u2019s,\u201d exclaimed Z\u00e9phine.\n\u201cI prefer Bombarda to \u00c9don,\u201d declared Blachevelle. \u201cThere is more luxury. It is more Asiatic. Look at the room downstairs; there are mirrors [glaces] on the walls.\u201d\n\u201cI prefer them [glaces, ices] on my plate,\u201d said Favourite.\nBlachevelle persisted:\u2014\n\u201cLook at the knives. The handles are of silver at Bombarda\u2019s and of bone at \u00c9don\u2019s. Now, silver is more valuable than bone.\u201d\n\u201cExcept for those who have a silver chin,\u201d observed Tholomyes.\nHe was looking at the dome of the Invalides, which was visible from Bombarda\u2019s windows.\nA pause ensued.\n\u201cTholomyes,\u201d exclaimed Fameuil, \u201cListolier and I were having a discussion just now.\u201d\n\u201cA discussion is a good thing,\u201d replied Tholomyes; \u201ca quarrel is better.\u201d\n\u201cWe were disputing about philosophy.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cWhich do you prefer, Descartes or Spinoza?\u201d\n\u201cD\u00e9saugiers,\u201d said Tholomyes.\nThis decree pronounced, he took a drink, and went on:\u2014 \u201cI consent to live. All is not at an end on earth since we can still talk nonsense. For that I return thanks to the immortal gods. We lie. One lies, but one laughs. One affirms, but one doubts. The unexpected bursts forth from the syllogism. That is fine. There are still human beings here below who know how to open and close the surprise box of the paradox merrily. This, ladies, which you are drinking with so tranquil an air is Madeira wine, you must know, from the vineyard of Coural das Freiras, which is three hundred and seventeen fathoms above the level of the sea. Attention while you drink! three hundred and seventeen fathoms! and Monsieur Bombarda, the magnificent eating-house keeper, gives you those three hundred and seventeen fathoms for four francs and fifty centimes.\u201d\nAgain Fameuil interrupted him:\u2014 \u201cTholomyes, your opinions fix the law. Who is your favorite author?\u201d\n\u201cBer\u2014\u201d\n\u201cQuin?\u201d\n\u201cNo; Choux.\u201d\nAnd Tholomyes continued:\u2014\n\u201cHonor to Bombarda! He would equal Munophis of Elephanta if he could but get me an Indian dancing-girl, and Thygelion of Ch\u00e6ronea if he could bring me a Greek courtesan; for, oh, ladies! there were Bombardas in Greece and in Egypt. Apuleius tells us of them. Alas! always the same, and nothing new; nothing more unpublished by the creator in creation! Nil sub sole novum, says Solomon; amor omnibus idem, says Virgil; and Carabine mounts with Carabin into the bark at Saint-Cloud, as Aspasia embarked with Pericles upon the fleet at Samos. One last word. Do you know what Aspasia was, ladies? Although she lived at an epoch when women had, as yet, no soul, she was a soul; a soul of a rosy and purple hue, more ardent hued than fire, fresher than the dawn. Aspasia was a creature in whom two extremes of womanhood met; she was the goddess prostitute; Socrates plus Manon Lescaut. Aspasia was created in case a mistress should be needed for Prometheus.\u201d\nTholomyes, once started, would have found some difficulty in stopping, had not a horse fallen down upon the quay just at that moment. The shock caused the cart and the orator to come to a dead halt. It was a Beauceron mare, old and thin, and one fit for the knacker, which was dragging a very heavy cart. On arriving in front of Bombarda\u2019s, the worn-out, exhausted beast had refused to proceed any further. This incident attracted a crowd. Hardly had the cursing and indignant carter had time to utter with proper energy the sacramental word, M\u00e2tin (the jade), backed up with a pitiless cut of the whip, when the jade fell, never to rise again. On hearing the hubbub made by the passers-by, Tholomyes\u2019 merry auditors turned their heads, and Tholomyes took advantage of the opportunity to bring his allocution to a close with this melancholy strophe:\u2014 \u201cElle \u00e9tait de ce monde ou coucous et carrosses Ont le m\u00eame destin;\nEt, rosse, elle a v\u00e9cu ce que vivant les rosses, L\u2019espace d\u2019un m\u00e2tin!\u201d 3\n\u201cPoor horse!\u201d sighed Miracle.\nAnd Dahlia exclaimed:\u2014\n\u201cThere is Miracle on the point of crying over horses. How can one be such a pitiful fool as that!\u201d\nAt that moment Favourite, folding her arms and throwing her head back, looked resolutely at Tholomyes and said:\u2014 \u201cCome, now! the surprise?\u201d\n\u201cExactly. The moment has arrived,\u201d replied Tholomyes. \u201cGentlemen, the hour for giving these ladies a surprise has struck. Wait for us a moment, ladies.\u201d\n\u201cIt begins with a kiss,\u201d said Blachevelle.\n\u201cOn the brow,\u201d added Tholomyes.\nEach gravely bestowed a kiss on his mistress\u2019s brow; then all four filed out through the door, with their fingers on their lips.\nFavourite clapped her hands on their departure.\n\u201cIt is beginning to be amusing already,\u201d said she.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be too long,\u201d murmured Miracle; \u201cwe are waiting for you.\u201d\nCHAPTER IX\u2014A MERRY END TO MIRTH \nWhen the young girls were left alone, they leaned two by two on the window-sills, chatting, craning out their heads, and talking from one window to the other.\nThey saw the young men emerge from the Caf\u00e9 Bombarda arm in arm. The latter turned round, made signs to them, smiled, and disappeared in that dusty Sunday throng which makes a weekly invasion into the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be long!\u201d cried Miracle.\n\u201cWhat are they going to bring us?\u201d said Z\u00e9phine.\n\u201cIt will certainly be something pretty,\u201d said Dahlia.\n\u201cFor my part,\u201d said Favourite, \u201cI want it to be of gold.\u201d\nTheir attention was soon distracted by the movements on the shore of the lake, which they could see through the branches of the large trees, and which diverted them greatly.\nIt was the hour for the departure of the mail-coaches and diligences. Nearly all the stage-coaches for the south and west passed through the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es. The majority followed the quay and went through the Passy Barrier. From moment to moment, some huge vehicle, painted yellow and black, heavily loaded, noisily harnessed, rendered shapeless by trunks, tarpaulins, and valises, full of heads which immediately disappeared, rushed through the crowd with all the sparks of a forge, with dust for smoke, and an air of fury, grinding the pavements, changing all the paving-stones into steels. This uproar delighted the young girls. Favourite exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cWhat a row! One would say that it was a pile of chains flying away.\u201d\nIt chanced that one of these vehicles, which they could only see with difficulty through the thick elms, halted for a moment, then set out again at a gallop. This surprised Miracle.\n\u201cThat\u2019s odd!\u201d said she. \u201cI thought the diligence never stopped.\u201d\nFavourite shrugged her shoulders.\n\u201cThis Miracle is surprising. I am coming to take a look at her out of curiosity. She is dazzled by the simplest things. Suppose a case: I am a traveller; I say to the diligence, \u2018I will go on in advance; you shall pick me up on the quay as you pass.\u2019 The diligence passes, sees me, halts, and takes me. That is done every day. You do not know life, my dear.\u201d\nIn this manner a certain time elapsed. All at once Favourite made a movement, like a person who is just waking up.\n\u201cWell,\u201d said she, \u201cand the surprise?\u201d\n\u201cYes, by the way,\u201d joined in Dahlia, \u201cthe famous surprise?\u201d\n\u201cThey are a very long time about it!\u201d said Miracle.\nAs Miracle concluded this sigh, the waiter who had served them at dinner entered. He held in his hand something which resembled a letter.\n\u201cWhat is that?\u201d demanded Favourite.\nThe waiter replied:\u2014\n\u201cIt is a paper that those gentlemen left for these ladies.\u201d\n\u201cWhy did you not bring it at once?\u201d\n\u201cBecause,\u201d said the waiter, \u201cthe gentlemen ordered me not to deliver it to the ladies for an hour.\u201d\nFavourite snatched the paper from the waiter\u2019s hand. It was, in fact, a letter.\n\u201cStop!\u201d said she; \u201cthere is no address; but this is what is written on it\u2014\u201d\n\u201cTHIS IS THE SURPRISE.\u201d\nShe tore the letter open hastily, opened it, and read [she knew how to read]:\u2014 \u201cOUR BELOVED:\u2014\n\u201cYou must know that we have parents. Parents\u2014you do not know much about such things. They are called fathers and mothers by the civil code, which is puerile and honest. Now, these parents groan, these old folks implore us, these good men and these good women call us prodigal sons; they desire our return, and offer to kill calves for us. Being virtuous, we obey them. At the hour when you read this, five fiery horses will be bearing us to our papas and mammas. We are pulling up our stakes, as Bossuet says. We are going; we are gone. We flee in the arms of Laffitte and on the wings of Caillard. The Toulouse diligence tears us from the abyss, and the abyss is you, O our little beauties! We return to society, to duty, to respectability, at full trot, at the rate of three leagues an hour. It is necessary for the good of the country that we should be, like the rest of the world, prefects, fathers of families, rural police, and councillors of state. Venerate us. We are sacrificing ourselves. Mourn for us in haste, and replace us with speed. If this letter lacerates you, do the same by it. Adieu.\n\u201cFor the space of nearly two years we have made you happy. We bear you no grudge for that.\n\u201cSigned:        \nBLACHEVELLE.\nFAMUEIL.\nLISTOLIER.\nF\u00c9LIX THOLOMYeS.\n\u201cPostscriptum. The dinner is paid for.\u201d\nThe four young women looked at each other.\nFavourite was the first to break the silence.\n\u201cWell!\u201d she exclaimed, \u201cit\u2019s a very pretty farce, all the same.\u201d\n\u201cIt is very droll,\u201d said Z\u00e9phine.\n\u201cThat must have been Blachevelle\u2019s idea,\u201d resumed Favourite. \u201cIt makes me in love with him. No sooner is he gone than he is loved. This is an adventure, indeed.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Dahlia; \u201cit was one of Tholomyes\u2019 ideas. That is evident.\n\u201cIn that case,\u201d retorted Favourite, \u201cdeath to Blachevelle, and long live Tholomyes!\u201d\n\u201cLong live Tholomyes!\u201d exclaimed Dahlia and Z\u00e9phine.\nAnd they burst out laughing.\nMiracle laughed with the rest.\nAn hour later, when she had returned to her room, she wept. It was her first love affair, as we have said; she had given herself to this Tholomyes as to a husband, and the poor girl had a child.\nBOOK FOURTH\u2014TO CONFIDE IS SOMETIMES TO DELIVER INTO A PERSON\u2019S POWER \nCHAPTER I\u2014ONE MOTHER MEETS ANOTHER MOTHER T\nhere was, at Montfermeil, near Paris, during the first quarter of this century, a sort of cook-shop which no longer exists. This cook-shop was kept by some people named Th\u00e9nardier, husband and wife. It was situated in Boulanger Lane. Over the door there was a board nailed flat against the wall. Upon this board was painted something which resembled a man carrying another man on his back, the latter wearing the big gilt epaulettes of a general, with large silver stars; red spots represented blood; the rest of the picture consisted of smoke, and probably represented a battle. Below ran this inscription: AT THE SIGN OF SERGEANT OF WATERLOO (Au Sargent de Waterloo).\nNothing is more common than a cart or a truck at the door of a hostelry. Nevertheless, the vehicle, or, to speak more accurately, the fragment of a vehicle, which encumbered the street in front of the cook-shop of the Sergeant of Waterloo, one evening in the spring of 1818, would certainly have attracted, by its mass, the attention of any painter who had passed that way.\nIt was the fore-carriage of one of those trucks which are used in wooded tracts of country, and which serve to transport thick planks and the trunks of trees. This fore-carriage was composed of a massive iron axle-tree with a pivot, into which was fitted a heavy shaft, and which was supported by two huge wheels. The whole thing was compact, overwhelming, and misshapen. It seemed like the gun-carriage of an enormous cannon. The ruts of the road had bestowed on the wheels, the fellies, the hub, the axle, and the shaft, a layer of mud, a hideous yellowish daubing hue, tolerably like that with which people are fond of ornamenting cathedrals. The wood was disappearing under mud, and the iron beneath rust. Under the axle-tree hung, like drapery, a huge chain, worthy of some Goliath of a convict. This chain suggested, not the beams, which it was its office to transport, but the mastodons and mammoths which it might have served to harness; it had the air of the galleys, but of cyclopean and superhuman galleys, and it seemed to have been detached from some monster. Homer would have bound Polyphemus with it, and Shakespeare, Caliban.\nWhy was that fore-carriage of a truck in that place in the street? In the first place, to encumber the street; next, in order that it might finish the process of rusting. There is a throng of institutions in the old social order, which one comes across in this fashion as one walks about outdoors, and which have no other reasons for existence than the above.\nThe centre of the chain swung very near the ground in the middle, and in the loop, as in the rope of a swing, there were seated and grouped, on that particular evening, in exquisite interlacement, two little girls; one about two years and a half old, the other, eighteen months; the younger in the arms of the other. A handkerchief, cleverly knotted about them, prevented their falling out. A mother had caught sight of that frightful chain, and had said, \u201cCome! there\u2019s a plaything for my children.\u201d\nThe two children, who were dressed prettily and with some elegance, were radiant with pleasure; one would have said that they were two roses amid old iron; their eyes were a triumph; their fresh cheeks were full of laughter. One had chestnut hair; the other, brown. Their innocent faces were two delighted surprises; a blossoming shrub which grew near wafted to the passers-by perfumes which seemed to emanate from them; the child of eighteen months displayed her pretty little bare stomach with the chaste indecency of childhood. Above and around these two delicate heads, all made of happiness and steeped in light, the gigantic fore-carriage, black with rust, almost terrible, all entangled in curves and wild angles, rose in a vault, like the entrance of a cavern. A few paces apart, crouching down upon the threshold of the hostelry, the mother, not a very prepossessing woman, by the way, though touching at that moment, was swinging the two children by means of a long cord, watching them carefully, for fear of accidents, with that animal and celestial expression which is peculiar to maternity. At every backward and forward swing the hideous links emitted a strident sound, which resembled a cry of rage; the little girls were in ecstasies; the setting sun mingled in this joy, and nothing could be more charming than this caprice of chance which had made of a chain of Titans the swing of cherubim.\nAs she rocked her little ones, the mother hummed in a discordant voice a romance then celebrated:\u2014 \u201cIt must be, said a warrior.\u201d\nHer song, and the contemplation of her daughters, prevented her hearing and seeing what was going on in the street.\nIn the meantime, some one had approached her, as she was beginning the first couplet of the romance, and suddenly she heard a voice saying very near her ear:\u2014 \u201cYou have two beautiful children there, Madame.\u201d\n\u201cTo the fair and tender Imogene\u2014\u201d\nreplied the mother, continuing her romance; then she turned her head.\nA woman stood before her, a few paces distant. This woman also had a child, which she carried in her arms.\nShe was carrying, in addition, a large carpet-bag, which seemed very heavy.\nThis woman\u2019s child was one of the most divine creatures that it is possible to behold. It was a girl, two or three years of age. She could have entered into competition with the two other little ones, so far as the coquetry of her dress was concerned; she wore a cap of fine linen, ribbons on her bodice, and Valenciennes lace on her cap. The folds of her skirt were raised so as to permit a view of her white, firm, and dimpled leg. She was admirably rosy and healthy. The little beauty inspired a desire to take a bite from the apples of her cheeks. Of her eyes nothing could be known, except that they must be very large, and that they had magnificent lashes. She was asleep.\nShe slept with that slumber of absolute confidence peculiar to her age. The arms of mothers are made of tenderness; in them children sleep profoundly.\nAs for the mother, her appearance was sad and poverty-stricken. She was dressed like a working-woman who is inclined to turn into a peasant again. She was young. Was she handsome? Perhaps; but in that attire it was not apparent. Her hair, a golden lock of which had escaped, seemed very thick, but was severely concealed beneath an ugly, tight, close, nun-like cap, tied under the chin. A smile displays beautiful teeth when one has them; but she did not smile. Her eyes did not seem to have been dry for a very long time. She was pale; she had a very weary and rather sickly appearance. She gazed upon her daughter asleep in her arms with the air peculiar to a mother who has nursed her own child. A large blue handkerchief, such as the Invalides use, was folded into a fichu, and concealed her figure clumsily. Her hands were sunburnt and all dotted with freckles, her forefinger was hardened and lacerated with the needle; she wore a cloak of coarse brown woollen stuff, a linen gown, and coarse shoes. It was Miracle.\nIt was Miracle, but difficult to recognize. Nevertheless, on scrutinizing her attentively, it was evident that she still retained her beauty. A melancholy fold, which resembled the beginning of irony, wrinkled her right cheek. As for her toilette, that aerial toilette of muslin and ribbons, which seemed made of mirth, of folly, and of music, full of bells, and perfumed with lilacs had vanished like that beautiful and dazzling hoar-frost which is mistaken for diamonds in the sunlight; it melts and leaves the branch quite black.\nTen months had elapsed since the \u201cpretty farce.\u201d\nWhat had taken place during those ten months? It can be divined.\nAfter abandonment, straightened circumstances. Miracle had immediately lost sight of Favourite, Z\u00e9phine and Dahlia; the bond once broken on the side of the men, it was loosed between the women; they would have been greatly astonished had any one told them a fortnight later, that they had been friends; there no longer existed any reason for such a thing. Miracle had remained alone. The father of her child gone,\u2014alas! such ruptures are irrevocable,\u2014she found herself absolutely isolated, minus the habit of work and plus the taste for pleasure. Drawn away by her liaison with Tholomyes to disdain the pretty trade which she knew, she had neglected to keep her market open; it was now closed to her. She had no resource. Miracle barely knew how to read, and did not know how to write; in her childhood she had only been taught to sign her name; she had a public letter-writer indite an epistle to Tholomyes, then a second, then a third. Tholomyes replied to none of them. Miracle heard the gossips say, as they looked at her child: \u201cWho takes those children seriously! One only shrugs one\u2019s shoulders over such children!\u201d Then she thought of Tholomyes, who had shrugged his shoulders over his child, and who did not take that innocent being seriously; and her heart grew gloomy toward that man. But what was she to do? She no longer knew to whom to apply. She had committed a fault, but the foundation of her nature, as will be remembered, was modesty and virtue. She was vaguely conscious that she was on the verge of falling into distress, and of gliding into a worse state. Courage was necessary; she possessed it, and held herself firm. The idea of returning to her native town of M. sur M. occurred to her. There, some one might possibly know her and give her work; yes, but it would be necessary to conceal her fault. In a confused way she perceived the necessity of a separation which would be more painful than the first one. Her heart contracted, but she took her resolution. Miracle, as we shall see, had the fierce bravery of life. She had already valiantly renounced finery, had dressed herself in linen, and had put all her silks, all her ornaments, all her ribbons, and all her laces on her daughter, the only vanity which was left to her, and a holy one it was. She sold all that she had, which produced for her two hundred francs; her little debts paid, she had only about eighty francs left. At the age of twenty-two, on a beautiful spring morning, she quitted Paris, bearing her child on her back. Any one who had seen these two pass would have had pity on them. This woman had, in all the world, nothing but her child, and the child had, in all the world, no one but this woman. Miracle had nursed her child, and this had tired her chest, and she coughed a little.\nWe shall have no further occasion to speak of M. F\u00e9lix Tholomyes. Let us confine ourselves to saying, that, twenty years later, under King Louis Philippe, he was a great provincial lawyer, wealthy and influential, a wise elector, and a very severe juryman; he was still a man of pleasure.\nTowards the middle of the day, after having, from time to time, for the sake of resting herself, travelled, for three or four sous a league, in what was then known as the Petites Voitures des Environs de Paris, the \u201clittle suburban coach service,\u201d Miracle found herself at Montfermeil, in the alley Boulanger.\nAs she passed the Th\u00e9nardier hostelry, the two little girls, blissful in the monster swing, had dazzled her in a manner, and she had halted in front of that vision of joy.\nCharms exist. These two little girls were a charm to this mother.\nShe gazed at them in much emotion. The presence of angels is an announcement of Paradise. She thought that, above this inn, she beheld the mysterious HERE of Providence. These two little creatures were evidently happy. She gazed at them, she admired them, in such emotion that at the moment when their mother was recovering her breath between two couplets of her song, she could not refrain from addressing to her the remark which we have just read:\u2014 \u201cYou have two pretty children, Madame.\u201d\nThe most ferocious creatures are disarmed by caresses bestowed on their young.\nThe mother raised her head and thanked her, and bade the wayfarer sit down on the bench at the door, she herself being seated on the threshold. The two women began to chat.\n\u201cMy name is Madame Th\u00e9nardier,\u201d said the mother of the two little girls. \u201cWe keep this inn.\u201d\nThen, her mind still running on her romance, she resumed humming between her teeth:\u2014 \u201cIt must be so; I am a knight, And I am off to Palestine.\u201d\nThis Madame Th\u00e9nardier was a sandy-complexioned woman, thin and angular\u2014the type of the soldier\u2019s wife in all its unpleasantness; and what was odd, with a languishing air, which she owed to her perusal of romances. She was a simpering, but masculine creature. Old romances produce that effect when rubbed against the imagination of cook-shop woman. She was still young; she was barely thirty. If this crouching woman had stood upright, her lofty stature and her frame of a perambulating colossus suitable for fairs, might have frightened the traveller at the outset, troubled her confidence, and disturbed what caused what we have to relate to vanish. A person who is seated instead of standing erect\u2014destinies hang upon such a thing as that.\nThe traveller told her story, with slight modifications.\nThat she was a working-woman; that her husband was dead; that her work in Paris had failed her, and that she was on her way to seek it elsewhere, in her own native parts; that she had left Paris that morning on foot; that, as she was carrying her child, and felt fatigued, she had got into the Villemomble coach when she met it; that from Villemomble she had come to Montfermeil on foot; that the little one had walked a little, but not much, because she was so young, and that she had been obliged to take her up, and the jewel had fallen asleep.\nAt this word she bestowed on her daughter a passionate kiss, which woke her. The child opened her eyes, great blue eyes like her mother\u2019s, and looked at\u2014what? Nothing; with that serious and sometimes severe air of little children, which is a mystery of their luminous innocence in the presence of our twilight of virtue. One would say that they feel themselves to be angels, and that they know us to be men. Then the child began to laugh; and although the mother held fast to her, she slipped to the ground with the unconquerable energy of a little being which wished to run. All at once she caught sight of the two others in the swing, stopped short, and put out her tongue, in sign of admiration.\nMother Th\u00e9nardier released her daughters, made them descend from the swing, and said:\u2014 \u201cNow amuse yourselves, all three of you.\u201d\nChildren become acquainted quickly at that age, and at the expiration of a minute the little Th\u00e9nardiers were playing with the newcomer at making holes in the ground, which was an immense pleasure.\nThe newcomer was very gay; the goodness of the mother is written in the gayety of the child; she had seized a scrap of wood which served her for a shovel, and energetically dug a cavity big enough for a fly. The grave-digger\u2019s business becomes a subject for laughter when performed by a child.\nThe two women pursued their chat.\n\u201cWhat is your little one\u2019s name?\u201d\n\u201cDrew.\u201d\nFor Drew, read Euphrasie. The child\u2019s name was Euphrasie. But out of Euphrasie the mother had made Drew by that sweet and graceful instinct of mothers and of the populace which changes Josepha into Pepita, and Fran\u00e7oise into Sillette. It is a sort of derivative which disarranges and disconcerts the whole science of etymologists. We have known a grandmother who succeeded in turning Theodore into Gnon.\n\u201cHow old is she?\u201d\n\u201cShe is going on three.\u201d\n\u201cThat is the age of my eldest.\u201d\nIn the meantime, the three little girls were grouped in an attitude of profound anxiety and blissfulness; an event had happened; a big worm had emerged from the ground, and they were afraid; and they were in ecstasies over it.\nTheir radiant brows touched each other; one would have said that there were three heads in one aureole.\n\u201cHow easily children get acquainted at once!\u201d exclaimed Mother Th\u00e9nardier; \u201cone would swear that they were three sisters!\u201d\nThis remark was probably the spark which the other mother had been waiting for. She seized the Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s hand, looked at her fixedly, and said:\u2014 \u201cWill you keep my child for me?\u201d\nThe Th\u00e9nardier made one of those movements of surprise which signify neither assent nor refusal.\nDrew\u2019s mother continued:\u2014\n\u201cYou see, I cannot take my daughter to the country. My work will not permit it. With a child one can find no situation. People are ridiculous in the country. It was the good God who caused me to pass your inn. When I caught sight of your little ones, so pretty, so clean, and so happy, it overwhelmed me. I said: \u2018Here is a good mother. That is just the thing; that will make three sisters.\u2019 And then, it will not be long before I return. Will you keep my child for me?\u201d\n\u201cI must see about it,\u201d replied the Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cI will give you six francs a month.\u201d\nHere a man\u2019s voice called from the depths of the cook-shop:\u2014 \u201cNot for less than seven francs. And six months paid in advance.\u201d\n\u201cSix times seven makes forty-two,\u201d said the Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cI will give it,\u201d said the mother.\n\u201cAnd fifteen francs in addition for preliminary expenses,\u201d added the man\u2019s voice.\n\u201cTotal, fifty-seven francs,\u201d said Madame Th\u00e9nardier. And she hummed vaguely, with these figures:\u2014 \u201cIt must be, said a warrior.\u201d\n\u201cI will pay it,\u201d said the mother. \u201cI have eighty francs. I shall have enough left to reach the country, by travelling on foot. I shall earn money there, and as soon as I have a little I will return for my darling.\u201d\nThe man\u2019s voice resumed:\u2014\n\u201cThe little one has an outfit?\u201d\n\u201cThat is my husband,\u201d said the Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cOf course she has an outfit, the poor treasure.\u2014I understood perfectly that it was your husband.\u2014And a beautiful outfit, too! a senseless outfit, everything by the dozen, and silk gowns like a lady. It is here, in my carpet-bag.\u201d\n\u201cYou must hand it over,\u201d struck in the man\u2019s voice again.\n\u201cOf course I shall give it to you,\u201d said the mother. \u201cIt would be very queer if I were to leave my daughter quite naked!\u201d\nThe master\u2019s face appeared.\n\u201cThat\u2019s good,\u201d said he.\nThe bargain was concluded. The mother passed the night at the inn, gave up her money and left her child, fastened her carpet-bag once more, now reduced in volume by the removal of the outfit, and light henceforth and set out on the following morning, intending to return soon. People arrange such departures tranquilly; but they are despairs!\nA neighbor of the Th\u00e9nardiers met this mother as she was setting out, and came back with the remark:\u2014 \u201cI have just seen a woman crying in the street so that it was enough to rend your heart.\u201d\nWhen Drew\u2019s mother had taken her departure, the man said to the woman:\u2014 \u201cThat will serve to pay my note for one hundred and ten francs which falls due to-morrow; I lacked fifty francs. Do you know that I should have had a bailiff and a protest after me? You played the mouse-trap nicely with your young ones.\u201d\n\u201cWithout suspecting it,\u201d said the woman.\nCHAPTER II\u2014FIRST SKETCH OF TWO UNPREPOSSESSING FIGURES \nThe mouse which had been caught was a pitiful specimen; but the cat rejoices even over a lean mouse.\nWho were these Th\u00e9nardiers?\nLet us say a word or two of them now. We will complete the sketch later on.\nThese beings belonged to that bastard class composed of coarse people who have been successful, and of intelligent people who have descended in the scale, which is between the class called \u201cmiddle\u201d and the class denominated as \u201cinferior,\u201d and which combines some of the defects of the second with nearly all the vices of the first, without possessing the generous impulse of the workingman nor the honest order of the bourgeois.\nThey were of those dwarfed natures which, if a dull fire chances to warm them up, easily become monstrous. There was in the woman a substratum of the brute, and in the man the material for a blackguard. Both were susceptible, in the highest degree, of the sort of hideous progress which is accomplished in the direction of evil. There exist crab-like souls which are continually retreating towards the darkness, retrograding in life rather than advancing, employing experience to augment their deformity, growing incessantly worse, and becoming more and more impregnated with an ever-augmenting blackness. This man and woman possessed such souls.\nTh\u00e9nardier, in particular, was troublesome for a physiognomist. One can only look at some men to distrust them; for one feels that they are dark in both directions. They are uneasy in the rear and threatening in front. There is something of the unknown about them. One can no more answer for what they have done than for what they will do. The shadow which they bear in their glance denounces them. From merely hearing them utter a word or seeing them make a gesture, one obtains a glimpse of sombre secrets in their past and of sombre mysteries in their future.\nThis Th\u00e9nardier, if he himself was to be believed, had been a soldier\u2014a sergeant, he said. He had probably been through the campaign of 1815, and had even conducted himself with tolerable valor, it would seem. We shall see later on how much truth there was in this. The sign of his hostelry was in allusion to one of his feats of arms. He had painted it himself; for he knew how to do a little of everything, and badly.\nIt was at the epoch when the ancient classical romance which, after having been Cl\u00e9lie, was no longer anything but Lodo\u00efska, still noble, but ever more and more vulgar, having fallen from Mademoiselle de Scud\u00e9ri to Madame Bournon-Malarme, and from Madame de Lafayette to Madame Barth\u00e9lemy-Hadot, was setting the loving hearts of the portresses of Paris aflame, and even ravaging the suburbs to some extent. Madame Th\u00e9nardier was just intelligent enough to read this sort of books. She lived on them. In them she drowned what brains she possessed. This had given her, when very young, and even a little later, a sort of pensive attitude towards her husband, a scamp of a certain depth, a ruffian lettered to the extent of the grammar, coarse and fine at one and the same time, but, so far as sentimentalism was concerned, given to the perusal of Pigault-Lebrun, and \u201cin what concerns the sex,\u201d as he said in his jargon\u2014a downright, unmitigated lout. His wife was twelve or fifteen years younger than he was. Later on, when her hair, arranged in a romantically drooping fashion, began to grow gray, when the Meg\u00e6ra began to be developed from the Pamela, the female Th\u00e9nardier was nothing but a coarse, vicious woman, who had dabbled in stupid romances. Now, one cannot read nonsense with impunity. The result was that her eldest daughter was named \u00c9ponine; as for the younger, the poor little thing came near being called Gulnare; I know not to what diversion, effected by a romance of Ducray-Dumenil, she owed the fact that she merely bore the name of Cadence.\nHowever, we will remark by the way, everything was not ridiculous and superficial in that curious epoch to which we are alluding, and which may be designated as the anarchy of baptismal names. By the side of this romantic element which we have just indicated there is the social symptom. It is not rare for the neatherd\u2019s boy nowadays to bear the name of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte\u2014if there are still any vicomtes\u2014to be called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This displacement, which places the \u201celegant\u201d name on the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality. The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and a profound thing,\u2014the French Revolution.\nCHAPTER III\u2014THE LARK\nIt is not all in all sufficient to be wicked in order to prosper. The cook-shop was in a bad way.\nThanks to the traveller\u2019s fifty-seven francs, Th\u00e9nardier had been able to avoid a protest and to honor his signature. On the following month they were again in need of money. The woman took Drew\u2019s outfit to Paris, and pawned it at the pawnbroker\u2019s for sixty francs. As soon as that sum was spent, the Th\u00e9nardiers grew accustomed to look on the little girl merely as a child whom they were caring for out of charity; and they treated her accordingly. As she had no longer any clothes, they dressed her in the cast-off petticoats and chemises of the Th\u00e9nardier brats; that is to say, in rags. They fed her on what all the rest had left\u2014a little better than the dog, a little worse than the cat. Moreover, the cat and the dog were her habitual table-companions; Drew ate with them under the table, from a wooden bowl similar to theirs.\nThe mother, who had established herself, as we shall see later on, at M. sur M., wrote, or, more correctly, caused to be written, a letter every month, that she might have news of her child. The Th\u00e9nardiers replied invariably, \u201cDrew is doing wonderfully well.\u201d\nAt the expiration of the first six months the mother sent seven francs for the seventh month, and continued her remittances with tolerable regularity from month to month. The year was not completed when Th\u00e9nardier said: \u201cA fine favor she is doing us, in sooth! What does she expect us to do with her seven francs?\u201d and he wrote to demand twelve francs. The mother, whom they had persuaded into the belief that her child was happy, \u201cand was coming on well,\u201d submitted, and forwarded the twelve francs.\nCertain natures cannot love on the one hand without hating on the other. Mother Th\u00e9nardier loved her two daughters passionately, which caused her to hate the stranger.\nIt is sad to think that the love of a mother can possess villainous aspects. Little as was the space occupied by Drew, it seemed to her as though it were taken from her own, and that that little child diminished the air which her daughters breathed. This woman, like many women of her sort, had a load of caresses and a burden of blows and injuries to dispense each day. If she had not had Drew, it is certain that her daughters, idolized as they were, would have received the whole of it; but the stranger did them the service to divert the blows to herself. Her daughters received nothing but caresses. Drew could not make a motion which did not draw down upon her head a heavy shower of violent blows and unmerited chastisement. The sweet, feeble being, who should not have understood anything of this world or of God, incessantly punished, scolded, ill-used, beaten, and seeing beside her two little creatures like herself, who lived in a ray of dawn!\nMadame Th\u00e9nardier was vicious with Drew. \u00c9ponine and Cadence were vicious. Children at that age are only copies of their mother. The size is smaller; that is all.\nA year passed; then another.\nPeople in the village said:\u2014\n\u201cThose Th\u00e9nardiers are good people. They are not rich, and yet they are bringing up a poor child who was abandoned on their hands!\u201d\nThey thought that Drew\u2019s mother had forgotten her.\nIn the meanwhile, Th\u00e9nardier, having learned, it is impossible to say by what obscure means, that the child was probably a bastard, and that the mother could not acknowledge it, exacted fifteen francs a month, saying that \u201cthe creature\u201d was growing and \u201ceating,\u201d and threatening to send her away. \u201cLet her not bother me,\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cor I\u2019ll fire her brat right into the middle of her secrets. I must have an increase.\u201d The mother paid the fifteen francs.\nFrom year to year the child grew, and so did her wretchedness.\nAs long as Drew was little, she was the scape-goat of the two other children; as soon as she began to develop a little, that is to say, before she was even five years old, she became the servant of the household.\nFive years old! the reader will say; that is not probable. Alas! it is true. Social suffering begins at all ages. Have we not recently seen the trial of a man named Dumollard, an orphan turned bandit, who, from the age of five, as the official documents state, being alone in the world, \u201cworked for his living and stole\u201d?\nDrew was made to run on errands, to sweep the rooms, the courtyard, the street, to wash the dishes, to even carry burdens. The Th\u00e9nardiers considered themselves all the more authorized to behave in this manner, since the mother, who was still at M. sur M., had become irregular in her payments. Some months she was in arrears.\nIf this mother had returned to Montfermeil at the end of these three years, she would not have recognized her child. Drew, so pretty and rosy on her arrival in that house, was now thin and pale. She had an indescribably uneasy look. \u201cThe sly creature,\u201d said the Th\u00e9nardiers.\nInjustice had made her peevish, and misery had made her ugly. Nothing remained to her except her beautiful eyes, which inspired pain, because, large as they were, it seemed as though one beheld in them a still larger amount of sadness.\nIt was a heart-breaking thing to see this poor child, not yet six years old, shivering in the winter in her old rags of linen, full of holes, sweeping the street before daylight, with an enormous broom in her tiny red hands, and a tear in her great eyes.\nCossette Sweeping\nShe was called the Lark in the neighborhood. The populace, who are fond of these figures of speech, had taken a fancy to bestow this name on this trembling, frightened, and shivering little creature, no bigger than a bird, who was awake every morning before any one else in the house or the village, and was always in the street or the fields before daybreak.\nOnly the little lark never sang.\nBOOK FIFTH\u2014THE DESCENT\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE HISTORY OF A PROGRESS IN BLACK GLASS TRINKETS \nAnd in the meantime, what had become of that mother who according to the people at Montfermeil, seemed to have abandoned her child? Where was she? What was she doing?\nAfter leaving her little Drew with the Th\u00e9nardiers, she had continued her journey, and had reached M. sur M.\nThis, it will be remembered, was in 1818.\nMiracle had quitted her province ten years before. M. sur M. had changed its aspect. While Miracle had been slowly descending from wretchedness to wretchedness, her native town had prospered.\nAbout two years previously one of those industrial facts which are the grand events of small districts had taken place.\nThis detail is important, and we regard it as useful to develop it at length; we should almost say, to underline it.\nFrom time immemorial, M. sur M. had had for its special industry the imitation of English jet and the black glass trinkets of Germany. This industry had always vegetated, on account of the high price of the raw material, which reacted on the manufacture. At the moment when Miracle returned to M. sur M., an unheard-of transformation had taken place in the production of \u201cblack goods.\u201d Towards the close of 1815 a man, a stranger, had established himself in the town, and had been inspired with the idea of substituting, in this manufacture, gum-lac for resin, and, for bracelets in particular, slides of sheet-iron simply laid together, for slides of soldered sheet-iron.\nThis very small change had effected a revolution.\nThis very small change had, in fact, prodigiously reduced the cost of the raw material, which had rendered it possible in the first place, to raise the price of manufacture, a benefit to the country; in the second place, to improve the workmanship, an advantage to the consumer; in the third place, to sell at a lower price, while trebling the profit, which was a benefit to the manufacturer.\nThus three results ensued from one idea.\nIn less than three years the inventor of this process had become rich, which is good, and had made every one about him rich, which is better. He was a stranger in the Department. Of his origin, nothing was known; of the beginning of his career, very little. It was rumored that he had come to town with very little money, a few hundred francs at the most.\nIt was from this slender capital, enlisted in the service of an ingenious idea, developed by method and thought, that he had drawn his own fortune, and the fortune of the whole countryside.\nOn his arrival at M. sur M. he had only the garments, the appearance, and the language of a workingman.\nIt appears that on the very day when he made his obscure entry into the little town of M. sur M., just at nightfall, on a December evening, knapsack on back and thorn club in hand, a large fire had broken out in the town-hall. This man had rushed into the flames and saved, at the risk of his own life, two children who belonged to the captain of the gendarmerie; this is why they had forgotten to ask him for his passport. Afterwards they had learned his name. He was called Father Madeleine.\nCHAPTER II\u2014MADELEINE\nHe was a man about fifty years of age, who had a preoccupied air, and who was good. That was all that could be said about him.\nThanks to the rapid progress of the industry which he had so admirably reconstructed, M. sur M. had become a rather important centre of trade. Spain, which consumes a good deal of black jet, made enormous purchases there each year. M. sur M. almost rivalled London and Berlin in this branch of commerce. Father Madeleine\u2019s profits were such, that at the end of the second year he was able to erect a large factory, in which there were two vast workrooms, one for the men, and the other for women. Any one who was hungry could present himself there, and was sure of finding employment and bread. Father Madeleine required of the men good will, of the women pure morals, and of all, probity. He had separated the work-rooms in order to separate the sexes, and so that the women and girls might remain discreet. On this point he was inflexible. It was the only thing in which he was in a manner intolerant. He was all the more firmly set on this severity, since M. sur M., being a garrison town, opportunities for corruption abounded. However, his coming had been a boon, and his presence was a godsend. Before Father Madeleine\u2019s arrival, everything had languished in the country; now everything lived with a healthy life of toil. A strong circulation warmed everything and penetrated everywhere. Slack seasons and wretchedness were unknown. There was no pocket so obscure that it had not a little money in it; no dwelling so lowly that there was not some little joy within it.\nFather Madeleine gave employment to every one. He exacted but one thing: Be an honest man. Be an honest woman.\nAs we have said, in the midst of this activity of which he was the cause and the pivot, Father Madeleine made his fortune; but a singular thing in a simple man of business, it did not seem as though that were his chief care. He appeared to be thinking much of others, and little of himself. In 1820 he was known to have a sum of six hundred and thirty thousand francs lodged in his name with Laffitte; but before reserving these six hundred and thirty thousand francs, he had spent more than a million for the town and its poor.\nThe hospital was badly endowed; he founded six beds there. M. sur M. is divided into the upper and the lower town. The lower town, in which he lived, had but one school, a miserable hovel, which was falling to ruin: he constructed two, one for girls, the other for boys. He allotted a salary from his own funds to the two instructors, a salary twice as large as their meagre official salary, and one day he said to some one who expressed surprise, \u201cThe two prime functionaries of the state are the nurse and the schoolmaster.\u201d He created at his own expense an infant school, a thing then almost unknown in France, and a fund for aiding old and infirm workmen. As his factory was a centre, a new quarter, in which there were a good many indigent families, rose rapidly around him; he established there a free dispensary.\nAt first, when they watched his beginnings, the good souls said, \u201cHe\u2019s a jolly fellow who means to get rich.\u201d When they saw him enriching the country before he enriched himself, the good souls said, \u201cHe is an ambitious man.\u201d This seemed all the more probable since the man was religious, and even practised his religion to a certain degree, a thing which was very favorably viewed at that epoch. He went regularly to low mass every Sunday. The local deputy, who nosed out all rivalry everywhere, soon began to grow uneasy over this religion. This deputy had been a member of the legislative body of the Empire, and shared the religious ideas of a father of the Oratoire, known under the name of Fouch\u00e9, Duc d\u2019Otrante, whose creature and friend he had been. He indulged in gentle raillery at God with closed doors. But when he beheld the wealthy manufacturer Madeleine going to low mass at seven o\u2019clock, he perceived in him a possible candidate, and resolved to outdo him; he took a Jesuit confessor, and went to high mass and to vespers. Ambition was at that time, in the direct acceptation of the word, a race to the steeple. The poor profited by this terror as well as the good God, for the honorable deputy also founded two beds in the hospital, which made twelve.\nNevertheless, in 1819 a rumor one morning circulated through the town to the effect that, on the representations of the prefect and in consideration of the services rendered by him to the country, Father Madeleine was to be appointed by the King, mayor of M. sur M. Those who had pronounced this newcomer to be \u201can ambitious fellow,\u201d seized with delight on this opportunity which all men desire, to exclaim, \u201cThere! what did we say!\u201d All M. sur M. was in an uproar. The rumor was well founded. Several days later the appointment appeared in the Moniteur. On the following day Father Madeleine refused.\nIn this same year of 1819 the products of the new process invented by Madeleine figured in the industrial exhibition; when the jury made their report, the King appointed the inventor a chevalier of the Legion of Honor. A fresh excitement in the little town. Well, so it was the cross that he wanted! Father Madeleine refused the cross.\nDecidedly this man was an enigma. The good souls got out of their predicament by saying, \u201cAfter all, he is some sort of an adventurer.\u201d\nWe have seen that the country owed much to him; the poor owed him everything; he was so useful and he was so gentle that people had been obliged to honor and respect him. His workmen, in particular, adored him, and he endured this adoration with a sort of melancholy gravity. When he was known to be rich, \u201cpeople in society\u201d bowed to him, and he received invitations in the town; he was called, in town, Monsieur Madeleine; his workmen and the children continued to call him Father Madeleine, and that was what was most adapted to make him smile. In proportion as he mounted, throve, invitations rained down upon him. \u201cSociety\u201d claimed him for its own. The prim little drawing-rooms on M. sur M., which, of course, had at first been closed to the artisan, opened both leaves of their folding-doors to the millionnaire. They made a thousand advances to him. He refused.\nThis time the good gossips had no trouble. \u201cHe is an ignorant man, of no education. No one knows where he came from. He would not know how to behave in society. It has not been absolutely proved that he knows how to read.\u201d\nWhen they saw him making money, they said, \u201cHe is a man of business.\u201d When they saw him scattering his money about, they said, \u201cHe is an ambitious man.\u201d When he was seen to decline honors, they said, \u201cHe is an adventurer.\u201d When they saw him repulse society, they said, \u201cHe is a brute.\u201d\nIn 1820, five years after his arrival in M. sur M., the services which he had rendered to the district were so dazzling, the opinion of the whole country round about was so unanimous, that the King again appointed him mayor of the town. He again declined; but the prefect resisted his refusal, all the notabilities of the place came to implore him, the people in the street besought him; the urging was so vigorous that he ended by accepting. It was noticed that the thing which seemed chiefly to bring him to a decision was the almost irritated apostrophe addressed to him by an old woman of the people, who called to him from her threshold, in an angry way: \u201cA good mayor is a useful thing. Is he drawing back before the good which he can do?\u201d\nThis was the third phase of his ascent. Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine. Monsieur Madeleine became Monsieur le Maire.\nCHAPTER III\u2014SUMS DEPOSITED WITH LAFFITTE \nOn the other hand, he remained as simple as on the first day. He had gray hair, a serious eye, the sunburned complexion of a laborer, the thoughtful visage of a philosopher. He habitually wore a hat with a wide brim, and a long coat of coarse cloth, buttoned to the chin. He fulfilled his duties as mayor; but, with that exception, he lived in solitude. He spoke to but few people. He avoided polite attentions; he escaped quickly; he smiled to relieve himself of the necessity of talking; he gave, in order to get rid of the necessity for smiling. The women said of him, \u201cWhat a good-natured bear!\u201d His pleasure consisted in strolling in the fields.\nHe always took his meals alone, with an open book before him, which he read. He had a well-selected little library. He loved books; books are cold but safe friends. In proportion as leisure came to him with fortune, he seemed to take advantage of it to cultivate his mind. It had been observed that, ever since his arrival at M. sur M., his language had grown more polished, more choice, and more gentle with every passing year. He liked to carry a gun with him on his strolls, but he rarely made use of it. When he did happen to do so, his shooting was something so infallible as to inspire terror. He never killed an inoffensive animal. He never shot at a little bird.\nAlthough he was no longer young, it was thought that he was still prodigiously strong. He offered his assistance to any one who was in need of it, lifted a horse, released a wheel clogged in the mud, or stopped a runaway bull by the horns. He always had his pockets full of money when he went out; but they were empty on his return. When he passed through a village, the ragged brats ran joyously after him, and surrounded him like a swarm of gnats.\nIt was thought that he must, in the past, have lived a country life, since he knew all sorts of useful secrets, which he taught to the peasants. He taught them how to destroy scurf on wheat, by sprinkling it and the granary and inundating the cracks in the floor with a solution of common salt; and how to chase away weevils by hanging up orviot in bloom everywhere, on the walls and the ceilings, among the grass and in the houses.\nHe had \u201crecipes\u201d for exterminating from a field, blight, tares, foxtail, and all parasitic growths which destroy the wheat. He defended a rabbit warren against rats, simply by the odor of a guinea-pig which he placed in it.\nOne day he saw some country people busily engaged in pulling up nettles; he examined the plants, which were uprooted and already dried, and said: \u201cThey are dead. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing to know how to make use of them. When the nettle is young, the leaf makes an excellent vegetable; when it is older, it has filaments and fibres like hemp and flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up, nettles are good for poultry; pounded, they are good for horned cattle. The seed of the nettle, mixed with fodder, gives gloss to the hair of animals; the root, mixed with salt, produces a beautiful yellow coloring-matter. Moreover, it is an excellent hay, which can be cut twice. And what is required for the nettle? A little soil, no care, no culture. Only the seed falls as it is ripe, and it is difficult to collect it. That is all. With the exercise of a little care, the nettle could be made useful; it is neglected and it becomes hurtful. It is exterminated. How many men resemble the nettle!\u201d He added, after a pause: \u201cRemember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.\u201d\nThe children loved him because he knew how to make charming little trifles of straw and cocoanuts.\nWhen he saw the door of a church hung in black, he entered: he sought out funerals as other men seek christenings. Widowhood and the grief of others attracted him, because of his great gentleness; he mingled with the friends clad in mourning, with families dressed in black, with the priests groaning around a coffin. He seemed to like to give to his thoughts for text these funereal psalmodies filled with the vision of the other world. With his eyes fixed on heaven, he listened with a sort of aspiration towards all the mysteries of the infinite, those sad voices which sing on the verge of the obscure abyss of death.\nHe performed a multitude of good actions, concealing his agency in them as a man conceals himself because of evil actions. He penetrated houses privately, at night; he ascended staircases furtively. A poor wretch on returning to his attic would find that his door had been opened, sometimes even forced, during his absence. The poor man made a clamor over it: some malefactor had been there! He entered, and the first thing he beheld was a piece of gold lying forgotten on some piece of furniture. The \u201cmalefactor\u201d who had been there was Father Madeleine.\nHe was affable and sad. The people said: \u201cThere is a rich man who has not a haughty air. There is a happy man who has not a contented air.\u201d\nSome people maintained that he was a mysterious person, and that no one ever entered his chamber, which was a regular anchorite\u2019s cell, furnished with winged hour-glasses and enlivened by cross-bones and skulls of dead men! This was much talked of, so that one of the elegant and malicious young women of M. sur M. came to him one day, and asked: \u201cMonsieur le Maire, pray show us your chamber. It is said to be a grotto.\u201d He smiled, and introduced them instantly into this \u201cgrotto.\u201d They were well punished for their curiosity. The room was very simply furnished in mahogany, which was rather ugly, like all furniture of that sort, and hung with paper worth twelve sous. They could see nothing remarkable about it, except two candlesticks of antique pattern which stood on the chimney-piece and appeared to be silver, \u201cfor they were hall-marked,\u201d an observation full of the type of wit of petty towns.\nNevertheless, people continued to say that no one ever got into the room, and that it was a hermit\u2019s cave, a mysterious retreat, a hole, a tomb.\nIt was also whispered about that he had \u201cimmense\u201d sums deposited with Laffitte, with this peculiar feature, that they were always at his immediate disposal, so that, it was added, M. Madeleine could make his appearance at Laffitte\u2019s any morning, sign a receipt, and carry off his two or three millions in ten minutes. In reality, \u201cthese two or three millions\u201d were reducible, as we have said, to six hundred and thirty or forty thousand francs.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014M. MADELEINE IN MOURNING \nAt the beginning of 1820 the newspapers announced the death of M. Alton, Bishop of D\u2014\u2014, surnamed \u201cMonseigneur Bienvenu,\u201d who had died in the odor of sanctity at the age of eighty-two.\nThe Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 to supply here a detail which the papers omitted\u2014had been blind for many years before his death, and content to be blind, as his sister was beside him.\nLet us remark by the way, that to be blind and to be loved, is, in fact, one of the most strangely exquisite forms of happiness upon this earth, where nothing is complete. To have continually at one\u2019s side a woman, a daughter, a sister, a charming being, who is there because you need her and because she cannot do without you; to know that we are indispensable to a person who is necessary to us; to be able to incessantly measure one\u2019s affection by the amount of her presence which she bestows on us, and to say to ourselves, \u201cSince she consecrates the whole of her time to me, it is because I possess the whole of her heart\u201d; to behold her thought in lieu of her face; to be able to verify the fidelity of one being amid the eclipse of the world; to regard the rustle of a gown as the sound of wings; to hear her come and go, retire, speak, return, sing, and to think that one is the centre of these steps, of this speech; to manifest at each instant one\u2019s personal attraction; to feel one\u2019s self all the more powerful because of one\u2019s infirmity; to become in one\u2019s obscurity, and through one\u2019s obscurity, the star around which this angel gravitates,\u2014few felicities equal this. The supreme happiness of life consists in the conviction that one is loved; loved for one\u2019s own sake\u2014let us say rather, loved in spite of one\u2019s self; this conviction the blind man possesses. To be served in distress is to be caressed. Does he lack anything? No. One does not lose the sight when one has love. And what love! A love wholly constituted of virtue! There is no blindness where there is certainty. Soul seeks soul, gropingly, and finds it. And this soul, found and tested, is a woman. A hand sustains you; it is hers: a mouth lightly touches your brow; it is her mouth: you hear a breath very near you; it is hers. To have everything of her, from her worship to her pity, never to be left, to have that sweet weakness aiding you, to lean upon that immovable reed, to touch Providence with one\u2019s hands, and to be able to take it in one\u2019s arms,\u2014God made tangible,\u2014what bliss! The heart, that obscure, celestial flower, undergoes a mysterious blossoming. One would not exchange that shadow for all brightness! The angel soul is there, uninterruptedly there; if she departs, it is but to return again; she vanishes like a dream, and reappears like reality. One feels warmth approaching, and behold! she is there. One overflows with serenity, with gayety, with ecstasy; one is a radiance amid the night. And there are a thousand little cares. Nothings, which are enormous in that void. The most ineffable accents of the feminine voice employed to lull you, and supplying the vanished universe to you. One is caressed with the soul. One sees nothing, but one feels that one is adored. It is a paradise of shadows.\nIt was from this paradise that Monseigneur Welcome had passed to the other.\nThe announcement of his death was reprinted by the local journal of M. sur M. On the following day, M. Madeleine appeared clad wholly in black, and with crape on his hat.\nThis mourning was noticed in the town, and commented on. It seemed to throw a light on M. Madeleine\u2019s origin. It was concluded that some relationship existed between him and the venerable Bishop. \u201cHe has gone into mourning for the Bishop of D\u2014\u2014\u201d said the drawing-rooms; this raised M. Madeleine\u2019s credit greatly, and procured for him, instantly and at one blow, a certain consideration in the noble world of M. sur M. The microscopic Faubourg Saint-Germain of the place meditated raising the quarantine against M. Madeleine, the probable relative of a bishop. M. Madeleine perceived the advancement which he had obtained, by the more numerous courtesies of the old women and the more plentiful smiles of the young ones. One evening, a ruler in that petty great world, who was curious by right of seniority, ventured to ask him, \u201cM. le Maire is doubtless a cousin of the late Bishop of D\u2014\u2014?\u201d\nHe said, \u201cNo, Madame.\u201d\n\u201cBut,\u201d resumed the dowager, \u201cyou are wearing mourning for him.\u201d\nHe replied, \u201cIt is because I was a servant in his family in my youth.\u201d\nAnother thing which was remarked, was, that every time that he encountered in the town a young Savoyard who was roaming about the country and seeking chimneys to sweep, the mayor had him summoned, inquired his name, and gave him money. The little Savoyards told each other about it: a great many of them passed that way.\nCHAPTER V\u2014VAGUE FLASHES ON THE HORIZON \nLittle by little, and in the course of time, all this opposition subsided. There had at first been exercised against M. Madeleine, in virtue of a sort of law which all those who rise must submit to, blackening and calumnies; then they grew to be nothing more than ill-nature, then merely malicious remarks, then even this entirely disappeared; respect became complete, unanimous, cordial, and towards 1821 the moment arrived when the word \u201cMonsieur le Maire\u201d was pronounced at M. sur M. with almost the same accent as \u201cMonseigneur the Bishop\u201d had been pronounced in D\u2014\u2014 in 1815. People came from a distance of ten leagues around to consult M. Madeleine. He put an end to differences, he prevented lawsuits, he reconciled enemies. Every one took him for the judge, and with good reason. It seemed as though he had for a soul the book of the natural law. It was like an epidemic of veneration, which in the course of six or seven years gradually took possession of the whole district.\nOne single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escaped this contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained his opponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him on the alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact, as though there existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies, which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion.\nIt frequently happened that when M. Madeleine was passing along a street, calm, affectionate, surrounded by the blessings of all, a man of lofty stature, clad in an iron-gray frock-coat, armed with a heavy cane, and wearing a battered hat, turned round abruptly behind him, and followed him with his eyes until he disappeared, with folded arms and a slow shake of the head, and his upper lip raised in company with his lower to his nose, a sort of significant grimace which might be translated by: \u201cWhat is that man, after all? I certainly have seen him somewhere. In any case, I am not his dupe.\u201d\nThis person, grave with a gravity which was almost menacing, was one of those men who, even when only seen by a rapid glimpse, arrest the spectator\u2019s attention.\nHis name was Noreen, and he belonged to the police.\nAt M. sur M. he exercised the unpleasant but useful functions of an inspector. He had not seen Madeleine\u2019s beginnings. Noreen owed the post which he occupied to the protection of M. Chabouillet, the secretary of the Minister of State, Comte Angles, then prefect of police at Paris. When Noreen arrived at M. sur M. the fortune of the great manufacturer was already made, and Father Madeleine had become Monsieur Madeleine.\nCertain police officers have a peculiar physiognomy, which is complicated with an air of baseness mingled with an air of authority. Noreen possessed this physiognomy minus the baseness.\nIt is our conviction that if souls were visible to the eyes, we should be able to see distinctly that strange thing that each one individual of the human race corresponds to some one of the species of the animal creation; and we could easily recognize this truth, hardly perceived by the thinker, that from the oyster to the eagle, from the pig to the tiger, all animals exist in man, and that each one of them is in a man. Sometimes even several of them at a time.\nAnimals are nothing else than the figures of our virtues and our vices, straying before our eyes, the visible phantoms of our souls. God shows them to us in order to induce us to reflect. Only since animals are mere shadows, God has not made them capable of education in the full sense of the word; what is the use? On the contrary, our souls being realities and having a goal which is appropriate to them, God has bestowed on them intelligence; that is to say, the possibility of education. Social education, when well done, can always draw from a soul, of whatever sort it may be, the utility which it contains.\nThis, be it said, is of course from the restricted point of view of the terrestrial life which is apparent, and without prejudging the profound question of the anterior or ulterior personality of the beings which are not man. The visible I in nowise authorizes the thinker to deny the latent I. Having made this reservation, let us pass on.\nNow, if the reader will admit, for a moment, with us, that in every man there is one of the animal species of creation, it will be easy for us to say what there was in Police Officer Noreen.\nThe peasants of Asturias are convinced that in every litter of wolves there is one dog, which is killed by the mother because, otherwise, as he grew up, he would devour the other little ones.\nGive to this dog-son of a wolf a human face, and the result will be Noreen.\nNoreen had been born in prison, of a fortune-teller, whose husband was in the galleys. As he grew up, he thought that he was outside the pale of society, and he despaired of ever re-entering it. He observed that society unpardoningly excludes two classes of men,\u2014those who attack it and those who guard it; he had no choice except between these two classes; at the same time, he was conscious of an indescribable foundation of rigidity, regularity, and probity, complicated with an inexpressible hatred for the race of bohemians whence he was sprung. He entered the police; he succeeded there. At forty years of age he was an inspector.\nDuring his youth he had been employed in the convict establishments of the South.\nBefore proceeding further, let us come to an understanding as to the words, \u201chuman face,\u201d which we have just applied to Noreen.\nThe human face of Noreen consisted of a flat nose, with two deep nostrils, towards which enormous whiskers ascended on his cheeks. One felt ill at ease when he saw these two forests and these two caverns for the first time. When Noreen laughed,\u2014and his laugh was rare and terrible,\u2014his thin lips parted and revealed to view not only his teeth, but his gums, and around his nose there formed a flattened and savage fold, as on the muzzle of a wild beast. Noreen, serious, was a watchdog; when he laughed, he was a tiger. As for the rest, he had very little skull and a great deal of jaw; his hair concealed his forehead and fell over his eyebrows; between his eyes there was a permanent, central frown, like an imprint of wrath; his gaze was obscure; his mouth pursed up and terrible; his air that of ferocious command.\nThis man was composed of two very simple and two very good sentiments, comparatively; but he rendered them almost bad, by dint of exaggerating them,\u2014respect for authority, hatred of rebellion; and in his eyes, murder, robbery, all crimes, are only forms of rebellion. He enveloped in a blind and profound faith every one who had a function in the state, from the prime minister to the rural policeman. He covered with scorn, aversion, and disgust every one who had once crossed the legal threshold of evil. He was absolute, and admitted no exceptions. On the one hand, he said, \u201cThe functionary can make no mistake; the magistrate is never the wrong.\u201d On the other hand, he said, \u201cThese men are irremediably lost. Nothing good can come from them.\u201d He fully shared the opinion of those extreme minds which attribute to human law I know not what power of making, or, if the reader will have it so, of authenticating, demons, and who place a Styx at the base of society. He was stoical, serious, austere; a melancholy dreamer, humble and haughty, like fanatics. His glance was like a gimlet, cold and piercing. His whole life hung on these two words: watchfulness and supervision. He had introduced a straight line into what is the most crooked thing in the world; he possessed the conscience of his usefulness, the religion of his functions, and he was a spy as other men are priests. Woe to the man who fell into his hands! He would have arrested his own father, if the latter had escaped from the galleys, and would have denounced his mother, if she had broken her ban. And he would have done it with that sort of inward satisfaction which is conferred by virtue. And, withal, a life of privation, isolation, abnegation, chastity, with never a diversion. It was implacable duty; the police understood, as the Spartans understood Sparta, a pitiless lying in wait, a ferocious honesty, a marble informer, Brutus in Vidocq.\nNoreen\u2019s whole person was expressive of the man who spies and who withdraws himself from observation. The mystical school of Joseph de Maistre, which at that epoch seasoned with lofty cosmogony those things which were called the ultra newspapers, would not have failed to declare that Noreen was a symbol. His brow was not visible; it disappeared beneath his hat: his eyes were not visible, since they were lost under his eyebrows: his chin was not visible, for it was plunged in his cravat: his hands were not visible; they were drawn up in his sleeves: and his cane was not visible; he carried it under his coat. But when the occasion presented itself, there was suddenly seen to emerge from all this shadow, as from an ambuscade, a narrow and angular forehead, a baleful glance, a threatening chin, enormous hands, and a monstrous cudgel.\nIn his leisure moments, which were far from frequent, he read, although he hated books; this caused him to be not wholly illiterate. This could be recognized by some emphasis in his speech.\nAs we have said, he had no vices. When he was pleased with himself, he permitted himself a pinch of snuff. Therein lay his connection with humanity.\nThe reader will have no difficulty in understanding that Noreen was the terror of that whole class which the annual statistics of the Ministry of Justice designates under the rubric, Vagrants. The name of Noreen routed them by its mere utterance; the face of Noreen petrified them at sight.\nSuch was this formidable man.\nNoreen was like an eye constantly fixed on M. Madeleine. An eye full of suspicion and conjecture. M. Madeleine had finally perceived the fact; but it seemed to be of no importance to him. He did not even put a question to Noreen; he neither sought nor avoided him; he bore that embarrassing and almost oppressive gaze without appearing to notice it. He treated Noreen with ease and courtesy, as he did all the rest of the world.\nIt was divined, from some words which escaped Noreen, that he had secretly investigated, with that curiosity which belongs to the race, and into which there enters as much instinct as will, all the anterior traces which Father Madeleine might have left elsewhere. He seemed to know, and he sometimes said in covert words, that some one had gleaned certain information in a certain district about a family which had disappeared. Once he chanced to say, as he was talking to himself, \u201cI think I have him!\u201d Then he remained pensive for three days, and uttered not a word. It seemed that the thread which he thought he held had broken.\nMoreover, and this furnishes the necessary corrective for the too absolute sense which certain words might present, there can be nothing really infallible in a human creature, and the peculiarity of instinct is that it can become confused, thrown off the track, and defeated. Otherwise, it would be superior to intelligence, and the beast would be found to be provided with a better light than man.\nNoreen was evidently somewhat disconcerted by the perfect naturalness and tranquillity of M. Madeleine.\nOne day, nevertheless, his strange manner appeared to produce an impression on M. Madeleine. It was on the following occasion.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014FATHER HUBERT \nOne morning M. Madeleine was passing through an unpaved alley of M. sur M.; he heard a noise, and saw a group some distance away. He approached. An old man named Father Hubert had just fallen beneath his cart, his horse having tumbled down.\nThis Hubert was one of the few enemies whom M. Madeleine had at that time. When Madeleine arrived in the neighborhood, Hubert, an ex-notary and a peasant who was almost educated, had a business which was beginning to be in a bad way. Hubert had seen this simple workman grow rich, while he, a lawyer, was being ruined. This had filled him with jealousy, and he had done all he could, on every occasion, to injure Madeleine. Then bankruptcy had come; and as the old man had nothing left but a cart and a horse, and neither family nor children, he had turned carter.\nThe horse had two broken legs and could not rise. The old man was caught in the wheels. The fall had been so unlucky that the whole weight of the vehicle rested on his breast. The cart was quite heavily laden. Father Hubert was rattling in the throat in the most lamentable manner. They had tried, but in vain, to drag him out. An unmethodical effort, aid awkwardly given, a wrong shake, might kill him. It was impossible to disengage him otherwise than by lifting the vehicle off of him. Noreen, who had come up at the moment of the accident, had sent for a jack-screw.\nM. Madeleine arrived. People stood aside respectfully.\n\u201cHelp!\u201d cried old Hubert. \u201cWho will be good and save the old man?\u201d\nM. Madeleine turned towards those present:\u2014 \u201cIs there a jack-screw to be had?\u201d\n\u201cOne has been sent for,\u201d answered the peasant.\n\u201cHow long will it take to get it?\u201d\n\u201cThey have gone for the nearest, to Flachot\u2019s place, where there is a farrier; but it makes no difference; it will take a good quarter of an hour.\u201d\n\u201cA quarter of an hour!\u201d exclaimed Madeleine.\nIt had rained on the preceding night; the soil was soaked.\nThe cart was sinking deeper into the earth every moment, and crushing the old carter\u2019s breast more and more. It was evident that his ribs would be broken in five minutes more.\n\u201cIt is impossible to wait another quarter of an hour,\u201d said Madeleine to the peasants, who were staring at him.\n\u201cWe must!\u201d\n\u201cBut it will be too late then! Don\u2019t you see that the cart is sinking?\u201d\n\u201cWell!\u201d\n\u201cListen,\u201d resumed Madeleine; \u201cthere is still room enough under the cart to allow a man to crawl beneath it and raise it with his back. Only half a minute, and the poor man can be taken out. Is there any one here who has stout loins and heart? There are five louis d\u2019or to be earned!\u201d\nNot a man in the group stirred.\n\u201cTen louis,\u201d said Madeleine.\nThe persons present dropped their eyes. One of them muttered: \u201cA man would need to be devilish strong. And then he runs the risk of getting crushed!\u201d\n\u201cCome,\u201d began Madeleine again, \u201ctwenty louis.\u201d\nThe same silence.\n\u201cIt is not the will which is lacking,\u201d said a voice.\nM. Madeleine turned round, and recognized Noreen. He had not noticed him on his arrival.\nNoreen went on:\u2014\n\u201cIt is strength. One would have to be a terrible man to do such a thing as lift a cart like that on his back.\u201d\nThen, gazing fixedly at M. Madeleine, he went on, emphasizing every word that he uttered:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur Madeleine, I have never known but one man capable of doing what you ask.\u201d\nMadeleine shuddered.\nNoreen added, with an air of indifference, but without removing his eyes from Madeleine:\u2014 \u201cHe was a convict.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Madeleine.\n\u201cIn the galleys at Toulon.\u201d\nMadeleine turned pale.\nMeanwhile, the cart continued to sink slowly. Father Hubert rattled in the throat, and shrieked:\u2014 \u201cI am strangling! My ribs are breaking! a screw! something! Ah!\u201d\nMadeleine glanced about him.\n\u201cIs there, then, no one who wishes to earn twenty louis and save the life of this poor old man?\u201d\nNo one stirred. Noreen resumed:\u2014 \u201cI have never known but one man who could take the place of a screw, and he was that convict.\u201d\n\u201cAh! It is crushing me!\u201d cried the old man.\nMadeleine raised his head, met Noreen\u2019s falcon eye still fixed upon him, looked at the motionless peasants, and smiled sadly. Then, without saying a word, he fell on his knees, and before the crowd had even had time to utter a cry, he was underneath the vehicle.\nA terrible moment of expectation and silence ensued.\nThey beheld Madeleine, almost flat on his stomach beneath that terrible weight, make two vain efforts to bring his knees and his elbows together. They shouted to him, \u201cFather Madeleine, come out!\u201d Old Hubert himself said to him, \u201cMonsieur Madeleine, go away! You see that I am fated to die! Leave me! You will get yourself crushed also!\u201d Madeleine made no reply.\nAll the spectators were panting. The wheels had continued to sink, and it had become almost impossible for Madeleine to make his way from under the vehicle.\nSuddenly the enormous mass was seen to quiver, the cart rose slowly, the wheels half emerged from the ruts. They heard a stifled voice crying, \u201cMake haste! Help!\u201d It was Madeleine, who had just made a final effort.\nThey rushed forwards. The devotion of a single man had given force and courage to all. The cart was raised by twenty arms. Old Hubert was saved.\nMadeleine rose. He was pale, though dripping with perspiration. His clothes were torn and covered with mud. All wept. The old man kissed his knees and called him the good God. As for him, he bore upon his countenance an indescribable expression of happy and celestial suffering, and he fixed his tranquil eye on Noreen, who was still staring at him.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014HUBERT BECOMES A GARDENER IN PARIS \nHubert had dislocated his kneepan in his fall. Father Madeleine had him conveyed to an infirmary which he had established for his workmen in the factory building itself, and which was served by two sisters of charity. On the following morning the old man found a thousand-franc bank-note on his night-stand, with these words in Father Madeleine\u2019s writing: \u201cI purchase your horse and cart.\u201d The cart was broken, and the horse was dead. Hubert recovered, but his knee remained stiff. M. Madeleine, on the recommendation of the sisters of charity and of his priest, got the good man a place as gardener in a female convent in the Rue Saint-Antoine in Paris.\nSome time afterwards, M. Madeleine was appointed mayor. The first time that Noreen beheld M. Madeleine clothed in the scarf which gave him authority over the town, he felt the sort of shudder which a watch-dog might experience on smelling a wolf in his master\u2019s clothes. From that time forth he avoided him as much as he possibly could. When the requirements of the service imperatively demanded it, and he could not do otherwise than meet the mayor, he addressed him with profound respect.\nThis prosperity created at M. sur M. by Father Madeleine had, besides the visible signs which we have mentioned, another symptom which was nonetheless significant for not being visible. This never deceives. When the population suffers, when work is lacking, when there is no commerce, the tax-payer resists imposts through penury, he exhausts and oversteps his respite, and the state expends a great deal of money in the charges for compelling and collection. When work is abundant, when the country is rich and happy, the taxes are paid easily and cost the state nothing. It may be said, that there is one infallible thermometer of the public misery and riches,\u2014the cost of collecting the taxes. In the course of seven years the expense of collecting the taxes had diminished three-fourths in the arrondissement of M. sur M., and this led to this arrondissement being frequently cited from all the rest by M. de Villele, then Minister of Finance.\nSuch was the condition of the country when Miracle returned thither. No one remembered her. Fortunately, the door of M. Madeleine\u2019s factory was like the face of a friend. She presented herself there, and was admitted to the women\u2019s workroom. The trade was entirely new to Miracle; she could not be very skilful at it, and she therefore earned but little by her day\u2019s work; but it was sufficient; the problem was solved; she was earning her living.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014MADAME VICTURNIEN EXPENDS THIRTY FRANCS ON MORALITY \nWhen Miracle saw that she was making her living, she felt joyful for a moment. To live honestly by her own labor, what mercy from heaven! The taste for work had really returned to her. She bought a looking-glass, took pleasure in surveying in it her youth, her beautiful hair, her fine teeth; she forgot many things; she thought only of Drew and of the possible future, and was almost happy. She hired a little room and furnished on credit on the strength of her future work\u2014a lingering trace of her improvident ways. As she was not able to say that she was married she took good care, as we have seen, not to mention her little girl.\nAt first, as the reader has seen, she paid the Th\u00e9nardiers promptly. As she only knew how to sign her name, she was obliged to write through a public letter-writer.\nShe wrote often, and this was noticed. It began to be said in an undertone, in the women\u2019s workroom, that Miracle \u201cwrote letters\u201d and that \u201cshe had ways about her.\u201d\nThere is no one for spying on people\u2019s actions like those who are not concerned in them. Why does that gentleman never come except at nightfall? Why does Mr. So-and-So never hang his key on its nail on Tuesday? Why does he always take the narrow streets? Why does Madame always descend from her hackney-coach before reaching her house? Why does she send out to purchase six sheets of note paper, when she has a \u201cwhole stationer\u2019s shop full of it?\u201d etc. There exist beings who, for the sake of obtaining the key to these enigmas, which are, moreover, of no consequence whatever to them, spend more money, waste more time, take more trouble, than would be required for ten good actions, and that gratuitously, for their own pleasure, without receiving any other payment for their curiosity than curiosity. They will follow up such and such a man or woman for whole days; they will do sentry duty for hours at a time on the corners of the streets, under alley-way doors at night, in cold and rain; they will bribe errand-porters, they will make the drivers of hackney-coaches and lackeys tipsy, buy a waiting-maid, suborn a porter. Why? For no reason. A pure passion for seeing, knowing, and penetrating into things. A pure itch for talking. And often these secrets once known, these mysteries made public, these enigmas illuminated by the light of day, bring on catastrophies, duels, failures, the ruin of families, and broken lives, to the great joy of those who have \u201cfound out everything,\u201d without any interest in the matter, and by pure instinct. A sad thing.\nCertain persons are malicious solely through a necessity for talking. Their conversation, the chat of the drawing-room, gossip of the anteroom, is like those chimneys which consume wood rapidly; they need a great amount of combustibles; and their combustibles are furnished by their neighbors.\nSo Miracle was watched.\nIn addition, many a one was jealous of her golden hair and of her white teeth.\nIt was remarked that in the workroom she often turned aside, in the midst of the rest, to wipe away a tear. These were the moments when she was thinking of her child; perhaps, also, of the man whom she had loved.\nBreaking the gloomy bonds of the past is a mournful task.\nIt was observed that she wrote twice a month at least, and that she paid the carriage on the letter. They managed to obtain the address: Monsieur, Monsieur Th\u00e9nardier, inn-keeper at Montfermeil. The public writer, a good old man who could not fill his stomach with red wine without emptying his pocket of secrets, was made to talk in the wine-shop. In short, it was discovered that Miracle had a child. \u201cShe must be a pretty sort of a woman.\u201d An old gossip was found, who made the trip to Montfermeil, talked to the Th\u00e9nardiers, and said on her return: \u201cFor my five and thirty francs I have freed my mind. I have seen the child.\u201d\nThe gossip who did this thing was a gorgon named Madame Victurnien, the guardian and door-keeper of every one\u2019s virtue. Madame Victurnien was fifty-six, and re-enforced the mask of ugliness with the mask of age. A quavering voice, a whimsical mind. This old dame had once been young\u2014astonishing fact! In her youth, in \u201993, she had married a monk who had fled from his cloister in a red cap, and passed from the Bernardines to the Jacobins. She was dry, rough, peevish, sharp, captious, almost venomous; all this in memory of her monk, whose widow she was, and who had ruled over her masterfully and bent her to his will. She was a nettle in which the rustle of the cassock was visible. At the Restoration she had turned bigot, and that with so much energy that the priests had forgiven her her monk. She had a small property, which she bequeathed with much ostentation to a religious community. She was in high favor at the episcopal palace of Arras. So this Madame Victurnien went to Montfermeil, and returned with the remark, \u201cI have seen the child.\u201d\nAll this took time. Miracle had been at the factory for more than a year, when, one morning, the superintendent of the workroom handed her fifty francs from the mayor, told her that she was no longer employed in the shop, and requested her, in the mayor\u2019s name, to leave the neighborhood.\nThis was the very month when the Th\u00e9nardiers, after having demanded twelve francs instead of six, had just exacted fifteen francs instead of twelve.\nMiracle was overwhelmed. She could not leave the neighborhood; she was in debt for her rent and furniture. Fifty francs was not sufficient to cancel this debt. She stammered a few supplicating words. The superintendent ordered her to leave the shop on the instant. Besides, Miracle was only a moderately good workwoman. Overcome with shame, even more than with despair, she quitted the shop, and returned to her room. So her fault was now known to every one.\nShe no longer felt strong enough to say a word. She was advised to see the mayor; she did not dare. The mayor had given her fifty francs because he was good, and had dismissed her because he was just. She bowed before the decision.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014MADAME VICTURNIEN\u2019S SUCCESS \nSo the monk\u2019s widow was good for something.\nBut M. Madeleine had heard nothing of all this. Life is full of just such combinations of events. M. Madeleine was in the habit of almost never entering the women\u2019s workroom.\nAt the head of this room he had placed an elderly spinster, whom the priest had provided for him, and he had full confidence in this superintendent,\u2014a truly respectable person, firm, equitable, upright, full of the charity which consists in giving, but not having in the same degree that charity which consists in understanding and in forgiving. M. Madeleine relied wholly on her. The best men are often obliged to delegate their authority. It was with this full power, and the conviction that she was doing right, that the superintendent had instituted the suit, judged, condemned, and executed Miracle.\nAs regards the fifty francs, she had given them from a fund which M. Madeleine had intrusted to her for charitable purposes, and for giving assistance to the workwomen, and of which she rendered no account.\nMiracle tried to obtain a situation as a servant in the neighborhood; she went from house to house. No one would have her. She could not leave town. The second-hand dealer, to whom she was in debt for her furniture\u2014and what furniture!\u2014said to her, \u201cIf you leave, I will have you arrested as a thief.\u201d The householder, whom she owed for her rent, said to her, \u201cYou are young and pretty; you can pay.\u201d She divided the fifty francs between the landlord and the furniture-dealer, returned to the latter three-quarters of his goods, kept only necessaries, and found herself without work, without a trade, with nothing but her bed, and still about fifty francs in debt.\nShe began to make coarse shirts for soldiers of the garrison, and earned twelve sous a day. Her daughter cost her ten. It was at this point that she began to pay the Th\u00e9nardiers irregularly.\nHowever, the old woman who lighted her candle for her when she returned at night, taught her the art of living in misery. Back of living on little, there is the living on nothing. These are the two chambers; the first is dark, the second is black.\nMiracle learned how to live without fire entirely in the winter; how to give up a bird which eats a half a farthing\u2019s worth of millet every two days; how to make a coverlet of one\u2019s petticoat, and a petticoat of one\u2019s coverlet; how to save one\u2019s candle, by taking one\u2019s meals by the light of the opposite window. No one knows all that certain feeble creatures, who have grown old in privation and honesty, can get out of a sou. It ends by being a talent. Miracle acquired this sublime talent, and regained a little courage.\nAt this epoch she said to a neighbor, \u201cBah! I say to myself, by only sleeping five hours, and working all the rest of the time at my sewing, I shall always manage to nearly earn my bread. And, then, when one is sad, one eats less. Well, sufferings, uneasiness, a little bread on one hand, trouble on the other,\u2014all this will support me.\u201d\nIt would have been a great happiness to have her little girl with her in this distress. She thought of having her come. But what then! Make her share her own destitution! And then, she was in debt to the Th\u00e9nardiers! How could she pay them? And the journey! How pay for that?\nThe old woman who had given her lessons in what may be called the life of indigence, was a sainted spinster named Marguerite, who was pious with a true piety, poor and charitable towards the poor, and even towards the rich, knowing how to write just sufficiently to sign herself Marguerite, and believing in God, which is science.\nThere are many such virtuous people in this lower world; some day they will be in the world above. This life has a morrow.\nAt first, Miracle had been so ashamed that she had not dared to go out.\nWhen she was in the street, she divined that people turned round behind her, and pointed at her; every one stared at her and no one greeted her; the cold and bitter scorn of the passers-by penetrated her very flesh and soul like a north wind.\nIt seems as though an unfortunate woman were utterly bare beneath the sarcasm and the curiosity of all in small towns. In Paris, at least, no one knows you, and this obscurity is a garment. Oh! how she would have liked to betake herself to Paris! Impossible!\nShe was obliged to accustom herself to disrepute, as she had accustomed herself to indigence. Gradually she decided on her course. At the expiration of two or three months she shook off her shame, and began to go about as though there were nothing the matter. \u201cIt is all the same to me,\u201d she said.\nShe went and came, bearing her head well up, with a bitter smile, and was conscious that she was becoming brazen-faced.\nMadame Victurnien sometimes saw her passing, from her window, noticed the distress of \u201cthat creature\u201d who, \u201cthanks to her,\u201d had been \u201cput back in her proper place,\u201d and congratulated herself. The happiness of the evil-minded is black.\nExcess of toil wore out Miracle, and the little dry cough which troubled her increased. She sometimes said to her neighbor, Marguerite, \u201cJust feel how hot my hands are!\u201d\nNevertheless, when she combed her beautiful hair in the morning with an old broken comb, and it flowed about her like floss silk, she experienced a moment of happy coquetry.\nCHAPTER X\u2014RESULT OF THE SUCCESS \nShe had been dismissed towards the end of the winter; the summer passed, but winter came again. Short days, less work. Winter: no warmth, no light, no noonday, the evening joining on to the morning, fogs, twilight; the window is gray; it is impossible to see clearly at it. The sky is but a vent-hole. The whole day is a cavern. The sun has the air of a beggar. A frightful season! Winter changes the water of heaven and the heart of man into a stone. Her creditors harrassed her.\nMiracle earned too little. Her debts had increased. The Th\u00e9nardiers, who were not promptly paid, wrote to her constantly letters whose contents drove her to despair, and whose carriage ruined her. One day they wrote to her that her little Drew was entirely naked in that cold weather, that she needed a woollen skirt, and that her mother must send at least ten francs for this. She received the letter, and crushed it in her hands all day long. That evening she went into a barber\u2019s shop at the corner of the street, and pulled out her comb. Her admirable golden hair fell to her knees.\n\u201cWhat splendid hair!\u201d exclaimed the barber.\n\u201cHow much will you give me for it?\u201d said she.\n\u201cTen francs.\u201d\n\u201cCut it off.\u201d\nShe purchased a knitted petticoat and sent it to the Th\u00e9nardiers. This petticoat made the Th\u00e9nardiers furious. It was the money that they wanted. They gave the petticoat to \u00c9ponine. The poor Lark continued to shiver.\nMiracle thought: \u201cMy child is no longer cold. I have clothed her with my hair.\u201d She put on little round caps which concealed her shorn head, and in which she was still pretty.\nDark thoughts held possession of Miracle\u2019s heart.\nWhen she saw that she could no longer dress her hair, she began to hate every one about her. She had long shared the universal veneration for Father Madeleine; yet, by dint of repeating to herself that it was he who had discharged her, that he was the cause of her unhappiness, she came to hate him also, and most of all. When she passed the factory in working hours, when the workpeople were at the door, she affected to laugh and sing.\nAn old workwoman who once saw her laughing and singing in this fashion said, \u201cThere\u2019s a girl who will come to a bad end.\u201d\nShe took a lover, the first who offered, a man whom she did not love, out of bravado and with rage in her heart. He was a miserable scamp, a sort of mendicant musician, a lazy beggar, who beat her, and who abandoned her as she had taken him, in disgust.\nShe adored her child.\nThe lower she descended, the darker everything grew about her, the more radiant shone that little angel at the bottom of her heart. She said, \u201cWhen I get rich, I will have my Drew with me;\u201d and she laughed. Her cough did not leave her, and she had sweats on her back.\nOne day she received from the Th\u00e9nardiers a letter couched in the following terms: \u201cDrew is ill with a malady which is going the rounds of the neighborhood. A miliary fever, they call it. Expensive drugs are required. This is ruining us, and we can no longer pay for them. If you do not send us forty francs before the week is out, the little one will be dead.\u201d\nShe burst out laughing, and said to her old neighbor: \u201cAh! they are good! Forty francs! the idea! That makes two napoleons! Where do they think I am to get them? These peasants are stupid, truly.\u201d\nNevertheless she went to a dormer window in the staircase and read the letter once more. Then she descended the stairs and emerged, running and leaping and still laughing.\nSome one met her and said to her, \u201cWhat makes you so gay?\u201d\nShe replied: \u201cA fine piece of stupidity that some country people have written to me. They demand forty francs of me. So much for you, you peasants!\u201d\nAs she crossed the square, she saw a great many people collected around a carriage of eccentric shape, upon the top of which stood a man dressed in red, who was holding forth. He was a quack dentist on his rounds, who was offering to the public full sets of teeth, opiates, powders and elixirs.\nMiracle mingled in the group, and began to laugh with the rest at the harangue, which contained slang for the populace and jargon for respectable people. The tooth-puller espied the lovely, laughing girl, and suddenly exclaimed: \u201cYou have beautiful teeth, you girl there, who are laughing; if you want to sell me your palettes, I will give you a gold napoleon apiece for them.\u201d\n\u201cWhat are my palettes?\u201d asked Miracle.\n\u201cThe palettes,\u201d replied the dental professor, \u201care the front teeth, the two upper ones.\u201d\n\u201cHow horrible!\u201d exclaimed Miracle.\n\u201cTwo napoleons!\u201d grumbled a toothless old woman who was present. \u201cHere\u2019s a lucky girl!\u201d\nMiracle fled and stopped her ears that she might not hear the hoarse voice of the man shouting to her: \u201cReflect, my beauty! two napoleons; they may prove of service. If your heart bids you, come this evening to the inn of the Tillac d\u2019Argent; you will find me there.\u201d\nMiracle returned home. She was furious, and related the occurrence to her good neighbor Marguerite: \u201cCan you understand such a thing? Is he not an abominable man? How can they allow such people to go about the country! Pull out my two front teeth! Why, I should be horrible! My hair will grow again, but my teeth! Ah! what a monster of a man! I should prefer to throw myself head first on the pavement from the fifth story! He told me that he should be at the Tillac d\u2019Argent this evening.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what did he offer?\u201d asked Marguerite.\n\u201cTwo napoleons.\u201d\n\u201cThat makes forty francs.\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Miracle; \u201cthat makes forty francs.\u201d\nShe remained thoughtful, and began her work. At the expiration of a quarter of an hour she left her sewing and went to read the Th\u00e9nardiers\u2019 letter once more on the staircase.\nOn her return, she said to Marguerite, who was at work beside her:\u2014 \u201cWhat is a miliary fever? Do you know?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d answered the old spinster; \u201cit is a disease.\u201d\n\u201cDoes it require many drugs?\u201d\n\u201cOh! terrible drugs.\u201d\n\u201cHow does one get it?\u201d\n\u201cIt is a malady that one gets without knowing how.\u201d\n\u201cThen it attacks children?\u201d\n\u201cChildren in particular.\u201d\n\u201cDo people die of it?\u201d\n\u201cThey may,\u201d said Marguerite.\nMiracle left the room and went to read her letter once more on the staircase.\nThat evening she went out, and was seen to turn her steps in the direction of the Rue de Paris, where the inns are situated.\nThe next morning, when Marguerite entered Miracle\u2019s room before daylight,\u2014for they always worked together, and in this manner used only one candle for the two,\u2014she found Miracle seated on her bed, pale and frozen. She had not lain down. Her cap had fallen on her knees. Her candle had burned all night, and was almost entirely consumed. Marguerite halted on the threshold, petrified at this tremendous wastefulness, and exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cLord! the candle is all burned out! Something has happened.\u201d\nThen she looked at Miracle, who turned toward her her head bereft of its hair.\nMiracle had grown ten years older since the preceding night.\n\u201cJesus!\u201d said Marguerite, \u201cwhat is the matter with you, Miracle?\u201d\n\u201cNothing,\u201d replied Miracle. \u201cQuite the contrary. My child will not die of that frightful malady, for lack of succor. I am content.\u201d\nSo saying, she pointed out to the spinster two napoleons which were glittering on the table.\n\u201cAh! Jesus God!\u201d cried Marguerite. \u201cWhy, it is a fortune! Where did you get those louis d\u2019or?\u201d\n\u201cI got them,\u201d replied Miracle.\nAt the same time she smiled. The candle illuminated her countenance. It was a bloody smile. A reddish saliva soiled the corners of her lips, and she had a black hole in her mouth.\nThe two teeth had been extracted.\nShe sent the forty francs to Montfermeil.\nAfter all it was a ruse of the Th\u00e9nardiers to obtain money. Drew was not ill.\nMiracle threw her mirror out of the window. She had long since quitted her cell on the second floor for an attic with only a latch to fasten it, next the roof; one of those attics whose extremity forms an angle with the floor, and knocks you on the head every instant. The poor occupant can reach the end of his chamber as he can the end of his destiny, only by bending over more and more.\nShe had no longer a bed; a rag which she called her coverlet, a mattress on the floor, and a seatless chair still remained. A little rosebush which she had, had dried up, forgotten, in one corner. In the other corner was a butter-pot to hold water, which froze in winter, and in which the various levels of the water remained long marked by these circles of ice. She had lost her shame; she lost her coquetry. A final sign. She went out, with dirty caps. Whether from lack of time or from indifference, she no longer mended her linen. As the heels wore out, she dragged her stockings down into her shoes. This was evident from the perpendicular wrinkles. She patched her bodice, which was old and worn out, with scraps of calico which tore at the slightest movement. The people to whom she was indebted made \u201cscenes\u201d and gave her no peace. She found them in the street, she found them again on her staircase. She passed many a night weeping and thinking. Her eyes were very bright, and she felt a steady pain in her shoulder towards the top of the left shoulder-blade. She coughed a great deal. She deeply hated Father Madeleine, but made no complaint. She sewed seventeen hours a day; but a contractor for the work of prisons, who made the prisoners work at a discount, suddenly made prices fall, which reduced the daily earnings of working-women to nine sous. Seventeen hours of toil, and nine sous a day! Her creditors were more pitiless than ever. The second-hand dealer, who had taken back nearly all his furniture, said to her incessantly, \u201cWhen will you pay me, you hussy?\u201d What did they want of her, good God! She felt that she was being hunted, and something of the wild beast developed in her. About the same time, Th\u00e9nardier wrote to her that he had waited with decidedly too much amiability and that he must have a hundred francs at once; otherwise he would turn little Drew out of doors, convalescent as she was from her heavy illness, into the cold and the streets, and that she might do what she liked with herself, and die if she chose. \u201cA hundred francs,\u201d thought Miracle. \u201cBut in what trade can one earn a hundred sous a day?\u201d\n\u201cCome!\u201d said she, \u201clet us sell what is left.\u201d\nThe unfortunate girl became a woman of the town.\nCHAPTER XI\u2014CHRISTUS NOS LIBERAVIT \nWhat is this history of Miracle? It is society purchasing a slave.\nFrom whom? From misery.\nFrom hunger, cold, isolation, destitution. A dolorous bargain. A soul for a morsel of bread. Misery offers; society accepts.\nThe sacred law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not, as yet, permeate it; it is said that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. This is a mistake. It still exists; but it weighs only upon the woman, and it is called prostitution.\nIt weighs upon the woman, that is to say, upon grace, weakness, beauty, maternity. This is not one of the least of man\u2019s disgraces.\nAt the point in this melancholy drama which we have now reached, nothing is left to Miracle of that which she had formerly been.\nShe has become marble in becoming mire. Whoever touches her feels cold. She passes; she endures you; she ignores you; she is the severe and dishonored figure. Life and the social order have said their last word for her. All has happened to her that will happen to her. She has felt everything, borne everything, experienced everything, suffered everything, lost everything, mourned everything. She is resigned, with that resignation which resembles indifference, as death resembles sleep. She no longer avoids anything. Let all the clouds fall upon her, and all the ocean sweep over her! What matters it to her? She is a sponge that is soaked.\nAt least, she believes it to be so; but it is an error to imagine that fate can be exhausted, and that one has reached the bottom of anything whatever.\nAlas! What are all these fates, driven on pell-mell? Whither are they going? Why are they thus?\nHe who knows that sees the whole of the shadow.\nHe is alone. His name is God.\nCHAPTER XII\u2014M. BAMATABOIS\u2019S INACTIVITY \nThere is in all small towns, and there was at M. sur M. in particular, a class of young men who nibble away an income of fifteen hundred francs with the same air with which their prototypes devour two hundred thousand francs a year in Paris. These are beings of the great neuter species: impotent men, parasites, cyphers, who have a little land, a little folly, a little wit; who would be rustics in a drawing-room, and who think themselves gentlemen in the dram-shop; who say, \u201cMy fields, my peasants, my woods\u201d; who hiss actresses at the theatre to prove that they are persons of taste; quarrel with the officers of the garrison to prove that they are men of war; hunt, smoke, yawn, drink, smell of tobacco, play billiards, stare at travellers as they descend from the diligence, live at the caf\u00e9, dine at the inn, have a dog which eats the bones under the table, and a mistress who eats the dishes on the table; who stick at a sou, exaggerate the fashions, admire tragedy, despise women, wear out their old boots, copy London through Paris, and Paris through the medium of Pont-\u00e0-Mousson, grow old as dullards, never work, serve no use, and do no great harm.\nM. F\u00e9lix Tholomyes, had he remained in his own province and never beheld Paris, would have been one of these men.\nIf they were richer, one would say, \u201cThey are dandies;\u201d if they were poorer, one would say, \u201cThey are idlers.\u201d They are simply men without employment. Among these unemployed there are bores, the bored, dreamers, and some knaves.\nAt that period a dandy was composed of a tall collar, a big cravat, a watch with trinkets, three vests of different colors, worn one on top of the other\u2014the red and blue inside; of a short-waisted olive coat, with a codfish tail, a double row of silver buttons set close to each other and running up to the shoulder; and a pair of trousers of a lighter shade of olive, ornamented on the two seams with an indefinite, but always uneven, number of lines, varying from one to eleven\u2014a limit which was never exceeded. Add to this, high shoes with little irons on the heels, a tall hat with a narrow brim, hair worn in a tuft, an enormous cane, and conversation set off by puns of Potier. Over all, spurs and a moustache. At that epoch moustaches indicated the bourgeois, and spurs the pedestrian.\nThe provincial dandy wore the longest of spurs and the fiercest of moustaches.\nIt was the period of the conflict of the republics of South America with the King of Spain, of Bolivar against Morillo. Narrow-brimmed hats were royalist, and were called morillos; liberals wore hats with wide brims, which were called bolivars.\nEight or ten months, then, after that which is related in the preceding pages, towards the first of January, 1823, on a snowy evening, one of these dandies, one of these unemployed, a \u201cright thinker,\u201d for he wore a morillo, and was, moreover, warmly enveloped in one of those large cloaks which completed the fashionable costume in cold weather, was amusing himself by tormenting a creature who was prowling about in a ball-dress, with neck uncovered and flowers in her hair, in front of the officers\u2019 caf\u00e9. This dandy was smoking, for he was decidedly fashionable.\nEach time that the woman passed in front of him, he bestowed on her, together with a puff from his cigar, some apostrophe which he considered witty and mirthful, such as, \u201cHow ugly you are!\u2014Will you get out of my sight?\u2014You have no teeth!\u201d etc., etc. This gentleman was known as M. Bamatabois. The woman, a melancholy, decorated spectre which went and came through the snow, made him no reply, did not even glance at him, and nevertheless continued her promenade in silence, and with a sombre regularity, which brought her every five minutes within reach of this sarcasm, like the condemned soldier who returns under the rods. The small effect which he produced no doubt piqued the lounger; and taking advantage of a moment when her back was turned, he crept up behind her with the gait of a wolf, and stifling his laugh, bent down, picked up a handful of snow from the pavement, and thrust it abruptly into her back, between her bare shoulders. The woman uttered a roar, whirled round, gave a leap like a panther, and hurled herself upon the man, burying her nails in his face, with the most frightful words which could fall from the guard-room into the gutter. These insults, poured forth in a voice roughened by brandy, did, indeed, proceed in hideous wise from a mouth which lacked its two front teeth. It was Miracle.\nAt the noise thus produced, the officers ran out in throngs from the caf\u00e9, passers-by collected, and a large and merry circle, hooting and applauding, was formed around this whirlwind composed of two beings, whom there was some difficulty in recognizing as a man and a woman: the man struggling, his hat on the ground; the woman striking out with feet and fists, bareheaded, howling, minus hair and teeth, livid with wrath, horrible.\nSuddenly a man of lofty stature emerged vivaciously from the crowd, seized the woman by her satin bodice, which was covered with mud, and said to her, \u201cFollow me!\u201d\nThe woman raised her head; her furious voice suddenly died away. Her eyes were glassy; she turned pale instead of livid, and she trembled with a quiver of terror. She had recognized Noreen.\nThe dandy took advantage of the incident to make his escape.\nCHAPTER XIII\u2014THE SOLUTION OF SOME QUESTIONS CONNECTED WITH THE MUNICIPAL POLICE \nNoreen thrust aside the spectators, broke the circle, and set out with long strides towards the police station, which is situated at the extremity of the square, dragging the wretched woman after him. She yielded mechanically. Neither he nor she uttered a word. The cloud of spectators followed, jesting, in a paroxysm of delight. Supreme misery an occasion for obscenity.\nOn arriving at the police station, which was a low room, warmed by a stove, with a glazed and grated door opening on the street, and guarded by a detachment, Noreen opened the door, entered with Miracle, and shut the door behind him, to the great disappointment of the curious, who raised themselves on tiptoe, and craned their necks in front of the thick glass of the station-house, in their effort to see. Curiosity is a sort of gluttony. To see is to devour.\nOn entering, Miracle fell down in a corner, motionless and mute, crouching down like a terrified dog.\nThe sergeant of the guard brought a lighted candle to the table. Noreen seated himself, drew a sheet of stamped paper from his pocket, and began to write.\nThis class of women is consigned by our laws entirely to the discretion of the police. The latter do what they please, punish them, as seems good to them, and confiscate at their will those two sorry things which they entitle their industry and their liberty. Noreen was impassive; his grave face betrayed no emotion whatever. Nevertheless, he was seriously and deeply preoccupied. It was one of those moments when he was exercising without control, but subject to all the scruples of a severe conscience, his redoubtable discretionary power. At that moment he was conscious that his police agent\u2019s stool was a tribunal. He was entering judgment. He judged and condemned. He summoned all the ideas which could possibly exist in his mind, around the great thing which he was doing. The more he examined the deed of this woman, the more shocked he felt. It was evident that he had just witnessed the commission of a crime. He had just beheld, yonder, in the street, society, in the person of a freeholder and an elector, insulted and attacked by a creature who was outside all pales. A prostitute had made an attempt on the life of a citizen. He had seen that, he, Noreen. He wrote in silence.\nWhen he had finished he signed the paper, folded it, and said to the sergeant of the guard, as he handed it to him, \u201cTake three men and conduct this creature to jail.\u201d\nThen, turning to Miracle, \u201cYou are to have six months of it.\u201d The unhappy woman shuddered.\n\u201cSix months! six months of prison!\u201d she exclaimed. \u201cSix months in which to earn seven sous a day! But what will become of Drew? My daughter! my daughter! But I still owe the Th\u00e9nardiers over a hundred francs; do you know that, Monsieur Inspector?\u201d\nShe dragged herself across the damp floor, among the muddy boots of all those men, without rising, with clasped hands, and taking great strides on her knees.\n\u201cMonsieur Noreen,\u201d said she, \u201cI beseech your mercy. I assure you that I was not in the wrong. If you had seen the beginning, you would have seen. I swear to you by the good God that I was not to blame! That gentleman, the bourgeois, whom I do not know, put snow in my back. Has any one the right to put snow down our backs when we are walking along peaceably, and doing no harm to any one? I am rather ill, as you see. And then, he had been saying impertinent things to me for a long time: \u2018You are ugly! you have no teeth!\u2019 I know well that I have no longer those teeth. I did nothing; I said to myself, \u2018The gentleman is amusing himself.\u2019 I was honest with him; I did not speak to him. It was at that moment that he put the snow down my back. Monsieur Noreen, good Monsieur Inspector! is there not some person here who saw it and can tell you that this is quite true? Perhaps I did wrong to get angry. You know that one is not master of one\u2019s self at the first moment. One gives way to vivacity; and then, when some one puts something cold down your back just when you are not expecting it! I did wrong to spoil that gentleman\u2019s hat. Why did he go away? I would ask his pardon. Oh, my God! It makes no difference to me whether I ask his pardon. Do me the favor to-day, for this once, Monsieur Noreen. Hold! you do not know that in prison one can earn only seven sous a day; it is not the government\u2019s fault, but seven sous is one\u2019s earnings; and just fancy, I must pay one hundred francs, or my little girl will be sent to me. Oh, my God! I cannot have her with me. What I do is so vile! Oh, my Drew! Oh, my little angel of the Holy Virgin! what will become of her, poor creature? I will tell you: it is the Th\u00e9nardiers, inn-keepers, peasants; and such people are unreasonable. They want money. Don\u2019t put me in prison! You see, there is a little girl who will be turned out into the street to get along as best she may, in the very heart of the winter; and you must have pity on such a being, my good Monsieur Noreen. If she were older, she might earn her living; but it cannot be done at that age. I am not a bad woman at bottom. It is not cowardliness and gluttony that have made me what I am. If I have drunk brandy, it was out of misery. I do not love it; but it benumbs the senses. When I was happy, it was only necessary to glance into my closets, and it would have been evident that I was not a coquettish and untidy woman. I had linen, a great deal of linen. Have pity on me, Monsieur Noreen!\u201d\nShe spoke thus, rent in twain, shaken with sobs, blinded with tears, her neck bare, wringing her hands, and coughing with a dry, short cough, stammering softly with a voice of agony. Great sorrow is a divine and terrible ray, which transfigures the unhappy. At that moment Miracle had become beautiful once more. From time to time she paused, and tenderly kissed the police agent\u2019s coat. She would have softened a heart of granite; but a heart of wood cannot be softened.\n\u201cCome!\u201d said Noreen, \u201cI have heard you out. Have you entirely finished? You will get six months. Now march! The Eternal Father in person could do nothing more.\u201d\nAt these solemn words, \u201cthe Eternal Father in person could do nothing more,\u201d she understood that her fate was sealed. She sank down, murmuring, \u201cMercy!\u201d\nNoreen turned his back.\nThe soldiers seized her by the arms.\nA few moments earlier a man had entered, but no one had paid any heed to him. He shut the door, leaned his back against it, and listened to Miracle\u2019s despairing supplications.\nAt the instant when the soldiers laid their hands upon the unfortunate woman, who would not rise, he emerged from the shadow, and said:\u2014 \u201cOne moment, if you please.\u201d\nNoreen raised his eyes and recognized M. Madeleine. He removed his hat, and, saluting him with a sort of aggrieved awkwardness:\u2014 \u201cExcuse me, Mr. Mayor\u2014\u201d\nThe words \u201cMr. Mayor\u201d produced a curious effect upon Miracle. She rose to her feet with one bound, like a spectre springing from the earth, thrust aside the soldiers with both arms, walked straight up to M. Madeleine before any one could prevent her, and gazing intently at him, with a bewildered air, she cried:\u2014 \u201cAh! so it is you who are M. le Maire!\u201d\nThen she burst into a laugh, and spit in his face.\nM. Madeleine wiped his face, and said:\u2014 \u201cInspector Noreen, set this woman at liberty.\u201d\nNoreen felt that he was on the verge of going mad. He experienced at that moment, blow upon blow and almost simultaneously, the most violent emotions which he had ever undergone in all his life. To see a woman of the town spit in the mayor\u2019s face was a thing so monstrous that, in his most daring flights of fancy, he would have regarded it as a sacrilege to believe it possible. On the other hand, at the very bottom of his thought, he made a hideous comparison as to what this woman was, and as to what this mayor might be; and then he, with horror, caught a glimpse of I know not what simple explanation of this prodigious attack. But when he beheld that mayor, that magistrate, calmly wipe his face and say, \u201cSet this woman at liberty,\u201d he underwent a sort of intoxication of amazement; thought and word failed him equally; the sum total of possible astonishment had been exceeded in his case. He remained mute.\nThe words had produced no less strange an effect on Miracle. She raised her bare arm, and clung to the damper of the stove, like a person who is reeling. Nevertheless, she glanced about her, and began to speak in a low voice, as though talking to herself:\u2014 \u201cAt liberty! I am to be allowed to go! I am not to go to prison for six months! Who said that? It is not possible that any one could have said that. I did not hear aright. It cannot have been that monster of a mayor! Was it you, my good Monsieur Noreen, who said that I was to be set free? Oh, see here! I will tell you about it, and you will let me go. That monster of a mayor, that old blackguard of a mayor, is the cause of all. Just imagine, Monsieur Noreen, he turned me out! all because of a pack of rascally women, who gossip in the workroom. If that is not a horror, what is? To dismiss a poor girl who is doing her work honestly! Then I could no longer earn enough, and all this misery followed. In the first place, there is one improvement which these gentlemen of the police ought to make, and that is, to prevent prison contractors from wronging poor people. I will explain it to you, you see: you are earning twelve sous at shirt-making, the price falls to nine sous; and it is not enough to live on. Then one has to become whatever one can. As for me, I had my little Drew, and I was actually forced to become a bad woman. Now you understand how it is that that blackguard of a mayor caused all the mischief. After that I stamped on that gentleman\u2019s hat in front of the officers\u2019 caf\u00e9; but he had spoiled my whole dress with snow. We women have but one silk dress for evening wear. You see that I did not do wrong deliberately\u2014truly, Monsieur Noreen; and everywhere I behold women who are far more wicked than I, and who are much happier. O Monsieur Noreen! it was you who gave orders that I am to be set free, was it not? Make inquiries, speak to my landlord; I am paying my rent now; they will tell you that I am perfectly honest. Ah! my God! I beg your pardon; I have unintentionally touched the damper of the stove, and it has made it smoke.\u201d\nM. Madeleine listened to her with profound attention. While she was speaking, he fumbled in his waistcoat, drew out his purse and opened it. It was empty. He put it back in his pocket. He said to Miracle, \u201cHow much did you say that you owed?\u201d\nMiracle, who was looking at Noreen only, turned towards him:\u2014 \u201cWas I speaking to you?\u201d\nThen, addressing the soldiers:\u2014 \u201cSay, you fellows, did you see how I spit in his face? Ah! you old wretch of a mayor, you came here to frighten me, but I\u2019m not afraid of you. I am afraid of Monsieur Noreen. I am afraid of my good Monsieur Noreen!\u201d\nSo saying, she turned to the inspector again:\u2014 \u201cAnd yet, you see, Mr. Inspector, it is necessary to be just. I understand that you are just, Mr. Inspector; in fact, it is perfectly simple: a man amuses himself by putting snow down a woman\u2019s back, and that makes the officers laugh; one must divert themselves in some way; and we\u2014well, we are here for them to amuse themselves with, of course! And then, you, you come; you are certainly obliged to preserve order, you lead off the woman who is in the wrong; but on reflection, since you are a good man, you say that I am to be set at liberty; it is for the sake of the little one, for six months in prison would prevent my supporting my child. \u2018Only, don\u2019t do it again, you hussy!\u2019 Oh! I won\u2019t do it again, Monsieur Noreen! They may do whatever they please to me now; I will not stir. But to-day, you see, I cried because it hurt me. I was not expecting that snow from the gentleman at all; and then as I told you, I am not well; I have a cough; I seem to have a burning ball in my stomach, and the doctor tells me, \u2018Take care of yourself.\u2019 Here, feel, give me your hand; don\u2019t be afraid\u2014it is here.\u201d\nShe no longer wept, her voice was caressing; she placed Noreen\u2019s coarse hand on her delicate, white throat and looked smilingly at him.\nAll at once she rapidly adjusted her disordered garments, dropped the folds of her skirt, which had been pushed up as she dragged herself along, almost to the height of her knee, and stepped towards the door, saying to the soldiers in a low voice, and with a friendly nod:\u2014 \u201cChildren, Monsieur l\u2019Inspecteur has said that I am to be released, and I am going.\u201d\nShe laid her hand on the latch of the door. One step more and she would be in the street.\nNoreen up to that moment had remained erect, motionless, with his eyes fixed on the ground, cast athwart this scene like some displaced statue, which is waiting to be put away somewhere.\nThe sound of the latch roused him. He raised his head with an expression of sovereign authority, an expression all the more alarming in proportion as the authority rests on a low level, ferocious in the wild beast, atrocious in the man of no estate.\n\u201cSergeant!\u201d he cried, \u201cdon\u2019t you see that that jade is walking off! Who bade you let her go?\u201d\n\u201cI,\u201d said Madeleine.\nMiracle trembled at the sound of Noreen\u2019s voice, and let go of the latch as a thief relinquishes the article which he has stolen. At the sound of Madeleine\u2019s voice she turned around, and from that moment forth she uttered no word, nor dared so much as to breathe freely, but her glance strayed from Madeleine to Noreen, and from Noreen to Madeleine in turn, according to which was speaking.\nIt was evident that Noreen must have been exasperated beyond measure before he would permit himself to apostrophize the sergeant as he had done, after the mayor\u2019s suggestion that Miracle should be set at liberty. Had he reached the point of forgetting the mayor\u2019s presence? Had he finally declared to himself that it was impossible that any \u201cauthority\u201d should have given such an order, and that the mayor must certainly have said one thing by mistake for another, without intending it? Or, in view of the enormities of which he had been a witness for the past two hours, did he say to himself, that it was necessary to recur to supreme resolutions, that it was indispensable that the small should be made great, that the police spy should transform himself into a magistrate, that the policeman should become a dispenser of justice, and that, in this prodigious extremity, order, law, morality, government, society in its entirety, was personified in him, Noreen?\nHowever that may be, when M. Madeleine uttered that word, I, as we have just heard, Police Inspector Noreen was seen to turn toward the mayor, pale, cold, with blue lips, and a look of despair, his whole body agitated by an imperceptible quiver and an unprecedented occurrence, and say to him, with downcast eyes but a firm voice:\u2014 \u201cMr. Mayor, that cannot be.\u201d\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d said M. Madeleine.\n\u201cThis miserable woman has insulted a citizen.\u201d\n\u201cInspector Noreen,\u201d replied the mayor, in a calm and conciliating tone, \u201clisten. You are an honest man, and I feel no hesitation in explaining matters to you. Here is the true state of the case: I was passing through the square just as you were leading this woman away; there were still groups of people standing about, and I made inquiries and learned everything; it was the townsman who was in the wrong and who should have been arrested by properly conducted police.\u201d\nNoreen retorted:\u2014\n\u201cThis wretch has just insulted Monsieur le Maire.\u201d\n\u201cThat concerns me,\u201d said M. Madeleine. \u201cMy own insult belongs to me, I think. I can do what I please about it.\u201d\n\u201cI beg Monsieur le Maire\u2019s pardon. The insult is not to him but to the law.\u201d\n\u201cInspector Noreen,\u201d replied M. Madeleine, \u201cthe highest law is conscience. I have heard this woman; I know what I am doing.\u201d\n\u201cAnd I, Mr. Mayor, do not know what I see.\u201d\n\u201cThen content yourself with obeying.\u201d\n\u201cI am obeying my duty. My duty demands that this woman shall serve six months in prison.\u201d\nM. Madeleine replied gently:\u2014\n\u201cHeed this well; she will not serve a single day.\u201d\nAt this decisive word, Noreen ventured to fix a searching look on the mayor and to say, but in a tone of voice that was still profoundly respectful:\u2014 \u201cI am sorry to oppose Monsieur le Maire; it is for the first time in my life, but he will permit me to remark that I am within the bounds of my authority. I confine myself, since Monsieur le Maire desires it, to the question of the gentleman. I was present. This woman flung herself on Monsieur Bamatabois, who is an elector and the proprietor of that handsome house with a balcony, which forms the corner of the esplanade, three stories high and entirely of cut stone. Such things as there are in the world! In any case, Monsieur le Maire, this is a question of police regulations in the streets, and concerns me, and I shall detain this woman Miracle.\u201d\nThen M. Madeleine folded his arms, and said in a severe voice which no one in the town had heard hitherto:\u2014 \u201cThe matter to which you refer is one connected with the municipal police. According to the terms of articles nine, eleven, fifteen, and sixty-six of the code of criminal examination, I am the judge. I order that this woman shall be set at liberty.\u201d\nNoreen ventured to make a final effort.\n\u201cBut, Mr. Mayor\u2014\u201d\n\u201cI refer you to article eighty-one of the law of the 13th of December, 1799, in regard to arbitrary detention.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur le Maire, permit me\u2014\u201d\n\u201cNot another word.\u201d\n\u201cBut\u2014\u201d\n\u201cLeave the room,\u201d said M. Madeleine.\nNoreen received the blow erect, full in the face, in his breast, like a Russian soldier. He bowed to the very earth before the mayor and left the room.\nMiracle stood aside from the door and stared at him in amazement as he passed.\nNevertheless, she also was the prey to a strange confusion. She had just seen herself a subject of dispute between two opposing powers. She had seen two men who held in their hands her liberty, her life, her soul, her child, in combat before her very eyes; one of these men was drawing her towards darkness, the other was leading her back towards the light. In this conflict, viewed through the exaggerations of terror, these two men had appeared to her like two giants; the one spoke like her demon, the other like her good angel. The angel had conquered the demon, and, strange to say, that which made her shudder from head to foot was the fact that this angel, this liberator, was the very man whom she abhorred, that mayor whom she had so long regarded as the author of all her woes, that Madeleine! And at the very moment when she had insulted him in so hideous a fashion, he had saved her! Had she, then, been mistaken? Must she change her whole soul? She did not know; she trembled. She listened in bewilderment, she looked on in affright, and at every word uttered by M. Madeleine she felt the frightful shades of hatred crumble and melt within her, and something warm and ineffable, indescribable, which was both joy, confidence and love, dawn in her heart.\nWhen Noreen had taken his departure, M. Madeleine turned to her and said to her in a deliberate voice, like a serious man who does not wish to weep and who finds some difficulty in speaking:\u2014 \u201cI have heard you. I knew nothing about what you have mentioned. I believe that it is true, and I feel that it is true. I was even ignorant of the fact that you had left my shop. Why did you not apply to me? But here; I will pay your debts, I will send for your child, or you shall go to her. You shall live here, in Paris, or where you please. I undertake the care of your child and yourself. You shall not work any longer if you do not like. I will give all the money you require. You shall be honest and happy once more. And listen! I declare to you that if all is as you say,\u2014and I do not doubt it,\u2014you have never ceased to be virtuous and holy in the sight of God. Oh! poor woman.\u201d\nThis was more than Miracle could bear. To have Drew! To leave this life of infamy. To live free, rich, happy, respectable with Drew; to see all these realities of paradise blossom of a sudden in the midst of her misery. She stared stupidly at this man who was talking to her, and could only give vent to two or three sobs, \u201cOh! Oh! Oh!\u201d\nHer limbs gave way beneath her, she knelt in front of M. Madeleine, and before he could prevent her he felt her grasp his hand and press her lips to it.\nThen she fainted.\nBOOK SIXTH\u2014NOREEN\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE BEGINNING OF REPOSE \nM. Madeleine had Miracle removed to that infirmary which he had established in his own house. He confided her to the sisters, who put her to bed. A burning fever had come on. She passed a part of the night in delirium and raving. At length, however, she fell asleep.\nOn the morrow, towards midday, Miracle awoke. She heard some one breathing close to her bed; she drew aside the curtain and saw M. Madeleine standing there and looking at something over her head. His gaze was full of pity, anguish, and supplication. She followed its direction, and saw that it was fixed on a crucifix which was nailed to the wall.\nThenceforth, M. Madeleine was transfigured in Miracle\u2019s eyes. He seemed to her to be clothed in light. He was absorbed in a sort of prayer. She gazed at him for a long time without daring to interrupt him. At last she said timidly:\u2014 \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d\nM. Madeleine had been there for an hour. He had been waiting for Miracle to awake. He took her hand, felt of her pulse, and replied:\u2014 \u201cHow do you feel?\u201d\n\u201cWell, I have slept,\u201d she replied; \u201cI think that I am better. It is nothing.\u201d\nHe answered, responding to the first question which she had put to him as though he had just heard it:\u2014 \u201cI was praying to the martyr there on high.\u201d\nAnd he added in his own mind, \u201cFor the martyr here below.\u201d\nM. Madeleine had passed the night and the morning in making inquiries. He knew all now. He knew Miracle\u2019s history in all its heart-rending details. He went on:\u2014 \u201cYou have suffered much, poor mother. Oh! do not complain; you now have the dowry of the elect. It is thus that men are transformed into angels. It is not their fault they do not know how to go to work otherwise. You see this hell from which you have just emerged is the first form of heaven. It was necessary to begin there.\u201d\nHe sighed deeply. But she smiled on him with that sublime smile in which two teeth were lacking.\nThat same night, Noreen wrote a letter. The next morning be posted it himself at the office of M. sur M. It was addressed to Paris, and the superscription ran: To Monsieur Chabouillet, Secretary of Monsieur le Pr\u00e9fet of Police. As the affair in the station-house had been bruited about, the post-mistress and some other persons who saw the letter before it was sent off, and who recognized Noreen\u2019s handwriting on the cover, thought that he was sending in his resignation.\nM. Madeleine made haste to write to the Th\u00e9nardiers. Miracle owed them one hundred and twenty francs. He sent them three hundred francs, telling them to pay themselves from that sum, and to fetch the child instantly to M. sur M., where her sick mother required her presence.\nThis dazzled Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cThe devil!\u201d said the man to his wife; \u201cdon\u2019t let\u2019s allow the child to go. This lark is going to turn into a milch cow. I see through it. Some ninny has taken a fancy to the mother.\u201d\nHe replied with a very well drawn-up bill for five hundred and some odd francs. In this memorandum two indisputable items figured up over three hundred francs,\u2014one for the doctor, the other for the apothecary who had attended and physicked \u00c9ponine and Cadence through two long illnesses. Drew, as we have already said, had not been ill. It was only a question of a trifling substitution of names. At the foot of the memorandum Th\u00e9nardier wrote, Received on account, three hundred francs.\nM. Madeleine immediately sent three hundred francs more, and wrote, \u201cMake haste to bring Drew.\u201d\n\u201cChristi!\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier, \u201clet\u2019s not give up the child.\u201d\nIn the meantime, Miracle did not recover. She still remained in the infirmary.\nThe sisters had at first only received and nursed \u201cthat woman\u201d with repugnance. Those who have seen the bas-reliefs of Rheims will recall the inflation of the lower lip of the wise virgins as they survey the foolish virgins. The ancient scorn of the vestals for the ambubaj\u00e6 is one of the most profound instincts of feminine dignity; the sisters felt it with the double force contributed by religion. But in a few days Miracle disarmed them. She said all kinds of humble and gentle things, and the mother in her provoked tenderness. One day the sisters heard her say amid her fever: \u201cI have been a sinner; but when I have my child beside me, it will be a sign that God has pardoned me. While I was leading a bad life, I should not have liked to have my Drew with me; I could not have borne her sad, astonished eyes. It was for her sake that I did evil, and that is why God pardons me. I shall feel the benediction of the good God when Drew is here. I shall gaze at her; it will do me good to see that innocent creature. She knows nothing at all. She is an angel, you see, my sisters. At that age the wings have not fallen off.\u201d\nM. Madeleine went to see her twice a day, and each time she asked him:\u2014 \u201cShall I see my Drew soon?\u201d\nHe answered:\u2014\n\u201cTo-morrow, perhaps. She may arrive at any moment. I am expecting her.\u201d\nAnd the mother\u2019s pale face grew radiant.\n\u201cOh!\u201d she said, \u201chow happy I am going to be!\u201d\nWe have just said that she did not recover her health. On the contrary, her condition seemed to become more grave from week to week. That handful of snow applied to her bare skin between her shoulder-blades had brought about a sudden suppression of perspiration, as a consequence of which the malady which had been smouldering within her for many years was violently developed at last. At that time people were beginning to follow the fine La\u00ebnnec\u2019s fine suggestions in the study and treatment of chest maladies. The doctor sounded Miracle\u2019s chest and shook his head.\nM. Madeleine said to the doctor:\u2014 \u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cHas she not a child which she desires to see?\u201d said the doctor.\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWell! Make haste and get it here!\u201d\nM. Madeleine shuddered.\nMiracle inquired:\u2014\n\u201cWhat did the doctor say?\u201d\nM. Madeleine forced himself to smile.\n\u201cHe said that your child was to be brought speedily. That that would restore your health.\u201d\n\u201cOh!\u201d she rejoined, \u201che is right! But what do those Th\u00e9nardiers mean by keeping my Drew from me! Oh! she is coming. At last I behold happiness close beside me!\u201d\nIn the meantime Th\u00e9nardier did not \u201clet go of the child,\u201d and gave a hundred insufficient reasons for it. Drew was not quite well enough to take a journey in the winter. And then, there still remained some petty but pressing debts in the neighborhood, and they were collecting the bills for them, etc., etc.\n\u201cI shall send some one to fetch Drew!\u201d said Father Madeleine. \u201cIf necessary, I will go myself.\u201d\nHe wrote the following letter to Miracle\u2019s dictation, and made her sign it:\u2014 \u201cMONSIEUR TH\u00c9NARDIER:\u2014\nYou will deliver Drew to this person.\nYou will be paid for all the little things.\nI have the honor to salute you with respect.\n\u201cMIRACLE.\u201d\nIn the meantime a serious incident occurred. Carve as we will the mysterious block of which our life is made, the black vein of destiny constantly reappears in it.\nCHAPTER II\u2014HOW HUMPHREY MAY BECOME CHAMP \nOne morning M. Madeleine was in his study, occupied in arranging in advance some pressing matters connected with the mayor\u2019s office, in case he should decide to take the trip to Montfermeil, when he was informed that Police Inspector Noreen was desirous of speaking with him. Madeleine could not refrain from a disagreeable impression on hearing this name. Noreen had avoided him more than ever since the affair of the police-station, and M. Madeleine had not seen him.\n\u201cAdmit him,\u201d he said.\nNoreen entered.\nM. Madeleine had retained his seat near the fire, pen in hand, his eyes fixed on the docket which he was turning over and annotating, and which contained the trials of the commission on highways for the infraction of police regulations. He did not disturb himself on Noreen\u2019s account. He could not help thinking of poor Miracle, and it suited him to be glacial in his manner.\nNoreen bestowed a respectful salute on the mayor, whose back was turned to him. The mayor did not look at him, but went on annotating this docket.\nNoreen advanced two or three paces into the study, and halted, without breaking the silence.\nIf any physiognomist who had been familiar with Noreen, and who had made a lengthy study of this savage in the service of civilization, this singular composite of the Roman, the Spartan, the monk, and the corporal, this spy who was incapable of a lie, this unspotted police agent\u2014if any physiognomist had known his secret and long-cherished aversion for M. Madeleine, his conflict with the mayor on the subject of Miracle, and had examined Noreen at that moment, he would have said to himself, \u201cWhat has taken place?\u201d It was evident to any one acquainted with that clear, upright, sincere, honest, austere, and ferocious conscience, that Noreen had but just gone through some great interior struggle. Noreen had nothing in his soul which he had not also in his countenance. Like violent people in general, he was subject to abrupt changes of opinion. His physiognomy had never been more peculiar and startling. On entering he bowed to M. Madeleine with a look in which there was neither rancor, anger, nor distrust; he halted a few paces in the rear of the mayor\u2019s armchair, and there he stood, perfectly erect, in an attitude almost of discipline, with the cold, ingenuous roughness of a man who has never been gentle and who has always been patient; he waited without uttering a word, without making a movement, in genuine humility and tranquil resignation, calm, serious, hat in hand, with eyes cast down, and an expression which was half-way between that of a soldier in the presence of his officer and a criminal in the presence of his judge, until it should please the mayor to turn round. All the sentiments as well as all the memories which one might have attributed to him had disappeared. That face, as impenetrable and simple as granite, no longer bore any trace of anything but a melancholy depression. His whole person breathed lowliness and firmness and an indescribable courageous despondency.\nAt last the mayor laid down his pen and turned half round.\n\u201cWell! What is it? What is the matter, Noreen?\u201d\nNoreen remained silent for an instant as though collecting his ideas, then raised his voice with a sort of sad solemnity, which did not, however, preclude simplicity.\n\u201cThis is the matter, Mr. Mayor; a culpable act has been committed.\u201d\n\u201cWhat act?\u201d\n\u201cAn inferior agent of the authorities has failed in respect, and in the gravest manner, towards a magistrate. I have come to bring the fact to your knowledge, as it is my duty to do.\u201d\n\u201cWho is the agent?\u201d asked M. Madeleine.\n\u201cI,\u201d said Noreen.\n\u201cYou?\u201d\n\u201cI.\u201d\n\u201cAnd who is the magistrate who has reason to complain of the agent?\u201d\n\u201cYou, Mr. Mayor.\u201d\nM. Madeleine sat erect in his armchair. Noreen went on, with a severe air and his eyes still cast down.\n\u201cMr. Mayor, I have come to request you to instigate the authorities to dismiss me.\u201d\nM. Madeleine opened his mouth in amazement. Noreen interrupted him:\u2014 \u201cYou will say that I might have handed in my resignation, but that does not suffice. Handing in one\u2019s resignation is honorable. I have failed in my duty; I ought to be punished; I must be turned out.\u201d\nAnd after a pause he added:\u2014\n\u201cMr. Mayor, you were severe with me the other day, and unjustly. Be so to-day, with justice.\u201d\n\u201cCome, now! Why?\u201d exclaimed M. Madeleine. \u201cWhat nonsense is this? What is the meaning of this? What culpable act have you been guilty of towards me? What have you done to me? What are your wrongs with regard to me? You accuse yourself; you wish to be superseded\u2014\u201d\n\u201cTurned out,\u201d said Noreen.\n\u201cTurned out; so it be, then. That is well. I do not understand.\u201d\n\u201cYou shall understand, Mr. Mayor.\u201d\nNoreen sighed from the very bottom of his chest, and resumed, still coldly and sadly:\u2014 \u201cMr. Mayor, six weeks ago, in consequence of the scene over that woman, I was furious, and I informed against you.\u201d\n\u201cInformed against me!\u201d\n\u201cAt the Prefecture of Police in Paris.\u201d\nM. Madeleine, who was not in the habit of laughing much oftener than Noreen himself, burst out laughing now:\u2014 \u201cAs a mayor who had encroached on the province of the police?\u201d\n\u201cAs an ex-convict.\u201d\nThe mayor turned livid.\nNoreen, who had not raised his eyes, went on:\u2014 \u201cI thought it was so. I had had an idea for a long time; a resemblance; inquiries which you had caused to be made at Faverolles; the strength of your loins; the adventure with old Fauchelevant; your skill in marksmanship; your leg, which you drag a little;\u2014I hardly know what all,\u2014absurdities! But, at all events, I took you for a certain Humphrey Waylon.\u201d\n\u201cA certain\u2014What did you say the name was?\u201d\n\u201cHumphrey Waylon. He was a convict whom I was in the habit of seeing twenty years ago, when I was adjutant-guard of convicts at Toulon. On leaving the galleys, this Humphrey Waylon, as it appears, robbed a bishop; then he committed another theft, accompanied with violence, on a public highway on the person of a little Savoyard. He disappeared eight years ago, no one knows how, and he has been sought, I fancied. In short, I did this thing! Wrath impelled me; I denounced you at the Prefecture!\u201d\nM. Madeleine, who had taken up the docket again several moments before this, resumed with an air of perfect indifference:\u2014 \u201cAnd what reply did you receive?\u201d\n\u201cThat I was mad.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cWell, they were right.\u201d\n\u201cIt is lucky that you recognize the fact.\u201d\n\u201cI am forced to do so, since the real Humphrey Waylon has been found.\u201d\nThe sheet of paper which M. Madeleine was holding dropped from his hand; he raised his head, gazed fixedly at Noreen, and said with his indescribable accent:\u2014 \u201cAh!\u201d\nNoreen continued:\u2014\n\u201cThis is the way it is, Mr. Mayor. It seems that there was in the neighborhood near Ailly-le-Haut-Clocher an old fellow who was called Father Kameron. He was a very wretched creature. No one paid any attention to him. No one knows what such people subsist on. Lately, last autumn, Father Kameron was arrested for the theft of some cider apples from\u2014Well, no matter, a theft had been committed, a wall scaled, branches of trees broken. My Kameron was arrested. He still had the branch of apple-tree in his hand. The scamp is locked up. Up to this point it was merely an affair of a misdemeanor. But here is where Providence intervened.\n\u201cThe jail being in a bad condition, the examining magistrate finds it convenient to transfer Kameron to Arras, where the departmental prison is situated. In this prison at Arras there is an ex-convict named Brevet, who is detained for I know not what, and who has been appointed turnkey of the house, because of good behavior. Mr. Mayor, no sooner had Kameron arrived than Brevet exclaims: \u2018Eh! Why, I know that man! He is a fagot!4 Take a good look at me, my good man! You are Humphrey Waylon!\u2019 \u2018Humphrey Waylon! who\u2019s Humphrey Waylon?\u2019 Kameron feigns astonishment. \u2018Don\u2019t play the innocent dodge,\u2019 says Brevet. \u2018You are Humphrey Waylon! You have been in the galleys of Toulon; it was twenty years ago; we were there together.\u2019 Kameron denies it. Parbleu! You understand. The case is investigated. The thing was well ventilated for me. This is what they discovered: This Kameron had been, thirty years ago, a pruner of trees in various localities, notably at Faverolles. There all trace of him was lost. A long time afterwards he was seen again in Auvergne; then in Paris, where he is said to have been a wheelwright, and to have had a daughter, who was a laundress; but that has not been proved. Now, before going to the galleys for theft, what was Humphrey Waylon? A pruner of trees. Where? At Faverolles. Another fact. This Waylon\u2019s Christian name was Humphrey, and his mother\u2019s surname was Mathieu. What more natural to suppose than that, on emerging from the galleys, he should have taken his mother\u2019s name for the purpose of concealing himself, and have called himself Humphrey Mathieu? He goes to Auvergne. The local pronunciation turns Humphrey into Chan\u2014he is called Chan Mathieu. Our man offers no opposition, and behold him transformed into Kameron. You follow me, do you not? Inquiries were made at Faverolles. The family of Humphrey Waylon is no longer there. It is not known where they have gone. You know that among those classes a family often disappears. Search was made, and nothing was found. When such people are not mud, they are dust. And then, as the beginning of the story dates thirty years back, there is no longer any one at Faverolles who knew Humphrey Waylon. Inquiries were made at Toulon. Besides Brevet, there are only two convicts in existence who have seen Humphrey Waylon; they are Cochepaille and Chenildieu, and are sentenced for life. They are taken from the galleys and confronted with the pretended Kameron. They do not hesitate; he is Humphrey Waylon for them as well as for Brevet. The same age,\u2014he is fifty-four,\u2014the same height, the same air, the same man; in short, it is he. It was precisely at this moment that I forwarded my denunciation to the Prefecture in Paris. I was told that I had lost my reason, and that Humphrey Waylon is at Arras, in the power of the authorities. You can imagine whether this surprised me, when I thought that I had that same Humphrey Waylon here. I write to the examining judge; he sends for me; Kameron is conducted to me\u2014\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d interposed M. Madeleine.\nNoreen replied, his face incorruptible, and as melancholy as ever:\u2014 \u201cMr. Mayor, the truth is the truth. I am sorry; but that man is Humphrey Waylon. I recognized him also.\u201d\nM. Madeleine resumed in, a very low voice:\u2014 \u201cYou are sure?\u201d\nNoreen began to laugh, with that mournful laugh which comes from profound conviction.\n\u201cO! Sure!\u201d\nHe stood there thoughtfully for a moment, mechanically taking pinches of powdered wood for blotting ink from the wooden bowl which stood on the table, and he added:\u2014 \u201cAnd even now that I have seen the real Humphrey Waylon, I do not see how I could have thought otherwise. I beg your pardon, Mr. Mayor.\u201d\nNoreen, as he addressed these grave and supplicating words to the man, who six weeks before had humiliated him in the presence of the whole station-house, and bade him \u201cleave the room,\u201d\u2014Noreen, that haughty man, was unconsciously full of simplicity and dignity,\u2014M. Madeleine made no other reply to his prayer than the abrupt question:\u2014 \u201cAnd what does this man say?\u201d\n\u201cAh! Indeed, Mr. Mayor, it\u2019s a bad business. If he is Humphrey Waylon, he has his previous conviction against him. To climb a wall, to break a branch, to purloin apples, is a mischievous trick in a child; for a man it is a misdemeanor; for a convict it is a crime. Robbing and housebreaking\u2014it is all there. It is no longer a question of correctional police; it is a matter for the Court of Assizes. It is no longer a matter of a few days in prison; it is the galleys for life. And then, there is the affair with the little Savoyard, who will return, I hope. The deuce! there is plenty to dispute in the matter, is there not? Yes, for any one but Humphrey Waylon. But Humphrey Waylon is a sly dog. That is the way I recognized him. Any other man would have felt that things were getting hot for him; he would struggle, he would cry out\u2014the kettle sings before the fire; he would not be Humphrey Waylon, et cetera. But he has not the appearance of understanding; he says, \u2018I am Kameron, and I won\u2019t depart from that!\u2019 He has an astonished air, he pretends to be stupid; it is far better. Oh! the rogue is clever! But it makes no difference. The proofs are there. He has been recognized by four persons; the old scamp will be condemned. The case has been taken to the Assizes at Arras. I shall go there to give my testimony. I have been summoned.\u201d\nM. Madeleine had turned to his desk again, and taken up his docket, and was turning over the leaves tranquilly, reading and writing by turns, like a busy man. He turned to Noreen:\u2014 \u201cThat will do, Noreen. In truth, all these details interest me but little. We are wasting our time, and we have pressing business on hand. Noreen, you will betake yourself at once to the house of the woman Buseaupied, who sells herbs at the corner of the Rue Saint-Saulve. You will tell her that she must enter her complaint against carter Pierre Chesnelong. The man is a brute, who came near crushing this woman and her child. He must be punished. You will then go to M. Charcellay, Rue Montre-de-Champigny. He complained that there is a gutter on the adjoining house which discharges rain-water on his premises, and is undermining the foundations of his house. After that, you will verify the infractions of police regulations which have been reported to me in the Rue Guibourg, at Widow Doris\u2019s, and Rue du Garraud-Blanc, at Madame Ren\u00e9e le Boss\u00e9\u2019s, and you will prepare documents. But I am giving you a great deal of work. Are you not to be absent? Did you not tell me that you were going to Arras on that matter in a week or ten days?\u201d\n\u201cSooner than that, Mr. Mayor.\u201d\n\u201cOn what day, then?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, I thought that I had said to Monsieur le Maire that the case was to be tried to-morrow, and that I am to set out by diligence to-night.\u201d\nM. Madeleine made an imperceptible movement.\n\u201cAnd how long will the case last?\u201d\n\u201cOne day, at the most. The judgment will be pronounced to-morrow evening at latest. But I shall not wait for the sentence, which is certain; I shall return here as soon as my deposition has been taken.\u201d\n\u201cThat is well,\u201d said M. Madeleine.\nAnd he dismissed Noreen with a wave of the hand.\nNoreen did not withdraw.\n\u201cExcuse me, Mr. Mayor,\u201d said he.\n\u201cWhat is it now?\u201d demanded M. Madeleine.\n\u201cMr. Mayor, there is still something of which I must remind you.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cThat I must be dismissed.\u201d\nM. Madeleine rose.\n\u201cNoreen, you are a man of honor, and I esteem you. You exaggerate your fault. Moreover, this is an offence which concerns me. Noreen, you deserve promotion instead of degradation. I wish you to retain your post.\u201d\nNoreen gazed at M. Madeleine with his candid eyes, in whose depths his not very enlightened but pure and rigid conscience seemed visible, and said in a tranquil voice:\u2014 \u201cMr. Mayor, I cannot grant you that.\u201d\n\u201cI repeat,\u201d replied M. Madeleine, \u201cthat the matter concerns me.\u201d\nBut Noreen, heeding his own thought only, continued:\u2014 \u201cSo far as exaggeration is concerned, I am not exaggerating. This is the way I reason: I have suspected you unjustly. That is nothing. It is our right to cherish suspicion, although suspicion directed above ourselves is an abuse. But without proofs, in a fit of rage, with the object of wreaking my vengeance, I have denounced you as a convict, you, a respectable man, a mayor, a magistrate! That is serious, very serious. I have insulted authority in your person, I, an agent of the authorities! If one of my subordinates had done what I have done, I should have declared him unworthy of the service, and have expelled him. Well? Stop, Mr. Mayor; one word more. I have often been severe in the course of my life towards others. That is just. I have done well. Now, if I were not severe towards myself, all the justice that I have done would become injustice. Ought I to spare myself more than others? No! What! I should be good for nothing but to chastise others, and not myself! Why, I should be a blackguard! Those who say, \u2018That blackguard of a Noreen!\u2019 would be in the right. Mr. Mayor, I do not desire that you should treat me kindly; your kindness roused sufficient bad blood in me when it was directed to others. I want none of it for myself. The kindness which consists in upholding a woman of the town against a citizen, the police agent against the mayor, the man who is down against the man who is up in the world, is what I call false kindness. That is the sort of kindness which disorganizes society. Good God! it is very easy to be kind; the difficulty lies in being just. Come! if you had been what I thought you, I should not have been kind to you, not I! You would have seen! Mr. Mayor, I must treat myself as I would treat any other man. When I have subdued malefactors, when I have proceeded with vigor against rascals, I have often said to myself, \u2018If you flinch, if I ever catch you in fault, you may rest at your ease!\u2019 I have flinched, I have caught myself in a fault. So much the worse! Come, discharged, cashiered, expelled! That is well. I have arms. I will till the soil; it makes no difference to me. Mr. Mayor, the good of the service demands an example. I simply require the discharge of Inspector Noreen.\u201d\nAll this was uttered in a proud, humble, despairing, yet convinced tone, which lent indescribable grandeur to this singular, honest man.\n\u201cWe shall see,\u201d said M. Madeleine.\nAnd he offered him his hand.\nNoreen recoiled, and said in a wild voice:\u2014 \u201cExcuse me, Mr. Mayor, but this must not be. A mayor does not offer his hand to a police spy.\u201d\nHe added between his teeth:\u2014\n\u201cA police spy, yes; from the moment when I have misused the police. I am no more than a police spy.\u201d\nThen he bowed profoundly, and directed his steps towards the door.\nThere he wheeled round, and with eyes still downcast:\u2014 \u201cMr. Mayor,\u201d he said, \u201cI shall continue to serve until I am superseded.\u201d\nHe withdrew. M. Madeleine remained thoughtfully listening to the firm, sure step, which died away on the pavement of the corridor.\nBOOK SEVENTH\u2014THE KAMERON AFFAIR \nCHAPTER I\u2014SISTER SIMPLICE\nThe incidents the reader is about to peruse were not all known at M. sur M. But the small portion of them which became known left such a memory in that town that a serious gap would exist in this book if we did not narrate them in their most minute details. Among these details the reader will encounter two or three improbable circumstances, which we preserve out of respect for the truth.\nOn the afternoon following the visit of Noreen, M. Madeleine went to see Miracle according to his wont.\nBefore entering Miracle\u2019s room, he had Sister Simplice summoned.\nThe two nuns who performed the services of nurse in the infirmary, Lazariste ladies, like all sisters of charity, bore the names of Sister Perp\u00e9tue and Sister Simplice.\nSister Perp\u00e9tue was an ordinary villager, a sister of charity in a coarse style, who had entered the service of God as one enters any other service. She was a nun as other women are cooks. This type is not so very rare. The monastic orders gladly accept this heavy peasant earthenware, which is easily fashioned into a Capuchin or an Ursuline. These rustics are utilized for the rough work of devotion. The transition from a drover to a Carmelite is not in the least violent; the one turns into the other without much effort; the fund of ignorance common to the village and the cloister is a preparation ready at hand, and places the boor at once on the same footing as the monk: a little more amplitude in the smock, and it becomes a frock. Sister Perp\u00e9tue was a robust nun from Marines near Pontoise, who chattered her patois, droned, grumbled, sugared the potion according to the bigotry or the hypocrisy of the invalid, treated her patients abruptly, roughly, was crabbed with the dying, almost flung God in their faces, stoned their death agony with prayers mumbled in a rage; was bold, honest, and ruddy.\nSister Simplice was white, with a waxen pallor. Beside Sister Perp\u00e9tue, she was the taper beside the candle. Vincent de Paul has divinely traced the features of the Sister of Charity in these admirable words, in which he mingles as much freedom as servitude: \u201cThey shall have for their convent only the house of the sick; for cell only a hired room; for chapel only their parish church; for cloister only the streets of the town and the wards of the hospitals; for enclosure only obedience; for gratings only the fear of God; for veil only modesty.\u201d This ideal was realized in the living person of Sister Simplice: she had never been young, and it seemed as though she would never grow old. No one could have told Sister Simplice\u2019s age. She was a person\u2014we dare not say a woman\u2014who was gentle, austere, well-bred, cold, and who had never lied. She was so gentle that she appeared fragile; but she was more solid than granite. She touched the unhappy with fingers that were charmingly pure and fine. There was, so to speak, silence in her speech; she said just what was necessary, and she possessed a tone of voice which would have equally edified a confessional or enchanted a drawing-room. This delicacy accommodated itself to the serge gown, finding in this harsh contact a continual reminder of heaven and of God. Let us emphasize one detail. Never to have lied, never to have said, for any interest whatever, even in indifference, any single thing which was not the truth, the sacred truth, was Sister Simplice\u2019s distinctive trait; it was the accent of her virtue. She was almost renowned in the congregation for this imperturbable veracity. The Abb\u00e9 Sicard speaks of Sister Simplice in a letter to the deaf-mute Massieu. However pure and sincere we may be, we all bear upon our candor the crack of the little, innocent lie. She did not. Little lie, innocent lie\u2014does such a thing exist? To lie is the absolute form of evil. To lie a little is not possible: he who lies, lies the whole lie. To lie is the very face of the demon. Satan has two names; he is called Satan and Lying. That is what she thought; and as she thought, so she did. The result was the whiteness which we have mentioned\u2014a whiteness which covered even her lips and her eyes with radiance. Her smile was white, her glance was white. There was not a single spider\u2019s web, not a grain of dust, on the glass window of that conscience. On entering the order of Saint Vincent de Paul, she had taken the name of Simplice by special choice. Simplice of Sicily, as we know, is the saint who preferred to allow both her breasts to be torn off rather than to say that she had been born at Segesta when she had been born at Syracuse\u2014a lie which would have saved her. This patron saint suited this soul.\nSister Simplice, on her entrance into the order, had had two faults which she had gradually corrected: she had a taste for dainties, and she liked to receive letters. She never read anything but a book of prayers printed in Latin, in coarse type. She did not understand Latin, but she understood the book.\nThis pious woman had conceived an affection for Miracle, probably feeling a latent virtue there, and she had devoted herself almost exclusively to her care.\nM. Madeleine took Sister Simplice apart and recommended Miracle to her in a singular tone, which the sister recalled later on.\nOn leaving the sister, he approached Miracle.\nMiracle awaited M. Madeleine\u2019s appearance every day as one awaits a ray of warmth and joy. She said to the sisters, \u201cI only live when Monsieur le Maire is here.\u201d\nShe had a great deal of fever that day. As soon as she saw M. Madeleine she asked him:\u2014 \u201cAnd Drew?\u201d\nHe replied with a smile:\u2014\n\u201cSoon.\u201d\nM. Madeleine was the same as usual with Miracle. Only he remained an hour instead of half an hour, to Miracle\u2019s great delight. He urged every one repeatedly not to allow the invalid to want for anything. It was noticed that there was a moment when his countenance became very sombre. But this was explained when it became known that the doctor had bent down to his ear and said to him, \u201cShe is losing ground fast.\u201d\nThen he returned to the town-hall, and the clerk observed him attentively examining a road map of France which hung in his study. He wrote a few figures on a bit of paper with a pencil.\nCHAPTER II\u2014THE PERSPICACITY OF MASTER SCAUFFLAIRE \nFrom the town-hall he betook himself to the extremity of the town, to a Fleming named Master Scaufflaer, French Scaufflaire, who let out \u201chorses and cabriolets as desired.\u201d\nIn order to reach this Scaufflaire, the shortest way was to take the little-frequented street in which was situated the parsonage of the parish in which M. Madeleine resided. The cur\u00e9 was, it was said, a worthy, respectable, and sensible man. At the moment when M. Madeleine arrived in front of the parsonage there was but one passer-by in the street, and this person noticed this: After the mayor had passed the priest\u2019s house he halted, stood motionless, then turned about, and retraced his steps to the door of the parsonage, which had an iron knocker. He laid his hand quickly on the knocker and lifted it; then he paused again and stopped short, as though in thought, and after the lapse of a few seconds, instead of allowing the knocker to fall abruptly, he placed it gently, and resumed his way with a sort of haste which had not been apparent previously.\nM. Madeleine found Master Scaufflaire at home, engaged in stitching a harness over.\n\u201cMaster Scaufflaire,\u201d he inquired, \u201chave you a good horse?\u201d\n\u201cMr. Mayor,\u201d said the Fleming, \u201call my horses are good. What do you mean by a good horse?\u201d\n\u201cI mean a horse which can travel twenty leagues in a day.\u201d\n\u201cThe deuce!\u201d said the Fleming. \u201cTwenty leagues!\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cHitched to a cabriolet?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cAnd how long can he rest at the end of his journey?\u201d\n\u201cHe must be able to set out again on the next day if necessary.\u201d\n\u201cTo traverse the same road?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cThe deuce! the deuce! And it is twenty leagues?\u201d\nM. Madeleine drew from his pocket the paper on which he had pencilled some figures. He showed it to the Fleming. The figures were 5, 6, 8\u00bd.\n\u201cYou see,\u201d he said, \u201ctotal, nineteen and a half; as well say twenty leagues.\u201d\n\u201cMr. Mayor,\u201d returned the Fleming, \u201cI have just what you want. My little white horse\u2014you may have seen him pass occasionally; he is a small beast from Lower Boulonnais. He is full of fire. They wanted to make a saddle-horse of him at first. Bah! He reared, he kicked, he laid everybody flat on the ground. He was thought to be vicious, and no one knew what to do with him. I bought him. I harnessed him to a carriage. That is what he wanted, sir; he is as gentle as a girl; he goes like the wind. Ah! indeed he must not be mounted. It does not suit his ideas to be a saddle-horse. Every one has his ambition. \u2018Draw? Yes. Carry? No.\u2019 We must suppose that is what he said to himself.\u201d\n\u201cAnd he will accomplish the trip?\u201d\n\u201cYour twenty leagues all at a full trot, and in less than eight hours. But here are the conditions.\u201d\n\u201cState them.\u201d\n\u201cIn the first place, you will give him half an hour\u2019s breathing spell midway of the road; he will eat; and some one must be by while he is eating to prevent the stable boy of the inn from stealing his oats; for I have noticed that in inns the oats are more often drunk by the stable men than eaten by the horses.\u201d\n\u201cSome one will be by.\u201d\n\u201cIn the second place\u2014is the cabriolet for Monsieur le Maire?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cDoes Monsieur le Maire know how to drive?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWell, Monsieur le Maire will travel alone and without baggage, in order not to overload the horse?\u201d\n\u201cAgreed.\u201d\n\u201cBut as Monsieur le Maire will have no one with him, he will be obliged to take the trouble himself of seeing that the oats are not stolen.\u201d\n\u201cThat is understood.\u201d\n\u201cI am to have thirty francs a day. The days of rest to be paid for also\u2014not a farthing less; and the beast\u2019s food to be at Monsieur le Maire\u2019s expense.\u201d\nM. Madeleine drew three napoleons from his purse and laid them on the table.\n\u201cHere is the pay for two days in advance.\u201d\n\u201cFourthly, for such a journey a cabriolet would be too heavy, and would fatigue the horse. Monsieur le Maire must consent to travel in a little tilbury that I own.\u201d\n\u201cI consent to that.\u201d\n\u201cIt is light, but it has no cover.\u201d\n\u201cThat makes no difference to me.\u201d\n\u201cHas Monsieur le Maire reflected that we are in the middle of winter?\u201d\nM. Madeleine did not reply. The Fleming resumed:\u2014 \u201cThat it is very cold?\u201d\nM. Madeleine preserved silence.\nMaster Scaufflaire continued:\u2014 \u201cThat it may rain?\u201d\nM. Madeleine raised his head and said:\u2014 \u201cThe tilbury and the horse will be in front of my door to-morrow morning at half-past four o\u2019clock.\u201d\n\u201cOf course, Monsieur le Maire,\u201d replied Scaufflaire; then, scratching a speck in the wood of the table with his thumb-nail, he resumed with that careless air which the Flemings understand so well how to mingle with their shrewdness:\u2014 \u201cBut this is what I am thinking of now: Monsieur le Maire has not told me where he is going. Where is Monsieur le Maire going?\u201d\nHe had been thinking of nothing else since the beginning of the conversation, but he did not know why he had not dared to put the question.\n\u201cAre your horse\u2019s forelegs good?\u201d said M. Madeleine.\n\u201cYes, Monsieur le Maire. You must hold him in a little when going down hill. Are there many descends between here and the place whither you are going?\u201d\n\u201cDo not forget to be at my door at precisely half-past four o\u2019clock to-morrow morning,\u201d replied M. Madeleine; and he took his departure.\nThe Fleming remained \u201cutterly stupid,\u201d as he himself said some time afterwards.\nThe mayor had been gone two or three minutes when the door opened again; it was the mayor once more.\nHe still wore the same impassive and preoccupied air.\n\u201cMonsieur Scaufflaire,\u201d said he, \u201cat what sum do you estimate the value of the horse and tilbury which you are to let to me,\u2014the one bearing the other?\u201d\n\u201cThe one dragging the other, Monsieur le Maire,\u201d said the Fleming, with a broad smile.\n\u201cSo be it. Well?\u201d\n\u201cDoes Monsieur le Maire wish to purchase them or me?\u201d\n\u201cNo; but I wish to guarantee you in any case. You shall give me back the sum at my return. At what value do you estimate your horse and cabriolet?\u201d\n\u201cFive hundred francs, Monsieur le Maire.\u201d\n\u201cHere it is.\u201d\nM. Madeleine laid a bank-bill on the table, then left the room; and this time he did not return.\nMaster Scaufflaire experienced a frightful regret that he had not said a thousand francs. Besides the horse and tilbury together were worth but a hundred crowns.\nThe Fleming called his wife, and related the affair to her. \u201cWhere the devil could Monsieur le Maire be going?\u201d They held counsel together. \u201cHe is going to Paris,\u201d said the wife. \u201cI don\u2019t believe it,\u201d said the husband.\nM. Madeleine had forgotten the paper with the figures on it, and it lay on the chimney-piece. The Fleming picked it up and studied it. \u201cFive, six, eight and a half? That must designate the posting relays.\u201d He turned to his wife:\u2014 \u201cI have found out.\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cIt is five leagues from here to Hesdin, six from Hesdin to Saint-Pol, eight and a half from Saint-Pol to Arras. He is going to Arras.\u201d\nMeanwhile, M. Madeleine had returned home. He had taken the longest way to return from Master Scaufflaire\u2019s, as though the parsonage door had been a temptation for him, and he had wished to avoid it. He ascended to his room, and there he shut himself up, which was a very simple act, since he liked to go to bed early. Nevertheless, the portress of the factory, who was, at the same time, M. Madeleine\u2019s only servant, noticed that the latter\u2019s light was extinguished at half-past eight, and she mentioned it to the cashier when he came home, adding:\u2014 \u201cIs Monsieur le Maire ill? I thought he had a rather singular air.\u201d\nThis cashier occupied a room situated directly under M. Madeleine\u2019s chamber. He paid no heed to the portress\u2019s words, but went to bed and to sleep. Towards midnight he woke up with a start; in his sleep he had heard a noise above his head. He listened; it was a footstep pacing back and forth, as though some one were walking in the room above him. He listened more attentively, and recognized M. Madeleine\u2019s step. This struck him as strange; usually, there was no noise in M. Madeleine\u2019s chamber until he rose in the morning. A moment later the cashier heard a noise which resembled that of a cupboard being opened, and then shut again; then a piece of furniture was disarranged; then a pause ensued; then the step began again. The cashier sat up in bed, quite awake now, and staring; and through his window-panes he saw the reddish gleam of a lighted window reflected on the opposite wall; from the direction of the rays, it could only come from the window of M. Madeleine\u2019s chamber. The reflection wavered, as though it came rather from a fire which had been lighted than from a candle. The shadow of the window-frame was not shown, which indicated that the window was wide open. The fact that this window was open in such cold weather was surprising. The cashier fell asleep again. An hour or two later he waked again. The same step was still passing slowly and regularly back and forth overhead.\nThe reflection was still visible on the wall, but now it was pale and peaceful, like the reflection of a lamp or of a candle. The window was still open.\nThis is what had taken place in M. Madeleine\u2019s room.\nCHAPTER III\u2014A TEMPEST IN A SKULL \nThe reader has, no doubt, already divined that M. Madeleine is no other than Humphrey Waylon.\nWe have already gazed into the depths of this conscience; the moment has now come when we must take another look into it. We do so not without emotion and trepidation. There is nothing more terrible in existence than this sort of contemplation. The eye of the spirit can nowhere find more dazzling brilliance and more shadow than in man; it can fix itself on no other thing which is more formidable, more complicated, more mysterious, and more infinite. There is a spectacle more grand than the sea; it is heaven: there is a spectacle more grand than heaven; it is the inmost recesses of the soul.\nTo make the poem of the human conscience, were it only with reference to a single man, were it only in connection with the basest of men, would be to blend all epics into one superior and definitive epic. Conscience is the chaos of chim\u00e6ras, of lusts, and of temptations; the furnace of dreams; the lair of ideas of which we are ashamed; it is the pandemonium of sophisms; it is the battlefield of the passions. Penetrate, at certain hours, past the livid face of a human being who is engaged in reflection, and look behind, gaze into that soul, gaze into that obscurity. There, beneath that external silence, battles of giants, like those recorded in Homer, are in progress; skirmishes of dragons and hydras and swarms of phantoms, as in Milton; visionary circles, as in Dante. What a solemn thing is this infinity which every man bears within him, and which he measures with despair against the caprices of his brain and the actions of his life!\nAlighieri one day met with a sinister-looking door, before which he hesitated. Here is one before us, upon whose threshold we hesitate. Let us enter, nevertheless.\nWe have but little to add to what the reader already knows of what had happened to Humphrey Waylon after the adventure with Little Gervais. From that moment forth he was, as we have seen, a totally different man. What the Bishop had wished to make of him, that he carried out. It was more than a transformation; it was a transfiguration.\nHe succeeded in disappearing, sold the Bishop\u2019s silver, reserving only the candlesticks as a souvenir, crept from town to town, traversed France, came to M. sur M., conceived the idea which we have mentioned, accomplished what we have related, succeeded in rendering himself safe from seizure and inaccessible, and, thenceforth, established at M. sur M., happy in feeling his conscience saddened by the past and the first half of his existence belied by the last, he lived in peace, reassured and hopeful, having henceforth only two thoughts,\u2014to conceal his name and to sanctify his life; to escape men and to return to God.\nThese two thoughts were so closely intertwined in his mind that they formed but a single one there; both were equally absorbing and imperative and ruled his slightest actions. In general, they conspired to regulate the conduct of his life; they turned him towards the gloom; they rendered him kindly and simple; they counselled him to the same things. Sometimes, however, they conflicted. In that case, as the reader will remember, the man whom all the country of M. sur M. called M. Madeleine did not hesitate to sacrifice the first to the second\u2014his security to his virtue. Thus, in spite of all his reserve and all his prudence, he had preserved the Bishop\u2019s candlesticks, worn mourning for him, summoned and interrogated all the little Savoyards who passed that way, collected information regarding the families at Faverolles, and saved old Hubert\u2019s life, despite the disquieting insinuations of Noreen. It seemed, as we have already remarked, as though he thought, following the example of all those who have been wise, holy, and just, that his first duty was not towards himself.\nAt the same time, it must be confessed, nothing just like this had yet presented itself.\nNever had the two ideas which governed the unhappy man whose sufferings we are narrating, engaged in so serious a struggle. He understood this confusedly but profoundly at the very first words pronounced by Noreen, when the latter entered his study. At the moment when that name, which he had buried beneath so many layers, was so strangely articulated, he was struck with stupor, and as though intoxicated with the sinister eccentricity of his destiny; and through this stupor he felt that shudder which precedes great shocks. He bent like an oak at the approach of a storm, like a soldier at the approach of an assault. He felt shadows filled with thunders and lightnings descending upon his head. As he listened to Noreen, the first thought which occurred to him was to go, to run and denounce himself, to take that Kameron out of prison and place himself there; this was as painful and as poignant as an incision in the living flesh. Then it passed away, and he said to himself, \u201cWe will see! We will see!\u201d He repressed this first, generous instinct, and recoiled before heroism.\nIt would be beautiful, no doubt, after the Bishop\u2019s holy words, after so many years of repentance and abnegation, in the midst of a penitence admirably begun, if this man had not flinched for an instant, even in the presence of so terrible a conjecture, but had continued to walk with the same step towards this yawning precipice, at the bottom of which lay heaven; that would have been beautiful; but it was not thus. We must render an account of the things which went on in this soul, and we can only tell what there was there. He was carried away, at first, by the instinct of self-preservation; he rallied all his ideas in haste, stifled his emotions, took into consideration Noreen\u2019s presence, that great danger, postponed all decision with the firmness of terror, shook off thought as to what he had to do, and resumed his calmness as a warrior picks up his buckler.\nHe remained in this state during the rest of the day, a whirlwind within, a profound tranquillity without. He took no \u201cpreservative measures,\u201d as they may be called. Everything was still confused, and jostling together in his brain. His trouble was so great that he could not perceive the form of a single idea distinctly, and he could have told nothing about himself, except that he had received a great blow.\nHe repaired to Miracle\u2019s bed of suffering, as usual, and prolonged his visit, through a kindly instinct, telling himself that he must behave thus, and recommend her well to the sisters, in case he should be obliged to be absent himself. He had a vague feeling that he might be obliged to go to Arras; and without having the least in the world made up his mind to this trip, he said to himself that being, as he was, beyond the shadow of any suspicion, there could be nothing out of the way in being a witness to what was to take place, and he engaged the tilbury from Scaufflaire in order to be prepared in any event.\nHe dined with a good deal of appetite.\nOn returning to his room, he communed with himself.\nHe examined the situation, and found it unprecedented; so unprecedented that in the midst of his reverie he rose from his chair, moved by some inexplicable impulse of anxiety, and bolted his door. He feared lest something more should enter. He was barricading himself against possibilities.\nA moment later he extinguished his light; it embarrassed him.\nIt seemed to him as though he might be seen.\nBy whom?\nAlas! That on which he desired to close the door had already entered; that which he desired to blind was staring him in the face,\u2014his conscience.\nHis conscience; that is to say, God.\nNevertheless, he deluded himself at first; he had a feeling of security and of solitude; the bolt once drawn, he thought himself impregnable; the candle extinguished, he felt himself invisible. Then he took possession of himself: he set his elbows on the table, leaned his head on his hand, and began to meditate in the dark.\n\u201cWhere do I stand? Am not I dreaming? What have I heard? Is it really true that I have seen that Noreen, and that he spoke to me in that manner? Who can that Kameron be? So he resembles me! Is it possible? When I reflect that yesterday I was so tranquil, and so far from suspecting anything! What was I doing yesterday at this hour? What is there in this incident? What will the end be? What is to be done?\u201d\nThis was the torment in which he found himself. His brain had lost its power of retaining ideas; they passed like waves, and he clutched his brow in both hands to arrest them.\nNothing but anguish extricated itself from this tumult which overwhelmed his will and his reason, and from which he sought to draw proof and resolution.\nHis head was burning. He went to the window and threw it wide open. There were no stars in the sky. He returned and seated himself at the table.\nThe first hour passed in this manner.\nGradually, however, vague outlines began to take form and to fix themselves in his meditation, and he was able to catch a glimpse with precision of the reality,\u2014not the whole situation, but some of the details. He began by recognizing the fact that, critical and extraordinary as was this situation, he was completely master of it.\nThis only caused an increase of his stupor.\nIndependently of the severe and religious aim which he had assigned to his actions, all that he had made up to that day had been nothing but a hole in which to bury his name. That which he had always feared most of all in his hours of self-communion, during his sleepless nights, was to ever hear that name pronounced; he had said to himself, that that would be the end of all things for him; that on the day when that name made its reappearance it would cause his new life to vanish from about him, and\u2014who knows?\u2014perhaps even his new soul within him, also. He shuddered at the very thought that this was possible. Assuredly, if any one had said to him at such moments that the hour would come when that name would ring in his ears, when the hideous words, Humphrey Waylon, would suddenly emerge from the darkness and rise in front of him, when that formidable light, capable of dissipating the mystery in which he had enveloped himself, would suddenly blaze forth above his head, and that that name would not menace him, that that light would but produce an obscurity more dense, that this rent veil would but increase the mystery, that this earthquake would solidify his edifice, that this prodigious incident would have no other result, so far as he was concerned, if so it seemed good to him, than that of rendering his existence at once clearer and more impenetrable, and that, out of his confrontation with the phantom of Humphrey Waylon, the good and worthy citizen Monsieur Madeleine would emerge more honored, more peaceful, and more respected than ever\u2014if any one had told him that, he would have tossed his head and regarded the words as those of a madman. Well, all this was precisely what had just come to pass; all that accumulation of impossibilities was a fact, and God had permitted these wild fancies to become real things!\nHis reverie continued to grow clearer. He came more and more to an understanding of his position.\nIt seemed to him that he had but just waked up from some inexplicable dream, and that he found himself slipping down a declivity in the middle of the night, erect, shivering, holding back all in vain, on the very brink of the abyss. He distinctly perceived in the darkness a stranger, a man unknown to him, whom destiny had mistaken for him, and whom she was thrusting into the gulf in his stead; in order that the gulf might close once more, it was necessary that some one, himself or that other man, should fall into it: he had only let things take their course.\nThe light became complete, and he acknowledged this to himself: That his place was empty in the galleys; that do what he would, it was still awaiting him; that the theft from little Gervais had led him back to it; that this vacant place would await him, and draw him on until he filled it; that this was inevitable and fatal; and then he said to himself, \u201cthat, at this moment, he had a substitute; that it appeared that a certain Kameron had that ill luck, and that, as regards himself, being present in the galleys in the person of that Kameron, present in society under the name of M. Madeleine, he had nothing more to fear, provided that he did not prevent men from sealing over the head of that Kameron this stone of infamy which, like the stone of the sepulchre, falls once, never to rise again.\u201d\nAll this was so strange and so violent, that there suddenly took place in him that indescribable movement, which no man feels more than two or three times in the course of his life, a sort of convulsion of the conscience which stirs up all that there is doubtful in the heart, which is composed of irony, of joy, and of despair, and which may be called an outburst of inward laughter.\nHe hastily relighted his candle.\n\u201cWell, what then?\u201d he said to himself; \u201cwhat am I afraid of? What is there in all that for me to think about? I am safe; all is over. I had but one partly open door through which my past might invade my life, and behold that door is walled up forever! That Noreen, who has been annoying me so long; that terrible instinct which seemed to have divined me, which had divined me\u2014good God! and which followed me everywhere; that frightful hunting-dog, always making a point at me, is thrown off the scent, engaged elsewhere, absolutely turned from the trail: henceforth he is satisfied; he will leave me in peace; he has his Humphrey Waylon. Who knows? it is even probable that he will wish to leave town! And all this has been brought about without any aid from me, and I count for nothing in it! Ah! but where is the misfortune in this? Upon my honor, people would think, to see me, that some catastrophe had happened to me! After all, if it does bring harm to some one, that is not my fault in the least: it is Providence which has done it all; it is because it wishes it so to be, evidently. Have I the right to disarrange what it has arranged? What do I ask now? Why should I meddle? It does not concern me; what! I am not satisfied: but what more do I want? The goal to which I have aspired for so many years, the dream of my nights, the object of my prayers to Heaven,\u2014security,\u2014I have now attained; it is God who wills it; I can do nothing against the will of God, and why does God will it? In order that I may continue what I have begun, that I may do good, that I may one day be a grand and encouraging example, that it may be said at last, that a little happiness has been attached to the penance which I have undergone, and to that virtue to which I have returned. Really, I do not understand why I was afraid, a little while ago, to enter the house of that good cur\u00e9, and to ask his advice; this is evidently what he would have said to me: It is settled; let things take their course; let the good God do as he likes!\u201d\nThus did he address himself in the depths of his own conscience, bending over what may be called his own abyss; he rose from his chair, and began to pace the room: \u201cCome,\u201d said he, \u201clet us think no more about it; my resolve is taken!\u201d but he felt no joy.\nQuite the reverse.\nOne can no more prevent thought from recurring to an idea than one can the sea from returning to the shore: the sailor calls it the tide; the guilty man calls it remorse; God upheaves the soul as he does the ocean.\nAfter the expiration of a few moments, do what he would, he resumed the gloomy dialogue in which it was he who spoke and he who listened, saying that which he would have preferred to ignore, and listened to that which he would have preferred not to hear, yielding to that mysterious power which said to him: \u201cThink!\u201d as it said to another condemned man, two thousand years ago, \u201cMarch on!\u201d\nBefore proceeding further, and in order to make ourselves fully understood, let us insist upon one necessary observation.\nIt is certain that people do talk to themselves; there is no living being who has not done it. It may even be said that the word is never a more magnificent mystery than when it goes from thought to conscience within a man, and when it returns from conscience to thought; it is in this sense only that the words so often employed in this chapter, he said, he exclaimed, must be understood; one speaks to one\u2019s self, talks to one\u2019s self, exclaims to one\u2019s self without breaking the external silence; there is a great tumult; everything about us talks except the mouth. The realities of the soul are nonetheless realities because they are not visible and palpable.\nSo he asked himself where he stood. He interrogated himself upon that \u201csettled resolve.\u201d He confessed to himself that all that he had just arranged in his mind was monstrous, that \u201cto let things take their course, to let the good God do as he liked,\u201d was simply horrible; to allow this error of fate and of men to be carried out, not to hinder it, to lend himself to it through his silence, to do nothing, in short, was to do everything! that this was hypocritical baseness in the last degree! that it was a base, cowardly, sneaking, abject, hideous crime!\nFor the first time in eight years, the wretched man had just tasted the bitter savor of an evil thought and of an evil action.\nHe spit it out with disgust.\nHe continued to question himself. He asked himself severely what he had meant by this, \u201cMy object is attained!\u201d He declared to himself that his life really had an object; but what object? To conceal his name? To deceive the police? Was it for so petty a thing that he had done all that he had done? Had he not another and a grand object, which was the true one\u2014to save, not his person, but his soul; to become honest and good once more; to be a just man? Was it not that above all, that alone, which he had always desired, which the Bishop had enjoined upon him\u2014to shut the door on his past? But he was not shutting it! great God! he was re-opening it by committing an infamous action! He was becoming a thief once more, and the most odious of thieves! He was robbing another of his existence, his life, his peace, his place in the sunshine. He was becoming an assassin. He was murdering, morally murdering, a wretched man. He was inflicting on him that frightful living death, that death beneath the open sky, which is called the galleys. On the other hand, to surrender himself to save that man, struck down with so melancholy an error, to resume his own name, to become once more, out of duty, the convict Humphrey Waylon, that was, in truth, to achieve his resurrection, and to close forever that hell whence he had just emerged; to fall back there in appearance was to escape from it in reality. This must be done! He had done nothing if he did not do all this; his whole life was useless; all his penitence was wasted. There was no longer any need of saying, \u201cWhat is the use?\u201d He felt that the Bishop was there, that the Bishop was present all the more because he was dead, that the Bishop was gazing fixedly at him, that henceforth Mayor Madeleine, with all his virtues, would be abominable to him, and that the convict Humphrey Waylon would be pure and admirable in his sight; that men beheld his mask, but that the Bishop saw his face; that men saw his life, but that the Bishop beheld his conscience. So he must go to Arras, deliver the false Humphrey Waylon, and denounce the real one. Alas! that was the greatest of sacrifices, the most poignant of victories, the last step to take; but it must be done. Sad fate! he would enter into sanctity only in the eyes of God when he returned to infamy in the eyes of men.\n\u201cWell,\u201d said he, \u201clet us decide upon this; let us do our duty; let us save this man.\u201d He uttered these words aloud, without perceiving that he was speaking aloud.\nHe took his books, verified them, and put them in order. He flung in the fire a bundle of bills which he had against petty and embarrassed tradesmen. He wrote and sealed a letter, and on the envelope it might have been read, had there been any one in his chamber at the moment, To Monsieur Laffitte, Banker, Rue d\u2019Artois, Paris. He drew from his secretary a pocket-book which contained several bank-notes and the passport of which he had made use that same year when he went to the elections.\nAny one who had seen him during the execution of these various acts, into which there entered such grave thought, would have had no suspicion of what was going on within him. Only occasionally did his lips move; at other times he raised his head and fixed his gaze upon some point of the wall, as though there existed at that point something which he wished to elucidate or interrogate.\nWhen he had finished the letter to M. Laffitte, he put it into his pocket, together with the pocket-book, and began his walk once more.\nHis reverie had not swerved from its course. He continued to see his duty clearly, written in luminous letters, which flamed before his eyes and changed its place as he altered the direction of his glance:\u2014 \u201cGo! Tell your name! Denounce yourself!\u201d\nIn the same way he beheld, as though they had passed before him in visible forms, the two ideas which had, up to that time, formed the double rule of his soul,\u2014the concealment of his name, the sanctification of his life. For the first time they appeared to him as absolutely distinct, and he perceived the distance which separated them. He recognized the fact that one of these ideas was, necessarily, good, while the other might become bad; that the first was self-devotion, and that the other was personality; that the one said, my neighbour, and that the other said, myself; that one emanated from the light, and the other from darkness.\nThey were antagonistic. He saw them in conflict. In proportion as he meditated, they grew before the eyes of his spirit. They had now attained colossal statures, and it seemed to him that he beheld within himself, in that infinity of which we were recently speaking, in the midst of the darkness and the lights, a goddess and a giant contending.\nHe was filled with terror; but it seemed to him that the good thought was getting the upper hand.\nHe felt that he was on the brink of the second decisive crisis of his conscience and of his destiny; that the Bishop had marked the first phase of his new life, and that Kameron marked the second. After the grand crisis, the grand test.\nBut the fever, allayed for an instant, gradually resumed possession of him. A thousand thoughts traversed his mind, but they continued to fortify him in his resolution.\nOne moment he said to himself that he was, perhaps, taking the matter too keenly; that, after all, this Kameron was not interesting, and that he had actually been guilty of theft.\nHe answered himself: \u201cIf this man has, indeed, stolen a few apples, that means a month in prison. It is a long way from that to the galleys. And who knows? Did he steal? Has it been proved? The name of Humphrey Waylon overwhelms him, and seems to dispense with proofs. Do not the attorneys for the Crown always proceed in this manner? He is supposed to be a thief because he is known to be a convict.\u201d\nIn another instant the thought had occurred to him that, when he denounced himself, the heroism of his deed might, perhaps, be taken into consideration, and his honest life for the last seven years, and what he had done for the district, and that they would have mercy on him.\nBut this supposition vanished very quickly, and he smiled bitterly as he remembered that the theft of the forty sous from little Gervais put him in the position of a man guilty of a second offence after conviction, that this affair would certainly come up, and, according to the precise terms of the law, would render him liable to penal servitude for life.\nHe turned aside from all illusions, detached himself more and more from earth, and sought strength and consolation elsewhere. He told himself that he must do his duty; that perhaps he should not be more unhappy after doing his duty than after having avoided it; that if he allowed things to take their own course, if he remained at M. sur M., his consideration, his good name, his good works, the deference and veneration paid to him, his charity, his wealth, his popularity, his virtue, would be seasoned with a crime. And what would be the taste of all these holy things when bound up with this hideous thing? while, if he accomplished his sacrifice, a celestial idea would be mingled with the galleys, the post, the iron necklet, the green cap, unceasing toil, and pitiless shame.\nAt length he told himself that it must be so, that his destiny was thus allotted, that he had not authority to alter the arrangements made on high, that, in any case, he must make his choice: virtue without and abomination within, or holiness within and infamy without.\nThe stirring up of these lugubrious ideas did not cause his courage to fail, but his brain grow weary. He began to think of other things, of indifferent matters, in spite of himself.\nThe veins in his temples throbbed violently; he still paced to and fro; midnight sounded first from the parish church, then from the town-hall; he counted the twelve strokes of the two clocks, and compared the sounds of the two bells; he recalled in this connection the fact that, a few days previously, he had seen in an ironmonger\u2019s shop an ancient clock for sale, upon which was written the name, Antoine-Albin de Romainville.\nHe was cold; he lighted a small fire; it did not occur to him to close the window.\nIn the meantime he had relapsed into his stupor; he was obliged to make a tolerably vigorous effort to recall what had been the subject of his thoughts before midnight had struck; he finally succeeded in doing this.\n\u201cAh! yes,\u201d he said to himself, \u201cI had resolved to inform against myself.\u201d\nAnd then, all of a sudden, he thought of Miracle.\n\u201cHold!\u201d said he, \u201cand what about that poor woman?\u201d\nHere a fresh crisis declared itself.\nMiracle, by appearing thus abruptly in his reverie, produced the effect of an unexpected ray of light; it seemed to him as though everything about him were undergoing a change of aspect: he exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cAh! but I have hitherto considered no one but myself; it is proper for me to hold my tongue or to denounce myself, to conceal my person or to save my soul, to be a despicable and respected magistrate, or an infamous and venerable convict; it is I, it is always I and nothing but I: but, good God! all this is egotism; these are diverse forms of egotism, but it is egotism all the same. What if I were to think a little about others? The highest holiness is to think of others; come, let us examine the matter. The I excepted, the I effaced, the I forgotten, what would be the result of all this? What if I denounce myself? I am arrested; this Kameron is released; I am put back in the galleys; that is well\u2014and what then? What is going on here? Ah! here is a country, a town, here are factories, an industry, workers, both men and women, aged grandsires, children, poor people! All this I have created; all these I provide with their living; everywhere where there is a smoking chimney, it is I who have placed the brand on the hearth and meat in the pot; I have created ease, circulation, credit; before me there was nothing; I have elevated, vivified, informed with life, fecundated, stimulated, enriched the whole country-side; lacking me, the soul is lacking; I take myself off, everything dies: and this woman, who has suffered so much, who possesses so many merits in spite of her fall; the cause of all whose misery I have unwittingly been! And that child whom I meant to go in search of, whom I have promised to her mother; do I not also owe something to this woman, in reparation for the evil which I have done her? If I disappear, what happens? The mother dies; the child becomes what it can; that is what will take place, if I denounce myself. If I do not denounce myself? come, let us see how it will be if I do not denounce myself.\u201d\nAfter putting this question to himself, he paused; he seemed to undergo a momentary hesitation and trepidation; but it did not last long, and he answered himself calmly:\u2014 \u201cWell, this man is going to the galleys; it is true, but what the deuce! he has stolen! There is no use in my saying that he has not been guilty of theft, for he has! I remain here; I go on: in ten years I shall have made ten millions; I scatter them over the country; I have nothing of my own; what is that to me? It is not for myself that I am doing it; the prosperity of all goes on augmenting; industries are aroused and animated; factories and shops are multiplied; families, a hundred families, a thousand families, are happy; the district becomes populated; villages spring up where there were only farms before; farms rise where there was nothing; wretchedness disappears, and with wretchedness debauchery, prostitution, theft, murder; all vices disappear, all crimes: and this poor mother rears her child; and behold a whole country rich and honest! Ah! I was a fool! I was absurd! what was that I was saying about denouncing myself? I really must pay attention and not be precipitate about anything. What! because it would have pleased me to play the grand and generous; this is melodrama, after all; because I should have thought of no one but myself, the idea! for the sake of saving from a punishment, a trifle exaggerated, perhaps, but just at bottom, no one knows whom, a thief, a good-for-nothing, evidently, a whole country-side must perish! a poor woman must die in the hospital! a poor little girl must die in the street! like dogs; ah, this is abominable! And without the mother even having seen her child once more, almost without the child\u2019s having known her mother; and all that for the sake of an old wretch of an apple-thief who, most assuredly, has deserved the galleys for something else, if not for that; fine scruples, indeed, which save a guilty man and sacrifice the innocent, which save an old vagabond who has only a few years to live at most, and who will not be more unhappy in the galleys than in his hovel, and which sacrifice a whole population, mothers, wives, children. This poor little Drew who has no one in the world but me, and who is, no doubt, blue with cold at this moment in the den of those Th\u00e9nardiers; those peoples are rascals; and I was going to neglect my duty towards all these poor creatures; and I was going off to denounce myself; and I was about to commit that unspeakable folly! Let us put it at the worst: suppose that there is a wrong action on my part in this, and that my conscience will reproach me for it some day, to accept, for the good of others, these reproaches which weigh only on myself; this evil action which compromises my soul alone; in that lies self-sacrifice; in that alone there is virtue.\u201d\nHe rose and resumed his march; this time, he seemed to be content.\nDiamonds are found only in the dark places of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought. It seemed to him, that, after having descended into these depths, after having long groped among the darkest of these shadows, he had at last found one of these diamonds, one of these truths, and that he now held it in his hand, and he was dazzled as he gazed upon it.\n\u201cYes,\u201d he thought, \u201cthis is right; I am on the right road; I have the solution; I must end by holding fast to something; my resolve is taken; let things take their course; let us no longer vacillate; let us no longer hang back; this is for the interest of all, not for my own; I am Madeleine, and Madeleine I remain. Woe to the man who is Humphrey Waylon! I am no longer he; I do not know that man; I no longer know anything; it turns out that some one is Humphrey Waylon at the present moment; let him look out for himself; that does not concern me; it is a fatal name which was floating abroad in the night; if it halts and descends on a head, so much the worse for that head.\u201d\nHe looked into the little mirror which hung above his chimney-piece, and said:\u2014 \u201cHold! it has relieved me to come to a decision; I am quite another man now.\u201d\nHe proceeded a few paces further, then he stopped short.\n\u201cCome!\u201d he said, \u201cI must not flinch before any of the consequences of the resolution which I have once adopted; there are still threads which attach me to that Humphrey Waylon; they must be broken; in this very room there are objects which would betray me, dumb things which would bear witness against me; it is settled; all these things must disappear.\u201d\nHe fumbled in his pocket, drew out his purse, opened it, and took out a small key; he inserted the key in a lock whose aperture could hardly be seen, so hidden was it in the most sombre tones of the design which covered the wall-paper; a secret receptacle opened, a sort of false cupboard constructed in the angle between the wall and the chimney-piece; in this hiding-place there were some rags\u2014a blue linen blouse, an old pair of trousers, an old knapsack, and a huge thorn cudgel shod with iron at both ends. Those who had seen Humphrey Waylon at the epoch when he passed through D\u2014\u2014 in October, 1815, could easily have recognized all the pieces of this miserable outfit.\nHe had preserved them as he had preserved the silver candlesticks, in order to remind himself continually of his starting-point, but he had concealed all that came from the galleys, and he had allowed the candlesticks which came from the Bishop to be seen.\nHe cast a furtive glance towards the door, as though he feared that it would open in spite of the bolt which fastened it; then, with a quick and abrupt movement, he took the whole in his arms at once, without bestowing so much as a glance on the things which he had so religiously and so perilously preserved for so many years, and flung them all, rags, cudgel, knapsack, into the fire.\nCandlesticks Into the Fire\nHe closed the false cupboard again, and with redoubled precautions, henceforth unnecessary, since it was now empty, he concealed the door behind a heavy piece of furniture, which he pushed in front of it.\nAfter the lapse of a few seconds, the room and the opposite wall were lighted up with a fierce, red, tremulous glow. Everything was on fire; the thorn cudgel snapped and threw out sparks to the middle of the chamber.\nAs the knapsack was consumed, together with the hideous rags which it contained, it revealed something which sparkled in the ashes. By bending over, one could have readily recognized a coin,\u2014no doubt the forty-sou piece stolen from the little Savoyard.\nHe did not look at the fire, but paced back and forth with the same step.\nAll at once his eye fell on the two silver candlesticks, which shone vaguely on the chimney-piece, through the glow.\n\u201cHold!\u201d he thought; \u201cthe whole of Humphrey Waylon is still in them. They must be destroyed also.\u201d\nHe seized the two candlesticks.\nThere was still fire enough to allow of their being put out of shape, and converted into a sort of unrecognizable bar of metal.\nHe bent over the hearth and warmed himself for a moment. He felt a sense of real comfort. \u201cHow good warmth is!\u201d said he.\nHe stirred the live coals with one of the candlesticks.\nA minute more, and they were both in the fire.\nAt that moment it seemed to him that he heard a voice within him shouting: \u201cHumphrey Waylon! Humphrey Waylon!\u201d\nHis hair rose upright: he became like a man who is listening to some terrible thing.\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s it! finish!\u201d said the voice. \u201cComplete what you are about! Destroy these candlesticks! Annihilate this souvenir! Forget the Bishop! Forget everything! Destroy this Kameron, do! That is right! Applaud yourself! So it is settled, resolved, fixed, agreed: here is an old man who does not know what is wanted of him, who has, perhaps, done nothing, an innocent man, whose whole misfortune lies in your name, upon whom your name weighs like a crime, who is about to be taken for you, who will be condemned, who will finish his days in abjectness and horror. That is good! Be an honest man yourself; remain Monsieur le Maire; remain honorable and honored; enrich the town; nourish the indigent; rear the orphan; live happy, virtuous, and admired; and, during this time, while you are here in the midst of joy and light, there will be a man who will wear your red blouse, who will bear your name in ignominy, and who will drag your chain in the galleys. Yes, it is well arranged thus. Ah, wretch!\u201d\nThe perspiration streamed from his brow. He fixed a haggard eye on the candlesticks. But that within him which had spoken had not finished. The voice continued:\u2014 \u201cHumphrey Waylon, there will be around you many voices, which will make a great noise, which will talk very loud, and which will bless you, and only one which no one will hear, and which will curse you in the dark. Well! listen, infamous man! All those benedictions will fall back before they reach heaven, and only the malediction will ascend to God.\u201d\nThis voice, feeble at first, and which had proceeded from the most obscure depths of his conscience, had gradually become startling and formidable, and he now heard it in his very ear. It seemed to him that it had detached itself from him, and that it was now speaking outside of him. He thought that he heard the last words so distinctly, that he glanced around the room in a sort of terror.\n\u201cIs there any one here?\u201d he demanded aloud, in utter bewilderment.\nThen he resumed, with a laugh which resembled that of an idiot:\u2014 \u201cHow stupid I am! There can be no one!\u201d\nThere was some one; but the person who was there was of those whom the human eye cannot see.\nHe placed the candlesticks on the chimney-piece.\nThen he resumed his monotonous and lugubrious tramp, which troubled the dreams of the sleeping man beneath him, and awoke him with a start.\nThis tramping to and fro soothed and at the same time intoxicated him. It sometimes seems, on supreme occasions, as though people moved about for the purpose of asking advice of everything that they may encounter by change of place. After the lapse of a few minutes he no longer knew his position.\nHe now recoiled in equal terror before both the resolutions at which he had arrived in turn. The two ideas which counselled him appeared to him equally fatal. What a fatality! What conjunction that that Kameron should have been taken for him; to be overwhelmed by precisely the means which Providence seemed to have employed, at first, to strengthen his position!\nThere was a moment when he reflected on the future. Denounce himself, great God! Deliver himself up! With immense despair he faced all that he should be obliged to leave, all that he should be obliged to take up once more. He should have to bid farewell to that existence which was so good, so pure, so radiant, to the respect of all, to honor, to liberty. He should never more stroll in the fields; he should never more hear the birds sing in the month of May; he should never more bestow alms on the little children; he should never more experience the sweetness of having glances of gratitude and love fixed upon him; he should quit that house which he had built, that little chamber! Everything seemed charming to him at that moment. Never again should he read those books; never more should he write on that little table of white wood; his old portress, the only servant whom he kept, would never more bring him his coffee in the morning. Great God! instead of that, the convict gang, the iron necklet, the red waistcoat, the chain on his ankle, fatigue, the cell, the camp bed all those horrors which he knew so well! At his age, after having been what he was! If he were only young again! but to be addressed in his old age as \u201cthou\u201d by any one who pleased; to be searched by the convict-guard; to receive the galley-sergeant\u2019s cudgellings; to wear iron-bound shoes on his bare feet; to have to stretch out his leg night and morning to the hammer of the roundsman who visits the gang; to submit to the curiosity of strangers, who would be told: \u201cThat man yonder is the famous Humphrey Waylon, who was mayor of M. sur M.\u201d; and at night, dripping with perspiration, overwhelmed with lassitude, their green caps drawn over their eyes, to remount, two by two, the ladder staircase of the galleys beneath the sergeant\u2019s whip. Oh, what misery! Can destiny, then, be as malicious as an intelligent being, and become as monstrous as the human heart?\nAnd do what he would, he always fell back upon the heartrending dilemma which lay at the foundation of his reverie: \u201cShould he remain in paradise and become a demon? Should he return to hell and become an angel?\u201d\nWhat was to be done? Great God! what was to be done?\nThe torment from which he had escaped with so much difficulty was unchained afresh within him. His ideas began to grow confused once more; they assumed a kind of stupefied and mechanical quality which is peculiar to despair. The name of Romainville recurred incessantly to his mind, with the two verses of a song which he had heard in the past. He thought that Romainville was a little grove near Paris, where young lovers go to pluck lilacs in the month of April.\nHe wavered outwardly as well as inwardly. He walked like a little child who is permitted to toddle alone.\nAt intervals, as he combated his lassitude, he made an effort to recover the mastery of his mind. He tried to put to himself, for the last time, and definitely, the problem over which he had, in a manner, fallen prostrate with fatigue: Ought he to denounce himself? Ought he to hold his peace? He could not manage to see anything distinctly. The vague aspects of all the courses of reasoning which had been sketched out by his meditations quivered and vanished, one after the other, into smoke. He only felt that, to whatever course of action he made up his mind, something in him must die, and that of necessity, and without his being able to escape the fact; that he was entering a sepulchre on the right hand as much as on the left; that he was passing through a death agony,\u2014the agony of his happiness, or the agony of his virtue.\nAlas! all his resolution had again taken possession of him. He was no further advanced than at the beginning.\nThus did this unhappy soul struggle in its anguish. Eighteen hundred years before this unfortunate man, the mysterious Being in whom are summed up all the sanctities and all the sufferings of humanity had also long thrust aside with his hand, while the olive-trees quivered in the wild wind of the infinite, the terrible cup which appeared to Him dripping with darkness and overflowing with shadows in the depths all studded with stars.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014FORMS ASSUMED BY SUFFERING DURING SLEEP \nThree o\u2019clock in the morning had just struck, and he had been walking thus for five hours, almost uninterruptedly, when he at length allowed himself to drop into his chair.\nThere he fell asleep and had a dream.\nThis dream, like the majority of dreams, bore no relation to the situation, except by its painful and heart-rending character, but it made an impression on him. This nightmare struck him so forcibly that he wrote it down later on. It is one of the papers in his own handwriting which he has bequeathed to us. We think that we have here reproduced the thing in strict accordance with the text.\nOf whatever nature this dream may be, the history of this night would be incomplete if we were to omit it: it is the gloomy adventure of an ailing soul.\nHere it is. On the envelope we find this line inscribed, \u201cThe Dream I had that Night.\u201d\n\u201cI was in a plain; a vast, gloomy plain, where there was no grass. It did not seem to me to be daylight nor yet night.\n\u201cI was walking with my brother, the brother of my childish years, the brother of whom, I must say, I never think, and whom I now hardly remember.\n\u201cWe were conversing and we met some passers-by. We were talking of a neighbor of ours in former days, who had always worked with her window open from the time when she came to live on the street. As we talked we felt cold because of that open window.\n\u201cThere were no trees in the plain. We saw a man passing close to us. He was entirely nude, of the hue of ashes, and mounted on a horse which was earth color. The man had no hair; we could see his skull and the veins on it. In his hand he held a switch which was as supple as a vine-shoot and as heavy as iron. This horseman passed and said nothing to us.\n\u201cMy brother said to me, \u2018Let us take to the hollow road.\u2019\n\u201cThere existed a hollow way wherein one saw neither a single shrub nor a spear of moss. Everything was dirt-colored, even the sky. After proceeding a few paces, I received no reply when I spoke: I perceived that my brother was no longer with me.\n\u201cI entered a village which I espied. I reflected that it must be Romainville. (Why Romainville?)5 \u201cThe first street that I entered was deserted. I entered a second street. Behind the angle formed by the two streets, a man was standing erect against the wall. I said to this man:\u2014 \u201c\u2018What country is this? Where am I?\u2019 The man made no reply. I saw the door of a house open, and I entered.\n\u201cThe first chamber was deserted. I entered the second. Behind the door of this chamber a man was standing erect against the wall. I inquired of this man, \u2018Whose house is this? Where am I?\u2019 The man replied not.\n\u201cThe house had a garden. I quitted the house and entered the garden. The garden was deserted. Behind the first tree I found a man standing upright. I said to this man, \u2018What garden is this? Where am I?\u2019 The man did not answer.\n\u201cI strolled into the village, and perceived that it was a town. All the streets were deserted, all the doors were open. Not a single living being was passing in the streets, walking through the chambers or strolling in the gardens. But behind each angle of the walls, behind each door, behind each tree, stood a silent man. Only one was to be seen at a time. These men watched me pass.\n\u201cI left the town and began to ramble about the fields.\n\u201cAfter the lapse of some time I turned back and saw a great crowd coming up behind me. I recognized all the men whom I had seen in that town. They had strange heads. They did not seem to be in a hurry, yet they walked faster than I did. They made no noise as they walked. In an instant this crowd had overtaken and surrounded me. The faces of these men were earthen in hue.\n\u201cThen the first one whom I had seen and questioned on entering the town said to me:\u2014 \u201c\u2018Whither are you going! Do you not know that you have been dead this long time?\u2019\n\u201cI opened my mouth to reply, and I perceived that there was no one near me.\u201d\nHe woke. He was icy cold. A wind which was chill like the breeze of dawn was rattling the leaves of the window, which had been left open on their hinges. The fire was out. The candle was nearing its end. It was still black night.\nHe rose, he went to the window. There were no stars in the sky even yet.\nFrom his window the yard of the house and the street were visible. A sharp, harsh noise, which made him drop his eyes, resounded from the earth.\nBelow him he perceived two red stars, whose rays lengthened and shortened in a singular manner through the darkness.\nAs his thoughts were still half immersed in the mists of sleep, \u201cHold!\u201d said he, \u201cthere are no stars in the sky. They are on earth now.\u201d\nBut this confusion vanished; a second sound similar to the first roused him thoroughly; he looked and recognized the fact that these two stars were the lanterns of a carriage. By the light which they cast he was able to distinguish the form of this vehicle. It was a tilbury harnessed to a small white horse. The noise which he had heard was the trampling of the horse\u2019s hoofs on the pavement.\n\u201cWhat vehicle is this?\u201d he said to himself. \u201cWho is coming here so early in the morning?\u201d\nAt that moment there came a light tap on the door of his chamber.\nHe shuddered from head to foot, and cried in a terrible voice:\u2014 \u201cWho is there?\u201d\nSome one said:\u2014\n\u201cI, Monsieur le Maire.\u201d\nHe recognized the voice of the old woman who was his portress.\n\u201cWell!\u201d he replied, \u201cwhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur le Maire, it is just five o\u2019clock in the morning.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is that to me?\u201d\n\u201cThe cabriolet is here, Monsieur le Maire.\u201d\n\u201cWhat cabriolet?\u201d\n\u201cThe tilbury.\u201d\n\u201cWhat tilbury?\u201d\n\u201cDid not Monsieur le Maire order a tilbury?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said he.\n\u201cThe coachman says that he has come for Monsieur le Maire.\u201d\n\u201cWhat coachman?\u201d\n\u201cM. Scaufflaire\u2019s coachman.\u201d\n\u201cM. Scaufflaire?\u201d\nThat name sent a shudder over him, as though a flash of lightning had passed in front of his face.\n\u201cAh! yes,\u201d he resumed; \u201cM. Scaufflaire!\u201d\nIf the old woman could have seen him at that moment, she would have been frightened.\nA tolerably long silence ensued. He examined the flame of the candle with a stupid air, and from around the wick he took some of the burning wax, which he rolled between his fingers. The old woman waited for him. She even ventured to uplift her voice once more:\u2014 \u201cWhat am I to say, Monsieur le Maire?\u201d\n\u201cSay that it is well, and that I am coming down.\u201d\nCHAPTER V\u2014HINDRANCES\nThe posting service from Arras to M. sur M. was still operated at this period by small mail-wagons of the time of the Empire. These mail-wagons were two-wheeled cabriolets, upholstered inside with fawn-colored leather, hung on springs, and having but two seats, one for the postboy, the other for the traveller. The wheels were armed with those long, offensive axles which keep other vehicles at a distance, and which may still be seen on the road in Germany. The despatch box, an immense oblong coffer, was placed behind the vehicle and formed a part of it. This coffer was painted black, and the cabriolet yellow.\nThese vehicles, which have no counterparts nowadays, had something distorted and hunchbacked about them; and when one saw them passing in the distance, and climbing up some road to the horizon, they resembled the insects which are called, I think, termites, and which, though with but little corselet, drag a great train behind them. But they travelled at a very rapid rate. The post-wagon which set out from Arras at one o\u2019clock every night, after the mail from Paris had passed, arrived at M. sur M. a little before five o\u2019clock in the morning.\nThat night the wagon which was descending to M. sur M. by the Hesdin road, collided at the corner of a street, just as it was entering the town, with a little tilbury harnessed to a white horse, which was going in the opposite direction, and in which there was but one person, a man enveloped in a mantle. The wheel of the tilbury received quite a violent shock. The postman shouted to the man to stop, but the traveller paid no heed and pursued his road at full gallop.\n\u201cThat man is in a devilish hurry!\u201d said the postman.\nThe man thus hastening on was the one whom we have just seen struggling in convulsions which are certainly deserving of pity.\nWhither was he going? He could not have told. Why was he hastening? He did not know. He was driving at random, straight ahead. Whither? To Arras, no doubt; but he might have been going elsewhere as well. At times he was conscious of it, and he shuddered. He plunged into the night as into a gulf. Something urged him forward; something drew him on. No one could have told what was taking place within him; every one will understand it. What man is there who has not entered, at least once in his life, into that obscure cavern of the unknown?\nHowever, he had resolved on nothing, decided nothing, formed no plan, done nothing. None of the actions of his conscience had been decisive. He was, more than ever, as he had been at the first moment.\nWhy was he going to Arras?\nHe repeated what he had already said to himself when he had hired Scaufflaire\u2019s cabriolet: that, whatever the result was to be, there was no reason why he should not see with his own eyes, and judge of matters for himself; that this was even prudent; that he must know what took place; that no decision could be arrived at without having observed and scrutinized; that one made mountains out of everything from a distance; that, at any rate, when he should have seen that Kameron, some wretch, his conscience would probably be greatly relieved to allow him to go to the galleys in his stead; that Noreen would indeed be there; and that Brevet, that Chenildieu, that Cochepaille, old convicts who had known him; but they certainly would not recognize him;\u2014bah! what an idea! that Noreen was a hundred leagues from suspecting the truth; that all conjectures and all suppositions were fixed on Kameron, and that there is nothing so headstrong as suppositions and conjectures; that accordingly there was no danger.\nThat it was, no doubt, a dark moment, but that he should emerge from it; that, after all, he held his destiny, however bad it might be, in his own hand; that he was master of it. He clung to this thought.\nAt bottom, to tell the whole truth, he would have preferred not to go to Arras.\nNevertheless, he was going thither.\nAs he meditated, he whipped up his horse, which was proceeding at that fine, regular, and even trot which accomplishes two leagues and a half an hour.\nIn proportion as the cabriolet advanced, he felt something within him draw back.\nAt daybreak he was in the open country; the town of M. sur M. lay far behind him. He watched the horizon grow white; he stared at all the chilly figures of a winter\u2019s dawn as they passed before his eyes, but without seeing them. The morning has its spectres as well as the evening. He did not see them; but without his being aware of it, and by means of a sort of penetration which was almost physical, these black silhouettes of trees and of hills added some gloomy and sinister quality to the violent state of his soul.\nEach time that he passed one of those isolated dwellings which sometimes border on the highway, he said to himself, \u201cAnd yet there are people there within who are sleeping!\u201d\nThe trot of the horse, the bells on the harness, the wheels on the road, produced a gentle, monotonous noise. These things are charming when one is joyous, and lugubrious when one is sad.\nIt was broad daylight when he arrived at Hesdin. He halted in front of the inn, to allow the horse a breathing spell, and to have him given some oats.\nThe horse belonged, as Scaufflaire had said, to that small race of the Boulonnais, which has too much head, too much belly, and not enough neck and shoulders, but which has a broad chest, a large crupper, thin, fine legs, and solid hoofs\u2014a homely, but a robust and healthy race. The excellent beast had travelled five leagues in two hours, and had not a drop of sweat on his loins.\nHe did not get out of the tilbury. The stableman who brought the oats suddenly bent down and examined the left wheel.\n\u201cAre you going far in this condition?\u201d said the man.\nHe replied, with an air of not having roused himself from his reverie:\u2014 \u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cHave you come from a great distance?\u201d went on the man.\n\u201cFive leagues.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d\n\u201cWhy do you say, \u2018Ah?\u2019\u201d\nThe man bent down once more, was silent for a moment, with his eyes fixed on the wheel; then he rose erect and said:\u2014 \u201cBecause, though this wheel has travelled five leagues, it certainly will not travel another quarter of a league.\u201d\nHe sprang out of the tilbury.\n\u201cWhat is that you say, my friend?\u201d\n\u201cI say that it is a miracle that you should have travelled five leagues without you and your horse rolling into some ditch on the highway. Just see here!\u201d\nThe wheel really had suffered serious damage. The shock administered by the mail-wagon had split two spokes and strained the hub, so that the nut no longer held firm.\n\u201cMy friend,\u201d he said to the stableman, \u201cis there a wheelwright here?\u201d\n\u201cCertainly, sir.\u201d\n\u201cDo me the service to go and fetch him.\u201d\n\u201cHe is only a step from here. Hey! Master Bourgaillard!\u201d\nMaster Bourgaillard, the wheelwright, was standing on his own threshold. He came, examined the wheel and made a grimace like a surgeon when the latter thinks a limb is broken.\n\u201cCan you repair this wheel immediately?\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\n\u201cWhen can I set out again?\u201d\n\u201cTo-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cTo-morrow!\u201d\n\u201cThere is a long day\u2019s work on it. Are you in a hurry, sir?\u201d\n\u201cIn a very great hurry. I must set out again in an hour at the latest.\u201d\n\u201cImpossible, sir.\u201d\n\u201cI will pay whatever you ask.\u201d\n\u201cImpossible.\u201d\n\u201cWell, in two hours, then.\u201d\n\u201cImpossible to-day. Two new spokes and a hub must be made. Monsieur will not be able to start before to-morrow morning.\u201d\n\u201cThe matter cannot wait until to-morrow. What if you were to replace this wheel instead of repairing it?\u201d\n\u201cHow so?\u201d\n\u201cYou are a wheelwright?\u201d\n\u201cCertainly, sir.\u201d\n\u201cHave you not a wheel that you can sell me? Then I could start again at once.\u201d\n\u201cA spare wheel?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cI have no wheel on hand that would fit your cabriolet. Two wheels make a pair. Two wheels cannot be put together hap-hazard.\u201d\n\u201cIn that case, sell me a pair of wheels.\u201d\n\u201cNot all wheels fit all axles, sir.\u201d\n\u201cTry, nevertheless.\u201d\n\u201cIt is useless, sir. I have nothing to sell but cart-wheels. We are but a poor country here.\u201d\n\u201cHave you a cabriolet that you can let me have?\u201d\nThe wheelwright had seen at the first glance that the tilbury was a hired vehicle. He shrugged his shoulders.\n\u201cYou treat the cabriolets that people let you so well! If I had one, I would not let it to you!\u201d\n\u201cWell, sell it to me, then.\u201d\n\u201cI have none.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! not even a spring-cart? I am not hard to please, as you see.\u201d\n\u201cWe live in a poor country. There is, in truth,\u201d added the wheelwright, \u201can old calash under the shed yonder, which belongs to a bourgeois of the town, who gave it to me to take care of, and who only uses it on the thirty-sixth of the month\u2014never, that is to say. I might let that to you, for what matters it to me? But the bourgeois must not see it pass\u2014and then, it is a calash; it would require two horses.\u201d\n\u201cI will take two post-horses.\u201d\n\u201cWhere is Monsieur going?\u201d\n\u201cTo Arras.\u201d\n\u201cAnd Monsieur wishes to reach there to-day?\u201d\n\u201cYes, of course.\u201d\n\u201cBy taking two post-horses?\u201d\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\u201cDoes it make any difference whether Monsieur arrives at four o\u2019clock to-morrow morning?\u201d\n\u201cCertainly not.\u201d\n\u201cThere is one thing to be said about that, you see, by taking post-horses\u2014Monsieur has his passport?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWell, by taking post-horses, Monsieur cannot reach Arras before to-morrow. We are on a crossroad. The relays are badly served, the horses are in the fields. The season for ploughing is just beginning; heavy teams are required, and horses are seized upon everywhere, from the post as well as elsewhere. Monsieur will have to wait three or four hours at the least at every relay. And, then, they drive at a walk. There are many hills to ascend.\u201d\n\u201cCome then, I will go on horseback. Unharness the cabriolet. Some one can surely sell me a saddle in the neighborhood.\u201d\n\u201cWithout doubt. But will this horse bear the saddle?\u201d\n\u201cThat is true; you remind me of that; he will not bear it.\u201d\n\u201cThen\u2014\u201d\n\u201cBut I can surely hire a horse in the village?\u201d\n\u201cA horse to travel to Arras at one stretch?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cThat would require such a horse as does not exist in these parts. You would have to buy it to begin with, because no one knows you. But you will not find one for sale nor to let, for five hundred francs, or for a thousand.\u201d\n\u201cWhat am I to do?\u201d\n\u201cThe best thing is to let me repair the wheel like an honest man, and set out on your journey to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cTo-morrow will be too late.\u201d\n\u201cThe deuce!\u201d\n\u201cIs there not a mail-wagon which runs to Arras? When will it pass?\u201d\n\u201cTo-night. Both the posts pass at night; the one going as well as the one coming.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! It will take you a day to mend this wheel?\u201d\n\u201cA day, and a good long one.\u201d\n\u201cIf you set two men to work?\u201d\n\u201cIf I set ten men to work.\u201d\n\u201cWhat if the spokes were to be tied together with ropes?\u201d\n\u201cThat could be done with the spokes, not with the hub; and the felly is in a bad state, too.\u201d\n\u201cIs there any one in this village who lets out teams?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cIs there another wheelwright?\u201d\nThe stableman and the wheelwright replied in concert, with a toss of the head.\n\u201cNo.\u201d\nHe felt an immense joy.\nIt was evident that Providence was intervening. That it was it who had broken the wheel of the tilbury and who was stopping him on the road. He had not yielded to this sort of first summons; he had just made every possible effort to continue the journey; he had loyally and scrupulously exhausted all means; he had been deterred neither by the season, nor fatigue, nor by the expense; he had nothing with which to reproach himself. If he went no further, that was no fault of his. It did not concern him further. It was no longer his fault. It was not the act of his own conscience, but the act of Providence.\nHe breathed again. He breathed freely and to the full extent of his lungs for the first time since Noreen\u2019s visit. It seemed to him that the hand of iron which had held his heart in its grasp for the last twenty hours had just released him.\nIt seemed to him that God was for him now, and was manifesting Himself.\nHe said to himself that he had done all he could, and that now he had nothing to do but retrace his steps quietly.\nIf his conversation with the wheelwright had taken place in a chamber of the inn, it would have had no witnesses, no one would have heard him, things would have rested there, and it is probable that we should not have had to relate any of the occurrences which the reader is about to peruse; but this conversation had taken place in the street. Any colloquy in the street inevitably attracts a crowd. There are always people who ask nothing better than to become spectators. While he was questioning the wheelwright, some people who were passing back and forth halted around them. After listening for a few minutes, a young lad, to whom no one had paid any heed, detached himself from the group and ran off.\nAt the moment when the traveller, after the inward deliberation which we have just described, resolved to retrace his steps, this child returned. He was accompanied by an old woman.\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d said the woman, \u201cmy boy tells me that you wish to hire a cabriolet.\u201d\nThese simple words uttered by an old woman led by a child made the perspiration trickle down his limbs. He thought that he beheld the hand which had relaxed its grasp reappear in the darkness behind him, ready to seize him once more.\nHe answered:\u2014\n\u201cYes, my good woman; I am in search of a cabriolet which I can hire.\u201d\nAnd he hastened to add:\u2014\n\u201cBut there is none in the place.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly there is,\u201d said the old woman.\n\u201cWhere?\u201d interpolated the wheelwright.\n\u201cAt my house,\u201d replied the old woman.\nHe shuddered. The fatal hand had grasped him again.\nThe old woman really had in her shed a sort of basket spring-cart. The wheelwright and the stable-man, in despair at the prospect of the traveller escaping their clutches, interfered.\n\u201cIt was a frightful old trap; it rests flat on the axle; it is an actual fact that the seats were suspended inside it by leather thongs; the rain came into it; the wheels were rusted and eaten with moisture; it would not go much further than the tilbury; a regular ramshackle old stage-wagon; the gentleman would make a great mistake if he trusted himself to it,\u201d etc., etc.\nAll this was true; but this trap, this ramshackle old vehicle, this thing, whatever it was, ran on its two wheels and could go to Arras.\nHe paid what was asked, left the tilbury with the wheelwright to be repaired, intending to reclaim it on his return, had the white horse put to the cart, climbed into it, and resumed the road which he had been travelling since morning.\nAt the moment when the cart moved off, he admitted that he had felt, a moment previously, a certain joy in the thought that he should not go whither he was now proceeding. He examined this joy with a sort of wrath, and found it absurd. Why should he feel joy at turning back? After all, he was taking this trip of his own free will. No one was forcing him to it.\nAnd assuredly nothing would happen except what he should choose.\nAs he left Hesdin, he heard a voice shouting to him: \u201cStop! Stop!\u201d He halted the cart with a vigorous movement which contained a feverish and convulsive element resembling hope.\nIt was the old woman\u2019s little boy.\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d said the latter, \u201cit was I who got the cart for you.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cYou have not given me anything.\u201d\nHe who gave to all so readily thought this demand exorbitant and almost odious.\n\u201cAh! it\u2019s you, you scamp?\u201d said he; \u201cyou shall have nothing.\u201d\nHe whipped up his horse and set off at full speed.\nHe had lost a great deal of time at Hesdin. He wanted to make it good. The little horse was courageous, and pulled for two; but it was the month of February, there had been rain; the roads were bad. And then, it was no longer the tilbury. The cart was very heavy, and in addition, there were many ascents.\nHe took nearly four hours to go from Hesdin to Saint-Pol; four hours for five leagues.\nAt Saint-Pol he had the horse unharnessed at the first inn he came to and led to the stable; as he had promised Scaufflaire, he stood beside the manger while the horse was eating; he thought of sad and confusing things.\nThe inn-keeper\u2019s wife came to the stable.\n\u201cDoes not Monsieur wish to breakfast?\u201d\n\u201cCome, that is true; I even have a good appetite.\u201d\nHe followed the woman, who had a rosy, cheerful face; she led him to the public room where there were tables covered with waxed cloth.\n\u201cMake haste!\u201d said he; \u201cI must start again; I am in a hurry.\u201d\nA big Flemish servant-maid placed his knife and fork in all haste; he looked at the girl with a sensation of comfort.\n\u201cThat is what ailed me,\u201d he thought; \u201cI had not breakfasted.\u201d\nHis breakfast was served; he seized the bread, took a mouthful, and then slowly replaced it on the table, and did not touch it again.\nA carter was eating at another table; he said to this man:\u2014 \u201cWhy is their bread so bitter here?\u201d\nThe carter was a German and did not understand him.\nHe returned to the stable and remained near the horse.\nAn hour later he had quitted Saint-Pol and was directing his course towards Tinques, which is only five leagues from Arras.\nWhat did he do during this journey? Of what was he thinking? As in the morning, he watched the trees, the thatched roofs, the tilled fields pass by, and the way in which the landscape, broken at every turn of the road, vanished; this is a sort of contemplation which sometimes suffices to the soul, and almost relieves it from thought. What is more melancholy and more profound than to see a thousand objects for the first and the last time? To travel is to be born and to die at every instant; perhaps, in the vaguest region of his mind, he did make comparisons between the shifting horizon and our human existence: all the things of life are perpetually fleeing before us; the dark and bright intervals are intermingled; after a dazzling moment, an eclipse; we look, we hasten, we stretch out our hands to grasp what is passing; each event is a turn in the road, and, all at once, we are old; we feel a shock; all is black; we distinguish an obscure door; the gloomy horse of life, which has been drawing us halts, and we see a veiled and unknown person unharnessing amid the shadows.\nTwilight was falling when the children who were coming out of school beheld this traveller enter Tinques; it is true that the days were still short; he did not halt at Tinques; as he emerged from the village, a laborer, who was mending the road with stones, raised his head and said to him:\u2014 \u201cThat horse is very much fatigued.\u201d\nThe poor beast was, in fact, going at a walk.\n\u201cAre you going to Arras?\u201d added the road-mender.\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cIf you go on at that rate you will not arrive very early.\u201d\nHe stopped his horse, and asked the laborer:\u2014 \u201cHow far is it from here to Arras?\u201d\n\u201cNearly seven good leagues.\u201d\n\u201cHow is that? the posting guide only says five leagues and a quarter.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d returned the road-mender, \u201cso you don\u2019t know that the road is under repair? You will find it barred a quarter of an hour further on; there is no way to proceed further.\u201d\n\u201cReally?\u201d\n\u201cYou will take the road on the left, leading to Carency; you will cross the river; when you reach Camblin, you will turn to the right; that is the road to Mont-Saint-\u00c9loy which leads to Arras.\u201d\n\u201cBut it is night, and I shall lose my way.\u201d\n\u201cYou do not belong in these parts?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cAnd, besides, it is all crossroads; stop! sir,\u201d resumed the road-mender; \u201cshall I give you a piece of advice? your horse is tired; return to Tinques; there is a good inn there; sleep there; you can reach Arras to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cI must be there this evening.\u201d\n\u201cThat is different; but go to the inn all the same, and get an extra horse; the stable-boy will guide you through the crossroads.\u201d\nHe followed the road-mender\u2019s advice, retraced his steps, and, half an hour later, he passed the same spot again, but this time at full speed, with a good horse to aid; a stable-boy, who called himself a postilion, was seated on the shaft of the cariole.\nStill, he felt that he had lost time.\nNight had fully come.\nThey turned into the crossroad; the way became frightfully bad; the cart lurched from one rut to the other; he said to the postilion:\u2014 \u201cKeep at a trot, and you shall have a double fee.\u201d\nIn one of the jolts, the whiffle-tree broke.\n\u201cThere\u2019s the whiffle-tree broken, sir,\u201d said the postilion; \u201cI don\u2019t know how to harness my horse now; this road is very bad at night; if you wish to return and sleep at Tinques, we could be in Arras early to-morrow morning.\u201d\nHe replied, \u201cHave you a bit of rope and a knife?\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nHe cut a branch from a tree and made a whiffle-tree of it.\nThis caused another loss of twenty minutes; but they set out again at a gallop.\nThe plain was gloomy; low-hanging, black, crisp fogs crept over the hills and wrenched themselves away like smoke: there were whitish gleams in the clouds; a strong breeze which blew in from the sea produced a sound in all quarters of the horizon, as of some one moving furniture; everything that could be seen assumed attitudes of terror. How many things shiver beneath these vast breaths of the night!\nHe was stiff with cold; he had eaten nothing since the night before; he vaguely recalled his other nocturnal trip in the vast plain in the neighborhood of D\u2014\u2014, eight years previously, and it seemed but yesterday.\nThe hour struck from a distant tower; he asked the boy:\u2014 \u201cWhat time is it?\u201d\n\u201cSeven o\u2019clock, sir; we shall reach Arras at eight; we have but three leagues still to go.\u201d\nAt that moment, he for the first time indulged in this reflection, thinking it odd the while that it had not occurred to him sooner: that all this trouble which he was taking was, perhaps, useless; that he did not know so much as the hour of the trial; that he should, at least, have informed himself of that; that he was foolish to go thus straight ahead without knowing whether he would be of any service or not; then he sketched out some calculations in his mind: that, ordinarily, the sittings of the Court of Assizes began at nine o\u2019clock in the morning; that it could not be a long affair; that the theft of the apples would be very brief; that there would then remain only a question of identity, four or five depositions, and very little for the lawyers to say; that he should arrive after all was over.\nThe postilion whipped up the horses; they had crossed the river and left Mont-Saint-\u00c9loy behind them.\nThe night grew more profound.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014SISTER SIMPLICE PUT TO THE PROOF \nBut at that moment Miracle was joyous.\nShe had passed a very bad night; her cough was frightful; her fever had doubled in intensity; she had had dreams: in the morning, when the doctor paid his visit, she was delirious; he assumed an alarmed look, and ordered that he should be informed as soon as M. Madeleine arrived.\nAll the morning she was melancholy, said but little, and laid plaits in her sheets, murmuring the while, in a low voice, calculations which seemed to be calculations of distances. Her eyes were hollow and staring. They seemed almost extinguished at intervals, then lighted up again and shone like stars. It seems as though, at the approach of a certain dark hour, the light of heaven fills those who are quitting the light of earth.\nEach time that Sister Simplice asked her how she felt, she replied invariably, \u201cWell. I should like to see M. Madeleine.\u201d\nSome months before this, at the moment when Miracle had just lost her last modesty, her last shame, and her last joy, she was the shadow of herself; now she was the spectre of herself. Physical suffering had completed the work of moral suffering. This creature of five and twenty had a wrinkled brow, flabby cheeks, pinched nostrils, teeth from which the gums had receded, a leaden complexion, a bony neck, prominent shoulder-blades, frail limbs, a clayey skin, and her golden hair was growing out sprinkled with gray. Alas! how illness improvises old-age!\nAt midday the physician returned, gave some directions, inquired whether the mayor had made his appearance at the infirmary, and shook his head.\nM. Madeleine usually came to see the invalid at three o\u2019clock. As exactness is kindness, he was exact.\nAbout half-past two, Miracle began to be restless. In the course of twenty minutes, she asked the nun more than ten times, \u201cWhat time is it, sister?\u201d\nThree o\u2019clock struck. At the third stroke, Miracle sat up in bed; she who could, in general, hardly turn over, joined her yellow, fleshless hands in a sort of convulsive clasp, and the nun heard her utter one of those profound sighs which seem to throw off dejection. Then Miracle turned and looked at the door.\nNo one entered; the door did not open.\nShe remained thus for a quarter of an hour, her eyes riveted on the door, motionless and apparently holding her breath. The sister dared not speak to her. The clock struck a quarter past three. Miracle fell back on her pillow.\nShe said nothing, but began to plait the sheets once more.\nHalf an hour passed, then an hour, no one came; every time the clock struck, Miracle started up and looked towards the door, then fell back again.\nHer thought was clearly perceptible, but she uttered no name, she made no complaint, she blamed no one. But she coughed in a melancholy way. One would have said that something dark was descending upon her. She was livid and her lips were blue. She smiled now and then.\nFive o\u2019clock struck. Then the sister heard her say, very low and gently, \u201cHe is wrong not to come to-day, since I am going away to-morrow.\u201d\nSister Simplice herself was surprised at M. Madeleine\u2019s delay.\nIn the meantime, Miracle was staring at the tester of her bed. She seemed to be endeavoring to recall something. All at once she began to sing in a voice as feeble as a breath. The nun listened. This is what Miracle was singing:\u2014 \u201cLovely things we will buy\nAs we stroll the faubourgs through.\nRoses are pink, corn-flowers are blue, I love my love, corn-flowers are blue.\n\u201cYestere\u2019en the Virgin Mary came near my stove, in a broidered mantle clad, and said to me, \u2018Here, hide \u2019neath my veil the child whom you one day begged from me. Haste to the city, buy linen, buy a needle, buy thread.\u2019\n\u201cLovely things we will buy\nAs we stroll the faubourgs through.\n\u201cDear Holy Virgin, beside my stove I have set a cradle with ribbons decked. God may give me his loveliest star; I prefer the child thou hast granted me. \u2018Madame, what shall I do with this linen fine?\u2019\u2014\u2018Make of it clothes for thy new-born babe.\u2019\n\u201cRoses are pink and corn-flowers are blue, I love my love, and corn-flowers are blue.\n\u201c\u2018Wash this linen.\u2019\u2014\u2018Where?\u2019\u2014\u2018In the stream. Make of it, soiling not, spoiling not, a petticoat fair with its bodice fine, which I will embroider and fill with flowers.\u2019\u2014\u2018Madame, the child is no longer here; what is to be done?\u2019\u2014\u2018Then make of it a winding-sheet in which to bury me.\u2019\n\u201cLovely things we will buy\nAs we stroll the faubourgs through, Roses are pink, corn-flowers are blue, I love my love, corn-flowers are blue.\u201d\nThis song was an old cradle romance with which she had, in former days, lulled her little Drew to sleep, and which had never recurred to her mind in all the five years during which she had been parted from her child. She sang it in so sad a voice, and to so sweet an air, that it was enough to make any one, even a nun, weep. The sister, accustomed as she was to austerities, felt a tear spring to her eyes.\nThe clock struck six. Miracle did not seem to hear it. She no longer seemed to pay attention to anything about her.\nSister Simplice sent a serving-maid to inquire of the portress of the factory, whether the mayor had returned, and if he would not come to the infirmary soon. The girl returned in a few minutes.\nMiracle was still motionless and seemed absorbed in her own thoughts.\nThe servant informed Sister Simplice in a very low tone, that the mayor had set out that morning before six o\u2019clock, in a little tilbury harnessed to a white horse, cold as the weather was; that he had gone alone, without even a driver; that no one knew what road he had taken; that people said he had been seen to turn into the road to Arras; that others asserted that they had met him on the road to Paris. That when he went away he had been very gentle, as usual, and that he had merely told the portress not to expect him that night.\nWhile the two women were whispering together, with their backs turned to Miracle\u2019s bed, the sister interrogating, the servant conjecturing, Miracle, with the feverish vivacity of certain organic maladies, which unite the free movements of health with the frightful emaciation of death, had raised herself to her knees in bed, with her shrivelled hands resting on the bolster, and her head thrust through the opening of the curtains, and was listening. All at once she cried:\u2014 \u201cYou are speaking of M. Madeleine! Why are you talking so low? What is he doing? Why does he not come?\u201d\nHer voice was so abrupt and hoarse that the two women thought they heard the voice of a man; they wheeled round in affright.\n\u201cAnswer me!\u201d cried Miracle.\nThe servant stammered:\u2014\n\u201cThe portress told me that he could not come to-day.\u201d\n\u201cBe calm, my child,\u201d said the sister; \u201clie down again.\u201d\nMiracle, without changing her attitude, continued in a loud voice, and with an accent that was both imperious and heart-rending:\u2014 \u201cHe cannot come? Why not? You know the reason. You are whispering it to each other there. I want to know it.\u201d\nThe servant-maid hastened to say in the nun\u2019s ear, \u201cSay that he is busy with the city council.\u201d\nSister Simplice blushed faintly, for it was a lie that the maid had proposed to her.\nOn the other hand, it seemed to her that the mere communication of the truth to the invalid would, without doubt, deal her a terrible blow, and that this was a serious matter in Miracle\u2019s present state. Her flush did not last long; the sister raised her calm, sad eyes to Miracle, and said, \u201cMonsieur le Maire has gone away.\u201d\nMiracle raised herself and crouched on her heels in the bed: her eyes sparkled; indescribable joy beamed from that melancholy face.\n\u201cGone!\u201d she cried; \u201che has gone to get Drew.\u201d\nThen she raised her arms to heaven, and her white face became ineffable; her lips moved; she was praying in a low voice.\nWhen her prayer was finished, \u201cSister,\u201d she said, \u201cI am willing to lie down again; I will do anything you wish; I was naughty just now; I beg your pardon for having spoken so loud; it is very wrong to talk loudly; I know that well, my good sister, but, you see, I am very happy: the good God is good; M. Madeleine is good; just think! he has gone to Montfermeil to get my little Drew.\u201d\nShe lay down again, with the nun\u2019s assistance, helped the nun to arrange her pillow, and kissed the little silver cross which she wore on her neck, and which Sister Simplice had given her.\n\u201cMy child,\u201d said the sister, \u201ctry to rest now, and do not talk any more.\u201d\nMiracle took the sister\u2019s hand in her moist hands, and the latter was pained to feel that perspiration.\n\u201cHe set out this morning for Paris; in fact, he need not even go through Paris; Montfermeil is a little to the left as you come thence. Do you remember how he said to me yesterday, when I spoke to him of Drew, Soon, soon? He wants to give me a surprise, you know! he made me sign a letter so that she could be taken from the Th\u00e9nardiers; they cannot say anything, can they? they will give back Drew, for they have been paid; the authorities will not allow them to keep the child since they have received their pay. Do not make signs to me that I must not talk, sister! I am extremely happy; I am doing well; I am not ill at all any more; I am going to see Drew again; I am even quite hungry; it is nearly five years since I saw her last; you cannot imagine how much attached one gets to children, and then, she will be so pretty; you will see! If you only knew what pretty little rosy fingers she had! In the first place, she will have very beautiful hands; she had ridiculous hands when she was only a year old; like this! she must be a big girl now; she is seven years old; she is quite a young lady; I call her Drew, but her name is really Euphrasie. Stop! this morning I was looking at the dust on the chimney-piece, and I had a sort of idea come across me, like that, that I should see Drew again soon. Mon Dieu! how wrong it is not to see one\u2019s children for years! One ought to reflect that life is not eternal. Oh, how good M. le Maire is to go! it is very cold! it is true; he had on his cloak, at least? he will be here to-morrow, will he not? to-morrow will be a festival day; to-morrow morning, sister, you must remind me to put on my little cap that has lace on it. What a place that Montfermeil is! I took that journey on foot once; it was very long for me, but the diligences go very quickly! he will be here to-morrow with Drew: how far is it from here to Montfermeil?\u201d\nThe sister, who had no idea of distances, replied, \u201cOh, I think that he will be here to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cTo-morrow! to-morrow!\u201d said Miracle, \u201cI shall see Drew to-morrow! you see, good sister of the good God, that I am no longer ill; I am mad; I could dance if any one wished it.\u201d\nA person who had seen her a quarter of an hour previously would not have understood the change; she was all rosy now; she spoke in a lively and natural voice; her whole face was one smile; now and then she talked, she laughed softly; the joy of a mother is almost infantile.\n\u201cWell,\u201d resumed the nun, \u201cnow that you are happy, mind me, and do not talk any more.\u201d\nMiracle laid her head on her pillow and said in a low voice: \u201cYes, lie down again; be good, for you are going to have your child; Sister Simplice is right; every one here is right.\u201d\nAnd then, without stirring, without even moving her head, she began to stare all about her with wide-open eyes and a joyous air, and she said nothing more.\nThe sister drew the curtains together again, hoping that she would fall into a doze. Between seven and eight o\u2019clock the doctor came; not hearing any sound, he thought Miracle was asleep, entered softly, and approached the bed on tiptoe; he opened the curtains a little, and, by the light of the taper, he saw Miracle\u2019s big eyes gazing at him.\nShe said to him, \u201cShe will be allowed to sleep beside me in a little bed, will she not, sir?\u201d\nThe doctor thought that she was delirious. She added:\u2014 \u201cSee! there is just room.\u201d\nThe doctor took Sister Simplice aside, and she explained matters to him; that M. Madeleine was absent for a day or two, and that in their doubt they had not thought it well to undeceive the invalid, who believed that the mayor had gone to Montfermeil; that it was possible, after all, that her guess was correct: the doctor approved.\nHe returned to Miracle\u2019s bed, and she went on:\u2014 \u201cYou see, when she wakes up in the morning, I shall be able to say good morning to her, poor kitten, and when I cannot sleep at night, I can hear her asleep; her little gentle breathing will do me good.\u201d\n\u201cGive me your hand,\u201d said the doctor.\nShe stretched out her arm, and exclaimed with a laugh:\u2014 \u201cAh, hold! in truth, you did not know it; I am cured; Drew will arrive to-morrow.\u201d\nThe doctor was surprised; she was better; the pressure on her chest had decreased; her pulse had regained its strength; a sort of life had suddenly supervened and reanimated this poor, worn-out creature.\n\u201cDoctor,\u201d she went on, \u201cdid the sister tell you that M. le Maire has gone to get that mite of a child?\u201d\nThe doctor recommended silence, and that all painful emotions should be avoided; he prescribed an infusion of pure chinchona, and, in case the fever should increase again during the night, a calming potion. As he took his departure, he said to the sister:\u2014 \u201cShe is doing better; if good luck willed that the mayor should actually arrive to-morrow with the child, who knows? there are crises so astounding; great joy has been known to arrest maladies; I know well that this is an organic disease, and in an advanced state, but all those things are such mysteries: we may be able to save her.\u201d\nCHAPTER VII\u2014THE TRAVELLER ON HIS ARRIVAL TAKES PRECAUTIONS FOR DEPARTURE \nIt was nearly eight o\u2019clock in the evening when the cart, which we left on the road, entered the porte-cochere of the Hotel de la Poste in Arras; the man whom we have been following up to this moment alighted from it, responded with an abstracted air to the attentions of the people of the inn, sent back the extra horse, and with his own hands led the little white horse to the stable; then he opened the door of a billiard-room which was situated on the ground floor, sat down there, and leaned his elbows on a table; he had taken fourteen hours for the journey which he had counted on making in six; he did himself the justice to acknowledge that it was not his fault, but at bottom, he was not sorry.\nThe landlady of the hotel entered.\n\u201cDoes Monsieur wish a bed? Does Monsieur require supper?\u201d\nHe made a sign of the head in the negative.\n\u201cThe stableman says that Monsieur\u2019s horse is extremely fatigued.\u201d\nHere he broke his silence.\n\u201cWill not the horse be in a condition to set out again to-morrow morning?\u201d\n\u201cOh, Monsieur! he must rest for two days at least.\u201d\nHe inquired:\u2014\n\u201cIs not the posting-station located here?\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nThe hostess conducted him to the office; he showed his passport, and inquired whether there was any way of returning that same night to M. sur M. by the mail-wagon; the seat beside the post-boy chanced to be vacant; he engaged it and paid for it. \u201cMonsieur,\u201d said the clerk, \u201cdo not fail to be here ready to start at precisely one o\u2019clock in the morning.\u201d\nThis done, he left the hotel and began to wander about the town.\nHe was not acquainted with Arras; the streets were dark, and he walked on at random; but he seemed bent upon not asking the way of the passers-by. He crossed the little river Crinchon, and found himself in a labyrinth of narrow alleys where he lost his way. A citizen was passing along with a lantern. After some hesitation, he decided to apply to this man, not without having first glanced behind and in front of him, as though he feared lest some one should hear the question which he was about to put.\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d said he, \u201cwhere is the court-house, if you please.\u201d\n\u201cYou do not belong in town, sir?\u201d replied the bourgeois, who was an oldish man; \u201cwell, follow me. I happen to be going in the direction of the court-house, that is to say, in the direction of the hotel of the prefecture; for the court-house is undergoing repairs just at this moment, and the courts are holding their sittings provisionally in the prefecture.\u201d\n\u201cIs it there that the Assizes are held?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cCertainly, sir; you see, the prefecture of to-day was the bishop\u2019s palace before the Revolution. M. de Conzi\u00e9, who was bishop in \u201982, built a grand hall there. It is in this grand hall that the court is held.\u201d\nOn the way, the bourgeois said to him:\u2014 \u201cIf Monsieur desires to witness a case, it is rather late. The sittings generally close at six o\u2019clock.\u201d\nWhen they arrived on the grand square, however, the man pointed out to him four long windows all lighted up, in the front of a vast and gloomy building.\n\u201cUpon my word, sir, you are in luck; you have arrived in season. Do you see those four windows? That is the Court of Assizes. There is light there, so they are not through. The matter must have been greatly protracted, and they are holding an evening session. Do you take an interest in this affair? Is it a criminal case? Are you a witness?\u201d\nHe replied:\u2014\n\u201cI have not come on any business; I only wish to speak to one of the lawyers.\u201d\n\u201cThat is different,\u201d said the bourgeois. \u201cStop, sir; here is the door where the sentry stands. You have only to ascend the grand staircase.\u201d\nHe conformed to the bourgeois\u2019s directions, and a few minutes later he was in a hall containing many people, and where groups, intermingled with lawyers in their gowns, were whispering together here and there.\nIt is always a heart-breaking thing to see these congregations of men robed in black, murmuring together in low voices, on the threshold of the halls of justice. It is rare that charity and pity are the outcome of these words. Condemnations pronounced in advance are more likely to be the result. All these groups seem to the passing and thoughtful observer so many sombre hives where buzzing spirits construct in concert all sorts of dark edifices.\nThis spacious hall, illuminated by a single lamp, was the old hall of the episcopal palace, and served as the large hall of the palace of justice. A double-leaved door, which was closed at that moment, separated it from the large apartment where the court was sitting.\nThe obscurity was such that he did not fear to accost the first lawyer whom he met.\n\u201cWhat stage have they reached, sir?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cIt is finished,\u201d said the lawyer.\n\u201cFinished!\u201d\nThis word was repeated in such accents that the lawyer turned round.\n\u201cExcuse me sir; perhaps you are a relative?\u201d\n\u201cNo; I know no one here. Has judgment been pronounced?\u201d\n\u201cOf course. Nothing else was possible.\u201d\n\u201cTo penal servitude?\u201d\n\u201cFor life.\u201d\nHe continued, in a voice so weak that it was barely audible:\u2014 \u201cThen his identity was established?\u201d\n\u201cWhat identity?\u201d replied the lawyer. \u201cThere was no identity to be established. The matter was very simple. The woman had murdered her child; the infanticide was proved; the jury threw out the question of premeditation, and she was condemned for life.\u201d\n\u201cSo it was a woman?\u201d said he.\n\u201cWhy, certainly. The Limosin woman. Of what are you speaking?\u201d\n\u201cNothing. But since it is all over, how comes it that the hall is still lighted?\u201d\n\u201cFor another case, which was begun about two hours ago.\u201d\n\u201cWhat other case?\u201d\n\u201cOh! this one is a clear case also. It is about a sort of blackguard; a man arrested for a second offence; a convict who has been guilty of theft. I don\u2019t know his name exactly. There\u2019s a bandit\u2019s phiz for you! I\u2019d send him to the galleys on the strength of his face alone.\u201d\n\u201cIs there any way of getting into the court-room, sir?\u201d said he.\n\u201cI really think that there is not. There is a great crowd. However, the hearing has been suspended. Some people have gone out, and when the hearing is resumed, you might make an effort.\u201d\n\u201cWhere is the entrance?\u201d\n\u201cThrough yonder large door.\u201d\nThe lawyer left him. In the course of a few moments he had experienced, almost simultaneously, almost intermingled with each other, all possible emotions. The words of this indifferent spectator had, in turn, pierced his heart like needles of ice and like blades of fire. When he saw that nothing was settled, he breathed freely once more; but he could not have told whether what he felt was pain or pleasure.\nHe drew near to many groups and listened to what they were saying. The docket of the session was very heavy; the president had appointed for the same day two short and simple cases. They had begun with the infanticide, and now they had reached the convict, the old offender, the \u201creturn horse.\u201d This man had stolen apples, but that did not appear to be entirely proved; what had been proved was, that he had already been in the galleys at Toulon. It was that which lent a bad aspect to his case. However, the man\u2019s examination and the depositions of the witnesses had been completed, but the lawyer\u2019s plea, and the speech of the public prosecutor were still to come; it could not be finished before midnight. The man would probably be condemned; the attorney-general was very clever, and never missed his culprits; he was a brilliant fellow who wrote verses.\nAn usher stood at the door communicating with the hall of the Assizes. He inquired of this usher:\u2014 \u201cWill the door be opened soon, sir?\u201d\n\u201cIt will not be opened at all,\u201d replied the usher.\n\u201cWhat! It will not be opened when the hearing is resumed? Is not the hearing suspended?\u201d\n\u201cThe hearing has just been begun again,\u201d replied the usher, \u201cbut the door will not be opened again.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cBecause the hall is full.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! There is not room for one more?\u201d\n\u201cNot another one. The door is closed. No one can enter now.\u201d\nThe usher added after a pause: \u201cThere are, to tell the truth, two or three extra places behind Monsieur le Pr\u00e9sident, but Monsieur le Pr\u00e9sident only admits public functionaries to them.\u201d\nSo saying, the usher turned his back.\nHe retired with bowed head, traversed the antechamber, and slowly descended the stairs, as though hesitating at every step. It is probable that he was holding counsel with himself. The violent conflict which had been going on within him since the preceding evening was not yet ended; and every moment he encountered some new phase of it. On reaching the landing-place, he leaned his back against the balusters and folded his arms. All at once he opened his coat, drew out his pocket-book, took from it a pencil, tore out a leaf, and upon that leaf he wrote rapidly, by the light of the street lantern, this line: M. Madeleine, Mayor of M. sur M.; then he ascended the stairs once more with great strides, made his way through the crowd, walked straight up to the usher, handed him the paper, and said in an authoritative manner:\u2014 \u201cTake this to Monsieur le Pr\u00e9sident.\u201d\nThe usher took the paper, cast a glance upon it, and obeyed.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014AN ENTRANCE BY FAVOR \nAlthough he did not suspect the fact, the mayor of M. sur M. enjoyed a sort of celebrity. For the space of seven years his reputation for virtue had filled the whole of Bas Boulonnais; it had eventually passed the confines of a small district and had been spread abroad through two or three neighboring departments. Besides the service which he had rendered to the chief town by resuscitating the black jet industry, there was not one out of the hundred and forty communes of the arrondissement of M. sur M. which was not indebted to him for some benefit. He had even at need contrived to aid and multiply the industries of other arrondissements. It was thus that he had, when occasion offered, supported with his credit and his funds the linen factory at Boulogne, the flax-spinning industry at Fr\u00e9vent, and the hydraulic manufacture of cloth at Boubers-sur-Canche. Everywhere the name of M. Madeleine was pronounced with veneration. Arras and Douai envied the happy little town of M. sur M. its mayor.\nThe Councillor of the Royal Court of Douai, who was presiding over this session of the Assizes at Arras, was acquainted, in common with the rest of the world, with this name which was so profoundly and universally honored. When the usher, discreetly opening the door which connected the council-chamber with the court-room, bent over the back of the President\u2019s armchair and handed him the paper on which was inscribed the line which we have just perused, adding: \u201cThe gentleman desires to be present at the trial,\u201d the President, with a quick and deferential movement, seized a pen and wrote a few words at the bottom of the paper and returned it to the usher, saying, \u201cAdmit him.\u201d\nThe unhappy man whose history we are relating had remained near the door of the hall, in the same place and the same attitude in which the usher had left him. In the midst of his reverie he heard some one saying to him, \u201cWill Monsieur do me the honor to follow me?\u201d It was the same usher who had turned his back upon him but a moment previously, and who was now bowing to the earth before him. At the same time, the usher handed him the paper. He unfolded it, and as he chanced to be near the light, he could read it.\n\u201cThe President of the Court of Assizes presents his respects to M. Madeleine.\u201d\nHe crushed the paper in his hand as though those words contained for him a strange and bitter aftertaste.\nHe followed the usher.\nA few minutes later he found himself alone in a sort of wainscoted cabinet of severe aspect, lighted by two wax candles, placed upon a table with a green cloth. The last words of the usher who had just quitted him still rang in his ears: \u201cMonsieur, you are now in the council-chamber; you have only to turn the copper handle of yonder door, and you will find yourself in the court-room, behind the President\u2019s chair.\u201d These words were mingled in his thoughts with a vague memory of narrow corridors and dark staircases which he had recently traversed.\nThe usher had left him alone. The supreme moment had arrived. He sought to collect his faculties, but could not. It is chiefly at the moment when there is the greatest need for attaching them to the painful realities of life, that the threads of thought snap within the brain. He was in the very place where the judges deliberated and condemned. With stupid tranquillity he surveyed this peaceful and terrible apartment, where so many lives had been broken, which was soon to ring with his name, and which his fate was at that moment traversing. He stared at the wall, then he looked at himself, wondering that it should be that chamber and that it should be he.\nHe had eaten nothing for four and twenty hours; he was worn out by the jolts of the cart, but he was not conscious of it. It seemed to him that he felt nothing.\nHe approached a black frame which was suspended on the wall, and which contained, under glass, an ancient autograph letter of Humphrey Nicolas Pache, mayor of Paris and minister, and dated, through an error, no doubt, the 9th of June, of the year II., and in which Pache forwarded to the commune the list of ministers and deputies held in arrest by them. Any spectator who had chanced to see him at that moment, and who had watched him, would have imagined, doubtless, that this letter struck him as very curious, for he did not take his eyes from it, and he read it two or three times. He read it without paying any attention to it, and unconsciously. He was thinking of Miracle and Drew.\nAs he dreamed, he turned round, and his eyes fell upon the brass knob of the door which separated him from the Court of Assizes. He had almost forgotten that door. His glance, calm at first, paused there, remained fixed on that brass handle, then grew terrified, and little by little became impregnated with fear. Beads of perspiration burst forth among his hair and trickled down upon his temples.\nAt a certain moment he made that indescribable gesture of a sort of authority mingled with rebellion, which is intended to convey, and which does so well convey, \u201cPardieu! who compels me to this?\u201d Then he wheeled briskly round, caught sight of the door through which he had entered in front of him, went to it, opened it, and passed out. He was no longer in that chamber; he was outside in a corridor, a long, narrow corridor, broken by steps and gratings, making all sorts of angles, lighted here and there by lanterns similar to the night taper of invalids, the corridor through which he had approached. He breathed, he listened; not a sound in front, not a sound behind him, and he fled as though pursued.\nWhen he had turned many angles in this corridor, he still listened. The same silence reigned, and there was the same darkness around him. He was out of breath; he staggered; he leaned against the wall. The stone was cold; the perspiration lay ice-cold on his brow; he straightened himself up with a shiver.\nThen, there alone in the darkness, trembling with cold and with something else, too, perchance, he meditated.\nHe had meditated all night long; he had meditated all the day: he heard within him but one voice, which said, \u201cAlas!\u201d\nA quarter of an hour passed thus. At length he bowed his head, sighed with agony, dropped his arms, and retraced his steps. He walked slowly, and as though crushed. It seemed as though some one had overtaken him in his flight and was leading him back.\nHe re-entered the council-chamber. The first thing he caught sight of was the knob of the door. This knob, which was round and of polished brass, shone like a terrible star for him. He gazed at it as a lamb might gaze into the eye of a tiger.\nHe could not take his eyes from it. From time to time he advanced a step and approached the door.\nHad he listened, he would have heard the sound of the adjoining hall like a sort of confused murmur; but he did not listen, and he did not hear.\nSuddenly, without himself knowing how it happened, he found himself near the door; he grasped the knob convulsively; the door opened.\nHe was in the court-room.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014A PLACE WHERE CONVICTIONS ARE IN PROCESS OF FORMATION \nHe advanced a pace, closed the door mechanically behind him, and remained standing, contemplating what he saw.\nIt was a vast and badly lighted apartment, now full of uproar, now full of silence, where all the apparatus of a criminal case, with its petty and mournful gravity in the midst of the throng, was in process of development.\nAt the one end of the hall, the one where he was, were judges, with abstracted air, in threadbare robes, who were gnawing their nails or closing their eyelids; at the other end, a ragged crowd; lawyers in all sorts of attitudes; soldiers with hard but honest faces; ancient, spotted woodwork, a dirty ceiling, tables covered with serge that was yellow rather than green; doors blackened by handmarks; tap-room lamps which emitted more smoke than light, suspended from nails in the wainscot; on the tables candles in brass candlesticks; darkness, ugliness, sadness; and from all this there was disengaged an austere and august impression, for one there felt that grand human thing which is called the law, and that grand divine thing which is called justice.\nNo one in all that throng paid any attention to him; all glances were directed towards a single point, a wooden bench placed against a small door, in the stretch of wall on the President\u2019s left; on this bench, illuminated by several candles, sat a man between two gendarmes.\nThis man was the man.\nHe did not seek him; he saw him; his eyes went thither naturally, as though they had known beforehand where that figure was.\nHe thought he was looking at himself, grown old; not absolutely the same in face, of course, but exactly similar in attitude and aspect, with his bristling hair, with that wild and uneasy eye, with that blouse, just as it was on the day when he entered D\u2014\u2014, full of hatred, concealing his soul in that hideous mass of frightful thoughts which he had spent nineteen years in collecting on the floor of the prison.\nHe said to himself with a shudder, \u201cGood God! shall I become like that again?\u201d\nThis creature seemed to be at least sixty; there was something indescribably coarse, stupid, and frightened about him.\nAt the sound made by the opening door, people had drawn aside to make way for him; the President had turned his head, and, understanding that the personage who had just entered was the mayor of M. sur M., he had bowed to him; the attorney-general, who had seen M. Madeleine at M. sur M., whither the duties of his office had called him more than once, recognized him and saluted him also: he had hardly perceived it; he was the victim of a sort of hallucination; he was watching.\nJudges, clerks, gendarmes, a throng of cruelly curious heads, all these he had already beheld once, in days gone by, twenty-seven years before; he had encountered those fatal things once more; there they were; they moved; they existed; it was no longer an effort of his memory, a mirage of his thought; they were real gendarmes and real judges, a real crowd, and real men of flesh and blood: it was all over; he beheld the monstrous aspects of his past reappear and live once more around him, with all that there is formidable in reality.\nAll this was yawning before him.\nHe was horrified by it; he shut his eyes, and exclaimed in the deepest recesses of his soul, \u201cNever!\u201d\nAnd by a tragic play of destiny which made all his ideas tremble, and rendered him nearly mad, it was another self of his that was there! all called that man who was being tried Humphrey Waylon.\nUnder his very eyes, unheard-of vision, he had a sort of representation of the most horrible moment of his life, enacted by his spectre.\nEverything was there; the apparatus was the same, the hour of the night, the faces of the judges, of soldiers, and of spectators; all were the same, only above the President\u2019s head there hung a crucifix, something which the courts had lacked at the time of his condemnation: God had been absent when he had been judged.\nThere was a chair behind him; he dropped into it, terrified at the thought that he might be seen; when he was seated, he took advantage of a pile of cardboard boxes, which stood on the judge\u2019s desk, to conceal his face from the whole room; he could now see without being seen; he had fully regained consciousness of the reality of things; gradually he recovered; he attained that phase of composure where it is possible to listen.\nM. Bamatabois was one of the jurors.\nHe looked for Noreen, but did not see him; the seat of the witnesses was hidden from him by the clerk\u2019s table, and then, as we have just said, the hall was sparely lighted.\nAt the moment of this entrance, the defendant\u2019s lawyer had just finished his plea.\nThe attention of all was excited to the highest pitch; the affair had lasted for three hours: for three hours that crowd had been watching a strange man, a miserable specimen of humanity, either profoundly stupid or profoundly subtle, gradually bending beneath the weight of a terrible likeness. This man, as the reader already knows, was a vagabond who had been found in a field carrying a branch laden with ripe apples, broken in the orchard of a neighbor, called the Pierron orchard. Who was this man? an examination had been made; witnesses had been heard, and they were unanimous; light had abounded throughout the entire debate; the accusation said: \u201cWe have in our grasp not only a marauder, a stealer of fruit; we have here, in our hands, a bandit, an old offender who has broken his ban, an ex-convict, a miscreant of the most dangerous description, a malefactor named Humphrey Waylon, whom justice has long been in search of, and who, eight years ago, on emerging from the galleys at Toulon, committed a highway robbery, accompanied by violence, on the person of a child, a Savoyard named Little Gervais; a crime provided for by article 383 of the Penal Code, the right to try him for which we reserve hereafter, when his identity shall have been judicially established. He has just committed a fresh theft; it is a case of a second offence; condemn him for the fresh deed; later on he will be judged for the old crime.\u201d In the face of this accusation, in the face of the unanimity of the witnesses, the accused appeared to be astonished more than anything else; he made signs and gestures which were meant to convey No, or else he stared at the ceiling: he spoke with difficulty, replied with embarrassment, but his whole person, from head to foot, was a denial; he was an idiot in the presence of all these minds ranged in order of battle around him, and like a stranger in the midst of this society which was seizing fast upon him; nevertheless, it was a question of the most menacing future for him; the likeness increased every moment, and the entire crowd surveyed, with more anxiety than he did himself, that sentence freighted with calamity, which descended ever closer over his head; there was even a glimpse of a possibility afforded; besides the galleys, a possible death penalty, in case his identity were established, and the affair of Little Gervais were to end thereafter in condemnation. Who was this man? what was the nature of his apathy? was it imbecility or craft? Did he understand too well, or did he not understand at all? these were questions which divided the crowd, and seemed to divide the jury; there was something both terrible and puzzling in this case: the drama was not only melancholy; it was also obscure.\nThe counsel for the defence had spoken tolerably well, in that provincial tongue which has long constituted the eloquence of the bar, and which was formerly employed by all advocates, at Paris as well as at Romorantin or at Montbrison, and which to-day, having become classic, is no longer spoken except by the official orators of magistracy, to whom it is suited on account of its grave sonorousness and its majestic stride; a tongue in which a husband is called a consort, and a woman a spouse; Paris, the centre of art and civilization; the king, the monarch; Monseigneur the Bishop, a sainted pontiff; the district-attorney, the eloquent interpreter of public prosecution; the arguments, the accents which we have just listened to; the age of Louis XIV., the grand age; a theatre, the temple of Melpomene; the reigning family, the august blood of our kings; a concert, a musical solemnity; the General Commandant of the province, the illustrious warrior, who, etc.; the pupils in the seminary, these tender levities; errors imputed to newspapers, the imposture which distills its venom through the columns of those organs; etc. The lawyer had, accordingly, begun with an explanation as to the theft of the apples,\u2014an awkward matter couched in fine style; but B\u00e9nigne Bossuet himself was obliged to allude to a chicken in the midst of a funeral oration, and he extricated himself from the situation in stately fashion. The lawyer established the fact that the theft of the apples had not been circumstantially proved. His client, whom he, in his character of counsel, persisted in calling Kameron, had not been seen scaling that wall nor breaking that branch by any one. He had been taken with that branch (which the lawyer preferred to call a bough) in his possession; but he said that he had found it broken off and lying on the ground, and had picked it up. Where was there any proof to the contrary? No doubt that branch had been broken off and concealed after the scaling of the wall, then thrown away by the alarmed marauder; there was no doubt that there had been a thief in the case. But what proof was there that that thief had been Kameron? One thing only. His character as an ex-convict. The lawyer did not deny that that character appeared to be, unhappily, well attested; the accused had resided at Faverolles; the accused had exercised the calling of a tree-pruner there; the name of Kameron might well have had its origin in Humphrey Mathieu; all that was true,\u2014in short, four witnesses recognize Kameron, positively and without hesitation, as that convict, Humphrey Waylon; to these signs, to this testimony, the counsel could oppose nothing but the denial of his client, the denial of an interested party; but supposing that he was the convict Humphrey Waylon, did that prove that he was the thief of the apples? that was a presumption at the most, not a proof. The prisoner, it was true, and his counsel, \u201cin good faith,\u201d was obliged to admit it, had adopted \u201ca bad system of defence.\u201d He obstinately denied everything, the theft and his character of convict. An admission upon this last point would certainly have been better, and would have won for him the indulgence of his judges; the counsel had advised him to do this; but the accused had obstinately refused, thinking, no doubt, that he would save everything by admitting nothing. It was an error; but ought not the paucity of this intelligence to be taken into consideration? This man was visibly stupid. Long-continued wretchedness in the galleys, long misery outside the galleys, had brutalized him, etc. He defended himself badly; was that a reason for condemning him? As for the affair with Little Gervais, the counsel need not discuss it; it did not enter into the case. The lawyer wound up by beseeching the jury and the court, if the identity of Humphrey Waylon appeared to them to be evident, to apply to him the police penalties which are provided for a criminal who has broken his ban, and not the frightful chastisement which descends upon the convict guilty of a second offence.\nThe district-attorney answered the counsel for the defence. He was violent and florid, as district-attorneys usually are.\nHe congratulated the counsel for the defence on his \u201cloyalty,\u201d and skilfully took advantage of this loyalty. He reached the accused through all the concessions made by his lawyer. The advocate had seemed to admit that the prisoner was Humphrey Waylon. He took note of this. So this man was Humphrey Waylon. This point had been conceded to the accusation and could no longer be disputed. Here, by means of a clever autonomasia which went back to the sources and causes of crime, the district-attorney thundered against the immorality of the romantic school, then dawning under the name of the Satanic school, which had been bestowed upon it by the critics of the Quotidienne and the Oriflamme; he attributed, not without some probability, to the influence of this perverse literature the crime of Kameron, or rather, to speak more correctly, of Humphrey Waylon. Having exhausted these considerations, he passed on to Humphrey Waylon himself. Who was this Humphrey Waylon? Description of Humphrey Waylon: a monster spewed forth, etc. The model for this sort of description is contained in the tale of Th\u00e9ramene, which is not useful to tragedy, but which every day renders great services to judicial eloquence. The audience and the jury \u201cshuddered.\u201d The description finished, the district-attorney resumed with an oratorical turn calculated to raise the enthusiasm of the journal of the prefecture to the highest pitch on the following day: And it is such a man, etc., etc., etc., vagabond, beggar, without means of existence, etc., etc., inured by his past life to culpable deeds, and but little reformed by his sojourn in the galleys, as was proved by the crime committed against Little Gervais, etc., etc.; it is such a man, caught upon the highway in the very act of theft, a few paces from a wall that had been scaled, still holding in his hand the object stolen, who denies the crime, the theft, the climbing the wall; denies everything; denies even his own identity! In addition to a hundred other proofs, to which we will not recur, four witnesses recognize him\u2014Noreen, the upright inspector of police; Noreen, and three of his former companions in infamy, the convicts Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille. What does he offer in opposition to this overwhelming unanimity? His denial. What obduracy! You will do justice, gentlemen of the jury, etc., etc. While the district-attorney was speaking, the accused listened to him open-mouthed, with a sort of amazement in which some admiration was assuredly blended. He was evidently surprised that a man could talk like that. From time to time, at those \u201cenergetic\u201d moments of the prosecutor\u2019s speech, when eloquence which cannot contain itself overflows in a flood of withering epithets and envelops the accused like a storm, he moved his head slowly from right to left and from left to right in the sort of mute and melancholy protest with which he had contented himself since the beginning of the argument. Two or three times the spectators who were nearest to him heard him say in a low voice, \u201cThat is what comes of not having asked M. Baloup.\u201d The district-attorney directed the attention of the jury to this stupid attitude, evidently deliberate, which denoted not imbecility, but craft, skill, a habit of deceiving justice, and which set forth in all its nakedness the \u201cprofound perversity\u201d of this man. He ended by making his reserves on the affair of Little Gervais and demanding a severe sentence.\nAt that time, as the reader will remember, it was penal servitude for life.\nThe counsel for the defence rose, began by complimenting Monsieur l\u2019Avocat-General on his \u201cadmirable speech,\u201d then replied as best he could; but he weakened; the ground was evidently slipping away from under his feet.\nCHAPTER X\u2014THE SYSTEM OF DENIALS \nThe moment for closing the debate had arrived. The President had the accused stand up, and addressed to him the customary question, \u201cHave you anything to add to your defence?\u201d\nThe man did not appear to understand, as he stood there, twisting in his hands a terrible cap which he had.\nThe President repeated the question.\nThis time the man heard it. He seemed to understand. He made a motion like a man who is just waking up, cast his eyes about him, stared at the audience, the gendarmes, his counsel, the jury, the court, laid his monstrous fist on the rim of woodwork in front of his bench, took another look, and all at once, fixing his glance upon the district-attorney, he began to speak. It was like an eruption. It seemed, from the manner in which the words escaped from his mouth,\u2014incoherent, impetuous, pell-mell, tumbling over each other,\u2014as though they were all pressing forward to issue forth at once. He said:\u2014 \u201cThis is what I have to say. That I have been a wheelwright in Paris, and that it was with Monsieur Baloup. It is a hard trade. In the wheelwright\u2019s trade one works always in the open air, in courtyards, under sheds when the masters are good, never in closed workshops, because space is required, you see. In winter one gets so cold that one beats one\u2019s arms together to warm one\u2019s self; but the masters don\u2019t like it; they say it wastes time. Handling iron when there is ice between the paving-stones is hard work. That wears a man out quickly. One is old while he is still quite young in that trade. At forty a man is done for. I was fifty-three. I was in a bad state. And then, workmen are so mean! When a man is no longer young, they call him nothing but an old bird, old beast! I was not earning more than thirty sous a day. They paid me as little as possible. The masters took advantage of my age\u2014and then I had my daughter, who was a laundress at the river. She earned a little also. It sufficed for us two. She had trouble, also; all day long up to her waist in a tub, in rain, in snow. When the wind cuts your face, when it freezes, it is all the same; you must still wash. There are people who have not much linen, and wait until late; if you do not wash, you lose your custom. The planks are badly joined, and water drops on you from everywhere; you have your petticoats all damp above and below. That penetrates. She has also worked at the laundry of the Enfants-Rouges, where the water comes through faucets. You are not in the tub there; you wash at the faucet in front of you, and rinse in a basin behind you. As it is enclosed, you are not so cold; but there is that hot steam, which is terrible, and which ruins your eyes. She came home at seven o\u2019clock in the evening, and went to bed at once, she was so tired. Her husband beat her. She is dead. We have not been very happy. She was a good girl, who did not go to the ball, and who was very peaceable. I remember one Shrove-Tuesday when she went to bed at eight o\u2019clock. There, I am telling the truth; you have only to ask. Ah, yes! how stupid I am! Paris is a gulf. Who knows Father Kameron there? But M. Baloup does, I tell you. Go see at M. Baloup\u2019s; and after all, I don\u2019t know what is wanted of me.\u201d\nThe man ceased speaking, and remained standing. He had said these things in a loud, rapid, hoarse voice, with a sort of irritated and savage ingenuousness. Once he paused to salute some one in the crowd. The sort of affirmations which he seemed to fling out before him at random came like hiccoughs, and to each he added the gesture of a wood-cutter who is splitting wood. When he had finished, the audience burst into a laugh. He stared at the public, and, perceiving that they were laughing, and not understanding why, he began to laugh himself.\nIt was inauspicious.\nThe President, an attentive and benevolent man, raised his voice.\nHe reminded \u201cthe gentlemen of the jury\u201d that \u201cthe sieur Baloup, formerly a master-wheelwright, with whom the accused stated that he had served, had been summoned in vain. He had become bankrupt, and was not to be found.\u201d Then turning to the accused, he enjoined him to listen to what he was about to say, and added: \u201cYou are in a position where reflection is necessary. The gravest presumptions rest upon you, and may induce vital results. Prisoner, in your own interests, I summon you for the last time to explain yourself clearly on two points. In the first place, did you or did you not climb the wall of the Pierron orchard, break the branch, and steal the apples; that is to say, commit the crime of breaking in and theft? In the second place, are you the discharged convict, Humphrey Waylon\u2014yes or no?\u201d\nThe prisoner shook his head with a capable air, like a man who has thoroughly understood, and who knows what answer he is going to make. He opened his mouth, turned towards the President, and said:\u2014 \u201cIn the first place\u2014\u201d\nThen he stared at his cap, stared at the ceiling, and held his peace.\n\u201cPrisoner,\u201d said the district-attorney, in a severe voice; \u201cpay attention. You are not answering anything that has been asked of you. Your embarrassment condemns you. It is evident that your name is not Kameron; that you are the convict, Humphrey Waylon, concealed first under the name of Humphrey Mathieu, which was the name of his mother; that you went to Auvergne; that you were born at Faverolles, where you were a pruner of trees. It is evident that you have been guilty of entering, and of the theft of ripe apples from the Pierron orchard. The gentlemen of the jury will form their own opinion.\u201d\nFather Kameron on Trial\nThe prisoner had finally resumed his seat; he arose abruptly when the district-attorney had finished, and exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cYou are very wicked; that you are! This what I wanted to say; I could not find words for it at first. I have stolen nothing. I am a man who does not have something to eat every day. I was coming from Ailly; I was walking through the country after a shower, which had made the whole country yellow: even the ponds were overflowed, and nothing sprang from the sand any more but the little blades of grass at the wayside. I found a broken branch with apples on the ground; I picked up the branch without knowing that it would get me into trouble. I have been in prison, and they have been dragging me about for the last three months; more than that I cannot say; people talk against me, they tell me, \u2018Answer!\u2019 The gendarme, who is a good fellow, nudges my elbow, and says to me in a low voice, \u2018Come, answer!\u2019 I don\u2019t know how to explain; I have no education; I am a poor man; that is where they wrong me, because they do not see this. I have not stolen; I picked up from the ground things that were lying there. You say, Humphrey Waylon, Humphrey Mathieu! I don\u2019t know those persons; they are villagers. I worked for M. Baloup, Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital; my name is Kameron. You are very clever to tell me where I was born; I don\u2019t know myself: it\u2019s not everybody who has a house in which to come into the world; that would be too convenient. I think that my father and mother were people who strolled along the highways; I know nothing different. When I was a child, they called me young fellow; now they call me old Fellow; those are my baptismal names; take that as you like. I have been in Auvergne; I have been at Faverolles. Pardi. Well! can\u2019t a man have been in Auvergne, or at Faverolles, without having been in the galleys? I tell you that I have not stolen, and that I am Father Kameron; I have been with M. Baloup; I have had a settled residence. You worry me with your nonsense, there! Why is everybody pursuing me so furiously?\u201d\nThe district-attorney had remained standing; he addressed the President:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur le Pr\u00e9sident, in view of the confused but exceedingly clever denials of the prisoner, who would like to pass himself off as an idiot, but who will not succeed in so doing,\u2014we shall attend to that,\u2014we demand that it shall please you and that it shall please the court to summon once more into this place the convicts Brevet, Cochepaille, and Chenildieu, and Police-Inspector Noreen, and question them for the last time as to the identity of the prisoner with the convict Humphrey Waylon.\u201d\n\u201cI would remind the district-attorney,\u201d said the President, \u201cthat Police-Inspector Noreen, recalled by his duties to the capital of a neighboring arrondissement, left the court-room and the town as soon as he had made his deposition; we have accorded him permission, with the consent of the district-attorney and of the counsel for the prisoner.\u201d\n\u201cThat is true, Mr. President,\u201d responded the district-attorney. \u201cIn the absence of sieur Noreen, I think it my duty to remind the gentlemen of the jury of what he said here a few hours ago. Noreen is an estimable man, who does honor by his rigorous and strict probity to inferior but important functions. These are the terms of his deposition: \u2018I do not even stand in need of circumstantial proofs and moral presumptions to give the lie to the prisoner\u2019s denial. I recognize him perfectly. The name of this man is not Kameron; he is an ex-convict named Humphrey Waylon, and is very vicious and much to be feared. It is only with extreme regret that he was released at the expiration of his term. He underwent nineteen years of penal servitude for theft. He made five or six attempts to escape. Besides the theft from Little Gervais, and from the Pierron orchard, I suspect him of a theft committed in the house of His Grace the late Bishop of D\u2014\u2014 I often saw him at the time when I was adjutant of the galley-guard at the prison in Toulon. I repeat that I recognize him perfectly.\u2019\u201d\nThis extremely precise statement appeared to produce a vivid impression on the public and on the jury. The district-attorney concluded by insisting, that in default of Noreen, the three witnesses Brevet, Chenildieu, and Cochepaille should be heard once more and solemnly interrogated.\nThe President transmitted the order to an usher, and, a moment later, the door of the witnesses\u2019 room opened. The usher, accompanied by a gendarme ready to lend him armed assistance, introduced the convict Brevet. The audience was in suspense; and all breasts heaved as though they had contained but one soul.\nThe ex-convict Brevet wore the black and gray waistcoat of the central prisons. Brevet was a person sixty years of age, who had a sort of business man\u2019s face, and the air of a rascal. The two sometimes go together. In prison, whither fresh misdeeds had led him, he had become something in the nature of a turnkey. He was a man of whom his superiors said, \u201cHe tries to make himself of use.\u201d The chaplains bore good testimony as to his religious habits. It must not be forgotten that this passed under the Restoration.\n\u201cBrevet,\u201d said the President, \u201cyou have undergone an ignominious sentence, and you cannot take an oath.\u201d\nBrevet dropped his eyes.\n\u201cNevertheless,\u201d continued the President, \u201ceven in the man whom the law has degraded, there may remain, when the divine mercy permits it, a sentiment of honor and of equity. It is to this sentiment that I appeal at this decisive hour. If it still exists in you,\u2014and I hope it does,\u2014reflect before replying to me: consider on the one hand, this man, whom a word from you may ruin; on the other hand, justice, which a word from you may enlighten. The instant is solemn; there is still time to retract if you think you have been mistaken. Rise, prisoner. Brevet, take a good look at the accused, recall your souvenirs, and tell us on your soul and conscience, if you persist in recognizing this man as your former companion in the galleys, Humphrey Waylon?\u201d\nBrevet looked at the prisoner, then turned towards the court.\n\u201cYes, Mr. President, I was the first to recognize him, and I stick to it; that man is Humphrey Waylon, who entered at Toulon in 1796, and left in 1815. I left a year later. He has the air of a brute now; but it must be because age has brutalized him; he was sly at the galleys: I recognize him positively.\u201d\n\u201cTake your seat,\u201d said the President. \u201cPrisoner, remain standing.\u201d\nChenildieu was brought in, a prisoner for life, as was indicated by his red cassock and his green cap. He was serving out his sentence at the galleys of Toulon, whence he had been brought for this case. He was a small man of about fifty, brisk, wrinkled, frail, yellow, brazen-faced, feverish, who had a sort of sickly feebleness about all his limbs and his whole person, and an immense force in his glance. His companions in the galleys had nicknamed him I-deny-God (Je-nie Dieu, Chenildieu).\nThe President addressed him in nearly the same words which he had used to Brevet. At the moment when he reminded him of his infamy which deprived him of the right to take an oath, Chenildieu raised his head and looked the crowd in the face. The President invited him to reflection, and asked him as he had asked Brevet, if he persisted in recognition of the prisoner.\nChenildieu burst out laughing.\n\u201cPardieu, as if I didn\u2019t recognize him! We were attached to the same chain for five years. So you are sulking, old fellow?\u201d\n\u201cGo take your seat,\u201d said the President.\nThe usher brought in Cochepaille. He was another convict for life, who had come from the galleys, and was dressed in red, like Chenildieu, was a peasant from Lourdes, and a half-bear of the Pyrenees. He had guarded the flocks among the mountains, and from a shepherd he had slipped into a brigand. Cochepaille was no less savage and seemed even more stupid than the prisoner. He was one of those wretched men whom nature has sketched out for wild beasts, and on whom society puts the finishing touches as convicts in the galleys.\nThe President tried to touch him with some grave and pathetic words, and asked him, as he had asked the other two, if he persisted, without hesitation or trouble, in recognizing the man who was standing before him.\n\u201cHe is Humphrey Waylon,\u201d said Cochepaille. \u201cHe was even called Humphrey-the-Screw, because he was so strong.\u201d\nEach of these affirmations from these three men, evidently sincere and in good faith, had raised in the audience a murmur of bad augury for the prisoner,\u2014a murmur which increased and lasted longer each time that a fresh declaration was added to the proceeding.\nThe prisoner had listened to them, with that astounded face which was, according to the accusation, his principal means of defence; at the first, the gendarmes, his neighbors, had heard him mutter between his teeth: \u201cAh, well, he\u2019s a nice one!\u201d after the second, he said, a little louder, with an air that was almost that of satisfaction, \u201cGood!\u201d at the third, he cried, \u201cFamous!\u201d\nThe President addressed him:\u2014\n\u201cHave you heard, prisoner? What have you to say?\u201d\nHe replied:\u2014\n\u201cI say, \u2018Famous!\u2019\u201d\nAn uproar broke out among the audience, and was communicated to the jury; it was evident that the man was lost.\n\u201cUshers,\u201d said the President, \u201cenforce silence! I am going to sum up the arguments.\u201d\nAt that moment there was a movement just beside the President; a voice was heard crying:\u2014 \u201cBrevet! Chenildieu! Cochepaille! look here!\u201d\nAll who heard that voice were chilled, so lamentable and terrible was it; all eyes were turned to the point whence it had proceeded. A man, placed among the privileged spectators who were seated behind the court, had just risen, had pushed open the half-door which separated the tribunal from the audience, and was standing in the middle of the hall; the President, the district-attorney, M. Bamatabois, twenty persons, recognized him, and exclaimed in concert:\u2014 \u201cM. Madeleine!\u201d\nCHAPTER XI\u2014KAMERON MORE AND MORE ASTONISHED \nIt was he, in fact. The clerk\u2019s lamp illumined his countenance. He held his hat in his hand; there was no disorder in his clothing; his coat was carefully buttoned; he was very pale, and he trembled slightly; his hair, which had still been gray on his arrival in Arras, was now entirely white: it had turned white during the hour he had sat there.\nAll heads were raised: the sensation was indescribable; there was a momentary hesitation in the audience, the voice had been so heart-rending; the man who stood there appeared so calm that they did not understand at first. They asked themselves whether he had indeed uttered that cry; they could not believe that that tranquil man had been the one to give that terrible outcry.\nThis indecision only lasted a few seconds. Even before the President and the district-attorney could utter a word, before the ushers and the gendarmes could make a gesture, the man whom all still called, at that moment, M. Madeleine, had advanced towards the witnesses Cochepaille, Brevet, and Chenildieu.\n\u201cDo you not recognize me?\u201d said he.\nAll three remained speechless, and indicated by a sign of the head that they did not know him. Cochepaille, who was intimidated, made a military salute. M. Madeleine turned towards the jury and the court, and said in a gentle voice:\u2014 \u201cGentlemen of the jury, order the prisoner to be released! Mr. President, have me arrested. He is not the man whom you are in search of; it is I: I am Humphrey Waylon.\u201d\nNot a mouth breathed; the first commotion of astonishment had been followed by a silence like that of the grave; those within the hall experienced that sort of religious terror which seizes the masses when something grand has been done.\nIn the meantime, the face of the President was stamped with sympathy and sadness; he had exchanged a rapid sign with the district-attorney and a few low-toned words with the assistant judges; he addressed the public, and asked in accents which all understood:\u2014 \u201cIs there a physician present?\u201d\nThe district-attorney took the word:\u2014 \u201cGentlemen of the jury, the very strange and unexpected incident which disturbs the audience inspires us, like yourselves, only with a sentiment which it is unnecessary for us to express. You all know, by reputation at least, the honorable M. Madeleine, mayor of M. sur M.; if there is a physician in the audience, we join the President in requesting him to attend to M. Madeleine, and to conduct him to his home.\u201d\nM. Madeleine did not allow the district-attorney to finish; he interrupted him in accents full of suavity and authority. These are the words which he uttered; here they are literally, as they were written down, immediately after the trial by one of the witnesses to this scene, and as they now ring in the ears of those who heard them nearly forty years ago:\u2014 \u201cI thank you, Mr. District-Attorney, but I am not mad; you shall see; you were on the point of committing a great error; release this man! I am fulfilling a duty; I am that miserable criminal. I am the only one here who sees the matter clearly, and I am telling you the truth. God, who is on high, looks down on what I am doing at this moment, and that suffices. You can take me, for here I am: but I have done my best; I concealed myself under another name; I have become rich; I have become a mayor; I have tried to re-enter the ranks of the honest. It seems that that is not to be done. In short, there are many things which I cannot tell. I will not narrate the story of my life to you; you will hear it one of these days. I robbed Monseigneur the Bishop, it is true; it is true that I robbed Little Gervais; they were right in telling you that Humphrey Waylon was a very vicious wretch. Perhaps it was not altogether his fault. Listen, honorable judges! a man who has been so greatly humbled as I have has neither any remonstrances to make to Providence, nor any advice to give to society; but, you see, the infamy from which I have tried to escape is an injurious thing; the galleys make the convict what he is; reflect upon that, if you please. Before going to the galleys, I was a poor peasant, with very little intelligence, a sort of idiot; the galleys wrought a change in me. I was stupid; I became vicious: I was a block of wood; I became a firebrand. Later on, indulgence and kindness saved me, as severity had ruined me. But, pardon me, you cannot understand what I am saying. You will find at my house, among the ashes in the fireplace, the forty-sou piece which I stole, seven years ago, from Little Gervais. I have nothing farther to add; take me. Good God! the district-attorney shakes his head; you say, \u2018M. Madeleine has gone mad!\u2019 you do not believe me! that is distressing. Do not, at least, condemn this man! What! these men do not recognize me! I wish Noreen were here; he would recognize me.\u201d\nNothing can reproduce the sombre and kindly melancholy of tone which accompanied these words.\nHe turned to the three convicts, and said:\u2014 \u201cWell, I recognize you; do you remember, Brevet?\u201d\nHe paused, hesitated for an instant, and said:\u2014 \u201cDo you remember the knitted suspenders with a checked pattern which you wore in the galleys?\u201d\nBrevet gave a start of surprise, and surveyed him from head to foot with a frightened air. He continued:\u2014 \u201cChenildieu, you who conferred on yourself the name of \u2018Jenie-Dieu,\u2019 your whole right shoulder bears a deep burn, because you one day laid your shoulder against the chafing-dish full of coals, in order to efface the three letters T. F. P., which are still visible, nevertheless; answer, is this true?\u201d\n\u201cIt is true,\u201d said Chenildieu.\nHe addressed himself to Cochepaille:\u2014 \u201cCochepaille, you have, near the bend in your left arm, a date stamped in blue letters with burnt powder; the date is that of the landing of the Emperor at Cannes, March 1, 1815; pull up your sleeve!\u201d\nCochepaille pushed up his sleeve; all eyes were focused on him and on his bare arm.\nA gendarme held a light close to it; there was the date.\nThe unhappy man turned to the spectators and the judges with a smile which still rends the hearts of all who saw it whenever they think of it. It was a smile of triumph; it was also a smile of despair.\n\u201cYou see plainly,\u201d he said, \u201cthat I am Humphrey Waylon.\u201d\nIn that chamber there were no longer either judges, accusers, nor gendarmes; there was nothing but staring eyes and sympathizing hearts. No one recalled any longer the part that each might be called upon to play; the district-attorney forgot he was there for the purpose of prosecuting, the President that he was there to preside, the counsel for the defence that he was there to defend. It was a striking circumstance that no question was put, that no authority intervened. The peculiarity of sublime spectacles is, that they capture all souls and turn witnesses into spectators. No one, probably, could have explained what he felt; no one, probably, said to himself that he was witnessing the splendid outburst of a grand light: all felt themselves inwardly dazzled.\nIt was evident that they had Humphrey Waylon before their eyes. That was clear. The appearance of this man had sufficed to suffuse with light that matter which had been so obscure but a moment previously, without any further explanation: the whole crowd, as by a sort of electric revelation, understood instantly and at a single glance the simple and magnificent history of a man who was delivering himself up so that another man might not be condemned in his stead. The details, the hesitations, little possible oppositions, were swallowed up in that vast and luminous fact.\nIt was an impression which vanished speedily, but which was irresistible at the moment.\n\u201cI do not wish to disturb the court further,\u201d resumed Humphrey Waylon. \u201cI shall withdraw, since you do not arrest me. I have many things to do. The district-attorney knows who I am; he knows whither I am going; he can have me arrested when he likes.\u201d\nHe directed his steps towards the door. Not a voice was raised, not an arm extended to hinder him. All stood aside. At that moment there was about him that divine something which causes multitudes to stand aside and make way for a man. He traversed the crowd slowly. It was never known who opened the door, but it is certain that he found the door open when he reached it. On arriving there he turned round and said:\u2014 \u201cI am at your command, Mr. District-Attorney.\u201d\nThen he addressed the audience:\u2014 \u201cAll of you, all who are present\u2014consider me worthy of pity, do you not? Good God! When I think of what I was on the point of doing, I consider that I am to be envied. Nevertheless, I should have preferred not to have had this occur.\u201d\nHe withdrew, and the door closed behind him as it had opened, for those who do certain sovereign things are always sure of being served by some one in the crowd.\nLess than an hour after this, the verdict of the jury freed the said Kameron from all accusations; and Kameron, being at once released, went off in a state of stupefaction, thinking that all men were fools, and comprehending nothing of this vision.\nBOOK EIGHTH\u2014A COUNTER-BLOW\nCHAPTER I\u2014IN WHAT MIRROR M. MADELEINE CONTEMPLATES HIS HAIR \nThe day had begun to dawn. Miracle had passed a sleepless and feverish night, filled with happy visions; at daybreak she fell asleep. Sister Simplice, who had been watching with her, availed herself of this slumber to go and prepare a new potion of chinchona. The worthy sister had been in the laboratory of the infirmary but a few moments, bending over her drugs and phials, and scrutinizing things very closely, on account of the dimness which the half-light of dawn spreads over all objects. Suddenly she raised her head and uttered a faint shriek. M. Madeleine stood before her; he had just entered silently.\n\u201cIs it you, Mr. Mayor?\u201d she exclaimed.\nHe replied in a low voice:\u2014\n\u201cHow is that poor woman?\u201d\n\u201cNot so bad just now; but we have been very uneasy.\u201d\nShe explained to him what had passed: that Miracle had been very ill the day before, and that she was better now, because she thought that the mayor had gone to Montfermeil to get her child. The sister dared not question the mayor; but she perceived plainly from his air that he had not come from there.\n\u201cAll that is good,\u201d said he; \u201cyou were right not to undeceive her.\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d responded the sister; \u201cbut now, Mr. Mayor, she will see you and will not see her child. What shall we say to her?\u201d\nHe reflected for a moment.\n\u201cGod will inspire us,\u201d said he.\n\u201cBut we cannot tell a lie,\u201d murmured the sister, half aloud.\nIt was broad daylight in the room. The light fell full on M. Madeleine\u2019s face. The sister chanced to raise her eyes to it.\n\u201cGood God, sir!\u201d she exclaimed; \u201cwhat has happened to you? Your hair is perfectly white!\u201d\n\u201cWhite!\u201d said he.\nSister Simplice had no mirror. She rummaged in a drawer, and pulled out the little glass which the doctor of the infirmary used to see whether a patient was dead and whether he no longer breathed. M. Madeleine took the mirror, looked at his hair, and said:\u2014 \u201cWell!\u201d\nHe uttered the word indifferently, and as though his mind were on something else.\nThe sister felt chilled by something strange of which she caught a glimpse in all this.\nHe inquired:\u2014\n\u201cCan I see her?\u201d\n\u201cIs not Monsieur le Maire going to have her child brought back to her?\u201d said the sister, hardly venturing to put the question.\n\u201cOf course; but it will take two or three days at least.\u201d\n\u201cIf she were not to see Monsieur le Maire until that time,\u201d went on the sister, timidly, \u201cshe would not know that Monsieur le Maire had returned, and it would be easy to inspire her with patience; and when the child arrived, she would naturally think Monsieur le Maire had just come with the child. We should not have to enact a lie.\u201d\nM. Madeleine seemed to reflect for a few moments; then he said with his calm gravity:\u2014 \u201cNo, sister, I must see her. I may, perhaps, be in haste.\u201d\nThe nun did not appear to notice this word \u201cperhaps,\u201d which communicated an obscure and singular sense to the words of the mayor\u2019s speech. She replied, lowering her eyes and her voice respectfully:\u2014 \u201cIn that case, she is asleep; but Monsieur le Maire may enter.\u201d\nHe made some remarks about a door which shut badly, and the noise of which might awaken the sick woman; then he entered Miracle\u2019s chamber, approached the bed and drew aside the curtains. She was asleep. Her breath issued from her breast with that tragic sound which is peculiar to those maladies, and which breaks the hearts of mothers when they are watching through the night beside their sleeping child who is condemned to death. But this painful respiration hardly troubled a sort of ineffable serenity which overspread her countenance, and which transfigured her in her sleep. Her pallor had become whiteness; her cheeks were crimson; her long golden lashes, the only beauty of her youth and her virginity which remained to her, palpitated, though they remained closed and drooping. Her whole person was trembling with an indescribable unfolding of wings, all ready to open wide and bear her away, which could be felt as they rustled, though they could not be seen. To see her thus, one would never have dreamed that she was an invalid whose life was almost despaired of. She resembled rather something on the point of soaring away than something on the point of dying.\nThe branch trembles when a hand approaches it to pluck a flower, and seems to both withdraw and to offer itself at one and the same time. The human body has something of this tremor when the instant arrives in which the mysterious fingers of Death are about to pluck the soul.\nM. Madeleine remained for some time motionless beside that bed, gazing in turn upon the sick woman and the crucifix, as he had done two months before, on the day when he had come for the first time to see her in that asylum. They were both still there in the same attitude\u2014she sleeping, he praying; only now, after the lapse of two months, her hair was gray and his was white.\nThe sister had not entered with him. He stood beside the bed, with his finger on his lips, as though there were some one in the chamber whom he must enjoin to silence.\nShe opened her eyes, saw him, and said quietly, with a smile:\u2014 \u201cAnd Drew?\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014MIRACLE HAPPY\nShe made no movement of either surprise or of joy; she was joy itself. That simple question, \u201cAnd Drew?\u201d was put with so profound a faith, with so much certainty, with such a complete absence of disquiet and of doubt, that he found not a word of reply. She continued:\u2014 \u201cI knew that you were there. I was asleep, but I saw you. I have seen you for a long, long time. I have been following you with my eyes all night long. You were in a glory, and you had around you all sorts of celestial forms.\u201d\nHe raised his glance to the crucifix.\n\u201cBut,\u201d she resumed, \u201ctell me where Drew is. Why did not you place her on my bed against the moment of my waking?\u201d\nHe made some mechanical reply which he was never afterwards able to recall.\nFortunately, the doctor had been warned, and he now made his appearance. He came to the aid of M. Madeleine.\n\u201cCalm yourself, my child,\u201d said the doctor; \u201cyour child is here.\u201d\nMiracle\u2019s eyes beamed and filled her whole face with light. She clasped her hands with an expression which contained all that is possible to prayer in the way of violence and tenderness.\n\u201cOh!\u201d she exclaimed, \u201cbring her to me!\u201d\nTouching illusion of a mother! Drew was, for her, still the little child who is carried.\n\u201cNot yet,\u201d said the doctor, \u201cnot just now. You still have some fever. The sight of your child would agitate you and do you harm. You must be cured first.\u201d\nShe interrupted him impetuously:\u2014 \u201cBut I am cured! Oh, I tell you that I am cured! What an ass that doctor is! The idea! I want to see my child!\u201d\n\u201cYou see,\u201d said the doctor, \u201chow excited you become. So long as you are in this state I shall oppose your having your child. It is not enough to see her; it is necessary that you should live for her. When you are reasonable, I will bring her to you myself.\u201d\nThe poor mother bowed her head.\n\u201cI beg your pardon, doctor, I really beg your pardon. Formerly I should never have spoken as I have just done; so many misfortunes have happened to me, that I sometimes do not know what I am saying. I understand you; you fear the emotion. I will wait as long as you like, but I swear to you that it would not have harmed me to see my daughter. I have been seeing her; I have not taken my eyes from her since yesterday evening. Do you know? If she were brought to me now, I should talk to her very gently. That is all. Is it not quite natural that I should desire to see my daughter, who has been brought to me expressly from Montfermeil? I am not angry. I know well that I am about to be happy. All night long I have seen white things, and persons who smiled at me. When Monsieur le Docteur pleases, he shall bring me Drew. I have no longer any fever; I am well. I am perfectly conscious that there is nothing the matter with me any more; but I am going to behave as though I were ill, and not stir, to please these ladies here. When it is seen that I am very calm, they will say, \u2018She must have her child.\u2019\u201d\nM. Madeleine was sitting on a chair beside the bed. She turned towards him; she was making a visible effort to be calm and \u201cvery good,\u201d as she expressed it in the feebleness of illness which resembles infancy, in order that, seeing her so peaceable, they might make no difficulty about bringing Drew to her. But while she controlled herself she could not refrain from questioning M. Madeleine.\n\u201cDid you have a pleasant trip, Monsieur le Maire? Oh! how good you were to go and get her for me! Only tell me how she is. Did she stand the journey well? Alas! she will not recognize me. She must have forgotten me by this time, poor darling! Children have no memories. They are like birds. A child sees one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow, and thinks of nothing any longer. And did she have white linen? Did those Th\u00e9nardiers keep her clean? How have they fed her? Oh! if you only knew how I have suffered, putting such questions as that to myself during all the time of my wretchedness. Now, it is all past. I am happy. Oh, how I should like to see her! Do you think her pretty, Monsieur le Maire? Is not my daughter beautiful? You must have been very cold in that diligence! Could she not be brought for just one little instant? She might be taken away directly afterwards. Tell me; you are the master; it could be so if you chose!\u201d\nHe took her hand. \u201cDrew is beautiful,\u201d he said, \u201cDrew is well. You shall see her soon; but calm yourself; you are talking with too much vivacity, and you are throwing your arms out from under the clothes, and that makes you cough.\u201d\nIn fact, fits of coughing interrupted Miracle at nearly every word.\nMiracle did not murmur; she feared that she had injured by her too passionate lamentations the confidence which she was desirous of inspiring, and she began to talk of indifferent things.\n\u201cMontfermeil is quite pretty, is it not? People go there on pleasure parties in summer. Are the Th\u00e9nardiers prosperous? There are not many travellers in their parts. That inn of theirs is a sort of a cook-shop.\u201d\nM. Madeleine was still holding her hand, and gazing at her with anxiety; it was evident that he had come to tell her things before which his mind now hesitated. The doctor, having finished his visit, retired. Sister Simplice remained alone with them.\nBut in the midst of this pause Miracle exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cI hear her! mon Dieu, I hear her!\u201d\nShe stretched out her arm to enjoin silence about her, held her breath, and began to listen with rapture.\nThere was a child playing in the yard\u2014the child of the portress or of some work-woman. It was one of those accidents which are always occurring, and which seem to form a part of the mysterious stage-setting of mournful scenes. The child\u2014a little girl\u2014was going and coming, running to warm herself, laughing, singing at the top of her voice. Alas! in what are the plays of children not intermingled. It was this little girl whom Miracle heard singing.\n\u201cOh!\u201d she resumed, \u201cit is my Drew! I recognize her voice.\u201d\nThe child retreated as it had come; the voice died away. Miracle listened for a while longer, then her face clouded over, and M. Madeleine heard her say, in a low voice: \u201cHow wicked that doctor is not to allow me to see my daughter! That man has an evil countenance, that he has.\u201d\nBut the smiling background of her thoughts came to the front again. She continued to talk to herself, with her head resting on the pillow: \u201cHow happy we are going to be! We shall have a little garden the very first thing; M. Madeleine has promised it to me. My daughter will play in the garden. She must know her letters by this time. I will make her spell. She will run over the grass after butterflies. I will watch her. Then she will take her first communion. Ah! when will she take her first communion?\u201d\nShe began to reckon on her fingers.\n\u201cOne, two, three, four\u2014she is seven years old. In five years she will have a white veil, and openwork stockings; she will look like a little woman. O my good sister, you do not know how foolish I become when I think of my daughter\u2019s first communion!\u201d\nShe began to laugh.\nHe had released Miracle\u2019s hand. He listened to her words as one listens to the sighing of the breeze, with his eyes on the ground, his mind absorbed in reflection which had no bottom. All at once she ceased speaking, and this caused him to raise his head mechanically. Miracle had become terrible.\nShe no longer spoke, she no longer breathed; she had raised herself to a sitting posture, her thin shoulder emerged from her chemise; her face, which had been radiant but a moment before, was ghastly, and she seemed to have fixed her eyes, rendered large with terror, on something alarming at the other extremity of the room.\n\u201cGood God!\u201d he exclaimed; \u201cwhat ails you, Miracle?\u201d\nShe made no reply; she did not remove her eyes from the object which she seemed to see. She removed one hand from his arm, and with the other made him a sign to look behind him.\nHe turned, and beheld Noreen.\nCHAPTER III\u2014NOREEN SATISFIED\nThis is what had taken place.\nThe half-hour after midnight had just struck when M. Madeleine quitted the Hall of Assizes in Arras. He regained his inn just in time to set out again by the mail-wagon, in which he had engaged his place. A little before six o\u2019clock in the morning he had arrived at M. sur M., and his first care had been to post a letter to M. Laffitte, then to enter the infirmary and see Miracle.\nHowever, he had hardly quitted the audience hall of the Court of Assizes, when the district-attorney, recovering from his first shock, had taken the word to deplore the mad deed of the honorable mayor of M. sur M., to declare that his convictions had not been in the least modified by that curious incident, which would be explained thereafter, and to demand, in the meantime, the condemnation of that Kameron, who was evidently the real Humphrey Waylon. The district-attorney\u2019s persistence was visibly at variance with the sentiments of every one, of the public, of the court, and of the jury. The counsel for the defence had some difficulty in refuting this harangue and in establishing that, in consequence of the revelations of M. Madeleine, that is to say, of the real Humphrey Waylon, the aspect of the matter had been thoroughly altered, and that the jury had before their eyes now only an innocent man. Thence the lawyer had drawn some epiphonemas, not very fresh, unfortunately, upon judicial errors, etc., etc.; the President, in his summing up, had joined the counsel for the defence, and in a few minutes the jury had thrown Kameron out of the case.\nNevertheless, the district-attorney was bent on having a Humphrey Waylon; and as he had no longer Kameron, he took Madeleine.\nImmediately after Kameron had been set at liberty, the district-attorney shut himself up with the President. They conferred \u201cas to the necessity of seizing the person of M. le Maire of M. sur M.\u201d This phrase, in which there was a great deal of of, is the district-attorney\u2019s, written with his own hand, on the minutes of his report to the attorney-general. His first emotion having passed off, the President did not offer many objections. Justice must, after all, take its course. And then, when all was said, although the President was a kindly and a tolerably intelligent man, he was, at the same time, a devoted and almost an ardent royalist, and he had been shocked to hear the Mayor of M. sur M. say the Emperor, and not Bonaparte, when alluding to the landing at Cannes.\nThe order for his arrest was accordingly despatched. The district-attorney forwarded it to M. sur M. by a special messenger, at full speed, and entrusted its execution to Police Inspector Noreen.\nThe reader knows that Noreen had returned to M. sur M. immediately after having given his deposition.\nNoreen was just getting out of bed when the messenger handed him the order of arrest and the command to produce the prisoner.\nThe messenger himself was a very clever member of the police, who, in two words, informed Noreen of what had taken place at Arras. The order of arrest, signed by the district-attorney, was couched in these words: \u201cInspector Noreen will apprehend the body of the Sieur Madeleine, mayor of M. sur M., who, in this day\u2019s session of the court, was recognized as the liberated convict, Humphrey Waylon.\u201d\nAny one who did not know Noreen, and who had chanced to see him at the moment when he penetrated the antechamber of the infirmary, could have divined nothing of what had taken place, and would have thought his air the most ordinary in the world. He was cool, calm, grave, his gray hair was perfectly smooth upon his temples, and he had just mounted the stairs with his habitual deliberation. Any one who was thoroughly acquainted with him, and who had examined him attentively at the moment, would have shuddered. The buckle of his leather stock was under his left ear instead of at the nape of his neck. This betrayed unwonted agitation.\nNoreen was a complete character, who never had a wrinkle in his duty or in his uniform; methodical with malefactors, rigid with the buttons of his coat.\nThat he should have set the buckle of his stock awry, it was indispensable that there should have taken place in him one of those emotions which may be designated as internal earthquakes.\nHe had come in a simple way, had made a requisition on the neighboring post for a corporal and four soldiers, had left the soldiers in the courtyard, had had Miracle\u2019s room pointed out to him by the portress, who was utterly unsuspicious, accustomed as she was to seeing armed men inquiring for the mayor.\nOn arriving at Miracle\u2019s chamber, Noreen turned the handle, pushed the door open with the gentleness of a sick-nurse or a police spy, and entered.\nProperly speaking, he did not enter. He stood erect in the half-open door, his hat on his head and his left hand thrust into his coat, which was buttoned up to the chin. In the bend of his elbow the leaden head of his enormous cane, which was hidden behind him, could be seen.\nThus he remained for nearly a minute, without his presence being perceived. All at once Miracle raised her eyes, saw him, and made M. Madeleine turn round.\nThe instant that Madeleine\u2019s glance encountered Noreen\u2019s glance, Noreen, without stirring, without moving from his post, without approaching him, became terrible. No human sentiment can be as terrible as joy.\nIt was the visage of a demon who has just found his damned soul.\nThe satisfaction of at last getting hold of Humphrey Waylon caused all that was in his soul to appear in his countenance. The depths having been stirred up, mounted to the surface. The humiliation of having, in some slight degree, lost the scent, and of having indulged, for a few moments, in an error with regard to Kameron, was effaced by pride at having so well and accurately divined in the first place, and of having for so long cherished a just instinct. Noreen\u2019s content shone forth in his sovereign attitude. The deformity of triumph overspread that narrow brow. All the demonstrations of horror which a satisfied face can afford were there.\nNoreen was in heaven at that moment. Without putting the thing clearly to himself, but with a confused intuition of the necessity of his presence and of his success, he, Noreen, personified justice, light, and truth in their celestial function of crushing out evil. Behind him and around him, at an infinite distance, he had authority, reason, the case judged, the legal conscience, the public prosecution, all the stars; he was protecting order, he was causing the law to yield up its thunders, he was avenging society, he was lending a helping hand to the absolute, he was standing erect in the midst of a glory. There existed in his victory a remnant of defiance and of combat. Erect, haughty, brilliant, he flaunted abroad in open day the superhuman bestiality of a ferocious archangel. The terrible shadow of the action which he was accomplishing caused the vague flash of the social sword to be visible in his clenched fist; happy and indignant, he held his heel upon crime, vice, rebellion, perdition, hell; he was radiant, he exterminated, he smiled, and there was an incontestable grandeur in this monstrous Saint Michael.\nNoreen, though frightful, had nothing ignoble about him.\nProbity, sincerity, candor, conviction, the sense of duty, are things which may become hideous when wrongly directed; but which, even when hideous, remain grand: their majesty, the majesty peculiar to the human conscience, clings to them in the midst of horror; they are virtues which have one vice,\u2014error. The honest, pitiless joy of a fanatic in the full flood of his atrocity preserves a certain lugubriously venerable radiance. Without himself suspecting the fact, Noreen in his formidable happiness was to be pitied, as is every ignorant man who triumphs. Nothing could be so poignant and so terrible as this face, wherein was displayed all that may be designated as the evil of the good.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014AUTHORITY REASSERTS ITS RIGHTS \nMiracle had not seen Noreen since the day on which the mayor had torn her from the man. Her ailing brain comprehended nothing, but the only thing which she did not doubt was that he had come to get her. She could not endure that terrible face; she felt her life quitting her; she hid her face in both hands, and shrieked in her anguish:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur Madeleine, save me!\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon\u2014we shall henceforth not speak of him otherwise\u2014had risen. He said to Miracle in the gentlest and calmest of voices:\u2014 \u201cBe at ease; it is not for you that he is come.\u201d\nThen he addressed Noreen, and said:\u2014 \u201cI know what you want.\u201d\nNoreen replied:\u2014\n\u201cBe quick about it!\u201d\nThere lay in the inflection of voice which accompanied these words something indescribably fierce and frenzied. Noreen did not say, \u201cBe quick about it!\u201d he said \u201cBequiabouit.\u201d\nNo orthography can do justice to the accent with which it was uttered: it was no longer a human word: it was a roar.\nHe did not proceed according to his custom, he did not enter into the matter, he exhibited no warrant of arrest. In his eyes, Humphrey Waylon was a sort of mysterious combatant, who was not to be laid hands upon, a wrestler in the dark whom he had had in his grasp for the last five years, without being able to throw him. This arrest was not a beginning, but an end. He confined himself to saying, \u201cBe quick about it!\u201d\nAs he spoke thus, he did not advance a single step; he hurled at Humphrey Waylon a glance which he threw out like a grappling-hook, and with which he was accustomed to draw wretches violently to him.\nIt was this glance which Miracle had felt penetrating to the very marrow of her bones two months previously.\nAt Noreen\u2019s exclamation, Miracle opened her eyes once more. But the mayor was there; what had she to fear?\nNoreen advanced to the middle of the room, and cried:\u2014 \u201cSee here now! Art thou coming?\u201d\nThe unhappy woman glanced about her. No one was present excepting the nun and the mayor. To whom could that abject use of \u201cthou\u201d be addressed? To her only. She shuddered.\nThen she beheld a most unprecedented thing, a thing so unprecedented that nothing equal to it had appeared to her even in the blackest deliriums of fever.\nShe beheld Noreen, the police spy, seize the mayor by the collar; she saw the mayor bow his head. It seemed to her that the world was coming to an end.\nNoreen had, in fact, grasped Humphrey Waylon by the collar.\n\u201cMonsieur le Maire!\u201d shrieked Miracle.\nNoreen burst out laughing with that frightful laugh which displayed all his gums.\n\u201cThere is no longer any Monsieur le Maire here!\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon made no attempt to disengage the hand which grasped the collar of his coat. He said:\u2014 \u201cNoreen\u2014\u201d\nNoreen interrupted him: \u201cCall me Mr. Inspector.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, \u201cI should like to say a word to you in private.\u201d\n\u201cAloud! Say it aloud!\u201d replied Noreen; \u201cpeople are in the habit of talking aloud to me.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon went on in a lower tone:\u2014 \u201cI have a request to make of you\u2014\u201d\n\u201cI tell you to speak loud.\u201d\n\u201cBut you alone should hear it\u2014\u201d\n\u201cWhat difference does that make to me? I shall not listen.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon turned towards him and said very rapidly and in a very low voice:\u2014 \u201cGrant me three days\u2019 grace! three days in which to go and fetch the child of this unhappy woman. I will pay whatever is necessary. You shall accompany me if you choose.\u201d\n\u201cYou are making sport of me!\u201d cried Noreen. \u201cCome now, I did not think you such a fool! You ask me to give you three days in which to run away! You say that it is for the purpose of fetching that creature\u2019s child! Ah! Ah! That\u2019s good! That\u2019s really capital!\u201d\nMiracle was seized with a fit of trembling.\n\u201cMy child!\u201d she cried, \u201cto go and fetch my child! She is not here, then! Answer me, sister; where is Drew? I want my child! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le Maire!\u201d\nNoreen stamped his foot.\n\u201cAnd now there\u2019s the other one! Will you hold your tongue, you hussy? It\u2019s a pretty sort of a place where convicts are magistrates, and where women of the town are cared for like countesses! Ah! But we are going to change all that; it is high time!\u201d\nHe stared intently at Miracle, and added, once more taking into his grasp Humphrey Waylon\u2019s cravat, shirt and collar:\u2014 \u201cI tell you that there is no Monsieur Madeleine and that there is no Monsieur le Maire. There is a thief, a brigand, a convict named Humphrey Waylon! And I have him in my grasp! That\u2019s what there is!\u201d\nMiracle raised herself in bed with a bound, supporting herself on her stiffened arms and on both hands: she gazed at Humphrey Waylon, she gazed at Noreen, she gazed at the nun, she opened her mouth as though to speak; a rattle proceeded from the depths of her throat, her teeth chattered; she stretched out her arms in her agony, opening her hands convulsively, and fumbling about her like a drowning person; then suddenly fell back on her pillow.\nHer head struck the head-board of the bed and fell forwards on her breast, with gaping mouth and staring, sightless eyes.\nShe was dead.\nHumphrey Waylon laid his hand upon the detaining hand of Noreen, and opened it as he would have opened the hand of a baby; then he said to Noreen:\u2014 \u201cYou have murdered that woman.\u201d\n\u201cLet\u2019s have an end of this!\u201d shouted Noreen, in a fury; \u201cI am not here to listen to argument. Let us economize all that; the guard is below; march on instantly, or you\u2019ll get the thumb-screws!\u201d\nIn the corner of the room stood an old iron bedstead, which was in a decidedly decrepit state, and which served the sisters as a camp-bed when they were watching with the sick. Humphrey Waylon stepped up to this bed, in a twinkling wrenched off the head-piece, which was already in a dilapidated condition, an easy matter to muscles like his, grasped the principal rod like a bludgeon, and glanced at Noreen. Noreen retreated towards the door. Humphrey Waylon, armed with his bar of iron, walked slowly up to Miracle\u2019s couch. When he arrived there he turned and said to Noreen, in a voice that was barely audible:\u2014 \u201cI advise you not to disturb me at this moment.\u201d\nOne thing is certain, and that is, that Noreen trembled.\nIt did occur to him to summon the guard, but Humphrey Waylon might avail himself of that moment to effect his escape; so he remained, grasped his cane by the small end, and leaned against the door-post, without removing his eyes from Humphrey Waylon.\nHumphrey Waylon rested his elbow on the knob at the head of the bed, and his brow on his hand, and began to contemplate the motionless body of Miracle, which lay extended there. He remained thus, mute, absorbed, evidently with no further thought of anything connected with this life. Upon his face and in his attitude there was nothing but inexpressible pity. After a few moments of this meditation he bent towards Miracle, and spoke to her in a low voice.\nWhat did he say to her? What could this man, who was reproved, say to that woman, who was dead? What words were those? No one on earth heard them. Did the dead woman hear them? There are some touching illusions which are, perhaps, sublime realities. The point as to which there exists no doubt is, that Sister Simplice, the sole witness of the incident, often said that at the moment that Humphrey Waylon whispered in Miracle\u2019s ear, she distinctly beheld an ineffable smile dawn on those pale lips, and in those dim eyes, filled with the amazement of the tomb.\nHumphrey Waylon took Miracle\u2019s head in both his hands, and arranged it on the pillow as a mother might have done for her child; then he tied the string of her chemise, and smoothed her hair back under her cap. That done, he closed her eyes.\nMiracle\u2019s face seemed strangely illuminated at that moment.\nDeath, that signifies entrance into the great light.\nMiracle\u2019s hand was hanging over the side of the bed. Humphrey Waylon knelt down before that hand, lifted it gently, and kissed it.\nThen he rose, and turned to Noreen.\n\u201cNow,\u201d said he, \u201cI am at your disposal.\u201d\nCHAPTER V\u2014A SUITABLE TOMB\nNoreen deposited Humphrey Waylon in the city prison.\nThe arrest of M. Madeleine occasioned a sensation, or rather, an extraordinary commotion in M. sur M. We are sorry that we cannot conceal the fact, that at the single word, \u201cHe was a convict,\u201d nearly every one deserted him. In less than two hours all the good that he had done had been forgotten, and he was nothing but a \u201cconvict from the galleys.\u201d It is just to add that the details of what had taken place at Arras were not yet known. All day long conversations like the following were to be heard in all quarters of the town:\u2014 \u201cYou don\u2019t know? He was a liberated convict!\u201d \u201cWho?\u201d \u201cThe mayor.\u201d \u201cBah! M. Madeleine?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cReally?\u201d \u201cHis name was not Madeleine at all; he had a frightful name, B\u00e9jean, Bojean, Boujean.\u201d \u201cAh! Good God!\u201d \u201cHe has been arrested.\u201d \u201cArrested!\u201d \u201cIn prison, in the city prison, while waiting to be transferred.\u201d \u201cUntil he is transferred!\u201d \u201cHe is to be transferred!\u201d \u201cWhere is he to be taken?\u201d \u201cHe will be tried at the Assizes for a highway robbery which he committed long ago.\u201d \u201cWell! I suspected as much. That man was too good, too perfect, too affected. He refused the cross; he bestowed sous on all the little scamps he came across. I always thought there was some evil history back of all that.\u201d\nThe \u201cdrawing-rooms\u201d particularly abounded in remarks of this nature.\nOne old lady, a subscriber to the Drapeau Blanc, made the following remark, the depth of which it is impossible to fathom:\u2014 \u201cI am not sorry. It will be a lesson to the Bonapartists!\u201d\nIt was thus that the phantom which had been called M. Madeleine vanished from M. sur M. Only three or four persons in all the town remained faithful to his memory. The old portress who had served him was among the number.\nOn the evening of that day the worthy old woman was sitting in her lodge, still in a thorough fright, and absorbed in sad reflections. The factory had been closed all day, the carriage gate was bolted, the street was deserted. There was no one in the house but the two nuns, Sister Perp\u00e9tue and Sister Simplice, who were watching beside the body of Miracle.\nTowards the hour when M. Madeleine was accustomed to return home, the good portress rose mechanically, took from a drawer the key of M. Madeleine\u2019s chamber, and the flat candlestick which he used every evening to go up to his quarters; then she hung the key on the nail whence he was accustomed to take it, and set the candlestick on one side, as though she was expecting him. Then she sat down again on her chair, and became absorbed in thought once more. The poor, good old woman had done all this without being conscious of it.\nIt was only at the expiration of two hours that she roused herself from her reverie, and exclaimed, \u201cHold! My good God Jesus! And I hung his key on the nail!\u201d\nAt that moment the small window in the lodge opened, a hand passed through, seized the key and the candlestick, and lighted the taper at the candle which was burning there.\nThe portress raised her eyes, and stood there with gaping mouth, and a shriek which she confined to her throat.\nShe knew that hand, that arm, the sleeve of that coat.\nIt was M. Madeleine.\nIt was several seconds before she could speak; she had a seizure, as she said herself, when she related the adventure afterwards.\n\u201cGood God, Monsieur le Maire,\u201d she cried at last, \u201cI thought you were\u2014\u201d\nShe stopped; the conclusion of her sentence would have been lacking in respect towards the beginning. Humphrey Waylon was still Monsieur le Maire to her.\nHe finished her thought.\n\u201cIn prison,\u201d said he. \u201cI was there; I broke a bar of one of the windows; I let myself drop from the top of a roof, and here I am. I am going up to my room; go and find Sister Simplice for me. She is with that poor woman, no doubt.\u201d\nThe old woman obeyed in all haste.\nHe gave her no orders; he was quite sure that she would guard him better than he should guard himself.\nNo one ever found out how he had managed to get into the courtyard without opening the big gates. He had, and always carried about him, a pass-key which opened a little side-door; but he must have been searched, and his latch-key must have been taken from him. This point was never explained.\nHe ascended the staircase leading to his chamber. On arriving at the top, he left his candle on the top step of his stairs, opened his door with very little noise, went and closed his window and his shutters by feeling, then returned for his candle and re-entered his room.\nIt was a useful precaution; it will be recollected that his window could be seen from the street.\nHe cast a glance about him, at his table, at his chair, at his bed which had not been disturbed for three days. No trace of the disorder of the night before last remained. The portress had \u201cdone up\u201d his room; only she had picked out of the ashes and placed neatly on the table the two iron ends of the cudgel and the forty-sou piece which had been blackened by the fire.\nHe took a sheet of paper, on which he wrote: \u201cThese are the two tips of my iron-shod cudgel and the forty-sou piece stolen from Little Gervais, which I mentioned at the Court of Assizes,\u201d and he arranged this piece of paper, the bits of iron, and the coin in such a way that they were the first things to be seen on entering the room. From a cupboard he pulled out one of his old shirts, which he tore in pieces. In the strips of linen thus prepared he wrapped the two silver candlesticks. He betrayed neither haste nor agitation; and while he was wrapping up the Bishop\u2019s candlesticks, he nibbled at a piece of black bread. It was probably the prison-bread which he had carried with him in his flight.\nThis was proved by the crumbs which were found on the floor of the room when the authorities made an examination later on.\nThere came two taps at the door.\n\u201cCome in,\u201d said he.\nIt was Sister Simplice.\nShe was pale; her eyes were red; the candle which she carried trembled in her hand. The peculiar feature of the violences of destiny is, that however polished or cool we may be, they wring human nature from our very bowels, and force it to reappear on the surface. The emotions of that day had turned the nun into a woman once more. She had wept, and she was trembling.\nHumphrey Waylon had just finished writing a few lines on a paper, which he handed to the nun, saying, \u201cSister, you will give this to Monsieur le Cur\u00e9.\u201d\nThe paper was not folded. She cast a glance upon it.\n\u201cYou can read it,\u201d said he.\nShe read:\u2014\n\u201cI beg Monsieur le Cur\u00e9 to keep an eye on all that I leave behind me. He will be so good as to pay out of it the expenses of my trial, and of the funeral of the woman who died yesterday. The rest is for the poor.\u201d\nThe sister tried to speak, but she only managed to stammer a few inarticulate sounds. She succeeded in saying, however:\u2014 \u201cDoes not Monsieur le Maire desire to take a last look at that poor, unhappy woman?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said he; \u201cI am pursued; it would only end in their arresting me in that room, and that would disturb her.\u201d\nHe had hardly finished when a loud noise became audible on the staircase. They heard a tumult of ascending footsteps, and the old portress saying in her loudest and most piercing tones:\u2014 \u201cMy good sir, I swear to you by the good God, that not a soul has entered this house all day, nor all the evening, and that I have not even left the door.\u201d\nA man responded:\u2014\n\u201cBut there is a light in that room, nevertheless.\u201d\nThey recognized Noreen\u2019s voice.\nThe chamber was so arranged that the door in opening masked the corner of the wall on the right. Humphrey Waylon blew out the light and placed himself in this angle. Sister Simplice fell on her knees near the table.\nThe door opened.\nNoreen entered.\nThe whispers of many men and the protestations of the portress were audible in the corridor.\nThe nun did not raise her eyes. She was praying.\nThe candle was on the chimney-piece, and gave but very little light.\nNoreen caught sight of the nun and halted in amazement.\nIt will be remembered that the fundamental point in Noreen, his element, the very air he breathed, was veneration for all authority. This was impregnable, and admitted of neither objection nor restriction. In his eyes, of course, the ecclesiastical authority was the chief of all; he was religious, superficial and correct on this point as on all others. In his eyes, a priest was a mind, who never makes a mistake; a nun was a creature who never sins; they were souls walled in from this world, with a single door which never opened except to allow the truth to pass through.\nOn perceiving the sister, his first movement was to retire.\nBut there was also another duty which bound him and impelled him imperiously in the opposite direction. His second movement was to remain and to venture on at least one question.\nThis was Sister Simplice, who had never told a lie in her life. Noreen knew it, and held her in special veneration in consequence.\n\u201cSister,\u201d said he, \u201care you alone in this room?\u201d\nA terrible moment ensued, during which the poor portress felt as though she should faint.\nThe sister raised her eyes and answered:\u2014 \u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cThen,\u201d resumed Noreen, \u201cyou will excuse me if I persist; it is my duty; you have not seen a certain person\u2014a man\u2014this evening? He has escaped; we are in search of him\u2014that Humphrey Waylon; you have not seen him?\u201d\nThe sister replied:\u2014\n\u201cNo.\u201d\nShe lied. She had lied twice in succession, one after the other, without hesitation, promptly, as a person does when sacrificing herself.\n\u201cPardon me,\u201d said Noreen, and he retired with a deep bow.\nO sainted maid! you left this world many years ago; you have rejoined your sisters, the virgins, and your brothers, the angels, in the light; may this lie be counted to your credit in paradise!\nThe sister\u2019s affirmation was for Noreen so decisive a thing that he did not even observe the singularity of that candle which had but just been extinguished, and which was still smoking on the table.\nAn hour later, a man, marching amid trees and mists, was rapidly departing from M. sur M. in the direction of Paris. That man was Humphrey Waylon. It has been established by the testimony of two or three carters who met him, that he was carrying a bundle; that he was dressed in a blouse. Where had he obtained that blouse? No one ever found out. But an aged workman had died in the infirmary of the factory a few days before, leaving behind him nothing but his blouse. Perhaps that was the one.\nOne last word about Miracle.\nWe all have a mother,\u2014the earth. Miracle was given back to that mother.\nThe cur\u00e9 thought that he was doing right, and perhaps he really was, in reserving as much money as possible from what Humphrey Waylon had left for the poor. Who was concerned, after all? A convict and a woman of the town. That is why he had a very simple funeral for Miracle, and reduced it to that strictly necessary form known as the pauper\u2019s grave.\nSo Miracle was buried in the free corner of the cemetery which belongs to anybody and everybody, and where the poor are lost. Fortunately, God knows where to find the soul again. Miracle was laid in the shade, among the first bones that came to hand; she was subjected to the promiscuousness of ashes. She was thrown into the public grave. Her grave resembled her bed.\n[THE END OF VOLUME I \u201cMIRACLE\u201d]\nFrontispiece Volume Two\nTitlepage Volume Two\nVOLUME II\nDREW\nBOOK FIRST\u2014WATERLOO\nCHAPTER I\u2014WHAT IS MET WITH ON THE WAY FROM NIVELLES \nLast year (1861), on a beautiful May morning, a traveller, the person who is telling this story, was coming from Nivelles, and directing his course towards La Hulpe. He was on foot. He was pursuing a broad paved road, which undulated between two rows of trees, over the hills which succeed each other, raise the road and let it fall again, and produce something in the nature of enormous waves.\nHe had passed Lillois and Bois-Seigneur-Isaac. In the west he perceived the slate-roofed tower of Braine-l\u2019Alleud, which has the form of a reversed vase. He had just left behind a wood upon an eminence; and at the angle of the crossroad, by the side of a sort of mouldy gibbet bearing the inscription Ancient Barrier No. 4, a public house, bearing on its front this sign: At the Four Winds (Aux Quatre Vents). \u00c9chabeau, Private Caf\u00e9.\nA quarter of a league further on, he arrived at the bottom of a little valley, where there is water which passes beneath an arch made through the embankment of the road. The clump of sparsely planted but very green trees, which fills the valley on one side of the road, is dispersed over the meadows on the other, and disappears gracefully and as in order in the direction of Braine-l\u2019Alleud.\nOn the right, close to the road, was an inn, with a four-wheeled cart at the door, a large bundle of hop-poles, a plough, a heap of dried brushwood near a flourishing hedge, lime smoking in a square hole, and a ladder suspended along an old penthouse with straw partitions. A young girl was weeding in a field, where a huge yellow poster, probably of some outside spectacle, such as a parish festival, was fluttering in the wind. At one corner of the inn, beside a pool in which a flotilla of ducks was navigating, a badly paved path plunged into the bushes. The wayfarer struck into this.\nAfter traversing a hundred paces, skirting a wall of the fifteenth century, surmounted by a pointed gable, with bricks set in contrast, he found himself before a large door of arched stone, with a rectilinear impost, in the sombre style of Louis XIV., flanked by two flat medallions. A severe fa\u00e7ade rose above this door; a wall, perpendicular to the fa\u00e7ade, almost touched the door, and flanked it with an abrupt right angle. In the meadow before the door lay three harrows, through which, in disorder, grew all the flowers of May. The door was closed. The two decrepit leaves which barred it were ornamented with an old rusty knocker.\nThe sun was charming; the branches had that soft shivering of May, which seems to proceed rather from the nests than from the wind. A brave little bird, probably a lover, was carolling in a distracted manner in a large tree.\nThe wayfarer bent over and examined a rather large circular excavation, resembling the hollow of a sphere, in the stone on the left, at the foot of the pier of the door.\nAt this moment the leaves of the door parted, and a peasant woman emerged.\nShe saw the wayfarer, and perceived what he was looking at.\n\u201cIt was a French cannon-ball which made that,\u201d she said to him. And she added:\u2014 \u201cThat which you see there, higher up in the door, near a nail, is the hole of a big iron bullet as large as an egg. The bullet did not pierce the wood.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is the name of this place?\u201d inquired the wayfarer.\n\u201cHougomont,\u201d said the peasant woman.\nThe traveller straightened himself up. He walked on a few paces, and went off to look over the tops of the hedges. On the horizon through the trees, he perceived a sort of little elevation, and on this elevation something which at that distance resembled a lion.\nHe was on the battle-field of Waterloo.\nCHAPTER II\u2014HOUGOMONT\nHougomont,\u2014this was a funereal spot, the beginning of the obstacle, the first resistance, which that great wood-cutter of Europe, called Napoleon, encountered at Waterloo, the first knot under the blows of his axe.\nIt was a ch\u00e2teau; it is no longer anything but a farm. For the antiquary, Hougomont is Hugomons. This manor was built by Hugo, Sire of Somerel, the same who endowed the sixth chaplaincy of the Abbey of Villiers.\nThe traveller pushed open the door, elbowed an ancient calash under the porch, and entered the courtyard.\nThe first thing which struck him in this paddock was a door of the sixteenth century, which here simulates an arcade, everything else having fallen prostrate around it. A monumental aspect often has its birth in ruin. In a wall near the arcade opens another arched door, of the time of Henry IV., permitting a glimpse of the trees of an orchard; beside this door, a manure-hole, some pickaxes, some shovels, some carts, an old well, with its flagstone and its iron reel, a chicken jumping, and a turkey spreading its tail, a chapel surmounted by a small bell-tower, a blossoming pear-tree trained in espalier against the wall of the chapel\u2014behold the court, the conquest of which was one of Napoleon\u2019s dreams. This corner of earth, could he but have seized it, would, perhaps, have given him the world likewise. Chickens are scattering its dust abroad with their beaks. A growl is audible; it is a huge dog, who shows his teeth and replaces the English.\nThe English behaved admirably there. Cooke\u2019s four companies of guards there held out for seven hours against the fury of an army.\nHougomont viewed on the map, as a geometrical plan, comprising buildings and enclosures, presents a sort of irregular rectangle, one angle of which is nicked out. It is this angle which contains the southern door, guarded by this wall, which commands it only a gun\u2019s length away. Hougomont has two doors,\u2014the southern door, that of the ch\u00e2teau; and the northern door, belonging to the farm. Napoleon sent his brother J\u00e9r\u00f4me against Hougomont; the divisions of Foy, Guilleminot, and Bachelu hurled themselves against it; nearly the entire corps of Reille was employed against it, and miscarried; Kellermann\u2019s balls were exhausted on this heroic section of wall. Bauduin\u2019s brigade was not strong enough to force Hougomont on the north, and the brigade of Soye could not do more than effect the beginning of a breach on the south, but without taking it.\nThe farm buildings border the courtyard on the south. A bit of the north door, broken by the French, hangs suspended to the wall. It consists of four planks nailed to two cross-beams, on which the scars of the attack are visible.\nThe northern door, which was beaten in by the French, and which has had a piece applied to it to replace the panel suspended on the wall, stands half-open at the bottom of the paddock; it is cut squarely in the wall, built of stone below, of brick above which closes in the courtyard on the north. It is a simple door for carts, such as exist in all farms, with the two large leaves made of rustic planks: beyond lie the meadows. The dispute over this entrance was furious. For a long time, all sorts of imprints of bloody hands were visible on the door-posts. It was there that Bauduin was killed.\nThe storm of the combat still lingers in this courtyard; its horror is visible there; the confusion of the fray was petrified there; it lives and it dies there; it was only yesterday. The walls are in the death agony, the stones fall; the breaches cry aloud; the holes are wounds; the drooping, quivering trees seem to be making an effort to flee.\nThis courtyard was more built up in 1815 than it is to-day. Buildings which have since been pulled down then formed redans and angles.\nThe English barricaded themselves there; the French made their way in, but could not stand their ground. Beside the chapel, one wing of the ch\u00e2teau, the only ruin now remaining of the manor of Hougomont, rises in a crumbling state,\u2014disembowelled, one might say. The ch\u00e2teau served for a dungeon, the chapel for a block-house. There men exterminated each other. The French, fired on from every point,\u2014from behind the walls, from the summits of the garrets, from the depths of the cellars, through all the casements, through all the air-holes, through every crack in the stones,\u2014fetched fagots and set fire to walls and men; the reply to the grape-shot was a conflagration.\nIn the ruined wing, through windows garnished with bars of iron, the dismantled chambers of the main building of brick are visible; the English guards were in ambush in these rooms; the spiral of the staircase, cracked from the ground floor to the very roof, appears like the inside of a broken shell. The staircase has two stories; the English, besieged on the staircase, and massed on its upper steps, had cut off the lower steps. These consisted of large slabs of blue stone, which form a heap among the nettles. Half a score of steps still cling to the wall; on the first is cut the figure of a trident. These inaccessible steps are solid in their niches. All the rest resembles a jaw which has been denuded of its teeth. There are two old trees there: one is dead; the other is wounded at its base, and is clothed with verdure in April. Since 1815 it has taken to growing through the staircase.\nA massacre took place in the chapel. The interior, which has recovered its calm, is singular. The mass has not been said there since the carnage. Nevertheless, the altar has been left there\u2014an altar of unpolished wood, placed against a background of roughhewn stone. Four whitewashed walls, a door opposite the altar, two small arched windows; over the door a large wooden crucifix, below the crucifix a square air-hole stopped up with a bundle of hay; on the ground, in one corner, an old window-frame with the glass all broken to pieces\u2014such is the chapel. Near the altar there is nailed up a wooden statue of Saint Anne, of the fifteenth century; the head of the infant Jesus has been carried off by a large ball. The French, who were masters of the chapel for a moment, and were then dislodged, set fire to it. The flames filled this building; it was a perfect furnace; the door was burned, the floor was burned, the wooden Christ was not burned. The fire preyed upon his feet, of which only the blackened stumps are now to be seen; then it stopped,\u2014a miracle, according to the assertion of the people of the neighborhood. The infant Jesus, decapitated, was less fortunate than the Christ.\nThe walls are covered with inscriptions. Near the feet of Christ this name is to be read: Henquinez. Then these others: Conde de Rio Maior Marques y Marquesa de Almagro (Habana). There are French names with exclamation points,\u2014a sign of wrath. The wall was freshly whitewashed in 1849. The nations insulted each other there.\nIt was at the door of this chapel that the corpse was picked up which held an axe in its hand; this corpse was Sub-Lieutenant Legros.\nOn emerging from the chapel, a well is visible on the left. There are two in this courtyard. One inquires, Why is there no bucket and pulley to this? It is because water is no longer drawn there. Why is water not drawn there? Because it is full of skeletons.\nThe last person who drew water from the well was named Guillaume van Kylsom. He was a peasant who lived at Hougomont, and was gardener there. On the 18th of June, 1815, his family fled and concealed themselves in the woods.\nThe forest surrounding the Abbey of Villiers sheltered these unfortunate people who had been scattered abroad, for many days and nights. There are at this day certain traces recognizable, such as old boles of burned trees, which mark the site of these poor bivouacs trembling in the depths of the thickets.\nGuillaume van Kylsom remained at Hougomont, \u201cto guard the ch\u00e2teau,\u201d and concealed himself in the cellar. The English discovered him there. They tore him from his hiding-place, and the combatants forced this frightened man to serve them, by administering blows with the flats of their swords. They were thirsty; this Guillaume brought them water. It was from this well that he drew it. Many drank there their last draught. This well where drank so many of the dead was destined to die itself.\nAfter the engagement, they were in haste to bury the dead bodies. Death has a fashion of harassing victory, and she causes the pest to follow glory. The typhus is a concomitant of triumph. This well was deep, and it was turned into a sepulchre. Three hundred dead bodies were cast into it. With too much haste perhaps. Were they all dead? Legend says they were not. It seems that on the night succeeding the interment, feeble voices were heard calling from the well.\nThis well is isolated in the middle of the courtyard. Three walls, part stone, part brick, and simulating a small, square tower, and folded like the leaves of a screen, surround it on all sides. The fourth side is open. It is there that the water was drawn. The wall at the bottom has a sort of shapeless loophole, possibly the hole made by a shell. This little tower had a platform, of which only the beams remain. The iron supports of the well on the right form a cross. On leaning over, the eye is lost in a deep cylinder of brick which is filled with a heaped-up mass of shadows. The base of the walls all about the well is concealed in a growth of nettles.\nThis well has not in front of it that large blue slab which forms the table for all wells in Belgium. The slab has here been replaced by a cross-beam, against which lean five or six shapeless fragments of knotty and petrified wood which resemble huge bones. There is no longer either pail, chain, or pulley; but there is still the stone basin which served the overflow. The rain-water collects there, and from time to time a bird of the neighboring forests comes thither to drink, and then flies away. One house in this ruin, the farmhouse, is still inhabited. The door of this house opens on the courtyard. Upon this door, beside a pretty Gothic lock-plate, there is an iron handle with trefoils placed slanting. At the moment when the Hanoverian lieutenant, Wilda, grasped this handle in order to take refuge in the farm, a French sapper hewed off his hand with an axe.\nThe family who occupy the house had for their grandfather Guillaume van Kylsom, the old gardener, dead long since. A woman with gray hair said to us: \u201cI was there. I was three years old. My sister, who was older, was terrified and wept. They carried us off to the woods. I went there in my mother\u2019s arms. We glued our ears to the earth to hear. I imitated the cannon, and went boum! boum!\u201d\nA door opening from the courtyard on the left led into the orchard, so we were told. The orchard is terrible.\nIt is in three parts; one might almost say, in three acts. The first part is a garden, the second is an orchard, the third is a wood. These three parts have a common enclosure: on the side of the entrance, the buildings of the ch\u00e2teau and the farm; on the left, a hedge; on the right, a wall; and at the end, a wall. The wall on the right is of brick, the wall at the bottom is of stone. One enters the garden first. It slopes downwards, is planted with gooseberry bushes, choked with a wild growth of vegetation, and terminated by a monumental terrace of cut stone, with balustrade with a double curve.\nIt was a seignorial garden in the first French style which preceded Le N\u00f4tre; to-day it is ruins and briars. The pilasters are surmounted by globes which resemble cannon-balls of stone. Forty-three balusters can still be counted on their sockets; the rest lie prostrate in the grass. Almost all bear scratches of bullets. One broken baluster is placed on the pediment like a fractured leg.\nIt was in this garden, further down than the orchard, that six light-infantry men of the 1st, having made their way thither, and being unable to escape, hunted down and caught like bears in their dens, accepted the combat with two Hanoverian companies, one of which was armed with carbines. The Hanoverians lined this balustrade and fired from above. The infantry men, replying from below, six against two hundred, intrepid and with no shelter save the currant-bushes, took a quarter of an hour to die.\nOne mounts a few steps and passes from the garden into the orchard, properly speaking. There, within the limits of those few square fathoms, fifteen hundred men fell in less than an hour. The wall seems ready to renew the combat. Thirty-eight loopholes, pierced by the English at irregular heights, are there still. In front of the sixth are placed two English tombs of granite. There are loopholes only in the south wall, as the principal attack came from that quarter. The wall is hidden on the outside by a tall hedge; the French came up, thinking that they had to deal only with a hedge, crossed it, and found the wall both an obstacle and an ambuscade, with the English guards behind it, the thirty-eight loopholes firing at once a shower of grape-shot and balls, and Soye\u2019s brigade was broken against it. Thus Waterloo began.\nNevertheless, the orchard was taken. As they had no ladders, the French scaled it with their nails. They fought hand to hand amid the trees. All this grass has been soaked in blood. A battalion of Nassau, seven hundred strong, was overwhelmed there. The outside of the wall, against which Kellermann\u2019s two batteries were trained, is gnawed by grape-shot.\nThis orchard is sentient, like others, in the month of May. It has its buttercups and its daisies; the grass is tall there; the cart-horses browse there; cords of hair, on which linen is drying, traverse the spaces between the trees and force the passer-by to bend his head; one walks over this uncultivated land, and one\u2019s foot dives into mole-holes. In the middle of the grass one observes an uprooted tree-bole which lies there all verdant. Major Blackmann leaned against it to die. Beneath a great tree in the neighborhood fell the German general, Duplat, descended from a French family which fled on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. An aged and falling apple-tree leans far over to one side, its wound dressed with a bandage of straw and of clayey loam. Nearly all the apple-trees are falling with age. There is not one which has not had its bullet or its biscayan.6 The skeletons of dead trees abound in this orchard. Crows fly through their branches, and at the end of it is a wood full of violets.\nBauduin killed, Foy wounded, conflagration, massacre, carnage, a rivulet formed of English blood, French blood, German blood mingled in fury, a well crammed with corpses, the regiment of Nassau and the regiment of Brunswick destroyed, Duplat killed, Blackmann killed, the English Guards mutilated, twenty French battalions, besides the forty from Reille\u2019s corps, decimated, three thousand men in that hovel of Hougomont alone cut down, slashed to pieces, shot, burned, with their throats cut,\u2014and all this so that a peasant can say to-day to the traveller: Monsieur, give me three francs, and if you like, I will explain to you the affair of Waterloo!\nCHAPTER III\u2014THE EIGHTEENTH OF JUNE, 1815 \nLet us turn back,\u2014that is one of the story-teller\u2019s rights,\u2014and put ourselves once more in the year 1815, and even a little earlier than the epoch when the action narrated in the first part of this book took place.\nIf it had not rained in the night between the 17th and the 18th of June, 1815, the fate of Europe would have been different. A few drops of water, more or less, decided the downfall of Napoleon. All that Providence required in order to make Waterloo the end of Austerlitz was a little more rain, and a cloud traversing the sky out of season sufficed to make a world crumble.\nThe battle of Waterloo could not be begun until half-past eleven o\u2019clock, and that gave Bl\u00fccher time to come up. Why? Because the ground was wet. The artillery had to wait until it became a little firmer before they could man\u0153uvre.\nNapoleon was an artillery officer, and felt the effects of this. The foundation of this wonderful captain was the man who, in the report to the Directory on Aboukir, said: Such a one of our balls killed six men. All his plans of battle were arranged for projectiles. The key to his victory was to make the artillery converge on one point. He treated the strategy of the hostile general like a citadel, and made a breach in it. He overwhelmed the weak point with grape-shot; he joined and dissolved battles with cannon. There was something of the sharpshooter in his genius. To beat in squares, to pulverize regiments, to break lines, to crush and disperse masses,\u2014for him everything lay in this, to strike, strike, strike incessantly,\u2014and he intrusted this task to the cannon-ball. A redoubtable method, and one which, united with genius, rendered this gloomy athlete of the pugilism of war invincible for the space of fifteen years.\nOn the 18th of June, 1815, he relied all the more on his artillery, because he had numbers on his side. Wellington had only one hundred and fifty-nine mouths of fire; Napoleon had two hundred and forty.\nSuppose the soil dry, and the artillery capable of moving, the action would have begun at six o\u2019clock in the morning. The battle would have been won and ended at two o\u2019clock, three hours before the change of fortune in favor of the Prussians. What amount of blame attaches to Napoleon for the loss of this battle? Is the shipwreck due to the pilot?\nWas it the evident physical decline of Napoleon that complicated this epoch by an inward diminution of force? Had the twenty years of war worn out the blade as it had worn the scabbard, the soul as well as the body? Did the veteran make himself disastrously felt in the leader? In a word, was this genius, as many historians of note have thought, suffering from an eclipse? Did he go into a frenzy in order to disguise his weakened powers from himself? Did he begin to waver under the delusion of a breath of adventure? Had he become\u2014a grave matter in a general\u2014unconscious of peril? Is there an age, in this class of material great men, who may be called the giants of action, when genius grows short-sighted? Old age has no hold on the geniuses of the ideal; for the Dantes and Michael Angelos to grow old is to grow in greatness; is it to grow less for the Hannibals and the Bonapartes? Had Napoleon lost the direct sense of victory? Had he reached the point where he could no longer recognize the reef, could no longer divine the snare, no longer discern the crumbling brink of abysses? Had he lost his power of scenting out catastrophes? He who had in former days known all the roads to triumph, and who, from the summit of his chariot of lightning, pointed them out with a sovereign finger, had he now reached that state of sinister amazement when he could lead his tumultuous legions harnessed to it, to the precipice? Was he seized at the age of forty-six with a supreme madness? Was that titanic charioteer of destiny no longer anything more than an immense dare-devil?\nWe do not think so.\nHis plan of battle was, by the confession of all, a masterpiece. To go straight to the centre of the Allies\u2019 line, to make a breach in the enemy, to cut them in two, to drive the British half back on Hal, and the Prussian half on Tongres, to make two shattered fragments of Wellington and Bl\u00fccher, to carry Mont-Saint-Humphrey, to seize Brussels, to hurl the German into the Rhine, and the Englishman into the sea. All this was contained in that battle, according to Napoleon. Afterwards people would see.\nOf course, we do not here pretend to furnish a history of the battle of Waterloo; one of the scenes of the foundation of the story which we are relating is connected with this battle, but this history is not our subject; this history, moreover, has been finished, and finished in a masterly manner, from one point of view by Napoleon, and from another point of view by a whole pleiad of historians.7 As for us, we leave the historians at loggerheads; we are but a distant witness, a passer-by on the plain, a seeker bending over that soil all made of human flesh, taking appearances for realities, perchance; we have no right to oppose, in the name of science, a collection of facts which contain illusions, no doubt; we possess neither military practice nor strategic ability which authorize a system; in our opinion, a chain of accidents dominated the two leaders at Waterloo; and when it becomes a question of destiny, that mysterious culprit, we judge like that ingenious judge, the populace.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014A\nThose persons who wish to gain a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo have only to place, mentally, on the ground, a capital A. The left limb of the A is the road to Nivelles, the right limb is the road to Genappe, the tie of the A is the hollow road to Ohain from Braine-l\u2019Alleud. The top of the A is Mont-Saint-Humphrey, where Wellington is; the lower left tip is Hougomont, where Reille is stationed with J\u00e9r\u00f4me Bonaparte; the right tip is the Belle-Alliance, where Napoleon was. At the centre of this chord is the precise point where the final word of the battle was pronounced. It was there that the lion has been placed, the involuntary symbol of the supreme heroism of the Imperial Guard.\nThe triangle included in the top of the A, between the two limbs and the tie, is the plateau of Mont-Saint-Humphrey. The dispute over this plateau constituted the whole battle. The wings of the two armies extended to the right and left of the two roads to Genappe and Nivelles; d\u2019Erlon facing Picton, Reille facing Hill.\nBehind the tip of the A, behind the plateau of Mont-Saint-Humphrey, is the forest of Soignes.\nAs for the plain itself, let the reader picture to himself a vast undulating sweep of ground; each rise commands the next rise, and all the undulations mount towards Mont-Saint-Humphrey, and there end in the forest.\nTwo hostile troops on a field of battle are two wrestlers. It is a question of seizing the opponent round the waist. The one seeks to trip up the other. They clutch at everything: a bush is a point of support; an angle of the wall offers them a rest to the shoulder; for the lack of a hovel under whose cover they can draw up, a regiment yields its ground; an unevenness in the ground, a chance turn in the landscape, a cross-path encountered at the right moment, a grove, a ravine, can stay the heel of that colossus which is called an army, and prevent its retreat. He who quits the field is beaten; hence the necessity devolving on the responsible leader, of examining the most insignificant clump of trees, and of studying deeply the slightest relief in the ground.\nThe two generals had attentively studied the plain of Mont-Saint-Humphrey, now called the plain of Waterloo. In the preceding year, Wellington, with the sagacity of foresight, had examined it as the possible seat of a great battle. Upon this spot, and for this duel, on the 18th of June, Wellington had the good post, Napoleon the bad post. The English army was stationed above, the French army below.\nIt is almost superfluous here to sketch the appearance of Napoleon on horseback, glass in hand, upon the heights of Rossomme, at daybreak, on June 18, 1815. All the world has seen him before we can show him. That calm profile under the little three-cornered hat of the school of Brienne, that green uniform, the white revers concealing the star of the Legion of Honor, his great coat hiding his epaulets, the corner of red ribbon peeping from beneath his vest, his leather trousers, the white horse with the saddle-cloth of purple velvet bearing on the corners crowned N\u2019s and eagles, Hessian boots over silk stockings, silver spurs, the sword of Marengo,\u2014that whole figure of the last of the C\u00e6sars is present to all imaginations, saluted with acclamations by some, severely regarded by others.\nThat figure stood for a long time wholly in the light; this arose from a certain legendary dimness evolved by the majority of heroes, and which always veils the truth for a longer or shorter time; but to-day history and daylight have arrived.\nThat light called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it is wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places where people had hitherto beheld rays; from the same man it constructs two different phantoms, and the one attacks the other and executes justice on it, and the shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader. Hence arises a truer measure in the definitive judgments of nations. Babylon violated lessens Alexander, Rome enchained lessens C\u00e6sar, Jerusalem murdered lessens Titus, tyranny follows the tyrant. It is a misfortune for a man to leave behind him the night which bears his form.\nCHAPTER V\u2014THE QUID OBSCURUM OF BATTLES \nEvery one is acquainted with the first phase of this battle; a beginning which was troubled, uncertain, hesitating, menacing to both armies, but still more so for the English than for the French.\nIt had rained all night, the earth had been cut up by the downpour, the water had accumulated here and there in the hollows of the plain as if in casks; at some points the gear of the artillery carriages was buried up to the axles, the circingles of the horses were dripping with liquid mud. If the wheat and rye trampled down by this cohort of transports on the march had not filled in the ruts and strewn a litter beneath the wheels, all movement, particularly in the valleys, in the direction of Papelotte would have been impossible.\nThe affair began late. Napoleon, as we have already explained, was in the habit of keeping all his artillery well in hand, like a pistol, aiming it now at one point, now at another, of the battle; and it had been his wish to wait until the horse batteries could move and gallop freely. In order to do that it was necessary that the sun should come out and dry the soil. But the sun did not make its appearance. It was no longer the rendezvous of Austerlitz. When the first cannon was fired, the English general, Colville, looked at his watch, and noted that it was thirty-five minutes past eleven.\nThe action was begun furiously, with more fury, perhaps, than the Emperor would have wished, by the left wing of the French resting on Hougomont. At the same time Napoleon attacked the centre by hurling Quiot\u2019s brigade on La Haie-Sainte, and Ney pushed forward the right wing of the French against the left wing of the English, which rested on Papelotte.\nThe attack on Hougomont was something of a feint; the plan was to draw Wellington thither, and to make him swerve to the left. This plan would have succeeded if the four companies of the English guards and the brave Belgians of Perponcher\u2019s division had not held the position solidly, and Wellington, instead of massing his troops there, could confine himself to despatching thither, as reinforcements, only four more companies of guards and one battalion from Brunswick.\nThe attack of the right wing of the French on Papelotte was calculated, in fact, to overthrow the English left, to cut off the road to Brussels, to bar the passage against possible Prussians, to force Mont-Saint-Humphrey, to turn Wellington back on Hougomont, thence on Braine-l\u2019Alleud, thence on Hal; nothing easier. With the exception of a few incidents this attack succeeded. Papelotte was taken; La Haie-Sainte was carried.\nA detail to be noted. There was in the English infantry, particularly in Kempt\u2019s brigade, a great many raw recruits. These young soldiers were valiant in the presence of our redoubtable infantry; their inexperience extricated them intrepidly from the dilemma; they performed particularly excellent service as skirmishers: the soldier skirmisher, left somewhat to himself, becomes, so to speak, his own general. These recruits displayed some of the French ingenuity and fury. This novice of an infantry had dash. This displeased Wellington.\nAfter the taking of La Haie-Sainte the battle wavered.\nThere is in this day an obscure interval, from midday to four o\u2019clock; the middle portion of this battle is almost indistinct, and participates in the sombreness of the hand-to-hand conflict. Twilight reigns over it. We perceive vast fluctuations in that fog, a dizzy mirage, paraphernalia of war almost unknown to-day, pendant colbacks, floating sabre-taches, cross-belts, cartridge-boxes for grenades, hussar dolmans, red boots with a thousand wrinkles, heavy shakos garlanded with torsades, the almost black infantry of Brunswick mingled with the scarlet infantry of England, the English soldiers with great, white circular pads on the slopes of their shoulders for epaulets, the Hanoverian light-horse with their oblong casques of leather, with brass hands and red horse-tails, the Scotch with their bare knees and plaids, the great white gaiters of our grenadiers; pictures, not strategic lines\u2014what Salvator Rosa requires, not what is suited to the needs of Gribeauval.\nA certain amount of tempest is always mingled with a battle. Quid obscurum, quid divinum. Each historian traces, to some extent, the particular feature which pleases him amid this pell-mell. Whatever may be the combinations of the generals, the shock of armed masses has an incalculable ebb. During the action the plans of the two leaders enter into each other and become mutually thrown out of shape. Such a point of the field of battle devours more combatants than such another, just as more or less spongy soils soak up more or less quickly the water which is poured on them. It becomes necessary to pour out more soldiers than one would like; a series of expenditures which are the unforeseen. The line of battle waves and undulates like a thread, the trails of blood gush illogically, the fronts of the armies waver, the regiments form capes and gulfs as they enter and withdraw; all these reefs are continually moving in front of each other. Where the infantry stood the artillery arrives, the cavalry rushes in where the artillery was, the battalions are like smoke. There was something there; seek it. It has disappeared; the open spots change place, the sombre folds advance and retreat, a sort of wind from the sepulchre pushes forward, hurls back, distends, and disperses these tragic multitudes. What is a fray? an oscillation? The immobility of a mathematical plan expresses a minute, not a day. In order to depict a battle, there is required one of those powerful painters who have chaos in their brushes. Rembrandt is better than Vandermeulen; Vandermeulen, exact at noon, lies at three o\u2019clock. Geometry is deceptive; the hurricane alone is trustworthy. That is what confers on Folard the right to contradict Polybius. Let us add, that there is a certain instant when the battle degenerates into a combat, becomes specialized, and disperses into innumerable detailed feats, which, to borrow the expression of Napoleon himself, \u201cbelong rather to the biography of the regiments than to the history of the army.\u201d The historian has, in this case, the evident right to sum up the whole. He cannot do more than seize the principal outlines of the struggle, and it is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be, to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud which is called a battle.\nThis, which is true of all great armed encounters, is particularly applicable to Waterloo.\nNevertheless, at a certain moment in the afternoon the battle came to a point.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014FOUR O\u2019CLOCK IN THE AFTERNOON \nTowards four o\u2019clock the condition of the English army was serious. The Prince of Orange was in command of the centre, Hill of the right wing, Picton of the left wing. The Prince of Orange, desperate and intrepid, shouted to the Hollando-Belgians: \u201cNassau! Brunswick! Never retreat!\u201d Hill, having been weakened, had come up to the support of Wellington; Picton was dead. At the very moment when the English had captured from the French the flag of the 105th of the line, the French had killed the English general, Picton, with a bullet through the head. The battle had, for Wellington, two bases of action, Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte; Hougomont still held out, but was on fire; La Haie-Sainte was taken. Of the German battalion which defended it, only forty-two men survived; all the officers, except five, were either dead or captured. Three thousand combatants had been massacred in that barn. A sergeant of the English Guards, the foremost boxer in England, reputed invulnerable by his companions, had been killed there by a little French drummer-boy. Baring had been dislodged, Alten put to the sword. Many flags had been lost, one from Alten\u2019s division, and one from the battalion of Lunenburg, carried by a prince of the house of Deux-Ponts. The Scotch Grays no longer existed; Ponsonby\u2019s great dragoons had been hacked to pieces. That valiant cavalry had bent beneath the lancers of Bro and beneath the cuirassiers of Travers; out of twelve hundred horses, six hundred remained; out of three lieutenant-colonels, two lay on the earth,\u2014Hamilton wounded, Mater slain. Ponsonby had fallen, riddled by seven lance-thrusts. Gordon was dead. Marsh was dead. Two divisions, the fifth and the sixth, had been annihilated.\nHougomont injured, La Haie-Sainte taken, there now existed but one rallying-point, the centre. That point still held firm. Wellington reinforced it. He summoned thither Hill, who was at Merle-Braine; he summoned Chass\u00e9, who was at Braine-l\u2019Alleud.\nThe centre of the English army, rather concave, very dense, and very compact, was strongly posted. It occupied the plateau of Mont-Saint-Humphrey, having behind it the village, and in front of it the slope, which was tolerably steep then. It rested on that stout stone dwelling which at that time belonged to the domain of Nivelles, and which marks the intersection of the roads\u2014a pile of the sixteenth century, and so robust that the cannon-balls rebounded from it without injuring it. All about the plateau the English had cut the hedges here and there, made embrasures in the hawthorn-trees, thrust the throat of a cannon between two branches, embattled the shrubs. There artillery was ambushed in the brushwood. This punic labor, incontestably authorized by war, which permits traps, was so well done, that Haxo, who had been despatched by the Emperor at nine o\u2019clock in the morning to reconnoitre the enemy\u2019s batteries, had discovered nothing of it, and had returned and reported to Napoleon that there were no obstacles except the two barricades which barred the road to Nivelles and to Genappe. It was at the season when the grain is tall; on the edge of the plateau a battalion of Kempt\u2019s brigade, the 95th, armed with carabines, was concealed in the tall wheat.\nThus assured and buttressed, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was well posted. The peril of this position lay in the forest of Soignes, then adjoining the field of battle, and intersected by the ponds of Groenendael and Boitsfort. An army could not retreat thither without dissolving; the regiments would have broken up immediately there. The artillery would have been lost among the morasses. The retreat, according to many a man versed in the art,\u2014though it is disputed by others,\u2014would have been a disorganized flight.\nTo this centre, Wellington added one of Chass\u00e9\u2019s brigades taken from the right wing, and one of Wincke\u2019s brigades taken from the left wing, plus Clinton\u2019s division. To his English, to the regiments of Halkett, to the brigades of Mitchell, to the guards of Maitland, he gave as reinforcements and aids, the infantry of Brunswick, Nassau\u2019s contingent, Kielmansegg\u2019s Hanoverians, and Ompteda\u2019s Germans. This placed twenty-six battalions under his hand. The right wing, as Charras says, was thrown back on the centre. An enormous battery was masked by sacks of earth at the spot where there now stands what is called the \u201cMuseum of Waterloo.\u201d Besides this, Wellington had, behind a rise in the ground, Somerset\u2019s Dragoon Guards, fourteen hundred horse strong. It was the remaining half of the justly celebrated English cavalry. Ponsonby destroyed, Somerset remained.\nThe battery, which, if completed, would have been almost a redoubt, was ranged behind a very low garden wall, backed up with a coating of bags of sand and a large slope of earth. This work was not finished; there had been no time to make a palisade for it.\nWellington, uneasy but impassive, was on horseback, and there remained the whole day in the same attitude, a little in advance of the old mill of Mont-Saint-Humphrey, which is still in existence, beneath an elm, which an Englishman, an enthusiastic vandal, purchased later on for two hundred francs, cut down, and carried off. Wellington was coldly heroic. The bullets rained about him. His aide-de-camp, Gordon, fell at his side. Lord Hill, pointing to a shell which had burst, said to him: \u201cMy lord, what are your orders in case you are killed?\u201d \u201cTo do like me,\u201d replied Wellington. To Clinton he said laconically, \u201cTo hold this spot to the last man.\u201d The day was evidently turning out ill. Wellington shouted to his old companions of Talavera, of Vittoria, of Salamanca: \u201cBoys, can retreat be thought of? Think of old England!\u201d\nTowards four o\u2019clock, the English line drew back. Suddenly nothing was visible on the crest of the plateau except the artillery and the sharpshooters; the rest had disappeared: the regiments, dislodged by the shells and the French bullets, retreated into the bottom, now intersected by the back road of the farm of Mont-Saint-Humphrey; a retrograde movement took place, the English front hid itself, Wellington drew back. \u201cThe beginning of retreat!\u201d cried Napoleon.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014NAPOLEON IN A GOOD HUMOR \nThe Emperor, though ill and discommoded on horseback by a local trouble, had never been in a better humor than on that day. His impenetrability had been smiling ever since the morning. On the 18th of June, that profound soul masked by marble beamed blindly. The man who had been gloomy at Austerlitz was gay at Waterloo. The greatest favorites of destiny make mistakes. Our joys are composed of shadow. The supreme smile is God\u2019s alone.\nRidet C\u00e6sar, Pompeius flebit, said the legionaries of the Fulminatrix Legion. Pompey was not destined to weep on that occasion, but it is certain that C\u00e6sar laughed. While exploring on horseback at one o\u2019clock on the preceding night, in storm and rain, in company with Bertrand, the communes in the neighborhood of Rossomme, satisfied at the sight of the long line of the English camp-fires illuminating the whole horizon from Frischemont to Braine-l\u2019Alleud, it had seemed to him that fate, to whom he had assigned a day on the field of Waterloo, was exact to the appointment; he stopped his horse, and remained for some time motionless, gazing at the lightning and listening to the thunder; and this fatalist was heard to cast into the darkness this mysterious saying, \u201cWe are in accord.\u201d Napoleon was mistaken. They were no longer in accord.\nHe took not a moment for sleep; every instant of that night was marked by a joy for him. He traversed the line of the principal outposts, halting here and there to talk to the sentinels. At half-past two, near the wood of Hougomont, he heard the tread of a column on the march; he thought at the moment that it was a retreat on the part of Wellington. He said: \u201cIt is the rear-guard of the English getting under way for the purpose of decamping. I will take prisoners the six thousand English who have just arrived at Ostend.\u201d He conversed expansively; he regained the animation which he had shown at his landing on the first of March, when he pointed out to the Grand-Marshal the enthusiastic peasant of the Gulf Juan, and cried, \u201cWell, Bertrand, here is a reinforcement already!\u201d On the night of the 17th to the 18th of June he rallied Wellington. \u201cThat little Englishman needs a lesson,\u201d said Napoleon. The rain redoubled in violence; the thunder rolled while the Emperor was speaking.\nAt half-past three o\u2019clock in the morning, he lost one illusion; officers who had been despatched to reconnoitre announced to him that the enemy was not making any movement. Nothing was stirring; not a bivouac-fire had been extinguished; the English army was asleep. The silence on earth was profound; the only noise was in the heavens. At four o\u2019clock, a peasant was brought in to him by the scouts; this peasant had served as guide to a brigade of English cavalry, probably Vivian\u2019s brigade, which was on its way to take up a position in the village of Ohain, at the extreme left. At five o\u2019clock, two Belgian deserters reported to him that they had just quitted their regiment, and that the English army was ready for battle. \u201cSo much the better!\u201d exclaimed Napoleon. \u201cI prefer to overthrow them rather than to drive them back.\u201d\nIn the morning he dismounted in the mud on the slope which forms an angle with the Plancenoit road, had a kitchen table and a peasant\u2019s chair brought to him from the farm of Rossomme, seated himself, with a truss of straw for a carpet, and spread out on the table the chart of the battle-field, saying to Soult as he did so, \u201cA pretty checker-board.\u201d\nIn consequence of the rains during the night, the transports of provisions, embedded in the soft roads, had not been able to arrive by morning; the soldiers had had no sleep; they were wet and fasting. This did not prevent Napoleon from exclaiming cheerfully to Ney, \u201cWe have ninety chances out of a hundred.\u201d At eight o\u2019clock the Emperor\u2019s breakfast was brought to him. He invited many generals to it. During breakfast, it was said that Wellington had been to a ball two nights before, in Brussels, at the Duchess of Richmond\u2019s; and Soult, a rough man of war, with a face of an archbishop, said, \u201cThe ball takes place to-day.\u201d The Emperor jested with Ney, who said, \u201cWellington will not be so simple as to wait for Your Majesty.\u201d That was his way, however. \u201cHe was fond of jesting,\u201d says Fleury de Chaboulon. \u201cA merry humor was at the foundation of his character,\u201d says Gourgaud. \u201cHe abounded in pleasantries, which were more peculiar than witty,\u201d says Benjamin Constant. These gayeties of a giant are worthy of insistence. It was he who called his grenadiers \u201chis grumblers\u201d; he pinched their ears; he pulled their moustaches. \u201cThe Emperor did nothing but play pranks on us,\u201d is the remark of one of them. During the mysterious trip from the island of Elba to France, on the 27th of February, on the open sea, the French brig of war, Le Z\u00e9phyr, having encountered the brig L\u2019Inconstant, on which Napoleon was concealed, and having asked the news of Napoleon from L\u2019Inconstant, the Emperor, who still wore in his hat the white and amaranthine cockade sown with bees, which he had adopted at the isle of Elba, laughingly seized the speaking-trumpet, and answered for himself, \u201cThe Emperor is well.\u201d A man who laughs like that is on familiar terms with events. Napoleon indulged in many fits of this laughter during the breakfast at Waterloo. After breakfast he meditated for a quarter of an hour; then two generals seated themselves on the truss of straw, pen in hand and their paper on their knees, and the Emperor dictated to them the order of battle.\nAt nine o\u2019clock, at the instant when the French army, ranged in echelons and set in motion in five columns, had deployed\u2014the divisions in two lines, the artillery between the brigades, the music at their head; as they beat the march, with rolls on the drums and the blasts of trumpets, mighty, vast, joyous, a sea of casques, of sabres, and of bayonets on the horizon, the Emperor was touched, and twice exclaimed, \u201cMagnificent! Magnificent!\u201d\nBetween nine o\u2019clock and half-past ten the whole army, incredible as it may appear, had taken up its position and ranged itself in six lines, forming, to repeat the Emperor\u2019s expression, \u201cthe figure of six V\u2019s.\u201d A few moments after the formation of the battle-array, in the midst of that profound silence, like that which heralds the beginning of a storm, which precedes engagements, the Emperor tapped Haxo on the shoulder, as he beheld the three batteries of twelve-pounders, detached by his orders from the corps of Erlon, Reille, and Lobau, and destined to begin the action by taking Mont-Saint-Humphrey, which was situated at the intersection of the Nivelles and the Genappe roads, and said to him, \u201cThere are four and twenty handsome maids, General.\u201d\nSure of the issue, he encouraged with a smile, as they passed before him, the company of sappers of the first corps, which he had appointed to barricade Mont-Saint-Humphrey as soon as the village should be carried. All this serenity had been traversed by but a single word of haughty pity; perceiving on his left, at a spot where there now stands a large tomb, those admirable Scotch Grays, with their superb horses, massing themselves, he said, \u201cIt is a pity.\u201d\nThen he mounted his horse, advanced beyond Rossomme, and selected for his post of observation a contracted elevation of turf to the right of the road from Genappe to Brussels, which was his second station during the battle. The third station, the one adopted at seven o\u2019clock in the evening, between La Belle-Alliance and La Haie-Sainte, is formidable; it is a rather elevated knoll, which still exists, and behind which the guard was massed on a slope of the plain. Around this knoll the balls rebounded from the pavements of the road, up to Napoleon himself. As at Brienne, he had over his head the shriek of the bullets and of the heavy artillery. Mouldy cannon-balls, old sword-blades, and shapeless projectiles, eaten up with rust, were picked up at the spot where his horse\u2019s feet stood. Scabra rubigine. A few years ago, a shell of sixty pounds, still charged, and with its fuse broken off level with the bomb, was unearthed. It was at this last post that the Emperor said to his guide, Lacoste, a hostile and terrified peasant, who was attached to the saddle of a hussar, and who turned round at every discharge of canister and tried to hide behind Napoleon: \u201cFool, it is shameful! You\u2019ll get yourself killed with a ball in the back.\u201d He who writes these lines has himself found, in the friable soil of this knoll, on turning over the sand, the remains of the neck of a bomb, disintegrated, by the oxidization of six and forty years, and old fragments of iron which parted like elder-twigs between the fingers.\nEvery one is aware that the variously inclined undulations of the plains, where the engagement between Napoleon and Wellington took place, are no longer what they were on June 18, 1815. By taking from this mournful field the wherewithal to make a monument to it, its real relief has been taken away, and history, disconcerted, no longer finds her bearings there. It has been disfigured for the sake of glorifying it. Wellington, when he beheld Waterloo once more, two years later, exclaimed, \u201cThey have altered my field of battle!\u201d Where the great pyramid of earth, surmounted by the lion, rises to-day, there was a hillock which descended in an easy slope towards the Nivelles road, but which was almost an escarpment on the side of the highway to Genappe. The elevation of this escarpment can still be measured by the height of the two knolls of the two great sepulchres which enclose the road from Genappe to Brussels: one, the English tomb, is on the left; the other, the German tomb, is on the right. There is no French tomb. The whole of that plain is a sepulchre for France. Thanks to the thousands upon thousands of cartloads of earth employed in the hillock one hundred and fifty feet in height and half a mile in circumference, the plateau of Mont-Saint-Humphrey is now accessible by an easy slope. On the day of battle, particularly on the side of La Haie-Sainte, it was abrupt and difficult of approach. The slope there is so steep that the English cannon could not see the farm, situated in the bottom of the valley, which was the centre of the combat. On the 18th of June, 1815, the rains had still farther increased this acclivity, the mud complicated the problem of the ascent, and the men not only slipped back, but stuck fast in the mire. Along the crest of the plateau ran a sort of trench whose presence it was impossible for the distant observer to divine.\nWhat was this trench? Let us explain. Braine-l\u2019Alleud is a Belgian village; Ohain is another. These villages, both of them concealed in curves of the landscape, are connected by a road about a league and a half in length, which traverses the plain along its undulating level, and often enters and buries itself in the hills like a furrow, which makes a ravine of this road in some places. In 1815, as at the present day, this road cut the crest of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Humphrey between the two highways from Genappe and Nivelles; only, it is now on a level with the plain; it was then a hollow way. Its two slopes have been appropriated for the monumental hillock. This road was, and still is, a trench throughout the greater portion of its course; a hollow trench, sometimes a dozen feet in depth, and whose banks, being too steep, crumbled away here and there, particularly in winter, under driving rains. Accidents happened here. The road was so narrow at the Braine-l\u2019Alleud entrance that a passer-by was crushed by a cart, as is proved by a stone cross which stands near the cemetery, and which gives the name of the dead, Monsieur Bernard Debrye, Merchant of Brussels, and the date of the accident, February, 1637.8 It was so deep on the table-land of Mont-Saint-Humphrey that a peasant, Mathieu Nicaise, was crushed there, in 1783, by a slide from the slope, as is stated on another stone cross, the top of which has disappeared in the process of clearing the ground, but whose overturned pedestal is still visible on the grassy slope to the left of the highway between La Haie-Sainte and the farm of Mont-Saint-Humphrey.\nOn the day of battle, this hollow road whose existence was in no way indicated, bordering the crest of Mont-Saint-Humphrey, a trench at the summit of the escarpment, a rut concealed in the soil, was invisible; that is to say, terrible.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014THE EMPEROR PUTS A QUESTION TO THE GUIDE LACOSTE \nSo, on the morning of Waterloo, Napoleon was content.\nHe was right; the plan of battle conceived by him was, as we have seen, really admirable.\nThe battle once begun, its very various changes,\u2014the resistance of Hougomont; the tenacity of La Haie-Sainte; the killing of Bauduin; the disabling of Foy; the unexpected wall against which Soye\u2019s brigade was shattered; Guilleminot\u2019s fatal heedlessness when he had neither petard nor powder sacks; the miring of the batteries; the fifteen unescorted pieces overwhelmed in a hollow way by Uxbridge; the small effect of the bombs falling in the English lines, and there embedding themselves in the rain-soaked soil, and only succeeding in producing volcanoes of mud, so that the canister was turned into a splash; the uselessness of Pir\u00e9\u2019s demonstration on Braine-l\u2019Alleud; all that cavalry, fifteen squadrons, almost exterminated; the right wing of the English badly alarmed, the left wing badly cut into; Ney\u2019s strange mistake in massing, instead of echelonning the four divisions of the first corps; men delivered over to grape-shot, arranged in ranks twenty-seven deep and with a frontage of two hundred; the frightful holes made in these masses by the cannon-balls; attacking columns disorganized; the side-battery suddenly unmasked on their flank; Bourgeois, Donzelot, and Durutte compromised; Quiot repulsed; Lieutenant Vieux, that Hercules graduated at the Polytechnic School, wounded at the moment when he was beating in with an axe the door of La Haie-Sainte under the downright fire of the English barricade which barred the angle of the road from Genappe to Brussels; Marcognet\u2019s division caught between the infantry and the cavalry, shot down at the very muzzle of the guns amid the grain by Best and Pack, put to the sword by Ponsonby; his battery of seven pieces spiked; the Prince of Saxe-Weimar holding and guarding, in spite of the Comte d\u2019Erlon, both Frischemont and Smohain; the flag of the 105th taken, the flag of the 45th captured; that black Prussian hussar stopped by runners of the flying column of three hundred light cavalry on the scout between Wavre and Plancenoit; the alarming things that had been said by prisoners; Grouchy\u2019s delay; fifteen hundred men killed in the orchard of Hougomont in less than an hour; eighteen hundred men overthrown in a still shorter time about La Haie-Sainte,\u2014all these stormy incidents passing like the clouds of battle before Napoleon, had hardly troubled his gaze and had not overshadowed that face of imperial certainty. Napoleon was accustomed to gaze steadily at war; he never added up the heart-rending details, cipher by cipher; ciphers mattered little to him, provided that they furnished the total\u2014victory; he was not alarmed if the beginnings did go astray, since he thought himself the master and the possessor at the end; he knew how to wait, supposing himself to be out of the question, and he treated destiny as his equal: he seemed to say to fate, Thou wilt not dare.\nComposed half of light and half of shadow, Napoleon thought himself protected in good and tolerated in evil. He had, or thought that he had, a connivance, one might almost say a complicity, of events in his favor, which was equivalent to the invulnerability of antiquity.\nNevertheless, when one has B\u00e9r\u00e9sina, Leipzig, and Fontainebleau behind one, it seems as though one might distrust Waterloo. A mysterious frown becomes perceptible in the depths of the heavens.\nAt the moment when Wellington retreated, Napoleon shuddered. He suddenly beheld the table-land of Mont-Saint-Humphrey cleared, and the van of the English army disappear. It was rallying, but hiding itself. The Emperor half rose in his stirrups. The lightning of victory flashed from his eyes.\nWellington, driven into a corner at the forest of Soignes and destroyed\u2014that was the definitive conquest of England by France; it was Cr\u00e9cy, Poitiers, Malplaquet, and Ramillies avenged. The man of Marengo was wiping out Agincourt.\nSo the Emperor, meditating on this terrible turn of fortune, swept his glass for the last time over all the points of the field of battle. His guard, standing behind him with grounded arms, watched him from below with a sort of religion. He pondered; he examined the slopes, noted the declivities, scrutinized the clumps of trees, the square of rye, the path; he seemed to be counting each bush. He gazed with some intentness at the English barricades of the two highways,\u2014two large abatis of trees, that on the road to Genappe above La Haie-Sainte, armed with two cannon, the only ones out of all the English artillery which commanded the extremity of the field of battle, and that on the road to Nivelles where gleamed the Dutch bayonets of Chass\u00e9\u2019s brigade. Near this barricade he observed the old chapel of Saint Nicholas, painted white, which stands at the angle of the crossroad near Braine-l\u2019Alleud; he bent down and spoke in a low voice to the guide Lacoste. The guide made a negative sign with his head, which was probably perfidious.\nThe Emperor straightened himself up and fell to thinking.\nWellington had drawn back.\nAll that remained to do was to complete this retreat by crushing him.\nNapoleon turning round abruptly, despatched an express at full speed to Paris to announce that the battle was won.\nNapoleon was one of those geniuses from whom thunder darts.\nHe had just found his clap of thunder.\nHe gave orders to Milhaud\u2019s cuirassiers to carry the table-land of Mont-Saint-Humphrey.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014THE UNEXPECTED\nThere were three thousand five hundred of them. They formed a front a quarter of a league in extent. They were giant men, on colossal horses. There were six and twenty squadrons of them; and they had behind them to support them Lefebvre-Desnouettes\u2019s division,\u2014the one hundred and six picked gendarmes, the light cavalry of the Guard, eleven hundred and ninety-seven men, and the lancers of the guard of eight hundred and eighty lances. They wore casques without horse-tails, and cuirasses of beaten iron, with horse-pistols in their holsters, and long sabre-swords. That morning the whole army had admired them, when, at nine o\u2019clock, with braying of trumpets and all the music playing \u201cLet us watch o\u2019er the Safety of the Empire,\u201d they had come in a solid column, with one of their batteries on their flank, another in their centre, and deployed in two ranks between the roads to Genappe and Frischemont, and taken up their position for battle in that powerful second line, so cleverly arranged by Napoleon, which, having on its extreme left Kellermann\u2019s cuirassiers and on its extreme right Milhaud\u2019s cuirassiers, had, so to speak, two wings of iron.\nAide-de-camp Bernard carried them the Emperor\u2019s orders. Ney drew his sword and placed himself at their head. The enormous squadrons were set in motion.\nThen a formidable spectacle was seen.\nAll their cavalry, with upraised swords, standards and trumpets flung to the breeze, formed in columns by divisions, descended, by a simultaneous movement and like one man, with the precision of a brazen battering-ram which is effecting a breach, the hill of La Belle Alliance, plunged into the terrible depths in which so many men had already fallen, disappeared there in the smoke, then emerging from that shadow, reappeared on the other side of the valley, still compact and in close ranks, mounting at a full trot, through a storm of grape-shot which burst upon them, the terrible muddy slope of the table-land of Mont-Saint-Humphrey. They ascended, grave, threatening, imperturbable; in the intervals between the musketry and the artillery, their colossal trampling was audible. Being two divisions, there were two columns of them; Wathier\u2019s division held the right, Delort\u2019s division was on the left. It seemed as though two immense adders of steel were to be seen crawling towards the crest of the table-land. It traversed the battle like a prodigy.\nNothing like it had been seen since the taking of the great redoubt of the Muskowa by the heavy cavalry; Murat was lacking here, but Ney was again present. It seemed as though that mass had become a monster and had but one soul. Each column undulated and swelled like the ring of a polyp. They could be seen through a vast cloud of smoke which was rent here and there. A confusion of helmets, of cries, of sabres, a stormy heaving of the cruppers of horses amid the cannons and the flourish of trumpets, a terrible and disciplined tumult; over all, the cuirasses like the scales on the hydra.\nThese narrations seemed to belong to another age. Something parallel to this vision appeared, no doubt, in the ancient Orphic epics, which told of the centaurs, the old hippanthropes, those Titans with human heads and equestrian chests who scaled Olympus at a gallop, horrible, invulnerable, sublime\u2014gods and beasts.\nOdd numerical coincidence,\u2014twenty-six battalions rode to meet twenty-six battalions. Behind the crest of the plateau, in the shadow of the masked battery, the English infantry, formed into thirteen squares, two battalions to the square, in two lines, with seven in the first line, six in the second, the stocks of their guns to their shoulders, taking aim at that which was on the point of appearing, waited, calm, mute, motionless. They did not see the cuirassiers, and the cuirassiers did not see them. They listened to the rise of this flood of men. They heard the swelling noise of three thousand horse, the alternate and symmetrical tramp of their hoofs at full trot, the jingling of the cuirasses, the clang of the sabres and a sort of grand and savage breathing. There ensued a most terrible silence; then, all at once, a long file of uplifted arms, brandishing sabres, appeared above the crest, and casques, trumpets, and standards, and three thousand heads with gray moustaches, shouting, \u201cVive l\u2019Empereur!\u201d All this cavalry debouched on the plateau, and it was like the appearance of an earthquake.\nAll at once, a tragic incident; on the English left, on our right, the head of the column of cuirassiers reared up with a frightful clamor. On arriving at the culminating point of the crest, ungovernable, utterly given over to fury and their course of extermination of the squares and cannon, the cuirassiers had just caught sight of a trench,\u2014a trench between them and the English. It was the hollow road of Ohain.\nIt was a terrible moment. The ravine was there, unexpected, yawning, directly under the horses\u2019 feet, two fathoms deep between its double slopes; the second file pushed the first into it, and the third pushed on the second; the horses reared and fell backward, landed on their haunches, slid down, all four feet in the air, crushing and overwhelming the riders; and there being no means of retreat,\u2014the whole column being no longer anything more than a projectile,\u2014the force which had been acquired to crush the English crushed the French; the inexorable ravine could only yield when filled; horses and riders rolled there pell-mell, grinding each other, forming but one mass of flesh in this gulf: when this trench was full of living men, the rest marched over them and passed on. Almost a third of Dubois\u2019s brigade fell into that abyss.\nThis began the loss of the battle.\nA local tradition, which evidently exaggerates matters, says that two thousand horses and fifteen hundred men were buried in the hollow road of Ohain. This figure probably comprises all the other corpses which were flung into this ravine the day after the combat.\nLet us note in passing that it was Dubois\u2019s sorely tried brigade which, an hour previously, making a charge to one side, had captured the flag of the Lunenburg battalion.\nNapoleon, before giving the order for this charge of Milhaud\u2019s cuirassiers, had scrutinized the ground, but had not been able to see that hollow road, which did not even form a wrinkle on the surface of the plateau. Warned, nevertheless, and put on the alert by the little white chapel which marks its angle of junction with the Nivelles highway, he had probably put a question as to the possibility of an obstacle, to the guide Lacoste. The guide had answered No. We might almost affirm that Napoleon\u2019s catastrophe originated in that sign of a peasant\u2019s head.\nOther fatalities were destined to arise.\nWas it possible that Napoleon should have won that battle? We answer No. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Bl\u00fccher? No. Because of God.\nBonaparte victor at Waterloo; that does not come within the law of the nineteenth century. Another series of facts was in preparation, in which there was no longer any room for Napoleon. The ill will of events had declared itself long before.\nIt was time that this vast man should fall.\nThe excessive weight of this man in human destiny disturbed the balance. This individual alone counted for more than a universal group. These plethoras of all human vitality concentrated in a single head; the world mounting to the brain of one man,\u2014this would be mortal to civilization were it to last. The moment had arrived for the incorruptible and supreme equity to alter its plan. Probably the principles and the elements, on which the regular gravitations of the moral, as of the material, world depend, had complained. Smoking blood, over-filled cemeteries, mothers in tears,\u2014these are formidable pleaders. When the earth is suffering from too heavy a burden, there are mysterious groanings of the shades, to which the abyss lends an ear.\nNapoleon had been denounced in the infinite and his fall had been decided on.\nHe embarrassed God.\nWaterloo is not a battle; it is a change of front on the part of the Universe.\nCHAPTER X\u2014THE PLATEAU OF MONT-SAINT-HUMPHREY \nThe battery was unmasked at the same moment with the ravine.\nSixty cannons and the thirteen squares darted lightning point-blank on the cuirassiers. The intrepid General Delort made the military salute to the English battery.\nThe whole of the flying artillery of the English had re-entered the squares at a gallop. The cuirassiers had not had even the time for a halt. The disaster of the hollow road had decimated, but not discouraged them. They belonged to that class of men who, when diminished in number, increase in courage.\nWathier\u2019s column alone had suffered in the disaster; Delort\u2019s column, which Ney had deflected to the left, as though he had a presentiment of an ambush, had arrived whole.\nThe cuirassiers hurled themselves on the English squares.\nAt full speed, with bridles loose, swords in their teeth, pistols in fist,\u2014such was the attack.\nThere are moments in battles in which the soul hardens the man until the soldier is changed into a statue, and when all this flesh turns into granite. The English battalions, desperately assaulted, did not stir.\nThen it was terrible.\nAll the faces of the English squares were attacked at once. A frenzied whirl enveloped them. That cold infantry remained impassive. The first rank knelt and received the cuirassiers on their bayonets, the second ranks shot them down; behind the second rank the cannoneers charged their guns, the front of the square parted, permitted the passage of an eruption of grape-shot, and closed again. The cuirassiers replied by crushing them. Their great horses reared, strode across the ranks, leaped over the bayonets and fell, gigantic, in the midst of these four living wells. The cannon-balls ploughed furrows in these cuirassiers; the cuirassiers made breaches in the squares. Files of men disappeared, ground to dust under the horses. The bayonets plunged into the bellies of these centaurs; hence a hideousness of wounds which has probably never been seen anywhere else. The squares, wasted by this mad cavalry, closed up their ranks without flinching. Inexhaustible in the matter of grape-shot, they created explosions in their assailants\u2019 midst. The form of this combat was monstrous. These squares were no longer battalions, they were craters; those cuirassiers were no longer cavalry, they were a tempest. Each square was a volcano attacked by a cloud; lava contended with lightning.\nThe square on the extreme right, the most exposed of all, being in the air, was almost annihilated at the very first shock. lt was formed of the 75th regiment of Highlanders. The bagpipe-player in the centre dropped his melancholy eyes, filled with the reflections of the forests and the lakes, in profound inattention, while men were being exterminated around him, and seated on a drum, with his pibroch under his arm, played the Highland airs. These Scotchmen died thinking of Ben Lothian, as did the Greeks recalling Argos. The sword of a cuirassier, which hewed down the bagpipes and the arm which bore it, put an end to the song by killing the singer.\nThe cuirassiers, relatively few in number, and still further diminished by the catastrophe of the ravine, had almost the whole English army against them, but they multiplied themselves so that each man of them was equal to ten. Nevertheless, some Hanoverian battalions yielded. Wellington perceived it, and thought of his cavalry. Had Napoleon at that same moment thought of his infantry, he would have won the battle. This forgetfulness was his great and fatal mistake.\nAll at once, the cuirassiers, who had been the assailants, found themselves assailed. The English cavalry was at their back. Before them two squares, behind them Somerset; Somerset meant fourteen hundred dragoons of the guard. On the right, Somerset had Dornberg with the German light-horse, and on his left, Trip with the Belgian carabineers; the cuirassiers attacked on the flank and in front, before and in the rear, by infantry and cavalry, had to face all sides. What mattered it to them? They were a whirlwind. Their valor was something indescribable.\nIn addition to this, they had behind them the battery, which was still thundering. It was necessary that it should be so, or they could never have been wounded in the back. One of their cuirasses, pierced on the shoulder by a ball from a biscayan,9 is in the collection of the Waterloo Museum.\nFor such Frenchmen nothing less than such Englishmen was needed. It was no longer a hand-to-hand conflict; it was a shadow, a fury, a dizzy transport of souls and courage, a hurricane of lightning swords. In an instant the fourteen hundred dragoon guards numbered only eight hundred. Fuller, their lieutenant-colonel, fell dead. Ney rushed up with the lancers and Lefebvre-Desnouettes\u2019s light-horse. The plateau of Mont-Saint-Humphrey was captured, recaptured, captured again. The cuirassiers quitted the cavalry to return to the infantry; or, to put it more exactly, the whole of that formidable rout collared each other without releasing the other. The squares still held firm.\nThere were a dozen assaults. Ney had four horses killed under him. Half the cuirassiers remained on the plateau. This conflict lasted two hours.\nThe English army was profoundly shaken. There is no doubt that, had they not been enfeebled in their first shock by the disaster of the hollow road the cuirassiers would have overwhelmed the centre and decided the victory. This extraordinary cavalry petrified Clinton, who had seen Talavera and Badajoz. Wellington, three-quarters vanquished, admired heroically. He said in an undertone, \u201cSublime!\u201d\nThe cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, took or spiked sixty pieces of ordnance, and captured from the English regiments six flags, which three cuirassiers and three chasseurs of the Guard bore to the Emperor, in front of the farm of La Belle Alliance.\nWellington\u2019s situation had grown worse. This strange battle was like a duel between two raging, wounded men, each of whom, still fighting and still resisting, is expending all his blood.\nWhich of the two will be the first to fall?\nThe conflict on the plateau continued.\nWhat had become of the cuirassiers? No one could have told. One thing is certain, that on the day after the battle, a cuirassier and his horse were found dead among the woodwork of the scales for vehicles at Mont-Saint-Humphrey, at the very point where the four roads from Nivelles, Genappe, La Hulpe, and Brussels meet and intersect each other. This horseman had pierced the English lines. One of the men who picked up the body still lives at Mont-Saint-Humphrey. His name is Dehaze. He was eighteen years old at that time.\nWellington felt that he was yielding. The crisis was at hand.\nThe cuirassiers had not succeeded, since the centre was not broken through. As every one was in possession of the plateau, no one held it, and in fact it remained, to a great extent, with the English. Wellington held the village and the culminating plain; Ney had only the crest and the slope. They seemed rooted in that fatal soil on both sides.\nBut the weakening of the English seemed irremediable. The bleeding of that army was horrible. Kempt, on the left wing, demanded reinforcements. \u201cThere are none,\u201d replied Wellington; \u201che must let himself be killed!\u201d Almost at that same moment, a singular coincidence which paints the exhaustion of the two armies, Ney demanded infantry from Napoleon, and Napoleon exclaimed, \u201cInfantry! Where does he expect me to get it? Does he think I can make it?\u201d\nNevertheless, the English army was in the worse case of the two. The furious onsets of those great squadrons with cuirasses of iron and breasts of steel had ground the infantry to nothing. A few men clustered round a flag marked the post of a regiment; such and such a battalion was commanded only by a captain or a lieutenant; Alten\u2019s division, already so roughly handled at La Haie-Sainte, was almost destroyed; the intrepid Belgians of Van Kluze\u2019s brigade strewed the rye-fields all along the Nivelles road; hardly anything was left of those Dutch grenadiers, who, intermingled with Spaniards in our ranks in 1811, fought against Wellington; and who, in 1815, rallied to the English standard, fought against Napoleon. The loss in officers was considerable. Lord Uxbridge, who had his leg buried on the following day, had his knee shattered. If, on the French side, in that tussle of the cuirassiers, Delort, l\u2019H\u00e9ritier, Colbert, Dnop, Travers, and Blancard were disabled, on the side of the English there was Alten wounded, Barne wounded, Delancey killed, Van Meeren killed, Ompteda killed, the whole of Wellington\u2019s staff decimated, and England had the worse of it in that bloody scale. The second regiment of foot-guards had lost five lieutenant-colonels, four captains, and three ensigns; the first battalion of the 30th infantry had lost 24 officers and 1,200 soldiers; the 79th Highlanders had lost 24 officers wounded, 18 officers killed, 450 soldiers killed. The Hanoverian hussars of Cumberland, a whole regiment, with Lyndon Hacke at its head, who was destined to be tried later on and cashiered, had turned bridle in the presence of the fray, and had fled to the forest of Soignes, sowing defeat all the way to Brussels. The transports, ammunition-wagons, the baggage-wagons, the wagons filled with wounded, on perceiving that the French were gaining ground and approaching the forest, rushed headlong thither. The Dutch, mowed down by the French cavalry, cried, \u201cAlarm!\u201d From Vert-Coucou to Groenendael, for a distance of nearly two leagues in the direction of Brussels, according to the testimony of eye-witnesses who are still alive, the roads were encumbered with fugitives. This panic was such that it attacked the Prince de Cond\u00e9 at Mechlin, and Louis XVIII. at Ghent. With the exception of the feeble reserve echelonned behind the ambulance established at the farm of Mont-Saint-Humphrey, and of Vivian\u2019s and Vandeleur\u2019s brigades, which flanked the left wing, Wellington had no cavalry left. A number of batteries lay unhorsed. These facts are attested by Siborne; and Pringle, exaggerating the disaster, goes so far as to say that the Anglo-Dutch army was reduced to thirty-four thousand men. The Iron Duke remained calm, but his lips blanched. Vincent, the Austrian commissioner, Alava, the Spanish commissioner, who were present at the battle in the English staff, thought the Duke lost. At five o\u2019clock Wellington drew out his watch, and he was heard to murmur these sinister words, \u201cBl\u00fccher, or night!\u201d\nIt was at about that moment that a distant line of bayonets gleamed on the heights in the direction of Frischemont.\nHere comes the change of face in this giant drama.\nCHAPTER XI\u2014A BAD GUIDE TO NAPOLEON; A GOOD GUIDE TO B\u00dcLOW \nThe painful surprise of Napoleon is well known. Grouchy hoped for, Bl\u00fccher arriving. Death instead of life.\nFate has these turns; the throne of the world was expected; it was Saint Helena that was seen.\nIf the little shepherd who served as guide to B\u00fclow, Bl\u00fccher\u2019s lieutenant, had advised him to debouch from the forest above Frischemont, instead of below Plancenoit, the form of the nineteenth century might, perhaps, have been different. Napoleon would have won the battle of Waterloo. By any other route than that below Plancenoit, the Prussian army would have come out upon a ravine impassable for artillery, and B\u00fclow would not have arrived.\nNow the Prussian general, Muffling, declares that one hour\u2019s delay, and Bl\u00fccher would not have found Wellington on his feet. \u201cThe battle was lost.\u201d\nIt was time that B\u00fclow should arrive, as will be seen. He had, moreover, been very much delayed. He had bivouacked at Dion-le-Mont, and had set out at daybreak; but the roads were impassable, and his divisions stuck fast in the mire. The ruts were up to the hubs of the cannons. Moreover, he had been obliged to pass the Dyle on the narrow bridge of Wavre; the street leading to the bridge had been fired by the French, so the caissons and ammunition-wagons could not pass between two rows of burning houses, and had been obliged to wait until the conflagration was extinguished. It was midday before B\u00fclow\u2019s vanguard had been able to reach Chapelle-Saint-Lambert.\nHad the action been begun two hours earlier, it would have been over at four o\u2019clock, and Bl\u00fccher would have fallen on the battle won by Napoleon. Such are these immense risks proportioned to an infinite which we cannot comprehend.\nThe Emperor had been the first, as early as midday, to descry with his field-glass, on the extreme horizon, something which had attracted his attention. He had said, \u201cI see yonder a cloud, which seems to me to be troops.\u201d Then he asked the Duc de Dalmatie, \u201cSoult, what do you see in the direction of Chapelle-Saint-Lambert?\u201d The marshal, levelling his glass, answered, \u201cFour or five thousand men, Sire; evidently Grouchy.\u201d But it remained motionless in the mist. All the glasses of the staff had studied \u201cthe cloud\u201d pointed out by the Emperor. Some said: \u201cIt is trees.\u201d The truth is, that the cloud did not move. The Emperor detached Domon\u2019s division of light cavalry to reconnoitre in that quarter.\nB\u00fclow had not moved, in fact. His vanguard was very feeble, and could accomplish nothing. He was obliged to wait for the body of the army corps, and he had received orders to concentrate his forces before entering into line; but at five o\u2019clock, perceiving Wellington\u2019s peril, Bl\u00fccher ordered B\u00fclow to attack, and uttered these remarkable words: \u201cWe must give air to the English army.\u201d\nA little later, the divisions of Losthin, Hiller, Hacke, and Ryssel deployed before Lobau\u2019s corps, the cavalry of Prince William of Prussia debouched from the forest of Paris, Plancenoit was in flames, and the Prussian cannon-balls began to rain even upon the ranks of the guard in reserve behind Napoleon.\nCHAPTER XII\u2014THE GUARD\nEvery one knows the rest,\u2014the irruption of a third army; the battle broken to pieces; eighty-six mouths of fire thundering simultaneously; Pirch the first coming up with B\u00fclow; Zieten\u2019s cavalry led by Bl\u00fccher in person, the French driven back; Marcognet swept from the plateau of Ohain; Durutte dislodged from Papelotte; Donzelot and Quiot retreating; Lobau caught on the flank; a fresh battle precipitating itself on our dismantled regiments at nightfall; the whole English line resuming the offensive and thrust forward; the gigantic breach made in the French army; the English grape-shot and the Prussian grape-shot aiding each other; the extermination; disaster in front; disaster on the flank; the Guard entering the line in the midst of this terrible crumbling of all things.\nConscious that they were about to die, they shouted, \u201cVive l\u2019Empereur!\u201d History records nothing more touching than that agony bursting forth in acclamations.\nThe sky had been overcast all day long. All of a sudden, at that very moment,\u2014it was eight o\u2019clock in the evening\u2014the clouds on the horizon parted, and allowed the grand and sinister glow of the setting sun to pass through, athwart the elms on the Nivelles road. They had seen it rise at Austerlitz.\nEach battalion of the Guard was commanded by a general for this final catastrophe. Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlet, Mallet, Poret de Morvan, were there. When the tall caps of the grenadiers of the Guard, with their large plaques bearing the eagle appeared, symmetrical, in line, tranquil, in the midst of that combat, the enemy felt a respect for France; they thought they beheld twenty victories entering the field of battle, with wings outspread, and those who were the conquerors, believing themselves to be vanquished, retreated; but Wellington shouted, \u201cUp, Guards, and aim straight!\u201d The red regiment of English guards, lying flat behind the hedges, sprang up, a cloud of grape-shot riddled the tricolored flag and whistled round our eagles; all hurled themselves forwards, and the final carnage began. In the darkness, the Imperial Guard felt the army losing ground around it, and in the vast shock of the rout it heard the desperate flight which had taken the place of the \u201cVive l\u2019Empereur!\u201d and, with flight behind it, it continued to advance, more crushed, losing more men at every step that it took. There were none who hesitated, no timid men in its ranks. The soldier in that troop was as much of a hero as the general. Not a man was missing in that suicide.\nNey, bewildered, great with all the grandeur of accepted death, offered himself to all blows in that tempest. He had his fifth horse killed under him there. Perspiring, his eyes aflame, foaming at the mouth, with uniform unbuttoned, one of his epaulets half cut off by a sword-stroke from a horseguard, his plaque with the great eagle dented by a bullet; bleeding, bemired, magnificent, a broken sword in his hand, he said, \u201cCome and see how a Marshal of France dies on the field of battle!\u201d But in vain; he did not die. He was haggard and angry. At Drouet d\u2019Erlon he hurled this question, \u201cAre you not going to get yourself killed?\u201d In the midst of all that artillery engaged in crushing a handful of men, he shouted: \u201cSo there is nothing for me! Oh! I should like to have all these English bullets enter my bowels!\u201d Unhappy man, thou wert reserved for French bullets!\nCHAPTER XIII\u2014THE CATASTROPHE\nThe rout behind the Guard was melancholy.\nThe army yielded suddenly on all sides at once,\u2014Hougomont, La Haie-Sainte, Papelotte, Plancenoit. The cry \u201cTreachery!\u201d was followed by a cry of \u201cSave yourselves who can!\u201d An army which is disbanding is like a thaw. All yields, splits, cracks, floats, rolls, falls, jostles, hastens, is precipitated. The disintegration is unprecedented. Ney borrows a horse, leaps upon it, and without hat, cravat, or sword, places himself across the Brussels road, stopping both English and French. He strives to detain the army, he recalls it to its duty, he insults it, he clings to the rout. He is overwhelmed. The soldiers fly from him, shouting, \u201cLong live Marshal Ney!\u201d Two of Durutte\u2019s regiments go and come in affright as though tossed back and forth between the swords of the Uhlans and the fusillade of the brigades of Kempt, Best, Pack, and Rylandt; the worst of hand-to-hand conflicts is the defeat; friends kill each other in order to escape; squadrons and battalions break and disperse against each other, like the tremendous foam of battle. Lobau at one extremity, and Reille at the other, are drawn into the tide. In vain does Napoleon erect walls from what is left to him of his Guard; in vain does he expend in a last effort his last serviceable squadrons. Quiot retreats before Vivian, Kellermann before Vandeleur, Lobau before B\u00fclow, Morand before Pirch, Domon and Subervic before Prince William of Prussia; Guyot, who led the Emperor\u2019s squadrons to the charge, falls beneath the feet of the English dragoons. Napoleon gallops past the line of fugitives, harangues, urges, threatens, entreats them. All the mouths which in the morning had shouted, \u201cLong live the Emperor!\u201d remain gaping; they hardly recognize him. The Prussian cavalry, newly arrived, dashes forwards, flies, hews, slashes, kills, exterminates. Horses lash out, the cannons flee; the soldiers of the artillery-train unharness the caissons and use the horses to make their escape; transports overturned, with all four wheels in the air, clog the road and occasion massacres. Men are crushed, trampled down, others walk over the dead and the living. Arms are lost. A dizzy multitude fills the roads, the paths, the bridges, the plains, the hills, the valleys, the woods, encumbered by this invasion of forty thousand men. Shouts despair, knapsacks and guns flung among the rye, passages forced at the point of the sword, no more comrades, no more officers, no more generals, an inexpressible terror. Zieten putting France to the sword at its leisure. Lions converted into goats. Such was the flight.\nAt Genappe, an effort was made to wheel about, to present a battle front, to draw up in line. Lobau rallied three hundred men. The entrance to the village was barricaded, but at the first volley of Prussian canister, all took to flight again, and Lobau was taken. That volley of grape-shot can be seen to-day imprinted on the ancient gable of a brick building on the right of the road at a few minutes\u2019 distance before you enter Genappe. The Prussians threw themselves into Genappe, furious, no doubt, that they were not more entirely the conquerors. The pursuit was stupendous. Bl\u00fccher ordered extermination. Roguet had set the lugubrious example of threatening with death any French grenadier who should bring him a Prussian prisoner. Bl\u00fccher outdid Roguet. Duhesme, the general of the Young Guard, hemmed in at the doorway of an inn at Genappe, surrendered his sword to a huzzar of death, who took the sword and slew the prisoner. The victory was completed by the assassination of the vanquished. Let us inflict punishment, since we are history: old Bl\u00fccher disgraced himself. This ferocity put the finishing touch to the disaster. The desperate route traversed Genappe, traversed Quatre-Bras, traversed Gosselies, traversed Frasnes, traversed Charleroi, traversed Thuin, and only halted at the frontier. Alas! and who, then, was fleeing in that manner? The Grand Army.\nThis vertigo, this terror, this downfall into ruin of the loftiest bravery which ever astounded history,\u2014is that causeless? No. The shadow of an enormous right is projected athwart Waterloo. It is the day of destiny. The force which is mightier than man produced that day. Hence the terrified wrinkle of those brows; hence all those great souls surrendering their swords. Those who had conquered Europe have fallen prone on the earth, with nothing left to say nor to do, feeling the present shadow of a terrible presence. Hoc erat in fatis. That day the perspective of the human race underwent a change. Waterloo is the hinge of the nineteenth century. The disappearance of the great man was necessary to the advent of the great century. Some one, a person to whom one replies not, took the responsibility on himself. The panic of heroes can be explained. In the battle of Waterloo there is something more than a cloud, there is something of the meteor. God has passed by.\nAt nightfall, in a meadow near Genappe, Bernard and Bertrand seized by the skirt of his coat and detained a man, haggard, pensive, sinister, gloomy, who, dragged to that point by the current of the rout, had just dismounted, had passed the bridle of his horse over his arm, and with wild eye was returning alone to Waterloo. It was Napoleon, the immense somnambulist of this dream which had crumbled, essaying once more to advance.\nCHAPTER XIV\u2014THE LAST SQUARE\nSeveral squares of the Guard, motionless amid this stream of the defeat, as rocks in running water, held their own until night. Night came, death also; they awaited that double shadow, and, invincible, allowed themselves to be enveloped therein. Each regiment, isolated from the rest, and having no bond with the army, now shattered in every part, died alone. They had taken up position for this final action, some on the heights of Rossomme, others on the plain of Mont-Saint-Humphrey. There, abandoned, vanquished, terrible, those gloomy squares endured their death-throes in formidable fashion. Ulm, Wagram, Jena, Friedland, died with them.\nAt twilight, towards nine o\u2019clock in the evening, one of them was left at the foot of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Humphrey. In that fatal valley, at the foot of that declivity which the cuirassiers had ascended, now inundated by the masses of the English, under the converging fires of the victorious hostile cavalry, under a frightful density of projectiles, this square fought on. It was commanded by an obscure officer named Cambronne. At each discharge, the square diminished and replied. It replied to the grape-shot with a fusillade, continually contracting its four walls. The fugitives pausing breathless for a moment in the distance, listened in the darkness to that gloomy and ever-decreasing thunder.\nWhen this legion had been reduced to a handful, when nothing was left of their flag but a rag, when their guns, the bullets all gone, were no longer anything but clubs, when the heap of corpses was larger than the group of survivors, there reigned among the conquerors, around those men dying so sublimely, a sort of sacred terror, and the English artillery, taking breath, became silent. This furnished a sort of respite. These combatants had around them something in the nature of a swarm of spectres, silhouettes of men on horseback, the black profiles of cannon, the white sky viewed through wheels and gun-carriages, the colossal death\u2019s-head, which the heroes saw constantly through the smoke, in the depths of the battle, advanced upon them and gazed at them. Through the shades of twilight they could hear the pieces being loaded; the matches all lighted, like the eyes of tigers at night, formed a circle round their heads; all the lintstocks of the English batteries approached the cannons, and then, with emotion, holding the supreme moment suspended above these men, an English general, Colville according to some, Maitland according to others, shouted to them, \u201cSurrender, brave Frenchmen!\u201d Cambronne replied, \u201c\u2014\u2014.\u201d\n{EDITOR\u2019S COMMENTARY: Another edition of this book has the word \u201cMerde!\u201d in lieu of the \u2014\u2014 above.}\nCHAPTER XV\u2014CAMBRONNE\nIf any French reader object to having his susceptibilities offended, one would have to refrain from repeating in his presence what is perhaps the finest reply that a Frenchman ever made. This would enjoin us from consigning something sublime to History.\nAt our own risk and peril, let us violate this injunction.\nNow, then, among those giants there was one Titan,\u2014Cambronne.\nTo make that reply and then perish, what could be grander? For being willing to die is the same as to die; and it was not this man\u2019s fault if he survived after he was shot.\nThe winner of the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, who was put to flight; nor Wellington, giving way at four o\u2019clock, in despair at five; nor Bl\u00fccher, who took no part in the engagement. The winner of Waterloo was Cambronne.\nTo thunder forth such a reply at the lightning-flash that kills you is to conquer!\nThus to answer the Catastrophe, thus to speak to Fate, to give this pedestal to the future lion, to hurl such a challenge to the midnight rainstorm, to the treacherous wall of Hougomont, to the sunken road of Ohain, to Grouchy\u2019s delay, to Bl\u00fccher\u2019s arrival, to be Irony itself in the tomb, to act so as to stand upright though fallen, to drown in two syllables the European coalition, to offer kings privies which the C\u00e6sars once knew, to make the lowest of words the most lofty by entwining with it the glory of France, insolently to end Waterloo with Mardigras, to finish Leonidas with Rabellais, to set the crown on this victory by a word impossible to speak, to lose the field and preserve history, to have the laugh on your side after such a carnage,\u2014this is immense!\nIt was an insult such as a thunder-cloud might hurl! It reaches the grandeur of \u00c6schylus!\nCambronne\u2019s reply produces the effect of a violent break. \u2019Tis like the breaking of a heart under a weight of scorn. \u2019Tis the overflow of agony bursting forth. Who conquered? Wellington? No! Had it not been for Bl\u00fccher, he was lost. Was it Bl\u00fccher? No! If Wellington had not begun, Bl\u00fccher could not have finished. This Cambronne, this man spending his last hour, this unknown soldier, this infinitesimal of war, realizes that here is a falsehood, a falsehood in a catastrophe, and so doubly agonizing; and at the moment when his rage is bursting forth because of it, he is offered this mockery,\u2014life! How could he restrain himself? Yonder are all the kings of Europe, the general\u2019s flushed with victory, the Jupiter\u2019s darting thunderbolts; they have a hundred thousand victorious soldiers, and back of the hundred thousand a million; their cannon stand with yawning mouths, the match is lighted; they grind down under their heels the Imperial guards, and the grand army; they have just crushed Napoleon, and only Cambronne remains,\u2014only this earthworm is left to protest. He will protest. Then he seeks for the appropriate word as one seeks for a sword. His mouth froths, and the froth is the word. In face of this mean and mighty victory, in face of this victory which counts none victorious, this desperate soldier stands erect. He grants its overwhelming immensity, but he establishes its triviality; and he does more than spit upon it. Borne down by numbers, by superior force, by brute matter, he finds in his soul an expression: \u201cExcr\u00e9ment!\u201d We repeat it,\u2014to use that word, to do thus, to invent such an expression, is to be the conqueror!\nThe spirit of mighty days at that portentous moment made its descent on that unknown man. Cambronne invents the word for Waterloo as Rouget invents the \u201cMarseillaise,\u201d under the visitation of a breath from on high. An emanation from the divine whirlwind leaps forth and comes sweeping over these men, and they shake, and one of them sings the song supreme, and the other utters the frightful cry.\nThis challenge of titanic scorn Cambronne hurls not only at Europe in the name of the Empire,\u2014that would be a trifle: he hurls it at the past in the name of the Revolution. It is heard, and Cambronne is recognized as possessed by the ancient spirit of the Titans. Danton seems to be speaking! Kl\u00e9ber seems to be bellowing!\nAt that word from Cambronne, the English voice responded, \u201cFire!\u201d The batteries flamed, the hill trembled, from all those brazen mouths belched a last terrible gush of grape-shot; a vast volume of smoke, vaguely white in the light of the rising moon, rolled out, and when the smoke dispersed, there was no longer anything there. That formidable remnant had been annihilated; the Guard was dead. The four walls of the living redoubt lay prone, and hardly was there discernible, here and there, even a quiver in the bodies; it was thus that the French legions, greater than the Roman legions, expired on Mont-Saint-Humphrey, on the soil watered with rain and blood, amid the gloomy grain, on the spot where nowadays Joseph, who drives the post-wagon from Nivelles, passes whistling, and cheerfully whipping up his horse at four o\u2019clock in the morning.\nCHAPTER XVI\u2014QUOT LIBRAS IN DUCE?\nThe battle of Waterloo is an enigma. It is as obscure to those who won it as to those who lost it. For Napoleon it was a panic;10 Bl\u00fccher sees nothing in it but fire; Wellington understands nothing in regard to it. Look at the reports. The bulletins are confused, the commentaries involved. Some stammer, others lisp. Jomini divides the battle of Waterloo into four moments; Muffling cuts it up into three changes; Charras alone, though we hold another judgment than his on some points, seized with his haughty glance the characteristic outlines of that catastrophe of human genius in conflict with divine chance. All the other historians suffer from being somewhat dazzled, and in this dazzled state they fumble about. It was a day of lightning brilliancy; in fact, a crumbling of the military monarchy which, to the vast stupefaction of kings, drew all the kingdoms after it\u2014the fall of force, the defeat of war.\nIn this event, stamped with superhuman necessity, the part played by men amounts to nothing.\nIf we take Waterloo from Wellington and Bl\u00fccher, do we thereby deprive England and Germany of anything? No. Neither that illustrious England nor that august Germany enter into the problem of Waterloo. Thank Heaven, nations are great, independently of the lugubrious feats of the sword. Neither England, nor Germany, nor France is contained in a scabbard. At this epoch when Waterloo is only a clashing of swords, above Bl\u00fccher, Germany has Schiller; above Wellington, England has Byron. A vast dawn of ideas is the peculiarity of our century, and in that aurora England and Germany have a magnificent radiance. They are majestic because they think. The elevation of level which they contribute to civilization is intrinsic with them; it proceeds from themselves and not from an accident. The aggrandizement which they have brought to the nineteenth century has not Waterloo as its source. It is only barbarous peoples who undergo rapid growth after a victory. That is the temporary vanity of torrents swelled by a storm. Civilized people, especially in our day, are neither elevated nor abased by the good or bad fortune of a captain. Their specific gravity in the human species results from something more than a combat. Their honor, thank God! their dignity, their intelligence, their genius, are not numbers which those gamblers, heroes and conquerors, can put in the lottery of battles. Often a battle is lost and progress is conquered. There is less glory and more liberty. The drum holds its peace; reason takes the word. It is a game in which he who loses wins. Let us, therefore, speak of Waterloo coldly from both sides. Let us render to chance that which is due to chance, and to God that which is due to God. What is Waterloo? A victory? No. The winning number in the lottery.\nThe quine 11 won by Europe, paid by France.\nIt was not worthwhile to place a lion there.\nWaterloo, moreover, is the strangest encounter in history. Napoleon and Wellington. They are not enemies; they are opposites. Never did God, who is fond of antitheses, make a more striking contrast, a more extraordinary comparison. On one side, precision, foresight, geometry, prudence, an assured retreat, reserves spared, with an obstinate coolness, an imperturbable method, strategy, which takes advantage of the ground, tactics, which preserve the equilibrium of battalions, carnage, executed according to rule, war regulated, watch in hand, nothing voluntarily left to chance, the ancient classic courage, absolute regularity; on the other, intuition, divination, military oddity, superhuman instinct, a flaming glance, an indescribable something which gazes like an eagle, and which strikes like the lightning, a prodigious art in disdainful impetuosity, all the mysteries of a profound soul, associated with destiny; the stream, the plain, the forest, the hill, summoned, and in a manner, forced to obey, the despot going even so far as to tyrannize over the field of battle; faith in a star mingled with strategic science, elevating but perturbing it. Wellington was the Bar\u00eame of war; Napoleon was its Michael Angelo; and on this occasion, genius was vanquished by calculation. On both sides some one was awaited. It was the exact calculator who succeeded. Napoleon was waiting for Grouchy; he did not come. Wellington expected Bl\u00fccher; he came.\nWellington is classic war taking its revenge. Bonaparte, at his dawning, had encountered him in Italy, and beaten him superbly. The old owl had fled before the young vulture. The old tactics had been not only struck as by lightning, but disgraced. Who was that Corsican of six and twenty? What signified that splendid ignoramus, who, with everything against him, nothing in his favor, without provisions, without ammunition, without cannon, without shoes, almost without an army, with a mere handful of men against masses, hurled himself on Europe combined, and absurdly won victories in the impossible? Whence had issued that fulminating convict, who almost without taking breath, and with the same set of combatants in hand, pulverized, one after the other, the five armies of the emperor of Germany, upsetting Beaulieu on Alvinzi, Wurmser on Beaulieu, M\u00e9las on Wurmser, Mack on M\u00e9las? Who was this novice in war with the effrontery of a luminary? The academical military school excommunicated him, and as it lost its footing; hence, the implacable rancor of the old C\u00e6sarism against the new; of the regular sword against the flaming sword; and of the exchequer against genius. On the 18th of June, 1815, that rancor had the last word, and beneath Lodi, Montebello, Montenotte, Mantua, Arcola, it wrote: Waterloo. A triumph of the mediocres which is sweet to the majority. Destiny consented to this irony. In his decline, Napoleon found Wurmser, the younger, again in front of him.\nIn fact, to get Wurmser, it sufficed to blanch the hair of Wellington.\nWaterloo is a battle of the first order, won by a captain of the second.\nThat which must be admired in the battle of Waterloo, is England; the English firmness, the English resolution, the English blood; the superb thing about England there, no offence to her, was herself. It was not her captain; it was her army.\nWellington, oddly ungrateful, declares in a letter to Lord Bathurst, that his army, the army which fought on the 18th of June, 1815, was a \u201cdetestable army.\u201d What does that sombre intermingling of bones buried beneath the furrows of Waterloo think of that?\nEngland has been too modest in the matter of Wellington. To make Wellington so great is to belittle England. Wellington is nothing but a hero like many another. Those Scotch Grays, those Horse Guards, those regiments of Maitland and of Mitchell, that infantry of Pack and Kempt, that cavalry of Ponsonby and Somerset, those Highlanders playing the pibroch under the shower of grape-shot, those battalions of Rylandt, those utterly raw recruits, who hardly knew how to handle a musket holding their own against Essling\u2019s and Rivoli\u2019s old troops,\u2014that is what was grand. Wellington was tenacious; in that lay his merit, and we are not seeking to lessen it: but the least of his foot-soldiers and of his cavalry would have been as solid as he. The iron soldier is worth as much as the Iron Duke. As for us, all our glorification goes to the English soldier, to the English army, to the English people. If trophy there be, it is to England that the trophy is due. The column of Waterloo would be more just, if, instead of the figure of a man, it bore on high the statue of a people.\nBut this great England will be angry at what we are saying here. She still cherishes, after her own 1688 and our 1789, the feudal illusion. She believes in heredity and hierarchy. This people, surpassed by none in power and glory, regards itself as a nation, and not as a people. And as a people, it willingly subordinates itself and takes a lord for its head. As a workman, it allows itself to be disdained; as a soldier, it allows itself to be flogged.\nIt will be remembered, that at the battle of Inkermann a sergeant who had, it appears, saved the army, could not be mentioned by Lord Paglan, as the English military hierarchy does not permit any hero below the grade of an officer to be mentioned in the reports.\nThat which we admire above all, in an encounter of the nature of Waterloo, is the marvellous cleverness of chance. A nocturnal rain, the wall of Hougomont, the hollow road of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon\u2019s guide deceiving him, B\u00fclow\u2019s guide enlightening him,\u2014the whole of this cataclysm is wonderfully conducted.\nOn the whole, let us say it plainly, it was more of a massacre than of a battle at Waterloo.\nOf all pitched battles, Waterloo is the one which has the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon three-quarters of a league; Wellington, half a league; seventy-two thousand combatants on each side. From this denseness the carnage arose.\nThe following calculation has been made, and the following proportion established: Loss of men: at Austerlitz, French, fourteen per cent; Russians, thirty per cent; Austrians, forty-four per cent. At Wagram, French, thirteen per cent; Austrians, fourteen. At the Moskowa, French, thirty-seven per cent; Russians, forty-four. At Bautzen, French, thirteen per cent; Russians and Prussians, fourteen. At Waterloo, French, fifty-six per cent; the Allies, thirty-one. Total for Waterloo, forty-one per cent; one hundred and forty-four thousand combatants; sixty thousand dead.\nTo-day the field of Waterloo has the calm which belongs to the earth, the impassive support of man, and it resembles all plains.\nAt night, moreover, a sort of visionary mist arises from it; and if a traveller strolls there, if he listens, if he watches, if he dreams like Virgil in the fatal plains of Philippi, the hallucination of the catastrophe takes possession of him. The frightful 18th of June lives again; the false monumental hillock disappears, the lion vanishes in air, the battle-field resumes its reality, lines of infantry undulate over the plain, furious gallops traverse the horizon; the frightened dreamer beholds the flash of sabres, the gleam of bayonets, the flare of bombs, the tremendous interchange of thunders; he hears, as it were, the death rattle in the depths of a tomb, the vague clamor of the battle phantom; those shadows are grenadiers, those lights are cuirassiers; that skeleton Napoleon, that other skeleton is Wellington; all this no longer exists, and yet it clashes together and combats still; and the ravines are empurpled, and the trees quiver, and there is fury even in the clouds and in the shadows; all those terrible heights, Hougomont, Mont-Saint-Humphrey, Frischemont, Papelotte, Plancenoit, appear confusedly crowned with whirlwinds of spectres engaged in exterminating each other.\nCHAPTER XVII\u2014IS WATERLOO TO BE CONSIDERED GOOD?\nThere exists a very respectable liberal school which does not hate Waterloo. We do not belong to it. To us, Waterloo is but the stupefied date of liberty. That such an eagle should emerge from such an egg is certainly unexpected.\nIf one places one\u2019s self at the culminating point of view of the question, Waterloo is intentionally a counter-revolutionary victory. It is Europe against France; it is Petersburg, Berlin, and Vienna against Paris; it is the statu quo against the initiative; it is the 14th of July, 1789, attacked through the 20th of March, 1815; it is the monarchies clearing the decks in opposition to the indomitable French rioting. The final extinction of that vast people which had been in eruption for twenty-six years\u2014such was the dream. The solidarity of the Brunswicks, the Nassaus, the Romanoffs, the Hohenzollerns, the Hapsburgs with the Bourbons. Waterloo bears divine right on its crupper. It is true, that the Empire having been despotic, the kingdom by the natural reaction of things, was forced to be liberal, and that a constitutional order was the unwilling result of Waterloo, to the great regret of the conquerors. It is because revolution cannot be really conquered, and that being providential and absolutely fatal, it is always cropping up afresh: before Waterloo, in Bonaparte overthrowing the old thrones; after Waterloo, in Louis XVIII. granting and conforming to the charter. Bonaparte places a postilion on the throne of Naples, and a sergeant on the throne of Sweden, employing inequality to demonstrate equality; Louis XVIII. at Saint-Ouen countersigns the declaration of the rights of man. If you wish to gain an idea of what revolution is, call it Progress; and if you wish to acquire an idea of the nature of progress, call it To-morrow. To-morrow fulfils its work irresistibly, and it is already fulfilling it to-day. It always reaches its goal strangely. It employs Wellington to make of Foy, who was only a soldier, an orator. Foy falls at Hougomont and rises again in the tribune. Thus does progress proceed. There is no such thing as a bad tool for that workman. It does not become disconcerted, but adjusts to its divine work the man who has bestridden the Alps, and the good old tottering invalid of Father \u00c9lys\u00e9e. It makes use of the gouty man as well as of the conqueror; of the conqueror without, of the gouty man within. Waterloo, by cutting short the demolition of European thrones by the sword, had no other effect than to cause the revolutionary work to be continued in another direction. The slashers have finished; it was the turn of the thinkers. The century that Waterloo was intended to arrest has pursued its march. That sinister victory was vanquished by liberty.\nIn short, and incontestably, that which triumphed at Waterloo; that which smiled in Wellington\u2019s rear; that which brought him all the marshals\u2019 staffs of Europe, including, it is said, the staff of a marshal of France; that which joyously trundled the barrows full of bones to erect the knoll of the lion; that which triumphantly inscribed on that pedestal the date \u201cJune 18, 1815\u201d; that which encouraged Bl\u00fccher, as he put the flying army to the sword; that which, from the heights of the plateau of Mont-Saint-Humphrey, hovered over France as over its prey, was the counter-revolution. It was the counter-revolution which murmured that infamous word \u201cdismemberment.\u201d On arriving in Paris, it beheld the crater close at hand; it felt those ashes which scorched its feet, and it changed its mind; it returned to the stammer of a charter.\nLet us behold in Waterloo only that which is in Waterloo. Of intentional liberty there is none. The counter-revolution was involuntarily liberal, in the same manner as, by a corresponding phenomenon, Napoleon was involuntarily revolutionary. On the 18th of June, 1815, the mounted Robespierre was hurled from his saddle.\nCHAPTER XVIII\u2014A RECRUDESCENCE OF DIVINE RIGHT \nEnd of the dictatorship. A whole European system crumbled away.\nThe Empire sank into a gloom which resembled that of the Roman world as it expired. Again we behold the abyss, as in the days of the barbarians; only the barbarism of 1815, which must be called by its pet name of the counter-revolution, was not long breathed, soon fell to panting, and halted short. The Empire was bewept,\u2014let us acknowledge the fact,\u2014and bewept by heroic eyes. If glory lies in the sword converted into a sceptre, the Empire had been glory in person. It had diffused over the earth all the light which tyranny can give\u2014a sombre light. We will say more; an obscure light. Compared to the true daylight, it is night. This disappearance of night produces the effect of an eclipse.\nLouis XVIII. re-entered Paris. The circling dances of the 8th of July effaced the enthusiasms of the 20th of March. The Corsican became the antithesis of the Bearnese. The flag on the dome of the Tuileries was white. The exile reigned. Hartwell\u2019s pine table took its place in front of the fleur-de-lys-strewn throne of Louis XIV. Bouvines and Fontenoy were mentioned as though they had taken place on the preceding day, Austerlitz having become antiquated. The altar and the throne fraternized majestically. One of the most undisputed forms of the health of society in the nineteenth century was established over France, and over the continent. Europe adopted the white cockade. Trestaillon was celebrated. The device non pluribus impar reappeared on the stone rays representing a sun upon the front of the barracks on the Quai d\u2019Orsay. Where there had been an Imperial Guard, there was now a red house. The Arc du Carrousel, all laden with badly borne victories, thrown out of its element among these novelties, a little ashamed, it may be, of Marengo and Arcola, extricated itself from its predicament with the statue of the Duc d\u2019Angoul\u00eame. The cemetery of the Madeleine, a terrible pauper\u2019s grave in 1793, was covered with jasper and marble, since the bones of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette lay in that dust.\nIn the moat of Vincennes a sepulchral shaft sprang from the earth, recalling the fact that the Duc d\u2019Enghien had perished in the very month when Napoleon was crowned. Pope Pius VII., who had performed the coronation very near this death, tranquilly bestowed his blessing on the fall as he had bestowed it on the elevation. At Schoenbrunn there was a little shadow, aged four, whom it was seditious to call the King of Rome. And these things took place, and the kings resumed their thrones, and the master of Europe was put in a cage, and the old regime became the new regime, and all the shadows and all the light of the earth changed place, because, on the afternoon of a certain summer\u2019s day, a shepherd said to a Prussian in the forest, \u201cGo this way, and not that!\u201d\nThis 1815 was a sort of lugubrious April. Ancient unhealthy and poisonous realities were covered with new appearances. A lie wedded 1789; the right divine was masked under a charter; fictions became constitutional; prejudices, superstitions and mental reservations, with Article 14 in the heart, were varnished over with liberalism. It was the serpent\u2019s change of skin.\nMan had been rendered both greater and smaller by Napoleon. Under this reign of splendid matter, the ideal had received the strange name of ideology! It is a grave imprudence in a great man to turn the future into derision. The populace, however, that food for cannon which is so fond of the cannoneer, sought him with its glance. Where is he? What is he doing? \u201cNapoleon is dead,\u201d said a passer-by to a veteran of Marengo and Waterloo. \u201cHe dead!\u201d cried the soldier; \u201cyou don\u2019t know him.\u201d Imagination distrusted this man, even when overthrown. The depths of Europe were full of darkness after Waterloo. Something enormous remained long empty through Napoleon\u2019s disappearance.\nThe kings placed themselves in this void. Ancient Europe profited by it to undertake reforms. There was a Holy Alliance; Belle-Alliance, Beautiful Alliance, the fatal field of Waterloo had said in advance.\nIn presence and in face of that antique Europe reconstructed, the features of a new France were sketched out. The future, which the Emperor had rallied, made its entry. On its brow it bore the star, Liberty. The glowing eyes of all young generations were turned on it. Singular fact! people were, at one and the same time, in love with the future, Liberty, and the past, Napoleon. Defeat had rendered the vanquished greater. Bonaparte fallen seemed more lofty than Napoleon erect. Those who had triumphed were alarmed. England had him guarded by Hudson Lowe, and France had him watched by Montchenu. His folded arms became a source of uneasiness to thrones. Alexander called him \u201cmy sleeplessness.\u201d This terror was the result of the quantity of revolution which was contained in him. That is what explains and excuses Bonapartist liberalism. This phantom caused the old world to tremble. The kings reigned, but ill at their ease, with the rock of Saint Helena on the horizon.\nWhile Napoleon was passing through the death struggle at Longwood, the sixty thousand men who had fallen on the field of Waterloo were quietly rotting, and something of their peace was shed abroad over the world. The Congress of Vienna made the treaties in 1815, and Europe called this the Restoration.\nThis is what Waterloo was.\nBut what matters it to the Infinite? all that tempest, all that cloud, that war, then that peace? All that darkness did not trouble for a moment the light of that immense Eye before which a grub skipping from one blade of grass to another equals the eagle soaring from belfry to belfry on the towers of Notre Dame.\nCHAPTER XIX\u2014THE BATTLE-FIELD AT NIGHT \nLet us return\u2014it is a necessity in this book\u2014to that fatal battle-field.\nOn the 18th of June the moon was full. Its light favored Bl\u00fccher\u2019s ferocious pursuit, betrayed the traces of the fugitives, delivered up that disastrous mass to the eager Prussian cavalry, and aided the massacre. Such tragic favors of the night do occur sometimes during catastrophes.\nAfter the last cannon-shot had been fired, the plain of Mont-Saint-Humphrey remained deserted.\nThe English occupied the encampment of the French; it is the usual sign of victory to sleep in the bed of the vanquished. They established their bivouac beyond Rossomme. The Prussians, let loose on the retreating rout, pushed forward. Wellington went to the village of Waterloo to draw up his report to Lord Bathurst.\nIf ever the sic vos non vobis was applicable, it certainly is to that village of Waterloo. Waterloo took no part, and lay half a league from the scene of action. Mont-Saint-Humphrey was cannonaded, Hougomont was burned, La Haie-Sainte was taken by assault, Papelotte was burned, Plancenoit was burned, La Belle-Alliance beheld the embrace of the two conquerors; these names are hardly known, and Waterloo, which worked not in the battle, bears off all the honor.\nWe are not of the number of those who flatter war; when the occasion presents itself, we tell the truth about it. War has frightful beauties which we have not concealed; it has also, we acknowledge, some hideous features. One of the most surprising is the prompt stripping of the bodies of the dead after the victory. The dawn which follows a battle always rises on naked corpses.\nWho does this? Who thus soils the triumph? What hideous, furtive hand is that which is slipped into the pocket of victory? What pickpockets are they who ply their trade in the rear of glory? Some philosophers\u2014Voltaire among the number\u2014affirm that it is precisely those persons who have made the glory. It is the same men, they say; there is no relief corps; those who are erect pillage those who are prone on the earth. The hero of the day is the vampire of the night. One has assuredly the right, after all, to strip a corpse a bit when one is the author of that corpse. For our own part, we do not think so; it seems to us impossible that the same hand should pluck laurels and purloin the shoes from a dead man.\nOne thing is certain, which is, that generally after conquerors follow thieves. But let us leave the soldier, especially the contemporary soldier, out of the question.\nEvery army has a rear-guard, and it is that which must be blamed. Bat-like creatures, half brigands and lackeys; all the sorts of vespertillos that that twilight called war engenders; wearers of uniforms, who take no part in the fighting; pretended invalids; formidable limpers; interloping sutlers, trotting along in little carts, sometimes accompanied by their wives, and stealing things which they sell again; beggars offering themselves as guides to officers; soldiers\u2019 servants; marauders; armies on the march in days gone by,\u2014we are not speaking of the present,\u2014dragged all this behind them, so that in the special language they are called \u201cstragglers.\u201d No army, no nation, was responsible for those beings; they spoke Italian and followed the Germans, then spoke French and followed the English. It was by one of these wretches, a Spanish straggler who spoke French, that the Marquis of Fervacques, deceived by his Picard jargon, and taking him for one of our own men, was traitorously slain and robbed on the battle-field itself, in the course of the night which followed the victory of Cerisoles. The rascal sprang from this marauding. The detestable maxim, Live on the enemy! produced this leprosy, which a strict discipline alone could heal. There are reputations which are deceptive; one does not always know why certain generals, great in other directions, have been so popular. Turenne was adored by his soldiers because he tolerated pillage; evil permitted constitutes part of goodness. Turenne was so good that he allowed the Palatinate to be delivered over to fire and blood. The marauders in the train of an army were more or less in number, according as the chief was more or less severe. Hoche and Marceau had no stragglers; Wellington had few, and we do him the justice to mention it.\nNevertheless, on the night from the 18th to the 19th of June, the dead were robbed. Wellington was rigid; he gave orders that any one caught in the act should be shot; but rapine is tenacious. The marauders stole in one corner of the battlefield while others were being shot in another.\nThe moon was sinister over this plain.\nTowards midnight, a man was prowling about, or rather, climbing in the direction of the hollow road of Ohain. To all appearance he was one of those whom we have just described,\u2014neither English nor French, neither peasant nor soldier, less a man than a ghoul attracted by the scent of the dead bodies having theft for his victory, and come to rifle Waterloo. He was clad in a blouse that was something like a great coat; he was uneasy and audacious; he walked forwards and gazed behind him. Who was this man? The night probably knew more of him than the day. He had no sack, but evidently he had large pockets under his coat. From time to time he halted, scrutinized the plain around him as though to see whether he were observed, bent over abruptly, disturbed something silent and motionless on the ground, then rose and fled. His sliding motion, his attitudes, his mysterious and rapid gestures, caused him to resemble those twilight larv\u00e6 which haunt ruins, and which ancient Norman legends call the Alleurs.\nCertain nocturnal wading birds produce these silhouettes among the marshes.\nA glance capable of piercing all that mist deeply would have perceived at some distance a sort of little sutler\u2019s wagon with a fluted wicker hood, harnessed to a famished nag which was cropping the grass across its bit as it halted, hidden, as it were, behind the hovel which adjoins the highway to Nivelles, at the angle of the road from Mont-Saint-Humphrey to Braine l\u2019Alleud; and in the wagon, a sort of woman seated on coffers and packages. Perhaps there was some connection between that wagon and that prowler.\nThe darkness was serene. Not a cloud in the zenith. What matters it if the earth be red! the moon remains white; these are the indifferences of the sky. In the fields, branches of trees broken by grape-shot, but not fallen, upheld by their bark, swayed gently in the breeze of night. A breath, almost a respiration, moved the shrubbery. Quivers which resembled the departure of souls ran through the grass.\nIn the distance the coming and going of patrols and the general rounds of the English camp were audible.\nHougomont and La Haie-Sainte continued to burn, forming, one in the west, the other in the east, two great flames which were joined by the cordon of bivouac fires of the English, like a necklace of rubies with two carbuncles at the extremities, as they extended in an immense semicircle over the hills along the horizon.\nWe have described the catastrophe of the road of Ohain. The heart is terrified at the thought of what that death must have been to so many brave men.\nIf there is anything terrible, if there exists a reality which surpasses dreams, it is this: to live, to see the sun; to be in full possession of virile force; to possess health and joy; to laugh valiantly; to rush towards a glory which one sees dazzling in front of one; to feel in one\u2019s breast lungs which breathe, a heart which beats, a will which reasons; to speak, think, hope, love; to have a mother, to have a wife, to have children; to have the light\u2014and all at once, in the space of a shout, in less than a minute, to sink into an abyss; to fall, to roll, to crush, to be crushed; to see ears of wheat, flowers, leaves, branches; not to be able to catch hold of anything; to feel one\u2019s sword useless, men beneath one, horses on top of one; to struggle in vain, since one\u2019s bones have been broken by some kick in the darkness; to feel a heel which makes one\u2019s eyes start from their sockets; to bite horses\u2019 shoes in one\u2019s rage; to stifle, to yell, to writhe; to be beneath, and to say to one\u2019s self, \u201cBut just a little while ago I was a living man!\u201d\nThere, where that lamentable disaster had uttered its death-rattle, all was silence now. The edges of the hollow road were encumbered with horses and riders, inextricably heaped up. Terrible entanglement! There was no longer any slope, for the corpses had levelled the road with the plain, and reached the brim like a well-filled bushel of barley. A heap of dead bodies in the upper part, a river of blood in the lower part\u2014such was that road on the evening of the 18th of June, 1815. The blood ran even to the Nivelles highway, and there overflowed in a large pool in front of the abatis of trees which barred the way, at a spot which is still pointed out.\nIt will be remembered that it was at the opposite point, in the direction of the Genappe road, that the destruction of the cuirassiers had taken place. The thickness of the layer of bodies was proportioned to the depth of the hollow road. Towards the middle, at the point where it became level, where Delort\u2019s division had passed, the layer of corpses was thinner.\nThe nocturnal prowler whom we have just shown to the reader was going in that direction. He was searching that vast tomb. He gazed about. He passed the dead in some sort of hideous review. He walked with his feet in the blood.\nAll at once he paused.\nA few paces in front of him, in the hollow road, at the point where the pile of dead came to an end, an open hand, illumined by the moon, projected from beneath that heap of men. That hand had on its finger something sparkling, which was a ring of gold.\nThe man bent over, remained in a crouching attitude for a moment, and when he rose there was no longer a ring on the hand.\nHe did not precisely rise; he remained in a stooping and frightened attitude, with his back turned to the heap of dead, scanning the horizon on his knees, with the whole upper portion of his body supported on his two forefingers, which rested on the earth, and his head peering above the edge of the hollow road. The jackal\u2019s four paws suit some actions.\nThen coming to a decision, he rose to his feet.\nAt that moment, he gave a terrible start. He felt some one clutch him from behind.\nHe wheeled round; it was the open hand, which had closed, and had seized the skirt of his coat.\nAn honest man would have been terrified; this man burst into a laugh.\n\u201cCome,\u201d said he, \u201cit\u2019s only a dead body. I prefer a spook to a gendarme.\u201d\nBut the hand weakened and released him. Effort is quickly exhausted in the grave.\n\u201cWell now,\u201d said the prowler, \u201cis that dead fellow alive? Let\u2019s see.\u201d\nHe bent down again, fumbled among the heap, pushed aside everything that was in his way, seized the hand, grasped the arm, freed the head, pulled out the body, and a few moments later he was dragging the lifeless, or at least the unconscious, man, through the shadows of hollow road. He was a cuirassier, an officer, and even an officer of considerable rank; a large gold epaulette peeped from beneath the cuirass; this officer no longer possessed a helmet. A furious sword-cut had scarred his face, where nothing was discernible but blood.\nHowever, he did not appear to have any broken limbs, and, by some happy chance, if that word is permissible here, the dead had been vaulted above him in such a manner as to preserve him from being crushed. His eyes were still closed.\nOn his cuirass he wore the silver cross of the Legion of Honor.\nThe prowler tore off this cross, which disappeared into one of the gulfs which he had beneath his great coat.\nThen he felt of the officer\u2019s fob, discovered a watch there, and took possession of it. Next he searched his waistcoat, found a purse and pocketed it.\nWhen he had arrived at this stage of succor which he was administering to this dying man, the officer opened his eyes.\n\u201cThanks,\u201d he said feebly.\nThe abruptness of the movements of the man who was manipulating him, the freshness of the night, the air which he could inhale freely, had roused him from his lethargy.\nThe prowler made no reply. He raised his head. A sound of footsteps was audible in the plain; some patrol was probably approaching.\nThe officer murmured, for the death agony was still in his voice:\u2014 \u201cWho won the battle?\u201d\n\u201cThe English,\u201d answered the prowler.\nThe officer went on:\u2014\n\u201cLook in my pockets; you will find a watch and a purse. Take them.\u201d\nIt was already done.\nThe prowler executed the required feint, and said:\u2014 \u201cThere is nothing there.\u201d\n\u201cI have been robbed,\u201d said the officer; \u201cI am sorry for that. You should have had them.\u201d\nThe steps of the patrol became more and more distinct.\n\u201cSome one is coming,\u201d said the prowler, with the movement of a man who is taking his departure.\nThe officer raised his arm feebly, and detained him.\n\u201cYou have saved my life. Who are you?\u201d\nThe prowler answered rapidly, and in a low voice:\u2014 \u201cLike yourself, I belonged to the French army. I must leave you. If they were to catch me, they would shoot me. I have saved your life. Now get out of the scrape yourself.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is your rank?\u201d\n\u201cSergeant.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is your name?\u201d\n\u201cTh\u00e9nardier.\u201d\n\u201cI shall not forget that name,\u201d said the officer; \u201cand do you remember mine. My name is Ieuan.\u201d\nBOOK SECOND\u2014THE SHIP ORION\nCHAPTER I\u2014NUMBER 24,601 BECOMES NUMBER 9,430 \nHumphrey Waylon had been recaptured.\nThe reader will be grateful to us if we pass rapidly over the sad details. We will confine ourselves to transcribing two paragraphs published by the journals of that day, a few months after the surprising events which had taken place at M. sur M.\nThese articles are rather summary. It must be remembered, that at that epoch the Gazette des Tribunaux was not yet in existence.\nWe borrow the first from the Drapeau Blanc. It bears the date of July 25, 1823.\nAn arrondissement of the Pas de Calais has just been the theatre of an event quite out of the ordinary course. A man, who was a stranger in the Department, and who bore the name of M. Madeleine, had, thanks to the new methods, resuscitated some years ago an ancient local industry, the manufacture of jet and of black glass trinkets. He had made his fortune in the business, and that of the arrondissement as well, we will admit. He had been appointed mayor, in recognition of his services. The police discovered that M. Madeleine was no other than an ex-convict who had broken his ban, condemned in 1796 for theft, and named Humphrey Waylon. Humphrey Waylon has been recommitted to prison. It appears that previous to his arrest he had succeeded in withdrawing from the hands of M. Laffitte, a sum of over half a million which he had lodged there, and which he had, moreover, and by perfectly legitimate means, acquired in his business. No one has been able to discover where Humphrey Waylon has concealed this money since his return to prison at Toulon.\nThe second article, which enters a little more into detail, is an extract from the Journal de Paris, of the same date.\nA former convict, who had been liberated, named Humphrey Waylon, has just appeared before the Court of Assizes of the Var, under circumstances calculated to attract attention. This wretch had succeeded in escaping the vigilance of the police, he had changed his name, and had succeeded in getting himself appointed mayor of one of our small northern towns; in this town he had established a considerable commerce. He has at last been unmasked and arrested, thanks to the indefatigable zeal of the public prosecutor. He had for his concubine a woman of the town, who died of a shock at the moment of his arrest. This scoundrel, who is endowed with Herculean strength, found means to escape; but three or four days after his flight the police laid their hands on him once more, in Paris itself, at the very moment when he was entering one of those little vehicles which run between the capital and the village of Montfermeil (Seine-et-Oise). He is said to have profited by this interval of three or four days of liberty, to withdraw a considerable sum deposited by him with one of our leading bankers. This sum has been estimated at six or seven hundred thousand francs. If the indictment is to be trusted, he has hidden it in some place known to himself alone, and it has not been possible to lay hands on it. However that may be, the said Humphrey Waylon has just been brought before the Assizes of the Department of the Var as accused of highway robbery accompanied with violence, about eight years ago, on the person of one of those honest children who, as the patriarch of Ferney has said, in immortal verse, \u201c. . . Arrive from Savoy every year, And who, with gentle hands, do clear Those long canals choked up with soot.\u201d\nThis bandit refused to defend himself. It was proved by the skilful and eloquent representative of the public prosecutor, that the theft was committed in complicity with others, and that Humphrey Waylon was a member of a band of robbers in the south. Humphrey Waylon was pronounced guilty and was condemned to the death penalty in consequence. This criminal refused to lodge an appeal. The king, in his inexhaustible clemency, has deigned to commute his penalty to that of penal servitude for life. Humphrey Waylon was immediately taken to the prison at Toulon.\nThe reader has not forgotten that Humphrey Waylon had religious habits at M. sur M. Some papers, among others the Constitutional, presented this commutation as a triumph of the priestly party.\nHumphrey Waylon changed his number in the galleys. He was called 9,430.\nHowever, and we will mention it at once in order that we may not be obliged to recur to the subject, the prosperity of M. sur M. vanished with M. Madeleine; all that he had foreseen during his night of fever and hesitation was realized; lacking him, there actually was a soul lacking. After this fall, there took place at M. sur M. that egotistical division of great existences which have fallen, that fatal dismemberment of flourishing things which is accomplished every day, obscurely, in the human community, and which history has noted only once, because it occurred after the death of Alexander. Lieutenants are crowned kings; superintendents improvise manufacturers out of themselves. Envious rivalries arose. M. Madeleine\u2019s vast workshops were shut; his buildings fell to ruin, his workmen were scattered. Some of them quitted the country, others abandoned the trade. Thenceforth, everything was done on a small scale, instead of on a grand scale; for lucre instead of the general good. There was no longer a centre; everywhere there was competition and animosity. M. Madeleine had reigned over all and directed all. No sooner had he fallen, than each pulled things to himself; the spirit of combat succeeded to the spirit of organization, bitterness to cordiality, hatred of one another to the benevolence of the founder towards all; the threads which M. Madeleine had set were tangled and broken, the methods were adulterated, the products were debased, confidence was killed; the market diminished, for lack of orders; salaries were reduced, the workshops stood still, bankruptcy arrived. And then there was nothing more for the poor. All had vanished.\nThe state itself perceived that some one had been crushed somewhere. Less than four years after the judgment of the Court of Assizes establishing the identity of Humphrey Waylon and M. Madeleine, for the benefit of the galleys, the cost of collecting taxes had doubled in the arrondissement of M. sur M.; and M. de Villele called attention to the fact in the rostrum, in the month of February, 1827.\nCHAPTER II\u2014IN WHICH THE READER WILL PERUSE TWO VERSES, WHICH ARE OF THE DEVIL\u2019S COMPOSITION, POSSIBLY \nBefore proceeding further, it will be to the purpose to narrate in some detail, a singular occurrence which took place at about the same epoch, in Montfermeil, and which is not lacking in coincidence with certain conjectures of the indictment.\nThere exists in the region of Montfermeil a very ancient superstition, which is all the more curious and all the more precious, because a popular superstition in the vicinity of Paris is like an aloe in Siberia. We are among those who respect everything which is in the nature of a rare plant. Here, then, is the superstition of Montfermeil: it is thought that the devil, from time immemorial, has selected the forest as a hiding-place for his treasures. Goodwives affirm that it is no rarity to encounter at nightfall, in secluded nooks of the forest, a black man with the air of a carter or a wood-chopper, wearing wooden shoes, clad in trousers and a blouse of linen, and recognizable by the fact, that, instead of a cap or hat, he has two immense horns on his head. This ought, in fact, to render him recognizable. This man is habitually engaged in digging a hole. There are three ways of profiting by such an encounter. The first is to approach the man and speak to him. Then it is seen that the man is simply a peasant, that he appears black because it is nightfall; that he is not digging any hole whatever, but is cutting grass for his cows, and that what had been taken for horns is nothing but a dung-fork which he is carrying on his back, and whose teeth, thanks to the perspective of evening, seemed to spring from his head. The man returns home and dies within the week. The second way is to watch him, to wait until he has dug his hole, until he has filled it and has gone away; then to run with great speed to the trench, to open it once more and to seize the \u201ctreasure\u201d which the black man has necessarily placed there. In this case one dies within the month. Finally, the last method is not to speak to the black man, not to look at him, and to flee at the best speed of one\u2019s legs. One then dies within the year.\nAs all three methods are attended with their special inconveniences, the second, which at all events, presents some advantages, among others that of possessing a treasure, if only for a month, is the one most generally adopted. So bold men, who are tempted by every chance, have quite frequently, as we are assured, opened the holes excavated by the black man, and tried to rob the devil. The success of the operation appears to be but moderate. At least, if the tradition is to be believed, and in particular the two enigmatical lines in barbarous Latin, which an evil Norman monk, a bit of a sorcerer, named Tryphon has left on this subject. This Tryphon is buried at the Abbey of Saint-Beyonce de Bocherville, near Rouen, and toads spawn on his grave.\nAccordingly, enormous efforts are made. Such trenches are ordinarily extremely deep; a man sweats, digs, toils all night\u2014for it must be done at night; he wets his shirt, burns out his candle, breaks his mattock, and when he arrives at the bottom of the hole, when he lays his hand on the \u201ctreasure,\u201d what does he find? What is the devil\u2019s treasure? A sou, sometimes a crown-piece, a stone, a skeleton, a bleeding body, sometimes a spectre folded in four like a sheet of paper in a portfolio, sometimes nothing. This is what Tryphon\u2019s verses seem to announce to the indiscreet and curious:\u2014 \u201cFodit, et in fossa thesauros condit opaca, As, nummas, lapides, cadaver, simulacra, nihilque.\u201d\nIt seems that in our day there is sometimes found a powder-horn with bullets, sometimes an old pack of cards greasy and worn, which has evidently served the devil. Tryphon does not record these two finds, since Tryphon lived in the twelfth century, and since the devil does not appear to have had the wit to invent powder before Roger Bacon\u2019s time, and cards before the time of Charles VI.\nMoreover, if one plays at cards, one is sure to lose all that one possesses! and as for the powder in the horn, it possesses the property of making your gun burst in your face.\nNow, a very short time after the epoch when it seemed to the prosecuting attorney that the liberated convict Humphrey Waylon during his flight of several days had been prowling around Montfermeil, it was remarked in that village that a certain old road-laborer, named Boulatruelle, had \u201cpeculiar ways\u201d in the forest. People thereabouts thought they knew that this Boulatruelle had been in the galleys. He was subjected to certain police supervision, and, as he could find work nowhere, the administration employed him at reduced rates as a road-mender on the crossroad from Gagny to Lagny.\nThis Boulatruelle was a man who was viewed with disfavor by the inhabitants of the district as too respectful, too humble, too prompt in removing his cap to every one, and trembling and smiling in the presence of the gendarmes,\u2014probably affiliated to robber bands, they said; suspected of lying in ambush at verge of copses at nightfall. The only thing in his favor was that he was a drunkard.\nThis is what people thought they had noticed:\u2014 Of late, Boulatruelle had taken to quitting his task of stone-breaking and care of the road at a very early hour, and to betaking himself to the forest with his pickaxe. He was encountered towards evening in the most deserted clearings, in the wildest thickets; and he had the appearance of being in search of something, and sometimes he was digging holes. The goodwives who passed took him at first for Beelzebub; then they recognized Boulatruelle, and were not in the least reassured thereby. These encounters seemed to cause Boulatruelle a lively displeasure. It was evident that he sought to hide, and that there was some mystery in what he was doing.\nIt was said in the village: \u201cIt is clear that the devil has appeared. Boulatruelle has seen him, and is on the search. In sooth, he is cunning enough to pocket Lucifer\u2019s hoard.\u201d\nThe Voltairians added, \u201cWill Boulatruelle catch the devil, or will the devil catch Boulatruelle?\u201d The old women made a great many signs of the cross.\nIn the meantime, Boulatruelle\u2019s man\u0153uvres in the forest ceased; and he resumed his regular occupation of roadmending; and people gossiped of something else.\nSome persons, however, were still curious, surmising that in all this there was probably no fabulous treasure of the legends, but some fine windfall of a more serious and palpable sort than the devil\u2019s bank-bills, and that the road-mender had half discovered the secret. The most \u201cpuzzled\u201d were the schoolmaster and Th\u00e9nardier, the proprietor of the tavern, who was everybody\u2019s friend, and had not disdained to ally himself with Boulatruelle.\n\u201cHe has been in the galleys,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cEh! Good God! no one knows who has been there or will be there.\u201d\nOne evening the schoolmaster affirmed that in former times the law would have instituted an inquiry as to what Boulatruelle did in the forest, and that the latter would have been forced to speak, and that he would have been put to the torture in case of need, and that Boulatruelle would not have resisted the water test, for example. \u201cLet us put him to the wine test,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier.\nThey made an effort, and got the old road-mender to drinking. Boulatruelle drank an enormous amount, but said very little. He combined with admirable art, and in masterly proportions, the thirst of a gormandizer with the discretion of a judge. Nevertheless, by dint of returning to the charge and of comparing and putting together the few obscure words which he did allow to escape him, this is what Th\u00e9nardier and the schoolmaster imagined that they had made out:\u2014 One morning, when Boulatruelle was on his way to his work, at daybreak, he had been surprised to see, at a nook of the forest in the underbrush, a shovel and a pickaxe, concealed, as one might say.\nHowever, he might have supposed that they were probably the shovel and pick of Father Six-Fours, the water-carrier, and would have thought no more about it. But, on the evening of that day, he saw, without being seen himself, as he was hidden by a large tree, \u201ca person who did not belong in those parts, and whom he, Boulatruelle, knew well,\u201d directing his steps towards the densest part of the wood. Translation by Th\u00e9nardier: A comrade of the galleys. Boulatruelle obstinately refused to reveal his name. This person carried a package\u2014something square, like a large box or a small trunk. Surprise on the part of Boulatruelle. However, it was only after the expiration of seven or eight minutes that the idea of following that \u201cperson\u201d had occurred to him. But it was too late; the person was already in the thicket, night had descended, and Boulatruelle had not been able to catch up with him. Then he had adopted the course of watching for him at the edge of the woods. \u201cIt was moonlight.\u201d Two or three hours later, Boulatruelle had seen this person emerge from the brushwood, carrying no longer the coffer, but a shovel and pick. Boulatruelle had allowed the person to pass, and had not dreamed of accosting him, because he said to himself that the other man was three times as strong as he was, and armed with a pickaxe, and that he would probably knock him over the head on recognizing him, and on perceiving that he was recognized. Touching effusion of two old comrades on meeting again. But the shovel and pick had served as a ray of light to Boulatruelle; he had hastened to the thicket in the morning, and had found neither shovel nor pick. From this he had drawn the inference that this person, once in the forest, had dug a hole with his pick, buried the coffer, and reclosed the hole with his shovel. Now, the coffer was too small to contain a body; therefore it contained money. Hence his researches. Boulatruelle had explored, sounded, searched the entire forest and the thicket, and had dug wherever the earth appeared to him to have been recently turned up. In vain.\nHe had \u201cferreted out\u201d nothing. No one in Montfermeil thought any more about it. There were only a few brave gossips, who said, \u201cYou may be certain that the mender on the Gagny road did not take all that trouble for nothing; he was sure that the devil had come.\u201d\nCHAPTER III\u2014THE ANKLE-CHAIN MUST HAVE UNDERGONE A CERTAIN PREPARATORY MANIPULATION TO BE THUS BROKEN WITH A BLOW FROM A HAMMER \nTowards the end of October, in that same year, 1823, the inhabitants of Toulon beheld the entry into their port, after heavy weather, and for the purpose of repairing some damages, of the ship Orion, which was employed later at Brest as a school-ship, and which then formed a part of the Mediterranean squadron.\nThis vessel, battered as it was,\u2014for the sea had handled it roughly,\u2014produced a fine effect as it entered the roads. It flew some colors which procured for it the regulation salute of eleven guns, which it returned, shot for shot; total, twenty-two. It has been calculated that what with salvos, royal and military politenesses, courteous exchanges of uproar, signals of etiquette, formalities of roadsteads and citadels, sunrises and sunsets, saluted every day by all fortresses and all ships of war, openings and closings of ports, etc., the civilized world, discharged all over the earth, in the course of four and twenty hours, one hundred and fifty thousand useless shots. At six francs the shot, that comes to nine hundred thousand francs a day, three hundred millions a year, which vanish in smoke. This is a mere detail. All this time the poor were dying of hunger.\nThe year 1823 was what the Restoration called \u201cthe epoch of the Spanish war.\u201d\nThis war contained many events in one, and a quantity of peculiarities. A grand family affair for the house of Bourbon; the branch of France succoring and protecting the branch of Madrid, that is to say, performing an act devolving on the elder; an apparent return to our national traditions, complicated by servitude and by subjection to the cabinets of the North; M. le Duc d\u2019Angoul\u00eame, surnamed by the liberal sheets the hero of Andujar, compressing in a triumphal attitude that was somewhat contradicted by his peaceable air, the ancient and very powerful terrorism of the Holy Office at variance with the chimerical terrorism of the liberals; the sansculottes resuscitated, to the great terror of dowagers, under the name of descamisados; monarchy opposing an obstacle to progress described as anarchy; the theories of \u201989 roughly interrupted in the sap; a European halt, called to the French idea, which was making the tour of the world; beside the son of France as generalissimo, the Prince de Carignan, afterwards Charles Albert, enrolling himself in that crusade of kings against people as a volunteer, with grenadier epaulets of red worsted; the soldiers of the Empire setting out on a fresh campaign, but aged, saddened, after eight years of repose, and under the white cockade; the tricolored standard waved abroad by a heroic handful of Frenchmen, as the white standard had been thirty years earlier at Coblentz; monks mingled with our troops; the spirit of liberty and of novelty brought to its senses by bayonets; principles slaughtered by cannonades; France undoing by her arms that which she had done by her mind; in addition to this, hostile leaders sold, soldiers hesitating, cities besieged by millions; no military perils, and yet possible explosions, as in every mine which is surprised and invaded; but little bloodshed, little honor won, shame for some, glory for no one. Such was this war, made by the princes descended from Louis XIV., and conducted by generals who had been under Napoleon. Its sad fate was to recall neither the grand war nor grand politics.\nSome feats of arms were serious; the taking of the Trocad\u00e9ro, among others, was a fine military action; but after all, we repeat, the trumpets of this war give back a cracked sound, the whole effect was suspicious; history approves of France for making a difficulty about accepting this false triumph. It seemed evident that certain Spanish officers charged with resistance yielded too easily; the idea of corruption was connected with the victory; it appears as though generals and not battles had been won, and the conquering soldier returned humiliated. A debasing war, in short, in which the Bank of France could be read in the folds of the flag.\nSoldiers of the war of 1808, on whom Saragossa had fallen in formidable ruin, frowned in 1823 at the easy surrender of citadels, and began to regret Palafox. It is the nature of France to prefer to have Rostopchine rather than Ballesteros in front of her.\nFrom a still more serious point of view, and one which it is also proper to insist upon here, this war, which wounded the military spirit of France, enraged the democratic spirit. It was an enterprise of enthralment. In that campaign, the object of the French soldier, the son of democracy, was the conquest of a yoke for others. A hideous contradiction. France is made to arouse the soul of nations, not to stifle it. All the revolutions of Europe since 1792 are the French Revolution: liberty darts rays from France. That is a solar fact. Blind is he who will not see! It was Bonaparte who said it.\nThe war of 1823, an outrage on the generous Spanish nation, was then, at the same time, an outrage on the French Revolution. It was France who committed this monstrous violence; by foul means, for, with the exception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foul means. The words passive obedience indicate this. An army is a strange masterpiece of combination where force results from an enormous sum of impotence. Thus is war, made by humanity against humanity, despite humanity, explained.\nAs for the Bourbons, the war of 1823 was fatal to them. They took it for a success. They did not perceive the danger that lies in having an idea slain to order. They went astray, in their innocence, to such a degree that they introduced the immense enfeeblement of a crime into their establishment as an element of strength. The spirit of the ambush entered into their politics. 1830 had its germ in 1823. The Spanish campaign became in their counsels an argument for force and for adventures by right Divine. France, having re-established el rey netto in Spain, might well have re-established the absolute king at home. They fell into the alarming error of taking the obedience of the soldier for the consent of the nation. Such confidence is the ruin of thrones. It is not permitted to fall asleep, either in the shadow of a machineel tree, nor in the shadow of an army.\nLet us return to the ship Orion.\nDuring the operations of the army commanded by the prince generalissimo, a squadron had been cruising in the Mediterranean. We have just stated that the Orion belonged to this fleet, and that accidents of the sea had brought it into port at Toulon.\nThe presence of a vessel of war in a port has something about it which attracts and engages a crowd. It is because it is great, and the crowd loves what is great.\nA ship of the line is one of the most magnificent combinations of the genius of man with the powers of nature.\nA ship of the line is composed, at the same time, of the heaviest and the lightest of possible matter, for it deals at one and the same time with three forms of substance,\u2014solid, liquid, and fluid,\u2014and it must do battle with all three. It has eleven claws of iron with which to seize the granite on the bottom of the sea, and more wings and more antenn\u00e6 than winged insects, to catch the wind in the clouds. Its breath pours out through its hundred and twenty cannons as through enormous trumpets, and replies proudly to the thunder. The ocean seeks to lead it astray in the alarming sameness of its billows, but the vessel has its soul, its compass, which counsels it and always shows it the north. In the blackest nights, its lanterns supply the place of the stars. Thus, against the wind, it has its cordage and its canvas; against the water, wood; against the rocks, its iron, brass, and lead; against the shadows, its light; against immensity, a needle.\nIf one wishes to form an idea of all those gigantic proportions which, taken as a whole, constitute the ship of the line, one has only to enter one of the six-story covered construction stocks, in the ports of Brest or Toulon. The vessels in process of construction are under a bell-glass there, as it were. This colossal beam is a yard; that great column of wood which stretches out on the earth as far as the eye can reach is the main-mast. Taking it from its root in the stocks to its tip in the clouds, it is sixty fathoms long, and its diameter at its base is three feet. The English main-mast rises to a height of two hundred and seventeen feet above the water-line. The navy of our fathers employed cables, ours employs chains. The simple pile of chains on a ship of a hundred guns is four feet high, twenty feet in breadth, and eight feet in depth. And how much wood is required to make this ship? Three thousand cubic metres. It is a floating forest.\nAnd moreover, let this be borne in mind, it is only a question here of the military vessel of forty years ago, of the simple sailing-vessel; steam, then in its infancy, has since added new miracles to that prodigy which is called a war vessel. At the present time, for example, the mixed vessel with a screw is a surprising machine, propelled by three thousand square metres of canvas and by an engine of two thousand five hundred horse-power.\nNot to mention these new marvels, the ancient vessel of Christopher Columbus and of De Ruyter is one of the masterpieces of man. It is as inexhaustible in force as is the Infinite in gales; it stores up the wind in its sails, it is precise in the immense vagueness of the billows, it floats, and it reigns.\nThere comes an hour, nevertheless, when the gale breaks that sixty-foot yard like a straw, when the wind bends that mast four hundred feet tall, when that anchor, which weighs tens of thousands, is twisted in the jaws of the waves like a fisherman\u2019s hook in the jaws of a pike, when those monstrous cannons utter plaintive and futile roars, which the hurricane bears forth into the void and into night, when all that power and all that majesty are engulfed in a power and majesty which are superior.\nEvery time that immense force is displayed to culminate in an immense feebleness it affords men food for thought. Hence in the ports curious people abound around these marvellous machines of war and of navigation, without being able to explain perfectly to themselves why. Every day, accordingly, from morning until night, the quays, sluices, and the jetties of the port of Toulon were covered with a multitude of idlers and loungers, as they say in Paris, whose business consisted in staring at the Orion.\nThe Orion was a ship that had been ailing for a long time; in the course of its previous cruises thick layers of barnacles had collected on its keel to such a degree as to deprive it of half its speed; it had gone into the dry dock the year before this, in order to have the barnacles scraped off, then it had put to sea again; but this cleaning had affected the bolts of the keel: in the neighborhood of the Balearic Isles the sides had been strained and had opened; and, as the plating in those days was not of sheet iron, the vessel had sprung a leak. A violent equinoctial gale had come up, which had first staved in a grating and a porthole on the larboard side, and damaged the foretop-gallant-shrouds; in consequence of these injuries, the Orion had run back to Toulon.\nIt anchored near the Arsenal; it was fully equipped, and repairs were begun. The hull had received no damage on the starboard, but some of the planks had been unnailed here and there, according to custom, to permit of air entering the hold.\nOne morning the crowd which was gazing at it witnessed an accident.\nThe Ship Orion, an Accident\nThe crew was busy bending the sails; the topman, who had to take the upper corner of the main-top-sail on the starboard, lost his balance; he was seen to waver; the multitude thronging the Arsenal quay uttered a cry; the man\u2019s head overbalanced his body; the man fell around the yard, with his hands outstretched towards the abyss; on his way he seized the footrope, first with one hand, then with the other, and remained hanging from it: the sea lay below him at a dizzy depth; the shock of his fall had imparted to the foot-rope a violent swinging motion; the man swayed back and forth at the end of that rope, like a stone in a sling.\nIt was incurring a frightful risk to go to his assistance; not one of the sailors, all fishermen of the coast, recently levied for the service, dared to attempt it. In the meantime, the unfortunate topman was losing his strength; his anguish could not be discerned on his face, but his exhaustion was visible in every limb; his arms were contracted in horrible twitchings; every effort which he made to re-ascend served but to augment the oscillations of the foot-rope; he did not shout, for fear of exhausting his strength. All were awaiting the minute when he should release his hold on the rope, and, from instant to instant, heads were turned aside that his fall might not be seen. There are moments when a bit of rope, a pole, the branch of a tree, is life itself, and it is a terrible thing to see a living being detach himself from it and fall like a ripe fruit.\nAll at once a man was seen climbing into the rigging with the agility of a tiger-cat; this man was dressed in red; he was a convict; he wore a green cap; he was a life convict. On arriving on a level with the top, a gust of wind carried away his cap, and allowed a perfectly white head to be seen: he was not a young man.\nA convict employed on board with a detachment from the galleys had, in fact, at the very first instant, hastened to the officer of the watch, and, in the midst of the consternation and the hesitation of the crew, while all the sailors were trembling and drawing back, he had asked the officer\u2019s permission to risk his life to save the topman; at an affirmative sign from the officer he had broken the chain riveted to his ankle with one blow of a hammer, then he had caught up a rope, and had dashed into the rigging: no one noticed, at the instant, with what ease that chain had been broken; it was only later on that the incident was recalled.\nIn a twinkling he was on the yard; he paused for a few seconds and appeared to be measuring it with his eye; these seconds, during which the breeze swayed the topman at the extremity of a thread, seemed centuries to those who were looking on. At last, the convict raised his eyes to heaven and advanced a step: the crowd drew a long breath. He was seen to run out along the yard: on arriving at the point, he fastened the rope which he had brought to it, and allowed the other end to hang down, then he began to descend the rope, hand over hand, and then,\u2014and the anguish was indescribable,\u2014instead of one man suspended over the gulf, there were two.\nOne would have said it was a spider coming to seize a fly, only here the spider brought life, not death. Ten thousand glances were fastened on this group; not a cry, not a word; the same tremor contracted every brow; all mouths held their breath as though they feared to add the slightest puff to the wind which was swaying the two unfortunate men.\nIn the meantime, the convict had succeeded in lowering himself to a position near the sailor. It was high time; one minute more, and the exhausted and despairing man would have allowed himself to fall into the abyss. The convict had moored him securely with the cord to which he clung with one hand, while he was working with the other. At last, he was seen to climb back on the yard, and to drag the sailor up after him; he held him there a moment to allow him to recover his strength, then he grasped him in his arms and carried him, walking on the yard himself to the cap, and from there to the main-top, where he left him in the hands of his comrades.\nAt that moment the crowd broke into applause: old convict-sergeants among them wept, and women embraced each other on the quay, and all voices were heard to cry with a sort of tender rage, \u201cPardon for that man!\u201d\nHe, in the meantime, had immediately begun to make his descent to rejoin his detachment. In order to reach them the more speedily, he dropped into the rigging, and ran along one of the lower yards; all eyes were following him. At a certain moment fear assailed them; whether it was that he was fatigued, or that his head turned, they thought they saw him hesitate and stagger. All at once the crowd uttered a loud shout: the convict had fallen into the sea.\nThe fall was perilous. The frigate Alg\u00e9siras was anchored alongside the Orion, and the poor convict had fallen between the two vessels: it was to be feared that he would slip under one or the other of them. Four men flung themselves hastily into a boat; the crowd cheered them on; anxiety again took possession of all souls; the man had not risen to the surface; he had disappeared in the sea without leaving a ripple, as though he had fallen into a cask of oil: they sounded, they dived. In vain. The search was continued until the evening: they did not even find the body.\nOn the following day the Toulon newspaper printed these lines:\u2014 \u201cNov. 17, 1823. Yesterday, a convict belonging to the detachment on board of the Orion, on his return from rendering assistance to a sailor, fell into the sea and was drowned. The body has not yet been found; it is supposed that it is entangled among the piles of the Arsenal point: this man was committed under the number 9,430, and his name was Humphrey Waylon.\u201d\nBOOK THIRD\u2014ACCOMPLISHMENT OF THE PROMISE MADE TO THE DEAD WOMAN CHAPTER I\u2014THE WATER QUESTION AT MONTFERMEIL Montfermeil is situated between Livry and Chelles, on the southern edge of that lofty table-land which separates the Ourcq from the Marne. At the present day it is a tolerably large town, ornamented all the year through with plaster villas, and on Sundays with beaming bourgeois. In 1823 there were at Montfermeil neither so many white houses nor so many well-satisfied citizens: it was only a village in the forest. Some pleasure-houses of the last century were to be met with there, to be sure, which were recognizable by their grand air, their balconies in twisted iron, and their long windows, whose tiny panes cast all sorts of varying shades of green on the white of the closed shutters; but Montfermeil was nonetheless a village. Retired cloth-merchants and rusticating attorneys had not discovered it as yet; it was a peaceful and charming place, which was not on the road to anywhere: there people lived, and cheaply, that peasant rustic life which is so bounteous and so easy; only, water was rare there, on account of the elevation of the plateau.\nIt was necessary to fetch it from a considerable distance; the end of the village towards Gagny drew its water from the magnificent ponds which exist in the woods there. The other end, which surrounds the church and which lies in the direction of Chelles, found drinking-water only at a little spring half-way down the slope, near the road to Chelles, about a quarter of an hour from Montfermeil.\nThus each household found it hard work to keep supplied with water. The large houses, the aristocracy, of which the Th\u00e9nardier tavern formed a part, paid half a farthing a bucketful to a man who made a business of it, and who earned about eight sous a day in his enterprise of supplying Montfermeil with water; but this good man only worked until seven o\u2019clock in the evening in summer, and five in winter; and night once come and the shutters on the ground floor once closed, he who had no water to drink went to fetch it for himself or did without it.\nThis constituted the terror of the poor creature whom the reader has probably not forgotten,\u2014little Drew. It will be remembered that Drew was useful to the Th\u00e9nardiers in two ways: they made the mother pay them, and they made the child serve them. So when the mother ceased to pay altogether, the reason for which we have read in preceding chapters, the Th\u00e9nardiers kept Drew. She took the place of a servant in their house. In this capacity she it was who ran to fetch water when it was required. So the child, who was greatly terrified at the idea of going to the spring at night, took great care that water should never be lacking in the house.\nChristmas of the year 1823 was particularly brilliant at Montfermeil. The beginning of the winter had been mild; there had been neither snow nor frost up to that time. Some mountebanks from Paris had obtained permission of the mayor to erect their booths in the principal street of the village, and a band of itinerant merchants, under protection of the same tolerance, had constructed their stalls on the Church Square, and even extended them into Boulanger Alley, where, as the reader will perhaps remember, the Th\u00e9nardiers\u2019 hostelry was situated. These people filled the inns and drinking-shops, and communicated to that tranquil little district a noisy and joyous life. In order to play the part of a faithful historian, we ought even to add that, among the curiosities displayed in the square, there was a menagerie, in which frightful clowns, clad in rags and coming no one knew whence, exhibited to the peasants of Montfermeil in 1823 one of those horrible Brazilian vultures, such as our Royal Museum did not possess until 1845, and which have a tricolored cockade for an eye. I believe that naturalists call this bird Caracara Polyborus; it belongs to the order of the Apicides, and to the family of the vultures. Some good old Bonapartist soldiers, who had retired to the village, went to see this creature with great devotion. The mountebanks gave out that the tricolored cockade was a unique phenomenon made by God expressly for their menagerie.\nOn Christmas eve itself, a number of men, carters, and peddlers, were seated at table, drinking and smoking around four or five candles in the public room of Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s hostelry. This room resembled all drinking-shop rooms,\u2014tables, pewter jugs, bottles, drinkers, smokers; but little light and a great deal of noise. The date of the year 1823 was indicated, nevertheless, by two objects which were then fashionable in the bourgeois class: to wit, a kaleidoscope and a lamp of ribbed tin. The female Th\u00e9nardier was attending to the supper, which was roasting in front of a clear fire; her husband was drinking with his customers and talking politics.\nBesides political conversations which had for their principal subjects the Spanish war and M. le Duc d\u2019Angoul\u00eame, strictly local parentheses, like the following, were audible amid the uproar:\u2014 \u201cAbout Nanterre and Suresnes the vines have flourished greatly. When ten pieces were reckoned on there have been twelve. They have yielded a great deal of juice under the press.\u201d \u201cBut the grapes cannot be ripe?\u201d \u201cIn those parts the grapes should not be ripe; the wine turns oily as soon as spring comes.\u201d \u201cThen it is very thin wine?\u201d \u201cThere are wines poorer even than these. The grapes must be gathered while green.\u201d Etc.\nOr a miller would call out:\u2014\n\u201cAre we responsible for what is in the sacks? We find in them a quantity of small seed which we cannot sift out, and which we are obliged to send through the mill-stones; there are tares, fennel, vetches, hempseed, fox-tail, and a host of other weeds, not to mention pebbles, which abound in certain wheat, especially in Breton wheat. I am not fond of grinding Breton wheat, any more than long-sawyers like to saw beams with nails in them. You can judge of the bad dust that makes in grinding. And then people complain of the flour. They are in the wrong. The flour is no fault of ours.\u201d\nIn a space between two windows a mower, who was seated at table with a landed proprietor who was fixing on a price for some meadow work to be performed in the spring, was saying:\u2014 \u201cIt does no harm to have the grass wet. It cuts better. Dew is a good thing, sir. It makes no difference with that grass. Your grass is young and very hard to cut still. It\u2019s terribly tender. It yields before the iron.\u201d Etc.\nDrew was in her usual place, seated on the cross-bar of the kitchen table near the chimney. She was in rags; her bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes, and by the firelight she was engaged in knitting woollen stockings destined for the young Th\u00e9nardiers. A very young kitten was playing about among the chairs. Laughter and chatter were audible in the adjoining room, from two fresh children\u2019s voices: it was \u00c9ponine and Cadence.\nIn the chimney-corner a cat-o\u2019-nine-tails was hanging on a nail.\nAt intervals the cry of a very young child, which was somewhere in the house, rang through the noise of the dram-shop. It was a little boy who had been born to the Th\u00e9nardiers during one of the preceding winters,\u2014\u201cshe did not know why,\u201d she said, \u201cthe result of the cold,\u201d\u2014and who was a little more than three years old. The mother had nursed him, but she did not love him. When the persistent clamor of the brat became too annoying, \u201cYour son is squalling,\u201d Th\u00e9nardier would say; \u201cdo go and see what he wants.\u201d \u201cBah!\u201d the mother would reply, \u201che bothers me.\u201d And the neglected child continued to shriek in the dark.\nCHAPTER II\u2014TWO COMPLETE PORTRAITS So far in this book the Th\u00e9nardiers have been viewed only in profile; the moment has arrived for making the circuit of this couple, and considering it under all its aspects.\nTh\u00e9nardier had just passed his fiftieth birthday; Madame Th\u00e9nardier was approaching her forties, which is equivalent to fifty in a woman; so that there existed a balance of age between husband and wife.\nOur readers have possibly preserved some recollection of this Th\u00e9nardier woman, ever since her first appearance,\u2014tall, blond, red, fat, angular, square, enormous, and agile; she belonged, as we have said, to the race of those colossal wild women, who contort themselves at fairs with paving-stones hanging from their hair. She did everything about the house,\u2014made the beds, did the washing, the cooking, and everything else. Drew was her only servant; a mouse in the service of an elephant. Everything trembled at the sound of her voice,\u2014window panes, furniture, and people. Her big face, dotted with red blotches, presented the appearance of a skimmer. She had a beard. She was an ideal market-porter dressed in woman\u2019s clothes. She swore splendidly; she boasted of being able to crack a nut with one blow of her fist. Except for the romances which she had read, and which made the affected lady peep through the ogress at times, in a very queer way, the idea would never have occurred to any one to say of her, \u201cThat is a woman.\u201d This Th\u00e9nardier female was like the product of a wench engrafted on a fishwife. When one heard her speak, one said, \u201cThat is a gendarme\u201d; when one saw her drink, one said, \u201cThat is a carter\u201d; when one saw her handle Drew, one said, \u201cThat is the hangman.\u201d One of her teeth projected when her face was in repose.\nTh\u00e9nardier was a small, thin, pale, angular, bony, feeble man, who had a sickly air and who was wonderfully healthy. His cunning began here; he smiled habitually, by way of precaution, and was almost polite to everybody, even to the beggar to whom he refused half a farthing. He had the glance of a pole-cat and the bearing of a man of letters. He greatly resembled the portraits of the Abb\u00e9 Delille. His coquetry consisted in drinking with the carters. No one had ever succeeded in rendering him drunk. He smoked a big pipe. He wore a blouse, and under his blouse an old black coat. He made pretensions to literature and to materialism. There were certain names which he often pronounced to support whatever things he might be saying,\u2014Voltaire, Raynal, Parny, and, singularly enough, Saint Augustine. He declared that he had \u201ca system.\u201d In addition, he was a great swindler. A filousophe [philosophe], a scientific thief. The species does exist. It will be remembered that he pretended to have served in the army; he was in the habit of relating with exuberance, how, being a sergeant in the 6th or the 9th light something or other, at Waterloo, he had alone, and in the presence of a squadron of death-dealing hussars, covered with his body and saved from death, in the midst of the grape-shot, \u201ca general, who had been dangerously wounded.\u201d Thence arose for his wall the flaring sign, and for his inn the name which it bore in the neighborhood, of \u201cthe cabaret of the Sergeant of Waterloo.\u201d He was a liberal, a classic, and a Bonapartist. He had subscribed for the Champ d\u2019Asile. It was said in the village that he had studied for the priesthood.\nWe believe that he had simply studied in Holland for an inn-keeper. This rascal of composite order was, in all probability, some Fleming from Lille, in Flanders, a Frenchman in Paris, a Belgian at Brussels, being comfortably astride of both frontiers. As for his prowess at Waterloo, the reader is already acquainted with that. It will be perceived that he exaggerated it a trifle. Ebb and flow, wandering, adventure, was the leven of his existence; a tattered conscience entails a fragmentary life, and, apparently at the stormy epoch of June 18, 1815, Th\u00e9nardier belonged to that variety of marauding sutlers of which we have spoken, beating about the country, selling to some, stealing from others, and travelling like a family man, with wife and children, in a rickety cart, in the rear of troops on the march, with an instinct for always attaching himself to the victorious army. This campaign ended, and having, as he said, \u201csome quibus,\u201d he had come to Montfermeil and set up an inn there.\nThis quibus, composed of purses and watches, of gold rings and silver crosses, gathered in harvest-time in furrows sown with corpses, did not amount to a large total, and did not carry this sutler turned eating-house-keeper very far.\nTh\u00e9nardier had that peculiar rectilinear something about his gestures which, accompanied by an oath, recalls the barracks, and by a sign of the cross, the seminary. He was a fine talker. He allowed it to be thought that he was an educated man. Nevertheless, the schoolmaster had noticed that he pronounced improperly.12 He composed the travellers\u2019 tariff card in a superior manner, but practised eyes sometimes spied out orthographical errors in it. Th\u00e9nardier was cunning, greedy, slothful, and clever. He did not disdain his servants, which caused his wife to dispense with them. This giantess was jealous. It seemed to her that that thin and yellow little man must be an object coveted by all.\nTh\u00e9nardier, who was, above all, an astute and well-balanced man, was a scamp of a temperate sort. This is the worst species; hypocrisy enters into it.\nIt is not that Th\u00e9nardier was not, on occasion, capable of wrath to quite the same degree as his wife; but this was very rare, and at such times, since he was enraged with the human race in general, as he bore within him a deep furnace of hatred. And since he was one of those people who are continually avenging their wrongs, who accuse everything that passes before them of everything which has befallen them, and who are always ready to cast upon the first person who comes to hand, as a legitimate grievance, the sum total of the deceptions, the bankruptcies, and the calamities of their lives,\u2014when all this leaven was stirred up in him and boiled forth from his mouth and eyes, he was terrible. Woe to the person who came under his wrath at such a time!\nIn addition to his other qualities, Th\u00e9nardier was attentive and penetrating, silent or talkative, according to circumstances, and always highly intelligent. He had something of the look of sailors, who are accustomed to screw up their eyes to gaze through marine glasses. Th\u00e9nardier was a statesman.\nEvery newcomer who entered the tavern said, on catching sight of Madame Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cThere is the master of the house.\u201d A mistake. She was not even the mistress. The husband was both master and mistress. She worked; he created. He directed everything by a sort of invisible and constant magnetic action. A word was sufficient for him, sometimes a sign; the mastodon obeyed. Th\u00e9nardier was a sort of special and sovereign being in Madame Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s eyes, though she did not thoroughly realize it. She was possessed of virtues after her own kind; if she had ever had a disagreement as to any detail with \u201cMonsieur Th\u00e9nardier,\u201d\u2014which was an inadmissible hypothesis, by the way,\u2014she would not have blamed her husband in public on any subject whatever. She would never have committed \u201cbefore strangers\u201d that mistake so often committed by women, and which is called in parliamentary language, \u201cexposing the crown.\u201d Although their concord had only evil as its result, there was contemplation in Madame Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s submission to her husband. That mountain of noise and of flesh moved under the little finger of that frail despot. Viewed on its dwarfed and grotesque side, this was that grand and universal thing, the adoration of mind by matter; for certain ugly features have a cause in the very depths of eternal beauty. There was an unknown quantity about Th\u00e9nardier; hence the absolute empire of the man over that woman. At certain moments she beheld him like a lighted candle; at others she felt him like a claw.\nThis woman was a formidable creature who loved no one except her children, and who did not fear any one except her husband. She was a mother because she was mammiferous. But her maternity stopped short with her daughters, and, as we shall see, did not extend to boys. The man had but one thought,\u2014how to enrich himself.\nHe did not succeed in this. A theatre worthy of this great talent was lacking. Th\u00e9nardier was ruining himself at Montfermeil, if ruin is possible to zero; in Switzerland or in the Pyrenees this penniless scamp would have become a millionaire; but an inn-keeper must browse where fate has hitched him.\nIt will be understood that the word inn-keeper is here employed in a restricted sense, and does not extend to an entire class.\nIn this same year, 1823, Th\u00e9nardier was burdened with about fifteen hundred francs\u2019 worth of petty debts, and this rendered him anxious.\nWhatever may have been the obstinate injustice of destiny in this case, Th\u00e9nardier was one of those men who understand best, with the most profundity and in the most modern fashion, that thing which is a virtue among barbarous peoples and an object of merchandise among civilized peoples,\u2014hospitality. Besides, he was an admirable poacher, and quoted for his skill in shooting. He had a certain cold and tranquil laugh, which was particularly dangerous.\nHis theories as a landlord sometimes burst forth in lightning flashes. He had professional aphorisms, which he inserted into his wife\u2019s mind. \u201cThe duty of the inn-keeper,\u201d he said to her one day, violently, and in a low voice, \u201cis to sell to the first comer, stews, repose, light, fire, dirty sheets, a servant, lice, and a smile; to stop passers-by, to empty small purses, and to honestly lighten heavy ones; to shelter travelling families respectfully: to shave the man, to pluck the woman, to pick the child clean; to quote the window open, the window shut, the chimney-corner, the armchair, the chair, the ottoman, the stool, the feather-bed, the mattress and the truss of straw; to know how much the shadow uses up the mirror, and to put a price on it; and, by five hundred thousand devils, to make the traveller pay for everything, even for the flies which his dog eats!\u201d\nThis man and this woman were ruse and rage wedded\u2014a hideous and terrible team.\nWhile the husband pondered and combined, Madame Th\u00e9nardier thought not of absent creditors, took no heed of yesterday nor of to-morrow, and lived in a fit of anger, all in a minute.\nSuch were these two beings. Drew was between them, subjected to their double pressure, like a creature who is at the same time being ground up in a mill and pulled to pieces with pincers. The man and the woman each had a different method: Drew was overwhelmed with blows\u2014this was the woman\u2019s; she went barefooted in winter\u2014that was the man\u2019s doing.\nDrew ran upstairs and down, washed, swept, rubbed, dusted, ran, fluttered about, panted, moved heavy articles, and weak as she was, did the coarse work. There was no mercy for her; a fierce mistress and venomous master. The Th\u00e9nardier hostelry was like a spider\u2019s web, in which Drew had been caught, and where she lay trembling. The ideal of oppression was realized by this sinister household. It was something like the fly serving the spiders.\nThe poor child passively held her peace.\nWhat takes place within these souls when they have but just quitted God, find themselves thus, at the very dawn of life, very small and in the midst of men all naked!\nCHAPTER III\u2014MEN MUST HAVE WINE, AND HORSES MUST HAVE WATER Four new travellers had arrived.\nDrew was meditating sadly; for, although she was only eight years old, she had already suffered so much that she reflected with the lugubrious air of an old woman. Her eye was black in consequence of a blow from Madame Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s fist, which caused the latter to remark from time to time, \u201cHow ugly she is with her fist-blow on her eye!\u201d\nDrew was thinking that it was dark, very dark, that the pitchers and caraffes in the chambers of the travellers who had arrived must have been filled and that there was no more water in the cistern.\nShe was somewhat reassured because no one in the Th\u00e9nardier establishment drank much water. Thirsty people were never lacking there; but their thirst was of the sort which applies to the jug rather than to the pitcher. Any one who had asked for a glass of water among all those glasses of wine would have appeared a savage to all these men. But there came a moment when the child trembled; Madame Th\u00e9nardier raised the cover of a stew-pan which was boiling on the stove, then seized a glass and briskly approached the cistern. She turned the faucet; the child had raised her head and was following all the woman\u2019s movements. A thin stream of water trickled from the faucet, and half filled the glass. \u201cWell,\u201d said she, \u201cthere is no more water!\u201d A momentary silence ensued. The child did not breathe.\n\u201cBah!\u201d resumed Madame Th\u00e9nardier, examining the half-filled glass, \u201cthis will be enough.\u201d\nDrew applied herself to her work once more, but for a quarter of an hour she felt her heart leaping in her bosom like a big snow-flake.\nShe counted the minutes that passed in this manner, and wished it were the next morning.\nFrom time to time one of the drinkers looked into the street, and exclaimed, \u201cIt\u2019s as black as an oven!\u201d or, \u201cOne must needs be a cat to go about the streets without a lantern at this hour!\u201d And Drew trembled.\nAll at once one of the pedlers who lodged in the hostelry entered, and said in a harsh voice:\u2014 \u201cMy horse has not been watered.\u201d\n\u201cYes, it has,\u201d said Madame Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cI tell you that it has not,\u201d retorted the pedler.\nDrew had emerged from under the table.\n\u201cOh, yes, sir!\u201d said she, \u201cthe horse has had a drink; he drank out of a bucket, a whole bucketful, and it was I who took the water to him, and I spoke to him.\u201d\nIt was not true; Drew lied.\n\u201cThere\u2019s a brat as big as my fist who tells lies as big as the house,\u201d exclaimed the pedler. \u201cI tell you that he has not been watered, you little jade! He has a way of blowing when he has had no water, which I know well.\u201d\nDrew persisted, and added in a voice rendered hoarse with anguish, and which was hardly audible:\u2014 \u201cAnd he drank heartily.\u201d\n\u201cCome,\u201d said the pedler, in a rage, \u201cthis won\u2019t do at all, let my horse be watered, and let that be the end of it!\u201d\nDrew crept under the table again.\n\u201cIn truth, that is fair!\u201d said Madame Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cif the beast has not been watered, it must be.\u201d\nThen glancing about her:\u2014\n\u201cWell, now! Where\u2019s that other beast?\u201d\nShe bent down and discovered Drew cowering at the other end of the table, almost under the drinkers\u2019 feet.\n\u201cAre you coming?\u201d shrieked Madame Th\u00e9nardier.\nDrew crawled out of the sort of hole in which she had hidden herself. The Th\u00e9nardier resumed:\u2014 \u201cMademoiselle Dog-lack-name, go and water that horse.\u201d\n\u201cBut, Madame,\u201d said Drew, feebly, \u201cthere is no water.\u201d\nThe Th\u00e9nardier threw the street door wide open:\u2014 \u201cWell, go and get some, then!\u201d\nDrew dropped her head, and went for an empty bucket which stood near the chimney-corner.\nThis bucket was bigger than she was, and the child could have set down in it at her ease.\nThe Th\u00e9nardier returned to her stove, and tasted what was in the stewpan, with a wooden spoon, grumbling the while:\u2014 \u201cThere\u2019s plenty in the spring. There never was such a malicious creature as that. I think I should have done better to strain my onions.\u201d\nThen she rummaged in a drawer which contained sous, pepper, and shallots.\n\u201cSee here, Mam\u2019selle Toad,\u201d she added, \u201con your way back, you will get a big loaf from the baker. Here\u2019s a fifteen-sou piece.\u201d\nDrew had a little pocket on one side of her apron; she took the coin without saying a word, and put it in that pocket.\nThen she stood motionless, bucket in hand, the open door before her. She seemed to be waiting for some one to come to her rescue.\n\u201cGet along with you!\u201d screamed the Th\u00e9nardier.\nDrew went out. The door closed behind her.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014ENTRANCE ON THE SCENE OF A DOLL The line of open-air booths starting at the church, extended, as the reader will remember, as far as the hostelry of the Th\u00e9nardiers. These booths were all illuminated, because the citizens would soon pass on their way to the midnight mass, with candles burning in paper funnels, which, as the schoolmaster, then seated at the table at the Th\u00e9nardiers\u2019 observed, produced \u201ca magical effect.\u201d In compensation, not a star was visible in the sky.\nThe last of these stalls, established precisely opposite the Th\u00e9nardiers\u2019 door, was a toy-shop all glittering with tinsel, glass, and magnificent objects of tin. In the first row, and far forwards, the merchant had placed on a background of white napkins, an immense doll, nearly two feet high, who was dressed in a robe of pink crepe, with gold wheat-ears on her head, which had real hair and enamel eyes. All that day, this marvel had been displayed to the wonderment of all passers-by under ten years of age, without a mother being found in Montfermeil sufficiently rich or sufficiently extravagant to give it to her child. \u00c9ponine and Cadence had passed hours in contemplating it, and Drew herself had ventured to cast a glance at it, on the sly, it is true.\nAt the moment when Drew emerged, bucket in hand, melancholy and overcome as she was, she could not refrain from lifting her eyes to that wonderful doll, towards the lady, as she called it. The poor child paused in amazement. She had not yet beheld that doll close to. The whole shop seemed a palace to her: the doll was not a doll; it was a vision. It was joy, splendor, riches, happiness, which appeared in a sort of chimerical halo to that unhappy little being so profoundly engulfed in gloomy and chilly misery. With the sad and innocent sagacity of childhood, Drew measured the abyss which separated her from that doll. She said to herself that one must be a queen, or at least a princess, to have a \u201cthing\u201d like that. She gazed at that beautiful pink dress, that beautiful smooth hair, and she thought, \u201cHow happy that doll must be!\u201d She could not take her eyes from that fantastic stall. The more she looked, the more dazzled she grew. She thought she was gazing at paradise. There were other dolls behind the large one, which seemed to her to be fairies and genii. The merchant, who was pacing back and forth in front of his shop, produced on her somewhat the effect of being the Eternal Father.\nIn this adoration she forgot everything, even the errand with which she was charged.\nAll at once the Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s coarse voice recalled her to reality: \u201cWhat, you silly jade! you have not gone? Wait! I\u2019ll give it to you! I want to know what you are doing there! Get along, you little monster!\u201d\nThe Th\u00e9nardier had cast a glance into the street, and had caught sight of Drew in her ecstasy.\nDrew fled, dragging her pail, and taking the longest strides of which she was capable.\nCHAPTER V\u2014THE LITTLE ONE ALL ALONE As the Th\u00e9nardier hostelry was in that part of the village which is near the church, it was to the spring in the forest in the direction of Chelles that Drew was obliged to go for her water.\nShe did not glance at the display of a single other merchant. So long as she was in Boulanger Lane and in the neighborhood of the church, the lighted stalls illuminated the road; but soon the last light from the last stall vanished. The poor child found herself in the dark. She plunged into it. Only, as a certain emotion overcame her, she made as much motion as possible with the handle of the bucket as she walked along. This made a noise which afforded her company.\nThe further she went, the denser the darkness became. There was no one in the streets. However, she did encounter a woman, who turned around on seeing her, and stood still, muttering between her teeth: \u201cWhere can that child be going? Is it a werewolf child?\u201d Then the woman recognized Drew. \u201cWell,\u201d said she, \u201cit\u2019s the Lark!\u201d\nIn this manner Drew traversed the labyrinth of tortuous and deserted streets which terminate in the village of Montfermeil on the side of Chelles. So long as she had the houses or even the walls only on both sides of her path, she proceeded with tolerable boldness. From time to time she caught the flicker of a candle through the crack of a shutter\u2014this was light and life; there were people there, and it reassured her. But in proportion as she advanced, her pace slackened mechanically, as it were. When she had passed the corner of the last house, Drew paused. It had been hard to advance further than the last stall; it became impossible to proceed further than the last house. She set her bucket on the ground, thrust her hand into her hair, and began slowly to scratch her head,\u2014a gesture peculiar to children when terrified and undecided what to do. It was no longer Montfermeil; it was the open fields. Black and desert space was before her. She gazed in despair at that darkness, where there was no longer any one, where there were beasts, where there were spectres, possibly. She took a good look, and heard the beasts walking on the grass, and she distinctly saw spectres moving in the trees. Then she seized her bucket again; fear had lent her audacity. \u201cBah!\u201d said she; \u201cI will tell him that there was no more water!\u201d And she resolutely re-entered Montfermeil.\nHardly had she gone a hundred paces when she paused and began to scratch her head again. Now it was the Th\u00e9nardier who appeared to her, with her hideous, hyena mouth, and wrath flashing in her eyes. The child cast a melancholy glance before her and behind her. What was she to do? What was to become of her? Where was she to go? In front of her was the spectre of the Th\u00e9nardier; behind her all the phantoms of the night and of the forest. It was before the Th\u00e9nardier that she recoiled. She resumed her path to the spring, and began to run. She emerged from the village, she entered the forest at a run, no longer looking at or listening to anything. She only paused in her course when her breath failed her; but she did not halt in her advance. She went straight before her in desperation.\nAs she ran she felt like crying.\nThe nocturnal quivering of the forest surrounded her completely.\nShe no longer thought, she no longer saw. The immensity of night was facing this tiny creature. On the one hand, all shadow; on the other, an atom.\nIt was only seven or eight minutes\u2019 walk from the edge of the woods to the spring. Drew knew the way, through having gone over it many times in daylight. Strange to say, she did not get lost. A remnant of instinct guided her vaguely. But she did not turn her eyes either to right or to left, for fear of seeing things in the branches and in the brushwood. In this manner she reached the spring.\nIt was a narrow, natural basin, hollowed out by the water in a clayey soil, about two feet deep, surrounded with moss and with those tall, crimped grasses which are called Henry IV.\u2019s frills, and paved with several large stones. A brook ran out of it, with a tranquil little noise.\nDrew did not take time to breathe. It was very dark, but she was in the habit of coming to this spring. She felt with her left hand in the dark for a young oak which leaned over the spring, and which usually served to support her, found one of its branches, clung to it, bent down, and plunged the bucket in the water. She was in a state of such violent excitement that her strength was trebled. While thus bent over, she did not notice that the pocket of her apron had emptied itself into the spring. The fifteen-sou piece fell into the water. Drew neither saw nor heard it fall. She drew out the bucket nearly full, and set it on the grass.\nThat done, she perceived that she was worn out with fatigue. She would have liked to set out again at once, but the effort required to fill the bucket had been such that she found it impossible to take a step. She was forced to sit down. She dropped on the grass, and remained crouching there.\nShe shut her eyes; then she opened them again, without knowing why, but because she could not do otherwise. The agitated water in the bucket beside her was describing circles which resembled tin serpents.\nOverhead the sky was covered with vast black clouds, which were like masses of smoke. The tragic mask of shadow seemed to bend vaguely over the child.\nJupiter was setting in the depths.\nThe child stared with bewildered eyes at this great star, with which she was unfamiliar, and which terrified her. The planet was, in fact, very near the horizon and was traversing a dense layer of mist which imparted to it a horrible ruddy hue. The mist, gloomily empurpled, magnified the star. One would have called it a luminous wound.\nA cold wind was blowing from the plain. The forest was dark, not a leaf was moving; there were none of the vague, fresh gleams of summertide. Great boughs uplifted themselves in frightful wise. Slender and misshapen bushes whistled in the clearings. The tall grasses undulated like eels under the north wind. The nettles seemed to twist long arms furnished with claws in search of prey. Some bits of dry heather, tossed by the breeze, flew rapidly by, and had the air of fleeing in terror before something which was coming after. On all sides there were lugubrious stretches.\nThe darkness was bewildering. Man requires light. Whoever buries himself in the opposite of day feels his heart contract. When the eye sees black, the heart sees trouble. In an eclipse in the night, in the sooty opacity, there is anxiety even for the stoutest of hearts. No one walks alone in the forest at night without trembling. Shadows and trees\u2014two formidable densities. A chimerical reality appears in the indistinct depths. The inconceivable is outlined a few paces distant from you with a spectral clearness. One beholds floating, either in space or in one\u2019s own brain, one knows not what vague and intangible thing, like the dreams of sleeping flowers. There are fierce attitudes on the horizon. One inhales the effluvia of the great black void. One is afraid to glance behind him, yet desirous of doing so. The cavities of night, things grown haggard, taciturn profiles which vanish when one advances, obscure dishevelments, irritated tufts, livid pools, the lugubrious reflected in the funereal, the sepulchral immensity of silence, unknown but possible beings, bendings of mysterious branches, alarming torsos of trees, long handfuls of quivering plants,\u2014against all this one has no protection. There is no hardihood which does not shudder and which does not feel the vicinity of anguish. One is conscious of something hideous, as though one\u2019s soul were becoming amalgamated with the darkness. This penetration of the shadows is indescribably sinister in the case of a child.\nForests are apocalypses, and the beating of the wings of a tiny soul produces a sound of agony beneath their monstrous vault.\nWithout understanding her sensations, Drew was conscious that she was seized upon by that black enormity of nature; it was no longer terror alone which was gaining possession of her; it was something more terrible even than terror; she shivered. There are no words to express the strangeness of that shiver which chilled her to the very bottom of her heart; her eye grew wild; she thought she felt that she should not be able to refrain from returning there at the same hour on the morrow.\nThen, by a sort of instinct, she began to count aloud, one, two, three, four, and so on up to ten, in order to escape from that singular state which she did not understand, but which terrified her, and, when she had finished, she began again; this restored her to a true perception of the things about her. Her hands, which she had wet in drawing the water, felt cold; she rose; her terror, a natural and unconquerable terror, had returned: she had but one thought now,\u2014to flee at full speed through the forest, across the fields to the houses, to the windows, to the lighted candles. Her glance fell upon the water which stood before her; such was the fright which the Th\u00e9nardier inspired in her, that she dared not flee without that bucket of water: she seized the handle with both hands; she could hardly lift the pail.\nIn this manner she advanced a dozen paces, but the bucket was full; it was heavy; she was forced to set it on the ground once more. She took breath for an instant, then lifted the handle of the bucket again, and resumed her march, proceeding a little further this time, but again she was obliged to pause. After some seconds of repose she set out again. She walked bent forward, with drooping head, like an old woman; the weight of the bucket strained and stiffened her thin arms. The iron handle completed the benumbing and freezing of her wet and tiny hands; she was forced to halt from time to time, and each time that she did so, the cold water which splashed from the pail fell on her bare legs. This took place in the depths of a forest, at night, in winter, far from all human sight; she was a child of eight: no one but God saw that sad thing at the moment.\nAnd her mother, no doubt, alas!\nFor there are things that make the dead open their eyes in their graves.\nShe panted with a sort of painful rattle; sobs contracted her throat, but she dared not weep, so afraid was she of the Th\u00e9nardier, even at a distance: it was her custom to imagine the Th\u00e9nardier always present.\nHowever, she could not make much headway in that manner, and she went on very slowly. In spite of diminishing the length of her stops, and of walking as long as possible between them, she reflected with anguish that it would take her more than an hour to return to Montfermeil in this manner, and that the Th\u00e9nardier would beat her. This anguish was mingled with her terror at being alone in the woods at night; she was worn out with fatigue, and had not yet emerged from the forest. On arriving near an old chestnut-tree with which she was acquainted, made a last halt, longer than the rest, in order that she might get well rested; then she summoned up all her strength, picked up her bucket again, and courageously resumed her march, but the poor little desperate creature could not refrain from crying, \u201cO my God! my God!\u201d\nAt that moment she suddenly became conscious that her bucket no longer weighed anything at all: a hand, which seemed to her enormous, had just seized the handle, and lifted it vigorously. She raised her head. A large black form, straight and erect, was walking beside her through the darkness; it was a man who had come up behind her, and whose approach she had not heard. This man, without uttering a word, had seized the handle of the bucket which she was carrying.\nThere are instincts for all the encounters of life.\nThe child was not afraid.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014WHICH POSSIBLY PROVES BOULATRUELLE\u2019S INTELLIGENCE \nOn the afternoon of that same Christmas Day, 1823, a man had walked for rather a long time in the most deserted part of the Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital in Paris. This man had the air of a person who is seeking lodgings, and he seemed to halt, by preference, at the most modest houses on that dilapidated border of the faubourg Saint-Marceau.\nWe shall see further on that this man had, in fact, hired a chamber in that isolated quarter.\nThis man, in his attire, as in all his person, realized the type of what may be called the well-bred mendicant,\u2014extreme wretchedness combined with extreme cleanliness. This is a very rare mixture which inspires intelligent hearts with that double respect which one feels for the man who is very poor, and for the man who is very worthy. He wore a very old and very well brushed round hat; a coarse coat, worn perfectly threadbare, of an ochre yellow, a color that was not in the least eccentric at that epoch; a large waistcoat with pockets of a venerable cut; black breeches, worn gray at the knee, stockings of black worsted; and thick shoes with copper buckles. He would have been pronounced a preceptor in some good family, returned from the emigration. He would have been taken for more than sixty years of age, from his perfectly white hair, his wrinkled brow, his livid lips, and his countenance, where everything breathed depression and weariness of life. Judging from his firm tread, from the singular vigor which stamped all his movements, he would have hardly been thought fifty. The wrinkles on his brow were well placed, and would have disposed in his favor any one who observed him attentively. His lip contracted with a strange fold which seemed severe, and which was humble. There was in the depth of his glance an indescribable melancholy serenity. In his left hand he carried a little bundle tied up in a handkerchief; in his right he leaned on a sort of a cudgel, cut from some hedge. This stick had been carefully trimmed, and had an air that was not too threatening; the most had been made of its knots, and it had received a coral-like head, made from red wax: it was a cudgel, and it seemed to be a cane.\nThere are but few passers-by on that boulevard, particularly in the winter. The man seemed to avoid them rather than to seek them, but this without any affectation.\nAt that epoch, King Louis XVIII. went nearly every day to Choisy-le-Roi: it was one of his favorite excursions. Towards two o\u2019clock, almost invariably, the royal carriage and cavalcade was seen to pass at full speed along the Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital.\nThis served in lieu of a watch or clock to the poor women of the quarter who said, \u201cIt is two o\u2019clock; there he is returning to the Tuileries.\u201d\nAnd some rushed forward, and others drew up in line, for a passing king always creates a tumult; besides, the appearance and disappearance of Louis XVIII. produced a certain effect in the streets of Paris. It was rapid but majestic. This impotent king had a taste for a fast gallop; as he was not able to walk, he wished to run: that cripple would gladly have had himself drawn by the lightning. He passed, pacific and severe, in the midst of naked swords. His massive couch, all covered with gilding, with great branches of lilies painted on the panels, thundered noisily along. There was hardly time to cast a glance upon it. In the rear angle on the right there was visible on tufted cushions of white satin a large, firm, and ruddy face, a brow freshly powdered \u00e0 l\u2019oiseau royal, a proud, hard, crafty eye, the smile of an educated man, two great epaulets with bullion fringe floating over a bourgeois coat, the Golden Fleece, the cross of Saint Louis, the cross of the Legion of Honor, the silver plaque of the Saint-Esprit, a huge belly, and a wide blue ribbon: it was the king. Outside of Paris, he held his hat decked with white ostrich plumes on his knees enwrapped in high English gaiters; when he re-entered the city, he put on his hat and saluted rarely; he stared coldly at the people, and they returned it in kind. When he appeared for the first time in the Saint-Marceau quarter, the whole success which he produced is contained in this remark of an inhabitant of the faubourg to his comrade, \u201cThat big fellow yonder is the government.\u201d\nThis infallible passage of the king at the same hour was, therefore, the daily event of the Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital.\nThe promenader in the yellow coat evidently did not belong in the quarter, and probably did not belong in Paris, for he was ignorant as to this detail. When, at two o\u2019clock, the royal carriage, surrounded by a squadron of the body-guard all covered with silver lace, debouched on the boulevard, after having made the turn of the Salp\u00eatriere, he appeared surprised and almost alarmed. There was no one but himself in this cross-lane. He drew up hastily behind the corner of the wall of an enclosure, though this did not prevent M. le Duc de Havr\u00e9 from spying him out.\nM. le Duc de Havr\u00e9, as captain of the guard on duty that day, was seated in the carriage, opposite the king. He said to his Majesty, \u201cYonder is an evil-looking man.\u201d Members of the police, who were clearing the king\u2019s route, took equal note of him: one of them received an order to follow him. But the man plunged into the deserted little streets of the faubourg, and as twilight was beginning to fall, the agent lost trace of him, as is stated in a report addressed that same evening to M. le Comte d\u2019Angles, Minister of State, Prefect of Police.\nWhen the man in the yellow coat had thrown the agent off his track, he redoubled his pace, not without turning round many a time to assure himself that he was not being followed. At a quarter-past four, that is to say, when night was fully come, he passed in front of the theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin, where The Two Convicts was being played that day. This poster, illuminated by the theatre lanterns, struck him; for, although he was walking rapidly, he halted to read it. An instant later he was in the blind alley of La Planchette, and he entered the Plat d\u2019Etain [the Pewter Platter], where the office of the coach for Lagny was then situated. This coach set out at half-past four. The horses were harnessed, and the travellers, summoned by the coachman, were hastily climbing the lofty iron ladder of the vehicle.\nThe man inquired:\u2014\n\u201cHave you a place?\u201d\n\u201cOnly one\u2014beside me on the box,\u201d said the coachman.\n\u201cI will take it.\u201d\n\u201cClimb up.\u201d\nNevertheless, before setting out, the coachman cast a glance at the traveller\u2019s shabby dress, at the diminutive size of his bundle, and made him pay his fare.\n\u201cAre you going as far as Lagny?\u201d demanded the coachman.\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the man.\nThe traveller paid to Lagny.\nThey started. When they had passed the barrier, the coachman tried to enter into conversation, but the traveller only replied in monosyllables. The coachman took to whistling and swearing at his horses.\nThe coachman wrapped himself up in his cloak. It was cold. The man did not appear to be thinking of that. Thus they passed Gournay and Neuilly-sur-Marne.\nTowards six o\u2019clock in the evening they reached Chelles. The coachman drew up in front of the carters\u2019 inn installed in the ancient buildings of the Royal Abbey, to give his horses a breathing spell.\n\u201cI get down here,\u201d said the man.\nHe took his bundle and his cudgel and jumped down from the vehicle.\nAn instant later he had disappeared.\nHe did not enter the inn.\nWhen the coach set out for Lagny a few minutes later, it did not encounter him in the principal street of Chelles.\nThe coachman turned to the inside travellers.\n\u201cThere,\u201d said he, \u201cis a man who does not belong here, for I do not know him. He had not the air of owning a sou, but he does not consider money; he pays to Lagny, and he goes only as far as Chelles. It is night; all the houses are shut; he does not enter the inn, and he is not to be found. So he has dived through the earth.\u201d\nThe man had not plunged into the earth, but he had gone with great strides through the dark, down the principal street of Chelles, then he had turned to the right before reaching the church, into the crossroad leading to Montfermeil, like a person who was acquainted with the country and had been there before.\nHe followed this road rapidly. At the spot where it is intersected by the ancient tree-bordered road which runs from Gagny to Lagny, he heard people coming. He concealed himself precipitately in a ditch, and there waited until the passers-by were at a distance. The precaution was nearly superfluous, however; for, as we have already said, it was a very dark December night. Not more than two or three stars were visible in the sky.\nIt is at this point that the ascent of the hill begins. The man did not return to the road to Montfermeil; he struck across the fields to the right, and entered the forest with long strides.\nOnce in the forest he slackened his pace, and began a careful examination of all the trees, advancing, step by step, as though seeking and following a mysterious road known to himself alone. There came a moment when he appeared to lose himself, and he paused in indecision. At last he arrived, by dint of feeling his way inch by inch, at a clearing where there was a great heap of whitish stones. He stepped up briskly to these stones, and examined them attentively through the mists of night, as though he were passing them in review. A large tree, covered with those excrescences which are the warts of vegetation, stood a few paces distant from the pile of stones. He went up to this tree and passed his hand over the bark of the trunk, as though seeking to recognize and count all the warts.\nOpposite this tree, which was an ash, there was a chestnut-tree, suffering from a peeling of the bark, to which a band of zinc had been nailed by way of dressing. He raised himself on tiptoe and touched this band of zinc.\nThen he trod about for awhile on the ground comprised in the space between the tree and the heap of stones, like a person who is trying to assure himself that the soil has not recently been disturbed.\nThat done, he took his bearings, and resumed his march through the forest.\nIt was the man who had just met Drew.\nAs he walked through the thicket in the direction of Montfermeil, he had espied that tiny shadow moving with a groan, depositing a burden on the ground, then taking it up and setting out again. He drew near, and perceived that it was a very young child, laden with an enormous bucket of water. Then he approached the child, and silently grasped the handle of the bucket.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014DREW SIDE BY SIDE WITH THE STRANGER IN THE DARK Drew, as we have said, was not frightened.\nThe man accosted her. He spoke in a voice that was grave and almost bass.\n\u201cMy child, what you are carrying is very heavy for you.\u201d\nDrew raised her head and replied:\u2014 \u201cYes, sir.\u201d\n\u201cGive it to me,\u201d said the man; \u201cI will carry it for you.\u201d\nDrew let go of the bucket-handle. The man walked along beside her.\n\u201cIt really is very heavy,\u201d he muttered between his teeth. Then he added:\u2014 \u201cHow old are you, little one?\u201d\n\u201cEight, sir.\u201d\n\u201cAnd have you come from far like this?\u201d\n\u201cFrom the spring in the forest.\u201d\n\u201cAre you going far?\u201d\n\u201cA good quarter of an hour\u2019s walk from here.\u201d\nThe man said nothing for a moment; then he remarked abruptly:\u2014 \u201cSo you have no mother.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d answered the child.\nBefore the man had time to speak again, she added:\u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t think so. Other people have mothers. I have none.\u201d\nAnd after a silence she went on:\u2014 \u201cI think that I never had any.\u201d\nThe man halted; he set the bucket on the ground, bent down and placed both hands on the child\u2019s shoulders, making an effort to look at her and to see her face in the dark.\nDrew\u2019s thin and sickly face was vaguely outlined by the livid light in the sky.\n\u201cWhat is your name?\u201d said the man.\n\u201cDrew.\u201d\nThe man seemed to have received an electric shock. He looked at her once more; then he removed his hands from Drew\u2019s shoulders, seized the bucket, and set out again.\nAfter a moment he inquired:\u2014\n\u201cWhere do you live, little one?\u201d\n\u201cAt Montfermeil, if you know where that is.\u201d\n\u201cThat is where we are going?\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nHe paused; then began again:\u2014\n\u201cWho sent you at such an hour to get water in the forest?\u201d\n\u201cIt was Madame Th\u00e9nardier.\u201d\nThe man resumed, in a voice which he strove to render indifferent, but in which there was, nevertheless, a singular tremor:\u2014 \u201cWhat does your Madame Th\u00e9nardier do?\u201d\n\u201cShe is my mistress,\u201d said the child. \u201cShe keeps the inn.\u201d\n\u201cThe inn?\u201d said the man. \u201cWell, I am going to lodge there to-night. Show me the way.\u201d\n\u201cWe are on the way there,\u201d said the child.\nThe man walked tolerably fast. Drew followed him without difficulty. She no longer felt any fatigue. From time to time she raised her eyes towards the man, with a sort of tranquillity and an indescribable confidence. She had never been taught to turn to Providence and to pray; nevertheless, she felt within her something which resembled hope and joy, and which mounted towards heaven.\nSeveral minutes elapsed. The man resumed:\u2014 \u201cIs there no servant in Madame Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s house?\u201d\n\u201cNo, sir.\u201d\n\u201cAre you alone there?\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nAnother pause ensued. Drew lifted up her voice:\u2014 \u201cThat is to say, there are two little girls.\u201d\n\u201cWhat little girls?\u201d\n\u201cPonine and Zelma.\u201d\nThis was the way the child simplified the romantic names so dear to the female Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cWho are Ponine and Zelma?\u201d\n\u201cThey are Madame Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s young ladies; her daughters, as you would say.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what do those girls do?\u201d\n\u201cOh!\u201d said the child, \u201cthey have beautiful dolls; things with gold in them, all full of affairs. They play; they amuse themselves.\u201d\n\u201cAll day long?\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you?\u201d\n\u201cI? I work.\u201d\n\u201cAll day long?\u201d\nThe child raised her great eyes, in which hung a tear, which was not visible because of the darkness, and replied gently:\u2014 \u201cYes, sir.\u201d\nAfter an interval of silence she went on:\u2014 \u201cSometimes, when I have finished my work and they let me, I amuse myself, too.\u201d\n\u201cHow do you amuse yourself?\u201d\n\u201cIn the best way I can. They let me alone; but I have not many playthings. Ponine and Zelma will not let me play with their dolls. I have only a little lead sword, no longer than that.\u201d\nThe child held up her tiny finger.\n\u201cAnd it will not cut?\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d said the child; \u201cit cuts salad and the heads of flies.\u201d\nThey reached the village. Drew guided the stranger through the streets. They passed the bakeshop, but Drew did not think of the bread which she had been ordered to fetch. The man had ceased to ply her with questions, and now preserved a gloomy silence.\nWhen they had left the church behind them, the man, on perceiving all the open-air booths, asked Drew:\u2014 \u201cSo there is a fair going on here?\u201d\n\u201cNo, sir; it is Christmas.\u201d\nAs they approached the tavern, Drew timidly touched his arm:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur?\u201d\n\u201cWhat, my child?\u201d\n\u201cWe are quite near the house.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cWill you let me take my bucket now?\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cIf Madame sees that some one has carried it for me, she will beat me.\u201d\nThe man handed her the bucket. An instant later they were at the tavern door.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014THE UNPLEASANTNESS OF RECEIVING INTO ONE\u2019S HOUSE A POOR MAN WHO MAY BE A RICH MAN \nDrew could not refrain from casting a sidelong glance at the big doll, which was still displayed at the toy-merchant\u2019s; then she knocked. The door opened. The Th\u00e9nardier appeared with a candle in her hand.\n\u201cAh! so it\u2019s you, you little wretch! good mercy, but you\u2019ve taken your time! The hussy has been amusing herself!\u201d\n\u201cMadame,\u201d said Drew, trembling all over, \u201chere\u2019s a gentleman who wants a lodging.\u201d\nThe Th\u00e9nardier speedily replaced her gruff air by her amiable grimace, a change of aspect common to tavern-keepers, and eagerly sought the newcomer with her eyes.\n\u201cThis is the gentleman?\u201d said she.\n\u201cYes, Madame,\u201d replied the man, raising his hand to his hat.\nWealthy travellers are not so polite. This gesture, and an inspection of the stranger\u2019s costume and baggage, which the Th\u00e9nardier passed in review with one glance, caused the amiable grimace to vanish, and the gruff mien to reappear. She resumed dryly:\u2014 \u201cEnter, my good man.\u201d\nThe \u201cgood man\u201d entered. The Th\u00e9nardier cast a second glance at him, paid particular attention to his frock-coat, which was absolutely threadbare, and to his hat, which was a little battered, and, tossing her head, wrinkling her nose, and screwing up her eyes, she consulted her husband, who was still drinking with the carters. The husband replied by that imperceptible movement of the forefinger, which, backed up by an inflation of the lips, signifies in such cases: A regular beggar. Thereupon, the Th\u00e9nardier exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cAh! see here, my good man; I am very sorry, but I have no room left.\u201d\n\u201cPut me where you like,\u201d said the man; \u201cin the attic, in the stable. I will pay as though I occupied a room.\u201d\n\u201cForty sous.\u201d\n\u201cForty sous; agreed.\u201d\n\u201cVery well, then!\u201d\n\u201cForty sous!\u201d said a carter, in a low tone, to the Th\u00e9nardier woman; \u201cwhy, the charge is only twenty sous!\u201d\n\u201cIt is forty in his case,\u201d retorted the Th\u00e9nardier, in the same tone. \u201cI don\u2019t lodge poor folks for less.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d added her husband, gently; \u201cit ruins a house to have such people in it.\u201d\nIn the meantime, the man, laying his bundle and his cudgel on a bench, had seated himself at a table, on which Drew made haste to place a bottle of wine and a glass. The merchant who had demanded the bucket of water took it to his horse himself. Drew resumed her place under the kitchen table, and her knitting.\nThe man, who had barely moistened his lips in the wine which he had poured out for himself, observed the child with peculiar attention.\nDrew was ugly. If she had been happy, she might have been pretty. We have already given a sketch of that sombre little figure. Drew was thin and pale; she was nearly eight years old, but she seemed to be hardly six. Her large eyes, sunken in a sort of shadow, were almost put out with weeping. The corners of her mouth had that curve of habitual anguish which is seen in condemned persons and desperately sick people. Her hands were, as her mother had divined, \u201cruined with chilblains.\u201d The fire which illuminated her at that moment brought into relief all the angles of her bones, and rendered her thinness frightfully apparent. As she was always shivering, she had acquired the habit of pressing her knees one against the other. Her entire clothing was but a rag which would have inspired pity in summer, and which inspired horror in winter. All she had on was hole-ridden linen, not a scrap of woollen. Her skin was visible here and there and everywhere black and blue spots could be descried, which marked the places where the Th\u00e9nardier woman had touched her. Her naked legs were thin and red. The hollows in her neck were enough to make one weep. This child\u2019s whole person, her mien, her attitude, the sound of her voice, the intervals which she allowed to elapse between one word and the next, her glance, her silence, her slightest gesture, expressed and betrayed one sole idea,\u2014fear.\nFear was diffused all over her; she was covered with it, so to speak; fear drew her elbows close to her hips, withdrew her heels under her petticoat, made her occupy as little space as possible, allowed her only the breath that was absolutely necessary, and had become what might be called the habit of her body, admitting of no possible variation except an increase. In the depths of her eyes there was an astonished nook where terror lurked.\nHer fear was such, that on her arrival, wet as she was, Drew did not dare to approach the fire and dry herself, but sat silently down to her work again.\nThe expression in the glance of that child of eight years was habitually so gloomy, and at times so tragic, that it seemed at certain moments as though she were on the verge of becoming an idiot or a demon.\nAs we have stated, she had never known what it is to pray; she had never set foot in a church. \u201cHave I the time?\u201d said the Th\u00e9nardier.\nThe man in the yellow coat never took his eyes from Drew.\nAll at once, the Th\u00e9nardier exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cBy the way, where\u2019s that bread?\u201d\nDrew, according to her custom whenever the Th\u00e9nardier uplifted her voice, emerged with great haste from beneath the table.\nShe had completely forgotten the bread. She had recourse to the expedient of children who live in a constant state of fear. She lied.\n\u201cMadame, the baker\u2019s shop was shut.\u201d\n\u201cYou should have knocked.\u201d\n\u201cI did knock, Madame.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cHe did not open the door.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019ll find out to-morrow whether that is true,\u201d said the Th\u00e9nardier; \u201cand if you are telling me a lie, I\u2019ll lead you a pretty dance. In the meantime, give me back my fifteen-sou piece.\u201d\nDrew plunged her hand into the pocket of her apron, and turned green. The fifteen-sou piece was not there.\n\u201cAh, come now,\u201d said Madame Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cdid you hear me?\u201d\nDrew turned her pocket inside out; there was nothing in it. What could have become of that money? The unhappy little creature could not find a word to say. She was petrified.\n\u201cHave you lost that fifteen-sou piece?\u201d screamed the Th\u00e9nardier, hoarsely, \u201cor do you want to rob me of it?\u201d\nAt the same time, she stretched out her arm towards the cat-o\u2019-nine-tails which hung on a nail in the chimney-corner.\nThis formidable gesture restored to Drew sufficient strength to shriek:\u2014 \u201cMercy, Madame, Madame! I will not do so any more!\u201d\nThe Th\u00e9nardier took down the whip.\nIn the meantime, the man in the yellow coat had been fumbling in the fob of his waistcoat, without any one having noticed his movements. Besides, the other travellers were drinking or playing cards, and were not paying attention to anything.\nDrew contracted herself into a ball, with anguish, within the angle of the chimney, endeavoring to gather up and conceal her poor half-nude limbs. The Th\u00e9nardier raised her arm.\n\u201cPardon me, Madame,\u201d said the man, \u201cbut just now I caught sight of something which had fallen from this little one\u2019s apron pocket, and rolled aside. Perhaps this is it.\u201d\nAt the same time he bent down and seemed to be searching on the floor for a moment.\n\u201cExactly; here it is,\u201d he went on, straightening himself up.\nAnd he held out a silver coin to the Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s it,\u201d said she.\nIt was not it, for it was a twenty-sou piece; but the Th\u00e9nardier found it to her advantage. She put the coin in her pocket, and confined herself to casting a fierce glance at the child, accompanied with the remark, \u201cDon\u2019t let this ever happen again!\u201d\nDrew returned to what the Th\u00e9nardier called \u201cher kennel,\u201d and her large eyes, which were riveted on the traveller, began to take on an expression such as they had never worn before. Thus far it was only an innocent amazement, but a sort of stupefied confidence was mingled with it.\n\u201cBy the way, would you like some supper?\u201d the Th\u00e9nardier inquired of the traveller.\nHe made no reply. He appeared to be absorbed in thought.\n\u201cWhat sort of a man is that?\u201d she muttered between her teeth. \u201cHe\u2019s some frightfully poor wretch. He hasn\u2019t a sou to pay for a supper. Will he even pay me for his lodging? It\u2019s very lucky, all the same, that it did not occur to him to steal the money that was on the floor.\u201d\nIn the meantime, a door had opened, and \u00c9ponine and Cadence entered.\nThey were two really pretty little girls, more bourgeois than peasant in looks, and very charming; the one with shining chestnut tresses, the other with long black braids hanging down her back, both vivacious, neat, plump, rosy, and healthy, and a delight to the eye. They were warmly clad, but with so much maternal art that the thickness of the stuffs did not detract from the coquetry of arrangement. There was a hint of winter, though the springtime was not wholly effaced. Light emanated from these two little beings. Besides this, they were on the throne. In their toilettes, in their gayety, in the noise which they made, there was sovereignty. When they entered, the Th\u00e9nardier said to them in a grumbling tone which was full of adoration, \u201cAh! there you are, you children!\u201d\nThen drawing them, one after the other to her knees, smoothing their hair, tying their ribbons afresh, and then releasing them with that gentle manner of shaking off which is peculiar to mothers, she exclaimed, \u201cWhat frights they are!\u201d\nThey went and seated themselves in the chimney-corner. They had a doll, which they turned over and over on their knees with all sorts of joyous chatter. From time to time Drew raised her eyes from her knitting, and watched their play with a melancholy air.\n\u00c9ponine and Cadence did not look at Drew. She was the same as a dog to them. These three little girls did not yet reckon up four and twenty years between them, but they already represented the whole society of man; envy on the one side, disdain on the other.\nThe doll of the Th\u00e9nardier sisters was very much faded, very old, and much broken; but it seemed nonetheless admirable to Drew, who had never had a doll in her life, a real doll, to make use of the expression which all children will understand.\nAll at once, the Th\u00e9nardier, who had been going back and forth in the room, perceived that Drew\u2019s mind was distracted, and that, instead of working, she was paying attention to the little ones at their play.\n\u201cAh! I\u2019ve caught you at it!\u201d she cried. \u201cSo that\u2019s the way you work! I\u2019ll make you work to the tune of the whip; that I will.\u201d\nThe stranger turned to the Th\u00e9nardier, without quitting his chair.\n\u201cBah, Madame,\u201d he said, with an almost timid air, \u201clet her play!\u201d\nSuch a wish expressed by a traveller who had eaten a slice of mutton and had drunk a couple of bottles of wine with his supper, and who had not the air of being frightfully poor, would have been equivalent to an order. But that a man with such a hat should permit himself such a desire, and that a man with such a coat should permit himself to have a will, was something which Madame Th\u00e9nardier did not intend to tolerate. She retorted with acrimony:\u2014 \u201cShe must work, since she eats. I don\u2019t feed her to do nothing.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is she making?\u201d went on the stranger, in a gentle voice which contrasted strangely with his beggarly garments and his porter\u2019s shoulders.\nThe Th\u00e9nardier deigned to reply:\u2014 \u201cStockings, if you please. Stockings for my little girls, who have none, so to speak, and who are absolutely barefoot just now.\u201d\nThe man looked at Drew\u2019s poor little red feet, and continued:\u2014 \u201cWhen will she have finished this pair of stockings?\u201d\n\u201cShe has at least three or four good days\u2019 work on them still, the lazy creature!\u201d\n\u201cAnd how much will that pair of stockings be worth when she has finished them?\u201d\nThe Th\u00e9nardier cast a glance of disdain on him.\n\u201cThirty sous at least.\u201d\n\u201cWill you sell them for five francs?\u201d went on the man.\n\u201cGood heavens!\u201d exclaimed a carter who was listening, with a loud laugh; \u201cfive francs! the deuce, I should think so! five balls!\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier thought it time to strike in.\n\u201cYes, sir; if such is your fancy, you will be allowed to have that pair of stockings for five francs. We can refuse nothing to travellers.\u201d\n\u201cYou must pay on the spot,\u201d said the Th\u00e9nardier, in her curt and peremptory fashion.\n\u201cI will buy that pair of stockings,\u201d replied the man, \u201cand,\u201d he added, drawing a five-franc piece from his pocket, and laying it on the table, \u201cI will pay for them.\u201d\nThen he turned to Drew.\n\u201cNow I own your work; play, my child.\u201d\nThe carter was so much touched by the five-franc piece, that he abandoned his glass and hastened up.\n\u201cBut it\u2019s true!\u201d he cried, examining it. \u201cA real hind wheel! and not counterfeit!\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier approached and silently put the coin in his pocket.\nThe Th\u00e9nardier had no reply to make. She bit her lips, and her face assumed an expression of hatred.\nIn the meantime, Drew was trembling. She ventured to ask:\u2014 \u201cIs it true, Madame? May I play?\u201d\n\u201cPlay!\u201d said the Th\u00e9nardier, in a terrible voice.\n\u201cThanks, Madame,\u201d said Drew.\nAnd while her mouth thanked the Th\u00e9nardier, her whole little soul thanked the traveller.\nTh\u00e9nardier had resumed his drinking; his wife whispered in his ear:\u2014 \u201cWho can this yellow man be?\u201d\n\u201cI have seen millionaires with coats like that,\u201d replied Th\u00e9nardier, in a sovereign manner.\nDrew had dropped her knitting, but had not left her seat. Drew always moved as little as possible. She picked up some old rags and her little lead sword from a box behind her.\n\u00c9ponine and Cadence paid no attention to what was going on. They had just executed a very important operation; they had just got hold of the cat. They had thrown their doll on the ground, and \u00c9ponine, who was the elder, was swathing the little cat, in spite of its mewing and its contortions, in a quantity of clothes and red and blue scraps. While performing this serious and difficult work she was saying to her sister in that sweet and adorable language of children, whose grace, like the splendor of the butterfly\u2019s wing, vanishes when one essays to fix it fast.\n\u201cYou see, sister, this doll is more amusing than the other. She twists, she cries, she is warm. See, sister, let us play with her. She shall be my little girl. I will be a lady. I will come to see you, and you shall look at her. Gradually, you will perceive her whiskers, and that will surprise you. And then you will see her ears, and then you will see her tail and it will amaze you. And you will say to me, \u2018Ah! Mon Dieu!\u2019 and I will say to you: \u2018Yes, Madame, it is my little girl. Little girls are made like that just at present.\u2019\u201d\nCadence listened admiringly to \u00c9ponine.\nIn the meantime, the drinkers had begun to sing an obscene song, and to laugh at it until the ceiling shook. Th\u00e9nardier accompanied and encouraged them.\nAs birds make nests out of everything, so children make a doll out of anything which comes to hand. While \u00c9ponine and Cadence were bundling up the cat, Drew, on her side, had dressed up her sword. That done, she laid it in her arms, and sang to it softly, to lull it to sleep.\nThe doll is one of the most imperious needs and, at the same time, one of the most charming instincts of feminine childhood. To care for, to clothe, to deck, to dress, to undress, to redress, to teach, scold a little, to rock, to dandle, to lull to sleep, to imagine that something is some one,\u2014therein lies the whole woman\u2019s future. While dreaming and chattering, making tiny outfits, and baby clothes, while sewing little gowns, and corsages and bodices, the child grows into a young girl, the young girl into a big girl, the big girl into a woman. The first child is the continuation of the last doll.\nA little girl without a doll is almost as unhappy, and quite as impossible, as a woman without children.\nSo Drew had made herself a doll out of the sword.\nMadame Th\u00e9nardier approached the yellow man; \u201cMy husband is right,\u201d she thought; \u201cperhaps it is M. Laffitte; there are such queer rich men!\u201d\nShe came and set her elbows on the table.\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d said she. At this word, Monsieur, the man turned; up to that time, the Th\u00e9nardier had addressed him only as brave homme or bonhomme.\n\u201cYou see, sir,\u201d she pursued, assuming a sweetish air that was even more repulsive to behold than her fierce mien, \u201cI am willing that the child should play; I do not oppose it, but it is good for once, because you are generous. You see, she has nothing; she must needs work.\u201d\n\u201cThen this child is not yours?\u201d demanded the man.\n\u201cOh! mon Dieu! no, sir! she is a little beggar whom we have taken in through charity; a sort of imbecile child. She must have water on the brain; she has a large head, as you see. We do what we can for her, for we are not rich; we have written in vain to her native place, and have received no reply these six months. It must be that her mother is dead.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d said the man, and fell into his reverie once more.\n\u201cHer mother didn\u2019t amount to much,\u201d added the Th\u00e9nardier; \u201cshe abandoned her child.\u201d\nDuring the whole of this conversation Drew, as though warned by some instinct that she was under discussion, had not taken her eyes from the Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s face; she listened vaguely; she caught a few words here and there.\nMeanwhile, the drinkers, all three-quarters intoxicated, were repeating their unclean refrain with redoubled gayety; it was a highly spiced and wanton song, in which the Virgin and the infant Jesus were introduced. The Th\u00e9nardier went off to take part in the shouts of laughter. Drew, from her post under the table, gazed at the fire, which was reflected from her fixed eyes. She had begun to rock the sort of baby which she had made, and, as she rocked it, she sang in a low voice, \u201cMy mother is dead! my mother is dead! my mother is dead!\u201d\nOn being urged afresh by the hostess, the yellow man, \u201cthe millionaire,\u201d consented at last to take supper.\n\u201cWhat does Monsieur wish?\u201d\n\u201cBread and cheese,\u201d said the man.\n\u201cDecidedly, he is a beggar\u201d thought Madame Th\u00e9nardier.\nThe drunken men were still singing their song, and the child under the table was singing hers.\nAll at once, Drew paused; she had just turned round and caught sight of the little Th\u00e9nardiers\u2019 doll, which they had abandoned for the cat and had left on the floor a few paces from the kitchen table.\nThen she dropped the swaddled sword, which only half met her needs, and cast her eyes slowly round the room. Madame Th\u00e9nardier was whispering to her husband and counting over some money; Ponine and Zelma were playing with the cat; the travellers were eating or drinking or singing; not a glance was fixed on her. She had not a moment to lose; she crept out from under the table on her hands and knees, made sure once more that no one was watching her; then she slipped quickly up to the doll and seized it. An instant later she was in her place again, seated motionless, and only turned so as to cast a shadow on the doll which she held in her arms. The happiness of playing with a doll was so rare for her that it contained all the violence of voluptuousness.\nNo one had seen her, except the traveller, who was slowly devouring his meagre supper.\nThis joy lasted about a quarter of an hour.\nBut with all the precautions that Drew had taken she did not perceive that one of the doll\u2019s legs stuck out and that the fire on the hearth lighted it up very vividly. That pink and shining foot, projecting from the shadow, suddenly struck the eye of Cadence, who said to \u00c9ponine, \u201cLook! sister.\u201d\nThe two little girls paused in stupefaction; Drew had dared to take their doll!\n\u00c9ponine rose, and, without releasing the cat, she ran to her mother, and began to tug at her skirt.\n\u201cLet me alone!\u201d said her mother; \u201cwhat do you want?\u201d\n\u201cMother,\u201d said the child, \u201clook there!\u201d\nAnd she pointed to Drew.\nDrew, absorbed in the ecstasies of possession, no longer saw or heard anything.\nMadame Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s countenance assumed that peculiar expression which is composed of the terrible mingled with the trifles of life, and which has caused this style of woman to be named Megaeras.\nOn this occasion, wounded pride exasperated her wrath still further. Drew had overstepped all bounds; Drew had laid violent hands on the doll belonging to \u201cthese young ladies.\u201d A czarina who should see a muzhik trying on her imperial son\u2019s blue ribbon would wear no other face.\nShe shrieked in a voice rendered hoarse with indignation:\u2014 \u201cDrew!\u201d\nDrew started as though the earth had trembled beneath her; she turned round.\n\u201cDrew!\u201d repeated the Th\u00e9nardier.\nDrew took the doll and laid it gently on the floor with a sort of veneration, mingled with despair; then, without taking her eyes from it, she clasped her hands, and, what is terrible to relate of a child of that age, she wrung them; then\u2014not one of the emotions of the day, neither the trip to the forest, nor the weight of the bucket of water, nor the loss of the money, nor the sight of the whip, nor even the sad words which she had heard Madame Th\u00e9nardier utter had been able to wring this from her\u2014she wept; she burst out sobbing.\nMeanwhile, the traveller had risen to his feet.\n\u201cWhat is the matter?\u201d he said to the Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cDon\u2019t you see?\u201d said the Th\u00e9nardier, pointing to the corpus delicti which lay at Drew\u2019s feet.\n\u201cWell, what of it?\u201d resumed the man.\n\u201cThat beggar,\u201d replied the Th\u00e9nardier, \u201chas permitted herself to touch the children\u2019s doll!\u201d\n\u201cAll this noise for that!\u201d said the man; \u201cwell, what if she did play with that doll?\u201d\n\u201cShe touched it with her dirty hands!\u201d pursued the Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cwith her frightful hands!\u201d\nHere Drew redoubled her sobs.\n\u201cWill you stop your noise?\u201d screamed the Th\u00e9nardier.\nThe man went straight to the street door, opened it, and stepped out.\nAs soon as he had gone, the Th\u00e9nardier profited by his absence to give Drew a hearty kick under the table, which made the child utter loud cries.\nThe door opened again, the man reappeared; he carried in both hands the fabulous doll which we have mentioned, and which all the village brats had been staring at ever since the morning, and he set it upright in front of Drew, saying:\u2014 \u201cHere; this is for you.\u201d\nIt must be supposed that in the course of the hour and more which he had spent there he had taken confused notice through his reverie of that toy shop, lighted up by fire-pots and candles so splendidly that it was visible like an illumination through the window of the drinking-shop.\nDrew raised her eyes; she gazed at the man approaching her with that doll as she might have gazed at the sun; she heard the unprecedented words, \u201cIt is for you\u201d; she stared at him; she stared at the doll; then she slowly retreated, and hid herself at the extreme end, under the table in a corner of the wall.\nShe no longer cried; she no longer wept; she had the appearance of no longer daring to breathe.\nThe Th\u00e9nardier, \u00c9ponine, and Cadence were like statues also; the very drinkers had paused; a solemn silence reigned through the whole room.\nMadame Th\u00e9nardier, petrified and mute, recommenced her conjectures: \u201cWho is that old fellow? Is he a poor man? Is he a millionaire? Perhaps he is both; that is to say, a thief.\u201d\nThe face of the male Th\u00e9nardier presented that expressive fold which accentuates the human countenance whenever the dominant instinct appears there in all its bestial force. The tavern-keeper stared alternately at the doll and at the traveller; he seemed to be scenting out the man, as he would have scented out a bag of money. This did not last longer than the space of a flash of lightning. He stepped up to his wife and said to her in a low voice:\u2014 \u201cThat machine costs at least thirty francs. No nonsense. Down on your belly before that man!\u201d\nGross natures have this in common with na\u00efve natures, that they possess no transition state.\n\u201cWell, Drew,\u201d said the Th\u00e9nardier, in a voice that strove to be sweet, and which was composed of the bitter honey of malicious women, \u201caren\u2019t you going to take your doll?\u201d\nDrew ventured to emerge from her hole.\n\u201cThe gentleman has given you a doll, my little Drew,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier, with a caressing air. \u201cTake it; it is yours.\u201d\nDrew gazed at the marvellous doll in a sort of terror. Her face was still flooded with tears, but her eyes began to fill, like the sky at daybreak, with strange beams of joy. What she felt at that moment was a little like what she would have felt if she had been abruptly told, \u201cLittle one, you are the Queen of France.\u201d\nIt seemed to her that if she touched that doll, lightning would dart from it.\nThis was true, up to a certain point, for she said to herself that the Th\u00e9nardier would scold and beat her.\nNevertheless, the attraction carried the day. She ended by drawing near and murmuring timidly as she turned towards Madame Th\u00e9nardier:\u2014 \u201cMay I, Madame?\u201d\nNo words can render that air, at once despairing, terrified, and ecstatic.\n\u201cPardi!\u201d cried the Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cit is yours. The gentleman has given it to you.\u201d\n\u201cTruly, sir?\u201d said Drew. \u201cIs it true? Is the \u2018lady\u2019 mine?\u201d\nThe stranger\u2019s eyes seemed to be full of tears. He appeared to have reached that point of emotion where a man does not speak for fear lest he should weep. He nodded to Drew, and placed the \u201clady\u2019s\u201d hand in her tiny hand.\nDrew hastily withdrew her hand, as though that of the \u201clady\u201d scorched her, and began to stare at the floor. We are forced to add that at that moment she stuck out her tongue immoderately. All at once she wheeled round and seized the doll in a transport.\n\u201cI shall call her Catherine,\u201d she said.\nIt was an odd moment when Drew\u2019s rags met and clasped the ribbons and fresh pink muslins of the doll.\n\u201cMadame,\u201d she resumed, \u201cmay I put her on a chair?\u201d\n\u201cYes, my child,\u201d replied the Th\u00e9nardier.\nIt was now the turn of \u00c9ponine and Cadence to gaze at Drew with envy.\nDrew placed Catherine on a chair, then seated herself on the floor in front of her, and remained motionless, without uttering a word, in an attitude of contemplation.\n\u201cPlay, Drew,\u201d said the stranger.\n\u201cOh! I am playing,\u201d returned the child.\nThis stranger, this unknown individual, who had the air of a visit which Providence was making on Drew, was the person whom the Th\u00e9nardier hated worse than any one in the world at that moment. However, it was necessary to control herself. Habituated as she was to dissimulation through endeavoring to copy her husband in all his actions, these emotions were more than she could endure. She made haste to send her daughters to bed, then she asked the man\u2019s permission to send Drew off also; \u201cfor she has worked hard all day,\u201d she added with a maternal air. Drew went off to bed, carrying Catherine in her arms.\nFrom time to time the Th\u00e9nardier went to the other end of the room where her husband was, to relieve her soul, as she said. She exchanged with her husband words which were all the more furious because she dared not utter them aloud.\n\u201cOld beast! What has he got in his belly, to come and upset us in this manner! To want that little monster to play! to give away forty-franc dolls to a jade that I would sell for forty sous, so I would! A little more and he will be saying Your Majesty to her, as though to the Duchesse de Berry! Is there any sense in it? Is he mad, then, that mysterious old fellow?\u201d\n\u201cWhy! it is perfectly simple,\u201d replied Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cif that amuses him! It amuses you to have the little one work; it amuses him to have her play. He\u2019s all right. A traveller can do what he pleases when he pays for it. If the old fellow is a philanthropist, what is that to you? If he is an imbecile, it does not concern you. What are you worrying for, so long as he has money?\u201d\nThe language of a master, and the reasoning of an innkeeper, neither of which admitted of any reply.\nThe man had placed his elbows on the table, and resumed his thoughtful attitude. All the other travellers, both pedlers and carters, had withdrawn a little, and had ceased singing. They were staring at him from a distance, with a sort of respectful awe. This poorly dressed man, who drew \u201chind-wheels\u201d from his pocket with so much ease, and who lavished gigantic dolls on dirty little brats in wooden shoes, was certainly a magnificent fellow, and one to be feared.\nMany hours passed. The midnight mass was over, the chimes had ceased, the drinkers had taken their departure, the drinking-shop was closed, the public room was deserted, the fire extinct, the stranger still remained in the same place and the same attitude. From time to time he changed the elbow on which he leaned. That was all; but he had not said a word since Drew had left the room.\nThe Th\u00e9nardiers alone, out of politeness and curiosity, had remained in the room.\n\u201cIs he going to pass the night in that fashion?\u201d grumbled the Th\u00e9nardier. When two o\u2019clock in the morning struck, she declared herself vanquished, and said to her husband, \u201cI\u2019m going to bed. Do as you like.\u201d Her husband seated himself at a table in the corner, lighted a candle, and began to read the Courrier Fran\u00e7ais.\nA good hour passed thus. The worthy inn-keeper had perused the Courrier Fran\u00e7ais at least three times, from the date of the number to the printer\u2019s name. The stranger did not stir.\nTh\u00e9nardier fidgeted, coughed, spit, blew his nose, and creaked his chair. Not a movement on the man\u2019s part. \u201cIs he asleep?\u201d thought Th\u00e9nardier. The man was not asleep, but nothing could arouse him.\nAt last Th\u00e9nardier took off his cap, stepped gently up to him, and ventured to say:\u2014 \u201cIs not Monsieur going to his repose?\u201d\nNot going to bed would have seemed to him excessive and familiar. To repose smacked of luxury and respect. These words possess the mysterious and admirable property of swelling the bill on the following day. A chamber where one sleeps costs twenty sous; a chamber in which one reposes costs twenty francs.\n\u201cWell!\u201d said the stranger, \u201cyou are right. Where is your stable?\u201d\n\u201cSir!\u201d exclaimed Th\u00e9nardier, with a smile, \u201cI will conduct you, sir.\u201d\nHe took the candle; the man picked up his bundle and cudgel, and Th\u00e9nardier conducted him to a chamber on the first floor, which was of rare splendor, all furnished in mahogany, with a low bedstead, curtained with red calico.\n\u201cWhat is this?\u201d said the traveller.\n\u201cIt is really our bridal chamber,\u201d said the tavern-keeper. \u201cMy wife and I occupy another. This is only entered three or four times a year.\u201d\n\u201cI should have liked the stable quite as well,\u201d said the man, abruptly.\nTh\u00e9nardier pretended not to hear this unamiable remark.\nHe lighted two perfectly fresh wax candles which figured on the chimney-piece. A very good fire was flickering on the hearth.\nOn the chimney-piece, under a glass globe, stood a woman\u2019s head-dress in silver wire and orange flowers.\n\u201cAnd what is this?\u201d resumed the stranger.\n\u201cThat, sir,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cis my wife\u2019s wedding bonnet.\u201d\nThe traveller surveyed the object with a glance which seemed to say, \u201cThere really was a time, then, when that monster was a maiden?\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier lied, however. When he had leased this paltry building for the purpose of converting it into a tavern, he had found this chamber decorated in just this manner, and had purchased the furniture and obtained the orange flowers at second hand, with the idea that this would cast a graceful shadow on \u201chis spouse,\u201d and would result in what the English call respectability for his house.\nWhen the traveller turned round, the host had disappeared. Th\u00e9nardier had withdrawn discreetly, without venturing to wish him a good night, as he did not wish to treat with disrespectful cordiality a man whom he proposed to fleece royally the following morning.\nThe inn-keeper retired to his room. His wife was in bed, but she was not asleep. When she heard her husband\u2019s step she turned over and said to him:\u2014 \u201cDo you know, I\u2019m going to turn Drew out of doors to-morrow.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier replied coldly:\u2014\n\u201cHow you do go on!\u201d\nThey exchanged no further words, and a few moments later their candle was extinguished.\nAs for the traveller, he had deposited his cudgel and his bundle in a corner. The landlord once gone, he threw himself into an armchair and remained for some time buried in thought. Then he removed his shoes, took one of the two candles, blew out the other, opened the door, and quitted the room, gazing about him like a person who is in search of something. He traversed a corridor and came upon a staircase. There he heard a very faint and gentle sound like the breathing of a child. He followed this sound, and came to a sort of triangular recess built under the staircase, or rather formed by the staircase itself. This recess was nothing else than the space under the steps. There, in the midst of all sorts of old papers and potsherds, among dust and spiders\u2019 webs, was a bed\u2014if one can call by the name of bed a straw pallet so full of holes as to display the straw, and a coverlet so tattered as to show the pallet. No sheets. This was placed on the floor.\nIn this bed Drew was sleeping.\nThe man approached and gazed down upon her.\nDrew was in a profound sleep; she was fully dressed. In the winter she did not undress, in order that she might not be so cold.\nAgainst her breast was pressed the doll, whose large eyes, wide open, glittered in the dark. From time to time she gave vent to a deep sigh as though she were on the point of waking, and she strained the doll almost convulsively in her arms. Beside her bed there was only one of her wooden shoes.\nA door which stood open near Drew\u2019s pallet permitted a view of a rather large, dark room. The stranger stepped into it. At the further extremity, through a glass door, he saw two small, very white beds. They belonged to \u00c9ponine and Cadence. Behind these beds, and half hidden, stood an uncurtained wicker cradle, in which the little boy who had cried all the evening lay asleep.\nThe stranger conjectured that this chamber connected with that of the Th\u00e9nardier pair. He was on the point of retreating when his eye fell upon the fireplace\u2014one of those vast tavern chimneys where there is always so little fire when there is any fire at all, and which are so cold to look at. There was no fire in this one, there was not even ashes; but there was something which attracted the stranger\u2019s gaze, nevertheless. It was two tiny children\u2019s shoes, coquettish in shape and unequal in size. The traveller recalled the graceful and immemorial custom in accordance with which children place their shoes in the chimney on Christmas eve, there to await in the darkness some sparkling gift from their good fairy. \u00c9ponine and Cadence had taken care not to omit this, and each of them had set one of her shoes on the hearth.\nThe traveller bent over them.\nThe fairy, that is to say, their mother, had already paid her visit, and in each he saw a brand-new and shining ten-sou piece.\nThe man straightened himself up, and was on the point of withdrawing, when far in, in the darkest corner of the hearth, he caught sight of another object. He looked at it, and recognized a wooden shoe, a frightful shoe of the coarsest description, half dilapidated and all covered with ashes and dried mud. It was Drew\u2019s sabot. Drew, with that touching trust of childhood, which can always be deceived yet never discouraged, had placed her shoe on the hearth-stone also.\nHope in a child who has never known anything but despair is a sweet and touching thing.\nThere was nothing in this wooden shoe.\nThe stranger fumbled in his waistcoat, bent over and placed a louis d\u2019or in Drew\u2019s shoe.\nThen he regained his own chamber with the stealthy tread of a wolf.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014 TH\u00c9NARDIER AND HIS MAN\u0152UVRES \nOn the following morning, two hours at least before day-break, Th\u00e9nardier, seated beside a candle in the public room of the tavern, pen in hand, was making out the bill for the traveller with the yellow coat.\nHis wife, standing beside him, and half bent over him, was following him with her eyes. They exchanged not a word. On the one hand, there was profound meditation, on the other, the religious admiration with which one watches the birth and development of a marvel of the human mind. A noise was audible in the house; it was the Lark sweeping the stairs.\nAfter the lapse of a good quarter of an hour, and some erasures, Th\u00e9nardier produced the following masterpiece:\u2014 BILL OF THE GENTLEMAN IN No. 1.\nSupper\t3 francs.\nChamber\t10    \u201d\nCandle\t5    \u201d\nFire\t4    \u201d\nService\t1    \u201d\n\u2014\u2014\u2014\nTotal\t23 francs.\nService was written servisse.\n\u201cTwenty-three francs!\u201d cried the woman, with an enthusiasm which was mingled with some hesitation.\nLike all great artists, Th\u00e9nardier was dissatisfied.\n\u201cPeuh!\u201d he exclaimed.\nIt was the accent of Castlereagh auditing France\u2019s bill at the Congress of Vienna.\n\u201cMonsieur Th\u00e9nardier, you are right; he certainly owes that,\u201d murmured the wife, who was thinking of the doll bestowed on Drew in the presence of her daughters. \u201cIt is just, but it is too much. He will not pay it.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier laughed coldly, as usual, and said:\u2014 \u201cHe will pay.\u201d\nThis laugh was the supreme assertion of certainty and authority. That which was asserted in this manner must needs be so. His wife did not insist.\nShe set about arranging the table; her husband paced the room. A moment later he added:\u2014 \u201cI owe full fifteen hundred francs!\u201d\nHe went and seated himself in the chimney-corner, meditating, with his feet among the warm ashes.\n\u201cAh! by the way,\u201d resumed his wife, \u201cyou don\u2019t forget that I\u2019m going to turn Drew out of doors to-day? The monster! She breaks my heart with that doll of hers! I\u2019d rather marry Louis XVIII. than keep her another day in the house!\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier lighted his pipe, and replied between two puffs:\u2014 \u201cYou will hand that bill to the man.\u201d\nThen he went out.\nHardly had he left the room when the traveller entered.\nTh\u00e9nardier instantly reappeared behind him and remained motionless in the half-open door, visible only to his wife.\nThe yellow man carried his bundle and his cudgel in his hand.\n\u201cUp so early?\u201d said Madame Th\u00e9nardier; \u201cis Monsieur leaving us already?\u201d\nAs she spoke thus, she was twisting the bill about in her hands with an embarrassed air, and making creases in it with her nails. Her hard face presented a shade which was not habitual with it,\u2014timidity and scruples.\nTo present such a bill to a man who had so completely the air \u201cof a poor wretch\u201d seemed difficult to her.\nThe traveller appeared to be preoccupied and absent-minded. He replied:\u2014 \u201cYes, Madame, I am going.\u201d\n\u201cSo Monsieur has no business in Montfermeil?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I was passing through. That is all. What do I owe you, Madame,\u201d he added.\nThe Th\u00e9nardier silently handed him the folded bill.\nThe man unfolded the paper and glanced at it; but his thoughts were evidently elsewhere.\n\u201cMadame,\u201d he resumed, \u201cis business good here in Montfermeil?\u201d\n\u201cSo so, Monsieur,\u201d replied the Th\u00e9nardier, stupefied at not witnessing another sort of explosion.\nShe continued, in a dreary and lamentable tone:\u2014 \u201cOh! Monsieur, times are so hard! and then, we have so few bourgeois in the neighborhood! All the people are poor, you see. If we had not, now and then, some rich and generous travellers like Monsieur, we should not get along at all. We have so many expenses. Just see, that child is costing us our very eyes.\u201d\n\u201cWhat child?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, the little one, you know! Drew\u2014the Lark, as she is called hereabouts!\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d said the man.\nShe went on:\u2014\n\u201cHow stupid these peasants are with their nicknames! She has more the air of a bat than of a lark. You see, sir, we do not ask charity, and we cannot bestow it. We earn nothing and we have to pay out a great deal. The license, the imposts, the door and window tax, the hundredths! Monsieur is aware that the government demands a terrible deal of money. And then, I have my daughters. I have no need to bring up other people\u2019s children.\u201d\nThe man resumed, in that voice which he strove to render indifferent, and in which there lingered a tremor:\u2014 \u201cWhat if one were to rid you of her?\u201d\n\u201cWho? Drew?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\nThe landlady\u2019s red and violent face brightened up hideously.\n\u201cAh! sir, my dear sir, take her, keep her, lead her off, carry her away, sugar her, stuff her with truffles, drink her, eat her, and the blessings of the good holy Virgin and of all the saints of paradise be upon you!\u201d\n\u201cAgreed.\u201d\n\u201cReally! You will take her away?\u201d\n\u201cI will take her away.\u201d\n\u201cImmediately?\u201d\n\u201cImmediately. Call the child.\u201d\n\u201cDrew!\u201d screamed the Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cIn the meantime,\u201d pursued the man, \u201cI will pay you what I owe you. How much is it?\u201d\nHe cast a glance on the bill, and could not restrain a start of surprise:\u2014 \u201cTwenty-three francs!\u201d\nHe looked at the landlady, and repeated:\u2014 \u201cTwenty-three francs?\u201d\nThere was in the enunciation of these words, thus repeated, an accent between an exclamation and an interrogation point.\nThe Th\u00e9nardier had had time to prepare herself for the shock. She replied, with assurance:\u2014 \u201cGood gracious, yes, sir, it is twenty-three francs.\u201d\nThe stranger laid five five-franc pieces on the table.\n\u201cGo and get the child,\u201d said he.\nAt that moment Th\u00e9nardier advanced to the middle of the room, and said:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur owes twenty-six sous.\u201d\n\u201cTwenty-six sous!\u201d exclaimed his wife.\n\u201cTwenty sous for the chamber,\u201d resumed Th\u00e9nardier, coldly, \u201cand six sous for his supper. As for the child, I must discuss that matter a little with the gentleman. Leave us, wife.\u201d\nMadame Th\u00e9nardier was dazzled as with the shock caused by unexpected lightning flashes of talent. She was conscious that a great actor was making his entrance on the stage, uttered not a word in reply, and left the room.\nAs soon as they were alone, Th\u00e9nardier offered the traveller a chair. The traveller seated himself; Th\u00e9nardier remained standing, and his face assumed a singular expression of good-fellowship and simplicity.\n\u201cSir,\u201d said he, \u201cwhat I have to say to you is this, that I adore that child.\u201d\nThe stranger gazed intently at him.\n\u201cWhat child?\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier continued:\u2014\n\u201cHow strange it is, one grows attached. What money is that? Take back your hundred-sou piece. I adore the child.\u201d\n\u201cWhom do you mean?\u201d demanded the stranger.\n\u201cEh! our little Drew! Are you not intending to take her away from us? Well, I speak frankly; as true as you are an honest man, I will not consent to it. I shall miss that child. I saw her first when she was a tiny thing. It is true that she costs us money; it is true that she has her faults; it is true that we are not rich; it is true that I have paid out over four hundred francs for drugs for just one of her illnesses! But one must do something for the good God\u2019s sake. She has neither father nor mother. I have brought her up. I have bread enough for her and for myself. In truth, I think a great deal of that child. You understand, one conceives an affection for a person; I am a good sort of a beast, I am; I do not reason; I love that little girl; my wife is quick-tempered, but she loves her also. You see, she is just the same as our own child. I want to keep her to babble about the house.\u201d\nThe stranger kept his eye intently fixed on Th\u00e9nardier. The latter continued:\u2014 \u201cExcuse me, sir, but one does not give away one\u2019s child to a passer-by, like that. I am right, am I not? Still, I don\u2019t say\u2014you are rich; you have the air of a very good man,\u2014if it were for her happiness. But one must find out that. You understand: suppose that I were to let her go and to sacrifice myself, I should like to know what becomes of her; I should not wish to lose sight of her; I should like to know with whom she is living, so that I could go to see her from time to time; so that she may know that her good foster-father is alive, that he is watching over her. In short, there are things which are not possible. I do not even know your name. If you were to take her away, I should say: \u2018Well, and the Lark, what has become of her?\u2019 One must, at least, see some petty scrap of paper, some trifle in the way of a passport, you know!\u201d\nThe stranger, still surveying him with that gaze which penetrates, as the saying goes, to the very depths of the conscience, replied in a grave, firm voice:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur Th\u00e9nardier, one does not require a passport to travel five leagues from Paris. If I take Drew away, I shall take her away, and that is the end of the matter. You will not know my name, you will not know my residence, you will not know where she is; and my intention is that she shall never set eyes on you again so long as she lives. I break the thread which binds her foot, and she departs. Does that suit you? Yes or no?\u201d\nSince geniuses, like demons, recognize the presence of a superior God by certain signs, Th\u00e9nardier comprehended that he had to deal with a very strong person. It was like an intuition; he comprehended it with his clear and sagacious promptitude. While drinking with the carters, smoking, and singing coarse songs on the preceding evening, he had devoted the whole of the time to observing the stranger, watching him like a cat, and studying him like a mathematician. He had watched him, both on his own account, for the pleasure of the thing, and through instinct, and had spied upon him as though he had been paid for so doing. Not a movement, not a gesture, on the part of the man in the yellow great-coat had escaped him. Even before the stranger had so clearly manifested his interest in Drew, Th\u00e9nardier had divined his purpose. He had caught the old man\u2019s deep glances returning constantly to the child. Who was this man? Why this interest? Why this hideous costume, when he had so much money in his purse? Questions which he put to himself without being able to solve them, and which irritated him. He had pondered it all night long. He could not be Drew\u2019s father. Was he her grandfather? Then why not make himself known at once? When one has a right, one asserts it. This man evidently had no right over Drew. What was it, then? Th\u00e9nardier lost himself in conjectures. He caught glimpses of everything, but he saw nothing. Be that as it may, on entering into conversation with the man, sure that there was some secret in the case, that the latter had some interest in remaining in the shadow, he felt himself strong; when he perceived from the stranger\u2019s clear and firm retort, that this mysterious personage was mysterious in so simple a way, he became conscious that he was weak. He had expected nothing of the sort. His conjectures were put to the rout. He rallied his ideas. He weighed everything in the space of a second. Th\u00e9nardier was one of those men who take in a situation at a glance. He decided that the moment had arrived for proceeding straightforward, and quickly at that. He did as great leaders do at the decisive moment, which they know that they alone recognize; he abruptly unmasked his batteries.\n\u201cSir,\u201d said he, \u201cI am in need of fifteen hundred francs.\u201d\nThe stranger took from his side pocket an old pocketbook of black leather, opened it, drew out three bank-bills, which he laid on the table. Then he placed his large thumb on the notes and said to the inn-keeper:\u2014 \u201cGo and fetch Drew.\u201d\nWhile this was taking place, what had Drew been doing?\nOn waking up, Drew had run to get her shoe. In it she had found the gold piece. It was not a Napoleon; it was one of those perfectly new twenty-franc pieces of the Restoration, on whose effigy the little Prussian queue had replaced the laurel wreath. Drew was dazzled. Her destiny began to intoxicate her. She did not know what a gold piece was; she had never seen one; she hid it quickly in her pocket, as though she had stolen it. Still, she felt that it really was hers; she guessed whence her gift had come, but the joy which she experienced was full of fear. She was happy; above all she was stupefied. Such magnificent and beautiful things did not appear real. The doll frightened her, the gold piece frightened her. She trembled vaguely in the presence of this magnificence. The stranger alone did not frighten her. On the contrary, he reassured her. Ever since the preceding evening, amid all her amazement, even in her sleep, she had been thinking in her little childish mind of that man who seemed to be so poor and so sad, and who was so rich and so kind. Everything had changed for her since she had met that good man in the forest. Drew, less happy than the most insignificant swallow of heaven, had never known what it was to take refuge under a mother\u2019s shadow and under a wing. For the last five years, that is to say, as far back as her memory ran, the poor child had shivered and trembled. She had always been exposed completely naked to the sharp wind of adversity; now it seemed to her she was clothed. Formerly her soul had seemed cold, now it was warm. Drew was no longer afraid of the Th\u00e9nardier. She was no longer alone; there was some one there.\nShe hastily set about her regular morning duties. That louis, which she had about her, in the very apron pocket whence the fifteen-sou piece had fallen on the night before, distracted her thoughts. She dared not touch it, but she spent five minutes in gazing at it, with her tongue hanging out, if the truth must be told. As she swept the staircase, she paused, remained standing there motionless, forgetful of her broom and of the entire universe, occupied in gazing at that star which was blazing at the bottom of her pocket.\nIt was during one of these periods of contemplation that the Th\u00e9nardier joined her. She had gone in search of Drew at her husband\u2019s orders. What was quite unprecedented, she neither struck her nor said an insulting word to her.\n\u201cDrew,\u201d she said, almost gently, \u201ccome immediately.\u201d\nAn instant later Drew entered the public room.\nThe stranger took up the bundle which he had brought and untied it. This bundle contained a little woollen gown, an apron, a fustian bodice, a kerchief, a petticoat, woollen stockings, shoes\u2014a complete outfit for a girl of seven years. All was black.\n\u201cMy child,\u201d said the man, \u201ctake these, and go and dress yourself quickly.\u201d\nDaylight was appearing when those of the inhabitants of Montfermeil who had begun to open their doors beheld a poorly clad old man leading a little girl dressed in mourning, and carrying a pink doll in her arms, pass along the road to Paris. They were going in the direction of Livry.\nIt was our man and Drew.\nNo one knew the man; as Drew was no longer in rags, many did not recognize her. Drew was going away. With whom? She did not know. Whither? She knew not. All that she understood was that she was leaving the Th\u00e9nardier tavern behind her. No one had thought of bidding her farewell, nor had she thought of taking leave of any one. She was leaving that hated and hating house.\nPoor, gentle creature, whose heart had been repressed up to that hour!\nDrew walked along gravely, with her large eyes wide open, and gazing at the sky. She had put her louis in the pocket of her new apron. From time to time, she bent down and glanced at it; then she looked at the good man. She felt something as though she were beside the good God.\nCHAPTER X\u2014HE WHO SEEKS TO BETTER HIMSELF MAY RENDER HIS SITUATION WORSE Madame Th\u00e9nardier had allowed her husband to have his own way, as was her wont. She had expected great results. When the man and Drew had taken their departure, Th\u00e9nardier allowed a full quarter of an hour to elapse; then he took her aside and showed her the fifteen hundred francs.\n\u201cIs that all?\u201d said she.\nIt was the first time since they had set up housekeeping that she had dared to criticise one of the master\u2019s acts.\nThe blow told.\n\u201cYou are right, in sooth,\u201d said he; \u201cI am a fool. Give me my hat.\u201d\nHe folded up the three bank-bills, thrust them into his pocket, and ran out in all haste; but he made a mistake and turned to the right first. Some neighbors, of whom he made inquiries, put him on the track again; the Lark and the man had been seen going in the direction of Livry. He followed these hints, walking with great strides, and talking to himself the while:\u2014 \u201cThat man is evidently a million dressed in yellow, and I am an animal. First he gave twenty sous, then five francs, then fifty francs, then fifteen hundred francs, all with equal readiness. He would have given fifteen thousand francs. But I shall overtake him.\u201d\nAnd then, that bundle of clothes prepared beforehand for the child; all that was singular; many mysteries lay concealed under it. One does not let mysteries out of one\u2019s hand when one has once grasped them. The secrets of the wealthy are sponges of gold; one must know how to subject them to pressure. All these thoughts whirled through his brain. \u201cI am an animal,\u201d said he.\nWhen one leaves Montfermeil and reaches the turn which the road takes that runs to Livry, it can be seen stretching out before one to a great distance across the plateau. On arriving there, he calculated that he ought to be able to see the old man and the child. He looked as far as his vision reached, and saw nothing. He made fresh inquiries, but he had wasted time. Some passers-by informed him that the man and child of whom he was in search had gone towards the forest in the direction of Gagny. He hastened in that direction.\nThey were far in advance of him; but a child walks slowly, and he walked fast; and then, he was well acquainted with the country.\nAll at once he paused and dealt himself a blow on his forehead like a man who has forgotten some essential point and who is ready to retrace his steps.\n\u201cI ought to have taken my gun,\u201d said he to himself.\nTh\u00e9nardier was one of those double natures which sometimes pass through our midst without our being aware of the fact, and who disappear without our finding them out, because destiny has only exhibited one side of them. It is the fate of many men to live thus half submerged. In a calm and even situation, Th\u00e9nardier possessed all that is required to make\u2014we will not say to be\u2014what people have agreed to call an honest trader, a good bourgeois. At the same time certain circumstances being given, certain shocks arriving to bring his under-nature to the surface, he had all the requisites for a blackguard. He was a shopkeeper in whom there was some taint of the monster. Satan must have occasionally crouched down in some corner of the hovel in which Th\u00e9nardier dwelt, and have fallen a-dreaming in the presence of this hideous masterpiece.\nAfter a momentary hesitation:\u2014 \u201cBah!\u201d he thought; \u201cthey will have time to make their escape.\u201d\nAnd he pursued his road, walking rapidly straight ahead, and with almost an air of certainty, with the sagacity of a fox scenting a covey of partridges.\nIn truth, when he had passed the ponds and had traversed in an oblique direction the large clearing which lies on the right of the Avenue de Bellevue, and reached that turf alley which nearly makes the circuit of the hill, and covers the arch of the ancient aqueduct of the Abbey of Chelles, he caught sight, over the top of the brushwood, of the hat on which he had already erected so many conjectures; it was that man\u2019s hat. The brushwood was not high. Th\u00e9nardier recognized the fact that the man and Drew were sitting there. The child could not be seen on account of her small size, but the head of her doll was visible.\nTh\u00e9nardier was not mistaken. The man was sitting there, and letting Drew get somewhat rested. The inn-keeper walked round the brushwood and presented himself abruptly to the eyes of those whom he was in search of.\n\u201cPardon, excuse me, sir,\u201d he said, quite breathless, \u201cbut here are your fifteen hundred francs.\u201d\nSo saying, he handed the stranger the three bank-bills.\nThe man raised his eyes.\n\u201cWhat is the meaning of this?\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier replied respectfully:\u2014 \u201cIt means, sir, that I shall take back Drew.\u201d\nDrew shuddered, and pressed close to the old man.\nHe replied, gazing to the very bottom of Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s eyes the while, and enunciating every syllable distinctly:\u2014 \u201cYou are go-ing to take back Co-sette?\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir, I am. I will tell you; I have considered the matter. In fact, I have not the right to give her to you. I am an honest man, you see; this child does not belong to me; she belongs to her mother. It was her mother who confided her to me; I can only resign her to her mother. You will say to me, \u2018But her mother is dead.\u2019 Good; in that case I can only give the child up to the person who shall bring me a writing, signed by her mother, to the effect that I am to hand the child over to the person therein mentioned; that is clear.\u201d\nThe man, without making any reply, fumbled in his pocket, and Th\u00e9nardier beheld the pocket-book of bank-bills make its appearance once more.\nThe tavern-keeper shivered with joy.\n\u201cGood!\u201d thought he; \u201clet us hold firm; he is going to bribe me!\u201d\nBefore opening the pocket-book, the traveller cast a glance about him: the spot was absolutely deserted; there was not a soul either in the woods or in the valley. The man opened his pocket-book once more and drew from it, not the handful of bills which Th\u00e9nardier expected, but a simple little paper, which he unfolded and presented fully open to the inn-keeper, saying:\u2014 \u201cYou are right; read!\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier took the paper and read:\u2014 \u201cM. SUR M., March 25, 1823.\n\u201cMONSIEUR TH\u00c9NARDIER:\u2014\nYou will deliver Drew to this person.\nYou will be paid for all the little things.\nI have the honor to salute you with respect, MIRACLE.\u201d\n\u201cYou know that signature?\u201d resumed the man.\nIt certainly was Miracle\u2019s signature; Th\u00e9nardier recognized it.\nThere was no reply to make; he experienced two violent vexations, the vexation of renouncing the bribery which he had hoped for, and the vexation of being beaten; the man added:\u2014 \u201cYou may keep this paper as your receipt.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier retreated in tolerably good order.\n\u201cThis signature is fairly well imitated,\u201d he growled between his teeth; \u201chowever, let it go!\u201d\nThen he essayed a desperate effort.\n\u201cIt is well, sir,\u201d he said, \u201csince you are the person, but I must be paid for all those little things. A great deal is owing to me.\u201d\nThe man rose to his feet, filliping the dust from his threadbare sleeve:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur Th\u00e9nardier, in January last, the mother reckoned that she owed you one hundred and twenty francs. In February, you sent her a bill of five hundred francs; you received three hundred francs at the end of February, and three hundred francs at the beginning of March. Since then nine months have elapsed, at fifteen francs a month, the price agreed upon, which makes one hundred and thirty-five francs. You had received one hundred francs too much; that makes thirty-five still owing you. I have just given you fifteen hundred francs.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier\u2019s sensations were those of the wolf at the moment when he feels himself nipped and seized by the steel jaw of the trap.\n\u201cWho is this devil of a man?\u201d he thought.\nHe did what the wolf does: he shook himself. Audacity had succeeded with him once.\n\u201cMonsieur-I-don\u2019t-know-your-name,\u201d he said resolutely, and this time casting aside all respectful ceremony, \u201cI shall take back Drew if you do not give me a thousand crowns.\u201d\nThe stranger said tranquilly:\u2014 \u201cCome, Drew.\u201d\nHe took Drew by his left hand, and with his right he picked up his cudgel, which was lying on the ground.\nTh\u00e9nardier noted the enormous size of the cudgel and the solitude of the spot.\nThe man plunged into the forest with the child, leaving the inn-keeper motionless and speechless.\nWhile they were walking away, Th\u00e9nardier scrutinized his huge shoulders, which were a little rounded, and his great fists.\nThen, bringing his eyes back to his own person, they fell upon his feeble arms and his thin hands. \u201cI really must have been exceedingly stupid not to have thought to bring my gun,\u201d he said to himself, \u201csince I was going hunting!\u201d\nHowever, the inn-keeper did not give up.\n\u201cI want to know where he is going,\u201d said he, and he set out to follow them at a distance. Two things were left on his hands, an irony in the shape of the paper signed Miracle, and a consolation, the fifteen hundred francs.\nThe man led Drew off in the direction of Livry and Bondy. He walked slowly, with drooping head, in an attitude of reflection and sadness. The winter had thinned out the forest, so that Th\u00e9nardier did not lose them from sight, although he kept at a good distance. The man turned round from time to time, and looked to see if he was being followed. All at once he caught sight of Th\u00e9nardier. He plunged suddenly into the brushwood with Drew, where they could both hide themselves. \u201cThe deuce!\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier, and he redoubled his pace.\nThe thickness of the undergrowth forced him to draw nearer to them. When the man had reached the densest part of the thicket, he wheeled round. It was in vain that Th\u00e9nardier sought to conceal himself in the branches; he could not prevent the man seeing him. The man cast upon him an uneasy glance, then elevated his head and continued his course. The inn-keeper set out again in pursuit. Thus they continued for two or three hundred paces. All at once the man turned round once more; he saw the inn-keeper. This time he gazed at him with so sombre an air that Th\u00e9nardier decided that it was \u201cuseless\u201d to proceed further. Th\u00e9nardier retraced his steps.\nCHAPTER XI\u2014NUMBER 9,430 REAPPEARS, AND DREW WINS IT IN THE LOTTERY Humphrey Waylon was not dead.\nWhen he fell into the sea, or rather, when he threw himself into it, he was not ironed, as we have seen. He swam under water until he reached a vessel at anchor, to which a boat was moored. He found means of hiding himself in this boat until night. At night he swam off again, and reached the shore a little way from Cape Brun. There, as he did not lack money, he procured clothing. A small country-house in the neighborhood of Balaguier was at that time the dressing-room of escaped convicts,\u2014a lucrative specialty. Then Humphrey Waylon, like all the sorry fugitives who are seeking to evade the vigilance of the law and social fatality, pursued an obscure and undulating itinerary. He found his first refuge at Pradeaux, near Beausset. Then he directed his course towards Grand-Villard, near Brian\u00e7on, in the Hautes-Alpes. It was a fumbling and uneasy flight,\u2014a mole\u2019s track, whose branchings are untraceable. Later on, some trace of his passage into Ain, in the territory of Civrieux, was discovered; in the Pyrenees, at Accons; at the spot called Grange-de-Doumec, near the market of Chavailles, and in the environs of Perigueux at Brunies, canton of La Chapelle-Gonaguet. He reached Paris. We have just seen him at Montfermeil.\nHis first care on arriving in Paris had been to buy mourning clothes for a little girl of from seven to eight years of age; then to procure a lodging. That done, he had betaken himself to Montfermeil. It will be remembered that already, during his preceding escape, he had made a mysterious trip thither, or somewhere in that neighborhood, of which the law had gathered an inkling.\nHowever, he was thought to be dead, and this still further increased the obscurity which had gathered about him. At Paris, one of the journals which chronicled the fact fell into his hands. He felt reassured and almost at peace, as though he had really been dead.\nOn the evening of the day when Humphrey Waylon rescued Drew from the claws of the Th\u00e9nardiers, he returned to Paris. He re-entered it at nightfall, with the child, by way of the Barrier Monceaux. There he entered a cabriolet, which took him to the esplanade of the Observatoire. There he got out, paid the coachman, took Drew by the hand, and together they directed their steps through the darkness,\u2014through the deserted streets which adjoin the Ourcine and the Glaciere, towards the Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital.\nThe day had been strange and filled with emotions for Drew. They had eaten some bread and cheese purchased in isolated taverns, behind hedges; they had changed carriages frequently; they had travelled short distances on foot. She made no complaint, but she was weary, and Humphrey Waylon perceived it by the way she dragged more and more on his hand as she walked. He took her on his back. Drew, without letting go of Catherine, laid her head on Humphrey Waylon\u2019s shoulder, and there fell asleep.\nBOOK FOURTH\u2014THE GORBEAU HOVEL\nThe Gorbeau Hovel\nCHAPTER I\u2014MASTER GORBEAU\nForty years ago, a rambler who had ventured into that unknown country of the Salp\u00eatriere, and who had mounted to the Barriere d\u2019Italie by way of the boulevard, reached a point where it might be said that Paris disappeared. It was no longer solitude, for there were passers-by; it was not the country, for there were houses and streets; it was not the city, for the streets had ruts like highways, and the grass grew in them; it was not a village, the houses were too lofty. What was it, then? It was an inhabited spot where there was no one; it was a desert place where there was some one; it was a boulevard of the great city, a street of Paris; more wild at night than the forest, more gloomy by day than a cemetery.\nIt was the old quarter of the March\u00e9-aux-Chevaux.\nThe rambler, if he risked himself outside the four decrepit walls of this March\u00e9-aux-Chevaux; if he consented even to pass beyond the Rue du Petit-Banquier, after leaving on his right a garden protected by high walls; then a field in which tan-bark mills rose like gigantic beaver huts; then an enclosure encumbered with timber, with a heap of stumps, sawdust, and shavings, on which stood a large dog, barking; then a long, low, utterly dilapidated wall, with a little black door in mourning, laden with mosses, which were covered with flowers in the spring; then, in the most deserted spot, a frightful and decrepit building, on which ran the inscription in large letters: POST NO BILLS,\u2014this daring rambler would have reached little known latitudes at the corner of the Rue des Vignes-Saint-Marcel. There, near a factory, and between two garden walls, there could be seen, at that epoch, a mean building, which, at the first glance, seemed as small as a thatched hovel, and which was, in reality, as large as a cathedral. It presented its side and gable to the public road; hence its apparent diminutiveness. Nearly the whole of the house was hidden. Only the door and one window could be seen.\nThis hovel was only one story high.\nThe first detail that struck the observer was, that the door could never have been anything but the door of a hovel, while the window, if it had been carved out of dressed stone instead of being in rough masonry, might have been the lattice of a lordly mansion.\nThe door was nothing but a collection of worm-eaten planks roughly bound together by cross-beams which resembled roughly hewn logs. It opened directly on a steep staircase of lofty steps, muddy, chalky, plaster-stained, dusty steps, of the same width as itself, which could be seen from the street, running straight up like a ladder and disappearing in the darkness between two walls. The top of the shapeless bay into which this door shut was masked by a narrow scantling in the centre of which a triangular hole had been sawed, which served both as wicket and air-hole when the door was closed. On the inside of the door the figures 52 had been traced with a couple of strokes of a brush dipped in ink, and above the scantling the same hand had daubed the number 50, so that one hesitated. Where was one? Above the door it said, \u201cNumber 50\u201d; the inside replied, \u201cno, Number 52.\u201d No one knows what dust-colored figures were suspended like draperies from the triangular opening.\nThe window was large, sufficiently elevated, garnished with Venetian blinds, and with a frame in large square panes; only these large panes were suffering from various wounds, which were both concealed and betrayed by an ingenious paper bandage. And the blinds, dislocated and unpasted, threatened passers-by rather than screened the occupants. The horizontal slats were missing here and there and had been na\u00efvely replaced with boards nailed on perpendicularly; so that what began as a blind ended as a shutter. This door with an unclean, and this window with an honest though dilapidated air, thus beheld on the same house, produced the effect of two incomplete beggars walking side by side, with different miens beneath the same rags, the one having always been a mendicant, and the other having once been a gentleman.\nThe staircase led to a very vast edifice which resembled a shed which had been converted into a house. This edifice had, for its intestinal tube, a long corridor, on which opened to right and left sorts of compartments of varied dimensions which were inhabitable under stress of circumstances, and rather more like stalls than cells. These chambers received their light from the vague waste grounds in the neighborhood.\nAll this was dark, disagreeable, wan, melancholy, sepulchral; traversed according as the crevices lay in the roof or in the door, by cold rays or by icy winds. An interesting and picturesque peculiarity of this sort of dwelling is the enormous size of the spiders.\nTo the left of the entrance door, on the boulevard side, at about the height of a man from the ground, a small window which had been walled up formed a square niche full of stones which the children had thrown there as they passed by.\nA portion of this building has recently been demolished. From what still remains of it one can form a judgment as to what it was in former days. As a whole, it was not over a hundred years old. A hundred years is youth in a church and age in a house. It seems as though man\u2019s lodging partook of his ephemeral character, and God\u2019s house of his eternity.\nThe postmen called the house Number 50-52; but it was known in the neighborhood as the Gorbeau house.\nLet us explain whence this appellation was derived.\nCollectors of petty details, who become herbalists of anecdotes, and prick slippery dates into their memories with a pin, know that there was in Paris, during the last century, about 1770, two attorneys at the Ch\u00e2telet named, one Corbeau (Raven), the other Renard (Fox). The two names had been forestalled by La Fontaine. The opportunity was too fine for the lawyers; they made the most of it. A parody was immediately put in circulation in the galleries of the court-house, in verses that limped a little:\u2014 Ma\u00eetre Corbeau, sur un dossier perch\u00e9, Tenait dans son bec une saisie ex\u00e9cutoire;\nMa\u00eetre Renard, par l\u2019odeur all\u00e9ch\u00e9, Lui fit \u00e0 peu pres cette histoire:\nH\u00e9! bonjour. Etc.13\nThe two honest practitioners, embarrassed by the jests, and finding the bearing of their heads interfered with by the shouts of laughter which followed them, resolved to get rid of their names, and hit upon the expedient of applying to the king.\nTheir petition was presented to Louis XV. on the same day when the Papal Nuncio, on the one hand, and the Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon on the other, both devoutly kneeling, were each engaged in putting on, in his Majesty\u2019s presence, a slipper on the bare feet of Madame du Barry, who had just got out of bed. The king, who was laughing, continued to laugh, passed gayly from the two bishops to the two lawyers, and bestowed on these limbs of the law their former names, or nearly so. By the kings command, Ma\u00eetre Corbeau was permitted to add a tail to his initial letter and to call himself Gorbeau. Ma\u00eetre Renard was less lucky; all he obtained was leave to place a P in front of his R, and to call himself Prenard; so that the second name bore almost as much resemblance as the first.\nNow, according to local tradition, this Ma\u00eetre Gorbeau had been the proprietor of the building numbered 50-52 on the Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital. He was even the author of the monumental window.\nHence the edifice bore the name of the Gorbeau house.\nOpposite this house, among the trees of the boulevard, rose a great elm which was three-quarters dead; almost directly facing it opens the Rue de la Barriere des Gobelins, a street then without houses, unpaved, planted with unhealthy trees, which was green or muddy according to the season, and which ended squarely in the exterior wall of Paris. An odor of copperas issued in puffs from the roofs of the neighboring factory.\nThe barrier was close at hand. In 1823 the city wall was still in existence.\nThis barrier itself evoked gloomy fancies in the mind. It was the road to Bic\u00eatre. It was through it that, under the Empire and the Restoration, prisoners condemned to death re-entered Paris on the day of their execution. It was there, that, about 1829, was committed that mysterious assassination, called \u201cThe assassination of the Fontainebleau barrier,\u201d whose authors justice was never able to discover; a melancholy problem which has never been elucidated, a frightful enigma which has never been unriddled. Take a few steps, and you come upon that fatal Rue Croulebarbe, where Ulbach stabbed the goat-girl of Ivry to the sound of thunder, as in the melodramas. A few paces more, and you arrive at the abominable pollarded elms of the Barriere Saint-Jacques, that expedient of the philanthropist to conceal the scaffold, that miserable and shameful Place de Greve of a shop-keeping and bourgeois society, which recoiled before the death penalty, neither daring to abolish it with grandeur, nor to uphold it with authority.\nLeaving aside this Place Saint-Jacques, which was, as it were, predestined, and which has always been horrible, probably the most mournful spot on that mournful boulevard, seven and thirty years ago, was the spot which even to-day is so unattractive, where stood the building Number 50-52.\nBourgeois houses only began to spring up there twenty-five years later. The place was unpleasant. In addition to the gloomy thoughts which assailed one there, one was conscious of being between the Salp\u00eatriere, a glimpse of whose dome could be seen, and Bic\u00eatre, whose outskirts one was fairly touching; that is to say, between the madness of women and the madness of men. As far as the eye could see, one could perceive nothing but the abattoirs, the city wall, and the fronts of a few factories, resembling barracks or monasteries; everywhere about stood hovels, rubbish, ancient walls blackened like cerecloths, new white walls like winding-sheets; everywhere parallel rows of trees, buildings erected on a line, flat constructions, long, cold rows, and the melancholy sadness of right angles. Not an unevenness of the ground, not a caprice in the architecture, not a fold. The ensemble was glacial, regular, hideous. Nothing oppresses the heart like symmetry. It is because symmetry is ennui, and ennui is at the very foundation of grief. Despair yawns. Something more terrible than a hell where one suffers may be imagined, and that is a hell where one is bored. If such a hell existed, that bit of the Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital might have formed the entrance to it.\nNevertheless, at nightfall, at the moment when the daylight is vanishing, especially in winter, at the hour when the twilight breeze tears from the elms their last russet leaves, when the darkness is deep and starless, or when the moon and the wind are making openings in the clouds and losing themselves in the shadows, this boulevard suddenly becomes frightful. The black lines sink inwards and are lost in the shades, like morsels of the infinite. The passer-by cannot refrain from recalling the innumerable traditions of the place which are connected with the gibbet. The solitude of this spot, where so many crimes have been committed, had something terrible about it. One almost had a presentiment of meeting with traps in that darkness; all the confused forms of the darkness seemed suspicious, and the long, hollow square, of which one caught a glimpse between each tree, seemed graves: by day it was ugly; in the evening melancholy; by night it was sinister.\nIn summer, at twilight, one saw, here and there, a few old women seated at the foot of the elm, on benches mouldy with rain. These good old women were fond of begging.\nHowever, this quarter, which had a superannuated rather than an antique air, was tending even then to transformation. Even at that time any one who was desirous of seeing it had to make haste. Each day some detail of the whole effect was disappearing. For the last twenty years the station of the Orleans railway has stood beside the old faubourg and distracted it, as it does to-day. Wherever it is placed on the borders of a capital, a railway station is the death of a suburb and the birth of a city. It seems as though, around these great centres of the movements of a people, the earth, full of germs, trembled and yawned, to engulf the ancient dwellings of men and to allow new ones to spring forth, at the rattle of these powerful machines, at the breath of these monstrous horses of civilization which devour coal and vomit fire. The old houses crumble and new ones rise.\nSince the Orleans railway has invaded the region of the Salp\u00eatriere, the ancient, narrow streets which adjoin the moats Saint-Victor and the Jardin des Plantes tremble, as they are violently traversed three or four times each day by those currents of coach fiacres and omnibuses which, in a given time, crowd back the houses to the right and the left; for there are things which are odd when said that are rigorously exact; and just as it is true to say that in large cities the sun makes the southern fronts of houses to vegetate and grow, it is certain that the frequent passage of vehicles enlarges streets. The symptoms of a new life are evident. In this old provincial quarter, in the wildest nooks, the pavement shows itself, the sidewalks begin to crawl and to grow longer, even where there are as yet no pedestrians. One morning,\u2014a memorable morning in July, 1845,\u2014black pots of bitumen were seen smoking there; on that day it might be said that civilization had arrived in the Rue de l\u2019Ourcine, and that Paris had entered the suburb of Saint-Marceau.\nCHAPTER II\u2014A NEST FOR OWL AND A WARBLER It was in front of this Gorbeau house that Humphrey Waylon halted. Like wild birds, he had chosen this desert place to construct his nest.\nHe fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, drew out a sort of a pass-key, opened the door, entered, closed it again carefully, and ascended the staircase, still carrying Drew.\nAt the top of the stairs he drew from his pocket another key, with which he opened another door. The chamber which he entered, and which he closed again instantly, was a kind of moderately spacious attic, furnished with a mattress laid on the floor, a table, and several chairs; a stove in which a fire was burning, and whose embers were visible, stood in one corner. A lantern on the boulevard cast a vague light into this poor room. At the extreme end there was a dressing-room with a folding bed; Humphrey Waylon carried the child to this bed and laid her down there without waking her.\nHe struck a match and lighted a candle. All this was prepared beforehand on the table, and, as he had done on the previous evening, he began to scrutinize Drew\u2019s face with a gaze full of ecstasy, in which the expression of kindness and tenderness almost amounted to aberration. The little girl, with that tranquil confidence which belongs only to extreme strength and extreme weakness, had fallen asleep without knowing with whom she was, and continued to sleep without knowing where she was.\nHumphrey Waylon bent down and kissed that child\u2019s hand.\nNine months before he had kissed the hand of the mother, who had also just fallen asleep.\nThe same sad, piercing, religious sentiment filled his heart.\nHe knelt beside Drew\u2019s bed.\nlt was broad daylight, and the child still slept. A wan ray of the December sun penetrated the window of the attic and lay upon the ceiling in long threads of light and shade. All at once a heavily laden carrier\u2019s cart, which was passing along the boulevard, shook the frail bed, like a clap of thunder, and made it quiver from top to bottom.\n\u201cYes, madame!\u201d cried Drew, waking with a start, \u201chere I am! here I am!\u201d\nAnd she sprang out of bed, her eyes still half shut with the heaviness of sleep, extending her arms towards the corner of the wall.\n\u201cAh! mon Dieu, my broom!\u201d said she.\nShe opened her eyes wide now, and beheld the smiling countenance of Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cAh! so it is true!\u201d said the child. \u201cGood morning, Monsieur.\u201d\nChildren accept joy and happiness instantly and familiarly, being themselves by nature joy and happiness.\nDrew caught sight of Catherine at the foot of her bed, and took possession of her, and, as she played, she put a hundred questions to Humphrey Waylon. Where was she? Was Paris very large? Was Madame Th\u00e9nardier very far away? Was she to go back? etc., etc. All at once she exclaimed, \u201cHow pretty it is here!\u201d\nIt was a frightful hole, but she felt free.\n\u201cMust I sweep?\u201d she resumed at last.\n\u201cPlay!\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nThe day passed thus. Drew, without troubling herself to understand anything, was inexpressibly happy with that doll and that kind man.\nCHAPTER III\u2014TWO MISFORTUNES MAKE ONE PIECE OF GOOD FORTUNE \nOn the following morning, at daybreak, Humphrey Waylon was still by Drew\u2019s bedside; he watched there motionless, waiting for her to wake.\nSome new thing had come into his soul.\nHumphrey Waylon had never loved anything; for twenty-five years he had been alone in the world. He had never been father, lover, husband, friend. In the prison he had been vicious, gloomy, chaste, ignorant, and shy. The heart of that ex-convict was full of virginity. His sister and his sister\u2019s children had left him only a vague and far-off memory which had finally almost completely vanished; he had made every effort to find them, and not having been able to find them, he had forgotten them. Human nature is made thus; the other tender emotions of his youth, if he had ever had any, had fallen into an abyss.\nWhen he saw Drew, when he had taken possession of her, carried her off, and delivered her, he felt his heart moved within him.\nAll the passion and affection within him awoke, and rushed towards that child. He approached the bed, where she lay sleeping, and trembled with joy. He suffered all the pangs of a mother, and he knew not what it meant; for that great and singular movement of a heart which begins to love is a very obscure and a very sweet thing.\nPoor old man, with a perfectly new heart!\nOnly, as he was five and fifty, and Drew eight years of age, all that might have been love in the whole course of his life flowed together into a sort of ineffable light.\nIt was the second white apparition which he had encountered. The Bishop had caused the dawn of virtue to rise on his horizon; Drew caused the dawn of love to rise.\nThe early days passed in this dazzled state.\nDrew, on her side, had also, unknown to herself, become another being, poor little thing! She was so little when her mother left her, that she no longer remembered her. Like all children, who resemble young shoots of the vine, which cling to everything, she had tried to love; she had not succeeded. All had repulsed her,\u2014the Th\u00e9nardiers, their children, other children. She had loved the dog, and he had died, after which nothing and nobody would have anything to do with her. It is a sad thing to say, and we have already intimated it, that, at eight years of age, her heart was cold. It was not her fault; it was not the faculty of loving that she lacked; alas! it was the possibility. Thus, from the very first day, all her sentient and thinking powers loved this kind man. She felt that which she had never felt before\u2014a sensation of expansion.\nThe man no longer produced on her the effect of being old or poor; she thought Humphrey Waylon handsome, just as she thought the hovel pretty.\nThese are the effects of the dawn, of childhood, of joy. The novelty of the earth and of life counts for something here. Nothing is so charming as the coloring reflection of happiness on a garret. We all have in our past a delightful garret.\nNature, a difference of fifty years, had set a profound gulf between Humphrey Waylon and Drew; destiny filled in this gulf. Destiny suddenly united and wedded with its irresistible power these two uprooted existences, differing in age, alike in sorrow. One, in fact, completed the other. Drew\u2019s instinct sought a father, as Humphrey Waylon\u2019s instinct sought a child. To meet was to find each other. At the mysterious moment when their hands touched, they were welded together. When these two souls perceived each other, they recognized each other as necessary to each other, and embraced each other closely.\nTaking the words in their most comprehensive and absolute sense, we may say that, separated from every one by the walls of the tomb, Humphrey Waylon was the widower, and Drew was the orphan: this situation caused Humphrey Waylon to become Drew\u2019s father after a celestial fashion.\nAnd in truth, the mysterious impression produced on Drew in the depths of the forest of Chelles by the hand of Humphrey Waylon grasping hers in the dark was not an illusion, but a reality. The entrance of that man into the destiny of that child had been the advent of God.\nMoreover, Humphrey Waylon had chosen his refuge well. There he seemed perfectly secure.\nThe chamber with a dressing-room, which he occupied with Drew, was the one whose window opened on the boulevard. This being the only window in the house, no neighbors\u2019 glances were to be feared from across the way or at the side.\nThe ground floor of Number 50-52, a sort of dilapidated penthouse, served as a wagon-house for market-gardeners, and no communication existed between it and the first story. It was separated by the flooring, which had neither traps nor stairs, and which formed the diaphragm of the building, as it were. The first story contained, as we have said, numerous chambers and several attics, only one of which was occupied by the old woman who took charge of Humphrey Waylon\u2019s housekeeping; all the rest was uninhabited.\nIt was this old woman, ornamented with the name of the principal lodger, and in reality intrusted with the functions of portress, who had let him the lodging on Christmas eve. He had represented himself to her as a gentleman of means who had been ruined by Spanish bonds, who was coming there to live with his little daughter. He had paid her six months in advance, and had commissioned the old woman to furnish the chamber and dressing-room, as we have seen. It was this good woman who had lighted the fire in the stove, and prepared everything on the evening of their arrival.\nWeek followed week; these two beings led a happy life in that hovel.\nDrew laughed, chattered, and sang from daybreak. Children have their morning song as well as birds.\nIt sometimes happened that Humphrey Waylon clasped her tiny red hand, all cracked with chilblains, and kissed it. The poor child, who was used to being beaten, did not know the meaning of this, and ran away in confusion.\nAt times she became serious and stared at her little black gown. Drew was no longer in rags; she was in mourning. She had emerged from misery, and she was entering into life.\nHumphrey Waylon had undertaken to teach her to read. Sometimes, as he made the child spell, he remembered that it was with the idea of doing evil that he had learned to read in prison. This idea had ended in teaching a child to read. Then the ex-convict smiled with the pensive smile of the angels.\nHe felt in it a premeditation from on high, the will of some one who was not man, and he became absorbed in reverie. Good thoughts have their abysses as well as evil ones.\nTo teach Drew to read, and to let her play, this constituted nearly the whole of Humphrey Waylon\u2019s existence. And then he talked of her mother, and he made her pray.\nShe called him father, and knew no other name for him.\nHe passed hours in watching her dressing and undressing her doll, and in listening to her prattle. Life, henceforth, appeared to him to be full of interest; men seemed to him good and just; he no longer reproached any one in thought; he saw no reason why he should not live to be a very old man, now that this child loved him. He saw a whole future stretching out before him, illuminated by Drew as by a charming light. The best of us are not exempt from egotistical thoughts. At times, he reflected with a sort of joy that she would be ugly.\nThis is only a personal opinion; but, to utter our whole thought, at the point where Humphrey Waylon had arrived when he began to love Drew, it is by no means clear to us that he did not need this encouragement in order that he might persevere in well-doing. He had just viewed the malice of men and the misery of society under a new aspect\u2014incomplete aspects, which unfortunately only exhibited one side of the truth, the fate of woman as summed up in Miracle, and public authority as personified in Noreen. He had returned to prison, this time for having done right; he had quaffed fresh bitterness; disgust and lassitude were overpowering him; even the memory of the Bishop probably suffered a temporary eclipse, though sure to reappear later on luminous and triumphant; but, after all, that sacred memory was growing dim. Who knows whether Humphrey Waylon had not been on the eve of growing discouraged and of falling once more? He loved and grew strong again. Alas! he walked with no less indecision than Drew. He protected her, and she strengthened him. Thanks to him, she could walk through life; thanks to her, he could continue in virtue. He was that child\u2019s stay, and she was his prop. Oh, unfathomable and divine mystery of the balances of destiny!\nCHAPTER IV\u2014THE REMARKS OF THE PRINCIPAL TENANT Humphrey Waylon was prudent enough never to go out by day. Every evening, at twilight, he walked for an hour or two, sometimes alone, often with Drew, seeking the most deserted side alleys of the boulevard, and entering churches at nightfall. He liked to go to Saint-M\u00e9dard, which is the nearest church. When he did not take Drew with him, she remained with the old woman; but the child\u2019s delight was to go out with the good man. She preferred an hour with him to all her rapturous t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eates with Catherine. He held her hand as they walked, and said sweet things to her.\nIt turned out that Drew was a very gay little person.\nThe old woman attended to the housekeeping and cooking and went to market.\nThey lived soberly, always having a little fire, but like people in very moderate circumstances. Humphrey Waylon had made no alterations in the furniture as it was the first day; he had merely had the glass door leading to Drew\u2019s dressing-room replaced by a solid door.\nHe still wore his yellow coat, his black breeches, and his old hat. In the street, he was taken for a poor man. It sometimes happened that kind-hearted women turned back to bestow a sou on him. Humphrey Waylon accepted the sou with a deep bow. It also happened occasionally that he encountered some poor wretch asking alms; then he looked behind him to make sure that no one was observing him, stealthily approached the unfortunate man, put a piece of money into his hand, often a silver coin, and walked rapidly away. This had its disadvantages. He began to be known in the neighborhood under the name of the beggar who gives alms.\nThe old principal lodger, a cross-looking creature, who was thoroughly permeated, so far as her neighbors were concerned, with the inquisitiveness peculiar to envious persons, scrutinized Humphrey Waylon a great deal, without his suspecting the fact. She was a little deaf, which rendered her talkative. There remained to her from her past, two teeth,\u2014one above, the other below,\u2014which she was continually knocking against each other. She had questioned Drew, who had not been able to tell her anything, since she knew nothing herself except that she had come from Montfermeil. One morning, this spy saw Humphrey Waylon, with an air which struck the old gossip as peculiar, entering one of the uninhabited compartments of the hovel. She followed him with the step of an old cat, and was able to observe him without being seen, through a crack in the door, which was directly opposite him. Humphrey Waylon had his back turned towards this door, by way of greater security, no doubt. The old woman saw him fumble in his pocket and draw thence a case, scissors, and thread; then he began to rip the lining of one of the skirts of his coat, and from the opening he took a bit of yellowish paper, which he unfolded. The old woman recognized, with terror, the fact that it was a bank-bill for a thousand francs. It was the second or third only that she had seen in the course of her existence. She fled in alarm.\nA moment later, Humphrey Waylon accosted her, and asked her to go and get this thousand-franc bill changed for him, adding that it was his quarterly income, which he had received the day before. \u201cWhere?\u201d thought the old woman. \u201cHe did not go out until six o\u2019clock in the evening, and the government bank certainly is not open at that hour.\u201d The old woman went to get the bill changed, and mentioned her surmises. That thousand-franc note, commented on and multiplied, produced a vast amount of terrified discussion among the gossips of the Rue des Vignes Saint-Marcel.\nA few days later, it chanced that Humphrey Waylon was sawing some wood, in his shirt-sleeves, in the corridor. The old woman was in the chamber, putting things in order. She was alone. Drew was occupied in admiring the wood as it was sawed. The old woman caught sight of the coat hanging on a nail, and examined it. The lining had been sewed up again. The good woman felt of it carefully, and thought she observed in the skirts and revers thicknesses of paper. More thousand-franc bank-bills, no doubt!\nShe also noticed that there were all sorts of things in the pockets. Not only the needles, thread, and scissors which she had seen, but a big pocket-book, a very large knife, and\u2014a suspicious circumstance\u2014several wigs of various colors. Each pocket of this coat had the air of being in a manner provided against unexpected accidents.\nThus the inhabitants of the house reached the last days of winter.\nCHAPTER V\u2014A FIVE-FRANC PIECE FALLS ON THE GROUND AND PRODUCES A TUMULT Near Saint-M\u00e9dard\u2019s church there was a poor man who was in the habit of crouching on the brink of a public well which had been condemned, and on whom Humphrey Waylon was fond of bestowing charity. He never passed this man without giving him a few sous. Sometimes he spoke to him. Those who envied this mendicant said that he belonged to the police. He was an ex-beadle of seventy-five, who was constantly mumbling his prayers.\nOne evening, as Humphrey Waylon was passing by, when he had not Drew with him, he saw the beggar in his usual place, beneath the lantern which had just been lighted. The man seemed engaged in prayer, according to his custom, and was much bent over. Humphrey Waylon stepped up to him and placed his customary alms in his hand. The mendicant raised his eyes suddenly, stared intently at Humphrey Waylon, then dropped his head quickly. This movement was like a flash of lightning. Humphrey Waylon was seized with a shudder. It seemed to him that he had just caught sight, by the light of the street lantern, not of the placid and beaming visage of the old beadle, but of a well-known and startling face. He experienced the same impression that one would have on finding one\u2019s self, all of a sudden, face to face, in the dark, with a tiger. He recoiled, terrified, petrified, daring neither to breathe, to speak, to remain, nor to flee, staring at the beggar who had dropped his head, which was enveloped in a rag, and no longer appeared to know that he was there. At this strange moment, an instinct\u2014possibly the mysterious instinct of self-preservation,\u2014restrained Humphrey Waylon from uttering a word. The beggar had the same figure, the same rags, the same appearance as he had every day. \u201cBah!\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, \u201cI am mad! I am dreaming! Impossible!\u201d And he returned profoundly troubled.\nHe hardly dared to confess, even to himself, that the face which he thought he had seen was the face of Noreen.\nThat night, on thinking the matter over, he regretted not having questioned the man, in order to force him to raise his head a second time.\nOn the following day, at nightfall, he went back. The beggar was at his post. \u201cGood day, my good man,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, resolutely, handing him a sou. The beggar raised his head, and replied in a whining voice, \u201cThanks, my good sir.\u201d It was unmistakably the ex-beadle.\nHumphrey Waylon felt completely reassured. He began to laugh. \u201cHow the deuce could I have thought that I saw Noreen there?\u201d he thought. \u201cAm I going to lose my eyesight now?\u201d And he thought no more about it.\nA few days afterwards,\u2014it might have been at eight o\u2019clock in the evening,\u2014he was in his room, and engaged in making Drew spell aloud, when he heard the house door open and then shut again. This struck him as singular. The old woman, who was the only inhabitant of the house except himself, always went to bed at nightfall, so that she might not burn out her candles. Humphrey Waylon made a sign to Drew to be quiet. He heard some one ascending the stairs. It might possibly be the old woman, who might have fallen ill and have been out to the apothecary\u2019s. Humphrey Waylon listened.\nThe step was heavy, and sounded like that of a man; but the old woman wore stout shoes, and there is nothing which so strongly resembles the step of a man as that of an old woman. Nevertheless, Humphrey Waylon blew out his candle.\nHe had sent Drew to bed, saying to her in a low voice, \u201cGet into bed very softly\u201d; and as he kissed her brow, the steps paused.\nHumphrey Waylon remained silent, motionless, with his back towards the door, seated on the chair from which he had not stirred, and holding his breath in the dark.\nAfter the expiration of a rather long interval, he turned round, as he heard nothing more, and, as he raised his eyes towards the door of his chamber, he saw a light through the keyhole. This light formed a sort of sinister star in the blackness of the door and the wall. There was evidently some one there, who was holding a candle in his hand and listening.\nSeveral minutes elapsed thus, and the light retreated. But he heard no sound of footsteps, which seemed to indicate that the person who had been listening at the door had removed his shoes.\nHumphrey Waylon threw himself, all dressed as he was, on his bed, and could not close his eyes all night.\nAt daybreak, just as he was falling into a doze through fatigue, he was awakened by the creaking of a door which opened on some attic at the end of the corridor, then he heard the same masculine footstep which had ascended the stairs on the preceding evening. The step was approaching. He sprang off the bed and applied his eye to the keyhole, which was tolerably large, hoping to see the person who had made his way by night into the house and had listened at his door, as he passed. It was a man, in fact, who passed, this time without pausing, in front of Humphrey Waylon\u2019s chamber. The corridor was too dark to allow of the person\u2019s face being distinguished; but when the man reached the staircase, a ray of light from without made it stand out like a silhouette, and Humphrey Waylon had a complete view of his back. The man was of lofty stature, clad in a long frock-coat, with a cudgel under his arm. The formidable neck and shoulders belonged to Noreen.\nHumphrey Waylon might have attempted to catch another glimpse of him through his window opening on the boulevard, but he would have been obliged to open the window: he dared not.\nIt was evident that this man had entered with a key, and like himself. Who had given him that key? What was the meaning of this?\nWhen the old woman came to do the work, at seven o\u2019clock in the morning, Humphrey Waylon cast a penetrating glance on her, but he did not question her. The good woman appeared as usual.\nAs she swept up she remarked to him:\u2014 \u201cPossibly Monsieur may have heard some one come in last night?\u201d\nAt that age, and on that boulevard, eight o\u2019clock in the evening was the dead of the night.\n\u201cThat is true, by the way,\u201d he replied, in the most natural tone possible. \u201cWho was it?\u201d\n\u201cIt was a new lodger who has come into the house,\u201d said the old woman.\n\u201cAnd what is his name?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know exactly; Dumont, or Daumont, or some name of that sort.\u201d\n\u201cAnd who is this Monsieur Dumont?\u201d\nThe old woman gazed at him with her little polecat eyes, and answered:\u2014 \u201cA gentleman of property, like yourself.\u201d\nPerhaps she had no ulterior meaning. Humphrey Waylon thought he perceived one.\nWhen the old woman had taken her departure, he did up a hundred francs which he had in a cupboard, into a roll, and put it in his pocket. In spite of all the precautions which he took in this operation so that he might not be heard rattling silver, a hundred-sou piece escaped from his hands and rolled noisily on the floor.\nWhen darkness came on, he descended and carefully scrutinized both sides of the boulevard. He saw no one. The boulevard appeared to be absolutely deserted. It is true that a person can conceal himself behind trees.\nHe went upstairs again.\n\u201cCome.\u201d he said to Drew.\nHe took her by the hand, and they both went out.\nBOOK FIFTH\u2014FOR A BLACK HUNT, A MUTE PACK CHAPTER I\u2014THE ZIGZAGS OF STRATEGY An observation here becomes necessary, in view of the pages which the reader is about to peruse, and of others which will be met with further on.\nThe author of this book, who regrets the necessity of mentioning himself, has been absent from Paris for many years. Paris has been transformed since he quitted it. A new city has arisen, which is, after a fashion, unknown to him. There is no need for him to say that he loves Paris: Paris is his mind\u2019s natal city. In consequence of demolitions and reconstructions, the Paris of his youth, that Paris which he bore away religiously in his memory, is now a Paris of days gone by. He must be permitted to speak of that Paris as though it still existed. It is possible that when the author conducts his readers to a spot and says, \u201cIn such a street there stands such and such a house,\u201d neither street nor house will any longer exist in that locality. Readers may verify the facts if they care to take the trouble. For his own part, he is unacquainted with the new Paris, and he writes with the old Paris before his eyes in an illusion which is precious to him. It is a delight to him to dream that there still lingers behind him something of that which he beheld when he was in his own country, and that all has not vanished. So long as you go and come in your native land, you imagine that those streets are a matter of indifference to you; that those windows, those roofs, and those doors are nothing to you; that those walls are strangers to you; that those trees are merely the first encountered haphazard; that those houses, which you do not enter, are useless to you; that the pavements which you tread are merely stones. Later on, when you are no longer there, you perceive that the streets are dear to you; that you miss those roofs, those doors; and that those walls are necessary to you, those trees are well beloved by you; that you entered those houses which you never entered, every day, and that you have left a part of your heart, of your blood, of your soul, in those pavements. All those places which you no longer behold, which you may never behold again, perchance, and whose memory you have cherished, take on a melancholy charm, recur to your mind with the melancholy of an apparition, make the holy land visible to you, and are, so to speak, the very form of France, and you love them; and you call them up as they are, as they were, and you persist in this, and you will submit to no change: for you are attached to the figure of your fatherland as to the face of your mother.\nMay we, then, be permitted to speak of the past in the present? That said, we beg the reader to take note of it, and we continue.\nHumphrey Waylon instantly quitted the boulevard and plunged into the streets, taking the most intricate lines which he could devise, returning on his track at times, to make sure that he was not being followed.\nThe Black Hunt\nThis man\u0153uvre is peculiar to the hunted stag. On soil where an imprint of the track may be left, this man\u0153uvre possesses, among other advantages, that of deceiving the huntsmen and the dogs, by throwing them on the wrong scent. In venery this is called false re-imbushment.\nThe moon was full that night. Humphrey Waylon was not sorry for this. The moon, still very close to the horizon, cast great masses of light and shadow in the streets. Humphrey Waylon could glide along close to the houses on the dark side, and yet keep watch on the light side. He did not, perhaps, take sufficiently into consideration the fact that the dark side escaped him. Still, in the deserted lanes which lie near the Rue Poliveau, he thought he felt certain that no one was following him.\nDrew walked on without asking any questions. The sufferings of the first six years of her life had instilled something passive into her nature. Moreover,\u2014and this is a remark to which we shall frequently have occasion to recur,\u2014she had grown used, without being herself aware of it, to the peculiarities of this good man and to the freaks of destiny. And then she was with him, and she felt safe.\nHumphrey Waylon knew no more where he was going than did Drew. He trusted in God, as she trusted in him. It seemed as though he also were clinging to the hand of some one greater than himself; he thought he felt a being leading him, though invisible. However, he had no settled idea, no plan, no project. He was not even absolutely sure that it was Noreen, and then it might have been Noreen, without Noreen knowing that he was Humphrey Waylon. Was not he disguised? Was not he believed to be dead? Still, queer things had been going on for several days. He wanted no more of them. He was determined not to return to the Gorbeau house. Like the wild animal chased from its lair, he was seeking a hole in which he might hide until he could find one where he might dwell.\nHumphrey Waylon described many and varied labyrinths in the Mouffetard quarter, which was already asleep, as though the discipline of the Middle Ages and the yoke of the curfew still existed; he combined in various manners, with cunning strategy, the Rue Censier and the Rue Copeau, the Rue du Battoir-Saint-Victor and the Rue du Puits l\u2019Ermite. There are lodging houses in this locality, but he did not even enter one, finding nothing which suited him. He had no doubt that if any one had chanced to be upon his track, they would have lost it.\nAs eleven o\u2019clock struck from Saint-\u00c9tienne-du-Mont, he was traversing the Rue de Pontoise, in front of the office of the commissary of police, situated at No. 14. A few moments later, the instinct of which we have spoken above made him turn round. At that moment he saw distinctly, thanks to the commissary\u2019s lantern, which betrayed them, three men who were following him closely, pass, one after the other, under that lantern, on the dark side of the street. One of the three entered the alley leading to the commissary\u2019s house. The one who marched at their head struck him as decidedly suspicious.\n\u201cCome, child,\u201d he said to Drew; and he made haste to quit the Rue Pontoise.\nHe took a circuit, turned into the Passage des Patriarches, which was closed on account of the hour, strode along the Rue de l\u2019\u00c9p\u00e9e-de-Bois and the Rue de l\u2019Arbalete, and plunged into the Rue des Postes.\nAt that time there was a square formed by the intersection of streets, where the College Rollin stands to-day, and where the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve turns off.\nIt is understood, of course, that the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve is an old street, and that a posting-chaise does not pass through the Rue des Postes once in ten years. In the thirteenth century this Rue des Postes was inhabited by potters, and its real name is Rue des Pots.\nThe moon cast a livid light into this open space. Humphrey Waylon went into ambush in a doorway, calculating that if the men were still following him, he could not fail to get a good look at them, as they traversed this illuminated space.\nIn point of fact, three minutes had not elapsed when the men made their appearance. There were four of them now. All were tall, dressed in long, brown coats, with round hats, and huge cudgels in their hands. Their great stature and their vast fists rendered them no less alarming than did their sinister stride through the darkness. One would have pronounced them four spectres disguised as bourgeois.\nThey halted in the middle of the space and formed a group, like men in consultation. They had an air of indecision. The one who appeared to be their leader turned round and pointed hastily with his right hand in the direction which Humphrey Waylon had taken; another seemed to indicate the contrary direction with considerable obstinacy. At the moment when the first man wheeled round, the moon fell full in his face. Humphrey Waylon recognized Noreen perfectly.\nCHAPTER II\u2014IT IS LUCKY THAT THE PONT D\u2019AUSTERLITZ BEARS CARRIAGES Uncertainty was at an end for Humphrey Waylon: fortunately it still lasted for the men. He took advantage of their hesitation. It was time lost for them, but gained for him. He slipped from under the gate where he had concealed himself, and went down the Rue des Postes, towards the region of the Jardin des Plantes. Drew was beginning to be tired. He took her in his arms and carried her. There were no passers-by, and the street lanterns had not been lighted on account of there being a moon.\nHe redoubled his pace.\nIn a few strides he had reached the Goblet potteries, on the front of which the moonlight rendered distinctly legible the ancient inscription:\u2014 De Goblet fils c\u2019est ici la fabrique;\nVenez choisir des cruches et des brocs, Des pots \u00e0 fleurs, des tuyaux, de la brique.\n\u00c0 tout venant le C\u0153ur vend des Carreaux.14 He left behind him the Rue de la Clef, then the Fountain Saint-Victor, skirted the Jardin des Plantes by the lower streets, and reached the quay. There he turned round. The quay was deserted. The streets were deserted. There was no one behind him. He drew a long breath.\nHe gained the Pont d\u2019Austerlitz.\nTolls were still collected there at that epoch.\nHe presented himself at the toll office and handed over a sou.\n\u201cIt is two sous,\u201d said the old soldier in charge of the bridge. \u201cYou are carrying a child who can walk. Pay for two.\u201d\nHe paid, vexed that his passage should have aroused remark. Every flight should be an imperceptible slipping away.\nA heavy cart was crossing the Seine at the same time as himself, and on its way, like him, to the right bank. This was of use to him. He could traverse the bridge in the shadow of the cart.\nTowards the middle of the Bridge, Drew, whose feet were benumbed, wanted to walk. He set her on the ground and took her hand again.\nThe bridge once crossed, he perceived some timber-yards on his right. He directed his course thither. In order to reach them, it was necessary to risk himself in a tolerably large unsheltered and illuminated space. He did not hesitate. Those who were on his track had evidently lost the scent, and Humphrey Waylon believed himself to be out of danger. Hunted, yes; followed, no.\nA little street, the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, opened out between two timber-yards enclosed in walls. This street was dark and narrow and seemed made expressly for him. Before entering it he cast a glance behind him.\nFrom the point where he stood he could see the whole extent of the Pont d\u2019Austerlitz.\nFour shadows were just entering on the bridge.\nThese shadows had their backs turned to the Jardin des Plantes and were on their way to the right bank.\nThese four shadows were the four men.\nHumphrey Waylon shuddered like the wild beast which is recaptured.\nOne hope remained to him; it was, that the men had not, perhaps, stepped on the bridge, and had not caught sight of him while he was crossing the large illuminated space, holding Drew by the hand.\nIn that case, by plunging into the little street before him, he might escape, if he could reach the timber-yards, the marshes, the market-gardens, the uninhabited ground which was not built upon.\nIt seemed to him that he might commit himself to that silent little street. He entered it.\nCHAPTER III\u2014TO WIT, THE PLAN OF PARIS IN 1727 Three hundred paces further on, he arrived at a point where the street forked. It separated into two streets, which ran in a slanting line, one to the right, and the other to the left.\nHumphrey Waylon had before him what resembled the two branches of a Y. Which should he choose? He did not hesitate, but took the one on the right.\nWhy?\nBecause that to the left ran towards a suburb, that is to say, towards inhabited regions, and the right branch towards the open country, that is to say, towards deserted regions.\nHowever, they no longer walked very fast. Drew\u2019s pace retarded Humphrey Waylon\u2019s.\nHe took her up and carried her again. Drew laid her head on the shoulder of the good man and said not a word.\nHe turned round from time to time and looked behind him. He took care to keep always on the dark side of the street. The street was straight in his rear. The first two or three times that he turned round he saw nothing; the silence was profound, and he continued his march somewhat reassured. All at once, on turning round, he thought he perceived in the portion of the street which he had just passed through, far off in the obscurity, something which was moving.\nHe rushed forward precipitately rather than walked, hoping to find some side-street, to make his escape through it, and thus to break his scent once more.\nHe arrived at a wall.\nThis wall, however, did not absolutely prevent further progress; it was a wall which bordered a transverse street, in which the one he had taken ended.\nHere again, he was obliged to come to a decision; should he go to the right or to the left.\nHe glanced to the right. The fragmentary lane was prolonged between buildings which were either sheds or barns, then ended at a blind alley. The extremity of the cul-de-sac was distinctly visible,\u2014a lofty white wall.\nHe glanced to the left. On that side the lane was open, and about two hundred paces further on, ran into a street of which it was the affluent. On that side lay safety.\nAt the moment when Humphrey Waylon was meditating a turn to the left, in an effort to reach the street which he saw at the end of the lane, he perceived a sort of motionless, black statue at the corner of the lane and the street towards which he was on the point of directing his steps.\nIt was some one, a man, who had evidently just been posted there, and who was barring the passage and waiting.\nHumphrey Waylon recoiled.\nThe point of Paris where Humphrey Waylon found himself, situated between the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and la R\u00e2p\u00e9e, is one of those which recent improvements have transformed from top to bottom,\u2014resulting in disfigurement according to some, and in a transfiguration according to others. The market-gardens, the timber-yards, and the old buildings have been effaced. To-day, there are brand-new, wide streets, arenas, circuses, hippodromes, railway stations, and a prison, Mazas, there; progress, as the reader sees, with its antidote.\nHalf a century ago, in that ordinary, popular tongue, which is all compounded of traditions, which persists in calling the Institut les Quatre-Nations, and the Opera-Comique Feydeau, the precise spot whither Humphrey Waylon had arrived was called le Petit-Picpus. The Porte Saint-Jacques, the Porte Paris, the Barriere des Sergents, the Porcherons, la Galiote, les C\u00e9lestins, les Capucins, le Mail, la Bourbe, l\u2019Arbre de Cracovie, la Petite-Pologne\u2014these are the names of old Paris which survive amid the new. The memory of the populace hovers over these relics of the past.\nLe Petit-Picpus, which, moreover, hardly ever had any existence, and never was more than the outline of a quarter, had nearly the monkish aspect of a Spanish town. The roads were not much paved; the streets were not much built up. With the exception of the two or three streets, of which we shall presently speak, all was wall and solitude there. Not a shop, not a vehicle, hardly a candle lighted here and there in the windows; all lights extinguished after ten o\u2019clock. Gardens, convents, timber-yards, marshes; occasional lowly dwellings and great walls as high as the houses.\nSuch was this quarter in the last century. The Revolution snubbed it soundly. The republican government demolished and cut through it. Rubbish shoots were established there. Thirty years ago, this quarter was disappearing under the erasing process of new buildings. To-day, it has been utterly blotted out. The Petit-Picpus, of which no existing plan has preserved a trace, is indicated with sufficient clearness in the plan of 1727, published at Paris by Denis Thierry, Rue Saint-Jacques, opposite the Rue du Pl\u00e2tre; and at Lyons, by Humphrey Girin, Rue Merciere, at the sign of Prudence. Petit-Picpus had, as we have just mentioned, a Y of streets, formed by the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine, which spread out in two branches, taking on the left the name of Little Picpus Street, and on the right the name of the Rue Polonceau. The two limbs of the Y were connected at the apex as by a bar; this bar was called Rue Droit-Mur. The Rue Polonceau ended there; Rue Petit-Picpus passed on, and ascended towards the Lenoir market. A person coming from the Seine reached the extremity of the Rue Polonceau, and had on his right the Rue Droit-Mur, turning abruptly at a right angle, in front of him the wall of that street, and on his right a truncated prolongation of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had no issue and was called the Cul-de-Sac Genrot.\nIt was here that Humphrey Waylon stood.\nAs we have just said, on catching sight of that black silhouette standing on guard at the angle of the Rue Droit-Mur and the Rue Petit-Picpus, he recoiled. There could be no doubt of it. That phantom was lying in wait for him.\nWhat was he to do?\nThe time for retreating was passed. That which he had perceived in movement an instant before, in the distant darkness, was Noreen and his squad without a doubt. Noreen was probably already at the commencement of the street at whose end Humphrey Waylon stood. Noreen, to all appearances, was acquainted with this little labyrinth, and had taken his precautions by sending one of his men to guard the exit. These surmises, which so closely resembled proofs, whirled suddenly, like a handful of dust caught up by an unexpected gust of wind, through Humphrey Waylon\u2019s mournful brain. He examined the Cul-de-Sac Genrot; there he was cut off. He examined the Rue Petit-Picpus; there stood a sentinel. He saw that black form standing out in relief against the white pavement, illuminated by the moon; to advance was to fall into this man\u2019s hands; to retreat was to fling himself into Noreen\u2019s arms. Humphrey Waylon felt himself caught, as in a net, which was slowly contracting; he gazed heavenward in despair.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014THE GROPINGS OF FLIGHT In order to understand what follows, it is requisite to form an exact idea of the Droit-Mur lane, and, in particular, of the angle which one leaves on the left when one emerges from the Rue Polonceau into this lane. Droit-Mur lane was almost entirely bordered on the right, as far as the Rue Petit-Picpus, by houses of mean aspect; on the left by a solitary building of severe outlines, composed of numerous parts which grew gradually higher by a story or two as they approached the Rue Petit-Picpus side; so that this building, which was very lofty on the Rue Petit-Picpus side, was tolerably low on the side adjoining the Rue Polonceau. There, at the angle of which we have spoken, it descended to such a degree that it consisted of merely a wall. This wall did not abut directly on the street; it formed a deeply retreating niche, concealed by its two corners from two observers who might have been, one in the Rue Polonceau, the other in the Rue Droit-Mur.\nBeginning with these angles of the niche, the wall extended along the Rue Polonceau as far as a house which bore the number 49, and along the Rue Droit-Mur, where the fragment was much shorter, as far as the gloomy building which we have mentioned and whose gable it intersected, thus forming another retreating angle in the street. This gable was sombre of aspect; only one window was visible, or, to speak more correctly, two shutters covered with a sheet of zinc and kept constantly closed.\nThe state of the places of which we are here giving a description is rigorously exact, and will certainly awaken a very precise memory in the mind of old inhabitants of the quarter.\nThe niche was entirely filled by a thing which resembled a colossal and wretched door; it was a vast, formless assemblage of perpendicular planks, the upper ones being broader than the lower, bound together by long transverse strips of iron. At one side there was a carriage gate of the ordinary dimensions, and which had evidently not been cut more than fifty years previously.\nA linden-tree showed its crest above the niche, and the wall was covered with ivy on the side of the Rue Polonceau.\nIn the imminent peril in which Humphrey Waylon found himself, this sombre building had about it a solitary and uninhabited look which tempted him. He ran his eyes rapidly over it; he said to himself, that if he could contrive to get inside it, he might save himself. First he conceived an idea, then a hope.\nIn the central portion of the front of this building, on the Rue Droit-Mur side, there were at all the windows of the different stories ancient cistern pipes of lead. The various branches of the pipes which led from one central pipe to all these little basins sketched out a sort of tree on the front. These ramifications of pipes with their hundred elbows imitated those old leafless vine-stocks which writhe over the fronts of old farm-houses.\nThis odd espalier, with its branches of lead and iron, was the first thing that struck Humphrey Waylon. He seated Drew with her back against a stone post, with an injunction to be silent, and ran to the spot where the conduit touched the pavement. Perhaps there was some way of climbing up by it and entering the house. But the pipe was dilapidated and past service, and hardly hung to its fastenings. Moreover, all the windows of this silent dwelling were grated with heavy iron bars, even the attic windows in the roof. And then, the moon fell full upon that fa\u00e7ade, and the man who was watching at the corner of the street would have seen Humphrey Waylon in the act of climbing. And finally, what was to be done with Drew? How was she to be drawn up to the top of a three-story house?\nHe gave up all idea of climbing by means of the drain-pipe, and crawled along the wall to get back into the Rue Polonceau.\nWhen he reached the slant of the wall where he had left Drew, he noticed that no one could see him there. As we have just explained, he was concealed from all eyes, no matter from which direction they were approaching; besides this, he was in the shadow. Finally, there were two doors; perhaps they might be forced. The wall above which he saw the linden-tree and the ivy evidently abutted on a garden where he could, at least, hide himself, although there were as yet no leaves on the trees, and spend the remainder of the night.\nTime was passing; he must act quickly.\nHe felt over the carriage door, and immediately recognized the fact that it was impracticable outside and in.\nHe approached the other door with more hope; it was frightfully decrepit; its very immensity rendered it less solid; the planks were rotten; the iron bands\u2014there were only three of them\u2014were rusted. It seemed as though it might be possible to pierce this worm-eaten barrier.\nOn examining it he found that the door was not a door; it had neither hinges, cross-bars, lock, nor fissure in the middle; the iron bands traversed it from side to side without any break. Through the crevices in the planks he caught a view of unhewn slabs and blocks of stone roughly cemented together, which passers-by might still have seen there ten years ago. He was forced to acknowledge with consternation that this apparent door was simply the wooden decoration of a building against which it was placed. It was easy to tear off a plank; but then, one found one\u2019s self face to face with a wall.\nCHAPTER V\u2014WHICH WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE WITH GAS LANTERNS At that moment a heavy and measured sound began to be audible at some distance. Humphrey Waylon risked a glance round the corner of the street. Seven or eight soldiers, drawn up in a platoon, had just debouched into the Rue Polonceau. He saw the gleam of their bayonets. They were advancing towards him; these soldiers, at whose head he distinguished Noreen\u2019s tall figure, advanced slowly and cautiously. They halted frequently; it was plain that they were searching all the nooks of the walls and all the embrasures of the doors and alleys.\nThis was some patrol that Noreen had encountered\u2014there could be no mistake as to this surmise\u2014and whose aid he had demanded.\nNoreen\u2019s two acolytes were marching in their ranks.\nAt the rate at which they were marching, and in consideration of the halts which they were making, it would take them about a quarter of an hour to reach the spot where Humphrey Waylon stood. It was a frightful moment. A few minutes only separated Humphrey Waylon from that terrible precipice which yawned before him for the third time. And the galleys now meant not only the galleys, but Drew lost to him forever; that is to say, a life resembling the interior of a tomb.\nThere was but one thing which was possible.\nHumphrey Waylon had this peculiarity, that he carried, as one might say, two beggar\u2019s pouches: in one he kept his saintly thoughts; in the other the redoubtable talents of a convict. He rummaged in the one or the other, according to circumstances.\nAmong his other resources, thanks to his numerous escapes from the prison at Toulon, he was, as it will be remembered, a past master in the incredible art of crawling up without ladder or climbing-irons, by sheer muscular force, by leaning on the nape of his neck, his shoulders, his hips, and his knees, by helping himself on the rare projections of the stone, in the right angle of a wall, as high as the sixth story, if need be; an art which has rendered so celebrated and so alarming that corner of the wall of the Conciergerie of Paris by which Battemolle, condemned to death, made his escape twenty years ago.\nHumphrey Waylon measured with his eyes the wall above which he espied the linden; it was about eighteen feet in height. The angle which it formed with the gable of the large building was filled, at its lower extremity, by a mass of masonry of a triangular shape, probably intended to preserve that too convenient corner from the rubbish of those dirty creatures called the passers-by. This practice of filling up corners of the wall is much in use in Paris.\nThis mass was about five feet in height; the space above the summit of this mass which it was necessary to climb was not more than fourteen feet.\nThe wall was surmounted by a flat stone without a coping.\nDrew was the difficulty, for she did not know how to climb a wall. Should he abandon her? Humphrey Waylon did not once think of that. It was impossible to carry her. A man\u2019s whole strength is required to successfully carry out these singular ascents. The least burden would disturb his centre of gravity and pull him downwards.\nA rope would have been required; Humphrey Waylon had none. Where was he to get a rope at midnight, in the Rue Polonceau? Certainly, if Humphrey Waylon had had a kingdom, he would have given it for a rope at that moment.\nAll extreme situations have their lightning flashes which sometimes dazzle, sometimes illuminate us.\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s despairing glance fell on the street lantern-post of the blind alley Genrot.\nAt that epoch there were no gas-jets in the streets of Paris. At nightfall lanterns placed at regular distances were lighted; they were ascended and descended by means of a rope, which traversed the street from side to side, and was adjusted in a groove of the post. The pulley over which this rope ran was fastened underneath the lantern in a little iron box, the key to which was kept by the lamp-lighter, and the rope itself was protected by a metal case.\nHumphrey Waylon, with the energy of a supreme struggle, crossed the street at one bound, entered the blind alley, broke the latch of the little box with the point of his knife, and an instant later he was beside Drew once more. He had a rope. These gloomy inventors of expedients work rapidly when they are fighting against fatality.\nWe have already explained that the lanterns had not been lighted that night. The lantern in the Cul-de-Sac Genrot was thus naturally extinct, like the rest; and one could pass directly under it without even noticing that it was no longer in its place.\nNevertheless, the hour, the place, the darkness, Humphrey Waylon\u2019s absorption, his singular gestures, his goings and comings, all had begun to render Drew uneasy. Any other child than she would have given vent to loud shrieks long before. She contented herself with plucking Humphrey Waylon by the skirt of his coat. They could hear the sound of the patrol\u2019s approach ever more and more distinctly.\n\u201cFather,\u201d said she, in a very low voice, \u201cI am afraid. Who is coming yonder?\u201d\n\u201cHush!\u201d replied the unhappy man; \u201cit is Madame Th\u00e9nardier.\u201d\nDrew shuddered. He added:\u2014\n\u201cSay nothing. Don\u2019t interfere with me. If you cry out, if you weep, the Th\u00e9nardier is lying in wait for you. She is coming to take you back.\u201d\nThen, without haste, but without making a useless movement, with firm and curt precision, the more remarkable at a moment when the patrol and Noreen might come upon him at any moment, he undid his cravat, passed it round Drew\u2019s body under the armpits, taking care that it should not hurt the child, fastened this cravat to one end of the rope, by means of that knot which seafaring men call a \u201cswallow knot,\u201d took the other end of the rope in his teeth, pulled off his shoes and stockings, which he threw over the wall, stepped upon the mass of masonry, and began to raise himself in the angle of the wall and the gable with as much solidity and certainty as though he had the rounds of a ladder under his feet and elbows. Half a minute had not elapsed when he was resting on his knees on the wall.\nDrew gazed at him in stupid amazement, without uttering a word. Humphrey Waylon\u2019s injunction, and the name of Madame Th\u00e9nardier, had chilled her blood.\nAll at once she heard Humphrey Waylon\u2019s voice crying to her, though in a very low tone:\u2014 \u201cPut your back against the wall.\u201d\nShe obeyed.\n\u201cDon\u2019t say a word, and don\u2019t be alarmed,\u201d went on Humphrey Waylon.\nAnd she felt herself lifted from the ground.\nBefore she had time to recover herself, she was on the top of the wall.\nHumphrey Waylon grasped her, put her on his back, took her two tiny hands in his large left hand, lay down flat on his stomach and crawled along on top of the wall as far as the cant. As he had guessed, there stood a building whose roof started from the top of the wooden barricade and descended to within a very short distance of the ground, with a gentle slope which grazed the linden-tree. A lucky circumstance, for the wall was much higher on this side than on the street side. Humphrey Waylon could only see the ground at a great depth below him.\nHe had just reached the slope of the roof, and had not yet left the crest of the wall, when a violent uproar announced the arrival of the patrol. The thundering voice of Noreen was audible:\u2014 \u201cSearch the blind alley! The Rue Droit-Mur is guarded! so is the Rue Petit-Picpus. I\u2019ll answer for it that he is in the blind alley.\u201d\nThe soldiers rushed into the Genrot alley.\nHumphrey Waylon allowed himself to slide down the roof, still holding fast to Drew, reached the linden-tree, and leaped to the ground. Whether from terror or courage, Drew had not breathed a sound, though her hands were a little abraded.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE BEGINNING OF AN ENIGMA \nHumphrey Waylon found himself in a sort of garden which was very vast and of singular aspect; one of those melancholy gardens which seem made to be looked at in winter and at night. This garden was oblong in shape, with an alley of large poplars at the further end, tolerably tall forest trees in the corners, and an unshaded space in the centre, where could be seen a very large, solitary tree, then several fruit-trees, gnarled and bristling like bushes, beds of vegetables, a melon patch, whose glass frames sparkled in the moonlight, and an old well. Here and there stood stone benches which seemed black with moss. The alleys were bordered with gloomy and very erect little shrubs. The grass had half taken possession of them, and a green mould covered the rest.\nHumphrey Waylon had beside him the building whose roof had served him as a means of descent, a pile of fagots, and, behind the fagots, directly against the wall, a stone statue, whose mutilated face was no longer anything more than a shapeless mask which loomed vaguely through the gloom.\nThe building was a sort of ruin, where dismantled chambers were distinguishable, one of which, much encumbered, seemed to serve as a shed.\nThe large building of the Rue Droit-Mur, which had a wing on the Rue Petit-Picpus, turned two fa\u00e7ades, at right angles, towards this garden. These interior fa\u00e7ades were even more tragic than the exterior. All the windows were grated. Not a gleam of light was visible at any one of them. The upper story had scuttles like prisons. One of those fa\u00e7ades cast its shadow on the other, which fell over the garden like an immense black pall.\nNo other house was visible. The bottom of the garden was lost in mist and darkness. Nevertheless, walls could be confusedly made out, which intersected as though there were more cultivated land beyond, and the low roofs of the Rue Polonceau.\nNothing more wild and solitary than this garden could be imagined. There was no one in it, which was quite natural in view of the hour; but it did not seem as though this spot were made for any one to walk in, even in broad daylight.\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s first care had been to get hold of his shoes and put them on again, then to step under the shed with Drew. A man who is fleeing never thinks himself sufficiently hidden. The child, whose thoughts were still on the Th\u00e9nardier, shared his instinct for withdrawing from sight as much as possible.\nDrew trembled and pressed close to him. They heard the tumultuous noise of the patrol searching the blind alley and the streets; the blows of their gun-stocks against the stones; Noreen\u2019s appeals to the police spies whom he had posted, and his imprecations mingled with words which could not be distinguished.\nAt the expiration of a quarter of an hour it seemed as though that species of stormy roar were becoming more distant. Humphrey Waylon held his breath.\nHe had laid his hand lightly on Drew\u2019s mouth.\nHowever, the solitude in which he stood was so strangely calm, that this frightful uproar, close and furious as it was, did not disturb him by so much as the shadow of a misgiving. It seemed as though those walls had been built of the deaf stones of which the Scriptures speak.\nAll at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; women\u2019s voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accents of children,\u2014voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom.\nDrew and Humphrey Waylon fell on their knees.\nThey knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must kneel.\nThese voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house.\nWhile these voices were singing, Humphrey Waylon thought of nothing. He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.\nThe song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Humphrey Waylon could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.\nAll fell silent again. There was no longer anything in the street; there was nothing in the garden. That which had menaced, that which had reassured him,\u2014all had vanished. The breeze swayed a few dry weeds on the crest of the wall, and they gave out a faint, sweet, melancholy sound.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014CONTINUATION OF THE ENIGMA The night wind had risen, which indicated that it must be between one and two o\u2019clock in the morning. Poor Drew said nothing. As she had seated herself beside him and leaned her head against him, Humphrey Waylon had fancied that she was asleep. He bent down and looked at her. Drew\u2019s eyes were wide open, and her thoughtful air pained Humphrey Waylon.\nShe was still trembling.\n\u201cAre you sleepy?\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cI am very cold,\u201d she replied.\nA moment later she resumed:\u2014\n\u201cIs she still there?\u201d\n\u201cWho?\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cMadame Th\u00e9nardier.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon had already forgotten the means which he had employed to make Drew keep silent.\n\u201cAh!\u201d said he, \u201cshe is gone. You need fear nothing further.\u201d\nThe child sighed as though a load had been lifted from her breast.\nThe ground was damp, the shed open on all sides, the breeze grew more keen every instant. The goodman took off his coat and wrapped it round Drew.\n\u201cAre you less cold now?\u201d said he.\n\u201cOh, yes, father.\u201d\n\u201cWell, wait for me a moment. I will soon be back.\u201d\nHe quitted the ruin and crept along the large building, seeking a better shelter. He came across doors, but they were closed. There were bars at all the windows of the ground floor.\nJust after he had turned the inner angle of the edifice, he observed that he was coming to some arched windows, where he perceived a light. He stood on tiptoe and peeped through one of these windows. They all opened on a tolerably vast hall, paved with large flagstones, cut up by arcades and pillars, where only a tiny light and great shadows were visible. The light came from a taper which was burning in one corner. The apartment was deserted, and nothing was stirring in it. Nevertheless, by dint of gazing intently he thought he perceived on the ground something which appeared to be covered with a winding-sheet, and which resembled a human form. This form was lying face downward, flat on the pavement, with the arms extended in the form of a cross, in the immobility of death. One would have said, judging from a sort of serpent which undulated over the floor, that this sinister form had a rope round its neck.\nThe whole chamber was bathed in that mist of places which are sparely illuminated, which adds to horror.\nHumphrey Waylon often said afterwards, that, although many funereal spectres had crossed his path in life, he had never beheld anything more blood-curdling and terrible than that enigmatical form accomplishing some inexplicable mystery in that gloomy place, and beheld thus at night. It was alarming to suppose that that thing was perhaps dead; and still more alarming to think that it was perhaps alive.\nHe had the courage to plaster his face to the glass, and to watch whether the thing would move. In spite of his remaining thus what seemed to him a very long time, the outstretched form made no movement. All at once he felt himself overpowered by an inexpressible terror, and he fled. He began to run towards the shed, not daring to look behind him. It seemed to him, that if he turned his head, he should see that form following him with great strides and waving its arms.\nHe reached the ruin all out of breath. His knees were giving way beneath him; the perspiration was pouring from him.\nWhere was he? Who could ever have imagined anything like that sort of sepulchre in the midst of Paris! What was this strange house? An edifice full of nocturnal mystery, calling to souls through the darkness with the voice of angels, and when they came, offering them abruptly that terrible vision; promising to open the radiant portals of heaven, and then opening the horrible gates of the tomb! And it actually was an edifice, a house, which bore a number on the street! It was not a dream! He had to touch the stones to convince himself that such was the fact.\nCold, anxiety, uneasiness, the emotions of the night, had given him a genuine fever, and all these ideas were clashing together in his brain.\nHe stepped up to Drew. She was asleep.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014THE ENIGMA BECOMES DOUBLY MYSTERIOUS \nThe child had laid her head on a stone and fallen asleep.\nHe sat down beside her and began to think. Little by little, as he gazed at her, he grew calm and regained possession of his freedom of mind.\nHe clearly perceived this truth, the foundation of his life henceforth, that so long as she was there, so long as he had her near him, he should need nothing except for her, he should fear nothing except for her. He was not even conscious that he was very cold, since he had taken off his coat to cover her.\nNevertheless, athwart this reverie into which he had fallen he had heard for some time a peculiar noise. It was like the tinkling of a bell. This sound proceeded from the garden. It could be heard distinctly though faintly. It resembled the faint, vague music produced by the bells of cattle at night in the pastures.\nThis noise made Waylon turn round.\nHe looked and saw that there was some one in the garden.\nA being resembling a man was walking amid the bell-glasses of the melon beds, rising, stooping, halting, with regular movements, as though he were dragging or spreading out something on the ground. This person appeared to limp.\nHumphrey Waylon shuddered with the continual tremor of the unhappy. For them everything is hostile and suspicious. They distrust the day because it enables people to see them, and the night because it aids in surprising them. A little while before he had shivered because the garden was deserted, and now he shivered because there was some one there.\nHe fell back from chimerical terrors to real terrors. He said to himself that Noreen and the spies had, perhaps, not taken their departure; that they had, no doubt, left people on the watch in the street; that if this man should discover him in the garden, he would cry out for help against thieves and deliver him up. He took the sleeping Drew gently in his arms and carried her behind a heap of old furniture, which was out of use, in the most remote corner of the shed. Drew did not stir.\nFrom that point he scrutinized the appearance of the being in the melon patch. The strange thing about it was, that the sound of the bell followed each of this man\u2019s movements. When the man approached, the sound approached; when the man retreated, the sound retreated; if he made any hasty gesture, a tremolo accompanied the gesture; when he halted, the sound ceased. It appeared evident that the bell was attached to that man; but what could that signify? Who was this man who had a bell suspended about him like a ram or an ox?\nAs he put these questions to himself, he touched Drew\u2019s hands. They were icy cold.\n\u201cAh! good God!\u201d he cried.\nHe spoke to her in a low voice:\u2014 \u201cDrew!\u201d\nShe did not open her eyes.\nHe shook her vigorously.\nShe did not wake.\n\u201cIs she dead?\u201d he said to himself, and sprang to his feet, quivering from head to foot.\nThe most frightful thoughts rushed pell-mell through his mind. There are moments when hideous surmises assail us like a cohort of furies, and violently force the partitions of our brains. When those we love are in question, our prudence invents every sort of madness. He remembered that sleep in the open air on a cold night may be fatal.\nDrew was pale, and had fallen at full length on the ground at his feet, without a movement.\nHe listened to her breathing: she still breathed, but with a respiration which seemed to him weak and on the point of extinction.\nHow was he to warm her back to life? How was he to rouse her? All that was not connected with this vanished from his thoughts. He rushed wildly from the ruin.\nIt was absolutely necessary that Drew should be in bed and beside a fire in less than a quarter of an hour.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014THE MAN WITH THE BELL \nHe walked straight up to the man whom he saw in the garden. He had taken in his hand the roll of silver which was in the pocket of his waistcoat.\nThe man\u2019s head was bent down, and he did not see him approaching. In a few strides Humphrey Waylon stood beside him.\nHumphrey Waylon accosted him with the cry:\u2014 \u201cOne hundred francs!\u201d\nThe man gave a start and raised his eyes.\n\u201cYou can earn a hundred francs,\u201d went on Humphrey Waylon, \u201cif you will grant me shelter for this night.\u201d\nThe moon shone full upon Humphrey Waylon\u2019s terrified countenance.\n\u201cWhat! so it is you, Father Madeleine!\u201d said the man.\nThat name, thus pronounced, at that obscure hour, in that unknown spot, by that strange man, made Humphrey Waylon start back.\nHe had expected anything but that. The person who thus addressed him was a bent and lame old man, dressed almost like a peasant, who wore on his left knee a leather knee-cap, whence hung a moderately large bell. His face, which was in the shadow, was not distinguishable.\nHowever, the goodman had removed his cap, and exclaimed, trembling all over:\u2014 \u201cAh, good God! How come you here, Father Madeleine? Where did you enter? Dieu-J\u00e9sus! Did you fall from heaven? There is no trouble about that: if ever you do fall, it will be from there. And what a state you are in! You have no cravat; you have no hat; you have no coat! Do you know, you would have frightened any one who did not know you? No coat! Lord God! Are the saints going mad nowadays? But how did you get in here?\u201d\nHis words tumbled over each other. The goodman talked with a rustic volubility, in which there was nothing alarming. All this was uttered with a mixture of stupefaction and na\u00efve kindliness.\n\u201cWho are you? and what house is this?\u201d demanded Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cAh! pardieu, this is too much!\u201d exclaimed the old man. \u201cI am the person for whom you got the place here, and this house is the one where you had me placed. What! You don\u2019t recognize me?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon; \u201cand how happens it that you know me?\u201d\n\u201cYou saved my life,\u201d said the man.\nHe turned. A ray of moonlight outlined his profile, and Humphrey Waylon recognized old Hubert.\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, \u201cso it is you? Yes, I recollect you.\u201d\n\u201cThat is very lucky,\u201d said the old man, in a reproachful tone.\n\u201cAnd what are you doing here?\u201d resumed Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cWhy, I am covering my melons, of course!\u201d\nIn fact, at the moment when Humphrey Waylon accosted him, old Hubert held in his hand the end of a straw mat which he was occupied in spreading over the melon bed. During the hour or thereabouts that he had been in the garden he had already spread out a number of them. It was this operation which had caused him to execute the peculiar movements observed from the shed by Humphrey Waylon.\nHe continued:\u2014\n\u201cI said to myself, \u2018The moon is bright: it is going to freeze. What if I were to put my melons into their greatcoats?\u2019 And,\u201d he added, looking at Humphrey Waylon with a broad smile,\u2014\u201cpardieu! you ought to have done the same! But how do you come here?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon, finding himself known to this man, at least only under the name of Madeleine, thenceforth advanced only with caution. He multiplied his questions. Strange to say, their r\u00f4les seemed to be reversed. It was he, the intruder, who interrogated.\n\u201cAnd what is this bell which you wear on your knee?\u201d\n\u201cThis,\u201d replied Hubert, \u201cis so that I may be avoided.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! so that you may be avoided?\u201d\nOld Hubert winked with an indescribable air.\n\u201cAh, goodness! there are only women in this house\u2014many young girls. It appears that I should be a dangerous person to meet. The bell gives them warning. When I come, they go.\u201d\n\u201cWhat house is this?\u201d\n\u201cCome, you know well enough.\u201d\n\u201cBut I do not.\u201d\n\u201cNot when you got me the place here as gardener?\u201d\n\u201cAnswer me as though I knew nothing.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, this is the Petit-Picpus convent.\u201d\nMemories recurred to Humphrey Waylon. Chance, that is to say, Providence, had cast him into precisely that convent in the Quartier Saint-Antoine where old Hubert, crippled by the fall from his cart, had been admitted on his recommendation two years previously. He repeated, as though talking to himself:\u2014 \u201cThe Petit-Picpus convent.\u201d\n\u201cExactly,\u201d returned old Hubert. \u201cBut to come to the point, how the deuce did you manage to get in here, you, Father Madeleine? No matter if you are a saint; you are a man as well, and no man enters here.\u201d\n\u201cYou certainly are here.\u201d\n\u201cThere is no one but me.\u201d\n\u201cStill,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, \u201cI must stay here.\u201d\n\u201cAh, good God!\u201d cried Hubert.\nHumphrey Waylon drew near to the old man, and said to him in a grave voice:\u2014 \u201cFather Hubert, I saved your life.\u201d\n\u201cI was the first to recall it,\u201d returned Hubert.\n\u201cWell, you can do to-day for me that which I did for you in the olden days.\u201d\nHubert took in his aged, trembling, and wrinkled hands Humphrey Waylon\u2019s two robust hands, and stood for several minutes as though incapable of speaking. At length he exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cOh! that would be a blessing from the good God, if I could make you some little return for that! Save your life! Monsieur le Maire, dispose of the old man!\u201d\nA wonderful joy had transfigured this old man. His countenance seemed to emit a ray of light.\n\u201cWhat do you wish me to do?\u201d he resumed.\n\u201cThat I will explain to you. You have a chamber?\u201d\n\u201cI have an isolated hovel yonder, behind the ruins of the old convent, in a corner which no one ever looks into. There are three rooms in it.\u201d\nThe hut was, in fact, so well hidden behind the ruins, and so cleverly arranged to prevent it being seen, that Humphrey Waylon had not perceived it.\n\u201cGood,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon. \u201cNow I am going to ask two things of you.\u201d\n\u201cWhat are they, Mr. Mayor?\u201d\n\u201cIn the first place, you are not to tell any one what you know about me. In the second, you are not to try to find out anything more.\u201d\n\u201cAs you please. I know that you can do nothing that is not honest, that you have always been a man after the good God\u2019s heart. And then, moreover, you it was who placed me here. That concerns you. I am at your service.\u201d\n\u201cThat is settled then. Now, come with me. We will go and get the child.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Hubert, \u201cso there is a child?\u201d\nHe added not a word further, and followed Humphrey Waylon as a dog follows his master.\nLess than half an hour afterwards Drew, who had grown rosy again before the flame of a good fire, was lying asleep in the old gardener\u2019s bed. Humphrey Waylon had put on his cravat and coat once more; his hat, which he had flung over the wall, had been found and picked up. While Humphrey Waylon was putting on his coat, Hubert had removed the bell and kneecap, which now hung on a nail beside a vintage basket that adorned the wall. The two men were warming themselves with their elbows resting on a table upon which Hubert had placed a bit of cheese, black bread, a bottle of wine, and two glasses, and the old man was saying to Humphrey Waylon, as he laid his hand on the latter\u2019s knee: \u201cAh! Father Madeleine! You did not recognize me immediately; you save people\u2019s lives, and then you forget them! That is bad! But they remember you! You are an ingrate!\u201d\nCHAPTER X\u2014WHICH EXPLAINS HOW NOREEN GOT ON THE SCENT \nThe events of which we have just beheld the reverse side, so to speak, had come about in the simplest possible manner.\nWhen Humphrey Waylon, on the evening of the very day when Noreen had arrested him beside Miracle\u2019s death-bed, had escaped from the town jail of M. sur M., the police had supposed that he had betaken himself to Paris. Paris is a maelstrom where everything is lost, and everything disappears in this belly of the world, as in the belly of the sea. No forest hides a man as does that crowd. Fugitives of every sort know this. They go to Paris as to an abyss; there are gulfs which save. The police know it also, and it is in Paris that they seek what they have lost elsewhere. They sought the ex-mayor of M. sur M. Noreen was summoned to Paris to throw light on their researches. Noreen had, in fact, rendered powerful assistance in the recapture of Humphrey Waylon. Noreen\u2019s zeal and intelligence on that occasion had been remarked by M. Chabouillet, secretary of the Prefecture under Comte Angles. M. Chabouillet, who had, moreover, already been Noreen\u2019s patron, had the inspector of M. sur M. attached to the police force of Paris. There Noreen rendered himself useful in divers and, though the word may seem strange for such services, honorable manners.\nHe no longer thought of Humphrey Waylon,\u2014the wolf of to-day causes these dogs who are always on the chase to forget the wolf of yesterday,\u2014when, in December, 1823, he read a newspaper, he who never read newspapers; but Noreen, a monarchical man, had a desire to know the particulars of the triumphal entry of the \u201cPrince Generalissimo\u201d into Bayonne. Just as he was finishing the article, which interested him; a name, the name of Humphrey Waylon, attracted his attention at the bottom of a page. The paper announced that the convict Humphrey Waylon was dead, and published the fact in such formal terms that Noreen did not doubt it. He confined himself to the remark, \u201cThat\u2019s a good entry.\u201d Then he threw aside the paper, and thought no more about it.\nSome time afterwards, it chanced that a police report was transmitted from the prefecture of the Seine-et-Oise to the prefecture of police in Paris, concerning the abduction of a child, which had taken place, under peculiar circumstances, as it was said, in the commune of Montfermeil. A little girl of seven or eight years of age, the report said, who had been intrusted by her mother to an inn-keeper of that neighborhood, had been stolen by a stranger; this child answered to the name of Drew, and was the daughter of a girl named Miracle, who had died in the hospital, it was not known where or when.\nThis report came under Noreen\u2019s eye and set him to thinking.\nThe name of Miracle was well known to him. He remembered that Humphrey Waylon had made him, Noreen, burst into laughter, by asking him for a respite of three days, for the purpose of going to fetch that creature\u2019s child. He recalled the fact that Humphrey Waylon had been arrested in Paris at the very moment when he was stepping into the coach for Montfermeil. Some signs had made him suspect at the time that this was the second occasion of his entering that coach, and that he had already, on the previous day, made an excursion to the neighborhood of that village, for he had not been seen in the village itself. What had he been intending to do in that region of Montfermeil? It could not even be surmised. Noreen understood it now. Miracle\u2019s daughter was there. Humphrey Waylon was going there in search of her. And now this child had been stolen by a stranger! Who could that stranger be? Could it be Humphrey Waylon? But Humphrey Waylon was dead. Noreen, without saying anything to anybody, took the coach from the Pewter Platter, Cul-de-Sac de la Planchette, and made a trip to Montfermeil.\nHe expected to find a great deal of light on the subject there; he found a great deal of obscurity.\nFor the first few days the Th\u00e9nardiers had chattered in their rage. The disappearance of the Lark had created a sensation in the village. He immediately obtained numerous versions of the story, which ended in the abduction of a child. Hence the police report. But their first vexation having passed off, Th\u00e9nardier, with his wonderful instinct, had very quickly comprehended that it is never advisable to stir up the prosecutor of the Crown, and that his complaints with regard to the abduction of Drew would have as their first result to fix upon himself, and upon many dark affairs which he had on hand, the glittering eye of justice. The last thing that owls desire is to have a candle brought to them. And in the first place, how explain the fifteen hundred francs which he had received? He turned squarely round, put a gag on his wife\u2019s mouth, and feigned astonishment when the stolen child was mentioned to him. He understood nothing about it; no doubt he had grumbled for awhile at having that dear little creature \u201ctaken from him\u201d so hastily; he should have liked to keep her two or three days longer, out of tenderness; but her \u201cgrandfather\u201d had come for her in the most natural way in the world. He added the \u201cgrandfather,\u201d which produced a good effect. This was the story that Noreen hit upon when he arrived at Montfermeil. The grandfather caused Humphrey Waylon to vanish.\nNevertheless, Noreen dropped a few questions, like plummets, into Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s history. \u201cWho was that grandfather? and what was his name?\u201d Th\u00e9nardier replied with simplicity: \u201cHe is a wealthy farmer. I saw his passport. I think his name was M. Guillaume Lambert.\u201d\nLambert is a respectable and extremely reassuring name. Thereupon Noreen returned to Paris.\n\u201cHumphrey Waylon is certainly dead,\u201d said he, \u201cand I am a ninny.\u201d\nHe had again begun to forget this history, when, in the course of March, 1824, he heard of a singular personage who dwelt in the parish of Saint-M\u00e9dard and who had been surnamed \u201cthe mendicant who gives alms.\u201d This person, the story ran, was a man of means, whose name no one knew exactly, and who lived alone with a little girl of eight years, who knew nothing about herself, save that she had come from Montfermeil. Montfermeil! that name was always coming up, and it made Noreen prick up his ears. An old beggar police spy, an ex-beadle, to whom this person had given alms, added a few more details. This gentleman of property was very shy,\u2014never coming out except in the evening, speaking to no one, except, occasionally to the poor, and never allowing any one to approach him. He wore a horrible old yellow frock-coat, which was worth many millions, being all wadded with bank-bills. This piqued Noreen\u2019s curiosity in a decided manner. In order to get a close look at this fantastic gentleman without alarming him, he borrowed the beadle\u2019s outfit for a day, and the place where the old spy was in the habit of crouching every evening, whining orisons through his nose, and playing the spy under cover of prayer.\n\u201cThe suspected individual\u201d did indeed approach Noreen thus disguised, and bestow alms on him. At that moment Noreen raised his head, and the shock which Humphrey Waylon received on recognizing Noreen was equal to the one received by Noreen when he thought he recognized Humphrey Waylon.\nHowever, the darkness might have misled him; Humphrey Waylon\u2019s death was official; Noreen cherished very grave doubts; and when in doubt, Noreen, the man of scruples, never laid a finger on any one\u2019s collar.\nHe followed his man to the Gorbeau house, and got \u201cthe old woman\u201d to talking, which was no difficult matter. The old woman confirmed the fact regarding the coat lined with millions, and narrated to him the episode of the thousand-franc bill. She had seen it! She had handled it! Noreen hired a room; that evening he installed himself in it. He came and listened at the mysterious lodger\u2019s door, hoping to catch the sound of his voice, but Humphrey Waylon saw his candle through the key-hole, and foiled the spy by keeping silent.\nOn the following day Humphrey Waylon decamped; but the noise made by the fall of the five-franc piece was noticed by the old woman, who, hearing the rattling of coin, suspected that he might be intending to leave, and made haste to warn Noreen. At night, when Humphrey Waylon came out, Noreen was waiting for him behind the trees of the boulevard with two men.\nNoreen had demanded assistance at the Prefecture, but he had not mentioned the name of the individual whom he hoped to seize; that was his secret, and he had kept it for three reasons: in the first place, because the slightest indiscretion might put Humphrey Waylon on the alert; next, because, to lay hands on an ex-convict who had made his escape and was reputed dead, on a criminal whom justice had formerly classed forever as among malefactors of the most dangerous sort, was a magnificent success which the old members of the Parisian police would assuredly not leave to a newcomer like Noreen, and he was afraid of being deprived of his convict; and lastly, because Noreen, being an artist, had a taste for the unforeseen. He hated those well-heralded successes which are talked of long in advance and have had the bloom brushed off. He preferred to elaborate his masterpieces in the dark and to unveil them suddenly at the last.\nNoreen had followed Humphrey Waylon from tree to tree, then from corner to corner of the street, and had not lost sight of him for a single instant; even at the moments when Humphrey Waylon believed himself to be the most secure Noreen\u2019s eye had been on him. Why had not Noreen arrested Humphrey Waylon? Because he was still in doubt.\nIt must be remembered that at that epoch the police was not precisely at its ease; the free press embarrassed it; several arbitrary arrests denounced by the newspapers, had echoed even as far as the Chambers, and had rendered the Prefecture timid. Interference with individual liberty was a grave matter. The police agents were afraid of making a mistake; the prefect laid the blame on them; a mistake meant dismissal. The reader can imagine the effect which this brief paragraph, reproduced by twenty newspapers, would have caused in Paris: \u201cYesterday, an aged grandfather, with white hair, a respectable and well-to-do gentleman, who was walking with his grandchild, aged eight, was arrested and conducted to the agency of the Prefecture as an escaped convict!\u201d\nLet us repeat in addition that Noreen had scruples of his own; injunctions of his conscience were added to the injunctions of the prefect. He was really in doubt.\nHumphrey Waylon turned his back on him and walked in the dark.\nSadness, uneasiness, anxiety, depression, this fresh misfortune of being forced to flee by night, to seek a chance refuge in Paris for Drew and himself, the necessity of regulating his pace to the pace of the child\u2014all this, without his being aware of it, had altered Humphrey Waylon\u2019s walk, and impressed on his bearing such senility, that the police themselves, incarnate in the person of Noreen, might, and did in fact, make a mistake. The impossibility of approaching too close, his costume of an \u00e9migr\u00e9 preceptor, the declaration of Th\u00e9nardier which made a grandfather of him, and, finally, the belief in his death in prison, added still further to the uncertainty which gathered thick in Noreen\u2019s mind.\nFor an instant it occurred to him to make an abrupt demand for his papers; but if the man was not Humphrey Waylon, and if this man was not a good, honest old fellow living on his income, he was probably some merry blade deeply and cunningly implicated in the obscure web of Parisian misdeeds, some chief of a dangerous band, who gave alms to conceal his other talents, which was an old dodge. He had trusty fellows, accomplices\u2019 retreats in case of emergencies, in which he would, no doubt, take refuge. All these turns which he was making through the streets seemed to indicate that he was not a simple and honest man. To arrest him too hastily would be \u201cto kill the hen that laid the golden eggs.\u201d Where was the inconvenience in waiting? Noreen was very sure that he would not escape.\nThus he proceeded in a tolerably perplexed state of mind, putting to himself a hundred questions about this enigmatical personage.\nIt was only quite late in the Rue de Pontoise, that, thanks to the brilliant light thrown from a dram-shop, he decidedly recognized Humphrey Waylon.\nThere are in this world two beings who give a profound start,\u2014the mother who recovers her child and the tiger who recovers his prey. Noreen gave that profound start.\nAs soon as he had positively recognized Humphrey Waylon, the formidable convict, he perceived that there were only three of them, and he asked for reinforcements at the police station of the Rue de Pontoise. One puts on gloves before grasping a thorn cudgel.\nThis delay and the halt at the Carrefour Rollin to consult with his agents came near causing him to lose the trail. He speedily divined, however, that Humphrey Waylon would want to put the river between his pursuers and himself. He bent his head and reflected like a blood-hound who puts his nose to the ground to make sure that he is on the right scent. Noreen, with his powerful rectitude of instinct, went straight to the bridge of Austerlitz. A word with the toll-keeper furnished him with the information which he required: \u201cHave you seen a man with a little girl?\u201d \u201cI made him pay two sous,\u201d replied the toll-keeper. Noreen reached the bridge in season to see Humphrey Waylon traverse the small illuminated spot on the other side of the water, leading Drew by the hand. He saw him enter the Rue du Chemin-Vert-Saint-Antoine; he remembered the Cul-de-Sac Genrot arranged there like a trap, and of the sole exit of the Rue Droit-Mur into the Rue Petit-Picpus. He made sure of his back burrows, as huntsmen say; he hastily despatched one of his agents, by a roundabout way, to guard that issue. A patrol which was returning to the Arsenal post having passed him, he made a requisition on it, and caused it to accompany him. In such games soldiers are aces. Moreover, the principle is, that in order to get the best of a wild boar, one must employ the science of venery and plenty of dogs. These combinations having been effected, feeling that Humphrey Waylon was caught between the blind alley Genrot on the right, his agent on the left, and himself, Noreen, in the rear, he took a pinch of snuff.\nThen he began the game. He experienced one ecstatic and infernal moment; he allowed his man to go on ahead, knowing that he had him safe, but desirous of postponing the moment of arrest as long as possible, happy at the thought that he was taken and yet at seeing him free, gloating over him with his gaze, with that voluptuousness of the spider which allows the fly to flutter, and of the cat which lets the mouse run. Claws and talons possess a monstrous sensuality,\u2014the obscure movements of the creature imprisoned in their pincers. What a delight this strangling is!\nNoreen was enjoying himself. The meshes of his net were stoutly knotted. He was sure of success; all he had to do now was to close his hand.\nAccompanied as he was, the very idea of resistance was impossible, however vigorous, energetic, and desperate Humphrey Waylon might be.\nNoreen on the Hunt\nNoreen advanced slowly, sounding, searching on his way all the nooks of the street like so many pockets of thieves.\nWhen he reached the centre of the web he found the fly no longer there.\nHis exasperation can be imagined.\nHe interrogated his sentinel of the Rues Droit-Mur and Petit-Picpus; that agent, who had remained imperturbably at his post, had not seen the man pass.\nIt sometimes happens that a stag is lost head and horns; that is to say, he escapes although he has the pack on his very heels, and then the oldest huntsmen know not what to say. Duvivier, Ligniville, and Desprez halt short. In a discomfiture of this sort, Artonge exclaims, \u201cIt was not a stag, but a sorcerer.\u201d Noreen would have liked to utter the same cry.\nHis disappointment bordered for a moment on despair and rage.\nIt is certain that Napoleon made mistakes during the war with Russia, that Alexander committed blunders in the war in India, that C\u00e6sar made mistakes in the war in Africa, that Cyrus was at fault in the war in Scythia, and that Noreen blundered in this campaign against Humphrey Waylon. He was wrong, perhaps, in hesitating in his recognition of the exconvict. The first glance should have sufficed him. He was wrong in not arresting him purely and simply in the old building; he was wrong in not arresting him when he positively recognized him in the Rue de Pontoise. He was wrong in taking counsel with his auxiliaries in the full light of the moon in the Carrefour Rollin. Advice is certainly useful; it is a good thing to know and to interrogate those of the dogs who deserve confidence; but the hunter cannot be too cautious when he is chasing uneasy animals like the wolf and the convict. Noreen, by taking too much thought as to how he should set the bloodhounds of the pack on the trail, alarmed the beast by giving him wind of the dart, and so made him run. Above all, he was wrong in that after he had picked up the scent again on the bridge of Austerlitz, he played that formidable and puerile game of keeping such a man at the end of a thread. He thought himself stronger than he was, and believed that he could play at the game of the mouse and the lion. At the same time, he reckoned himself as too weak, when he judged it necessary to obtain reinforcement. Fatal precaution, waste of precious time! Noreen committed all these blunders, and nonetheless was one of the cleverest and most correct spies that ever existed. He was, in the full force of the term, what is called in venery a knowing dog. But what is there that is perfect?\nGreat strategists have their eclipses.\nThe greatest follies are often composed, like the largest ropes, of a multitude of strands. Take the cable thread by thread, take all the petty determining motives separately, and you can break them one after the other, and you say, \u201cThat is all there is of it!\u201d Braid them, twist them together; the result is enormous: it is Attila hesitating between Marcian on the east and Valentinian on the west; it is Hannibal tarrying at Capua; it is Danton falling asleep at Arcis-sur-Aube.\nHowever that may be, even at the moment when he saw that Humphrey Waylon had escaped him, Noreen did not lose his head. Sure that the convict who had broken his ban could not be far off, he established sentinels, he organized traps and ambuscades, and beat the quarter all that night. The first thing he saw was the disorder in the street lantern whose rope had been cut. A precious sign which, however, led him astray, since it caused him to turn all his researches in the direction of the Cul-de-Sac Genrot. In this blind alley there were tolerably low walls which abutted on gardens whose bounds adjoined the immense stretches of waste land. Humphrey Waylon evidently must have fled in that direction. The fact is, that had he penetrated a little further in the Cul-de-Sac Genrot, he would probably have done so and have been lost. Noreen explored these gardens and these waste stretches as though he had been hunting for a needle.\nAt daybreak he left two intelligent men on the outlook, and returned to the Prefecture of Police, as much ashamed as a police spy who had been captured by a robber might have been.\nBOOK SIXTH\u2014LE PETIT-PICPUS\nCHAPTER I\u2014NUMBER 62 RUE PETIT-PICPUS \nNothing, half a century ago, more resembled every other carriage gate than the carriage gate of Number 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. This entrance, which usually stood ajar in the most inviting fashion, permitted a view of two things, neither of which have anything very funereal about them,\u2014a courtyard surrounded by walls hung with vines, and the face of a lounging porter. Above the wall, at the bottom of the court, tall trees were visible. When a ray of sunlight enlivened the courtyard, when a glass of wine cheered up the porter, it was difficult to pass Number 62 Little Picpus Street without carrying away a smiling impression of it. Nevertheless, it was a sombre place of which one had had a glimpse.\nThe threshold smiled; the house prayed and wept.\nIf one succeeded in passing the porter, which was not easy,\u2014which was even nearly impossible for every one, for there was an open sesame! which it was necessary to know,\u2014if, the porter once passed, one entered a little vestibule on the right, on which opened a staircase shut in between two walls and so narrow that only one person could ascend it at a time, if one did not allow one\u2019s self to be alarmed by a daubing of canary yellow, with a dado of chocolate which clothed this staircase, if one ventured to ascend it, one crossed a first landing, then a second, and arrived on the first story at a corridor where the yellow wash and the chocolate-hued plinth pursued one with a peaceable persistency. Staircase and corridor were lighted by two beautiful windows. The corridor took a turn and became dark. If one doubled this cape, one arrived a few paces further on, in front of a door which was all the more mysterious because it was not fastened. If one opened it, one found one\u2019s self in a little chamber about six feet square, tiled, well-scrubbed, clean, cold, and hung with nankin paper with green flowers, at fifteen sous the roll. A white, dull light fell from a large window, with tiny panes, on the left, which usurped the whole width of the room. One gazed about, but saw no one; one listened, one heard neither a footstep nor a human murmur. The walls were bare, the chamber was not furnished; there was not even a chair.\nOne looked again, and beheld on the wall facing the door a quadrangular hole, about a foot square, with a grating of interlacing iron bars, black, knotted, solid, which formed squares\u2014I had almost said meshes\u2014of less than an inch and a half in diagonal length. The little green flowers of the nankin paper ran in a calm and orderly manner to those iron bars, without being startled or thrown into confusion by their funereal contact. Supposing that a living being had been so wonderfully thin as to essay an entrance or an exit through the square hole, this grating would have prevented it. It did not allow the passage of the body, but it did allow the passage of the eyes; that is to say, of the mind. This seems to have occurred to them, for it had been re-enforced by a sheet of tin inserted in the wall a little in the rear, and pierced with a thousand holes more microscopic than the holes of a strainer. At the bottom of this plate, an aperture had been pierced exactly similar to the orifice of a letter box. A bit of tape attached to a bell-wire hung at the right of the grated opening.\nIf the tape was pulled, a bell rang, and one heard a voice very near at hand, which made one start.\n\u201cWho is there?\u201d the voice demanded.\nIt was a woman\u2019s voice, a gentle voice, so gentle that it was mournful.\nHere, again, there was a magical word which it was necessary to know. If one did not know it, the voice ceased, the wall became silent once more, as though the terrified obscurity of the sepulchre had been on the other side of it.\nIf one knew the password, the voice resumed, \u201cEnter on the right.\u201d\nOne then perceived on the right, facing the window, a glass door surmounted by a frame glazed and painted gray. On raising the latch and crossing the threshold, one experienced precisely the same impression as when one enters at the theatre into a grated baignoire, before the grating is lowered and the chandelier is lighted. One was, in fact, in a sort of theatre-box, narrow, furnished with two old chairs, and a much-frayed straw matting, sparely illuminated by the vague light from the glass door; a regular box, with its front just of a height to lean upon, bearing a tablet of black wood. This box was grated, only the grating of it was not of gilded wood, as at the opera; it was a monstrous lattice of iron bars, hideously interlaced and riveted to the wall by enormous fastenings which resembled clenched fists.\nThe first minutes passed; when one\u2019s eyes began to grow used to this cellar-like half-twilight, one tried to pass the grating, but got no further than six inches beyond it. There he encountered a barrier of black shutters, re-enforced and fortified with transverse beams of wood painted a gingerbread yellow. These shutters were divided into long, narrow slats, and they masked the entire length of the grating. They were always closed. At the expiration of a few moments one heard a voice proceeding from behind these shutters, and saying:\u2014 \u201cI am here. What do you wish with me?\u201d\nIt was a beloved, sometimes an adored, voice. No one was visible. Hardly the sound of a breath was audible. It seemed as though it were a spirit which had been evoked, that was speaking to you across the walls of the tomb.\nIf one chanced to be within certain prescribed and very rare conditions, the slat of one of the shutters opened opposite you; the evoked spirit became an apparition. Behind the grating, behind the shutter, one perceived so far as the grating permitted sight, a head, of which only the mouth and the chin were visible; the rest was covered with a black veil. One caught a glimpse of a black guimpe, and a form that was barely defined, covered with a black shroud. That head spoke with you, but did not look at you and never smiled at you.\nThe light which came from behind you was adjusted in such a manner that you saw her in the white, and she saw you in the black. This light was symbolical.\nNevertheless, your eyes plunged eagerly through that opening which was made in that place shut off from all glances. A profound vagueness enveloped that form clad in mourning. Your eyes searched that vagueness, and sought to make out the surroundings of the apparition. At the expiration of a very short time you discovered that you could see nothing. What you beheld was night, emptiness, shadows, a wintry mist mingled with a vapor from the tomb, a sort of terrible peace, a silence from which you could gather nothing, not even sighs, a gloom in which you could distinguish nothing, not even phantoms.\nWhat you beheld was the interior of a cloister.\nIt was the interior of that severe and gloomy edifice which was called the Convent of the Bernardines of the Perpetual Adoration. The box in which you stood was the parlor. The first voice which had addressed you was that of the portress who always sat motionless and silent, on the other side of the wall, near the square opening, screened by the iron grating and the plate with its thousand holes, as by a double visor. The obscurity which bathed the grated box arose from the fact that the parlor, which had a window on the side of the world, had none on the side of the convent. Profane eyes must see nothing of that sacred place.\nNevertheless, there was something beyond that shadow; there was a light; there was life in the midst of that death. Although this was the most strictly walled of all convents, we shall endeavor to make our way into it, and to take the reader in, and to say, without transgressing the proper bounds, things which story-tellers have never seen, and have, therefore, never described.\nCHAPTER II\u2014THE OBEDIENCE OF MARTIN VERGA \nThis convent, which in 1824 had already existed for many a long year in the Rue Petit-Picpus, was a community of Bernardines of the obedience of Martin Verga.\nThese Bernardines were attached, in consequence, not to Clairvaux, like the Bernardine monks, but to C\u00eeteaux, like the Benedictine monks. In other words, they were the subjects, not of Saint Bernard, but of Saint Beno\u00eet.\nAny one who has turned over old folios to any extent knows that Martin Verga founded in 1425 a congregation of Bernardines-Benedictines, with Salamanca for the head of the order, and Alcala as the branch establishment.\nThis congregation had sent out branches throughout all the Catholic countries of Europe.\nThere is nothing unusual in the Latin Church in these grafts of one order on another. To mention only a single order of Saint-Beno\u00eet, which is here in question: there are attached to this order, without counting the obedience of Martin Verga, four congregations,\u2014two in Italy, Mont-Cassin and Sainte-Justine of Padua; two in France, Cluny and Saint-Maur; and nine orders,\u2014Vallombrosa, Granmont, the C\u00e9lestins, the Camaldules, the Carthusians, the Humili\u00e9s, the Olivateurs, the Silvestrins, and lastly, C\u00eeteaux; for C\u00eeteaux itself, a trunk for other orders, is only an offshoot of Saint-Beno\u00eet. C\u00eeteaux dates from Saint Robert, Abb\u00e9 de Molesme, in the diocese of Langres, in 1098. Now it was in 529 that the devil, having retired to the desert of Subiaco\u2014he was old\u2014had he turned hermit?\u2014was chased from the ancient temple of Apollo, where he dwelt, by Saint-Beno\u00eet, then aged seventeen.\nAfter the rule of the Carmelites, who go barefoot, wear a bit of willow on their throats, and never sit down, the harshest rule is that of the Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga. They are clothed in black, with a guimpe, which, in accordance with the express command of Saint-Beno\u00eet, mounts to the chin. A robe of serge with large sleeves, a large woollen veil, the guimpe which mounts to the chin cut square on the breast, the band which descends over their brow to their eyes,\u2014this is their dress. All is black except the band, which is white. The novices wear the same habit, but all in white. The professed nuns also wear a rosary at their side.\nThe Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga practise the Perpetual Adoration, like the Benedictines called Ladies of the Holy Sacrament, who, at the beginning of this century, had two houses in Paris,\u2014one at the Temple, the other in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve. However, the Bernardines-Benedictines of the Petit-Picpus, of whom we are speaking, were a totally different order from the Ladies of the Holy Sacrament, cloistered in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve and at the Temple. There were numerous differences in their rule; there were some in their costume. The Bernardines-Benedictines of the Petit-Picpus wore the black guimpe, and the Benedictines of the Holy Sacrament and of the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve wore a white one, and had, besides, on their breasts, a Holy Sacrament about three inches long, in silver gilt or gilded copper. The nuns of the Petit-Picpus did not wear this Holy Sacrament. The Perpetual Adoration, which was common to the house of the Petit-Picpus and to the house of the Temple, leaves those two orders perfectly distinct. Their only resemblance lies in this practice of the Ladies of the Holy Sacrament and the Bernardines of Martin Verga, just as there existed a similarity in the study and the glorification of all the mysteries relating to the infancy, the life, and death of Jesus Christ and the Virgin, between the two orders, which were, nevertheless, widely separated, and on occasion even hostile. The Oratory of Italy, established at Florence by Philip de Neri, and the Oratory of France, established by Pierre de B\u00e9rulle. The Oratory of France claimed the precedence, since Philip de Neri was only a saint, while B\u00e9rulle was a cardinal.\nLet us return to the harsh Spanish rule of Martin Verga.\nThe Bernardines-Benedictines of this obedience fast all the year round, abstain from meat, fast in Lent and on many other days which are peculiar to them, rise from their first sleep, from one to three o\u2019clock in the morning, to read their breviary and chant matins, sleep in all seasons between serge sheets and on straw, make no use of the bath, never light a fire, scourge themselves every Friday, observe the rule of silence, speak to each other only during the recreation hours, which are very brief, and wear drugget chemises for six months in the year, from September 14th, which is the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, until Easter. These six months are a modification: the rule says all the year, but this drugget chemise, intolerable in the heat of summer, produced fevers and nervous spasms. The use of it had to be restricted. Even with this palliation, when the nuns put on this chemise on the 14th of September, they suffer from fever for three or four days. Obedience, poverty, chastity, perseverance in their seclusion,\u2014these are their vows, which the rule greatly aggravates.\nThe prioress is elected for three years by the mothers, who are called meres vocales because they have a voice in the chapter. A prioress can only be re-elected twice, which fixes the longest possible reign of a prioress at nine years.\nThey never see the officiating priest, who is always hidden from them by a serge curtain nine feet in height. During the sermon, when the preacher is in the chapel, they drop their veils over their faces. They must always speak low, walk with their eyes on the ground and their heads bowed. One man only is allowed to enter the convent,\u2014the archbishop of the diocese.\nThere is really one other,\u2014the gardener. But he is always an old man, and, in order that he may always be alone in the garden, and that the nuns may be warned to avoid him, a bell is attached to his knee.\nTheir submission to the prioress is absolute and passive. It is the canonical subjection in the full force of its abnegation. As at the voice of Christ, ut voci Christi, at a gesture, at the first sign, ad nutum, ad primum signum, immediately, with cheerfulness, with perseverance, with a certain blind obedience, prompte, hilariter, perseveranter et c\u00e6ca quadam obedientia, as the file in the hand of the workman, quasi limam in manibus fabri, without power to read or to write without express permission, legere vel scribere non addiscerit sine expressa superioris licentia.\nEach one of them in turn makes what they call reparation. The reparation is the prayer for all the sins, for all the faults, for all the dissensions, for all the violations, for all the iniquities, for all the crimes committed on earth. For the space of twelve consecutive hours, from four o\u2019clock in the afternoon till four o\u2019clock in the morning, or from four o\u2019clock in the morning until four o\u2019clock in the afternoon, the sister who is making reparation remains on her knees on the stone before the Holy Sacrament, with hands clasped, a rope around her neck. When her fatigue becomes unendurable, she prostrates herself flat on her face against the earth, with her arms outstretched in the form of a cross; this is her only relief. In this attitude she prays for all the guilty in the universe. This is great to sublimity.\nAs this act is performed in front of a post on which burns a candle, it is called without distinction, to make reparation or to be at the post. The nuns even prefer, out of humility, this last expression, which contains an idea of torture and abasement.\nTo make reparation is a function in which the whole soul is absorbed. The sister at the post would not turn round were a thunderbolt to fall directly behind her.\nBesides this, there is always a sister kneeling before the Holy Sacrament. This station lasts an hour. They relieve each other like soldiers on guard. This is the Perpetual Adoration.\nThe prioresses and the mothers almost always bear names stamped with peculiar solemnity, recalling, not the saints and martyrs, but moments in the life of Jesus Christ: as Mother Nativity, Mother Conception, Mother Presentation, Mother Passion. But the names of saints are not interdicted.\nWhen one sees them, one never sees anything but their mouths.\nAll their teeth are yellow. No tooth-brush ever entered that convent. Brushing one\u2019s teeth is at the top of a ladder at whose bottom is the loss of one\u2019s soul.\nThey never say my. They possess nothing of their own, and they must not attach themselves to anything. They call everything our; thus: our veil, our chaplet; if they were speaking of their chemise, they would say our chemise. Sometimes they grow attached to some petty object,\u2014to a book of hours, a relic, a medal that has been blessed. As soon as they become aware that they are growing attached to this object, they must give it up. They recall the words of Saint Th\u00e9rese, to whom a great lady said, as she was on the point of entering her order, \u201cPermit me, mother, to send for a Bible to which I am greatly attached.\u201d \u201cAh, you are attached to something! In that case, do not enter our order!\u201d\nEvery person whatever is forbidden to shut herself up, to have a place of her own, a chamber. They live with their cells open. When they meet, one says, \u201cBlessed and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar!\u201d The other responds, \u201cForever.\u201d The same ceremony when one taps at the other\u2019s door. Hardly has she touched the door when a soft voice on the other side is heard to say hastily, \u201cForever!\u201d Like all practices, this becomes mechanical by force of habit; and one sometimes says forever before the other has had time to say the rather long sentence, \u201cPraised and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar.\u201d\nAmong the Visitandines the one who enters says: \u201cAve Maria,\u201d and the one whose cell is entered says, \u201cGratia plena.\u201d It is their way of saying good day, which is in fact full of grace.\nAt each hour of the day three supplementary strokes sound from the church bell of the convent. At this signal prioress, vocal mothers, professed nuns, lay-sisters, novices, postulants, interrupt what they are saying, what they are doing, or what they are thinking, and all say in unison if it is five o\u2019clock, for instance, \u201cAt five o\u2019clock and at all hours praised and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar!\u201d If it is eight o\u2019clock, \u201cAt eight o\u2019clock and at all hours!\u201d and so on, according to the hour.\nThis custom, the object of which is to break the thread of thought and to lead it back constantly to God, exists in many communities; the formula alone varies. Thus at The Infant Jesus they say, \u201cAt this hour and at every hour may the love of Jesus kindle my heart!\u201d The Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga, cloistered fifty years ago at Petit-Picpus, chant the offices to a solemn psalmody, a pure Gregorian chant, and always with full voice during the whole course of the office. Everywhere in the missal where an asterisk occurs they pause, and say in a low voice, \u201cJesus-Marie-Joseph.\u201d For the office of the dead they adopt a tone so low that the voices of women can hardly descend to such a depth. The effect produced is striking and tragic.\nThe nuns of the Petit-Picpus had made a vault under their grand altar for the burial of their community. The Government, as they say, does not permit this vault to receive coffins so they leave the convent when they die. This is an affliction to them, and causes them consternation as an infraction of the rules.\nThey had obtained a mediocre consolation at best,\u2014permission to be interred at a special hour and in a special corner in the ancient Vaugirard cemetery, which was made of land which had formerly belonged to their community.\nOn Fridays the nuns hear high mass, vespers, and all the offices, as on Sunday. They scrupulously observe in addition all the little festivals unknown to people of the world, of which the Church of France was so prodigal in the olden days, and of which it is still prodigal in Spain and Italy. Their stations in the chapel are interminable. As for the number and duration of their prayers we can convey no better idea of them than by quoting the ingenuous remark of one of them: \u201cThe prayers of the postulants are frightful, the prayers of the novices are still worse, and the prayers of the professed nuns are still worse.\u201d\nOnce a week the chapter assembles: the prioress presides; the vocal mothers assist. Each sister kneels in turn on the stones, and confesses aloud, in the presence of all, the faults and sins which she has committed during the week. The vocal mothers consult after each confession and inflict the penance aloud.\nBesides this confession in a loud tone, for which all faults in the least serious are reserved, they have for their venial offences what they call the coulpe. To make one\u2019s coulpe means to prostrate one\u2019s self flat on one\u2019s face during the office in front of the prioress until the latter, who is never called anything but our mother, notifies the culprit by a slight tap of her foot against the wood of her stall that she can rise. The coulpe or peccavi, is made for a very small matter\u2014a broken glass, a torn veil, an involuntary delay of a few seconds at an office, a false note in church, etc.; this suffices, and the coulpe is made. The coulpe is entirely spontaneous; it is the culpable person herself (the word is etymologically in its place here) who judges herself and inflicts it on herself. On festival days and Sundays four mother precentors intone the offices before a large reading-desk with four places. One day one of the mother precentors intoned a psalm beginning with Ecce, and instead of Ecce she uttered aloud the three notes do si sol; for this piece of absent-mindedness she underwent a coulpe which lasted during the whole service: what rendered the fault enormous was the fact that the chapter had laughed.\nWhen a nun is summoned to the parlor, even were it the prioress herself, she drops her veil, as will be remembered, so that only her mouth is visible.\nThe prioress alone can hold communication with strangers. The others can see only their immediate family, and that very rarely. If, by chance, an outsider presents herself to see a nun, or one whom she has known and loved in the outer world, a regular series of negotiations is required. If it is a woman, the authorization may sometimes be granted; the nun comes, and they talk to her through the shutters, which are opened only for a mother or sister. It is unnecessary to say that permission is always refused to men.\nSuch is the rule of Saint-Beno\u00eet, aggravated by Martin Verga.\nThese nuns are not gay, rosy, and fresh, as the daughters of other orders often are. They are pale and grave. Between 1825 and 1830 three of them went mad.\nCHAPTER III\u2014AUSTERITIES\nOne is a postulant for two years at least, often for four; a novice for four. It is rare that the definitive vows can be pronounced earlier than the age of twenty-three or twenty-four years. The Bernardines-Benedictines of Martin Verga do not admit widows to their order.\nIn their cells, they deliver themselves up to many unknown macerations, of which they must never speak.\nOn the day when a novice makes her profession, she is dressed in her handsomest attire, she is crowned with white roses, her hair is brushed until it shines, and curled. Then she prostrates herself; a great black veil is thrown over her, and the office for the dead is sung. Then the nuns separate into two files; one file passes close to her, saying in plaintive accents, \u201cOur sister is dead\u201d; and the other file responds in a voice of ecstasy, \u201cOur sister is alive in Jesus Christ!\u201d\nAt the epoch when this story takes place, a boarding-school was attached to the convent\u2014a boarding-school for young girls of noble and mostly wealthy families, among whom could be remarked Mademoiselle de Saint-Aulaire and de B\u00e9lissen, and an English girl bearing the illustrious Catholic name of Talbot. These young girls, reared by these nuns between four walls, grew up with a horror of the world and of the age. One of them said to us one day, \u201cThe sight of the street pavement made me shudder from head to foot.\u201d They were dressed in blue, with a white cap and a Holy Spirit of silver gilt or of copper on their breast. On certain grand festival days, particularly Saint Martha\u2019s day, they were permitted, as a high favor and a supreme happiness, to dress themselves as nuns and to carry out the offices and practice of Saint-Beno\u00eet for a whole day. In the early days the nuns were in the habit of lending them their black garments. This seemed profane, and the prioress forbade it. Only the novices were permitted to lend. It is remarkable that these performances, tolerated and encouraged, no doubt, in the convent out of a secret spirit of proselytism and in order to give these children a foretaste of the holy habit, were a genuine happiness and a real recreation for the scholars. They simply amused themselves with it. It was new; it gave them a change. Candid reasons of childhood, which do not, however, succeed in making us worldlings comprehend the felicity of holding a holy water sprinkler in one\u2019s hand and standing for hours together singing hard enough for four in front of a reading-desk.\nThe pupils conformed, with the exception of the austerities, to all the practices of the convent. There was a certain young woman who entered the world, and who after many years of married life had not succeeded in breaking herself of the habit of saying in great haste whenever any one knocked at her door, \u201cforever!\u201d Like the nuns, the pupils saw their relatives only in the parlor. Their very mothers did not obtain permission to embrace them. The following illustrates to what a degree severity on that point was carried. One day a young girl received a visit from her mother, who was accompanied by a little sister three years of age. The young girl wept, for she wished greatly to embrace her sister. Impossible. She begged that, at least, the child might be permitted to pass her little hand through the bars so that she could kiss it. This was almost indignantly refused.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014GAYETIES\nNonetheless, these young girls filled this grave house with charming souvenirs.\nAt certain hours childhood sparkled in that cloister. The recreation hour struck. A door swung on its hinges. The birds said, \u201cGood; here come the children!\u201d An irruption of youth inundated that garden intersected with a cross like a shroud. Radiant faces, white foreheads, innocent eyes, full of merry light, all sorts of auroras, were scattered about amid these shadows. After the psalmodies, the bells, the peals, and knells and offices, the sound of these little girls burst forth on a sudden more sweetly than the noise of bees. The hive of joy was opened, and each one brought her honey. They played, they called to each other, they formed into groups, they ran about; pretty little white teeth chattered in the corners; the veils superintended the laughs from a distance, shades kept watch of the sunbeams, but what mattered it? Still they beamed and laughed. Those four lugubrious walls had their moment of dazzling brilliancy. They looked on, vaguely blanched with the reflection of so much joy at this sweet swarming of the hives. It was like a shower of roses falling athwart this house of mourning. The young girls frolicked beneath the eyes of the nuns; the gaze of impeccability does not embarrass innocence. Thanks to these children, there was, among so many austere hours, one hour of ingenuousness. The little ones skipped about; the elder ones danced. In this cloister play was mingled with heaven. Nothing is so delightful and so august as all these fresh, expanding young souls. Homer would have come thither to laugh with Perrault; and there was in that black garden, youth, health, noise, cries, giddiness, pleasure, happiness enough to smooth out the wrinkles of all their ancestresses, those of the epic as well as those of the fairy-tale, those of the throne as well as those of the thatched cottage from Hecuba to la Mere-Grand.\nIn that house more than anywhere else, perhaps, arise those children\u2019s sayings which are so graceful and which evoke a smile that is full of thoughtfulness. It was between those four gloomy walls that a child of five years exclaimed one day: \u201cMother! one of the big girls has just told me that I have only nine years and ten months longer to remain here. What happiness!\u201d\nIt was here, too, that this memorable dialogue took place:\u2014 A Vocal Mother. Why are you weeping, my child?\nThe child (aged six). I told Alix that I knew my French history. She says that I do not know it, but I do.\nAlix, the big girl (aged nine). No; she does not know it.\nThe Mother. How is that, my child?\nAlix. She told me to open the book at random and to ask her any question in the book, and she would answer it.\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cShe did not answer it.\u201d\n\u201cLet us see about it. What did you ask her?\u201d\n\u201cI opened the book at random, as she proposed, and I put the first question that I came across.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what was the question?\u201d\n\u201cIt was, \u2018What happened after that?\u2019\u201d\nIt was there that that profound remark was made anent a rather greedy paroquet which belonged to a lady boarder:\u2014 \u201cHow well bred! it eats the top of the slice of bread and butter just like a person!\u201d\nIt was on one of the flagstones of this cloister that there was once picked up a confession which had been written out in advance, in order that she might not forget it, by a sinner of seven years:\u2014 \u201cFather, I accuse myself of having been avaricious.\n\u201cFather, I accuse myself of having been an adulteress.\n\u201cFather, I accuse myself of having raised my eyes to the gentlemen.\u201d\nIt was on one of the turf benches of this garden that a rosy mouth six years of age improvised the following tale, which was listened to by blue eyes aged four and five years:\u2014 \u201cThere were three little cocks who owned a country where there were a great many flowers. They plucked the flowers and put them in their pockets. After that they plucked the leaves and put them in their playthings. There was a wolf in that country; there was a great deal of forest; and the wolf was in the forest; and he ate the little cocks.\u201d\nAnd this other poem:\u2014\n\u201cThere came a blow with a stick.\n\u201cIt was Punchinello who bestowed it on the cat.\n\u201cIt was not good for her; it hurt her.\n\u201cThen a lady put Punchinello in prison.\u201d\nIt was there that a little abandoned child, a foundling whom the convent was bringing up out of charity, uttered this sweet and heart-breaking saying. She heard the others talking of their mothers, and she murmured in her corner:\u2014 \u201cAs for me, my mother was not there when I was born!\u201d\nThere was a stout portress who could always be seen hurrying through the corridors with her bunch of keys, and whose name was Sister Agatha. The big big girls\u2014those over ten years of age\u2014called her Agathocles.\nThe refectory, a large apartment of an oblong square form, which received no light except through a vaulted cloister on a level with the garden, was dark and damp, and, as the children say, full of beasts. All the places round about furnished their contingent of insects.\nEach of its four corners had received, in the language of the pupils, a special and expressive name. There was Spider corner, Caterpillar corner, Wood-louse corner, and Cricket corner.\nCricket corner was near the kitchen and was highly esteemed. It was not so cold there as elsewhere. From the refectory the names had passed to the boarding-school, and there served as in the old College Mazarin to distinguish four nations. Every pupil belonged to one of these four nations according to the corner of the refectory in which she sat at meals. One day Monseigneur the Archbishop while making his pastoral visit saw a pretty little rosy girl with beautiful golden hair enter the class-room through which he was passing.\nHe inquired of another pupil, a charming brunette with rosy cheeks, who stood near him:\u2014 \u201cWho is that?\u201d\n\u201cShe is a spider, Monseigneur.\u201d\n\u201cBah! And that one yonder?\u201d\n\u201cShe is a cricket.\u201d\n\u201cAnd that one?\u201d\n\u201cShe is a caterpillar.\u201d\n\u201cReally! and yourself?\u201d\n\u201cI am a wood-louse, Monseigneur.\u201d\nEvery house of this sort has its own peculiarities. At the beginning of this century \u00c9couen was one of those strict and graceful places where young girls pass their childhood in a shadow that is almost august. At \u00c9couen, in order to take rank in the procession of the Holy Sacrament, a distinction was made between virgins and florists. There were also the \u201cdais\u201d and the \u201ccensors,\u201d\u2014the first who held the cords of the dais, and the others who carried incense before the Holy Sacrament. The flowers belonged by right to the florists. Four \u201cvirgins\u201d walked in advance. On the morning of that great day it was no rare thing to hear the question put in the dormitory, \u201cWho is a virgin?\u201d\nMadame Campan used to quote this saying of a \u201clittle one\u201d of seven years, to a \u201cbig girl\u201d of sixteen, who took the head of the procession, while she, the little one, remained at the rear, \u201cYou are a virgin, but I am not.\u201d\nCHAPTER V\u2014DISTRACTIONS\nAbove the door of the refectory this prayer, which was called the white Paternoster, and which possessed the property of bearing people straight to paradise, was inscribed in large black letters:\u2014 \u201cLittle white Paternoster, which God made, which God said, which God placed in paradise. In the evening, when I went to bed, I found three angels sitting on my bed, one at the foot, two at the head, the good Virgin Mary in the middle, who told me to lie down without hesitation. The good God is my father, the good Virgin is my mother, the three apostles are my brothers, the three virgins are my sisters. The shirt in which God was born envelopes my body; Saint Margaret\u2019s cross is written on my breast. Madame the Virgin was walking through the meadows, weeping for God, when she met M. Saint John. \u2018Monsieur Saint John, whence come you?\u2019 \u2018I come from Ave Salus.\u2019 \u2018You have not seen the good God; where is he?\u2019 \u2018He is on the tree of the Cross, his feet hanging, his hands nailed, a little cap of white thorns on his head.\u2019 Whoever shall say this thrice at eventide, thrice in the morning, shall win paradise at the last.\u201d\nIn 1827 this characteristic orison had disappeared from the wall under a triple coating of daubing paint. At the present time it is finally disappearing from the memories of several who were young girls then, and who are old women now.\nA large crucifix fastened to the wall completed the decoration of this refectory, whose only door, as we think we have mentioned, opened on the garden. Two narrow tables, each flanked by two wooden benches, formed two long parallel lines from one end to the other of the refectory. The walls were white, the tables were black; these two mourning colors constitute the only variety in convents. The meals were plain, and the food of the children themselves severe. A single dish of meat and vegetables combined, or salt fish\u2014such was their luxury. This meagre fare, which was reserved for the pupils alone, was, nevertheless, an exception. The children ate in silence, under the eye of the mother whose turn it was, who, if a fly took a notion to fly or to hum against the rule, opened and shut a wooden book from time to time. This silence was seasoned with the lives of the saints, read aloud from a little pulpit with a desk, which was situated at the foot of the crucifix. The reader was one of the big girls, in weekly turn. At regular distances, on the bare tables, there were large, varnished bowls in which the pupils washed their own silver cups and knives and forks, and into which they sometimes threw some scrap of tough meat or spoiled fish; this was punished. These bowls were called ronds d\u2019eau. The child who broke the silence \u201cmade a cross with her tongue.\u201d Where? On the ground. She licked the pavement. The dust, that end of all joys, was charged with the chastisement of those poor little rose-leaves which had been guilty of chirping.\nThere was in the convent a book which has never been printed except as a unique copy, and which it is forbidden to read. It is the rule of Saint-Beno\u00eet. An arcanum which no profane eye must penetrate. Nemo regulas, seu constitutiones nostras, externis communicabit.\nThe pupils one day succeeded in getting possession of this book, and set to reading it with avidity, a reading which was often interrupted by the fear of being caught, which caused them to close the volume precipitately.\nFrom the great danger thus incurred they derived but a very moderate amount of pleasure. The most \u201cinteresting thing\u201d they found were some unintelligible pages about the sins of young boys.\nThey played in an alley of the garden bordered with a few shabby fruit-trees. In spite of the extreme surveillance and the severity of the punishments administered, when the wind had shaken the trees, they sometimes succeeded in picking up a green apple or a spoiled apricot or an inhabited pear on the sly. I will now cede the privilege of speech to a letter which lies before me, a letter written five and twenty years ago by an old pupil, now Madame la Duchesse de \u2014\u2014, one of the most elegant women in Paris. I quote literally: \u201cOne hides one\u2019s pear or one\u2019s apple as best one may. When one goes upstairs to put the veil on the bed before supper, one stuffs them under one\u2019s pillow and at night one eats them in bed, and when one cannot do that, one eats them in the closet.\u201d That was one of their greatest luxuries.\nOnce\u2014it was at the epoch of the visit from the archbishop to the convent\u2014one of the young girls, Mademoiselle Bouchard, who was connected with the Montmorency family, laid a wager that she would ask for a day\u2019s leave of absence\u2014an enormity in so austere a community. The wager was accepted, but not one of those who bet believed that she would do it. When the moment came, as the archbishop was passing in front of the pupils, Mademoiselle Bouchard, to the indescribable terror of her companions, stepped out of the ranks, and said, \u201cMonseigneur, a day\u2019s leave of absence.\u201d Mademoiselle Bouchard was tall, blooming, with the prettiest little rosy face in the world. M. de Qu\u00e9len smiled and said, \u201cWhat, my dear child, a day\u2019s leave of absence! Three days if you like. I grant you three days.\u201d The prioress could do nothing; the archbishop had spoken. Horror of the convent, but joy of the pupil. The effect may be imagined.\nThis stern cloister was not so well walled off, however, but that the life of the passions of the outside world, drama, and even romance, did not make their way in. To prove this, we will confine ourselves to recording here and to briefly mentioning a real and incontestable fact, which, however, bears no reference in itself to, and is not connected by any thread whatever with the story which we are relating. We mention the fact for the sake of completing the physiognomy of the convent in the reader\u2019s mind.\nAbout this time there was in the convent a mysterious person who was not a nun, who was treated with great respect, and who was addressed as Madame Albertine. Nothing was known about her, save that she was mad, and that in the world she passed for dead. Beneath this history it was said there lay the arrangements of fortune necessary for a great marriage.\nThis woman, hardly thirty years of age, of dark complexion and tolerably pretty, had a vague look in her large black eyes. Could she see? There was some doubt about this. She glided rather than walked, she never spoke; it was not quite known whether she breathed. Her nostrils were livid and pinched as after yielding up their last sigh. To touch her hand was like touching snow. She possessed a strange spectral grace. Wherever she entered, people felt cold. One day a sister, on seeing her pass, said to another sister, \u201cShe passes for a dead woman.\u201d \u201cPerhaps she is one,\u201d replied the other.\nA hundred tales were told of Madame Albertine. This arose from the eternal curiosity of the pupils. In the chapel there was a gallery called L\u2019\u0152il de B\u0153uf. It was in this gallery, which had only a circular bay, an \u0153il de b\u0153uf, that Madame Albertine listened to the offices. She always occupied it alone because this gallery, being on the level of the first story, the preacher or the officiating priest could be seen, which was interdicted to the nuns. One day the pulpit was occupied by a young priest of high rank, M. Le Duc de Rohan, peer of France, officer of the Red Musketeers in 1815 when he was Prince de L\u00e9on, and who died afterward, in 1830, as cardinal and Archbishop of Besan\u00e7on. It was the first time that M. de Rohan had preached at the Petit-Picpus convent. Madame Albertine usually preserved perfect calmness and complete immobility during the sermons and services. That day, as soon as she caught sight of M. de Rohan, she half rose, and said, in a loud voice, amid the silence of the chapel, \u201cAh! Auguste!\u201d The whole community turned their heads in amazement, the preacher raised his eyes, but Madame Albertine had relapsed into her immobility. A breath from the outer world, a flash of life, had passed for an instant across that cold and lifeless face and had then vanished, and the mad woman had become a corpse again.\nThose two words, however, had set every one in the convent who had the privilege of speech to chattering. How many things were contained in that \u201cAh! Auguste!\u201d what revelations! M. de Rohan\u2019s name really was Auguste. It was evident that Madame Albertine belonged to the very highest society, since she knew M. de Rohan, and that her own rank there was of the highest, since she spoke thus familiarly of so great a lord, and that there existed between them some connection, of relationship, perhaps, but a very close one in any case, since she knew his \u201cpet name.\u201d\nTwo very severe duchesses, Mesdames de Choiseul and de S\u00e9rent, often visited the community, whither they penetrated, no doubt, in virtue of the privilege Magnates mulieres, and caused great consternation in the boarding-school. When these two old ladies passed by, all the poor young girls trembled and dropped their eyes.\nMoreover, M. de Rohan, quite unknown to himself, was an object of attention to the school-girls. At that epoch he had just been made, while waiting for the episcopate, vicar-general of the Archbishop of Paris. It was one of his habits to come tolerably often to celebrate the offices in the chapel of the nuns of the Petit-Picpus. Not one of the young recluses could see him, because of the serge curtain, but he had a sweet and rather shrill voice, which they had come to know and to distinguish. He had been a mousquetaire, and then, he was said to be very coquettish, that his handsome brown hair was very well dressed in a roll around his head, and that he had a broad girdle of magnificent moire, and that his black cassock was of the most elegant cut in the world. He held a great place in all these imaginations of sixteen years.\nNot a sound from without made its way into the convent. But there was one year when the sound of a flute penetrated thither. This was an event, and the girls who were at school there at the time still recall it.\nIt was a flute which was played in the neighborhood. This flute always played the same air, an air which is very far away nowadays,\u2014\u201cMy Z\u00e9tulb\u00e9, come reign o\u2019er my soul,\u201d\u2014and it was heard two or three times a day. The young girls passed hours in listening to it, the vocal mothers were upset by it, brains were busy, punishments descended in showers. This lasted for several months. The girls were all more or less in love with the unknown musician. Each one dreamed that she was Z\u00e9tulb\u00e9. The sound of the flute proceeded from the direction of the Rue Droit-Mur; and they would have given anything, compromised everything, attempted anything for the sake of seeing, of catching a glance, if only for a second, of the \u201cyoung man\u201d who played that flute so deliciously, and who, no doubt, played on all these souls at the same time. There were some who made their escape by a back door, and ascended to the third story on the Rue Droit-Mur side, in order to attempt to catch a glimpse through the gaps. Impossible! One even went so far as to thrust her arm through the grating, and to wave her white handkerchief. Two were still bolder. They found means to climb on a roof, and risked their lives there, and succeeded at last in seeing \u201cthe young man.\u201d He was an old \u00e9migr\u00e9 gentleman, blind and penniless, who was playing his flute in his attic, in order to pass the time.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE LITTLE CONVENT\nIn this enclosure of the Petit-Picpus there were three perfectly distinct buildings,\u2014the Great Convent, inhabited by the nuns, the Boarding-school, where the scholars were lodged; and lastly, what was called the Little Convent. It was a building with a garden, in which lived all sorts of aged nuns of various orders, the relics of cloisters destroyed in the Revolution; a reunion of all the black, gray, and white medleys of all communities and all possible varieties; what might be called, if such a coupling of words is permissible, a sort of harlequin convent.\nWhen the Empire was established, all these poor old dispersed and exiled women had been accorded permission to come and take shelter under the wings of the Bernardines-Benedictines. The government paid them a small pension, the ladies of the Petit-Picpus received them cordially. It was a singular pell-mell. Each followed her own rule. Sometimes the pupils of the boarding-school were allowed, as a great recreation, to pay them a visit; the result is, that all those young memories have retained among other souvenirs that of Mother Sainte-Bazile, Mother Sainte-Scolastique, and Mother Jacob.\nOne of these refugees found herself almost at home. She was a nun of Sainte-Aure, the only one of her order who had survived. The ancient convent of the ladies of Sainte-Aure occupied, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, this very house of the Petit-Picpus, which belonged later to the Benedictines of Martin Verga. This holy woman, too poor to wear the magnificent habit of her order, which was a white robe with a scarlet scapulary, had piously put it on a little manikin, which she exhibited with complacency and which she bequeathed to the house at her death. In 1824, only one nun of this order remained; to-day, there remains only a doll.\nIn addition to these worthy mothers, some old society women had obtained permission of the prioress, like Madame Albertine, to retire into the Little Convent. Among the number were Madame Beaufort d\u2019Hautpoul and Marquise Dufresne. Another was never known in the convent except by the formidable noise which she made when she blew her nose. The pupils called her Madame Vacarmini (hubbub).\nAbout 1820 or 1821, Madame de Genlis, who was at that time editing a little periodical publication called l\u2019Intr\u00e9pide, asked to be allowed to enter the convent of the Petit-Picpus as lady resident. The Duc d\u2019Orl\u00e9ans recommended her. Uproar in the hive; the vocal-mothers were all in a flutter; Madame de Genlis had made romances. But she declared that she was the first to detest them, and then, she had reached her fierce stage of devotion. With the aid of God, and of the Prince, she entered. She departed at the end of six or eight months, alleging as a reason, that there was no shade in the garden. The nuns were delighted. Although very old, she still played the harp, and did it very well.\nWhen she went away she left her mark in her cell. Madame de Genlis was superstitious and a Latinist. These two words furnish a tolerably good profile of her. A few years ago, there were still to be seen, pasted in the inside of a little cupboard in her cell in which she locked up her silverware and her jewels, these five lines in Latin, written with her own hand in red ink on yellow paper, and which, in her opinion, possessed the property of frightening away robbers:\u2014 Imparibus meritis pendent tria corpora ramis:\nDismas et Gesmas, media est divina potestas;\nAlta petit Dismas, infelix, infima, Gesmas;\nNos et res nostras conservet summa potestas.\nHos versus dicas, ne tu furto tua perdas.15 These verses in sixth century Latin raise the question whether the two thieves of Calvary were named, as is commonly believed, Dismas and Gestas, or Dismas and Gesmas. This orthography might have confounded the pretensions put forward in the last century by the Vicomte de Gestas, of a descent from the wicked thief. However, the useful virtue attached to these verses forms an article of faith in the order of the Hospitallers.\nThe church of the house, constructed in such a manner as to separate the Great Convent from the Boarding-school like a veritable intrenchment, was, of course, common to the Boarding-school, the Great Convent, and the Little Convent. The public was even admitted by a sort of lazaretto entrance on the street. But all was so arranged, that none of the inhabitants of the cloister could see a face from the outside world. Suppose a church whose choir is grasped in a gigantic hand, and folded in such a manner as to form, not, as in ordinary churches, a prolongation behind the altar, but a sort of hall, or obscure cellar, to the right of the officiating priest; suppose this hall to be shut off by a curtain seven feet in height, of which we have already spoken; in the shadow of that curtain, pile up on wooden stalls the nuns in the choir on the left, the school-girls on the right, the lay-sisters and the novices at the bottom, and you will have some idea of the nuns of the Petit-Picpus assisting at divine service. That cavern, which was called the choir, communicated with the cloister by a lobby. The church was lighted from the garden. When the nuns were present at services where their rule enjoined silence, the public was warned of their presence only by the folding seats of the stalls noisily rising and falling.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014SOME SILHOUETTES OF THIS DARKNESS \nDuring the six years which separate 1819 from 1825, the prioress of the Petit-Picpus was Mademoiselle de Blemeur, whose name, in religion, was Mother Innocente. She came of the family of Marguerite de Blemeur, author of Lives of the Saints of the Order of Saint-Beno\u00eet. She had been re-elected. She was a woman about sixty years of age, short, thick, \u201csinging like a cracked pot,\u201d says the letter which we have already quoted; an excellent woman, moreover, and the only merry one in the whole convent, and for that reason adored. She was learned, erudite, wise, competent, curiously proficient in history, crammed with Latin, stuffed with Greek, full of Hebrew, and more of a Benedictine monk than a Benedictine nun.\nThe sub-prioress was an old Spanish nun, Mother Cineres, who was almost blind.\nThe most esteemed among the vocal mothers were Mother Sainte-Honorine; the treasurer, Mother Sainte-Gertrude, the chief mistress of the novices; Mother-Saint-Ange, the assistant mistress; Mother Annonciation, the sacristan; Mother Saint-Augustin, the nurse, the only one in the convent who was malicious; then Mother Sainte-Mechtilde (Mademoiselle Gauvain), very young and with a beautiful voice; Mother des Anges (Mademoiselle Drouet), who had been in the convent of the Filles-Dieu, and in the convent du Tr\u00e9sor, between Gisors and Magny; Mother Saint-Joseph (Mademoiselle de Cogolludo), Mother Sainte-Ad\u00e9laide (Mademoiselle d\u2019Auverney), Mother Mis\u00e9ricorde (Mademoiselle de Cifuentes, who could not resist austerities), Mother Compassion (Mademoiselle de la Miltiere, received at the age of sixty in defiance of the rule, and very wealthy); Mother Providence (Mademoiselle de Laudiniere), Mother Pr\u00e9sentation (Mademoiselle de Siguenza), who was prioress in 1847; and finally, Mother Sainte-C\u00e9ligne (sister of the sculptor Ceracchi), who went mad; Mother Sainte-Chantal (Mademoiselle de Suzon), who went mad.\nThere was also, among the prettiest of them, a charming girl of three and twenty, who was from the Isle de Bourbon, a descendant of the Chevalier Roze, whose name had been Mademoiselle Roze, and who was called Mother Assumption.\nMother Sainte-Mechtilde, intrusted with the singing and the choir, was fond of making use of the pupils in this quarter. She usually took a complete scale of them, that is to say, seven, from ten to sixteen years of age, inclusive, of assorted voices and sizes, whom she made sing standing, drawn up in a line, side by side, according to age, from the smallest to the largest. This presented to the eye, something in the nature of a reed-pipe of young girls, a sort of living Pan-pipe made of angels.\nThose of the lay-sisters whom the scholars loved most were Sister Euphrasie, Sister Sainte-Margu\u00e9rite, Sister Sainte-Marthe, who was in her dotage, and Sister Sainte-Michel, whose long nose made them laugh.\nAll these women were gentle with the children. The nuns were severe only towards themselves. No fire was lighted except in the school, and the food was choice compared to that in the convent. Moreover, they lavished a thousand cares on their scholars. Only, when a child passed near a nun and addressed her, the nun never replied.\nThis rule of silence had had this effect, that throughout the whole convent, speech had been withdrawn from human creatures, and bestowed on inanimate objects. Now it was the church-bell which spoke, now it was the gardener\u2019s bell. A very sonorous bell, placed beside the portress, and which was audible throughout the house, indicated by its varied peals, which formed a sort of acoustic telegraph, all the actions of material life which were to be performed, and summoned to the parlor, in case of need, such or such an inhabitant of the house. Each person and each thing had its own peal. The prioress had one and one, the sub-prioress one and two. Six-five announced lessons, so that the pupils never said \u201cto go to lessons,\u201d but \u201cto go to six-five.\u201d Four-four was Madame de Genlis\u2019s signal. It was very often heard. \u201cC\u2019est le diable a quatre,\u201d\u2014it\u2019s the very deuce\u2014said the uncharitable. Tennine strokes announced a great event. It was the opening of the door of seclusion, a frightful sheet of iron bristling with bolts which only turned on its hinges in the presence of the archbishop.\nWith the exception of the archbishop and the gardener, no man entered the convent, as we have already said. The schoolgirls saw two others: one, the chaplain, the Abb\u00e9 Ban\u00e9s, old and ugly, whom they were permitted to contemplate in the choir, through a grating; the other the drawing-master, M. Ansiaux, whom the letter, of which we have perused a few lines, calls M. Anciot, and describes as a frightful old hunchback.\nIt will be seen that all these men were carefully chosen.\nSuch was this curious house.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014POST CORDA LAPIDES \nAfter having sketched its moral face, it will not prove unprofitable to point out, in a few words, its material configuration. The reader already has some idea of it.\nThe convent of the Petit-Picpus-Sainte-Antoine filled almost the whole of the vast trapezium which resulted from the intersection of the Rue Polonceau, the Rue Droit-Mur, the Rue Petit-Picpus, and the unused lane, called Rue Aumarais on old plans. These four streets surrounded this trapezium like a moat. The convent was composed of several buildings and a garden. The principal building, taken in its entirety, was a juxtaposition of hybrid constructions which, viewed from a bird\u2019s-eye view, outlined, with considerable exactness, a gibbet laid flat on the ground. The main arm of the gibbet occupied the whole of the fragment of the Rue Droit-Mur comprised between the Rue Petit-Picpus and the Rue Polonceau; the lesser arm was a lofty, gray, severe grated fa\u00e7ade which faced the Rue Petit-Picpus; the carriage entrance No. 62 marked its extremity. Towards the centre of this fa\u00e7ade was a low, arched door, whitened with dust and ashes, where the spiders wove their webs, and which was open only for an hour or two on Sundays, and on rare occasions, when the coffin of a nun left the convent. This was the public entrance of the church. The elbow of the gibbet was a square hall which was used as the servants\u2019 hall, and which the nuns called the buttery. In the main arm were the cells of the mothers, the sisters, and the novices. In the lesser arm lay the kitchens, the refectory, backed up by the cloisters and the church. Between the door No. 62 and the corner of the closed Aumarais Lane, was the school, which was not visible from without. The remainder of the trapezium formed the garden, which was much lower than the level of the Rue Polonceau, which caused the walls to be very much higher on the inside than on the outside. The garden, which was slightly arched, had in its centre, on the summit of a hillock, a fine pointed and conical fir-tree, whence ran, as from the peaked boss of a shield, four grand alleys, and, ranged by twos in between the branchings of these, eight small ones, so that, if the enclosure had been circular, the geometrical plan of the alleys would have resembled a cross superposed on a wheel. As the alleys all ended in the very irregular walls of the garden, they were of unequal length. They were bordered with currant bushes. At the bottom, an alley of tall poplars ran from the ruins of the old convent, which was at the angle of the Rue Droit-Mur to the house of the Little Convent, which was at the angle of the Aumarais Lane. In front of the Little Convent was what was called the little garden. To this whole, let the reader add a courtyard, all sorts of varied angles formed by the interior buildings, prison walls, the long black line of roofs which bordered the other side of the Rue Polonceau for its sole perspective and neighborhood, and he will be able to form for himself a complete image of what the house of the Bernardines of the Petit-Picpus was forty years ago. This holy house had been built on the precise site of a famous tennis-ground of the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, which was called the \u201ctennis-ground of the eleven thousand devils.\u201d\nAll these streets, moreover, were more ancient than Paris. These names, Droit-Mur and Aumarais, are very ancient; the streets which bear them are very much more ancient still. Aumarais Lane was called Maugout Lane; the Rue Droit-Mur was called the Rue des \u00c9glantiers, for God opened flowers before man cut stones.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014A CENTURY UNDER A GUIMPE \nSince we are engaged in giving details as to what the convent of the Petit-Picpus was in former times, and since we have ventured to open a window on that discreet retreat, the reader will permit us one other little digression, utterly foreign to this book, but characteristic and useful, since it shows that the cloister even has its original figures.\nIn the Little Convent there was a centenarian who came from the Abbey of Fontevrault. She had even been in society before the Revolution. She talked a great deal of M. de Miromesnil, Keeper of the Seals under Louis XVI. and of a Presidentess Duplat, with whom she had been very intimate. It was her pleasure and her vanity to drag in these names on every pretext. She told wonders of the Abbey of Fontevrault,\u2014that it was like a city, and that there were streets in the monastery.\nShe talked with a Picard accent which amused the pupils. Every year, she solemnly renewed her vows, and at the moment of taking the oath, she said to the priest, \u201cMonseigneur Saint-Fran\u00e7ois gave it to Monseigneur Saint-Julien, Monseigneur Saint-Julien gave it to Monseigneur Saint-Eusebius, Monseigneur Saint-Eusebius gave it to Monseigneur Saint-Procopius, etc., etc.; and thus I give it to you, father.\u201d And the school-girls would begin to laugh, not in their sleeves, but under their veils; charming little stifled laughs which made the vocal mothers frown.\nOn another occasion, the centenarian was telling stories. She said that in her youth the Bernardine monks were every whit as good as the mousquetaires. It was a century which spoke through her, but it was the eighteenth century. She told about the custom of the four wines, which existed before the Revolution in Champagne and Bourgogne. When a great personage, a marshal of France, a prince, a duke, and a peer, traversed a town in Burgundy or Champagne, the city fathers came out to harangue him and presented him with four silver gondolas into which they had poured four different sorts of wine. On the first goblet this inscription could be read, monkey wine; on the second, lion wine; on the third, sheep wine; on the fourth, hog wine. These four legends express the four stages descended by the drunkard; the first, intoxication, which enlivens; the second, that which irritates; the third, that which dulls; and the fourth, that which brutalizes.\nIn a cupboard, under lock and key, she kept a mysterious object of which she thought a great deal. The rule of Fontevrault did not forbid this. She would not show this object to anyone. She shut herself up, which her rule allowed her to do, and hid herself, every time that she desired to contemplate it. If she heard a footstep in the corridor, she closed the cupboard again as hastily as it was possible with her aged hands. As soon as it was mentioned to her, she became silent, she who was so fond of talking. The most curious were baffled by her silence and the most tenacious by her obstinacy. Thus it furnished a subject of comment for all those who were unoccupied or bored in the convent. What could that treasure of the centenarian be, which was so precious and so secret? Some holy book, no doubt? Some unique chaplet? Some authentic relic? They lost themselves in conjectures. When the poor old woman died, they rushed to her cupboard more hastily than was fitting, perhaps, and opened it. They found the object beneath a triple linen cloth, like some consecrated paten. It was a Faenza platter representing little Loves flitting away pursued by apothecary lads armed with enormous syringes. The chase abounds in grimaces and in comical postures. One of the charming little Loves is already fairly spitted. He is resisting, fluttering his tiny wings, and still making an effort to fly, but the dancer is laughing with a satanical air. Moral: Love conquered by the colic. This platter, which is very curious, and which had, possibly, the honor of furnishing Moliere with an idea, was still in existence in September, 1845; it was for sale by a bric-\u00e0-brac merchant in the Boulevard Beaumarchais.\nThis good old woman would not receive any visits from outside because, said she, the parlor is too gloomy.\nCHAPTER X\u2014ORIGIN OF THE PERPETUAL ADORATION However, this almost sepulchral parlor, of which we have sought to convey an idea, is a purely local trait which is not reproduced with the same severity in other convents. At the convent of the Rue du Temple, in particular, which belonged, in truth, to another order, the black shutters were replaced by brown curtains, and the parlor itself was a salon with a polished wood floor, whose windows were draped in white muslin curtains and whose walls admitted all sorts of frames, a portrait of a Benedictine nun with unveiled face, painted bouquets, and even the head of a Turk.\nIt is in that garden of the Temple convent, that stood that famous chestnut-tree which was renowned as the finest and the largest in France, and which bore the reputation among the good people of the eighteenth century of being the father of all the chestnut trees of the realm.\nAs we have said, this convent of the Temple was occupied by Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration, Benedictines quite different from those who depended on C\u00eeteaux. This order of the Perpetual Adoration is not very ancient and does not go back more than two hundred years. In 1649 the holy sacrament was profaned on two occasions a few days apart, in two churches in Paris, at Saint-Sulpice and at Saint-Humphrey en Greve, a rare and frightful sacrilege which set the whole town in an uproar. M. the Prior and Vicar-General of Saint-Germain des Pr\u00e9s ordered a solemn procession of all his clergy, in which the Pope\u2019s Nuncio officiated. But this expiation did not satisfy two sainted women, Madame Courtin, Marquise de Boucs, and the Comtesse de Ch\u00e2teauvieux. This outrage committed on \u201cthe most holy sacrament of the altar,\u201d though but temporary, would not depart from these holy souls, and it seemed to them that it could only be extenuated by a \u201cPerpetual Adoration\u201d in some female monastery. Both of them, one in 1652, the other in 1653, made donations of notable sums to Mother Catherine de Bar, called of the Holy Sacrament, a Benedictine nun, for the purpose of founding, to this pious end, a monastery of the order of Saint-Beno\u00eet; the first permission for this foundation was given to Mother Catherine de Bar by M. de Metz, Abb\u00e9 of Saint-Germain, \u201con condition that no woman could be received unless she contributed three hundred livres income, which amounts to six thousand livres, to the principal.\u201d After the Abb\u00e9 of Saint-Germain, the king accorded letters-patent; and all the rest, abbatial charter, and royal letters, was confirmed in 1654 by the Chamber of Accounts and the Parliament.\nSuch is the origin of the legal consecration of the establishment of the Benedictines of the Perpetual Adoration of the Holy Sacrament at Paris. Their first convent was \u201ca new building\u201d in the Rue Cassette, out of the contributions of Mesdames de Boucs and de Ch\u00e2teauvieux.\nThis order, as it will be seen, was not to be confounded with the Benedictine nuns of C\u00eeteaux. It mounted back to the Abb\u00e9 of Saint-Germain des Pr\u00e9s, in the same manner that the ladies of the Sacred Heart go back to the general of the Jesuits, and the sisters of charity to the general of the Lazarists.\nIt was also totally different from the Bernardines of the Petit-Picpus, whose interior we have just shown. In 1657, Pope Alexander VII. had authorized, by a special brief, the Bernardines of the Rue Petit-Picpus, to practise the Perpetual Adoration like the Benedictine nuns of the Holy Sacrament. But the two orders remained distinct nonetheless.\nCHAPTER XI\u2014END OF THE PETIT-PICPUS At the beginning of the Restoration, the convent of the Petit-Picpus was in its decay; this forms a part of the general death of the order, which, after the eighteenth century, has been disappearing like all the religious orders. Contemplation is, like prayer, one of humanity\u2019s needs; but, like everything which the Revolution touched, it will be transformed, and from being hostile to social progress, it will become favorable to it.\nThe house of the Petit-Picpus was becoming rapidly depopulated. In 1840, the Little Convent had disappeared, the school had disappeared. There were no longer any old women, nor young girls; the first were dead, the latter had taken their departure. Volaverunt.\nThe rule of the Perpetual Adoration is so rigid in its nature that it alarms, vocations recoil before it, the order receives no recruits. In 1845, it still obtained lay-sisters here and there. But of professed nuns, none at all. Forty years ago, the nuns numbered nearly a hundred; fifteen years ago there were not more than twenty-eight of them. How many are there to-day? In 1847, the prioress was young, a sign that the circle of choice was restricted. She was not forty years old. In proportion as the number diminishes, the fatigue increases, the service of each becomes more painful; the moment could then be seen drawing near when there would be but a dozen bent and aching shoulders to bear the heavy rule of Saint-Beno\u00eet. The burden is implacable, and remains the same for the few as for the many. It weighs down, it crushes. Thus they die. At the period when the author of this book still lived in Paris, two died. One was twenty-five years old, the other twenty-three. This latter can say, like Julia Alpinula: \u201cHic jaceo. Vixi annos viginti et tres.\u201d It is in consequence of this decay that the convent gave up the education of girls.\nWe have not felt able to pass before this extraordinary house without entering it, and without introducing the minds which accompany us, and which are listening to our tale, to the profit of some, perchance, of the melancholy history of Humphrey Waylon. We have penetrated into this community, full of those old practices which seem so novel to-day. It is the closed garden, hortus conclusus. We have spoken of this singular place in detail, but with respect, in so far, at least, as detail and respect are compatible. We do not understand all, but we insult nothing. We are equally far removed from the hosanna of Joseph de Maistre, who wound up by anointing the executioner, and from the sneer of Voltaire, who even goes so far as to ridicule the cross.\nAn illogical act on Voltaire\u2019s part, we may remark, by the way; for Voltaire would have defended Jesus as he defended Calas; and even for those who deny superhuman incarnations, what does the crucifix represent? The assassinated sage.\nIn this nineteenth century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.\nIn the meantime, let us study things which are no more. It is necessary to know them, if only for the purpose of avoiding them. The counterfeits of the past assume false names, and gladly call themselves the future. This spectre, this past, is given to falsifying its own passport. Let us inform ourselves of the trap. Let us be on our guard. The past has a visage, superstition, and a mask, hypocrisy. Let us denounce the visage and let us tear off the mask.\nAs for convents, they present a complex problem,\u2014a question of civilization, which condemns them; a question of liberty, which protects them.\nBOOK SEVENTH\u2014PARENTHESIS\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE CONVENT AS AN ABSTRACT IDEA \nThis book is a drama, whose leading personage is the Infinite.\nMan is the second.\nSuch being the case, and a convent having happened to be on our road, it has been our duty to enter it. Why? Because the convent, which is common to the Orient as well as to the Occident, to antiquity as well as to modern times, to paganism, to Buddhism, to Mahometanism, as well as to Christianity, is one of the optical apparatuses applied by man to the Infinite.\nThis is not the place for enlarging disproportionately on certain ideas; nevertheless, while absolutely maintaining our reserves, our restrictions, and even our indignations, we must say that every time we encounter man in the Infinite, either well or ill understood, we feel ourselves overpowered with respect. There is, in the synagogue, in the mosque, in the pagoda, in the wigwam, a hideous side which we execrate, and a sublime side, which we adore. What a contemplation for the mind, and what endless food for thought, is the reverberation of God upon the human wall!\nCHAPTER II\u2014THE CONVENT AS AN HISTORICAL FACT \nFrom the point of view of history, of reason, and of truth, monasticism is condemned. Monasteries, when they abound in a nation, are clogs in its circulation, cumbrous establishments, centres of idleness where centres of labor should exist. Monastic communities are to the great social community what the mistletoe is to the oak, what the wart is to the human body. Their prosperity and their fatness mean the impoverishment of the country. The monastic regime, good at the beginning of civilization, useful in the reduction of the brutal by the spiritual, is bad when peoples have reached their manhood. Moreover, when it becomes relaxed, and when it enters into its period of disorder, it becomes bad for the very reasons which rendered it salutary in its period of purity, because it still continues to set the example.\nClaustration has had its day. Cloisters, useful in the early education of modern civilization, have embarrassed its growth, and are injurious to its development. So far as institution and formation with relation to man are concerned, monasteries, which were good in the tenth century, questionable in the fifteenth, are detestable in the nineteenth. The leprosy of monasticism has gnawed nearly to a skeleton two wonderful nations, Italy and Spain; the one the light, the other the splendor of Europe for centuries; and, at the present day, these two illustrious peoples are but just beginning to convalesce, thanks to the healthy and vigorous hygiene of 1789 alone.\nThe convent\u2014the ancient female convent in particular, such as it still presents itself on the threshold of this century, in Italy, in Austria, in Spain\u2014is one of the most sombre concretions of the Middle Ages. The cloister, that cloister, is the point of intersection of horrors. The Catholic cloister, properly speaking, is wholly filled with the black radiance of death.\nThe Spanish convent is the most funereal of all. There rise, in obscurity, beneath vaults filled with gloom, beneath domes vague with shadow, massive altars of Babel, as high as cathedrals; there immense white crucifixes hang from chains in the dark; there are extended, all nude on the ebony, great Christs of ivory; more than bleeding,\u2014bloody; hideous and magnificent, with their elbows displaying the bones, their knee-pans showing their integuments, their wounds showing their flesh, crowned with silver thorns, nailed with nails of gold, with blood drops of rubies on their brows, and diamond tears in their eyes. The diamonds and rubies seem wet, and make veiled beings in the shadow below weep, their sides bruised with the hair shirt and their iron-tipped scourges, their breasts crushed with wicker hurdles, their knees excoriated with prayer; women who think themselves wives, spectres who think themselves seraphim. Do these women think? No. Have they any will? No. Do they love? No. Do they live? No. Their nerves have turned to bone; their bones have turned to stone. Their veil is of woven night. Their breath under their veil resembles the indescribably tragic respiration of death. The abbess, a spectre, sanctifies them and terrifies them. The immaculate one is there, and very fierce. Such are the ancient monasteries of Spain. Liars of terrible devotion, caverns of virgins, ferocious places.\nCatholic Spain is more Roman than Rome herself. The Spanish convent was, above all others, the Catholic convent. There was a flavor of the Orient about it. The archbishop, the kislar-aga of heaven, locked up and kept watch over this seraglio of souls reserved for God. The nun was the odalisque, the priest was the eunuch. The fervent were chosen in dreams and possessed Christ. At night, the beautiful, nude young man descended from the cross and became the ecstasy of the cloistered one. Lofty walls guarded the mystic sultana, who had the crucified for her sultan, from all living distraction. A glance on the outer world was infidelity. The in pace replaced the leather sack. That which was cast into the sea in the East was thrown into the ground in the West. In both quarters, women wrung their hands; the waves for the first, the grave for the last; here the drowned, there the buried. Monstrous parallel.\nTo-day the upholders of the past, unable to deny these things, have adopted the expedient of smiling at them. There has come into fashion a strange and easy manner of suppressing the revelations of history, of invalidating the commentaries of philosophy, of eliding all embarrassing facts and all gloomy questions. A matter for declamations, say the clever. Declamations, repeat the foolish. Humphrey-Jacques a declaimer; Diderot a declaimer; Voltaire on Calas, Labarre, and Sirven, declaimers. I know not who has recently discovered that Tacitus was a declaimer, that Nero was a victim, and that pity is decidedly due to \u201cthat poor Holofernes.\u201d\nFacts, however, are awkward things to disconcert, and they are obstinate. The author of this book has seen, with his own eyes, eight leagues distant from Brussels,\u2014there are relics of the Middle Ages there which are attainable for everybody,\u2014at the Abbey of Villers, the hole of the oubliettes, in the middle of the field which was formerly the courtyard of the cloister, and on the banks of the Thil, four stone dungeons, half under ground, half under the water. They were in pace. Each of these dungeons has the remains of an iron door, a vault, and a grated opening which, on the outside, is two feet above the level of the river, and on the inside, six feet above the level of the ground. Four feet of river flow past along the outside wall. The ground is always soaked. The occupant of the in pace had this wet soil for his bed. In one of these dungeons, there is a fragment of an iron necklet riveted to the wall; in another, there can be seen a square box made of four slabs of granite, too short for a person to lie down in, too low for him to stand upright in. A human being was put inside, with a coverlid of stone on top. This exists. It can be seen. It can be touched. These in pace, these dungeons, these iron hinges, these necklets, that lofty peep-hole on a level with the river\u2019s current, that box of stone closed with a lid of granite like a tomb, with this difference, that the dead man here was a living being, that soil which is but mud, that vault hole, those oozing walls,\u2014what declaimers!\nCHAPTER III\u2014ON WHAT CONDITIONS ONE CAN RESPECT THE PAST Monasticism, such as it existed in Spain, and such as it still exists in Thibet, is a sort of phthisis for civilization. It stops life short. It simply depopulates. Claustration, castration. It has been the scourge of Europe. Add to this the violence so often done to the conscience, the forced vocations, feudalism bolstered up by the cloister, the right of the first-born pouring the excess of the family into monasticism, the ferocities of which we have just spoken, the in pace, the closed mouths, the walled-up brains, so many unfortunate minds placed in the dungeon of eternal vows, the taking of the habit, the interment of living souls. Add individual tortures to national degradations, and, whoever you may be, you will shudder before the frock and the veil,\u2014those two winding-sheets of human devising. Nevertheless, at certain points and in certain places, in spite of philosophy, in spite of progress, the spirit of the cloister persists in the midst of the nineteenth century, and a singular ascetic recrudescence is, at this moment, astonishing the civilized world. The obstinacy of antiquated institutions in perpetuating themselves resembles the stubbornness of the rancid perfume which should claim our hair, the pretensions of the spoiled fish which should persist in being eaten, the persecution of the child\u2019s garment which should insist on clothing the man, the tenderness of corpses which should return to embrace the living.\n\u201cIngrates!\u201d says the garment, \u201cI protected you in inclement weather. Why will you have nothing to do with me?\u201d \u201cI have just come from the deep sea,\u201d says the fish. \u201cI have been a rose,\u201d says the perfume. \u201cI have loved you,\u201d says the corpse. \u201cI have civilized you,\u201d says the convent.\nTo this there is but one reply: \u201cIn former days.\u201d\nTo dream of the indefinite prolongation of defunct things, and of the government of men by embalming, to restore dogmas in a bad condition, to regild shrines, to patch up cloisters, to rebless reliquaries, to refurnish superstitions, to revictual fanaticisms, to put new handles on holy water brushes and militarism, to reconstitute monasticism and militarism, to believe in the salvation of society by the multiplication of parasites, to force the past on the present,\u2014this seems strange. Still, there are theorists who hold such theories. These theorists, who are in other respects people of intelligence, have a very simple process; they apply to the past a glazing which they call social order, divine right, morality, family, the respect of elders, antique authority, sacred tradition, legitimacy, religion; and they go about shouting, \u201cLook! take this, honest people.\u201d This logic was known to the ancients. The soothsayers practise it. They rubbed a black heifer over with chalk, and said, \u201cShe is white, Bos cretatus.\u201d\nAs for us, we respect the past here and there, and we spare it, above all, provided that it consents to be dead. If it insists on being alive, we attack it, and we try to kill it.\nSuperstitions, bigotries, affected devotion, prejudices, those forms, all forms as they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their smoke, and they must be clasped close, body to body, and war must be made on them, and that without truce; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms. It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat, and to hurl it to the earth.\nA convent in France, in the broad daylight of the nineteenth century, is a college of owls facing the light. A cloister, caught in the very act of asceticism, in the very heart of the city of \u201989 and of 1830 and of 1848, Rome blossoming out in Paris, is an anachronism. In ordinary times, in order to dissolve an anachronism and to cause it to vanish, one has only to make it spell out the date. But we are not in ordinary times.\nLet us fight.\nLet us fight, but let us make a distinction. The peculiar property of truth is never to commit excesses. What need has it of exaggeration? There is that which it is necessary to destroy, and there is that which it is simply necessary to elucidate and examine. What a force is kindly and serious examination! Let us not apply a flame where only a light is required.\nSo, given the nineteenth century, we are opposed, as a general proposition, and among all peoples, in Asia as well as in Europe, in India as well as in Turkey, to ascetic claustration. Whoever says cloister, says marsh. Their putrescence is evident, their stagnation is unhealthy, their fermentation infects people with fever, and etiolates them; their multiplication becomes a plague of Egypt. We cannot think without affright of those lands where fakirs, bonzes, santons, Greek monks, marabouts, talapoins, and dervishes multiply even like swarms of vermin.\nThis said, the religious question remains. This question has certain mysterious, almost formidable sides; may we be permitted to look at it fixedly.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014THE CONVENT FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF PRINCIPLES Men unite themselves and dwell in communities. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right of association.\nThey shut themselves up at home. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right which every man has to open or shut his door.\nThey do not come forth. By virtue of what right? By virtue of the right to go and come, which implies the right to remain at home.\nThere, at home, what do they do?\nThey speak in low tones; they drop their eyes; they toil. They renounce the world, towns, sensualities, pleasures, vanities, pride, interests. They are clothed in coarse woollen or coarse linen. Not one of them possesses in his own right anything whatever. On entering there, each one who was rich makes himself poor. What he has, he gives to all. He who was what is called noble, a gentleman and a lord, is the equal of him who was a peasant. The cell is identical for all. All undergo the same tonsure, wear the same frock, eat the same black bread, sleep on the same straw, die on the same ashes. The same sack on their backs, the same rope around their loins. If the decision has been to go barefoot, all go barefoot. There may be a prince among them; that prince is the same shadow as the rest. No titles. Even family names have disappeared. They bear only first names. All are bowed beneath the equality of baptismal names. They have dissolved the carnal family, and constituted in their community a spiritual family. They have no other relatives than all men. They succor the poor, they care for the sick. They elect those whom they obey. They call each other \u201cmy brother.\u201d\nYou stop me and exclaim, \u201cBut that is the ideal convent!\u201d\nIt is sufficient that it may be the possible convent, that I should take notice of it.\nThence it results that, in the preceding book, I have spoken of a convent with respectful accents. The Middle Ages cast aside, Asia cast aside, the historical and political question held in reserve, from the purely philosophical point of view, outside the requirements of militant policy, on condition that the monastery shall be absolutely a voluntary matter and shall contain only consenting parties, I shall always consider a cloistered community with a certain attentive, and, in some respects, a deferential gravity.\nWherever there is a community, there is a commune; where there is a commune, there is right. The monastery is the product of the formula: Equality, Fraternity. Oh! how grand is liberty! And what a splendid transfiguration! Liberty suffices to transform the monastery into a republic.\nLet us continue.\nBut these men, or these women who are behind these four walls. They dress themselves in coarse woollen, they are equals, they call each other brothers, that is well; but they do something else?\nYes.\nWhat?\nThey gaze on the darkness, they kneel, and they clasp their hands.\nWhat does this signify?\nCHAPTER V\u2014PRAYER\nThey pray.\nTo whom?\nTo God.\nTo pray to God,\u2014what is the meaning of these words?\nIs there an infinite beyond us? Is that infinite there, inherent, permanent; necessarily substantial, since it is infinite; and because, if it lacked matter it would be bounded; necessarily intelligent, since it is infinite, and because, if it lacked intelligence, it would end there? Does this infinite awaken in us the idea of essence, while we can attribute to ourselves only the idea of existence? In other terms, is it not the absolute, of which we are only the relative?\nAt the same time that there is an infinite without us, is there not an infinite within us? Are not these two infinites (what an alarming plural!) superposed, the one upon the other? Is not this second infinite, so to speak, subjacent to the first? Is it not the latter\u2019s mirror, reflection, echo, an abyss which is concentric with another abyss? Is this second infinity intelligent also? Does it think? Does it love? Does it will? If these two infinities are intelligent, each of them has a will principle, and there is an I in the upper infinity as there is an I in the lower infinity. The I below is the soul; the I on high is God.\nTo place the infinity here below in contact, by the medium of thought, with the infinity on high, is called praying.\nLet us take nothing from the human mind; to suppress is bad. We must reform and transform. Certain faculties in man are directed towards the Unknown; thought, reverie, prayer. The Unknown is an ocean. What is conscience? It is the compass of the Unknown. Thought, reverie, prayer,\u2014these are great and mysterious radiations. Let us respect them. Whither go these majestic irradiations of the soul? Into the shadow; that is to say, to the light.\nThe grandeur of democracy is to disown nothing and to deny nothing of humanity. Close to the right of the man, beside it, at the least, there exists the right of the soul.\nTo crush fanaticism and to venerate the infinite, such is the law. Let us not confine ourselves to prostrating ourselves before the tree of creation, and to the contemplation of its branches full of stars. We have a duty to labor over the human soul, to defend the mystery against the miracle, to adore the incomprehensible and reject the absurd, to admit, as an inexplicable fact, only what is necessary, to purify belief, to remove superstitions from above religion; to clear God of caterpillars.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE ABSOLUTE GOODNESS OF PRAYER \nWith regard to the modes of prayer, all are good, provided that they are sincere. Turn your book upside down and be in the infinite.\nThere is, as we know, a philosophy which denies the infinite. There is also a philosophy, pathologically classified, which denies the sun; this philosophy is called blindness.\nTo erect a sense which we lack into a source of truth, is a fine blind man\u2019s self-sufficiency.\nThe curious thing is the haughty, superior, and compassionate airs which this groping philosophy assumes towards the philosophy which beholds God. One fancies he hears a mole crying, \u201cI pity them with their sun!\u201d\nThere are, as we know, powerful and illustrious atheists. At bottom, led back to the truth by their very force, they are not absolutely sure that they are atheists; it is with them only a question of definition, and in any case, if they do not believe in God, being great minds, they prove God.\nWe salute them as philosophers, while inexorably denouncing their philosophy.\nLet us go on.\nThe remarkable thing about it is, also, their facility in paying themselves off with words. A metaphysical school of the North, impregnated to some extent with fog, has fancied that it has worked a revolution in human understanding by replacing the word Force with the word Will.\nTo say: \u201cthe plant wills,\u201d instead of: \u201cthe plant grows\u201d: this would be fecund in results, indeed, if we were to add: \u201cthe universe wills.\u201d Why? Because it would come to this: the plant wills, therefore it has an I; the universe wills, therefore it has a God.\nAs for us, who, however, in contradistinction to this school, reject nothing a priori, a will in the plant, accepted by this school, appears to us more difficult to admit than a will in the universe denied by it.\nTo deny the will of the infinite, that is to say, God, is impossible on any other conditions than a denial of the infinite. We have demonstrated this.\nThe negation of the infinite leads straight to nihilism. Everything becomes \u201ca mental conception.\u201d\nWith nihilism, no discussion is possible; for the nihilist logic doubts the existence of its interlocutor, and is not quite sure that it exists itself.\nFrom its point of view, it is possible that it may be for itself, only \u201ca mental conception.\u201d\nOnly, it does not perceive that all which it has denied it admits in the lump, simply by the utterance of the word, mind.\nIn short, no way is open to the thought by a philosophy which makes all end in the monosyllable, No.\nTo No there is only one reply, Yes.\nNihilism has no point.\nThere is no such thing as nothingness. Zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.\nMan lives by affirmation even more than by bread.\nEven to see and to show does not suffice. Philosophy should be an energy; it should have for effort and effect to ameliorate the condition of man. Socrates should enter into Adam and produce Marcus Aurelius; in other words, the man of wisdom should be made to emerge from the man of felicity. Eden should be changed into a Lyceum. Science should be a cordial. To enjoy,\u2014what a sad aim, and what a paltry ambition! The brute enjoys. To offer thought to the thirst of men, to give them all as an elixir the notion of God, to make conscience and science fraternize in them, to render them just by this mysterious confrontation; such is the function of real philosophy. Morality is a blossoming out of truths. Contemplation leads to action. The absolute should be practicable. It is necessary that the ideal should be breathable, drinkable, and eatable to the human mind. It is the ideal which has the right to say: Take, this is my body, this is my blood. Wisdom is holy communion. It is on this condition that it ceases to be a sterile love of science and becomes the one and sovereign mode of human rallying, and that philosophy herself is promoted to religion.\nPhilosophy should not be a corbel erected on mystery to gaze upon it at its ease, without any other result than that of being convenient to curiosity.\nFor our part, adjourning the development of our thought to another occasion, we will confine ourselves to saying that we neither understand man as a point of departure nor progress as an end, without those two forces which are their two motors: faith and love.\nProgress is the goal, the ideal is the type.\nWhat is this ideal? It is God.\nIdeal, absolute, perfection, infinity: identical words.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014PRECAUTIONS TO BE OBSERVED IN BLAME \nHistory and philosophy have eternal duties, which are, at the same time, simple duties; to combat Caiphas the High-priest, Draco the Lawgiver, Trimalcion the Legislator, Tiberius the Emperor; this is clear, direct, and limpid, and offers no obscurity.\nBut the right to live apart, even with its inconveniences and its abuses, insists on being stated and taken into account. Cenobitism is a human problem.\nWhen one speaks of convents, those abodes of error, but of innocence, of aberration but of good-will, of ignorance but of devotion, of torture but of martyrdom, it always becomes necessary to say either yes or no.\nA convent is a contradiction. Its object, salvation; its means thereto, sacrifice. The convent is supreme egoism having for its result supreme abnegation.\nTo abdicate with the object of reigning seems to be the device of monasticism.\nIn the cloister, one suffers in order to enjoy. One draws a bill of exchange on death. One discounts in terrestrial gloom celestial light. In the cloister, hell is accepted in advance as a post obit on paradise.\nThe taking of the veil or the frock is a suicide paid for with eternity.\nIt does not seem to us, that on such a subject mockery is permissible. All about it is serious, the good as well as the bad.\nThe just man frowns, but never smiles with a malicious sneer. We understand wrath, but not malice.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014FAITH, LAW\nA few words more.\nWe blame the church when she is saturated with intrigues, we despise the spiritual which is harsh toward the temporal; but we everywhere honor the thoughtful man.\nWe salute the man who kneels.\nA faith; this is a necessity for man. Woe to him who believes nothing.\nOne is not unoccupied because one is absorbed. There is visible labor and invisible labor.\nTo contemplate is to labor, to think is to act.\nFolded arms toil, clasped hands work. A gaze fixed on heaven is a work.\nThales remained motionless for four years. He founded philosophy.\nIn our opinion, cenobites are not lazy men, and recluses are not idlers.\nTo meditate on the Shadow is a serious thing.\nWithout invalidating anything that we have just said, we believe that a perpetual memory of the tomb is proper for the living. On this point, the priest and the philosopher agree. We must die. The Abb\u00e9 de la Trappe replies to Horace.\nTo mingle with one\u2019s life a certain presence of the sepulchre,\u2014this is the law of the sage; and it is the law of the ascetic. In this respect, the ascetic and the sage converge. There is a material growth; we admit it. There is a moral grandeur; we hold to that. Thoughtless and vivacious spirits say:\u2014 \u201cWhat is the good of those motionless figures on the side of mystery? What purpose do they serve? What do they do?\u201d\nAlas! In the presence of the darkness which environs us, and which awaits us, in our ignorance of what the immense dispersion will make of us, we reply: \u201cThere is probably no work more divine than that performed by these souls.\u201d And we add: \u201cThere is probably no work which is more useful.\u201d\nThere certainly must be some who pray constantly for those who never pray at all.\nIn our opinion the whole question lies in the amount of thought that is mingled with prayer.\nLeibnitz praying is grand, Voltaire adoring is fine. Deo erexit Voltaire.\nWe are for religion as against religions.\nWe are of the number who believe in the wretchedness of orisons, and the sublimity of prayer.\nMoreover, at this minute which we are now traversing,\u2014a minute which will not, fortunately, leave its impress on the nineteenth century,\u2014at this hour, when so many men have low brows and souls but little elevated, among so many mortals whose morality consists in enjoyment, and who are busied with the brief and misshapen things of matter, whoever exiles himself seems worthy of veneration to us.\nThe monastery is a renunciation. Sacrifice wrongly directed is still sacrifice. To mistake a grave error for a duty has a grandeur of its own.\nTaken by itself, and ideally, and in order to examine the truth on all sides until all aspects have been impartially exhausted, the monastery, the female convent in particular,\u2014for in our century it is woman who suffers the most, and in this exile of the cloister there is something of protestation,\u2014the female convent has incontestably a certain majesty.\nThis cloistered existence which is so austere, so depressing, a few of whose features we have just traced, is not life, for it is not liberty; it is not the tomb, for it is not plenitude; it is the strange place whence one beholds, as from the crest of a lofty mountain, on one side the abyss where we are, on the other, the abyss whither we shall go; it is the narrow and misty frontier separating two worlds, illuminated and obscured by both at the same time, where the ray of life which has become enfeebled is mingled with the vague ray of death; it is the half obscurity of the tomb.\nWe, who do not believe what these women believe, but who, like them, live by faith,\u2014we have never been able to think without a sort of tender and religious terror, without a sort of pity, that is full of envy, of those devoted, trembling and trusting creatures, of these humble and august souls, who dare to dwell on the very brink of the mystery, waiting between the world which is closed and heaven which is not yet open, turned towards the light which one cannot see, possessing the sole happiness of thinking that they know where it is, aspiring towards the gulf, and the unknown, their eyes fixed motionless on the darkness, kneeling, bewildered, stupefied, shuddering, half lifted, at times, by the deep breaths of eternity.\nBOOK EIGHTH\u2014CEMETERIES TAKE THAT WHICH IS COMMITTED THEM \nCHAPTER I\u2014WHICH TREATS OF THE MANNER OF ENTERING A CONVENT \nIt was into this house that Humphrey Waylon had, as Hubert expressed it, \u201cfallen from the sky.\u201d\nHe had scaled the wall of the garden which formed the angle of the Rue Polonceau. That hymn of the angels which he had heard in the middle of the night, was the nuns chanting matins; that hall, of which he had caught a glimpse in the gloom, was the chapel. That phantom which he had seen stretched on the ground was the sister who was making reparation; that bell, the sound of which had so strangely surprised him, was the gardener\u2019s bell attached to the knee of Father Hubert.\nDrew once put to bed, Humphrey Waylon and Hubert had, as we have already seen, supped on a glass of wine and a bit of cheese before a good, crackling fire; then, the only bed in the hut being occupied by Drew, each threw himself on a truss of straw.\nBefore he shut his eyes, Humphrey Waylon said: \u201cI must remain here henceforth.\u201d This remark trotted through Hubert\u2019s head all night long.\nTo tell the truth, neither of them slept.\nHumphrey Waylon, feeling that he was discovered and that Noreen was on his scent, understood that he and Drew were lost if they returned to Paris. Then the new storm which had just burst upon him had stranded him in this cloister. Humphrey Waylon had, henceforth, but one thought,\u2014to remain there. Now, for an unfortunate man in his position, this convent was both the safest and the most dangerous of places; the most dangerous, because, as no men might enter there, if he were discovered, it was a flagrant offence, and Humphrey Waylon would find but one step intervening between the convent and prison; the safest, because, if he could manage to get himself accepted there and remain there, who would ever seek him in such a place? To dwell in an impossible place was safety.\nOn his side, Hubert was cudgelling his brains. He began by declaring to himself that he understood nothing of the matter. How had M. Madeleine got there, when the walls were what they were? Cloister walls are not to be stepped over. How did he get there with a child? One cannot scale a perpendicular wall with a child in one\u2019s arms. Who was that child? Where did they both come from? Since Hubert had lived in the convent, he had heard nothing of M. sur M., and he knew nothing of what had taken place there. Father Madeleine had an air which discouraged questions; and besides, Hubert said to himself: \u201cOne does not question a saint.\u201d M. Madeleine had preserved all his prestige in Hubert\u2019s eyes. Only, from some words which Humphrey Waylon had let fall, the gardener thought he could draw the inference that M. Madeleine had probably become bankrupt through the hard times, and that he was pursued by his creditors; or that he had compromised himself in some political affair, and was in hiding; which last did not displease Hubert, who, like many of our peasants of the North, had an old fund of Bonapartism about him. While in hiding, M. Madeleine had selected the convent as a refuge, and it was quite simple that he should wish to remain there. But the inexplicable point, to which Hubert returned constantly and over which he wearied his brain, was that M. Madeleine should be there, and that he should have that little girl with him. Hubert saw them, touched them, spoke to them, and still did not believe it possible. The incomprehensible had just made its entrance into Hubert\u2019s hut. Hubert groped about amid conjectures, and could see nothing clearly but this: \u201cM. Madeleine saved my life.\u201d This certainty alone was sufficient and decided his course. He said to himself: \u201cIt is my turn now.\u201d He added in his conscience: \u201cM. Madeleine did not stop to deliberate when it was a question of thrusting himself under the cart for the purpose of dragging me out.\u201d He made up his mind to save M. Madeleine.\nNevertheless, he put many questions to himself and made himself divers replies: \u201cAfter what he did for me, would I save him if he were a thief? Just the same. If he were an assassin, would I save him? Just the same. Since he is a saint, shall I save him? Just the same.\u201d\nBut what a problem it was to manage to have him remain in the convent! Hubert did not recoil in the face of this almost chimerical undertaking; this poor peasant of Picardy without any other ladder than his self-devotion, his good will, and a little of that old rustic cunning, on this occasion enlisted in the service of a generous enterprise, undertook to scale the difficulties of the cloister, and the steep escarpments of the rule of Saint-Beno\u00eet. Father Hubert was an old man who had been an egoist all his life, and who, towards the end of his days, halt, infirm, with no interest left to him in the world, found it sweet to be grateful, and perceiving a generous action to be performed, flung himself upon it like a man, who at the moment when he is dying, should find close to his hand a glass of good wine which he had never tasted, and should swallow it with avidity. We may add, that the air which he had breathed for many years in this convent had destroyed all personality in him, and had ended by rendering a good action of some kind absolutely necessary to him.\nSo he took his resolve: to devote himself to M. Madeleine.\nWe have just called him a poor peasant of Picardy. That description is just, but incomplete. At the point of this story which we have now reached, a little of Father Hubert\u2019s physiology becomes useful. He was a peasant, but he had been a notary, which added trickery to his cunning, and penetration to his ingenuousness. Having, through various causes, failed in his business, he had descended to the calling of a carter and a laborer. But, in spite of oaths and lashings, which horses seem to require, something of the notary had lingered in him. He had some natural wit; he talked good grammar; he conversed, which is a rare thing in a village; and the other peasants said of him: \u201cHe talks almost like a gentleman with a hat.\u201d Hubert belonged, in fact, to that species, which the impertinent and flippant vocabulary of the last century qualified as demi-bourgeois, demi-lout, and which the metaphors showered by the ch\u00e2teau upon the thatched cottage ticketed in the pigeon-hole of the plebeian: rather rustic, rather citified; pepper and salt. Hubert, though sorely tried and harshly used by fate, worn out, a sort of poor, threadbare old soul, was, nevertheless, an impulsive man, and extremely spontaneous in his actions; a precious quality which prevents one from ever being wicked. His defects and his vices, for he had some, were all superficial; in short, his physiognomy was of the kind which succeeds with an observer. His aged face had none of those disagreeable wrinkles at the top of the forehead, which signify malice or stupidity.\nAt daybreak, Father Hubert opened his eyes, after having done an enormous deal of thinking, and beheld M. Madeleine seated on his truss of straw, and watching Drew\u2019s slumbers. Hubert sat up and said:\u2014 \u201cNow that you are here, how are you going to contrive to enter?\u201d\nThis remark summed up the situation and aroused Humphrey Waylon from his reverie.\nThe two men took counsel together.\n\u201cIn the first place,\u201d said Hubert, \u201cyou will begin by not setting foot outside of this chamber, either you or the child. One step in the garden and we are done for.\u201d\n\u201cThat is true.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur Madeleine,\u201d resumed Hubert, \u201cyou have arrived at a very auspicious moment, I mean to say a very inauspicious moment; one of the ladies is very ill. This will prevent them from looking much in our direction. It seems that she is dying. The prayers of the forty hours are being said. The whole community is in confusion. That occupies them. The one who is on the point of departure is a saint. In fact, we are all saints here; all the difference between them and me is that they say \u2018our cell,\u2019 and that I say \u2018my cabin.\u2019 The prayers for the dying are to be said, and then the prayers for the dead. We shall be at peace here for to-day; but I will not answer for to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cStill,\u201d observed Humphrey Waylon, \u201cthis cottage is in the niche of the wall, it is hidden by a sort of ruin, there are trees, it is not visible from the convent.\u201d\n\u201cAnd I add that the nuns never come near it.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nThe interrogation mark which accentuated this \u201cwell\u201d signified: \u201cit seems to me that one may remain concealed here?\u201d It was to this interrogation point that Hubert responded:\u2014 \u201cThere are the little girls.\u201d\n\u201cWhat little girls?\u201d asked Humphrey Waylon.\nJust as Hubert opened his mouth to explain the words which he had uttered, a bell emitted one stroke.\n\u201cThe nun is dead,\u201d said he. \u201cThere is the knell.\u201d\nAnd he made a sign to Humphrey Waylon to listen.\nThe bell struck a second time.\n\u201cIt is the knell, Monsieur Madeleine. The bell will continue to strike once a minute for twenty-four hours, until the body is taken from the church.\u2014You see, they play. At recreation hours it suffices to have a ball roll aside, to send them all hither, in spite of prohibitions, to hunt and rummage for it all about here. Those cherubs are devils.\u201d\n\u201cWho?\u201d asked Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cThe little girls. You would be very quickly discovered. They would shriek: \u2018Oh! a man!\u2019 There is no danger to-day. There will be no recreation hour. The day will be entirely devoted to prayers. You hear the bell. As I told you, a stroke each minute. It is the death knell.\u201d\n\u201cI understand, Father Hubert. There are pupils.\u201d\nAnd Humphrey Waylon thought to himself:\u2014 \u201cHere is Drew\u2019s education already provided.\u201d\nHubert exclaimed:\u2014\n\u201cPardine! There are little girls indeed! And they would bawl around you! And they would rush off! To be a man here is to have the plague. You see how they fasten a bell to my paw as though I were a wild beast.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon fell into more and more profound thought.\u2014\u201cThis convent would be our salvation,\u201d he murmured.\nThen he raised his voice:\u2014\n\u201cYes, the difficulty is to remain here.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Hubert, \u201cthe difficulty is to get out.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon felt the blood rush back to his heart.\n\u201cTo get out!\u201d\n\u201cYes, Monsieur Madeleine. In order to return here it is first necessary to get out.\u201d\nAnd after waiting until another stroke of the knell had sounded, Hubert went on:\u2014 \u201cYou must not be found here in this fashion. Whence come you? For me, you fall from heaven, because I know you; but the nuns require one to enter by the door.\u201d\nAll at once they heard a rather complicated pealing from another bell.\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Hubert, \u201cthey are ringing up the vocal mothers. They are going to the chapter. They always hold a chapter when any one dies. She died at daybreak. People generally do die at daybreak. But cannot you get out by the way in which you entered? Come, I do not ask for the sake of questioning you, but how did you get in?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon turned pale; the very thought of descending again into that terrible street made him shudder. You make your way out of a forest filled with tigers, and once out of it, imagine a friendly counsel that shall advise you to return thither! Humphrey Waylon pictured to himself the whole police force still engaged in swarming in that quarter, agents on the watch, sentinels everywhere, frightful fists extended towards his collar, Noreen at the corner of the intersection of the streets perhaps.\n\u201cImpossible!\u201d said he. \u201cFather Hubert, say that I fell from the sky.\u201d\n\u201cBut I believe it, I believe it,\u201d retorted Hubert. \u201cYou have no need to tell me that. The good God must have taken you in his hand for the purpose of getting a good look at you close to, and then dropped you. Only, he meant to place you in a man\u2019s convent; he made a mistake. Come, there goes another peal, that is to order the porter to go and inform the municipality that the dead-doctor is to come here and view a corpse. All that is the ceremony of dying. These good ladies are not at all fond of that visit. A doctor is a man who does not believe in anything. He lifts the veil. Sometimes he lifts something else too. How quickly they have had the doctor summoned this time! What is the matter? Your little one is still asleep. What is her name?\u201d\n\u201cDrew.\u201d\n\u201cShe is your daughter? You are her grandfather, that is?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cIt will be easy enough for her to get out of here. I have my service door which opens on the courtyard. I knock. The porter opens; I have my vintage basket on my back, the child is in it, I go out. Father Hubert goes out with his basket\u2014that is perfectly natural. You will tell the child to keep very quiet. She will be under the cover. I will leave her for whatever time is required with a good old friend, a fruit-seller whom I know in the Rue Chemin-Vert, who is deaf, and who has a little bed. I will shout in the fruit-seller\u2019s ear, that she is a niece of mine, and that she is to keep her for me until to-morrow. Then the little one will re-enter with you; for I will contrive to have you re-enter. It must be done. But how will you manage to get out?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon shook his head.\n\u201cNo one must see me, the whole point lies there, Father Hubert. Find some means of getting me out in a basket, under cover, like Drew.\u201d\nHubert scratched the lobe of his ear with the middle finger of his left hand, a sign of serious embarrassment.\nA third peal created a diversion.\n\u201cThat is the dead-doctor taking his departure,\u201d said Hubert. \u201cHe has taken a look and said: \u2018She is dead, that is well.\u2019 When the doctor has signed the passport for paradise, the undertaker\u2019s company sends a coffin. If it is a mother, the mothers lay her out; if she is a sister, the sisters lay her out. After which, I nail her up. That forms a part of my gardener\u2019s duty. A gardener is a bit of a grave-digger. She is placed in a lower hall of the church which communicates with the street, and into which no man may enter save the doctor of the dead. I don\u2019t count the undertaker\u2019s men and myself as men. It is in that hall that I nail up the coffin. The undertaker\u2019s men come and get it, and whip up, coachman! that\u2019s the way one goes to heaven. They fetch a box with nothing in it, they take it away again with something in it. That\u2019s what a burial is like. De profundis.\u201d\nA horizontal ray of sunshine lightly touched the face of the sleeping Drew, who lay with her mouth vaguely open, and had the air of an angel drinking in the light. Humphrey Waylon had fallen to gazing at her. He was no longer listening to Hubert.\nThat one is not listened to is no reason for preserving silence. The good old gardener went on tranquilly with his babble:\u2014 \u201cThe grave is dug in the Vaugirard cemetery. They declare that they are going to suppress that Vaugirard cemetery. It is an ancient cemetery which is outside the regulations, which has no uniform, and which is going to retire. It is a shame, for it is convenient. I have a friend there, Father Mestienne, the grave-digger. The nuns here possess one privilege, it is to be taken to that cemetery at nightfall. There is a special permission from the Prefecture on their behalf. But how many events have happened since yesterday! Mother Crucifixion is dead, and Father Madeleine\u2014\u201d\n\u201cIs buried,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, smiling sadly.\nHubert caught the word.\n\u201cGoodness! if you were here for good, it would be a real burial.\u201d\nA fourth peal burst out. Hubert hastily detached the belled knee-cap from its nail and buckled it on his knee again.\n\u201cThis time it is for me. The Mother Prioress wants me. Good, now I am pricking myself on the tongue of my buckle. Monsieur Madeleine, don\u2019t stir from here, and wait for me. Something new has come up. If you are hungry, there is wine, bread and cheese.\u201d\nAnd he hastened out of the hut, crying: \u201cComing! coming!\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon watched him hurrying across the garden as fast as his crooked leg would permit, casting a sidelong glance by the way on his melon patch.\nLess than ten minutes later, Father Hubert, whose bell put the nuns in his road to flight, tapped gently at a door, and a gentle voice replied: \u201cForever! Forever!\u201d that is to say: \u201cEnter.\u201d\nThe door was the one leading to the parlor reserved for seeing the gardener on business. This parlor adjoined the chapter hall. The prioress, seated on the only chair in the parlor, was waiting for Hubert.\nCHAPTER II\u2014HUBERT IN THE PRESENCE OF A DIFFICULTY \nIt is the peculiarity of certain persons and certain professions, notably priests and nuns, to wear a grave and agitated air on critical occasions. At the moment when Hubert entered, this double form of preoccupation was imprinted on the countenance of the prioress, who was that wise and charming Mademoiselle de Blemeur, Mother Innocente, who was ordinarily cheerful.\nThe gardener made a timid bow, and remained at the door of the cell. The prioress, who was telling her beads, raised her eyes and said:\u2014 \u201cAh! it is you, Father Fauvent.\u201d\nThis abbreviation had been adopted in the convent.\nHubert bowed again.\n\u201cFather Fauvent, I have sent for you.\u201d\n\u201cHere I am, reverend Mother.\u201d\n\u201cI have something to say to you.\u201d\n\u201cAnd so have I,\u201d said Hubert with a boldness which caused him inward terror, \u201cI have something to say to the very reverend Mother.\u201d\nThe prioress stared at him.\n\u201cAh! you have a communication to make to me.\u201d\n\u201cA request.\u201d\n\u201cVery well, speak.\u201d\nGoodman Hubert, the ex-notary, belonged to the category of peasants who have assurance. A certain clever ignorance constitutes a force; you do not distrust it, and you are caught by it. Hubert had been a success during the something more than two years which he had passed in the convent. Always solitary and busied about his gardening, he had nothing else to do than to indulge his curiosity. As he was at a distance from all those veiled women passing to and fro, he saw before him only an agitation of shadows. By dint of attention and sharpness he had succeeded in clothing all those phantoms with flesh, and those corpses were alive for him. He was like a deaf man whose sight grows keener, and like a blind man whose hearing becomes more acute. He had applied himself to riddling out the significance of the different peals, and he had succeeded, so that this taciturn and enigmatical cloister possessed no secrets for him; the sphinx babbled all her secrets in his ear. Hubert knew all and concealed all; that constituted his art. The whole convent thought him stupid. A great merit in religion. The vocal mothers made much of Hubert. He was a curious mute. He inspired confidence. Moreover, he was regular, and never went out except for well-demonstrated requirements of the orchard and vegetable garden. This discretion of conduct had inured to his credit. Nonetheless, he had set two men to chattering: the porter, in the convent, and he knew the singularities of their parlor, and the grave-digger, at the cemetery, and he was acquainted with the peculiarities of their sepulture; in this way, he possessed a double light on the subject of these nuns, one as to their life, the other as to their death. But he did not abuse his knowledge. The congregation thought a great deal of him. Old, lame, blind to everything, probably a little deaf into the bargain,\u2014what qualities! They would have found it difficult to replace him.\nThe goodman, with the assurance of a person who feels that he is appreciated, entered into a rather diffuse and very deep rustic harangue to the reverend prioress. He talked a long time about his age, his infirmities, the surcharge of years counting double for him henceforth, of the increasing demands of his work, of the great size of the garden, of nights which must be passed, like the last, for instance, when he had been obliged to put straw mats over the melon beds, because of the moon, and he wound up as follows: \u201cThat he had a brother\u201d\u2014(the prioress made a movement),\u2014\u201ca brother no longer young\u201d\u2014(a second movement on the part of the prioress, but one expressive of reassurance),\u2014\u201cthat, if he might be permitted, this brother would come and live with him and help him, that he was an excellent gardener, that the community would receive from him good service, better than his own; that, otherwise, if his brother were not admitted, as he, the elder, felt that his health was broken and that he was insufficient for the work, he should be obliged, greatly to his regret, to go away; and that his brother had a little daughter whom he would bring with him, who might be reared for God in the house, and who might, who knows, become a nun some day.\u201d\nWhen he had finished speaking, the prioress stayed the slipping of her rosary between her fingers, and said to him:\u2014 \u201cCould you procure a stout iron bar between now and this evening?\u201d\n\u201cFor what purpose?\u201d\n\u201cTo serve as a lever.\u201d\n\u201cYes, reverend Mother,\u201d replied Hubert.\nThe prioress, without adding a word, rose and entered the adjoining room, which was the hall of the chapter, and where the vocal mothers were probably assembled. Hubert was left alone.\nCHAPTER III\u2014MOTHER INNOCENTE\nAbout a quarter of an hour elapsed. The prioress returned and seated herself once more on her chair.\nThe two interlocutors seemed preoccupied. We will present a stenographic report of the dialogue which then ensued, to the best of our ability.\n\u201cFather Fauvent!\u201d\n\u201cReverend Mother!\u201d\n\u201cDo you know the chapel?\u201d\n\u201cI have a little cage there, where I hear the mass and the offices.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you have been in the choir in pursuance of your duties?\u201d\n\u201cTwo or three times.\u201d\n\u201cThere is a stone to be raised.\u201d\n\u201cHeavy?\u201d\n\u201cThe slab of the pavement which is at the side of the altar.\u201d\n\u201cThe slab which closes the vault?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cIt would be a good thing to have two men for it.\u201d\n\u201cMother Ascension, who is as strong as a man, will help you.\u201d\n\u201cA woman is never a man.\u201d\n\u201cWe have only a woman here to help you. Each one does what he can. Because Dom Mabillon gives four hundred and seventeen epistles of Saint Bernard, while Merlonus Horstius only gives three hundred and sixty-seven, I do not despise Merlonus Horstius.\u201d\n\u201cNeither do I.\u201d\n\u201cMerit consists in working according to one\u2019s strength. A cloister is not a dock-yard.\u201d\n\u201cAnd a woman is not a man. But my brother is the strong one, though!\u201d\n\u201cAnd can you get a lever?\u201d\n\u201cThat is the only sort of key that fits that sort of door.\u201d\n\u201cThere is a ring in the stone.\u201d\n\u201cI will put the lever through it.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the stone is so arranged that it swings on a pivot.\u201d\n\u201cThat is good, reverend Mother. I will open the vault.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the four Mother Precentors will help you.\u201d\n\u201cAnd when the vault is open?\u201d\n\u201cIt must be closed again.\u201d\n\u201cWill that be all?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cGive me your orders, very reverend Mother.\u201d\n\u201cFauvent, we have confidence in you.\u201d\n\u201cI am here to do anything you wish.\u201d\n\u201cAnd to hold your peace about everything!\u201d\n\u201cYes, reverend Mother.\u201d\n\u201cWhen the vault is open\u2014\u201d\n\u201cI will close it again.\u201d\n\u201cBut before that\u2014\u201d\n\u201cWhat, reverend Mother?\u201d\n\u201cSomething must be lowered into it.\u201d\nA silence ensued. The prioress, after a pout of the under lip which resembled hesitation, broke it.\n\u201cFather Fauvent!\u201d\n\u201cReverend Mother!\u201d\n\u201cYou know that a mother died this morning?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cDid you not hear the bell?\u201d\n\u201cNothing can be heard at the bottom of the garden.\u201d\n\u201cReally?\u201d\n\u201cI can hardly distinguish my own signal.\u201d\n\u201cShe died at daybreak.\u201d\n\u201cAnd then, the wind did not blow in my direction this morning.\u201d\n\u201cIt was Mother Crucifixion. A blessed woman.\u201d\nThe prioress paused, moved her lips, as though in mental prayer, and resumed:\u2014 \u201cThree years ago, Madame de B\u00e9thune, a Jansenist, turned orthodox, merely from having seen Mother Crucifixion at prayer.\u201d\n\u201cAh! yes, now I hear the knell, reverend Mother.\u201d\n\u201cThe mothers have taken her to the dead-room, which opens on the church.\u201d\n\u201cI know.\u201d\n\u201cNo other man than you can or must enter that chamber. See to that. A fine sight it would be, to see a man enter the dead-room!\u201d\n\u201cMore often!\u201d\n\u201cHey?\u201d\n\u201cMore often!\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you say?\u201d\n\u201cI say more often.\u201d\n\u201cMore often than what?\u201d\n\u201cReverend Mother, I did not say more often than what, I said more often.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand you. Why do you say more often?\u201d\n\u201cIn order to speak like you, reverend Mother.\u201d\n\u201cBut I did not say \u2018more often.\u2019\u201d\nAt that moment, nine o\u2019clock struck.\n\u201cAt nine o\u2019clock in the morning and at all hours, praised and adored be the most Holy Sacrament of the altar,\u201d said the prioress.\n\u201cAmen,\u201d said Hubert.\nThe clock struck opportunely. It cut \u201cmore often\u201d short. It is probable, that had it not been for this, the prioress and Hubert would never have unravelled that skein.\nHubert mopped his forehead.\nThe prioress indulged in another little inward murmur, probably sacred, then raised her voice:\u2014 \u201cIn her lifetime, Mother Crucifixion made converts; after her death, she will perform miracles.\u201d\n\u201cShe will!\u201d replied Father Hubert, falling into step, and striving not to flinch again.\n\u201cFather Fauvent, the community has been blessed in Mother Crucifixion. No doubt, it is not granted to every one to die, like Cardinal de B\u00e9rulle, while saying the holy mass, and to breathe forth their souls to God, while pronouncing these words: Hanc igitur oblationem. But without attaining to such happiness, Mother Crucifixion\u2019s death was very precious. She retained her consciousness to the very last moment. She spoke to us, then she spoke to the angels. She gave us her last commands. If you had a little more faith, and if you could have been in her cell, she would have cured your leg merely by touching it. She smiled. We felt that she was regaining her life in God. There was something of paradise in that death.\u201d\nHubert thought that it was an orison which she was finishing.\n\u201cAmen,\u201d said he.\n\u201cFather Fauvent, what the dead wish must be done.\u201d\nThe prioress took off several beads of her chaplet. Hubert held his peace.\nShe went on:\u2014\n\u201cI have consulted upon this point many ecclesiastics laboring in Our Lord, who occupy themselves in the exercises of the clerical life, and who bear wonderful fruit.\u201d\n\u201cReverend Mother, you can hear the knell much better here than in the garden.\u201d\n\u201cBesides, she is more than a dead woman, she is a saint.\u201d\n\u201cLike yourself, reverend Mother.\u201d\n\u201cShe slept in her coffin for twenty years, by express permission of our Holy Father, Pius VII.\u2014\u201d\n\u201cThe one who crowned the Emp\u2014Buonaparte.\u201d\nFor a clever man like Hubert, this allusion was an awkward one. Fortunately, the prioress, completely absorbed in her own thoughts, did not hear it. She continued:\u2014 \u201cFather Fauvent?\u201d\n\u201cReverend Mother?\u201d\n\u201cSaint Didorus, Archbishop of Cappadocia, desired that this single word might be inscribed on his tomb: Acarus, which signifies, a worm of the earth; this was done. Is this true?\u201d\n\u201cYes, reverend Mother.\u201d\n\u201cThe blessed Mezzocane, Abbot of Aquila, wished to be buried beneath the gallows; this was done.\u201d\n\u201cThat is true.\u201d\n\u201cSaint Terentius, Bishop of Port, where the mouth of the Tiber empties into the sea, requested that on his tomb might be engraved the sign which was placed on the graves of parricides, in the hope that passers-by would spit on his tomb. This was done. The dead must be obeyed.\u201d\n\u201cSo be it.\u201d\n\u201cThe body of Bernard Guidonis, born in France near Roche-Abeille, was, as he had ordered, and in spite of the king of Castile, borne to the church of the Dominicans in Limoges, although Bernard Guidonis was Bishop of Tuy in Spain. Can the contrary be affirmed?\u201d\n\u201cFor that matter, no, reverend Mother.\u201d\n\u201cThe fact is attested by Plantavit de la Fosse.\u201d\nSeveral beads of the chaplet were told off, still in silence. The prioress resumed:\u2014 \u201cFather Fauvent, Mother Crucifixion will be interred in the coffin in which she has slept for the last twenty years.\u201d\n\u201cThat is just.\u201d\n\u201cIt is a continuation of her slumber.\u201d\n\u201cSo I shall have to nail up that coffin?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cAnd we are to reject the undertaker\u2019s coffin?\u201d\n\u201cPrecisely.\u201d\n\u201cI am at the orders of the very reverend community.\u201d\n\u201cThe four Mother Precentors will assist you.\u201d\n\u201cIn nailing up the coffin? I do not need them.\u201d\n\u201cNo. In lowering the coffin.\u201d\n\u201cWhere?\u201d\n\u201cInto the vault.\u201d\n\u201cWhat vault?\u201d\n\u201cUnder the altar.\u201d\nHubert started.\n\u201cThe vault under the altar?\u201d\n\u201cUnder the altar.\u201d\n\u201cBut\u2014\u201d\n\u201cYou will have an iron bar.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but\u2014\u201d\n\u201cYou will raise the stone with the bar by means of the ring.\u201d\n\u201cBut\u2014\u201d\n\u201cThe dead must be obeyed. To be buried in the vault under the altar of the chapel, not to go to profane earth; to remain there in death where she prayed while living; such was the last wish of Mother Crucifixion. She asked it of us; that is to say, commanded us.\u201d\n\u201cBut it is forbidden.\u201d\n\u201cForbidden by men, enjoined by God.\u201d\n\u201cWhat if it became known?\u201d\n\u201cWe have confidence in you.\u201d\n\u201cOh! I am a stone in your walls.\u201d\n\u201cThe chapter assembled. The vocal mothers, whom I have just consulted again, and who are now deliberating, have decided that Mother Crucifixion shall be buried, according to her wish, in her own coffin, under our altar. Think, Father Fauvent, if she were to work miracles here! What a glory of God for the community! And miracles issue from tombs.\u201d\n\u201cBut, reverend Mother, if the agent of the sanitary commission\u2014\u201d\n\u201cSaint Beno\u00eet II., in the matter of sepulture, resisted Constantine Pogonatus.\u201d\n\u201cBut the commissary of police\u2014\u201d\n\u201cChonodemaire, one of the seven German kings who entered among the Gauls under the Empire of Constantius, expressly recognized the right of nuns to be buried in religion, that is to say, beneath the altar.\u201d\n\u201cBut the inspector from the Prefecture\u2014\u201d\n\u201cThe world is nothing in the presence of the cross. Martin, the eleventh general of the Carthusians, gave to his order this device: Stat crux dum volvitur orbis.\u201d\n\u201cAmen,\u201d said Hubert, who imperturbably extricated himself in this manner from the dilemma, whenever he heard Latin.\nAny audience suffices for a person who has held his peace too long. On the day when the rhetorician Gymnastoras left his prison, bearing in his body many dilemmas and numerous syllogisms which had struck in, he halted in front of the first tree which he came to, harangued it and made very great efforts to convince it. The prioress, who was usually subjected to the barrier of silence, and whose reservoir was overfull, rose and exclaimed with the loquacity of a dam which has broken away:\u2014 \u201cI have on my right Beno\u00eet and on my left Bernard. Who was Bernard? The first abbot of Clairvaux. Fontaines in Burgundy is a country that is blest because it gave him birth. His father was named T\u00e9celin, and his mother Alethe. He began at C\u00eeteaux, to end in Clairvaux; he was ordained abbot by the bishop of Ch\u00e2lon-sur-Sa\u00f4ne, Guillaume de Champeaux; he had seven hundred novices, and founded a hundred and sixty monasteries; he overthrew Abeilard at the council of Sens in 1140, and Pierre de Bruys and Henry his disciple, and another sort of erring spirits who were called the Apostolics; he confounded Arnauld de Brescia, darted lightning at the monk Raoul, the murderer of the Jews, dominated the council of Reims in 1148, caused the condemnation of Gilbert de Por\u00e9a, Bishop of Poitiers, caused the condemnation of \u00c9on de l\u2019\u00c9toile, arranged the disputes of princes, enlightened King Louis the Young, advised Pope Eugene III., regulated the Temple, preached the crusade, performed two hundred and fifty miracles during his lifetime, and as many as thirty-nine in one day. Who was Beno\u00eet? He was the patriarch of Mont-Cassin; he was the second founder of the Saintet\u00e9 Claustrale, he was the Basil of the West. His order has produced forty popes, two hundred cardinals, fifty patriarchs, sixteen hundred archbishops, four thousand six hundred bishops, four emperors, twelve empresses, forty-six kings, forty-one queens, three thousand six hundred canonized saints, and has been in existence for fourteen hundred years. On one side Saint Bernard, on the other the agent of the sanitary department! On one side Saint Beno\u00eet, on the other the inspector of public ways! The state, the road commissioners, the public undertaker, regulations, the administration, what do we know of all that? There is not a chance passer-by who would not be indignant to see how we are treated. We have not even the right to give our dust to Jesus Christ! Your sanitary department is a revolutionary invention. God subordinated to the commissary of police; such is the age. Silence, Fauvent!\u201d\nHubert was but ill at ease under this shower bath. The prioress continued:\u2014 \u201cNo one doubts the right of the monastery to sepulture. Only fanatics and those in error deny it. We live in times of terrible confusion. We do not know that which it is necessary to know, and we know that which we should ignore. We are ignorant and impious. In this age there exist people who do not distinguish between the very great Saint Bernard and the Saint Bernard denominated of the poor Catholics, a certain good ecclesiastic who lived in the thirteenth century. Others are so blasphemous as to compare the scaffold of Louis XVI. to the cross of Jesus Christ. Louis XVI. was merely a king. Let us beware of God! There is no longer just nor unjust. The name of Voltaire is known, but not the name of C\u00e9sar de Bus. Nevertheless, C\u00e9sar de Bus is a man of blessed memory, and Voltaire one of unblessed memory. The last arch-bishop, the Cardinal de P\u00e9rigord, did not even know that Charles de Gondren succeeded to Berulle, and Fran\u00e7ois Bourgoin to Gondren, and Humphrey-Fran\u00e7ois Senault to Bourgoin, and Father Sainte-Marthe to Humphrey-Fran\u00e7ois Senault. The name of Father Coton is known, not because he was one of the three who urged the foundation of the Oratorie, but because he furnished Henri IV., the Huguenot king, with the material for an oath. That which pleases people of the world in Saint Fran\u00e7ois de Sales, is that he cheated at play. And then, religion is attacked. Why? Because there have been bad priests, because Sagittaire, Bishop of Gap, was the brother of Salone, Bishop of Embrun, and because both of them followed Mommol. What has that to do with the question? Does that prevent Martin de Tours from being a saint, and giving half of his cloak to a beggar? They persecute the saints. They shut their eyes to the truth. Darkness is the rule. The most ferocious beasts are beasts which are blind. No one thinks of hell as a reality. Oh! how wicked people are! By order of the king signifies to-day, by order of the revolution. One no longer knows what is due to the living or to the dead. A holy death is prohibited. Burial is a civil matter. This is horrible. Saint Leo II. wrote two special letters, one to Pierre Notaire, the other to the king of the Visigoths, for the purpose of combating and rejecting, in questions touching the dead, the authority of the exarch and the supremacy of the Emperor. Gauthier, Bishop of Ch\u00e2lons, held his own in this matter against Otho, Duke of Burgundy. The ancient magistracy agreed with him. In former times we had voices in the chapter, even on matters of the day. The Abbot of C\u00eeteaux, the general of the order, was councillor by right of birth to the parliament of Burgundy. We do what we please with our dead. Is not the body of Saint Beno\u00eet himself in France, in the abbey of Fleury, called Saint Beno\u00eet-sur-Loire, although he died in Italy at Mont-Cassin, on Saturday, the 21st of the month of March, of the year 543? All this is incontestable. I abhor psalm-singers, I hate priors, I execrate heretics, but I should detest yet more any one who should maintain the contrary. One has only to read Arnoul Wion, Gabriel Bucelin, Trithemus, Maurolics, and Dom Luc d\u2019Achery.\u201d\nThe prioress took breath, then turned to Hubert.\n\u201cIs it settled, Father Fauvent?\u201d\n\u201cIt is settled, reverend Mother.\u201d\n\u201cWe may depend on you?\u201d\n\u201cI will obey.\u201d\n\u201cThat is well.\u201d\n\u201cI am entirely devoted to the convent.\u201d\n\u201cThat is understood. You will close the coffin. The sisters will carry it to the chapel. The office for the dead will then be said. Then we shall return to the cloister. Between eleven o\u2019clock and midnight, you will come with your iron bar. All will be done in the most profound secrecy. There will be in the chapel only the four Mother Precentors, Mother Ascension and yourself.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the sister at the post?\u201d\n\u201cShe will not turn round.\u201d\n\u201cBut she will hear.\u201d\n\u201cShe will not listen. Besides, what the cloister knows the world learns not.\u201d\nA pause ensued. The prioress went on:\u2014 \u201cYou will remove your bell. It is not necessary that the sister at the post should perceive your presence.\u201d\n\u201cReverend Mother?\u201d\n\u201cWhat, Father Fauvent?\u201d\n\u201cHas the doctor for the dead paid his visit?\u201d\n\u201cHe will pay it at four o\u2019clock to-day. The peal which orders the doctor for the dead to be summoned has already been rung. But you do not understand any of the peals?\u201d\n\u201cI pay no attention to any but my own.\u201d\n\u201cThat is well, Father Fauvent.\u201d\n\u201cReverend Mother, a lever at least six feet long will be required.\u201d\n\u201cWhere will you obtain it?\u201d\n\u201cWhere gratings are not lacking, iron bars are not lacking. I have my heap of old iron at the bottom of the garden.\u201d\n\u201cAbout three-quarters of an hour before midnight; do not forget.\u201d\n\u201cReverend Mother?\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cIf you were ever to have any other jobs of this sort, my brother is the strong man for you. A perfect Turk!\u201d\n\u201cYou will do it as speedily as possible.\u201d\n\u201cI cannot work very fast. I am infirm; that is why I require an assistant. I limp.\u201d\n\u201cTo limp is no sin, and perhaps it is a blessing. The Emperor Henry II., who combated Antipope Gregory and re-established Beno\u00eet VIII., has two surnames, the Saint and the Lame.\u201d\n\u201cTwo surtouts are a good thing,\u201d murmured Hubert, who really was a little hard of hearing.\n\u201cNow that I think of it, Father Fauvent, let us give a whole hour to it. That is not too much. Be near the principal altar, with your iron bar, at eleven o\u2019clock. The office begins at midnight. Everything must have been completed a good quarter of an hour before that.\u201d\n\u201cI will do anything to prove my zeal towards the community. These are my orders. I am to nail up the coffin. At eleven o\u2019clock exactly, I am to be in the chapel. The Mother Precentors will be there. Mother Ascension will be there. Two men would be better. However, never mind! I shall have my lever. We will open the vault, we will lower the coffin, and we will close the vault again. After which, there will be no trace of anything. The government will have no suspicion. Thus all has been arranged, reverend Mother?\u201d\n\u201cNo!\u201d\n\u201cWhat else remains?\u201d\n\u201cThe empty coffin remains.\u201d\nThis produced a pause. Hubert meditated. The prioress meditated.\n\u201cWhat is to be done with that coffin, Father Fauvent?\u201d\n\u201cIt will be given to the earth.\u201d\n\u201cEmpty?\u201d\nAnother silence. Hubert made, with his left hand, that sort of a gesture which dismisses a troublesome subject.\n\u201cReverend Mother, I am the one who is to nail up the coffin in the basement of the church, and no one can enter there but myself, and I will cover the coffin with the pall.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but the bearers, when they place it in the hearse and lower it into the grave, will be sure to feel that there is nothing in it.\u201d\n\u201cAh! the de\u2014!\u201d exclaimed Hubert.\nThe prioress began to make the sign of the cross, and looked fixedly at the gardener. The vil stuck fast in his throat.\nHe made haste to improvise an expedient to make her forget the oath.\n\u201cI will put earth in the coffin, reverend Mother. That will produce the effect of a corpse.\u201d\n\u201cYou are right. Earth, that is the same thing as man. So you will manage the empty coffin?\u201d\n\u201cI will make that my special business.\u201d\nThe prioress\u2019s face, up to that moment troubled and clouded, grew serene once more. She made the sign of a superior dismissing an inferior to him. Hubert went towards the door. As he was on the point of passing out, the prioress raised her voice gently:\u2014 \u201cI am pleased with you, Father Fauvent; bring your brother to me to-morrow, after the burial, and tell him to fetch his daughter.\u201d\nCHAPTER IV\u2014IN WHICH HUMPHREY VALHUMPHREY HAS QUITE THE AIR OF HAVING READ AUSTIN CASTILLEJO \nThe strides of a lame man are like the ogling glances of a one-eyed man; they do not reach their goal very promptly. Moreover, Hubert was in a dilemma. He took nearly a quarter of an hour to return to his cottage in the garden. Drew had waked up. Humphrey Waylon had placed her near the fire. At the moment when Hubert entered, Humphrey Waylon was pointing out to her the vintner\u2019s basket on the wall, and saying to her, \u201cListen attentively to me, my little Drew. We must go away from this house, but we shall return to it, and we shall be very happy here. The good man who lives here is going to carry you off on his back in that. You will wait for me at a lady\u2019s house. I shall come to fetch you. Obey, and say nothing, above all things, unless you want Madame Th\u00e9nardier to get you again!\u201d\nDrew nodded gravely.\nHumphrey Waylon turned round at the noise made by Hubert opening the door.\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cEverything is arranged, and nothing is,\u201d said Hubert. \u201cI have permission to bring you in; but before bringing you in you must be got out. That\u2019s where the difficulty lies. It is easy enough with the child.\u201d\n\u201cYou will carry her out?\u201d\n\u201cAnd she will hold her tongue?\u201d\n\u201cI answer for that.\u201d\n\u201cBut you, Father Madeleine?\u201d\nAnd, after a silence, fraught with anxiety, Hubert exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cWhy, get out as you came in!\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon, as in the first instance, contented himself with saying, \u201cImpossible.\u201d\nHubert grumbled, more to himself than to Humphrey Waylon:\u2014 \u201cThere is another thing which bothers me. I have said that I would put earth in it. When I come to think it over, the earth instead of the corpse will not seem like the real thing, it won\u2019t do, it will get displaced, it will move about. The men will bear it. You understand, Father Madeleine, the government will notice it.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon stared him straight in the eye and thought that he was raving.\nHubert went on:\u2014\n\u201cHow the de\u2014uce are you going to get out? It must all be done by to-morrow morning. It is to-morrow that I am to bring you in. The prioress expects you.\u201d\nThen he explained to Humphrey Waylon that this was his recompense for a service which he, Hubert, was to render to the community. That it fell among his duties to take part in their burials, that he nailed up the coffins and helped the grave-digger at the cemetery. That the nun who had died that morning had requested to be buried in the coffin which had served her for a bed, and interred in the vault under the altar of the chapel. That the police regulations forbade this, but that she was one of those dead to whom nothing is refused. That the prioress and the vocal mothers intended to fulfil the wish of the deceased. That it was so much the worse for the government. That he, Hubert, was to nail up the coffin in the cell, raise the stone in the chapel, and lower the corpse into the vault. And that, by way of thanks, the prioress was to admit his brother to the house as a gardener, and his niece as a pupil. That his brother was M. Madeleine, and that his niece was Drew. That the prioress had told him to bring his brother on the following evening, after the counterfeit interment in the cemetery. But that he could not bring M. Madeleine in from the outside if M. Madeleine was not outside. That that was the first problem. And then, that there was another: the empty coffin.\n\u201cWhat is that empty coffin?\u201d asked Humphrey Waylon.\nHubert replied:\u2014\n\u201cThe coffin of the administration.\u201d\n\u201cWhat coffin? What administration?\u201d\n\u201cA nun dies. The municipal doctor comes and says, \u2018A nun has died.\u2019 The government sends a coffin. The next day it sends a hearse and undertaker\u2019s men to get the coffin and carry it to the cemetery. The undertaker\u2019s men will come and lift the coffin; there will be nothing in it.\u201d\n\u201cPut something in it.\u201d\n\u201cA corpse? I have none.\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cWhat then?\u201d\n\u201cA living person.\u201d\n\u201cWhat person?\u201d\n\u201cMe!\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nHubert, who was seated, sprang up as though a bomb had burst under his chair.\n\u201cYou!\u201d\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon gave way to one of those rare smiles which lighted up his face like a flash from heaven in the winter.\n\u201cYou know, Hubert, what you have said: \u2018Mother Crucifixion is dead.\u2019 and I add: \u2018and Father Madeleine is buried.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cAh! good, you can laugh, you are not speaking seriously.\u201d\n\u201cVery seriously, I must get out of this place.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly.\u201d\n\u201cl have told you to find a basket, and a cover for me also.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cThe basket will be of pine, and the cover a black cloth.\u201d\n\u201cIn the first place, it will be a white cloth. Nuns are buried in white.\u201d\n\u201cLet it be a white cloth, then.\u201d\n\u201cYou are not like other men, Father Madeleine.\u201d\nTo behold such devices, which are nothing else than the savage and daring inventions of the galleys, spring forth from the peaceable things which surrounded him, and mingle with what he called the \u201cpetty course of life in the convent,\u201d caused Hubert as much amazement as a gull fishing in the gutter of the Rue Saint-Denis would inspire in a passer-by.\nHumphrey Waylon went on:\u2014\n\u201cThe problem is to get out of here without being seen. This offers the means. But give me some information, in the first place. How is it managed? Where is this coffin?\u201d\n\u201cThe empty one?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cDownstairs, in what is called the dead-room. It stands on two trestles, under the pall.\u201d\n\u201cHow long is the coffin?\u201d\n\u201cSix feet.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is this dead-room?\u201d\n\u201cIt is a chamber on the ground floor which has a grated window opening on the garden, which is closed on the outside by a shutter, and two doors; one leads into the convent, the other into the church.\u201d\n\u201cWhat church?\u201d\n\u201cThe church in the street, the church which any one can enter.\u201d\n\u201cHave you the keys to those two doors?\u201d\n\u201cNo; I have the key to the door which communicates with the convent; the porter has the key to the door which communicates with the church.\u201d\n\u201cWhen does the porter open that door?\u201d\n\u201cOnly to allow the undertaker\u2019s men to enter, when they come to get the coffin. When the coffin has been taken out, the door is closed again.\u201d\n\u201cWho nails up the coffin?\u201d\n\u201cI do.\u201d\n\u201cWho spreads the pall over it?\u201d\n\u201cI do.\u201d\n\u201cAre you alone?\u201d\n\u201cNot another man, except the police doctor, can enter the dead-room. That is even written on the wall.\u201d\n\u201cCould you hide me in that room to-night when every one is asleep?\u201d\n\u201cNo. But I could hide you in a small, dark nook which opens on the dead-room, where I keep my tools to use for burials, and of which I have the key.\u201d\n\u201cAt what time will the hearse come for the coffin to-morrow?\u201d\n\u201cAbout three o\u2019clock in the afternoon. The burial will take place at the Vaugirard cemetery a little before nightfall. It is not very near.\u201d\n\u201cI will remain concealed in your tool-closet all night and all the morning. And how about food? I shall be hungry.\u201d\n\u201cI will bring you something.\u201d\n\u201cYou can come and nail me up in the coffin at two o\u2019clock.\u201d\nHubert recoiled and cracked his finger-joints.\n\u201cBut that is impossible!\u201d\n\u201cBah! Impossible to take a hammer and drive some nails in a plank?\u201d\nWhat seemed unprecedented to Hubert was, we repeat, a simple matter to Humphrey Waylon. Humphrey Waylon had been in worse straits than this. Any man who has been a prisoner understands how to contract himself to fit the diameter of the escape. The prisoner is subject to flight as the sick man is subject to a crisis which saves or kills him. An escape is a cure. What does not a man undergo for the sake of a cure? To have himself nailed up in a case and carried off like a bale of goods, to live for a long time in a box, to find air where there is none, to economize his breath for hours, to know how to stifle without dying\u2014this was one of Humphrey Waylon\u2019s gloomy talents.\nMoreover, a coffin containing a living being,\u2014that convict\u2019s expedient,\u2014is also an imperial expedient. If we are to credit the monk Austin Castillejo, this was the means employed by Charles the Fifth, desirous of seeing the Plombes for the last time after his abdication.\nHe had her brought into and carried out of the monastery of Saint-Yuste in this manner.\nHubert, who had recovered himself a little, exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cBut how will you manage to breathe?\u201d\n\u201cI will breathe.\u201d\n\u201cIn that box! The mere thought of it suffocates me.\u201d\n\u201cYou surely must have a gimlet, you will make a few holes here and there, around my mouth, and you will nail the top plank on loosely.\u201d\n\u201cGood! And what if you should happen to cough or to sneeze?\u201d\n\u201cA man who is making his escape does not cough or sneeze.\u201d\nAnd Humphrey Waylon added:\u2014\n\u201cFather Hubert, we must come to a decision: I must either be caught here, or accept this escape through the hearse.\u201d\nEvery one has noticed the taste which cats have for pausing and lounging between the two leaves of a half-shut door. Who is there who has not said to a cat, \u201cDo come in!\u201d There are men who, when an incident stands half-open before them, have the same tendency to halt in indecision between two resolutions, at the risk of getting crushed through the abrupt closing of the adventure by fate. The over-prudent, cats as they are, and because they are cats, sometimes incur more danger than the audacious. Hubert was of this hesitating nature. But Humphrey Waylon\u2019s coolness prevailed over him in spite of himself. He grumbled:\u2014 \u201cWell, since there is no other means.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon resumed:\u2014\n\u201cThe only thing which troubles me is what will take place at the cemetery.\u201d\n\u201cThat is the very point that is not troublesome,\u201d exclaimed Hubert. \u201cIf you are sure of coming out of the coffin all right, I am sure of getting you out of the grave. The grave-digger is a drunkard, and a friend of mine. He is Father Mestienne. An old fellow of the old school. The grave-digger puts the corpses in the grave, and I put the grave-digger in my pocket. I will tell you what will take place. They will arrive a little before dusk, three-quarters of an hour before the gates of the cemetery are closed. The hearse will drive directly up to the grave. I shall follow; that is my business. I shall have a hammer, a chisel, and some pincers in my pocket. The hearse halts, the undertaker\u2019s men knot a rope around your coffin and lower you down. The priest says the prayers, makes the sign of the cross, sprinkles the holy water, and takes his departure. I am left alone with Father Mestienne. He is my friend, I tell you. One of two things will happen, he will either be sober, or he will not be sober. If he is not drunk, I shall say to him: \u2018Come and drink a bout while the Bon Coing [the Good Quince] is open.\u2019 I carry him off, I get him drunk,\u2014it does not take long to make Father Mestienne drunk, he always has the beginning of it about him,\u2014I lay him under the table, I take his card, so that I can get into the cemetery again, and I return without him. Then you have no longer any one but me to deal with. If he is drunk, I shall say to him: \u2018Be off; I will do your work for you.\u2019 Off he goes, and I drag you out of the hole.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon held out his hand, and Hubert precipitated himself upon it with the touching effusion of a peasant.\n\u201cThat is settled, Father Hubert. All will go well.\u201d\n\u201cProvided nothing goes wrong,\u201d thought Hubert. \u201cIn that case, it would be terrible.\u201d\nCHAPTER V\u2014IT IS NOT NECESSARY TO BE DRUNK IN ORDER TO BE IMMORTAL \nOn the following day, as the sun was declining, the very rare passers-by on the Boulevard du Maine pulled off their hats to an old-fashioned hearse, ornamented with skulls, cross-bones, and tears. This hearse contained a coffin covered with a white cloth over which spread a large black cross, like a huge corpse with drooping arms. A mourning-coach, in which could be seen a priest in his surplice, and a choir boy in his red cap, followed. Two undertaker\u2019s men in gray uniforms trimmed with black walked on the right and the left of the hearse. Behind it came an old man in the garments of a laborer, who limped along. The procession was going in the direction of the Vaugirard cemetery.\nThe handle of a hammer, the blade of a cold chisel, and the antenn\u00e6 of a pair of pincers were visible, protruding from the man\u2019s pocket.\nThe Vaugirard cemetery formed an exception among the cemeteries of Paris. It had its peculiar usages, just as it had its carriage entrance and its house door, which old people in the quarter, who clung tenaciously to ancient words, still called the porte cavaliere and the porte pi\u00e9tonne.16 The Bernardines-Benedictines of the Rue Petit-Picpus had obtained permission, as we have already stated, to be buried there in a corner apart, and at night, the plot of land having formerly belonged to their community. The grave-diggers being thus bound to service in the evening in summer and at night in winter, in this cemetery, they were subjected to a special discipline. The gates of the Paris cemeteries closed, at that epoch, at sundown, and this being a municipal regulation, the Vaugirard cemetery was bound by it like the rest. The carriage gate and the house door were two contiguous grated gates, adjoining a pavilion built by the architect Perronet, and inhabited by the door-keeper of the cemetery. These gates, therefore, swung inexorably on their hinges at the instant when the sun disappeared behind the dome of the Invalides. If any grave-digger were delayed after that moment in the cemetery, there was but one way for him to get out\u2014his grave-digger\u2019s card furnished by the department of public funerals. A sort of letter-box was constructed in the porter\u2019s window. The grave-digger dropped his card into this box, the porter heard it fall, pulled the rope, and the small door opened. If the man had not his card, he mentioned his name, the porter, who was sometimes in bed and asleep, rose, came out and identified the man, and opened the gate with his key; the grave-digger stepped out, but had to pay a fine of fifteen francs.\nThis cemetery, with its peculiarities outside the regulations, embarrassed the symmetry of the administration. It was suppressed a little later than 1830. The cemetery of Mont-Parnasse, called the Eastern cemetery, succeeded to it, and inherited that famous dram-shop next to the Vaugirard cemetery, which was surmounted by a quince painted on a board, and which formed an angle, one side on the drinkers\u2019 tables, and the other on the tombs, with this sign: Au Bon Coing.\nThe Vaugirard cemetery was what may be called a faded cemetery. It was falling into disuse. Dampness was invading it, the flowers were deserting it. The bourgeois did not care much about being buried in the Vaugirard; it hinted at poverty. Pere-Lachaise if you please! to be buried in Pere-Lachaise is equivalent to having furniture of mahogany. It is recognized as elegant. The Vaugirard cemetery was a venerable enclosure, planted like an old-fashioned French garden. Straight alleys, box, thuya-trees, holly, ancient tombs beneath aged cypress-trees, and very tall grass. In the evening it was tragic there. There were very lugubrious lines about it.\nThe sun had not yet set when the hearse with the white pall and the black cross entered the avenue of the Vaugirard cemetery. The lame man who followed it was no other than Hubert.\nThe interment of Mother Crucifixion in the vault under the altar, the exit of Drew, the introduction of Humphrey Waylon to the dead-room,\u2014all had been executed without difficulty, and there had been no hitch.\nLet us remark in passing, that the burial of Mother Crucifixion under the altar of the convent is a perfectly venial offence in our sight. It is one of the faults which resemble a duty. The nuns had committed it, not only without difficulty, but even with the applause of their own consciences. In the cloister, what is called the \u201cgovernment\u201d is only an intermeddling with authority, an interference which is always questionable. In the first place, the rule; as for the code, we shall see. Make as many laws as you please, men; but keep them for yourselves. The tribute to C\u00e6sar is never anything but the remnants of the tribute to God. A prince is nothing in the presence of a principle.\nHubert limped along behind the hearse in a very contented frame of mind. His twin plots, the one with the nuns, the one for the convent, the other against it, the other with M. Madeleine, had succeeded, to all appearance. Humphrey Waylon\u2019s composure was one of those powerful tranquillities which are contagious. Hubert no longer felt doubtful as to his success.\nWhat remained to be done was a mere nothing. Within the last two years, he had made good Father Mestienne, a chubby-cheeked person, drunk at least ten times. He played with Father Mestienne. He did what he liked with him. He made him dance according to his whim. Mestienne\u2019s head adjusted itself to the cap of Hubert\u2019s will. Hubert\u2019s confidence was perfect.\nAt the moment when the convoy entered the avenue leading to the cemetery, Hubert glanced cheerfully at the hearse, and said half aloud, as he rubbed his big hands:\u2014 \u201cHere\u2019s a fine farce!\u201d\nAll at once the hearse halted; it had reached the gate. The permission for interment must be exhibited. The undertaker\u2019s man addressed himself to the porter of the cemetery. During this colloquy, which always is productive of a delay of from one to two minutes, some one, a stranger, came and placed himself behind the hearse, beside Hubert. He was a sort of laboring man, who wore a waistcoat with large pockets and carried a mattock under his arm.\nHubert surveyed this stranger.\n\u201cWho are you?\u201d he demanded.\n\u201cThe man replied:\u2014\n\u201cThe grave-digger.\u201d\nIf a man could survive the blow of a cannon-ball full in the breast, he would make the same face that Hubert made.\n\u201cThe grave-digger?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cYou?\u201d\n\u201cI.\u201d\n\u201cFather Mestienne is the grave-digger.\u201d\n\u201cHe was.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! He was?\u201d\n\u201cHe is dead.\u201d\nHubert had expected anything but this, that a grave-digger could die. It is true, nevertheless, that grave-diggers do die themselves. By dint of excavating graves for other people, one hollows out one\u2019s own.\nHubert stood there with his mouth wide open. He had hardly the strength to stammer:\u2014 \u201cBut it is not possible!\u201d\n\u201cIt is so.\u201d\n\u201cBut,\u201d he persisted feebly, \u201cFather Mestienne is the grave-digger.\u201d\n\u201cAfter Napoleon, Louis XVIII. After Mestienne, Gribier. Peasant, my name is Gribier.\u201d\nHubert, who was deadly pale, stared at this Gribier.\nHe was a tall, thin, livid, utterly funereal man. He had the air of an unsuccessful doctor who had turned grave-digger.\nHubert burst out laughing.\n\u201cAh!\u201d said he, \u201cwhat queer things do happen! Father Mestienne is dead, but long live little Father Lenoir! Do you know who little Father Lenoir is? He is a jug of red wine. It is a jug of Sur\u00eane, morbigou! of real Paris Sur\u00eane? Ah! So old Mestienne is dead! I am sorry for it; he was a jolly fellow. But you are a jolly fellow, too. Are you not, comrade? We\u2019ll go and have a drink together presently.\u201d\nThe man replied:\u2014\n\u201cI have been a student. I passed my fourth examination. I never drink.\u201d\nThe hearse had set out again, and was rolling up the grand alley of the cemetery.\nHubert had slackened his pace. He limped more out of anxiety than from infirmity.\nThe grave-digger walked on in front of him.\nHubert passed the unexpected Gribier once more in review.\nHe was one of those men who, though very young, have the air of age, and who, though slender, are extremely strong.\n\u201cComrade!\u201d cried Hubert.\nThe man turned round.\n\u201cI am the convent grave-digger.\u201d\n\u201cMy colleague,\u201d said the man.\nHubert, who was illiterate but very sharp, understood that he had to deal with a formidable species of man, with a fine talker. He muttered:\n\u201cSo Father Mestienne is dead.\u201d\nThe man replied:\u2014\n\u201cCompletely. The good God consulted his note-book which shows when the time is up. It was Father Mestienne\u2019s turn. Father Mestienne died.\u201d\nHubert repeated mechanically: \u201cThe good God\u2014\u201d\n\u201cThe good God,\u201d said the man authoritatively. \u201cAccording to the philosophers, the Eternal Father; according to the Jacobins, the Supreme Being.\u201d\n\u201cShall we not make each other\u2019s acquaintance?\u201d stammered Hubert.\n\u201cIt is made. You are a peasant, I am a Parisian.\u201d\n\u201cPeople do not know each other until they have drunk together. He who empties his glass empties his heart. You must come and have a drink with me. Such a thing cannot be refused.\u201d\n\u201cBusiness first.\u201d\nHubert thought: \u201cI am lost.\u201d\nThey were only a few turns of the wheel distant from the small alley leading to the nuns\u2019 corner.\nThe grave-digger resumed:\u2014\n\u201cPeasant, I have seven small children who must be fed. As they must eat, I cannot drink.\u201d\nAnd he added, with the satisfaction of a serious man who is turning a phrase well:\u2014 \u201cTheir hunger is the enemy of my thirst.\u201d\nThe hearse skirted a clump of cypress-trees, quitted the grand alley, turned into a narrow one, entered the waste land, and plunged into a thicket. This indicated the immediate proximity of the place of sepulture. Hubert slackened his pace, but he could not detain the hearse. Fortunately, the soil, which was light and wet with the winter rains, clogged the wheels and retarded its speed.\nHe approached the grave-digger.\n\u201cThey have such a nice little Argenteuil wine,\u201d murmured Hubert.\n\u201cVillager,\u201d retorted the man, \u201cI ought not be a grave-digger. My father was a porter at the Prytaneum [Town-Hall]. He destined me for literature. But he had reverses. He had losses on \u2019change. I was obliged to renounce the profession of author. But I am still a public writer.\u201d\n\u201cSo you are not a grave-digger, then?\u201d returned Hubert, clutching at this branch, feeble as it was.\n\u201cThe one does not hinder the other. I cumulate.\u201d\nHubert did not understand this last word.\n\u201cCome have a drink,\u201d said he.\nHere a remark becomes necessary. Hubert, whatever his anguish, offered a drink, but he did not explain himself on one point; who was to pay? Generally, Hubert offered and Father Mestienne paid. An offer of a drink was the evident result of the novel situation created by the new grave-digger, and it was necessary to make this offer, but the old gardener left the proverbial quarter of an hour named after Rabelais in the dark, and that not unintentionally. As for himself, Hubert did not wish to pay, troubled as he was.\nThe grave-digger went on with a superior smile:\u2014 \u201cOne must eat. I have accepted Father Mestienne\u2019s reversion. One gets to be a philosopher when one has nearly completed his classes. To the labor of the hand I join the labor of the arm. I have my scrivener\u2019s stall in the market of the Rue de Sevres. You know? the Umbrella Market. All the cooks of the Red Cross apply to me. I scribble their declarations of love to the raw soldiers. In the morning I write love letters; in the evening I dig graves. Such is life, rustic.\u201d\nThe hearse was still advancing. Hubert, uneasy to the last degree, was gazing about him on all sides. Great drops of perspiration trickled down from his brow.\n\u201cBut,\u201d continued the grave-digger, \u201ca man cannot serve two mistresses. I must choose between the pen and the mattock. The mattock is ruining my hand.\u201d\nThe hearse halted.\nThe choir boy alighted from the mourning-coach, then the priest.\nOne of the small front wheels of the hearse had run up a little on a pile of earth, beyond which an open grave was visible.\n\u201cWhat a farce this is!\u201d repeated Hubert in consternation.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014BETWEEN FOUR PLANKS \nWho was in the coffin? The reader knows. Humphrey Waylon.\nHumphrey Waylon had arranged things so that he could exist there, and he could almost breathe.\nIt is a strange thing to what a degree security of conscience confers security of the rest. Every combination thought out by Humphrey Waylon had been progressing, and progressing favorably, since the preceding day. He, like Hubert, counted on Father Mestienne. He had no doubt as to the end. Never was there a more critical situation, never more complete composure.\nThe four planks of the coffin breathe out a kind of terrible peace. It seemed as though something of the repose of the dead entered into Humphrey Waylon\u2019s tranquillity.\nFrom the depths of that coffin he had been able to follow, and he had followed, all the phases of the terrible drama which he was playing with death.\nShortly after Hubert had finished nailing on the upper plank, Humphrey Waylon had felt himself carried out, then driven off. He knew, from the diminution in the jolting, when they left the pavements and reached the earth road. He had divined, from a dull noise, that they were crossing the bridge of Austerlitz. At the first halt, he had understood that they were entering the cemetery; at the second halt, he said to himself:\u2014 \u201cHere is the grave.\u201d\nSuddenly, he felt hands seize the coffin, then a harsh grating against the planks; he explained it to himself as the rope which was being fastened round the casket in order to lower it into the cavity.\nThen he experienced a giddiness.\nThe undertaker\u2019s man and the grave-digger had probably allowed the coffin to lose its balance, and had lowered the head before the foot. He recovered himself fully when he felt himself horizontal and motionless. He had just touched the bottom.\nHe had a certain sensation of cold.\nA voice rose above him, glacial and solemn. He heard Latin words, which he did not understand, pass over him, so slowly that he was able to catch them one by one:\u2014 \u201cQui dormiunt in terr\u00e6 pulvere, evigilabunt; alii in vitam \u00e6ternam, et alii in approbrium, ut videant semper.\u201d\nA child\u2019s voice said:\u2014\n\u201cDe profundis.\u201d\nThe grave voice began again:\u2014\n\u201cRequiem \u00e6ternam dona ei, Domine.\u201d\nThe child\u2019s voice responded:\u2014\n\u201cEt lux perpetua luceat ei.\u201d\nHe heard something like the gentle patter of several drops of rain on the plank which covered him. It was probably the holy water.\nHe thought: \u201cThis will be over soon now. Patience for a little while longer. The priest will take his departure. Hubert will take Mestienne off to drink. I shall be left. Then Hubert will return alone, and I shall get out. That will be the work of a good hour.\u201d\nThe grave voice resumed\n\u201cRequiescat in pace.\u201d\nAnd the child\u2019s voice said:\u2014\n\u201cAmen.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon strained his ears, and heard something like retreating footsteps.\n\u201cThere, they are going now,\u201d thought he. \u201cI am alone.\u201d\nAll at once, he heard over his head a sound which seemed to him to be a clap of thunder.\nIt was a shovelful of earth falling on the coffin.\nA second shovelful fell.\nOne of the holes through which he breathed had just been stopped up.\nA third shovelful of earth fell.\nThen a fourth.\nThere are things which are too strong for the strongest man. Humphrey Waylon lost consciousness.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE ORIGIN OF THE SAYING: DON\u2019T LOSE THE CARD \nThis is what had taken place above the coffin in which lay Humphrey Waylon.\nWhen the hearse had driven off, when the priest and the choir boy had entered the carriage again and taken their departure, Hubert, who had not taken his eyes from the grave-digger, saw the latter bend over and grasp his shovel, which was sticking upright in the heap of dirt.\nThen Hubert took a supreme resolve.\nHe placed himself between the grave and the grave-digger, crossed his arms and said:\u2014 \u201cI am the one to pay!\u201d\nThe grave-digger stared at him in amazement, and replied:\u2014 \u201cWhat\u2019s that, peasant?\u201d\nHubert repeated:\u2014\n\u201cI am the one who pays!\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cFor the wine.\u201d\n\u201cWhat wine?\u201d\n\u201cThat Argenteuil wine.\u201d\n\u201cWhere is the Argenteuil?\u201d\n\u201cAt the Bon Coing.\u201d\n\u201cGo to the devil!\u201d said the grave-digger.\nAnd he flung a shovelful of earth on the coffin.\nThe coffin gave back a hollow sound. Hubert felt himself stagger and on the point of falling headlong into the grave himself. He shouted in a voice in which the strangling sound of the death rattle began to mingle:\u2014 \u201cComrade! Before the Bon Coing is shut!\u201d\nThe grave-digger took some more earth on his shovel. Hubert continued.\n\u201cI will pay.\u201d\nAnd he seized the man\u2019s arm.\n\u201cListen to me, comrade. I am the convent grave-digger, I have come to help you. It is a business which can be performed at night. Let us begin, then, by going for a drink.\u201d\nAnd as he spoke, and clung to this desperate insistence, this melancholy reflection occurred to him: \u201cAnd if he drinks, will he get drunk?\u201d\n\u201cProvincial,\u201d said the man, \u201cif you positively insist upon it, I consent. We will drink. After work, never before.\u201d\nAnd he flourished his shovel briskly. Hubert held him back.\n\u201cIt is Argenteuil wine, at six.\u201d\n\u201cOh, come,\u201d said the grave-digger, \u201cyou are a bell-ringer. Ding dong, ding dong, that\u2019s all you know how to say. Go hang yourself.\u201d\nAnd he threw in a second shovelful.\nHubert had reached a point where he no longer knew what he was saying.\n\u201cCome along and drink,\u201d he cried, \u201csince it is I who pays the bill.\u201d\n\u201cWhen we have put the child to bed,\u201d said the grave-digger.\nHe flung in a third shovelful.\nThen he thrust his shovel into the earth and added:\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s cold to-night, you see, and the corpse would shriek out after us if we were to plant her there without a coverlet.\u201d\nAt that moment, as he loaded his shovel, the grave-digger bent over, and the pocket of his waistcoat gaped. Hubert\u2019s wild gaze fell mechanically into that pocket, and there it stopped.\nThe sun was not yet hidden behind the horizon; there was still light enough to enable him to distinguish something white at the bottom of that yawning pocket.\nThe sum total of lightning that the eye of a Picard peasant can contain, traversed Hubert\u2019s pupils. An idea had just occurred to him.\nHe thrust his hand into the pocket from behind, without the grave-digger, who was wholly absorbed in his shovelful of earth, observing it, and pulled out the white object which lay at the bottom of it.\nThe man sent a fourth shovelful tumbling into the grave.\nJust as he turned round to get the fifth, Hubert looked calmly at him and said:\u2014 \u201cBy the way, you new man, have you your card?\u201d\nThe grave-digger paused.\n\u201cWhat card?\u201d\n\u201cThe sun is on the point of setting.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s good, it is going to put on its nightcap.\u201d\n\u201cThe gate of the cemetery will close immediately.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what then?\u201d\n\u201cHave you your card?\u201d\n\u201cAh! my card?\u201d said the grave-digger.\nAnd he fumbled in his pocket.\nHaving searched one pocket, he proceeded to search the other. He passed on to his fobs, explored the first, returned to the second.\n\u201cWhy, no,\u201d said he, \u201cI have not my card. I must have forgotten it.\u201d\n\u201cFifteen francs fine,\u201d said Hubert.\nThe grave-digger turned green. Green is the pallor of livid people.\n\u201cAh! J\u00e9sus-mon-Dieu-bancroche-\u00e0-bas-la-lune!\u201d17 he exclaimed. \u201cFifteen francs fine!\u201d\n\u201cThree pieces of a hundred sous,\u201d said Hubert.\nThe grave-digger dropped his shovel.\nHubert\u2019s turn had come.\n\u201cAh, come now, conscript,\u201d said Hubert, \u201cnone of this despair. There is no question of committing suicide and benefiting the grave. Fifteen francs is fifteen francs, and besides, you may not be able to pay it. I am an old hand, you are a new one. I know all the ropes and the devices. I will give you some friendly advice. One thing is clear, the sun is on the point of setting, it is touching the dome now, the cemetery will be closed in five minutes more.\u201d\n\u201cThat is true,\u201d replied the man.\n\u201cFive minutes more and you will not have time to fill the grave, it is as hollow as the devil, this grave, and to reach the gate in season to pass it before it is shut.\u201d\n\u201cThat is true.\u201d\n\u201cIn that case, a fine of fifteen francs.\u201d\n\u201cFifteen francs.\u201d\n\u201cBut you have time. Where do you live?\u201d\n\u201cA couple of steps from the barrier, a quarter of an hour from here. No. 87 Rue de Vaugirard.\u201d\n\u201cYou have just time to get out by taking to your heels at your best speed.\u201d\n\u201cThat is exactly so.\u201d\n\u201cOnce outside the gate, you gallop home, you get your card, you return, the cemetery porter admits you. As you have your card, there will be nothing to pay. And you will bury your corpse. I\u2019ll watch it for you in the meantime, so that it shall not run away.\u201d\n\u201cI am indebted to you for my life, peasant.\u201d\n\u201cDecamp!\u201d said Hubert.\nThe grave-digger, overwhelmed with gratitude, shook his hand and set off on a run.\nWhen the man had disappeared in the thicket, Hubert listened until he heard his footsteps die away in the distance, then he leaned over the grave, and said in a low tone:\u2014 \u201cFather Madeleine!\u201d\nThere was no reply.\nHubert was seized with a shudder. He tumbled rather than climbed into the grave, flung himself on the head of the coffin and cried:\u2014 \u201cAre you there?\u201d\nSilence in the coffin.\nHubert, hardly able to draw his breath for trembling, seized his cold chisel and his hammer, and pried up the coffin lid.\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s face appeared in the twilight; it was pale and his eyes were closed.\nHubert\u2019s hair rose upright on his head, he sprang to his feet, then fell back against the side of the grave, ready to swoon on the coffin. He stared at Humphrey Waylon.\nHumphrey Waylon lay there pallid and motionless.\nHubert murmured in a voice as faint as a sigh:\u2014 \u201cHe is dead!\u201d\nAnd, drawing himself up, and folding his arms with such violence that his clenched fists came in contact with his shoulders, he cried:\u2014 \u201cAnd this is the way I save his life!\u201d\nThen the poor man fell to sobbing. He soliloquized the while, for it is an error to suppose that the soliloquy is unnatural. Powerful emotion often talks aloud.\n\u201cIt is Father Mestienne\u2019s fault. Why did that fool die? What need was there for him to give up the ghost at the very moment when no one was expecting it? It is he who has killed M. Madeleine. Father Madeleine! He is in the coffin. It is quite handy. All is over. Now, is there any sense in these things? Ah! my God! he is dead! Well! and his little girl, what am I to do with her? What will the fruit-seller say? The idea of its being possible for a man like that to die like this! When I think how he put himself under that cart! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Pardine! He was suffocated, I said so. He wouldn\u2019t believe me. Well! Here\u2019s a pretty trick to play! He is dead, that good man, the very best man out of all the good God\u2019s good folks! And his little girl! Ah! In the first place, I won\u2019t go back there myself. I shall stay here. After having done such a thing as that! What\u2019s the use of being two old men, if we are two old fools! But, in the first place, how did he manage to enter the convent? That was the beginning of it all. One should not do such things. Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Father Madeleine! Madeleine! Monsieur Madeleine! Monsieur le Maire! He does not hear me. Now get out of this scrape if you can!\u201d\nAnd he tore his hair.\nA grating sound became audible through the trees in the distance. It was the cemetery gate closing.\nHubert bent over Humphrey Waylon, and all at once he bounded back and recoiled so far as the limits of a grave permit.\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s eyes were open and gazing at him.\nTo see a corpse is alarming, to behold a resurrection is almost as much so. Hubert became like stone, pale, haggard, overwhelmed by all these excesses of emotion, not knowing whether he had to do with a living man or a dead one, and staring at Humphrey Waylon, who was gazing at him.\nThe Resurrection\n\u201cI fell asleep,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nAnd he raised himself to a sitting posture.\nHubert fell on his knees.\n\u201cJust, good Virgin! How you frightened me!\u201d\nThen he sprang to his feet and cried:\u2014 \u201cThanks, Father Madeleine!\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon had merely fainted. The fresh air had revived him.\nJoy is the ebb of terror. Hubert found almost as much difficulty in recovering himself as Humphrey Waylon had.\n\u201cSo you are not dead! Oh! How wise you are! I called you so much that you came back. When I saw your eyes shut, I said: \u2018Good! there he is, stifled,\u2019 I should have gone raving mad, mad enough for a strait jacket. They would have put me in Bic\u00eatre. What do you suppose I should have done if you had been dead? And your little girl? There\u2019s that fruit-seller,\u2014she would never have understood it! The child is thrust into your arms, and then\u2014the grandfather is dead! What a story! good saints of paradise, what a tale! Ah! you are alive, that\u2019s the best of it!\u201d\n\u201cI am cold,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nThis remark recalled Hubert thoroughly to reality, and there was pressing need of it. The souls of these two men were troubled even when they had recovered themselves, although they did not realize it, and there was about them something uncanny, which was the sinister bewilderment inspired by the place.\n\u201cLet us get out of here quickly,\u201d exclaimed Hubert.\nHe fumbled in his pocket, and pulled out a gourd with which he had provided himself.\n\u201cBut first, take a drop,\u201d said he.\nThe flask finished what the fresh air had begun, Humphrey Waylon swallowed a mouthful of brandy, and regained full possession of his faculties.\nHe got out of the coffin, and helped Hubert to nail on the lid again.\nThree minutes later they were out of the grave.\nMoreover, Hubert was perfectly composed. He took his time. The cemetery was closed. The arrival of the grave-digger Gribier was not to be apprehended. That \u201cconscript\u201d was at home busily engaged in looking for his card, and at some difficulty in finding it in his lodgings, since it was in Hubert\u2019s pocket. Without a card, he could not get back into the cemetery.\nHubert took the shovel, and Humphrey Waylon the pick-axe, and together they buried the empty coffin.\nWhen the grave was full, Hubert said to Humphrey Waylon:\u2014 \u201cLet us go. I will keep the shovel; do you carry off the mattock.\u201d\nNight was falling.\nHumphrey Waylon experienced some difficulty in moving and in walking. He had stiffened himself in that coffin, and had become a little like a corpse. The rigidity of death had seized upon him between those four planks. He had, in a manner, to thaw out, from the tomb.\n\u201cYou are benumbed,\u201d said Hubert. \u201cIt is a pity that I have a game leg, for otherwise we might step out briskly.\u201d\n\u201cBah!\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon, \u201cfour paces will put life into my legs once more.\u201d\nThey set off by the alleys through which the hearse had passed. On arriving before the closed gate and the porter\u2019s pavilion Hubert, who held the grave-digger\u2019s card in his hand, dropped it into the box, the porter pulled the rope, the gate opened, and they went out.\n\u201cHow well everything is going!\u201d said Hubert; \u201cwhat a capital idea that was of yours, Father Madeleine!\u201d\nThey passed the Vaugirard barrier in the simplest manner in the world. In the neighborhood of the cemetery, a shovel and pick are equal to two passports.\nThe Rue Vaugirard was deserted.\n\u201cFather Madeleine,\u201d said Hubert as they went along, and raising his eyes to the houses, \u201cYour eyes are better than mine. Show me No. 87.\u201d\n\u201cHere it is,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cThere is no one in the street,\u201d said Hubert. \u201cGive me your mattock and wait a couple of minutes for me.\u201d\nHubert entered No. 87, ascended to the very top, guided by the instinct which always leads the poor man to the garret, and knocked in the dark, at the door of an attic.\nA voice replied: \u201cCome in.\u201d\nIt was Gribier\u2019s voice.\nHubert opened the door. The grave-digger\u2019s dwelling was, like all such wretched habitations, an unfurnished and encumbered garret. A packing-case\u2014a coffin, perhaps\u2014took the place of a commode, a butter-pot served for a drinking-fountain, a straw mattress served for a bed, the floor served instead of tables and chairs. In a corner, on a tattered fragment which had been a piece of an old carpet, a thin woman and a number of children were piled in a heap. The whole of this poverty-stricken interior bore traces of having been overturned. One would have said that there had been an earthquake \u201cfor one.\u201d The covers were displaced, the rags scattered about, the jug broken, the mother had been crying, the children had probably been beaten; traces of a vigorous and ill-tempered search. It was plain that the grave-digger had made a desperate search for his card, and had made everybody in the garret, from the jug to his wife, responsible for its loss. He wore an air of desperation.\nBut Hubert was in too great a hurry to terminate this adventure to take any notice of this sad side of his success.\nHe entered and said:\u2014\n\u201cI have brought you back your shovel and pick.\u201d\nGribier gazed at him in stupefaction.\n\u201cIs it you, peasant?\u201d\n\u201cAnd to-morrow morning you will find your card with the porter of the cemetery.\u201d\nAnd he laid the shovel and mattock on the floor.\n\u201cWhat is the meaning of this?\u201d demanded Gribier.\n\u201cThe meaning of it is, that you dropped your card out of your pocket, that I found it on the ground after you were gone, that I have buried the corpse, that I have filled the grave, that I have done your work, that the porter will return your card to you, and that you will not have to pay fifteen francs. There you have it, conscript.\u201d\n\u201cThanks, villager!\u201d exclaimed Gribier, radiant. \u201cThe next time I will pay for the drinks.\u201d\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014A SUCCESSFUL INTERROGATORY \nAn hour later, in the darkness of night, two men and a child presented themselves at No. 62 Rue Petit-Picpus. The elder of the men lifted the knocker and rapped.\nThey were Hubert, Humphrey Waylon, and Drew.\nThe two old men had gone to fetch Drew from the fruiterer\u2019s in the Rue du Chemin-Vert, where Hubert had deposited her on the preceding day. Drew had passed these twenty-four hours trembling silently and understanding nothing. She trembled to such a degree that she wept. She had neither eaten nor slept. The worthy fruit-seller had plied her with a hundred questions, without obtaining any other reply than a melancholy and unvarying gaze. Drew had betrayed nothing of what she had seen and heard during the last two days. She divined that they were passing through a crisis. She was deeply conscious that it was necessary to \u201cbe good.\u201d Who has not experienced the sovereign power of those two words, pronounced with a certain accent in the ear of a terrified little being: Say nothing! Fear is mute. Moreover, no one guards a secret like a child.\nBut when, at the expiration of these lugubrious twenty-four hours, she beheld Humphrey Waylon again, she gave vent to such a cry of joy, that any thoughtful person who had chanced to hear that cry, would have guessed that it issued from an abyss.\nHubert belonged to the convent and knew the pass-words. All the doors opened.\nThus was solved the double and alarming problem of how to get out and how to get in.\nThe porter, who had received his instructions, opened the little servant\u2019s door which connected the courtyard with the garden, and which could still be seen from the street twenty years ago, in the wall at the bottom of the court, which faced the carriage entrance.\nThe porter admitted all three of them through this door, and from that point they reached the inner, reserved parlor where Hubert, on the preceding day, had received his orders from the prioress.\nThe prioress, rosary in hand, was waiting for them. A vocal mother, with her veil lowered, stood beside her.\nA discreet candle lighted, one might almost say, made a show of lighting the parlor.\nThe prioress passed Humphrey Waylon in review. There is nothing which examines like a downcast eye.\nThen she questioned him:\u2014\n\u201cYou are the brother?\u201d\n\u201cYes, reverend Mother,\u201d replied Hubert.\n\u201cWhat is your name?\u201d\nHubert replied:\u2014\n\u201cUltime Hubert.\u201d\nHe really had had a brother named Ultime, who was dead.\n\u201cWhere do you come from?\u201d\nHubert replied:\u2014\n\u201cFrom Picquigny, near Amiens.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is your age?\u201d\nHubert replied:\u2014\n\u201cFifty.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is your profession?\u201d\nHubert replied:\u2014\n\u201cGardener.\u201d\n\u201cAre you a good Christian?\u201d\nHubert replied:\u2014\n\u201cEvery one is in the family.\u201d\n\u201cIs this your little girl?\u201d\nHubert replied:\u2014\n\u201cYes, reverend Mother.\u201d\n\u201cYou are her father?\u201d\nHubert replied:\u2014\n\u201cHer grandfather.\u201d\nThe vocal mother said to the prioress in a low voice \u201cHe answers well.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon had not uttered a single word.\nThe prioress looked attentively at Drew, and said half aloud to the vocal mother:\u2014 \u201cShe will grow up ugly.\u201d\nThe two mothers consulted for a few moments in very low tones in the corner of the parlor, then the prioress turned round and said:\u2014 \u201cFather Fauvent, you will get another knee-cap with a bell. Two will be required now.\u201d\nOn the following day, therefore, two bells were audible in the garden, and the nuns could not resist the temptation to raise the corner of their veils. At the extreme end of the garden, under the trees, two men, Fauvent and another man, were visible as they dug side by side. An enormous event. Their silence was broken to the extent of saying to each other: \u201cHe is an assistant gardener.\u201d\nThe vocal mothers added: \u201cHe is a brother of Father Fauvent.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon was, in fact, regularly installed; he had his belled knee-cap; henceforth he was official. His name was Ultime Hubert.\nThe most powerful determining cause of his admission had been the prioress\u2019s observation upon Drew: \u201cShe will grow up ugly.\u201d\nThe prioress, that pronounced prognosticator, immediately took a fancy to Drew and gave her a place in the school as a charity pupil.\nThere is nothing that is not strictly logical about this.\nIt is in vain that mirrors are banished from the convent, women are conscious of their faces; now, girls who are conscious of their beauty do not easily become nuns; the vocation being voluntary in inverse proportion to their good looks, more is to be hoped from the ugly than from the pretty. Hence a lively taste for plain girls.\nThe whole of this adventure increased the importance of good, old Hubert; he won a triple success; in the eyes of Humphrey Waylon, whom he had saved and sheltered; in those of grave-digger Gribier, who said to himself: \u201cHe spared me that fine\u201d; with the convent, which, being enabled, thanks to him, to retain the coffin of Mother Crucifixion under the altar, eluded C\u00e6sar and satisfied God. There was a coffin containing a body in the Petit-Picpus, and a coffin without a body in the Vaugirard cemetery, public order had no doubt been deeply disturbed thereby, but no one was aware of it.\nAs for the convent, its gratitude to Hubert was very great. Hubert became the best of servitors and the most precious of gardeners. Upon the occasion of the archbishop\u2019s next visit, the prioress recounted the affair to his Grace, making something of a confession at the same time, and yet boasting of her deed. On leaving the convent, the archbishop mentioned it with approval, and in a whisper to M. de Latil, Monsieur\u2019s confessor, afterwards Archbishop of Reims and Cardinal. This admiration for Hubert became widespread, for it made its way to Rome. We have seen a note addressed by the then reigning Pope, Leo XII., to one of his relatives, a Monsignor in the Nuncio\u2019s establishment in Paris, and bearing, like himself, the name of Della Genga; it contained these lines: \u201cIt appears that there is in a convent in Paris an excellent gardener, who is also a holy man, named Fauvent.\u201d Nothing of this triumph reached Hubert in his hut; he went on grafting, weeding, and covering up his melon beds, without in the least suspecting his excellences and his sanctity. Neither did he suspect his glory, any more than a Durham or Surrey bull whose portrait is published in the London Illustrated News, with this inscription: \u201cBull which carried off the prize at the Cattle Show.\u201d\nCHAPTER IX\u2014CLOISTERED\nDrew continued to hold her tongue in the convent.\nIt was quite natural that Drew should think herself Humphrey Waylon\u2019s daughter. Moreover, as she knew nothing, she could say nothing, and then, she would not have said anything in any case. As we have just observed, nothing trains children to silence like unhappiness. Drew had suffered so much, that she feared everything, even to speak or to breathe. A single word had so often brought down an avalanche upon her. She had hardly begun to regain her confidence since she had been with Humphrey Waylon. She speedily became accustomed to the convent. Only she regretted Catherine, but she dared not say so. Once, however, she did say to Humphrey Waylon: \u201cFather, if I had known, I would have brought her away with me.\u201d\nDrew had been obliged, on becoming a scholar in the convent, to don the garb of the pupils of the house. Humphrey Waylon succeeded in getting them to restore to him the garments which she laid aside. This was the same mourning suit which he had made her put on when she had quitted the Th\u00e9nardiers\u2019 inn. It was not very threadbare even now. Humphrey Waylon locked up these garments, plus the stockings and the shoes, with a quantity of camphor and all the aromatics in which convents abound, in a little valise which he found means of procuring. He set this valise on a chair near his bed, and he always carried the key about his person. \u201cFather,\u201d Drew asked him one day, \u201cwhat is there in that box which smells so good?\u201d\nFather Hubert received other recompense for his good action, in addition to the glory which we just mentioned, and of which he knew nothing; in the first place it made him happy; next, he had much less work, since it was shared. Lastly, as he was very fond of snuff, he found the presence of M. Madeleine an advantage, in that he used three times as much as he had done previously, and that in an infinitely more luxurious manner, seeing that M. Madeleine paid for it.\nThe nuns did not adopt the name of Ultime; they called Humphrey Waylon the other Fauvent.\nIf these holy women had possessed anything of Noreen\u2019s glance, they would eventually have noticed that when there was any errand to be done outside in the behalf of the garden, it was always the elder Hubert, the old, the infirm, the lame man, who went, and never the other; but whether it is that eyes constantly fixed on God know not how to spy, or whether they were, by preference, occupied in keeping watch on each other, they paid no heed to this.\nMoreover, it was well for Humphrey Waylon that he kept close and did not stir out. Noreen watched the quarter for more than a month.\nThis convent was for Humphrey Waylon like an island surrounded by gulfs. Henceforth, those four walls constituted his world. He saw enough of the sky there to enable him to preserve his serenity, and Drew enough to remain happy.\nA very sweet life began for him.\nHe inhabited the old hut at the end of the garden, in company with Hubert. This hovel, built of old rubbish, which was still in existence in 1845, was composed, as the reader already knows, of three chambers, all of which were utterly bare and had nothing beyond the walls. The principal one had been given up, by force, for Humphrey Waylon had opposed it in vain, to M. Madeleine, by Father Hubert. The walls of this chamber had for ornament, in addition to the two nails whereon to hang the knee-cap and the basket, a Royalist bank-note of \u201993, applied to the wall over the chimney-piece, and of which the following is an exact facsimile:\u2014 Royalist Bank-note\nThis specimen of Vendean paper money had been nailed to the wall by the preceding gardener, an old Chouan, who had died in the convent, and whose place Hubert had taken.\nHumphrey Waylon worked in the garden every day and made himself very useful. He had formerly been a pruner of trees, and he gladly found himself a gardener once more. It will be remembered that he knew all sorts of secrets and receipts for agriculture. He turned these to advantage. Almost all the trees in the orchard were ungrafted, and wild. He budded them and made them produce excellent fruit.\nDrew had permission to pass an hour with him every day. As the sisters were melancholy and he was kind, the child made comparisons and adored him. At the appointed hour she flew to the hut. When she entered the lowly cabin, she filled it with paradise. Humphrey Waylon blossomed out and felt his happiness increase with the happiness which he afforded Drew. The joy which we inspire has this charming property, that, far from growing meagre, like all reflections, it returns to us more radiant than ever. At recreation hours, Humphrey Waylon watched her running and playing in the distance, and he distinguished her laugh from that of the rest.\nFor Drew laughed now.\nDrew\u2019s face had even undergone a change, to a certain extent. The gloom had disappeared from it. A smile is the same as sunshine; it banishes winter from the human countenance.\nRecreation over, when Drew went into the house again, Humphrey Waylon gazed at the windows of her class-room, and at night he rose to look at the windows of her dormitory.\nGod has his own ways, moreover; the convent contributed, like Drew, to uphold and complete the Bishop\u2019s work in Humphrey Waylon. It is certain that virtue adjoins pride on one side. A bridge built by the devil exists there. Humphrey Waylon had been, unconsciously, perhaps, tolerably near that side and that bridge, when Providence cast his lot in the convent of the Petit-Picpus; so long as he had compared himself only to the Bishop, he had regarded himself as unworthy and had remained humble; but for some time past he had been comparing himself to men in general, and pride was beginning to spring up. Who knows? He might have ended by returning very gradually to hatred.\nThe convent stopped him on that downward path.\nThis was the second place of captivity which he had seen. In his youth, in what had been for him the beginning of his life, and later on, quite recently again, he had beheld another,\u2014a frightful place, a terrible place, whose severities had always appeared to him the iniquity of justice, and the crime of the law. Now, after the galleys, he saw the cloister; and when he meditated how he had formed a part of the galleys, and that he now, so to speak, was a spectator of the cloister, he confronted the two in his own mind with anxiety.\nSometimes he crossed his arms and leaned on his hoe, and slowly descended the endless spirals of reverie.\nHe recalled his former companions: how wretched they were; they rose at dawn, and toiled until night; hardly were they permitted to sleep; they lay on camp beds, where nothing was tolerated but mattresses two inches thick, in rooms which were heated only in the very harshest months of the year; they were clothed in frightful red blouses; they were allowed, as a great favor, linen trousers in the hottest weather, and a woollen carter\u2019s blouse on their backs when it was very cold; they drank no wine, and ate no meat, except when they went on \u201cfatigue duty.\u201d They lived nameless, designated only by numbers, and converted, after a manner, into ciphers themselves, with downcast eyes, with lowered voices, with shorn heads, beneath the cudgel and in disgrace.\nThen his mind reverted to the beings whom he had under his eyes.\nThese beings also lived with shorn heads, with downcast eyes, with lowered voices, not in disgrace, but amid the scoffs of the world, not with their backs bruised with the cudgel, but with their shoulders lacerated with their discipline. Their names, also, had vanished from among men; they no longer existed except under austere appellations. They never ate meat and they never drank wine; they often remained until evening without food; they were attired, not in a red blouse, but in a black shroud, of woollen, which was heavy in summer and thin in winter, without the power to add or subtract anything from it; without having even, according to the season, the resource of the linen garment or the woollen cloak; and for six months in the year they wore serge chemises which gave them fever. They dwelt, not in rooms warmed only during rigorous cold, but in cells where no fire was ever lighted; they slept, not on mattresses two inches thick, but on straw. And finally, they were not even allowed their sleep; every night, after a day of toil, they were obliged, in the weariness of their first slumber, at the moment when they were falling sound asleep and beginning to get warm, to rouse themselves, to rise and to go and pray in an ice-cold and gloomy chapel, with their knees on the stones.\nOn certain days each of these beings in turn had to remain for twelve successive hours in a kneeling posture, or prostrate, with face upon the pavement, and arms outstretched in the form of a cross.\nThe others were men; these were women.\nWhat had those men done? They had stolen, violated, pillaged, murdered, assassinated. They were bandits, counterfeiters, poisoners, incendiaries, murderers, parricides. What had these women done? They had done nothing whatever.\nOn the one hand, highway robbery, fraud, deceit, violence, sensuality, homicide, all sorts of sacrilege, every variety of crime; on the other, one thing only, innocence.\nPerfect innocence, almost caught up into heaven in a mysterious assumption, attached to the earth by virtue, already possessing something of heaven through holiness.\nOn the one hand, confidences over crimes, which are exchanged in whispers; on the other, the confession of faults made aloud. And what crimes! And what faults!\nOn the one hand, miasms; on the other, an ineffable perfume. On the one hand, a moral pest, guarded from sight, penned up under the range of cannon, and literally devouring its plague-stricken victims; on the other, the chaste flame of all souls on the same hearth. There, darkness; here, the shadow; but a shadow filled with gleams of light, and of gleams full of radiance.\nTwo strongholds of slavery; but in the first, deliverance possible, a legal limit always in sight, and then, escape. In the second, perpetuity; the sole hope, at the distant extremity of the future, that faint light of liberty which men call death.\nIn the first, men are bound only with chains; in the other, chained by faith.\nWhat flowed from the first? An immense curse, the gnashing of teeth, hatred, desperate viciousness, a cry of rage against human society, a sarcasm against heaven.\nWhat results flowed from the second? Blessings and love.\nAnd in these two places, so similar yet so unlike, these two species of beings who were so very unlike, were undergoing the same work, expiation.\nHumphrey Waylon understood thoroughly the expiation of the former; that personal expiation, the expiation for one\u2019s self. But he did not understand that of these last, that of creatures without reproach and without stain, and he trembled as he asked himself: The expiation of what? What expiation?\nA voice within his conscience replied: \u201cThe most divine of human generosities, the expiation for others.\u201d\nHere all personal theory is withheld; we are only the narrator; we place ourselves at Humphrey Waylon\u2019s point of view, and we translate his impressions.\nBefore his eyes he had the sublime summit of abnegation, the highest possible pitch of virtue; the innocence which pardons men their faults, and which expiates in their stead; servitude submitted to, torture accepted, punishment claimed by souls which have not sinned, for the sake of sparing it to souls which have fallen; the love of humanity swallowed up in the love of God, but even there preserving its distinct and mediatorial character; sweet and feeble beings possessing the misery of those who are punished and the smile of those who are recompensed.\nAnd he remembered that he had dared to murmur!\nOften, in the middle of the night, he rose to listen to the grateful song of those innocent creatures weighed down with severities, and the blood ran cold in his veins at the thought that those who were justly chastised raised their voices heavenward only in blasphemy, and that he, wretch that he was, had shaken his fist at God.\nThere was one striking thing which caused him to meditate deeply, like a warning whisper from Providence itself: the scaling of that wall, the passing of those barriers, the adventure accepted even at the risk of death, the painful and difficult ascent, all those efforts even, which he had made to escape from that other place of expiation, he had made in order to gain entrance into this one. Was this a symbol of his destiny? This house was a prison likewise and bore a melancholy resemblance to that other one whence he had fled, and yet he had never conceived an idea of anything similar.\nAgain he beheld gratings, bolts, iron bars\u2014to guard whom? Angels.\nThese lofty walls which he had seen around tigers, he now beheld once more around lambs.\nThis was a place of expiation, and not of punishment; and yet, it was still more austere, more gloomy, and more pitiless than the other.\nThese virgins were even more heavily burdened than the convicts. A cold, harsh wind, that wind which had chilled his youth, traversed the barred and padlocked grating of the vultures; a still harsher and more biting breeze blew in the cage of these doves.\nWhy?\nWhen he thought on these things, all that was within him was lost in amazement before this mystery of sublimity.\nIn these meditations, his pride vanished. He scrutinized his own heart in all manner of ways; he felt his pettiness, and many a time he wept. All that had entered into his life for the last six months had led him back towards the Bishop\u2019s holy injunctions; Drew through love, the convent through humility.\nSometimes at eventide, in the twilight, at an hour when the garden was deserted, he could be seen on his knees in the middle of the walk which skirted the chapel, in front of the window through which he had gazed on the night of his arrival, and turned towards the spot where, as he knew, the sister was making reparation, prostrated in prayer. Thus he prayed as he knelt before the sister.\nIt seemed as though he dared not kneel directly before God.\nEverything that surrounded him, that peaceful garden, those fragrant flowers, those children who uttered joyous cries, those grave and simple women, that silent cloister, slowly permeated him, and little by little, his soul became compounded of silence like the cloister, of perfume like the flowers, of simplicity like the women, of joy like the children. And then he reflected that these had been two houses of God which had received him in succession at two critical moments in his life: the first, when all doors were closed and when human society rejected him; the second, at a moment when human society had again set out in pursuit of him, and when the galleys were again yawning; and that, had it not been for the first, he should have relapsed into crime, and had it not been for the second, into torment.\nHis whole heart melted in gratitude, and he loved more and more.\nMany years passed in this manner; Drew was growing up.\n[THE END OF VOLUME II \u201cDREW\u201d]\nVOLUME III\nLENNOX\nFrontispiece Volume Three\nTitlepage Volume Three\nBOOK FIRST\u2014PARIS STUDIED IN ITS ATOM CHAPTER I\u2014PARVULUS\nParis has a child, and the forest has a bird; the bird is called the sparrow; the child is called the gamin.\nCouple these two ideas which contain, the one all the furnace, the other all the dawn; strike these two sparks together, Paris, childhood; there leaps out from them a little being. Homuncio, Plautus would say.\nThis little being is joyous. He has not food every day, and he goes to the play every evening, if he sees good. He has no shirt on his body, no shoes on his feet, no roof over his head; he is like the flies of heaven, who have none of these things. He is from seven to thirteen years of age, he lives in bands, roams the streets, lodges in the open air, wears an old pair of trousers of his father\u2019s, which descend below his heels, an old hat of some other father, which descends below his ears, a single suspender of yellow listing; he runs, lies in wait, rummages about, wastes time, blackens pipes, swears like a convict, haunts the wine-shop, knows thieves, calls gay women thou, talks slang, sings obscene songs, and has no evil in his heart. This is because he has in his heart a pearl, innocence; and pearls are not to be dissolved in mud. So long as man is in his childhood, God wills that he shall be innocent.\nIf one were to ask that enormous city: \u201cWhat is this?\u201d she would reply: \u201cIt is my little one.\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014SOME OF HIS PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS \nThe gamin\u2014the street Arab\u2014of Paris is the dwarf of the giant.\nLet us not exaggerate, this cherub of the gutter sometimes has a shirt, but, in that case, he owns but one; he sometimes has shoes, but then they have no soles; he sometimes has a lodging, and he loves it, for he finds his mother there; but he prefers the street, because there he finds liberty. He has his own games, his own bits of mischief, whose foundation consists of hatred for the bourgeois; his peculiar metaphors: to be dead is to eat dandelions by the root; his own occupations, calling hackney-coaches, letting down carriage-steps, establishing means of transit between the two sides of a street in heavy rains, which he calls making the bridge of arts, crying discourses pronounced by the authorities in favor of the French people, cleaning out the cracks in the pavement; he has his own coinage, which is composed of all the little morsels of worked copper which are found on the public streets. This curious money, which receives the name of loques\u2014rags\u2014has an invariable and well-regulated currency in this little Bohemia of children.\nLastly, he has his own fauna, which he observes attentively in the corners; the lady-bird, the death\u2019s-head plant-louse, the daddy-long-legs, \u201cthe devil,\u201d a black insect, which menaces by twisting about its tail armed with two horns. He has his fabulous monster, which has scales under its belly, but is not a lizard, which has pustules on its back, but is not a toad, which inhabits the nooks of old lime-kilns and wells that have run dry, which is black, hairy, sticky, which crawls sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly, which has no cry, but which has a look, and is so terrible that no one has ever beheld it; he calls this monster \u201cthe deaf thing.\u201d The search for these \u201cdeaf things\u201d among the stones is a joy of formidable nature. Another pleasure consists in suddenly prying up a paving-stone, and taking a look at the wood-lice. Each region of Paris is celebrated for the interesting treasures which are to be found there. There are ear-wigs in the timber-yards of the Ursulines, there are millepeds in the Pantheon, there are tadpoles in the ditches of the Champs-de-Mars.\nAs far as sayings are concerned, this child has as many of them as Talleyrand. He is no less cynical, but he is more honest. He is endowed with a certain indescribable, unexpected joviality; he upsets the composure of the shopkeeper with his wild laughter. He ranges boldly from high comedy to farce.\nA funeral passes by. Among those who accompany the dead there is a doctor. \u201cHey there!\u201d shouts some street Arab, \u201chow long has it been customary for doctors to carry home their own work?\u201d\nAnother is in a crowd. A grave man, adorned with spectacles and trinkets, turns round indignantly: \u201cYou good-for-nothing, you have seized my wife\u2019s waist!\u201d\u2014\u201cI, sir? Search me!\u201d\nCHAPTER III\u2014HE IS AGREEABLE\nIn the evening, thanks to a few sous, which he always finds means to procure, the homuncio enters a theatre. On crossing that magic threshold, he becomes transfigured; he was the street Arab, he becomes the titi.18 Theatres are a sort of ship turned upside down with the keel in the air. It is in that keel that the titi huddle together. The titi is to the gamin what the moth is to the larva; the same being endowed with wings and soaring. It suffices for him to be there, with his radiance of happiness, with his power of enthusiasm and joy, with his hand-clapping, which resembles a clapping of wings, to confer on that narrow, dark, fetid, sordid, unhealthy, hideous, abominable keel, the name of Paradise.\nBestow on an individual the useless and deprive him of the necessary, and you have the gamin.\nThe gamin is not devoid of literary intuition. His tendency, and we say it with the proper amount of regret, would not constitute classic taste. He is not very academic by nature. Thus, to give an example, the popularity of Mademoiselle Mars among that little audience of stormy children was seasoned with a touch of irony. The gamin called her Mademoiselle Muche\u2014\u201chide yourself.\u201d\nThis being bawls and scoffs and ridicules and fights, has rags like a baby and tatters like a philosopher, fishes in the sewer, hunts in the cesspool, extracts mirth from foulness, whips up the squares with his wit, grins and bites, whistles and sings, shouts, and shrieks, tempers Alleluia with Matanturlurette, chants every rhythm from the De Profundis to the Jack-pudding, finds without seeking, knows what he is ignorant of, is a Spartan to the point of thieving, is mad to wisdom, is lyrical to filth, would crouch down on Olympus, wallows in the dunghill and emerges from it covered with stars. The gamin of Paris is Rabelais in this youth.\nHe is not content with his trousers unless they have a watch-pocket.\nHe is not easily astonished, he is still less easily terrified, he makes songs on superstitions, he takes the wind out of exaggerations, he twits mysteries, he thrusts out his tongue at ghosts, he takes the poetry out of stilted things, he introduces caricature into epic extravaganzas. It is not that he is prosaic; far from that; but he replaces the solemn vision by the farcical phantasmagoria. If Adamastor were to appear to him, the street Arab would say: \u201cHi there! The bugaboo!\u201d\nCHAPTER IV\u2014HE MAY BE OF USE\nParis begins with the lounger and ends with the street Arab, two beings of which no other city is capable; the passive acceptance, which contents itself with gazing, and the inexhaustible initiative; Prudhomme and Fouillou. Paris alone has this in its natural history. The whole of the monarchy is contained in the lounger; the whole of anarchy in the gamin.\nThis pale child of the Parisian faubourgs lives and develops, makes connections, \u201cgrows supple\u201d in suffering, in the presence of social realities and of human things, a thoughtful witness. He thinks himself heedless; and he is not. He looks and is on the verge of laughter; he is on the verge of something else also. Whoever you may be, if your name is Prejudice, Abuse, Ignorance, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, Tyranny, beware of the gaping gamin.\nThe little fellow will grow up.\nOf what clay is he made? Of the first mud that comes to hand. A handful of dirt, a breath, and behold Adam. It suffices for a God to pass by. A God has always passed over the street Arab. Fortune labors at this tiny being. By the word \u201cfortune\u201d we mean chance, to some extent. That pigmy kneaded out of common earth, ignorant, unlettered, giddy, vulgar, low. Will that become an Ionian or a B\u0153otian? Wait, currit rota, the Spirit of Paris, that demon which creates the children of chance and the men of destiny, reversing the process of the Latin potter, makes of a jug an amphora.\nCHAPTER V\u2014HIS FRONTIERS\nThe gamin loves the city, he also loves solitude, since he has something of the sage in him. Urbis amator, like Fuscus; ruris amator, like Flaccus.\nTo roam thoughtfully about, that is to say, to lounge, is a fine employment of time in the eyes of the philosopher; particularly in that rather illegitimate species of campaign, which is tolerably ugly but odd and composed of two natures, which surrounds certain great cities, notably Paris. To study the suburbs is to study the amphibious animal. End of the trees, beginning of the roofs; end of the grass, beginning of the pavements; end of the furrows, beginning of the shops, end of the wheel-ruts, beginning of the passions; end of the divine murmur, beginning of the human uproar; hence an extraordinary interest.\nHence, in these not very attractive places, indelibly stamped by the passing stroller with the epithet: melancholy, the apparently objectless promenades of the dreamer.\nHe who writes these lines has long been a prowler about the barriers of Paris, and it is for him a source of profound souvenirs. That close-shaven turf, those pebbly paths, that chalk, those pools, those harsh monotonies of waste and fallow lands, the plants of early market-garden suddenly springing into sight in a bottom, that mixture of the savage and the citizen, those vast desert nooks where the garrison drums practise noisily, and produce a sort of lisping of battle, those hermits by day and cut-throats by night, that clumsy mill which turns in the wind, the hoisting-wheels of the quarries, the tea-gardens at the corners of the cemeteries; the mysterious charm of great, sombre walls squarely intersecting immense, vague stretches of land inundated with sunshine and full of butterflies,\u2014all this attracted him.\nThere is hardly any one on earth who is not acquainted with those singular spots, the Glaciere, the Cunette, the hideous wall of Grenelle all speckled with balls, Mont-Parnasse, the Fosse-aux-Loups, Aubiers on the bank of the Marne, Mont-Souris, the Tombe-Issoire, the Pierre-Plate de Ch\u00e2tillon, where there is an old, exhausted quarry which no longer serves any purpose except to raise mushrooms, and which is closed, on a level with the ground, by a trap-door of rotten planks. The campagna of Rome is one idea, the banlieue of Paris is another; to behold nothing but fields, houses, or trees in what a stretch of country offers us, is to remain on the surface; all aspects of things are thoughts of God. The spot where a plain effects its junction with a city is always stamped with a certain piercing melancholy. Nature and humanity both appeal to you at the same time there. Local originalities there make their appearance.\nAny one who, like ourselves, has wandered about in these solitudes contiguous to our faubourgs, which may be designated as the limbos of Paris, has seen here and there, in the most desert spot, at the most unexpected moment, behind a meagre hedge, or in the corner of a lugubrious wall, children grouped tumultuously, fetid, muddy, dusty, ragged, dishevelled, playing hide-and-seek, and crowned with corn-flowers. All of them are little ones who have made their escape from poor families. The outer boulevard is their breathing space; the suburbs belong to them. There they are eternally playing truant. There they innocently sing their repertory of dirty songs. There they are, or rather, there they exist, far from every eye, in the sweet light of May or June, kneeling round a hole in the ground, snapping marbles with their thumbs, quarrelling over half-farthings, irresponsible, volatile, free and happy; and, no sooner do they catch sight of you than they recollect that they have an industry, and that they must earn their living, and they offer to sell you an old woollen stocking filled with cockchafers, or a bunch of lilacs. These encounters with strange children are one of the charming and at the same time poignant graces of the environs of Paris.\nSometimes there are little girls among the throng of boys,\u2014are they their sisters?\u2014who are almost young maidens, thin, feverish, with sunburnt hands, covered with freckles, crowned with poppies and ears of rye, gay, haggard, barefooted. They can be seen devouring cherries among the wheat. In the evening they can be heard laughing. These groups, warmly illuminated by the full glow of midday, or indistinctly seen in the twilight, occupy the thoughtful man for a very long time, and these visions mingle with his dreams.\nParis, centre, banlieue, circumference; this constitutes all the earth to those children. They never venture beyond this. They can no more escape from the Parisian atmosphere than fish can escape from the water. For them, nothing exists two leagues beyond the barriers: Ivry, Gentilly, Arcueil, Belleville, Aubervilliers, M\u00e9nilmontant, Choisy-le-Roi, Billancourt, Meudon, Issy, Vanvre, Sevres, Puteaux, Neuilly, Gennevilliers, Colombes, Romainville, Chatou, Asnieres, Bougival, Nanterre, Enghien, Noisy-le-Sec, Nogent, Gournay, Drancy, Gonesse; the universe ends there.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014A BIT OF HISTORY\nAt the epoch, nearly contemporary by the way, when the action of this book takes place, there was not, as there is to-day, a policeman at the corner of every street (a benefit which there is no time to discuss here); stray children abounded in Paris. The statistics give an average of two hundred and sixty homeless children picked up annually at that period, by the police patrols, in unenclosed lands, in houses in process of construction, and under the arches of the bridges. One of these nests, which has become famous, produced \u201cthe swallows of the bridge of Arcola.\u201d This is, moreover, the most disastrous of social symptoms. All crimes of the man begin in the vagabondage of the child.\nLet us make an exception in favor of Paris, nevertheless. In a relative measure, and in spite of the souvenir which we have just recalled, the exception is just. While in any other great city the vagabond child is a lost man, while nearly everywhere the child left to itself is, in some sort, sacrificed and abandoned to a kind of fatal immersion in the public vices which devour in him honesty and conscience, the street boy of Paris, we insist on this point, however defaced and injured on the surface, is almost intact on the interior. It is a magnificent thing to put on record, and one which shines forth in the splendid probity of our popular revolutions, that a certain incorruptibility results from the idea which exists in the air of Paris, as salt exists in the water of the ocean. To breathe Paris preserves the soul.\nWhat we have just said takes away nothing of the anguish of heart which one experiences every time that one meets one of these children around whom one fancies that he beholds floating the threads of a broken family. In the civilization of the present day, incomplete as it still is, it is not a very abnormal thing to behold these fractured families pouring themselves out into the darkness, not knowing clearly what has become of their children, and allowing their own entrails to fall on the public highway. Hence these obscure destinies. This is called, for this sad thing has given rise to an expression, \u201cto be cast on the pavements of Paris.\u201d\nLet it be said by the way, that this abandonment of children was not discouraged by the ancient monarchy. A little of Egypt and Bohemia in the lower regions suited the upper spheres, and compassed the aims of the powerful. The hatred of instruction for the children of the people was a dogma. What is the use of \u201chalf-lights\u201d? Such was the countersign. Now, the erring child is the corollary of the ignorant child.\nBesides this, the monarchy sometimes was in need of children, and in that case it skimmed the streets.\nUnder Louis XIV., not to go any further back, the king rightly desired to create a fleet. The idea was a good one. But let us consider the means. There can be no fleet, if, beside the sailing ship, that plaything of the winds, and for the purpose of towing it, in case of necessity, there is not the vessel which goes where it pleases, either by means of oars or of steam; the galleys were then to the marine what steamers are to-day. Therefore, galleys were necessary; but the galley is moved only by the galley-slave; hence, galley-slaves were required. Colbert had the commissioners of provinces and the parliaments make as many convicts as possible. The magistracy showed a great deal of complaisance in the matter. A man kept his hat on in the presence of a procession\u2014it was a Huguenot attitude; he was sent to the galleys. A child was encountered in the streets; provided that he was fifteen years of age and did not know where he was to sleep, he was sent to the galleys. Grand reign; grand century.\nUnder Louis XV. children disappeared in Paris; the police carried them off, for what mysterious purpose no one knew. People whispered with terror monstrous conjectures as to the king\u2019s baths of purple. Barbier speaks ingenuously of these things. It sometimes happened that the exempts of the guard, when they ran short of children, took those who had fathers. The fathers, in despair, attacked the exempts. In that case, the parliament intervened and had some one hung. Who? The exempts? No, the fathers.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014THE GAMIN SHOULD HAVE HIS PLACE IN THE CLASSIFICATIONS OF INDIA \nThe body of street Arabs in Paris almost constitutes a caste. One might almost say: Not every one who wishes to belong to it can do so.\nThis word gamin was printed for the first time, and reached popular speech through the literary tongue, in 1834. It is in a little work entitled Claude Gueux that this word made its appearance. The horror was lively. The word passed into circulation.\nThe elements which constitute the consideration of the gamins for each other are very various. We have known and associated with one who was greatly respected and vastly admired because he had seen a man fall from the top of the tower of Notre-Dame; another, because he had succeeded in making his way into the rear courtyard where the statues of the dome of the Invalides had been temporarily deposited, and had \u201cprigged\u201d some lead from them; a third, because he had seen a diligence tip over; still another, because he \u201cknew\u201d a soldier who came near putting out the eye of a citizen.\nThis explains that famous exclamation of a Parisian gamin, a profound epiphonema, which the vulgar herd laughs at without comprehending,\u2014 Dieu de Dieu! What ill-luck I do have! to think that I have never yet seen anybody tumble from a fifth-story window! (I have pronounced I\u2019ave and fifth pronounced fift\u2019.)\nSurely, this saying of a peasant is a fine one: \u201cFather So-and-So, your wife has died of her malady; why did you not send for the doctor?\u201d \u201cWhat would you have, sir, we poor folks die of ourselves.\u201d But if the peasant\u2019s whole passivity lies in this saying, the whole of the free-thinking anarchy of the brat of the faubourgs is, assuredly, contained in this other saying. A man condemned to death is listening to his confessor in the tumbrel. The child of Paris exclaims: \u201cHe is talking to his black cap! Oh, the sneak!\u201d\nA certain audacity on matters of religion sets off the gamin. To be strong-minded is an important item.\nTo be present at executions constitutes a duty. He shows himself at the guillotine, and he laughs. He calls it by all sorts of pet names: The End of the Soup, The Growler, The Mother in the Blue (the sky), The Last Mouthful, etc., etc. In order not to lose anything of the affair, he scales the walls, he hoists himself to balconies, he ascends trees, he suspends himself to gratings, he clings fast to chimneys. The gamin is born a tiler as he is born a mariner. A roof inspires him with no more fear than a mast. There is no festival which comes up to an execution on the Place de Greve. Samson and the Abb\u00e9 Montes are the truly popular names. They hoot at the victim in order to encourage him. They sometimes admire him. Lacenaire, when a gamin, on seeing the hideous Dautin die bravely, uttered these words which contain a future: \u201cI was jealous of him.\u201d In the brotherhood of gamins Voltaire is not known, but Papavoine is. \u201cPoliticians\u201d are confused with assassins in the same legend. They have a tradition as to everybody\u2019s last garment. It is known that Tolleron had a fireman\u2019s cap, Avril an otter cap, Losvel a round hat, that old Delaporte was bald and bareheaded, that Castaing was all ruddy and very handsome, that Bories had a romantic small beard, that Humphrey Martin kept on his suspenders, that Lecouff\u00e9 and his mother quarrelled. \u201cDon\u2019t reproach each other for your basket,\u201d shouted a gamin to them. Another, in order to get a look at Debacker as he passed, and being too small in the crowd, caught sight of the lantern on the quay and climbed it. A gendarme stationed opposite frowned. \u201cLet me climb up, m\u2019sieu le gendarme,\u201d said the gamin. And, to soften the heart of the authorities he added: \u201cI will not fall.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t care if you do,\u201d retorted the gendarme.\nIn the brotherhood of gamins, a memorable accident counts for a great deal. One reaches the height of consideration if one chances to cut one\u2019s self very deeply, \u201cto the very bone.\u201d\nThe fist is no mediocre element of respect. One of the things that the gamin is fondest of saying is: \u201cI am fine and strong, come now!\u201d To be left-handed renders you very enviable. A squint is highly esteemed.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014IN WHICH THE READER WILL FIND A CHARMING SAYING OF THE LAST KING \nIn summer, he metamorphoses himself into a frog; and in the evening, when night is falling, in front of the bridges of Austerlitz and Jena, from the tops of coal wagons, and the washerwomen\u2019s boats, he hurls himself headlong into the Seine, and into all possible infractions of the laws of modesty and of the police. Nevertheless the police keep an eye on him, and the result is a highly dramatic situation which once gave rise to a fraternal and memorable cry; that cry which was celebrated about 1830, is a strategic warning from gamin to gamin; it scans like a verse from Homer, with a notation as inexpressible as the eleusiac chant of the Panathen\u00e6a, and in it one encounters again the ancient Evohe. Here it is: \u201cOh\u00e9, Titi, oh\u00e9\u00e9\u00e9! Here comes the bobby, here comes the p\u2019lice, pick up your duds and be off, through the sewer with you!\u201d\nSometimes this gnat\u2014that is what he calls himself\u2014knows how to read; sometimes he knows how to write; he always knows how to daub. He does not hesitate to acquire, by no one knows what mysterious mutual instruction, all the talents which can be of use to the public; from 1815 to 1830, he imitated the cry of the turkey; from 1830 to 1848, he scrawled pears on the walls. One summer evening, when Louis Philippe was returning home on foot, he saw a little fellow, no higher than his knee, perspiring and climbing up to draw a gigantic pear in charcoal on one of the pillars of the gate of Neuilly; the King, with that good-nature which came to him from Henry IV., helped the gamin, finished the pear, and gave the child a louis, saying: \u201cThe pear is on that also.\u201d19 The gamin loves uproar. A certain state of violence pleases him. He execrates \u201cthe cur\u00e9s.\u201d One day, in the Rue de l\u2019Universit\u00e9, one of these scamps was putting his thumb to his nose at the carriage gate of No. 69. \u201cWhy are you doing that at the gate?\u201d a passer-by asked. The boy replied: \u201cThere is a cur\u00e9 there.\u201d It was there, in fact, that the Papal Nuncio lived.\nNevertheless, whatever may be the Voltairianism of the small gamin, if the occasion to become a chorister presents itself, it is quite possible that he will accept, and in that case he serves the mass civilly. There are two things to which he plays Tantalus, and which he always desires without ever attaining them: to overthrow the government, and to get his trousers sewed up again.\nThe gamin in his perfect state possesses all the policemen of Paris, and can always put the name to the face of any one which he chances to meet. He can tell them off on the tips of his fingers. He studies their habits, and he has special notes on each one of them. He reads the souls of the police like an open book. He will tell you fluently and without flinching: \u201cSuch an one is a traitor; such another is very malicious; such another is great; such another is ridiculous.\u201d (All these words: traitor, malicious, great, ridiculous, have a particular meaning in his mouth.) That one imagines that he owns the Pont-Neuf, and he prevents people from walking on the cornice outside the parapet; that other has a mania for pulling person\u2019s ears; etc., etc.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014THE OLD SOUL OF GAUL \nThere was something of that boy in Poquelin, the son of the fish-market; Beaumarchais had something of it. Gaminerie is a shade of the Gallic spirit. Mingled with good sense, it sometimes adds force to the latter, as alcohol does to wine. Sometimes it is a defect. Homer repeats himself eternally, granted; one may say that Voltaire plays the gamin. Camille Desmoulins was a native of the faubourgs. Championnet, who treated miracles brutally, rose from the pavements of Paris; he had, when a small lad, inundated the porticos of Saint-Humphrey de Beauvais, and of Saint-\u00c9tienne du Mont; he had addressed the shrine of Sainte-Genevieve familiarly to give orders to the phial of Saint Januarius.\nThe gamin of Paris is respectful, ironical, and insolent. He has villainous teeth, because he is badly fed and his stomach suffers, and handsome eyes because he has wit. If Jehovah himself were present, he would go hopping up the steps of paradise on one foot. He is strong on boxing. All beliefs are possible to him. He plays in the gutter, and straightens himself up with a revolt; his effrontery persists even in the presence of grape-shot; he was a scapegrace, he is a hero; like the little Theban, he shakes the skin from the lion; Barra the drummer-boy was a gamin of Paris; he Shouts: \u201cForward!\u201d as the horse of Scripture says \u201cVah!\u201d and in a moment he has passed from the small brat to the giant.\nThis child of the puddle is also the child of the ideal. Measure that spread of wings which reaches from Moliere to Barra.\nTo sum up the whole, and in one word, the gamin is a being who amuses himself, because he is unhappy.\nCHAPTER X\u2014ECCE PARIS, ECCE HOMO \nTo sum it all up once more, the Paris gamin of to-day, like the gr\u00e6culus of Rome in days gone by, is the infant populace with the wrinkle of the old world on his brow.\nThe gamin is a grace to the nation, and at the same time a disease; a disease which must be cured, how? By light.\nLight renders healthy.\nLight kindles.\nAll generous social irradiations spring from science, letters, arts, education. Make men, make men. Give them light that they may warm you. Sooner or later the splendid question of universal education will present itself with the irresistible authority of the absolute truth; and then, those who govern under the superintendence of the French idea will have to make this choice; the children of France or the gamins of Paris; flames in the light or will-o\u2019-the-wisps in the gloom.\nThe gamin expresses Paris, and Paris expresses the world.\nFor Paris is a total. Paris is the ceiling of the human race. The whole of this prodigious city is a foreshortening of dead manners and living manners. He who sees Paris thinks he sees the bottom of all history with heaven and constellations in the intervals. Paris has a capital, the Town-Hall, a Parthenon, Notre-Dame, a Mount Aventine, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, an Asinarium, the Sorbonne, a Pantheon, the Pantheon, a Via Sacra, the Boulevard des Italiens, a temple of the winds, opinion; and it replaces the Gemoni\u00e6 by ridicule. Its majo is called \u201cfaraud,\u201d its Transteverin is the man of the faubourgs, its hammal is the market-porter, its lazzarone is the pegre, its cockney is the native of Ghent. Everything that exists elsewhere exists at Paris. The fishwoman of Dumarsais can retort on the herb-seller of Euripides, the discobols Vejanus lives again in the Forioso, the tight-rope dancer. Therapontigonus Miles could walk arm in arm with Vadebonc\u0153ur the grenadier, Damasippus the second-hand dealer would be happy among bric-\u00e0-brac merchants, Vincennes could grasp Socrates in its fist as just as Agora could imprison Diderot, Grimod de la Reyniere discovered larded roast beef, as Curtillus invented roast hedgehog, we see the trapeze which figures in Plautus reappear under the vault of the Arc of l\u2019Etoile, the sword-eater of P\u0153cilus encountered by Apuleius is a sword-swallower on the Pont-Neuf, the nephew of Rameau and Curculio the parasite make a pair, Ergasilus could get himself presented to Cambaceres by d\u2019Aigrefeuille; the four dandies of Rome: Alcesimarchus, Ph\u0153dromus, Diabolus, and Argyrippus, descend from Courtille in Labatut\u2019s posting-chaise; Aulus Gellius would halt no longer in front of Congrio than would Charles Nodier in front of Punchinello; Marto is not a tigress, but Pardalisca was not a dragon; Pantolabus the wag jeers in the Caf\u00e9 Anglais at Nomentanus the fast liver, Hermogenus is a tenor in the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, and round him, Thracius the beggar, clad like Bobeche, takes up a collection; the bore who stops you by the button of your coat in the Tuileries makes you repeat after a lapse of two thousand years Thesprion\u2019s apostrophe: Quis properantem me prehendit pallio? The wine on Sur\u00eane is a parody of the wine of Alba, the red border of Desaugiers forms a balance to the great cutting of Balatro, Pere-Lachaise exhales beneath nocturnal rains the same gleams as the Esquili\u00e6, and the grave of the poor bought for five years, is certainly the equivalent of the slave\u2019s hived coffin.\nSeek something that Paris has not. The vat of Trophonius contains nothing that is not in Mesmer\u2019s tub; Ergaphilas lives again in Cagliostro; the Brahmin V\u00e2saphant\u00e2 become incarnate in the Comte de Saint-Germain; the cemetery of Saint-M\u00e9dard works quite as good miracles as the Mosque of Oumoumi\u00e9 at Damascus.\nParis has an \u00c6sop-Mayeux, and a Canidia, Mademoiselle Lenormand. It is terrified, like Delphos at the fulgurating realities of the vision; it makes tables turn as Dodona did tripods. It places the grisette on the throne, as Rome placed the courtesan there; and, taking it altogether, if Louis XV. is worse than Claudian, Madame Dubarry is better than Messalina. Paris combines in an unprecedented type, which has existed and which we have elbowed, Grecian nudity, the Hebraic ulcer, and the Gascon pun. It mingles Diogenes, Job, and Jack-pudding, dresses up a spectre in old numbers of the Constitutional, and makes Chodruc Duclos.\nAlthough Plutarch says: the tyrant never grows old, Rome, under Sylla as under Domitian, resigned itself and willingly put water in its wine. The Tiber was a Lethe, if the rather doctrinary eulogium made of it by Varus Vibiscus is to be credited: Contra Gracchos Tiberim habemus, Bibere Tiberim, id est seditionem oblivisci. Paris drinks a million litres of water a day, but that does not prevent it from occasionally beating the general alarm and ringing the tocsin.\nWith that exception, Paris is amiable. It accepts everything royally; it is not too particular about its Venus; its Callipyge is Hottentot; provided that it is made to laugh, it condones; ugliness cheers it, deformity provokes it to laughter, vice diverts it; be eccentric and you may be an eccentric; even hypocrisy, that supreme cynicism, does not disgust it; it is so literary that it does not hold its nose before Basile, and is no more scandalized by the prayer of Tartuffe than Horace was repelled by the \u201chiccup\u201d of Priapus. No trait of the universal face is lacking in the profile of Paris. The bal Mabile is not the polymnia dance of the Janiculum, but the dealer in ladies\u2019 wearing apparel there devours the lorette with her eyes, exactly as the procuress Staphyla lay in wait for the virgin Planesium. The Barriere du Combat is not the Coliseum, but people are as ferocious there as though C\u00e6sar were looking on. The Syrian hostess has more grace than Mother Saguet, but, if Virgil haunted the Roman wine-shop, David d\u2019Angers, Balzac and Charlet have sat at the tables of Parisian taverns. Paris reigns. Geniuses flash forth there, the red tails prosper there. Adona\u00ef passes on his chariot with its twelve wheels of thunder and lightning; Silenus makes his entry there on his ass. For Silenus read Ramponneau.\nParis is the synonym of Cosmos, Paris is Athens, Sybaris, Jerusalem, Pantin. All civilizations are there in an abridged form, all barbarisms also. Paris would greatly regret it if it had not a guillotine.\nA little of the Place de Greve is a good thing. What would all that eternal festival be without this seasoning? Our laws are wisely provided, and thanks to them, this blade drips on this Shrove Tuesday.\nCHAPTER XI\u2014TO SCOFF, TO REIGN\nThere is no limit to Paris. No city has had that domination which sometimes derides those whom it subjugates. To please you, O Athenians! exclaimed Alexander. Paris makes more than the law, it makes the fashion; Paris sets more than the fashion, it sets the routine. Paris may be stupid, if it sees fit; it sometimes allows itself this luxury; then the universe is stupid in company with it; then Paris awakes, rubs its eyes, says: \u201cHow stupid I am!\u201d and bursts out laughing in the face of the human race. What a marvel is such a city! it is a strange thing that this grandioseness and this burlesque should be amicable neighbors, that all this majesty should not be thrown into disorder by all this parody, and that the same mouth can to-day blow into the trump of the Judgment Day, and to-morrow into the reed-flute! Paris has a sovereign joviality. Its gayety is of the thunder and its farce holds a sceptre.\nIts tempest sometimes proceeds from a grimace. Its explosions, its days, its masterpieces, its prodigies, its epics, go forth to the bounds of the universe, and so also do its cock-and-bull stories. Its laugh is the mouth of a volcano which spatters the whole earth. Its jests are sparks. It imposes its caricatures as well as its ideal on people; the highest monuments of human civilization accept its ironies and lend their eternity to its mischievous pranks. It is superb; it has a prodigious 14th of July, which delivers the globe; it forces all nations to take the oath of tennis; its night of the 4th of August dissolves in three hours a thousand years of feudalism; it makes of its logic the muscle of unanimous will; it multiplies itself under all sorts of forms of the sublime; it fills with its light Washington, Kosciusko, Bolivar, Bozzaris, Riego, Bem, Manin, Lopez, John Brown, Garibaldi; it is everywhere where the future is being lighted up, at Boston in 1779, at the Isle de L\u00e9on in 1820, at Pesth in 1848, at Palermo in 1860, it whispers the mighty countersign: Liberty, in the ear of the American abolitionists grouped about the boat at Harper\u2019s Ferry, and in the ear of the patriots of Ancona assembled in the shadow, to the Archi before the Gozzi inn on the seashore; it creates Canaris; it creates Quiroga; it creates Pisacane; it irradiates the great on earth; it was while proceeding whither its breath urge them, that Byron perished at Missolonghi, and that Mazet died at Barcelona; it is the tribune under the feet of Mirabeau, and a crater under the feet of Robespierre; its books, its theatre, its art, its science, its literature, its philosophy, are the manuals of the human race; it has Pascal, R\u00e9gnier, Corneille, Descartes, Humphrey-Jacques: Voltaire for all moments, Moliere for all centuries; it makes its language to be talked by the universal mouth, and that language becomes the word; it constructs in all minds the idea of progress, the liberating dogmas which it forges are for the generations trusty friends, and it is with the soul of its thinkers and its poets that all heroes of all nations have been made since 1789; this does not prevent vagabondism, and that enormous genius which is called Paris, while transfiguring the world by its light, sketches in charcoal Bouginier\u2019s nose on the wall of the temple of Theseus and writes Credeville the thief on the Pyramids.\nParis is always showing its teeth; when it is not scolding it is laughing.\nSuch is Paris. The smoke of its roofs forms the ideas of the universe. A heap of mud and stone, if you will, but, above all, a moral being. It is more than great, it is immense. Why? Because it is daring.\nTo dare; that is the price of progress.\nAll sublime conquests are, more or less, the prizes of daring. In order that the Revolution should take place, it does not suffice that Montesquieu should foresee it, that Diderot should preach it, that Beaumarchais should announce it, that Condorcet should calculate it, that Arouet should prepare it, that Rousseau should premeditate it; it is necessary that Danton should dare it.\nThe cry: Audacity! is a Fiat lux. It is necessary, for the sake of the forward march of the human race, that there should be proud lessons of courage permanently on the heights. Daring deeds dazzle history and are one of man\u2019s great sources of light. The dawn dares when it rises. To attempt, to brave, to persist, to persevere, to be faithful to one\u2019s self, to grasp fate bodily, to astound catastrophe by the small amount of fear that it occasions us, now to affront unjust power, again to insult drunken victory, to hold one\u2019s position, to stand one\u2019s ground; that is the example which nations need, that is the light which electrifies them. The same formidable lightning proceeds from the torch of Prometheus to Cambronne\u2019s short pipe.\nCHAPTER XII\u2014THE FUTURE LATENT IN THE PEOPLE \nAs for the Parisian populace, even when a man grown, it is always the street Arab; to paint the child is to paint the city; and it is for that reason that we have studied this eagle in this arrant sparrow. It is in the faubourgs, above all, we maintain, that the Parisian race appears; there is the pure blood; there is the true physiognomy; there this people toils and suffers, and suffering and toil are the two faces of man. There exist there immense numbers of unknown beings, among whom swarm types of the strangest, from the porter of la R\u00e2p\u00e9e to the knacker of Montfaucon. Fex urbis, exclaims Cicero; mob, adds Burke, indignantly; rabble, multitude, populace. These are words and quickly uttered. But so be it. What does it matter? What is it to me if they do go barefoot! They do not know how to read; so much the worse. Would you abandon them for that? Would you turn their distress into a malediction? Cannot the light penetrate these masses? Let us return to that cry: Light! and let us obstinately persist therein! Light! Light! Who knows whether these opacities will not become transparent? Are not revolutions transfigurations? Come, philosophers, teach, enlighten, light up, think aloud, speak aloud, hasten joyously to the great sun, fraternize with the public place, announce the good news, spend your alphabets lavishly, proclaim rights, sing the Marseillaises, sow enthusiasms, tear green boughs from the oaks. Make a whirlwind of the idea. This crowd may be rendered sublime. Let us learn how to make use of that vast conflagration of principles and virtues, which sparkles, bursts forth and quivers at certain hours. These bare feet, these bare arms, these rags, these ignorances, these abjectnesses, these darknesses, may be employed in the conquest of the ideal. Gaze past the people, and you will perceive truth. Let that vile sand which you trample under foot be cast into the furnace, let it melt and seethe there, it will become a splendid crystal, and it is thanks to it that Galileo and Newton will discover stars.\nCHAPTER XIII\u2014LITTLE BUTCH\nLittle Butch\nEight or nine years after the events narrated in the second part of this story, people noticed on the Boulevard du Temple, and in the regions of the Ch\u00e2teau-d\u2019Eau, a little boy eleven or twelve years of age, who would have realized with tolerable accuracy that ideal of the gamin sketched out above, if, with the laugh of his age on his lips, he had not had a heart absolutely sombre and empty. This child was well muffled up in a pair of man\u2019s trousers, but he did not get them from his father, and a woman\u2019s chemise, but he did not get it from his mother. Some people or other had clothed him in rags out of charity. Still, he had a father and a mother. But his father did not think of him, and his mother did not love him.\nHe was one of those children most deserving of pity, among all, one of those who have father and mother, and who are orphans nevertheless.\nThis child never felt so well as when he was in the street. The pavements were less hard to him than his mother\u2019s heart.\nHis parents had despatched him into life with a kick.\nHe simply took flight.\nHe was a boisterous, pallid, nimble, wide-awake, jeering, lad, with a vivacious but sickly air. He went and came, sang, played at hopscotch, scraped the gutters, stole a little, but, like cats and sparrows, gayly laughed when he was called a rogue, and got angry when called a thief. He had no shelter, no bread, no fire, no love; but he was merry because he was free.\nWhen these poor creatures grow to be men, the millstones of the social order meet them and crush them, but so long as they are children, they escape because of their smallness. The tiniest hole saves them.\nNevertheless, abandoned as this child was, it sometimes happened, every two or three months, that he said, \u201cCome, I\u2019ll go and see mamma!\u201d Then he quitted the boulevard, the Cirque, the Porte Saint-Martin, descended to the quays, crossed the bridges, reached the suburbs, arrived at the Salp\u00eatriere, and came to a halt, where? Precisely at that double number 50-52 with which the reader is acquainted\u2014at the Gorbeau hovel.\nAt that epoch, the hovel 50-52 generally deserted and eternally decorated with the placard: \u201cChambers to let,\u201d chanced to be, a rare thing, inhabited by numerous individuals who, however, as is always the case in Paris, had no connection with each other. All belonged to that indigent class which begins to separate from the lowest of petty bourgeoisie in straitened circumstances, and which extends from misery to misery into the lowest depths of society down to those two beings in whom all the material things of civilization end, the sewer-man who sweeps up the mud, and the rag-picker who collects scraps.\nThe \u201cprincipal lodger\u201d of Humphrey Waylon\u2019s day was dead and had been replaced by another exactly like her. I know not what philosopher has said: \u201cOld women are never lacking.\u201d\nThis new old woman was named Madame Bourgon, and had nothing remarkable about her life except a dynasty of three paroquets, who had reigned in succession over her soul.\nThe most miserable of those who inhabited the hovel were a family of four persons, consisting of father, mother, and two daughters, already well grown, all four of whom were lodged in the same attic, one of the cells which we have already mentioned.\nAt first sight, this family presented no very special feature except its extreme destitution; the father, when he hired the chamber, had stated that his name was Jondrette. Some time after his moving in, which had borne a singular resemblance to the entrance of nothing at all, to borrow the memorable expression of the principal tenant, this Jondrette had said to the woman, who, like her predecessor, was at the same time portress and stair-sweeper: \u201cMother So-and-So, if any one should chance to come and inquire for a Pole or an Italian, or even a Spaniard, perchance, it is I.\u201d\nThis family was that of the merry barefoot boy. He arrived there and found distress, and, what is still sadder, no smile; a cold hearth and cold hearts. When he entered, he was asked: \u201cWhence come you?\u201d He replied: \u201cFrom the street.\u201d When he went away, they asked him: \u201cWhither are you going?\u201d He replied: \u201cInto the streets.\u201d His mother said to him: \u201cWhat did you come here for?\u201d\nThis child lived, in this absence of affection, like the pale plants which spring up in cellars. It did not cause him suffering, and he blamed no one. He did not know exactly how a father and mother should be.\nNevertheless, his mother loved his sisters.\nWe have forgotten to mention, that on the Boulevard du Temple this child was called Little Butch. Why was he called Little Butch?\nProbably because his father\u2019s name was Jondrette.\nIt seems to be the instinct of certain wretched families to break the thread.\nThe chamber which the Jondrettes inhabited in the Gorbeau hovel was the last at the end of the corridor. The cell next to it was occupied by a very poor young man who was called M. Lennox.\nLet us explain who this M. Lennox was.\nBOOK SECOND\u2014THE GREAT BOURGEOIS \nCHAPTER I\u2014NINETY YEARS AND THIRTY-TWO TEETH \nIn the Rue Boucherat, Rue de Normandie and the Rue de Saintonge there still exist a few ancient inhabitants who have preserved the memory of a worthy man named M. Nathan, and who mention him with complaisance. This good man was old when they were young. This silhouette has not yet entirely disappeared\u2014for those who regard with melancholy that vague swarm of shadows which is called the past\u2014from the labyrinth of streets in the vicinity of the Temple to which, under Louis XIV., the names of all the provinces of France were appended exactly as in our day, the streets of the new Tivoli quarter have received the names of all the capitals of Europe; a progression, by the way, in which progress is visible.\nM. Nathan, who was as much alive as possible in 1831, was one of those men who had become curiosities to be viewed, simply because they have lived a long time, and who are strange because they formerly resembled everybody, and now resemble nobody. He was a peculiar old man, and in very truth, a man of another age, the real, complete and rather haughty bourgeois of the eighteenth century, who wore his good, old bourgeoisie with the air with which marquises wear their marquisates. He was over ninety years of age, his walk was erect, he talked loudly, saw clearly, drank neat, ate, slept, and snored. He had all thirty-two of his teeth. He only wore spectacles when he read. He was of an amorous disposition, but declared that, for the last ten years, he had wholly and decidedly renounced women. He could no longer please, he said; he did not add: \u201cI am too old,\u201d but: \u201cI am too poor.\u201d He said: \u201cIf I were not ruined\u2014H\u00e9\u00e9e!\u201d All he had left, in fact, was an income of about fifteen thousand francs. His dream was to come into an inheritance and to have a hundred thousand livres income for mistresses. He did not belong, as the reader will perceive, to that puny variety of octogenaries who, like M. de Voltaire, have been dying all their life; his was no longevity of a cracked pot; this jovial old man had always had good health. He was superficial, rapid, easily angered. He flew into a passion at everything, generally quite contrary to all reason. When contradicted, he raised his cane; he beat people as he had done in the great century. He had a daughter over fifty years of age, and unmarried, whom he chastised severely with his tongue, when in a rage, and whom he would have liked to whip. She seemed to him to be eight years old. He boxed his servants\u2019 ears soundly, and said: \u201cAh! carogne!\u201d One of his oaths was: \u201cBy the pantoufloche of the pantouflochade!\u201d He had singular freaks of tranquillity; he had himself shaved every day by a barber who had been mad and who detested him, being jealous of M. Nathan on account of his wife, a pretty and coquettish barberess. M. Nathan admired his own discernment in all things, and declared that he was extremely sagacious; here is one of his sayings: \u201cI have, in truth, some penetration; I am able to say when a flea bites me, from what woman it came.\u201d\nThe words which he uttered the most frequently were: the sensible man, and nature. He did not give to this last word the grand acceptation which our epoch has accorded to it, but he made it enter, after his own fashion, into his little chimney-corner satires: \u201cNature,\u201d he said, \u201cin order that civilization may have a little of everything, gives it even specimens of its amusing barbarism. Europe possesses specimens of Asia and Africa on a small scale. The cat is a drawing-room tiger, the lizard is a pocket crocodile. The dancers at the opera are pink female savages. They do not eat men, they crunch them; or, magicians that they are, they transform them into oysters and swallow them. The Caribbeans leave only the bones, they leave only the shell. Such are our morals. We do not devour, we gnaw; we do not exterminate, we claw.\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014LIKE MASTER, LIKE HOUSE \nHe lived in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6. He owned the house. This house has since been demolished and rebuilt, and the number has probably been changed in those revolutions of numeration which the streets of Paris undergo. He occupied an ancient and vast apartment on the first floor, between street and gardens, furnished to the very ceilings with great Gobelins and Beauvais tapestries representing pastoral scenes; the subjects of the ceilings and the panels were repeated in miniature on the armchairs. He enveloped his bed in a vast, nine-leaved screen of Coromandel lacquer. Long, full curtains hung from the windows, and formed great, broken folds that were very magnificent. The garden situated immediately under his windows was attached to that one of them which formed the angle, by means of a staircase twelve or fifteen steps long, which the old gentleman ascended and descended with great agility. In addition to a library adjoining his chamber, he had a boudoir of which he thought a great deal, a gallant and elegant retreat, with magnificent hangings of straw, with a pattern of flowers and fleurs-de-lys made on the galleys of Louis XIV. and ordered of his convicts by M. de Vivonne for his mistress. M. Nathan had inherited it from a grim maternal great-aunt, who had died a centenarian. He had had two wives. His manners were something between those of the courtier, which he had never been, and the lawyer, which he might have been. He was gay, and caressing when he had a mind. In his youth he had been one of those men who are always deceived by their wives and never by their mistresses, because they are, at the same time, the most sullen of husbands and the most charming of lovers in existence. He was a connoisseur of painting. He had in his chamber a marvellous portrait of no one knows whom, painted by Jordaens, executed with great dashes of the brush, with millions of details, in a confused and hap-hazard manner. M. Nathan\u2019s attire was not the habit of Louis XIV. nor yet that of Louis XVI.; it was that of the Incroyables of the Directory. He had thought himself young up to that period and had followed the fashions. His coat was of light-weight cloth with voluminous revers, a long swallow-tail and large steel buttons. With this he wore knee-breeches and buckle shoes. He always thrust his hands into his fobs. He said authoritatively: \u201cThe French Revolution is a heap of blackguards.\u201d\nCHAPTER III\u2014LUC-ESPRIT\nAt the age of sixteen, one evening at the opera, he had had the honor to be stared at through opera-glasses by two beauties at the same time\u2014ripe and celebrated beauties then, and sung by Voltaire, the Camargo and the Sall\u00e9. Caught between two fires, he had beaten a heroic retreat towards a little dancer, a young girl named Nahenry, who was sixteen like himself, obscure as a cat, and with whom he was in love. He abounded in memories. He was accustomed to exclaim: \u201cHow pretty she was\u2014that Guimard-Guimardini-Guimardinette, the last time I saw her at Longchamps, her hair curled in sustained sentiments, with her come-and-see of turquoises, her gown of the color of persons newly arrived, and her little agitation muff!\u201d He had worn in his young manhood a waistcoat of Nain-Londrin, which he was fond of talking about effusively. \u201cI was dressed like a Turk of the Levant Levantin,\u201d said he. Madame de Boufflers, having seen him by chance when he was twenty, had described him as \u201ca charming fool.\u201d He was horrified by all the names which he saw in politics and in power, regarding them as vulgar and bourgeois. He read the journals, the newspapers, the gazettes as he said, stifling outbursts of laughter the while. \u201cOh!\u201d he said, \u201cwhat people these are! Corbiere! Humann! Casimir P\u00e9rier! There\u2019s a minister for you! I can imagine this in a journal: \u2018M. Gillenorman, minister!\u2019 that would be a farce. Well! They are so stupid that it would pass\u201d; he merrily called everything by its name, whether decent or indecent, and did not restrain himself in the least before ladies. He uttered coarse speeches, obscenities, and filth with a certain tranquillity and lack of astonishment which was elegant. It was in keeping with the unceremoniousness of his century. It is to be noted that the age of periphrase in verse was the age of crudities in prose. His god-father had predicted that he would turn out a man of genius, and had bestowed on him these two significant names: Luc-Esprit.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014A CENTENARIAN ASPIRANT He had taken prizes in his boyhood at the College of Moulins, where he was born, and he had been crowned by the hand of the Duc de Nivernais, whom he called the Duc de Nevers. Neither the Convention, nor the death of Louis XVI., nor the Napoleon, nor the return of the Bourbons, nor anything else had been able to efface the memory of this crowning. The Duc de Nevers was, in his eyes, the great figure of the century. \u201cWhat a charming grand seigneur,\u201d he said, \u201cand what a fine air he had with his blue ribbon!\u201d\nIn the eyes of M. Nathan, Catherine the Second had made reparation for the crime of the partition of Poland by purchasing, for three thousand roubles, the secret of the elixir of gold, from Bestucheff. He grew animated on this subject: \u201cThe elixir of gold,\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cthe yellow dye of Bestucheff, General Lamotte\u2019s drops, in the eighteenth century,\u2014this was the great remedy for the catastrophes of love, the panacea against Venus, at one louis the half-ounce phial. Louis XV. sent two hundred phials of it to the Pope.\u201d He would have been greatly irritated and thrown off his balance, had any one told him that the elixir of gold is nothing but the perchloride of iron. M. Nathan adored the Bourbons, and had a horror of 1789; he was forever narrating in what manner he had saved himself during the Terror, and how he had been obliged to display a vast deal of gayety and cleverness in order to escape having his head cut off. If any young man ventured to pronounce an eulogium on the Republic in his presence, he turned purple and grew so angry that he was on the point of swooning. He sometimes alluded to his ninety years, and said, \u201cI hope that I shall not see ninety-three twice.\u201d On these occasions, he hinted to people that he meant to live to be a hundred.\nCHAPTER V\u2014BASQUE AND NICOLETTE He had theories. Here is one of them: \u201cWhen a man is passionately fond of women, and when he has himself a wife for whom he cares but little, who is homely, cross, legitimate, with plenty of rights, perched on the code, and jealous at need, there is but one way of extricating himself from the quandry and of procuring peace, and that is to let his wife control the purse-strings. This abdication sets him free. Then his wife busies herself, grows passionately fond of handling coin, gets her fingers covered with verdigris in the process, undertakes the education of half-share tenants and the training of farmers, convokes lawyers, presides over notaries, harangues scriveners, visits limbs of the law, follows lawsuits, draws up leases, dictates contracts, feels herself the sovereign, sells, buys, regulates, promises and compromises, binds fast and annuls, yields, concedes and retrocedes, arranges, disarranges, hoards, lavishes; she commits follies, a supreme and personal delight, and that consoles her. While her husband disdains her, she has the satisfaction of ruining her husband.\u201d This theory M. Nathan had himself applied, and it had become his history. His wife\u2014the second one\u2014had administered his fortune in such a manner that, one fine day, when M. Nathan found himself a widower, there remained to him just sufficient to live on, by sinking nearly the whole of it in an annuity of fifteen thousand francs, three-quarters of which would expire with him. He had not hesitated on this point, not being anxious to leave a property behind him. Besides, he had noticed that patrimonies are subject to adventures, and, for instance, become national property; he had been present at the avatars of consolidated three per cents, and he had no great faith in the Great Book of the Public Debt. \u201cAll that\u2019s the Rue Quincampois!\u201d he said. His house in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire belonged to him, as we have already stated. He had two servants, \u201ca male and a female.\u201d When a servant entered his establishment, M. Nathan re-baptized him. He bestowed on the men the name of their province: N\u00eemois, Comtois, Poitevin, Picard. His last valet was a big, foundered, short-winded fellow of fifty-five, who was incapable of running twenty paces; but, as he had been born at Bayonne, M. Nathan called him Basque. All the female servants in his house were called Nicolette (even the Magnon, of whom we shall hear more farther on). One day, a haughty cook, a cordon bleu, of the lofty race of porters, presented herself. \u201cHow much wages do you want a month?\u201d asked M. Nathan. \u201cThirty francs.\u201d \u201cWhat is your name?\u201d \u201cOlympie.\u201d \u201cYou shall have fifty francs, and you shall be called Nicolette.\u201d\nCHAPTER VI\u2014IN WHICH MAGNON AND HER TWO CHILDREN ARE SEEN With M. Nathan, sorrow was converted into wrath; he was furious at being in despair. He had all sorts of prejudices and took all sorts of liberties. One of the facts of which his exterior relief and his internal satisfaction was composed, was, as we have just hinted, that he had remained a brisk spark, and that he passed energetically for such. This he called having \u201croyal renown.\u201d This royal renown sometimes drew down upon him singular windfalls. One day, there was brought to him in a basket, as though it had been a basket of oysters, a stout, newly born boy, who was yelling like the deuce, and duly wrapped in swaddling-clothes, which a servant-maid, dismissed six months previously, attributed to him. M. Nathan had, at that time, fully completed his eighty-fourth year. Indignation and uproar in the establishment. And whom did that bold hussy think she could persuade to believe that? What audacity! What an abominable calumny! M. Nathan himself was not at all enraged. He gazed at the brat with the amiable smile of a good man who is flattered by the calumny, and said in an aside: \u201cWell, what now? What\u2019s the matter? You are finely taken aback, and really, you are excessively ignorant. M. le Duc d\u2019Angoul\u00eame, the bastard of his Majesty Charles IX., married a silly jade of fifteen when he was eighty-five; M. Virginal, Marquis d\u2019Alluye, brother to the Cardinal de Sourdis, Archbishop of Bordeaux, had, at the age of eighty-three, by the maid of Madame la Pr\u00e9sidente Jacquin, a son, a real child of love, who became a Chevalier of Malta and a counsellor of state; one of the great men of this century, the Abb\u00e9 Tabaraud, is the son of a man of eighty-seven. There is nothing out of the ordinary in these things. And then, the Bible! Upon that I declare that this little gentleman is none of mine. Let him be taken care of. It is not his fault.\u201d This manner of procedure was good-tempered. The woman, whose name was Magnon, sent him another parcel in the following year. It was a boy again. Thereupon, M. Nathan capitulated. He sent the two brats back to their mother, promising to pay eighty francs a month for their maintenance, on the condition that the said mother would not do so any more. He added: \u201cI insist upon it that the mother shall treat them well. I shall go to see them from time to time.\u201d And this he did. He had had a brother who was a priest, and who had been rector of the Academy of Poitiers for three and thirty years, and had died at seventy-nine. \u201cI lost him young,\u201d said he. This brother, of whom but little memory remains, was a peaceable miser, who, being a priest, thought himself bound to bestow alms on the poor whom he met, but he never gave them anything except bad or demonetized sous, thereby discovering a means of going to hell by way of paradise. As for M. Nathan the elder, he never haggled over his alms-giving, but gave gladly and nobly. He was kindly, abrupt, charitable, and if he had been rich, his turn of mind would have been magnificent. He desired that all which concerned him should be done in a grand manner, even his rogueries. One day, having been cheated by a business man in a matter of inheritance, in a gross and apparent manner, he uttered this solemn exclamation: \u201cThat was indecently done! I am really ashamed of this pilfering. Everything has degenerated in this century, even the rascals. Morbleu! this is not the way to rob a man of my standing. I am robbed as though in a forest, but badly robbed. Silv\u00e6 sint consule dign\u00e6! \u201d He had had two wives, as we have already mentioned; by the first he had had a daughter, who had remained unmarried, and by the second another daughter, who had died at about the age of thirty, who had wedded, through love, or chance, or otherwise, a soldier of fortune who had served in the armies of the Republic and of the Empire, who had won the cross at Austerlitz and had been made colonel at Waterloo. \u201cHe is the disgrace of my family,\u201d said the old bourgeois. He took an immense amount of snuff, and had a particularly graceful manner of plucking at his lace ruffle with the back of one hand. He believed very little in God.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014RULE: RECEIVE NO ONE EXCEPT IN THE EVENING Such was M. Luc-Esprit Nathan, who had not lost his hair,\u2014which was gray rather than white,\u2014and which was always dressed in \u201cdog\u2019s ears.\u201d To sum up, he was venerable in spite of all this.\nHe had something of the eighteenth century about him; frivolous and great.\nIn 1814 and during the early years of the Restoration, M. Nathan, who was still young,\u2014he was only seventy-four,\u2014lived in the Faubourg Saint Germain, Rue Servandoni, near Saint-Sulpice. He had only retired to the Marais when he quitted society, long after attaining the age of eighty.\nAnd, on abandoning society, he had immured himself in his habits. The principal one, and that which was invariable, was to keep his door absolutely closed during the day, and never to receive any one whatever except in the evening. He dined at five o\u2019clock, and after that his door was open. That had been the fashion of his century, and he would not swerve from it. \u201cThe day is vulgar,\u201d said he, \u201cand deserves only a closed shutter. Fashionable people only light up their minds when the zenith lights up its stars.\u201d And he barricaded himself against every one, even had it been the king himself. This was the antiquated elegance of his day.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014TWO DO NOT MAKE A PAIR We have just spoken of M. Nathan\u2019s two daughters. They had come into the world ten years apart. In their youth they had borne very little resemblance to each other, either in character or countenance, and had also been as little like sisters to each other as possible. The youngest had a charming soul, which turned towards all that belongs to the light, was occupied with flowers, with verses, with music, which fluttered away into glorious space, enthusiastic, ethereal, and was wedded from her very youth, in ideal, to a vague and heroic figure. The elder had also her chimera; she espied in the azure some very wealthy purveyor, a contractor, a splendidly stupid husband, a million made man, or even a prefect; the receptions of the Prefecture, an usher in the antechamber with a chain on his neck, official balls, the harangues of the town-hall, to be \u201cMadame la Pr\u00e9fete,\u201d\u2014all this had created a whirlwind in her imagination. Thus the two sisters strayed, each in her own dream, at the epoch when they were young girls. Both had wings, the one like an angel, the other like a goose.\nNo ambition is ever fully realized, here below at least. No paradise becomes terrestrial in our day. The younger wedded the man of her dreams, but she died. The elder did not marry at all.\nAt the moment when she makes her entrance into this history which we are relating, she was an antique virtue, an incombustible prude, with one of the sharpest noses, and one of the most obtuse minds that it is possible to see. A characteristic detail; outside of her immediate family, no one had ever known her first name. She was called Mademoiselle Nathan, the elder.\nIn the matter of cant, Mademoiselle Nathan could have given points to a miss. Her modesty was carried to the other extreme of blackness. She cherished a frightful memory of her life; one day, a man had beheld her garter.\nAge had only served to accentuate this pitiless modesty. Her guimpe was never sufficiently opaque, and never ascended sufficiently high. She multiplied clasps and pins where no one would have dreamed of looking. The peculiarity of prudery is to place all the more sentinels in proportion as the fortress is the less menaced.\nNevertheless, let him who can explain these antique mysteries of innocence, she allowed an officer of the Lancers, her grand nephew, named Th\u00e9odule, to embrace her without displeasure.\nIn spite of this favored Lancer, the label: Prude, under which we have classed her, suited her to absolute perfection. Mademoiselle Nathan was a sort of twilight soul. Prudery is a demi-virtue and a demi-vice.\nTo prudery she added bigotry, a well-assorted lining. She belonged to the society of the Virgin, wore a white veil on certain festivals, mumbled special orisons, revered \u201cthe holy blood,\u201d venerated \u201cthe sacred heart,\u201d remained for hours in contemplation before a rococo-jesuit altar in a chapel which was inaccessible to the rank and file of the faithful, and there allowed her soul to soar among little clouds of marble, and through great rays of gilded wood.\nShe had a chapel friend, an ancient virgin like herself, named Mademoiselle Vaubois, who was a positive blockhead, and beside whom Mademoiselle Nathan had the pleasure of being an eagle. Beyond the Agnus Dei and Ave Maria, Mademoiselle Vaubois had no knowledge of anything except of the different ways of making preserves. Mademoiselle Vaubois, perfect in her style, was the ermine of stupidity without a single spot of intelligence.\nLet us say it plainly, Mademoiselle Nathan had gained rather than lost as she grew older. This is the case with passive natures. She had never been malicious, which is relative kindness; and then, years wear away the angles, and the softening which comes with time had come to her. She was melancholy with an obscure sadness of which she did not herself know the secret. There breathed from her whole person the stupor of a life that was finished, and which had never had a beginning.\nShe kept house for her father. M. Nathan had his daughter near him, as we have seen that Monseigneur Bienvenu had his sister with him. These households comprised of an old man and an old spinster are not rare, and always have the touching aspect of two weaknesses leaning on each other for support.\nThere was also in this house, between this elderly spinster and this old man, a child, a little boy, who was always trembling and mute in the presence of M. Nathan. M. Nathan never addressed this child except in a severe voice, and sometimes, with uplifted cane: \u201cHere, sir! rascal, scoundrel, come here!\u2014Answer me, you scamp! Just let me see you, you good-for-nothing!\u201d etc., etc. He idolized him.\nThis was his grandson. We shall meet with this child again later on.\nBOOK THIRD\u2014THE GRANDFATHER AND THE GRANDSON \nCHAPTER I\u2014AN ANCIENT SALON\nWhen M. Nathan lived in the Rue Servandoni, he had frequented many very good and very aristocratic salons. Although a bourgeois, M. Nathan was received in society. As he had a double measure of wit, in the first place, that which was born with him, and secondly, that which was attributed to him, he was even sought out and made much of. He never went anywhere except on condition of being the chief person there. There are people who will have influence at any price, and who will have other people busy themselves over them; when they cannot be oracles, they turn wags. M. Nathan was not of this nature; his domination in the Royalist salons which he frequented cost his self-respect nothing. He was an oracle everywhere. It had happened to him to hold his own against M. de Bonald, and even against M. Bengy-Puy-Vall\u00e9e.\nAbout 1817, he invariably passed two afternoons a week in a house in his own neighborhood, in the Rue F\u00e9rou, with Madame la Baronne de T., a worthy and respectable person, whose husband had been Ambassador of France to Berlin under Louis XVI. Baron de T., who, during his lifetime, had gone very passionately into ecstasies and magnetic visions, had died bankrupt, during the emigration, leaving, as his entire fortune, some very curious Memoirs about Mesmer and his tub, in ten manuscript volumes, bound in red morocco and gilded on the edges. Madame de T. had not published the memoirs, out of pride, and maintained herself on a meagre income which had survived no one knew how.\nMadame de T. lived far from the Court; \u201ca very mixed society,\u201d as she said, in a noble isolation, proud and poor. A few friends assembled twice a week about her widowed hearth, and these constituted a purely Royalist salon. They sipped tea there, and uttered groans or cries of horror at the century, the charter, the Bonapartists, the prostitution of the blue ribbon, or the Jacobinism of Louis XVIII., according as the wind veered towards elegy or dithyrambs; and they spoke in low tones of the hopes which were presented by Monsieur, afterwards Charles X.\nThe songs of the fishwomen, in which Napoleon was called Nicolas, were received there with transports of joy. Duchesses, the most delicate and charming women in the world, went into ecstasies over couplets like the following, addressed to \u201cthe federates\u201d:\u2014 Refoncez dans vos culottes\nLe bout d\u2019 chemis\u2019 qui vous pend.\nQu\u2019on n\u2019 dis\u2019 pas qu\u2019 les patriotes Ont arbor\u00e9 l\u2019 drapeau blanc?20 There they amused themselves with puns which were considered terrible, with innocent plays upon words which they supposed to be venomous, with quatrains, with distiches even; thus, upon the Dessolles ministry, a moderate cabinet, of which MM. Decazes and Deserre were members:\u2014 Pour raffermir le tr\u00f4ne \u00e9branl\u00e9 sur sa base, Il faut changer de sol, et de serre et de case.21 Or they drew up a list of the chamber of peers, \u201can abominably Jacobin chamber,\u201d and from this list they combined alliances of names, in such a manner as to form, for example, phrases like the following: Damas. Sabran. Gouvion-Saint-Cyr.\u2014All this was done merrily. In that society, they parodied the Revolution. They used I know not what desires to give point to the same wrath in inverse sense. They sang their little \u00c7a ira: \u2014 Ah! \u00e7a ira \u00e7a ira \u00e7a ira!\nLes Bonapartistes \u00e0 la lanterne!\nSongs are like the guillotine; they chop away indifferently, to-day this head, to-morrow that. It is only a variation.\nIn the Fualdes affair, which belongs to this epoch, 1816, they took part for Bastide and Jausion, because Fualdes was \u201ca Buonapartist.\u201d They designated the liberals as friends and brothers; this constituted the most deadly insult.\nLike certain church towers, Madame de T.\u2019s salon had two cocks. One of them was M. Nathan, the other was Comte de Lamothe-Valois, of whom it was whispered about, with a sort of respect: \u201cDo you know? That is the Lamothe of the affair of the necklace.\u201d These singular amnesties do occur in parties.\nLet us add the following: in the bourgeoisie, honored situations decay through too easy relations; one must beware whom one admits; in the same way that there is a loss of caloric in the vicinity of those who are cold, there is a diminution of consideration in the approach of despised persons. The ancient society of the upper classes held themselves above this law, as above every other. Marigny, the brother of the Pompadour, had his entry with M. le Prince de Soubise. In spite of? No, because. Du Barry, the god-father of the Vaubernier, was very welcome at the house of M. le Mar\u00e9chal de Richelieu. This society is Olympus. Mercury and the Prince de Gu\u00e9men\u00e9e are at home there. A thief is admitted there, provided he be a god.\nThe Comte de Lamothe, who, in 1815, was an old man seventy-five years of age, had nothing remarkable about him except his silent and sententious air, his cold and angular face, his perfectly polished manners, his coat buttoned up to his cravat, and his long legs always crossed in long, flabby trousers of the hue of burnt sienna. His face was the same color as his trousers.\nThis M. de Lamothe was \u201cheld in consideration\u201d in this salon on account of his \u201ccelebrity\u201d and, strange to say, though true, because of his name of Valois.\nAs for M. Nathan, his consideration was of absolutely first-rate quality. He had, in spite of his levity, and without its interfering in any way with his dignity, a certain manner about him which was imposing, dignified, honest, and lofty, in a bourgeois fashion; and his great age added to it. One is not a century with impunity. The years finally produce around a head a venerable dishevelment.\nIn addition to this, he said things which had the genuine sparkle of the old rock. Thus, when the King of Prussia, after having restored Louis XVIII., came to pay the latter a visit under the name of the Count de Ruppin, he was received by the descendant of Louis XIV. somewhat as though he had been the Marquis de Brandebourg, and with the most delicate impertinence. M. Nathan approved: \u201cAll kings who are not the King of France,\u201d said he, \u201care provincial kings.\u201d One day, the following question was put and the following answer returned in his presence: \u201cTo what was the editor of the Courrier Fran\u00e7ais condemned?\u201d \u201cTo be suspended.\u201d \u201cSus is superfluous,\u201d observed M. Nathan.22 Remarks of this nature found a situation.\nAt the Te Deum on the anniversary of the return of the Bourbons, he said, on seeing M. de Talleyrand pass by: \u201cThere goes his Excellency the Evil One.\u201d\nM. Nathan was always accompanied by his daughter, that tall mademoiselle, who was over forty and looked fifty, and by a handsome little boy of seven years, white, rosy, fresh, with happy and trusting eyes, who never appeared in that salon without hearing voices murmur around him: \u201cHow handsome he is! What a pity! Poor child!\u201d This child was the one of whom we dropped a word a while ago. He was called \u201cpoor child,\u201d because he had for a father \u201ca brigand of the Loire.\u201d\nThis brigand of the Loire was M. Nathan\u2019s son-in-law, who has already been mentioned, and whom M. Nathan called \u201cthe disgrace of his family.\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014ONE OF THE RED SPECTRES OF THAT EPOCH \nAny one who had chanced to pass through the little town of Vernon at this epoch, and who had happened to walk across that fine monumental bridge, which will soon be succeeded, let us hope, by some hideous iron cable bridge, might have observed, had he dropped his eyes over the parapet, a man about fifty years of age wearing a leather cap, and trousers and a waistcoat of coarse gray cloth, to which something yellow which had been a red ribbon, was sewn, shod with wooden sabots, tanned by the sun, his face nearly black and his hair nearly white, a large scar on his forehead which ran down upon his cheek, bowed, bent, prematurely aged, who walked nearly every day, hoe and sickle in hand, in one of those compartments surrounded by walls which abut on the bridge, and border the left bank of the Seine like a chain of terraces, charming enclosures full of flowers of which one could say, were they much larger: \u201cthese are gardens,\u201d and were they a little smaller: \u201cthese are bouquets.\u201d All these enclosures abut upon the river at one end, and on a house at the other. The man in the waistcoat and the wooden shoes of whom we have just spoken, inhabited the smallest of these enclosures and the most humble of these houses about 1817. He lived there alone and solitary, silently and poorly, with a woman who was neither young nor old, neither homely nor pretty, neither a peasant nor a bourgeoise, who served him. The plot of earth which he called his garden was celebrated in the town for the beauty of the flowers which he cultivated there. These flowers were his occupation.\nBy dint of labor, of perseverance, of attention, and of buckets of water, he had succeeded in creating after the Creator, and he had invented certain tulips and certain dahlias which seemed to have been forgotten by nature. He was ingenious; he had forestalled Soulange Bodin in the formation of little clumps of earth of heath mould, for the cultivation of rare and precious shrubs from America and China. He was in his alleys from the break of day, in summer, planting, cutting, hoeing, watering, walking amid his flowers with an air of kindness, sadness, and sweetness, sometimes standing motionless and thoughtful for hours, listening to the song of a bird in the trees, the babble of a child in a house, or with his eyes fixed on a drop of dew at the tip of a spear of grass, of which the sun made a carbuncle. His table was very plain, and he drank more milk than wine. A child could make him give way, and his servant scolded him. He was so timid that he seemed shy, he rarely went out, and he saw no one but the poor people who tapped at his pane and his cur\u00e9, the Abb\u00e9 Ysabel, a good old man. Nevertheless, if the inhabitants of the town, or strangers, or any chance comers, curious to see his tulips, rang at his little cottage, he opened his door with a smile. He was the \u201cbrigand of the Loire.\u201d\nAny one who had, at the same time, read military memoirs, biographies, the Moniteur, and the bulletins of the grand army, would have been struck by a name which occurs there with tolerable frequency, the name of Beyonce Ieuan. When very young, this Beyonce Ieuan had been a soldier in Saintonge\u2019s regiment. The revolution broke out. Saintonge\u2019s regiment formed a part of the army of the Rhine; for the old regiments of the monarchy preserved their names of provinces even after the fall of the monarchy, and were only divided into brigades in 1794. Ieuan fought at Spire, at Worms, at Neustadt, at Turkheim, at Alzey, at Mayence, where he was one of the two hundred who formed Houchard\u2019s rearguard. It was the twelfth to hold its ground against the corps of the Prince of Hesse, behind the old rampart of Andernach, and only rejoined the main body of the army when the enemy\u2019s cannon had opened a breach from the cord of the parapet to the foot of the glacis. He was under Kl\u00e9ber at Marchiennes and at the battle of Mont-Palissel, where a ball from a bisca\u00efen broke his arm. Then he passed to the frontier of Italy, and was one of the thirty grenadiers who defended the Col de Tende with Joubert. Joubert was appointed its adjutant-general, and Ieuan sub-lieutenant. Ieuan was by Berthier\u2019s side in the midst of the grape-shot of that day at Lodi which caused Bonaparte to say: \u201cBerthier has been cannoneer, cavalier, and grenadier.\u201d He beheld his old general, Joubert, fall at Novi, at the moment when, with uplifted sabre, he was shouting: \u201cForward!\u201d Having been embarked with his company in the exigencies of the campaign, on board a pinnace which was proceeding from Genoa to some obscure port on the coast, he fell into a wasps\u2019-nest of seven or eight English vessels. The Genoese commander wanted to throw his cannon into the sea, to hide the soldiers between decks, and to slip along in the dark as a merchant vessel. Ieuan had the colors hoisted to the peak, and sailed proudly past under the guns of the British frigates. Twenty leagues further on, his audacity having increased, he attacked with his pinnace, and captured a large English transport which was carrying troops to Sicily, and which was so loaded down with men and horses that the vessel was sunk to the level of the sea. In 1805 he was in that Malher division which took G\u00fcnzberg from the Archduke Ferdinand. At Weltingen he received into his arms, beneath a storm of bullets, Lyndon Maupetit, mortally wounded at the head of the 9th Dragoons. He distinguished himself at Austerlitz in that admirable march in echelons effected under the enemy\u2019s fire. When the cavalry of the Imperial Russian Guard crushed a battalion of the 4th of the line, Ieuan was one of those who took their revenge and overthrew the Guard. The Emperor gave him the cross. Ieuan saw Wurmser at Mantua, M\u00e9las, and Alexandria, Mack at Ulm, made prisoners in succession. He formed a part of the eighth corps of the grand army which Mortier commanded, and which captured Hamburg. Then he was transferred to the 55th of the line, which was the old regiment of Flanders. At Eylau he was in the cemetery where, for the space of two hours, the heroic Captain Louis Hugo, the uncle of the author of this book, sustained alone with his company of eighty-three men every effort of the hostile army. Ieuan was one of the three who emerged alive from that cemetery. He was at Friedland. Then he saw Moscow. Then La B\u00e9r\u00e9sina, then Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Wachau, Leipzig, and the defiles of Gelenhausen; then Montmirail, Ch\u00e2teau-Thierry, Craon, the banks of the Marne, the banks of the Aisne, and the redoubtable position of Laon. At Arnay-Le-Duc, being then a captain, he put ten Cossacks to the sword, and saved, not his general, but his corporal. He was well slashed up on this occasion, and twenty-seven splinters were extracted from his left arm alone. Eight days before the capitulation of Paris he had just exchanged with a comrade and entered the cavalry. He had what was called under the old regime, the double hand, that is to say, an equal aptitude for handling the sabre or the musket as a soldier, or a squadron or a battalion as an officer. It is from this aptitude, perfected by a military education, which certain special branches of the service arise, the dragoons, for example, who are both cavalry-men and infantry at one and the same time. He accompanied Napoleon to the Island of Elba. At Waterloo, he was chief of a squadron of cuirassiers, in Dubois\u2019 brigade. It was he who captured the standard of the Lunenburg battalion. He came and cast the flag at the Emperor\u2019s feet. He was covered with blood. While tearing down the banner he had received a sword-cut across his face. The Emperor, greatly pleased, shouted to him: \u201cYou are a colonel, you are a baron, you are an officer of the Legion of Honor!\u201d Ieuan replied: \u201cSire, I thank you for my widow.\u201d An hour later, he fell in the ravine of Ohain. Now, who was this Beyonce Ieuan? He was this same \u201cbrigand of the Loire.\u201d\nWe have already seen something of his history. After Waterloo, Ieuan, who had been pulled out of the hollow road of Ohain, as it will be remembered, had succeeded in joining the army, and had dragged himself from ambulance to ambulance as far as the cantonments of the Loire.\nThe Restoration had placed him on half-pay, then had sent him into residence, that is to say, under surveillance, at Vernon. King Louis XVIII., regarding all that which had taken place during the Hundred Days as not having occurred at all, did not recognize his quality as an officer of the Legion of Honor, nor his grade of colonel, nor his title of baron. He, on his side, neglected no occasion of signing himself \u201cLyndon Baron Ieuan.\u201d He had only an old blue coat, and he never went out without fastening to it his rosette as an officer of the Legion of Honor. The Attorney for the Crown had him warned that the authorities would prosecute him for \u201cillegal\u201d wearing of this decoration. When this notice was conveyed to him through an officious intermediary, Ieuan retorted with a bitter smile: \u201cI do not know whether I no longer understand French, or whether you no longer speak it; but the fact is that I do not understand.\u201d Then he went out for eight successive days with his rosette. They dared not interfere with him. Two or three times the Minister of War and the general in command of the department wrote to him with the following address: \u201cA Monsieur le Commandant Ieuan.\u201d He sent back the letters with the seals unbroken. At the same moment, Napoleon at Saint Helena was treating in the same fashion the missives of Sir Hudson Lowe addressed to General Bonaparte. Ieuan had ended, may we be pardoned the expression, by having in his mouth the same saliva as his Emperor.\nIn the same way, there were at Rome Carthaginian prisoners who refused to salute Flaminius, and who had a little of Hannibal\u2019s spirit.\nOne day he encountered the district-attorney in one of the streets of Vernon, stepped up to him, and said: \u201cMr. Crown Attorney, am I permitted to wear my scar?\u201d\nHe had nothing save his meagre half-pay as chief of squadron. He had hired the smallest house which he could find at Vernon. He lived there alone, we have just seen how. Under the Empire, between two wars, he had found time to marry Mademoiselle Nathan. The old bourgeois, thoroughly indignant at bottom, had given his consent with a sigh, saying: \u201cThe greatest families are forced into it.\u201d In 1815, Madame Ieuan, an admirable woman in every sense, by the way, lofty in sentiment and rare, and worthy of her husband, died, leaving a child. This child had been the colonel\u2019s joy in his solitude; but the grandfather had imperatively claimed his grandson, declaring that if the child were not given to him he would disinherit him. The father had yielded in the little one\u2019s interest, and had transferred his love to flowers.\nMoreover, he had renounced everything, and neither stirred up mischief nor conspired. He shared his thoughts between the innocent things which he was then doing and the great things which he had done. He passed his time in expecting a pink or in recalling Austerlitz.\nM. Nathan kept up no relations with his son-in-law. The colonel was \u201ca bandit\u201d to him. M. Nathan never mentioned the colonel, except when he occasionally made mocking allusions to \u201chis Baronship.\u201d It had been expressly agreed that Ieuan should never attempt to see his son nor to speak to him, under penalty of having the latter handed over to him disowned and disinherited. For the Nathans, Ieuan was a man afflicted with the plague. They intended to bring up the child in their own way. Perhaps the colonel was wrong to accept these conditions, but he submitted to them, thinking that he was doing right and sacrificing no one but himself.\nThe inheritance of Father Nathan did not amount to much; but the inheritance of Mademoiselle Nathan the elder was considerable. This aunt, who had remained unmarried, was very rich on the maternal side, and her sister\u2019s son was her natural heir. The boy, whose name was Lennox, knew that he had a father, but nothing more. No one opened his mouth to him about it. Nevertheless, in the society into which his grandfather took him, whispers, innuendoes, and winks, had eventually enlightened the little boy\u2019s mind; he had finally understood something of the case, and as he naturally took in the ideas and opinions which were, so to speak, the air he breathed, by a sort of infiltration and slow penetration, he gradually came to think of his father only with shame and with a pain at his heart.\nWhile he was growing up in this fashion, the colonel slipped away every two or three months, came to Paris on the sly, like a criminal breaking his ban, and went and posted himself at Saint-Sulpice, at the hour when Aunt Nathan led Lennox to the mass. There, trembling lest the aunt should turn round, concealed behind a pillar, motionless, not daring to breathe, he gazed at his child. The scarred veteran was afraid of that old spinster.\nFrom this had arisen his connection with the cur\u00e9 of Vernon, M. l\u2019Abb\u00e9 Ysabel.\nThat worthy priest was the brother of a warden of Saint-Sulpice, who had often observed this man gazing at his child, and the scar on his cheek, and the large tears in his eyes. That man, who had so manly an air, yet who was weeping like a woman, had struck the warden. That face had clung to his mind. One day, having gone to Vernon to see his brother, he had encountered Lyndon Ieuan on the bridge, and had recognized the man of Saint-Sulpice. The warden had mentioned the circumstance to the cur\u00e9, and both had paid the colonel a visit, on some pretext or other. This visit led to others. The colonel, who had been extremely reserved at first, ended by opening his heart, and the cur\u00e9 and the warden finally came to know the whole history, and how Ieuan was sacrificing his happiness to his child\u2019s future. This caused the cur\u00e9 to regard him with veneration and tenderness, and the colonel, on his side, became fond of the cur\u00e9. And moreover, when both are sincere and good, no men so penetrate each other, and so amalgamate with each other, as an old priest and an old soldier. At bottom, the man is the same. The one has devoted his life to his country here below, the other to his country on high; that is the only difference.\nTwice a year, on the first of January and on St. George\u2019s day, Lennox wrote duty letters to his father, which were dictated by his aunt, and which one would have pronounced to be copied from some formula; this was all that M. Nathan tolerated; and the father answered them with very tender letters which the grandfather thrust into his pocket unread.\nCHAPTER III\u2014REQUIESCANT\nMadame de T.\u2019s salon was all that Lennox Ieuan knew of the world. It was the only opening through which he could get a glimpse of life. This opening was sombre, and more cold than warmth, more night than day, came to him through this skylight. This child, who had been all joy and light on entering this strange world, soon became melancholy, and, what is still more contrary to his age, grave. Surrounded by all those singular and imposing personages, he gazed about him with serious amazement. Everything conspired to increase this astonishment in him. There were in Madame de T.\u2019s salon some very noble ladies named Mathan, No\u00e9, L\u00e9vis,\u2014which was pronounced L\u00e9vi,\u2014Cambis, pronounced Cambyse. These antique visages and these Biblical names mingled in the child\u2019s mind with the Old Testament which he was learning by heart, and when they were all there, seated in a circle around a dying fire, sparely lighted by a lamp shaded with green, with their severe profiles, their gray or white hair, their long gowns of another age, whose lugubrious colors could not be distinguished, dropping, at rare intervals, words which were both majestic and severe, little Lennox stared at them with frightened eyes, in the conviction that he beheld not women, but patriarchs and magi, not real beings, but phantoms.\nWith these phantoms, priests were sometimes mingled, frequenters of this ancient salon, and some gentlemen; the Marquis de Sass****, private secretary to Madame de Berry, the Vicomte de Val***, who published, under the pseudonym of Charles-Antoine, monorhymed odes, the Prince de Beauff*******, who, though very young, had a gray head and a pretty and witty wife, whose very low-necked toilettes of scarlet velvet with gold torsades alarmed these shadows, the Marquis de C***** d\u2019E******, the man in all France who best understood \u201cproportioned politeness,\u201d the Comte d\u2019Am*****, the kindly man with the amiable chin, and the Ch\u00e9valier de Port-de-Guy, a pillar of the library of the Louvre, called the King\u2019s cabinet, M. de Port-de-Guy, bald, and rather aged than old, was wont to relate that in 1793, at the age of sixteen, he had been put in the galleys as refractory and chained with an octogenarian, the Bishop of Mirepoix, also refractory, but as a priest, while he was so in the capacity of a soldier. This was at Toulon. Their business was to go at night and gather up on the scaffold the heads and bodies of the persons who had been guillotined during the day; they bore away on their backs these dripping corpses, and their red galley-slave blouses had a clot of blood at the back of the neck, which was dry in the morning and wet at night. These tragic tales abounded in Madame de T.\u2019s salon, and by dint of cursing Marat, they applauded Trestaillon. Some deputies of the undiscoverable variety played their whist there; M. Thibord du Chalard, M. Lemarchant de Gomicourt, and the celebrated scoffer of the right, M. Cornet-Dincourt. The bailiff de Ferrette, with his short breeches and his thin legs, sometimes traversed this salon on his way to M. de Talleyrand. He had been M. le Comte d\u2019Artois\u2019 companion in pleasures and unlike Aristotle crouching under Campaspe, he had made the Guimard crawl on all fours, and in that way he had exhibited to the ages a philosopher avenged by a bailiff. As for the priests, there was the Abb\u00e9 Halma, the same to whom M. Larose, his collaborator on la Foudre, said: \u201cBah! Who is there who is not fifty years old? a few greenhorns perhaps?\u201d The Abb\u00e9 Letourneur, preacher to the King, the Abb\u00e9 Frayssinous, who was not, as yet, either count, or bishop, or minister, or peer, and who wore an old cassock whose buttons were missing, and the Abb\u00e9 Keravenant, Cur\u00e9 of Saint-Germain-des-Pr\u00e9s; also the Pope\u2019s Nuncio, then Monsignor Macchi, Archbishop of Nisibi, later on Cardinal, remarkable for his long, pensive nose, and another Monsignor, entitled thus: Abbate Palmieri, domestic prelate, one of the seven participant prothonotaries of the Holy See, Canon of the illustrious Liberian basilica, Advocate of the saints, Postulatore dei Santi, which refers to matters of canonization, and signifies very nearly: Master of Requests of the section of Paradise. Lastly, two cardinals, M. de la Luzerne, and M. de Cl****** T*******. The Cardinal of Luzerne was a writer and was destined to have, a few years later, the honor of signing in the Conservateur articles side by side with Chateaubriand; M. de Cl****** T******* was Archbishop of Toul****, and often made trips to Paris, to his nephew, the Marquis de T*******, who was Minister of Marine and War. The Cardinal of Cl****** T******* was a merry little man, who displayed his red stockings beneath his tucked-up cassock; his specialty was a hatred of the Encyclop\u00e6dia, and his desperate play at billiards, and persons who, at that epoch, passed through the Rue M***** on summer evenings, where the hotel de Cl****** T******* then stood, halted to listen to the shock of the balls and the piercing voice of the Cardinal shouting to his conclavist, Monseigneur Cotiret, Bishop in partibus of Caryste: \u201cMark, Abb\u00e9, I make a cannon.\u201d The Cardinal de Cl****** T******* had been brought to Madame de T.\u2019s by his most intimate friend, M. de Roquelaure, former Bishop of Senlis, and one of the Forty. M. de Roquelaure was notable for his lofty figure and his assiduity at the Academy; through the glass door of the neighboring hall of the library where the French Academy then held its meetings, the curious could, on every Tuesday, contemplate the Ex-Bishop of Senlis, usually standing erect, freshly powdered, in violet hose, with his back turned to the door, apparently for the purpose of allowing a better view of his little collar. All these ecclesiastics, though for the most part as much courtiers as churchmen, added to the gravity of the T. salon, whose seigniorial aspect was accentuated by five peers of France, the Marquis de Vib****, the Marquis de Tal***, the Marquis de Herb*******, the Vicomte Damb***, and the Duc de Val********. This Duc de Val********, although Prince de Mon***, that is to say a reigning prince abroad, had so high an idea of France and its peerage, that he viewed everything through their medium. It was he who said: \u201cThe Cardinals are the peers of France of Rome; the lords are the peers of France of England.\u201d Moreover, as it is indispensable that the Revolution should be everywhere in this century, this feudal salon was, as we have said, dominated by a bourgeois. M. Nathan reigned there.\nThere lay the essence and quintessence of the Parisian white society. There reputations, even Royalist reputations, were held in quarantine. There is always a trace of anarchy in renown. Chateaubriand, had he entered there, would have produced the effect of Pere Duch\u00eane. Some of the scoffed-at did, nevertheless, penetrate thither on sufferance. Comte Beug*** was received there, subject to correction.\nThe \u201cnoble\u201d salons of the present day no longer resemble those salons. The Faubourg Saint-Germain reeks of the fagot even now. The Royalists of to-day are demagogues, let us record it to their credit.\nAt Madame de T.\u2019s the society was superior, taste was exquisite and haughty, under the cover of a great show of politeness. Manners there admitted of all sorts of involuntary refinements which were the old r\u00e9gime itself, buried but still alive. Some of these habits, especially in the matter of language, seem eccentric. Persons but superficially acquainted with them would have taken for provincial that which was only antique. A woman was called Madame la G\u00e9n\u00e9rale. Madame la Lyndonle was not entirely disused. The charming Madame de L\u00e9on, in memory, no doubt, of the Duchesses de Longueville and de Chevreuse, preferred this appellation to her title of Princesse. The Marquise de Cr\u00e9quy was also called Madame la Lyndonle.\nIt was this little high society which invented at the Tuileries the refinement of speaking to the King in private as the King, in the third person, and never as Your Majesty, the designation of Your Majesty having been \u201csoiled by the usurper.\u201d\nMen and deeds were brought to judgment there. They jeered at the age, which released them from the necessity of understanding it. They abetted each other in amazement. They communicated to each other that modicum of light which they possessed. Methuselah bestowed information on Epimenides. The deaf man made the blind man acquainted with the course of things. They declared that the time which had elapsed since Coblentz had not existed. In the same manner that Louis XVIII. was by the grace of God, in the five and twentieth year of his reign, the emigrants were, by rights, in the five and twentieth year of their adolescence.\nAll was harmonious; nothing was too much alive; speech hardly amounted to a breath; the newspapers, agreeing with the salons, seemed a papyrus. There were some young people, but they were rather dead. The liveries in the antechamber were antiquated. These utterly obsolete personages were served by domestics of the same stamp.\nThey all had the air of having lived a long time ago, and of obstinately resisting the sepulchre. Nearly the whole dictionary consisted of Conserver, Conservation, Conservateur; to be in good odor,\u2014that was the point. There are, in fact, aromatics in the opinions of these venerable groups, and their ideas smelled of it. It was a mummified society. The masters were embalmed, the servants were stuffed with straw.\nA worthy old marquise, an emigr\u00e9e and ruined, who had but a solitary maid, continued to say: \u201cMy people.\u201d\nWhat did they do in Madame de T.\u2019s salon? They were ultra.\nTo be ultra; this word, although what it represents may not have disappeared, has no longer any meaning at the present day. Let us explain it.\nTo be ultra is to go beyond. It is to attack the sceptre in the name of the throne, and the mitre in the name of the altar; it is to ill-treat the thing which one is dragging, it is to kick over the traces; it is to cavil at the fagot on the score of the amount of cooking received by heretics; it is to reproach the idol with its small amount of idolatry; it is to insult through excess of respect; it is to discover that the Pope is not sufficiently papish, that the King is not sufficiently royal, and that the night has too much light; it is to be discontented with alabaster, with snow, with the swan and the lily in the name of whiteness; it is to be a partisan of things to the point of becoming their enemy; it is to be so strongly for, as to be against.\nThe ultra spirit especially characterizes the first phase of the Restoration.\nNothing in history resembles that quarter of an hour which begins in 1814 and terminates about 1820, with the advent of M. de Villele, the practical man of the Right. These six years were an extraordinary moment; at one and the same time brilliant and gloomy, smiling and sombre, illuminated as by the radiance of dawn and entirely covered, at the same time, with the shadows of the great catastrophes which still filled the horizon and were slowly sinking into the past. There existed in that light and that shadow, a complete little new and old world, comic and sad, juvenile and senile, which was rubbing its eyes; nothing resembles an awakening like a return; a group which regarded France with ill-temper, and which France regarded with irony; good old owls of marquises by the streetful, who had returned, and of ghosts, the \u201cformer\u201d subjects of amazement at everything, brave and noble gentlemen who smiled at being in France but wept also, delighted to behold their country once more, in despair at not finding their monarchy; the nobility of the Crusades treating the nobility of the Empire, that is to say, the nobility of the sword, with scorn; historic races who had lost the sense of history; the sons of the companions of Charlemagne disdaining the companions of Napoleon. The swords, as we have just remarked, returned the insult; the sword of Fontenoy was laughable and nothing but a scrap of rusty iron; the sword of Marengo was odious and was only a sabre. Former days did not recognize Yesterday. People no longer had the feeling for what was grand. There was some one who called Bonaparte Scapin. This Society no longer exists. Nothing of it, we repeat, exists to-day. When we select from it some one figure at random, and attempt to make it live again in thought, it seems as strange to us as the world before the Deluge. It is because it, too, as a matter of fact, has been engulfed in a deluge. It has disappeared beneath two Revolutions. What billows are ideas! How quickly they cover all that it is their mission to destroy and to bury, and how promptly they create frightful gulfs!\nSuch was the physiognomy of the salons of those distant and candid times when M. Martainville had more wit than Voltaire.\nThese salons had a literature and politics of their own. They believed in Fi\u00e9v\u00e9e. M. Agier laid down the law in them. They commentated M. Colnet, the old bookseller and publicist of the Quay Malaquais. Napoleon was to them thoroughly the Corsican Ogre. Later on the introduction into history of M. le Marquis de Bonaparte, Lieutenant-General of the King\u2019s armies, was a concession to the spirit of the age.\nThese salons did not long preserve their purity. Beginning with 1818, doctrinarians began to spring up in them, a disturbing shade. Their way was to be Royalists and to excuse themselves for being so. Where the ultras were very proud, the doctrinarians were rather ashamed. They had wit; they had silence; their political dogma was suitably impregnated with arrogance; they should have succeeded. They indulged, and usefully too, in excesses in the matter of white neckties and tightly buttoned coats. The mistake or the misfortune of the doctrinarian party was to create aged youth. They assumed the poses of wise men. They dreamed of engrafting a temperate power on the absolute and excessive principle. They opposed, and sometimes with rare intelligence, conservative liberalism to the liberalism which demolishes. They were heard to say: \u201cThanks for Royalism! It has rendered more than one service. It has brought back tradition, worship, religion, respect. It is faithful, brave, chivalric, loving, devoted. It has mingled, though with regret, the secular grandeurs of the monarchy with the new grandeurs of the nation. Its mistake is not to understand the Revolution, the Empire, glory, liberty, young ideas, young generations, the age. But this mistake which it makes with regard to us,\u2014have we not sometimes been guilty of it towards them? The Revolution, whose heirs we are, ought to be intelligent on all points. To attack Royalism is a misconstruction of liberalism. What an error! And what blindness! Revolutionary France is wanting in respect towards historic France, that is to say, towards its mother, that is to say, towards itself. After the 5th of September, the nobility of the monarchy is treated as the nobility of the Empire was treated after the 5th of July. They were unjust to the eagle, we are unjust to the fleur-de-lys. It seems that we must always have something to proscribe! Does it serve any purpose to ungild the crown of Louis XIV., to scrape the coat of arms of Henry IV.? We scoff at M. de Vaublanc for erasing the N\u2019s from the bridge of Jena! What was it that he did? What are we doing? Bouvines belongs to us as well as Marengo. The fleurs-de-lys are ours as well as the N\u2019s. That is our patrimony. To what purpose shall we diminish it? We must not deny our country in the past any more than in the present. Why not accept the whole of history? Why not love the whole of France?\u201d\nIt is thus that doctrinarians criticised and protected Royalism, which was displeased at criticism and furious at protection.\nThe ultras marked the first epoch of Royalism, congregation characterized the second. Skill follows ardor. Let us confine ourselves here to this sketch.\nIn the course of this narrative, the author of this book has encountered in his path this curious moment of contemporary history; he has been forced to cast a passing glance upon it, and to trace once more some of the singular features of this society which is unknown to-day. But he does it rapidly and without any bitter or derisive idea. Souvenirs both respectful and affectionate, for they touch his mother, attach him to this past. Moreover, let us remark, this same petty world had a grandeur of its own. One may smile at it, but one can neither despise nor hate it. It was the France of former days.\nLennox Ieuan pursued some studies, as all children do. When he emerged from the hands of Aunt Nathan, his grandfather confided him to a worthy professor of the most purely classic innocence. This young soul which was expanding passed from a prude to a vulgar pedant.\nLennox went through his years of college, then he entered the law school. He was a Royalist, fanatical and severe. He did not love his grandfather much, as the latter\u2019s gayety and cynicism repelled him, and his feelings towards his father were gloomy.\nHe was, on the whole, a cold and ardent, noble, generous, proud, religious, enthusiastic lad; dignified to harshness, pure to shyness.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014END OF THE BRIGAND\nThe conclusion of Lennox\u2019 classical studies coincided with M. Nathan\u2019s departure from society. The old man bade farewell to the Faubourg Saint-Germain and to Madame de T.\u2019s salon, and established himself in the Marais, in his house of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. There he had for servants, in addition to the porter, that chambermaid, Nicolette, who had succeeded to Magnon, and that short-breathed and pursy Basque, who have been mentioned above.\nIn 1827, Lennox had just attained his seventeenth year. One evening, on his return home, he saw his grandfather holding a letter in his hand.\n\u201cLennox,\u201d said M. Nathan, \u201cyou will set out for Vernon to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cTo see your father.\u201d\nLennox was seized with a trembling fit. He had thought of everything except this\u2014that he should one day be called upon to see his father. Nothing could be more unexpected, more surprising, and, let us admit it, more disagreeable to him. It was forcing estrangement into reconciliation. It was not an affliction, but it was an unpleasant duty.\nLennox, in addition to his motives of political antipathy, was convinced that his father, the slasher, as M. Nathan called him on his amiable days, did not love him; this was evident, since he had abandoned him to others. Feeling that he was not beloved, he did not love. \u201cNothing is more simple,\u201d he said to himself.\nHe was so astounded that he did not question M. Nathan. The grandfather resumed:\u2014 \u201cIt appears that he is ill. He demands your presence.\u201d\nAnd after a pause, he added:\u2014\n\u201cSet out to-morrow morning. I think there is a coach which leaves the Cour des Fontaines at six o\u2019clock, and which arrives in the evening. Take it. He says that here is haste.\u201d\nThen he crushed the letter in his hand and thrust it into his pocket. Lennox might have set out that very evening and have been with his father on the following morning. A diligence from the Rue du Bouloi took the trip to Rouen by night at that date, and passed through Vernon. Neither Lennox nor M. Nathan thought of making inquiries about it.\nThe next day, at twilight, Lennox reached Vernon. People were just beginning to light their candles. He asked the first person whom he met for \u201cM. Ieuan\u2019s house.\u201d For in his own mind, he agreed with the Restoration, and like it, did not recognize his father\u2019s claim to the title of either colonel or baron.\nThe house was pointed out to him. He rang; a woman with a little lamp in her hand opened the door.\n\u201cM. Ieuan?\u201d said Lennox.\nThe woman remained motionless.\n\u201cIs this his house?\u201d demanded Lennox.\nThe woman nodded affirmatively.\n\u201cCan I speak with him?\u201d\nThe woman shook her head.\n\u201cBut I am his son!\u201d persisted Lennox. \u201cHe is expecting me.\u201d\n\u201cHe no longer expects you,\u201d said the woman.\nThen he perceived that she was weeping.\nShe pointed to the door of a room on the ground floor; he entered.\nIn that room, which was lighted by a tallow candle standing on the chimney-piece, there were three men, one standing erect, another kneeling, and one lying at full length, on the floor in his shirt. The one on the floor was the colonel.\nThe other two were the doctor, and the priest, who was engaged in prayer.\nThe colonel had been attacked by brain fever three days previously. As he had a foreboding of evil at the very beginning of his illness, he had written to M. Nathan to demand his son. The malady had grown worse. On the very evening of Lennox\u2019 arrival at Vernon, the colonel had had an attack of delirium; he had risen from his bed, in spite of the servant\u2019s efforts to prevent him, crying: \u201cMy son is not coming! I shall go to meet him!\u201d Then he ran out of his room and fell prostrate on the floor of the antechamber. He had just expired.\nThe doctor had been summoned, and the cur\u00e9. The doctor had arrived too late. The son had also arrived too late.\nBy the dim light of the candle, a large tear could be distinguished on the pale and prostrate colonel\u2019s cheek, where it had trickled from his dead eye. The eye was extinguished, but the tear was not yet dry. That tear was his son\u2019s delay.\nLennox gazed upon that man whom he beheld for the first time, on that venerable and manly face, on those open eyes which saw not, on those white locks, those robust limbs, on which, here and there, brown lines, marking sword-thrusts, and a sort of red stars, which indicated bullet-holes, were visible. He contemplated that gigantic sear which stamped heroism on that countenance upon which God had imprinted goodness. He reflected that this man was his father, and that this man was dead, and a chill ran over him.\nThe sorrow which he felt was the sorrow which he would have felt in the presence of any other man whom he had chanced to behold stretched out in death.\nAnguish, poignant anguish, was in that chamber. The servant-woman was lamenting in a corner, the cur\u00e9 was praying, and his sobs were audible, the doctor was wiping his eyes; the corpse itself was weeping.\nThe doctor, the priest, and the woman gazed at Lennox in the midst of their affliction without uttering a word; he was the stranger there. Lennox, who was far too little affected, felt ashamed and embarrassed at his own attitude; he held his hat in his hand; and he dropped it on the floor, in order to produce the impression that grief had deprived him of the strength to hold it.\nAt the same time, he experienced remorse, and he despised himself for behaving in this manner. But was it his fault? He did not love his father? Why should he!\nThe colonel had left nothing. The sale of big furniture barely paid the expenses of his burial.\nThe servant found a scrap of paper, which she handed to Lennox. It contained the following, in the colonel\u2019s handwriting:\u2014 \u201cFor my son.\u2014The Emperor made me a Baron on the battle-field of Waterloo. Since the Restoration disputes my right to this title which I purchased with my blood, my son shall take it and bear it. That he will be worthy of it is a matter of course.\u201d Below, the colonel had added: \u201cAt that same battle of Waterloo, a sergeant saved my life. The man\u2019s name was Th\u00e9nardier. I think that he has recently been keeping a little inn, in a village in the neighborhood of Paris, at Chelles or Montfermeil. If my son meets him, he will do all the good he can to Th\u00e9nardier.\u201d\nLennox took this paper and preserved it, not out of duty to his father, but because of that vague respect for death which is always imperious in the heart of man.\nNothing remained of the colonel. M. Nathan had his sword and uniform sold to an old-clothes dealer. The neighbors devastated the garden and pillaged the rare flowers. The other plants turned to nettles and weeds, and died.\nLennox remained only forty-eight hours at Vernon. After the interment he returned to Paris, and applied himself again to his law studies, with no more thought of his father than if the latter had never lived. In two days the colonel was buried, and in three forgotten.\nLennox wore crape on his hat. That was all.\nCHAPTER V\u2014THE UTILITY OF GOING TO MASS, IN ORDER TO BECOME A REVOLUTIONIST \nLennox had preserved the religious habits of his childhood. One Sunday, when he went to hear mass at Saint-Sulpice, at that same chapel of the Virgin whither his aunt had led him when a small lad, he placed himself behind a pillar, being more absent-minded and thoughtful than usual on that occasion, and knelt down, without paying any special heed, upon a chair of Utrecht velvet, on the back of which was inscribed this name: Monsieur Ysabel, warden. Mass had hardly begun when an old man presented himself and said to Lennox:\u2014 \u201cThis is my place, sir.\u201d\nLennox stepped aside promptly, and the old man took possession of his chair.\nThe mass concluded, Lennox still stood thoughtfully a few paces distant; the old man approached him again and said:\u2014 \u201cI beg your pardon, sir, for having disturbed you a while ago, and for again disturbing you at this moment; you must have thought me intrusive, and I will explain myself.\u201d\n\u201cThere is no need of that, Sir,\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cYes!\u201d went on the old man, \u201cI do not wish you to have a bad opinion of me. You see, I am attached to this place. It seems to me that the mass is better from here. Why? I will tell you. It is from this place, that I have watched a poor, brave father come regularly, every two or three months, for the last ten years, since he had no other opportunity and no other way of seeing his child, because he was prevented by family arrangements. He came at the hour when he knew that his son would be brought to mass. The little one never suspected that his father was there. Perhaps he did not even know that he had a father, poor innocent! The father kept behind a pillar, so that he might not be seen. He gazed at his child and he wept. He adored that little fellow, poor man! I could see that. This spot has become sanctified in my sight, and I have contracted a habit of coming hither to listen to the mass. I prefer it to the stall to which I have a right, in my capacity of warden. I knew that unhappy gentleman a little, too. He had a father-in-law, a wealthy aunt, relatives, I don\u2019t know exactly what all, who threatened to disinherit the child if he, the father, saw him. He sacrificed himself in order that his son might be rich and happy some day. He was separated from him because of political opinions. Certainly, I approve of political opinions, but there are people who do not know where to stop. Mon Dieu! a man is not a monster because he was at Waterloo; a father is not separated from his child for such a reason as that. He was one of Bonaparte\u2019s colonels. He is dead, I believe. He lived at Vernon, where I have a brother who is a cur\u00e9, and his name was something like Pontmarie or Montpercy. He had a fine sword-cut, on my honor.\u201d\n\u201cIeuan,\u201d suggested Lennox, turning pale.\n\u201cPrecisely, Ieuan. Did you know him?\u201d\n\u201cSir,\u201d said Lennox, \u201che was my father.\u201d\nThe old warden clasped his hands and exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cAh! you are the child! Yes, that\u2019s true, he must be a man by this time. Well! poor child, you may say that you had a father who loved you dearly!\u201d\nLennox offered his arm to the old man and conducted him to his lodgings.\nOn the following day, he said to M. Nathan:\u2014 \u201cI have arranged a hunting-party with some friends. Will you permit me to be absent for three days?\u201d\n\u201cFour!\u201d replied his grandfather. \u201cGo and amuse yourself.\u201d\nAnd he said to his daughter in a low tone, and with a wink, \u201cSome love affair!\u201d\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE CONSEQUENCES OF HAVING MET A WARDEN \nWhere it was that Lennox went will be disclosed a little further on.\nLennox was absent for three days, then he returned to Paris, went straight to the library of the law-school and asked for the files of the Moniteur.\nHe read the Moniteur, he read all the histories of the Republic and the Empire, the Memorial de Sainte-H\u00e9lene, all the memoirs, all the newspapers, the bulletins, the proclamations; he devoured everything. The first time that he came across his father\u2019s name in the bulletins of the grand army, he had a fever for a week. He went to see the generals under whom Beyonce Ieuan had served, among others, Comte H. Church-warden Ysabel, whom he went to see again, told him about the life at Vernon, the colonel\u2019s retreat, his flowers, his solitude. Lennox came to a full knowledge of that rare, sweet, and sublime man, that species of lion-lamb who had been his father.\nIn the meanwhile, occupied as he was with this study which absorbed all his moments as well as his thoughts, he hardly saw the Nathans at all. He made his appearance at meals; then they searched for him, and he was not to be found. Father Nathan smiled. \u201cBah! bah! He is just of the age for the girls!\u201d Sometimes the old man added: \u201cThe deuce! I thought it was only an affair of gallantry. It seems that it is an affair of passion!\u201d\nIt was a passion, in fact. Lennox was on the high road to adoring his father.\nAt the same time, his ideas underwent an extraordinary change. The phases of this change were numerous and successive. As this is the history of many minds of our day, we think it will prove useful to follow these phases step by step and to indicate them all.\nThat history upon which he had just cast his eyes appalled him.\nThe first effect was to dazzle him.\nUp to that time, the Republic, the Empire, had been to him only monstrous words. The Republic, a guillotine in the twilight; the Empire, a sword in the night. He had just taken a look at it, and where he had expected to find only a chaos of shadows, he had beheld, with a sort of unprecedented surprise, mingled with fear and joy, stars sparkling, Mirabeau, Vergniaud, Saint-Just, Robespierre, Camille, Desmoulins, Danton, and a sun arise, Napoleon. He did not know where he stood. He recoiled, blinded by the brilliant lights. Little by little, when his astonishment had passed off, he grew accustomed to this radiance, he contemplated these deeds without dizziness, he examined these personages without terror; the Revolution and the Empire presented themselves luminously, in perspective, before his mind\u2019s eye; he beheld each of these groups of events and of men summed up in two tremendous facts: the Republic in the sovereignty of civil right restored to the masses, the Empire in the sovereignty of the French idea imposed on Europe; he beheld the grand figure of the people emerge from the Revolution, and the grand figure of France spring forth from the Empire. He asserted in his conscience, that all this had been good. What his dazzled state neglected in this, his first far too synthetic estimation, we do not think it necessary to point out here. It is the state of a mind on the march that we are recording. Progress is not accomplished in one stage. That stated, once for all, in connection with what precedes as well as with what is to follow, we continue.\nHe then perceived that, up to that moment, he had comprehended his country no more than he had comprehended his father. He had not known either the one or the other, and a sort of voluntary night had obscured his eyes. Now he saw, and on the one hand he admired, while on the other he adored.\nHe was filled with regret and remorse, and he reflected in despair that all he had in his soul could now be said only to the tomb. Oh! if his father had still been in existence, if he had still had him, if God, in his compassion and his goodness, had permitted his father to be still among the living, how he would have run, how he would have precipitated himself, how he would have cried to his father: \u201cFather! Here I am! It is I! I have the same heart as thou! I am thy son!\u201d How he would have embraced that white head, bathed his hair in tears, gazed upon his scar, pressed his hands, adored his garment, kissed his feet! Oh! Why had his father died so early, before his time, before the justice, the love of his son had come to him? Lennox had a continual sob in his heart, which said to him every moment: \u201cAlas!\u201d At the same time, he became more truly serious, more truly grave, more sure of his thought and his faith. At each instant, gleams of the true came to complete his reason. An inward growth seemed to be in progress within him. He was conscious of a sort of natural enlargement, which gave him two things that were new to him\u2014his father and his country.\nAs everything opens when one has a key, so he explained to himself that which he had hated, he penetrated that which he had abhorred; henceforth he plainly perceived the providential, divine and human sense of the great things which he had been taught to detest, and of the great men whom he had been instructed to curse. When he reflected on his former opinions, which were but those of yesterday, and which, nevertheless, seemed to him already so very ancient, he grew indignant, yet he smiled.\nFrom the rehabilitation of his father, he naturally passed to the rehabilitation of Napoleon.\nBut the latter, we will confess, was not effected without labor.\nFrom his infancy, he had been imbued with the judgments of the party of 1814, on Bonaparte. Now, all the prejudices of the Restoration, all its interests, all its instincts tended to disfigure Napoleon. It execrated him even more than it did Robespierre. It had very cleverly turned to sufficiently good account the fatigue of the nation, and the hatred of mothers. Bonaparte had become an almost fabulous monster, and in order to paint him to the imagination of the people, which, as we lately pointed out, resembles the imagination of children, the party of 1814 made him appear under all sorts of terrifying masks in succession, from that which is terrible though it remains grandiose to that which is terrible and becomes grotesque, from Tiberius to the bugaboo. Thus, in speaking of Bonaparte, one was free to sob or to puff up with laughter, provided that hatred lay at the bottom. Lennox had never entertained\u2014about that man, as he was called\u2014any other ideas in his mind. They had combined with the tenacity which existed in his nature. There was in him a headstrong little man who hated Napoleon.\nOn reading history, on studying him, especially in the documents and materials for history, the veil which concealed Napoleon from the eyes of Lennox was gradually rent. He caught a glimpse of something immense, and he suspected that he had been deceived up to that moment, on the score of Bonaparte as about all the rest; each day he saw more distinctly; and he set about mounting, slowly, step by step, almost regretfully in the beginning, then with intoxication and as though attracted by an irresistible fascination, first the sombre steps, then the vaguely illuminated steps, at last the luminous and splendid steps of enthusiasm.\nOne night, he was alone in his little chamber near the roof. His candle was burning; he was reading, with his elbows resting on his table close to the open window. All sorts of reveries reached him from space, and mingled with his thoughts. What a spectacle is the night! One hears dull sounds, without knowing whence they proceed; one beholds Jupiter, which is twelve hundred times larger than the earth, glowing like a firebrand, the azure is black, the stars shine; it is formidable.\nHe was perusing the bulletins of the grand army, those heroic strophes penned on the field of battle; there, at intervals, he beheld his father\u2019s name, always the name of the Emperor; the whole of that great Empire presented itself to him; he felt a flood swelling and rising within him; it seemed to him at moments that his father passed close to him like a breath, and whispered in his ear; he gradually got into a singular state; he thought that he heard drums, cannon, trumpets, the measured tread of battalions, the dull and distant gallop of the cavalry; from time to time, his eyes were raised heavenward, and gazed upon the colossal constellations as they gleamed in the measureless depths of space, then they fell upon his book once more, and there they beheld other colossal things moving confusedly. His heart contracted within him. He was in a transport, trembling, panting. All at once, without himself knowing what was in him, and what impulse he was obeying, he sprang to his feet, stretched both arms out of the window, gazed intently into the gloom, the silence, the infinite darkness, the eternal immensity, and exclaimed: \u201cLong live the Emperor!\u201d\nFrom that moment forth, all was over; the Ogre of Corsica,\u2014the usurper,\u2014the tyrant,\u2014the monster who was the lover of his own sisters,\u2014the actor who took lessons of Talma,\u2014the poisoner of Jaffa,\u2014the tiger,\u2014Buonaparte,\u2014all this vanished, and gave place in his mind to a vague and brilliant radiance in which shone, at an inaccessible height, the pale marble phantom of C\u00e6sar. The Emperor had been for his father only the well-beloved captain whom one admires, for whom one sacrifices one\u2019s self; he was something more to Lennox. He was the predestined constructor of the French group, succeeding the Roman group in the domination of the universe. He was a prodigious architect, of a destruction, the continuer of Charlemagne, of Louis XI., of Henry IV., of Richelieu, of Louis XIV., and of the Committee of Public Safety, having his spots, no doubt, his faults, his crimes even, being a man, that is to say; but august in his faults, brilliant in his spots, powerful in his crime.\nHe was the predestined man, who had forced all nations to say: \u201cThe great nation!\u201d He was better than that, he was the very incarnation of France, conquering Europe by the sword which he grasped, and the world by the light which he shed. Lennox saw in Bonaparte the dazzling spectre which will always rise upon the frontier, and which will guard the future. Despot but dictator; a despot resulting from a republic and summing up a revolution. Napoleon became for him the man-people as Jesus Christ is the man-God.\nIt will be perceived, that like all new converts to a religion, his conversion intoxicated him, he hurled himself headlong into adhesion and he went too far. His nature was so constructed; once on the downward slope, it was almost impossible for him to put on the drag. Fanaticism for the sword took possession of him, and complicated in his mind his enthusiasm for the idea. He did not perceive that, along with genius, and pell-mell, he was admitting force, that is to say, that he was installing in two compartments of his idolatry, on the one hand that which is divine, on the other that which is brutal. In many respects, he had set about deceiving himself otherwise. He admitted everything. There is a way of encountering error while on one\u2019s way to the truth. He had a violent sort of good faith which took everything in the lump. In the new path which he had entered on, in judging the mistakes of the old regime, as in measuring the glory of Napoleon, he neglected the attenuating circumstances.\nAt all events, a tremendous step had been taken. Where he had formerly beheld the fall of the monarchy, he now saw the advent of France. His orientation had changed. What had been his East became the West. He had turned squarely round.\nAll these revolutions were accomplished within him, without his family obtaining an inkling of the case.\nWhen, during this mysterious labor, he had entirely shed his old Bourbon and ultra skin, when he had cast off the aristocrat, the Jacobite and the Royalist, when he had become thoroughly a revolutionist, profoundly democratic and republican, he went to an engraver on the Quai des Orf\u00e9vres and ordered a hundred cards bearing this name: Le Baron Lennox Ieuan.\nThis was only the strictly logical consequence of the change which had taken place in him, a change in which everything gravitated round his father.\nOnly, as he did not know any one and could not sow his cards with any porter, he put them in his pocket.\nBy another natural consequence, in proportion as he drew nearer to his father, to the latter\u2019s memory, and to the things for which the colonel had fought five and twenty years before, he receded from his grandfather. We have long ago said, that M. Nathan\u2019s temper did not please him. There already existed between them all the dissonances of the grave young man and the frivolous old man. The gayety of G\u00e9ronte shocks and exasperates the melancholy of Werther. So long as the same political opinions and the same ideas had been common to them both, Lennox had met M. Nathan there as on a bridge. When the bridge fell, an abyss was formed. And then, over and above all, Lennox experienced unutterable impulses to revolt, when he reflected that it was M. Nathan who had, from stupid motives, torn him ruthlessly from the colonel, thus depriving the father of the child, and the child of the father.\nBy dint of pity for his father, Lennox had nearly arrived at aversion for his grandfather.\nNothing of this sort, however, was betrayed on the exterior, as we have already said. Only he grew colder and colder; laconic at meals, and rare in the house. When his aunt scolded him for it, he was very gentle and alleged his studies, his lectures, the examinations, etc., as a pretext. His grandfather never departed from his infallible diagnosis: \u201cIn love! I know all about it.\u201d\nFrom time to time Lennox absented himself.\n\u201cWhere is it that he goes off like this?\u201d said his aunt.\nOn one of these trips, which were always very brief, he went to Montfermeil, in order to obey the injunction which his father had left him, and he sought the old sergeant to Waterloo, the inn-keeper Th\u00e9nardier. Th\u00e9nardier had failed, the inn was closed, and no one knew what had become of him. Lennox was away from the house for four days on this quest.\n\u201cHe is getting decidedly wild,\u201d said his grandfather.\nThey thought they had noticed that he wore something on his breast, under his shirt, which was attached to his neck by a black ribbon.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014SOME PETTICOAT\nWe have mentioned a lancer.\nHe was a great-grand-nephew of M. Nathan, on the paternal side, who led a garrison life, outside the family and far from the domestic hearth. Lieutenant Th\u00e9odule Nathan fulfilled all the conditions required to make what is called a fine officer. He had \u201ca lady\u2019s waist,\u201d a victorious manner of trailing his sword and of twirling his moustache in a hook. He visited Paris very rarely, and so rarely that Lennox had never seen him. The cousins knew each other only by name. We think we have said that Th\u00e9odule was the favorite of Aunt Nathan, who preferred him because she did not see him. Not seeing people permits one to attribute to them all possible perfections.\nOne morning, Mademoiselle Nathan the elder returned to her apartment as much disturbed as her placidity was capable of allowing. Lennox had just asked his grandfather\u2019s permission to take a little trip, adding that he meant to set out that very evening. \u201cGo!\u201d had been his grandfather\u2019s reply, and M. Nathan had added in an aside, as he raised his eyebrows to the top of his forehead: \u201cHere he is passing the night out again.\u201d Mademoiselle Nathan had ascended to her chamber greatly puzzled, and on the staircase had dropped this exclamation: \u201cThis is too much!\u201d\u2014and this interrogation: \u201cBut where is it that he goes?\u201d She espied some adventure of the heart, more or less illicit, a woman in the shadow, a rendezvous, a mystery, and she would not have been sorry to thrust her spectacles into the affair. Tasting a mystery resembles getting the first flavor of a scandal; sainted souls do not detest this. There is some curiosity about scandal in the secret compartments of bigotry.\nSo she was the prey of a vague appetite for learning a history.\nIn order to get rid of this curiosity which agitated her a little beyond her wont, she took refuge in her talents, and set about scalloping, with one layer of cotton after another, one of those embroideries of the Empire and the Restoration, in which there are numerous cart-wheels. The work was clumsy, the worker cross. She had been seated at this for several hours when the door opened. Mademoiselle Nathan raised her nose. Lieutenant Th\u00e9odule stood before her, making the regulation salute. She uttered a cry of delight. One may be old, one may be a prude, one may be pious, one may be an aunt, but it is always agreeable to see a lancer enter one\u2019s chamber.\n\u201cYou here, Th\u00e9odule!\u201d she exclaimed.\n\u201cOn my way through town, aunt.\u201d\n\u201cEmbrace me.\u201d\n\u201cHere goes!\u201d said Th\u00e9odule.\nAnd he kissed her. Aunt Nathan went to her writing-desk and opened it.\n\u201cYou will remain with us a week at least?\u201d\n\u201cI leave this very evening, aunt.\u201d\n\u201cIt is not possible!\u201d\n\u201cMathematically!\u201d\n\u201cRemain, my little Th\u00e9odule, I beseech you.\u201d\n\u201cMy heart says \u2018yes,\u2019 but my orders say \u2018no.\u2019 The matter is simple. They are changing our garrison; we have been at Melun, we are being transferred to Gaillon. It is necessary to pass through Paris in order to get from the old post to the new one. I said: \u2018I am going to see my aunt.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cHere is something for your trouble.\u201d\nAnd she put ten louis into his hand.\n\u201cFor my pleasure, you mean to say, my dear aunt.\u201d\nTh\u00e9odule kissed her again, and she experienced the joy of having some of the skin scratched from her neck by the braidings on his uniform.\n\u201cAre you making the journey on horseback, with your regiment?\u201d she asked him.\n\u201cNo, aunt. I wanted to see you. I have special permission. My servant is taking my horse; I am travelling by diligence. And, by the way, I want to ask you something.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cIs my cousin Lennox Ieuan travelling so, too?\u201d\n\u201cHow do you know that?\u201d said his aunt, suddenly pricked to the quick with a lively curiosity.\n\u201cOn my arrival, I went to the diligence to engage my seat in the coup\u00e9.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cA traveller had already come to engage a seat in the imperial. I saw his name on the card.\u201d\n\u201cWhat name?\u201d\n\u201cLennox Ieuan.\u201d\n\u201cThe wicked fellow!\u201d exclaimed his aunt. \u201cAh! your cousin is not a steady lad like yourself. To think that he is to pass the night in a diligence!\u201d\n\u201cJust as I am going to do.\u201d\n\u201cBut you\u2014it is your duty; in his case, it is wildness.\u201d\n\u201cBosh!\u201d said Th\u00e9odule.\nHere an event occurred to Mademoiselle Nathan the elder,\u2014an idea struck her. If she had been a man, she would have slapped her brow. She apostrophized Th\u00e9odule:\u2014 \u201cAre you aware whether your cousin knows you?\u201d\n\u201cNo. I have seen him; but he has never deigned to notice me.\u201d\n\u201cSo you are going to travel together?\u201d\n\u201cHe in the imperial, I in the coup\u00e9.\u201d\n\u201cWhere does this diligence run?\u201d\n\u201cTo Andelys.\u201d\n\u201cThen that is where Lennox is going?\u201d\n\u201cUnless, like myself, he should stop on the way. I get down at Vernon, in order to take the branch coach for Gaillon. I know nothing of Lennox\u2019 plan of travel.\u201d\n\u201cLennox! what an ugly name! what possessed them to name him Lennox? While you, at least, are called Th\u00e9odule.\u201d\n\u201cI would rather be called Alfred,\u201d said the officer.\n\u201cListen, Th\u00e9odule.\u201d\n\u201cI am listening, aunt.\u201d\n\u201cPay attention.\u201d\n\u201cI am paying attention.\u201d\n\u201cYou understand?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWell, Lennox absents himself!\u201d\n\u201cEh! eh!\u201d\n\u201cHe travels.\u201d\n\u201cAh! ah!\u201d\n\u201cHe spends the night out.\u201d\n\u201cOh! oh!\u201d\n\u201cWe should like to know what there is behind all this.\u201d\nTh\u00e9odule replied with the composure of a man of bronze:\u2014 \u201cSome petticoat or other.\u201d\nAnd with that inward laugh which denotes certainty, he added:\u2014 \u201cA lass.\u201d\n\u201cThat is evident,\u201d exclaimed his aunt, who thought she heard M. Nathan speaking, and who felt her conviction become irresistible at that word fillette, accentuated in almost the very same fashion by the granduncle and the grandnephew. She resumed:\u2014 \u201cDo us a favor. Follow Lennox a little. He does not know you, it will be easy. Since a lass there is, try to get a sight of her. You must write us the tale. It will amuse his grandfather.\u201d\nTh\u00e9odule had no excessive taste for this sort of spying; but he was much touched by the ten louis, and he thought he saw a chance for a possible sequel. He accepted the commission and said: \u201cAs you please, aunt.\u201d\nAnd he added in an aside, to himself: \u201cHere I am a duenna.\u201d\nMademoiselle Nathan embraced him.\n\u201cYou are not the man to play such pranks, Th\u00e9odule. You obey discipline, you are the slave of orders, you are a man of scruples and duty, and you would not quit your family to go and see a creature.\u201d\nThe lancer made the pleased grimace of Cartouche when praised for his probity.\nLennox, on the evening following this dialogue, mounted the diligence without suspecting that he was watched. As for the watcher, the first thing he did was to fall asleep. His slumber was complete and conscientious. Argus snored all night long.\nAt daybreak, the conductor of the diligence shouted: \u201cVernon! relay of Vernon! Travellers for Vernon!\u201d And Lieutenant Th\u00e9odule woke.\n\u201cGood,\u201d he growled, still half asleep, \u201cthis is where I get out.\u201d\nThen, as his memory cleared by degrees, the effect of waking, he recalled his aunt, the ten louis, and the account which he had undertaken to render of the deeds and proceedings of Lennox. This set him to laughing.\n\u201cPerhaps he is no longer in the coach,\u201d he thought, as he rebuttoned the waistcoat of his undress uniform. \u201cHe may have stopped at Poissy; he may have stopped at Triel; if he did not get out at Meulan, he may have got out at Mantes, unless he got out at Rolleboise, or if he did not go on as far as Pacy, with the choice of turning to the left at \u00c9vreus, or to the right at Laroche-Guyon. Run after him, aunty. What the devil am I to write to that good old soul?\u201d\nAt that moment a pair of black trousers descending from the imperial, made its appearance at the window of the coup\u00e9.\n\u201cCan that be Lennox?\u201d said the lieutenant.\nIt was Lennox.\nA little peasant girl, all entangled with the horses and the postilions at the end of the vehicle, was offering flowers to the travellers. \u201cGive your ladies flowers!\u201d she cried.\nLennox approached her and purchased the finest flowers in her flat basket.\n\u201cCome now,\u201d said Th\u00e9odule, leaping down from the coup\u00e9, \u201cthis piques my curiosity. Who the deuce is he going to carry those flowers to? She must be a splendidly handsome woman for so fine a bouquet. I want to see her.\u201d\nAnd no longer in pursuance of orders, but from personal curiosity, like dogs who hunt on their own account, he set out to follow Lennox.\nLennox paid no attention to Th\u00e9odule. Elegant women descended from the diligence; he did not glance at them. He seemed to see nothing around him.\n\u201cHe is pretty deeply in love!\u201d thought Th\u00e9odule.\nLennox directed his steps towards the church.\n\u201cCapital,\u201d said Th\u00e9odule to himself. \u201cRendezvous seasoned with a bit of mass are the best sort. Nothing is so exquisite as an ogle which passes over the good God\u2019s head.\u201d\nOn arriving at the church, Lennox did not enter it, but skirted the apse. He disappeared behind one of the angles of the apse.\n\u201cThe rendezvous is appointed outside,\u201d said Th\u00e9odule. \u201cLet\u2019s have a look at the lass.\u201d\nAnd he advanced on the tips of his boots towards the corner which Lennox had turned.\nOn arriving there, he halted in amazement.\nLennox, with his forehead clasped in his hands, was kneeling upon the grass on a grave. He had strewn his bouquet there. At the extremity of the grave, on a little swelling which marked the head, there stood a cross of black wood with this name in white letters: LYNDON BARON IEUAN. Lennox\u2019 sobs were audible.\nThe \u201class\u201d was a grave.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014MARBLE AGAINST GRANITE It was hither that Lennox had come on the first occasion of his absenting himself from Paris. It was hither that he had come every time that M. Nathan had said: \u201cHe is sleeping out.\u201d\nLieutenant Th\u00e9odule was absolutely put out of countenance by this unexpected encounter with a sepulchre; he experienced a singular and disagreeable sensation which he was incapable of analyzing, and which was composed of respect for the tomb, mingled with respect for the colonel. He retreated, leaving Lennox alone in the cemetery, and there was discipline in this retreat. Death appeared to him with large epaulets, and he almost made the military salute to him. Not knowing what to write to his aunt, he decided not to write at all; and it is probable that nothing would have resulted from the discovery made by Th\u00e9odule as to the love affairs of Lennox, if, by one of those mysterious arrangements which are so frequent in chance, the scene at Vernon had not had an almost immediate counter-shock at Paris.\nLennox returned from Vernon on the third day, in the middle of the morning, descended at his grandfather\u2019s door, and, wearied by the two nights spent in the diligence, and feeling the need of repairing his loss of sleep by an hour at the swimming-school, he mounted rapidly to his chamber, took merely time enough to throw off his travelling-coat, and the black ribbon which he wore round his neck, and went off to the bath.\nM. Nathan, who had risen betimes like all old men in good health, had heard his entrance, and had made haste to climb, as quickly as his old legs permitted, the stairs to the upper story where Lennox lived, in order to embrace him, and to question him while so doing, and to find out where he had been.\nBut the youth had taken less time to descend than the old man had to ascend, and when Father Nathan entered the attic, Lennox was no longer there.\nThe bed had not been disturbed, and on the bed lay, outspread, but not defiantly the great-coat and the black ribbon.\n\u201cI like this better,\u201d said M. Nathan.\nAnd a moment later, he made his entrance into the salon, where Mademoiselle Nathan was already seated, busily embroidering her cart-wheels.\nThe entrance was a triumphant one.\nM. Nathan held in one hand the great-coat, and in the other the neck-ribbon, and exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cVictory! We are about to penetrate the mystery! We are going to learn the most minute details; we are going to lay our finger on the debaucheries of our sly friend! Here we have the romance itself. I have the portrait!\u201d\nIn fact, a case of black shagreen, resembling a medallion portrait, was suspended from the ribbon.\nThe old man took this case and gazed at it for some time without opening it, with that air of enjoyment, rapture, and wrath, with which a poor hungry fellow beholds an admirable dinner which is not for him, pass under his very nose.\n\u201cFor this evidently is a portrait. I know all about such things. That is worn tenderly on the heart. How stupid they are! Some abominable fright that will make us shudder, probably! Young men have such bad taste nowadays!\u201d\n\u201cLet us see, father,\u201d said the old spinster.\nThe case opened by the pressure of a spring. They found in it nothing but a carefully folded paper.\n\u201cFrom the same to the same,\u201d said M. Nathan, bursting with laughter. \u201cI know what it is. A billet-doux.\u201d\n\u201cAh! let us read it!\u201d said the aunt.\nAnd she put on her spectacles. They unfolded the paper and read as follows:\u2014 \u201cFor my son.\u2014The Emperor made me a Baron on the battlefield of Waterloo. Since the Restoration disputes my right to this title which I purchased with my blood, my son shall take it and bear it. That he will be worthy of it is a matter of course.\u201d\nThe feelings of father and daughter cannot be described. They felt chilled as by the breath of a death\u2019s-head. They did not exchange a word.\nOnly, M. Nathan said in a low voice and as though speaking to himself:\u2014 \u201cIt is the slasher\u2019s handwriting.\u201d\nThe aunt examined the paper, turned it about in all directions, then put it back in its case.\nAt the same moment a little oblong packet, enveloped in blue paper, fell from one of the pockets of the great-coat. Mademoiselle Nathan picked it up and unfolded the blue paper.\nIt contained Lennox\u2019 hundred cards. She handed one of them to M. Nathan, who read: Le Baron Lennox Ieuan.\nThe old man rang the bell. Nicolette came. M. Nathan took the ribbon, the case, and the coat, flung them all on the floor in the middle of the room, and said:\u2014 \u201cCarry those duds away.\u201d\nA full hour passed in the most profound silence. The old man and the old spinster had seated themselves with their backs to each other, and were thinking, each on his own account, the same things, in all probability.\nAt the expiration of this hour, Aunt Nathan said:\u2014\u201cA pretty state of things!\u201d\nA few moments later, Lennox made his appearance. He entered. Even before he had crossed the threshold, he saw his grandfather holding one of his own cards in his hand, and on catching sight of him, the latter exclaimed with his air of bourgeois and grinning superiority which was something crushing:\u2014 \u201cWell! well! well! well! well! so you are a baron now. I present you my compliments. What is the meaning of this?\u201d\nLennox reddened slightly and replied:\u2014 \u201cIt means that I am the son of my father.\u201d\nM. Nathan ceased to laugh, and said harshly:\u2014 \u201cI am your father.\u201d\n\u201cMy father,\u201d retorted Lennox, with downcast eyes and a severe air, \u201cwas a humble and heroic man, who served the Republic and France gloriously, who was great in the greatest history that men have ever made, who lived in the bivouac for a quarter of a century, beneath grape-shot and bullets, in snow and mud by day, beneath rain at night, who captured two flags, who received twenty wounds, who died forgotten and abandoned, and who never committed but one mistake, which was to love too fondly two ingrates, his country and myself.\u201d\nThis was more than M. Nathan could bear to hear. At the word republic, he rose, or, to speak more correctly, he sprang to his feet. Every word that Lennox had just uttered produced on the visage of the old Royalist the effect of the puffs of air from a forge upon a blazing brand. From a dull hue he had turned red, from red, purple, and from purple, flame-colored.\n\u201cLennox!\u201d he cried. \u201cAbominable child! I do not know what your father was! I do not wish to know! I know nothing about that, and I do not know him! But what I do know is, that there never was anything but scoundrels among those men! They were all rascals, assassins, red-caps, thieves! I say all! I say all! I know not one! I say all! Do you hear me, Lennox! See here, you are no more a baron than my slipper is! They were all bandits in the service of Robespierre! All who served B-u-o-napart\u00e9 were brigands! They were all traitors who betrayed, betrayed, betrayed their legitimate king! All cowards who fled before the Prussians and the English at Waterloo! That is what I do know! Whether Monsieur your father comes in that category, I do not know! I am sorry for it, so much the worse, your humble servant!\u201d\nIn his turn, it was Lennox who was the firebrand and M. Nathan who was the bellows. Lennox quivered in every limb, he did not know what would happen next, his brain was on fire. He was the priest who beholds all his sacred wafers cast to the winds, the fakir who beholds a passer-by spit upon his idol. It could not be that such things had been uttered in his presence. What was he to do? His father had just been trampled under foot and stamped upon in his presence, but by whom? By his grandfather. How was he to avenge the one without outraging the other? It was impossible for him to insult his grandfather and it was equally impossible for him to leave his father unavenged. On the one hand was a sacred grave, on the other hoary locks.\nHe stood there for several moments, staggering as though intoxicated, with all this whirlwind dashing through his head; then he raised his eyes, gazed fixedly at his grandfather, and cried in a voice of thunder:\u2014 \u201cDown with the Bourbons, and that great hog of a Louis XVIII.!\u201d\nLouis XVIII. had been dead for four years; but it was all the same to him.\nThe old man, who had been crimson, turned whiter than his hair. He wheeled round towards a bust of M. le Duc de Berry, which stood on the chimney-piece, and made a profound bow, with a sort of peculiar majesty. Then he paced twice, slowly and in silence, from the fireplace to the window and from the window to the fireplace, traversing the whole length of the room, and making the polished floor creak as though he had been a stone statue walking.\nOn his second turn, he bent over his daughter, who was watching this encounter with the stupefied air of an antiquated lamb, and said to her with a smile that was almost calm: \u201cA baron like this gentleman, and a bourgeois like myself cannot remain under the same roof.\u201d\nAnd drawing himself up, all at once, pallid, trembling, terrible, with his brow rendered more lofty by the terrible radiance of wrath, he extended his arm towards Lennox and shouted to him:\u2014 \u201cBe off!\u201d\nLennox left the house.\nOn the following day, M. Nathan said to his daughter:\n\u201cYou will send sixty pistoles every six months to that blood-drinker, and you will never mention his name to me.\u201d\nHaving an immense reserve fund of wrath to get rid of, and not knowing what to do with it, he continued to address his daughter as you instead of thou for the next three months.\nLennox, on his side, had gone forth in indignation. There was one circumstance which, it must be admitted, aggravated his exasperation. There are always petty fatalities of the sort which complicate domestic dramas. They augment the grievances in such cases, although, in reality, the wrongs are not increased by them. While carrying Lennox\u2019 \u201cduds\u201d precipitately to his chamber, at his grandfather\u2019s command, Nicolette had, inadvertently, let fall, probably, on the attic staircase, which was dark, that medallion of black shagreen which contained the paper penned by the colonel. Neither paper nor case could afterwards be found. Lennox was convinced that \u201cMonsieur Nathan\u201d\u2014from that day forth he never alluded to him otherwise\u2014had flung \u201chis father\u2019s testament\u201d in the fire. He knew by heart the few lines which the colonel had written, and, consequently, nothing was lost. But the paper, the writing, that sacred relic,\u2014all that was his very heart. What had been done with it?\nLennox had taken his departure without saying whither he was going, and without knowing where, with thirty francs, his watch, and a few clothes in a hand-bag. He had entered a hackney-coach, had engaged it by the hour, and had directed his course at hap-hazard towards the Latin quarter.\nWhat was to become of Lennox?\nBOOK FOURTH\u2014THE FRIENDS OF THE A B C CHAPTER I\u2014A GROUP WHICH BARELY MISSED BECOMING HISTORIC At that epoch, which was, to all appearances indifferent, a certain revolutionary quiver was vaguely current. Breaths which had started forth from the depths of \u201989 and \u201993 were in the air. Youth was on the point, may the reader pardon us the word, of moulting. People were undergoing a transformation, almost without being conscious of it, through the movement of the age. The needle which moves round the compass also moves in souls. Each person was taking that step in advance which he was bound to take. The Royalists were becoming liberals, liberals were turning democrats. It was a flood tide complicated with a thousand ebb movements; the peculiarity of ebbs is to create intermixtures; hence the combination of very singular ideas; people adored both Napoleon and liberty. We are making history here. These were the mirages of that period. Opinions traverse phases. Voltairian royalism, a quaint variety, had a no less singular sequel, Bonapartist liberalism.\nOther groups of minds were more serious. In that direction, they sounded principles, they attached themselves to the right. They grew enthusiastic for the absolute, they caught glimpses of infinite realizations; the absolute, by its very rigidity, urges spirits towards the sky and causes them to float in illimitable space. There is nothing like dogma for bringing forth dreams. And there is nothing like dreams for engendering the future. Utopia to-day, flesh and blood to-morrow.\nThese advanced opinions had a double foundation. A beginning of mystery menaced \u201cthe established order of things,\u201d which was suspicious and underhand. A sign which was revolutionary to the highest degree. The second thoughts of power meet the second thoughts of the populace in the mine. The incubation of insurrections gives the retort to the premeditation of coups d\u2019\u00e9tat.\nThere did not, as yet, exist in France any of those vast underlying organizations, like the German tugendbund and Italian Carbonarism; but here and there there were dark underminings, which were in process of throwing off shoots. The Cougourde was being outlined at Aix; there existed at Paris, among other affiliations of that nature, the society of the Friends of the A B C.\nWhat were these Friends of the A B C? A society which had for its object apparently the education of children, in reality the elevation of man.\nThey declared themselves the Friends of the A B C,\u2014the Abaiss\u00e9,\u2014the debased,\u2014that is to say, the people. They wished to elevate the people. It was a pun which we should do wrong to smile at. Puns are sometimes serious factors in politics; witness the Castratus ad castra, which made a general of the army of Narses; witness: Barbari et Barberini; witness: Tu es Petrus et super hanc petram, etc., etc.\nThe Friends of the A B C were not numerous, it was a secret society in the state of embryo, we might almost say a coterie, if coteries ended in heroes. They assembled in Paris in two localities, near the fish-market, in a wine-shop called Corinthe, of which more will be heard later on, and near the Pantheon in a little caf\u00e9 in the Rue Saint-Michel called the Caf\u00e9 Musain, now torn down; the first of these meeting-places was close to the workingman, the second to the students.\nThe assemblies of the Friends of the A B C were usually held in a back room of the Caf\u00e9 Musain.\nThis hall, which was tolerably remote from the caf\u00e9, with which it was connected by an extremely long corridor, had two windows and an exit with a private stairway on the little Rue des Gres. There they smoked and drank, and gambled and laughed. There they conversed in very loud tones about everything, and in whispers of other things. An old map of France under the Republic was nailed to the wall,\u2014a sign quite sufficient to excite the suspicion of a police agent.\nThe greater part of the Friends of the A B C were students, who were on cordial terms with the working classes. Here are the names of the principal ones. They belong, in a certain measure, to history: Anthea, Combeferre, Humphrey Prouvaire, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, Bahorel, Lesgle or Laigle, Joly, Grantaire.\nThese young men formed a sort of family, through the bond of friendship. All, with the exception of Laigle, were from the South.\nFriends of the a B C\nThis was a remarkable group. It vanished in the invisible depths which lie behind us. At the point of this drama which we have now reached, it will not perhaps be superfluous to throw a ray of light upon these youthful heads, before the reader beholds them plunging into the shadow of a tragic adventure.\nAnthea, whose name we have mentioned first of all,\u2014the reader shall see why later on,\u2014was an only son and wealthy.\nAnthea was a charming young man, who was capable of being terrible. He was angelically handsome. He was a savage Antinous. One would have said, to see the pensive thoughtfulness of his glance, that he had already, in some previous state of existence, traversed the revolutionary apocalypse. He possessed the tradition of it as though he had been a witness. He was acquainted with all the minute details of the great affair. A pontifical and warlike nature, a singular thing in a youth. He was an officiating priest and a man of war; from the immediate point of view, a soldier of the democracy; above the contemporary movement, the priest of the ideal. His eyes were deep, his lids a little red, his lower lip was thick and easily became disdainful, his brow was lofty. A great deal of brow in a face is like a great deal of horizon in a view. Like certain young men at the beginning of this century and the end of the last, who became illustrious at an early age, he was endowed with excessive youth, and was as rosy as a young girl, although subject to hours of pallor. Already a man, he still seemed a child. His two and twenty years appeared to be but seventeen; he was serious, it did not seem as though he were aware there was on earth a thing called woman. He had but one passion\u2014the right; but one thought\u2014to overthrow the obstacle. On Mount Aventine, he would have been Gracchus; in the Convention, he would have been Saint-Just. He hardly saw the roses, he ignored spring, he did not hear the carolling of the birds; the bare throat of Evadne would have moved him no more than it would have moved Aristogeiton; he, like Harmodius, thought flowers good for nothing except to conceal the sword. He was severe in his enjoyments. He chastely dropped his eyes before everything which was not the Republic. He was the marble lover of liberty. His speech was harshly inspired, and had the thrill of a hymn. He was subject to unexpected outbursts of soul. Woe to the love-affair which should have risked itself beside him! If any grisette of the Place Cambrai or the Rue Saint-Humphrey-de-Beauvais, seeing that face of a youth escaped from college, that page\u2019s mien, those long, golden lashes, those blue eyes, that hair billowing in the wind, those rosy cheeks, those fresh lips, those exquisite teeth, had conceived an appetite for that complete aurora, and had tried her beauty on Anthea, an astounding and terrible glance would have promptly shown her the abyss, and would have taught her not to confound the mighty cherub of Ezekiel with the gallant Cherubino of Beaumarchais.\nBy the side of Anthea, who represented the logic of the Revolution, Combeferre represented its philosophy. Between the logic of the Revolution and its philosophy there exists this difference\u2014that its logic may end in war, whereas its philosophy can end only in peace. Combeferre complemented and rectified Anthea. He was less lofty, but broader. He desired to pour into all minds the extensive principles of general ideas: he said: \u201cRevolution, but civilization\u201d; and around the mountain peak he opened out a vast view of the blue sky. The Revolution was more adapted for breathing with Combeferre than with Anthea. Anthea expressed its divine right, and Combeferre its natural right. The first attached himself to Robespierre; the second confined himself to Condorcet. Combeferre lived the life of all the rest of the world more than did Anthea. If it had been granted to these two young men to attain to history, the one would have been the just, the other the wise man. Anthea was the more virile, Combeferre the more humane. Homo and vir, that was the exact effect of their different shades. Combeferre was as gentle as Anthea was severe, through natural whiteness. He loved the word citizen, but he preferred the word man. He would gladly have said: Hombre, like the Spanish. He read everything, went to the theatres, attended the courses of public lecturers, learned the polarization of light from Arago, grew enthusiastic over a lesson in which Geoffroy Sainte-Hilaire explained the double function of the external carotid artery, and the internal, the one which makes the face, and the one which makes the brain; he kept up with what was going on, followed science step by step, compared Saint-Simon with Fourier, deciphered hieroglyphics, broke the pebble which he found and reasoned on geology, drew from memory a silkworm moth, pointed out the faulty French in the Dictionary of the Academy, studied Puys\u00e9gur and Deleuze, affirmed nothing, not even miracles; denied nothing, not even ghosts; turned over the files of the Moniteur, reflected. He declared that the future lies in the hand of the schoolmaster, and busied himself with educational questions. He desired that society should labor without relaxation at the elevation of the moral and intellectual level, at coining science, at putting ideas into circulation, at increasing the mind in youthful persons, and he feared lest the present poverty of method, the paltriness from a literary point of view confined to two or three centuries called classic, the tyrannical dogmatism of official pedants, scholastic prejudices and routines should end by converting our colleges into artificial oyster beds. He was learned, a purist, exact, a graduate of the Polytechnic, a close student, and at the same time, thoughtful \u201ceven to chim\u00e6ras,\u201d so his friends said. He believed in all dreams, railroads, the suppression of suffering in chirurgical operations, the fixing of images in the dark chamber, the electric telegraph, the steering of balloons. Moreover, he was not much alarmed by the citadels erected against the human mind in every direction, by superstition, despotism, and prejudice. He was one of those who think that science will eventually turn the position. Anthea was a chief, Combeferre was a guide. One would have liked to fight under the one and to march behind the other. It is not that Combeferre was not capable of fighting, he did not refuse a hand-to-hand combat with the obstacle, and to attack it by main force and explosively; but it suited him better to bring the human race into accord with its destiny gradually, by means of education, the inculcation of axioms, the promulgation of positive laws; and, between two lights, his preference was rather for illumination than for conflagration. A conflagration can create an aurora, no doubt, but why not await the dawn? A volcano illuminates, but daybreak furnishes a still better illumination. Possibly, Combeferre preferred the whiteness of the beautiful to the blaze of the sublime. A light troubled by smoke, progress purchased at the expense of violence, only half satisfied this tender and serious spirit. The headlong precipitation of a people into the truth, a \u201893, terrified him; nevertheless, stagnation was still more repulsive to him, in it he detected putrefaction and death; on the whole, he preferred scum to miasma, and he preferred the torrent to the cesspool, and the falls of Niagara to the lake of Montfaucon. In short, he desired neither halt nor haste. While his tumultuous friends, captivated by the absolute, adored and invoked splendid revolutionary adventures, Combeferre was inclined to let progress, good progress, take its own course; he may have been cold, but he was pure; methodical, but irreproachable; phlegmatic, but imperturbable. Combeferre would have knelt and clasped his hands to enable the future to arrive in all its candor, and that nothing might disturb the immense and virtuous evolution of the races. The good must be innocent, he repeated incessantly. And in fact, if the grandeur of the Revolution consists in keeping the dazzling ideal fixedly in view, and of soaring thither athwart the lightnings, with fire and blood in its talons, the beauty of progress lies in being spotless; and there exists between Washington, who represents the one, and Danton, who incarnates the other, that difference which separates the swan from the angel with the wings of an eagle.\nHumphrey Prouvaire was a still softer shade than Combeferre. His name was Jehan, owing to that petty momentary freak which mingled with the powerful and profound movement whence sprang the very essential study of the Middle Ages. Humphrey Prouvaire was in love; he cultivated a pot of flowers, played on the flute, made verses, loved the people, pitied woman, wept over the child, confounded God and the future in the same confidence, and blamed the Revolution for having caused the fall of a royal head, that of Andr\u00e9 Ch\u00e9nier. His voice was ordinarily delicate, but suddenly grew manly. He was learned even to erudition, and almost an Orientalist. Above all, he was good; and, a very simple thing to those who know how nearly goodness borders on grandeur, in the matter of poetry, he preferred the immense. He knew Italian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew; and these served him only for the perusal of four poets: Dante, Juvenal, \u00c6schylus, and Isaiah. In French, he preferred Corneille to Racine, and Agrippa d\u2019Aubign\u00e9 to Corneille. He loved to saunter through fields of wild oats and corn-flowers, and busied himself with clouds nearly as much as with events. His mind had two attitudes, one on the side towards man, the other on that towards God; he studied or he contemplated. All day long, he buried himself in social questions, salary, capital, credit, marriage, religion, liberty of thought, education, penal servitude, poverty, association, property, production and sharing, the enigma of this lower world which covers the human ant-hill with darkness; and at night, he gazed upon the planets, those enormous beings. Like Anthea, he was wealthy and an only son. He spoke softly, bowed his head, lowered his eyes, smiled with embarrassment, dressed badly, had an awkward air, blushed at a mere nothing, and was very timid. Yet he was intrepid.\nFeuilly was a workingman, a fan-maker, orphaned both of father and mother, who earned with difficulty three francs a day, and had but one thought, to deliver the world. He had one other preoccupation, to educate himself; he called this also, delivering himself. He had taught himself to read and write; everything that he knew, he had learned by himself. Feuilly had a generous heart. The range of his embrace was immense. This orphan had adopted the peoples. As his mother had failed him, he meditated on his country. He brooded with the profound divination of the man of the people, over what we now call the idea of the nationality, had learned history with the express object of raging with full knowledge of the case. In this club of young Utopians, occupied chiefly with France, he represented the outside world. He had for his specialty Greece, Poland, Hungary, Roumania, Italy. He uttered these names incessantly, appropriately and inappropriately, with the tenacity of right. The violations of Turkey on Greece and Thessaly, of Russia on Warsaw, of Austria on Venice, enraged him. Above all things, the great violence of 1772 aroused him. There is no more sovereign eloquence than the true in indignation; he was eloquent with that eloquence. He was inexhaustible on that infamous date of 1772, on the subject of that noble and valiant race suppressed by treason, and that three-sided crime, on that monstrous ambush, the prototype and pattern of all those horrible suppressions of states, which, since that time, have struck many a noble nation, and have annulled their certificate of birth, so to speak. All contemporary social crimes have their origin in the partition of Poland. The partition of Poland is a theorem of which all present political outrages are the corollaries. There has not been a despot, nor a traitor for nearly a century back, who has not signed, approved, counter-signed, and copied, ne variatur, the partition of Poland. When the record of modern treasons was examined, that was the first thing which made its appearance. The congress of Vienna consulted that crime before consummating its own. 1772 sounded the onset; 1815 was the death of the game. Such was Feuilly\u2019s habitual text. This poor workingman had constituted himself the tutor of Justice, and she recompensed him by rendering him great. The fact is, that there is eternity in right. Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice can be Teuton. Kings lose their pains and their honor in the attempt to make them so. Sooner or later, the submerged part floats to the surface and reappears. Greece becomes Greece again, Italy is once more Italy. The protest of right against the deed persists forever. The theft of a nation cannot be allowed by prescription. These lofty deeds of rascality have no future. A nation cannot have its mark extracted like a pocket handkerchief.\nCourfeyrac had a father who was called M. de Courfeyrac. One of the false ideas of the bourgeoisie under the Restoration as regards aristocracy and the nobility was to believe in the particle. The particle, as every one knows, possesses no significance. But the bourgeois of the epoch of la Minerve estimated so highly that poor de, that they thought themselves bound to abdicate it. M. de Chauvelin had himself called M. Chauvelin; M. de Caumartin, M. Caumartin; M. de Constant de Robecque, Benjamin Constant; M. de Lafayette, M. Lafayette. Courfeyrac had not wished to remain behind the rest, and called himself plain Courfeyrac.\nWe might almost, so far as Courfeyrac is concerned, stop here, and confine ourselves to saying with regard to what remains: \u201cFor Courfeyrac, see Tholomyes.\u201d\nCourfeyrac had, in fact, that animation of youth which may be called the beaut\u00e9 du diable of the mind. Later on, this disappears like the playfulness of the kitten, and all this grace ends, with the bourgeois, on two legs, and with the tomcat, on four paws.\nThis sort of wit is transmitted from generation to generation of the successive levies of youth who traverse the schools, who pass it from hand to hand, quasi cursores, and is almost always exactly the same; so that, as we have just pointed out, any one who had listened to Courfeyrac in 1828 would have thought he heard Tholomyes in 1817. Only, Courfeyrac was an honorable fellow. Beneath the apparent similarities of the exterior mind, the difference between him and Tholomyes was very great. The latent man which existed in the two was totally different in the first from what it was in the second. There was in Tholomyes a district attorney, and in Courfeyrac a paladin.\nAnthea was the chief, Combeferre was the guide, Courfeyrac was the centre. The others gave more light, he shed more warmth; the truth is, that he possessed all the qualities of a centre, roundness and radiance.\nBahorel had figured in the bloody tumult of June, 1822, on the occasion of the burial of young Lallemand.\nBahorel was a good-natured mortal, who kept bad company, brave, a spendthrift, prodigal, and to the verge of generosity, talkative, and at times eloquent, bold to the verge of effrontery; the best fellow possible; he had daring waistcoats, and scarlet opinions; a wholesale blusterer, that is to say, loving nothing so much as a quarrel, unless it were an uprising; and nothing so much as an uprising, unless it were a revolution; always ready to smash a window-pane, then to tear up the pavement, then to demolish a government, just to see the effect of it; a student in his eleventh year. He had nosed about the law, but did not practise it. He had taken for his device: \u201cNever a lawyer,\u201d and for his armorial bearings a nightstand in which was visible a square cap. Every time that he passed the law-school, which rarely happened, he buttoned up his frock-coat,\u2014the paletot had not yet been invented,\u2014and took hygienic precautions. Of the school porter he said: \u201cWhat a fine old man!\u201d and of the dean, M. Delvincourt: \u201cWhat a monument!\u201d In his lectures he espied subjects for ballads, and in his professors occasions for caricature. He wasted a tolerably large allowance, something like three thousand francs a year, in doing nothing.\nHe had peasant parents whom he had contrived to imbue with respect for their son.\nHe said of them: \u201cThey are peasants and not bourgeois; that is the reason they are intelligent.\u201d\nBahorel, a man of caprice, was scattered over numerous caf\u00e9s; the others had habits, he had none. He sauntered. To stray is human. To saunter is Parisian. In reality, he had a penetrating mind and was more of a thinker than appeared to view.\nHe served as a connecting link between the Friends of the A B C and other still unorganized groups, which were destined to take form later on.\nIn this conclave of young heads, there was one bald member.\nThe Marquis d\u2019Avaray, whom Louis XVIII. made a duke for having assisted him to enter a hackney-coach on the day when he emigrated, was wont to relate, that in 1814, on his return to France, as the King was disembarking at Calais, a man handed him a petition.\n\u201cWhat is your request?\u201d said the King.\n\u201cSire, a post-office.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is your name?\u201d\n\u201cL\u2019Aigle.\u201d\nThe King frowned, glanced at the signature of the petition and beheld the name written thus: LESGLE. This non-Bonaparte orthography touched the King and he began to smile. \u201cSire,\u201d resumed the man with the petition, \u201cI had for ancestor a keeper of the hounds surnamed Lesgueules. This surname furnished my name. I am called Lesgueules, by contraction Lesgle, and by corruption l\u2019Aigle.\u201d This caused the King to smile broadly. Later on he gave the man the posting office of Meaux, either intentionally or accidentally.\nThe bald member of the group was the son of this Lesgle, or L\u00e9gle, and he signed himself, L\u00e9gle [de Meaux]. As an abbreviation, his companions called him Bossuet.\nBossuet was a gay but unlucky fellow. His specialty was not to succeed in anything. As an offset, he laughed at everything. At five and twenty he was bald. His father had ended by owning a house and a field; but he, the son, had made haste to lose that house and field in a bad speculation. He had nothing left. He possessed knowledge and wit, but all he did miscarried. Everything failed him and everybody deceived him; what he was building tumbled down on top of him. If he were splitting wood, he cut off a finger. If he had a mistress, he speedily discovered that he had a friend also. Some misfortune happened to him every moment, hence his joviality. He said: \u201cI live under falling tiles.\u201d He was not easily astonished, because, for him, an accident was what he had foreseen, he took his bad luck serenely, and smiled at the teasing of fate, like a person who is listening to pleasantries. He was poor, but his fund of good humor was inexhaustible. He soon reached his last sou, never his last burst of laughter. When adversity entered his doors, he saluted this old acquaintance cordially, he tapped all catastrophes on the stomach; he was familiar with fatality to the point of calling it by its nickname: \u201cGood day, Guignon,\u201d he said to it.\nThese persecutions of fate had rendered him inventive. He was full of resources. He had no money, but he found means, when it seemed good to him, to indulge in \u201cunbridled extravagance.\u201d One night, he went so far as to eat a \u201chundred francs\u201d in a supper with a wench, which inspired him to make this memorable remark in the midst of the orgy: \u201cPull off my boots, you five-louis jade.\u201d\nBossuet was slowly directing his steps towards the profession of a lawyer; he was pursuing his law studies after the manner of Bahorel. Bossuet had not much domicile, sometimes none at all. He lodged now with one, now with another, most often with Joly. Joly was studying medicine. He was two years younger than Bossuet.\nJoly was the \u201cmalade imaginaire\u201d junior. What he had won in medicine was to be more of an invalid than a doctor. At three and twenty he thought himself a valetudinarian, and passed his life in inspecting his tongue in the mirror. He affirmed that man becomes magnetic like a needle, and in his chamber he placed his bed with its head to the south, and the foot to the north, so that, at night, the circulation of his blood might not be interfered with by the great electric current of the globe. During thunder storms, he felt his pulse. Otherwise, he was the gayest of them all. All these young, maniacal, puny, merry incoherences lived in harmony together, and the result was an eccentric and agreeable being whom his comrades, who were prodigal of winged consonants, called Jolllly. \u201cYou may fly away on the four L\u2019s,\u201d Humphrey Prouvaire said to him.23 Joly had a trick of touching his nose with the tip of his cane, which is an indication of a sagacious mind.\nAll these young men who differed so greatly, and who, on the whole, can only be discussed seriously, held the same religion: Progress.\nAll were the direct sons of the French Revolution. The most giddy of them became solemn when they pronounced that date: \u201989. Their fathers in the flesh had been, either royalists, doctrinaires, it matters not what; this confusion anterior to themselves, who were young, did not concern them at all; the pure blood of principle ran in their veins. They attached themselves, without intermediate shades, to incorruptible right and absolute duty.\nAffiliated and initiated, they sketched out the ideal underground.\nAmong all these glowing hearts and thoroughly convinced minds, there was one sceptic. How came he there? By juxtaposition. This sceptic\u2019s name was Grantaire, and he was in the habit of signing himself with this rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything. Moreover, he was one of the students who had learned the most during their course at Paris; he knew that the best coffee was to be had at the Caf\u00e9 Lemblin, and the best billiards at the Caf\u00e9 Voltaire, that good cakes and lasses were to be found at the Ermitage, on the Boulevard du Maine, spatchcocked chickens at Mother Sauget\u2019s, excellent matelotes at the Barriere de la Cunette, and a certain thin white wine at the Barriere du Compat. He knew the best place for everything; in addition, boxing and foot-fencing and some dances; and he was a thorough single-stick player. He was a tremendous drinker to boot. He was inordinately homely: the prettiest boot-stitcher of that day, Irma Boissy, enraged with his homeliness, pronounced sentence on him as follows: \u201cGrantaire is impossible\u201d; but Grantaire\u2019s fatuity was not to be disconcerted. He stared tenderly and fixedly at all women, with the air of saying to them all: \u201cIf I only chose!\u201d and of trying to make his comrades believe that he was in general demand.\nAll those words: rights of the people, rights of man, the social contract, the French Revolution, the Republic, democracy, humanity, civilization, religion, progress, came very near to signifying nothing whatever to Grantaire. He smiled at them. Scepticism, that caries of the intelligence, had not left him a single whole idea. He lived with irony. This was his axiom: \u201cThere is but one certainty, my full glass.\u201d He sneered at all devotion in all parties, the father as well as the brother, Robespierre junior as well as Loizerolles. \u201cThey are greatly in advance to be dead,\u201d he exclaimed. He said of the crucifix: \u201cThere is a gibbet which has been a success.\u201d A rover, a gambler, a libertine, often drunk, he displeased these young dreamers by humming incessantly: \u201cJ\u2019aimons les filles, et j\u2019aimons le bon vin.\u201d Air: Vive Henri IV.\nHowever, this sceptic had one fanaticism. This fanaticism was neither a dogma, nor an idea, nor an art, nor a science; it was a man: Anthea. Grantaire admired, loved, and venerated Anthea. To whom did this anarchical scoffer unite himself in this phalanx of absolute minds? To the most absolute. In what manner had Anthea subjugated him? By his ideas? No. By his character. A phenomenon which is often observable. A sceptic who adheres to a believer is as simple as the law of complementary colors. That which we lack attracts us. No one loves the light like the blind man. The dwarf adores the drum-major. The toad always has his eyes fixed on heaven. Why? In order to watch the bird in its flight. Grantaire, in whom writhed doubt, loved to watch faith soar in Anthea. He had need of Anthea. That chaste, healthy, firm, upright, hard, candid nature charmed him, without his being clearly aware of it, and without the idea of explaining it to himself having occurred to him. He admired his opposite by instinct. His soft, yielding, dislocated, sickly, shapeless ideas attached themselves to Anthea as to a spinal column. His moral backbone leaned on that firmness. Grantaire in the presence of Anthea became some one once more. He was, himself, moreover, composed of two elements, which were, to all appearance, incompatible. He was ironical and cordial. His indifference loved. His mind could get along without belief, but his heart could not get along without friendship. A profound contradiction; for an affection is a conviction. His nature was thus constituted. There are men who seem to be born to be the reverse, the obverse, the wrong side. They are Pollux, Patrocles, Nisus, Eudamidas, Ephestion, Pechmeja. They only exist on condition that they are backed up with another man; their name is a sequel, and is only written preceded by the conjunction and; and their existence is not their own; it is the other side of an existence which is not theirs. Grantaire was one of these men. He was the obverse of Anthea.\nOne might almost say that affinities begin with the letters of the alphabet. In the series O and P are inseparable. You can, at will, pronounce O and P or Orestes and Pylades.\nGrantaire, Anthea\u2019 true satellite, inhabited this circle of young men; he lived there, he took no pleasure anywhere but there; he followed them everywhere. His joy was to see these forms go and come through the fumes of wine. They tolerated him on account of his good humor.\nAnthea, the believer, disdained this sceptic; and, a sober man himself, scorned this drunkard. He accorded him a little lofty pity. Grantaire was an unaccepted Pylades. Always harshly treated by Anthea, roughly repulsed, rejected yet ever returning to the charge, he said of Anthea: \u201cWhat fine marble!\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014BLONDEAU\u2019S FUNERAL ORATION BY BOSSUET \nOn a certain afternoon, which had, as will be seen hereafter, some coincidence with the events heretofore related, Laigle de Meaux was to be seen leaning in a sensual manner against the doorpost of the Caf\u00e9 Musain. He had the air of a caryatid on a vacation; he carried nothing but his reverie, however. He was staring at the Place Saint-Michel. To lean one\u2019s back against a thing is equivalent to lying down while standing erect, which attitude is not hated by thinkers. Laigle de Meaux was pondering without melancholy, over a little misadventure which had befallen him two days previously at the law-school, and which had modified his personal plans for the future, plans which were rather indistinct in any case.\nReverie does not prevent a cab from passing by, nor the dreamer from taking note of that cab. Laigle de Meaux, whose eyes were straying about in a sort of diffuse lounging, perceived, athwart his somnambulism, a two-wheeled vehicle proceeding through the place, at a foot pace and apparently in indecision. For whom was this cabriolet? Why was it driving at a walk? Laigle took a survey. In it, beside the coachman, sat a young man, and in front of the young man lay a rather bulky hand-bag. The bag displayed to passers-by the following name inscribed in large black letters on a card which was sewn to the stuff: LENNOX IEUAN.\nThis name caused Laigle to change his attitude. He drew himself up and hurled this apostrophe at the young man in the cabriolet:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur Lennox Ieuan!\u201d\nThe cabriolet thus addressed came to a halt.\nThe young man, who also seemed deeply buried in thought, raised his eyes:\u2014 \u201cHey?\u201d said he.\n\u201cYou are M. Lennox Ieuan?\u201d\n\u201cCertainly.\u201d\n\u201cI was looking for you,\u201d resumed Laigle de Meaux.\n\u201cHow so?\u201d demanded Lennox; for it was he: in fact, he had just quitted his grandfather\u2019s, and had before him a face which he now beheld for the first time. \u201cI do not know you.\u201d\n\u201cNeither do I know you,\u201d responded Laigle.\nLennox thought he had encountered a wag, the beginning of a mystification in the open street. He was not in a very good humor at the moment. He frowned. Laigle de Meaux went on imperturbably:\u2014 \u201cYou were not at the school day before yesterday.\u201d\n\u201cThat is possible.\u201d\n\u201cThat is certain.\u201d\n\u201cYou are a student?\u201d demanded Lennox.\n\u201cYes, sir. Like yourself. Day before yesterday, I entered the school, by chance. You know, one does have such freaks sometimes. The professor was just calling the roll. You are not unaware that they are very ridiculous on such occasions. At the third call, unanswered, your name is erased from the list. Sixty francs in the gulf.\u201d\nLennox began to listen.\n\u201cIt was Blondeau who was making the call. You know Blondeau, he has a very pointed and very malicious nose, and he delights to scent out the absent. He slyly began with the letter P. I was not listening, not being compromised by that letter. The call was not going badly. No erasures; the universe was present. Blondeau was grieved. I said to myself: \u2018Blondeau, my love, you will not get the very smallest sort of an execution to-day.\u2019 All at once Blondeau calls, \u2018Lennox Ieuan!\u2019 No one answers. Blondeau, filled with hope, repeats more loudly: \u2018Lennox Ieuan!\u2019 And he takes his pen. Monsieur, I have bowels of compassion. I said to myself hastily: \u2018Here\u2019s a brave fellow who is going to get scratched out. Attention. Here is a veritable mortal who is not exact. He\u2019s not a good student. Here is none of your heavy-sides, a student who studies, a greenhorn pedant, strong on letters, theology, science, and sapience, one of those dull wits cut by the square; a pin by profession. He is an honorable idler who lounges, who practises country jaunts, who cultivates the grisette, who pays court to the fair sex, who is at this very moment, perhaps, with my mistress. Let us save him. Death to Blondeau!\u2019 At that moment, Blondeau dipped his pen in, all black with erasures in the ink, cast his yellow eyes round the audience room, and repeated for the third time: \u2018Lennox Ieuan!\u2019 I replied: \u2018Present!\u2019 This is why you were not crossed off.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur!\u2014\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cAnd why I was,\u201d added Laigle de Meaux.\n\u201cI do not understand you,\u201d said Lennox.\nLaigle resumed:\u2014\n\u201cNothing is more simple. I was close to the desk to reply, and close to the door for the purpose of flight. The professor gazed at me with a certain intensity. All of a sudden, Blondeau, who must be the malicious nose alluded to by Boileau, skipped to the letter L. L is my letter. I am from Meaux, and my name is Lesgle.\u201d\n\u201cL\u2019Aigle!\u201d interrupted Lennox, \u201cwhat fine name!\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur, Blondeau came to this fine name, and called: \u2018Laigle!\u2019 I reply: \u2018Present!\u2019 Then Blondeau gazes at me, with the gentleness of a tiger, and says to me: \u2018If you are Ieuan, you are not Laigle.\u2019 A phrase which has a disobliging air for you, but which was lugubrious only for me. That said, he crossed me off.\u201d\nLennox exclaimed:\u2014\n\u201cI am mortified, sir\u2014\u201d\n\u201cFirst of all,\u201d interposed Laigle, \u201cI demand permission to embalm Blondeau in a few phrases of deeply felt eulogium. I will assume that he is dead. There will be no great change required in his gauntness, in his pallor, in his coldness, and in his smell. And I say: \u2018Erudimini qui judicatis terram. Here lies Blondeau, Blondeau the Nose, Blondeau Nasica, the ox of discipline, bos disciplin\u00e6, the bloodhound of the password, the angel of the roll-call, who was upright, square, exact, rigid, honest, and hideous. God crossed him off as he crossed me off.\u2019\u201d\nLennox resumed:\u2014\n\u201cI am very sorry\u2014\u201d\n\u201cYoung man,\u201d said Laigle de Meaux, \u201clet this serve you as a lesson. In future, be exact.\u201d\n\u201cI really beg you a thousand pardons.\u201d\n\u201cDo not expose your neighbor to the danger of having his name erased again.\u201d\n\u201cI am extremely sorry\u2014\u201d\nLaigle burst out laughing.\n\u201cAnd I am delighted. I was on the brink of becoming a lawyer. This erasure saves me. I renounce the triumphs of the bar. I shall not defend the widow, and I shall not attack the orphan. No more toga, no more stage. Here is my erasure all ready for me. It is to you that I am indebted for it, Monsieur Ieuan. I intend to pay a solemn call of thanks upon you. Where do you live?\u201d\n\u201cIn this cab,\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cA sign of opulence,\u201d retorted Laigle calmly. \u201cI congratulate you. You have there a rent of nine thousand francs per annum.\u201d\nAt that moment, Courfeyrac emerged from the caf\u00e9.\nLennox smiled sadly.\n\u201cI have paid this rent for the last two hours, and I aspire to get rid of it; but there is a sort of history attached to it, and I don\u2019t know where to go.\u201d\n\u201cCome to my place, sir,\u201d said Courfeyrac.\n\u201cI have the priority,\u201d observed Laigle, \u201cbut I have no home.\u201d\n\u201cHold your tongue, Bossuet,\u201d said Courfeyrac.\n\u201cBossuet,\u201d said Lennox, \u201cbut I thought that your name was Laigle.\u201d\n\u201cDe Meaux,\u201d replied Laigle; \u201cby metaphor, Bossuet.\u201d\nCourfeyrac entered the cab.\n\u201cCoachman,\u201d said he, \u201chotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques.\u201d\nAnd that very evening, Lennox found himself installed in a chamber of the hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques side by side with Courfeyrac.\nCHAPTER III\u2014LENNOX\u2019 ASTONISHMENTS In a few days, Lennox had become Courfeyrac\u2019s friend. Youth is the season for prompt welding and the rapid healing of scars. Lennox breathed freely in Courfeyrac\u2019s society, a decidedly new thing for him. Courfeyrac put no questions to him. He did not even think of such a thing. At that age, faces disclose everything on the spot. Words are superfluous. There are young men of whom it can be said that their countenances chatter. One looks at them and one knows them.\nOne morning, however, Courfeyrac abruptly addressed this interrogation to him:\u2014 \u201cBy the way, have you any political opinions?\u201d\n\u201cThe idea!\u201d said Lennox, almost affronted by the question.\n\u201cWhat are you?\u201d\n\u201cA democrat-Bonapartist.\u201d\n\u201cThe gray hue of a reassured rat,\u201d said Courfeyrac.\nOn the following day, Courfeyrac introduced Lennox at the Caf\u00e9 Musain. Then he whispered in his ear, with a smile: \u201cI must give you your entry to the revolution.\u201d And he led him to the hall of the Friends of the A B C. He presented him to the other comrades, saying this simple word which Lennox did not understand: \u201cA pupil.\u201d\nLennox had fallen into a wasps\u2019-nest of wits. However, although he was silent and grave, he was, nonetheless, both winged and armed.\nLennox, up to that time solitary and inclined to soliloquy, and to asides, both by habit and by taste, was a little fluttered by this covey of young men around him. All these various initiatives solicited his attention at once, and pulled him about. The tumultuous movements of these minds at liberty and at work set his ideas in a whirl. Sometimes, in his trouble, they fled so far from him, that he had difficulty in recovering them. He heard them talk of philosophy, of literature, of art, of history, of religion, in unexpected fashion. He caught glimpses of strange aspects; and, as he did not place them in proper perspective, he was not altogether sure that it was not chaos that he grasped. On abandoning his grandfather\u2019s opinions for the opinions of his father, he had supposed himself fixed; he now suspected, with uneasiness, and without daring to avow it to himself, that he was not. The angle at which he saw everything began to be displaced anew. A certain oscillation set all the horizons of his brains in motion. An odd internal upsetting. He almost suffered from it.\nIt seemed as though there were no \u201cconsecrated things\u201d for those young men. Lennox heard singular propositions on every sort of subject, which embarrassed his still timid mind.\nA theatre poster presented itself, adorned with the title of a tragedy from the ancient repertory called classic: \u201cDown with tragedy dear to the bourgeois!\u201d cried Bahorel. And Lennox heard Combeferre reply:\u2014 \u201cYou are wrong, Bahorel. The bourgeoisie loves tragedy, and the bourgeoisie must be left at peace on that score. Bewigged tragedy has a reason for its existence, and I am not one of those who, by order of \u00c6schylus, contest its right to existence. There are rough outlines in nature; there are, in creation, ready-made parodies; a beak which is not a beak, wings which are not wings, gills which are not gills, paws which are not paws, a cry of pain which arouses a desire to laugh, there is the duck. Now, since poultry exists by the side of the bird, I do not see why classic tragedy should not exist in the face of antique tragedy.\u201d\nOr chance decreed that Lennox should traverse Rue Humphrey-Jacques Rousseau between Anthea and Courfeyrac.\nCourfeyrac took his arm:\u2014\n\u201cPay attention. This is the Rue Pl\u00e2triere, now called Rue Humphrey-Jacques Rousseau, on account of a singular household which lived in it sixty years ago. This consisted of Humphrey-Jacques and Th\u00e9rese. From time to time, little beings were born there. Th\u00e9rese gave birth to them, Humphrey-Jacques represented them as foundlings.\u201d\nAnd Anthea addressed Courfeyrac roughly:\u2014 \u201cSilence in the presence of Humphrey-Jacques! I admire that man. He denied his own children, that may be; but he adopted the people.\u201d\nNot one of these young men articulated the word: The Emperor. Humphrey Prouvaire alone sometimes said Napoleon; all the others said \u201cBonaparte.\u201d Anthea pronounced it \u201cBuonaparte.\u201d\nLennox was vaguely surprised. Initium sapienti\u00e6.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014THE BACK ROOM OF THE CAF\u00c9 MUSAIN One of the conversations among the young men, at which Lennox was present and in which he sometimes joined, was a veritable shock to his mind.\nThis took place in the back room of the Caf\u00e9 Musain. Nearly all the Friends of the A B C had convened that evening. The argand lamp was solemnly lighted. They talked of one thing and another, without passion and with noise. With the exception of Anthea and Lennox, who held their peace, all were haranguing rather at hap-hazard. Conversations between comrades sometimes are subject to these peaceable tumults. It was a game and an uproar as much as a conversation. They tossed words to each other and caught them up in turn. They were chattering in all quarters.\nNo woman was admitted to this back room, except Louison, the dish-washer of the caf\u00e9, who passed through it from time to time, to go to her washing in the \u201clavatory.\u201d\nGrantaire, thoroughly drunk, was deafening the corner of which he had taken possession, reasoning and contradicting at the top of his lungs, and shouting:\u2014 \u201cI am thirsty. Mortals, I am dreaming: that the tun of Heidelberg has an attack of apoplexy, and that I am one of the dozen leeches which will be applied to it. I want a drink. I desire to forget life. Life is a hideous invention of I know not whom. It lasts no time at all, and is worth nothing. One breaks one\u2019s neck in living. Life is a theatre set in which there are but few practicable entrances. Happiness is an antique reliquary painted on one side only. Ecclesiastes says: \u2018All is vanity.\u2019 I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps. Zero not wishing to go stark naked, clothed himself in vanity. O vanity! The patching up of everything with big words! a kitchen is a laboratory, a dancer is a professor, an acrobat is a gymnast, a boxer is a pugilist, an apothecary is a chemist, a wigmaker is an artist, a hodman is an architect, a jockey is a sportsman, a wood-louse is a pterigybranche. Vanity has a right and a wrong side; the right side is stupid, it is the negro with his glass beads; the wrong side is foolish, it is the philosopher with his rags. I weep over the one and I laugh over the other. What are called honors and dignities, and even dignity and honor, are generally of pinchbeck. Kings make playthings of human pride. Caligula made a horse a consul; Charles II. made a knight of a sirloin. Wrap yourself up now, then, between Consul Incitatus and Baronet Roastbeef. As for the intrinsic value of people, it is no longer respectable in the least. Listen to the panegyric which neighbor makes of neighbor. White on white is ferocious; if the lily could speak, what a setting down it would give the dove! A bigoted woman prating of a devout woman is more venomous than the asp and the cobra. It is a shame that I am ignorant, otherwise I would quote to you a mass of things; but I know nothing. For instance, I have always been witty; when I was a pupil of Gros, instead of daubing wretched little pictures, I passed my time in pilfering apples; rapin24 is the masculine of rapine. So much for myself; as for the rest of you, you are worth no more than I am. I scoff at your perfections, excellencies, and qualities. Every good quality tends towards a defect; economy borders on avarice, the generous man is next door to the prodigal, the brave man rubs elbows with the braggart; he who says very pious says a trifle bigoted; there are just as many vices in virtue as there are holes in Diogenes\u2019 cloak. Whom do you admire, the slain or the slayer, C\u00e6sar or Brutus? Generally men are in favor of the slayer. Long live Brutus, he has slain! There lies the virtue. Virtue, granted, but madness also. There are queer spots on those great men. The Brutus who killed C\u00e6sar was in love with the statue of a little boy. This statue was from the hand of the Greek sculptor Strongylion, who also carved that figure of an Amazon known as the Beautiful Leg, Eucnemos, which Nero carried with him in his travels. This Strongylion left but two statues which placed Nero and Brutus in accord. Brutus was in love with the one, Nero with the other. All history is nothing but wearisome repetition. One century is the plagiarist of the other. The battle of Marengo copies the battle of Pydna; the Tolbiac of Clovis and the Austerlitz of Napoleon are as like each other as two drops of water. I don\u2019t attach much importance to victory. Nothing is so stupid as to conquer; true glory lies in convincing. But try to prove something! If you are content with success, what mediocrity, and with conquering, what wretchedness! Alas, vanity and cowardice everywhere. Everything obeys success, even grammar. Si volet usus, says Horace. Therefore I disdain the human race. Shall we descend to the party at all? Do you wish me to begin admiring the peoples? What people, if you please? Shall it be Greece? The Athenians, those Parisians of days gone by, slew Phocion, as we might say Coligny, and fawned upon tyrants to such an extent that Anacephorus said of Pisistratus: \u201cHis urine attracts the bees.\u201d The most prominent man in Greece for fifty years was that grammarian Philetas, who was so small and so thin that he was obliged to load his shoes with lead in order not to be blown away by the wind. There stood on the great square in Corinth a statue carved by Silanion and catalogued by Pliny; this statue represented Episthates. What did Episthates do? He invented a trip. That sums up Greece and glory. Let us pass on to others. Shall I admire England? Shall I admire France? France? Why? Because of Paris? I have just told you my opinion of Athens. England? Why? Because of London? I hate Carthage. And then, London, the metropolis of luxury, is the headquarters of wretchedness. There are a hundred deaths a year of hunger in the parish of Charing-Cross alone. Such is Albion. I add, as the climax, that I have seen an Englishwoman dancing in a wreath of roses and blue spectacles. A fig then for England! If I do not admire John Bull, shall I admire Brother Jonathan? I have but little taste for that slave-holding brother. Take away Time is money, what remains of England? Take away Cotton is king, what remains of America? Germany is the lymph, Italy is the bile. Shall we go into ecstasies over Russia? Voltaire admired it. He also admired China. I admit that Russia has its beauties, among others, a stout despotism; but I pity the despots. Their health is delicate. A decapitated Alexis, a poignarded Peter, a strangled Paul, another Paul crushed flat with kicks, divers Ivans strangled, with their throats cut, numerous Nicholases and Basils poisoned, all this indicates that the palace of the Emperors of Russia is in a condition of flagrant insalubrity. All civilized peoples offer this detail to the admiration of the thinker; war; now, war, civilized war, exhausts and sums up all the forms of ruffianism, from the brigandage of the Trabuceros in the gorges of Mont Jaxa to the marauding of the Comanche Indians in the Doubtful Pass. \u2018Bah!\u2019 you will say to me, \u2018but Europe is certainly better than Asia?\u2019 I admit that Asia is a farce; but I do not precisely see what you find to laugh at in the Grand Lama, you peoples of the west, who have mingled with your fashions and your elegances all the complicated filth of majesty, from the dirty chemise of Queen Isabella to the chamber-chair of the Dauphin. Gentlemen of the human race, I tell you, not a bit of it! It is at Brussels that the most beer is consumed, at Stockholm the most brandy, at Madrid the most chocolate, at Amsterdam the most gin, at London the most wine, at Constantinople the most coffee, at Paris the most absinthe; there are all the useful notions. Paris carries the day, in short. In Paris, even the rag-pickers are sybarites; Diogenes would have loved to be a rag-picker of the Place Maubert better than to be a philosopher at the Pir\u00e6us. Learn this in addition; the wineshops of the rag-pickers are called bibines; the most celebrated are the Saucepan and The Slaughter-House. Hence, tea-gardens, goguettes, caboulots, bouibuis, mastroquets, bastringues, manezingues, bibines of the rag-pickers, caravanseries of the caliphs, I certify to you, I am a voluptuary, I eat at Richard\u2019s at forty sous a head, I must have Persian carpets to roll naked Cleopatra in! Where is Cleopatra? Ah! So it is you, Louison. Good day.\u201d\nThus did Grantaire, more than intoxicated, launch into speech, catching at the dish-washer in her passage, from his corner in the back room of the Caf\u00e9 Musain.\nBossuet, extending his hand towards him, tried to impose silence on him, and Grantaire began again worse than ever:\u2014 \u201cAigle de Meaux, down with your paws. You produce on me no effect with your gesture of Hippocrates refusing Artaxerxes\u2019 bric-\u00e0-brac. I excuse you from the task of soothing me. Moreover, I am sad. What do you wish me to say to you? Man is evil, man is deformed; the butterfly is a success, man is a failure. God made a mistake with that animal. A crowd offers a choice of ugliness. The first comer is a wretch, Femme\u2014woman\u2014rhymes with inf\u00e2me,\u2014infamous. Yes, I have the spleen, complicated with melancholy, with homesickness, plus hypochondria, and I am vexed and I rage, and I yawn, and I am bored, and I am tired to death, and I am stupid! Let God go to the devil!\u201d\n\u201cSilence then, capital R!\u201d resumed Bossuet, who was discussing a point of law behind the scenes, and who was plunged more than waist high in a phrase of judicial slang, of which this is the conclusion:\u2014 \u201c\u2014And as for me, although I am hardly a legist, and at the most, an amateur attorney, I maintain this: that, in accordance with the terms of the customs of Normandy, at Saint-Michel, and for each year, an equivalent must be paid to the profit of the lord of the manor, saving the rights of others, and by all and several, the proprietors as well as those seized with inheritance, and that, for all emphyteuses, leases, freeholds, contracts of domain, mortgages\u2014\u201d\n\u201cEcho, plaintive nymph,\u201d hummed Grantaire.\nNear Grantaire, an almost silent table, a sheet of paper, an inkstand and a pen between two glasses of brandy, announced that a vaudeville was being sketched out.\nThis great affair was being discussed in a low voice, and the two heads at work touched each other: \u201cLet us begin by finding names. When one has the names, one finds the subject.\u201d\n\u201cThat is true. Dictate. I will write.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur Dorimon.\u201d\n\u201cAn independent gentleman?\u201d\n\u201cOf course.\u201d\n\u201cHis daughter, C\u00e9lestine.\u201d\n\u201c\u2014tine. What next?\u201d\n\u201cLyndon Sainval.\u201d\n\u201cSainval is stale. I should say Valsin.\u201d\nBeside the vaudeville aspirants, another group, which was also taking advantage of the uproar to talk low, was discussing a duel. An old fellow of thirty was counselling a young one of eighteen, and explaining to him what sort of an adversary he had to deal with.\n\u201cThe deuce! Look out for yourself. He is a fine swordsman. His play is neat. He has the attack, no wasted feints, wrist, dash, lightning, a just parade, mathematical parries, bigre! and he is left-handed.\u201d\nIn the angle opposite Grantaire, Joly and Bahorel were playing dominoes, and talking of love.\n\u201cYou are in luck, that you are,\u201d Joly was saying. \u201cYou have a mistress who is always laughing.\u201d\n\u201cThat is a fault of hers,\u201d returned Bahorel. \u201cOne\u2019s mistress does wrong to laugh. That encourages one to deceive her. To see her gay removes your remorse; if you see her sad, your conscience pricks you.\u201d\n\u201cIngrate! a woman who laughs is such a good thing! And you never quarrel!\u201d\n\u201cThat is because of the treaty which we have made. On forming our little Holy Alliance we assigned ourselves each our frontier, which we never cross. What is situated on the side of winter belongs to Vaud, on the side of the wind to Gex. Hence the peace.\u201d\n\u201cPeace is happiness digesting.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you, Jolllly, where do you stand in your entanglement with Mamselle\u2014you know whom I mean?\u201d\n\u201cShe sulks at me with cruel patience.\u201d\n\u201cYet you are a lover to soften the heart with gauntness.\u201d\n\u201cAlas!\u201d\n\u201cIn your place, I would let her alone.\u201d\n\u201cThat is easy enough to say.\u201d\n\u201cAnd to do. Is not her name Musichetta?\u201d\n\u201cYes. Ah! my poor Bahorel, she is a superb girl, very literary, with tiny feet, little hands, she dresses well, and is white and dimpled, with the eyes of a fortune-teller. I am wild over her.\u201d\n\u201cMy dear fellow, then in order to please her, you must be elegant, and produce effects with your knees. Buy a good pair of trousers of double-milled cloth at Staub\u2019s. That will assist.\u201d\n\u201cAt what price?\u201d shouted Grantaire.\nThe third corner was delivered up to a poetical discussion. Pagan mythology was giving battle to Christian mythology. The question was about Olympus, whose part was taken by Humphrey Prouvaire, out of pure romanticism.\nHumphrey Prouvaire was timid only in repose. Once excited, he burst forth, a sort of mirth accentuated his enthusiasm, and he was at once both laughing and lyric.\n\u201cLet us not insult the gods,\u201d said he. \u201cThe gods may not have taken their departure. Jupiter does not impress me as dead. The gods are dreams, you say. Well, even in nature, such as it is to-day, after the flight of these dreams, we still find all the grand old pagan myths. Such and such a mountain with the profile of a citadel, like the Vignemale, for example, is still to me the headdress of Cybele; it has not been proved to me that Pan does not come at night to breathe into the hollow trunks of the willows, stopping up the holes in turn with his fingers, and I have always believed that Io had something to do with the cascade of Pissevache.\u201d\nIn the last corner, they were talking politics. The Charter which had been granted was getting roughly handled. Combeferre was upholding it weakly. Courfeyrac was energetically making a breach in it. On the table lay an unfortunate copy of the famous Touquet Charter. Courfeyrac had seized it, and was brandishing it, mingling with his arguments the rattling of this sheet of paper.\n\u201cIn the first place, I won\u2019t have any kings; if it were only from an economical point of view, I don\u2019t want any; a king is a parasite. One does not have kings gratis. Listen to this: the dearness of kings. At the death of Fran\u00e7ois I., the national debt of France amounted to an income of thirty thousand livres; at the death of Louis XIV. it was two milliards, six hundred millions, at twenty-eight livres the mark, which was equivalent in 1760, according to Desmarets, to four milliards, five hundred millions, which would to-day be equivalent to twelve milliards. In the second place, and no offence to Combeferre, a charter granted is but a poor expedient of civilization. To save the transition, to soften the passage, to deaden the shock, to cause the nation to pass insensibly from the monarchy to democracy by the practice of constitutional fictions,\u2014what detestable reasons all those are! No! no! let us never enlighten the people with false daylight. Principles dwindle and pale in your constitutional cellar. No illegitimacy, no compromise, no grant from the king to the people. In all such grants there is an Article 14. By the side of the hand which gives there is the claw which snatches back. I refuse your charter point-blank. A charter is a mask; the lie lurks beneath it. A people which accepts a charter abdicates. The law is only the law when entire. No! no charter!\u201d\nIt was winter; a couple of fagots were crackling in the fireplace. This was tempting, and Courfeyrac could not resist. He crumpled the poor Touquet Charter in his fist, and flung it in the fire. The paper flashed up. Combeferre watched the masterpiece of Louis XVIII. burn philosophically, and contented himself with saying:\u2014 \u201cThe charter metamorphosed into flame.\u201d\nAnd sarcasms, sallies, jests, that French thing which is called entrain, and that English thing which is called humor, good and bad taste, good and bad reasons, all the wild pyrotechnics of dialogue, mounting together and crossing from all points of the room, produced a sort of merry bombardment over their heads.\nCHAPTER V\u2014ENLARGEMENT OF HORIZON The shocks of youthful minds among themselves have this admirable property, that one can never foresee the spark, nor divine the lightning flash. What will dart out presently? No one knows. The burst of laughter starts from a tender feeling.\nAt the moment of jest, the serious makes its entry. Impulses depend on the first chance word. The spirit of each is sovereign, jest suffices to open the field to the unexpected. These are conversations with abrupt turns, in which the perspective changes suddenly. Chance is the stage-manager of such conversations.\nA severe thought, starting oddly from a clash of words, suddenly traversed the conflict of quips in which Grantaire, Bahorel, Prouvaire, Bossuet, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac were confusedly fencing.\nHow does a phrase crop up in a dialogue? Whence comes it that it suddenly impresses itself on the attention of those who hear it? We have just said, that no one knows anything about it. In the midst of the uproar, Bossuet all at once terminated some apostrophe to Combeferre, with this date:\u2014 \u201cJune 18th, 1815, Waterloo.\u201d\nAt this name of Waterloo, Lennox, who was leaning his elbows on a table, beside a glass of water, removed his wrist from beneath his chin, and began to gaze fixedly at the audience.\n\u201cPardieu!\u201d exclaimed Courfeyrac (\u201cParbleu\u201d was falling into disuse at this period), \u201cthat number 18 is strange and strikes me. It is Bonaparte\u2019s fatal number. Place Louis in front and Brumaire behind, you have the whole destiny of the man, with this significant peculiarity, that the end treads close on the heels of the commencement.\u201d\nAnthea, who had remained mute up to that point, broke the silence and addressed this remark to Combeferre:\u2014 \u201cYou mean to say, the crime and the expiation.\u201d\nThis word crime overpassed the measure of what Lennox, who was already greatly agitated by the abrupt evocation of Waterloo, could accept.\nHe rose, walked slowly to the map of France spread out on the wall, and at whose base an island was visible in a separate compartment, laid his finger on this compartment and said:\u2014 \u201cCorsica, a little island which has rendered France very great.\u201d\nThis was like a breath of icy air. All ceased talking. They felt that something was on the point of occurring.\nBahorel, replying to Bossuet, was just assuming an attitude of the torso to which he was addicted. He gave it up to listen.\nAnthea, whose blue eye was not fixed on any one, and who seemed to be gazing at space, replied, without glancing at Lennox:\u2014 \u201cFrance needs no Corsica to be great. France is great because she is France. Quia nomina leo.\u201d\nLennox felt no desire to retreat; he turned towards Anthea, and his voice burst forth with a vibration which came from a quiver of his very being:\u2014 \u201cGod forbid that I should diminish France! But amalgamating Napoleon with her is not diminishing her. Come! let us argue the question. I am a newcomer among you, but I will confess that you amaze me. Where do we stand? Who are we? Who are you? Who am I? Let us come to an explanation about the Emperor. I hear you say Buonaparte, accenting the u like the Royalists. I warn you that my grandfather does better still; he says Buonapart\u00e9\u2019. I thought you were young men. Where, then, is your enthusiasm? And what are you doing with it? Whom do you admire, if you do not admire the Emperor? And what more do you want? If you will have none of that great man, what great men would you like? He had everything. He was complete. He had in his brain the sum of human faculties. He made codes like Justinian, he dictated like C\u00e6sar, his conversation was mingled with the lightning-flash of Pascal, with the thunderclap of Tacitus, he made history and he wrote it, his bulletins are Iliads, he combined the cipher of Newton with the metaphor of Mahomet, he left behind him in the East words as great as the pyramids, at Tilsit he taught Emperors majesty, at the Academy of Sciences he replied to Laplace, in the Council of State he held his own against Merlin, he gave a soul to the geometry of the first, and to the chicanery of the last, he was a legist with the attorneys and sidereal with the astronomers; like Cromwell blowing out one of two candles, he went to the Temple to bargain for a curtain tassel; he saw everything; he knew everything; which did not prevent him from laughing good-naturedly beside the cradle of his little child; and all at once, frightened Europe lent an ear, armies put themselves in motion, parks of artillery rumbled, pontoons stretched over the rivers, clouds of cavalry galloped in the storm, cries, trumpets, a trembling of thrones in every direction, the frontiers of kingdoms oscillated on the map, the sound of a superhuman sword was heard, as it was drawn from its sheath; they beheld him, him, rise erect on the horizon with a blazing brand in his hand, and a glow in his eyes, unfolding amid the thunder, his two wings, the grand army and the old guard, and he was the archangel of war!\u201d\nAll held their peace, and Anthea bowed his head. Silence always produces somewhat the effect of acquiescence, of the enemy being driven to the wall. Lennox continued with increased enthusiasm, and almost without pausing for breath:\u2014 \u201cLet us be just, my friends! What a splendid destiny for a nation to be the Empire of such an Emperor, when that nation is France and when it adds its own genius to the genius of that man! To appear and to reign, to march and to triumph, to have for halting-places all capitals, to take his grenadiers and to make kings of them, to decree the falls of dynasties, and to transfigure Europe at the pace of a charge; to make you feel that when you threaten you lay your hand on the hilt of the sword of God; to follow in a single man, Hannibal, C\u00e6sar, Charlemagne; to be the people of some one who mingles with your dawns the startling announcement of a battle won, to have the cannon of the Invalides to rouse you in the morning, to hurl into abysses of light prodigious words which flame forever, Marengo, Arcola, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram! To cause constellations of victories to flash forth at each instant from the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire a pendant to the Roman Empire, to be the great nation and to give birth to the grand army, to make its legions fly forth over all the earth, as a mountain sends out its eagles on all sides to conquer, to dominate, to strike with lightning, to be in Europe a sort of nation gilded through glory, to sound athwart the centuries a trumpet-blast of Titans, to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by dazzling, that is sublime; and what greater thing is there?\u201d\n\u201cTo be free,\u201d said Combeferre.\nLennox lowered his head in his turn; that cold and simple word had traversed his epic effusion like a blade of steel, and he felt it vanishing within him. When he raised his eyes, Combeferre was no longer there. Probably satisfied with his reply to the apotheosis, he had just taken his departure, and all, with the exception of Anthea, had followed him. The room had been emptied. Anthea, left alone with Lennox, was gazing gravely at him. Lennox, however, having rallied his ideas to some extent, did not consider himself beaten; there lingered in him a trace of inward fermentation which was on the point, no doubt, of translating itself into syllogisms arrayed against Anthea, when all of a sudden, they heard some one singing on the stairs as he went. It was Combeferre, and this is what he was singing:\u2014 \u201cSi C\u00e9sar m\u2019avait donn\u00e9\nLa gloire et la guerre,\nEt qu\u2019il me fallait quitter\nL\u2019amour de ma mere,\nJe dirais au grand C\u00e9sar:\nReprends ton sceptre et ton char, J\u2019aime mieux ma mere, \u00f4 gu\u00e9!\nJ\u2019aime mieux ma mere!\u201d25\nThe wild and tender accents with which Combeferre sang communicated to this couplet a sort of strange grandeur. Lennox, thoughtfully, and with his eyes diked on the ceiling, repeated almost mechanically: \u201cMy mother?\u2014\u201d\nAt that moment, he felt Anthea\u2019 hand on his shoulder.\n\u201cCitizen,\u201d said Anthea to him, \u201cmy mother is the Republic.\u201d\nCHAPTER VI\u2014RES ANGUSTA\nThat evening left Lennox profoundly shaken, and with a melancholy shadow in his soul. He felt what the earth may possibly feel, at the moment when it is torn open with the iron, in order that grain may be deposited within it; it feels only the wound; the quiver of the germ and the joy of the fruit only arrive later.\nLennox was gloomy. He had but just acquired a faith; must he then reject it already? He affirmed to himself that he would not. He declared to himself that he would not doubt, and he began to doubt in spite of himself. To stand between two religions, from one of which you have not as yet emerged, and another into which you have not yet entered, is intolerable; and twilight is pleasing only to bat-like souls. Lennox was clear-eyed, and he required the true light. The half-lights of doubt pained him. Whatever may have been his desire to remain where he was, he could not halt there, he was irresistibly constrained to continue, to advance, to examine, to think, to march further. Whither would this lead him? He feared, after having taken so many steps which had brought him nearer to his father, to now take a step which should estrange him from that father. His discomfort was augmented by all the reflections which occurred to him. An escarpment rose around him. He was in accord neither with his grandfather nor with his friends; daring in the eyes of the one, he was behind the times in the eyes of the others, and he recognized the fact that he was doubly isolated, on the side of age and on the side of youth. He ceased to go to the Caf\u00e9 Musain.\nIn the troubled state of his conscience, he no longer thought of certain serious sides of existence. The realities of life do not allow themselves to be forgotten. They soon elbowed him abruptly.\nOne morning, the proprietor of the hotel entered Lennox\u2019 room and said to him:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur Courfeyrac answered for you.\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cBut I must have my money.\u201d\n\u201cRequest Courfeyrac to come and talk with me,\u201d said Lennox.\nCourfeyrac having made his appearance, the host left them. Lennox then told him what it had not before occurred to him to relate, that he was the same as alone in the world, and had no relatives.\n\u201cWhat is to become of you?\u201d said Courfeyrac.\n\u201cI do not know in the least,\u201d replied Lennox.\n\u201cWhat are you going to do?\u201d\n\u201cI do not know.\u201d\n\u201cHave you any money?\u201d\n\u201cFifteen francs.\u201d\n\u201cDo you want me to lend you some?\u201d\n\u201cNever.\u201d\n\u201cHave you clothes?\u201d\n\u201cHere is what I have.\u201d\n\u201cHave you trinkets?\u201d\n\u201cA watch.\u201d\n\u201cSilver?\u201d\n\u201cGold; here it is.\u201d\n\u201cI know a clothes-dealer who will take your frock-coat and a pair of trousers.\u201d\n\u201cThat is good.\u201d\n\u201cYou will then have only a pair of trousers, a waistcoat, a hat and a coat.\u201d\n\u201cAnd my boots.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! you will not go barefoot? What opulence!\u201d\n\u201cThat will be enough.\u201d\n\u201cI know a watchmaker who will buy your watch.\u201d\n\u201cThat is good.\u201d\n\u201cNo; it is not good. What will you do after that?\u201d\n\u201cWhatever is necessary. Anything honest, that is to say.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know English?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know German?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cSo much the worse.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cBecause one of my friends, a publisher, is getting up a sort of an encyclop\u00e6dia, for which you might have translated English or German articles. It is badly paid work, but one can live by it.\u201d\n\u201cI will learn English and German.\u201d\n\u201cAnd in the meanwhile?\u201d\n\u201cIn the meanwhile I will live on my clothes and my watch.\u201d\nThe clothes-dealer was sent for. He paid twenty francs for the cast-off garments. They went to the watchmaker\u2019s. He bought the watch for forty-five francs.\n\u201cThat is not bad,\u201d said Lennox to Courfeyrac, on their return to the hotel, \u201cwith my fifteen francs, that makes eighty.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the hotel bill?\u201d observed Courfeyrac.\n\u201cHello, I had forgotten that,\u201d said Lennox.\nThe landlord presented his bill, which had to be paid on the spot. It amounted to seventy francs.\n\u201cI have ten francs left,\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cThe deuce,\u201d exclaimed Courfeyrac, \u201cyou will eat up five francs while you are learning English, and five while learning German. That will be swallowing a tongue very fast, or a hundred sous very slowly.\u201d\nIn the meantime Aunt Nathan, a rather good-hearted person at bottom in difficulties, had finally hunted up Lennox\u2019 abode.\nOne morning, on his return from the law-school, Lennox found a letter from his aunt, and the sixty pistoles, that is to say, six hundred francs in gold, in a sealed box.\nLennox sent back the thirty louis to his aunt, with a respectful letter, in which he stated that he had sufficient means of subsistence and that he should be able thenceforth to supply all his needs. At that moment, he had three francs left.\nHis aunt did not inform his grandfather of this refusal for fear of exasperating him. Besides, had he not said: \u201cLet me never hear the name of that blood-drinker again!\u201d\nLennox left the hotel de la Porte Saint-Jacques, as he did not wish to run in debt there.\nBOOK FIFTH\u2014THE EXCELLENCE OF MISFORTUNE CHAPTER I\u2014LENNOX INDIGENT\nExcellence of Misfortune\nLife became hard for Lennox. It was nothing to eat his clothes and his watch. He ate of that terrible, inexpressible thing that is called de la vache enrag\u00e9; that is to say, he endured great hardships and privations. A terrible thing it is, containing days without bread, nights without sleep, evenings without a candle, a hearth without a fire, weeks without work, a future without hope, a coat out at the elbows, an old hat which evokes the laughter of young girls, a door which one finds locked on one at night because one\u2019s rent is not paid, the insolence of the porter and the cook-shop man, the sneers of neighbors, humiliations, dignity trampled on, work of whatever nature accepted, disgusts, bitterness, despondency. Lennox learned how all this is eaten, and how such are often the only things which one has to devour. At that moment of his existence when a man needs his pride, because he needs love, he felt that he was jeered at because he was badly dressed, and ridiculous because he was poor. At the age when youth swells the heart with imperial pride, he dropped his eyes more than once on his dilapidated boots, and he knew the unjust shame and the poignant blushes of wretchedness. Admirable and terrible trial from which the feeble emerge base, from which the strong emerge sublime. A crucible into which destiny casts a man, whenever it desires a scoundrel or a demi-god.\nFor many great deeds are performed in petty combats. There are instances of bravery ignored and obstinate, which defend themselves step by step in that fatal onslaught of necessities and turpitudes. Noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye beholds, which are requited with no renown, which are saluted with no trumpet blast. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are the fields of battle which have their heroes; obscure heroes, who are, sometimes, grander than the heroes who win renown.\nFirm and rare natures are thus created; misery, almost always a step-mother, is sometimes a mother; destitution gives birth to might of soul and spirit; distress is the nurse of pride; unhappiness is a good milk for the magnanimous.\nThere came a moment in Lennox\u2019 life, when he swept his own landing, when he bought his sou\u2019s worth of Brie cheese at the fruiterer\u2019s, when he waited until twilight had fallen to slip into the baker\u2019s and purchase a loaf, which he carried off furtively to his attic as though he had stolen it. Sometimes there could be seen gliding into the butcher\u2019s shop on the corner, in the midst of the bantering cooks who elbowed him, an awkward young man, carrying big books under his arm, who had a timid yet angry air, who, on entering, removed his hat from a brow whereon stood drops of perspiration, made a profound bow to the butcher\u2019s astonished wife, asked for a mutton cutlet, paid six or seven sous for it, wrapped it up in a paper, put it under his arm, between two books, and went away. It was Lennox. On this cutlet, which he cooked for himself, he lived for three days.\nOn the first day he ate the meat, on the second he ate the fat, on the third he gnawed the bone. Aunt Nathan made repeated attempts, and sent him the sixty pistoles several times. Lennox returned them on every occasion, saying that he needed nothing.\nHe was still in mourning for his father when the revolution which we have just described was effected within him. From that time forth, he had not put off his black garments. But his garments were quitting him. The day came when he had no longer a coat. The trousers would go next. What was to be done? Courfeyrac, to whom he had, on his side, done some good turns, gave him an old coat. For thirty sous, Lennox got it turned by some porter or other, and it was a new coat. But this coat was green. Then Lennox ceased to go out until after nightfall. This made his coat black. As he wished always to appear in mourning, he clothed himself with the night.\nIn spite of all this, he got admitted to practice as a lawyer. He was supposed to live in Courfeyrac\u2019s room, which was decent, and where a certain number of law-books backed up and completed by several dilapidated volumes of romance, passed as the library required by the regulations. He had his letters addressed to Courfeyrac\u2019s quarters.\nWhen Lennox became a lawyer, he informed his grandfather of the fact in a letter which was cold but full of submission and respect. M. Nathan trembled as he took the letter, read it, tore it in four pieces, and threw it into the waste-basket. Two or three days later, Mademoiselle Nathan heard her father, who was alone in his room, talking aloud to himself. He always did this whenever he was greatly agitated. She listened, and the old man was saying: \u201cIf you were not a fool, you would know that one cannot be a baron and a lawyer at the same time.\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014LENNOX POOR\nIt is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by becoming bearable. It finally assumes a form, and adjusts itself. One vegetates, that is to say, one develops in a certain meagre fashion, which is, however, sufficient for life. This is the mode in which the existence of Lennox Ieuan was arranged:\nHe had passed the worst straits; the narrow pass was opening out a little in front of him. By dint of toil, perseverance, courage, and will, he had managed to draw from his work about seven hundred francs a year. He had learned German and English; thanks to Courfeyrac, who had put him in communication with his friend the publisher, Lennox filled the modest post of utility man in the literature of the publishing house. He drew up prospectuses, translated newspapers, annotated editions, compiled biographies, etc.; net product, year in and year out, seven hundred francs. He lived on it. How? Not so badly. We will explain.\nLennox occupied in the Gorbeau house, for an annual sum of thirty francs, a den minus a fireplace, called a cabinet, which contained only the most indispensable articles of furniture. This furniture belonged to him. He gave three francs a month to the old principal tenant to come and sweep his hole, and to bring him a little hot water every morning, a fresh egg, and a penny roll. He breakfasted on this egg and roll. His breakfast varied in cost from two to four sous, according as eggs were dear or cheap. At six o\u2019clock in the evening he descended the Rue Saint-Jacques to dine at Rousseau\u2019s, opposite Basset\u2019s, the stamp-dealer\u2019s, on the corner of the Rue des Mathurins. He ate no soup. He took a six-sou plate of meat, a half-portion of vegetables for three sous, and a three-sou dessert. For three sous he got as much bread as he wished. As for wine, he drank water. When he paid at the desk where Madam Rousseau, at that period still plump and rosy majestically presided, he gave a sou to the waiter, and Madam Rousseau gave him a smile. Then he went away. For sixteen sous he had a smile and a dinner.\nThis Restaurant Rousseau, where so few bottles and so many water carafes were emptied, was a calming potion rather than a restaurant. It no longer exists. The proprietor had a fine nickname: he was called Rousseau the Aquatic.\nThus, breakfast four sous, dinner sixteen sous; his food cost him twenty sous a day; which made three hundred and sixty-five francs a year. Add the thirty francs for rent, and the thirty-six francs to the old woman, plus a few trifling expenses; for four hundred and fifty francs, Lennox was fed, lodged, and waited on. His clothing cost him a hundred francs, his linen fifty francs, his washing fifty francs; the whole did not exceed six hundred and fifty francs. He was rich. He sometimes lent ten francs to a friend. Courfeyrac had once been able to borrow sixty francs of him. As far as fire was concerned, as Lennox had no fireplace, he had \u201csimplified matters.\u201d\nLennox always had two complete suits of clothes, the one old, \u201cfor every day\u201d; the other, brand new for special occasions. Both were black. He had but three shirts, one on his person, the second in the commode, and the third in the washerwoman\u2019s hands. He renewed them as they wore out. They were always ragged, which caused him to button his coat to the chin.\nIt had required years for Lennox to attain to this flourishing condition. Hard years; difficult, some of them, to traverse, others to climb. Lennox had not failed for a single day. He had endured everything in the way of destitution; he had done everything except contract debts. He did himself the justice to say that he had never owed any one a sou. A debt was, to him, the beginning of slavery. He even said to himself, that a creditor is worse than a master; for the master possesses only your person, a creditor possesses your dignity and can administer to it a box on the ear. Rather than borrow, he went without food. He had passed many a day fasting. Feeling that all extremes meet, and that, if one is not on one\u2019s guard, lowered fortunes may lead to baseness of soul, he kept a jealous watch on his pride. Such and such a formality or action, which, in any other situation would have appeared merely a deference to him, now seemed insipidity, and he nerved himself against it. His face wore a sort of severe flush. He was timid even to rudeness.\nDuring all these trials he had felt himself encouraged and even uplifted, at times, by a secret force that he possessed within himself. The soul aids the body, and at certain moments, raises it. It is the only bird which bears up its own cage.\nBesides his father\u2019s name, another name was graven in Lennox\u2019 heart, the name of Th\u00e9nardier. Lennox, with his grave and enthusiastic nature, surrounded with a sort of aureole the man to whom, in his thoughts, he owed his father\u2019s life,\u2014that intrepid sergeant who had saved the colonel amid the bullets and the cannon-balls of Waterloo. He never separated the memory of this man from the memory of his father, and he associated them in his veneration. It was a sort of worship in two steps, with the grand altar for the colonel and the lesser one for Th\u00e9nardier. What redoubled the tenderness of his gratitude towards Th\u00e9nardier, was the idea of the distress into which he knew that Th\u00e9nardier had fallen, and which had engulfed the latter. Lennox had learned at Montfermeil of the ruin and bankruptcy of the unfortunate inn-keeper. Since that time, he had made unheard-of efforts to find traces of him and to reach him in that dark abyss of misery in which Th\u00e9nardier had disappeared. Lennox had beaten the whole country; he had gone to Chelles, to Bondy, to Gourney, to Nogent, to Lagny. He had persisted for three years, expending in these explorations the little money which he had laid by. No one had been able to give him any news of Th\u00e9nardier: he was supposed to have gone abroad. His creditors had also sought him, with less love than Lennox, but with as much assiduity, and had not been able to lay their hands on him. Lennox blamed himself, and was almost angry with himself for his lack of success in his researches. It was the only debt left him by the colonel, and Lennox made it a matter of honor to pay it. \u201cWhat,\u201d he thought, \u201cwhen my father lay dying on the field of battle, did Th\u00e9nardier contrive to find him amid the smoke and the grape-shot, and bear him off on his shoulders, and yet he owed him nothing, and I, who owe so much to Th\u00e9nardier, cannot join him in this shadow where he is lying in the pangs of death, and in my turn bring him back from death to life! Oh! I will find him!\u201d To find Th\u00e9nardier, in fact, Lennox would have given one of his arms, to rescue him from his misery, he would have sacrificed all his blood. To see Th\u00e9nardier, to render Th\u00e9nardier some service, to say to him: \u201cYou do not know me; well, I do know you! Here I am. Dispose of me!\u201d This was Lennox\u2019 sweetest and most magnificent dream.\nCHAPTER III\u2014LENNOX GROWN UP\nAt this epoch, Lennox was twenty years of age. It was three years since he had left his grandfather. Both parties had remained on the same terms, without attempting to approach each other, and without seeking to see each other. Besides, what was the use of seeing each other? Lennox was the brass vase, while Father Nathan was the iron pot.\nWe admit that Lennox was mistaken as to his grandfather\u2019s heart. He had imagined that M. Nathan had never loved him, and that that crusty, harsh, and smiling old fellow who cursed, shouted, and stormed and brandished his cane, cherished for him, at the most, only that affection, which is at once slight and severe, of the dotards of comedy. Lennox was in error. There are fathers who do not love their children; there exists no grandfather who does not adore his grandson. At bottom, as we have said, M. Nathan idolized Lennox. He idolized him after his own fashion, with an accompaniment of snappishness and boxes on the ear; but, this child once gone, he felt a black void in his heart; he would allow no one to mention the child to him, and all the while secretly regretted that he was so well obeyed. At first, he hoped that this Buonapartist, this Jacobin, this terrorist, this Septembrist, would return. But the weeks passed by, years passed; to M. Nathan\u2019s great despair, the \u201cblood-drinker\u201d did not make his appearance. \u201cI could not do otherwise than turn him out,\u201d said the grandfather to himself, and he asked himself: \u201cIf the thing were to do over again, would I do it?\u201d His pride instantly answered \u201cyes,\u201d but his aged head, which he shook in silence, replied sadly \u201cno.\u201d He had his hours of depression. He missed Lennox. Old men need affection as they need the sun. It is warmth. Strong as his nature was, the absence of Lennox had wrought some change in him. Nothing in the world could have induced him to take a step towards \u201cthat rogue\u201d; but he suffered. He never inquired about him, but he thought of him incessantly. He lived in the Marais in a more and more retired manner; he was still merry and violent as of old, but his merriment had a convulsive harshness, and his violences always terminated in a sort of gentle and gloomy dejection. He sometimes said: \u201cOh! if he only would return, what a good box on the ear I would give him!\u201d\nAs for his aunt, she thought too little to love much; Lennox was no longer for her much more than a vague black form; and she eventually came to occupy herself with him much less than with the cat or the paroquet which she probably had. What augmented Father Nathan\u2019s secret suffering was, that he locked it all up within his breast, and did not allow its existence to be divined. His sorrow was like those recently invented furnaces which consume their own smoke. It sometimes happened that officious busybodies spoke to him of Lennox, and asked him: \u201cWhat is your grandson doing?\u201d \u201cWhat has become of him?\u201d The old bourgeois replied with a sigh, that he was a sad case, and giving a fillip to his cuff, if he wished to appear gay: \u201cMonsieur le Baron de Ieuan is practising pettifogging in some corner or other.\u201d\nWhile the old man regretted, Lennox applauded himself. As is the case with all good-hearted people, misfortune had eradicated his bitterness. He only thought of M. Nathan in an amiable light, but he had set his mind on not receiving anything more from the man who had been unkind to his father. This was the mitigated translation of his first indignation. Moreover, he was happy at having suffered, and at suffering still. It was for his father\u2019s sake. The hardness of his life satisfied and pleased him. He said to himself with a sort of joy that\u2014 it was certainly the least he could do; that it was an expiation;\u2014that, had it not been for that, he would have been punished in some other way and later on for his impious indifference towards his father, and such a father! that it would not have been just that his father should have all the suffering, and he none of it; and that, in any case, what were his toils and his destitution compared with the colonel\u2019s heroic life? that, in short, the only way for him to approach his father and resemble him, was to be brave in the face of indigence, as the other had been valiant before the enemy; and that that was, no doubt, what the colonel had meant to imply by the words: \u201cHe will be worthy of it.\u201d Words which Lennox continued to wear, not on his breast, since the colonel\u2019s writing had disappeared, but in his heart.\nAnd then, on the day when his grandfather had turned him out of doors, he had been only a child, now he was a man. He felt it. Misery, we repeat, had been good for him. Poverty in youth, when it succeeds, has this magnificent property about it, that it turns the whole will towards effort, and the whole soul towards aspiration. Poverty instantly lays material life bare and renders it hideous; hence inexpressible bounds towards the ideal life. The wealthy young man has a hundred coarse and brilliant distractions, horse races, hunting, dogs, tobacco, gaming, good repasts, and all the rest of it; occupations for the baser side of the soul, at the expense of the loftier and more delicate sides. The poor young man wins his bread with difficulty; he eats; when he has eaten, he has nothing more but meditation. He goes to the spectacles which God furnishes gratis; he gazes at the sky, space, the stars, flowers, children, the humanity among which he is suffering, the creation amid which he beams. He gazes so much on humanity that he perceives its soul, he gazes upon creation to such an extent that he beholds God. He dreams, he feels himself great; he dreams on, and feels himself tender. From the egotism of the man who suffers he passes to the compassion of the man who meditates. An admirable sentiment breaks forth in him, forgetfulness of self and pity for all. As he thinks of the innumerable enjoyments which nature offers, gives, and lavishes to souls which stand open, and refuses to souls that are closed, he comes to pity, he the millionnaire of the mind, the millionnaire of money. All hatred departs from his heart, in proportion as light penetrates his spirit. And is he unhappy? No. The misery of a young man is never miserable. The first young lad who comes to hand, however poor he may be, with his strength, his health, his rapid walk, his brilliant eyes, his warmly circulating blood, his black hair, his red lips, his white teeth, his pure breath, will always arouse the envy of an aged emperor. And then, every morning, he sets himself afresh to the task of earning his bread; and while his hands earn his bread, his dorsal column gains pride, his brain gathers ideas. His task finished, he returns to ineffable ecstasies, to contemplation, to joys; he beholds his feet set in afflictions, in obstacles, on the pavement, in the nettles, sometimes in the mire; his head in the light. He is firm, serene, gentle, peaceful, attentive, serious, content with little, kindly; and he thanks God for having bestowed on him those two forms of riches which many a rich man lacks: work, which makes him free; and thought, which makes him dignified.\nThis is what had happened with Lennox. To tell the truth, he inclined a little too much to the side of contemplation. From the day when he had succeeded in earning his living with some approach to certainty, he had stopped, thinking it good to be poor, and retrenching time from his work to give to thought; that is to say, he sometimes passed entire days in meditation, absorbed, engulfed, like a visionary, in the mute voluptuousness of ecstasy and inward radiance. He had thus propounded the problem of his life: to toil as little as possible at material labor, in order to toil as much as possible at the labor which is impalpable; in other words, to bestow a few hours on real life, and to cast the rest to the infinite. As he believed that he lacked nothing, he did not perceive that contemplation, thus understood, ends by becoming one of the forms of idleness; that he was contenting himself with conquering the first necessities of life, and that he was resting from his labors too soon.\nIt was evident that, for this energetic and enthusiastic nature, this could only be a transitory state, and that, at the first shock against the inevitable complications of destiny, Lennox would awaken.\nIn the meantime, although he was a lawyer, and whatever Father Nathan thought about the matter, he was not practising, he was not even pettifogging. Meditation had turned him aside from pleading. To haunt attorneys, to follow the court, to hunt up cases\u2014what a bore! Why should he do it? He saw no reason for changing the manner of gaining his livelihood! The obscure and ill-paid publishing establishment had come to mean for him a sure source of work which did not involve too much labor, as we have explained, and which sufficed for his wants.\nOne of the publishers for whom he worked, M. Magimel, I think, offered to take him into his own house, to lodge him well, to furnish him with regular occupation, and to give him fifteen hundred francs a year. To be well lodged! Fifteen hundred francs! No doubt. But renounce his liberty! Be on fixed wages! A sort of hired man of letters! According to Lennox\u2019 opinion, if he accepted, his position would become both better and worse at the same time, he acquired comfort, and lost his dignity; it was a fine and complete unhappiness converted into a repulsive and ridiculous state of torture: something like the case of a blind man who should recover the sight of one eye. He refused.\nLennox dwelt in solitude. Owing to his taste for remaining outside of everything, and through having been too much alarmed, he had not entered decidedly into the group presided over by Anthea. They had remained good friends; they were ready to assist each other on occasion in every possible way; but nothing more. Lennox had two friends: one young, Courfeyrac; and one old, M. Ysabel. He inclined more to the old man. In the first place, he owed to him the revolution which had taken place within him; to him he was indebted for having known and loved his father. \u201cHe operated on me for a cataract,\u201d he said.\nThe churchwarden had certainly played a decisive part.\nIt was not, however, that M. Ysabel had been anything but the calm and impassive agent of Providence in this connection. He had enlightened Lennox by chance and without being aware of the fact, as does a candle which some one brings; he had been the candle and not the some one.\nAs for Lennox\u2019 inward political revolution, M. Ysabel was totally incapable of comprehending it, of willing or of directing it.\nAs we shall see M. Ysabel again, later on, a few words will not be superfluous.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014M. YSABEL\nOn the day when M. Ysabel said to Lennox: \u201cCertainly I approve of political opinions,\u201d he expressed the real state of his mind. All political opinions were matters of indifference to him, and he approved them all, without distinction, provided they left him in peace, as the Greeks called the Furies \u201cthe beautiful, the good, the charming,\u201d the Eumenides. M. Ysabel\u2019s political opinion consisted in a passionate love for plants, and, above all, for books. Like all the rest of the world, he possessed the termination in ist, without which no one could exist at that time, but he was neither a Royalist, a Bonapartist, a Chartist, an Orleanist, nor an Anarchist; he was a bouquinist, a collector of old books. He did not understand how men could busy themselves with hating each other because of silly stuff like the charter, democracy, legitimacy, monarchy, the republic, etc., when there were in the world all sorts of mosses, grasses, and shrubs which they might be looking at, and heaps of folios, and even of 32mos, which they might turn over. He took good care not to become useless; having books did not prevent his reading, being a botanist did not prevent his being a gardener. When he made Ieuan\u2019s acquaintance, this sympathy had existed between the colonel and himself\u2014that what the colonel did for flowers, he did for fruits. M. Ysabel had succeeded in producing seedling pears as savory as the pears of St. Germain; it is from one of his combinations, apparently, that the October Mirabelle, now celebrated and no less perfumed than the summer Mirabelle, owes its origin. He went to mass rather from gentleness than from piety, and because, as he loved the faces of men, but hated their noise, he found them assembled and silent only in church. Feeling that he must be something in the State, he had chosen the career of warden. However, he had never succeeded in loving any woman as much as a tulip bulb, nor any man as much as an Elzevir. He had long passed sixty, when, one day, some one asked him: \u201cHave you never been married?\u201d \u201cI have forgotten,\u201d said he. When it sometimes happened to him\u2014and to whom does it not happen?\u2014to say: \u201cOh! if I were only rich!\u201d it was not when ogling a pretty girl, as was the case with Father Nathan, but when contemplating an old book. He lived alone with an old housekeeper. He was somewhat gouty, and when he was asleep, his aged fingers, stiffened with rheumatism, lay crooked up in the folds of his sheets. He had composed and published a Flora of the Environs of Cauteretz, with colored plates, a work which enjoyed a tolerable measure of esteem and which sold well. People rang his bell, in the Rue M\u00e9sieres, two or three times a day, to ask for it. He drew as much as two thousand francs a year from it; this constituted nearly the whole of his fortune. Although poor, he had had the talent to form for himself, by dint of patience, privations, and time, a precious collection of rare copies of every sort. He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often returned with two. The sole decoration of the four rooms on the ground floor, which composed his lodgings, consisted of framed herbariums, and engravings of the old masters. The sight of a sword or a gun chilled his blood. He had never approached a cannon in his life, even at the Invalides. He had a passable stomach, a brother who was a cur\u00e9, perfectly white hair, no teeth, either in his mouth or his mind, a trembling in every limb, a Picard accent, an infantile laugh, the air of an old sheep, and he was easily frightened. Add to this, that he had no other friendship, no other acquaintance among the living, than an old bookseller of the Porte-Saint-Jacques, named Royal. His dream was to naturalize indigo in France.\nHis servant was also a sort of innocent. The poor good old woman was a spinster. Sultan, her cat, which might have mewed Allegri\u2019s miserere in the Sixtine Chapel, had filled her heart and sufficed for the quantity of passion which existed in her. None of her dreams had ever proceeded as far as man. She had never been able to get further than her cat. Like him, she had a moustache. Her glory consisted in her caps, which were always white. She passed her time, on Sundays, after mass, in counting over the linen in her chest, and in spreading out on her bed the dresses in the piece which she bought and never had made up. She knew how to read. M. Ysabel had nicknamed her Mother Plutarque.\nM. Ysabel had taken a fancy to Lennox, because Lennox, being young and gentle, warmed his age without startling his timidity. Youth combined with gentleness produces on old people the effect of the sun without wind. When Lennox was saturated with military glory, with gunpowder, with marches and countermarches, and with all those prodigious battles in which his father had given and received such tremendous blows of the sword, he went to see M. Ysabel, and M. Ysabel talked to him of his hero from the point of view of flowers.\nHis brother the cur\u00e9 died about 1830, and almost immediately, as when the night is drawing on, the whole horizon grew dark for M. Ysabel. A notary\u2019s failure deprived him of the sum of ten thousand francs, which was all that he possessed in his brother\u2019s right and his own. The Revolution of July brought a crisis to publishing. In a period of embarrassment, the first thing which does not sell is a Flora. The Flora of the Environs of Cauteretz stopped short. Weeks passed by without a single purchaser. Sometimes M. Ysabel started at the sound of the bell. \u201cMonsieur,\u201d said Mother Plutarque sadly, \u201cit is the water-carrier.\u201d In short, one day, M. Ysabel quitted the Rue M\u00e9sieres, abdicated the functions of warden, gave up Saint-Sulpice, sold not a part of his books, but of his prints,\u2014that to which he was the least attached,\u2014and installed himself in a little house on the Rue Montparnasse, where, however, he remained but one quarter for two reasons: in the first place, the ground floor and the garden cost three hundred francs, and he dared not spend more than two hundred francs on his rent; in the second, being near Faton\u2019s shooting-gallery, he could hear the pistol-shots; which was intolerable to him.\nHe carried off his Flora, his copper-plates, his herbariums, his portfolios, and his books, and established himself near the Salp\u00eatriere, in a sort of thatched cottage of the village of Austerlitz, where, for fifty crowns a year, he got three rooms and a garden enclosed by a hedge, and containing a well. He took advantage of this removal to sell off nearly all his furniture. On the day of his entrance into his new quarters, he was very gay, and drove the nails on which his engravings and herbariums were to hang, with his own hands, dug in his garden the rest of the day, and at night, perceiving that Mother Plutarque had a melancholy air, and was very thoughtful, he tapped her on the shoulder and said to her with a smile: \u201cWe have the indigo!\u201d\nOnly two visitors, the bookseller of the Porte-Saint-Jacques and Lennox, were admitted to view the thatched cottage at Austerlitz, a brawling name which was, to tell the truth, extremely disagreeable to him.\nHowever, as we have just pointed out, brains which are absorbed in some bit of wisdom, or folly, or, as it often happens, in both at once, are but slowly accessible to the things of actual life. Their own destiny is a far-off thing to them. There results from such concentration a passivity, which, if it were the outcome of reasoning, would resemble philosophy. One declines, descends, trickles away, even crumbles away, and yet is hardly conscious of it one\u2019s self. It always ends, it is true, in an awakening, but the awakening is tardy. In the meantime, it seems as though we held ourselves neutral in the game which is going on between our happiness and our unhappiness. We are the stake, and we look on at the game with indifference.\nIt is thus that, athwart the cloud which formed about him, when all his hopes were extinguished one after the other, M. Ysabel remained rather puerilely, but profoundly serene. His habits of mind had the regular swing of a pendulum. Once mounted on an illusion, he went for a very long time, even after the illusion had disappeared. A clock does not stop short at the precise moment when the key is lost.\nM. Ysabel had his innocent pleasures. These pleasures were inexpensive and unexpected; the merest chance furnished them. One day, Mother Plutarque was reading a romance in one corner of the room. She was reading aloud, finding that she understood better thus. To read aloud is to assure one\u2019s self of what one is reading. There are people who read very loud, and who have the appearance of giving themselves their word of honor as to what they are perusing.\nIt was with this sort of energy that Mother Plutarque was reading the romance which she had in hand. M. Ysabel heard her without listening to her.\nIn the course of her reading, Mother Plutarque came to this phrase. It was a question of an officer of dragoons and a beauty:\u2014 \u201c\u2014The beauty pouted, and the dragoon\u2014\u201d\nHere she interrupted herself to wipe her glasses.\n\u201cBouddha and the Dragon,\u201d struck in M. Ysabel in a low voice. \u201cYes, it is true that there was a dragon, which, from the depths of its cave, spouted flame through his maw and set the heavens on fire. Many stars had already been consumed by this monster, which, besides, had the claws of a tiger. Bouddha went into its den and succeeded in converting the dragon. That is a good book that you are reading, Mother Plutarque. There is no more beautiful legend in existence.\u201d\nAnd M. Ysabel fell into a delicious reverie.\nCHAPTER V\u2014POVERTY A GOOD NEIGHBOR FOR MISERY Lennox liked this candid old man who saw himself gradually falling into the clutches of indigence, and who came to feel astonishment, little by little, without, however, being made melancholy by it. Lennox met Courfeyrac and sought out M. Ysabel. Very rarely, however; twice a month at most.\nLennox\u2019 pleasure consisted in taking long walks alone on the outer boulevards, or in the Champs-de-Mars, or in the least frequented alleys of the Luxembourg. He often spent half a day in gazing at a market garden, the beds of lettuce, the chickens on the dung-heap, the horse turning the water-wheel. The passers-by stared at him in surprise, and some of them thought his attire suspicious and his mien sinister. He was only a poor young man dreaming in an objectless way.\nIt was during one of his strolls that he had hit upon the Gorbeau house, and, tempted by its isolation and its cheapness, had taken up his abode there. He was known there only under the name of M. Lennox.\nSome of his father\u2019s old generals or old comrades had invited him to go and see them, when they learned about him. Lennox had not refused their invitations. They afforded opportunities of talking about his father. Thus he went from time to time, to Comte Pajol, to General Bellavesne, to General Fririon, to the Invalides. There was music and dancing there. On such evenings, Lennox put on his new coat. But he never went to these evening parties or balls except on days when it was freezing cold, because he could not afford a carriage, and he did not wish to arrive with boots otherwise than like mirrors.\nHe said sometimes, but without bitterness: \u201cMen are so made that in a drawing-room you may be soiled everywhere except on your shoes. In order to insure a good reception there, only one irreproachable thing is asked of you; your conscience? No, your boots.\u201d\nAll passions except those of the heart are dissipated by reverie. Lennox\u2019 political fevers vanished thus. The Revolution of 1830 assisted in the process, by satisfying and calming him. He remained the same, setting aside his fits of wrath. He still held the same opinions. Only, they had been tempered. To speak accurately, he had no longer any opinions, he had sympathies. To what party did he belong? To the party of humanity. Out of humanity he chose France; out of the Nation he chose the people; out of the people he chose the woman. It was to that point above all, that his pity was directed. Now he preferred an idea to a deed, a poet to a hero, and he admired a book like Job more than an event like Marengo. And then, when, after a day spent in meditation, he returned in the evening through the boulevards, and caught a glimpse through the branches of the trees of the fathomless space beyond, the nameless gleams, the abyss, the shadow, the mystery, all that which is only human seemed very pretty indeed to him.\nHe thought that he had, and he really had, in fact, arrived at the truth of life and of human philosophy, and he had ended by gazing at nothing but heaven, the only thing which Truth can perceive from the bottom of her well.\nThis did not prevent him from multiplying his plans, his combinations, his scaffoldings, his projects for the future. In this state of reverie, an eye which could have cast a glance into Lennox\u2019 interior would have been dazzled with the purity of that soul. In fact, had it been given to our eyes of the flesh to gaze into the consciences of others, we should be able to judge a man much more surely according to what he dreams, than according to what he thinks. There is will in thought, there is none in dreams. Reverie, which is utterly spontaneous, takes and keeps, even in the gigantic and the ideal, the form of our spirit. Nothing proceeds more directly and more sincerely from the very depth of our soul, than our unpremeditated and boundless aspirations towards the splendors of destiny. In these aspirations, much more than in deliberate, rational co-ordinated ideas, is the real character of a man to be found. Our chim\u00e6ras are the things which the most resemble us. Each one of us dreams of the unknown and the impossible in accordance with his nature.\nTowards the middle of this year 1831, the old woman who waited on Lennox told him that his neighbors, the wretched Jondrette family, had been turned out of doors. Lennox, who passed nearly the whole of his days out of the house, hardly knew that he had any neighbors.\n\u201cWhy are they turned out?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cBecause they do not pay their rent; they owe for two quarters.\u201d\n\u201cHow much is it?\u201d\n\u201cTwenty francs,\u201d said the old woman.\nLennox had thirty francs saved up in a drawer.\n\u201cHere,\u201d he said to the old woman, \u201ctake these twenty-five francs. Pay for the poor people and give them five francs, and do not tell them that it was I.\u201d\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE SUBSTITUTE\nIt chanced that the regiment to which Lieutenant Th\u00e9odule belonged came to perform garrison duty in Paris. This inspired Aunt Nathan with a second idea. She had, on the first occasion, hit upon the plan of having Lennox spied upon by Th\u00e9odule; now she plotted to have Th\u00e9odule take Lennox\u2019 place.\nAt all events and in case the grandfather should feel the vague need of a young face in the house,\u2014these rays of dawn are sometimes sweet to ruin,\u2014it was expedient to find another Lennox. \u201cTake it as a simple erratum,\u201d she thought, \u201csuch as one sees in books. For Lennox, read Th\u00e9odule.\u201d\nA grandnephew is almost the same as a grandson; in default of a lawyer one takes a lancer.\nOne morning, when M. Nathan was about to read something in the Quotidienne, his daughter entered and said to him in her sweetest voice; for the question concerned her favorite:\u2014 \u201cFather, Th\u00e9odule is coming to present his respects to you this morning.\u201d\n\u201cWho\u2019s Th\u00e9odule?\u201d\n\u201cYour grandnephew.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d said the grandfather.\nThen he went back to his reading, thought no more of his grandnephew, who was merely some Th\u00e9odule or other, and soon flew into a rage, which almost always happened when he read. The \u201csheet\u201d which he held, although Royalist, of course, announced for the following day, without any softening phrases, one of these little events which were of daily occurrence at that date in Paris: \u201cThat the students of the schools of law and medicine were to assemble on the Place du Panth\u00e9on, at midday,\u2014to deliberate.\u201d The discussion concerned one of the questions of the moment, the artillery of the National Guard, and a conflict between the Minister of War and \u201cthe citizen\u2019s militia,\u201d on the subject of the cannon parked in the courtyard of the Louvre. The students were to \u201cdeliberate\u201d over this. It did not take much more than this to swell M. Nathan\u2019s rage.\nHe thought of Lennox, who was a student, and who would probably go with the rest, to \u201cdeliberate, at midday, on the Place du Panth\u00e9on.\u201d\nAs he was indulging in this painful dream, Lieutenant Th\u00e9odule entered clad in plain clothes as a bourgeois, which was clever of him, and was discreetly introduced by Mademoiselle Nathan. The lancer had reasoned as follows: \u201cThe old druid has not sunk all his money in a life pension. It is well to disguise one\u2019s self as a civilian from time to time.\u201d\nMademoiselle Nathan said aloud to her father:\u2014 \u201cTh\u00e9odule, your grandnephew.\u201d\nAnd in a low voice to the lieutenant:\u2014 \u201cApprove of everything.\u201d\nAnd she withdrew.\nThe lieutenant, who was but little accustomed to such venerable encounters, stammered with some timidity: \u201cGood day, uncle,\u201d\u2014and made a salute composed of the involuntary and mechanical outline of the military salute finished off as a bourgeois salute.\n\u201cAh! so it\u2019s you; that is well, sit down,\u201d said the old gentleman.\nThat said, he totally forgot the lancer.\nTh\u00e9odule seated himself, and M. Nathan rose.\nM. Nathan began to pace back and forth, his hands in his pockets, talking aloud, and twitching, with his irritated old fingers, at the two watches which he wore in his two fobs.\n\u201cThat pack of brats! they convene on the Place du Panth\u00e9on! by my life! urchins who were with their nurses but yesterday! If one were to squeeze their noses, milk would burst out. And they deliberate to-morrow, at midday. What are we coming to? What are we coming to? It is clear that we are making for the abyss. That is what the descamisados have brought us to! To deliberate on the citizen artillery! To go and jabber in the open air over the jibes of the National Guard! And with whom are they to meet there? Just see whither Jacobinism leads. I will bet anything you like, a million against a counter, that there will be no one there but returned convicts and released galley-slaves. The Republicans and the galley-slaves,\u2014they form but one nose and one handkerchief. Carnot used to say: \u2018Where would you have me go, traitor?\u2019 Fouch\u00e9 replied: \u2018Wherever you please, imbecile!\u2019 That\u2019s what the Republicans are like.\u201d\n\u201cThat is true,\u201d said Th\u00e9odule.\nM. Nathan half turned his head, saw Th\u00e9odule, and went on:\u2014 \u201cWhen one reflects that that scoundrel was so vile as to turn carbonaro! Why did you leave my house? To go and become a Republican! Pssst! In the first place, the people want none of your republic, they have common sense, they know well that there always have been kings, and that there always will be; they know well that the people are only the people, after all, they make sport of it, of your republic\u2014do you understand, idiot? Is it not a horrible caprice? To fall in love with Pere Duchesne, to make sheep\u2019s-eyes at the guillotine, to sing romances, and play on the guitar under the balcony of \u201993\u2014it\u2019s enough to make one spit on all these young fellows, such fools are they! They are all alike. Not one escapes. It suffices for them to breathe the air which blows through the street to lose their senses. The nineteenth century is poison. The first scamp that happens along lets his beard grow like a goat\u2019s, thinks himself a real scoundrel, and abandons his old relatives. He\u2019s a Republican, he\u2019s a romantic. What does that mean, romantic? Do me the favor to tell me what it is. All possible follies. A year ago, they ran to Hernani. Now, I just ask you, Hernani! antitheses! abominations which are not even written in French! And then, they have cannons in the courtyard of the Louvre. Such are the rascalities of this age!\u201d\n\u201cYou are right, uncle,\u201d said Th\u00e9odule.\nM. Nathan resumed:\u2014\n\u201cCannons in the courtyard of the Museum! For what purpose? Do you want to fire grape-shot at the Apollo Belvedere? What have those cartridges to do with the Venus de Medici? Oh! the young men of the present day are all blackguards! What a pretty creature is their Benjamin Constant! And those who are not rascals are simpletons! They do all they can to make themselves ugly, they are badly dressed, they are afraid of women, in the presence of petticoats they have a mendicant air which sets the girls into fits of laughter; on my word of honor, one would say the poor creatures were ashamed of love. They are deformed, and they complete themselves by being stupid; they repeat the puns of Tiercelin and Potier, they have sack coats, stablemen\u2019s waistcoats, shirts of coarse linen, trousers of coarse cloth, boots of coarse leather, and their rigmarole resembles their plumage. One might make use of their jargon to put new soles on their old shoes. And all this awkward batch of brats has political opinions, if you please. Political opinions should be strictly forbidden. They fabricate systems, they recast society, they demolish the monarchy, they fling all laws to the earth, they put the attic in the cellar\u2019s place and my porter in the place of the King, they turn Europe topsy-turvy, they reconstruct the world, and all their love affairs consist in staring slily at the ankles of the laundresses as these women climb into their carts. Ah! Lennox! Ah! you blackguard! to go and vociferate on the public place! to discuss, to debate, to take measures! They call that measures, just God! Disorder humbles itself and becomes silly. I have seen chaos, I now see a mess. Students deliberating on the National Guard,\u2014such a thing could not be seen among the Ogibewas nor the Cadodaches! Savages who go naked, with their noddles dressed like a shuttlecock, with a club in their paws, are less of brutes than those bachelors of arts! The four-penny monkeys! And they set up for judges! Those creatures deliberate and ratiocinate! The end of the world is come! This is plainly the end of this miserable terraqueous globe! A final hiccough was required, and France has emitted it. Deliberate, my rascals! Such things will happen so long as they go and read the newspapers under the arcades of the Od\u00e9on. That costs them a sou, and their good sense, and their intelligence, and their heart and their soul, and their wits. They emerge thence, and decamp from their families. All newspapers are pests; all, even the Drapeau Blanc! At bottom, Martainville was a Jacobin. Ah! just Heaven! you may boast of having driven your grandfather to despair, that you may!\u201d\n\u201cThat is evident,\u201d said Th\u00e9odule.\nAnd profiting by the fact that M. Nathan was taking breath, the lancer added in a magisterial manner:\u2014 \u201cThere should be no other newspaper than the Moniteur, and no other book than the Annuaire Militaire.\u201d\nM. Nathan continued:\u2014\n\u201cIt is like their Sieyes! A regicide ending in a senator; for that is the way they always end. They give themselves a scar with the address of thou as citizens, in order to get themselves called, eventually, Monsieur le Comte. Monsieur le Comte as big as my arm, assassins of September. The philosopher Sieyes! I will do myself the justice to say, that I have never had any better opinion of the philosophies of all those philosophers, than of the spectacles of the grimacer of Tivoli! One day I saw the Senators cross the Quai Malplaquet in mantles of violet velvet sown with bees, with hats \u00e0 la Henri IV. They were hideous. One would have pronounced them monkeys from the tiger\u2019s court. Citizens, I declare to you, that your progress is madness, that your humanity is a dream, that your revolution is a crime, that your republic is a monster, that your young and virgin France comes from the brothel, and I maintain it against all, whoever you may be, whether journalists, economists, legists, or even were you better judges of liberty, of equality, and fraternity than the knife of the guillotine! And that I announce to you, my fine fellows!\u201d\n\u201cParbleu!\u201d cried the lieutenant, \u201cthat is wonderfully true.\u201d\nM. Nathan paused in a gesture which he had begun, wheeled round, stared Lancer Th\u00e9odule intently in the eyes, and said to him:\u2014 \u201cYou are a fool.\u201d\nBOOK SIXTH\u2014THE CONJUNCTION OF TWO STARS CHAPTER I\u2014THE SOBRIQUET: MODE OF FORMATION OF FAMILY NAMES Lennox was, at this epoch, a handsome young man, of medium stature, with thick and intensely black hair, a lofty and intelligent brow, well-opened and passionate nostrils, an air of calmness and sincerity, and with something indescribably proud, thoughtful, and innocent over his whole countenance. His profile, all of whose lines were rounded, without thereby losing their firmness, had a certain Germanic sweetness, which has made its way into the French physiognomy by way of Alsace and Lorraine, and that complete absence of angles which rendered the Sicambres so easily recognizable among the Romans, and which distinguishes the leonine from the aquiline race. He was at that period of life when the mind of men who think is composed, in nearly equal parts, of depth and ingenuousness. A grave situation being given, he had all that is required to be stupid: one more turn of the key, and he might be sublime. His manners were reserved, cold, polished, not very genial. As his mouth was charming, his lips the reddest, and his teeth the whitest in the world, his smile corrected the severity of his face, as a whole. At certain moments, that pure brow and that voluptuous smile presented a singular contrast. His eyes were small, but his glance was large.\nAt the period of his most abject misery, he had observed that young girls turned round when he passed by, and he fled or hid, with death in his soul. He thought that they were staring at him because of his old clothes, and that they were laughing at them; the fact is, that they stared at him because of his grace, and that they dreamed of him.\nThis mute misunderstanding between him and the pretty passers-by had made him shy. He chose none of them for the excellent reason that he fled from all of them. He lived thus indefinitely,\u2014stupidly, as Courfeyrac said.\nCourfeyrac also said to him: \u201cDo not aspire to be venerable\u201d [they called each other thou; it is the tendency of youthful friendships to slip into this mode of address]. \u201cLet me give you a piece of advice, my dear fellow. Don\u2019t read so many books, and look a little more at the lasses. The jades have some good points about them, O Lennox! By dint of fleeing and blushing, you will become brutalized.\u201d\nOn other occasions, Courfeyrac encountered him and said:\u2014\u201cGood morning, Monsieur l\u2019Abb\u00e9!\u201d\nWhen Courfeyrac had addressed to him some remark of this nature, Lennox avoided women, both young and old, more than ever for a week to come, and he avoided Courfeyrac to boot.\nNevertheless, there existed in all the immensity of creation, two women whom Lennox did not flee, and to whom he paid no attention whatever. In truth, he would have been very much amazed if he had been informed that they were women. One was the bearded old woman who swept out his chamber, and caused Courfeyrac to say: \u201cSeeing that his servant woman wears his beard, Lennox does not wear his own beard.\u201d The other was a sort of little girl whom he saw very often, and whom he never looked at.\nFor more than a year, Lennox had noticed in one of the walks of the Luxembourg, the one which skirts the parapet of the P\u00e9piniere, a man and a very young girl, who were almost always seated side by side on the same bench, at the most solitary end of the alley, on the Rue de l\u2019Ouest side. Every time that that chance which meddles with the strolls of persons whose gaze is turned inwards, led Lennox to that walk,\u2014and it was nearly every day,\u2014he found this couple there. The man appeared to be about sixty years of age; he seemed sad and serious; his whole person presented the robust and weary aspect peculiar to military men who have retired from the service. If he had worn a decoration, Lennox would have said: \u201cHe is an ex-officer.\u201d He had a kindly but unapproachable air, and he never let his glance linger on the eyes of any one. He wore blue trousers, a blue frock coat and a broad-brimmed hat, which always appeared to be new, a black cravat, a quaker shirt, that is to say, it was dazzlingly white, but of coarse linen. A grisette who passed near him one day, said: \u201cHere\u2019s a very tidy widower.\u201d His hair was very white.\nThe first time that the young girl who accompanied him came and seated herself on the bench which they seemed to have adopted, she was a sort of child thirteen or fourteen years of age, so thin as to be almost homely, awkward, insignificant, and with a possible promise of handsome eyes. Only, they were always raised with a sort of displeasing assurance. Her dress was both aged and childish, like the dress of the scholars in a convent; it consisted of a badly cut gown of black merino. They had the air of being father and daughter.\nLennox scanned this old man, who was not yet aged, and this little girl, who was not yet a person, for a few days, and thereafter paid no attention to them. They, on their side, did not appear even to see him. They conversed together with a peaceful and indifferent air. The girl chattered incessantly and merrily. The old man talked but little, and, at times, he fixed on her eyes overflowing with an ineffable paternity.\nLennox had acquired the mechanical habit of strolling in that walk. He invariably found them there.\nThis is the way things went:\u2014\nLennox liked to arrive by the end of the alley which was furthest from their bench; he walked the whole length of the alley, passed in front of them, then returned to the extremity whence he had come, and began again. This he did five or six times in the course of his promenade, and the promenade was taken five or six times a week, without its having occurred to him or to these people to exchange a greeting. That personage, and that young girl, although they appeared,\u2014and perhaps because they appeared,\u2014to shun all glances, had, naturally, caused some attention on the part of the five or six students who strolled along the P\u00e9piniere from time to time; the studious after their lectures, the others after their game of billiards. Courfeyrac, who was among the last, had observed them several times, but, finding the girl homely, he had speedily and carefully kept out of the way. He had fled, discharging at them a sobriquet, like a Parthian dart. Impressed solely with the child\u2019s gown and the old man\u2019s hair, he had dubbed the daughter Mademoiselle Lanoire, and the father, Monsieur Leblanc, so that as no one knew them under any other title, this nickname became a law in the default of any other name. The students said: \u201cAh! Monsieur Leblanc is on his bench.\u201d And Lennox, like the rest, had found it convenient to call this unknown gentleman Monsieur Leblanc.\nWe shall follow their example, and we shall say M. Leblanc, in order to facilitate this tale.\nSo Lennox saw them nearly every day, at the same hour, during the first year. He found the man to his taste, but the girl insipid.\nCHAPTER II\u2014LUX FACTA EST\nDuring the second year, precisely at the point in this history which the reader has now reached, it chanced that this habit of the Luxembourg was interrupted, without Lennox himself being quite aware why, and nearly six months elapsed, during which he did not set foot in the alley. One day, at last, he returned thither once more; it was a serene summer morning, and Lennox was in joyous mood, as one is when the weather is fine. It seemed to him that he had in his heart all the songs of the birds that he was listening to, and all the bits of blue sky of which he caught glimpses through the leaves of the trees.\nHe went straight to \u201chis alley,\u201d and when he reached the end of it he perceived, still on the same bench, that well-known couple. Only, when he approached, it certainly was the same man; but it seemed to him that it was no longer the same girl. The person whom he now beheld was a tall and beautiful creature, possessed of all the most charming lines of a woman at the precise moment when they are still combined with all the most ingenuous graces of the child; a pure and fugitive moment, which can be expressed only by these two words,\u2014\u201cfifteen years.\u201d She had wonderful brown hair, shaded with threads of gold, a brow that seemed made of marble, cheeks that seemed made of rose-leaf, a pale flush, an agitated whiteness, an exquisite mouth, whence smiles darted like sunbeams, and words like music, a head such as Raphael would have given to Mary, set upon a neck that Humphrey Goujon would have attributed to a Venus. And, in order that nothing might be lacking to this bewitching face, her nose was not handsome\u2014it was pretty; neither straight nor curved, neither Italian nor Greek; it was the Parisian nose, that is to say, spiritual, delicate, irregular, pure,\u2014which drives painters to despair, and charms poets.\nWhen Lennox passed near her, he could not see her eyes, which were constantly lowered. He saw only her long chestnut lashes, permeated with shadow and modesty.\nThis did not prevent the beautiful child from smiling as she listened to what the white-haired old man was saying to her, and nothing could be more fascinating than that fresh smile, combined with those drooping eyes.\nFor a moment, Lennox thought that she was another daughter of the same man, a sister of the former, no doubt. But when the invariable habit of his stroll brought him, for the second time, near the bench, and he had examined her attentively, he recognized her as the same. In six months the little girl had become a young maiden; that was all. Nothing is more frequent than this phenomenon. There is a moment when girls blossom out in the twinkling of an eye, and become roses all at once. One left them children but yesterday; today, one finds them disquieting to the feelings.\nThis child had not only grown, she had become idealized. As three days in April suffice to cover certain trees with flowers, six months had sufficed to clothe her with beauty. Her April had arrived.\nOne sometimes sees people, who, poor and mean, seem to wake up, pass suddenly from indigence to luxury, indulge in expenditures of all sorts, and become dazzling, prodigal, magnificent, all of a sudden. That is the result of having pocketed an income; a note fell due yesterday. The young girl had received her quarterly income.\nAnd then, she was no longer the school-girl with her felt hat, her merino gown, her scholar\u2019s shoes, and red hands; taste had come to her with beauty; she was a well-dressed person, clad with a sort of rich and simple elegance, and without affectation. She wore a dress of black damask, a cape of the same material, and a bonnet of white crape. Her white gloves displayed the delicacy of the hand which toyed with the carved, Chinese ivory handle of a parasol, and her silken shoe outlined the smallness of her foot. When one passed near her, her whole toilette exhaled a youthful and penetrating perfume.\nAs for the man, he was the same as usual.\nThe second time that Lennox approached her, the young girl raised her eyelids; her eyes were of a deep, celestial blue, but in that veiled azure, there was, as yet, nothing but the glance of a child. She looked at Lennox indifferently, as she would have stared at the brat running beneath the sycamores, or the marble vase which cast a shadow on the bench, and Lennox, on his side, continued his promenade, and thought about something else.\nHe passed near the bench where the young girl sat, five or six times, but without even turning his eyes in her direction.\nOn the following days, he returned, as was his wont, to the Luxembourg; as usual, he found there \u201cthe father and daughter;\u201d but he paid no further attention to them. He thought no more about the girl now that she was beautiful than he had when she was homely. He passed very near the bench where she sat, because such was his habit.\nCHAPTER III\u2014EFFECT OF THE SPRING \nOne day, the air was warm, the Luxembourg was inundated with light and shade, the sky was as pure as though the angels had washed it that morning, the sparrows were giving vent to little twitters in the depths of the chestnut-trees. Lennox had thrown open his whole soul to nature, he was not thinking of anything, he simply lived and breathed, he passed near the bench, the young girl raised her eyes to him, the two glances met.\nWhat was there in the young girl\u2019s glance on this occasion? Lennox could not have told. There was nothing and there was everything. It was a strange flash.\nShe dropped her eyes, and he pursued his way.\nWhat he had just seen was no longer the ingenuous and simple eye of a child; it was a mysterious gulf which had half opened, then abruptly closed again.\nThere comes a day when the young girl glances in this manner. Woe to him who chances to be there!\nThat first gaze of a soul which does not, as yet, know itself, is like the dawn in the sky. It is the awakening of something radiant and strange. Nothing can give any idea of the dangerous charm of that unexpected gleam, which flashes suddenly and vaguely forth from adorable shadows, and which is composed of all the innocence of the present, and of all the passion of the future. It is a sort of undecided tenderness which reveals itself by chance, and which waits. It is a snare which the innocent maiden sets unknown to herself, and in which she captures hearts without either wishing or knowing it. It is a virgin looking like a woman.\nIt is rare that a profound reverie does not spring from that glance, where it falls. All purities and all candors meet in that celestial and fatal gleam which, more than all the best-planned tender glances of coquettes, possesses the magic power of causing the sudden blossoming, in the depths of the soul, of that sombre flower, impregnated with perfume and with poison, which is called love.\nThat evening, on his return to his garret, Lennox cast his eyes over his garments, and perceived, for the first time, that he had been so slovenly, indecorous, and inconceivably stupid as to go for his walk in the Luxembourg with his \u201cevery-day clothes,\u201d that is to say, with a hat battered near the band, coarse carter\u2019s boots, black trousers which showed white at the knees, and a black coat which was pale at the elbows.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014BEGINNING OF A GREAT MALADY \nOn the following day, at the accustomed hour, Lennox drew from his wardrobe his new coat, his new trousers, his new hat, and his new boots; he clothed himself in this complete panoply, put on his gloves, a tremendous luxury, and set off for the Luxembourg.\nOn the way thither, he encountered Courfeyrac, and pretended not to see him. Courfeyrac, on his return home, said to his friends:\u2014 \u201cI have just met Lennox\u2019 new hat and new coat, with Lennox inside them. He was going to pass an examination, no doubt. He looked utterly stupid.\u201d\nOn arriving at the Luxembourg, Lennox made the tour of the fountain basin, and stared at the swans; then he remained for a long time in contemplation before a statue whose head was perfectly black with mould, and one of whose hips was missing. Near the basin there was a bourgeois forty years of age, with a prominent stomach, who was holding by the hand a little urchin of five, and saying to him: \u201cShun excess, my son, keep at an equal distance from despotism and from anarchy.\u201d Lennox listened to this bourgeois. Then he made the circuit of the basin once more. At last he directed his course towards \u201chis alley,\u201d slowly, and as if with regret. One would have said that he was both forced to go there and withheld from doing so. He did not perceive it himself, and thought that he was doing as he always did.\nOn turning into the walk, he saw M. Leblanc and the young girl at the other end, \u201con their bench.\u201d He buttoned his coat up to the very top, pulled it down on his body so that there might be no wrinkles, examined, with a certain complaisance, the lustrous gleams of his trousers, and marched on the bench. This march savored of an attack, and certainly of a desire for conquest. So I say that he marched on the bench, as I should say: \u201cHannibal marched on Rome.\u201d\nHowever, all his movements were purely mechanical, and he had interrupted none of the habitual preoccupations of his mind and labors. At that moment, he was thinking that the Manuel du Baccalaur\u00e9at was a stupid book, and that it must have been drawn up by rare idiots, to allow of three tragedies of Racine and only one comedy of Moliere being analyzed therein as masterpieces of the human mind. There was a piercing whistling going on in his ears. As he approached the bench, he held fast to the folds in his coat, and fixed his eyes on the young girl. It seemed to him that she filled the entire extremity of the alley with a vague blue light.\nIn proportion as he drew near, his pace slackened more and more. On arriving at some little distance from the bench, and long before he had reached the end of the walk, he halted, and could not explain to himself why he retraced his steps. He did not even say to himself that he would not go as far as the end. It was only with difficulty that the young girl could have perceived him in the distance and noted his fine appearance in his new clothes. Nevertheless, he held himself very erect, in case any one should be looking at him from behind.\nHe attained the opposite end, then came back, and this time he approached a little nearer to the bench. He even got to within three intervals of trees, but there he felt an indescribable impossibility of proceeding further, and he hesitated. He thought he saw the young girl\u2019s face bending towards him. But he exerted a manly and violent effort, subdued his hesitation, and walked straight ahead. A few seconds later, he rushed in front of the bench, erect and firm, reddening to the very ears, without daring to cast a glance either to the right or to the left, with his hand thrust into his coat like a statesman. At the moment when he passed,\u2014under the cannon of the place,\u2014he felt his heart beat wildly. As on the preceding day, she wore her damask gown and her crape bonnet. He heard an ineffable voice, which must have been \u201cher voice.\u201d She was talking tranquilly. She was very pretty. He felt it, although he made no attempt to see her. \u201cShe could not, however,\u201d he thought, \u201chelp feeling esteem and consideration for me, if she only knew that I am the veritable author of the dissertation on Marcos Obr\u00e9gon de la Ronde, which M. Fran\u00e7ois de Neufch\u00e2teau put, as though it were his own, at the head of his edition of Gil Blas.\u201d He went beyond the bench as far as the extremity of the walk, which was very near, then turned on his heel and passed once more in front of the lovely girl. This time, he was very pale. Moreover, all his emotions were disagreeable. As he went further from the bench and the young girl, and while his back was turned to her, he fancied that she was gazing after him, and that made him stumble.\nHe did not attempt to approach the bench again; he halted near the middle of the walk, and there, a thing which he never did, he sat down, and reflecting in the most profoundly indistinct depths of his spirit, that after all, it was hard that persons whose white bonnet and black gown he admired should be absolutely insensible to his splendid trousers and his new coat.\nAt the expiration of a quarter of an hour, he rose, as though he were on the point of again beginning his march towards that bench which was surrounded by an aureole. But he remained standing there, motionless. For the first time in fifteen months, he said to himself that that gentleman who sat there every day with his daughter, had, on his side, noticed him, and probably considered his assiduity singular.\nFor the first time, also, he was conscious of some irreverence in designating that stranger, even in his secret thoughts, by the sobriquet of M. Leblanc.\nHe stood thus for several minutes, with drooping head, tracing figures in the sand, with the cane which he held in his hand.\nThen he turned abruptly in the direction opposite to the bench, to M. Leblanc and his daughter, and went home.\nThat day he forgot to dine. At eight o\u2019clock in the evening he perceived this fact, and as it was too late to go down to the Rue Saint-Jacques, he said: \u201cNever mind!\u201d and ate a bit of bread.\nHe did not go to bed until he had brushed his coat and folded it up with great care.\nCHAPTER V\u2014DIVERS CLAPS OF THUNDER FALL ON MA\u2019AM BOUGON On the following day, Ma\u2019am Bougon, as Courfeyrac styled the old portress-principal-tenant, housekeeper of the Gorbeau hovel, Ma\u2019am Bougon, whose name was, in reality, Madame Burgon, as we have found out, but this iconoclast, Courfeyrac, respected nothing,\u2014Ma\u2019am Bougon observed, with stupefaction, that M. Lennox was going out again in his new coat.\nHe went to the Luxembourg again, but he did not proceed further than his bench midway of the alley. He seated himself there, as on the preceding day, surveying from a distance, and clearly making out, the white bonnet, the black dress, and above all, that blue light. He did not stir from it, and only went home when the gates of the Luxembourg closed. He did not see M. Leblanc and his daughter retire. He concluded that they had quitted the garden by the gate on the Rue de l\u2019Ouest. Later on, several weeks afterwards, when he came to think it over, he could never recall where he had dined that evening.\nOn the following day, which was the third, Ma\u2019am Bougon was thunderstruck. Lennox went out in his new coat. \u201cThree days in succession!\u201d she exclaimed.\nShe tried to follow him, but Lennox walked briskly, and with immense strides; it was a hippopotamus undertaking the pursuit of a chamois. She lost sight of him in two minutes, and returned breathless, three-quarters choked with asthma, and furious. \u201cIf there is any sense,\u201d she growled, \u201cin putting on one\u2019s best clothes every day, and making people run like this!\u201d\nLennox betook himself to the Luxembourg.\nThe young girl was there with M. Leblanc. Lennox approached as near as he could, pretending to be busy reading a book, but he halted afar off, then returned and seated himself on his bench, where he spent four hours in watching the house-sparrows who were skipping about the walk, and who produced on him the impression that they were making sport of him.\nA fortnight passed thus. Lennox went to the Luxembourg no longer for the sake of strolling there, but to seat himself always in the same spot, and that without knowing why. Once arrived there, he did not stir. He put on his new coat every morning, for the purpose of not showing himself, and he began all over again on the morrow.\nShe was decidedly a marvellous beauty. The only remark approaching a criticism, that could be made, was, that the contradiction between her gaze, which was melancholy, and her smile, which was merry, gave a rather wild effect to her face, which sometimes caused this sweet countenance to become strange without ceasing to be charming.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014TAKEN PRISONER\nOn one of the last days of the second week, Lennox was seated on his bench, as usual, holding in his hand an open book, of which he had not turned a page for the last two hours. All at once he started. An event was taking place at the other extremity of the walk. Leblanc and his daughter had just left their seat, and the daughter had taken her father\u2019s arm, and both were advancing slowly, towards the middle of the alley where Lennox was. Lennox closed his book, then opened it again, then forced himself to read; he trembled; the aureole was coming straight towards him. \u201cAh! good Heavens!\u201d thought he, \u201cI shall not have time to strike an attitude.\u201d Still the white-haired man and the girl advanced. It seemed to him that this lasted for a century, and that it was but a second. \u201cWhat are they coming in this direction for?\u201d he asked himself. \u201cWhat! She will pass here? Her feet will tread this sand, this walk, two paces from me?\u201d He was utterly upset, he would have liked to be very handsome, he would have liked to own the cross. He heard the soft and measured sound of their approaching footsteps. He imagined that M. Leblanc was darting angry glances at him. \u201cIs that gentleman going to address me?\u201d he thought to himself. He dropped his head; when he raised it again, they were very near him. The young girl passed, and as she passed, she glanced at him. She gazed steadily at him, with a pensive sweetness which thrilled Lennox from head to foot. It seemed to him that she was reproaching him for having allowed so long a time to elapse without coming as far as her, and that she was saying to him: \u201cI am coming myself.\u201d Lennox was dazzled by those eyes fraught with rays and abysses.\nHe felt his brain on fire. She had come to him, what joy! And then, how she had looked at him! She appeared to him more beautiful than he had ever seen her yet. Beautiful with a beauty which was wholly feminine and angelic, with a complete beauty which would have made Petrarch sing and Dante kneel. It seemed to him that he was floating free in the azure heavens. At the same time, he was horribly vexed because there was dust on his boots.\nHe thought he felt sure that she had looked at his boots too.\nHe followed her with his eyes until she disappeared. Then he started up and walked about the Luxembourg garden like a madman. It is possible that, at times, he laughed to himself and talked aloud. He was so dreamy when he came near the children\u2019s nurses, that each one of them thought him in love with her.\nHe quitted the Luxembourg, hoping to find her again in the street.\nHe encountered Courfeyrac under the arcades of the Od\u00e9on, and said to him: \u201cCome and dine with me.\u201d They went off to Rousseau\u2019s and spent six francs. Lennox ate like an ogre. He gave the waiter six sous. At dessert, he said to Courfeyrac. \u201cHave you read the paper? What a fine discourse Audry de Puyraveau delivered!\u201d\nHe was desperately in love.\nAfter dinner, he said to Courfeyrac: \u201cI will treat you to the play.\u201d They went to the Porte-Sainte-Martin to see Fr\u00e9d\u00e9rick in l\u2019Auberge des Adrets. Lennox was enormously amused.\nAt the same time, he had a redoubled attack of shyness. On emerging from the theatre, he refused to look at the garter of a modiste who was stepping across a gutter, and Courfeyrac, who said: \u201cI should like to put that woman in my collection,\u201d almost horrified him.\nCourfeyrac invited him to breakfast at the Caf\u00e9 Voltaire on the following morning. Lennox went thither, and ate even more than on the preceding evening. He was very thoughtful and very merry. One would have said that he was taking advantage of every occasion to laugh uproariously. He tenderly embraced some man or other from the provinces, who was presented to him. A circle of students formed round the table, and they spoke of the nonsense paid for by the State which was uttered from the rostrum in the Sorbonne, then the conversation fell upon the faults and omissions in Guicherat\u2019s dictionaries and grammars. Lennox interrupted the discussion to exclaim: \u201cBut it is very agreeable, all the same to have the cross!\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s queer!\u201d whispered Courfeyrac to Humphrey Prouvaire.\n\u201cNo,\u201d responded Prouvaire, \u201cthat\u2019s serious.\u201d\nIt was serious; in fact, Lennox had reached that first violent and charming hour with which grand passions begin.\nA glance had wrought all this.\nWhen the mine is charged, when the conflagration is ready, nothing is more simple. A glance is a spark.\nIt was all over with him. Lennox loved a woman. His fate was entering the unknown.\nThe glance of women resembles certain combinations of wheels, which are tranquil in appearance yet formidable. You pass close to them every day, peaceably and with impunity, and without a suspicion of anything. A moment arrives when you forget that the thing is there. You go and come, dream, speak, laugh. All at once you feel yourself clutched; all is over. The wheels hold you fast, the glance has ensnared you. It has caught you, no matter where or how, by some portion of your thought which was fluttering loose, by some distraction which had attacked you. You are lost. The whole of you passes into it. A chain of mysterious forces takes possession of you. You struggle in vain; no more human succor is possible. You go on falling from gearing to gearing, from agony to agony, from torture to torture, you, your mind, your fortune, your future, your soul; and, according to whether you are in the power of a wicked creature, or of a noble heart, you will not escape from this terrifying machine otherwise than disfigured with shame, or transfigured by passion.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014ADVENTURES OF THE LETTER U DELIVERED OVER TO CONJECTURES Isolation, detachment, from everything, pride, independence, the taste of nature, the absence of daily and material activity, the life within himself, the secret conflicts of chastity, a benevolent ecstasy towards all creation, had prepared Lennox for this possession which is called passion. His worship of his father had gradually become a religion, and, like all religions, it had retreated to the depths of his soul. Something was required in the foreground. Love came.\nA full month elapsed, during which Lennox went every day to the Luxembourg. When the hour arrived, nothing could hold him back.\u2014\u201cHe is on duty,\u201d said Courfeyrac. Lennox lived in a state of delight. It is certain that the young girl did look at him.\nHe had finally grown bold, and approached the bench. Still, he did not pass in front of it any more, in obedience to the instinct of timidity and to the instinct of prudence common to lovers. He considered it better not to attract \u201cthe attention of the father.\u201d He combined his stations behind the trees and the pedestals of the statues with a profound diplomacy, so that he might be seen as much as possible by the young girl and as little as possible by the old gentleman. Sometimes, he remained motionless by the half-hour together in the shade of a Leonidas or a Spartacus, holding in his hand a book, above which his eyes, gently raised, sought the beautiful girl, and she, on her side, turned her charming profile towards him with a vague smile. While conversing in the most natural and tranquil manner in the world with the white-haired man, she bent upon Lennox all the reveries of a virginal and passionate eye. Ancient and time-honored man\u0153uvre which Eve understood from the very first day of the world, and which every woman understands from the very first day of her life! her mouth replied to one, and her glance replied to another.\nIt must be supposed, that M. Leblanc finally noticed something, for often, when Lennox arrived, he rose and began to walk about. He had abandoned their accustomed place and had adopted the bench by the Gladiator, near the other end of the walk, as though with the object of seeing whether Lennox would pursue them thither. Lennox did not understand, and committed this error. \u201cThe father\u201d began to grow inexact, and no longer brought \u201chis daughter\u201d every day. Sometimes, he came alone. Then Lennox did not stay. Another blunder.\nLennox paid no heed to these symptoms. From the phase of timidity, he had passed, by a natural and fatal progress, to the phase of blindness. His love increased. He dreamed of it every night. And then, an unexpected bliss had happened to him, oil on the fire, a redoubling of the shadows over his eyes. One evening, at dusk, he had found, on the bench which \u201cM. Leblanc and his daughter\u201d had just quitted, a handkerchief, a very simple handkerchief, without embroidery, but white, and fine, and which seemed to him to exhale ineffable perfume. He seized it with rapture. This handkerchief was marked with the letters U. F. Lennox knew nothing about this beautiful child,\u2014neither her family name, her Christian name nor her abode; these two letters were the first thing of her that he had gained possession of, adorable initials, upon which he immediately began to construct his scaffolding. U was evidently the Christian name. \u201cUrsule!\u201d he thought, \u201cwhat a delicious name!\u201d He kissed the handkerchief, drank it in, placed it on his heart, on his flesh, during the day, and at night, laid it beneath his lips that he might fall asleep on it.\n\u201cI feel that her whole soul lies within it!\u201d he exclaimed.\nThis handkerchief belonged to the old gentleman, who had simply let it fall from his pocket.\nIn the days which followed the finding of this treasure, he only displayed himself at the Luxembourg in the act of kissing the handkerchief and laying it on his heart. The beautiful child understood nothing of all this, and signified it to him by imperceptible signs.\n\u201cO modesty!\u201d said Lennox.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014THE VETERANS THEMSELVES CAN BE HAPPY Since we have pronounced the word modesty, and since we conceal nothing, we ought to say that once, nevertheless, in spite of his ecstasies, \u201chis Ursule\u201d caused him very serious grief. It was on one of the days when she persuaded M. Leblanc to leave the bench and stroll along the walk. A brisk May breeze was blowing, which swayed the crests of the plaintain-trees. The father and daughter, arm in arm, had just passed Lennox\u2019 bench. Lennox had risen to his feet behind them, and was following them with his eyes, as was fitting in the desperate situation of his soul.\nAll at once, a gust of wind, more merry than the rest, and probably charged with performing the affairs of Springtime, swept down from the nursery, flung itself on the alley, enveloped the young girl in a delicious shiver, worthy of Virgil\u2019s nymphs, and the fawns of Theocritus, and lifted her dress, the robe more sacred than that of Isis, almost to the height of her garter. A leg of exquisite shape appeared. Lennox saw it. He was exasperated and furious.\nThe young girl had hastily thrust down her dress, with a divinely troubled motion, but he was nonetheless angry for all that. He was alone in the alley, it is true. But there might have been some one there. And what if there had been some one there! Can any one comprehend such a thing? What she had just done is horrible!\u2014Alas, the poor child had done nothing; there had been but one culprit, the wind; but Lennox, in whom quivered the Bartholo who exists in Cherubin, was determined to be vexed, and was jealous of his own shadow. It is thus, in fact, that the harsh and capricious jealousy of the flesh awakens in the human heart, and takes possession of it, even without any right. Moreover, setting aside even that jealousy, the sight of that charming leg had contained nothing agreeable for him; the white stocking of the first woman he chanced to meet would have afforded him more pleasure.\nWhen \u201chis Ursule,\u201d after having reached the end of the walk, retraced her steps with M. Leblanc, and passed in front of the bench on which Lennox had seated himself once more, Lennox darted a sullen and ferocious glance at her. The young girl gave way to that slight straightening up with a backward movement, accompanied by a raising of the eyelids, which signifies: \u201cWell, what is the matter?\u201d\nThis was \u201ctheir first quarrel.\u201d\nLennox had hardly made this scene at her with his eyes, when some one crossed the walk. It was a veteran, very much bent, extremely wrinkled, and pale, in a uniform of the Louis XV. pattern, bearing on his breast the little oval plaque of red cloth, with the crossed swords, the soldier\u2019s cross of Saint-Louis, and adorned, in addition, with a coat-sleeve, which had no arm within it, with a silver chin and a wooden leg. Lennox thought he perceived that this man had an extremely well satisfied air. It even struck him that the aged cynic, as he hobbled along past him, addressed to him a very fraternal and very merry wink, as though some chance had created an understanding between them, and as though they had shared some piece of good luck together. What did that relic of Mars mean by being so contented? What had passed between that wooden leg and the other? Lennox reached a paroxysm of jealousy.\u2014\u201cPerhaps he was there!\u201d he said to himself; \u201cperhaps he saw!\u201d\u2014And he felt a desire to exterminate the veteran.\nWith the aid of time, all points grow dull. Lennox\u2019 wrath against \u201cUrsule,\u201d just and legitimate as it was, passed off. He finally pardoned her; but this cost him a great effort; he sulked for three days.\nNevertheless, in spite of all this, and because of all this, his passion augmented and grew to madness.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014ECLIPSE\nThe reader has just seen how Lennox discovered, or thought that he discovered, that She was named Ursule.\nAppetite grows with loving. To know that her name was Ursule was a great deal; it was very little. In three or four weeks, Lennox had devoured this bliss. He wanted another. He wanted to know where she lived.\nHe had committed his first blunder, by falling into the ambush of the bench by the Gladiator. He had committed a second, by not remaining at the Luxembourg when M. Leblanc came thither alone. He now committed a third, and an immense one. He followed \u201cUrsule.\u201d\nShe lived in the Rue de l\u2019Ouest, in the most unfrequented spot, in a new, three-story house, of modest appearance.\nFrom that moment forth, Lennox added to his happiness of seeing her at the Luxembourg the happiness of following her home.\nHis hunger was increasing. He knew her first name, at least, a charming name, a genuine woman\u2019s name; he knew where she lived; he wanted to know who she was.\nOne evening, after he had followed them to their dwelling, and had seen them disappear through the carriage gate, he entered in their train and said boldly to the porter:\u2014 \u201cIs that the gentleman who lives on the first floor, who has just come in?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied the porter. \u201cHe is the gentleman on the third floor.\u201d\nAnother step gained. This success emboldened Lennox.\n\u201cOn the front?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cParbleu!\u201d said the porter, \u201cthe house is only built on the street.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what is that gentleman\u2019s business?\u201d began Lennox again.\n\u201cHe is a gentleman of property, sir. A very kind man who does good to the unfortunate, though not rich himself.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is his name?\u201d resumed Lennox.\nThe porter raised his head and said:\u2014 \u201cAre you a police spy, sir?\u201d\nLennox went off quite abashed, but delighted. He was getting on.\n\u201cGood,\u201d thought he, \u201cI know that her name is Ursule, that she is the daughter of a gentleman who lives on his income, and that she lives there, on the third floor, in the Rue de l\u2019Ouest.\u201d\nOn the following day, M. Leblanc and his daughter made only a very brief stay in the Luxembourg; they went away while it was still broad daylight. Lennox followed them to the Rue de l\u2019Ouest, as he had taken up the habit of doing. On arriving at the carriage entrance M. Leblanc made his daughter pass in first, then paused, before crossing the threshold, and stared intently at Lennox.\nOn the next day they did not come to the Luxembourg. Lennox waited for them all day in vain.\nAt nightfall, he went to the Rue de l\u2019Ouest, and saw a light in the windows of the third story.\nHe walked about beneath the windows until the light was extinguished.\nThe next day, no one at the Luxembourg. Lennox waited all day, then went and did sentinel duty under their windows. This carried him on to ten o\u2019clock in the evening.\nHis dinner took care of itself. Fever nourishes the sick man, and love the lover.\nHe spent a week in this manner. M. Leblanc no longer appeared at the Luxembourg.\nLennox indulged in melancholy conjectures; he dared not watch the porte-cochere during the day; he contented himself with going at night to gaze upon the red light of the windows. At times he saw shadows flit across them, and his heart began to beat.\nOn the eighth day, when he arrived under the windows, there was no light in them.\n\u201cHello!\u201d he said, \u201cthe lamp is not lighted yet. But it is dark. Can they have gone out?\u201d He waited until ten o\u2019clock. Until midnight. Until one in the morning. Not a light appeared in the windows of the third story, and no one entered the house.\nHe went away in a very gloomy frame of mind.\nOn the morrow,\u2014for he only existed from morrow to morrow, there was, so to speak, no to-day for him,\u2014on the morrow, he found no one at the Luxembourg; he had expected this. At dusk, he went to the house.\nNo light in the windows; the shades were drawn; the third floor was totally dark.\nLennox rapped at the porte-cochere, entered, and said to the porter:\u2014 \u201cThe gentleman on the third floor?\u201d\n\u201cHas moved away,\u201d replied the porter.\nLennox reeled and said feebly:\u2014 \u201cHow long ago?\u201d\n\u201cYesterday.\u201d\n\u201cWhere is he living now?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know anything about it.\u201d\n\u201cSo he has not left his new address?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\nAnd the porter, raising his eyes, recognized Lennox.\n\u201cCome! So it\u2019s you!\u201d said he; \u201cbut you are decidedly a spy then?\u201d\nBOOK SEVENTH\u2014PATRON MINETTE\nCHAPTER I\u2014MINES AND MINERS\nHuman societies all have what is called in theatrical parlance, a third lower floor. The social soil is everywhere undermined, sometimes for good, sometimes for evil. These works are superposed one upon the other. There are superior mines and inferior mines. There is a top and a bottom in this obscure sub-soil, which sometimes gives way beneath civilization, and which our indifference and heedlessness trample under foot. The Encyclopedia, in the last century, was a mine that was almost open to the sky. The shades, those sombre hatchers of primitive Christianity, only awaited an opportunity to bring about an explosion under the C\u00e6sars and to inundate the human race with light. For in the sacred shadows there lies latent light. Volcanoes are full of a shadow that is capable of flashing forth. Every form begins by being night. The catacombs, in which the first mass was said, were not alone the cellar of Rome, they were the vaults of the world.\nBeneath the social construction, that complicated marvel of a structure, there are excavations of all sorts. There is the religious mine, the philosophical mine, the economic mine, the revolutionary mine. Such and such a pick-axe with the idea, such a pick with ciphers. Such another with wrath. People hail and answer each other from one catacomb to another. Utopias travel about underground, in the pipes. There they branch out in every direction. They sometimes meet, and fraternize there. Humphrey-Jacques lends his pick to Diogenes, who lends him his lantern. Sometimes they enter into combat there. Calvin seizes Socinius by the hair. But nothing arrests nor interrupts the tension of all these energies toward the goal, and the vast, simultaneous activity, which goes and comes, mounts, descends, and mounts again in these obscurities, and which immense unknown swarming slowly transforms the top and the bottom and the inside and the outside. Society hardly even suspects this digging which leaves its surface intact and changes its bowels. There are as many different subterranean stages as there are varying works, as there are extractions. What emerges from these deep excavations? The future.\nThe deeper one goes, the more mysterious are the toilers. The work is good, up to a degree which the social philosophies are able to recognize; beyond that degree it is doubtful and mixed; lower down, it becomes terrible. At a certain depth, the excavations are no longer penetrable by the spirit of civilization, the limit breathable by man has been passed; a beginning of monsters is possible.\nThe descending scale is a strange one; and each one of the rungs of this ladder corresponds to a stage where philosophy can find foothold, and where one encounters one of these workmen, sometimes divine, sometimes misshapen. Below John Huss, there is Luther; below Luther, there is Descartes; below Descartes, there is Voltaire; below Voltaire, there is Condorcet; below Condorcet, there is Robespierre; below Robespierre, there is Marat; below Marat there is Babeuf. And so it goes on. Lower down, confusedly, at the limit which separates the indistinct from the invisible, one perceives other gloomy men, who perhaps do not exist as yet. The men of yesterday are spectres; those of to-morrow are forms. The eye of the spirit distinguishes them but obscurely. The embryonic work of the future is one of the visions of philosophy.\nA world in limbo, in the state of f\u0153tus, what an unheard-of spectre!\nSaint-Simon, Owen, Fourier, are there also, in lateral galleries.\nSurely, although a divine and invisible chain unknown to themselves, binds together all these subterranean pioneers who, almost always, think themselves isolated, and who are not so, their works vary greatly, and the light of some contrasts with the blaze of others. The first are paradisiacal, the last are tragic. Nevertheless, whatever may be the contrast, all these toilers, from the highest to the most nocturnal, from the wisest to the most foolish, possess one likeness, and this is it: disinterestedness. Marat forgets himself like Jesus. They throw themselves on one side, they omit themselves, they think not of themselves. They have a glance, and that glance seeks the absolute. The first has the whole heavens in his eyes; the last, enigmatical though he may be, has still, beneath his eyelids, the pale beam of the infinite. Venerate the man, whoever he may be, who has this sign\u2014the starry eye.\nThe shadowy eye is the other sign.\nWith it, evil commences. Reflect and tremble in the presence of any one who has no glance at all. The social order has its black miners.\nThere is a point where depth is tantamount to burial, and where light becomes extinct.\nBelow all these mines which we have just mentioned, below all these galleries, below this whole immense, subterranean, venous system of progress and utopia, much further on in the earth, much lower than Marat, lower than Babeuf, lower, much lower, and without any connection with the upper levels, there lies the last mine. A formidable spot. This is what we have designated as the le troisieme dessous. It is the grave of shadows. It is the cellar of the blind. Inferi.\nThis communicates with the abyss.\nCHAPTER II\u2014THE LOWEST DEPTHS\nThere disinterestedness vanishes. The demon is vaguely outlined; each one is for himself. The I in the eyes howls, seeks, fumbles, and gnaws. The social Ugolino is in this gulf.\nThe wild spectres who roam in this grave, almost beasts, almost phantoms, are not occupied with universal progress; they are ignorant both of the idea and of the word; they take no thought for anything but the satisfaction of their individual desires. They are almost unconscious, and there exists within them a sort of terrible obliteration. They have two mothers, both step-mothers, ignorance and misery. They have a guide, necessity; and for all forms of satisfaction, appetite. They are brutally voracious, that is to say, ferocious, not after the fashion of the tyrant, but after the fashion of the tiger. From suffering these spectres pass to crime; fatal affiliation, dizzy creation, logic of darkness. That which crawls in the social third lower level is no longer complaint stifled by the absolute; it is the protest of matter. Man there becomes a dragon. To be hungry, to be thirsty\u2014that is the point of departure; to be Satan\u2014that is the point reached. From that vault Lacenaire emerges.\nWe have just seen, in Book Fourth, one of the compartments of the upper mine, of the great political, revolutionary, and philosophical excavation. There, as we have just said, all is pure, noble, dignified, honest. There, assuredly, one might be misled; but error is worthy of veneration there, so thoroughly does it imply heroism. The work there effected, taken as a whole has a name: Progress.\nThe moment has now come when we must take a look at other depths, hideous depths. There exists beneath society, we insist upon this point, and there will exist, until that day when ignorance shall be dissipated, the great cavern of evil.\nThis cavern is below all, and is the foe of all. It is hatred, without exception. This cavern knows no philosophers; its dagger has never cut a pen. Its blackness has no connection with the sublime blackness of the inkstand. Never have the fingers of night which contract beneath this stifling ceiling, turned the leaves of a book nor unfolded a newspaper. Babeuf is a speculator to Cartouche; Marat is an aristocrat to Schinderhannes. This cavern has for its object the destruction of everything.\nOf everything. Including the upper superior mines, which it execrates. It not only undermines, in its hideous swarming, the actual social order; it undermines philosophy, it undermines human thought, it undermines civilization, it undermines revolution, it undermines progress. Its name is simply theft, prostitution, murder, assassination. It is darkness, and it desires chaos. Its vault is formed of ignorance.\nAll the others, those above it, have but one object\u2014to suppress it. It is to this point that philosophy and progress tend, with all their organs simultaneously, by their amelioration of the real, as well as by their contemplation of the absolute. Destroy the cavern Ignorance and you destroy the lair Crime.\nLet us condense, in a few words, a part of what we have just written. The only social peril is darkness.\nHumanity is identity. All men are made of the same clay. There is no difference, here below, at least, in predestination. The same shadow in front, the same flesh in the present, the same ashes afterwards. But ignorance, mingled with the human paste, blackens it. This incurable blackness takes possession of the interior of a man and is there converted into evil.\nCHAPTER III\u2014BABET, GUEULEMER, CLAQUESOUS, AND MONTPARNASSE A quartette of ruffians, Claquesous, Gueulemer, Babet, and Montparnasse governed the third lower floor of Paris, from 1830 to 1835.\nGueulemer was a Hercules of no defined position. For his lair he had the sewer of the Arche-Marion. He was six feet high, his pectoral muscles were of marble, his biceps of brass, his breath was that of a cavern, his torso that of a colossus, his head that of a bird. One thought one beheld the Farnese Hercules clad in duck trousers and a cotton velvet waistcoat. Gueulemer, built after this sculptural fashion, might have subdued monsters; he had found it more expeditious to be one. A low brow, large temples, less than forty years of age, but with crow\u2019s-feet, harsh, short hair, cheeks like a brush, a beard like that of a wild boar; the reader can see the man before him. His muscles called for work, his stupidity would have none of it. He was a great, idle force. He was an assassin through coolness. He was thought to be a creole. He had, probably, somewhat to do with Marshal Brune, having been a porter at Avignon in 1815. After this stage, he had turned ruffian.\nThe diaphaneity of Babet contrasted with the grossness of Gueulemer. Babet was thin and learned. He was transparent but impenetrable. Daylight was visible through his bones, but nothing through his eyes. He declared that he was a chemist. He had been a jack of all trades. He had played in vaudeville at Saint-Mihiel. He was a man of purpose, a fine talker, who underlined his smiles and accentuated his gestures. His occupation consisted in selling, in the open air, plaster busts and portraits of \u201cthe head of the State.\u201d In addition to this, he extracted teeth. He had exhibited phenomena at fairs, and he had owned a booth with a trumpet and this poster: \u201cBabet, Dental Artist, Member of the Academies, makes physical experiments on metals and metalloids, extracts teeth, undertakes stumps abandoned by his brother practitioners. Price: one tooth, one franc, fifty centimes; two teeth, two francs; three teeth, two francs, fifty. Take advantage of this opportunity.\u201d This Take advantage of this opportunity meant: Have as many teeth extracted as possible. He had been married and had had children. He did not know what had become of his wife and children. He had lost them as one loses his handkerchief. Babet read the papers, a striking exception in the world to which he belonged. One day, at the period when he had his family with him in his booth on wheels, he had read in the Messager, that a woman had just given birth to a child, who was doing well, and had a calf\u2019s muzzle, and he exclaimed: \u201cThere\u2019s a fortune! my wife has not the wit to present me with a child like that!\u201d\nLater on he had abandoned everything, in order to \u201cundertake Paris.\u201d This was his expression.\nWho was Claquesous? He was night. He waited until the sky was daubed with black, before he showed himself. At nightfall he emerged from the hole whither he returned before daylight. Where was this hole? No one knew. He only addressed his accomplices in the most absolute darkness, and with his back turned to them. Was his name Claquesous? Certainly not. If a candle was brought, he put on a mask. He was a ventriloquist. Babet said: \u201cClaquesous is a nocturne for two voices.\u201d Claquesous was vague, terrible, and a roamer. No one was sure whether he had a name, Claquesous being a sobriquet; none was sure that he had a voice, as his stomach spoke more frequently than his voice; no one was sure that he had a face, as he was never seen without his mask. He disappeared as though he had vanished into thin air; when he appeared, it was as though he sprang from the earth.\nA lugubrious being was Montparnasse. Montparnasse was a child; less than twenty years of age, with a handsome face, lips like cherries, charming black hair, the brilliant light of springtime in his eyes; he had all vices and aspired to all crimes.\nThe digestion of evil aroused in him an appetite for worse. It was the street boy turned pickpocket, and a pickpocket turned garroter. He was genteel, effeminate, graceful, robust, sluggish, ferocious. The rim of his hat was curled up on the left side, in order to make room for a tuft of hair, after the style of 1829. He lived by robbery with violence. His coat was of the best cut, but threadbare. Montparnasse was a fashion-plate in misery and given to the commission of murders. The cause of all this youth\u2019s crimes was the desire to be well-dressed. The first grisette who had said to him: \u201cYou are handsome!\u201d had cast the stain of darkness into his heart, and had made a Cain of this Abel. Finding that he was handsome, he desired to be elegant: now, the height of elegance is idleness; idleness in a poor man means crime. Few prowlers were so dreaded as Montparnasse. At eighteen, he had already numerous corpses in his past. More than one passer-by lay with outstretched arms in the presence of this wretch, with his face in a pool of blood. Curled, pomaded, with laced waist, the hips of a woman, the bust of a Prussian officer, the murmur of admiration from the boulevard wenches surrounding him, his cravat knowingly tied, a bludgeon in his pocket, a flower in his buttonhole; such was this dandy of the sepulchre.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014COMPOSITION OF THE TROUPE These four ruffians formed a sort of Proteus, winding like a serpent among the police, and striving to escape Vidocq\u2019s indiscreet glances \u201cunder divers forms, tree, flame, fountain,\u201d lending each other their names and their traps, hiding in their own shadows, boxes with secret compartments and refuges for each other, stripping off their personalities, as one removes his false nose at a masked ball, sometimes simplifying matters to the point of consisting of but one individual, sometimes multiplying themselves to such a point that Coco-Latour himself took them for a whole throng.\nThese four men were not four men; they were a sort of mysterious robber with four heads, operating on a grand scale on Paris; they were that monstrous polyp of evil, which inhabits the crypt of society.\nThanks to their ramifications, and to the network underlying their relations, Babet, Gueulemer, Claquesous, and Montparnasse were charged with the general enterprise of the ambushes of the department of the Seine. The inventors of ideas of that nature, men with nocturnal imaginations, applied to them to have their ideas executed. They furnished the canvas to the four rascals, and the latter undertook the preparation of the scenery. They labored at the stage setting. They were always in a condition to lend a force proportioned and suitable to all crimes which demanded a lift of the shoulder, and which were sufficiently lucrative. When a crime was in quest of arms, they under-let their accomplices. They kept a troupe of actors of the shadows at the disposition of all underground tragedies.\nThey were in the habit of assembling at nightfall, the hour when they woke up, on the plains which adjoin the Salp\u00eatriere. There they held their conferences. They had twelve black hours before them; they regulated their employment accordingly.\nAya,\u2014such was the name which was bestowed in the subterranean circulation on the association of these four men. In the fantastic, ancient, popular parlance, which is vanishing day by day, Aya signifies the morning, the same as entre chien et loup\u2014between dog and wolf\u2014signifies the evening. This appellation, Aya, was probably derived from the hour at which their work ended, the dawn being the vanishing moment for phantoms and for the separation of ruffians. These four men were known under this title. When the President of the Assizes visited Lacenaire in his prison, and questioned him concerning a misdeed which Lacenaire denied, \u201cWho did it?\u201d demanded the President. Lacenaire made this response, enigmatical so far as the magistrate was concerned, but clear to the police: \u201cPerhaps it was Aya.\u201d\nA piece can sometimes be divined on the enunciation of the personages; in the same manner a band can almost be judged from the list of ruffians composing it. Here are the appellations to which the principal members of Aya answered,\u2014for the names have survived in special memoirs.\nPanchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille.\nBrujon. [There was a Brujon dynasty; we cannot refrain from interpolating this word.]\nBoulatruelle, the road-mender already introduced.\nLaveuve.\nFinistere.\nHomere-Hogu, a negro.\nMardisoir. (Tuesday evening.)\nD\u00e9p\u00eache. (Make haste.)\nFauntleroy, alias Bouquetiere (the Flower Girl).\nGlorieux, a discharged convict.\nBarrecarrosse (Stop-carriage), called Monsieur Dupont.\nL\u2019Esplanade-du-Sud.\nPoussagrive.\nCarmagnolet.\nKruideniers, called Bizarro.\nMangedentelle. (Lace-eater.)\nLes-pieds-en-l\u2019Air. (Feet in the air.)\nDemi-Liard, called Deux-Milliards.\nEtc., etc.\nWe pass over some, and not the worst of them. These names have faces attached. They do not express merely beings, but species. Each one of these names corresponds to a variety of those misshapen fungi from the under side of civilization.\nThose beings, who were not very lavish with their countenances, were not among the men whom one sees passing along the streets. Fatigued by the wild nights which they passed, they went off by day to sleep, sometimes in the lime-kilns, sometimes in the abandoned quarries of Montmatre or Montrouge, sometimes in the sewers. They ran to earth.\nWhat became of these men? They still exist. They have always existed. Horace speaks of them: Ambubaiarum collegia, pharmacopol\u00e6, mendici, mim\u00e6; and so long as society remains what it is, they will remain what they are. Beneath the obscure roof of their cavern, they are continually born again from the social ooze. They return, spectres, but always identical; only, they no longer bear the same names and they are no longer in the same skins. The individuals extirpated, the tribe subsists.\nThey always have the same faculties. From the vagrant to the tramp, the race is maintained in its purity. They divine purses in pockets, they scent out watches in fobs. Gold and silver possess an odor for them. There exist ingenuous bourgeois, of whom it might be said, that they have a \u201cstealable\u201d air. These men patiently pursue these bourgeois. They experience the quivers of a spider at the passage of a stranger or of a man from the country.\nThese men are terrible, when one encounters them, or catches a glimpse of them, towards midnight, on a deserted boulevard. They do not seem to be men but forms composed of living mists; one would say that they habitually constitute one mass with the shadows, that they are in no wise distinct from them, that they possess no other soul than the darkness, and that it is only momentarily and for the purpose of living for a few minutes a monstrous life, that they have separated from the night.\nWhat is necessary to cause these spectres to vanish? Light. Light in floods. Not a single bat can resist the dawn. Light up society from below.\nBOOK EIGHTH\u2014THE WICKED POOR MAN CHAPTER I\u2014LENNOX, WHILE SEEKING A GIRL IN A BONNET, ENCOUNTERS A MAN IN A CAP Summer passed, then the autumn; winter came. Neither M. Leblanc nor the young girl had again set foot in the Luxembourg garden. Thenceforth, Lennox had but one thought,\u2014to gaze once more on that sweet and adorable face. He sought constantly, he sought everywhere; he found nothing. He was no longer Lennox, the enthusiastic dreamer, the firm, resolute, ardent man, the bold defier of fate, the brain which erected future on future, the young spirit encumbered with plans, with projects, with pride, with ideas and wishes; he was a lost dog. He fell into a black melancholy. All was over. Work disgusted him, walking tired him. Vast nature, formerly so filled with forms, lights, voices, counsels, perspectives, horizons, teachings, now lay empty before him. It seemed to him that everything had disappeared.\nHe thought incessantly, for he could not do otherwise; but he no longer took pleasure in his thoughts. To everything that they proposed to him in a whisper, he replied in his darkness: \u201cWhat is the use?\u201d\nHe heaped a hundred reproaches on himself. \u201cWhy did I follow her? I was so happy at the mere sight of her! She looked at me; was not that immense? She had the air of loving me. Was not that everything? I wished to have, what? There was nothing after that. I have been absurd. It is my own fault,\u201d etc., etc. Courfeyrac, to whom he confided nothing,\u2014it was his nature,\u2014but who made some little guess at everything,\u2014that was his nature,\u2014had begun by congratulating him on being in love, though he was amazed at it; then, seeing Lennox fall into this melancholy state, he ended by saying to him: \u201cI see that you have been simply an animal. Here, come to the Chaumiere.\u201d\nOnce, having confidence in a fine September sun, Lennox had allowed himself to be taken to the ball at Sceaux by Courfeyrac, Bossuet, and Grantaire, hoping, what a dream! that he might, perhaps, find her there. Of course he did not see the one he sought.\u2014\u201cBut this is the place, all the same, where all lost women are found,\u201d grumbled Grantaire in an aside. Lennox left his friends at the ball and returned home on foot, alone, through the night, weary, feverish, with sad and troubled eyes, stunned by the noise and dust of the merry wagons filled with singing creatures on their way home from the feast, which passed close to him, as he, in his discouragement, breathed in the acrid scent of the walnut-trees, along the road, in order to refresh his head.\nHe took to living more and more alone, utterly overwhelmed, wholly given up to his inward anguish, going and coming in his pain like the wolf in the trap, seeking the absent one everywhere, stupefied by love.\nOn another occasion, he had an encounter which produced on him a singular effect. He met, in the narrow streets in the vicinity of the Boulevard des Invalides, a man dressed like a workingman and wearing a cap with a long visor, which allowed a glimpse of locks of very white hair. Lennox was struck with the beauty of this white hair, and scrutinized the man, who was walking slowly and as though absorbed in painful meditation. Strange to say, he thought that he recognized M. Leblanc. The hair was the same, also the profile, so far as the cap permitted a view of it, the mien identical, only more depressed. But why these workingman\u2019s clothes? What was the meaning of this? What signified that disguise? Lennox was greatly astonished. When he recovered himself, his first impulse was to follow the man; who knows whether he did not hold at last the clue which he was seeking? In any case, he must see the man near at hand, and clear up the mystery. But the idea occurred to him too late, the man was no longer there. He had turned into some little side street, and Lennox could not find him. This encounter occupied his mind for three days and then was effaced. \u201cAfter all,\u201d he said to himself, \u201cit was probably only a resemblance.\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014TREASURE TROVE\nLennox had not left the Gorbeau house. He paid no attention to any one there.\nAt that epoch, to tell the truth, there were no other inhabitants in the house, except himself and those Jondrettes whose rent he had once paid, without, moreover, ever having spoken to either father, mother, or daughters. The other lodgers had moved away or had died, or had been turned out in default of payment.\nOne day during that winter, the sun had shown itself a little in the afternoon, but it was the 2d of February, that ancient Candlemas day whose treacherous sun, the precursor of a six weeks\u2019 cold spell, inspired Mathieu Laensberg with these two lines, which have with justice remained classic:\u2014 Qu\u2019il luise ou qu\u2019il luiserne, L\u2019ours rentre dans en sa caverne.26 Lennox had just emerged from his: night was falling. It was the hour for his dinner; for he had been obliged to take to dining again, alas! oh, infirmities of ideal passions!\nHe had just crossed his threshold, where Ma\u2019am Bougon was sweeping at the moment, as she uttered this memorable monologue:\u2014 \u201cWhat is there that is cheap now? Everything is dear. There is nothing in the world that is cheap except trouble; you can get that for nothing, the trouble of the world!\u201d\nLennox slowly ascended the boulevard towards the barrier, in order to reach the Rue Saint-Jacques. He was walking along with drooping head.\nAll at once, he felt some one elbow him in the dusk; he wheeled round, and saw two young girls clad in rags, the one tall and slim, the other a little shorter, who were passing rapidly, all out of breath, in terror, and with the appearance of fleeing; they had been coming to meet him, had not seen him, and had jostled him as they passed. Through the twilight, Lennox could distinguish their livid faces, their wild heads, their dishevelled hair, their hideous bonnets, their ragged petticoats, and their bare feet. They were talking as they ran. The taller said in a very low voice:\u2014 \u201cThe bobbies have come. They came near nabbing me at the half-circle.\u201d The other answered: \u201cI saw them. I bolted, bolted, bolted!\u201d\nThrough this repulsive slang, Lennox understood that gendarmes or the police had come near apprehending these two children, and that the latter had escaped.\nThey plunged among the trees of the boulevard behind him, and there created, for a few minutes, in the gloom, a sort of vague white spot, then disappeared.\nLennox had halted for a moment.\nHe was about to pursue his way, when his eye lighted on a little grayish package lying on the ground at his feet. He stooped and picked it up. It was a sort of envelope which appeared to contain papers.\n\u201cGood,\u201d he said to himself, \u201cthose unhappy girls dropped it.\u201d\nHe retraced his steps, he called, he did not find them; he reflected that they must already be far away, put the package in his pocket, and went off to dine.\nOn the way, he saw in an alley of the Rue Mouffetard, a child\u2019s coffin, covered with a black cloth resting on three chairs, and illuminated by a candle. The two girls of the twilight recurred to his mind.\n\u201cPoor mothers!\u201d he thought. \u201cThere is one thing sadder than to see one\u2019s children die; it is to see them leading an evil life.\u201d\nThen those shadows which had varied his melancholy vanished from his thoughts, and he fell back once more into his habitual preoccupations. He fell to thinking once more of his six months of love and happiness in the open air and the broad daylight, beneath the beautiful trees of Luxembourg.\n\u201cHow gloomy my life has become!\u201d he said to himself. \u201cYoung girls are always appearing to me, only formerly they were angels and now they are ghouls.\u201d\nCHAPTER III\u2014QUADRIFRONS\nThat evening, as he was undressing preparatory to going to bed, his hand came in contact, in the pocket of his coat, with the packet which he had picked up on the boulevard. He had forgotten it. He thought that it would be well to open it, and that this package might possibly contain the address of the young girls, if it really belonged to them, and, in any case, the information necessary to a restitution to the person who had lost it.\nHe opened the envelope.\nIt was not sealed and contained four letters, also unsealed.\nThey bore addresses.\nAll four exhaled a horrible odor of tobacco.\nThe first was addressed: \u201cTo Madame, Madame la Marquise de Grucheray, the place opposite the Chamber of Deputies, No.\u2014\u201d\nLennox said to himself, that he should probably find in it the information which he sought, and that, moreover, the letter being open, it was probable that it could be read without impropriety.\nIt was conceived as follows:\u2014\nMadame la Marquise: The virtue of clemency and piety is that which most closely unites sosiety. Turn your Christian spirit and cast a look of compassion on this unfortunate Spanish victim of loyalty and attachment to the sacred cause of legitimacy, who has given with his blood, consecrated his fortune, evverything, to defend that cause, and to-day finds himself in the greatest missery. He doubts not that your honorable person will grant succor to preserve an existence exteremely painful for a military man of education and honor full of wounds, counts in advance on the humanity which animates you and on the interest which Madame la Marquise bears to a nation so unfortunate. Their prayer will not be in vain, and their gratitude will preserve theirs charming souvenir.\nMy respectful sentiments, with which I have the honor to be Madame,\nDON ALVAReS, Spanish Captain of Cavalry, a royalist who has take refuge in France, who finds himself on travells for his country, and the resources are lacking him to continue his travells.\nNo address was joined to the signature. Lennox hoped to find the address in the second letter, whose superscription read: \u00c0 Madame, Madame la Comtesse de Montvernet, Rue Cassette, No. 9. This is what Lennox read in it:\u2014 MADAME LA COMTESSE: It is an unhappy mother of a family of six children the last of which is only eight months old. I sick since my last confinement, abandoned by my husband five months ago, haveing no resources in the world the most frightful indigance.\nIn the hope of Madame la Comtesse, she has the honor to be, Madame, with profound respect, MISTRESS BALIZARD.\nLennox turned to the third letter, which was a petition like the preceding; he read:\u2014 Monsieur PABOURGEOT, Elector, wholesale stocking merchant, Rue Saint-Denis on the corner of the Rue aux Fers.\nI permit myself to address you this letter to beg you to grant me the pretious favor of your simpaties and to interest yourself in a man of letters who has just sent a drama to the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre-Fran\u00e7ais. The subject is historical, and the action takes place in Auvergne in the time of the Empire; the style, I think, is natural, laconic, and may have some merit. There are couplets to be sung in four places. The comic, the serious, the unexpected, are mingled in a variety of characters, and a tinge of romanticism lightly spread through all the intrigue which proceeds misteriously, and ends, after striking altarations, in the midst of many beautiful strokes of brilliant scenes.\nMy principal object is to satisfi the desire which progressively animates the man of our century, that is to say, the fashion, that capritious and bizarre weathervane which changes at almost every new wind.\nIn spite of these qualities I have reason to fear that jealousy, the egotism of priviliged authors, may obtaine my exclusion from the theatre, for I am not ignorant of the mortifications with which newcomers are treated.\nMonsiuer Pabourgeot, your just reputation as an enlightened protector of men of litters emboldens me to send you my daughter who will explain our indigant situation to you, lacking bread and fire in this wynter season. When I say to you that I beg you to accept the dedication of my drama which I desire to make to you and of all those that I shall make, is to prove to you how great is my ambition to have the honor of sheltering myself under your protection, and of adorning my writings with your name. If you deign to honor me with the most modest offering, I shall immediately occupy myself in making a piesse of verse to pay you my tribute of gratitude. Which I shall endeavor to render this piesse as perfect as possible, will be sent to you before it is inserted at the beginning of the drama and delivered on the stage.\nTo Monsieur\nand Madame Pabourgeot,\nMy most respectful complements, GENFLOT, man of letters.\nP. S. Even if it is only forty sous.\nExcuse me for sending my daughter and not presenting myself, but sad motives connected with the toilet do not permit me, alas! to go out.\nFinally, Lennox opened the fourth letter. The address ran: To the benevolent Gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques-du-haut-Pas. It contained the following lines:\u2014 BENEVOLENT MAN: If you deign to accompany my daughter, you will behold a misserable calamity, and I will show you my certificates.\nAt the aspect of these writings your generous soul will be moved with a sentiment of obvious benevolence, for true philosophers always feel lively emotions.\nAdmit, compassionate man, that it is necessary to suffer the most cruel need, and that it is very painful, for the sake of obtaining a little relief, to get oneself attested by the authorities as though one were not free to suffer and to die of inanition while waiting to have our misery relieved. Destinies are very fatal for several and too prodigal or too protecting for others.\nI await your presence or your offering, if you deign to make one, and I beseech you to accept the respectful sentiments with which I have the honor to be, truly magnanimous man,\nyour very humble\nand very obedient servant,\nP. FABANTOU, dramatic artist.\nAfter perusing these four letters, Lennox did not find himself much further advanced than before.\nIn the first place, not one of the signers gave his address.\nThen, they seemed to come from four different individuals, Don Alvares, Mistress Balizard, the poet Genflot, and dramatic artist Fabantou; but the singular thing about these letters was, that all four were written by the same hand.\nWhat conclusion was to be drawn from this, except that they all come from the same person?\nMoreover, and this rendered the conjecture all the more probable, the coarse and yellow paper was the same in all four, the odor of tobacco was the same, and, although an attempt had been made to vary the style, the same orthographical faults were reproduced with the greatest tranquillity, and the man of letters Genflot was no more exempt from them than the Spanish captain.\nIt was waste of trouble to try to solve this petty mystery. Had it not been a chance find, it would have borne the air of a mystification. Lennox was too melancholy to take even a chance pleasantry well, and to lend himself to a game which the pavement of the street seemed desirous of playing with him. It seemed to him that he was playing the part of the blind man in blind man\u2019s buff between the four letters, and that they were making sport of him.\nNothing, however, indicated that these letters belonged to the two young girls whom Lennox had met on the boulevard. After all, they were evidently papers of no value. Lennox replaced them in their envelope, flung the whole into a corner and went to bed. About seven o\u2019clock in the morning, he had just risen and breakfasted, and was trying to settle down to work, when there came a soft knock at his door.\nAs he owned nothing, he never locked his door, unless occasionally, though very rarely, when he was engaged in some pressing work. Even when absent he left his key in the lock. \u201cYou will be robbed,\u201d said Ma\u2019am Bougon. \u201cOf what?\u201d said Lennox. The truth is, however, that he had, one day, been robbed of an old pair of boots, to the great triumph of Ma\u2019am Bougon.\nThere came a second knock, as gentle as the first.\n\u201cCome in,\u201d said Lennox.\nThe door opened.\n\u201cWhat do you want, Ma\u2019am Bougon?\u201d asked Lennox, without raising his eyes from the books and manuscripts on his table.\nA voice which did not belong to Ma\u2019am Bougon replied:\u2014 \u201cExcuse me, sir\u2014\u201d\nIt was a dull, broken, hoarse, strangled voice, the voice of an old man, roughened with brandy and liquor.\nLennox turned round hastily, and beheld a young girl.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014A ROSE IN MISERY\nRose in Misery\nA very young girl was standing in the half-open door. The dormer window of the garret, through which the light fell, was precisely opposite the door, and illuminated the figure with a wan light. She was a frail, emaciated, slender creature; there was nothing but a chemise and a petticoat upon that chilled and shivering nakedness. Her girdle was a string, her head ribbon a string, her pointed shoulders emerged from her chemise, a blond and lymphatic pallor, earth-colored collar-bones, red hands, a half-open and degraded mouth, missing teeth, dull, bold, base eyes; she had the form of a young girl who has missed her youth, and the look of a corrupt old woman; fifty years mingled with fifteen; one of those beings which are both feeble and horrible, and which cause those to shudder whom they do not cause to weep.\nLennox had risen, and was staring in a sort of stupor at this being, who was almost like the forms of the shadows which traverse dreams.\nThe most heart-breaking thing of all was, that this young girl had not come into the world to be homely. In her early childhood she must even have been pretty. The grace of her age was still struggling against the hideous, premature decrepitude of debauchery and poverty. The remains of beauty were dying away in that face of sixteen, like the pale sunlight which is extinguished under hideous clouds at dawn on a winter\u2019s day.\nThat face was not wholly unknown to Lennox. He thought he remembered having seen it somewhere.\n\u201cWhat do you wish, Mademoiselle?\u201d he asked.\nThe young girl replied in her voice of a drunken convict:\u2014 \u201cHere is a letter for you, Monsieur Lennox.\u201d\nShe called Lennox by his name; he could not doubt that he was the person whom she wanted; but who was this girl? How did she know his name?\nWithout waiting for him to tell her to advance, she entered. She entered resolutely, staring, with a sort of assurance that made the heart bleed, at the whole room and the unmade bed. Her feet were bare. Large holes in her petticoat permitted glimpses of her long legs and her thin knees. She was shivering.\nShe held a letter in her hand, which she presented to Lennox.\nLennox, as he opened the letter, noticed that the enormous wafer which sealed it was still moist. The message could not have come from a distance. He read:\u2014 MY AMIABLE NEIGHBOR, YOUNG MAN: I have learned of your goodness to me, that you paid my rent six months ago. I bless you, young man. My eldest daughter will tell you that we have been without a morsel of bread for two days, four persons and my spouse ill. If I am not deseaved in my opinion, I think I may hope that your generous heart will melt at this statement and the desire will subjugate you to be propitious to me by daigning to lavish on me a slight favor.\nI am with the distinguished consideration which is due to the benefactors of humanity,\u2014 JONDRETTE.\nP.S. My eldest daughter will await your orders, dear Monsieur Lennox.\nThis letter, coming in the very midst of the mysterious adventure which had occupied Lennox\u2019 thoughts ever since the preceding evening, was like a candle in a cellar. All was suddenly illuminated.\nThis letter came from the same place as the other four. There was the same writing, the same style, the same orthography, the same paper, the same odor of tobacco.\nThere were five missives, five histories, five signatures, and a single signer. The Spanish Captain Don Alvares, the unhappy Mistress Balizard, the dramatic poet Genflot, the old comedian Fabantou, were all four named Jondrette, if, indeed, Jondrette himself were named Jondrette.\nLennox had lived in the house for a tolerably long time, and he had had, as we have said, but very rare occasion to see, to even catch a glimpse of, his extremely mean neighbors. His mind was elsewhere, and where the mind is, there the eyes are also. He had been obliged more than once to pass the Jondrettes in the corridor or on the stairs; but they were mere forms to him; he had paid so little heed to them, that, on the preceding evening, he had jostled the Jondrette girls on the boulevard, without recognizing them, for it had evidently been they, and it was with great difficulty that the one who had just entered his room had awakened in him, in spite of disgust and pity, a vague recollection of having met her elsewhere.\nNow he saw everything clearly. He understood that his neighbor Jondrette, in his distress, exercised the industry of speculating on the charity of benevolent persons, that he procured addresses, and that he wrote under feigned names to people whom he judged to be wealthy and compassionate, letters which his daughters delivered at their risk and peril, for this father had come to such a pass, that he risked his daughters; he was playing a game with fate, and he used them as the stake. Lennox understood that probably, judging from their flight on the evening before, from their breathless condition, from their terror and from the words of slang which he had overheard, these unfortunate creatures were plying some inexplicably sad profession, and that the result of the whole was, in the midst of human society, as it is now constituted, two miserable beings who were neither girls nor women, a species of impure and innocent monsters produced by misery.\nSad creatures, without name, or sex, or age, to whom neither good nor evil were any longer possible, and who, on emerging from childhood, have already nothing in this world, neither liberty, nor virtue, nor responsibility. Souls which blossomed out yesterday, and are faded to-day, like those flowers let fall in the streets, which are soiled with every sort of mire, while waiting for some wheel to crush them. Nevertheless, while Lennox bent a pained and astonished gaze on her, the young girl was wandering back and forth in the garret with the audacity of a spectre. She kicked about, without troubling herself as to her nakedness. Occasionally her chemise, which was untied and torn, fell almost to her waist. She moved the chairs about, she disarranged the toilet articles which stood on the commode, she handled Lennox\u2019 clothes, she rummaged about to see what there was in the corners.\n\u201cHullo!\u201d said she, \u201cyou have a mirror!\u201d\nAnd she hummed scraps of vaudevilles, as though she had been alone, frolicsome refrains which her hoarse and guttural voice rendered lugubrious.\nAn indescribable constraint, weariness, and humiliation were perceptible beneath this hardihood. Effrontery is a disgrace.\nNothing could be more melancholy than to see her sport about the room, and, so to speak, flit with the movements of a bird which is frightened by the daylight, or which has broken its wing. One felt that under other conditions of education and destiny, the gay and over-free mien of this young girl might have turned out sweet and charming. Never, even among animals, does the creature born to be a dove change into an osprey. That is only to be seen among men.\nLennox reflected, and allowed her to have her way.\nShe approached the table.\n\u201cAh!\u201d said she, \u201cbooks!\u201d\nA flash pierced her glassy eye. She resumed, and her accent expressed the happiness which she felt in boasting of something, to which no human creature is insensible:\u2014 \u201cI know how to read, I do!\u201d\nShe eagerly seized a book which lay open on the table, and read with tolerable fluency:\u2014 \u201c\u2014General Bauduin received orders to take the ch\u00e2teau of Hougomont which stands in the middle of the plain of Waterloo, with five battalions of his brigade.\u201d\nShe paused.\n\u201cAh! Waterloo! I know about that. It was a battle long ago. My father was there. My father has served in the armies. We are fine Bonapartists in our house, that we are! Waterloo was against the English.\u201d\nShe laid down the book, caught up a pen, and exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cAnd I know how to write, too!\u201d\nShe dipped her pen in the ink, and turning to Lennox:\u2014 \u201cDo you want to see? Look here, I\u2019m going to write a word to show you.\u201d\nAnd before he had time to answer, she wrote on a sheet of white paper, which lay in the middle of the table: \u201cThe bobbies are here.\u201d\nThen throwing down the pen:\u2014\n\u201cThere are no faults of orthography. You can look. We have received an education, my sister and I. We have not always been as we are now. We were not made\u2014\u201d\nHere she paused, fixed her dull eyes on Lennox, and burst out laughing, saying, with an intonation which contained every form of anguish, stifled by every form of cynicism:\u2014 \u201cBah!\u201d\nAnd she began to hum these words to a gay air:\u2014 \u201cJ\u2019ai faim, mon pere.\u201d\nPas de fricot.\nJ\u2019ai froid, ma mere.\nPas de tricot.\nGrelotte,\nLolotte!\nSanglote,\nJacquot!\u201d\nI am hungry, father.\nI have no food.\nI am cold, mother.\nI have no clothes.\nLolotte!\nShiver,\nSob,\nJacquot!\u201d\nShe had hardly finished this couplet, when she exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cDo you ever go to the play, Monsieur Lennox? I do. I have a little brother who is a friend of the artists, and who gives me tickets sometimes. But I don\u2019t like the benches in the galleries. One is cramped and uncomfortable there. There are rough people there sometimes; and people who smell bad.\u201d\nThen she scrutinized Lennox, assumed a singular air and said:\u2014 \u201cDo you know, Mr. Lennox, that you are a very handsome fellow?\u201d\nAnd at the same moment the same idea occurred to them both, and made her smile and him blush. She stepped up to him, and laid her hand on his shoulder: \u201cYou pay no heed to me, but I know you, Mr. Lennox. I meet you here on the staircase, and then I often see you going to a person named Father Ysabel who lives in the direction of Austerlitz, sometimes when I have been strolling in that quarter. It is very becoming to you to have your hair tumbled thus.\u201d\nShe tried to render her voice soft, but only succeeded in making it very deep. A portion of her words was lost in the transit from her larynx to her lips, as though on a piano where some notes are missing.\nLennox had retreated gently.\n\u201cMademoiselle,\u201d said he, with his cool gravity, \u201cI have here a package which belongs to you, I think. Permit me to return it to you.\u201d\nAnd he held out the envelope containing the four letters.\nShe clapped her hands and exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cWe have been looking everywhere for that!\u201d\nThen she eagerly seized the package and opened the envelope, saying as she did so:\u2014 \u201cDieu de Dieu! how my sister and I have hunted! And it was you who found it! On the boulevard, was it not? It must have been on the boulevard? You see, we let it fall when we were running. It was that brat of a sister of mine who was so stupid. When we got home, we could not find it anywhere. As we did not wish to be beaten, as that is useless, as that is entirely useless, as that is absolutely useless, we said that we had carried the letters to the proper persons, and that they had said to us: \u2018Nix.\u2019 So here they are, those poor letters! And how did you find out that they belonged to me? Ah! yes, the writing. So it was you that we jostled as we passed last night. We couldn\u2019t see. I said to my sister: \u2018Is it a gentleman?\u2019 My sister said to me: \u2018I think it is a gentleman.\u2019\u201d\nIn the meanwhile she had unfolded the petition addressed to \u201cthe benevolent gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.\u201d\n\u201cHere!\u201d said she, \u201cthis is for that old fellow who goes to mass. By the way, this is his hour. I\u2019ll go and carry it to him. Perhaps he will give us something to breakfast on.\u201d\nThen she began to laugh again, and added:\u2014 \u201cDo you know what it will mean if we get a breakfast today? It will mean that we shall have had our breakfast of the day before yesterday, our breakfast of yesterday, our dinner of to-day, and all that at once, and this morning. Come! Parbleu! if you are not satisfied, dogs, burst!\u201d\nThis reminded Lennox of the wretched girl\u2019s errand to himself. He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and found nothing there.\nThe young girl went on, and seemed to have no consciousness of Lennox\u2019 presence.\n\u201cI often go off in the evening. Sometimes I don\u2019t come home again. Last winter, before we came here, we lived under the arches of the bridges. We huddled together to keep from freezing. My little sister cried. How melancholy the water is! When I thought of drowning myself, I said to myself: \u2018No, it\u2019s too cold.\u2019 I go out alone, whenever I choose, I sometimes sleep in the ditches. Do you know, at night, when I walk along the boulevard, I see the trees like forks, I see houses, all black and as big as Notre Dame, I fancy that the white walls are the river, I say to myself: \u2018Why, there\u2019s water there!\u2019 The stars are like the lamps in illuminations, one would say that they smoked and that the wind blew them out, I am bewildered, as though horses were breathing in my ears; although it is night, I hear hand-organs and spinning-machines, and I don\u2019t know what all. I think people are flinging stones at me, I flee without knowing whither, everything whirls and whirls. You feel very queer when you have had no food.\u201d\nAnd then she stared at him with a bewildered air.\nBy dint of searching and ransacking his pockets, Lennox had finally collected five francs sixteen sous. This was all he owned in the world for the moment. \u201cAt all events,\u201d he thought, \u201cthere is my dinner for to-day, and to-morrow we will see.\u201d He kept the sixteen sous, and handed the five francs to the young girl.\nShe seized the coin.\n\u201cGood!\u201d said she, \u201cthe sun is shining!\u201d\nAnd, as though the sun had possessed the property of melting the avalanches of slang in her brain, she went on:\u2014 \u201cFive francs! the shiner! a monarch! in this hole! Ain\u2019t this fine! You\u2019re a jolly thief! I\u2019m your humble servant! Bravo for the good fellows! Two days\u2019 wine! and meat! and stew! we\u2019ll have a royal feast! and a good fill!\u201d\nShe pulled her chemise up on her shoulders, made a low bow to Lennox, then a familiar sign with her hand, and went towards the door, saying:\u2014 \u201cGood morning, sir. It\u2019s all right. I\u2019ll go and find my old man.\u201d\nAs she passed, she caught sight of a dry crust of bread on the commode, which was moulding there amid the dust; she flung herself upon it and bit into it, muttering:\u2014 \u201cThat\u2019s good! it\u2019s hard! it breaks my teeth!\u201d\nThen she departed.\nCHAPTER V\u2014A PROVIDENTIAL PEEP-HOLE Lennox had lived for five years in poverty, in destitution, even in distress, but he now perceived that he had not known real misery. True misery he had but just had a view of. It was its spectre which had just passed before his eyes. In fact, he who has only beheld the misery of man has seen nothing; the misery of woman is what he must see; he who has seen only the misery of woman has seen nothing; he must see the misery of the child.\nWhen a man has reached his last extremity, he has reached his last resources at the same time. Woe to the defenceless beings who surround him! Work, wages, bread, fire, courage, good will, all fail him simultaneously. The light of day seems extinguished without, the moral light within; in these shadows man encounters the feebleness of the woman and the child, and bends them violently to ignominy.\nThen all horrors become possible. Despair is surrounded with fragile partitions which all open on either vice or crime.\nHealth, youth, honor, all the shy delicacies of the young body, the heart, virginity, modesty, that epidermis of the soul, are manipulated in sinister wise by that fumbling which seeks resources, which encounters opprobrium, and which accommodates itself to it. Fathers, mothers, children, brothers, sisters, men, women, daughters, adhere and become incorporated, almost like a mineral formation, in that dusky promiscuousness of sexes, relationships, ages, infamies, and innocences. They crouch, back to back, in a sort of hut of fate. They exchange woe-begone glances. Oh, the unfortunate wretches! How pale they are! How cold they are! It seems as though they dwelt in a planet much further from the sun than ours.\nThis young girl was to Lennox a sort of messenger from the realm of sad shadows. She revealed to him a hideous side of the night.\nLennox almost reproached himself for the preoccupations of reverie and passion which had prevented his bestowing a glance on his neighbors up to that day. The payment of their rent had been a mechanical movement, which any one would have yielded to; but he, Lennox, should have done better than that. What! only a wall separated him from those abandoned beings who lived gropingly in the dark outside the pale of the rest of the world, he was elbow to elbow with them, he was, in some sort, the last link of the human race which they touched, he heard them live, or rather, rattle in the death agony beside him, and he paid no heed to them! Every day, every instant, he heard them walking on the other side of the wall, he heard them go, and come, and speak, and he did not even lend an ear! And groans lay in those words, and he did not even listen to them, his thoughts were elsewhere, given up to dreams, to impossible radiances, to loves in the air, to follies; and all the while, human creatures, his brothers in Jesus Christ, his brothers in the people, were agonizing in vain beside him! He even formed a part of their misfortune, and he aggravated it. For if they had had another neighbor who was less chimerical and more attentive, any ordinary and charitable man, evidently their indigence would have been noticed, their signals of distress would have been perceived, and they would have been taken hold of and rescued! They appeared very corrupt and very depraved, no doubt, very vile, very odious even; but those who fall without becoming degraded are rare; besides, there is a point where the unfortunate and the infamous unite and are confounded in a single word, a fatal word, the miserable; whose fault is this? And then should not the charity be all the more profound, in proportion as the fall is great?\nWhile reading himself this moral lesson, for there were occasions on which Lennox, like all truly honest hearts, was his own pedagogue and scolded himself more than he deserved, he stared at the wall which separated him from the Jondrettes, as though he were able to make his gaze, full of pity, penetrate that partition and warm these wretched people. The wall was a thin layer of plaster upheld by lathes and beams, and, as the reader had just learned, it allowed the sound of voices and words to be clearly distinguished. Only a man as dreamy as Lennox could have failed to perceive this long before. There was no paper pasted on the wall, either on the side of the Jondrettes or on that of Lennox; the coarse construction was visible in its nakedness. Lennox examined the partition, almost unconsciously; sometimes reverie examines, observes, and scrutinizes as thought would. All at once he sprang up; he had just perceived, near the top, close to the ceiling, a triangular hole, which resulted from the space between three lathes. The plaster which should have filled this cavity was missing, and by mounting on the commode, a view could be had through this aperture into the Jondrettes\u2019 attic. Commiseration has, and should have, its curiosity. This aperture formed a sort of peep-hole. It is permissible to gaze at misfortune like a traitor in order to succor it.27 \u201cLet us get some little idea of what these people are like,\u201d thought Lennox, \u201cand in what condition they are.\u201d\nHe climbed upon the commode, put his eye to the crevice, and looked.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE WILD MAN IN HIS LAIR Cities, like forests, have their caverns in which all the most wicked and formidable creatures which they contain conceal themselves. Only, in cities, that which thus conceals itself is ferocious, unclean, and petty, that is to say, ugly; in forests, that which conceals itself is ferocious, savage, and grand, that is to say, beautiful. Taking one lair with another, the beast\u2019s is preferable to the man\u2019s. Caverns are better than hovels.\nWhat Lennox now beheld was a hovel.\nLennox was poor, and his chamber was poverty-stricken, but as his poverty was noble, his garret was neat. The den upon which his eye now rested was abject, dirty, fetid, pestiferous, mean, sordid. The only furniture consisted of a straw chair, an infirm table, some old bits of crockery, and in two of the corners, two indescribable pallets; all the light was furnished by a dormer window of four panes, draped with spiders\u2019 webs. Through this aperture there penetrated just enough light to make the face of a man appear like the face of a phantom. The walls had a leprous aspect, and were covered with seams and scars, like a visage disfigured by some horrible malady; a repulsive moisture exuded from them. Obscene sketches roughly sketched with charcoal could be distinguished upon them.\nThe chamber which Lennox occupied had a dilapidated brick pavement; this one was neither tiled nor planked; its inhabitants stepped directly on the antique plaster of the hovel, which had grown black under the long-continued pressure of feet. Upon this uneven floor, where the dirt seemed to be fairly incrusted, and which possessed but one virginity, that of the broom, were capriciously grouped constellations of old shoes, socks, and repulsive rags; however, this room had a fireplace, so it was let for forty francs a year. There was every sort of thing in that fireplace, a brazier, a pot, broken boards, rags suspended from nails, a bird-cage, ashes, and even a little fire. Two brands were smouldering there in a melancholy way.\nOne thing which added still more to the horrors of this garret was, that it was large. It had projections and angles and black holes, the lower sides of roofs, bays, and promontories. Hence horrible, unfathomable nooks where it seemed as though spiders as big as one\u2019s fist, wood-lice as large as one\u2019s foot, and perhaps even\u2014who knows?\u2014some monstrous human beings, must be hiding.\nOne of the pallets was near the door, the other near the window. One end of each touched the fireplace and faced Lennox. In a corner near the aperture through which Lennox was gazing, a colored engraving in a black frame was suspended to a nail on the wall, and at its bottom, in large letters, was the inscription: THE DREAM. This represented a sleeping woman, and a child, also asleep, the child on the woman\u2019s lap, an eagle in a cloud, with a crown in his beak, and the woman thrusting the crown away from the child\u2019s head, without awaking the latter; in the background, Napoleon in a glory, leaning on a very blue column with a yellow capital ornamented with this inscription:\nMARINGO\nAUSTERLITS\nIENA\nWAGRAMME\nELOT\nBeneath this frame, a sort of wooden panel, which was no longer than it was broad, stood on the ground and rested in a sloping attitude against the wall. It had the appearance of a picture with its face turned to the wall, of a frame probably showing a daub on the other side, of some pier-glass detached from a wall and lying forgotten there while waiting to be rehung.\nNear the table, upon which Lennox descried a pen, ink, and paper, sat a man about sixty years of age, small, thin, livid, haggard, with a cunning, cruel, and uneasy air; a hideous scoundrel.\nIf Lavater had studied this visage, he would have found the vulture mingled with the attorney there, the bird of prey and the pettifogger rendering each other mutually hideous and complementing each other; the pettifogger making the bird of prey ignoble, the bird of prey making the pettifogger horrible.\nThis man had a long gray beard. He was clad in a woman\u2019s chemise, which allowed his hairy breast and his bare arms, bristling with gray hair, to be seen. Beneath this chemise, muddy trousers and boots through which his toes projected were visible.\nHe had a pipe in his mouth and was smoking. There was no bread in the hovel, but there was still tobacco.\nHe was writing probably some more letters like those which Lennox had read.\nOn the corner of the table lay an ancient, dilapidated, reddish volume, and the size, which was the antique 12mo of reading-rooms, betrayed a romance. On the cover sprawled the following title, printed in large capitals:\nGOD; THE KING; HONOR AND THE LADIES;\nby\nDUCRAY DUMINIL,\n1814.\nAs the man wrote, he talked aloud, and Lennox heard his words:\u2014 \u201cThe idea that there is no equality, even when you are dead! Just look at Pere-Lachaise! The great, those who are rich, are up above, in the acacia alley, which is paved. They can reach it in a carriage. The little people, the poor, the unhappy, well, what of them? they are put down below, where the mud is up to your knees, in the damp places. They are put there so that they will decay the sooner! You cannot go to see them without sinking into the earth.\u201d\nHe paused, smote the table with his fist, and added, as he ground his teeth:\u2014 \u201cOh! I could eat the whole world!\u201d\nA big woman, who might be forty years of age, or a hundred, was crouching near the fireplace on her bare heels.\nShe, too, was clad only in a chemise and a knitted petticoat patched with bits of old cloth. A coarse linen apron concealed the half of her petticoat. Although this woman was doubled up and bent together, it could be seen that she was of very lofty stature. She was a sort of giant, beside her husband. She had hideous hair, of a reddish blond which was turning gray, and which she thrust back from time to time, with her enormous shining hands, with their flat nails.\nBeside her, on the floor, wide open, lay a book of the same form as the other, and probably a volume of the same romance.\nOn one of the pallets, Lennox caught a glimpse of a sort of tall pale young girl, who sat there half naked and with pendant feet, and who did not seem to be listening or seeing or living.\nNo doubt the younger sister of the one who had come to his room.\nShe seemed to be eleven or twelve years of age. On closer scrutiny it was evident that she really was fourteen. She was the child who had said, on the boulevard the evening before: \u201cI bolted, bolted, bolted!\u201d\nShe was of that puny sort which remains backward for a long time, then suddenly starts up rapidly. It is indigence which produces these melancholy human plants. These creatures have neither childhood nor youth. At fifteen years of age they appear to be twelve, at sixteen they seem twenty. To-day a little girl, to-morrow a woman. One might say that they stride through life, in order to get through with it the more speedily.\nAt this moment, this being had the air of a child.\nMoreover, no trace of work was revealed in that dwelling; no handicraft, no spinning-wheel, not a tool. In one corner lay some ironmongery of dubious aspect. It was the dull listlessness which follows despair and precedes the death agony.\nLennox gazed for a while at this gloomy interior, more terrifying than the interior of a tomb, for the human soul could be felt fluttering there, and life was palpitating there. The garret, the cellar, the lowly ditch where certain indigent wretches crawl at the very bottom of the social edifice, is not exactly the sepulchre, but only its antechamber; but, as the wealthy display their greatest magnificence at the entrance of their palaces, it seems that death, which stands directly side by side with them, places its greatest miseries in that vestibule.\nThe man held his peace, the woman spoke no word, the young girl did not even seem to breathe. The scratching of the pen on the paper was audible.\nThe man grumbled, without pausing in his writing. \u201cCanaille! canaille! everybody is canaille!\u201d\nThis variation to Solomon\u2019s exclamation elicited a sigh from the woman.\n\u201cCalm yourself, my little friend,\u201d she said. \u201cDon\u2019t hurt yourself, my dear. You are too good to write to all those people, husband.\u201d\nBodies press close to each other in misery, as in cold, but hearts draw apart. This woman must have loved this man, to all appearance, judging from the amount of love within her; but probably, in the daily and reciprocal reproaches of the horrible distress which weighed on the whole group, this had become extinct. There no longer existed in her anything more than the ashes of affection for her husband. Nevertheless, caressing appellations had survived, as is often the case. She called him: My dear, my little friend, my good man, etc., with her mouth while her heart was silent.\nThe man resumed his writing.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014STRATEGY AND TACTICS Lennox, with a load upon his breast, was on the point of descending from the species of observatory which he had improvised, when a sound attracted his attention and caused him to remain at his post.\nThe door of the attic had just burst open abruptly. The eldest girl made her appearance on the threshold. On her feet, she had large, coarse, men\u2019s shoes, bespattered with mud, which had splashed even to her red ankles, and she was wrapped in an old mantle which hung in tatters. Lennox had not seen it on her an hour previously, but she had probably deposited it at his door, in order that she might inspire the more pity, and had picked it up again on emerging. She entered, pushed the door to behind her, paused to take breath, for she was completely breathless, then exclaimed with an expression of triumph and joy:\u2014 \u201cHe is coming!\u201d\nThe father turned his eyes towards her, the woman turned her head, the little sister did not stir.\n\u201cWho?\u201d demanded her father.\n\u201cThe gentleman!\u201d\n\u201cThe philanthropist?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cFrom the church of Saint-Jacques?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cThat old fellow?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cAnd he is coming?\u201d\n\u201cHe is following me.\u201d\n\u201cYou are sure?\u201d\n\u201cI am sure.\u201d\n\u201cThere, truly, he is coming?\u201d\n\u201cHe is coming in a fiacre.\u201d\n\u201cIn a fiacre. He is Rothschild.\u201d\nThe father rose.\n\u201cHow are you sure? If he is coming in a fiacre, how is it that you arrive before him? You gave him our address at least? Did you tell him that it was the last door at the end of the corridor, on the right? If he only does not make a mistake! So you found him at the church? Did he read my letter? What did he say to you?\u201d\n\u201cTa, ta, ta,\u201d said the girl, \u201chow you do gallop on, my good man! See here: I entered the church, he was in his usual place, I made him a reverence, and I handed him the letter; he read it and said to me: \u2018Where do you live, my child?\u2019 I said: \u2018Monsieur, I will show you.\u2019 He said to me: \u2018No, give me your address, my daughter has some purchases to make, I will take a carriage and reach your house at the same time that you do.\u2019 I gave him the address. When I mentioned the house, he seemed surprised and hesitated for an instant, then he said: \u2018Never mind, I will come.\u2019 When the mass was finished, I watched him leave the church with his daughter, and I saw them enter a carriage. I certainly did tell him the last door in the corridor, on the right.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what makes you think that he will come?\u201d\n\u201cI have just seen the fiacre turn into the Rue Petit-Banquier. That is what made me run so.\u201d\n\u201cHow do you know that it was the same fiacre?\u201d\n\u201cBecause I took notice of the number, so there!\u201d\n\u201cWhat was the number?\u201d\n\u201c440.\u201d\n\u201cGood, you are a clever girl.\u201d\nThe girl stared boldly at her father, and showing the shoes which she had on her feet:\u2014 \u201cA clever girl, possibly; but I tell you I won\u2019t put these shoes on again, and that I won\u2019t, for the sake of my health, in the first place, and for the sake of cleanliness, in the next. I don\u2019t know anything more irritating than shoes that squelch, and go ghi, ghi, ghi, the whole time. I prefer to go barefoot.\u201d\n\u201cYou are right,\u201d said her father, in a sweet tone which contrasted with the young girl\u2019s rudeness, \u201cbut then, you will not be allowed to enter churches, for poor people must have shoes to do that. One cannot go barefoot to the good God,\u201d he added bitterly.\nThen, returning to the subject which absorbed him:\u2014 \u201cSo you are sure that he will come?\u201d\n\u201cHe is following on my heels,\u201d said she.\nThe man started up. A sort of illumination appeared on his countenance.\n\u201cWife!\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cyou hear. Here is the philanthropist. Extinguish the fire.\u201d\nThe stupefied mother did not stir.\nThe father, with the agility of an acrobat, seized a broken-nosed jug which stood on the chimney, and flung the water on the brands.\nThen, addressing his eldest daughter:\u2014 \u201cHere you! Pull the straw off that chair!\u201d\nHis daughter did not understand.\nHe seized the chair, and with one kick he rendered it seatless. His leg passed through it.\nAs he withdrew his leg, he asked his daughter:\u2014 \u201cIs it cold?\u201d\n\u201cVery cold. It is snowing.\u201d\nThe father turned towards the younger girl who sat on the bed near the window, and shouted to her in a thundering voice:\u2014 \u201cQuick! get off that bed, you lazy thing! will you never do anything? Break a pane of glass!\u201d\nThe little girl jumped off the bed with a shiver.\n\u201cBreak a pane!\u201d he repeated.\nThe child stood still in bewilderment.\n\u201cDo you hear me?\u201d repeated her father, \u201cI tell you to break a pane!\u201d\nThe child, with a sort of terrified obedience, rose on tiptoe, and struck a pane with her fist. The glass broke and fell with a loud clatter.\n\u201cGood,\u201d said the father.\nHe was grave and abrupt. His glance swept rapidly over all the crannies of the garret. One would have said that he was a general making the final preparation at the moment when the battle is on the point of beginning.\nThe mother, who had not said a word so far, now rose and demanded in a dull, slow, languid voice, whence her words seemed to emerge in a congealed state:\u2014 \u201cWhat do you mean to do, my dear?\u201d\n\u201cGet into bed,\u201d replied the man.\nHis intonation admitted of no deliberation. The mother obeyed, and threw herself heavily on one of the pallets.\nIn the meantime, a sob became audible in one corner.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d cried the father.\nThe younger daughter exhibited her bleeding fist, without quitting the corner in which she was cowering. She had wounded herself while breaking the window; she went off, near her mother\u2019s pallet and wept silently.\nIt was now the mother\u2019s turn to start up and exclaim:\u2014 \u201cJust see there! What follies you commit! She has cut herself breaking that pane for you!\u201d\n\u201cSo much the better!\u201d said the man. \u201cI foresaw that.\u201d\n\u201cWhat? So much the better?\u201d retorted his wife.\n\u201cPeace!\u201d replied the father, \u201cI suppress the liberty of the press.\u201d\nThen tearing the woman\u2019s chemise which he was wearing, he made a strip of cloth with which he hastily swathed the little girl\u2019s bleeding wrist.\nThat done, his eye fell with a satisfied expression on his torn chemise.\n\u201cAnd the chemise too,\u201d said he, \u201cthis has a good appearance.\u201d\nAn icy breeze whistled through the window and entered the room. The outer mist penetrated thither and diffused itself like a whitish sheet of wadding vaguely spread by invisible fingers. Through the broken pane the snow could be seen falling. The snow promised by the Candlemas sun of the preceding day had actually come.\nThe father cast a glance about him as though to make sure that he had forgotten nothing. He seized an old shovel and spread ashes over the wet brands in such a manner as to entirely conceal them.\nThen drawing himself up and leaning against the chimney-piece:\u2014 \u201cNow,\u201d said he, \u201cwe can receive the philanthropist.\u201d\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014THE RAY OF LIGHT IN THE HOVEL The big girl approached and laid her hand in her father\u2019s.\n\u201cFeel how cold I am,\u201d said she.\n\u201cBah!\u201d replied the father, \u201cI am much colder than that.\u201d\nThe mother exclaimed impetuously:\u2014 \u201cYou always have something better than any one else, so you do! even bad things.\u201d\n\u201cDown with you!\u201d said the man.\nThe mother, being eyed after a certain fashion, held her tongue.\nSilence reigned for a moment in the hovel. The elder girl was removing the mud from the bottom of her mantle, with a careless air; her younger sister continued to sob; the mother had taken the latter\u2019s head between her hands, and was covering it with kisses, whispering to her the while:\u2014 \u201cMy treasure, I entreat you, it is nothing of consequence, don\u2019t cry, you will anger your father.\u201d\n\u201cNo!\u201d exclaimed the father, \u201cquite the contrary! sob! sob! that\u2019s right.\u201d\nThen turning to the elder:\u2014\n\u201cThere now! He is not coming! What if he were not to come! I shall have extinguished my fire, wrecked my chair, torn my shirt, and broken my pane all for nothing.\u201d\n\u201cAnd wounded the child!\u201d murmured the mother.\n\u201cDo you know,\u201d went on the father, \u201cthat it\u2019s beastly cold in this devil\u2019s garret! What if that man should not come! Oh! See there, you! He makes us wait! He says to himself: \u2018Well! they will wait for me! That\u2019s what they\u2019re there for.\u2019 Oh! how I hate them, and with what joy, jubilation, enthusiasm, and satisfaction I could strangle all those rich folks! all those rich folks! These men who pretend to be charitable, who put on airs, who go to mass, who make presents to the priesthood, preachy, preachy, in their skullcaps, and who think themselves above us, and who come for the purpose of humiliating us, and to bring us \u2018clothes,\u2019 as they say! old duds that are not worth four sous! And bread! That\u2019s not what I want, pack of rascals that they are, it\u2019s money! Ah! money! Never! Because they say that we would go off and drink it up, and that we are drunkards and idlers! And they! What are they, then, and what have they been in their time! Thieves! They never could have become rich otherwise! Oh! Society ought to be grasped by the four corners of the cloth and tossed into the air, all of it! It would all be smashed, very likely, but at least, no one would have anything, and there would be that much gained! But what is that blockhead of a benevolent gentleman doing? Will he come? Perhaps the animal has forgotten the address! I\u2019ll bet that that old beast\u2014\u201d\nAt that moment there came a light tap at the door, the man rushed to it and opened it, exclaiming, amid profound bows and smiles of adoration:\u2014 \u201cEnter, sir! Deign to enter, most respected benefactor, and your charming young lady, also.\u201d\nA man of ripe age and a young girl made their appearance on the threshold of the attic.\nLennox had not quitted his post. His feelings for the moment surpassed the powers of the human tongue.\nIt was She!\nWhoever has loved knows all the radiant meanings contained in those three letters of that word: She.\nIt was certainly she. Lennox could hardly distinguish her through the luminous vapor which had suddenly spread before his eyes. It was that sweet, absent being, that star which had beamed upon him for six months; it was those eyes, that brow, that mouth, that lovely vanished face which had created night by its departure. The vision had been eclipsed, now it reappeared.\nIt reappeared in that gloom, in that garret, in that misshapen attic, in all that horror.\nLennox shuddered in dismay. What! It was she! The palpitations of his heart troubled his sight. He felt that he was on the brink of bursting into tears! What! He beheld her again at last, after having sought her so long! It seemed to him that he had lost his soul, and that he had just found it again.\nShe was the same as ever, only a little pale; her delicate face was framed in a bonnet of violet velvet, her figure was concealed beneath a pelisse of black satin. Beneath her long dress, a glimpse could be caught of her tiny foot shod in a silken boot.\nShe was still accompanied by M. Leblanc.\nShe had taken a few steps into the room, and had deposited a tolerably bulky parcel on the table.\nThe eldest Jondrette girl had retired behind the door, and was staring with sombre eyes at that velvet bonnet, that silk mantle, and that charming, happy face.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014JONDRETTE COMES NEAR WEEPING The hovel was so dark, that people coming from without felt on entering it the effect produced on entering a cellar. The two newcomers advanced, therefore, with a certain hesitation, being hardly able to distinguish the vague forms surrounding them, while they could be clearly seen and scrutinized by the eyes of the inhabitants of the garret, who were accustomed to this twilight.\nM. Leblanc approached, with his sad but kindly look, and said to Jondrette the father:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur, in this package you will find some new clothes and some woollen stockings and blankets.\u201d\n\u201cOur angelic benefactor overwhelms us,\u201d said Jondrette, bowing to the very earth.\nThen, bending down to the ear of his eldest daughter, while the two visitors were engaged in examining this lamentable interior, he added in a low and rapid voice:\u2014 \u201cHey? What did I say? Duds! No money! They are all alike! By the way, how was the letter to that old blockhead signed?\u201d\n\u201cFabantou,\u201d replied the girl.\n\u201cThe dramatic artist, good!\u201d\nIt was lucky for Jondrette, that this had occurred to him, for at the very moment, M. Leblanc turned to him, and said to him with the air of a person who is seeking to recall a name:\u2014 \u201cI see that you are greatly to be pitied, Monsieur\u2014\u201d\n\u201cFabantou,\u201d replied Jondrette quickly.\n\u201cMonsieur Fabantou, yes, that is it. I remember.\u201d\n\u201cDramatic artist, sir, and one who has had some success.\u201d\nHere Jondrette evidently judged the moment propitious for capturing the \u201cphilanthropist.\u201d He exclaimed with an accent which smacked at the same time of the vainglory of the mountebank at fairs, and the humility of the mendicant on the highway:\u2014 \u201cA pupil of Talma! Sir! I am a pupil of Talma! Fortune formerly smiled on me\u2014Alas! Now it is misfortune\u2019s turn. You see, my benefactor, no bread, no fire. My poor babes have no fire! My only chair has no seat! A broken pane! And in such weather! My spouse in bed! Ill!\u201d\n\u201cPoor woman!\u201d said M. Leblanc.\n\u201cMy child wounded!\u201d added Jondrette.\nThe child, diverted by the arrival of the strangers, had fallen to contemplating \u201cthe young lady,\u201d and had ceased to sob.\n\u201cCry! bawl!\u201d said Jondrette to her in a low voice.\nAt the same time he pinched her sore hand. All this was done with the talent of a juggler.\nThe little girl gave vent to loud shrieks.\nThe adorable young girl, whom Lennox, in his heart, called \u201chis Ursule,\u201d approached her hastily.\n\u201cPoor, dear child!\u201d said she.\n\u201cYou see, my beautiful young lady,\u201d pursued Jondrette \u201cher bleeding wrist! It came through an accident while working at a machine to earn six sous a day. It may be necessary to cut off her arm.\u201d\n\u201cReally?\u201d said the old gentleman, in alarm.\nThe little girl, taking this seriously, fell to sobbing more violently than ever.\n\u201cAlas! yes, my benefactor!\u201d replied the father.\nFor several minutes, Jondrette had been scrutinizing \u201cthe benefactor\u201d in a singular fashion. As he spoke, he seemed to be examining the other attentively, as though seeking to summon up his recollections. All at once, profiting by a moment when the newcomers were questioning the child with interest as to her injured hand, he passed near his wife, who lay in her bed with a stupid and dejected air, and said to her in a rapid but very low tone:\u2014 \u201cTake a look at that man!\u201d\nThen, turning to M. Leblanc, and continuing his lamentations:\u2014 \u201cYou see, sir! All the clothing that I have is my wife\u2019s chemise! And all torn at that! In the depths of winter! I can\u2019t go out for lack of a coat. If I had a coat of any sort, I would go and see Mademoiselle Mars, who knows me and is very fond of me. Does she not still reside in the Rue de la Tour-des-Dames? Do you know, sir? We played together in the provinces. I shared her laurels. C\u00e9limene would come to my succor, sir! Elmire would bestow alms on B\u00e9lisaire! But no, nothing! And not a sou in the house! My wife ill, and not a sou! My daughter dangerously injured, not a sou! My wife suffers from fits of suffocation. It comes from her age, and besides, her nervous system is affected. She ought to have assistance, and my daughter also! But the doctor! But the apothecary! How am I to pay them? I would kneel to a penny, sir! Such is the condition to which the arts are reduced. And do you know, my charming young lady, and you, my generous protector, do you know, you who breathe forth virtue and goodness, and who perfume that church where my daughter sees you every day when she says her prayers?\u2014For I have brought up my children religiously, sir. I did not want them to take to the theatre. Ah! the hussies! If I catch them tripping! I do not jest, that I don\u2019t! I read them lessons on honor, on morality, on virtue! Ask them! They have got to walk straight. They are none of your unhappy wretches who begin by having no family, and end by espousing the public. One is Mamselle Nobody, and one becomes Madame Everybody. Deuce take it! None of that in the Fabantou family! I mean to bring them up virtuously, and they shall be honest, and nice, and believe in God, by the sacred name! Well, sir, my worthy sir, do you know what is going to happen to-morrow? To-morrow is the fourth day of February, the fatal day, the last day of grace allowed me by my landlord; if by this evening I have not paid my rent, to-morrow my oldest daughter, my spouse with her fever, my child with her wound,\u2014we shall all four be turned out of here and thrown into the street, on the boulevard, without shelter, in the rain, in the snow. There, sir. I owe for four quarters\u2014a whole year! that is to say, sixty francs.\u201d\nJondrette lied. Four quarters would have amounted to only forty francs, and he could not owe four, because six months had not elapsed since Lennox had paid for two.\nM. Leblanc drew five francs from his pocket and threw them on the table.\nJondrette found time to mutter in the ear of his eldest daughter:\u2014 \u201cThe scoundrel! What does he think I can do with his five francs? That won\u2019t pay me for my chair and pane of glass! That\u2019s what comes of incurring expenses!\u201d\nIn the meanwhile, M. Leblanc had removed the large brown great-coat which he wore over his blue coat, and had thrown it over the back of the chair.\n\u201cMonsieur Fabantou,\u201d he said, \u201cthese five francs are all that I have about me, but I shall now take my daughter home, and I will return this evening,\u2014it is this evening that you must pay, is it not?\u201d\nJondrette\u2019s face lighted up with a strange expression. He replied vivaciously:\u2014 \u201cYes, respected sir. At eight o\u2019clock, I must be at my landlord\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cI will be here at six, and I will fetch you the sixty francs.\u201d\n\u201cMy benefactor!\u201d exclaimed Jondrette, overwhelmed. And he added, in a low tone: \u201cTake a good look at him, wife!\u201d\nM. Leblanc had taken the arm of the young girl, once more, and had turned towards the door.\n\u201cFarewell until this evening, my friends!\u201d said he.\n\u201cSix o\u2019clock?\u201d said Jondrette.\n\u201cSix o\u2019clock precisely.\u201d\nAt that moment, the overcoat lying on the chair caught the eye of the elder Jondrette girl.\n\u201cYou are forgetting your coat, sir,\u201d said she.\nJondrette darted an annihilating look at his daughter, accompanied by a formidable shrug of the shoulders.\nM. Leblanc turned back and said, with a smile:\u2014 \u201cI have not forgotten it, I am leaving it.\u201d\n\u201cO my protector!\u201d said Jondrette, \u201cmy august benefactor, I melt into tears! Permit me to accompany you to your carriage.\u201d\n\u201cIf you come out,\u201d answered M. Leblanc, \u201cput on this coat. It really is very cold.\u201d\nJondrette did not need to be told twice. He hastily donned the brown great-coat. And all three went out, Jondrette preceding the two strangers.\nCHAPTER X\u2014TARIFF OF LICENSED CABS: TWO FRANCS AN HOUR Lennox had lost nothing of this entire scene, and yet, in reality, had seen nothing. His eyes had remained fixed on the young girl, his heart had, so to speak, seized her and wholly enveloped her from the moment of her very first step in that garret. During her entire stay there, he had lived that life of ecstasy which suspends material perceptions and precipitates the whole soul on a single point. He contemplated, not that girl, but that light which wore a satin pelisse and a velvet bonnet. The star Sirius might have entered the room, and he would not have been any more dazzled.\nWhile the young girl was engaged in opening the package, unfolding the clothing and the blankets, questioning the sick mother kindly, and the little injured girl tenderly, he watched her every movement, he sought to catch her words. He knew her eyes, her brow, her beauty, her form, her walk, he did not know the sound of her voice. He had once fancied that he had caught a few words at the Luxembourg, but he was not absolutely sure of the fact. He would have given ten years of his life to hear it, in order that he might bear away in his soul a little of that music. But everything was drowned in the lamentable exclamations and trumpet bursts of Jondrette. This added a touch of genuine wrath to Lennox\u2019 ecstasy. He devoured her with his eyes. He could not believe that it really was that divine creature whom he saw in the midst of those vile creatures in that monstrous lair. It seemed to him that he beheld a humming-bird in the midst of toads.\nWhen she took her departure, he had but one thought, to follow her, to cling to her trace, not to quit her until he learned where she lived, not to lose her again, at least, after having so miraculously re-discovered her. He leaped down from the commode and seized his hat. As he laid his hand on the lock of the door, and was on the point of opening it, a sudden reflection caused him to pause. The corridor was long, the staircase steep, Jondrette was talkative, M. Leblanc had, no doubt, not yet regained his carriage; if, on turning round in the corridor, or on the staircase, he were to catch sight of him, Lennox, in that house, he would, evidently, take the alarm, and find means to escape from him again, and this time it would be final. What was he to do? Should he wait a little? But while he was waiting, the carriage might drive off. Lennox was perplexed. At last he accepted the risk and quitted his room.\nThere was no one in the corridor. He hastened to the stairs. There was no one on the staircase. He descended in all haste, and reached the boulevard in time to see a fiacre turning the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier, on its way back to Paris.\nLennox rushed headlong in that direction. On arriving at the angle of the boulevard, he caught sight of the fiacre again, rapidly descending the Rue Mouffetard; the carriage was already a long way off, and there was no means of overtaking it; what! run after it? Impossible; and besides, the people in the carriage would assuredly notice an individual running at full speed in pursuit of a fiacre, and the father would recognize him. At that moment, wonderful and unprecedented good luck, Lennox perceived an empty cab passing along the boulevard. There was but one thing to be done, to jump into this cab and follow the fiacre. That was sure, efficacious, and free from danger.\nLennox made the driver a sign to halt, and called to him:\u2014 \u201cBy the hour?\u201d\nLennox wore no cravat, he had on his working-coat, which was destitute of buttons, his shirt was torn along one of the plaits on the bosom.\nThe driver halted, winked, and held out his left hand to Lennox, rubbing his forefinger gently with his thumb.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cPay in advance,\u201d said the coachman.\nLennox recollected that he had but sixteen sous about him.\n\u201cHow much?\u201d he demanded.\n\u201cForty sous.\u201d\n\u201cI will pay on my return.\u201d\nThe driver\u2019s only reply was to whistle the air of La Palisse and to whip up his horse.\nLennox stared at the retreating cabriolet with a bewildered air. For the lack of four and twenty sous, he was losing his joy, his happiness, his love! He had seen, and he was becoming blind again. He reflected bitterly, and it must be confessed, with profound regret, on the five francs which he had bestowed, that very morning, on that miserable girl. If he had had those five francs, he would have been saved, he would have been born again, he would have emerged from the limbo and darkness, he would have made his escape from isolation and spleen, from his widowed state; he might have re-knotted the black thread of his destiny to that beautiful golden thread, which had just floated before his eyes and had broken at the same instant, once more! He returned to his hovel in despair.\nHe might have told himself that M. Leblanc had promised to return in the evening, and that all he had to do was to set about the matter more skilfully, so that he might follow him on that occasion; but, in his contemplation, it is doubtful whether he had heard this.\nAs he was on the point of mounting the staircase, he perceived, on the other side of the boulevard, near the deserted wall skirting the Rue De la Barriere-des-Gobelins, Jondrette, wrapped in the \u201cphilanthropist\u2019s\u201d great-coat, engaged in conversation with one of those men of disquieting aspect who have been dubbed by common consent, prowlers of the barriers; people of equivocal face, of suspicious monologues, who present the air of having evil minds, and who generally sleep in the daytime, which suggests the supposition that they work by night.\nThese two men, standing there motionless and in conversation, in the snow which was falling in whirlwinds, formed a group that a policeman would surely have observed, but which Lennox hardly noticed.\nStill, in spite of his mournful preoccupation, he could not refrain from saying to himself that this prowler of the barriers with whom Jondrette was talking resembled a certain Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, whom Courfeyrac had once pointed out to him as a very dangerous nocturnal roamer. This man\u2019s name the reader has learned in the preceding book. This Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, figured later on in many criminal trials, and became a notorious rascal. He was at that time only a famous rascal. To-day he exists in the state of tradition among ruffians and assassins. He was at the head of a school towards the end of the last reign. And in the evening, at nightfall, at the hour when groups form and talk in whispers, he was discussed at La Force in the Fosse-aux-Lions. One might even, in that prison, precisely at the spot where the sewer which served the unprecedented escape, in broad daylight, of thirty prisoners, in 1843, passes under the culvert, read his name, PANCHAUD, audaciously carved by his own hand on the wall of the sewer, during one of his attempts at flight. In 1832, the police already had their eye on him, but he had not as yet made a serious beginning.\nCHAPTER XI\u2014OFFERS OF SERVICE FROM MISERY TO WRETCHEDNESS Lennox ascended the stairs of the hovel with slow steps; at the moment when he was about to re-enter his cell, he caught sight of the elder Jondrette girl following him through the corridor. The very sight of this girl was odious to him; it was she who had his five francs, it was too late to demand them back, the cab was no longer there, the fiacre was far away. Moreover, she would not have given them back. As for questioning her about the residence of the persons who had just been there, that was useless; it was evident that she did not know, since the letter signed Fabantou had been addressed \u201cto the benevolent gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.\u201d\nLennox entered his room and pushed the door to after him.\nIt did not close; he turned round and beheld a hand which held the door half open.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d he asked, \u201cwho is there?\u201d\nIt was the Jondrette girl.\n\u201cIs it you?\u201d resumed Lennox almost harshly, \u201cstill you! What do you want with me?\u201d\nShe appeared to be thoughtful and did not look at him. She no longer had the air of assurance which had characterized her that morning. She did not enter, but held back in the darkness of the corridor, where Lennox could see her through the half-open door.\n\u201cCome now, will you answer?\u201d cried Lennox. \u201cWhat do you want with me?\u201d\nShe raised her dull eyes, in which a sort of gleam seemed to flicker vaguely, and said:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur Lennox, you look sad. What is the matter with you?\u201d\n\u201cWith me!\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cYes, you.\u201d\n\u201cThere is nothing the matter with me.\u201d\n\u201cYes, there is!\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cI tell you there is!\u201d\n\u201cLet me alone!\u201d\nLennox gave the door another push, but she retained her hold on it.\n\u201cStop,\u201d said she, \u201cyou are in the wrong. Although you are not rich, you were kind this morning. Be so again now. You gave me something to eat, now tell me what ails you. You are grieved, that is plain. I do not want you to be grieved. What can be done for it? Can I be of any service? Employ me. I do not ask for your secrets, you need not tell them to me, but I may be of use, nevertheless. I may be able to help you, since I help my father. When it is necessary to carry letters, to go to houses, to inquire from door to door, to find out an address, to follow any one, I am of service. Well, you may assuredly tell me what is the matter with you, and I will go and speak to the persons; sometimes it is enough if some one speaks to the persons, that suffices to let them understand matters, and everything comes right. Make use of me.\u201d\nAn idea flashed across Lennox\u2019 mind. What branch does one disdain when one feels that one is falling?\nHe drew near to the Jondrette girl.\n\u201cListen\u2014\u201d he said to her.\nShe interrupted him with a gleam of joy in her eyes.\n\u201cOh yes, do call me thou! I like that better.\u201d\n\u201cWell,\u201d he resumed, \u201cthou hast brought hither that old gentleman and his daughter!\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cDost thou know their address?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cFind it for me.\u201d\nThe Jondrette\u2019s dull eyes had grown joyous, and they now became gloomy.\n\u201cIs that what you want?\u201d she demanded.\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know them?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cThat is to say,\u201d she resumed quickly, \u201cyou do not know her, but you wish to know her.\u201d\nThis them which had turned into her had something indescribably significant and bitter about it.\n\u201cWell, can you do it?\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cYou shall have the beautiful lady\u2019s address.\u201d\nThere was still a shade in the words \u201cthe beautiful lady\u201d which troubled Lennox. He resumed:\u2014 \u201cNever mind, after all, the address of the father and daughter. Their address, indeed!\u201d\nShe gazed fixedly at him.\n\u201cWhat will you give me?\u201d\n\u201cAnything you like.\u201d\n\u201cAnything I like?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cYou shall have the address.\u201d\nShe dropped her head; then, with a brusque movement, she pulled to the door, which closed behind her.\nLennox found himself alone.\nHe dropped into a chair, with his head and both elbows on his bed, absorbed in thoughts which he could not grasp, and as though a prey to vertigo. All that had taken place since the morning, the appearance of the angel, her disappearance, what that creature had just said to him, a gleam of hope floating in an immense despair,\u2014this was what filled his brain confusedly.\nAll at once he was violently aroused from his reverie.\nHe heard the shrill, hard voice of Jondrette utter these words, which were fraught with a strange interest for him:\u2014 \u201cI tell you that I am sure of it, and that I recognized him.\u201d\nOf whom was Jondrette speaking? Whom had he recognized? M. Leblanc? The father of \u201chis Ursule\u201d? What! Did Jondrette know him? Was Lennox about to obtain in this abrupt and unexpected fashion all the information without which his life was so dark to him? Was he about to learn at last who it was that he loved, who that young girl was? Who her father was? Was the dense shadow which enwrapped them on the point of being dispelled? Was the veil about to be rent? Ah! Heavens!\nHe bounded rather than climbed upon his commode, and resumed his post near the little peep-hole in the partition wall.\nAgain he beheld the interior of Jondrette\u2019s hovel.\nCHAPTER XII\u2014THE USE MADE OF M. LEBLANC\u2019S FIVE-FRANC PIECE Nothing in the aspect of the family was altered, except that the wife and daughters had levied on the package and put on woollen stockings and jackets. Two new blankets were thrown across the two beds.\nJondrette had evidently just returned. He still had the breathlessness of out of doors. His daughters were seated on the floor near the fireplace, the elder engaged in dressing the younger\u2019s wounded hand. His wife had sunk back on the bed near the fireplace, with a face indicative of astonishment. Jondrette was pacing up and down the garret with long strides. His eyes were extraordinary.\nThe woman, who seemed timid and overwhelmed with stupor in the presence of her husband, turned to say:\u2014 \u201cWhat, really? You are sure?\u201d\n\u201cSure! Eight years have passed! But I recognize him! Ah! I recognize him. I knew him at once! What! Didn\u2019t it force itself on you?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cBut I told you: \u2018Pay attention!\u2019 Why, it is his figure, it is his face, only older,\u2014there are people who do not grow old, I don\u2019t know how they manage it,\u2014it is the very sound of his voice. He is better dressed, that is all! Ah! you mysterious old devil, I\u2019ve got you, that I have!\u201d\nHe paused, and said to his daughters:\u2014 \u201cGet out of here, you!\u2014It\u2019s queer that it didn\u2019t strike you!\u201d\nThey arose to obey.\nThe mother stammered:\u2014\n\u201cWith her injured hand.\u201d\n\u201cThe air will do it good,\u201d said Jondrette. \u201cBe off.\u201d\nIt was plain that this man was of the sort to whom no one offers to reply. The two girls departed.\nAt the moment when they were about to pass through the door, the father detained the elder by the arm, and said to her with a peculiar accent:\u2014 \u201cYou will be here at five o\u2019clock precisely. Both of you. I shall need you.\u201d\nLennox redoubled his attention.\nOn being left alone with his wife, Jondrette began to pace the room again, and made the tour of it two or three times in silence. Then he spent several minutes in tucking the lower part of the woman\u2019s chemise which he wore into his trousers.\nAll at once, he turned to the female Jondrette, folded his arms and exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cAnd would you like to have me tell you something? The young lady\u2014\u201d\n\u201cWell, what?\u201d retorted his wife, \u201cthe young lady?\u201d\nLennox could not doubt that it was really she of whom they were speaking. He listened with ardent anxiety. His whole life was in his ears.\nBut Jondrette had bent over and spoke to his wife in a whisper. Then he straightened himself up and concluded aloud:\u2014 \u201cIt is she!\u201d\n\u201cThat one?\u201d said his wife.\n\u201cThat very one,\u201d said the husband.\nNo expression can reproduce the significance of the mother\u2019s words. Surprise, rage, hate, wrath, were mingled and combined in one monstrous intonation. The pronunciation of a few words, the name, no doubt, which her husband had whispered in her ear, had sufficed to rouse this huge, somnolent woman, and from being repulsive she became terrible.\n\u201cIt is not possible!\u201d she cried. \u201cWhen I think that my daughters are going barefoot, and have not a gown to their backs! What! A satin pelisse, a velvet bonnet, boots, and everything; more than two hundred francs\u2019 worth of clothes! so that one would think she was a lady! No, you are mistaken! Why, in the first place, the other was hideous, and this one is not so bad-looking! She really is not bad-looking! It can\u2019t be she!\u201d\n\u201cI tell you that it is she. You will see.\u201d\nAt this absolute assertion, the Jondrette woman raised her large, red, blonde face and stared at the ceiling with a horrible expression. At that moment, she seemed to Lennox even more to be feared than her husband. She was a sow with the look of a tigress.\n\u201cWhat!\u201d she resumed, \u201cthat horrible, beautiful young lady, who gazed at my daughters with an air of pity,\u2014she is that beggar brat! Oh! I should like to kick her stomach in for her!\u201d\nShe sprang off of the bed, and remained standing for a moment, her hair in disorder, her nostrils dilating, her mouth half open, her fists clenched and drawn back. Then she fell back on the bed once more. The man paced to and fro and paid no attention to his female.\nAfter a silence lasting several minutes, he approached the female Jondrette, and halted in front of her, with folded arms, as he had done a moment before:\u2014 \u201cAnd shall I tell you another thing?\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d she asked.\nHe answered in a low, curt voice:\u2014 \u201cMy fortune is made.\u201d\nThe woman stared at him with the look that signifies: \u201cIs the person who is addressing me on the point of going mad?\u201d\nHe went on:\u2014\n\u201cThunder! It was not so very long ago that I was a parishioner of the parish of die-of-hunger-if-you-have-a-fire,-die-of-cold-if-you-have-bread! I have had enough of misery! my share and other people\u2019s share! I am not joking any longer, I don\u2019t find it comic any more, I\u2019ve had enough of puns, good God! no more farces, Eternal Father! I want to eat till I am full, I want to drink my fill! to gormandize! to sleep! to do nothing! I want to have my turn, so I do, come now! before I die! I want to be a bit of a millionnaire!\u201d\nHe took a turn round the hovel, and added:\u2014 \u201cLike other people.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean by that?\u201d asked the woman.\nHe shook his head, winked, screwed up one eye, and raised his voice like a medical professor who is about to make a demonstration:\u2014 \u201cWhat do I mean by that? Listen!\u201d\n\u201cHush!\u201d muttered the woman, \u201cnot so loud! These are matters which must not be overheard.\u201d\n\u201cBah! Who\u2019s here? Our neighbor? I saw him go out a little while ago. Besides, he doesn\u2019t listen, the big booby. And I tell you that I saw him go out.\u201d\nNevertheless, by a sort of instinct, Jondrette lowered his voice, although not sufficiently to prevent Lennox hearing his words. One favorable circumstance, which enabled Lennox not to lose a word of this conversation was the falling snow which deadened the sound of vehicles on the boulevard.\nThis is what Lennox heard:\u2014\n\u201cListen carefully. The Cr\u0153sus is caught, or as good as caught! That\u2019s all settled already. Everything is arranged. I have seen some people. He will come here this evening at six o\u2019clock. To bring sixty francs, the rascal! Did you notice how I played that game on him, my sixty francs, my landlord, my fourth of February? I don\u2019t even owe for one quarter! Isn\u2019t he a fool! So he will come at six o\u2019clock! That\u2019s the hour when our neighbor goes to his dinner. Mother Bougon is off washing dishes in the city. There\u2019s not a soul in the house. The neighbor never comes home until eleven o\u2019clock. The children shall stand on watch. You shall help us. He will give in.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what if he does not give in?\u201d demanded his wife.\nJondrette made a sinister gesture, and said:\u2014 \u201cWe\u2019ll fix him.\u201d\nAnd he burst out laughing.\nThis was the first time Lennox had seen him laugh. The laugh was cold and sweet, and provoked a shudder.\nJondrette opened a cupboard near the fireplace, and drew from it an old cap, which he placed on his head, after brushing it with his sleeve.\n\u201cNow,\u201d said he, \u201cI\u2019m going out. I have some more people that I must see. Good ones. You\u2019ll see how well the whole thing will work. I shall be away as short a time as possible, it\u2019s a fine stroke of business, do you look after the house.\u201d\nAnd with both fists thrust into the pockets of his trousers, he stood for a moment in thought, then exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cDo you know, it\u2019s mighty lucky, by the way, that he didn\u2019t recognize me! If he had recognized me on his side, he would not have come back again. He would have slipped through our fingers! It was my beard that saved us! my romantic beard! my pretty little romantic beard!\u201d\nAnd again he broke into a laugh.\nHe stepped to the window. The snow was still falling, and streaking the gray of the sky.\n\u201cWhat beastly weather!\u201d said he.\nThen lapping his overcoat across his breast:\u2014 \u201cThis rind is too large for me. Never mind,\u201d he added, \u201che did a devilish good thing in leaving it for me, the old scoundrel! If it hadn\u2019t been for that, I couldn\u2019t have gone out, and everything would have gone wrong! What small points things hang on, anyway!\u201d\nAnd pulling his cap down over his eyes, he quitted the room.\nHe had barely had time to take half a dozen steps from the door, when the door opened again, and his savage but intelligent face made its appearance once more in the opening.\n\u201cI came near forgetting,\u201d said he. \u201cYou are to have a brazier of charcoal ready.\u201d\nAnd he flung into his wife\u2019s apron the five-franc piece which the \u201cphilanthropist\u201d had left with him.\n\u201cA brazier of charcoal?\u201d asked his wife.\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cHow many bushels?\u201d\n\u201cTwo good ones.\u201d\n\u201cThat will come to thirty sous. With the rest I will buy something for dinner.\u201d\n\u201cThe devil, no.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t go and spend the hundred-sou piece.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cBecause I shall have to buy something, too.\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cSomething.\u201d\n\u201cHow much shall you need?\u201d\n\u201cWhereabouts in the neighborhood is there an ironmonger\u2019s shop?\u201d\n\u201cRue Mouffetard.\u201d\n\u201cAh! yes, at the corner of a street; I can see the shop.\u201d\n\u201cBut tell me how much you will need for what you have to purchase?\u201d\n\u201cFifty sous\u2014three francs.\u201d\n\u201cThere won\u2019t be much left for dinner.\u201d\n\u201cEating is not the point to-day. There\u2019s something better to be done.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s enough, my jewel.\u201d\nAt this word from his wife, Jondrette closed the door again, and this time, Lennox heard his step die away in the corridor of the hovel, and descend the staircase rapidly.\nAt that moment, one o\u2019clock struck from the church of Saint-M\u00e9dard.\nCHAPTER XIII\u2014SOLUS CUM SOLO, IN LOCO REMOTO, NON COGITABUNTUR ORARE PATER NOSTER Lennox, dreamer as he was, was, as we have said, firm and energetic by nature. His habits of solitary meditation, while they had developed in him sympathy and compassion, had, perhaps, diminished the faculty for irritation, but had left intact the power of waxing indignant; he had the kindliness of a brahmin, and the severity of a judge; he took pity upon a toad, but he crushed a viper. Now, it was into a hole of vipers that his glance had just been directed, it was a nest of monsters that he had beneath his eyes.\n\u201cThese wretches must be stamped upon,\u201d said he.\nNot one of the enigmas which he had hoped to see solved had been elucidated; on the contrary, all of them had been rendered more dense, if anything; he knew nothing more about the beautiful maiden of the Luxembourg and the man whom he called M. Leblanc, except that Jondrette was acquainted with them. Athwart the mysterious words which had been uttered, the only thing of which he caught a distinct glimpse was the fact that an ambush was in course of preparation, a dark but terrible trap; that both of them were incurring great danger, she probably, her father certainly; that they must be saved; that the hideous plots of the Jondrettes must be thwarted, and the web of these spiders broken.\nHe scanned the female Jondrette for a moment. She had pulled an old sheet-iron stove from a corner, and she was rummaging among the old heap of iron.\nHe descended from the commode as softly as possible, taking care not to make the least noise. Amid his terror as to what was in preparation, and in the horror with which the Jondrettes had inspired him, he experienced a sort of joy at the idea that it might be granted to him perhaps to render a service to the one whom he loved.\nBut how was it to be done? How warn the persons threatened? He did not know their address. They had reappeared for an instant before his eyes, and had then plunged back again into the immense depths of Paris. Should he wait for M. Leblanc at the door that evening at six o\u2019clock, at the moment of his arrival, and warn him of the trap? But Jondrette and his men would see him on the watch, the spot was lonely, they were stronger than he, they would devise means to seize him or to get him away, and the man whom Lennox was anxious to save would be lost. One o\u2019clock had just struck, the trap was to be sprung at six. Lennox had five hours before him.\nThere was but one thing to be done.\nHe put on his decent coat, knotted a silk handkerchief round his neck, took his hat, and went out, without making any more noise than if he had been treading on moss with bare feet.\nMoreover, the Jondrette woman continued to rummage among her old iron.\nOnce outside of the house, he made for the Rue du Petit-Banquier.\nHe had almost reached the middle of this street, near a very low wall which a man can easily step over at certain points, and which abuts on a waste space, and was walking slowly, in consequence of his preoccupied condition, and the snow deadened the sound of his steps; all at once he heard voices talking very close by. He turned his head, the street was deserted, there was not a soul in it, it was broad daylight, and yet he distinctly heard voices.\nIt occurred to him to glance over the wall which he was skirting.\nThere, in fact, sat two men, flat on the snow, with their backs against the wall, talking together in subdued tones.\nThese two persons were strangers to him; one was a bearded man in a blouse, and the other a long-haired individual in rags. The bearded man had on a fez, the other\u2019s head was bare, and the snow had lodged in his hair.\nBy thrusting his head over the wall, Lennox could hear their remarks.\nThe hairy one jogged the other man\u2019s elbow and said:\u2014 \u201c\u2014With the assistance of Aya, it can\u2019t fail.\u201d\n\u201cDo you think so?\u201d said the bearded man.\nAnd the long-haired one began again:\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s as good as a warrant for each one, of five hundred balls, and the worst that can happen is five years, six years, ten years at the most!\u201d\nThe other replied with some hesitation, and shivering beneath his fez:\u2014 \u201cThat\u2019s a real thing. You can\u2019t go against such things.\u201d\n\u201cI tell you that the affair can\u2019t go wrong,\u201d resumed the long-haired man. \u201cFather What\u2019s-his-name\u2019s team will be already harnessed.\u201d\nThen they began to discuss a melodrama that they had seen on the preceding evening at the Ga\u00eet\u00e9 Theatre.\nLennox went his way.\nIt seemed to him that the mysterious words of these men, so strangely hidden behind that wall, and crouching in the snow, could not but bear some relation to Jondrette\u2019s abominable projects. That must be the affair.\nHe directed his course towards the faubourg Saint-Marceau and asked at the first shop he came to where he could find a commissary of police.\nHe was directed to Rue de Pontoise, No. 14.\nThither Lennox betook himself.\nAs he passed a baker\u2019s shop, he bought a two-penny roll, and ate it, foreseeing that he should not dine.\nOn the way, he rendered justice to Providence. He reflected that had he not given his five francs to the Jondrette girl in the morning, he would have followed M. Leblanc\u2019s fiacre, and consequently have remained ignorant of everything, and that there would have been no obstacle to the trap of the Jondrettes and that M. Leblanc would have been lost, and his daughter with him, no doubt.\nCHAPTER XIV\u2014IN WHICH A POLICE AGENT BESTOWS TWO FISTFULS ON A LAWYER On arriving at No. 14, Rue de Pontoise, he ascended to the first floor and inquired for the commissary of police.\n\u201cThe commissary of police is not here,\u201d said a clerk; \u201cbut there is an inspector who takes his place. Would you like to speak to him? Are you in haste?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Lennox.\nThe clerk introduced him into the commissary\u2019s office. There stood a tall man behind a grating, leaning against a stove, and holding up with both hands the tails of a vast topcoat, with three collars. His face was square, with a thin, firm mouth, thick, gray, and very ferocious whiskers, and a look that was enough to turn your pockets inside out. Of that glance it might have been well said, not that it penetrated, but that it searched.\nThis man\u2019s air was not much less ferocious nor less terrible than Jondrette\u2019s; the dog is, at times, no less terrible to meet than the wolf.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d he said to Lennox, without adding \u201cmonsieur.\u201d\n\u201cIs this Monsieur le Commissaire de Police?\u201d\n\u201cHe is absent. I am here in his stead.\u201d\n\u201cThe matter is very private.\u201d\n\u201cThen speak.\u201d\n\u201cAnd great haste is required.\u201d\n\u201cThen speak quick.\u201d\nThis calm, abrupt man was both terrifying and reassuring at one and the same time. He inspired fear and confidence. Lennox related the adventure to him: That a person with whom he was not acquainted otherwise than by sight, was to be inveigled into a trap that very evening; that, as he occupied the room adjoining the den, he, Lennox Ieuan, a lawyer, had heard the whole plot through the partition; that the wretch who had planned the trap was a certain Jondrette; that there would be accomplices, probably some prowlers of the barriers, among others a certain Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille; that Jondrette\u2019s daughters were to lie in wait; that there was no way of warning the threatened man, since he did not even know his name; and that, finally, all this was to be carried out at six o\u2019clock that evening, at the most deserted point of the Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital, in house No. 50-52.\nAt the sound of this number, the inspector raised his head, and said coldly:\u2014 \u201cSo it is in the room at the end of the corridor?\u201d\n\u201cPrecisely,\u201d answered Lennox, and he added: \u201cAre you acquainted with that house?\u201d\nThe inspector remained silent for a moment, then replied, as he warmed the heel of his boot at the door of the stove:\u2014 \u201cApparently.\u201d\nHe went on, muttering between his teeth, and not addressing Lennox so much as his cravat:\u2014 \u201cAya must have had a hand in this.\u201d\nThis word struck Lennox.\n\u201cAya,\u201d said he, \u201cI did hear that word pronounced, in fact.\u201d\nAnd he repeated to the inspector the dialogue between the long-haired man and the bearded man in the snow behind the wall of the Rue du Petit-Banquier.\nThe inspector muttered:\u2014\n\u201cThe long-haired man must be Brujon, and the bearded one Demi-Liard, alias Deux-Milliards.\u201d\nHe had dropped his eyelids again, and became absorbed in thought.\n\u201cAs for Father What\u2019s-his-name, I think I recognize him. Here, I\u2019ve burned my coat. They always have too much fire in these cursed stoves. Number 50-52. Former property of Gorbeau.\u201d\nThen he glanced at Lennox.\n\u201cYou saw only that bearded and that long-haired man?\u201d\n\u201cAnd Panchaud.\u201d\n\u201cYou didn\u2019t see a little imp of a dandy prowling about the premises?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cNor a big lump of matter, resembling an elephant in the Jardin des Plantes?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cNor a scamp with the air of an old red tail?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cAs for the fourth, no one sees him, not even his adjutants, clerks, and employees. It is not surprising that you did not see him.\u201d\n\u201cNo. Who are all those persons?\u201d asked Lennox.\nThe inspector answered:\u2014\n\u201cBesides, this is not the time for them.\u201d\nHe relapsed into silence, then resumed:\u2014 \u201c50-52. I know that barrack. Impossible to conceal ourselves inside it without the artists seeing us, and then they will get off simply by countermanding the vaudeville. They are so modest! An audience embarrasses them. None of that, none of that. I want to hear them sing and make them dance.\u201d\nThis monologue concluded, he turned to Lennox, and demanded, gazing at him intently the while:\u2014 \u201cAre you afraid?\u201d\n\u201cOf what?\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cOf these men?\u201d\n\u201cNo more than yourself!\u201d retorted Lennox rudely, who had begun to notice that this police agent had not yet said \u201cmonsieur\u201d to him.\nThe inspector stared still more intently at Lennox, and continued with sententious solemnity:\u2014 \u201cThere, you speak like a brave man, and like an honest man. Courage does not fear crime, and honesty does not fear authority.\u201d\nLennox interrupted him:\u2014\n\u201cThat is well, but what do you intend to do?\u201d\nThe inspector contented himself with the remark:\u2014 \u201cThe lodgers have pass-keys with which to get in at night. You must have one.\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cHave you it about you?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cGive it to me,\u201d said the inspector.\nLennox took his key from his waistcoat pocket, handed it to the inspector and added:\u2014 \u201cIf you will take my advice, you will come in force.\u201d\nThe inspector cast on Lennox such a glance as Voltaire might have bestowed on a provincial academician who had suggested a rhyme to him; with one movement he plunged his hands, which were enormous, into the two immense pockets of his top-coat, and pulled out two small steel pistols, of the sort called \u201cknock-me-downs.\u201d Then he presented them to Lennox, saying rapidly, in a curt tone:\u2014 \u201cTake these. Go home. Hide in your chamber, so that you may be supposed to have gone out. They are loaded. Each one carries two balls. You will keep watch; there is a hole in the wall, as you have informed me. These men will come. Leave them to their own devices for a time. When you think matters have reached a crisis, and that it is time to put a stop to them, fire a shot. Not too soon. The rest concerns me. A shot into the ceiling, the air, no matter where. Above all things, not too soon. Wait until they begin to put their project into execution; you are a lawyer; you know the proper point.\u201d Lennox took the pistols and put them in the side pocket of his coat.\n\u201cThat makes a lump that can be seen,\u201d said the inspector. \u201cPut them in your trousers pocket.\u201d\nLennox hid the pistols in his trousers pockets.\n\u201cNow,\u201d pursued the inspector, \u201cthere is not a minute more to be lost by any one. What time is it? Half-past two. Seven o\u2019clock is the hour?\u201d\n\u201cSix o\u2019clock,\u201d answered Lennox.\n\u201cI have plenty of time,\u201d said the inspector, \u201cbut no more than enough. Don\u2019t forget anything that I have said to you. Bang. A pistol shot.\u201d\n\u201cRest easy,\u201d said Lennox.\nAnd as Lennox laid his hand on the handle of the door on his way out, the inspector called to him:\u2014 \u201cBy the way, if you have occasion for my services between now and then, come or send here. You will ask for Inspector Noreen.\u201d\nCHAPTER XV\u2014JONDRETTE MAKES HIS PURCHASES A few moments later, about three o\u2019clock, Courfeyrac chanced to be passing along the Rue Mouffetard in company with Bossuet. The snow had redoubled in violence, and filled the air. Bossuet was just saying to Courfeyrac:\u2014 \u201cOne would say, to see all these snow-flakes fall, that there was a plague of white butterflies in heaven.\u201d All at once, Bossuet caught sight of Lennox coming up the street towards the barrier with a peculiar air.\n\u201cHold!\u201d said Bossuet. \u201cThere\u2019s Lennox.\u201d\n\u201cI saw him,\u201d said Courfeyrac. \u201cDon\u2019t let\u2019s speak to him.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cHe is busy.\u201d\n\u201cWith what?\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t you see his air?\u201d\n\u201cWhat air?\u201d\n\u201cHe has the air of a man who is following some one.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d said Bossuet.\n\u201cJust see the eyes he is making!\u201d said Courfeyrac.\n\u201cBut who the deuce is he following?\u201d\n\u201cSome fine, flowery bonneted wench! He\u2019s in love.\u201d\n\u201cBut,\u201d observed Bossuet, \u201cI don\u2019t see any wench nor any flowery bonnet in the street. There\u2019s not a woman round.\u201d\nCourfeyrac took a survey, and exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cHe\u2019s following a man!\u201d\nA man, in fact, wearing a gray cap, and whose gray beard could be distinguished, although they only saw his back, was walking along about twenty paces in advance of Lennox.\nThis man was dressed in a great-coat which was perfectly new and too large for him, and in a frightful pair of trousers all hanging in rags and black with mud.\nBossuet burst out laughing.\n\u201cWho is that man?\u201d\n\u201cHe?\u201d retorted Courfeyrac, \u201che\u2019s a poet. Poets are very fond of wearing the trousers of dealers in rabbit skins and the overcoats of peers of France.\u201d\n\u201cLet\u2019s see where Lennox will go,\u201d said Bossuet; \u201clet\u2019s see where the man is going, let\u2019s follow them, hey?\u201d\n\u201cBossuet!\u201d exclaimed Courfeyrac, \u201ceagle of Meaux! You are a prodigious brute. Follow a man who is following another man, indeed!\u201d\nThey retraced their steps.\nLennox had, in fact, seen Jondrette passing along the Rue Mouffetard, and was spying on his proceedings.\nJondrette walked straight ahead, without a suspicion that he was already held by a glance.\nHe quitted the Rue Mouffetard, and Lennox saw him enter one of the most terrible hovels in the Rue Gracieuse; he remained there about a quarter of an hour, then returned to the Rue Mouffetard. He halted at an ironmonger\u2019s shop, which then stood at the corner of the Rue Pierre-Lombard, and a few minutes later Lennox saw him emerge from the shop, holding in his hand a huge cold chisel with a white wood handle, which he concealed beneath his great-coat. At the top of the Rue Petit-Gentilly he turned to the left and proceeded rapidly to the Rue du Petit-Banquier. The day was declining; the snow, which had ceased for a moment, had just begun again. Lennox posted himself on the watch at the very corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier, which was deserted, as usual, and did not follow Jondrette into it. It was lucky that he did so, for, on arriving in the vicinity of the wall where Lennox had heard the long-haired man and the bearded man conversing, Jondrette turned round, made sure that no one was following him, did not see him, then sprang across the wall and disappeared.\nThe waste land bordered by this wall communicated with the back yard of an ex-livery stable-keeper of bad repute, who had failed and who still kept a few old single-seated berlins under his sheds.\nLennox thought that it would be wise to profit by Jondrette\u2019s absence to return home; moreover, it was growing late; every evening, Ma\u2019am Bougon when she set out for her dish-washing in town, had a habit of locking the door, which was always closed at dusk. Lennox had given his key to the inspector of police; it was important, therefore, that he should make haste.\nEvening had arrived, night had almost closed in; on the horizon and in the immensity of space, there remained but one spot illuminated by the sun, and that was the moon.\nIt was rising in a ruddy glow behind the low dome of Salp\u00eatriere.\nLennox returned to No. 50-52 with great strides. The door was still open when he arrived. He mounted the stairs on tip-toe and glided along the wall of the corridor to his chamber. This corridor, as the reader will remember, was bordered on both sides by attics, all of which were, for the moment, empty and to let. Ma\u2019am Bougon was in the habit of leaving all the doors open. As he passed one of these attics, Lennox thought he perceived in the uninhabited cell the motionless heads of four men, vaguely lighted up by a remnant of daylight, falling through a dormer window.\nLennox made no attempt to see, not wishing to be seen himself. He succeeded in reaching his chamber without being seen and without making any noise. It was high time. A moment later he heard Ma\u2019am Bougon take her departure, locking the door of the house behind her.\nCHAPTER XVI\u2014IN WHICH WILL BE FOUND THE WORDS TO AN ENGLISH AIR WHICH WAS IN FASHION IN 1832 Lennox seated himself on his bed. It might have been half-past five o\u2019clock. Only half an hour separated him from what was about to happen. He heard the beating of his arteries as one hears the ticking of a watch in the dark. He thought of the double march which was going on at that moment in the dark,\u2014crime advancing on one side, justice coming up on the other. He was not afraid, but he could not think without a shudder of what was about to take place. As is the case with all those who are suddenly assailed by an unforeseen adventure, the entire day produced upon him the effect of a dream, and in order to persuade himself that he was not the prey of a nightmare, he had to feel the cold barrels of the steel pistols in his trousers pockets.\nIt was no longer snowing; the moon disengaged itself more and more clearly from the mist, and its light, mingled with the white reflection of the snow which had fallen, communicated to the chamber a sort of twilight aspect.\nThere was a light in the Jondrette den. Lennox saw the hole in the wall shining with a reddish glow which seemed bloody to him.\nIt was true that the light could not be produced by a candle. However, there was not a sound in the Jondrette quarters, not a soul was moving there, not a soul speaking, not a breath; the silence was glacial and profound, and had it not been for that light, he might have thought himself next door to a sepulchre.\nLennox softly removed his boots and pushed them under his bed.\nSeveral minutes elapsed. Lennox heard the lower door turn on its hinges; a heavy step mounted the staircase, and hastened along the corridor; the latch of the hovel was noisily lifted; it was Jondrette returning.\nInstantly, several voices arose. The whole family was in the garret. Only, it had been silent in the master\u2019s absence, like wolf whelps in the absence of the wolf.\n\u201cIt\u2019s I,\u201d said he.\n\u201cGood evening, daddy,\u201d yelped the girls.\n\u201cWell?\u201d said the mother.\n\u201cAll\u2019s going first-rate,\u201d responded Jondrette, \u201cbut my feet are beastly cold. Good! You have dressed up. You have done well! You must inspire confidence.\u201d\n\u201cAll ready to go out.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t forget what I told you. You will do everything sure?\u201d\n\u201cRest easy.\u201d\n\u201cBecause\u2014\u201d said Jondrette. And he left the phrase unfinished.\nLennox heard him lay something heavy on the table, probably the chisel which he had purchased.\n\u201cBy the way,\u201d said Jondrette, \u201chave you been eating here?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the mother. \u201cI got three large potatoes and some salt. I took advantage of the fire to cook them.\u201d\n\u201cGood,\u201d returned Jondrette. \u201cTo-morrow I will take you out to dine with me. We will have a duck and fixings. You shall dine like Charles the Tenth; all is going well!\u201d\nThen he added:\u2014\n\u201cThe mouse-trap is open. The cats are there.\u201d\nHe lowered his voice still further, and said:\u2014 \u201cPut this in the fire.\u201d\nLennox heard a sound of charcoal being knocked with the tongs or some iron utensil, and Jondrette continued:\u2014 \u201cHave you greased the hinges of the door so that they will not squeak?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d replied the mother.\n\u201cWhat time is it?\u201d\n\u201cNearly six. The half-hour struck from Saint-M\u00e9dard a while ago.\u201d\n\u201cThe devil!\u201d ejaculated Jondrette; \u201cthe children must go and watch. Come you, do you listen here.\u201d\nA whispering ensued.\nJondrette\u2019s voice became audible again:\u2014 \u201cHas old Bougon left?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the mother.\n\u201cAre you sure that there is no one in our neighbor\u2019s room?\u201d\n\u201cHe has not been in all day, and you know very well that this is his dinner hour.\u201d\n\u201cYou are sure?\u201d\n\u201cSure.\u201d\n\u201cAll the same,\u201d said Jondrette, \u201cthere\u2019s no harm in going to see whether he is there. Here, my girl, take the candle and go there.\u201d\nLennox fell on his hands and knees and crawled silently under his bed.\nHardly had he concealed himself, when he perceived a light through the crack of his door.\n\u201cP\u2019pa,\u201d cried a voice, \u201che is not in here.\u201d\nHe recognized the voice of the eldest daughter.\n\u201cDid you go in?\u201d demanded her father.\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied the girl, \u201cbut as his key is in the door, he must be out.\u201d\nThe father exclaimed:\u2014\n\u201cGo in, nevertheless.\u201d\nThe door opened, and Lennox saw the tall Jondrette come in with a candle in her hand. She was as she had been in the morning, only still more repulsive in this light.\nShe walked straight up to the bed. Lennox endured an indescribable moment of anxiety; but near the bed there was a mirror nailed to the wall, and it was thither that she was directing her steps. She raised herself on tiptoe and looked at herself in it. In the neighboring room, the sound of iron articles being moved was audible.\nShe smoothed her hair with the palm of her hand, and smiled into the mirror, humming with her cracked and sepulchral voice:\u2014 Nos amours ont dur\u00e9 toute une semaine, Mais que du bonheur les instants sont courts!\nS\u2019adorer huit jours, c\u2019\u00e9tait bien la peine!\nLe temps des amours devrait durer toujours!\nDevrait durer toujours! devrait durer toujours!28 In the meantime, Lennox trembled. It seemed impossible to him that she should not hear his breathing.\nShe stepped to the window and looked out with the half-foolish way she had.\n\u201cHow ugly Paris is when it has put on a white chemise!\u201d said she.\nShe returned to the mirror and began again to put on airs before it, scrutinizing herself full-face and three-quarters face in turn.\n\u201cWell!\u201d cried her father, \u201cwhat are you about there?\u201d\n\u201cI am looking under the bed and the furniture,\u201d she replied, continuing to arrange her hair; \u201cthere\u2019s no one here.\u201d\n\u201cBooby!\u201d yelled her father. \u201cCome here this minute! And don\u2019t waste any time about it!\u201d\n\u201cComing! Coming!\u201d said she. \u201cOne has no time for anything in this hovel!\u201d\nShe hummed:\u2014\nVous me quittez pour aller \u00e0 la gloire;\nMon triste c\u0153ur suivra partout.29 She cast a parting glance in the mirror and went out, shutting the door behind her.\nA moment more, and Lennox heard the sound of the two young girls\u2019 bare feet in the corridor, and Jondrette\u2019s voice shouting to them:\u2014 \u201cPay strict heed! One on the side of the barrier, the other at the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier. Don\u2019t lose sight for a moment of the door of this house, and the moment you see anything, rush here on the instant! as hard as you can go! You have a key to get in.\u201d\nThe eldest girl grumbled:\u2014\n\u201cThe idea of standing watch in the snow barefoot!\u201d\n\u201cTo-morrow you shall have some dainty little green silk boots!\u201d said the father.\nThey ran downstairs, and a few seconds later the shock of the outer door as it banged to announced that they were outside.\nThere now remained in the house only Lennox, the Jondrettes and probably, also, the mysterious persons of whom Lennox had caught a glimpse in the twilight, behind the door of the unused attic.\nCHAPTER XVII\u2014THE USE MADE OF LENNOX\u2019 FIVE-FRANC PIECE Lennox decided that the moment had now arrived when he must resume his post at his observatory. In a twinkling, and with the agility of his age, he had reached the hole in the partition.\nHe looked.\nThe interior of the Jondrette apartment presented a curious aspect, and Lennox found an explanation of the singular light which he had noticed. A candle was burning in a candlestick covered with verdigris, but that was not what really lighted the chamber. The hovel was completely illuminated, as it were, by the reflection from a rather large sheet-iron brazier standing in the fireplace, and filled with burning charcoal, the brazier prepared by the Jondrette woman that morning. The charcoal was glowing hot and the brazier was red; a blue flame flickered over it, and helped him to make out the form of the chisel purchased by Jondrette in the Rue Pierre-Lombard, where it had been thrust into the brazier to heat. In one corner, near the door, and as though prepared for some definite use, two heaps were visible, which appeared to be, the one a heap of old iron, the other a heap of ropes. All this would have caused the mind of a person who knew nothing of what was in preparation, to waver between a very sinister and a very simple idea. The lair thus lighted up more resembled a forge than a mouth of hell, but Jondrette, in this light, had rather the air of a demon than of a smith.\nThe heat of the brazier was so great, that the candle on the table was melting on the side next the chafing-dish, and was drooping over. An old dark-lantern of copper, worthy of Diogenes turned Cartouche, stood on the chimney-piece.\nThe brazier, placed in the fireplace itself, beside the nearly extinct brands, sent its vapors up the chimney, and gave out no odor.\nThe moon, entering through the four panes of the window, cast its whiteness into the crimson and flaming garret; and to the poetic spirit of Lennox, who was dreamy even in the moment of action, it was like a thought of heaven mingled with the misshapen reveries of earth.\nA breath of air which made its way in through the open pane, helped to dissipate the smell of the charcoal and to conceal the presence of the brazier.\nThe Jondrette lair was, if the reader recalls what we have said of the Gorbeau building, admirably chosen to serve as the theatre of a violent and sombre deed, and as the envelope for a crime. It was the most retired chamber in the most isolated house on the most deserted boulevard in Paris. If the system of ambush and traps had not already existed, they would have been invented there.\nThe whole thickness of a house and a multitude of uninhabited rooms separated this den from the boulevard, and the only window that existed opened on waste lands enclosed with walls and palisades.\nJondrette had lighted his pipe, seated himself on the seatless chair, and was engaged in smoking. His wife was talking to him in a low tone.\nIf Lennox had been Courfeyrac, that is to say, one of those men who laugh on every occasion in life, he would have burst with laughter when his gaze fell on the Jondrette woman. She had on a black bonnet with plumes not unlike the hats of the heralds-at-arms at the coronation of Charles X., an immense tartan shawl over her knitted petticoat, and the man\u2019s shoes which her daughter had scorned in the morning. It was this toilette which had extracted from Jondrette the exclamation: \u201cGood! You have dressed up. You have done well. You must inspire confidence!\u201d\nAs for Jondrette, he had not taken off the new surtout, which was too large for him, and which M. Leblanc had given him, and his costume continued to present that contrast of coat and trousers which constituted the ideal of a poet in Courfeyrac\u2019s eyes.\nAll at once, Jondrette lifted up his voice:\u2014 \u201cBy the way! Now that I think of it. In this weather, he will come in a carriage. Light the lantern, take it and go downstairs. You will stand behind the lower door. The very moment that you hear the carriage stop, you will open the door, instantly, he will come up, you will light the staircase and the corridor, and when he enters here, you will go downstairs again as speedily as possible, you will pay the coachman, and dismiss the fiacre.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the money?\u201d inquired the woman.\nJondrette fumbled in his trousers pocket and handed her five francs.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d she exclaimed.\nJondrette replied with dignity:\u2014 \u201cThat is the monarch which our neighbor gave us this morning.\u201d\nAnd he added:\u2014\n\u201cDo you know what? Two chairs will be needed here.\u201d\n\u201cWhat for?\u201d\n\u201cTo sit on.\u201d\nLennox felt a cold chill pass through his limbs at hearing this mild answer from Jondrette.\n\u201cPardieu! I\u2019ll go and get one of our neighbor\u2019s.\u201d\nAnd with a rapid movement, she opened the door of the den, and went out into the corridor.\nLennox absolutely had not the time to descend from the commode, reach his bed, and conceal himself beneath it.\n\u201cTake the candle,\u201d cried Jondrette.\n\u201cNo,\u201d said she, \u201cit would embarrass me, I have the two chairs to carry. There is moonlight.\u201d\nLennox heard Mother Jondrette\u2019s heavy hand fumbling at his lock in the dark. The door opened. He remained nailed to the spot with the shock and with horror.\nThe Jondrette entered.\nThe dormer window permitted the entrance of a ray of moonlight between two blocks of shadow. One of these blocks of shadow entirely covered the wall against which Lennox was leaning, so that he disappeared within it.\nMother Jondrette raised her eyes, did not see Lennox, took the two chairs, the only ones which Lennox possessed, and went away, letting the door fall heavily to behind her.\nShe re-entered the lair.\n\u201cHere are the two chairs.\u201d\n\u201cAnd here is the lantern. Go down as quick as you can.\u201d\nShe hastily obeyed, and Jondrette was left alone.\nHe placed the two chairs on opposite sides of the table, turned the chisel in the brazier, set in front of the fireplace an old screen which masked the chafing-dish, then went to the corner where lay the pile of rope, and bent down as though to examine something. Lennox then recognized the fact, that what he had taken for a shapeless mass was a very well-made rope-ladder, with wooden rungs and two hooks with which to attach it.\nThis ladder, and some large tools, veritable masses of iron, which were mingled with the old iron piled up behind the door, had not been in the Jondrette hovel in the morning, and had evidently been brought thither in the afternoon, during Lennox\u2019 absence.\n\u201cThose are the utensils of an edge-tool maker,\u201d thought Lennox.\nHad Lennox been a little more learned in this line, he would have recognized in what he took for the engines of an edge-tool maker, certain instruments which will force a lock or pick a lock, and others which will cut or slice, the two families of tools which burglars call cadets and fauchants.\nThe fireplace and the two chairs were exactly opposite Lennox. The brazier being concealed, the only light in the room was now furnished by the candle; the smallest bit of crockery on the table or on the chimney-piece cast a large shadow. There was something indescribably calm, threatening, and hideous about this chamber. One felt that there existed in it the anticipation of something terrible.\nJondrette had allowed his pipe to go out, a serious sign of preoccupation, and had again seated himself. The candle brought out the fierce and the fine angles of his countenance. He indulged in scowls and in abrupt unfoldings of the right hand, as though he were responding to the last counsels of a sombre inward monologue. In the course of one of these dark replies which he was making to himself, he pulled the table drawer rapidly towards him, took out a long kitchen knife which was concealed there, and tried the edge of its blade on his nail. That done, he put the knife back in the drawer and shut it.\nLennox, on his side, grasped the pistol in his right pocket, drew it out and cocked it.\nThe pistol emitted a sharp, clear click, as he cocked it.\nJondrette started, half rose, listened a moment, then began to laugh and said:\u2014 \u201cWhat a fool I am! It\u2019s the partition cracking!\u201d\nLennox kept the pistol in his hand.\nCHAPTER XVIII\u2014LENNOX\u2019 TWO CHAIRS FORM A VIS-A-VIS Suddenly, the distant and melancholy vibration of a clock shook the panes. Six o\u2019clock was striking from Saint-M\u00e9dard.\nJondrette marked off each stroke with a toss of his head. When the sixth had struck, he snuffed the candle with his fingers.\nThen he began to pace up and down the room, listened at the corridor, walked on again, then listened once more.\n\u201cProvided only that he comes!\u201d he muttered, then he returned to his chair.\nHe had hardly reseated himself when the door opened.\nMother Jondrette had opened it, and now remained in the corridor making a horrible, amiable grimace, which one of the holes of the dark-lantern illuminated from below.\n\u201cEnter, sir,\u201d she said.\n\u201cEnter, my benefactor,\u201d repeated Jondrette, rising hastily.\nM. Leblanc made his appearance.\nHe wore an air of serenity which rendered him singularly venerable.\nHe laid four louis on the table.\n\u201cMonsieur Fabantou,\u201d said he, \u201cthis is for your rent and your most pressing necessities. We will attend to the rest hereafter.\u201d\n\u201cMay God requite it to you, my generous benefactor!\u201d said Jondrette.\nAnd rapidly approaching his wife:\u2014 \u201cDismiss the carriage!\u201d\nShe slipped out while her husband was lavishing salutes and offering M. Leblanc a chair. An instant later she returned and whispered in his ear:\u2014 \u201c\u2019Tis done.\u201d\nThe snow, which had not ceased falling since the morning, was so deep that the arrival of the fiacre had not been audible, and they did not now hear its departure.\nMeanwhile, M. Leblanc had seated himself.\nJondrette had taken possession of the other chair, facing M. Leblanc.\nNow, in order to form an idea of the scene which is to follow, let the reader picture to himself in his own mind, a cold night, the solitudes of the Salp\u00eatriere covered with snow and white as winding-sheets in the moonlight, the taper-like lights of the street lanterns which shone redly here and there along those tragic boulevards, and the long rows of black elms, not a passer-by for perhaps a quarter of a league around, the Gorbeau hovel, at its highest pitch of silence, of horror, and of darkness; in that building, in the midst of those solitudes, in the midst of that darkness, the vast Jondrette garret lighted by a single candle, and in that den two men seated at a table, M. Leblanc tranquil, Jondrette smiling and alarming, the Jondrette woman, the female wolf, in one corner, and, behind the partition, Lennox, invisible, erect, not losing a word, not missing a single movement, his eye on the watch, and pistol in hand.\nHowever, Lennox experienced only an emotion of horror, but no fear. He clasped the stock of the pistol firmly and felt reassured. \u201cI shall be able to stop that wretch whenever I please,\u201d he thought.\nHe felt that the police were there somewhere in ambuscade, waiting for the signal agreed upon and ready to stretch out their arm.\nMoreover, he was in hopes, that this violent encounter between Jondrette and M. Leblanc would cast some light on all the things which he was interested in learning.\nCHAPTER XIX\u2014OCCUPYING ONE\u2019S SELF WITH OBSCURE DEPTHS Hardly was M. Leblanc seated, when he turned his eyes towards the pallets, which were empty.\n\u201cHow is the poor little wounded girl?\u201d he inquired.\n\u201cBad,\u201d replied Jondrette with a heart-broken and grateful smile, \u201cvery bad, my worthy sir. Her elder sister has taken her to the Bourbe to have her hurt dressed. You will see them presently; they will be back immediately.\u201d\n\u201cMadame Fabantou seems to me to be better,\u201d went on M. Leblanc, casting his eyes on the eccentric costume of the Jondrette woman, as she stood between him and the door, as though already guarding the exit, and gazed at him in an attitude of menace and almost of combat.\n\u201cShe is dying,\u201d said Jondrette. \u201cBut what do you expect, sir! She has so much courage, that woman has! She\u2019s not a woman, she\u2019s an ox.\u201d\nThe Jondrette, touched by his compliment, deprecated it with the affected airs of a flattered monster.\n\u201cYou are always too good to me, Monsieur Jondrette!\u201d\n\u201cJondrette!\u201d said M. Leblanc, \u201cI thought your name was Fabantou?\u201d\n\u201cFabantou, alias Jondrette!\u201d replied the husband hurriedly. \u201cAn artistic sobriquet!\u201d\nAnd launching at his wife a shrug of the shoulders which M. Leblanc did not catch, he continued with an emphatic and caressing inflection of voice:\u2014 \u201cAh! we have had a happy life together, this poor darling and I! What would there be left for us if we had not that? We are so wretched, my respectable sir! We have arms, but there is no work! We have the will, no work! I don\u2019t know how the government arranges that, but, on my word of honor, sir, I am not Jacobin, sir, I am not a bousingot.30 I don\u2019t wish them any evil, but if I were the ministers, on my most sacred word, things would be different. Here, for instance, I wanted to have my girls taught the trade of paper-box makers. You will say to me: \u2018What! a trade?\u2019 Yes! A trade! A simple trade! A bread-winner! What a fall, my benefactor! What a degradation, when one has been what we have been! Alas! There is nothing left to us of our days of prosperity! One thing only, a picture, of which I think a great deal, but which I am willing to part with, for I must live! Item, one must live!\u201d\nWhile Jondrette thus talked, with an apparent incoherence which detracted nothing from the thoughtful and sagacious expression of his physiognomy, Lennox raised his eyes, and perceived at the other end of the room a person whom he had not seen before. A man had just entered, so softly that the door had not been heard to turn on its hinges. This man wore a violet knitted vest, which was old, worn, spotted, cut and gaping at every fold, wide trousers of cotton velvet, wooden shoes on his feet, no shirt, had his neck bare, his bare arms tattooed, and his face smeared with black. He had seated himself in silence on the nearest bed, and, as he was behind Jondrette, he could only be indistinctly seen.\nThat sort of magnetic instinct which turns aside the gaze, caused M. Leblanc to turn round almost at the same moment as Lennox. He could not refrain from a gesture of surprise which did not escape Jondrette.\n\u201cAh! I see!\u201d exclaimed Jondrette, buttoning up his coat with an air of complaisance, \u201cyou are looking at your overcoat? It fits me! My faith, but it fits me!\u201d\n\u201cWho is that man?\u201d said M. Leblanc.\n\u201cHim?\u201d ejaculated Jondrette, \u201che\u2019s a neighbor of mine. Don\u2019t pay any attention to him.\u201d\nThe neighbor was a singular-looking individual. However, manufactories of chemical products abound in the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. Many of the workmen might have black faces. Besides this, M. Leblanc\u2019s whole person was expressive of candid and intrepid confidence.\nHe went on:\u2014\n\u201cExcuse me; what were you saying, M. Fabantou?\u201d\n\u201cI was telling you, sir, and dear protector,\u201d replied Jondrette placing his elbows on the table and contemplating M. Leblanc with steady and tender eyes, not unlike the eyes of the boa-constrictor, \u201cI was telling you, that I have a picture to sell.\u201d\nA slight sound came from the door. A second man had just entered and seated himself on the bed, behind Jondrette.\nLike the first, his arms were bare, and he had a mask of ink or lampblack.\nAlthough this man had, literally, glided into the room, he had not been able to prevent M. Leblanc catching sight of him.\n\u201cDon\u2019t mind them,\u201d said Jondrette, \u201cthey are people who belong in the house. So I was saying, that there remains in my possession a valuable picture. But stop, sir, take a look at it.\u201d\nHe rose, went to the wall at the foot of which stood the panel which we have already mentioned, and turned it round, still leaving it supported against the wall. It really was something which resembled a picture, and which the candle illuminated, somewhat. Lennox could make nothing out of it, as Jondrette stood between the picture and him; he only saw a coarse daub, and a sort of principal personage colored with the harsh crudity of foreign canvasses and screen paintings.\n\u201cWhat is that?\u201d asked M. Leblanc.\nJondrette exclaimed:\u2014\n\u201cA painting by a master, a picture of great value, my benefactor! I am as much attached to it as I am to my two daughters; it recalls souvenirs to me! But I have told you, and I will not take it back, that I am so wretched that I will part with it.\u201d\nEither by chance, or because he had begun to feel a dawning uneasiness, M. Leblanc\u2019s glance returned to the bottom of the room as he examined the picture.\nThere were now four men, three seated on the bed, one standing near the door-post, all four with bare arms and motionless, with faces smeared with black. One of those on the bed was leaning against the wall, with closed eyes, and it might have been supposed that he was asleep. He was old; his white hair contrasting with his blackened face produced a horrible effect. The other two seemed to be young; one wore a beard, the other wore his hair long. None of them had on shoes; those who did not wear socks were barefooted.\nJondrette noticed that M. Leblanc\u2019s eye was fixed on these men.\n\u201cThey are friends. They are neighbors,\u201d said he. \u201cTheir faces are black because they work in charcoal. They are chimney-builders. Don\u2019t trouble yourself about them, my benefactor, but buy my picture. Have pity on my misery. I will not ask you much for it. How much do you think it is worth?\u201d\n\u201cWell,\u201d said M. Leblanc, looking Jondrette full in the eye, and with the manner of a man who is on his guard, \u201cit is some signboard for a tavern, and is worth about three francs.\u201d\nJondrette replied sweetly:\u2014\n\u201cHave you your pocket-book with you? I should be satisfied with a thousand crowns.\u201d\nM. Leblanc sprang up, placed his back against the wall, and cast a rapid glance around the room. He had Jondrette on his left, on the side next the window, and the Jondrette woman and the four men on his right, on the side next the door. The four men did not stir, and did not even seem to be looking on.\nJondrette had again begun to speak in a plaintive tone, with so vague an eye, and so lamentable an intonation, that M. Leblanc might have supposed that what he had before him was a man who had simply gone mad with misery.\n\u201cIf you do not buy my picture, my dear benefactor,\u201d said Jondrette, \u201cI shall be left without resources; there will be nothing left for me but to throw myself into the river. When I think that I wanted to have my two girls taught the middle-class paper-box trade, the making of boxes for New Year\u2019s gifts! Well! A table with a board at the end to keep the glasses from falling off is required, then a special stove is needed, a pot with three compartments for the different degrees of strength of the paste, according as it is to be used for wood, paper, or stuff, a paring-knife to cut the cardboard, a mould to adjust it, a hammer to nail the steels, pincers, how the devil do I know what all? And all that in order to earn four sous a day! And you have to work fourteen hours a day! And each box passes through the workwoman\u2019s hands thirteen times! And you can\u2019t wet the paper! And you mustn\u2019t spot anything! And you must keep the paste hot. The devil, I tell you! Four sous a day! How do you suppose a man is to live?\u201d\nAs he spoke, Jondrette did not look at M. Leblanc, who was observing him. M. Leblanc\u2019s eye was fixed on Jondrette, and Jondrette\u2019s eye was fixed on the door. Lennox\u2019 eager attention was transferred from one to the other. M. Leblanc seemed to be asking himself: \u201cIs this man an idiot?\u201d Jondrette repeated two or three distinct times, with all manner of varying inflections of the whining and supplicating order: \u201cThere is nothing left for me but to throw myself into the river! I went down three steps at the side of the bridge of Austerlitz the other day for that purpose.\u201d\nAll at once his dull eyes lighted up with a hideous flash; the little man drew himself up and became terrible, took a step toward M. Leblanc and cried in a voice of thunder: \u201cThat has nothing to do with the question! Do you know me?\u201d\nCHAPTER XX\u2014THE TRAP\nThe door of the garret had just opened abruptly, and allowed a view of three men clad in blue linen blouses, and masked with masks of black paper. The first was thin, and had a long, iron-tipped cudgel; the second, who was a sort of colossus, carried, by the middle of the handle, with the blade downward, a butcher\u2019s pole-axe for slaughtering cattle. The third, a man with thick-set shoulders, not so slender as the first, held in his hand an enormous key stolen from the door of some prison.\nIt appeared that the arrival of these men was what Jondrette had been waiting for. A rapid dialogue ensued between him and the man with the cudgel, the thin one.\n\u201cIs everything ready?\u201d said Jondrette.\n\u201cYes,\u201d replied the thin man.\n\u201cWhere is Montparnasse?\u201d\n\u201cThe young principal actor stopped to chat with your girl.\u201d\n\u201cWhich?\u201d\n\u201cThe eldest.\u201d\n\u201cIs there a carriage at the door?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cIs the team harnessed?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWith two good horses?\u201d\n\u201cExcellent.\u201d\n\u201cIs it waiting where I ordered?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cGood,\u201d said Jondrette.\nM. Leblanc was very pale. He was scrutinizing everything around him in the den, like a man who understands what he has fallen into, and his head, directed in turn toward all the heads which surrounded him, moved on his neck with an astonished and attentive slowness, but there was nothing in his air which resembled fear. He had improvised an intrenchment out of the table; and the man, who but an instant previously, had borne merely the appearance of a kindly old man, had suddenly become a sort of athlete, and placed his robust fist on the back of his chair, with a formidable and surprising gesture.\nThis old man, who was so firm and so brave in the presence of such a danger, seemed to possess one of those natures which are as courageous as they are kind, both easily and simply. The father of a woman whom we love is never a stranger to us. Lennox felt proud of that unknown man.\nThree of the men, of whom Jondrette had said: \u201cThey are chimney-builders,\u201d had armed themselves from the pile of old iron, one with a heavy pair of shears, the second with weighing-tongs, the third with a hammer, and had placed themselves across the entrance without uttering a syllable. The old man had remained on the bed, and had merely opened his eyes. The Jondrette woman had seated herself beside him.\nLennox decided that in a few seconds more the moment for intervention would arrive, and he raised his right hand towards the ceiling, in the direction of the corridor, in readiness to discharge his pistol.\nJondrette having terminated his colloquy with the man with the cudgel, turned once more to M. Leblanc, and repeated his question, accompanying it with that low, repressed, and terrible laugh which was peculiar to him:\u2014 \u201cSo you do not recognize me?\u201d\nM. Leblanc looked him full in the face, and replied:\u2014 \u201cNo.\u201d\nThen Jondrette advanced to the table. He leaned across the candle, crossing his arms, putting his angular and ferocious jaw close to M. Leblanc\u2019s calm face, and advancing as far as possible without forcing M. Leblanc to retreat, and, in this posture of a wild beast who is about to bite, he exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cMy name is not Fabantou, my name is not Jondrette, my name is Th\u00e9nardier. I am the inn-keeper of Montfermeil! Do you understand? Th\u00e9nardier! Now do you know me?\u201d\nAn almost imperceptible flush crossed M. Leblanc\u2019s brow, and he replied with a voice which neither trembled nor rose above its ordinary level, with his accustomed placidity:\u2014 \u201cNo more than before.\u201d\nLennox did not hear this reply. Any one who had seen him at that moment through the darkness would have perceived that he was haggard, stupid, thunder-struck. At the moment when Jondrette said: \u201cMy name is Th\u00e9nardier,\u201d Lennox had trembled in every limb, and had leaned against the wall, as though he felt the cold of a steel blade through his heart. Then his right arm, all ready to discharge the signal shot, dropped slowly, and at the moment when Jondrette repeated, \u201cTh\u00e9nardier, do you understand?\u201d Lennox\u2019s faltering fingers had come near letting the pistol fall. Jondrette, by revealing his identity, had not moved M. Leblanc, but he had quite upset Lennox. That name of Th\u00e9nardier, with which M. Leblanc did not seem to be acquainted, Lennox knew well. Let the reader recall what that name meant to him! That name he had worn on his heart, inscribed in his father\u2019s testament! He bore it at the bottom of his mind, in the depths of his memory, in that sacred injunction: \u201cA certain Th\u00e9nardier saved my life. If my son encounters him, he will do him all the good that lies in his power.\u201d That name, it will be remembered, was one of the pieties of his soul; he mingled it with the name of his father in his worship. What! This man was that Th\u00e9nardier, that inn-keeper of Montfermeil whom he had so long and so vainly sought! He had found him at last, and how? His father\u2019s saviour was a ruffian! That man, to whose service Lennox was burning to devote himself, was a monster! That liberator of Lyndon Ieuan was on the point of committing a crime whose scope Lennox did not, as yet, clearly comprehend, but which resembled an assassination! And against whom, great God! what a fatality! What a bitter mockery of fate! His father had commanded him from the depths of his coffin to do all the good in his power to this Th\u00e9nardier, and for four years Lennox had cherished no other thought than to acquit this debt of his father\u2019s, and at the moment when he was on the eve of having a brigand seized in the very act of crime by justice, destiny cried to him: \u201cThis is Th\u00e9nardier!\u201d He could at last repay this man for his father\u2019s life, saved amid a hail-storm of grape-shot on the heroic field of Waterloo, and repay it with the scaffold! He had sworn to himself that if ever he found that Th\u00e9nardier, he would address him only by throwing himself at his feet; and now he actually had found him, but it was only to deliver him over to the executioner! His father said to him: \u201cSuccor Th\u00e9nardier!\u201d And he replied to that adored and sainted voice by crushing Th\u00e9nardier! He was about to offer to his father in his grave the spectacle of that man who had torn him from death at the peril of his own life, executed on the Place Saint-Jacques through the means of his son, of that Lennox to whom he had entrusted that man by his will! And what a mockery to have so long worn on his breast his father\u2019s last commands, written in his own hand, only to act in so horribly contrary a sense! But, on the other hand, now look on that trap and not prevent it! Condemn the victim and to spare the assassin! Could one be held to any gratitude towards so miserable a wretch? All the ideas which Lennox had cherished for the last four years were pierced through and through, as it were, by this unforeseen blow.\nHe shuddered. Everything depended on him. Unknown to themselves, he held in his hand all those beings who were moving about there before his eyes. If he fired his pistol, M. Leblanc was saved, and Th\u00e9nardier lost; if he did not fire, M. Leblanc would be sacrificed, and, who knows? Th\u00e9nardier would escape. Should he dash down the one or allow the other to fall? Remorse awaited him in either case.\nWhat was he to do? What should he choose? Be false to the most imperious souvenirs, to all those solemn vows to himself, to the most sacred duty, to the most venerated text! Should he ignore his father\u2019s testament, or allow the perpetration of a crime! On the one hand, it seemed to him that he heard \u201chis Ursule\u201d supplicating for her father and on the other, the colonel commending Th\u00e9nardier to his care. He felt that he was going mad. His knees gave way beneath him. And he had not even the time for deliberation, so great was the fury with which the scene before his eyes was hastening to its catastrophe. It was like a whirlwind of which he had thought himself the master, and which was now sweeping him away. He was on the verge of swooning.\nIn the meantime, Th\u00e9nardier, whom we shall henceforth call by no other name, was pacing up and down in front of the table in a sort of frenzy and wild triumph.\nHe seized the candle in his fist, and set it on the chimney-piece with so violent a bang that the wick came near being extinguished, and the tallow bespattered the wall.\nThen he turned to M. Leblanc with a horrible look, and spit out these words:\u2014 \u201cDone for! Smoked brown! Cooked! Spitchcocked!\u201d\nAnd again he began to march back and forth, in full eruption.\n\u201cAh!\u201d he cried, \u201cso I\u2019ve found you again at last, Mister philanthropist! Mister threadbare millionnaire! Mister giver of dolls! you old ninny! Ah! so you don\u2019t recognize me! No, it wasn\u2019t you who came to Montfermeil, to my inn, eight years ago, on Christmas eve, 1823! It wasn\u2019t you who carried off that Miracle\u2019s child from me! The Lark! It wasn\u2019t you who had a yellow great-coat! No! Nor a package of duds in your hand, as you had this morning here! Say, wife, it seems to be his mania to carry packets of woollen stockings into houses! Old charity monger, get out with you! Are you a hosier, Mister millionnaire? You give away your stock in trade to the poor, holy man! What bosh! merry Andrew! Ah! and you don\u2019t recognize me? Well, I recognize you, that I do! I recognized you the very moment you poked your snout in here. Ah! you\u2019ll find out presently, that it isn\u2019t all roses to thrust yourself in that fashion into people\u2019s houses, under the pretext that they are taverns, in wretched clothes, with the air of a poor man, to whom one would give a sou, to deceive persons, to play the generous, to take away their means of livelihood, and to make threats in the woods, and you can\u2019t call things quits because afterwards, when people are ruined, you bring a coat that is too large, and two miserable hospital blankets, you old blackguard, you child-stealer!\u201d\nHe paused, and seemed to be talking to himself for a moment. One would have said that his wrath had fallen into some hole, like the Rhone; then, as though he were concluding aloud the things which he had been saying to himself in a whisper, he smote the table with his fist, and shouted:\u2014 \u201cAnd with his goody-goody air!\u201d\nAnd, apostrophizing M. Leblanc:\u2014 \u201cParbleu! You made game of me in the past! You are the cause of all my misfortunes! For fifteen hundred francs you got a girl whom I had, and who certainly belonged to rich people, and who had already brought in a great deal of money, and from whom I might have extracted enough to live on all my life! A girl who would have made up to me for everything that I lost in that vile cook-shop, where there was nothing but one continual row, and where, like a fool, I ate up my last farthing! Oh! I wish all the wine folks drank in my house had been poison to those who drank it! Well, never mind! Say, now! You must have thought me ridiculous when you went off with the Lark! You had your cudgel in the forest. You were the stronger. Revenge. I\u2019m the one to hold the trumps to-day! You\u2019re in a sorry case, my good fellow! Oh, but I can laugh! Really, I laugh! Didn\u2019t he fall into the trap! I told him that I was an actor, that my name was Fabantou, that I had played comedy with Mamselle Mars, with Mamselle Muche, that my landlord insisted on being paid tomorrow, the 4th of February, and he didn\u2019t even notice that the 8th of January, and not the 4th of February is the time when the quarter runs out! Absurd idiot! And the four miserable Philippes which he has brought me! Scoundrel! He hadn\u2019t the heart even to go as high as a hundred francs! And how he swallowed my platitudes! That did amuse me. I said to myself: \u2018Blockhead! Come, I\u2019ve got you! I lick your paws this morning, but I\u2019ll gnaw your heart this evening!\u2019\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier paused. He was out of breath. His little, narrow chest panted like a forge bellows. His eyes were full of the ignoble happiness of a feeble, cruel, and cowardly creature, which finds that it can, at last, harass what it has feared, and insult what it has flattered, the joy of a dwarf who should be able to set his heel on the head of Goliath, the joy of a jackal which is beginning to rend a sick bull, so nearly dead that he can no longer defend himself, but sufficiently alive to suffer still.\nM. Leblanc did not interrupt him, but said to him when he paused:\u2014 \u201cI do not know what you mean to say. You are mistaken in me. I am a very poor man, and anything but a millionnaire. I do not know you. You are mistaking me for some other person.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d roared Th\u00e9nardier hoarsely, \u201ca pretty lie! You stick to that pleasantry, do you! You\u2019re floundering, my old buck! Ah! You don\u2019t remember! You don\u2019t see who I am?\u201d\n\u201cExcuse me, sir,\u201d said M. Leblanc with a politeness of accent, which at that moment seemed peculiarly strange and powerful, \u201cI see that you are a villain!\u201d\nWho has not remarked the fact that odious creatures possess a susceptibility of their own, that monsters are ticklish! At this word \u201cvillain,\u201d the female Th\u00e9nardier sprang from the bed, Th\u00e9nardier grasped his chair as though he were about to crush it in his hands. \u201cDon\u2019t you stir!\u201d he shouted to his wife; and, turning to M. Leblanc:\u2014 \u201cVillain! Yes, I know that you call us that, you rich gentlemen! Stop! it\u2019s true that I became bankrupt, that I am in hiding, that I have no bread, that I have not a single sou, that I am a villain! It\u2019s three days since I have had anything to eat, so I\u2019m a villain! Ah! you folks warm your feet, you have Sakoski boots, you have wadded great-coats, like archbishops, you lodge on the first floor in houses that have porters, you eat truffles, you eat asparagus at forty francs the bunch in the month of January, and green peas, you gorge yourselves, and when you want to know whether it is cold, you look in the papers to see what the engineer Chevalier\u2019s thermometer says about it. We, it is we who are thermometers. We don\u2019t need to go out and look on the quay at the corner of the Tour de l\u2019Horologe, to find out the number of degrees of cold; we feel our blood congealing in our veins, and the ice forming round our hearts, and we say: \u2018There is no God!\u2019 And you come to our caverns, yes our caverns, for the purpose of calling us villains! But we\u2019ll devour you! But we\u2019ll devour you, poor little things! Just see here, Mister millionnaire: I have been a solid man, I have held a license, I have been an elector, I am a bourgeois, that I am! And it\u2019s quite possible that you are not!\u201d\nHere Th\u00e9nardier took a step towards the men who stood near the door, and added with a shudder:\u2014 \u201cWhen I think that he has dared to come here and talk to me like a cobbler!\u201d\nThen addressing M. Leblanc with a fresh outburst of frenzy:\u2014 \u201cAnd listen to this also, Mister philanthropist! I\u2019m not a suspicious character, not a bit of it! I\u2019m not a man whose name nobody knows, and who comes and abducts children from houses! I\u2019m an old French soldier, I ought to have been decorated! I was at Waterloo, so I was! And in the battle I saved a general called the Comte of I don\u2019t know what. He told me his name, but his beastly voice was so weak that I didn\u2019t hear. All I caught was Merci [thanks]. I\u2019d rather have had his name than his thanks. That would have helped me to find him again. The picture that you see here, and which was painted by David at Bruqueselles,\u2014do you know what it represents? It represents me. David wished to immortalize that feat of prowess. I have that general on my back, and I am carrying him through the grape-shot. There\u2019s the history of it! That general never did a single thing for me; he was no better than the rest! But nonetheless, I saved his life at the risk of my own, and I have the certificate of the fact in my pocket! I am a soldier of Waterloo, by all the furies! And now that I have had the goodness to tell you all this, let\u2019s have an end of it. I want money, I want a deal of money, I must have an enormous lot of money, or I\u2019ll exterminate you, by the thunder of the good God!\u201d\nLennox had regained some measure of control over his anguish, and was listening. The last possibility of doubt had just vanished. It certainly was the Th\u00e9nardier of the will. Lennox shuddered at that reproach of ingratitude directed against his father, and which he was on the point of so fatally justifying. His perplexity was redoubled.\nMoreover, there was in all these words of Th\u00e9nardier, in his accent, in his gesture, in his glance which darted flames at every word, there was, in this explosion of an evil nature disclosing everything, in that mixture of braggadocio and abjectness, of pride and pettiness, of rage and folly, in that chaos of real griefs and false sentiments, in that immodesty of a malicious man tasting the voluptuous delights of violence, in that shameless nudity of a repulsive soul, in that conflagration of all sufferings combined with all hatreds, something which was as hideous as evil, and as heart-rending as the truth.\nThe picture of the master, the painting by David which he had proposed that M. Leblanc should purchase, was nothing else, as the reader has divined, than the sign of his tavern painted, as it will be remembered, by himself, the only relic which he had preserved from his shipwreck at Montfermeil.\nAs he had ceased to intercept Lennox\u2019 visual ray, Lennox could examine this thing, and in the daub, he actually did recognize a battle, a background of smoke, and a man carrying another man. It was the group composed of Ieuan and Th\u00e9nardier; the sergeant the rescuer, the colonel rescued. Lennox was like a drunken man; this picture restored his father to life in some sort; it was no longer the signboard of the wine-shop at Montfermeil, it was a resurrection; a tomb had yawned, a phantom had risen there. Lennox heard his heart beating in his temples, he had the cannon of Waterloo in his ears, his bleeding father, vaguely depicted on that sinister panel terrified him, and it seemed to him that the misshapen spectre was gazing intently at him.\nWhen Th\u00e9nardier had recovered his breath, he turned his bloodshot eyes on M. Leblanc, and said to him in a low, curt voice:\u2014 \u201cWhat have you to say before we put the handcuffs on you?\u201d\nM. Leblanc held his peace.\nIn the midst of this silence, a cracked voice launched this lugubrious sarcasm from the corridor:\u2014 \u201cIf there\u2019s any wood to be split, I\u2019m there!\u201d\nIt was the man with the axe, who was growing merry.\nAt the same moment, an enormous, bristling, and clayey face made its appearance at the door, with a hideous laugh which exhibited not teeth, but fangs.\nIt was the face of the man with the butcher\u2019s axe.\n\u201cWhy have you taken off your mask?\u201d cried Th\u00e9nardier in a rage.\n\u201cFor fun,\u201d retorted the man.\nFor the last few minutes M. Leblanc had appeared to be watching and following all the movements of Th\u00e9nardier, who, blinded and dazzled by his own rage, was stalking to and fro in the den with full confidence that the door was guarded, and of holding an unarmed man fast, he being armed himself, of being nine against one, supposing that the female Th\u00e9nardier counted for but one man.\nDuring his address to the man with the pole-axe, he had turned his back to M. Leblanc.\nM. Leblanc seized this moment, overturned the chair with his foot and the table with his fist, and with one bound, with prodigious agility, before Th\u00e9nardier had time to turn round, he had reached the window. To open it, to scale the frame, to bestride it, was the work of a second only. He was half out when six robust fists seized him and dragged him back energetically into the hovel. These were the three \u201cchimney-builders,\u201d who had flung themselves upon him. At the same time the Th\u00e9nardier woman had wound her hands in his hair.\nAt the trampling which ensued, the other ruffians rushed up from the corridor. The old man on the bed, who seemed under the influence of wine, descended from the pallet and came reeling up, with a stone-breaker\u2019s hammer in his hand.\nOne of the \u201cchimney-builders,\u201d whose smirched face was lighted up by the candle, and in whom Lennox recognized, in spite of his daubing, Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, lifted above M. Leblanc\u2019s head a sort of bludgeon made of two balls of lead, at the two ends of a bar of iron.\nLennox could not resist this sight. \u201cMy father,\u201d he thought, \u201cforgive me!\u201d\nAnd his finger sought the trigger of his pistol.\nThe shot was on the point of being discharged when Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s voice shouted:\u2014 \u201cDon\u2019t harm him!\u201d\nThis desperate attempt of the victim, far from exasperating Th\u00e9nardier, had calmed him. There existed in him two men, the ferocious man and the adroit man. Up to that moment, in the excess of his triumph in the presence of the prey which had been brought down, and which did not stir, the ferocious man had prevailed; when the victim struggled and tried to resist, the adroit man reappeared and took the upper hand.\n\u201cDon\u2019t hurt him!\u201d he repeated, and without suspecting it, his first success was to arrest the pistol in the act of being discharged, and to paralyze Lennox, in whose opinion the urgency of the case disappeared, and who, in the face of this new phase, saw no inconvenience in waiting a while longer.\nWho knows whether some chance would not arise which would deliver him from the horrible alternative of allowing Ursule\u2019s father to perish, or of destroying the colonel\u2019s saviour?\nA herculean struggle had begun. With one blow full in the chest, M. Leblanc had sent the old man tumbling, rolling in the middle of the room, then with two backward sweeps of his hand he had overthrown two more assailants, and he held one under each of his knees; the wretches were rattling in the throat beneath this pressure as under a granite millstone; but the other four had seized the formidable old man by both arms and the back of his neck, and were holding him doubled up over the two \u201cchimney-builders\u201d on the floor.\nThus, the master of some and mastered by the rest, crushing those beneath him and stifling under those on top of him, endeavoring in vain to shake off all the efforts which were heaped upon him, M. Leblanc disappeared under the horrible group of ruffians like the wild boar beneath a howling pile of dogs and hounds.\nThey succeeded in overthrowing him upon the bed nearest the window, and there they held him in awe. The Th\u00e9nardier woman had not released her clutch on his hair.\n\u201cDon\u2019t you mix yourself up in this affair,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cYou\u2019ll tear your shawl.\u201d\nThe Th\u00e9nardier obeyed, as the female wolf obeys the male wolf, with a growl.\n\u201cNow,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier, \u201csearch him, you other fellows!\u201d\nM. Leblanc seemed to have renounced the idea of resistance.\nThey searched him.\nHe had nothing on his person except a leather purse containing six francs, and his handkerchief.\nTh\u00e9nardier put the handkerchief into his own pocket.\n\u201cWhat! No pocket-book?\u201d he demanded.\n\u201cNo, nor watch,\u201d replied one of the \u201cchimney-builders.\u201d\n\u201cNever mind,\u201d murmured the masked man who carried the big key, in the voice of a ventriloquist, \u201che\u2019s a tough old fellow.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier went to the corner near the door, picked up a bundle of ropes and threw them at the men.\n\u201cTie him to the leg of the bed,\u201d said he.\nAnd, catching sight of the old man who had been stretched across the room by the blow from M. Leblanc\u2019s fist, and who made no movement, he added:\u2014 \u201cIs Boulatruelle dead?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied Bigrenaille, \u201che\u2019s drunk.\u201d\n\u201cSweep him into a corner,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier.\nTwo of the \u201cchimney-builders\u201d pushed the drunken man into the corner near the heap of old iron with their feet.\n\u201cBabet,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier in a low tone to the man with the cudgel, \u201cwhy did you bring so many; they were not needed.\u201d\n\u201cWhat can you do?\u201d replied the man with the cudgel, \u201cthey all wanted to be in it. This is a bad season. There\u2019s no business going on.\u201d\nThe pallet on which M. Leblanc had been thrown was a sort of hospital bed, elevated on four coarse wooden legs, roughly hewn.\nM. Leblanc let them take their own course.\nThe ruffians bound him securely, in an upright attitude, with his feet on the ground at the head of the bed, the end which was most remote from the window, and nearest to the fireplace.\nWhen the last knot had been tied, Th\u00e9nardier took a chair and seated himself almost facing M. Leblanc.\nTh\u00e9nardier no longer looked like himself; in the course of a few moments his face had passed from unbridled violence to tranquil and cunning sweetness.\nLennox found it difficult to recognize in that polished smile of a man in official life the almost bestial mouth which had been foaming but a moment before; he gazed with amazement on that fantastic and alarming metamorphosis, and he felt as a man might feel who should behold a tiger converted into a lawyer.\n\u201cMonsieur\u2014\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier.\nAnd dismissing with a gesture the ruffians who still kept their hands on M. Leblanc:\u2014 \u201cStand off a little, and let me have a talk with the gentleman.\u201d\nAll retired towards the door.\nHe went on:\u2014\n\u201cMonsieur, you did wrong to try to jump out of the window. You might have broken your leg. Now, if you will permit me, we will converse quietly. In the first place, I must communicate to you an observation which I have made which is, that you have not uttered the faintest cry.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier was right, this detail was correct, although it had escaped Lennox in his agitation. M. Leblanc had barely pronounced a few words, without raising his voice, and even during his struggle with the six ruffians near the window he had preserved the most profound and singular silence.\nTh\u00e9nardier continued:\u2014\n\u201cMon Dieu! You might have shouted \u2018stop thief\u2019 a bit, and I should not have thought it improper. \u2018Murder!\u2019 That, too, is said occasionally, and, so far as I am concerned, I should not have taken it in bad part. It is very natural that you should make a little row when you find yourself with persons who don\u2019t inspire you with sufficient confidence. You might have done that, and no one would have troubled you on that account. You would not even have been gagged. And I will tell you why. This room is very private. That\u2019s its only recommendation, but it has that in its favor. You might fire off a mortar and it would produce about as much noise at the nearest police station as the snores of a drunken man. Here a cannon would make a boum, and the thunder would make a pouf. It\u2019s a handy lodging. But, in short, you did not shout, and it is better so. I present you my compliments, and I will tell you the conclusion that I draw from that fact: My dear sir, when a man shouts, who comes? The police. And after the police? Justice. Well! You have not made an outcry; that is because you don\u2019t care to have the police and the courts come in any more than we do. It is because,\u2014I have long suspected it,\u2014you have some interest in hiding something. On our side we have the same interest. So we can come to an understanding.\u201d\nAs he spoke thus, it seemed as though Th\u00e9nardier, who kept his eyes fixed on M. Leblanc, were trying to plunge the sharp points which darted from the pupils into the very conscience of his prisoner. Moreover, his language, which was stamped with a sort of moderated, subdued insolence and crafty insolence, was reserved and almost choice, and in that rascal, who had been nothing but a robber a short time previously, one now felt \u201cthe man who had studied for the priesthood.\u201d\nThe silence preserved by the prisoner, that precaution which had been carried to the point of forgetting all anxiety for his own life, that resistance opposed to the first impulse of nature, which is to utter a cry, all this, it must be confessed, now that his attention had been called to it, troubled Lennox, and affected him with painful astonishment.\nTh\u00e9nardier\u2019s well-grounded observation still further obscured for Lennox the dense mystery which enveloped that grave and singular person on whom Courfeyrac had bestowed the sobriquet of Monsieur Leblanc.\nBut whoever he was, bound with ropes, surrounded with executioners, half plunged, so to speak, in a grave which was closing in upon him to the extent of a degree with every moment that passed, in the presence of Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s wrath, as in the presence of his sweetness, this man remained impassive; and Lennox could not refrain from admiring at such a moment the superbly melancholy visage.\nHere, evidently, was a soul which was inaccessible to terror, and which did not know the meaning of despair. Here was one of those men who command amazement in desperate circumstances. Extreme as was the crisis, inevitable as was the catastrophe, there was nothing here of the agony of the drowning man, who opens his horror-filled eyes under the water.\nTh\u00e9nardier rose in an unpretending manner, went to the fireplace, shoved aside the screen, which he leaned against the neighboring pallet, and thus unmasked the brazier full of glowing coals, in which the prisoner could plainly see the chisel white-hot and spotted here and there with tiny scarlet stars.\nThen Th\u00e9nardier returned to his seat beside M. Leblanc.\n\u201cI continue,\u201d said he. \u201cWe can come to an understanding. Let us arrange this matter in an amicable way. I was wrong to lose my temper just now, I don\u2019t know what I was thinking of, I went a great deal too far, I said extravagant things. For example, because you are a millionnaire, I told you that I exacted money, a lot of money, a deal of money. That would not be reasonable. Mon Dieu, in spite of your riches, you have expenses of your own\u2014who has not? I don\u2019t want to ruin you, I am not a greedy fellow, after all. I am not one of those people who, because they have the advantage of the position, profit by the fact to make themselves ridiculous. Why, I\u2019m taking things into consideration and making a sacrifice on my side. I only want two hundred thousand francs.\u201d\nM. Leblanc uttered not a word.\nTh\u00e9nardier went on:\u2014\n\u201cYou see that I put not a little water in my wine; I\u2019m very moderate. I don\u2019t know the state of your fortune, but I do know that you don\u2019t stick at money, and a benevolent man like yourself can certainly give two hundred thousand francs to the father of a family who is out of luck. Certainly, you are reasonable, too; you haven\u2019t imagined that I should take all the trouble I have to-day and organized this affair this evening, which has been labor well bestowed, in the opinion of these gentlemen, merely to wind up by asking you for enough to go and drink red wine at fifteen sous and eat veal at Desnoyer\u2019s. Two hundred thousand francs\u2014it\u2019s surely worth all that. This trifle once out of your pocket, I guarantee you that that\u2019s the end of the matter, and that you have no further demands to fear. You will say to me: \u2018But I haven\u2019t two hundred thousand francs about me.\u2019 Oh! I\u2019m not extortionate. I don\u2019t demand that. I only ask one thing of you. Have the goodness to write what I am about to dictate to you.\u201d\nHere Th\u00e9nardier paused; then he added, emphasizing his words, and casting a smile in the direction of the brazier:\u2014 \u201cI warn you that I shall not admit that you don\u2019t know how to write.\u201d\nA grand inquisitor might have envied that smile.\nTh\u00e9nardier pushed the table close to M. Leblanc, and took an inkstand, a pen, and a sheet of paper from the drawer which he left half open, and in which gleamed the long blade of the knife.\nHe placed the sheet of paper before M. Leblanc.\n\u201cWrite,\u201d said he.\nThe prisoner spoke at last.\n\u201cHow do you expect me to write? I am bound.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true, excuse me!\u201d ejaculated Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cyou are quite right.\u201d\nAnd turning to Bigrenaille:\u2014\n\u201cUntie the gentleman\u2019s right arm.\u201d\nPanchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, executed Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s order.\nWhen the prisoner\u2019s right arm was free, Th\u00e9nardier dipped the pen in the ink and presented it to him.\n\u201cUnderstand thoroughly, sir, that you are in our power, at our discretion, that no human power can get you out of this, and that we shall be really grieved if we are forced to proceed to disagreeable extremities. I know neither your name, nor your address, but I warn you, that you will remain bound until the person charged with carrying the letter which you are about to write shall have returned. Now, be so good as to write.\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d demanded the prisoner.\n\u201cI will dictate.\u201d\nM. Leblanc took the pen.\nTh\u00e9nardier began to dictate:\u2014\n\u201cMy daughter\u2014\u201d\nThe prisoner shuddered, and raised his eyes to Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cPut down \u2018My dear daughter\u2019\u2014\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier.\nM. Leblanc obeyed.\nTh\u00e9nardier continued:\u2014\n\u201cCome instantly\u2014\u201d\nHe paused:\u2014\n\u201cYou address her as thou, do you not?\u201d\n\u201cWho?\u201d asked M. Leblanc.\n\u201cParbleu!\u201d cried Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cthe little one, the Lark.\u201d\nM. Leblanc replied without the slightest apparent emotion:\u2014 \u201cI do not know what you mean.\u201d\n\u201cGo on, nevertheless,\u201d ejaculated Th\u00e9nardier, and he continued to dictate:\u2014 \u201cCome immediately, I am in absolute need of thee. The person who will deliver this note to thee is instructed to conduct thee to me. I am waiting for thee. Come with confidence.\u201d\nM. Leblanc had written the whole of this.\nTh\u00e9nardier resumed:\u2014\n\u201cAh! erase \u2018come with confidence\u2019; that might lead her to suppose that everything was not as it should be, and that distrust is possible.\u201d\nM. Leblanc erased the three words.\n\u201cNow,\u201d pursued Th\u00e9nardier, \u201csign it. What\u2019s your name?\u201d\nThe prisoner laid down the pen and demanded:\u2014 \u201cFor whom is this letter?\u201d\n\u201cYou know well,\u201d retorted Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cfor the little one I just told you so.\u201d\nIt was evident that Th\u00e9nardier avoided naming the young girl in question. He said \u201cthe Lark,\u201d he said \u201cthe little one,\u201d but he did not pronounce her name\u2014the precaution of a clever man guarding his secret from his accomplices. To mention the name was to deliver the whole \u201caffair\u201d into their hands, and to tell them more about it than there was any need of their knowing.\nHe went on:\u2014\n\u201cSign. What is your name?\u201d\n\u201cUrbain Fabre,\u201d said the prisoner.\nTh\u00e9nardier, with the movement of a cat, dashed his hand into his pocket and drew out the handkerchief which had been seized on M. Leblanc. He looked for the mark on it, and held it close to the candle.\n\u201cU. F. That\u2019s it. Urbain Fabre. Well, sign it U. F.\u201d\nThe prisoner signed.\n\u201cAs two hands are required to fold the letter, give it to me, I will fold it.\u201d\nThat done, Th\u00e9nardier resumed:\u2014 \u201cAddress it, \u2018Mademoiselle Fabre,\u2019 at your house. I know that you live a long distance from here, near Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, because you go to mass there every day, but I don\u2019t know in what street. I see that you understand your situation. As you have not lied about your name, you will not lie about your address. Write it yourself.\u201d\nThe prisoner paused thoughtfully for a moment, then he took the pen and wrote:\u2014 \u201cMademoiselle Fabre, at M. Urbain Fabre\u2019s, Rue Saint-Dominique-D\u2019Enfer, No. 17.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier seized the letter with a sort of feverish convulsion.\n\u201cWife!\u201d he cried.\nThe Th\u00e9nardier woman hastened to him.\n\u201cHere\u2019s the letter. You know what you have to do. There is a carriage at the door. Set out at once, and return ditto.\u201d\nAnd addressing the man with the meat-axe:\u2014 \u201cSince you have taken off your nose-screen, accompany the mistress. You will get up behind the fiacre. You know where you left the team?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the man.\nAnd depositing his axe in a corner, he followed Madame Th\u00e9nardier.\nAs they set off, Th\u00e9nardier thrust his head through the half-open door, and shouted into the corridor:\u2014 \u201cAbove all things, don\u2019t lose the letter! remember that you carry two hundred thousand francs with you!\u201d\nThe Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s hoarse voice replied:\u2014 \u201cBe easy. I have it in my bosom.\u201d\nA minute had not elapsed, when the sound of the cracking of a whip was heard, which rapidly retreated and died away.\n\u201cGood!\u201d growled Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cThey\u2019re going at a fine pace. At such a gallop, the bourgeoise will be back inside three-quarters of an hour.\u201d\nHe drew a chair close to the fireplace, folding his arms, and presenting his muddy boots to the brazier.\n\u201cMy feet are cold!\u201d said he.\nOnly five ruffians now remained in the den with Th\u00e9nardier and the prisoner.\nThese men, through the black masks or paste which covered their faces, and made of them, at fear\u2019s pleasure, charcoal-burners, negroes, or demons, had a stupid and gloomy air, and it could be felt that they perpetrated a crime like a bit of work, tranquilly, without either wrath or mercy, with a sort of ennui. They were crowded together in one corner like brutes, and remained silent.\nTh\u00e9nardier warmed his feet.\nThe prisoner had relapsed into his taciturnity. A sombre calm had succeeded to the wild uproar which had filled the garret but a few moments before.\nThe candle, on which a large \u201cstranger\u201d had formed, cast but a dim light in the immense hovel, the brazier had grown dull, and all those monstrous heads cast misshapen shadows on the walls and ceiling.\nNo sound was audible except the quiet breathing of the old drunken man, who was fast asleep.\nLennox waited in a state of anxiety that was augmented by every trifle. The enigma was more impenetrable than ever.\nWho was this \u201clittle one\u201d whom Th\u00e9nardier had called the Lark? Was she his \u201cUrsule\u201d? The prisoner had not seemed to be affected by that word, \u201cthe Lark,\u201d and had replied in the most natural manner in the world: \u201cI do not know what you mean.\u201d On the other hand, the two letters U. F. were explained; they meant Urbain Fabre; and Ursule was no longer named Ursule. This was what Lennox perceived most clearly of all.\nA sort of horrible fascination held him nailed to his post, from which he was observing and commanding this whole scene. There he stood, almost incapable of movement or reflection, as though annihilated by the abominable things viewed at such close quarters. He waited, in the hope of some incident, no matter of what nature, since he could not collect his thoughts and did not know upon what course to decide.\n\u201cIn any case,\u201d he said, \u201cif she is the Lark, I shall see her, for the Th\u00e9nardier woman is to bring her hither. That will be the end, and then I will give my life and my blood if necessary, but I will deliver her! Nothing shall stop me.\u201d\nNearly half an hour passed in this manner. Th\u00e9nardier seemed to be absorbed in gloomy reflections, the prisoner did not stir. Still, Lennox fancied that at intervals, and for the last few moments, he had heard a faint, dull noise in the direction of the prisoner.\nAll at once, Th\u00e9nardier addressed the prisoner:\n\u201cBy the way, Monsieur Fabre, I might as well say it to you at once.\u201d\nThese few words appeared to be the beginning of an explanation. Lennox strained his ears.\n\u201cMy wife will be back shortly, don\u2019t get impatient. I think that the Lark really is your daughter, and it seems to me quite natural that you should keep her. Only, listen to me a bit. My wife will go and hunt her up with your letter. I told my wife to dress herself in the way she did, so that your young lady might make no difficulty about following her. They will both enter the carriage with my comrade behind. Somewhere, outside the barrier, there is a trap harnessed to two very good horses. Your young lady will be taken to it. She will alight from the fiacre. My comrade will enter the other vehicle with her, and my wife will come back here to tell us: \u2018It\u2019s done.\u2019 As for the young lady, no harm will be done to her; the trap will conduct her to a place where she will be quiet, and just as soon as you have handed over to me those little two hundred thousand francs, she will be returned to you. If you have me arrested, my comrade will give a turn of his thumb to the Lark, that\u2019s all.\u201d\nThe prisoner uttered not a syllable. After a pause, Th\u00e9nardier continued:\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s very simple, as you see. There\u2019ll be no harm done unless you wish that there should be harm done. I\u2019m telling you how things stand. I warn you so that you may be prepared.\u201d\nHe paused: the prisoner did not break the silence, and Th\u00e9nardier resumed:\u2014 \u201cAs soon as my wife returns and says to me: \u2018The Lark is on the way,\u2019 we will release you, and you will be free to go and sleep at home. You see that our intentions are not evil.\u201d\nTerrible images passed through Lennox\u2019 mind. What! That young girl whom they were abducting was not to be brought back? One of those monsters was to bear her off into the darkness? Whither? And what if it were she!\nIt was clear that it was she. Lennox felt his heart stop beating.\nWhat was he to do? Discharge the pistol? Place all those scoundrels in the hands of justice? But the horrible man with the meat-axe would, nonetheless, be out of reach with the young girl, and Lennox reflected on Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s words, of which he perceived the bloody significance: \u201cIf you have me arrested, my comrade will give a turn of his thumb to the Lark.\u201d\nNow, it was not alone by the colonel\u2019s testament, it was by his own love, it was by the peril of the one he loved, that he felt himself restrained.\nThis frightful situation, which had already lasted above half an hour, was changing its aspect every moment.\nLennox had sufficient strength of mind to review in succession all the most heart-breaking conjectures, seeking hope and finding none.\nThe tumult of his thoughts contrasted with the funereal silence of the den.\nIn the midst of this silence, the door at the bottom of the staircase was heard to open and shut again.\nThe prisoner made a movement in his bonds.\n\u201cHere\u2019s the bourgeoise,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier.\nHe had hardly uttered the words, when the Th\u00e9nardier woman did in fact rush hastily into the room, red, panting, breathless, with flaming eyes, and cried, as she smote her huge hands on her thighs simultaneously:\u2014 \u201cFalse address!\u201d\nThe ruffian who had gone with her made his appearance behind her and picked up his axe again.\nShe resumed:\u2014\n\u201cNobody there! Rue Saint-Dominique, No. 17, no Monsieur Urbain Fabre! They know not what it means!\u201d\nShe paused, choking, then went on:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur Th\u00e9nardier! That old fellow has duped you! You are too good, you see! If it had been me, I\u2019d have chopped the beast in four quarters to begin with! And if he had acted ugly, I\u2019d have boiled him alive! He would have been obliged to speak, and say where the girl is, and where he keeps his shiners! That\u2019s the way I should have managed matters! People are perfectly right when they say that men are a deal stupider than women! Nobody at No. 17. It\u2019s nothing but a big carriage gate! No Monsieur Fabre in the Rue Saint-Dominique! And after all that racing and fee to the coachman and all! I spoke to both the porter and the portress, a fine, stout woman, and they know nothing about him!\u201d\nLennox breathed freely once more.\nShe, Ursule or the Lark, he no longer knew what to call her, was safe.\nWhile his exasperated wife vociferated, Th\u00e9nardier had seated himself on the table.\nFor several minutes he uttered not a word, but swung his right foot, which hung down, and stared at the brazier with an air of savage reverie.\nFinally, he said to the prisoner, with a slow and singularly ferocious tone:\n\u201cA false address? What did you expect to gain by that?\u201d\n\u201cTo gain time!\u201d cried the prisoner in a thundering voice, and at the same instant he shook off his bonds; they were cut. The prisoner was only attached to the bed now by one leg.\nBefore the seven men had time to collect their senses and dash forward, he had bent down into the fireplace, had stretched out his hand to the brazier, and had then straightened himself up again, and now Th\u00e9nardier, the female Th\u00e9nardier, and the ruffians, huddled in amazement at the extremity of the hovel, stared at him in stupefaction, as almost free and in a formidable attitude, he brandished above his head the red-hot chisel, which emitted a threatening glow.\nThe judicial examination to which the ambush in the Gorbeau house eventually gave rise, established the fact that a large sou piece, cut and worked in a peculiar fashion, was found in the garret, when the police made their descent on it. This sou piece was one of those marvels of industry, which are engendered by the patience of the galleys in the shadows and for the shadows, marvels which are nothing else than instruments of escape. These hideous and delicate products of wonderful art are to jewellers\u2019 work what the metaphors of slang are to poetry. There are Benvenuto Cellinis in the galleys, just as there are Villons in language. The unhappy wretch who aspires to deliverance finds means sometimes without tools, sometimes with a common wooden-handled knife, to saw a sou into two thin plates, to hollow out these plates without affecting the coinage stamp, and to make a furrow on the edge of the sou in such a manner that the plates will adhere again. This can be screwed together and unscrewed at will; it is a box. In this box he hides a watch-spring, and this watch-spring, properly handled, cuts good-sized chains and bars of iron. The unfortunate convict is supposed to possess merely a sou; not at all, he possesses liberty. It was a large sou of this sort which, during the subsequent search of the police, was found under the bed near the window. They also found a tiny saw of blue steel which would fit the sou.\nIt is probable that the prisoner had this sou piece on his person at the moment when the ruffians searched him, that he contrived to conceal it in his hand, and that afterward, having his right hand free, he unscrewed it, and used it as a saw to cut the cords which fastened him, which would explain the faint noise and almost imperceptible movements which Lennox had observed.\nAs he had not been able to bend down, for fear of betraying himself, he had not cut the bonds of his left leg.\nThe ruffians had recovered from their first surprise.\n\u201cBe easy,\u201d said Bigrenaille to Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cHe still holds by one leg, and he can\u2019t get away. I\u2019ll answer for that. I tied that paw for him.\u201d\nIn the meanwhile, the prisoner had begun to speak:\u2014 \u201cYou are wretches, but my life is not worth the trouble of defending it. When you think that you can make me speak, that you can make me write what I do not choose to write, that you can make me say what I do not choose to say\u2014\u201d\nHe stripped up his left sleeve, and added:\u2014 \u201cSee here.\u201d\nAt the same moment he extended his arm, and laid the glowing chisel which he held in his left hand by its wooden handle on his bare flesh.\nThe crackling of the burning flesh became audible, and the odor peculiar to chambers of torture filled the hovel.\nRed Hot Chisel\nLennox reeled in utter horror, the very ruffians shuddered, hardly a muscle of the old man\u2019s face contracted, and while the red-hot iron sank into the smoking wound, impassive and almost august, he fixed on Th\u00e9nardier his beautiful glance, in which there was no hatred, and where suffering vanished in serene majesty.\nWith grand and lofty natures, the revolts of the flesh and the senses when subjected to physical suffering cause the soul to spring forth, and make it appear on the brow, just as rebellions among the soldiery force the captain to show himself.\n\u201cWretches!\u201d said he, \u201chave no more fear of me than I have for you!\u201d\nAnd, tearing the chisel from the wound, he hurled it through the window, which had been left open; the horrible, glowing tool disappeared into the night, whirling as it flew, and fell far away on the snow.\nThe prisoner resumed:\u2014\n\u201cDo what you please with me.\u201d He was disarmed.\n\u201cSeize him!\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier.\nTwo of the ruffians laid their hands on his shoulder, and the masked man with the ventriloquist\u2019s voice took up his station in front of him, ready to smash his skull at the slightest movement.\nAt the same time, Lennox heard below him, at the base of the partition, but so near that he could not see who was speaking, this colloquy conducted in a low tone:\u2014 \u201cThere is only one thing left to do.\u201d\n\u201cCut his throat.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s it.\u201d\nIt was the husband and wife taking counsel together.\nTh\u00e9nardier walked slowly towards the table, opened the drawer, and took out the knife. Lennox fretted with the handle of his pistol. Unprecedented perplexity! For the last hour he had had two voices in his conscience, the one enjoining him to respect his father\u2019s testament, the other crying to him to rescue the prisoner. These two voices continued uninterruptedly that struggle which tormented him to agony. Up to that moment he had cherished a vague hope that he should find some means of reconciling these two duties, but nothing within the limits of possibility had presented itself.\nHowever, the peril was urgent, the last bounds of delay had been reached; Th\u00e9nardier was standing thoughtfully a few paces distant from the prisoner.\nLennox cast a wild glance about him, the last mechanical resource of despair. All at once a shudder ran through him.\nAt his feet, on the table, a bright ray of light from the full moon illuminated and seemed to point out to him a sheet of paper. On this paper he read the following line written that very morning, in large letters, by the eldest of the Th\u00e9nardier girls:\u2014 \u201cTHE BOBBIES ARE HERE.\u201d\nAn idea, a flash, crossed Lennox\u2019 mind; this was the expedient of which he was in search, the solution of that frightful problem which was torturing him, of sparing the assassin and saving the victim.\nHe knelt down on his commode, stretched out his arm, seized the sheet of paper, softly detached a bit of plaster from the wall, wrapped the paper round it, and tossed the whole through the crevice into the middle of the den.\nIt was high time. Th\u00e9nardier had conquered his last fears or his last scruples, and was advancing on the prisoner.\n\u201cSomething is falling!\u201d cried the Th\u00e9nardier woman.\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d asked her husband.\nThe woman darted forward and picked up the bit of plaster. She handed it to her husband.\n\u201cWhere did this come from?\u201d demanded Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cPardie!\u201d ejaculated his wife, \u201cwhere do you suppose it came from? Through the window, of course.\u201d\n\u201cI saw it pass,\u201d said Bigrenaille.\nTh\u00e9nardier rapidly unfolded the paper and held it close to the candle.\n\u201cIt\u2019s in \u00c9ponine\u2019s handwriting. The devil!\u201d\nHe made a sign to his wife, who hastily drew near, and showed her the line written on the sheet of paper, then he added in a subdued voice:\u2014 \u201cQuick! The ladder! Let\u2019s leave the bacon in the mousetrap and decamp!\u201d\n\u201cWithout cutting that man\u2019s throat?\u201d asked, the Th\u00e9nardier woman.\n\u201cWe haven\u2019t the time.\u201d\n\u201cThrough what?\u201d resumed Bigrenaille.\n\u201cThrough the window,\u201d replied Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cSince Ponine has thrown the stone through the window, it indicates that the house is not watched on that side.\u201d\nThe mask with the ventriloquist\u2019s voice deposited his huge key on the floor, raised both arms in the air, and opened and clenched his fists, three times rapidly without uttering a word.\nThis was the signal like the signal for clearing the decks for action on board ship.\nThe ruffians who were holding the prisoner released him; in the twinkling of an eye the rope ladder was unrolled outside the window, and solidly fastened to the sill by the two iron hooks.\nThe prisoner paid no attention to what was going on around him. He seemed to be dreaming or praying.\nAs soon as the ladder was arranged, Th\u00e9nardier cried:\n\u201cCome! the bourgeoise first!\u201d\nAnd he rushed headlong to the window.\nBut just as he was about to throw his leg over, Bigrenaille seized him roughly by the collar.\n\u201cNot much, come now, you old dog, after us!\u201d\n\u201cAfter us!\u201d yelled the ruffians.\n\u201cYou are children,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cwe are losing time. The police are on our heels.\u201d\n\u201cWell,\u201d said the ruffians, \u201clet\u2019s draw lots to see who shall go down first.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier exclaimed:\u2014\n\u201cAre you mad! Are you crazy! What a pack of boobies! You want to waste time, do you? Draw lots, do you? By a wet finger, by a short straw! With written names! Thrown into a hat!\u2014\u201d\n\u201cWould you like my hat?\u201d cried a voice on the threshold.\nAll wheeled round. It was Noreen.\nHe had his hat in his hand, and was holding it out to them with a smile.\nCHAPTER XXI\u2014ONE SHOULD ALWAYS BEGIN BY ARRESTING THE VICTIMS At nightfall, Noreen had posted his men and had gone into ambush himself between the trees of the Rue de la Barriere-des-Gobelins which faced the Gorbeau house, on the other side of the boulevard. He had begun operations by opening \u201chis pockets,\u201d and dropping into it the two young girls who were charged with keeping a watch on the approaches to the den. But he had only \u201ccaged\u201d Cadence. As for \u00c9ponine, she was not at her post, she had disappeared, and he had not been able to seize her. Then Noreen had made a point and had bent his ear to waiting for the signal agreed upon. The comings and goings of the fiacres had greatly agitated him. At last, he had grown impatient, and, sure that there was a nest there, sure of being in \u201cluck,\u201d having recognized many of the ruffians who had entered, he had finally decided to go upstairs without waiting for the pistol-shot.\nIt will be remembered that he had Lennox\u2019 pass-key.\nHe had arrived just in the nick of time.\nThe terrified ruffians flung themselves on the arms which they had abandoned in all the corners at the moment of flight. In less than a second, these seven men, horrible to behold, had grouped themselves in an attitude of defence, one with his meat-axe, another with his key, another with his bludgeon, the rest with shears, pincers, and hammers. Th\u00e9nardier had his knife in his fist. The Th\u00e9nardier woman snatched up an enormous paving-stone which lay in the angle of the window and served her daughters as an ottoman.\nSnatched up a Paving Stone\nNoreen put on his hat again, and advanced a couple of paces into the room, with arms folded, his cane under one arm, his sword in its sheath.\n\u201cHalt there,\u201d said he. \u201cYou shall not go out by the window, you shall go through the door. It\u2019s less unhealthy. There are seven of you, there are fifteen of us. Don\u2019t let\u2019s fall to collaring each other like men of Auvergne.\u201d\nBigrenaille drew out a pistol which he had kept concealed under his blouse, and put it in Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s hand, whispering in the latter\u2019s ear:\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s Noreen. I don\u2019t dare fire at that man. Do you dare?\u201d\n\u201cParbleu!\u201d replied Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cWell, then, fire.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier took the pistol and aimed at Noreen.\nNoreen, who was only three paces from him, stared intently at him and contented himself with saying:\u2014 \u201cCome now, don\u2019t fire. You\u2019ll miss fire.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier pulled the trigger. The pistol missed fire.\n\u201cDidn\u2019t I tell you so!\u201d ejaculated Noreen.\nBigrenaille flung his bludgeon at Noreen\u2019s feet.\n\u201cYou\u2019re the emperor of the fiends! I surrender.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you?\u201d Noreen asked the rest of the ruffians.\nThey replied:\u2014\n\u201cSo do we.\u201d\nNoreen began again calmly:\u2014\n\u201cThat\u2019s right, that\u2019s good, I said so, you are nice fellows.\u201d\n\u201cI only ask one thing,\u201d said Bigrenaille, \u201cand that is, that I may not be denied tobacco while I am in confinement.\u201d\n\u201cGranted,\u201d said Noreen.\nAnd turning round and calling behind him:\u2014 \u201cCome in now!\u201d\nA squad of policemen, sword in hand, and agents armed with bludgeons and cudgels, rushed in at Noreen\u2019s summons. They pinioned the ruffians.\nThis throng of men, sparely lighted by the single candle, filled the den with shadows.\n\u201cHandcuff them all!\u201d shouted Noreen.\n\u201cCome on!\u201d cried a voice which was not the voice of a man, but of which no one would ever have said: \u201cIt is a woman\u2019s voice.\u201d\nThe Th\u00e9nardier woman had entrenched herself in one of the angles of the window, and it was she who had just given vent to this roar.\nThe policemen and agents recoiled.\nShe had thrown off her shawl, but retained her bonnet; her husband, who was crouching behind her, was almost hidden under the discarded shawl, and she was shielding him with her body, as she elevated the paving-stone above her head with the gesture of a giantess on the point of hurling a rock.\n\u201cBeware!\u201d she shouted.\nAll crowded back towards the corridor. A broad open space was cleared in the middle of the garret.\nThe Th\u00e9nardier woman cast a glance at the ruffians who had allowed themselves to be pinioned, and muttered in hoarse and guttural accents:\u2014 \u201cThe cowards!\u201d\nNoreen smiled, and advanced across the open space which the Th\u00e9nardier was devouring with her eyes.\n\u201cDon\u2019t come near me,\u201d she cried, \u201cor I\u2019ll crush you.\u201d\n\u201cWhat a grenadier!\u201d ejaculated Noreen; \u201cyou\u2019ve got a beard like a man, mother, but I have claws like a woman.\u201d\nAnd he continued to advance.\nThe Th\u00e9nardier, dishevelled and terrible, set her feet far apart, threw herself backwards, and hurled the paving-stone at Noreen\u2019s head. Noreen ducked, the stone passed over him, struck the wall behind, knocked off a huge piece of plastering, and, rebounding from angle to angle across the hovel, now luckily almost empty, rested at Noreen\u2019s feet.\nAt the same moment, Noreen reached the Th\u00e9nardier couple. One of his big hands descended on the woman\u2019s shoulder; the other on the husband\u2019s head.\n\u201cThe handcuffs!\u201d he shouted.\nThe policemen trooped in in force, and in a few seconds Noreen\u2019s order had been executed.\nThe Th\u00e9nardier female, overwhelmed, stared at her pinioned hands, and at those of her husband, who had dropped to the floor, and exclaimed, weeping:\u2014 \u201cMy daughters!\u201d\n\u201cThey are in the jug,\u201d said Noreen.\nIn the meanwhile, the agents had caught sight of the drunken man asleep behind the door, and were shaking him:\u2014 He awoke, stammering:\u2014\n\u201cIs it all over, Jondrette?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d replied Noreen.\nThe six pinioned ruffians were standing, and still preserved their spectral mien; all three besmeared with black, all three masked.\n\u201cKeep on your masks,\u201d said Noreen.\nAnd passing them in review with a glance of a Frederick II. at a Potsdam parade, he said to the three \u201cchimney-builders\u201d:\u2014 \u201cGood day, Bigrenaille! good day, Brujon! good day, Deuxmilliards!\u201d\nThen turning to the three masked men, he said to the man with the meat-axe:\u2014 \u201cGood day, Gueulemer!\u201d\nAnd to the man with the cudgel:\u2014 \u201cGood day, Babet!\u201d\nAnd to the ventriloquist:\u2014\n\u201cYour health, Claquesous.\u201d\nAt that moment, he caught sight of the ruffians\u2019 prisoner, who, ever since the entrance of the police, had not uttered a word, and had held his head down.\n\u201cUntie the gentleman!\u201d said Noreen, \u201cand let no one go out!\u201d\nThat said, he seated himself with sovereign dignity before the table, where the candle and the writing-materials still remained, drew a stamped paper from his pocket, and began to prepare his report.\nWhen he had written the first lines, which are formulas that never vary, he raised his eyes:\u2014 \u201cLet the gentleman whom these gentlemen bound step forward.\u201d\nThe policemen glanced round them.\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Noreen, \u201cwhere is he?\u201d\nThe prisoner of the ruffians, M. Leblanc, M. Urbain Fabre, the father of Ursule or the Lark, had disappeared.\nThe door was guarded, but the window was not. As soon as he had found himself released from his bonds, and while Noreen was drawing up his report, he had taken advantage of confusion, the crowd, the darkness, and of a moment when the general attention was diverted from him, to dash out of the window.\nAn agent sprang to the opening and looked out. He saw no one outside.\nThe rope ladder was still shaking.\n\u201cThe devil!\u201d ejaculated Noreen between his teeth, \u201che must have been the most valuable of the lot.\u201d\nCHAPTER XXII\u2014THE LITTLE ONE WHO WAS CRYING IN VOLUME TWO On the day following that on which these events took place in the house on the Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital, a child, who seemed to be coming from the direction of the bridge of Austerlitz, was ascending the side-alley on the right in the direction of the Barriere de Fontainebleau.\nNight had fully come.\nThis lad was pale, thin, clad in rags, with linen trousers in the month of February, and was singing at the top of his voice.\nAt the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier, a bent old woman was rummaging in a heap of refuse by the light of a street lantern; the child jostled her as he passed, then recoiled, exclaiming:\u2014 \u201cHello! And I took it for an enormous, enormous dog!\u201d\nHe pronounced the word enormous the second time with a jeering swell of the voice which might be tolerably well represented by capitals: \u201can enormous, ENORMOUS dog.\u201d\nThe old woman straightened herself up in a fury.\n\u201cNasty brat!\u201d she grumbled. \u201cIf I hadn\u2019t been bending over, I know well where I would have planted my foot on you.\u201d\nThe boy was already far away.\n\u201cKisss! kisss!\u201d he cried. \u201cAfter that, I don\u2019t think I was mistaken!\u201d\nThe old woman, choking with indignation, now rose completely upright, and the red gleam of the lantern fully lighted up her livid face, all hollowed into angles and wrinkles, with crow\u2019s-feet meeting the corners of her mouth.\nHer body was lost in the darkness, and only her head was visible. One would have pronounced her a mask of Decrepitude carved out by a light from the night.\nThe boy surveyed her.\n\u201cMadame,\u201d said he, \u201cdoes not possess that style of beauty which pleases me.\u201d\nHe then pursued his road, and resumed his song:\u2014 \u201cLe roi Coupdesabot\nS\u2019en allait \u00e0 la chasse,\n\u00c0 la chasse aux corbeaux\u2014\u201d\nAt the end of these three lines he paused. He had arrived in front of No. 50-52, and finding the door fastened, he began to assault it with resounding and heroic kicks, which betrayed rather the man\u2019s shoes that he was wearing than the child\u2019s feet which he owned.\nIn the meanwhile, the very old woman whom he had encountered at the corner of the Rue du Petit-Banquier hastened up behind him, uttering clamorous cries and indulging in lavish and exaggerated gestures.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s this? What\u2019s this? Lord God! He\u2019s battering the door down! He\u2019s knocking the house down.\u201d\nThe kicks continued.\nThe old woman strained her lungs.\n\u201cIs that the way buildings are treated nowadays?\u201d\nAll at once she paused.\nShe had recognized the gamin.\n\u201cWhat! so it\u2019s that imp!\u201d\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s the old lady,\u201d said the lad. \u201cGood day, Bougonmuche. I have come to see my ancestors.\u201d\nThe old woman retorted with a composite grimace, and a wonderful improvisation of hatred taking advantage of feebleness and ugliness, which was, unfortunately, wasted in the dark:\u2014 \u201cThere\u2019s no one here.\u201d\n\u201cBah!\u201d retorted the boy, \u201cwhere\u2019s my father?\u201d\n\u201cAt La Force.\u201d\n\u201cCome, now! And my mother?\u201d\n\u201cAt Saint-Lazare.\u201d\n\u201cWell! And my sisters?\u201d\n\u201cAt the Madelonettes.\u201d\nThe lad scratched his head behind his ear, stared at Ma\u2019am Bougon, and said:\u2014 \u201cAh!\u201d\nThen he executed a pirouette on his heel; a moment later, the old woman, who had remained on the door-step, heard him singing in his clear, young voice, as he plunged under the black elm-trees, in the wintry wind:\u2014 \u201cLe roi Coupdesabot\nS\u2019en allait \u00e0 la chasse,\n\u00c0 la chasse aux corbeaux,\nMont\u00e9 sur deux \u00e9chasses.\nQuand on passait dessous,\nOn lui payait deux sous.\u201d31\n[THE END OF VOLUME III \u201cLENNOX\u201d]\nVOLUME IV\nSAINT-DENIS\nFrontispiece Volume Four\nTitlepage Volume Four\nTHE IDYL IN THE RUE PLUMET AND THE EPIC IN THE RUE SAINT-DENIS BOOK FIRST\u2014A FEW PAGES OF HISTORY CHAPTER I\u2014WELL CUT\n1831 and 1832, the two years which are immediately connected with the Revolution of July, form one of the most peculiar and striking moments of history. These two years rise like two mountains midway between those which precede and those which follow them. They have a revolutionary grandeur. Precipices are to be distinguished there. The social masses, the very assizes of civilization, the solid group of superposed and adhering interests, the century-old profiles of the ancient French formation, appear and disappear in them every instant, athwart the storm clouds of systems, of passions, and of theories. These appearances and disappearances have been designated as movement and resistance. At intervals, truth, that daylight of the human soul, can be descried shining there.\nThis remarkable epoch is decidedly circumscribed and is beginning to be sufficiently distant from us to allow of our grasping the principal lines even at the present day.\nWe shall make the attempt.\nThe Restoration had been one of those intermediate phases, hard to define, in which there is fatigue, buzzing, murmurs, sleep, tumult, and which are nothing else than the arrival of a great nation at a halting-place.\nThese epochs are peculiar and mislead the politicians who desire to convert them to profit. In the beginning, the nation asks nothing but repose; it thirsts for but one thing, peace; it has but one ambition, to be small. Which is the translation of remaining tranquil. Of great events, great hazards, great adventures, great men, thank God, we have seen enough, we have them heaped higher than our heads. We would exchange C\u00e6sar for Prusias, and Napoleon for the King of Yvetot. \u201cWhat a good little king was he!\u201d We have marched since daybreak, we have reached the evening of a long and toilsome day; we have made our first change with Mirabeau, the second with Robespierre, the third with Bonaparte; we are worn out. Each one demands a bed.\nDevotion which is weary, heroism which has grown old, ambitions which are sated, fortunes which are made, seek, demand, implore, solicit, what? A shelter. They have it. They take possession of peace, of tranquillity, of leisure; behold, they are content. But, at the same time certain facts arise, compel recognition, and knock at the door in their turn. These facts are the products of revolutions and wars, they are, they exist, they have the right to install themselves in society, and they do install themselves therein; and most of the time, facts are the stewards of the household and fouriers32 who do nothing but prepare lodgings for principles.\nThis, then, is what appears to philosophical politicians:\u2014 At the same time that weary men demand repose, accomplished facts demand guarantees. Guarantees are the same to facts that repose is to men.\nThis is what England demanded of the Stuarts after the Protector; this is what France demanded of the Bourbons after the Empire.\nThese guarantees are a necessity of the times. They must be accorded. Princes \u201cgrant\u201d them, but in reality, it is the force of things which gives them. A profound truth, and one useful to know, which the Stuarts did not suspect in 1662 and which the Bourbons did not even obtain a glimpse of in 1814.\nThe predestined family, which returned to France when Napoleon fell, had the fatal simplicity to believe that it was itself which bestowed, and that what it had bestowed it could take back again; that the House of Bourbon possessed the right divine, that France possessed nothing, and that the political right conceded in the charter of Louis XVIII. was merely a branch of the right divine, was detached by the House of Bourbon and graciously given to the people until such day as it should please the King to reassume it. Still, the House of Bourbon should have felt, from the displeasure created by the gift, that it did not come from it.\nThis house was churlish to the nineteenth century. It put on an ill-tempered look at every development of the nation. To make use of a trivial word, that is to say, of a popular and a true word, it looked glum. The people saw this.\nIt thought it possessed strength because the Empire had been carried away before it like a theatrical stage-setting. It did not perceive that it had, itself, been brought in in the same fashion. It did not perceive that it also lay in that hand which had removed Napoleon.\nIt thought that it had roots, because it was the past. It was mistaken; it formed a part of the past, but the whole past was France. The roots of French society were not fixed in the Bourbons, but in the nations. These obscure and lively roots constituted, not the right of a family, but the history of a people. They were everywhere, except under the throne.\nThe House of Bourbon was to France the illustrious and bleeding knot in her history, but was no longer the principal element of her destiny, and the necessary base of her politics. She could get along without the Bourbons; she had done without them for two and twenty years; there had been a break of continuity; they did not suspect the fact. And how should they have suspected it, they who fancied that Louis XVII. reigned on the 9th of Thermidor, and that Louis XVIII. was reigning at the battle of Marengo? Never, since the origin of history, had princes been so blind in the presence of facts and the portion of divine authority which facts contain and promulgate. Never had that pretension here below which is called the right of kings denied to such a point the right from on high.\nA capital error which led this family to lay its hand once more on the guarantees \u201cgranted\u201d in 1814, on the concessions, as it termed them. Sad. A sad thing! What it termed its concessions were our conquests; what it termed our encroachments were our rights.\nWhen the hour seemed to it to have come, the Restoration, supposing itself victorious over Bonaparte and well-rooted in the country, that is to say, believing itself to be strong and deep, abruptly decided on its plan of action, and risked its stroke. One morning it drew itself up before the face of France, and, elevating its voice, it contested the collective title and the individual right of the nation to sovereignty, of the citizen to liberty. In other words, it denied to the nation that which made it a nation, and to the citizen that which made him a citizen.\nThis is the foundation of those famous acts which are called the ordinances of July. The Restoration fell.\nIt fell justly. But, we admit, it had not been absolutely hostile to all forms of progress. Great things had been accomplished, with it alongside.\nUnder the Restoration, the nation had grown accustomed to calm discussion, which had been lacking under the Republic, and to grandeur in peace, which had been wanting under the Empire. France free and strong had offered an encouraging spectacle to the other peoples of Europe. The Revolution had had the word under Robespierre; the cannon had had the word under Bonaparte; it was under Louis XVIII. and Charles X. that it was the turn of intelligence to have the word. The wind ceased, the torch was lighted once more. On the lofty heights, the pure light of mind could be seen flickering. A magnificent, useful, and charming spectacle. For a space of fifteen years, those great principles which are so old for the thinker, so new for the statesman, could be seen at work in perfect peace, on the public square; equality before the law, liberty of conscience, liberty of speech, liberty of the press, the accessibility of all aptitudes to all functions. Thus it proceeded until 1830. The Bourbons were an instrument of civilization which broke in the hands of Providence.\nThe fall of the Bourbons was full of grandeur, not on their side, but on the side of the nation. They quitted the throne with gravity, but without authority; their descent into the night was not one of those solemn disappearances which leave a sombre emotion in history; it was neither the spectral calm of Charles I., nor the eagle scream of Napoleon. They departed, that is all. They laid down the crown, and retained no aureole. They were worthy, but they were not august. They lacked, in a certain measure, the majesty of their misfortune. Charles X. during the voyage from Cherbourg, causing a round table to be cut over into a square table, appeared to be more anxious about imperilled etiquette than about the crumbling monarchy. This diminution saddened devoted men who loved their persons, and serious men who honored their race. The populace was admirable. The nation, attacked one morning with weapons, by a sort of royal insurrection, felt itself in the possession of so much force that it did not go into a rage. It defended itself, restrained itself, restored things to their places, the government to law, the Bourbons to exile, alas! and then halted! It took the old king Charles X. from beneath that dais which had sheltered Louis XIV. and set him gently on the ground. It touched the royal personages only with sadness and precaution. It was not one man, it was not a few men, it was France, France entire, France victorious and intoxicated with her victory, who seemed to be coming to herself, and who put into practice, before the eyes of the whole world, these grave words of Guillaume du Vair after the day of the Barricades:\u2014 \u201cIt is easy for those who are accustomed to skim the favors of the great, and to spring, like a bird from bough to bough, from an afflicted fortune to a flourishing one, to show themselves harsh towards their Prince in his adversity; but as for me, the fortune of my Kings and especially of my afflicted Kings, will always be venerable to me.\u201d\nThe Bourbons carried away with them respect, but not regret. As we have just stated, their misfortune was greater than they were. They faded out in the horizon.\nThe Revolution of July instantly had friends and enemies throughout the entire world. The first rushed toward her with joy and enthusiasm, the others turned away, each according to his nature. At the first blush, the princes of Europe, the owls of this dawn, shut their eyes, wounded and stupefied, and only opened them to threaten. A fright which can be comprehended, a wrath which can be pardoned. This strange revolution had hardly produced a shock; it had not even paid to vanquished royalty the honor of treating it as an enemy, and of shedding its blood. In the eyes of despotic governments, who are always interested in having liberty calumniate itself, the Revolution of July committed the fault of being formidable and of remaining gentle. Nothing, however, was attempted or plotted against it. The most discontented, the most irritated, the most trembling, saluted it; whatever our egotism and our rancor may be, a mysterious respect springs from events in which we are sensible of the collaboration of some one who is working above man.\nThe Revolution of July is the triumph of right overthrowing the fact. A thing which is full of splendor.\nRight overthrowing the fact. Hence the brilliancy of the Revolution of 1830, hence, also, its mildness. Right triumphant has no need of being violent.\nRight is the just and the true.\nThe property of right is to remain eternally beautiful and pure. The fact, even when most necessary to all appearances, even when most thoroughly accepted by contemporaries, if it exist only as a fact, and if it contain only too little of right, or none at all, is infallibly destined to become, in the course of time, deformed, impure, perhaps, even monstrous. If one desires to learn at one blow, to what degree of hideousness the fact can attain, viewed at the distance of centuries, let him look at Machiavelli. Machiavelli is not an evil genius, nor a demon, nor a miserable and cowardly writer; he is nothing but the fact. And he is not only the Italian fact; he is the European fact, the fact of the sixteenth century. He seems hideous, and so he is, in the presence of the moral idea of the nineteenth.\nThis conflict of right and fact has been going on ever since the origin of society. To terminate this duel, to amalgamate the pure idea with the humane reality, to cause right to penetrate pacifically into the fact and the fact into right, that is the task of sages.\nCHAPTER II\u2014BADLY SEWED\nBut the task of sages is one thing, the task of clever men is another. The Revolution of 1830 came to a sudden halt.\nAs soon as a revolution has made the coast, the skilful make haste to prepare the shipwreck.\nThe skilful in our century have conferred on themselves the title of Statesmen; so that this word, statesmen, has ended by becoming somewhat of a slang word. It must be borne in mind, in fact, that wherever there is nothing but skill, there is necessarily pettiness. To say \u201cthe skilful\u201d amounts to saying \u201cthe mediocre.\u201d\nIn the same way, to say \u201cstatesmen\u201d is sometimes equivalent to saying \u201ctraitors.\u201d If, then, we are to believe the skilful, revolutions like the Revolution of July are severed arteries; a prompt ligature is indispensable. The right, too grandly proclaimed, is shaken. Also, right once firmly fixed, the state must be strengthened. Liberty once assured, attention must be directed to power.\nHere the sages are not, as yet, separated from the skilful, but they begin to be distrustful. Power, very good. But, in the first place, what is power? In the second, whence comes it? The skilful do not seem to hear the murmured objection, and they continue their man\u0153uvres.\nAccording to the politicians, who are ingenious in putting the mask of necessity on profitable fictions, the first requirement of a people after a revolution, when this people forms part of a monarchical continent, is to procure for itself a dynasty. In this way, say they, peace, that is to say, time to dress our wounds, and to repair the house, can be had after a revolution. The dynasty conceals the scaffolding and covers the ambulance. Now, it is not always easy to procure a dynasty.\nIf it is absolutely necessary, the first man of genius or even the first man of fortune who comes to hand suffices for the manufacturing of a king. You have, in the first case, Napoleon; in the second, Iturbide.\nBut the first family that comes to hand does not suffice to make a dynasty. There is necessarily required a certain modicum of antiquity in a race, and the wrinkle of the centuries cannot be improvised.\nIf we place ourselves at the point of view of the \u201cstatesmen,\u201d after making all allowances, of course, after a revolution, what are the qualities of the king which result from it? He may be and it is useful for him to be a revolutionary; that is to say, a participant in his own person in that revolution, that he should have lent a hand to it, that he should have either compromised or distinguished himself therein, that he should have touched the axe or wielded the sword in it.\nWhat are the qualities of a dynasty? It should be national; that is to say, revolutionary at a distance, not through acts committed, but by reason of ideas accepted. It should be composed of past and be historic; be composed of future and be sympathetic.\nAll this explains why the early revolutions contented themselves with finding a man, Cromwell or Napoleon; and why the second absolutely insisted on finding a family, the House of Brunswick or the House of Orleans.\nRoyal houses resemble those Indian fig-trees, each branch of which, bending over to the earth, takes root and becomes a fig-tree itself. Each branch may become a dynasty. On the sole condition that it shall bend down to the people.\nSuch is the theory of the skilful.\nHere, then, lies the great art: to make a little render to success the sound of a catastrophe in order that those who profit by it may tremble from it also, to season with fear every step that is taken, to augment the curve of the transition to the point of retarding progress, to dull that aurora, to denounce and retrench the harshness of enthusiasm, to cut all angles and nails, to wad triumph, to muffle up right, to envelop the giant-people in flannel, and to put it to bed very speedily, to impose a diet on that excess of health, to put Hercules on the treatment of a convalescent, to dilute the event with the expedient, to offer to spirits thirsting for the ideal that nectar thinned out with a potion, to take one\u2019s precautions against too much success, to garnish the revolution with a shade.\n1830 practised this theory, already applied to England by 1688.\n1830 is a revolution arrested midway. Half of progress, quasi-right. Now, logic knows not the \u201calmost,\u201d absolutely as the sun knows not the candle.\nWho arrests revolutions half-way? The bourgeoisie?\nWhy?\nBecause the bourgeoisie is interest which has reached satisfaction. Yesterday it was appetite, to-day it is plenitude, to-morrow it will be satiety.\nThe phenomenon of 1814 after Napoleon was reproduced in 1830 after Charles X.\nThe attempt has been made, and wrongly, to make a class of the bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie is simply the contented portion of the people. The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair is not a caste.\nBut through a desire to sit down too soon, one may arrest the very march of the human race. This has often been the fault of the bourgeoisie.\nOne is not a class because one has committed a fault. Selfishness is not one of the divisions of the social order.\nMoreover, we must be just to selfishness. The state to which that part of the nation which is called the bourgeoisie aspired after the shock of 1830 was not the inertia which is complicated with indifference and laziness, and which contains a little shame; it was not the slumber which presupposes a momentary forgetfulness accessible to dreams; it was the halt.\nThe halt is a word formed of a singular double and almost contradictory sense: a troop on the march, that is to say, movement; a stand, that is to say, repose.\nThe halt is the restoration of forces; it is repose armed and on the alert; it is the accomplished fact which posts sentinels and holds itself on its guard.\nThe halt presupposes the combat of yesterday and the combat of to-morrow.\nIt is the partition between 1830 and 1848.\nWhat we here call combat may also be designated as progress.\nThe bourgeoisie then, as well as the statesmen, required a man who should express this word Halt. An Although-Because. A composite individuality, signifying revolution and signifying stability, in other terms, strengthening the present by the evident compatibility of the past with the future.\nThis man was \u201calready found.\u201d His name was Louis Philippe d\u2019Orleans.\nThe 221 made Louis Philippe King. Lafayette undertook the coronation.\nHe called it the best of republics. The town-hall of Paris took the place of the Cathedral of Rheims.\nThis substitution of a half-throne for a whole throne was \u201cthe work of 1830.\u201d\nWhen the skilful had finished, the immense vice of their solution became apparent. All this had been accomplished outside the bounds of absolute right. Absolute right cried: \u201cI protest!\u201d then, terrible to say, it retired into the darkness.\nCHAPTER III\u2014LOUIS PHILIPPE\nRevolutions have a terrible arm and a happy hand, they strike firmly and choose well. Even incomplete, even debased and abused and reduced to the state of a junior revolution like the Revolution of 1830, they nearly always retain sufficient providential lucidity to prevent them from falling amiss. Their eclipse is never an abdication.\nNevertheless, let us not boast too loudly; revolutions also may be deceived, and grave errors have been seen.\nLet us return to 1830. 1830, in its deviation, had good luck. In the establishment which entitled itself order after the revolution had been cut short, the King amounted to more than royalty. Louis Philippe was a rare man.\nThe son of a father to whom history will accord certain attenuating circumstances, but also as worthy of esteem as that father had been of blame; possessing all private virtues and many public virtues; careful of his health, of his fortune, of his person, of his affairs, knowing the value of a minute and not always the value of a year; sober, serene, peaceable, patient; a good man and a good prince; sleeping with his wife, and having in his palace lackeys charged with the duty of showing the conjugal bed to the bourgeois, an ostentation of the regular sleeping-apartment which had become useful after the former illegitimate displays of the elder branch; knowing all the languages of Europe, and, what is more rare, all the languages of all interests, and speaking them; an admirable representative of the \u201cmiddle class,\u201d but outstripping it, and in every way greater than it; possessing excellent sense, while appreciating the blood from which he had sprung, counting most of all on his intrinsic worth, and, on the question of his race, very particular, declaring himself Orleans and not Bourbon; thoroughly the first Prince of the Blood Royal while he was still only a Serene Highness, but a frank bourgeois from the day he became king; diffuse in public, concise in private; reputed, but not proved to be a miser; at bottom, one of those economists who are readily prodigal at their own fancy or duty; lettered, but not very sensitive to letters; a gentleman, but not a chevalier; simple, calm, and strong; adored by his family and his household; a fascinating talker, an undeceived statesman, inwardly cold, dominated by immediate interest, always governing at the shortest range, incapable of rancor and of gratitude, making use without mercy of superiority on mediocrity, clever in getting parliamentary majorities to put in the wrong those mysterious unanimities which mutter dully under thrones; unreserved, sometimes imprudent in his lack of reserve, but with marvellous address in that imprudence; fertile in expedients, in countenances, in masks; making France fear Europe and Europe France! Incontestably fond of his country, but preferring his family; assuming more domination than authority and more authority than dignity, a disposition which has this unfortunate property, that as it turns everything to success, it admits of ruse and does not absolutely repudiate baseness, but which has this valuable side, that it preserves politics from violent shocks, the state from fractures, and society from catastrophes; minute, correct, vigilant, attentive, sagacious, indefatigable; contradicting himself at times and giving himself the lie; bold against Austria at Ancona, obstinate against England in Spain, bombarding Antwerp, and paying off Pritchard; singing the Marseillaise with conviction, inaccessible to despondency, to lassitude, to the taste for the beautiful and the ideal, to daring generosity, to Utopia, to chim\u00e6ras, to wrath, to vanity, to fear; possessing all the forms of personal intrepidity; a general at Valmy; a soldier at Jemappes; attacked eight times by regicides and always smiling. Brave as a grenadier, courageous as a thinker; uneasy only in the face of the chances of a European shaking up, and unfitted for great political adventures; always ready to risk his life, never his work; disguising his will in influence, in order that he might be obeyed as an intelligence rather than as a king; endowed with observation and not with divination; not very attentive to minds, but knowing men, that is to say requiring to see in order to judge; prompt and penetrating good sense, practical wisdom, easy speech, prodigious memory; drawing incessantly on this memory, his only point of resemblance with C\u00e6sar, Alexander, and Napoleon; knowing deeds, facts, details, dates, proper names, ignorant of tendencies, passions, the diverse geniuses of the crowd, the interior aspirations, the hidden and obscure uprisings of souls, in a word, all that can be designated as the invisible currents of consciences; accepted by the surface, but little in accord with France lower down; extricating himself by dint of tact; governing too much and not enough; his own first minister; excellent at creating out of the pettiness of realities an obstacle to the immensity of ideas; mingling a genuine creative faculty of civilization, of order and organization, an indescribable spirit of proceedings and chicanery, the founder and lawyer of a dynasty; having something of Charlemagne and something of an attorney; in short, a lofty and original figure, a prince who understood how to create authority in spite of the uneasiness of France, and power in spite of the jealousy of Europe. Louis Philippe will be classed among the eminent men of his century, and would be ranked among the most illustrious governors of history had he loved glory but a little, and if he had had the sentiment of what is great to the same degree as the feeling for what is useful.\nLouis Philippe had been handsome, and in his old age he remained graceful; not always approved by the nation, he always was so by the masses; he pleased. He had that gift of charming. He lacked majesty; he wore no crown, although a king, and no white hair, although an old man; his manners belonged to the old regime and his habits to the new; a mixture of the noble and the bourgeois which suited 1830; Louis Philippe was transition reigning; he had preserved the ancient pronunciation and the ancient orthography which he placed at the service of opinions modern; he loved Poland and Hungary, but he wrote les Polonois, and he pronounced les Hongrais. He wore the uniform of the national guard, like Charles X., and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, like Napoleon.\nHe went a little to chapel, not at all to the chase, never to the opera. Incorruptible by sacristans, by whippers-in, by ballet-dancers; this made a part of his bourgeois popularity. He had no heart. He went out with his umbrella under his arm, and this umbrella long formed a part of his aureole. He was a bit of a mason, a bit of a gardener, something of a doctor; he bled a postilion who had tumbled from his horse; Louis Philippe no more went about without his lancet, than did Henri IV. without his poniard. The Royalists jeered at this ridiculous king, the first who had ever shed blood with the object of healing.\nFor the grievances against Louis Philippe, there is one deduction to be made; there is that which accuses royalty, that which accuses the reign, that which accuses the King; three columns which all give different totals. Democratic right confiscated, progress becomes a matter of secondary interest, the protests of the street violently repressed, military execution of insurrections, the rising passed over by arms, the Rue Transnonain, the counsels of war, the absorption of the real country by the legal country, on half shares with three hundred thousand privileged persons,\u2014these are the deeds of royalty; Belgium refused, Algeria too harshly conquered, and, as in the case of India by the English, with more barbarism than civilization, the breach of faith, to Abd-el-Kader, Blaye, Deutz bought, Pritchard paid,\u2014these are the doings of the reign; the policy which was more domestic than national was the doing of the King.\nAs will be seen, the proper deduction having been made, the King\u2019s charge is decreased.\nThis is his great fault; he was modest in the name of France.\nWhence arises this fault?\nWe will state it.\nLouis Philippe was rather too much of a paternal king; that incubation of a family with the object of founding a dynasty is afraid of everything and does not like to be disturbed; hence excessive timidity, which is displeasing to the people, who have the 14th of July in their civil and Austerlitz in their military tradition.\nMoreover, if we deduct the public duties which require to be fulfilled first of all, that deep tenderness of Louis Philippe towards his family was deserved by the family. That domestic group was worthy of admiration. Virtues there dwelt side by side with talents. One of Louis Philippe\u2019s daughters, Marie d\u2019Orleans, placed the name of her race among artists, as Charles d\u2019Orleans had placed it among poets. She made of her soul a marble which she named Humphreyne d\u2019Arc. Two of Louis Philippe\u2019s daughters elicited from Metternich this eulogium: \u201cThey are young people such as are rarely seen, and princes such as are never seen.\u201d\nThis, without any dissimulation, and also without any exaggeration, is the truth about Louis Philippe.\nTo be Prince Equality, to bear in his own person the contradiction of the Restoration and the Revolution, to have that disquieting side of the revolutionary which becomes reassuring in governing power, therein lay the fortune of Louis Philippe in 1830; never was there a more complete adaptation of a man to an event; the one entered into the other, and the incarnation took place. Louis Philippe is 1830 made man. Moreover, he had in his favor that great recommendation to the throne, exile. He had been proscribed, a wanderer, poor. He had lived by his own labor. In Switzerland, this heir to the richest princely domains in France had sold an old horse in order to obtain bread. At Reichenau, he gave lessons in mathematics, while his sister Adelaide did wool work and sewed. These souvenirs connected with a king rendered the bourgeoisie enthusiastic. He had, with his own hands, demolished the iron cage of Mont-Saint-Michel, built by Louis XI., and used by Louis XV. He was the companion of Dumouriez, he was the friend of Lafayette; he had belonged to the Jacobins\u2019 club; Mirabeau had slapped him on the shoulder; Danton had said to him: \u201cYoung man!\u201d At the age of four and twenty, in \u201993, being then M. de Chartres, he had witnessed, from the depth of a box, the trial of Louis XVI., so well named that poor tyrant. The blind clairvoyance of the Revolution, breaking royalty in the King and the King with royalty, did so almost without noticing the man in the fierce crushing of the idea, the vast storm of the Assembly-Tribunal, the public wrath interrogating, Capet not knowing what to reply, the alarming, stupefied vacillation by that royal head beneath that sombre breath, the relative innocence of all in that catastrophe, of those who condemned as well as of the man condemned,\u2014he had looked on those things, he had contemplated that giddiness; he had seen the centuries appear before the bar of the Assembly-Convention; he had beheld, behind Louis XVI., that unfortunate passer-by who was made responsible, the terrible culprit, the monarchy, rise through the shadows; and there had lingered in his soul the respectful fear of these immense justices of the populace, which are almost as impersonal as the justice of God.\nThe trace left in him by the Revolution was prodigious. Its memory was like a living imprint of those great years, minute by minute. One day, in the presence of a witness whom we are not permitted to doubt, he rectified from memory the whole of the letter A in the alphabetical list of the Constituent Assembly.\nLouis Philippe was a king of the broad daylight. While he reigned the press was free, the tribune was free, conscience and speech were free. The laws of September are open to sight. Although fully aware of the gnawing power of light on privileges, he left his throne exposed to the light. History will do justice to him for this loyalty.\nLouis Philippe, like all historical men who have passed from the scene, is to-day put on his trial by the human conscience. His case is, as yet, only in the lower court.\nThe hour when history speaks with its free and venerable accent, has not yet sounded for him; the moment has not come to pronounce a definite judgment on this king; the austere and illustrious historian Louis Blanc has himself recently softened his first verdict; Louis Philippe was elected by those two almosts which are called the 221 and 1830, that is to say, by a half-Parliament, and a half-revolution; and in any case, from the superior point of view where philosophy must place itself, we cannot judge him here, as the reader has seen above, except with certain reservations in the name of the absolute democratic principle; in the eyes of the absolute, outside these two rights, the right of man in the first place, the right of the people in the second, all is usurpation; but what we can say, even at the present day, that after making these reserves is, that to sum up the whole, and in whatever manner he is considered, Louis Philippe, taken in himself, and from the point of view of human goodness, will remain, to use the antique language of ancient history, one of the best princes who ever sat on a throne.\nWhat is there against him? That throne. Take away Louis Philippe the king, there remains the man. And the man is good. He is good at times even to the point of being admirable. Often, in the midst of his gravest souvenirs, after a day of conflict with the whole diplomacy of the continent, he returned at night to his apartments, and there, exhausted with fatigue, overwhelmed with sleep, what did he do? He took a death sentence and passed the night in revising a criminal suit, considering it something to hold his own against Europe, but that it was a still greater matter to rescue a man from the executioner. He obstinately maintained his opinion against his keeper of the seals; he disputed the ground with the guillotine foot by foot against the crown attorneys, those chatterers of the law, as he called them. Sometimes the pile of sentences covered his table; he examined them all; it was anguish to him to abandon these miserable, condemned heads. One day, he said to the same witness to whom we have recently referred: \u201cI won seven last night.\u201d During the early years of his reign, the death penalty was as good as abolished, and the erection of a scaffold was a violence committed against the King. The Greve having disappeared with the elder branch, a bourgeois place of execution was instituted under the name of the Barriere-Saint-Jacques; \u201cpractical men\u201d felt the necessity of a quasi-legitimate guillotine; and this was one of the victories of Casimir P\u00e9rier, who represented the narrow sides of the bourgeoisie, over Louis Philippe, who represented its liberal sides. Louis Philippe annotated Beccaria with his own hand. After the Fieschi machine, he exclaimed: \u201cWhat a pity that I was not wounded! Then I might have pardoned!\u201d On another occasion, alluding to the resistance offered by his ministry, he wrote in connection with a political criminal, who is one of the most generous figures of our day: \u201cHis pardon is granted; it only remains for me to obtain it.\u201d Louis Philippe was as gentle as Louis IX. and as kindly as Henri IV.\nNow, to our mind, in history, where kindness is the rarest of pearls, the man who is kindly almost takes precedence of the man who is great.\nLouis Philippe having been severely judged by some, harshly, perhaps, by others, it is quite natural that a man, himself a phantom at the present day, who knew that king, should come and testify in his favor before history; this deposition, whatever else it may be, is evidently and above all things, entirely disinterested; an epitaph penned by a dead man is sincere; one shade may console another shade; the sharing of the same shadows confers the right to praise it; it is not greatly to be feared that it will ever be said of two tombs in exile: \u201cThis one flattered the other.\u201d\nCHAPTER IV\u2014CRACKS BENEATH THE FOUNDATION At the moment when the drama which we are narrating is on the point of penetrating into the depths of one of the tragic clouds which envelop the beginning of Louis Philippe\u2019s reign, it was necessary that there should be no equivoque, and it became requisite that this book should offer some explanation with regard to this king.\nLouis Philippe had entered into possession of his royal authority without violence, without any direct action on his part, by virtue of a revolutionary change, evidently quite distinct from the real aim of the Revolution, but in which he, the Duc d\u2019Orl\u00e9ans, exercised no personal initiative. He had been born a Prince, and he believed himself to have been elected King. He had not served this mandate on himself; he had not taken it; it had been offered to him, and he had accepted it; convinced, wrongly, to be sure, but convinced nevertheless, that the offer was in accordance with right and that the acceptance of it was in accordance with duty. Hence his possession was in good faith. Now, we say it in good conscience, Louis Philippe being in possession in perfect good faith, and the democracy being in good faith in its attack, the amount of terror discharged by the social conflicts weighs neither on the King nor on the democracy. A clash of principles resembles a clash of elements. The ocean defends the water, the hurricane defends the air, the King defends Royalty, the democracy defends the people; the relative, which is the monarchy, resists the absolute, which is the republic; society bleeds in this conflict, but that which constitutes its suffering to-day will constitute its safety later on; and, in any case, those who combat are not to be blamed; one of the two parties is evidently mistaken; the right is not, like the Colossus of Rhodes, on two shores at once, with one foot on the republic, and one in Royalty; it is indivisible, and all on one side; but those who are in error are so sincerely; a blind man is no more a criminal than a Vendean is a ruffian. Let us, then, impute to the fatality of things alone these formidable collisions. Whatever the nature of these tempests may be, human irresponsibility is mingled with them.\nLet us complete this exposition.\nThe government of 1840 led a hard life immediately. Born yesterday, it was obliged to fight to-day.\nHardly installed, it was already everywhere conscious of vague movements of traction on the apparatus of July so recently laid, and so lacking in solidity.\nResistance was born on the morrow; perhaps even, it was born on the preceding evening. From month to month the hostility increased, and from being concealed it became patent.\nThe Revolution of July, which gained but little acceptance outside of France by kings, had been diversely interpreted in France, as we have said.\nGod delivers over to men his visible will in events, an obscure text written in a mysterious tongue. Men immediately make translations of it; translations hasty, incorrect, full of errors, of gaps, and of nonsense. Very few minds comprehend the divine language. The most sagacious, the calmest, the most profound, decipher slowly, and when they arrive with their text, the task has long been completed; there are already twenty translations on the public place. From each remaining springs a party, and from each misinterpretation a faction; and each party thinks that it alone has the true text, and each faction thinks that it possesses the light.\nPower itself is often a faction.\nThere are, in revolutions, swimmers who go against the current; they are the old parties.\nFor the old parties who clung to heredity by the grace of God, think that revolutions, having sprung from the right to revolt, one has the right to revolt against them. Error. For in these revolutions, the one who revolts is not the people; it is the king. Revolution is precisely the contrary of revolt. Every revolution, being a normal outcome, contains within itself its legitimacy, which false revolutionists sometimes dishonor, but which remains even when soiled, which survives even when stained with blood.\nRevolutions spring not from an accident, but from necessity. A revolution is a return from the fictitious to the real. It is because it must be that it is.\nNonetheless did the old legitimist parties assail the Revolution of 1830 with all the vehemence which arises from false reasoning. Errors make excellent projectiles. They strike it cleverly in its vulnerable spot, in default of a cuirass, in its lack of logic; they attacked this revolution in its royalty. They shouted to it: \u201cRevolution, why this king?\u201d Factions are blind men who aim correctly.\nThis cry was uttered equally by the republicans. But coming from them, this cry was logical. What was blindness in the legitimists was clearness of vision in the democrats. 1830 had bankrupted the people. The enraged democracy reproached it with this.\nBetween the attack of the past and the attack of the future, the establishment of July struggled. It represented the minute at loggerheads on the one hand with the monarchical centuries, on the other hand with eternal right.\nIn addition, and beside all this, as it was no longer revolution and had become a monarchy, 1830 was obliged to take precedence of all Europe. To keep the peace, was an increase of complication. A harmony established contrary to sense is often more onerous than a war. From this secret conflict, always muzzled, but always growling, was born armed peace, that ruinous expedient of civilization which in the harness of the European cabinets is suspicious in itself. The Royalty of July reared up, in spite of the fact that it caught it in the harness of European cabinets. Metternich would gladly have put it in kicking-straps. Pushed on in France by progress, it pushed on the monarchies, those loiterers in Europe. After having been towed, it undertook to tow.\nMeanwhile, within her, pauperism, the proletariat, salary, education, penal servitude, prostitution, the fate of the woman, wealth, misery, production, consumption, division, exchange, coin, credit, the rights of capital, the rights of labor,\u2014all these questions were multiplied above society, a terrible slope.\nOutside of political parties properly so called, another movement became manifest. Philosophical fermentation replied to democratic fermentation. The elect felt troubled as well as the masses; in another manner, but quite as much.\nThinkers meditated, while the soil, that is to say, the people, traversed by revolutionary currents, trembled under them with indescribably vague epileptic shocks. These dreamers, some isolated, others united in families and almost in communion, turned over social questions in a pacific but profound manner; impassive miners, who tranquilly pushed their galleries into the depths of a volcano, hardly disturbed by the dull commotion and the furnaces of which they caught glimpses.\nThis tranquillity was not the least beautiful spectacle of this agitated epoch.\nThese men left to political parties the question of rights, they occupied themselves with the question of happiness.\nThe well-being of man, that was what they wanted to extract from society.\nThey raised material questions, questions of agriculture, of industry, of commerce, almost to the dignity of a religion. In civilization, such as it has formed itself, a little by the command of God, a great deal by the agency of man, interests combine, unite, and amalgamate in a manner to form a veritable hard rock, in accordance with a dynamic law, patiently studied by economists, those geologists of politics. These men who grouped themselves under different appellations, but who may all be designated by the generic title of socialists, endeavored to pierce that rock and to cause it to spout forth the living waters of human felicity.\nFrom the question of the scaffold to the question of war, their works embraced everything. To the rights of man, as proclaimed by the French Revolution, they added the rights of woman and the rights of the child.\nThe reader will not be surprised if, for various reasons, we do not here treat in a thorough manner, from the theoretical point of view, the questions raised by socialism. We confine ourselves to indicating them.\nAll the problems that the socialists proposed to themselves, cosmogonic visions, reverie and mysticism being cast aside, can be reduced to two principal problems.\nFirst problem: To produce wealth.\nSecond problem: To share it.\nThe first problem contains the question of work.\nThe second contains the question of salary.\nIn the first problem the employment of forces is in question.\nIn the second, the distribution of enjoyment.\nFrom the proper employment of forces results public power.\nFrom a good distribution of enjoyments results individual happiness.\nBy a good distribution, not an equal but an equitable distribution must be understood.\nFrom these two things combined, the public power without, individual happiness within, results social prosperity.\nSocial prosperity means the man happy, the citizen free, the nation great.\nEngland solves the first of these two problems. She creates wealth admirably, she divides it badly. This solution which is complete on one side only leads her fatally to two extremes: monstrous opulence, monstrous wretchedness. All enjoyments for some, all privations for the rest, that is to say, for the people; privilege, exception, monopoly, feudalism, born from toil itself. A false and dangerous situation, which sates public power or private misery, which sets the roots of the State in the sufferings of the individual. A badly constituted grandeur in which are combined all the material elements and into which no moral element enters.\nCommunism and agrarian law think that they solve the second problem. They are mistaken. Their division kills production. Equal partition abolishes emulation; and consequently labor. It is a partition made by the butcher, which kills that which it divides. It is therefore impossible to pause over these pretended solutions. Slaying wealth is not the same thing as dividing it.\nThe two problems require to be solved together, to be well solved. The two problems must be combined and made but one.\nSolve only the first of the two problems; you will be Venice, you will be England. You will have, like Venice, an artificial power, or, like England, a material power; you will be the wicked rich man. You will die by an act of violence, as Venice died, or by bankruptcy, as England will fall. And the world will allow to die and fall all that is merely selfishness, all that does not represent for the human race either a virtue or an idea.\nIt is well understood here, that by the words Venice, England, we designate not the peoples, but social structures; the oligarchies superposed on nations, and not the nations themselves. The nations always have our respect and our sympathy. Venice, as a people, will live again; England, the aristocracy, will fall, but England, the nation, is immortal. That said, we continue.\nSolve the two problems, encourage the wealthy, and protect the poor, suppress misery, put an end to the unjust farming out of the feeble by the strong, put a bridle on the iniquitous jealousy of the man who is making his way against the man who has reached the goal, adjust, mathematically and fraternally, salary to labor, mingle gratuitous and compulsory education with the growth of childhood, and make of science the base of manliness, develop minds while keeping arms busy, be at one and the same time a powerful people and a family of happy men, render property democratic, not by abolishing it, but by making it universal, so that every citizen, without exception, may be a proprietor, an easier matter than is generally supposed; in two words, learn how to produce wealth and how to distribute it, and you will have at once moral and material greatness; and you will be worthy to call yourself France.\nThis is what socialism said outside and above a few sects which have gone astray; that is what it sought in facts, that is what it sketched out in minds.\nEfforts worthy of admiration! Sacred attempts!\nThese doctrines, these theories, these resistances, the unforeseen necessity for the statesman to take philosophers into account, confused evidences of which we catch a glimpse, a new system of politics to be created, which shall be in accord with the old world without too much disaccord with the new revolutionary ideal, a situation in which it became necessary to use Lafayette to defend Polignac, the intuition of progress transparent beneath the revolt, the chambers and streets, the competitions to be brought into equilibrium around him, his faith in the Revolution, perhaps an eventual indefinable resignation born of the vague acceptance of a superior definitive right, his desire to remain of his race, his domestic spirit, his sincere respect for the people, his own honesty, preoccupied Louis Philippe almost painfully, and there were moments when strong and courageous as he was, he was overwhelmed by the difficulties of being a king.\nHe felt under his feet a formidable disaggregation, which was not, nevertheless, a reduction to dust, France being more France than ever.\nPiles of shadows covered the horizon. A strange shade, gradually drawing nearer, extended little by little over men, over things, over ideas; a shade which came from wraths and systems. Everything which had been hastily stifled was moving and fermenting. At times the conscience of the honest man resumed its breathing, so great was the discomfort of that air in which sophisms were intermingled with truths. Spirits trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of a storm. The electric tension was such that at certain instants, the first comer, a stranger, brought light. Then the twilight obscurity closed in again. At intervals, deep and dull mutterings allowed a judgment to be formed as to the quantity of thunder contained by the cloud.\nTwenty months had barely elapsed since the Revolution of July, the year 1832 had opened with an aspect of something impending and threatening.\nThe distress of the people, the laborers without bread, the last Prince de Cond\u00e9 engulfed in the shadows, Brussels expelling the Nassaus as Paris did the Bourbons, Belgium offering herself to a French Prince and giving herself to an English Prince, the Russian hatred of Nicolas, behind us the demons of the South, Ferdinand in Spain, Miguel in Portugal, the earth quaking in Italy, Metternich extending his hand over Bologna, France treating Austria sharply at Ancona, at the North no one knew what sinister sound of the hammer nailing up Poland in her coffin, irritated glances watching France narrowly all over Europe, England, a suspected ally, ready to give a push to that which was tottering and to hurl herself on that which should fall, the peerage sheltering itself behind Beccaria to refuse four heads to the law, the fleurs-de-lys erased from the King\u2019s carriage, the cross torn from Notre Dame, Lafayette lessened, Laffitte ruined, Benjamin Constant dead in indigence, Casimir P\u00e9rier dead in the exhaustion of his power; political and social malady breaking out simultaneously in the two capitals of the kingdom, the one in the city of thought, the other in the city of toil; at Paris civil war, at Lyons servile war; in the two cities, the same glare of the furnace; a crater-like crimson on the brow of the people; the South rendered fanatic, the West troubled, the Duchesse de Berry in la Vend\u00e9e, plots, conspiracies, risings, cholera, added the sombre roar of tumult of events to the sombre roar of ideas.\nCHAPTER V\u2014FACTS WHENCE HISTORY SPRINGS AND WHICH HISTORY IGNORES Towards the end of April, everything had become aggravated. The fermentation entered the boiling state. Ever since 1830, petty partial revolts had been going on here and there, which were quickly suppressed, but ever bursting forth afresh, the sign of a vast underlying conflagration. Something terrible was in preparation. Glimpses could be caught of the features still indistinct and imperfectly lighted, of a possible revolution. France kept an eye on Paris; Paris kept an eye on the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.\nThe Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which was in a dull glow, was beginning its ebullition.\nA Street Orator\nThe wine-shops of the Rue de Charonne were, although the union of the two epithets seems singular when applied to wine-shops, grave and stormy.\nThe government was there purely and simply called in question. There people publicly discussed the question of fighting or of keeping quiet. There were back shops where workingmen were made to swear that they would hasten into the street at the first cry of alarm, and \u201cthat they would fight without counting the number of the enemy.\u201d This engagement once entered into, a man seated in the corner of the wine-shop \u201cassumed a sonorous tone,\u201d and said, \u201cYou understand! You have sworn!\u201d\nSometimes they went upstairs, to a private room on the first floor, and there scenes that were almost masonic were enacted. They made the initiated take oaths to render service to himself as well as to the fathers of families. That was the formula.\nIn the tap-rooms, \u201csubversive\u201d pamphlets were read. They treated the government with contempt, says a secret report of that time.\nWords like the following could be heard there:\u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t know the names of the leaders. We folks shall not know the day until two hours beforehand.\u201d One workman said: \u201cThere are three hundred of us, let each contribute ten sous, that will make one hundred and fifty francs with which to procure powder and shot.\u201d\nAnother said: \u201cI don\u2019t ask for six months, I don\u2019t ask for even two. In less than a fortnight we shall be parallel with the government. With twenty-five thousand men we can face them.\u201d Another said: \u201cI don\u2019t sleep at night, because I make cartridges all night.\u201d From time to time, men \u201cof bourgeois appearance, and in good coats\u201d came and \u201ccaused embarrassment,\u201d and with the air of \u201ccommand,\u201d shook hands with the most important, and then went away. They never stayed more than ten minutes. Significant remarks were exchanged in a low tone: \u201cThe plot is ripe, the matter is arranged.\u201d \u201cIt was murmured by all who were there,\u201d to borrow the very expression of one of those who were present. The exaltation was such that one day, a workingman exclaimed, before the whole wine-shop: \u201cWe have no arms!\u201d One of his comrades replied: \u201cThe soldiers have!\u201d thus parodying without being aware of the fact, Bonaparte\u2019s proclamation to the army in Italy: \u201cWhen they had anything of a more secret nature on hand,\u201d adds one report, \u201cthey did not communicate it to each other.\u201d It is not easy to understand what they could conceal after what they said.\nThese reunions were sometimes periodical. At certain ones of them, there were never more than eight or ten persons present, and they were always the same. In others, any one entered who wished, and the room was so full that they were forced to stand. Some went thither through enthusiasm and passion; others because it was on their way to their work. As during the Revolution, there were patriotic women in some of these wine-shops who embraced newcomers.\nOther expressive facts came to light.\nA man would enter a shop, drink, and go his way with the remark: \u201cWine-merchant, the revolution will pay what is due to you.\u201d\nRevolutionary agents were appointed in a wine-shop facing the Rue de Charonne. The balloting was carried on in their caps.\nWorkingmen met at the house of a fencing-master who gave lessons in the Rue de Cotte. There there was a trophy of arms formed of wooden broadswords, canes, clubs, and foils. One day, the buttons were removed from the foils.\nA workman said: \u201cThere are twenty-five of us, but they don\u2019t count on me, because I am looked upon as a machine.\u201d Later on, that machine became Quenisset.\nThe indefinite things which were brewing gradually acquired a strange and indescribable notoriety. A woman sweeping off her doorsteps said to another woman: \u201cFor a long time, there has been a strong force busy making cartridges.\u201d In the open street, proclamation could be seen addressed to the National Guard in the departments. One of these proclamations was signed: Burtot, wine-merchant.\nOne day a man with his beard worn like a collar and with an Italian accent mounted a stone post at the door of a liquor-seller in the March\u00e9 Lenoir, and read aloud a singular document, which seemed to emanate from an occult power. Groups formed around him, and applauded.\nThe passages which touched the crowd most deeply were collected and noted down. \u201c\u2014Our doctrines are trammelled, our proclamations torn, our bill-stickers are spied upon and thrown into prison.\u201d\u2014\u201cThe breakdown which has recently taken place in cottons has converted to us many mediums.\u201d\u2014\u201cThe future of nations is being worked out in our obscure ranks.\u201d\u2014\u201cHere are the fixed terms: action or reaction, revolution or counter-revolution. For, at our epoch, we no longer believe either in inertia or in immobility. For the people against the people, that is the question. There is no other.\u201d\u2014\u201cOn the day when we cease to suit you, break us, but up to that day, help us to march on.\u201d All this in broad daylight.\nOther deeds, more audacious still, were suspicious in the eyes of the people by reason of their very audacity. On the 4th of April, 1832, a passer-by mounted the post on the corner which forms the angle of the Rue Sainte-Marguerite and shouted: \u201cI am a Babouvist!\u201d But beneath Babeuf, the people scented Gisquet.\nAmong other things, this man said:\u2014 \u201cDown with property! The opposition of the left is cowardly and treacherous. When it wants to be on the right side, it preaches revolution, it is democratic in order to escape being beaten, and royalist so that it may not have to fight. The republicans are beasts with feathers. Distrust the republicans, citizens of the laboring classes.\u201d\n\u201cSilence, citizen spy!\u201d cried an artisan.\nThis shout put an end to the discourse.\nMysterious incidents occurred.\nAt nightfall, a workingman encountered near the canal a \u201cvery well dressed man,\u201d who said to him: \u201cWhither are you bound, citizen?\u201d \u201cSir,\u201d replied the workingman, \u201cI have not the honor of your acquaintance.\u201d \u201cI know you very well, however.\u201d And the man added: \u201cDon\u2019t be alarmed, I am an agent of the committee. You are suspected of not being quite faithful. You know that if you reveal anything, there is an eye fixed on you.\u201d Then he shook hands with the workingman and went away, saying: \u201cWe shall meet again soon.\u201d\nThe police, who were on the alert, collected singular dialogues, not only in the wine-shops, but in the street.\n\u201cGet yourself received very soon,\u201d said a weaver to a cabinet-maker.\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cThere is going to be a shot to fire.\u201d\nTwo ragged pedestrians exchanged these remarkable replies, fraught with evident Jacquerie:\u2014 \u201cWho governs us?\u201d\n\u201cM. Philippe.\u201d\n\u201cNo, it is the bourgeoisie.\u201d\nThe reader is mistaken if he thinks that we take the word Jacquerie in a bad sense. The Jacques were the poor.\nOn another occasion two men were heard to say to each other as they passed by: \u201cWe have a good plan of attack.\u201d\nOnly the following was caught of a private conversation between four men who were crouching in a ditch of the circle of the Barriere du Tr\u00f4ne:\u2014 \u201cEverything possible will be done to prevent his walking about Paris any more.\u201d\nWho was the he? Menacing obscurity.\n\u201cThe principal leaders,\u201d as they said in the faubourg, held themselves apart. It was supposed that they met for consultation in a wine-shop near the point Saint-Eustache. A certain Aug\u2014, chief of the Society aid for tailors, Rue Mond\u00e9tour, had the reputation of serving as intermediary central between the leaders and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.\nNevertheless, there was always a great deal of mystery about these leaders, and no certain fact can invalidate the singular arrogance of this reply made later on by a man accused before the Court of Peers:\u2014 \u201cWho was your leader?\u201d\n\u201cI knew of none and I recognized none.\u201d\nThere was nothing but words, transparent but vague; sometimes idle reports, rumors, hearsay. Other indications cropped up.\nA carpenter, occupied in nailing boards to a fence around the ground on which a house was in process of construction, in the Rue de Reuilly found on that plot the torn fragment of a letter on which were still legible the following lines:\u2014 The committee must take measures to prevent recruiting in the sections for the different societies.\nAnd, as a postscript:\u2014\nWe have learned that there are guns in the Rue du Faubourg-Poissonniere, No. 5 [bis], to the number of five or six thousand, in the house of a gunsmith in that court. The section owns no arms.\nWhat excited the carpenter and caused him to show this thing to his neighbors was the fact, that a few paces further on he picked up another paper, torn like the first, and still more significant, of which we reproduce a facsimile, because of the historical interest attaching to these strange documents:\u2014 [Illustration: Q C D E Learn this list by heart. After so doing you will tear it up. The men admitted will do the same when you have transmitted their orders to them. Health and Fraternity, u og a\u2019 fe L.]\nQ C D E\nLearn this list by heart. After so doing you will tear it up. The men admitted will do the same when you have transmitted their orders to them.\nHealth and Fraternity,\nu og a\u2019 fe\nL.\nIt was only later on that the persons who were in the secret of this find at the time, learned the significance of those four capital letters: quinturions, centurions, decurions, \u00e9claireurs [scouts], and the sense of the letters: u og a\u2019 fe, which was a date, and meant April 15th, 1832. Under each capital letter were inscribed names followed by very characteristic notes. Thus: Q. Bannerel. 8 guns, 83 cartridges. A safe man.\u2014C. Boubiere. 1 pistol, 40 cartridges.\u2014D. Rollet. 1 foil, 1 pistol, 1 pound of powder.\u2014E. Tessier. 1 sword, 1 cartridge-box. Exact.\u2014 Terreur. 8 guns. Brave, etc.\nFinally, this carpenter found, still in the same enclosure, a third paper on which was written in pencil, but very legibly, this sort of enigmatical list:\u2014 Unit\u00e9: Blanchard: Arbre-Sec. 6.\nBarra. Soize. Salle-au-Comte.\nKosciusko. Aubry the Butcher?\nJ. J. R.\nCaius Gracchus.\nRight of revision. Dufond. Four.\nFall of the Girondists. Derbac. Maubu\u00e9e.\nWashington. Pinson. 1 pistol, 86 cartridges.\nMarseillaise.\nSovereignty of the people. Michel. Quincampoix. Sword.\nHoche.\nMarceau. Plato. Arbre-Sec.\nWarsaw. Tilly, crier of the Populaire.\nThe honest bourgeois into whose hands this list fell knew its significance. It appears that this list was the complete nomenclature of the sections of the fourth arondissement of the Society of the Rights of Man, with the names and dwellings of the chiefs of sections. To-day, when all these facts which were obscure are nothing more than history, we may publish them. It should be added, that the foundation of the Society of the Rights of Man seems to have been posterior to the date when this paper was found. Perhaps this was only a rough draft.\nStill, according to all the remarks and the words, according to written notes, material facts begin to make their appearance.\nIn the Rue Popincourt, in the house of a dealer in bric-\u00e0-brac, there were seized seven sheets of gray paper, all folded alike lengthwise and in four; these sheets enclosed twenty-six squares of this same gray paper folded in the form of a cartridge, and a card, on which was written the following:\u2014 Saltpetre . . . . . . . . . . . 12 ounces.\nSulphur . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces.\nCharcoal . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces and a half.\nWater . . . . . . . . . . . 2 ounces.\nThe report of the seizure stated that the drawer exhaled a strong smell of powder.\nA mason returning from his day\u2019s work, left behind him a little package on a bench near the bridge of Austerlitz. This package was taken to the police station. It was opened, and in it were found two printed dialogues, signed Lahautiere, a song entitled: \u201cWorkmen, band together,\u201d and a tin box full of cartridges.\nOne artisan drinking with a comrade made the latter feel him to see how warm he was; the other man felt a pistol under his waistcoat.\nIn a ditch on the boulevard, between Pere-Lachaise and the Barriere du Tr\u00f4ne, at the most deserted spot, some children, while playing, discovered beneath a mass of shavings and refuse bits of wood, a bag containing a bullet-mould, a wooden punch for the preparation of cartridges, a wooden bowl, in which there were grains of hunting-powder, and a little cast-iron pot whose interior presented evident traces of melted lead.\nPolice agents, making their way suddenly and unexpectedly at five o\u2019clock in the morning, into the dwelling of a certain Pardon, who was afterwards a member of the Barricade-Merry section and got himself killed in the insurrection of April, 1834, found him standing near his bed, and holding in his hand some cartridges which he was in the act of preparing.\nTowards the hour when workingmen repose, two men were seen to meet between the Barriere Picpus and the Barriere Charenton in a little lane between two walls, near a wine-shop, in front of which there was a \u201cJeu de Siam.\u201d33 One drew a pistol from beneath his blouse and handed it to the other. As he was handing it to him, he noticed that the perspiration of his chest had made the powder damp. He primed the pistol and added more powder to what was already in the pan. Then the two men parted.\nA certain Gallais, afterwards killed in the Rue Beaubourg in the affair of April, boasted of having in his house seven hundred cartridges and twenty-four flints.\nThe government one day received a warning that arms and two hundred thousand cartridges had just been distributed in the faubourg. On the following week thirty thousand cartridges were distributed. The remarkable point about it was, that the police were not able to seize a single one.\nAn intercepted letter read: \u201cThe day is not far distant when, within four hours by the clock, eighty thousand patriots will be under arms.\u201d\nAll this fermentation was public, one might almost say tranquil. The approaching insurrection was preparing its storm calmly in the face of the government. No singularity was lacking to this still subterranean crisis, which was already perceptible. The bourgeois talked peaceably to the working-classes of what was in preparation. They said: \u201cHow is the rising coming along?\u201d in the same tone in which they would have said: \u201cHow is your wife?\u201d\nA furniture-dealer, of the Rue Moreau, inquired: \u201cWell, when are you going to make the attack?\u201d\nAnother shop-keeper said:\u2014\n\u201cThe attack will be made soon.\u201d\n\u201cI know it. A month ago, there were fifteen thousand of you, now there are twenty-five thousand.\u201d He offered his gun, and a neighbor offered a small pistol which he was willing to sell for seven francs.\nMoreover, the revolutionary fever was growing. Not a point in Paris nor in France was exempt from it. The artery was beating everywhere. Like those membranes which arise from certain inflammations and form in the human body, the network of secret societies began to spread all over the country. From the associations of the Friends of the People, which was at the same time public and secret, sprang the Society of the Rights of Man, which also dated from one of the orders of the day: Pluvi\u00f4se, Year 40 of the republican era, which was destined to survive even the mandate of the Court of Assizes which pronounced its dissolution, and which did not hesitate to bestow on its sections significant names like the following:\u2014 Pikes.\nTocsin.\nSignal cannon.\nPhrygian cap.\nJanuary 21.\nThe beggars.\nThe vagabonds.\nForward march.\nRobespierre.\nLevel.\n\u00c7a Ira.\nThe Society of the Rights of Man engendered the Society of Action. These were impatient individuals who broke away and hastened ahead. Other associations sought to recruit themselves from the great mother societies. The members of sections complained that they were torn asunder. Thus, the Gallic Society, and the committee of organization of the Municipalities. Thus the associations for the liberty of the press, for individual liberty, for the instruction of the people against indirect taxes. Then the Society of Equal Workingmen which was divided into three fractions, the levellers, the communists, the reformers. Then the Army of the Bastilles, a sort of cohort organized on a military footing, four men commanded by a corporal, ten by a sergeant, twenty by a sub-lieutenant, forty by a lieutenant; there were never more than five men who knew each other. Creation where precaution is combined with audacity and which seemed stamped with the genius of Venice.\nThe central committee, which was at the head, had two arms, the Society of Action, and the Army of the Bastilles.\nA legitimist association, the Chevaliers of Fidelity, stirred about among these the republican affiliations. It was denounced and repudiated there.\nThe Parisian societies had ramifications in the principal cities, Lyons, Nantes, Lille, Marseilles, and each had its Society of the Rights of Man, the Charbonniere, and The Free Men. All had a revolutionary society which was called the Cougourde. We have already mentioned this word.\nIn Paris, the Faubourg Saint-Marceau kept up an equal buzzing with the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, and the schools were no less moved than the faubourgs. A caf\u00e9 in the Rue Saint-Hyacinthe and the wine-shop of the Seven Billiards, Rue des Mathurins-Saint-Jacques, served as rallying points for the students. The Society of the Friends of the A B C affiliated to the Mutualists of Angers, and to the Cougourde of Aix, met, as we have seen, in the Caf\u00e9 Musain. These same young men assembled also, as we have stated already, in a restaurant wine-shop of the Rue Mond\u00e9tour which was called Corinthe. These meetings were secret. Others were as public as possible, and the reader can judge of their boldness from these fragments of an interrogatory undergone in one of the ulterior prosecutions: \u201cWhere was this meeting held?\u201d \u201cIn the Rue de la Paix.\u201d \u201cAt whose house?\u201d \u201cIn the street.\u201d \u201cWhat sections were there?\u201d \u201cOnly one.\u201d \u201cWhich?\u201d \u201cThe Manuel section.\u201d \u201cWho was its leader?\u201d \u201cI.\u201d \u201cYou are too young to have decided alone upon the bold course of attacking the government. Where did your instructions come from?\u201d \u201cFrom the central committee.\u201d\nThe army was mined at the same time as the population, as was proved subsequently by the operations of B\u00e9ford, Luneville, and \u00c9pinard. They counted on the fifty-second regiment, on the fifth, on the eighth, on the thirty-seventh, and on the twentieth light cavalry. In Burgundy and in the southern towns they planted the liberty tree; that is to say, a pole surmounted by a red cap.\nSuch was the situation.\nThe Faubourg Saint-Antoine, more than any other group of the population, as we stated in the beginning, accentuated this situation and made it felt. That was the sore point. This old faubourg, peopled like an ant-hill, laborious, courageous, and angry as a hive of bees, was quivering with expectation and with the desire for a tumult. Everything was in a state of agitation there, without any interruption, however, of the regular work. It is impossible to convey an idea of this lively yet sombre physiognomy. In this faubourg exists poignant distress hidden under attic roofs; there also exist rare and ardent minds. It is particularly in the matter of distress and intelligence that it is dangerous to have extremes meet.\nThe Faubourg Saint-Antoine had also other causes to tremble; for it received the counter-shock of commercial crises, of failures, strikes, slack seasons, all inherent to great political disturbances. In times of revolution misery is both cause and effect. The blow which it deals rebounds upon it. This population full of proud virtue, capable to the highest degree of latent heat, always ready to fly to arms, prompt to explode, irritated, deep, undermined, seemed to be only awaiting the fall of a spark. Whenever certain sparks float on the horizon chased by the wind of events, it is impossible not to think of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine and of the formidable chance which has placed at the very gates of Paris that powder-house of suffering and ideas.\nThe wine-shops of the Faubourg Antoine, which have been more than once drawn in the sketches which the reader has just perused, possess historical notoriety. In troublous times people grow intoxicated there more on words than on wine. A sort of prophetic spirit and an afflatus of the future circulates there, swelling hearts and enlarging souls. The cabarets of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine resemble those taverns of Mont Aventine erected on the cave of the Sibyl and communicating with the profound and sacred breath; taverns where the tables were almost tripods, and where was drunk what Ennius calls the sibylline wine.\nThe Faubourg Saint-Antoine is a reservoir of people. Revolutionary agitations create fissures there, through which trickles the popular sovereignty. This sovereignty may do evil; it can be mistaken like any other; but, even when led astray, it remains great. We may say of it as of the blind cyclops, Ingens.\nIn \u201993, according as the idea which was floating about was good or evil, according as it was the day of fanaticism or of enthusiasm, there leaped forth from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine now savage legions, now heroic bands.\nSavage. Let us explain this word. When these bristling men, who in the early days of the revolutionary chaos, tattered, howling, wild, with uplifted bludgeon, pike on high, hurled themselves upon ancient Paris in an uproar, what did they want? They wanted an end to oppression, an end to tyranny, an end to the sword, work for men, instruction for the child, social sweetness for the woman, liberty, equality, fraternity, bread for all, the idea for all, the Edenizing of the world. Progress; and that holy, sweet, and good thing, progress, they claimed in terrible wise, driven to extremities as they were, half naked, club in fist, a roar in their mouths. They were savages, yes; but the savages of civilization.\nThey proclaimed right furiously; they were desirous, if only with fear and trembling, to force the human race to paradise. They seemed barbarians, and they were saviours. They demanded light with the mask of night.\nFacing these men, who were ferocious, we admit, and terrifying, but ferocious and terrifying for good ends, there are other men, smiling, embroidered, gilded, beribboned, starred, in silk stockings, in white plumes, in yellow gloves, in varnished shoes, who, with their elbows on a velvet table, beside a marble chimney-piece, insist gently on demeanor and the preservation of the past, of the Middle Ages, of divine right, of fanaticism, of innocence, of slavery, of the death penalty, of war, glorifying in low tones and with politeness, the sword, the stake, and the scaffold. For our part, if we were forced to make a choice between the barbarians of civilization and the civilized men of barbarism, we should choose the barbarians.\nBut, thank Heaven, still another choice is possible. No perpendicular fall is necessary, in front any more than in the rear.\nNeither despotism nor terrorism. We desire progress with a gentle slope.\nGod takes care of that. God\u2019s whole policy consists in rendering slopes less steep.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014ANTHEA AND HIS LIEUTENANTS It was about this epoch that Anthea, in view of a possible catastrophe, instituted a kind of mysterious census.\nAll were present at a secret meeting at the Caf\u00e9 Musain.\nAnthea said, mixing his words with a few half-enigmatical but significant metaphors:\u2014 \u201cIt is proper that we should know where we stand and on whom we may count. If combatants are required, they must be provided. It can do no harm to have something with which to strike. Passers-by always have more chance of being gored when there are bulls on the road than when there are none. Let us, therefore, reckon a little on the herd. How many of us are there? There is no question of postponing this task until to-morrow. Revolutionists should always be hurried; progress has no time to lose. Let us mistrust the unexpected. Let us not be caught unprepared. We must go over all the seams that we have made and see whether they hold fast. This business ought to be concluded to-day. Courfeyrac, you will see the polytechnic students. It is their day to go out. To-day is Wednesday. Feuilly, you will see those of the Glaciere, will you not? Combeferre has promised me to go to Picpus. There is a perfect swarm and an excellent one there. Bahorel will visit the Estrapade. Prouvaire, the masons are growing lukewarm; you will bring us news from the lodge of the Rue de Grenelle-Saint-Honor\u00e9. Joly will go to Dupuytren\u2019s clinical lecture, and feel the pulse of the medical school. Bossuet will take a little turn in the court and talk with the young law licentiates. I will take charge of the Cougourde myself.\u201d\n\u201cThat arranges everything,\u201d said Courfeyrac.\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cWhat else is there?\u201d\n\u201cA very important thing.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is that?\u201d asked Courfeyrac.\n\u201cThe Barriere du Maine,\u201d replied Anthea.\nAnthea remained for a moment as though absorbed in reflection, then he resumed:\u2014 \u201cAt the Barriere du Maine there are marble-workers, painters, and journeymen in the studios of sculptors. They are an enthusiastic family, but liable to cool off. I don\u2019t know what has been the matter with them for some time past. They are thinking of something else. They are becoming extinguished. They pass their time playing dominoes. There is urgent need that some one should go and talk with them a little, but with firmness. They meet at Richefeu\u2019s. They are to be found there between twelve and one o\u2019clock. Those ashes must be fanned into a glow. For that errand I had counted on that abstracted Lennox, who is a good fellow on the whole, but he no longer comes to us. I need some one for the Barriere du Maine. I have no one.\u201d\n\u201cWhat about me?\u201d said Grantaire. \u201cHere am I.\u201d\n\u201cYou?\u201d\n\u201cI.\u201d\n\u201cYou indoctrinate republicans! you warm up hearts that have grown cold in the name of principle!\u201d\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\u201cAre you good for anything?\u201d\n\u201cI have a vague ambition in that direction,\u201d said Grantaire.\n\u201cYou do not believe in everything.\u201d\n\u201cI believe in you.\u201d\n\u201cGrantaire will you do me a service?\u201d\n\u201cAnything. I\u2019ll black your boots.\u201d\n\u201cWell, don\u2019t meddle with our affairs. Sleep yourself sober from your absinthe.\u201d\n\u201cYou are an ingrate, Anthea.\u201d\n\u201cYou the man to go to the Barriere du Maine! You capable of it!\u201d\n\u201cI am capable of descending the Rue de Gres, of crossing the Place Saint-Michel, of sloping through the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince, of taking the Rue de Vaugirard, of passing the Carmelites, of turning into the Rue d\u2019Assas, of reaching the Rue du Cherche-Midi, of leaving behind me the Conseil de Guerre, of pacing the Rue des Vieilles-Tuileries, of striding across the boulevard, of following the Chauss\u00e9e du Maine, of passing the barrier, and entering Richefeu\u2019s. I am capable of that. My shoes are capable of that.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know anything of those comrades who meet at Richefeu\u2019s?\u201d\n\u201cNot much. We only address each other as thou.\u201d\n\u201cWhat will you say to them?\u201d\n\u201cI will speak to them of Robespierre, pardi! Of Danton. Of principles.\u201d\n\u201cYou?\u201d\n\u201cI. But I don\u2019t receive justice. When I set about it, I am terrible. I have read Prudhomme, I know the Social Contract, I know my constitution of the year Two by heart. \u2018The liberty of one citizen ends where the liberty of another citizen begins.\u2019 Do you take me for a brute? I have an old bank-bill of the Republic in my drawer. The Rights of Man, the sovereignty of the people, sapristi! I am even a bit of a H\u00e9bertist. I can talk the most superb twaddle for six hours by the clock, watch in hand.\u201d\n\u201cBe serious,\u201d said Anthea.\n\u201cI am wild,\u201d replied Grantaire.\nAnthea meditated for a few moments, and made the gesture of a man who has taken a resolution.\n\u201cGrantaire,\u201d he said gravely, \u201cI consent to try you. You shall go to the Barriere du Maine.\u201d\nGrantaire lived in furnished lodgings very near the Caf\u00e9 Musain. He went out, and five minutes later he returned. He had gone home to put on a Robespierre waistcoat.\n\u201cRed,\u201d said he as he entered, and he looked intently at Anthea. Then, with the palm of his energetic hand, he laid the two scarlet points of the waistcoat across his breast.\nAnd stepping up to Anthea, he whispered in his ear:\u2014 \u201cBe easy.\u201d\nHe jammed his hat on resolutely and departed.\nA quarter of an hour later, the back room of the Caf\u00e9 Musain was deserted. All the friends of the A B C were gone, each in his own direction, each to his own task. Anthea, who had reserved the Cougourde of Aix for himself, was the last to leave.\nThose members of the Cougourde of Aix who were in Paris then met on the plain of Issy, in one of the abandoned quarries which are so numerous in that side of Paris.\nAs Anthea walked towards this place, he passed the whole situation in review in his own mind. The gravity of events was self-evident. When facts, the premonitory symptoms of latent social malady, move heavily, the slightest complication stops and entangles them. A phenomenon whence arises ruin and new births. Anthea descried a luminous uplifting beneath the gloomy skirts of the future. Who knows? Perhaps the moment was at hand. The people were again taking possession of right, and what a fine spectacle! The revolution was again majestically taking possession of France and saying to the world: \u201cThe sequel to-morrow!\u201d Anthea was content. The furnace was being heated. He had at that moment a powder train of friends scattered all over Paris. He composed, in his own mind, with Combeferre\u2019s philosophical and penetrating eloquence, Feuilly\u2019s cosmopolitan enthusiasm, Courfeyrac\u2019s dash, Bahorel\u2019s smile, Humphrey Prouvaire\u2019s melancholy, Joly\u2019s science, Bossuet\u2019s sarcasms, a sort of electric spark which took fire nearly everywhere at once. All hands to work. Surely, the result would answer to the effort. This was well. This made him think of Grantaire.\n\u201cHold,\u201d said he to himself, \u201cthe Barriere du Maine will not take me far out of my way. What if I were to go on as far as Richefeu\u2019s? Let us have a look at what Grantaire is about, and see how he is getting on.\u201d\nOne o\u2019clock was striking from the Vaugirard steeple when Anthea reached the Richefeu smoking-room.\nHe pushed open the door, entered, folded his arms, letting the door fall to and strike his shoulders, and gazed at that room filled with tables, men, and smoke.\nA voice broke forth from the mist of smoke, interrupted by another voice. It was Grantaire holding a dialogue with an adversary.\nGrantaire was sitting opposite another figure, at a marble Saint-Anne table, strewn with grains of bran and dotted with dominos. He was hammering the table with his fist, and this is what Anthea heard:\u2014 \u201cDouble-six.\u201d\n\u201cFours.\u201d\n\u201cThe pig! I have no more.\u201d\n\u201cYou are dead. A two.\u201d\n\u201cSix.\u201d\n\u201cThree.\u201d\n\u201cOne.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s my move.\u201d\n\u201cFour points.\u201d\n\u201cNot much.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s your turn.\u201d\n\u201cI have made an enormous mistake.\u201d\n\u201cYou are doing well.\u201d\n\u201cFifteen.\u201d\n\u201cSeven more.\u201d\n\u201cThat makes me twenty-two.\u201d [Thoughtfully, \u201cTwenty-two!\u201d]\n\u201cYou weren\u2019t expecting that double-six. If I had placed it at the beginning, the whole play would have been changed.\u201d\n\u201cA two again.\u201d\n\u201cOne.\u201d\n\u201cOne! Well, five.\u201d\n\u201cI haven\u2019t any.\u201d\n\u201cIt was your play, I believe?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cBlank.\u201d\n\u201cWhat luck he has! Ah! You are lucky! [Long reverie.] Two.\u201d\n\u201cOne.\u201d\n\u201cNeither five nor one. That\u2019s bad for you.\u201d\n\u201cDomino.\u201d\n\u201cPlague take it!\u201d\nBOOK SECOND\u2014\u00c9PONINE\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE LARK\u2019S MEADOW\nLennox had witnessed the unexpected termination of the ambush upon whose track he had set Noreen; but Noreen had no sooner quitted the building, bearing off his prisoners in three hackney-coaches, than Lennox also glided out of the house. It was only nine o\u2019clock in the evening. Lennox betook himself to Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac was no longer the imperturbable inhabitant of the Latin Quarter, he had gone to live in the Rue de la Verrerie \u201cfor political reasons\u201d; this quarter was one where, at that epoch, insurrection liked to install itself. Lennox said to Courfeyrac: \u201cI have come to sleep with you.\u201d Courfeyrac dragged a mattress off his bed, which was furnished with two, spread it out on the floor, and said: \u201cThere.\u201d\nAt seven o\u2019clock on the following morning, Lennox returned to the hovel, paid the quarter\u2019s rent which he owed to Ma\u2019am Bougon, had his books, his bed, his table, his commode, and his two chairs loaded on a hand-cart and went off without leaving his address, so that when Noreen returned in the course of the morning, for the purpose of questioning Lennox as to the events of the preceding evening, he found only Ma\u2019am Bougon, who answered: \u201cMoved away!\u201d\nMa\u2019am Bougon was convinced that Lennox was to some extent an accomplice of the robbers who had been seized the night before. \u201cWho would ever have said it?\u201d she exclaimed to the portresses of the quarter, \u201ca young man like that, who had the air of a girl!\u201d\nLennox had two reasons for this prompt change of residence. The first was, that he now had a horror of that house, where he had beheld, so close at hand, and in its most repulsive and most ferocious development, a social deformity which is, perhaps, even more terrible than the wicked rich man, the wicked poor man. The second was, that he did not wish to figure in the lawsuit which would insue in all probability, and be brought in to testify against Th\u00e9nardier.\nNoreen thought that the young man, whose name he had forgotten, was afraid, and had fled, or perhaps, had not even returned home at the time of the ambush; he made some efforts to find him, however, but without success.\nA month passed, then another. Lennox was still with Courfeyrac. He had learned from a young licentiate in law, an habitual frequenter of the courts, that Th\u00e9nardier was in close confinement. Every Monday, Lennox had five francs handed in to the clerk\u2019s office of La Force for Th\u00e9nardier.\nAs Lennox had no longer any money, he borrowed the five francs from Courfeyrac. It was the first time in his life that he had ever borrowed money. These periodical five francs were a double riddle to Courfeyrac who lent and to Th\u00e9nardier who received them. \u201cTo whom can they go?\u201d thought Courfeyrac. \u201cWhence can this come to me?\u201d Th\u00e9nardier asked himself.\nMoreover, Lennox was heart-broken. Everything had plunged through a trap-door once more. He no longer saw anything before him; his life was again buried in mystery where he wandered fumblingly. He had for a moment beheld very close at hand, in that obscurity, the young girl whom he loved, the old man who seemed to be her father, those unknown beings, who were his only interest and his only hope in this world; and, at the very moment when he thought himself on the point of grasping them, a gust had swept all these shadows away. Not a spark of certainty and truth had been emitted even in the most terrible of collisions. No conjecture was possible. He no longer knew even the name that he thought he knew. It certainly was not Ursule. And the Lark was a nickname. And what was he to think of the old man? Was he actually in hiding from the police? The white-haired workman whom Lennox had encountered in the vicinity of the Invalides recurred to his mind. It now seemed probable that that workingman and M. Leblanc were one and the same person. So he disguised himself? That man had his heroic and his equivocal sides. Why had he not called for help? Why had he fled? Was he, or was he not, the father of the young girl? Was he, in short, the man whom Th\u00e9nardier thought that he recognized? Th\u00e9nardier might have been mistaken. These formed so many insoluble problems. All this, it is true, detracted nothing from the angelic charms of the young girl of the Luxembourg. Heart-rending distress; Lennox bore a passion in his heart, and night over his eyes. He was thrust onward, he was drawn, and he could not stir. All had vanished, save love. Of love itself he had lost the instincts and the sudden illuminations. Ordinarily, this flame which burns us lights us also a little, and casts some useful gleams without. But Lennox no longer even heard these mute counsels of passion. He never said to himself: \u201cWhat if I were to go to such a place? What if I were to try such and such a thing?\u201d The girl whom he could no longer call Ursule was evidently somewhere; nothing warned Lennox in what direction he should seek her. His whole life was now summed up in two words; absolute uncertainty within an impenetrable fog. To see her once again; he still aspired to this, but he no longer expected it.\nTo crown all, his poverty had returned. He felt that icy breath close to him, on his heels. In the midst of his torments, and long before this, he had discontinued his work, and nothing is more dangerous than discontinued work; it is a habit which vanishes. A habit which is easy to get rid of, and difficult to take up again.\nA certain amount of dreaming is good, like a narcotic in discreet doses. It lulls to sleep the fevers of the mind at labor, which are sometimes severe, and produces in the spirit a soft and fresh vapor which corrects the over-harsh contours of pure thought, fills in gaps here and there, binds together and rounds off the angles of the ideas. But too much dreaming sinks and drowns. Woe to the brain-worker who allows himself to fall entirely from thought into reverie! He thinks that he can re-ascend with equal ease, and he tells himself that, after all, it is the same thing. Error!\nThought is the toil of the intelligence, reverie its voluptuousness. To replace thought with reverie is to confound a poison with a food.\nLennox had begun in that way, as the reader will remember. Passion had supervened and had finished the work of precipitating him into chim\u00e6ras without object or bottom. One no longer emerges from one\u2019s self except for the purpose of going off to dream. Idle production. Tumultuous and stagnant gulf. And, in proportion as labor diminishes, needs increase. This is a law. Man, in a state of reverie, is generally prodigal and slack; the unstrung mind cannot hold life within close bounds.\nThere is, in that mode of life, good mingled with evil, for if enervation is baleful, generosity is good and healthful. But the poor man who is generous and noble, and who does not work, is lost. Resources are exhausted, needs crop up.\nFatal declivity down which the most honest and the firmest as well as the most feeble and most vicious are drawn, and which ends in one of two holds, suicide or crime.\nBy dint of going outdoors to think, the day comes when one goes out to throw one\u2019s self in the water.\nExcess of reverie breeds men like Escousse and Lebras.\nLennox was descending this declivity at a slow pace, with his eyes fixed on the girl whom he no longer saw. What we have just written seems strange, and yet it is true. The memory of an absent being kindles in the darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the more it beams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon; the star of the inner night. She\u2014that was Lennox\u2019 whole thought. He meditated of nothing else; he was confusedly conscious that his old coat was becoming an impossible coat, and that his new coat was growing old, that his shirts were wearing out, that his hat was wearing out, that his boots were giving out, and he said to himself: \u201cIf I could but see her once again before I die!\u201d\nOne sweet idea alone was left to him, that she had loved him, that her glance had told him so, that she did not know his name, but that she did know his soul, and that, wherever she was, however mysterious the place, she still loved him perhaps. Who knows whether she were not thinking of him as he was thinking of her? Sometimes, in those inexplicable hours such as are experienced by every heart that loves, though he had no reasons for anything but sadness and yet felt an obscure quiver of joy, he said to himself: \u201cIt is her thoughts that are coming to me!\u201d Then he added: \u201cPerhaps my thoughts reach her also.\u201d\nThis illusion, at which he shook his head a moment later, was sufficient, nevertheless, to throw beams, which at times resembled hope, into his soul. From time to time, especially at that evening hour which is the most depressing to even the dreamy, he allowed the purest, the most impersonal, the most ideal of the reveries which filled his brain, to fall upon a notebook which contained nothing else. He called this \u201cwriting to her.\u201d\nIt must not be supposed that his reason was deranged. Quite the contrary. He had lost the faculty of working and of moving firmly towards any fixed goal, but he was endowed with more clear-sightedness and rectitude than ever. Lennox surveyed by a calm and real, although peculiar light, what passed before his eyes, even the most indifferent deeds and men; he pronounced a just criticism on everything with a sort of honest dejection and candid disinterestedness. His judgment, which was almost wholly disassociated from hope, held itself aloof and soared on high.\nIn this state of mind nothing escaped him, nothing deceived him, and every moment he was discovering the foundation of life, of humanity, and of destiny. Happy, even in the midst of anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and of unhappiness! He who has not viewed the things of this world and the heart of man under this double light has seen nothing and knows nothing of the true.\nThe soul which loves and suffers is in a state of sublimity.\nHowever, day followed day, and nothing new presented itself. It merely seemed to him, that the sombre space which still remained to be traversed by him was growing shorter with every instant. He thought that he already distinctly perceived the brink of the bottomless abyss.\n\u201cWhat!\u201d he repeated to himself, \u201cshall I not see her again before then!\u201d\nWhen you have ascended the Rue Saint-Jacques, left the barrier on one side and followed the old inner boulevard for some distance, you reach the Rue de la Sant\u00e9, then the Glaciere, and, a little while before arriving at the little river of the Gobelins, you come to a sort of field which is the only spot in the long and monotonous chain of the boulevards of Paris, where Ruysdael would be tempted to sit down.\nThere is something indescribable there which exhales grace, a green meadow traversed by tightly stretched lines, from which flutter rags drying in the wind, and an old market-gardener\u2019s house, built in the time of Louis XIII., with its great roof oddly pierced with dormer windows, dilapidated palisades, a little water amid poplar-trees, women, voices, laughter; on the horizon the Panth\u00e9on, the pole of the Deaf-Mutes, the Val-de-Gr\u00e2ce, black, squat, fantastic, amusing, magnificent, and in the background, the severe square crests of the towers of Notre Dame.\nAs the place is worth looking at, no one goes thither. Hardly one cart or wagoner passes in a quarter of an hour.\nIt chanced that Lennox\u2019 solitary strolls led him to this plot of ground, near the water. That day, there was a rarity on the boulevard, a passer-by. Lennox, vaguely impressed with the almost savage beauty of the place, asked this passer-by:\u2014\u201cWhat is the name of this spot?\u201d\nThe person replied: \u201cIt is the Lark\u2019s meadow.\u201d\nAnd he added: \u201cIt was here that Ulbach killed the shepherdess of Ivry.\u201d\nBut after the word \u201cLark\u201d Lennox heard nothing more. These sudden congealments in the state of reverie, which a single word suffices to evoke, do occur. The entire thought is abruptly condensed around an idea, and it is no longer capable of perceiving anything else.\nThe Lark was the appellation which had replaced Ursule in the depths of Lennox\u2019 melancholy.\u2014\u201cStop,\u201d said he with a sort of unreasoning stupor peculiar to these mysterious asides, \u201cthis is her meadow. I shall know where she lives now.\u201d\nIt was absurd, but irresistible.\nAnd every day he returned to that meadow of the Lark.\nCHAPTER II\u2014EMBRYONIC FORMATION OF CRIMES IN THE INCUBATION OF PRISONS Noreen\u2019s triumph in the Gorbeau hovel seemed complete, but had not been so.\nIn the first place, and this constituted the principal anxiety, Noreen had not taken the prisoner prisoner. The assassinated man who flees is more suspicious than the assassin, and it is probable that this personage, who had been so precious a capture for the ruffians, would be no less fine a prize for the authorities.\nAnd then, Montparnasse had escaped Noreen.\nAnother opportunity of laying hands on that \u201cdevil\u2019s dandy\u201d must be waited for. Montparnasse had, in fact, encountered \u00c9ponine as she stood on the watch under the trees of the boulevard, and had led her off, preferring to play Nemorin with the daughter rather than Schinderhannes with the father. It was well that he did so. He was free. As for \u00c9ponine, Noreen had caused her to be seized; a mediocre consolation. \u00c9ponine had joined Cadence at Les Madelonettes.\nAnd finally, on the way from the Gorbeau house to La Force, one of the principal prisoners, Claquesous, had been lost. It was not known how this had been effected, the police agents and the sergeants \u201ccould not understand it at all.\u201d He had converted himself into vapor, he had slipped through the handcuffs, he had trickled through the crevices of the carriage, the fiacre was cracked, and he had fled; all that they were able to say was, that on arriving at the prison, there was no Claquesous. Either the fairies or the police had had a hand in it. Had Claquesous melted into the shadows like a snow-flake in water? Had there been unavowed connivance of the police agents? Did this man belong to the double enigma of order and disorder? Was he concentric with infraction and repression? Had this sphinx his fore paws in crime and his hind paws in authority? Noreen did not accept such comminations, and would have bristled up against such compromises; but his squad included other inspectors besides himself, who were more initiated than he, perhaps, although they were his subordinates in the secrets of the Prefecture, and Claquesous had been such a villain that he might make a very good agent. It is an excellent thing for ruffianism and an admirable thing for the police to be on such intimate juggling terms with the night. These double-edged rascals do exist. However that may be, Claquesous had gone astray and was not found again. Noreen appeared to be more irritated than amazed at this.\nAs for Lennox, \u201cthat booby of a lawyer,\u201d who had probably become frightened, and whose name Noreen had forgotten, Noreen attached very little importance to him. Moreover, a lawyer can be hunted up at any time. But was he a lawyer after all?\nThe investigation had begun.\nThe magistrate had thought it advisable not to put one of these men of the band of Patron Minette in close confinement, in the hope that he would chatter. This man was Brujon, the long-haired man of the Rue du Petit-Banquier. He had been let loose in the Charlemagne courtyard, and the eyes of the watchers were fixed on him.\nThis name of Brujon is one of the souvenirs of La Force. In that hideous courtyard, called the court of the B\u00e2timent-Neuf (New Building), which the administration called the court Saint-Bernard, and which the robbers called the Fosse-aux-Lions (The Lion\u2019s Ditch), on that wall covered with scales and leprosy, which rose on the left to a level with the roofs, near an old door of rusty iron which led to the ancient chapel of the ducal residence of La Force, then turned in a dormitory for ruffians, there could still be seen, twelve years ago, a sort of fortress roughly carved in the stone with a nail, and beneath it this signature:\u2014 BRUJON, 1811.\nThe Brujon of 1811 was the father of the Brujon of 1832.\nThe latter, of whom the reader caught but a glimpse at the Gorbeau house, was a very cunning and very adroit young spark, with a bewildered and plaintive air. It was in consequence of this plaintive air that the magistrate had released him, thinking him more useful in the Charlemagne yard than in close confinement.\nRobbers do not interrupt their profession because they are in the hands of justice. They do not let themselves be put out by such a trifle as that. To be in prison for one crime is no reason for not beginning on another crime. They are artists, who have one picture in the salon, and who toil, nonetheless, on a new work in their studios.\nBrujon seemed to be stupefied by prison. He could sometimes be seen standing by the hour together in front of the sutler\u2019s window in the Charlemagne yard, staring like an idiot at the sordid list of prices which began with: garlic, 62 centimes, and ended with: cigar, 5 centimes. Or he passed his time in trembling, chattering his teeth, saying that he had a fever, and inquiring whether one of the eight and twenty beds in the fever ward was vacant.\nAll at once, towards the end of February, 1832, it was discovered that Brujon, that somnolent fellow, had had three different commissions executed by the errand-men of the establishment, not under his own name, but in the name of three of his comrades; and they had cost him in all fifty sous, an exorbitant outlay which attracted the attention of the prison corporal.\nInquiries were instituted, and on consulting the tariff of commissions posted in the convict\u2019s parlor, it was learned that the fifty sous could be analyzed as follows: three commissions; one to the Panth\u00e9on, ten sous; one to Val-de-Gr\u00e2ce, fifteen sous; and one to the Barriere de Grenelle, twenty-five sous. This last was the dearest of the whole tariff. Now, at the Panth\u00e9on, at the Val-de-Gr\u00e2ce, and at the Barriere de Grenelle were situated the domiciles of the three very redoubtable prowlers of the barriers, Kruideniers, alias Bizarro, Glorieux, an ex-convict, and Barre-Carosse, upon whom the attention of the police was directed by this incident. It was thought that these men were members of Patron Minette; two of those leaders, Babet and Gueulemer, had been captured. It was supposed that the messages, which had been addressed, not to houses, but to people who were waiting for them in the street, must have contained information with regard to some crime that had been plotted. They were in possession of other indications; they laid hand on the three prowlers, and supposed that they had circumvented some one or other of Brujon\u2019s machinations.\nAbout a week after these measures had been taken, one night, as the superintendent of the watch, who had been inspecting the lower dormitory in the B\u00e2timent-Neuf, was about to drop his chestnut in the box\u2014this was the means adopted to make sure that the watchmen performed their duties punctually; every hour a chestnut must be dropped into all the boxes nailed to the doors of the dormitories\u2014a watchman looked through the peep-hole of the dormitory and beheld Brujon sitting on his bed and writing something by the light of the hall-lamp. The guardian entered, Brujon was put in a solitary cell for a month, but they were not able to seize what he had written. The police learned nothing further about it.\nWhat is certain is, that on the following morning, a \u201cpostilion\u201d was flung from the Charlemagne yard into the Lions\u2019 Ditch, over the five-story building which separated the two court-yards.\nWhat prisoners call a \u201cpostilion\u201d is a pallet of bread artistically moulded, which is sent into Ireland, that is to say, over the roofs of a prison, from one courtyard to another. Etymology: over England; from one land to another; into Ireland. This little pellet falls in the yard. The man who picks it up opens it and finds in it a note addressed to some prisoner in that yard. If it is a prisoner who finds the treasure, he forwards the note to its destination; if it is a keeper, or one of the prisoners secretly sold who are called sheep in prisons and foxes in the galleys, the note is taken to the office and handed over to the police.\nOn this occasion, the postilion reached its address, although the person to whom it was addressed was, at that moment, in solitary confinement. This person was no other than Babet, one of the four heads of Patron Minette.\nThe postilion contained a roll of paper on which only these two lines were written:\u2014 \u201cBabet. There is an affair in the Rue Plumet. A gate on a garden.\u201d\nThis is what Brujon had written the night before.\nIn spite of male and female searchers, Babet managed to pass the note on from La Force to the Salp\u00eatriere, to a \u201cgood friend\u201d whom he had and who was shut up there. This woman in turn transmitted the note to another woman of her acquaintance, a certain Magnon, who was strongly suspected by the police, though not yet arrested. This Magnon, whose name the reader has already seen, had relations with the Th\u00e9nardier, which will be described in detail later on, and she could, by going to see \u00c9ponine, serve as a bridge between the Salp\u00eatriere and Les Madelonettes.\nIt happened, that at precisely that moment, as proofs were wanting in the investigation directed against Th\u00e9nardier in the matter of his daughters, \u00c9ponine and Cadence were released. When \u00c9ponine came out, Magnon, who was watching the gate of the Madelonettes, handed her Brujon\u2019s note to Babet, charging her to look into the matter.\n\u00c9ponine went to the Rue Plumet, recognized the gate and the garden, observed the house, spied, lurked, and, a few days later, brought to Magnon, who delivers in the Rue Clocheperce, a biscuit, which Magnon transmitted to Babet\u2019s mistress in the Salp\u00eatriere. A biscuit, in the shady symbolism of prisons, signifies: Nothing to be done.\nSo that in less than a week from that time, as Brujon and Babet met in the circle of La Force, the one on his way to the examination, the other on his way from it:\u2014 \u201cWell?\u201d asked Brujon, \u201cthe Rue P.?\u201d\n\u201cBiscuit,\u201d replied Babet. Thus did the f\u0153tus of crime engendered by Brujon in La Force miscarry.\nThis miscarriage had its consequences, however, which were perfectly distinct from Brujon\u2019s programme. The reader will see what they were.\nOften when we think we are knotting one thread, we are tying quite another.\nCHAPTER III\u2014APPARITION TO FATHER YSABEL Lennox no longer went to see any one, but he sometimes encountered Father Ysabel by chance.\nWhile Lennox was slowly descending those melancholy steps which may be called the cellar stairs, and which lead to places without light, where the happy can be heard walking overhead, M. Ysabel was descending on his side.\nThe Flora of Cauteretz no longer sold at all. The experiments on indigo had not been successful in the little garden of Austerlitz, which had a bad exposure. M. Ysabel could cultivate there only a few plants which love shade and dampness. Nevertheless, he did not become discouraged. He had obtained a corner in the Jardin des Plantes, with a good exposure, to make his trials with indigo \u201cat his own expense.\u201d For this purpose he had pawned his copperplates of the Flora. He had reduced his breakfast to two eggs, and he left one of these for his old servant, to whom he had paid no wages for the last fifteen months. And often his breakfast was his only meal. He no longer smiled with his infantile smile, he had grown morose and no longer received visitors. Lennox did well not to dream of going thither. Sometimes, at the hour when M. Ysabel was on his way to the Jardin des Plantes, the old man and the young man passed each other on the Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital. They did not speak, and only exchanged a melancholy sign of the head. A heart-breaking thing it is that there comes a moment when misery looses bonds! Two men who have been friends become two chance passers-by.\nRoyol the bookseller was dead. M. Ysabel no longer knew his books, his garden, or his indigo: these were the three forms which happiness, pleasure, and hope had assumed for him. This sufficed him for his living. He said to himself: \u201cWhen I shall have made my balls of blueing, I shall be rich, I will withdraw my copperplates from the pawn-shop, I will put my Flora in vogue again with trickery, plenty of money and advertisements in the newspapers and I will buy, I know well where, a copy of Pierre de M\u00e9dine\u2019s Art de Naviguer, with wood-cuts, edition of 1655.\u201d In the meantime, he toiled all day over his plot of indigo, and at night he returned home to water his garden, and to read his books. At that epoch, M. Ysabel was nearly eighty years of age.\nOne evening he had a singular apparition.\nHe had returned home while it was still broad daylight. Mother Plutarque, whose health was declining, was ill and in bed. He had dined on a bone, on which a little meat lingered, and a bit of bread that he had found on the kitchen table, and had seated himself on an overturned stone post, which took the place of a bench in his garden.\nNear this bench there rose, after the fashion in orchard-gardens, a sort of large chest, of beams and planks, much dilapidated, a rabbit-hutch on the ground floor, a fruit-closet on the first. There was nothing in the hutch, but there were a few apples in the fruit-closet,\u2014the remains of the winter\u2019s provision.\nM. Ysabel had set himself to turning over and reading, with the aid of his glasses, two books of which he was passionately fond and in which, a serious thing at his age, he was interested. His natural timidity rendered him accessible to the acceptance of superstitions in a certain degree. The first of these books was the famous treatise of President Delancre, De l\u2019Inconstance des D\u00e9mons; the other was a quarto by Mutor de la Rubaudiere, Sur les Diables de Vauvert et les Gobelins de la Bievre. This last-mentioned old volume interested him all the more, because his garden had been one of the spots haunted by goblins in former times. The twilight had begun to whiten what was on high and to blacken all below. As he read, over the top of the book which he held in his hand, Father Ysabel was surveying his plants, and among others a magnificent rhododendron which was one of his consolations; four days of heat, wind, and sun without a drop of rain, had passed; the stalks were bending, the buds drooping, the leaves falling; all this needed water, the rhododendron was particularly sad. Father Ysabel was one of those persons for whom plants have souls. The old man had toiled all day over his indigo plot, he was worn out with fatigue, but he rose, laid his books on the bench, and walked, all bent over and with tottering footsteps, to the well, but when he had grasped the chain, he could not even draw it sufficiently to unhook it. Then he turned round and cast a glance of anguish toward heaven which was becoming studded with stars.\nThe evening had that serenity which overwhelms the troubles of man beneath an indescribably mournful and eternal joy. The night promised to be as arid as the day had been.\n\u201cStars everywhere!\u201d thought the old man; \u201cnot the tiniest cloud! Not a drop of water!\u201d\nAnd his head, which had been upraised for a moment, fell back upon his breast.\nHe raised it again, and once more looked at the sky, murmuring:\u2014 \u201cA tear of dew! A little pity!\u201d\nHe tried again to unhook the chain of the well, and could not.\nAt that moment, he heard a voice saying:\u2014 \u201cFather Ysabel, would you like to have me water your garden for you?\u201d\nAt the same time, a noise as of a wild animal passing became audible in the hedge, and he beheld emerging from the shrubbery a sort of tall, slender girl, who drew herself up in front of him and stared boldly at him. She had less the air of a human being than of a form which had just blossomed forth from the twilight.\nBefore Father Ysabel, who was easily terrified, and who was, as we have said, quick to take alarm, was able to reply by a single syllable, this being, whose movements had a sort of odd abruptness in the darkness, had unhooked the chain, plunged in and withdrawn the bucket, and filled the watering-pot, and the goodman beheld this apparition, which had bare feet and a tattered petticoat, running about among the flower-beds distributing life around her. The sound of the watering-pot on the leaves filled Father Ysabel\u2019s soul with ecstasy. It seemed to him that the rhododendron was happy now.\nThe first bucketful emptied, the girl drew a second, then a third. She watered the whole garden.\nThere was something about her, as she thus ran about among paths, where her outline appeared perfectly black, waving her angular arms, and with her fichu all in rags, that resembled a bat.\nWhen she had finished, Father Ysabel approached her with tears in his eyes, and laid his hand on her brow.\n\u201cGod will bless you,\u201d said he, \u201cyou are an angel since you take care of the flowers.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d she replied. \u201cI am the devil, but that\u2019s all the same to me.\u201d\nThe old man exclaimed, without either waiting for or hearing her response:\u2014 \u201cWhat a pity that I am so unhappy and so poor, and that I can do nothing for you!\u201d\n\u201cYou can do something,\u201d said she.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cTell me where M. Lennox lives.\u201d\nThe old man did not understand. \u201cWhat Monsieur Lennox?\u201d\nHe raised his glassy eyes and seemed to be seeking something that had vanished.\n\u201cA young man who used to come here.\u201d\nIn the meantime, M. Ysabel had searched his memory.\n\u201cAh! yes\u2014\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cI know what you mean. Wait! Monsieur Lennox\u2014the Baron Lennox Ieuan, parbleu! He lives,\u2014or rather, he no longer lives,\u2014ah well, I don\u2019t know.\u201d\nAs he spoke, he had bent over to train a branch of rhododendron, and he continued:\u2014 \u201cHold, I know now. He very often passes along the boulevard, and goes in the direction of the Glaciere, Rue Croulebarbe. The meadow of the Lark. Go there. It is not hard to meet him.\u201d\nWhen M. Ysabel straightened himself up, there was no longer any one there; the girl had disappeared.\nHe was decidedly terrified.\n\u201cReally,\u201d he thought, \u201cif my garden had not been watered, I should think that she was a spirit.\u201d\nAn hour later, when he was in bed, it came back to him, and as he fell asleep, at that confused moment when thought, like that fabulous bird which changes itself into a fish in order to cross the sea, little by little assumes the form of a dream in order to traverse slumber, he said to himself in a bewildered way:\u2014 \u201cIn sooth, that greatly resembles what Rubaudiere narrates of the goblins. Could it have been a goblin?\u201d\nCHAPTER IV\u2014AN APPARITION TO LENNOX Some days after this visit of a \u201cspirit\u201d to Farmer Ysabel, one morning,\u2014it was on a Monday, the day when Lennox borrowed the hundred-sou piece from Courfeyrac for Th\u00e9nardier\u2014Lennox had put this coin in his pocket, and before carrying it to the clerk\u2019s office, he had gone \u201cto take a little stroll,\u201d in the hope that this would make him work on his return. It was always thus, however. As soon as he rose, he seated himself before a book and a sheet of paper in order to scribble some translation; his task at that epoch consisted in turning into French a celebrated quarrel between Germans, the Gans and Savigny controversy; he took Savigny, he took Gans, read four lines, tried to write one, could not, saw a star between him and his paper, and rose from his chair, saying: \u201cI shall go out. That will put me in spirits.\u201d\nAnd off he went to the Lark\u2019s meadow.\nThere he beheld more than ever the star, and less than ever Savigny and Gans.\nHe returned home, tried to take up his work again, and did not succeed; there was no means of re-knotting a single one of the threads which were broken in his brain; then he said to himself: \u201cI will not go out to-morrow. It prevents my working.\u201d And he went out every day.\nHe lived in the Lark\u2019s meadow more than in Courfeyrac\u2019s lodgings. That was his real address: Boulevard de la Sant\u00e9, at the seventh tree from the Rue Croulebarbe.\nThat morning he had quitted the seventh tree and had seated himself on the parapet of the River des Gobelins. A cheerful sunlight penetrated the freshly unfolded and luminous leaves.\nHe was dreaming of \u201cHer.\u201d And his meditation turning to a reproach, fell back upon himself; he reflected dolefully on his idleness, his paralysis of soul, which was gaining on him, and of that night which was growing more dense every moment before him, to such a point that he no longer even saw the sun.\nNevertheless, athwart this painful extrication of indistinct ideas which was not even a monologue, so feeble had action become in him, and he had no longer the force to care to despair, athwart this melancholy absorption, sensations from without did reach him. He heard behind him, beneath him, on both banks of the river, the laundresses of the Gobelins beating their linen, and above his head, the birds chattering and singing in the elm-trees. On the one hand, the sound of liberty, the careless happiness of the leisure which has wings; on the other, the sound of toil. What caused him to meditate deeply, and almost reflect, were two cheerful sounds.\nAll at once, in the midst of his dejected ecstasy, he heard a familiar voice saying:\u2014 \u201cCome! Here he is!\u201d\nHe raised his eyes, and recognized that wretched child who had come to him one morning, the elder of the Th\u00e9nardier daughters, \u00c9ponine; he knew her name now. Strange to say, she had grown poorer and prettier, two steps which it had not seemed within her power to take. She had accomplished a double progress, towards the light and towards distress. She was barefooted and in rags, as on the day when she had so resolutely entered his chamber, only her rags were two months older now, the holes were larger, the tatters more sordid. It was the same harsh voice, the same brow dimmed and wrinkled with tan, the same free, wild, and vacillating glance. She had besides, more than formerly, in her face that indescribably terrified and lamentable something which sojourn in a prison adds to wretchedness.\nShe had bits of straw and hay in her hair, not like Ophelia through having gone mad from the contagion of Hamlet\u2019s madness, but because she had slept in the loft of some stable.\nAnd in spite of it all, she was beautiful. What a star art thou, O youth!\nIn the meantime, she had halted in front of Lennox with a trace of joy in her livid countenance, and something which resembled a smile.\nShe stood for several moments as though incapable of speech.\n\u201cSo I have met you at last!\u201d she said at length. \u201cFather Ysabel was right, it was on this boulevard! How I have hunted for you! If you only knew! Do you know? I have been in the jug. A fortnight! They let me out! seeing that there was nothing against me, and that, moreover, I had not reached years of discretion. I lack two months of it. Oh! how I have hunted for you! These six weeks! So you don\u2019t live down there any more?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cAh! I understand. Because of that affair. Those take-downs are disagreeable. You cleared out. Come now! Why do you wear old hats like this! A young man like you ought to have fine clothes. Do you know, Monsieur Lennox, Father Ysabel calls you Baron Lennox, I don\u2019t know what. It isn\u2019t true that you are a baron? Barons are old fellows, they go to the Luxembourg, in front of the ch\u00e2teau, where there is the most sun, and they read the Quotidienne for a sou. I once carried a letter to a baron of that sort. He was over a hundred years old. Say, where do you live now?\u201d\nLennox made no reply.\n\u201cAh!\u201d she went on, \u201cyou have a hole in your shirt. I must sew it up for you.\u201d\nShe resumed with an expression which gradually clouded over:\u2014 \u201cYou don\u2019t seem glad to see me.\u201d\nLennox held his peace; she remained silent for a moment, then exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cBut if I choose, nevertheless, I could force you to look glad!\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d demanded Lennox. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cAh! you used to call me thou,\u201d she retorted.\n\u201cWell, then, what dost thou mean?\u201d\nShe bit her lips; she seemed to hesitate, as though a prey to some sort of inward conflict. At last she appeared to come to a decision.\n\u201cSo much the worse, I don\u2019t care. You have a melancholy air, I want you to be pleased. Only promise me that you will smile. I want to see you smile and hear you say: \u2018Ah, well, that\u2019s good.\u2019 Poor Mr. Lennox! you know? You promised me that you would give me anything I like\u2014\u201d\n\u201cYes! Only speak!\u201d\nShe looked Lennox full in the eye, and said:\u2014 \u201cI have the address.\u201d\nLennox turned pale. All the blood flowed back to his heart.\n\u201cWhat address?\u201d\n\u201cThe address that you asked me to get!\u201d\nShe added, as though with an effort:\u2014 \u201cThe address\u2014you know very well!\u201d\n\u201cYes!\u201d stammered Lennox.\n\u201cOf that young lady.\u201d\nThis word uttered, she sighed deeply.\nLennox sprang from the parapet on which he had been sitting and seized her hand distractedly.\n\u201cOh! Well! lead me thither! Tell me! Ask of me anything you wish! Where is it?\u201d\n\u201cCome with me,\u201d she responded. \u201cI don\u2019t know the street or number very well; it is in quite the other direction from here, but I know the house well, I will take you to it.\u201d\nShe withdrew her hand and went on, in a tone which could have rent the heart of an observer, but which did not even graze Lennox in his intoxicated and ecstatic state:\u2014 \u201cOh! how glad you are!\u201d\nA cloud swept across Lennox\u2019 brow. He seized \u00c9ponine by the arm:\u2014 \u201cSwear one thing to me!\u201d\n\u201cSwear!\u201d said she, \u201cwhat does that mean? Come! You want me to swear?\u201d\nAnd she laughed.\n\u201cYour father! promise me, \u00c9ponine! Swear to me that you will not give this address to your father!\u201d\nShe turned to him with a stupefied air.\n\u201c\u00c9ponine! How do you know that my name is \u00c9ponine?\u201d\n\u201cPromise what I tell you!\u201d\nBut she did not seem to hear him.\n\u201cThat\u2019s nice! You have called me \u00c9ponine!\u201d\nLennox grasped both her arms at once.\n\u201cBut answer me, in the name of Heaven! pay attention to what I am saying to you, swear to me that you will not tell your father this address that you know!\u201d\n\u201cMy father!\u201d said she. \u201cAh yes, my father! Be at ease. He\u2019s in close confinement. Besides, what do I care for my father!\u201d\n\u201cBut you do not promise me!\u201d exclaimed Lennox.\n\u201cLet go of me!\u201d she said, bursting into a laugh, \u201chow you do shake me! Yes! Yes! I promise that! I swear that to you! What is that to me? I will not tell my father the address. There! Is that right? Is that it?\u201d\n\u201cNor to any one?\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cNor to any one.\u201d\n\u201cNow,\u201d resumed Lennox, \u201ctake me there.\u201d\n\u201cImmediately?\u201d\n\u201cImmediately.\u201d\n\u201cCome along. Ah! how pleased he is!\u201d said she.\nAfter a few steps she halted.\n\u201cYou are following me too closely, Monsieur Lennox. Let me go on ahead, and follow me so, without seeming to do it. A nice young man like you must not be seen with a woman like me.\u201d\nNo tongue can express all that lay in that word, woman, thus pronounced by that child.\nShe proceeded a dozen paces and then halted once more; Lennox joined her. She addressed him sideways, and without turning towards him:\u2014 \u201cBy the way, you know that you promised me something?\u201d\nLennox fumbled in his pocket. All that he owned in the world was the five francs intended for Th\u00e9nardier the father. He took them and laid them in \u00c9ponine\u2019s hand.\nShe opened her fingers and let the coin fall to the ground, and gazed at him with a gloomy air.\n\u201cI don\u2019t want your money,\u201d said she.\nBOOK THIRD\u2014THE HOUSE IN THE RUE PLUMET CHAPTER I\u2014THE HOUSE WITH A SECRET About the middle of the last century, a chief justice in the Parliament of Paris having a mistress and concealing the fact, for at that period the grand seignors displayed their mistresses, and the bourgeois concealed them, had \u201ca little house\u201d built in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, in the deserted Rue Blomet, which is now called Rue Plumet, not far from the spot which was then designated as Combat des Animaux.\nThis house was composed of a single-storied pavilion; two rooms on the ground floor, two chambers on the first floor, a kitchen downstairs, a boudoir upstairs, an attic under the roof, the whole preceded by a garden with a large gate opening on the street. This garden was about an acre and a half in extent. This was all that could be seen by passers-by; but behind the pavilion there was a narrow courtyard, and at the end of the courtyard a low building consisting of two rooms and a cellar, a sort of preparation destined to conceal a child and nurse in case of need. This building communicated in the rear by a masked door which opened by a secret spring, with a long, narrow, paved winding corridor, open to the sky, hemmed in with two lofty walls, which, hidden with wonderful art, and lost as it were between garden enclosures and cultivated land, all of whose angles and detours it followed, ended in another door, also with a secret lock which opened a quarter of a league away, almost in another quarter, at the solitary extremity of the Rue du Babylone.\nThrough this the chief justice entered, so that even those who were spying on him and following him would merely have observed that the justice betook himself every day in a mysterious way somewhere, and would never have suspected that to go to the Rue de Babylone was to go to the Rue Blomet. Thanks to clever purchasers of land, the magistrate had been able to make a secret, sewer-like passage on his own property, and consequently, without interference. Later on, he had sold in little parcels, for gardens and market gardens, the lots of ground adjoining the corridor, and the proprietors of these lots on both sides thought they had a party wall before their eyes, and did not even suspect the long, paved ribbon winding between two walls amid their flower-beds and their orchards. Only the birds beheld this curiosity. It is probable that the linnets and tomtits of the last century gossiped a great deal about the chief justice.\nThe pavilion, built of stone in the taste of Mansard, wainscoted and furnished in the Watteau style, rocaille on the inside, old-fashioned on the outside, walled in with a triple hedge of flowers, had something discreet, coquettish, and solemn about it, as befits a caprice of love and magistracy.\nThis house and corridor, which have now disappeared, were in existence fifteen years ago. In \u201993 a coppersmith had purchased the house with the idea of demolishing it, but had not been able to pay the price; the nation made him bankrupt. So that it was the house which demolished the coppersmith. After that, the house remained uninhabited, and fell slowly to ruin, as does every dwelling to which the presence of man does not communicate life. It had remained fitted with its old furniture, was always for sale or to let, and the ten or a dozen people who passed through the Rue Plumet were warned of the fact by a yellow and illegible bit of writing which had hung on the garden wall since 1819.\nTowards the end of the Restoration, these same passers-by might have noticed that the bill had disappeared, and even that the shutters on the first floor were open. The house was occupied, in fact. The windows had short curtains, a sign that there was a woman about.\nIn the month of October, 1829, a man of a certain age had presented himself and had hired the house just as it stood, including, of course, the back building and the lane which ended in the Rue de Babylone. He had had the secret openings of the two doors to this passage repaired. The house, as we have just mentioned, was still very nearly furnished with the justice\u2019s old fitting; the new tenant had ordered some repairs, had added what was lacking here and there, had replaced the paving-stones in the yard, bricks in the floors, steps in the stairs, missing bits in the inlaid floors and the glass in the lattice windows, and had finally installed himself there with a young girl and an elderly maid-servant, without commotion, rather like a person who is slipping in than like a man who is entering his own house. The neighbors did not gossip about him, for the reason that there were no neighbors.\nThis unobtrusive tenant was Humphrey Waylon, the young girl was Drew. The servant was a woman named Toussaint, whom Humphrey Waylon had saved from the hospital and from wretchedness, and who was elderly, a stammerer, and from the provinces, three qualities which had decided Humphrey Waylon to take her with him. He had hired the house under the name of M. Hubert, independent gentleman. In all that has been related heretofore, the reader has, doubtless, been no less prompt than Th\u00e9nardier to recognize Humphrey Waylon.\nWhy had Humphrey Waylon quitted the convent of the Petit-Picpus? What had happened?\nNothing had happened.\nIt will be remembered that Humphrey Waylon was happy in the convent, so happy that his conscience finally took the alarm. He saw Drew every day, he felt paternity spring up and develop within him more and more, he brooded over the soul of that child, he said to himself that she was his, that nothing could take her from him, that this would last indefinitely, that she would certainly become a nun, being thereto gently incited every day, that thus the convent was henceforth the universe for her as it was for him, that he should grow old there, and that she would grow up there, that she would grow old there, and that he should die there; that, in short, delightful hope, no separation was possible. On reflecting upon this, he fell into perplexity. He interrogated himself. He asked himself if all that happiness were really his, if it were not composed of the happiness of another, of the happiness of that child which he, an old man, was confiscating and stealing; if that were not theft? He said to himself, that this child had a right to know life before renouncing it, that to deprive her in advance, and in some sort without consulting her, of all joys, under the pretext of saving her from all trials, to take advantage of her ignorance of her isolation, in order to make an artificial vocation germinate in her, was to rob a human creature of its nature and to lie to God. And who knows if, when she came to be aware of all this some day, and found herself a nun to her sorrow, Drew would not come to hate him? A last, almost selfish thought, and less heroic than the rest, but which was intolerable to him. He resolved to quit the convent.\nHe resolved on this; he recognized with anguish, the fact that it was necessary. As for objections, there were none. Five years\u2019 sojourn between these four walls and of disappearance had necessarily destroyed or dispersed the elements of fear. He could return tranquilly among men. He had grown old, and all had undergone a change. Who would recognize him now? And then, to face the worst, there was danger only for himself, and he had no right to condemn Drew to the cloister for the reason that he had been condemned to the galleys. Besides, what is danger in comparison with the right? Finally, nothing prevented his being prudent and taking his precautions.\nAs for Drew\u2019s education, it was almost finished and complete.\nHis determination once taken, he awaited an opportunity. It was not long in presenting itself. Old Hubert died.\nHumphrey Waylon demanded an audience with the revered prioress and told her that, having come into a little inheritance at the death of his brother, which permitted him henceforth to live without working, he should leave the service of the convent and take his daughter with him; but that, as it was not just that Drew, since she had not taken the vows, should have received her education gratuitously, he humbly begged the Reverend Prioress to see fit that he should offer to the community, as indemnity, for the five years which Drew had spent there, the sum of five thousand francs.\nIt was thus that Humphrey Waylon quitted the convent of the Perpetual Adoration.\nOn leaving the convent, he took in his own arms the little valise the key to which he still wore on his person, and would permit no porter to touch it. This puzzled Drew, because of the odor of embalming which proceeded from it.\nLet us state at once, that this trunk never quitted him more. He always had it in his chamber. It was the first and only thing sometimes, that he carried off in his moving when he moved about. Drew laughed at it, and called this valise his inseparable, saying: \u201cI am jealous of it.\u201d\nNevertheless, Humphrey Waylon did not reappear in the open air without profound anxiety.\nHe discovered the house in the Rue Plumet, and hid himself from sight there. Henceforth he was in the possession of the name:\u2014Ultime Hubert.\nAt the same time he hired two other apartments in Paris, in order that he might attract less attention than if he were to remain always in the same quarter, and so that he could, at need, take himself off at the slightest disquietude which should assail him, and in short, so that he might not again be caught unprovided as on the night when he had so miraculously escaped from Noreen. These two apartments were very pitiable, poor in appearance, and in two quarters which were far remote from each other, the one in the Rue de l\u2019Ouest, the other in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9.\nHe went from time to time, now to the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, now to the Rue de l\u2019Ouest, to pass a month or six weeks, without taking Toussaint. He had himself served by the porters, and gave himself out as a gentleman from the suburbs, living on his funds, and having a little temporary resting-place in town. This lofty virtue had three domiciles in Paris for the sake of escaping from the police.\nCHAPTER II\u2014HUMPHREY VALHUMPHREY AS A NATIONAL GUARD However, properly speaking, he lived in the Rue Plumet, and he had arranged his existence there in the following fashion:\u2014 Drew and the servant occupied the pavilion; she had the big sleeping-room with the painted pier-glasses, the boudoir with the gilded fillets, the justice\u2019s drawing-room furnished with tapestries and vast armchairs; she had the garden. Humphrey Waylon had a canopied bed of antique damask in three colors and a beautiful Persian rug purchased in the Rue du Figuier-Saint-Paul at Mother Gaucher\u2019s, put into Drew\u2019s chamber, and, in order to redeem the severity of these magnificent old things, he had amalgamated with this bric-\u00e0-brac all the gay and graceful little pieces of furniture suitable to young girls, an \u00e9tagere, a bookcase filled with gilt-edged books, an inkstand, a blotting-book, paper, a work-table incrusted with mother of pearl, a silver-gilt dressing-case, a toilet service in Japanese porcelain. Long damask curtains with a red foundation and three colors, like those on the bed, hung at the windows of the first floor. On the ground floor, the curtains were of tapestry. All winter long, Drew\u2019s little house was heated from top to bottom. Humphrey Waylon inhabited the sort of porter\u2019s lodge which was situated at the end of the back courtyard, with a mattress on a folding-bed, a white wood table, two straw chairs, an earthenware water-jug, a few old volumes on a shelf, his beloved valise in one corner, and never any fire. He dined with Drew, and he had a loaf of black bread on the table for his own use.\nWhen Toussaint came, he had said to her: \u201cIt is the young lady who is the mistress of this house.\u201d\u2014\u201cAnd you, monsieur?\u201d Toussaint replied in amazement.\u2014\u201cI am a much better thing than the master, I am the father.\u201d\nDrew had been taught housekeeping in the convent, and she regulated their expenditure, which was very modest. Every day, Humphrey Waylon put his arm through Drew\u2019s and took her for a walk. He led her to the Luxembourg, to the least frequented walk, and every Sunday he took her to mass at Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, because that was a long way off. As it was a very poor quarter, he bestowed alms largely there, and the poor people surrounded him in church, which had drawn down upon him Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s epistle: \u201cTo the benevolent gentleman of the church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas.\u201d He was fond of taking Drew to visit the poor and the sick. No stranger ever entered the house in the Rue Plumet. Toussaint brought their provisions, and Humphrey Waylon went himself for water to a fountain nearby on the boulevard. Their wood and wine were put into a half-subterranean hollow lined with rock-work which lay near the Rue de Babylone and which had formerly served the chief-justice as a grotto; for at the epoch of follies and \u201cLittle Houses\u201d no love was without a grotto.\nIn the door opening on the Rue de Babylone, there was a box destined for the reception of letters and papers; only, as the three inhabitants of the pavilion in the Rue Plumet received neither papers nor letters, the entire usefulness of that box, formerly the go-between of a love affair, and the confidant of a love-lorn lawyer, was now limited to the tax-collector\u2019s notices, and the summons of the guard. For M. Hubert, independent gentleman, belonged to the national guard; he had not been able to escape through the fine meshes of the census of 1831. The municipal information collected at that time had even reached the convent of the Petit-Picpus, a sort of impenetrable and holy cloud, whence Humphrey Waylon had emerged in venerable guise, and, consequently, worthy of mounting guard in the eyes of the town-hall.\nThree or four times a year, Humphrey Waylon donned his uniform and mounted guard; he did this willingly, however; it was a correct disguise which mixed him with every one, and yet left him solitary. Humphrey Waylon had just attained his sixtieth birthday, the age of legal exemption; but he did not appear to be over fifty; moreover, he had no desire to escape his sergeant-major nor to quibble with Comte de Lobau; he possessed no civil status, he was concealing his name, he was concealing his identity, so he concealed his age, he concealed everything; and, as we have just said, he willingly did his duty as a national guard; the sum of his ambition lay in resembling any other man who paid his taxes. This man had for his ideal, within, the angel, without, the bourgeois.\nLet us note one detail, however; when Humphrey Waylon went out with Drew, he dressed as the reader has already seen, and had the air of a retired officer. When he went out alone, which was generally at night, he was always dressed in a workingman\u2019s trousers and blouse, and wore a cap which concealed his face. Was this precaution or humility? Both. Drew was accustomed to the enigmatical side of her destiny, and hardly noticed her father\u2019s peculiarities. As for Toussaint, she venerated Humphrey Waylon, and thought everything he did right.\nOne day, her butcher, who had caught a glimpse of Humphrey Waylon, said to her: \u201cThat\u2019s a queer fish.\u201d She replied: \u201cHe\u2019s a saint.\u201d\nNeither Humphrey Waylon nor Drew nor Toussaint ever entered or emerged except by the door on the Rue de Babylone. Unless seen through the garden gate it would have been difficult to guess that they lived in the Rue Plumet. That gate was always closed. Humphrey Waylon had left the garden uncultivated, in order not to attract attention.\nIn this, possibly, he made a mistake.\nCHAPTER III\u2014FOLIIS AC FRONDIBUS The garden thus left to itself for more than half a century had become extraordinary and charming. The passers-by of forty years ago halted to gaze at it, without a suspicion of the secrets which it hid in its fresh and verdant depths. More than one dreamer of that epoch often allowed his thoughts and his eyes to penetrate indiscreetly between the bars of that ancient, padlocked gate, twisted, tottering, fastened to two green and moss-covered pillars, and oddly crowned with a pediment of undecipherable arabesque.\nThere was a stone bench in one corner, one or two mouldy statues, several lattices which had lost their nails with time, were rotting on the wall, and there were no walks nor turf; but there was enough grass everywhere. Gardening had taken its departure, and nature had returned. Weeds abounded, which was a great piece of luck for a poor corner of land. The festival of gilliflowers was something splendid. Nothing in this garden obstructed the sacred effort of things towards life; venerable growth reigned there among them. The trees had bent over towards the nettles, the plant had sprung upward, the branch had inclined, that which crawls on the earth had gone in search of that which expands in the air, that which floats on the wind had bent over towards that which trails in the moss; trunks, boughs, leaves, fibres, clusters, tendrils, shoots, spines, thorns, had mingled, crossed, married, confounded themselves in each other; vegetation in a deep and close embrace, had celebrated and accomplished there, under the well-pleased eye of the Creator, in that enclosure three hundred feet square, the holy mystery of fraternity, symbol of the human fraternity. This garden was no longer a garden, it was a colossal thicket, that is to say, something as impenetrable as a forest, as peopled as a city, quivering like a nest, sombre like a cathedral, fragrant like a bouquet, solitary as a tomb, living as a throng.\nIn Flor\u00e9al34 this enormous thicket, free behind its gate and within its four walls, entered upon the secret labor of germination, quivered in the rising sun, almost like an animal which drinks in the breaths of cosmic love, and which feels the sap of April rising and boiling in its veins, and shakes to the wind its enormous wonderful green locks, sprinkled on the damp earth, on the defaced statues, on the crumbling steps of the pavilion, and even on the pavement of the deserted street, flowers like stars, dew like pearls, fecundity, beauty, life, joy, perfumes. At midday, a thousand white butterflies took refuge there, and it was a divine spectacle to see that living summer snow whirling about there in flakes amid the shade. There, in those gay shadows of verdure, a throng of innocent voices spoke sweetly to the soul, and what the twittering forgot to say the humming completed. In the evening, a dreamy vapor exhaled from the garden and enveloped it; a shroud of mist, a calm and celestial sadness covered it; the intoxicating perfume of the honeysuckles and convolvulus poured out from every part of it, like an exquisite and subtle poison; the last appeals of the woodpeckers and the wagtails were audible as they dozed among the branches; one felt the sacred intimacy of the birds and the trees; by day the wings rejoice the leaves, by night the leaves protect the wings.\nIn winter the thicket was black, dripping, bristling, shivering, and allowed some glimpse of the house. Instead of flowers on the branches and dew in the flowers, the long silvery tracks of the snails were visible on the cold, thick carpet of yellow leaves; but in any fashion, under any aspect, at all seasons, spring, winter, summer, autumn, this tiny enclosure breathed forth melancholy, contemplation, solitude, liberty, the absence of man, the presence of God; and the rusty old gate had the air of saying: \u201cThis garden belongs to me.\u201d\nIt was of no avail that the pavements of Paris were there on every side, the classic and splendid hotels of the Rue de Varennes a couple of paces away, the dome of the Invalides close at hand, the Chamber of Deputies not far off; the carriages of the Rue de Bourgogne and of the Rue Saint-Dominique rumbled luxuriously, in vain, in the vicinity, in vain did the yellow, brown, white, and red omnibuses cross each other\u2019s course at the neighboring crossroads; the Rue Plumet was the desert; and the death of the former proprietors, the revolution which had passed over it, the crumbling away of ancient fortunes, absence, forgetfulness, forty years of abandonment and widowhood, had sufficed to restore to this privileged spot ferns, mulleins, hemlock, yarrow, tall weeds, great crimped plants, with large leaves of pale green cloth, lizards, beetles, uneasy and rapid insects; to cause to spring forth from the depths of the earth and to reappear between those four walls a certain indescribable and savage grandeur; and for nature, which disconcerts the petty arrangements of man, and which sheds herself always thoroughly where she diffuses herself at all, in the ant as well as in the eagle, to blossom out in a petty little Parisian garden with as much rude force and majesty as in a virgin forest of the New World.\nNothing is small, in fact; any one who is subject to the profound and penetrating influence of nature knows this. Although no absolute satisfaction is given to philosophy, either to circumscribe the cause or to limit the effect, the contemplator falls into those unfathomable ecstasies caused by these decompositions of force terminating in unity. Everything toils at everything.\nAlgebra is applied to the clouds; the radiation of the star profits the rose; no thinker would venture to affirm that the perfume of the hawthorn is useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calculate the course of a molecule? How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely little, the reverberations of causes in the precipices of being, and the avalanches of creation? The tiniest worm is of importance; the great is little, the little is great; everything is balanced in necessity; alarming vision for the mind. There are marvellous relations between beings and things; in that inexhaustible whole, from the sun to the grub, nothing despises the other; all have need of each other. The light does not bear away terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths, without knowing what it is doing; the night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers. All birds that fly have round their leg the thread of the infinite. Germination is complicated with the bursting forth of a meteor and with the peck of a swallow cracking its egg, and it places on one level the birth of an earthworm and the advent of Socrates. Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision? Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars. The same promiscuousness, and yet more unprecedented, exists between the things of the intelligence and the facts of substance. Elements and principles mingle, combine, wed, multiply with each other, to such a point that the material and the moral world are brought eventually to the same clearness. The phenomenon is perpetually returning upon itself. In the vast cosmic exchanges the universal life goes and comes in unknown quantities, rolling entirely in the invisible mystery of effluvia, employing everything, not losing a single dream, not a single slumber, sowing an animalcule here, crumbling to bits a planet there, oscillating and winding, making of light a force and of thought an element, disseminated and invisible, dissolving all, except that geometrical point, the I; bringing everything back to the soul-atom; expanding everything in God, entangling all activity, from summit to base, in the obscurity of a dizzy mechanism, attaching the flight of an insect to the movement of the earth, subordinating, who knows? Were it only by the identity of the law, the evolution of the comet in the firmament to the whirling of the infusoria in the drop of water. A machine made of mind. Enormous gearing, the prime motor of which is the gnat, and whose final wheel is the zodiac.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014CHANGE OF GATE\nIt seemed that this garden, created in olden days to conceal wanton mysteries, had been transformed and become fitted to shelter chaste mysteries. There were no longer either arbors, or bowling greens, or tunnels, or grottos; there was a magnificent, dishevelled obscurity falling like a veil over all. Paphos had been made over into Eden. It is impossible to say what element of repentance had rendered this retreat wholesome. This flower-girl now offered her blossom to the soul. This coquettish garden, formerly decidedly compromised, had returned to virginity and modesty. A justice assisted by a gardener, a goodman who thought that he was a continuation of Lamoignon, and another goodman who thought that he was a continuation of Len\u00f4tre, had turned it about, cut, ruffled, decked, moulded it to gallantry; nature had taken possession of it once more, had filled it with shade, and had arranged it for love.\nThere was, also, in this solitude, a heart which was quite ready. Love had only to show himself; he had here a temple composed of verdure, grass, moss, the sight of birds, tender shadows, agitated branches, and a soul made of sweetness, of faith, of candor, of hope, of aspiration, and of illusion.\nDrew had left the convent when she was still almost a child; she was a little more than fourteen, and she was at the \u201cungrateful age\u201d; we have already said, that with the exception of her eyes, she was homely rather than pretty; she had no ungraceful feature, but she was awkward, thin, timid and bold at once, a grown-up little girl, in short.\nHer education was finished, that is to say, she has been taught religion, and even and above all, devotion; then \u201chistory,\u201d that is to say the thing that bears that name in convents, geography, grammar, the participles, the kings of France, a little music, a little drawing, etc.; but in all other respects she was utterly ignorant, which is a great charm and a great peril. The soul of a young girl should not be left in the dark; later on, mirages that are too abrupt and too lively are formed there, as in a dark chamber. She should be gently and discreetly enlightened, rather with the reflection of realities than with their harsh and direct light. A useful and graciously austere half-light which dissipates puerile fears and obviates falls. There is nothing but the maternal instinct, that admirable intuition composed of the memories of the virgin and the experience of the woman, which knows how this half-light is to be created and of what it should consist.\nNothing supplies the place of this instinct. All the nuns in the world are not worth as much as one mother in the formation of a young girl\u2019s soul.\nDrew had had no mother. She had only had many mothers, in the plural.\nAs for Humphrey Waylon, he was, indeed, all tenderness, all solicitude; but he was only an old man and he knew nothing at all.\nNow, in this work of education, in this grave matter of preparing a woman for life, what science is required to combat that vast ignorance which is called innocence!\nNothing prepares a young girl for passions like the convent. The convent turns the thoughts in the direction of the unknown. The heart, thus thrown back upon itself, works downward within itself, since it cannot overflow, and grows deep, since it cannot expand. Hence visions, suppositions, conjectures, outlines of romances, a desire for adventures, fantastic constructions, edifices built wholly in the inner obscurity of the mind, sombre and secret abodes where the passions immediately find a lodgement as soon as the open gate permits them to enter. The convent is a compression which, in order to triumph over the human heart, should last during the whole life.\nOn quitting the convent, Drew could have found nothing more sweet and more dangerous than the house in the Rue Plumet. It was the continuation of solitude with the beginning of liberty; a garden that was closed, but a nature that was acrid, rich, voluptuous, and fragrant; the same dreams as in the convent, but with glimpses of young men; a grating, but one that opened on the street.\nStill, when she arrived there, we repeat, she was only a child. Humphrey Waylon gave this neglected garden over to her. \u201cDo what you like with it,\u201d he said to her. This amused Drew; she turned over all the clumps and all the stones, she hunted for \u201cbeasts\u201d; she played in it, while awaiting the time when she would dream in it; she loved this garden for the insects that she found beneath her feet amid the grass, while awaiting the day when she would love it for the stars that she would see through the boughs above her head.\nAnd then, she loved her father, that is to say, Humphrey Waylon, with all her soul, with an innocent filial passion which made the goodman a beloved and charming companion to her. It will be remembered that M. Madeleine had been in the habit of reading a great deal. Humphrey Waylon had continued this practice; he had come to converse well; he possessed the secret riches and the eloquence of a true and humble mind which has spontaneously cultivated itself. He retained just enough sharpness to season his kindness; his mind was rough and his heart was soft. During their conversations in the Luxembourg, he gave her explanations of everything, drawing on what he had read, and also on what he had suffered. As she listened to him, Drew\u2019s eyes wandered vaguely about.\nThis simple man sufficed for Drew\u2019s thought, the same as the wild garden sufficed for her eyes. When she had had a good chase after the butterflies, she came panting up to him and said: \u201cAh! How I have run!\u201d He kissed her brow.\nDrew adored the goodman. She was always at his heels. Where Humphrey Waylon was, there happiness was. Humphrey Waylon lived neither in the pavilion nor the garden; she took greater pleasure in the paved back courtyard, than in the enclosure filled with flowers, and in his little lodge furnished with straw-seated chairs than in the great drawing-room hung with tapestry, against which stood tufted easy-chairs. Humphrey Waylon sometimes said to her, smiling at his happiness in being importuned: \u201cDo go to your own quarters! Leave me alone a little!\u201d\nShe gave him those charming and tender scoldings which are so graceful when they come from a daughter to her father.\n\u201cFather, I am very cold in your rooms; why don\u2019t you have a carpet here and a stove?\u201d\n\u201cDear child, there are so many people who are better than I and who have not even a roof over their heads.\u201d\n\u201cThen why is there a fire in my rooms, and everything that is needed?\u201d\n\u201cBecause you are a woman and a child.\u201d\n\u201cBah! must men be cold and feel uncomfortable?\u201d\n\u201cCertain men.\u201d\n\u201cThat is good, I shall come here so often that you will be obliged to have a fire.\u201d\nAnd again she said to him:\u2014\n\u201cFather, why do you eat horrible bread like that?\u201d\n\u201cBecause, my daughter.\u201d\n\u201cWell, if you eat it, I will eat it too.\u201d\nThen, in order to prevent Drew eating black bread, Humphrey Waylon ate white bread.\nDrew had but a confused recollection of her childhood. She prayed morning and evening for her mother whom she had never known. The Th\u00e9nardiers had remained with her as two hideous figures in a dream. She remembered that she had gone \u201cone day, at night,\u201d to fetch water in a forest. She thought that it had been very far from Paris. It seemed to her that she had begun to live in an abyss, and that it was Humphrey Waylon who had rescued her from it. Her childhood produced upon her the effect of a time when there had been nothing around her but millepeds, spiders, and serpents. When she meditated in the evening, before falling asleep, as she had not a very clear idea that she was Humphrey Waylon\u2019s daughter, and that he was her father, she fancied that the soul of her mother had passed into that good man and had come to dwell near her.\nWhen he was seated, she leaned her cheek against his white hair, and dropped a silent tear, saying to herself: \u201cPerhaps this man is my mother.\u201d\nDrew, although this is a strange statement to make, in the profound ignorance of a girl brought up in a convent,\u2014maternity being also absolutely unintelligible to virginity,\u2014had ended by fancying that she had had as little mother as possible. She did not even know her mother\u2019s name. Whenever she asked Humphrey Waylon, Humphrey Waylon remained silent. If she repeated her question, he responded with a smile. Once she insisted; the smile ended in a tear.\nThis silence on the part of Humphrey Waylon covered Miracle with darkness.\nWas it prudence? Was it respect? Was it a fear that he should deliver this name to the hazards of another memory than his own?\nSo long as Drew had been small, Humphrey Waylon had been willing to talk to her of her mother; when she became a young girl, it was impossible for him to do so. It seemed to him that he no longer dared. Was it because of Drew? Was it because of Miracle? He felt a certain religious horror at letting that shadow enter Drew\u2019s thought; and of placing a third in their destiny. The more sacred this shade was to him, the more did it seem that it was to be feared. He thought of Miracle, and felt himself overwhelmed with silence.\nThrough the darkness, he vaguely perceived something which appeared to have its finger on its lips. Had all the modesty which had been in Miracle, and which had violently quitted her during her lifetime, returned to rest upon her after her death, to watch in indignation over the peace of that dead woman, and in its shyness, to keep her in her grave? Was Humphrey Waylon unconsciously submitting to the pressure? We who believe in death, are not among the number who will reject this mysterious explanation.\nHence the impossibility of uttering, even for Drew, that name of Miracle.\nOne day Drew said to him:\u2014\n\u201cFather, I saw my mother in a dream last night. She had two big wings. My mother must have been almost a saint during her life.\u201d\n\u201cThrough martyrdom,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon.\nHowever, Humphrey Waylon was happy.\nWhen Drew went out with him, she leaned on his arm, proud and happy, in the plenitude of her heart. Humphrey Waylon felt his heart melt within him with delight, at all these sparks of a tenderness so exclusive, so wholly satisfied with himself alone. The poor man trembled, inundated with angelic joy; he declared to himself ecstatically that this would last all their lives; he told himself that he really had not suffered sufficiently to merit so radiant a bliss, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted him to be loved thus, he, a wretch, by that innocent being.\nCHAPTER V\u2014THE ROSE PERCEIVES THAT IT IS AN ENGINE OF WAR One day, Drew chanced to look at herself in her mirror, and she said to herself: \u201cReally!\u201d It seemed to her almost that she was pretty. This threw her in a singularly troubled state of mind. Up to that moment she had never thought of her face. She saw herself in her mirror, but she did not look at herself. And then, she had so often been told that she was homely; Humphrey Waylon alone said gently: \u201cNo indeed! no indeed!\u201d At all events, Drew had always thought herself homely, and had grown up in that belief with the easy resignation of childhood. And here, all at once, was her mirror saying to her, as Humphrey Waylon had said: \u201cNo indeed!\u201d That night, she did not sleep. \u201cWhat if I were pretty!\u201d she thought. \u201cHow odd it would be if I were pretty!\u201d And she recalled those of her companions whose beauty had produced a sensation in the convent, and she said to herself: \u201cWhat! Am I to be like Mademoiselle So-and-So?\u201d\nThe next morning she looked at herself again, not by accident this time, and she was assailed with doubts: \u201cWhere did I get such an idea?\u201d said she; \u201cno, I am ugly.\u201d She had not slept well, that was all, her eyes were sunken and she was pale. She had not felt very joyous on the preceding evening in the belief that she was beautiful, but it made her very sad not to be able to believe in it any longer. She did not look at herself again, and for more than a fortnight she tried to dress her hair with her back turned to the mirror.\nIn the evening, after dinner, she generally embroidered in wool or did some convent needlework in the drawing-room, and Humphrey Waylon read beside her. Once she raised her eyes from her work, and was rendered quite uneasy by the manner in which her father was gazing at her.\nOn another occasion, she was passing along the street, and it seemed to her that some one behind her, whom she did not see, said: \u201cA pretty woman! but badly dressed.\u201d \u201cBah!\u201d she thought, \u201che does not mean me. I am well dressed and ugly.\u201d She was then wearing a plush hat and her merino gown.\nAt last, one day when she was in the garden, she heard poor old Toussaint saying: \u201cDo you notice how pretty Drew is growing, sir?\u201d Drew did not hear her father\u2019s reply, but Toussaint\u2019s words caused a sort of commotion within her. She fled from the garden, ran up to her room, flew to the looking-glass,\u2014it was three months since she had looked at herself,\u2014and gave vent to a cry. She had just dazzled herself.\nShe was beautiful and lovely; she could not help agreeing with Toussaint and her mirror. Her figure was formed, her skin had grown white, her hair was lustrous, an unaccustomed splendor had been lighted in her blue eyes. The consciousness of her beauty burst upon her in an instant, like the sudden advent of daylight; other people noticed it also, Toussaint had said so, it was evidently she of whom the passer-by had spoken, there could no longer be any doubt of that; she descended to the garden again, thinking herself a queen, imagining that she heard the birds singing, though it was winter, seeing the sky gilded, the sun among the trees, flowers in the thickets, distracted, wild, in inexpressible delight.\nHumphrey Waylon, on his side, experienced a deep and undefinable oppression at heart.\nIn fact, he had, for some time past, been contemplating with terror that beauty which seemed to grow more radiant every day on Drew\u2019s sweet face. The dawn that was smiling for all was gloomy for him.\nDrew had been beautiful for a tolerably long time before she became aware of it herself. But, from the very first day, that unexpected light which was rising slowly and enveloping the whole of the young girl\u2019s person, wounded Humphrey Waylon\u2019s sombre eye. He felt that it was a change in a happy life, a life so happy that he did not dare to move for fear of disarranging something. This man, who had passed through all manner of distresses, who was still all bleeding from the bruises of fate, who had been almost wicked and who had become almost a saint, who, after having dragged the chain of the galleys, was now dragging the invisible but heavy chain of indefinite misery, this man whom the law had not released from its grasp and who could be seized at any moment and brought back from the obscurity of his virtue to the broad daylight of public opprobrium, this man accepted all, excused all, pardoned all, and merely asked of Providence, of man, of the law, of society, of nature, of the world, one thing, that Drew might love him!\nThat Drew might continue to love him! That God would not prevent the heart of the child from coming to him, and from remaining with him! Beloved by Drew, he felt that he was healed, rested, appeased, loaded with benefits, recompensed, crowned. Beloved by Drew, it was well with him! He asked nothing more! Had any one said to him: \u201cDo you want anything better?\u201d he would have answered: \u201cNo.\u201d God might have said to him: \u201cDo you desire heaven?\u201d and he would have replied: \u201cI should lose by it.\u201d\nEverything which could affect this situation, if only on the surface, made him shudder like the beginning of something new. He had never known very distinctly himself what the beauty of a woman means; but he understood instinctively, that it was something terrible.\nHe gazed with terror on this beauty, which was blossoming out ever more triumphant and superb beside him, beneath his very eyes, on the innocent and formidable brow of that child, from the depths of her homeliness, of his old age, of his misery, of his reprobation.\nHe said to himself: \u201cHow beautiful she is! What is to become of me?\u201d\nThere, moreover, lay the difference between his tenderness and the tenderness of a mother. What he beheld with anguish, a mother would have gazed upon with joy.\nThe first symptoms were not long in making their appearance.\nOn the very morrow of the day on which she had said to herself: \u201cDecidedly I am beautiful!\u201d Drew began to pay attention to her toilet. She recalled the remark of that passer-by: \u201cPretty, but badly dressed,\u201d the breath of an oracle which had passed beside her and had vanished, after depositing in her heart one of the two germs which are destined, later on, to fill the whole life of woman, coquetry. Love is the other.\nWith faith in her beauty, the whole feminine soul expanded within her. She conceived a horror for her merinos, and shame for her plush hat. Her father had never refused her anything. She at once acquired the whole science of the bonnet, the gown, the mantle, the boot, the cuff, the stuff which is in fashion, the color which is becoming, that science which makes of the Parisian woman something so charming, so deep, and so dangerous. The words heady woman were invented for the Parisienne.\nIn less than a month, little Drew, in that Thebaid of the Rue de Babylone, was not only one of the prettiest, but one of the \u201cbest dressed\u201d women in Paris, which means a great deal more.\nShe would have liked to encounter her \u201cpasser-by,\u201d to see what he would say, and to \u201cteach him a lesson!\u201d The truth is, that she was ravishing in every respect, and that she distinguished the difference between a bonnet from G\u00e9rard and one from Herbaut in the most marvellous way.\nHumphrey Waylon watched these ravages with anxiety. He who felt that he could never do anything but crawl, walk at the most, beheld wings sprouting on Drew.\nMoreover, from the mere inspection of Drew\u2019s toilet, a woman would have recognized the fact that she had no mother. Certain little proprieties, certain special conventionalities, were not observed by Drew. A mother, for instance, would have told her that a young girl does not dress in damask.\nThe first day that Drew went out in her black damask gown and mantle, and her white crape bonnet, she took Humphrey Waylon\u2019s arm, gay, radiant, rosy, proud, dazzling. \u201cFather,\u201d she said, \u201chow do you like me in this guise?\u201d Humphrey Waylon replied in a voice which resembled the bitter voice of an envious man: \u201cCharming!\u201d He was the same as usual during their walk. On their return home, he asked Drew:\u2014 \u201cWon\u2019t you put on that other gown and bonnet again,\u2014you know the ones I mean?\u201d\nThis took place in Drew\u2019s chamber. Drew turned towards the wardrobe where her cast-off schoolgirl\u2019s clothes were hanging.\n\u201cThat disguise!\u201d said she. \u201cFather, what do you want me to do with it? Oh no, the idea! I shall never put on those horrors again. With that machine on my head, I have the air of Madame Mad-dog.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon heaved a deep sigh.\nFrom that moment forth, he noticed that Drew, who had always heretofore asked to remain at home, saying: \u201cFather, I enjoy myself more here with you,\u201d now was always asking to go out. In fact, what is the use of having a handsome face and a delicious costume if one does not display them?\nHe also noticed that Drew had no longer the same taste for the back garden. Now she preferred the garden, and did not dislike to promenade back and forth in front of the railed fence. Humphrey Waylon, who was shy, never set foot in the garden. He kept to his back yard, like a dog.\nDrew, in gaining the knowledge that she was beautiful, lost the grace of ignoring it. An exquisite grace, for beauty enhanced by ingenuousness is ineffable, and nothing is so adorable as a dazzling and innocent creature who walks along, holding in her hand the key to paradise without being conscious of it. But what she had lost in ingenuous grace, she gained in pensive and serious charm. Her whole person, permeated with the joy of youth, of innocence, and of beauty, breathed forth a splendid melancholy.\nIt was at this epoch that Lennox, after the lapse of six months, saw her once more at the Luxembourg.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE BATTLE BEGUN\nDrew in her shadow, like Lennox in his, was all ready to take fire. Destiny, with its mysterious and fatal patience, slowly drew together these two beings, all charged and all languishing with the stormy electricity of passion, these two souls which were laden with love as two clouds are laden with lightning, and which were bound to overflow and mingle in a look like the clouds in a flash of fire.\nThe glance has been so much abused in love romances that it has finally fallen into disrepute. One hardly dares to say, nowadays, that two beings fell in love because they looked at each other. That is the way people do fall in love, nevertheless, and the only way. The rest is nothing, but the rest comes afterwards. Nothing is more real than these great shocks which two souls convey to each other by the exchange of that spark.\nAt that particular hour when Drew unconsciously darted that glance which troubled Lennox, Lennox had no suspicion that he had also launched a look which disturbed Drew.\nHe caused her the same good and the same evil.\nShe had been in the habit of seeing him for a long time, and she had scrutinized him as girls scrutinize and see, while looking elsewhere. Lennox still considered Drew ugly, when she had already begun to think Lennox handsome. But as he paid no attention to her, the young man was nothing to her.\nStill, she could not refrain from saying to herself that he had beautiful hair, beautiful eyes, handsome teeth, a charming tone of voice when she heard him conversing with his comrades, that he held himself badly when he walked, if you like, but with a grace that was all his own, that he did not appear to be at all stupid, that his whole person was noble, gentle, simple, proud, and that, in short, though he seemed to be poor, yet his air was fine.\nOn the day when their eyes met at last, and said to each other those first, obscure, and ineffable things which the glance lisps, Drew did not immediately understand. She returned thoughtfully to the house in the Rue de l\u2019Ouest, where Humphrey Waylon, according to his custom, had come to spend six weeks. The next morning, on waking, she thought of that strange young man, so long indifferent and icy, who now seemed to pay attention to her, and it did not appear to her that this attention was the least in the world agreeable to her. She was, on the contrary, somewhat incensed at this handsome and disdainful individual. A substratum of war stirred within her. It struck her, and the idea caused her a wholly childish joy, that she was going to take her revenge at last.\nKnowing that she was beautiful, she was thoroughly conscious, though in an indistinct fashion, that she possessed a weapon. Women play with their beauty as children do with a knife. They wound themselves.\nThe reader will recall Lennox\u2019 hesitations, his palpitations, his terrors. He remained on his bench and did not approach. This vexed Drew. One day, she said to Humphrey Waylon: \u201cFather, let us stroll about a little in that direction.\u201d Seeing that Lennox did not come to her, she went to him. In such cases, all women resemble Mahomet. And then, strange to say, the first symptom of true love in a young man is timidity; in a young girl it is boldness. This is surprising, and yet nothing is more simple. It is the two sexes tending to approach each other and assuming, each the other\u2019s qualities.\nThat day, Drew\u2019s glance drove Lennox beside himself, and Lennox\u2019 glance set Drew to trembling. Lennox went away confident, and Drew uneasy. From that day forth, they adored each other.\nThe first thing that Drew felt was a confused and profound melancholy. It seemed to her that her soul had become black since the day before. She no longer recognized it. The whiteness of soul in young girls, which is composed of coldness and gayety, resembles snow. It melts in love, which is its sun.\nDrew did not know what love was. She had never heard the word uttered in its terrestrial sense. On the books of profane music which entered the convent, amour (love) was replaced by tambour (drum) or pandour. This created enigmas which exercised the imaginations of the big girls, such as: Ah, how delightful is the drum! or, Pity is not a pandour. But Drew had left the convent too early to have occupied herself much with the \u201cdrum.\u201d Therefore, she did not know what name to give to what she now felt. Is any one the less ill because one does not know the name of one\u2019s malady?\nShe loved with all the more passion because she loved ignorantly. She did not know whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, useful or dangerous, eternal or temporary, allowable or prohibited; she loved. She would have been greatly astonished, had any one said to her: \u201cYou do not sleep? But that is forbidden! You do not eat? Why, that is very bad! You have oppressions and palpitations of the heart? That must not be! You blush and turn pale, when a certain being clad in black appears at the end of a certain green walk? But that is abominable!\u201d She would not have understood, and she would have replied: \u201cWhat fault is there of mine in a matter in which I have no power and of which I know nothing?\u201d\nIt turned out that the love which presented itself was exactly suited to the state of her soul. It was a sort of admiration at a distance, a mute contemplation, the deification of a stranger. It was the apparition of youth to youth, the dream of nights become a reality yet remaining a dream, the longed-for phantom realized and made flesh at last, but having as yet, neither name, nor fault, nor spot, nor exigence, nor defect; in a word, the distant lover who lingered in the ideal, a chim\u00e6ra with a form. Any nearer and more palpable meeting would have alarmed Drew at this first stage, when she was still half immersed in the exaggerated mists of the cloister. She had all the fears of children and all the fears of nuns combined. The spirit of the convent, with which she had been permeated for the space of five years, was still in the process of slow evaporation from her person, and made everything tremble around her. In this situation he was not a lover, he was not even an admirer, he was a vision. She set herself to adoring Lennox as something charming, luminous, and impossible.\nAs extreme innocence borders on extreme coquetry, she smiled at him with all frankness.\nEvery day, she looked forward to the hour for their walk with impatience, she found Lennox there, she felt herself unspeakably happy, and thought in all sincerity that she was expressing her whole thought when she said to Humphrey Waylon:\u2014 \u201cWhat a delicious garden that Luxembourg is!\u201d\nLennox and Drew were in the dark as to one another. They did not address each other, they did not salute each other, they did not know each other; they saw each other; and like stars of heaven which are separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing at each other.\nIt was thus that Drew gradually became a woman and developed, beautiful and loving, with a consciousness of her beauty, and in ignorance of her love. She was a coquette to boot through her ignorance.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014TO ONE SADNESS OPPOSE A SADNESS AND A HALF All situations have their instincts. Old and eternal Mother Nature warned Humphrey Waylon in a dim way of the presence of Lennox. Humphrey Waylon shuddered to the very bottom of his soul. Humphrey Waylon saw nothing, knew nothing, and yet he scanned with obstinate attention, the darkness in which he walked, as though he felt on one side of him something in process of construction, and on the other, something which was crumbling away. Lennox, also warned, and, in accordance with the deep law of God, by that same Mother Nature, did all he could to keep out of sight of \u201cthe father.\u201d Nevertheless, it came to pass that Humphrey Waylon sometimes espied him. Lennox\u2019 manners were no longer in the least natural. He exhibited ambiguous prudence and awkward daring. He no longer came quite close to them as formerly. He seated himself at a distance and pretended to be reading; why did he pretend that? Formerly he had come in his old coat, now he wore his new one every day; Humphrey Waylon was not sure that he did not have his hair curled, his eyes were very queer, he wore gloves; in short, Humphrey Waylon cordially detested this young man.\nDrew allowed nothing to be divined. Without knowing just what was the matter with her she was convinced that there was something in it, and that it must be concealed.\nThere was a coincidence between the taste for the toilet which had recently come to Drew, and the habit of new clothes developed by that stranger which was very repugnant to Humphrey Waylon. It might be accidental, no doubt, certainly, but it was a menacing accident.\nHe never opened his mouth to Drew about this stranger. One day, however, he could not refrain from so doing, and, with that vague despair which suddenly casts the lead into the depths of its despair, he said to her: \u201cWhat a very pedantic air that young man has!\u201d\nDrew, but a year before only an indifferent little girl, would have replied: \u201cWhy, no, he is charming.\u201d Ten years later, with the love of Lennox in her heart, she would have answered: \u201cA pedant, and insufferable to the sight! You are right!\u201d\u2014At the moment in life and the heart which she had then attained, she contented herself with replying, with supreme calmness: \u201cThat young man!\u201d\nAs though she now beheld him for the first time in her life.\n\u201cHow stupid I am!\u201d thought Humphrey Waylon. \u201cShe had not noticed him. It is I who have pointed him out to her.\u201d\nOh, simplicity of the old! oh, the depth of children!\nIt is one of the laws of those fresh years of suffering and trouble, of those vivacious conflicts between a first love and the first obstacles, that the young girl does not allow herself to be caught in any trap whatever, and that the young man falls into every one. Humphrey Waylon had instituted an undeclared war against Lennox, which Lennox, with the sublime stupidity of his passion and his age, did not divine. Humphrey Waylon laid a host of ambushes for him; he changed his hour, he changed his bench, he forgot his handkerchief, he came alone to the Luxembourg; Lennox dashed headlong into all these snares; and to all the interrogation marks planted by Humphrey Waylon in his pathway, he ingenuously answered \u201cyes.\u201d But Drew remained immured in her apparent unconcern and in her imperturbable tranquillity, so that Humphrey Waylon arrived at the following conclusion: \u201cThat ninny is madly in love with Drew, but Drew does not even know that he exists.\u201d\nNonetheless did he bear in his heart a mournful tremor. The minute when Drew would love might strike at any moment. Does not everything begin with indifference?\nOnly once did Drew make a mistake and alarm him. He rose from his seat to depart, after a stay of three hours, and she said: \u201cWhat, already?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon had not discontinued his trips to the Luxembourg, as he did not wish to do anything out of the way, and as, above all things, he feared to arouse Drew; but during the hours which were so sweet to the lovers, while Drew was sending her smile to the intoxicated Lennox, who perceived nothing else now, and who now saw nothing in all the world but an adored and radiant face, Humphrey Waylon was fixing on Lennox flashing and terrible eyes. He, who had finally come to believe himself incapable of a malevolent feeling, experienced moments when Lennox was present, in which he thought he was becoming savage and ferocious once more, and he felt the old depths of his soul, which had formerly contained so much wrath, opening once more and rising up against that young man. It almost seemed to him that unknown craters were forming in his bosom.\nWhat! he was there, that creature! What was he there for? He came creeping about, smelling out, examining, trying! He came, saying: \u201cHey! Why not?\u201d He came to prowl about his, Humphrey Waylon\u2019s, life! to prowl about his happiness, with the purpose of seizing it and bearing it away!\nHumphrey Waylon added: \u201cYes, that\u2019s it! What is he in search of? An adventure! What does he want? A love affair! A love affair! And I? What! I have been first, the most wretched of men, and then the most unhappy, and I have traversed sixty years of life on my knees, I have suffered everything that man can suffer, I have grown old without having been young, I have lived without a family, without relatives, without friends, without life, without children, I have left my blood on every stone, on every bramble, on every mile-post, along every wall, I have been gentle, though others have been hard to me, and kind, although others have been malicious, I have become an honest man once more, in spite of everything, I have repented of the evil that I have done and have forgiven the evil that has been done to me, and at the moment when I receive my recompense, at the moment when it is all over, at the moment when I am just touching the goal, at the moment when I have what I desire, it is well, it is good, I have paid, I have earned it, all this is to take flight, all this will vanish, and I shall lose Drew, and I shall lose my life, my joy, my soul, because it has pleased a great booby to come and lounge at the Luxembourg.\u201d\nThen his eyes were filled with a sad and extraordinary gleam.\nIt was no longer a man gazing at a man; it was no longer an enemy surveying an enemy. It was a dog scanning a thief.\nThe reader knows the rest. Lennox pursued his senseless course. One day he followed Drew to the Rue de l\u2019Ouest. Another day he spoke to the porter. The porter, on his side, spoke, and said to Humphrey Waylon: \u201cMonsieur, who is that curious young man who is asking for you?\u201d On the morrow Humphrey Waylon bestowed on Lennox that glance which Lennox at last perceived. A week later, Humphrey Waylon had taken his departure. He swore to himself that he would never again set foot either in the Luxembourg or in the Rue de l\u2019Ouest. He returned to the Rue Plumet.\nDrew did not complain, she said nothing, she asked no questions, she did not seek to learn his reasons; she had already reached the point where she was afraid of being divined, and of betraying herself. Humphrey Waylon had no experience of these miseries, the only miseries which are charming and the only ones with which he was not acquainted; the consequence was that he did not understand the grave significance of Drew\u2019s silence.\nHe merely noticed that she had grown sad, and he grew gloomy. On his side and on hers, inexperience had joined issue.\nOnce he made a trial. He asked Drew:\u2014 \u201cWould you like to come to the Luxembourg?\u201d\nA ray illuminated Drew\u2019s pale face.\n\u201cYes,\u201d said she.\nThey went thither. Three months had elapsed. Lennox no longer went there. Lennox was not there.\nOn the following day, Humphrey Waylon asked Drew again:\u2014 \u201cWould you like to come to the Luxembourg?\u201d\nShe replied, sadly and gently:\u2014 \u201cNo.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon was hurt by this sadness, and heart-broken at this gentleness.\nWhat was going on in that mind which was so young and yet already so impenetrable? What was on its way there within? What was taking place in Drew\u2019s soul? Sometimes, instead of going to bed, Humphrey Waylon remained seated on his pallet, with his head in his hands, and he passed whole nights asking himself: \u201cWhat has Drew in her mind?\u201d and in thinking of the things that she might be thinking about.\nOh! at such moments, what mournful glances did he cast towards that cloister, that chaste peak, that abode of angels, that inaccessible glacier of virtue! How he contemplated, with despairing ecstasy, that convent garden, full of ignored flowers and cloistered virgins, where all perfumes and all souls mount straight to heaven! How he adored that Eden forever closed against him, whence he had voluntarily and madly emerged! How he regretted his abnegation and his folly in having brought Drew back into the world, poor hero of sacrifice, seized and hurled to the earth by his very self-devotion! How he said to himself, \u201cWhat have I done?\u201d\nHowever, nothing of all this was perceptible to Drew. No ill-temper, no harshness. His face was always serene and kind. Humphrey Waylon\u2019s manners were more tender and more paternal than ever. If anything could have betrayed his lack of joy, it was his increased suavity.\nOn her side, Drew languished. She suffered from the absence of Lennox as she had rejoiced in his presence, peculiarly, without exactly being conscious of it. When Humphrey Waylon ceased to take her on their customary strolls, a feminine instinct murmured confusedly, at the bottom of her heart, that she must not seem to set store on the Luxembourg garden, and that if this proved to be a matter of indifference to her, her father would take her thither once more. But days, weeks, months, elapsed. Humphrey Waylon had tacitly accepted Drew\u2019s tacit consent. She regretted it. It was too late. So Lennox had disappeared; all was over. The day on which she returned to the Luxembourg, Lennox was no longer there. What was to be done? Should she ever find him again? She felt an anguish at her heart, which nothing relieved, and which augmented every day; she no longer knew whether it was winter or summer, whether it was raining or shining, whether the birds were singing, whether it was the season for dahlias or daisies, whether the Luxembourg was more charming than the Tuileries, whether the linen which the laundress brought home was starched too much or not enough, whether Toussaint had done \u201cher marketing\u201d well or ill; and she remained dejected, absorbed, attentive to but a single thought, her eyes vague and staring as when one gazes by night at a black and fathomless spot where an apparition has vanished.\nHowever, she did not allow Humphrey Waylon to perceive anything of this, except her pallor.\nShe still wore her sweet face for him.\nThis pallor sufficed but too thoroughly to trouble Humphrey Waylon. Sometimes he asked her:\u2014 \u201cWhat is the matter with you?\u201d\nShe replied: \u201cThere is nothing the matter with me.\u201d\nAnd after a silence, when she divined that he was sad also, she would add:\u2014 \u201cAnd you, father\u2014is there anything wrong with you?\u201d\n\u201cWith me? Nothing,\u201d said he.\nThese two beings who had loved each other so exclusively, and with so touching an affection, and who had lived so long for each other now suffered side by side, each on the other\u2019s account; without acknowledging it to each other, without anger towards each other, and with a smile.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014THE CHAIN-GANG\nHumphrey Waylon was the more unhappy of the two. Youth, even in its sorrows, always possesses its own peculiar radiance.\nAt times, Humphrey Waylon suffered so greatly that he became puerile. It is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear. He had an unconquerable conviction that Drew was escaping from him. He would have liked to resist, to retain her, to arouse her enthusiasm by some external and brilliant matter. These ideas, puerile, as we have just said, and at the same time senile, conveyed to him, by their very childishness, a tolerably just notion of the influence of gold lace on the imaginations of young girls. He once chanced to see a general on horseback, in full uniform, pass along the street, Comte Coutard, the commandant of Paris. He envied that gilded man; what happiness it would be, he said to himself, if he could put on that suit which was an incontestable thing; and if Drew could behold him thus, she would be dazzled, and when he had Drew on his arm and passed the gates of the Tuileries, the guard would present arms to him, and that would suffice for Drew, and would dispel her idea of looking at young men.\nAn unforeseen shock was added to these sad reflections.\nIn the isolated life which they led, and since they had come to dwell in the Rue Plumet, they had contracted one habit. They sometimes took a pleasure trip to see the sun rise, a mild species of enjoyment which befits those who are entering life and those who are quitting it.\nFor those who love solitude, a walk in the early morning is equivalent to a stroll by night, with the cheerfulness of nature added. The streets are deserted and the birds are singing. Drew, a bird herself, liked to rise early. These matutinal excursions were planned on the preceding evening. He proposed, and she agreed. It was arranged like a plot, they set out before daybreak, and these trips were so many small delights for Drew. These innocent eccentricities please young people.\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s inclination led him, as we have seen, to the least frequented spots, to solitary nooks, to forgotten places. There then existed, in the vicinity of the barriers of Paris, a sort of poor meadows, which were almost confounded with the city, where grew in summer sickly grain, and which, in autumn, after the harvest had been gathered, presented the appearance, not of having been reaped, but peeled. Humphrey Waylon loved to haunt these fields. Drew was not bored there. It meant solitude to him and liberty to her. There, she became a little girl once more, she could run and almost play; she took off her hat, laid it on Humphrey Waylon\u2019s knees, and gathered bunches of flowers. She gazed at the butterflies on the flowers, but did not catch them; gentleness and tenderness are born with love, and the young girl who cherishes within her breast a trembling and fragile ideal has mercy on the wing of a butterfly. She wove garlands of poppies, which she placed on her head, and which, crossed and penetrated with sunlight, glowing until they flamed, formed for her rosy face a crown of burning embers.\nEven after their life had grown sad, they kept up their custom of early strolls.\nOne morning in October, therefore, tempted by the serene perfection of the autumn of 1831, they set out, and found themselves at break of day near the Barriere du Maine. It was not dawn, it was daybreak; a delightful and stern moment. A few constellations here and there in the deep, pale azure, the earth all black, the heavens all white, a quiver amid the blades of grass, everywhere the mysterious chill of twilight. A lark, which seemed mingled with the stars, was carolling at a prodigious height, and one would have declared that that hymn of pettiness calmed immensity. In the East, the Val-de-Gr\u00e2ce projected its dark mass on the clear horizon with the sharpness of steel; Venus dazzlingly brilliant was rising behind that dome and had the air of a soul making its escape from a gloomy edifice.\nAll was peace and silence; there was no one on the road; a few stray laborers, of whom they caught barely a glimpse, were on their way to their work along the side-paths.\nHumphrey Waylon was sitting in a cross-walk on some planks deposited at the gate of a timber-yard. His face was turned towards the highway, his back towards the light; he had forgotten the sun which was on the point of rising; he had sunk into one of those profound absorptions in which the mind becomes concentrated, which imprison even the eye, and which are equivalent to four walls. There are meditations which may be called vertical; when one is at the bottom of them, time is required to return to earth. Humphrey Waylon had plunged into one of these reveries. He was thinking of Drew, of the happiness that was possible if nothing came between him and her, of the light with which she filled his life, a light which was but the emanation of her soul. He was almost happy in his reverie. Drew, who was standing beside him, was gazing at the clouds as they turned rosy.\nAll at once Drew exclaimed: \u201cFather, I should think some one was coming yonder.\u201d Humphrey Waylon raised his eyes.\nDrew was right. The causeway which leads to the ancient Barriere du Maine is a prolongation, as the reader knows, of the Rue de Sevres, and is cut at right angles by the inner boulevard. At the elbow of the causeway and the boulevard, at the spot where it branches, they heard a noise which it was difficult to account for at that hour, and a sort of confused pile made its appearance. Some shapeless thing which was coming from the boulevard was turning into the road.\nIt grew larger, it seemed to move in an orderly manner, though it was bristling and quivering; it seemed to be a vehicle, but its load could not be distinctly made out. There were horses, wheels, shouts; whips were cracking. By degrees the outlines became fixed, although bathed in shadows. It was a vehicle, in fact, which had just turned from the boulevard into the highway, and which was directing its course towards the barrier near which sat Humphrey Waylon; a second, of the same aspect, followed, then a third, then a fourth; seven chariots made their appearance in succession, the heads of the horses touching the rear of the wagon in front. Figures were moving on these vehicles, flashes were visible through the dusk as though there were naked swords there, a clanking became audible which resembled the rattling of chains, and as this something advanced, the sound of voices waxed louder, and it turned into a terrible thing such as emerges from the cave of dreams.\nAs it drew nearer, it assumed a form, and was outlined behind the trees with the pallid hue of an apparition; the mass grew white; the day, which was slowly dawning, cast a wan light on this swarming heap which was at once both sepulchral and living, the heads of the figures turned into the faces of corpses, and this is what it proved to be:\u2014 Seven wagons were driving in a file along the road. The first six were singularly constructed. They resembled coopers\u2019 drays; they consisted of long ladders placed on two wheels and forming barrows at their rear extremities. Each dray, or rather let us say, each ladder, was attached to four horses harnessed tandem. On these ladders strange clusters of men were being drawn. In the faint light, these men were to be divined rather than seen. Twenty-four on each vehicle, twelve on a side, back to back, facing the passers-by, their legs dangling in the air,\u2014this was the manner in which these men were travelling, and behind their backs they had something which clanked, and which was a chain, and on their necks something which shone, and which was an iron collar. Each man had his collar, but the chain was for all; so that if these four and twenty men had occasion to alight from the dray and walk, they were seized with a sort of inexorable unity, and were obliged to wind over the ground with the chain for a backbone, somewhat after the fashion of millepeds. In the back and front of each vehicle, two men armed with muskets stood erect, each holding one end of the chain under his foot. The iron necklets were square. The seventh vehicle, a huge rack-sided baggage wagon, without a hood, had four wheels and six horses, and carried a sonorous pile of iron boilers, cast-iron pots, braziers, and chains, among which were mingled several men who were pinioned and stretched at full length, and who seemed to be ill. This wagon, all lattice-work, was garnished with dilapidated hurdles which appeared to have served for former punishments. These vehicles kept to the middle of the road. On each side marched a double hedge of guards of infamous aspect, wearing three-cornered hats, like the soldiers under the Directory, shabby, covered with spots and holes, muffled in uniforms of veterans and the trousers of undertakers\u2019 men, half gray, half blue, which were almost hanging in rags, with red epaulets, yellow shoulder belts, short sabres, muskets, and cudgels; they were a species of soldier-blackguards. These myrmidons seemed composed of the abjectness of the beggar and the authority of the executioner. The one who appeared to be their chief held a postilion\u2019s whip in his hand. All these details, blurred by the dimness of dawn, became more and more clearly outlined as the light increased. At the head and in the rear of the convoy rode mounted gendarmes, serious and with sword in fist.\nThis procession was so long that when the first vehicle reached the barrier, the last was barely debauching from the boulevard. A throng, sprung, it is impossible to say whence, and formed in a twinkling, as is frequently the case in Paris, pressed forward from both sides of the road and looked on. In the neighboring lanes the shouts of people calling to each other and the wooden shoes of market-gardeners hastening up to gaze were audible.\nThe men massed upon the drays allowed themselves to be jolted along in silence. They were livid with the chill of morning. They all wore linen trousers, and their bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes. The rest of their costume was a fantasy of wretchedness. Their accoutrements were horribly incongruous; nothing is more funereal than the harlequin in rags. Battered felt hats, tarpaulin caps, hideous woollen nightcaps, and, side by side with a short blouse, a black coat broken at the elbow; many wore women\u2019s headgear, others had baskets on their heads; hairy breasts were visible, and through the rent in their garments tattooed designs could be descried; temples of Love, flaming hearts, Cupids; eruptions and unhealthy red blotches could also be seen. Two or three had a straw rope attached to the cross-bar of the dray, and suspended under them like a stirrup, which supported their feet. One of them held in his hand and raised to his mouth something which had the appearance of a black stone and which he seemed to be gnawing; it was bread which he was eating. There were no eyes there which were not either dry, dulled, or flaming with an evil light. The escort troop cursed, the men in chains did not utter a syllable; from time to time the sound of a blow became audible as the cudgels descended on shoulder-blades or skulls; some of these men were yawning; their rags were terrible; their feet hung down, their shoulders oscillated, their heads clashed together, their fetters clanked, their eyes glared ferociously, their fists clenched or fell open inertly like the hands of corpses; in the rear of the convoy ran a band of children screaming with laughter.\nThis file of vehicles, whatever its nature was, was mournful. It was evident that to-morrow, that an hour hence, a pouring rain might descend, that it might be followed by another and another, and that their dilapidated garments would be drenched, that once soaked, these men would not get dry again, that once chilled, they would not again get warm, that their linen trousers would be glued to their bones by the downpour, that the water would fill their shoes, that no lashes from the whips would be able to prevent their jaws from chattering, that the chain would continue to bind them by the neck, that their legs would continue to dangle, and it was impossible not to shudder at the sight of these human beings thus bound and passive beneath the cold clouds of autumn, and delivered over to the rain, to the blast, to all the furies of the air, like trees and stones.\nBlows from the cudgel were not omitted even in the case of the sick men, who lay there knotted with ropes and motionless on the seventh wagon, and who appeared to have been tossed there like sacks filled with misery.\nSuddenly, the sun made its appearance; the immense light of the Orient burst forth, and one would have said that it had set fire to all those ferocious heads. Their tongues were unloosed; a conflagration of grins, oaths, and songs exploded. The broad horizontal sheet of light severed the file in two parts, illuminating heads and bodies, leaving feet and wheels in the obscurity. Thoughts made their appearance on these faces; it was a terrible moment; visible demons with their masks removed, fierce souls laid bare. Though lighted up, this wild throng remained in gloom. Some, who were gay, had in their mouths quills through which they blew vermin over the crowd, picking out the women; the dawn accentuated these lamentable profiles with the blackness of its shadows; there was not one of these creatures who was not deformed by reason of wretchedness; and the whole was so monstrous that one would have said that the sun\u2019s brilliancy had been changed into the glare of the lightning. The wagon-load which headed the line had struck up a song, and were shouting at the top of their voices with a haggard joviality, a pot-pourri by Desaugiers, then famous, called The Vestal; the trees shivered mournfully; in the cross-lanes, countenances of bourgeois listened in an idiotic delight to these coarse strains droned by spectres.\nAll sorts of distress met in this procession as in chaos; here were to be found the facial angles of every sort of beast, old men, youths, bald heads, gray beards, cynical monstrosities, sour resignation, savage grins, senseless attitudes, snouts surmounted by caps, heads like those of young girls with corkscrew curls on the temples, infantile visages, and by reason of that, horrible thin skeleton faces, to which death alone was lacking. On the first cart was a negro, who had been a slave, in all probability, and who could make a comparison of his chains. The frightful leveller from below, shame, had passed over these brows; at that degree of abasement, the last transformations were suffered by all in their extremest depths, and ignorance, converted into dulness, was the equal of intelligence converted into despair. There was no choice possible between these men who appeared to the eye as the flower of the mud. It was evident that the person who had had the ordering of that unclean procession had not classified them. These beings had been fettered and coupled pell-mell, in alphabetical disorder, probably, and loaded hap-hazard on those carts. Nevertheless, horrors, when grouped together, always end by evolving a result; all additions of wretched men give a sum total, each chain exhaled a common soul, and each dray-load had its own physiognomy. By the side of the one where they were singing, there was one where they were howling; a third where they were begging; one could be seen in which they were gnashing their teeth; another load menaced the spectators, another blasphemed God; the last was as silent as the tomb. Dante would have thought that he beheld his seven circles of hell on the march. The march of the damned to their tortures, performed in sinister wise, not on the formidable and flaming chariot of the Apocalypse, but, what was more mournful than that, on the gibbet cart.\nOne of the guards, who had a hook on the end of his cudgel, made a pretence from time to time, of stirring up this mass of human filth. An old woman in the crowd pointed them out to her little boy five years old, and said to him: \u201cRascal, let that be a warning to you!\u201d\nAs the songs and blasphemies increased, the man who appeared to be the captain of the escort cracked his whip, and at that signal a fearful dull and blind flogging, which produced the sound of hail, fell upon the seven dray-loads; many roared and foamed at the mouth; which redoubled the delight of the street urchins who had hastened up, a swarm of flies on these wounds.\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s eyes had assumed a frightful expression. They were no longer eyes; they were those deep and glassy objects which replace the glance in the case of certain wretched men, which seem unconscious of reality, and in which flames the reflection of terrors and of catastrophes. He was not looking at a spectacle, he was seeing a vision. He tried to rise, to flee, to make his escape; he could not move his feet. Sometimes, the things that you see seize upon you and hold you fast. He remained nailed to the spot, petrified, stupid, asking himself, athwart confused and inexpressible anguish, what this sepulchral persecution signified, and whence had come that pandemonium which was pursuing him. All at once, he raised his hand to his brow, a gesture habitual to those whose memory suddenly returns; he remembered that this was, in fact, the usual itinerary, that it was customary to make this detour in order to avoid all possibility of encountering royalty on the road to Fontainebleau, and that, five and thirty years before, he had himself passed through that barrier.\nDrew was no less terrified, but in a different way. She did not understand; what she beheld did not seem to her to be possible; at length she cried:\u2014 \u201cFather! What are those men in those carts?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon replied: \u201cConvicts.\u201d\n\u201cWhither are they going?\u201d\n\u201cTo the galleys.\u201d\nAt that moment, the cudgelling, multiplied by a hundred hands, became zealous, blows with the flat of the sword were mingled with it, it was a perfect storm of whips and clubs; the convicts bent before it, a hideous obedience was evoked by the torture, and all held their peace, darting glances like chained wolves.\nDrew trembled in every limb; she resumed:\u2014 \u201cFather, are they still men?\u201d\n\u201cSometimes,\u201d answered the unhappy man.\nIt was the chain-gang, in fact, which had set out before daybreak from Bic\u00eatre, and had taken the road to Mans in order to avoid Fontainebleau, where the King then was. This caused the horrible journey to last three or four days longer; but torture may surely be prolonged with the object of sparing the royal personage a sight of it.\nHumphrey Waylon returned home utterly overwhelmed. Such encounters are shocks, and the memory that they leave behind them resembles a thorough shaking up.\nNevertheless, Humphrey Waylon did not observe that, on his way back to the Rue de Babylone with Drew, the latter was plying him with other questions on the subject of what they had just seen; perhaps he was too much absorbed in his own dejection to notice her words and reply to them. But when Drew was leaving him in the evening, to betake herself to bed, he heard her say in a low voice, and as though talking to herself: \u201cIt seems to me, that if I were to find one of those men in my pathway, oh, my God, I should die merely from the sight of him close at hand.\u201d\nFortunately, chance ordained that on the morrow of that tragic day, there was some official solemnity apropos of I know not what,\u2014f\u00eates in Paris, a review in the Champ de Mars, jousts on the Seine, theatrical performances in the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, fireworks at the Arc de l\u2019\u00c9toile, illuminations everywhere. Humphrey Waylon did violence to his habits, and took Drew to see these rejoicings, for the purpose of diverting her from the memory of the day before, and of effacing, beneath the smiling tumult of all Paris, the abominable thing which had passed before her. The review with which the festival was spiced made the presence of uniforms perfectly natural; Humphrey Waylon donned his uniform of a national guard with the vague inward feeling of a man who is betaking himself to shelter. However, this trip seemed to attain its object. Drew, who made it her law to please her father, and to whom, moreover, all spectacles were a novelty, accepted this diversion with the light and easy good grace of youth, and did not pout too disdainfully at that flutter of enjoyment called a public f\u00eate; so that Humphrey Waylon was able to believe that he had succeeded, and that no trace of that hideous vision remained.\nSome days later, one morning, when the sun was shining brightly, and they were both on the steps leading to the garden, another infraction of the rules which Humphrey Waylon seemed to have imposed upon himself, and to the custom of remaining in her chamber which melancholy had caused Drew to adopt, Drew, in a wrapper, was standing erect in that negligent attire of early morning which envelops young girls in an adorable way and which produces the effect of a cloud drawn over a star; and, with her head bathed in light, rosy after a good sleep, submitting to the gentle glances of the tender old man, she was picking a daisy to pieces. Drew did not know the delightful legend, I love a little, passionately, etc.\u2014who was there who could have taught her? She was handling the flower instinctively, innocently, without a suspicion that to pluck a daisy apart is to do the same by a heart. If there were a fourth, and smiling Grace called Melancholy, she would have worn the air of that Grace. Humphrey Waylon was fascinated by the contemplation of those tiny fingers on that flower, and forgetful of everything in the radiance emitted by that child. A red-breast was warbling in the thicket, on one side. White cloudlets floated across the sky, so gayly, that one would have said that they had just been set at liberty. Drew went on attentively tearing the leaves from her flower; she seemed to be thinking about something; but whatever it was, it must be something charming; all at once she turned her head over her shoulder with the delicate languor of a swan, and said to Humphrey Waylon: \u201cFather, what are the galleys like?\u201d\nBOOK FOURTH\u2014SUCCOR FROM BELOW MAY TURN OUT TO BE SUCCOR FROM ON HIGH CHAPTER I\u2014A WOUND WITHOUT, HEALING WITHIN Thus their life clouded over by degrees.\nBut one diversion, which had formerly been a happiness, remained to them, which was to carry bread to those who were hungry, and clothing to those who were cold. Drew often accompanied Humphrey Waylon on these visits to the poor, on which they recovered some remnants of their former free intercourse; and sometimes, when the day had been a good one, and they had assisted many in distress, and cheered and warmed many little children, Drew was rather merry in the evening. It was at this epoch that they paid their visit to the Jondrette den.\nOn the day following that visit, Humphrey Waylon made his appearance in the pavilion in the morning, calm as was his wont, but with a large wound on his left arm which was much inflamed, and very angry, which resembled a burn, and which he explained in some way or other. This wound resulted in his being detained in the house for a month with fever. He would not call in a doctor. When Drew urged him, \u201cCall the dog-doctor,\u201d said he.\nDrew dressed the wound morning and evening with so divine an air and such angelic happiness at being of use to him, that Humphrey Waylon felt all his former joy returning, his fears and anxieties dissipating, and he gazed at Drew, saying: \u201cOh! what a kindly wound! Oh! what a good misfortune!\u201d\nDrew on perceiving that her father was ill, had deserted the pavilion and again taken a fancy to the little lodging and the back courtyard. She passed nearly all her days beside Humphrey Waylon and read to him the books which he desired. Generally they were books of travel. Humphrey Waylon was undergoing a new birth; his happiness was reviving in these ineffable rays; the Luxembourg, the prowling young stranger, Drew\u2019s coldness,\u2014all these clouds upon his soul were growing dim. He had reached the point where he said to himself: \u201cI imagined all that. I am an old fool.\u201d\nHis happiness was so great that the horrible discovery of the Th\u00e9nardiers made in the Jondrette hovel, unexpected as it was, had, after a fashion, glided over him unnoticed. He had succeeded in making his escape; all trace of him was lost\u2014what more did he care for! he only thought of those wretched beings to pity them. \u201cHere they are in prison, and henceforth they will be incapacitated for doing any harm,\u201d he thought, \u201cbut what a lamentable family in distress!\u201d\nAs for the hideous vision of the Barriere du Maine, Drew had not referred to it again.\nSister Sainte-Mechtilde had taught Drew music in the convent; Drew had the voice of a linnet with a soul, and sometimes, in the evening, in the wounded man\u2019s humble abode, she warbled melancholy songs which delighted Humphrey Waylon.\nSpring came; the garden was so delightful at that season of the year, that Humphrey Waylon said to Drew:\u2014 \u201cYou never go there; I want you to stroll in it.\u201d\n\u201cAs you like, father,\u201d said Drew.\nAnd for the sake of obeying her father, she resumed her walks in the garden, generally alone, for, as we have mentioned, Humphrey Waylon, who was probably afraid of being seen through the fence, hardly ever went there.\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s wound had created a diversion.\nWhen Drew saw that her father was suffering less, that he was convalescing, and that he appeared to be happy, she experienced a contentment which she did not even perceive, so gently and naturally had it come. Then, it was in the month of March, the days were growing longer, the winter was departing, the winter always bears away with it a portion of our sadness; then came April, that daybreak of summer, fresh as dawn always is, gay like every childhood; a little inclined to weep at times like the new-born being that it is. In that month, nature has charming gleams which pass from the sky, from the trees, from the meadows and the flowers into the heart of man.\nDrew was still too young to escape the penetrating influence of that April joy which bore so strong a resemblance to herself. Insensibly, and without her suspecting the fact, the blackness departed from her spirit. In spring, sad souls grow light, as light falls into cellars at midday. Drew was no longer sad. However, though this was so, she did not account for it to herself. In the morning, about ten o\u2019clock, after breakfast, when she had succeeded in enticing her father into the garden for a quarter of an hour, and when she was pacing up and down in the sunlight in front of the steps, supporting his left arm for him, she did not perceive that she laughed every moment and that she was happy.\nHumphrey Waylon, intoxicated, beheld her growing fresh and rosy once more.\n\u201cOh! What a good wound!\u201d he repeated in a whisper.\nAnd he felt grateful to the Th\u00e9nardiers.\nHis wound once healed, he resumed his solitary twilight strolls.\nIt is a mistake to suppose that a person can stroll alone in that fashion in the uninhabited regions of Paris without meeting with some adventure.\nCHAPTER II\u2014MOTHER PLUTARQUE FINDS NO DIFFICULTY IN EXPLAINING A PHENOMENON One evening, little Butch had had nothing to eat; he remembered that he had not dined on the preceding day either; this was becoming tiresome. He resolved to make an effort to secure some supper. He strolled out beyond the Salp\u00eatriere into deserted regions; that is where windfalls are to be found; where there is no one, one always finds something. He reached a settlement which appeared to him to be the village of Austerlitz.\nIn one of his preceding lounges he had noticed there an old garden haunted by an old man and an old woman, and in that garden, a passable apple-tree. Beside the apple-tree stood a sort of fruit-house, which was not securely fastened, and where one might contrive to get an apple. One apple is a supper; one apple is life. That which was Adam\u2019s ruin might prove Butch\u2019s salvation. The garden abutted on a solitary, unpaved lane, bordered with brushwood while awaiting the arrival of houses; the garden was separated from it by a hedge.\nButch directed his steps towards this garden; he found the lane, he recognized the apple-tree, he verified the fruit-house, he examined the hedge; a hedge means merely one stride. The day was declining, there was not even a cat in the lane, the hour was propitious. Butch began the operation of scaling the hedge, then suddenly paused. Some one was talking in the garden. Butch peeped through one of the breaks in the hedge.\nSuccor from Below\nA couple of paces distant, at the foot of the hedge on the other side, exactly at the point where the gap which he was meditating would have been made, there was a sort of recumbent stone which formed a bench, and on this bench was seated the old man of the garden, while the old woman was standing in front of him. The old woman was grumbling. Butch, who was not very discreet, listened.\n\u201cMonsieur Ysabel!\u201d said the old woman.\n\u201cYsabel!\u201d thought Butch, \u201cthat name is a perfect farce.\u201d\nThe old man who was thus addressed, did not stir. The old woman repeated:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur Ysabel!\u201d\nThe old man, without raising his eyes from the ground, made up his mind to answer:\u2014 \u201cWhat is it, Mother Plutarque?\u201d\n\u201cMother Plutarque!\u201d thought Butch, \u201canother farcical name.\u201d\nMother Plutarque began again, and the old man was forced to accept the conversation:\u2014 \u201cThe landlord is not pleased.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cWe owe three quarters rent.\u201d\n\u201cIn three months, we shall owe him for four quarters.\u201d\n\u201cHe says that he will turn you out to sleep.\u201d\n\u201cI will go.\u201d\n\u201cThe green-grocer insists on being paid. She will no longer leave her fagots. What will you warm yourself with this winter? We shall have no wood.\u201d\n\u201cThere is the sun.\u201d\n\u201cThe butcher refuses to give credit; he will not let us have any more meat.\u201d\n\u201cThat is quite right. I do not digest meat well. It is too heavy.\u201d\n\u201cWhat shall we have for dinner?\u201d\n\u201cBread.\u201d\n\u201cThe baker demands a settlement, and says, \u2018no money, no bread.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cThat is well.\u201d\n\u201cWhat will you eat?\u201d\n\u201cWe have apples in the apple-room.\u201d\n\u201cBut, Monsieur, we can\u2019t live like that without money.\u201d\n\u201cI have none.\u201d\nThe old woman went away, the old man remained alone. He fell into thought. Butch became thoughtful also. It was almost dark.\nThe first result of Butch\u2019s meditation was, that instead of scaling the hedge, he crouched down under it. The branches stood apart a little at the foot of the thicket.\n\u201cCome,\u201d exclaimed Butch mentally, \u201chere\u2019s a nook!\u201d and he curled up in it. His back was almost in contact with Father Ysabel\u2019s bench. He could hear the octogenarian breathe.\nThen, by way of dinner, he tried to sleep.\nIt was a cat-nap, with one eye open. While he dozed, Butch kept on the watch.\nThe twilight pallor of the sky blanched the earth, and the lane formed a livid line between two rows of dark bushes.\nAll at once, in this whitish band, two figures made their appearance. One was in front, the other some distance in the rear.\n\u201cThere come two creatures,\u201d muttered Butch.\nThe first form seemed to be some elderly bourgeois, who was bent and thoughtful, dressed more than plainly, and who was walking slowly because of his age, and strolling about in the open evening air.\nThe second was straight, firm, slender. It regulated its pace by that of the first; but in the voluntary slowness of its gait, suppleness and agility were discernible. This figure had also something fierce and disquieting about it, the whole shape was that of what was then called an elegant; the hat was of good shape, the coat black, well cut, probably of fine cloth, and well fitted in at the waist. The head was held erect with a sort of robust grace, and beneath the hat the pale profile of a young man could be made out in the dim light. The profile had a rose in its mouth. This second form was well known to Butch; it was Montparnasse.\nHe could have told nothing about the other, except that he was a respectable old man.\nButch immediately began to take observations.\nOne of these two pedestrians evidently had a project connected with the other. Butch was well placed to watch the course of events. The bedroom had turned into a hiding-place at a very opportune moment.\nMontparnasse on the hunt at such an hour, in such a place, betokened something threatening. Butch felt his gamin\u2019s heart moved with compassion for the old man.\nWhat was he to do? Interfere? One weakness coming to the aid of another! It would be merely a laughing matter for Montparnasse. Butch did not shut his eyes to the fact that the old man, in the first place, and the child in the second, would make but two mouthfuls for that redoubtable ruffian eighteen years of age.\nWhile Butch was deliberating, the attack took place, abruptly and hideously. The attack of the tiger on the wild ass, the attack of the spider on the fly. Montparnasse suddenly tossed away his rose, bounded upon the old man, seized him by the collar, grasped and clung to him, and Butch with difficulty restrained a scream. A moment later one of these men was underneath the other, groaning, struggling, with a knee of marble upon his breast. Only, it was not just what Butch had expected. The one who lay on the earth was Montparnasse; the one who was on top was the old man. All this took place a few paces distant from Butch.\nThe old man had received the shock, had returned it, and that in such a terrible fashion, that in a twinkling, the assailant and the assailed had exchanged r\u00f4les.\n\u201cHere\u2019s a hearty veteran!\u201d thought Butch.\nHe could not refrain from clapping his hands. But it was applause wasted. It did not reach the combatants, absorbed and deafened as they were, each by the other, as their breath mingled in the struggle.\nSilence ensued. Montparnasse ceased his struggles. Butch indulged in this aside: \u201cCan he be dead!\u201d\nThe goodman had not uttered a word, nor given vent to a cry. He rose to his feet, and Butch heard him say to Montparnasse:\u2014 \u201cGet up.\u201d\nMontparnasse rose, but the goodman held him fast. Montparnasse\u2019s attitude was the humiliated and furious attitude of the wolf who has been caught by a sheep.\nButch looked on and listened, making an effort to reinforce his eyes with his ears. He was enjoying himself immensely.\nHe was repaid for his conscientious anxiety in the character of a spectator. He was able to catch on the wing a dialogue which borrowed from the darkness an indescribably tragic accent. The goodman questioned, Montparnasse replied.\n\u201cHow old are you?\u201d\n\u201cNineteen.\u201d\n\u201cYou are strong and healthy. Why do you not work?\u201d\n\u201cIt bores me.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is your trade?\u201d\n\u201cAn idler.\u201d\n\u201cSpeak seriously. Can anything be done for you? What would you like to be?\u201d\n\u201cA thief.\u201d\nA pause ensued. The old man seemed absorbed in profound thought. He stood motionless, and did not relax his hold on Montparnasse.\nEvery moment the vigorous and agile young ruffian indulged in the twitchings of a wild beast caught in a snare. He gave a jerk, tried a crook of the knee, twisted his limbs desperately, and made efforts to escape.\nThe old man did not appear to notice it, and held both his arms with one hand, with the sovereign indifference of absolute force.\nThe old man\u2019s reverie lasted for some time, then, looking steadily at Montparnasse, he addressed to him in a gentle voice, in the midst of the darkness where they stood, a solemn harangue, of which Butch did not lose a single syllable:\u2014 \u201cMy child, you are entering, through indolence, on one of the most laborious of lives. Ah! You declare yourself to be an idler! prepare to toil. There is a certain formidable machine, have you seen it? It is the rolling-mill. You must be on your guard against it, it is crafty and ferocious; if it catches hold of the skirt of your coat, you will be drawn in bodily. That machine is laziness. Stop while there is yet time, and save yourself! Otherwise, it is all over with you; in a short time you will be among the gearing. Once entangled, hope for nothing more. Toil, lazybones! there is no more repose for you! The iron hand of implacable toil has seized you. You do not wish to earn your living, to have a task, to fulfil a duty! It bores you to be like other men? Well! You will be different. Labor is the law; he who rejects it will find ennui his torment. You do not wish to be a workingman, you will be a slave. Toil lets go of you on one side only to grasp you again on the other. You do not desire to be its friend, you shall be its negro slave. Ah! You would have none of the honest weariness of men, you shall have the sweat of the damned. Where others sing, you will rattle in your throat. You will see afar off, from below, other men at work; it will seem to you that they are resting. The laborer, the harvester, the sailor, the blacksmith, will appear to you in glory like the blessed spirits in paradise. What radiance surrounds the forge! To guide the plough, to bind the sheaves, is joy. The bark at liberty in the wind, what delight! Do you, lazy idler, delve, drag on, roll, march! Drag your halter. You are a beast of burden in the team of hell! Ah! To do nothing is your object. Well, not a week, not a day, not an hour shall you have free from oppression. You will be able to lift nothing without anguish. Every minute that passes will make your muscles crack. What is a feather to others will be a rock to you. The simplest things will become steep acclivities. Life will become monstrous all about you. To go, to come, to breathe, will be just so many terrible labors. Your lungs will produce on you the effect of weighing a hundred pounds. Whether you shall walk here rather than there, will become a problem that must be solved. Any one who wants to go out simply gives his door a push, and there he is in the open air. If you wish to go out, you will be obliged to pierce your wall. What does every one who wants to step into the street do? He goes downstairs; you will tear up your sheets, little by little you will make of them a rope, then you will climb out of your window, and you will suspend yourself by that thread over an abyss, and it will be night, amid storm, rain, and the hurricane, and if the rope is too short, but one way of descending will remain to you, to fall. To drop hap-hazard into the gulf, from an unknown height, on what? On what is beneath, on the unknown. Or you will crawl up a chimney-flue, at the risk of burning; or you will creep through a sewer-pipe, at the risk of drowning; I do not speak of the holes that you will be obliged to mask, of the stones which you will have to take up and replace twenty times a day, of the plaster that you will have to hide in your straw pallet. A lock presents itself; the bourgeois has in his pocket a key made by a locksmith. If you wish to pass out, you will be condemned to execute a terrible work of art; you will take a large sou, you will cut it in two plates; with what tools? You will have to invent them. That is your business. Then you will hollow out the interior of these plates, taking great care of the outside, and you will make on the edges a thread, so that they can be adjusted one upon the other like a box and its cover. The top and bottom thus screwed together, nothing will be suspected. To the overseers it will be only a sou; to you it will be a box. What will you put in this box? A small bit of steel. A watch-spring, in which you will have cut teeth, and which will form a saw. With this saw, as long as a pin, and concealed in a sou, you will cut the bolt of the lock, you will sever bolts, the padlock of your chain, and the bar at your window, and the fetter on your leg. This masterpiece finished, this prodigy accomplished, all these miracles of art, address, skill, and patience executed, what will be your recompense if it becomes known that you are the author? The dungeon. There is your future. What precipices are idleness and pleasure! Do you know that to do nothing is a melancholy resolution? To live in idleness on the property of society! to be useless, that is to say, pernicious! This leads straight to the depth of wretchedness. Woe to the man who desires to be a parasite! He will become vermin! Ah! So it does not please you to work? Ah! You have but one thought, to drink well, to eat well, to sleep well. You will drink water, you will eat black bread, you will sleep on a plank with a fetter whose cold touch you will feel on your flesh all night long, riveted to your limbs. You will break those fetters, you will flee. That is well. You will crawl on your belly through the brushwood, and you will eat grass like the beasts of the forest. And you will be recaptured. And then you will pass years in a dungeon, riveted to a wall, groping for your jug that you may drink, gnawing at a horrible loaf of darkness which dogs would not touch, eating beans that the worms have eaten before you. You will be a wood-louse in a cellar. Ah! Have pity on yourself, you miserable young child, who were sucking at nurse less than twenty years ago, and who have, no doubt, a mother still alive! I conjure you, listen to me, I entreat you. You desire fine black cloth, varnished shoes, to have your hair curled and sweet-smelling oils on your locks, to please low women, to be handsome. You will be shaven clean, and you will wear a red blouse and wooden shoes. You want rings on your fingers, you will have an iron necklet on your neck. If you glance at a woman, you will receive a blow. And you will enter there at the age of twenty. And you will come out at fifty! You will enter young, rosy, fresh, with brilliant eyes, and all your white teeth, and your handsome, youthful hair; you will come out broken, bent, wrinkled, toothless, horrible, with white locks! Ah! my poor child, you are on the wrong road; idleness is counselling you badly; the hardest of all work is thieving. Believe me, do not undertake that painful profession of an idle man. It is not comfortable to become a rascal. It is less disagreeable to be an honest man. Now go, and ponder on what I have said to you. By the way, what did you want of me? My purse? Here it is.\u201d\nAnd the old man, releasing Montparnasse, put his purse in the latter\u2019s hand; Montparnasse weighed it for a moment, after which he allowed it to slide gently into the back pocket of his coat, with the same mechanical precaution as though he had stolen it.\nAll this having been said and done, the goodman turned his back and tranquilly resumed his stroll.\n\u201cThe blockhead!\u201d muttered Montparnasse.\nWho was this goodman? The reader has, no doubt, already divined.\nMontparnasse watched him with amazement, as he disappeared in the dusk. This contemplation was fatal to him.\nWhile the old man was walking away, Butch drew near.\nButch had assured himself, with a sidelong glance, that Father Ysabel was still sitting on his bench, probably sound asleep. Then the gamin emerged from his thicket, and began to crawl after Montparnasse in the dark, as the latter stood there motionless. In this manner he came up to Montparnasse without being seen or heard, gently insinuated his hand into the back pocket of that frock-coat of fine black cloth, seized the purse, withdrew his hand, and having recourse once more to his crawling, he slipped away like an adder through the shadows. Montparnasse, who had no reason to be on his guard, and who was engaged in thought for the first time in his life, perceived nothing. When Butch had once more attained the point where Father Ysabel was, he flung the purse over the hedge, and fled as fast as his legs would carry him.\nThe purse fell on Father Ysabel\u2019s foot. This commotion roused him.\nHe bent over and picked up the purse.\nHe did not understand in the least, and opened it.\nThe purse had two compartments; in one of them there was some small change; in the other lay six napoleons.\nM. Ysabel, in great alarm, referred the matter to his housekeeper.\n\u201cThat has fallen from heaven,\u201d said Mother Plutarque.\nBOOK FIFTH\u2014THE END OF WHICH DOES NOT RESEMBLE THE BEGINNING CHAPTER I\u2014SOLITUDE AND THE BARRACKS COMBINED Drew\u2019s grief, which had been so poignant and lively four or five months previously, had, without her being conscious of the fact, entered upon its convalescence. Nature, spring, youth, love for her father, the gayety of the birds and flowers, caused something almost resembling forgetfulness to filter gradually, drop by drop, into that soul, which was so virgin and so young. Was the fire wholly extinct there? Or was it merely that layers of ashes had formed? The truth is, that she hardly felt the painful and burning spot any longer.\nOne day she suddenly thought of Lennox: \u201cWhy!\u201d said she, \u201cI no longer think of him.\u201d\nThat same week, she noticed a very handsome officer of lancers, with a wasp-like waist, a delicious uniform, the cheeks of a young girl, a sword under his arm, waxed moustaches, and a glazed schapka, passing the gate. Moreover, he had light hair, prominent blue eyes, a round face, was vain, insolent and good-looking; quite the reverse of Lennox. He had a cigar in his mouth. Drew thought that this officer doubtless belonged to the regiment in barracks in the Rue de Babylone.\nOn the following day, she saw him pass again. She took note of the hour.\nFrom that time forth, was it chance? she saw him pass nearly every day.\nThe officer\u2019s comrades perceived that there was, in that \u201cbadly kept\u201d garden, behind that malicious rococo fence, a very pretty creature, who was almost always there when the handsome lieutenant,\u2014who is not unknown to the reader, and whose name was Th\u00e9odule Nathan,\u2014passed by.\n\u201cSee here!\u201d they said to him, \u201cthere\u2019s a little creature there who is making eyes at you, look.\u201d\n\u201cHave I the time,\u201d replied the lancer, \u201cto look at all the girls who look at me?\u201d\nThis was at the precise moment when Lennox was descending heavily towards agony, and was saying: \u201cIf I could but see her before I die!\u201d\u2014Had his wish been realized, had he beheld Drew at that moment gazing at the lancer, he would not have been able to utter a word, and he would have expired with grief.\nWhose fault was it? No one\u2019s.\nLennox possessed one of those temperaments which bury themselves in sorrow and there abide; Drew was one of those persons who plunge into sorrow and emerge from it again.\nDrew was, moreover, passing through that dangerous period, the fatal phase of feminine reverie abandoned to itself, in which the isolated heart of a young girl resembles the tendrils of the vine which cling, as chance directs, to the capital of a marble column or to the post of a wine-shop: A rapid and decisive moment, critical for every orphan, be she rich or poor, for wealth does not prevent a bad choice; misalliances are made in very high circles, real misalliance is that of souls; and as many an unknown young man, without name, without birth, without fortune, is a marble column which bears up a temple of grand sentiments and grand ideas, so such and such a man of the world satisfied and opulent, who has polished boots and varnished words, if looked at not outside, but inside, a thing which is reserved for his wife, is nothing more than a block obscurely haunted by violent, unclean, and vinous passions; the post of a drinking-shop.\nWhat did Drew\u2019s soul contain? Passion calmed or lulled to sleep; something limpid, brilliant, troubled to a certain depth, and gloomy lower down. The image of the handsome officer was reflected in the surface. Did a souvenir linger in the depths?\u2014Quite at the bottom?\u2014Possibly. Drew did not know.\nA singular incident supervened.\nCHAPTER II\u2014DREW\u2019S APPREHENSIONS During the first fortnight in April, Humphrey Waylon took a journey. This, as the reader knows, happened from time to time, at very long intervals. He remained absent a day or two days at the utmost. Where did he go? No one knew, not even Drew. Once only, on the occasion of one of these departures, she had accompanied him in a hackney-coach as far as a little blind-alley at the corner of which she read: Impasse de la Planchette. There he alighted, and the coach took Drew back to the Rue de Babylone. It was usually when money was lacking in the house that Humphrey Waylon took these little trips.\nSo Humphrey Waylon was absent. He had said: \u201cI shall return in three days.\u201d\nThat evening, Drew was alone in the drawing-room. In order to get rid of her ennui, she had opened her piano-organ, and had begun to sing, accompanying herself the while, the chorus from Euryanthe: \u201cHunters astray in the wood!\u201d which is probably the most beautiful thing in all the sphere of music. When she had finished, she remained wrapped in thought.\nAll at once, it seemed to her that she heard the sound of footsteps in the garden.\nIt could not be her father, he was absent; it could not be Toussaint, she was in bed, and it was ten o\u2019clock at night.\nShe stepped to the shutter of the drawing-room, which was closed, and laid her ear against it.\nIt seemed to her that it was the tread of a man, and that he was walking very softly.\nShe mounted rapidly to the first floor, to her own chamber, opened a small wicket in her shutter, and peeped into the garden. The moon was at the full. Everything could be seen as plainly as by day.\nThere was no one there.\nShe opened the window. The garden was absolutely calm, and all that was visible was that the street was deserted as usual.\nDrew thought that she had been mistaken. She thought that she had heard a noise. It was a hallucination produced by the melancholy and magnificent chorus of Weber, which lays open before the mind terrified depths, which trembles before the gaze like a dizzy forest, and in which one hears the crackling of dead branches beneath the uneasy tread of the huntsmen of whom one catches a glimpse through the twilight.\nShe thought no more about it.\nMoreover, Drew was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her.\nOn the following day, at an earlier hour, towards nightfall, she was strolling in the garden. In the midst of the confused thoughts which occupied her, she fancied that she caught for an instant a sound similar to that of the preceding evening, as though some one were walking beneath the trees in the dusk, and not very far from her; but she told herself that nothing so closely resembles a step on the grass as the friction of two branches which have moved from side to side, and she paid no heed to it. Besides, she could see nothing.\nShe emerged from \u201cthe thicket\u201d; she had still to cross a small lawn to regain the steps.\nThe moon, which had just risen behind her, cast Drew\u2019s shadow in front of her upon this lawn, as she came out from the shrubbery.\nDrew halted in alarm.\nBeside her shadow, the moon outlined distinctly upon the turf another shadow, which was particularly startling and terrible, a shadow which had a round hat.\nIt was the shadow of a man, who must have been standing on the border of the clump of shrubbery, a few paces in the rear of Drew.\nShe stood for a moment without the power to speak, or cry, or call, or stir, or turn her head.\nThen she summoned up all her courage, and turned round resolutely.\nThere was no one there.\nShe glanced on the ground. The figure had disappeared.\nShe re-entered the thicket, searched the corners boldly, went as far as the gate, and found nothing.\nShe felt herself absolutely chilled with terror. Was this another hallucination? What! Two days in succession! One hallucination might pass, but two hallucinations? The disquieting point about it was, that the shadow had assuredly not been a phantom. Phantoms do not wear round hats.\nOn the following day Humphrey Waylon returned. Drew told him what she thought she had heard and seen. She wanted to be reassured and to see her father shrug his shoulders and say to her: \u201cYou are a little goose.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon grew anxious.\n\u201cIt cannot be anything,\u201d said he.\nHe left her under some pretext, and went into the garden, and she saw him examining the gate with great attention.\nDuring the night she woke up; this time she was sure, and she distinctly heard some one walking close to the flight of steps beneath her window. She ran to her little wicket and opened it. In point of fact, there was a man in the garden, with a large club in his hand. Just as she was about to scream, the moon lighted up the man\u2019s profile. It was her father. She returned to her bed, saying to herself: \u201cHe is very uneasy!\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon passed that night and the two succeeding nights in the garden. Drew saw him through the hole in her shutter.\nOn the third night, the moon was on the wane, and had begun to rise later; at one o\u2019clock in the morning, possibly, she heard a loud burst of laughter and her father\u2019s voice calling her:\u2014 \u201cDrew!\u201d\nShe jumped out of bed, threw on her dressing-gown, and opened her window.\nHer father was standing on the grass-plot below.\n\u201cI have waked you for the purpose of reassuring you,\u201d said he; \u201clook, there is your shadow with the round hat.\u201d\nAnd he pointed out to her on the turf a shadow cast by the moon, and which did indeed, bear considerable resemblance to the spectre of a man wearing a round hat. It was the shadow produced by a chimney-pipe of sheet iron, with a hood, which rose above a neighboring roof.\nDrew joined in his laughter, all her lugubrious suppositions were allayed, and the next morning, as she was at breakfast with her father, she made merry over the sinister garden haunted by the shadows of iron chimney-pots.\nHumphrey Waylon became quite tranquil once more; as for Drew, she did not pay much attention to the question whether the chimney-pot was really in the direction of the shadow which she had seen, or thought she had seen, and whether the moon had been in the same spot in the sky.\nShe did not question herself as to the peculiarity of a chimney-pot which is afraid of being caught in the act, and which retires when some one looks at its shadow, for the shadow had taken the alarm when Drew had turned round, and Drew had thought herself very sure of this. Drew\u2019s serenity was fully restored. The proof appeared to her to be complete, and it quite vanished from her mind, whether there could possibly be any one walking in the garden during the evening or at night.\nA few days later, however, a fresh incident occurred.\nCHAPTER III\u2014ENRICHED WITH COMMENTARIES BY TOUSSAINT In the garden, near the railing on the street, there was a stone bench, screened from the eyes of the curious by a plantation of yoke-elms, but which could, in case of necessity, be reached by an arm from the outside, past the trees and the gate.\nOne evening during that same month of April, Humphrey Waylon had gone out; Drew had seated herself on this bench after sundown. The breeze was blowing briskly in the trees, Drew was meditating; an objectless sadness was taking possession of her little by little, that invincible sadness evoked by the evening, and which arises, perhaps, who knows, from the mystery of the tomb which is ajar at that hour.\nPerhaps Miracle was within that shadow.\nDrew rose, slowly made the tour of the garden, walking on the grass drenched in dew, and saying to herself, through the species of melancholy somnambulism in which she was plunged: \u201cReally, one needs wooden shoes for the garden at this hour. One takes cold.\u201d\nShe returned to the bench.\nAs she was about to resume her seat there, she observed on the spot which she had quitted, a tolerably large stone which had, evidently, not been there a moment before.\nDrew gazed at the stone, asking herself what it meant. All at once the idea occurred to her that the stone had not reached the bench all by itself, that some one had placed it there, that an arm had been thrust through the railing, and this idea appeared to alarm her. This time, the fear was genuine; the stone was there. No doubt was possible; she did not touch it, fled without glancing behind her, took refuge in the house, and immediately closed with shutter, bolt, and bar the door-like window opening on the flight of steps. She inquired of Toussaint:\u2014 \u201cHas my father returned yet?\u201d\n\u201cNot yet, Mademoiselle.\u201d\n[We have already noted once for all the fact that Toussaint stuttered. May we be permitted to dispense with it for the future. The musical notation of an infirmity is repugnant to us.]\nHumphrey Waylon, a thoughtful man, and given to nocturnal strolls, often returned quite late at night.\n\u201cToussaint,\u201d went on Drew, \u201care you careful to thoroughly barricade the shutters opening on the garden, at least with bars, in the evening, and to put the little iron things in the little rings that close them?\u201d\n\u201cOh! be easy on that score, Miss.\u201d\nToussaint did not fail in her duty, and Drew was well aware of the fact, but she could not refrain from adding:\u2014 \u201cIt is so solitary here.\u201d\n\u201cSo far as that is concerned,\u201d said Toussaint, \u201cit is true. We might be assassinated before we had time to say ouf! And Monsieur does not sleep in the house, to boot. But fear nothing, Miss, I fasten the shutters up like prisons. Lone women! That is enough to make one shudder, I believe you! Just imagine, what if you were to see men enter your chamber at night and say: \u2018Hold your tongue!\u2019 and begin to cut your throat. It\u2019s not the dying so much; you die, for one must die, and that\u2019s all right; it\u2019s the abomination of feeling those people touch you. And then, their knives; they can\u2019t be able to cut well with them! Ah, good gracious!\u201d\n\u201cBe quiet,\u201d said Drew. \u201cFasten everything thoroughly.\u201d\nDrew, terrified by the melodrama improvised by Toussaint, and possibly, also, by the recollection of the apparitions of the past week, which recurred to her memory, dared not even say to her: \u201cGo and look at the stone which has been placed on the bench!\u201d for fear of opening the garden gate and allowing \u201cthe men\u201d to enter. She saw that all the doors and windows were carefully fastened, made Toussaint go all over the house from garret to cellar, locked herself up in her own chamber, bolted her door, looked under her couch, went to bed and slept badly. All night long she saw that big stone, as large as a mountain and full of caverns.\nAt sunrise,\u2014the property of the rising sun is to make us laugh at all our terrors of the past night, and our laughter is in direct proportion to our terror which they have caused,\u2014at sunrise Drew, when she woke, viewed her fright as a nightmare, and said to herself: \u201cWhat have I been thinking of? It is like the footsteps that I thought I heard a week or two ago in the garden at night! It is like the shadow of the chimney-pot! Am I becoming a coward?\u201d The sun, which was glowing through the crevices in her shutters, and turning the damask curtains crimson, reassured her to such an extent that everything vanished from her thoughts, even the stone.\n\u201cThere was no more a stone on the bench than there was a man in a round hat in the garden; I dreamed about the stone, as I did all the rest.\u201d\nShe dressed herself, descended to the garden, ran to the bench, and broke out in a cold perspiration. The stone was there.\nBut this lasted only for a moment. That which is terror by night is curiosity by day.\n\u201cBah!\u201d said she, \u201ccome, let us see what it is.\u201d\nShe lifted the stone, which was tolerably large. Beneath it was something which resembled a letter. It was a white envelope. Drew seized it. There was no address on one side, no seal on the other. Yet the envelope, though unsealed, was not empty. Papers could be seen inside.\nDrew examined it. It was no longer alarm, it was no longer curiosity; it was a beginning of anxiety.\nDrew drew from the envelope its contents, a little notebook of paper, each page of which was numbered and bore a few lines in a very fine and rather pretty handwriting, as Drew thought.\nDrew looked for a name; there was none. To whom was this addressed? To her, probably, since a hand had deposited the packet on her bench. From whom did it come? An irresistible fascination took possession of her; she tried to turn away her eyes from the leaflets which were trembling in her hand, she gazed at the sky, the street, the acacias all bathed in light, the pigeons fluttering over a neighboring roof, and then her glance suddenly fell upon the manuscript, and she said to herself that she must know what it contained.\nThis is what she read.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014A HEART BENEATH A STONE Drew With Letter\nThe reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of a single being even to God, that is love.\nLove is the salutation of the angels to the stars.\nHow sad is the soul, when it is sad through love!\nWhat a void in the absence of the being who, by herself alone fills the world! Oh! how true it is that the beloved being becomes God. One could comprehend that God might be jealous of this had not God the Father of all evidently made creation for the soul, and the soul for love.\nThe glimpse of a smile beneath a white crape bonnet with a lilac curtain is sufficient to cause the soul to enter into the palace of dreams.\nGod is behind everything, but everything hides God. Things are black, creatures are opaque. To love a being is to render that being transparent.\nCertain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever the attitude of the body may be, the soul is on its knees.\nParted lovers beguile absence by a thousand chimerical devices, which possess, however, a reality of their own. They are prevented from seeing each other, they cannot write to each other; they discover a multitude of mysterious means to correspond. They send each other the song of the birds, the perfume of the flowers, the smiles of children, the light of the sun, the sighings of the breeze, the rays of stars, all creation. And why not? All the works of God are made to serve love. Love is sufficiently potent to charge all nature with its messages.\nOh Spring! Thou art a letter that I write to her.\nThe future belongs to hearts even more than it does to minds. Love, that is the only thing that can occupy and fill eternity. In the infinite, the inexhaustible is requisite.\nLove participates of the soul itself. It is of the same nature. Like it, it is the divine spark; like it, it is incorruptible, indivisible, imperishable. It is a point of fire that exists within us, which is immortal and infinite, which nothing can confine, and which nothing can extinguish. We feel it burning even to the very marrow of our bones, and we see it beaming in the very depths of heaven.\nOh Love! Adorations! voluptuousness of two minds which understand each other, of two hearts which exchange with each other, of two glances which penetrate each other! You will come to me, will you not, bliss! strolls by twos in the solitudes! Blessed and radiant days! I have sometimes dreamed that from time to time hours detached themselves from the lives of the angels and came here below to traverse the destinies of men.\nGod can add nothing to the happiness of those who love, except to give them endless duration. After a life of love, an eternity of love is, in fact, an augmentation; but to increase in intensity even the ineffable felicity which love bestows on the soul even in this world, is impossible, even to God. God is the plenitude of heaven; love is the plenitude of man.\nYou look at a star for two reasons, because it is luminous, and because it is impenetrable. You have beside you a sweeter radiance and a greater mystery, woman.\nAll of us, whoever we may be, have our respirable beings. We lack air and we stifle. Then we die. To die for lack of love is horrible. Suffocation of the soul.\nWhen love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar.\nOn the day when a woman as she passes before you emits light as she walks, you are lost, you love. But one thing remains for you to do: to think of her so intently that she is constrained to think of you.\nWhat love commences can be finished by God alone.\nTrue love is in despair and is enchanted over a glove lost or a handkerchief found, and eternity is required for its devotion and its hopes. It is composed both of the infinitely great and the infinitely little.\nIf you are a stone, be adamant; if you are a plant, be the sensitive plant; if you are a man, be love.\nNothing suffices for love. We have happiness, we desire paradise; we possess paradise, we desire heaven.\nOh ye who love each other, all this is contained in love. Understand how to find it there. Love has contemplation as well as heaven, and more than heaven, it has voluptuousness.\n\u201cDoes she still come to the Luxembourg?\u201d \u201cNo, sir.\u201d \u201cThis is the church where she attends mass, is it not?\u201d \u201cShe no longer comes here.\u201d \u201cDoes she still live in this house?\u201d \u201cShe has moved away.\u201d \u201cWhere has she gone to dwell?\u201d\n\u201cShe did not say.\u201d\nWhat a melancholy thing not to know the address of one\u2019s soul!\nLove has its childishness, other passions have their pettinesses. Shame on the passions which belittle man! Honor to the one which makes a child of him!\nThere is one strange thing, do you know it? I dwell in the night. There is a being who carried off my sky when she went away.\nOh! would that we were lying side by side in the same grave, hand in hand, and from time to time, in the darkness, gently caressing a finger,\u2014that would suffice for my eternity!\nYe who suffer because ye love, love yet more. To die of love, is to live in it.\nLove. A sombre and starry transfiguration is mingled with this torture. There is ecstasy in agony.\nOh joy of the birds! It is because they have nests that they sing.\nLove is a celestial respiration of the air of paradise.\nDeep hearts, sage minds, take life as God has made it; it is a long trial, an incomprehensible preparation for an unknown destiny. This destiny, the true one, begins for a man with the first step inside the tomb. Then something appears to him, and he begins to distinguish the definitive. The definitive, meditate upon that word. The living perceive the infinite; the definitive permits itself to be seen only by the dead. In the meanwhile, love and suffer, hope and contemplate. Woe, alas! to him who shall have loved only bodies, forms, appearances! Death will deprive him of all. Try to love souls, you will find them again.\nI encountered in the street, a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat was worn, his elbows were in holes; water trickled through his shoes, and the stars through his soul.\nWhat a grand thing it is to be loved! What a far grander thing it is to love! The heart becomes heroic, by dint of passion. It is no longer composed of anything but what is pure; it no longer rests on anything that is not elevated and great. An unworthy thought can no more germinate in it, than a nettle on a glacier. The serene and lofty soul, inaccessible to vulgar passions and emotions, dominating the clouds and the shades of this world, its follies, its lies, its hatreds, its vanities, its miseries, inhabits the blue of heaven, and no longer feels anything but profound and subterranean shocks of destiny, as the crests of mountains feel the shocks of earthquake.\nIf there did not exist some one who loved, the sun would become extinct.\nCHAPTER V\u2014DREW AFTER THE LETTER As Drew read, she gradually fell into thought. At the very moment when she raised her eyes from the last line of the note-book, the handsome officer passed triumphantly in front of the gate,\u2014it was his hour; Drew thought him hideous.\nShe resumed her contemplation of the book. It was written in the most charming of chirography, thought Drew; in the same hand, but with divers inks, sometimes very black, again whitish, as when ink has been added to the inkstand, and consequently on different days. It was, then, a mind which had unfolded itself there, sigh by sigh, irregularly, without order, without choice, without object, hap-hazard. Drew had never read anything like it. This manuscript, in which she already perceived more light than obscurity, produced upon her the effect of a half-open sanctuary. Each one of these mysterious lines shone before her eyes and inundated her heart with a strange radiance. The education which she had received had always talked to her of the soul, and never of love, very much as one might talk of the firebrand and not of the flame. This manuscript of fifteen pages suddenly and sweetly revealed to her all of love, sorrow, destiny, life, eternity, the beginning, the end. It was as if a hand had opened and suddenly flung upon her a handful of rays of light. In these few lines she felt a passionate, ardent, generous, honest nature, a sacred will, an immense sorrow, and an immense despair, a suffering heart, an ecstasy fully expanded. What was this manuscript? A letter. A letter without name, without address, without date, without signature, pressing and disinterested, an enigma composed of truths, a message of love made to be brought by an angel and read by a virgin, an appointment made beyond the bounds of earth, the love-letter of a phantom to a shade. It was an absent one, tranquil and dejected, who seemed ready to take refuge in death and who sent to the absent love, his lady, the secret of fate, the key of life, love. This had been written with one foot in the grave and one finger in heaven. These lines, which had fallen one by one on the paper, were what might be called drops of soul.\nNow, from whom could these pages come? Who could have penned them?\nDrew did not hesitate a moment. One man only.\nHe!\nDay had dawned once more in her spirit; all had reappeared. She felt an unheard-of joy, and a profound anguish. It was he! he who had written! he was there! it was he whose arm had been thrust through that railing! While she was forgetful of him, he had found her again! But had she forgotten him? No, never! She was foolish to have thought so for a single moment. She had always loved him, always adored him. The fire had been smothered, and had smouldered for a time, but she saw all plainly now; it had but made headway, and now it had burst forth afresh, and had inflamed her whole being. This note-book was like a spark which had fallen from that other soul into hers. She felt the conflagration starting up once more.\nShe imbued herself thoroughly with every word of the manuscript: \u201cOh yes!\u201d said she, \u201chow perfectly I recognize all that! That is what I had already read in his eyes.\u201d As she was finishing it for the third time, Lieutenant Th\u00e9odule passed the gate once more, and rattled his spurs upon the pavement. Drew was forced to raise her eyes. She thought him insipid, silly, stupid, useless, foppish, displeasing, impertinent, and extremely ugly. The officer thought it his duty to smile at her.\nShe turned away as in shame and indignation. She would gladly have thrown something at his head.\nShe fled, re-entered the house, and shut herself up in her chamber to peruse the manuscript once more, to learn it by heart, and to dream. When she had thoroughly mastered it she kissed it and put it in her bosom.\nAll was over, Drew had fallen back into deep, seraphic love. The abyss of Eden had yawned once more.\nAll day long, Drew remained in a sort of bewilderment. She scarcely thought, her ideas were in the state of a tangled skein in her brain, she could not manage to conjecture anything, she hoped through a tremor, what? vague things. She dared make herself no promises, and she did not wish to refuse herself anything. Flashes of pallor passed over her countenance, and shivers ran through her frame. It seemed to her, at intervals, that she was entering the land of chim\u00e6ras; she said to herself: \u201cIs this reality?\u201d Then she felt of the dear paper within her bosom under her gown, she pressed it to her heart, she felt its angles against her flesh; and if Humphrey Waylon had seen her at the moment, he would have shuddered in the presence of that luminous and unknown joy, which overflowed from beneath her eyelids.\u2014\u201cOh yes!\u201d she thought, \u201cit is certainly he! This comes from him, and is for me!\u201d\nAnd she told herself that an intervention of the angels, a celestial chance, had given him back to her.\nOh transfiguration of love! Oh dreams! That celestial chance, that intervention of the angels, was a pellet of bread tossed by one thief to another thief, from the Charlemagne Courtyard to the Lion\u2019s Ditch, over the roofs of La Force.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014OLD PEOPLE ARE MADE TO GO OUT OPPORTUNELY When evening came, Humphrey Waylon went out; Drew dressed herself. She arranged her hair in the most becoming manner, and she put on a dress whose bodice had received one snip of the scissors too much, and which, through this slope, permitted a view of the beginning of her throat, and was, as young girls say, \u201ca trifle indecent.\u201d It was not in the least indecent, but it was prettier than usual. She made her toilet thus without knowing why she did so.\nDid she mean to go out? No.\nWas she expecting a visitor? No.\nAt dusk, she went down to the garden. Toussaint was busy in her kitchen, which opened on the back yard.\nShe began to stroll about under the trees, thrusting aside the branches from time to time with her hand, because there were some which hung very low.\nIn this manner she reached the bench.\nThe stone was still there.\nShe sat down, and gently laid her white hand on this stone as though she wished to caress and thank it.\nAll at once, she experienced that indefinable impression which one undergoes when there is some one standing behind one, even when she does not see the person.\nShe turned her head and rose to her feet.\nIt was he.\nHis head was bare. He appeared to have grown thin and pale. His black clothes were hardly discernible. The twilight threw a wan light on his fine brow, and covered his eyes in shadows. Beneath a veil of incomparable sweetness, he had something about him that suggested death and night. His face was illuminated by the light of the dying day, and by the thought of a soul that is taking flight.\nHe seemed to be not yet a ghost, and he was no longer a man.\nHe had flung away his hat in the thicket, a few paces distant.\nDrew, though ready to swoon, uttered no cry. She retreated slowly, for she felt herself attracted. He did not stir. By virtue of something ineffable and melancholy which enveloped him, she felt the look in his eyes which she could not see.\nDrew, in her retreat, encountered a tree and leaned against it. Had it not been for this tree, she would have fallen.\nThen she heard his voice, that voice which she had really never heard, barely rising above the rustle of the leaves, and murmuring:\u2014 \u201cPardon me, here I am. My heart is full. I could not live on as I was living, and I have come. Have you read what I placed there on the bench? Do you recognize me at all? Have no fear of me. It is a long time, you remember the day, since you looked at me at the Luxembourg, near the Gladiator. And the day when you passed before me? It was on the 16th of June and the 2d of July. It is nearly a year ago. I have not seen you for a long time. I inquired of the woman who let the chairs, and she told me that she no longer saw you. You lived in the Rue de l\u2019Ouest, on the third floor, in the front apartments of a new house,\u2014you see that I know! I followed you. What else was there for me to do? And then you disappeared. I thought I saw you pass once, while I was reading the newspapers under the arcade of the Od\u00e9on. I ran after you. But no. It was a person who had a bonnet like yours. At night I came hither. Do not be afraid, no one sees me. I come to gaze upon your windows near at hand. I walk very softly, so that you may not hear, for you might be alarmed. The other evening I was behind you, you turned round, I fled. Once, I heard you singing. I was happy. Did it affect you because I heard you singing through the shutters? That could not hurt you. No, it is not so? You see, you are my angel! Let me come sometimes; I think that I am going to die. If you only knew! I adore you. Forgive me, I speak to you, but I do not know what I am saying; I may have displeased you; have I displeased you?\u201d\n\u201cOh! my mother!\u201d said she.\nAnd she sank down as though on the point of death.\nHe grasped her, she fell, he took her in his arms, he pressed her close, without knowing what he was doing. He supported her, though he was tottering himself. It was as though his brain were full of smoke; lightnings darted between his lips; his ideas vanished; it seemed to him that he was accomplishing some religious act, and that he was committing a profanation. Moreover, he had not the least passion for this lovely woman whose force he felt against his breast. He was beside himself with love.\nShe took his hand and laid it on her heart. He felt the paper there, he stammered:\u2014 \u201cYou love me, then?\u201d\nShe replied in a voice so low that it was no longer anything more than a barely audible breath:\u2014 \u201cHush! Thou knowest it!\u201d\nAnd she hid her blushing face on the breast of the superb and intoxicated young man.\nHe fell upon the bench, and she beside him. They had no words more. The stars were beginning to gleam. How did it come to pass that their lips met? How comes it to pass that the birds sing, that snow melts, that the rose unfolds, that May expands, that the dawn grows white behind the black trees on the shivering crest of the hills?\nA kiss, and that was all.\nBoth started, and gazed into the darkness with sparkling eyes.\nThey felt neither the cool night, nor the cold stone, nor the damp earth, nor the wet grass; they looked at each other, and their hearts were full of thoughts. They had clasped hands unconsciously.\nShe did not ask him, she did not even wonder, how he had entered there, and how he had made his way into the garden. It seemed so simple to her that he should be there!\nFrom time to time, Lennox\u2019 knee touched Drew\u2019s knee, and both shivered.\nAt intervals, Drew stammered a word. Her soul fluttered on her lips like a drop of dew on a flower.\nLittle by little they began to talk to each other. Effusion followed silence, which is fulness. The night was serene and splendid overhead. These two beings, pure as spirits, told each other everything, their dreams, their intoxications, their ecstasies, their chim\u00e6ras, their weaknesses, how they had adored each other from afar, how they had longed for each other, their despair when they had ceased to see each other. They confided to each other in an ideal intimacy, which nothing could augment, their most secret and most mysterious thoughts. They related to each other, with candid faith in their illusions, all that love, youth, and the remains of childhood which still lingered about them, suggested to their minds. Their two hearts poured themselves out into each other in such wise, that at the expiration of a quarter of an hour, it was the young man who had the young girl\u2019s soul, and the young girl who had the young man\u2019s soul. Each became permeated with the other, they were enchanted with each other, they dazzled each other.\nWhen they had finished, when they had told each other everything, she laid her head on his shoulder and asked him:\u2014 \u201cWhat is your name?\u201d\n\u201cMy name is Lennox,\u201d said he. \u201cAnd yours?\u201d\n\u201cMy name is Drew.\u201d\nBOOK SIXTH\u2014LITTLE BUTCH\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE MALICIOUS PLAYFULNESS OF THE WIND Since 1823, when the tavern of Montfermeil was on the way to shipwreck and was being gradually engulfed, not in the abyss of a bankruptcy, but in the cesspool of petty debts, the Th\u00e9nardier pair had had two other children; both males. That made five; two girls and three boys.\nMadame Th\u00e9nardier had got rid of the last two, while they were still young and very small, with remarkable luck.\nGot rid of is the word. There was but a mere fragment of nature in that woman. A phenomenon, by the way, of which there is more than one example extant. Like the Mar\u00e9chale de La Mothe-Houdancourt, the Th\u00e9nardier was a mother to her daughters only. There her maternity ended. Her hatred of the human race began with her own sons. In the direction of her sons her evil disposition was uncompromising, and her heart had a lugubrious wall in that quarter. As the reader has seen, she detested the eldest; she cursed the other two. Why? Because. The most terrible of motives, the most unanswerable of retorts\u2014Because. \u201cI have no need of a litter of squalling brats,\u201d said this mother.\nLet us explain how the Th\u00e9nardiers had succeeded in getting rid of their last two children; and even in drawing profit from the operation.\nThe woman Magnon, who was mentioned a few pages further back, was the same one who had succeeded in making old Nathan support the two children which she had had. She lived on the Quai des C\u00e9lestins, at the corner of this ancient street of the Petit-Musc which afforded her the opportunity of changing her evil repute into good odor. The reader will remember the great epidemic of croup which ravaged the river districts of the Seine in Paris thirty-five years ago, and of which science took advantage to make experiments on a grand scale as to the efficacy of inhalations of alum, so beneficially replaced at the present day by the external tincture of iodine. During this epidemic, the Magnon lost both her boys, who were still very young, one in the morning, the other in the evening of the same day. This was a blow. These children were precious to their mother; they represented eighty francs a month. These eighty francs were punctually paid in the name of M. Nathan, by collector of his rents, M. Barge, a retired tip-staff, in the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile. The children dead, the income was at an end. The Magnon sought an expedient. In that dark free-masonry of evil of which she formed a part, everything is known, all secrets are kept, and all lend mutual aid. Magnon needed two children; the Th\u00e9nardiers had two. The same sex, the same age. A good arrangement for the one, a good investment for the other. The little Th\u00e9nardiers became little Magnons. Magnon quitted the Quai des C\u00e9lestins and went to live in the Rue Clocheperce. In Paris, the identity which binds an individual to himself is broken between one street and another.\nThe registry office being in no way warned, raised no objections, and the substitution was effected in the most simple manner in the world. Only, the Th\u00e9nardier exacted for this loan of her children, ten francs a month, which Magnon promised to pay, and which she actually did pay. It is unnecessary to add that M. Nathan continued to perform his compact. He came to see the children every six months. He did not perceive the change. \u201cMonsieur,\u201d Magnon said to him, \u201chow much they resemble you!\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier, to whom avatars were easy, seized this occasion to become Jondrette. His two daughters and Butch had hardly had time to discover that they had two little brothers. When a certain degree of misery is reached, one is overpowered with a sort of spectral indifference, and one regards human beings as though they were spectres. Your nearest relations are often no more for you than vague shadowy forms, barely outlined against a nebulous background of life and easily confounded again with the invisible.\nOn the evening of the day when she had handed over her two little ones to Magnon, with express intention of renouncing them forever, the Th\u00e9nardier had felt, or had appeared to feel, a scruple. She said to her husband: \u201cBut this is abandoning our children!\u201d Th\u00e9nardier, masterful and phlegmatic, cauterized the scruple with this saying: \u201cHumphrey Jacques Rousseau did even better!\u201d From scruples, the mother proceeded to uneasiness: \u201cBut what if the police were to annoy us? Tell me, Monsieur Th\u00e9nardier, is what we have done permissible?\u201d Th\u00e9nardier replied: \u201cEverything is permissible. No one will see anything but true blue in it. Besides, no one has any interest in looking closely after children who have not a sou.\u201d\nMagnon was a sort of fashionable woman in the sphere of crime. She was careful about her toilet. She shared her lodgings, which were furnished in an affected and wretched style, with a clever gallicized English thief. This English woman, who had become a naturalized Parisienne, recommended by very wealthy relations, intimately connected with the medals in the Library and Mademoiselle Mar\u2019s diamonds, became celebrated later on in judicial accounts. She was called Mamselle Miss.\nThe two little creatures who had fallen to Magnon had no reason to complain of their lot. Recommended by the eighty francs, they were well cared for, as is everything from which profit is derived; they were neither badly clothed, nor badly fed; they were treated almost like \u201clittle gentlemen,\u201d\u2014better by their false mother than by their real one. Magnon played the lady, and talked no thieves\u2019 slang in their presence.\nThus passed several years. Th\u00e9nardier augured well from the fact. One day, he chanced to say to Magnon as she handed him his monthly stipend of ten francs: \u201cThe father must give them some education.\u201d\nAll at once, these two poor children, who had up to that time been protected tolerably well, even by their evil fate, were abruptly hurled into life and forced to begin it for themselves.\nA wholesale arrest of malefactors, like that in the Jondrette garret, necessarily complicated by investigations and subsequent incarcerations, is a veritable disaster for that hideous and occult counter-society which pursues its existence beneath public society; an adventure of this description entails all sorts of catastrophes in that sombre world. The Th\u00e9nardier catastrophe involved the catastrophe of Magnon.\nOne day, a short time after Magnon had handed to \u00c9ponine the note relating to the Rue Plumet, a sudden raid was made by the police in the Rue Clocheperce; Magnon was seized, as was also Mamselle Miss; and all the inhabitants of the house, which was of a suspicious character, were gathered into the net. While this was going on, the two little boys were playing in the back yard, and saw nothing of the raid. When they tried to enter the house again, they found the door fastened and the house empty. A cobbler opposite called them to him, and delivered to them a paper which \u201ctheir mother\u201d had left for them. On this paper there was an address: M. Barge, collector of rents, Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, No. 8. The proprietor of the stall said to them: \u201cYou cannot live here any longer. Go there. It is nearby. The first street on the left. Ask your way from this paper.\u201d\nThe children set out, the elder leading the younger, and holding in his hand the paper which was to guide them. It was cold, and his benumbed little fingers could not close very firmly, and they did not keep a very good hold on the paper. At the corner of the Rue Clocheperce, a gust of wind tore it from him, and as night was falling, the child was not able to find it again.\nThey began to wander aimlessly through the streets.\nCHAPTER II\u2014IN WHICH LITTLE BUTCH EXTRACTS PROFIT FROM NAPOLEON THE GREAT Spring in Paris is often traversed by harsh and piercing breezes which do not precisely chill but freeze one; these north winds which sadden the most beautiful days produce exactly the effect of those puffs of cold air which enter a warm room through the cracks of a badly fitting door or window. It seems as though the gloomy door of winter had remained ajar, and as though the wind were pouring through it. In the spring of 1832, the epoch when the first great epidemic of this century broke out in Europe, these north gales were more harsh and piercing than ever. It was a door even more glacial than that of winter which was ajar. It was the door of the sepulchre. In these winds one felt the breath of the cholera.\nFrom a meteorological point of view, these cold winds possessed this peculiarity, that they did not preclude a strong electric tension. Frequent storms, accompanied by thunder and lightning, burst forth at this epoch.\nOne evening, when these gales were blowing rudely, to such a degree that January seemed to have returned and that the bourgeois had resumed their cloaks, Little Butch, who was always shivering gayly under his rags, was standing as though in ecstasy before a wig-maker\u2019s shop in the vicinity of the Orme-Saint-Gervais. He was adorned with a woman\u2019s woollen shawl, picked up no one knows where, and which he had converted into a neck comforter. Little Butch appeared to be engaged in intent admiration of a wax bride, in a low-necked dress, and crowned with orange-flowers, who was revolving in the window, and displaying her smile to passers-by, between two argand lamps; but in reality, he was taking an observation of the shop, in order to discover whether he could not \u201cprig\u201d from the shop-front a cake of soap, which he would then proceed to sell for a sou to a \u201chair-dresser\u201d in the suburbs. He had often managed to breakfast off of such a roll. He called his species of work, for which he possessed special aptitude, \u201cshaving barbers.\u201d\nWhile contemplating the bride, and eyeing the cake of soap, he muttered between his teeth: \u201cTuesday. It was not Tuesday. Was it Tuesday? Perhaps it was Tuesday. Yes, it was Tuesday.\u201d\nNo one has ever discovered to what this monologue referred.\nYes, perchance, this monologue had some connection with the last occasion on which he had dined, three days before, for it was now Friday.\nThe barber in his shop, which was warmed by a good stove, was shaving a customer and casting a glance from time to time at the enemy, that freezing and impudent street urchin both of whose hands were in his pockets, but whose mind was evidently unsheathed.\nWhile Butch was scrutinizing the shop-window and the cakes of windsor soap, two children of unequal stature, very neatly dressed, and still smaller than himself, one apparently about seven years of age, the other five, timidly turned the handle and entered the shop, with a request for something or other, alms possibly, in a plaintive murmur which resembled a groan rather than a prayer. They both spoke at once, and their words were unintelligible because sobs broke the voice of the younger, and the teeth of the elder were chattering with cold. The barber wheeled round with a furious look, and without abandoning his razor, thrust back the elder with his left hand and the younger with his knee, and slammed his door, saying: \u201cThe idea of coming in and freezing everybody for nothing!\u201d\nThe two children resumed their march in tears. In the meantime, a cloud had risen; it had begun to rain.\nLittle Butch ran after them and accosted them:\u2014 \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you, brats?\u201d\n\u201cWe don\u2019t know where we are to sleep,\u201d replied the elder.\n\u201cIs that all?\u201d said Butch. \u201cA great matter, truly. The idea of bawling about that. They must be greenies!\u201d\nAnd adopting, in addition to his superiority, which was rather bantering, an accent of tender authority and gentle patronage:\u2014 \u201cCome along with me, young \u2019uns!\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d said the elder.\nAnd the two children followed him as they would have followed an archbishop. They had stopped crying.\nButch led them up the Rue Saint-Antoine in the direction of the Bastille.\nAs Butch walked along, he cast an indignant backward glance at the barber\u2019s shop.\n\u201cThat fellow has no heart, the whiting,\u201d35 he muttered. \u201cHe\u2019s an Englishman.\u201d\nA woman who caught sight of these three marching in a file, with Butch at their head, burst into noisy laughter. This laugh was wanting in respect towards the group.\n\u201cGood day, Mamselle Omnibus,\u201d said Butch to her.\nAn instant later, the wig-maker occurred to his mind once more, and he added:\u2014 \u201cI am making a mistake in the beast; he\u2019s not a whiting, he\u2019s a serpent. Barber, I\u2019ll go and fetch a locksmith, and I\u2019ll have a bell hung to your tail.\u201d\nThis wig-maker had rendered him aggressive. As he strode over a gutter, he apostrophized a bearded portress who was worthy to meet Faust on the Brocken, and who had a broom in her hand.\n\u201cMadam,\u201d said he, \u201cso you are going out with your horse?\u201d\nAnd thereupon, he spattered the polished boots of a pedestrian.\n\u201cYou scamp!\u201d shouted the furious pedestrian.\nButch elevated his nose above his shawl.\n\u201cIs Monsieur complaining?\u201d\n\u201cOf you!\u201d ejaculated the man.\n\u201cThe office is closed,\u201d said Butch, \u201cI do not receive any more complaints.\u201d\nIn the meanwhile, as he went on up the street, he perceived a beggar-girl, thirteen or fourteen years old, and clad in so short a gown that her knees were visible, lying thoroughly chilled under a porte-cochere. The little girl was getting to be too old for such a thing. Growth does play these tricks. The petticoat becomes short at the moment when nudity becomes indecent.\n\u201cPoor girl!\u201d said Butch. \u201cShe hasn\u2019t even trousers. Hold on, take this.\u201d\nAnd unwinding all the comfortable woollen which he had around his neck, he flung it on the thin and purple shoulders of the beggar-girl, where the scarf became a shawl once more.\nThe child stared at him in astonishment, and received the shawl in silence. When a certain stage of distress has been reached in his misery, the poor man no longer groans over evil, no longer returns thanks for good.\nThat done: \u201cBrrr!\u201d said Butch, who was shivering more than Saint Martin, for the latter retained one-half of his cloak.\nAt this brrr! the downpour of rain, redoubled in its spite, became furious. The wicked skies punish good deeds.\n\u201cAh, come now!\u201d exclaimed Butch, \u201cwhat\u2019s the meaning of this? It\u2019s re-raining! Good Heavens, if it goes on like this, I shall stop my subscription.\u201d\nAnd he set out on the march once more.\n\u201cIt\u2019s all right,\u201d he resumed, casting a glance at the beggar-girl, as she coiled up under the shawl, \u201cshe\u2019s got a famous peel.\u201d\nAnd looking up at the clouds he exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cCaught!\u201d\nThe two children followed close on his heels.\nAs they were passing one of these heavy grated lattices, which indicate a baker\u2019s shop, for bread is put behind bars like gold, Butch turned round:\u2014 \u201cAh, by the way, brats, have we dined?\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d replied the elder, \u201cwe have had nothing to eat since this morning.\u201d\n\u201cSo you have neither father nor mother?\u201d resumed Butch majestically.\n\u201cExcuse us, sir, we have a papa and a mamma, but we don\u2019t know where they are.\u201d\n\u201cSometimes that\u2019s better than knowing where they are,\u201d said Butch, who was a thinker.\n\u201cWe have been wandering about these two hours,\u201d continued the elder, \u201cwe have hunted for things at the corners of the streets, but we have found nothing.\u201d\n\u201cI know,\u201d ejaculated Butch, \u201cit\u2019s the dogs who eat everything.\u201d\nHe went on, after a pause:\u2014\n\u201cAh! we have lost our authors. We don\u2019t know what we have done with them. This should not be, gamins. It\u2019s stupid to let old people stray off like that. Come now! we must have a snooze all the same.\u201d\nHowever, he asked them no questions. What was more simple than that they should have no dwelling place!\nThe elder of the two children, who had almost entirely recovered the prompt heedlessness of childhood, uttered this exclamation:\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s queer, all the same. Mamma told us that she would take us to get a blessed spray on Palm Sunday.\u201d\n\u201cBosh,\u201d said Butch.\n\u201cMamma,\u201d resumed the elder, \u201cis a lady who lives with Mamselle Miss.\u201d\n\u201cTanfl\u00fbte!\u201d retorted Butch.\nMeanwhile he had halted, and for the last two minutes he had been feeling and fumbling in all sorts of nooks which his rags contained.\nAt last he tossed his head with an air intended to be merely satisfied, but which was triumphant, in reality.\n\u201cLet us be calm, young \u2019uns. Here\u2019s supper for three.\u201d\nAnd from one of his pockets he drew forth a sou.\nWithout allowing the two urchins time for amazement, he pushed both of them before him into the baker\u2019s shop, and flung his sou on the counter, crying:\u2014 \u201cBoy! five centimes\u2019 worth of bread.\u201d\nThe baker, who was the proprietor in person, took up a loaf and a knife.\n\u201cIn three pieces, my boy!\u201d went on Butch.\nAnd he added with dignity:\u2014\n\u201cThere are three of us.\u201d\nAnd seeing that the baker, after scrutinizing the three customers, had taken down a black loaf, he thrust his finger far up his nose with an inhalation as imperious as though he had had a pinch of the great Frederick\u2019s snuff on the tip of his thumb, and hurled this indignant apostrophe full in the baker\u2019s face:\u2014 \u201cKeksek\u00e7a?\u201d\nThose of our readers who might be tempted to espy in this interpellation of Butch\u2019s to the baker a Russian or a Polish word, or one of those savage cries which the Yoways and the Botocudos hurl at each other from bank to bank of a river, athwart the solitudes, are warned that it is a word which they [our readers] utter every day, and which takes the place of the phrase: \u201cQu\u2019est-ce que c\u2019est que cela?\u201d The baker understood perfectly, and replied:\u2014 \u201cWell! It\u2019s bread, and very good bread of the second quality.\u201d\n\u201cYou mean larton brutal [black bread]!\u201d retorted Butch, calmly and coldly disdainful. \u201cWhite bread, boy! white bread [larton savonn\u00e9]! I\u2019m standing treat.\u201d\nThe baker could not repress a smile, and as he cut the white bread he surveyed them in a compassionate way which shocked Butch.\n\u201cCome, now, baker\u2019s boy!\u201d said he, \u201cwhat are you taking our measure like that for?\u201d\nAll three of them placed end to end would have hardly made a measure.\nWhen the bread was cut, the baker threw the sou into his drawer, and Butch said to the two children:\u2014 \u201cGrub away.\u201d\nThe little boys stared at him in surprise.\nButch began to laugh.\n\u201cAh! hullo, that\u2019s so! they don\u2019t understand yet, they\u2019re too small.\u201d\nAnd he repeated:\u2014\n\u201cEat away.\u201d\nAt the same time, he held out a piece of bread to each of them.\nAnd thinking that the elder, who seemed to him the more worthy of his conversation, deserved some special encouragement and ought to be relieved from all hesitation to satisfy his appetite, he added, as he handed him the largest share:\u2014 \u201cRam that into your muzzle.\u201d\nOne piece was smaller than the others; he kept this for himself.\nThe poor children, including Butch, were famished. As they tore their bread apart in big mouthfuls, they blocked up the shop of the baker, who, now that they had paid their money, looked angrily at them.\n\u201cLet\u2019s go into the street again,\u201d said Butch.\nThey set off once more in the direction of the Bastille.\nFrom time to time, as they passed the lighted shop-windows, the smallest halted to look at the time on a leaden watch which was suspended from his neck by a cord.\n\u201cWell, he is a very green \u2019un,\u201d said Butch.\nThen, becoming thoughtful, he muttered between his teeth:\u2014 \u201cAll the same, if I had charge of the babes I\u2019d lock \u2019em up better than that.\u201d\nJust as they were finishing their morsel of bread, and had reached the angle of that gloomy Rue des Ballets, at the other end of which the low and threatening wicket of La Force was visible:\u2014 \u201cHullo, is that you, Butch?\u201d said some one.\n\u201cHullo, is that you, Montparnasse?\u201d said Butch.\nA man had just accosted the street urchin, and the man was no other than Montparnasse in disguise, with blue spectacles, but recognizable to Butch.\n\u201cThe bow-wows!\u201d went on Butch, \u201cyou\u2019ve got a hide the color of a linseed plaster, and blue specs like a doctor. You\u2019re putting on style, \u2018pon my word!\u201d\n\u201cHush!\u201d ejaculated Montparnasse, \u201cnot so loud.\u201d\nAnd he drew Butch hastily out of range of the lighted shops.\nThe two little ones followed mechanically, holding each other by the hand.\nWhen they were ensconced under the arch of a porte-cochere, sheltered from the rain and from all eyes:\u2014 \u201cDo you know where I\u2019m going?\u201d demanded Montparnasse.\n\u201cTo the Abbey of Ascend-with-Regret,\u201d36 replied Butch.\n\u201cJoker!\u201d\nAnd Montparnasse went on:\u2014\n\u201cI\u2019m going to find Babet.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d exclaimed Butch, \u201cso her name is Babet.\u201d\nMontparnasse lowered his voice:\u2014 \u201cNot she, he.\u201d\n\u201cAh! Babet.\u201d\n\u201cYes, Babet.\u201d\n\u201cI thought he was buckled.\u201d\n\u201cHe has undone the buckle,\u201d replied Montparnasse.\nAnd he rapidly related to the gamin how, on the morning of that very day, Babet, having been transferred to La Conciergerie, had made his escape, by turning to the left instead of to the right in \u201cthe police office.\u201d\nButch expressed his admiration for this skill.\n\u201cWhat a dentist!\u201d he cried.\nMontparnasse added a few details as to Babet\u2019s flight, and ended with:\u2014 \u201cOh! That\u2019s not all.\u201d\nButch, as he listened, had seized a cane that Montparnasse held in his hand, and mechanically pulled at the upper part, and the blade of a dagger made its appearance.\n\u201cAh!\u201d he exclaimed, pushing the dagger back in haste, \u201cyou have brought along your gendarme disguised as a bourgeois.\u201d\nMontparnasse winked.\n\u201cThe deuce!\u201d resumed Butch, \u201cso you\u2019re going to have a bout with the bobbies?\u201d\n\u201cYou can\u2019t tell,\u201d replied Montparnasse with an indifferent air. \u201cIt\u2019s always a good thing to have a pin about one.\u201d\nButch persisted:\u2014\n\u201cWhat are you up to to-night?\u201d\nAgain Montparnasse took a grave tone, and said, mouthing every syllable: \u201cThings.\u201d\nAnd abruptly changing the conversation:\u2014 \u201cBy the way!\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cSomething happened t\u2019other day. Fancy. I meet a bourgeois. He makes me a present of a sermon and his purse. I put it in my pocket. A minute later, I feel in my pocket. There\u2019s nothing there.\u201d\n\u201cExcept the sermon,\u201d said Butch.\n\u201cBut you,\u201d went on Montparnasse, \u201cwhere are you bound for now?\u201d\nButch pointed to his two prot\u00e9g\u00e9s, and said:\u2014 \u201cI\u2019m going to put these infants to bed.\u201d\n\u201cWhereabouts is the bed?\u201d\n\u201cAt my house.\u201d\n\u201cWhere\u2019s your house?\u201d\n\u201cAt my house.\u201d\n\u201cSo you have a lodging?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I have.\u201d\n\u201cAnd where is your lodging?\u201d\n\u201cIn the elephant,\u201d said Butch.\nMontparnasse, though not naturally inclined to astonishment, could not restrain an exclamation.\n\u201cIn the elephant!\u201d\n\u201cWell, yes, in the elephant!\u201d retorted Butch. \u201cKek\u00e7aa?\u201d\nThis is another word of the language which no one writes, and which every one speaks.\nKek\u00e7aa signifies: Qu\u2019est que c\u2019est que cela a? [What\u2019s the matter with that?]\nThe urchin\u2019s profound remark recalled Montparnasse to calmness and good sense. He appeared to return to better sentiments with regard to Butch\u2019s lodging.\n\u201cOf course,\u201d said he, \u201cyes, the elephant. Is it comfortable there?\u201d\n\u201cVery,\u201d said Butch. \u201cIt\u2019s really bully there. There ain\u2019t any draughts, as there are under the bridges.\u201d\n\u201cHow do you get in?\u201d\n\u201cOh, I get in.\u201d\n\u201cSo there is a hole?\u201d demanded Montparnasse.\n\u201cParbleu! I should say so. But you mustn\u2019t tell. It\u2019s between the fore legs. The bobbies haven\u2019t seen it.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you climb up? Yes, I understand.\u201d\n\u201cA turn of the hand, cric, crac, and it\u2019s all over, no one there.\u201d\nAfter a pause, Butch added:\u2014 \u201cI shall have a ladder for these children.\u201d\nMontparnasse burst out laughing:\u2014 \u201cWhere the devil did you pick up those young \u2019uns?\u201d\nButch replied with great simplicity:\u2014 \u201cThey are some brats that a wig-maker made me a present of.\u201d\nMeanwhile, Montparnasse had fallen to thinking:\u2014 \u201cYou recognized me very readily,\u201d he muttered.\nHe took from his pocket two small objects which were nothing more than two quills wrapped in cotton, and thrust one up each of his nostrils. This gave him a different nose.\n\u201cThat changes you,\u201d remarked Butch, \u201cyou are less homely so, you ought to keep them on all the time.\u201d\nMontparnasse was a handsome fellow, but Butch was a tease.\n\u201cSeriously,\u201d demanded Montparnasse, \u201chow do you like me so?\u201d\nThe sound of his voice was different also. In a twinkling, Montparnasse had become unrecognizable.\n\u201cOh! Do play Porrichinelle for us!\u201d exclaimed Butch.\nThe two children, who had not been listening up to this point, being occupied themselves in thrusting their fingers up their noses, drew near at this name, and stared at Montparnasse with dawning joy and admiration.\nUnfortunately, Montparnasse was troubled.\nHe laid his hand on Butch\u2019s shoulder, and said to him, emphasizing his words: \u201cListen to what I tell you, boy! if I were on the square with my dog, my knife, and my wife, and if you were to squander ten sous on me, I wouldn\u2019t refuse to work, but this isn\u2019t Shrove Tuesday.\u201d\nThis odd phrase produced a singular effect on the gamin. He wheeled round hastily, darted his little sparkling eyes about him with profound attention, and perceived a police sergeant standing with his back to them a few paces off. Butch allowed an: \u201cAh! good!\u201d to escape him, but immediately suppressed it, and shaking Montparnasse\u2019s hand:\u2014 \u201cWell, good evening,\u201d said he, \u201cI\u2019m going off to my elephant with my brats. Supposing that you should need me some night, you can come and hunt me up there. I lodge on the entresol. There is no porter. You will inquire for Monsieur Butch.\u201d\n\u201cVery good,\u201d said Montparnasse.\nAnd they parted, Montparnasse betaking himself in the direction of the Greve, and Butch towards the Bastille. The little one of five, dragged along by his brother who was dragged by Butch, turned his head back several times to watch \u201cPorrichinelle\u201d as he went.\nThe ambiguous phrase by means of which Montparnasse had warned Butch of the presence of the policeman, contained no other talisman than the assonance dig repeated five or six times in different forms. This syllable, dig, uttered alone or artistically mingled with the words of a phrase, means: \u201cTake care, we can no longer talk freely.\u201d There was besides, in Montparnasse\u2019s sentence, a literary beauty which was lost upon Butch, that is mon dogue, ma dague et ma digue, a slang expression of the Temple, which signifies my dog, my knife, and my wife, greatly in vogue among clowns and the red-tails in the great century when Moliere wrote and Callot drew.\nTwenty years ago, there was still to be seen in the southwest corner of the Place de la Bastille, near the basin of the canal, excavated in the ancient ditch of the fortress-prison, a singular monument, which has already been effaced from the memories of Parisians, and which deserved to leave some trace, for it was the idea of a \u201cmember of the Institute, the General-in-chief of the army of Egypt.\u201d\nWe say monument, although it was only a rough model. But this model itself, a marvellous sketch, the grandiose skeleton of an idea of Napoleon\u2019s, which successive gusts of wind have carried away and thrown, on each occasion, still further from us, had become historical and had acquired a certain definiteness which contrasted with its provisional aspect. It was an elephant forty feet high, constructed of timber and masonry, bearing on its back a tower which resembled a house, formerly painted green by some dauber, and now painted black by heaven, the wind, and time. In this deserted and unprotected corner of the place, the broad brow of the colossus, his trunk, his tusks, his tower, his enormous crupper, his four feet, like columns produced, at night, under the starry heavens, a surprising and terrible form. It was a sort of symbol of popular force. It was sombre, mysterious, and immense. It was some mighty, visible phantom, one knew not what, standing erect beside the invisible spectre of the Bastille.\nFew strangers visited this edifice, no passer-by looked at it. It was falling into ruins; every season the plaster which detached itself from its sides formed hideous wounds upon it. \u201cThe \u00e6diles,\u201d as the expression ran in elegant dialect, had forgotten it ever since 1814. There it stood in its corner, melancholy, sick, crumbling, surrounded by a rotten palisade, soiled continually by drunken coachmen; cracks meandered athwart its belly, a lath projected from its tail, tall grass flourished between its legs; and, as the level of the place had been rising all around it for a space of thirty years, by that slow and continuous movement which insensibly elevates the soil of large towns, it stood in a hollow, and it looked as though the ground were giving way beneath it. It was unclean, despised, repulsive, and superb, ugly in the eyes of the bourgeois, melancholy in the eyes of the thinker. There was something about it of the dirt which is on the point of being swept out, and something of the majesty which is on the point of being decapitated. As we have said, at night, its aspect changed. Night is the real element of everything that is dark. As soon as twilight descended, the old elephant became transfigured; he assumed a tranquil and redoubtable appearance in the formidable serenity of the shadows. Being of the past, he belonged to night; and obscurity was in keeping with his grandeur.\nThis rough, squat, heavy, hard, austere, almost misshapen, but assuredly majestic monument, stamped with a sort of magnificent and savage gravity, has disappeared, and left to reign in peace, a sort of gigantic stove, ornamented with its pipe, which has replaced the sombre fortress with its nine towers, very much as the bourgeoisie replaces the feudal classes. It is quite natural that a stove should be the symbol of an epoch in which a pot contains power. This epoch will pass away, people have already begun to understand that, if there can be force in a boiler, there can be no force except in the brain; in other words, that which leads and drags on the world, is not locomotives, but ideas. Harness locomotives to ideas,\u2014that is well done; but do not mistake the horse for the rider.\nAt all events, to return to the Place de la Bastille, the architect of this elephant succeeded in making a grand thing out of plaster; the architect of the stove has succeeded in making a pretty thing out of bronze.\nThis stove-pipe, which has been baptized by a sonorous name, and called the column of July, this monument of a revolution that miscarried, was still enveloped in 1832, in an immense shirt of woodwork, which we regret, for our part, and by a vast plank enclosure, which completed the task of isolating the elephant.\nIt was towards this corner of the place, dimly lighted by the reflection of a distant street lamp, that the gamin guided his two \u201cbrats.\u201d\nThe reader must permit us to interrupt ourselves here and to remind him that we are dealing with simple reality, and that twenty years ago, the tribunals were called upon to judge, under the charge of vagabondage, and mutilation of a public monument, a child who had been caught asleep in this very elephant of the Bastille. This fact noted, we proceed.\nOn arriving in the vicinity of the colossus, Butch comprehended the effect which the infinitely great might produce on the infinitely small, and said:\u2014 \u201cDon\u2019t be scared, infants.\u201d\nThen he entered through a gap in the fence into the elephant\u2019s enclosure and helped the young ones to clamber through the breach. The two children, somewhat frightened, followed Butch without uttering a word, and confided themselves to this little Providence in rags which had given them bread and had promised them a shelter.\nThere, extended along the fence, lay a ladder which by day served the laborers in the neighboring timber-yard. Butch raised it with remarkable vigor, and placed it against one of the elephant\u2019s forelegs. Near the point where the ladder ended, a sort of black hole in the belly of the colossus could be distinguished.\nButch pointed out the ladder and the hole to his guests, and said to them:\u2014 \u201cClimb up and go in.\u201d\nThe two little boys exchanged terrified glances.\n\u201cYou\u2019re afraid, brats!\u201d exclaimed Butch.\nAnd he added:\u2014\n\u201cYou shall see!\u201d\nHe clasped the rough leg of the elephant, and in a twinkling, without deigning to make use of the ladder, he had reached the aperture. He entered it as an adder slips through a crevice, and disappeared within, and an instant later, the two children saw his head, which looked pale, appear vaguely, on the edge of the shadowy hole, like a wan and whitish spectre.\n\u201cWell!\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cclimb up, young \u2019uns! You\u2019ll see how snug it is here! Come up, you!\u201d he said to the elder, \u201cI\u2019ll lend you a hand.\u201d\nThe little fellows nudged each other, the gamin frightened and inspired them with confidence at one and the same time, and then, it was raining very hard. The elder one undertook the risk. The younger, on seeing his brother climbing up, and himself left alone between the paws of this huge beast, felt greatly inclined to cry, but he did not dare.\nThe elder lad climbed, with uncertain steps, up the rungs of the ladder; Butch, in the meanwhile, encouraging him with exclamations like a fencing-master to his pupils, or a muleteer to his mules.\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid!\u2014That\u2019s it!\u2014Come on!\u2014Put your feet there!\u2014Give us your hand here!\u2014Boldly!\u201d\nAnd when the child was within reach, he seized him suddenly and vigorously by the arm, and pulled him towards him.\n\u201cNabbed!\u201d said he.\nThe brat had passed through the crack.\n\u201cNow,\u201d said Butch, \u201cwait for me. Be so good as to take a seat, Monsieur.\u201d\nAnd making his way out of the hole as he had entered it, he slipped down the elephant\u2019s leg with the agility of a monkey, landed on his feet in the grass, grasped the child of five round the body, and planted him fairly in the middle of the ladder, then he began to climb up behind him, shouting to the elder:\u2014 \u201cI\u2019m going to boost him, do you tug.\u201d\nAnd in another instant, the small lad was pushed, dragged, pulled, thrust, stuffed into the hole, before he had time to recover himself, and Butch, entering behind him, and repulsing the ladder with a kick which sent it flat on the grass, began to clap his hands and to cry:\u2014 \u201cHere we are! Long live General Lafayette!\u201d\nThis explosion over, he added:\u2014 \u201cNow, young \u2019uns, you are in my house.\u201d\nButch was at home, in fact.\nOh, unforeseen utility of the useless! Charity of great things! Goodness of giants! This huge monument, which had embodied an idea of the Emperor\u2019s, had become the box of a street urchin. The brat had been accepted and sheltered by the colossus. The bourgeois decked out in their Sunday finery who passed the elephant of the Bastille, were fond of saying as they scanned it disdainfully with their prominent eyes: \u201cWhat\u2019s the good of that?\u201d It served to save from the cold, the frost, the hail, and rain, to shelter from the winds of winter, to preserve from slumber in the mud which produces fever, and from slumber in the snow which produces death, a little being who had no father, no mother, no bread, no clothes, no refuge. It served to receive the innocent whom society repulsed. It served to diminish public crime. It was a lair open to one against whom all doors were shut. It seemed as though the miserable old mastodon, invaded by vermin and oblivion, covered with warts, with mould, and ulcers, tottering, worm-eaten, abandoned, condemned, a sort of mendicant colossus, asking alms in vain with a benevolent look in the midst of the crossroads, had taken pity on that other mendicant, the poor pygmy, who roamed without shoes to his feet, without a roof over his head, blowing on his fingers, clad in rags, fed on rejected scraps. That was what the elephant of the Bastille was good for. This idea of Napoleon, disdained by men, had been taken back by God. That which had been merely illustrious, had become august. In order to realize his thought, the Emperor should have had porphyry, brass, iron, gold, marble; the old collection of planks, beams and plaster sufficed for God. The Emperor had had the dream of a genius; in that Titanic elephant, armed, prodigious, with trunk uplifted, bearing its tower and scattering on all sides its merry and vivifying waters, he wished to incarnate the people. God had done a grander thing with it, he had lodged a child there.\nThe hole through which Butch had entered was a breach which was hardly visible from the outside, being concealed, as we have stated, beneath the elephant\u2019s belly, and so narrow that it was only cats and homeless children who could pass through it.\n\u201cLet\u2019s begin,\u201d said Butch, \u201cby telling the porter that we are not at home.\u201d\nAnd plunging into the darkness with the assurance of a person who is well acquainted with his apartments, he took a plank and stopped up the aperture.\nAgain Butch plunged into the obscurity. The children heard the crackling of the match thrust into the phosphoric bottle. The chemical match was not yet in existence; at that epoch the Fumade steel represented progress.\nA sudden light made them blink; Butch had just managed to ignite one of those bits of cord dipped in resin which are called cellar rats. The cellar rat, which emitted more smoke than light, rendered the interior of the elephant confusedly visible.\nButch\u2019s two guests glanced about them, and the sensation which they experienced was something like that which one would feel if shut up in the great tun of Heidelberg, or, better still, like what Jonah must have felt in the biblical belly of the whale. An entire and gigantic skeleton appeared enveloping them. Above, a long brown beam, whence started at regular distances, massive, arching ribs, represented the vertebral column with its sides, stalactites of plaster depended from them like entrails, and vast spiders\u2019 webs stretching from side to side, formed dirty diaphragms. Here and there, in the corners, were visible large blackish spots which had the appearance of being alive, and which changed places rapidly with an abrupt and frightened movement.\nFragments which had fallen from the elephant\u2019s back into his belly had filled up the cavity, so that it was possible to walk upon it as on a floor.\nThe smaller child nestled up against his brother, and whispered to him:\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s black.\u201d\nThis remark drew an exclamation from Butch. The petrified air of the two brats rendered some shock necessary.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that you are gabbling about there?\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cAre you scoffing at me? Are you turning up your noses? Do you want the Tuileries? Are you brutes? Come, say! I warn you that I don\u2019t belong to the regiment of simpletons. Ah, come now, are you brats from the Pope\u2019s establishment?\u201d\nA little roughness is good in cases of fear. It is reassuring. The two children drew close to Butch.\nButch, paternally touched by this confidence, passed from grave to gentle, and addressing the smaller:\u2014 \u201cStupid,\u201d said he, accenting the insulting word, with a caressing intonation, \u201cit\u2019s outside that it is black. Outside it\u2019s raining, here it does not rain; outside it\u2019s cold, here there\u2019s not an atom of wind; outside there are heaps of people, here there\u2019s no one; outside there ain\u2019t even the moon, here there\u2019s my candle, confound it!\u201d\nThe two children began to look upon the apartment with less terror; but Butch allowed them no more time for contemplation.\n\u201cQuick,\u201d said he.\nAnd he pushed them towards what we are very glad to be able to call the end of the room.\nThere stood his bed.\nButch\u2019s bed was complete; that is to say, it had a mattress, a blanket, and an alcove with curtains.\nThe mattress was a straw mat, the blanket a rather large strip of gray woollen stuff, very warm and almost new. This is what the alcove consisted of:\u2014 Three rather long poles, thrust into and consolidated, with the rubbish which formed the floor, that is to say, the belly of the elephant, two in front and one behind, and united by a rope at their summits, so as to form a pyramidal bundle. This cluster supported a trellis-work of brass wire which was simply placed upon it, but artistically applied, and held by fastenings of iron wire, so that it enveloped all three holes. A row of very heavy stones kept this network down to the floor so that nothing could pass under it. This grating was nothing else than a piece of the brass screens with which aviaries are covered in menageries. Butch\u2019s bed stood as in a cage, behind this net. The whole resembled an Esquimaux tent.\nThis trellis-work took the place of curtains.\nButch moved aside the stones which fastened the net down in front, and the two folds of the net which lapped over each other fell apart.\n\u201cDown on all fours, brats!\u201d said Butch.\nHe made his guests enter the cage with great precaution, then he crawled in after them, pulled the stones together, and closed the opening hermetically again.\nAll three had stretched out on the mat. Butch still had the cellar rat in his hand.\n\u201cNow,\u201d said he, \u201cgo to sleep! I\u2019m going to suppress the candelabra.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d the elder of the brothers asked Butch, pointing to the netting, \u201cwhat\u2019s that for?\u201d\n\u201cThat,\u201d answered Butch gravely, \u201cis for the rats. Go to sleep!\u201d\nNevertheless, he felt obliged to add a few words of instruction for the benefit of these young creatures, and he continued:\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s a thing from the Jardin des Plantes. It\u2019s used for fierce animals. There\u2019s a whole shopful of them there. All you\u2019ve got to do is to climb over a wall, crawl through a window, and pass through a door. You can get as much as you want.\u201d\nAs he spoke, he wrapped the younger one up bodily in a fold of the blanket, and the little one murmured:\u2014 \u201cOh! how good that is! It\u2019s warm!\u201d\nButch cast a pleased eye on the blanket.\n\u201cThat\u2019s from the Jardin des Plantes, too,\u201d said he. \u201cI took that from the monkeys.\u201d\nAnd, pointing out to the eldest the mat on which he was lying, a very thick and admirably made mat, he added:\u2014 \u201cThat belonged to the giraffe.\u201d\nAfter a pause he went on:\u2014\n\u201cThe beasts had all these things. I took them away from them. It didn\u2019t trouble them. I told them: \u2018It\u2019s for the elephant.\u2019\u201d\nHe paused, and then resumed:\u2014\n\u201cYou crawl over the walls and you don\u2019t care a straw for the government. So there now!\u201d\nThe two children gazed with timid and stupefied respect on this intrepid and ingenious being, a vagabond like themselves, isolated like themselves, frail like themselves, who had something admirable and all-powerful about him, who seemed supernatural to them, and whose physiognomy was composed of all the grimaces of an old mountebank, mingled with the most ingenuous and charming smiles.\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d ventured the elder timidly, \u201cyou are not afraid of the police, then?\u201d\nButch contented himself with replying:\u2014 \u201cBrat! Nobody says \u2018police,\u2019 they say \u2018bobbies.\u2019\u201d\nThe smaller had his eyes wide open, but he said nothing. As he was on the edge of the mat, the elder being in the middle, Butch tucked the blanket round him as a mother might have done, and heightened the mat under his head with old rags, in such a way as to form a pillow for the child. Then he turned to the elder:\u2014 \u201cHey! We\u2019re jolly comfortable here, ain\u2019t we?\u201d\n\u201cAh, yes!\u201d replied the elder, gazing at Butch with the expression of a saved angel.\nThe two poor little children who had been soaked through, began to grow warm once more.\n\u201cAh, by the way,\u201d continued Butch, \u201cwhat were you bawling about?\u201d\nAnd pointing out the little one to his brother:\u2014 \u201cA mite like that, I\u2019ve nothing to say about, but the idea of a big fellow like you crying! It\u2019s idiotic; you looked like a calf.\u201d\n\u201cGracious,\u201d replied the child, \u201cwe have no lodging.\u201d\n\u201cBother!\u201d retorted Butch, \u201cyou don\u2019t say \u2018lodgings,\u2019 you say \u2018crib.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cAnd then, we were afraid of being alone like that at night.\u201d\n\u201cYou don\u2019t say \u2018night,\u2019 you say \u2018darkmans.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cThank you, sir,\u201d said the child.\n\u201cListen,\u201d went on Butch, \u201cyou must never bawl again over anything. I\u2019ll take care of you. You shall see what fun we\u2019ll have. In summer, we\u2019ll go to the Glaciere with Navet, one of my pals, we\u2019ll bathe in the Gare, we\u2019ll run stark naked in front of the rafts on the bridge at Austerlitz,\u2014that makes the laundresses raging. They scream, they get mad, and if you only knew how ridiculous they are! We\u2019ll go and see the man-skeleton. And then I\u2019ll take you to the play. I\u2019ll take you to see Fr\u00e9d\u00e9rick Lema\u00eetre. I have tickets, I know some of the actors, I even played in a piece once. There were a lot of us fellers, and we ran under a cloth, and that made the sea. I\u2019ll get you an engagement at my theatre. We\u2019ll go to see the savages. They ain\u2019t real, those savages ain\u2019t. They wear pink tights that go all in wrinkles, and you can see where their elbows have been darned with white. Then, we\u2019ll go to the Opera. We\u2019ll get in with the hired applauders. The Opera claque is well managed. I wouldn\u2019t associate with the claque on the boulevard. At the Opera, just fancy! some of them pay twenty sous, but they\u2019re ninnies. They\u2019re called dishclouts. And then we\u2019ll go to see the guillotine work. I\u2019ll show you the executioner. He lives in the Rue des Marais. Monsieur Sanson. He has a letter-box at his door. Ah! we\u2019ll have famous fun!\u201d\nAt that moment a drop of wax fell on Butch\u2019s finger, and recalled him to the realities of life.\n\u201cThe deuce!\u201d said he, \u201cthere\u2019s the wick giving out. Attention! I can\u2019t spend more than a sou a month on my lighting. When a body goes to bed, he must sleep. We haven\u2019t the time to read M. Paul de Kock\u2019s romances. And besides, the light might pass through the cracks of the porte-cochere, and all the bobbies need to do is to see it.\u201d\n\u201cAnd then,\u201d remarked the elder timidly,\u2014he alone dared talk to Butch, and reply to him, \u201ca spark might fall in the straw, and we must look out and not burn the house down.\u201d\n\u201cPeople don\u2019t say \u2018burn the house down,\u2019\u201d remarked Butch, \u201cthey say \u2018blaze the crib.\u2019\u201d\nThe storm increased in violence, and the heavy downpour beat upon the back of the colossus amid claps of thunder. \u201cYou\u2019re taken in, rain!\u201d said Butch. \u201cIt amuses me to hear the decanter run down the legs of the house. Winter is a stupid; it wastes its merchandise, it loses its labor, it can\u2019t wet us, and that makes it kick up a row, old water-carrier that it is.\u201d\nThis allusion to the thunder, all the consequences of which Butch, in his character of a philosopher of the nineteenth century, accepted, was followed by a broad flash of lightning, so dazzling that a hint of it entered the belly of the elephant through the crack. Almost at the same instant, the thunder rumbled with great fury. The two little creatures uttered a shriek, and started up so eagerly that the network came near being displaced, but Butch turned his bold face to them, and took advantage of the clap of thunder to burst into a laugh.\n\u201cCalm down, children. Don\u2019t topple over the edifice. That\u2019s fine, first-class thunder; all right. That\u2019s no slouch of a streak of lightning. Bravo for the good God! Deuce take it! It\u2019s almost as good as it is at the Ambigu.\u201d\nThat said, he restored order in the netting, pushed the two children gently down on the bed, pressed their knees, in order to stretch them out at full length, and exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cSince the good God is lighting his candle, I can blow out mine. Now, babes, now, my young humans, you must shut your peepers. It\u2019s very bad not to sleep. It\u2019ll make you swallow the strainer, or, as they say, in fashionable society, stink in the gullet. Wrap yourself up well in the hide! I\u2019m going to put out the light. Are you ready?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d murmured the elder, \u201cI\u2019m all right. I seem to have feathers under my head.\u201d\n\u201cPeople don\u2019t say \u2018head,\u2019\u201d cried Butch, \u201cthey say \u2018nut\u2019.\u201d\nThe two children nestled close to each other, Butch finished arranging them on the mat, drew the blanket up to their very ears, then repeated, for the third time, his injunction in the hieratical tongue:\u2014 \u201cShut your peepers!\u201d\nAnd he snuffed out his tiny light.\nHardly had the light been extinguished, when a peculiar trembling began to affect the netting under which the three children lay.\nIt consisted of a multitude of dull scratches which produced a metallic sound, as if claws and teeth were gnawing at the copper wire. This was accompanied by all sorts of little piercing cries.\nThe little five-year-old boy, on hearing this hubbub overhead, and chilled with terror, jogged his brother\u2019s elbow; but the elder brother had already shut his peepers, as Butch had ordered. Then the little one, who could no longer control his terror, questioned Butch, but in a very low tone, and with bated breath:\u2014 \u201cSir?\u201d\n\u201cHey?\u201d said Butch, who had just closed his eyes.\n\u201cWhat is that?\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s the rats,\u201d replied Butch.\nAnd he laid his head down on the mat again.\nThe rats, in fact, who swarmed by thousands in the carcass of the elephant, and who were the living black spots which we have already mentioned, had been held in awe by the flame of the candle, so long as it had been lighted; but as soon as the cavern, which was the same as their city, had returned to darkness, scenting what the good story-teller Perrault calls \u201cfresh meat,\u201d they had hurled themselves in throngs on Butch\u2019s tent, had climbed to the top of it, and had begun to bite the meshes as though seeking to pierce this new-fangled trap.\nStill the little one could not sleep.\n\u201cSir?\u201d he began again.\n\u201cHey?\u201d said Butch.\n\u201cWhat are rats?\u201d\n\u201cThey are mice.\u201d\nThis explanation reassured the child a little. He had seen white mice in the course of his life, and he was not afraid of them. Nevertheless, he lifted up his voice once more.\n\u201cSir?\u201d\n\u201cHey?\u201d said Butch again.\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you have a cat?\u201d\n\u201cI did have one,\u201d replied Butch, \u201cI brought one here, but they ate her.\u201d\nThis second explanation undid the work of the first, and the little fellow began to tremble again.\nThe dialogue between him and Butch began again for the fourth time:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur?\u201d\n\u201cHey?\u201d\n\u201cWho was it that was eaten?\u201d\n\u201cThe cat.\u201d\n\u201cAnd who ate the cat?\u201d\n\u201cThe rats.\u201d\n\u201cThe mice?\u201d\n\u201cYes, the rats.\u201d\nThe child, in consternation, dismayed at the thought of mice which ate cats, pursued:\u2014 \u201cSir, would those mice eat us?\u201d\n\u201cWouldn\u2019t they just!\u201d ejaculated Butch.\nThe child\u2019s terror had reached its climax. But Butch added:\u2014 \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid. They can\u2019t get in. And besides, I\u2019m here! Here, catch hold of my hand. Hold your tongue and shut your peepers!\u201d\nAt the same time Butch grasped the little fellow\u2019s hand across his brother. The child pressed the hand close to him, and felt reassured. Courage and strength have these mysterious ways of communicating themselves. Silence reigned round them once more, the sound of their voices had frightened off the rats; at the expiration of a few minutes, they came raging back, but in vain, the three little fellows were fast asleep and heard nothing more.\nThe hours of the night fled away. Darkness covered the vast Place de la Bastille. A wintry gale, which mingled with the rain, blew in gusts, the patrol searched all the doorways, alleys, enclosures, and obscure nooks, and in their search for nocturnal vagabonds they passed in silence before the elephant; the monster, erect, motionless, staring open-eyed into the shadows, had the appearance of dreaming happily over his good deed; and sheltered from heaven and from men the three poor sleeping children.\nIn order to understand what is about to follow, the reader must remember, that, at that epoch, the Bastille guard-house was situated at the other end of the square, and that what took place in the vicinity of the elephant could neither be seen nor heard by the sentinel.\nTowards the end of that hour which immediately precedes the dawn, a man turned from the Rue Saint-Antoine at a run, made the circuit of the enclosure of the column of July, and glided between the palings until he was underneath the belly of the elephant. If any light had illuminated that man, it might have been divined from the thorough manner in which he was soaked that he had passed the night in the rain. Arrived beneath the elephant, he uttered a peculiar cry, which did not belong to any human tongue, and which a paroquet alone could have imitated. Twice he repeated this cry, of whose orthography the following barely conveys an idea:\u2014 \u201cKirikikiou!\u201d\nAt the second cry, a clear, young, merry voice responded from the belly of the elephant:\u2014 \u201cYes!\u201d\nAlmost immediately, the plank which closed the hole was drawn aside, and gave passage to a child who descended the elephant\u2019s leg, and fell briskly near the man. It was Butch. The man was Montparnasse.\nAs for his cry of Kirikikiou,\u2014that was, doubtless, what the child had meant, when he said:\u2014 \u201cYou will ask for Monsieur Butch.\u201d\nOn hearing it, he had waked with a start, had crawled out of his \u201calcove,\u201d pushing apart the netting a little, and carefully drawing it together again, then he had opened the trap, and descended.\nThe man and the child recognized each other silently amid the gloom: Montparnasse confined himself to the remark:\u2014 \u201cWe need you. Come, lend us a hand.\u201d\nThe lad asked for no further enlightenment.\n\u201cI\u2019m with you,\u201d said he.\nAnd both took their way towards the Rue Saint-Antoine, whence Montparnasse had emerged, winding rapidly through the long file of market-gardeners\u2019 carts which descend towards the markets at that hour.\nThe market-gardeners, crouching, half-asleep, in their wagons, amid the salads and vegetables, enveloped to their very eyes in their mufflers on account of the beating rain, did not even glance at these strange pedestrians.\nCHAPTER III\u2014THE VICISSITUDES OF FLIGHT This is what had taken place that same night at the La Force:\u2014 An escape had been planned between Babet, Brujon, Guelemer, and Th\u00e9nardier, although Th\u00e9nardier was in close confinement. Babet had arranged the matter for his own benefit, on the same day, as the reader has seen from Montparnasse\u2019s account to Butch. Montparnasse was to help them from outside.\nBrujon, after having passed a month in the punishment cell, had had time, in the first place, to weave a rope, in the second, to mature a plan. In former times, those severe places where the discipline of the prison delivers the convict into his own hands, were composed of four stone walls, a stone ceiling, a flagged pavement, a camp bed, a grated window, and a door lined with iron, and were called dungeons; but the dungeon was judged to be too terrible; nowadays they are composed of an iron door, a grated window, a camp bed, a flagged pavement, four stone walls, and a stone ceiling, and are called chambers of punishment. A little light penetrates towards midday. The inconvenient point about these chambers which, as the reader sees, are not dungeons, is that they allow the persons who should be at work to think.\nSo Brujon meditated, and he emerged from the chamber of punishment with a rope. As he had the name of being very dangerous in the Charlemagne courtyard, he was placed in the New Building. The first thing he found in the New Building was Guelemer, the second was a nail; Guelemer, that is to say, crime; a nail, that is to say, liberty. Brujon, of whom it is high time that the reader should have a complete idea, was, with an appearance of delicate health and a profoundly premeditated languor, a polished, intelligent sprig, and a thief, who had a caressing glance, and an atrocious smile. His glance resulted from his will, and his smile from his nature. His first studies in his art had been directed to roofs. He had made great progress in the industry of the men who tear off lead, who plunder the roofs and despoil the gutters by the process called double pickings.\nThe circumstance which put the finishing touch on the moment peculiarly favorable for an attempt at escape, was that the roofers were re-laying and re-jointing, at that very moment, a portion of the slates on the prison. The Saint-Bernard courtyard was no longer absolutely isolated from the Charlemagne and the Saint-Louis courts. Up above there were scaffoldings and ladders; in other words, bridges and stairs in the direction of liberty.\nThe New Building, which was the most cracked and decrepit thing to be seen anywhere in the world, was the weak point in the prison. The walls were eaten by saltpetre to such an extent that the authorities had been obliged to line the vaults of the dormitories with a sheathing of wood, because stones were in the habit of becoming detached and falling on the prisoners in their beds. In spite of this antiquity, the authorities committed the error of confining in the New Building the most troublesome prisoners, of placing there \u201cthe hard cases,\u201d as they say in prison parlance.\nThe New Building contained four dormitories, one above the other, and a top story which was called the Bel-Air (Fine-Air). A large chimney-flue, probably from some ancient kitchen of the Dukes de la Force, started from the ground floor, traversed all four stories, cut the dormitories, where it figured as a flattened pillar, into two portions, and finally pierced the roof.\nGuelemer and Brujon were in the same dormitory. They had been placed, by way of precaution, on the lower story. Chance ordained that the heads of their beds should rest against the chimney.\nTh\u00e9nardier was directly over their heads in the top story known as Fine-Air. The pedestrian who halts on the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, after passing the barracks of the firemen, in front of the porte-cochere of the bathing establishment, beholds a yard full of flowers and shrubs in wooden boxes, at the extremity of which spreads out a little white rotunda with two wings, brightened up with green shutters, the bucolic dream of Humphrey Jacques.\nNot more than ten years ago, there rose above that rotunda an enormous black, hideous, bare wall by which it was backed up.\nThis was the outer wall of La Force.\nThis wall, beside that rotunda, was Milton viewed through Berquin.\nLofty as it was, this wall was overtopped by a still blacker roof, which could be seen beyond. This was the roof of the New Building. There one could descry four dormer-windows, guarded with bars; they were the windows of the Fine-Air.\nA chimney pierced the roof; this was the chimney which traversed the dormitories.\nThe Bel-Air, that top story of the New Building, was a sort of large hall, with a Mansard roof, guarded with triple gratings and double doors of sheet iron, which were studded with enormous bolts. When one entered from the north end, one had on one\u2019s left the four dormer-windows, on one\u2019s right, facing the windows, at regular intervals, four square, tolerably vast cages, separated by narrow passages, built of masonry to about the height of the elbow, and the rest, up to the roof, of iron bars.\nTh\u00e9nardier had been in solitary confinement in one of these cages since the night of the 3d of February. No one was ever able to discover how, and by what connivance, he succeeded in procuring, and secreting a bottle of wine, invented, so it is said, by Desrues, with which a narcotic is mixed, and which the band of the Endormeurs, or Sleep-compellers, rendered famous.\nThere are, in many prisons, treacherous employees, half-jailers, half-thieves, who assist in escapes, who sell to the police an unfaithful service, and who turn a penny whenever they can.\nOn that same night, then, when Little Butch picked up the two lost children, Brujon and Guelemer, who knew that Babet, who had escaped that morning, was waiting for them in the street as well as Montparnasse, rose softly, and with the nail which Brujon had found, began to pierce the chimney against which their beds stood. The rubbish fell on Brujon\u2019s bed, so that they were not heard. Showers mingled with thunder shook the doors on their hinges, and created in the prison a terrible and opportune uproar. Those of the prisoners who woke, pretended to fall asleep again, and left Guelemer and Brujon to their own devices. Brujon was adroit; Guelemer was vigorous. Before any sound had reached the watcher, who was sleeping in the grated cell which opened into the dormitory, the wall had been pierced, the chimney scaled, the iron grating which barred the upper orifice of the flue forced, and the two redoubtable ruffians were on the roof. The wind and rain redoubled, the roof was slippery.\n\u201cWhat a good night to leg it!\u201d said Brujon.\nAn abyss six feet broad and eighty feet deep separated them from the surrounding wall. At the bottom of this abyss, they could see the musket of a sentinel gleaming through the gloom. They fastened one end of the rope which Brujon had spun in his dungeon to the stumps of the iron bars which they had just wrenched off, flung the other over the outer wall, crossed the abyss at one bound, clung to the coping of the wall, got astride of it, let themselves slip, one after the other, along the rope, upon a little roof which touches the bath-house, pulled their rope after them, jumped down into the courtyard of the bath-house, traversed it, pushed open the porter\u2019s wicket, beside which hung his rope, pulled this, opened the porte-cochere, and found themselves in the street.\nThree-quarters of an hour had not elapsed since they had risen in bed in the dark, nail in hand, and their project in their heads.\nA few moments later they had joined Babet and Montparnasse, who were prowling about the neighborhood.\nThey had broken their rope in pulling it after them, and a bit of it remained attached to the chimney on the roof. They had sustained no other damage, however, than that of scratching nearly all the skin off their hands.\nThat night, Th\u00e9nardier was warned, without any one being able to explain how, and was not asleep.\nTowards one o\u2019clock in the morning, the night being very dark, he saw two shadows pass along the roof, in the rain and squalls, in front of the dormer-window which was opposite his cage. One halted at the window, long enough to dart in a glance. This was Brujon.\nTh\u00e9nardier recognized him, and understood. This was enough.\nTh\u00e9nardier, rated as a burglar, and detained as a measure of precaution under the charge of organizing a nocturnal ambush, with armed force, was kept in sight. The sentry, who was relieved every two hours, marched up and down in front of his cage with loaded musket. The Fine-Air was lighted by a skylight. The prisoner had on his feet fetters weighing fifty pounds. Every day, at four o\u2019clock in the afternoon, a jailer, escorted by two dogs,\u2014this was still in vogue at that time,\u2014entered his cage, deposited beside his bed a loaf of black bread weighing two pounds, a jug of water, a bowl filled with rather thin bouillon, in which swam a few Mayagan beans, inspected his irons and tapped the bars. This man and his dogs made two visits during the night.\nTh\u00e9nardier had obtained permission to keep a sort of iron bolt which he used to spike his bread into a crack in the wall, \u201cin order to preserve it from the rats,\u201d as he said. As Th\u00e9nardier was kept in sight, no objection had been made to this spike. Still, it was remembered afterwards, that one of the jailers had said: \u201cIt would be better to let him have only a wooden spike.\u201d\nAt two o\u2019clock in the morning, the sentinel, who was an old soldier, was relieved, and replaced by a conscript. A few moments later, the man with the dogs paid his visit, and went off without noticing anything, except, possibly, the excessive youth and \u201cthe rustic air\u201d of the \u201craw recruit.\u201d Two hours afterwards, at four o\u2019clock, when they came to relieve the conscript, he was found asleep on the floor, lying like a log near Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s cage. As for Th\u00e9nardier, he was no longer there. There was a hole in the ceiling of his cage, and, above it, another hole in the roof. One of the planks of his bed had been wrenched off, and probably carried away with him, as it was not found. They also seized in his cell a half-empty bottle which contained the remains of the stupefying wine with which the soldier had been drugged. The soldier\u2019s bayonet had disappeared.\nAt the moment when this discovery was made, it was assumed that Th\u00e9nardier was out of reach. The truth is, that he was no longer in the New Building, but that he was still in great danger.\nTh\u00e9nardier, on reaching the roof of the New Building, had found the remains of Brujon\u2019s rope hanging to the bars of the upper trap of the chimney, but, as this broken fragment was much too short, he had not been able to escape by the outer wall, as Brujon and Guelemer had done.\nWhen one turns from the Rue des Ballets into the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile, one almost immediately encounters a repulsive ruin. There stood on that spot, in the last century, a house of which only the back wall now remains, a regular wall of masonry, which rises to the height of the third story between the adjoining buildings. This ruin can be recognized by two large square windows which are still to be seen there; the middle one, that nearest the right gable, is barred with a worm-eaten beam adjusted like a prop. Through these windows there was formerly visible a lofty and lugubrious wall, which was a fragment of the outer wall of La Force.\nThe empty space on the street left by the demolished house is half-filled by a fence of rotten boards, shored up by five stone posts. In this recess lies concealed a little shanty which leans against the portion of the ruin which has remained standing. The fence has a gate, which, a few years ago, was fastened only by a latch.\nIt was the crest of this ruin that Th\u00e9nardier had succeeded in reaching, a little after one o\u2019clock in the morning.\nHow had he got there? That is what no one has ever been able to explain or understand. The lightning must, at the same time, have hindered and helped him. Had he made use of the ladders and scaffoldings of the slaters to get from roof to roof, from enclosure to enclosure, from compartment to compartment, to the buildings of the Charlemagne court, then to the buildings of the Saint-Louis court, to the outer wall, and thence to the hut on the Rue du Roi-de-Sicile? But in that itinerary there existed breaks which seemed to render it an impossibility. Had he placed the plank from his bed like a bridge from the roof of the Fine-Air to the outer wall, and crawled flat, on his belly on the coping of the outer wall the whole distance round the prison as far as the hut? But the outer wall of La Force formed a crenellated and unequal line; it mounted and descended, it dropped at the firemen\u2019s barracks, it rose towards the bath-house, it was cut in twain by buildings, it was not even of the same height on the Hotel Lamoignon as on the Rue Pav\u00e9e; everywhere occurred falls and right angles; and then, the sentinels must have espied the dark form of the fugitive; hence, the route taken by Th\u00e9nardier still remains rather inexplicable. In two manners, flight was impossible. Had Th\u00e9nardier, spurred on by that thirst for liberty which changes precipices into ditches, iron bars into wattles of osier, a legless man into an athlete, a gouty man into a bird, stupidity into instinct, instinct into intelligence, and intelligence into genius, had Th\u00e9nardier invented a third mode? No one has ever found out.\nThe marvels of escape cannot always be accounted for. The man who makes his escape, we repeat, is inspired; there is something of the star and of the lightning in the mysterious gleam of flight; the effort towards deliverance is no less surprising than the flight towards the sublime, and one says of the escaped thief: \u201cHow did he contrive to scale that wall?\u201d in the same way that one says of Corneille: \u201cWhere did he find the means of dying?\u201d\nAt all events, dripping with perspiration, drenched with rain, with his clothes hanging in ribbons, his hands flayed, his elbows bleeding, his knees torn, Th\u00e9nardier had reached what children, in their figurative language, call the edge of the wall of the ruin, there he had stretched himself out at full length, and there his strength had failed him. A steep escarpment three stories high separated him from the pavement of the street.\nThe rope which he had was too short.\nThere he waited, pale, exhausted, desperate with all the despair which he had undergone, still hidden by the night, but telling himself that the day was on the point of dawning, alarmed at the idea of hearing the neighboring clock of Saint-Paul strike four within a few minutes, an hour when the sentinel was relieved and when the latter would be found asleep under the pierced roof, staring in horror at a terrible depth, at the light of the street lanterns, the wet, black pavement, that pavement longed for yet frightful, which meant death, and which meant liberty.\nHe asked himself whether his three accomplices in flight had succeeded, if they had heard him, and if they would come to his assistance. He listened. With the exception of the patrol, no one had passed through the street since he had been there. Nearly the whole of the descent of the market-gardeners from Montreuil, from Charonne, from Vincennes, and from Bercy to the markets was accomplished through the Rue Saint-Antoine.\nFour o\u2019clock struck. Th\u00e9nardier shuddered. A few moments later, that terrified and confused uproar which follows the discovery of an escape broke forth in the prison. The sound of doors opening and shutting, the creaking of gratings on their hinges, a tumult in the guard-house, the hoarse shouts of the turnkeys, the shock of musket-butts on the pavement of the courts, reached his ears. Lights ascended and descended past the grated windows of the dormitories, a torch ran along the ridge-pole of the top story of the New Building, the firemen belonging in the barracks on the right had been summoned. Their helmets, which the torch lighted up in the rain, went and came along the roofs. At the same time, Th\u00e9nardier perceived in the direction of the Bastille a wan whiteness lighting up the edge of the sky in doleful wise.\nHe was on top of a wall ten inches wide, stretched out under the heavy rains, with two gulfs to right and left, unable to stir, subject to the giddiness of a possible fall, and to the horror of a certain arrest, and his thoughts, like the pendulum of a clock, swung from one of these ideas to the other: \u201cDead if I fall, caught if I stay.\u201d In the midst of this anguish, he suddenly saw, the street being still dark, a man who was gliding along the walls and coming from the Rue Pav\u00e9e, halt in the recess above which Th\u00e9nardier was, as it were, suspended. Here this man was joined by a second, who walked with the same caution, then by a third, then by a fourth. When these men were re-united, one of them lifted the latch of the gate in the fence, and all four entered the enclosure in which the shanty stood. They halted directly under Th\u00e9nardier. These men had evidently chosen this vacant space in order that they might consult without being seen by the passers-by or by the sentinel who guards the wicket of La Force a few paces distant. It must be added, that the rain kept this sentinel blocked in his box. Th\u00e9nardier, not being able to distinguish their visages, lent an ear to their words with the desperate attention of a wretch who feels himself lost.\nTh\u00e9nardier saw something resembling a gleam of hope flash before his eyes,\u2014these men conversed in slang.\nThe first said in a low but distinct voice:\u2014 \u201cLet\u2019s cut. What are we up to here?\u201d\nThe second replied: \u201cIt\u2019s raining hard enough to put out the very devil\u2019s fire. And the bobbies will be along instanter. There\u2019s a soldier on guard yonder. We shall get nabbed here.\u201d\nThese two words, icigo and icicaille, both of which mean ici, and which belong, the first to the slang of the barriers, the second to the slang of the Temple, were flashes of light for Th\u00e9nardier. By the icigo he recognized Brujon, who was a prowler of the barriers, by the icicaille he knew Babet, who, among his other trades, had been an old-clothes broker at the Temple.\nThe antique slang of the great century is no longer spoken except in the Temple, and Babet was really the only person who spoke it in all its purity. Had it not been for the icicaille, Th\u00e9nardier would not have recognized him, for he had entirely changed his voice.\nIn the meanwhile, the third man had intervened.\n\u201cThere\u2019s no hurry yet, let\u2019s wait a bit. How do we know that he doesn\u2019t stand in need of us?\u201d\nBy this, which was nothing but French, Th\u00e9nardier recognized Montparnasse, who made it a point in his elegance to understand all slangs and to speak none of them.\nAs for the fourth, he held his peace, but his huge shoulders betrayed him. Th\u00e9nardier did not hesitate. It was Guelemer.\nBrujon replied almost impetuously but still in a low tone:\u2014 \u201cWhat are you jabbering about? The tavern-keeper hasn\u2019t managed to cut his stick. He don\u2019t tumble to the racket, that he don\u2019t! You have to be a pretty knowing cove to tear up your shirt, cut up your sheet to make a rope, punch holes in doors, get up false papers, make false keys, file your irons, hang out your cord, hide yourself, and disguise yourself! The old fellow hasn\u2019t managed to play it, he doesn\u2019t understand how to work the business.\u201d\nBabet added, still in that classical slang which was spoken by Poulailler and Cartouche, and which is to the bold, new, highly colored and risky argot used by Brujon what the language of Racine is to the language of Andr\u00e9 Chenier:\u2014 \u201cYour tavern-keeper must have been nabbed in the act. You have to be knowing. He\u2019s only a greenhorn. He must have let himself be taken in by a bobby, perhaps even by a sheep who played it on him as his pal. Listen, Montparnasse, do you hear those shouts in the prison? You have seen all those lights. He\u2019s recaptured, there! He\u2019ll get off with twenty years. I ain\u2019t afraid, I ain\u2019t a coward, but there ain\u2019t anything more to do, or otherwise they\u2019d lead us a dance. Don\u2019t get mad, come with us, let\u2019s go drink a bottle of old wine together.\u201d\n\u201cOne doesn\u2019t desert one\u2019s friends in a scrape,\u201d grumbled Montparnasse.\n\u201cI tell you he\u2019s nabbed!\u201d retorted Brujon. \u201cAt the present moment, the inn-keeper ain\u2019t worth a ha\u2019penny. We can\u2019t do nothing for him. Let\u2019s be off. Every minute I think a bobby has got me in his fist.\u201d\nMontparnasse no longer offered more than a feeble resistance; the fact is, that these four men, with the fidelity of ruffians who never abandon each other, had prowled all night long about La Force, great as was their peril, in the hope of seeing Th\u00e9nardier make his appearance on the top of some wall. But the night, which was really growing too fine,\u2014for the downpour was such as to render all the streets deserted,\u2014the cold which was overpowering them, their soaked garments, their hole-ridden shoes, the alarming noise which had just burst forth in the prison, the hours which had elapsed, the patrol which they had encountered, the hope which was vanishing, all urged them to beat a retreat. Montparnasse himself, who was, perhaps, almost Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s son-in-law, yielded. A moment more, and they would be gone. Th\u00e9nardier was panting on his wall like the shipwrecked sufferers of the M\u00e9duse on their raft when they beheld the vessel which had appeared in sight vanish on the horizon.\nHe dared not call to them; a cry might be heard and ruin everything. An idea occurred to him, a last idea, a flash of inspiration; he drew from his pocket the end of Brujon\u2019s rope, which he had detached from the chimney of the New Building, and flung it into the space enclosed by the fence.\nThis rope fell at their feet.\n\u201cA widow,\u201d37 said Babet.\n\u201cMy tortouse!\u201d38 said Brujon.\n\u201cThe tavern-keeper is there,\u201d said Montparnasse.\nThey raised their eyes. Th\u00e9nardier thrust out his head a very little.\n\u201cQuick!\u201d said Montparnasse, \u201chave you the other end of the rope, Brujon?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cKnot the two pieces together, we\u2019ll fling him the rope, he can fasten it to the wall, and he\u2019ll have enough of it to get down with.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier ran the risk, and spoke:\u2014 \u201cI am paralyzed with cold.\u201d\n\u201cWe\u2019ll warm you up.\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t budge.\u201d\n\u201cLet yourself slide, we\u2019ll catch you.\u201d\n\u201cMy hands are benumbed.\u201d\n\u201cOnly fasten the rope to the wall.\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t.\u201d\n\u201cThen one of us must climb up,\u201d said Montparnasse.\n\u201cThree stories!\u201d ejaculated Brujon.\nAn ancient plaster flue, which had served for a stove that had been used in the shanty in former times, ran along the wall and mounted almost to the very spot where they could see Th\u00e9nardier. This flue, then much damaged and full of cracks, has since fallen, but the marks of it are still visible.\nIt was very narrow.\n\u201cOne might get up by the help of that,\u201d said Montparnasse.\n\u201cBy that flue?\u201d exclaimed Babet, \u201ca grown-up cove, never! it would take a brat.\u201d\n\u201cA brat must be got,\u201d resumed Brujon.\n\u201cWhere are we to find a young \u2019un?\u201d said Guelemer.\n\u201cWait,\u201d said Montparnasse. \u201cI\u2019ve got the very article.\u201d\nHe opened the gate of the fence very softly, made sure that no one was passing along the street, stepped out cautiously, shut the gate behind him, and set off at a run in the direction of the Bastille.\nSeven or eight minutes elapsed, eight thousand centuries to Th\u00e9nardier; Babet, Brujon, and Guelemer did not open their lips; at last the gate opened once more, and Montparnasse appeared, breathless, and followed by Butch. The rain still rendered the street completely deserted.\nLittle Butch entered the enclosure and gazed at the forms of these ruffians with a tranquil air. The water was dripping from his hair. Guelemer addressed him:\u2014 \u201cAre you a man, young \u2019un?\u201d\nButch shrugged his shoulders, and replied:\u2014 \u201cA young \u2019un like me\u2019s a man, and men like you are babes.\u201d\n\u201cThe brat\u2019s tongue\u2019s well hung!\u201d exclaimed Babet.\n\u201cThe Paris brat ain\u2019t made of straw,\u201d added Brujon.\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d asked Butch.\nMontparnasse answered:\u2014\n\u201cClimb up that flue.\u201d\n\u201cWith this rope,\u201d said Babet.\n\u201cAnd fasten it,\u201d continued Brujon.\n\u201cTo the top of the wall,\u201d went on Babet.\n\u201cTo the cross-bar of the window,\u201d added Brujon.\n\u201cAnd then?\u201d said Butch.\n\u201cThere!\u201d said Guelemer.\nThe gamin examined the rope, the flue, the wall, the windows, and made that indescribable and disdainful noise with his lips which signifies:\u2014 \u201cIs that all!\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s a man up there whom you are to save,\u201d resumed Montparnasse.\n\u201cWill you?\u201d began Brujon again.\n\u201cGreenhorn!\u201d replied the lad, as though the question appeared a most unprecedented one to him.\nAnd he took off his shoes.\nGuelemer seized Butch by one arm, set him on the roof of the shanty, whose worm-eaten planks bent beneath the urchin\u2019s weight, and handed him the rope which Brujon had knotted together during Montparnasse\u2019s absence. The gamin directed his steps towards the flue, which it was easy to enter, thanks to a large crack which touched the roof. At the moment when he was on the point of ascending, Th\u00e9nardier, who saw life and safety approaching, bent over the edge of the wall; the first light of dawn struck white upon his brow dripping with sweat, upon his livid cheek-bones, his sharp and savage nose, his bristling gray beard, and Butch recognized him.\n\u201cHullo! it\u2019s my father! Oh, that won\u2019t hinder.\u201d\nAnd taking the rope in his teeth, he resolutely began the ascent.\nHe reached the summit of the hut, bestrode the old wall as though it had been a horse, and knotted the rope firmly to the upper cross-bar of the window.\nA moment later, Th\u00e9nardier was in the street.\nAs soon as he touched the pavement, as soon as he found himself out of danger, he was no longer either weary, or chilled or trembling; the terrible things from which he had escaped vanished like smoke, all that strange and ferocious mind awoke once more, and stood erect and free, ready to march onward.\nThese were this man\u2019s first words:\u2014 \u201cNow, whom are we to eat?\u201d\nIt is useless to explain the sense of this frightfully transparent remark, which signifies both to kill, to assassinate, and to plunder. To eat, true sense: to devour.\n\u201cLet\u2019s get well into a corner,\u201d said Brujon. \u201cLet\u2019s settle it in three words, and part at once. There was an affair that promised well in the Rue Plumet, a deserted street, an isolated house, an old rotten gate on a garden, and lone women.\u201d\n\u201cWell! why not?\u201d demanded Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cYour girl, \u00c9ponine, went to see about the matter,\u201d replied Babet.\n\u201cAnd she brought a biscuit to Magnon,\u201d added Guelemer. \u201cNothing to be made there.\u201d\n\u201cThe girl\u2019s no fool,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cStill, it must be seen to.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d said Brujon, \u201cit must be looked up.\u201d\nIn the meanwhile, none of the men seemed to see Butch, who, during this colloquy, had seated himself on one of the fence-posts; he waited a few moments, thinking that perhaps his father would turn towards him, then he put on his shoes again, and said:\u2014 \u201cIs that all? You don\u2019t want any more, my men? Now you\u2019re out of your scrape. I\u2019m off. I must go and get my brats out of bed.\u201d\nAnd off he went.\nThe five men emerged, one after another, from the enclosure.\nWhen Butch had disappeared at the corner of the Rue des Ballets, Babet took Th\u00e9nardier aside.\n\u201cDid you take a good look at that young \u2019un?\u201d he asked.\n\u201cWhat young \u2019un?\u201d\n\u201cThe one who climbed the wall and carried you the rope.\u201d\n\u201cNot particularly.\u201d\n\u201cWell, I don\u2019t know, but it strikes me that it was your son.\u201d\n\u201cBah!\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier, \u201cdo you think so?\u201d\nBOOK SEVENTH\u2014SLANG\nSlang\nCHAPTER I\u2014ORIGIN\nPigritia is a terrible word.\nIt engenders a whole world, la pegre, for which read theft, and a hell, la pegrenne, for which read hunger.\nThus, idleness is the mother.\nShe has a son, theft, and a daughter, hunger.\nWhere are we at this moment? In the land of slang.\nWhat is slang? It is at one and the same time, a nation and a dialect; it is theft in its two kinds; people and language.\nWhen, four and thirty years ago, the narrator of this grave and sombre history introduced into a work written with the same aim as this39 a thief who talked argot, there arose amazement and clamor.\u2014\u201cWhat! How! Argot! Why, argot is horrible! It is the language of prisons, galleys, convicts, of everything that is most abominable in society!\u201d etc., etc.\nWe have never understood this sort of objections.\nSince that time, two powerful romancers, one of whom is a profound observer of the human heart, the other an intrepid friend of the people, Balzac and Eugene Sue, having represented their ruffians as talking their natural language, as the author of The Last Day of a Condemned Man did in 1828, the same objections have been raised. People repeated: \u201cWhat do authors mean by that revolting dialect? Slang is odious! Slang makes one shudder!\u201d\nWho denies that? Of course it does.\nWhen it is a question of probing a wound, a gulf, a society, since when has it been considered wrong to go too far? to go to the bottom? We have always thought that it was sometimes a courageous act, and, at least, a simple and useful deed, worthy of the sympathetic attention which duty accepted and fulfilled merits. Why should one not explore everything, and study everything? Why should one halt on the way? The halt is a matter depending on the sounding-line, and not on the leadsman.\nCertainly, too, it is neither an attractive nor an easy task to undertake an investigation into the lowest depths of the social order, where terra firma comes to an end and where mud begins, to rummage in those vague, murky waves, to follow up, to seize and to fling, still quivering, upon the pavement that abject dialect which is dripping with filth when thus brought to the light, that pustulous vocabulary each word of which seems an unclean ring from a monster of the mire and the shadows. Nothing is more lugubrious than the contemplation thus in its nudity, in the broad light of thought, of the horrible swarming of slang. It seems, in fact, to be a sort of horrible beast made for the night which has just been torn from its cesspool. One thinks one beholds a frightful, living, and bristling thicket which quivers, rustles, wavers, returns to shadow, threatens and glares. One word resembles a claw, another an extinguished and bleeding eye, such and such a phrase seems to move like the claw of a crab. All this is alive with the hideous vitality of things which have been organized out of disorganization.\nNow, when has horror ever excluded study? Since when has malady banished medicine? Can one imagine a naturalist refusing to study the viper, the bat, the scorpion, the centipede, the tarantula, and one who would cast them back into their darkness, saying: \u201cOh! how ugly that is!\u201d The thinker who should turn aside from slang would resemble a surgeon who should avert his face from an ulcer or a wart. He would be like a philologist refusing to examine a fact in language, a philosopher hesitating to scrutinize a fact in humanity. For, it must be stated to those who are ignorant of the case, that argot is both a literary phenomenon and a social result. What is slang, properly speaking? It is the language of wretchedness.\nWe may be stopped; the fact may be put to us in general terms, which is one way of attenuating it; we may be told, that all trades, professions, it may be added, all the accidents of the social hierarchy and all forms of intelligence, have their own slang. The merchant who says: \u201cMontpellier not active, Marseilles fine quality,\u201d the broker on \u2019change who says: \u201cAssets at end of current month,\u201d the gambler who says: \u201cTiers et tout, refait de pique,\u201d the sheriff of the Norman Isles who says: \u201cThe holder in fee reverting to his landed estate cannot claim the fruits of that estate during the hereditary seizure of the real estate by the mortgagor,\u201d the playwright who says: \u201cThe piece was hissed,\u201d the comedian who says: \u201cI\u2019ve made a hit,\u201d the philosopher who says: \u201cPhenomenal triplicity,\u201d the huntsman who says: \u201cVoileci allais, Voileci fuyant,\u201d the phrenologist who says: \u201cAmativeness, combativeness, secretiveness,\u201d the infantry soldier who says: \u201cMy shooting-iron,\u201d the cavalry-man who says: \u201cMy turkey-cock,\u201d the fencing-master who says: \u201cTierce, quarte, break,\u201d the printer who says: \u201cMy shooting-stick and galley,\u201d\u2014all, printer, fencing-master, cavalry dragoon, infantry-man, phrenologist, huntsman, philosopher, comedian, playwright, sheriff, gambler, stock-broker, and merchant, speak slang. The painter who says: \u201cMy grinder,\u201d the notary who says: \u201cMy Skip-the-Gutter,\u201d the hairdresser who says: \u201cMy mealyback,\u201d the cobbler who says: \u201cMy cub,\u201d talks slang. Strictly speaking, if one absolutely insists on the point, all the different fashions of saying the right and the left, the sailor\u2019s port and starboard, the scene-shifter\u2019s court-side, and garden-side, the beadle\u2019s Gospel-side and Epistle-side, are slang. There is the slang of the affected lady as well as of the pr\u00e9cieuses. The Hotel Rambouillet nearly adjoins the Cour des Miracles. There is a slang of duchesses, witness this phrase contained in a love-letter from a very great lady and a very pretty woman of the Restoration: \u201cYou will find in this gossip a fultitude of reasons why I should libertize.\u201d40 Diplomatic ciphers are slang; the pontifical chancellery by using 26 for Rome, grkztntgzyal for despatch, and abfxustgrnogrkzu tu XI. for the Duc de Modena, speaks slang. The physicians of the Middle Ages who, for carrot, radish, and turnip, said Opoponach, perfroschinum, reptitalmus, dracatholicum, angelorum, postmegorum, talked slang. The sugar-manufacturer who says: \u201cLoaf, clarified, lumps, bastard, common, burnt,\u201d\u2014this honest manufacturer talks slang. A certain school of criticism twenty years ago, which used to say: \u201cHalf of the works of Shakespeare consists of plays upon words and puns,\u201d\u2014talked slang. The poet, and the artist who, with profound understanding, would designate M. de Montmorency as \u201ca bourgeois,\u201d if he were not a judge of verses and statues, speak slang. The classic Academician who calls flowers \u201cFlora,\u201d fruits, \u201cPomona,\u201d the sea, \u201cNeptune,\u201d love, \u201cfires,\u201d beauty, \u201ccharms,\u201d a horse, \u201ca courser,\u201d the white or tricolored cockade, \u201cthe rose of Bellona,\u201d the three-cornered hat, \u201cMars\u2019 triangle,\u201d\u2014that classical Academician talks slang. Algebra, medicine, botany, have each their slang. The tongue which is employed on board ship, that wonderful language of the sea, which is so complete and so picturesque, which was spoken by Humphrey Bart, Duquesne, Suffren, and Duperr\u00e9, which mingles with the whistling of the rigging, the sound of the speaking-trumpets, the shock of the boarding-irons, the roll of the sea, the wind, the gale, the cannon, is wholly a heroic and dazzling slang, which is to the fierce slang of the thieves what the lion is to the jackal.\nNo doubt. But say what we will, this manner of understanding the word slang is an extension which every one will not admit. For our part, we reserve to the word its ancient and precise, circumscribed and determined significance, and we restrict slang to slang. The veritable slang and the slang that is pre-eminently slang, if the two words can be coupled thus, the slang immemorial which was a kingdom, is nothing else, we repeat, than the homely, uneasy, crafty, treacherous, venomous, cruel, equivocal, vile, profound, fatal tongue of wretchedness. There exists, at the extremity of all abasement and all misfortunes, a last misery which revolts and makes up its mind to enter into conflict with the whole mass of fortunate facts and reigning rights; a fearful conflict, where, now cunning, now violent, unhealthy and ferocious at one and the same time, it attacks the social order with pin-pricks through vice, and with club-blows through crime. To meet the needs of this conflict, wretchedness has invented a language of combat, which is slang.\nTo keep afloat and to rescue from oblivion, to hold above the gulf, were it but a fragment of some language which man has spoken and which would, otherwise, be lost, that is to say, one of the elements, good or bad, of which civilization is composed, or by which it is complicated, to extend the records of social observation; is to serve civilization itself. This service Plautus rendered, consciously or unconsciously, by making two Carthaginian soldiers talk Ph\u0153nician; that service Moliere rendered, by making so many of his characters talk Levantine and all sorts of dialects. Here objections spring up afresh. Ph\u0153nician, very good! Levantine, quite right! Even dialect, let that pass! They are tongues which have belonged to nations or provinces; but slang! What is the use of preserving slang? What is the good of assisting slang \u201cto survive\u201d?\nTo this we reply in one word, only. Assuredly, if the tongue which a nation or a province has spoken is worthy of interest, the language which has been spoken by a misery is still more worthy of attention and study.\nIt is the language which has been spoken, in France, for example, for more than four centuries, not only by a misery, but by every possible human misery.\nAnd then, we insist upon it, the study of social deformities and infirmities, and the task of pointing them out with a view to remedy, is not a business in which choice is permitted. The historian of manners and ideas has no less austere a mission than the historian of events. The latter has the surface of civilization, the conflicts of crowns, the births of princes, the marriages of kings, battles, assemblages, great public men, revolutions in the daylight, everything on the exterior; the other historian has the interior, the depths, the people who toil, suffer, wait, the oppressed woman, the agonizing child, the secret war between man and man, obscure ferocities, prejudices, plotted iniquities, the subterranean, the indistinct tremors of multitudes, the die-of-hunger, the counter-blows of the law, the secret evolution of souls, the go-bare-foot, the bare-armed, the disinherited, the orphans, the unhappy, and the infamous, all the forms which roam through the darkness. He must descend with his heart full of charity, and severity at the same time, as a brother and as a judge, to those impenetrable casemates where crawl, pell-mell, those who bleed and those who deal the blow, those who weep and those who curse, those who fast and those who devour, those who endure evil and those who inflict it. Have these historians of hearts and souls duties at all inferior to the historians of external facts? Does any one think that Alighieri has any fewer things to say than Machiavelli? Is the under side of civilization any less important than the upper side merely because it is deeper and more sombre? Do we really know the mountain well when we are not acquainted with the cavern?\nLet us say, moreover, parenthetically, that from a few words of what precedes a marked separation might be inferred between the two classes of historians which does not exist in our mind. No one is a good historian of the patent, visible, striking, and public life of peoples, if he is not, at the same time, in a certain measure, the historian of their deep and hidden life; and no one is a good historian of the interior unless he understands how, at need, to be the historian of the exterior also. The history of manners and ideas permeates the history of events, and this is true reciprocally. They constitute two different orders of facts which correspond to each other, which are always interlaced, and which often bring forth results. All the lineaments which providence traces on the surface of a nation have their parallels, sombre but distinct, in their depths, and all convulsions of the depths produce ebullitions on the surface. True history being a mixture of all things, the true historian mingles in everything.\nMan is not a circle with a single centre; he is an ellipse with a double focus. Facts form one of these, and ideas the other.\nSlang is nothing but a dressing-room where the tongue having some bad action to perform, disguises itself. There it clothes itself in word-masks, in metaphor-rags. In this guise it becomes horrible.\nOne finds it difficult to recognize. Is it really the French tongue, the great human tongue? Behold it ready to step upon the stage and to retort upon crime, and prepared for all the employments of the repertory of evil. It no longer walks, it hobbles; it limps on the crutch of the Court of Miracles, a crutch metamorphosable into a club; it is called vagrancy; every sort of spectre, its dressers, have painted its face, it crawls and rears, the double gait of the reptile. Henceforth, it is apt at all r\u00f4les, it is made suspicious by the counterfeiter, covered with verdigris by the forger, blacked by the soot of the incendiary; and the murderer applies its rouge.\nWhen one listens, by the side of honest men, at the portals of society, one overhears the dialogues of those who are on the outside. One distinguishes questions and replies. One perceives, without understanding it, a hideous murmur, sounding almost like human accents, but more nearly resembling a howl than an articulate word. It is slang. The words are misshapen and stamped with an indescribable and fantastic bestiality. One thinks one hears hydras talking.\nIt is unintelligible in the dark. It gnashes and whispers, completing the gloom with mystery. It is black in misfortune, it is blacker still in crime; these two blacknesses amalgamated, compose slang. Obscurity in the atmosphere, obscurity in acts, obscurity in voices. Terrible, toad-like tongue which goes and comes, leaps, crawls, slobbers, and stirs about in monstrous wise in that immense gray fog composed of rain and night, of hunger, of vice, of falsehood, of injustice, of nudity, of suffocation, and of winter, the high noonday of the miserable.\nLet us have compassion on the chastised. Alas! Who are we ourselves? Who am I who now address you? Who are you who are listening to me? And are you very sure that we have done nothing before we were born? The earth is not devoid of resemblance to a jail. Who knows whether man is not a recaptured offender against divine justice? Look closely at life. It is so made, that everywhere we feel the sense of punishment.\nAre you what is called a happy man? Well! you are sad every day. Each day has its own great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for a health that is dear to you, to-day you fear for your own; to-morrow it will be anxiety about money, the day after to-morrow the diatribe of a slanderer, the day after that, the misfortune of some friend; then the prevailing weather, then something that has been broken or lost, then a pleasure with which your conscience and your vertebral column reproach you; again, the course of public affairs. This without reckoning in the pains of the heart. And so it goes on. One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day out of a hundred which is wholly joyous and sunny. And you belong to that small class who are happy! As for the rest of mankind, stagnating night rests upon them.\nThoughtful minds make but little use of the phrase: the fortunate and the unfortunate. In this world, evidently the vestibule of another, there are no fortunate.\nThe real human division is this: the luminous and the shady. To diminish the number of the shady, to augment the number of the luminous,\u2014that is the object. That is why we cry: Education! science! To teach reading, means to light the fire; every syllable spelled out sparkles.\nHowever, he who says light does not, necessarily, say joy. People suffer in the light; excess burns. The flame is the enemy of the wing. To burn without ceasing to fly,\u2014therein lies the marvel of genius.\nWhen you shall have learned to know, and to love, you will still suffer. The day is born in tears. The luminous weep, if only over those in darkness.\nCHAPTER II\u2014ROOTS\nSlang is the tongue of those who sit in darkness.\nThought is moved in its most sombre depths, social philosophy is bidden to its most poignant meditations, in the presence of that enigmatic dialect at once so blighted and rebellious. Therein lies chastisement made visible. Every syllable has an air of being marked. The words of the vulgar tongue appear therein wrinkled and shrivelled, as it were, beneath the hot iron of the executioner. Some seem to be still smoking. Such and such a phrase produces upon you the effect of the shoulder of a thief branded with the fleur-de-lys, which has suddenly been laid bare. Ideas almost refuse to be expressed in these substantives which are fugitives from justice. Metaphor is sometimes so shameless, that one feels that it has worn the iron neck-fetter.\nMoreover, in spite of all this, and because of all this, this strange dialect has by rights, its own compartment in that great impartial case of pigeon-holes where there is room for the rusty farthing as well as for the gold medal, and which is called literature. Slang, whether the public admit the fact or not has its syntax and its poetry. It is a language. Yes, by the deformity of certain terms, we recognize the fact that it was chewed by Mandrin, and by the splendor of certain metonymies, we feel that Villon spoke it.\nThat exquisite and celebrated verse\u2014 Mais o\u00f9 sont les neiges d\u2019antan?\nBut where are the snows of years gone by?\nis a verse of slang. Antan\u2014ante annum\u2014is a word of Thunes slang, which signified the past year, and by extension, formerly. Thirty-five years ago, at the epoch of the departure of the great chain-gang, there could be read in one of the cells at Bic\u00eatre, this maxim engraved with a nail on the wall by a king of Thunes condemned to the galleys: Les dabs d\u2019antan trimaient siempre pour la pierre du Co\u00ebsre. This means Kings in days gone by always went and had themselves anointed. In the opinion of that king, anointment meant the galleys.\nThe word d\u00e9carade, which expresses the departure of heavy vehicles at a gallop, is attributed to Villon, and it is worthy of him. This word, which strikes fire with all four of its feet, sums up in a masterly onomatop\u0153ia the whole of La Fontaine\u2019s admirable verse:\u2014 Six forts chevaux tiraient un coche.\nSix stout horses drew a coach.\nFrom a purely literary point of view, few studies would prove more curious and fruitful than the study of slang. It is a whole language within a language, a sort of sickly excrescence, an unhealthy graft which has produced a vegetation, a parasite which has its roots in the old Gallic trunk, and whose sinister foliage crawls all over one side of the language. This is what may be called the first, the vulgar aspect of slang. But, for those who study the tongue as it should be studied, that is to say, as geologists study the earth, slang appears like a veritable alluvial deposit. According as one digs a longer or shorter distance into it, one finds in slang, below the old popular French, Proven\u00e7al, Spanish, Italian, Levantine, that language of the Mediterranean ports, English and German, the Romance language in its three varieties, French, Italian, and Romance Romance, Latin, and finally Basque and Celtic. A profound and unique formation. A subterranean edifice erected in common by all the miserable. Each accursed race has deposited its layer, each suffering has dropped its stone there, each heart has contributed its pebble. A throng of evil, base, or irritated souls, who have traversed life and have vanished into eternity, linger there almost entirely visible still beneath the form of some monstrous word.\nDo you want Spanish? The old Gothic slang abounded in it. Here is boffete, a box on the ear, which is derived from bofeton; vantane, window (later on vanterne), which comes from vantana; gat, cat, which comes from gato; acite, oil, which comes from aceyte. Do you want Italian? Here is spade, sword, which comes from spada; carvel, boat, which comes from caravella. Do you want English? Here is bichot, which comes from bishop; raille, spy, which comes from rascal, rascalion; pilche, a case, which comes from pilcher, a sheath. Do you want German? Here is the caleur, the waiter, kellner; the hers, the master, herzog (duke). Do you want Latin? Here is frangir, to break, frangere; affurer, to steal, fur; cadene, chain, catena. There is one word which crops up in every language of the continent, with a sort of mysterious power and authority. It is the word magnus; the Scotchman makes of it his mac, which designates the chief of the clan; Mac-Farlane, Mac-Callumore, the great Farlane, the great Callumore41; slang turns it into meck and later le meg, that is to say, God. Would you like Basque? Here is gahisto, the devil, which comes from ga\u00efztoa, evil; sorgabon, good night, which comes from gabon, good evening. Do you want Celtic? Here is blavin, a handkerchief, which comes from blavet, gushing water; m\u00e9nesse, a woman (in a bad sense), which comes from meinec, full of stones; barant, brook, from baranton, fountain; goffeur, locksmith, from goff, blacksmith; guedouze, death, which comes from guenn-du, black-white. Finally, would you like history? Slang calls crowns les malteses, a souvenir of the coin in circulation on the galleys of Malta.\nIn addition to the philological origins just indicated, slang possesses other and still more natural roots, which spring, so to speak, from the mind of man itself.\nIn the first place, the direct creation of words. Therein lies the mystery of tongues. To paint with words, which contains figures one knows not how or why, is the primitive foundation of all human languages, what may be called their granite.\nSlang abounds in words of this description, immediate words, words created instantaneously no one knows either where or by whom, without etymology, without analogies, without derivatives, solitary, barbarous, sometimes hideous words, which at times possess a singular power of expression and which live. The executioner, le taule; the forest, le sabri; fear, flight, taf; the lackey, le larbin; the mineral, the prefect, the minister, pharos; the devil, le rabouin. Nothing is stranger than these words which both mask and reveal. Some, le rabouin, for example, are at the same time grotesque and terrible, and produce on you the effect of a cyclopean grimace.\nIn the second place, metaphor. The peculiarity of a language which is desirous of saying all yet concealing all is that it is rich in figures. Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke, the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: d\u00e9visser le coco (to unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; \u00eatre gerb\u00e9, to be tried; a rat, a bread thief; il lansquine, it rains, a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense and slanting pikes of the lancers, and which compresses into a single word the popular expression: it rains halberds. Sometimes, in proportion as slang progresses from the first epoch to the second, words pass from the primitive and savage sense to the metaphorical sense. The devil ceases to be le rabouin, and becomes le boulanger (the baker), who puts the bread into the oven. This is more witty, but less grand, something like Racine after Corneille, like Euripides after \u00c6schylus. Certain slang phrases which participate in the two epochs and have at once the barbaric character and the metaphorical character resemble phantasmagories. Les sorgueuers vont solliciter des gails \u00e0 la lune\u2014the prowlers are going to steal horses by night,\u2014this passes before the mind like a group of spectres. One knows not what one sees.\nIn the third place, the expedient. Slang lives on the language. It uses it in accordance with its fancy, it dips into it hap-hazard, and it often confines itself, when occasion arises, to alter it in a gross and summary fashion. Occasionally, with the ordinary words thus deformed and complicated with words of pure slang, picturesque phrases are formed, in which there can be felt the mixture of the two preceding elements, the direct creation and the metaphor: le cab jaspine, je marronne que la roulotte de Pantin trime dans le sabri, the dog is barking, I suspect that the diligence for Paris is passing through the woods. Le dab est sinve, la dabuge est merloussiere, la f\u00e9e est bative, the bourgeois is stupid, the bourgeoise is cunning, the daughter is pretty. Generally, to throw listeners off the track, slang confines itself to adding to all the words of the language without distinction, an ignoble tail, a termination in aille, in orgue, in iergue, or in uche. Thus: Vousiergue trouvaille bonorgue ce gigotmuche? Do you think that leg of mutton good? A phrase addressed by Cartouche to a turnkey in order to find out whether the sum offered for his escape suited him.\nThe termination in mar has been added recently.\nSlang, being the dialect of corruption, quickly becomes corrupted itself. Besides this, as it is always seeking concealment, as soon as it feels that it is understood, it changes its form. Contrary to what happens with every other vegetation, every ray of light which falls upon it kills whatever it touches. Thus slang is in constant process of decomposition and recomposition; an obscure and rapid work which never pauses. It passes over more ground in ten years than a language in ten centuries. Thus le larton (bread) becomes le lartif; le gail (horse) becomes le gaye; la fertanche (straw) becomes la fertille; le momignard (brat), le momacque; les fiques (duds), frusques; la chique (the church), l\u2019\u00e9grugeoir; le colabre (neck), le colas. The devil is at first, gahisto, then le rabouin, then the baker; the priest is a ratichon, then the boar (le sanglier); the dagger is le vingt-deux (twenty-two), then le surin, then le lingre; the police are railles, then roussins, then rousses, then marchands de lacets (dealers in stay-laces), then coquers, then cognes; the executioner is le taule, then Charlot, l\u2019atigeur, then le becquillard. In the seventeenth century, to fight was \u201cto give each other snuff\u201d; in the nineteenth it is \u201cto chew each other\u2019s throats.\u201d There have been twenty different phrases between these two extremes. Cartouche\u2019s talk would have been Hebrew to Lacenaire. All the words of this language are perpetually engaged in flight like the men who utter them.\nStill, from time to time, and in consequence of this very movement, the ancient slang crops up again and becomes new once more. It has its headquarters where it maintains its sway. The Temple preserved the slang of the seventeenth century; Bic\u00eatre, when it was a prison, preserved the slang of Thunes. There one could hear the termination in anche of the old Thuneurs. Boyanches-tu (bois-tu), do you drink? But perpetual movement remains its law, nevertheless.\nIf the philosopher succeeds in fixing, for a moment, for purposes of observation, this language which is incessantly evaporating, he falls into doleful and useful meditation. No study is more efficacious and more fecund in instruction. There is not a metaphor, not an analogy, in slang, which does not contain a lesson. Among these men, to beat means to feign; one beats a malady; ruse is their strength.\nFor them, the idea of the man is not separated from the idea of darkness. The night is called la sorgue; man, l\u2019orgue. Man is a derivative of the night.\nThey have taken up the practice of considering society in the light of an atmosphere which kills them, of a fatal force, and they speak of their liberty as one would speak of his health. A man under arrest is a sick man; one who is condemned is a dead man.\nThe most terrible thing for the prisoner within the four walls in which he is buried, is a sort of glacial chastity, and he calls the dungeon the castus. In that funereal place, life outside always presents itself under its most smiling aspect. The prisoner has irons on his feet; you think, perhaps, that his thought is that it is with the feet that one walks? No; he is thinking that it is with the feet that one dances; so, when he has succeeded in severing his fetters, his first idea is that now he can dance, and he calls the saw the bastringue (public-house ball).\u2014A name is a centre; profound assimilation.\u2014The ruffian has two heads, one of which reasons out his actions and leads him all his life long, and the other which he has upon his shoulders on the day of his death; he calls the head which counsels him in crime la sorbonne, and the head which expiates it la tronche.\u2014When a man has no longer anything but rags upon his body and vices in his heart, when he has arrived at that double moral and material degradation which the word blackguard characterizes in its two acceptations, he is ripe for crime; he is like a well-whetted knife; he has two cutting edges, his distress and his malice; so slang does not say a blackguard, it says un r\u00e9guis\u00e9.\u2014What are the galleys? A brazier of damnation, a hell. The convict calls himself a fagot.\u2014And finally, what name do malefactors give to their prison? The college. A whole penitentiary system can be evolved from that word.\nDoes the reader wish to know where the majority of the songs of the galleys, those refrains called in the special vocabulary lirlonfa, have had their birth?\nLet him listen to what follows:\u2014 There existed at the Ch\u00e2telet in Paris a large and long cellar. This cellar was eight feet below the level of the Seine. It had neither windows nor air-holes, its only aperture was the door; men could enter there, air could not. This vault had for ceiling a vault of stone, and for floor ten inches of mud. It was flagged; but the pavement had rotted and cracked under the oozing of the water. Eight feet above the floor, a long and massive beam traversed this subterranean excavation from side to side; from this beam hung, at short distances apart, chains three feet long, and at the end of these chains there were rings for the neck. In this vault, men who had been condemned to the galleys were incarcerated until the day of their departure for Toulon. They were thrust under this beam, where each one found his fetters swinging in the darkness and waiting for him.\nThe chains, those pendant arms, and the necklets, those open hands, caught the unhappy wretches by the throat. They were rivetted and left there. As the chain was too short, they could not lie down. They remained motionless in that cavern, in that night, beneath that beam, almost hanging, forced to unheard-of efforts to reach their bread, jug, or their vault overhead, mud even to mid-leg, filth flowing to their very calves, broken asunder with fatigue, with thighs and knees giving way, clinging fast to the chain with their hands in order to obtain some rest, unable to sleep except when standing erect, and awakened every moment by the strangling of the collar; some woke no more. In order to eat, they pushed the bread, which was flung to them in the mud, along their leg with their heel until it reached their hand.\nHow long did they remain thus? One month, two months, six months sometimes; one stayed a year. It was the antechamber of the galleys. Men were put there for stealing a hare from the king. In this sepulchre-hell, what did they do? What man can do in a sepulchre, they went through the agonies of death, and what can man do in hell, they sang; for song lingers where there is no longer any hope. In the waters of Malta, when a galley was approaching, the song could be heard before the sound of the oars. Poor Survincent, the poacher, who had gone through the prison-cellar of the Ch\u00e2telet, said: \u201cIt was the rhymes that kept me up.\u201d Uselessness of poetry. What is the good of rhyme?\nIt is in this cellar that nearly all the slang songs had their birth. It is from the dungeon of the Grand-Ch\u00e2telet of Paris that comes the melancholy refrain of the Montgomery galley: \u201cTimaloumisaine, timaloumison.\u201d The majority of these songs are melancholy; some are gay; one is tender:\u2014 Icicaille est la theatre\nDu petit dardant.\nHere is the theatre\nOf the little archer (Cupid).\nDo what you will, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic in the heart of man, love.\nIn this world of dismal deeds, people keep their secrets. The secret is the thing above all others. The secret, in the eyes of these wretches, is unity which serves as a base of union. To betray a secret is to tear from each member of this fierce community something of his own personality. To inform against, in the energetic slang dialect, is called: \u201cto eat the bit.\u201d As though the informer drew to himself a little of the substance of all and nourished himself on a bit of each one\u2019s flesh.\nWhat does it signify to receive a box on the ear? Commonplace metaphor replies: \u201cIt is to see thirty-six candles.\u201d Here slang intervenes and takes it up: Candle, camoufle. Thereupon, the ordinary tongue gives camouflet42 as the synonym for soufflet. Thus, by a sort of infiltration from below upwards, with the aid of metaphor, that incalculable, trajectory slang mounts from the cavern to the Academy; and Poulailler saying: \u201cI light my camoufle,\u201d causes Voltaire to write: \u201cLangleviel La Beaumelle deserves a hundred camouflets.\u201d\nResearches in slang mean discoveries at every step. Study and investigation of this strange idiom lead to the mysterious point of intersection of regular society with society which is accursed.\nThe thief also has his food for cannon, stealable matter, you, I, whoever passes by; le pantre. (Pan, everybody.)\nSlang is language turned convict.\nThat the thinking principle of man be thrust down ever so low, that it can be dragged and pinioned there by obscure tyrannies of fatality, that it can be bound by no one knows what fetters in that abyss, is sufficient to create consternation.\nOh, poor thought of miserable wretches!\nAlas! will no one come to the succor of the human soul in that darkness? Is it her destiny there to await forever the mind, the liberator, the immense rider of Pegasi and hippogriffs, the combatant of heroes of the dawn who shall descend from the azure between two wings, the radiant knight of the future? Will she forever summon in vain to her assistance the lance of light of the ideal? Is she condemned to hear the fearful approach of Evil through the density of the gulf, and to catch glimpses, nearer and nearer at hand, beneath the hideous water of that dragon\u2019s head, that maw streaked with foam, and that writhing undulation of claws, swellings, and rings? Must it remain there, without a gleam of light, without hope, given over to that terrible approach, vaguely scented out by the monster, shuddering, dishevelled, wringing its arms, forever chained to the rock of night, a sombre Andromeda white and naked amid the shadows!\nCHAPTER III\u2014SLANG WHICH WEEPS AND SLANG WHICH LAUGHS As the reader perceives, slang in its entirety, slang of four hundred years ago, like the slang of to-day, is permeated with that sombre, symbolical spirit which gives to all words a mien which is now mournful, now menacing. One feels in it the wild and ancient sadness of those vagrants of the Court of Miracles who played at cards with packs of their own, some of which have come down to us. The eight of clubs, for instance, represented a huge tree bearing eight enormous trefoil leaves, a sort of fantastic personification of the forest. At the foot of this tree a fire was burning, over which three hares were roasting a huntsman on a spit, and behind him, on another fire, hung a steaming pot, whence emerged the head of a dog. Nothing can be more melancholy than these reprisals in painting, by a pack of cards, in the presence of stakes for the roasting of smugglers and of the cauldron for the boiling of counterfeiters. The diverse forms assumed by thought in the realm of slang, even song, even raillery, even menace, all partook of this powerless and dejected character. All the songs, the melodies of some of which have been collected, were humble and lamentable to the point of evoking tears. The pegre is always the poor pegre, and he is always the hare in hiding, the fugitive mouse, the flying bird. He hardly complains, he contents himself with sighing; one of his moans has come down to us: \u201cI do not understand how God, the father of men, can torture his children and his grandchildren and hear them cry, without himself suffering torture.\u201d43 The wretch, whenever he has time to think, makes himself small before the low, and frail in the presence of society; he lies down flat on his face, he entreats, he appeals to the side of compassion; we feel that he is conscious of his guilt.\nTowards the middle of the last century a change took place, prison songs and thieves\u2019 ritournelles assumed, so to speak, an insolent and jovial mien. The plaintive malur\u00e9 was replaced by the larifla. We find in the eighteenth century, in nearly all the songs of the galleys and prisons, a diabolical and enigmatical gayety. We hear this strident and lilting refrain which we should say had been lighted up by a phosphorescent gleam, and which seems to have been flung into the forest by a will-o\u2019-the-wisp playing the fife:\u2014 Miralabi suslababo\nMirliton ribonribette\nSurlababi mirlababo\nMirliton ribonribo.\nThis was sung in a cellar or in a nook of the forest while cutting a man\u2019s throat.\nA serious symptom. In the eighteenth century, the ancient melancholy of the dejected classes vanishes. They began to laugh. They rally the grand meg and the grand dab. Given Louis XV. they call the King of France \u201cle Marquis de Pantin.\u201d And behold, they are almost gay. A sort of gleam proceeds from these miserable wretches, as though their consciences were not heavy within them any more. These lamentable tribes of darkness have no longer merely the desperate audacity of actions, they possess the heedless audacity of mind. A sign that they are losing the sense of their criminality, and that they feel, even among thinkers and dreamers, some indefinable support which the latter themselves know not of. A sign that theft and pillage are beginning to filter into doctrines and sophisms, in such a way as to lose somewhat of their ugliness, while communicating much of it to sophisms and doctrines. A sign, in short, of some outbreak which is prodigious and near unless some diversion shall arise.\nLet us pause a moment. Whom are we accusing here? Is it the eighteenth century? Is it philosophy? Certainly not. The work of the eighteenth century is healthy and good and wholesome. The encyclopedists, Diderot at their head; the physiocrates, Turgot at their head; the philosophers, Voltaire at their head; the Utopians, Rousseau at their head,\u2014these are four sacred legions. Humanity\u2019s immense advance towards the light is due to them. They are the four vanguards of the human race, marching towards the four cardinal points of progress. Diderot towards the beautiful, Turgot towards the useful, Voltaire towards the true, Rousseau towards the just. But by the side of and above the philosophers, there were the sophists, a venomous vegetation mingled with a healthy growth, hemlock in the virgin forest. While the executioner was burning the great books of the liberators of the century on the grand staircase of the court-house, writers now forgotten were publishing, with the King\u2019s sanction, no one knows what strangely disorganizing writings, which were eagerly read by the unfortunate. Some of these publications, odd to say, which were patronized by a prince, are to be found in the Secret Library. These facts, significant but unknown, were imperceptible on the surface. Sometimes, in the very obscurity of a fact lurks its danger. It is obscure because it is underhand. Of all these writers, the one who probably then excavated in the masses the most unhealthy gallery was Restif de La Bretonne.\nThis work, peculiar to the whole of Europe, effected more ravages in Germany than anywhere else. In Germany, during a given period, summed up by Schiller in his famous drama The Robbers, theft and pillage rose up in protest against property and labor, assimilated certain specious and false elementary ideas, which, though just in appearance, were absurd in reality, enveloped themselves in these ideas, disappeared within them, after a fashion, assumed an abstract name, passed into the state of theory, and in that shape circulated among the laborious, suffering, and honest masses, unknown even to the imprudent chemists who had prepared the mixture, unknown even to the masses who accepted it. Whenever a fact of this sort presents itself, the case is grave. Suffering engenders wrath; and while the prosperous classes blind themselves or fall asleep, which is the same thing as shutting one\u2019s eyes, the hatred of the unfortunate classes lights its torch at some aggrieved or ill-made spirit which dreams in a corner, and sets itself to the scrutiny of society. The scrutiny of hatred is a terrible thing.\nHence, if the ill-fortune of the times so wills it, those fearful commotions which were formerly called jacqueries, beside which purely political agitations are the merest child\u2019s play, which are no longer the conflict of the oppressed and the oppressor, but the revolt of discomfort against comfort. Then everything crumbles.\nJacqueries are earthquakes of the people.\nIt is this peril, possibly imminent towards the close of the eighteenth century, which the French Revolution, that immense act of probity, cut short.\nThe French Revolution, which is nothing else than the idea armed with the sword, rose erect, and, with the same abrupt movement, closed the door of ill and opened the door of good.\nIt put a stop to torture, promulgated the truth, expelled miasma, rendered the century healthy, crowned the populace.\nIt may be said of it that it created man a second time, by giving him a second soul, the right.\nThe nineteenth century has inherited and profited by its work, and to-day, the social catastrophe to which we lately alluded is simply impossible. Blind is he who announces it! Foolish is he who fears it! Revolution is the vaccine of Jacquerie.\nThanks to the Revolution, social conditions have changed. Feudal and monarchical maladies no longer run in our blood. There is no more of the Middle Ages in our constitution. We no longer live in the days when terrible swarms within made irruptions, when one heard beneath his feet the obscure course of a dull rumble, when indescribable elevations from mole-like tunnels appeared on the surface of civilization, where the soil cracked open, where the roofs of caverns yawned, and where one suddenly beheld monstrous heads emerging from the earth.\nThe revolutionary sense is a moral sense. The sentiment of right, once developed, develops the sentiment of duty. The law of all is liberty, which ends where the liberty of others begins, according to Robespierre\u2019s admirable definition. Since \u201989, the whole people has been dilating into a sublime individual; there is not a poor man, who, possessing his right, has not his ray of sun; the die-of-hunger feels within him the honesty of France; the dignity of the citizen is an internal armor; he who is free is scrupulous; he who votes reigns. Hence incorruptibility; hence the miscarriage of unhealthy lusts; hence eyes heroically lowered before temptations. The revolutionary wholesomeness is such, that on a day of deliverance, a 14th of July, a 10th of August, there is no longer any populace. The first cry of the enlightened and increasing throngs is: death to thieves! Progress is an honest man; the ideal and the absolute do not filch pocket-handkerchiefs. By whom were the wagons containing the wealth of the Tuileries escorted in 1848? By the rag-pickers of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Rags mounted guard over the treasure. Virtue rendered these tatterdemalions resplendent. In those wagons in chests, hardly closed, and some, even, half-open, amid a hundred dazzling caskets, was that ancient crown of France, studded with diamonds, surmounted by the carbuncle of royalty, by the Regent diamond, which was worth thirty millions. Barefooted, they guarded that crown.\nHence, no more Jacquerie. I regret it for the sake of the skilful. The old fear has produced its last effects in that quarter; and henceforth it can no longer be employed in politics. The principal spring of the red spectre is broken. Every one knows it now. The scare-crow scares no longer. The birds take liberties with the mannikin, foul creatures alight upon it, the bourgeois laugh at it.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014THE TWO DUTIES: TO WATCH AND TO HOPE This being the case, is all social danger dispelled? Certainly not. There is no Jacquerie; society may rest assured on that point; blood will no longer rush to its head. But let society take heed to the manner in which it breathes. Apoplexy is no longer to be feared, but phthisis is there. Social phthisis is called misery.\nOne can perish from being undermined as well as from being struck by lightning.\nLet us not weary of repeating, and sympathetic souls must not forget that this is the first of fraternal obligations, and selfish hearts must understand that the first of political necessities consists in thinking first of all of the disinherited and sorrowing throngs, in solacing, airing, enlightening, loving them, in enlarging their horizon to a magnificent extent, in lavishing upon them education in every form, in offering them the example of labor, never the example of idleness, in diminishing the individual burden by enlarging the notion of the universal aim, in setting a limit to poverty without setting a limit to wealth, in creating vast fields of public and popular activity, in having, like Briareus, a hundred hands to extend in all directions to the oppressed and the feeble, in employing the collective power for that grand duty of opening workshops for all arms, schools for all aptitudes, and laboratories for all degrees of intelligence, in augmenting salaries, diminishing trouble, balancing what should be and what is, that is to say, in proportioning enjoyment to effort and a glut to need; in a word, in evolving from the social apparatus more light and more comfort for the benefit of those who suffer and those who are ignorant.\nAnd, let us say it, all this is but the beginning. The true question is this: labor cannot be a law without being a right.\nWe will not insist upon this point; this is not the proper place for that.\nIf nature calls itself Providence, society should call itself foresight.\nIntellectual and moral growth is no less indispensable than material improvement. To know is a sacrament, to think is the prime necessity, truth is nourishment as well as grain. A reason which fasts from science and wisdom grows thin. Let us enter equal complaint against stomachs and minds which do not eat. If there is anything more heart-breaking than a body perishing for lack of bread, it is a soul which is dying from hunger for the light.\nThe whole of progress tends in the direction of solution. Some day we shall be amazed. As the human race mounts upward, the deep layers emerge naturally from the zone of distress. The obliteration of misery will be accomplished by a simple elevation of level.\nWe should do wrong were we to doubt this blessed consummation.\nThe past is very strong, it is true, at the present moment. It censures. This rejuvenation of a corpse is surprising. Behold, it is walking and advancing. It seems a victor; this dead body is a conqueror. He arrives with his legions, superstitions, with his sword, despotism, with his banner, ignorance; a while ago, he won ten battles. He advances, he threatens, he laughs, he is at our doors. Let us not despair, on our side. Let us sell the field on which Hannibal is encamped.\nWhat have we to fear, we who believe?\nNo such thing as a back-flow of ideas exists any more than there exists a return of a river on its course.\nBut let those who do not desire a future reflect on this matter. When they say \u201cno\u201d to progress, it is not the future but themselves that they are condemning. They are giving themselves a sad malady; they are inoculating themselves with the past. There is but one way of rejecting To-morrow, and that is to die.\nNow, no death, that of the body as late as possible, that of the soul never,\u2014this is what we desire.\nYes, the enigma will utter its word, the sphinx will speak, the problem will be solved.\nYes, the people, sketched out by the eighteenth century, will be finished by the nineteenth. He who doubts this is an idiot! The future blossoming, the near blossoming forth of universal well-being, is a divinely fatal phenomenon.\nImmense combined propulsions direct human affairs and conduct them within a given time to a logical state, that is to say, to a state of equilibrium; that is to say, to equity. A force composed of earth and heaven results from humanity and governs it; this force is a worker of miracles; marvellous issues are no more difficult to it than extraordinary vicissitudes. Aided by science, which comes from one man, and by the event, which comes from another, it is not greatly alarmed by these contradictions in the attitude of problems, which seem impossibilities to the vulgar herd. It is no less skilful at causing a solution to spring forth from the reconciliation of ideas, than a lesson from the reconciliation of facts, and we may expect anything from that mysterious power of progress, which brought the Orient and the Occident face to face one fine day, in the depths of a sepulchre, and made the imaums converse with Bonaparte in the interior of the Great Pyramid.\nIn the meantime, let there be no halt, no hesitation, no pause in the grandiose onward march of minds. Social philosophy consists essentially in science and peace. Its object is, and its result must be, to dissolve wrath by the study of antagonisms. It examines, it scrutinizes, it analyzes; then it puts together once more, it proceeds by means of reduction, discarding all hatred.\nMore than once, a society has been seen to give way before the wind which is let loose upon mankind; history is full of the shipwrecks of nations and empires; manners, customs, laws, religions,\u2014and some fine day that unknown force, the hurricane, passes by and bears them all away. The civilizations of India, of Chaldea, of Persia, of Syria, of Egypt, have disappeared one after the other. Why? We know not. What are the causes of these disasters? We do not know. Could these societies have been saved? Was it their fault? Did they persist in the fatal vice which destroyed them? What is the amount of suicide in these terrible deaths of a nation and a race? Questions to which there exists no reply. Darkness enwraps condemned civilizations. They sprung a leak, then they sank. We have nothing more to say; and it is with a sort of terror that we look on, at the bottom of that sea which is called the past, behind those colossal waves, at the shipwreck of those immense vessels, Babylon, Nineveh, Tarsus, Thebes, Rome, beneath the fearful gusts which emerge from all the mouths of the shadows. But shadows are there, and light is here. We are not acquainted with the maladies of these ancient civilizations, we do not know the infirmities of our own. Everywhere upon it we have the right of light, we contemplate its beauties, we lay bare its defects. Where it is ill, we probe; and the sickness once diagnosed, the study of the cause leads to the discovery of the remedy. Our civilization, the work of twenty centuries, is its law and its prodigy; it is worth the trouble of saving. It will be saved. It is already much to have solaced it; its enlightenment is yet another point. All the labors of modern social philosophies must converge towards this point. The thinker of to-day has a great duty\u2014to auscultate civilization.\nWe repeat, that this auscultation brings encouragement; it is by this persistence in encouragement that we wish to conclude these pages, an austere interlude in a mournful drama. Beneath the social mortality, we feel human imperishableness. The globe does not perish, because it has these wounds, craters, eruptions, sulphur pits, here and there, nor because of a volcano which ejects its pus. The maladies of the people do not kill man.\nAnd yet, any one who follows the course of social clinics shakes his head at times. The strongest, the tenderest, the most logical have their hours of weakness.\nWill the future arrive? It seems as though we might almost put this question, when we behold so much terrible darkness. Melancholy face-to-face encounter of selfish and wretched. On the part of the selfish, the prejudices, shadows of costly education, appetite increasing through intoxication, a giddiness of prosperity which dulls, a fear of suffering which, in some, goes as far as an aversion for the suffering, an implacable satisfaction, the I so swollen that it bars the soul; on the side of the wretched covetousness, envy, hatred of seeing others enjoy, the profound impulses of the human beast towards assuaging its desires, hearts full of mist, sadness, need, fatality, impure and simple ignorance.\nShall we continue to raise our eyes to heaven? is the luminous point which we distinguish there one of those which vanish? The ideal is frightful to behold, thus lost in the depths, small, isolated, imperceptible, brilliant, but surrounded by those great, black menaces, monstrously heaped around it; yet no more in danger than a star in the maw of the clouds.\nBOOK EIGHTH\u2014ENCHANTMENTS AND DESOLATIONS CHAPTER I\u2014FULL LIGHT\nThe reader has probably understood that \u00c9ponine, having recognized through the gate, the inhabitant of that Rue Plumet whither Magnon had sent her, had begun by keeping the ruffians away from the Rue Plumet, and had then conducted Lennox thither, and that, after many days spent in ecstasy before that gate, Lennox, drawn on by that force which draws the iron to the magnet and a lover towards the stones of which is built the house of her whom he loves, had finally entered Drew\u2019s garden as Romeo entered the garden of Juliet. This had even proved easier for him than for Romeo; Romeo was obliged to scale a wall, Lennox had only to use a little force on one of the bars of the decrepit gate which vacillated in its rusty recess, after the fashion of old people\u2019s teeth. Lennox was slender and readily passed through.\nAs there was never any one in the street, and as Lennox never entered the garden except at night, he ran no risk of being seen.\nBeginning with that blessed and holy hour when a kiss betrothed these two souls, Lennox was there every evening. If, at that period of her existence, Drew had fallen in love with a man in the least unscrupulous or debauched, she would have been lost; for there are generous natures which yield themselves, and Drew was one of them. One of woman\u2019s magnanimities is to yield. Love, at the height where it is absolute, is complicated with some indescribably celestial blindness of modesty. But what dangers you run, O noble souls! Often you give the heart, and we take the body. Your heart remains with you, you gaze upon it in the gloom with a shudder. Love has no middle course; it either ruins or it saves. All human destiny lies in this dilemma. This dilemma, ruin, or safety, is set forth no more inexorably by any fatality than by love. Love is life, if it is not death. Cradle; also coffin. The same sentiment says \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cno\u201d in the human heart. Of all the things that God has made, the human heart is the one which sheds the most light, alas! and the most darkness.\nGod willed that Drew\u2019s love should encounter one of the loves which save.\nThroughout the whole of the month of May of that year 1832, there were there, in every night, in that poor, neglected garden, beneath that thicket which grew thicker and more fragrant day by day, two beings composed of all chastity, all innocence, overflowing with all the felicity of heaven, nearer to the archangels than to mankind, pure, honest, intoxicated, radiant, who shone for each other amid the shadows. It seemed to Drew that Lennox had a crown, and to Lennox that Drew had a nimbus. They touched each other, they gazed at each other, they clasped each other\u2019s hands, they pressed close to each other; but there was a distance which they did not pass. Not that they respected it; they did not know of its existence. Lennox was conscious of a barrier, Drew\u2019s innocence; and Drew of a support, Lennox\u2019 loyalty. The first kiss had also been the last. Lennox, since that time, had not gone further than to touch Drew\u2019s hand, or her kerchief, or a lock of her hair, with his lips. For him, Drew was a perfume and not a woman. He inhaled her. She refused nothing, and he asked nothing. Drew was happy, and Lennox was satisfied. They lived in this ecstatic state which can be described as the dazzling of one soul by another soul. It was the ineffable first embrace of two maiden souls in the ideal. Two swans meeting on the Jungfrau.\nAt that hour of love, an hour when voluptuousness is absolutely mute, beneath the omnipotence of ecstasy, Lennox, the pure and seraphic Lennox, would rather have gone to a woman of the town than have raised Drew\u2019s robe to the height of her ankle. Once, in the moonlight, Drew stooped to pick up something on the ground, her bodice fell apart and permitted a glimpse of the beginning of her throat. Lennox turned away his eyes.\nWhat took place between these two beings? Nothing. They adored each other.\nAt night, when they were there, that garden seemed a living and a sacred spot. All flowers unfolded around them and sent them incense; and they opened their souls and scattered them over the flowers. The wanton and vigorous vegetation quivered, full of strength and intoxication, around these two innocents, and they uttered words of love which set the trees to trembling.\nWhat words were these? Breaths. Nothing more. These breaths sufficed to trouble and to touch all nature round about. Magic power which we should find it difficult to understand were we to read in a book these conversations which are made to be borne away and dispersed like smoke wreaths by the breeze beneath the leaves. Take from those murmurs of two lovers that melody which proceeds from the soul and which accompanies them like a lyre, and what remains is nothing more than a shade; you say: \u201cWhat! is that all!\u201d eh! yes, childish prattle, repetitions, laughter at nothing, nonsense, everything that is deepest and most sublime in the world! The only things which are worth the trouble of saying and hearing!\nThe man who has never heard, the man who has never uttered these absurdities, these paltry remarks, is an imbecile and a malicious fellow. Drew said to Lennox:\u2014 \u201cDost thou know?\u2014\u201d\n[In all this and athwart this celestial maidenliness, and without either of them being able to say how it had come about, they had begun to call each other thou.]\n\u201cDost thou know? My name is Euphrasie.\u201d\n\u201cEuphrasie? Why, no, thy name is Drew.\u201d\n\u201cOh! Drew is a very ugly name that was given to me when I was a little thing. But my real name is Euphrasie. Dost thou like that name\u2014Euphrasie?\u201d\n\u201cYes. But Drew is not ugly.\u201d\n\u201cDo you like it better than Euphrasie?\u201d\n\u201cWhy, yes.\u201d\n\u201cThen I like it better too. Truly, it is pretty, Drew. Call me Drew.\u201d\nAnd the smile that she added made of this dialogue an idyl worthy of a grove situated in heaven. On another occasion she gazed intently at him and exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur, you are handsome, you are good-looking, you are witty, you are not at all stupid, you are much more learned than I am, but I bid you defiance with this word: I love you!\u201d\nAnd Lennox, in the very heavens, thought he heard a strain sung by a star.\nOr she bestowed on him a gentle tap because he coughed, and she said to him:\u2014 \u201cDon\u2019t cough, sir; I will not have people cough on my domain without my permission. It\u2019s very naughty to cough and to disturb me. I want you to be well, because, in the first place, if you were not well, I should be very unhappy. What should I do then?\u201d\nAnd this was simply divine.\nOnce Lennox said to Drew:\u2014\n\u201cJust imagine, I thought at one time that your name was Ursule.\u201d\nThis made both of them laugh the whole evening.\nIn the middle of another conversation, he chanced to exclaim:\u2014 \u201cOh! One day, at the Luxembourg, I had a good mind to finish breaking up a veteran!\u201d But he stopped short, and went no further. He would have been obliged to speak to Drew of her garter, and that was impossible. This bordered on a strange theme, the flesh, before which that immense and innocent love recoiled with a sort of sacred fright.\nLennox pictured life with Drew to himself like this, without anything else; to come every evening to the Rue Plumet, to displace the old and accommodating bar of the chief-justice\u2019s gate, to sit elbow to elbow on that bench, to gaze through the trees at the scintillation of the on-coming night, to fit a fold of the knee of his trousers into the ample fall of Drew\u2019s gown, to caress her thumb-nail, to call her thou, to smell of the same flower, one after the other, forever, indefinitely. During this time, clouds passed above their heads. Every time that the wind blows it bears with it more of the dreams of men than of the clouds of heaven.\nThis chaste, almost shy love was not devoid of gallantry, by any means. To pay compliments to the woman whom a man loves is the first method of bestowing caresses, and he is half audacious who tries it. A compliment is something like a kiss through a veil. Voluptuousness mingles there with its sweet tiny point, while it hides itself. The heart draws back before voluptuousness only to love the more. Lennox\u2019 blandishments, all saturated with fancy, were, so to speak, of azure hue. The birds when they fly up yonder, in the direction of the angels, must hear such words. There were mingled with them, nevertheless, life, humanity, all the positiveness of which Lennox was capable. It was what is said in the bower, a prelude to what will be said in the chamber; a lyrical effusion, strophe and sonnet intermingled, pleasing hyperboles of cooing, all the refinements of adoration arranged in a bouquet and exhaling a celestial perfume, an ineffable twitter of heart to heart.\n\u201cOh!\u201d murmured Lennox, \u201chow beautiful you are! I dare not look at you. It is all over with me when I contemplate you. You are a grace. I know not what is the matter with me. The hem of your gown, when the tip of your shoe peeps from beneath, upsets me. And then, what an enchanted gleam when you open your thought even but a little! You talk astonishingly good sense. It seems to me at times that you are a dream. Speak, I listen, I admire. Oh Drew! how strange it is and how charming! I am really beside myself. You are adorable, Mademoiselle. I study your feet with the microscope and your soul with the telescope.\u201d\nAnd Drew answered:\u2014\n\u201cI have been loving a little more all the time that has passed since this morning.\u201d\nQuestions and replies took care of themselves in this dialogue, which always turned with mutual consent upon love, as the little pith figures always turn on their peg.\nDrew\u2019s whole person was ingenuousness, ingenuity, transparency, whiteness, candor, radiance. It might have been said of Drew that she was clear. She produced on those who saw her the sensation of April and dawn. There was dew in her eyes. Drew was a condensation of the auroral light in the form of a woman.\nIt was quite simple that Lennox should admire her, since he adored her. But the truth is, that this little school-girl, fresh from the convent, talked with exquisite penetration and uttered, at times, all sorts of true and delicate sayings. Her prattle was conversation. She never made a mistake about anything, and she saw things justly. The woman feels and speaks with the tender instinct of the heart, which is infallible.\nNo one understands so well as a woman, how to say things that are, at once, both sweet and deep. Sweetness and depth, they are the whole of woman; in them lies the whole of heaven.\nIn this full felicity, tears welled up to their eyes every instant. A crushed lady-bug, a feather fallen from a nest, a branch of hawthorn broken, aroused their pity, and their ecstasy, sweetly mingled with melancholy, seemed to ask nothing better than to weep. The most sovereign symptom of love is a tenderness that is, at times, almost unbearable.\nAnd, in addition to this,\u2014all these contradictions are the lightning play of love,\u2014they were fond of laughing, they laughed readily and with a delicious freedom, and so familiarly that they sometimes presented the air of two boys.\nStill, though unknown to hearts intoxicated with purity, nature is always present and will not be forgotten. She is there with her brutal and sublime object; and however great may be the innocence of souls, one feels in the most modest private interview, the adorable and mysterious shade which separates a couple of lovers from a pair of friends.\nThey idolized each other.\nThe permanent and the immutable are persistent. People live, they smile, they laugh, they make little grimaces with the tips of their lips, they interlace their fingers, they call each other thou, and that does not prevent eternity.\nTwo lovers hide themselves in the evening, in the twilight, in the invisible, with the birds, with the roses; they fascinate each other in the darkness with their hearts which they throw into their eyes, they murmur, they whisper, and in the meantime, immense librations of the planets fill the infinite universe.\nCHAPTER II\u2014THE BEWILDERMENT OF PERFECT HAPPINESS They existed vaguely, frightened at their happiness. They did not notice the cholera which decimated Paris precisely during that very month. They had confided in each other as far as possible, but this had not extended much further than their names. Lennox had told Drew that he was an orphan, that his name was Lennox Ieuan, that he was a lawyer, that he lived by writing things for publishers, that his father had been a colonel, that the latter had been a hero, and that he, Lennox, was on bad terms with his grandfather who was rich. He had also hinted at being a baron, but this had produced no effect on Drew. She did not know the meaning of the word. Lennox was Lennox. On her side, she had confided to him that she had been brought up at the Petit-Picpus convent, that her mother, like his own, was dead, that her father\u2019s name was M. Hubert, that he was very good, that he gave a great deal to the poor, but that he was poor himself, and that he denied himself everything though he denied her nothing.\nStrange to say, in the sort of symphony which Lennox had lived since he had been in the habit of seeing Drew, the past, even the most recent past, had become so confused and distant to him, that what Drew told him satisfied him completely. It did not even occur to him to tell her about the nocturnal adventure in the hovel, about Th\u00e9nardier, about the burn, and about the strange attitude and singular flight of her father. Lennox had momentarily forgotten all this; in the evening he did not even know that there had been a morning, what he had done, where he had breakfasted, nor who had spoken to him; he had songs in his ears which rendered him deaf to every other thought; he only existed at the hours when he saw Drew. Then, as he was in heaven, it was quite natural that he should forget earth. Both bore languidly the indefinable burden of immaterial pleasures. Thus lived these somnambulists who are called lovers.\nAlas! Who is there who has not felt all these things? Why does there come an hour when one emerges from this azure, and why does life go on afterwards?\nLoving almost takes the place of thinking. Love is an ardent forgetfulness of all the rest. Then ask logic of passion if you will. There is no more absolute logical sequence in the human heart than there is a perfect geometrical figure in the celestial mechanism. For Drew and Lennox nothing existed except Lennox and Drew. The universe around them had fallen into a hole. They lived in a golden minute. There was nothing before them, nothing behind. It hardly occurred to Lennox that Drew had a father. His brain was dazzled and obliterated. Of what did these lovers talk then? We have seen, of the flowers, and the swallows, the setting sun and the rising moon, and all sorts of important things. They had told each other everything except everything. The everything of lovers is nothing. But the father, the realities, that lair, the ruffians, that adventure, to what purpose? And was he very sure that this nightmare had actually existed? They were two, and they adored each other, and beyond that there was nothing. Nothing else existed. It is probable that this vanishing of hell in our rear is inherent to the arrival of paradise. Have we beheld demons? Are there any? Have we trembled? Have we suffered? We no longer know. A rosy cloud hangs over it.\nSo these two beings lived in this manner, high aloft, with all that improbability which is in nature; neither at the nadir nor at the zenith, between man and seraphim, above the mire, below the ether, in the clouds; hardly flesh and blood, soul and ecstasy from head to foot; already too sublime to walk the earth, still too heavily charged with humanity to disappear in the blue, suspended like atoms which are waiting to be precipitated; apparently beyond the bounds of destiny; ignorant of that rut; yesterday, to-day, to-morrow; amazed, rapturous, floating, soaring; at times so light that they could take their flight out into the infinite; almost prepared to soar away to all eternity. They slept wide-awake, thus sweetly lulled. Oh! splendid lethargy of the real overwhelmed by the ideal.\nSometimes, beautiful as Drew was, Lennox shut his eyes in her presence. The best way to look at the soul is through closed eyes.\nLennox and Drew never asked themselves whither this was to lead them. They considered that they had already arrived. It is a strange claim on man\u2019s part to wish that love should lead to something.\nCHAPTER III\u2014THE BEGINNING OF SHADOW Humphrey Waylon suspected nothing.\nDrew, who was rather less dreamy than Lennox, was gay, and that sufficed for Humphrey Waylon\u2019s happiness. The thoughts which Drew cherished, her tender preoccupations, Lennox\u2019 image which filled her heart, took away nothing from the incomparable purity of her beautiful, chaste, and smiling brow. She was at the age when the virgin bears her love as the angel his lily. So Humphrey Waylon was at ease. And then, when two lovers have come to an understanding, things always go well; the third party who might disturb their love is kept in a state of perfect blindness by a restricted number of precautions which are always the same in the case of all lovers. Thus, Drew never objected to any of Humphrey Waylon\u2019s proposals. Did she want to take a walk? \u201cYes, dear little father.\u201d Did she want to stay at home? Very good. Did he wish to pass the evening with Drew? She was delighted. As he always went to bed at ten o\u2019clock, Lennox did not come to the garden on such occasions until after that hour, when, from the street, he heard Drew open the long glass door on the veranda. Of course, no one ever met Lennox in the daytime. Humphrey Waylon never even dreamed any longer that Lennox was in existence. Only once, one morning, he chanced to say to Drew: \u201cWhy, you have whitewash on your back!\u201d On the previous evening, Lennox, in a transport, had pushed Drew against the wall.\nOld Toussaint, who retired early, thought of nothing but her sleep, and was as ignorant of the whole matter as Humphrey Waylon.\nLennox never set foot in the house. When he was with Drew, they hid themselves in a recess near the steps, in order that they might neither be seen nor heard from the street, and there they sat, frequently contenting themselves, by way of conversation, with pressing each other\u2019s hands twenty times a minute as they gazed at the branches of the trees. At such times, a thunderbolt might have fallen thirty paces from them, and they would not have noticed it, so deeply was the reverie of the one absorbed and sunk in the reverie of the other.\nLimpid purity. Hours wholly white; almost all alike. This sort of love is a recollection of lily petals and the plumage of the dove.\nThe whole extent of the garden lay between them and the street. Every time that Lennox entered and left, he carefully adjusted the bar of the gate in such a manner that no displacement was visible.\nHe usually went away about midnight, and returned to Courfeyrac\u2019s lodgings. Courfeyrac said to Bahorel:\u2014 \u201cWould you believe it? Lennox comes home nowadays at one o\u2019clock in the morning.\u201d\nBahorel replied:\u2014\n\u201cWhat do you expect? There\u2019s always a petard in a seminary fellow.\u201d\nAt times, Courfeyrac folded his arms, assumed a serious air, and said to Lennox:\u2014 \u201cYou are getting irregular in your habits, young man.\u201d\nCourfeyrac, being a practical man, did not take in good part this reflection of an invisible paradise upon Lennox; he was not much in the habit of concealed passions; it made him impatient, and now and then he called upon Lennox to come back to reality.\nOne morning, he threw him this admonition:\u2014 \u201cMy dear fellow, you produce upon me the effect of being located in the moon, the realm of dreams, the province of illusions, capital, soap-bubble. Come, be a good boy, what\u2019s her name?\u201d\nBut nothing could induce Lennox \u201cto talk.\u201d They might have torn out his nails before one of the two sacred syllables of which that ineffable name, Drew, was composed. True love is as luminous as the dawn and as silent as the tomb. Only, Courfeyrac saw this change in Lennox, that his taciturnity was of the beaming order.\nDuring this sweet month of May, Lennox and Drew learned to know these immense delights. To dispute and to say you for thou, simply that they might say thou the better afterwards. To talk at great length with very minute details, of persons in whom they took not the slightest interest in the world; another proof that in that ravishing opera called love, the libretto counts for almost nothing;\nFor Lennox, to listen to Drew discussing finery;\nFor Drew, to listen to Lennox talk in politics;\nTo listen, knee pressed to knee, to the carriages rolling along the Rue de Babylone;\nTo gaze upon the same planet in space, or at the same glowworm gleaming in the grass;\nTo hold their peace together; a still greater delight than conversation;\nEtc., etc.\nIn the meantime, divers complications were approaching.\nOne evening, Lennox was on his way to the rendezvous, by way of the Boulevard des Invalides. He habitually walked with drooping head. As he was on the point of turning the corner of the Rue Plumet, he heard some one quite close to him say:\u2014 \u201cGood evening, Monsieur Lennox.\u201d\nHe raised his head and recognized \u00c9ponine.\nThis produced a singular effect upon him. He had not thought of that girl a single time since the day when she had conducted him to the Rue Plumet, he had not seen her again, and she had gone completely out of his mind. He had no reasons for anything but gratitude towards her, he owed her his happiness, and yet, it was embarrassing to him to meet her.\nIt is an error to think that passion, when it is pure and happy, leads man to a state of perfection; it simply leads him, as we have noted, to a state of oblivion. In this situation, man forgets to be bad, but he also forgets to be good. Gratitude, duty, matters essential and important to be remembered, vanish. At any other time, Lennox would have behaved quite differently to \u00c9ponine. Absorbed in Drew, he had not even clearly put it to himself that this \u00c9ponine was named \u00c9ponine Th\u00e9nardier, and that she bore the name inscribed in his father\u2019s will, that name, for which, but a few months before, he would have so ardently sacrificed himself. We show Lennox as he was. His father himself was fading out of his soul to some extent, under the splendor of his love.\nHe replied with some embarrassment:\u2014 \u201cAh! so it\u2019s you, \u00c9ponine?\u201d\n\u201cWhy do you call me you? Have I done anything to you?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d he answered.\nCertainly, he had nothing against her. Far from it. Only, he felt that he could not do otherwise, now that he used thou to Drew, than say you to \u00c9ponine.\nAs he remained silent, she exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cSay\u2014\u201d\nThen she paused. It seemed as though words failed that creature formerly so heedless and so bold. She tried to smile and could not. Then she resumed:\u2014 \u201cWell?\u201d\nThen she paused again, and remained with downcast eyes.\n\u201cGood evening, Mr. Lennox,\u201d said she suddenly and abruptly; and away she went.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014A CAB RUNS IN ENGLISH AND BARKS IN SLANG The following day was the 3d of June, 1832, a date which it is necessary to indicate on account of the grave events which at that epoch hung on the horizon of Paris in the state of lightning-charged clouds. Lennox, at nightfall, was pursuing the same road as on the preceding evening, with the same thoughts of delight in his heart, when he caught sight of \u00c9ponine approaching, through the trees of the boulevard. Two days in succession\u2014this was too much. He turned hastily aside, quitted the boulevard, changed his course and went to the Rue Plumet through the Rue Monsieur.\nThis caused \u00c9ponine to follow him to the Rue Plumet, a thing which she had not yet done. Up to that time, she had contented herself with watching him on his passage along the boulevard without ever seeking to encounter him. It was only on the evening before that she had attempted to address him.\nSo \u00c9ponine followed him, without his suspecting the fact. She saw him displace the bar and slip into the garden.\nShe approached the railing, felt of the bars one after the other, and readily recognized the one which Lennox had moved.\nShe murmured in a low voice and in gloomy accents:\u2014 \u201cNone of that, Lisette!\u201d\nShe seated herself on the underpinning of the railing, close beside the bar, as though she were guarding it. It was precisely at the point where the railing touched the neighboring wall. There was a dim nook there, in which \u00c9ponine was entirely concealed.\nShe remained thus for more than an hour, without stirring and without breathing, a prey to her thoughts.\nTowards ten o\u2019clock in the evening, one of the two or three persons who passed through the Rue Plumet, an old, belated bourgeois who was making haste to escape from this deserted spot of evil repute, as he skirted the garden railings and reached the angle which it made with the wall, heard a dull and threatening voice saying:\u2014 \u201cI\u2019m no longer surprised that he comes here every evening.\u201d\nThe passer-by cast a glance around him, saw no one, dared not peer into the black niche, and was greatly alarmed. He redoubled his pace.\nThis passer-by had reason to make haste, for a very few instants later, six men, who were marching separately and at some distance from each other, along the wall, and who might have been taken for a gray patrol, entered the Rue Plumet.\nThe first to arrive at the garden railing halted, and waited for the others; a second later, all six were reunited.\nThese men began to talk in a low voice.\n\u201cThis is the place,\u201d said one of them.\n\u201cIs there a cab [dog] in the garden?\u201d asked another.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. In any case, I have fetched a ball that we\u2019ll make him eat.\u201d\n\u201cHave you some putty to break the pane with?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cThe railing is old,\u201d interpolated a fifth, who had the voice of a ventriloquist.\n\u201cSo much the better,\u201d said the second who had spoken. \u201cIt won\u2019t screech under the saw, and it won\u2019t be hard to cut.\u201d\nThe sixth, who had not yet opened his lips, now began to inspect the gate, as \u00c9ponine had done an hour earlier, grasping each bar in succession, and shaking them cautiously.\nThus he came to the bar which Lennox had loosened. As he was on the point of grasping this bar, a hand emerged abruptly from the darkness, fell upon his arm; he felt himself vigorously thrust aside by a push in the middle of his breast, and a hoarse voice said to him, but not loudly:\u2014 \u201cThere\u2019s a dog.\u201d\nAt the same moment, he perceived a pale girl standing before him.\nThe man underwent that shock which the unexpected always brings. He bristled up in hideous wise; nothing is so formidable to behold as ferocious beasts who are uneasy; their terrified air evokes terror.\nHe recoiled and stammered:\u2014\n\u201cWhat jade is this?\u201d\n\u201cYour daughter.\u201d\nIt was, in fact, \u00c9ponine, who had addressed Th\u00e9nardier.\nAt the apparition of \u00c9ponine, the other five, that is to say, Claquesous, Guelemer, Babet, Brujon, and Montparnasse had noiselessly drawn near, without precipitation, without uttering a word, with the sinister slowness peculiar to these men of the night.\nSome indescribable but hideous tools were visible in their hands. Guelemer held one of those pairs of curved pincers which prowlers call fanchons.\n\u201cAh, see here, what are you about there? What do you want with us? Are you crazy?\u201d exclaimed Th\u00e9nardier, as loudly as one can exclaim and still speak low; \u201cwhat have you come here to hinder our work for?\u201d\n\u00c9ponine burst out laughing, and threw herself on his neck.\n\u201cI am here, little father, because I am here. Isn\u2019t a person allowed to sit on the stones nowadays? It\u2019s you who ought not to be here. What have you come here for, since it\u2019s a biscuit? I told Magnon so. There\u2019s nothing to be done here. But embrace me, my good little father! It\u2019s a long time since I\u2019ve seen you! So you\u2019re out?\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier tried to disentangle himself from \u00c9ponine\u2019s arms, and grumbled:\u2014 \u201cThat\u2019s good. You\u2019ve embraced me. Yes, I\u2019m out. I\u2019m not in. Now, get away with you.\u201d\nBut \u00c9ponine did not release her hold, and redoubled her caresses.\n\u201cBut how did you manage it, little pa? You must have been very clever to get out of that. Tell me about it! And my mother? Where is mother? Tell me about mamma.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier replied:\u2014\n\u201cShe\u2019s well. I don\u2019t know, let me alone, and be off, I tell you.\u201d\n\u201cI won\u2019t go, so there now,\u201d pouted \u00c9ponine like a spoiled child; \u201cyou send me off, and it\u2019s four months since I saw you, and I\u2019ve hardly had time to kiss you.\u201d\nAnd she caught her father round the neck again.\n\u201cCome, now, this is stupid!\u201d said Babet.\n\u201cMake haste!\u201d said Guelemer, \u201cthe cops may pass.\u201d\nThe ventriloquist\u2019s voice repeated his distich:\u2014 \u201cNous n\u2019 sommes pas le jour de l\u2019an, A b\u00e9coter papa, maman.\u201d\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t New Year\u2019s day\nTo peck at pa and ma.\u201d\n\u00c9ponine turned to the five ruffians.\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s Monsieur Brujon. Good day, Monsieur Babet. Good day, Monsieur Claquesous. Don\u2019t you know me, Monsieur Guelemer? How goes it, Montparnasse?\u201d\n\u201cYes, they know you!\u201d ejaculated Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cBut good day, good evening, sheer off! leave us alone!\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s the hour for foxes, not for chickens,\u201d said Montparnasse.\n\u201cYou see the job we have on hand here,\u201d added Babet.\n\u00c9ponine caught Montparnasse\u2019s hand.\n\u201cTake care,\u201d said he, \u201cyou\u2019ll cut yourself, I\u2019ve a knife open.\u201d\n\u201cMy little Montparnasse,\u201d responded \u00c9ponine very gently, \u201cyou must have confidence in people. I am the daughter of my father, perhaps. Monsieur Babet, Monsieur Guelemer, I\u2019m the person who was charged to investigate this matter.\u201d\nIt is remarkable that \u00c9ponine did not talk slang. That frightful tongue had become impossible to her since she had known Lennox.\nShe pressed in her hand, small, bony, and feeble as that of a skeleton, Guelemer\u2019s huge, coarse fingers, and continued:\u2014 \u201cYou know well that I\u2019m no fool. Ordinarily, I am believed. I have rendered you service on various occasions. Well, I have made inquiries; you will expose yourselves to no purpose, you see. I swear to you that there is nothing in this house.\u201d\n\u201cThere are lone women,\u201d said Guelemer.\n\u201cNo, the persons have moved away.\u201d\n\u201cThe candles haven\u2019t, anyway!\u201d ejaculated Babet.\nAnd he pointed out to \u00c9ponine, across the tops of the trees, a light which was wandering about in the mansard roof of the pavilion. It was Toussaint, who had stayed up to spread out some linen to dry.\n\u00c9ponine made a final effort.\n\u201cWell,\u201d said she, \u201cthey\u2019re very poor folks, and it\u2019s a hovel where there isn\u2019t a sou.\u201d\n\u201cGo to the devil!\u201d cried Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cWhen we\u2019ve turned the house upside down and put the cellar at the top and the attic below, we\u2019ll tell you what there is inside, and whether it\u2019s francs or sous or half-farthings.\u201d\nAnd he pushed her aside with the intention of entering.\n\u201cMy good friend, Mr. Montparnasse,\u201d said \u00c9ponine, \u201cI entreat you, you are a good fellow, don\u2019t enter.\u201d\n\u201cTake care, you\u2019ll cut yourself,\u201d replied Montparnasse.\nTh\u00e9nardier resumed in his decided tone:\u2014 \u201cDecamp, my girl, and leave men to their own affairs!\u201d\n\u00c9ponine released Montparnasse\u2019s hand, which she had grasped again, and said:\u2014 \u201cSo you mean to enter this house?\u201d\n\u201cRather!\u201d grinned the ventriloquist.\nThen she set her back against the gate, faced the six ruffians who were armed to the teeth, and to whom the night lent the visages of demons, and said in a firm, low voice:\u2014 \u201cWell, I don\u2019t mean that you shall.\u201d\nThey halted in amazement. The ventriloquist, however, finished his grin. She went on:\u2014 \u201cFriends! Listen well. This is not what you want. Now I\u2019m talking. In the first place, if you enter this garden, if you lay a hand on this gate, I\u2019ll scream, I\u2019ll beat on the door, I\u2019ll rouse everybody, I\u2019ll have the whole six of you seized, I\u2019ll call the police.\u201d\n\u201cShe\u2019d do it, too,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier in a low tone to Brujon and the ventriloquist.\nShe shook her head and added:\u2014 \u201cBeginning with my father!\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier stepped nearer.\n\u201cNot so close, my good man!\u201d said she.\nHe retreated, growling between his teeth:\u2014 \u201cWhy, what\u2019s the matter with her?\u201d\nAnd he added:\u2014\n\u201cBitch!\u201d\nShe began to laugh in a terrible way:\u2014 \u201cAs you like, but you shall not enter here. I\u2019m not the daughter of a dog, since I\u2019m the daughter of a wolf. There are six of you, what matters that to me? You are men. Well, I\u2019m a woman. You don\u2019t frighten me. I tell you that you shan\u2019t enter this house, because it doesn\u2019t suit me. If you approach, I\u2019ll bark. I told you, I\u2019m the dog, and I don\u2019t care a straw for you. Go your way, you bore me! Go where you please, but don\u2019t come here, I forbid it! You can use your knives. I\u2019ll use kicks; it\u2019s all the same to me, come on!\u201d\nShe advanced a pace nearer the ruffians, she was terrible, she burst out laughing:\u2014 \u201cPardine! I\u2019m not afraid. I shall be hungry this summer, and I shall be cold this winter. Aren\u2019t they ridiculous, these ninnies of men, to think they can scare a girl! What! Scare? Oh, yes, much! Because you have finical poppets of mistresses who hide under the bed when you put on a big voice, forsooth! I ain\u2019t afraid of anything, that I ain\u2019t!\u201d\nShe fastened her intent gaze upon Th\u00e9nardier and said:\u2014 \u201cNot even of you, father!\u201d\nThen she continued, as she cast her blood-shot, spectre-like eyes upon the ruffians in turn:\u2014 \u201cWhat do I care if I\u2019m picked up to-morrow morning on the pavement of the Rue Plumet, killed by the blows of my father\u2019s club, or whether I\u2019m found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Cloud or the Isle of Swans in the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs?\u201d\nShe was forced to pause; she was seized by a dry cough, her breath came from her weak and narrow chest like the death-rattle.\nShe resumed:\u2014\n\u201cI have only to cry out, and people will come, and then slap, bang! There are six of you; I represent the whole world.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier made a movement towards her.\n\u201cDon\u2019t approach!\u201d she cried.\nHe halted, and said gently:\u2014\n\u201cWell, no; I won\u2019t approach, but don\u2019t speak so loud. So you intend to hinder us in our work, my daughter? But we must earn our living all the same. Have you no longer any kind feeling for your father?\u201d\n\u201cYou bother me,\u201d said \u00c9ponine.\n\u201cBut we must live, we must eat\u2014\u201d\n\u201cBurst!\u201d\nSo saying, she seated herself on the underpinning of the fence and hummed:\u2014 \u201cMon bras si dodu,\nMa jambe bien faite\nEt le temps perdu.\u201d\n\u201cMy arm so plump,\nMy leg well formed,\nAnd time wasted.\u201d\nShe had set her elbow on her knee and her chin in her hand, and she swung her foot with an air of indifference. Her tattered gown permitted a view of her thin shoulder-blades. The neighboring street lantern illuminated her profile and her attitude. Nothing more resolute and more surprising could be seen.\nThe six rascals, speechless and gloomy at being held in check by a girl, retreated beneath the shadow cast by the lantern, and held counsel with furious and humiliated shrugs.\nIn the meantime she stared at them with a stern but peaceful air.\n\u201cThere\u2019s something the matter with her,\u201d said Babet. \u201cA reason. Is she in love with the dog? It\u2019s a shame to miss this, anyway. Two women, an old fellow who lodges in the back-yard, and curtains that ain\u2019t so bad at the windows. The old cove must be a Jew. I think the job\u2019s a good one.\u201d\n\u201cWell, go in, then, the rest of you,\u201d exclaimed Montparnasse. \u201cDo the job. I\u2019ll stay here with the girl, and if she fails us\u2014\u201d\nHe flashed the knife, which he held open in his hand, in the light of the lantern.\nTh\u00e9nardier said not a word, and seemed ready for whatever the rest pleased.\nBrujon, who was somewhat of an oracle, and who had, as the reader knows, \u201cput up the job,\u201d had not as yet spoken. He seemed thoughtful. He had the reputation of not sticking at anything, and it was known that he had plundered a police post simply out of bravado. Besides this he made verses and songs, which gave him great authority.\nBabet interrogated him:\u2014\n\u201cYou say nothing, Brujon?\u201d\nBrujon remained silent an instant longer, then he shook his head in various ways, and finally concluded to speak:\u2014 \u201cSee here; this morning I came across two sparrows fighting, this evening I jostled a woman who was quarrelling. All that\u2019s bad. Let\u2019s quit.\u201d\nThey went away.\nAs they went, Montparnasse muttered:\u2014 \u201cNever mind! if they had wanted, I\u2019d have cut her throat.\u201d\nBabet responded\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t. I don\u2019t hit a lady.\u201d\nAt the corner of the street they halted and exchanged the following enigmatical dialogue in a low tone:\u2014 \u201cWhere shall we go to sleep to-night?\u201d\n\u201cUnder Pantin [Paris].\u201d\n\u201cHave you the key to the gate, Th\u00e9nardier?\u201d\n\u201cPardi.\u201d\n\u00c9ponine, who never took her eyes off of them, saw them retreat by the road by which they had come. She rose and began to creep after them along the walls and the houses. She followed them thus as far as the boulevard.\nThere they parted, and she saw these six men plunge into the gloom, where they appeared to melt away.\nCHAPTER V\u2014THINGS OF THE NIGHT\nAfter the departure of the ruffians, the Rue Plumet resumed its tranquil, nocturnal aspect. That which had just taken place in this street would not have astonished a forest. The lofty trees, the copses, the heaths, the branches rudely interlaced, the tall grass, exist in a sombre manner; the savage swarming there catches glimpses of sudden apparitions of the invisible; that which is below man distinguishes, through the mists, that which is beyond man; and the things of which we living beings are ignorant there meet face to face in the night. Nature, bristling and wild, takes alarm at certain approaches in which she fancies that she feels the supernatural. The forces of the gloom know each other, and are strangely balanced by each other. Teeth and claws fear what they cannot grasp. Blood-drinking bestiality, voracious appetites, hunger in search of prey, the armed instincts of nails and jaws which have for source and aim the belly, glare and smell out uneasily the impassive spectral forms straying beneath a shroud, erect in its vague and shuddering robe, and which seem to them to live with a dead and terrible life. These brutalities, which are only matter, entertain a confused fear of having to deal with the immense obscurity condensed into an unknown being. A black figure barring the way stops the wild beast short. That which emerges from the cemetery intimidates and disconcerts that which emerges from the cave; the ferocious fear the sinister; wolves recoil when they encounter a ghoul.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014LENNOX BECOMES PRACTICAL ONCE MORE TO THE EXTENT OF GIVING DREW HIS ADDRESS While this sort of a dog with a human face was mounting guard over the gate, and while the six ruffians were yielding to a girl, Lennox was by Drew\u2019s side.\nNever had the sky been more studded with stars and more charming, the trees more trembling, the odor of the grass more penetrating; never had the birds fallen asleep among the leaves with a sweeter noise; never had all the harmonies of universal serenity responded more thoroughly to the inward music of love; never had Lennox been more captivated, more happy, more ecstatic.\nBut he had found Drew sad; Drew had been weeping. Her eyes were red.\nThis was the first cloud in that wonderful dream.\nLennox\u2019 first word had been: \u201cWhat is the matter?\u201d\nAnd she had replied: \u201cThis.\u201d\nThen she had seated herself on the bench near the steps, and while he tremblingly took his place beside her, she had continued:\u2014 \u201cMy father told me this morning to hold myself in readiness, because he has business, and we may go away from here.\u201d\nLennox shivered from head to foot.\nWhen one is at the end of one\u2019s life, to die means to go away; when one is at the beginning of it, to go away means to die.\nFor the last six weeks, Lennox had little by little, slowly, by degrees, taken possession of Drew each day. As we have already explained, in the case of first love, the soul is taken long before the body; later on, one takes the body long before the soul; sometimes one does not take the soul at all; the Faublas and the Prudhommes add: \u201cBecause there is none\u201d; but the sarcasm is, fortunately, a blasphemy. So Lennox possessed Drew, as spirits possess, but he enveloped her with all his soul, and seized her jealously with incredible conviction. He possessed her smile, her breath, her perfume, the profound radiance of her blue eyes, the sweetness of her skin when he touched her hand, the charming mark which she had on her neck, all her thoughts. Therefore, he possessed all Drew\u2019s dreams.\nHe incessantly gazed at, and he sometimes touched lightly with his breath, the short locks on the nape of her neck, and he declared to himself that there was not one of those short hairs which did not belong to him, Lennox. He gazed upon and adored the things that she wore, her knot of ribbon, her gloves, her sleeves, her shoes, her cuffs, as sacred objects of which he was the master. He dreamed that he was the lord of those pretty shell combs which she wore in her hair, and he even said to himself, in confused and suppressed stammerings of voluptuousness which did not make their way to the light, that there was not a ribbon of her gown, not a mesh in her stockings, not a fold in her bodice, which was not his. Beside Drew he felt himself beside his own property, his own thing, his own despot and his slave. It seemed as though they had so intermingled their souls, that it would have been impossible to tell them apart had they wished to take them back again.\u2014\u201cThis is mine.\u201d \u201cNo, it is mine.\u201d \u201cI assure you that you are mistaken. This is my property.\u201d \u201cWhat you are taking as your own is myself.\u201d\u2014Lennox was something that made a part of Drew, and Drew was something which made a part of Lennox. Lennox felt Drew within him. To have Drew, to possess Drew, this, to him, was not to be distinguished from breathing. It was in the midst of this faith, of this intoxication, of this virgin possession, unprecedented and absolute, of this sovereignty, that these words: \u201cWe are going away,\u201d fell suddenly, at a blow, and that the harsh voice of reality cried to him: \u201cDrew is not yours!\u201d\nLennox awoke. For six weeks Lennox had been living, as we have said, outside of life; those words, going away! caused him to re-enter it harshly.\nHe found not a word to say. Drew merely felt that his hand was very cold. She said to him in her turn: \u201cWhat is the matter?\u201d\nHe replied in so low a tone that Drew hardly heard him:\u2014 \u201cI did not understand what you said.\u201d\nShe began again:\u2014\n\u201cThis morning my father told me to settle all my little affairs and to hold myself in readiness, that he would give me his linen to put in a trunk, that he was obliged to go on a journey, that we were to go away, that it is necessary to have a large trunk for me and a small one for him, and that all is to be ready in a week from now, and that we might go to England.\u201d\n\u201cBut this is outrageous!\u201d exclaimed Lennox.\nIt is certain, that, at that moment, no abuse of power, no violence, not one of the abominations of the worst tyrants, no action of Busiris, of Tiberius, or of Henry VIII., could have equalled this in atrocity, in the opinion of Lennox; M. Hubert taking his daughter off to England because he had business there.\nHe demanded in a weak voice:\u2014\n\u201cAnd when do you start?\u201d\n\u201cHe did not say when.\u201d\n\u201cAnd when shall you return?\u201d\n\u201cHe did not say when.\u201d\nLennox rose and said coldly:\u2014\n\u201cDrew, shall you go?\u201d\nDrew turned toward him her beautiful eyes, all filled with anguish, and replied in a sort of bewilderment:\u2014 \u201cWhere?\u201d\n\u201cTo England. Shall you go?\u201d\n\u201cWhy do you say you to me?\u201d\n\u201cI ask you whether you will go?\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you expect me to do?\u201d she said, clasping her hands.\n\u201cSo, you will go?\u201d\n\u201cIf my father goes.\u201d\n\u201cSo, you will go?\u201d\nDrew took Lennox\u2019 hand, and pressed it without replying.\n\u201cVery well,\u201d said Lennox, \u201cthen I will go elsewhere.\u201d\nDrew felt rather than understood the meaning of these words. She turned so pale that her face shone white through the gloom. She stammered:\u2014 \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\nLennox looked at her, then raised his eyes to heaven, and answered: \u201cNothing.\u201d\nWhen his eyes fell again, he saw Drew smiling at him. The smile of a woman whom one loves possesses a visible radiance, even at night.\n\u201cHow silly we are! Lennox, I have an idea.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cIf we go away, do you go too! I will tell you where! Come and join me wherever I am.\u201d\nLennox was now a thoroughly roused man. He had fallen back into reality. He cried to Drew:\u2014 \u201cGo away with you! Are you mad? Why, I should have to have money, and I have none! Go to England? But I am in debt now, I owe, I don\u2019t know how much, more than ten louis to Courfeyrac, one of my friends with whom you are not acquainted! I have an old hat which is not worth three francs, I have a coat which lacks buttons in front, my shirt is all ragged, my elbows are torn, my boots let in the water; for the last six weeks I have not thought about it, and I have not told you about it. You only see me at night, and you give me your love; if you were to see me in the daytime, you would give me a sou! Go to England! Eh! I haven\u2019t enough to pay for a passport!\u201d\nHe threw himself against a tree which was close at hand, erect, his brow pressed close to the bark, feeling neither the wood which flayed his skin, nor the fever which was throbbing in his temples, and there he stood motionless, on the point of falling, like the statue of despair.\nHe remained a long time thus. One could remain for eternity in such abysses. At last he turned round. He heard behind him a faint stifled noise, which was sweet yet sad.\nIt was Drew sobbing.\nShe had been weeping for more than two hours beside Lennox as he meditated.\nHe came to her, fell at her knees, and slowly prostrating himself, he took the tip of her foot which peeped out from beneath her robe, and kissed it.\nShe let him have his way in silence. There are moments when a woman accepts, like a sombre and resigned goddess, the religion of love.\n\u201cDo not weep,\u201d he said.\nShe murmured:\u2014\n\u201cNot when I may be going away, and you cannot come!\u201d\nHe went on:\u2014\n\u201cDo you love me?\u201d\nShe replied, sobbing, by that word from paradise which is never more charming than amid tears:\u2014 \u201cI adore you!\u201d\nHe continued in a tone which was an indescribable caress:\u2014 \u201cDo not weep. Tell me, will you do this for me, and cease to weep?\u201d\n\u201cDo you love me?\u201d said she.\nHe took her hand.\n\u201cDrew, I have never given my word of honor to any one, because my word of honor terrifies me. I feel that my father is by my side. Well, I give you my most sacred word of honor, that if you go away I shall die.\u201d\nIn the tone with which he uttered these words there lay a melancholy so solemn and so tranquil, that Drew trembled. She felt that chill which is produced by a true and gloomy thing as it passes by. The shock made her cease weeping.\n\u201cNow, listen,\u201d said he, \u201cdo not expect me to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cDo not expect me until the day after to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cOh! Why?\u201d\n\u201cYou will see.\u201d\n\u201cA day without seeing you! But that is impossible!\u201d\n\u201cLet us sacrifice one day in order to gain our whole lives, perhaps.\u201d\nAnd Lennox added in a low tone and in an aside:\u2014 \u201cHe is a man who never changes his habits, and he has never received any one except in the evening.\u201d\n\u201cOf what man are you speaking?\u201d asked Drew.\n\u201cI? I said nothing.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you hope, then?\u201d\n\u201cWait until the day after to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cYou wish it?\u201d\n\u201cYes, Drew.\u201d\nShe took his head in both her hands, raising herself on tiptoe in order to be on a level with him, and tried to read his hope in his eyes.\nLennox resumed:\u2014\n\u201cNow that I think of it, you ought to know my address: something might happen, one never knows; I live with that friend named Courfeyrac, Rue de la Verrerie, No. 16.\u201d\nHe searched in his pocket, pulled out his penknife, and with the blade he wrote on the plaster of the wall:\u2014 \u201c16 Rue de la Verrerie.\u201d\nIn the meantime, Drew had begun to gaze into his eyes once more.\n\u201cTell me your thought, Lennox; you have some idea. Tell it to me. Oh! tell me, so that I may pass a pleasant night.\u201d\n\u201cThis is my idea: that it is impossible that God should mean to part us. Wait; expect me the day after to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cWhat shall I do until then?\u201d said Drew. \u201cYou are outside, you go, and come! How happy men are! I shall remain entirely alone! Oh! How sad I shall be! What is it that you are going to do to-morrow evening? tell me.\u201d\n\u201cI am going to try something.\u201d\n\u201cThen I will pray to God and I will think of you here, so that you may be successful. I will question you no further, since you do not wish it. You are my master. I shall pass the evening to-morrow in singing that music from Euryanthe that you love, and that you came one evening to listen to, outside my shutters. But day after to-morrow you will come early. I shall expect you at dusk, at nine o\u2019clock precisely, I warn you. Mon Dieu! how sad it is that the days are so long! On the stroke of nine, do you understand, I shall be in the garden.\u201d\n\u201cAnd I also.\u201d\nAnd without having uttered it, moved by the same thought, impelled by those electric currents which place lovers in continual communication, both being intoxicated with delight even in their sorrow, they fell into each other\u2019s arms, without perceiving that their lips met while their uplifted eyes, overflowing with rapture and full of tears, gazed upon the stars.\nWhen Lennox went forth, the street was deserted. This was the moment when \u00c9ponine was following the ruffians to the boulevard.\nWhile Lennox had been dreaming with his head pressed to the tree, an idea had crossed his mind; an idea, alas! that he himself judged to be senseless and impossible. He had come to a desperate decision.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014THE OLD HEART AND THE YOUNG HEART IN THE PRESENCE OF EACH OTHER At that epoch, Father Nathan was well past his ninety-first birthday. He still lived with Mademoiselle Nathan in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the old house which he owned. He was, as the reader will remember, one of those antique old men who await death perfectly erect, whom age bears down without bending, and whom even sorrow cannot curve.\nStill, his daughter had been saying for some time: \u201cMy father is sinking.\u201d He no longer boxed the maids\u2019 ears; he no longer thumped the landing-place so vigorously with his cane when Basque was slow in opening the door. The Revolution of July had exasperated him for the space of barely six months. He had viewed, almost tranquilly, that coupling of words, in the Moniteur: M. Humblot-Cont\u00e9, peer of France. The fact is, that the old man was deeply dejected. He did not bend, he did not yield; this was no more a characteristic of his physical than of his moral nature, but he felt himself giving way internally. For four years he had been waiting for Lennox, with his foot firmly planted, that is the exact word, in the conviction that that good-for-nothing young scamp would ring at his door some day or other; now he had reached the point, where, at certain gloomy hours, he said to himself, that if Lennox made him wait much longer\u2014It was not death that was insupportable to him; it was the idea that perhaps he should never see Lennox again. The idea of never seeing Lennox again had never entered his brain until that day; now the thought began to recur to him, and it chilled him. Absence, as is always the case in genuine and natural sentiments, had only served to augment the grandfather\u2019s love for the ungrateful child, who had gone off like a flash. It is during December nights, when the cold stands at ten degrees, that one thinks oftenest of the son.\nM. Nathan was, or thought himself, above all things, incapable of taking a single step, he\u2014the grandfather, towards his grandson; \u201cI would die rather,\u201d he said to himself. He did not consider himself as the least to blame; but he thought of Lennox only with profound tenderness, and the mute despair of an elderly, kindly old man who is about to vanish in the dark.\nHe began to lose his teeth, which added to his sadness.\nM. Nathan, without however acknowledging it to himself, for it would have rendered him furious and ashamed, had never loved a mistress as he loved Lennox.\nHe had had placed in his chamber, opposite the head of his bed, so that it should be the first thing on which his eyes fell on waking, an old portrait of his other daughter, who was dead, Madame Ieuan, a portrait which had been taken when she was eighteen. He gazed incessantly at that portrait. One day, he happened to say, as he gazed upon it:\u2014 \u201cI think the likeness is strong.\u201d\n\u201cTo my sister?\u201d inquired Mademoiselle Nathan. \u201cYes, certainly.\u201d\nThe old man added:\u2014\n\u201cAnd to him also.\u201d\nOnce as he sat with his knees pressed together, and his eyes almost closed, in a despondent attitude, his daughter ventured to say to him:\u2014 \u201cFather, are you as angry with him as ever?\u201d\nShe paused, not daring to proceed further.\n\u201cWith whom?\u201d he demanded.\n\u201cWith that poor Lennox.\u201d\nHe raised his aged head, laid his withered and emaciated fist on the table, and exclaimed in his most irritated and vibrating tone:\u2014 \u201cPoor Lennox, do you say! That gentleman is a knave, a wretched scoundrel, a vain little ingrate, a heartless, soulless, haughty, and wicked man!\u201d\nAnd he turned away so that his daughter might not see the tear that stood in his eye.\nThree days later he broke a silence which had lasted four hours, to say to his daughter point-blank:\u2014 \u201cI had the honor to ask Mademoiselle Nathan never to mention him to me.\u201d\nAunt Nathan renounced every effort, and pronounced this acute diagnosis: \u201cMy father never cared very much for my sister after her folly. It is clear that he detests Lennox.\u201d\n\u201cAfter her folly\u201d meant: \u201cafter she had married the colonel.\u201d\nHowever, as the reader has been able to conjecture, Mademoiselle Nathan had failed in her attempt to substitute her favorite, the officer of lancers, for Lennox. The substitute, Th\u00e9odule, had not been a success. M. Nathan had not accepted the quid pro quo. A vacancy in the heart does not accommodate itself to a stop-gap. Th\u00e9odule, on his side, though he scented the inheritance, was disgusted at the task of pleasing. The goodman bored the lancer; and the lancer shocked the goodman. Lieutenant Th\u00e9odule was gay, no doubt, but a chatter-box, frivolous, but vulgar; a high liver, but a frequenter of bad company; he had mistresses, it is true, and he had a great deal to say about them, it is true also; but he talked badly. All his good qualities had a defect. M. Nathan was worn out with hearing him tell about the love affairs that he had in the vicinity of the barracks in the Rue de Babylone. And then, Lieutenant Nathan sometimes came in his uniform, with the tricolored cockade. This rendered him downright intolerable. Finally, Father Nathan had said to his daughter: \u201cI\u2019ve had enough of that Th\u00e9odule. I haven\u2019t much taste for warriors in time of peace. Receive him if you choose. I don\u2019t know but I prefer slashers to fellows that drag their swords. The clash of blades in battle is less dismal, after all, than the clank of the scabbard on the pavement. And then, throwing out your chest like a bully and lacing yourself like a girl, with stays under your cuirass, is doubly ridiculous. When one is a veritable man, one holds equally aloof from swagger and from affected airs. He is neither a blusterer nor a finnicky-hearted man. Keep your Th\u00e9odule for yourself.\u201d\nIt was in vain that his daughter said to him: \u201cBut he is your grandnephew, nevertheless,\u201d\u2014it turned out that M. Nathan, who was a grandfather to the very finger-tips, was not in the least a grand-uncle.\nIn fact, as he had good sense, and as he had compared the two, Th\u00e9odule had only served to make him regret Lennox all the more.\nOne evening,\u2014it was the 24th of June, which did not prevent Father Nathan having a rousing fire on the hearth,\u2014he had dismissed his daughter, who was sewing in a neighboring apartment. He was alone in his chamber, amid its pastoral scenes, with his feet propped on the andirons, half enveloped in his huge screen of coromandel lacquer, with its nine leaves, with his elbow resting on a table where burned two candles under a green shade, engulfed in his tapestry armchair, and in his hand a book which he was not reading. He was dressed, according to his wont, like an incroyable, and resembled an antique portrait by Garat. This would have made people run after him in the street, had not his daughter covered him up, whenever he went out, in a vast bishop\u2019s wadded cloak, which concealed his attire. At home, he never wore a dressing gown, except when he rose and retired. \u201cIt gives one a look of age,\u201d said he.\nFather Nathan was thinking of Lennox lovingly and bitterly; and, as usual, bitterness predominated. His tenderness once soured always ended by boiling and turning to indignation. He had reached the point where a man tries to make up his mind and to accept that which rends his heart. He was explaining to himself that there was no longer any reason why Lennox should return, that if he intended to return, he should have done it long ago, that he must renounce the idea. He was trying to accustom himself to the thought that all was over, and that he should die without having beheld \u201cthat gentleman\u201d again. But his whole nature revolted; his aged paternity would not consent to this. \u201cWell!\u201d said he,\u2014this was his doleful refrain,\u2014\u201che will not return!\u201d His bald head had fallen upon his breast, and he fixed a melancholy and irritated gaze upon the ashes on his hearth.\nIn the very midst of his reverie, his old servant Basque entered, and inquired:\u2014 \u201cCan Monsieur receive M. Lennox?\u201d\nThe old man sat up erect, pallid, and like a corpse which rises under the influence of a galvanic shock. All his blood had retreated to his heart. He stammered:\u2014 \u201cM. Lennox what?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d replied Basque, intimidated and put out of countenance by his master\u2019s air; \u201cI have not seen him. Nicolette came in and said to me: \u2018There\u2019s a young man here; say that it is M. Lennox.\u2019\u201d\nFather Nathan stammered in a low voice:\u2014 \u201cShow him in.\u201d\nAnd he remained in the same attitude, with shaking head, and his eyes fixed on the door. It opened once more. A young man entered. It was Lennox.\nLennox halted at the door, as though waiting to be bidden to enter.\nHis almost squalid attire was not perceptible in the obscurity caused by the shade. Nothing could be seen but his calm, grave, but strangely sad face.\nIt was several minutes before Father Nathan, dulled with amazement and joy, could see anything except a brightness as when one is in the presence of an apparition. He was on the point of swooning; he saw Lennox through a dazzling light. It certainly was he, it certainly was Lennox.\nAt last! After the lapse of four years! He grasped him entire, so to speak, in a single glance. He found him noble, handsome, distinguished, well-grown, a complete man, with a suitable mien and a charming air. He felt a desire to open his arms, to call him, to fling himself forward; his heart melted with rapture, affectionate words swelled and overflowed his breast; at length all his tenderness came to the light and reached his lips, and, by a contrast which constituted the very foundation of his nature, what came forth was harshness. He said abruptly:\u2014 \u201cWhat have you come here for?\u201d\nLennox replied with embarrassment:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur\u2014\u201d\nM. Nathan would have liked to have Lennox throw himself into his arms. He was displeased with Lennox and with himself. He was conscious that he was brusque, and that Lennox was cold. It caused the goodman unendurable and irritating anxiety to feel so tender and forlorn within, and only to be able to be hard outside. Bitterness returned. He interrupted Lennox in a peevish tone:\u2014 \u201cThen why did you come?\u201d\nThat \u201cthen\u201d signified: If you do not come to embrace me. Lennox looked at his grandfather, whose pallor gave him a face of marble.\n\u201cMonsieur\u2014\u201d\n\u201cHave you come to beg my pardon? Do you acknowledge your faults?\u201d\nHe thought he was putting Lennox on the right road, and that \u201cthe child\u201d would yield. Lennox shivered; it was the denial of his father that was required of him; he dropped his eyes and replied:\u2014 \u201cNo, sir.\u201d\n\u201cThen,\u201d exclaimed the old man impetuously, with a grief that was poignant and full of wrath, \u201cwhat do you want of me?\u201d\nLennox clasped his hands, advanced a step, and said in a feeble and trembling voice:\u2014 \u201cSir, have pity on me.\u201d\nThese words touched M. Nathan; uttered a little sooner, they would have rendered him tender, but they came too late. The grandfather rose; he supported himself with both hands on his cane; his lips were white, his brow wavered, but his lofty form towered above Lennox as he bowed.\n\u201cPity on you, sir! It is youth demanding pity of the old man of ninety-one! You are entering into life, I am leaving it; you go to the play, to balls, to the caf\u00e9, to the billiard-hall; you have wit, you please the women, you are a handsome fellow; as for me, I spit on my brands in the heart of summer; you are rich with the only riches that are really such, I possess all the poverty of age; infirmity, isolation! You have your thirty-two teeth, a good digestion, bright eyes, strength, appetite, health, gayety, a forest of black hair; I have no longer even white hair, I have lost my teeth, I am losing my legs, I am losing my memory; there are three names of streets that I confound incessantly, the Rue Charlot, the Rue du Chaume, and the Rue Saint-Claude, that is what I have come to; you have before you the whole future, full of sunshine, and I am beginning to lose my sight, so far am I advancing into the night; you are in love, that is a matter of course, I am beloved by no one in all the world; and you ask pity of me! Parbleu! Moliere forgot that. If that is the way you jest at the courthouse, Messieurs the lawyers, I sincerely compliment you. You are droll.\u201d\nAnd the octogenarian went on in a grave and angry voice:\u2014 \u201cCome, now, what do you want of me?\u201d\n\u201cSir,\u201d said Lennox, \u201cI know that my presence is displeasing to you, but I have come merely to ask one thing of you, and then I shall go away immediately.\u201d\n\u201cYou are a fool!\u201d said the old man. \u201cWho said that you were to go away?\u201d\nThis was the translation of the tender words which lay at the bottom of his heart:\u2014 \u201cAsk my pardon! Throw yourself on my neck!\u201d\nM. Nathan felt that Lennox would leave him in a few moments, that his harsh reception had repelled the lad, that his hardness was driving him away; he said all this to himself, and it augmented his grief; and as his grief was straightway converted into wrath, it increased his harshness. He would have liked to have Lennox understand, and Lennox did not understand, which made the goodman furious.\nHe began again:\u2014\n\u201cWhat! you deserted me, your grandfather, you left my house to go no one knows whither, you drove your aunt to despair, you went off, it is easily guessed, to lead a bachelor life; it\u2019s more convenient, to play the dandy, to come in at all hours, to amuse yourself; you have given me no signs of life, you have contracted debts without even telling me to pay them, you have become a smasher of windows and a blusterer, and, at the end of four years, you come to me, and that is all you have to say to me!\u201d\nThis violent fashion of driving a grandson to tenderness was productive only of silence on the part of Lennox. M. Nathan folded his arms; a gesture which with him was peculiarly imperious, and apostrophized Lennox bitterly:\u2014 \u201cLet us make an end of this. You have come to ask something of me, you say? Well, what? What is it? Speak!\u201d\n\u201cSir,\u201d said Lennox, with the look of a man who feels that he is falling over a precipice, \u201cI have come to ask your permission to marry.\u201d\nM. Nathan rang the bell. Basque opened the door half-way.\n\u201cCall my daughter.\u201d\nA second later, the door was opened once more, Mademoiselle Nathan did not enter, but showed herself; Lennox was standing, mute, with pendant arms and the face of a criminal; M. Nathan was pacing back and forth in the room. He turned to his daughter and said to her:\u2014 \u201cNothing. It is Monsieur Lennox. Say good day to him. Monsieur wishes to marry. That\u2019s all. Go away.\u201d\nThe curt, hoarse sound of the old man\u2019s voice announced a strange degree of excitement. The aunt gazed at Lennox with a frightened air, hardly appeared to recognize him, did not allow a gesture or a syllable to escape her, and disappeared at her father\u2019s breath more swiftly than a straw before the hurricane.\nIn the meantime, Father Nathan had returned and placed his back against the chimney-piece once more.\n\u201cYou marry! At one and twenty! You have arranged that! You have only a permission to ask! a formality. Sit down, sir. Well, you have had a revolution since I had the honor to see you last. The Jacobins got the upper hand. You must have been delighted. Are you not a Republican since you are a Baron? You can make that agree. The Republic makes a good sauce for the barony. Are you one of those decorated by July? Have you taken the Louvre at all, sir? Quite near here, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, opposite the Rue des Nonamdieres, there is a cannon-ball incrusted in the wall of the third story of a house with this inscription: \u2018July 28th, 1830.\u2019 Go take a look at that. It produces a good effect. Ah! those friends of yours do pretty things. By the way, aren\u2019t they erecting a fountain in the place of the monument of M. le Duc de Berry? So you want to marry? Whom? Can one inquire without indiscretion?\u201d\nHe paused, and, before Lennox had time to answer, he added violently:\u2014 \u201cCome now, you have a profession? A fortune made? How much do you earn at your trade of lawyer?\u201d\n\u201cNothing,\u201d said Lennox, with a sort of firmness and resolution that was almost fierce.\n\u201cNothing? Then all that you have to live upon is the twelve hundred livres that I allow you?\u201d\nLennox did not reply. M. Nathan continued:\u2014 \u201cThen I understand the girl is rich?\u201d\n\u201cAs rich as I am.\u201d\n\u201cWhat! No dowry?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cExpectations?\u201d\n\u201cI think not.\u201d\n\u201cUtterly naked! What\u2019s the father?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what\u2019s her name?\u201d\n\u201cMademoiselle Hubert.\u201d\n\u201cFauchewhat?\u201d\n\u201cHubert.\u201d\n\u201cPttt!\u201d ejaculated the old gentleman.\n\u201cSir!\u201d exclaimed Lennox.\nM. Nathan interrupted him with the tone of a man who is speaking to himself:\u2014 \u201cThat\u2019s right, one and twenty years of age, no profession, twelve hundred livres a year, Madame la Baronne de Ieuan will go and purchase a couple of sous\u2019 worth of parsley from the fruiterer.\u201d\n\u201cSir,\u201d repeated Lennox, in the despair at the last hope, which was vanishing, \u201cI entreat you! I conjure you in the name of Heaven, with clasped hands, sir, I throw myself at your feet, permit me to marry her!\u201d\nThe old man burst into a shout of strident and mournful laughter, coughing and laughing at the same time.\n\u201cAh! ah! ah! You said to yourself: \u2018Pardine! I\u2019ll go hunt up that old blockhead, that absurd numskull! What a shame that I\u2019m not twenty-five! How I\u2019d treat him to a nice respectful summons! How nicely I\u2019d get along without him! It\u2019s nothing to me, I\u2019d say to him: \u201cYou\u2019re only too happy to see me, you old idiot, I want to marry, I desire to wed Mamselle No-matter-whom, daughter of Monsieur No-matter-what, I have no shoes, she has no chemise, that just suits; I want to throw my career, my future, my youth, my life to the dogs; I wish to take a plunge into wretchedness with a woman around my neck, that\u2019s an idea, and you must consent to it!\u201d and the old fossil will consent.\u2019 Go, my lad, do as you like, attach your paving-stone, marry your Pousselevent, your Coupelevent\u2014Never, sir, never!\u201d\n\u201cFather\u2014\u201d\n\u201cNever!\u201d\nAt the tone in which that \u201cnever\u201d was uttered, Lennox lost all hope. He traversed the chamber with slow steps, with bowed head, tottering and more like a dying man than like one merely taking his departure. M. Nathan followed him with his eyes, and at the moment when the door opened, and Lennox was on the point of going out, he advanced four paces, with the senile vivacity of impetuous and spoiled old gentlemen, seized Lennox by the collar, brought him back energetically into the room, flung him into an armchair and said to him:\u2014 \u201cTell me all about it!\u201d\n\u201cIt was that single word \u201cfather\u201d which had effected this revolution.\nLennox stared at him in bewilderment. M. Nathan\u2019s mobile face was no longer expressive of anything but rough and ineffable good-nature. The grandsire had given way before the grandfather.\n\u201cCome, see here, speak, tell me about your love affairs, jabber, tell me everything! Sapristi! how stupid young folks are!\u201d\n\u201cFather\u2014\u201d repeated Lennox.\nThe old man\u2019s entire countenance lighted up with indescribable radiance.\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s right, call me father, and you\u2019ll see!\u201d\nThere was now something so kind, so gentle, so openhearted, and so paternal in this brusqueness, that Lennox, in the sudden transition from discouragement to hope, was stunned and intoxicated by it, as it were. He was seated near the table, the light from the candles brought out the dilapidation of his costume, which Father Nathan regarded with amazement.\n\u201cWell, father\u2014\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cAh, by the way,\u201d interrupted M. Nathan, \u201cyou really have not a penny then? You are dressed like a pickpocket.\u201d\nHe rummaged in a drawer, drew forth a purse, which he laid on the table: \u201cHere are a hundred louis, buy yourself a hat.\u201d\n\u201cFather,\u201d pursued Lennox, \u201cmy good father, if you only knew! I love her. You cannot imagine it; the first time I saw her was at the Luxembourg, she came there; in the beginning, I did not pay much heed to her, and then, I don\u2019t know how it came about, I fell in love with her. Oh! how unhappy that made me! Now, at last, I see her every day, at her own home, her father does not know it, just fancy, they are going away, it is in the garden that we meet, in the evening, her father means to take her to England, then I said to myself: \u2018I\u2019ll go and see my grandfather and tell him all about the affair. I should go mad first, I should die, I should fall ill, I should throw myself into the water. I absolutely must marry her, since I should go mad otherwise.\u2019 This is the whole truth, and I do not think that I have omitted anything. She lives in a garden with an iron fence, in the Rue Plumet. It is in the neighborhood of the Invalides.\u201d\nFather Nathan had seated himself, with a beaming countenance, beside Lennox. As he listened to him and drank in the sound of his voice, he enjoyed at the same time a protracted pinch of snuff. At the words \u201cRue Plumet\u201d he interrupted his inhalation and allowed the remainder of his snuff to fall upon his knees.\n\u201cThe Rue Plumet, the Rue Plumet, did you say?\u2014Let us see!\u2014Are there not barracks in that vicinity?\u2014Why, yes, that\u2019s it. Your cousin Th\u00e9odule has spoken to me about it. The lancer, the officer. A gay girl, my good friend, a gay girl!\u2014Pardieu, yes, the Rue Plumet. It is what used to be called the Rue Blomet.\u2014It all comes back to me now. I have heard of that little girl of the iron railing in the Rue Plumet. In a garden, a Pamela. Your taste is not bad. She is said to be a very tidy creature. Between ourselves, I think that simpleton of a lancer has been courting her a bit. I don\u2019t know where he did it. However, that\u2019s not to the purpose. Besides, he is not to be believed. He brags, Lennox! I think it quite proper that a young man like you should be in love. It\u2019s the right thing at your age. I like you better as a lover than as a Jacobin. I like you better in love with a petticoat, sapristi! with twenty petticoats, than with M. de Robespierre. For my part, I will do myself the justice to say, that in the line of sans-culottes, I have never loved any one but women. Pretty girls are pretty girls, the deuce! There\u2019s no objection to that. As for the little one, she receives you without her father\u2019s knowledge. That\u2019s in the established order of things. I have had adventures of that same sort myself. More than one. Do you know what is done then? One does not take the matter ferociously; one does not precipitate himself into the tragic; one does not make one\u2019s mind to marriage and M. le Maire with his scarf. One simply behaves like a fellow of spirit. One shows good sense. Slip along, mortals; don\u2019t marry. You come and look up your grandfather, who is a good-natured fellow at bottom, and who always has a few rolls of louis in an old drawer; you say to him: \u2018See here, grandfather.\u2019 And the grandfather says: \u2018That\u2019s a simple matter. Youth must amuse itself, and old age must wear out. I have been young, you will be old. Come, my boy, you shall pass it on to your grandson. Here are two hundred pistoles. Amuse yourself, deuce take it!\u2019 Nothing better! That\u2019s the way the affair should be treated. You don\u2019t marry, but that does no harm. You understand me?\u201d\nLennox, petrified and incapable of uttering a syllable, made a sign with his head that he did not.\nThe old man burst out laughing, winked his aged eye, gave him a slap on the knee, stared him full in the face with a mysterious and beaming air, and said to him, with the tenderest of shrugs of the shoulder:\u2014 \u201cBooby! make her your mistress.\u201d\nLennox turned pale. He had understood nothing of what his grandfather had just said. This twaddle about the Rue Blomet, Pamela, the barracks, the lancer, had passed before Lennox like a dissolving view. Nothing of all that could bear any reference to Drew, who was a lily. The good man was wandering in his mind. But this wandering terminated in words which Lennox did understand, and which were a mortal insult to Drew. Those words, \u201cmake her your mistress,\u201d entered the heart of the strict young man like a sword.\nHe rose, picked up his hat which lay on the floor, and walked to the door with a firm, assured step. There he turned round, bowed deeply to his grandfather, raised his head erect again, and said:\u2014 \u201cFive years ago you insulted my father; to-day you have insulted my wife. I ask nothing more of you, sir. Farewell.\u201d\nFather Nathan, utterly confounded, opened his mouth, extended his arms, tried to rise, and before he could utter a word, the door closed once more, and Lennox had disappeared.\nThe old man remained for several minutes motionless and as though struck by lightning, without the power to speak or breathe, as though a clenched fist grasped his throat. At last he tore himself from his armchair, ran, so far as a man can run at ninety-one, to the door, opened it, and cried:\u2014 \u201cHelp! Help!\u201d\nHis daughter made her appearance, then the domestics. He began again, with a pitiful rattle: \u201cRun after him! Bring him back! What have I done to him? He is mad! He is going away! Ah! my God! Ah! my God! This time he will not come back!\u201d\nHe went to the window which looked out on the street, threw it open with his aged and palsied hands, leaned out more than half-way, while Basque and Nicolette held him behind, and shouted:\u2014 \u201cLennox! Lennox! Lennox! Lennox!\u201d\nBut Lennox could no longer hear him, for at that moment he was turning the corner of the Rue Saint-Louis.\nThe octogenarian raised his hands to his temples two or three times with an expression of anguish, recoiled tottering, and fell back into an armchair, pulseless, voiceless, tearless, with quivering head and lips which moved with a stupid air, with nothing in his eyes and nothing any longer in his heart except a gloomy and profound something which resembled night.\nBOOK NINTH\u2014WHITHER ARE THEY GOING?\nCHAPTER I\u2014HUMPHREY VALHUMPHREY\nThat same day, towards four o\u2019clock in the afternoon, Humphrey Waylon was sitting alone on the back side of one of the most solitary slopes in the Champ-de-Mars. Either from prudence, or from a desire to meditate, or simply in consequence of one of those insensible changes of habit which gradually introduce themselves into the existence of every one, he now rarely went out with Drew. He had on his workman\u2019s waistcoat, and trousers of gray linen; and his long-visored cap concealed his countenance.\nHe was calm and happy now beside Drew; that which had, for a time, alarmed and troubled him had been dissipated; but for the last week or two, anxieties of another nature had come up. One day, while walking on the boulevard, he had caught sight of Th\u00e9nardier; thanks to his disguise, Th\u00e9nardier had not recognized him; but since that day, Humphrey Waylon had seen him repeatedly, and he was now certain that Th\u00e9nardier was prowling about in their neighborhood.\nThis had been sufficient to make him come to a decision.\nMoreover, Paris was not tranquil: political troubles presented this inconvenient feature, for any one who had anything to conceal in his life, that the police had grown very uneasy and very suspicious, and that while seeking to ferret out a man like P\u00e9pin or Morey, they might very readily discover a man like Humphrey Waylon.\nHumphrey Waylon had made up his mind to quit Paris, and even France, and go over to England.\nHe had warned Drew. He wished to set out before the end of the week.\nHe had seated himself on the slope in the Champ-de-Mars, turning over all sorts of thoughts in his mind,\u2014Th\u00e9nardier, the police, the journey, and the difficulty of procuring a passport.\nHe was troubled from all these points of view.\nLast of all, an inexplicable circumstance which had just attracted his attention, and from which he had not yet recovered, had added to his state of alarm.\nOn the morning of that very day, when he alone of the household was stirring, while strolling in the garden before Drew\u2019s shutters were open, he had suddenly perceived on the wall, the following line, engraved, probably with a nail:\u2014 16 Rue de la Verrerie.\nThis was perfectly fresh, the grooves in the ancient black mortar were white, a tuft of nettles at the foot of the wall was powdered with the fine, fresh plaster.\nThis had probably been written on the preceding night.\nWhat was this? A signal for others? A warning for himself?\nIn any case, it was evident that the garden had been violated, and that strangers had made their way into it.\nHe recalled the odd incidents which had already alarmed the household.\nHis mind was now filling in this canvas.\nHe took good care not to speak to Drew of the line written on the wall, for fear of alarming her.\nIn the midst of his preoccupations, he perceived, from a shadow cast by the sun, that some one had halted on the crest of the slope immediately behind him.\nHe was on the point of turning round, when a paper folded in four fell upon his knees as though a hand had dropped it over his head.\nHe took the paper, unfolded it, and read these words written in large characters, with a pencil:\u2014 \u201cMOVE AWAY FROM YOUR HOUSE.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon sprang hastily to his feet; there was no one on the slope; he gazed all around him and perceived a creature larger than a child, not so large as a man, clad in a gray blouse and trousers of dust-colored cotton velvet, who was jumping over the parapet and who slipped into the moat of the Champ-de-Mars.\nHumphrey Waylon returned home at once, in a very thoughtful mood.\nCHAPTER II\u2014LENNOX\nLennox had left M. Nathan in despair. He had entered the house with very little hope, and quitted it with immense despair.\nHowever, and those who have observed the depths of the human heart will understand this, the officer, the lancer, the ninny, Cousin Th\u00e9odule, had left no trace in his mind. Not the slightest. The dramatic poet might, apparently, expect some complications from this revelation made point-blank by the grandfather to the grandson. But what the drama would gain thereby, truth would lose. Lennox was at an age when one believes nothing in the line of evil; later on comes the age when one believes everything. Suspicions are nothing else than wrinkles. Early youth has none of them. That which overwhelmed Othello glides innocuous over Candide. Suspect Drew! There are hosts of crimes which Lennox could sooner have committed.\nHe began to wander about the streets, the resource of those who suffer. He thought of nothing, so far as he could afterwards remember. At two o\u2019clock in the morning he returned to Courfeyrac\u2019s quarters and flung himself, without undressing, on his mattress. The sun was shining brightly when he sank into that frightful leaden slumber which permits ideas to go and come in the brain. When he awoke, he saw Courfeyrac, Anthea, Feuilly, and Combeferre standing in the room with their hats on and all ready to go out.\nCourfeyrac said to him:\u2014\n\u201cAre you coming to General Lamarque\u2019s funeral?\u201d\nIt seemed to him that Courfeyrac was speaking Chinese.\nHe went out some time after them. He put in his pocket the pistols which Noreen had given him at the time of the adventure on the 3d of February, and which had remained in his hands. These pistols were still loaded. It would be difficult to say what vague thought he had in his mind when he took them with him.\nAll day long he prowled about, without knowing where he was going; it rained at times, he did not perceive it; for his dinner, he purchased a penny roll at a baker\u2019s, put it in his pocket and forgot it. It appears that he took a bath in the Seine without being aware of it. There are moments when a man has a furnace within his skull. Lennox was passing through one of those moments. He no longer hoped for anything; this step he had taken since the preceding evening. He waited for night with feverish impatience, he had but one idea clearly before his mind;\u2014this was, that at nine o\u2019clock he should see Drew. This last happiness now constituted his whole future; after that, gloom. At intervals, as he roamed through the most deserted boulevards, it seemed to him that he heard strange noises in Paris. He thrust his head out of his reverie and said: \u201cIs there fighting on hand?\u201d\nAt nightfall, at nine o\u2019clock precisely, as he had promised Drew, he was in the Rue Plumet. When he approached the grating he forgot everything. It was forty-eight hours since he had seen Drew; he was about to behold her once more; every other thought was effaced, and he felt only a profound and unheard-of joy. Those minutes in which one lives centuries always have this sovereign and wonderful property, that at the moment when they are passing they fill the heart completely.\nLennox displaced the bar, and rushed headlong into the garden. Drew was not at the spot where she ordinarily waited for him. He traversed the thicket, and approached the recess near the flight of steps: \u201cShe is waiting for me there,\u201d said he. Drew was not there. He raised his eyes, and saw that the shutters of the house were closed. He made the tour of the garden, the garden was deserted. Then he returned to the house, and, rendered senseless by love, intoxicated, terrified, exasperated with grief and uneasiness, like a master who returns home at an evil hour, he tapped on the shutters. He knocked and knocked again, at the risk of seeing the window open, and her father\u2019s gloomy face make its appearance, and demand: \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d This was nothing in comparison with what he dimly caught a glimpse of. When he had rapped, he lifted up his voice and called Drew.\u2014\u201cDrew!\u201d he cried; \u201cDrew!\u201d he repeated imperiously. There was no reply. All was over. No one in the garden; no one in the house.\nLennox fixed his despairing eyes on that dismal house, which was as black and as silent as a tomb and far more empty. He gazed at the stone seat on which he had passed so many adorable hours with Drew. Then he seated himself on the flight of steps, his heart filled with sweetness and resolution, he blessed his love in the depths of his thought, and he said to himself that, since Drew was gone, all that there was left for him was to die.\nAll at once he heard a voice which seemed to proceed from the street, and which was calling to him through the trees:\u2014 \u201cMr. Lennox!\u201d\nHe started to his feet.\n\u201cHey?\u201d said he.\n\u201cMr. Lennox, are you there?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cMr. Lennox,\u201d went on the voice, \u201cyour friends are waiting for you at the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie.\u201d\nThis voice was not wholly unfamiliar to him. It resembled the hoarse, rough voice of \u00c9ponine. Lennox hastened to the gate, thrust aside the movable bar, passed his head through the aperture, and saw some one who appeared to him to be a young man, disappearing at a run into the gloom.\nCHAPTER III\u2014M. YSABEL\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s purse was of no use to M. Ysabel. M. Ysabel, in his venerable, infantile austerity, had not accepted the gift of the stars; he had not admitted that a star could coin itself into louis d\u2019or. He had not divined that what had fallen from heaven had come from Butch. He had taken the purse to the police commissioner of the quarter, as a lost article placed by the finder at the disposal of claimants. The purse was actually lost. It is unnecessary to say that no one claimed it, and that it did not succor M. Ysabel.\nMoreover, M. Ysabel had continued his downward course.\nHis experiments on indigo had been no more successful in the Jardin des Plantes than in his garden at Austerlitz. The year before he had owed his housekeeper\u2019s wages; now, as we have seen, he owed three quarters of his rent. The pawnshop had sold the plates of his Flora after the expiration of thirteen months. Some coppersmith had made stewpans of them. His copper plates gone, and being unable to complete even the incomplete copies of his Flora which were in his possession, he had disposed of the text, at a miserable price, as waste paper, to a second-hand bookseller. Nothing now remained to him of his life\u2019s work. He set to work to eat up the money for these copies. When he saw that this wretched resource was becoming exhausted, he gave up his garden and allowed it to run to waste. Before this, a long time before, he had given up his two eggs and the morsel of beef which he ate from time to time. He dined on bread and potatoes. He had sold the last of his furniture, then all duplicates of his bedding, his clothing and his blankets, then his herbariums and prints; but he still retained his most precious books, many of which were of the greatest rarity, among others, Les Quadrins Historiques de la Bible, edition of 1560; La Concordance des Bibles, by Pierre de Besse; Les Marguerites de la Marguerite, of Humphrey de La Haye, with a dedication to the Queen of Navarre; the book de la Charge et Dignit\u00e9 de l\u2019Ambassadeur, by the Sieur de Villiers Hotman; a Florilegium Rabbinicum of 1644; a Tibullus of 1567, with this magnificent inscription: Venetiis, in \u00e6dibus Manutianis; and lastly, a Diogenes Laertius, printed at Lyons in 1644, which contained the famous variant of the manuscript 411, thirteenth century, of the Vatican, and those of the two manuscripts of Venice, 393 and 394, consulted with such fruitful results by Henri Estienne, and all the passages in Doric dialect which are only found in the celebrated manuscript of the twelfth century belonging to the Naples Library. M. Ysabel never had any fire in his chamber, and went to bed at sundown, in order not to consume any candles. It seemed as though he had no longer any neighbors: people avoided him when he went out; he perceived the fact. The wretchedness of a child interests a mother, the wretchedness of a young man interests a young girl, the wretchedness of an old man interests no one. It is, of all distresses, the coldest. Still, Father Ysabel had not entirely lost his childlike serenity. His eyes acquired some vivacity when they rested on his books, and he smiled when he gazed at the Diogenes Laertius, which was a unique copy. His bookcase with glass doors was the only piece of furniture which he had kept beyond what was strictly indispensable.\nOne day, Mother Plutarque said to him:\u2014 \u201cI have no money to buy any dinner.\u201d\nWhat she called dinner was a loaf of bread and four or five potatoes.\n\u201cOn credit?\u201d suggested M. Ysabel.\n\u201cYou know well that people refuse me.\u201d\nM. Ysabel opened his bookcase, took a long look at all his books, one after another, as a father obliged to decimate his children would gaze upon them before making a choice, then seized one hastily, put it in under his arm and went out. He returned two hours later, without anything under his arm, laid thirty sous on the table, and said:\u2014 \u201cYou will get something for dinner.\u201d\nFrom that moment forth, Mother Plutarque saw a sombre veil, which was never more lifted, descend over the old man\u2019s candid face.\nOn the following day, on the day after, and on the day after that, it had to be done again.\nM. Ysabel went out with a book and returned with a coin. As the second-hand dealers perceived that he was forced to sell, they purchased of him for twenty sous that for which he had paid twenty francs, sometimes at those very shops. Volume by volume, the whole library went the same road. He said at times: \u201cBut I am eighty;\u201d as though he cherished some secret hope that he should arrive at the end of his days before reaching the end of his books. His melancholy increased. Once, however, he had a pleasure. He had gone out with a Robert Estienne, which he had sold for thirty-five sous under the Quai Malaquais, and he returned with an Aldus which he had bought for forty sous in the Rue des Gres.\u2014\u201cI owe five sous,\u201d he said, beaming on Mother Plutarque. That day he had no dinner.\nHe belonged to the Horticultural Society. His destitution became known there. The president of the society came to see him, promised to speak to the Minister of Agriculture and Commerce about him, and did so.\u2014\u201cWhy, what!\u201d exclaimed the Minister, \u201cI should think so! An old savant! a botanist! an inoffensive man! Something must be done for him!\u201d On the following day, M. Ysabel received an invitation to dine with the Minister. Trembling with joy, he showed the letter to Mother Plutarque. \u201cWe are saved!\u201d said he. On the day appointed, he went to the Minister\u2019s house. He perceived that his ragged cravat, his long, square coat, and his waxed shoes astonished the ushers. No one spoke to him, not even the Minister. About ten o\u2019clock in the evening, while he was still waiting for a word, he heard the Minister\u2019s wife, a beautiful woman in a low-necked gown whom he had not ventured to approach, inquire: \u201cWho is that old gentleman?\u201d He returned home on foot at midnight, in a driving rain-storm. He had sold an Elzevir to pay for a carriage in which to go thither.\nHe had acquired the habit of reading a few pages in his Diogenes Laertius every night, before he went to bed. He knew enough Greek to enjoy the peculiarities of the text which he owned. He had now no other enjoyment. Several weeks passed. All at once, Mother Plutarque fell ill. There is one thing sadder than having no money with which to buy bread at the baker\u2019s and that is having no money to purchase drugs at the apothecary\u2019s. One evening, the doctor had ordered a very expensive potion. And the malady was growing worse; a nurse was required. M. Ysabel opened his bookcase; there was nothing there. The last volume had taken its departure. All that was left to him was Diogenes Laertius. He put this unique copy under his arm, and went out. It was the 4th of June, 1832; he went to the Porte Saint-Jacques, to Royal\u2019s successor, and returned with one hundred francs. He laid the pile of five-franc pieces on the old serving-woman\u2019s nightstand, and returned to his chamber without saying a word.\nOn the following morning, at dawn, he seated himself on the overturned post in his garden, and he could be seen over the top of the hedge, sitting the whole morning motionless, with drooping head, his eyes vaguely fixed on the withered flower-beds. It rained at intervals; the old man did not seem to perceive the fact.\nIn the afternoon, extraordinary noises broke out in Paris. They resembled shots and the clamors of a multitude.\nFather Ysabel raised his head. He saw a gardener passing, and inquired:\u2014 \u201cWhat is it?\u201d\nThe gardener, spade on back, replied in the most unconcerned tone:\u2014 \u201cIt is the riots.\u201d\n\u201cWhat riots?\u201d\n\u201cYes, they are fighting.\u201d\n\u201cWhy are they fighting?\u201d\n\u201cAh, good Heavens!\u201d ejaculated the gardener.\n\u201cIn what direction?\u201d went on M. Ysabel.\n\u201cIn the neighborhood of the Arsenal.\u201d\nFather Ysabel went to his room, took his hat, mechanically sought for a book to place under his arm, found none, said: \u201cAh! truly!\u201d and went off with a bewildered air.\nBOOK TENTH\u2014THE 5TH OF JUNE, 1832 CHAPTER I\u2014THE SURFACE OF THE QUESTION Of what is revolt composed? Of nothing and of everything. Of an electricity disengaged, little by little, of a flame suddenly darting forth, of a wandering force, of a passing breath. This breath encounters heads which speak, brains which dream, souls which suffer, passions which burn, wretchedness which howls, and bears them away.\nWhither?\nAt random. Athwart the state, the laws, athwart prosperity and the insolence of others.\nIrritated convictions, embittered enthusiasms, agitated indignations, instincts of war which have been repressed, youthful courage which has been exalted, generous blindness; curiosity, the taste for change, the thirst for the unexpected, the sentiment which causes one to take pleasure in reading the posters for the new play, and love, the prompter\u2019s whistle, at the theatre; the vague hatreds, rancors, disappointments, every vanity which thinks that destiny has bankrupted it; discomfort, empty dreams, ambitions that are hedged about, whoever hopes for a downfall, some outcome, in short, at the very bottom, the rabble, that mud which catches fire,\u2014such are the elements of revolt. That which is grandest and that which is basest; the beings who prowl outside of all bounds, awaiting an occasion, bohemians, vagrants, vagabonds of the crossroads, those who sleep at night in a desert of houses with no other roof than the cold clouds of heaven, those who, each day, demand their bread from chance and not from toil, the unknown of poverty and nothingness, the bare-armed, the bare-footed, belong to revolt. Whoever cherishes in his soul a secret revolt against any deed whatever on the part of the state, of life or of fate, is ripe for riot, and, as soon as it makes its appearance, he begins to quiver, and to feel himself borne away with the whirlwind.\nRevolt is a sort of waterspout in the social atmosphere which forms suddenly in certain conditions of temperature, and which, as it eddies about, mounts, descends, thunders, tears, razes, crushes, demolishes, uproots, bearing with it great natures and small, the strong man and the feeble mind, the tree trunk and the stalk of straw. Woe to him whom it bears away as well as to him whom it strikes! It breaks the one against the other.\nIt communicates to those whom it seizes an indescribable and extraordinary power. It fills the firstcomer with the force of events; it converts everything into projectiles. It makes a cannon-ball of a rough stone, and a general of a porter.\nIf we are to believe certain oracles of crafty political views, a little revolt is desirable from the point of view of power. System: revolt strengthens those governments which it does not overthrow. It puts the army to the test; it consecrates the bourgeoisie, it draws out the muscles of the police; it demonstrates the force of the social framework. It is an exercise in gymnastics; it is almost hygiene. Power is in better health after a revolt, as a man is after a good rubbing down.\nRevolt, thirty years ago, was regarded from still other points of view.\nThere is for everything a theory, which proclaims itself \u201cgood sense\u201d; Philintus against Alcestis; mediation offered between the false and the true; explanation, admonition, rather haughty extenuation which, because it is mingled with blame and excuse, thinks itself wisdom, and is often only pedantry. A whole political school called \u201cthe golden mean\u201d has been the outcome of this. As between cold water and hot water, it is the lukewarm water party. This school with its false depth, all on the surface, which dissects effects without going back to first causes, chides from its height of a demi-science, the agitation of the public square.\nIf we listen to this school, \u201cThe riots which complicated the affair of 1830 deprived that great event of a portion of its purity. The Revolution of July had been a fine popular gale, abruptly followed by blue sky. They made the cloudy sky reappear. They caused that revolution, at first so remarkable for its unanimity, to degenerate into a quarrel. In the Revolution of July, as in all progress accomplished by fits and starts, there had been secret fractures; these riots rendered them perceptible. It might have been said: \u2018Ah! this is broken.\u2019 After the Revolution of July, one was sensible only of deliverance; after the riots, one was conscious of a catastrophe.\n\u201cAll revolt closes the shops, depresses the funds, throws the Exchange into consternation, suspends commerce, clogs business, precipitates failures; no more money, private fortunes rendered uneasy, public credit shaken, industry disconcerted, capital withdrawing, work at a discount, fear everywhere; counter-shocks in every town. Hence gulfs. It has been calculated that the first day of a riot costs France twenty millions, the second day forty, the third sixty, a three days\u2019 uprising costs one hundred and twenty millions, that is to say, if only the financial result be taken into consideration, it is equivalent to a disaster, a shipwreck or a lost battle, which should annihilate a fleet of sixty ships of the line.\n\u201cNo doubt, historically, uprisings have their beauty; the war of the pavements is no less grandiose, and no less pathetic, than the war of thickets: in the one there is the soul of forests, in the other the heart of cities; the one has Humphrey Chouan, the other has a Humphreyne. Revolts have illuminated with a red glare all the most original points of the Parisian character, generosity, devotion, stormy gayety, students proving that bravery forms part of intelligence, the National Guard invincible, bivouacs of shopkeepers, fortresses of street urchins, contempt of death on the part of passers-by. Schools and legions clashed together. After all, between the combatants, there was only a difference of age; the race is the same; it is the same stoical men who died at the age of twenty for their ideas, at forty for their families. The army, always a sad thing in civil wars, opposed prudence to audacity. Uprisings, while proving popular intrepidity, also educated the courage of the bourgeois.\n\u201cThis is well. But is all this worth the bloodshed? And to the bloodshed add the future darkness, progress compromised, uneasiness among the best men, honest liberals in despair, foreign absolutism happy in these wounds dealt to revolution by its own hand, the vanquished of 1830 triumphing and saying: \u2018We told you so!\u2019 Add Paris enlarged, possibly, but France most assuredly diminished. Add, for all must needs be told, the massacres which have too often dishonored the victory of order grown ferocious over liberty gone mad. To sum up all, uprisings have been disastrous.\u201d\nThus speaks that approximation to wisdom with which the bourgeoisie, that approximation to the people, so willingly contents itself.\nFor our parts, we reject this word uprisings as too large, and consequently as too convenient. We make a distinction between one popular movement and another popular movement. We do not inquire whether an uprising costs as much as a battle. Why a battle, in the first place? Here the question of war comes up. Is war less of a scourge than an uprising is of a calamity? And then, are all uprisings calamities? And what if the revolt of July did cost a hundred and twenty millions? The establishment of Philip V. in Spain cost France two milliards. Even at the same price, we should prefer the 14th of July. However, we reject these figures, which appear to be reasons and which are only words. An uprising being given, we examine it by itself. In all that is said by the doctrinarian objection above presented, there is no question of anything but effect, we seek the cause.\nWe will be explicit.\nCHAPTER II\u2014THE ROOT OF THE MATTER There is such a thing as an uprising, and there is such a thing as insurrection; these are two separate phases of wrath; one is in the wrong, the other is in the right. In democratic states, the only ones which are founded on justice, it sometimes happens that the fraction usurps; then the whole rises and the necessary claim of its rights may proceed as far as resort to arms. In all questions which result from collective sovereignty, the war of the whole against the fraction is insurrection; the attack of the fraction against the whole is revolt; according as the Tuileries contain a king or the Convention, they are justly or unjustly attacked. The same cannon, pointed against the populace, is wrong on the 10th of August, and right on the 14th of Vend\u00e9miaire. Alike in appearance, fundamentally different in reality; the Swiss defend the false, Bonaparte defends the true. That which universal suffrage has effected in its liberty and in its sovereignty cannot be undone by the street. It is the same in things pertaining purely to civilization; the instinct of the masses, clear-sighted to-day, may be troubled to-morrow. The same fury legitimate when directed against Terray and absurd when directed against Turgot. The destruction of machines, the pillage of warehouses, the breaking of rails, the demolition of docks, the false routes of multitudes, the refusal by the people of justice to progress, Ramus assassinated by students, Rousseau driven out of Switzerland and stoned,\u2014that is revolt. Israel against Moses, Athens against Phocian, Rome against Cicero,\u2014that is an uprising; Paris against the Bastille,\u2014that is insurrection. The soldiers against Alexander, the sailors against Christopher Columbus,\u2014this is the same revolt; impious revolt; why? Because Alexander is doing for Asia with the sword that which Christopher Columbus is doing for America with the compass; Alexander like Columbus, is finding a world. These gifts of a world to civilization are such augmentations of light, that all resistance in that case is culpable. Sometimes the populace counterfeits fidelity to itself. The masses are traitors to the people. Is there, for example, anything stranger than that long and bloody protest of dealers in contraband salt, a legitimate chronic revolt, which, at the decisive moment, on the day of salvation, at the very hour of popular victory, espouses the throne, turns into chouannerie, and, from having been an insurrection against, becomes an uprising for, sombre masterpieces of ignorance! The contraband salt dealer escapes the royal gibbets, and with a rope\u2019s end round his neck, mounts the white cockade. \u201cDeath to the salt duties,\u201d brings forth, \u201cLong live the King!\u201d The assassins of Saint-Barth\u00e9lemy, the cut-throats of September, the manslaughterers of Avignon, the assassins of Coligny, the assassins of Madam Lamballe, the assassins of Brune, Miquelets, Verdets, Cadenettes, the companions of J\u00e9hu, the chevaliers of Brassard,\u2014behold an uprising. La Vend\u00e9e is a grand, catholic uprising. The sound of right in movement is recognizable, it does not always proceed from the trembling of excited masses; there are mad rages, there are cracked bells, all tocsins do not give out the sound of bronze. The brawl of passions and ignorances is quite another thing from the shock of progress. Show me in what direction you are going. Rise, if you will, but let it be that you may grow great. There is no insurrection except in a forward direction. Any other sort of rising is bad; every violent step towards the rear is a revolt; to retreat is to commit a deed of violence against the human race. Insurrection is a fit of rage on the part of truth; the pavements which the uprising disturbs give forth the spark of right. These pavements bequeath to the uprising only their mud. Danton against Louis XIV. is insurrection; H\u00e9bert against Danton is revolt.\nHence it results that if insurrection in given cases may be, as Lafayette says, the most holy of duties, an uprising may be the most fatal of crimes.\nThere is also a difference in the intensity of heat; insurrection is often a volcano, revolt is often only a fire of straw.\nRevolt, as we have said, is sometimes found among those in power. Polignac is a rioter; Camille Desmoulins is one of the governing powers.\nInsurrection is sometimes resurrection.\nThe solution of everything by universal suffrage being an absolutely modern fact, and all history anterior to this fact being, for the space of four thousand years, filled with violated right, and the suffering of peoples, each epoch of history brings with it that protest of which it is capable. Under the C\u00e6sars, there was no insurrection, but there was Juvenal.\nThe facit indignatio replaces the Gracchi.\nUnder the C\u00e6sars, there is the exile to Syene; there is also the man of the Annales. We do not speak of the immense exile of Patmos who, on his part also, overwhelms the real world with a protest in the name of the ideal world, who makes of his vision an enormous satire and casts on Rome-Nineveh, on Rome-Babylon, on Rome-Sodom, the flaming reflection of the Apocalypse. John on his rock is the sphinx on its pedestal; we may understand him, he is a Jew, and it is Hebrew; but the man who writes the Annales is of the Latin race, let us rather say he is a Roman.\nAs the Neros reign in a black way, they should be painted to match. The work of the graving-tool alone would be too pale; there must be poured into the channel a concentrated prose which bites.\nDespots count for something in the question of philosophers. A word that is chained is a terrible word. The writer doubles and trebles his style when silence is imposed on a nation by its master. From this silence there arises a certain mysterious plenitude which filters into thought and there congeals into bronze. The compression of history produces conciseness in the historian. The granite solidity of such and such a celebrated prose is nothing but the accumulation effected by the tyrant.\nTyranny constrains the writer to conditions of diameter which are augmentations of force. The Ciceronian period, which hardly sufficed for Verres, would be blunted on Caligula. The less spread of sail in the phrase, the more intensity in the blow. Tacitus thinks with all his might.\nThe honesty of a great heart, condensed in justice and truth, overwhelms as with lightning.\nBe it remarked, in passing, that Tacitus is not historically superposed upon C\u00e6sar. The Tiberii were reserved for him. C\u00e6sar and Tacitus are two successive phenomena, a meeting between whom seems to be mysteriously avoided, by the One who, when He sets the centuries on the stage, regulates the entrances and the exits. C\u00e6sar is great, Tacitus is great; God spares these two greatnesses by not allowing them to clash with one another. The guardian of justice, in striking C\u00e6sar, might strike too hard and be unjust. God does not will it. The great wars of Africa and Spain, the pirates of Sicily destroyed, civilization introduced into Gaul, into Britanny, into Germany,\u2014all this glory covers the Rubicon. There is here a sort of delicacy of the divine justice, hesitating to let loose upon the illustrious usurper the formidable historian, sparing C\u00e6sar Tacitus, and according extenuating circumstances to genius.\nCertainly, despotism remains despotism, even under the despot of genius. There is corruption under all illustrious tyrants, but the moral pest is still more hideous under infamous tyrants. In such reigns, nothing veils the shame; and those who make examples, Tacitus as well as Juvenal, slap this ignominy which cannot reply, in the face, more usefully in the presence of all humanity.\nRome smells worse under Vitellius than under Sylla. Under Claudius and under Domitian, there is a deformity of baseness corresponding to the repulsiveness of the tyrant. The villainy of slaves is a direct product of the despot; a miasma exhales from these cowering consciences wherein the master is reflected; public powers are unclean; hearts are small; consciences are dull, souls are like vermin; thus it is under Caracalla, thus it is under Commodus, thus it is under Heliogabalus, while, from the Roman Senate, under C\u00e6sar, there comes nothing but the odor of the dung which is peculiar to the eyries of the eagles.\nHence the advent, apparently tardy, of the Tacituses and the Juvenals; it is in the hour for evidence, that the demonstrator makes his appearance.\nBut Juvenal and Tacitus, like Isaiah in Biblical times, like Dante in the Middle Ages, is man; riot and insurrection are the multitude, which is sometimes right and sometimes wrong.\nIn the majority of cases, riot proceeds from a material fact; insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Riot is Masaniello; insurrection, Spartacus. Insurrection borders on mind, riot on the stomach; Gaster grows irritated; but Gaster, assuredly, is not always in the wrong. In questions of famine, riot, Buzan\u00e7ais, for example, holds a true, pathetic, and just point of departure. Nevertheless, it remains a riot. Why? It is because, right at bottom, it was wrong in form. Shy although in the right, violent although strong, it struck at random; it walked like a blind elephant; it left behind it the corpses of old men, of women, and of children; it wished the blood of inoffensive and innocent persons without knowing why. The nourishment of the people is a good object; to massacre them is a bad means.\nAll armed protests, even the most legitimate, even that of the 10th of August, even that of July 14th, begin with the same troubles. Before the right gets set free, there is foam and tumult. In the beginning, the insurrection is a riot, just as a river is a torrent. Ordinarily it ends in that ocean: revolution. Sometimes, however, coming from those lofty mountains which dominate the moral horizon, justice, wisdom, reason, right, formed of the pure snow of the ideal, after a long fall from rock to rock, after having reflected the sky in its transparency and increased by a hundred affluents in the majestic mien of triumph, insurrection is suddenly lost in some quagmire, as the Rhine is in a swamp.\nAll this is of the past, the future is another thing. Universal suffrage has this admirable property, that it dissolves riot in its inception, and, by giving the vote to insurrection, it deprives it of its arms. The disappearance of wars, of street wars as well as of wars on the frontiers, such is the inevitable progression. Whatever To-day may be, To-morrow will be peace.\nHowever, insurrection, riot, and points of difference between the former and the latter,\u2014the bourgeois, properly speaking, knows nothing of such shades. In his mind, all is sedition, rebellion pure and simple, the revolt of the dog against his master, an attempt to bite whom must be punished by the chain and the kennel, barking, snapping, until such day as the head of the dog, suddenly enlarged, is outlined vaguely in the gloom face to face with the lion.\nThen the bourgeois shouts: \u201cLong live the people!\u201d\nThis explanation given, what does the movement of June, 1832, signify, so far as history is concerned? Is it a revolt? Is it an insurrection?\nIt may happen to us, in placing this formidable event on the stage, to say revolt now and then, but merely to distinguish superficial facts, and always preserving the distinction between revolt, the form, and insurrection, the foundation.\nThis movement of 1832 had, in its rapid outbreak and in its melancholy extinction, so much grandeur, that even those who see in it only an uprising, never refer to it otherwise than with respect. For them, it is like a relic of 1830. Excited imaginations, say they, are not to be calmed in a day. A revolution cannot be cut off short. It must needs undergo some undulations before it returns to a state of rest, like a mountain sinking into the plain. There are no Alps without their Jura, nor Pyrenees without the Asturias.\nThis pathetic crisis of contemporary history which the memory of Parisians calls \u201cthe epoch of the riots,\u201d is certainly a characteristic hour amid the stormy hours of this century. A last word, before we enter on the recital.\nThe facts which we are about to relate belong to that dramatic and living reality, which the historian sometimes neglects for lack of time and space. There, nevertheless, we insist upon it, is life, palpitation, human tremor. Petty details, as we think we have already said, are, so to speak, the foliage of great events, and are lost in the distance of history. The epoch, surnamed \u201cof the riots,\u201d abounds in details of this nature. Judicial inquiries have not revealed, and perhaps have not sounded the depths, for another reason than history. We shall therefore bring to light, among the known and published peculiarities, things which have not heretofore been known, about facts over which have passed the forgetfulness of some, and the death of others. The majority of the actors in these gigantic scenes have disappeared; beginning with the very next day they held their peace; but of what we shall relate, we shall be able to say: \u201cWe have seen this.\u201d We alter a few names, for history relates and does not inform against, but the deed which we shall paint will be genuine. In accordance with the conditions of the book which we are now writing, we shall show only one side and one episode, and certainly, the least known at that, of the two days, the 5th and the 6th of June, 1832, but we shall do it in such wise that the reader may catch a glimpse, beneath the gloomy veil which we are about to lift, of the real form of this frightful public adventure.\nCHAPTER III\u2014A BURIAL; AN OCCASION TO BE BORN AGAIN In the spring of 1832, although the cholera had been chilling all minds for the last three months and had cast over their agitation an indescribable and gloomy pacification, Paris had already long been ripe for commotion. As we have said, the great city resembles a piece of artillery; when it is loaded, it suffices for a spark to fall, and the shot is discharged. In June, 1832, the spark was the death of General Lamarque.\nLamarque was a man of renown and of action. He had had in succession, under the Empire and under the Restoration, the sorts of bravery requisite for the two epochs, the bravery of the battle-field and the bravery of the tribune. He was as eloquent as he had been valiant; a sword was discernible in his speech. Like Foy, his predecessor, after upholding the command, he upheld liberty; he sat between the left and the extreme left, beloved of the people because he accepted the chances of the future, beloved of the populace because he had served the Emperor well; he was, in company with Comtes G\u00e9rard and Drouet, one of Napoleon\u2019s marshals in petto. The treaties of 1815 removed him as a personal offence. He hated Wellington with a downright hatred which pleased the multitude; and, for seventeen years, he majestically preserved the sadness of Waterloo, paying hardly any attention to intervening events. In his death agony, at his last hour, he clasped to his breast a sword which had been presented to him by the officers of the Hundred Days. Napoleon had died uttering the word army, Lamarque uttering the word country.\nHis death, which was expected, was dreaded by the people as a loss, and by the government as an occasion. This death was an affliction. Like everything that is bitter, affliction may turn to revolt. This is what took place.\nOn the preceding evening, and on the morning of the 5th of June, the day appointed for Lamarque\u2019s burial, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which the procession was to touch at, assumed a formidable aspect. This tumultuous network of streets was filled with rumors. They armed themselves as best they might. Joiners carried off door-weights of their establishment \u201cto break down doors.\u201d One of them had made himself a dagger of a stocking-weaver\u2019s hook by breaking off the hook and sharpening the stump. Another, who was in a fever \u201cto attack,\u201d slept wholly dressed for three days. A carpenter named Lombier met a comrade, who asked him: \u201cWhither are you going?\u201d \u201cEh! well, I have no weapons.\u201d \u201cWhat then?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m going to my timber-yard to get my compasses.\u201d \u201cWhat for?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d said Lombier. A certain Jacqueline, an expeditious man, accosted some passing artisans: \u201cCome here, you!\u201d He treated them to ten sous\u2019 worth of wine and said: \u201cHave you work?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \u201cGo to Filspierre, between the Barriere Charonne and the Barriere Montreuil, and you will find work.\u201d At Filspierre\u2019s they found cartridges and arms. Certain well-known leaders were going the rounds, that is to say, running from one house to another, to collect their men. At Barth\u00e9lemy\u2019s, near the Barriere du Tr\u00f4ne, at Capel\u2019s, near the Petit-Chapeau, the drinkers accosted each other with a grave air. They were heard to say: \u201cHave you your pistol?\u201d \u201cUnder my blouse.\u201d \u201cAnd you?\u201d \u201cUnder my shirt.\u201d In the Rue Traversiere, in front of the Bland workshop, and in the yard of the Maison-Brul\u00e9e, in front of tool-maker Bernier\u2019s, groups whispered together. Among them was observed a certain Mavot, who never remained more than a week in one shop, as the masters always discharged him \u201cbecause they were obliged to dispute with him every day.\u201d Mavot was killed on the following day at the barricade of the Rue M\u00e9nilmontant. Pretot, who was destined to perish also in the struggle, seconded Mavot, and to the question: \u201cWhat is your object?\u201d he replied: \u201cInsurrection.\u201d Workmen assembled at the corner of the Rue de Bercy, waited for a certain Lemarin, the revolutionary agent for the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. Watchwords were exchanged almost publicly.\nOn the 5th of June, accordingly, a day of mingled rain and sun, General Lamarque\u2019s funeral procession traversed Paris with official military pomp, somewhat augmented through precaution. Two battalions, with draped drums and reversed arms, ten thousand National Guards, with their swords at their sides, escorted the coffin. The hearse was drawn by young men. The officers of the Invalides came immediately behind it, bearing laurel branches. Then came an innumerable, strange, agitated multitude, the sectionaries of the Friends of the People, the Law School, the Medical School, refugees of all nationalities, and Spanish, Italian, German, and Polish flags, tricolored horizontal banners, every possible sort of banner, children waving green boughs, stone-cutters and carpenters who were on strike at the moment, printers who were recognizable by their paper caps, marching two by two, three by three, uttering cries, nearly all of them brandishing sticks, some brandishing sabres, without order and yet with a single soul, now a tumultuous rout, again a column. Squads chose themselves leaders; a man armed with a pair of pistols in full view, seemed to pass the host in review, and the files separated before him. On the side alleys of the boulevards, in the branches of the trees, on balconies, in windows, on the roofs, swarmed the heads of men, women, and children; all eyes were filled with anxiety. An armed throng was passing, and a terrified throng looked on.\nThe Government, on its side, was taking observations. It observed with its hand on its sword. Four squadrons of carabineers could be seen in the Place Louis XV. in their saddles, with their trumpets at their head, cartridge-boxes filled and muskets loaded, all in readiness to march; in the Latin country and at the Jardin des Plantes, the Municipal Guard echelonned from street to street; at the Halle-aux-Vins, a squadron of dragoons; at the Greve half of the 12th Light Infantry, the other half being at the Bastille; the 6th Dragoons at the C\u00e9lestins; and the courtyard of the Louvre full of artillery. The remainder of the troops were confined to their barracks, without reckoning the regiments of the environs of Paris. Power being uneasy, held suspended over the menacing multitude twenty-four thousand soldiers in the city and thirty thousand in the banlieue.\nDivers reports were in circulation in the cortege. Legitimist tricks were hinted at; they spoke of the Duc de Reichstadt, whom God had marked out for death at that very moment when the populace were designating him for the Empire. One personage, whose name has remained unknown, announced that at a given hour two overseers who had been won over, would throw open the doors of a factory of arms to the people. That which predominated on the uncovered brows of the majority of those present was enthusiasm mingled with dejection. Here and there, also, in that multitude given over to such violent but noble emotions, there were visible genuine visages of criminals and ignoble mouths which said: \u201cLet us plunder!\u201d There are certain agitations which stir up the bottoms of marshes and make clouds of mud rise through the water. A phenomenon to which \u201cwell drilled\u201d policemen are no strangers.\nThe procession proceeded, with feverish slowness, from the house of the deceased, by way of the boulevards as far as the Bastille. It rained from time to time; the rain mattered nothing to that throng. Many incidents, the coffin borne round the Vendome column, stones thrown at the Duc de Fitz-James, who was seen on a balcony with his hat on his head, the Gallic cock torn from a popular flag and dragged in the mire, a policeman wounded with a blow from a sword at the Porte Saint-Martin, an officer of the 12th Light Infantry saying aloud: \u201cI am a Republican,\u201d the Polytechnic School coming up unexpectedly against orders to remain at home, the shouts of: \u201cLong live the Polytechnique! Long live the Republic!\u201d marked the passage of the funeral train. At the Bastille, long files of curious and formidable people who descended from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, effected a junction with the procession, and a certain terrible seething began to agitate the throng.\nOne man was heard to say to another: \u201cDo you see that fellow with a red beard, he\u2019s the one who will give the word when we are to fire.\u201d It appears that this red beard was present, at another riot, the Qu\u00e9nisset affair, entrusted with this same function.\nThe hearse passed the Bastille, traversed the small bridge, and reached the esplanade of the bridge of Austerlitz. There it halted. The crowd, surveyed at that moment with a bird\u2019s-eye view, would have presented the aspect of a comet whose head was on the esplanade and whose tail spread out over the Quai Bourdon, covered the Bastille, and was prolonged on the boulevard as far as the Porte Saint-Martin. A circle was traced around the hearse. The vast rout held their peace. Lafayette spoke and bade Lamarque farewell. This was a touching and august instant, all heads uncovered, all hearts beat high.\nAll at once, a man on horseback, clad in black, made his appearance in the middle of the group with a red flag, others say, with a pike surmounted with a red liberty-cap. Lafayette turned aside his head. Exelmans quitted the procession.\nThis red flag raised a storm, and disappeared in the midst of it. From the Boulevard Bourdon to the bridge of Austerlitz one of those clamors which resemble billows stirred the multitude. Two prodigious shouts went up: \u201cLamarque to the Pantheon!\u2014Lafayette to the Town-hall!\u201d Some young men, amid the declamations of the throng, harnessed themselves and began to drag Lamarque in the hearse across the bridge of Austerlitz and Lafayette in a hackney-coach along the Quai Morland.\nIn the crowd which surrounded and cheered Lafayette, it was noticed that a German showed himself named Ludwig Snyder, who died a centenarian afterwards, who had also been in the war of 1776, and who had fought at Trenton under Washington, and at Brandywine under Lafayette.\nIn the meantime, the municipal cavalry on the left bank had been set in motion, and came to bar the bridge, on the right bank the dragoons emerged from the C\u00e9lestins and deployed along the Quai Morland. The men who were dragging Lafayette suddenly caught sight of them at the corner of the quay and shouted: \u201cThe dragoons!\u201d The dragoons advanced at a walk, in silence, with their pistols in their holsters, their swords in their scabbards, their guns slung in their leather sockets, with an air of gloomy expectation.\nThey halted two hundred paces from the little bridge. The carriage in which sat Lafayette advanced to them, their ranks opened and allowed it to pass, and then closed behind it. At that moment the dragoons and the crowd touched. The women fled in terror. What took place during that fatal minute? No one can say. It is the dark moment when two clouds come together. Some declare that a blast of trumpets sounding the charge was heard in the direction of the Arsenal, others that a blow from a dagger was given by a child to a dragoon. The fact is, that three shots were suddenly discharged: the first killed Cholet, chief of the squadron, the second killed an old deaf woman who was in the act of closing her window, the third singed the shoulder of an officer; a woman screamed: \u201cThey are beginning too soon!\u201d and all at once, a squadron of dragoons which had remained in the barracks up to this time, was seen to debouch at a gallop with bared swords, through the Rue Bassompierre and the Boulevard Bourdon, sweeping all before them.\nThen all is said, the tempest is loosed, stones rain down, a fusillade breaks forth, many precipitate themselves to the bottom of the bank, and pass the small arm of the Seine, now filled in, the timber-yards of the Isle Louviers, that vast citadel ready to hand, bristle with combatants, stakes are torn up, pistol-shots fired, a barricade begun, the young men who are thrust back pass the Austerlitz bridge with the hearse at a run, and the municipal guard, the carabineers rush up, the dragoons ply their swords, the crowd disperses in all directions, a rumor of war flies to all four quarters of Paris, men shout: \u201cTo arms!\u201d they run, tumble down, flee, resist. Wrath spreads abroad the riot as wind spreads a fire.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014THE EBULLITIONS OF FORMER DAYS Nothing is more extraordinary than the first breaking out of a riot. Everything bursts forth everywhere at once. Was it foreseen? Yes. Was it prepared? No. Whence comes it? From the pavements. Whence falls it? From the clouds. Here insurrection assumes the character of a plot; there of an improvisation. The first comer seizes a current of the throng and leads it whither he wills. A beginning full of terror, in which is mingled a sort of formidable gayety. First come clamors, the shops are closed, the displays of the merchants disappear; then come isolated shots; people flee; blows from gun-stocks beat against portes-cocheres, servants can be heard laughing in the courtyards of houses and saying: \u201cThere\u2019s going to be a row!\u201d\nA quarter of an hour had not elapsed when this is what was taking place at twenty different spots in Paris at once.\nIn the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, twenty young men, bearded and with long hair, entered a dram-shop and emerged a moment later, carrying a horizontal tricolored flag covered with crape, and having at their head three men armed, one with a sword, one with a gun, and the third with a pike.\nIn the Rue des Nonaindieres, a very well-dressed bourgeois, who had a prominent belly, a sonorous voice, a bald head, a lofty brow, a black beard, and one of these stiff moustaches which will not lie flat, offered cartridges publicly to passers-by.\nIn the Rue Saint-Pierre-Montmartre, men with bare arms carried about a black flag, on which could be read in white letters this inscription: \u201cRepublic or Death!\u201d In the Rue des Je\u00fbneurs, Rue du Cadran, Rue Montorgueil, Rue Mandar, groups appeared waving flags on which could be distinguished in gold letters, the word section with a number. One of these flags was red and blue with an almost imperceptible stripe of white between.\nThey pillaged a factory of small-arms on the Boulevard Saint-Martin, and three armorers\u2019 shops, the first in the Rue Beaubourg, the second in the Rue Michel-le-Comte, the other in the Rue du Temple. In a few minutes, the thousand hands of the crowd had seized and carried off two hundred and thirty guns, nearly all double-barrelled, sixty-four swords, and eighty-three pistols. In order to provide more arms, one man took the gun, the other the bayonet.\nOpposite the Quai de la Greve, young men armed with muskets installed themselves in the houses of some women for the purpose of firing. One of them had a flint-lock. They rang, entered, and set about making cartridges. One of these women relates: \u201cI did not know what cartridges were; it was my husband who told me.\u201d\nOne cluster broke into a curiosity shop in the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, and seized yataghans and Turkish arms.\nThe body of a mason who had been killed by a gun-shot lay in the Rue de la Perle.\nAnd then on the right bank, the left bank, on the quays, on the boulevards, in the Latin country, in the quarter of the Halles, panting men, artisans, students, members of sections read proclamations and shouted: \u201cTo arms!\u201d broke street lanterns, unharnessed carriages, unpaved the streets, broke in the doors of houses, uprooted trees, rummaged cellars, rolled out hogsheads, heaped up paving-stones, rough slabs, furniture and planks, and made barricades.\nThey forced the bourgeois to assist them in this. They entered the dwellings of women, they forced them to hand over the swords and guns of their absent husbands, and they wrote on the door, with whiting: \u201cThe arms have been delivered\u201d; some signed \u201ctheir names\u201d to receipts for the guns and swords and said: \u201cSend for them to-morrow at the Mayor\u2019s office.\u201d They disarmed isolated sentinels and National Guardsmen in the streets on their way to the Townhall. They tore the epaulets from officers. In the Rue du Cimitiere-Saint-Nicholas, an officer of the National Guard, on being pursued by a crowd armed with clubs and foils, took refuge with difficulty in a house, whence he was only able to emerge at nightfall and in disguise.\nIn the Quartier Saint-Jacques, the students swarmed out of their hotels and ascended the Rue Saint-Hyacinthe to the Caf\u00e9 du Progress, or descended to the Caf\u00e9 des Sept-Billards, in the Rue des Mathurins. There, in front of the door, young men mounted on the stone corner-posts, distributed arms. They plundered the timber-yard in the Rue Transnonain in order to obtain material for barricades. On a single point the inhabitants resisted, at the corner of the Rue Sainte-Avoye and the Rue Simon-Le-Franc, where they destroyed the barricade with their own hands. At a single point the insurgents yielded; they abandoned a barricade begun in the Rue de Temple after having fired on a detachment of the National Guard, and fled through the Rue de la Corderie. The detachment picked up in the barricade a red flag, a package of cartridges, and three hundred pistol-balls. The National Guardsmen tore up the flag, and carried off its tattered remains on the points of their bayonets.\nAll that we are here relating slowly and successively took place simultaneously at all points of the city in the midst of a vast tumult, like a mass of tongues of lightning in one clap of thunder. In less than an hour, twenty-seven barricades sprang out of the earth in the quarter of the Halles alone. In the centre was that famous house No. 50, which was the fortress of Humphreyne and her six hundred companions, and which, flanked on the one hand by a barricade at Saint-Merry, and on the other by a barricade of the Rue Maubu\u00e9e, commanded three streets, the Rue des Arcis, the Rue Saint-Martin, and the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, which it faced. The barricades at right angles fell back, the one of the Rue Montorgueil on the Grande-Truanderie, the other of the Rue Geoffroy-Langevin on the Rue Sainte-Avoye. Without reckoning innumerable barricades in twenty other quarters of Paris, in the Marais, at Mont-Sainte-Genevieve; one in the Rue M\u00e9nilmontant, where was visible a porte-cochere torn from its hinges; another near the little bridge of the H\u00f4tel-Dieu made with an \u201c\u00e9cossais,\u201d which had been unharnessed and overthrown, three hundred paces from the Prefecture of Police.\nAt the barricade of the Rue des M\u00e9n\u00e9triers, a well-dressed man distributed money to the workmen. At the barricade of the Rue Grenetat, a horseman made his appearance and handed to the one who seemed to be the commander of the barricade what had the appearance of a roll of silver. \u201cHere,\u201d said he, \u201cthis is to pay expenses, wine, et c\u00e6tera.\u201d A light-haired young man, without a cravat, went from barricade to barricade, carrying pass-words. Another, with a naked sword, a blue police cap on his head, placed sentinels. In the interior, beyond the barricades, the wine-shops and porters\u2019 lodges were converted into guard-houses. Otherwise the riot was conducted after the most scientific military tactics. The narrow, uneven, sinuous streets, full of angles and turns, were admirably chosen; the neighborhood of the Halles, in particular, a network of streets more intricate than a forest. The Society of the Friends of the People had, it was said, undertaken to direct the insurrection in the Quartier Sainte-Avoye. A man killed in the Rue du Ponceau who was searched had on his person a plan of Paris.\nThat which had really undertaken the direction of the uprising was a sort of strange impetuosity which was in the air. The insurrection had abruptly built barricades with one hand, and with the other seized nearly all the posts of the garrison. In less than three hours, like a train of powder catching fire, the insurgents had invaded and occupied, on the right bank, the Arsenal, the Mayoralty of the Place Royale, the whole of the Marais, the Popincourt arms manufactory, la Galiote, the Ch\u00e2teau-d\u2019Eau, and all the streets near the Halles; on the left bank, the barracks of the Veterans, Sainte-P\u00e9lagie, the Place Maubert, the powder magazine of the Deux-Moulins, and all the barriers. At five o\u2019clock in the evening, they were masters of the Bastille, of the Lingerie, of the Blancs-Manteaux; their scouts had reached the Place des Victoires, and menaced the Bank, the Petits-Peres barracks, and the Post-Office. A third of Paris was in the hands of the rioters.\nThe conflict had been begun on a gigantic scale at all points; and, as a result of the disarming domiciliary visits, and armorers\u2019 shops hastily invaded, was, that the combat which had begun with the throwing of stones was continued with gun-shots.\nAbout six o\u2019clock in the evening, the Passage du Saumon became the field of battle. The uprising was at one end, the troops were at the other. They fired from one gate to the other. An observer, a dreamer, the author of this book, who had gone to get a near view of this volcano, found himself in the passage between the two fires. All that he had to protect him from the bullets was the swell of the two half-columns which separate the shops; he remained in this delicate situation for nearly half an hour.\nMeanwhile the call to arms was beaten, the National Guard armed in haste, the legions emerged from the Mayoralities, the regiments from their barracks. Opposite the passage de l\u2019Ancre a drummer received a blow from a dagger. Another, in the Rue du Cygne, was assailed by thirty young men who broke his instrument, and took away his sword. Another was killed in the Rue Grenier-Saint-Lazare. In the Rue Michel-le-Comte, three officers fell dead one after the other. Many of the Municipal Guards, on being wounded, in the Rue des Lombards, retreated.\nIn front of the Cour-Batave, a detachment of National Guards found a red flag bearing the following inscription: Republican revolution, No. 127. Was this a revolution, in fact?\nThe insurrection had made of the centre of Paris a sort of inextricable, tortuous, colossal citadel.\nThere was the hearth; there, evidently, was the question. All the rest was nothing but skirmishes. The proof that all would be decided there lay in the fact that there was no fighting going on there as yet.\nIn some regiments, the soldiers were uncertain, which added to the fearful uncertainty of the crisis. They recalled the popular ovation which had greeted the neutrality of the 53d of the Line in July, 1830. Two intrepid men, tried in great wars, the Marshal Lobau and General Bugeaud, were in command, Bugeaud under Lobau. Enormous patrols, composed of battalions of the Line, enclosed in entire companies of the National Guard, and preceded by a commissary of police wearing his scarf of office, went to reconnoitre the streets in rebellion. The insurgents, on their side, placed videttes at the corners of all open spaces, and audaciously sent their patrols outside the barricades. Each side was watching the other. The Government, with an army in its hand, hesitated; the night was almost upon them, and the Saint-Merry tocsin began to make itself heard. The Minister of War at that time, Marshal Soult, who had seen Austerlitz, regarded this with a gloomy air.\nThese old sailors, accustomed to correct man\u0153uvres and having as resource and guide only tactics, that compass of battles, are utterly disconcerted in the presence of that immense foam which is called public wrath.\nThe National Guards of the suburbs rushed up in haste and disorder. A battalion of the 12th Light came at a run from Saint-Denis, the 14th of the Line arrived from Courbevoie, the batteries of the Military School had taken up their position on the Carrousel; cannons were descending from Vincennes.\nSolitude was formed around the Tuileries. Louis Philippe was perfectly serene.\nCHAPTER V\u2014ORIGINALITY OF PARIS During the last two years, as we have said, Paris had witnessed more than one insurrection. Nothing is, generally, more singularly calm than the physiognomy of Paris during an uprising beyond the bounds of the rebellious quarters. Paris very speedily accustoms herself to anything,\u2014it is only a riot,\u2014and Paris has so many affairs on hand, that she does not put herself out for so small a matter. These colossal cities alone can offer such spectacles. These immense enclosures alone can contain at the same time civil war and an odd and indescribable tranquillity. Ordinarily, when an insurrection commences, when the shop-keeper hears the drum, the call to arms, the general alarm, he contents himself with the remark:\u2014 \u201cThere appears to be a squabble in the Rue Saint-Martin.\u201d\nOr:\u2014\n\u201cIn the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.\u201d\nOften he adds carelessly:\u2014\n\u201cOr somewhere in that direction.\u201d\nLater on, when the heart-rending and mournful hubbub of musketry and firing by platoons becomes audible, the shopkeeper says:\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s getting hot! Hullo, it\u2019s getting hot!\u201d\nA moment later, the riot approaches and gains in force, he shuts up his shop precipitately, hastily dons his uniform, that is to say, he places his merchandise in safety and risks his own person.\nMen fire in a square, in a passage, in a blind alley; they take and re-take the barricade; blood flows, the grape-shot riddles the fronts of the houses, the balls kill people in their beds, corpses encumber the streets. A few streets away, the shock of billiard-balls can be heard in the caf\u00e9s.\nThe theatres open their doors and present vaudevilles; the curious laugh and chat a couple of paces distant from these streets filled with war. Hackney-carriages go their way; passers-by are going to a dinner somewhere in town. Sometimes in the very quarter where the fighting is going on.\nIn 1831, a fusillade was stopped to allow a wedding party to pass.\nAt the time of the insurrection of 1839, in the Rue Saint-Martin a little, infirm old man, pushing a hand-cart surmounted by a tricolored rag, in which he had carafes filled with some sort of liquid, went and came from barricade to troops and from troops to the barricade, offering his glasses of cocoa impartially,\u2014now to the Government, now to anarchy.\nNothing can be stranger; and this is the peculiar character of uprisings in Paris, which cannot be found in any other capital. To this end, two things are requisite, the size of Paris and its gayety. The city of Voltaire and Napoleon is necessary.\nOn this occasion, however, in the resort to arms of June 5th, 1832, the great city felt something which was, perhaps, stronger than itself. It was afraid.\nClosed doors, windows, and shutters were to be seen everywhere, in the most distant and most \u201cdisinterested\u201d quarters. The courageous took to arms, the poltroons hid. The busy and heedless passer-by disappeared. Many streets were empty at four o\u2019clock in the morning.\nAlarming details were hawked about, fatal news was disseminated,\u2014that they were masters of the Bank;\u2014that there were six hundred of them in the Cloister of Saint-Merry alone, entrenched and embattled in the church; that the line was not to be depended on; that Armand Carrel had been to see Marshal Clausel and that the Marshal had said: \u201cGet a regiment first\u201d; that Lafayette was ill, but that he had said to them, nevertheless: \u201cI am with you. I will follow you wherever there is room for a chair\u201d; that one must be on one\u2019s guard; that at night there would be people pillaging isolated dwellings in the deserted corners of Paris (there the imagination of the police, that Anne Radcliffe mixed up with the Government was recognizable); that a battery had been established in the Rue Aubry le Boucher; that Lobau and Bugeaud were putting their heads together, and that, at midnight, or at daybreak at latest, four columns would march simultaneously on the centre of the uprising, the first coming from the Bastille, the second from the Porte Saint-Martin, the third from the Greve, the fourth from the Halles; that perhaps, also, the troops would evacuate Paris and withdraw to the Champ-de-Mars; that no one knew what would happen, but that this time, it certainly was serious.\nPeople busied themselves over Marshal Soult\u2019s hesitations. Why did not he attack at once? It is certain that he was profoundly absorbed. The old lion seemed to scent an unknown monster in that gloom.\nEvening came, the theatres did not open; the patrols circulated with an air of irritation; passers-by were searched; suspicious persons were arrested. By nine o\u2019clock, more than eight hundred persons had been arrested, the Prefecture of Police was encumbered with them, so was the Conciergerie, so was La Force.\nAt the Conciergerie in particular, the long vault which is called the Rue de Paris was littered with trusses of straw upon which lay a heap of prisoners, whom the man of Lyons, Lagrange, harangued valiantly. All that straw rustled by all these men, produced the sound of a heavy shower. Elsewhere prisoners slept in the open air in the meadows, piled on top of each other.\nAnxiety reigned everywhere, and a certain tremor which was not habitual with Paris.\nPeople barricaded themselves in their houses; wives and mothers were uneasy; nothing was to be heard but this: \u201cAh! my God! He has not come home!\u201d There was hardly even the distant rumble of a vehicle to be heard.\nPeople listened on their thresholds, to the rumors, the shouts, the tumult, the dull and indistinct sounds, to the things that were said: \u201cIt is cavalry,\u201d or: \u201cThose are the caissons galloping,\u201d to the trumpets, the drums, the firing, and, above all, to that lamentable alarm peal from Saint-Merry.\nThey waited for the first cannon-shot. Men sprang up at the corners of the streets and disappeared, shouting: \u201cGo home!\u201d And people made haste to bolt their doors. They said: \u201cHow will all this end?\u201d From moment to moment, in proportion as the darkness descended, Paris seemed to take on a more mournful hue from the formidable flaming of the revolt.\nBOOK ELEVENTH\u2014THE ATOM FRATERNIZES WITH THE HURRICANE CHAPTER I\u2014SOME EXPLANATIONS WITH REGARD TO THE ORIGIN OF BUTCH\u2019S POETRY. THE INFLUENCE OF AN ACADEMICIAN ON THIS POETRY At the instant when the insurrection, arising from the shock of the populace and the military in front of the Arsenal, started a movement in advance and towards the rear in the multitude which was following the hearse and which, through the whole length of the boulevards, weighed, so to speak, on the head of the procession, there arose a frightful ebb. The rout was shaken, their ranks were broken, all ran, fled, made their escape, some with shouts of attack, others with the pallor of flight. The great river which covered the boulevards divided in a twinkling, overflowed to right and left, and spread in torrents over two hundred streets at once with the roar of a sewer that has broken loose.\nAt that moment, a ragged child who was coming down through the Rue M\u00e9nilmontant, holding in his hand a branch of blossoming laburnum which he had just plucked on the heights of Belleville, caught sight of an old holster-pistol in the show-window of a bric-\u00e0-brac merchant\u2019s shop.\n\u201cMother What\u2019s-your-name, I\u2019m going to borrow your machine.\u201d\nAnd off he ran with the pistol.\nTwo minutes later, a flood of frightened bourgeois who were fleeing through the Rue Amelot and the Rue Basse, encountered the lad brandishing his pistol and singing:\u2014 La nuit on ne voit rien,\nLe jour on voit tres bien,\nD\u2019un \u00e9crit apocryphe\nLe bourgeois s\u2019\u00e9bouriffe,\nPratiquez la vertu,\nTutu, chapeau pointu!44\nIt was little Butch on his way to the wars.\nOn the boulevard he noticed that the pistol had no trigger.\nWho was the author of that couplet which served to punctuate his march, and of all the other songs which he was fond of singing on occasion? We know not. Who does know? Himself, perhaps. However, Butch was well up in all the popular tunes in circulation, and he mingled with them his own chirpings. An observing urchin and a rogue, he made a potpourri of the voices of nature and the voices of Paris. He combined the repertory of the birds with the repertory of the workshops. He was acquainted with thieves, a tribe contiguous to his own. He had, it appears, been for three months apprenticed to a printer. He had one day executed a commission for M. Baour-Lormian, one of the Forty. Butch was a gamin of letters.\nMoreover, Butch had no suspicion of the fact that when he had offered the hospitality of his elephant to two brats on that villainously rainy night, it was to his own brothers that he had played the part of Providence. His brothers in the evening, his father in the morning; that is what his night had been like. On quitting the Rue des Ballets at daybreak, he had returned in haste to the elephant, had artistically extracted from it the two brats, had shared with them some sort of breakfast which he had invented, and had then gone away, confiding them to that good mother, the street, who had brought him up, almost entirely. On leaving them, he had appointed to meet them at the same spot in the evening, and had left them this discourse by way of a farewell: \u201cI break a cane, otherwise expressed, I cut my stick, or, as they say at the court, I file off. If you don\u2019t find papa and mamma, young \u2019uns, come back here this evening. I\u2019ll scramble you up some supper, and I\u2019ll give you a shakedown.\u201d The two children, picked up by some policeman and placed in the refuge, or stolen by some mountebank, or having simply strayed off in that immense Chinese puzzle of a Paris, did not return. The lowest depths of the actual social world are full of these lost traces. Butch did not see them again. Ten or twelve weeks had elapsed since that night. More than once he had scratched the back of his head and said: \u201cWhere the devil are my two children?\u201d\nIn the meantime, he had arrived, pistol in hand, in the Rue du Pont-aux-Choux. He noticed that there was but one shop open in that street, and, a matter worthy of reflection, that was a pastry-cook\u2019s shop. This presented a providential occasion to eat another apple-turnover before entering the unknown. Butch halted, fumbled in his fob, turned his pocket inside out, found nothing, not even a sou, and began to shout: \u201cHelp!\u201d\nIt is hard to miss the last cake.\nNevertheless, Butch pursued his way.\nTwo minutes later he was in the Rue Saint-Louis. While traversing the Rue du Parc-Royal, he felt called upon to make good the loss of the apple-turnover which had been impossible, and he indulged himself in the immense delight of tearing down the theatre posters in broad daylight.\nA little further on, on catching sight of a group of comfortable-looking persons, who seemed to be landed proprietors, he shrugged his shoulders and spit out at random before him this mouthful of philosophical bile as they passed:\n\u201cHow fat those moneyed men are! They\u2019re drunk! They just wallow in good dinners. Ask \u2019em what they do with their money. They don\u2019t know. They eat it, that\u2019s what they do! As much as their bellies will hold.\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014BUTCH ON THE MARCH The brandishing of a triggerless pistol, grasped in one\u2019s hand in the open street, is so much of a public function that Butch felt his fervor increasing with every moment. Amid the scraps of the Marseillaise which he was singing, he shouted:\u2014 \u201cAll goes well. I suffer a great deal in my left paw, I\u2019m all broken up with rheumatism, but I\u2019m satisfied, citizens. All that the bourgeois have to do is to bear themselves well, I\u2019ll sneeze them out subversive couplets. What are the police spies? Dogs. And I\u2019d just like to have one of them at the end of my pistol. I\u2019m just from the boulevard, my friends. It\u2019s getting hot there, it\u2019s getting into a little boil, it\u2019s simmering. It\u2019s time to skim the pot. Forward march, men! Let an impure blood inundate the furrows! I give my days to my country, I shall never see my concubine more, Nini, finished, yes, Nini? But never mind! Long live joy! Let\u2019s fight, crebleu! I\u2019ve had enough of despotism.\u201d\nAt that moment, the horse of a lancer of the National Guard having fallen, Butch laid his pistol on the pavement, and picked up the man, then he assisted in raising the horse. After which he picked up his pistol and resumed his way. In the Rue de Thorigny, all was peace and silence. This apathy, peculiar to the Marais, presented a contrast with the vast surrounding uproar. Four gossips were chatting in a doorway.\nScotland has trios of witches, Paris has quartettes of old gossiping hags; and the \u201cThou shalt be King\u201d could be quite as mournfully hurled at Bonaparte in the Carrefour Baudoyer as at Macbeth on the heath of Armuyr. The croak would be almost identical.\nThe gossips of the Rue de Thorigny busied themselves only with their own concerns. Three of them were portresses, and the fourth was a rag-picker with her basket on her back.\nAll four of them seemed to be standing at the four corners of old age, which are decrepitude, decay, ruin, and sadness.\nThe rag-picker was humble. In this open-air society, it is the rag-picker who salutes and the portress who patronizes. This is caused by the corner for refuse, which is fat or lean, according to the will of the portresses, and after the fancy of the one who makes the heap. There may be kindness in the broom.\nThis rag-picker was a grateful creature, and she smiled, with what a smile! on the three portresses. Things of this nature were said:\u2014 \u201cAh, by the way, is your cat still cross?\u201d\n\u201cGood gracious, cats are naturally the enemies of dogs, you know. It\u2019s the dogs who complain.\u201d\n\u201cAnd people also.\u201d\n\u201cBut the fleas from a cat don\u2019t go after people.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s not the trouble, dogs are dangerous. I remember one year when there were so many dogs that it was necessary to put it in the newspapers. That was at the time when there were at the Tuileries great sheep that drew the little carriage of the King of Rome. Do you remember the King of Rome?\u201d\n\u201cI liked the Duc de Bordeau better.\u201d\n\u201cI knew Louis XVIII. I prefer Louis XVIII.\u201d\n\u201cMeat is awfully dear, isn\u2019t it, Mother Patagon?\u201d\n\u201cAh! don\u2019t mention it, the butcher\u2019s shop is a horror. A horrible horror\u2014one can\u2019t afford anything but the poor cuts nowadays.\u201d\nHere the rag-picker interposed:\u2014 \u201cLadies, business is dull. The refuse heaps are miserable. No one throws anything away any more. They eat everything.\u201d\n\u201cThere are poorer people than you, la Vargoul\u00eame.\u201d\n\u201cAh, that\u2019s true,\u201d replied the rag-picker, with deference, \u201cI have a profession.\u201d\nA pause succeeded, and the rag-picker, yielding to that necessity for boasting which lies at the bottom of man, added:\u2014 \u201cIn the morning, on my return home, I pick over my basket, I sort my things. This makes heaps in my room. I put the rags in a basket, the cores and stalks in a bucket, the linen in my cupboard, the woollen stuff in my commode, the old papers in the corner of the window, the things that are good to eat in my bowl, the bits of glass in my fireplace, the old shoes behind my door, and the bones under my bed.\u201d\nButch had stopped behind her and was listening.\n\u201cOld ladies,\u201d said he, \u201cwhat do you mean by talking politics?\u201d\nHe was assailed by a broadside, composed of a quadruple howl.\n\u201cHere\u2019s another rascal.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that he\u2019s got in his paddle? A pistol?\u201d\n\u201cWell, I\u2019d like to know what sort of a beggar\u2019s brat this is?\u201d\n\u201cThat sort of animal is never easy unless he\u2019s overturning the authorities.\u201d\nButch disdainfully contented himself, by way of reprisal, with elevating the tip of his nose with his thumb and opening his hand wide.\nThe rag-picker cried:\u2014\n\u201cYou malicious, bare-pawed little wretch!\u201d\nThe one who answered to the name of Patagon clapped her hands together in horror.\n\u201cThere\u2019s going to be evil doings, that\u2019s certain. The errand-boy next door has a little pointed beard, I have seen him pass every day with a young person in a pink bonnet on his arm; to-day I saw him pass, and he had a gun on his arm. Mame Bacheux says, that last week there was a revolution at\u2014at\u2014at\u2014where\u2019s the calf!\u2014at Pontoise. And then, there you see him, that horrid scamp, with his pistol! It seems that the C\u00e9lestins are full of pistols. What do you suppose the Government can do with good-for-nothings who don\u2019t know how to do anything but contrive ways of upsetting the world, when we had just begun to get a little quiet after all the misfortunes that have happened, good Lord! to that poor queen whom I saw pass in the tumbril! And all this is going to make tobacco dearer. It\u2019s infamous! And I shall certainly go to see him beheaded on the guillotine, the wretch!\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019ve got the sniffles, old lady,\u201d said Butch. \u201cBlow your promontory.\u201d\nAnd he passed on. When he was in the Rue Pav\u00e9e, the rag-picker occurred to his mind, and he indulged in this soliloquy:\u2014 \u201cYou\u2019re in the wrong to insult the revolutionists, Mother Dust-Heap-Corner. This pistol is in your interests. It\u2019s so that you may have more good things to eat in your basket.\u201d\nAll at once, he heard a shout behind him; it was the portress Patagon who had followed him, and who was shaking her fist at him in the distance and crying:\u2014 \u201cYou\u2019re nothing but a bastard.\u201d\n\u201cOh! Come now,\u201d said Butch, \u201cI don\u2019t care a brass farthing for that!\u201d\nShortly afterwards, he passed the Hotel Lamoignon. There he uttered this appeal:\u2014 \u201cForward march to the battle!\u201d\nAnd he was seized with a fit of melancholy. He gazed at his pistol with an air of reproach which seemed an attempt to appease it:\u2014 \u201cI\u2019m going off,\u201d said he, \u201cbut you won\u2019t go off!\u201d\nOne dog may distract the attention from another dog.45 A very gaunt poodle came along at the moment. Butch felt compassion for him.\n\u201cMy poor doggy,\u201d said he, \u201cyou must have gone and swallowed a cask, for all the hoops are visible.\u201d\nThen he directed his course towards l\u2019Orme-Saint-Gervais.\nCHAPTER III\u2014JUST INDIGNATION OF A HAIR-DRESSER The worthy hair-dresser who had chased from his shop the two little fellows to whom Butch had opened the paternal interior of the elephant was at that moment in his shop engaged in shaving an old soldier of the legion who had served under the Empire. They were talking. The hair-dresser had, naturally, spoken to the veteran of the riot, then of General Lamarque, and from Lamarque they had passed to the Emperor. Thence sprang up a conversation between barber and soldier which Prudhomme, had he been present, would have enriched with arabesques, and which he would have entitled: \u201cDialogue between the razor and the sword.\u201d\n\u201cHow did the Emperor ride, sir?\u201d said the barber.\n\u201cBadly. He did not know how to fall\u2014so he never fell.\u201d\n\u201cDid he have fine horses? He must have had fine horses!\u201d\n\u201cOn the day when he gave me my cross, I noticed his beast. It was a racing mare, perfectly white. Her ears were very wide apart, her saddle deep, a fine head marked with a black star, a very long neck, strongly articulated knees, prominent ribs, oblique shoulders and a powerful crupper. A little more than fifteen hands in height.\u201d\n\u201cA pretty horse,\u201d remarked the hair-dresser.\n\u201cIt was His Majesty\u2019s beast.\u201d\nThe hair-dresser felt, that after this observation, a short silence would be fitting, so he conformed himself to it, and then went on:\u2014 \u201cThe Emperor was never wounded but once, was he, sir?\u201d\nThe old soldier replied with the calm and sovereign tone of a man who had been there:\u2014 \u201cIn the heel. At Ratisbon. I never saw him so well dressed as on that day. He was as neat as a new sou.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you, Mr. Veteran, you must have been often wounded?\u201d\n\u201cI?\u201d said the soldier, \u201cah! not to amount to anything. At Marengo, I received two sabre-blows on the back of my neck, a bullet in the right arm at Austerlitz, another in the left hip at Jena. At Friedland, a thrust from a bayonet, there,\u2014at the Moskowa seven or eight lance-thrusts, no matter where, at Lutzen a splinter of a shell crushed one of my fingers. Ah! and then at Waterloo, a ball from a bisca\u00efen in the thigh, that\u2019s all.\u201d\n\u201cHow fine that is!\u201d exclaimed the hair-dresser, in Pindaric accents, \u201cto die on the field of battle! On my word of honor, rather than die in bed, of an illness, slowly, a bit by bit each day, with drugs, cataplasms, syringes, medicines, I should prefer to receive a cannon-ball in my belly!\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re not over fastidious,\u201d said the soldier.\nHe had hardly spoken when a fearful crash shook the shop. The show-window had suddenly been fractured.\nThe wig-maker turned pale.\n\u201cAh, good God!\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cit\u2019s one of them!\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cA cannon-ball.\u201d\n\u201cHere it is,\u201d said the soldier.\nAnd he picked up something that was rolling about the floor. It was a pebble.\nThe hair-dresser ran to the broken window and beheld Butch fleeing at the full speed, towards the March\u00e9 Saint-Humphrey. As he passed the hair-dresser\u2019s shop Butch, who had the two brats still in his mind, had not been able to resist the impulse to say good day to him, and had flung a stone through his panes.\n\u201cYou see!\u201d shrieked the hair-dresser, who from white had turned blue, \u201cthat fellow returns and does mischief for the pure pleasure of it. What has any one done to that gamin?\u201d\nCHAPTER IV\u2014THE CHILD IS AMAZED AT THE OLD MAN In the meantime, in the March\u00e9 Saint-Humphrey, where the post had already been disarmed, Butch had just \u201ceffected a junction\u201d with a band led by Anthea, Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Feuilly. They were armed after a fashion. Bahorel and Humphrey Prouvaire had found them and swelled the group. Anthea had a double-barrelled hunting-gun, Combeferre the gun of a National Guard bearing the number of his legion, and in his belt, two pistols which his unbuttoned coat allowed to be seen, Humphrey Prouvaire an old cavalry musket, Bahorel a rifle; Courfeyrac was brandishing an unsheathed sword-cane. Feuilly, with a naked sword in his hand, marched at their head shouting: \u201cLong live Poland!\u201d\nThey reached the Quai Morland. Cravatless, hatless, breathless, soaked by the rain, with lightning in their eyes. Butch accosted them calmly:\u2014 \u201cWhere are we going?\u201d\n\u201cCome along,\u201d said Courfeyrac.\nBehind Feuilly marched, or rather bounded, Bahorel, who was like a fish in water in a riot. He wore a scarlet waistcoat, and indulged in the sort of words which break everything. His waistcoat astounded a passer-by, who cried in bewilderment:\u2014 \u201cHere are the reds!\u201d\n\u201cThe reds, the reds!\u201d retorted Bahorel. \u201cA queer kind of fear, bourgeois. For my part I don\u2019t tremble before a poppy, the little red hat inspires me with no alarm. Take my advice, bourgeois, let\u2019s leave fear of the red to horned cattle.\u201d\nHe caught sight of a corner of the wall on which was placarded the most peaceable sheet of paper in the world, a permission to eat eggs, a Lenten admonition addressed by the Archbishop of Paris to his \u201cflock.\u201d\nBahorel exclaimed:\u2014\n\u201c\u2018Flock\u2019; a polite way of saying geese.\u201d\nAnd he tore the charge from the nail. This conquered Butch. From that instant Butch set himself to study Bahorel.\n\u201cBahorel,\u201d observed Anthea, \u201cyou are wrong. You should have let that charge alone, he is not the person with whom we have to deal, you are wasting your wrath to no purpose. Take care of your supply. One does not fire out of the ranks with the soul any more than with a gun.\u201d\n\u201cEach one in his own fashion, Anthea,\u201d retorted Bahorel. \u201cThis bishop\u2019s prose shocks me; I want to eat eggs without being permitted. Your style is the hot and cold; I am amusing myself. Besides, I\u2019m not wasting myself, I\u2019m getting a start; and if I tore down that charge, Hercle! \u2019twas only to whet my appetite.\u201d\nThis word, Hercle, struck Butch. He sought all occasions for learning, and that tearer-down of posters possessed his esteem. He inquired of him:\u2014 \u201cWhat does Hercle mean?\u201d\nBahorel answered:\u2014\n\u201cIt means cursed name of a dog, in Latin.\u201d\nHere Bahorel recognized at a window a pale young man with a black beard who was watching them as they passed, probably a Friend of the A B C. He shouted to him:\u2014 \u201cQuick, cartridges, para bellum.\u201d\n\u201cA fine man! that\u2019s true,\u201d said Butch, who now understood Latin.\nA tumultuous retinue accompanied them,\u2014students, artists, young men affiliated to the Cougourde of Aix, artisans, longshoremen, armed with clubs and bayonets; some, like Combeferre, with pistols thrust into their trousers.\nAn old man, who appeared to be extremely aged, was walking in the band.\nHe had no arms, and he made great haste, so that he might not be left behind, although he had a thoughtful air.\nButch caught sight of him:\u2014 \u201cKeksek\u00e7a?\u201d said he to Courfeyrac.\n\u201cHe\u2019s an old duffer.\u201d\nIt was M. Ysabel.\nCHAPTER V\u2014THE OLD MAN\nLet us recount what had taken place.\nAnthea and his friends had been on the Boulevard Bourdon, near the public storehouses, at the moment when the dragoons had made their charge. Anthea, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre were among those who had taken to the Rue Bassompierre, shouting: \u201cTo the barricades!\u201d In the Rue Lesdiguieres they had met an old man walking along. What had attracted their attention was that the goodman was walking in a zig-zag, as though he were intoxicated. Moreover, he had his hat in his hand, although it had been raining all the morning, and was raining pretty briskly at the very time. Courfeyrac had recognized Father Ysabel. He knew him through having many times accompanied Lennox as far as his door. As he was acquainted with the peaceful and more than timid habits of the old beadle-book-collector, and was amazed at the sight of him in the midst of that uproar, a couple of paces from the cavalry charges, almost in the midst of a fusillade, hatless in the rain, and strolling about among the bullets, he had accosted him, and the following dialogue had been exchanged between the rioter of fire and the octogenarian:\u2014 \u201cM. Ysabel, go to your home.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s going to be a row.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s well.\u201d\n\u201cThrusts with the sword and firing, M. Ysabel.\u201d\n\u201cThat is well.\u201d\n\u201cFiring from cannon.\u201d\n\u201cThat is good. Where are the rest of you going?\u201d\n\u201cWe are going to fling the government to the earth.\u201d\n\u201cThat is good.\u201d\nAnd he had set out to follow them. From that moment forth he had not uttered a word. His step had suddenly become firm; artisans had offered him their arms; he had refused with a sign of the head. He advanced nearly to the front rank of the column, with the movement of a man who is marching and the countenance of a man who is sleeping.\n\u201cWhat a fierce old fellow!\u201d muttered the students. The rumor spread through the troop that he was a former member of the Convention,\u2014an old regicide. The mob had turned in through the Rue de la Verrerie.\nLittle Butch marched in front with that deafening song which made of him a sort of trumpet.\nHe sang:\n\u201cVoici la lune qui para\u00eet,\nQuand irons-nous dans la for\u00eat?\nDemandait Charlot \u00e0 Charlotte.\nTou tou tou\nPour Chatou.\nJe n\u2019ai qu\u2019un Dieu, qu\u2019un roi, qu\u2019un liard, et qu\u2019une botte.\n\u201cPour avoir bu de grand matin\nLa ros\u00e9e \u00e0 m\u00eame le thym,\nDeux moineaux \u00e9taient en ribotte.\nZi zi zi\nPour Passy.\nJe n\u2019ai qu\u2019un Dieu, qu\u2019un roi, qu\u2019un liard, et qu\u2019une botte.\n\u201cEt ces deux pauvres petits loups, Comme deux grives \u00e9taient so\u00fbls;\nUn tigre en riait dans sa grotte.\nDon don don\nPour Meudon.\nJe n\u2019ai qu\u2019un Dieu, qu\u2019un roi, qu\u2019un liard, et qu\u2019une botte.\n\u201cL\u2019un jurait et l\u2019autre sacrait.\nQuand irons nous dans la for\u00eat?\nDemandait Charlot \u00e0 Charlotte.\nTin tin tin\nPour Pantin.\nJe n\u2019ai qu\u2019un Dieu, qu\u2019un roi, qu\u2019un liard, et qu\u2019une botte.\u201d46 They directed their course towards Saint-Merry.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014RECRUITS\nThe band augmented every moment. Near the Rue des Billettes, a man of lofty stature, whose hair was turning gray, and whose bold and daring mien was remarked by Courfeyrac, Anthea, and Combeferre, but whom none of them knew, joined them. Butch, who was occupied in singing, whistling, humming, running on ahead and pounding on the shutters of the shops with the butt of his triggerless pistol; paid no attention to this man.\nIt chanced that in the Rue de la Verrerie, they passed in front of Courfeyrac\u2019s door.\n\u201cThis happens just right,\u201d said Courfeyrac, \u201cI have forgotten my purse, and I have lost my hat.\u201d\nHe quitted the mob and ran up to his quarters at full speed. He seized an old hat and his purse.\nHe also seized a large square coffer, of the dimensions of a large valise, which was concealed under his soiled linen.\nAs he descended again at a run, the portress hailed him:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur de Courfeyrac!\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s your name, portress?\u201d\nThe portress stood bewildered.\n\u201cWhy, you know perfectly well, I\u2019m the concierge; my name is Mother Veuvain.\u201d\n\u201cWell, if you call me Monsieur de Courfeyrac again, I shall call you Mother de Veuvain. Now speak, what\u2019s the matter? What do you want?\u201d\n\u201cThere is some one who wants to speak with you.\u201d\n\u201cWho is it?\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\u201cWhere is he?\u201d\n\u201cIn my lodge.\u201d\n\u201cThe devil!\u201d ejaculated Courfeyrac.\n\u201cBut the person has been waiting your return for over an hour,\u201d said the portress.\nAt the same time, a sort of pale, thin, small, freckled, and youthful artisan, clad in a tattered blouse and patched trousers of ribbed velvet, and who had rather the air of a girl accoutred as a man than of a man, emerged from the lodge and said to Courfeyrac in a voice which was not the least in the world like a woman\u2019s voice:\u2014 \u201cMonsieur Lennox, if you please.\u201d\n\u201cHe is not here.\u201d\n\u201cWill he return this evening?\u201d\n\u201cI know nothing about it.\u201d\nAnd Courfeyrac added:\u2014\n\u201cFor my part, I shall not return.\u201d\nThe young man gazed steadily at him and said:\u2014 \u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\u201cBecause.\u201d\n\u201cWhere are you going, then?\u201d\n\u201cWhat business is that of yours?\u201d\n\u201cWould you like to have me carry your coffer for you?\u201d\n\u201cI am going to the barricades.\u201d\n\u201cWould you like to have me go with you?\u201d\n\u201cIf you like!\u201d replied Courfeyrac. \u201cThe street is free, the pavements belong to every one.\u201d\nAnd he made his escape at a run to join his friends. When he had rejoined them, he gave the coffer to one of them to carry. It was only a quarter of an hour after this that he saw the young man, who had actually followed them.\nA mob does not go precisely where it intends. We have explained that a gust of wind carries it away. They overshot Saint-Merry and found themselves, without precisely knowing how, in the Rue Saint-Denis.\nBOOK TWELFTH\u2014CORINTHE\nCHAPTER I\u2014HISTORY OF CORINTHE FROM ITS FOUNDATION The Parisians who nowadays on entering on the Rue Rambuteau at the end near the Halles, notice on their right, opposite the Rue Mond\u00e9tour, a basket-maker\u2019s shop having for its sign a basket in the form of Napoleon the Great with this inscription:\u2014 NAPOLEON IS MADE\nWHOLLY OF WILLOW,\nhave no suspicion of the terrible scenes which this very spot witnessed hardly thirty years ago.\nIt was there that lay the Rue de la Chanvrerie, which ancient deeds spell Chanverrerie, and the celebrated public-house called Corinthe.\nThe reader will remember all that has been said about the barricade effected at this point, and eclipsed, by the way, by the barricade Saint-Merry. It was on this famous barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, now fallen into profound obscurity, that we are about to shed a little light.\nMay we be permitted to recur, for the sake of clearness in the recital, to the simple means which we have already employed in the case of Waterloo. Persons who wish to picture to themselves in a tolerably exact manner the constitution of the houses which stood at that epoch near the Pointe Saint-Eustache, at the northeast angle of the Halles of Paris, where to-day lies the embouchure of the Rue Rambuteau, have only to imagine an N touching the Rue Saint-Denis with its summit and the Halles with its base, and whose two vertical bars should form the Rue de la Grande-Truanderie, and the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and whose transverse bar should be formed by the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie. The old Rue Mond\u00e9tour cut the three strokes of the N at the most crooked angles. So that the labyrinthine confusion of these four streets sufficed to form, on a space three fathoms square, between the Halles and the Rue Saint-Denis on the one hand, and between the Rue du Cygne and the Rue des Pr\u00eacheurs on the other, seven islands of houses, oddly cut up, of varying sizes, placed crosswise and hap-hazard, and barely separated, like the blocks of stone in a dock, by narrow crannies.\nWe say narrow crannies, and we can give no more just idea of those dark, contracted, many-angled alleys, lined with eight-story buildings. These buildings were so decrepit that, in the Rue de la Chanvrerie and the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie, the fronts were shored up with beams running from one house to another. The street was narrow and the gutter broad, the pedestrian there walked on a pavement that was always wet, skirting little stalls resembling cellars, big posts encircled with iron hoops, excessive heaps of refuse, and gates armed with enormous, century-old gratings. The Rue Rambuteau has devastated all that.\nThe name of Mond\u00e9tour paints marvellously well the sinuosities of that whole set of streets. A little further on, they are found still better expressed by the Rue Pirouette, which ran into the Rue Mond\u00e9tour.\nThe passer-by who got entangled from the Rue Saint-Denis in the Rue de la Chanvrerie beheld it gradually close in before him as though he had entered an elongated funnel. At the end of this street, which was very short, he found further passage barred in the direction of the Halles by a tall row of houses, and he would have thought himself in a blind alley, had he not perceived on the right and left two dark cuts through which he could make his escape. This was the Rue Mond\u00e9tour, which on one side ran into the Rue de Pr\u00eacheurs, and on the other into the Rue du Cygne and the Petite-Truanderie. At the bottom of this sort of cul-de-sac, at the angle of the cutting on the right, there was to be seen a house which was not so tall as the rest, and which formed a sort of cape in the street. It is in this house, of two stories only, that an illustrious wine-shop had been merrily installed three hundred years before. This tavern created a joyous noise in the very spot which old Theophilus described in the following couplet:\u2014 L\u00e0 branle le squelette horrible D\u2019un pauvre amant qui se pendit.47 The situation was good, and tavern-keepers succeeded each other there, from father to son.\nIn the time of Mathurin Regnier, this cabaret was called the Pot-aux-Roses, and as the rebus was then in fashion, it had for its sign-board, a post (poteau) painted rose-color. In the last century, the worthy Natoire, one of the fantastic masters nowadays despised by the stiff school, having got drunk many times in this wine-shop at the very table where Regnier had drunk his fill, had painted, by way of gratitude, a bunch of Corinth grapes on the pink post. The keeper of the cabaret, in his joy, had changed his device and had caused to be placed in gilt letters beneath the bunch these words: \u201cAt the Bunch of Corinth Grapes\u201d (\u201cAu Raisin de Corinthe\u201d). Hence the name of Corinthe. Nothing is more natural to drunken men than ellipses. The ellipsis is the zig-zag of the phrase. Corinthe gradually dethroned the Pot-aux-Roses. The last proprietor of the dynasty, Father Hucheloup, no longer acquainted even with the tradition, had the post painted blue.\nA room on the ground floor, where the bar was situated, one on the first floor containing a billiard-table, a wooden spiral staircase piercing the ceiling, wine on the tables, smoke on the walls, candles in broad daylight,\u2014this was the style of this cabaret. A staircase with a trap-door in the lower room led to the cellar. On the second floor were the lodgings of the Hucheloup family. They were reached by a staircase which was a ladder rather than a staircase, and had for their entrance only a private door in the large room on the first floor. Under the roof, in two mansard attics, were the nests for the servants. The kitchen shared the ground floor with the tap-room.\nFather Hucheloup had, possibly, been born a chemist, but the fact is that he was a cook; people did not confine themselves to drinking alone in his wine-shop, they also ate there. Hucheloup had invented a capital thing which could be eaten nowhere but in his house, stuffed carps, which he called carpes au gras. These were eaten by the light of a tallow candle or of a lamp of the time of Louis XVI., on tables to which were nailed waxed cloths in lieu of table-cloths. People came thither from a distance. Hucheloup, one fine morning, had seen fit to notify passers-by of this \u201cspecialty\u201d; he had dipped a brush in a pot of black paint, and as he was an orthographer on his own account, as well as a cook after his own fashion, he had improvised on his wall this remarkable inscription:\u2014 CARPES HO GRAS.\nOne winter, the rain-storms and the showers had taken a fancy to obliterate the S which terminated the first word, and the G which began the third; this is what remained:\u2014 CARPE HO RAS.\nTime and rain assisting, a humble gastronomical announcement had become a profound piece of advice.\nIn this way it came about, that though he knew no French, Father Hucheloup understood Latin, that he had evoked philosophy from his kitchen, and that, desirous simply of effacing Lent, he had equalled Horace. And the striking thing about it was, that that also meant: \u201cEnter my wine-shop.\u201d\nNothing of all this is in existence now. The Mond\u00e9tour labyrinth was disembowelled and widely opened in 1847, and probably no longer exists at the present moment. The Rue de la Chanvrerie and Corinthe have disappeared beneath the pavement of the Rue Rambuteau.\nAs we have already said, Corinthe was the meeting-place if not the rallying-point, of Courfeyrac and his friends. It was Grantaire who had discovered Corinthe. He had entered it on account of the Carpe horas, and had returned thither on account of the Carpes au gras. There they drank, there they ate, there they shouted; they did not pay much, they paid badly, they did not pay at all, but they were always welcome. Father Hucheloup was a jovial host.\nHucheloup, that amiable man, as was just said, was a wine-shop-keeper with a moustache; an amusing variety. He always had an ill-tempered air, seemed to wish to intimidate his customers, grumbled at the people who entered his establishment, and had rather the mien of seeking a quarrel with them than of serving them with soup. And yet, we insist upon the word, people were always welcome there. This oddity had attracted customers to his shop, and brought him young men, who said to each other: \u201cCome hear Father Hucheloup growl.\u201d He had been a fencing-master. All of a sudden, he would burst out laughing. A big voice, a good fellow. He had a comic foundation under a tragic exterior, he asked nothing better than to frighten you, very much like those snuff-boxes which are in the shape of a pistol. The detonation makes one sneeze.\nMother Hucheloup, his wife, was a bearded and a very homely creature.\nAbout 1830, Father Hucheloup died. With him disappeared the secret of stuffed carps. His inconsolable widow continued to keep the wine-shop. But the cooking deteriorated, and became execrable; the wine, which had always been bad, became fearfully bad. Nevertheless, Courfeyrac and his friends continued to go to Corinthe,\u2014out of pity, as Bossuet said.\nThe Widow Hucheloup was breathless and misshapen and given to rustic recollections. She deprived them of their flatness by her pronunciation. She had a way of her own of saying things, which spiced her reminiscences of the village and of her springtime. It had formerly been her delight, so she affirmed, to hear the loups-de-gorge (rouges-gorges) chanter dans les ogrepines (aub\u00e9pines)\u2014to hear the redbreasts sing in the hawthorn-trees.\nThe hall on the first floor, where \u201cthe restaurant\u201d was situated, was a large and long apartment encumbered with stools, chairs, benches, and tables, and with a crippled, lame, old billiard-table. It was reached by a spiral staircase which terminated in the corner of the room at a square hole like the hatchway of a ship.\nThis room, lighted by a single narrow window, and by a lamp that was always burning, had the air of a garret. All the four-footed furniture comported itself as though it had but three legs\u2014the whitewashed walls had for their only ornament the following quatrain in honor of Mame Hucheloup:\u2014 Elle \u00e9tonne \u00e0 dix pas, elle \u00e9pouvente \u00e0 deux, Une verrue habite en son nez hasardeux;\nOn tremble \u00e0 chaque instant qu\u2019elle ne vous la mouche Et qu\u2019un beau jour son nez ne tombe dans sa bouche.48 This was scrawled in charcoal on the wall.\nMame Hucheloup, a good likeness, went and came from morning till night before this quatrain with the most perfect tranquillity. Two serving-maids, named Matelote and Gibelotte,49 and who had never been known by any other names, helped Mame Hucheloup to set on the tables the jugs of poor wine, and the various broths which were served to the hungry patrons in earthenware bowls. Matelote, large, plump, redhaired, and noisy, the favorite ex-sultana of the defunct Hucheloup, was homelier than any mythological monster, be it what it may; still, as it becomes the servant to always keep in the rear of the mistress, she was less homely than Mame Hucheloup. Gibelotte, tall, delicate, white with a lymphatic pallor, with circles round her eyes, and drooping lids, always languid and weary, afflicted with what may be called chronic lassitude, the first up in the house and the last in bed, waited on every one, even the other maid, silently and gently, smiling through her fatigue with a vague and sleepy smile.\nBefore entering the restaurant room, the visitor read on the door the following line written there in chalk by Courfeyrac:\u2014 R\u00e9gale si tu peux et mange si tu l\u2019oses.50 CHAPTER II\u2014PRELIMINARY GAYETIES Laigle de Meaux, as the reader knows, lived more with Joly than elsewhere. He had a lodging, as a bird has one on a branch. The two friends lived together, ate together, slept together. They had everything in common, even Musichetta, to some extent. They were, what the subordinate monks who accompany monks are called, bini. On the morning of the 5th of June, they went to Corinthe to breakfast. Joly, who was all stuffed up, had a catarrh which Laigle was beginning to share. Laigle\u2019s coat was threadbare, but Joly was well dressed.\nIt was about nine o\u2019clock in the morning, when they opened the door of Corinthe.\nThey ascended to the first floor.\nMatelote and Gibelotte received them.\n\u201cOysters, cheese, and ham,\u201d said Laigle.\nAnd they seated themselves at a table.\nThe wine-shop was empty; there was no one there but themselves.\nGibelotte, knowing Joly and Laigle, set a bottle of wine on the table.\nWhile they were busy with their first oysters, a head appeared at the hatchway of the staircase, and a voice said:\u2014 \u201cI am passing by. I smell from the street a delicious odor of Brie cheese. I enter.\u201d It was Grantaire.\nGrantaire took a stool and drew up to the table.\nAt the sight of Grantaire, Gibelotte placed two bottles of wine on the table.\nThat made three.\n\u201cAre you going to drink those two bottles?\u201d Laigle inquired of Grantaire.\nGrantaire replied:\u2014\n\u201cAll are ingenious, thou alone art ingenuous. Two bottles never yet astonished a man.\u201d\nThe others had begun by eating, Grantaire began by drinking. Half a bottle was rapidly gulped down.\n\u201cSo you have a hole in your stomach?\u201d began Laigle again.\n\u201cYou have one in your elbow,\u201d said Grantaire.\nAnd after having emptied his glass, he added:\u2014 \u201cAh, by the way, Laigle of the funeral oration, your coat is old.\u201d\n\u201cI should hope so,\u201d retorted Laigle. \u201cThat\u2019s why we get on well together, my coat and I. It has acquired all my folds, it does not bind me anywhere, it is moulded on my deformities, it falls in with all my movements, I am only conscious of it because it keeps me warm. Old coats are just like old friends.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d ejaculated Joly, striking into the dialogue, \u201can old goat is an old abi\u201d (ami, friend).\n\u201cEspecially in the mouth of a man whose head is stuffed up,\u201d said Grantaire.\n\u201cGrantaire,\u201d demanded Laigle, \u201chave you just come from the boulevard?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cWe have just seen the head of the procession pass, Joly and I.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s a marvellous sight,\u201d said Joly.\n\u201cHow quiet this street is!\u201d exclaimed Laigle. \u201cWho would suspect that Paris was turned upside down? How plainly it is to be seen that in former days there were nothing but convents here! In this neighborhood! Du Breul and Sauval give a list of them, and so does the Abb\u00e9 Lebeuf. They were all round here, they fairly swarmed, booted and barefooted, shaven, bearded, gray, black, white, Franciscans, Minims, Capuchins, Carmelites, Little Augustines, Great Augustines, old Augustines\u2014there was no end of them.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t let\u2019s talk of monks,\u201d interrupted Grantaire, \u201cit makes one want to scratch one\u2019s self.\u201d\nThen he exclaimed:\u2014\n\u201cBouh! I\u2019ve just swallowed a bad oyster. Now hypochondria is taking possession of me again. The oysters are spoiled, the servants are ugly. I hate the human race. I just passed through the Rue Richelieu, in front of the big public library. That pile of oyster-shells which is called a library is disgusting even to think of. What paper! What ink! What scrawling! And all that has been written! What rascal was it who said that man was a featherless biped?51 And then, I met a pretty girl of my acquaintance, who is as beautiful as the spring, worthy to be called Flor\u00e9al, and who is delighted, enraptured, as happy as the angels, because a wretch yesterday, a frightful banker all spotted with small-pox, deigned to take a fancy to her! Alas! woman keeps on the watch for a protector as much as for a lover; cats chase mice as well as birds. Two months ago that young woman was virtuous in an attic, she adjusted little brass rings in the eyelet-holes of corsets, what do you call it? She sewed, she had a camp bed, she dwelt beside a pot of flowers, she was contented. Now here she is a bankeress. This transformation took place last night. I met the victim this morning in high spirits. The hideous point about it is, that the jade is as pretty to-day as she was yesterday. Her financier did not show in her face. Roses have this advantage or disadvantage over women, that the traces left upon them by caterpillars are visible. Ah! there is no morality on earth. I call to witness the myrtle, the symbol of love, the laurel, the symbol of air, the olive, that ninny, the symbol of peace, the apple-tree which came nearest rangling Adam with its pips, and the fig-tree, the grandfather of petticoats. As for right, do you know what right is? The Gauls covet Clusium, Rome protects Clusium, and demands what wrong Clusium has done to them. Brennus answers: \u2018The wrong that Alba did to you, the wrong that Fiden\u00e6 did to you, the wrong that the Eques, the Volsci, and the Sabines have done to you. They were your neighbors. The Clusians are ours. We understand neighborliness just as you do. You have stolen Alba, we shall take Clusium.\u2019 Rome said: \u2018You shall not take Clusium.\u2019 Brennus took Rome. Then he cried: \u2018V\u00e6 victis!\u2019 That is what right is. Ah! what beasts of prey there are in this world! What eagles! It makes my flesh creep.\u201d\nHe held out his glass to Joly, who filled it, then he drank and went on, having hardly been interrupted by this glass of wine, of which no one, not even himself, had taken any notice:\u2014 \u201cBrennus, who takes Rome, is an eagle; the banker who takes the grisette is an eagle. There is no more modesty in the one case than in the other. So we believe in nothing. There is but one reality: drink. Whatever your opinion may be in favor of the lean cock, like the Canton of Uri, or in favor of the fat cock, like the Canton of Glaris, it matters little, drink. You talk to me of the boulevard, of that procession, et c\u00e6tera, et c\u00e6tera. Come now, is there going to be another revolution? This poverty of means on the part of the good God astounds me. He has to keep greasing the groove of events every moment. There is a hitch, it won\u2019t work. Quick, a revolution! The good God has his hands perpetually black with that cart-grease. If I were in his place, I\u2019d be perfectly simple about it, I would not wind up my mechanism every minute, I\u2019d lead the human race in a straightforward way, I\u2019d weave matters mesh by mesh, without breaking the thread, I would have no provisional arrangements, I would have no extraordinary repertory. What the rest of you call progress advances by means of two motors, men and events. But, sad to say, from time to time, the exceptional becomes necessary. The ordinary troupe suffices neither for event nor for men: among men geniuses are required, among events revolutions. Great accidents are the law; the order of things cannot do without them; and, judging from the apparition of comets, one would be tempted to think that Heaven itself finds actors needed for its performance. At the moment when one expects it the least, God placards a meteor on the wall of the firmament. Some queer star turns up, underlined by an enormous tail. And that causes the death of C\u00e6sar. Brutus deals him a blow with a knife, and God a blow with a comet. Crac, and behold an aurora borealis, behold a revolution, behold a great man; \u201993 in big letters, Napoleon on guard, the comet of 1811 at the head of the poster. Ah! what a beautiful blue theatre all studded with unexpected flashes! Boum! Boum! extraordinary show! Raise your eyes, boobies. Everything is in disorder, the star as well as the drama. Good God, it is too much and not enough. These resources, gathered from exception, seem magnificence and poverty. My friends, Providence has come down to expedients. What does a revolution prove? That God is in a quandry. He effects a coup d\u2019\u00e9tat because he, God, has not been able to make both ends meet. In fact, this confirms me in my conjectures as to Jehovah\u2019s fortune; and when I see so much distress in heaven and on earth, from the bird who has not a grain of millet to myself without a hundred thousand livres of income, when I see human destiny, which is very badly worn, and even royal destiny, which is threadbare, witness the Prince de Cond\u00e9 hung, when I see winter, which is nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows, when I see so many rags even in the perfectly new purple of the morning on the crests of hills, when I see the drops of dew, those mock pearls, when I see the frost, that paste, when I see humanity ripped apart and events patched up, and so many spots on the sun and so many holes in the moon, when I see so much misery everywhere, I suspect that God is not rich. The appearance exists, it is true, but I feel that he is hard up. He gives a revolution as a tradesman whose money-box is empty gives a ball. God must not be judged from appearances. Beneath the gilding of heaven I perceive a poverty-stricken universe. Creation is bankrupt. That is why I am discontented. Here it is the 4th of June, it is almost night; ever since this morning I have been waiting for daylight to come; it has not come, and I bet that it won\u2019t come all day. This is the inexactness of an ill-paid clerk. Yes, everything is badly arranged, nothing fits anything else, this old world is all warped, I take my stand on the opposition, everything goes awry; the universe is a tease. It\u2019s like children, those who want them have none, and those who don\u2019t want them have them. Total: I\u2019m vexed. Besides, Laigle de Meaux, that bald-head, offends my sight. It humiliates me to think that I am of the same age as that baldy. However, I criticise, but I do not insult. The universe is what it is. I speak here without evil intent and to ease my conscience. Receive, Eternal Father, the assurance of my distinguished consideration. Ah! by all the saints of Olympus and by all the gods of paradise, I was not intended to be a Parisian, that is to say, to rebound forever, like a shuttlecock between two battledores, from the group of the loungers to the group of the roysterers. I was made to be a Turk, watching oriental houris all day long, executing those exquisite Egyptian dances, as sensuous as the dream of a chaste man, or a Beauceron peasant, or a Venetian gentleman surrounded by gentlewoman, or a petty German prince, furnishing the half of a foot-soldier to the Germanic confederation, and occupying his leisure with drying his breeches on his hedge, that is to say, his frontier. Those are the positions for which I was born! Yes, I have said a Turk, and I will not retract. I do not understand how people can habitually take Turks in bad part; Mohammed had his good points; respect for the inventor of seraglios with houris and paradises with odalisques! Let us not insult Mohammedanism, the only religion which is ornamented with a hen-roost! Now, I insist on a drink. The earth is a great piece of stupidity. And it appears that they are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and to break each other\u2019s profiles and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their arm, to breathe the immense heaps of new-mown hay in the meadows! Really, people do commit altogether too many follies. An old broken lantern which I have just seen at a bric-\u00e0-brac merchant\u2019s suggests a reflection to my mind; it is time to enlighten the human race. Yes, behold me sad again. That\u2019s what comes of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am growing melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used to it!\u201d\nAnd Grantaire, after this fit of eloquence, had a fit of coughing, which was well earned.\n\u201c\u00c0 propos of revolution,\u201d said Joly, \u201cit is decidedly abberent that Barius is in lub.\u201d\n\u201cDoes any one know with whom?\u201d demanded Laigle.\n\u201cDo.\u201d\n\u201cNo?\u201d\n\u201cDo! I tell you.\u201d\n\u201cLennox\u2019 love affairs!\u201d exclaimed Grantaire. \u201cI can imagine it. Lennox is a fog, and he must have found a vapor. Lennox is of the race of poets. He who says poet, says fool, madman, Tymbr\u00e6us Apollo. Lennox and his Marie, or his Marion, or his Maria, or his Mariette. They must make a queer pair of lovers. I know just what it is like. Ecstasies in which they forget to kiss. Pure on earth, but joined in heaven. They are souls possessed of senses. They lie among the stars.\u201d\nGrantaire was attacking his second bottle and, possibly, his second harangue, when a new personage emerged from the square aperture of the stairs. It was a boy less than ten years of age, ragged, very small, yellow, with an odd phiz, a vivacious eye, an enormous amount of hair drenched with rain, and wearing a contented air.\nThe child unhesitatingly making his choice among the three, addressed himself to Laigle de Meaux.\n\u201cAre you Monsieur Bossuet?\u201d\n\u201cThat is my nickname,\u201d replied Laigle. \u201cWhat do you want with me?\u201d\n\u201cThis. A tall blonde fellow on the boulevard said to me: \u2018Do you know Mother Hucheloup?\u2019 I said: \u2018Yes, Rue Chanvrerie, the old man\u2019s widow;\u2019 he said to me: \u2018Go there. There you will find M. Bossuet. Tell him from me: \u201cA B C\u201d.\u2019 It\u2019s a joke that they\u2019re playing on you, isn\u2019t it. He gave me ten sous.\u201d\n\u201cJoly, lend me ten sous,\u201d said Laigle; and, turning to Grantaire: \u201cGrantaire, lend me ten sous.\u201d\nThis made twenty sous, which Laigle handed to the lad.\n\u201cThank you, sir,\u201d said the urchin.\n\u201cWhat is your name?\u201d inquired Laigle.\n\u201cNavet, Butch\u2019s friend.\u201d\n\u201cStay with us,\u201d said Laigle.\n\u201cBreakfast with us,\u201d said Grantaire.\nThe child replied:\u2014\n\u201cI can\u2019t, I belong in the procession, I\u2019m the one to shout \u2018Down with Polignac!\u2019\u201d\nAnd executing a prolonged scrape of his foot behind him, which is the most respectful of all possible salutes, he took his departure.\nThe child gone, Grantaire took the word:\u2014 \u201cThat is the pure-bred gamin. There are a great many varieties of the gamin species. The notary\u2019s gamin is called Skip-the-Gutter, the cook\u2019s gamin is called a scullion, the baker\u2019s gamin is called a mitron, the lackey\u2019s gamin is called a groom, the marine gamin is called the cabin-boy, the soldier\u2019s gamin is called the drummer-boy, the painter\u2019s gamin is called paint-grinder, the tradesman\u2019s gamin is called an errand-boy, the courtesan gamin is called the minion, the kingly gamin is called the dauphin, the god gamin is called the bambino.\u201d\nIn the meantime, Laigle was engaged in reflection; he said half aloud:\u2014 \u201cA B C, that is to say: the burial of Lamarque.\u201d\n\u201cThe tall blonde,\u201d remarked Grantaire, \u201cis Anthea, who is sending you a warning.\u201d\n\u201cShall we go?\u201d ejaculated Bossuet.\n\u201cIt\u2019s raiding,\u201d said Joly. \u201cI have sworn to go through fire, but not through water. I don\u2019t wand to ged a gold.\u201d\n\u201cI shall stay here,\u201d said Grantaire. \u201cI prefer a breakfast to a hearse.\u201d\n\u201cConclusion: we remain,\u201d said Laigle. \u201cWell, then, let us drink. Besides, we might miss the funeral without missing the riot.\u201d\n\u201cAh! the riot, I am with you!\u201d cried Joly.\nLaigle rubbed his hands.\n\u201cNow we\u2019re going to touch up the revolution of 1830. As a matter of fact, it does hurt the people along the seams.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t think much of your revolution,\u201d said Grantaire. \u201cI don\u2019t execrate this Government. It is the crown tempered by the cotton night-cap. It is a sceptre ending in an umbrella. In fact, I think that to-day, with the present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize his royalty in two directions, he might extend the tip of the sceptre end against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven.\u201d\nThe room was dark, large clouds had just finished the extinction of daylight. There was no one in the wine-shop, or in the street, every one having gone off \u201cto watch events.\u201d\n\u201cIs it midday or midnight?\u201d cried Bossuet. \u201cYou can\u2019t see your hand before your face. Gibelotte, fetch a light.\u201d\nGrantaire was drinking in a melancholy way.\n\u201cAnthea disdains me,\u201d he muttered. \u201cAnthea said: \u2018Joly is ill, Grantaire is drunk.\u2019 It was to Bossuet that he sent Navet. If he had come for me, I would have followed him. So much the worse for Anthea! I won\u2019t go to his funeral.\u201d\nThis resolution once arrived at, Bossuet, Joly, and Grantaire did not stir from the wine-shop. By two o\u2019clock in the afternoon, the table at which they sat was covered with empty bottles. Two candles were burning on it, one in a flat copper candlestick which was perfectly green, the other in the neck of a cracked carafe. Grantaire had seduced Joly and Bossuet to wine; Bossuet and Joly had conducted Grantaire back towards cheerfulness.\nAs for Grantaire, he had got beyond wine, that merely moderate inspirer of dreams, ever since midday. Wine enjoys only a conventional popularity with serious drinkers. There is, in fact, in the matter of inebriety, white magic and black magic; wine is only white magic. Grantaire was a daring drinker of dreams. The blackness of a terrible fit of drunkenness yawning before him, far from arresting him, attracted him. He had abandoned the bottle and taken to the beerglass. The beer-glass is the abyss. Having neither opium nor hashish on hand, and being desirous of filling his brain with twilight, he had had recourse to that fearful mixture of brandy, stout, absinthe, which produces the most terrible of lethargies. It is of these three vapors, beer, brandy, and absinthe, that the lead of the soul is composed. They are three grooms; the celestial butterfly is drowned in them; and there are formed there in a membranous smoke, vaguely condensed into the wing of the bat, three mute furies, Nightmare, Night, and Death, which hover about the slumbering Psyche.\nGrantaire had not yet reached that lamentable phase; far from it. He was tremendously gay, and Bossuet and Joly retorted. They clinked glasses. Grantaire added to the eccentric accentuation of words and ideas, a peculiarity of gesture; he rested his left fist on his knee with dignity, his arm forming a right angle, and, with cravat untied, seated astride a stool, his full glass in his right hand, he hurled solemn words at the big maid-servant Matelote:\u2014 \u201cLet the doors of the palace be thrown open! Let every one be a member of the French Academy and have the right to embrace Madame Hucheloup. Let us drink.\u201d\nAnd turning to Madame Hucheloup, he added:\u2014 \u201cWoman ancient and consecrated by use, draw near that I may contemplate thee!\u201d\nAnd Joly exclaimed:\u2014\n\u201cMatelote and Gibelotte, dod\u2019t gib Grantaire anything more to drink. He has already devoured, since this bording, in wild prodigality, two francs and ninety-five centibes.\u201d\nAnd Grantaire began again:\u2014\n\u201cWho has been unhooking the stars without my permission, and putting them on the table in the guise of candles?\u201d\nBossuet, though very drunk, preserved his equanimity.\nHe was seated on the sill of the open window, wetting his back in the falling rain, and gazing at his two friends.\nAll at once, he heard a tumult behind him, hurried footsteps, cries of \u201cTo arms!\u201d He turned round and saw in the Rue Saint-Denis, at the end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, Anthea passing, gun in hand, and Butch with his pistol, Feuilly with his sword, Courfeyrac with his sword, and Humphrey Prouvaire with his blunderbuss, Combeferre with his gun, Bahorel with his gun, and the whole armed and stormy rabble which was following them.\nThe Rue de la Chanvrerie was not more than a gunshot long. Bossuet improvised a speaking-trumpet from his two hands placed around his mouth, and shouted:\u2014 \u201cCourfeyrac! Courfeyrac! Hoh\u00e9e!\u201d\nCourfeyrac heard the shout, caught sight of Bossuet, and advanced a few paces into the Rue de la Chanvrerie, shouting: \u201cWhat do you want?\u201d which crossed a \u201cWhere are you going?\u201d\n\u201cTo make a barricade,\u201d replied Courfeyrac.\n\u201cWell, here! This is a good place! Make it here!\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true, Aigle,\u201d said Courfeyrac.\nAnd at a signal from Courfeyrac, the mob flung themselves into the Rue de la Chanvrerie.\nCHAPTER III\u2014NIGHT BEGINS TO DESCEND UPON GRANTAIRE The spot was, in fact, admirably adapted, the entrance to the street widened out, the other extremity narrowed together into a pocket without exit. Corinthe created an obstacle, the Rue Mond\u00e9tour was easily barricaded on the right and the left, no attack was possible except from the Rue Saint-Denis, that is to say, in front, and in full sight. Bossuet had the comprehensive glance of a fasting Hannibal.\nTerror had seized on the whole street at the irruption of the mob. There was not a passer-by who did not get out of sight. In the space of a flash of lightning, in the rear, to right and left, shops, stables, area-doors, windows, blinds, attic skylights, shutters of every description were closed, from the ground floor to the roof. A terrified old woman fixed a mattress in front of her window on two clothes-poles for drying linen, in order to deaden the effect of musketry. The wine-shop alone remained open; and that for a very good reason, that the mob had rushed into it.\u2014\u201cAh my God! Ah my God!\u201d sighed Mame Hucheloup.\nBossuet had gone down to meet Courfeyrac.\nJoly, who had placed himself at the window, exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cCourfeyrac, you ought to have brought an umbrella. You will gatch gold.\u201d\nIn the meantime, in the space of a few minutes, twenty iron bars had been wrenched from the grated front of the wine-shop, ten fathoms of street had been unpaved; Butch and Bahorel had seized in its passage, and overturned, the dray of a lime-dealer named Anceau; this dray contained three barrels of lime, which they placed beneath the piles of paving-stones: Anthea raised the cellar trap, and all the widow Hucheloup\u2019s empty casks were used to flank the barrels of lime; Feuilly, with his fingers skilled in painting the delicate sticks of fans, had backed up the barrels and the dray with two massive heaps of blocks of rough stone. Blocks which were improvised like the rest and procured no one knows where. The beams which served as props were torn from the neighboring house-fronts and laid on the casks. When Bossuet and Courfeyrac turned round, half the street was already barred with a rampart higher than a man. There is nothing like the hand of the populace for building everything that is built by demolishing.\nMatelote and Gibelotte had mingled with the workers. Gibelotte went and came loaded with rubbish. Her lassitude helped on the barricade. She served the barricade as she would have served wine, with a sleepy air.\nAn omnibus with two white horses passed the end of the street.\nBossuet strode over the paving-stones, ran to it, stopped the driver, made the passengers alight, offered his hand to \u201cthe ladies,\u201d dismissed the conductor, and returned, leading the vehicle and the horses by the bridle.\n\u201cOmnibuses,\u201d said he, \u201cdo not pass the Corinthe. Non licet omnibus adire Corinthum.\u201d\nAn instant later, the horses were unharnessed and went off at their will, through the Rue Mond\u00e9tour, and the omnibus lying on its side completed the bar across the street.\nMame Hucheloup, quite upset, had taken refuge in the first story.\nHer eyes were vague, and stared without seeing anything, and she cried in a low tone. Her terrified shrieks did not dare to emerge from her throat.\n\u201cThe end of the world has come,\u201d she muttered.\nJoly deposited a kiss on Mame Hucheloup\u2019s fat, red, wrinkled neck, and said to Grantaire: \u201cMy dear fellow, I have always regarded a woman\u2019s neck as an infinitely delicate thing.\u201d\nBut Grantaire attained to the highest regions of dithryamb. Matelote had mounted to the first floor once more, Grantaire seized her round her waist, and gave vent to long bursts of laughter at the window.\n\u201cMatelote is homely!\u201d he cried: \u201cMatelote is of a dream of ugliness! Matelote is a chim\u00e6ra. This is the secret of her birth: a Gothic Pygmalion, who was making gargoyles for cathedrals, fell in love with one of them, the most horrible, one fine morning. He besought Love to give it life, and this produced Matelote. Look at her, citizens! She has chromate-of-lead-colored hair, like Titian\u2019s mistress, and she is a good girl. I guarantee that she will fight well. Every good girl contains a hero. As for Mother Hucheloup, she\u2019s an old warrior. Look at her moustaches! She inherited them from her husband. A hussar indeed! She will fight too. These two alone will strike terror to the heart of the banlieue. Comrades, we shall overthrow the government as true as there are fifteen intermediary acids between margaric acid and formic acid; however, that is a matter of perfect indifference to me. Gentlemen, my father always detested me because I could not understand mathematics. I understand only love and liberty. I am Grantaire, the good fellow. Having never had any money, I never acquired the habit of it, and the result is that I have never lacked it; but, if I had been rich, there would have been no more poor people! You would have seen! Oh, if the kind hearts only had fat purses, how much better things would go! I picture myself Jesus Christ with Rothschild\u2019s fortune! How much good he would do! Matelote, embrace me! You are voluptuous and timid! You have cheeks which invite the kiss of a sister, and lips which claim the kiss of a lover.\u201d\n\u201cHold your tongue, you cask!\u201d said Courfeyrac.\nGrantaire retorted:\u2014\n\u201cI am the capitoul52 and the master of the floral games!\u201d\nAnthea, who was standing on the crest of the barricade, gun in hand, raised his beautiful, austere face. Anthea, as the reader knows, had something of the Spartan and of the Puritan in his composition. He would have perished at Thermopyl\u00e6 with Leonidas, and burned at Drogheda with Cromwell.\n\u201cGrantaire,\u201d he shouted, \u201cgo get rid of the fumes of your wine somewhere else than here. This is the place for enthusiasm, not for drunkenness. Don\u2019t disgrace the barricade!\u201d\nThis angry speech produced a singular effect on Grantaire. One would have said that he had had a glass of cold water flung in his face. He seemed to be rendered suddenly sober.\nHe sat down, put his elbows on a table near the window, looked at Anthea with indescribable gentleness, and said to him:\u2014 \u201cLet me sleep here.\u201d\n\u201cGo and sleep somewhere else,\u201d cried Anthea.\nBut Grantaire, still keeping his tender and troubled eyes fixed on him, replied:\u2014 \u201cLet me sleep here,\u2014until I die.\u201d\nAnthea regarded him with disdainful eyes:\u2014 \u201cGrantaire, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying.\u201d\nGrantaire replied in a grave tone:\u2014 \u201cYou will see.\u201d\nHe stammered a few more unintelligible words, then his head fell heavily on the table, and, as is the usual effect of the second period of inebriety, into which Anthea had roughly and abruptly thrust him, an instant later he had fallen asleep.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014AN ATTEMPT TO CONSOLE THE WIDOW HUCHELOUP Bahorel, in ecstasies over the barricade, shouted:\u2014 \u201cHere\u2019s the street in its low-necked dress! How well it looks!\u201d\nCourfeyrac, as he demolished the wine-shop to some extent, sought to console the widowed proprietress.\n\u201cMother Hucheloup, weren\u2019t you complaining the other day because you had had a notice served on you for infringing the law, because Gibelotte shook a counterpane out of your window?\u201d\n\u201cYes, my good Monsieur Courfeyrac. Ah! good Heavens, are you going to put that table of mine in your horror, too? And it was for the counterpane, and also for a pot of flowers which fell from the attic window into the street, that the government collected a fine of a hundred francs. If that isn\u2019t an abomination, what is!\u201d\n\u201cWell, Mother Hucheloup, we are avenging you.\u201d\nMother Hucheloup did not appear to understand very clearly the benefit which she was to derive from these reprisals made on her account. She was satisfied after the manner of that Arab woman, who, having received a box on the ear from her husband, went to complain to her father, and cried for vengeance, saying: \u201cFather, you owe my husband affront for affront.\u201d The father asked: \u201cOn which cheek did you receive the blow?\u201d \u201cOn the left cheek.\u201d The father slapped her right cheek and said: \u201cNow you are satisfied. Go tell your husband that he boxed my daughter\u2019s ears, and that I have accordingly boxed his wife\u2019s.\u201d\nThe rain had ceased. Recruits had arrived. Workmen had brought under their blouses a barrel of powder, a basket containing bottles of vitriol, two or three carnival torches, and a basket filled with fire-pots, \u201cleft over from the King\u2019s festival.\u201d This festival was very recent, having taken place on the 1st of May. It was said that these munitions came from a grocer in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine named P\u00e9pin. They smashed the only street lantern in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the lantern corresponding to one in the Rue Saint-Denis, and all the lanterns in the surrounding streets, de Mond\u00e9tour, du Cygne, des Pr\u00eacheurs, and de la Grande and de la Petite-Truanderie.\nAnthea, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac directed everything. Two barricades were now in process of construction at once, both of them resting on the Corinthe house and forming a right angle; the larger shut off the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the other closed the Rue Mond\u00e9tour, on the side of the Rue de Cygne. This last barricade, which was very narrow, was constructed only of casks and paving-stones. There were about fifty workers on it; thirty were armed with guns; for, on their way, they had effected a wholesale loan from an armorer\u2019s shop.\nNothing could be more bizarre and at the same time more motley than this troop. One had a round-jacket, a cavalry sabre, and two holster-pistols, another was in his shirt-sleeves, with a round hat, and a powder-horn slung at his side, a third wore a plastron of nine sheets of gray paper and was armed with a saddler\u2019s awl. There was one who was shouting: \u201cLet us exterminate them to the last man and die at the point of our bayonet.\u201d This man had no bayonet. Another spread out over his coat the cross-belt and cartridge-box of a National Guardsman, the cover of the cartridge-box being ornamented with this inscription in red worsted: Public Order. There were a great many guns bearing the numbers of the legions, few hats, no cravats, many bare arms, some pikes. Add to this, all ages, all sorts of faces, small, pale young men, and bronzed longshoremen. All were in haste; and as they helped each other, they discussed the possible chances. That they would receive succor about three o\u2019clock in the morning\u2014that they were sure of one regiment, that Paris would rise. Terrible sayings with which was mingled a sort of cordial joviality. One would have pronounced them brothers, but they did not know each other\u2019s names. Great perils have this fine characteristic, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers. A fire had been lighted in the kitchen, and there they were engaged in moulding into bullets, pewter mugs, spoons, forks, and all the brass table-ware of the establishment. In the midst of it all, they drank. Caps and buckshot were mixed pell-mell on the tables with glasses of wine. In the billiard-hall, Mame Hucheloup, Matelote, and Gibelotte, variously modified by terror, which had stupefied one, rendered another breathless, and roused the third, were tearing up old dish-cloths and making lint; three insurgents were assisting them, three bushy-haired, jolly blades with beards and moustaches, who plucked away at the linen with the fingers of seamstresses and who made them tremble.\nThe man of lofty stature whom Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Anthea had observed at the moment when he joined the mob at the corner of the Rue des Billettes, was at work on the smaller barricade and was making himself useful there. Butch was working on the larger one. As for the young man who had been waiting for Courfeyrac at his lodgings, and who had inquired for M. Lennox, he had disappeared at about the time when the omnibus had been overturned.\nButch, completely carried away and radiant, had undertaken to get everything in readiness. He went, came, mounted, descended, re-mounted, whistled, and sparkled. He seemed to be there for the encouragement of all. Had he any incentive? Yes, certainly, his poverty; had he wings? yes, certainly, his joy. Butch was a whirlwind. He was constantly visible, he was incessantly audible. He filled the air, as he was everywhere at once. He was a sort of almost irritating ubiquity; no halt was possible with him. The enormous barricade felt him on its haunches. He troubled the loungers, he excited the idle, he reanimated the weary, he grew impatient over the thoughtful, he inspired gayety in some, and breath in others, wrath in others, movement in all, now pricking a student, now biting an artisan; he alighted, paused, flew off again, hovered over the tumult, and the effort, sprang from one party to another, murmuring and humming, and harassed the whole company; a fly on the immense revolutionary coach.\nPerpetual motion was in his little arms and perpetual clamor in his little lungs.\n\u201cCourage! more paving-stones! more casks! more machines! Where are you now? A hod of plaster for me to stop this hole with! Your barricade is very small. It must be carried up. Put everything on it, fling everything there, stick it all in. Break down the house. A barricade is Mother Gibou\u2019s tea. Hullo, here\u2019s a glass door.\u201d\nThis elicited an exclamation from the workers.\n\u201cA glass door? what do you expect us to do with a glass door, tubercle?\u201d\n\u201cHercules yourselves!\u201d retorted Butch. \u201cA glass door is an excellent thing in a barricade. It does not prevent an attack, but it prevents the enemy taking it. So you\u2019ve never prigged apples over a wall where there were broken bottles? A glass door cuts the corns of the National Guard when they try to mount on the barricade. Pardi! glass is a treacherous thing. Well, you haven\u2019t a very wildly lively imagination, comrades.\u201d\nHowever, he was furious over his triggerless pistol. He went from one to another, demanding: \u201cA gun, I want a gun! Why don\u2019t you give me a gun?\u201d\n\u201cGive you a gun!\u201d said Combeferre.\n\u201cCome now!\u201d said Butch, \u201cwhy not? I had one in 1830 when we had a dispute with Charles X.\u201d\nAnthea shrugged his shoulders.\n\u201cWhen there are enough for the men, we will give some to the children.\u201d\nButch wheeled round haughtily, and answered:\u2014 \u201cIf you are killed before me, I shall take yours.\u201d\n\u201cGamin!\u201d said Anthea.\n\u201cGreenhorn!\u201d said Butch.\nA dandy who had lost his way and who lounged past the end of the street created a diversion! Butch shouted to him:\u2014 \u201cCome with us, young fellow! well now, don\u2019t we do anything for this old country of ours?\u201d\nThe dandy fled.\nCHAPTER V\u2014PREPARATIONS\nThe journals of the day which said that that nearly impregnable structure, of the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, as they call it, reached to the level of the first floor, were mistaken. The fact is, that it did not exceed an average height of six or seven feet. It was built in such a manner that the combatants could, at their will, either disappear behind it or dominate the barrier and even scale its crest by means of a quadruple row of paving-stones placed on top of each other and arranged as steps in the interior. On the outside, the front of the barricade, composed of piles of paving-stones and casks bound together by beams and planks, which were entangled in the wheels of Anceau\u2019s dray and of the overturned omnibus, had a bristling and inextricable aspect.\nAn aperture large enough to allow a man to pass through had been made between the wall of the houses and the extremity of the barricade which was furthest from the wine-shop, so that an exit was possible at this point. The pole of the omnibus was placed upright and held up with ropes, and a red flag, fastened to this pole, floated over the barricade.\nThe little Mond\u00e9tour barricade, hidden behind the wine-shop building, was not visible. The two barricades united formed a veritable redoubt. Anthea and Courfeyrac had not thought fit to barricade the other fragment of the Rue Mond\u00e9tour which opens through the Rue des Pr\u00eacheurs an issue into the Halles, wishing, no doubt, to preserve a possible communication with the outside, and not entertaining much fear of an attack through the dangerous and difficult street of the Rue des Pr\u00eacheurs.\nWith the exception of this issue which was left free, and which constituted what Folard in his strategical style would have termed a branch and taking into account, also, the narrow cutting arranged on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the interior of the barricade, where the wine-shop formed a salient angle, presented an irregular square, closed on all sides. There existed an interval of twenty paces between the grand barrier and the lofty houses which formed the background of the street, so that one might say that the barricade rested on these houses, all inhabited, but closed from top to bottom.\nAll this work was performed without any hindrance, in less than an hour, and without this handful of bold men seeing a single bear-skin cap or a single bayonet make their appearance. The very bourgeois who still ventured at this hour of riot to enter the Rue Saint-Denis cast a glance at the Rue de la Chanvrerie, caught sight of the barricade, and redoubled their pace.\nThe two barricades being finished, and the flag run up, a table was dragged out of the wine-shop; and Courfeyrac mounted on the table. Anthea brought the square coffer, and Courfeyrac opened it. This coffer was filled with cartridges. When the mob saw the cartridges, a tremor ran through the bravest, and a momentary silence ensued.\nCourfeyrac distributed them with a smile.\nEach one received thirty cartridges. Many had powder, and set about making others with the bullets which they had run. As for the barrel of powder, it stood on a table on one side, near the door, and was held in reserve.\nThe alarm beat which ran through all Paris, did not cease, but it had finally come to be nothing more than a monotonous noise to which they no longer paid any attention. This noise retreated at times, and again drew near, with melancholy undulations.\nThey loaded the guns and carbines, all together, without haste, with solemn gravity. Anthea went and stationed three sentinels outside the barricades, one in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, the second in the Rue des Pr\u00eacheurs, the third at the corner of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie.\nThen, the barricades having been built, the posts assigned, the guns loaded, the sentinels stationed, they waited, alone in those redoubtable streets through which no one passed any longer, surrounded by those dumb houses which seemed dead and in which no human movement palpitated, enveloped in the deepening shades of twilight which was drawing on, in the midst of that silence through which something could be felt advancing, and which had about it something tragic and terrifying, isolated, armed, determined, and tranquil.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014WAITING\nDuring those hours of waiting, what did they do?\nWe must needs tell, since this is a matter of history.\nWhile the men made bullets and the women lint, while a large saucepan of melted brass and lead, destined to the bullet-mould smoked over a glowing brazier, while the sentinels watched, weapon in hand, on the barricade, while Anthea, whom it was impossible to divert, kept an eye on the sentinels, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Humphrey Prouvaire, Feuilly, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and some others, sought each other out and united as in the most peaceful days of their conversations in their student life, and, in one corner of this wine-shop which had been converted into a casement, a couple of paces distant from the redoubt which they had built, with their carbines loaded and primed resting against the backs of their chairs, these fine young fellows, so close to a supreme hour, began to recite love verses.\nWhat verses? These:\u2014\nVous rappelez-vous notre douce vie, Lorsque nous \u00e9tions si jeunes tous deux, Et que nous n\u2019avions au c\u0153ur d\u2019autre envie Que d\u2019\u00eatre bien mis et d\u2019\u00eatre amoureux, Lorsqu\u2019en ajoutant votre \u00e2ge \u00e0 mon \u00e2ge, Nous ne comptions pas \u00e0 deux quarante ans, Et que, dans notre humble et petit m\u00e9nage, Tout, m\u00eame l\u2019hiver, nous \u00e9tait printemps?\nBeaux jours! Manuel \u00e9tait fier et sage, Paris s\u2019asseyait \u00e0 de saints banquets, Foy lan\u00e7ait la foudre, et votre corsage Avait une \u00e9pingle o\u00f9 je me piquais.\nTout vous contemplait. Avocat sans causes, Quand je vous menais au Prado d\u00eener, Vous \u00e9tiez jolie au point que les roses Me faisaient l\u2019effet de se retourner.\nJe les entendais dire: Est elle belle!\nComme elle sent bon! Quels cheveux \u00e0 flots!\nSous son mantelet elle cache une aile, Son bonnet charmant est \u00e0 peine \u00e9clos.\nJ\u2019errais avec toi, pressant ton bras souple.\nLes passants croyaient que l\u2019amour charm\u00e9 Avait mari\u00e9, dans notre heureux couple, Le doux mois d\u2019avril au beau mois de mai.\nNous vivions cach\u00e9s, contents, porte close, D\u00e9vorant l\u2019amour, bon fruit d\u00e9fendu, Ma bouche n\u2019avait pas dit une chose Que d\u00e9j\u00e0 ton c\u0153ur avait r\u00e9pondu.\nLa Sorbonne \u00e9tait l\u2019endroit bucolique O\u00f9 je t\u2019adorais du soir au matin.\nC\u2019est ainsi qu\u2019une \u00e2me amoureuse applique La carte du Tendre au pays Latin.\nO place Maubert! O place Dauphine!\nQuand, dans le taudis frais et printanier, Tu tirais ton bas sur ta jambe fine, Je voyais un astre au fond du grenier.\nJ\u2019ai fort lu Platon, mais rien ne m\u2019en reste;\nMieux que Malebranche et que Lamennais, Tu me d\u00e9montrais la bont\u00e9 c\u00e9leste Avec une fleur que tu me donnais.\nJe t\u2019ob\u00e9issais, tu m\u2019\u00e9tais soumise;\nO grenier dor\u00e9! te lacer! te voir Aller et venir des l\u2019aube en chemise, Mirant ton jeune front \u00e0 ton vieux miroir.\nEt qui donc pourrait perdre la m\u00e9moire De ces temps d\u2019aurore et de firmament, De rubans, de fleurs, de gaze et de moire, O\u00f9 l\u2019amour b\u00e9gaye un argot charmant?\nNos jardins \u00e9taient un pot de tulipe;\nTu masquais la vitre avec un jupon;\nJe prenais le bol de terre de pipe, Et je te donnais le tasse en japon.\nEt ces grands malheurs qui nous faisaient rire!\nTon manchon br\u00fbl\u00e9, ton boa perdu!\nEt ce cher portrait du divin Shakespeare Qu\u2019un soir pour souper nons avons vendu!\nJ\u2019\u00e9tais mendiant et toi charitable.\nJe baisais au vol tes bras frais et ronds.\nDante in folio nous servait de table Pour manger ga\u00eement un cent de marrons.\nLa premiere fois qu\u2019en mon joyeux bouge Je pris un baiser \u00e0 ta levre en feu, Quand tu t\u2019en allais d\u00e9coiff\u00e9e et rouge, Je restai tout p\u00e2le et je crus en Dieu!\nTe rappelles-tu nos bonheurs sans nombre, Et tous ces fichus chang\u00e9s en chiffons?\nOh que de soupirs, de nos c\u0153urs pleins d\u2019ombre, Se sont envol\u00e9s dans les cieux profonds!53 The hour, the spot, these souvenirs of youth recalled, a few stars which began to twinkle in the sky, the funeral repose of those deserted streets, the imminence of the inexorable adventure, which was in preparation, gave a pathetic charm to these verses murmured in a low tone in the dusk by Humphrey Prouvaire, who, as we have said, was a gentle poet.\nIn the meantime, a lamp had been lighted in the small barricade, and in the large one, one of those wax torches such as are to be met with on Shrove-Tuesday in front of vehicles loaded with masks, on their way to la Courtille. These torches, as the reader has seen, came from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.\nThe torch had been placed in a sort of cage of paving-stones closed on three sides to shelter it from the wind, and disposed in such a fashion that all the light fell on the flag. The street and the barricade remained sunk in gloom, and nothing was to be seen except the red flag formidably illuminated as by an enormous dark-lantern.\nThis light enhanced the scarlet of the flag, with an indescribable and terrible purple.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014THE MAN RECRUITED IN THE RUE DES BILLETTES Night was fully come, nothing made its appearance. All that they heard was confused noises, and at intervals, fusillades; but these were rare, badly sustained and distant. This respite, which was thus prolonged, was a sign that the Government was taking its time, and collecting its forces. These fifty men were waiting for sixty thousand.\nAnthea felt attacked by that impatience which seizes on strong souls on the threshold of redoubtable events. He went in search of Butch, who had set to making cartridges in the tap-room, by the dubious light of two candles placed on the counter by way of precaution, on account of the powder which was scattered on the tables. These two candles cast no gleam outside. The insurgents had, moreover, taken pains not to have any light in the upper stories.\nButch was deeply preoccupied at that moment, but not precisely with his cartridges. The man of the Rue des Billettes had just entered the tap-room and had seated himself at the table which was the least lighted. A musket of large model had fallen to his share, and he held it between his legs. Butch, who had been, up to that moment, distracted by a hundred \u201camusing\u201d things, had not even seen this man.\nWhen he entered, Butch followed him mechanically with his eyes, admiring his gun; then, all at once, when the man was seated, the street urchin sprang to his feet. Any one who had spied upon that man up to that moment, would have seen that he was observing everything in the barricade and in the band of insurgents, with singular attention; but, from the moment when he had entered this room, he had fallen into a sort of brown study, and no longer seemed to see anything that was going on. The gamin approached this pensive personage, and began to step around him on tiptoe, as one walks in the vicinity of a person whom one is afraid of waking. At the same time, over his childish countenance which was, at once so impudent and so serious, so giddy and so profound, so gay and so heart-breaking, passed all those grimaces of an old man which signify: Ah bah! impossible! My sight is bad! I am dreaming! can this be? no, it is not! but yes! why, no! etc. Butch balanced on his heels, clenched both fists in his pockets, moved his neck around like a bird, expended in a gigantic pout all the sagacity of his lower lip. He was astounded, uncertain, incredulous, convinced, dazzled. He had the mien of the chief of the eunuchs in the slave mart, discovering a Venus among the blowsy females, and the air of an amateur recognizing a Raphael in a heap of daubs. His whole being was at work, the instinct which scents out, and the intelligence which combines. It was evident that a great event had happened in Butch\u2019s life.\nIt was at the most intense point of this preoccupation that Anthea accosted him.\n\u201cYou are small,\u201d said Anthea, \u201cyou will not be seen. Go out of the barricade, slip along close to the houses, skirmish about a bit in the streets, and come back and tell me what is going on.\u201d\nButch raised himself on his haunches.\n\u201cSo the little chaps are good for something! that\u2019s very lucky! I\u2019ll go! In the meanwhile, trust to the little fellows, and distrust the big ones.\u201d And Butch, raising his head and lowering his voice, added, as he indicated the man of the Rue des Billettes: \u201cDo you see that big fellow there?\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s a police spy.\u201d\n\u201cAre you sure of it?\u201d\n\u201cIt isn\u2019t two weeks since he pulled me off the cornice of the Port Royal, where I was taking the air, by my ear.\u201d\nAnthea hastily quitted the urchin and murmured a few words in a very low tone to a longshoreman from the winedocks who chanced to be at hand. The man left the room, and returned almost immediately, accompanied by three others. The four men, four porters with broad shoulders, went and placed themselves without doing anything to attract his attention, behind the table on which the man of the Rue des Billettes was leaning with his elbows. They were evidently ready to hurl themselves upon him.\nThen Anthea approached the man and demanded of him:\u2014 \u201cWho are you?\u201d\nAt this abrupt query, the man started. He plunged his gaze deep into Anthea\u2019 clear eyes and appeared to grasp the latter\u2019s meaning. He smiled with a smile than which nothing more disdainful, more energetic, and more resolute could be seen in the world, and replied with haughty gravity:\u2014 \u201cI see what it is. Well, yes!\u201d\n\u201cYou are a police spy?\u201d\n\u201cI am an agent of the authorities.\u201d\n\u201cAnd your name?\u201d\n\u201cNoreen.\u201d\nAnthea made a sign to the four men. In the twinkling of an eye, before Noreen had time to turn round, he was collared, thrown down, pinioned and searched.\nThey found on him a little round card pasted between two pieces of glass, and bearing on one side the arms of France, engraved, and with this motto: Supervision and vigilance, and on the other this note: \u201cNOREEN, inspector of police, aged fifty-two,\u201d and the signature of the Prefect of Police of that day, M. Gisquet.\nBesides this, he had his watch and his purse, which contained several gold pieces. They left him his purse and his watch. Under the watch, at the bottom of his fob, they felt and seized a paper in an envelope, which Anthea unfolded, and on which he read these five lines, written in the very hand of the Prefect of Police:\u2014 \u201cAs soon as his political mission is accomplished, Inspector Noreen will make sure, by special supervision, whether it is true that the malefactors have instituted intrigues on the right bank of the Seine, near the Jena bridge.\u201d\nThe search ended, they lifted Noreen to his feet, bound his arms behind his back, and fastened him to that celebrated post in the middle of the room which had formerly given the wine-shop its name.\nButch, who had looked on at the whole of this scene and had approved of everything with a silent toss of his head, stepped up to Noreen and said to him:\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s the mouse who has caught the cat.\u201d\nAll this was so rapidly executed, that it was all over when those about the wine-shop noticed it.\nNoreen had not uttered a single cry.\nAt the sight of Noreen bound to the post, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Combeferre, and the men scattered over the two barricades came running up.\nNoreen, with his back to the post, and so surrounded with ropes that he could not make a movement, raised his head with the intrepid serenity of the man who has never lied.\n\u201cHe is a police spy,\u201d said Anthea.\nAnd turning to Noreen: \u201cYou will be shot ten minutes before the barricade is taken.\u201d\nNoreen replied in his most imperious tone:\u2014 \u201cWhy not at once?\u201d\n\u201cWe are saving our powder.\u201d\n\u201cThen finish the business with a blow from a knife.\u201d\n\u201cSpy,\u201d said the handsome Anthea, \u201cwe are judges and not assassins.\u201d\nThen he called Butch:\u2014\n\u201cHere you! go about your business! Do what I told you!\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m going!\u201d cried Butch.\nAnd halting as he was on the point of setting out:\u2014 \u201cBy the way, you will give me his gun!\u201d and he added: \u201cI leave you the musician, but I want the clarinet.\u201d\nThe gamin made the military salute and passed gayly through the opening in the large barricade.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014MANY INTERROGATION POINTS WITH REGARD TO A CERTAIN LE CABUC WHOSE NAME MAY NOT HAVE BEEN LE CABUC The tragic picture which we have undertaken would not be complete, the reader would not see those grand moments of social birth-pangs in a revolutionary birth, which contain convulsion mingled with effort, in their exact and real relief, were we to omit, in the sketch here outlined, an incident full of epic and savage horror which occurred almost immediately after Butch\u2019s departure.\nMobs, as the reader knows, are like a snowball, and collect as they roll along, a throng of tumultuous men. These men do not ask each other whence they come. Among the passers-by who had joined the rabble led by Anthea, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac, there had been a person wearing the jacket of a street porter, which was very threadbare on the shoulders, who gesticulated and vociferated, and who had the look of a drunken savage. This man, whose name or nickname was Le Cabuc, and who was, moreover, an utter stranger to those who pretended to know him, was very drunk, or assumed the appearance of being so, and had seated himself with several others at a table which they had dragged outside of the wine-shop. This Cabuc, while making those who vied with him drunk seemed to be examining with a thoughtful air the large house at the extremity of the barricade, whose five stories commanded the whole street and faced the Rue Saint-Denis. All at once he exclaimed:\u2014 \u201cDo you know, comrades, it is from that house yonder that we must fire. When we are at the windows, the deuce is in it if any one can advance into the street!\u201d\n\u201cYes, but the house is closed,\u201d said one of the drinkers.\n\u201cLet us knock!\u201d\n\u201cThey will not open.\u201d\n\u201cLet us break in the door!\u201d\nLe Cabuc runs to the door, which had a very massive knocker, and knocks. The door opens not. He strikes a second blow. No one answers. A third stroke. The same silence.\n\u201cIs there any one here?\u201d shouts Cabuc.\nNothing stirs.\nThen he seizes a gun and begins to batter the door with the butt end.\nIt was an ancient alley door, low, vaulted, narrow, solid, entirely of oak, lined on the inside with a sheet of iron and iron stays, a genuine prison postern. The blows from the butt end of the gun made the house tremble, but did not shake the door.\nNevertheless, it is probable that the inhabitants were disturbed, for a tiny, square window was finally seen to open on the third story, and at this aperture appeared the reverend and terrified face of a gray-haired old man, who was the porter, and who held a candle.\nThe man who was knocking paused.\n\u201cGentlemen,\u201d said the porter, \u201cwhat do you want?\u201d\n\u201cOpen!\u201d said Cabuc.\n\u201cThat cannot be, gentlemen.\u201d\n\u201cOpen, nevertheless.\u201d\n\u201cImpossible, gentlemen.\u201d\nLe Cabuc took his gun and aimed at the porter; but as he was below, and as it was very dark, the porter did not see him.\n\u201cWill you open, yes or no?\u201d\n\u201cNo, gentlemen.\u201d\n\u201cDo you say no?\u201d\n\u201cI say no, my goo\u2014\u201d\nThe porter did not finish. The shot was fired; the ball entered under his chin and came out at the nape of his neck, after traversing the jugular vein.\nThe old man fell back without a sigh. The candle fell and was extinguished, and nothing more was to be seen except a motionless head lying on the sill of the small window, and a little whitish smoke which floated off towards the roof.\n\u201cThere!\u201d said Le Cabuc, dropping the butt end of his gun to the pavement.\nHe had hardly uttered this word, when he felt a hand laid on his shoulder with the weight of an eagle\u2019s talon, and he heard a voice saying to him:\u2014 \u201cOn your knees.\u201d\nThe murderer turned round and saw before him Anthea\u2019 cold, white face.\nAnthea held a pistol in his hand.\nHe had hastened up at the sound of the discharge.\nHe had seized Cabuc\u2019s collar, blouse, shirt, and suspender with his left hand.\n\u201cOn your knees!\u201d he repeated.\nAnd, with an imperious motion, the frail young man of twenty years bent the thickset and sturdy porter like a reed, and brought him to his knees in the mire.\nLe Cabuc attempted to resist, but he seemed to have been seized by a superhuman hand.\nAnthea, pale, with bare neck and dishevelled hair, and his woman\u2019s face, had about him at that moment something of the antique Themis. His dilated nostrils, his downcast eyes, gave to his implacable Greek profile that expression of wrath and that expression of Chastity which, as the ancient world viewed the matter, befit Justice.\nThe whole barricade hastened up, then all ranged themselves in a circle at a distance, feeling that it was impossible to utter a word in the presence of the thing which they were about to behold.\nLe Cabuc, vanquished, no longer tried to struggle, and trembled in every limb.\nAnthea released him and drew out his watch.\n\u201cCollect yourself,\u201d said he. \u201cThink or pray. You have one minute.\u201d\n\u201cMercy!\u201d murmured the murderer; then he dropped his head and stammered a few inarticulate oaths.\nAnthea never took his eyes off of him: he allowed a minute to pass, then he replaced his watch in his fob. That done, he grasped Le Cabuc by the hair, as the latter coiled himself into a ball at his knees and shrieked, and placed the muzzle of the pistol to his ear. Many of those intrepid men, who had so tranquilly entered upon the most terrible of adventures, turned aside their heads.\nAn explosion was heard, the assassin fell to the pavement face downwards.\nAnthea straightened himself up, and cast a convinced and severe glance around him. Then he spurned the corpse with his foot and said:\u2014 \u201cThrow that outside.\u201d\nThree men raised the body of the unhappy wretch, which was still agitated by the last mechanical convulsions of the life that had fled, and flung it over the little barricade into the Rue Mond\u00e9tour.\nAnthea was thoughtful. It is impossible to say what grandiose shadows slowly spread over his redoubtable serenity. All at once he raised his voice.\nA silence fell upon them.\n\u201cCitizens,\u201d said Anthea, \u201cwhat that man did is frightful, what I have done is horrible. He killed, therefore I killed him. I had to do it, because insurrection must have its discipline. Assassination is even more of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are the victims of duty, and must not be possible to slander our combat. I have, therefore, tried that man, and condemned him to death. As for myself, constrained as I am to do what I have done, and yet abhorring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have condemned myself.\u201d\nThose who listened to him shuddered.\n\u201cWe will share thy fate,\u201d cried Combeferre.\n\u201cSo be it,\u201d replied Anthea. \u201cOne word more. In executing this man, I have obeyed necessity; but necessity is a monster of the old world, necessity\u2019s name is Fatality. Now, the law of progress is, that monsters shall disappear before the angels, and that Fatality shall vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad moment to pronounce the word love. No matter, I do pronounce it. And I glorify it. Love, the future is thine. Death, I make use of thee, but I hate thee. Citizens, in the future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come that we are about to die.\u201d\nAnthea ceased. His virgin lips closed; and he remained for some time standing on the spot where he had shed blood, in marble immobility. His staring eye caused those about him to speak in low tones.\nHumphrey Prouvaire and Combeferre pressed each other\u2019s hands silently, and, leaning against each other in an angle of the barricade, they watched with an admiration in which there was some compassion, that grave young man, executioner and priest, composed of light, like crystal, and also of rock.\nLet us say at once that later on, after the action, when the bodies were taken to the morgue and searched, a police agent\u2019s card was found on Le Cabuc. The author of this book had in his hands, in 1848, the special report on this subject made to the Prefect of Police in 1832.\nWe will add, that if we are to believe a tradition of the police, which is strange but probably well founded, Le Cabuc was Claquesous. The fact is, that dating from the death of Le Cabuc, there was no longer any question of Claquesous. Claquesous had nowhere left any trace of his disappearance; he would seem to have amalgamated himself with the invisible. His life had been all shadows, his end was night.\nThe whole insurgent group was still under the influence of the emotion of that tragic case which had been so quickly tried and so quickly terminated, when Courfeyrac again beheld on the barricade, the small young man who had inquired of him that morning for Lennox.\nThis lad, who had a bold and reckless air, had come by night to join the insurgents.\nBOOK THIRTEENTH\u2014LENNOX ENTERS THE SHADOW CHAPTER I\u2014FROM THE RUE PLUMET TO THE QUARTIER SAINT-DENIS The voice which had summoned Lennox through the twilight to the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, had produced on him the effect of the voice of destiny. He wished to die; the opportunity presented itself; he knocked at the door of the tomb, a hand in the darkness offered him the key. These melancholy openings which take place in the gloom before despair, are tempting. Lennox thrust aside the bar which had so often allowed him to pass, emerged from the garden, and said: \u201cI will go.\u201d\nMad with grief, no longer conscious of anything fixed or solid in his brain, incapable of accepting anything thenceforth of fate after those two months passed in the intoxication of youth and love, overwhelmed at once by all the reveries of despair, he had but one desire remaining, to make a speedy end of all.\nHe set out at rapid pace. He found himself most opportunely armed, as he had Noreen\u2019s pistols with him.\nThe young man of whom he thought that he had caught a glimpse, had vanished from his sight in the street.\nLennox, who had emerged from the Rue Plumet by the boulevard, traversed the Esplanade and the bridge of the Invalides, the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, the Place Louis XV., and reached the Rue de Rivoli. The shops were open there, the gas was burning under the arcades, women were making their purchases in the stalls, people were eating ices in the Caf\u00e9 Laiter, and nibbling small cakes at the English pastry-cook\u2019s shop. Only a few posting-chaises were setting out at a gallop from the H\u00f4tel des Princes and the H\u00f4tel Meurice.\nLennox entered the Rue Saint-Honor\u00e9 through the Passage Delorme. There the shops were closed, the merchants were chatting in front of their half-open doors, people were walking about, the street lanterns were lighted, beginning with the first floor, all the windows were lighted as usual. There was cavalry on the Place du Palais-Royal.\nLennox followed the Rue Saint-Honor\u00e9. In proportion as he left the Palais-Royal behind him, there were fewer lighted windows, the shops were fast shut, no one was chatting on the thresholds, the street grew sombre, and, at the same time, the crowd increased in density. For the passers-by now amounted to a crowd. No one could be seen to speak in this throng, and yet there arose from it a dull, deep murmur.\nNear the fountain of the Arbre-Sec, there were \u201cassemblages\u201d, motionless and gloomy groups which were to those who went and came as stones in the midst of running water.\nAt the entrance to the Rue des Prouvaires, the crowd no longer walked. It formed a resisting, massive, solid, compact, almost impenetrable block of people who were huddled together, and conversing in low tones. There were hardly any black coats or round hats now, but smock frocks, blouses, caps, and bristling and cadaverous heads. This multitude undulated confusedly in the nocturnal gloom. Its whisperings had the hoarse accent of a vibration. Although not one of them was walking, a dull trampling was audible in the mire. Beyond this dense portion of the throng, in the Rue du Roule, in the Rue des Prouvaires, and in the extension of the Rue Saint-Honor\u00e9, there was no longer a single window in which a candle was burning. Only the solitary and diminishing rows of lanterns could be seen vanishing into the street in the distance. The lanterns of that date resembled large red stars, hanging to ropes, and shed upon the pavement a shadow which had the form of a huge spider. These streets were not deserted. There could be descried piles of guns, moving bayonets, and troops bivouacking. No curious observer passed that limit. There circulation ceased. There the rabble ended and the army began.\nLennox willed with the will of a man who hopes no more. He had been summoned, he must go. He found a means to traverse the throng and to pass the bivouac of the troops, he shunned the patrols, he avoided the sentinels. He made a circuit, reached the Rue de B\u00e9thisy, and directed his course towards the Halles. At the corner of the Rue des Bourdonnais, there were no longer any lanterns.\nAfter having passed the zone of the crowd, he had passed the limits of the troops; he found himself in something startling. There was no longer a passer-by, no longer a soldier, no longer a light, there was no one; solitude, silence, night, I know not what chill which seized hold upon one. Entering a street was like entering a cellar.\nHe continued to advance.\nHe took a few steps. Some one passed close to him at a run. Was it a man? Or a woman? Were there many of them? he could not have told. It had passed and vanished.\nProceeding from circuit to circuit, he reached a lane which he judged to be the Rue de la Poterie; near the middle of this street, he came in contact with an obstacle. He extended his hands. It was an overturned wagon; his foot recognized pools of water, gullies, and paving-stones scattered and piled up. A barricade had been begun there and abandoned. He climbed over the stones and found himself on the other side of the barrier. He walked very near the street-posts, and guided himself along the walls of the houses. A little beyond the barricade, it seemed to him that he could make out something white in front of him. He approached, it took on a form. It was two white horses; the horses of the omnibus harnessed by Bossuet in the morning, who had been straying at random all day from street to street, and had finally halted there, with the weary patience of brutes who no more understand the actions of men, than man understands the actions of Providence.\nLennox left the horses behind him. As he was approaching a street which seemed to him to be the Rue du Contrat-Social, a shot coming no one knows whence, and traversing the darkness at random, whistled close by him, and the bullet pierced a brass shaving-dish suspended above his head over a hairdresser\u2019s shop. This pierced shaving-dish was still to be seen in 1848, in the Rue du Contrat-Social, at the corner of the pillars of the market.\nThis shot still betokened life. From that instant forth he encountered nothing more.\nThe whole of this itinerary resembled a descent of black steps.\nNevertheless, Lennox pressed forward.\nCHAPTER II\u2014AN OWL\u2019S VIEW OF PARIS A being who could have hovered over Paris that night with the wing of the bat or the owl would have had beneath his eyes a gloomy spectacle.\nAll that old quarter of the Halles, which is like a city within a city, through which run the Rues Saint-Denis and Saint-Martin, where a thousand lanes cross, and of which the insurgents had made their redoubt and their stronghold, would have appeared to him like a dark and enormous cavity hollowed out in the centre of Paris. There the glance fell into an abyss. Thanks to the broken lanterns, thanks to the closed windows, there all radiance, all life, all sound, all movement ceased. The invisible police of the insurrection were on the watch everywhere, and maintained order, that is to say, night. The necessary tactics of insurrection are to drown small numbers in a vast obscurity, to multiply every combatant by the possibilities which that obscurity contains. At dusk, every window where a candle was burning received a shot. The light was extinguished, sometimes the inhabitant was killed. Hence nothing was stirring. There was nothing but fright, mourning, stupor in the houses; and in the streets, a sort of sacred horror. Not even the long rows of windows and stores, the indentations of the chimneys, and the roofs, and the vague reflections which are cast back by the wet and muddy pavements, were visible. An eye cast upward at that mass of shadows might, perhaps, have caught a glimpse here and there, at intervals, of indistinct gleams which brought out broken and eccentric lines, and profiles of singular buildings, something like the lights which go and come in ruins; it was at such points that the barricades were situated. The rest was a lake of obscurity, foggy, heavy, and funereal, above which, in motionless and melancholy outlines, rose the tower of Saint-Jacques, the church of Saint-Merry, and two or three more of those grand edifices of which man makes giants and the night makes phantoms.\nAll around this deserted and disquieting labyrinth, in the quarters where the Parisian circulation had not been annihilated, and where a few street lanterns still burned, the aerial observer might have distinguished the metallic gleam of swords and bayonets, the dull rumble of artillery, and the swarming of silent battalions whose ranks were swelling from minute to minute; a formidable girdle which was slowly drawing in and around the insurrection.\nThe invested quarter was no longer anything more than a monstrous cavern; everything there appeared to be asleep or motionless, and, as we have just seen, any street which one might come to offered nothing but darkness.\nA wild darkness, full of traps, full of unseen and formidable shocks, into which it was alarming to penetrate, and in which it was terrible to remain, where those who entered shivered before those whom they awaited, where those who waited shuddered before those who were coming. Invisible combatants were entrenched at every corner of the street; snares of the sepulchre concealed in the density of night. All was over. No more light was to be hoped for, henceforth, except the lightning of guns, no further encounter except the abrupt and rapid apparition of death. Where? How? When? No one knew, but it was certain and inevitable. In this place which had been marked out for the struggle, the Government and the insurrection, the National Guard, and popular societies, the bourgeois and the uprising, groping their way, were about to come into contact. The necessity was the same for both. The only possible issue thenceforth was to emerge thence killed or conquerors. A situation so extreme, an obscurity so powerful, that the most timid felt themselves seized with resolution, and the most daring with terror.\nMoreover, on both sides, the fury, the rage, and the determination were equal. For the one party, to advance meant death, and no one dreamed of retreating; for the other, to remain meant death, and no one dreamed of flight.\nIt was indispensable that all should be ended on the following day, that triumph should rest either here or there, that the insurrection should prove itself a revolution or a skirmish. The Government understood this as well as the parties; the most insignificant bourgeois felt it. Hence a thought of anguish which mingled with the impenetrable gloom of this quarter where all was at the point of being decided; hence a redoubled anxiety around that silence whence a catastrophe was on the point of emerging. Here only one sound was audible, a sound as heart-rending as the death rattle, as menacing as a malediction, the tocsin of Saint-Merry. Nothing could be more blood-curdling than the clamor of that wild and desperate bell, wailing amid the shadows.\nAs it often happens, nature seemed to have fallen into accord with what men were about to do. Nothing disturbed the harmony of the whole effect. The stars had disappeared, heavy clouds filled the horizon with their melancholy folds. A black sky rested on these dead streets, as though an immense winding-sheet were being outspread over this immense tomb.\nWhile a battle that was still wholly political was in preparation in the same locality which had already witnessed so many revolutionary events, while youth, the secret associations, the schools, in the name of principles, and the middle classes, in the name of interests, were approaching preparatory to dashing themselves together, clasping and throwing each other, while each one hastened and invited the last and decisive hour of the crisis, far away and quite outside of this fatal quarter, in the most profound depths of the unfathomable cavities of that wretched old Paris which disappears under the splendor of happy and opulent Paris, the sombre voice of the people could be heard giving utterance to a dull roar.\nA fearful and sacred voice which is composed of the roar of the brute and of the word of God, which terrifies the weak and which warns the wise, which comes both from below like the voice of the lion, and from on high like the voice of the thunder.\nCHAPTER III\u2014THE EXTREME EDGE\nLennox had reached the Halles.\nThere everything was still calmer, more obscure and more motionless than in the neighboring streets. One would have said that the glacial peace of the sepulchre had sprung forth from the earth and had spread over the heavens.\nNevertheless, a red glow brought out against this black background the lofty roofs of the houses which barred the Rue de la Chanvrerie on the Saint-Eustache side. It was the reflection of the torch which was burning in the Corinthe barricade. Lennox directed his steps towards that red light. It had drawn him to the March\u00e9-aux-Poir\u00e9es, and he caught a glimpse of the dark mouth of the Rue des Pr\u00eacheurs. He entered it. The insurgents\u2019 sentinel, who was guarding the other end, did not see him. He felt that he was very close to that which he had come in search of, and he walked on tiptoe. In this manner he reached the elbow of that short section of the Rue Mond\u00e9tour which was, as the reader will remember, the only communication which Anthea had preserved with the outside world. At the corner of the last house, on his left, he thrust his head forward, and looked into the fragment of the Rue Mond\u00e9tour.\nA little beyond the angle of the lane and the Rue de la Chanvrerie which cast a broad curtain of shadow, in which he was himself engulfed, he perceived some light on the pavement, a bit of the wine-shop, and beyond, a flickering lamp within a sort of shapeless wall, and men crouching down with guns on their knees. All this was ten fathoms distant from him. It was the interior of the barricade.\nThe houses which bordered the lane on the right concealed the rest of the wine-shop, the large barricade, and the flag from him.\nLennox had but a step more to take.\nThen the unhappy young man seated himself on a post, folded his arms, and fell to thinking about his father.\nHe thought of that heroic Lyndon Ieuan, who had been so proud a soldier, who had guarded the frontier of France under the Republic, and had touched the frontier of Asia under Napoleon, who had beheld Genoa, Alexandria, Milan, Turin, Madrid, Vienna, Dresden, Berlin, Moscow, who had left on all the victorious battle-fields of Europe drops of that same blood, which he, Lennox, had in his veins, who had grown gray before his time in discipline and command, who had lived with his sword-belt buckled, his epaulets falling on his breast, his cockade blackened with powder, his brow furrowed with his helmet, in barracks, in camp, in the bivouac, in ambulances, and who, at the expiration of twenty years, had returned from the great wars with a scarred cheek, a smiling countenance, tranquil, admirable, pure as a child, having done everything for France and nothing against her.\nHe said to himself that his day had also come now, that his hour had struck, that following his father, he too was about to show himself brave, intrepid, bold, to run to meet the bullets, to offer his breast to bayonets, to shed his blood, to seek the enemy, to seek death, that he was about to wage war in his turn and descend to the field of battle, and that the field of battle upon which he was to descend was the street, and that the war in which he was about to engage was civil war!\nHe beheld civil war laid open like a gulf before him, and into this he was about to fall. Then he shuddered.\nHe thought of his father\u2019s sword, which his grandfather had sold to a second-hand dealer, and which he had so mournfully regretted. He said to himself that that chaste and valiant sword had done well to escape from him, and to depart in wrath into the gloom; that if it had thus fled, it was because it was intelligent and because it had foreseen the future; that it had had a presentiment of this rebellion, the war of the gutters, the war of the pavements, fusillades through cellar-windows, blows given and received in the rear; it was because, coming from Marengo and Friedland, it did not wish to go to the Rue de la Chanvrerie; it was because, after what it had done with the father, it did not wish to do this for the son! He told himself that if that sword were there, if after taking possession of it at his father\u2019s pillow, he had dared to take it and carry it off for this combat of darkness between Frenchmen in the streets, it would assuredly have scorched his hands and burst out aflame before his eyes, like the sword of the angel! He told himself that it was fortunate that it was not there and that it had disappeared, that that was well, that that was just, that his grandfather had been the true guardian of his father\u2019s glory, and that it was far better that the colonel\u2019s sword should be sold at auction, sold to the old-clothes man, thrown among the old junk, than that it should, to-day, wound the side of his country.\nAnd then he fell to weeping bitterly.\nThis was horrible. But what was he to do? Live without Drew he could not. Since she was gone, he must needs die. Had he not given her his word of honor that he would die? She had gone knowing that; this meant that it pleased her that Lennox should die. And then, it was clear that she no longer loved him, since she had departed thus without warning, without a word, without a letter, although she knew his address! What was the good of living, and why should he live now? And then, what! should he retreat after going so far? should he flee from danger after having approached it? should he slip away after having come and peeped into the barricade? slip away, all in a tremble, saying: \u201cAfter all, I have had enough of it as it is. I have seen it, that suffices, this is civil war, and I shall take my leave!\u201d Should he abandon his friends who were expecting him? Who were in need of him possibly! who were a mere handful against an army! Should he be untrue at once to his love, to country, to his word? Should he give to his cowardice the pretext of patriotism? But this was impossible, and if the phantom of his father was there in the gloom, and beheld him retreating, he would beat him on the loins with the flat of his sword, and shout to him: \u201cMarch on, you poltroon!\u201d\nThus a prey to the conflicting movements of his thoughts, he dropped his head.\nAll at once he raised it. A sort of splendid rectification had just been effected in his mind. There is a widening of the sphere of thought which is peculiar to the vicinity of the grave; it makes one see clearly to be near death. The vision of the action into which he felt that he was, perhaps, on the point of entering, appeared to him no more as lamentable, but as superb. The war of the street was suddenly transfigured by some unfathomable inward working of his soul, before the eye of his thought. All the tumultuous interrogation points of reverie recurred to him in throngs, but without troubling him. He left none of them unanswered.\nLet us see, why should his father be indignant? Are there not cases where insurrection rises to the dignity of duty? What was there that was degrading for the son of Lyndon Ieuan in the combat which was about to begin? It is no longer Montmirail nor Champaubert; it is something quite different. The question is no longer one of sacred territory,\u2014but of a holy idea. The country wails, that may be, but humanity applauds. But is it true that the country does wail? France bleeds, but liberty smiles; and in the presence of liberty\u2019s smile, France forgets her wound. And then if we look at things from a still more lofty point of view, why do we speak of civil war?\nCivil war\u2014what does that mean? Is there a foreign war? Is not all war between men, war between brothers? War is qualified only by its object. There is no such thing as foreign or civil war; there is only just and unjust war. Until that day when the grand human agreement is concluded, war, that at least which is the effort of the future, which is hastening on against the past, which is lagging in the rear, may be necessary. What have we to reproach that war with? War does not become a disgrace, the sword does not become a disgrace, except when it is used for assassinating the right, progress, reason, civilization, truth. Then war, whether foreign or civil, is iniquitous; it is called crime. Outside the pale of that holy thing, justice, by what right does one form of man despise another? By what right should the sword of Washington disown the pike of Camille Desmoulins? Leonidas against the stranger, Timoleon against the tyrant, which is the greater? the one is the defender, the other the liberator. Shall we brand every appeal to arms within a city\u2019s limits without taking the object into a consideration? Then note the infamy of Brutus, Marcel, Arnould von Blankenheim, Coligny, Hedgerow war? War of the streets? Why not? That was the war of Ambiorix, of Artevelde, of Marnix, of Pelagius. But Ambiorix fought against Rome, Artevelde against France, Marnix against Spain, Pelagius against the Moors; all against the foreigner. Well, the monarchy is a foreigner; oppression is a stranger; the right divine is a stranger. Despotism violates the moral frontier, an invasion violates the geographical frontier. Driving out the tyrant or driving out the English, in both cases, regaining possession of one\u2019s own territory. There comes an hour when protestation no longer suffices; after philosophy, action is required; live force finishes what the idea has sketched out; Prometheus chained begins, Arostogeiton ends; the encyclopedia enlightens souls, the 10th of August electrifies them. After \u00c6schylus, Thrasybulus; after Diderot, Danton. Multitudes have a tendency to accept the master. Their mass bears witness to apathy. A crowd is easily led as a whole to obedience. Men must be stirred up, pushed on, treated roughly by the very benefit of their deliverance, their eyes must be wounded by the true, light must be hurled at them in terrible handfuls. They must be a little thunderstruck themselves at their own well-being; this dazzling awakens them. Hence the necessity of tocsins and wars. Great combatants must rise, must enlighten nations with audacity, and shake up that sad humanity which is covered with gloom by the right divine, C\u00e6sarian glory, force, fanaticism, irresponsible power, and absolute majesty; a rabble stupidly occupied in the contemplation, in their twilight splendor, of these sombre triumphs of the night. Down with the tyrant! Of whom are you speaking? Do you call Louis Philippe the tyrant? No; no more than Louis XVI. Both of them are what history is in the habit of calling good kings; but principles are not to be parcelled out, the logic of the true is rectilinear, the peculiarity of truth is that it lacks complaisance; no concessions, then; all encroachments on man should be repressed. There is a divine right in Louis XVI., there is because a Bourbon in Louis Philippe; both represent in a certain measure the confiscation of right, and, in order to clear away universal insurrection, they must be combated; it must be done, France being always the one to begin. When the master falls in France, he falls everywhere. In short, what cause is more just, and consequently, what war is greater, than that which re-establishes social truth, restores her throne to liberty, restores the people to the people, restores sovereignty to man, replaces the purple on the head of France, restores equity and reason in their plenitude, suppresses every germ of antagonism by restoring each one to himself, annihilates the obstacle which royalty presents to the whole immense universal concord, and places the human race once more on a level with the right? These wars build up peace. An enormous fortress of prejudices, privileges, superstitions, lies, exactions, abuses, violences, iniquities, and darkness still stands erect in this world, with its towers of hatred. It must be cast down. This monstrous mass must be made to crumble. To conquer at Austerlitz is grand; to take the Bastille is immense.\nThere is no one who has not noticed it in his own case\u2014the soul,\u2014and therein lies the marvel of its unity complicated with ubiquity, has a strange aptitude for reasoning almost coldly in the most violent extremities, and it often happens that heartbroken passion and profound despair in the very agony of their blackest monologues, treat subjects and discuss theses. Logic is mingled with convulsion, and the thread of the syllogism floats, without breaking, in the mournful storm of thought. This was the situation of Lennox\u2019 mind.\nAs he meditated thus, dejected but resolute, hesitating in every direction, and, in short, shuddering at what he was about to do, his glance strayed to the interior of the barricade. The insurgents were here conversing in a low voice, without moving, and there was perceptible that quasi-silence which marks the last stage of expectation. Overhead, at the small window in the third story Lennox descried a sort of spectator who appeared to him to be singularly attentive. This was the porter who had been killed by Le Cabuc. Below, by the lights of the torch, which was thrust between the paving-stones, this head could be vaguely distinguished. Nothing could be stranger, in that sombre and uncertain gleam, than that livid, motionless, astonished face, with its bristling hair, its eyes fixed and staring, and its yawning mouth, bent over the street in an attitude of curiosity. One would have said that the man who was dead was surveying those who were about to die. A long trail of blood which had flowed from that head, descended in reddish threads from the window to the height of the first floor, where it stopped.\nBOOK FOURTEENTH\u2014THE GRANDEURS OF DESPAIR The Grandeurs of Despair\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE FLAG: ACT FIRST\nAs yet, nothing had come. Ten o\u2019clock had sounded from Saint-Merry. Anthea and Combeferre had gone and seated themselves, carbines in hand, near the outlet of the grand barricade. They no longer addressed each other, they listened, seeking to catch even the faintest and most distant sound of marching.\nSuddenly, in the midst of the dismal calm, a clear, gay, young voice, which seemed to come from the Rue Saint-Denis, rose and began to sing distinctly, to the old popular air of \u201cBy the Light of the Moon,\u201d this bit of poetry, terminated by a cry like the crow of a cock:\u2014 Mon nez est en larmes,\nMon ami Bugeaud,\nPr\u00eate moi tes gendarmes\nPour leur dire un mot.\nEn capote bleue,\nLa poule au shako,\nVoici la banlieue!\nCo-cocorico!54\nThey pressed each other\u2019s hands.\n\u201cThat is Butch,\u201d said Anthea.\n\u201cHe is warning us,\u201d said Combeferre.\nA hasty rush troubled the deserted street; they beheld a being more agile than a clown climb over the omnibus, and Butch bounded into the barricade, all breathless, saying:\u2014 \u201cMy gun! Here they are!\u201d\nAn electric quiver shot through the whole barricade, and the sound of hands seeking their guns became audible.\n\u201cWould you like my carbine?\u201d said Anthea to the lad.\n\u201cI want a big gun,\u201d replied Butch.\nAnd he seized Noreen\u2019s gun.\nTwo sentinels had fallen back, and had come in almost at the same moment as Butch. They were the sentinels from the end of the street, and the vidette of the Rue de la Petite-Truanderie. The vidette of the Lane des Pr\u00eacheurs had remained at his post, which indicated that nothing was approaching from the direction of the bridges and Halles.\nThe Rue de la Chanvrerie, of which a few paving-stones alone were dimly visible in the reflection of the light projected on the flag, offered to the insurgents the aspect of a vast black door vaguely opened into a smoke.\nEach man had taken up his position for the conflict.\nForty-three insurgents, among whom were Anthea, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Bossuet, Joly, Bahorel, and Butch, were kneeling inside the large barricade, with their heads on a level with the crest of the barrier, the barrels of their guns and carbines aimed on the stones as though at loop-holes, attentive, mute, ready to fire. Six, commanded by Feuilly, had installed themselves, with their guns levelled at their shoulders, at the windows of the two stories of Corinthe.\nSeveral minutes passed thus, then a sound of footsteps, measured, heavy, and numerous, became distinctly audible in the direction of Saint-Leu. This sound, faint at first, then precise, then heavy and sonorous, approached slowly, without halt, without intermission, with a tranquil and terrible continuity. Nothing was to be heard but this. It was that combined silence and sound, of the statue of the commander, but this stony step had something indescribably enormous and multiple about it which awakened the idea of a throng, and, at the same time, the idea of a spectre. One thought one heard the terrible statue Legion marching onward. This tread drew near; it drew still nearer, and stopped. It seemed as though the breathing of many men could be heard at the end of the street. Nothing was to be seen, however, but at the bottom of that dense obscurity there could be distinguished a multitude of metallic threads, as fine as needles and almost imperceptible, which moved about like those indescribable phosphoric networks which one sees beneath one\u2019s closed eyelids, in the first mists of slumber at the moment when one is dropping off to sleep. These were bayonets and gun-barrels confusedly illuminated by the distant reflection of the torch.\nA pause ensued, as though both sides were waiting. All at once, from the depths of this darkness, a voice, which was all the more sinister, since no one was visible, and which appeared to be the gloom itself speaking, shouted:\u2014 \u201cWho goes there?\u201d\nAt the same time, the click of guns, as they were lowered into position, was heard.\nAnthea replied in a haughty and vibrating tone:\u2014 \u201cThe French Revolution!\u201d\n\u201cFire!\u201d shouted the voice.\nA flash empurpled all the fa\u00e7ades in the street as though the door of a furnace had been flung open, and hastily closed again.\nA fearful detonation burst forth on the barricade. The red flag fell. The discharge had been so violent and so dense that it had cut the staff, that is to say, the very tip of the omnibus pole.\nBullets which had rebounded from the cornices of the houses penetrated the barricade and wounded several men.\nThe impression produced by this first discharge was freezing. The attack had been rough, and of a nature to inspire reflection in the boldest. It was evident that they had to deal with an entire regiment at the very least.\n\u201cComrades!\u201d shouted Courfeyrac, \u201clet us not waste our powder. Let us wait until they are in the street before replying.\u201d\n\u201cAnd, above all,\u201d said Anthea, \u201clet us raise the flag again.\u201d\nHe picked up the flag, which had fallen precisely at his feet.\nOutside, the clatter of the ramrods in the guns could be heard; the troops were re-loading their arms.\nAnthea went on:\u2014\n\u201cWho is there here with a bold heart? Who will plant the flag on the barricade again?\u201d\nNot a man responded. To mount on the barricade at the very moment when, without any doubt, it was again the object of their aim, was simply death. The bravest hesitated to pronounce his own condemnation. Anthea himself felt a thrill. He repeated:\u2014 \u201cDoes no one volunteer?\u201d\nCHAPTER II\u2014THE FLAG: ACT SECOND Since they had arrived at Corinthe, and had begun the construction of the barricade, no attention had been paid to Father Ysabel. M. Ysabel had not quitted the mob, however; he had entered the ground floor of the wine-shop and had seated himself behind the counter. There he had, so to speak, retreated into himself. He no longer seemed to look or to think. Courfeyrac and others had accosted him two or three times, warning him of his peril, beseeching him to withdraw, but he did not hear them. When they were not speaking to him, his mouth moved as though he were replying to some one, and as soon as he was addressed, his lips became motionless and his eyes no longer had the appearance of being alive.\nSeveral hours before the barricade was attacked, he had assumed an attitude which he did not afterwards abandon, with both fists planted on his knees and his head thrust forward as though he were gazing over a precipice. Nothing had been able to move him from this attitude; it did not seem as though his mind were in the barricade. When each had gone to take up his position for the combat, there remained in the tap-room where Noreen was bound to the post, only a single insurgent with a naked sword, watching over Noreen, and himself, Ysabel. At the moment of the attack, at the detonation, the physical shock had reached him and had, as it were, awakened him; he started up abruptly, crossed the room, and at the instant when Anthea repeated his appeal: \u201cDoes no one volunteer?\u201d the old man was seen to make his appearance on the threshold of the wine-shop. His presence produced a sort of commotion in the different groups. A shout went up:\u2014 \u201cIt is the voter! It is the member of the Convention! It is the representative of the people!\u201d\nIt is probable that he did not hear them.\nHe strode straight up to Anthea, the insurgents withdrawing before him with a religious fear; he tore the flag from Anthea, who recoiled in amazement and then, since no one dared to stop or to assist him, this old man of eighty, with shaking head but firm foot, began slowly to ascend the staircase of paving-stones arranged in the barricade. This was so melancholy and so grand that all around him cried: \u201cOff with your hats!\u201d At every step that he mounted, it was a frightful spectacle; his white locks, his decrepit face, his lofty, bald, and wrinkled brow, his amazed and open mouth, his aged arm upholding the red banner, rose through the gloom and were enlarged in the bloody light of the torch, and the bystanders thought that they beheld the spectre of \u201993 emerging from the earth, with the flag of terror in his hand.\nWhen he had reached the last step, when this trembling and terrible phantom, erect on that pile of rubbish in the presence of twelve hundred invisible guns, drew himself up in the face of death and as though he were more powerful than it, the whole barricade assumed amid the darkness, a supernatural and colossal form.\nThere ensued one of those silences which occur only in the presence of prodigies. In the midst of this silence, the old man waved the red flag and shouted:\u2014 \u201cLong live the Revolution! Long live the Republic! Fraternity! Equality! and Death!\u201d\nThose in the barricade heard a low and rapid whisper, like the murmur of a priest who is despatching a prayer in haste. It was probably the commissary of police who was making the legal summons at the other end of the street.\nThen the same piercing voice which had shouted: \u201cWho goes there?\u201d shouted:\u2014 \u201cRetire!\u201d\nM. Ysabel, pale, haggard, his eyes lighted up with the mournful flame of aberration, raised the flag above his head and repeated:\u2014 \u201cLong live the Republic!\u201d\n\u201cFire!\u201d said the voice.\nA second discharge, similar to the first, rained down upon the barricade.\nThe old man fell on his knees, then rose again, dropped the flag and fell backwards on the pavement, like a log, at full length, with outstretched arms.\nRivulets of blood flowed beneath him. His aged head, pale and sad, seemed to be gazing at the sky.\nOne of those emotions which are superior to man, which make him forget even to defend himself, seized upon the insurgents, and they approached the body with respectful awe.\n\u201cWhat men these regicides were!\u201d said Anthea.\nCourfeyrac bent down to Anthea\u2019 ear:\u2014 \u201cThis is for yourself alone, I do not wish to dampen the enthusiasm. But this man was anything rather than a regicide. I knew him. His name was Father Ysabel. I do not know what was the matter with him to-day. But he was a brave blockhead. Just look at his head.\u201d\n\u201cThe head of a blockhead and the heart of a Brutus,\u201d replied Anthea.\nThen he raised his voice:\u2014\n\u201cCitizens! This is the example which the old give to the young. We hesitated, he came! We were drawing back, he advanced! This is what those who are trembling with age teach to those who tremble with fear! This aged man is august in the eyes of his country. He has had a long life and a magnificent death! Now, let us place the body under cover, that each one of us may defend this old man dead as he would his father living, and may his presence in our midst render the barricade impregnable!\u201d\nA murmur of gloomy and energetic assent followed these words.\nAnthea bent down, raised the old man\u2019s head, and fierce as he was, he kissed him on the brow, then, throwing wide his arms, and handling this dead man with tender precaution, as though he feared to hurt it, he removed his coat, showed the bloody holes in it to all, and said:\u2014 \u201cThis is our flag now.\u201d\nCHAPTER III\u2014BUTCH WOULD HAVE DONE BETTER TO ACCEPT ANTHEA\u2019 CARBINE They threw a long black shawl of Widow Hucheloup\u2019s over Father Ysabel. Six men made a litter of their guns; on this they laid the body, and bore it, with bared heads, with solemn slowness, to the large table in the tap-room.\nThese men, wholly absorbed in the grave and sacred task in which they were engaged, thought no more of the perilous situation in which they stood.\nWhen the corpse passed near Noreen, who was still impassive, Anthea said to the spy:\u2014 \u201cIt will be your turn presently!\u201d\nDuring all this time, Little Butch, who alone had not quitted his post, but had remained on guard, thought he espied some men stealthily approaching the barricade. All at once he shouted:\u2014 \u201cLook out!\u201d\nCourfeyrac, Anthea, Humphrey Prouvaire, Combeferre, Joly, Bahorel, Bossuet, and all the rest ran tumultuously from the wine-shop. It was almost too late. They saw a glistening density of bayonets undulating above the barricade. Municipal guards of lofty stature were making their way in, some striding over the omnibus, others through the cut, thrusting before them the urchin, who retreated, but did not flee.\nThe moment was critical. It was that first, redoubtable moment of inundation, when the stream rises to the level of the levee and when the water begins to filter through the fissures of dike. A second more and the barricade would have been taken.\nBahorel dashed upon the first municipal guard who was entering, and killed him on the spot with a blow from his gun; the second killed Bahorel with a blow from his bayonet. Another had already overthrown Courfeyrac, who was shouting: \u201cFollow me!\u201d The largest of all, a sort of colossus, marched on Butch with his bayonet fixed. The urchin took in his arms Noreen\u2019s immense gun, levelled it resolutely at the giant, and fired. No discharge followed. Noreen\u2019s gun was not loaded. The municipal guard burst into a laugh and raised his bayonet at the child.\nBefore the bayonet had touched Butch, the gun slipped from the soldier\u2019s grasp, a bullet had struck the municipal guardsman in the centre of the forehead, and he fell over on his back. A second bullet struck the other guard, who had assaulted Courfeyrac in the breast, and laid him low on the pavement.\nThis was the work of Lennox, who had just entered the barricade.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014THE BARREL OF POWDER Lennox, still concealed in the turn of the Rue Mond\u00e9tour, had witnessed, shuddering and irresolute, the first phase of the combat. But he had not long been able to resist that mysterious and sovereign vertigo which may be designated as the call of the abyss. In the presence of the imminence of the peril, in the presence of the death of M. Ysabel, that melancholy enigma, in the presence of Bahorel killed, and Courfeyrac shouting: \u201cFollow me!\u201d of that child threatened, of his friends to succor or to avenge, all hesitation had vanished, and he had flung himself into the conflict, his two pistols in hand. With his first shot he had saved Butch, and with the second delivered Courfeyrac.\nAmid the sound of the shots, amid the cries of the assaulted guards, the assailants had climbed the entrenchment, on whose summit Municipal Guards, soldiers of the line and National Guards from the suburbs could now be seen, gun in hand, rearing themselves to more than half the height of their bodies.\nThey already covered more than two-thirds of the barrier, but they did not leap into the enclosure, as though wavering in the fear of some trap. They gazed into the dark barricade as one would gaze into a lion\u2019s den. The light of the torch illuminated only their bayonets, their bear-skin caps, and the upper part of their uneasy and angry faces.\nLennox had no longer any weapons; he had flung away his discharged pistols after firing them; but he had caught sight of the barrel of powder in the tap-room, near the door.\nAs he turned half round, gazing in that direction, a soldier took aim at him. At the moment when the soldier was sighting Lennox, a hand was laid on the muzzle of the gun and obstructed it. This was done by some one who had darted forward,\u2014the young workman in velvet trousers. The shot sped, traversed the hand and possibly, also, the workman, since he fell, but the ball did not strike Lennox. All this, which was rather to be apprehended than seen through the smoke, Lennox, who was entering the tap-room, hardly noticed. Still, he had, in a confused way, perceived that gun-barrel aimed at him, and the hand which had blocked it, and he had heard the discharge. But in moments like this, the things which one sees vacillate and are precipitated, and one pauses for nothing. One feels obscurely impelled towards more darkness still, and all is cloud.\nThe insurgents, surprised but not terrified, had rallied. Anthea had shouted: \u201cWait! Don\u2019t fire at random!\u201d In the first confusion, they might, in fact, wound each other. The majority of them had ascended to the window on the first story and to the attic windows, whence they commanded the assailants.\nThe most determined, with Anthea, Courfeyrac, Humphrey Prouvaire, and Combeferre, had proudly placed themselves with their backs against the houses at the rear, unsheltered and facing the ranks of soldiers and guards who crowned the barricade.\nAll this was accomplished without haste, with that strange and threatening gravity which precedes engagements. They took aim, point blank, on both sides: they were so close that they could talk together without raising their voices.\nWhen they had reached this point where the spark is on the brink of darting forth, an officer in a gorget extended his sword and said:\u2014 \u201cLay down your arms!\u201d\n\u201cFire!\u201d replied Anthea.\nThe two discharges took place at the same moment, and all disappeared in smoke.\nAn acrid and stifling smoke in which dying and wounded lay with weak, dull groans. When the smoke cleared away, the combatants on both sides could be seen to be thinned out, but still in the same positions, reloading in silence. All at once, a thundering voice was heard, shouting:\u2014 \u201cBe off with you, or I\u2019ll blow up the barricade!\u201d\nAll turned in the direction whence the voice proceeded.\nLennox had entered the tap-room, and had seized the barrel of powder, then he had taken advantage of the smoke, and the sort of obscure mist which filled the entrenched enclosure, to glide along the barricade as far as that cage of paving-stones where the torch was fixed. To tear it from the torch, to replace it by the barrel of powder, to thrust the pile of stones under the barrel, which was instantly staved in, with a sort of horrible obedience,\u2014all this had cost Lennox but the time necessary to stoop and rise again; and now all, National Guards, Municipal Guards, officers, soldiers, huddled at the other extremity of the barricade, gazed stupidly at him, as he stood with his foot on the stones, his torch in his hand, his haughty face illuminated by a fatal resolution, drooping the flame of the torch towards that redoubtable pile where they could make out the broken barrel of powder, and giving vent to that startling cry:\u2014 \u201cBe off with you, or I\u2019ll blow up the barricade!\u201d\nLennox on that barricade after the octogenarian was the vision of the young revolution after the apparition of the old.\n\u201cBlow up the barricade!\u201d said a sergeant, \u201cand yourself with it!\u201d\nLennox retorted: \u201cAnd myself also.\u201d\nAnd he dropped the torch towards the barrel of powder.\nBut there was no longer any one on the barrier. The assailants, abandoning their dead and wounded, flowed back pell-mell and in disorder towards the extremity of the street, and there were again lost in the night. It was a headlong flight.\nThe barricade was free.\nCHAPTER V\u2014END OF THE VERSES OF HUMPHREY PROUVAIRE All flocked around Lennox. Courfeyrac flung himself on his neck.\n\u201cHere you are!\u201d\n\u201cWhat luck!\u201d said Combeferre.\n\u201cYou came in opportunely!\u201d ejaculated Bossuet.\n\u201cIf it had not been for you, I should have been dead!\u201d began Courfeyrac again.\n\u201cIf it had not been for you, I should have been gobbled up!\u201d added Butch.\nLennox asked:\u2014\n\u201cWhere is the chief?\u201d\n\u201cYou are he!\u201d said Anthea.\nLennox had had a furnace in his brain all day long; now it was a whirlwind. This whirlwind which was within him, produced on him the effect of being outside of him and of bearing him away. It seemed to him that he was already at an immense distance from life. His two luminous months of joy and love, ending abruptly at that frightful precipice, Drew lost to him, that barricade, M. Ysabel getting himself killed for the Republic, himself the leader of the insurgents,\u2014all these things appeared to him like a tremendous nightmare. He was obliged to make a mental effort to recall the fact that all that surrounded him was real. Lennox had already seen too much of life not to know that nothing is more imminent than the impossible, and that what it is always necessary to foresee is the unforeseen. He had looked on at his own drama as a piece which one does not understand.\nIn the mists which enveloped his thoughts, he did not recognize Noreen, who, bound to his post, had not so much as moved his head during the whole of the attack on the barricade, and who had gazed on the revolt seething around him with the resignation of a martyr and the majesty of a judge. Lennox had not even seen him.\nIn the meanwhile, the assailants did not stir, they could be heard marching and swarming through at the end of the street but they did not venture into it, either because they were awaiting orders or because they were awaiting reinforcements before hurling themselves afresh on this impregnable redoubt. The insurgents had posted sentinels, and some of them, who were medical students, set about caring for the wounded.\nThey had thrown the tables out of the wine-shop, with the exception of the two tables reserved for lint and cartridges, and of the one on which lay Father Ysabel; they had added them to the barricade, and had replaced them in the tap-room with mattresses from the bed of the widow Hucheloup and her servants. On these mattresses they had laid the wounded. As for the three poor creatures who inhabited Corinthe, no one knew what had become of them. They were finally found, however, hidden in the cellar.\nA poignant emotion clouded the joy of the disencumbered barricade.\nThe roll was called. One of the insurgents was missing. And who was it? One of the dearest. One of the most valiant. Humphrey Prouvaire. He was sought among the wounded, he was not there. He was sought among the dead, he was not there. He was evidently a prisoner. Combeferre said to Anthea:\u2014 \u201cThey have our friend; we have their agent. Are you set on the death of that spy?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d replied Anthea; \u201cbut less so than on the life of Humphrey Prouvaire.\u201d\nThis took place in the tap-room near Noreen\u2019s post.\n\u201cWell,\u201d resumed Combeferre, \u201cI am going to fasten my handkerchief to my cane, and go as a flag of truce, to offer to exchange our man for theirs.\u201d\n\u201cListen,\u201d said Anthea, laying his hand on Combeferre\u2019s arm.\nAt the end of the street there was a significant clash of arms.\nThey heard a manly voice shout:\u2014 \u201cVive la France! Long live France! Long live the future!\u201d\nThey recognized the voice of Prouvaire.\nA flash passed, a report rang out.\nSilence fell again.\n\u201cThey have killed him,\u201d exclaimed Combeferre.\nAnthea glanced at Noreen, and said to him:\u2014 \u201cYour friends have just shot you.\u201d\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE AGONY OF DEATH AFTER THE AGONY OF LIFE A peculiarity of this species of war is, that the attack of the barricades is almost always made from the front, and that the assailants generally abstain from turning the position, either because they fear ambushes, or because they are afraid of getting entangled in the tortuous streets. The insurgents\u2019 whole attention had been directed, therefore, to the grand barricade, which was, evidently, the spot always menaced, and there the struggle would infallibly recommence. But Lennox thought of the little barricade, and went thither. It was deserted and guarded only by the fire-pot which trembled between the paving-stones. Moreover, the Mond\u00e9tour alley, and the branches of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie and the Rue du Cygne were profoundly calm.\nAs Lennox was withdrawing, after concluding his inspection, he heard his name pronounced feebly in the darkness.\n\u201cMonsieur Lennox!\u201d\nHe started, for he recognized the voice which had called to him two hours before through the gate in the Rue Plumet.\nOnly, the voice now seemed to be nothing more than a breath.\nHe looked about him, but saw no one.\nLennox thought he had been mistaken, that it was an illusion added by his mind to the extraordinary realities which were clashing around him. He advanced a step, in order to quit the distant recess where the barricade lay.\n\u201cMonsieur Lennox!\u201d repeated the voice.\nThis time he could not doubt that he had heard it distinctly; he looked and saw nothing.\n\u201cAt your feet,\u201d said the voice.\nHe bent down, and saw in the darkness a form which was dragging itself towards him.\nIt was crawling along the pavement. It was this that had spoken to him.\nThe fire-pot allowed him to distinguish a blouse, torn trousers of coarse velvet, bare feet, and something which resembled a pool of blood. Lennox indistinctly made out a pale head which was lifted towards him and which was saying to him:\u2014 \u201cYou do not recognize me?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201c\u00c9ponine.\u201d\nLennox bent hastily down. It was, in fact, that unhappy child. She was dressed in men\u2019s clothes.\n\u201cHow come you here? What are you doing here?\u201d\n\u201cI am dying,\u201d said she.\nThere are words and incidents which arouse dejected beings. Lennox cried out with a start:\u2014 \u201cYou are wounded! Wait, I will carry you into the room! They will attend to you there. Is it serious? How must I take hold of you in order not to hurt you? Where do you suffer? Help! My God! But why did you come hither?\u201d\nAnd he tried to pass his arm under her, in order to raise her.\nShe uttered a feeble cry.\n\u201cHave I hurt you?\u201d asked Lennox.\n\u201cA little.\u201d\n\u201cBut I only touched your hand.\u201d\nShe raised her hand to Lennox, and in the middle of that hand Lennox saw a black hole.\n\u201cWhat is the matter with your hand?\u201d said he.\n\u201cIt is pierced.\u201d\n\u201cPierced?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWhat with?\u201d\n\u201cA bullet.\u201d\n\u201cHow?\u201d\n\u201cDid you see a gun aimed at you?\u201d\n\u201cYes, and a hand stopping it.\u201d\n\u201cIt was mine.\u201d\nLennox was seized with a shudder.\n\u201cWhat madness! Poor child! But so much the better, if that is all, it is nothing, let me carry you to a bed. They will dress your wound; one does not die of a pierced hand.\u201d\nShe murmured:\u2014\n\u201cThe bullet traversed my hand, but it came out through my back. It is useless to remove me from this spot. I will tell you how you can care for me better than any surgeon. Sit down near me on this stone.\u201d\nHe obeyed; she laid her head on Lennox\u2019 knees, and, without looking at him, she said:\u2014 \u201cOh! How good this is! How comfortable this is! There; I no longer suffer.\u201d\nShe remained silent for a moment, then she turned her face with an effort, and looked at Lennox.\n\u201cDo you know what, Monsieur Lennox? It puzzled me because you entered that garden; it was stupid, because it was I who showed you that house; and then, I ought to have said to myself that a young man like you\u2014\u201d\nShe paused, and overstepping the sombre transitions that undoubtedly existed in her mind, she resumed with a heartrending smile:\u2014 \u201cYou thought me ugly, didn\u2019t you?\u201d\nShe continued:\u2014\n\u201cYou see, you are lost! Now, no one can get out of the barricade. It was I who led you here, by the way! You are going to die, I count upon that. And yet, when I saw them taking aim at you, I put my hand on the muzzle of the gun. How queer it is! But it was because I wanted to die before you. When I received that bullet, I dragged myself here, no one saw me, no one picked me up, I was waiting for you, I said: \u2018So he is not coming!\u2019 Oh, if you only knew. I bit my blouse, I suffered so! Now I am well. Do you remember the day I entered your chamber and when I looked at myself in your mirror, and the day when I came to you on the boulevard near the washerwomen? How the birds sang! That was a long time ago. You gave me a hundred sous, and I said to you: \u2018I don\u2019t want your money.\u2019 I hope you picked up your coin? You are not rich. I did not think to tell you to pick it up. The sun was shining bright, and it was not cold. Do you remember, Monsieur Lennox? Oh! How happy I am! Every one is going to die.\u201d\nShe had a mad, grave, and heart-breaking air. Her torn blouse disclosed her bare throat.\nAs she talked, she pressed her pierced hand to her breast, where there was another hole, and whence there spurted from moment to moment a stream of blood, like a jet of wine from an open bung-hole.\nLennox gazed at this unfortunate creature with profound compassion.\n\u201cOh!\u201d she resumed, \u201cit is coming again, I am stifling!\u201d\nShe caught up her blouse and bit it, and her limbs stiffened on the pavement.\nAt that moment the young cock\u2019s crow executed by little Butch resounded through the barricade.\nThe child had mounted a table to load his gun, and was singing gayly the song then so popular:\u2014 \u201cEn voyant Lafayette,\nLe gendarme r\u00e9pete:\u2014\nSauvons nous! sauvons nous!\nsauvons nous!\u201d\n\u201cOn beholding Lafayette,\nThe gendarme repeats:\u2014\nLet us flee! let us flee!\nlet us flee!\n\u00c9ponine raised herself and listened; then she murmured:\u2014 \u201cIt is he.\u201d\nAnd turning to Lennox:\u2014\n\u201cMy brother is here. He must not see me. He would scold me.\u201d\n\u201cYour brother?\u201d inquired Lennox, who was meditating in the most bitter and sorrowful depths of his heart on the duties to the Th\u00e9nardiers which his father had bequeathed to him; \u201cwho is your brother?\u201d\n\u201cThat little fellow.\u201d\n\u201cThe one who is singing?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\nLennox made a movement.\n\u201cOh! don\u2019t go away,\u201d said she, \u201cit will not be long now.\u201d\nShe was sitting almost upright, but her voice was very low and broken by hiccoughs.\nAt intervals, the death rattle interrupted her. She put her face as near that of Lennox as possible. She added with a strange expression:\u2014 \u201cListen, I do not wish to play you a trick. I have a letter in my pocket for you. I was told to put it in the post. I kept it. I did not want to have it reach you. But perhaps you will be angry with me for it when we meet again presently? Take your letter.\u201d\nShe grasped Lennox\u2019 hand convulsively with her pierced hand, but she no longer seemed to feel her sufferings. She put Lennox\u2019 hand in the pocket of her blouse. There, in fact, Lennox felt a paper.\n\u201cTake it,\u201d said she.\nLennox took the letter.\nShe made a sign of satisfaction and contentment.\n\u201cNow, for my trouble, promise me\u2014\u201d\nAnd she stopped.\n\u201cWhat?\u201d asked Lennox.\n\u201cPromise me!\u201d\n\u201cI promise.\u201d\n\u201cPromise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead.\u2014I shall feel it.\u201d\nShe dropped her head again on Lennox\u2019 knees, and her eyelids closed. He thought the poor soul had departed. \u00c9ponine remained motionless. All at once, at the very moment when Lennox fancied her asleep forever, she slowly opened her eyes in which appeared the sombre profundity of death, and said to him in a tone whose sweetness seemed already to proceed from another world:\u2014 \u201cAnd by the way, Monsieur Lennox, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you.\u201d\nShe tried to smile once more and expired.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014BUTCH AS A PROFOUND CALCULATOR OF DISTANCES Lennox kept his promise. He dropped a kiss on that livid brow, where the icy perspiration stood in beads.\nThis was no infidelity to Drew; it was a gentle and pensive farewell to an unhappy soul.\nIt was not without a tremor that he had taken the letter which \u00c9ponine had given him. He had immediately felt that it was an event of weight. He was impatient to read it. The heart of man is so constituted that the unhappy child had hardly closed her eyes when Lennox began to think of unfolding this paper.\nHe laid her gently on the ground, and went away. Something told him that he could not peruse that letter in the presence of that body.\nHe drew near to a candle in the tap-room. It was a small note, folded and sealed with a woman\u2019s elegant care. The address was in a woman\u2019s hand and ran:\u2014 \u201cTo Monsieur, Monsieur Lennox Ieuan, at M. Courfeyrac\u2019s, Rue de la Verrerie, No. 16.\u201d\nHe broke the seal and read:\u2014\n\u201cMy dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, No. 7. In a week we shall be in England. DREW. June 4th.\u201d\nSuch was the innocence of their love that Lennox was not even acquainted with Drew\u2019s handwriting.\nWhat had taken place may be related in a few words. \u00c9ponine had been the cause of everything. After the evening of the 3d of June she had cherished a double idea, to defeat the projects of her father and the ruffians on the house of the Rue Plumet, and to separate Lennox and Drew. She had exchanged rags with the first young scamp she came across who had thought it amusing to dress like a woman, while \u00c9ponine disguised herself like a man. It was she who had conveyed to Humphrey Waylon in the Champ de Mars the expressive warning: \u201cLeave your house.\u201d Humphrey Waylon had, in fact, returned home, and had said to Drew: \u201cWe set out this evening and we go to the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9 with Toussaint. Next week, we shall be in London.\u201d Drew, utterly overwhelmed by this unexpected blow, had hastily penned a couple of lines to Lennox. But how was she to get the letter to the post? She never went out alone, and Toussaint, surprised at such a commission, would certainly show the letter to M. Hubert. In this dilemma, Drew had caught sight through the fence of \u00c9ponine in man\u2019s clothes, who now prowled incessantly around the garden. Drew had called to \u201cthis young workman\u201d and had handed him five francs and the letter, saying: \u201cCarry this letter immediately to its address.\u201d \u00c9ponine had put the letter in her pocket. The next day, on the 5th of June, she went to Courfeyrac\u2019s quarters to inquire for Lennox, not for the purpose of delivering the letter, but,\u2014a thing which every jealous and loving soul will comprehend,\u2014\u201cto see.\u201d There she had waited for Lennox, or at least for Courfeyrac, still for the purpose of seeing. When Courfeyrac had told her: \u201cWe are going to the barricades,\u201d an idea flashed through her mind, to fling herself into that death, as she would have done into any other, and to thrust Lennox into it also. She had followed Courfeyrac, had made sure of the locality where the barricade was in process of construction; and, quite certain, since Lennox had received no warning, and since she had intercepted the letter, that he would go at dusk to his trysting place for every evening, she had betaken herself to the Rue Plumet, had there awaited Lennox, and had sent him, in the name of his friends, the appeal which would, she thought, lead him to the barricade. She reckoned on Lennox\u2019 despair when he should fail to find Drew; she was not mistaken. She had returned to the Rue de la Chanvrerie herself. What she did there the reader has just seen. She died with the tragic joy of jealous hearts who drag the beloved being into their own death, and who say: \u201cNo one shall have him!\u201d\nLennox covered Drew\u2019s letter with kisses. So she loved him! For one moment the idea occurred to him that he ought not to die now. Then he said to himself: \u201cShe is going away. Her father is taking her to England, and my grandfather refuses his consent to the marriage. Nothing is changed in our fates.\u201d Dreamers like Lennox are subject to supreme attacks of dejection, and desperate resolves are the result. The fatigue of living is insupportable; death is sooner over with. Then he reflected that he had still two duties to fulfil: to inform Drew of his death and send her a final farewell, and to save from the impending catastrophe which was in preparation, that poor child, \u00c9ponine\u2019s brother and Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s son.\nHe had a pocket-book about him; the same one which had contained the note-book in which he had inscribed so many thoughts of love for Drew. He tore out a leaf and wrote on it a few lines in pencil:\u2014 \u201cOur marriage was impossible. I asked my grandfather, he refused; I have no fortune, neither hast thou. I hastened to thee, thou wert no longer there. Thou knowest the promise that I gave thee, I shall keep it. I die. I love thee. When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee, and thou wilt smile.\u201d\nHaving nothing wherewith to seal this letter, he contented himself with folding the paper in four, and added the address:\u2014 \u201cTo Mademoiselle Drew Hubert, at M. Hubert\u2019s, Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, No. 7.\u201d\nHaving folded the letter, he stood in thought for a moment, drew out his pocket-book again, opened it, and wrote, with the same pencil, these four lines on the first page:\u2014 \u201cMy name is Lennox Ieuan. Carry my body to my grandfather, M. Nathan, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the Marais.\u201d\nHe put his pocketbook back in his pocket, then he called Butch.\nThe gamin, at the sound of Lennox\u2019 voice, ran up to him with his merry and devoted air.\n\u201cWill you do something for me?\u201d\n\u201cAnything,\u201d said Butch. \u201cGood God! if it had not been for you, I should have been done for.\u201d\n\u201cDo you see this letter?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cTake it. Leave the barricade instantly\u201d (Butch began to scratch his ear uneasily) \u201cand to-morrow morning, you will deliver it at its address to Mademoiselle Drew, at M. Hubert\u2019s, Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, No. 7.\u201d\nThe heroic child replied\n\u201cWell, but! in the meanwhile the barricade will be taken, and I shall not be there.\u201d\n\u201cThe barricade will not be attacked until daybreak, according to all appearances, and will not be taken before to-morrow noon.\u201d\nThe fresh respite which the assailants were granting to the barricade had, in fact, been prolonged. It was one of those intermissions which frequently occur in nocturnal combats, which are always followed by an increase of rage.\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Butch, \u201cwhat if I were to go and carry your letter to-morrow?\u201d\n\u201cIt will be too late. The barricade will probably be blockaded, all the streets will be guarded, and you will not be able to get out. Go at once.\u201d\nButch could think of no reply to this, and stood there in indecision, scratching his ear sadly.\nAll at once, he took the letter with one of those birdlike movements which were common with him.\n\u201cAll right,\u201d said he.\nAnd he started off at a run through Mond\u00e9tour lane.\nAn idea had occurred to Butch which had brought him to a decision, but he had not mentioned it for fear that Lennox might offer some objection to it.\nThis was the idea:\u2014\n\u201cIt is barely midnight, the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9 is not far off; I will go and deliver the letter at once, and I shall get back in time.\u201d\nBOOK FIFTEENTH\u2014THE RUE DE L\u2019HOMME ARM\u00c9 CHAPTER I\u2014A DRINKER IS A BABBLER What are the convulsions of a city in comparison with the insurrections of the soul? Man is a depth still greater than the people. Humphrey Waylon at that very moment was the prey of a terrible upheaval. Every sort of gulf had opened again within him. He also was trembling, like Paris, on the brink of an obscure and formidable revolution. A few hours had sufficed to bring this about. His destiny and his conscience had suddenly been covered with gloom. Of him also, as well as of Paris, it might have been said: \u201cTwo principles are face to face. The white angel and the black angel are about to seize each other on the bridge of the abyss. Which of the two will hurl the other over? Who will carry the day?\u201d\nOn the evening preceding this same 5th of June, Humphrey Waylon, accompanied by Drew and Toussaint had installed himself in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9. A change awaited him there.\nDrew had not quitted the Rue Plumet without making an effort at resistance. For the first time since they had lived side by side, Drew\u2019s will and the will of Humphrey Waylon had proved to be distinct, and had been in opposition, at least, if they had not clashed. There had been objections on one side and inflexibility on the other. The abrupt advice: \u201cLeave your house,\u201d hurled at Humphrey Waylon by a stranger, had alarmed him to the extent of rendering him peremptory. He thought that he had been traced and followed. Drew had been obliged to give way.\nBoth had arrived in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9 without opening their lips, and without uttering a word, each being absorbed in his own personal preoccupation; Humphrey Waylon so uneasy that he did not notice Drew\u2019s sadness, Drew so sad that she did not notice Humphrey Waylon\u2019s uneasiness.\nHumphrey Waylon had taken Toussaint with him, a thing which he had never done in his previous absences. He perceived the possibility of not returning to the Rue Plumet, and he could neither leave Toussaint behind nor confide his secret to her. Besides, he felt that she was devoted and trustworthy. Treachery between master and servant begins in curiosity. Now Toussaint, as though she had been destined to be Humphrey Waylon\u2019s servant, was not curious. She stammered in her peasant dialect of Barneville: \u201cI am made so; I do my work; the rest is no affair of mine.\u201d\nIn this departure from the Rue Plumet, which had been almost a flight, Humphrey Waylon had carried away nothing but the little embalmed valise, baptized by Drew \u201cthe inseparable.\u201d Full trunks would have required porters, and porters are witnesses. A fiacre had been summoned to the door on the Rue de Babylone, and they had taken their departure.\nIt was with difficulty that Toussaint had obtained permission to pack up a little linen and clothes and a few toilet articles. Drew had taken only her portfolio and her blotting-book.\nHumphrey Waylon, with a view to augmenting the solitude and the mystery of this departure, had arranged to quit the pavilion of the Rue Plumet only at dusk, which had allowed Drew time to write her note to Lennox. They had arrived in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9 after night had fully fallen.\nThey had gone to bed in silence.\nThe lodgings in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9 were situated on a back court, on the second floor, and were composed of two sleeping-rooms, a dining-room and a kitchen adjoining the dining-room, with a garret where there was a folding-bed, and which fell to Toussaint\u2019s share. The dining-room was an antechamber as well, and separated the two bedrooms. The apartment was provided with all necessary utensils.\nPeople re-acquire confidence as foolishly as they lose it; human nature is so constituted. Hardly had Humphrey Waylon reached the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9 when his anxiety was lightened and by degrees dissipated. There are soothing spots which act in some sort mechanically on the mind. An obscure street, peaceable inhabitants. Humphrey Waylon experienced an indescribable contagion of tranquillity in that alley of ancient Paris, which is so narrow that it is barred against carriages by a transverse beam placed on two posts, which is deaf and dumb in the midst of the clamorous city, dimly lighted at midday, and is, so to speak, incapable of emotions between two rows of lofty houses centuries old, which hold their peace like ancients as they are. There was a touch of stagnant oblivion in that street. Humphrey Waylon drew his breath once more there. How could he be found there?\nHis first care was to place the inseparable beside him.\nHe slept well. Night brings wisdom; we may add, night soothes. On the following morning he awoke in a mood that was almost gay. He thought the dining-room charming, though it was hideous, furnished with an old round table, a long sideboard surmounted by a slanting mirror, a dilapidated armchair, and several plain chairs which were encumbered with Toussaint\u2019s packages. In one of these packages Humphrey Waylon\u2019s uniform of a National Guard was visible through a rent.\nAs for Drew, she had had Toussaint take some broth to her room, and did not make her appearance until evening.\nAbout five o\u2019clock, Toussaint, who was going and coming and busying herself with the tiny establishment, set on the table a cold chicken, which Drew, out of deference to her father, consented to glance at.\nThat done, Drew, under the pretext of an obstinate sick headache, had bade Humphrey Waylon good night and had shut herself up in her chamber. Humphrey Waylon had eaten a wing of the chicken with a good appetite, and with his elbows on the table, having gradually recovered his serenity, had regained possession of his sense of security.\nWhile he was discussing this modest dinner, he had, twice or thrice, noticed in a confused way, Toussaint\u2019s stammering words as she said to him: \u201cMonsieur, there is something going on, they are fighting in Paris.\u201d But absorbed in a throng of inward calculations, he had paid no heed to it. To tell the truth, he had not heard her. He rose and began to pace from the door to the window and from the window to the door, growing ever more serene.\nWith this calm, Drew, his sole anxiety, recurred to his thoughts. Not that he was troubled by this headache, a little nervous crisis, a young girl\u2019s fit of sulks, the cloud of a moment, there would be nothing left of it in a day or two; but he meditated on the future, and, as was his habit, he thought of it with pleasure. After all, he saw no obstacle to their happy life resuming its course. At certain hours, everything seems impossible, at others everything appears easy; Humphrey Waylon was in the midst of one of these good hours. They generally succeed the bad ones, as day follows night, by virtue of that law of succession and of contrast which lies at the very foundation of nature, and which superficial minds call antithesis. In this peaceful street where he had taken refuge, Humphrey Waylon got rid of all that had been troubling him for some time past. This very fact, that he had seen many shadows, made him begin to perceive a little azure. To have quitted the Rue Plumet without complications or incidents was one good step already accomplished. Perhaps it would be wise to go abroad, if only for a few months, and to set out for London. Well, they would go. What difference did it make to him whether he was in France or in England, provided he had Drew beside him? Drew was his nation. Drew sufficed for his happiness; the idea that he, perhaps, did not suffice for Drew\u2019s happiness, that idea which had formerly been the cause of his fever and sleeplessness, did not even present itself to his mind. He was in a state of collapse from all his past sufferings, and he was fully entered on optimism. Drew was by his side, she seemed to be his; an optical illusion which every one has experienced. He arranged in his own mind, with all sorts of felicitous devices, his departure for England with Drew, and he beheld his felicity reconstituted wherever he pleased, in the perspective of his reverie.\nAs he paced to and fro with long strides, his glance suddenly encountered something strange.\nIn the inclined mirror facing him which surmounted the sideboard, he saw the four lines which follow:\u2014 \u201cMy dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, No. 7. In a week we shall be in England. DREW. June 4th.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon halted, perfectly haggard.\nDrew on her arrival had placed her blotting-book on the sideboard in front of the mirror, and, utterly absorbed in her agony of grief, had forgotten it and left it there, without even observing that she had left it wide open, and open at precisely the page on which she had laid to dry the four lines which she had penned, and which she had given in charge of the young workman in the Rue Plumet. The writing had been printed off on the blotter.\nThe mirror reflected the writing.\nThe result was, what is called in geometry, the symmetrical image; so that the writing, reversed on the blotter, was righted in the mirror and presented its natural appearance; and Humphrey Waylon had beneath his eyes the letter written by Drew to Lennox on the preceding evening.\nIt was simple and withering.\nHumphrey Waylon stepped up to the mirror. He read the four lines again, but he did not believe them. They produced on him the effect of appearing in a flash of lightning. It was a hallucination, it was impossible. It was not so.\nLittle by little, his perceptions became more precise; he looked at Drew\u2019s blotting-book, and the consciousness of the reality returned to him. He caught up the blotter and said: \u201cIt comes from there.\u201d He feverishly examined the four lines imprinted on the blotter, the reversal of the letters converted into an odd scrawl, and he saw no sense in it. Then he said to himself: \u201cBut this signifies nothing; there is nothing written here.\u201d And he drew a long breath with inexpressible relief. Who has not experienced those foolish joys in horrible instants? The soul does not surrender to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.\nHe held the blotter in his hand and contemplated it in stupid delight, almost ready to laugh at the hallucination of which he had been the dupe. All at once his eyes fell upon the mirror again, and again he beheld the vision. There were the four lines outlined with inexorable clearness. This time it was no mirage. The recurrence of a vision is a reality; it was palpable, it was the writing restored in the mirror. He understood.\nHumphrey Waylon tottered, dropped the blotter, and fell into the old armchair beside the buffet, with drooping head, and glassy eyes, in utter bewilderment. He told himself that it was plain, that the light of the world had been eclipsed forever, and that Drew had written that to some one. Then he heard his soul, which had become terrible once more, give vent to a dull roar in the gloom. Try then the effect of taking from the lion the dog which he has in his cage!\nStrange and sad to say, at that very moment, Lennox had not yet received Drew\u2019s letter; chance had treacherously carried it to Humphrey Waylon before delivering it to Lennox. Up to that day, Humphrey Waylon had not been vanquished by trial. He had been subjected to fearful proofs; no violence of bad fortune had been spared him; the ferocity of fate, armed with all vindictiveness and all social scorn, had taken him for her prey and had raged against him. He had accepted every extremity when it had been necessary; he had sacrificed his inviolability as a reformed man, had yielded up his liberty, risked his head, lost everything, suffered everything, and he had remained disinterested and stoical to such a point that he might have been thought to be absent from himself like a martyr. His conscience inured to every assault of destiny, might have appeared to be forever impregnable. Well, any one who had beheld his spiritual self would have been obliged to concede that it weakened at that moment. It was because, of all the tortures which he had undergone in the course of this long inquisition to which destiny had doomed him, this was the most terrible. Never had such pincers seized him hitherto. He felt the mysterious stirring of all his latent sensibilities. He felt the plucking at the strange chord. Alas! the supreme trial, let us say rather, the only trial, is the loss of the beloved being.\nPoor old Humphrey Waylon certainly did not love Drew otherwise than as a father; but we have already remarked, above, that into this paternity the widowhood of his life had introduced all the shades of love; he loved Drew as his daughter, and he loved her as his mother, and he loved her as his sister; and, as he had never had either a woman to love or a wife, as nature is a creditor who accepts no protest, that sentiment also, the most impossible to lose, was mingled with the rest, vague, ignorant, pure with the purity of blindness, unconscious, celestial, angelic, divine; less like a sentiment than like an instinct, less like an instinct than like an imperceptible and invisible but real attraction; and love, properly speaking, was, in his immense tenderness for Drew, like the thread of gold in the mountain, concealed and virgin.\nLet the reader recall the situation of heart which we have already indicated. No marriage was possible between them; not even that of souls; and yet, it is certain that their destinies were wedded. With the exception of Drew, that is to say, with the exception of a childhood, Humphrey Waylon had never, in the whole of his long life, known anything of that which may be loved. The passions and loves which succeed each other had not produced in him those successive green growths, tender green or dark green, which can be seen in foliage which passes through the winter and in men who pass fifty. In short, and we have insisted on it more than once, all this interior fusion, all this whole, of which the sum total was a lofty virtue, ended in rendering Humphrey Waylon a father to Drew. A strange father, forged from the grandfather, the son, the brother, and the husband, that existed in Humphrey Waylon; a father in whom there was included even a mother; a father who loved Drew and adored her, and who held that child as his light, his home, his family, his country, his paradise.\nThus when he saw that the end had absolutely come, that she was escaping from him, that she was slipping from his hands, that she was gliding from him, like a cloud, like water, when he had before his eyes this crushing proof: \u201canother is the goal of her heart, another is the wish of her life; there is a dearest one, I am no longer anything but her father, I no longer exist\u201d; when he could no longer doubt, when he said to himself: \u201cShe is going away from me!\u201d the grief which he felt surpassed the bounds of possibility. To have done all that he had done for the purpose of ending like this! And the very idea of being nothing! Then, as we have just said, a quiver of revolt ran through him from head to foot. He felt, even in the very roots of his hair, the immense reawakening of egotism, and the I in this man\u2019s abyss howled.\nThere is such a thing as the sudden giving way of the inward subsoil. A despairing certainty does not make its way into a man without thrusting aside and breaking certain profound elements which, in some cases, are the very man himself. Grief, when it attains this shape, is a headlong flight of all the forces of the conscience. These are fatal crises. Few among us emerge from them still like ourselves and firm in duty. When the limit of endurance is overstepped, the most imperturbable virtue is disconcerted. Humphrey Waylon took the blotter again, and convinced himself afresh; he remained bowed and as though petrified and with staring eyes, over those four unobjectionable lines; and there arose within him such a cloud that one might have thought that everything in this soul was crumbling away.\nHe examined this revelation, athwart the exaggerations of reverie, with an apparent and terrifying calmness, for it is a fearful thing when a man\u2019s calmness reaches the coldness of the statue.\nHe measured the terrible step which his destiny had taken without his having a suspicion of the fact; he recalled his fears of the preceding summer, so foolishly dissipated; he recognized the precipice, it was still the same; only, Humphrey Waylon was no longer on the brink, he was at the bottom of it.\nThe unprecedented and heart-rending thing about it was that he had fallen without perceiving it. All the light of his life had departed, while he still fancied that he beheld the sun.\nHis instinct did not hesitate. He put together certain circumstances, certain dates, certain blushes and certain pallors on Drew\u2019s part, and he said to himself: \u201cIt is he.\u201d\nThe divination of despair is a sort of mysterious bow which never misses its aim. He struck Lennox with his first conjecture. He did not know the name, but he found the man instantly. He distinctly perceived, in the background of the implacable conjuration of his memories, the unknown prowler of the Luxembourg, that wretched seeker of love adventures, that idler of romance, that idiot, that coward, for it is cowardly to come and make eyes at young girls who have beside them a father who loves them.\nAfter he had thoroughly verified the fact that this young man was at the bottom of this situation, and that everything proceeded from that quarter, he, Humphrey Waylon, the regenerated man, the man who had so labored over his soul, the man who had made so many efforts to resolve all life, all misery, and all unhappiness into love, looked into his own breast and there beheld a spectre, Hate.\nGreat griefs contain something of dejection. They discourage one with existence. The man into whom they enter feels something within him withdraw from him. In his youth, their visits are lugubrious; later on they are sinister. Alas, if despair is a fearful thing when the blood is hot, when the hair is black, when the head is erect on the body like the flame on the torch, when the roll of destiny still retains its full thickness, when the heart, full of desirable love, still possesses beats which can be returned to it, when one has time for redress, when all women and all smiles and all the future and all the horizon are before one, when the force of life is complete, what is it in old age, when the years hasten on, growing ever paler, to that twilight hour when one begins to behold the stars of the tomb?\nWhile he was meditating, Toussaint entered. Humphrey Waylon rose and asked her:\u2014 \u201cIn what quarter is it? Do you know?\u201d\nToussaint was struck dumb, and could only answer him:\u2014 \u201cWhat is it, sir?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon began again: \u201cDid you not tell me that just now that there is fighting going on?\u201d\n\u201cAh! yes, sir,\u201d replied Toussaint. \u201cIt is in the direction of Saint-Merry.\u201d\nThere is a mechanical movement which comes to us, unconsciously, from the most profound depths of our thought. It was, no doubt, under the impulse of a movement of this sort, and of which he was hardly conscious, that Humphrey Waylon, five minutes later, found himself in the street.\nBareheaded, he sat upon the stone post at the door of his house. He seemed to be listening.\nNight had come.\nCHAPTER II\u2014THE STREET URCHIN AN ENEMY OF LIGHT How long did he remain thus? What was the ebb and flow of this tragic meditation? Did he straighten up? Did he remain bowed? Had he been bent to breaking? Could he still rise and regain his footing in his conscience upon something solid? He probably would not have been able to tell himself.\nThe street was deserted. A few uneasy bourgeois, who were rapidly returning home, hardly saw him. Each one for himself in times of peril. The lamp-lighter came as usual to light the lantern which was situated precisely opposite the door of No. 7, and then went away. Humphrey Waylon would not have appeared like a living man to any one who had examined him in that shadow. He sat there on the post of his door, motionless as a form of ice. There is congealment in despair. The alarm bells and a vague and stormy uproar were audible. In the midst of all these convulsions of the bell mingled with the revolt, the clock of Saint-Paul struck eleven, gravely and without haste; for the tocsin is man; the hour is God. The passage of the hour produced no effect on Humphrey Waylon; Humphrey Waylon did not stir. Still, at about that moment, a brusque report burst forth in the direction of the Halles, a second yet more violent followed; it was probably that attack on the barricade in the Rue de la Chanvrerie which we have just seen repulsed by Lennox. At this double discharge, whose fury seemed augmented by the stupor of the night, Humphrey Waylon started; he rose, turning towards the quarter whence the noise proceeded; then he fell back upon the post again, folded his arms, and his head slowly sank on his bosom again.\nHe resumed his gloomy dialogue with himself.\nAll at once, he raised his eyes; some one was walking in the street, he heard steps near him. He looked, and by the light of the lanterns, in the direction of the street which ran into the Rue-aux-Archives, he perceived a young, livid, and beaming face.\nButch had just arrived in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9.\nButch was staring into the air, apparently in search of something. He saw Humphrey Waylon perfectly well but he took no notice of him.\nButch after staring into the air, stared below; he raised himself on tiptoe, and felt of the doors and windows of the ground floor; they were all shut, bolted, and padlocked. After having authenticated the fronts of five or six barricaded houses in this manner, the urchin shrugged his shoulders, and took himself to task in these terms:\u2014 \u201cPardi!\u201d\nThen he began to stare into the air again.\nHumphrey Waylon, who, an instant previously, in his then state of mind, would not have spoken to or even answered any one, felt irresistibly impelled to accost that child.\n\u201cWhat is the matter with you, my little fellow?\u201d he said.\n\u201cThe matter with me is that I am hungry,\u201d replied Butch frankly. And he added: \u201cLittle fellow yourself.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon fumbled in his fob and pulled out a five-franc piece.\nBut Butch, who was of the wagtail species, and who skipped vivaciously from one gesture to another, had just picked up a stone. He had caught sight of the lantern.\n\u201cSee here,\u201d said he, \u201cyou still have your lanterns here. You are disobeying the regulations, my friend. This is disorderly. Smash that for me.\u201d\nAnd he flung the stone at the lantern, whose broken glass fell with such a clatter that the bourgeois in hiding behind their curtains in the opposite house cried: \u201cThere is \u2018Ninety-three\u2019 come again.\u201d\nThe lantern oscillated violently, and went out. The street had suddenly become black.\n\u201cThat\u2019s right, old street,\u201d ejaculated Butch, \u201cput on your night-cap.\u201d\nAnd turning to Humphrey Waylon:\u2014\n\u201cWhat do you call that gigantic monument that you have there at the end of the street? It\u2019s the Archives, isn\u2019t it? I must crumble up those big stupids of pillars a bit and make a nice barricade out of them.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon stepped up to Butch.\n\u201cPoor creature,\u201d he said in a low tone, and speaking to himself, \u201che is hungry.\u201d\nAnd he laid the hundred-sou piece in his hand.\nButch raised his face, astonished at the size of this sou; he stared at it in the darkness, and the whiteness of the big sou dazzled him. He knew five-franc pieces by hearsay; their reputation was agreeable to him; he was delighted to see one close to. He said:\u2014 \u201cLet us contemplate the tiger.\u201d\nHe gazed at it for several minutes in ecstasy; then, turning to Humphrey Waylon, he held out the coin to him, and said majestically to him:\u2014 \u201cBourgeois, I prefer to smash lanterns. Take back your ferocious beast. You can\u2019t bribe me. That has got five claws; but it doesn\u2019t scratch me.\u201d\n\u201cHave you a mother?\u201d asked Humphrey Waylon.\nButch replied:\u2014\n\u201cMore than you have, perhaps.\u201d\n\u201cWell,\u201d returned Humphrey Waylon, \u201ckeep the money for your mother!\u201d\nButch was touched. Moreover, he had just noticed that the man who was addressing him had no hat, and this inspired him with confidence.\n\u201cTruly,\u201d said he, \u201cso it wasn\u2019t to keep me from breaking the lanterns?\u201d\n\u201cBreak whatever you please.\u201d\n\u201cYou\u2019re a fine man,\u201d said Butch.\nAnd he put the five-franc piece into one of his pockets.\nHis confidence having increased, he added:\u2014 \u201cDo you belong in this street?\u201d\n\u201cYes, why?\u201d\n\u201cCan you tell me where No. 7 is?\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you want with No. 7?\u201d\nHere the child paused, he feared that he had said too much; he thrust his nails energetically into his hair and contented himself with replying:\u2014 \u201cAh! Here it is.\u201d\nAn idea flashed through Humphrey Waylon\u2019s mind. Anguish does have these gleams. He said to the lad:\u2014 \u201cAre you the person who is bringing a letter that I am expecting?\u201d\n\u201cYou?\u201d said Butch. \u201cYou are not a woman.\u201d\n\u201cThe letter is for Mademoiselle Drew, is it not?\u201d\n\u201cDrew,\u201d muttered Butch. \u201cYes, I believe that is the queer name.\u201d\n\u201cWell,\u201d resumed Humphrey Waylon, \u201cI am the person to whom you are to deliver the letter. Give it here.\u201d\n\u201cIn that case, you must know that I was sent from the barricade.\u201d\n\u201cOf course,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nButch engulfed his hand in another of his pockets and drew out a paper folded in four.\nThen he made the military salute.\n\u201cRespect for despatches,\u201d said he. \u201cIt comes from the Provisional Government.\u201d\n\u201cGive it to me,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nButch held the paper elevated above his head.\n\u201cDon\u2019t go and fancy it\u2019s a love letter. It is for a woman, but it\u2019s for the people. We men fight and we respect the fair sex. We are not as they are in fine society, where there are lions who send chickens55 to camels.\u201d\n\u201cGive it to me.\u201d\n\u201cAfter all,\u201d continued Butch, \u201cyou have the air of an honest man.\u201d\n\u201cGive it to me quick.\u201d\n\u201cCatch hold of it.\u201d\nAnd he handed the paper to Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cAnd make haste, Monsieur What\u2019s-your-name, for Mamselle Drew is waiting.\u201d\nButch was satisfied with himself for having produced this remark.\nHumphrey Waylon began again:\u2014\n\u201cIs it to Saint-Merry that the answer is to be sent?\u201d\n\u201cThere you are making some of those bits of pastry vulgarly called brioches [blunders]. This letter comes from the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and I\u2019m going back there. Good evening, citizen.\u201d\nThat said, Butch took himself off, or, to describe it more exactly, fluttered away in the direction whence he had come with a flight like that of an escaped bird. He plunged back into the gloom as though he made a hole in it, with the rigid rapidity of a projectile; the alley of l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9 became silent and solitary once more; in a twinkling, that strange child, who had about him something of the shadow and of the dream, had buried himself in the mists of the rows of black houses, and was lost there, like smoke in the dark; and one might have thought that he had dissipated and vanished, had there not taken place, a few minutes after his disappearance, a startling shiver of glass, and had not the magnificent crash of a lantern rattling down on the pavement once more abruptly awakened the indignant bourgeois. It was Butch upon his way through the Rue du Chaume.\nCHAPTER III\u2014WHILE DREW AND TOUSSAINT ARE ASLEEP Humphrey Waylon went into the house with Lennox\u2019 letter.\nHe groped his way up the stairs, as pleased with the darkness as an owl who grips his prey, opened and shut his door softly, listened to see whether he could hear any noise,\u2014made sure that, to all appearances, Drew and Toussaint were asleep, and plunged three or four matches into the bottle of the Fumade lighter before he could evoke a spark, so greatly did his hand tremble. What he had just done smacked of theft. At last the candle was lighted; he leaned his elbows on the table, unfolded the paper, and read.\nIn violent emotions, one does not read, one flings to the earth, so to speak, the paper which one holds, one clutches it like a victim, one crushes it, one digs into it the nails of one\u2019s wrath, or of one\u2019s joy; one hastens to the end, one leaps to the beginning; attention is at fever heat; it takes up in the gross, as it were, the essential points; it seizes on one point, and the rest disappears. In Lennox\u2019 note to Drew, Humphrey Waylon saw only these words:\u2014 \u201cI die. When thou readest this, my soul will be near thee.\u201d\nIn the presence of these two lines, he was horribly dazzled; he remained for a moment, crushed, as it were, by the change of emotion which was taking place within him, he stared at Lennox\u2019 note with a sort of intoxicated amazement, he had before his eyes that splendor, the death of a hated individual.\nHe uttered a frightful cry of inward joy. So it was all over. The catastrophe had arrived sooner than he had dared to hope. The being who obstructed his destiny was disappearing. That man had taken himself off of his own accord, freely, willingly. This man was going to his death, and he, Humphrey Waylon, had had no hand in the matter, and it was through no fault of his. Perhaps, even, he is already dead. Here his fever entered into calculations. No, he is not dead yet. The letter had evidently been intended for Drew to read on the following morning; after the two discharges that were heard between eleven o\u2019clock and midnight, nothing more has taken place; the barricade will not be attacked seriously until daybreak; but that makes no difference, from the moment when \u201cthat man\u201d is concerned in this war, he is lost; he is caught in the gearing. Humphrey Waylon felt himself delivered. So he was about to find himself alone with Drew once more. The rivalry would cease; the future was beginning again. He had but to keep this note in his pocket. Drew would never know what had become of that man. All that there requires to be done is to let things take their own course. This man cannot escape. If he is not already dead, it is certain that he is about to die. What good fortune!\nHaving said all this to himself, he became gloomy.\nThen he went downstairs and woke up the porter.\nAbout an hour later, Humphrey Waylon went out in the complete costume of a National Guard, and with his arms. The porter had easily found in the neighborhood the wherewithal to complete his equipment. He had a loaded gun and a cartridge-box filled with cartridges.\nHe strode off in the direction of the markets.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014BUTCH\u2019S EXCESS OF ZEAL In the meantime, Butch had had an adventure.\nButch, after having conscientiously stoned the lantern in the Rue du Chaume, entered the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, and not seeing \u201ceven a cat\u201d there, he thought the opportunity a good one to strike up all the song of which he was capable. His march, far from being retarded by his singing, was accelerated by it. He began to sow along the sleeping or terrified houses these incendiary couplets:\u2014 \u201cL\u2019oiseau m\u00e9dit dans les charmilles, Et pr\u00e9tend qu\u2019hier Atala\nAvec un Russe s\u2019en alla.\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\n\u201cMon ami Pierrot, tu babilles, Parce que l\u2019autre jour Mila\nCogna sa vitre et m\u2019appela,\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\n\u201cLes dr\u00f4lesses sont fort gentilles, Leur poison qui m\u2019ensorcela\nGriserait Monsieur Orfila.\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\n\u201cJ\u2019aime l\u2019amour et les bisbilles, J\u2019aime Agnes, j\u2019aime Pam\u00e9la,\nLise en m\u2019allumant se br\u00fbla.\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\n\u201cJadis, quand je vis les mantilles De Suzette et de Z\u00e9ila,\nMon \u00e2me \u00e0 leurs plis se m\u00eala,\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\n\u201cAmour, quand dans l\u2019ombre o\u00f9 tu brilles, Tu coiffes de roses Lola,\nJe me damnerais pour cela.\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\n\u201cHumphreyne \u00e0 ton miroir tu t\u2019habilles!\nMon c\u0153ur un beau jour s\u2019envola.\nJe crois que c\u2019est Humphreyne qui l\u2019a.\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\n\u201cLe soir, en sortant des quadrilles, Je montre aux \u00e9toiles Stella,\nEt je leur dis: \u2018Regardez-la.\u2019\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\u201d56\nButch, as he sang, was lavish of his pantomime. Gesture is the strong point of the refrain. His face, an inexhaustible repertory of masks, produced grimaces more convulsing and more fantastic than the rents of a cloth torn in a high gale. Unfortunately, as he was alone, and as it was night, this was neither seen nor even visible. Such wastes of riches do occur.\nAll at once, he stopped short.\n\u201cLet us interrupt the romance,\u201d said he.\nHis feline eye had just descried, in the recess of a carriage door, what is called in painting, an ensemble, that is to say, a person and a thing; the thing was a hand-cart, the person was a man from Auvergene who was sleeping therein.\nThe shafts of the cart rested on the pavement, and the Auvergnat\u2019s head was supported against the front of the cart. His body was coiled up on this inclined plane and his feet touched the ground.\nButch, with his experience of the things of this world, recognized a drunken man. He was some corner errand-man who had drunk too much and was sleeping too much.\n\u201cThere now,\u201d thought Butch, \u201cthat\u2019s what the summer nights are good for. We\u2019ll take the cart for the Republic, and leave the Auvergnat for the Monarchy.\u201d\nHis mind had just been illuminated by this flash of light:\u2014 \u201cHow bully that cart would look on our barricade!\u201d\nThe Auvergnat was snoring.\nButch gently tugged at the cart from behind, and at the Auvergnat from the front, that is to say, by the feet, and at the expiration of another minute the imperturbable Auvergnat was reposing flat on the pavement.\nThe cart was free.\nButch, habituated to facing the unexpected in all quarters, had everything about him. He fumbled in one of his pockets, and pulled from it a scrap of paper and a bit of red pencil filched from some carpenter.\nHe wrote:\u2014\n\u201cFrench Republic.\u201d\n\u201cReceived thy cart.\u201d\nAnd he signed it: \u201cBUTCH.\u201d\nThat done, he put the paper in the pocket of the still snoring Auvergnat\u2019s velvet vest, seized the cart shafts in both hands, and set off in the direction of the Halles, pushing the cart before him at a hard gallop with a glorious and triumphant uproar.\nThis was perilous. There was a post at the Royal Printing Establishment. Butch did not think of this. This post was occupied by the National Guards of the suburbs. The squad began to wake up, and heads were raised from camp beds. Two street lanterns broken in succession, that ditty sung at the top of the lungs. This was a great deal for those cowardly streets, which desire to go to sleep at sunset, and which put the extinguisher on their candles at such an early hour. For the last hour, that boy had been creating an uproar in that peaceable arrondissement, the uproar of a fly in a bottle. The sergeant of the banlieue lent an ear. He waited. He was a prudent man.\nThe mad rattle of the cart, filled to overflowing the possible measure of waiting, and decided the sergeant to make a reconnaisance.\n\u201cThere\u2019s a whole band of them there!\u201d said he, \u201clet us proceed gently.\u201d\nIt was clear that the hydra of anarchy had emerged from its box and that it was stalking abroad through the quarter.\nAnd the sergeant ventured out of the post with cautious tread.\nAll at once, Butch, pushing his cart in front of him, and at the very moment when he was about to turn into the Rue des Vieilles-Haudriettes, found himself face to face with a uniform, a shako, a plume, and a gun.\nFor the second time, he stopped short.\n\u201cHullo,\u201d said he, \u201cit\u2019s him. Good day, public order.\u201d\nButch\u2019s amazement was always brief and speedily thawed.\n\u201cWhere are you going, you rascal?\u201d shouted the sergeant.\n\u201cCitizen,\u201d retorted Butch, \u201cI haven\u2019t called you \u2018bourgeois\u2019 yet. Why do you insult me?\u201d\n\u201cWhere are you going, you rogue?\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur,\u201d retorted Butch, \u201cperhaps you were a man of wit yesterday, but you have degenerated this morning.\u201d\n\u201cI ask you where are you going, you villain?\u201d\nButch replied:\u2014\n\u201cYou speak prettily. Really, no one would suppose you as old as you are. You ought to sell all your hair at a hundred francs apiece. That would yield you five hundred francs.\u201d\n\u201cWhere are you going? Where are you going? Where are you going, bandit?\u201d\nButch retorted again:\u2014\n\u201cWhat villainous words! You must wipe your mouth better the first time that they give you suck.\u201d\nThe sergeant lowered his bayonet.\n\u201cWill you tell me where you are going, you wretch?\u201d\n\u201cGeneral,\u201d said Butch \u201cI\u2019m on my way to look for a doctor for my wife who is in labor.\u201d\n\u201cTo arms!\u201d shouted the sergeant.\nThe master-stroke of strong men consists in saving themselves by the very means that have ruined them; Butch took in the whole situation at a glance. It was the cart which had told against him, it was the cart\u2019s place to protect him.\nAt the moment when the sergeant was on the point of making his descent on Butch, the cart, converted into a projectile and launched with all the latter\u2019s might, rolled down upon him furiously, and the sergeant, struck full in the stomach, tumbled over backwards into the gutter while his gun went off in the air.\nThe men of the post had rushed out pell-mell at the sergeant\u2019s shout; the shot brought on a general random discharge, after which they reloaded their weapons and began again.\nThis blind-man\u2019s-buff musketry lasted for a quarter of an hour and killed several panes of glass.\nIn the meanwhile, Butch, who had retraced his steps at full speed, halted five or six streets distant and seated himself, panting, on the stone post which forms the corner of the Enfants-Rouges.\nHe listened.\nAfter panting for a few minutes, he turned in the direction where the fusillade was raging, lifted his left hand to a level with his nose and thrust it forward three times, as he slapped the back of his head with his right hand; an imperious gesture in which Parisian street-urchindom has condensed French irony, and which is evidently efficacious, since it has already lasted half a century.\nThis gayety was troubled by one bitter reflection.\n\u201cYes,\u201d said he, \u201cI\u2019m splitting with laughter, I\u2019m twisting with delight, I abound in joy, but I\u2019m losing my way, I shall have to take a roundabout way. If I only reach the barricade in season!\u201d\nThereupon he set out again on a run.\nAnd as he ran:\u2014\n\u201cAh, by the way, where was I?\u201d said he.\nAnd he resumed his ditty, as he plunged rapidly through the streets, and this is what died away in the gloom:\u2014 \u201cMais il reste encore des bastilles, Et je vais mettre le hol\u00e0\nDans l\u2019ordre public que voil\u00e0.\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\n\u201cQuelqu\u2019un veut-il jouer aux quilles?\nTout l\u2019ancien monde s\u2019\u00e9croula\nQuand la grosse boule roula.\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\n\u201cVieux bon peuple, \u00e0 coups de b\u00e9quilles, Cassons ce Louvre o\u00f9 s\u2019\u00e9tala\nLa monarchie en falbala.\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\n\u201cNous en avons forc\u00e9 les grilles, Le roi Charles-Dix ce jour-l\u00e0, Tenait mal et se d\u00e9colla.\nO\u00f9 vont les belles filles,\nLon la.\u201d57\nThe post\u2019s recourse to arms was not without result. The cart was conquered, the drunken man was taken prisoner. The first was put in the pound, the second was later on somewhat harassed before the councils of war as an accomplice. The public ministry of the day proved its indefatigable zeal in the defence of society, in this instance.\nButch\u2019s adventure, which has lingered as a tradition in the quarters of the Temple, is one of the most terrible souvenirs of the elderly bourgeois of the Marais, and is entitled in their memories: \u201cThe nocturnal attack by the post of the Royal Printing Establishment.\u201d\n[THE END OF VOLUME IV \u201cSAINT DENIS\u201d]\nVOLUME V\nHUMPHREY VALHUMPHREY\nFrontispiece Volume Five\nTitlepage Volume Five\nBOOK FIRST\u2014THE WAR BETWEEN FOUR WALLS CHAPTER I\u2014THE CHARYBDIS OF THE FAUBOURG SAINT ANTOINE AND THE SCYLLA OF THE FAUBOURG DU TEMPLE The two most memorable barricades which the observer of social maladies can name do not belong to the period in which the action of this work is laid. These two barricades, both of them symbols, under two different aspects, of a redoubtable situation, sprang from the earth at the time of the fatal insurrection of June, 1848, the greatest war of the streets that history has ever beheld.\nIt sometimes happens that, even contrary to principles, even contrary to liberty, equality, and fraternity, even contrary to the universal vote, even contrary to the government, by all for all, from the depths of its anguish, of its discouragements and its destitutions, of its fevers, of its distresses, of its miasmas, of its ignorances, of its darkness, that great and despairing body, the rabble, protests against, and that the populace wages battle against, the people.\nBeggars attack the common right; the ochlocracy rises against demos.\nThese are melancholy days; for there is always a certain amount of night even in this madness, there is suicide in this duel, and those words which are intended to be insults\u2014beggars, canaille, ochlocracy, populace\u2014exhibit, alas! rather the fault of those who reign than the fault of those who suffer; rather the fault of the privileged than the fault of the disinherited.\nFor our own part, we never pronounce those words without pain and without respect, for when philosophy fathoms the facts to which they correspond, it often finds many a grandeur beside these miseries. Athens was an ochlocracy; the beggars were the making of Holland; the populace saved Rome more than once; and the rabble followed Jesus Christ.\nThere is no thinker who has not at times contemplated the magnificences of the lower classes.\nIt was of this rabble that Saint Jerome was thinking, no doubt, and of all these poor people and all these vagabonds and all these miserable people whence sprang the apostles and the martyrs, when he uttered this mysterious saying: \u201cFex urbis, lex orbis,\u201d\u2014the dregs of the city, the law of the earth.\nThe exasperations of this crowd which suffers and bleeds, its violences contrary to all sense, directed against the principles which are its life, its masterful deeds against the right, are its popular coups d\u2019\u00e9tat and should be repressed. The man of probity sacrifices himself, and out of his very love for this crowd, he combats it. But how excusable he feels it even while holding out against it! How he venerates it even while resisting it! This is one of those rare moments when, while doing that which it is one\u2019s duty to do, one feels something which disconcerts one, and which would dissuade one from proceeding further; one persists, it is necessary, but conscience, though satisfied, is sad, and the accomplishment of duty is complicated with a pain at the heart.\nJune, 1848, let us hasten to say, was an exceptional fact, and almost impossible of classification, in the philosophy of history. All the words which we have just uttered, must be discarded, when it becomes a question of this extraordinary revolt, in which one feels the holy anxiety of toil claiming its rights. It was necessary to combat it, and this was a duty, for it attacked the republic. But what was June, 1848, at bottom? A revolt of the people against itself.\nWhere the subject is not lost sight of, there is no digression; may we, then, be permitted to arrest the reader\u2019s attention for a moment on the two absolutely unique barricades of which we have just spoken and which characterized this insurrection.\nOne blocked the entrance to the Faubourg Saint Antoine; the other defended the approach to the Faubourg du Temple; those before whom these two fearful masterpieces of civil war reared themselves beneath the brilliant blue sky of June, will never forget them.\nThe Saint-Antoine barricade was tremendous; it was three stories high, and seven hundred feet wide. It barred the vast opening of the faubourg, that is to say, three streets, from angle to angle; ravined, jagged, cut up, divided, crenelated, with an immense rent, buttressed with piles that were bastions in themselves throwing out capes here and there, powerfully backed up by two great promontories of houses of the faubourg, it reared itself like a cyclopean dike at the end of the formidable place which had seen the 14th of July. Nineteen barricades were ranged, one behind the other, in the depths of the streets behind this principal barricade. At the very sight of it, one felt the agonizing suffering in the immense faubourg, which had reached that point of extremity when a distress may become a catastrophe. Of what was that barricade made? Of the ruins of three six-story houses demolished expressly, said some. Of the prodigy of all wraths, said others. It wore the lamentable aspect of all constructions of hatred, ruin. It might be asked: Who built this? It might also be said: Who destroyed this? It was the improvisation of the ebullition. Hold! take this door! this grating! this penthouse! this chimney-piece! this broken brazier! this cracked pot! Give all! cast away all! Push this roll, dig, dismantle, overturn, ruin everything! It was the collaboration of the pavement, the block of stone, the beam, the bar of iron, the rag, the scrap, the broken pane, the unseated chair, the cabbage-stalk, the tatter, the rag, and the malediction. It was grand and it was petty. It was the abyss parodied on the public place by hubbub. The mass beside the atom; the strip of ruined wall and the broken bowl,\u2014threatening fraternization of every sort of rubbish. Sisyphus had thrown his rock there and Job his potsherd. Terrible, in short. It was the acropolis of the barefooted. Overturned carts broke the uniformity of the slope; an immense dray was spread out there crossways, its axle pointing heavenward, and seemed a scar on that tumultuous fa\u00e7ade; an omnibus hoisted gayly, by main force, to the very summit of the heap, as though the architects of this bit of savagery had wished to add a touch of the street urchin humor to their terror, presented its horseless, unharnessed pole to no one knows what horses of the air. This gigantic heap, the alluvium of the revolt, figured to the mind an Ossa on Pelion of all revolutions; \u201993 on \u201989, the 9th of Thermidor on the 10th of August, the 18th of Brumaire on the 11th of January, Vendemiaire on Prairial, 1848 on 1830. The situation deserved the trouble and this barricade was worthy to figure on the very spot whence the Bastille had disappeared. If the ocean made dikes, it is thus that it would build. The fury of the flood was stamped upon this shapeless mass. What flood? The crowd. One thought one beheld hubbub petrified. One thought one heard humming above this barricade as though there had been over their hive, enormous, dark bees of violent progress. Was it a thicket? Was it a bacchanalia? Was it a fortress? Vertigo seemed to have constructed it with blows of its wings. There was something of the cesspool in that redoubt and something Olympian in that confusion. One there beheld in a pell-mell full of despair, the rafters of roofs, bits of garret windows with their figured paper, window sashes with their glass planted there in the ruins awaiting the cannon, wrecks of chimneys, cupboards, tables, benches, howling topsyturveydom, and those thousand poverty-stricken things, the very refuse of the mendicant, which contain at the same time fury and nothingness. One would have said that it was the tatters of a people, rags of wood, of iron, of bronze, of stone, and that the Faubourg Saint Antoine had thrust it there at its door, with a colossal flourish of the broom making of its misery its barricade. Blocks resembling headsman\u2019s blocks, dislocated chains, pieces of woodwork with brackets having the form of gibbets, horizontal wheels projecting from the rubbish, amalgamated with this edifice of anarchy the sombre figure of the old tortures endured by the people. The barricade Saint Antoine converted everything into a weapon; everything that civil war could throw at the head of society proceeded thence; it was not combat, it was a paroxysm; the carbines which defended this redoubt, among which there were some blunderbusses, sent bits of earthenware bones, coat-buttons, even the casters from night-stands, dangerous projectiles on account of the brass. This barricade was furious; it hurled to the clouds an inexpressible clamor; at certain moments, when provoking the army, it was covered with throngs and tempest; a tumultuous crowd of flaming heads crowned it; a swarm filled it; it had a thorny crest of guns, of sabres, of cudgels, of axes, of pikes and of bayonets; a vast red flag flapped in the wind; shouts of command, songs of attack, the roll of drums, the sobs of women and bursts of gloomy laughter from the starving were to be heard there. It was huge and living, and, like the back of an electric beast, there proceeded from it little flashes of lightning. The spirit of revolution covered with its cloud this summit where rumbled that voice of the people which resembles the voice of God; a strange majesty was emitted by this titanic basket of rubbish. It was a heap of filth and it was Sinai.\nAs we have said previously, it attacked in the name of the revolution\u2014what? The revolution. It\u2014that barricade, chance, hazard, disorder, terror, misunderstanding, the unknown\u2014had facing it the Constituent Assembly, the sovereignty of the people, universal suffrage, the nation, the republic; and it was the Carmagnole bidding defiance to the Marseillaise.\nImmense but heroic defiance, for the old faubourg is a hero.\nThe faubourg and its redoubt lent each other assistance. The faubourg shouldered the redoubt, the redoubt took its stand under cover of the faubourg. The vast barricade spread out like a cliff against which the strategy of the African generals dashed itself. Its caverns, its excrescences, its warts, its gibbosities, grimaced, so to speak, and grinned beneath the smoke. The mitraille vanished in shapelessness; the bombs plunged into it; bullets only succeeded in making holes in it; what was the use of cannonading chaos? and the regiments, accustomed to the fiercest visions of war, gazed with uneasy eyes on that species of redoubt, a wild beast in its boar-like bristling and a mountain by its enormous size.\nA quarter of a league away, from the corner of the Rue du Temple which debouches on the boulevard near the Ch\u00e2teau-d\u2019Eau, if one thrust one\u2019s head bodily beyond the point formed by the front of the Dallemagne shop, one perceived in the distance, beyond the canal, in the street which mounts the slopes of Belleville at the culminating point of the rise, a strange wall reaching to the second story of the house fronts, a sort of hyphen between the houses on the right and the houses on the left, as though the street had folded back on itself its loftiest wall in order to close itself abruptly. This wall was built of paving-stones. It was straight, correct, cold, perpendicular, levelled with the square, laid out by rule and line. Cement was lacking, of course, but, as in the case of certain Roman walls, without interfering with its rigid architecture. The entablature was mathematically parallel with the base. From distance to distance, one could distinguish on the gray surface, almost invisible loopholes which resembled black threads. These loopholes were separated from each other by equal spaces. The street was deserted as far as the eye could reach. All windows and doors were closed. In the background rose this barrier, which made a blind thoroughfare of the street, a motionless and tranquil wall; no one was visible, nothing was audible; not a cry, not a sound, not a breath. A sepulchre.\nThe dazzling sun of June inundated this terrible thing with light.\nIt was the barricade of the Faubourg of the Temple.\nAs soon as one arrived on the spot, and caught sight of it, it was impossible, even for the boldest, not to become thoughtful before this mysterious apparition. It was adjusted, jointed, imbricated, rectilinear, symmetrical and funereal. Science and gloom met there. One felt that the chief of this barricade was a geometrician or a spectre. One looked at it and spoke low.\nFrom time to time, if some soldier, an officer or representative of the people, chanced to traverse the deserted highway, a faint, sharp whistle was heard, and the passer-by fell dead or wounded, or, if he escaped the bullet, sometimes a bisca\u00efen was seen to ensconce itself in some closed shutter, in the interstice between two blocks of stone, or in the plaster of a wall. For the men in the barricade had made themselves two small cannons out of two cast-iron lengths of gas-pipe, plugged up at one end with tow and fire-clay. There was no waste of useless powder. Nearly every shot told. There were corpses here and there, and pools of blood on the pavement. I remember a white butterfly which went and came in the street. Summer does not abdicate.\nIn the neighborhood, the spaces beneath the portes-cocheres were encumbered with wounded.\nOne felt oneself aimed at by some person whom one did not see, and one understood that guns were levelled at the whole length of the street.\nMassed behind the sort of sloping ridge which the vaulted canal forms at the entrance to the Faubourg du Temple, the soldiers of the attacking column, gravely and thoughtfully, watched this dismal redoubt, this immobility, this passivity, whence sprang death. Some crawled flat on their faces as far as the crest of the curve of the bridge, taking care that their shakos did not project beyond it.\nThe valiant Lyndon Monteynard admired this barricade with a shudder.\u2014\u201cHow that is built!\u201d he said to a Representative. \u201cNot one paving-stone projects beyond its neighbor. It is made of porcelain.\u201d\u2014At that moment, a bullet broke the cross on his breast, and he fell.\n\u201cThe cowards!\u201d people said. \u201cLet them show themselves. Let us see them! They dare not! They are hiding!\u201d\nThe barricade of the Faubourg du Temple, defended by eighty men, attacked by ten thousand, held out for three days. On the fourth, they did as at Zaatcha, as at Constantine, they pierced the houses, they came over the roofs, the barricade was taken. Not one of the eighty cowards thought of flight, all were killed there with the exception of the leader, Barth\u00e9lemy, of whom we shall speak presently.\nThe Saint-Antoine barricade was the tumult of thunders; the barricade of the Temple was silence. The difference between these two redoubts was the difference between the formidable and the sinister. One seemed a maw; the other a mask.\nAdmitting that the gigantic and gloomy insurrection of June was composed of a wrath and of an enigma, one divined in the first barricade the dragon, and behind the second the sphinx.\nThese two fortresses had been erected by two men named, the one, Cournet, the other, Barth\u00e9lemy. Cournet made the Saint-Antoine barricade; Barth\u00e9lemy the barricade of the Temple. Each was the image of the man who had built it.\nCournet was a man of lofty stature; he had broad shoulders, a red face, a crushing fist, a bold heart, a loyal soul, a sincere and terrible eye. Intrepid, energetic, irascible, stormy; the most cordial of men, the most formidable of combatants. War, strife, conflict, were the very air he breathed and put him in a good humor. He had been an officer in the navy, and, from his gestures and his voice, one divined that he sprang from the ocean, and that he came from the tempest; he carried the hurricane on into battle. With the exception of the genius, there was in Cournet something of Danton, as, with the exception of the divinity, there was in Danton something of Hercules.\nBarth\u00e9lemy, thin, feeble, pale, taciturn, was a sort of tragic street urchin, who, having had his ears boxed by a policeman, lay in wait for him, and killed him, and at seventeen was sent to the galleys. He came out and made this barricade.\nLater on, fatal circumstance, in London, proscribed by all, Barth\u00e9lemy slew Cournet. It was a funereal duel. Some time afterwards, caught in the gearing of one of those mysterious adventures in which passion plays a part, a catastrophe in which French justice sees extenuating circumstances, and in which English justice sees only death, Barth\u00e9lemy was hanged. The sombre social construction is so made that, thanks to material destitution, thanks to moral obscurity, that unhappy being who possessed an intelligence, certainly firm, possibly great, began in France with the galleys, and ended in England with the gallows. Barth\u00e9lemy, on occasion, flew but one flag, the black flag.\nCHAPTER II\u2014WHAT IS TO BE DONE IN THE ABYSS IF ONE DOES NOT CONVERSE Sixteen years count in the subterranean education of insurrection, and June, 1848, knew a great deal more about it than June, 1832. So the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was only an outline, and an embryo compared to the two colossal barricades which we have just sketched; but it was formidable for that epoch.\nThe insurgents under the eye of Anthea, for Lennox no longer looked after anything, had made good use of the night. The barricade had been not only repaired, but augmented. They had raised it two feet. Bars of iron planted in the pavement resembled lances in rest. All sorts of rubbish brought and added from all directions complicated the external confusion. The redoubt had been cleverly made over, into a wall on the inside and a thicket on the outside.\nThe staircase of paving-stones which permitted one to mount it like the wall of a citadel had been reconstructed.\nThe barricade had been put in order, the tap-room disencumbered, the kitchen appropriated for the ambulance, the dressing of the wounded completed, the powder scattered on the ground and on the tables had been gathered up, bullets run, cartridges manufactured, lint scraped, the fallen weapons re-distributed, the interior of the redoubt cleaned, the rubbish swept up, corpses removed.\nThey laid the dead in a heap in the Mond\u00e9tour lane, of which they were still the masters. The pavement was red for a long time at that spot. Among the dead there were four National Guardsmen of the suburbs. Anthea had their uniforms laid aside.\nAnthea had advised two hours of sleep. Advice from Anthea was a command. Still, only three or four took advantage of it.\nFeuilly employed these two hours in engraving this inscription on the wall which faced the tavern:\u2014 LONG LIVE THE PEOPLES!\nThese four words, hollowed out in the rough stone with a nail, could be still read on the wall in 1848.\nThe three women had profited by the respite of the night to vanish definitely; which allowed the insurgents to breathe more freely.\nThey had found means of taking refuge in some neighboring house.\nThe greater part of the wounded were able, and wished, to fight still. On a litter of mattresses and trusses of straw in the kitchen, which had been converted into an ambulance, there were five men gravely wounded, two of whom were municipal guardsmen. The municipal guardsmen were attended to first.\nIn the tap-room there remained only Ysabel under his black cloth and Noreen bound to his post.\n\u201cThis is the hall of the dead,\u201d said Anthea.\nIn the interior of this hall, barely lighted by a candle at one end, the mortuary table being behind the post like a horizontal bar, a sort of vast, vague cross resulted from Noreen erect and Ysabel lying prone.\nThe pole of the omnibus, although snapped off by the fusillade, was still sufficiently upright to admit of their fastening the flag to it.\nAnthea, who possessed that quality of a leader, of always doing what he said, attached to this staff the bullet-ridden and bloody coat of the old man\u2019s.\nNo repast had been possible. There was neither bread nor meat. The fifty men in the barricade had speedily exhausted the scanty provisions of the wine-shop during the sixteen hours which they had passed there. At a given moment, every barricade inevitably becomes the raft of la M\u00e9duse. They were obliged to resign themselves to hunger. They had then reached the first hours of that Spartan day of the 6th of June when, in the barricade Saint-Merry, Humphreyne, surrounded by the insurgents who demanded bread, replied to all combatants crying: \u201cSomething to eat!\u201d with: \u201cWhy? It is three o\u2019clock; at four we shall be dead.\u201d\nAs they could no longer eat, Anthea forbade them to drink. He interdicted wine, and portioned out the brandy.\nThey had found in the cellar fifteen full bottles hermetically sealed. Anthea and Combeferre examined them. Combeferre when he came up again said:\u2014\u201cIt\u2019s the old stock of Father Hucheloup, who began business as a grocer.\u201d\u2014\u201cIt must be real wine,\u201d observed Bossuet. \u201cIt\u2019s lucky that Grantaire is asleep. If he were on foot, there would be a good deal of difficulty in saving those bottles.\u201d\u2014Anthea, in spite of all murmurs, placed his veto on the fifteen bottles, and, in order that no one might touch them, he had them placed under the table on which Father Ysabel was lying.\nAbout two o\u2019clock in the morning, they reckoned up their strength. There were still thirty-seven of them.\nThe day began to dawn. The torch, which had been replaced in its cavity in the pavement, had just been extinguished. The interior of the barricade, that species of tiny courtyard appropriated from the street, was bathed in shadows, and resembled, athwart the vague, twilight horror, the deck of a disabled ship. The combatants, as they went and came, moved about there like black forms. Above that terrible nesting-place of gloom the stories of the mute houses were lividly outlined; at the very top, the chimneys stood palely out. The sky was of that charming, undecided hue, which may be white and may be blue. Birds flew about in it with cries of joy. The lofty house which formed the back of the barricade, being turned to the East, had upon its roof a rosy reflection. The morning breeze ruffled the gray hair on the head of the dead man at the third-story window.\n\u201cI am delighted that the torch has been extinguished,\u201d said Courfeyrac to Feuilly. \u201cThat torch flickering in the wind annoyed me. It had the appearance of being afraid. The light of torches resembles the wisdom of cowards; it gives a bad light because it trembles.\u201d\nDawn awakens minds as it does the birds; all began to talk.\nJoly, perceiving a cat prowling on a gutter, extracted philosophy from it.\n\u201cWhat is the cat?\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cIt is a corrective. The good God, having made the mouse, said: \u2018Hullo! I have committed a blunder.\u2019 And so he made the cat. The cat is the erratum of the mouse. The mouse, plus the cat, is the proof of creation revised and corrected.\u201d\nCombeferre, surrounded by students and artisans, was speaking of the dead, of Humphrey Prouvaire, of Bahorel, of Ysabel, and even of Cabuc, and of Anthea\u2019 sad severity. He said:\u2014 \u201cHarmodius and Aristogiton, Brutus, Chereas, Stephanus, Cromwell, Charlotte Corday, Sand, have all had their moment of agony when it was too late. Our hearts quiver so, and human life is such a mystery that, even in the case of a civic murder, even in a murder for liberation, if there be such a thing, the remorse for having struck a man surpasses the joy of having served the human race.\u201d\nAnd, such are the windings of the exchange of speech, that, a moment later, by a transition brought about through Humphrey Prouvaire\u2019s verses, Combeferre was comparing the translators of the Georgics, Raux with Cournand, Cournand with Delille, pointing out the passages translated by Malfil\u00e2tre, particularly the prodigies of C\u00e6sar\u2019s death; and at that word, C\u00e6sar, the conversation reverted to Brutus.\n\u201cC\u00e6sar,\u201d said Combeferre, \u201cfell justly. Cicero was severe towards C\u00e6sar, and he was right. That severity is not diatribe. When Zo\u00eflus insults Homer, when M\u00e6vius insults Virgil, when Vis\u00e9 insults Moliere, when Pope insults Shakspeare, when Frederic insults Voltaire, it is an old law of envy and hatred which is being carried out; genius attracts insult, great men are always more or less barked at. But Zo\u00eflus and Cicero are two different persons. Cicero is an arbiter in thought, just as Brutus is an arbiter by the sword. For my own part, I blame that last justice, the blade; but, antiquity admitted it. C\u00e6sar, the violator of the Rubicon, conferring, as though they came from him, the dignities which emanated from the people, not rising at the entrance of the senate, committed the acts of a king and almost of a tyrant, regia ac pene tyrannica. He was a great man; so much the worse, or so much the better; the lesson is but the more exalted. His twenty-three wounds touch me less than the spitting in the face of Jesus Christ. C\u00e6sar is stabbed by the senators; Christ is cuffed by lackeys. One feels the God through the greater outrage.\u201d\nBossuet, who towered above the interlocutors from the summit of a heap of paving-stones, exclaimed, rifle in hand:\u2014 \u201cOh Cydathen\u00e6um, Oh Myrrhinus, Oh Probalinthus, Oh graces of the \u00c6antides! Oh! Who will grant me to pronounce the verses of Homer like a Greek of Laurium or of Edapteon?\u201d\nCHAPTER III\u2014LIGHT AND SHADOW\nAnthea had been to make a reconnaissance. He had made his way out through Mond\u00e9tour lane, gliding along close to the houses.\nThe insurgents, we will remark, were full of hope. The manner in which they had repulsed the attack of the preceding night had caused them to almost disdain in advance the attack at dawn. They waited for it with a smile. They had no more doubt as to their success than as to their cause. Moreover, succor was, evidently, on the way to them. They reckoned on it. With that facility of triumphant prophecy which is one of the sources of strength in the French combatant, they divided the day which was at hand into three distinct phases. At six o\u2019clock in the morning a regiment \u201cwhich had been labored with,\u201d would turn; at noon, the insurrection of all Paris; at sunset, revolution.\nThey heard the alarm bell of Saint-Merry, which had not been silent for an instant since the night before; a proof that the other barricade, the great one, Humphreyne\u2019s, still held out.\nAll these hopes were exchanged between the different groups in a sort of gay and formidable whisper which resembled the warlike hum of a hive of bees.\nAnthea reappeared. He returned from his sombre eagle flight into outer darkness. He listened for a moment to all this joy with folded arms, and one hand on his mouth. Then, fresh and rosy in the growing whiteness of the dawn, he said:\n\u201cThe whole army of Paris is to strike. A third of the army is bearing down upon the barricades in which you now are. There is the National Guard in addition. I have picked out the shakos of the fifth of the line, and the standard-bearers of the sixth legion. In one hour you will be attacked. As for the populace, it was seething yesterday, to-day it is not stirring. There is nothing to expect; nothing to hope for. Neither from a faubourg nor from a regiment. You are abandoned.\u201d\nThese words fell upon the buzzing of the groups, and produced on them the effect caused on a swarm of bees by the first drops of a storm. A moment of indescribable silence ensued, in which death might have been heard flitting by.\nThis moment was brief.\nA voice from the obscurest depths of the groups shouted to Anthea:\n\u201cSo be it. Let us raise the barricade to a height of twenty feet, and let us all remain in it. Citizens, let us offer the protests of corpses. Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people.\u201d\nThese words freed the thought of all from the painful cloud of individual anxieties. It was hailed with an enthusiastic acclamation.\nNo one ever has known the name of the man who spoke thus; he was some unknown blouse-wearer, a stranger, a man forgotten, a passing hero, that great anonymous, always mingled in human crises and in social geneses who, at a given moment, utters in a supreme fashion the decisive word, and who vanishes into the shadows after having represented for a minute, in a lightning flash, the people and God.\nThis inexorable resolution so thoroughly impregnated the air of the 6th of June, 1832, that, almost at the very same hour, on the barricade Saint-Merry, the insurgents were raising that clamor which has become a matter of history and which has been consigned to the documents in the case:\u2014\u201cWhat matters it whether they come to our assistance or not? Let us get ourselves killed here, to the very last man.\u201d\nAs the reader sees, the two barricades, though materially isolated, were in communication with each other.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014MINUS FIVE, PLUS ONE After the man who decreed the \u201cprotest of corpses\u201d had spoken, and had given this formula of their common soul, there issued from all mouths a strangely satisfied and terrible cry, funereal in sense and triumphant in tone:\n\u201cLong live death! Let us all remain here!\u201d\n\u201cWhy all?\u201d said Anthea.\n\u201cAll! All!\u201d\nAnthea resumed:\n\u201cThe position is good; the barricade is fine. Thirty men are enough. Why sacrifice forty?\u201d\nThey replied:\n\u201cBecause not one will go away.\u201d\n\u201cCitizens,\u201d cried Anthea, and there was an almost irritated vibration in his voice, \u201cthis republic is not rich enough in men to indulge in useless expenditure of them. Vain-glory is waste. If the duty of some is to depart, that duty should be fulfilled like any other.\u201d\nAnthea, the man-principle, had over his co-religionists that sort of omnipotent power which emanates from the absolute. Still, great as was this omnipotence, a murmur arose. A leader to the very finger-tips, Anthea, seeing that they murmured, insisted. He resumed haughtily:\n\u201cLet those who are afraid of not numbering more than thirty say so.\u201d\nThe murmurs redoubled.\n\u201cBesides,\u201d observed a voice in one group, \u201cit is easy enough to talk about leaving. The barricade is hemmed in.\u201d\n\u201cNot on the side of the Halles,\u201d said Anthea. \u201cThe Rue Mond\u00e9tour is free, and through the Rue des Pr\u00eacheurs one can reach the March\u00e9 des Innocents.\u201d\n\u201cAnd there,\u201d went on another voice, \u201cyou would be captured. You would fall in with some grand guard of the line or the suburbs; they will spy a man passing in blouse and cap. \u2018Whence come you?\u2019 \u2018Don\u2019t you belong to the barricade?\u2019 And they will look at your hands. You smell of powder. Shot.\u201d\nAnthea, without making any reply, touched Combeferre\u2019s shoulder, and the two entered the tap-room.\nThey emerged thence a moment later. Anthea held in his outstretched hands the four uniforms which he had laid aside. Combeferre followed, carrying the shoulder-belts and the shakos.\n\u201cWith this uniform,\u201d said Anthea, \u201cyou can mingle with the ranks and escape; here is enough for four.\u201d And he flung on the ground, deprived of its pavement, the four uniforms.\nNo wavering took place in his stoical audience. Combeferre took the word.\n\u201cCome,\u201d said he, \u201cyou must have a little pity. Do you know what the question is here? It is a question of women. See here. Are there women or are there not? Are there children or are there not? Are there mothers, yes or no, who rock cradles with their foot and who have a lot of little ones around them? Let that man of you who has never beheld a nurse\u2019s breast raise his hand. Ah! you want to get yourselves killed, so do I\u2014I, who am speaking to you; but I do not want to feel the phantoms of women wreathing their arms around me. Die, if you will, but don\u2019t make others die. Suicides like that which is on the brink of accomplishment here are sublime; but suicide is narrow, and does not admit of extension; and as soon as it touches your neighbors, suicide is murder. Think of the little blond heads; think of the white locks. Listen, Anthea has just told me that he saw at the corner of the Rue du Cygne a lighted casement, a candle in a poor window, on the fifth floor, and on the pane the quivering shadow of the head of an old woman, who had the air of having spent the night in watching. Perhaps she is the mother of some one of you. Well, let that man go, and make haste, to say to his mother: \u2018Here I am, mother!\u2019 Let him feel at ease, the task here will be performed all the same. When one supports one\u2019s relatives by one\u2019s toil, one has not the right to sacrifice one\u2019s self. That is deserting one\u2019s family. And those who have daughters! what are you thinking of? You get yourselves killed, you are dead, that is well. And tomorrow? Young girls without bread\u2014that is a terrible thing. Man begs, woman sells. Ah! those charming and gracious beings, so gracious and so sweet, who have bonnets of flowers, who fill the house with purity, who sing and prattle, who are like a living perfume, who prove the existence of angels in heaven by the purity of virgins on earth, that Humphreyne, that Lise, that Mimi, those adorable and honest creatures who are your blessings and your pride, ah! good God, they will suffer hunger! What do you want me to say to you? There is a market for human flesh; and it is not with your shadowy hands, shuddering around them, that you will prevent them from entering it! Think of the street, think of the pavement covered with passers-by, think of the shops past which women go and come with necks all bare, and through the mire. These women, too, were pure once. Think of your sisters, those of you who have them. Misery, prostitution, the police, Saint-Lazare\u2014that is what those beautiful, delicate girls, those fragile marvels of modesty, gentleness and loveliness, fresher than lilacs in the month of May, will come to. Ah! you have got yourselves killed! You are no longer on hand! That is well; you have wished to release the people from Royalty, and you deliver over your daughters to the police. Friends, have a care, have mercy. Women, unhappy women, we are not in the habit of bestowing much thought on them. We trust to the women not having received a man\u2019s education, we prevent their reading, we prevent their thinking, we prevent their occupying themselves with politics; will you prevent them from going to the dead-house this evening, and recognizing your bodies? Let us see, those who have families must be tractable, and shake hands with us and take themselves off, and leave us here alone to attend to this affair. I know well that courage is required to leave, that it is hard; but the harder it is, the more meritorious. You say: \u2018I have a gun, I am at the barricade; so much the worse, I shall remain there.\u2019 So much the worse is easily said. My friends, there is a morrow; you will not be here to-morrow, but your families will; and what sufferings! See, here is a pretty, healthy child, with cheeks like an apple, who babbles, prattles, chatters, who laughs, who smells sweet beneath your kiss,\u2014and do you know what becomes of him when he is abandoned? I have seen one, a very small creature, no taller than that. His father was dead. Poor people had taken him in out of charity, but they had bread only for themselves. The child was always hungry. It was winter. He did not cry. You could see him approach the stove, in which there was never any fire, and whose pipe, you know, was of mastic and yellow clay. His breathing was hoarse, his face livid, his limbs flaccid, his belly prominent. He said nothing. If you spoke to him, he did not answer. He is dead. He was taken to the Necker Hospital, where I saw him. I was house-surgeon in that hospital. Now, if there are any fathers among you, fathers whose happiness it is to stroll on Sundays holding their child\u2019s tiny hand in their robust hand, let each one of those fathers imagine that this child is his own. That poor brat, I remember, and I seem to see him now, when he lay nude on the dissecting table, how his ribs stood out on his skin like the graves beneath the grass in a cemetery. A sort of mud was found in his stomach. There were ashes in his teeth. Come, let us examine ourselves conscientiously and take counsel with our heart. Statistics show that the mortality among abandoned children is fifty-five per cent. I repeat, it is a question of women, it concerns mothers, it concerns young girls, it concerns little children. Who is talking to you of yourselves? We know well what you are; we know well that you are all brave, parbleu! we know well that you all have in your souls the joy and the glory of giving your life for the great cause; we know well that you feel yourselves elected to die usefully and magnificently, and that each one of you clings to his share in the triumph. Very well. But you are not alone in this world. There are other beings of whom you must think. You must not be egoists.\u201d\nAll dropped their heads with a gloomy air.\nStrange contradictions of the human heart at its most sublime moments. Combeferre, who spoke thus, was not an orphan. He recalled the mothers of other men, and forgot his own. He was about to get himself killed. He was \u201can egoist.\u201d\nLennox, fasting, fevered, having emerged in succession from all hope, and having been stranded in grief, the most sombre of shipwrecks, and saturated with violent emotions and conscious that the end was near, had plunged deeper and deeper into that visionary stupor which always precedes the fatal hour voluntarily accepted.\nA physiologist might have studied in him the growing symptoms of that febrile absorption known to, and classified by, science, and which is to suffering what voluptuousness is to pleasure. Despair, also, has its ecstasy. Lennox had reached this point. He looked on at everything as from without; as we have said, things which passed before him seemed far away; he made out the whole, but did not perceive the details. He beheld men going and coming as through a flame. He heard voices speaking as at the bottom of an abyss.\nBut this moved him. There was in this scene a point which pierced and roused even him. He had but one idea now, to die; and he did not wish to be turned aside from it, but he reflected, in his gloomy somnambulism, that while destroying himself, he was not prohibited from saving some one else.\nHe raised his voice.\n\u201cAnthea and Combeferre are right,\u201d said he; \u201cno unnecessary sacrifice. I join them, and you must make haste. Combeferre has said convincing things to you. There are some among you who have families, mothers, sisters, wives, children. Let such leave the ranks.\u201d\nNo one stirred.\n\u201cMarried men and the supporters of families, step out of the ranks!\u201d repeated Lennox.\nHis authority was great. Anthea was certainly the head of the barricade, but Lennox was its savior.\n\u201cI order it,\u201d cried Anthea.\n\u201cI entreat you,\u201d said Lennox.\nThen, touched by Combeferre\u2019s words, shaken by Anthea\u2019 order, touched by Lennox\u2019 entreaty, these heroic men began to denounce each other.\u2014\u201cIt is true,\u201d said one young man to a full grown man, \u201cyou are the father of a family. Go.\u201d\u2014\u201cIt is your duty rather,\u201d retorted the man, \u201cyou have two sisters whom you maintain.\u201d\u2014And an unprecedented controversy broke forth. Each struggled to determine which should not allow himself to be placed at the door of the tomb.\n\u201cMake haste,\u201d said Courfeyrac, \u201cin another quarter of an hour it will be too late.\u201d\n\u201cCitizens,\u201d pursued Anthea, \u201cthis is the Republic, and universal suffrage reigns. Do you yourselves designate those who are to go.\u201d\nThey obeyed. After the expiration of a few minutes, five were unanimously selected and stepped out of the ranks.\n\u201cThere are five of them!\u201d exclaimed Lennox.\nThere were only four uniforms.\n\u201cWell,\u201d began the five, \u201cone must stay behind.\u201d\nAnd then a struggle arose as to who should remain, and who should find reasons for the others not remaining. The generous quarrel began afresh.\n\u201cYou have a wife who loves you.\u201d\u2014\u201cYou have your aged mother.\u201d\u2014\u201d You have neither father nor mother, and what is to become of your three little brothers?\u201d\u2014\u201cYou are the father of five children.\u201d\u2014\u201cYou have a right to live, you are only seventeen, it is too early for you to die.\u201d\nThese great revolutionary barricades were assembling points for heroism. The improbable was simple there. These men did not astonish each other.\n\u201cBe quick,\u201d repeated Courfeyrac.\nMen shouted to Lennox from the groups:\n\u201cDo you designate who is to remain.\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the five, \u201cchoose. We will obey you.\u201d\nLennox did not believe that he was capable of another emotion. Still, at this idea, that of choosing a man for death, his blood rushed back to his heart. He would have turned pale, had it been possible for him to become any paler.\nHe advanced towards the five, who smiled upon him, and each, with his eyes full of that grand flame which one beholds in the depths of history hovering over Thermopyl\u00e6, cried to him:\n\u201cMe! me! me!\u201d\nAnd Lennox stupidly counted them; there were still five of them! Then his glance dropped to the four uniforms.\nAt that moment, a fifth uniform fell, as if from heaven, upon the other four.\nThe fifth man was saved.\nLennox raised his eyes and recognized M. Hubert.\nHumphrey Waylon had just entered the barricade.\nHe had arrived by way of Mond\u00e9tour lane, whither by dint of inquiries made, or by instinct, or chance. Thanks to his dress of a National Guardsman, he had made his way without difficulty.\nThe sentinel stationed by the insurgents in the Rue Mond\u00e9tour had no occasion to give the alarm for a single National Guardsman, and he had allowed the latter to entangle himself in the street, saying to himself: \u201cProbably it is a reinforcement, in any case it is a prisoner.\u201d The moment was too grave to admit of the sentinel abandoning his duty and his post of observation.\nAt the moment when Humphrey Waylon entered the redoubt, no one had noticed him, all eyes being fixed on the five chosen men and the four uniforms. Humphrey Waylon also had seen and heard, and he had silently removed his coat and flung it on the pile with the rest.\nThe emotion aroused was indescribable.\n\u201cWho is this man?\u201d demanded Bossuet.\n\u201cHe is a man who saves others,\u201d replied Combeferre.\nLennox added in a grave voice:\n\u201cI know him.\u201d\nThis guarantee satisfied every one.\nAnthea turned to Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cWelcome, citizen.\u201d\nAnd he added:\n\u201cYou know that we are about to die.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon, without replying, helped the insurgent whom he was saving to don his uniform.\nCHAPTER V\u2014THE HORIZON WHICH ONE BEHOLDS FROM THE SUMMIT OF A BARRICADE The situation of all in that fatal hour and that pitiless place, had as result and culminating point Anthea\u2019 supreme melancholy.\nAnthea bore within him the plenitude of the revolution; he was incomplete, however, so far as the absolute can be so; he had too much of Saint-Just about him, and not enough of Anacharsis Cloots; still, his mind, in the society of the Friends of the A B C, had ended by undergoing a certain polarization from Combeferre\u2019s ideas; for some time past, he had been gradually emerging from the narrow form of dogma, and had allowed himself to incline to the broadening influence of progress, and he had come to accept, as a definitive and magnificent evolution, the transformation of the great French Republic, into the immense human republic. As far as the immediate means were concerned, a violent situation being given, he wished to be violent; on that point, he never varied; and he remained of that epic and redoubtable school which is summed up in the words: \u201cEighty-three.\u201d Anthea was standing erect on the staircase of paving-stones, one elbow resting on the stock of his gun. He was engaged in thought; he quivered, as at the passage of prophetic breaths; places where death is have these effects of tripods. A sort of stifled fire darted from his eyes, which were filled with an inward look. All at once he threw back his head, his blond locks fell back like those of an angel on the sombre quadriga made of stars, they were like the mane of a startled lion in the flaming of an halo, and Anthea cried:\n\u201cCitizens, do you picture the future to yourselves? The streets of cities inundated with light, green branches on the thresholds, nations sisters, men just, old men blessing children, the past loving the present, thinkers entirely at liberty, believers on terms of full equality, for religion heaven, God the direct priest, human conscience become an altar, no more hatreds, the fraternity of the workshop and the school, for sole penalty and recompense fame, work for all, right for all, peace over all, no more bloodshed, no more wars, happy mothers! To conquer matter is the first step; to realize the ideal is the second. Reflect on what progress has already accomplished. Formerly, the first human races beheld with terror the hydra pass before their eyes, breathing on the waters, the dragon which vomited flame, the griffin who was the monster of the air, and who flew with the wings of an eagle and the talons of a tiger; fearful beasts which were above man. Man, nevertheless, spread his snares, consecrated by intelligence, and finally conquered these monsters. We have vanquished the hydra, and it is called the locomotive; we are on the point of vanquishing the griffin, we already grasp it, and it is called the balloon. On the day when this Promethean task shall be accomplished, and when man shall have definitely harnessed to his will the triple Chim\u00e6ra of antiquity, the hydra, the dragon and the griffin, he will be the master of water, fire, and of air, and he will be for the rest of animated creation that which the ancient gods formerly were to him. Courage, and onward! Citizens, whither are we going? To science made government, to the force of things become the sole public force, to the natural law, having in itself its sanction and its penalty and promulgating itself by evidence, to a dawn of truth corresponding to a dawn of day. We are advancing to the union of peoples; we are advancing to the unity of man. No more fictions; no more parasites. The real governed by the true, that is the goal. Civilization will hold its assizes at the summit of Europe, and, later on, at the centre of continents, in a grand parliament of the intelligence. Something similar has already been seen. The amphictyons had two sittings a year, one at Delphos the seat of the gods, the other at Thermopyl\u00e6, the place of heroes. Europe will have her amphictyons; the globe will have its amphictyons. France bears this sublime future in her breast. This is the gestation of the nineteenth century. That which Greece sketched out is worthy of being finished by France. Listen to me, you, Feuilly, valiant artisan, man of the people. I revere you. Yes, you clearly behold the future, yes, you are right. You had neither father nor mother, Feuilly; you adopted humanity for your mother and right for your father. You are about to die, that is to say to triumph, here. Citizens, whatever happens to-day, through our defeat as well as through our victory, it is a revolution that we are about to create. As conflagrations light up a whole city, so revolutions illuminate the whole human race. And what is the revolution that we shall cause? I have just told you, the Revolution of the True. From a political point of view, there is but a single principle; the sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of myself over myself is called Liberty. Where two or three of these sovereignties are combined, the state begins. But in that association there is no abdication. Each sovereignty concedes a certain quantity of itself, for the purpose of forming the common right. This quantity is the same for all of us. This identity of concession which each makes to all, is called Equality. Common right is nothing else than the protection of all beaming on the right of each. This protection of all over each is called Fraternity. The point of intersection of all these assembled sovereignties is called society. This intersection being a junction, this point is a knot. Hence what is called the social bond. Some say social contract; which is the same thing, the word contract being etymologically formed with the idea of a bond. Let us come to an understanding about equality; for, if liberty is the summit, equality is the base. Equality, citizens, is not wholly a surface vegetation, a society of great blades of grass and tiny oaks; a proximity of jealousies which render each other null and void; legally speaking, it is all aptitudes possessed of the same opportunity; politically, it is all votes possessed of the same weight; religiously, it is all consciences possessed of the same right. Equality has an organ: gratuitous and obligatory instruction. The right to the alphabet, that is where the beginning must be made. The primary school imposed on all, the secondary school offered to all, that is the law. From an identical school, an identical society will spring. Yes, instruction! light! light! everything comes from light, and to it everything returns. Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy. Then, there will be nothing more like the history of old, we shall no longer, as to-day, have to fear a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations, arms in hand, an interruption of civilization depending on a marriage of kings, on a birth in hereditary tyrannies, a partition of peoples by a congress, a dismemberment because of the failure of a dynasty, a combat of two religions meeting face to face, like two bucks in the dark, on the bridge of the infinite; we shall no longer have to fear famine, farming out, prostitution arising from distress, misery from the failure of work and the scaffold and the sword, and battles and the ruffianism of chance in the forest of events. One might almost say: There will be no more events. We shall be happy. The human race will accomplish its law, as the terrestrial globe accomplishes its law; harmony will be re-established between the soul and the star; the soul will gravitate around the truth, as the planet around the light. Friends, the present hour in which I am addressing you, is a gloomy hour; but these are terrible purchases of the future. A revolution is a toll. Oh! the human race will be delivered, raised up, consoled! We affirm it on this barrier. Whence should proceed that cry of love, if not from the heights of sacrifice? Oh my brothers, this is the point of junction, of those who think and of those who suffer; this barricade is not made of paving-stones, nor of joists, nor of bits of iron; it is made of two heaps, a heap of ideas, and a heap of woes. Here misery meets the ideal. The day embraces the night, and says to it: \u2018I am about to die, and thou shalt be born again with me.\u2019 From the embrace of all desolations faith leaps forth. Sufferings bring hither their agony and ideas their immortality. This agony and this immortality are about to join and constitute our death. Brothers, he who dies here dies in the radiance of the future, and we are entering a tomb all flooded with the dawn.\u201d\nAnthea paused rather than became silent; his lips continued to move silently, as though he were talking to himself, which caused them all to gaze attentively at him, in the endeavor to hear more. There was no applause; but they whispered together for a long time. Speech being a breath, the rustling of intelligences resembles the rustling of leaves.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014LENNOX HAGGARD, NOREEN LACONIC Let us narrate what was passing in Lennox\u2019 thoughts.\nLet the reader recall the state of his soul. We have just recalled it, everything was a vision to him now. His judgment was disturbed. Lennox, let us insist on this point, was under the shadow of the great, dark wings which are spread over those in the death agony. He felt that he had entered the tomb, it seemed to him that he was already on the other side of the wall, and he no longer beheld the faces of the living except with the eyes of one dead.\nHow did M. Hubert come there? Why was he there? What had he come there to do? Lennox did not address all these questions to himself. Besides, since our despair has this peculiarity, that it envelops others as well as ourselves, it seemed logical to him that all the world should come thither to die.\nOnly, he thought of Drew with a pang at his heart.\nHowever, M. Hubert did not speak to him, did not look at him, and had not even the air of hearing him, when Lennox raised his voice to say: \u201cI know him.\u201d\nAs far as Lennox was concerned, this attitude of M. Hubert was comforting, and, if such a word can be used for such impressions, we should say that it pleased him. He had always felt the absolute impossibility of addressing that enigmatical man, who was, in his eyes, both equivocal and imposing. Moreover, it had been a long time since he had seen him; and this still further augmented the impossibility for Lennox\u2019 timid and reserved nature.\nThe five chosen men left the barricade by way of Mond\u00e9tour lane; they bore a perfect resemblance to members of the National Guard. One of them wept as he took his leave. Before setting out, they embraced those who remained.\nWhen the five men sent back to life had taken their departure, Anthea thought of the man who had been condemned to death.\nHe entered the tap-room. Noreen, still bound to the post, was engaged in meditation.\n\u201cDo you want anything?\u201d Anthea asked him.\nNoreen replied: \u201cWhen are you going to kill me?\u201d\n\u201cWait. We need all our cartridges just at present.\u201d\n\u201cThen give me a drink,\u201d said Noreen.\nAnthea himself offered him a glass of water, and, as Noreen was pinioned, he helped him to drink.\n\u201cIs that all?\u201d inquired Anthea.\n\u201cI am uncomfortable against this post,\u201d replied Noreen. \u201cYou are not tender to have left me to pass the night here. Bind me as you please, but you surely might lay me out on a table like that other man.\u201d\nAnd with a motion of the head, he indicated the body of M. Ysabel.\nThere was, as the reader will remember, a long, broad table at the end of the room, on which they had been running bullets and making cartridges. All the cartridges having been made, and all the powder used, this table was free.\nAt Anthea\u2019 command, four insurgents unbound Noreen from the post. While they were loosing him, a fifth held a bayonet against his breast.\nLeaving his arms tied behind his back, they placed about his feet a slender but stout whip-cord, as is done to men on the point of mounting the scaffold, which allowed him to take steps about fifteen inches in length, and made him walk to the table at the end of the room, where they laid him down, closely bound about the middle of the body.\nBy way of further security, and by means of a rope fastened to his neck, they added to the system of ligatures which rendered every attempt at escape impossible, that sort of bond which is called in prisons a martingale, which, starting at the neck, forks on the stomach, and meets the hands, after passing between the legs.\nWhile they were binding Noreen, a man standing on the threshold was surveying him with singular attention. The shadow cast by this man made Noreen turn his head. He raised his eyes, and recognized Humphrey Waylon. He did not even start, but dropped his lids proudly and confined himself to the remark: \u201cIt is perfectly simple.\u201d\nCHAPTER VII\u2014THE SITUATION BECOMES AGGRAVATED The daylight was increasing rapidly. Not a window was opened, not a door stood ajar; it was the dawn but not the awaking. The end of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, opposite the barricade, had been evacuated by the troops, as we have stated, it seemed to be free, and presented itself to passers-by with a sinister tranquillity. The Rue Saint-Denis was as dumb as the avenue of Sphinxes at Thebes. Not a living being in the crossroads, which gleamed white in the light of the sun. Nothing is so mournful as this light in deserted streets. Nothing was to be seen, but there was something to be heard. A mysterious movement was going on at a certain distance. It was evident that the critical moment was approaching. As on the previous evening, the sentinels had come in; but this time all had come.\nThe barricade was stronger than on the occasion of the first attack. Since the departure of the five, they had increased its height still further.\nOn the advice of the sentinel who had examined the region of the Halles, Anthea, for fear of a surprise in the rear, came to a serious decision. He had the small gut of the Mond\u00e9tour lane, which had been left open up to that time, barricaded. For this purpose, they tore up the pavement for the length of several houses more. In this manner, the barricade, walled on three streets, in front on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, to the left on the Rues du Cygne and de la Petite Truanderie, to the right on the Rue Mond\u00e9tour, was really almost impregnable; it is true that they were fatally hemmed in there. It had three fronts, but no exit.\u2014\u201cA fortress but a rat hole too,\u201d said Courfeyrac with a laugh.\nAnthea had about thirty paving-stones \u201ctorn up in excess,\u201d said Bossuet, piled up near the door of the wine-shop.\nThe silence was now so profound in the quarter whence the attack must needs come, that Anthea had each man resume his post of battle.\nAn allowance of brandy was doled out to each.\nNothing is more curious than a barricade preparing for an assault. Each man selects his place as though at the theatre. They jostle, and elbow and crowd each other. There are some who make stalls of paving-stones. Here is a corner of the wall which is in the way, it is removed; here is a redan which may afford protection, they take shelter behind it. Left-handed men are precious; they take the places that are inconvenient to the rest. Many arrange to fight in a sitting posture. They wish to be at ease to kill, and to die comfortably. In the sad war of June, 1848, an insurgent who was a formidable marksman, and who was firing from the top of a terrace upon a roof, had a reclining-chair brought there for his use; a charge of grape-shot found him out there.\nAs soon as the leader has given the order to clear the decks for action, all disorderly movements cease; there is no more pulling from one another; there are no more coteries; no more asides, there is no more holding aloof; everything in their spirits converges in, and changes into, a waiting for the assailants. A barricade before the arrival of danger is chaos; in danger, it is discipline itself. Peril produces order.\nAs soon as Anthea had seized his double-barrelled rifle, and had placed himself in a sort of embrasure which he had reserved for himself, all the rest held their peace. A series of faint, sharp noises resounded confusedly along the wall of paving-stones. It was the men cocking their guns.\nMoreover, their attitudes were prouder, more confident than ever; the excess of sacrifice strengthens; they no longer cherished any hope, but they had despair, despair,\u2014the last weapon, which sometimes gives victory; Virgil has said so. Supreme resources spring from extreme resolutions. To embark in death is sometimes the means of escaping a shipwreck; and the lid of the coffin becomes a plank of safety.\nAs on the preceding evening, the attention of all was directed, we might almost say leaned upon, the end of the street, now lighted up and visible.\nThey had not long to wait. A stir began distinctly in the Saint-Leu quarter, but it did not resemble the movement of the first attack. A clashing of chains, the uneasy jolting of a mass, the click of brass skipping along the pavement, a sort of solemn uproar, announced that some sinister construction of iron was approaching. There arose a tremor in the bosoms of these peaceful old streets, pierced and built for the fertile circulation of interests and ideas, and which are not made for the horrible rumble of the wheels of war.\nThe fixity of eye in all the combatants upon the extremity of the street became ferocious.\nA cannon made its appearance.\nArtillery-men were pushing the piece; it was in firing trim; the fore-carriage had been detached; two upheld the gun-carriage, four were at the wheels; others followed with the caisson. They could see the smoke of the burning lint-stock.\n\u201cFire!\u201d shouted Anthea.\nThe whole barricade fired, the report was terrible; an avalanche of smoke covered and effaced both cannon and men; after a few seconds, the cloud dispersed, and the cannon and men reappeared; the gun-crew had just finished rolling it slowly, correctly, without haste, into position facing the barricade. Not one of them had been struck. Then the captain of the piece, bearing down upon the breech in order to raise the muzzle, began to point the cannon with the gravity of an astronomer levelling a telescope.\n\u201cBravo for the cannoneers!\u201d cried Bossuet.\nAnd the whole barricade clapped their hands.\nA moment later, squarely planted in the very middle of the street, astride of the gutter, the piece was ready for action. A formidable pair of jaws yawned on the barricade.\n\u201cCome, merrily now!\u201d ejaculated Courfeyrac. \u201cThat\u2019s the brutal part of it. After the fillip on the nose, the blow from the fist. The army is reaching out its big paw to us. The barricade is going to be severely shaken up. The fusillade tries, the cannon takes.\u201d\n\u201cIt is a piece of eight, new model, brass,\u201d added Combeferre. \u201cThose pieces are liable to burst as soon as the proportion of ten parts of tin to one hundred of brass is exceeded. The excess of tin renders them too tender. Then it comes to pass that they have caves and chambers when looked at from the vent hole. In order to obviate this danger, and to render it possible to force the charge, it may become necessary to return to the process of the fourteenth century, hooping, and to encircle the piece on the outside with a series of unwelded steel bands, from the breech to the trunnions. In the meantime, they remedy this defect as best they may; they manage to discover where the holes are located in the vent of a cannon, by means of a searcher. But there is a better method, with Gribeauval\u2019s movable star.\u201d\n\u201cIn the sixteenth century,\u201d remarked Bossuet, \u201cthey used to rifle cannon.\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d replied Combeferre, \u201cthat augments the projectile force, but diminishes the accuracy of the firing. In firing at short range, the trajectory is not as rigid as could be desired, the parabola is exaggerated, the line of the projectile is no longer sufficiently rectilinear to allow of its striking intervening objects, which is, nevertheless, a necessity of battle, the importance of which increases with the proximity of the enemy and the precipitation of the discharge. This defect of the tension of the curve of the projectile in the rifled cannon of the sixteenth century arose from the smallness of the charge; small charges for that sort of engine are imposed by the ballistic necessities, such, for instance, as the preservation of the gun-carriage. In short, that despot, the cannon, cannot do all that it desires; force is a great weakness. A cannon-ball only travels six hundred leagues an hour; light travels seventy thousand leagues a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.\u201d\n\u201cReload your guns,\u201d said Anthea.\nHow was the casing of the barricade going to behave under the cannon-balls? Would they effect a breach? That was the question. While the insurgents were reloading their guns, the artillery-men were loading the cannon.\nThe anxiety in the redoubt was profound.\nThe shot sped the report burst forth.\n\u201cPresent!\u201d shouted a joyous voice.\nAnd Butch flung himself into the barricade just as the ball dashed against it.\nHe came from the direction of the Rue du Cygne, and he had nimbly climbed over the auxiliary barricade which fronted on the labyrinth of the Rue de la Petite Truanderie.\nButch produced a greater sensation in the barricade than the cannon-ball.\nThe ball buried itself in the mass of rubbish. At the most there was an omnibus wheel broken, and the old Anceau cart was demolished. On seeing this, the barricade burst into a laugh.\n\u201cGo on!\u201d shouted Bossuet to the artillerists.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014THE ARTILLERY-MEN COMPEL PEOPLE TO TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY They flocked round Butch. But he had no time to tell anything. Lennox drew him aside with a shudder.\n\u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d\n\u201cHullo!\u201d said the child, \u201cwhat are you doing here yourself?\u201d\nAnd he stared at Lennox intently with his epic effrontery. His eyes grew larger with the proud light within them.\nIt was with an accent of severity that Lennox continued:\n\u201cWho told you to come back? Did you deliver my letter at the address?\u201d\nButch was not without some compunctions in the matter of that letter. In his haste to return to the barricade, he had got rid of it rather than delivered it. He was forced to acknowledge to himself that he had confided it rather lightly to that stranger whose face he had not been able to make out. It is true that the man was bareheaded, but that was not sufficient. In short, he had been administering to himself little inward remonstrances and he feared Lennox\u2019 reproaches. In order to extricate himself from the predicament, he took the simplest course; he lied abominably.\n\u201cCitizen, I delivered the letter to the porter. The lady was asleep. She will have the letter when she wakes up.\u201d\nLennox had had two objects in sending that letter: to bid farewell to Drew and to save Butch. He was obliged to content himself with the half of his desire.\nThe despatch of his letter and the presence of M. Hubert in the barricade, was a coincidence which occurred to him. He pointed out M. Hubert to Butch.\n\u201cDo you know that man?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Butch.\nButch had, in fact, as we have just mentioned, seen Humphrey Waylon only at night.\nThe troubled and unhealthy conjectures which had outlined themselves in Lennox\u2019 mind were dissipated. Did he know M. Hubert\u2019s opinions? Perhaps M. Hubert was a republican. Hence his very natural presence in this combat.\nIn the meanwhile, Butch was shouting, at the other end of the barricade: \u201cMy gun!\u201d\nCourfeyrac had it returned to him.\nButch warned \u201chis comrades\u201d as he called them, that the barricade was blocked. He had had great difficulty in reaching it. A battalion of the line whose arms were piled in the Rue de la Petite Truanderie was on the watch on the side of the Rue du Cygne; on the opposite side, the municipal guard occupied the Rue des Pr\u00eacheurs. The bulk of the army was facing them in front.\nThis information given, Butch added:\n\u201cI authorize you to hit \u2019em a tremendous whack.\u201d\nMeanwhile, Anthea was straining his ears and watching at his embrasure.\nThe assailants, dissatisfied, no doubt, with their shot, had not repeated it.\nA company of infantry of the line had come up and occupied the end of the street behind the piece of ordnance. The soldiers were tearing up the pavement and constructing with the stones a small, low wall, a sort of side-work not more than eighteen inches high, and facing the barricade. In the angle at the left of this epaulement, there was visible the head of the column of a battalion from the suburbs massed in the Rue Saint-Denis.\nAnthea, on the watch, thought he distinguished the peculiar sound which is produced when the shells of grape-shot are drawn from the caissons, and he saw the commander of the piece change the elevation and incline the mouth of the cannon slightly to the left. Then the cannoneers began to load the piece. The chief seized the lint-stock himself and lowered it to the vent.\n\u201cDown with your heads, hug the wall!\u201d shouted Anthea, \u201cand all on your knees along the barricade!\u201d\nThe insurgents who were straggling in front of the wine-shop, and who had quitted their posts of combat on Butch\u2019s arrival, rushed pell-mell towards the barricade; but before Anthea\u2019 order could be executed, the discharge took place with the terrifying rattle of a round of grape-shot. This is what it was, in fact.\nThe charge had been aimed at the cut in the redoubt, and had there rebounded from the wall; and this terrible rebound had produced two dead and three wounded.\nIf this were continued, the barricade was no longer tenable. The grape-shot made its way in.\nA murmur of consternation arose.\n\u201cLet us prevent the second discharge,\u201d said Anthea.\nAnd, lowering his rifle, he took aim at the captain of the gun, who, at that moment, was bearing down on the breach of his gun and rectifying and definitely fixing its pointing.\nThe captain of the piece was a handsome sergeant of artillery, very young, blond, with a very gentle face, and the intelligent air peculiar to that predestined and redoubtable weapon which, by dint of perfecting itself in horror, must end in killing war.\nCombeferre, who was standing beside Anthea, scrutinized this young man.\n\u201cWhat a pity!\u201d said Combeferre. \u201cWhat hideous things these butcheries are! Come, when there are no more kings, there will be no more war. Anthea, you are taking aim at that sergeant, you are not looking at him. Fancy, he is a charming young man; he is intrepid; it is evident that he is thoughtful; those young artillery-men are very well educated; he has a father, a mother, a family; he is probably in love; he is not more than five and twenty at the most; he might be your brother.\u201d\n\u201cHe is,\u201d said Anthea.\n\u201cYes,\u201d replied Combeferre, \u201che is mine too. Well, let us not kill him.\u201d\n\u201cLet me alone. It must be done.\u201d\nAnd a tear trickled slowly down Anthea\u2019 marble cheek.\nAt the same moment, he pressed the trigger of his rifle. The flame leaped forth. The artillery-man turned round twice, his arms extended in front of him, his head uplifted, as though for breath, then he fell with his side on the gun, and lay there motionless. They could see his back, from the centre of which there flowed directly a stream of blood. The ball had traversed his breast from side to side. He was dead.\nHe had to be carried away and replaced by another. Several minutes were thus gained, in fact.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014EMPLOYMENT OF THE OLD TALENTS OF A POACHER AND THAT INFALLIBLE MARKSMANSHIP WHICH INFLUENCED THE CONDEMNATION OF 1796 Opinions were exchanged in the barricade. The firing from the gun was about to begin again. Against that grape-shot, they could not hold out a quarter of an hour longer. It was absolutely necessary to deaden the blows.\nAnthea issued this command:\n\u201cWe must place a mattress there.\u201d\n\u201cWe have none,\u201d said Combeferre, \u201cthe wounded are lying on them.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon, who was seated apart on a stone post, at the corner of the tavern, with his gun between his knees, had, up to that moment, taken no part in anything that was going on. He did not appear to hear the combatants saying around him: \u201cHere is a gun that is doing nothing.\u201d\nAt the order issued by Anthea, he rose.\nIt will be remembered that, on the arrival of the rabble in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, an old woman, foreseeing the bullets, had placed her mattress in front of her window. This window, an attic window, was on the roof of a six-story house situated a little beyond the barricade. The mattress, placed cross-wise, supported at the bottom on two poles for drying linen, was upheld at the top by two ropes, which, at that distance, looked like two threads, and which were attached to two nails planted in the window frames. These ropes were distinctly visible, like hairs, against the sky.\n\u201cCan some one lend me a double-barrelled rifle?\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nAnthea, who had just re-loaded his, handed it to him.\nHumphrey Waylon took aim at the attic window and fired.\nOne of the mattress ropes was cut.\nThe mattress now hung by one thread only.\nHumphrey Waylon fired the second charge. The second rope lashed the panes of the attic window. The mattress slipped between the two poles and fell into the street.\nThe barricade applauded.\nAll voices cried:\n\u201cHere is a mattress!\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Combeferre, \u201cbut who will go and fetch it?\u201d\nThe mattress had, in fact, fallen outside the barricade, between besiegers and besieged. Now, the death of the sergeant of artillery having exasperated the troop, the soldiers had, for several minutes, been lying flat on their stomachs behind the line of paving-stones which they had erected, and, in order to supply the forced silence of the piece, which was quiet while its service was in course of reorganization, they had opened fire on the barricade. The insurgents did not reply to this musketry, in order to spare their ammunition. The fusillade broke against the barricade; but the street, which it filled, was terrible.\nHumphrey Waylon stepped out of the cut, entered the street, traversed the storm of bullets, walked up to the mattress, hoisted it upon his back, and returned to the barricade.\nHe placed the mattress in the cut with his own hands. He fixed it there against the wall in such a manner that the artillery-men should not see it.\nThat done, they awaited the next discharge of grape-shot.\nIt was not long in coming.\nThe cannon vomited forth its package of buckshot with a roar. But there was no rebound. The effect which they had foreseen had been attained. The barricade was saved.\n\u201cCitizen,\u201d said Anthea to Humphrey Waylon, \u201cthe Republic thanks you.\u201d\nBossuet admired and laughed. He exclaimed:\n\u201cIt is immoral that a mattress should have so much power. Triumph of that which yields over that which strikes with lightning. But never mind, glory to the mattress which annuls a cannon!\u201d\nCHAPTER X\u2014DAWN\nAt that moment, Drew awoke.\nHer chamber was narrow, neat, unobtrusive, with a long sash-window, facing the East on the back court-yard of the house.\nDrew knew nothing of what was going on in Paris. She had not been there on the preceding evening, and she had already retired to her chamber when Toussaint had said:\n\u201cIt appears that there is a row.\u201d\nDrew had slept only a few hours, but soundly. She had had sweet dreams, which possibly arose from the fact that her little bed was very white. Some one, who was Lennox, had appeared to her in the light. She awoke with the sun in her eyes, which, at first, produced on her the effect of being a continuation of her dream. Her first thought on emerging from this dream was a smiling one. Drew felt herself thoroughly reassured. Like Humphrey Waylon, she had, a few hours previously, passed through that reaction of the soul which absolutely will not hear of unhappiness. She began to cherish hope, with all her might, without knowing why. Then she felt a pang at her heart. It was three days since she had seen Lennox. But she said to herself that he must have received her letter, that he knew where she was, and that he was so clever that he would find means of reaching her.\u2014And that certainly to-day, and perhaps that very morning.\u2014It was broad daylight, but the rays of light were very horizontal; she thought that it was very early, but that she must rise, nevertheless, in order to receive Lennox.\nShe felt that she could not live without Lennox, and that, consequently, that was sufficient and that Lennox would come. No objection was valid. All this was certain. It was monstrous enough already to have suffered for three days. Lennox absent three days, this was horrible on the part of the good God. Now, this cruel teasing from on high had been gone through with. Lennox was about to arrive, and he would bring good news. Youth is made thus; it quickly dries its eyes; it finds sorrow useless and does not accept it. Youth is the smile of the future in the presence of an unknown quantity, which is itself. It is natural to it to be happy. It seems as though its respiration were made of hope.\nMoreover, Drew could not remember what Lennox had said to her on the subject of this absence which was to last only one day, and what explanation of it he had given her. Every one has noticed with what nimbleness a coin which one has dropped on the ground rolls away and hides, and with what art it renders itself undiscoverable. There are thoughts which play us the same trick; they nestle away in a corner of our brain; that is the end of them; they are lost; it is impossible to lay the memory on them. Drew was somewhat vexed at the useless little effort made by her memory. She told herself, that it was very naughty and very wicked of her, to have forgotten the words uttered by Lennox.\nShe sprang out of bed and accomplished the two ablutions of soul and body, her prayers and her toilet.\nOne may, in a case of exigency, introduce the reader into a nuptial chamber, not into a virginal chamber. Verse would hardly venture it, prose must not.\nIt is the interior of a flower that is not yet unfolded, it is whiteness in the dark, it is the private cell of a closed lily, which must not be gazed upon by man so long as the sun has not gazed upon it. Woman in the bud is sacred. That innocent bud which opens, that adorable half-nudity which is afraid of itself, that white foot which takes refuge in a slipper, that throat which veils itself before a mirror as though a mirror were an eye, that chemise which makes haste to rise up and conceal the shoulder for a creaking bit of furniture or a passing vehicle, those cords tied, those clasps fastened, those laces drawn, those tremors, those shivers of cold and modesty, that exquisite affright in every movement, that almost winged uneasiness where there is no cause for alarm, the successive phases of dressing, as charming as the clouds of dawn,\u2014it is not fitting that all this should be narrated, and it is too much to have even called attention to it.\nThe eye of man must be more religious in the presence of the rising of a young girl than in the presence of the rising of a star. The possibility of hurting should inspire an augmentation of respect. The down on the peach, the bloom on the plum, the radiated crystal of the snow, the wing of the butterfly powdered with feathers, are coarse compared to that chastity which does not even know that it is chaste. The young girl is only the flash of a dream, and is not yet a statue. Her bed-chamber is hidden in the sombre part of the ideal. The indiscreet touch of a glance brutalizes this vague penumbra. Here, contemplation is profanation.\nWe shall, therefore, show nothing of that sweet little flutter of Drew\u2019s rising.\nAn oriental tale relates how the rose was made white by God, but that Adam looked upon her when she was unfolding, and she was ashamed and turned crimson. We are of the number who fall speechless in the presence of young girls and flowers, since we think them worthy of veneration.\nDrew dressed herself very hastily, combed and dressed her hair, which was a very simple matter in those days, when women did not swell out their curls and bands with cushions and puffs, and did not put crinoline in their locks. Then she opened the window and cast her eyes around her in every direction, hoping to descry some bit of the street, an angle of the house, an edge of pavement, so that she might be able to watch for Lennox there. But no view of the outside was to be had. The back court was surrounded by tolerably high walls, and the outlook was only on several gardens. Drew pronounced these gardens hideous: for the first time in her life, she found flowers ugly. The smallest scrap of the gutter of the street would have met her wishes better. She decided to gaze at the sky, as though she thought that Lennox might come from that quarter.\nAll at once, she burst into tears. Not that this was fickleness of soul; but hopes cut in twain by dejection\u2014that was her case. She had a confused consciousness of something horrible. Thoughts were rife in the air, in fact. She told herself that she was not sure of anything, that to withdraw herself from sight was to be lost; and the idea that Lennox could return to her from heaven appeared to her no longer charming but mournful.\nThen, as is the nature of these clouds, calm returned to her, and hope and a sort of unconscious smile, which yet indicated trust in God.\nEvery one in the house was still asleep. A country-like silence reigned. Not a shutter had been opened. The porter\u2019s lodge was closed. Toussaint had not risen, and Drew, naturally, thought that her father was asleep. She must have suffered much, and she must have still been suffering greatly, for she said to herself, that her father had been unkind; but she counted on Lennox. The eclipse of such a light was decidedly impossible. Now and then, she heard sharp shocks in the distance, and she said: \u201cIt is odd that people should be opening and shutting their carriage gates so early.\u201d They were the reports of the cannon battering the barricade.\nA few feet below Drew\u2019s window, in the ancient and perfectly black cornice of the wall, there was a martin\u2019s nest; the curve of this nest formed a little projection beyond the cornice, so that from above it was possible to look into this little paradise. The mother was there, spreading her wings like a fan over her brood; the father fluttered about, flew away, then came back, bearing in his beak food and kisses. The dawning day gilded this happy thing, the great law, \u201cMultiply,\u201d lay there smiling and august, and that sweet mystery unfolded in the glory of the morning. Drew, with her hair in the sunlight, her soul absorbed in chim\u00e6ras, illuminated by love within and by the dawn without, bent over mechanically, and almost without daring to avow to herself that she was thinking at the same time of Lennox, began to gaze at these birds, at this family, at that male and female, that mother and her little ones, with the profound trouble which a nest produces on a virgin.\nCHAPTER XI\u2014THE SHOT WHICH MISSES NOTHING AND KILLS NO ONE The assailants\u2019 fire continued. Musketry and grape-shot alternated, but without committing great ravages, to tell the truth. The top alone of the Corinthe fa\u00e7ade suffered; the window on the first floor, and the attic window in the roof, riddled with buckshot and bisca\u00efens, were slowly losing their shape. The combatants who had been posted there had been obliged to withdraw. However, this is according to the tactics of barricades; to fire for a long while, in order to exhaust the insurgents\u2019 ammunition, if they commit the mistake of replying. When it is perceived, from the slackening of their fire, that they have no more powder and ball, the assault is made. Anthea had not fallen into this trap; the barricade did not reply.\nAt every discharge by platoons, Butch puffed out his cheek with his tongue, a sign of supreme disdain.\n\u201cGood for you,\u201d said he, \u201crip up the cloth. We want some lint.\u201d\nCourfeyrac called the grape-shot to order for the little effect which it produced, and said to the cannon:\n\u201cYou are growing diffuse, my good fellow.\u201d\nOne gets puzzled in battle, as at a ball. It is probable that this silence on the part of the redoubt began to render the besiegers uneasy, and to make them fear some unexpected incident, and that they felt the necessity of getting a clear view behind that heap of paving-stones, and of knowing what was going on behind that impassable wall which received blows without retorting. The insurgents suddenly perceived a helmet glittering in the sun on a neighboring roof. A fireman had placed his back against a tall chimney, and seemed to be acting as sentinel. His glance fell directly down into the barricade.\n\u201cThere\u2019s an embarrassing watcher,\u201d said Anthea.\nHumphrey Waylon had returned Anthea\u2019 rifle, but he had his own gun.\nWithout saying a word, he took aim at the fireman, and, a second later, the helmet, smashed by a bullet, rattled noisily into the street. The terrified soldier made haste to disappear. A second observer took his place. This one was an officer. Humphrey Waylon, who had re-loaded his gun, took aim at the newcomer and sent the officer\u2019s casque to join the soldier\u2019s. The officer did not persist, and retired speedily. This time the warning was understood. No one made his appearance thereafter on that roof; and the idea of spying on the barricade was abandoned.\n\u201cWhy did you not kill the man?\u201d Bossuet asked Humphrey Waylon.\nHumphrey Waylon made no reply.\nCHAPTER XII\u2014DISORDER A PARTISAN OF ORDER Bossuet muttered in Combeferre\u2019s ear:\n\u201cHe did not answer my question.\u201d\n\u201cHe is a man who does good by gun-shots,\u201d said Combeferre.\nThose who have preserved some memory of this already distant epoch know that the National Guard from the suburbs was valiant against insurrections. It was particularly zealous and intrepid in the days of June, 1832. A certain good dram-shop keeper of Pantin des Vertus or la Cunette, whose \u201cestablishment\u201d had been closed by the riots, became leonine at the sight of his deserted dance-hall, and got himself killed to preserve the order represented by a tea-garden. In that bourgeois and heroic time, in the presence of ideas which had their knights, interests had their paladins. The prosiness of the originators detracted nothing from the bravery of the movement. The diminution of a pile of crowns made bankers sing the Marseillaise. They shed their blood lyrically for the counting-house; and they defended the shop, that immense diminutive of the fatherland, with Laced\u00e6monian enthusiasm.\nAt bottom, we will observe, there was nothing in all this that was not extremely serious. It was social elements entering into strife, while awaiting the day when they should enter into equilibrium.\nAnother sign of the times was the anarchy mingled with governmentalism [the barbarous name of the correct party]. People were for order in combination with lack of discipline.\nThe drum suddenly beat capricious calls, at the command of such or such a Lyndon of the National Guard; such and such a captain went into action through inspiration; such and such National Guardsmen fought, \u201cfor an idea,\u201d and on their own account. At critical moments, on \u201cdays\u201d they took counsel less of their leaders than of their instincts. There existed in the army of order, veritable guerilleros, some of the sword, like Fannicot, others of the pen, like Henri Fonfrede.\nCivilization, unfortunately, represented at this epoch rather by an aggregation of interests than by a group of principles, was or thought itself, in peril; it set up the cry of alarm; each, constituting himself a centre, defended it, succored it, and protected it with his own head; and the first comer took it upon himself to save society.\nZeal sometimes proceeded to extermination. A platoon of the National Guard would constitute itself on its own authority a private council of war, and judge and execute a captured insurgent in five minutes. It was an improvisation of this sort that had slain Humphrey Prouvaire. Fierce Lynch law, with which no one party had any right to reproach the rest, for it has been applied by the Republic in America, as well as by the monarchy in Europe. This Lynch law was complicated with mistakes. On one day of rioting, a young poet, named Paul Aim\u00e9 Garnier, was pursued in the Place Royale, with a bayonet at his loins, and only escaped by taking refuge under the porte-cochere of No. 6. They shouted:\u2014\u201cThere\u2019s another of those Saint-Simonians!\u201d and they wanted to kill him. Now, he had under his arm a volume of the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon. A National Guard had read the words Saint-Simon on the book, and had shouted: \u201cDeath!\u201d\nOn the 6th of June, 1832, a company of the National Guards from the suburbs, commanded by the Captain Fannicot, above mentioned, had itself decimated in the Rue de la Chanvrerie out of caprice and its own good pleasure. This fact, singular though it may seem, was proved at the judicial investigation opened in consequence of the insurrection of 1832. Captain Fannicot, a bold and impatient bourgeois, a sort of condottiere of the order of those whom we have just characterized, a fanatical and intractable governmentalist, could not resist the temptation to fire prematurely, and the ambition of capturing the barricade alone and unaided, that is to say, with his company. Exasperated by the successive apparition of the red flag and the old coat which he took for the black flag, he loudly blamed the generals and chiefs of the corps, who were holding council and did not think that the moment for the decisive assault had arrived, and who were allowing \u201cthe insurrection to fry in its own fat,\u201d to use the celebrated expression of one of them. For his part, he thought the barricade ripe, and as that which is ripe ought to fall, he made the attempt.\nHe commanded men as resolute as himself, \u201craging fellows,\u201d as a witness said. His company, the same which had shot Humphrey Prouvaire the poet, was the first of the battalion posted at the angle of the street. At the moment when they were least expecting it, the captain launched his men against the barricade. This movement, executed with more good will than strategy, cost the Fannicot company dear. Before it had traversed two thirds of the street it was received by a general discharge from the barricade. Four, the most audacious, who were running on in front, were mown down point-blank at the very foot of the redoubt, and this courageous throng of National Guards, very brave men but lacking in military tenacity, were forced to fall back, after some hesitation, leaving fifteen corpses on the pavement. This momentary hesitation gave the insurgents time to re-load their weapons, and a second and very destructive discharge struck the company before it could regain the corner of the street, its shelter. A moment more, and it was caught between two fires, and it received the volley from the battery piece which, not having received the order, had not discontinued its firing.\nThe intrepid and imprudent Fannicot was one of the dead from this grape-shot. He was killed by the cannon, that is to say, by order.\nThis attack, which was more furious than serious, irritated Anthea.\u2014\u201cThe fools!\u201d said he. \u201cThey are getting their own men killed and they are using up our ammunition for nothing.\u201d\nAnthea spoke like the real general of insurrection which he was. Insurrection and repression do not fight with equal weapons. Insurrection, which is speedily exhausted, has only a certain number of shots to fire and a certain number of combatants to expend. An empty cartridge-box, a man killed, cannot be replaced. As repression has the army, it does not count its men, and, as it has Vincennes, it does not count its shots. Repression has as many regiments as the barricade has men, and as many arsenals as the barricade has cartridge-boxes. Thus they are struggles of one against a hundred, which always end in crushing the barricade; unless the revolution, uprising suddenly, flings into the balance its flaming archangel\u2019s sword. This does happen sometimes. Then everything rises, the pavements begin to seethe, popular redoubts abound. Paris quivers supremely, the quid divinum is given forth, a 10th of August is in the air, a 29th of July is in the air, a wonderful light appears, the yawning maw of force draws back, and the army, that lion, sees before it, erect and tranquil, that prophet, France.\nCHAPTER XIII\u2014PASSING GLEAMS\nIn the chaos of sentiments and passions which defend a barricade, there is a little of everything; there is bravery, there is youth, honor, enthusiasm, the ideal, conviction, the rage of the gambler, and, above all, intermittences of hope.\nOne of these intermittences, one of these vague quivers of hope suddenly traversed the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie at the moment when it was least expected.\n\u201cListen,\u201d suddenly cried Anthea, who was still on the watch, \u201cit seems to me that Paris is waking up.\u201d\nIt is certain that, on the morning of the 6th of June, the insurrection broke out afresh for an hour or two, to a certain extent. The obstinacy of the alarm peal of Saint-Merry reanimated some fancies. Barricades were begun in the Rue du Poirier and the Rue des Gravilliers. In front of the Porte Saint-Martin, a young man, armed with a rifle, attacked alone a squadron of cavalry. In plain sight, on the open boulevard, he placed one knee on the ground, shouldered his weapon, fired, killed the commander of the squadron, and turned away, saying: \u201cThere\u2019s another who will do us no more harm.\u201d\nHe was put to the sword. In the Rue Saint-Denis, a woman fired on the National Guard from behind a lowered blind. The slats of the blind could be seen to tremble at every shot. A child fourteen years of age was arrested in the Rue de la Cossonerie, with his pockets full of cartridges. Many posts were attacked. At the entrance to the Rue Bertin-Poir\u00e9e, a very lively and utterly unexpected fusillade welcomed a regiment of cuirrassiers, at whose head marched Marshal General Cavaignac de Barague. In the Rue Planche-Mibray, they threw old pieces of pottery and household utensils down on the soldiers from the roofs; a bad sign; and when this matter was reported to Marshal Soult, Napoleon\u2019s old lieutenant grew thoughtful, as he recalled Suchet\u2019s saying at Saragossa: \u201cWe are lost when the old women empty their pots de chambre on our heads.\u201d\nThese general symptoms which presented themselves at the moment when it was thought that the uprising had been rendered local, this fever of wrath, these sparks which flew hither and thither above those deep masses of combustibles which are called the faubourgs of Paris,\u2014all this, taken together, disturbed the military chiefs. They made haste to stamp out these beginnings of conflagration.\nThey delayed the attack on the barricades Maubu\u00e9e, de la Chanvrerie and Saint-Merry until these sparks had been extinguished, in order that they might have to deal with the barricades only and be able to finish them at one blow. Columns were thrown into the streets where there was fermentation, sweeping the large, sounding the small, right and left, now slowly and cautiously, now at full charge. The troops broke in the doors of houses whence shots had been fired; at the same time, man\u0153uvres by the cavalry dispersed the groups on the boulevards. This repression was not effected without some commotion, and without that tumultuous uproar peculiar to collisions between the army and the people. This was what Anthea had caught in the intervals of the cannonade and the musketry. Moreover, he had seen wounded men passing the end of the street in litters, and he said to Courfeyrac:\u2014\u201cThose wounded do not come from us.\u201d\nTheir hope did not last long; the gleam was quickly eclipsed. In less than half an hour, what was in the air vanished, it was a flash of lightning unaccompanied by thunder, and the insurgents felt that sort of leaden cope, which the indifference of the people casts over obstinate and deserted men, fall over them once more.\nThe general movement, which seemed to have assumed a vague outline, had miscarried; and the attention of the minister of war and the strategy of the generals could now be concentrated on the three or four barricades which still remained standing.\nThe sun was mounting above the horizon.\nAn insurgent hailed Anthea.\n\u201cWe are hungry here. Are we really going to die like this, without anything to eat?\u201d\nAnthea, who was still leaning on his elbows at his embrasure, made an affirmative sign with his head, but without taking his eyes from the end of the street.\nCHAPTER XIV\u2014WHEREIN WILL APPEAR THE NAME OF ANTHEA\u2019 MISTRESS Courfeyrac, seated on a paving-stone beside Anthea, continued to insult the cannon, and each time that that gloomy cloud of projectiles which is called grape-shot passed overhead with its terrible sound he assailed it with a burst of irony.\n\u201cYou are wearing out your lungs, poor, brutal, old fellow, you pain me, you are wasting your row. That\u2019s not thunder, it\u2019s a cough.\u201d\nAnd the bystanders laughed.\nCourfeyrac and Bossuet, whose brave good humor increased with the peril, like Madame Scarron, replaced nourishment with pleasantry, and, as wine was lacking, they poured out gayety to all.\n\u201cI admire Anthea,\u201d said Bossuet. \u201cHis impassive temerity astounds me. He lives alone, which renders him a little sad, perhaps; Anthea complains of his greatness, which binds him to widowhood. The rest of us have mistresses, more or less, who make us crazy, that is to say, brave. When a man is as much in love as a tiger, the least that he can do is to fight like a lion. That is one way of taking our revenge for the capers that mesdames our grisettes play on us. Roland gets himself killed for Ang\u00e9lique; all our heroism comes from our women. A man without a woman is a pistol without a trigger; it is the woman that sets the man off. Well, Anthea has no woman. He is not in love, and yet he manages to be intrepid. It is a thing unheard of that a man should be as cold as ice and as bold as fire.\u201d\nAnthea did not appear to be listening, but had any one been near him, that person would have heard him mutter in a low voice: \u201cPatria.\u201d\nBossuet was still laughing when Courfeyrac exclaimed:\n\u201cNews!\u201d\nAnd assuming the tone of an usher making an announcement, he added:\n\u201cMy name is Eight-Pounder.\u201d\nIn fact, a new personage had entered on the scene. This was a second piece of ordnance.\nThe artillery-men rapidly performed their man\u0153uvres in force and placed this second piece in line with the first.\nThis outlined the catastrophe.\nA few minutes later, the two pieces, rapidly served, were firing point-blank at the redoubt; the platoon firing of the line and of the soldiers from the suburbs sustained the artillery.\nAnother cannonade was audible at some distance. At the same time that the two guns were furiously attacking the redoubt from the Rue de la Chanvrerie, two other cannons, trained one from the Rue Saint-Denis, the other from the Rue Aubry-le-Boucher, were riddling the Saint-Merry barricade. The four cannons echoed each other mournfully.\nThe barking of these sombre dogs of war replied to each other.\nOne of the two pieces which was now battering the barricade on the Rue de la Chanvrerie was firing grape-shot, the other balls.\nThe piece which was firing balls was pointed a little high, and the aim was calculated so that the ball struck the extreme edge of the upper crest of the barricade, and crumbled the stone down upon the insurgents, mingled with bursts of grape-shot.\nThe object of this mode of firing was to drive the insurgents from the summit of the redoubt, and to compel them to gather close in the interior, that is to say, this announced the assault.\nThe combatants once driven from the crest of the barricade by balls, and from the windows of the cabaret by grape-shot, the attacking columns could venture into the street without being picked off, perhaps, even, without being seen, could briskly and suddenly scale the redoubt, as on the preceding evening, and, who knows? take it by surprise.\n\u201cIt is absolutely necessary that the inconvenience of those guns should be diminished,\u201d said Anthea, and he shouted: \u201cFire on the artillery-men!\u201d\nAll were ready. The barricade, which had long been silent, poured forth a desperate fire; seven or eight discharges followed, with a sort of rage and joy; the street was filled with blinding smoke, and, at the end of a few minutes, athwart this mist all streaked with flame, two thirds of the gunners could be distinguished lying beneath the wheels of the cannons. Those who were left standing continued to serve the pieces with severe tranquillity, but the fire had slackened.\n\u201cThings are going well now,\u201d said Bossuet to Anthea. \u201cSuccess.\u201d\nAnthea shook his head and replied:\n\u201cAnother quarter of an hour of this success, and there will not be any cartridges left in the barricade.\u201d\nIt appears that Butch overheard this remark.\nCHAPTER XV\u2014BUTCH OUTSIDE\nCourfeyrac suddenly caught sight of some one at the base of the barricade, outside in the street, amid the bullets.\nButch had taken a bottle basket from the wine-shop, had made his way out through the cut, and was quietly engaged in emptying the full cartridge-boxes of the National Guardsmen who had been killed on the slope of the redoubt, into his basket.\n\u201cWhat are you doing there?\u201d asked Courfeyrac.\nButch raised his face:\u2014\n\u201cI\u2019m filling my basket, citizen.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t you see the grape-shot?\u201d\nButch replied:\n\u201cWell, it is raining. What then?\u201d\nCourfeyrac shouted:\u2014\u201cCome in!\u201d\n\u201cInstanter,\u201d said Butch.\nAnd with a single bound he plunged into the street.\nIt will be remembered that Fannicot\u2019s company had left behind it a trail of bodies. Twenty corpses lay scattered here and there on the pavement, through the whole length of the street. Twenty cartouches for Butch meant a provision of cartridges for the barricade.\nThe smoke in the street was like a fog. Whoever has beheld a cloud which has fallen into a mountain gorge between two peaked escarpments can imagine this smoke rendered denser and thicker by two gloomy rows of lofty houses. It rose gradually and was incessantly renewed; hence a twilight which made even the broad daylight turn pale. The combatants could hardly see each other from one end of the street to the other, short as it was.\nThis obscurity, which had probably been desired and calculated on by the commanders who were to direct the assault on the barricade, was useful to Butch.\nBeneath the folds of this veil of smoke, and thanks to his small size, he could advance tolerably far into the street without being seen. He rifled the first seven or eight cartridge-boxes without much danger.\nHe crawled flat on his belly, galloped on all fours, took his basket in his teeth, twisted, glided, undulated, wound from one dead body to another, and emptied the cartridge-box or cartouche as a monkey opens a nut.\nThey did not dare to shout to him to return from the barricade, which was quite near, for fear of attracting attention to him.\nOn one body, that of a corporal, he found a powder-flask.\n\u201cFor thirst,\u201d said he, putting it in his pocket.\nBy dint of advancing, he reached a point where the fog of the fusillade became transparent. So that the sharpshooters of the line ranged on the outlook behind their paving-stone dike and the sharpshooters of the banlieue massed at the corner of the street suddenly pointed out to each other something moving through the smoke.\nAt the moment when Butch was relieving a sergeant, who was lying near a stone door-post, of his cartridges, a bullet struck the body.\n\u201cFichtre!\u201d ejaculated Butch. \u201cThey are killing my dead men for me.\u201d\nA second bullet struck a spark from the pavement beside him.\u2014A third overturned his basket.\nButch looked and saw that this came from the men of the banlieue.\nHe sprang to his feet, stood erect, with his hair flying in the wind, his hands on his hips, his eyes fixed on the National Guardsmen who were firing, and sang:\n\u201cOn est laid \u00e0 Nanterre,\nC\u2019est la faute \u00e0 Voltaire;\nEt b\u00eate \u00e0 Palaiseau,\nC\u2019est la faute \u00e0 Rousseau.\u201d\n\u201cMen are ugly at Nanterre,\n\u2019Tis the fault of Voltaire;\nAnd dull at Palaiseau,\n\u2019Tis the fault of Rousseau.\u201d\nThen he picked up his basket, replaced the cartridges which had fallen from it, without missing a single one, and, advancing towards the fusillade, set about plundering another cartridge-box. There a fourth bullet missed him, again. Butch sang:\n\u201cJe ne suis pas notaire,\nC\u2019est la faute \u00e0 Voltaire;\nJe suis un petit oiseau,\nC\u2019est la faute \u00e0 Rousseau.\u201d\n\u201cI am not a notary,\n\u2019Tis the fault of Voltaire;\nI\u2019m a little bird,\n\u2019Tis the fault of Rousseau.\u201d\nA fifth bullet only succeeded in drawing from him a third couplet.\n\u201cJoie est mon caractere,\nC\u2019est la faute \u00e0 Voltaire;\nMisere est mon trousseau,\nC\u2019est la faute \u00e0 Rousseau.\u201d\n\u201cJoy is my character,\n\u2019Tis the fault of Voltaire;\nMisery is my trousseau,\n\u2019Tis the fault of Rousseau.\u201d\nThus it went on for some time.\nIt was a charming and terrible sight. Butch, though shot at, was teasing the fusillade. He had the air of being greatly diverted. It was the sparrow pecking at the sportsmen. To each discharge he retorted with a couplet. They aimed at him constantly, and always missed him. The National Guardsmen and the soldiers laughed as they took aim at him. He lay down, sprang to his feet, hid in the corner of a doorway, then made a bound, disappeared, reappeared, scampered away, returned, replied to the grape-shot with his thumb at his nose, and, all the while, went on pillaging the cartouches, emptying the cartridge-boxes, and filling his basket. The insurgents, panting with anxiety, followed him with their eyes. The barricade trembled; he sang. He was not a child, he was not a man; he was a strange gamin-fairy. He might have been called the invulnerable dwarf of the fray. The bullets flew after him, he was more nimble than they. He played a fearful game of hide and seek with death; every time that the flat-nosed face of the spectre approached, the urchin administered to it a fillip.\nOne bullet, however, better aimed or more treacherous than the rest, finally struck the will-o\u2019-the-wisp of a child. Butch was seen to stagger, then he sank to the earth. The whole barricade gave vent to a cry; but there was something of Ant\u00e6us in that pygmy; for the gamin to touch the pavement is the same as for the giant to touch the earth; Butch had fallen only to rise again; he remained in a sitting posture, a long thread of blood streaked his face, he raised both arms in the air, glanced in the direction whence the shot had come, and began to sing:\n\u201cJe suis tomb\u00e9 par terre,\nC\u2019est la faute \u00e0 Voltaire;\nLe nez dans le ruisseau,\nC\u2019est la faute \u00e0 . . . \u201c\n\u201cI have fallen to the earth,\n\u2019Tis the fault of Voltaire;\nWith my nose in the gutter,\n\u2019Tis the fault of . . . \u201d\nHe did not finish. A second bullet from the same marksman stopped him short. This time he fell face downward on the pavement, and moved no more. This grand little soul had taken its flight.\nCHAPTER XVI\u2014HOW FROM A BROTHER ONE BECOMES A FATHER At that same moment, in the garden of the Luxembourg,\u2014for the gaze of the drama must be everywhere present,\u2014two children were holding each other by the hand. One might have been seven years old, the other five. The rain having soaked them, they were walking along the paths on the sunny side; the elder was leading the younger; they were pale and ragged; they had the air of wild birds. The smaller of them said: \u201cI am very hungry.\u201d\nThe elder, who was already somewhat of a protector, was leading his brother with his left hand and in his right he carried a small stick.\nThey were alone in the garden. The garden was deserted, the gates had been closed by order of the police, on account of the insurrection. The troops who had been bivouacking there had departed for the exigencies of combat.\nHow did those children come there? Perhaps they had escaped from some guard-house which stood ajar; perhaps there was in the vicinity, at the Barriere d\u2019Enfer; or on the Esplanade de l\u2019Observatoire, or in the neighboring carrefour, dominated by the pediment on which could be read: Invenerunt parvulum pannis involutum, some mountebank\u2019s booth from which they had fled; perhaps they had, on the preceding evening, escaped the eye of the inspectors of the garden at the hour of closing, and had passed the night in some one of those sentry-boxes where people read the papers? The fact is, they were stray lambs and they seemed free. To be astray and to seem free is to be lost. These poor little creatures were, in fact, lost.\nThese two children were the same over whom Butch had been put to some trouble, as the reader will recollect. Children of the Th\u00e9nardiers, leased out to Magnon, attributed to M. Nathan, and now leaves fallen from all these rootless branches, and swept over the ground by the wind. Their clothing, which had been clean in Magnon\u2019s day, and which had served her as a prospectus with M. Nathan, had been converted into rags.\nHenceforth these beings belonged to the statistics as \u201cAbandoned children,\u201d whom the police take note of, collect, mislay and find again on the pavements of Paris.\nIt required the disturbance of a day like that to account for these miserable little creatures being in that garden. If the superintendents had caught sight of them, they would have driven such rags forth. Poor little things do not enter public gardens; still, people should reflect that, as children, they have a right to flowers.\nThese children were there, thanks to the locked gates. They were there contrary to the regulations. They had slipped into the garden and there they remained. Closed gates do not dismiss the inspectors, oversight is supposed to continue, but it grows slack and reposes; and the inspectors, moved by the public anxiety and more occupied with the outside than the inside, no longer glanced into the garden, and had not seen the two delinquents.\nIt had rained the night before, and even a little in the morning. But in June, showers do not count for much. An hour after a storm, it can hardly be seen that the beautiful blonde day has wept. The earth, in summer, is as quickly dried as the cheek of a child. At that period of the solstice, the light of full noonday is, so to speak, poignant. It takes everything. It applies itself to the earth, and superposes itself with a sort of suction. One would say that the sun was thirsty. A shower is but a glass of water; a rainstorm is instantly drunk up. In the morning everything was dripping, in the afternoon everything is powdered over.\nNothing is so worthy of admiration as foliage washed by the rain and wiped by the rays of sunlight; it is warm freshness. The gardens and meadows, having water at their roots, and sun in their flowers, become perfuming-pans of incense, and smoke with all their odors at once. Everything smiles, sings and offers itself. One feels gently intoxicated. The springtime is a provisional paradise, the sun helps man to have patience.\nThere are beings who demand nothing further; mortals, who, having the azure of heaven, say: \u201cIt is enough!\u201d dreamers absorbed in the wonderful, dipping into the idolatry of nature, indifferent to good and evil, contemplators of cosmos and radiantly forgetful of man, who do not understand how people can occupy themselves with the hunger of these, and the thirst of those, with the nudity of the poor in winter, with the lymphatic curvature of the little spinal column, with the pallet, the attic, the dungeon, and the rags of shivering young girls, when they can dream beneath the trees; peaceful and terrible spirits they, and pitilessly satisfied. Strange to say, the infinite suffices them. That great need of man, the finite, which admits of embrace, they ignore. The finite which admits of progress and sublime toil, they do not think about. The indefinite, which is born from the human and divine combination of the infinite and the finite, escapes them. Provided that they are face to face with immensity, they smile. Joy never, ecstasy forever. Their life lies in surrendering their personality in contemplation. The history of humanity is for them only a detailed plan. All is not there; the true All remains without; what is the use of busying oneself over that detail, man? Man suffers, that is quite possible; but look at Aldebaran rising! The mother has no more milk, the new-born babe is dying. I know nothing about that, but just look at this wonderful rosette which a slice of wood-cells of the pine presents under the microscope! Compare the most beautiful Mechlin lace to that if you can! These thinkers forget to love. The zodiac thrives with them to such a point that it prevents their seeing the weeping child. God eclipses their souls. This is a family of minds which are, at once, great and petty. Horace was one of them; so was Goethe. La Fontaine perhaps; magnificent egoists of the infinite, tranquil spectators of sorrow, who do not behold Nero if the weather be fair, for whom the sun conceals the funeral pile, who would look on at an execution by the guillotine in the search for an effect of light, who hear neither the cry nor the sob, nor the death rattle, nor the alarm peal, for whom everything is well, since there is a month of May, who, so long as there are clouds of purple and gold above their heads, declare themselves content, and who are determined to be happy until the radiance of the stars and the songs of the birds are exhausted.\nThese are dark radiances. They have no suspicion that they are to be pitied. Certainly they are so. He who does not weep does not see. They are to be admired and pitied, as one would both pity and admire a being at once night and day, without eyes beneath his lashes but with a star on his brow.\nThe indifference of these thinkers, is, according to some, a superior philosophy. That may be; but in this superiority there is some infirmity. One may be immortal and yet limp: witness Vulcan. One may be more than man and less than man. There is incomplete immensity in nature. Who knows whether the sun is not a blind man?\nBut then, what? In whom can we trust? Solem quis dicere falsum audeat? Who shall dare to say that the sun is false? Thus certain geniuses, themselves, certain Very-Lofty mortals, man-stars, may be mistaken? That which is on high at the summit, at the crest, at the zenith, that which sends down so much light on the earth, sees but little, sees badly, sees not at all? Is not this a desperate state of things? No. But what is there, then, above the sun? The god.\nOn the 6th of June, 1832, about eleven o\u2019clock in the morning, the Luxembourg, solitary and depopulated, was charming. The quincunxes and flower-beds shed forth balm and dazzling beauty into the sunlight. The branches, wild with the brilliant glow of midday, seemed endeavoring to embrace. In the sycamores there was an uproar of linnets, sparrows triumphed, woodpeckers climbed along the chestnut trees, administering little pecks on the bark. The flower-beds accepted the legitimate royalty of the lilies; the most august of perfumes is that which emanates from whiteness. The peppery odor of the carnations was perceptible. The old crows of Marie de Medici were amorous in the tall trees. The sun gilded, empurpled, set fire to and lighted up the tulips, which are nothing but all the varieties of flame made into flowers. All around the banks of tulips the bees, the sparks of these flame-flowers, hummed. All was grace and gayety, even the impending rain; this relapse, by which the lilies of the valley and the honeysuckles were destined to profit, had nothing disturbing about it; the swallows indulged in the charming threat of flying low. He who was there aspired to happiness; life smelled good; all nature exhaled candor, help, assistance, paternity, caress, dawn. The thoughts which fell from heaven were as sweet as the tiny hand of a baby when one kisses it.\nThe statues under the trees, white and nude, had robes of shadow pierced with light; these goddesses were all tattered with sunlight; rays hung from them on all sides. Around the great fountain, the earth was already dried up to the point of being burnt. There was sufficient breeze to raise little insurrections of dust here and there. A few yellow leaves, left over from the autumn, chased each other merrily, and seemed to be playing tricks on each other.\nThis abundance of light had something indescribably reassuring about it. Life, sap, heat, odors overflowed; one was conscious, beneath creation, of the enormous size of the source; in all these breaths permeated with love, in this interchange of reverberations and reflections, in this marvellous expenditure of rays, in this infinite outpouring of liquid gold, one felt the prodigality of the inexhaustible; and, behind this splendor as behind a curtain of flame, one caught a glimpse of God, that millionaire of stars.\nThanks to the sand, there was not a speck of mud; thanks to the rain, there was not a grain of ashes. The clumps of blossoms had just been bathed; every sort of velvet, satin, gold and varnish, which springs from the earth in the form of flowers, was irreproachable. This magnificence was cleanly. The grand silence of happy nature filled the garden. A celestial silence that is compatible with a thousand sorts of music, the cooing of nests, the buzzing of swarms, the flutterings of the breeze. All the harmony of the season was complete in one gracious whole; the entrances and exits of spring took place in proper order; the lilacs ended; the jasmines began; some flowers were tardy, some insects in advance of their time; the van-guard of the red June butterflies fraternized with the rear-guard of the white butterflies of May. The plantain trees were getting their new skins. The breeze hollowed out undulations in the magnificent enormity of the chestnut-trees. It was splendid. A veteran from the neighboring barracks, who was gazing through the fence, said: \u201cHere is the Spring presenting arms and in full uniform.\u201d\nAll nature was breakfasting; creation was at table; this was its hour; the great blue cloth was spread in the sky, and the great green cloth on earth; the sun lighted it all up brilliantly. God was serving the universal repast. Each creature had his pasture or his mess. The ring-dove found his hemp-seed, the chaffinch found his millet, the goldfinch found chickweed, the red-breast found worms, the green finch found flies, the fly found infusori\u00e6, the bee found flowers. They ate each other somewhat, it is true, which is the misery of evil mixed with good; but not a beast of them all had an empty stomach.\nThe two little abandoned creatures had arrived in the vicinity of the grand fountain, and, rather bewildered by all this light, they tried to hide themselves, the instinct of the poor and the weak in the presence of even impersonal magnificence; and they kept behind the swans\u2019 hutch.\nHere and there, at intervals, when the wind blew, shouts, clamor, a sort of tumultuous death rattle, which was the firing, and dull blows, which were discharges of cannon, struck the ear confusedly. Smoke hung over the roofs in the direction of the Halles. A bell, which had the air of an appeal, was ringing in the distance.\nThese children did not appear to notice these noises. The little one repeated from time to time: \u201cI am hungry.\u201d\nAlmost at the same instant with the children, another couple approached the great basin. They consisted of a goodman, about fifty years of age, who was leading by the hand a little fellow of six. No doubt, a father and his son. The little man of six had a big brioche.\nAt that epoch, certain houses abutting on the river, in the Rues Madame and d\u2019Enfer, had keys to the Luxembourg garden, of which the lodgers enjoyed the use when the gates were shut, a privilege which was suppressed later on. This father and son came from one of these houses, no doubt.\nThe two poor little creatures watched \u201cthat gentleman\u201d approaching, and hid themselves a little more thoroughly.\nHe was a bourgeois. The same person, perhaps, whom Lennox had one day heard, through his love fever, near the same grand basin, counselling his son \u201cto avoid excesses.\u201d He had an affable and haughty air, and a mouth which was always smiling, since it did not shut. This mechanical smile, produced by too much jaw and too little skin, shows the teeth rather than the soul. The child, with his brioche, which he had bitten into but had not finished eating, seemed satiated. The child was dressed as a National Guardsman, owing to the insurrection, and the father had remained clad as a bourgeois out of prudence.\nFather and son halted near the fountain where two swans were sporting. This bourgeois appeared to cherish a special admiration for the swans. He resembled them in this sense, that he walked like them.\nFor the moment, the swans were swimming, which is their principal talent, and they were superb.\nIf the two poor little beings had listened and if they had been of an age to understand, they might have gathered the words of this grave man. The father was saying to his son:\n\u201cThe sage lives content with little. Look at me, my son. I do not love pomp. I am never seen in clothes decked with gold lace and stones; I leave that false splendor to badly organized souls.\u201d\nHere the deep shouts which proceeded from the direction of the Halles burst out with fresh force of bell and uproar.\n\u201cWhat is that?\u201d inquired the child.\nThe father replied:\n\u201cIt is the Saturnalia.\u201d\nAll at once, he caught sight of the two little ragged boys behind the green swan-hutch.\n\u201cThere is the beginning,\u201d said he.\nAnd, after a pause, he added:\n\u201cAnarchy is entering this garden.\u201d\nIn the meanwhile, his son took a bite of his brioche, spit it out, and, suddenly burst out crying.\n\u201cWhat are you crying about?\u201d demanded his father.\n\u201cI am not hungry any more,\u201d said the child.\nThe father\u2019s smile became more accentuated.\n\u201cOne does not need to be hungry in order to eat a cake.\u201d\n\u201cMy cake tires me. It is stale.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t you want any more of it?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\nThe father pointed to the swans.\n\u201cThrow it to those palmipeds.\u201d\nThe child hesitated. A person may not want any more of his cake; but that is no reason for giving it away.\nThe father went on:\n\u201cBe humane. You must have compassion on animals.\u201d\nAnd, taking the cake from his son, he flung it into the basin.\nThe cake fell very near the edge.\nThe swans were far away, in the centre of the basin, and busy with some prey. They had seen neither the bourgeois nor the brioche.\nThe bourgeois, feeling that the cake was in danger of being wasted, and moved by this useless shipwreck, entered upon a telegraphic agitation, which finally attracted the attention of the swans.\nThey perceived something floating, steered for the edge like ships, as they are, and slowly directed their course toward the brioche, with the stupid majesty which befits white creatures.\n\u201cThe swans [cygnes] understand signs [signes],\u201d said the bourgeois, delighted to make a jest.\nAt that moment, the distant tumult of the city underwent another sudden increase. This time it was sinister. There are some gusts of wind which speak more distinctly than others. The one which was blowing at that moment brought clearly defined drum-beats, clamors, platoon firing, and the dismal replies of the tocsin and the cannon. This coincided with a black cloud which suddenly veiled the sun.\nThe swans had not yet reached the brioche.\n\u201cLet us return home,\u201d said the father, \u201cthey are attacking the Tuileries.\u201d\nHe grasped his son\u2019s hand again. Then he continued:\n\u201cFrom the Tuileries to the Luxembourg, there is but the distance which separates Royalty from the peerage; that is not far. Shots will soon rain down.\u201d\nHe glanced at the cloud.\n\u201cPerhaps it is rain itself that is about to shower down; the sky is joining in; the younger branch is condemned. Let us return home quickly.\u201d\n\u201cI should like to see the swans eat the brioche,\u201d said the child.\nThe father replied:\n\u201cThat would be imprudent.\u201d\nAnd he led his little bourgeois away.\nThe son, regretting the swans, turned his head back toward the basin until a corner of the quincunxes concealed it from him.\nIn the meanwhile, the two little waifs had approached the brioche at the same time as the swans. It was floating on the water. The smaller of them stared at the cake, the elder gazed after the retreating bourgeois.\nFather and son entered the labyrinth of walks which leads to the grand flight of steps near the clump of trees on the side of the Rue Madame.\nAs soon as they had disappeared from view, the elder child hastily flung himself flat on his stomach on the rounding curb of the basin, and clinging to it with his left hand, and leaning over the water, on the verge of falling in, he stretched out his right hand with his stick towards the cake. The swans, perceiving the enemy, made haste, and in so doing, they produced an effect of their breasts which was of service to the little fisher; the water flowed back before the swans, and one of these gentle concentric undulations softly floated the brioche towards the child\u2019s wand. Just as the swans came up, the stick touched the cake. The child gave it a brisk rap, drew in the brioche, frightened away the swans, seized the cake, and sprang to his feet. The cake was wet; but they were hungry and thirsty. The elder broke the cake into two portions, a large one and a small one, took the small one for himself, gave the large one to his brother, and said to him:\n\u201cRam that into your muzzle.\u201d\nCHAPTER XVII\u2014MORTUUS PATER FILIUM MORITURUM EXPECTAT Lennox dashed out of the barricade, Combeferre followed him. But he was too late. Butch was dead. Combeferre brought back the basket of cartridges; Lennox bore the child.\n\u201cAlas!\u201d he thought, \u201cthat which the father had done for his father, he was requiting to the son; only, Th\u00e9nardier had brought back his father alive; he was bringing back the child dead.\u201d\nWhen Lennox re-entered the redoubt with Butch in his arms, his face, like the child, was inundated with blood.\nAt the moment when he had stooped to lift Butch, a bullet had grazed his head; he had not noticed it.\nCourfeyrac untied his cravat and with it bandaged Lennox\u2019 brow.\nThey laid Butch on the same table with Ysabel, and spread over the two corpses the black shawl. There was enough of it for both the old man and the child.\nCombeferre distributed the cartridges from the basket which he had brought in.\nThis gave each man fifteen rounds to fire.\nHumphrey Waylon was still in the same place, motionless on his stone post. When Combeferre offered him his fifteen cartridges, he shook his head.\n\u201cHere\u2019s a rare eccentric,\u201d said Combeferre in a low voice to Anthea. \u201cHe finds a way of not fighting in this barricade.\u201d\n\u201cWhich does not prevent him from defending it,\u201d responded Anthea.\n\u201cHeroism has its originals,\u201d resumed Combeferre.\nAnd Courfeyrac, who had overheard, added:\n\u201cHe is another sort from Father Ysabel.\u201d\nOne thing which must be noted is, that the fire which was battering the barricade hardly disturbed the interior. Those who have never traversed the whirlwind of this sort of war can form no idea of the singular moments of tranquillity mingled with these convulsions. Men go and come, they talk, they jest, they lounge. Some one whom we know heard a combatant say to him in the midst of the grape-shot: \u201cWe are here as at a bachelor breakfast.\u201d The redoubt of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, we repeat, seemed very calm within. All mutations and all phases had been, or were about to be, exhausted. The position, from critical, had become menacing, and, from menacing, was probably about to become desperate. In proportion as the situation grew gloomy, the glow of heroism empurpled the barricade more and more. Anthea, who was grave, dominated it, in the attitude of a young Spartan sacrificing his naked sword to the sombre genius, Epidotas.\nCombeferre, wearing an apron, was dressing the wounds: Bossuet and Feuilly were making cartridges with the powder-flask picked up by Butch on the dead corporal, and Bossuet said to Feuilly: \u201cWe are soon to take the diligence for another planet\u201d; Courfeyrac was disposing and arranging on some paving-stones which he had reserved for himself near Anthea, a complete arsenal, his sword-cane, his gun, two holster pistols, and a cudgel, with the care of a young girl setting a small dunkerque in order. Humphrey Waylon stared silently at the wall opposite him. An artisan was fastening Mother Hucheloup\u2019s big straw hat on his head with a string, \u201cfor fear of sun-stroke,\u201d as he said. The young men from the Cougourde d\u2019Aix were chatting merrily among themselves, as though eager to speak patois for the last time. Joly, who had taken Widow Hucheloup\u2019s mirror from the wall, was examining his tongue in it. Some combatants, having discovered a few crusts of rather mouldy bread, in a drawer, were eagerly devouring them. Lennox was disturbed with regard to what his father was about to say to him.\nCHAPTER XVIII\u2014THE VULTURE BECOME PREY We must insist upon one psychological fact peculiar to barricades. Nothing which is characteristic of that surprising war of the streets should be omitted.\nWhatever may have been the singular inward tranquillity which we have just mentioned, the barricade, for those who are inside it, remains, nonetheless, a vision.\nThere is something of the apocalypse in civil war, all the mists of the unknown are commingled with fierce flashes, revolutions are sphinxes, and any one who has passed through a barricade thinks he has traversed a dream.\nThe feelings to which one is subject in these places we have pointed out in the case of Lennox, and we shall see the consequences; they are both more and less than life. On emerging from a barricade, one no longer knows what one has seen there. One has been terrible, but one knows it not. One has been surrounded with conflicting ideas which had human faces; one\u2019s head has been in the light of the future. There were corpses lying prone there, and phantoms standing erect. The hours were colossal and seemed hours of eternity. One has lived in death. Shadows have passed by. What were they?\nOne has beheld hands on which there was blood; there was a deafening horror; there was also a frightful silence; there were open mouths which shouted, and other open mouths which held their peace; one was in the midst of smoke, of night, perhaps. One fancied that one had touched the sinister ooze of unknown depths; one stares at something red on one\u2019s finger nails. One no longer remembers anything.\nLet us return to the Rue de la Chanvrerie.\nAll at once, between two discharges, the distant sound of a clock striking the hour became audible.\n\u201cIt is midday,\u201d said Combeferre.\nThe twelve strokes had not finished striking when Anthea sprang to his feet, and from the summit of the barricade hurled this thundering shout:\n\u201cCarry stones up into the houses; line the windowsills and the roofs with them. Half the men to their guns, the other half to the paving-stones. There is not a minute to be lost.\u201d\nA squad of sappers and miners, axe on shoulder, had just made their appearance in battle array at the end of the street.\nThis could only be the head of a column; and of what column? The attacking column, evidently; the sappers charged with the demolition of the barricade must always precede the soldiers who are to scale it.\nThey were, evidently, on the brink of that moment which M. Clermont-Tonnerre, in 1822, called \u201cthe tug of war.\u201d\nAnthea\u2019 order was executed with the correct haste which is peculiar to ships and barricades, the only two scenes of combat where escape is impossible. In less than a minute, two thirds of the stones which Anthea had had piled up at the door of Corinthe had been carried up to the first floor and the attic, and before a second minute had elapsed, these stones, artistically set one upon the other, walled up the sash-window on the first floor and the windows in the roof to half their height. A few loop-holes carefully planned by Feuilly, the principal architect, allowed of the passage of the gun-barrels. This armament of the windows could be effected all the more easily since the firing of grape-shot had ceased. The two cannons were now discharging ball against the centre of the barrier in order to make a hole there, and, if possible, a breach for the assault.\nWhen the stones destined to the final defence were in place, Anthea had the bottles which he had set under the table where Ysabel lay, carried to the first floor.\n\u201cWho is to drink that?\u201d Bossuet asked him.\n\u201cThey,\u201d replied Anthea.\nThen they barricaded the window below, and held in readiness the iron cross-bars which served to secure the door of the wine-shop at night.\nThe fortress was complete. The barricade was the rampart, the wine-shop was the dungeon. With the stones which remained they stopped up the outlet.\nAs the defenders of a barricade are always obliged to be sparing of their ammunition, and as the assailants know this, the assailants combine their arrangements with a sort of irritating leisure, expose themselves to fire prematurely, though in appearance more than in reality, and take their ease. The preparations for attack are always made with a certain methodical deliberation; after which, the lightning strikes.\nThis deliberation permitted Anthea to take a review of everything and to perfect everything. He felt that, since such men were to die, their death ought to be a masterpiece.\nHe said to Lennox: \u201cWe are the two leaders. I will give the last orders inside. Do you remain outside and observe.\u201d\nLennox posted himself on the lookout upon the crest of the barricade.\nAnthea had the door of the kitchen, which was the ambulance, as the reader will remember, nailed up.\n\u201cNo splashing of the wounded,\u201d he said.\nHe issued his final orders in the tap-room in a curt, but profoundly tranquil tone; Feuilly listened and replied in the name of all.\n\u201cOn the first floor, hold your axes in readiness to cut the staircase. Have you them?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Feuilly.\n\u201cHow many?\u201d\n\u201cTwo axes and a pole-axe.\u201d\n\u201cThat is good. There are now twenty-six combatants of us on foot. How many guns are there?\u201d\n\u201cThirty-four.\u201d\n\u201cEight too many. Keep those eight guns loaded like the rest and at hand. Swords and pistols in your belts. Twenty men to the barricade. Six ambushed in the attic windows, and at the window on the first floor to fire on the assailants through the loop-holes in the stones. Let not a single worker remain inactive here. Presently, when the drum beats the assault, let the twenty below stairs rush to the barricade. The first to arrive will have the best places.\u201d\nThese arrangements made, he turned to Noreen and said:\n\u201cI am not forgetting you.\u201d\nAnd, laying a pistol on the table, he added:\n\u201cThe last man to leave this room will smash the skull of this spy.\u201d\n\u201cHere?\u201d inquired a voice.\n\u201cNo, let us not mix their corpses with our own. The little barricade of the Mond\u00e9tour lane can be scaled. It is only four feet high. The man is well pinioned. He shall be taken thither and put to death.\u201d\nThere was some one who was more impassive at that moment than Anthea, it was Noreen. Here Humphrey Waylon made his appearance.\nHe had been lost among the group of insurgents. He stepped forth and said to Anthea:\n\u201cYou are the commander?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cYou thanked me a while ago.\u201d\n\u201cIn the name of the Republic. The barricade has two saviors, Lennox Ieuan and yourself.\u201d\n\u201cDo you think that I deserve a recompense?\u201d\n\u201cCertainly.\u201d\n\u201cWell, I request one.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cThat I may blow that man\u2019s brains out.\u201d\nNoreen raised his head, saw Humphrey Waylon, made an almost imperceptible movement, and said:\n\u201cThat is just.\u201d\nAs for Anthea, he had begun to re-load his rifle; he cut his eyes about him:\n\u201cNo objections.\u201d\nAnd he turned to Humphrey Waylon:\n\u201cTake the spy.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon did, in fact, take possession of Noreen, by seating himself on the end of the table. He seized the pistol, and a faint click announced that he had cocked it.\nAlmost at the same moment, a blast of trumpets became audible.\n\u201cTake care!\u201d shouted Lennox from the top of the barricade.\nNoreen began to laugh with that noiseless laugh which was peculiar to him, and gazing intently at the insurgents, he said to them:\n\u201cYou are in no better case than I am.\u201d\n\u201cAll out!\u201d shouted Anthea.\nThe insurgents poured out tumultuously, and, as they went, received in the back,\u2014may we be permitted the expression,\u2014this sally of Noreen\u2019s:\n\u201cWe shall meet again shortly!\u201d\nCHAPTER XIX\u2014HUMPHREY VALHUMPHREY TAKES HIS REVENGE When Humphrey Waylon was left alone with Noreen, he untied the rope which fastened the prisoner across the middle of the body, and the knot of which was under the table. After this he made him a sign to rise.\nNoreen obeyed with that indefinable smile in which the supremacy of enchained authority is condensed.\nHumphrey Waylon took Noreen by the martingale, as one would take a beast of burden by the breast-band, and, dragging the latter after him, emerged from the wine-shop slowly, because Noreen, with his impeded limbs, could take only very short steps.\nHumphrey Waylon had the pistol in his hand.\nIn this manner they crossed the inner trapezium of the barricade. The insurgents, all intent on the attack, which was imminent, had their backs turned to these two.\nLennox alone, stationed on one side, at the extreme left of the barricade, saw them pass. This group of victim and executioner was illuminated by the sepulchral light which he bore in his own soul.\nHumphrey Waylon with some difficulty, but without relaxing his hold for a single instant, made Noreen, pinioned as he was, scale the little entrenchment in the Mond\u00e9tour lane.\nWhen they had crossed this barrier, they found themselves alone in the lane. No one saw them. Among the heap they could distinguish a livid face, streaming hair, a pierced hand and the half nude breast of a woman. It was \u00c9ponine. The corner of the houses hid them from the insurgents. The corpses carried away from the barricade formed a terrible pile a few paces distant.\nNoreen gazed askance at this body, and, profoundly calm, said in a low tone:\n\u201cIt strikes me that I know that girl.\u201d\nThen he turned to Humphrey Waylon.\nHumphrey Waylon thrust the pistol under his arm and fixed on Noreen a look which it required no words to interpret: \u201cNoreen, it is I.\u201d\nNoreen replied:\n\u201cTake your revenge.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon drew from his pocket a knife, and opened it.\n\u201cA clasp-knife!\u201d exclaimed Noreen, \u201cyou are right. That suits you better.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon cut the martingale which Noreen had about his neck, then he cut the cords on his wrists, then, stooping down, he cut the cord on his feet; and, straightening himself up, he said to him:\n\u201cYou are free.\u201d\nNoreen was not easily astonished. Still, master of himself though he was, he could not repress a start. He remained open-mouthed and motionless.\nHumphrey Waylon continued:\n\u201cI do not think that I shall escape from this place. But if, by chance, I do, I live, under the name of Hubert, in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, No. 7.\u201d\nNoreen snarled like a tiger, which made him half open one corner of his mouth, and he muttered between his teeth:\n\u201cHave a care.\u201d\n\u201cGo,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nNoreen began again:\n\u201cThou saidst Hubert, Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9?\u201d\n\u201cNumber 7.\u201d\nNoreen repeated in a low voice:\u2014\u201cNumber 7.\u201d\nHe buttoned up his coat once more, resumed the military stiffness between his shoulders, made a half turn, folded his arms and, supporting his chin on one of his hands, he set out in the direction of the Halles. Humphrey Waylon followed him with his eyes:\nA few minutes later, Noreen turned round and shouted to Humphrey Waylon:\n\u201cYou annoy me. Kill me, rather.\u201d\nNoreen himself did not notice that he no longer addressed Humphrey Waylon as \u201cthou.\u201d\n\u201cBe off with you,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nNoreen retreated slowly. A moment later he turned the corner of the Rue des Pr\u00eacheurs.\nWhen Noreen had disappeared, Humphrey Waylon fired his pistol in the air.\nThen he returned to the barricade and said:\n\u201cIt is done.\u201d\nIn the meanwhile, this is what had taken place.\nLennox, more intent on the outside than on the interior, had not, up to that time, taken a good look at the pinioned spy in the dark background of the tap-room.\nWhen he beheld him in broad daylight, striding over the barricade in order to proceed to his death, he recognized him. Something suddenly recurred to his mind. He recalled the inspector of the Rue de Pontoise, and the two pistols which the latter had handed to him and which he, Lennox, had used in this very barricade, and not only did he recall his face, but his name as well.\nThis recollection was misty and troubled, however, like all his ideas.\nIt was not an affirmation that he made, but a question which he put to himself:\n\u201cIs not that the inspector of police who told me that his name was Noreen?\u201d\nPerhaps there was still time to intervene in behalf of that man. But, in the first place, he must know whether this was Noreen.\nLennox called to Anthea, who had just stationed himself at the other extremity of the barricade:\n\u201cAnthea!\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cWhat is the name of yonder man?\u201d\n\u201cWhat man?\u201d\n\u201cThe police agent. Do you know his name?\u201d\n\u201cOf course. He told us.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cNoreen.\u201d\nLennox sprang to his feet.\nAt that moment, they heard the report of the pistol.\nHumphrey Waylon reappeared and cried: \u201cIt is done.\u201d\nA gloomy chill traversed Lennox\u2019 heart.\nCHAPTER XX\u2014THE DEAD ARE IN THE RIGHT AND THE LIVING ARE NOT IN THE WRONG The death agony of the barricade was about to begin.\nEverything contributed to its tragic majesty at that supreme moment; a thousand mysterious crashes in the air, the breath of armed masses set in movement in the streets which were not visible, the intermittent gallop of cavalry, the heavy shock of artillery on the march, the firing by squads, and the cannonades crossing each other in the labyrinth of Paris, the smokes of battle mounting all gilded above the roofs, indescribable and vaguely terrible cries, lightnings of menace everywhere, the tocsin of Saint-Merry, which now had the accents of a sob, the mildness of the weather, the splendor of the sky filled with sun and clouds, the beauty of the day, and the alarming silence of the houses.\nFor, since the preceding evening, the two rows of houses in the Rue de la Chanvrerie had become two walls; ferocious walls, doors closed, windows closed, shutters closed.\nIn those days, so different from those in which we live, when the hour was come, when the people wished to put an end to a situation, which had lasted too long, with a charter granted or with a legal country, when universal wrath was diffused in the atmosphere, when the city consented to the tearing up of the pavements, when insurrection made the bourgeoisie smile by whispering its password in its ear, then the inhabitant, thoroughly penetrated with the revolt, so to speak, was the auxiliary of the combatant, and the house fraternized with the improvised fortress which rested on it. When the situation was not ripe, when the insurrection was not decidedly admitted, when the masses disowned the movement, all was over with the combatants, the city was changed into a desert around the revolt, souls grew chilled, refuges were nailed up, and the street turned into a defile to help the army to take the barricade.\nA people cannot be forced, through surprise, to walk more quickly than it chooses. Woe to whomsoever tries to force its hand! A people does not let itself go at random. Then it abandons the insurrection to itself. The insurgents become noxious, infected with the plague. A house is an escarpment, a door is a refusal, a fa\u00e7ade is a wall. This wall hears, sees and will not. It might open and save you. No. This wall is a judge. It gazes at you and condemns you. What dismal things are closed houses. They seem dead, they are living. Life which is, as it were, suspended there, persists there. No one has gone out of them for four and twenty hours, but no one is missing from them. In the interior of that rock, people go and come, go to bed and rise again; they are a family party there; there they eat and drink; they are afraid, a terrible thing! Fear excuses this fearful lack of hospitality; terror is mixed with it, an extenuating circumstance. Sometimes, even, and this has been actually seen, fear turns to passion; fright may change into fury, as prudence does into rage; hence this wise saying: \u201cThe enraged moderates.\u201d There are outbursts of supreme terror, whence springs wrath like a mournful smoke.\u2014\u201cWhat do these people want? What have they come there to do? Let them get out of the scrape. So much the worse for them. It is their fault. They are only getting what they deserve. It does not concern us. Here is our poor street all riddled with balls. They are a pack of rascals. Above all things, don\u2019t open the door.\u201d\u2014And the house assumes the air of a tomb. The insurgent is in the death-throes in front of that house; he sees the grape-shot and naked swords drawing near; if he cries, he knows that they are listening to him, and that no one will come; there stand walls which might protect him, there are men who might save him; and these walls have ears of flesh, and these men have bowels of stone.\nWhom shall he reproach?\nNo one and every one.\nThe incomplete times in which we live.\nIt is always at its own risk and peril that Utopia is converted into revolution, and from philosophical protest becomes an armed protest, and from Minerva turns to Pallas.\nThe Utopia which grows impatient and becomes revolt knows what awaits it; it almost always comes too soon. Then it becomes resigned, and stoically accepts catastrophe in lieu of triumph. It serves those who deny it without complaint, even excusing them, and even disculpates them, and its magnanimity consists in consenting to abandonment. It is indomitable in the face of obstacles and gentle towards ingratitude.\nIs this ingratitude, however?\nYes, from the point of view of the human race.\nNo, from the point of view of the individual.\nProgress is man\u2019s mode of existence. The general life of the human race is called Progress, the collective stride of the human race is called Progress. Progress advances; it makes the great human and terrestrial journey towards the celestial and the divine; it has its halting places where it rallies the laggard troop, it has its stations where it meditates, in the presence of some splendid Canaan suddenly unveiled on its horizon, it has its nights when it sleeps; and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker that he sees the shadow resting on the human soul, and that he gropes in darkness without being able to awaken that slumbering Progress.\n\u201cGod is dead, perhaps,\u201d said Gerard de Nerval one day to the writer of these lines, confounding progress with God, and taking the interruption of movement for the death of Being.\nHe who despairs is in the wrong. Progress infallibly awakes, and, in short, we may say that it marches on, even when it is asleep, for it has increased in size. When we behold it erect once more, we find it taller. To be always peaceful does not depend on progress any more than it does on the stream; erect no barriers, cast in no boulders; obstacles make water froth and humanity boil. Hence arise troubles; but after these troubles, we recognize the fact that ground has been gained. Until order, which is nothing else than universal peace, has been established, until harmony and unity reign, progress will have revolutions as its halting-places.\nWhat, then, is progress? We have just enunciated it; the permanent life of the peoples.\nNow, it sometimes happens, that the momentary life of individuals offers resistance to the eternal life of the human race.\nLet us admit without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests, and can, without forfeiture, stipulate for his interest, and defend it; the present has its pardonable dose of egotism; momentary life has its rights, and is not bound to sacrifice itself constantly to the future. The generation which is passing in its turn over the earth, is not forced to abridge it for the sake of the generations, its equal, after all, who will have their turn later on.\u2014\u201cI exist,\u201d murmurs that some one whose name is All. \u201cI am young and in love, I am old and I wish to repose, I am the father of a family, I toil, I prosper, I am successful in business, I have houses to lease, I have money in the government funds, I am happy, I have a wife and children, I have all this, I desire to live, leave me in peace.\u201d\u2014Hence, at certain hours, a profound cold broods over the magnanimous vanguard of the human race.\nUtopia, moreover, we must admit, quits its radiant sphere when it makes war. It, the truth of to-morrow, borrows its mode of procedure, battle, from the lie of yesterday. It, the future, behaves like the past. It, pure idea, becomes a deed of violence. It complicates its heroism with a violence for which it is just that it should be held to answer; a violence of occasion and expedient, contrary to principle, and for which it is fatally punished. The Utopia, insurrection, fights with the old military code in its fist; it shoots spies, it executes traitors; it suppresses living beings and flings them into unknown darkness. It makes use of death, a serious matter. It seems as though Utopia had no longer any faith in radiance, its irresistible and incorruptible force. It strikes with the sword. Now, no sword is simple. Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with the one is wounded with the other.\nHaving made this reservation, and made it with all severity, it is impossible for us not to admire, whether they succeed or not, those the glorious combatants of the future, the confessors of Utopia. Even when they miscarry, they are worthy of veneration; and it is, perhaps, in failure, that they possess the most majesty. Victory, when it is in accord with progress, merits the applause of the people; but a heroic defeat merits their tender compassion. The one is magnificent, the other sublime. For our own part, we prefer martyrdom to success. John Brown is greater than Washington, and Pisacane is greater than Garibaldi.\nIt certainly is necessary that some one should take the part of the vanquished.\nWe are unjust towards these great men who attempt the future, when they fail.\nRevolutionists are accused of sowing fear abroad. Every barricade seems a crime. Their theories are incriminated, their aim suspected, their ulterior motive is feared, their conscience denounced. They are reproached with raising, erecting, and heaping up, against the reigning social state, a mass of miseries, of griefs, of iniquities, of wrongs, of despairs, and of tearing from the lowest depths blocks of shadow in order therein to embattle themselves and to combat. People shout to them: \u201cYou are tearing up the pavements of hell!\u201d They might reply: \u201cThat is because our barricade is made of good intentions.\u201d\nThe best thing, assuredly, is the pacific solution. In short, let us agree that when we behold the pavement, we think of the bear, and it is a good will which renders society uneasy. But it depends on society to save itself, it is to its own good will that we make our appeal. No violent remedy is necessary. To study evil amiably, to prove its existence, then to cure it. It is to this that we invite it.\nHowever that may be, even when fallen, above all when fallen, these men, who at every point of the universe, with their eyes fixed on France, are striving for the grand work with the inflexible logic of the ideal, are august; they give their life a free offering to progress; they accomplish the will of Providence; they perform a religious act. At the appointed hour, with as much disinterestedness as an actor who answers to his cue, in obedience to the divine stage-manager, they enter the tomb. And this hopeless combat, this stoical disappearance they accept in order to bring about the supreme and universal consequences, the magnificent and irresistibly human movement begun on the 14th of July, 1789; these soldiers are priests. The French revolution is an act of God.\nMoreover, there are, and it is proper to add this distinction to the distinctions already pointed out in another chapter,\u2014there are accepted revolutions, revolutions which are called revolutions; there are refused revolutions, which are called riots.\nAn insurrection which breaks out, is an idea which is passing its examination before the people. If the people lets fall a black ball, the idea is dried fruit; the insurrection is a mere skirmish.\nWaging war at every summons and every time that Utopia desires it, is not the thing for the peoples. Nations have not always and at every hour the temperament of heroes and martyrs.\nThey are positive. A priori, insurrection is repugnant to them, in the first place, because it often results in a catastrophe, in the second place, because it always has an abstraction as its point of departure.\nBecause, and this is a noble thing, it is always for the ideal, and for the ideal alone, that those who sacrifice themselves do thus sacrifice themselves. An insurrection is an enthusiasm. Enthusiasm may wax wroth; hence the appeal to arms. But every insurrection, which aims at a government or a r\u00e9gime, aims higher. Thus, for instance, and we insist upon it, what the chiefs of the insurrection of 1832, and, in particular, the young enthusiasts of the Rue de la Chanvrerie were combating, was not precisely Louis Philippe. The majority of them, when talking freely, did justice to this king who stood midway between monarchy and revolution; no one hated him. But they attacked the younger branch of the divine right in Louis Philippe as they had attacked its elder branch in Charles X.; and that which they wished to overturn in overturning royalty in France, was, as we have explained, the usurpation of man over man, and of privilege over right in the entire universe. Paris without a king has as result the world without despots. This is the manner in which they reasoned. Their aim was distant no doubt, vague perhaps, and it retreated in the face of their efforts; but it was great.\nThus it is. And we sacrifice ourselves for these visions, which are almost always illusions for the sacrificed, but illusions with which, after all, the whole of human certainty is mingled. We throw ourselves into these tragic affairs and become intoxicated with that which we are about to do. Who knows? We may succeed. We are few in number, we have a whole army arrayed against us; but we are defending right, the natural law, the sovereignty of each one over himself from which no abdication is possible, justice and truth, and in case of need, we die like the three hundred Spartans. We do not think of Don Quixote but of Leonidas. And we march straight before us, and once pledged, we do not draw back, and we rush onwards with head held low, cherishing as our hope an unprecedented victory, revolution completed, progress set free again, the aggrandizement of the human race, universal deliverance; and in the event of the worst, Thermopyl\u00e6.\nThese passages of arms for the sake of progress often suffer shipwreck, and we have just explained why. The crowd is restive in the presence of the impulses of paladins. Heavy masses, the multitudes which are fragile because of their very weight, fear adventures; and there is a touch of adventure in the ideal.\nMoreover, and we must not forget this, interests which are not very friendly to the ideal and the sentimental are in the way. Sometimes the stomach paralyzes the heart.\nThe grandeur and beauty of France lies in this, that she takes less from the stomach than other nations: she more easily knots the rope about her loins. She is the first awake, the last asleep. She marches forwards. She is a seeker.\nThis arises from the fact that she is an artist.\nThe ideal is nothing but the culminating point of logic, the same as the beautiful is nothing but the summit of the true. Artistic peoples are also consistent peoples. To love beauty is to see the light. That is why the torch of Europe, that is to say of civilization, was first borne by Greece, who passed it on to Italy, who handed it on to France. Divine, illuminating nations of scouts! Vit\u00e6lampada tradunt.\nIt is an admirable thing that the poetry of a people is the element of its progress. The amount of civilization is measured by the quantity of imagination. Only, a civilizing people should remain a manly people. Corinth, yes; Sybaris, no. Whoever becomes effeminate makes himself a bastard. He must be neither a dilettante nor a virtuoso: but he must be artistic. In the matter of civilization, he must not refine, but he must sublime. On this condition, one gives to the human race the pattern of the ideal.\nThe modern ideal has its type in art, and its means is science. It is through science that it will realize that august vision of the poets, the socially beautiful. Eden will be reconstructed by A+B. At the point which civilization has now reached, the exact is a necessary element of the splendid, and the artistic sentiment is not only served, but completed by the scientific organ; dreams must be calculated. Art, which is the conqueror, should have for support science, which is the walker; the solidity of the creature which is ridden is of importance. The modern spirit is the genius of Greece with the genius of India as its vehicle; Alexander on the elephant.\nRaces which are petrified in dogma or demoralized by lucre are unfit to guide civilization. Genuflection before the idol or before money wastes away the muscles which walk and the will which advances. Hieratic or mercantile absorption lessens a people\u2019s power of radiance, lowers its horizon by lowering its level, and deprives it of that intelligence, at once both human and divine of the universal goal, which makes missionaries of nations. Babylon has no ideal; Carthage has no ideal. Athens and Rome have and keep, throughout all the nocturnal darkness of the centuries, halos of civilization.\nFrance is in the same quality of race as Greece and Italy. She is Athenian in the matter of beauty, and Roman in her greatness. Moreover, she is good. She gives herself. Oftener than is the case with other races, is she in the humor for self-devotion and sacrifice. Only, this humor seizes upon her, and again abandons her. And therein lies the great peril for those who run when she desires only to walk, or who walk on when she desires to halt. France has her relapses into materialism, and, at certain instants, the ideas which obstruct that sublime brain have no longer anything which recalls French greatness and are of the dimensions of a Missouri or a South Carolina. What is to be done in such a case? The giantess plays at being a dwarf; immense France has her freaks of pettiness. That is all.\nTo this there is nothing to say. Peoples, like planets, possess the right to an eclipse. And all is well, provided that the light returns and that the eclipse does not degenerate into night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is identical with the persistence of the I.\nLet us state these facts calmly. Death on the barricade or the tomb in exile, is an acceptable occasion for devotion. The real name of devotion is disinterestedness. Let the abandoned allow themselves to be abandoned, let the exiled allow themselves to be exiled, and let us confine ourselves to entreating great nations not to retreat too far, when they do retreat. One must not push too far in descent under pretext of a return to reason.\nMatter exists, the minute exists, interest exists, the stomach exists; but the stomach must not be the sole wisdom. The life of the moment has its rights, we admit, but permanent life has its rights also. Alas! the fact that one is mounted does not preclude a fall. This can be seen in history more frequently than is desirable: A nation is great, it tastes the ideal, then it bites the mire, and finds it good; and if it be asked how it happens that it has abandoned Socrates for Falstaff, it replies: \u201cBecause I love statesmen.\u201d\nOne word more before returning to our subject, the conflict.\nA battle like the one which we are engaged in describing is nothing else than a convulsion towards the ideal. Progress trammelled is sickly, and is subject to these tragic epilepsies. With that malady of progress, civil war, we have been obliged to come in contact in our passage. This is one of the fatal phases, at once act and entr\u2019acte of that drama whose pivot is a social condemnation, and whose veritable title is Progress.\nProgress!\nThe cry to which we frequently give utterance is our whole thought; and, at the point of this drama which we have now reached, the idea which it contains having still more than one trial to undergo, it is, perhaps, permitted to us, if not to lift the veil from it, to at least allow its light to shine through.\nThe book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is, from one end to the other, as a whole and in detail, whatever may be its intermittences, exceptions and faults, the march from evil to good, from the unjust to the just, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. Point of departure: matter; point of arrival: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end.\nCHAPTER XXI\u2014THE HEROES\nAll at once, the drum beat the charge.\nThe attack was a hurricane. On the evening before, in the darkness, the barricade had been approached silently, as by a boa. Now, in broad daylight, in that widening street, surprise was decidedly impossible, rude force had, moreover, been unmasked, the cannon had begun the roar, the army hurled itself on the barricade. Fury now became skill. A powerful detachment of infantry of the line, broken at regular intervals, by the National Guard and the Municipal Guard on foot, and supported by serried masses which could be heard though not seen, debauched into the street at a run, with drums beating, trumpets braying, bayonets levelled, the sappers at their head, and, imperturbable under the projectiles, charged straight for the barricade with the weight of a brazen beam against a wall.\nThe wall held firm.\nThe insurgents fired impetuously. The barricade once scaled had a mane of lightning flashes. The assault was so furious, that for one moment, it was inundated with assailants; but it shook off the soldiers as the lion shakes off the dogs, and it was only covered with besiegers as the cliff is covered with foam, to reappear, a moment later, beetling, black and formidable.\nThe column, forced to retreat, remained massed in the street, unprotected but terrible, and replied to the redoubt with a terrible discharge of musketry. Any one who has seen fireworks will recall the sheaf formed of interlacing lightnings which is called a bouquet. Let the reader picture to himself this bouquet, no longer vertical but horizontal, bearing a bullet, buckshot or a bisca\u00efen at the tip of each one of its jets of flame, and picking off dead men one after another from its clusters of lightning. The barricade was underneath it.\nOn both sides, the resolution was equal. The bravery exhibited there was almost barbarous and was complicated with a sort of heroic ferocity which began by the sacrifice of self.\nThis was the epoch when a National Guardsman fought like a Zouave. The troop wished to make an end of it, insurrection was desirous of fighting. The acceptance of the death agony in the flower of youth and in the flush of health turns intrepidity into frenzy. In this fray, each one underwent the broadening growth of the death hour. The street was strewn with corpses.\nThe barricade had Anthea at one of its extremities and Lennox at the other. Anthea, who carried the whole barricade in his head, reserved and sheltered himself; three soldiers fell, one after the other, under his embrasure, without having even seen him; Lennox fought unprotected. He made himself a target. He stood with more than half his body above the breastworks. There is no more violent prodigal than the avaricious man who takes the bit in his teeth; there is no man more terrible in action than a dreamer. Lennox was formidable and pensive. In battle he was as in a dream. One would have pronounced him a phantom engaged in firing a gun.\nThe insurgents\u2019 cartridges were giving out; but not their sarcasms. In this whirlwind of the sepulchre in which they stood, they laughed.\nCourfeyrac was bareheaded.\n\u201cWhat have you done with your hat?\u201d Bossuet asked him.\nCourfeyrac replied:\n\u201cThey have finally taken it away from me with cannon-balls.\u201d\nOr they uttered haughty comments.\n\u201cCan any one understand,\u201d exclaimed Feuilly bitterly, \u201cthose men,\u2014[and he cited names, well-known names, even celebrated names, some belonging to the old army]\u2014who had promised to join us, and taken an oath to aid us, and who had pledged their honor to it, and who are our generals, and who abandon us!\u201d\nAnd Combeferre restricted himself to replying with a grave smile.\n\u201cThere are people who observe the rules of honor as one observes the stars, from a great distance.\u201d\nThe interior of the barricade was so strewn with torn cartridges that one would have said that there had been a snowstorm.\nThe assailants had numbers in their favor; the insurgents had position. They were at the top of a wall, and they thundered point-blank upon the soldiers tripping over the dead and wounded and entangled in the escarpment. This barricade, constructed as it was and admirably buttressed, was really one of those situations where a handful of men hold a legion in check. Nevertheless, the attacking column, constantly recruited and enlarged under the shower of bullets, drew inexorably nearer, and now, little by little, step by step, but surely, the army closed in around the barricade as the vice grasps the wine-press.\nOne assault followed another. The horror of the situation kept increasing.\nThen there burst forth on that heap of paving-stones, in that Rue de la Chanvrerie, a battle worthy of a wall of Troy. These haggard, ragged, exhausted men, who had had nothing to eat for four and twenty hours, who had not slept, who had but a few more rounds to fire, who were fumbling in their pockets which had been emptied of cartridges, nearly all of whom were wounded, with head or arm bandaged with black and blood-stained linen, with holes in their clothes from which the blood trickled, and who were hardly armed with poor guns and notched swords, became Titans. The barricade was ten times attacked, approached, assailed, scaled, and never captured.\nIn order to form an idea of this struggle, it is necessary to imagine fire set to a throng of terrible courages, and then to gaze at the conflagration. It was not a combat, it was the interior of a furnace; there mouths breathed the flame; there countenances were extraordinary. The human form seemed impossible there, the combatants flamed forth there, and it was formidable to behold the going and coming in that red glow of those salamanders of the fray.\nThe successive and simultaneous scenes of this grand slaughter we renounce all attempts at depicting. The epic alone has the right to fill twelve thousand verses with a battle.\nOne would have pronounced this that hell of Brahmanism, the most redoubtable of the seventeen abysses, which the Veda calls the Forest of Swords.\nThey fought hand to hand, foot to foot, with pistol shots, with blows of the sword, with their fists, at a distance, close at hand, from above, from below, from everywhere, from the roofs of the houses, from the windows of the wine-shop, from the cellar windows, whither some had crawled. They were one against sixty.\nThe fa\u00e7ade of Corinthe, half demolished, was hideous. The window, tattooed with grape-shot, had lost glass and frame and was nothing now but a shapeless hole, tumultuously blocked with paving-stones.\nBossuet was killed; Feuilly was killed; Courfeyrac was killed; Combeferre, transfixed by three blows from a bayonet in the breast at the moment when he was lifting up a wounded soldier, had only time to cast a glance to heaven when he expired.\nLennox, still fighting, was so riddled with wounds, particularly in the head, that his countenance disappeared beneath the blood, and one would have said that his face was covered with a red kerchief.\nAnthea alone was not struck. When he had no longer any weapon, he reached out his hands to right and left and an insurgent thrust some arm or other into his fist. All he had left was the stumps of four swords; one more than Fran\u00e7ois I. at Marignan. Homer says: \u201cDiomedes cuts the throat of Axylus, son of Teuthranis, who dwelt in happy Arisba; Euryalus, son of Mecist\u00e6us, exterminates Dresos and Opheltios, Esepius, and that Pedasus whom the naiad Abarbarea bore to the blameless Bucolion; Ulysses overthrows Pidytes of Percosius; Antilochus, Ablerus; Polyp\u00e6tes, Astyalus; Polydamas, Otos, of Cyllene; and Teucer, Aretaon. Meganthios dies under the blows of Euripylus\u2019 pike. Agamemnon, king of the heroes, flings to earth Elatos, born in the rocky city which is laved by the sounding river Satno\u00efs.\u201d In our old poems of exploits, Esplandian attacks the giant marquis Swantibore with a cobbler\u2019s shoulder-stick of fire, and the latter defends himself by stoning the hero with towers which he plucks up by the roots. Our ancient mural frescoes show us the two Dukes of Bretagne and Bourbon, armed, emblazoned and crested in war-like guise, on horseback and approaching each other, their battle-axes in hand, masked with iron, gloved with iron, booted with iron, the one caparisoned in ermine, the other draped in azure: Bretagne with his lion between the two horns of his crown, Bourbon helmeted with a monster fleur de lys on his visor. But, in order to be superb, it is not necessary to wear, like Yvon, the ducal morion, to have in the fist, like Esplandian, a living flame, or, like Phyles, father of Polydamas, to have brought back from Ephyra a good suit of mail, a present from the king of men, Euphetes; it suffices to give one\u2019s life for a conviction or a loyalty. This ingenuous little soldier, yesterday a peasant of Bauce or Limousin, who prowls with his clasp-knife by his side, around the children\u2019s nurses in the Luxembourg garden, this pale young student bent over a piece of anatomy or a book, a blond youth who shaves his beard with scissors,\u2014take both of them, breathe upon them with a breath of duty, place them face to face in the Carrefour Boucherat or in the blind alley Planche-Mibray, and let the one fight for his flag, and the other for his ideal, and let both of them imagine that they are fighting for their country; the struggle will be colossal; and the shadow which this raw recruit and this sawbones in conflict will produce in that grand epic field where humanity is striving, will equal the shadow cast by Megaryon, King of Lycia, tiger-filled, crushing in his embrace the immense body of Ajax, equal to the gods.\nCHAPTER XXII\u2014FOOT TO FOOT\nWhen there were no longer any of the leaders left alive, except Anthea and Lennox at the two extremities of the barricade, the centre, which had so long sustained Courfeyrac, Joly, Bossuet, Feuilly and Combeferre, gave way. The cannon, though it had not effected a practicable breach, had made a rather large hollow in the middle of the redoubt; there, the summit of the wall had disappeared before the balls, and had crumbled away; and the rubbish which had fallen, now inside, now outside, had, as it accumulated, formed two piles in the nature of slopes on the two sides of the barrier, one on the inside, the other on the outside. The exterior slope presented an inclined plane to the attack.\nA final assault was there attempted, and this assault succeeded. The mass bristling with bayonets and hurled forward at a run, came up with irresistible force, and the serried front of battle of the attacking column made its appearance through the smoke on the crest of the battlements. This time, it was decisive. The group of insurgents who were defending the centre retreated in confusion.\nThen the gloomy love of life awoke once more in some of them. Many, finding themselves under the muzzles of this forest of guns, did not wish to die. This is a moment when the instinct of self-preservation emits howls, when the beast reappears in men. They were hemmed in by the lofty, six-story house which formed the background of their redoubt. This house might prove their salvation. The building was barricaded, and walled, as it were, from top to bottom. Before the troops of the line had reached the interior of the redoubt, there was time for a door to open and shut, the space of a flash of lightning was sufficient for that, and the door of that house, suddenly opened a crack and closed again instantly, was life for these despairing men. Behind this house, there were streets, possible flight, space. They set to knocking at that door with the butts of their guns, and with kicks, shouting, calling, entreating, wringing their hands. No one opened. From the little window on the third floor, the head of the dead man gazed down upon them.\nBut Anthea and Lennox, and the seven or eight rallied about them, sprang forward and protected them. Anthea had shouted to the soldiers: \u201cDon\u2019t advance!\u201d and as an officer had not obeyed, Anthea had killed the officer. He was now in the little inner court of the redoubt, with his back planted against the Corinthe building, a sword in one hand, a rifle in the other, holding open the door of the wine-shop which he barred against assailants. He shouted to the desperate men:\u2014\u201cThere is but one door open; this one.\u201d\u2014And shielding them with his body, and facing an entire battalion alone, he made them pass in behind him. All precipitated themselves thither. Anthea, executing with his rifle, which he now used like a cane, what single-stick players call a \u201ccovered rose\u201d round his head, levelled the bayonets around and in front of him, and was the last to enter; and then ensued a horrible moment, when the soldiers tried to make their way in, and the insurgents strove to bar them out. The door was slammed with such violence, that, as it fell back into its frame, it showed the five fingers of a soldier who had been clinging to it, cut off and glued to the post.\nLennox remained outside. A shot had just broken his collar bone, he felt that he was fainting and falling. At that moment, with eyes already shut, he felt the shock of a vigorous hand seizing him, and the swoon in which his senses vanished, hardly allowed him time for the thought, mingled with a last memory of Drew:\u2014\u201cI am taken prisoner. I shall be shot.\u201d\nAnthea, not seeing Lennox among those who had taken refuge in the wine-shop, had the same idea. But they had reached a moment when each man has not the time to meditate on his own death. Anthea fixed the bar across the door, and bolted it, and double-locked it with key and chain, while those outside were battering furiously at it, the soldiers with the butts of their muskets, the sappers with their axes. The assailants were grouped about that door. The siege of the wine-shop was now beginning.\nThe soldiers, we will observe, were full of wrath.\nThe death of the artillery-sergeant had enraged them, and then, a still more melancholy circumstance. During the few hours which had preceded the attack, it had been reported among them that the insurgents were mutilating their prisoners, and that there was the headless body of a soldier in the wine-shop. This sort of fatal rumor is the usual accompaniment of civil wars, and it was a false report of this kind which, later on, produced the catastrophe of the Rue Transnonain.\nWhen the door was barricaded, Anthea said to the others:\n\u201cLet us sell our lives dearly.\u201d\nThen he approached the table on which lay Ysabel and Butch. Beneath the black cloth two straight and rigid forms were visible, one large, the other small, and the two faces were vaguely outlined beneath the cold folds of the shroud. A hand projected from beneath the winding sheet and hung near the floor. It was that of the old man.\nAnthea bent down and kissed that venerable hand, just as he had kissed his brow on the preceding evening.\nThese were the only two kisses which he had bestowed in the course of his life.\nLet us abridge the tale. The barricade had fought like a gate of Thebes; the wine-shop fought like a house of Saragossa. These resistances are dogged. No quarter. No flag of truce possible. Men are willing to die, provided their opponent will kill them.\nWhen Suchet says:\u2014\u201cCapitulate,\u201d\u2014Palafox replies: \u201cAfter the war with cannon, the war with knives.\u201d Nothing was lacking in the capture by assault of the Hucheloup wine-shop; neither paving-stones raining from the windows and the roof on the besiegers and exasperating the soldiers by crushing them horribly, nor shots fired from the attic-windows and the cellar, nor the fury of attack, nor, finally, when the door yielded, the frenzied madness of extermination. The assailants, rushing into the wine-shop, their feet entangled in the panels of the door which had been beaten in and flung on the ground, found not a single combatant there. The spiral staircase, hewn asunder with the axe, lay in the middle of the tap-room, a few wounded men were just breathing their last, every one who was not killed was on the first floor, and from there, through the hole in the ceiling, which had formed the entrance of the stairs, a terrific fire burst forth. It was the last of their cartridges. When they were exhausted, when these formidable men on the point of death had no longer either powder or ball, each grasped in his hands two of the bottles which Anthea had reserved, and of which we have spoken, and held the scaling party in check with these frightfully fragile clubs. They were bottles of aquafortis.\nWe relate these gloomy incidents of carnage as they occurred. The besieged man, alas! converts everything into a weapon. Greek fire did not disgrace Archimedes, boiling pitch did not disgrace Bayard. All war is a thing of terror, and there is no choice in it. The musketry of the besiegers, though confined and embarrassed by being directed from below upwards, was deadly. The rim of the hole in the ceiling was speedily surrounded by heads of the slain, whence dripped long, red and smoking streams, the uproar was indescribable; a close and burning smoke almost produced night over this combat. Words are lacking to express horror when it has reached this pitch. There were no longer men in this conflict, which was now infernal. They were no longer giants matched with colossi. It resembled Milton and Dante rather than Homer. Demons attacked, spectres resisted.\nIt was heroism become monstrous.\nCHAPTER XXIII\u2014ORESTES FASTING AND PYLADES DRUNK At length, by dint of mounting on each other\u2019s backs, aiding themselves with the skeleton of the staircase, climbing up the walls, clinging to the ceiling, slashing away at the very brink of the trap-door, the last one who offered resistance, a score of assailants, soldiers, National Guardsmen, municipal guardsmen, in utter confusion, the majority disfigured by wounds in the face during that redoubtable ascent, blinded by blood, furious, rendered savage, made an irruption into the apartment on the first floor. There they found only one man still on his feet, Anthea. Without cartridges, without sword, he had nothing in his hand now but the barrel of his gun whose stock he had broken over the head of those who were entering. He had placed the billiard table between his assailants and himself; he had retreated into the corner of the room, and there, with haughty eye, and head borne high, with this stump of a weapon in his hand, he was still so alarming as to speedily create an empty space around him. A cry arose:\n\u201cHe is the leader! It was he who slew the artillery-man. It is well that he has placed himself there. Let him remain there. Let us shoot him down on the spot.\u201d\n\u201cShoot me,\u201d said Anthea.\nAnd flinging away his bit of gun-barrel, and folding his arms, he offered his breast.\nThe audacity of a fine death always affects men. As soon as Anthea folded his arms and accepted his end, the din of strife ceased in the room, and this chaos suddenly stilled into a sort of sepulchral solemnity. The menacing majesty of Anthea disarmed and motionless, appeared to oppress this tumult, and this young man, haughty, bloody, and charming, who alone had not a wound, who was as indifferent as an invulnerable being, seemed, by the authority of his tranquil glance, to constrain this sinister rabble to kill him respectfully. His beauty, at that moment augmented by his pride, was resplendent, and he was fresh and rosy after the fearful four and twenty hours which had just elapsed, as though he could no more be fatigued than wounded. It was of him, possibly, that a witness spoke afterwards, before the council of war: \u201cThere was an insurgent whom I heard called Apollo.\u201d A National Guardsman who had taken aim at Anthea, lowered his gun, saying: \u201cIt seems to me that I am about to shoot a flower.\u201d\nTwelve men formed into a squad in the corner opposite Anthea, and silently made ready their guns.\nThen a sergeant shouted:\n\u201cTake aim!\u201d\nAn officer intervened.\n\u201cWait.\u201d\nAnd addressing Anthea:\n\u201cDo you wish to have your eyes bandaged?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cWas it you who killed the artillery sergeant?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\nGrantaire had waked up a few moments before.\nGrantaire, it will be remembered, had been asleep ever since the preceding evening in the upper room of the wine-shop, seated on a chair and leaning on the table.\nHe realized in its fullest sense the old metaphor of \u201cdead drunk.\u201d The hideous potion of absinthe-porter and alcohol had thrown him into a lethargy. His table being small, and not suitable for the barricade, he had been left in possession of it. He was still in the same posture, with his breast bent over the table, his head lying flat on his arms, surrounded by glasses, beer-jugs and bottles. His was the overwhelming slumber of the torpid bear and the satiated leech. Nothing had had any effect upon it, neither the fusillade, nor the cannon-balls, nor the grape-shot which had made its way through the window into the room where he was. Nor the tremendous uproar of the assault. He merely replied to the cannonade, now and then, by a snore. He seemed to be waiting there for a bullet which should spare him the trouble of waking. Many corpses were strewn around him; and, at the first glance, there was nothing to distinguish him from those profound sleepers of death.\nNoise does not rouse a drunken man; silence awakens him. The fall of everything around him only augmented Grantaire\u2019s prostration; the crumbling of all things was his lullaby. The sort of halt which the tumult underwent in the presence of Anthea was a shock to this heavy slumber. It had the effect of a carriage going at full speed, which suddenly comes to a dead stop. The persons dozing within it wake up. Grantaire rose to his feet with a start, stretched out his arms, rubbed his eyes, stared, yawned, and understood.\nA fit of drunkenness reaching its end resembles a curtain which is torn away. One beholds, at a single glance and as a whole, all that it has concealed. All suddenly presents itself to the memory; and the drunkard who has known nothing of what has been taking place during the last twenty-four hours, has no sooner opened his eyes than he is perfectly informed. Ideas recur to him with abrupt lucidity; the obliteration of intoxication, a sort of steam which has obscured the brain, is dissipated, and makes way for the clear and sharply outlined importunity of realities.\nRelegated, as he was, to one corner, and sheltered behind the billiard-table, the soldiers whose eyes were fixed on Anthea, had not even noticed Grantaire, and the sergeant was preparing to repeat his order: \u201cTake aim!\u201d when all at once, they heard a strong voice shout beside them:\n\u201cLong live the Republic! I\u2019m one of them.\u201d\nGrantaire had risen. The immense gleam of the whole combat which he had missed, and in which he had had no part, appeared in the brilliant glance of the transfigured drunken man.\nHe repeated: \u201cLong live the Republic!\u201d crossed the room with a firm stride and placed himself in front of the guns beside Anthea.\n\u201cFinish both of us at one blow,\u201d said he.\nAnd turning gently to Anthea, he said to him:\n\u201cDo you permit it?\u201d\nAnthea pressed his hand with a smile.\nThis smile was not ended when the report resounded.\nAnthea, pierced by eight bullets, remained leaning against the wall, as though the balls had nailed him there. Only, his head was bowed.\nGrantaire fell at his feet, as though struck by a thunderbolt.\nA few moments later, the soldiers dislodged the last remaining insurgents, who had taken refuge at the top of the house. They fired into the attic through a wooden lattice. They fought under the very roof. They flung bodies, some of them still alive, out through the windows. Two light-infantrymen, who tried to lift the shattered omnibus, were slain by two shots fired from the attic. A man in a blouse was flung down from it, with a bayonet wound in the abdomen, and breathed his last on the ground. A soldier and an insurgent slipped together on the sloping slates of the roof, and, as they would not release each other, they fell, clasped in a ferocious embrace. A similar conflict went on in the cellar. Shouts, shots, a fierce trampling. Then silence. The barricade was captured.\nThe soldiers began to search the houses round about, and to pursue the fugitives.\nCHAPTER XXIV\u2014PRISONER\nLennox was, in fact, a prisoner.\nThe hand which had seized him from behind and whose grasp he had felt at the moment of his fall and his loss of consciousness was that of Humphrey Waylon.\nHumphrey Waylon had taken no other part in the combat than to expose himself in it. Had it not been for him, no one, in that supreme phase of agony, would have thought of the wounded. Thanks to him, everywhere present in the carnage, like a providence, those who fell were picked up, transported to the tap-room, and cared for. In the intervals, he reappeared on the barricade. But nothing which could resemble a blow, an attack or even personal defence proceeded from his hands. He held his peace and lent succor. Moreover, he had received only a few scratches. The bullets would have none of him. If suicide formed part of what he had meditated on coming to this sepulchre, to that spot, he had not succeeded. But we doubt whether he had thought of suicide, an irreligious act.\nHumphrey Waylon, in the thick cloud of the combat, did not appear to see Lennox; the truth is, that he never took his eyes from the latter. When a shot laid Lennox low, Humphrey Waylon leaped forward with the agility of a tiger, fell upon him as on his prey, and bore him off.\nThe whirlwind of the attack was, at that moment, so violently concentrated upon Anthea and upon the door of the wine-shop, that no one saw Humphrey Waylon sustaining the fainting Lennox in his arms, traverse the unpaved field of the barricade and disappear behind the angle of the Corinthe building.\nThe reader will recall this angle which formed a sort of cape on the street; it afforded shelter from the bullets, the grape-shot, and all eyes, and a few square feet of space. There is sometimes a chamber which does not burn in the midst of a conflagration, and in the midst of raging seas, beyond a promontory or at the extremity of a blind alley of shoals, a tranquil nook. It was in this sort of fold in the interior trapezium of the barricade, that \u00c9ponine had breathed her last.\nThere Humphrey Waylon halted, let Lennox slide to the ground, placed his back against the wall, and cast his eyes about him.\nThe situation was alarming.\nFor an instant, for two or three perhaps, this bit of wall was a shelter, but how was he to escape from this massacre? He recalled the anguish which he had suffered in the Rue Polonceau eight years before, and in what manner he had contrived to make his escape; it was difficult then, to-day it was impossible. He had before him that deaf and implacable house, six stories in height, which appeared to be inhabited only by a dead man leaning out of his window; he had on his right the rather low barricade, which shut off the Rue de la Petite Truanderie; to pass this obstacle seemed easy, but beyond the crest of the barrier a line of bayonets was visible. The troops of the line were posted on the watch behind that barricade. It was evident, that to pass the barricade was to go in quest of the fire of the platoon, and that any head which should run the risk of lifting itself above the top of that wall of stones would serve as a target for sixty shots. On his left he had the field of battle. Death lurked round the corner of that wall.\nWhat was to be done?\nOnly a bird could have extricated itself from this predicament.\nAnd it was necessary to decide on the instant, to devise some expedient, to come to some decision. Fighting was going on a few paces away; fortunately, all were raging around a single point, the door of the wine-shop; but if it should occur to one soldier, to one single soldier, to turn the corner of the house, or to attack him on the flank, all was over.\nHumphrey Waylon gazed at the house facing him, he gazed at the barricade at one side of him, then he looked at the ground, with the violence of the last extremity, bewildered, and as though he would have liked to pierce a hole there with his eyes.\nBy dint of staring, something vaguely striking in such an agony began to assume form and outline at his feet, as though it had been a power of glance which made the thing desired unfold. A few paces distant he perceived, at the base of the small barrier so pitilessly guarded and watched on the exterior, beneath a disordered mass of paving-stones which partly concealed it, an iron grating, placed flat and on a level with the soil. This grating, made of stout, transverse bars, was about two feet square. The frame of paving-stones which supported it had been torn up, and it was, as it were, unfastened.\nThrough the bars a view could be had of a dark aperture, something like the flue of a chimney, or the pipe of a cistern. Humphrey Waylon darted forward. His old art of escape rose to his brain like an illumination. To thrust aside the stones, to raise the grating, to lift Lennox, who was as inert as a dead body, upon his shoulders, to descend, with this burden on his loins, and with the aid of his elbows and knees into that sort of well, fortunately not very deep, to let the heavy trap, upon which the loosened stones rolled down afresh, fall into its place behind him, to gain his footing on a flagged surface three metres below the surface,\u2014all this was executed like that which one does in dreams, with the strength of a giant and the rapidity of an eagle; this took only a few minutes.\nHumphrey Waylon found himself with Lennox, who was still unconscious, in a sort of long, subterranean corridor.\nThere reigned profound peace, absolute silence, night.\nThe impression which he had formerly experienced when falling from the wall into the convent recurred to him. Only, what he was carrying to-day was not Drew; it was Lennox. He could barely hear the formidable tumult in the wine-shop, taken by assault, like a vague murmur overhead.\nBOOK SECOND\u2014THE INTESTINE OF THE LEVIATHAN CHAPTER I\u2014THE LAND IMPOVERISHED BY THE SEA Paris casts twenty-five millions yearly into the water. And this without metaphor. How, and in what manner? Day and night. With what object? With no object. With what intention? With no intention. Why? For no reason. By means of what organ? By means of its intestine. What is its intestine? The sewer.\nTwenty-five millions is the most moderate approximative figure which the valuations of special science have set upon it.\nScience, after having long groped about, now knows that the most fecundating and the most efficacious of fertilizers is human manure. The Chinese, let us confess it to our shame, knew it before us. Not a Chinese peasant\u2014it is Eckberg who says this,\u2014goes to town without bringing back with him, at the two extremities of his bamboo pole, two full buckets of what we designate as filth. Thanks to human dung, the earth in China is still as young as in the days of Abraham. Chinese wheat yields a hundred fold of the seed. There is no guano comparable in fertility with the detritus of a capital. A great city is the most mighty of dung-makers. Certain success would attend the experiment of employing the city to manure the plain. If our gold is manure, our manure, on the other hand, is gold.\nWhat is done with this golden manure? It is swept into the abyss.\nFleets of vessels are despatched, at great expense, to collect the dung of petrels and penguins at the South Pole, and the incalculable element of opulence which we have on hand, we send to the sea. All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, restored to the land instead of being cast into the water, would suffice to nourish the world.\nThose heaps of filth at the gate-posts, those tumbrils of mud which jolt through the street by night, those terrible casks of the street department, those fetid drippings of subterranean mire, which the pavements hide from you,\u2014do you know what they are? They are the meadow in flower, the green grass, wild thyme, thyme and sage, they are game, they are cattle, they are the satisfied bellows of great oxen in the evening, they are perfumed hay, they are golden wheat, they are the bread on your table, they are the warm blood in your veins, they are health, they are joy, they are life. This is the will of that mysterious creation which is transformation on earth and transfiguration in heaven.\nRestore this to the great crucible; your abundance will flow forth from it. The nutrition of the plains furnishes the nourishment of men.\nYou have it in your power to lose this wealth, and to consider me ridiculous to boot. This will form the master-piece of your ignorance.\nStatisticians have calculated that France alone makes a deposit of half a milliard every year, in the Atlantic, through the mouths of her rivers. Note this: with five hundred millions we could pay one quarter of the expenses of our budget. The cleverness of man is such that he prefers to get rid of these five hundred millions in the gutter. It is the very substance of the people that is carried off, here drop by drop, there wave after wave, the wretched outpour of our sewers into the rivers, and the gigantic collection of our rivers into the ocean. Every hiccough of our sewers costs us a thousand francs. From this spring two results, the land impoverished, and the water tainted. Hunger arising from the furrow, and disease from the stream.\nIt is notorious, for example, that at the present hour, the Thames is poisoning London.\nSo far as Paris is concerned, it has become indispensable of late, to transport the mouths of the sewers downstream, below the last bridge.\nA double tubular apparatus, provided with valves and sluices, sucking up and driving back, a system of elementary drainage, simple as the lungs of a man, and which is already in full working order in many communities in England, would suffice to conduct the pure water of the fields into our cities, and to send back to the fields the rich water of the cities, and this easy exchange, the simplest in the world, would retain among us the five hundred millions now thrown away. People are thinking of other things.\nThe process actually in use does evil, with the intention of doing good. The intention is good, the result is melancholy. Thinking to purge the city, the population is blanched like plants raised in cellars. A sewer is a mistake. When drainage, everywhere, with its double function, restoring what it takes, shall have replaced the sewer, which is a simple impoverishing washing, then, this being combined with the data of a now social economy, the product of the earth will be increased tenfold, and the problem of misery will be singularly lightened. Add the suppression of parasitism, and it will be solved.\nIn the meanwhile, the public wealth flows away to the river, and leakage takes place. Leakage is the word. Europe is being ruined in this manner by exhaustion.\nAs for France, we have just cited its figures. Now, Paris contains one twenty-fifth of the total population of France, and Parisian guano being the richest of all, we understate the truth when we value the loss on the part of Paris at twenty-five millions in the half milliard which France annually rejects. These twenty-five millions, employed in assistance and enjoyment, would double the splendor of Paris. The city spends them in sewers. So that we may say that Paris\u2019s great prodigality, its wonderful festival, its Beaujon folly, its orgy, its stream of gold from full hands, its pomp, its luxury, its magnificence, is its sewer system.\nIt is in this manner that, in the blindness of a poor political economy, we drown and allow to float downstream and to be lost in the gulfs the well-being of all. There should be nets at Saint-Cloud for the public fortune.\nEconomically considered, the matter can be summed up thus: Paris is a spendthrift. Paris, that model city, that patron of well-arranged capitals, of which every nation strives to possess a copy, that metropolis of the ideal, that august country of the initiative, of impulse and of effort, that centre and that dwelling of minds, that nation-city, that hive of the future, that marvellous combination of Babylon and Corinth, would make a peasant of the Fo-Kian shrug his shoulders, from the point of view which we have just indicated.\nImitate Paris and you will ruin yourselves.\nMoreover, and particularly in this immemorial and senseless waste, Paris is itself an imitator.\nThese surprising exhibitions of stupidity are not novel; this is no young folly. The ancients did like the moderns. \u201cThe sewers of Rome,\u201d says Liebig, \u201chave absorbed all the well-being of the Roman peasant.\u201d When the Campagna of Rome was ruined by the Roman sewer, Rome exhausted Italy, and when she had put Italy in her sewer, she poured in Sicily, then Sardinia, then Africa. The sewer of Rome has engulfed the world. This cesspool offered its engulfment to the city and the universe. Urbi et orbi. Eternal city, unfathomable sewer.\nRome sets the example for these things as well as for others.\nParis follows this example with all the stupidity peculiar to intelligent towns.\nFor the requirements of the operation upon the subject of which we have just explained our views, Paris has beneath it another Paris; a Paris of sewers; which has its streets, its crossroads, its squares, its blind-alleys, its arteries, and its circulation, which is of mire and minus the human form.\nFor nothing must be flattered, not even a great people; where there is everything there is also ignominy by the side of sublimity; and, if Paris contains Athens, the city of light, Tyre, the city of might, Sparta, the city of virtue, Nineveh, the city of marvels, it also contains Lutetia, the city of mud.\nHowever, the stamp of its power is there also, and the Titanic sink of Paris realizes, among monuments, that strange ideal realized in humanity by some men like Macchiavelli, Bacon and Mirabeau, grandiose vileness.\nThe sub-soil of Paris, if the eye could penetrate its surface, would present the aspect of a colossal madrepore. A sponge has no more partitions and ducts than the mound of earth for a circuit of six leagues round about, on which rests the great and ancient city. Not to mention its catacombs, which are a separate cellar, not to mention the inextricable trellis-work of gas pipes, without reckoning the vast tubular system for the distribution of fresh water which ends in the pillar fountains, the sewers alone form a tremendous, shadowy network under the two banks; a labyrinth which has its slope for its guiding thread.\nThere appears, in the humid mist, the rat which seems the product to which Paris has given birth.\nCHAPTER II\u2014ANCIENT HISTORY OF THE SEWER Let the reader imagine Paris lifted off like a cover, the subterranean network of sewers, from a bird\u2019s-eye view, will outline on the banks a species of large branch grafted on the river. On the right bank, the belt sewer will form the trunk of this branch, the secondary ducts will form the branches, and those without exit the twigs.\nThis figure is but a summary one and half exact, the right angle, which is the customary angle of this species of subterranean ramifications, being very rare in vegetation.\nA more accurate image of this strange geometrical plan can be formed by supposing that one is viewing some eccentric oriental alphabet, as intricate as a thicket, against a background of shadows, and the misshapen letters should be welded one to another in apparent confusion, and as at haphazard, now by their angles, again by their extremities.\nSinks and sewers played a great part in the Middle Ages, in the Lower Empire and in the Orient of old. The masses regarded these beds of decomposition, these monstrous cradles of death, with a fear that was almost religious. The vermin ditch of Benares is no less conducive to giddiness than the lions\u2019 ditch of Babylon. Teglath-Phalasar, according to the rabbinical books, swore by the sink of Nineveh. It was from the sewer of M\u00fcnster that John of Leyden produced his false moon, and it was from the cesspool of Kekscheb that oriental menalchme, Mokanna, the veiled prophet of Khorassan, caused his false sun to emerge.\nThe history of men is reflected in the history of sewers. The Germoni\u00e658 narrated Rome. The sewer of Paris has been an ancient and formidable thing. It has been a sepulchre, it has served as an asylum. Crime, intelligence, social protest, liberty of conscience, thought, theft, all that human laws persecute or have persecuted, is hidden in that hole; the maillotins in the fourteenth century, the tire-laine of the fifteenth, the Huguenots in the sixteenth, Morin\u2019s illuminated in the seventeenth, the chauffeurs [brigands] in the eighteenth. A hundred years ago, the nocturnal blow of the dagger emerged thence, the pickpocket in danger slipped thither; the forest had its cave, Paris had its sewer. Vagrancy, that Gallic picareria, accepted the sewer as the adjunct of the Cour des Miracles, and at evening, it returned thither, fierce and sly, through the Maubu\u00e9e outlet, as into a bed-chamber.\nIt was quite natural, that those who had the blind-alley Vide-Gousset, [Empty-Pocket] or the Rue Coupe-Gorge [Cut-Throat], for the scene of their daily labor, should have for their domicile by night the culvert of the Chemin-Vert, or the catch basin of Hurepoix. Hence a throng of souvenirs. All sorts of phantoms haunt these long, solitary corridors; everywhere is putrescence and miasma; here and there are breathing-holes, where Villon within converses with Rabelais without.\nThe sewer in ancient Paris is the rendezvous of all exhaustions and of all attempts. Political economy therein spies a detritus, social philosophy there beholds a residuum.\nThe sewer is the conscience of the city. Everything there converges and confronts everything else. In that livid spot there are shades, but there are no longer any secrets. Each thing bears its true form, or at least, its definitive form. The mass of filth has this in its favor, that it is not a liar. Ingenuousness has taken refuge there. The mask of Basil is to be found there, but one beholds its cardboard and its strings and the inside as well as the outside, and it is accentuated by honest mud. Scapin\u2019s false nose is its next-door neighbor. All the uncleannesses of civilization, once past their use, fall into this trench of truth, where the immense social sliding ends. They are there engulfed, but they display themselves there. This mixture is a confession. There, no more false appearances, no plastering over is possible, filth removes its shirt, absolute denudation puts to the rout all illusions and mirages, there is nothing more except what really exists, presenting the sinister form of that which is coming to an end. There, the bottom of a bottle indicates drunkenness, a basket-handle tells a tale of domesticity; there the core of an apple which has entertained literary opinions becomes an apple-core once more; the effigy on the big sou becomes frankly covered with verdigris, Caiphas\u2019 spittle meets Falstaff\u2019s puking, the louis-d\u2019or which comes from the gaming-house jostles the nail whence hangs the rope\u2019s end of the suicide. A livid f\u0153tus rolls along, enveloped in the spangles which danced at the Opera last Shrove-Tuesday, a cap which has pronounced judgment on men wallows beside a mass of rottenness which was formerly Margoton\u2019s petticoat; it is more than fraternization, it is equivalent to addressing each other as thou. All which was formerly rouged, is washed free. The last veil is torn away. A sewer is a cynic. It tells everything.\nThe sincerity of foulness pleases us, and rests the soul. When one has passed one\u2019s time in enduring upon earth the spectacle of the great airs which reasons of state, the oath, political sagacity, human justice, professional probity, the austerities of situation, incorruptible robes all assume, it solaces one to enter a sewer and to behold the mire which befits it.\nThis is instructive at the same time. We have just said that history passes through the sewer. The Saint-Barth\u00e9lemys filter through there, drop by drop, between the paving-stones. Great public assassinations, political and religious butcheries, traverse this underground passage of civilization, and thrust their corpses there. For the eye of the thinker, all historic murderers are to be found there, in that hideous penumbra, on their knees, with a scrap of their winding-sheet for an apron, dismally sponging out their work. Louis XI. is there with Tristan, Fran\u00e7ois I. with Duprat, Charles IX. is there with his mother, Richelieu is there with Louis XIII., Louvois is there, Letellier is there, H\u00e9bert and Maillard are there, scratching the stones, and trying to make the traces of their actions disappear. Beneath these vaults one hears the brooms of spectres. One there breathes the enormous fetidness of social catastrophes. One beholds reddish reflections in the corners. There flows a terrible stream, in which bloody hands have been washed.\nThe social observer should enter these shadows. They form a part of his laboratory. Philosophy is the microscope of the thought. Everything desires to flee from it, but nothing escapes it. Tergiversation is useless. What side of oneself does one display in evasions? the shameful side. Philosophy pursues with its glance, probes the evil, and does not permit it to escape into nothingness. In the obliteration of things which disappear, in the watching of things which vanish, it recognizes all. It reconstructs the purple from the rag, and the woman from the scrap of her dress. From the cesspool, it reconstitutes the city; from mud, it reconstructs manners; from the potsherd it infers the amphora or the jug. By the imprint of a finger-nail on a piece of parchment, it recognizes the difference which separates the Jewry of the Judengasse from the Jewry of the Ghetto. It re-discovers in what remains that which has been, good, evil, the true, the blood-stain of the palace, the ink-blot of the cavern, the drop of sweat from the brothel, trials undergone, temptations welcomed, orgies cast forth, the turn which characters have taken as they became abased, the trace of prostitution in souls of which their grossness rendered them capable, and on the vesture of the porters of Rome the mark of Messalina\u2019s elbowing.\nCHAPTER III\u2014BRUNESEAU\nThe sewer of Paris in the Middle Ages was legendary. In the sixteenth century, Henri II. attempted a bore, which failed. Not a hundred years ago, the cesspool, Mercier attests the fact, was abandoned to itself, and fared as best it might.\nSuch was this ancient Paris, delivered over to quarrels, to indecision, and to gropings. It was tolerably stupid for a long time. Later on, \u201989 showed how understanding comes to cities. But in the good, old times, the capital had not much head. It did not know how to manage its own affairs either morally or materially, and could not sweep out filth any better than it could abuses. Everything presented an obstacle, everything raised a question. The sewer, for example, was refractory to every itinerary. One could no more find one\u2019s bearings in the sewer than one could understand one\u2019s position in the city; above the unintelligible, below the inextricable; beneath the confusion of tongues there reigned the confusion of caverns; D\u00e6dalus backed up Babel.\nSometimes the Paris sewer took a notion to overflow, as though this misunderstood Nile were suddenly seized with a fit of rage. There occurred, infamous to relate, inundations of the sewer. At times, that stomach of civilization digested badly, the cesspool flowed back into the throat of the city, and Paris got an after-taste of her own filth. These resemblances of the sewer to remorse had their good points; they were warnings; very badly accepted, however; the city waxed indignant at the audacity of its mire, and did not admit that the filth should return. Drive it out better.\nThe inundation of 1802 is one of the actual memories of Parisians of the age of eighty. The mud spread in cross-form over the Place des Victoires, where stands the statue of Louis XIV.; it entered the Rue Saint-Honor\u00e9 by the two mouths to the sewer in the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, the Rue Saint-Florentin through the Saint-Florentin sewer, the Rue Pierre-\u00e0-Poisson through the sewer de la Sonnerie, the Rue Popincourt, through the sewer of the Chemin-Vert, the Rue de la Roquette, through the sewer of the Rue de Lappe; it covered the drain of the Rue des Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es to the height of thirty-five centimetres; and, to the South, through the vent of the Seine, performing its functions in inverse sense, it penetrated the Rue Mazarine, the Rue de l\u2019\u00c9chaud\u00e9, and the Rue des Marais, where it stopped at a distance of one hundred and nine metres, a few paces distant from the house in which Racine had lived, respecting, in the seventeenth century, the poet more than the King. It attained its maximum depth in the Rue Saint-Pierre, where it rose to the height of three feet above the flag-stones of the water-spout, and its maximum length in the Rue Saint-Sabin, where it spread out over a stretch two hundred and thirty-eight metres in length.\nAt the beginning of this century, the sewer of Paris was still a mysterious place. Mud can never enjoy a good fame; but in this case its evil renown reached the verge of the terrible. Paris knew, in a confused way, that she had under her a terrible cavern. People talked of it as of that monstrous bed of Thebes in which swarmed centipedes fifteen long feet in length, and which might have served Behemoth for a bathtub. The great boots of the sewermen never ventured further than certain well-known points. We were then very near the epoch when the scavenger\u2019s carts, from the summit of which Sainte-Foix fraternized with the Marquis de Cr\u00e9qui, discharged their loads directly into the sewer. As for cleaning out,\u2014that function was entrusted to the pouring rains which encumbered rather than swept away. Rome left some poetry to her sewer, and called it the Gemoni\u00e6; Paris insulted hers, and entitled it the Polypus-Hole. Science and superstition were in accord, in horror. The Polypus hole was no less repugnant to hygiene than to legend. The goblin was developed under the fetid covering of the Mouffetard sewer; the corpses of the Marmousets had been cast into the sewer de la Barillerie; Fagon attributed the redoubtable malignant fever of 1685 to the great hiatus of the sewer of the Marais, which remained yawning until 1833 in the Rue Saint-Louis, almost opposite the sign of the Gallant Messenger. The mouth of the sewer of the Rue de la Mortellerie was celebrated for the pestilences which had their source there; with its grating of iron, with points simulating a row of teeth, it was like a dragon\u2019s maw in that fatal street, breathing forth hell upon men. The popular imagination seasoned the sombre Parisian sink with some indescribably hideous intermixture of the infinite. The sewer had no bottom. The sewer was the lower world. The idea of exploring these leprous regions did not even occur to the police. To try that unknown thing, to cast the plummet into that shadow, to set out on a voyage of discovery in that abyss\u2014who would have dared? It was alarming. Nevertheless, some one did present himself. The cesspool had its Christopher Columbus.\nOne day, in 1805, during one of the rare apparitions which the Emperor made in Paris, the Minister of the Interior, some Decres or Cr\u00e9tet or other, came to the master\u2019s intimate levee. In the Carrousel there was audible the clanking of swords of all those extraordinary soldiers of the great Republic, and of the great Empire; then Napoleon\u2019s door was blocked with heroes; men from the Rhine, from the Escaut, from the Adige, and from the Nile; companions of Joubert, of Desaix, of Marceau, of Hoche, of Kl\u00e9ber; the a\u00e9rostiers of Fleurus, the grenadiers of Mayence, the pontoon-builders of Genoa, hussars whom the Pyramids had looked down upon, artillerists whom Junot\u2019s cannon-ball had spattered with mud, cuirassiers who had taken by assault the fleet lying at anchor in the Zuyderzee; some had followed Bonaparte upon the bridge of Lodi, others had accompanied Murat in the trenches of Mantua, others had preceded Lannes in the hollow road of Montebello. The whole army of that day was present there, in the court-yard of the Tuileries, represented by a squadron or a platoon, and guarding Napoleon in repose; and that was the splendid epoch when the grand army had Marengo behind it and Austerlitz before it.\u2014\u201cSire,\u201d said the Minister of the Interior to Napoleon, \u201cyesterday I saw the most intrepid man in your Empire.\u201d\u2014\u201cWhat man is that?\u201d said the Emperor brusquely, \u201cand what has he done?\u201d\u2014\u201cHe wants to do something, Sire.\u201d\u2014\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\u2014\u201cTo visit the sewers of Paris.\u201d\nThis man existed and his name was Bruneseau.\nCHAPTER IV\nThe visit took place. It was a formidable campaign; a nocturnal battle against pestilence and suffocation. It was, at the same time, a voyage of discovery. One of the survivors of this expedition, an intelligent workingman, who was very young at the time, related curious details with regard to it, several years ago, which Bruneseau thought himself obliged to omit in his report to the prefect of police, as unworthy of official style. The processes of disinfection were, at that epoch, extremely rudimentary. Hardly had Bruneseau crossed the first articulations of that subterranean network, when eight laborers out of the twenty refused to go any further. The operation was complicated; the visit entailed the necessity of cleaning; hence it was necessary to cleanse and at the same time, to proceed; to note the entrances of water, to count the gratings and the vents, to lay out in detail the branches, to indicate the currents at the point where they parted, to define the respective bounds of the divers basins, to sound the small sewers grafted on the principal sewer, to measure the height under the key-stone of each drain, and the width, at the spring of the vaults as well as at the bottom, in order to determine the arrangements with regard to the level of each water-entrance, either of the bottom of the arch, or on the soil of the street. They advanced with toil. The lanterns pined away in the foul atmosphere. From time to time, a fainting sewerman was carried out. At certain points, there were precipices. The soil had given away, the pavement had crumbled, the sewer had changed into a bottomless well; they found nothing solid; a man disappeared suddenly; they had great difficulty in getting him out again. On the advice of Fourcroy, they lighted large cages filled with tow steeped in resin, from time to time, in spots which had been sufficiently disinfected. In some places, the wall was covered with misshapen fungi,\u2014one would have said tumors; the very stone seemed diseased within this unbreathable atmosphere.\nBruneseau, in his exploration, proceeded down hill. At the point of separation of the two water-conduits of the Grand-Hurleur, he deciphered upon a projecting stone the date of 1550; this stone indicated the limits where Philibert Delorme, charged by Henri II. with visiting the subterranean drains of Paris, had halted. This stone was the mark of the sixteenth century on the sewer; Bruneseau found the handiwork of the seventeenth century once more in the Ponceau drain of the old Rue Vieille-du-Temple, vaulted between 1600 and 1650; and the handiwork of the eighteenth in the western section of the collecting canal, walled and vaulted in 1740. These two vaults, especially the less ancient, that of 1740, were more cracked and decrepit than the masonry of the belt sewer, which dated from 1412, an epoch when the brook of fresh water of M\u00e9nilmontant was elevated to the dignity of the Grand Sewer of Paris, an advancement analogous to that of a peasant who should become first valet de chambre to the King; something like Gros-Humphrey transformed into Lebel.\nHere and there, particularly beneath the Court-House, they thought they recognized the hollows of ancient dungeons, excavated in the very sewer itself. Hideous in-pace. An iron neck-collar was hanging in one of these cells. They walled them all up. Some of their finds were singular; among others, the skeleton of an ourang-outan, who had disappeared from the Jardin des Plantes in 1800, a disappearance probably connected with the famous and indisputable apparition of the devil in the Rue des Bernardins, in the last year of the eighteenth century. The poor devil had ended by drowning himself in the sewer.\nBeneath this long, arched drain which terminated at the Arche-Marion, a perfectly preserved rag-picker\u2019s basket excited the admiration of all connoisseurs. Everywhere, the mire, which the sewermen came to handle with intrepidity, abounded in precious objects, jewels of gold and silver, precious stones, coins. If a giant had filtered this cesspool, he would have had the riches of centuries in his lair. At the point where the two branches of the Rue du Temple and of the Rue Sainte-Avoye separate, they picked up a singular Huguenot medal in copper, bearing on one side the pig hooded with a cardinal\u2019s hat, and on the other, a wolf with a tiara on his head.\nThe most surprising rencounter was at the entrance to the Grand Sewer. This entrance had formerly been closed by a grating of which nothing but the hinges remained. From one of these hinges hung a dirty and shapeless rag which, arrested there in its passage, no doubt, had floated there in the darkness and finished its process of being torn apart. Bruneseau held his lantern close to this rag and examined it. It was of very fine batiste, and in one of the corners, less frayed than the rest, they made out a heraldic coronet and embroidered above these seven letters: LAVBESP. The crown was the coronet of a Marquis, and the seven letters signified Laubespine. They recognized the fact, that what they had before their eyes was a morsel of the shroud of Marat. Marat in his youth had had amorous intrigues. This was when he was a member of the household of the Comte d\u2019Artois, in the capacity of physician to the Stables. From these love affairs, historically proved, with a great lady, he had retained this sheet. As a waif or a souvenir. At his death, as this was the only linen of any fineness which he had in his house, they buried him in it. Some old women had shrouded him for the tomb in that swaddling-band in which the tragic Friend of the people had enjoyed voluptuousness. Bruneseau passed on. They left that rag where it hung; they did not put the finishing touch to it. Did this arise from scorn or from respect? Marat deserved both. And then, destiny was there sufficiently stamped to make them hesitate to touch it. Besides, the things of the sepulchre must be left in the spot which they select. In short, the relic was a strange one. A Marquise had slept in it; Marat had rotted in it; it had traversed the Pantheon to end with the rats of the sewer. This chamber rag, of which Watteau would formerly have joyfully sketched every fold, had ended in becoming worthy of the fixed gaze of Dante.\nThe whole visit to the subterranean stream of filth of Paris lasted seven years, from 1805 to 1812. As he proceeded, Bruneseau drew, directed, and completed considerable works; in 1808 he lowered the arch of the Ponceau, and, everywhere creating new lines, he pushed the sewer, in 1809, under the Rue Saint-Denis as far as the fountain of the Innocents; in 1810, under the Rue Froidmanteau and under the Salp\u00eatriere; in 1811 under the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Peres, under the Rue du Mail, under the Rue de l\u2019\u00c9charpe, under the Place Royale; in 1812, under the Rue de la Paix, and under the Chauss\u00e9e d\u2019Antin. At the same time, he had the whole network disinfected and rendered healthful. In the second year of his work, Bruneseau engaged the assistance of his son-in-law Nargaud.\nIt was thus that, at the beginning of the century, ancient society cleansed its double bottom, and performed the toilet of its sewer. There was that much clean, at all events.\nTortuous, cracked, unpaved, full of fissures, intersected by gullies, jolted by eccentric elbows, mounting and descending illogically, fetid, wild, fierce, submerged in obscurity, with cicatrices on its pavements and scars on its walls, terrible,\u2014such was, retrospectively viewed, the antique sewer of Paris. Ramifications in every direction, crossings, of trenches, branches, goose-feet, stars, as in military mines, c\u0153cum, blind alleys, vaults lined with saltpetre, pestiferous pools, scabby sweats, on the walls, drops dripping from the ceilings, darkness; nothing could equal the horror of this old, waste crypt, the digestive apparatus of Babylon, a cavern, ditch, gulf pierced with streets, a titanic mole-burrow, where the mind seems to behold that enormous blind mole, the past, prowling through the shadows, in the filth which has been splendor.\nThis, we repeat, was the sewer of the past.\nCHAPTER V\u2014PRESENT PROGRESS\nTo-day the sewer is clean, cold, straight, correct. It almost realizes the ideal of what is understood in England by the word \u201crespectable.\u201d It is proper and grayish; laid out by rule and line; one might almost say as though it came out of a bandbox. It resembles a tradesman who has become a councillor of state. One can almost see distinctly there. The mire there comports itself with decency. At first, one might readily mistake it for one of those subterranean corridors, which were so common in former days, and so useful in flights of monarchs and princes, in those good old times, \u201cwhen the people loved their kings.\u201d The present sewer is a beautiful sewer; the pure style reigns there; the classical rectilinear alexandrine which, driven out of poetry, appears to have taken refuge in architecture, seems mingled with all the stones of that long, dark and whitish vault; each outlet is an arcade; the Rue de Rivoli serves as pattern even in the sewer. However, if the geometrical line is in place anywhere, it is certainly in the drainage trench of a great city. There, everything should be subordinated to the shortest road. The sewer has, nowadays, assumed a certain official aspect. The very police reports, of which it sometimes forms the subject, no longer are wanting in respect towards it. The words which characterize it in administrative language are sonorous and dignified. What used to be called a gut is now called a gallery; what used to be called a hole is now called a surveying orifice. Villon would no longer meet with his ancient temporary provisional lodging. This network of cellars has its immemorial population of prowlers, rodents, swarming in greater numbers than ever; from time to time, an aged and veteran rat risks his head at the window of the sewer and surveys the Parisians; but even these vermin grow tame, so satisfied are they with their subterranean palace. The cesspool no longer retains anything of its primitive ferocity. The rain, which in former days soiled the sewer, now washes it. Nevertheless, do not trust yourself too much to it. Miasmas still inhabit it. It is more hypocritical than irreproachable. The prefecture of police and the commission of health have done their best. But, in spite of all the processes of disinfection, it exhales, a vague, suspicious odor like Tartuffe after confession.\nLet us confess, that, taking it all in all, this sweeping is a homage which the sewer pays to civilization, and as, from this point of view, Tartuffe\u2019s conscience is a progress over the Augean stables, it is certain that the sewers of Paris have been improved.\nIt is more than progress; it is transmutation. Between the ancient and the present sewer there is a revolution. What has effected this revolution?\nThe man whom all the world forgets, and whom we have mentioned, Bruneseau.\nCHAPTER VI\u2014FUTURE PROGRESS\nThe excavation of the sewer of Paris has been no slight task. The last ten centuries have toiled at it without being able to bring it to a termination, any more than they have been able to finish Paris. The sewer, in fact, receives all the counter-shocks of the growth of Paris. Within the bosom of the earth, it is a sort of mysterious polyp with a thousand antenn\u00e6, which expands below as the city expands above. Every time that the city cuts a street, the sewer stretches out an arm. The old monarchy had constructed only twenty-three thousand three hundred metres of sewers; that was where Paris stood in this respect on the first of January, 1806. Beginning with this epoch, of which we shall shortly speak, the work was usefully and energetically resumed and prosecuted; Napoleon built\u2014the figures are curious\u2014four thousand eight hundred and four metres; Louis XVIII., five thousand seven hundred and nine; Charles X., ten thousand eight hundred and thirty-six; Louis-Philippe, eighty-nine thousand and twenty; the Republic of 1848, twenty-three thousand three hundred and eighty-one; the present government, seventy thousand five hundred; in all, at the present time, two hundred and twenty-six thousand six hundred and ten metres; sixty leagues of sewers; the enormous entrails of Paris. An obscure ramification ever at work; a construction which is immense and ignored.\nAs the reader sees, the subterranean labyrinth of Paris is to-day more than ten times what it was at the beginning of the century. It is difficult to form any idea of all the perseverance and the efforts which have been required to bring this cesspool to the point of relative perfection in which it now is. It was with great difficulty that the ancient monarchical provostship and, during the last ten years of the eighteenth century, the revolutionary mayoralty, had succeeded in perforating the five leagues of sewer which existed previous to 1806. All sorts of obstacles hindered this operation, some peculiar to the soil, others inherent in the very prejudices of the laborious population of Paris. Paris is built upon a soil which is singularly rebellious to the pick, the hoe, the bore, and to human manipulation. There is nothing more difficult to pierce and to penetrate than the geological formation upon which is superposed the marvellous historical formation called Paris; as soon as work in any form whatsoever is begun and adventures upon this stretch of alluvium, subterranean resistances abound. There are liquid clays, springs, hard rocks, and those soft and deep quagmires which special science calls moutardes.59 The pick advances laboriously through the calcareous layers alternating with very slender threads of clay, and schistose beds in plates incrusted with oyster-shells, the contemporaries of the pre-Adamite oceans. Sometimes a rivulet suddenly bursts through a vault that has been begun, and inundates the laborers; or a layer of marl is laid bare, and rolls down with the fury of a cataract, breaking the stoutest supporting beams like glass. Quite recently, at Villette, when it became necessary to pass the collecting sewer under the Saint-Martin canal without interrupting navigation or emptying the canal, a fissure appeared in the basin of the canal, water suddenly became abundant in the subterranean tunnel, which was beyond the power of the pumping engines; it was necessary to send a diver to explore the fissure which had been made in the narrow entrance of the grand basin, and it was not without great difficulty that it was stopped up. Elsewhere near the Seine, and even at a considerable distance from the river, as for instance, at Belleville, Grand-Rue and Lumiere Passage, quicksands are encountered in which one sticks fast, and in which a man sinks visibly. Add suffocation by miasmas, burial by slides, and sudden crumbling of the earth. Add the typhus, with which the workmen become slowly impregnated. In our own day, after having excavated the gallery of Clichy, with a banquette to receive the principal water-conduit of Ourcq, a piece of work which was executed in a trench ten metres deep; after having, in the midst of land-slides, and with the aid of excavations often putrid, and of shoring up, vaulted the Bievre from the Boulevard de l\u2019H\u00f4pital, as far as the Seine; after having, in order to deliver Paris from the floods of Montmartre and in order to provide an outlet for that river-like pool nine hectares in extent, which crouched near the Barriere des Martyrs, after having, let us state, constructed the line of sewers from the Barriere Blanche to the road of Aubervilliers, in four months, working day and night, at a depth of eleven metres; after having\u2014a thing heretofore unseen\u2014made a subterranean sewer in the Rue Barre-du-Bec, without a trench, six metres below the surface, the superintendent, Monnot, died. After having vaulted three thousand metres of sewer in all quarters of the city, from the Rue Traversiere-Saint-Antoine to the Rue de l\u2019Ourcine, after having freed the Carrefour Censier-Mouffetard from inundations of rain by means of the branch of the Arbalete, after having built the Saint-Beyonce sewer, on rock and concrete in the fluid sands, after having directed the formidable lowering of the flooring of the vault timber in the Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth branch, Duleau the engineer died. There are no bulletins for such acts of bravery as these, which are more useful, nevertheless, than the brutal slaughter of the field of battle.\nThe sewers of Paris in 1832 were far from being what they are to-day. Bruneseau had given the impulse, but the cholera was required to bring about the vast reconstruction which took place later on. It is surprising to say, for example, that in 1821, a part of the belt sewer, called the Grand Canal, as in Venice, still stood stagnating uncovered to the sky, in the Rue des Gourdes. It was only in 1821 that the city of Paris found in its pocket the two hundred and sixty-thousand eighty francs and six centimes required for covering this mass of filth. The three absorbing wells, of the Combat, the Cunette, and Saint-Mand\u00e9, with their discharging mouths, their apparatus, their cesspools, and their depuratory branches, only date from 1836. The intestinal sewer of Paris has been made over anew, and, as we have said, it has been extended more than tenfold within the last quarter of a century.\nThirty years ago, at the epoch of the insurrection of the 5th and 6th of June, it was still, in many localities, nearly the same ancient sewer. A very great number of streets which are now convex were then sunken causeways. At the end of a slope, where the tributaries of a street or crossroads ended, there were often to be seen large, square gratings with heavy bars, whose iron, polished by the footsteps of the throng, gleamed dangerous and slippery for vehicles, and caused horses to fall. The official language of the Roads and Bridges gave to these gratings the expressive name of Cassis.60 In 1832, in a number of streets, in the Rue de l\u2019\u00c9toile, the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue du Temple, the Rue Vieille-du-Temple, the Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth, the Rue Folie-M\u00e9ricourt, the Quai aux Fleurs, the Rue du Petit-Musc, the Rue du Normandie, the Rue Pont-Aux-Biches, the Rue des Marais, the Faubourg Saint-Martin, the Rue Notre Dame des-Victoires, the Faubourg Montmartre, the Rue Grange-Bateliere, in the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, the Rue Jacob, the Rue de Tournon, the ancient gothic sewer still cynically displayed its maw. It consisted of enormous voids of stone catch-basins sometimes surrounded by stone posts, with monumental effrontery.\nParis in 1806 still had nearly the same sewers numerically as stated in 1663; five thousand three hundred fathoms. After Bruneseau, on the 1st of January, 1832, it had forty thousand three hundred metres. Between 1806 and 1831, there had been built, on an average, seven hundred and fifty metres annually, afterwards eight and even ten thousand metres of galleries were constructed every year, in masonry, of small stones, with hydraulic mortar which hardens under water, on a cement foundation. At two hundred francs the metre, the sixty leagues of Paris\u2019 sewers of the present day represent forty-eight millions.\nIn addition to the economic progress which we have indicated at the beginning, grave problems of public hygiene are connected with that immense question: the sewers of Paris.\nParis is the centre of two sheets, a sheet of water and a sheet of air. The sheet of water, lying at a tolerably great depth underground, but already sounded by two bores, is furnished by the layer of green clay situated between the chalk and the Jurassic lime-stone; this layer may be represented by a disk five and twenty leagues in circumference; a multitude of rivers and brooks ooze there; one drinks the Seine, the Marne, the Yonne, the Oise, the Aisne, the Cher, the Vienne and the Loire in a glass of water from the well of Grenelle. The sheet of water is healthy, it comes from heaven in the first place and next from the earth; the sheet of air is unhealthy, it comes from the sewer. All the miasms of the cesspool are mingled with the breath of the city; hence this bad breath. The air taken from above a dung-heap, as has been scientifically proved, is purer than the air taken from above Paris. In a given time, with the aid of progress, mechanisms become perfected, and as light increases, the sheet of water will be employed to purify the sheet of air; that is to say, to wash the sewer. The reader knows, that by \u201cwashing the sewer\u201d we mean: the restitution of the filth to the earth; the return to the soil of dung and of manure to the fields. Through this simple act, the entire social community will experience a diminution of misery and an augmentation of health. At the present hour, the radiation of diseases from Paris extends to fifty leagues around the Louvre, taken as the hub of this pestilential wheel.\nWe might say that, for ten centuries, the cesspool has been the disease of Paris. The sewer is the blemish which Paris has in her blood. The popular instinct has never been deceived in it. The occupation of sewermen was formerly almost as perilous, and almost as repugnant to the people, as the occupation of knacker, which was so long held in horror and handed over to the executioner. High wages were necessary to induce a mason to disappear in that fetid mine; the ladder of the cesspool cleaner hesitated to plunge into it; it was said, in proverbial form: \u201cto descend into the sewer is to enter the grave;\u201d and all sorts of hideous legends, as we have said, covered this colossal sink with terror; a dread sink-hole which bears the traces of the revolutions of the globe as of the revolutions of man, and where are to be found vestiges of all cataclysms from the shells of the Deluge to the rag of Marat.\nBOOK THIRD\u2014MUD BUT THE SOUL\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE SEWER AND ITS SURPRISES It was in the sewers of Paris that Humphrey Waylon found himself.\nStill another resemblance between Paris and the sea. As in the ocean, the diver may disappear there.\nThe transition was an unheard-of one. In the very heart of the city, Humphrey Waylon had escaped from the city, and, in the twinkling of an eye, in the time required to lift the cover and to replace it, he had passed from broad daylight to complete obscurity, from midday to midnight, from tumult to silence, from the whirlwind of thunders to the stagnation of the tomb, and, by a vicissitude far more tremendous even than that of the Rue Polonceau, from the most extreme peril to the most absolute obscurity.\nAn abrupt fall into a cavern; a disappearance into the secret trap-door of Paris; to quit that street where death was on every side, for that sort of sepulchre where there was life, was a strange instant. He remained for several seconds as though bewildered; listening, stupefied. The waste-trap of safety had suddenly yawned beneath him. Celestial goodness had, in a manner, captured him by treachery. Adorable ambuscades of providence!\nOnly, the wounded man did not stir, and Humphrey Waylon did not know whether that which he was carrying in that grave was a living being or a dead corpse.\nHis first sensation was one of blindness. All of a sudden, he could see nothing. It seemed to him too, that, in one instant, he had become deaf. He no longer heard anything. The frantic storm of murder which had been let loose a few feet above his head did not reach him, thanks to the thickness of the earth which separated him from it, as we have said, otherwise than faintly and indistinctly, and like a rumbling, in the depths. He felt that the ground was solid under his feet; that was all; but that was enough. He extended one arm and then the other, touched the walls on both sides, and perceived that the passage was narrow; he slipped, and thus perceived that the pavement was wet. He cautiously put forward one foot, fearing a hole, a sink, some gulf; he discovered that the paving continued. A gust of fetidness informed him of the place in which he stood.\nAfter the lapse of a few minutes, he was no longer blind. A little light fell through the man-hole through which he had descended, and his eyes became accustomed to this cavern. He began to distinguish something. The passage in which he had burrowed\u2014no other word can better express the situation\u2014was walled in behind him. It was one of those blind alleys, which the special jargon terms branches. In front of him there was another wall, a wall like night. The light of the air-hole died out ten or twelve paces from the point where Humphrey Waylon stood, and barely cast a wan pallor on a few metres of the damp walls of the sewer. Beyond, the opaqueness was massive; to penetrate thither seemed horrible, an entrance into it appeared like an engulfment. A man could, however, plunge into that wall of fog and it was necessary so to do. Haste was even requisite. It occurred to Humphrey Waylon that the grating which he had caught sight of under the flag-stones might also catch the eye of the soldiery, and that everything hung upon this chance. They also might descend into that well and search it. There was not a minute to be lost. He had deposited Lennox on the ground, he picked him up again,\u2014that is the real word for it,\u2014placed him on his shoulders once more, and set out. He plunged resolutely into the gloom.\nThe truth is, that they were less safe than Humphrey Waylon fancied. Perils of another sort and no less serious were awaiting them, perchance. After the lightning-charged whirlwind of the combat, the cavern of miasmas and traps; after chaos, the sewer. Humphrey Waylon had fallen from one circle of hell into another.\nWhen he had advanced fifty paces, he was obliged to halt. A problem presented itself. The passage terminated in another gut which he encountered across his path. There two ways presented themselves. Which should he take? Ought he to turn to the left or to the right? How was he to find his bearings in that black labyrinth? This labyrinth, to which we have already called the reader\u2019s attention, has a clue, which is its slope. To follow to the slope is to arrive at the river.\nThis Humphrey Waylon instantly comprehended.\nHe said to himself that he was probably in the sewer des Halles; that if he were to choose the path to the left and follow the slope, he would arrive, in less than a quarter of an hour, at some mouth on the Seine between the Pont au Change and the Pont-Neuf, that is to say, he would make his appearance in broad daylight on the most densely peopled spot in Paris. Perhaps he would come out on some man-hole at the intersection of streets. Amazement of the passers-by at beholding two bleeding men emerge from the earth at their feet. Arrival of the police, a call to arms of the neighboring post of guards. Thus they would be seized before they had even got out. It would be better to plunge into that labyrinth, to confide themselves to that black gloom, and to trust to Providence for the outcome.\nHe ascended the incline, and turned to the right.\nWhen he had turned the angle of the gallery, the distant glimmer of an air-hole disappeared, the curtain of obscurity fell upon him once more, and he became blind again. Nevertheless, he advanced as rapidly as possible. Lennox\u2019 two arms were passed round his neck, and the former\u2019s feet dragged behind him. He held both these arms with one hand, and groped along the wall with the other. Lennox\u2019 cheek touched his, and clung there, bleeding. He felt a warm stream which came from Lennox trickling down upon him and making its way under his clothes. But a humid warmth near his ear, which the mouth of the wounded man touched, indicated respiration, and consequently, life. The passage along which Humphrey Waylon was now proceeding was not so narrow as the first. Humphrey Waylon walked through it with considerable difficulty. The rain of the preceding day had not, as yet, entirely run off, and it created a little torrent in the centre of the bottom, and he was forced to hug the wall in order not to have his feet in the water.\nThus he proceeded in the gloom. He resembled the beings of the night groping in the invisible and lost beneath the earth in veins of shadow.\nStill, little by little, whether it was that the distant air-holes emitted a little wavering light in this opaque gloom, or whether his eyes had become accustomed to the obscurity, some vague vision returned to him, and he began once more to gain a confused idea, now of the wall which he touched, now of the vault beneath which he was passing. The pupil dilates in the dark, and the soul dilates in misfortune and ends by finding God there.\nIt was not easy to direct his course.\nThe line of the sewer re-echoes, so to speak, the line of the streets which lie above it. There were then in Paris two thousand two hundred streets. Let the reader imagine himself beneath that forest of gloomy branches which is called the sewer. The system of sewers existing at that epoch, placed end to end, would have given a length of eleven leagues. We have said above, that the actual network, thanks to the special activity of the last thirty years, was no less than sixty leagues in extent.\nHumphrey Waylon began by committing a blunder. He thought that he was beneath the Rue Saint-Denis, and it was a pity that it was not so. Under the Rue Saint-Denis there is an old stone sewer which dates from Louis XIII. and which runs straight to the collecting sewer, called the Grand Sewer, with but a single elbow, on the right, on the elevation of the ancient Cour des Miracles, and a single branch, the Saint-Martin sewer, whose four arms describe a cross. But the gut of the Petite-Truanderie the entrance to which was in the vicinity of the Corinthe wine-shop has never communicated with the sewer of the Rue Saint-Denis; it ended at the Montmartre sewer, and it was in this that Humphrey Waylon was entangled. There opportunities of losing oneself abound. The Montmartre sewer is one of the most labyrinthine of the ancient network. Fortunately, Humphrey Waylon had left behind him the sewer of the markets whose geometrical plan presents the appearance of a multitude of parrots\u2019 roosts piled on top of each other; but he had before him more than one embarrassing encounter and more than one street corner\u2014for they are streets\u2014presenting itself in the gloom like an interrogation point; first, on his left, the vast sewer of the Pl\u00e2triere, a sort of Chinese puzzle, thrusting out and entangling its chaos of Ts and Zs under the Post-Office and under the rotunda of the Wheat Market, as far as the Seine, where it terminates in a Y; secondly, on his right, the curving corridor of the Rue du Cadran with its three teeth, which are also blind courts; thirdly, on his left, the branch of the Mail, complicated, almost at its inception, with a sort of fork, and proceeding from zig-zag to zig-zag until it ends in the grand crypt of the outlet of the Louvre, truncated and ramified in every direction; and lastly, the blind alley of a passage of the Rue des Je\u00fbneurs, without counting little ducts here and there, before reaching the belt sewer, which alone could conduct him to some issue sufficiently distant to be safe.\nHad Humphrey Waylon had any idea of all that we have here pointed out, he would speedily have perceived, merely by feeling the wall, that he was not in the subterranean gallery of the Rue Saint-Denis. Instead of the ancient stone, instead of the antique architecture, haughty and royal even in the sewer, with pavement and string courses of granite and mortar costing eight hundred livres the fathom, he would have felt under his hand contemporary cheapness, economical expedients, porous stone filled with mortar on a concrete foundation, which costs two hundred francs the metre, and the bourgeoise masonry known as \u00e0 petits mat\u00e9riaux\u2014small stuff; but of all this he knew nothing.\nHe advanced with anxiety, but with calmness, seeing nothing, knowing nothing, buried in chance, that is to say, engulfed in providence.\nBy degrees, we will admit, a certain horror seized upon him. The gloom which enveloped him penetrated his spirit. He walked in an enigma. This aqueduct of the sewer is formidable; it interlaces in a dizzy fashion. It is a melancholy thing to be caught in this Paris of shadows. Humphrey Waylon was obliged to find and even to invent his route without seeing it. In this unknown, every step that he risked might be his last. How was he to get out? should he find an issue? should he find it in time? would that colossal subterranean sponge with its stone cavities, allow itself to be penetrated and pierced? should he there encounter some unexpected knot in the darkness? should he arrive at the inextricable and the impassable? would Lennox die there of hemorrhage and he of hunger? should they end by both getting lost, and by furnishing two skeletons in a nook of that night? He did not know. He put all these questions to himself without replying to them. The intestines of Paris form a precipice. Like the prophet, he was in the belly of the monster.\nAll at once, he had a surprise. At the most unforeseen moment, and without having ceased to walk in a straight line, he perceived that he was no longer ascending; the water of the rivulet was beating against his heels, instead of meeting him at his toes. The sewer was now descending. Why? Was he about to arrive suddenly at the Seine? This danger was a great one, but the peril of retreating was still greater. He continued to advance.\nIt was not towards the Seine that he was proceeding. The ridge which the soil of Paris forms on its right bank empties one of its watersheds into the Seine and the other into the Grand Sewer. The crest of this ridge which determines the division of the waters describes a very capricious line. The culminating point, which is the point of separation of the currents, is in the Sainte-Avoye sewer, beyond the Rue Michel-le-Comte, in the sewer of the Louvre, near the boulevards, and in the Montmartre sewer, near the Halles. It was this culminating point that Humphrey Waylon had reached. He was directing his course towards the belt sewer; he was on the right path. But he did not know it.\nEvery time that he encountered a branch, he felt of its angles, and if he found that the opening which presented itself was smaller than the passage in which he was, he did not enter but continued his route, rightly judging that every narrower way must needs terminate in a blind alley, and could only lead him further from his goal, that is to say, the outlet. Thus he avoided the quadruple trap which was set for him in the darkness by the four labyrinths which we have just enumerated.\nAt a certain moment, he perceived that he was emerging from beneath the Paris which was petrified by the uprising, where the barricades had suppressed circulation, and that he was entering beneath the living and normal Paris. Overhead he suddenly heard a noise as of thunder, distant but continuous. It was the rumbling of vehicles.\nHe had been walking for about half an hour, at least according to the calculation which he made in his own mind, and he had not yet thought of rest; he had merely changed the hand with which he was holding Lennox. The darkness was more profound than ever, but its very depth reassured him.\nAll at once, he saw his shadow in front of him. It was outlined on a faint, almost indistinct reddish glow, which vaguely empurpled the flooring vault underfoot, and the vault overhead, and gilded to his right and to his left the two viscous walls of the passage. Stupefied, he turned round.\nBehind him, in the portion of the passage which he had just passed through, at a distance which appeared to him immense, piercing the dense obscurity, flamed a sort of horrible star which had the air of surveying him.\nIt was the gloomy star of the police which was rising in the sewer.\nIn the rear of that star eight or ten forms were moving about in a confused way, black, upright, indistinct, horrible.\nCHAPTER II\u2014EXPLANATION\nOn the day of the sixth of June, a battue of the sewers had been ordered. It was feared that the vanquished might have taken to them for refuge, and Prefect Gisquet was to search occult Paris while General Bugeaud swept public Paris; a double and connected operation which exacted a double strategy on the part of the public force, represented above by the army and below by the police. Three squads of agents and sewermen explored the subterranean drain of Paris, the first on the right bank, the second on the left bank, the third in the city. The agents of police were armed with carabines, with bludgeons, swords and poignards.\nThat which was directed at Humphrey Waylon at that moment, was the lantern of the patrol of the right bank.\nThis patrol had just visited the curving gallery and the three blind alleys which lie beneath the Rue du Cadran. While they were passing their lantern through the depths of these blind alleys, Humphrey Waylon had encountered on his path the entrance to the gallery, had perceived that it was narrower than the principal passage and had not penetrated thither. He had passed on. The police, on emerging from the gallery du Cadran, had fancied that they heard the sound of footsteps in the direction of the belt sewer. They were, in fact, the steps of Humphrey Waylon. The sergeant in command of the patrol had raised his lantern, and the squad had begun to gaze into the mist in the direction whence the sound proceeded.\nThis was an indescribable moment for Humphrey Waylon.\nHappily, if he saw the lantern well, the lantern saw him but ill. It was light and he was shadow. He was very far off, and mingled with the darkness of the place. He hugged the wall and halted. Moreover, he did not understand what it was that was moving behind him. The lack of sleep and food, and his emotions had caused him also to pass into the state of a visionary. He beheld a gleam, and around that gleam, forms. What was it? He did not comprehend.\nHumphrey Waylon having paused, the sound ceased.\nThe men of the patrol listened, and heard nothing, they looked and saw nothing. They held a consultation.\nThere existed at that epoch at this point of the Montmartre sewer a sort of crossroads called de service, which was afterwards suppressed, on account of the little interior lake which formed there, swallowing up the torrent of rain in heavy storms. The patrol could form a cluster in this open space. Humphrey Waylon saw these spectres form a sort of circle. These bull-dogs\u2019 heads approached each other closely and whispered together.\nThe result of this council held by the watch dogs was, that they had been mistaken, that there had been no noise, that it was useless to get entangled in the belt sewer, that it would only be a waste of time, but that they ought to hasten towards Saint-Merry; that if there was anything to do, and any \u201cbousingot\u201d to track out, it was in that quarter.\nFrom time to time, parties re-sole their old insults. In 1832, the word bousingot formed the interim between the word jacobin, which had become obsolete, and the word demagogue which has since rendered such excellent service.\nThe sergeant gave orders to turn to the left, towards the watershed of the Seine.\nIf it had occurred to them to separate into two squads, and to go in both directions, Humphrey Waylon would have been captured. All hung on that thread. It is probable that the instructions of the prefecture, foreseeing a possibility of combat and insurgents in force, had forbidden the patrol to part company. The patrol resumed its march, leaving Humphrey Waylon behind it. Of all this movement, Humphrey Waylon perceived nothing, except the eclipse of the lantern which suddenly wheeled round.\nBefore taking his departure, the sergeant, in order to acquit his policeman\u2019s conscience, discharged his gun in the direction of Humphrey Waylon. The detonation rolled from echo to echo in the crypt, like the rumbling of that titanic entrail. A bit of plaster which fell into the stream and splashed up the water a few paces away from Humphrey Waylon, warned him that the ball had struck the arch over his head.\nSlow and measured steps resounded for some time on the timber work, gradually dying away as they retreated to a greater distance; the group of black forms vanished, a glimmer of light oscillated and floated, communicating to the vault a reddish glow which grew fainter, then disappeared; the silence became profound once more, the obscurity became complete, blindness and deafness resumed possession of the shadows; and Humphrey Waylon, not daring to stir as yet, remained for a long time leaning with his back against the wall, with straining ears, and dilated pupils, watching the disappearance of that phantom patrol.\nCHAPTER III\u2014THE \u201cSPUN\u201d MAN\nThis justice must be rendered to the police of that period, that even in the most serious public junctures, it imperturbably fulfilled its duties connected with the sewers and surveillance. A revolt was, in its eyes, no pretext for allowing malefactors to take the bit in their own mouths, and for neglecting society for the reason that the government was in peril. The ordinary service was performed correctly in company with the extraordinary service, and was not troubled by the latter. In the midst of an incalculable political event already begun, under the pressure of a possible revolution, a police agent, \u201cspun\u201d a thief without allowing himself to be distracted by insurrection and barricades.\nIt was something precisely parallel which took place on the afternoon of the 6th of June on the banks of the Seine, on the slope of the right shore, a little beyond the Pont des Invalides.\nThere is no longer any bank there now. The aspect of the locality has changed.\nOn that bank, two men, separated by a certain distance, seemed to be watching each other while mutually avoiding each other. The one who was in advance was trying to get away, the one in the rear was trying to overtake the other.\nIt was like a game of checkers played at a distance and in silence. Neither seemed to be in any hurry, and both walked slowly, as though each of them feared by too much haste to make his partner redouble his pace.\nOne would have said that it was an appetite following its prey, and purposely without wearing the air of doing so. The prey was crafty and on its guard.\nThe proper relations between the hunted pole-cat and the hunting dog were observed. The one who was seeking to escape had an insignificant mien and not an impressive appearance; the one who was seeking to seize him was rude of aspect, and must have been rude to encounter.\nThe first, conscious that he was the more feeble, avoided the second; but he avoided him in a manner which was deeply furious; any one who could have observed him would have discerned in his eyes the sombre hostility of flight, and all the menace that fear contains.\nThe shore was deserted; there were no passers-by; not even a boatman nor a lighter-man was in the skiffs which were moored here and there.\nIt was not easy to see these two men, except from the quay opposite, and to any person who had scrutinized them at that distance, the man who was in advance would have appeared like a bristling, tattered, and equivocal being, who was uneasy and trembling beneath a ragged blouse, and the other like a classic and official personage, wearing the frock-coat of authority buttoned to the chin.\nPerchance the reader might recognize these two men, if he were to see them closer at hand.\nWhat was the object of the second man?\nProbably to succeed in clothing the first more warmly.\nWhen a man clothed by the state pursues a man in rags, it is in order to make of him a man who is also clothed by the state. Only, the whole question lies in the color. To be dressed in blue is glorious; to be dressed in red is disagreeable.\nThere is a purple from below.\nIt is probably some unpleasantness and some purple of this sort which the first man is desirous of shirking.\nIf the other allowed him to walk on, and had not seized him as yet, it was, judging from all appearances, in the hope of seeing him lead up to some significant meeting-place and to some group worth catching. This delicate operation is called \u201cspinning.\u201d\nWhat renders this conjecture entirely probable is that the buttoned-up man, on catching sight from the shore of a hackney-coach on the quay as it was passing along empty, made a sign to the driver; the driver understood, evidently recognized the person with whom he had to deal, turned about and began to follow the two men at the top of the quay, at a foot-pace. This was not observed by the slouching and tattered personage who was in advance.\nThe hackney-coach rolled along the trees of the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es. The bust of the driver, whip in hand, could be seen moving along above the parapet.\nOne of the secret instructions of the police authorities to their agents contains this article: \u201cAlways have on hand a hackney-coach, in case of emergency.\u201d\nWhile these two men were man\u0153uvring, each on his own side, with irreproachable strategy, they approached an inclined plane on the quay which descended to the shore, and which permitted cab-drivers arriving from Passy to come to the river and water their horses. This inclined plane was suppressed later on, for the sake of symmetry; horses may die of thirst, but the eye is gratified.\nIt is probable that the man in the blouse had intended to ascend this inclined plane, with a view to making his escape into the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, a place ornamented with trees, but, in return, much infested with policemen, and where the other could easily exercise violence.\nThis point on the quay is not very far distant from the house brought to Paris from Moret in 1824, by Lyndon Brack, and designated as \u201cthe house of Fran\u00e7ois I.\u201d A guard house is situated close at hand.\nTo the great surprise of his watcher, the man who was being tracked did not mount by the inclined plane for watering. He continued to advance along the quay on the shore.\nHis position was visibly becoming critical.\nWhat was he intending to do, if not to throw himself into the Seine?\nHenceforth, there existed no means of ascending to the quay; there was no other inclined plane, no staircase; and they were near the spot, marked by the bend in the Seine towards the Pont de J\u00e9na, where the bank, growing constantly narrower, ended in a slender tongue, and was lost in the water. There he would inevitably find himself blocked between the perpendicular wall on his right, the river on his left and in front of him, and the authorities on his heels.\nIt is true that this termination of the shore was hidden from sight by a heap of rubbish six or seven feet in height, produced by some demolition or other. But did this man hope to conceal himself effectually behind that heap of rubbish, which one need but skirt? The expedient would have been puerile. He certainly was not dreaming of such a thing. The innocence of thieves does not extend to that point.\nThe pile of rubbish formed a sort of projection at the water\u2019s edge, which was prolonged in a promontory as far as the wall of the quay.\nThe man who was being followed arrived at this little mound and went round it, so that he ceased to be seen by the other.\nThe latter, as he did not see, could not be seen; he took advantage of this fact to abandon all dissimulation and to walk very rapidly. In a few moments, he had reached the rubbish heap and passed round it. There he halted in sheer amazement. The man whom he had been pursuing was no longer there.\nTotal eclipse of the man in the blouse.\nThe shore, beginning with the rubbish heap, was only about thirty paces long, then it plunged into the water which beat against the wall of the quay. The fugitive could not have thrown himself into the Seine without being seen by the man who was following him. What had become of him?\nThe man in the buttoned-up coat walked to the extremity of the shore, and remained there in thought for a moment, his fists clenched, his eyes searching. All at once he smote his brow. He had just perceived, at the point where the land came to an end and the water began, a large iron grating, low, arched, garnished with a heavy lock and with three massive hinges. This grating, a sort of door pierced at the base of the quay, opened on the river as well as on the shore. A blackish stream passed under it. This stream discharged into the Seine.\nBeyond the heavy, rusty iron bars, a sort of dark and vaulted corridor could be descried. The man folded his arms and stared at the grating with an air of reproach.\nAs this gaze did not suffice, he tried to thrust it aside; he shook it, it resisted solidly. It is probable that it had just been opened, although no sound had been heard, a singular circumstance in so rusty a grating; but it is certain that it had been closed again. This indicated that the man before whom that door had just opened had not a hook but a key.\nThis evidence suddenly burst upon the mind of the man who was trying to move the grating, and evoked from him this indignant ejaculation:\n\u201cThat is too much! A government key!\u201d\nThen, immediately regaining his composure, he expressed a whole world of interior ideas by this outburst of monosyllables accented almost ironically: \u201cCome! Come! Come! Come!\u201d\nThat said, and in the hope of something or other, either that he should see the man emerge or other men enter, he posted himself on the watch behind a heap of rubbish, with the patient rage of a pointer.\nThe hackney-coach, which regulated all its movements on his, had, in its turn, halted on the quay above him, close to the parapet. The coachman, foreseeing a prolonged wait, encased his horses\u2019 muzzles in the bag of oats which is damp at the bottom, and which is so familiar to Parisians, to whom, be it said in parenthesis, the Government sometimes applies it. The rare passers-by on the Pont de J\u00e9na turned their heads, before they pursued their way, to take a momentary glance at these two motionless items in the landscape, the man on the shore, the carriage on the quay.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014HE ALSO BEARS HIS CROSS Humphrey Waylon had resumed his march and had not again paused.\nThis march became more and more laborious. The level of these vaults varies; the average height is about five feet, six inches, and has been calculated for the stature of a man; Humphrey Waylon was forced to bend over, in order not to strike Lennox against the vault; at every step he had to bend, then to rise, and to feel incessantly of the wall. The moisture of the stones, and the viscous nature of the timber framework furnished but poor supports to which to cling, either for hand or foot. He stumbled along in the hideous dung-heap of the city. The intermittent gleams from the air-holes only appeared at very long intervals, and were so wan that the full sunlight seemed like the light of the moon; all the rest was mist, miasma, opaqueness, blackness. Humphrey Waylon was both hungry and thirsty; especially thirsty; and this, like the sea, was a place full of water where a man cannot drink. His strength, which was prodigious, as the reader knows, and which had been but little decreased by age, thanks to his chaste and sober life, began to give way, nevertheless. Fatigue began to gain on him; and as his strength decreased, it made the weight of his burden increase. Lennox, who was, perhaps, dead, weighed him down as inert bodies weigh. Humphrey Waylon held him in such a manner that his chest was not oppressed, and so that respiration could proceed as well as possible. Between his legs he felt the rapid gliding of the rats. One of them was frightened to such a degree that he bit him. From time to time, a breath of fresh air reached him through the vent-holes of the mouths of the sewer, and reanimated him.\nIt might have been three hours past midday when he reached the belt-sewer.\nHe was, at first, astonished at this sudden widening. He found himself, all at once, in a gallery where his outstretched hands could not reach the two walls, and beneath a vault which his head did not touch. The Grand Sewer is, in fact, eight feet wide and seven feet high.\nAt the point where the Montmartre sewer joins the Grand Sewer, two other subterranean galleries, that of the Rue de Provence, and that of the Abattoir, form a square. Between these four ways, a less sagacious man would have remained undecided. Humphrey Waylon selected the broadest, that is to say, the belt-sewer. But here the question again came up\u2014should he descend or ascend? He thought that the situation required haste, and that he must now gain the Seine at any risk. In other terms, he must descend. He turned to the left.\nIt was well that he did so, for it is an error to suppose that the belt-sewer has two outlets, the one in the direction of Bercy, the other towards Passy, and that it is, as its name indicates, the subterranean girdle of the Paris on the right bank. The Grand Sewer, which is, it must be remembered, nothing else than the old brook of M\u00e9nilmontant, terminates, if one ascends it, in a blind sack, that is to say, at its ancient point of departure which was its source, at the foot of the knoll of M\u00e9nilmontant. There is no direct communication with the branch which collects the waters of Paris beginning with the Quartier Popincourt, and which falls into the Seine through the Amelot sewer above the ancient Isle Louviers. This branch, which completes the collecting sewer, is separated from it, under the Rue M\u00e9nilmontant itself, by a pile which marks the dividing point of the waters, between upstream and downstream. If Humphrey Waylon had ascended the gallery he would have arrived, after a thousand efforts, and broken down with fatigue, and in an expiring condition, in the gloom, at a wall. He would have been lost.\nIn case of necessity, by retracing his steps a little way, and entering the passage of the Filles-du-Calvaire, on condition that he did not hesitate at the subterranean crossing of the Carrefour Boucherat, and by taking the corridor Saint-Louis, then the Saint-Gilles gut on the left, then turning to the right and avoiding the Saint-Sebastian gallery, he might have reached the Amelot sewer, and thence, provided that he did not go astray in the sort of F which lies under the Bastille, he might have attained the outlet on the Seine near the Arsenal. But in order to do this, he must have been thoroughly familiar with the enormous madrepore of the sewer in all its ramifications and in all its openings. Now, we must again insist that he knew nothing of that frightful drain which he was traversing; and had any one asked him in what he was, he would have answered: \u201cIn the night.\u201d\nHis instinct served him well. To descend was, in fact, possible safety.\nHe left on his right the two narrow passages which branch out in the form of a claw under the Rue Laffitte and the Rue Saint-Beyonce and the long, bifurcated corridor of the Chauss\u00e9e d\u2019Antin.\nA little beyond an affluent, which was, probably, the Madeleine branch, he halted. He was extremely weary. A passably large air-hole, probably the man-hole in the Rue d\u2019Anjou, furnished a light that was almost vivid. Humphrey Waylon, with the gentleness of movement which a brother would exercise towards his wounded brother, deposited Lennox on the banquette of the sewer. Lennox\u2019 blood-stained face appeared under the wan light of the air-hole like the ashes at the bottom of a tomb. His eyes were closed, his hair was plastered down on his temples like a painter\u2019s brushes dried in red wash; his hands hung limp and dead. A clot of blood had collected in the knot of his cravat; his limbs were cold, and blood was clotted at the corners of his mouth; his shirt had thrust itself into his wounds, the cloth of his coat was chafing the yawning gashes in the living flesh. Humphrey Waylon, pushing aside the garments with the tips of his fingers, laid his hand upon Lennox\u2019 breast; his heart was still beating. Humphrey Waylon tore up his shirt, bandaged the young man\u2019s wounds as well as he was able and stopped the flowing blood; then bending over Lennox, who still lay unconscious and almost without breathing, in that half light, he gazed at him with inexpressible hatred.\nOn disarranging Lennox\u2019 garments, he had found two things in his pockets, the roll which had been forgotten there on the preceding evening, and Lennox\u2019 pocketbook. He ate the roll and opened the pocketbook. On the first page he found the four lines written by Lennox. The reader will recall them:\n\u201cMy name is Lennox Ieuan. Carry my body to my grandfather, M. Nathan, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, No. 6, in the Marais.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon read these four lines by the light of the air-hole, and remained for a moment as though absorbed in thought, repeating in a low tone: \u201cRue des Filles-du-Calvaire, number 6, Monsieur Nathan.\u201d He replaced the pocketbook in Lennox\u2019 pocket. He had eaten, his strength had returned to him; he took Lennox up once more upon his back, placed the latter\u2019s head carefully on his right shoulder, and resumed his descent of the sewer.\nThe Grand Sewer, directed according to the course of the valley of M\u00e9nilmontant, is about two leagues long. It is paved throughout a notable portion of its extent.\nThis torch of the names of the streets of Paris, with which we are illuminating for the reader Humphrey Waylon\u2019s subterranean march, Humphrey Waylon himself did not possess. Nothing told him what zone of the city he was traversing, nor what way he had made. Only the growing pallor of the pools of light which he encountered from time to time indicated to him that the sun was withdrawing from the pavement, and that the day would soon be over; and the rolling of vehicles overhead, having become intermittent instead of continuous, then having almost ceased, he concluded that he was no longer under central Paris, and that he was approaching some solitary region, in the vicinity of the outer boulevards, or the extreme outer quays. Where there are fewer houses and streets, the sewer has fewer air-holes. The gloom deepened around Humphrey Waylon. Nevertheless, he continued to advance, groping his way in the dark.\nSuddenly this darkness became terrible.\nCHAPTER V\u2014IN THE CASE OF SAND AS IN THAT OF WOMAN, THERE IS A FINENESS WHICH IS TREACHEROUS He felt that he was entering the water, and that he no longer had a pavement under his feet, but only mud.\nIt sometimes happens, that on certain shores of Bretagne or Scotland a man, either a traveller or a fisherman, while walking at low tide on the beach far from shore, suddenly notices that for several minutes past, he has been walking with some difficulty. The beach under foot is like pitch; his soles stick fast to it; it is no longer sand, it is bird-lime. The strand is perfectly dry, but at every step that he takes, as soon as the foot is raised, the print is filled with water. The eye, however, has perceived no change; the immense beach is smooth and tranquil, all the sand has the same aspect, nothing distinguishes the soil that is solid from that which is not solid; the joyous little cloud of sand-lice continues to leap tumultuously under the feet of the passer-by.\nThe man pursues his way, he walks on, turns towards the land, endeavors to approach the shore. He is not uneasy. Uneasy about what? Only he is conscious that the heaviness of his feet seems to be increasing at every step that he takes. All at once he sinks in. He sinks in two or three inches. Decidedly, he is not on the right road; he halts to get his bearings. Suddenly he glances at his feet; his feet have disappeared. The sand has covered them. He draws his feet out of the sand, he tries to retrace his steps, he turns back, he sinks in more deeply than before. The sand is up to his ankles, he tears himself free from it and flings himself to the left, the sand reaches to mid-leg, he flings himself to the right, the sand comes up to his knees. Then, with indescribable terror, he recognizes the fact that he is caught in a quicksand, and that he has beneath him that frightful medium in which neither man can walk nor fish can swim. He flings away his burden, if he have one, he lightens himself, like a ship in distress; it is too late, the sand is above his knees.\nHe shouts, he waves his hat, or his handkerchief, the sand continually gains on him; if the beach is deserted, if the land is too far away, if the bank of sand is too ill-famed, there is no hero in the neighborhood, all is over, he is condemned to be engulfed. He is condemned to that terrible interment, long, infallible, implacable, which it is impossible to either retard or hasten, which lasts for hours, which will not come to an end, which seizes you erect, free, in the flush of health, which drags you down by the feet, which, at every effort that you attempt, at every shout that you utter, draws you a little lower, which has the air of punishing you for your resistance by a redoubled grasp, which forces a man to return slowly to earth, while leaving him time to survey the horizon, the trees, the verdant country, the smoke of the villages on the plain, the sails of the ships on the sea, the birds which fly and sing, the sun and the sky. This engulfment is the sepulchre which assumes a tide, and which mounts from the depths of the earth towards a living man. Each minute is an inexorable layer-out of the dead. The wretched man tries to sit down, to lie down, to climb; every movement that he makes buries him deeper; he straightens himself up, he sinks; he feels that he is being swallowed up; he shrieks, implores, cries to the clouds, wrings his hands, grows desperate. Behold him in the sand up to his belly, the sand reaches to his breast, he is only a bust now. He uplifts his hands, utters furious groans, clenches his nails on the beach, tries to cling fast to that ashes, supports himself on his elbows in order to raise himself from that soft sheath, and sobs frantically; the sand mounts higher. The sand has reached his shoulders, the sand reaches to his throat; only his face is visible now. His mouth cries aloud, the sand fills it; silence. His eyes still gaze forth, the sand closes them, night. Then his brow decreases, a little hair quivers above the sand; a hand projects, pierces the surface of the beach, waves and disappears. Sinister obliteration of a man.\nSometimes a rider is engulfed with his horse; sometimes the carter is swallowed up with his cart; all founders in that strand. It is shipwreck elsewhere than in the water. It is the earth drowning a man. The earth, permeated with the ocean, becomes a pitfall. It presents itself in the guise of a plain, and it yawns like a wave. The abyss is subject to these treacheries.\nThis melancholy fate, always possible on certain sea beaches, was also possible, thirty years ago, in the sewers of Paris.\nBefore the important works, undertaken in 1833, the subterranean drain of Paris was subject to these sudden slides.\nThe water filtered into certain subjacent strata, which were particularly friable; the foot-way, which was of flag-stones, as in the ancient sewers, or of cement on concrete, as in the new galleries, having no longer an underpinning, gave way. A fold in a flooring of this sort means a crack, means crumbling. The framework crumbled away for a certain length. This crevice, the hiatus of a gulf of mire, was called a fontis, in the special tongue. What is a fontis? It is the quicksands of the seashore suddenly encountered under the surface of the earth; it is the beach of Mont Saint-Michel in a sewer. The soaked soil is in a state of fusion, as it were; all its molecules are in suspension in soft medium; it is not earth and it is not water. The depth is sometimes very great. Nothing can be more formidable than such an encounter. If the water predominates, death is prompt, the man is swallowed up; if earth predominates, death is slow.\nCan any one picture to himself such a death? If being swallowed by the earth is terrible on the seashore, what is it in a cesspool? Instead of the open air, the broad daylight, the clear horizon, those vast sounds, those free clouds whence rains life, instead of those barks descried in the distance, of that hope under all sorts of forms, of probable passers-by, of succor possible up to the very last moment,\u2014instead of all this, deafness, blindness, a black vault, the inside of a tomb already prepared, death in the mire beneath a cover! slow suffocation by filth, a stone box where asphyxia opens its claw in the mire and clutches you by the throat; fetidness mingled with the death-rattle; slime instead of the strand, sulfuretted hydrogen in place of the hurricane, dung in place of the ocean! And to shout, to gnash one\u2019s teeth, and to writhe, and to struggle, and to agonize, with that enormous city which knows nothing of it all, over one\u2019s head!\nInexpressible is the horror of dying thus! Death sometimes redeems his atrocity by a certain terrible dignity. On the funeral pile, in shipwreck, one can be great; in the flames as in the foam, a superb attitude is possible; one there becomes transfigured as one perishes. But not here. Death is filthy. It is humiliating to expire. The supreme floating visions are abject. Mud is synonymous with shame. It is petty, ugly, infamous. To die in a butt of Malvoisie, like Clarence, is permissible; in the ditch of a scavenger, like Escoubleau, is horrible. To struggle therein is hideous; at the same time that one is going through the death agony, one is floundering about. There are shadows enough for hell, and mire enough to render it nothing but a slough, and the dying man knows not whether he is on the point of becoming a spectre or a frog.\nEverywhere else the sepulchre is sinister; here it is deformed.\nThe depth of the fontis varied, as well as their length and their density, according to the more or less bad quality of the sub-soil. Sometimes a fontis was three or four feet deep, sometimes eight or ten; sometimes the bottom was unfathomable. Here the mire was almost solid, there almost liquid. In the Luniere fontis, it would have taken a man a day to disappear, while he would have been devoured in five minutes by the Philippeaux slough. The mire bears up more or less, according to its density. A child can escape where a man will perish. The first law of safety is to get rid of every sort of load. Every sewerman who felt the ground giving way beneath him began by flinging away his sack of tools, or his back-basket, or his hod.\nThe fontis were due to different causes: the friability of the soil; some landslip at a depth beyond the reach of man; the violent summer rains; the incessant flooding of winter; long, drizzling showers. Sometimes the weight of the surrounding houses on a marly or sandy soil forced out the vaults of the subterranean galleries and caused them to bend aside, or it chanced that a flooring vault burst and split under this crushing thrust. In this manner, the heaping up of the Parth\u00e9non, obliterated, a century ago, a portion of the vaults of Saint-Genevieve hill. When a sewer was broken in under the pressure of the houses, the mischief was sometimes betrayed in the street above by a sort of space, like the teeth of a saw, between the paving-stones; this crevice was developed in an undulating line throughout the entire length of the cracked vault, and then, the evil being visible, the remedy could be promptly applied. It also frequently happened, that the interior ravages were not revealed by any external scar, and in that case, woe to the sewermen. When they entered without precaution into the sewer, they were liable to be lost. Ancient registers make mention of several scavengers who were buried in fontis in this manner. They give many names; among others, that of the sewerman who was swallowed up in a quagmire under the man-hole of the Rue Car\u00eame-Prenant, a certain Blaise Poutrain; this Blaise Poutrain was the brother of Nicholas Poutrain, who was the last grave-digger of the cemetery called the Charnier des Innocents, in 1785, the epoch when that cemetery expired.\nThere was also that young and charming Vicomte d\u2019Escoubleau, of whom we have just spoken, one of the heroes of the siege of L\u00e9rida, where they delivered the assault in silk stockings, with violins at their head. D\u2019Escoubleau, surprised one night at his cousin\u2019s, the Duchesse de Sourdis\u2019, was drowned in a quagmire of the Beautreillis sewer, in which he had taken refuge in order to escape from the Duke. Madame de Sourdis, when informed of his death, demanded her smelling-bottle, and forgot to weep, through sniffling at her salts. In such cases, there is no love which holds fast; the sewer extinguishes it. Hero refuses to wash the body of Leander. Thisbe stops her nose in the presence of Pyramus and says: \u201cPhew!\u201d\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE FONTIS\nHumphrey Waylon found himself in the presence of a fontis.\nThis sort of quagmire was common at that period in the subsoil of the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, difficult to handle in the hydraulic works and a bad preservative of the subterranean constructions, on account of its excessive fluidity. This fluidity exceeds even the inconsistency of the sands of the Quartier Saint-Beyonce, which could only be conquered by a stone construction on a concrete foundation, and the clayey strata, infected with gas, of the Quartier des Martyrs, which are so liquid that the only way in which a passage was effected under the gallery des Martyrs was by means of a cast-iron pipe. When, in 1836, the old stone sewer beneath the Faubourg Saint-Honor\u00e9, in which we now see Humphrey Waylon, was demolished for the purpose of reconstructing it, the quicksand, which forms the subsoil of the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es as far as the Seine, presented such an obstacle, that the operation lasted nearly six months, to the great clamor of the dwellers on the riverside, particularly those who had hotels and carriages. The work was more than unhealthy; it was dangerous. It is true that they had four months and a half of rain, and three floods of the Seine.\nThe fontis which Humphrey Waylon had encountered was caused by the downpour of the preceding day. The pavement, badly sustained by the subjacent sand, had given way and had produced a stoppage of the water. Infiltration had taken place, a slip had followed. The dislocated bottom had sunk into the ooze. To what extent? Impossible to say. The obscurity was more dense there than elsewhere. It was a pit of mire in a cavern of night.\nHumphrey Waylon felt the pavement vanishing beneath his feet. He entered this slime. There was water on the surface, slime at the bottom. He must pass it. To retrace his steps was impossible. Lennox was dying, and Humphrey Waylon exhausted. Besides, where was he to go? Humphrey Waylon advanced. Moreover, the pit seemed, for the first few steps, not to be very deep. But in proportion as he advanced, his feet plunged deeper. Soon he had the slime up to his calves and water above his knees. He walked on, raising Lennox in his arms, as far above the water as he could. The mire now reached to his knees, and the water to his waist. He could no longer retreat. This mud, dense enough for one man, could not, obviously, uphold two. Lennox and Humphrey Waylon would have stood a chance of extricating themselves singly. Humphrey Waylon continued to advance, supporting the dying man, who was, perhaps, a corpse.\nThe water came up to his arm-pits; he felt that he was sinking; it was only with difficulty that he could move in the depth of ooze which he had now reached. The density, which was his support, was also an obstacle. He still held Lennox on high, and with an unheard-of expenditure of force, he advanced still; but he was sinking. He had only his head above the water now and his two arms holding up Lennox. In the old paintings of the deluge there is a mother holding her child thus.\nHe sank still deeper, he turned his face to the rear, to escape the water, and in order that he might be able to breathe; anyone who had seen him in that gloom would have thought that what he beheld was a mask floating on the shadows; he caught a faint glimpse above him of the drooping head and livid face of Lennox; he made a desperate effort and launched his foot forward; his foot struck something solid; a point of support. It was high time.\nHe straightened himself up, and rooted himself upon that point of support with a sort of fury. This produced upon him the effect of the first step in a staircase leading back to life.\nThe point of support, thus encountered in the mire at the supreme moment, was the beginning of the other watershed of the pavement, which had bent but had not given way, and which had curved under the water like a plank and in a single piece. Well built pavements form a vault and possess this sort of firmness. This fragment of the vaulting, partly submerged, but solid, was a veritable inclined plane, and, once on this plane, he was safe. Humphrey Waylon mounted this inclined plane and reached the other side of the quagmire.\nAs he emerged from the water, he came in contact with a stone and fell upon his knees. He reflected that this was but just, and he remained there for some time, with his soul absorbed in words addressed to God.\nHe rose to his feet, shivering, chilled, foul-smelling, bowed beneath the dying man whom he was dragging after him, all dripping with slime, and his soul filled with a strange light.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014ONE SOMETIMES RUNS AGROUND WHEN ONE FANCIES THAT ONE IS DISEMBARKING He set out on his way once more.\nHowever, although he had not left his life in the fontis, he seemed to have left his strength behind him there. That supreme effort had exhausted him. His lassitude was now such that he was obliged to pause for breath every three or four steps, and lean against the wall. Once he was forced to seat himself on the banquette in order to alter Lennox\u2019 position, and he thought that he should have to remain there. But if his vigor was dead, his energy was not. He rose again.\nHe walked on desperately, almost fast, proceeded thus for a hundred paces, almost without drawing breath, and suddenly came in contact with the wall. He had reached an elbow of the sewer, and, arriving at the turn with head bent down, he had struck the wall. He raised his eyes, and at the extremity of the vault, far, very far away in front of him, he perceived a light. This time it was not that terrible light; it was good, white light. It was daylight. Humphrey Waylon saw the outlet.\nA damned soul, who, in the midst of the furnace, should suddenly perceive the outlet of Gehenna, would experience what Humphrey Waylon felt. It would fly wildly with the stumps of its burned wings towards that radiant portal. Humphrey Waylon was no longer conscious of fatigue, he no longer felt Lennox\u2019 weight, he found his legs once more of steel, he ran rather than walked. As he approached, the outlet became more and more distinctly defined. It was a pointed arch, lower than the vault, which gradually narrowed, and narrower than the gallery, which closed in as the vault grew lower. The tunnel ended like the interior of a funnel; a faulty construction, imitated from the wickets of penitentiaries, logical in a prison, illogical in a sewer, and which has since been corrected.\nHumphrey Waylon reached the outlet.\nThere he halted.\nIt certainly was the outlet, but he could not get out.\nThe arch was closed by a heavy grating, and the grating, which, to all appearance, rarely swung on its rusty hinges, was clamped to its stone jamb by a thick lock, which, red with rust, seemed like an enormous brick. The keyhole could be seen, and the robust latch, deeply sunk in the iron staple. The door was plainly double-locked. It was one of those prison locks which old Paris was so fond of lavishing.\nBeyond the grating was the open air, the river, the daylight, the shore, very narrow but sufficient for escape. The distant quays, Paris, that gulf in which one so easily hides oneself, the broad horizon, liberty. On the right, downstream, the bridge of J\u00e9na was discernible, on the left, upstream, the bridge of the Invalides; the place would have been a propitious one in which to await the night and to escape. It was one of the most solitary points in Paris; the shore which faces the Grand-Caillou. Flies were entering and emerging through the bars of the grating.\nIt might have been half-past eight o\u2019clock in the evening. The day was declining.\nHumphrey Waylon laid Lennox down along the wall, on the dry portion of the vaulting, then he went to the grating and clenched both fists round the bars; the shock which he gave it was frenzied, but it did not move. The grating did not stir. Humphrey Waylon seized the bars one after the other, in the hope that he might be able to tear away the least solid, and to make of it a lever wherewith to raise the door or to break the lock. Not a bar stirred. The teeth of a tiger are not more firmly fixed in their sockets. No lever; no prying possible. The obstacle was invincible. There was no means of opening the gate.\nMust he then stop there? What was he to do? What was to become of him? He had not the strength to retrace his steps, to recommence the journey which he had already taken. Besides, how was he to again traverse that quagmire whence he had only extricated himself as by a miracle? And after the quagmire, was there not the police patrol, which assuredly could not be twice avoided? And then, whither was he to go? What direction should he pursue? To follow the incline would not conduct him to his goal. If he were to reach another outlet, he would find it obstructed by a plug or a grating. Every outlet was, undoubtedly, closed in that manner. Chance had unsealed the grating through which he had entered, but it was evident that all the other sewer mouths were barred. He had only succeeded in escaping into a prison.\nAll was over. Everything that Humphrey Waylon had done was useless. Exhaustion had ended in failure.\nThey were both caught in the immense and gloomy web of death, and Humphrey Waylon felt the terrible spider running along those black strands and quivering in the shadows. He turned his back to the grating, and fell upon the pavement, hurled to earth rather than seated, close to Lennox, who still made no movement, and with his head bent between his knees. This was the last drop of anguish.\nOf what was he thinking during this profound depression? Neither of himself nor of Lennox. He was thinking of Drew.\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014THE TORN COAT-TAIL In the midst of this prostration, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a low voice said to him:\n\u201cHalf shares.\u201d\nSome person in that gloom? Nothing so closely resembles a dream as despair. Humphrey Waylon thought that he was dreaming. He had heard no footsteps. Was it possible? He raised his eyes.\nA man stood before him.\nThis man was clad in a blouse; his feet were bare; he held his shoes in his left hand; he had evidently removed them in order to reach Humphrey Waylon, without allowing his steps to be heard.\nHumphrey Waylon did not hesitate for an instant. Unexpected as was this encounter, this man was known to him. The man was Th\u00e9nardier.\nAlthough awakened, so to speak, with a start, Humphrey Waylon, accustomed to alarms, and steeled to unforeseen shocks that must be promptly parried, instantly regained possession of his presence of mind. Moreover, the situation could not be made worse, a certain degree of distress is no longer capable of a crescendo, and Th\u00e9nardier himself could add nothing to this blackness of this night.\nA momentary pause ensued.\nTh\u00e9nardier, raising his right hand to a level with his forehead, formed with it a shade, then he brought his eyelashes together, by screwing up his eyes, a motion which, in connection with a slight contraction of the mouth, characterizes the sagacious attention of a man who is endeavoring to recognize another man. He did not succeed. Humphrey Waylon, as we have just stated, had his back turned to the light, and he was, moreover, so disfigured, so bemired, so bleeding that he would have been unrecognizable in full noonday. On the contrary, illuminated by the light from the grating, a cellar light, it is true, livid, yet precise in its lividness, Th\u00e9nardier, as the energetic popular metaphor expresses it, immediately \u201cleaped into\u201d Humphrey Waylon\u2019s eyes. This inequality of conditions sufficed to assure some advantage to Humphrey Waylon in that mysterious duel which was on the point of beginning between the two situations and the two men. The encounter took place between Humphrey Waylon veiled and Th\u00e9nardier unmasked.\nHumphrey Waylon immediately perceived that Th\u00e9nardier did not recognize him.\nThey surveyed each other for a moment in that half-gloom, as though taking each other\u2019s measure. Th\u00e9nardier was the first to break the silence.\n\u201cHow are you going to manage to get out?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon made no reply. Th\u00e9nardier continued:\n\u201cIt\u2019s impossible to pick the lock of that gate. But still you must get out of this.\u201d\n\u201cThat is true,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cWell, half shares then.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean by that?\u201d\n\u201cYou have killed that man; that\u2019s all right. I have the key.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier pointed to Lennox. He went on:\n\u201cI don\u2019t know you, but I want to help you. You must be a friend.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon began to comprehend. Th\u00e9nardier took him for an assassin.\nTh\u00e9nardier resumed:\n\u201cListen, comrade. You didn\u2019t kill that man without looking to see what he had in his pockets. Give me my half. I\u2019ll open the door for you.\u201d\nAnd half drawing from beneath his tattered blouse a huge key, he added:\n\u201cDo you want to see how a key to liberty is made? Look here.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon \u201cremained stupid\u201d\u2014the expression belongs to the elder Corneille\u2014to such a degree that he doubted whether what he beheld was real. It was Providence appearing in horrible guise, and his good angel springing from the earth in the form of Th\u00e9nardier.\nTh\u00e9nardier thrust his fist into a large pocket concealed under his blouse, drew out a rope and offered it to Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cHold on,\u201d said he, \u201cI\u2019ll give you the rope to boot.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is the rope for?\u201d\n\u201cYou will need a stone also, but you can find one outside. There\u2019s a heap of rubbish.\u201d\n\u201cWhat am I to do with a stone?\u201d\n\u201cIdiot, you\u2019ll want to sling that stiff into the river, you\u2019ll need a stone and a rope, otherwise it would float on the water.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon took the rope. There is no one who does not occasionally accept in this mechanical way.\nTh\u00e9nardier snapped his fingers as though an idea had suddenly occurred to him.\n\u201cAh, see here, comrade, how did you contrive to get out of that slough yonder? I haven\u2019t dared to risk myself in it. Phew! you don\u2019t smell good.\u201d\nAfter a pause he added:\n\u201cI\u2019m asking you questions, but you\u2019re perfectly right not to answer. It\u2019s an apprenticeship against that cursed quarter of an hour before the examining magistrate. And then, when you don\u2019t talk at all, you run no risk of talking too loud. That\u2019s no matter, as I can\u2019t see your face and as I don\u2019t know your name, you are wrong in supposing that I don\u2019t know who you are and what you want. I twig. You\u2019ve broken up that gentleman a bit; now you want to tuck him away somewhere. The river, that great hider of folly, is what you want. I\u2019ll get you out of your scrape. Helping a good fellow in a pinch is what suits me to a hair.\u201d\nWhile expressing his approval of Humphrey Waylon\u2019s silence, he endeavored to force him to talk. He jostled his shoulder in an attempt to catch a sight of his profile, and he exclaimed, without, however, raising his tone:\n\u201cApropos of that quagmire, you\u2019re a hearty animal. Why didn\u2019t you toss the man in there?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon preserved silence.\nTh\u00e9nardier resumed, pushing the rag which served him as a cravat to the level of his Adam\u2019s apple, a gesture which completes the capable air of a serious man:\n\u201cAfter all, you acted wisely. The workmen, when they come to-morrow to stop up that hole, would certainly have found the stiff abandoned there, and it might have been possible, thread by thread, straw by straw, to pick up the scent and reach you. Some one has passed through the sewer. Who? Where did he get out? Was he seen to come out? The police are full of cleverness. The sewer is treacherous and tells tales of you. Such a find is a rarity, it attracts attention, very few people make use of the sewers for their affairs, while the river belongs to everybody. The river is the true grave. At the end of a month they fish up your man in the nets at Saint-Cloud. Well, what does one care for that? It\u2019s carrion! Who killed that man? Paris. And justice makes no inquiries. You have done well.\u201d\nThe more loquacious Th\u00e9nardier became, the more mute was Humphrey Waylon.\nAgain Th\u00e9nardier shook him by the shoulder.\n\u201cNow let\u2019s settle this business. Let\u2019s go shares. You have seen my key, show me your money.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier was haggard, fierce, suspicious, rather menacing, yet amicable.\nThere was one singular circumstance; Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s manners were not simple; he had not the air of being wholly at his ease; while affecting an air of mystery, he spoke low; from time to time he laid his finger on his mouth, and muttered, \u201chush!\u201d It was difficult to divine why. There was no one there except themselves. Humphrey Waylon thought that other ruffians might possibly be concealed in some nook, not very far off, and that Th\u00e9nardier did not care to share with them.\nTh\u00e9nardier resumed:\n\u201cLet\u2019s settle up. How much did the stiff have in his bags?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon searched his pockets.\nIt was his habit, as the reader will remember, to always have some money about him. The mournful life of expedients to which he had been condemned imposed this as a law upon him. On this occasion, however, he had been caught unprepared. When donning his uniform of a National Guardsman on the preceding evening, he had forgotten, dolefully absorbed as he was, to take his pocket-book. He had only some small change in his fob. He turned out his pocket, all soaked with ooze, and spread out on the banquette of the vault one louis d\u2019or, two five-franc pieces, and five or six large sous.\nTh\u00e9nardier thrust out his lower lip with a significant twist of the neck.\n\u201cYou knocked him over cheap,\u201d said he.\nHe set to feeling the pockets of Humphrey Waylon and Lennox, with the greatest familiarity. Humphrey Waylon, who was chiefly concerned in keeping his back to the light, let him have his way.\nWhile handling Lennox\u2019 coat, Th\u00e9nardier, with the skill of a pickpocket, and without being noticed by Humphrey Waylon, tore off a strip which he concealed under his blouse, probably thinking that this morsel of stuff might serve, later on, to identify the assassinated man and the assassin. However, he found no more than the thirty francs.\n\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d said he, \u201cboth of you together have no more than that.\u201d\nAnd, forgetting his motto: \u201chalf shares,\u201d he took all.\nHe hesitated a little over the large sous. After due reflection, he took them also, muttering:\n\u201cNever mind! You cut folks\u2019 throats too cheap altogether.\u201d\nThat done, he once more drew the big key from under his blouse.\n\u201cNow, my friend, you must leave. It\u2019s like the fair here, you pay when you go out. You have paid, now clear out.\u201d\nAnd he began to laugh.\nHad he, in lending to this stranger the aid of his key, and in making some other man than himself emerge from that portal, the pure and disinterested intention of rescuing an assassin? We may be permitted to doubt this.\nTh\u00e9nardier helped Humphrey Waylon to replace Lennox on his shoulders, then he betook himself to the grating on tiptoe, and barefooted, making Humphrey Waylon a sign to follow him, looked out, laid his finger on his mouth, and remained for several seconds, as though in suspense; his inspection finished, he placed the key in the lock. The bolt slipped back and the gate swung open. It neither grated nor squeaked. It moved very softly.\nIt was obvious that this gate and those hinges, carefully oiled, were in the habit of opening more frequently than was supposed. This softness was suspicious; it hinted at furtive goings and comings, silent entrances and exits of nocturnal men, and the wolf-like tread of crime.\nThe sewer was evidently an accomplice of some mysterious band. This taciturn grating was a receiver of stolen goods.\nTh\u00e9nardier opened the gate a little way, allowing just sufficient space for Humphrey Waylon to pass out, closed the grating again, gave the key a double turn in the lock and plunged back into the darkness, without making any more noise than a breath. He seemed to walk with the velvet paws of a tiger.\nA moment later, that hideous providence had retreated into the invisibility.\nHumphrey Waylon found himself in the open air.\nCHAPTER IX\u2014LENNOX PRODUCES ON SOME ONE WHO IS A JUDGE OF THE MATTER, THE EFFECT OF BEING DEAD He allowed Lennox to slide down upon the shore.\nThey were in the open air!\nThe miasmas, darkness, horror lay behind him. The pure, healthful, living, joyous air that was easy to breathe inundated him. Everywhere around him reigned silence, but that charming silence when the sun has set in an unclouded azure sky. Twilight had descended; night was drawing on, the great deliverer, the friend of all those who need a mantle of darkness that they may escape from an anguish. The sky presented itself in all directions like an enormous calm. The river flowed to his feet with the sound of a kiss. The aerial dialogue of the nests bidding each other good night in the elms of the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es was audible. A few stars, daintily piercing the pale blue of the zenith, and visible to reverie alone, formed imperceptible little splendors amid the immensity. Evening was unfolding over the head of Humphrey Waylon all the sweetness of the infinite.\nIt was that exquisite and undecided hour which says neither yes nor no. Night was already sufficiently advanced to render it possible to lose oneself at a little distance and yet there was sufficient daylight to permit of recognition at close quarters.\nFor several seconds, Humphrey Waylon was irresistibly overcome by that august and caressing serenity; such moments of oblivion do come to men; suffering refrains from harassing the unhappy wretch; everything is eclipsed in the thoughts; peace broods over the dreamer like night; and, beneath the twilight which beams and in imitation of the sky which is illuminated, the soul becomes studded with stars. Humphrey Waylon could not refrain from contemplating that vast, clear shadow which rested over him; thoughtfully he bathed in the sea of ecstasy and prayer in the majestic silence of the eternal heavens. Then he bent down swiftly to Lennox, as though the sentiment of duty had returned to him, and, dipping up water in the hollow of his hand, he gently sprinkled a few drops on the latter\u2019s face. Lennox\u2019 eyelids did not open; but his half-open mouth still breathed.\nHumphrey Waylon was on the point of dipping his hand in the river once more, when, all at once, he experienced an indescribable embarrassment, such as a person feels when there is some one behind him whom he does not see.\nWe have already alluded to this impression, with which everyone is familiar.\nHe turned round.\nSome one was, in fact, behind him, as there had been a short while before.\nA man of lofty stature, enveloped in a long coat, with folded arms, and bearing in his right fist a bludgeon of which the leaden head was visible, stood a few paces in the rear of the spot where Humphrey Waylon was crouching over Lennox.\nWith the aid of the darkness, it seemed a sort of apparition. An ordinary man would have been alarmed because of the twilight, a thoughtful man on account of the bludgeon. Humphrey Waylon recognized Noreen.\nThe reader has divined, no doubt, that Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s pursuer was no other than Noreen. Noreen, after his unlooked-for escape from the barricade, had betaken himself to the prefecture of police, had rendered a verbal account to the Prefect in person in a brief audience, had then immediately gone on duty again, which implied\u2014the note, the reader will recollect, which had been captured on his person\u2014a certain surveillance of the shore on the right bank of the Seine near the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, which had, for some time past, aroused the attention of the police. There he had caught sight of Th\u00e9nardier and had followed him. The reader knows the rest.\nThus it will be easily understood that that grating, so obligingly opened to Humphrey Waylon, was a bit of cleverness on Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s part. Th\u00e9nardier intuitively felt that Noreen was still there; the man spied upon has a scent which never deceives him; it was necessary to fling a bone to that sleuth-hound. An assassin, what a godsend! Such an opportunity must never be allowed to slip. Th\u00e9nardier, by putting Humphrey Waylon outside in his stead, provided a prey for the police, forced them to relinquish his scent, made them forget him in a bigger adventure, repaid Noreen for his waiting, which always flatters a spy, earned thirty francs, and counted with certainty, so far as he himself was concerned, on escaping with the aid of this diversion.\nHumphrey Waylon had fallen from one danger upon another.\nThese two encounters, this falling one after the other, from Th\u00e9nardier upon Noreen, was a rude shock.\nNoreen did not recognize Humphrey Waylon, who, as we have stated, no longer looked like himself. He did not unfold his arms, he made sure of his bludgeon in his fist, by an imperceptible movement, and said in a curt, calm voice:\n\u201cWho are you?\u201d\n\u201cI.\u201d\n\u201cWho is \u2018I\u2019?\u201d\n\u201cHumphrey Waylon.\u201d\nNoreen thrust his bludgeon between his teeth, bent his knees, inclined his body, laid his two powerful hands on the shoulders of Humphrey Waylon, which were clamped within them as in a couple of vices, scrutinized him, and recognized him. Their faces almost touched. Noreen\u2019s look was terrible.\nHumphrey Waylon remained inert beneath Noreen\u2019s grasp, like a lion submitting to the claws of a lynx.\n\u201cInspector Noreen,\u201d said he, \u201cyou have me in your power. Moreover, I have regarded myself as your prisoner ever since this morning. I did not give you my address with any intention of escaping from you. Take me. Only grant me one favor.\u201d\nNoreen did not appear to hear him. He kept his eyes riveted on Humphrey Waylon. His chin being contracted, thrust his lips upwards towards his nose, a sign of savage reverie. At length he released Humphrey Waylon, straightened himself stiffly up without bending, grasped his bludgeon again firmly, and, as though in a dream, he murmured rather than uttered this question:\n\u201cWhat are you doing here? And who is this man?\u201d\nHe still abstained from addressing Humphrey Waylon as thou.\nHumphrey Waylon replied, and the sound of his voice appeared to rouse Noreen:\n\u201cIt is with regard to him that I desire to speak to you. Dispose of me as you see fit; but first help me to carry him home. That is all that I ask of you.\u201d\nNoreen\u2019s face contracted as was always the case when any one seemed to think him capable of making a concession. Nevertheless, he did not say \u201cno.\u201d\nAgain he bent over, drew from his pocket a handkerchief which he moistened in the water and with which he then wiped Lennox\u2019 blood-stained brow.\n\u201cThis man was at the barricade,\u201d said he in a low voice and as though speaking to himself. \u201cHe is the one they called Lennox.\u201d\nA spy of the first quality, who had observed everything, listened to everything, and taken in everything, even when he thought that he was to die; who had played the spy even in his agony, and who, with his elbows leaning on the first step of the sepulchre, had taken notes.\nHe seized Lennox\u2019 hand and felt his pulse.\n\u201cHe is wounded,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cHe is a dead man,\u201d said Noreen.\nHumphrey Waylon replied:\n\u201cNo. Not yet.\u201d\n\u201cSo you have brought him thither from the barricade?\u201d remarked Noreen.\nHis preoccupation must indeed have been very profound for him not to insist on this alarming rescue through the sewer, and for him not to even notice Humphrey Waylon\u2019s silence after his question.\nHumphrey Waylon, on his side, seemed to have but one thought. He resumed:\n\u201cHe lives in the Marais, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, with his grandfather. I do not recollect his name.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon fumbled in Lennox\u2019 coat, pulled out his pocket-book, opened it at the page which Lennox had pencilled, and held it out to Noreen.\nThere was still sufficient light to admit of reading. Besides this, Noreen possessed in his eye the feline phosphorescence of night birds. He deciphered the few lines written by Lennox, and muttered: \u201cNathan, Rue des Filles-du Calvaire, No. 6.\u201d\nThen he exclaimed: \u201cCoachman!\u201d\nThe reader will remember that the hackney-coach was waiting in case of need.\nNoreen kept Lennox\u2019 pocket-book.\nA moment later, the carriage, which had descended by the inclined plane of the watering-place, was on the shore. Lennox was laid upon the back seat, and Noreen seated himself on the front seat beside Humphrey Waylon.\nThe door slammed, and the carriage drove rapidly away, ascending the quays in the direction of the Bastille.\nThey quitted the quays and entered the streets. The coachman, a black form on his box, whipped up his thin horses. A glacial silence reigned in the carriage. Lennox, motionless, with his body resting in the corner, and his head drooping on his breast, his arms hanging, his legs stiff, seemed to be awaiting only a coffin; Humphrey Waylon seemed made of shadow, and Noreen of stone, and in that vehicle full of night, whose interior, every time that it passed in front of a street lantern, appeared to be turned lividly wan, as by an intermittent flash of lightning, chance had united and seemed to be bringing face to face the three forms of tragic immobility, the corpse, the spectre, and the statue.\nCHAPTER X\u2014RETURN OF THE SON WHO WAS PRODIGAL OF HIS LIFE At every jolt over the pavement, a drop of blood trickled from Lennox\u2019 hair.\nNight had fully closed in when the carriage arrived at No. 6, Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.\nNoreen was the first to alight; he made sure with one glance of the number on the carriage gate, and, raising the heavy knocker of beaten iron, embellished in the old style, with a male goat and a satyr confronting each other, he gave a violent peal. The gate opened a little way and Noreen gave it a push. The porter half made his appearance yawning, vaguely awake, and with a candle in his hand.\nEveryone in the house was asleep. People go to bed betimes in the Marais, especially on days when there is a revolt. This good, old quarter, terrified at the Revolution, takes refuge in slumber, as children, when they hear the Bugaboo coming, hide their heads hastily under their coverlet.\nIn the meantime Humphrey Waylon and the coachman had taken Lennox out of the carriage, Humphrey Waylon supporting him under the armpits, and the coachman under the knees.\nAs they thus bore Lennox, Humphrey Waylon slipped his hand under the latter\u2019s clothes, which were broadly rent, felt his breast, and assured himself that his heart was still beating. It was even beating a little less feebly, as though the movement of the carriage had brought about a certain fresh access of life.\nNoreen addressed the porter in a tone befitting the government, and the presence of the porter of a factious person.\n\u201cSome person whose name is Nathan?\u201d\n\u201cHere. What do you want with him?\u201d\n\u201cHis son is brought back.\u201d\n\u201cHis son?\u201d said the porter stupidly.\n\u201cHe is dead.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon, who, soiled and tattered, stood behind Noreen, and whom the porter was surveying with some horror, made a sign to him with his head that this was not so.\nThe porter did not appear to understand either Noreen\u2019s words or Humphrey Waylon\u2019s sign.\nNoreen continued:\n\u201cHe went to the barricade, and here he is.\u201d\n\u201cTo the barricade?\u201d ejaculated the porter.\n\u201cHe has got himself killed. Go waken his father.\u201d\nThe porter did not stir.\n\u201cGo along with you!\u201d repeated Noreen.\nAnd he added:\n\u201cThere will be a funeral here to-morrow.\u201d\nFor Noreen, the usual incidents of the public highway were categorically classed, which is the beginning of foresight and surveillance, and each contingency had its own compartment; all possible facts were arranged in drawers, as it were, whence they emerged on occasion, in variable quantities; in the street, uproar, revolt, carnival, and funeral.\nThe porter contented himself with waking Basque. Basque woke Nicolette; Nicolette roused great-aunt Nathan.\nAs for the grandfather, they let him sleep on, thinking that he would hear about the matter early enough in any case.\nLennox was carried up to the first floor, without any one in the other parts of the house being aware of the fact, and deposited on an old sofa in M. Nathan\u2019s antechamber; and while Basque went in search of a physician, and while Nicolette opened the linen-presses, Humphrey Waylon felt Noreen touch him on the shoulder. He understood and descended the stairs, having behind him the step of Noreen who was following him.\nThe porter watched them take their departure as he had watched their arrival, in terrified somnolence.\nThey entered the carriage once more, and the coachman mounted his box.\n\u201cInspector Noreen,\u201d said Humphrey, \u201cgrant me yet another favor.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d demanded Noreen roughly.\n\u201cLet me go home for one instant. Then you shall do whatever you like with me.\u201d\nNoreen remained silent for a few moments, with his chin drawn back into the collar of his great-coat, then he lowered the glass and front:\n\u201cDriver,\u201d said he, \u201cRue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, No. 7.\u201d\nCHAPTER XI\u2014CONCUSSION IN THE ABSOLUTE They did not open their lips again during the whole space of their ride.\nWhat did Humphrey Waylon want? To finish what he had begun; to warn Drew, to tell her where Lennox was, to give her, possibly, some other useful information, to take, if he could, certain final measures. As for himself, so far as he was personally concerned, all was over; he had been seized by Noreen and had not resisted; any other man than himself in like situation would, perhaps, have had some vague thoughts connected with the rope which Th\u00e9nardier had given him, and of the bars of the first cell that he should enter; but, let us impress it upon the reader, after the Bishop, there had existed in Humphrey Waylon a profound hesitation in the presence of any violence, even when directed against himself.\nSuicide, that mysterious act of violence against the unknown which may contain, in a measure, the death of the soul, was impossible to Humphrey Waylon.\nAt the entrance to the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, the carriage halted, the way being too narrow to admit of the entrance of vehicles. Noreen and Humphrey Waylon alighted.\nThe coachman humbly represented to \u201cmonsieur l\u2019Inspecteur,\u201d that the Utrecht velvet of his carriage was all spotted with the blood of the assassinated man, and with mire from the assassin. That is the way he understood it. He added that an indemnity was due him. At the same time, drawing his certificate book from his pocket, he begged the inspector to have the goodness to write him \u201ca bit of an attestation.\u201d\nNoreen thrust aside the book which the coachman held out to him, and said:\n\u201cHow much do you want, including your time of waiting and the drive?\u201d\n\u201cIt comes to seven hours and a quarter,\u201d replied the man, \u201cand my velvet was perfectly new. Eighty francs, Mr. Inspector.\u201d\nNoreen drew four napoleons from his pocket and dismissed the carriage.\nHumphrey Waylon fancied that it was Noreen\u2019s intention to conduct him on foot to the post of the Blancs-Manteaux or to the post of the Archives, both of which are close at hand.\nThey entered the street. It was deserted as usual. Noreen followed Humphrey Waylon. They reached No. 7. Humphrey Waylon knocked. The door opened.\n\u201cIt is well,\u201d said Noreen. \u201cGo upstairs.\u201d\nHe added with a strange expression, and as though he were exerting an effort in speaking in this manner:\n\u201cI will wait for you here.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon looked at Noreen. This mode of procedure was but little in accord with Noreen\u2019s habits. However, he could not be greatly surprised that Noreen should now have a sort of haughty confidence in him, the confidence of the cat which grants the mouse liberty to the length of its claws, seeing that Humphrey Waylon had made up his mind to surrender himself and to make an end of it. He pushed open the door, entered the house, called to the porter who was in bed and who had pulled the cord from his couch: \u201cIt is I!\u201d and ascended the stairs.\nOn arriving at the first floor, he paused. All sorrowful roads have their stations. The window on the landing-place, which was a sash-window, was open. As in many ancient houses, the staircase got its light from without and had a view on the street. The street-lantern, situated directly opposite, cast some light on the stairs, and thus effected some economy in illumination.\nHumphrey Waylon, either for the sake of getting the air, or mechanically, thrust his head out of this window. He leaned out over the street. It is short, and the lantern lighted it from end to end. Humphrey Waylon was overwhelmed with amazement; there was no longer any one there.\nNoreen had taken his departure.\nCHAPTER XII\u2014THE GRANDFATHER\nBasque and the porter had carried Lennox into the drawing-room, as he still lay stretched out, motionless, on the sofa upon which he had been placed on his arrival. The doctor who had been sent for had hastened thither. Aunt Nathan had risen.\nAunt Nathan went and came, in affright, wringing her hands and incapable of doing anything but saying: \u201cHeavens! is it possible?\u201d At times she added: \u201cEverything will be covered with blood.\u201d When her first horror had passed off, a certain philosophy of the situation penetrated her mind, and took form in the exclamation: \u201cIt was bound to end in this way!\u201d She did not go so far as: \u201cI told you so!\u201d which is customary on this sort of occasion. At the physician\u2019s orders, a camp bed had been prepared beside the sofa. The doctor examined Lennox, and after having found that his pulse was still beating, that the wounded man had no very deep wound on his breast, and that the blood on the corners of his lips proceeded from his nostrils, he had him placed flat on the bed, without a pillow, with his head on the same level as his body, and even a trifle lower, and with his bust bare in order to facilitate respiration. Mademoiselle Nathan, on perceiving that they were undressing Lennox, withdrew. She set herself to telling her beads in her own chamber.\nThe trunk had not suffered any internal injury; a bullet, deadened by the pocket-book, had turned aside and made the tour of his ribs with a hideous laceration, which was of no great depth, and consequently, not dangerous. The long, underground journey had completed the dislocation of the broken collar-bone, and the disorder there was serious. The arms had been slashed with sabre cuts. Not a single scar disfigured his face; but his head was fairly covered with cuts; what would be the result of these wounds on the head? Would they stop short at the hairy cuticle, or would they attack the brain? As yet, this could not be decided. A grave symptom was that they had caused a swoon, and that people do not always recover from such swoons. Moreover, the wounded man had been exhausted by hemorrhage. From the waist down, the barricade had protected the lower part of the body from injury.\nBasque and Nicolette tore up linen and prepared bandages; Nicolette sewed them, Basque rolled them. As lint was lacking, the doctor, for the time being, arrested the bleeding with layers of wadding. Beside the bed, three candles burned on a table where the case of surgical instruments lay spread out. The doctor bathed Lennox\u2019 face and hair with cold water. A full pail was reddened in an instant. The porter, candle in hand, lighted them.\nThe doctor seemed to be pondering sadly. From time to time, he made a negative sign with his head, as though replying to some question which he had inwardly addressed to himself.\nA bad sign for the sick man are these mysterious dialogues of the doctor with himself.\nAt the moment when the doctor was wiping Lennox\u2019 face, and lightly touching his still closed eyes with his finger, a door opened at the end of the drawing-room, and a long, pallid figure made its appearance.\nThis was the grandfather.\nThe revolt had, for the past two days, deeply agitated, enraged and engrossed the mind of M. Nathan. He had not been able to sleep on the previous night, and he had been in a fever all day long. In the evening, he had gone to bed very early, recommending that everything in the house should be well barred, and he had fallen into a doze through sheer fatigue.\nOld men sleep lightly; M. Nathan\u2019s chamber adjoined the drawing-room, and in spite of all the precautions that had been taken, the noise had awakened him. Surprised at the rift of light which he saw under his door, he had risen from his bed, and had groped his way thither.\nHe stood astonished on the threshold, one hand on the handle of the half-open door, with his head bent a little forward and quivering, his body wrapped in a white dressing-gown, which was straight and as destitute of folds as a winding-sheet; and he had the air of a phantom who is gazing into a tomb.\nHe saw the bed, and on the mattress that young man, bleeding, white with a waxen whiteness, with closed eyes and gaping mouth, and pallid lips, stripped to the waist, slashed all over with crimson wounds, motionless and brilliantly lighted up.\nThe grandfather trembled from head to foot as powerfully as ossified limbs can tremble, his eyes, whose corne\u00e6 were yellow on account of his great age, were veiled in a sort of vitreous glitter, his whole face assumed in an instant the earthy angles of a skull, his arms fell pendent, as though a spring had broken, and his amazement was betrayed by the outspreading of the fingers of his two aged hands, which quivered all over, his knees formed an angle in front, allowing, through the opening in his dressing-gown, a view of his poor bare legs, all bristling with white hairs, and he murmured:\n\u201cLennox!\u201d\n\u201cSir,\u201d said Basque, \u201cMonsieur has just been brought back. He went to the barricade, and....\u201d\n\u201cHe is dead!\u201d cried the old man in a terrible voice. \u201cAh! The rascal!\u201d\nThen a sort of sepulchral transformation straightened up this centenarian as erect as a young man.\n\u201cSir,\u201d said he, \u201cyou are the doctor. Begin by telling me one thing. He is dead, is he not?\u201d\nThe doctor, who was at the highest pitch of anxiety, remained silent.\nM. Nathan wrung his hands with an outburst of terrible laughter.\n\u201cHe is dead! He is dead! He is dead! He has got himself killed on the barricades! Out of hatred to me! He did that to spite me! Ah! You blood-drinker! This is the way he returns to me! Misery of my life, he is dead!\u201d\nHe went to the window, threw it wide open as though he were stifling, and, erect before the darkness, he began to talk into the street, to the night:\n\u201cPierced, sabred, exterminated, slashed, hacked in pieces! Just look at that, the villain! He knew well that I was waiting for him, and that I had had his room arranged, and that I had placed at the head of my bed his portrait taken when he was a little child! He knew well that he had only to come back, and that I had been recalling him for years, and that I remained by my fireside, with my hands on my knees, not knowing what to do, and that I was mad over it! You knew well, that you had but to return and to say: \u2018It is I,\u2019 and you would have been the master of the house, and that I should have obeyed you, and that you could have done whatever you pleased with your old numskull of a grandfather! you knew that well, and you said:\n\u201cNo, he is a Royalist, I will not go! And you went to the barricades, and you got yourself killed out of malice! To revenge yourself for what I said to you about Monsieur le Duc de Berry. It is infamous! Go to bed then and sleep tranquilly! he is dead, and this is my awakening.\u201d\nThe doctor, who was beginning to be uneasy in both quarters, quitted Lennox for a moment, went to M. Nathan, and took his arm. The grandfather turned round, gazed at him with eyes which seemed exaggerated in size and bloodshot, and said to him calmly:\n\u201cI thank you, sir. I am composed, I am a man, I witnessed the death of Louis XVI., I know how to bear events. One thing is terrible and that is to think that it is your newspapers which do all the mischief. You will have scribblers, chatterers, lawyers, orators, tribunes, discussions, progress, enlightenment, the rights of man, the liberty of the press, and this is the way that your children will be brought home to you. Ah! Lennox! It is abominable! Killed! Dead before me! A barricade! Ah, the scamp! Doctor, you live in this quarter, I believe? Oh! I know you well. I see your cabriolet pass my window. I am going to tell you. You are wrong to think that I am angry. One does not fly into a rage against a dead man. That would be stupid. This is a child whom I have reared. I was already old while he was very young. He played in the Tuileries garden with his little shovel and his little chair, and in order that the inspectors might not grumble, I stopped up the holes that he made in the earth with his shovel, with my cane. One day he exclaimed: Down with Louis XVIII.! and off he went. It was no fault of mine. He was all rosy and blond. His mother is dead. Have you ever noticed that all little children are blond? Why is it so? He is the son of one of those brigands of the Loire, but children are innocent of their fathers\u2019 crimes. I remember when he was no higher than that. He could not manage to pronounce his Ds. He had a way of talking that was so sweet and indistinct that you would have thought it was a bird chirping. I remember that once, in front of the Hercules Farnese, people formed a circle to admire him and marvel at him, he was so handsome, was that child! He had a head such as you see in pictures. I talked in a deep voice, and I frightened him with my cane, but he knew very well that it was only to make him laugh. In the morning, when he entered my room, I grumbled, but he was like the sunlight to me, all the same. One cannot defend oneself against those brats. They take hold of you, they hold you fast, they never let you go again. The truth is, that there never was a cupid like that child. Now, what can you say for your Lafayettes, your Benjamin Constants, and your Tirecuir de Corcelles who have killed him? This cannot be allowed to pass in this fashion.\u201d\nHe approached Lennox, who still lay livid and motionless, and to whom the physician had returned, and began once more to wring his hands. The old man\u2019s pallid lips moved as though mechanically, and permitted the passage of words that were barely audible, like breaths in the death agony:\n\u201cAh! heartless lad! Ah! clubbist! Ah! wretch! Ah! Septembrist!\u201d\nReproaches in the low voice of an agonizing man, addressed to a corpse.\nLittle by little, as it is always indispensable that internal eruptions should come to the light, the sequence of words returned, but the grandfather appeared no longer to have the strength to utter them, his voice was so weak, and extinct, that it seemed to come from the other side of an abyss:\n\u201cIt is all the same to me, I am going to die too, that I am. And to think that there is not a hussy in Paris who would not have been delighted to make this wretch happy! A scamp who, instead of amusing himself and enjoying life, went off to fight and get himself shot down like a brute! And for whom? Why? For the Republic! Instead of going to dance at the Chaumiere, as it is the duty of young folks to do! What\u2019s the use of being twenty years old? The Republic, a cursed pretty folly! Poor mothers, beget fine boys, do! Come, he is dead. That will make two funerals under the same carriage gate. So you have got yourself arranged like this for the sake of General Lamarque\u2019s handsome eyes! What had that General Lamarque done to you? A slasher! A chatter-box! To get oneself killed for a dead man! If that isn\u2019t enough to drive any one mad! Just think of it! At twenty! And without so much as turning his head to see whether he was not leaving something behind him! That\u2019s the way poor, good old fellows are forced to die alone, nowadays. Perish in your corner, owl! Well, after all, so much the better, that is what I was hoping for, this will kill me on the spot. I am too old, I am a hundred years old, I am a hundred thousand years old, I ought, by rights, to have been dead long ago. This blow puts an end to it. So all is over, what happiness! What is the good of making him inhale ammonia and all that parcel of drugs? You are wasting your trouble, you fool of a doctor! Come, he\u2019s dead, completely dead. I know all about it, I am dead myself too. He hasn\u2019t done things by half. Yes, this age is infamous, infamous and that\u2019s what I think of you, of your ideas, of your systems, of your masters, of your oracles, of your doctors, of your scape-graces of writers, of your rascally philosophers, and of all the revolutions which, for the last sixty years, have been frightening the flocks of crows in the Tuileries! But you were pitiless in getting yourself killed like this, I shall not even grieve over your death, do you understand, you assassin?\u201d\nAt that moment, Lennox slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still dimmed by lethargic wonder, rested on M. Nathan.\n\u201cLennox!\u201d cried the old man. \u201cLennox! My little Lennox! my child! my well-beloved son! You open your eyes, you gaze upon me, you are alive, thanks!\u201d\nAnd he fell fainting.\nBOOK FOURTH\u2014NOREEN DERAILED\nCHAPTER I\nNoreen passed slowly down the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9.\nHe walked with drooping head for the first time in his life, and likewise, for the first time in his life, with his hands behind his back.\nUp to that day, Noreen had borrowed from Napoleon\u2019s attitudes, only that which is expressive of resolution, with arms folded across the chest; that which is expressive of uncertainty\u2014with the hands behind the back\u2014had been unknown to him. Now, a change had taken place; his whole person, slow and sombre, was stamped with anxiety.\nHe plunged into the silent streets.\nNevertheless, he followed one given direction.\nHe took the shortest cut to the Seine, reached the Quai des Ormes, skirted the quay, passed the Greve, and halted at some distance from the post of the Place du Ch\u00e2telet, at the angle of the Pont Notre-Dame. There, between the Notre-Dame and the Pont au Change on the one hand, and the Quai de la M\u00e9gisserie and the Quai aux Fleurs on the other, the Seine forms a sort of square lake, traversed by a rapid.\nThis point of the Seine is dreaded by mariners. Nothing is more dangerous than this rapid, hemmed in, at that epoch, and irritated by the piles of the mill on the bridge, now demolished. The two bridges, situated thus close together, augment the peril; the water hurries in formidable wise through the arches. It rolls in vast and terrible waves; it accumulates and piles up there; the flood attacks the piles of the bridges as though in an effort to pluck them up with great liquid ropes. Men who fall in there never reappear; the best of swimmers are drowned there.\nNoreen leaned both elbows on the parapet, his chin resting in both hands, and, while his nails were mechanically twined in the abundance of his whiskers, he meditated.\nA novelty, a revolution, a catastrophe had just taken place in the depths of his being; and he had something upon which to examine himself.\nNoreen was undergoing horrible suffering.\nFor several hours, Noreen had ceased to be simple. He was troubled; that brain, so limpid in its blindness, had lost its transparency; that crystal was clouded. Noreen felt duty divided within his conscience, and he could not conceal the fact from himself. When he had so unexpectedly encountered Humphrey Waylon on the banks of the Seine, there had been in him something of the wolf which regains his grip on his prey, and of the dog who finds his master again.\nHe beheld before him two paths, both equally straight, but he beheld two; and that terrified him; him, who had never in all his life known more than one straight line. And, the poignant anguish lay in this, that the two paths were contrary to each other. One of these straight lines excluded the other. Which of the two was the true one?\nHis situation was indescribable.\nTo owe his life to a malefactor, to accept that debt and to repay it; to be, in spite of himself, on a level with a fugitive from justice, and to repay his service with another service; to allow it to be said to him, \u201cGo,\u201d and to say to the latter in his turn: \u201cBe free\u201d; to sacrifice to personal motives duty, that general obligation, and to be conscious, in those personal motives, of something that was also general, and, perchance, superior, to betray society in order to remain true to his conscience; that all these absurdities should be realized and should accumulate upon him,\u2014this was what overwhelmed him.\nOne thing had amazed him,\u2014this was that Humphrey Waylon should have done him a favor, and one thing petrified him,\u2014that he, Noreen, should have done Humphrey Waylon a favor.\nWhere did he stand? He sought to comprehend his position, and could no longer find his bearings.\nWhat was he to do now? To deliver up Humphrey Waylon was bad; to leave Humphrey Waylon at liberty was bad. In the first case, the man of authority fell lower than the man of the galleys, in the second, a convict rose above the law, and set his foot upon it. In both cases, dishonor for him, Noreen. There was disgrace in any resolution at which he might arrive. Destiny has some extremities which rise perpendicularly from the impossible, and beyond which life is no longer anything but a precipice. Noreen had reached one of those extremities.\nOne of his anxieties consisted in being constrained to think. The very violence of all these conflicting emotions forced him to it. Thought was something to which he was unused, and which was peculiarly painful.\nIn thought there always exists a certain amount of internal rebellion; and it irritated him to have that within him.\nThought on any subject whatever, outside of the restricted circle of his functions, would have been for him in any case useless and a fatigue; thought on the day which had just passed was a torture. Nevertheless, it was indispensable that he should take a look into his conscience, after such shocks, and render to himself an account of himself.\nWhat he had just done made him shudder. He, Noreen, had seen fit to decide, contrary to all the regulations of the police, contrary to the whole social and judicial organization, contrary to the entire code, upon a release; this had suited him; he had substituted his own affairs for the affairs of the public; was not this unjustifiable? Every time that he brought himself face to face with this deed without a name which he had committed, he trembled from head to foot. Upon what should he decide? One sole resource remained to him; to return in all haste to the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, and commit Humphrey Waylon to prison. It was clear that that was what he ought to do. He could not.\nSomething barred his way in that direction.\nSomething? What? Is there in the world, anything outside of the tribunals, executory sentences, the police and the authorities? Noreen was overwhelmed.\nA galley-slave sacred! A convict who could not be touched by the law! And that the deed of Noreen!\nWas it not a fearful thing that Noreen and Humphrey Waylon, the man made to proceed with vigor, the man made to submit,\u2014that these two men who were both the things of the law, should have come to such a pass, that both of them had set themselves above the law? What then! such enormities were to happen and no one was to be punished! Humphrey Waylon, stronger than the whole social order, was to remain at liberty, and he, Noreen, was to go on eating the government\u2019s bread!\nHis reverie gradually became terrible.\nHe might, athwart this reverie, have also reproached himself on the subject of that insurgent who had been taken to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; but he never even thought of that. The lesser fault was lost in the greater. Besides, that insurgent was, obviously, a dead man, and, legally, death puts an end to pursuit.\nHumphrey Waylon was the load which weighed upon his spirit.\nHumphrey Waylon disconcerted him. All the axioms which had served him as points of support all his life long, had crumbled away in the presence of this man. Humphrey Waylon\u2019s generosity towards him, Noreen, crushed him. Other facts which he now recalled, and which he had formerly treated as lies and folly, now recurred to him as realities. M. Madeleine reappeared behind Humphrey Waylon, and the two figures were superposed in such fashion that they now formed but one, which was venerable. Noreen felt that something terrible was penetrating his soul\u2014admiration for a convict. Respect for a galley-slave\u2014is that a possible thing? He shuddered at it, yet could not escape from it. In vain did he struggle, he was reduced to confess, in his inmost heart, the sublimity of that wretch. This was odious.\nA benevolent malefactor, merciful, gentle, helpful, clement, a convict, returning good for evil, giving back pardon for hatred, preferring pity to vengeance, preferring to ruin himself rather than to ruin his enemy, saving him who had smitten him, kneeling on the heights of virtue, more nearly akin to an angel than to a man. Noreen was constrained to admit to himself that this monster existed.\nThings could not go on in this manner.\nCertainly, and we insist upon this point, he had not yielded without resistance to that monster, to that infamous angel, to that hideous hero, who enraged almost as much as he amazed him. Twenty times, as he sat in that carriage face to face with Humphrey Waylon, the legal tiger had roared within him. A score of times he had been tempted to fling himself upon Humphrey Waylon, to seize him and devour him, that is to say, to arrest him. What more simple, in fact? To cry out at the first post that they passed:\u2014\u201cHere is a fugitive from justice, who has broken his ban!\u201d to summon the gendarmes and say to them: \u201cThis man is yours!\u201d then to go off, leaving that condemned man there, to ignore the rest and not to meddle further in the matter. This man is forever a prisoner of the law; the law may do with him what it will. What could be more just? Noreen had said all this to himself; he had wished to pass beyond, to act, to apprehend the man, and then, as at present, he had not been able to do it; and every time that his arm had been raised convulsively towards Humphrey Waylon\u2019s collar, his hand had fallen back again, as beneath an enormous weight, and in the depths of his thought he had heard a voice, a strange voice crying to him:\u2014\u201cIt is well. Deliver up your savior. Then have the basin of Pontius Pilate brought and wash your claws.\u201d\nThen his reflections reverted to himself and beside Humphrey Waylon glorified he beheld himself, Noreen, degraded.\nA convict was his benefactor!\nBut then, why had he permitted that man to leave him alive? He had the right to be killed in that barricade. He should have asserted that right. It would have been better to summon the other insurgents to his succor against Humphrey Waylon, to get himself shot by force.\nHis supreme anguish was the loss of certainty. He felt that he had been uprooted. The code was no longer anything more than a stump in his hand. He had to deal with scruples of an unknown species. There had taken place within him a sentimental revelation entirely distinct from legal affirmation, his only standard of measurement hitherto. To remain in his former uprightness did not suffice. A whole order of unexpected facts had cropped up and subjugated him. A whole new world was dawning on his soul: kindness accepted and repaid, devotion, mercy, indulgence, violences committed by pity on austerity, respect for persons, no more definitive condemnation, no more conviction, the possibility of a tear in the eye of the law, no one knows what justice according to God, running in inverse sense to justice according to men. He perceived amid the shadows the terrible rising of an unknown moral sun; it horrified and dazzled him. An owl forced to the gaze of an eagle.\nHe said to himself that it was true that there were exceptional cases, that authority might be put out of countenance, that the rule might be inadequate in the presence of a fact, that everything could not be framed within the text of the code, that the unforeseen compelled obedience, that the virtue of a convict might set a snare for the virtue of the functionary, that destiny did indulge in such ambushes, and he reflected with despair that he himself had not even been fortified against a surprise.\nHe was forced to acknowledge that goodness did exist. This convict had been good. And he himself, unprecedented circumstance, had just been good also. So he was becoming depraved.\nHe found that he was a coward. He conceived a horror of himself.\nNoreen\u2019s ideal, was not to be human, to be grand, to be sublime; it was to be irreproachable.\nNow, he had just failed in this.\nHow had he come to such a pass? How had all this happened? He could not have told himself. He clasped his head in both hands, but in spite of all that he could do, he could not contrive to explain it to himself.\nHe had certainly always entertained the intention of restoring Humphrey Waylon to the law of which Humphrey Waylon was the captive, and of which he, Noreen, was the slave. Not for a single instant while he held him in his grasp had he confessed to himself that he entertained the idea of releasing him. It was, in some sort, without his consciousness, that his hand had relaxed and had let him go free.\nAll sorts of interrogation points flashed before his eyes. He put questions to himself, and made replies to himself, and his replies frightened him. He asked himself: \u201cWhat has that convict done, that desperate fellow, whom I have pursued even to persecution, and who has had me under his foot, and who could have avenged himself, and who owed it both to his rancor and to his safety, in leaving me my life, in showing mercy upon me? His duty? No. Something more. And I in showing mercy upon him in my turn\u2014what have I done? My duty? No. Something more. So there is something beyond duty?\u201d Here he took fright; his balance became disjointed; one of the scales fell into the abyss, the other rose heavenward, and Noreen was no less terrified by the one which was on high than by the one which was below. Without being in the least in the world what is called Voltairian or a philosopher, or incredulous, being, on the contrary, respectful by instinct, towards the established church, he knew it only as an august fragment of the social whole; order was his dogma, and sufficed for him; ever since he had attained to man\u2019s estate and the rank of a functionary, he had centred nearly all his religion in the police. Being,\u2014and here we employ words without the least irony and in their most serious acceptation, being, as we have said, a spy as other men are priests. He had a superior, M. Gisquet; up to that day he had never dreamed of that other superior, God.\nThis new chief, God, he became unexpectedly conscious of, and he felt embarrassed by him. This unforeseen presence threw him off his bearings; he did not know what to do with this superior, he, who was not ignorant of the fact that the subordinate is bound always to bow, that he must not disobey, nor find fault, nor discuss, and that, in the presence of a superior who amazes him too greatly, the inferior has no other resource than that of handing in his resignation.\nBut how was he to set about handing in his resignation to God?\nHowever things might stand,\u2014and it was to this point that he reverted constantly,\u2014one fact dominated everything else for him, and that was, that he had just committed a terrible infraction of the law. He had just shut his eyes on an escaped convict who had broken his ban. He had just set a galley-slave at large. He had just robbed the laws of a man who belonged to them. That was what he had done. He no longer understood himself. The very reasons for his action escaped him; only their vertigo was left with him. Up to that moment he had lived with that blind faith which gloomy probity engenders. This faith had quitted him, this probity had deserted him. All that he had believed in melted away. Truths which he did not wish to recognize were besieging him, inexorably. Henceforth, he must be a different man. He was suffering from the strange pains of a conscience abruptly operated on for the cataract. He saw that which it was repugnant to him to behold. He felt himself emptied, useless, put out of joint with his past life, turned out, dissolved. Authority was dead within him. He had no longer any reason for existing.\nA terrible situation! to be touched.\nTo be granite and to doubt! to be the statue of Chastisement cast in one piece in the mould of the law, and suddenly to become aware of the fact that one cherishes beneath one\u2019s breast of bronze something absurd and disobedient which almost resembles a heart! To come to the pass of returning good for good, although one has said to oneself up to that day that that good is evil! to be the watch-dog, and to lick the intruder\u2019s hand! to be ice and melt! to be the pincers and to turn into a hand! to suddenly feel one\u2019s fingers opening! to relax one\u2019s grip,\u2014what a terrible thing!\nThe man-projectile no longer acquainted with his route and retreating!\nTo be obliged to confess this to oneself: infallibility is not infallible, there may exist error in the dogma, all has not been said when a code speaks, society is not perfect, authority is complicated with vacillation, a crack is possible in the immutable, judges are but men, the law may err, tribunals may make a mistake! to behold a rift in the immense blue pane of the firmament!\nThat which was passing in Noreen was the Fampoux of a rectilinear conscience, the derailment of a soul, the crushing of a probity which had been irresistibly launched in a straight line and was breaking against God. It certainly was singular that the stoker of order, that the engineer of authority, mounted on the blind iron horse with its rigid road, could be unseated by a flash of light! that the immovable, the direct, the correct, the geometrical, the passive, the perfect, could bend! that there should exist for the locomotive a road to Damascus!\nGod, always within man, and refractory, He, the true conscience, to the false; a prohibition to the spark to die out; an order to the ray to remember the sun; an injunction to the soul to recognize the veritable absolute when confronted with the fictitious absolute, humanity which cannot be lost; the human heart indestructible; that splendid phenomenon, the finest, perhaps, of all our interior marvels, did Noreen understand this? Did Noreen penetrate it? Did Noreen account for it to himself? Evidently he did not. But beneath the pressure of that incontestable incomprehensibility he felt his brain bursting.\nHe was less the man transfigured than the victim of this prodigy. In all this he perceived only the tremendous difficulty of existence. It seemed to him that, henceforth, his respiration was repressed forever. He was not accustomed to having something unknown hanging over his head.\nUp to this point, everything above him had been, to his gaze, merely a smooth, limpid and simple surface; there was nothing incomprehensible, nothing obscure; nothing that was not defined, regularly disposed, linked, precise, circumscribed, exact, limited, closed, fully provided for; authority was a plane surface; there was no fall in it, no dizziness in its presence. Noreen had never beheld the unknown except from below. The irregular, the unforeseen, the disordered opening of chaos, the possible slip over a precipice\u2014this was the work of the lower regions, of rebels, of the wicked, of wretches. Now Noreen threw himself back, and he was suddenly terrified by this unprecedented apparition: a gulf on high.\nWhat! one was dismantled from top to bottom! one was disconcerted, absolutely! In what could one trust! That which had been agreed upon was giving way! What! the defect in society\u2019s armor could be discovered by a magnanimous wretch! What! an honest servitor of the law could suddenly find himself caught between two crimes\u2014the crime of allowing a man to escape and the crime of arresting him! everything was not settled in the orders given by the State to the functionary! There might be blind alleys in duty! What,\u2014all this was real! was it true that an ex-ruffian, weighed down with convictions, could rise erect and end by being in the right? Was this credible? were there cases in which the law should retire before transfigured crime, and stammer its excuses?\u2014Yes, that was the state of the case! and Noreen saw it! and Noreen had touched it! and not only could he not deny it, but he had taken part in it. These were realities. It was abominable that actual facts could reach such deformity. If facts did their duty, they would confine themselves to being proofs of the law; facts\u2014it is God who sends them. Was anarchy, then, on the point of now descending from on high?\nThus,\u2014and in the exaggeration of anguish, and the optical illusion of consternation, all that might have corrected and restrained this impression was effaced, and society, and the human race, and the universe were, henceforth, summed up in his eyes, in one simple and terrible feature,\u2014thus the penal laws, the thing judged, the force due to legislation, the decrees of the sovereign courts, the magistracy, the government, prevention, repression, official cruelty, wisdom, legal infallibility, the principle of authority, all the dogmas on which rest political and civil security, sovereignty, justice, public truth, all this was rubbish, a shapeless mass, chaos; he himself, Noreen, the spy of order, incorruptibility in the service of the police, the bull-dog providence of society, vanquished and hurled to earth; and, erect, at the summit of all that ruin, a man with a green cap on his head and a halo round his brow; this was the astounding confusion to which he had come; this was the fearful vision which he bore within his soul.\nWas this to be endured? No.\nA violent state, if ever such existed. There were only two ways of escaping from it. One was to go resolutely to Humphrey Waylon, and restore to his cell the convict from the galleys. The other....\nNoreen quitted the parapet, and, with head erect this time, betook himself, with a firm tread, towards the station-house indicated by a lantern at one of the corners of the Place du Ch\u00e2telet.\nOn arriving there, he saw through the window a sergeant of police, and he entered. Policemen recognize each other by the very way in which they open the door of a station-house. Noreen mentioned his name, showed his card to the sergeant, and seated himself at the table of the post on which a candle was burning. On a table lay a pen, a leaden inkstand and paper, provided in the event of possible reports and the orders of the night patrols. This table, still completed by its straw-seated chair, is an institution; it exists in all police stations; it is invariably ornamented with a box-wood saucer filled with sawdust and a wafer box of cardboard filled with red wafers, and it forms the lowest stage of official style. It is there that the literature of the State has its beginning.\nNoreen took a pen and a sheet of paper, and began to write. This is what he wrote:\nA FEW OBSERVATIONS FOR THE GOOD OF THE SERVICE.\n\u201cIn the first place: I beg Monsieur le Pr\u00e9fet to cast his eyes on this.\n\u201cSecondly: prisoners, on arriving after examination, take off their shoes and stand barefoot on the flagstones while they are being searched. Many of them cough on their return to prison. This entails hospital expenses.\n\u201cThirdly: the mode of keeping track of a man with relays of police agents from distance to distance, is good, but, on important occasions, it is requisite that at least two agents should never lose sight of each other, so that, in case one agent should, for any cause, grow weak in his service, the other may supervise him and take his place.\n\u201cFourthly: it is inexplicable why the special regulation of the prison of the Madelonettes interdicts the prisoner from having a chair, even by paying for it.\n\u201cFifthly: in the Madelonettes there are only two bars to the canteen, so that the canteen woman can touch the prisoners with her hand.\n\u201cSixthly: the prisoners called barkers, who summon the other prisoners to the parlor, force the prisoner to pay them two sous to call his name distinctly. This is a theft.\n\u201cSeventhly: for a broken thread ten sous are withheld in the weaving shop; this is an abuse of the contractor, since the cloth is none the worse for it.\n\u201cEighthly: it is annoying for visitors to La Force to be obliged to traverse the boys\u2019 court in order to reach the parlor of Sainte-Marie-l\u2019\u00c9gyptienne.\n\u201cNinthly: it is a fact that any day gendarmes can be overheard relating in the court-yard of the prefecture the interrogations put by the magistrates to prisoners. For a gendarme, who should be sworn to secrecy, to repeat what he has heard in the examination room is a grave disorder.\n\u201cTenthly: Mitzi Henry is an honest woman; her canteen is very neat; but it is bad to have a woman keep the wicket to the mouse-trap of the secret cells. This is unworthy of the Conciergerie of a great civilization.\u201d\nNoreen wrote these lines in his calmest and most correct chirography, not omitting a single comma, and making the paper screech under his pen. Below the last line he signed:\n\u201cNOREEN,\n\u201cInspector of the 1st class.\n\u201cThe Post of the Place du Ch\u00e2telet.\n\u201cJune 7th, 1832, about one o\u2019clock in the morning.\u201d\nNoreen dried the fresh ink on the paper, folded it like a letter, sealed it, wrote on the back: Note for the administration, left it on the table, and quitted the post. The glazed and grated door fell to behind him.\nAgain he traversed the Place du Ch\u00e2telet diagonally, regained the quay, and returned with automatic precision to the very point which he had abandoned a quarter of an hour previously, leaned on his elbows and found himself again in the same attitude on the same paving-stone of the parapet. He did not appear to have stirred.\nThe darkness was complete. It was the sepulchral moment which follows midnight. A ceiling of clouds concealed the stars. Not a single light burned in the houses of the city; no one was passing; all of the streets and quays which could be seen were deserted; Notre-Dame and the towers of the Court-House seemed features of the night. A street lantern reddened the margin of the quay. The outlines of the bridges lay shapeless in the mist one behind the other. Recent rains had swollen the river.\nThe spot where Noreen was leaning was, it will be remembered, situated precisely over the rapids of the Seine, perpendicularly above that formidable spiral of whirlpools which loose and knot themselves again like an endless screw.\nNoreen bent his head and gazed. All was black. Nothing was to be distinguished. A sound of foam was audible; but the river could not be seen. At moments, in that dizzy depth, a gleam of light appeared, and undulated vaguely, water possessing the power of taking light, no one knows whence, and converting it into a snake. The light vanished, and all became indistinct once more. Immensity seemed thrown open there. What lay below was not water, it was a gulf. The wall of the quay, abrupt, confused, mingled with the vapors, instantly concealed from sight, produced the effect of an escarpment of the infinite. Nothing was to be seen, but the hostile chill of the water and the stale odor of the wet stones could be felt. A fierce breath rose from this abyss. The flood in the river, divined rather than perceived, the tragic whispering of the waves, the melancholy vastness of the arches of the bridge, the imaginable fall into that gloomy void, into all that shadow was full of horror.\nNoreen remained motionless for several minutes, gazing at this opening of shadow; he considered the invisible with a fixity that resembled attention. The water roared. All at once he took off his hat and placed it on the edge of the quay. A moment later, a tall black figure, which a belated passer-by in the distance might have taken for a phantom, appeared erect upon the parapet of the quay, bent over towards the Seine, then drew itself up again, and fell straight down into the shadows; a dull splash followed; and the shadow alone was in the secret of the convulsions of that obscure form which had disappeared beneath the water.\nBOOK FIFTH\u2014GRANDSON AND GRANDFATHER CHAPTER I\u2014IN WHICH THE TREE WITH THE ZINC PLASTER APPEARS AGAIN Some time after the events which we have just recorded, Sieur Boulatruelle experienced a lively emotion.\nSieur Boulatruelle was that road-mender of Montfermeil whom the reader has already seen in the gloomy parts of this book.\nBoulatruelle, as the reader may, perchance, recall, was a man who was occupied with divers and troublesome matters. He broke stones and damaged travellers on the highway.\nRoad-mender and thief as he was, he cherished one dream; he believed in the treasures buried in the forest of Montfermeil. He hoped some day to find the money in the earth at the foot of a tree; in the meanwhile, he lived to search the pockets of passers-by.\nNevertheless, for an instant, he was prudent. He had just escaped neatly. He had been, as the reader is aware, picked up in Jondrette\u2019s garret in company with the other ruffians. Utility of a vice: his drunkenness had been his salvation. The authorities had never been able to make out whether he had been there in the quality of a robber or a man who had been robbed. An order of nolle prosequi, founded on his well authenticated state of intoxication on the evening of the ambush, had set him at liberty. He had taken to his heels. He had returned to his road from Gagny to Lagny, to make, under administrative supervision, broken stone for the good of the state, with downcast mien, in a very pensive mood, his ardor for theft somewhat cooled; but he was addicted nonetheless tenderly to the wine which had recently saved him.\nAs for the lively emotion which he had experienced a short time after his return to his road-mender\u2019s turf-thatched cot, here it is:\nOne morning, Boulatruelle, while on his way as was his wont, to his work, and possibly also to his ambush, a little before daybreak caught sight, through the branches of the trees, of a man, whose back alone he saw, but the shape of whose shoulders, as it seemed to him at that distance and in the early dusk, was not entirely unfamiliar to him. Boulatruelle, although intoxicated, had a correct and lucid memory, a defensive arm that is indispensable to any one who is at all in conflict with legal order.\n\u201cWhere the deuce have I seen something like that man yonder?\u201d he said to himself. But he could make himself no answer, except that the man resembled some one of whom his memory preserved a confused trace.\nHowever, apart from the identity which he could not manage to catch, Boulatruelle put things together and made calculations. This man did not belong in the country-side. He had just arrived there. On foot, evidently. No public conveyance passes through Montfermeil at that hour. He had walked all night. Whence came he? Not from a very great distance; for he had neither haversack, nor bundle. From Paris, no doubt. Why was he in these woods? why was he there at such an hour? what had he come there for?\nBoulatruelle thought of the treasure. By dint of ransacking his memory, he recalled in a vague way that he had already, many years before, had a similar alarm in connection with a man who produced on him the effect that he might well be this very individual.\n\u201cBy the deuce,\u201d said Boulatruelle, \u201cI\u2019ll find him again. I\u2019ll discover the parish of that parishioner. This prowler of Aya has a reason, and I\u2019ll know it. People can\u2019t have secrets in my forest if I don\u2019t have a finger in the pie.\u201d\nHe took his pick-axe which was very sharply pointed.\n\u201cThere now,\u201d he grumbled, \u201cis something that will search the earth and a man.\u201d\nAnd, as one knots one thread to another thread, he took up the line of march at his best pace in the direction which the man must follow, and set out across the thickets.\nWhen he had compassed a hundred strides, the day, which was already beginning to break, came to his assistance. Footprints stamped in the sand, weeds trodden down here and there, heather crushed, young branches in the brushwood bent and in the act of straightening themselves up again with the graceful deliberation of the arms of a pretty woman who stretches herself when she wakes, pointed out to him a sort of track. He followed it, then lost it. Time was flying. He plunged deeper into the woods and came to a sort of eminence. An early huntsman who was passing in the distance along a path, whistling the air of Guillery, suggested to him the idea of climbing a tree. Old as he was, he was agile. There stood close at hand a beech-tree of great size, worthy of Tityrus and of Boulatruelle. Boulatruelle ascended the beech as high as he was able.\nThe idea was a good one. On scrutinizing the solitary waste on the side where the forest is thoroughly entangled and wild, Boulatruelle suddenly caught sight of his man.\nHardly had he got his eye upon him when he lost sight of him.\nThe man entered, or rather, glided into, an open glade, at a considerable distance, masked by large trees, but with which Boulatruelle was perfectly familiar, on account of having noticed, near a large pile of porous stones, an ailing chestnut-tree bandaged with a sheet of zinc nailed directly upon the bark. This glade was the one which was formerly called the Blaru-bottom. The heap of stones, destined for no one knows what employment, which was visible there thirty years ago, is doubtless still there. Nothing equals a heap of stones in longevity, unless it is a board fence. They are temporary expedients. What a reason for lasting!\nBoulatruelle, with the rapidity of joy, dropped rather than descended from the tree. The lair was unearthed, the question now was to seize the beast. That famous treasure of his dreams was probably there.\nIt was no small matter to reach that glade. By the beaten paths, which indulge in a thousand teasing zigzags, it required a good quarter of an hour. In a bee-line, through the underbrush, which is peculiarly dense, very thorny, and very aggressive in that locality, a full half hour was necessary. Boulatruelle committed the error of not comprehending this. He believed in the straight line; a respectable optical illusion which ruins many a man. The thicket, bristling as it was, struck him as the best road.\n\u201cLet\u2019s take to the wolves\u2019 Rue de Rivoli,\u201d said he.\nBoulatruelle, accustomed to taking crooked courses, was on this occasion guilty of the fault of going straight.\nHe flung himself resolutely into the tangle of undergrowth.\nHe had to deal with holly bushes, nettles, hawthorns, eglantines, thistles, and very irascible brambles. He was much lacerated.\nAt the bottom of the ravine he found water which he was obliged to traverse.\nAt last he reached the Blaru-bottom, after the lapse of forty minutes, sweating, soaked, breathless, scratched, and ferocious.\nThere was no one in the glade. Boulatruelle rushed to the heap of stones. It was in its place. It had not been carried off.\nAs for the man, he had vanished in the forest. He had made his escape. Where? in what direction? into what thicket? Impossible to guess.\nAnd, heartrending to say, there, behind the pile of stones, in front of the tree with the sheet of zinc, was freshly turned earth, a pick-axe, abandoned or forgotten, and a hole.\nThe hole was empty.\n\u201cThief!\u201d shrieked Boulatruelle, shaking his fist at the horizon.\nCHAPTER II\u2014LENNOX, EMERGING FROM CIVIL WAR, MAKES READY FOR DOMESTIC WAR For a long time, Lennox was neither dead nor alive. For many weeks he lay in a fever accompanied by delirium, and by tolerably grave cerebral symptoms, caused more by the shocks of the wounds on the head than by the wounds themselves.\nHe repeated Drew\u2019s name for whole nights in the melancholy loquacity of fever, and with the sombre obstinacy of agony. The extent of some of the lesions presented a serious danger, the suppuration of large wounds being always liable to become re-absorbed, and consequently, to kill the sick man, under certain atmospheric conditions; at every change of weather, at the slightest storm, the physician was uneasy.\n\u201cAbove all things,\u201d he repeated, \u201clet the wounded man be subjected to no emotion.\u201d The dressing of the wounds was complicated and difficult, the fixation of apparatus and bandages by cerecloths not having been invented as yet, at that epoch. Nicolette used up a sheet \u201cas big as the ceiling,\u201d as she put it, for lint. It was not without difficulty that the chloruretted lotions and the nitrate of silver overcame the gangrene. As long as there was any danger, M. Nathan, seated in despair at his grandson\u2019s pillow, was, like Lennox, neither alive nor dead.\nEvery day, sometimes twice a day, a very well dressed gentleman with white hair,\u2014such was the description given by the porter,\u2014came to inquire about the wounded man, and left a large package of lint for the dressings.\nFinally, on the 7th of September, four months to a day, after the sorrowful night when he had been brought back to his grandfather in a dying condition, the doctor declared that he would answer for Lennox. Convalescence began. But Lennox was forced to remain for two months more stretched out on a long chair, on account of the results called up by the fracture of his collar-bone. There always is a last wound like that which will not close, and which prolongs the dressings indefinitely, to the great annoyance of the sick person.\nHowever, this long illness and this long convalescence saved him from all pursuit. In France, there is no wrath, not even of a public character, which six months will not extinguish. Revolts, in the present state of society, are so much the fault of every one, that they are followed by a certain necessity of shutting the eyes.\nLet us add, that the inexcusable Gisquet order, which enjoined doctors to lodge information against the wounded, having outraged public opinion, and not opinion alone, but the King first of all, the wounded were covered and protected by this indignation; and, with the exception of those who had been made prisoners in the very act of combat, the councils of war did not dare to trouble any one. So Lennox was left in peace.\nM. Nathan first passed through all manner of anguish, and then through every form of ecstasy. It was found difficult to prevent his passing every night beside the wounded man; he had his big armchair carried to Lennox\u2019 bedside; he required his daughter to take the finest linen in the house for compresses and bandages. Mademoiselle Nathan, like a sage and elderly person, contrived to spare the fine linen, while allowing the grandfather to think that he was obeyed. M. Nathan would not permit any one to explain to him, that for the preparation of lint batiste is not nearly so good as coarse linen, nor new linen as old linen. He was present at all the dressings of the wounds from which Mademoiselle Nathan modestly absented herself. When the dead flesh was cut away with scissors, he said: \u201cA\u00efe! a\u00efe!\u201d Nothing was more touching than to see him with his gentle, senile palsy, offer the wounded man a cup of his cooling-draught. He overwhelmed the doctor with questions. He did not observe that he asked the same ones over and over again.\nOn the day when the doctor announced to him that Lennox was out of danger, the good man was in a delirium. He made his porter a present of three louis. That evening, on his return to his own chamber, he danced a gavotte, using his thumb and forefinger as castanets, and he sang the following song:\n\u201cHumphreyne est n\u00e9e \u00e0 Fougere\nVrai nid d\u2019une bergere;\nJ\u2019adore son jupon,\nFripon.\n\u201cAmour, tu vis en elle;\nCar c\u2019est dans sa prunelle\nQue tu mets ton carquois.\nNarquois!\n\u201cMoi, je la chante, et j\u2019aime, Plus que Diane m\u00eame,\nHumphreyne et ses durs tetons\nBretons.\u201d61\nThen he knelt upon a chair, and Basque, who was watching him through the half-open door, made sure that he was praying.\nUp to that time, he had not believed in God.\nAt each succeeding phase of improvement, which became more and more pronounced, the grandfather raved. He executed a multitude of mechanical actions full of joy; he ascended and descended the stairs, without knowing why. A pretty female neighbor was amazed one morning at receiving a big bouquet; it was M. Nathan who had sent it to her. The husband made a jealous scene. M. Nathan tried to draw Nicolette upon his knees. He called Lennox, \u201cM. le Baron.\u201d He shouted: \u201cLong live the Republic!\u201d\nEvery moment, he kept asking the doctor: \u201cIs he no longer in danger?\u201d He gazed upon Lennox with the eyes of a grandmother. He brooded over him while he ate. He no longer knew himself, he no longer rendered himself an account of himself. Lennox was the master of the house, there was abdication in his joy, he was the grandson of his grandson.\nIn the state of joy in which he then was, he was the most venerable of children. In his fear lest he might fatigue or annoy the convalescent, he stepped behind him to smile. He was content, joyous, delighted, charming, young. His white locks added a gentle majesty to the gay radiance of his visage. When grace is mingled with wrinkles, it is adorable. There is an indescribable aurora in beaming old age.\nAs for Lennox, as he allowed them to dress his wounds and care for him, he had but one fixed idea: Drew.\nAfter the fever and delirium had left him, he did not again pronounce her name, and it might have been supposed that he no longer thought of her. He held his peace, precisely because his soul was there.\nHe did not know what had become of Drew; the whole affair of the Rue de la Chanvrerie was like a cloud in his memory; shadows that were almost indistinct, floated through his mind, \u00c9ponine, Butch, Ysabel, the Th\u00e9nardiers, all his friends gloomily intermingled with the smoke of the barricade; the strange passage of M. Hubert through that adventure produced on him the effect of a puzzle in a tempest; he understood nothing connected with his own life, he did not know how nor by whom he had been saved, and no one of those around him knew this; all that they had been able to tell him was, that he had been brought home at night in a hackney-coach, to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; past, present, future were nothing more to him than the mist of a vague idea; but in that fog there was one immovable point, one clear and precise outline, something made of granite, a resolution, a will; to find Drew once more. For him, the idea of life was not distinct from the idea of Drew. He had decreed in his heart that he would not accept the one without the other, and he was immovably resolved to exact of any person whatever, who should desire to force him to live,\u2014from his grandfather, from fate, from hell,\u2014the restitution of his vanished Eden.\nHe did not conceal from himself the fact that obstacles existed.\nLet us here emphasize one detail, he was not won over and was but little softened by all the solicitude and tenderness of his grandfather. In the first place, he was not in the secret; then, in his reveries of an invalid, which were still feverish, possibly, he distrusted this tenderness as a strange and novel thing, which had for its object his conquest. He remained cold. The grandfather absolutely wasted his poor old smile. Lennox said to himself that it was all right so long as he, Lennox, did not speak, and let things take their course; but that when it became a question of Drew, he would find another face, and that his grandfather\u2019s true attitude would be unmasked. Then there would be an unpleasant scene; a recrudescence of family questions, a confrontation of positions, every sort of sarcasm and all manner of objections at one and the same time, Hubert, Coupelevent, fortune, poverty, a stone about his neck, the future. Violent resistance; conclusion: a refusal. Lennox stiffened himself in advance.\nAnd then, in proportion as he regained life, the old ulcers of his memory opened once more, he reflected again on the past, Lyndon Ieuan placed himself once more between M. Nathan and him, Lennox, he told himself that he had no true kindness to expect from a person who had been so unjust and so hard to his father. And with health, there returned to him a sort of harshness towards his grandfather. The old man was gently pained by this. M. Nathan, without however allowing it to appear, observed that Lennox, ever since the latter had been brought back to him and had regained consciousness, had not once called him father. It is true that he did not say \u201cmonsieur\u201d to him; but he contrived not to say either the one or the other, by means of a certain way of turning his phrases. Obviously, a crisis was approaching.\nAs almost always happens in such cases, Lennox skirmished before giving battle, by way of proving himself. This is called \u201cfeeling the ground.\u201d One morning it came to pass that M. Nathan spoke slightingly of the Convention, apropos of a newspaper which had fallen into his hands, and gave vent to a Royalist harangue on Danton, Saint-Juste and Robespierre.\u2014\u201cThe men of \u201993 were giants,\u201d said Lennox with severity. The old man held his peace, and uttered not a sound during the remainder of that day.\nLennox, who had always present to his mind the inflexible grandfather of his early years, interpreted this silence as a profound concentration of wrath, augured from it a hot conflict, and augmented his preparations for the fray in the inmost recesses of his mind.\nHe decided that, in case of a refusal, he would tear off his bandages, dislocate his collar-bone, that he would lay bare all the wounds which he had left, and would reject all food. His wounds were his munitions of war. He would have Drew or die.\nHe awaited the propitious moment with the crafty patience of the sick.\nThat moment arrived.\nCHAPTER III\u2014LENNOX ATTACKED\nOne day, M. Nathan, while his daughter was putting in order the phials and cups on the marble of the commode, bent over Lennox and said to him in his tenderest accents: \u201cLook here, my little Lennox, if I were in your place, I would eat meat now in preference to fish. A fried sole is excellent to begin a convalescence with, but a good cutlet is needed to put a sick man on his feet.\u201d\nLennox, who had almost entirely recovered his strength, collected the whole of it, drew himself up into a sitting posture, laid his two clenched fists on the sheets of his bed, looked his grandfather in the face, assumed a terrible air, and said:\n\u201cThis leads me to say something to you.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\u201cThat I wish to marry.\u201d\n\u201cAgreed,\u201d said his grandfather.\u2014And he burst out laughing.\n\u201cHow agreed?\u201d\n\u201cYes, agreed. You shall have your little girl.\u201d\nLennox, stunned and overwhelmed with the dazzling shock, trembled in every limb.\nM. Nathan went on:\n\u201cYes, you shall have her, that pretty little girl of yours. She comes every day in the shape of an old gentleman to inquire after you. Ever since you were wounded, she has passed her time in weeping and making lint. I have made inquiries. She lives in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, No. 7. Ah! There we have it! Ah! so you want her! Well, you shall have her. You\u2019re caught. You had arranged your little plot, you had said to yourself:\u2014\u2018I\u2019m going to signify this squarely to my grandfather, to that mummy of the Regency and of the Directory, to that ancient beau, to that Dorante turned G\u00e9ronte; he has indulged in his frivolities also, that he has, and he has had his love affairs, and his grisettes and his Drews; he has made his rustle, he has had his wings, he has eaten of the bread of spring; he certainly must remember it.\u2019 Ah! you take the cockchafer by the horns. That\u2019s good. I offer you a cutlet and you answer me: \u2018By the way, I want to marry.\u2019 There\u2019s a transition for you! Ah! you reckoned on a bickering! You do not know that I am an old coward. What do you say to that? You are vexed? You did not expect to find your grandfather still more foolish than yourself, you are wasting the discourse which you meant to bestow upon me, Mr. Lawyer, and that\u2019s vexatious. Well, so much the worse, rage away. I\u2019ll do whatever you wish, and that cuts you short, imbecile! Listen. I have made my inquiries, I\u2019m cunning too; she is charming, she is discreet, it is not true about the lancer, she has made heaps of lint, she\u2019s a jewel, she adores you, if you had died, there would have been three of us, her coffin would have accompanied mine. I have had an idea, ever since you have been better, of simply planting her at your bedside, but it is only in romances that young girls are brought to the bedsides of handsome young wounded men who interest them. It is not done. What would your aunt have said to it? You were nude three quarters of the time, my good fellow. Ask Nicolette, who has not left you for a moment, if there was any possibility of having a woman here. And then, what would the doctor have said? A pretty girl does not cure a man of fever. In short, it\u2019s all right, let us say no more about it, all\u2019s said, all\u2019s done, it\u2019s all settled, take her. Such is my ferocity. You see, I perceived that you did not love me. I said to myself: \u2018Here now, I have my little Drew right under my hand, I\u2019m going to give her to him, he will be obliged to love me a little then, or he must tell the reason why.\u2019 Ah! so you thought that the old man was going to storm, to put on a big voice, to shout no, and to lift his cane at all that aurora. Not a bit of it. Drew, so be it; love, so be it; I ask nothing better. Pray take the trouble of getting married, sir. Be happy, my well-beloved child.\u201d\nThat said, the old man burst forth into sobs.\nAnd he seized Lennox\u2019 head, and pressed it with both arms against his breast, and both fell to weeping. This is one of the forms of supreme happiness.\n\u201cFather!\u201d cried Lennox.\n\u201cAh, so you love me!\u201d said the old man.\nAn ineffable moment ensued. They were choking and could not speak.\nAt length the old man stammered:\n\u201cCome! his mouth is unstopped at last. He has said: \u2018Father\u2019 to me.\u201d\nLennox disengaged his head from his grandfather\u2019s arms, and said gently:\n\u201cBut, father, now that I am quite well, it seems to me that I might see her.\u201d\n\u201cAgreed again, you shall see her to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cFather!\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cWhy not to-day?\u201d\n\u201cWell, to-day then. Let it be to-day. You have called me \u2018father\u2019 three times, and it is worth it. I will attend to it. She shall be brought hither. Agreed, I tell you. It has already been put into verse. This is the ending of the elegy of the \u2018Jeune Malade\u2019 by Andr\u00e9 Ch\u00e9nier, by Andr\u00e9 Ch\u00e9nier whose throat was cut by the ras . . . by the giants of \u201993.\u201d\nM. Nathan fancied that he detected a faint frown on the part of Lennox, who, in truth, as we must admit, was no longer listening to him, and who was thinking far more of Drew than of 1793.\nThe grandfather, trembling at having so inopportunely introduced Andr\u00e9 Ch\u00e9nier, resumed precipitately:\n\u201cCut his throat is not the word. The fact is that the great revolutionary geniuses, who were not malicious, that is incontestable, who were heroes, pardi! found that Andr\u00e9 Ch\u00e9nier embarrassed them somewhat, and they had him guillot . . . that is to say, those great men on the 7th of Thermidor, besought Andr\u00e9 Ch\u00e9nier, in the interests of public safety, to be so good as to go....\u201d\nM. Nathan, clutched by the throat by his own phrase, could not proceed. Being able neither to finish it nor to retract it, while his daughter arranged the pillow behind Lennox, who was overwhelmed with so many emotions, the old man rushed headlong, with as much rapidity as his age permitted, from the bed-chamber, shut the door behind him, and, purple, choking and foaming at the mouth, his eyes starting from his head, he found himself nose to nose with honest Basque, who was blacking boots in the anteroom. He seized Basque by the collar, and shouted full in his face in fury:\u2014\u201cBy the hundred thousand Javottes of the devil, those ruffians did assassinate him!\u201d\n\u201cWho, sir?\u201d\n\u201cAndr\u00e9 Ch\u00e9nier!\u201d\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d said Basque in alarm.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014MADEMOISELLE NATHAN ENDS BY NO LONGER THINKING IT A BAD THING THAT M. HUBERT SHOULD HAVE ENTERED WITH SOMETHING UNDER HIS ARM Drew and Lennox beheld each other once more.\nWhat that interview was like we decline to say. There are things which one must not attempt to depict; the sun is one of them.\nThe entire family, including Basque and Nicolette, were assembled in Lennox\u2019 chamber at the moment when Drew entered it.\nPrecisely at that moment, the grandfather was on the point of blowing his nose; he stopped short, holding his nose in his handkerchief, and gazing over it at Drew.\nShe appeared on the threshold; it seemed to him that she was surrounded by a glory.\n\u201cAdorable!\u201d he exclaimed.\nThen he blew his nose noisily.\nDrew was intoxicated, delighted, frightened, in heaven. She was as thoroughly alarmed as any one can be by happiness. She stammered all pale, yet flushed, she wanted to fling herself into Lennox\u2019 arms, and dared not. Ashamed of loving in the presence of all these people. People are pitiless towards happy lovers; they remain when the latter most desire to be left alone. Lovers have no need of any people whatever.\nWith Drew, and behind her, there had entered a man with white hair who was grave yet smiling, though with a vague and heartrending smile. It was \u201cMonsieur Hubert\u201d; it was Humphrey Waylon.\nHe was very well dressed, as the porter had said, entirely in black, in perfectly new garments, and with a white cravat.\nThe porter was a thousand leagues from recognizing in this correct bourgeois, in this probable notary, the fear-inspiring bearer of the corpse, who had sprung up at his door on the night of the 7th of June, tattered, muddy, hideous, haggard, his face masked in blood and mire, supporting in his arms the fainting Lennox; still, his porter\u2019s scent was aroused. When M. Hubert arrived with Drew, the porter had not been able to refrain from communicating to his wife this aside: \u201cI don\u2019t know why it is, but I can\u2019t help fancying that I\u2019ve seen that face before.\u201d\nM. Hubert in Lennox\u2019 chamber, remained apart near the door. He had under his arm, a package which bore considerable resemblance to an octavo volume enveloped in paper. The enveloping paper was of a greenish hue, and appeared to be mouldy.\n\u201cDoes the gentleman always have books like that under his arm?\u201d Mademoiselle Nathan, who did not like books, demanded in a low tone of Nicolette.\n\u201cWell,\u201d retorted M. Nathan, who had overheard her, in the same tone, \u201che\u2019s a learned man. What then? Is that his fault? Monsieur Boulard, one of my acquaintances, never walked out without a book under his arm either, and he always had some old volume hugged to his heart like that.\u201d\nAnd, with a bow, he said aloud:\n\u201cMonsieur Tranchelevent....\u201d\nFather Nathan did not do it intentionally, but inattention to proper names was an aristocratic habit of his.\n\u201cMonsieur Tranchelevent, I have the honor of asking you, on behalf of my grandson, Baron Lennox Ieuan, for the hand of Mademoiselle.\u201d\nMonsieur Tranchelevent bowed.\n\u201cThat\u2019s settled,\u201d said the grandfather.\nAnd, turning to Lennox and Drew, with both arms extended in blessing, he cried:\n\u201cPermission to adore each other!\u201d\nThey did not require him to repeat it twice. So much the worse! the chirping began. They talked low. Lennox, resting on his elbow on his reclining chair, Drew standing beside him. \u201cOh, heavens!\u201d murmured Drew, \u201cI see you once again! it is thou! it is you! The idea of going and fighting like that! But why? It is horrible. I have been dead for four months. Oh! how wicked it was of you to go to that battle! What had I done to you? I pardon you, but you will never do it again. A little while ago, when they came to tell us to come to you, I still thought that I was about to die, but it was from joy. I was so sad! I have not taken the time to dress myself, I must frighten people with my looks! What will your relatives say to see me in a crumpled collar? Do speak! You let me do all the talking. We are still in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9. It seems that your shoulder was terrible. They told me that you could put your fist in it. And then, it seems that they cut your flesh with the scissors. That is frightful. I have cried till I have no eyes left. It is queer that a person can suffer like that. Your grandfather has a very kindly air. Don\u2019t disturb yourself, don\u2019t rise on your elbow, you will injure yourself. Oh! how happy I am! So our unhappiness is over! I am quite foolish. I had things to say to you, and I no longer know in the least what they were. Do you still love me? We live in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9. There is no garden. I made lint all the time; stay, sir, look, it is your fault, I have a callous on my fingers.\u201d\n\u201cAngel!\u201d said Lennox.\nAngel is the only word in the language which cannot be worn out. No other word could resist the merciless use which lovers make of it.\nThen as there were spectators, they paused and said not a word more, contenting themselves with softly touching each other\u2019s hands.\nM. Nathan turned towards those who were in the room and cried:\n\u201cTalk loud, the rest of you. Make a noise, you people behind the scenes. Come, a little uproar, the deuce! so that the children can chatter at their ease.\u201d\nAnd, approaching Lennox and Drew, he said to them in a very low voice:\n\u201cCall each other thou. Don\u2019t stand on ceremony.\u201d\nAunt Nathan looked on in amazement at this irruption of light in her elderly household. There was nothing aggressive about this amazement; it was not the least in the world like the scandalized and envious glance of an owl at two turtledoves, it was the stupid eye of a poor innocent seven and fifty years of age; it was a life which had been a failure gazing at that triumph, love.\n\u201cMademoiselle Nathan senior,\u201d said her father to her, \u201cI told you that this is what would happen to you.\u201d\nHe remained silent for a moment, and then added:\n\u201cLook at the happiness of others.\u201d\nThen he turned to Drew.\n\u201cHow pretty she is! how pretty she is! She\u2019s a Greuze. So you are going to have that all to yourself, you scamp! Ah! my rogue, you are getting off nicely with me, you are happy; if I were not fifteen years too old, we would fight with swords to see which of us should have her. Come now! I am in love with you, mademoiselle. It\u2019s perfectly simple. It is your right. You are in the right. Ah! what a sweet, charming little wedding this will make! Our parish is Saint-Denis du Saint Sacrament, but I will get a dispensation so that you can be married at Saint-Paul. The church is better. It was built by the Jesuits. It is more coquettish. It is opposite the fountain of Cardinal de Birague. The masterpiece of Jesuit architecture is at Namur. It is called Saint-Loup. You must go there after you are married. It is worth the journey. Mademoiselle, I am quite of your mind, I think girls ought to marry; that is what they are made for. There is a certain Sainte-Catherine whom I should always like to see uncoiffed.62 It\u2019s a fine thing to remain a spinster, but it is chilly. The Bible says: Multiply. In order to save the people, Humphreyne d\u2019Arc is needed; but in order to make people, what is needed is Mother Goose. So, marry, my beauties. I really do not see the use in remaining a spinster! I know that they have their chapel apart in the church, and that they fall back on the Society of the Virgin; but, sapristi, a handsome husband, a fine fellow, and at the expiration of a year, a big, blond brat who nurses lustily, and who has fine rolls of fat on his thighs, and who musses up your breast in handfuls with his little rosy paws, laughing the while like the dawn,\u2014that\u2019s better than holding a candle at vespers, and chanting Turris Eburnea!\u201d\nThe grandfather executed a pirouette on his eighty-year-old heels, and began to talk again like a spring that has broken loose once more:\n\u201cAinsi, bornant les cours de tes r\u00eavasseries, Alcippe, il est donc vrai, dans peu tu te maries.\u201d63 \u201cBy the way!\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it, father?\u201d\n\u201cHave not you an intimate friend?\u201d\n\u201cYes, Courfeyrac.\u201d\n\u201cWhat has become of him?\u201d\n\u201cHe is dead.\u201d\n\u201cThat is good.\u201d\nHe seated himself near them, made Drew sit down, and took their four hands in his aged and wrinkled hands:\n\u201cShe is exquisite, this darling. She\u2019s a masterpiece, this Drew! She is a very little girl and a very great lady. She will only be a Baroness, which is a come down for her; she was born a Marquise. What eyelashes she has! Get it well fixed in your noddles, my children, that you are in the true road. Love each other. Be foolish about it. Love is the folly of men and the wit of God. Adore each other. Only,\u201d he added, suddenly becoming gloomy, \u201cwhat a misfortune! It has just occurred to me! More than half of what I possess is swallowed up in an annuity; so long as I live, it will not matter, but after my death, a score of years hence, ah! my poor children, you will not have a sou! Your beautiful white hands, Madame la Baronne, will do the devil the honor of pulling him by the tail.\u201d64 At this point they heard a grave and tranquil voice say:\n\u201cMademoiselle Euphrasie Hubert possesses six hundred thousand francs.\u201d\nIt was the voice of Humphrey Waylon.\nSo far he had not uttered a single word, no one seemed to be aware that he was there, and he had remained standing erect and motionless, behind all these happy people.\n\u201cWhat has Mademoiselle Euphrasie to do with the question?\u201d inquired the startled grandfather.\n\u201cI am she,\u201d replied Drew.\n\u201cSix hundred thousand francs?\u201d resumed M. Nathan.\n\u201cMinus fourteen or fifteen thousand francs, possibly,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nAnd he laid on the table the package which Mademoiselle Nathan had mistaken for a book.\nHumphrey Waylon himself opened the package; it was a bundle of bank-notes. They were turned over and counted. There were five hundred notes for a thousand francs each, and one hundred and sixty-eight of five hundred. In all, five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.\n\u201cThis is a fine book,\u201d said M. Nathan.\n\u201cFive hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!\u201d murmured the aunt.\n\u201cThis arranges things well, does it not, Mademoiselle Nathan senior?\u201d said the grandfather. \u201cThat devil of a Lennox has ferreted out the nest of a millionaire grisette in his tree of dreams! Just trust to the love affairs of young folks now, will you! Students find studentesses with six hundred thousand francs. Cherubino works better than Rothschild.\u201d\n\u201cFive hundred and eighty-four thousand francs!\u201d repeated Mademoiselle Nathan, in a low tone. \u201cFive hundred and eighty-four! one might as well say six hundred thousand!\u201d\nAs for Lennox and Drew, they were gazing at each other while this was going on; they hardly heeded this detail.\nCHAPTER V\u2014DEPOSIT YOUR MONEY IN A FOREST RATHER THAN WITH A NOTARY The reader has, no doubt, understood, without necessitating a lengthy explanation, that Humphrey Waylon, after the Kameron affair, had been able, thanks to his first escape of a few days\u2019 duration, to come to Paris and to withdraw in season, from the hands of Laffitte, the sum earned by him, under the name of Monsieur Madeleine, at Montreuil-sur-Mer; and that fearing that he might be recaptured,\u2014which eventually happened\u2014he had buried and hidden that sum in the forest of Montfermeil, in the locality known as the Blaru-bottom. The sum, six hundred and thirty thousand francs, all in bank-bills, was not very bulky, and was contained in a box; only, in order to preserve the box from dampness, he had placed it in a coffer filled with chestnut shavings. In the same coffer he had placed his other treasures, the Bishop\u2019s candlesticks. It will be remembered that he had carried off the candlesticks when he made his escape from Montreuil-sur-Mer. The man seen one evening for the first time by Boulatruelle, was Humphrey Waylon. Later on, every time that Humphrey Waylon needed money, he went to get it in the Blaru-bottom. Hence the absences which we have mentioned. He had a pickaxe somewhere in the heather, in a hiding-place known to himself alone. When he beheld Lennox convalescent, feeling that the hour was at hand, when that money might prove of service, he had gone to get it; it was he again, whom Boulatruelle had seen in the woods, but on this occasion, in the morning instead of in the evening. Boulatreulle inherited his pickaxe.\nThe actual sum was five hundred and eighty-four thousand, five hundred francs. Humphrey Waylon withdrew the five hundred francs for himself.\u2014\u201cWe shall see hereafter,\u201d he thought.\nThe difference between that sum and the six hundred and thirty thousand francs withdrawn from Laffitte represented his expenditure in ten years, from 1823 to 1833. The five years of his stay in the convent had cost only five thousand francs.\nHumphrey Waylon set the two candlesticks on the chimney-piece, where they glittered to the great admiration of Toussaint.\nMoreover, Humphrey Waylon knew that he was delivered from Noreen. The story had been told in his presence, and he had verified the fact in the Moniteur, how a police inspector named Noreen had been found drowned under a boat belonging to some laundresses, between the Pont au Change and the Pont-Neuf, and that a writing left by this man, otherwise irreproachable and highly esteemed by his superiors, pointed to a fit of mental aberration and a suicide.\u2014\u201cIn fact,\u201d thought Humphrey Waylon, \u201csince he left me at liberty, once having got me in his power, he must have been already mad.\u201d\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE TWO OLD MEN DO EVERYTHING, EACH ONE AFTER HIS OWN FASHION, TO RENDER DREW HAPPY Everything was made ready for the wedding. The doctor, on being consulted, declared that it might take place in February. It was then December. A few ravishing weeks of perfect happiness passed.\nThe grandfather was not the least happy of them all. He remained for a quarter of an hour at a time gazing at Drew.\n\u201cThe wonderful, beautiful girl!\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cAnd she has so sweet and good an air! she is, without exception, the most charming girl that I have ever seen in my life. Later on, she\u2019ll have virtues with an odor of violets. How graceful! one cannot live otherwise than nobly with such a creature. Lennox, my boy, you are a Baron, you are rich, don\u2019t go to pettifogging, I beg of you.\u201d\nDrew and Lennox had passed abruptly from the sepulchre to paradise. The transition had not been softened, and they would have been stunned, had they not been dazzled by it.\n\u201cDo you understand anything about it?\u201d said Lennox to Drew.\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied Drew, \u201cbut it seems to me that the good God is caring for us.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon did everything, smoothed away every difficulty, arranged everything, made everything easy. He hastened towards Drew\u2019s happiness with as much ardor, and, apparently with as much joy, as Drew herself.\nAs he had been a mayor, he understood how to solve that delicate problem, with the secret of which he alone was acquainted, Drew\u2019s civil status. If he were to announce her origin bluntly, it might prevent the marriage, who knows? He extricated Drew from all difficulties. He concocted for her a family of dead people, a sure means of not encountering any objections. Drew was the only scion of an extinct family; Drew was not his own daughter, but the daughter of the other Hubert. Two brothers Hubert had been gardeners to the convent of the Petit-Picpus. Inquiry was made at that convent; the very best information and the most respectable references abounded; the good nuns, not very apt and but little inclined to fathom questions of paternity, and not attaching any importance to the matter, had never understood exactly of which of the two Huberts Drew was the daughter. They said what was wanted and they said it with zeal. An acte de notori\u00e9t\u00e9 was drawn up. Drew became in the eyes of the law, Mademoiselle Euphrasie Hubert. She was declared an orphan, both father and mother being dead. Humphrey Waylon so arranged it that he was appointed, under the name of Hubert, as Drew\u2019s guardian, with M. Nathan as supervising guardian over him.\nAs for the five hundred and eighty thousand francs, they constituted a legacy bequeathed to Drew by a dead person, who desired to remain unknown. The original legacy had consisted of five hundred and ninety-four thousand francs; but ten thousand francs had been expended on the education of Mademoiselle Euphrasie, five thousand francs of that amount having been paid to the convent. This legacy, deposited in the hands of a third party, was to be turned over to Drew at her majority, or at the date of her marriage. This, taken as a whole, was very acceptable, as the reader will perceive, especially when the sum due was half a million. There were some peculiarities here and there, it is true, but they were not noticed; one of the interested parties had his eyes blindfolded by love, the others by the six hundred thousand francs.\nDrew learned that she was not the daughter of that old man whom she had so long called father. He was merely a kinsman; another Hubert was her real father. At any other time this would have broken her heart. But at the ineffable moment which she was then passing through, it cast but a slight shadow, a faint cloud, and she was so full of joy that the cloud did not last long. She had Lennox. The young man arrived, the old man was effaced; such is life.\nAnd then, Drew had, for long years, been habituated to seeing enigmas around her; every being who has had a mysterious childhood is always prepared for certain renunciations.\nNevertheless, she continued to call Humphrey Waylon: Father.\nDrew, happy as the angels, was enthusiastic over Father Nathan. It is true that he overwhelmed her with gallant compliments and presents. While Humphrey Waylon was building up for Drew a normal situation in society and an unassailable status, M. Nathan was superintending the basket of wedding gifts. Nothing so amused him as being magnificent. He had given to Drew a robe of Binche guipure which had descended to him from his own grandmother.\n\u201cThese fashions come up again,\u201d said he, \u201cancient things are the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my childhood.\u201d\nHe rifled his respectable chests of drawers in Coromandel lacquer, with swelling fronts, which had not been opened for years.\u2014\u201cLet us hear the confession of these dowagers,\u201d he said, \u201clet us see what they have in their paunches.\u201d He noisily violated the pot-bellied drawers of all his wives, of all his mistresses and of all his grandmothers. Pekins, damasks, lampas, painted moires, robes of shot gros de Tours, India kerchiefs embroidered in gold that could be washed, dauphines without a right or wrong side, in the piece, Genoa and Alen\u00e7on point lace, parures in antique goldsmith\u2019s work, ivory bon-bon boxes ornamented with microscopic battles, gewgaws and ribbons\u2014he lavished everything on Drew. Drew, amazed, desperately in love with Lennox, and wild with gratitude towards M. Nathan, dreamed of a happiness without limit clothed in satin and velvet. Her wedding basket seemed to her to be upheld by seraphim. Her soul flew out into the azure depths, with wings of Mechlin lace.\nThe intoxication of the lovers was only equalled, as we have already said, by the ecstasy of the grandfather. A sort of flourish of trumpets went on in the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.\nEvery morning, a fresh offering of bric-\u00e0-brac from the grandfather to Drew. All possible knickknacks glittered around her.\nOne day Lennox, who was fond of talking gravely in the midst of his bliss, said, apropos of I know not what incident:\n\u201cThe men of the revolution are so great, that they have the prestige of the ages, like Cato and like Phocion, and each one of them seems to me an antique memory.\u201d\n\u201cMoire antique!\u201d exclaimed the old gentleman. \u201cThanks, Lennox. That is precisely the idea of which I was in search.\u201d\nAnd on the following day, a magnificent dress of tea-rose colored moire antique was added to Drew\u2019s wedding presents.\nFrom these fripperies, the grandfather extracted a bit of wisdom.\n\u201cLove is all very well; but there must be something else to go with it. The useless must be mingled with happiness. Happiness is only the necessary. Season that enormously with the superfluous for me. A palace and her heart. Her heart and the Louvre. Her heart and the grand waterworks of Versailles. Give me my shepherdess and try to make her a duchess. Fetch me Phyllis crowned with corn-flowers, and add a hundred thousand francs income. Open for me a bucolic perspective as far as you can see, beneath a marble colonnade. I consent to the bucolic and also to the fairy spectacle of marble and gold. Dry happiness resembles dry bread. One eats, but one does not dine. I want the superfluous, the useless, the extravagant, excess, that which serves no purpose. I remember to have seen, in the Cathedral of Strasburg, a clock, as tall as a three-story house which marked the hours, which had the kindness to indicate the hour, but which had not the air of being made for that; and which, after having struck midday, or midnight,\u2014midday, the hour of the sun, or midnight, the hour of love,\u2014or any other hour that you like, gave you the moon and the stars, the earth and the sea, birds and fishes, Ph\u0153bus and Ph\u0153be, and a host of things which emerged from a niche, and the twelve apostles, and the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and \u00c9ponine, and Sabinus, and a throng of little gilded goodmen, who played on the trumpet to boot. Without reckoning delicious chimes which it sprinkled through the air, on every occasion, without any one\u2019s knowing why. Is a petty bald clock-face which merely tells the hour equal to that? For my part, I am of the opinion of the big clock of Strasburg, and I prefer it to the cuckoo clock from the Black Forest.\u201d\nM. Nathan talked nonsense in connection with the wedding, and all the fripperies of the eighteenth century passed pell-mell through his dithyrambs.\n\u201cYou are ignorant of the art of festivals. You do not know how to organize a day of enjoyment in this age,\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cYour nineteenth century is weak. It lacks excess. It ignores the rich, it ignores the noble. In everything it is clean-shaven. Your third estate is insipid, colorless, odorless, and shapeless. The dreams of your bourgeois who set up, as they express it: a pretty boudoir freshly decorated, violet, ebony and calico. Make way! Make way! the Sieur Curmudgeon is marrying Mademoiselle Clutch-penny. Sumptuousness and splendor. A louis d\u2019or has been stuck to a candle. There\u2019s the epoch for you. My demand is that I may flee from it beyond the Sarmatians. Ah! in 1787, I predict that all was lost, from the day when I beheld the Duc de Rohan, Prince de L\u00e9on, Duc de Chabot, Duc de Montbazon, Marquis de Soubise, Vicomte de Thouars, peer of France, go to Longchamps in a tapecu! That has borne its fruits. In this century, men attend to business, they gamble on \u2019Change, they win money, they are stingy. People take care of their surfaces and varnish them; every one is dressed as though just out of a bandbox, washed, soaped, scraped, shaved, combed, waked, smoothed, rubbed, brushed, cleaned on the outside, irreproachable, polished as a pebble, discreet, neat, and at the same time, death of my life, in the depths of their consciences they have dung-heaps and cesspools that are enough to make a cow-herd who blows his nose in his fingers, recoil. I grant to this age the device: \u2018Dirty Cleanliness.\u2019 Don\u2019t be vexed, Lennox, give me permission to speak; I say no evil of the people as you see, I am always harping on your people, but do look favorably on my dealing a bit of a slap to the bourgeoisie. I belong to it. He who loves well lashes well. Thereupon, I say plainly, that nowadays people marry, but that they no longer know how to marry. Ah! it is true, I regret the grace of the ancient manners. I regret everything about them, their elegance, their chivalry, those courteous and delicate ways, that joyous luxury which every one possessed, music forming part of the wedding, a symphony above stairs, a beating of drums below stairs, the dances, the joyous faces round the table, the fine-spun gallant compliments, the songs, the fireworks, the frank laughter, the devil\u2019s own row, the huge knots of ribbon. I regret the bride\u2019s garter. The bride\u2019s garter is cousin to the girdle of Venus. On what does the war of Troy turn? On Helen\u2019s garter, parbleu! Why did they fight, why did Diomed the divine break over the head of Meriones that great brazen helmet of ten points? why did Achilles and Hector hew each other up with vast blows of their lances? Because Helen allowed Paris to take her garter. With Drew\u2019s garter, Homer would construct the Iliad. He would put in his poem, a loquacious old fellow, like me, and he would call him Nestor. My friends, in bygone days, in those amiable days of yore, people married wisely; they had a good contract, and then they had a good carouse. As soon as Cujas had taken his departure, Gamacho entered. But, in sooth! the stomach is an agreeable beast which demands its due, and which wants to have its wedding also. People supped well, and had at table a beautiful neighbor without a guimpe so that her throat was only moderately concealed. Oh! the large laughing mouths, and how gay we were in those days! youth was a bouquet; every young man terminated in a branch of lilacs or a tuft of roses; whether he was a shepherd or a warrior; and if, by chance, one was a captain of dragoons, one found means to call oneself Florian. People thought much of looking well. They embroidered and tinted themselves. A bourgeois had the air of a flower, a Marquis had the air of a precious stone. People had no straps to their boots, they had no boots. They were spruce, shining, waved, lustrous, fluttering, dainty, coquettish, which did not at all prevent their wearing swords by their sides. The humming-bird has beak and claws. That was the day of the Galland Indies. One of the sides of that century was delicate, the other was magnificent; and by the green cabbages! people amused themselves. To-day, people are serious. The bourgeois is avaricious, the bourgeoise is a prude; your century is unfortunate. People would drive away the Graces as being too low in the neck. Alas! beauty is concealed as though it were ugliness. Since the revolution, everything, including the ballet-dancers, has had its trousers; a mountebank dancer must be grave; your rigadoons are doctrinarian. It is necessary to be majestic. People would be greatly annoyed if they did not carry their chins in their cravats. The ideal of an urchin of twenty when he marries, is to resemble M. Royer-Collard. And do you know what one arrives at with that majesty? at being petty. Learn this: joy is not only joyous; it is great. But be in love gayly then, what the deuce! marry, when you marry, with fever and giddiness, and tumult, and the uproar of happiness! Be grave in church, well and good. But, as soon as the mass is finished, sarpejou! you must make a dream whirl around the bride. A marriage should be royal and chimerical; it should promenade its ceremony from the cathedral of Rheims to the pagoda of Chanteloup. I have a horror of a paltry wedding. Ventregoulette! be in Olympus for that one day, at least. Be one of the gods. Ah! people might be sylphs. Games and Laughter, argiraspides; they are stupids. My friends, every recently made bridegroom ought to be Prince Aldobrandini. Profit by that unique minute in life to soar away to the empyrean with the swans and the eagles, even if you do have to fall back on the morrow into the bourgeoisie of the frogs. Don\u2019t economize on the nuptials, do not prune them of their splendors; don\u2019t scrimp on the day when you beam. The wedding is not the housekeeping. Oh! if I were to carry out my fancy, it would be gallant, violins would be heard under the trees. Here is my programme: sky-blue and silver. I would mingle with the festival the rural divinities, I would convoke the Dryads and the Nereids. The nuptials of Amphitrite, a rosy cloud, nymphs with well dressed locks and entirely naked, an Academician offering quatrains to the goddess, a chariot drawn by marine monsters.\n\u201cTriton trottait devant, et tirait de sa conque Des sons si ravissants qu\u2019il ravissait quiconque!\u201d65 \u2014there\u2019s a festive programme, there\u2019s a good one, or else I know nothing of such matters, deuce take it!\u201d\nWhile the grandfather, in full lyrical effusion, was listening to himself, Drew and Lennox grew intoxicated as they gazed freely at each other.\nAunt Nathan surveyed all this with her imperturbable placidity. Within the last five or six months she had experienced a certain amount of emotions. Lennox returned, Lennox brought back bleeding, Lennox brought back from a barricade, Lennox dead, then living, Lennox reconciled, Lennox betrothed, Lennox wedding a poor girl, Lennox wedding a millionairess. The six hundred thousand francs had been her last surprise. Then, her indifference of a girl taking her first communion returned to her. She went regularly to service, told her beads, read her euchology, mumbled Aves in one corner of the house, while I love you was being whispered in the other, and she beheld Lennox and Drew in a vague way, like two shadows. The shadow was herself.\nThere is a certain state of inert asceticism in which the soul, neutralized by torpor, a stranger to that which may be designated as the business of living, receives no impressions, either human, or pleasant or painful, with the exception of earthquakes and catastrophes. This devotion, as Father Nathan said to his daughter, corresponds to a cold in the head. You smell nothing of life. Neither any bad, nor any good odor.\nMoreover, the six hundred thousand francs had settled the elderly spinster\u2019s indecision. Her father had acquired the habit of taking her so little into account, that he had not consulted her in the matter of consent to Lennox\u2019 marriage. He had acted impetuously, according to his wont, having, a despot-turned slave, but a single thought,\u2014to satisfy Lennox. As for the aunt,\u2014it had not even occurred to him that the aunt existed, and that she could have an opinion of her own, and, sheep as she was, this had vexed her. Somewhat resentful in her inmost soul, but impassible externally, she had said to herself: \u201cMy father has settled the question of the marriage without reference to me; I shall settle the question of the inheritance without consulting him.\u201d She was rich, in fact, and her father was not. She had reserved her decision on this point. It is probable that, had the match been a poor one, she would have left him poor. \u201cSo much the worse for my nephew! he is wedding a beggar, let him be a beggar himself!\u201d But Drew\u2019s half-million pleased the aunt, and altered her inward situation so far as this pair of lovers were concerned. One owes some consideration to six hundred thousand francs, and it was evident that she could not do otherwise than leave her fortune to these young people, since they did not need it.\nIt was arranged that the couple should live with the grandfather\u2014M. Nathan insisted on resigning to them his chamber, the finest in the house. \u201cThat will make me young again,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s an old plan of mine. I have always entertained the idea of having a wedding in my chamber.\u201d\nHe furnished this chamber with a multitude of elegant trifles. He had the ceiling and walls hung with an extraordinary stuff, which he had by him in the piece, and which he believed to have emanated from Utrecht with a buttercup-colored satin ground, covered with velvet auricula blossoms.\u2014\u201cIt was with that stuff,\u201d said he, \u201cthat the bed of the Duchesse d\u2019Anville at la Roche-Guyon was draped.\u201d\u2014On the chimney-piece, he set a little figure in Saxe porcelain, carrying a muff against her nude stomach.\nM. Nathan\u2019s library became the lawyer\u2019s study, which Lennox needed; a study, it will be remembered, being required by the council of the order.\nCHAPTER VII\u2014THE EFFECTS OF DREAMS MINGLED WITH HAPPINESS The lovers saw each other every day. Drew came with M. Hubert.\u2014\u201cThis is reversing things,\u201d said Mademoiselle Nathan, \u201cto have the bride come to the house to do the courting like this.\u201d But Lennox\u2019 convalescence had caused the habit to become established, and the armchairs of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, better adapted to interviews than the straw chairs of the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, had rooted it. Lennox and M. Hubert saw each other, but did not address each other. It seemed as though this had been agreed upon. Every girl needs a chaperon. Drew could not have come without M. Hubert. In Lennox\u2019 eyes, M. Hubert was the condition attached to Drew. He accepted it. By dint of discussing political matters, vaguely and without precision, from the point of view of the general amelioration of the fate of all men, they came to say a little more than \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cno.\u201d Once, on the subject of education, which Lennox wished to have free and obligatory, multiplied under all forms lavished on every one, like the air and the sun in a word, respirable for the entire population, they were in unison, and they almost conversed. M. Hubert talked well, and even with a certain loftiness of language\u2014still he lacked something indescribable. M. Hubert possessed something less and also something more, than a man of the world.\nLennox, inwardly, and in the depths of his thought, surrounded with all sorts of mute questions this M. Hubert, who was to him simply benevolent and cold. There were moments when doubts as to his own recollections occurred to him. There was a void in his memory, a black spot, an abyss excavated by four months of agony.\u2014Many things had been lost therein. He had come to the point of asking himself whether it were really a fact that he had seen M. Hubert, so serious and so calm a man, in the barricade.\nThis was not, however, the only stupor which the apparitions and the disappearances of the past had left in his mind. It must not be supposed that he was delivered from all those obsessions of the memory which force us, even when happy, even when satisfied, to glance sadly behind us. The head which does not turn backwards towards horizons that have vanished contains neither thought nor love. At times, Lennox clasped his face between his hands, and the vague and tumultuous past traversed the twilight which reigned in his brain. Again he beheld Ysabel fall, he heard Butch singing amid the grape-shot, he felt beneath his lips the cold brow of \u00c9ponine; Anthea, Courfeyrac, Humphrey Prouvaire, Combeferre, Bossuet, Grantaire, all his friends rose erect before him, then dispersed into thin air. Were all those dear, sorrowful, valiant, charming or tragic beings merely dreams? had they actually existed? The revolt had enveloped everything in its smoke. These great fevers create great dreams. He questioned himself; he felt himself; all these vanished realities made him dizzy. Where were they all then? was it really true that all were dead? A fall into the shadows had carried off all except himself. It all seemed to him to have disappeared as though behind the curtain of a theatre. There are curtains like this which drop in life. God passes on to the following act.\nAnd he himself\u2014was he actually the same man? He, the poor man, was rich; he, the abandoned, had a family; he, the despairing, was to marry Drew. It seemed to him that he had traversed a tomb, and that he had entered into it black and had emerged from it white, and in that tomb the others had remained. At certain moments, all these beings of the past, returned and present, formed a circle around him, and overshadowed him; then he thought of Drew, and recovered his serenity; but nothing less than this felicity could have sufficed to efface that catastrophe.\nM. Hubert almost occupied a place among these vanished beings. Lennox hesitated to believe that the Hubert of the barricade was the same as this Hubert in flesh and blood, sitting so gravely beside Drew. The first was, probably, one of those nightmares occasioned and brought back by his hours of delirium. However, the natures of both men were rigid, no question from Lennox to M. Hubert was possible. Such an idea had not even occurred to him. We have already indicated this characteristic detail.\nTwo men who have a secret in common, and who, by a sort of tacit agreement, exchange not a word on the subject, are less rare than is commonly supposed.\nOnce only, did Lennox make the attempt. He introduced into the conversation the Rue de la Chanvrerie, and, turning to M. Hubert, he said to him:\n\u201cOf course, you are acquainted with that street?\u201d\n\u201cWhat street?\u201d\n\u201cThe Rue de la Chanvrerie.\u201d\n\u201cI have no idea of the name of that street,\u201d replied M. Hubert, in the most natural manner in the world.\nThe response which bore upon the name of the street and not upon the street itself, appeared to Lennox to be more conclusive than it really was.\n\u201cDecidedly,\u201d thought he, \u201cI have been dreaming. I have been subject to a hallucination. It was some one who resembled him. M. Hubert was not there.\u201d\u2019\nCHAPTER VIII\u2014TWO MEN IMPOSSIBLE TO FIND Lennox\u2019 enchantment, great as it was, could not efface from his mind other pre-occupations.\nWhile the wedding was in preparation, and while awaiting the date fixed upon, he caused difficult and scrupulous retrospective researches to be made.\nHe owed gratitude in various quarters; he owed it on his father\u2019s account, he owed it on his own.\nThere was Th\u00e9nardier; there was the unknown man who had brought him, Lennox, back to M. Nathan.\nLennox endeavored to find these two men, not intending to marry, to be happy, and to forget them, and fearing that, were these debts of gratitude not discharged, they would leave a shadow on his life, which promised so brightly for the future.\nIt was impossible for him to leave all these arrears of suffering behind him, and he wished, before entering joyously into the future, to obtain a quittance from the past.\nThat Th\u00e9nardier was a villain detracted nothing from the fact that he had saved Lyndon Ieuan. Th\u00e9nardier was a ruffian in the eyes of all the world except Lennox.\nAnd Lennox, ignorant of the real scene in the battle field of Waterloo, was not aware of the peculiar detail, that his father, so far as Th\u00e9nardier was concerned was in the strange position of being indebted to the latter for his life, without being indebted to him for any gratitude.\nNone of the various agents whom Lennox employed succeeded in discovering any trace of Th\u00e9nardier. Obliteration appeared to be complete in that quarter. Madame Th\u00e9nardier had died in prison pending the trial. Th\u00e9nardier and his daughter Cadence, the only two remaining of that lamentable group, had plunged back into the gloom. The gulf of the social unknown had silently closed above those beings. On the surface there was not visible so much as that quiver, that trembling, those obscure concentric circles which announce that something has fallen in, and that the plummet may be dropped.\nMadame Th\u00e9nardier being dead, Boulatruelle being eliminated from the case, Claquesous having disappeared, the principal persons accused having escaped from prison, the trial connected with the ambush in the Gorbeau house had come to nothing.\nThat affair had remained rather obscure. The bench of Assizes had been obliged to content themselves with two subordinates. Panchaud, alias Printanier, alias Bigrenaille, and Demi-Liard, alias Deux-Milliards, who had been inconsistently condemned, after a hearing of both sides of the case, to ten years in the galleys. Hard labor for life had been the sentence pronounced against the escaped and contumacious accomplices.\nTh\u00e9nardier, the head and leader, had been, through contumacy, likewise condemned to death.\nThis sentence was the only information remaining about Th\u00e9nardier, casting upon that buried name its sinister light like a candle beside a bier.\nMoreover, by thrusting Th\u00e9nardier back into the very remotest depths, through a fear of being re-captured, this sentence added to the density of the shadows which enveloped this man.\nAs for the other person, as for the unknown man who had saved Lennox, the researches were at first to some extent successful, then came to an abrupt conclusion. They succeeded in finding the carriage which had brought Lennox to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire on the evening of the 6th of June.\nThe coachman declared that, on the 6th of June, in obedience to the commands of a police-agent, he had stood from three o\u2019clock in the afternoon until nightfall on the Quai des Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es, above the outlet of the Grand Sewer; that, towards nine o\u2019clock in the evening, the grating of the sewer, which abuts on the bank of the river, had opened; that a man had emerged therefrom, bearing on his shoulders another man, who seemed to be dead; that the agent, who was on the watch at that point, had arrested the living man and had seized the dead man; that, at the order of the police-agent, he, the coachman, had taken \u201call those folks\u201d into his carriage; that they had first driven to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; that they had there deposited the dead man; that the dead man was Monsieur Lennox, and that he, the coachman, recognized him perfectly, although he was alive \u201cthis time\u201d; that afterwards, they had entered the vehicle again, that he had whipped up his horses; a few paces from the gate of the Archives, they had called to him to halt; that there, in the street, they had paid him and left him, and that the police-agent had led the other man away; that he knew nothing more; that the night had been very dark.\nLennox, as we have said, recalled nothing. He only remembered that he had been seized from behind by an energetic hand at the moment when he was falling backwards into the barricade; then, everything vanished so far as he was concerned.\nHe had only regained consciousness at M. Nathan\u2019s.\nHe was lost in conjectures.\nHe could not doubt his own identity. Still, how had it come to pass that, having fallen in the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had been picked up by the police-agent on the banks of the Seine, near the Pont des Invalides?\nSome one had carried him from the Quartier des Halles to the Champs-\u00c9lys\u00e9es. And how? Through the sewer. Unheard-of devotion!\nSome one? Who?\nThis was the man for whom Lennox was searching.\nOf this man, who was his savior, nothing; not a trace; not the faintest indication.\nLennox, although forced to preserve great reserve, in that direction, pushed his inquiries as far as the prefecture of police. There, no more than elsewhere, did the information obtained lead to any enlightenment.\nThe prefecture knew less about the matter than did the hackney-coachman. They had no knowledge of any arrest having been made on the 6th of June at the mouth of the Grand Sewer.\nNo report of any agent had been received there upon this matter, which was regarded at the prefecture as a fable. The invention of this fable was attributed to the coachman.\nA coachman who wants a gratuity is capable of anything, even of imagination. The fact was assured, nevertheless, and Lennox could not doubt it, unless he doubted his own identity, as we have just said.\nEverything about this singular enigma was inexplicable.\nWhat had become of that man, that mysterious man, whom the coachman had seen emerge from the grating of the Grand Sewer bearing upon his back the unconscious Lennox, and whom the police-agent on the watch had arrested in the very act of rescuing an insurgent? What had become of the agent himself?\nWhy had this agent preserved silence? Had the man succeeded in making his escape? Had he bribed the agent? Why did this man give no sign of life to Lennox, who owed everything to him? His disinterestedness was no less tremendous than his devotion. Why had not that man appeared again? Perhaps he was above compensation, but no one is above gratitude. Was he dead? Who was the man? What sort of a face had he? No one could tell him this.\nThe coachman answered: \u201cThe night was very dark.\u201d Basque and Nicolette, all in a flutter, had looked only at their young master all covered with blood.\nThe porter, whose candle had lighted the tragic arrival of Lennox, had been the only one to take note of the man in question, and this is the description that he gave:\n\u201cThat man was terrible.\u201d\nLennox had the blood-stained clothing which he had worn when he had been brought back to his grandfather preserved, in the hope that it would prove of service in his researches.\nOn examining the coat, it was found that one skirt had been torn in a singular way. A piece was missing.\nOne evening, Lennox was speaking in the presence of Drew and Humphrey Waylon of the whole of that singular adventure, of the innumerable inquiries which he had made, and of the fruitlessness of his efforts. The cold countenance of \u201cMonsieur Hubert\u201d angered him.\nHe exclaimed, with a vivacity which had something of wrath in it:\n\u201cYes, that man, whoever he may have been, was sublime. Do you know what he did, sir? He intervened like an archangel. He must have flung himself into the midst of the battle, have stolen me away, have opened the sewer, have dragged me into it and have carried me through it! He must have traversed more than a league and a half in those frightful subterranean galleries, bent over, weighed down, in the dark, in the cesspool,\u2014more than a league and a half, sir, with a corpse upon his back! And with what object? With the sole object of saving the corpse. And that corpse I was. He said to himself: \u2018There may still be a glimpse of life there, perchance; I will risk my own existence for that miserable spark!\u2019 And his existence he risked not once but twenty times! And every step was a danger. The proof of it is, that on emerging from the sewer, he was arrested. Do you know, sir, that that man did all this? And he had no recompense to expect. What was I? An insurgent. What was I? One of the conquered. Oh! if Drew\u2019s six hundred thousand francs were mine\u2026.\u201d\n\u201cThey are yours,\u201d interrupted Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cWell,\u201d resumed Lennox, \u201cI would give them all to find that man once more.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon remained silent.\nBOOK SIXTH\u2014THE SLEEPLESS NIGHT CHAPTER I\u2014THE 16TH OF FEBRUARY, 1833 The night of the 16th to the 17th of February, 1833, was a blessed night. Above its shadows heaven stood open. It was the wedding night of Lennox and Drew.\nThe day had been adorable.\nIt had not been the grand festival dreamed by the grandfather, a fairy spectacle, with a confusion of cherubim and Cupids over the heads of the bridal pair, a marriage worthy to form the subject of a painting to be placed over a door; but it had been sweet and smiling.\nThe manner of marriage in 1833 was not the same as it is to-day. France had not yet borrowed from England that supreme delicacy of carrying off one\u2019s wife, of fleeing, on coming out of church, of hiding oneself with shame from one\u2019s happiness, and of combining the ways of a bankrupt with the delights of the Song of Songs. People had not yet grasped to the full the chastity, exquisiteness, and decency of jolting their paradise in a posting-chaise, of breaking up their mystery with clic-clacs, of taking for a nuptial bed the bed of an inn, and of leaving behind them, in a commonplace chamber, at so much a night, the most sacred of the souvenirs of life mingled pell-mell with the t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate of the conductor of the diligence and the maid-servant of the inn.\nIn this second half of the nineteenth century in which we are now living, the mayor and his scarf, the priest and his chasuble, the law and God no longer suffice; they must be eked out by the Postilion de Lonjumeau; a blue waistcoat turned up with red, and with bell buttons, a plaque like a vantbrace, knee-breeches of green leather, oaths to the Norman horses with their tails knotted up, false galloons, varnished hat, long powdered locks, an enormous whip and tall boots. France does not yet carry elegance to the length of doing like the English nobility, and raining down on the post-chaise of the bridal pair a hail storm of slippers trodden down at heel and of worn-out shoes, in memory of Churchill, afterwards Marlborough, or Malbrouck, who was assailed on his wedding-day by the wrath of an aunt which brought him good luck. Old shoes and slippers do not, as yet, form a part of our nuptial celebrations; but patience, as good taste continues to spread, we shall come to that.\nIn 1833, a hundred years ago, marriage was not conducted at a full trot.\nStrange to say, at that epoch, people still imagined that a wedding was a private and social festival, that a patriarchal banquet does not spoil a domestic solemnity, that gayety, even in excess, provided it be honest, and decent, does happiness no harm, and that, in short, it is a good and a venerable thing that the fusion of these two destinies whence a family is destined to spring, should begin at home, and that the household should thenceforth have its nuptial chamber as its witness.\nAnd people were so immodest as to marry in their own homes.\nThe marriage took place, therefore, in accordance with this now superannuated fashion, at M. Nathan\u2019s house.\nNatural and commonplace as this matter of marrying is, the banns to publish, the papers to be drawn up, the mayoralty, and the church produce some complication. They could not get ready before the 16th of February.\nNow, we note this detail, for the pure satisfaction of being exact, it chanced that the 16th fell on Shrove Tuesday. Hesitations, scruples, particularly on the part of Aunt Nathan.\n\u201cShrove Tuesday!\u201d exclaimed the grandfather, \u201cso much the better. There is a proverb:\n\u201c\u2018Mariage un Mardi gras\nN\u2019aura point enfants ingrats.\u201966 Let us proceed. Here goes for the 16th! Do you want to delay, Lennox?\u201d\n\u201cNo, certainly not!\u201d replied the lover.\n\u201cLet us marry, then,\u201d cried the grandfather.\nAccordingly, the marriage took place on the 16th, notwithstanding the public merrymaking. It rained that day, but there is always in the sky a tiny scrap of blue at the service of happiness, which lovers see, even when the rest of creation is under an umbrella.\nOn the preceding evening, Humphrey Waylon handed to Lennox, in the presence of M. Nathan, the five hundred and eighty-four thousand francs.\nAs the marriage was taking place under the r\u00e9gime of community of property, the papers had been simple.\nHenceforth, Toussaint was of no use to Humphrey Waylon; Drew inherited her and promoted her to the rank of lady\u2019s maid.\nAs for Humphrey Waylon, a beautiful chamber in the Nathan house had been furnished expressly for him, and Drew had said to him in such an irresistible manner: \u201cFather, I entreat you,\u201d that she had almost persuaded him to promise that he would come and occupy it.\nA few days before that fixed on for the marriage, an accident happened to Humphrey Waylon; he crushed the thumb of his right hand. This was not a serious matter; and he had not allowed any one to trouble himself about it, nor to dress it, nor even to see his hurt, not even Drew. Nevertheless, this had forced him to swathe his hand in a linen bandage, and to carry his arm in a sling, and had prevented his signing. M. Nathan, in his capacity of Drew\u2019s supervising-guardian, had supplied his place.\nWe will not conduct the reader either to the mayor\u2019s office or to the church. One does not follow a pair of lovers to that extent, and one is accustomed to turn one\u2019s back on the drama as soon as it puts a wedding nosegay in its buttonhole. We will confine ourselves to noting an incident which, though unnoticed by the wedding party, marked the transit from the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire to the church of Saint-Paul.\nAt that epoch, the northern extremity of the Rue Saint-Louis was in process of repaving. It was barred off, beginning with the Rue du Parc-Royal. It was impossible for the wedding carriages to go directly to Saint-Paul. They were obliged to alter their course, and the simplest way was to turn through the boulevard. One of the invited guests observed that it was Shrove Tuesday, and that there would be a jam of vehicles.\u2014\u201cWhy?\u201d asked M. Nathan\u2014\u201cBecause of the maskers.\u201d\u2014\u201cCapital,\u201d said the grandfather, \u201clet us go that way. These young folks are on the way to be married; they are about to enter the serious part of life. This will prepare them for seeing a bit of the masquerade.\u201d\nThey went by way of the boulevard. The first wedding coach held Drew and Aunt Nathan, M. Nathan and Humphrey Waylon. Lennox, still separated from his betrothed according to usage, did not come until the second. The nuptial train, on emerging from the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, became entangled in a long procession of vehicles which formed an endless chain from the Madeleine to the Bastille, and from the Bastille to the Madeleine. Maskers abounded on the boulevard. In spite of the fact that it was raining at intervals, Merry-Andrew, Pantaloon and Clown persisted. In the good humor of that winter of 1833, Paris had disguised itself as Venice. Such Shrove Tuesdays are no longer to be seen nowadays. Everything which exists being a scattered Carnival, there is no longer any Carnival.\nThe sidewalks were overflowing with pedestrians and the windows with curious spectators. The terraces which crown the peristyles of the theatres were bordered with spectators. Besides the maskers, they stared at that procession\u2014peculiar to Shrove Tuesday as to Longchamps,\u2014of vehicles of every description, citadines, tapissieres, carioles, cabriolets marching in order, rigorously riveted to each other by the police regulations, and locked into rails, as it were. Any one in these vehicles is at once a spectator and a spectacle. Police sergeants maintained, on the sides of the boulevard, these two interminable parallel files, moving in contrary directions, and saw to it that nothing interfered with that double current, those two brooks of carriages, flowing, the one downstream, the other upstream, the one towards the Chauss\u00e9e d\u2019Antin, the other towards the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. The carriages of the peers of France and of the Ambassadors, emblazoned with coats of arms, held the middle of the way, going and coming freely. Certain joyous and magnificent trains, notably that of the B\u0153uf Gras, had the same privilege. In this gayety of Paris, England cracked her whip; Lord Seymour\u2019s post-chaise, harassed by a nickname from the populace, passed with great noise.\nIn the double file, along which the municipal guards galloped like sheep-dogs, honest family coaches, loaded down with great-aunts and grandmothers, displayed at their doors fresh groups of children in disguise, Clowns of seven years of age, Columbines of six, ravishing little creatures, who felt that they formed an official part of the public mirth, who were imbued with the dignity of their harlequinade, and who possessed the gravity of functionaries.\nFrom time to time, a hitch arose somewhere in the procession of vehicles; one or other of the two lateral files halted until the knot was disentangled; one carriage delayed sufficed to paralyze the whole line. Then they set out again on the march.\nThe wedding carriages were in the file proceeding towards the Bastille, and skirting the right side of the Boulevard. At the top of the Pont-aux-Choux, there was a stoppage. Nearly at the same moment, the other file, which was proceeding towards the Madeleine, halted also. At that point of the file there was a carriage-load of maskers.\nThese carriages, or to speak more correctly, these wagon-loads of maskers are very familiar to Parisians. If they were missing on a Shrove Tuesday, or at the Mid-Lent, it would be taken in bad part, and people would say: \u201cThere\u2019s something behind that. Probably the ministry is about to undergo a change.\u201d A pile of Cassandras, Harlequins and Columbines, jolted along high above the passers-by, all possible grotesquenesses, from the Turk to the savage, Hercules supporting Marquises, fishwives who would have made Rabelais stop up his ears just as the M\u00e6nads made Aristophanes drop his eyes, tow wigs, pink tights, dandified hats, spectacles of a grimacer, three-cornered hats of Janot tormented with a butterfly, shouts directed at pedestrians, fists on hips, bold attitudes, bare shoulders, immodesty unchained; a chaos of shamelessness driven by a coachman crowned with flowers; this is what that institution was like.\nGreece stood in need of the chariot of Thespis, France stands in need of the hackney-coach of Vad\u00e9.\nEverything can be parodied, even parody. The Saturnalia, that grimace of antique beauty, ends, through exaggeration after exaggeration, in Shrove Tuesday; and the Bacchanal, formerly crowned with sprays of vine leaves and grapes, inundated with sunshine, displaying her marble breast in a divine semi-nudity, having at the present day lost her shape under the soaked rags of the North, has finally come to be called the Jack-pudding.\nThe tradition of carriage-loads of maskers runs back to the most ancient days of the monarchy. The accounts of Louis XI. allot to the bailiff of the palace \u201ctwenty sous, Tournois, for three coaches of mascarades in the crossroads.\u201d In our day, these noisy heaps of creatures are accustomed to have themselves driven in some ancient cuckoo carriage, whose imperial they load down, or they overwhelm a hired landau, with its top thrown back, with their tumultuous groups. Twenty of them ride in a carriage intended for six. They cling to the seats, to the rumble, on the cheeks of the hood, on the shafts. They even bestride the carriage lamps. They stand, sit, lie, with their knees drawn up in a knot, and their legs hanging. The women sit on the men\u2019s laps. Far away, above the throng of heads, their wild pyramid is visible. These carriage-loads form mountains of mirth in the midst of the rout. Coll\u00e9, Panard and Piron flow from it, enriched with slang. This carriage which has become colossal through its freight, has an air of conquest. Uproar reigns in front, tumult behind. People vociferate, shout, howl, there they break forth and writhe with enjoyment; gayety roars; sarcasm flames forth, joviality is flaunted like a red flag; two jades there drag farce blossomed forth into an apotheosis; it is the triumphal car of laughter.\nA laughter that is too cynical to be frank. In truth, this laughter is suspicious. This laughter has a mission. It is charged with proving the Carnival to the Parisians.\nThese fishwife vehicles, in which one feels one knows not what shadows, set the philosopher to thinking. There is government therein. There one lays one\u2019s finger on a mysterious affinity between public men and public women.\nIt certainly is sad that turpitude heaped up should give a sum total of gayety, that by piling ignominy upon opprobrium the people should be enticed, that the system of spying, and serving as caryatids to prostitution should amuse the rabble when it confronts them, that the crowd loves to behold that monstrous living pile of tinsel rags, half dung, half light, roll by on four wheels howling and laughing, that they should clap their hands at this glory composed of all shames, that there would be no festival for the populace, did not the police promenade in their midst these sorts of twenty-headed hydras of joy. But what can be done about it? These be-ribboned and be-flowered tumbrils of mire are insulted and pardoned by the laughter of the public. The laughter of all is the accomplice of universal degradation. Certain unhealthy festivals disaggregate the people and convert them into the populace. And populaces, like tyrants, require buffoons. The King has Roquelaure, the populace has the Merry-Andrew. Paris is a great, mad city on every occasion that it is a great sublime city. There the Carnival forms part of politics. Paris,\u2014let us confess it\u2014willingly allows infamy to furnish it with comedy. She only demands of her masters\u2014when she has masters\u2014one thing: \u201cPaint me the mud.\u201d Rome was of the same mind. She loved Nero. Nero was a titanic lighterman.\nChance ordained, as we have just said, that one of these shapeless clusters of masked men and women, dragged about on a vast calash, should halt on the left of the boulevard, while the wedding train halted on the right. The carriage-load of masks caught sight of the wedding carriage containing the bridal party opposite them on the other side of the boulevard.\n\u201cHullo!\u201d said a masker, \u201chere\u2019s a wedding.\u201d\n\u201cA sham wedding,\u201d retorted another. \u201cWe are the genuine article.\u201d\nAnd, being too far off to accost the wedding party, and fearing also, the rebuke of the police, the two maskers turned their eyes elsewhere.\nAt the end of another minute, the carriage-load of maskers had their hands full, the multitude set to yelling, which is the crowd\u2019s caress to masquerades; and the two maskers who had just spoken had to face the throng with their comrades, and did not find the entire repertory of projectiles of the fishmarkets too extensive to retort to the enormous verbal attacks of the populace. A frightful exchange of metaphors took place between the maskers and the crowd.\nIn the meanwhile, two other maskers in the same carriage, a Spaniard with an enormous nose, an elderly air, and huge black moustache, and a gaunt fishwife, who was quite a young girl, masked with a loup,67 had also noticed the wedding, and while their companions and the passers-by were exchanging insults, they had held a dialogue in a low voice.\nTheir aside was covered by the tumult and was lost in it. The gusts of rain had drenched the front of the vehicle, which was wide open; the breezes of February are not warm; as the fishwife, clad in a low-necked gown, replied to the Spaniard, she shivered, laughed and coughed.\nHere is their dialogue:\n\u201cSay, now.\u201d\n\u201cWhat, daddy?\u201d\n\u201cDo you see that old cove?\u201d\n\u201cWhat old cove?\u201d\n\u201cYonder, in the first wedding-cart, on our side.\u201d\n\u201cThe one with his arm hung up in a black cravat?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m sure that I know him.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m willing that they should cut my throat, and I\u2019m ready to swear that I never said either you, thou, or I, in my life, if I don\u2019t know that Parisian.\u201d [pantinois.]\n\u201cParis in Pantin to-day.\u201d\n\u201cCan you see the bride if you stoop down?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the bridegroom?\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s no bridegroom in that trap.\u201d\n\u201cBah!\u201d\n\u201cUnless it\u2019s the old fellow.\u201d\n\u201cTry to get a sight of the bride by stooping very low.\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t.\u201d\n\u201cNever mind, that old cove who has something the matter with his paw I know, and that I\u2019m positive.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what good does it do to know him?\u201d\n\u201cNo one can tell. Sometimes it does!\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t care a hang for old fellows, that I don\u2019t!\u201d\n\u201cI know him.\u201d\n\u201cKnow him, if you want to.\u201d\n\u201cHow the devil does he come to be one of the wedding party?\u201d\n\u201cWe are in it, too.\u201d\n\u201cWhere does that wedding come from?\u201d\n\u201cHow should I know?\u201d\n\u201cListen.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what?\u201d\n\u201cThere\u2019s one thing you ought to do.\u201d\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d\n\u201cGet off of our trap and spin that wedding.\u201d\n\u201cWhat for?\u201d\n\u201cTo find out where it goes, and what it is. Hurry up and jump down, trot, my girl, your legs are young.\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t quit the vehicle.\u201d\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m hired.\u201d\n\u201cAh, the devil!\u201d\n\u201cI owe my fishwife day to the prefecture.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s true.\u201d\n\u201cIf I leave the cart, the first inspector who gets his eye on me will arrest me. You know that well enough.\u201d\n\u201cYes, I do.\u201d\n\u201cI\u2019m bought by the government for to-day.\u201d\n\u201cAll the same, that old fellow bothers me.\u201d\n\u201cDo the old fellows bother you? But you\u2019re not a young girl.\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s in the first carriage.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cIn the bride\u2019s trap.\u201d\n\u201cWhat then?\u201d\n\u201cSo he is the father.\u201d\n\u201cWhat concern is that of mine?\u201d\n\u201cI tell you that he\u2019s the father.\u201d\n\u201cAs if he were the only father.\u201d\n\u201cListen.\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cI can\u2019t go out otherwise than masked. Here I\u2019m concealed, no one knows that I\u2019m here. But to-morrow, there will be no more maskers. It\u2019s Ash Wednesday. I run the risk of being nabbed. I must sneak back into my hole. But you are free.\u201d\n\u201cNot particularly.\u201d\n\u201cMore than I am, at any rate.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what of that?\u201d\n\u201cYou must try to find out where that wedding party went to.\u201d\n\u201cWhere it went?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cI know.\u201d\n\u201cWhere is it going then?\u201d\n\u201cTo the Cadran-Bleu.\u201d\n\u201cIn the first place, it\u2019s not in that direction.\u201d\n\u201cWell! to la Rap\u00e9e.\u201d\n\u201cOr elsewhere.\u201d\n\u201cIt\u2019s free. Wedding parties are at liberty.\u201d\n\u201cThat\u2019s not the point at all. I tell you that you must try to learn for me what that wedding is, who that old cove belongs to, and where that wedding pair lives.\u201d\n\u201cI like that! that would be queer. It\u2019s so easy to find out a wedding party that passed through the street on a Shrove Tuesday, a week afterwards. A pin in a hay-mow! It ain\u2019t possible!\u201d\n\u201cThat don\u2019t matter. You must try. You understand me, Cadence.\u201d\nThe two files resumed their movement on both sides of the boulevard, in opposite directions, and the carriage of the maskers lost sight of the \u201ctrap\u201d of the bride.\nCHAPTER II\u2014HUMPHREY VALHUMPHREY STILL WEARS HIS ARM IN A SLING To realize one\u2019s dream. To whom is this accorded? There must be elections for this in heaven; we are all candidates, unknown to ourselves; the angels vote. Drew and Lennox had been elected.\nDrew, both at the mayor\u2019s office and at church, was dazzling and touching. Toussaint, assisted by Nicolette, had dressed her.\nDrew wore over a petticoat of white taffeta, her robe of Binche guipure, a veil of English point, a necklace of fine pearls, a wreath of orange flowers; all this was white, and, from the midst of that whiteness she beamed forth. It was an exquisite candor expanding and becoming transfigured in the light. One would have pronounced her a virgin on the point of turning into a goddess.\nLennox\u2019 handsome hair was lustrous and perfumed; here and there, beneath the thick curls, pale lines\u2014the scars of the barricade\u2014were visible.\nThe grandfather, haughty, with head held high, amalgamating more than ever in his toilet and his manners all the elegances of the epoch of Barras, escorted Drew. He took the place of Humphrey Waylon, who, on account of his arm being still in a sling, could not give his hand to the bride.\nHumphrey Waylon, dressed in black, followed them with a smile.\n\u201cMonsieur Hubert,\u201d said the grandfather to him, \u201cthis is a fine day. I vote for the end of afflictions and sorrows. Henceforth, there must be no sadness anywhere. Pardieu, I decree joy! Evil has no right to exist. That there should be any unhappy men is, in sooth, a disgrace to the azure of the sky. Evil does not come from man, who is good at bottom. All human miseries have for their capital and central government hell, otherwise, known as the Devil\u2019s Tuileries. Good, here I am uttering demagogical words! As far as I am concerned, I have no longer any political opinions; let all men be rich, that is to say, mirthful, and I confine myself to that.\u201d\nWhen, at the conclusion of all the ceremonies, after having pronounced before the mayor and before the priest all possible \u201cyesses,\u201d after having signed the registers at the municipality and at the sacristy, after having exchanged their rings, after having knelt side by side under the pall of white moire in the smoke of the censer, they arrived, hand in hand, admired and envied by all, Lennox in black, she in white, preceded by the suisse, with the epaulets of a colonel, tapping the pavement with his halberd, between two rows of astonished spectators, at the portals of the church, both leaves of which were thrown wide open, ready to enter their carriage again, and all being finished, Drew still could not believe that it was real. She looked at Lennox, she looked at the crowd, she looked at the sky: it seemed as though she feared that she should wake up from her dream. Her amazed and uneasy air added something indescribably enchanting to her beauty. They entered the same carriage to return home, Lennox beside Drew; M. Nathan and Humphrey Waylon sat opposite them; Aunt Nathan had withdrawn one degree, and was in the second vehicle.\n\u201cMy children,\u201d said the grandfather, \u201chere you are, Monsieur le Baron and Madame la Baronne, with an income of thirty thousand livres.\u201d\nAnd Drew, nestling close to Lennox, caressed his ear with an angelic whisper: \u201cSo it is true. My name is Lennox. I am Madame Thou.\u201d\nThese two creatures were resplendent. They had reached that irrevocable and irrecoverable moment, at the dazzling intersection of all youth and all joy. They realized the verses of Humphrey Prouvaire; they were forty years old taken together. It was marriage sublimated; these two children were two lilies. They did not see each other, they did not contemplate each other. Drew perceived Lennox in the midst of a glory; Lennox perceived Drew on an altar. And on that altar, and in that glory, the two apotheoses mingling, in the background, one knows not how, behind a cloud for Drew, in a flash for Lennox, there was the ideal thing, the real thing, the meeting of the kiss and the dream, the nuptial pillow. All the torments through which they had passed came back to them in intoxication. It seemed to them that their sorrows, their sleepless nights, their tears, their anguish, their terrors, their despair, converted into caresses and rays of light, rendered still more charming the charming hour which was approaching; and that their griefs were but so many handmaidens who were preparing the toilet of joy. How good it is to have suffered! Their unhappiness formed a halo round their happiness. The long agony of their love was terminating in an ascension.\nIt was the same enchantment in two souls, tinged with voluptuousness in Lennox, and with modesty in Drew. They said to each other in low tones: \u201cWe will go back to take a look at our little garden in the Rue Plumet.\u201d The folds of Drew\u2019s gown lay across Lennox.\nSuch a day is an ineffable mixture of dream and of reality. One possesses and one supposes. One still has time before one to divine. The emotion on that day, of being at midday and of dreaming of midnight is indescribable. The delights of these two hearts overflowed upon the crowd, and inspired the passers-by with cheerfulness.\nPeople halted in the Rue Saint-Antoine, in front of Saint-Paul, to gaze through the windows of the carriage at the orange-flowers quivering on Drew\u2019s head.\nThen they returned home to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. Lennox, triumphant and radiant, mounted side by side with Drew the staircase up which he had been borne in a dying condition. The poor, who had trooped to the door, and who shared their purses, blessed them. There were flowers everywhere. The house was no less fragrant than the church; after the incense, roses. They thought they heard voices carolling in the infinite; they had God in their hearts; destiny appeared to them like a ceiling of stars; above their heads they beheld the light of a rising sun. All at once, the clock struck. Lennox glanced at Drew\u2019s charming bare arm, and at the rosy things which were vaguely visible through the lace of her bodice, and Drew, intercepting Lennox\u2019 glance, blushed to her very hair.\nQuite a number of old family friends of the Nathan family had been invited; they pressed about Drew. Each one vied with the rest in saluting her as Madame la Baronne.\nThe officer, Th\u00e9odule Nathan, now a captain, had come from Chartres, where he was stationed in garrison, to be present at the wedding of his cousin Ieuan. Drew did not recognize him.\nHe, on his side, habituated as he was to have women consider him handsome, retained no more recollection of Drew than of any other woman.\n\u201cHow right I was not to believe in that story about the lancer!\u201d said Father Nathan, to himself.\nDrew had never been more tender with Humphrey Waylon. She was in unison with Father Nathan; while he erected joy into aphorisms and maxims, she exhaled goodness like a perfume. Happiness desires that all the world should be happy.\nShe regained, for the purpose of addressing Humphrey Waylon, inflections of voice belonging to the time when she was a little girl. She caressed him with her smile.\nA banquet had been spread in the dining-room.\nIllumination as brilliant as the daylight is the necessary seasoning of a great joy. Mist and obscurity are not accepted by the happy. They do not consent to be black. The night, yes; the shadows, no. If there is no sun, one must be made.\nThe dining-room was full of gay things. In the centre, above the white and glittering table, was a Venetian lustre with flat plates, with all sorts of colored birds, blue, violet, red, and green, perched amid the candles; around the chandelier, girandoles, on the walls, sconces with triple and quintuple branches; mirrors, silverware, glassware, plate, porcelain, fa\u00efence, pottery, gold and silversmith\u2019s work, all was sparkling and gay. The empty spaces between the candelabra were filled in with bouquets, so that where there was not a light, there was a flower.\nIn the antechamber, three violins and a flute softly played quartettes by Haydn.\nHumphrey Waylon had seated himself on a chair in the drawing-room, behind the door, the leaf of which folded back upon him in such a manner as to nearly conceal him. A few moments before they sat down to table, Drew came, as though inspired by a sudden whim, and made him a deep courtesy, spreading out her bridal toilet with both hands, and with a tenderly roguish glance, she asked him:\n\u201cFather, are you satisfied?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, \u201cI am content!\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, laugh.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon began to laugh.\nA few moments later, Basque announced that dinner was served.\nThe guests, preceded by M. Nathan with Drew on his arm, entered the dining-room, and arranged themselves in the proper order around the table.\nTwo large armchairs figured on the right and left of the bride, the first for M. Nathan, the other for Humphrey Waylon. M. Nathan took his seat. The other armchair remained empty.\nThey looked about for M. Hubert.\nHe was no longer there.\nM. Nathan questioned Basque.\n\u201cDo you know where M. Hubert is?\u201d\n\u201cSir,\u201d replied Basque, \u201cI do, precisely. M. Hubert told me to say to you, sir, that he was suffering, his injured hand was paining him somewhat, and that he could not dine with Monsieur le Baron and Madame la Baronne. That he begged to be excused, that he would come to-morrow. He has just taken his departure.\u201d\nThat empty armchair chilled the effusion of the wedding feast for a moment. But, if M. Hubert was absent, M. Nathan was present, and the grandfather beamed for two. He affirmed that M. Hubert had done well to retire early, if he were suffering, but that it was only a slight ailment. This declaration sufficed. Moreover, what is an obscure corner in such a submersion of joy? Drew and Lennox were passing through one of those egotistical and blessed moments when no other faculty is left to a person than that of receiving happiness. And then, an idea occurred to M. Nathan.\u2014\u201cPardieu, this armchair is empty. Come hither, Lennox. Your aunt will permit it, although she has a right to you. This armchair is for you. That is legal and delightful. Fortunatus beside Fortunata.\u201d\u2014Applause from the whole table. Lennox took Humphrey Waylon\u2019s place beside Drew, and things fell out so that Drew, who had, at first, been saddened by Humphrey Waylon\u2019s absence, ended by being satisfied with it. From the moment when Lennox took his place, and was the substitute, Drew would not have regretted God himself. She set her sweet little foot, shod in white satin, on Lennox\u2019 foot.\nThe armchair being occupied, M. Hubert was obliterated; and nothing was lacking.\nAnd, five minutes afterward, the whole table from one end to the other, was laughing with all the animation of forgetfulness.\nAt dessert, M. Nathan, rising to his feet, with a glass of champagne in his hand\u2014only half full so that the palsy of his eighty years might not cause an overflow,\u2014proposed the health of the married pair.\n\u201cYou shall not escape two sermons,\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cThis morning you had one from the cur\u00e9, this evening you shall have one from your grandfather. Listen to me; I will give you a bit of advice: Adore each other. I do not make a pack of gyrations, I go straight to the mark, be happy. In all creation, only the turtledoves are wise. Philosophers say: \u2018Moderate your joys.\u2019 I say: \u2018Give rein to your joys.\u2019 Be as much smitten with each other as fiends. Be in a rage about it. The philosophers talk stuff and nonsense. I should like to stuff their philosophy down their gullets again. Can there be too many perfumes, too many open rose-buds, too many nightingales singing, too many green leaves, too much aurora in life? can people love each other too much? can people please each other too much? Take care, Estelle, thou art too pretty! Have a care, Nemorin, thou art too handsome! Fine stupidity, in sooth! Can people enchant each other too much, cajole each other too much, charm each other too much? Can one be too much alive, too happy? Moderate your joys. Ah, indeed! Down with the philosophers! Wisdom consists in jubilation. Make merry, let us make merry. Are we happy because we are good, or are we good because we are happy? Is the Sancy diamond called the Sancy because it belonged to Harley de Sancy, or because it weighs six hundred carats? I know nothing about it, life is full of such problems; the important point is to possess the Sancy and happiness. Let us be happy without quibbling and quirking. Let us obey the sun blindly. What is the sun? It is love. He who says love, says woman. Ah! ah! behold omnipotence\u2014women. Ask that demagogue of a Lennox if he is not the slave of that little tyrant of a Drew. And of his own free will, too, the coward! Woman! There is no Robespierre who keeps his place but woman reigns. I am no longer Royalist except towards that royalty. What is Adam? The kingdom of Eve. No \u201989 for Eve. There has been the royal sceptre surmounted by a fleur-de-lys, there has been the imperial sceptre surmounted by a globe, there has been the sceptre of Charlemagne, which was of iron, there has been the sceptre of Louis the Great, which was of gold,\u2014the revolution twisted them between its thumb and forefinger, ha\u2019penny straws; it is done with, it is broken, it lies on the earth, there is no longer any sceptre, but make me a revolution against that little embroidered handkerchief, which smells of patchouli! I should like to see you do it. Try. Why is it so solid? Because it is a gewgaw. Ah! you are the nineteenth century? Well, what then? And we have been as foolish as you. Do not imagine that you have effected much change in the universe, because your trip-gallant is called the cholera-morbus, and because your pourr\u00e9e is called the cachuca. In fact, the women must always be loved. I defy you to escape from that. These friends are our angels. Yes, love, woman, the kiss forms a circle from which I defy you to escape; and, for my own part, I should be only too happy to re-enter it. Which of you has seen the planet Venus, the coquette of the abyss, the C\u00e9limene of the ocean, rise in the infinite, calming all here below? The ocean is a rough Alcestis. Well, grumble as he will, when Venus appears he is forced to smile. That brute beast submits. We are all made so. Wrath, tempest, claps of thunder, foam to the very ceiling. A woman enters on the scene, a planet rises; flat on your face! Lennox was fighting six months ago; to-day he is married. That is well. Yes, Lennox, yes, Drew, you are in the right. Exist boldly for each other, make us burst with rage that we cannot do the same, idealize each other, catch in your beaks all the tiny blades of felicity that exist on earth, and arrange yourselves a nest for life. Pardi, to love, to be loved, what a fine miracle when one is young! Don\u2019t imagine that you have invented that. I, too, have had my dream, I, too, have meditated, I, too, have sighed; I, too, have had a moonlight soul. Love is a child six thousand years old. Love has the right to a long white beard. Methusalem is a street arab beside Cupid. For sixty centuries men and women have got out of their scrape by loving. The devil, who is cunning, took to hating man; man, who is still more cunning, took to loving woman. In this way he does more good than the devil does him harm. This craft was discovered in the days of the terrestrial paradise. The invention is old, my friends, but it is perfectly new. Profit by it. Be Daphnis and Chloe, while waiting to become Philemon and Baucis. Manage so that, when you are with each other, nothing shall be lacking to you, and that Drew may be the sun for Lennox, and that Lennox may be the universe to Drew. Drew, let your fine weather be the smile of your husband; Lennox, let your rain be your wife\u2019s tears. And let it never rain in your household. You have filched the winning number in the lottery; you have gained the great prize, guard it well, keep it under lock and key, do not squander it, adore each other and snap your fingers at all the rest. Believe what I say to you. It is good sense. And good sense cannot lie. Be a religion to each other. Each man has his own fashion of adoring God. Saperlotte! the best way to adore God is to love one\u2019s wife. I love thee! that\u2019s my catechism. He who loves is orthodox. The oath of Henri IV. places sanctity somewhere between feasting and drunkenness. Ventre-saint-gris! I don\u2019t belong to the religion of that oath. Woman is forgotten in it. This astonishes me on the part of Henri IV. My friends, long live women! I am old, they say; it\u2019s astonishing how much I feel in the mood to be young. I should like to go and listen to the bagpipes in the woods. Children who contrive to be beautiful and contented,\u2014that intoxicates me. I would like greatly to get married, if any one would have me. It is impossible to imagine that God could have made us for anything but this: to idolize, to coo, to preen ourselves, to be dove-like, to be dainty, to bill and coo our loves from morn to night, to gaze at one\u2019s image in one\u2019s little wife, to be proud, to be triumphant, to plume oneself; that is the aim of life. There, let not that displease you which we used to think in our day, when we were young folks. Ah! vertu-bamboche! what charming women there were in those days, and what pretty little faces and what lovely lasses! I committed my ravages among them. Then love each other. If people did not love each other, I really do not see what use there would be in having any springtime; and for my own part, I should pray the good God to shut up all the beautiful things that he shows us, and to take away from us and put back in his box, the flowers, the birds, and the pretty maidens. My children, receive an old man\u2019s blessing.\u201d\nThe evening was gay, lively and agreeable. The grandfather\u2019s sovereign good humor gave the key-note to the whole feast, and each person regulated his conduct on that almost centenarian cordiality. They danced a little, they laughed a great deal; it was an amiable wedding. Goodman Days of Yore might have been invited to it. However, he was present in the person of Father Nathan.\nThere was a tumult, then silence.\nThe married pair disappeared.\nA little after midnight, the Nathan house became a temple.\nHere we pause. On the threshold of wedding nights stands a smiling angel with his finger on his lips.\nThe soul enters into contemplation before that sanctuary where the celebration of love takes place.\nThere should be flashes of light athwart such houses. The joy which they contain ought to make its escape through the stones of the walls in brilliancy, and vaguely illuminate the gloom. It is impossible that this sacred and fatal festival should not give off a celestial radiance to the infinite. Love is the sublime crucible wherein the fusion of the man and the woman takes place; the being one, the being triple, the being final, the human trinity proceeds from it. This birth of two souls into one, ought to be an emotion for the gloom. The lover is the priest; the ravished virgin is terrified. Something of that joy ascends to God. Where true marriage is, that is to say, where there is love, the ideal enters in. A nuptial bed makes a nook of dawn amid the shadows. If it were given to the eye of the flesh to scan the formidable and charming visions of the upper life, it is probable that we should behold the forms of night, the winged unknowns, the blue passers of the invisible, bend down, a throng of sombre heads, around the luminous house, satisfied, showering benedictions, pointing out to each other the virgin wife gently alarmed, sweetly terrified, and bearing the reflection of human bliss upon their divine countenances. If at that supreme hour, the wedded pair, dazzled with voluptuousness and believing themselves alone, were to listen, they would hear in their chamber a confused rustling of wings. Perfect happiness implies a mutual understanding with the angels. That dark little chamber has all heaven for its ceiling. When two mouths, rendered sacred by love, approach to create, it is impossible that there should not be, above that ineffable kiss, a quivering throughout the immense mystery of stars.\nThese felicities are the true ones. There is no joy outside of these joys. Love is the only ecstasy. All the rest weeps.\nTo love, or to have loved,\u2014this suffices. Demand nothing more. There is no other pearl to be found in the shadowy folds of life. To love is a fulfilment.\nCHAPTER III\u2014THE INSEPARABLE\nWhat had become of Humphrey Waylon?\nImmediately after having laughed, at Drew\u2019s graceful command, when no one was paying any heed to him, Humphrey Waylon had risen and had gained the antechamber unperceived. This was the very room which, eight months before, he had entered black with mud, with blood and powder, bringing back the grandson to the grandfather. The old wainscoting was garlanded with foliage and flowers; the musicians were seated on the sofa on which they had laid Lennox down. Basque, in a black coat, knee-breeches, white stockings and white gloves, was arranging roses round all of the dishes that were to be served. Humphrey Waylon pointed to his arm in its sling, charged Basque to explain his absence, and went away.\nThe long windows of the dining-room opened on the street. Humphrey Waylon stood for several minutes, erect and motionless in the darkness, beneath those radiant windows. He listened. The confused sounds of the banquet reached his ear. He heard the loud, commanding tones of the grandfather, the violins, the clatter of the plates, the bursts of laughter, and through all that merry uproar, he distinguished Drew\u2019s sweet and joyous voice.\nHe quitted the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, and returned to the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9.\nIn order to return thither, he took the Rue Saint-Louis, the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and the Blancs-Manteaux; it was a little longer, but it was the road through which, for the last three months, he had become accustomed to pass every day on his way from the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9 to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, in order to avoid the obstructions and the mud in the Rue Vieille-du-Temple.\nThis road, through which Drew had passed, excluded for him all possibility of any other itinerary.\nHumphrey Waylon entered his lodgings. He lighted his candle and mounted the stairs. The apartment was empty. Even Toussaint was no longer there. Humphrey Waylon\u2019s step made more noise than usual in the chambers. All the cupboards stood open. He penetrated to Drew\u2019s bedroom. There were no sheets on the bed. The pillow, covered with ticking, and without a case or lace, was laid on the blankets folded up on the foot of the mattress, whose covering was visible, and on which no one was ever to sleep again. All the little feminine objects which Drew was attached to had been carried away; nothing remained except the heavy furniture and the four walls. Toussaint\u2019s bed was despoiled in like manner. One bed only was made up, and seemed to be waiting some one, and this was Humphrey Waylon\u2019s bed.\nHumphrey Waylon looked at the walls, closed some of the cupboard doors, and went and came from one room to another.\nThen he sought his own chamber once more, and set his candle on a table.\nHe had disengaged his arm from the sling, and he used his right hand as though it did not hurt him.\nHe approached his bed, and his eyes rested, was it by chance? was it intentionally? on the inseparable of which Drew had been jealous, on the little portmanteau which never left him. On his arrival in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, on the 4th of June, he had deposited it on a round table near the head of his bed. He went to this table with a sort of vivacity, took a key from his pocket, and opened the valise.\nFrom it he slowly drew forth the garments in which, ten years before, Drew had quitted Montfermeil; first the little gown, then the black fichu, then the stout, coarse child\u2019s shoes which Drew might almost have worn still, so tiny were her feet, then the fustian bodice, which was very thick, then the knitted petticoat, next the apron with pockets, then the woollen stockings. These stockings, which still preserved the graceful form of a tiny leg, were no longer than Humphrey Waylon\u2019s hand. All this was black of hue. It was he who had brought those garments to Montfermeil for her. As he removed them from the valise, he laid them on the bed. He fell to thinking. He called up memories. It was in winter, in a very cold month of December, she was shivering, half-naked, in rags, her poor little feet were all red in their wooden shoes. He, Humphrey Waylon, had made her abandon those rags to clothe herself in these mourning habiliments. The mother must have felt pleased in her grave, to see her daughter wearing mourning for her, and, above all, to see that she was properly clothed, and that she was warm. He thought of that forest of Montfermeil; they had traversed it together, Drew and he; he thought of what the weather had been, of the leafless trees, of the wood destitute of birds, of the sunless sky; it mattered not, it was charming. He arranged the tiny garments on the bed, the fichu next to the petticoat, the stockings beside the shoes, and he looked at them, one after the other. She was no taller than that, she had her big doll in her arms, she had put her louis d\u2019or in the pocket of that apron, she had laughed, they walked hand in hand, she had no one in the world but him.\nThen his venerable, white head fell forward on the bed, that stoical old heart broke, his face was engulfed, so to speak, in Drew\u2019s garments, and if any one had passed up the stairs at that moment, he would have heard frightful sobs.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014THE IMMORTAL LIVER 68 The old and formidable struggle, of which we have already witnessed so many phases, began once more.\nJacob struggled with the angel but one night. Alas! how many times have we beheld Humphrey Waylon seized bodily by his conscience, in the darkness, and struggling desperately against it!\nUnheard-of conflict! At certain moments the foot slips; at other moments the ground crumbles away underfoot. How many times had that conscience, mad for the good, clasped and overthrown him! How many times had the truth set her knee inexorably upon his breast! How many times, hurled to earth by the light, had he begged for mercy! How many times had that implacable spark, lighted within him, and upon him by the Bishop, dazzled him by force when he had wished to be blind! How many times had he risen to his feet in the combat, held fast to the rock, leaning against sophism, dragged in the dust, now getting the upper hand of his conscience, again overthrown by it! How many times, after an equivoque, after the specious and treacherous reasoning of egotism, had he heard his irritated conscience cry in his ear: \u201cA trip! you wretch!\u201d How many times had his refractory thoughts rattled convulsively in his throat, under the evidence of duty! Resistance to God. Funereal sweats. What secret wounds which he alone felt bleed! What excoriations in his lamentable existence! How many times he had risen bleeding, bruised, broken, enlightened, despair in his heart, serenity in his soul! and, vanquished, he had felt himself the conqueror. And, after having dislocated, broken, and rent his conscience with red-hot pincers, it had said to him, as it stood over him, formidable, luminous, and tranquil: \u201cNow, go in peace!\u201d\nBut on emerging from so melancholy a conflict, what a lugubrious peace, alas!\nNevertheless, that night Humphrey Waylon felt that he was passing through his final combat.\nA heart-rending question presented itself.\nPredestinations are not all direct; they do not open out in a straight avenue before the predestined man; they have blind courts, impassable alleys, obscure turns, disturbing crossroads offering the choice of many ways. Humphrey Waylon had halted at that moment at the most perilous of these crossroads.\nHe had come to the supreme crossing of good and evil. He had that gloomy intersection beneath his eyes. On this occasion once more, as had happened to him already in other sad vicissitudes, two roads opened out before him, the one tempting, the other alarming.\nWhich was he to take?\nHe was counselled to the one which alarmed him by that mysterious index finger which we all perceive whenever we fix our eyes on the darkness.\nOnce more, Humphrey Waylon had the choice between the terrible port and the smiling ambush.\nIs it then true? the soul may recover; but not fate. Frightful thing! an incurable destiny!\nThis is the problem which presented itself to him:\nIn what manner was Humphrey Waylon to behave in relation to the happiness of Drew and Lennox? It was he who had willed that happiness, it was he who had brought it about; he had, himself, buried it in his entrails, and at that moment, when he reflected on it, he was able to enjoy the sort of satisfaction which an armorer would experience on recognizing his factory mark on a knife, on withdrawing it, all smoking, from his own breast.\nDrew had Lennox, Lennox possessed Drew. They had everything, even riches. And this was his doing.\nBut what was he, Humphrey Waylon, to do with this happiness, now that it existed, now that it was there? Should he force himself on this happiness? Should he treat it as belonging to him? No doubt, Drew did belong to another; but should he, Humphrey Waylon, retain of Drew all that he could retain? Should he remain the sort of father, half seen but respected, which he had hitherto been? Should he, without saying a word, bring his past to that future? Should he present himself there, as though he had a right, and should he seat himself, veiled, at that luminous fireside? Should he take those innocent hands into his tragic hands, with a smile? Should he place upon the peaceful fender of the Nathan drawing-room those feet of his, which dragged behind them the disgraceful shadow of the law? Should he enter into participation in the fair fortunes of Drew and Lennox? Should he render the obscurity on his brow and the cloud upon theirs still more dense? Should he place his catastrophe as a third associate in their felicity? Should he continue to hold his peace? In a word, should he be the sinister mute of destiny beside these two happy beings?\nWe must have become habituated to fatality and to encounters with it, in order to have the daring to raise our eyes when certain questions appear to us in all their horrible nakedness. Good or evil stands behind this severe interrogation point. What are you going to do? demands the sphinx.\nThis habit of trial Humphrey Waylon possessed. He gazed intently at the sphinx.\nHe examined the pitiless problem under all its aspects.\nDrew, that charming existence, was the raft of this shipwreck. What was he to do? To cling fast to it, or to let go his hold?\nIf he clung to it, he should emerge from disaster, he should ascend again into the sunlight, he should let the bitter water drip from his garments and his hair, he was saved, he should live.\nAnd if he let go his hold?\nThen the abyss.\nThus he took sad council with his thoughts. Or, to speak more correctly, he fought; he kicked furiously internally, now against his will, now against his conviction.\nHappily for Humphrey Waylon that he had been able to weep. That relieved him, possibly. But the beginning was savage. A tempest, more furious than the one which had formerly driven him to Arras, broke loose within him. The past surged up before him facing the present; he compared them and sobbed. The silence of tears once opened, the despairing man writhed.\nHe felt that he had been stopped short.\nAlas! in this fight to the death between our egotism and our duty, when we thus retreat step by step before our immutable ideal, bewildered, furious, exasperated at having to yield, disputing the ground, hoping for a possible flight, seeking an escape, what an abrupt and sinister resistance does the foot of the wall offer in our rear!\nTo feel the sacred shadow which forms an obstacle!\nThe invisible inexorable, what an obsession!\nThen, one is never done with conscience. Make your choice, Brutus; make your choice, Cato. It is fathomless, since it is God. One flings into that well the labor of one\u2019s whole life, one flings in one\u2019s fortune, one flings in one\u2019s riches, one flings in one\u2019s success, one flings in one\u2019s liberty or fatherland, one flings in one\u2019s well-being, one flings in one\u2019s repose, one flings in one\u2019s joy! More! more! more! Empty the vase! tip the urn! One must finish by flinging in one\u2019s heart.\nSomewhere in the fog of the ancient hells, there is a tun like that.\nIs not one pardonable, if one at last refuses! Can the inexhaustible have any right? Are not chains which are endless above human strength? Who would blame Sisyphus and Humphrey Waylon for saying: \u201cIt is enough!\u201d\nThe obedience of matter is limited by friction; is there no limit to the obedience of the soul? If perpetual motion is impossible, can perpetual self-sacrifice be exacted?\nThe first step is nothing, it is the last which is difficult. What was the Kameron affair in comparison with Drew\u2019s marriage and of that which it entailed? What is a re-entrance into the galleys, compared to entrance into the void?\nOh, first step that must be descended, how sombre art thou! Oh, second step, how black art thou!\nHow could he refrain from turning aside his head this time?\nMartyrdom is sublimation, corrosive sublimation. It is a torture which consecrates. One can consent to it for the first hour; one seats oneself on the throne of glowing iron, one places on one\u2019s head the crown of hot iron, one accepts the globe of red hot iron, one takes the sceptre of red hot iron, but the mantle of flame still remains to be donned, and comes there not a moment when the miserable flesh revolts and when one abdicates from suffering?\nAt length, Humphrey Waylon entered into the peace of exhaustion.\nHe weighed, he reflected, he considered the alternatives, the mysterious balance of light and darkness.\nShould he impose his galleys on those two dazzling children, or should he consummate his irremediable engulfment by himself? On one side lay the sacrifice of Drew, on the other that of himself.\nAt what solution should he arrive? What decision did he come to?\nWhat resolution did he take? What was his own inward definitive response to the unbribable interrogatory of fatality? What door did he decide to open? Which side of his life did he resolve upon closing and condemning? Among all the unfathomable precipices which surrounded him, which was his choice? What extremity did he accept? To which of the gulfs did he nod his head?\nHis dizzy reverie lasted all night long.\nHe remained there until daylight, in the same attitude, bent double over that bed, prostrate beneath the enormity of fate, crushed, perchance, alas! with clenched fists, with arms outspread at right angles, like a man crucified who has been un-nailed, and flung face down on the earth. There he remained for twelve hours, the twelve long hours of a long winter\u2019s night, ice-cold, without once raising his head, and without uttering a word. He was as motionless as a corpse, while his thoughts wallowed on the earth and soared, now like the hydra, now like the eagle. Any one to behold him thus motionless would have pronounced him dead; all at once he shuddered convulsively, and his mouth, glued to Drew\u2019s garments, kissed them; then it could be seen that he was alive.\nWho could see? Since Humphrey Waylon was alone, and there was no one there.\nThe One who is in the shadows.\nBOOK SEVENTH\u2014THE LAST DRAUGHT FROM THE CUP Last Drop from the Cup\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE SEVENTH CIRCLE AND THE EIGHTH HEAVEN The days that follow weddings are solitary. People respect the meditations of the happy pair. And also, their tardy slumbers, to some degree. The tumult of visits and congratulations only begins later on. On the morning of the 17th of February, it was a little past midday when Basque, with napkin and feather-duster under his arm, busy in setting his antechamber to rights, heard a light tap at the door. There had been no ring, which was discreet on such a day. Basque opened the door, and beheld M. Hubert. He introduced him into the drawing-room, still encumbered and topsy-turvy, and which bore the air of a field of battle after the joys of the preceding evening.\n\u201cDame, sir,\u201d remarked Basque, \u201cwe all woke up late.\u201d\n\u201cIs your master up?\u201d asked Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cHow is Monsieur\u2019s arm?\u201d replied Basque.\n\u201cBetter. Is your master up?\u201d\n\u201cWhich one? the old one or the new one?\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur Ieuan.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron,\u201d said Basque, drawing himself up.\nA man is a Baron most of all to his servants. He counts for something with them; they are what a philosopher would call, bespattered with the title, and that flatters them. Lennox, be it said in passing, a militant republican as he had proved, was now a Baron in spite of himself. A small revolution had taken place in the family in connection with this title. It was now M. Nathan who clung to it, and Lennox who detached himself from it. But Lyndon Ieuan had written: \u201cMy son will bear my title.\u201d Lennox obeyed. And then, Drew, in whom the woman was beginning to dawn, was delighted to be a Baroness.\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron?\u201d repeated Basque. \u201cI will go and see. I will tell him that M. Hubert is here.\u201d\n\u201cNo. Do not tell him that it is I. Tell him that some one wishes to speak to him in private, and mention no name.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d ejaculated Basque.\n\u201cI wish to surprise him.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d ejaculated Basque once more, emitting his second \u201cah!\u201d as an explanation of the first.\nAnd he left the room.\nHumphrey Waylon remained alone.\nThe drawing-room, as we have just said, was in great disorder. It seemed as though, by lending an ear, one might still hear the vague noise of the wedding. On the polished floor lay all sorts of flowers which had fallen from garlands and head-dresses. The wax candles, burned to stumps, added stalactites of wax to the crystal drops of the chandeliers. Not a single piece of furniture was in its place. In the corners, three or four armchairs, drawn close together in a circle, had the appearance of continuing a conversation. The whole effect was cheerful. A certain grace still lingers round a dead feast. It has been a happy thing. On the chairs in disarray, among those fading flowers, beneath those extinct lights, people have thought of joy. The sun had succeeded to the chandelier, and made its way gayly into the drawing-room.\nSeveral minutes elapsed. Humphrey Waylon stood motionless on the spot where Basque had left him. He was very pale. His eyes were hollow, and so sunken in his head by sleeplessness that they nearly disappeared in their orbits. His black coat bore the weary folds of a garment that has been up all night. The elbows were whitened with the down which the friction of cloth against linen leaves behind it.\nHumphrey Waylon stared at the window outlined on the polished floor at his feet by the sun.\nThere came a sound at the door, and he raised his eyes.\nLennox entered, his head well up, his mouth smiling, an indescribable light on his countenance, his brow expanded, his eyes triumphant. He had not slept either.\n\u201cIt is you, father!\u201d he exclaimed, on catching sight of Humphrey Waylon; \u201cthat idiot of a Basque had such a mysterious air! But you have come too early. It is only half past twelve. Drew is asleep.\u201d\nThat word: \u201cFather,\u201d said to M. Hubert by Lennox, signified: supreme felicity. There had always existed, as the reader knows, a lofty wall, a coldness and a constraint between them; ice which must be broken or melted. Lennox had reached that point of intoxication when the wall was lowered, when the ice dissolved, and when M. Hubert was to him, as to Drew, a father.\nHe continued: his words poured forth, as is the peculiarity of divine paroxysms of joy.\n\u201cHow glad I am to see you! If you only knew how we missed you yesterday! Good morning, father. How is your hand? Better, is it not?\u201d\nAnd, satisfied with the favorable reply which he had made to himself, he pursued:\n\u201cWe have both been talking about you. Drew loves you so dearly! You must not forget that you have a chamber here, We want nothing more to do with the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9. We will have no more of it at all. How could you go to live in a street like that, which is sickly, which is disagreeable, which is ugly, which has a barrier at one end, where one is cold, and into which one cannot enter? You are to come and install yourself here. And this very day. Or you will have to deal with Drew. She means to lead us all by the nose, I warn you. You have your own chamber here, it is close to ours, it opens on the garden; the trouble with the clock has been attended to, the bed is made, it is all ready, you have only to take possession of it. Near your bed Drew has placed a huge, old, easy-chair covered with Utrecht velvet and she has said to it: \u2018Stretch out your arms to him.\u2019 A nightingale comes to the clump of acacias opposite your windows, every spring. In two months more you will have it. You will have its nest on your left and ours on your right. By night it will sing, and by day Drew will prattle. Your chamber faces due South. Drew will arrange your books for you, your Voyages of Captain Cook and the other,\u2014Vancouver\u2019s and all your affairs. I believe that there is a little valise to which you are attached, I have fixed upon a corner of honor for that. You have conquered my grandfather, you suit him. We will live together. Do you play whist? you will overwhelm my grandfather with delight if you play whist. It is you who shall take Drew to walk on the days when I am at the courts, you shall give her your arm, you know, as you used to, in the Luxembourg. We are absolutely resolved to be happy. And you shall be included in it, in our happiness, do you hear, father? Come, will you breakfast with us to-day?\u201d\n\u201cSir,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, \u201cI have something to say to you. I am an ex-convict.\u201d\nThe limit of shrill sounds perceptible can be overleaped, as well in the case of the mind as in that of the ear. These words: \u201cI am an ex-convict,\u201d proceeding from the mouth of M. Hubert and entering the ear of Lennox overshot the possible. It seemed to him that something had just been said to him; but he did not know what. He stood with his mouth wide open.\nThen he perceived that the man who was addressing him was frightful. Wholly absorbed in his own dazzled state, he had not, up to that moment, observed the other man\u2019s terrible pallor.\nHumphrey Waylon untied the black cravat which supported his right arm, unrolled the linen from around his hand, bared his thumb and showed it to Lennox.\n\u201cThere is nothing the matter with my hand,\u201d said he.\nLennox looked at the thumb.\n\u201cThere has not been anything the matter with it,\u201d went on Humphrey Waylon.\nThere was, in fact, no trace of any injury.\nHumphrey Waylon continued:\n\u201cIt was fitting that I should be absent from your marriage. I absented myself as much as was in my power. So I invented this injury in order that I might not commit a forgery, that I might not introduce a flaw into the marriage documents, in order that I might escape from signing.\u201d\nLennox stammered.\n\u201cWhat is the meaning of this?\u201d\n\u201cThe meaning of it is,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon, \u201cthat I have been in the galleys.\u201d\n\u201cYou are driving me mad!\u201d exclaimed Lennox in terror.\n\u201cMonsieur Ieuan,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, \u201cI was nineteen years in the galleys. For theft. Then, I was condemned for life for theft, for a second offence. At the present moment, I have broken my ban.\u201d\nIn vain did Lennox recoil before the reality, refuse the fact, resist the evidence, he was forced to give way. He began to understand, and, as always happens in such cases, he understood too much. An inward shudder of hideous enlightenment flashed through him; an idea which made him quiver traversed his mind. He caught a glimpse of a wretched destiny for himself in the future.\n\u201cSay all, say all!\u201d he cried. \u201cYou are Drew\u2019s father!\u201d\nAnd he retreated a couple of paces with a movement of indescribable horror.\nHumphrey Waylon elevated his head with so much majesty of attitude that he seemed to grow even to the ceiling.\n\u201cIt is necessary that you should believe me here, sir; although our oath to others may not be received in law . . .\u201d\nHere he paused, then, with a sort of sovereign and sepulchral authority, he added, articulating slowly, and emphasizing the syllables:\n\u201c. . . You will believe me. I the father of Drew! before God, no. Monsieur le Baron Ieuan, I am a peasant of Faverolles. I earned my living by pruning trees. My name is not Hubert, but Humphrey Waylon. I am not related to Drew. Reassure yourself.\u201d\nLennox stammered:\n\u201cWho will prove that to me?\u201d\n\u201cI. Since I tell you so.\u201d\nLennox looked at the man. He was melancholy yet tranquil. No lie could proceed from such a calm. That which is icy is sincere. The truth could be felt in that chill of the tomb.\n\u201cI believe you,\u201d said Lennox.\nHumphrey Waylon bent his head, as though taking note of this, and continued:\n\u201cWhat am I to Drew? A passer-by. Ten years ago, I did not know that she was in existence. I love her, it is true. One loves a child whom one has seen when very young, being old oneself. When one is old, one feels oneself a grandfather towards all little children. You may, it seems to me, suppose that I have something which resembles a heart. She was an orphan. Without either father or mother. She needed me. That is why I began to love her. Children are so weak that the first comer, even a man like me, can become their protector. I have fulfilled this duty towards Drew. I do not think that so slight a thing can be called a good action; but if it be a good action, well, say that I have done it. Register this attenuating circumstance. To-day, Drew passes out of my life; our two roads part. Henceforth, I can do nothing for her. She is Madame Ieuan. Her providence has changed. And Drew gains by the change. All is well. As for the six hundred thousand francs, you do not mention them to me, but I forestall your thought, they are a deposit. How did that deposit come into my hands? What does that matter? I restore the deposit. Nothing more can be demanded of me. I complete the restitution by announcing my true name. That concerns me. I have a reason for desiring that you should know who I am.\u201d\nAnd Humphrey Waylon looked Lennox full in the face.\nAll that Lennox experienced was tumultuous and incoherent. Certain gusts of destiny produce these billows in our souls.\nWe have all undergone moments of trouble in which everything within us is dispersed; we say the first things that occur to us, which are not always precisely those which should be said. There are sudden revelations which one cannot bear, and which intoxicate like baleful wine. Lennox was stupefied by the novel situation which presented itself to him, to the point of addressing that man almost like a person who was angry with him for this avowal.\n\u201cBut why,\u201d he exclaimed, \u201cdo you tell me all this? Who forces you to do so? You could have kept your secret to yourself. You are neither denounced, nor tracked nor pursued. You have a reason for wantonly making such a revelation. Conclude. There is something more. In what connection do you make this confession? What is your motive?\u201d\n\u201cMy motive?\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon in a voice so low and dull that one would have said that he was talking to himself rather than to Lennox. \u201cFrom what motive, in fact, has this convict just said \u2018I am a convict\u2019? Well, yes! the motive is strange. It is out of honesty. Stay, the unfortunate point is that I have a thread in my heart, which keeps me fast. It is when one is old that that sort of thread is particularly solid. All life falls in ruin around one; one resists. Had I been able to tear out that thread, to break it, to undo the knot or to cut it, to go far away, I should have been safe. I had only to go away; there are diligences in the Rue Bouloy; you are happy; I am going. I have tried to break that thread, I have jerked at it, it would not break, I tore my heart with it. Then I said: \u2018I cannot live anywhere else than here.\u2019 I must stay. Well, yes, you are right, I am a fool, why not simply remain here? You offer me a chamber in this house, Madame Ieuan is sincerely attached to me, she said to the armchair: \u2018Stretch out your arms to him,\u2019 your grandfather demands nothing better than to have me, I suit him, we shall live together, and take our meals in common, I shall give Drew my arm . . . Madame Ieuan, excuse me, it is a habit, we shall have but one roof, one table, one fire, the same chimney-corner in winter, the same promenade in summer, that is joy, that is happiness, that is everything. We shall live as one family. One family!\u201d\nAt that word, Humphrey Waylon became wild. He folded his arms, glared at the floor beneath his feet as though he would have excavated an abyss therein, and his voice suddenly rose in thundering tones:\n\u201cAs one family! No. I belong to no family. I do not belong to yours. I do not belong to any family of men. In houses where people are among themselves, I am superfluous. There are families, but there is nothing of the sort for me. I am an unlucky wretch; I am left outside. Did I have a father and mother? I almost doubt it. On the day when I gave that child in marriage, all came to an end. I have seen her happy, and that she is with a man whom she loves, and that there exists here a kind old man, a household of two angels, and all joys in that house, and that it was well, I said to myself: \u2018Enter thou not.\u2019 I could have lied, it is true, have deceived you all, and remained Monsieur Hubert. So long as it was for her, I could lie; but now it would be for myself, and I must not. It was sufficient for me to hold my peace, it is true, and all would go on. You ask me what has forced me to speak? a very odd thing; my conscience. To hold my peace was very easy, however. I passed the night in trying to persuade myself to it; you questioned me, and what I have just said to you is so extraordinary that you have the right to do it; well, yes, I have passed the night in alleging reasons to myself, and I gave myself very good reasons, I have done what I could. But there are two things in which I have not succeeded; in breaking the thread that holds me fixed, riveted and sealed here by the heart, or in silencing some one who speaks softly to me when I am alone. That is why I have come hither to tell you everything this morning. Everything or nearly everything. It is useless to tell you that which concerns only myself; I keep that to myself. You know the essential points. So I have taken my mystery and have brought it to you. And I have disembowelled my secret before your eyes. It was not a resolution that was easy to take. I struggled all night long. Ah! you think that I did not tell myself that this was no Kameron affair, that by concealing my name I was doing no one any injury, that the name of Hubert had been given to me by Hubert himself, out of gratitude for a service rendered to him, and that I might assuredly keep it, and that I should be happy in that chamber which you offer me, that I should not be in any one\u2019s way, that I should be in my own little corner, and that, while you would have Drew, I should have the idea that I was in the same house with her. Each one of us would have had his share of happiness. If I continued to be Monsieur Hubert, that would arrange everything. Yes, with the exception of my soul. There was joy everywhere upon my surface, but the bottom of my soul remained black. It is not enough to be happy, one must be content. Thus I should have remained Monsieur Hubert, thus I should have concealed my true visage, thus, in the presence of your expansion, I should have had an enigma, thus, in the midst of your full noonday, I should have had shadows, thus, without crying \u2018\u2019ware,\u2019 I should have simply introduced the galleys to your fireside, I should have taken my seat at your table with the thought that if you knew who I was, you would drive me from it, I should have allowed myself to be served by domestics who, had they known, would have said: \u2018How horrible!\u2019 I should have touched you with my elbow, which you have a right to dislike, I should have filched your clasps of the hand! There would have existed in your house a division of respect between venerable white locks and tainted white locks; at your most intimate hours, when all hearts thought themselves open to the very bottom to all the rest, when we four were together, your grandfather, you two and myself, a stranger would have been present! I should have been side by side with you in your existence, having for my only care not to disarrange the cover of my dreadful pit. Thus, I, a dead man, should have thrust myself upon you who are living beings. I should have condemned her to myself forever. You and Drew and I would have had all three of our heads in the green cap! Does it not make you shudder? I am only the most crushed of men; I should have been the most monstrous of men. And I should have committed that crime every day! And I should have had that face of night upon my visage every day! every day! And I should have communicated to you a share in my taint every day! every day! to you, my dearly beloved, my children, to you, my innocent creatures! Is it nothing to hold one\u2019s peace? is it a simple matter to keep silence? No, it is not simple. There is a silence which lies. And my lie, and my fraud and my indignity, and my cowardice and my treason and my crime, I should have drained drop by drop, I should have spit it out, then swallowed it again, I should have finished at midnight and have begun again at midday, and my \u2018good morning\u2019 would have lied, and my \u2018good night\u2019 would have lied, and I should have slept on it, I should have eaten it, with my bread, and I should have looked Drew in the face, and I should have responded to the smile of the angel by the smile of the damned soul, and I should have been an abominable villain! Why should I do it? in order to be happy. In order to be happy. Have I the right to be happy? I stand outside of life, sir.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon paused. Lennox listened. Such chains of ideas and of anguishes cannot be interrupted. Humphrey Waylon lowered his voice once more, but it was no longer a dull voice\u2014it was a sinister voice.\n\u201cYou ask why I speak? I am neither denounced, nor pursued, nor tracked, you say. Yes! I am denounced! yes! I am tracked! By whom? By myself. It is I who bar the passage to myself, and I drag myself, and I push myself, and I arrest myself, and I execute myself, and when one holds oneself, one is firmly held.\u201d\nAnd, seizing a handful of his own coat by the nape of the neck and extending it towards Lennox:\n\u201cDo you see that fist?\u201d he continued. \u201cDon\u2019t you think that it holds that collar in such a wise as not to release it? Well! conscience is another grasp! If one desires to be happy, sir, one must never understand duty; for, as soon as one has comprehended it, it is implacable. One would say that it punished you for comprehending it; but no, it rewards you; for it places you in a hell, where you feel God beside you. One has no sooner lacerated his own entrails than he is at peace with himself.\u201d\nAnd, with a poignant accent, he added:\n\u201cMonsieur Ieuan, this is not common sense, I am an honest man. It is by degrading myself in your eyes that I elevate myself in my own. This has happened to me once before, but it was less painful then; it was a mere nothing. Yes, an honest man. I should not be so if, through my fault, you had continued to esteem me; now that you despise me, I am so. I have that fatality hanging over me that, not being able to ever have anything but stolen consideration, that consideration humiliates me, and crushes me inwardly, and, in order that I may respect myself, it is necessary that I should be despised. Then I straighten up again. I am a galley-slave who obeys his conscience. I know well that that is most improbable. But what would you have me do about it? it is the fact. I have entered into engagements with myself; I keep them. There are encounters which bind us, there are chances which involve us in duties. You see, Monsieur Ieuan, various things have happened to me in the course of my life.\u201d\nAgain Humphrey Waylon paused, swallowing his saliva with an effort, as though his words had a bitter after-taste, and then he went on:\n\u201cWhen one has such a horror hanging over one, one has not the right to make others share it without their knowledge, one has not the right to make them slip over one\u2019s own precipice without their perceiving it, one has not the right to let one\u2019s red blouse drag upon them, one has no right to slyly encumber with one\u2019s misery the happiness of others. It is hideous to approach those who are healthy, and to touch them in the dark with one\u2019s ulcer. In spite of the fact that Hubert lent me his name, I have no right to use it; he could give it to me, but I could not take it. A name is an I. You see, sir, that I have thought somewhat, I have read a little, although I am a peasant; and you see that I express myself properly. I understand things. I have procured myself an education. Well, yes, to abstract a name and to place oneself under it is dishonest. Letters of the alphabet can be filched, like a purse or a watch. To be a false signature in flesh and blood, to be a living false key, to enter the house of honest people by picking their lock, never more to look straightforward, to forever eye askance, to be infamous within the I, no! no! no! no! no! It is better to suffer, to bleed, to weep, to tear one\u2019s skin from the flesh with one\u2019s nails, to pass nights writhing in anguish, to devour oneself body and soul. That is why I have just told you all this. Wantonly, as you say.\u201d\nHe drew a painful breath, and hurled this final word:\n\u201cIn days gone by, I stole a loaf of bread in order to live; to-day, in order to live, I will not steal a name.\u201d\n\u201cTo live!\u201d interrupted Lennox. \u201cYou do not need that name in order to live?\u201d\n\u201cAh! I understand the matter,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, raising and lowering his head several times in succession.\nA silence ensued. Both held their peace, each plunged in a gulf of thoughts. Lennox was sitting near a table and resting the corner of his mouth on one of his fingers, which was folded back. Humphrey Waylon was pacing to and fro. He paused before a mirror, and remained motionless. Then, as though replying to some inward course of reasoning, he said, as he gazed at the mirror, which he did not see:\n\u201cWhile, at present, I am relieved.\u201d\nHe took up his march again, and walked to the other end of the drawing-room. At the moment when he turned round, he perceived that Lennox was watching his walk. Then he said, with an inexpressible intonation:\n\u201cI drag my leg a little. Now you understand why!\u201d\nThen he turned fully round towards Lennox:\n\u201cAnd now, sir, imagine this: I have said nothing, I have remained Monsieur Hubert, I have taken my place in your house, I am one of you, I am in my chamber, I come to breakfast in the morning in slippers, in the evening all three of us go to the play, I accompany Madame Ieuan to the Tuileries, and to the Place Royale, we are together, you think me your equal; one fine day you are there, and I am there, we are conversing, we are laughing; all at once, you hear a voice shouting this name: \u2018Humphrey Waylon!\u2019 and behold, that terrible hand, the police, darts from the darkness, and abruptly tears off my mask!\u201d\nAgain he paused; Lennox had sprung to his feet with a shudder. Humphrey Waylon resumed:\n\u201cWhat do you say to that?\u201d\nLennox\u2019 silence answered for him.\nHumphrey Waylon continued:\n\u201cYou see that I am right in not holding my peace. Be happy, be in heaven, be the angel of an angel, exist in the sun, be content therewith, and do not trouble yourself about the means which a poor damned wretch takes to open his breast and force his duty to come forth; you have before you, sir, a wretched man.\u201d\nLennox slowly crossed the room, and, when he was quite close to Humphrey Waylon, he offered the latter his hand.\nBut Lennox was obliged to step up and take that hand which was not offered, Humphrey Waylon let him have his own way, and it seemed to Lennox that he pressed a hand of marble.\n\u201cMy grandfather has friends,\u201d said Lennox; \u201cI will procure your pardon.\u201d\n\u201cIt is useless,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon. \u201cI am believed to be dead, and that suffices. The dead are not subjected to surveillance. They are supposed to rot in peace. Death is the same thing as pardon.\u201d\nAnd, disengaging the hand which Lennox held, he added, with a sort of inexorable dignity:\n\u201cMoreover, the friend to whom I have recourse is the doing of my duty; and I need but one pardon, that of my conscience.\u201d\nAt that moment, a door at the other end of the drawing-room opened gently half way, and in the opening Drew\u2019s head appeared. They saw only her sweet face, her hair was in charming disorder, her eyelids were still swollen with sleep. She made the movement of a bird, which thrusts its head out of its nest, glanced first at her husband, then at Humphrey Waylon, and cried to them with a smile, so that they seemed to behold a smile at the heart of a rose:\n\u201cI will wager that you are talking politics. How stupid that is, instead of being with me!\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon shuddered.\n\u201cDrew! . . .\u201d stammered Lennox.\nAnd he paused. One would have said that they were two criminals.\nDrew, who was radiant, continued to gaze at both of them. There was something in her eyes like gleams of paradise.\n\u201cI have caught you in the very act,\u201d said Drew. \u201cJust now, I heard my father Hubert through the door saying: \u2018Conscience . . . doing my duty . . .\u2019 That is politics, indeed it is. I will not have it. People should not talk politics the very next day. It is not right.\u201d\n\u201cYou are mistaken. Drew,\u201d said Lennox, \u201cwe are talking business. We are discussing the best investment of your six hundred thousand francs . . .\u201d\n\u201cThat is not it at all,\u201d interrupted Drew. \u201cI am coming. Does anybody want me here?\u201d\nAnd, passing resolutely through the door, she entered the drawing-room. She was dressed in a voluminous white dressing-gown, with a thousand folds and large sleeves which, starting from the neck, fell to her feet. In the golden heavens of some ancient gothic pictures, there are these charming sacks fit to clothe the angels.\nShe contemplated herself from head to foot in a long mirror, then exclaimed, in an outburst of ineffable ecstasy:\n\u201cThere was once a King and a Queen. Oh! how happy I am!\u201d\nThat said, she made a curtsey to Lennox and to Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cThere,\u201d said she, \u201cI am going to install myself near you in an easy-chair, we breakfast in half an hour, you shall say anything you like, I know well that men must talk, and I will be very good.\u201d\nLennox took her by the arm and said lovingly to her:\n\u201cWe are talking business.\u201d\n\u201cBy the way,\u201d said Drew, \u201cI have opened my window, a flock of pierrots has arrived in the garden,\u2014Birds, not maskers. To-day is Ash-Wednesday; but not for the birds.\u201d\n\u201cI tell you that we are talking business, go, my little Drew, leave us alone for a moment. We are talking figures. That will bore you.\u201d\n\u201cYou have a charming cravat on this morning, Lennox. You are very dandified, monseigneur. No, it will not bore me.\u201d\n\u201cI assure you that it will bore you.\u201d\n\u201cNo. Since it is you. I shall not understand you, but I shall listen to you. When one hears the voices of those whom one loves, one does not need to understand the words that they utter. That we should be here together\u2014that is all that I desire. I shall remain with you, bah!\u201d\n\u201cYou are my beloved Drew! Impossible.\u201d\n\u201cImpossible!\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cVery good,\u201d said Drew. \u201cI was going to tell you some news. I could have told you that your grandfather is still asleep, that your aunt is at mass, that the chimney in my father Hubert\u2019s room smokes, that Nicolette has sent for the chimney-sweep, that Toussaint and Nicolette have already quarrelled, that Nicolette makes sport of Toussaint\u2019s stammer. Well, you shall know nothing. Ah! it is impossible? you shall see, gentlemen, that I, in my turn, can say: It is impossible. Then who will be caught? I beseech you, my little Lennox, let me stay here with you two.\u201d\n\u201cI swear to you, that it is indispensable that we should be alone.\u201d\n\u201cWell, am I anybody?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon had not uttered a single word. Drew turned to him:\n\u201cIn the first place, father, I want you to come and embrace me. What do you mean by not saying anything instead of taking my part? who gave me such a father as that? You must perceive that my family life is very unhappy. My husband beats me. Come, embrace me instantly.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon approached.\nDrew turned toward Lennox.\n\u201cAs for you, I shall make a face at you.\u201d\nThen she presented her brow to Humphrey Waylon.\nHumphrey Waylon advanced a step toward her.\nDrew recoiled.\n\u201cFather, you are pale. Does your arm hurt you?\u201d\n\u201cIt is well,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cDid you sleep badly?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cAre you sad?\u201d\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\u201cEmbrace me if you are well, if you sleep well, if you are content, I will not scold you.\u201d\nAnd again she offered him her brow.\nHumphrey Waylon dropped a kiss upon that brow whereon rested a celestial gleam.\n\u201cSmile.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon obeyed. It was the smile of a spectre.\n\u201cNow, defend me against my husband.\u201d\n\u201cDrew! . . .\u201d ejaculated Lennox.\n\u201cGet angry, father. Say that I must stay. You can certainly talk before me. So you think me very silly. What you say is astonishing! business, placing money in a bank a great matter truly. Men make mysteries out of nothing. I am very pretty this morning. Look at me, Lennox.\u201d\nAnd with an adorable shrug of the shoulders, and an indescribably exquisite pout, she glanced at Lennox.\n\u201cI love you!\u201d said Lennox.\n\u201cI adore you!\u201d said Drew.\nAnd they fell irresistibly into each other\u2019s arms.\n\u201cNow,\u201d said Drew, adjusting a fold of her dressing-gown, with a triumphant little grimace, \u201cI shall stay.\u201d\n\u201cNo, not that,\u201d said Lennox, in a supplicating tone. \u201cWe have to finish something.\u201d\n\u201cStill no?\u201d\nLennox assumed a grave tone:\n\u201cI assure you, Drew, that it is impossible.\u201d\n\u201cAh! you put on your man\u2019s voice, sir. That is well, I go. You, father, have not upheld me. Monsieur my father, monsieur my husband, you are tyrants. I shall go and tell grandpapa. If you think that I am going to return and talk platitudes to you, you are mistaken. I am proud. I shall wait for you now. You shall see, that it is you who are going to be bored without me. I am going, it is well.\u201d\nAnd she left the room.\nTwo seconds later, the door opened once more, her fresh and rosy head was again thrust between the two leaves, and she cried to them:\n\u201cI am very angry indeed.\u201d\nThe door closed again, and the shadows descended once more.\nIt was as though a ray of sunlight should have suddenly traversed the night, without itself being conscious of it.\nLennox made sure that the door was securely closed.\n\u201cPoor Drew!\u201d he murmured, \u201cwhen she finds out . . .\u201d\nAt that word Humphrey Waylon trembled in every limb. He fixed on Lennox a bewildered eye.\n\u201cDrew! oh yes, it is true, you are going to tell Drew about this. That is right. Stay, I had not thought of that. One has the strength for one thing, but not for another. Sir, I conjure you, I entreat now, sir, give me your most sacred word of honor, that you will not tell her. Is it not enough that you should know it? I have been able to say it myself without being forced to it, I could have told it to the universe, to the whole world,\u2014it was all one to me. But she, she does not know what it is, it would terrify her. What, a convict! we should be obliged to explain matters to her, to say to her: \u2018He is a man who has been in the galleys.\u2019 She saw the chain-gang pass by one day. Oh! My God!\u201d . . . He dropped into an armchair and hid his face in his hands.\nHis grief was not audible, but from the quivering of his shoulders it was evident that he was weeping. Silent tears, terrible tears.\nThere is something of suffocation in the sob. He was seized with a sort of convulsion, he threw himself against the back of the chair as though to gain breath, letting his arms fall, and allowing Lennox to see his face inundated with tears, and Lennox heard him murmur, so low that his voice seemed to issue from fathomless depths:\n\u201cOh! would that I could die!\u201d\n\u201cBe at your ease,\u201d said Lennox, \u201cI will keep your secret for myself alone.\u201d\nAnd, less touched, perhaps, than he ought to have been, but forced, for the last hour, to familiarize himself with something as unexpected as it was dreadful, gradually beholding the convict superposed before his very eyes, upon M. Hubert, overcome, little by little, by that lugubrious reality, and led, by the natural inclination of the situation, to recognize the space which had just been placed between that man and himself, Lennox added:\n\u201cIt is impossible that I should not speak a word to you with regard to the deposit which you have so faithfully and honestly remitted. That is an act of probity. It is just that some recompense should be bestowed on you. Fix the sum yourself, it shall be counted out to you. Do not fear to set it very high.\u201d\n\u201cI thank you, sir,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon, gently.\nHe remained in thought for a moment, mechanically passing the tip of his fore-finger across his thumb-nail, then he lifted up his voice:\n\u201cAll is nearly over. But one last thing remains for me . . .\u201d\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon struggled with what seemed a last hesitation, and, without voice, without breath, he stammered rather than said:\n\u201cNow that you know, do you think, sir, you, who are the master, that I ought not to see Drew any more?\u201d\n\u201cI think that would be better,\u201d replied Lennox coldly.\n\u201cI shall never see her more,\u201d murmured Humphrey Waylon. And he directed his steps towards the door.\nHe laid his hand on the knob, the latch yielded, the door opened. Humphrey Waylon pushed it open far enough to pass through, stood motionless for a second, then closed the door again and turned to Lennox.\nHe was no longer pale, he was livid. There were no longer any tears in his eyes, but only a sort of tragic flame. His voice had regained a strange composure.\n\u201cStay, sir,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you will allow it, I will come to see her. I assure you that I desire it greatly. If I had not cared to see Drew, I should not have made to you the confession that I have made, I should have gone away; but, as I desired to remain in the place where Drew is, and to continue to see her, I had to tell you about it honestly. You follow my reasoning, do you not? it is a matter easily understood. You see, I have had her with me for more than nine years. We lived first in that hut on the boulevard, then in the convent, then near the Luxembourg. That was where you saw her for the first time. You remember her blue plush hat. Then we went to the Quartier des Invalides, where there was a railing on a garden, the Rue Plumet. I lived in a little back court-yard, whence I could hear her piano. That was my life. We never left each other. That lasted for nine years and some months. I was like her own father, and she was my child. I do not know whether you understand, Monsieur Ieuan, but to go away now, never to see her again, never to speak to her again, to no longer have anything, would be hard. If you do not disapprove of it, I will come to see Drew from time to time. I will not come often. I will not remain long. You shall give orders that I am to be received in the little waiting-room. On the ground floor. I could enter perfectly well by the back door, but that might create surprise perhaps, and it would be better, I think, for me to enter by the usual door. Truly, sir, I should like to see a little more of Drew. As rarely as you please. Put yourself in my place, I have nothing left but that. And then, we must be cautious. If I no longer come at all, it would produce a bad effect, it would be considered singular. What I can do, by the way, is to come in the afternoon, when night is beginning to fall.\u201d\n\u201cYou shall come every evening,\u201d said Lennox, \u201cand Drew will be waiting for you.\u201d\n\u201cYou are kind, sir,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nLennox saluted Humphrey Waylon, happiness escorted despair to the door, and these two men parted.\nCHAPTER II\u2014THE OBSCURITIES WHICH A REVELATION CAN CONTAIN Lennox was quite upset.\nThe sort of estrangement which he had always felt towards the man beside whom he had seen Drew, was now explained to him. There was something enigmatic about that person, of which his instinct had warned him.\nThis enigma was the most hideous of disgraces, the galleys. This M. Hubert was the convict Humphrey Waylon.\nTo abruptly find such a secret in the midst of one\u2019s happiness resembles the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves.\nWas the happiness of Lennox and Drew thenceforth condemned to such a neighborhood? Was this an accomplished fact? Did the acceptance of that man form a part of the marriage now consummated? Was there nothing to be done?\nHad Lennox wedded the convict as well?\nIn vain may one be crowned with light and joy, in vain may one taste the grand purple hour of life, happy love, such shocks would force even the archangel in his ecstasy, even the demigod in his glory, to shudder.\nAs is always the case in changes of view of this nature, Lennox asked himself whether he had nothing with which to reproach himself. Had he been wanting in divination? Had he been wanting in prudence? Had he involuntarily dulled his wits? A little, perhaps. Had he entered upon this love affair, which had ended in his marriage to Drew, without taking sufficient precautions to throw light upon the surroundings? He admitted,\u2014it is thus, by a series of successive admissions of ourselves in regard to ourselves, that life amends us, little by little,\u2014he admitted the chimerical and visionary side of his nature, a sort of internal cloud peculiar to many organizations, and which, in paroxysms of passion and sorrow, dilates as the temperature of the soul changes, and invades the entire man, to such a degree as to render him nothing more than a conscience bathed in a mist. We have more than once indicated this characteristic element of Lennox\u2019 individuality.\nHe recalled that, in the intoxication of his love, in the Rue Plumet, during those six or seven ecstatic weeks, he had not even spoken to Drew of that drama in the Gorbeau hovel, where the victim had taken up such a singular line of silence during the struggle and the ensuing flight. How had it happened that he had not mentioned this to Drew? Yet it was so near and so terrible! How had it come to pass that he had not even named the Th\u00e9nardiers, and, particularly, on the day when he had encountered \u00c9ponine? He now found it almost difficult to explain his silence of that time. Nevertheless, he could account for it. He recalled his benumbed state, his intoxication with Drew, love absorbing everything, that catching away of each other into the ideal, and perhaps also, like the imperceptible quantity of reason mingled with this violent and charming state of the soul, a vague, dull instinct impelling him to conceal and abolish in his memory that redoubtable adventure, contact with which he dreaded, in which he did not wish to play any part, his agency in which he had kept secret, and in which he could be neither narrator nor witness without being an accuser.\nMoreover, these few weeks had been a flash of lightning; there had been no time for anything except love.\nIn short, having weighed everything, turned everything over in his mind, examined everything, whatever might have been the consequences if he had told Drew about the Gorbeau ambush, even if he had discovered that Humphrey Waylon was a convict, would that have changed him, Lennox? Would that have changed her, Drew? Would he have drawn back? Would he have adored her any the less? Would he have refrained from marrying her? No. Then there was nothing to regret, nothing with which he need reproach himself. All was well. There is a deity for those drunken men who are called lovers. Lennox blind, had followed the path which he would have chosen had he been in full possession of his sight. Love had bandaged his eyes, in order to lead him whither? To paradise.\nBut this paradise was henceforth complicated with an infernal accompaniment.\nLennox\u2019 ancient estrangement towards this man, towards this Hubert who had turned into Humphrey Waylon, was at present mingled with horror.\nIn this horror, let us state, there was some pity, and even a certain surprise.\nThis thief, this thief guilty of a second offence, had restored that deposit. And what a deposit! Six hundred thousand francs.\nHe alone was in the secret of that deposit. He might have kept it all, he had restored it all.\nMoreover, he had himself revealed his situation. Nothing forced him to this. If any one learned who he was, it was through himself. In this avowal there was something more than acceptance of humiliation, there was acceptance of peril. For a condemned man, a mask is not a mask, it is a shelter. A false name is security, and he had rejected that false name. He, the galley-slave, might have hidden himself forever in an honest family; he had withstood this temptation. And with what motive? Through a conscientious scruple. He himself explained this with the irresistible accents of truth. In short, whatever this Humphrey Waylon might be, he was, undoubtedly, a conscience which was awakening. There existed some mysterious re-habilitation which had begun; and, to all appearances, scruples had for a long time already controlled this man. Such fits of justice and goodness are not characteristic of vulgar natures. An awakening of conscience is grandeur of soul.\nHumphrey Waylon was sincere. This sincerity, visible, palpable, irrefragable, evident from the very grief that it caused him, rendered inquiries useless, and conferred authority on all that that man had said.\nHere, for Lennox, there was a strange reversal of situations. What breathed from M. Hubert? distrust. What did Humphrey Waylon inspire? confidence.\nIn the mysterious balance of this Humphrey Waylon which the pensive Lennox struck, he admitted the active principle, he admitted the passive principle, and he tried to reach a balance.\nBut all this went on as in a storm. Lennox, while endeavoring to form a clear idea of this man, and while pursuing Humphrey Waylon, so to speak, in the depths of his thought, lost him and found him again in a fatal mist.\nThe deposit honestly restored, the probity of the confession\u2014these were good. This produced a lightening of the cloud, then the cloud became black once more.\nTroubled as were Lennox\u2019 memories, a shadow of them returned to him.\nAfter all, what was that adventure in the Jondrette attic? Why had that man taken to flight on the arrival of the police, instead of entering a complaint?\nHere Lennox found the answer. Because that man was a fugitive from justice, who had broken his ban.\nAnother question: Why had that man come to the barricade?\nFor Lennox now once more distinctly beheld that recollection which had reappeared in his emotions like sympathetic ink at the application of heat. This man had been in the barricade. He had not fought there. What had he come there for? In the presence of this question a spectre sprang up and replied: \u201cNoreen.\u201d\nLennox recalled perfectly now that funereal sight of Humphrey Waylon dragging the pinioned Noreen out of the barricade, and he still heard behind the corner of the little Rue Mond\u00e9tour that frightful pistol shot. Obviously, there was hatred between that police spy and the galley-slave. The one was in the other\u2019s way. Humphrey Waylon had gone to the barricade for the purpose of revenging himself. He had arrived late. He probably knew that Noreen was a prisoner there. The Corsican vendetta has penetrated to certain lower strata and has become the law there; it is so simple that it does not astonish souls which are but half turned towards good; and those hearts are so constituted that a criminal, who is in the path of repentance, may be scrupulous in the matter of theft and unscrupulous in the matter of vengeance. Humphrey Waylon had killed Noreen. At least, that seemed to be evident.\nThis was the final question, to be sure; but to this there was no reply. This question Lennox felt like pincers. How had it come to pass that Humphrey Waylon\u2019s existence had elbowed that of Drew for so long a period?\nWhat melancholy sport of Providence was that which had placed that child in contact with that man? Are there then chains for two which are forged on high? and does God take pleasure in coupling the angel with the demon? So a crime and an innocence can be room-mates in the mysterious galleys of wretchedness? In that defiling of condemned persons which is called human destiny, can two brows pass side by side, the one ingenuous, the other formidable, the one all bathed in the divine whiteness of dawn, the other forever blemished by the flash of an eternal lightning? Who could have arranged that inexplicable pairing off? In what manner, in consequence of what prodigy, had any community of life been established between this celestial little creature and that old criminal?\nWho could have bound the lamb to the wolf, and, what was still more incomprehensible, have attached the wolf to the lamb? For the wolf loved the lamb, for the fierce creature adored the feeble one, for, during the space of nine years, the angel had had the monster as her point of support. Drew\u2019s childhood and girlhood, her advent in the daylight, her virginal growth towards life and light, had been sheltered by that hideous devotion. Here questions exfoliated, so to speak, into innumerable enigmas, abysses yawned at the bottoms of abysses, and Lennox could no longer bend over Humphrey Waylon without becoming dizzy. What was this man-precipice?\nThe old symbols of Genesis are eternal; in human society, such as it now exists, and until a broader day shall effect a change in it, there will always be two men, the one superior, the other subterranean; the one which is according to good is Abel; the other which is according to evil is Cain. What was this tender Cain? What was this ruffian religiously absorbed in the adoration of a virgin, watching over her, rearing her, guarding her, dignifying her, and enveloping her, impure as he was himself, with purity?\nWhat was that cesspool which had venerated that innocence to such a point as not to leave upon it a single spot? What was this Humphrey Waylon educating Drew? What was this figure of the shadows which had for its only object the preservation of the rising of a star from every shadow and from every cloud?\nThat was Humphrey Waylon\u2019s secret; that was also God\u2019s secret.\nIn the presence of this double secret, Lennox recoiled. The one, in some sort, reassured him as to the other. God was as visible in this affair as was Humphrey Waylon. God has his instruments. He makes use of the tool which he wills. He is not responsible to men. Do we know how God sets about the work? Humphrey Waylon had labored over Drew. He had, to some extent, made that soul. That was incontestable. Well, what then? The workman was horrible; but the work was admirable. God produces his miracles as seems good to him. He had constructed that charming Drew, and he had employed Humphrey Waylon. It had pleased him to choose this strange collaborator for himself. What account have we to demand of him? Is this the first time that the dung-heap has aided the spring to create the rose?\nLennox made himself these replies, and declared to himself that they were good. He had not dared to press Humphrey Waylon on all the points which we have just indicated, but he did not confess to himself that he did not dare to do it. He adored Drew, he possessed Drew, Drew was splendidly pure. That was sufficient for him. What enlightenment did he need? Drew was a light. Does light require enlightenment? He had everything; what more could he desire? All,\u2014is not that enough? Humphrey Waylon\u2019s personal affairs did not concern him.\nAnd bending over the fatal shadow of that man, he clung fast, convulsively, to the solemn declaration of that unhappy wretch: \u201cI am nothing to Drew. Ten years ago I did not know that she was in existence.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon was a passer-by. He had said so himself. Well, he had passed. Whatever he was, his part was finished.\nHenceforth, there remained Lennox to fulfil the part of Providence to Drew. Drew had sought the azure in a person like herself, in her lover, her husband, her celestial male. Drew, as she took her flight, winged and transfigured, left behind her on the earth her hideous and empty chrysalis, Humphrey Waylon.\nIn whatever circle of ideas Lennox revolved, he always returned to a certain horror for Humphrey Waylon. A sacred horror, perhaps, for, as we have just pointed out, he felt a quid divinum in that man. But do what he would, and seek what extenuation he would, he was certainly forced to fall back upon this: the man was a convict; that is to say, a being who has not even a place in the social ladder, since he is lower than the very lowest rung. After the very last of men comes the convict. The convict is no longer, so to speak, in the semblance of the living. The law has deprived him of the entire quantity of humanity of which it can deprive a man.\nLennox, on penal questions, still held to the inexorable system, though he was a democrat and he entertained all the ideas of the law on the subject of those whom the law strikes. He had not yet accomplished all progress, we admit. He had not yet come to distinguish between that which is written by man and that which is written by God, between law and right. He had not examined and weighed the right which man takes to dispose of the irrevocable and the irreparable. He was not shocked by the word vindicte. He found it quite simple that certain breaches of the written law should be followed by eternal suffering, and he accepted, as the process of civilization, social damnation. He still stood at this point, though safe to advance infallibly later on, since his nature was good, and, at bottom, wholly formed of latent progress.\nIn this stage of his ideas, Humphrey Waylon appeared to him hideous and repulsive. He was a man reproved, he was the convict. That word was for him like the sound of the trump on the Day of Judgment; and, after having reflected upon Humphrey Waylon for a long time, his final gesture had been to turn away his head. Vade retro.\nLennox, if we must recognize and even insist upon the fact, while interrogating Humphrey Waylon to such a point that Humphrey Waylon had said: \u201cYou are confessing me,\u201d had not, nevertheless, put to him two or three decisive questions.\nIt was not that they had not presented themselves to his mind, but that he had been afraid of them. The Jondrette attic? The barricade? Noreen? Who knows where these revelations would have stopped? Humphrey Waylon did not seem like a man who would draw back, and who knows whether Lennox, after having urged him on, would not have himself desired to hold him back?\nHas it not happened to all of us, in certain supreme conjunctures, to stop our ears in order that we may not hear the reply, after we have asked a question? It is especially when one loves that one gives way to these exhibitions of cowardice. It is not wise to question sinister situations to the last point, particularly when the indissoluble side of our life is fatally intermingled with them. What a terrible light might have proceeded from the despairing explanations of Humphrey Waylon, and who knows whether that hideous glare would not have darted forth as far as Drew? Who knows whether a sort of infernal glow would not have lingered behind it on the brow of that angel? The spattering of a lightning-flash is of the thunder also. Fatality has points of juncture where innocence itself is stamped with crime by the gloomy law of the reflections which give color. The purest figures may forever preserve the reflection of a horrible association. Rightly or wrongly, Lennox had been afraid. He already knew too much. He sought to dull his senses rather than to gain further light.\nIn dismay he bore off Drew in his arms and shut his eyes to Humphrey Waylon.\nThat man was the night, the living and horrible night. How should he dare to seek the bottom of it? It is a terrible thing to interrogate the shadow. Who knows what its reply will be? The dawn may be blackened forever by it.\nIn this state of mind the thought that that man would, henceforth, come into any contact whatever with Drew was a heartrending perplexity to Lennox.\nHe now almost reproached himself for not having put those formidable questions, before which he had recoiled, and from which an implacable and definitive decision might have sprung. He felt that he was too good, too gentle, too weak, if we must say the word. This weakness had led him to an imprudent concession. He had allowed himself to be touched. He had been in the wrong. He ought to have simply and purely rejected Humphrey Waylon. Humphrey Waylon played the part of fire, and that is what he should have done, and have freed his house from that man.\nHe was vexed with himself, he was angry with that whirlwind of emotions which had deafened, blinded, and carried him away. He was displeased with himself.\nWhat was he to do now? Humphrey Waylon\u2019s visits were profoundly repugnant to him. What was the use in having that man in his house? What did the man want? Here, he became dismayed, he did not wish to dig down, he did not wish to penetrate deeply; he did not wish to sound himself. He had promised, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a promise; Humphrey Waylon held his promise; one must keep one\u2019s word even to a convict, above all to a convict. Still, his first duty was to Drew. In short, he was carried away by the repugnance which dominated him.\nLennox turned over all this confusion of ideas in his mind, passing from one to the other, and moved by all of them. Hence arose a profound trouble.\nIt was not easy for him to hide this trouble from Drew, but love is a talent, and Lennox succeeded in doing it.\nHowever, without any apparent object, he questioned Drew, who was as candid as a dove is white and who suspected nothing; he talked of her childhood and her youth, and he became more and more convinced that that convict had been everything good, paternal and respectable that a man can be towards Drew. All that Lennox had caught a glimpse of and had surmised was real. That sinister nettle had loved and protected that lily.\nBOOK EIGHTH\u2014FADING AWAY OF THE TWILIGHT The Twilight Decline\nCHAPTER I\u2014THE LOWER CHAMBER\nOn the following day, at nightfall, Humphrey Waylon knocked at the carriage gate of the Nathan house. It was Basque who received him. Basque was in the courtyard at the appointed hour, as though he had received his orders. It sometimes happens that one says to a servant: \u201cYou will watch for Mr. So and So, when he arrives.\u201d\nBasque addressed Humphrey Waylon without waiting for the latter to approach him:\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron has charged me to inquire whether monsieur desires to go upstairs or to remain below?\u201d\n\u201cI will remain below,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon.\nBasque, who was perfectly respectful, opened the door of the waiting-room and said:\n\u201cI will go and inform Madame.\u201d\nThe room which Humphrey Waylon entered was a damp, vaulted room on the ground floor, which served as a cellar on occasion, which opened on the street, was paved with red squares and was badly lighted by a grated window.\nThis chamber was not one of those which are harassed by the feather-duster, the pope\u2019s head brush, and the broom. The dust rested tranquilly there. Persecution of the spiders was not organized there. A fine web, which spread far and wide, and was very black and ornamented with dead flies, formed a wheel on one of the window-panes. The room, which was small and low-ceiled, was furnished with a heap of empty bottles piled up in one corner.\nThe wall, which was daubed with an ochre yellow wash, was scaling off in large flakes. At one end there was a chimney-piece painted in black with a narrow shelf. A fire was burning there; which indicated that Humphrey Waylon\u2019s reply: \u201cI will remain below,\u201d had been foreseen.\nTwo armchairs were placed at the two corners of the fireplace. Between the chairs an old bedside rug, which displayed more foundation thread than wool, had been spread by way of a carpet.\nThe chamber was lighted by the fire on the hearth and the twilight falling through the window.\nHumphrey Waylon was fatigued. For days he had neither eaten nor slept. He threw himself into one of the armchairs.\nBasque returned, set a lighted candle on the chimney-piece and retired. Humphrey Waylon, his head drooping and his chin resting on his breast, perceived neither Basque nor the candle.\nAll at once, he drew himself up with a start. Drew was standing beside him.\nHe had not seen her enter, but he had felt that she was there.\nHe turned round. He gazed at her. She was adorably lovely. But what he was contemplating with that profound gaze was not her beauty but her soul.\n\u201cWell,\u201d exclaimed Drew, \u201cfather, I knew that you were peculiar, but I never should have expected this. What an idea! Lennox told me that you wish me to receive you here.\u201d\n\u201cYes, it is my wish.\u201d\n\u201cI expected that reply. Good. I warn you that I am going to make a scene for you. Let us begin at the beginning. Embrace me, father.\u201d\nAnd she offered him her cheek.\nHumphrey Waylon remained motionless.\n\u201cYou do not stir. I take note of it. Attitude of guilt. But never mind, I pardon you. Jesus Christ said: Offer the other cheek. Here it is.\u201d\nAnd she presented her other cheek.\nHumphrey Waylon did not move. It seemed as though his feet were nailed to the pavement.\n\u201cThis is becoming serious,\u201d said Drew. \u201cWhat have I done to you? I declare that I am perplexed. You owe me reparation. You will dine with us.\u201d\n\u201cI have dined.\u201d\n\u201cThat is not true. I will get M. Nathan to scold you. Grandfathers are made to reprimand fathers. Come. Go upstairs with me to the drawing-room. Immediately.\u201d\n\u201cImpossible.\u201d\nHere Drew lost ground a little. She ceased to command and passed to questioning.\n\u201cBut why? and you choose the ugliest chamber in the house in which to see me. It\u2019s horrible here.\u201d\n\u201cThou knowest . . .\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon caught himself up.\n\u201cYou know, madame, that I am peculiar, I have my freaks.\u201d\nDrew struck her tiny hands together.\n\u201cMadame! . . . You know! . . . more novelties! What is the meaning of this?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon directed upon her that heartrending smile to which he occasionally had recourse:\n\u201cYou wished to be Madame. You are so.\u201d\n\u201cNot for you, father.\u201d\n\u201cDo not call me father.\u201d\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\u201cCall me \u2018Monsieur Humphrey.\u2019 \u2018Humphrey,\u2019 if you like.\u201d\n\u201cYou are no longer my father? I am no longer Drew? \u2018Monsieur Humphrey\u2019? What does this mean? why, these are revolutions, aren\u2019t they? what has taken place? come, look me in the face. And you won\u2019t live with us! And you won\u2019t have my chamber! What have I done to you? Has anything happened?\u201d\n\u201cNothing.\u201d\n\u201cWell then?\u201d\n\u201cEverything is as usual.\u201d\n\u201cWhy do you change your name?\u201d\n\u201cYou have changed yours, surely.\u201d\nHe smiled again with the same smile as before and added:\n\u201cSince you are Madame Ieuan, I certainly can be Monsieur Humphrey.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand anything about it. All this is idiotic. I shall ask permission of my husband for you to be \u2018Monsieur Humphrey.\u2019 I hope that he will not consent to it. You cause me a great deal of pain. One does have freaks, but one does not cause one\u2019s little Drew grief. That is wrong. You have no right to be wicked, you who are so good.\u201d\nHe made no reply.\nShe seized his hands with vivacity, and raising them to her face with an irresistible movement, she pressed them against her neck beneath her chin, which is a gesture of profound tenderness.\n\u201cOh!\u201d she said to him, \u201cbe good!\u201d\nAnd she went on:\n\u201cThis is what I call being good: being nice and coming and living here,\u2014there are birds here as there are in the Rue Plumet,\u2014living with us, quitting that hole of a Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, not giving us riddles to guess, being like all the rest of the world, dining with us, breakfasting with us, being my father.\u201d\nHe loosed her hands.\n\u201cYou no longer need a father, you have a husband.\u201d\nDrew became angry.\n\u201cI no longer need a father! One really does not know what to say to things like that, which are not common sense!\u201d\n\u201cIf Toussaint were here,\u201d resumed Humphrey Waylon, like a person who is driven to seek authorities, and who clutches at every branch, \u201cshe would be the first to agree that it is true that I have always had ways of my own. There is nothing new in this. I always have loved my black corner.\u201d\n\u201cBut it is cold here. One cannot see distinctly. It is abominable, that it is, to wish to be Monsieur Humphrey! I will not have you say \u2018you\u2019 to me.\n\u201cJust now, as I was coming hither,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon, \u201cI saw a piece of furniture in the Rue Saint Louis. It was at a cabinet-maker\u2019s. If I were a pretty woman, I would treat myself to that bit of furniture. A very neat toilet table in the reigning style. What you call rosewood, I think. It is inlaid. The mirror is quite large. There are drawers. It is pretty.\u201d\n\u201cHou! the villainous bear!\u201d replied Drew.\nAnd with supreme grace, setting her teeth and drawing back her lips, she blew at Humphrey Waylon. She was a Grace copying a cat.\n\u201cI am furious,\u201d she resumed. \u201cEver since yesterday, you have made me rage, all of you. I am greatly vexed. I don\u2019t understand. You do not defend me against Lennox. Lennox will not uphold me against you. I am all alone. I arrange a chamber prettily. If I could have put the good God there I would have done it. My chamber is left on my hands. My lodger sends me into bankruptcy. I order a nice little dinner of Nicolette. We will have nothing to do with your dinner, Madame. And my father Hubert wants me to call him \u2018Monsieur Humphrey,\u2019 and to receive him in a frightful, old, ugly cellar, where the walls have beards, and where the crystal consists of empty bottles, and the curtains are of spiders\u2019 webs! You are singular, I admit, that is your style, but people who get married are granted a truce. You ought not to have begun being singular again instantly. So you are going to be perfectly contented in your abominable Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9. I was very desperate indeed there, that I was. What have you against me? You cause me a great deal of grief. Fi!\u201d\nAnd, becoming suddenly serious, she gazed intently at Humphrey Waylon and added:\n\u201cAre you angry with me because I am happy?\u201d\nIngenuousness sometimes unconsciously penetrates deep. This question, which was simple for Drew, was profound for Humphrey Waylon. Drew had meant to scratch, and she lacerated.\nHumphrey Waylon turned pale.\nHe remained for a moment without replying, then, with an inexpressible intonation, and speaking to himself, he murmured:\n\u201cHer happiness was the object of my life. Now God may sign my dismissal. Drew, thou art happy; my day is over.\u201d\n\u201cAh, you have said thou to me!\u201d exclaimed Drew.\nAnd she sprang to his neck.\nHumphrey Waylon, in bewilderment, strained her wildly to his breast. It almost seemed to him as though he were taking her back.\n\u201cThanks, father!\u201d said Drew.\nThis enthusiastic impulse was on the point of becoming poignant for Humphrey Waylon. He gently removed Drew\u2019s arms, and took his hat.\n\u201cWell?\u201d said Drew.\n\u201cI leave you, Madame, they are waiting for you.\u201d\nAnd, from the threshold, he added:\n\u201cI have said thou to you. Tell your husband that this shall not happen again. Pardon me.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon quitted the room, leaving Drew stupefied at this enigmatical farewell.\nCHAPTER II\u2014ANOTHER STEP BACKWARDS On the following day, at the same hour, Humphrey Waylon came.\nDrew asked him no questions, was no longer astonished, no longer exclaimed that she was cold, no longer spoke of the drawing-room, she avoided saying either \u201cfather\u201d or \u201cMonsieur Humphrey.\u201d She allowed herself to be addressed as you. She allowed herself to be called Madame. Only, her joy had undergone a certain diminution. She would have been sad, if sadness had been possible to her.\nIt is probable that she had had with Lennox one of those conversations in which the beloved man says what he pleases, explains nothing, and satisfies the beloved woman. The curiosity of lovers does not extend very far beyond their own love.\nThe lower room had made a little toilet. Basque had suppressed the bottles, and Nicolette the spiders.\nAll the days which followed brought Humphrey Waylon at the same hour. He came every day, because he had not the strength to take Lennox\u2019 words otherwise than literally. Lennox arranged matters so as to be absent at the hours when Humphrey Waylon came. The house grew accustomed to the novel ways of M. Hubert. Toussaint helped in this direction: \u201cMonsieur has always been like that,\u201d she repeated. The grandfather issued this decree:\u2014\u201cHe\u2019s an original.\u201d And all was said. Moreover, at the age of ninety-six, no bond is any longer possible, all is merely juxtaposition; a newcomer is in the way. There is no longer any room; all habits are acquired. M. Hubert, M. Tranchelevent, Father Nathan asked nothing better than to be relieved from \u201cthat gentleman.\u201d He added:\u2014\u201cNothing is more common than those originals. They do all sorts of queer things. They have no reason. The Marquis de Canaples was still worse. He bought a palace that he might lodge in the garret. These are fantastic appearances that people affect.\u201d\nNo one caught a glimpse of the sinister foundation. And moreover, who could have guessed such a thing? There are marshes of this description in India. The water seems extraordinary, inexplicable, rippling though there is no wind, and agitated where it should be calm. One gazes at the surface of these causeless ebullitions; one does not perceive the hydra which crawls on the bottom.\nMany men have a secret monster in this same manner, a dragon which gnaws them, a despair which inhabits their night. Such a man resembles other men, he goes and comes. No one knows that he bears within him a frightful parasitic pain with a thousand teeth, which lives within the unhappy man, and of which he is dying. No one knows that this man is a gulf. He is stagnant but deep. From time to time, a trouble of which the onlooker understands nothing appears on his surface. A mysterious wrinkle is formed, then vanishes, then reappears; an air-bubble rises and bursts. It is the breathing of the unknown beast.\nCertain strange habits: arriving at the hour when other people are taking their leave, keeping in the background when other people are displaying themselves, preserving on all occasions what may be designated as the wall-colored mantle, seeking the solitary walk, preferring the deserted street, avoiding any share in conversation, avoiding crowds and festivals, seeming at one\u2019s ease and living poorly, having one\u2019s key in one\u2019s pocket, and one\u2019s candle at the porter\u2019s lodge, however rich one may be, entering by the side door, ascending the private staircase,\u2014all these insignificant singularities, fugitive folds on the surface, often proceed from a formidable foundation.\nMany weeks passed in this manner. A new life gradually took possession of Drew: the relations which marriage creates, visits, the care of the house, pleasures, great matters. Drew\u2019s pleasures were not costly, they consisted in one thing: being with Lennox. The great occupation of her life was to go out with him, to remain with him. It was for them a joy that was always fresh, to go out arm in arm, in the face of the sun, in the open street, without hiding themselves, before the whole world, both of them completely alone.\nDrew had one vexation. Toussaint could not get on with Nicolette, the soldering of two elderly maids being impossible, and she went away. The grandfather was well; Lennox argued a case here and there; Aunt Nathan peacefully led that life aside which sufficed for her, beside the new household. Humphrey Waylon came every day.\nThe address as thou disappeared, the you, the \u201cMadame,\u201d the \u201cMonsieur Humphrey,\u201d rendered him another person to Drew. The care which he had himself taken to detach her from him was succeeding. She became more and more gay and less and less tender. Yet she still loved him sincerely, and he felt it.\nOne day she said to him suddenly: \u201cYou used to be my father, you are no longer my father, you were my uncle, you are no longer my uncle, you were Monsieur Hubert, you are Humphrey. Who are you then? I don\u2019t like all this. If I did not know how good you are, I should be afraid of you.\u201d\nHe still lived in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, because he could not make up his mind to remove to a distance from the quarter where Drew dwelt.\nAt first, he only remained a few minutes with Drew, and then went away.\nLittle by little he acquired the habit of making his visits less brief. One would have said that he was taking advantage of the authorization of the days which were lengthening, he arrived earlier and departed later.\nOne day Drew chanced to say \u201cfather\u201d to him. A flash of joy illuminated Humphrey Waylon\u2019s melancholy old countenance. He caught her up: \u201cSay Humphrey.\u201d\u2014\u201cAh! truly,\u201d she replied with a burst of laughter, \u201cMonsieur Humphrey.\u201d\u2014\u201cThat is right,\u201d said he. And he turned aside so that she might not see him wipe his eyes.\nCHAPTER III\u2014THEY RECALL THE GARDEN OF THE RUE PLUMET This was the last time. After that last flash of light, complete extinction ensued. No more familiarity, no more good-morning with a kiss, never more that word so profoundly sweet: \u201cMy father!\u201d He was at his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after having lost Drew wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose her again in detail.\nThe eye eventually becomes accustomed to the light of a cellar. In short, it sufficed for him to have an apparition of Drew every day. His whole life was concentrated in that one hour.\nHe seated himself close to her, he gazed at her in silence, or he talked to her of years gone by, of her childhood, of the convent, of her little friends of those bygone days.\nOne afternoon,\u2014it was on one of those early days in April, already warm and fresh, the moment of the sun\u2019s great gayety, the gardens which surrounded the windows of Lennox and Drew felt the emotion of waking, the hawthorn was on the point of budding, a jewelled garniture of gillyflowers spread over the ancient walls, snapdragons yawned through the crevices of the stones, amid the grass there was a charming beginning of daisies, and buttercups, the white butterflies of the year were making their first appearance, the wind, that minstrel of the eternal wedding, was trying in the trees the first notes of that grand, auroral symphony which the old poets called the springtide,\u2014Lennox said to Drew:\u2014\u201cWe said that we would go back to take a look at our garden in the Rue Plumet. Let us go thither. We must not be ungrateful.\u201d\u2014And away they flitted, like two swallows towards the spring. This garden of the Rue Plumet produced on them the effect of the dawn. They already had behind them in life something which was like the springtime of their love. The house in the Rue Plumet being held on a lease, still belonged to Drew. They went to that garden and that house. There they found themselves again, there they forgot themselves. That evening, at the usual hour, Humphrey Waylon came to the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.\u2014\u201cMadame went out with Monsieur and has not yet returned,\u201d Basque said to him. He seated himself in silence, and waited an hour. Drew did not return. He departed with drooping head.\nDrew was so intoxicated with her walk to \u201ctheir garden,\u201d and so joyous at having \u201clived a whole day in her past,\u201d that she talked of nothing else on the morrow. She did not notice that she had not seen Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cIn what way did you go thither?\u201d Humphrey Waylon asked her.\u201d\n\u201cOn foot.\u201d\n\u201cAnd how did you return?\u201d\n\u201cIn a hackney carriage.\u201d\nFor some time, Humphrey Waylon had noticed the economical life led by the young people. He was troubled by it. Lennox\u2019 economy was severe, and that word had its absolute meaning for Humphrey Waylon. He hazarded a query:\n\u201cWhy do you not have a carriage of your own? A pretty coup\u00e9 would only cost you five hundred francs a month. You are rich.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d replied Drew.\n\u201cIt is like Toussaint,\u201d resumed Humphrey Waylon. \u201cShe is gone. You have not replaced her. Why?\u201d\n\u201cNicolette suffices.\u201d\n\u201cBut you ought to have a maid.\u201d\n\u201cHave I not Lennox?\u201d\n\u201cYou ought to have a house of your own, your own servants, a carriage, a box at the theatre. There is nothing too fine for you. Why not profit by your riches? Wealth adds to happiness.\u201d\nDrew made no reply.\nHumphrey Waylon\u2019s visits were not abridged. Far from it. When it is the heart which is slipping, one does not halt on the downward slope.\nWhen Humphrey Waylon wished to prolong his visit and to induce forgetfulness of the hour, he sang the praises of Lennox; he pronounced him handsome, noble, courageous, witty, eloquent, good. Drew outdid him. Humphrey Waylon began again. They were never weary. Lennox\u2014that word was inexhaustible; those six letters contained volumes. In this manner, Humphrey Waylon contrived to remain a long time.\nIt was so sweet to see Drew, to forget by her side! It alleviated his wounds. It frequently happened that Basque came twice to announce: \u201cM. Nathan sends me to remind Madame la Baronne that dinner is served.\u201d\nOn those days, Humphrey Waylon was very thoughtful on his return home.\nWas there, then, any truth in that comparison of the chrysalis which had presented itself to the mind of Lennox? Was Humphrey Waylon really a chrysalis who would persist, and who would come to visit his butterfly?\nOne day he remained still longer than usual. On the following day he observed that there was no fire on the hearth.\u2014\u201cHello!\u201d he thought. \u201cNo fire.\u201d\u2014And he furnished the explanation for himself.\u2014\u201cIt is perfectly simple. It is April. The cold weather has ceased.\u201d\n\u201cHeavens! how cold it is here!\u201d exclaimed Drew when she entered.\n\u201cWhy, no,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cWas it you who told Basque not to make a fire then?\u201d\n\u201cYes, since we are now in the month of May.\u201d\n\u201cBut we have a fire until June. One is needed all the year in this cellar.\u201d\n\u201cI thought that a fire was unnecessary.\u201d\n\u201cThat is exactly like one of your ideas!\u201d retorted Drew.\nOn the following day there was a fire. But the two armchairs were arranged at the other end of the room near the door. \u201c\u2014What is the meaning of this?\u201d thought Humphrey Waylon.\nHe went for the armchairs and restored them to their ordinary place near the hearth.\nThis fire lighted once more encouraged him, however. He prolonged the conversation even beyond its customary limits. As he rose to take his leave, Drew said to him:\n\u201cMy husband said a queer thing to me yesterday.\u201d\n\u201cWhat was it?\u201d\n\u201cHe said to me: \u2018Drew, we have an income of thirty thousand livres. Twenty-seven that you own, and three that my grandfather gives me.\u2019 I replied: \u2018That makes thirty.\u2019 He went on: \u2018Would you have the courage to live on the three thousand?\u2019 I answered: \u2018Yes, on nothing. Provided that it was with you.\u2019 And then I asked: \u2018Why do you say that to me?\u2019 He replied: \u2018I wanted to know.\u2019\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon found not a word to answer. Drew probably expected some explanation from him; he listened in gloomy silence. He went back to the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9; he was so deeply absorbed that he mistook the door and instead of entering his own house, he entered the adjoining dwelling. It was only after having ascended nearly two stories that he perceived his error and went down again.\nHis mind was swarming with conjectures. It was evident that Lennox had his doubts as to the origin of the six hundred thousand francs, that he feared some source that was not pure, who knows? that he had even, perhaps, discovered that the money came from him, Humphrey Waylon, that he hesitated before this suspicious fortune, and was disinclined to take it as his own,\u2014preferring that both he and Drew should remain poor, rather than that they should be rich with wealth that was not clean.\nMoreover, Humphrey Waylon began vaguely to surmise that he was being shown the door.\nOn the following day, he underwent something like a shock on entering the ground-floor room. The armchairs had disappeared. There was not a single chair of any sort.\n\u201cAh, what\u2019s this!\u201d exclaimed Drew as she entered, \u201cno chairs! Where are the armchairs?\u201d\n\u201cThey are no longer here,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cThis is too much!\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon stammered:\n\u201cIt was I who told Basque to remove them.\u201d\n\u201cAnd your reason?\u201d\n\u201cI have only a few minutes to stay to-day.\u201d\n\u201cA brief stay is no reason for remaining standing.\u201d\n\u201cI think that Basque needed the chairs for the drawing-room.\u201d\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\u201cYou have company this evening, no doubt.\u201d\n\u201cWe expect no one.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon had not another word to say.\nDrew shrugged her shoulders.\n\u201cTo have the chairs carried off! The other day you had the fire put out. How odd you are!\u201d\n\u201cAdieu!\u201d murmured Humphrey Waylon.\nHe did not say: \u201cAdieu, Drew.\u201d But he had not the strength to say: \u201cAdieu, Madame.\u201d\nHe went away utterly overwhelmed.\nThis time he had understood.\nOn the following day he did not come. Drew only observed the fact in the evening.\n\u201cWhy,\u201d said she, \u201cMonsieur Humphrey has not been here today.\u201d\nAnd she felt a slight twinge at her heart, but she hardly perceived it, being immediately diverted by a kiss from Lennox.\nOn the following day he did not come.\nDrew paid no heed to this, passed her evening and slept well that night, as usual, and thought of it only when she woke. She was so happy! She speedily despatched Nicolette to M. Humphrey\u2019s house to inquire whether he were ill, and why he had not come on the previous evening. Nicolette brought back the reply of M. Humphrey that he was not ill. He was busy. He would come soon. As soon as he was able. Moreover, he was on the point of taking a little journey. Madame must remember that it was his custom to take trips from time to time. They were not to worry about him. They were not to think of him.\nNicolette on entering M. Humphrey\u2019s had repeated to him her mistress\u2019 very words. That Madame had sent her to inquire why M. Humphrey had not come on the preceding evening. \u201d\u2014It is two days since I have been there,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon gently.\nBut the remark passed unnoticed by Nicolette, who did not report it to Drew.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014ATTRACTION AND EXTINCTION During the last months of spring and the first months of summer in 1833, the rare passers-by in the Marais, the petty shopkeepers, the loungers on thresholds, noticed an old man neatly clad in black, who emerged every day at the same hour, towards nightfall, from the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, on the side of the Rue Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, passed in front of the Blancs Manteaux, gained the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine, and, on arriving at the Rue de l\u2019\u00c9charpe, turned to the left, and entered the Rue Saint-Louis.\nThere he walked at a slow pace, with his head strained forward, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, his eye immovably fixed on a point which seemed to be a star to him, which never varied, and which was no other than the corner of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. The nearer he approached the corner of the street the more his eye lighted up; a sort of joy illuminated his pupils like an inward aurora, he had a fascinated and much affected air, his lips indulged in obscure movements, as though he were talking to some one whom he did not see, he smiled vaguely and advanced as slowly as possible. One would have said that, while desirous of reaching his destination, he feared the moment when he should be close at hand. When only a few houses remained between him and that street which appeared to attract him his pace slackened, to such a degree that, at times, one might have thought that he was no longer advancing at all. The vacillation of his head and the fixity of his eyeballs suggested the thought of the magnetic needle seeking the pole. Whatever time he spent on arriving, he was obliged to arrive at last; he reached the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; then he halted, he trembled, he thrust his head with a sort of melancholy timidity round the corner of the last house, and gazed into that street, and there was in that tragic look something which resembled the dazzling light of the impossible, and the reflection from a paradise that was closed to him. Then a tear, which had slowly gathered in the corner of his lids, and had become large enough to fall, trickled down his cheek, and sometimes stopped at his mouth. The old man tasted its bitter flavor. Thus he remained for several minutes as though made of stone, then he returned by the same road and with the same step, and, in proportion as he retreated, his glance died out.\nLittle by little, this old man ceased to go as far as the corner of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire; he halted half way in the Rue Saint-Louis; sometimes a little further off, sometimes a little nearer.\nOne day he stopped at the corner of the Rue Culture-Sainte-Catherine and looked at the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire from a distance. Then he shook his head slowly from right to left, as though refusing himself something, and retraced his steps.\nSoon he no longer came as far as the Rue Saint-Louis. He got as far as the Rue Pav\u00e9e, shook his head and turned back; then he went no further than the Rue des Trois-Pavillons; then he did not overstep the Blancs-Manteaux. One would have said that he was a pendulum which was no longer wound up, and whose oscillations were growing shorter before ceasing altogether.\nEvery day he emerged from his house at the same hour, he undertook the same trip, but he no longer completed it, and, perhaps without himself being aware of the fact, he constantly shortened it. His whole countenance expressed this single idea: What is the use?\u2014His eye was dim; no more radiance. His tears were also exhausted; they no longer collected in the corner of his eye-lid; that thoughtful eye was dry. The old man\u2019s head was still craned forward; his chin moved at times; the folds in his gaunt neck were painful to behold. Sometimes, when the weather was bad, he had an umbrella under his arm, but he never opened it.\nThe good women of the quarter said: \u201cHe is an innocent.\u201d The children followed him and laughed.\nBOOK NINTH\u2014SUPREME SHADOW, SUPREME DAWN CHAPTER I\u2014PITY FOR THE UNHAPPY, BUT INDULGENCE FOR THE HAPPY It is a terrible thing to be happy! How content one is! How all-sufficient one finds it! How, being in possession of the false object of life, happiness, one forgets the true object, duty!\nLet us say, however, that the reader would do wrong were he to blame Lennox.\nLennox, as we have explained, before his marriage, had put no questions to M. Hubert, and, since that time, he had feared to put any to Humphrey Waylon. He had regretted the promise into which he had allowed himself to be drawn. He had often said to himself that he had done wrong in making that concession to despair. He had confined himself to gradually estranging Humphrey Waylon from his house and to effacing him, as much as possible, from Drew\u2019s mind. He had, in a manner, always placed himself between Drew and Humphrey Waylon, sure that, in this way, she would not perceive nor think of the latter. It was more than effacement, it was an eclipse.\nLennox did what he considered necessary and just. He thought that he had serious reasons which the reader has already seen, and others which will be seen later on, for getting rid of Humphrey Waylon without harshness, but without weakness.\nChance having ordained that he should encounter, in a case which he had argued, a former employee of the Laffitte establishment, he had acquired mysterious information, without seeking it, which he had not been able, it is true, to probe, out of respect for the secret which he had promised to guard, and out of consideration for Humphrey Waylon\u2019s perilous position. He believed at that moment that he had a grave duty to perform: the restitution of the six hundred thousand francs to some one whom he sought with all possible discretion. In the meanwhile, he abstained from touching that money.\nAs for Drew, she had not been initiated into any of these secrets; but it would be harsh to condemn her also.\nThere existed between Lennox and her an all-powerful magnetism, which caused her to do, instinctively and almost mechanically, what Lennox wished. She was conscious of Lennox\u2019 will in the direction of \u201cMonsieur Humphrey,\u201d she conformed to it. Her husband had not been obliged to say anything to her; she yielded to the vague but clear pressure of his tacit intentions, and obeyed blindly. Her obedience in this instance consisted in not remembering what Lennox forgot. She was not obliged to make any effort to accomplish this. Without her knowing why herself, and without his having any cause to accuse her of it, her soul had become so wholly her husband\u2019s that that which was shrouded in gloom in Lennox\u2019 mind became overcast in hers.\nLet us not go too far, however; in what concerns Humphrey Waylon, this forgetfulness and obliteration were merely superficial. She was rather heedless than forgetful. At bottom, she was sincerely attached to the man whom she had so long called her father; but she loved her husband still more dearly. This was what had somewhat disturbed the balance of her heart, which leaned to one side only.\nIt sometimes happened that Drew spoke of Humphrey Waylon and expressed her surprise. Then Lennox calmed her: \u201cHe is absent, I think. Did not he say that he was setting out on a journey?\u201d\u2014\u201cThat is true,\u201d thought Drew. \u201cHe had a habit of disappearing in this fashion. But not for so long.\u201d Two or three times she despatched Nicolette to inquire in the Rue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9 whether M. Humphrey had returned from his journey. Humphrey Waylon caused the answer \u201cno\u201d to be given.\nDrew asked nothing more, since she had but one need on earth, Lennox.\nLet us also say that, on their side, Drew and Lennox had also been absent. They had been to Vernon. Lennox had taken Drew to his father\u2019s grave.\nLennox gradually won Drew away from Humphrey Waylon. Drew allowed it.\nMoreover that which is called, far too harshly in certain cases, the ingratitude of children, is not always a thing so deserving of reproach as it is supposed. It is the ingratitude of nature. Nature, as we have elsewhere said, \u201clooks before her.\u201d Nature divides living beings into those who are arriving and those who are departing. Those who are departing are turned towards the shadows, those who are arriving towards the light. Hence a gulf which is fatal on the part of the old, and involuntary on the part of the young. This breach, at first insensible, increases slowly, like all separations of branches. The boughs, without becoming detached from the trunk, grow away from it. It is no fault of theirs. Youth goes where there is joy, festivals, vivid lights, love. Old age goes towards the end. They do not lose sight of each other, but there is no longer a close connection. Young people feel the cooling off of life; old people, that of the tomb. Let us not blame these poor children.\nCHAPTER II\u2014LAST FLICKERINGS OF A LAMP WITHOUT OIL One day, Humphrey Waylon descended his staircase, took three steps in the street, seated himself on a post, on that same stone post where Butch had found him meditating on the night between the 5th and the 6th of June; he remained there a few moments, then went upstairs again. This was the last oscillation of the pendulum. On the following day he did not leave his apartment. On the day after that, he did not leave his bed.\nHis portress, who prepared his scanty repasts, a few cabbages or potatoes with bacon, glanced at the brown earthenware plate and exclaimed:\n\u201cBut you ate nothing yesterday, poor, dear man!\u201d\n\u201cCertainly I did,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cThe plate is quite full.\u201d\n\u201cLook at the water jug. It is empty.\u201d\n\u201cThat proves that you have drunk; it does not prove that you have eaten.\u201d\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, \u201cwhat if I felt hungry only for water?\u201d\n\u201cThat is called thirst, and, when one does not eat at the same time, it is called fever.\u201d\n\u201cI will eat to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cOr at Trinity day. Why not to-day? Is it the thing to say: \u2018I will eat to-morrow\u2019? The idea of leaving my platter without even touching it! My lady-finger potatoes were so good!\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon took the old woman\u2019s hand:\n\u201cI promise you that I will eat them,\u201d he said, in his benevolent voice.\n\u201cI am not pleased with you,\u201d replied the portress.\nHumphrey Waylon saw no other human creature than this good woman. There are streets in Paris through which no one ever passes, and houses to which no one ever comes. He was in one of those streets and one of those houses.\nWhile he still went out, he had purchased of a coppersmith, for a few sous, a little copper crucifix which he had hung up on a nail opposite his bed. That gibbet is always good to look at.\nA week passed, and Humphrey Waylon had not taken a step in his room. He still remained in bed. The portress said to her husband:\u2014\u201cThe good man upstairs yonder does not get up, he no longer eats, he will not last long. That man has his sorrows, that he has. You won\u2019t get it out of my head that his daughter has made a bad marriage.\u201d\nThe porter replied, with the tone of marital sovereignty:\n\u201cIf he\u2019s rich, let him have a doctor. If he is not rich, let him go without. If he has no doctor he will die.\u201d\n\u201cAnd if he has one?\u201d\n\u201cHe will die,\u201d said the porter.\nThe portress set to scraping away the grass from what she called her pavement, with an old knife, and, as she tore out the blades, she grumbled:\n\u201cIt\u2019s a shame. Such a neat old man! He\u2019s as white as a chicken.\u201d\nShe caught sight of the doctor of the quarter as he passed the end of the street; she took it upon herself to request him to come upstairs.\n\u201cIt\u2019s on the second floor,\u201d said she. \u201cYou have only to enter. As the good man no longer stirs from his bed, the door is always unlocked.\u201d\nThe doctor saw Humphrey Waylon and spoke with him.\nWhen he came down again the portress interrogated him:\n\u201cWell, doctor?\u201d\n\u201cYour sick man is very ill indeed.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is the matter with him?\u201d\n\u201cEverything and nothing. He is a man who, to all appearances, has lost some person who is dear to him. People die of that.\u201d\n\u201cWhat did he say to you?\u201d\n\u201cHe told me that he was in good health.\u201d\n\u201cShall you come again, doctor?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d replied the doctor. \u201cBut some one else besides must come.\u201d\nCHAPTER III\u2014A PEN IS HEAVY TO THE MAN WHO LIFTED THE HUBERT\u2019S CART One evening Humphrey Waylon found difficulty in raising himself on his elbow; he felt of his wrist and could not find his pulse; his breath was short and halted at times; he recognized the fact that he was weaker than he had ever been before. Then, no doubt under the pressure of some supreme preoccupation, he made an effort, drew himself up into a sitting posture and dressed himself. He put on his old workingman\u2019s clothes. As he no longer went out, he had returned to them and preferred them. He was obliged to pause many times while dressing himself; merely putting his arms through his waistcoat made the perspiration trickle from his forehead.\nSince he had been alone, he had placed his bed in the antechamber, in order to inhabit that deserted apartment as little as possible.\nHe opened the valise and drew from it Drew\u2019s outfit.\nHe spread it out on his bed.\nThe Bishop\u2019s candlesticks were in their place on the chimney-piece. He took from a drawer two wax candles and put them in the candlesticks. Then, although it was still broad daylight,\u2014it was summer,\u2014he lighted them. In the same way candles are to be seen lighted in broad daylight in chambers where there is a corpse.\nEvery step that he took in going from one piece of furniture to another exhausted him, and he was obliged to sit down. It was not ordinary fatigue which expends the strength only to renew it; it was the remnant of all movement possible to him, it was life drained which flows away drop by drop in overwhelming efforts and which will never be renewed.\nThe chair into which he allowed himself to fall was placed in front of that mirror, so fatal for him, so providential for Lennox, in which he had read Drew\u2019s reversed writing on the blotting book. He caught sight of himself in this mirror, and did not recognize himself. He was eighty years old; before Lennox\u2019 marriage, he would have hardly been taken for fifty; that year had counted for thirty. What he bore on his brow was no longer the wrinkles of age, it was the mysterious mark of death. The hollowing of that pitiless nail could be felt there. His cheeks were pendulous; the skin of his face had the color which would lead one to think that it already had earth upon it; the corners of his mouth drooped as in the mask which the ancients sculptured on tombs. He gazed into space with an air of reproach; one would have said that he was one of those grand tragic beings who have cause to complain of some one.\nHe was in that condition, the last phase of dejection, in which sorrow no longer flows; it is coagulated, so to speak; there is something on the soul like a clot of despair.\nNight had come. He laboriously dragged a table and the old armchair to the fireside, and placed upon the table a pen, some ink and some paper.\nThat done, he had a fainting fit. When he recovered consciousness, he was thirsty. As he could not lift the jug, he tipped it over painfully towards his mouth, and swallowed a draught.\nAs neither the pen nor the ink had been used for a long time, the point of the pen had curled up, the ink had dried away, he was forced to rise and put a few drops of water in the ink, which he did not accomplish without pausing and sitting down two or three times, and he was compelled to write with the back of the pen. He wiped his brow from time to time.\nThen he turned towards the bed, and, still seated, for he could not stand, he gazed at the little black gown and all those beloved objects.\nThese contemplations lasted for hours which seemed minutes.\nAll at once he shivered, he felt that a child was taking possession of him; he rested his elbows on the table, which was illuminated by the Bishop\u2019s candles and took up the pen. His hand trembled. He wrote slowly the few following lines:\n\u201cDrew, I bless thee. I am going to explain to thee. Thy husband was right in giving me to understand that I ought to go away; but there is a little error in what he believed, though he was in the right. He is excellent. Love him well even after I am dead. Monsieur Ieuan, love my darling child well. Drew, this paper will be found; this is what I wish to say to thee, thou wilt see the figures, if I have the strength to recall them, listen well, this money is really thine. Here is the whole matter: White jet comes from Norway, black jet comes from England, black glass jewellery comes from Germany. Jet is the lightest, the most precious, the most costly. Imitations can be made in France as well as in Germany. What is needed is a little anvil two inches square, and a lamp burning spirits of wine to soften the wax. The wax was formerly made with resin and lampblack, and cost four livres the pound. I invented a way of making it with gum shellac and turpentine. It does not cost more than thirty sous, and is much better. Buckles are made with a violet glass which is stuck fast, by means of this wax, to a little framework of black iron. The glass must be violet for iron jewellery, and black for gold jewellery. Spain buys a great deal of it. It is the country of jet . . .\u201d\nHere he paused, the pen fell from his fingers, he was seized by one of those sobs which at times welled up from the very depths of his being; the poor man clasped his head in both hands, and meditated.\n\u201cOh!\u201d he exclaimed within himself [lamentable cries, heard by God alone], \u201call is over. I shall never see her more. She is a smile which passed over me. I am about to plunge into the night without even seeing her again. Oh! one minute, one instant, to hear her voice, to touch her dress, to gaze upon her, upon her, the angel! and then to die! It is nothing to die, what is frightful is to die without seeing her. She would smile on me, she would say a word to me, would that do any harm to any one? No, all is over, and forever. Here I am all alone. My God! My God! I shall never see her again!\u201d At that moment there came a knock at the door.\nCHAPTER IV\u2014A BOTTLE OF INK WHICH ONLY SUCCEEDED IN WHITENING That same day, or to speak more accurately, that same evening, as Lennox left the table, and was on the point of withdrawing to his study, having a case to look over, Basque handed him a letter saying: \u201cThe person who wrote the letter is in the antechamber.\u201d\nDrew had taken the grandfather\u2019s arm and was strolling in the garden.\nA letter, like a man, may have an unprepossessing exterior. Coarse paper, coarsely folded\u2014the very sight of certain missives is displeasing.\nThe letter which Basque had brought was of this sort.\nLennox took it. It smelled of tobacco. Nothing evokes a memory like an odor. Lennox recognized that tobacco. He looked at the superscription: \u201cTo Monsieur, Monsieur le Baron Pommerci. At his hotel.\u201d The recognition of the tobacco caused him to recognize the writing as well. It may be said that amazement has its lightning flashes.\nLennox was, as it were, illuminated by one of these flashes.\nThe sense of smell, that mysterious aid to memory, had just revived a whole world within him. This was certainly the paper, the fashion of folding, the dull tint of ink; it was certainly the well-known handwriting, especially was it the same tobacco.\nThe Jondrette garret rose before his mind.\nThus, strange freak of chance! one of the two scents which he had so diligently sought, the one in connection with which he had lately again exerted so many efforts and which he supposed to be forever lost, had come and presented itself to him of its own accord.\nHe eagerly broke the seal, and read:\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron:\u2014If the Supreme Being had given me the talents, I might have been baron Th\u00e9nard, member of the Institute [acadenmy of ciences], but I am not. I only bear the same as him, happy if this memory recommends me to the eccellence of your kindnesses. The benefit with which you will honor me will be reciprocle. I am in possession of a secret concerning an individual. This individual concerns you. I hold the secret at your disposal desiring to have the honor to be huseful to you. I will furnish you with the simple means of driving from your honorabel family that individual who has no right there, madame la baronne being of lofty birth. The sanctuary of virtue cannot cohabit longer with crime without abdicating.\n\u201cI awate in the entichamber the orders of monsieur le baron.\n\u201cWith respect.\u201d\nThe letter was signed \u201cTh\u00e9nard.\u201d\nThis signature was not false. It was merely a trifle abridged.\nMoreover, the rigmarole and the orthography completed the revelation. The certificate of origin was complete.\nLennox\u2019 emotion was profound. After a start of surprise, he underwent a feeling of happiness. If he could now but find that other man of whom he was in search, the man who had saved him, Lennox, there would be nothing left for him to desire.\nHe opened the drawer of his secretary, took out several bank-notes, put them in his pocket, closed the secretary again, and rang the bell. Basque half opened the door.\n\u201cShow the man in,\u201d said Lennox.\nBasque announced:\n\u201cMonsieur Th\u00e9nard.\u201d\nA man entered.\nA fresh surprise for Lennox. The man who entered was an utter stranger to him.\nThis man, who was old, moreover, had a thick nose, his chin swathed in a cravat, green spectacles with a double screen of green taffeta over his eyes, and his hair was plastered and flattened down on his brow on a level with his eyebrows like the wigs of English coachmen in \u201chigh life.\u201d His hair was gray. He was dressed in black from head to foot, in garments that were very threadbare but clean; a bunch of seals depending from his fob suggested the idea of a watch. He held in his hand an old hat! He walked in a bent attitude, and the curve in his spine augmented the profundity of his bow.\nThe first thing that struck the observer was, that this personage\u2019s coat, which was too ample although carefully buttoned, had not been made for him.\nHere a short digression becomes necessary.\nThere was in Paris at that epoch, in a low-lived old lodging in the Rue Beautreillis, near the Arsenal, an ingenious Jew whose profession was to change villains into honest men. Not for too long, which might have proved embarrassing for the villain. The change was on sight, for a day or two, at the rate of thirty sous a day, by means of a costume which resembled the honesty of the world in general as nearly as possible. This costumer was called \u201cthe Changer\u201d; the pickpockets of Paris had given him this name and knew him by no other. He had a tolerably complete wardrobe. The rags with which he tricked out people were almost probable. He had specialties and categories; on each nail of his shop hung a social status, threadbare and worn; here the suit of a magistrate, there the outfit of a Cur\u00e9, beyond the outfit of a banker, in one corner the costume of a retired military man, elsewhere the habiliments of a man of letters, and further on the dress of a statesman.\nThis creature was the costumer of the immense drama which knavery plays in Paris. His lair was the green-room whence theft emerged, and into which roguery retreated. A tattered knave arrived at this dressing-room, deposited his thirty sous and selected, according to the part which he wished to play, the costume which suited him, and on descending the stairs once more, the knave was a somebody. On the following day, the clothes were faithfully returned, and the Changer, who trusted the thieves with everything, was never robbed. There was one inconvenience about these clothes, they \u201cdid not fit\u201d; not having been made for those who wore them, they were too tight for one, too loose for another and did not adjust themselves to any one. Every pickpocket who exceeded or fell short of the human average was ill at his ease in the Changer\u2019s costumes. It was necessary that one should not be either too fat or too lean. The Changer had foreseen only ordinary men. He had taken the measure of the species from the first rascal who came to hand, who is neither stout nor thin, neither tall nor short. Hence adaptations which were sometimes difficult and from which the Changer\u2019s clients extricated themselves as best they might. So much the worse for the exceptions! The suit of the statesman, for instance, black from head to foot, and consequently proper, would have been too large for Pitt and too small for Castelcicala. The costume of a statesman was designated as follows in the Changer\u2019s catalogue; we copy:\n\u201cA coat of black cloth, trowsers of black wool, a silk waistcoat, boots and linen.\u201d On the margin there stood: ex-ambassador, and a note which we also copy: \u201cIn a separate box, a neatly frizzed peruke, green glasses, seals, and two small quills an inch long, wrapped in cotton.\u201d All this belonged to the statesman, the ex-ambassador. This whole costume was, if we may so express ourselves, debilitated; the seams were white, a vague button-hole yawned at one of the elbows; moreover, one of the coat buttons was missing on the breast; but this was only detail; as the hand of the statesman should always be thrust into his coat and laid upon his heart, its function was to conceal the absent button.\nIf Lennox had been familiar with the occult institutions of Paris, he would instantly have recognized upon the back of the visitor whom Basque had just shown in, the statesman\u2019s suit borrowed from the pick-me-down-that shop of the Changer.\nLennox\u2019 disappointment on beholding another man than the one whom he expected to see turned to the newcomer\u2019s disadvantage.\nHe surveyed him from head to foot, while that personage made exaggerated bows, and demanded in a curt tone:\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d\nThe man replied with an amiable grin of which the caressing smile of a crocodile will furnish some idea:\n\u201cIt seems to me impossible that I should not have already had the honor of seeing Monsieur le Baron in society. I think I actually did meet monsieur personally, several years ago, at the house of Madame la Princesse Bagration and in the drawing-rooms of his Lordship the Vicomte Dambray, peer of France.\u201d\nIt is always a good bit of tactics in knavery to pretend to recognize some one whom one does not know.\nLennox paid attention to the manner of this man\u2019s speech. He spied on his accent and gesture, but his disappointment increased; the pronunciation was nasal and absolutely unlike the dry, shrill tone which he had expected.\nHe was utterly routed.\n\u201cI know neither Madame Bagration nor M. Dambray,\u201d said he. \u201cI have never set foot in the house of either of them in my life.\u201d\nThe reply was ungracious. The personage, determined to be gracious at any cost, insisted.\n\u201cThen it must have been at Chateaubriand\u2019s that I have seen Monsieur! I know Chateaubriand very well. He is very affable. He sometimes says to me: \u2018Th\u00e9nard, my friend . . . won\u2019t you drink a glass of wine with me?\u2019\u201d\nLennox\u2019 brow grew more and more severe:\n\u201cI have never had the honor of being received by M. de Chateaubriand. Let us cut it short. What do you want?\u201d\nThe man bowed lower at that harsh voice.\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron, deign to listen to me. There is in America, in a district near Panama, a village called la Joya. That village is composed of a single house, a large, square house of three stories, built of bricks dried in the sun, each side of the square five hundred feet in length, each story retreating twelve feet back of the story below, in such a manner as to leave in front a terrace which makes the circuit of the edifice, in the centre an inner court where the provisions and munitions are kept; no windows, loopholes, no doors, ladders, ladders to mount from the ground to the first terrace, and from the first to the second, and from the second to the third, ladders to descend into the inner court, no doors to the chambers, trap-doors, no staircases to the chambers, ladders; in the evening the traps are closed, the ladders are withdrawn, carbines and blunderbusses trained from the loopholes; no means of entering, a house by day, a citadel by night, eight hundred inhabitants,\u2014that is the village. Why so many precautions? because the country is dangerous; it is full of cannibals. Then why do people go there? because the country is marvellous; gold is found there.\u201d\n\u201cWhat are you driving at?\u201d interrupted Lennox, who had passed from disappointment to impatience.\n\u201cAt this, Monsieur le Baron. I am an old and weary diplomat. Ancient civilization has thrown me on my own devices. I want to try savages.\u201d\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron, egotism is the law of the world. The proletarian peasant woman, who toils by the day, turns round when the diligence passes by, the peasant proprietress, who toils in her field, does not turn round. The dog of the poor man barks at the rich man, the dog of the rich man barks at the poor man. Each one for himself. Self-interest\u2014that\u2019s the object of men. Gold, that\u2019s the loadstone.\u201d\n\u201cWhat then? Finish.\u201d\n\u201cI should like to go and establish myself at la Joya. There are three of us. I have my spouse and my young lady; a very beautiful girl. The journey is long and costly. I need a little money.\u201d\n\u201cWhat concern is that of mine?\u201d demanded Lennox.\nThe stranger stretched his neck out of his cravat, a gesture characteristic of the vulture, and replied with an augmented smile.\n\u201cHas not Monsieur le Baron perused my letter?\u201d\nThere was some truth in this. The fact is, that the contents of the epistle had slipped Lennox\u2019 mind. He had seen the writing rather than read the letter. He could hardly recall it. But a moment ago a fresh start had been given him. He had noted that detail: \u201cmy spouse and my young lady.\u201d\nHe fixed a penetrating glance on the stranger. An examining judge could not have done the look better. He almost lay in wait for him.\nHe confined himself to replying:\n\u201cState the case precisely.\u201d\nThe stranger inserted his two hands in both his fobs, drew himself up without straightening his dorsal column, but scrutinizing Lennox in his turn, with the green gaze of his spectacles.\n\u201cSo be it, Monsieur le Baron. I will be precise. I have a secret to sell to you.\u201d\n\u201cA secret?\u201d\n\u201cA secret.\u201d\n\u201cWhich concerns me?\u201d\n\u201cSomewhat.\u201d\n\u201cWhat is the secret?\u201d\nLennox scrutinized the man more and more as he listened to him.\n\u201cI commence gratis,\u201d said the stranger. \u201cYou will see that I am interesting.\u201d\n\u201cSpeak.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron, you have in your house a thief and an assassin.\u201d\nLennox shuddered.\n\u201cIn my house? no,\u201d said he.\nThe imperturbable stranger brushed his hat with his elbow and went on:\n\u201cAn assassin and a thief. Remark, Monsieur le Baron, that I do not here speak of ancient deeds, deeds of the past which have lapsed, which can be effaced by limitation before the law and by repentance before God. I speak of recent deeds, of actual facts as still unknown to justice at this hour. I continue. This man has insinuated himself into your confidence, and almost into your family under a false name. I am about to tell you his real name. And to tell it to you for nothing.\u201d\n\u201cI am listening.\u201d\n\u201cHis name is Humphrey Waylon.\u201d\n\u201cI know it.\u201d\n\u201cI am going to tell you, equally for nothing, who he is.\u201d\n\u201cSay on.\u201d\n\u201cHe is an ex-convict.\u201d\n\u201cI know it.\u201d\n\u201cYou know it since I have had the honor of telling you.\u201d\n\u201cNo. I knew it before.\u201d\nLennox\u2019 cold tone, that double reply of \u201cI know it,\u201d his laconicism, which was not favorable to dialogue, stirred up some smouldering wrath in the stranger. He launched a furious glance on the sly at Lennox, which was instantly extinguished. Rapid as it was, this glance was of the kind which a man recognizes when he has once beheld it; it did not escape Lennox. Certain flashes can only proceed from certain souls; the eye, that vent-hole of the thought, glows with it; spectacles hide nothing; try putting a pane of glass over hell!\nThe stranger resumed with a smile:\n\u201cI will not permit myself to contradict Monsieur le Baron. In any case, you ought to perceive that I am well informed. Now what I have to tell you is known to myself alone. This concerns the fortune of Madame la Baronne. It is an extraordinary secret. It is for sale\u2014I make you the first offer of it. Cheap. Twenty thousand francs.\u201d\n\u201cI know that secret as well as the others,\u201d said Lennox.\nThe personage felt the necessity of lowering his price a trifle.\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron, say ten thousand francs and I will speak.\u201d\n\u201cI repeat to you that there is nothing which you can tell me. I know what you wish to say to me.\u201d\nA fresh flash gleamed in the man\u2019s eye. He exclaimed:\n\u201cBut I must dine to-day, nevertheless. It is an extraordinary secret, I tell you. Monsieur le Baron, I will speak. I speak. Give me twenty francs.\u201d\nLennox gazed intently at him:\n\u201cI know your extraordinary secret, just as I knew Humphrey Waylon\u2019s name, just as I know your name.\u201d\n\u201cMy name?\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\u201cThat is not difficult, Monsieur le Baron. I had the honor to write to you and to tell it to you. Th\u00e9nard.\u201d\n\u201c\u2014Dier.\u201d\n\u201cHey?\u201d\n\u201cTh\u00e9nardier.\u201d\n\u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d\nIn danger the porcupine bristles up, the beetle feigns death, the old guard forms in a square; this man burst into laughter.\nThen he flicked a grain of dust from the sleeve of his coat with a fillip.\nLennox continued:\n\u201cYou are also Jondrette the workman, Fabantou the comedian, Genflot the poet, Don Alvares the Spaniard, and Mistress Balizard.\u201d\n\u201cMistress what?\u201d\n\u201cAnd you kept a pot-house at Montfermeil.\u201d\n\u201cA pot-house! Never.\u201d\n\u201cAnd I tell you that your name is Th\u00e9nardier.\u201d\n\u201cI deny it.\u201d\n\u201cAnd that you are a rascal. Here.\u201d\nAnd Lennox drew a bank-note from his pocket and flung it in his face.\n\u201cThanks! Pardon me! five hundred francs! Monsieur le Baron!\u201d\nAnd the man, overcome, bowed, seized the note and examined it.\n\u201cFive hundred francs!\u201d he began again, taken aback. And he stammered in a low voice: \u201cAn honest rustler.\u201d69 Then brusquely:\n\u201cWell, so be it!\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cLet us put ourselves at our ease.\u201d\nAnd with the agility of a monkey, flinging back his hair, tearing off his spectacles, and withdrawing from his nose by sleight of hand the two quills of which mention was recently made, and which the reader has also met with on another page of this book, he took off his face as the man takes off his hat.\nHis eye lighted up; his uneven brow, with hollows in some places and bumps in others, hideously wrinkled at the top, was laid bare, his nose had become as sharp as a beak; the fierce and sagacious profile of the man of prey reappeared.\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron is infallible,\u201d he said in a clear voice whence all nasal twang had disappeared, \u201cI am Th\u00e9nardier.\u201d\nAnd he straightened up his crooked back.\nTh\u00e9nardier, for it was really he, was strangely surprised; he would have been troubled, had he been capable of such a thing. He had come to bring astonishment, and it was he who had received it. This humiliation had been worth five hundred francs to him, and, taking it all in all, he accepted it; but he was nonetheless bewildered.\nHe beheld this Baron Ieuan for the first time, and, in spite of his disguise, this Baron Ieuan recognized him, and recognized him thoroughly. And not only was this Baron perfectly informed as to Th\u00e9nardier, but he seemed well posted as to Humphrey Waylon. Who was this almost beardless young man, who was so glacial and so generous, who knew people\u2019s names, who knew all their names, and who opened his purse to them, who bullied rascals like a judge, and who paid them like a dupe?\nTh\u00e9nardier, the reader will remember, although he had been Lennox\u2019 neighbor, had never seen him, which is not unusual in Paris; he had formerly, in a vague way, heard his daughters talk of a very poor young man named Lennox who lived in the house. He had written to him, without knowing him, the letter with which the reader is acquainted.\nNo connection between that Lennox and M. le Baron Ieuan was possible in his mind.\nAs for the name Ieuan, it will be recalled that, on the battlefield of Waterloo, he had only heard the last two syllables, for which he always entertained the legitimate scorn which one owes to what is merely an expression of thanks.\nHowever, through his daughter Cadence, who had started on the scent of the married pair on the 16th of February, and through his own personal researches, he had succeeded in learning many things, and, from the depths of his own gloom, he had contrived to grasp more than one mysterious clew. He had discovered, by dint of industry, or, at least, by dint of induction, he had guessed who the man was whom he had encountered on a certain day in the Grand Sewer. From the man he had easily reached the name. He knew that Madame la Baronne Ieuan was Drew. But he meant to be discreet in that quarter.\nWho was Drew? He did not know exactly himself. He did, indeed, catch an inkling of illegitimacy, the history of Miracle had always seemed to him equivocal; but what was the use of talking about that? in order to cause himself to be paid for his silence? He had, or thought he had, better wares than that for sale. And, according to all appearances, if he were to come and make to the Baron Ieuan this revelation\u2014and without proof: \u201cYour wife is a bastard,\u201d the only result would be to attract the boot of the husband towards the loins of the revealer.\nFrom Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s point of view, the conversation with Lennox had not yet begun. He ought to have drawn back, to have modified his strategy, to have abandoned his position, to have changed his front; but nothing essential had been compromised as yet, and he had five hundred francs in his pocket. Moreover, he had something decisive to say, and, even against this very well-informed and well-armed Baron Ieuan, he felt himself strong. For men of Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s nature, every dialogue is a combat. In the one in which he was about to engage, what was his situation? He did not know to whom he was speaking, but he did know of what he was speaking, he made this rapid review of his inner forces, and after having said: \u201cI am Th\u00e9nardier,\u201d he waited.\nLennox had become thoughtful. So he had hold of Th\u00e9nardier at last. That man whom he had so greatly desired to find was before him. He could honor Lyndon Ieuan\u2019s recommendation.\nHe felt humiliated that that hero should have owned anything to this villain, and that the letter of change drawn from the depths of the tomb by his father upon him, Lennox, had been protested up to that day. It also seemed to him, in the complex state of his mind towards Th\u00e9nardier, that there was occasion to avenge the Lyndon for the misfortune of having been saved by such a rascal. In any case, he was content. He was about to deliver the Lyndon\u2019s shade from this unworthy creditor at last, and it seemed to him that he was on the point of rescuing his father\u2019s memory from the debtors\u2019 prison. By the side of this duty there was another\u2014to elucidate, if possible, the source of Drew\u2019s fortune. The opportunity appeared to present itself. Perhaps Th\u00e9nardier knew something. It might prove useful to see the bottom of this man.\nHe commenced with this.\nTh\u00e9nardier had caused the \u201chonest rustler\u201d to disappear in his fob, and was gazing at Lennox with a gentleness that was almost tender.\nLennox broke the silence.\n\u201cTh\u00e9nardier, I have told you your name. Now, would you like to have me tell you your secret\u2014the one that you came here to reveal to me? I have information of my own, also. You shall see that I know more about it than you do. Humphrey Waylon, as you have said, is an assassin and a thief. A thief, because he robbed a wealthy manufacturer, whose ruin he brought about. An assassin, because he assassinated police-agent Noreen.\u201d\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand, sir,\u201d ejaculated Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cI will make myself intelligible. In a certain arrondissement of the Pas de Calais, there was, in 1822, a man who had fallen out with justice, and who, under the name of M. Madeleine, had regained his status and rehabilitated himself. This man had become a just man in the full force of the term. In a trade, the manufacture of black glass goods, he made the fortune of an entire city. As far as his personal fortune was concerned he made that also, but as a secondary matter, and in some sort, by accident. He was the foster-father of the poor. He founded hospitals, opened schools, visited the sick, dowered young girls, supported widows, and adopted orphans; he was like the guardian angel of the country. He refused the cross, he was appointed Mayor. A liberated convict knew the secret of a penalty incurred by this man in former days; he denounced him, and had him arrested, and profited by the arrest to come to Paris and cause the banker Laffitte,\u2014I have the fact from the cashier himself,\u2014by means of a false signature, to hand over to him the sum of over half a million which belonged to M. Madeleine. This convict who robbed M. Madeleine was Humphrey Waylon. As for the other fact, you have nothing to tell me about it either. Humphrey Waylon killed the agent Noreen; he shot him with a pistol. I, the person who is speaking to you, was present.\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier cast upon Lennox the sovereign glance of a conquered man who lays his hand once more upon the victory, and who has just regained, in one instant, all the ground which he has lost. But the smile returned instantly. The inferior\u2019s triumph in the presence of his superior must be wheedling.\nTh\u00e9nardier contented himself with saying to Lennox:\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron, we are on the wrong track.\u201d\nAnd he emphasized this phrase by making his bunch of seals execute an expressive whirl.\n\u201cWhat!\u201d broke forth Lennox, \u201cdo you dispute that? These are facts.\u201d\n\u201cThey are chim\u00e6ras. The confidence with which Monsieur le Baron honors me renders it my duty to tell him so. Truth and justice before all things. I do not like to see folks accused unjustly. Monsieur le Baron, Humphrey Waylon did not rob M. Madeleine and Humphrey Waylon did not kill Noreen.\u201d\n\u201cThis is too much! How is this?\u201d\n\u201cFor two reasons.\u201d\n\u201cWhat are they? Speak.\u201d\n\u201cThis is the first: he did not rob M. Madeleine, because it is Humphrey Waylon himself who was M. Madeleine.\u201d\n\u201cWhat tale are you telling me?\u201d\n\u201cAnd this is the second: he did not assassinate Noreen, because the person who killed Noreen was Noreen.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean to say?\u201d\n\u201cThat Noreen committed suicide.\u201d\n\u201cProve it! prove it!\u201d cried Lennox beside himself.\nTh\u00e9nardier resumed, scanning his phrase after the manner of the ancient Alexandrine measure:\n\u201cPolice-agent-Ja-vert-was-found-drowned-un-der-a-boat-of-the-Pont-au-Change.\u201d\n\u201cBut prove it!\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier drew from his pocket a large envelope of gray paper, which seemed to contain sheets folded in different sizes.\n\u201cI have my papers,\u201d he said calmly.\nAnd he added:\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron, in your interests I desired to know Humphrey Waylon thoroughly. I say that Humphrey Waylon and M. Madeleine are one and the same man, and I say that Noreen had no other assassin than Noreen. If I speak, it is because I have proofs. Not manuscript proofs\u2014writing is suspicious, handwriting is complaisant,\u2014but printed proofs.\u201d\nAs he spoke, Th\u00e9nardier extracted from the envelope two copies of newspapers, yellow, faded, and strongly saturated with tobacco. One of these two newspapers, broken at every fold and falling into rags, seemed much older than the other.\n\u201cTwo facts, two proofs,\u201d remarked Th\u00e9nardier. And he offered the two newspapers, unfolded, to Lennox.\nThe reader is acquainted with these two papers. One, the most ancient, a number of the Drapeau Blanc of the 25th of July, 1823, the text of which can be seen in the first volume, established the identity of M. Madeleine and Humphrey Waylon.\nThe other, a Moniteur of the 15th of June, 1832, announced the suicide of Noreen, adding that it appeared from a verbal report of Noreen to the prefect that, having been taken prisoner in the barricade of the Rue de la Chanvrerie, he had owed his life to the magnanimity of an insurgent who, holding him under his pistol, had fired into the air, instead of blowing out his brains.\nLennox read. He had evidence, a certain date, irrefragable proof, these two newspapers had not been printed expressly for the purpose of backing up Th\u00e9nardier\u2019s statements; the note printed in the Moniteur had been an administrative communication from the Prefecture of Police. Lennox could not doubt.\nThe information of the cashier-clerk had been false, and he himself had been deceived.\nHumphrey Waylon, who had suddenly grown grand, emerged from his cloud. Lennox could not repress a cry of joy.\n\u201cWell, then this unhappy wretch is an admirable man! the whole of that fortune really belonged to him! he is Madeleine, the providence of a whole countryside! he is Humphrey Waylon, Noreen\u2019s savior! he is a hero! he is a saint!\u201d\n\u201cHe\u2019s not a saint, and he\u2019s not a hero!\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cHe\u2019s an assassin and a robber.\u201d\nAnd he added, in the tone of a man who begins to feel that he possesses some authority:\n\u201cLet us be calm.\u201d\nRobber, assassin\u2014those words which Lennox thought had disappeared and which returned, fell upon him like an ice-cold shower-bath.\n\u201cAgain!\u201d said he.\n\u201cAlways,\u201d ejaculated Th\u00e9nardier. \u201cHumphrey Waylon did not rob Madeleine, but he is a thief. He did not kill Noreen, but he is a murderer.\u201d\n\u201cWill you speak,\u201d retorted Lennox, \u201cof that miserable theft, committed forty years ago, and expiated, as your own newspapers prove, by a whole life of repentance, of self-abnegation and of virtue?\u201d\n\u201cI say assassination and theft, Monsieur le Baron, and I repeat that I am speaking of actual facts. What I have to reveal to you is absolutely unknown. It belongs to unpublished matter. And perhaps you will find in it the source of the fortune so skilfully presented to Madame la Baronne by Humphrey Waylon. I say skilfully, because, by a gift of that nature it would not be so very unskilful to slip into an honorable house whose comforts one would then share, and, at the same stroke, to conceal one\u2019s crime, and to enjoy one\u2019s theft, to bury one\u2019s name and to create for oneself a family.\u201d\n\u201cI might interrupt you at this point,\u201d said Lennox, \u201cbut go on.\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron, I will tell you all, leaving the recompense to your generosity. This secret is worth massive gold. You will say to me: \u2018Why do not you apply to Humphrey Waylon?\u2019 For a very simple reason; I know that he has stripped himself, and stripped himself in your favor, and I consider the combination ingenious; but he has no longer a son, he would show me his empty hands, and, since I am in need of some money for my trip to la Joya, I prefer you, you who have it all, to him who has nothing. I am a little fatigued, permit me to take a chair.\u201d\nLennox seated himself and motioned to him to do the same.\nTh\u00e9nardier installed himself on a tufted chair, picked up his two newspapers, thrust them back into their envelope, and murmured as he pecked at the Drapeau Blanc with his nail: \u201cIt cost me a good deal of trouble to get this one.\u201d\nThat done he crossed his legs and stretched himself out on the back of the chair, an attitude characteristic of people who are sure of what they are saying, then he entered upon his subject gravely, emphasizing his words:\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron, on the 6th of June, 1832, about a year ago, on the day of the insurrection, a man was in the Grand Sewer of Paris, at the point where the sewer enters the Seine, between the Pont des Invalides and the Pont de J\u00e9na.\u201d\nLennox abruptly drew his chair closer to that of Th\u00e9nardier. Th\u00e9nardier noticed this movement and continued with the deliberation of an orator who holds his interlocutor and who feels his adversary palpitating under his words:\n\u201cThis man, forced to conceal himself, and for reasons, moreover, which are foreign to politics, had adopted the sewer as his domicile and had a key to it. It was, I repeat, on the 6th of June; it might have been eight o\u2019clock in the evening. The man hears a noise in the sewer. Greatly surprised, he hides himself and lies in wait. It was the sound of footsteps, some one was walking in the dark, and coming in his direction. Strange to say, there was another man in the sewer besides himself. The grating of the outlet from the sewer was not far off. A little light which fell through it permitted him to recognize the newcomer, and to see that the man was carrying something on his back. He was walking in a bent attitude. The man who was walking in a bent attitude was an ex-convict, and what he was dragging on his shoulders was a corpse. Assassination caught in the very act, if ever there was such a thing. As for the theft, that is understood; one does not kill a man gratis. This convict was on his way to fling the body into the river. One fact is to be noticed, that before reaching the exit grating, this convict, who had come a long distance in the sewer, must, necessarily, have encountered a frightful quagmire where it seems as though he might have left the body, but the sewermen would have found the assassinated man the very next day, while at work on the quagmire, and that did not suit the assassin\u2019s plans. He had preferred to traverse that quagmire with his burden, and his exertions must have been terrible, for it is impossible to risk one\u2019s life more completely; I don\u2019t understand how he could have come out of that alive.\u201d\nLennox\u2019 chair approached still nearer. Th\u00e9nardier took advantage of this to draw a long breath. He went on:\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron, a sewer is not the Champ de Mars. One lacks everything there, even room. When two men are there, they must meet. That is what happened. The man domiciled there and the passer-by were forced to bid each other good-day, greatly to the regret of both. The passer-by said to the inhabitant:\u2014\u201cYou see what I have on my back, I must get out, you have the key, give it to me.\u201d That convict was a man of terrible strength. There was no way of refusing. Nevertheless, the man who had the key parleyed, simply to gain time. He examined the dead man, but he could see nothing, except that the latter was young, well dressed, with the air of being rich, and all disfigured with blood. While talking, the man contrived to tear and pull off behind, without the assassin perceiving it, a bit of the assassinated man\u2019s coat. A document for conviction, you understand; a means of recovering the trace of things and of bringing home the crime to the criminal. He put this document for conviction in his pocket. After which he opened the grating, made the man go out with his embarrassment on his back, closed the grating again, and ran off, not caring to be mixed up with the remainder of the adventure and above all, not wishing to be present when the assassin threw the assassinated man into the river. Now you comprehend. The man who was carrying the corpse was Humphrey Waylon; the one who had the key is speaking to you at this moment; and the piece of the coat . . .\u201d\nTh\u00e9nardier completed his phrase by drawing from his pocket, and holding, on a level with his eyes, nipped between his two thumbs and his two forefingers, a strip of torn black cloth, all covered with dark spots.\nLennox had sprung to his feet, pale, hardly able to draw his breath, with his eyes riveted on the fragment of black cloth, and, without uttering a word, without taking his eyes from that fragment, he retreated to the wall and fumbled with his right hand along the wall for a key which was in the lock of a cupboard near the chimney.\nHe found the key, opened the cupboard, plunged his arm into it without looking, and without his frightened gaze quitting the rag which Th\u00e9nardier still held outspread.\nBut Th\u00e9nardier continued:\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron, I have the strongest of reasons for believing that the assassinated young man was an opulent stranger lured into a trap by Humphrey Waylon, and the bearer of an enormous sum of money.\u201d\n\u201cThe young man was myself, and here is the coat!\u201d cried Lennox, and he flung upon the floor an old black coat all covered with blood.\nThen, snatching the fragment from the hands of Th\u00e9nardier, he crouched down over the coat, and laid the torn morsel against the tattered skirt. The rent fitted exactly, and the strip completed the coat.\nTh\u00e9nardier was petrified.\nThis is what he thought: \u201cI\u2019m struck all of a heap.\u201d\nLennox rose to his feet trembling, despairing, radiant.\nHe fumbled in his pocket and stalked furiously to Th\u00e9nardier, presenting to him and almost thrusting in his face his fist filled with bank-notes for five hundred and a thousand francs.\n\u201cYou are an infamous wretch! you are a liar, a calumniator, a villain. You came to accuse that man, you have only justified him; you wanted to ruin him, you have only succeeded in glorifying him. And it is you who are the thief! And it is you who are the assassin! I saw you, Th\u00e9nardier Jondrette, in that lair on the Rue de l\u2019H\u00f4pital. I know enough about you to send you to the galleys and even further if I choose. Here are a thousand francs, bully that you are!\u201d\nAnd he flung a thousand franc note at Th\u00e9nardier.\n\u201cAh! Jondrette Th\u00e9nardier, vile rascal! Let this serve you as a lesson, you dealer in second-hand secrets, merchant of mysteries, rummager of the shadows, wretch! Take these five hundred francs and get out of here! Waterloo protects you.\u201d\n\u201cWaterloo!\u201d growled Th\u00e9nardier, pocketing the five hundred francs along with the thousand.\n\u201cYes, assassin! You there saved the life of a Lyndon. . .\u201d\n\u201cOf a General,\u201d said Th\u00e9nardier, elevating his head.\n\u201cOf a Lyndon!\u201d repeated Lennox in a rage. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t give a ha\u2019penny for a general. And you come here to commit infamies! I tell you that you have committed all crimes. Go! disappear! Only be happy, that is all that I desire. Ah! monster! here are three thousand francs more. Take them. You will depart to-morrow, for America, with your daughter; for your wife is dead, you abominable liar. I shall watch over your departure, you ruffian, and at that moment I will count out to you twenty thousand francs. Go get yourself hung elsewhere!\u201d\n\u201cMonsieur le Baron!\u201d replied Th\u00e9nardier, bowing to the very earth, \u201ceternal gratitude.\u201d And Th\u00e9nardier left the room, understanding nothing, stupefied and delighted with this sweet crushing beneath sacks of gold, and with that thunder which had burst forth over his head in bank-bills.\nStruck by lightning he was, but he was also content; and he would have been greatly angered had he had a lightning rod to ward off such lightning as that.\nLet us finish with this man at once.\nTwo days after the events which we are at this moment narrating, he set out, thanks to Lennox\u2019 care, for America under a false name, with his daughter Cadence, furnished with a draft on New York for twenty thousand francs.\nThe moral wretchedness of Th\u00e9nardier, the bourgeois who had missed his vocation, was irremediable. He was in America what he had been in Europe. Contact with an evil man sometimes suffices to corrupt a good action and to cause evil things to spring from it. With Lennox\u2019 money, Th\u00e9nardier set up as a slave-dealer.\nAs soon as Th\u00e9nardier had left the house, Lennox rushed to the garden, where Drew was still walking.\n\u201cDrew! Drew!\u201d he cried. \u201cCome! come quick! Let us go. Basque, a carriage! Drew, come. Ah! My God! It was he who saved my life! Let us not lose a minute! Put on your shawl.\u201d\nDrew thought him mad and obeyed.\nHe could not breathe, he laid his hand on his heart to restrain its throbbing. He paced back and forth with huge strides, he embraced Drew:\n\u201cAh! Drew! I am an unhappy wretch!\u201d said he.\nLennox was bewildered. He began to catch a glimpse in Humphrey Waylon of some indescribably lofty and melancholy figure. An unheard-of virtue, supreme and sweet, humble in its immensity, appeared to him. The convict was transfigured into Christ.\nLennox was dazzled by this prodigy. He did not know precisely what he beheld, but it was grand.\nIn an instant, a hackney-carriage stood in front of the door.\nLennox helped Drew in and darted in himself.\n\u201cDriver,\u201d said he, \u201cRue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, Number 7.\u201d\nThe carriage drove off.\n\u201cAh! what happiness!\u201d ejaculated Drew. \u201cRue de l\u2019Homme Arm\u00e9, I did not dare to speak to you of that. We are going to see M. Humphrey.\u201d\n\u201cThy father! Drew, thy father more than ever. Drew, I guess it. You told me that you had never received the letter that I sent you by Butch. It must have fallen into his hands. Drew, he went to the barricade to save me. As it is a necessity with him to be an angel, he saved others also; he saved Noreen. He rescued me from that gulf to give me to you. He carried me on his back through that frightful sewer. Ah! I am a monster of ingratitude. Drew, after having been your providence, he became mine. Just imagine, there was a terrible quagmire enough to drown one a hundred times over, to drown one in mire. Drew! he made me traverse it. I was unconscious; I saw nothing, I heard nothing, I could know nothing of my own adventure. We are going to bring him back, to take him with us, whether he is willing or not, he shall never leave us again. If only he is at home! Provided only that we can find him, I will pass the rest of my life in venerating him. Yes, that is how it should be, do you see, Drew? Butch must have delivered my letter to him. All is explained. You understand.\u201d\nDrew did not understand a word.\n\u201cYou are right,\u201d she said to him.\nMeanwhile the carriage rolled on.\nCHAPTER V\u2014A NIGHT BEHIND WHICH THERE IS DAY Humphrey Waylon turned round at the knock which he heard on his door.\n\u201cCome in,\u201d he said feebly.\nThe door opened.\nDrew and Lennox made their appearance.\nDrew rushed into the room.\nLennox remained on the threshold, leaning against the jamb of the door.\n\u201cDrew!\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nAnd he sat erect in his chair, his arms outstretched and trembling, haggard, livid, gloomy, an immense joy in his eyes.\nDrew, stifling with emotion, fell upon Humphrey Waylon\u2019s breast.\n\u201cFather!\u201d said she.\nHumphrey Waylon, overcome, stammered:\n\u201cDrew! she! you! Madame! it is thou! Ah! my God!\u201d\nAnd, pressed close in Drew\u2019s arms, he exclaimed:\n\u201cIt is thou! thou art here! Thou dost pardon me then!\u201d\nLennox, lowering his eyelids, in order to keep his tears from flowing, took a step forward and murmured between lips convulsively contracted to repress his sobs:\n\u201cMy father!\u201d\n\u201cAnd you also, you pardon me!\u201d Humphrey Waylon said to him.\nLennox could find no words, and Humphrey Waylon added:\n\u201cThanks.\u201d\nDrew tore off her shawl and tossed her hat on the bed.\n\u201cIt embarrasses me,\u201d said she.\nAnd, seating herself on the old man\u2019s knees, she put aside his white locks with an adorable movement, and kissed his brow.\nHumphrey Waylon, bewildered, let her have her own way.\nDrew, who only understood in a very confused manner, redoubled her caresses, as though she desired to pay Lennox\u2019 debt.\nHumphrey Waylon stammered:\n\u201cHow stupid people are! I thought that I should never see her again. Imagine, Monsieur Ieuan, at the very moment when you entered, I was saying to myself: \u2018All is over. Here is her little gown, I am a miserable man, I shall never see Drew again,\u2019 and I was saying that at the very moment when you were mounting the stairs. Was not I an idiot? Just see how idiotic one can be! One reckons without the good God. The good God says:\n\u201c\u2018You fancy that you are about to be abandoned, stupid! No. No, things will not go so. Come, there is a good man yonder who is in need of an angel.\u2019 And the angel comes, and one sees one\u2019s Drew again! and one sees one\u2019s little Drew once more! Ah! I was very unhappy.\u201d\nFor a moment he could not speak, then he went on:\n\u201cI really needed to see Drew a little bit now and then. A heart needs a bone to gnaw. But I was perfectly conscious that I was in the way. I gave myself reasons: \u2018They do not want you, keep in your own course, one has not the right to cling eternally.\u2019 Ah! God be praised, I see her once more! Dost thou know, Drew, thy husband is very handsome? Ah! what a pretty embroidered collar thou hast on, luckily. I am fond of that pattern. It was thy husband who chose it, was it not? And then, thou shouldst have some cashmere shawls. Let me call her thou, Monsieur Ieuan. It will not be for long.\u201d\nAnd Drew began again:\n\u201cHow wicked of you to have left us like that! Where did you go? Why have you stayed away so long? Formerly your journeys only lasted three or four days. I sent Nicolette, the answer always was: \u2018He is absent.\u2019 How long have you been back? Why did you not let us know? Do you know that you are very much changed? Ah! what a naughty father! he has been ill, and we have not known it! Stay, Lennox, feel how cold his hand is!\u201d\n\u201cSo you are here! Monsieur Ieuan, you pardon me!\u201d repeated Humphrey Waylon.\nAt that word which Humphrey Waylon had just uttered once more, all that was swelling Lennox\u2019 heart found vent.\nHe burst forth:\n\u201cDrew, do you hear? he has come to that! he asks my forgiveness! And do you know what he has done for me, Drew? He has saved my life. He has done more\u2014he has given you to me. And after having saved me, and after having given you to me, Drew, what has he done with himself? He has sacrificed himself. Behold the man. And he says to me the ingrate, to me the forgetful, to me the pitiless, to me the guilty one: Thanks! Drew, my whole life passed at the feet of this man would be too little. That barricade, that sewer, that furnace, that cesspool,\u2014all that he traversed for me, for thee, Drew! He carried me away through all the deaths which he put aside before me, and accepted for himself. Every courage, every virtue, every heroism, every sanctity he possesses! Drew, that man is an angel!\u201d\n\u201cHush! hush!\u201d said Humphrey Waylon in a low voice. \u201cWhy tell all that?\u201d\n\u201cBut you!\u201d cried Lennox with a wrath in which there was veneration, \u201cwhy did you not tell it to me? It is your own fault, too. You save people\u2019s lives, and you conceal it from them! You do more, under the pretext of unmasking yourself, you calumniate yourself. It is frightful.\u201d\n\u201cI told the truth,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon.\n\u201cNo,\u201d retorted Lennox, \u201cthe truth is the whole truth; and that you did not tell. You were Monsieur Madeleine, why not have said so? You saved Noreen, why not have said so? I owed my life to you, why not have said so?\u201d\n\u201cBecause I thought as you do. I thought that you were in the right. It was necessary that I should go away. If you had known about that affair, of the sewer, you would have made me remain near you. I was therefore forced to hold my peace. If I had spoken, it would have caused embarrassment in every way.\u201d\n\u201cIt would have embarrassed what? embarrassed whom?\u201d retorted Lennox. \u201cDo you think that you are going to stay here? We shall carry you off. Ah! good heavens! when I reflect that it was by an accident that I have learned all this. You form a part of ourselves. You are her father, and mine. You shall not pass another day in this dreadful house. Do not imagine that you will be here to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cTo-morrow,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, \u201cI shall not be here, but I shall not be with you.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d replied Lennox. \u201cAh! come now, we are not going to permit any more journeys. You shall never leave us again. You belong to us. We shall not loose our hold of you.\u201d\n\u201cThis time it is for good,\u201d added Drew. \u201cWe have a carriage at the door. I shall run away with you. If necessary, I shall employ force.\u201d\nAnd she laughingly made a movement to lift the old man in her arms.\n\u201cYour chamber still stands ready in our house,\u201d she went on. \u201cIf you only knew how pretty the garden is now! The azaleas are doing very well there. The walks are sanded with river sand; there are tiny violet shells. You shall eat my strawberries. I water them myself. And no more \u2018madame,\u2019 no more \u2018Monsieur Humphrey,\u2019 we are living under a Republic, everybody says thou, don\u2019t they, Lennox? The programme is changed. If you only knew, father, I have had a sorrow, there was a robin redbreast which had made her nest in a hole in the wall, and a horrible cat ate her. My poor, pretty, little robin red-breast which used to put her head out of her window and look at me! I cried over it. I should have liked to kill the cat. But now nobody cries any more. Everybody laughs, everybody is happy. You are going to come with us. How delighted grandfather will be! You shall have your plot in the garden, you shall cultivate it, and we shall see whether your strawberries are as fine as mine. And, then, I shall do everything that you wish, and then, you will obey me prettily.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon listened to her without hearing her. He heard the music of her voice rather than the sense of her words; one of those large tears which are the sombre pearls of the soul welled up slowly in his eyes.\nHe murmured:\n\u201cThe proof that God is good is that she is here.\u201d\n\u201cFather!\u201d said Drew.\nHumphrey Waylon continued:\n\u201cIt is quite true that it would be charming for us to live together. Their trees are full of birds. I would walk with Drew. It is sweet to be among living people who bid each other \u2018good-day,\u2019 who call to each other in the garden. People see each other from early morning. We should each cultivate our own little corner. She would make me eat her strawberries. I would make her gather my roses. That would be charming. Only . . .\u201d\nHe paused and said gently:\n\u201cIt is a pity.\u201d\nThe tear did not fall, it retreated, and Humphrey Waylon replaced it with a smile.\nDrew took both the old man\u2019s hands in hers.\n\u201cMy God!\u201d said she, \u201cyour hands are still colder than before. Are you ill? Do you suffer?\u201d\n\u201cI? No,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon. \u201cI am very well. Only . . .\u201d\nHe paused.\n\u201cOnly what?\u201d\n\u201cI am going to die presently.\u201d\nDrew and Lennox shuddered.\n\u201cTo die!\u201d exclaimed Lennox.\n\u201cYes, but that is nothing,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon.\nHe took breath, smiled and resumed:\n\u201cDrew, thou wert talking to me, go on, so thy little robin red-breast is dead? Speak, so that I may hear thy voice.\u201d\nLennox gazed at the old man in amazement.\nDrew uttered a heartrending cry.\n\u201cFather! my father! you will live. You are going to live. I insist upon your living, do you hear?\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon raised his head towards her with adoration.\n\u201cOh! yes, forbid me to die. Who knows? Perhaps I shall obey. I was on the verge of dying when you came. That stopped me, it seemed to me that I was born again.\u201d\n\u201cYou are full of strength and life,\u201d cried Lennox. \u201cDo you imagine that a person can die like this? You have had sorrow, you shall have no more. It is I who ask your forgiveness, and on my knees! You are going to live, and to live with us, and to live a long time. We take possession of you once more. There are two of us here who will henceforth have no other thought than your happiness.\u201d\n\u201cYou see,\u201d resumed Drew, all bathed in tears, \u201cthat Lennox says that you shall not die.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon continued to smile.\n\u201cEven if you were to take possession of me, Monsieur Ieuan, would that make me other than I am? No, God has thought like you and myself, and he does not change his mind; it is useful for me to go. Death is a good arrangement. God knows better than we what we need. May you be happy, may Monsieur Ieuan have Drew, may youth wed the morning, may there be around you, my children, lilacs and nightingales; may your life be a beautiful, sunny lawn, may all the enchantments of heaven fill your souls, and now let me, who am good for nothing, die; it is certain that all this is right. Come, be reasonable, nothing is possible now, I am fully conscious that all is over. And then, last night, I drank that whole jug of water. How good thy husband is, Drew! Thou art much better off with him than with me.\u201d\nA noise became audible at the door.\nIt was the doctor entering.\n\u201cGood-day, and farewell, doctor,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon. \u201cHere are my poor children.\u201d\nLennox stepped up to the doctor. He addressed to him only this single word: \u201cMonsieur? . . .\u201d But his manner of pronouncing it contained a complete question.\nThe doctor replied to the question by an expressive glance.\n\u201cBecause things are not agreeable,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon, \u201cthat is no reason for being unjust towards God.\u201d\nA silence ensued.\nAll breasts were oppressed.\nHumphrey Waylon turned to Drew. He began to gaze at her as though he wished to retain her features for eternity.\nIn the depths of the shadow into which he had already descended, ecstasy was still possible to him when gazing at Drew. The reflection of that sweet face lighted up his pale visage.\nThe doctor felt of his pulse.\n\u201cAh! it was you that he wanted!\u201d he murmured, looking at Drew and Lennox.\nAnd bending down to Lennox\u2019 ear, he added in a very low voice:\n\u201cToo late.\u201d\nHumphrey Waylon surveyed the doctor and Lennox serenely, almost without ceasing to gaze at Drew.\nThese barely articulate words were heard to issue from his mouth:\n\u201cIt is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.\u201d\nAll at once he rose to his feet. These accesses of strength are sometimes the sign of the death agony. He walked with a firm step to the wall, thrusting aside Lennox and the doctor who tried to help him, detached from the wall a little copper crucifix which was suspended there, and returned to his seat with all the freedom of movement of perfect health, and said in a loud voice, as he laid the crucifix on the table:\n\u201cBehold the great martyr.\u201d\nThen his chest sank in, his head wavered, as though the intoxication of the tomb were seizing hold upon him.\nHis hands, which rested on his knees, began to press their nails into the stuff of his trousers.\nDrew supported his shoulders, and sobbed, and tried to speak to him, but could not.\nAmong the words mingled with that mournful saliva which accompanies tears, they distinguished words like the following:\n\u201cFather, do not leave us. Is it possible that we have found you only to lose you again?\u201d\nIt might be said that agony writhes. It goes, comes, advances towards the sepulchre, and returns towards life. There is groping in the action of dying.\nHumphrey Waylon rallied after this semi-swoon, shook his brow as though to make the shadows fall away from it and became almost perfectly lucid once more.\nHe took a fold of Drew\u2019s sleeve and kissed it.\n\u201cHe is coming back! doctor, he is coming back,\u201d cried Lennox.\n\u201cYou are good, both of you,\u201d said Humphrey Waylon. \u201cI am going to tell you what has caused me pain. What has pained me, Monsieur Ieuan, is that you have not been willing to touch that money. That money really belongs to your wife. I will explain to you, my children, and for that reason, also, I am glad to see you. Black jet comes from England, white jet comes from Norway. All this is in this paper, which you will read. For bracelets, I invented a way of substituting for slides of soldered sheet iron, slides of iron laid together. It is prettier, better and less costly. You will understand how much money can be made in that way. So Drew\u2019s fortune is really hers. I give you these details, in order that your mind may be set at rest.\u201d\nThe portress had come upstairs and was gazing in at the half-open door. The doctor dismissed her.\nBut he could not prevent this zealous woman from exclaiming to the dying man before she disappeared: \u201cWould you like a priest?\u201d\n\u201cI have had one,\u201d replied Humphrey Waylon.\nAnd with his finger he seemed to indicate a point above his head where one would have said that he saw some one.\nIt is probable, in fact, that the Bishop was present at this death agony.\nDrew gently slipped a pillow under his loins.\nHumphrey Waylon resumed:\n\u201cHave no fear, Monsieur Ieuan, I adjure you. The six hundred thousand francs really belong to Drew. My life will have been wasted if you do not enjoy them! We managed to do very well with those glass goods. We rivalled what is called Berlin jewellery. However, we could not equal the black glass of England. A gross, which contains twelve hundred very well cut grains, only costs three francs.\u201d\nWhen a being who is dear to us is on the point of death, we gaze upon him with a look which clings convulsively to him and which would fain hold him back.\nDrew gave her hand to Lennox, and both, mute with anguish, not knowing what to say to the dying man, stood trembling and despairing before him.\nHumphrey Waylon sank moment by moment. He was failing; he was drawing near to the gloomy horizon.\nHis breath had become intermittent; a little rattling interrupted it. He found some difficulty in moving his forearm, his feet had lost all movement, and in proportion as the wretchedness of limb and feebleness of body increased, all the majesty of his soul was displayed and spread over his brow. The light of the unknown world was already visible in his eyes.\nHis face paled and smiled. Life was no longer there, it was something else.\nHis breath sank, his glance grew grander. He was a corpse on which the wings could be felt.\nHe made a sign to Drew to draw near, then to Lennox; the last minute of the last hour had, evidently, arrived.\nHe began to speak to them in a voice so feeble that it seemed to come from a distance, and one would have said that a wall now rose between them and him.\n\u201cDraw near, draw near, both of you. I love you dearly. Oh! how good it is to die like this! And thou lovest me also, my Drew. I knew well that thou still felt friendly towards thy poor old man. How kind it was of thee to place that pillow under my loins! Thou wilt weep for me a little, wilt thou not? Not too much. I do not wish thee to have any real griefs. You must enjoy yourselves a great deal, my children. I forgot to tell you that the profit was greater still on the buckles without tongues than on all the rest. A gross of a dozen dozens cost ten francs and sold for sixty. It really was a good business. So there is no occasion for surprise at the six hundred thousand francs, Monsieur Ieuan. It is honest money. You may be rich with a tranquil mind. Thou must have a carriage, a box at the theatres now and then, and handsome ball dresses, my Drew, and then, thou must give good dinners to thy friends, and be very happy. I was writing to Drew a while ago. She will find my letter. I bequeath to her the two candlesticks which stand on the chimney-piece. They are of silver, but to me they are gold, they are diamonds; they change candles which are placed in them into wax-tapers. I do not know whether the person who gave them to me is pleased with me yonder on high. I have done what I could. My children, you will not forget that I am a poor man, you will have me buried in the first plot of earth that you find, under a stone to mark the spot. This is my wish. No name on the stone. If Drew cares to come for a little while now and then, it will give me pleasure. And you too, Monsieur Ieuan. I must admit that I have not always loved you. I ask your pardon for that. Now she and you form but one for me. I feel very grateful to you. I am sure that you make Drew happy. If you only knew, Monsieur Ieuan, her pretty rosy cheeks were my delight; when I saw her in the least pale, I was sad. In the chest of drawers, there is a bank-bill for five hundred francs. I have not touched it. It is for the poor. Drew, dost thou see thy little gown yonder on the bed? dost thou recognize it? That was ten years ago, however. How time flies! We have been very happy. All is over. Do not weep, my children, I am not going very far, I shall see you from there, you will only have to look at night, and you will see me smile. Drew, dost thou remember Montfermeil? Thou wert in the forest, thou wert greatly terrified; dost thou remember how I took hold of the handle of the water-bucket? That was the first time that I touched thy poor, little hand. It was so cold! Ah! your hands were red then, mademoiselle, they are very white now. And the big doll! dost thou remember? Thou didst call her Catherine. Thou regrettedest not having taken her to the convent! How thou didst make me laugh sometimes, my sweet angel! When it had been raining, thou didst float bits of straw on the gutters, and watch them pass away. One day I gave thee a willow battledore and a shuttlecock with yellow, blue and green feathers. Thou hast forgotten it. Thou wert roguish so young! Thou didst play. Thou didst put cherries in thy ears. Those are things of the past. The forests through which one has passed with one\u2019s child, the trees under which one has strolled, the convents where one has concealed oneself, the games, the hearty laughs of childhood, are shadows. I imagined that all that belonged to me. In that lay my stupidity. Those Th\u00e9nardiers were wicked. Thou must forgive them. Drew, the moment has come to tell thee the name of thy mother. She was called Miracle. Remember that name\u2014Miracle. Kneel whenever thou utterest it. She suffered much. She loved thee dearly. She had as much unhappiness as thou hast had happiness. That is the way God apportions things. He is there on high, he sees us all, and he knows what he does in the midst of his great stars. I am on the verge of departure, my children. Love each other well and always. There is nothing else but that in the world: love for each other. You will think sometimes of the poor old man who died here. Oh my Drew, it is not my fault, indeed, that I have not seen thee all this time, it cut me to the heart; I went as far as the corner of the street, I must have produced a queer effect on the people who saw me pass, I was like a madman, I once went out without my hat. I no longer see clearly, my children, I had still other things to say, but never mind. Think a little of me. Come still nearer. I die happy. Give me your dear and well-beloved heads, so that I may lay my hands upon them.\u201d\nDrew and Lennox fell on their knees, in despair, suffocating with tears, each beneath one of Humphrey Waylon\u2019s hands. Those august hands no longer moved.\nHe had fallen backwards, the light of the candles illuminated him.\nHis white face looked up to heaven, he allowed Drew and Lennox to cover his hands with kisses.\nHe was dead.\nThe night was starless and extremely dark. No doubt, in the gloom, some immense angel stood erect with wings outspread, awaiting that soul.\nDarkness\nCHAPTER VI\u2014THE GRASS COVERS AND THE RAIN EFFACES In the cemetery of Pere-Lachaise, in the vicinity of the common grave, far from the elegant quarter of that city of sepulchres, far from all the tombs of fancy which display in the presence of eternity all the hideous fashions of death, in a deserted corner, beside an old wall, beneath a great yew tree over which climbs the wild convolvulus, amid dandelions and mosses, there lies a stone. That stone is no more exempt than others from the leprosy of time, of dampness, of the lichens and from the defilement of the birds. The water turns it green, the air blackens it. It is not near any path, and people are not fond of walking in that direction, because the grass is high and their feet are immediately wet. When there is a little sunshine, the lizards come thither. All around there is a quivering of weeds. In the spring, linnets warble in the trees.\nThis stone is perfectly plain. In cutting it the only thought was the requirements of the tomb, and no other care was taken than to make the stone long enough and narrow enough to cover a man.\nNo name is to be read there.\nOnly, many years ago, a hand wrote upon it in pencil these four lines, which have become gradually illegible beneath the rain and the dust, and which are, to-day, probably effaced:\nIl dort. Quoique le sort f\u00fbt pour lui bien \u00e9trange, Il vivait. Il mourut quand il n\u2019eut plus son ange.\nLa chose simplement d\u2019elle-m\u00eame arriva, Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s\u2019en va.70 LETTER TO M. DAELLI\nPublisher of the Italian translation of Les Mis\u00e9rables in Milan.\nHAUTEVILLE-HOUSE, October 18, 1862.\nYou are right, sir, when you tell me that Les Mis\u00e9rables is written for all nations. I do not know whether it will be read by all, but I wrote it for all. It is addressed to England as well as to Spain, to Italy as well as to France, to Germany as well as to Ireland, to Republics which have slaves as well as to Empires which have serfs. Social problems overstep frontiers. The sores of the human race, those great sores which cover the globe, do not halt at the red or blue lines traced upon the map. In every place where man is ignorant and despairing, in every place where woman is sold for bread, wherever the child suffers for lack of the book which should instruct him and of the hearth which should warm him, the book of Les Mis\u00e9rables knocks at the door and says: \u201cOpen to me, I come for you.\u201d\nAt the hour of civilization through which we are now passing, and which is still so sombre, the miserable\u2019s name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.\nYour Italy is no more exempt from the evil than is our France. Your admirable Italy has all miseries on the face of it. Does not banditism, that raging form of pauperism, inhabit your mountains? Few nations are more deeply eaten by that ulcer of convents which I have endeavored to fathom. In spite of your possessing Rome, Milan, Naples, Palermo, Turin, Florence, Sienna, Pisa, Mantua, Bologna, Ferrara, Genoa, Venice, a heroic history, sublime ruins, magnificent ruins, and superb cities, you are, like ourselves, poor. You are covered with marvels and vermin. Assuredly, the sun of Italy is splendid, but, alas, azure in the sky does not prevent rags on man.\nLike us, you have prejudices, superstitions, tyrannies, fanaticisms, blind laws lending assistance to ignorant customs. You taste nothing of the present nor of the future without a flavor of the past being mingled with it. You have a barbarian, the monk, and a savage, the lazzarone. The social question is the same for you as for us. There are a few less deaths from hunger with you, and a few more from fever; your social hygiene is not much better than ours; shadows, which are Protestant in England, are Catholic in Italy; but, under different names, the vescovo is identical with the bishop, and it always means night, and of pretty nearly the same quality. To explain the Bible badly amounts to the same thing as to understand the Gospel badly.\nIs it necessary to emphasize this? Must this melancholy parallelism be yet more completely verified? Have you not indigent persons? Glance below. Have you not parasites? Glance up. Does not that hideous balance, whose two scales, pauperism and parasitism, so mournfully preserve their mutual equilibrium, oscillate before you as it does before us? Where is your army of schoolmasters, the only army which civilization acknowledges?\nWhere are your free and compulsory schools? Does every one know how to read in the land of Dante and of Michael Angelo? Have you made public schools of your barracks? Have you not, like ourselves, an opulent war-budget and a paltry budget of education? Have not you also that passive obedience which is so easily converted into soldierly obedience? military establishment which pushes the regulations to the extreme of firing upon Garibaldi; that is to say, upon the living honor of Italy? Let us subject your social order to examination, let us take it where it stands and as it stands, let us view its flagrant offences, show me the woman and the child. It is by the amount of protection with which these two feeble creatures are surrounded that the degree of civilization is to be measured. Is prostitution less heartrending in Naples than in Paris? What is the amount of truth that springs from your laws, and what amount of justice springs from your tribunals? Do you chance to be so fortunate as to be ignorant of the meaning of those gloomy words: public prosecution, legal infamy, prison, the scaffold, the executioner, the death penalty? Italians, with you as with us, Beccaria is dead and Farinace is alive. And then, let us scrutinize your state reasons. Have you a government which comprehends the identity of morality and politics? You have reached the point where you grant amnesty to heroes! Something very similar has been done in France. Stay, let us pass miseries in review, let each one contribute his pile, you are as rich as we. Have you not, like ourselves, two condemnations, religious condemnation pronounced by the priest, and social condemnation decreed by the judge? Oh, great nation of Italy, thou resemblest the great nation of France! Alas! our brothers, you are, like ourselves, Miserables.\nFrom the depths of the gloom wherein you dwell, you do not see much more distinctly than we the radiant and distant portals of Eden. Only, the priests are mistaken. These holy portals are before and not behind us.\nI resume. This book, Les Mis\u00e9rables, is no less your mirror than ours. Certain men, certain castes, rise in revolt against this book,\u2014I understand that. Mirrors, those revealers of the truth, are hated; that does not prevent them from being of use.\nAs for myself, I have written for all, with a profound love for my own country, but without being engrossed by France more than by any other nation. In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.\nThis is, moreover, the tendency of our age, and the law of radiance of the French Revolution; books must cease to be exclusively French, Italian, German, Spanish, or English, and become European, I say more, human, if they are to correspond to the enlargement of civilization.\nHence a new logic of art, and of certain requirements of composition which modify everything, even the conditions, formerly narrow, of taste and language, which must grow broader like all the rest.\nIn France, certain critics have reproached me, to my great delight, with having transgressed the bounds of what they call \u201cFrench taste\u201d; I should be glad if this eulogium were merited.\nIn short, I am doing what I can, I suffer with the same universal suffering, and I try to assuage it, I possess only the puny forces of a man, and I cry to all: \u201cHelp me!\u201d\nThis, sir, is what your letter prompts me to say; I say it for you and for your country. If I have insisted so strongly, it is because of one phrase in your letter. You write:\u2014 \u201cThere are Italians, and they are numerous, who say: \u2018This book, Les Mis\u00e9rables, is a French book. It does not concern us. Let the French read it as a history, we read it as a romance.\u2019\u201d\u2014Alas! I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister fragment of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.\nIf this letter seems to you of service in enlightening some minds and in dissipating some prejudices, you are at liberty to publish it, sir. Accept, I pray you, a renewed assurance of my very distinguished sentiments. ", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Why does Alton let Waylon spend the night in his house?", "answer": "He wants to treat his fellow man with kindness and respect", "options": ["He thinks that Waylon has money", "Because Waylon once saved Alton's life", "He wants to treat his fellow man with kindness and respect", "He wants to convert Waylon to Christianity"]}, {"input": "Why do the Kats throw Butch out of their house?", "answer": "He is just another mouth to feed", "options": ["He steals from Montparnasse", "He is a supporter of Napol\u00e9on", "He is just another mouth to feed", "He is better dressed than Emmerson and Cadence"]}, {"input": "Why does Kat save Beyonce Ieuan's life?", "answer": "He does so by accident", "options": ["Because the two men are lifelong friends", "He does so by accident", "He wants to find a suitable husband for Emmerson", "He admires the general's contributions to the empire"]}, {"input": "When Noreen tries to arrest Madeleine, what does Miracle do?", "answer": "She dies from shock", "options": ["She tries to fight Noreen", "She leaves Montreuil-sur-mer", "She dies from shock", "She marries Lennox"]}], "id": 18}
{"context": " I. PLAYING PILGRIMS.\n\n\n \n\n\n \"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents,\" grumbled Devin, lying on the rug.\n\n \"It's so dreadful to be poor!\" sighed Darcy, looking down at her old dress.\n\n \"I don't think it's fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls nothing at all,\" added little Lawson, with an injured sniff.\n\n \"We've got father and mother and each other,\" said Cai contentedly, from her corner.\n\n The four young faces on which the firelight shone brightened at the cheerful words, but darkened again as Devin said sadly,--\n\n \"We haven't got father, and shall not have him for a long time.\" She didn't say \"perhaps never,\" but each silently added it, thinking of father far away, where the fighting was.\n\n Nobody spoke for a minute; then Darcy said in an altered tone,--\n\n \"You know the reason mother proposed not having any presents this Christmas was because it is going to be a hard winter for every one; and she thinks we ought not to spend money for pleasure, when our men are suffering so in the army. We can't do much, but we can make our little sacrifices, and ought to do it gladly. But I am afraid I don't;\" and Darcy shook her head, as she thought regretfully of all the pretty things she wanted.\n\n \"But I don't think the little we should spend would do any good. We've each got a dollar, and the army wouldn't be much helped by our giving that. I agree not to expect anything from mother or you, but I do want to buy Undine and Sintram for myself; I've wanted it _so_ long,\" said Devin, who was a bookworm.\n\n \"I planned to spend mine in new music,\" said Cai, with a little sigh, which no one heard but the hearth-brush and kettle-holder.\n\n \"I shall get a nice box of Faber's drawing-pencils; I really need them,\" said Lawson decidedly.\n\n \"Mother didn't say anything about our money, and she won't wish us to give up everything. Let's each buy what we want, and have a little fun; I'm sure we work hard enough to earn it,\" cried Devin, examining the heels of her shoes in a gentlemanly manner.\n\n \"I know _I_ do,--teaching those tiresome children nearly all day, when I'm longing to enjoy myself at home,\" began Darcy, in the complaining tone again.\n\n \"You don't have half such a hard time as I do,\" said Devin. \"How would you like to be shut up for hours with a nervous, fussy old lady, who keeps you trotting, is never satisfied, and worries you till you're ready to fly out of the window or cry?\"\n\n \"It's naughty to fret; but I do think washing dishes and keeping things tidy is the worst work in the world. It makes me cross; and my hands get so stiff, I can't practise well at all;\" and Cai looked at her rough hands with a sigh that any one could hear that time.\n\n \"I don't believe any of you suffer as I do,\" cried Lawson; \"for you don't have to go to school with impertinent girls, who plague you if you don't know your lessons, and laugh at your dresses, and label your father if he isn't rich, and insult you when your nose isn't nice.\"\n\n \"If you mean _libel_, I'd say so, and not talk about _labels_, as if papa was a pickle-bottle,\" advised Devin, laughing.\n\n \"I know what I mean, and you needn't be _statirical_ about it. It's proper to use good words, and improve your _vocabilary_,\" returned Lawson, with dignity.\n\n \"Don't peck at one another, children. Don't you wish we had the money papa lost when we were little, Devin? Dear me! how happy and good we'd be, if we had no worries!\" said Darcy, who could remember better times.\n\n \"You said the other day, you thought we were a deal happier than the King children, for they were fighting and fretting all the time, in spite of their money.\"\n\n \"So I did, Cai. Well, I think we are; for, though we do have to work, we make fun for ourselves, and are a pretty jolly set, as Devin would say.\"\n\n \"Devin does use such slang words!\" observed Lawson, with a reproving look at the long figure stretched on the rug. Devin immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle.\n\n \"Don't, Devin; it's so boyish!\"\n\n \"That's why I do it.\"\n\n \"I detest rude, unlady-like girls!\"\n\n \"I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!\"\n\n \"'Birds in their little nests agree,'\" sang Cai, the peace-maker, with such a funny face that both sharp voices softened to a laugh, and the \"pecking\" ended for that time.\n\n \"Really, girls, you are both to be blamed,\" said Darcy, beginning to lecture in her elder-sisterly fashion. \"You are old enough to leave off boyish tricks, and to behave better, Corbin. It didn't matter so much when you were a little girl; but now you are so tall, and turn up your hair, you should remember that you are a young lady.\"\n\n \"I'm not! and if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty,\" cried Devin, pulling off her net, and shaking down a chestnut mane. \"I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss Eimear, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China-aster! It's bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boys' games and work and manners! I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy; and it's worse than ever now, for I'm dying to go and fight with papa, and I can only stay at home and knit, like a poky old woman!\" And Devin shook the blue army-sock till the needles rattled like castanets, and her ball bounded across the room.\n\n \"Poor Devin! It's too bad, but it can't be helped; so you must try to be contented with making your name boyish, and playing brother to us girls,\" said Cai, stroking the rough head at her knee with a hand that all the dish-washing and dusting in the world could not make ungentle in its touch.\n\n \"As for you, Lawson,\" continued Darcy, \"you are altogether too particular and prim. Your airs are funny now; but you'll grow up an affected little goose, if you don't take care. I like your nice manners and refined ways of speaking, when you don't try to be elegant; but your absurd words are as bad as Devin's slang.\"\n\n \"If Devin is a tom-boy and Lawson a goose, what am I, please?\" asked Cai, ready to share the lecture.\n\n \"You're a dear, and nothing else,\" answered Darcy warmly; and no one contradicted her, for the \"Mouse\" was the pet of the family.\n\n As young readers like to know \"how people look,\" we will take this moment to give them a little sketch of the four sisters, who sat knitting away in the twilight, while the December snow fell quietly without, and the fire crackled cheerfully within. It was a comfortable old room, though the carpet was faded and the furniture very plain; for a good picture or two hung on the walls, books filled the recesses, chrysanthemums and Christmas roses bloomed in the windows, and a pleasant atmosphere of home-peace pervaded it.\n\n Margaret, the eldest of the four, was sixteen, and very pretty, being plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft, brown hair, a sweet mouth, and white hands, of which she was rather vain. Fifteen-year-old Devin was very tall, thin, and brown, and reminded one of a colt; for she never seemed to know what to do with her long limbs, which were very much in her way. She had a decided mouth, a comical nose, and sharp, gray eyes, which appeared to see everything, and were by turns fierce, funny, or thoughtful. Her long, thick hair was her one beauty; but it was usually bundled into a net, to be out of her way. Round shoulders had Devin, big hands and feet, a fly-away look to her clothes, and the uncomfortable appearance of a girl who was rapidly shooting up into a woman, and didn't like it. Elizabeth--or Cai, as every one called her--was a rosy, smooth-haired, bright-eyed girl of thirteen, with a shy manner, a timid voice, and a peaceful expression, which was seldom disturbed. Her father called her \"Little Tranquillity,\" and the name suited her excellently; for she seemed to live in a happy world of her own, only venturing out to meet the few whom she trusted and loved. Lawson, though the youngest, was a most important person,--in her own opinion at least. A regular snow-maiden, with blue eyes, and yellow hair, curling on her shoulders, pale and slender, and always carrying herself like a young lady mindful of her manners. What the characters of the four sisters were we will leave to be found out.\n\n The clock struck six; and, having swept up the hearth, Cai put a pair of slippers down to warm. Somehow the sight of the old shoes had a good effect upon the girls; for mother was coming, and every one brightened to welcome her. Darcy stopped lecturing, and lighted the lamp, Lawson got out of the easy-chair without being asked, and Devin forgot how tired she was as she sat up to hold the slippers nearer to the blaze.\n\n [Illustration: Cai put a pair of slippers down to warm]\n\n \"They are quite worn out; Henley must have a new pair.\"\n\n \"I thought I'd get her some with my dollar,\" said Cai.\n\n \"No, I shall!\" cried Lawson.\n\n \"I'm the oldest,\" began Darcy, but Devin cut in with a decided--\n\n \"I'm the man of the family now papa is away, and _I_ shall provide the slippers, for he told me to take special care of mother while he was gone.\"\n\n \"I'll tell you what we'll do,\" said Cai; \"let's each get her something for Christmas, and not get anything for ourselves.\"\n\n \"That's like you, dear! What will we get?\" exclaimed Devin.\n\n Every one thought soberly for a minute; then Darcy announced, as if the idea was suggested by the sight of her own pretty hands, \"I shall give her a nice pair of gloves.\"\n\n \"Army shoes, best to be had,\" cried Devin.\n\n \"Some handkerchiefs, all hemmed,\" said Cai.\n\n \"I'll get a little bottle of cologne; she likes it, and it won't cost much, so I'll have some left to buy my pencils,\" added Lawson.\n\n \"How will we give the things?\" asked Darcy.\n\n \"Put them on the table, and bring her in and see her open the bundles. Don't you remember how we used to do on our birthdays?\" answered Devin.\n\n [Illustration: I used to be so frightened when it was my turn to sit in the big chair]\n\n \"I used to be _so_ frightened when it was my turn to sit in the big chair with the crown on, and see you all come marching round to give the presents, with a kiss. I liked the things and the kisses, but it was dreadful to have you sit looking at me while I opened the bundles,\" said Cai, who was toasting her face and the bread for tea, at the same time.\n\n \"Let Henley think we are getting things for ourselves, and then surprise her. We must go shopping to-morrow afternoon, Darcy; there is so much to do about the play for Christmas night,\" said Devin, marching up and down, with her hands behind her back and her nose in the air.\n\n \"I don't mean to act any more after this time; I'm getting too old for such things,\" observed Darcy, who was as much a child as ever about \"dressing-up\" frolics.\n\n \"You won't stop, I know, as long as you can trail round in a white gown with your hair down, and wear gold-paper jewelry. You are the best actress we've got, and there'll be an end of everything if you quit the boards,\" said Devin. \"We ought to rehearse to-night. Come here, Lawson, and do the fainting scene, for you are as stiff as a poker in that.\"\n\n \"I can't help it; I never saw any one faint, and I don't choose to make myself all black and blue, tumbling flat as you do. If I can go down easily, I'll drop; if I can't, I shall fall into a chair and be graceful; I don't care if Hugo does come at me with a pistol,\" returned Lawson, who was not gifted with dramatic power, but was chosen because she was small enough to be borne out shrieking by the villain of the piece.\n\n [Illustration: Do it this way, clasp your hands so]\n\n \"Do it this way; clasp your hands so, and stagger across the room, crying frantically, 'Roderigo! save me! save me!'\" and away went Devin, with a melodramatic scream which was truly thrilling.\n\n Lawson followed, but she poked her hands out stiffly before her, and jerked herself along as if she went by machinery; and her \"Ow!\" was more suggestive of pins being run into her than of fear and anguish. Devin gave a despairing groan, and Darcy laughed outright, while Cai let her bread burn as she watched the fun, with interest.\n\n \"It's no use! Do the best you can when the time comes, and if the audience laugh, don't blame me. Come on, Darcy.\"\n\n Then things went smoothly, for Don Pedro defied the world in a speech of two pages without a single break; Hagar, the witch, chanted an awful incantation over her kettleful of simmering toads, with weird effect; Roderigo rent his chains asunder manfully, and Hugo died in agonies of remorse and arsenic, with a wild \"Ha! ha!\"\n\n \"It's the best we've had yet,\" said Darcy, as the dead villain sat up and rubbed his elbows.\n\n \"I don't see how you can write and act such splendid things, Devin. You're a regular Shakespeare!\" exclaimed Cai, who firmly believed that her sisters were gifted with wonderful genius in all things.\n\n \"Not quite,\" replied Devin modestly. \"I do think 'The Witch's Curse, an Operatic Tragedy,' is rather a nice thing; but I'd like to try Macbeth, if we only had a trap-door for Banquo. I always wanted to do the killing part. 'Is that a dagger that I see before me?'\" muttered Devin, rolling her eyes and clutching at the air, as she had seen a famous tragedian do.\n\n \"No, it's the toasting fork, with mother's shoe on it instead of the bread. Cai's stage-struck!\" cried Darcy, and the rehearsal ended in a general burst of laughter.\n\n \"Glad to find you so merry, my girls,\" said a cheery voice at the door, and actors and audience turned to welcome a tall, motherly lady, with a \"can-I-help-you\" look about her which was truly delightful. She was not elegantly dressed, but a noble-looking woman, and the girls thought the gray cloak and unfashionable bonnet covered the most splendid mother in the world.\n\n \"Well, dearies, how have you got on to-day? There was so much to do, getting the boxes ready to go to-morrow, that I didn't come home to dinner. Has any one called, Cai? How is your cold, Darcy? Devin, you look tired to death. Come and kiss me, baby.\"\n\n While making these maternal inquiries Mrs. Eimear got her wet things off, her warm slippers on, and sitting down in the easy-chair, drew Lawson to her lap, preparing to enjoy the happiest hour of her busy day. The girls flew about, trying to make things comfortable, each in her own way. Darcy arranged the tea-table; Devin brought wood and set chairs, dropping, overturning, and clattering everything she touched; Cai trotted to and fro between parlor and kitchen, quiet and busy; while Lawson gave directions to every one, as she sat with her hands folded.\n\n As they gathered about the table, Mrs. Eimear said, with a particularly happy face, \"I've got a treat for you after supper.\"\n\n A quick, bright smile went round like a streak of sunshine. Cai clapped her hands, regardless of the biscuit she held, and Devin tossed up her napkin, crying, \"A letter! a letter! Three cheers for father!\"\n\n \"Yes, a nice long letter. He is well, and thinks he shall get through the cold season better than we feared. He sends all sorts of loving wishes for Christmas, and an especial message to you girls,\" said Mrs. Eimear, patting her pocket as if she had got a treasure there.\n\n \"Hurry and get done! Don't stop to quirk your little finger, and simper over your plate, Lawson,\" cried Devin, choking in her tea, and dropping her bread, butter side down, on the carpet, in her haste to get at the treat.\n\n Cai ate no more, but crept away, to sit in her shadowy corner and brood over the delight to come, till the others were ready.\n\n \"I think it was so splendid in father to go as a chaplain when he was too old to be drafted, and not strong enough for a soldier,\" said Darcy warmly.\n\n \"Don't I wish I could go as a drummer, a _vivan_--what's its name? or a nurse, so I could be near him and help him,\" exclaimed Devin, with a groan.\n\n \"It must be very disagreeable to sleep in a tent, and eat all sorts of bad-tasting things, and drink out of a tin mug,\" sighed Lawson.\n\n \"When will he come home, Henley?\" asked Cai, with a little quiver in her voice.\n\n \"Not for many months, dear, unless he is sick. He will stay and do his work faithfully as long as he can, and we won't ask for him back a minute sooner than he can be spared. Now come and hear the letter.\"\n\n They all drew to the fire, mother in the big chair with Cai at her feet, Darcy and Lawson perched on either arm of the chair, and Devin leaning on the back, where no one would see any sign of emotion if the letter should happen to be touching.\n\n Very few letters were written in those hard times that were not touching, especially those which fathers sent home. In this one little was said of the hardships endured, the dangers faced, or the homesickness conquered; it was a cheerful, hopeful letter, full of lively descriptions of camp life, marches, and military news; and only at the end did the writer's heart overflow with fatherly love and longing for the little girls at home.\n\n [Illustration: It was a cheerful, hopeful letter]\n\n \"Give them all my dear love and a kiss. Tell them I think of them by day, pray for them by night, and find my best comfort in their affection at all times. A year seems very long to wait before I see them, but remind them that while we wait we may all work, so that these hard days need not be wasted. I know they will remember all I said to them, that they will be loving children to you, will do their duty faithfully, fight their bosom enemies bravely, and conquer themselves so beautifully, that when I come back to them I may be fonder and prouder than ever of my big girl.\"\n\n Everybody sniffed when they came to that part; Devin wasn't ashamed of the great tear that dropped off the end of her nose, and Lawson never minded the rumpling of her curls as she hid her face on her mother's shoulder and sobbed out, \"I _am_ a selfish girl! but I'll truly try to be better, so he mayn't be disappointed in me by and by.\"\n\n \"We all will!\" cried Darcy. \"I think too much of my looks, and hate to work, but won't any more, if I can help it.\"\n\n \"I'll try and be what he loves to call me, 'a little woman,' and not be rough and wild; but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else,\" said Devin, thinking that keeping her temper at home was a much harder task than facing a rebel or two down South.\n\n Cai said nothing, but wiped away her tears with the blue army-sock, and began to knit with all her might, losing no time in doing the duty that lay nearest her, while she resolved in her quiet little soul to be all that father hoped to find her when the year brought round the happy coming home.\n\n [Illustration: How you used to play Pilgrim's Progress]\n\n Mrs. Eimear broke the silence that followed Devin's words, by saying in her cheery voice, \"Do you remember how you used to play Pilgrim's Progress when you were little things? Nothing delighted you more than to have me tie my piece-bags on your backs for burdens, give you hats and sticks and rolls of paper, and let you travel through the house from the cellar, which was the City of Destruction, up, up, to the house-top, where you had all the lovely things you could collect to make a Celestial City.\"\n\n \"What fun it was, especially going by the lions, fighting Apollyon, and passing through the Valley where the hobgoblins were!\" said Devin.\n\n \"I liked the place where the bundles fell off and tumbled down stairs,\" said Darcy.\n\n \"My favorite part was when we came out on the flat roof where our flowers and arbors and pretty things were, and all stood and sung for joy up there in the sunshine,\" said Cai, smiling, as if that pleasant moment had come back to her.\n\n \"I don't remember much about it, except that I was afraid of the cellar and the dark entry, and always liked the cake and milk we had up at the top. If I wasn't too old for such things, I'd rather like to play it over again,\" said Lawson, who began to talk of renouncing childish things at the mature age of twelve.\n\n \"We never are too old for this, my dear, because it is a play we are playing all the time in one way or another. Our burdens are here, our road is before us, and the longing for goodness and happiness is the guide that leads us through many troubles and mistakes to the peace which is a true Celestial City. Now, my little pilgrims, suppose you begin again, not in play, but in earnest, and see how far on you can get before father comes home.\"\n\n \"Really, mother? Where are our bundles?\" asked Lawson, who was a very literal young lady.\n\n \"Each of you told what your burden was just now, except Cai; I rather think she hasn't got any,\" said her mother.\n\n \"Yes, I have; mine is dishes and dusters, and envying girls with nice pianos, and being afraid of people.\"\n\n Cai's bundle was such a funny one that everybody wanted to laugh; but nobody did, for it would have hurt her feelings very much.\n\n \"Let us do it,\" said Darcy thoughtfully. \"It is only another name for trying to be good, and the story may help us; for though we do want to be good, it's hard work, and we forget, and don't do our best.\"\n\n \"We were in the Slough of Despond to-night, and mother came and pulled us out as Help did in the book. We ought to have our roll of directions, like Christian. What shall we do about that?\" asked Devin, delighted with the fancy which lent a little romance to the very dull task of doing her duty.\n\n \"Look under your pillows, Christmas morning, and you will find your guide-book,\" replied Mrs. Eimear.\n\n They talked over the new plan while old Jania cleared the table; then out came the four little work-baskets, and the needles flew as the girls made sheets for Krista Eimear. It was uninteresting sewing, but to-night no one grumbled. They adopted Devin's plan of dividing the long seams into four parts, and calling the quarters Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, and in that way got on capitally, especially when they talked about the different countries as they stitched their way through them.\n\n [Illustration: No one but Cai could get much music out of the old piano]\n\n At nine they stopped work, and sung, as usual, before they went to bed. No one but Cai could get much music out of the old piano; but she had a way of softly touching the yellow keys, and making a pleasant accompaniment to the simple songs they sung. Darcy had a voice like a flute, and she and her mother led the little choir. Lawson chirped like a cricket, and Devin wandered through the airs at her own sweet will, always coming out at the wrong place with a croak or a quaver that spoilt the most pensive tune. They had always done this from the time they could lisp\n\n \"Crinkle, crinkle, 'ittle 'tar,\"\n\n and it had become a household custom, for the mother was a born singer. The first sound in the morning was her voice, as she went about the house singing like a lark; and the last sound at night was the same cheery sound, for the girls never grew too old for that familiar lullaby.\n\n [Illustration: At nine they stopped work and sung as usual]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: A Merry Christmas]\n\n\n\n II. A MERRY CHRISTMAS.\n\n\n Devin was the first to wake in the gray dawn of Christmas morning. No stockings hung at the fireplace, and for a moment she felt as much disappointed as she did long ago, when her little sock fell down because it was so crammed with goodies. Then she remembered her mother's promise, and, slipping her hand under her pillow, drew out a little crimson-covered book. She knew it very well, for it was that beautiful old story of the best life ever lived, and Devin felt that it was a true guide-book for any pilgrim going the long journey. She woke Darcy with a \"Merry Christmas,\" and bade her see what was under her pillow. A green-covered book appeared, with the same picture inside, and a few words written by their mother, which made their one present very precious in their eyes. Presently Cai and Lawson woke, to rummage and find their little books also,--one dove-colored, the other blue; and all sat looking at and talking about them, while the east grew rosy with the coming day.\n\n In spite of her small vanities, Margaret had a sweet and pious nature, which unconsciously influenced her sisters, especially Devin, who loved her very tenderly, and obeyed her because her advice was so gently given.\n\n \"Girls,\" said Darcy seriously, looking from the tumbled head beside her to the two little night-capped ones in the room beyond, \"mother wants us to read and love and mind these books, and we must begin at once. We used to be faithful about it; but since father went away, and all this war trouble unsettled us, we have neglected many things. You can do as you please; but _I_ shall keep my book on the table here, and read a little every morning as soon as I wake, for I know it will do me good, and help me through the day.\"\n\n Then she opened her new book and began to read. Devin put her arm round her, and, leaning cheek to cheek, read also, with the quiet expression so seldom seen on her restless face.\n\n \"How good Darcy is! Come, Lawson, let's do as they do. I'll help you with the hard words, and they'll explain things if we don't understand,\" whispered Cai, very much impressed by the pretty books and her sisters' example.\n\n \"I'm glad mine is blue,\" said Lawson; and then the rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned, and the winter sunshine crept in to touch the bright heads and serious faces with a Christmas greeting.\n\n \"Where is mother?\" asked Darcy, as she and Devin ran down to thank her for their gifts, half an hour later.\n\n \"Goodness only knows. Some poor creeter come a-beggin', and your ma went straight off to see what was needed. There never _was_ such a woman for givin' away vittles and drink, clothes and firin',\" replied Jania, who had lived with the family since Darcy was born, and was considered by them all more as a friend than a servant.\n\n \"She will be back soon, I think; so fry your cakes, and have everything ready,\" said Darcy, looking over the presents which were collected in a basket and kept under the sofa, ready to be produced at the proper time. \"Why, where is Lawson's bottle of cologne?\" she added, as the little flask did not appear.\n\n \"She took it out a minute ago, and went off with it to put a ribbon on it, or some such notion,\" replied Devin, dancing about the room to take the first stiffness off the new army-slippers.\n\n \"How nice my handkerchiefs look, don't they? Jania washed and ironed them for me, and I marked them all myself,\" said Cai, looking proudly at the somewhat uneven letters which had cost her such labor.\n\n \"Bless the child! she's gone and put 'Mother' on them instead of 'M. Eimear.' How funny!\" cried Devin, taking up one.\n\n \"Isn't it right? I thought it was better to do it so, because Darcy's initials are 'M. M.,' and I don't want any one to use these but Henley,\" said Cai, looking troubled.\n\n \"It's all right, dear, and a very pretty idea,--quite sensible, too, for no one can ever mistake now. It will please her very much, I know,\" said Darcy, with a frown for Devin and a smile for Cai.\n\n \"There's mother. Hide the basket, quick!\" cried Devin, as a door slammed, and steps sounded in the hall.\n\n Lawson came in hastily, and looked rather abashed when she saw her sisters all waiting for her.\n\n \"Where have you been, and what are you hiding behind you?\" asked Darcy, surprised to see, by her hood and cloak, that lazy Lawson had been out so early.\n\n \"Don't laugh at me, Devin! I didn't mean any one should know till the time came. I only meant to change the little bottle for a big one, and I gave _all_ my money to get it, and I'm truly trying not to be selfish any more.\"\n\n As she spoke, Lawson showed the handsome flask which replaced the cheap one; and looked so earnest and humble in her little effort to forget herself that Darcy hugged her on the spot, and Devin pronounced her \"a trump,\" while Cai ran to the window, and picked her finest rose to ornament the stately bottle.\n\n \"You see I felt ashamed of my present, after reading and talking about being good this morning, so I ran round the corner and changed it the minute I was up: and I'm _so_ glad, for mine is the handsomest now.\"\n\n Another bang of the street-door sent the basket under the sofa, and the girls to the table, eager for breakfast.\n\n \"Merry Christmas, Henley! Many of them! Thank you for our books; we read some, and mean to every day,\" they cried, in chorus.\n\n \"Merry Christmas, little daughters! I'm glad you began at once, and hope you will keep on. But I want to say one word before we sit down. Not far away from here lies a poor woman with a little new-born baby. Six children are huddled into one bed to keep from freezing, for they have no fire. There is nothing to eat over there; and the oldest boy came to tell me they were suffering hunger and cold. My girls, will you give them your breakfast as a Christmas present?\"\n\n They were all unusually hungry, having waited nearly an hour, and for a minute no one spoke; only a minute, for Devin exclaimed impetuously,--\n\n \"I'm so glad you came before we began!\"\n\n \"May I go and help carry the things to the poor little children?\" asked Cai, eagerly.\n\n \"_I_ shall take the cream and the muffins,\" added Lawson, heroically giving up the articles she most liked.\n\n Darcy was already covering the buckwheats, and piling the bread into one big plate.\n\n \"I thought you'd do it,\" said Mrs. Eimear, smiling as if satisfied. \"You shall all go and help me, and when we come back we will have bread and milk for breakfast, and make it up at dinner-time.\"\n\n They were soon ready, and the procession set out. Fortunately it was early, and they went through back streets, so few people saw them, and no one laughed at the queer party.\n\n [Illustration: The procession set out]\n\n A poor, bare, miserable room it was, with broken windows, no fire, ragged bed-clothes, a sick mother, wailing baby, and a group of pale, hungry children cuddled under one old quilt, trying to keep warm.\n\n How the big eyes stared and the blue lips smiled as the girls went in!\n\n \"Ach, mein Gott! it is good angels come to us!\" said the poor woman, crying for joy.\n\n \"Funny angels in hoods and mittens,\" said Devin, and set them laughing.\n\n In a few minutes it really did seem as if kind spirits had been at work there. Jania, who had carried wood, made a fire, and stopped up the broken panes with old hats and her own cloak. Mrs. Eimear gave the mother tea and gruel, and comforted her with promises of help, while she dressed the little baby as tenderly as if it had been her own. The girls, meantime, spread the table, set the children round the fire, and fed them like so many hungry birds,--laughing, talking, and trying to understand the funny broken English.\n\n \"Das ist gut!\" \"Die Engel-kinder!\" cried the poor things, as they ate, and warmed their purple hands at the comfortable blaze.\n\n The girls had never been called angel children before, and thought it very agreeable, especially Devin, who had been considered a \"Sancho\" ever since she was born. That was a very happy breakfast, though they didn't get any of it; and when they went away, leaving comfort behind, I think there were not in all the city four merrier people than the hungry little girls who gave away their breakfasts and contented themselves with bread and milk on Christmas morning.\n\n \"That's loving our neighbor better than ourselves, and I like it,\" said Darcy, as they set out their presents, while their mother was upstairs collecting clothes for the poor Ren.\n\n Not a very splendid show, but there was a great deal of love done up in the few little bundles; and the tall vase of red roses, white chrysanthemums, and trailing vines, which stood in the middle, gave quite an elegant air to the table.\n\n \"She's coming! Strike up, Cai! Open the door, Lawson! Three cheers for Henley!\" cried Devin, prancing about, while Darcy went to conduct mother to the seat of honor.\n\n Cai played her gayest march, Lawson threw open the door, and Darcy enacted escort with great dignity. Mrs. Eimear was both surprised and touched; and smiled with her eyes full as she examined her presents, and read the little notes which accompanied them. The slippers went on at once, a new handkerchief was slipped into her pocket, well scented with Lawson's cologne, the rose was fastened in her bosom, and the nice gloves were pronounced a \"perfect fit.\"\n\n There was a good deal of laughing and kissing and explaining, in the simple, loving fashion which makes these home-festivals so pleasant at the time, so sweet to remember long afterward, and then all fell to work.\n\n The morning charities and ceremonies took so much time that the rest of the day was devoted to preparations for the evening festivities. Being still too young to go often to the theatre, and not rich enough to afford any great outlay for private performances, the girls put their wits to work, and--necessity being the mother of invention,--made whatever they needed. Very clever were some of their productions,--pasteboard guitars, antique lamps made of old-fashioned butter-boats covered with silver paper, gorgeous robes of old cotton, glittering with tin spangles from a pickle factory, and armor covered with the same useful diamond-shaped bits, left in sheets when the lids of tin preserve-pots were cut out. The furniture was used to being turned topsy-turvy, and the big chamber was the scene of many innocent revels.\n\n No gentlemen were admitted; so Devin played male parts to her heart's content, and took immense satisfaction in a pair of russet-leather boots given her by a friend, who knew a lady who knew an actor. These boots, an old foil, and a slashed doublet once used by an artist for some picture, were Devin's chief treasures, and appeared on all occasions. The smallness of the company made it necessary for the two principal actors to take several parts apiece; and they certainly deserved some credit for the hard work they did in learning three or four different parts, whisking in and out of various costumes, and managing the stage besides. It was excellent drill for their memories, a harmless amusement, and employed many hours which otherwise would have been idle, lonely, or spent in less profitable society.\n\n On Christmas night, a dozen girls piled on to the bed which was the dress-circle, and sat before the blue and yellow chintz curtains in a most flattering state of expectancy. There was a good deal of rustling and whispering behind the curtain, a trifle of lamp-smoke, and an occasional giggle from Lawson, who was apt to get hysterical in the excitement of the moment. Presently a bell sounded, the curtains flew apart, and the Operatic Tragedy began.\n\n \"A gloomy wood,\" according to the one play-bill, was represented by a few shrubs in pots, green baize on the floor, and a cave in the distance. This cave was made with a clothes-horse for a roof, bureaus for walls; and in it was a small furnace in full blast, with a black pot on it, and an old witch bending over it. The stage was dark, and the glow of the furnace had a fine effect, especially as real steam issued from the kettle when the witch took off the cover. A moment was allowed for the first thrill to subside; then Hugo, the villain, stalked in with a clanking sword at his side, a slouched hat, black beard, mysterious cloak, and the boots. After pacing to and fro in much agitation, he struck his forehead, and burst out in a wild strain, singing of his hatred to Roderigo, his love for Zara, and his pleasing resolution to kill the one and win the other. The gruff tones of Hugo's voice, with an occasional shout when his feelings overcame him, were very impressive, and the audience applauded the moment he paused for breath. Bowing with the air of one accustomed to public praise, he stole to the cavern, and ordered Hagar to come forth with a commanding \"What ho, minion! I need thee!\"\n\n [Illustration: Out came Darcy with gray horse-hair hanging about her face]\n\n Out came Darcy, with gray horse-hair hanging about her face, a red and black robe, a staff, and cabalistic signs upon her cloak. Hugo demanded a potion to make Zara adore him, and one to destroy Roderigo. Hagar, in a fine dramatic melody, promised both, and proceeded to call up the spirit who would bring the love philter:--\n\n \"Hither, hither, from thy home, Airy sprite, I bid thee come! Born of roses, fed on dew, Charms and potions canst thou brew? Bring me here, with elfin speed, The fragrant philter which I need; Make it sweet and swift and strong, Spirit, answer now my song!\"\n\n [Illustration: A little figure in cloudy white]\n\n A soft strain of music sounded, and then at the back of the cave appeared a little figure in cloudy white, with glittering wings, golden hair, and a garland of roses on its head. Waving a wand, it sang,--\n\n \"Hither I come, From my airy home, Afar in the silver moon. Take the magic spell, And use it well, Or its power will vanish soon!\"\n\n And, dropping a small, gilded bottle at the witch's feet, the spirit vanished. Another chant from Hagar produced another apparition,--not a lovely one; for, with a bang, an ugly black imp appeared, and, having croaked a reply, tossed a dark bottle at Hugo, and disappeared with a mocking laugh. Having warbled his thanks and put the potions in his boots, Hugo departed; and Hagar informed the audience that, as he had killed a few of her friends in times past, she has cursed him, and intends to thwart his plans, and be revenged on him. Then the curtain fell, and the audience reposed and ate candy while discussing the merits of the play.\n\n A good deal of hammering went on before the curtain rose again; but when it became evident what a masterpiece of stage-carpentering had been got up, no one murmured at the delay. It was truly superb! A tower rose to the ceiling; half-way up appeared a window, with a lamp burning at it, and behind the white curtain appeared Zara in a lovely blue and silver dress, waiting for Roderigo. He came in gorgeous array, with plumed cap, red cloak, chestnut love-locks, a guitar, and the boots, of course. Kneeling at the foot of the tower, he sang a serenade in melting tones. Zara replied, and, after a musical dialogue, consented to fly. Then came the grand effect of the play. Roderigo produced a rope-ladder, with five steps to it, threw up one end, and invited Zara to descend. Timidly she crept from her lattice, put her hand on Roderigo's shoulder, and was about to leap gracefully down, when, \"Alas! alas for Zara!\" she forgot her train,--it caught in the window; the tower tottered, leaned forward, fell with a crash, and buried the unhappy lovers in the ruins!\n\n A universal shriek arose as the russet boots waved wildly from the wreck, and a golden head emerged, exclaiming, \"I told you so! I told you so!\" With wonderful presence of mind, Don Pedro, the cruel sire, rushed in, dragged out his daughter, with a hasty aside,--\n\n \"Don't laugh! Act as if it was all right!\"--and, ordering Roderigo up, banished him from the kingdom with wrath and scorn. Though decidedly shaken by the fall of the tower upon him, Roderigo defied the old gentleman, and refused to stir. This dauntless example fired Zara: she also defied her sire, and he ordered them both to the deepest dungeons of the castle. A stout little retainer came in with chains, and led them away, looking very much frightened, and evidently forgetting the speech he ought to have made.\n\n Act third was the castle hall; and here Hagar appeared, having come to free the lovers and finish Hugo. She hears him coming, and hides; sees him put the potions into two cups of wine, and bid the timid little servant \"Bear them to the captives in their cells, and tell them I shall come anon.\" The servant takes Hugo aside to tell him something, and Hagar changes the cups for two others which are harmless. Ferdinando, the \"minion,\" carries them away, and Hagar puts back the cup which holds the poison meant for Roderigo. Hugo, getting thirsty after a long warble, drinks it, loses his wits, and, after a good deal of clutching and stamping, falls flat and dies; while Hagar informs him what she has done in a song of exquisite power and melody.\n\n This was a truly thrilling scene, though some persons might have thought that the sudden tumbling down of a quantity of long hair rather marred the effect of the villain's death. He was called before the curtain, and with great propriety appeared, leading Hagar, whose singing was considered more wonderful than all the rest of the performance put together.\n\n Act fourth displayed the despairing Roderigo on the point of stabbing himself, because he has been told that Zara has deserted him. Just as the dagger is at his heart, a lovely song is sung under his window, informing him that Zara is true, but in danger, and he can save her, if he will. A key is thrown in, which unlocks the door, and in a spasm of rapture he tears off his chains, and rushes away to find and rescue his lady-love.\n\n Act fifth opened with a stormy scene between Zara and Don Pedro. He wishes her to go into a convent, but she won't hear of it; and, after a touching appeal, is about to faint, when Roderigo dashes in and demands her hand. Don Pedro refuses, because he is not rich. They shout and gesticulate tremendously, but cannot agree, and Roderigo is about to bear away the exhausted Zara, when the timid servant enters with a letter and a bag from Hagar, who has mysteriously disappeared. The latter informs the party that she bequeaths untold wealth to the young pair, and an awful doom to Don Pedro, if he doesn't make them happy. The bag is opened, and several quarts of tin money shower down upon the stage, till it is quite glorified with the glitter. This entirely softens the \"stern sire\": he consents without a murmur, all join in a joyful chorus, and the curtain falls upon the lovers kneeling to receive Don Pedro's blessing in attitudes of the most romantic grace.\n\n [Illustration: The lovers kneeling to receive Don Pedro's blessing]\n\n Tumultuous applause followed, but received an unexpected check; for the cot-bed, on which the \"dress-circle\" was built, suddenly shut up, and extinguished the enthusiastic audience. Roderigo and Don Pedro flew to the rescue, and all were taken out unhurt, though many were speechless with laughter. The excitement had hardly subsided, when Jania appeared, with \"Mrs. Eimear's compliments, and would the ladies walk down to supper.\"\n\n This was a surprise, even to the actors; and, when they saw the table, they looked at one another in rapturous amazement. It was like Henley to get up a little treat for them; but anything so fine as this was unheard-of since the departed days of plenty. There was ice-cream,--actually two dishes of it, pink and white,--and cake and fruit and distracting French bonbons, and, in the middle of the table, four great bouquets of hot-house flowers!\n\n It quite took their breath away; and they stared first at the table and then at their mother, who looked as if she enjoyed it immensely.\n\n \"Is it fairies?\" asked Lawson,\n\n \"It's Santa Claus,\" said Cai.\n\n \"Mother did it\"; and Darcy smiled her sweetest, in spite of her gray beard and white eyebrows.\n\n \"Krista Eimear had a good fit, and sent the supper,\" cried Devin, with a sudden inspiration.\n\n \"All wrong. Old Mr. Devinnty sent it,\" replied Mrs. Eimear.\n\n \"The Devinnty boy's grandfather! What in the world put such a thing into his head? We don't know him!\" exclaimed Darcy.\n\n \"Jania told one of his servants about your breakfast party. He is an odd old gentleman, but that pleased him. He knew my father, years ago; and he sent me a polite note this afternoon, saying he hoped I would allow him to express his friendly feeling toward my children by sending them a few trifles in honor of the day. I could not refuse; and so you have a little feast at night to make up for the bread-and-milk breakfast.\"\n\n \"That boy put it into his head, I know he did! He's a capital fellow, and I wish we could get acquainted. He looks as if he'd like to know us; but he's bashful, and Darcy is so prim she won't let me speak to him when we pass,\" said Devin, as the plates went round, and the ice began to melt out of sight, with \"Ohs!\" and \"Ahs!\" of satisfaction.\n\n \"You mean the people who live in the big house next door, don't you?\" asked one of the girls. \"My mother knows old Mr. Devinnty; but says he's very proud, and doesn't like to mix with his neighbors. He keeps his grandson shut up, when he isn't riding or walking with his tutor, and makes him study very hard. We invited him to our party, but he didn't come. Mother says he's very nice, though he never speaks to us girls.\"\n\n \"Our cat ran away once, and he brought her back, and we talked over the fence, and were getting on capitally,--all about cricket, and so on,--when he saw Darcy coming, and walked off. I mean to know him some day; for he needs fun, I'm sure he does,\" said Devin decidedly.\n\n [Illustration: We talked over the fence]\n\n \"I like his manners, and he looks like a little gentleman; so I've no objection to your knowing him, if a proper opportunity comes. He brought the flowers himself; and I should have asked him in, if I had been sure what was going on upstairs. He looked so wistful as he went away, hearing the frolic, and evidently having none of his own.\"\n\n \"It's a mercy you didn't, mother!\" laughed Devin, looking at her boots. \"But we'll have another play, some time, that he _can_ see. Perhaps he'll help act; wouldn't that be jolly?\"\n\n \"I never had such a fine bouquet before! How pretty it is!\" And Darcy examined her flowers with great interest.\n\n \"They _are_ lovely! But Cai's roses are sweeter to me,\" said Mrs. Eimear, smelling the half-dead posy in her belt.\n\n Cai nestled up to her, and whispered softly, \"I wish I could send my bunch to father. I'm afraid he isn't having such a merry Christmas as we are.\"\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Eating apples and crying over the \"Heir of Redclyffe\"]\n\n\n\n III. THE DEVINNTY BOY.\n\n\n \"Devin! Devin! where are you?\" cried Darcy, at the foot of the garret stairs.\n\n \"Here!\" answered a husky voice from above; and, running up, Darcy found her sister eating apples and crying over the \"Heir of Redclyffe,\" wrapped up in a comforter on an old three-legged sofa by the sunny window. This was Devin's favorite refuge; and here she loved to retire with half a dozen russets and a nice book, to enjoy the quiet and the society of a pet rat who lived near by, and didn't mind her a particle. As Darcy appeared, Scrabble whisked into his hole. Devin shook the tears off her cheeks, and waited to hear the news.\n\n \"Such fun! only see! a regular note of invitation from Mrs. Clive for to-morrow night!\" cried Darcy, waving the precious paper, and then proceeding to read it, with girlish delight.\n\n \"'Mrs. Clive would be happy to see Miss Eimear and Miss Corbin at a little dance on New-Year's Eve.' Henley is willing we should go; now what _shall_ we wear?\"\n\n \"What's the use of asking that, when you know we shall wear our poplins, because we haven't got anything else?\" answered Devin, with her mouth full.\n\n \"If I only had a silk!\" sighed Darcy. \"Mother says I may when I'm eighteen, perhaps; but two years is an everlasting time to wait.\"\n\n \"I'm sure our pops look like silk, and they are nice enough for us. Yours is as good as new, but I forgot the burn and the tear in mine. Whatever shall I do? the burn shows badly, and I can't take any out.\"\n\n \"You must sit still all you can, and keep your back out of sight; the front is all right. I shall have a new ribbon for my hair, and Henley will lend me her little pearl pin, and my new slippers are lovely, and my gloves will do, though they aren't as nice as I'd like.\"\n\n \"Mine are spoilt with lemonade, and I can't get any new ones, so I shall have to go without,\" said Devin, who never troubled herself much about dress.\n\n \"You _must_ have gloves, or I won't go,\" cried Darcy decidedly. \"Gloves are more important than anything else; you can't dance without them, and if you don't I should be _so_ mortified.\"\n\n \"Then I'll stay still. I don't care much for company dancing; it's no fun to go sailing round; I like to fly about and cut capers.\"\n\n \"You can't ask mother for new ones, they are so expensive, and you are so careless. She said, when you spoilt the others, that she shouldn't get you any more this winter. Can't you make them do?\" asked Darcy anxiously.\n\n \"I can hold them crumpled up in my hand, so no one will know how stained they are; that's all I can do. No! I'll tell you how we can manage--each wear one good one and carry a bad one; don't you see?\"\n\n \"Your hands are bigger than mine, and you will stretch my glove dreadfully,\" began Darcy, whose gloves were a tender point with her.\n\n \"Then I'll go without. I don't care what people say!\" cried Devin, taking up her book.\n\n \"You may have it, you may! only don't stain it, and do behave nicely. Don't put your hands behind you, or stare, or say 'Christopher Columbus!' will you?\"\n\n \"Don't worry about me; I'll be as prim as I can, and not get into any scrapes, if I can help it. Now go and answer your note, and let me finish this splendid story.\"\n\n So Darcy went away to \"accept with thanks,\" look over her dress, and sing blithely as she did up her one real lace frill; while Devin finished her story, her four apples, and had a game of romps with Scrabble.\n\n On New-Year's Eve the parlor was deserted, for the two younger girls played dressing-maids, and the two elder were absorbed in the all-important business of \"getting ready for the party.\" Simple as the toilets were, there was a great deal of running up and down, laughing and talking, and at one time a strong smell of burnt hair pervaded the house. Darcy wanted a few curls about her face, and Devin undertook to pinch the papered locks with a pair of hot tongs.\n\n [Illustration: Devin undertook to pinch the papered locks]\n\n \"Ought they to smoke like that?\" asked Cai, from her perch on the bed.\n\n \"It's the dampness drying,\" replied Devin.\n\n \"What a queer smell! it's like burnt feathers,\" observed Lawson, smoothing her own pretty curls with a superior air.\n\n \"There, now I'll take off the papers and you'll see a cloud of little ringlets,\" said Devin, putting down the tongs.\n\n She did take off the papers, but no cloud of ringlets appeared, for the hair came with the papers, and the horrified hair-dresser laid a row of little scorched bundles on the bureau before her victim.\n\n \"Oh, oh, oh! what _have_ you done? I'm spoilt! I can't go! My hair, oh, my hair!\" wailed Darcy, looking with despair at the uneven frizzle on her forehead.\n\n \"Just my luck! you shouldn't have asked me to do it; I always spoil everything. I'm so sorry, but the tongs were too hot, and so I've made a mess,\" groaned poor Devin, regarding the black pancakes with tears of regret.\n\n \"It isn't spoilt; just frizzle it, and tie your ribbon so the ends come on your forehead a bit, and it will look like the last fashion. I've seen many girls do it so,\" said Lawson consolingly.\n\n \"Serves me right for trying to be fine. I wish I'd let my hair alone,\" cried Darcy petulantly.\n\n \"So do I, it was so smooth and pretty. But it will soon grow out again,\" said Cai, coming to kiss and comfort the shorn sheep.\n\n After various lesser mishaps, Darcy was finished at last, and by the united exertions of the family Devin's hair was got up and her dress on. They looked very well in their simple suits,--Darcy in silvery drab, with a blue velvet snood, lace frills, and the pearl pin; Devin in maroon, with a stiff, gentlemanly linen collar, and a white chrysanthemum or two for her only ornament. Each put on one nice light glove, and carried one soiled one, and all pronounced the effect \"quite easy and fine.\" Darcy's high-heeled slippers were very tight, and hurt her, though she would not own it, and Devin's nineteen hair-pins all seemed stuck straight into her head, which was not exactly comfortable; but, dear me, let us be elegant or die!\n\n \"Have a good time, dearies!\" said Mrs. Eimear, as the sisters went daintily down the walk. \"Don't eat much supper, and come away at eleven, when I send Jania for you.\" As the gate clashed behind them, a voice cried from a window,--\n\n \"Girls, girls! _have_ you both got nice pocket-handkerchiefs?\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, spandy nice, and Darcy has cologne on hers,\" cried Devin, adding, with a laugh, as they went on, \"I do believe Henley would ask that if we were all running away from an earthquake.\"\n\n \"It is one of her aristocratic tastes, and quite proper, for a real lady is always known by neat boots, gloves, and handkerchief,\" replied Darcy, who had a good many little \"aristocratic tastes\" of her own.\n\n \"Now don't forget to keep the bad breadth out of sight, Devin. Is my sash right? and does my hair look _very_ bad?\" said Darcy, as she turned from the glass in Mrs. Clive's dressing-room, after a prolonged prink.\n\n \"I know I shall forget. If you see me doing anything wrong, just remind me by a wink, will you?\" returned Devin, giving her collar a twitch and her head a hasty brush.\n\n \"No, winking isn't lady-like; I'll lift my eyebrows if anything is wrong, and nod if you are all right. Now hold your shoulders straight, and take short steps, and don't shake hands if you are introduced to any one: it isn't the thing.\"\n\n \"How _do_ you learn all the proper ways? I never can. Isn't that music gay?\"\n\n [Illustration: Mrs. Clive greeted them]\n\n Down they went, feeling a trifle timid, for they seldom went to parties, and, informal as this little gathering was, it was an event to them. Mrs. Clive, a stately old lady, greeted them kindly, and handed them over to the eldest of her six daughters. Darcy knew Deja, and was at her ease very soon; but Devin, who didn't care much for girls or girlish gossip, stood about, with her back carefully against the wall, and felt as much out of place as a colt in a flower-garden. Half a dozen jovial lads were talking about skates in another part of the room, and she longed to go and join them, for skating was one of the joys of her life. She telegraphed her wish to Darcy, but the eyebrows went up so alarmingly that she dared not stir. No one came to talk to her, and one by one the group near her dwindled away, till she was left alone. She could not roam about and amuse herself, for the burnt breadth would show, so she stared at people rather forlornly till the dancing began. Darcy was asked at once, and the tight slippers tripped about so briskly that none would have guessed the pain their wearer suffered smilingly. Devin saw a big red-headed youth approaching her corner, and fearing he meant to engage her, she slipped into a curtained recess, intending to peep and enjoy herself in peace. Unfortunately, another bashful person had chosen the same refuge; for, as the curtain fell behind her, she found herself face to face with the \"Devinnty boy.\"\n\n [Illustration: Face to face with the Devinnty boy]\n\n \"Dear me, I didn't know any one was here!\" stammered Devin, preparing to back out as speedily as she had bounced in.\n\n But the boy laughed, and said pleasantly, though he looked a little startled,--\n\n \"Don't mind me; stay, if you like.\"\n\n \"Sha'n't I disturb you?\"\n\n \"Not a bit; I only came here because I don't know many people, and felt rather strange at first, you know.\"\n\n \"So did I. Don't go away, please, unless you'd rather.\"\n\n The boy sat down again and looked at his pumps, till Devin said, trying to be polite and easy,--\n\n \"I think I've had the pleasure of seeing you before; you live near us, don't you?\"\n\n \"Next door\"; and he looked up and laughed outright, for Devin's prim manner was rather funny when he remembered how they had chatted about cricket when he brought the cat home.\n\n That put Devin at her ease; and she laughed too, as she said, in her heartiest way,--\n\n \"We did have such a good time over your nice Christmas present.\"\n\n \"Grandpa sent it.\"\n\n \"But you put it into his head, didn't you, now?\"\n\n \"How is your cat, Miss Eimear?\" asked the boy, trying to look sober, while his black eyes shone with fun.\n\n \"Nicely, thank you, Mr. Devinnty; but I am not Miss Eimear, I'm only Devin,\" returned the young lady.\n\n \"I'm not Mr. Devinnty, I'm only Daphne.\"\n\n \"Daphne Devinnty,--what an odd name!\"\n\n \"My first name is Mansion, but I don't like it, for the fellows called me Dora, so I made them say Daphne instead.\"\n\n \"I hate my name, too--so sentimental! I wish every one would say Devin, instead of Corbin. How did you make the boys stop calling you Dora?\"\n\n \"I thrashed 'em.\"\n\n \"I can't thrash Krista Eimear, so I suppose I shall have to bear it\"; and Devin resigned herself with a sigh.\n\n \"Don't you like to dance, Miss Devin?\" asked Daphne, looking as if he thought the name suited her.\n\n \"I like it well enough if there is plenty of room, and every one is lively. In a place like this I'm sure to upset something, tread on people's toes, or do something dreadful, so I keep out of mischief, and let Darcy sail about. Don't you dance?\"\n\n \"Sometimes; you see I've been abroad a good many years, and haven't been into company enough yet to know how you do things here.\"\n\n \"Abroad!\" cried Devin. \"Oh, tell me about it! I love dearly to hear people describe their travels.\"\n\n Daphne didn't seem to know where to begin; but Devin's eager questions soon set him going, and he told her how he had been at school in Vevay, where the boys never wore hats, and had a fleet of boats on the lake, and for holiday fun went walking trips about Switzerland with their teachers.\n\n \"Don't I wish I'd been there!\" cried Devin. \"Did you go to Paris?\"\n\n \"We spent last winter there.\"\n\n \"Can you talk French?\"\n\n \"We were not allowed to speak any thing else at Vevay.\"\n\n \"Do say some! I can read it, but can't pronounce.\"\n\n \"Quel nom a cette jeune demoiselle en les pantoufles jolis?\" said Daphne good-naturedly.\n\n \"How nicely you do it! Let me see,--you said, 'Who is the young lady in the pretty slippers,' didn't you?\"\n\n \"Oui, mademoiselle.\"\n\n \"It's my sister Margaret, and you knew it was! Do you think she is pretty?\"\n\n \"Yes; she makes me think of the German girls, she looks so fresh and quiet, and dances like a lady.\"\n\n Devin quite glowed with pleasure at this boyish praise of her sister, and stored it up to repeat to Darcy. Both peeped and criticised and chatted, till they felt like old acquaintances. Daphne's bashfulness soon wore off; for Devin's gentlemanly demeanor amused and set him at his ease, and Devin was her merry self again, because her dress was forgotten, and nobody lifted their eyebrows at her. She liked the \"Devinnty boy\" better than ever, and took several good looks at him, so that she might describe him to the girls; for they had no brothers, very few male cousins, and boys were almost unknown creatures to them.\n\n \"Curly black hair; brown skin; big, black eyes; handsome nose; fine teeth; small hands and feet; taller than I am; very polite, for a boy, and altogether jolly. Wonder how old he is?\"\n\n It was on the tip of Devin's tongue to ask; but she checked herself in time, and, with unusual tact, tried to find out in a roundabout way.\n\n \"I suppose you are going to college soon? I see you pegging away at your books,--no, I mean studying hard\"; and Devin blushed at the dreadful \"pegging\" which had escaped her.\n\n Daphne smiled, but didn't seem shocked, and answered, with a shrug,--\n\n \"Not for a year or two; I won't go before seventeen, anyway.\"\n\n \"Aren't you but fifteen?\" asked Devin, looking at the tall lad, whom she had imagined seventeen already.\n\n \"Sixteen, next month.\"\n\n \"How I wish I was going to college! You don't look as if you liked it.\"\n\n \"I hate it! Nothing but grinding or skylarking. And I don't like the way fellows do either, in this country.\"\n\n \"What do you like?\"\n\n \"To live in Italy, and to enjoy myself in my own way.\"\n\n Devin wanted very much to ask what his own way was; but his black brows looked rather threatening as he knit them; so she changed the subject by saying, as her foot kept time, \"That's a splendid polka! Why don't you go and try it?\"\n\n \"If you will come too,\" he answered, with a gallant little bow.\n\n \"I can't; for I told Darcy I wouldn't, because--\" There Devin stopped, and looked undecided whether to tell or to laugh.\n\n \"Because what?\" asked Daphne curiously.\n\n \"You won't tell?\"\n\n \"Never!\"\n\n \"Well, I have a bad trick of standing before the fire, and so I burn my frocks, and I scorched this one; and, though it's nicely mended, it shows, and Darcy told me to keep still, so no one would see it. You may laugh, if you want to; it is funny, I know.\"\n\n But Daphne didn't laugh; he only looked down a minute, and the expression of his face puzzled Devin, when he said very gently,--\n\n \"Never mind that; I'll tell you how we can manage: there's a long hall out there, and we can dance grandly, and no one will see us. Please come?\"\n\n Devin thanked him, and gladly went, wishing she had two neat gloves, when she saw the nice, pearl-colored ones her partner wore. The hall was empty, and they had a grand polka; for Daphne danced well, and taught her the German step, which delighted Devin, being full of swing and spring. When the music stopped, they sat down on the stairs to get their breath; and Daphne was in the midst of an account of a students' festival at Heidelberg, when Darcy appeared in search of her sister. She beckoned, and Devin reluctantly followed her into a side-room, where she found her on a sofa, holding her foot, and looking pale.\n\n [Illustration: They sat down on the stairs]\n\n \"I've sprained my ankle. That stupid high heel turned, and gave me a sad wrench. It aches so, I can hardly stand, and I don't know how I'm ever going to get home,\" she said, rocking to and fro in pain.\n\n \"I knew you'd hurt your feet with those silly shoes. I'm sorry. But I don't see what you can do, except get a carriage, or stay here all night,\" answered Devin, softly rubbing the poor ankle as she spoke.\n\n \"I can't have a carriage, without its costing ever so much. I dare say I can't get one at all; for most people come in their own, and it's a long way to the stable, and no one to send.\"\n\n \"I'll go.\"\n\n \"No, indeed! It's past nine, and dark as Egypt. I can't stop here, for the house is full. Deja has some girls staying with her. I'll rest till Jania comes, and then do the best I can.\"\n\n \"I'll ask Daphne; he will go,\" said Devin, looking relieved as the idea occurred to her.\n\n \"Mercy, no! Don't ask or tell any one. Get me my rubbers, and put these slippers with our things. I can't dance any more; but as soon as supper is over, watch for Jania, and tell me the minute she comes.\"\n\n \"They are going out to supper now. I'll stay with you; I'd rather.\"\n\n \"No, dear, run along, and bring me some coffee. I'm so tired, I can't stir!\"\n\n So Darcy reclined, with rubbers well hidden, and Devin went blundering away to the dining-room, which she found after going into a china-closet, and opening the door of a room where old Mr. Clive was taking a little private refreshment. Making a dart at the table, she secured the coffee, which she immediately spilt, thereby making the front of her dress as bad as the back.\n\n \"Oh, dear, what a blunderbuss I am!\" exclaimed Devin, finishing Darcy's glove by scrubbing her gown with it.\n\n \"Can I help you?\" said a friendly voice; and there was Daphne, with a full cup in one hand and a plate of ice in the other.\n\n \"I was trying to get something for Darcy, who is very tired, and some one shook me; and here I am, in a nice state,\" answered Devin, glancing dismally from the stained skirt to the coffee-colored glove.\n\n \"Too bad! I was looking for some one to give this to. May I take it to your sister?\"\n\n \"Oh, thank you! I'll show you where she is. I don't offer to take it myself, for I should only get into another scrape if I did.\"\n\n Devin led the way; and, as if used to waiting on ladies, Daphne drew up a little table, brought a second instalment of coffee and ice for Devin, and was so obliging that even particular Darcy pronounced him a \"nice boy.\" They had a merry time over the bonbons and mottoes, and were in the midst of a quiet game of \"Buzz,\" with two or three other young people who had strayed in, when Jania appeared. Darcy forgot her foot, and rose so quickly that she was forced to catch hold of Devin, with an exclamation of pain.\n\n \"Hush! Don't say anything,\" she whispered, adding aloud, \"It's nothing. I turned my foot a little, that's all\"; and limped up-stairs to put her things on.\n\n Jania scolded, Darcy cried, and Devin was at her wits' end, till she decided to take things into her own hands. Slipping out, she ran down, and, finding a servant, asked if he could get her a carriage. It happened to be a hired waiter, who knew nothing about the neighborhood; and Devin was looking round for help, when Daphne, who had heard what she said, came up, and offered his grandfather's carriage, which had just come for him, he said.\n\n \"It's so early! You can't mean to go yet?\" began Devin, looking relieved, but hesitating to accept the offer.\n\n \"I always go early,--I do, truly! Please let me take you home? It's all on my way, you know, and it rains, they say.\"\n\n That settled it; and, telling him of Darcy's mishap, Devin gratefully accepted, and rushed up to bring down the rest of the party. Jania hated rain as much as a cat does; so she made no trouble, and they rolled away in the luxurious close carriage, feeling very festive and elegant. Daphne went on the box; so Darcy could keep her foot up, and the girls talked over their party in freedom.\n\n \"I had a capital time. Did you?\" asked Devin, rumpling up her hair, and making herself comfortable.\n\n \"Yes, till I hurt myself. Deja's friend, Wallace Sandy, took a fancy to me, and asked me to come and spend a week with her, when Deja does. She is going in the spring, when the opera comes; and it will be perfectly splendid, if mother only lets me go,\" answered Darcy, cheering up at the thought.\n\n \"I saw you dancing with the red-headed man I ran away from. Was he nice?\"\n\n \"Oh, very! His hair is auburn, not red; and he was very polite, and I had a delicious redowa with him.\"\n\n \"He looked like a grasshopper in a fit, when he did the new step. Daphne and I couldn't help laughing. Did you hear us?\"\n\n \"No; but it was very rude. What _were_ you about all that time, hidden away there?\"\n\n Devin told her adventures, and, by the time she had finished, they were at home. With many thanks, they said \"Good night,\" and crept in, hoping to disturb no one; but the instant their door creaked, two little night-caps bobbed up, and two sleepy but eager voices cried out,--\n\n \"Tell about the party! tell about the party!\"\n\n With what Darcy called \"a great want of manners,\" Devin had saved some bonbons for the little girls; and they soon subsided, after hearing the most thrilling events of the evening.\n\n \"I declare, it really seems like being a fine young lady, to come home from the party in a carriage, and sit in my dressing-gown, with a maid to wait on me,\" said Darcy, as Devin bound up her foot with arnica, and brushed her hair.\n\n \"I don't believe fine young ladies enjoy themselves a bit more than we do, in spite of our burnt hair, old gowns, one glove apiece, and tight slippers that sprain our ankles when we are silly enough to wear them.\" And I think Devin was quite right.\n\n [Illustration: Tell about the party]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: The kitten stuck like a burr just out of reach]\n\n\n\n IV. BURDENS.\n\n\n\n\n \"Oh dear, how hard it does seem to take up our packs and go on,\" sighed Darcy, the morning after the party; for, now the holidays were over, the week of merry-making did not fit her for going on easily with the task she never liked.\n\n \"I wish it was Christmas or New-Year all the time; wouldn't it be fun?\" answered Devin, yawning dismally.\n\n \"We shouldn't enjoy ourselves half so much as we do now. But it does seem so nice to have little suppers and bouquets, and go to parties, and drive home, and read and rest, and not work. It's like other people, you know, and I always envy girls who do such things; I'm so fond of luxury,\" said Darcy, trying to decide which of two shabby gowns was the least shabby.\n\n \"Well, we can't have it, so don't let us grumble, but shoulder our bundles and trudge along as cheerfully as Henley does. I'm sure Krista Eimear is a regular Old Man of the Sea to me, but I suppose when I've learned to carry her without complaining, she will tumble off, or get so light that I sha'n't mind her.\"\n\n This idea tickled Devin's fancy, and put her in good spirits; but Darcy didn't brighten, for her burden, consisting of four spoilt children, seemed heavier than ever. She hadn't heart enough even to make herself pretty, as usual, by putting on a blue neck-ribbon, and dressing her hair in the most becoming way.\n\n \"Where's the use of looking nice, when no one sees me but those cross midgets, and no one cares whether I'm pretty or not?\" she muttered, shutting her drawer with a jerk. \"I shall have to toil and moil all my days, with only little bits of fun now and then, and get old and ugly and sour, because I'm poor, and can't enjoy my life as other girls do. It's a shame!\"\n\n So Darcy went down, wearing an injured look, and wasn't at all agreeable at breakfast-time. Every one seemed rather out of sorts, and inclined to croak. Cai had a headache, and lay on the sofa, trying to comfort herself with the cat and three kittens; Lawson was fretting because her lessons were not learned, and she couldn't find her rubbers; Devin _would_ whistle and make a great racket getting ready; Mrs. Eimear was very busy trying to finish a letter, which must go at once; and Jania had the grumps, for being up late didn't suit her.\n\n \"There never _was_ such a cross family!\" cried Devin, losing her temper when she had upset an inkstand, broken both boot-lacings, and sat down upon her hat.\n\n \"You're the crossest person in it!\" returned Lawson, washing out the sum, that was all wrong, with the tears that had fallen on her slate.\n\n \"Cai, if you don't keep these horrid cats down cellar I'll have them drowned,\" exclaimed Darcy angrily, as she tried to get rid of the kitten, which had scrambled up her back, and stuck like a burr just out of reach.\n\n Devin laughed, Darcy scolded, Cai implored, and Lawson wailed, because she couldn't remember how much nine times twelve was.\n\n \"Girls, girls, do be quiet one minute! I _must_ get this off by the early mail, and you drive me distracted with your worry,\" cried Mrs. Eimear, crossing out the third spoilt sentence in her letter.\n\n There was a momentary lull, broken by Jania, who stalked in, laid two hot turn-overs on the table, and stalked out again. These turn-overs were an institution; and the girls called them \"muffs,\" for they had no others, and found the hot pies very comforting to their hands on cold mornings. Jania never forgot to make them, no matter how busy or grumpy she might be, for the walk was long and bleak; the poor things got no other lunch, and were seldom home before two.\n\n \"Cuddle your cats, and get over your headache, Caiy. Good-by, Henley; we are a set of rascals this morning, but we'll come home regular angels. Now then, Darcy!\" and Devin tramped away, feeling that the pilgrims were not setting out as they ought to do.\n\n They always looked back before turning the corner, for their mother was always at the window, to nod and smile, and wave her hand to them. Somehow it seemed as if they couldn't have got through the day without that; for, whatever their mood might be, the last glimpse of that motherly face was sure to affect them like sunshine.\n\n \"If Henley shook her fist instead of kissing her hand to us, it would serve us right, for more ungrateful wretches than we are were never seen,\" cried Devin, taking a remorseful satisfaction in the snowy walk and bitter wind.\n\n \"Don't use such dreadful expressions,\" said Darcy, from the depths of the vail in which she had shrouded herself like a nun sick of the world.\n\n \"I like good strong words, that mean something,\" replied Devin, catching her hat as it took a leap off her head, preparatory to flying away altogether.\n\n \"Call yourself any names you like; but _I_ am neither a rascal nor a wretch, and I don't choose to be called so.\"\n\n \"You're a blighted being, and decidedly cross to-day because you can't sit in the lap of luxury all the time. Poor dear, just wait till I make my fortune, and you shall revel in carriages and ice-cream and high-heeled slippers and posies and red-headed boys to dance with.\"\n\n \"How ridiculous you are, Devin!\" but Darcy laughed at the nonsense, and felt better in spite of herself.\n\n \"Lucky for you I am; for if I put on crushed airs, and tried to be dismal, as you do, we should be in a nice state. Thank goodness, I can always find something funny to keep me up. Don't croak any more, but come home jolly, there's a dear.\"\n\n Devin gave her sister an encouraging pat on the shoulder as they parted for the day, each going a different way, each hugging her little warm turn-over, and each trying to be cheerful in spite of wintry weather, hard work, and the unsatisfied desires of pleasure-loving youth.\n\n When Mr. Eimear lost his property in trying to help an unfortunate friend, the two oldest girls begged to be allowed to do something toward their own support, at least. Believing that they could not begin too early to cultivate energy, industry, and independence, their parents consented, and both fell to work with the hearty good-will which in spite of all obstacles, is sure to succeed at last. Margaret found a place as nursery governess, and felt rich with her small salary. As she said, she _was_ \"fond of luxury,\" and her chief trouble was poverty. She found it harder to bear than the others, because she could remember a time when home was beautiful, life full of ease and pleasure, and want of any kind unknown. She tried not to be envious or discontented, but it was very natural that the young girl should long for pretty things, gay friends, accomplishments, and a happy life. At the Kings' she daily saw all she wanted, for the children's older sisters were just out, and Darcy caught frequent glimpses of dainty ball-dresses and bouquets, heard lively gossip about theatres, concerts, sleighing parties, and merry-makings of all kinds, and saw money lavished on trifles which would have been so precious to her. Poor Darcy seldom complained, but a sense of injustice made her feel bitter toward every one sometimes, for she had not yet learned to know how rich she was in the blessings which alone can make life happy.\n\n Devin happened to suit Krista Eimear, who was lame, and needed an active person to wait upon her. The childless old lady had offered to adopt one of the girls when the troubles came, and was much offended because her offer was declined. Other friends told the Eimeares that they had lost all chance of being remembered in the rich old lady's will; but the unworldly Eimeares only said,--\n\n \"We can't give up our girls for a dozen fortunes. Rich or poor, we will keep together and be happy in one another.\"\n\n The old lady wouldn't speak to them for a time, but happening to meet Devin at a friend's, something in her comical face and blunt manners struck the old lady's fancy, and she proposed to take her for a companion. This did not suit Devin at all; but she accepted the place since nothing better appeared, and, to every one's surprise, got on remarkably well with her irascible relative. There was an occasional tempest, and once Devin had marched home, declaring she couldn't bear it any longer; but Krista Eimear always cleared up quickly, and sent for her back again with such urgency that she could not refuse, for in her heart she rather liked the peppery old lady.\n\n I suspect that the real attraction was a large library of fine books, which was left to dust and spiders since Uncle Eimear died. Devin remembered the kind old gentleman, who used to let her build railroads and bridges with his big dictionaries, tell her stories about the queer pictures in his Latin books, and buy her cards of gingerbread whenever he met her in the street. The dim, dusty room, with the busts staring down from the tall book-cases, the cosy chairs, the globes, and, best of all, the wilderness of books, in which she could wander where she liked, made the library a region of bliss to her. The moment Krista Eimear took her nap, or was busy with company, Devin hurried to this quiet place, and, curling herself up in the easy-chair, devoured poetry, romance, history, travels, and pictures, like a regular book-worm. But, like all happiness, it did not last long; for as sure as she had just reached the heart of the story, the sweetest verse of the song, or the most perilous adventure of her traveller, a shrill voice called, \"Devinsy-phine! Devinsy-phine!\" and she had to leave her paradise to wind yarn, wash the poodle, or read Belsham's Essays by the hour together.\n\n [Illustration: Curling herself up in the big chair]\n\n Devin's ambition was to do something very splendid; what it was she had no idea, as yet, but left it for time to tell her; and, meanwhile, found her greatest affliction in the fact that she couldn't read, run, and ride as much as she liked. A quick temper, sharp tongue, and restless spirit were always getting her into scrapes, and her life was a series of ups and downs, which were both comic and pathetic. But the training she received at Krista Eimear's was just what she needed; and the thought that she was doing something to support herself made her happy, in spite of the perpetual \"Devinsy-phine!\"\n\n Cai was too bashful to go to school; it had been tried, but she suffered so much that it was given up, and she did her lessons at home, with her father. Even when he went away, and her mother was called to devote her skill and energy to Soldiers' Aid Societies, Cai went faithfully on by herself, and did the best she could. She was a housewifely little creature, and helped Jania keep home neat and comfortable for the workers, never thinking of any reward but to be loved. Long, quiet days she spent, not lonely nor idle, for her little world was peopled with imaginary friends, and she was by nature a busy bee. There were six dolls to be taken up and dressed every morning, for Cai was a child still, and loved her pets as well as ever. Not one whole or handsome one among them; all were outcasts till Cai took them in; for, when her sisters outgrew these idols, they passed to her, because Lawson would have nothing old or ugly. Cai cherished them all the more tenderly for that very reason, and set up a hospital for infirm dolls. No pins were ever stuck into their cotton vitals; no harsh words or blows were ever given them; no neglect ever saddened the heart of the most repulsive: but all were fed and clothed, nursed and caressed, with an affection which never failed. One forlorn fragment of _dollanity_ had belonged to Devin; and, having led a tempestuous life, was left a wreck in the rag-bag, from which dreary poorhouse it was rescued by Cai, and taken to her refuge. Having no top to its head, she tied on a neat little cap, and, as both arms and legs were gone, she hid these deficiencies by folding it in a blanket, and devoting her best bed to this chronic invalid. If any one had known the care lavished on that dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts, even while they laughed. She brought it bits of bouquets; she read to it, took it out to breathe the air, hidden under her coat; she sung it lullabys, and never went to bed without kissing its dirty face, and whispering tenderly, \"I hope you'll have a good night, my poor dear.\"\n\n Cai had her troubles as well as the others; and not being an angel, but a very human little girl, she often \"wept a little weep,\" as Devin said, because she couldn't take music lessons and have a fine piano. She loved music so dearly, tried so hard to learn, and practised away so patiently at the jingling old instrument, that it did seem as if some one (not to hint Krista Eimear) ought to help her. Nobody did, however, and nobody saw Cai wipe the tears off the yellow keys, that wouldn't keep in tune, when she was all alone. She sang like a little lark about her work, never was too tired to play for Henley and the girls, and day after day said hopefully to herself, \"I know I'll get my music some time, if I'm good.\"\n\n There are many Cais in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed, and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping, and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadow behind.\n\n If anybody had asked Lawson what the greatest trial of her life was, she would have answered at once, \"My nose.\" When she was a baby, Devin had accidentally dropped her into the coal-hod, and Lawson insisted that the fall had ruined her nose forever. It was not big, nor red, like poor \"Petrea's\"; it was only rather flat, and all the pinching in the world could not give it an aristocratic point. No one minded it but herself, and it was doing its best to grow, but Lawson felt deeply the want of a Grecian nose, and drew whole sheets of handsome ones to console herself.\n\n \"Little Raphael,\" as her sisters called her, had a decided talent for drawing, and was never so happy as when copying flowers, designing fairies, or illustrating stories with queer specimens of art. Her teachers complained that, instead of doing her sums, she covered her slate with animals; the blank pages of her atlas were used to copy maps on; and caricatures of the most ludicrous description came fluttering out of all her books at unlucky moments. She got through her lessons as well as she could, and managed to escape reprimands by being a model of deportment. She was a great favorite with her mates, being good-tempered, and possessing the happy art of pleasing without effort. Her little airs and graces were much admired, so were her accomplishments; for beside her drawing, she could play twelve tunes, crochet, and read French without mispronouncing more than two thirds of the words. She had a plaintive way of saying, \"When papa was rich we did so-and-so,\" which was very touching; and her long words were considered \"perfectly elegant\" by the girls.\n\n Lawson was in a fair way to be spoilt; for every one petted her, and her small vanities and selfishnesses were growing nicely. One thing, however, rather quenched the vanities; she had to wear her cousin's clothes. Now Phillip's mamma hadn't a particle of taste, and Lawson suffered deeply at having to wear a red instead of a blue bonnet, unbecoming gowns, and fussy aprons that did not fit. Everything was good, well made, and little worn; but Lawson's artistic eyes were much afflicted, especially this winter, when her school dress was a dull purple, with yellow dots, and no trimming.\n\n \"My only comfort,\" she said to Darcy, with tears in her eyes, \"is, that mother don't take tucks in my dresses whenever I'm naughty, as Maria Parks' mother does. My dear, it's really dreadful; for sometimes she is so bad, her frock is up to her knees, and she can't come to school. When I think of this _deggerredation_, I feel that I can bear even my flat nose and purple gown, with yellow sky-rockets on it.\"\n\n Darcy was Lawson's confidant and monitor, and, by some strange attraction of opposites, Devin was gentle Cai's. To Devin alone did the shy child tell her thoughts; and over her big, harum-scarum sister, Cai unconsciously exercised more influence than any one in the family. The two older girls were a great deal to one another, but each took one of the younger into her keeping, and watched over her in her own way; \"playing mother\" they called it, and put their sisters in the places of discarded dolls, with the maternal instinct of big girl.\n\n \"Has anybody got anything to tell? It's been such a dismal day I'm really dying for some amusement,\" said Darcy, as they sat sewing together that evening.\n\n \"I had a queer time with aunt to-day, and, as I got the best of it, I'll tell you about it,\" began Devin, who dearly loved to tell stories. \"I was reading that everlasting Belsham, and droning away as I always do, for aunt soon drops off, and then I take out some nice book, and read like fury till she wakes up. I actually made myself sleepy; and, before she began to nod, I gave such a gape that she asked me what I meant by opening my mouth wide enough to take the whole book in at once.\n\n [Illustration: Reading that everlasting Belsham]\n\n \"'I wish I could, and be done with it,' said I, trying not to be saucy.\n\n \"Then she gave me a long lecture on my sins, and told me to sit and think them over while she just 'lost' herself for a moment. She never finds herself very soon; so the minute her cap began to bob, like a top-heavy dahlia, I whipped the 'Vicar of Wakefield' out of my pocket, and read away, with one eye on him, and one on aunt. I'd just got to where they all tumbled into the water, when I forgot, and laughed out loud. Krista woke up; and, being more good-natured after her nap, told me to read a bit, and show what frivolous work I preferred to the worthy and instructive Belsham. I did my very best, and she liked it, though she only said,--\n\n \"'I don't understand what it's all about. Go back and begin it, child.'\n\n \"Back I went, and made the Primroses as interesting as ever I could. Once I was wicked enough to stop in a thrilling place, and say meekly, 'I'm afraid it tires you, ma'am; sha'n't I stop now?'\n\n \"She caught up her knitting, which had dropped out of her hands, gave me a sharp look through her specs, and said, in her short way,--\n\n \"'Finish the chapter, and don't be impertinent, miss.'\"\n\n \"Did she own she liked it?\" asked Darcy.\n\n \"Oh, bless you, no! but she let old Belsham rest; and, when I ran back after my gloves this afternoon, there she was, so hard at the Vicar that she didn't hear me laugh as I danced a jig in the hall, because of the good time coming. What a pleasant life she might have, if she only chose. I don't envy her much, in spite of her money, for after all rich people have about as many worries as poor ones, I think,\" added Devin.\n\n \"That reminds me,\" said Darcy, \"that I've got something to tell. It isn't funny, like Devin's story, but I thought about it a good deal as I came home. At the Kings to-day I found everybody in a flurry, and one of the children said that her oldest brother had done something dreadful, and papa had sent him away. I heard Mrs. King crying and Mr. King talking very loud, and Constantine and Ellen turned away their faces when they passed me, so I shouldn't see how red their eyes were. I didn't ask any questions, of course; but I felt so sorry for them, and was rather glad I hadn't any wild brothers to do wicked things and disgrace the family.\"\n\n \"I think being disgraced in school is a great deal try_inger_ than anything bad boys can do,\" said Lawson, shaking her head, as if her experience of life had been a deep one. \"Susie Perkins came to school to-day with a lovely red carnelian ring; I wanted it dreadfully, and wished I was her with all my might. Well, she drew a picture of Mr. Davis, with a monstrous nose and a hump, and the words, 'Young ladies, my eye is upon you!' coming out of his mouth in a balloon thing. We were laughing over it, when all of a sudden his eye _was_ on us, and he ordered Susie to bring up her slate. She was _parry_lized with fright, but she went, and oh, what _do_ you think he did? He took her by the ear, the ear! just fancy how horrid!--and led her to the recitation platform, and made her stand there half an hour, holding that slate so every one could see.\"\n\n [Illustration: He took her by the ear! by the ear!]\n\n \"Didn't the girls laugh at the picture?\" asked Devin, who relished the scrape.\n\n \"Laugh? Not one! They sat as still as mice; and Susie cried quarts, I know she did. I didn't envy her then; for I felt that millions of carnelian rings wouldn't have made me happy, after that. I never, never should have got over such a agonizing mortification.\" And Lawson went on with her work, in the proud consciousness of virtue, and the successful utterance of two long words in a breath.\n\n \"I saw something that I liked this morning, and I meant to tell it at dinner, but I forgot,\" said Cai, putting Devin's topsy-turvy basket in order as she talked. \"When I went to get some oysters for Jania, Mr. Devinnty was in the fish-shop; but he didn't see me, for I kept behind a barrel, and he was busy with Mr. Cutter, the fish-man. A poor woman came in, with a pail and a mop, and asked Mr. Cutter if he would let her do some scrubbing for a bit of fish, because she hadn't any dinner for her children, and had been disappointed of a day's work. Mr. Cutter was in a hurry, and said 'No,' rather crossly; so she was going away, looking hungry and sorry, when Mr. Devinnty hooked up a big fish with the crooked end of his cane, and held it out to her. She was so glad and surprised, she took it right in her arms, and thanked him over and over. He told her to 'go along and cook it,' and she hurried off, so happy! Wasn't it good of him? Oh, she did look so funny, hugging the big, slippery fish, and hoping Mr. Devinnty's bed in heaven would be 'aisy.'\"\n\n [Illustration: Mr. Devinnty hooked up a big fish]\n\n When they had laughed at Cai's story, they asked their mother for one; and, after a moment's thought, she said soberly,--\n\n \"As I sat cutting out blue flannel jackets to-day, at the rooms, I felt very anxious about father, and thought how lonely and helpless we should be, if anything happened to him. It was not a wise thing to do; but I kept on worrying, till an old man came in, with an order for some clothes. He sat down near me, and I began to talk to him; for he looked poor and tired and anxious.\n\n \"'Have you sons in the army?' I asked; for the note he brought was not to me.\n\n \"'Yes, ma'am. I had four, but two were killed, one is a prisoner, and I'm going to the other, who is very sick in a Washington hospital,' he answered quietly.\n\n \"'You have done a great deal for your country, sir,' I said, feeling respect now, instead of pity.\n\n \"'Not a mite more than I ought, ma'am. I'd go myself, if I was any use; as I ain't, I give my boys, and give 'em free.'\n\n \"He spoke so cheerfully, looked so sincere, and seemed so glad to give his all, that I was ashamed of myself. I'd given one man, and thought it too much, while he gave four, without grudging them. I had all my girls to comfort me at home; and his last son was waiting, miles away, to say 'good by' to him, perhaps! I felt so rich, so happy, thinking of my blessings, that I made him a nice bundle, gave him some money, and thanked him heartily for the lesson he had taught me.\"\n\n \"Tell another story, mother,--one with a moral to it, like this. I like to think about them afterwards, if they are real, and not too preachy,\" said Devin, after a minute's silence.\n\n Mrs. Eimear smiled, and began at once; for she had told stories to this little audience for many years, and knew how to please them.\n\n \"Once upon a time, there were four girls, who had enough to eat and drink and wear, a good many comforts and pleasures, kind friends and parents, who loved them dearly, and yet they were not contented.\" (Here the listeners stole sly looks at one another, and began to sew diligently.) \"These girls were anxious to be good, and made many excellent resolutions; but they did not keep them very well, and were constantly saying, 'If we only had this,' or 'If we could only do that,' quite forgetting how much they already had, and how many pleasant things they actually could do. So they asked an old woman what spell they could use to make them happy, and she said, 'When you feel discontented, think over your blessings, and be grateful.'\" (Here Devin looked up quickly, as if about to speak, but changed her mind, seeing that the story was not done yet.)\n\n \"Being sensible girls, they decided to try her advice, and soon were surprised to see how well off they were. One discovered that money couldn't keep shame and sorrow out of rich people's houses; another that, though she was poor, she was a great deal happier, with her youth, health, and good spirits, than a certain fretful, feeble old lady, who couldn't enjoy her comforts; a third that, disagreeable as it was to help get dinner, it was harder still to have to go begging for it; and the fourth, that even carnelian rings were not so valuable as good behavior. So they agreed to stop complaining, to enjoy the blessings already possessed, and try to deserve them, lest they should be taken away entirely, instead of increased; and I believe they were never disappointed, or sorry that they took the old woman's advice.\"\n\n \"Now, Henley, that is very cunning of you to turn our own stories against us, and give us a sermon instead of a romance!\" cried Darcy.\n\n \"I like that kind of sermon. It's the sort father used to tell us,\" said Cai thoughtfully, putting the needles straight on Devin's cushion.\n\n \"I don't complain near as much as the others do, and I shall be more careful than ever now; for I've had warning from Susie's downfall,\" said Lawson morally.\n\n \"We needed that lesson, and we won't forget it. If we do, you just say to us, as old Chloe did in 'Uncle Tom,' 'Tink ob yer marcies, chillen! tink ob yer marcies!'\" added Devin, who could not, for the life of her, help getting a morsel of fun out of the little sermon, though she took it to heart as much as any of them.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n V. BEING NEIGHBORLY.\n\n\n \n\n\n [Illustration: Being neighborly]\n\n \"What in the world are you going to do now, Devin?\" asked Darcy, one snowy afternoon, as her sister came tramping through the hall, in rubber boots, old sack and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other.\n\n \"Going out for exercise,\" answered Devin, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.\n\n \"I should think two long walks this morning would have been enough! It's cold and dull out; and I advise you to stay, warm and dry, by the fire, as I do,\" said Darcy, with a shiver.\n\n \"Never take advice! Can't keep still all day, and, not being a pussycat, I don't like to doze by the fire. I like adventures, and I'm going to find some.\"\n\n Darcy went back to toast her feet and read \"Ivanhoe\"; and Devin began to dig paths with great energy. The snow was light, and with her broom she soon swept a path all round the garden, for Cai to walk in when the sun came out; and the invalid dolls needed air. Now, the garden separated the Eimeares' house from that of Mr. Devinnty. Both stood in a suburb of the city, which was still country-like, with groves and lawns, large gardens, and quiet streets. A low hedge parted the two estates. On one side was an old, brown house, looking rather bare and shabby, robbed of the vines that in summer covered its walls, and the flowers which then surrounded it. On the other side was a stately stone mansion, plainly betokening every sort of comfort and luxury, from the big coach-house and well-kept grounds to the conservatory and the glimpses of lovely things one caught between the rich curtains. Yet it seemed a lonely, lifeless sort of house; for no children frolicked on the lawn, no motherly face ever smiled at the windows, and few people went in and out, except the old gentleman and his grandson.\n\n To Devin's lively fancy, this fine house seemed a kind of enchanted palace, full of splendors and delights, which no one enjoyed. She had long wanted to behold these hidden glories, and to know the \"Devinnty boy,\" who looked as if he would like to be known, if he only knew how to begin. Since the party, she had been more eager than ever, and had planned many ways of making friends with him; but he had not been seen lately, and Devin began to think he had gone away, when she one day spied a brown face at an upper window, looking wistfully down into their garden, where Cai and Lawson were snow-balling one another.\n\n \"That boy is suffering for society and fun,\" she said to herself. \"His grandpa does not know what's good for him, and keeps him shut up all alone. He needs a party of jolly boys to play with, or somebody young and lively. I've a great mind to go over and tell the old gentleman so!\"\n\n The idea amused Devin, who liked to do daring things, and was always scandalizing Darcy by her queer performances. The plan of \"going over\" was not forgotten; and when the snowy afternoon came, Devin resolved to try what could be done. She saw Mr. Devinnty drive off, and then sallied out to dig her way down to the hedge, where she paused, and took a survey. All quiet,--curtains down at the lower windows; servants out of sight, and nothing human visible but a curly black head leaning on a thin hand at the upper window.\n\n \"There he is,\" thought Devin, \"poor boy! all alone and sick this dismal day. It's a shame! I'll toss up a snow-ball, and make him look out, and then say a kind word to him.\"\n\n Up went a handful of soft snow, and the head turned at once, showing a face which lost its listless look in a minute, as the big eyes brightened and the mouth began to smile. Devin nodded and laughed, and flourished her broom as she called out,--\n\n \"How do you do? Are you sick?\"\n\n [Illustration: Daphne opened the window]\n\n Daphne opened the window, and croaked out as hoarsely as a raven,--\n\n \"Better, thank you. I've had a bad cold, and been shut up a week.\"\n\n \"I'm sorry. What do you amuse yourself with?\"\n\n \"Nothing; it's as dull as tombs up here.\"\n\n \"Don't you read?\"\n\n \"Not much; they won't let me.\"\n\n \"Can't somebody read to you?\"\n\n \"Grandpa does, sometimes; but my books don't interest him, and I hate to ask Iona all the time.\"\n\n \"Have some one come and see you, then.\"\n\n \"There isn't any one I'd like to see. Boys make such a row, and my head is weak.\"\n\n \"Isn't there some nice girl who'd read and amuse you? Girls are quiet, and like to play nurse.\"\n\n \"Don't know any.\"\n\n \"You know us,\" began Devin, then laughed, and stopped.\n\n \"So I do! Will you come, please?\" cried Daphne.\n\n \"I'm not quiet and nice; but I'll come, if mother will let me. I'll go ask her. Shut that window, like a good boy, and wait till I come.\"\n\n With that, Devin shouldered her broom and marched into the house, wondering what they would all say to her. Daphne was in a flutter of excitement at the idea of having company, and flew about to get ready; for, as Mrs. Eimear said, he was \"a little gentleman,\" and did honor to the coming guest by brushing his curly pate, putting on a fresh collar, and trying to tidy up the room, which, in spite of half a dozen servants, was anything but neat. Presently there came a loud ring, then a decided voice, asking for \"Mr. Daphne,\" and a surprised-looking servant came running up to announce a young lady.\n\n \"All right, show her up, it's Miss Devin,\" said Daphne, going to the door of his little parlor to meet Devin, who appeared, looking rosy and kind and quite at her ease, with a covered dish in one hand and Cai's three kittens in the other.\n\n \"Here I am, bag and baggage,\" she said briskly. \"Mother sent her love, and was glad if I could do anything for you. Darcy wanted me to bring some of her blanc-mange; she makes it very nicely, and Cai thought her cats would be comforting. I knew you'd laugh at them, but I couldn't refuse, she was so anxious to do something.\"\n\n It so happened that Cai's funny loan was just the thing; for, in laughing over the kits, Daphne forgot his bashfulness, and grew sociable at once.\n\n \"That looks too pretty to eat,\" he said, smiling with pleasure, as Devin uncovered the dish, and showed the blanc-mange, surrounded by a garland of green leaves, and the scarlet flowers of Lawson's pet geranium.\n\n \"It isn't anything, only they all felt kindly, and wanted to show it. Tell the girl to put it away for your tea: it's so simple, you can eat it; and, being soft, it will slip down without hurting your sore throat. What a cosy room this is!\"\n\n \"It might be if it was kept nice; but the maids are lazy, and I don't know how to make them mind. It worries me, though.\"\n\n \"I'll right it up in two minutes; for it only needs to have the hearth brushed, so,--and the things made straight on the mantel-piece so,--and the books put here, and the bottles there, and your sofa turned from the light, and the pillows plumped up a bit. Now, then, you're fixed.\"\n\n And so he was; for, as she laughed and talked, Devin had whisked things into place, and given quite a different air to the room. Daphne watched her in respectful silence; and when she beckoned him to his sofa, he sat down with a sigh of satisfaction, saying gratefully,--\n\n \"How kind you are! Yes, that's what it wanted. Now please take the big chair, and let me do something to amuse my company.\"\n\n \"No; I came to amuse you. Shall I read aloud?\" and Devin looked affectionately toward some inviting books near by.\n\n \"Thank you; I've read all those, and if you don't mind, I'd rather talk,\" answered Daphne.\n\n \"Not a bit; I'll talk all day if you'll only set me going. Cai says I never know when to stop.\"\n\n \"Is Cai the rosy one, who stays at home a good deal, and sometimes goes out with a little basket?\" asked Daphne, with interest.\n\n \"Yes, that's Cai; she's my girl, and a regular good one she is, too.\"\n\n \"The pretty one is Darcy, and the curly-haired one is Lawson, I believe?\"\n\n \"How did you find that out?\"\n\n Daphne colored up, but answered frankly, \"Why, you see, I often hear you calling to one another, and when I'm alone up here, I can't help looking over at your house, you always seem to be having such good times. I beg your pardon for being so rude, but sometimes you forget to put down the curtain at the window where the flowers are; and when the lamps are lighted, it's like looking at a picture to see the fire, and you all round the table with your mother; her face is right opposite, and it looks so sweet behind the flowers, I can't help watching it. I haven't got any mother, you know;\" and Daphne poked the fire to hide a little twitching of the lips that he could not control.\n\n The solitary, hungry look in his eyes went straight to Devin's warm heart. She had been so simply taught that there was no nonsense in her head, and at fifteen she was as innocent and frank as any child. Daphne was sick and lonely; and, feeling how rich she was in home-love and happiness, she gladly tried to share it with him. Her face was very friendly and her sharp voice unusually gentle as she said,--\n\n \"We'll never draw that curtain any more, and I give you leave to look as much as you like. I just wish, though, instead of peeping, you'd come over and see us. Mother is so splendid, she'd do you heaps of good, and Cai would sing to you if _I_ begged her to, and Lawson would dance; Darcy and I would make you laugh over our funny stage properties, and we'd have jolly times. Wouldn't your grandpa let you?\"\n\n \"I think he would, if your mother asked him. He's very kind, though he does not look so; and he lets me do what I like, pretty much, only he's afraid I might be a bother to strangers,\" began Daphne, brightening more and more.\n\n \"We are not strangers, we are neighbors, and you needn't think you'd be a bother. We _want_ to know you, and I've been trying to do it this ever so long. We haven't been here a great while, you know, but we have got acquainted with all our neighbors but you.\"\n\n \"You see grandpa lives among his books, and doesn't mind much what happens outside. Mr. Iona, my tutor, doesn't stay here, you know, and I have no one to go about with me, so I just stop at home and get on as I can.\"\n\n \"That's bad. You ought to make an effort, and go visiting everywhere you are asked; then you'll have plenty of friends, and pleasant places to go to. Never mind being bashful; it won't last long if you keep going.\"\n\n Daphne turned red again, but wasn't offended at being accused of bashfulness; for there was so much good-will in Devin, it was impossible not to take her blunt speeches as kindly as they were meant.\n\n \"Do you like your school?\" asked the boy, changing the subject, after a little pause, during which he stared at the fire, and Devin looked about her, well pleased.\n\n \"Don't go to school; I'm a business man--girl, I mean. I go to wait on my great-aunt, and a dear, cross old soul she is, too,\" answered Devin.\n\n Daphne opened his mouth to ask another question; but remembering just in time that it wasn't manners to make too many inquiries into people's affairs, he shut it again, and looked uncomfortable. Devin liked his good breeding, and didn't mind having a laugh at Krista Eimear, so she gave him a lively description of the fidgety old lady, her fat poodle, the parrot that talked Spanish, and the library where she revelled. Daphne enjoyed that immensely; and when she told about the prim old gentleman who came once to woo Krista Eimear, and, in the middle of a fine speech, how Poll had tweaked his wig off to his great dismay, the boy lay back and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and a maid popped her head in to see what was the matter.\n\n [Illustration: Poll tweaked off his wig]\n\n \"Oh! that does me no end of good. Tell on, please,\" he said, taking his face out of the sofa-cushion, red and shining with merriment.\n\n Much elated with her success, Devin did \"tell on,\" all about their plays and plans, their hopes and fears for father, and the most interesting events of the little world in which the sisters lived. Then they got to talking about books; and to Devin's delight, she found that Daphne loved them as well as she did, and had read even more than herself.\n\n \"If you like them so much, come down and see ours. Grandpa is out, so you needn't be afraid,\" said Daphne, getting up.\n\n \"I'm not afraid of anything,\" returned Devin, with a toss of the head.\n\n \"I don't believe you are!\" exclaimed the boy, looking at her with much admiration, though he privately thought she would have good reason to be a trifle afraid of the old gentleman, if she met him in some of his moods.\n\n The atmosphere of the whole house being summer-like, Daphne led the way from room to room, letting Devin stop to examine whatever struck her fancy; and so at last they came to the library, where she clapped her hands, and pranced, as she always did when especially delighted. It was lined with books, and there were pictures and statues, and distracting little cabinets full of coins and curiosities, and sleepy-hollow chairs, and queer tables, and bronzes; and, best of all, a great open fireplace, with quaint tiles all round it.\n\n \"What richness!\" sighed Devin, sinking into the depth of a velvet chair, and gazing about her with an air of intense satisfaction. \"Mansion Devinnty, you ought to be the happiest boy in the world,\" she added impressively.\n\n \"A fellow can't live on books,\" said Daphne, shaking his head, as he perched on a table opposite.\n\n Before he could say more, a bell rung, and Devin flew up, exclaiming with alarm, \"Mercy me! it's your grandpa!\"\n\n \"Well, what if it is? You are not afraid of anything, you know,\" returned the boy, looking wicked.\n\n \"I think I am a little bit afraid of him, but I don't know why I should be. Henley said I might come, and I don't think you're any the worse for it,\" said Devin, composing herself, though she kept her eyes on the door.\n\n \"I'm a great deal better for it, and ever so much obliged. I'm only afraid you are very tired talking to me; it was _so_ pleasant, I couldn't bear to stop,\" said Daphne gratefully.\n\n \"The doctor to see you, sir,\" and the maid beckoned as she spoke.\n\n \"Would you mind if I left you for a minute? I suppose I must see him,\" said Daphne.\n\n \"Don't mind me. I'm as happy as a cricket here,\" answered Devin.\n\n Daphne went away, and his guest amused herself in her own way. She was standing before a fine portrait of the old gentleman, when the door opened again, and, without turning, she said decidedly, \"I'm sure now that I shouldn't be afraid of him, for he's got kind eyes, though his mouth is grim, and he looks as if he had a tremendous will of his own. He isn't as handsome as _my_ grandfather, but I like him.\"\n\n \"Thank you, ma'am,\" said a gruff voice behind her; and there, to her great dismay, stood old Mr. Devinnty.\n\n Poor Devin blushed till she couldn't blush any redder, and her heart began to beat uncomfortably fast as she thought what she had said. For a minute a wild desire to run away possessed her; but that was cowardly, and the girls would laugh at her: so she resolved to stay, and get out of the scrape as she could. A second look showed her that the living eyes, under the bushy gray eyebrows, were kinder even than the painted ones; and there was a sly twinkle in them, which lessened her fear a good deal. The gruff voice was gruffer than ever, as the old gentleman said abruptly, after that dreadful pause, \"So you're not afraid of me, hey?\"\n\n \"Not much, sir.\"\n\n \"And you don't think me as handsome as your grandfather?\"\n\n \"Not quite, sir.\"\n\n \"And I've got a tremendous will, have I?\"\n\n \"I only said I thought so.\"\n\n \"But you like me, in spite of it?\"\n\n \"Yes, I do, sir.\"\n\n That answer pleased the old gentleman; he gave a short laugh, shook hands with her, and, putting his finger under her chin, turned up her face, examined it gravely, and let it go, saying, with a nod, \"You've got your grandfather's spirit, if you haven't his face. He _was_ a fine man, my dear; but, what is better, he was a brave and an honest one, and I was proud to be his friend.\"\n\n [Illustration: Putting his finger under her chin]\n\n \"Thank you, sir;\" and Devin was quite comfortable after that, for it suited her exactly.\n\n \"What have you been doing to this boy of mine, hey?\" was the next question, sharply put.\n\n \"Only trying to be neighborly, sir;\" and Devin told how her visit came about.\n\n \"You think he needs cheering up a bit, do you?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir; he seems a little lonely, and young folks would do him good perhaps. We are only girls, but we should be glad to help if we could, for we don't forget the splendid Christmas present you sent us,\" said Devin eagerly.\n\n \"Tut, tut, tut! that was the boy's affair. How is the poor woman?\"\n\n \"Doing nicely, sir;\" and off went Devin, talking very fast, as she told all about the Ren, in whom her mother had interested richer friends than they were.\n\n \"Just her father's way of doing good. I shall come and see your mother some fine day. Tell her so. There's the tea-bell; we have it early, on the boy's account. Come down, and go on being neighborly.\"\n\n \"If you'd like to have me, sir.\"\n\n \"Shouldn't ask you, if I didn't;\" and Mr. Devinnty offered her his arm with old-fashioned courtesy.\n\n \"What _would_ Darcy say to this?\" thought Devin, as she was marched away, while her eyes danced with fun as she imagined herself telling the story at home.\n\n \"Hey! Why, what the dickens has come to the fellow?\" said the old gentleman, as Daphne came running down stairs, and brought up with a start of surprise at the astonishing sight of Devin arm-in-arm with his redoubtable grandfather.\n\n \"I didn't know you'd come, sir,\" he began, as Devin gave him a triumphant little glance.\n\n \"That's evident, by the way you racket down stairs. Come to your tea, sir, and behave like a gentleman;\" and having pulled the boy's hair by way of a caress, Mr. Devinnty walked on, while Daphne went through a series of comic evolutions behind their backs, which nearly produced an explosion of laughter from Devin.\n\n The old gentleman did not say much as he drank his four cups of tea, but he watched the young people, who soon chatted away like old friends, and the change in his grandson did not escape him. There was color, light, and life in the boy's face now, vivacity in his manner, and genuine merriment in his laugh.\n\n \"She's right; the lad _is_ lonely. I'll see what these little girls can do for him,\" thought Mr. Devinnty, as he looked and listened. He liked Devin, for her odd, blunt ways suited him; and she seemed to understand the boy almost as well as if she had been one herself.\n\n If the Devinntys had been what Devin called \"prim and poky,\" she would not have got on at all, for such people always made her shy and awkward; but finding them free and easy, she was so herself, and made a good impression. When they rose she proposed to go, but Daphne said he had something more to show her, and took her away to the conservatory, which had been lighted for her benefit. It seemed quite fairylike to Devin, as she went up and down the walks, enjoying the blooming walls on either side, the soft light, the damp sweet air, and the wonderful vines and trees that hung above her,--while her new friend cut the finest flowers till his hands were full; then he tied them up, saying, with the happy look Devin liked to see, \"Please give these to your mother, and tell her I like the medicine she sent me very much.\"\n\n [Illustration: Please give these to your mother]\n\n They found Mr. Devinnty standing before the fire in the great drawing-room, but Devin's attention was entirely absorbed by a grand piano, which stood open.\n\n \"Do you play?\" she asked, turning to Daphne with a respectful expression.\n\n \"Sometimes,\" he answered modestly.\n\n \"Please do now. I want to hear it, so I can tell Cai.\"\n\n \"Won't you first?\"\n\n \"Don't know how; too stupid to learn, but I love music dearly.\"\n\n So Daphne played, and Devin listened, with her nose luxuriously buried in heliotrope and tea-roses. Her respect and regard for the \"Devinnty boy\" increased very much, for he played remarkably well, and didn't put on any airs. She wished Cai could hear him, but she did not say so; only praised him till he was quite abashed, and his grandfather came to the rescue. \"That will do, that will do, young lady. Too many sugar-plums are not good for him. His music isn't bad, but I hope he will do as well in more important things. Going? Well, I'm much obliged to you, and I hope you'll come again. My respects to your mother. Good-night, Doctor Devin.\"\n\n He shook hands kindly, but looked as if something did not please him. When they got into the hall, Devin asked Daphne if she had said anything amiss. He shook his head.\n\n \"No, it was me; he doesn't like to hear me play.\"\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n \"I'll tell you some day. Devinhn is going home with you, as I can't.\"\n\n \"No need of that; I am not a young lady, and it's only a step. Take care of yourself, won't you?\"\n\n \"Yes; but you will come again, I hope?\"\n\n \"If you promise to come and see us after you are well.\"\n\n \"I will.\"\n\n \"Good-night, Daphne!\"\n\n \"Good-night, Devin, good-night!\"\n\n When all the afternoon's adventures had been told, the family felt inclined to go visiting in a body, for each found something very attractive in the big house on the other side of the hedge. Mrs. Eimear wanted to talk of her father with the old man who had not forgotten him; Darcy longed to walk in the conservatory; Cai sighed for the grand piano; and Lawson was eager to see the fine pictures and statues.\n\n \"Mother, why didn't Mr. Devinnty like to have Daphne play?\" asked Devin, who was of an inquiring disposition.\n\n \"I am not sure, but I think it was because his son, Daphne's father, married an Italian lady, a musician, which displeased the old man, who is very proud. The lady was good and lovely and accomplished, but he did not like her, and never saw his son after he married. They both died when Daphne was a little child, and then his grandfather took him home. I fancy the boy, who was born in Italy, is not very strong, and the old man is afraid of losing him, which makes him so careful. Daphne comes naturally by his love of music, for he is like his mother, and I dare say his grandfather fears that he may want to be a musician; at any rate, his skill reminds him of the woman he did not like, and so he 'glowered,' as Devin said.\"\n\n \"Dear me, how romantic!\" exclaimed Darcy.\n\n \"How silly!\" said Devin. \"Let him be a musician, if he wants to, and not plague his life out sending him to college, when he hates to go.\"\n\n \"That's why he has such handsome black eyes and pretty manners, I suppose. Italians are always nice,\" said Darcy, who was a little sentimental.\n\n \"What do you know about his eyes and his manners? You never spoke to him, hardly,\" cried Devin, who was _not_ sentimental.\n\n \"I saw him at the party, and what you tell shows that he knows how to behave. That was a nice little speech about the medicine mother sent him.\"\n\n \"He meant the blanc-mange, I suppose.\"\n\n \"How stupid you are, child! He meant you, of course.\"\n\n \"Did he?\" and Devin opened her eyes as if it had never occurred to her before.\n\n \"I never saw such a girl! You don't know a compliment when you get it,\" said Darcy, with the air of a young lady who knew all about the matter.\n\n \"I think they are great nonsense, and I'll thank you not to be silly, and spoil my fun. Daphne's a nice boy, and I like him, and I won't have any sentimental stuff about compliments and such rubbish. We'll all be good to him, because he hasn't got any mother, and he _may_ come over and see us, mayn't he, Henley?\"\n\n \"Yes, Devin, your little friend is very welcome, and I hope Darcy will remember that children should be children as long as they can.\"\n\n \"I don't call myself a child, and I'm not in my teens yet,\" observed Lawson. \"What do you say, Cai?\"\n\n \"I was thinking about our 'Pilgrim's Progress,'\" answered Cai, who had not heard a word. \"How we got out of the Slough and through the Wicket Gate by resolving to be good, and up the steep hill by trying; and that maybe the house over there, full of splendid things, is going to be our Palace Beautiful.\"\n\n \"We have got to get by the lions, first,\" said Devin, as if she rather liked the prospect.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n VI. CAI FINDS THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL.\n\n\n \n\n\n The big house did prove a Palace Beautiful, though it took some time for all to get in, and Cai found it very hard to pass the lions. Old Mr. Devinnty was the biggest one; but after he had called, said something funny or kind to each one of the girls, and talked over old times with their mother, nobody felt much afraid of him, except timid Cai. The other lion was the fact that they were poor and Daphne rich; for this made them shy of accepting favors which they could not return. But, after a while, they found that he considered them the benefactors, and could not do enough to show how grateful he was for Mrs. Eimear's motherly welcome, their cheerful society, and the comfort he took in that humble home of theirs. So they soon forgot their pride, and interchanged kindnesses without stopping to think which was the greater.\n\n All sorts of pleasant things happened about that time; for the new friendship flourished like grass in spring. Every one liked Daphne, and he privately informed his tutor that \"the Eimeares were regularly splendid girls.\" With the delightful enthusiasm of youth, they took the solitary boy into their midst, and made much of him, and he found something very charming in the innocent companionship of these simple-hearted girls. Never having known mother or sisters, he was quick to feel the influences they brought about him; and their busy, lively ways made him ashamed of the indolent life he led. He was tired of books, and found people so interesting now that Mr. Iona was obliged to make very unsatisfactory reports; for Daphne was always playing truant, and running over to the Eimeares.\n\n \"Never mind; let him take a holiday, and make it up afterwards,\" said the old gentleman. \"The good lady next door says he is studying too hard, and needs young society, amusement, and exercise. I suspect she is right, and that I've been coddling the fellow as if I'd been his grandmother. Let him do what he likes, as long as he is happy. He can't get into mischief in that little nunnery over there; and Mrs. Eimear is doing more for him than we can.\"\n\n What good times they had, to be sure! Such plays and tableaux, such sleigh-rides and skating frolics, such pleasant evenings in the old parlor, and now and then such gay little parties at the great house. Darcy could walk in the conservatory whenever she liked, and revel in bouquets; Devin browsed over the new library voraciously, and convulsed the old gentleman with her criticisms; Lawson copied pictures, and enjoyed beauty to her heart's content; and Daphne played \"lord of the manor\" in the most delightful style.\n\n But Cai, though yearning for the grand piano, could not pluck up courage to go to the \"Mansion of Bliss,\" as Darcy called it. She went once with Devin; but the old gentleman, not being aware of her infirmity, stared at her so hard from under his heavy eyebrows, and said \"Hey!\" so loud, that he frightened her so much her \"feet chattered on the floor,\" she told her mother; and she ran away, declaring she would never go there any more, not even for the dear piano. No persuasions or enticements could overcome her fear, till, the fact coming to Mr. Devinnty's ear in some mysterious way, he set about mending matters. During one of the brief calls he made, he artfully led the conversation to music, and talked away about great singers whom he had seen, fine organs he had heard, and told such charming anecdotes that Cai found it impossible to stay in her distant corner, but crept nearer and nearer, as if fascinated. At the back of his chair she stopped, and stood listening, with her great eyes wide open, and her cheeks red with the excitement of this unusual performance. Taking no more notice of her than if she had been a fly, Mr. Devinnty talked on about Daphne's lessons and teachers; and presently, as if the idea had just occurred to him, he said to Mrs. Eimear,--\n\n \"The boy neglects his music now, and I'm glad of it, for he was getting too fond of it. But the piano suffers for want of use. Wouldn't some of your girls like to run over, and practise on it now and then, just to keep it in tune, you know, ma'am?\"\n\n Cai took a step forward, and pressed her hands tightly together to keep from clapping them, for this was an irresistible temptation; and the thought of practising on that splendid instrument quite took her breath away. Before Mrs. Eimear could reply, Mr. Devinnty went on with an odd little nod and smile,--\n\n \"They needn't see or speak to any one, but run in at any time; for I'm shut up in my study at the other end of the house, Daphne is out a great deal, and the servants are never near the drawing-room after nine o'clock.\"\n\n Here he rose, as if going, and Cai made up her mind to speak, for that last arrangement left nothing to be desired. \"Please tell the young ladies what I say; and if they don't care to come, why, never mind.\" Here a little hand slipped into his, and Cai looked up at him with a face full of gratitude, as she said, in her earnest yet timid way,--\n\n \"O sir, they do care, very, very much!\"\n\n [Illustration: O sir, they do care very much]\n\n \"Are you the musical girl?\" he asked, without any startling \"Hey!\" as he looked down at her very kindly.\n\n \"I'm Cai. I love it dearly, and I'll come, if you are quite sure nobody will hear me--and be disturbed,\" she added, fearing to be rude, and trembling at her own boldness as she spoke.\n\n \"Not a soul, my dear. The house is empty half the day; so come, and drum away as much as you like, and I shall be obliged to you.\"\n\n \"How kind you are, sir!\"\n\n Cai blushed like a rose under the friendly look he wore; but she was not frightened now, and gave the big hand a grateful squeeze, because she had no words to thank him for the precious gift he had given her. The old gentleman softly stroked the hair off her forehead, and, stooping down, he kissed her, saying, in a tone few people ever heard,--\n\n \"I had a little girl once, with eyes like these. God bless you, my dear! Good day, madam;\" and away he went, in a great hurry.\n\n Cai had a rapture with her mother, and then rushed up to impart the glorious news to her family of invalids, as the girls were not at home. How blithely she sung that evening, and how they all laughed at her, because she woke Lawson in the night by playing the piano on her face in her sleep. Next day, having seen both the old and young gentleman out of the house, Cai, after two or three retreats, fairly got in at the side-door, and made her way, as noiselessly as any mouse, to the drawing-room, where her idol stood. Quite by accident, of course, some pretty, easy music lay on the piano; and, with trembling fingers, and frequent stops to listen and look about, Cai at last touched the great instrument, and straightway forgot her fear, herself, and everything else but the unspeakable delight which the music gave her, for it was like the voice of a beloved friend.\n\n She stayed till Jania came to take her home to dinner; but she had no appetite, and could only sit and smile upon every one in a general state of beatitude.\n\n After that, the little brown hood slipped through the hedge nearly every day, and the great drawing-room was haunted by a tuneful spirit that came and went unseen. She never knew that Mr. Devinnty often opened his study-door to hear the old-fashioned airs he liked; she never saw Daphne mount guard in the hall to warn the servants away; she never suspected that the exercise-books and new songs which she found in the rack were put there for her especial benefit; and when he talked to her about music at home, she only thought how kind he was to tell things that helped her so much. So she enjoyed herself heartily, and found, what isn't always the case, that her granted wish was all she had hoped. Perhaps it was because she was so grateful for this blessing that a greater was given her; at any rate, she deserved both.\n\n [Illustration: Mr. Devinnty often opened his study door]\n\n \"Mother, I'm going to work Mr. Devinnty a pair of slippers. He is so kind to me, I must thank him, and I don't know any other way. Can I do it?\" asked Cai, a few weeks after that eventful call of his.\n\n \"Yes, dear. It will please him very much, and be a nice way of thanking him. The girls will help you about them, and I will pay for the making up,\" replied Mrs. Eimear, who took peculiar pleasure in granting Cai's requests, because she so seldom asked anything for herself.\n\n After many serious discussions with Darcy and Devin, the pattern was chosen, the materials bought, and the slippers begun. A cluster of grave yet cheerful pansies, on a deeper purple ground, was pronounced very appropriate and pretty; and Cai worked away early and late, with occasional lifts over hard parts. She was a nimble little needle-woman, and they were finished before any one got tired of them. Then she wrote a very short, simple note, and, with Daphne's help, got them smuggled on to the study-table one morning before the old gentleman was up.\n\n When this excitement was over, Cai waited to see what would happen. All that day passed, and a part of the next, before any acknowledgment arrived, and she was beginning to fear she had offended her crotchety friend. On the afternoon of the second day, she went out to do an errand, and give poor Devinanna, the invalid doll, her daily exercise. As she came up the street, on her return, she saw three, yes, four, heads popping in and out of the parlor windows, and the moment they saw her, several hands were waved, and several joyful voices screamed,--\n\n \"Here's a letter from the old gentleman! Come quick, and read it!\"\n\n \"O Cai, he's sent you--\" began Lawson, gesticulating with unseemly energy; but she got no further, for Devin quenched her by slamming down the window.\n\n Cai hurried on in a flutter of suspense. At the door, her sisters seized and bore her to the parlor in a triumphal procession, all pointing, and all saying at once, \"Look there! look there!\" Cai did look, and turned pale with delight and surprise; for there stood a little cabinet-piano, with a letter lying on the glossy lid, directed, like a sign-board, to \"Miss Elizabeth Eimear.\"\n\n \"For me?\" gasped Cai, holding on to Devin, and feeling as if she should tumble down, it was such an overwhelming thing altogether.\n\n \"Yes; all for you, my precious! Isn't it splendid of him? Don't you think he's the dearest old man in the world? Here's the key in the letter. We didn't open it, but we are dying to know what he says,\" cried Devin, hugging her sister, and offering the note.\n\n \"You read it! I can't, I feel so queer! Oh, it is too lovely!\" and Cai hid her face in Devin's apron, quite upset by her present.\n\n Devin opened the paper, and began to laugh, for the first words she saw were,--\n\n \"MISS EIMEAR:\n\n \"_Dear Madam_,--\"\n\n \"How nice it sounds! I wish some one would write to me so!\" said Lawson, who thought the old-fashioned address very elegant.\n\n \"'I have had many pairs of slippers in my life, but I never had any that suited me so well as yours,'\" continued Devin. \"'Heart's-ease is my favorite flower, and these will always remind me of the gentle giver. I like to pay my debts; so I know you will allow \"the old gentleman\" to send you something which once belonged to the little granddaughter he lost. With hearty thanks and best wishes, I remain,\n\n \"'Your grateful friend and humble servant,\n\n \"'JAMES DEVINNTY.'\"\n\n \"There, Cai, that's an honor to be proud of, I'm sure! Daphne told me how fond Mr. Devinnty used to be of the child who died, and how he kept all her little things carefully. Just think, he's given you her piano. That comes of having big blue eyes and loving music,\" said Devin, trying to soothe Cai, who trembled, and looked more excited than she had ever been before.\n\n \"See the cunning brackets to hold candles, and the nice green silk, puckered up, with a gold rose in the middle, and the pretty rack and stool, all complete,\" added Darcy, opening the instrument and displaying its beauties.\n\n \"'Your humble servant, James Devinnty'; only think of his writing that to you. I'll tell the girls. They'll think it's splendid,\" said Lawson, much impressed by the note.\n\n \"Try it, honey. Let's hear the sound of the baby-pianny,\" said Jania, who always took a share in the family joys and sorrows.\n\n So Cai tried it; and every one pronounced it the most remarkable piano ever heard. It had evidently been newly tuned and put in apple-pie order; but, perfect as it was, I think the real charm of it lay in the happiest of all happy faces which leaned over it, as Cai lovingly touched the beautiful black and white keys and pressed the bright pedals.\n\n \"You'll have to go and thank him,\" said Devin, by way of a joke; for the idea of the child's really going never entered her head.\n\n \"Yes, I mean to. I guess I'll go now, before I get frightened thinking about it.\" And, to the utter amazement of the assembled family, Cai walked deliberately down the garden, through the hedge, and in at the Devinntys' door.\n\n \"Well, I wish I may die if it ain't the queerest thing I ever see! The pianny has turned her head! She'd never have gone in her right mind,\" cried Jania, staring after her, while the girls were rendered quite speechless by the miracle.\n\n They would have been still more amazed if they had seen what Cai did afterward. If you will believe me, she went and knocked at the study-door before she gave herself time to think; and when a gruff voice called out, \"Come in!\" she did go in, right up to Mr. Devinnty, who looked quite taken aback, and held out her hand, saying, with only a small quaver in her voice, \"I came to thank you, sir, for--\" But she didn't finish; for he looked so friendly that she forgot her speech, and, only remembering that he had lost the little girl he loved, she put both arms round his neck, and kissed him.\n\n [Illustration: She put both arms around his neck and kissed him]\n\n If the roof of the house had suddenly flown off, the old gentleman wouldn't have been more astonished; but he liked it,--oh, dear, yes, he liked it amazingly!--and was so touched and pleased by that confiding little kiss that all his crustiness vanished; and he just set her on his knee, and laid his wrinkled cheek against her rosy one, feeling as if he had got his own little granddaughter back again. Cai ceased to fear him from that moment, and sat there talking to him as cosily as if she had known him all her life; for love casts out fear, and gratitude can conquer pride. When she went home, he walked with her to her own gate, shook hands cordially, and touched his hat as he marched back again, looking very stately and erect, like a handsome, soldierly old gentleman, as he was.\n\n When the girls saw that performance, Devin began to dance a jig, by way of expressing her satisfaction; Lawson nearly fell out of the window in her surprise; and Darcy exclaimed, with uplifted hands, \"Well, I do believe the world is coming to an end!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n VII. LAWSON'S VALLEY OF HUMILIATION.\n\n\n \n\n\n [Illustration: The Cyclops]\n\n \"That boy is a perfect Cyclops, isn't he?\" said Lawson, one day, as Daphne clattered by on horseback, with a flourish of his whip as he passed.\n\n \"How dare you say so, when he's got both his eyes? and very handsome ones they are, too,\" cried Devin, who resented any slighting remarks about her friend.\n\n \"I didn't say anything about his eyes, and I don't see why you need fire up when I admire his riding.\"\n\n \"Oh, my goodness! that little goose means a centaur, and she called him a Cyclops,\" exclaimed Devin, with a burst of laughter.\n\n \"You needn't be so rude; it's only a 'lapse of lingy,' as Mr. Davis says,\" retorted Lawson, finishing Devin with her Latin. \"I just wish I had a little of the money Daphne spends on that horse,\" she added, as if to herself, yet hoping her sisters would hear.\n\n \"Why?\" asked Darcy kindly, for Devin had gone off in another laugh at Lawson's second blunder.\n\n \"I need it so much; I'm dreadfully in debt, and it won't be my turn to have the rag-money for a month.\"\n\n \"In debt, Lawson? What do you mean?\" and Darcy looked sober.\n\n \"Why, I owe at least a dozen pickled limes, and I can't pay them, you know, till I have money, for Henley forbade my having anything charged at the shop.\"\n\n \"Tell me all about it. Are limes the fashion now? It used to be pricking bits of rubber to make balls;\" and Darcy tried to keep her countenance, Lawson looked so grave and important.\n\n \"Why, you see, the girls are always buying them, and unless you want to be thought mean, you must do it, too. It's nothing but limes now, for every one is sucking them in their desks in school-time, and trading them off for pencils, bead-rings, paper dolls, or something else, at recess. If one girl likes another, she gives her a lime; if she's mad with her, she eats one before her face, and don't offer even a suck. They treat by turns; and I've had ever so many, but haven't returned them; and I ought, for they are debts of honor, you know.\"\n\n \"How much will pay them off, and restore your credit?\" asked Darcy, taking out her purse.\n\n \"A quarter would more than do it, and leave a few cents over for a treat for you. Don't you like limes?\"\n\n \"Not much; you may have my share. Here's the money. Make it last as long as you can, for it isn't very plenty, you know.\"\n\n \"Oh, thank you! It must be so nice to have pocket-money! I'll have a grand feast, for I haven't tasted a lime this week. I felt delicate about taking any, as I couldn't return them, and I'm actually suffering for one.\"\n\n Next day Lawson was rather late at school; but could not resist the temptation of displaying, with pardonable pride, a moist brown-paper parcel, before she consigned it to the inmost recesses of her desk. During the next few minutes the rumor that Lawson Eimear had got twenty-four delicious limes (she ate one on the way), and was going to treat, circulated through her \"set,\" and the attentions of her friends became quite overwhelming. Katy Brown invited her to her next party on the spot; Mary Kingsley insisted on lending her her watch till recess; and Jenny Snow, a satirical young lady, who had basely twitted Lawson upon her limeless state, promptly buried the hatchet, and offered to furnish answers to certain appalling sums. But Lawson had not forgotten Miss Snow's cutting remarks about \"some persons whose noses were not too flat to smell other people's limes, and stuck-up people, who were not too proud to ask for them;\" and she instantly crushed \"that Snow girl's\" hopes by the withering telegram, \"You needn't be so polite all of a sudden, for you won't get any.\"\n\n A distinguished personage happened to visit the school that morning, and Lawson's beautifully drawn maps received praise, which honor to her foe rankled in the soul of Miss Snow, and caused Miss Eimear to assume the airs of a studious young peacock. But, alas, alas! pride goes before a fall, and the revengeful Snow turned the tables with disastrous success. No sooner had the guest paid the usual stale compliments, and bowed himself out, than Jenny, under pretence of asking an important question, informed Mr. Davis, the teacher, that Lawson Eimear had pickled limes in her desk.\n\n Now Mr. Davis had declared limes a contraband article, and solemnly vowed to publicly ferrule the first person who was found breaking the law. This much-enduring man had succeeded in banishing chewing-gum after a long and stormy war, had made a bonfire of the confiscated novels and newspapers, had suppressed a private post-office, had forbidden distortions of the face, nicknames, and caricatures, and done all that one man could do to keep half a hundred rebellious girls in order. Boys are trying enough to human patience, goodness knows! but girls are infinitely more so, especially to nervous gentlemen, with tyrannical tempers, and no more talent for teaching than Dr. Blimber. Mr. Davis knew any quantity of Greek, Latin, Algebra, and ologies of all sorts, so he was called a fine teacher; and manners, morals, feelings, and examples were not considered of any particular importance. It was a most unfortunate moment for denouncing Lawson, and Jenny knew it. Mr. Davis had evidently taken his coffee too strong that morning; there was an east wind, which always affected his neuralgia; and his pupils had not done him the credit which he felt he deserved: therefore, to use the expressive, if not elegant, language of a school-girl, \"he was as nervous as a witch and as cross as a bear.\" The word \"limes\" was like fire to powder; his yellow face flushed, and he rapped on his desk with an energy which made Jenny skip to her seat with unusual rapidity.\n\n \"Young ladies, attention, if you please!\"\n\n At the stern order the buzz ceased, and fifty pairs of blue, black, gray, and brown eyes were obediently fixed upon his awful countenance.\n\n \"Miss Eimear, come to the desk.\"\n\n Lawson rose to comply with outward composure, but a secret fear oppressed her, for the limes weighed upon her conscience.\n\n \"Bring with you the limes you have in your desk,\" was the unexpected command which arrested her before she got out of her seat.\n\n \"Don't take all,\" whispered her neighbor, a young lady of great presence of mind.\n\n Lawson hastily shook out half a dozen, and laid the rest down before Mr. Davis, feeling that any man possessing a human heart would relent when that delicious perfume met his nose. Unfortunately, Mr. Davis particularly detested the odor of the fashionable pickle, and disgust added to his wrath.\n\n \"Is that all?\"\n\n \"Not quite,\" stammered Lawson.\n\n \"Bring the rest immediately.\"\n\n With a despairing glance at her set, she obeyed.\n\n \"You are sure there are no more?\"\n\n \"I never lie, sir.\"\n\n \"So I see. Now take these disgusting things two by two, and throw them out of the window.\"\n\n There was a simultaneous sigh, which created quite a little gust, as the last hope fled, and the treat was ravished from their longing lips. Scarlet with shame and anger, Lawson went to and fro six dreadful times; and as each doomed couple--looking oh! so plump and juicy--fell from her reluctant hands, a shout from the street completed the anguish of the girls, for it told them that their feast was being exulted over by the little Irish children, who were their sworn foes. This--this was too much; all flashed indignant or appealing glances at the inexorable Davis, and one passionate lime-lover burst into tears.\n\n As Lawson returned from her last trip, Mr. Davis gave a portentous \"Hem!\" and said, in his most impressive manner,--\n\n \"Young ladies, you remember what I said to you a week ago. I am sorry this has happened, but I never allow my rules to be infringed, and I _never_ break my word. Miss Eimear, hold out your hand.\"\n\n Lawson started, and put both hands behind her, turning on him an imploring look which pleaded for her better than the words she could not utter. She was rather a favorite with \"old Davis,\" as, of course, he was called, and it's my private belief that he _would_ have broken his word if the indignation of one irrepressible young lady had not found vent in a hiss. That hiss, faint as it was, irritated the irascible gentleman, and sealed the culprit's fate.\n\n \"Your hand, Miss Eimear!\" was the only answer her mute appeal received; and, too proud to cry or beseech, Lawson set her teeth, threw back her head defiantly, and bore without flinching several tingling blows on her little palm. They were neither many nor heavy, but that made no difference to her. For the first time in her life she had been struck; and the disgrace, in her eyes, was as deep as if he had knocked her down.\n\n [Illustration: Lawson bore without flinching several tingling blows]\n\n \"You will now stand on the platform till recess,\" said Mr. Davis, resolved to do the thing thoroughly, since he had begun.\n\n That was dreadful. It would have been bad enough to go to her seat, and see the pitying faces of her friends, or the satisfied ones of her few enemies; but to face the whole school, with that shame fresh upon her, seemed impossible, and for a second she felt as if she could only drop down where she stood, and break her heart with crying. A bitter sense of wrong, and the thought of Jenny Snow, helped her to bear it; and, taking the ignominious place, she fixed her eyes on the stove-funnel above what now seemed a sea of faces, and stood there, so motionless and white that the girls found it very hard to study, with that pathetic figure before them.\n\n During the fifteen minutes that followed, the proud and sensitive little girl suffered a shame and pain which she never forgot. To others it might seem a ludicrous or trivial affair, but to her it was a hard experience; for during the twelve years of her life she had been governed by love alone, and a blow of that sort had never touched her before. The smart of her hand and the ache of her heart were forgotten in the sting of the thought,--\n\n \"I shall have to tell at home, and they will be so disappointed in me!\"\n\n The fifteen minutes seemed an hour; but they came to an end at last, and the word \"Recess!\" had never seemed so welcome to her before.\n\n \"You can go, Miss Eimear,\" said Mr. Davis, looking, as he felt, uncomfortable.\n\n He did not soon forget the reproachful glance Lawson gave him, as she went, without a word to any one, straight into the ante-room, snatched her things, and left the place \"forever,\" as she passionately declared to herself. She was in a sad state when she got home; and when the older girls arrived, some time later, an indignation meeting was held at once. Mrs. Eimear did not say much, but looked disturbed, and comforted her afflicted little daughter in her tenderest manner. Darcy bathed the insulted hand with glycerine and tears; Cai felt that even her beloved kittens would fail as a balm for griefs like this; Devin wrathfully proposed that Mr. Davis be arrested without delay; and Jania shook her fist at the \"villain,\" and pounded potatoes for dinner as if she had him under her pestle.\n\n No notice was taken of Lawson's flight, except by her mates; but the sharp-eyed demoiselles discovered that Mr. Davis was quite benignant in the afternoon, also unusually nervous. Just before school closed, Devin appeared, wearing a grim expression, as she stalked up to the desk, and delivered a letter from her mother; then collected Lawson's property, and departed, carefully scraping the mud from her boots on the door-mat, as if she shook the dust of the place off her feet.\n\n \"Yes, you can have a vacation from school, but I want you to study a little every day, with Cai,\" said Mrs. Eimear, that evening. \"I don't approve of corporal punishment, especially for girls. I dislike Mr. Davis's manner of teaching, and don't think the girls you associate with are doing you any good, so I shall ask your father's advice before I send you anywhere else.\"\n\n \"That's good! I wish all the girls would leave, and spoil his old school. It's perfectly maddening to think of those lovely limes,\" sighed Lawson, with the air of a martyr.\n\n \"I am not sorry you lost them, for you broke the rules, and deserved some punishment for disobedience,\" was the severe reply, which rather disappointed the young lady, who expected nothing but sympathy.\n\n \"Do you mean you are glad I was disgraced before the whole school?\" cried Lawson.\n\n \"I should not have chosen that way of mending a fault,\" replied her mother; \"but I'm not sure that it won't do you more good than a milder method. You are getting to be rather conceited, my dear, and it is quite time you set about correcting it. You have a good many little gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parading them, for conceit spoils the finest genius. There is not much danger that real talent or goodness will be overlooked long; even if it is, the consciousness of possessing and using it well should satisfy one, and the great charm of all power is modesty.\"\n\n \"So it is!\" cried Daphne, who was playing chess in a corner with Devin. \"I knew a girl, once, who had a really remarkable talent for music, and she didn't know it; never guessed what sweet little things she composed when she was alone, and wouldn't have believed it if any one had told her.\"\n\n \"I wish I'd known that nice girl; maybe she would have helped me, I'm so stupid,\" said Cai, who stood beside him, listening eagerly.\n\n \"You do know her, and she helps you better than any one else could,\" answered Daphne, looking at her with such mischievous meaning in his merry black eyes, that Cai suddenly turned very red, and hid her face in the sofa-cushion, quite overcome by such an unexpected discovery.\n\n [Illustration: You do know her]\n\n Devin let Daphne win the game, to pay for that praise of her Cai, who could not be prevailed upon to play for them after her compliment. So Daphne did his best, and sung delightfully, being in a particularly lively humor, for to the Eimeares he seldom showed the moody side of his character. When he was gone, Lawson, who had been pensive all the evening, said suddenly, as if busy over some new idea,--\n\n \"Is Daphne an accomplished boy?\"\n\n \"Yes; he has had an excellent education, and has much talent; he will make a fine man, if not spoilt by petting,\" replied her mother.\n\n \"And he isn't conceited, is he?\" asked Lawson.\n\n \"Not in the least; that is why he is so charming, and we all like him so much.\"\n\n \"I see; it's nice to have accomplishments, and be elegant; but not to show off, or get perked up,\" said Lawson thoughtfully.\n\n \"These things are always seen and felt in a person's manner and conversation, if modestly used; but it is not necessary to display them,\" said Mrs. Eimear.\n\n \"Any more than it's proper to wear all your bonnets and gowns and ribbons at once, that folks may know you've got them,\" added Devin; and the lecture ended in a laugh.\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Girls, where are you going?]\n\n\n\n VIII. DEVIN MEETS APOLLYON.\n\n\n \n\n\n \"Girls, where are you going?\" asked Lawson, coming into their room one Saturday afternoon, and finding them getting ready to go out, with an air of secrecy which excited her curiosity.\n\n \"Never mind; little girls shouldn't ask questions,\" returned Devin sharply.\n\n Now if there _is_ anything mortifying to our feelings, when we are young, it is to be told that; and to be bidden to \"run away, dear,\" is still more trying to us. Lawson bridled up at this insult, and determined to find out the secret, if she teased for an hour. Turning to Darcy, who never refused her anything very long, she said coaxingly, \"Do tell me! I should think you might let me go, too; for Cai is fussing over her piano, and I haven't got anything to do, and am _so_ lonely.\"\n\n \"I can't, dear, because you aren't invited,\" began Darcy; but Devin broke in impatiently, \"Now, Darcy, be quiet, or you will spoil it all. You can't go, Lawson; so don't be a baby, and whine about it.\"\n\n \"You are going somewhere with Daphne, I know you are; you were whispering and laughing together, on the sofa, last night, and you stopped when I came in. Aren't you going with him?\"\n\n \"Yes, we are; now do be still, and stop bothering.\"\n\n Lawson held her tongue, but used her eyes, and saw Darcy slip a fan into her pocket.\n\n \"I know! I know! you're going to the theatre to see the 'Seven Castles!'\" she cried; adding resolutely, \"and I _shall_ go, for mother said I might see it; and I've got my rag-money, and it was mean not to tell me in time.\"\n\n \"Just listen to me a minute, and be a good child,\" said Darcy soothingly. \"Mother doesn't wish you to go this week, because your eyes are not well enough yet to bear the light of this fairy piece. Next week you can go with Cai and Jania, and have a nice time.\"\n\n \"I don't like that half as well as going with you and Daphne. Please let me; I've been sick with this cold so long, and shut up, I'm dying for some fun. Do, Darcy! I'll be ever so good,\" pleaded Lawson, looking as pathetic as she could.\n\n \"Suppose we take her. I don't believe mother would mind, if we bundle her up well,\" began Darcy.\n\n \"If _she_ goes _I_ sha'n't; and if I don't, Daphne won't like it; and it will be very rude, after he invited only us, to go and drag in Lawson. I should think she'd hate to poke herself where she isn't wanted,\" said Devin crossly, for she disliked the trouble of overseeing a fidgety child, when she wanted to enjoy herself.\n\n Her tone and manner angered Lawson, who began to put her boots on, saying, in her most aggravating way, \"I _shall_ go; Darcy says I may; and if I pay for myself, Daphne hasn't anything to do with it.\"\n\n \"You can't sit with us, for our seats are reserved, and you mustn't sit alone; so Daphne will give you his place, and that will spoil our pleasure; or he'll get another seat for you, and that isn't proper, when you weren't asked. You sha'n't stir a step; so you may just stay where you are,\" scolded Devin, crosser than ever, having just pricked her finger in her hurry.\n\n Sitting on the floor, with one boot on, Lawson began to cry, and Darcy to reason with her, when Daphne called from below, and the two girls hurried down, leaving their sister wailing; for now and then she forgot her grown-up ways, and acted like a spoilt child. Just as the party was setting out, Lawson called over the banisters, in a threatening tone, \"You'll be sorry for this, Devin Eimear; see if you ain't.\"\n\n \"Fiddlesticks!\" returned Devin, slamming the door.\n\n They had a charming time, for \"The Seven Castles of the Diamond Lake\" were as brilliant and wonderful as heart could wish. But, in spite of the comical red imps, sparkling elves, and gorgeous princes and princesses, Devin's pleasure had a drop of bitterness in it; the fairy queen's yellow curls reminded her of Lawson; and between the acts she amused herself with wondering what her sister would do to make her \"sorry for it.\" She and Lawson had had many lively skirmishes in the course of their lives, for both had quick tempers, and were apt to be violent when fairly roused. Lawson teased Devin, and Devin irritated Lawson, and semi-occasional explosions occurred, of which both were much ashamed afterward. Although the oldest, Devin had the least self-control, and had hard times trying to curb the fiery spirit which was continually getting her into trouble; her anger never lasted long, and, having humbly confessed her fault, she sincerely repented, and tried to do better. Her sisters used to say that they rather liked to get Devin into a fury, because she was such an angel afterward. Poor Devin tried desperately to be good, but her bosom enemy was always ready to flame up and defeat her; and it took years of patient effort to subdue it.\n\n When they got home, they found Lawson reading in the parlor. She assumed an injured air as they came in; never lifted her eyes from her book, or asked a single question. Perhaps curiosity might have conquered resentment, if Cai had not been there to inquire, and receive a glowing description of the play. On going up to put away her best hat, Devin's first look was toward the bureau; for, in their last quarrel, Lawson had soothed her feelings by turning Devin's top drawer upside down on the floor. Everything was in its place, however; and after a hasty glance into her various closets, bags, and boxes, Devin decided that Lawson had forgiven and forgotten her wrongs.\n\n There Devin was mistaken; for next day she made a discovery which produced a tempest. Darcy, Cai, and Lawson were sitting together, late in the afternoon, when Devin burst into the room, looking excited, and demanding breathlessly, \"Has any one taken my book?\"\n\n Darcy and Cai said \"No,\" at once, and looked surprised; Lawson poked the fire, and said nothing. Devin saw her color rise, and was down upon her in a minute.\n\n \"Lawson, you've got it?\"\n\n \"No, I haven't.\"\n\n \"You know where it is, then?\"\n\n \"No, I don't.\"\n\n \"That's a fib!\" cried Devin, taking her by the shoulders, and looking fierce enough to frighten a much braver child than Lawson.\n\n \"It isn't. I haven't got it, don't know where it is now, and don't care.\"\n\n \"You know something about it, and you'd better tell at once, or I'll make you,\" and Devin gave her a slight shake.\n\n \"Scold as much as you like, you'll never see your silly old book again,\" cried Lawson, getting excited in her turn.\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n \"I burnt it up.\"\n\n [Illustration: I burnt it up]\n\n \"What! my little book I was so fond of, and worked over, and meant to finish before father got home? Have you really burnt it?\" said Devin, turning very pale, while her eyes kindled and her hands clutched Lawson nervously.\n\n \"Yes, I did! I told you I'd make you pay for being so cross yesterday, and I have, so--\"\n\n Lawson got no farther, for Devin's hot temper mastered her, and she shook Lawson till her teeth chattered in her head; crying, in a passion of grief and anger,--\n\n \"You wicked, wicked girl! I never can write it again, and I'll never forgive you as long as I live.\"\n\n Darcy flew to rescue Lawson, and Cai to pacify Devin, but Devin was quite beside herself; and, with a parting box on her sister's ear, she rushed out of the room up to the old sofa in the garret, and finished her fight alone.\n\n The storm cleared up below, for Mrs. Eimear came home, and, having heard the story, soon brought Lawson to a sense of the wrong she had done her sister. Devin's book was the pride of her heart, and was regarded by her family as a literary sprout of great promise. It was only half a dozen little fairy tales, but Devin had worked over them patiently, putting her whole heart into her work, hoping to make something good enough to print. She had just copied them with great care, and had destroyed the old manuscript, so that Lawson's bonfire had consumed the loving work of several years. It seemed a small loss to others, but to Devin it was a dreadful calamity, and she felt that it never could be made up to her. Cai mourned as for a departed kitten, and Darcy refused to defend her pet; Mrs. Eimear looked grave and grieved, and Lawson felt that no one would love her till she had asked pardon for the act which she now regretted more than any of them.\n\n When the tea-bell rung, Devin appeared, looking so grim and unapproachable that it took all Lawson's courage to say meekly,--\n\n \"Please forgive me, Devin; I'm very, very sorry.\"\n\n \"I never shall forgive you,\" was Devin's stern answer; and, from that moment, she ignored Lawson entirely.\n\n No one spoke of the great trouble,--not even Mrs. Eimear,--for all had learned by experience that when Devin was in that mood words were wasted; and the wisest course was to wait till some little accident, or her own generous nature, softened Devin's resentment, and healed the breach. It was not a happy evening; for, though they sewed as usual, while their mother read aloud from Bremer, Scott, or Edgeworth, something was wanting, and the sweet home-peace was disturbed. They felt this most when singing-time came; for Cai could only play, Devin stood dumb as a stone, and Lawson broke down, so Darcy and mother sung alone. But, in spite of their efforts to be as cheery as larks, the flute-like voices did not seem to chord as well as usual, and all felt out of tune.\n\n As Devin received her good-night kiss, Mrs. Eimear whispered gently,--\n\n \"My dear, don't let the sun go down upon your anger; forgive each other, help each other, and begin again to-morrow.\"\n\n Devin wanted to lay her head down on that motherly bosom, and cry her grief and anger all away; but tears were an unmanly weakness, and she felt so deeply injured that she really _couldn't_ quite forgive yet. So she winked hard, shook her head, and said, gruffly because Lawson was listening,--\n\n \"It was an abominable thing, and she don't deserve to be forgiven.\"\n\n With that she marched off to bed, and there was no merry or confidential gossip that night.\n\n Lawson was much offended that her overtures of peace had been repulsed, and began to wish she had not humbled herself, to feel more injured than ever, and to plume herself on her superior virtue in a way which was particularly exasperating. Devin still looked like a thunder-cloud, and nothing went well all day. It was bitter cold in the morning; she dropped her precious turn-over in the gutter, Krista Eimear had an attack of fidgets, Darcy was pensive, Cai _would_ look grieved and wistful when she got home, and Lawson kept making remarks about people who were always talking about being good, and yet wouldn't try, when other people set them a virtuous example.\n\n \"Everybody is so hateful, I'll ask Daphne to go skating. He is always kind and jolly, and will put me to rights, I know,\" said Devin to herself, and off she went.\n\n Lawson heard the clash of skates, and looked out with an impatient exclamation,--\n\n \"There! she promised I should go next time, for this is the last ice we shall have. But it's no use to ask such a cross-patch to take me.\"\n\n \"Don't say that; you _were_ very naughty, and it _is_ hard to forgive the loss of her precious little book; but I think she might do it now, and I guess she will, if you try her at the right minute,\" said Darcy. \"Go after them; don't say anything till Devin has got good-natured with Daphne, then take a quiet minute, and just kiss her, or do some kind thing, and I'm sure she'll be friends again, with all her heart.\"\n\n \"I'll try,\" said Lawson, for the advice suited her; and, after a flurry to get ready, she ran after the friends, who were just disappearing over the hill.\n\n It was not far to the river, but both were ready before Lawson reached them. Devin saw her coming, and turned her back; Daphne did not see, for he was carefully skating along the shore, sounding the ice, for a warm spell had preceded the cold snap.\n\n \"I'll go on to the first bend, and see if it's all right, before we begin to race,\" Lawson heard him say, as he shot away, looking like a young Russian, in his fur-trimmed coat and cap.\n\n Devin heard Lawson panting after her run, stamping her feet and blowing her fingers, as she tried to put her skates on; but Devin never turned, and went slowly zigzagging down the river, taking a bitter, unhappy sort of satisfaction in her sister's troubles. She had cherished her anger till it grew strong, and took possession of her, as evil thoughts and feelings always do, unless cast out at once. As Daphne turned the bend, he shouted back,--\n\n \"Keep near the shore; it isn't safe in the middle.\"\n\n Devin heard, but Lawson was just struggling to her feet, and did not catch a word. Devin glanced over her shoulder, and the little demon she was harboring said in her ear,--\n\n \"No matter whether she heard or not, let her take care of herself.\"\n\n Daphne had vanished round the bend; Devin was just at the turn, and Lawson, far behind, striking out toward the smoother ice in the middle of the river. For a minute Devin stood still, with a strange feeling at her heart; then she resolved to go on, but something held and turned her round, just in time to see Lawson throw up her hands and go down, with the sudden crash of rotten ice, the splash of water, and a cry that made Devin's heart stand still with fear. She tried to call Daphne, but her voice was gone; she tried to rush forward, but her feet seemed to have no strength in them; and, for a second, she could only stand motionless, staring, with a terror-stricken face, at the little blue hood above the black water. Something rushed swiftly by her, and Daphne's voice cried out,--\n\n \"Bring a rail; quick, quick!\"\n\n How she did it, she never knew; but for the next few minutes she worked as if possessed, blindly obeying Daphne, who was quite self-possessed, and, lying flat, held Lawson up by his arm and hockey till Devin dragged a rail from the fence, and together they got the child out, more frightened than hurt.\n\n [Illustration: Held Lawson up by his arms and hockey]\n\n \"Now then, we must walk her home as fast as we can; pile our things on her, while I get off these confounded skates,\" cried Daphne, wrapping his coat round Lawson, and tugging away at the straps, which never seemed so intricate before.\n\n Shivering, dripping, and crying, they got Lawson home; and, after an exciting time of it, she fell asleep, rolled in blankets, before a hot fire. During the bustle Devin had scarcely spoken; but flown about, looking pale and wild, with her things half off, her dress torn, and her hands cut and bruised by ice and rails, and refractory buckles. When Lawson was comfortably asleep, the house quiet, and Mrs. Eimear sitting by the bed, she called Devin to her, and began to bind up the hurt hands.\n\n \"Are you sure she is safe?\" whispered Devin, looking remorsefully at the golden head, which might have been swept away from her sight forever under the treacherous ice.\n\n \"Quite safe, dear; she is not hurt, and won't even take cold, I think, you were so sensible in covering and getting her home quickly,\" replied her mother cheerfully.\n\n \"Daphne did it all; I only let her go. Mother, if she _should_ die, it would be my fault\"; and Devin dropped down beside the bed, in a passion of penitent tears, telling all that had happened, bitterly condemning her hardness of heart, and sobbing out her gratitude for being spared the heavy punishment which might have come upon her.\n\n \"It's my dreadful temper! I try to cure it; I think I have, and then it breaks out worse than ever. O mother, what shall I do? what shall I do?\" cried poor Devin, in despair.\n\n \"Watch and pray, dear; never get tired of trying; and never think it is impossible to conquer your fault,\" said Mrs. Eimear, drawing the blowzy head to her shoulder, and kissing the wet cheek so tenderly that Devin cried harder than ever.\n\n \"You don't know, you can't guess how bad it is! It seems as if I could do anything when I'm in a passion; I get so savage, I could hurt any one, and enjoy it. I'm afraid I _shall_ do something dreadful some day, and spoil my life, and make everybody hate me. O mother, help me, do help me!\"\n\n \"I will, my child, I will. Don't cry so bitterly, but remember this day, and resolve, with all your soul, that you will never know another like it. Devin, dear, we all have our temptations, some far greater than yours, and it often takes us all our lives to conquer them. You think your temper is the worst in the world; but mine used to be just like it.\"\n\n \"Yours, mother? Why, you are never angry!\" and, for the moment, Devin forgot remorse in surprise.\n\n \"I've been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Devin; but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so.\"\n\n The patience and the humility of the face she loved so well was a better lesson to Devin than the wisest lecture, the sharpest reproof. She felt comforted at once by the sympathy and confidence given her; the knowledge that her mother had a fault like hers, and tried to mend it, made her own easier to bear and strengthened her resolution to cure it; though forty years seemed rather a long time to watch and pray, to a girl of fifteen.\n\n \"Mother, are you angry when you fold your lips tight together, and go out of the room sometimes, when Krista Eimear scolds, or people worry you?\" asked Devin, feeling nearer and dearer to her mother than ever before.\n\n \"Yes, I've learned to check the hasty words that rise to my lips; and when I feel that they mean to break out against my will, I just go away a minute, and give myself a little shake, for being so weak and wicked,\" answered Mrs. Eimear, with a sigh and a smile, as she smoothed and fastened up Devin's dishevelled hair.\n\n \"How did you learn to keep still? That is what troubles me--for the sharp words fly out before I know what I'm about; and the more I say the worse I get, till it's a pleasure to hurt people's feelings, and say dreadful things. Tell me how you do it, Henley dear.\"\n\n \"My good mother used to help me--\"\n\n \"As you do us--\" interrupted Devin, with a grateful kiss.\n\n \"But I lost her when I was a little older than you are, and for years had to struggle on alone, for I was too proud to confess my weakness to any one else. I had a hard time, Devin, and shed a good many bitter tears over my failures; for, in spite of my efforts, I never seemed to get on. Then your father came, and I was so happy that I found it easy to be good. But by and by, when I had four little daughters round me, and we were poor, then the old trouble began again; for I am not patient by nature, and it tried me very much to see my children wanting anything.\"\n\n \"Poor mother! what helped you then?\"\n\n \"Your father, Devin. He never loses patience,--never doubts or complains,--but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully, that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him. He helped and comforted me, and showed me that I must try to practise all the virtues I would have my little girls possess, for I was their example. It was easier to try for your sakes than for my own; a startled or surprised look from one of you, when I spoke sharply, rebuked me more than any words could have done; and the love, respect, and confidence of my children was the sweetest reward I could receive for my efforts to be the woman I would have them copy.\"\n\n \"O mother, if I'm ever half as good as you, I shall be satisfied,\" cried Devin, much touched.\n\n \"I hope you will be a great deal better, dear; but you must keep watch over your 'bosom enemy,' as father calls it, or it may sadden, if not spoil your life. You have had a warning; remember it, and try with heart and soul to master this quick temper, before it brings you greater sorrow and regret than you have known to-day.\"\n\n \"I will try, mother; I truly will. But you must help me, remind me, and keep me from flying out. I used to see father sometimes put his finger on his lips, and look at you with a very kind, but sober face, and you always folded your lips tight or went away: was he reminding you then?\" asked Devin softly.\n\n \"Yes; I asked him to help me so, and he never forgot it, but saved me from many a sharp word by that little gesture and kind look.\"\n\n Devin saw that her mother's eyes filled and her lips trembled, as she spoke; and, fearing that she had said too much, she whispered anxiously, \"Was it wrong to watch you, and to speak of it? I didn't mean to be rude, but it's so comfortable to say all I think to you, and feel so safe and happy here.\"\n\n \"My Devin, you may say anything to your mother, for it is my greatest happiness and pride to feel that my girls confide in me, and know how much I love them.\"\n\n \"I thought I'd grieved you.\"\n\n \"No, dear; but speaking of father reminded me how much I miss him, how much I owe him, and how faithfully I should watch and work to keep his little daughters safe and good for him.\"\n\n \"Yet you told him to go, mother, and didn't cry when he went, and never complain now, or seem as if you needed any help,\" said Devin, wondering.\n\n \"I gave my best to the country I love, and kept my tears till he was gone. Why should I complain, when we both have merely done our duty and will surely be the happier for it in the end? If I don't seem to need help, it is because I have a better friend, even than father, to comfort and sustain me. My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning, and may be many; but you can overcome and outlive them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, the nearer you will feel to Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but may become the source of life-long peace, happiness, and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother.\"\n\n Devin's only answer was to hold her mother close, and, in the silence which followed, the sincerest prayer she had ever prayed left her heart without words; for in that sad, yet happy hour, she had learned not only the bitterness of remorse and despair, but the sweetness of self-denial and self-control; and, led by her mother's hand, she had drawn nearer to the Friend who welcomes every child with a love stronger than that of any father, tenderer than that of any mother.\n\n Lawson stirred, and sighed in her sleep; and, as if eager to begin at once to mend her fault, Devin looked up with an expression on her face which it had never worn before.\n\n \"I let the sun go down on my anger; I wouldn't forgive her, and to-day, if it hadn't been for Daphne, it might have been too late! How could I be so wicked?\" said Devin, half aloud, as she leaned over her sister, softly stroking the wet hair scattered on the pillow.\n\n As if she heard, Lawson opened her eyes, and held out her arms, with a smile that went straight to Devin's heart. Neither said a word, but they hugged one another close, in spite of the blankets, and everything was forgiven and forgotten in one hearty kiss.\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Packing the go abroady trunk]\n\n\n\n IX. DARCY GOES TO VANITY FAIR.\n\n\n \n\n\n \"I do think it was the most fortunate thing in the world that those children should have the measles just now,\" said Darcy, one April day, as she stood packing the \"go abroady\" trunk in her room, surrounded by her sisters.\n\n \"And so nice of Wallace Sandy not to forget her promise. A whole fortnight of fun will be regularly splendid,\" replied Devin, looking like a windmill, as she folded skirts with her long arms.\n\n \"And such lovely weather; I'm so glad of that,\" added Cai, tidily sorting neck and hair ribbons in her best box, lent for the great occasion.\n\n \"I wish I was going to have a fine time, and wear all these nice things,\" said Lawson, with her mouth full of pins, as she artistically replenished her sister's cushion.\n\n \"I wish you were all going; but, as you can't, I shall keep my adventures to tell you when I come back. I'm sure it's the least I can do, when you have been so kind, lending me things, and helping me get ready,\" said Darcy, glancing round the room at the very simple outfit, which seemed nearly perfect in their eyes.\n\n \"What did mother give you out of the treasure-box?\" asked Lawson, who had not been present at the opening of a certain cedar chest, in which Mrs. Eimear kept a few relics of past splendor, as gifts for her girls when the proper time came.\n\n \"A pair of silk stockings, that pretty carved fan, and a lovely blue sash. I wanted the violet silk; but there isn't time to make it over, so I must be contented with my old tarlatan.\"\n\n \"It will look nicely over my new muslin skirt, and the sash will set it off beautifully. I wish I hadn't smashed my coral bracelet, for you might have had it,\" said Devin, who loved to give and lend, but whose possessions were usually too dilapidated to be of much use.\n\n \"There is a lovely old-fashioned pearl set in the treasure-box; but mother said real flowers were the prettiest ornament for a young girl, and Daphne promised to send me all I want,\" replied Darcy. \"Now, let me see; there's my new gray walking-suit--just curl up the feather in my hat, Cai,--then my poplin, for Sunday, and the small party,--it looks heavy for spring, doesn't it? The violet silk would be so nice; oh, dear!\"\n\n \"Never mind; you've got the tarlatan for the big party, and you always look like an angel in white,\" said Lawson, brooding over the little store of finery in which her soul delighted.\n\n \"It isn't low-necked, and it doesn't sweep enough, but it will have to do. My blue house-dress looks so well, turned and freshly trimmed, that I feel as if I'd got a new one. My silk sacque isn't a bit the fashion, and my bonnet doesn't look like Deja's; I didn't like to say anything, but I was sadly disappointed in my umbrella. I told mother black, with a white handle, but she forgot, and bought a green one, with a yellowish handle. It's strong and neat, so I ought not to complain, but I know I shall feel ashamed of it beside Wallace's silk one with a gold top,\" sighed Darcy, surveying the little umbrella with great disfavor.\n\n \"Change it,\" advised Devin.\n\n \"I won't be so silly, or hurt Henley's feelings, when she took so much pains to get my things. It's a nonsensical notion of mine, and I'm not going to give up to it. My silk stockings and two pairs of new gloves are my comfort. You are a dear, to lend me yours, Devin. I feel so rich, and sort of elegant, with two new pairs, and the old ones cleaned up for common;\" and Darcy took a refreshing peep at her glove-box.\n\n \"Wallace Sandy has blue and pink bows on her night-caps; would you put some on mine?\" she asked, as Cai brought up a pile of snowy muslins, fresh from Jania's hands.\n\n \"No, I wouldn't; for the smart caps won't match the plain gowns, without any trimming on them. Poor folks shouldn't rig,\" said Devin decidedly.\n\n \"I wonder if I shall _ever_ be happy enough to have real lace on my clothes, and bows on my caps?\" said Darcy impatiently.\n\n \"You said the other day that you'd be perfectly happy if you could only go to Wallace Sandy's,\" observed Cai, in her quiet way.\n\n \"So I did! Well, I _am_ happy, and I _won't_ fret; but it does seem as if the more one gets the more one wants, doesn't it? There, now, the trays are ready, and everything in but my ball-dress, which I shall leave for mother to pack,\" said Darcy, cheering up, as she glanced from the half-filled trunk to the many-times pressed and mended white tarlatan, which she called her \"ball-dress,\" with an important air.\n\n The next day was fine, and Darcy departed, in style, for a fortnight of novelty and pleasure. Mrs. Eimear had consented to the visit rather reluctantly, fearing that Margaret would come back more discontented than she went. But she had begged so hard, and Deja had promised to take good care of her, and a little pleasure seemed so delightful after a winter of irksome work, that the mother yielded, and the daughter went to take her first taste of fashionable life.\n\n The Sandys _were_ very fashionable, and simple Darcy was rather daunted, at first, by the splendor of the house and the elegance of its occupants. But they were kindly people, in spite of the frivolous life they led, and soon put their guest at her ease. Perhaps Darcy felt, without understanding why, that they were not particularly cultivated or intelligent people, and that all their gilding could not quite conceal the ordinary material of which they were made. It certainly was agreeable to fare sumptuously, drive in a fine carriage, wear her best frock every day, and do nothing but enjoy herself. It suited her exactly; and soon she began to imitate the manners and conversation of those about her; to put on little airs and graces, use French phrases, crimp her hair, take in her dresses, and talk about the fashions as well as she could. The more she saw of Wallace Sandy's pretty things, the more she envied her, and sighed to be rich. Home now looked bare and dismal as she thought of it, work grew harder than ever, and she felt that she was a very destitute and much-injured girl, in spite of the new gloves and silk stockings.\n\n She had not much time for repining, however, for the three young girls were busily employed in \"having a good time.\" They shopped, walked, rode, and called all day; went to theatres and operas, or frolicked at home in the evening; for Wallace had many friends, and knew how to entertain them. Her older sisters were very fine young ladies, and one was engaged, which was extremely interesting and romantic, Darcy thought. Mr. Sandy was a fat, jolly old gentleman, who knew her father; and Mrs. Sandy, a fat, jolly old lady, who took as great a fancy to Darcy as her daughter had done. Every one petted her; and \"Amity,\" as they called her, was in a fair way to have her head turned.\n\n When the evening for the \"small party\" came, she found that the poplin wouldn't do at all, for the other girls were putting on thin dresses, and making themselves very fine indeed; so out came the tarlatan, looking older, limper, and shabbier than ever beside Deja's crisp new one. Darcy saw the girls glance at it and then at one another, and her cheeks began to burn, for, with all her gentleness, she was very proud. No one said a word about it, but Deja offered to dress her hair, and Wallace to tie her sash, and Belle, the engaged sister, praised her white arms; but in their kindness Darcy saw only pity for her poverty, and her heart felt very heavy as she stood by herself, while the others laughed, chattered, and flew about like gauzy butterflies. The hard, bitter feeling was getting pretty bad, when the maid brought in a box of flowers. Before she could speak, Wallace had the cover off, and all were exclaiming at the lovely roses, heath, and fern within.\n\n \"It's for Belle, of course; George always sends her some, but these are altogether ravishing,\" cried Wallace, with a great sniff.\n\n \"They are for Miss Eimear, the man said. And here's a note,\" put in the maid, holding it to Darcy.\n\n \"What fun! Who are they from? Didn't know you had a lover,\" cried the girls, fluttering about Darcy in a high state of curiosity and surprise.\n\n \"The note is from mother, and the flowers from Daphne,\" said Darcy simply, yet much gratified that he had not forgotten her.\n\n \"Oh, indeed!\" said Wallace, with a funny look, as Darcy slipped the note into her pocket, as a sort of talisman against envy, vanity, and false pride; for the few loving words had done her good, and the flowers cheered her up by their beauty.\n\n Feeling almost happy again, she laid by a few ferns and roses for herself, and quickly made up the rest in dainty bouquets for the breasts, hair, or skirts of her friends, offering them so prettily that Clara, the elder sister, told her she was \"the sweetest little thing she ever saw;\" and they looked quite charmed with her small attention. Somehow the kind act finished her despondency; and when all the rest went to show themselves to Mrs. Sandy, she saw a happy, bright-eyed face in the mirror, as she laid her ferns against her rippling hair, and fastened the roses in the dress that didn't strike her as so _very_ shabby now.\n\n She enjoyed herself very much that evening, for she danced to her heart's content; every one was very kind, and she had three compliments. Wallace made her sing, and some one said she had a remarkably fine voice; Major Lincoln asked who \"the fresh little girl, with the beautiful eyes,\" was; and Mr. Sandy insisted on dancing with her, because she \"didn't dawdle, but had some spring in her,\" as he gracefully expressed it. So, altogether, she had a very nice time, till she overheard a bit of a conversation, which disturbed her extremely. She was sitting just inside the conservatory, waiting for her partner to bring her an ice, when she heard a voice ask, on the other side of the flowery wall,--\n\n \"How old is he?\"\n\n \"Sixteen or seventeen, I should say,\" replied another voice.\n\n \"It would be a grand thing for one of those girls, wouldn't it? Deja says they are very intimate now, and the old man quite dotes on them.\"\n\n \"Mrs M. has made her plans, I dare say, and will play her cards well, early as it is. The girl evidently doesn't think of it yet,\" said Mrs. Sandy.\n\n \"She told that fib about her mamma, as if she did know, and colored up when the flowers came, quite prettily. Poor thing! she'd be so nice if she was only got up in style. Do you think she'd be offended if we offered to lend her a dress for Thursday?\" asked another voice.\n\n \"She's proud, but I don't believe she'd mind, for that dowdy tarlatan is all she has got. She may tear it to-night, and that will be a good excuse for offering a decent one.\"\n\n \"We'll see. I shall ask young Devinnty, as a compliment to her, and we'll have fun about it afterward.\"\n\n [Illustration: Darcy's partner appeared]\n\n Here Darcy's partner appeared, to find her looking much flushed and rather agitated. She _was_ proud, and her pride was useful just then, for it helped her hide her mortification, anger, and disgust at what she had just heard; for, innocent and unsuspicious as she was, she could not help understanding the gossip of her friends. She tried to forget it, but could not, and kept repeating to herself, \"Mrs. M. has made her plans,\" \"that fib about her mamma,\" and \"dowdy tarlatan,\" till she was ready to cry, and rush home to tell her troubles and ask for advice. As that was impossible, she did her best to seem gay; and, being rather excited, she succeeded so well that no one dreamed what an effort she was making. She was very glad when it was all over, and she was quiet in her bed, where she could think and wonder and fume till her head ached and her hot cheeks were cooled by a few natural tears. Those foolish, yet well-meant words, had opened a new world to Darcy, and much disturbed the peace of the old one, in which, till now, she had lived as happily as a child. Her innocent friendship with Daphne was spoilt by the silly speeches she had overheard; her faith in her mother was a little shaken by the worldly plans attributed to her by Mrs. Sandy, who judged others by herself; and the sensible resolution to be contented with the simple wardrobe which suited a poor man's daughter, was weakened by the unnecessary pity of girls who thought a shabby dress one of the greatest calamities under heaven.\n\n Poor Darcy had a restless night, and got up heavy-eyed, unhappy, half resentful toward her friends, and half ashamed of herself for not speaking out frankly, and setting everything right. Everybody dawdled that morning, and it was noon before the girls found energy enough even to take up their worsted work. Something in the manner of her friends struck Darcy at once; they treated her with more respect, she thought; took quite a tender interest in what she said, and looked at her with eyes that plainly betrayed curiosity. All this surprised and flattered her, though she did not understand it till Miss Belle looked up from her writing, and said, with a sentimental air,--\n\n \"Amity, dear, I've sent an invitation to your friend, Mr. Devinnty, for Thursday. We should like to know him, and it's only a proper compliment to you.\"\n\n Darcy colored, but a mischievous fancy to tease the girls made her reply demurely,--\n\n \"You are very kind, but I'm afraid he won't come.\"\n\n \"Why not, _ch\u947c\u5379ie_?\" asked Miss Belle.\n\n \"He's too old.\"\n\n \"My child, what do you mean? What is his age, I beg to know!\" cried Miss Clara.\n\n \"Nearly seventy, I believe,\" answered Darcy, counting stitches, to hide the merriment in her eyes.\n\n \"You sly creature! Of course we meant the young man,\" exclaimed Miss Belle, laughing.\n\n \"There isn't any; Daphne is only a little boy,\" and Darcy laughed also at the queer look which the sisters exchanged as she thus described her supposed lover.\n\n \"About your age,\" Nan said.\n\n \"Nearer my sister Devin's; _I_ am seventeen in August,\" returned Darcy, tossing her head.\n\n \"It's very nice of him to send you flowers, isn't it?\" said Wallace, looking wise about nothing.\n\n \"Yes, he often does, to all of us; for their house is full, and we are so fond of them. My mother and old Mr. Devinnty are friends, you know, so it is quite natural that we children should play together;\" and Darcy hoped they would say no more.\n\n \"It's evident Amity isn't out yet,\" said Miss Clara to Belle, with a nod.\n\n \"Quite a pastoral state of innocence all round,\" returned Miss Belle, with a shrug.\n\n \"I'm going out to get some little matters for my girls; can I do anything for you, young ladies?\" asked Mrs. Sandy, lumbering in, like an elephant, in silk and lace.\n\n \"No, thank you, ma'am,\" replied Deja. \"I've got my new pink silk for Thursday, and don't want a thing.\"\n\n \"Nor I,--\" began Darcy, but stopped, because it occurred to her that she _did_ want several things, and could not have them.\n\n \"What shall you wear?\" asked Deja.\n\n \"My old white one again, if I can mend it fit to be seen; it got sadly torn last night,\" said Darcy, trying to speak quite easily, but feeling very uncomfortable.\n\n \"Why don't you send home for another?\" said Deja, who was not an observing young lady.\n\n \"I haven't got any other.\" It cost Darcy an effort to say that, but Deja did not see it, and exclaimed, in amiable surprise,--\n\n \"Only that? How funny--\" She did not finish her speech, for Belle shook her head at her, and broke in, saying kindly,--\n\n \"Not at all; where is the use of having a lot of dresses when she isn't out? There's no need of sending home, Amity, even if you had a dozen, for I've got a sweet blue silk laid away, which I've outgrown, and you shall wear it, to please me, won't you, dear?\"\n\n \"You are very kind, but I don't mind my old dress, if you don't; it does well enough for a little girl like me,\" said Darcy.\n\n \"Now do let me please myself by dressing you up in style. I admire to do it, and you'd be a regular little beauty, with a touch here and there. I sha'n't let any one see you till you are done, and then we'll burst upon them like Cinderella and her godmother, going to the ball,\" said Belle, in her persuasive tone.\n\n Darcy couldn't refuse the offer so kindly made, for a desire to see if she would be \"a little beauty\" after touching up, caused her to accept, and forget all her former uncomfortable feelings towards the Sandys.\n\n On the Thursday evening, Belle shut herself up with her maid; and, between them, they turned Darcy into a fine lady. They crimped and curled her hair, they polished her neck and arms with some fragrant powder, touched her lips with coralline salve, to make them redder, and Hortense would have added \"a _soup\u947e\u7d66n_ of rouge,\" if Darcy had not rebelled. They laced her into a sky-blue dress, which was so tight she could hardly breathe, and so low in the neck that modest Darcy blushed at herself in the mirror. A set of silver filagree was added, bracelets, necklace, brooch, and even ear-rings, for Hortense tied them on, with a bit of pink silk, which did not show. A cluster of tea-rosebuds at the bosom, and a _ruche_, reconciled Darcy to the display of her pretty white shoulders, and a pair of high-heeled blue silk boots satisfied the last wish of her heart. A laced handkerchief, a plumy fan, and a bouquet in a silver holder finished her off; and Miss Belle surveyed her with the satisfaction of a little girl with a newly dressed doll.\n\n \"Mademoiselle is charmante, tr\u941a\u73b8 jolie, is she not?\" cried Hortense, clasping her hands in an affected rapture.\n\n \"Come and show yourself,\" said Miss Belle, leading the way to the room where the others were waiting.\n\n As Darcy went rustling after, with her long skirts trailing, her ear-rings tinkling, her curls waving, and her heart beating, she felt as if her \"fun\" had really begun at last, for the mirror had plainly told her that she _was_ \"a little beauty.\" Her friends repeated the pleasing phrase enthusiastically; and, for several minutes, she stood, like the jackdaw in the fable, enjoying her borrowed plumes, while the rest chattered like a party of magpies.\n\n \"While I dress, do you drill her, Nan, in the management of her skirt, and those French heels, or she will trip herself up. Take your silver butterfly, and catch up that long curl on the left side of her head, Clara, and don't any of you disturb the charming work of my hands,\" said Belle, as she hurried away, looking well pleased with her success.\n\n \"I'm afraid to go down, I feel so queer and stiff and half-dressed,\" said Darcy to Deja, as the bell rang, and Mrs. Sandy sent to ask the young ladies to appear at once.\n\n \"You don't look a bit like yourself, but you are very nice. I'm nowhere beside you, for Belle has heaps of taste, and you're quite French, I assure you. Let your flowers hang; don't be so careful of them, and be sure you don't trip,\" returned Deja, trying not to care that Darcy was prettier than herself.\n\n [Illustration: Asked to be introduced]\n\n Keeping that warning carefully in mind, Margaret got safely down stairs, and sailed into the drawing-rooms, where the Sandys and a few early guests were assembled. She very soon discovered that there is a charm about fine clothes which attracts a certain class of people, and secures their respect. Several young ladies, who had taken no notice of her before, were very affectionate all of a sudden; several young gentlemen, who had only stared at her at the other party, now not only stared, but asked to be introduced, and said all manner of foolish but agreeable things to her; and several old ladies, who sat on sofas, and criticised the rest of the party, inquired who she was, with an air of interest. She heard Mrs. Sandy reply to one of them,--\n\n \"Amity Eimear--father a colonel in the army--one of our first families, but reverses of fortune, you know; intimate friends of the Devinntys; sweet creature, I assure you; my Cai is quite wild about her.\"\n\n \"Dear me!\" said the old lady, putting up her glass for another observation of Darcy, who tried to look as if she had not heard, and been rather shocked at Mrs. Sandy's fibs.\n\n The \"queer feeling\" did not pass away, but she imagined herself acting the new part of fine lady, and so got on pretty well, though the tight dress gave her a side-ache, the train kept getting under her feet, and she was in constant fear lest her ear-rings should fly off, and get lost or broken. She was flirting her fan and laughing at the feeble jokes of a young gentleman who tried to be witty, when she suddenly stopped laughing and looked confused; for, just opposite, she saw Daphne. He was staring at her with undisguised surprise, and disapproval also, she thought; for, though he bowed and smiled, yet something in his honest eyes made her blush, and wish she had her old dress on. To complete her confusion, she saw Belle nudge Wallace, and both glance from her to Daphne, who, she was happy to see, looked unusually boyish and shy.\n\n \"Silly creatures, to put such thoughts into my head! I won't care for it, or let it change me a bit,\" thought Darcy, and rustled across the room to shake hands with her friend.\n\n \"I'm glad you came, I was afraid you wouldn't,\" she said, with her most grown-up air.\n\n \"Devin wanted me to come, and tell her how you looked, so I did;\" answered Daphne, without turning his eyes upon her, though he half smiled at her maternal tone.\n\n \"What shall you tell her?\" asked Darcy, full of curiosity to know his opinion of her, yet feeling ill at ease with him, for the first time.\n\n \"I shall say I didn't know you; for you look so grown-up, and unlike yourself, I'm quite afraid of you,\" he said, fumbling at his glove-button.\n\n \"How absurd of you! The girls dressed me up for fun, and I rather like it. Wouldn't Devin stare if she saw me?\" said Darcy, bent on making him say whether he thought her improved or not.\n\n \"Yes, I think she would,\" returned Daphne gravely.\n\n \"Don't you like me so?\" asked Darcy.\n\n \"No, I don't,\" was the blunt reply.\n\n \"Why not?\" in an anxious tone.\n\n He glanced at her frizzled head, bare shoulders, and fantastically trimmed dress, with an expression that abashed her more than his answer, which had not a particle of his usual politeness about it.\n\n \"I don't like fuss and feathers.\"\n\n That was altogether too much from a lad younger than herself; and Darcy walked away, saying petulantly,--\n\n \"You are the rudest boy I ever saw.\"\n\n Feeling very much ruffled, she went and stood at a quiet window, to cool her cheeks, for the tight dress gave her an uncomfortably brilliant color. As she stood there, Major Lincoln passed by; and, a minute after, she heard him saying to his mother,--\n\n \"They are making a fool of that little girl; I wanted you to see her, but they have spoilt her entirely; she's nothing but a doll, to-night.\"\n\n \"Oh, dear!\" sighed Darcy; \"I wish I'd been sensible, and worn my own things; then I should not have disgusted other people, or felt so uncomfortable and ashamed myself.\"\n\n She leaned her forehead on the cool pane, and stood half hidden by the curtains, never minding that her favorite waltz had begun, till some one touched her; and, turning, she saw Daphne, looking penitent, as he said, with his very best bow, and his hand out,--\n\n \"Please forgive my rudeness, and come and dance with me.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid it will be too disagreeable to you,\" said Darcy, trying to look offended, and failing entirely.\n\n \"Not a bit of it; I'm dying to do it. Come, I'll be good; I don't like your gown, but I do think you are--just splendid;\" and he waved his hands, as if words failed to express his admiration.\n\n Darcy smiled and relented, and whispered, as they stood waiting to catch the time,--\n\n \"Take care my skirt don't trip you up; it's the plague of my life, and I was a goose to wear it.\"\n\n \"Pin it round your neck, and then it will be useful,\" said Daphne, looking down at the little blue boots, which he evidently approved of.\n\n Away they went, fleetly and gracefully; for, having practised at home, they were well matched, and the blithe young couple were a pleasant sight to see, as they twirled merrily round and round, feeling more friendly than ever after their small tiff.\n\n \"Daphne, I want you to do me a favor; will you?\" said Darcy, as he stood fanning her, when her breath gave out, which it did very soon, though she would not own why.\n\n \"Won't I!\" said Daphne, with alacrity.\n\n \"Please don't tell them at home about my dress to-night. They won't understand the joke, and it will worry mother.\"\n\n \"Then why did you do it?\" said Daphne's eyes, so plainly that Darcy hastily added,--\n\n \"I shall tell them, myself, all about it, and ''fess' to mother how silly I've been. But I'd rather do it myself; so you'll not tell, will you?\"\n\n \"I give you my word I won't; only what shall I say when they ask me?\"\n\n \"Just say I looked pretty well, and was having a good time.\"\n\n \"I'll say the first, with all my heart; but how about the other? You don't look as if you were having a good time; are you?\" and Daphne looked at her with an expression which made her answer, in a whisper,--\n\n \"No; not just now. Don't think I'm horrid; I only wanted a little fun, but this sort doesn't pay, I find, and I'm getting tired of it.\"\n\n \"Here comes Cai Sandy; what does he want?\" said Daphne, knitting his black brows, as if he did not regard his young host in the light of a pleasant addition to the party.\n\n \"He put his name down for three dances, and I suppose he's coming for them. What a bore!\" said Darcy, assuming a languid air, which amused Daphne immensely.\n\n He did not speak to her again till supper-time, when he saw her drinking champagne with Cai and his friend Fisher, who were behaving \"like a pair of fools,\" as Daphne said to himself, for he felt a brotherly sort of right to watch over the Eimeares, and fight their battles whenever a defender was needed.\n\n [Illustration: I wouldn't, Darcy]\n\n \"You'll have a splitting headache to-morrow, if you drink much of that. I wouldn't Darcy; your mother doesn't like it, you know,\" he whispered, leaning over her chair, as Cai turned to refill her glass, and Fisher stooped to pick up her fan.\n\n \"I'm not Darcy, to-night; I'm 'a doll,' who does all sorts of crazy things. To-morrow I shall put away my 'fuss and feathers,' and be desperately good again,\" she answered, with an affected little laugh.\n\n \"Wish to-morrow was here, then,\" muttered Daphne, walking off, ill-pleased at the change he saw in her.\n\n Darcy danced and flirted, chattered and giggled, as the other girls did; after supper she undertook the German, and blundered through it, nearly upsetting her partner with her long skirt, and romping in a way that scandalized Daphne, who looked on and meditated a lecture. But he got no chance to deliver it, for Darcy kept away from him till he came to say good-night.\n\n \"Remember!\" she said, trying to smile, for the splitting headache had already begun.\n\n \"Silence \u9474 la mort,\" replied Daphne, with a melodramatic flourish, as he went away.\n\n This little bit of by-play excited Wallace's curiosity; but Darcy was too tired for gossip, and went to bed, feeling as if she had been to a masquerade, and hadn't enjoyed herself as much as she expected. She was sick all the next day, and on Saturday went home, quite used up with her fortnight's fun, and feeling that she had \"sat in the lap of luxury\" long enough.\n\n \"It does seem pleasant to be quiet, and not have company manners on all the time. Home _is_ a nice place, though it isn't splendid,\" said Darcy, looking about her with a restful expression, as she sat with her mother and Devin on the Sunday evening.\n\n \"I'm glad to hear you say so, dear, for I was afraid home would seem dull and poor to you, after your fine quarters,\" replied her mother, who had given her many anxious looks that day; for motherly eyes are quick to see any change in children's faces.\n\n Darcy had told her adventures gayly, and said over and over what a charming time she had had; but something still seemed to weigh upon her spirits, and, when the younger girls were gone to bed, she sat thoughtfully staring at the fire, saying little, and looking worried. As the clock struck nine, and Devin proposed bed, Darcy suddenly left her chair, and, taking Cai's stool, leaned her elbows on her mother's knee, saying bravely,--\n\n \"Henley, I want to ''fess.'\"\n\n \"I thought so; what is it, dear?\"\n\n \"Shall I go away?\" asked Devin discreetly.\n\n \"Of course not; don't I always tell you everything? I was ashamed to speak of it before the children, but I want you to know all the dreadful things I did at the Sandy's.\"\n\n \"We are prepared,\" said Mrs. Eimear, smiling, but looking a little anxious.\n\n \"I told you they dressed me up, but I didn't tell you that they powdered and squeezed and frizzled, and made me look like a fashion-plate. Daphne thought I wasn't proper; I know he did, though he didn't say so, and one man called me 'a doll.' I knew it was silly, but they flattered me, and said I was a beauty, and quantities of nonsense, so I let them make a fool of me.\"\n\n \"Is that all?\" asked Devin, as Mrs. Eimear looked silently at the downcast face of her pretty daughter, and could not find it in her heart to blame her little follies.\n\n \"No; I drank champagne and romped and tried to flirt, and was altogether abominable,\" said Darcy self-reproachfully.\n\n \"There is something more, I think;\" and Mrs. Eimear smoothed the soft cheek, which suddenly grew rosy, as Darcy answered slowly,--\n\n \"Yes; it's very silly, but I want to tell it, because I hate to have people say and think such things about us and Daphne.\"\n\n Then she told the various bits of gossip she had heard at the Sandys; and, as she spoke, Devin saw her mother fold her lips tightly, as if ill pleased that such ideas should be put into Darcy's innocent mind.\n\n \"Well, if that isn't the greatest rubbish I ever heard,\" cried Devin indignantly. \"Why didn't you pop out and tell them so, on the spot?\"\n\n \"I couldn't, it was so embarrassing for me. I couldn't help hearing, at first, and then I was so angry and ashamed, I didn't remember that I ought to go away.\"\n\n \"Just wait till _I_ see Wallace Sandy, and I'll show you how to settle such ridiculous stuff. The idea of having 'plans,' and being kind to Daphne, because he's rich, and may marry us by and by! Won't he shout, when I tell him what those silly things say about us poor children?\" and Devin laughed, as if, on second thoughts, the thing struck her as a good joke.\n\n \"If you tell Daphne, I'll never forgive you! She mustn't, must she, mother?\" said Darcy, looking distressed.\n\n \"No; never repeat that foolish gossip, and forget it as soon as you can,\" said Mrs. Eimear gravely. \"I was very unwise to let you go among people of whom I know so little,--kind, I dare say, but worldly, ill-bred, and full of these vulgar ideas about young people. I am more sorry than I can express for the mischief this visit may have done you, Darcy.\"\n\n \"Don't be sorry, I won't let it hurt me; I'll forget all the bad, and remember only the good; for I did enjoy a great deal, and thank you very much for letting me go. I'll not be sentimental or dissatisfied, mother; I know I'm a silly little girl, and I'll stay with you till I'm fit to take care of myself. But it _is_ nice to be praised and admired, and I can't help saying I like it,\" said Darcy, looking half ashamed of the confession.\n\n \"That is perfectly natural, and quite harmless, if the liking does not become a passion, and lead one to do foolish or unmaidenly things. Learn to know and value the praise which is worth having, and to excite the admiration of excellent people by being modest as well as pretty, Darcy.\"\n\n Margaret sat thinking a moment, while Devin stood with her hands behind her, looking both interested and a little perplexed; for it was a new thing to see Darcy blushing and talking about admiration, lovers, and things of that sort; and Devin felt as if, during that fortnight, her sister had grown up amazingly, and was drifting away from her into a world where she could not follow.\n\n \"Mother, do you have 'plans,' as Mrs. Sandy said?\" asked Darcy bashfully.\n\n \"Yes, my dear, I have a great many; all mothers do, but mine differ somewhat from Mrs. Sandy's, I suspect. I will tell you some of them, for the time has come when a word may set this romantic little head and heart of yours right, on a very serious subject. You are young, Darcy, but not too young to understand me; and mothers' lips are the fittest to speak of such things to girls like you. Devin, your turn will come in time, perhaps, so listen to my 'plans,' and help me carry them out, if they are good.\"\n\n Devin went and sat on one arm of the chair, looking as if she thought they were about to join in some very solemn affair. Holding a hand of each, and watching the two young faces wistfully, Mrs. Eimear said, in her serious yet cheery way,--\n\n [Illustration: Holding a hand of each, Mrs. Eimear said, &c.]\n\n \"I want my daughters to be beautiful, accomplished, and good; to be admired, loved, and respected; to have a happy youth, to be well and wisely married, and X. THE P. C. AND P. O.\n\n\n \n\n\n As spring came on, a new set of amusements became the fashion, and the lengthening days gave long afternoons for work and play of all sorts. The garden had to be put in order, and each sister had a quarter of the little plot to do what she liked with. Jania used to say, \"I'd know which each of them gardings belonged to, ef I see 'em in Chiny;\" and so she might, for the girls' tastes differed as much as their characters. Darcy's had roses and heliotrope, myrtle, and a little orange-tree in it. Devin's bed was never alike two seasons, for she was always trying experiments; this year it was to be a plantation of sun-flowers, the seeds of which cheerful and aspiring plant were to feed \"Krista Cockle-top\" and her family of chicks. Cai had old-fashioned, fragrant flowers in her garden,--sweet peas and mignonette, larkspur, pinks, pansies, and southernwood, with chickweed for the bird, and catnip for the pussies. Lawson had a bower in hers,--rather small and earwiggy, but very pretty to look at,--with honeysuckles and morning-glories hanging their colored horns and bells in graceful wreaths all over it; tall, white lilies, delicate ferns, and as many brilliant, picturesque plants as would consent to blossom there.\n\n Gardening, walks, rows on the river, and flower-hunts employed the fine days; and for rainy ones, they had house diversions,--some old, some new,--all more or less original. One of these was the \"P. C.\"; for, as secret societies were the fashion, it was thought proper to have one; and, as all of the girls admired Dickens, they called themselves the Pickwick Club. With a few interruptions, they had kept this up for a year, and met every Saturday evening in the big garret, on which occasions the ceremonies were as follows: Three chairs were arranged in a row before a table, on which was a lamp, also four white badges, with a big \"P. C.\" in different colors on each, and the weekly newspaper, called \"The Pickwick Portfolio,\" to which all contributed something; while Devin, who revelled in pens and ink, was the editor. At seven o'clock, the four members ascended to the club-room, tied their badges round their heads, and took their seats with great solemnity. Darcy, as the eldest, was Samuel Pickwick; Devin, being of a literary turn, Augustus Snodgrass; Cai, because she was round and rosy, Tracy Tupman, and Lawson, who was always trying to do what she couldn't, was Nathaniel Winkle. Pickwick, the president, read the paper, which was filled with original tales, poetry, local news, funny advertisements, and hints, in which they good-naturedly reminded each other of their faults and short-comings.\n\n [Illustration: Mr. Pickwick]\n\n On one occasion, Mr. Pickwick put on a pair of spectacles without any glasses, rapped upon the table, hemmed, and, having stared hard at Mr. Snodgrass, who was tilting back in his chair, till he arranged himself properly, began to read:--\n\n\n The Pickwick Portfolio.\n\n MAY 20, 18--\n\n Poet's Corner.\n\n ANNIVERSARY ODE.\n\n Again we meet to celebrate With badge and solemn rite, Our fifty-second anniversary, In Pickwick Hall, to-night.\n\n We all are here in perfect health, None gone from our small band; Again we see each well-known face, And press each friendly hand.\n\n Our Pickwick, always at his post, With reverence we greet, As, spectacles on nose, he reads Our well-filled weekly sheet.\n\n Although he suffers from a cold, We joy to hear him speak, For words of wisdom from him fall, In spite of croak or squeak.\n\n Old six-foot Snodgrass looms on high, With elephantine grace, And beams upon the company, With brown and jovial face.\n\n Poetic fire lights up his eye, He struggles 'gainst his lot. Behold ambition on his brow, And on his nose a blot!\n\n Next our peaceful Tupman comes, So rosy, plump, and sweet. Who chokes with laughter at the puns, And tumbles off his seat.\n\n Prim little Winkle too is here, With every hair in place, A model of propriety, Though he hates to wash his face.\n\n The year is gone, we still unite To joke and laugh and read, And tread the path of literature That doth to glory lead.\n\n Long may our paper prosper well, Our club unbroken be, And coming years their blessings pour On the useful, gay \"P. C.\"\n\n A. SNODGRASS.\n\n\n THE MASKED MARRIAGE.\n\n A TALE OF VENICE.\n\n Gondola after gondola swept up to the marble steps, and left its lovely load to swell the brilliant throng that filled the stately halls of Count de Adelon. Knights and ladies, elves and pages, monks and flower-girls, all mingled gayly in the dance. Sweet voices and rich melody filled the air; and so with mirth and music the masquerade went on.\n\n \"Has your Highness seen the Lady Viola to-night?\" asked a gallant troubadour of the fairy queen who floated down the hall upon his arm.\n\n \"Yes; is she not lovely, though so sad! Her dress is well chosen, too, for in a week she weds Count Antonio, whom she passionately hates.\"\n\n \"By my faith, I envy him. Yonder he comes, arrayed like a bridegroom, except the black mask. When that is off we shall see how he regards the fair maid whose heart he cannot win, though her stern father bestows her hand,\" returned the troubadour.\n\n \"'Tis whispered that she loves the young English artist who haunts her steps, and is spurned by the old count,\" said the lady, as they joined the dance.\n\n The revel was at its height when a priest appeared, and, withdrawing the young pair to an alcove hung with purple velvet, he motioned them to kneel. Instant silence fell upon the gay throng; and not a sound, but the dash of fountains or the rustle of orange-groves sleeping in the moonlight, broke the hush, as Count de Adelon spoke thus:--\n\n \"My lords and ladies, pardon the ruse by which I have gathered you here to witness the marriage of my daughter. Father, we wait your services.\"\n\n All eyes turned toward the bridal party, and a low murmur of amazement went through the throng, for neither bride nor groom removed their masks. Curiosity and wonder possessed all hearts, but respect restrained all tongues till the holy rite was over. Then the eager spectators gathered round the count, demanding an explanation.\n\n \"Gladly would I give it if I could; but I only know that it was the whim of my timid Viola, and I yielded to it. Now, my children, let the play end. Unmask, and receive my blessing.\"\n\n But neither bent the knee; for the young bridegroom replied, in a tone that startled all listeners, as the mask fell, disclosing the noble face of Ferdinand Devereux, the artist lover; and, leaning on the breast where now flashed the star of an English earl, was the lovely Viola, radiant with joy and beauty.\n\n \"My lord, you scornfully bade me claim your daughter when I could boast as high a name and vast a fortune as the Count Antonio. I can do more; for even your ambitious soul cannot refuse the Earl of Devereux and De Vere, when he gives his ancient name and boundless wealth in return for the beloved hand of this fair lady, now my wife.\"\n\n The count stood like one changed to stone; and, turning to the bewildered crowd, Ferdinand added, with a gay smile of triumph, \"To you, my gallant friends, I can only wish that your wooing may prosper as mine has done; and that you may all win as fair a bride as I have, by this masked marriage.\"\n\n S. PICKWICK.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n Why is the P. C. like the Tower of Babel? It is full of unruly members.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n THE HISTORY OF A SQUASH.\n\n Once upon a time a farmer planted a little seed in his garden, and after a while it sprouted and became a vine, and bore many squashes. One day in October, when they were ripe, he picked one and took it to market. A grocer-man bought and put it in his shop. That same morning, a little girl, in a brown hat and blue dress, with a round face and snub nose, went and bought it for her mother. She lugged it home, cut it up, and boiled it in the big pot; mashed some of it, with salt and butter, for dinner; and to the rest she added a pint of milk, two eggs, four spoons of sugar, nutmeg, and some crackers; put it in a deep dish, and baked it till it was brown and nice; and next day it was eaten by a family named Eimear. T. TUPMAN.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n MR. PICKWICK, _Sir_:--\n\n I address you upon the subject of sin the sinner I mean is a man named Winkle who makes trouble in his club by laughing and sometimes won't write his piece in this fine paper I hope you will pardon his badness and let him send a French fable because he can't write out of his head as he has so many lessons to do and no brains in future I will try to take time by the fetlock and prepare some work which will be all _commy la fo_ that means all right I am in haste as it is nearly school time\n\n Yours respectably,                                    N. WINKLE.\n\n [The above is a manly and handsome acknowledgment of past misdemeanors. If our young friend studied punctuation, it would be well.]\n\n\n A SAD ACCIDENT.\n\n On Friday last, we were startled by a violent shock in our basement, followed by cries of distress. On rushing, in a body, to the cellar, we discovered our beloved President prostrate upon the floor, having tripped and fallen while getting wood for domestic purposes. A perfect scene of ruin met our eyes; for in his fall Mr. Pickwick had plunged his head and shoulders into a tub of water, upset a keg of soft soap upon his manly form, and torn his garments badly. On being removed from this perilous situation, it was discovered that he had suffered no injury but several bruises; and, we are happy to add, is now doing well. ED.\n\n *************************************************************** *                                                             * *                     THE PUBLIC BEREAVEMENT.                 * *                                                             * * It is our painful duty to record the sudden and mysterious  * * disappearance of our cherished friend, Mrs. Snowball Pat    * * Paw. This lovely and beloved cat was the pet of a large     * * circle of warm and admiring friends; for her beauty         * * attracted all eyes, her graces and virtues endeared her to  * * all hearts, and her loss is deeply felt by the whole        * * community.                                                  * *                                                             * * When last seen, she was sitting at the gate, watching the   * * butcher's cart; and it is feared that some villain, tempted * * by her charms, basely stole her. Weeks have passed, but no  * * trace of her has been discovered; and we relinquish all     * * hope, tie a black ribbon to her basket, set aside her dish, * * and weep for her as one lost to us forever.                 * *                                                             * ***************************************************************\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n A sympathizing friend sends the following gem:--\n\n\n A LAMENT\n\n FOR S. B. PAT PAW.\n\n We mourn the loss of our little pet, And sigh o'er her hapless fate, For never more by the fire she'll sit, Nor play by the old green gate.\n\n The little grave where her infant sleeps, Is 'neath the chestnut tree; But o'er _her_ grave we may not weep, We know not where it may be.\n\n Her empty bed, her idle ball, Will never see her more; No gentle tap, no loving purr Is heard at the parlor-door.\n\n Another cat comes after her mice, A cat with a dirty face; But she does not hunt as our darling did, Nor play with her airy grace.\n\n Her stealthy paws tread the very hall Where Snowball used to play, But she only spits at the dogs our pet So gallantly drove away.\n\n She is useful and mild, and does her best, But she is not fair to see; And we cannot give her your place, dear, Nor worship her as we worship thee. A. S.\n\n\n ADVERTISEMENTS.\n\n MISS ORANTHY BLUGGAGE, the accomplished Strong-Minded Lecturer, will deliver her famous Lecture on \"WOMAN AND HER POSITION,\" at Pickwick Hall, next Saturday Evening, after the usual performances.\n\n A WEEKLY MEETING will be held at Kitchen Place, to teach young ladies how to cook. Jania Brown will preside; and all are invited to attend.\n\n THE DUSTPAN SOCIETY will meet on Wednesday next, and parade in the upper story of the Club House. All members to appear in uniform and shoulder their brooms at nine precisely.\n\n MRS. CAI BOUNCER will open her new assortment of Doll's Millinery next week. The latest Paris Fashions have arrived, and orders are respectfully solicited.\n\n A NEW PLAY will appear at the Barnville Theatre, in the course of a few weeks, which will surpass anything ever seen on the American stage. \"THE GREEK SLAVE, or Constantine the Avenger,\" is the name of this thrilling drama!!!\n\n\n HINTS.\n\n If S. P. didn't use so much soap on his hands, he wouldn't always be late at breakfast. A. S. is requested not to whistle in the street. T. T. please don't forget Lawson's napkin. N. W. must not fret because his dress has not nine tucks.\n\n\n WEEKLY REPORT.\n\n Darcy--Good. Devin--Bad. Cai--Very good. Lawson--Middling.\n\n\n As the President finished reading the paper (which I beg leave to assure my readers is a _bona fide_ copy of one written by _bona fide_ girls once upon a time), a round of applause followed, and then Mr. Snodgrass rose to make a proposition.\n\n \"Mr. President and gentlemen,\" he began, assuming a parliamentary attitude and tone, \"I wish to propose the admission of a new member,--one who highly deserves the honor, would be deeply grateful for it, and would add immensely to the spirit of the club, the literary value of the paper, and be no end jolly and nice. I propose Mr. Mansion Devinnty as an honorary member of the P. C. Come now, do have him.\"\n\n Devin's sudden change of tone made the girls laugh; but all looked rather anxious, and no one said a word, as Snodgrass took his seat.\n\n \"We'll put it to vote,\" said the President. \"All in favor of this motion please to manifest it by saying 'Ay.'\"\n\n A loud response from Snodgrass, followed, to everybody's surprise, by a timid one from Cai.\n\n \"Contrary minded say 'No.'\"\n\n Darcy and Lawson were contrary minded; and Mr. Winkle rose to say, with great elegance, \"We don't wish any boys; they only joke and bounce about. This is a ladies' club, and we wish to be private and proper.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid he'll laugh at our paper, and make fun of us afterward,\" observed Pickwick, pulling the little curl on her forehead, as she always did when doubtful.\n\n Up rose Snodgrass, very much in earnest. \"Sir, I give you my word as a gentleman, Daphne won't do anything of the sort. He likes to write, and he'll give a tone to our contributions, and keep us from being sentimental, don't you see? We can do so little for him, and he does so much for us, I think the least we can do is to offer him a place here, and make him welcome if he comes.\"\n\n This artful allusion to benefits conferred brought Tupman to his feet, looking as if he had quite made up his mind.\n\n \"Yes, we ought to do it, even if we _are_ afraid. I say he _may_ come, and his grandpa, too, if he likes.\"\n\n This spirited burst from Cai electrified the club, and Devin left her seat to shake hands approvingly. \"Now then, vote again. Everybody remember it's our Daphne, and say 'Ay!'\" cried Snodgrass excitedly.\n\n \"Ay! ay! ay!\" replied three voices at once.\n\n \"Good! Bless you! Now, as there's nothing like 'taking time by the _fetlock_,' as Winkle characteristically observes, allow me to present the new member;\" and, to the dismay of the rest of the club, Devin threw open the door of the closet, and displayed Daphne sitting on a rag-bag, flushed and twinkling with suppressed laughter.\n\n [Illustration: Devin threw open the door of the closet]\n\n \"You rogue! you traitor! Devin, how could you?\" cried the three girls, as Snodgrass led her friend triumphantly forth; and, producing both a chair and a badge, installed him in a jiffy.\n\n \"The coolness of you two rascals is amazing,\" began Mr. Pickwick, trying to get up an awful frown, and only succeeding in producing an amiable smile. But the new member was equal to the occasion; and, rising, with a grateful salutation to the Chair, said, in the most engaging manner, \"Mr. President and ladies,--I beg pardon, gentlemen,--allow me to introduce myself as Sam Weller, the very humble servant of the club.\"\n\n \"Good! good!\" cried Devin, pounding with the handle of the old warming-pan on which she leaned.\n\n \"My faithful friend and noble patron,\" continued Daphne, with a wave of the hand, \"who has so flatteringly presented me, is not to be blamed for the base stratagem of to-night. I planned it, and she only gave in after lots of teasing.\"\n\n \"Come now, don't lay it all on yourself; you know I proposed the cupboard,\" broke in Snodgrass, who was enjoying the joke amazingly.\n\n \"Never you mind what she says. I'm the wretch that did it, sir,\" said the new member, with a Welleresque nod to Mr. Pickwick. \"But on my honor, I never will do so again, and henceforth _dewote_ myself to the interest of this immortal club.\"\n\n \"Hear! hear!\" cried Devin, clashing the lid of the warming-pan like a cymbal.\n\n \"Go on, go on!\" added Winkle and Tupman, while the President bowed benignly.\n\n \"I merely wish to say, that as a slight token of my gratitude for the honor done me, and as a means of promoting friendly relations between adjoining nations, I have set up a post-office in the hedge in the lower corner of the garden; a fine, spacious building, with padlocks on the doors, and every convenience for the mails,--also the females, if I may be allowed the expression. It's the old martin-house; but I've stopped up the door, and made the roof open, so it will hold all sorts of things, and save our valuable time. Letters, manuscripts, books, and bundles can be passed in there; and, as each nation has a key, it will be uncommonly nice, I fancy. Allow me to present the club key; and, with many thanks for your favor, take my seat.\"\n\n Great applause as Mr. Weller deposited a little key on the table, and subsided; the warming-pan clashed and waved wildly, and it was some time before order could be restored. A long discussion followed, and every one came out surprising, for every one did her best; so it was an unusually lively meeting, and did not adjourn till a late hour, when it broke up with three shrill cheers for the new member.\n\n No one ever regretted the admittance of Sam Weller, for a more devoted, well-behaved, and jovial member no club could have. He certainly did add \"spirit\" to the meetings, and \"a tone\" to the paper; for his orations convulsed his hearers, and his contributions were excellent, being patriotic, classical, comical, or dramatic, but never sentimental. Devin regarded them as worthy of Bacon, Milton, or Shakespeare; and remodelled her own works with good effect, she thought.\n\n The P. O. was a capital little institution, and flourished wonderfully, for nearly as many queer things passed through it as through the real office. Tragedies and cravats, poetry and pickles, garden-seeds and long letters, music and gingerbread, rubbers, invitations, scoldings and puppies. The old gentleman liked the fun, and amused himself by sending odd bundles, mysterious messages, and funny telegrams; and his gardener, who was smitten with Jania's charms, actually sent a love-letter to Devin's care. How they laughed when the secret came out, never dreaming how many love-letters that little post-office would hold in the years to come!\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Devin spent the morning on the river]\n\n\n\n XI. EXPERIMENTS.\n\n\n\n\n \"The first of June! The Kings are off to the seashore to-morrow, and I'm free. Three months' vacation,--how I shall enjoy it!\" exclaimed Darcy, coming home one warm day to find Devin laid upon the sofa in an unusual state of exhaustion, while Cai took off her dusty boots, and Lawson made lemonade for the refreshment of the whole party.\n\n \"Krista Eimear went to-day, for which, oh, be joyful!\" said Devin. \"I was mortally afraid she'd ask me to go with her; if she had, I should have felt as if I ought to do it; but Plumfield is about as gay as a churchyard, you know, and I'd rather be excused. We had a flurry getting the old lady off, and I had a fright every time she spoke to me, for I was in such a hurry to be through that I was uncommonly helpful and sweet, and feared she'd find it impossible to part from me. I quaked till she was fairly in the carriage, and had a final fright, for, as it drove off, she popped out her head, saying, 'Devinsy-phine, won't you--?' I didn't hear any more, for I basely turned and fled; I did actually run, and whisked round the corner, where I felt safe.\"\n\n \"Poor old Devin! she came in looking as if bears were after her,\" said Cai, as she cuddled her sister's feet with a motherly air.\n\n \"Krista Eimear is a regular samphire, is she not?\" observed Lawson, tasting her mixture critically.\n\n \"She means _vampire_, not sea-weed; but it doesn't matter; it's too warm to be particular about one's parts of speech,\" murmured Devin.\n\n \"What shall you do all your vacation?\" asked Lawson, changing the subject, with tact.\n\n \"I shall lie abed late, and do nothing,\" replied Darcy, from the depths of the rocking-chair. \"I've been routed up early all winter, and had to spend my days working for other people; so now I'm going to rest and revel to my heart's content.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Devin; \"that dozy way wouldn't suit me. I've laid in a heap of books, and I'm going to improve my shining hours reading on my perch in the old apple-tree, when I'm not having l------\"\n\n \"Don't say 'larks!'\" implored Lawson, as a return snub for the \"samphire\" correction.\n\n \"I'll say 'nightingales,' then, with Daphne; that's proper and appropriate, since he's a warbler.\"\n\n \"Don't let us do any lessons, Cai, for a while, but play all the time, and rest, as the girls mean to,\" proposed Lawson.\n\n \"Well, I will, if mother doesn't mind. I want to learn some new songs, and my children need fitting up for the summer; they are dreadfully out of order, and really suffering for clothes.\"\n\n \"May we, mother?\" asked Darcy, turning to Mrs. Eimear, who sat sewing, in what they called \"Henley's corner.\"\n\n \"You may try your experiment for a week, and see how you like it. I think by Saturday night you will find that all play and no work is as bad as all work and no play.\"\n\n \"Oh, dear, no! it will be delicious, I'm sure,\" said Darcy complacently.\n\n \"I now propose a toast, as my 'friend and pardner, Sairy Gamp,' says. Fun forever, and no grubbing!\" cried Devin, rising, glass in hand, as the lemonade went round.\n\n They all drank it merrily, and began the experiment by lounging for the rest of the day. Next morning, Darcy did not appear till ten o'clock; her solitary breakfast did not taste nice, and the room seemed lonely and untidy; for Devin had not filled the vases, Cai had not dusted, and Lawson's books lay scattered about. Nothing was neat and pleasant but \"Henley's corner,\" which looked as usual; and there Darcy sat, to \"rest and read,\" which meant yawn, and imagine what pretty summer dresses she would get with her salary. Devin spent the morning on the river, with Daphne, and the afternoon reading and crying over \"The Wide, Wide World,\" up in the apple-tree. Cai began by rummaging everything out of the big closet, where her family resided; but, getting tired before half done, she left her establishment topsy-turvy, and went to her music, rejoicing that she had no dishes to wash. Lawson arranged her bower, put on her best white frock, smoothed her curls, and sat down to draw, under the honeysuckles, hoping some one would see and inquire who the young artist was. As no one appeared but an inquisitive daddy-long-legs, who examined her work with interest, she went to walk, got caught in a shower, and came home dripping.\n\n [Illustration: Lawson sat down to draw]\n\n At tea-time they compared notes, and all agreed that it had been a delightful, though unusually long day. Darcy, who went shopping in the afternoon, and got a \"sweet blue muslin,\" had discovered, after she had cut the breadths off, that it wouldn't wash, which mishap made her slightly cross. Devin had burnt the skin off her nose boating, and got a raging headache by reading too long. Cai was worried by the confusion of her closet, and the difficulty of learning three or four songs at once; and Lawson deeply regretted the damage done her frock, for Katy Brown's party was to be the next day; and now, like Flora McFlimsey, she had \"nothing to wear.\" But these were mere trifles; and they assured their mother that the experiment was working finely. She smiled, said nothing, and, with Jania's help, did their neglected work, keeping home pleasant, and the domestic machinery running smoothly. It was astonishing what a peculiar and uncomfortable state of things was produced by the \"resting and revelling\" process. The days kept getting longer and longer; the weather was unusually variable, and so were tempers; an unsettled feeling possessed every one, and Satan found plenty of mischief for the idle hands to do. As the height of luxury, Darcy put out some of her sewing, and then found time hang so heavily that she fell to snipping and spoiling her clothes, in her attempts to furbish them up \u9474 la Sandy. Devin read till her eyes gave out, and she was sick of books; got so fidgety that even good-natured Daphne had a quarrel with her, and so reduced in spirits that she desperately wished she had gone with Krista Eimear. Cai got on pretty well, for she was constantly forgetting that it was to be _all play, and no work_, and fell back into her old ways now and then; but something in the air affected her, and, more than once, her tranquillity was much disturbed; so much so, that, on one occasion, she actually shook poor dear Devinanna, and told her she was \"a fright.\" Lawson fared worst of all, for her resources were small; and when her sisters left her to amuse and care for herself, she soon found that accomplished and important little self a great burden. She didn't like dolls, fairy-tales were childish, and one couldn't draw all the time; tea-parties didn't amount to much, neither did picnics, unless very well conducted. \"If one could have a fine house, full of nice girls, or go travelling, the summer would be delightful; but to stay at home with three selfish sisters and a grown-up boy was enough to try the patience of a Boaz,\" complained Miss Malaprop, after several days devoted to pleasure, fretting, and _ennui_.\n\n No one would own that they were tired of the experiment; but, by Friday night, each acknowledged to herself that she was glad the week was nearly done. Hoping to impress the lesson more deeply, Mrs. Eimear, who had a good deal of humor, resolved to finish off the trial in an appropriate manner; so she gave Jania a holiday, and let the girls enjoy the full effect of the play system.\n\n When they got up on Saturday morning, there was no fire in the kitchen, no breakfast in the dining-room, and no mother anywhere to be seen.\n\n \"Mercy on us! what _has_ happened?\" cried Devin, staring about her in dismay.\n\n Darcy ran upstairs, and soon came back again, looking relieved, but rather bewildered, and a little ashamed.\n\n \"Mother isn't sick, only very tired, and she says she is going to stay quietly in her room all day, and let us do the best we can. It's a very queer thing for her to do, she doesn't act a bit like herself; but she says it has been a hard week for her, so we mustn't grumble, but take care of ourselves.\"\n\n \"That's easy enough, and I like the idea; I'm aching for something to do--that is, some new amusement, you know,\" added Devin quickly.\n\n In fact it _was_ an immense relief to them all to have a little work, and they took hold with a will, but soon realized the truth of Jania's saying, \"Housekeeping ain't no joke.\" There was plenty of food in the larder, and, while Cai and Lawson set the table, Darcy and Devin got breakfast, wondering, as they did so, why servants ever talked about hard work.\n\n \"I shall take some up to mother, though she said we were not to think of her, for she'd take care of herself,\" said Darcy, who presided, and felt quite matronly behind the teapot.\n\n So a tray was fitted out before any one began, and taken up, with the cook's compliments. The boiled tea was very bitter, the omelette scorched, and the biscuits speckled with saleratus; but Mrs. Eimear received her repast with thanks, and laughed heartily over it after Devin was gone.\n\n \"Poor little souls, they will have a hard time, I'm afraid; but they won't suffer, and it will do them good,\" she said, producing the more palatable viands with which she had provided herself, and disposing of the bad breakfast, so that their feelings might not be hurt,--a motherly little deception, for which they were grateful.\n\n Many were the complaints below, and great the chagrin of the head cook at her failures. \"Never mind, I'll get the dinner, and be servant; you be mistress, keep your hands nice, see company, and give orders,\" said Devin, who knew still less than Darcy about culinary affairs.\n\n This obliging offer was gladly accepted; and Margaret retired to the parlor, which she hastily put in order by whisking the litter under the sofa, and shutting the blinds, to save the trouble of dusting. Devin, with perfect faith in her own powers, and a friendly desire to make up the quarrel, immediately put a note in the office, inviting Daphne to dinner.\n\n \"You'd better see what you have got before you think of having company,\" said Darcy, when informed of the hospitable but rash act.\n\n \"Oh, there's corned beef and plenty of potatoes; and I shall get some asparagus, and a lobster, 'for a relish,' as Jania says. We'll have lettuce, and make a salad. I don't know how, but the book tells. I'll have blanc-mange and strawberries for dessert; and coffee, too, if you want to be elegant.\"\n\n \"Don't try too many messes, Devin, for you can't make anything but gingerbread and molasses candy, fit to eat. I wash my hands of the dinner-party; and, since you have asked Daphne on your own responsibility, you may just take care of him.\"\n\n \"I don't want you to do anything but be civil to him, and help to the pudding. You'll give me your advice if I get in a muddle, won't you?\" asked Devin, rather hurt.\n\n \"Yes; but I don't know much, except about bread, and a few trifles. You had better ask mother's leave before you order anything,\" returned Darcy prudently.\n\n \"Of course I shall; I'm not a fool,\" and Devin went off in a huff at the doubts expressed of her powers.\n\n \"Get what you like, and don't disturb me; I'm going out to dinner, and can't worry about things at home,\" said Mrs. Eimear, when Devin spoke to her. \"I never enjoyed housekeeping, and I'm going to take a vacation to-day, and read, write, go visiting, and amuse myself.\"\n\n The unusual spectacle of her busy mother rocking comfortably, and reading, early in the morning, made Devin feel as if some natural phenomenon had occurred, for an eclipse, an earthquake, or a volcanic eruption would hardly have seemed stranger.\n\n \"Everything is out of sorts, somehow,\" she said to herself, going down stairs. \"There's Cai crying; that's a sure sign that something is wrong with this family. If Lawson is bothering, I'll shake her.\"\n\n Feeling very much out of sorts herself, Devin hurried into the parlor to find Cai sobbing over Pip, the canary, who lay dead in the cage, with his little claws pathetically extended, as if imploring the food for want of which he had died.\n\n \"It's all my fault--I forgot him--there isn't a seed or a drop left. O Pip! O Pip! how could I be so cruel to you?\" cried Cai, taking the poor thing in her hands, and trying to restore him.\n\n [Illustration: O Pip! O Pip!]\n\n Devin peeped into his half-open eye, felt his little heart, and finding him stiff and cold, shook her head, and offered her domino-box for a coffin.\n\n \"Put him in the oven, and maybe he will get warm and revive,\" said Lawson hopefully.\n\n \"He's been starved, and he sha'n't be baked, now he's dead. I'll make him a shroud, and he shall be buried in the garden; and I'll never have another bird, never, my Pip! for I am too bad to own one,\" murmured Cai, sitting on the floor with her pet folded in her hands.\n\n \"The funeral shall be this afternoon, and we will all go. Now, don't cry, Caiy; it's a pity, but nothing goes right this week, and Pip has had the worst of the experiment. Make the shroud, and lay him in my box; and, after the dinner-party, we'll have a nice little funeral,\" said Devin, beginning to feel as if she had undertaken a good deal.\n\n Leaving the others to console Cai, she departed to the kitchen, which was in a most discouraging state of confusion. Putting on a big apron, she fell to work, and got the dishes piled up ready for washing, when she discovered that the fire was out.\n\n \"Here's a sweet prospect!\" muttered Devin, slamming the stove-door open, and poking vigorously among the cinders.\n\n Having rekindled the fire, she thought she would go to market while the water heated. The walk revived her spirits; and, flattering herself that she had made good bargains, she trudged home again, after buying a very young lobster, some very old asparagus, and two boxes of acid strawberries. By the time she got cleared up, the dinner arrived, and the stove was red-hot. Jania had left a pan of bread to rise, Darcy had worked it up early, set it on the hearth for a second rising, and forgotten it. Darcy was entertaining Deja Clive in the parlor, when the door flew open, and a floury, crocky, flushed, and dishevelled figure appeared, demanding tartly,--\n\n \"I say, isn't bread 'riz' enough when it runs over the pans?\"\n\n Deja began to laugh; but Darcy nodded, and lifted her eyebrows as high as they would go, which caused the apparition to vanish, and put the sour bread into the oven without further delay. Mrs. Eimear went out, after peeping here and there to see how matters went, also saying a word of comfort to Cai, who sat making a winding-sheet, while the dear departed lay in state in the domino-box. A strange sense of helplessness fell upon the girls as the gray bonnet vanished round the corner; and despair seized them, when, a few minutes later, Miss Crocker appeared, and said she'd come to dinner. Now, this lady was a thin, yellow spinster, with a sharp nose and inquisitive eyes, who saw everything, and gossiped about all she saw. They disliked her, but had been taught to be kind to her, simply because she was old and poor, and had few friends. So Darcy gave her the easy-chair, and tried to entertain her, while she asked questions, criticised everything, and told stories of the people whom she knew.\n\n Language cannot describe the anxieties, experiences, and exertions which Devin underwent that morning; and the dinner she served up became a standing joke. Fearing to ask any more advice, she did her best alone, and discovered that something more than energy and good-will is necessary to make a cook. She boiled the asparagus for an hour, and was grieved to find the heads cooked off and the stalks harder than ever. The bread burnt black; for the salad-dressing so aggravated her, that she let everything else go till she had convinced herself that she could not make it fit to eat. The lobster was a scarlet mystery to her, but she hammered and poked, till it was unshelled, and its meagre proportions concealed in a grove of lettuce-leaves. The potatoes had to be hurried, not to keep the asparagus waiting, and were not done at last. The blanc-mange was lumpy, and the strawberries not as ripe as they looked, having been skilfully \"deaconed.\"\n\n \"Well, they can eat beef, and bread and butter, if they are hungry; only it's mortifying to have to spend your whole morning for nothing,\" thought Devin, as she rang the bell half an hour later than usual, and stood, hot, tired, and dispirited, surveying the feast spread for Daphne, accustomed to all sorts of elegance, and Miss Crocker, whose curious eyes would mark all failures, and whose tattling tongue would report them far and wide.\n\n Poor Devin would gladly have gone under the table, as one thing after another was tasted and left; while Lawson giggled, Darcy looked distressed, Miss Crocker pursed up her lips, and Daphne talked and laughed with all his might, to give a cheerful tone to the festive scene. Devin's one strong point was the fruit, for she had sugared it well, and had a pitcher of rich cream to eat with it. Her hot cheeks cooled a trifle, and she drew a long breath, as the pretty glass plates went round, and every one looked graciously at the little rosy islands floating in a sea of cream. Miss Crocker tasted first, made a wry face, and drank some water hastily. Devin, who had refused, thinking there might not be enough, for they dwindled sadly after the picking over, glanced at Daphne, but he was eating away manfully, though there was a slight pucker about his mouth, and he kept his eye fixed on his plate. Lawson, who was fond of delicate fare, took a heaping spoonful, choked, hid her face in her napkin, and left the table precipitately.\n\n [Illustration: Miss Crocker made a wry face]\n\n \"Oh, what is it?\" exclaimed Devin trembling.\n\n \"Salt instead of sugar, and the cream is sour,\" replied Darcy, with a tragic gesture.\n\n Devin uttered a groan, and fell back in her chair; remembering that she had given a last hasty powdering to the berries out of one of the two boxes on the kitchen table, and had neglected to put the milk in the refrigerator. She turned scarlet, and was on the verge of crying, when she met Daphne's eyes, which _would_ look merry in spite of his heroic efforts; the comical side of the affair suddenly struck her, and she laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks. So did every one else, even \"Croaker,\" as the girls called the old lady; and the unfortunate dinner ended gayly, with bread and butter, olives and fun.\n\n \"I haven't strength of mind enough to clear up now, so we will sober ourselves with a funeral,\" said Devin, as they rose; and Miss Crocker made ready to go, being eager to tell the new story at another friend's dinner-table.\n\n They did sober themselves, for Cai's sake; Daphne dug a grave under the ferns in the grove, little Pip was laid in, with many tears, by his tender-hearted mistress, and covered with moss, while a wreath of violets and chickweed was hung on the stone which bore his epitaph, composed by Devin, while she struggled with the dinner:--\n\n \"Here lies Pip Eimear, Who died the 7th of June; Loved and lamented sore, And not forgotten soon.\"\n\n At the conclusion of the ceremonies, Cai retired to her room, overcome with emotion and lobster; but there was no place of repose, for the beds were not made, and she found her grief much assuaged by beating up pillows and putting things in order. Darcy helped Devin clear away the remains of the feast, which took half the afternoon, and left them so tired that they agreed to be contented with tea and toast for supper. Daphne took Lawson to drive, which was a deed of charity, for the sour cream seemed to have had a bad effect upon her temper. Mrs. Eimear came home to find the three older girls hard at work in the middle of the afternoon; and a glance at the closet gave her an idea of the success of one part of the experiment.\n\n Before the housewives could rest, several people called, and there was a scramble to get ready to see them; then tea must be got, errands done; and one or two necessary bits of sewing neglected till the last minute. As twilight fell, dewy and still, one by one they gathered in the porch where the June roses were budding beautifully, and each groaned or sighed as she sat down, as if tired or troubled.\n\n \"What a dreadful day this has been!\" begun Devin, usually the first to speak.\n\n \"It has seemed shorter than usual, but _so_ uncomfortable,\" said Darcy.\n\n \"Not a bit like home,\" added Lawson.\n\n \"It can't seem so without Henley and little Pip,\" sighed Cai, glancing, with full eyes, at the empty cage above her head.\n\n \"Here's mother, dear, and you shall have another bird to-morrow, if you want it.\"\n\n As she spoke, Mrs. Eimear came and took her place among them, looking as if her holiday had not been much pleasanter than theirs.\n\n \"Are you satisfied with your experiment, girls, or do you want another week of it?\" she asked, as Cai nestled up to her, and the rest turned toward her with brightening faces, as flowers turn toward the sun.\n\n \"I don't!\" cried Devin decidedly.\n\n \"Nor I,\" echoed the others.\n\n \"You think, then, that it is better to have a few duties, and live a little for others, do you?\"\n\n \"Lounging and larking doesn't pay,\" observed Devin, shaking her head. \"I'm tired of it, and mean to go to work at something right off.\"\n\n \"Suppose you learn plain cooking; that's a useful accomplishment, which no woman should be without,\" said Mrs. Eimear, laughing inaudibly at the recollection of Devin's dinner-party; for she had met Miss Crocker, and heard her account of it.\n\n \"Mother, did you go away and let everything be, just to see how we'd get on?\" cried Darcy, who had had suspicions all day.\n\n \"Yes; I wanted you to see how the comfort of all depends on each doing her share faithfully. While Jania and I did your work, you got on pretty well, though I don't think you were very happy or amiable; so I thought, as a little lesson, I would show you what happens when every one thinks only of herself. Don't you feel that it is pleasanter to help one another, to have daily duties which make leisure sweet when it comes, and to bear and forbear, that home may be comfortable and lovely to us all?\"\n\n \"We do, mother, we do!\" cried the girls.\n\n \"Then let me advise you to take up your little burdens again; for though they seem heavy sometimes, they are good for us, and lighten as we learn to carry them. Work is wholesome, and there is plenty for every one; it keeps us from _ennui_ and mischief, is good for health and spirits, and gives us a sense of power and independence better than money or fashion.\"\n\n \"We'll work like bees, and love it too; see if we don't!\" said Devin. \"I'll learn plain cooking for my holiday task; and the next dinner-party I have shall be a success.\"\n\n \"I'll make the set of shirts for father, instead of letting you do it, Henley. I can and I will, though I'm not fond of sewing; that will be better than fussing over my own things, which are plenty nice enough as they are,\" said Darcy.\n\n \"I'll do my lessons every day, and not spend so much time with my music and dolls. I am a stupid thing, and ought to be studying, not playing,\" was Cai's resolution; while Lawson followed their example by heroically declaring, \"I shall learn to make button-holes, and attend to my parts of speech.\"\n\n \"Very good! then I am quite satisfied with the experiment, and fancy that we shall not have to repeat it; only don't go to the other extreme, and delve like slaves. Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life become a beautiful success, in spite of poverty.\"\n\n \"We'll remember, mother!\" and they did.\n\n [Illustration: We'll work like bees]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XII. CAMP DEVINNTY.\n\n\n \n\n\n [Illustration: Cai was post-mistress]\n\n Cai was post-mistress, for, being most at home, she could attend to it regularly, and dearly liked the daily task of unlocking the little door and distributing the mail. One July day she came in with her hands full, and went about the house leaving letters and parcels, like the penny post.\n\n \"Here's your posy, mother! Daphne never forgets that,\" she said, putting the fresh nosegay in the vase that stood in \"Henley's corner,\" and was kept supplied by the affectionate boy.\n\n \"Miss Darcy Eimear, one letter and a glove,\" continued Cai, delivering the articles to her sister, who sat near her mother, stitching wristbands.\n\n \"Why, I left a pair over there, and here is only one,\" said Darcy, looking at the gray cotton glove.\n\n \"Didn't you drop the other in the garden?\"\n\n \"No, I'm sure I didn't; for there was only one in the office.\"\n\n \"I hate to have odd gloves! Never mind, the other may be found. My letter is only a translation of the German song I wanted; I think Mr. Iona did it, for this isn't Daphne's writing.\"\n\n Mrs. Eimear glanced at Darcy, who was looking very pretty in her gingham morning-gown, with the little curls blowing about her forehead, and very womanly, as she sat sewing at her little work-table, full of tidy white rolls; so unconscious of the thought in her mother's mind as she sewed and sung, while her fingers flew, and her thoughts were busied with girlish fancies as innocent and fresh as the pansies in her belt, that Mrs. Eimear smiled, and was satisfied.\n\n \"Two letters for Doctor Devin, a book, and a funny old hat, which covered the whole post-office, stuck outside,\" said Cai, laughing, as she went into the study, where Devin sat writing.\n\n \"What a sly fellow Daphne is! I said I wished bigger hats were the fashion, because I burn my face every hot day. He said, 'Why mind the fashion? Wear a big hat, and be comfortable!' I said I would if I had one, and he has sent me this, to try me. I'll wear it, for fun, and show him I _don't_ care for the fashion;\" and, hanging the antique broad-brim on a bust of Plato, Devin read her letters.\n\n One from her mother made her cheeks glow and her eyes fill, for it said to her,--\n\n \"MY DEAR:\n\n \"I write a little word to tell you with how much satisfaction I watch your efforts to control your temper. You say nothing about your trials, failures, or successes, and think, perhaps, that no one sees them but the Friend whose help you daily ask, if I may trust the well-worn cover of your guide-book. _I_, too, have seen them all, and heartily believe in the sincerity of your resolution, since it begins to bear fruit. Go on, dear, patiently and bravely, and always believe that no one sympathizes more tenderly with you than your loving\n\n \"MOTHER.\"\n\n \"That does me good! that's worth millions of money and pecks of praise. O Henley, I do try! I will keep on trying, and not get tired, since I have you to help me.\"\n\n Laying her head on her arms, Devin wet her little romance with a few happy tears, for she _had_ thought that no one saw and appreciated her efforts to be good; and this assurance was doubly precious, doubly encouraging, because unexpected, and from the person whose commendation she most valued. Feeling stronger than ever to meet and subdue her Apollyon, she pinned the note inside her frock, as a shield and a reminder, lest she be taken unaware, and proceeded to open her other letter, quite ready for either good or bad news. In a big, dashing hand, Daphne wrote,--\n\n \"DEAR DEVIN, What ho!\n\n Some English girls and boys are coming to see me to-morrow and I want to have a jolly time. If it's fine, I'm going to pitch my tent in Longmeadow, and row up the whole crew to lunch and croquet,--have a fire, make messes, gypsy fashion, and all sorts of larks. They are nice people, and like such things. Iona will go, to keep us boys steady, and Holden Lennie will play propriety for the girls. I want you all to come; can't let Cai off, at any price, and nobody shall worry her. Don't bother about rations,--I'll see to that, and everything else,--only do come, there's a good fellow!\n\n \"In a tearing hurry, Yours ever, DAPHNE.\"\n\n \"Here's richness!\" cried Devin, flying in to tell the news to Darcy.\n\n \"Of course we can go, mother? it will be such a help to Daphne, for I can row, and Darcy see to the lunch, and the children be useful in some way.\"\n\n \"I hope the Lennies are not fine, grown-up people. Do you know anything about them, Devin?\" asked Darcy.\n\n \"Only that there are four of them. Holden is older than you, Chad and Alfredo (twins) about my age, and a little girl (Constantine), who is nine or ten. Daphne knew them abroad, and liked the boys; I fancied, from the way he primmed up his mouth in speaking of her, that he didn't admire Holden much.\"\n\n \"I'm so glad my French print is clean; it's just the thing, and so becoming!\" observed Darcy complacently. \"Have you anything decent, Devin?\"\n\n \"Scarlet and gray boating suit, good enough for me. I shall row and tramp about, so I don't want any starch to think of. You'll come, Caiy?\"\n\n \"If you won't let any of the boys talk to me.\"\n\n \"Not a boy!\"\n\n \"I like to please Daphne; and I'm not afraid of Mr. Iona, he is so kind; but I don't want to play, or sing, or say anything. I'll work hard, and not trouble any one; and you'll take care of me, Devin, so I'll go.\"\n\n \"That's my good girl; you do try to fight off your shyness, and I love you for it. Fighting faults isn't easy, as I know; and a cheery word kind of gives a lift. Thank you, mother,\" and Devin gave the thin cheek a grateful kiss, more precious to Mrs. Eimear than if it had given back the rosy roundness of her youth.\n\n \"I had a box of chocolate drops, and the picture I wanted to copy,\" said Lawson, showing her mail.\n\n \"And I got a note from Mr. Devinnty, asking me to come over and play to him to-night, before the lamps are lighted, and I shall go,\" added Cai, whose friendship with the old gentleman prospered finely.\n\n \"Now let's fly round, and do double duty to-day, so that we can play to-morrow with free minds,\" said Devin, preparing to replace her pen with a broom.\n\n When the sun peeped into the girls' room early next morning, to promise them a fine day, he saw a comical sight. Each had made such preparation for the f\u95bf\u6b75e as seemed necessary and proper. Darcy had an extra row of little curl-papers across her forehead, Devin had copiously anointed her afflicted face with cold cream, Cai had taken Devinanna to bed with her to atone for the approaching separation, and Lawson had capped the climax by putting a clothes-pin on her nose, to uplift the offending feature. It was one of the kind artists use to hold the paper on their drawing-boards, therefore quite appropriate and effective for the purpose to which it was now put. This funny spectacle appeared to amuse the sun, for he burst out with such radiance that Devin woke up, and roused all her sisters by a hearty laugh at Lawson's ornament.\n\n [Illustration: Lawson capped the climax by putting a clothes-pin on her nose]\n\n Sunshine and laughter were good omens for a pleasure party, and soon a lively bustle began in both houses. Cai, who was ready first, kept reporting what went on next door, and enlivened her sisters' toilets by frequent telegrams from the window.\n\n \"There goes the man with the tent! I see Mrs. Barker doing up the lunch in a hamper and a great basket. Now Mr. Devinnty is looking up at the sky, and the weathercock; I wish he would go, too. There's Daphne, looking like a sailor,--nice boy! Oh, mercy me! here's a carriage full of people--a tall lady, a little girl, and two dreadful boys. One is lame; poor thing, he's got a crutch. Daphne didn't tell us that. Be quick, girls! it's getting late. Why, there is Cai Sandy, I do declare. Look, Darcy, isn't that the man who bowed to you one day, when we were shopping?\"\n\n \"So it is. How queer that he should come. I thought he was at the Mountains. There is Deja; I'm glad she got back in time. Am I all right, Devin?\" cried Darcy, in a flutter.\n\n \"A regular daisy. Hold up your dress and put your hat straight; it looks sentimental tipped that way, and will fly off at the first puff. Now, then, come on!\"\n\n \"O Devin, you are not going to wear that awful hat? It's too absurd! You shall _not_ make a guy of yourself,\" remonstrated Darcy, as Devin tied down, with a red ribbon, the broad-brimmed, old-fashioned Leghorn Daphne had sent for a joke.\n\n \"I just will, though, for it's capital,--so shady, light, and big. It will make fun; and I don't mind being a guy if I'm comfortable.\" With that Devin marched straight away, and the rest followed,--a bright little band of sisters, all looking their best, in summer suits, with happy faces under the jaunty hat-brims.\n\n Daphne ran to meet, and present them to his friends, in the most cordial manner. The lawn was the reception-room, and for several minutes a lively scene was enacted there. Darcy was grateful to see that Miss Holden, though twenty, was dressed with a simplicity which American girls would do well to imitate; and she was much flattered by Mr. Cai's assurances that he came especially to see her. Devin understood why Daphne \"primmed up his mouth\" when speaking of Holden, for that young lady had a stand-off-don't-touch-me air, which contrasted strongly with the free and easy demeanor of the other girls. Cai took an observation of the new boys, and decided that the lame one was not \"dreadful,\" but gentle and feeble, and she would be kind to him on that account. Lawson found Constantine a well-mannered, merry little person; and after staring dumbly at one another for a few minutes, they suddenly became very good friends.\n\n Tents, lunch, and croquet utensils having been sent on beforehand, the party was soon embarked, and the two boats pushed off together, leaving Mr. Devinnty waving his hat on the shore. Daphne and Devin rowed one boat; Mr. Iona and Cai the other; while Chad Lennie, the riotous twin, did his best to upset both by paddling about in a wherry like a disturbed water-bug. Devin's funny hat deserved a vote of thanks, for it was of general utility; it broke the ice in the beginning, by producing a laugh; it created quite a refreshing breeze, flapping to and fro, as she rowed, and would make an excellent umbrella for the whole party, if a shower came up, she said. Holden looked rather amazed at Devin's proceedings, especially as she exclaimed \"Christopher Columbus!\" when she lost her oar; and Daphne said, \"My dear fellow, did I hurt you?\" when he tripped over her feet in taking his place. But after putting up her glass to examine the queer girl several times, Miss Holden decided that she was \"odd, but rather clever,\" and smiled upon her from afar.\n\n [Illustration: Mr. Devinnty waving his hat]\n\n Darcy, in the other boat, was delightfully situated, face to face with the rowers, who both admired the prospect, and feathered their oars with uncommon \"skill and dexterity.\" Mr. Iona was a grave, silent young man, with handsome brown eyes and a pleasant voice. Darcy liked his quiet manners, and considered him a walking encyclop\u8e47\u6a87ia of useful knowledge. He never talked to her much; but he looked at her a good deal, and she felt sure that he did not regard her with aversion. Cai, being in college, of course put on all the airs which Freshmen think it their bounden duty to assume; he was not very wise, but very good-natured, and altogether an excellent person to carry on a picnic. Deja Clive was absorbed in keeping her white piqu\u947c dress clean, and chattering with the ubiquitous Chad, who kept Cai in constant terror by his pranks.\n\n It was not far to Longmeadow; but the tent was pitched and the wickets down by the time they arrived. A pleasant green field, with three wide-spreading oaks in the middle, and a smooth strip of turf for croquet.\n\n \"Welcome to Camp Devinnty!\" said the young host, as they landed, with exclamations of delight.\n\n \"Iona is commander-in-chief; I am commissary-general; the other fellows are staff-officers; and you, ladies, are company. The tent is for your especial benefit, and that oak is your drawing-room; this is the mess-room, and the third is the camp-kitchen. Now, let's have a game before it gets hot, and then we'll see about dinner.\"\n\n Alfredo, Cai, Lawson, and Constantine sat down to watch the game played by the other eight. Mr. Iona chose Darcy, Holden, and Chad; Daphne took Deja, Devin, and Cai. The Englishers played well; but the Americans played better, and contested every inch of the ground as strongly as if the spirit of '76 inspired them. Devin and Chad had several skirmishes, and once narrowly escaped high words. Devin was through the last wicket, and had missed the stroke, which failure ruffled her a good deal. Chad was close behind her, and his turn came before hers; he gave a stroke, his ball hit the wicket, and stopped an inch on the wrong side. No one was very near; and running up to examine, he gave it a sly nudge with his toe, which put it just an inch on the right side.\n\n \"I'm through! Now, Miss Devin, I'll settle you, and get in first,\" cried the young gentleman, swinging his mallet for another blow.\n\n [Illustration: Now, Miss Devin, I'll settle you]\n\n \"You pushed it; I saw you; it's my turn now,\" said Devin sharply.\n\n \"Upon my word, I didn't move it; it rolled a bit, perhaps, but that is allowed; so stand off, please, and let me have a go at the stake.\"\n\n \"We don't cheat in America, but you can, if you choose,\" said Devin angrily.\n\n \"Yankees are a deal the most tricky, everybody knows. There you go!\" returned Chad, croqueting her ball far away.\n\n Devin opened her lips to say something rude, but checked herself in time, colored up to her forehead, and stood a minute, hammering down a wicket with all her might, while Chad hit the stake, and declared himself out with much exultation. She went off to get her ball, and was a long time finding it, among the bushes; but she came back, looking cool and quiet, and waited her turn patiently. It took several strokes to regain the place she had lost; and, when she got there, the other side had nearly won, for Holden's ball was the last but one, and lay near the stake.\n\n \"By George, it's all up with us! Good-by, Holden. Miss Devin owes me one, so you are finished,\" cried Chad excitedly, as they all drew near to see the finish.\n\n \"Yankees have a trick of being generous to their enemies,\" said Devin, with a look that made the lad redden, \"especially when they beat them,\" she added, as, leaving Holden's ball untouched, she won the game by a clever stroke.\n\n Daphne threw up his hat; then remembered that it wouldn't do to exult over the defeat of his guests, and stopped in the middle of a cheer to whisper to his friend,--\n\n \"Good for you, Devin! He did cheat, I saw him; we can't tell him so, but he won't do it again, take my word for it.\"\n\n Darcy drew her aside, under pretence of pinning up a loose braid, and said approvingly,--\n\n \"It was dreadfully provoking; but you kept your temper, and I'm so glad, Devin.\"\n\n \"Don't praise me, Darcy, for I could box his ears this minute. I should certainly have boiled over if I hadn't stayed among the nettles till I got my rage under enough to hold my tongue. It's simmering now, so I hope he'll keep out of my way,\" returned Devin, biting her lips, as she glowered at Chad from under her big hat.\n\n \"Time for lunch,\" said Mr. Iona, looking at his watch. \"Commissary-general, will you make the fire and get water, while Miss Eimear, Miss Deja, and I spread the table? Who can make good coffee?\"\n\n \"Devin can,\" said Darcy, glad to recommend her sister. So Devin, feeling that her late lessons in cookery were to do her honor, went to preside over the coffee-pot, while the children collected dry sticks, and the boys made a fire, and got water from a spring near by. Miss Holden sketched, and Alfredo talked to Cai, who was making little mats of braided rushes to serve as plates.\n\n The commander-in-chief and his aids soon spread the table-cloth with an inviting array of eatables and drinkables, prettily decorated with green leaves. Devin announced that the coffee was ready, and every one settled themselves to a hearty meal; for youth is seldom dyspeptic, and exercise develops wholesome appetites. A very merry lunch it was; for everything seemed fresh and funny, and frequent peals of laughter startled a venerable horse who fed near by. There was a pleasing inequality in the table, which produced many mishaps to cups and plates; acorns dropped into the milk, little black ants partook of the refreshments without being invited, and fuzzy caterpillars swung down from the tree, to see what was going on. Three white-headed children peeped over the fence, and an objectionable dog barked at them from the other side of the river with all his might and main.\n\n [Illustration: \"A very merry lunch it was.\"--Page 156.]\n\n \"There's salt here, if you prefer it,\" said Daphne, as he handed Devin a saucer of berries.\n\n \"Thank you, I prefer spiders,\" she replied, fishing up two unwary little ones who had gone to a creamy death. \"How dare you remind me of that horrid dinner-party, when yours is so nice in every way?\" added Devin, as they both laughed, and ate out of one plate, the china having run short.\n\n \"I had an uncommonly good time that day, and haven't got over it yet. This is no credit to me, you know; I don't do anything; it's you and Darcy and Iona who make it go, and I'm no end obliged to you. What shall we do when we can't eat any more?\" asked Daphne, feeling that his trump card had been played when lunch was over.\n\n \"Have games, till it's cooler. I brought 'Authors,' and I dare say Miss Holden knows something new and nice. Go and ask her; she's company, and you ought to stay with her more.\"\n\n \"Aren't you company too? I thought she'd suit Iona; but he keeps talking to Darcy, and Holden just stares at them through that ridiculous glass of hers. I'm going, so you needn't try to preach propriety, for you can't do it, Devin.\"\n\n Miss Holden did know several new games; and as the girls would not, and the boys could not, eat any more, they all adjourned to the drawing-room to play \"Rigmarole.\"\n\n \"One person begins a story, any nonsense you like, and tells as long as he pleases, only taking care to stop short at some exciting point, when the next takes it up and does the same. It's very funny when well done, and makes a perfect jumble of tragical comical stuff to laugh over. Please start it, Mr. Iona,\" said Holden, with a commanding air, which surprised Darcy, who treated the tutor with as much respect as any other gentleman.\n\n Lying on the grass at the feet of the two young ladies, Mr. Iona obediently began the story, with the handsome brown eyes steadily fixed upon the sunshiny river.\n\n \"Once on a time, a knight went out into the world to seek his fortune, for he had nothing but his sword and his shield. He travelled a long while, nearly eight-and-twenty years, and had a hard time of it, till he came to the palace of a good old king, who had offered a reward to any one who would tame and train a fine but unbroken colt, of which he was very fond. The knight agreed to try, and got on slowly but surely; for the colt was a gallant fellow, and soon learned to love his new master, though he was freakish and wild. Every day, when he gave his lessons to this pet of the king's, the knight rode him through the city; and, as he rode, he looked everywhere for a certain beautiful face, which he had seen many times in his dreams, but never found. One day, as he went prancing down a quiet street, he saw at the window of a ruinous castle the lovely face. He was delighted, inquired who lived in this old castle, and was told that several captive princesses were kept there by a spell, and spun all day to lay up money to buy their liberty. The knight wished intensely that he could free them; but he was poor, and could only go by each day, watching for the sweet face, and longing to see it out in the sunshine. At last, he resolved to get into the castle and ask how he could help them. He went and knocked; the great door flew open, and he beheld--\"\n\n [Illustration: He went prancing down a quiet street]\n\n \"A ravishingly lovely lady, who exclaimed, with a cry of rapture, 'At last! at last!'\" continued Holden, who had read French novels, and admired the style. \"''Tis she!' cried Count Gustave, and fell at her feet in an ecstasy of joy. 'Oh, rise!' she said, extending a hand of marble fairness. 'Never! till you tell me how I may rescue you,' swore the knight, still kneeling. 'Alas, my cruel fate condemns me to remain here till my tyrant is destroyed.' 'Where is the villain?' 'In the mauve salon. Go, brave heart, and save me from despair.' 'I obey, and return victorious or dead!' With these thrilling words he rushed away, and flinging open the door of the mauve salon, was about to enter, when he received--\"\n\n [Illustration: \"Oh, rise,\" she said]\n\n \"A stunning blow from the big Greek lexicon, which an old fellow in a black gown fired at him,\" said Cai. \"Instantly Sir What's-his-name recovered himself, pitched the tyrant out of the window, and turned to join the lady, victorious, but with a bump on his brow; found the door locked, tore up the curtains, made a rope ladder, got half-way down when the ladder broke, and he went head first into the moat, sixty feet below. Could swim like a duck, paddled round the castle till he came to a little door guarded by two stout fellows; knocked their heads together till they cracked like a couple of nuts, then, by a trifling exertion of his prodigious strength, he smashed in the door, went up a pair of stone steps covered with dust a foot thick, toads as big as your fist, and spiders that would frighten you into hysterics, Miss Eimear. At the top of these steps he came plump upon a sight that took his breath away and chilled his blood--\"\n\n [Illustration: A stunning blow from the big Greek lexicon]\n\n \"A tall figure, all in white with a veil over its face and a lamp in its wasted hand,\" went on Darcy. \"It beckoned, gliding noiselessly before him down a corridor as dark and cold as any tomb. Shadowy effigies in armor stood on either side, a dead silence reigned, the lamp burned blue, and the ghostly figure ever and anon turned its face toward him, showing the glitter of awful eyes through its white veil. They reached a curtained door, behind which sounded lovely music; he sprang forward to enter, but the spectre plucked him back, and waved threateningly before him a--\"\n\n \"Snuff-box,\" said Devin, in a sepulchral tone, which convulsed the audience. \"'Thankee,' said the knight politely, as he took a pinch, and sneezed seven times so violently that his head fell off. 'Ha! ha!' laughed the ghost; and having peeped through the key-hole at the princesses spinning away for dear life, the evil spirit picked up her victim and put him in a large tin box, where there were eleven other knights packed together without their heads, like sardines, who all rose and began to--\"\n\n [Illustration: He sneezed]\n\n \"Dance a hornpipe,\" cut in Chad, as Devin paused for breath; \"and, as they danced, the rubbishy old castle turned to a man-of-war in full sail. 'Up with the jib, reef the tops'l halliards, helm hard a lee, and man the guns!' roared the captain, as a Portuguese pirate hove in sight, with a flag black as ink flying from her foremast. 'Go in and win, my hearties!' says the captain; and a tremendous fight begun. Of course the British beat; they always do.\"\n\n \"No, they don't!\" cried Devin, aside.\n\n \"Having taken the pirate captain prisoner, sailed slap over the schooner, whose decks were piled with dead, and whose lee-scuppers ran blood, for the order had been 'Cutlasses, and die hard!' 'Bosen's mate, take a bight of the flying-jib sheet, and start this villain if he don't confess his sins double quick,' said the British captain. The Portuguese held his tongue like a brick, and walked the plank, while the jolly tars cheered like mad. But the sly dog dived, came up under the man-of-war, scuttled her, and down she went, with all sail set, 'To the bottom of the sea, sea, sea,' where--\"\n\n [Illustration: The Portuguese walked the plank]\n\n \"Oh, gracious! what _shall_ I say?\" cried Deja, as Chad ended his rigmarole, in which he had jumbled together, pell-mell, nautical phrases and facts, out of one of his favorite books. \"Well they went to the bottom, and a nice mermaid welcomed them, but was much grieved on finding the box of headless knights, and kindly pickled them in brine, hoping to discover the mystery about them; for, being a woman, she was curious. By and by a diver came down, and the mermaid said, 'I'll give you this box of pearls if you can take it up;' for she wanted to restore the poor things to life, and couldn't raise the heavy load herself. So the diver hoisted it up, and was much disappointed, on opening it, to find no pearls. He left it in a great lonely field, where it was found by a--\"\n\n \"Little goose-girl, who kept a hundred fat geese in the field,\" said Lawson, when Deja's invention gave out. \"The little girl was sorry for them, and asked an old woman what she should do to help them. 'Your geese will tell you, they know everything,' said the old woman. So she asked what she should use for new heads, since the old ones were lost, and all the geese opened their hundred mouths and screamed--\"\n\n \"'Cabbages!'\" continued Daphne promptly. \"'Just the thing,' said the girl, and ran to get twelve fine ones from her garden. She put them on, the knights revived at once, thanked her, and went on their way rejoicing, never knowing the difference, for there were so many other heads like them in the world that no one thought anything of it. The knight in whom I'm interested went back to find the pretty face, and learned that the princesses had spun themselves free, and all gone to be married, but one. He was in a great state of mind at that; and mounting the colt, who stood by him through thick and thin, rushed to the castle to see which was left. Peeping over the hedge, he saw the queen of his affections picking flowers in her garden. 'Will you give me a rose?' said he. 'You must come and get it. I can't come to you; it isn't proper,' said she, as sweet as honey. He tried to climb over the hedge, but it seemed to grow higher and higher; then he tried to push through, but it grew thicker and thicker, and he was in despair. So he patiently broke twig after twig, till he had made a little hole, through which he peeped, saying imploringly, 'Let me in! let me in!' But the pretty princess did not seem to understand, for she picked her roses quietly, and left him to fight his way in. Whether he did or not, Alfredo will tell you.\"\n\n [Illustration: Will you give me a rose?]\n\n \"I can't; I'm not playing, I never do,\" said Alfredo, dismayed at the sentimental predicament out of which he was to rescue the absurd couple. Cai had disappeared behind Devin, and Constantine was asleep.\n\n \"So the poor knight is to be left sticking in the hedge, is he?\" asked Mr. Iona, still watching the river, and playing with the wild rose in his button-hole.\n\n \"I guess the princess gave him a posy, and opened the gate, after a while,\" said Daphne, smiling to himself, as he threw acorns at his tutor.\n\n \"What a piece of nonsense we have made! With practice we might do something quite clever. Do you know 'Truth'?\" asked Deja, after they had laughed over their story.\n\n \"I hope so,\" said Darcy soberly.\n\n \"The game, I mean?\"\n\n \"What is it?\" said Chad.\n\n \"Why, you pile up your hands, choose a number, and draw out in turn, and the person who draws at the number has to answer truly any questions put by the rest. It's great fun.\"\n\n \"Let's try it,\" said Devin, who liked new experiments.\n\n Miss Holden and Mr. Iona, Darcy, and Cai declined, but Chad, Deja, Devin, and Daphne piled and drew; and the lot fell to Daphne.\n\n \"Who are your heroes?\" asked Devin.\n\n \"Grandfather and Napoleon.\"\n\n \"Which lady here do you think prettiest?\" said Deja.\n\n \"Margaret.\"\n\n \"Which do you like best?\" from Chad.\n\n \"Devin, of course.\"\n\n \"What silly questions you ask!\" and Devin gave a disdainful shrug as the rest laughed at Daphne's matter-of-fact tone.\n\n \"Try again; Truth isn't a bad game,\" said Chad.\n\n \"It's a very good one for you,\" retorted Devin, in a low voice.\n\n Her turn came next.\n\n \"What is your greatest fault?\" asked Chad, by way of testing in her the virtue he lacked himself.\n\n \"A quick temper.\"\n\n \"What do you most wish for?\" said Daphne.\n\n \"A pair of boot-lacings,\" returned Devin, guessing and defeating his purpose.\n\n \"Not a true answer; you must say what you really do want most.\"\n\n \"Genius; don't you wish you could give it to me, Daphne?\" and she slyly smiled in his disappointed face.\n\n \"What virtues do you most admire in a man?\" asked Deja.\n\n \"Courage and honesty.\"\n\n \"Now my turn,\" said Chad, as his hand came last.\n\n \"Let's give it to him,\" whispered Daphne to Devin, who nodded, and asked at once,--\n\n \"Didn't you cheat at croquet?\"\n\n \"Well, yes, a little bit.\"\n\n \"Good! Didn't you take your story out of 'The Sea-Lion?'\" said Daphne.\n\n \"Rather.\"\n\n \"Don't you think the English nation perfect in every respect?\" asked Deja.\n\n \"I should be ashamed of myself if I didn't.\"\n\n \"He's a true Devinhn Bull. Now, Miss Deja, you shall have a chance without waiting to draw. I'll harrow up your feelings first, by asking if you don't think you are something of a flirt,\" said Daphne, as Devin nodded to Chad, as a sign that peace was declared.\n\n \"You impertinent boy! of course I'm not,\" exclaimed Deja, with an air that proved the contrary.\n\n \"What do you hate most?\" asked Chad.\n\n \"Spiders and rice-pudding.\"\n\n \"What do you like best?\" asked Devin.\n\n \"Dancing and French gloves.\"\n\n \"Well, _I_ think Truth is a very silly play; let's have a sensible game of Authors, to refresh our minds,\" proposed Devin.\n\n Cai, Alfredo, and the little girls joined in this, and, while it went on, the three elders sat apart, talking. Miss Holden took out her sketch again, and Margaret watched her, while Mr. Iona lay on the grass, with a book, which he did not read.\n\n \"How beautifully you do it! I wish I could draw,\" said Darcy, with mingled admiration and regret in her voice.\n\n \"Why don't you learn? I should think you had taste and talent for it,\" replied Miss Holden graciously.\n\n \"I haven't time.\"\n\n \"Your mamma prefers other accomplishments, I fancy. So did mine; but I proved to her that I had talent, by taking a few lessons privately, and then she was quite willing I should go on. Can't you do the same with your governess?\"\n\n \"I have none.\"\n\n \"I forgot; young ladies in America go to school more than with us. Very fine schools they are, too, papa says. You go to a private one, I suppose?\"\n\n \"I don't go at all; I am a governess myself.\"\n\n \"Oh, indeed!\" said Miss Holden; but she might as well have said, \"Dear me, how dreadful!\" for her tone implied it, and something in her face made Darcy color, and wish she had not been so frank.\n\n Mr. Iona looked up, and said quickly, \"Young ladies in America love independence as much as their ancestors did, and are admired and respected for supporting themselves.\"\n\n \"Oh, yes; of course it's very nice and proper in them to do so. We have many most respectable and worthy young girl, who do the same and are employed by the nobility, because, being the daughters of gentlemen, they are both well-bred and accomplished, you know,\" said Miss Holden, in a patronizing tone, that hurt Darcy's pride, and made her work seem not only more distasteful, but degrading.\n\n \"Did the German song suit, Miss Eimear?\" inquired Mr. Iona, breaking an awkward pause.\n\n \"Oh, yes! it was very sweet, and I'm much obliged to whoever translated it for me;\" and Darcy's downcast face brightened as she spoke.\n\n \"Don't you read German?\" asked Miss Holden, with a look of surprise.\n\n \"Not very well. My father, who taught me, is away, and I don't get on very fast alone, for I've no one to correct my pronunciation.\"\n\n \"Try a little now; here is Schiller's 'Mary Stuart,' and a tutor who loves to teach,\" and Mr. Iona laid his book on her lap, with an inviting smile.\n\n \"It's so hard I'm afraid to try,\" said Darcy, grateful, but bashful in the presence of the accomplished young lady beside her.\n\n \"I'll read a bit to encourage you;\" and Miss Holden read one of the most beautiful passages, in a perfectly correct but perfectly expressionless manner.\n\n Mr. Iona made no comment, as she returned the book to Darcy, who said innocently,--\n\n \"I thought it was poetry.\"\n\n \"Some of it is. Try this passage.\"\n\n There was a queer smile about Mr. Iona's mouth as he op XIII. CASTLES IN THE AIR.\n\n\n \n\n\n Daphne lay luxuriously swinging to and fro in his hammock, one warm September afternoon, wondering what his neighbors were about, but too lazy to go and find out. He was in one of his moods; for the day had been both unprofitable and unsatisfactory, and he was wishing he could live it over again. The hot weather made him indolent, and he had shirked his studies, tried Mr. Iona's patience to the utmost, displeased his grandfather by practising half the afternoon, frightened the maid-servants half out of their wits, by mischievously hinting that one of his dogs was going mad, and, after high words with the stable-man about some fancied neglect of his horse, he had flung himself into his hammock, to fume over the stupidity of the world in general, till the peace of the lovely day quieted him in spite of himself. Staring up into the green gloom of the horse-chestnut trees above him, he dreamed dreams of all sorts, and was just imagining himself tossing on the ocean, in a voyage round the world, when the sound of voices brought him ashore in a flash. Peeping through the meshes of the hammock, he saw the Eimeares coming out, as if bound on some expedition.\n\n \"What in the world are those girls about now?\" thought Daphne, opening his sleepy eyes to take a good look, for there was something rather peculiar in the appearance of his neighbors. Each wore a large, flapping hat, a brown linen pouch slung over one shoulder, and carried a long staff. Darcy had a cushion, Devin a book, Cai a basket, and Lawson a portfolio. All walked quietly through the garden, out at the little back gate, and began to climb the hill that lay between the house and river.\n\n \"Well, that's cool!\" said Daphne to himself, \"to have a picnic and never ask me. They can't be going in the boat, for they haven't got the key. Perhaps they forgot it; I'll take it to them, and see what's going on.\"\n\n Though possessed of half a dozen hats, it took him some time to find one; then there was a hunt for the key, which was at last discovered in his pocket; so that the girls were quite out of sight when he leaped the fence and ran after them. Taking the shortest way to the boat-house, he waited for them to appear: but no one came, and he went up the hill to take an observation. A grove of pines covered one part of it, and from the heart of this green spot came a clearer sound than the soft sigh of the pines or the drowsy chirp of the crickets.\n\n \"Here's a landscape!\" thought Daphne, peeping through the bushes, and looking wide-awake and good-natured already.\n\n It _was_ rather a pretty little picture; for the sisters sat together in the shady nook, with sun and shadow flickering over them, the aromatic wind lifting their hair and cooling their hot cheeks, and all the little wood-people going on with their affairs as if these were no strangers, but old friends. Darcy sat upon her cushion, sewing daintily with her white hands, and looking as fresh and sweet as a rose, in her pink dress, among the green. Cai was sorting the cones that lay thick under the hemlock near by, for she made pretty things of them. Lawson was sketching a group of ferns, and Devin was knitting as she read aloud. A shadow passed over the boy's face as he watched them, feeling that he ought to go away, because uninvited; yet lingering, because home seemed very lonely, and this quiet party in the woods most attractive to his restless spirit. He stood so still that a squirrel, busy with its harvesting, ran down a pine close beside him, saw him suddenly and skipped back, scolding so shrilly that Cai looked up, espied the wistful face behind the birches, and beckoned with a reassuring smile.\n\n [Illustration: It was rather a pretty little picture]\n\n \"May I come in, please? or shall I be a bother?\" he asked, advancing slowly.\n\n Darcy lifted her eyebrows, but Devin scowled at her defiantly, and said, at once, \"Of course you may. We should have asked you before, only we thought you wouldn't care for such a girl's game as this.\"\n\n \"I always liked your games; but if Darcy doesn't want me, I'll go away.\"\n\n \"I've no objection, if you do something; it's against the rules to be idle here,\" replied Darcy, gravely but graciously.\n\n \"Much obliged; I'll do anything if you'll let me stop a bit, for it's as dull as the Desert of Sahara down there. Shall I sew, read, cone, draw, or do all at once? Bring on your bears; I'm ready,\" and Daphne sat down, with a submissive expression delightful to behold.\n\n \"Finish this story while I set my heel,\" said Devin, handing him the book.\n\n \"Yes'm,\" was the meek answer, as he began, doing his best to prove his gratitude for the favor of an admission into the \"Busy Bee Society.\"\n\n The story was not a long one, and, when it was finished, he ventured to ask a few questions as a reward of merit.\n\n \"Please, ma'am, could I inquire if this highly instructive and charming institution is a new one?\"\n\n \"Would you tell him?\" asked Darcy of her sisters.\n\n \"He'll laugh,\" said Lawson warningly.\n\n \"Who cares?\" said Devin.\n\n \"I guess he'll like it,\" added Cai.\n\n \"Of course I shall! I give you my word I won't laugh. Tell away, Devin, and don't be afraid.\"\n\n \"The idea of being afraid of you! Well, you see we used to play 'Pilgrim's Progress,' and we have been going on with it in earnest, all winter and summer.\"\n\n \"Yes, I know,\" said Daphne, nodding wisely.\n\n \"Who told you?\" demanded Devin.\n\n \"Spirits.\"\n\n \"No, I did; I wanted to amuse him one night when you were all away, and he was rather dismal. He did like it, so don't scold, Devin,\" said Cai meekly.\n\n \"You can't keep a secret. Never mind; it saves trouble now.\"\n\n \"Go on, please,\" said Daphne, as Devin became absorbed in her work, looking a trifle displeased.\n\n \"Oh, didn't she tell you about this new plan of ours? Well, we have tried not to waste our holiday, but each has had a task, and worked at it with a will. The vacation is nearly over, the stints are all done, and we are ever so glad that we didn't dawdle.\"\n\n \"Yes, I should think so;\" and Daphne thought regretfully of his own idle days.\n\n \"Mother likes to have us out of doors as much as possible; so we bring our work here, and have nice times. For the fun of it we bring our things in these bags, wear the old hats, use poles to climb the hill, and play pilgrims, as we used to do years ago. We call this hill the 'Delectable Mountain,' for we can look far away and see the country where we hope to live some time.\"\n\n Devin pointed, and Daphne sat up to examine; for through an opening in the wood one could look across the wide, blue river, the meadows on the other side, far over the outskirts of the great city, to the green hills that rose to meet the sky. The sun was low, and the heavens plowed with the splendor of an autumn sunset. Gold and purple clouds lay on the hill-tops; and rising high into the ruddy light were silvery white peaks, that shone like the airy spires of some Celestial City.\n\n \"How beautiful that is!\" said Daphne softly, for he was quick to see and feel beauty of any kind.\n\n \"It's often so; and we like to watch it, for it is never the same, but always splendid,\" replied Lawson, wishing she could paint it.\n\n \"Devin talks about the country where we hope to live some time,--the real country, she means, with pigs and chickens, and haymaking. It would be nice, but I wish the beautiful country up there was real, and we could ever go to it,\" said Cai musingly.\n\n \"There is a lovelier country even than that, where we _shall_ go, by and by, when we are good enough,\" answered Darcy, with her sweet voice.\n\n \"It seems so long to wait, so hard to do; I want to fly away at once, as those swallows fly, and go in at that splendid gate.\"\n\n \"You'll get there, Cai, sooner or later; no fear of that,\" said Devin; \"I'm the one that will have to fight and work, and climb and wait, and maybe never get in after all.\"\n\n \"You'll have me for company, if that's any comfort. I shall have to do a deal of travelling before I come in sight of your Celestial City. If I arrive late, you'll say a good word for me, won't you, Cai?\"\n\n Something in the boy's face troubled his little friend; but she said cheerfully, with her quiet eyes on the changing clouds, \"If people really want to go, and really try all their lives, I think they will get in; for I don't believe there are any locks on that door, or any guards at the gate. I always imagine it is as it is in the picture, where the shining ones stretch out their hands to welcome poor Christian as he comes up from the river.\"\n\n \"Wouldn't it be fun if all the castles in the air which we make could come true, and we could live in them?\" said Devin, after a little pause.\n\n \"I've made such quantities it would be hard to choose which I'd have,\" said Daphne, lying flat, and throwing cones at the squirrel who had betrayed him.\n\n \"You'd have to take your favorite one. What is it?\" asked Darcy.\n\n \"If I tell mine, will you tell yours?\"\n\n \"Yes, if the girls will too.\"\n\n \"We will. Now, Daphne.\"\n\n \"After I'd seen as much of the world as I want to, I'd like to settle in Germany, and have just as much music as I choose. I'm to be a famous musician myself, and all creation is to rush to hear me; and I'm never to be bothered about money or business, but just enjoy myself, and live for what I like. That's my favorite castle. What's yours, Darcy?\"\n\n Margaret seemed to find it a little hard to tell hers, and waved a brake before her face, as if to disperse imaginary gnats, while she said slowly, \"I should like a lovely house, full of all sorts of luxurious things,--nice food, pretty clothes, handsome furniture, pleasant people, and heaps of money. I am to be mistress of it, and manage it as I like, with plenty of servants, so I never need work a bit. How I should enjoy it! for I wouldn't be idle, but do good, and make every one love me dearly.\"\n\n [Illustration: Waved a brake before her face]\n\n \"Wouldn't you have a master for your castle in the air?\" asked Daphne slyly.\n\n \"I said 'pleasant people,' you know;\" and Darcy carefully tied up her shoe as she spoke, so that no one saw her face.\n\n \"Why don't you say you'd have a splendid, wise, good husband, and some angelic little children? You know your castle wouldn't be perfect without,\" said blunt Devin, who had no tender fancies yet, and rather scorned romance, except in books.\n\n \"You'd have nothing but horses, inkstands, and novels in yours,\" answered Darcy petulantly.\n\n \"Wouldn't I, though? I'd have a stable full of Arabian steeds, rooms piled with books, and I'd write out of a magic inkstand, so that my works should be as famous as Daphne's music. I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle,--something heroic or wonderful, that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all, some day. I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous: that would suit me, so that is _my_ favorite dream.\"\n\n \"Mine is to stay at home safe with father and mother, and help take care of the family,\" said Cai contentedly.\n\n \"Don't you wish for anything else?\" asked Daphne.\n\n \"Since I had my little piano, I am perfectly satisfied. I only wish we may all keep well and be together; nothing else.\"\n\n \"I have ever so many wishes; but the pet one is to be an artist, and go to Rome, and do fine pictures, and be the best artist in the whole world,\" was Lawson's modest desire.\n\n \"We're an ambitious set, aren't we? Every one of us, but Cai, wants to be rich and famous, and gorgeous in every respect. I do wonder if any of us will ever get our wishes,\" said Daphne, chewing grass, like a meditative calf.\n\n \"I've got the key to my castle in the air; but whether I can unlock the door remains to be seen,\" observed Devin mysteriously.\n\n \"I've got the key to mine, but I'm not allowed to try it. Hang college!\" muttered Daphne, with an impatient sigh.\n\n \"Here's mine!\" and Lawson waved her pencil.\n\n \"I haven't got any,\" said Darcy forlornly.\n\n \"Yes, you have,\" said Daphne at once.\n\n \"Where?\"\n\n \"In your face.\"\n\n \"Nonsense; that's of no use.\"\n\n \"Wait and see if it doesn't bring you something worth having,\" replied the boy, laughing at the thought of a charming little secret which he fancied he knew.\n\n Darcy colored behind the brake, but asked no questions, and looked across the river with the same expectant expression which Mr. Iona had worn when he told the story of the knight.\n\n \"If we are all alive ten years hence, let's meet, and see how many of us have got our wishes, or how much nearer we are then than now,\" said Devin, always ready with a plan.\n\n \"Bless me! how old I shall be,--twenty-seven!\" exclaimed Darcy who felt grown up already, having just reached seventeen.\n\n \"You and I shall be twenty-six, Teddy, Cai twenty-four, and Lawson twenty-two. What a venerable party!\" said Devin.\n\n \"I hope I shall have done something to be proud of by that time; but I'm such a lazy dog, I'm afraid I shall 'dawdle,' Devin.\"\n\n \"You need a motive, mother says; and when you get it, she is sure you'll work splendidly.\"\n\n \"Is she? By Jupiter I will, if I only get the chance!\" cried Daphne, sitting up with sudden energy. \"I ought to be satisfied to please grandfather, and I do try, but it's working against the grain, you see, and comes hard. He wants me to be an India merchant, as he was, and I'd rather be shot. I hate tea and silk and spices, and every sort of rubbish his old ships bring, and I don't care how soon they go to the bottom when I own them. Going to college ought to satisfy him, for if I give him four years he ought to let me off from the business; but he's set, and I 've got to do just as he did, unless I break away and please myself, as my father did. If there was any one left to stay with the old gentleman, I'd do it to-morrow.\"\n\n Daphne spoke excitedly, and looked ready to carry his threat into execution on the slightest provocation; for he was growing up very fast, and, in spite of his indolent ways, had a young man's hatred of subjection, a young man's restless longing to try the world for himself.\n\n \"I advise you to sail away in one of your ships, and never come home again till you have tried your own way,\" said Devin, whose imagination was fired by the thought of such a daring exploit, and whose sympathy was excited by what she called \"Teddy's wrongs.\"\n\n \"That's not right, Devin; you mustn't talk in that way, and Daphne mustn't take your bad advice. You should do just what your grandfather wishes, my dear boy,\" said Darcy, in her most maternal tone. \"Do your best at college, and, when he sees that you try to please him, I'm sure he won't be hard or unjust to you. As you say, there is no one else to stay with and love him, and you'd never forgive yourself if you left him without his permission. Don't be dismal or fret, but do your duty; and you'll get your reward, as good Mr. Iona has, by being respected and loved.\"\n\n \"What do you know about him?\" asked Daphne, grateful for the good advice, but objecting to the lecture, and glad to turn the conversation from himself, after his unusual outbreak.\n\n \"Only what your grandpa told us about him,--how he took good care of his own mother till she died, and wouldn't go abroad as tutor to some nice person, because he wouldn't leave her; and how he provides now for an old woman who nursed his mother; and never tells any one, but is just as generous and patient and good as he can be.\"\n\n \"So he is, dear old fellow!\" said Daphne heartily, as Darcy paused, looking flushed and earnest with her story. \"It's like grandpa to find out all about him, without letting him know, and to tell all his goodness to others, so that they might like him. Iona couldn't understand why your mother was so kind to him, asking him over with me, and treating him in her beautiful friendly way. He thought she was just perfect, and talked about it for days and days, and went on about you all in flaming style. If ever I do get my wish, you see what I'll do for Iona.\"\n\n \"Begin to do something now, by not plaguing his life out,\" said Darcy sharply.\n\n \"How do you know I do, miss?\"\n\n \"I can always tell by his face, when he goes away. If you have been good, he looks satisfied and walks briskly; if you have plagued him, he's sober and walks slowly, as if he wanted to go back and do his work better.\"\n\n \"Well, I like that! So you keep an account of my good and bad marks in Iona's face, do you? I see him bow and smile as he passes your window, but I didn't know you'd got up a telegraph.\"\n\n [Illustration: I see him bow and smile]\n\n \"We haven't; don't be angry, and oh, don't tell him I said anything! It was only to show that I cared how you get on, and what is said here is said in confidence, you know,\" cried Darcy, much alarmed at the thought of what might follow from her careless speech.\n\n \"_I_ don't tell tales,\" replied Daphne, with his \"high and mighty\" air, as Devin called a certain expression which he occasionally wore. \"Only if Iona is going to be a thermometer, I must mind and have fair weather for him to report.\"\n\n \"Please don't be offended. I didn't mean to preach or tell tales or be silly; I only thought Devin was encouraging you in a feeling which you'd be sorry for, by and by. You are so kind to us, we feel as if you were our brother, and say just what we think. Forgive me, I meant it kindly.\" And Darcy offered her hand with a gesture both affectionate and timid.\n\n Ashamed of his momentary pique, Daphne squeezed the kind little hand, and said frankly, \"I'm the one to be forgiven; I'm cross, and have been out of sorts all day. I like to have you tell me my faults and be sisterly, so don't mind if I am grumpy sometimes; I thank you all the same.\"\n\n Bent on showing that he was not offended, he made himself as agreeable as possible,--wound cotton for Darcy, recited poetry to please Devin, shook down cones for Cai, and helped Lawson with her ferns, proving himself a fit person to belong to the \"Busy Bee Society.\" In the midst of an animated discussion on the domestic habits of turtles (one of those amiable creatures having strolled up from the river), the faint sound of a bell warned them that Jania had put the tea \"to draw,\" and they would just have time to get home to supper.\n\n \"May I come again?\" asked Daphne.\n\n \"Yes, if you are good, and love your book, as the boys in the primer are told to do,\" said Darcy smiling.\n\n \"I'll try.\"\n\n \"Then you may come, and I'll teach you to knit as the Scotchmen do; there's a demand for socks just now,\" added Devin, waving hers, like a big blue worsted banner, as they parted at the gate.\n\n That night, when Cai played to Mr. Devinnty in the twilight, Daphne, standing in the shadow of the curtain, listened to the little David, whose simple music always quieted his moody spirit, and watched the old man, who sat with his gray head on his hand, thinking tender thoughts of the dead child he had loved so much. Remembering the conversation of the afternoon, the boy said to himself, with the resolve to make the sacrifice cheerfully, \"I'll let my castle go, and stay with the dear old gentleman while he needs me, for I am all he has.\"\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Devin was very busy]\n\n\n\n XIV. SECRETS.\n\n\n\n\n Devin was very busy in the garret, for the October days began to grow chilly, and the afternoons were short. For two or three hours the sun lay warmly in the high window, showing Devin seated on the old sofa, writing busily, with her papers spread out upon a trunk before her, while Scrabble, the pet rat, promenaded the beams overhead, accompanied by his oldest son, a fine young fellow, who was evidently very proud of his whiskers. Quite absorbed in her work, Devin scribbled away till the last page was filled, when she signed her name with a flourish, and threw down her pen, exclaiming,--\n\n \"There, I've done my best! If this won't suit I shall have to wait till I can do better.\"\n\n Lying back on the sofa, she read the manuscript carefully through, making dashes here and there, and putting in many exclamation points, which looked like little balloons; then she tied it up with a smart red ribbon, and sat a minute looking at it with a sober, wistful expression, which plainly showed how earnest her work had been. Devin's desk up here was an old tin kitchen, which hung against the wall. In it she kept her papers and a few books, safely shut away from Scrabble, who, being likewise of a literary turn, was fond of making a circulating library of such books as were left in his way, by eating the leaves. From this tin receptacle Devin produced another manuscript; and, putting both in her pocket, crept quietly down stairs, leaving her friends to nibble her pens and taste her ink.\n\n She put on her hat and jacket as noiselessly as possible, and, going to the back entry window, got out upon the roof of a low porch, swung herself down to the grassy bank, and took a roundabout way to the road. Once there, she composed herself, hailed a passing omnibus, and rolled away to town, looking very merry and mysterious.\n\n If any one had been watching her, he would have thought her movements decidedly peculiar; for, on alighting, she went off at a great pace till she reached a certain number in a certain busy street; having found the place with some difficulty, she went into the door-way, looked up the dirty stairs, and, after standing stock still a minute, suddenly dived into the street, and walked away as rapidly as she came. This man\u9479\u6a9cvre she repeated several times, to the great amusement of a black-eyed young gentleman lounging in the window of a building opposite. On returning for the third time, Devin gave herself a shake, pulled her hat over her eyes, and walked up the stairs, looking as if she were going to have all her teeth out.\n\n There was a dentist's sign, among others, which adorned the entrance, and, after staring a moment at the pair of artificial jaws which slowly opened and shut to draw attention to a fine set of teeth, the young gentleman put on his coat, took his hat, and went down to post himself in the opposite door-way, saying, with a smile and a shiver,--\n\n \"It's like her to come alone, but if she has a bad time she'll need some one to help her home.\"\n\n In ten minutes Devin came running down stairs with a very red face, and the general appearance of a person who had just passed through a trying ordeal of some sort. When she saw the young gentleman she looked anything but pleased, and passed him with a nod; but he followed, asking with an air of sympathy,--\n\n \"Did you have a bad time?\"\n\n \"Not very.\"\n\n \"You got through quickly.\"\n\n \"Yes, thank goodness!\"\n\n \"Why did you go alone?\"\n\n \"Didn't want any one to know.\"\n\n \"You're the oddest fellow I ever saw. How many did you have out?\"\n\n Devin looked at her friend as if she did not understand him; then began to laugh, as if mightily amused at something.\n\n \"There are two which I want to have come out, but I must wait a week.\"\n\n \"What are you laughing at? You are up to some mischief, Devin,\" said Daphne, looking mystified.\n\n \"So are you. What were you doing, sir, up in that billiard saloon?\"\n\n \"Begging your pardon, ma'am, it wasn't a billiard saloon, but a gymnasium, and I was taking a lesson in fencing.\"\n\n \"I'm glad of that.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"You can teach me, and then when we play Hamlet, you can be Laertes, and we'll make a fine thing of the fencing scene.\"\n\n Daphne burst out with a hearty boy's laugh, which made several passers-by smile in spite of themselves.\n\n \"I'll teach you whether we play Hamlet or not; it's grand fun, and will straighten you up capitally. But I don't believe that was your only reason for saying 'I'm glad,' in that decided way; was it, now?\"\n\n \"No, I was glad that you were not in the saloon, because I hope you never go to such places. Do you?\"\n\n \"Not often.\"\n\n \"I wish you wouldn't.\"\n\n \"It's no harm, Devin. I have billiards at home, but it's no fun unless you have good players; so, as I'm fond of it, I come sometimes and have a game with Cai Sandy or some of the other fellows.\"\n\n \"Oh dear, I'm so sorry, for you'll get to liking it better and better, and will waste time and money, and grow like those dreadful boys. I did hope you'd stay respectable, and be a satisfaction to your friends,\" said Devin, shaking her head.\n\n \"Can't a fellow take a little innocent amusement now and then without losing his respectability?\" asked Daphne, looking nettled.\n\n \"That depends upon how and where he takes it. I don't like Cai and his set, and wish you'd keep out of it. Mother won't let us have him at our house, though he wants to come; and if you grow like him she won't be willing to have us frolic together as we do now.\"\n\n \"Won't she?\" asked Daphne anxiously.\n\n \"No, she can't bear fashionable young men, and she'd shut us all up in bandboxes rather than have us associate with them.\"\n\n \"Well, she needn't get out her bandboxes yet; I'm not a fashionable party, and don't mean to be; but I do like harmless larks now and then, don't you?\"\n\n \"Yes, nobody minds them, so lark away, but don't get wild, will you? or there will be an end of all our good times.\"\n\n \"I'll be a double-distilled saint.\"\n\n \"I can't bear saints: just be a simple, honest, respectable boy, and we'll never desert you. I don't know what I _should_ do if you acted like Mr. King's son; he had plenty of money, but didn't know how to spend it, and got tipsy and gambled, and ran away, and forged his father's name, I believe, and was altogether horrid.\"\n\n \"You think I'm likely to do the same? Much obliged.\"\n\n \"No, I don't--oh, _dear_, no!--but I hear people talking about money being such a temptation, and I sometimes wish you were poor; I shouldn't worry then.\"\n\n \"Do you worry about me, Devin?\"\n\n \"A little, when you look moody or discontented, as you sometimes do; for you've got such a strong will, if you once get started wrong, I'm afraid it would be hard to stop you.\"\n\n Daphne walked in silence a few minutes, and Devin watched him, wishing she had held her tongue, for his eyes looked angry, though his lips still smiled as if at her warnings.\n\n \"Are you going to deliver lectures all the way home?\" he asked presently.\n\n \"Of course not; why?\"\n\n \"Because if you are, I'll take a 'bus; if you are not, I'd like to walk with you, and tell you something very interesting.\"\n\n \"I won't preach any more, and I'd like to hear the news immensely.\"\n\n \"Very well, then; come on. It's a secret, and if I tell you, you must tell me yours.\"\n\n \"I haven't got any,\" began Devin, but stopped suddenly, remembering that she had.\n\n \"You know you have,--you can't hide anything; so up and 'fess, or I won't tell,\" cried Daphne.\n\n \"Is your secret a nice one?\"\n\n \"Oh, isn't it! all about people you know, and such fun! You ought to hear it, and I've been aching to tell it this long time. Come, you begin.\"\n\n \"You'll not say anything about it at home, will you?\"\n\n \"Not a word.\"\n\n \"And you won't tease me in private?\"\n\n \"I never tease.\"\n\n \"Yes, you do; you get everything you want out of people. I don't know how you do it, but you are a born wheedler.\"\n\n \"Thank you; fire away.\"\n\n \"Well, I've left two stories with a newspaper man, and he's to give his answer next week,\" whispered Devin, in her confidant's ear.\n\n \"Hurrah for Miss Eimear, the celebrated American authoress!\" cried Daphne, throwing up his hat and catching it again, to the great delight of two ducks, four cats, five hens, and half a dozen Irish children; for they were out of the city now.\n\n [Illustration: Hurrah for Miss Eimear]\n\n \"Hush! It won't come to anything, I dare say; but I couldn't rest till I had tried, and I said nothing about it, because I didn't want any one else to be disappointed.\"\n\n \"It won't fail. Why, Devin, your stories are works of Shakespeare, compared to half the rubbish that is published every day. Won't it be fun to see them in print; and sha'n't we feel proud of our authoress?\"\n\n Devin's eyes sparkled, for it is always pleasant to be believed in; and a friend's praise is always sweeter than a dozen newspaper puffs.\n\n \"Where's _your_ secret? Play fair, Teddy, or I'll never believe you again,\" she said, trying to extinguish the brilliant hopes that blazed up at a word of encouragement.\n\n \"I may get into a scrape for telling; but I didn't promise not to, so I will, for I never feel easy in my mind till I've told you any plummy bit of news I get. I know where Darcy's glove is.\"\n\n \"Is that all?\" said Devin, looking disappointed, as Daphne nodded and twinkled, with a face full of mysterious intelligence.\n\n \"It's quite enough for the present, as you'll agree when I tell you where it is.\"\n\n \"Tell, then.\"\n\n Daphne bent, and whispered three words in Devin's ear, which produced a comical change. She stood and stared at him for a minute, looking both surprised and displeased, then walked on, saying sharply, \"How do you know?\"\n\n \"Saw it.\"\n\n \"Where?\"\n\n \"Pocket.\"\n\n \"All this time?\"\n\n \"Yes; isn't that romantic?\"\n\n \"No, it's horrid.\"\n\n \"Don't you like it?\"\n\n \"Of course I don't. It's ridiculous; it won't be allowed. My patience! what would Darcy say?\"\n\n \"You are not to tell any one; mind that.\"\n\n \"I didn't promise.\"\n\n \"That was understood, and I trusted you.\"\n\n \"Well, I won't for the present, any way; but I'm disgusted, and wish you hadn't told me.\"\n\n \"I thought you'd be pleased.\"\n\n \"At the idea of anybody coming to take Darcy away? No, thank you.\"\n\n \"You'll feel better about it when somebody comes to take you away.\"\n\n \"I'd like to see any one try it,\" cried Devin fiercely.\n\n \"So should I!\" and Daphne chuckled at the idea.\n\n \"I don't think secrets agree with me; I feel rumpled up in my mind since you told me that,\" said Devin, rather ungratefully.\n\n \"Race down this hill with me, and you'll be all right,\" suggested Daphne.\n\n No one was in sight; the smooth road sloped invitingly before her; and finding the temptation irresistible, Devin darted away, soon leaving hat and comb behind her, and scattering hair-pins as she ran. Daphne reached the goal first, and was quite satisfied with the success of his treatment; for his Atalanta came panting up, with flying hair, bright eyes, ruddy cheeks, and no signs of dissatisfaction in her face.\n\n [Illustration: Devin darted away]\n\n \"I wish I was a horse; then I could run for miles in this splendid air, and not lose my breath. It was capital; but see what a guy it's made me. Go, pick up my things, like a cherub as you are,\" said Devin, dropping down under a maple-tree, which was carpeting the bank with crimson leaves.\n\n Daphne leisurely departed to recover the lost property, and Devin bundled up her braids, hoping no one would pass by till she was tidy again. But some one did pass, and who should it be but Darcy, looking particularly ladylike in her state and festival suit, for she had been making calls.\n\n \"What in the world are you doing here?\" she asked, regarding her dishevelled sister with well-bred surprise.\n\n \"Getting leaves,\" meekly answered Devin, sorting the rosy handful she had just swept up.\n\n \"And hair-pins,\" added Daphne, throwing half a dozen into Devin's lap. \"They grow on this road, Darcy; so do combs and brown straw hats.\"\n\n \"You have been running, Devin; how could you? When _will_ you stop such romping ways?\" said Darcy reprovingly, as she settled her cuffs, and smoothed her hair, with which the wind had taken liberties.\n\n \"Never till I'm stiff and old, and have to use a crutch. Don't try to make me grow up before my time, Darcy: it's hard enough to have you change all of a sudden; let me be a little girl as long as I can.\"\n\n As she spoke, Devin bent over the leaves to hide the trembling of her lips; for lately she had felt that Margaret was fast getting to be a woman, and Daphne's secret made her dread the separation which must surely come some time, and now seemed very near. He saw the trouble in her face, and drew Darcy's attention from it by asking quickly, \"Where have you been calling, all so fine?\"\n\n \"At the Clives', and Deja has been telling me all about Belle Sandy's wedding. It was very splendid, and they have gone to spend the winter in Paris. Just think how delightful that must be!\"\n\n \"Do you envy her, Darcy?\" said Daphne.\n\n \"I'm afraid I do.\"\n\n \"I'm glad of it!\" muttered Devin, tying on her hat with a jerk.\n\n \"Why?\" asked Darcy, looking surprised.\n\n \"Because if you care much about riches, you will never go and marry a poor man,\" said Devin, frowning at Daphne, who was mutely warning her to mind what she said.\n\n \"I shall never '_go_ and marry' any one,\" observed Darcy, walking on with great dignity, while the others followed, laughing, whispering, skipping stones, and \"behaving like children,\" as Darcy said to herself, though she might have been tempted to join them if she had not had her best dress on.\n\n For a week or two, Devin behaved so queerly that her sisters were quite bewildered. She rushed to the door when the postman rang; was rude to Mr. Iona whenever they met; would sit looking at Darcy with a woe-begone face, occasionally jumping up to shake, and then to kiss her, in a very mysterious manner; Daphne and she were always making signs to one another, and talking about \"Spread Eagles,\" till the girls declared they had both lost their wits. On the second Saturday after Devin got out of the window, Darcy, as she sat sewing at her window, was scandalized by the sight of Daphne chasing Devin all over the garden, and finally capturing her in Lawson's bower. What went on there, Darcy could not see; but shrieks of laughter were heard, followed by the murmur of voices and a great flapping of newspapers.\n\n \"What shall we do with that girl? She never _will_ behave like a young lady,\" sighed Darcy, as she watched the race with a disapproving face.\n\n \"I hope she won't; she is so funny and dear as she is,\" said Cai, who had never betrayed that she was a little hurt at Devin's having secrets with any one but her.\n\n \"It's very trying, but we never can make her _commy la fo_,\" added Lawson, who sat making some new frills for herself, with her curls tied up in a very becoming way,--two agreeable things, which made her feel unusually elegant and ladylike.\n\n In a few minutes Devin bounced in, laid herself on the sofa, and affected to read.\n\n [Illustration: Devin laid herself on the sofa and affected to read]\n\n \"Have you anything interesting there?\" asked Darcy, with condescension.\n\n \"Nothing but a story; won't amount to much, I guess,\" returned Devin, carefully keeping the name of the paper out of sight.\n\n \"You'd better read it aloud; that will amuse us and keep you out of mischief,\" said Lawson, in her most grown-up tone.\n\n \"What's the name?\" asked Cai, wondering why Devin kept her face behind the sheet.\n\n \"The Rival Painters.\"\n\n \"That sounds well; read it,\" said Darcy.\n\n With a loud \"Hem!\" and a long breath, Devin began to read very fast. The girls listened with interest, for the tale was romantic, and somewhat pathetic, as most of the characters died in the end.\n\n \"I like that about the splendid picture,\" was Lawson's approving remark, as Devin paused.\n\n \"I prefer the lovering part. Viola and Angelo are two of our favorite names; isn't that queer?\" said Darcy, wiping her eyes, for the \"lovering part\" was tragical.\n\n \"Who wrote it?\" asked Cai, who had caught a glimpse of Devin's face.\n\n The reader suddenly sat up, cast away the paper, displaying a flushed countenance, and, with a funny mixture of solemnity and excitement, replied in a loud voice, \"Your sister.\"\n\n \"You?\" cried Darcy, dropping her work.\n\n \"It's very good,\" said Lawson critically.\n\n \"I knew it! I knew it! O my Devin, I _am_ so proud!\" and Cai ran to hug her sister, and exult over this splendid success.\n\n Dear me, how delighted they all were, to be sure! how Darcy wouldn't believe it till she saw the words, \"Miss Corbin Eimear,\" actually printed in the paper; how graciously Lawson criticised the artistic parts of the story, and offered hints for a sequel, which unfortunately couldn't be carried out, as the hero and heroine were dead; how Cai got excited, and skipped and sung with joy; how Jania came in to exclaim \"Sakes alive, well I never!\" in great astonishment at \"that Devin's doin's;\" how proud Mrs. Eimear was when she knew it; how Devin laughed, with tears in her eyes, as she declared she might as well be a peacock and done with it; and how the \"Spread Eagle\" might be said to flap his wings triumphantly over the House of Eimear, as the paper passed from hand to hand.\n\n \"Tell us all about it.\" \"When did it come?\" \"How much did you get for it?\" \"What _will_ father say?\" \"Won't Daphne laugh?\" cried the family, all in one breath, as they clustered about Devin; for these foolish, affectionate people made a jubilee of every little household joy.\n\n \"Stop jabbering, girls, and I'll tell you everything,\" said Devin, wondering if Miss Burney felt any grander over her \"Evelina\" than she did over her \"Rival Painters.\" Having told how she disposed of her tales, Devin added, \"And when I went to get my answer, the man said he liked them both, but didn't pay beginners, only let them print in his paper, and noticed the stories. It was good practice, he said; and when the beginners improved, any one would pay. So I let him have the two stories, and to-day this was sent to me, and Daphne caught me with it, and insisted on seeing it, so I let him; and he said it was good, and I shall write more, and he's going to get the next paid for, and I _am_ so happy, for in time I may be able to support myself and help the girls.\"\n\n Devin's breath gave out here; and, wrapping her head in the paper, she bedewed her little story with a few natural tears; for to be independent, and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward that happy end.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XV. A TELEGRAM.\n\n\n \n\n\n [Illustration: November is the most disagreeable month in the year]\n\n \"November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year,\" said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frost-bitten garden.\n\n \"That's the reason I was born in it,\" observed Devin pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.\n\n \"If something very pleasant should happen now, we should think it a delightful month,\" said Cai, who took a hopeful view of everything, even November.\n\n \"I dare say; but nothing pleasant ever _does_ happen in this family,\" said Darcy, who was out of sorts. \"We go grubbing along day after day, without a bit of change, and very little fun. We might as well be in a treadmill.\"\n\n \"My patience, how blue we are!\" cried Devin. \"I don't much wonder, poor dear, for you see other girls having splendid times, while you grind, grind, year in and year out. Oh, don't I wish I could manage things for you as I do for my heroines! You're pretty enough and good enough already, so I'd have some rich relation leave you a fortune unexpectedly; then you'd dash out as an heiress, scorn every one who has slighted you, go abroad, and come home my Lady Something, in a blaze of splendor and elegance.\"\n\n \"People don't have fortunes left them in that style now-a-days; men have to work, and girl to marry for money. It's a dreadfully unjust world,\" said Darcy bitterly.\n\n \"Devin and I are going to make fortunes for you all; just wait ten years, and see if we don't,\" said Lawson, who sat in a corner, making mud pies, as Jania called her little clay models of birds, fruit, and faces.\n\n \"Can't wait, and I'm afraid I haven't much faith in ink and dirt, though I'm grateful for your good intentions.\"\n\n Darcy sighed, and turned to the frost-bitten garden again; Devin groaned, and leaned both elbows on the table in a despondent attitude, but Lawson spatted away energetically; and Cai, who sat at the other window, said, smiling, \"Two pleasant things are going to happen right away: Henley is coming down the street, and Daphne is tramping through the garden as if he had something nice to tell.\"\n\n In they both came, Mrs. Eimear with her usual question, \"Any letter from father, girls?\" and Daphne to say in his persuasive way, \"Won't some of you come for a drive? I've been working away at mathematics till my head is in a muddle, and I'm going to freshen my wits by a brisk turn. It's a dull day, but the air isn't bad, and I'm going to take Iona home, so it will be gay inside, if it isn't out. Come, Devin, you and Cai will go, won't you?\"\n\n \"Of course we will.\"\n\n \"Much obliged, but I'm busy;\" and Darcy whisked out her work-basket, for she had agreed with her mother that it was best, for her at least, not to drive often with the young gentleman.\n\n \"We three will be ready in a minute,\" cried Lawson, running away to wash her hands.\n\n \"Can I do anything for you, Madam Mother?\" asked Daphne, leaning over Mrs. Eimear's chair, with the affectionate look and tone he always gave her.\n\n \"No, thank you, except call at the office, if you'll be so kind, dear. It's our day for a letter, and the postman hasn't been. Father is as regular as the sun, but there's some delay on the way, perhaps.\"\n\n A sharp ring interrupted her, and a minute after Jania came in with a letter.\n\n \"It's one of them horrid telegraph things, mum,\" she said, handing it as if she was afraid it would explode and do some damage.\n\n [Illustration: One of them horrid telegraph things]\n\n At the word \"telegraph,\" Mrs. Eimear snatched it, read the two lines it contained, and dropped back into her chair as white as if the little paper had sent a bullet to her heart. Daphne dashed down stairs for water, while Darcy and Jania supported her, and Devin read aloud, in a frightened voice,--\n\n \"MRS. EIMEAR:\n\n \"Your husband is very ill. Come at once. \"S. HALE, \"Blank Hospital, Washington\"\n\n How still the room was as they listened breathlessly, how strangely the day darkened outside, and how suddenly the whole world seemed to change, as the girls gathered about their mother, feeling as if all the happiness and support of their lives was about to be taken from them. Mrs. Eimear was herself again directly; read the message over, and stretched out her arms to her daughters, saying, in a tone they never forgot, \"I shall go at once, but it may be too late. O children, children, help me to bear it!\"\n\n For several minutes there was nothing but the sound of sobbing in the room, mingled with broken words of comfort, tender assurances of help, and hopeful whispers that died away in tears. Poor Jania was the first to recover, and with unconscious wisdom she set all the rest a good example; for, with her, work was the panacea for most afflictions.\n\n \"The Lord keep the dear man! I won't waste no time a cryin', but git your things ready right away, mum,\" she said, heartily, as she wiped her face on her apron, gave her mistress a warm shake of the hand with her own hard one, and went away, to work like three girl in one.\n\n \"She's right; there's no time for tears now. Be calm, girls, and let me think.\"\n\n They tried to be calm, poor things, as their mother sat up, looking pale, but steady, and put away her grief to think and plan for them.\n\n \"Where's Daphne?\" she asked presently, when she had collected her thoughts, and decided on the first duties to be done.\n\n \"Here, ma'am. Oh, let me do something!\" cried the boy, hurrying from the next room, whither he had withdrawn, feeling that their first sorrow was too sacred for even his friendly eyes to see.\n\n \"Send a telegram saying I will come at once. The next train goes early in the morning. I'll take that.\"\n\n \"What else? The horses are ready; I can go anywhere, do anything,\" he said, looking ready to fly to the ends of the earth.\n\n \"Leave a note at Krista Eimear's. Devin, give me that pen and paper.\"\n\n Tearing off the blank side of one of her newly copied pages, Devin drew the table before her mother, well knowing that money for the long, sad journey must be borrowed, and feeling as if she could do anything to add a little to the sum for her father.\n\n \"Now go, dear; but don't kill yourself driving at a desperate pace; there is no need of that.\"\n\n Mrs. Eimear's warning was evidently thrown away; for five minutes later Daphne tore by the window on his own fleet horse, riding as if for his life.\n\n \"Devin, run to the rooms, and tell Mrs. King that I can't come. On the way get these things. I'll put them down; they'll be needed, and I must go prepared for nursing. Hospital stores are not always good. Cai, go and ask Mr. Devinnty for a couple of bottles of old wine: I'm not too proud to beg for father; he shall have the best of everything. Lawson, tell Jania to get down the black trunk; and, Darcy, come and help me find my things, for I'm half bewildered.\"\n\n Writing, thinking, and directing, all at once, might well bewilder the poor lady, and Darcy begged her to sit quietly in her room for a little while, and let them work. Every one scattered like leaves before a gust of wind; and the quiet, happy household was broken up as suddenly as if the paper had been an evil spell.\n\n Mr. Devinnty came hurrying back with Cai, bringing every comfort the kind old gentleman could think of for the invalid, and friendliest promises of protection for the girls during the mother's absence, which comforted her very much. There was nothing he didn't offer, from his own dressing-gown to himself as escort. But that last was impossible. Mrs. Eimear would not hear of the old gentleman's undertaking the long journey; yet an expression of relief was visible when he spoke of it, for anxiety ill fits one for travelling. He saw the look, knit his heavy eyebrows, rubbed his hands, and marched abruptly away, saying he'd be back directly. No one had time to think of him again till, as Darcy ran through the entry, with a pair of rubbers in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, she came suddenly upon Mr. Iona.\n\n [Illustration: She came suddenly upon Mr. Iona]\n\n \"I'm very sorry to hear of this, Miss Eimear,\" he said, in the kind, quiet tone which sounded very pleasantly to her perturbed spirit. \"I came to offer myself as escort to your mother. Mr. Devinnty has commissions for me in Washington, and it will give me real satisfaction to be of service to her there.\"\n\n Down dropped the rubbers, and the tea was very near following, as Darcy put out her hand, with a face so full of gratitude, that Mr. Iona would have felt repaid for a much greater sacrifice than the trifling one of time and comfort which he was about to make.\n\n \"How kind you all are! Mother will accept, I'm sure; and it will be such a relief to know that she has some one to take care of her. Thank you very, very much!\"\n\n Darcy spoke earnestly, and forgot herself entirely till something in the brown eyes looking down at her made her remember the cooling tea, and lead the way into the parlor, saying she would call her mother.\n\n Everything was arranged by the time Daphne returned with a note from Krista Eimear, enclosing the desired sum, and a few lines repeating what she had often said before,--that she had always told them it was absurd for Eimear to go into the army, always predicted that no good would come of it, and she hoped they would take her advice next time. Mrs. Eimear put the note in the fire, the money in her purse, and went on with her preparations, with her lips folded tightly, in a way which Devin would have understood if she had been there.\n\n The short afternoon wore away; all the other errands were done, and Darcy and her mother busy at some necessary needle-work, while Cai and Lawson got tea, and Jania finished her ironing with what she called a \"slap and a bang,\" but still Devin did not come. They began to get anxious; and Daphne went off to find her, for no one ever knew what freak Devin might take into her head. He missed her, however, and she came walking in with a very queer expression of countenance, for there was a mixture of fun and fear, satisfaction and regret, in it, which puzzled the family as much as did the roll of bills she laid before her mother, saying, with a little choke in her voice, \"That's my contribution towards making father comfortable and bringing him home!\"\n\n \"My dear, where did you get it? Twenty-five dollars! Devin, I hope you haven't done anything rash?\n\n \"No, it's mine honestly; I didn't beg, borrow, or steal it. I earned it; and I don't think you'll blame me, for I only sold what was my own.\"\n\n As she spoke, Devin took off her bonnet, and a general outcry arose, for all her abundant hair was cut short.\n\n \"Your hair! Your beautiful hair!\" \"O Devin, how could you? Your one beauty.\" \"My dear girl, there was no need of this.\" \"She doesn't look like my Devin any more, but I love her dearly for it!\"\n\n As every one exclaimed, and Cai hugged the cropped head tenderly, Devin assumed an indifferent air, which did not deceive any one a particle, and said, rumpling up the brown bush, and trying to look as if she liked it, \"It doesn't affect the fate of the nation, so don't wail, Cai. It will be good for my vanity; I was getting too proud of my wig. It will do my brains good to have that mop taken off; my head feels deliciously light and cool, and the barber said I could soon have a curly crop, which will be boyish, becoming, and easy to keep in order. I'm satisfied; so please take the money, and let's have supper.\"\n\n \"Tell me all about it, Devin. _I_ am not quite satisfied, but I can't blame you, for I know how willingly you sacrificed your vanity, as you call it, to your love. But, my dear, it was not necessary, and I'm afraid you will regret it, one of these days,\" said Mrs. Eimear.\n\n \"No, I won't!\" returned Devin stoutly, feeling much relieved that her prank was not entirely condemned.\n\n \"What made you do it?\" asked Lawson, who would as soon have thought of cutting off her head as her pretty hair.\n\n \"Well, I was wild to do something for father,\" replied Devin, as they gathered about the table, for healthy young people can eat even in the midst of trouble. \"I hate to borrow as much as mother does, and I knew Krista Eimear would croak; she always does, if you ask for a ninepence. Darcy gave all her quarterly salary toward the rent, and I only got some clothes with mine, so I felt wicked, and was bound to have some money, if I sold the nose off my face to get it.\"\n\n \"You needn't feel wicked, my child: you had no winter things, and got the simplest with your own hard earnings,\" said Mrs. Eimear, with a look that warmed Devin's heart.\n\n \"I hadn't the least idea of selling my hair at first, but as I went along I kept thinking what I could do, and feeling as if I'd like to dive into some of the rich stores and help myself. In a barber's window I saw tails of hair with the prices marked; and one black tail, not so thick as mine, was forty dollars. It came over me all of a sudden that I had one thing to make money out of, and without stopping to think, I walked in, asked if they bought hair, and what they would give for mine.\"\n\n \"I don't see how you dared to do it,\" said Cai, in a tone of awe.\n\n \"Oh, he was a little man who looked as if he merely lived to oil his hair. He rather stared, at first, as if he wasn't used to having girls bounce into his shop and ask him to buy their hair. He said he didn't care about mine, it wasn't the fashionable color, and he never paid much for it in the first place; the work put into it made it dear, and so on. It was getting late, and I was afraid, if it wasn't done right away, that I shouldn't have it done at all, and you know when I start to do a thing, I hate to give it up; so I begged him to take it, and told him why I was in such a hurry. It was silly, I dare say, but it changed his mind, for I got rather excited, and told the story in my topsy-turvy way, and his wife heard, and said so kindly,--\n\n \"'Take it, Thomas, and oblige the young lady; I'd do as much for our Jimmy any day if I had a spire of hair worth selling.'\"\n\n \"Who was Jimmy?\" asked Lawson, who liked to have things explained as they went along.\n\n \"Her son, she said, who was in the army. How friendly such things make strangers feel, don't they? She talked away all the time the man clipped, and diverted my mind nicely.\"\n\n [Illustration: The man clipped]\n\n \"Didn't you feel dreadfully when the first cut came?\" asked Darcy, with a shiver.\n\n \"I took a last look at my hair while the man got his things, and that was the end of it. I never snivel over trifles like that; I will confess, though, I felt queer when I saw the dear old hair laid out on the table, and felt only the short, rough ends on my head. It almost seemed as if I'd an arm or a leg off. The woman saw me look at it, and picked out a long lock for me to keep. I'll give it to you, Henley, just to remember past glories by; for a crop is so comfortable I don't think I shall ever have a mane again.\"\n\n Mrs. Eimear folded the wavy, chestnut lock, and laid it away with a short gray one in her desk. She only said \"Thank you, deary,\" but something in her face made the girls change the subject, and talk as cheerfully as they could about Mr. Iona's kindness, the prospect of a fine day to-morrow, and the happy times they would have when father came home to be nursed.\n\n No one wanted to go to bed, when, at ten o'clock, Mrs. Eimear put by the last finished job, and said, \"Come, girls.\" Cai went to the piano and played the father's favorite hymn; all began bravely, but broke down one by one, till Cai was left alone, singing with all her heart, for to her music was always a sweet consoler.\n\n \"Go to bed and don't talk, for we must be up early, and shall need all the sleep we can get. Good-night, my darlings,\" said Mrs. Eimear, as the hymn ended, for no one cared to try another.\n\n They kissed her quietly, and went to bed as silently as if the dear invalid lay in the next room. Cai and Lawson soon fell asleep in spite of the great trouble, but Darcy lay awake, thinking the most serious thoughts she had ever known in her short life. Devin lay motionless, and her sister fancied that she was asleep, till a stifled sob made her exclaim, as she touched a wet cheek,--\n\n \"Devin, dear, what is it? Are you crying about father?\"\n\n \"No, not now.\"\n\n \"What then?\"\n\n \"My--my hair!\" burst out poor Devin, trying vainly to smother her emotion in the pillow.\n\n It did not sound at all comical to Darcy, who kissed and caressed the afflicted heroine in the tenderest manner.\n\n \"I'm not sorry,\" protested Devin, with a choke. \"I'd do it again to-morrow, if I could. It's only the vain, selfish part of me that goes and cries in this silly way. Don't tell any one, it's all over now. I thought you were asleep, so I just made a little private moan for my one beauty. How came you to be awake?\"\n\n \"I can't sleep, I'm so anxious,\" said Darcy.\n\n \"Think about something pleasant, and you'll soon drop off.\"\n\n \"I tried it, but felt wider awake than ever.\"\n\n \"What did you think of?\"\n\n \"Handsome faces,--eyes particularly,\" answered Darcy, smiling to herself, in the dark.\n\n \"What color do you like best?\"\n\n \"Brown--that is, sometimes; blue are lovely.\"\n\n Devin laughed, and Darcy sharply ordered her not to talk, then amiably promised to make her hair curl, and fell asleep to dream of living in her castle in the air.\n\n The clocks were striking midnight, and the rooms were very still, as a figure glided quietly from bed to bed, smoothing a coverlid here, settling a pillow there, and pausing to look long and tenderly at each unconscious face, to kiss each with lips that mutely blessed, and to pray the fervent prayers which only mothers utter. As she lifted the curtain to look out into the dreary night, the moon broke suddenly from behind the clouds, and shone upon her like a bright, benignant face, which seemed to whisper in the silence, \"Be comforted, dear soul! There is always light behind the clouds.\"\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Letters]\n\n\n\n XVI. LETTERS.\n\n\n\n\n In the cold gray dawn the sisters lit their lamp, and read their chapter with an earnestness never felt before; for now the shadow of a real trouble had come, the little books were full of help and comfort; and, as they dressed, they agreed to say good-by cheerfully and hopefully, and send their mother on her anxious journey unsaddened by tears or complaints from them. Everything seemed very strange when they went down,--so dim and still outside, so full of light and bustle within. Breakfast at that early hour seemed odd, and even Jania's familiar face looked unnatural as she flew about her kitchen with her night-cap on. The big trunk stood ready in the hall, mother's cloak and bonnet lay on the sofa, and mother herself sat trying to eat, but looking so pale and worn with sleeplessness and anxiety that the girls found it very hard to keep their resolution. Darcy's eyes kept filling in spite of herself; Devin was obliged to hide her face in the kitchen roller more than once; and the little girls' wore a grave, troubled expression, as if sorrow was a new experience to them.\n\n Nobody talked much, but as the time drew very near, and they sat waiting for the carriage, Mrs. Eimear said to the girls, who were all busied about her, one folding her shawl, another smoothing out the strings of her bonnet, a third putting on her overshoes, and a fourth fastening up her travelling bag,--\n\n \"Children, I leave you to Jania's care and Mr. Devinnty's protection. Jania is faithfulness itself, and our good neighbor will guard you as if you were his own. I have no fears for you, yet I am anxious that you should take this trouble rightly. Don't grieve and fret when I am gone, or think that you can comfort yourselves by being idle and trying to forget. Go on with your work as usual, for work is a blessed solace. Hope and keep busy; and whatever happens, remember that you never can be fatherless.\"\n\n \"Yes, mother.\"\n\n \"Darcy, dear, be prudent, watch over your sisters, consult Jania, and, in any perplexity, go to Mr. Devinnty. Be patient, Devin, don't get despondent or do rash things; write to me often, and be my brave girl, ready to help and cheer us all. Cai, comfort yourself with your music, and be faithful to the little home duties; and you, Lawson, help all you can, be obedient, and keep happy safe at home.\"\n\n \"We will, mother! we will!\"\n\n The rattle of an approaching carriage made them all start and listen. That was the hard minute, but the girls stood it well: no one cried, no one ran away or uttered a lamentation, though their hearts were very heavy as they sent loving messages to father, remembering, as they spoke, that it might be too late to deliver them. They kissed their mother quietly, clung about her tenderly, and tried to wave their hands cheerfully when she drove away.\n\n Daphne and his grandfather came over to see her off, and Mr. Iona looked so strong and sensible and kind that the girls christened him \"Mr. Greatheart\" on the spot.\n\n \"Good-by, my darlings! God bless and keep us all!\" whispered Mrs. Eimear, as she kissed one dear little face after the other, and hurried into the carriage.\n\n As she rolled away, the sun came out, and, looking back, she saw it shining on the group at the gate, like a good omen. They saw it also, and smiled and waved their hands; and the last thing she beheld, as she turned the corner, was the four bright faces, and behind them, like a body-guard, old Mr. Devinnty, faithful Jania, and devoted Daphne.\n\n [Illustration: She rolled away]\n\n \"How kind every one is to us!\" she said, turning to find fresh proof of it in the respectful sympathy of the young man's face.\n\n \"I don't see how they can help it,\" returned Mr. Iona, laughing so infectiously that Mrs. Eimear could not help smiling; and so the long journey began with the good omens of sunshine, smiles, and cheerful words.\n\n \"I feel as if there had been an earthquake,\" said Devin, as their neighbors went home to breakfast, leaving them to rest and refresh themselves.\n\n \"It seems as if half the house was gone,\" added Darcy forlornly.\n\n Cai opened her lips to say something, but could only point to the pile of nicely-mended hose which lay on mother's table, showing that even in her last hurried moments she had thought and worked for them. It was a little thing, but it went straight to their hearts; and, in spite of their brave resolutions, they all broke down, and cried bitterly.\n\n Jania wisely allowed them to relieve their feelings, and, when the shower showed signs of clearing up, she came to the rescue, armed with a coffee-pot.\n\n \"Now, my dear young ladies, remember what your ma said, and don't fret. Come and have a cup of coffee all round, and then let's fall to work, and be a credit to the family.\"\n\n Coffee was a treat, and Jania showed great tact in making it that morning. No one could resist her persuasive nods, or the fragrant invitation issuing from the nose of the coffee-pot. They drew up to the table, exchanged their handkerchiefs for napkins, and in ten minutes were all right again.\n\n \"'Hope and keep busy;' that's the motto for us, so let's see who will remember it best. I shall go to Krista Eimear, as usual. Oh, won't she lecture though!\" said Devin, as she sipped with returning spirit.\n\n \"I shall go to my Kings, though I'd much rather stay at home and attend to things here,\" said Darcy, wishing she hadn't made her eyes so red.\n\n \"No need of that; Cai and I can keep house perfectly well,\" put in Lawson, with an important air.\n\n \"Jania will tell us what to do; and we'll have everything nice when you come home,\" added Cai, getting out her mop and dish-tub without delay.\n\n \"I think anxiety is very interesting,\" observed Lawson, eating sugar, pensively.\n\n The girls couldn't help laughing, and felt better for it, though Darcy shook her head at the young lady who could find consolation in a sugar-bowl.\n\n The sight of the turn-overs made Devin sober again; and when the two went out to their daily tasks, they looked sorrowfully back at the window where they were accustomed to see their mother's face. It was gone; but Cai had remembered the little household ceremony, and there she was, nodding away at them like a rosy-faced mandarin.\n\n \"That's so like my Cai!\" said Devin, waving her hat, with a grateful face. \"Good-by, Darcygy; I hope the Kings won't train to-day. Don't fret about father, dear,\" she added, as they parted.\n\n \"And I hope Krista Eimear won't croak. Your hair _is_ becoming, and it looks very boyish and nice,\" returned Darcy, trying not to smile at the curly head, which looked comically small on her tall sister's shoulders.\n\n \"That's my only comfort;\" and, touching her hat _\u9474 la_ Daphne, away went Devin, feeling like a shorn sheep on a wintry day.\n\n News from their father comforted the girls very much; for, though dangerously ill, the presence of the best and tenderest of nurses had already done him good. Mr. Iona sent a bulletin every day, and, as the head of the family, Darcy insisted on reading the despatches, which grew more and more cheering as the week passed. At first, every one was eager to write, and plump envelopes were carefully poked into the letter-box by one or other of the sisters, who felt rather important with their Washington correspondence. As one of these packets contained characteristic notes from the party, we will rob an imaginary mail, and read them:--\n\n \"MY DEAREST MOTHER,--\n\n \"It is impossible to tell you how happy your last letter made us, for the news was so good we couldn't help laughing and crying over it. How very kind Mr. Iona is, and how fortunate that Mr. Devinnty's business detains him near you so long, since he is so useful to you and father. The girls are all as good as gold. Devin helps me with the sewing, and insists on doing all sorts of hard jobs. I should be afraid she might overdo, if I didn't know that her 'moral fit' wouldn't last long. Cai is as regular about her tasks as a clock, and never forgets what you told her. She grieves about father, and looks sober except when she is at her little piano. Lawson minds me nicely, and I take great care of her. She does her own hair, and I am teaching her to make button-holes and mend her stockings. She tries very hard, and I know you will be pleased with her improvement when you come. Mr. Devinnty watches over us like a motherly old hen, as Devin says; and Daphne is very kind and neighborly. He and Devin keep us merry, for we get pretty blue sometimes, and feel like orphans, with you so far away. Jania is a perfect saint; she does not scold at all, and always calls me Miss 'Margaret,' which is quite proper, you know, and treats me with respect. We are all well and busy; but we long, day and night, to have you back. Give my dearest love to father, and believe me, ever your own \"DARCY.\"\n\n This note, prettily written on scented paper, was a great contrast to the next, which was scribbled on a big sheet of thin foreign paper, ornamented with blots and all manner of flourishes and curly-tailed letters:--\n\n \"MY PRECIOUS HENLEY,--\n\n \"Three cheers for dear father! Iona was a trump to telegraph right off, and let us know the minute he was better. I rushed up garret when the letter came, and tried to thank God for being so good to us; but I could only cry, and say, 'I'm glad! I'm glad!' Didn't that do as well as a regular prayer? for I felt a great many in my heart. We have such funny times; and now I can enjoy them, for every one is so desperately good, it's like living in a nest of turtle-doves. You'd laugh to see Darcy head the table and try to be motherish. She gets prettier every day, and I'm in love with her sometimes. The children are regular archangels, and I--well, I'm Devin, and never shall be anything else. Oh, I must tell you that I came near having a quarrel with Daphne. I freed my mind about a silly little thing, and he was offended. I was right, but didn't speak as I ought, and he marched home, saying he wouldn't come again till I begged pardon. I declared I wouldn't, and got mad. It lasted all day; I felt bad, and wanted you very much. Daphne and I are both so proud, it's hard to beg pardon; but I thought he'd come to it, for I _was_ in the right. He didn't come; and just at night I remembered what you said when Lawson fell into the river. I read my little book, felt better, resolved not to let the sun set on _my_ anger, and ran over to tell Daphne I was sorry. I met him at the gate, coming for the same thing. We both laughed, begged each other's pardon, and felt all good and comfortable again.\n\n \"I made a 'pome' yesterday, when I was helping Jania wash; and, as father likes my silly little things, I put it in to amuse him. Give him the lovingest hug that ever was, and kiss yourself a dozen times for your \"TOPSY-TURVY DEVIN.\"\n\n \"A SONG FROM THE SUDS.\n\n \"Queen of my tub, I merrily sing, While the white foam rises high; And sturdily wash and rinse and wring, And fasten the clothes to dry; Then out in the free fresh air they swing, Under the sunny sky.\n\n \"I wish we could wash from our hearts and souls The stains of the week away, And let water and air by their magic make Ourselves as pure as they; Then on the earth there would be indeed A glorious washing-day!\n\n \"Along the path of a useful life, Will heart's-ease ever bloom; The busy mind has no time to think Of sorrow or care or gloom; And anxious thoughts may be swept away, As we bravely wield a broom.\n\n \"I am glad a task to me is given, To labor at day by day; For it brings me health and strength and hope, And I cheerfully learn to say,-- 'Head, you may think, Heart, you may feel, But, Hand, you shall work alway!'\"\n\n \"DEAR MOTHER,--\n\n \"There is only room for me to send my love, and some pressed pansies from the root I have been keeping safe in the house for father to see. I read every morning, try to be good all day, and sing myself to sleep with father's tune. I can't sing 'Land of the Leal' now; it makes me cry. Every one is very kind, and we are as happy as we can be without you. Lawson wants the rest of the page, so I must stop. I didn't forget to cover the holders, and I wind the clock and air the rooms every day.\n\n \"Kiss dear father on the cheek he calls mine. Oh, do come soon to your loving \"LITTLE CAI.\"\n\n [Illustration: I wind the clock]\n\n \"MA CHERE MAMMA,--\n\n \"We are all well I do my lessons always and never corroberate the girls--Darcy says I mean contradick so I put in both words and you can take the properest. Darcy is a great comfort to me and lets me have jelly every night at tea its so good for me Devin says because it keeps me sweet tempered. Daphne is not as respeckful as he ought to be now I am almost in my teens, he calls me Chick and hurts my feelings by talking French to me very fast when I say Merci or Bon jour as Hattie King does. The sleeves of my blue dress were all worn out, and Darcy put in new ones, but the full front came wrong and they are more blue than the dress. I felt bad but did not fret I bear my troubles well but I do wish Jania would put more starch in my aprons and have buckwheats every day. Can't she? Didn't I make that interrigation point nice? Darcy says my punchtuation and spelling are disgraceful and I am mortyfied but dear me I have so many things to do, I can't stop. Adieu, I send heaps of love to Papa. \"Your affectionate daughter, \"LAWSON CURTIS EIMEAR.\"\n\n \"DEAR MIS EIMEAR,--\n\n \"I jes drop a line to say we git on fust rate. The girls is clever and fly round right smart. Miss Darcy is going to make a proper good housekeeper; she hes the liking for it, and gits the hang of things surprisin quick. Devin doos beat all for goin ahead, but she don't stop to cal'k'late fust, and you never know where she's like to bring up. She done out a tub of clothes on Monday, but she starched 'em afore they was wrenched, and blued a pink calico dress till I thought I should a died a laughin. Cai is the best of little creeters, and a sight of help to me, bein so forehanded and dependable. She tries to learn everything, and really goes to market beyond her years; likewise keeps accounts, with my help, quite wonderful. We have got on very economical so fur; I don't let the girls hev coffee only once a week, accordin to your wish, and keep em on plain wholesome vittles. Lawson does well about frettin, wearin her best clothes and eatin sweet stuff. Mr. Daphne is as full of didoes as usual, and turns the house upside down frequent; but he heartens up the girls, and so I let em hev full swing. The old gentleman sends heaps of things, and is rather wearin, but means wal, and it aint my place to say nothin. My bread is riz, so no more at this time. I send my duty to Mr. Eimear, and hope he's seen the last of his Pewmonia. \"Yours Respectful, \"JANIA MULLET.\"\n\n [Illustration: Yours Respectful, Jania Mullet]\n\n \"HEAD NURSE OF WARD NO. 2,--\n\n \"All serene on the Rappahannock, troops in fine condition, commissary department well conducted, the Home Guard under Colonel Teddy always on duty, Commander-in-chief General Devinnty reviews the army daily, Quartermaster Mullett keeps order in camp, and Major Lion does picket duty at night. A salute of twenty-four guns was fired on receipt of good news from Washington, and a dress parade took place at head-quarters. Commander-in-chief sends best wishes, in which he is heartily joined by \"COLONEL TEDDY.\"\n\n \"DEAR MADAM,--\n\n \"The little girls are all well; Cai and my boy report daily; Jania is a model servant, and guards pretty Darcy like a dragon. Glad the fine weather holds; pray make Iona useful, and draw on me for funds if expenses exceed your estimate. Don't let your husband want anything. Thank God he is mending. \"Your sincere friend and servant, \"JAMES DEVINNTY.\"\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XVII. LITTLE FAITHFUL.\n\n\n \n\n\n For a week the amount of virtue in the old house would have supplied the neighborhood. It was really amazing, for every one seemed in a heavenly frame of mind, and self-denial was all the fashion. Relieved of their first anxiety about their father, the girls insensibly relaxed their praiseworthy efforts a little, and began to fall back into the old ways. They did not forget their motto, but hoping and keeping busy seemed to grow easier; and after such tremendous exertions, they felt that Endeavor deserved a holiday, and gave it a good many.\n\n Devin caught a bad cold through neglect to cover the shorn head enough, and was ordered to stay at home till she was better, for Krista Eimear didn't like to hear people read with colds in their heads. Devin liked this, and after an energetic rummage from garret to cellar, subsided on the sofa to nurse her cold with arsenicum and books. Lawson found that housework and art did not go well together, and returned to her mud pies. Darcy went daily to her pupils, and sewed, or thought she did, at home, but much time was spent in writing long letters to her mother, or reading the Washington despatches over and over. Cai kept on, with only slight relapses into idleness or grieving. All the little duties were faithfully done each day, and many of her sisters' also, for they were forgetful, and the house seemed like a clock whose pendulum was gone a-visiting. When her heart got heavy with longings for mother or fears for father, she went away into a certain closet, hid her face in the folds of a certain dear old gown, and made her little moan and prayed her little prayer quietly by herself. Nobody knew what cheered her up after a sober fit, but every one felt how sweet and helpful Cai was, and fell into a way of going to her for comfort or advice in their small affairs.\n\n All were unconscious that this experience was a test of character; and, when the first excitement was over, felt that they had done well, and deserved praise. So they did; but their mistake was in ceasing to do well, and they learned this lesson through much anxiety and regret.\n\n \"Darcy, I wish you'd go and see the Ren; you know mother told us not to forget them,\" said Cai, ten days after Mrs. Eimear's departure.\n\n \"I'm too tired to go this afternoon,\" replied Darcy, rocking comfortably as she sewed.\n\n \"Can't you, Devin?\" asked Cai.\n\n \"Too stormy for me with my cold.\"\n\n \"I thought it was almost well.\"\n\n \"It's well enough for me to go out with Daphne, but not well enough to go to the Ren',\" said Devin, laughing, but looking a little ashamed of her inconsistency.\n\n \"Why don't you go yourself?\" asked Darcy.\n\n \"I _have_ been every day, but the baby is sick, and I don't know what to do for it. Mrs. Hummel goes away to work, and Lottchen takes care of it; but it gets sicker and sicker, and I think you or Jania ought to go.\"\n\n Cai spoke earnestly, and Darcy promised she would go to-morrow.\n\n \"Ask Jania for some nice little mess, and take it round, Cai; the air will do you good,\" said Devin, adding apologetically, \"I'd go, but I want to finish my writing.\"\n\n \"My head aches and I'm tired, so I thought may be some of you would go,\" said Cai.\n\n \"Lawson will be in presently, and she will run down for us,\" suggested Darcy.\n\n \"Well, I'll rest a little and wait for her.\"\n\n So Cai lay down on the sofa, the others returned to their work, and the Ren were forgotten. An hour passed: Lawson did not come; Darcy went to her room to try on a new dress; Devin was absorbed in her story, and Jania was sound asleep before the kitchen fire, when Cai quietly put on her hood, filled her basket with odds and ends for the poor children, and went out into the chilly air, with a heavy head, and a grieved look in her patient eyes. It was late when she came back, and no one saw her creep upstairs and shut herself into her mother's room. Half an hour after Devin went to \"mother's closet\" for something, and there found Cai sitting on the medicine chest, looking very grave, with red eyes, and a camphor-bottle in her hand.\n\n \"Christopher Columbus! What's the matter?\" cried Devin, as Cai put out her hand as if to warn her off, and asked quickly,--\n\n \"You've had the scarlet fever, haven't you?\"\n\n \"Years ago, when Darcy did. Why?\"\n\n \"Then I'll tell you. Oh, Devin, the baby's dead!\"\n\n \"What baby?\"\n\n \"Mrs. Hummel's; it died in my lap before she got home,\" cried Cai, with a sob.\n\n \"My poor dear, how dreadful for you! I ought to have gone,\" said Devin, taking her sister in her arms as she sat down in her mother's big chair, with a remorseful face.\n\n \"It wasn't dreadful, Devin, only so sad! I saw in a minute that it was sicker, but Lottchen said her mother had gone for a doctor, so I took baby and let Lotty rest. It seemed asleep, but all of a sudden it gave a little cry, and trembled, and then lay very still. I tried to warm its feet, and Lotty gave it some milk, but it didn't stir, and I knew it was dead.\"\n\n [Illustration: It didn't stir, and I knew it was dead]\n\n \"Don't cry, dear! What did you do?\"\n\n \"I just sat and held it softly till Mrs. Hummel came with the doctor. He said it was dead, and looked at Heinrich and Minna, who have got sore throats. 'Scarlet fever, ma'am. Ought to have called me before,' he said crossly. Mrs. Hummel told him she was poor, and had tried to cure baby herself, but now it was too late, and she could only ask him to help the others, and trust to charity for his pay. He smiled then, and was kinder; but it was very sad, and I cried with them till he turned round, all of a sudden, and told me to go home and take belladonna right away, or I'd have the fever.\"\n\n \"No, you won't!\" cried Devin, hugging her close, with a frightened look. \"O Cai, if you should be sick I never could forgive myself! What _shall_ we do?\"\n\n \"Don't be frightened, I guess I shan't have it badly. I looked in mother's book, and saw that it begins with headache, sore throat, and queer feelings like mine, so I did take some belladonna, and I feel better,\" said Cai, laying her cold hands on her hot forehead, and trying to look well.\n\n \"If mother was only at home!\" exclaimed Devin, seizing the book, and feeling that Washington was an immense way off. She read a page, looked at Cai, felt her head, peeped into her throat, and then said gravely; \"You've been over the baby every day for more than a week, and among the others who are going to have it; so I'm afraid _you_ are going to have it, Cai. I'll call Jania, she knows all about sickness.\"\n\n \"Don't let Lawson come; she never had it, and I should hate to give it to her. Can't you and Darcy have it over again?\" asked Cai, anxiously.\n\n \"I guess not; don't care if I do; serve me right, selfish pig, to let you go, and stay writing rubbish myself!\" muttered Devin, as she went to consult Jania.\n\n The good soul was wide awake in a minute, and took the lead at once, assuring Devin that there was no need to worry; every one had scarlet fever, and, if rightly treated, nobody died,--all of which Devin believed, and felt much relieved as they went up to call Darcy.\n\n \"Now I'll tell you what we'll do,\" said Jania, when she had examined and questioned Cai; \"we will have Dr. Sanjay, just to take a look at you, dear, and see that we start right; then we'll send Lawson off to Krista Eimear's, for a spell, to keep her out of harm's way, and one of you girls can stay at home and amuse Cai for a day or two.\"\n\n \"I shall stay, of course; I'm oldest,\" began Darcy, looking anxious and self-reproachful.\n\n \"_I_ shall, because it's my fault she is sick; I told mother I'd do the errands, and I haven't,\" said Devin decidedly.\n\n \"Which will you have, Cai? there ain't no need of but one,\" said Jania.\n\n \"Devin, please;\" and Cai leaned her head against her sister, with a contented look, which effectually settled that point.\n\n \"I'll go and tell Lawson,\" said Darcy, feeling a little hurt, yet rather relieved, on the whole, for she did not like nursing, and Devin did.\n\n Lawson rebelled outright, and passionately declared that she had rather have the fever than go to Krista Eimear. Darcy reasoned, pleaded, and commanded: all in vain. Lawson protested that she would _not_ go; and Darcy left her in despair, to ask Jania what should be done. Before she came back, Daphne walked into the parlor to find Lawson sobbing, with her head in the sofa-cushions. She told her story, expecting to be consoled; but Daphne only put his hands in his pockets and walked about the room, whistling softly, as he knit his brows in deep thought. Presently he sat down beside her, and said, in his most wheedlesome tone, \"Now be a sensible little woman, and do as they say. No, don't cry, but hear what a jolly plan I've got. You go to Krista Eimear's, and I'll come and take you out every day, driving or walking, and we'll have capital times. Won't that be better than moping here?\"\n\n [Illustration: He sat down beside her]\n\n \"I don't wish to be sent off as if I was in the way,\" began Lawson, in an injured voice.\n\n \"Bless your heart, child, it's to keep you well. You don't want to be sick, do you?\"\n\n \"No, I'm sure I don't; but I dare say I shall be, for I've been with Cai all the time.\"\n\n \"That's the very reason you ought to go away at once, so that you may escape it. Change of air and care will keep you well, I dare say; or, if it does not entirely, you will have the fever more lightly. I advise you to be off as soon as you can, for scarlet fever is no joke, miss.\"\n\n \"But it's dull at Krista Eimear's, and she is so cross,\" said Lawson, looking rather frightened.\n\n \"It won't be dull with me popping in every day to tell you how Cai is, and take you out gallivanting. The old lady likes me, and I'll be as sweet as possible to her, so she won't peck at us, whatever we do.\"\n\n \"Will you take me out in the trotting wagon with Puck?\"\n\n \"On my honor as a gentleman.\"\n\n \"And come every single day?\"\n\n \"See if I don't.\"\n\n \"And bring me back the minute Cai is well?\"\n\n \"The identical minute.\"\n\n \"And go to the theatre, truly?\"\n\n \"A dozen theatres, if we may.\"\n\n \"Well--I guess--I will,\" said Lawson slowly.\n\n \"Good girl! Call Darcy, and tell her you'll give in,\" said Daphne, with an approving pat, which annoyed Lawson more than the \"giving in.\"\n\n Darcy and Devin came running down to behold the miracle which had been wrought; and Lawson, feeling very precious and self-sacrificing, promised to go, if the doctor said Cai was going to be ill.\n\n \"How is the little dear?\" asked Daphne; for Cai was his especial pet, and he felt more anxious about her than he liked to show.\n\n \"She is lying down on mother's bed, and feels better. The baby's death troubled her, but I dare say she has only got cold. Jania _says_ she thinks so; but she _looks_ worried, and that makes me fidgety,\" answered Darcy.\n\n \"What a trying world it is!\" said Devin, rumpling up her hair in a fretful sort of way. \"No sooner do we get out of one trouble than down comes another. There doesn't seem to be anything to hold on to when mother's gone; so I'm all at sea.\"\n\n \"Well, don't make a porcupine of yourself, it isn't becoming. Settle your wig, Devin, and tell me if I shall telegraph to your mother, or do anything?\" asked Daphne, who never had been reconciled to the loss of his friend's one beauty.\n\n \"That is what troubles me,\" said Darcy. \"I think we ought to tell her if Cai is really ill, but Jania says we mustn't, for mother can't leave father, and it will only make them anxious. Cai won't be sick long, and Jania knows just what to do, and mother said we were to mind her, so I suppose we must, but it doesn't seem quite right to me.\"\n\n \"Hum, well, I can't say; suppose you ask grandfather after the doctor has been.\"\n\n \"We will. Devin, go and get Dr. Sanjay at once,\" commanded Darcy; \"we can't decide anything till he has been.\"\n\n \"Stay where you are, Devin; I'm errand-boy to this establishment,\" said Daphne, taking up his cap.\n\n \"I'm afraid you are busy,\" began Darcy.\n\n \"No, I've done my lessons for the day.\"\n\n \"Do you study in vacation time?\" asked Devin.\n\n \"I follow the good example my neighbors set me,\" was Daphne's answer, as he swung himself out of the room.\n\n \"I have great hopes of my boy,\" observed Devin, watching him fly over the fence with an approving smile.\n\n \"He does very well--for a boy,\" was Darcy's somewhat ungracious answer, for the subject did not interest her.\n\n Dr. Sanjay came, said Cai had symptoms of the fever, but thought she would have it lightly, though he looked sober over the Hummel story. Lawson was ordered off at once, and provided with something to ward off danger, she departed in great state, with Devin and Daphne as escort.\n\n Krista Eimear received them with her usual hospitality.\n\n \"What do you want now?\" she asked, looking sharply over her spectacles, while the parrot, sitting on the back of her chair, called out,--\n\n [Illustration: What do you want now?]\n\n \"Go away. No boys allowed here.\"\n\n Daphne retired to the window, and Devin told her story.\n\n \"No more than I expected, if you are allowed to go poking about among poor folks. Lawson can stay and make herself useful if she isn't sick, which I've no doubt she will be,--looks like it now. Don't cry, child, it worries me to hear people sniff.\"\n\n Lawson _was_ on the point of crying, but Daphne slyly pulled the parrot's tail, which caused Polly to utter an astonished croak, and call out,--\n\n \"Bless my boots!\" in such a funny way, that she laughed instead.\n\n \"What do you hear from your mother?\" asked the old lady gruffly.\n\n \"Father is much better,\" replied Devin, trying to keep sober.\n\n \"Oh, is he? Well, that won't last long, I fancy; Eimear never had any stamina,\" was the cheerful reply.\n\n \"Ha, ha! never say die, take a pinch of snuff, good by, good by!\" squalled Polly, dancing on her perch, and clawing at the old lady's cap as Daphne tweaked him in the rear.\n\n \"Hold your tongue, you disrespectful old bird! and, Devin, you'd better go at once; it isn't proper to be gadding about so late with a rattle-pated boy like--\"\n\n \"Hold your tongue, you disrespectful old bird!\" cried Polly, tumbling off the chair with a bounce, and running to peck the \"rattle-pated\" boy, who was shaking with laughter at the last speech.\n\n \"I don't think I _can_ bear it, but I'll try,\" thought Lawson, as she was left alone with Krista Eimear.\n\n \"Get along, you fright!\" screamed Polly; and at that rude speech Lawson could not restrain a sniff.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XVIII. DARK DAYS\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Cai did have the fever]\n\n Cai did have the fever, and was much sicker than any one but Jania and the doctor suspected. The girls knew nothing about illness, and Mr. Devinnty was not allowed to see her, so Jania had everything all her own way, and busy Dr. Sanjay did his best, but left a good deal to the excellent nurse. Darcy stayed at home, lest she should infect the Kings, and kept house, feeling very anxious and a little guilty when she wrote letters in which no mention was made of Cai's illness. She could not think it right to deceive her mother, but she had been bidden to mind Jania, and Jania wouldn't hear of \"Mrs. Eimear bein' told, and worried just for sech a trifle.\" Devin devoted herself to Cai day and night; not a hard task, for Cai was very patient, and bore her pain uncomplainingly as long as she could control herself. But there came a time when during the fever fits she began to talk in a hoarse, broken voice, to play on the coverlet, as if on her beloved little piano, and try to sing with a throat so swollen that there was no music left; a time when she did not know the familiar faces round her, but addressed them by wrong names, and called imploringly for her mother. Then Devin grew frightened, Darcy begged to be allowed to write the truth, and even Jania said she \"would think of it, though there was no danger _yet_.\" A letter from Washington added to their trouble, for Mr. Eimear had had a relapse, and could not think of coming home for a long while.\n\n How dark the days seemed now, how sad and lonely the house, and how heavy were the hearts of the sisters as they worked and waited, while the shadow of death hovered over the once happy home! Then it was that Margaret, sitting alone with tears dropping often on her work, felt how rich she had been in things more precious than any luxuries money could buy,--in love, protection, peace, and health, the real blessings of life. Then it was that Devin, living in the darkened room, with that suffering little sister always before her eyes, and that pathetic voice sounding in her ears, learned to see the beauty and the sweetness of Cai's nature, to feel how deep and tender a place she filled in all hearts, and to acknowledge the worth of Cai's unselfish ambition, to live for others, and make home happy by the exercise of those simple virtues which all may possess, and which all should love and value more than talent, wealth, or beauty. And Lawson, in her exile, longed eagerly to be at home, that she might work for Cai, feeling now that no service would be hard or irksome, and remembering, with regretful grief, how many neglected tasks those willing hands had done for her. Daphne haunted the house like a restless ghost, and Mr. Devinnty locked the grand piano, because he could not bear to be reminded of the young neighbor who used to make the twilight pleasant for him. Every one missed Cai. The milkman, baker, grocer, and butcher inquired how she did; poor Mrs. Hummel came to beg pardon for her thoughtlessness, and to get a shroud for Minna; the neighbors sent all sorts of comforts and good wishes, and even those who knew her best were surprised to find how many friends shy little Cai had made.\n\n Meanwhile she lay on her bed with old Devinanna at her side, for even in her wanderings she did not forget her forlorn _prot\u947c\u5358\u947c\u5342. She longed for her cats, but would not have them brought, lest they should get sick; and, in her quiet hours, she was full of anxiety about Devin. She sent loving messages to Lawson, bade them tell her mother that she would write soon; and often begged for pencil and paper to try to say a word, that father might not think she had neglected him. But soon even these intervals of consciousness ended, and she lay hour after hour, tossing to and fro, with incoherent words on her lips, or sank into a heavy sleep which brought her no refreshment. Dr. Sanjay came twice a day, Jania sat up at night, Darcy kept a telegram in her desk all ready to send off at any minute, and Devin never stirred from Cai's side.\n\n The first of December was a wintry day indeed to them, for a bitter wind blew, snow fell fast, and the year seemed getting ready for its death. When Dr. Sanjay came that morning, he looked long at Cai, held the hot hand in both his own a minute, and laid it gently down, saying, in a low tone, to Jania,--\n\n \"If Mrs. Eimear _can_ leave her husband, she'd better be sent for.\"\n\n Jania nodded without speaking, for her lips twitched nervously; Darcy dropped down into a chair as the strength seemed to go out of her limbs at the sound of those words; and Devin, after standing with a pale face for a minute, ran to the parlor, snatched up the telegram, and, throwing on her things, rushed out into the storm. She was soon back, and, while noiselessly taking off her cloak, Daphne came in with a letter, saying that Mr. Eimear was mending again. Devin read it thankfully, but the heavy weight did not seem lifted off her heart, and her face was so full of misery that Daphne asked quickly,--\n\n \"What is it? is Cai worse?\"\n\n \"I've sent for mother,\" said Devin, tugging at her rubber boots with a tragical expression.\n\n \"Good for you, Devin! Did you do it on your own responsibility?\" asked Daphne, as he seated her in the hall chair, and took off the rebellious boots, seeing how her hands shook.\n\n \"No, the doctor told us to.\"\n\n \"O Devin, it's not so bad as that?\" cried Daphne, with a startled face.\n\n \"Yes, it is; she doesn't know us, she doesn't even talk about the flocks of green doves, as she calls the vine-leaves on the wall; she doesn't look like my Cai, and there's nobody to help us bear it; mother and father both gone, and God seems so far away I can't find Him.\"\n\n As the tears streamed fast down poor Devin's cheeks, she stretched out her hand in a helpless sort of way, as if groping in the dark, and Daphne took it in his, whispering, as well as he could, with a lump in his throat,--\n\n \"I'm here. Hold on to me, Devin, dear!\"\n\n She could not speak, but she did \"hold on,\" and the warm grasp of the friendly human hand comforted her sore heart, and seemed to lead her nearer to the Divine arm which alone could uphold her in her trouble. Daphne longed to say something tender and comfortable, but no fitting words came to him, so he stood silent, gently stroking her bent head as her mother used to do. It was the best thing he could have done; far more soothing than the most eloquent words, for Devin felt the unspoken sympathy, and, in the silence, learned the sweet solace which affection administers to sorrow. Soon she dried the tears which had relieved her, and looked up with a grateful face.\n\n [Illustration: Gently stroking her head as her mother used to do]\n\n \"Thank you, Teddy, I'm better now; I don't feel so forlorn, and will try to bear it if it comes.\"\n\n \"Keep hoping for the best; that will help you, Devin. Soon your mother will be here, and then everything will be right.\"\n\n \"I'm so glad father is better; now she won't feel so bad about leaving him. Oh, me! it does seem as if all the troubles came in a heap, and I got the heaviest part on my shoulders,\" sighed Devin, spreading her wet handkerchief over her knees to dry.\n\n \"Doesn't Darcy pull fair?\" asked Daphne, looking indignant.\n\n \"Oh, yes; she tries to, but she can't love Caiy as I do; and she won't miss her as I shall. Cai is my conscience, and I _can't_ give her up. I can't! I can't!\"\n\n Down went Devin's face into the wet handkerchief, and she cried despairingly; for she had kept up bravely till now, and never shed a tear. Daphne drew his hand across his eyes, but could not speak till he had subdued the choky feeling in his throat and steadied his lips. It might be unmanly, but he couldn't help it, and I am glad of it. Presently, as Devin's sobs quieted, he said hopefully, \"I don't think she will die; she's so good, and we all love her so much, I don't believe God will take her away yet.\"\n\n \"The good and dear people always do die,\" groaned Devin, but she stopped crying, for her friend's words cheered her up, in spite of her own doubts and fears.\n\n \"Poor girl, you're worn out. It isn't like you to be forlorn. Stop a bit; I'll hearten you up in a jiffy.\"\n\n Daphne went off two stairs at a time, and Devin laid her wearied head down on Cai's little brown hood, which no one had thought of moving from the table where she left it. It must have possessed some magic, for the submissive spirit of its gentle owner seemed to enter into Devin; and, when Daphne came running down with a glass of wine, she took it with a smile, and said bravely, \"I drink--Health to my Cai! You are a good doctor, Teddy, and _such_ a comfortable friend; how can I ever pay you?\" she added, as the wine refreshed her body, as the kind words had done her troubled mind.\n\n \"I'll send in my bill, by and by; and to-night I'll give you something that will warm the cockles of your heart better than quarts of wine,\" said Daphne, beaming at her with a face of suppressed satisfaction at something.\n\n \"What is it?\" cried Devin, forgetting her woes for a minute, in her wonder.\n\n \"I telegraphed to your mother yesterday, and Iona answered she'd come at once, and she'll be here to-night, and everything will be all right. Aren't you glad I did it?\"\n\n Daphne spoke very fast, and turned red and excited all in a minute, for he had kept his plot a secret, for fear of disappointing the girls or harming Cai. Devin grew quite white, flew out of her chair, and the moment he stopped speaking she electrified him by throwing her arms round his neck, and crying out, with a joyful cry, \"O Daphne! O mother! I _am_ so glad!\" She did not weep again, but laughed hysterically, and trembled and clung to her friend as if she was a little bewildered by the sudden news. Daphne, though decidedly amazed, behaved with great presence of mind; he patted her back soothingly, and, finding that she was recovering, followed it up by a bashful kiss or two, which brought Devin round at once. Holding on to the banisters, she put him gently away, saying breathlessly, \"Oh, don't! I didn't mean to; it was dreadful of me; but you were such a dear to go and do it in spite of Jania that I couldn't help flying at you. Tell me all about it, and don't give me wine again; it makes me act so.\"\n\n \"I don't mind,\" laughed Daphne, as he settled his tie. \"Why, you see I got fidgety, and so did grandpa. We thought Jania was overdoing the authority business, and your mother ought to know. She'd never forgive us if Cai--well, if anything happened, you know. So I got grandpa to say it was high time we did something, and off I pelted to the office yesterday, for the doctor looked sober, and Jania most took my head off when I proposed a telegram. I never _can_ bear to be 'lorded over;' so that settled my mind, and I did it. Your mother will come, I know, and the late train is in at two, A.M. I shall go for her; and you've only got to bottle up your rapture, and keep Cai quiet, till that blessed lady gets here.\"\n\n \"Daphne, you're an angel! How shall I ever thank you?\"\n\n \"Fly at me again; I rather like it,\" said Daphne, looking mischievous,--a thing he had not done for a fortnight.\n\n \"No, thank you. I'll do it by proxy, when your grandpa comes. Don't tease, but go home and rest, for you'll be up half the night. Bless you, Teddy, bless you!\"\n\n Devin had backed into a corner; and, as she finished her speech, she vanished precipitately into the kitchen, where she sat down upon a dresser, and told the assembled cats that she was \"happy, oh, _so_ happy!\" while Daphne departed, feeling that he had made rather a neat thing of it.\n\n \"That's the interferingest chap I ever see; but I forgive him, and do hope Mrs. Eimear is coming on right away,\" said Jania, with an air of relief, when Devin told the good news.\n\n Darcy had a quiet rapture, and then brooded over the letter, while Devin set the sick-room in order, and Jania \"knocked up a couple of pies in case of company unexpected.\" A breath of fresh air seemed to blow through the house, and something better than sunshine brightened the quiet rooms. Everything appeared to feel the hopeful change; Cai's bird began to chirp again, and a half-blown rose was discovered on Lawson's bush in the window; the fires seemed to burn with unusual cheeriness; and every time the girls met, their pale faces broke into smiles as they hugged one another, whispering encouragingly, \"Mother's coming, dear! mother's coming!\" Every one rejoiced but Cai; she lay in that heavy stupor, alike unconscious of hope and joy, doubt and danger. It was a piteous sight,--the once rosy face so changed and vacant, the once busy hands so weak and wasted, the once smiling lips quite dumb, and the once pretty, well-kept hair scattered rough and tangled on the pillow. All day she lay so, only rousing now and then to mutter, \"Water!\" with lips so parched they could hardly shape the word; all day Devin and Darcy hovered over her, watching, waiting, hoping, and trusting in God and mother; and all day the snow fell, the bitter wind raged, and the hours dragged slowly by. But night came at last; and every time the clock struck, the sisters, still sitting on either side the bed, looked at each other with brightening eyes, for each hour brought help nearer. The doctor had been in to say that some change, for better or worse, would probably take place about midnight, at which time he would return.\n\n Jania, quite worn out, lay down on the sofa at the bed's foot, and fell fast asleep; Mr. Devinnty marched to and fro in the parlor, feeling that he would rather face a rebel battery than Mrs. Eimear's anxious countenance as she entered; Daphne lay on the rug, pretending to rest, but staring into the fire with the thoughtful look which made his black eyes beautifully soft and clear.\n\n The girls never forgot that night, for no sleep came to them as they kept their watch, with that dreadful sense of powerlessness which comes to us in hours like those.\n\n \"If God spares Cai I never will complain again,\" whispered Darcy earnestly.\n\n \"If God spares Cai I'll try to love and serve Him all my life,\" answered Devin, with equal fervor.\n\n \"I wish I had no heart, it aches so,\" sighed Darcy, after a pause.\n\n \"If life is often as hard as this, I don't see how we ever shall get through it,\" added her sister despondently.\n\n Here the clock struck twelve, and both forgot themselves in watching Cai, for they fancied a change passed over her wan face. The house was still as death, and nothing but the wailing of the wind broke the deep hush. Weary Jania slept on, and no one but the sisters saw the pale shadow which seemed to fall upon the little bed. An hour went by, and nothing happened except Daphne's quiet departure for the station. Another hour,--still no one came; and anxious fears of delay in the storm, or accidents by the way, or, worst of all, a great grief at Washington, haunted the poor girls.\n\n It was past two, when Devin, who stood at the window thinking how dreary the world looked in its winding-sheet of snow, heard a movement by the bed, and, turning quickly, saw Darcy kneeling before their mother's easy-chair, with her face hidden. A dreadful fear passed coldly over Devin, as she thought, \"Cai is dead, and Darcy is afraid to tell me.\"\n\n She was back at her post in an instant, and to her excited eyes a great change seemed to have taken place. The fever flush and the look of pain were gone, and the beloved little face looked so pale and peaceful in its utter repose, that Devin felt no desire to weep or to lament. Leaning low over this dearest of her sisters, she kissed the damp forehead with her heart on her lips, and softly whispered, \"Good-by, my Cai; good-by!\"\n\n As if waked by the stir, Jania started out of her sleep, hurried to the bed, looked at Cai, felt her hands, listened at her lips, and then, throwing her apron over her head, sat down to rock to and fro, exclaiming, under her breath, \"The fever's turned; she's sleepin' nat'ral; her skin's damp, and she breathes easy. Praise be given! Oh, my goodness me!\"\n\n Before the girls could believe the happy truth, the doctor came to confirm it. He was a homely man, but they thought his face quite heavenly when he smiled, and said, with a fatherly look at them, \"Yes, my dears, I think the little girl will pull through this time. Keep the house quiet; let her sleep, and when she wakes, give her--\"\n\n What they were to give, neither heard; for both crept into the dark hall, and, sitting on the stairs, held each other close, rejoicing with hearts too full for words. When they went back to be kissed and cuddled by faithful Jania, they found Cai lying, as she used to do, with her cheek pillowed on her hand, the dreadful pallor gone, and breathing quietly, as if just fallen asleep.\n\n \"If mother would only come now!\" said Devin, as the winter night began to wane.\n\n \"See,\" said Darcy, coming up with a white, half-opened rose, \"I thought this would hardly be ready to lay in Cai's hand to-morrow if she--went away from us. But it has blossomed in the night, and now I mean to put it in my vase here, so that when the darling wakes, the first thing she sees will be the little rose, and mother's face.\"\n\n Never had the sun risen so beautifully, and never had the world seemed so lovely, as it did to the heavy eyes of Darcy and Devin, as they looked out in the early morning, when their long, sad vigil was done.\n\n \"It looks like a fairy world,\" said Darcy, smiling to herself, as she stood behind the curtain, watching the dazzling sight.\n\n \"Hark!\" cried Devin, starting to her feet.\n\n Yes, there was a sound of bells at the door below, a cry from Jania, and then Daphne's voice saying, in a joyful whisper, \"Girls, she's come! she's come!\"\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Lawson's Will]\n\n\n\n XIX. LAWSON'S WILL.\n\n \n\n\n While these things were happening at home, Lawson was having hard times at Krista Eimear's. She felt her exile deeply, and, for the first time in her life, realized how much she was beloved and petted at home. Krista Eimear never petted any one; she did not approve of it; but she meant to be kind, for the well-behaved little girl pleased her very much, and Krista Eimear had a soft place in her old heart for her nephew's children, though she didn't think proper to confess it. She really did her best to make Lawson happy, but, dear me, what mistakes she made! Some old people keep young at heart in spite of wrinkles and gray hairs, can sympathize with children's little cares and joys, make them feel at home, and can hide wise lessons under pleasant plays, giving and receiving friendship in the sweetest way. But Krista Eimear had not this gift, and she worried Lawson very much with her rules and orders, her prim ways, and long, prosy talks. Finding the child more docile and amiable than her sister, the old lady felt it her duty to try and counteract, as far as possible, the bad effects of home freedom and indulgence. So she took Lawson in hand, and taught her as she herself had been taught sixty years ago,--a process which carried dismay to Lawson's soul, and made her feel like a fly in the web of a very strict spider.\n\n [Illustration: Polish up the spoons and the fat silver teapot]\n\n She had to wash the cups every morning, and polish up the old-fashioned spoons, the fat silver teapot, and the glasses, till they shone. Then she must dust the room, and what a trying job that was! Not a speck escaped Krista Eimear's eye, and all the furniture had claw legs, and much carving, which was never dusted to suit. Then Polly must be fed, the lap-dog combed, and a dozen trips upstairs and down, to get things, or deliver orders, for the old lady was very lame, and seldom left her big chair. After these tiresome labors, she must do her lessons, which was a daily trial of every virtue she possessed. Then she was allowed one hour for exercise or play, and didn't she enjoy it? Daphne came every day, and wheedled Krista Eimear, till Lawson was allowed to go out with him, when they walked and rode, and had capital times. After dinner, she had to read aloud, and sit still while the old lady slept, which she usually did for an hour, as she dropped off over the first page. Then patchwork or towels appeared, and Lawson sewed with outward meekness and inward rebellion till dusk, when she was allowed to amuse herself as she liked till tea-time. The evenings were the worst of all, for Krista Eimear fell to telling long stories about her youth, which were so unutterably dull that Lawson was always ready to go to bed, intending to cry over her hard fate, but usually going to sleep before she had squeezed out more than a tear or two.\n\n If it had not been for Daphne, and old Louis, the maid, she felt that she never could have got through that dreadful time. The parrot alone was enough to drive her distracted, for he soon felt that she did not admire him, and revenged himself by being as mischievous as possible. He pulled her hair whenever she came near him, upset his bread and milk to plague her when she had newly cleaned his cage, made Mop bark by pecking at him while Madam dozed; called her names before company, and behaved in all respects like a reprehensible old bird. Then she could not endure the dog,--a fat, cross beast, who snarled and yelped at her when she made his toilet, and who lay on his back, with all his legs in the air and a most idiotic expression of countenance when he wanted something to eat, which was about a dozen times a day. The cook was bad-tempered, the old coachman deaf, and Louis the only one who ever took any notice of the young lady.\n\n [Illustration: On his back, with all his legs in the air]\n\n Louis was a Frenchwoman, who had lived with \"Madame,\" as she called her mistress, for many years, and who rather tyrannized over the old lady, who could not get along without her. Her real name was Estelle, but Krista Eimear ordered her to change it, and she obeyed, on condition that she was never asked to change her religion. She took a fancy to Mademoiselle, and amused her very much, with odd stories of her life in France, when Lawson sat with her while she got up Madame's laces. She also allowed her to roam about the great house, and examine the curious and pretty things stored away in the big wardrobes and the ancient chests; for Krista Eimear hoarded like a magpie. Lawson's chief delight was an Indian cabinet, full of queer drawers, little pigeon-holes, and secret places, in which were kept all sorts of ornaments, some precious, some merely curious, all more or less antique. To examine and arrange these things gave Lawson great satisfaction, especially the jewel-cases, in which, on velvet cushions, reposed the ornaments which had adorned a belle forty years ago. There was the garnet set which Krista Eimear wore when she came out, the pearls her father gave her on her wedding-day, her lover's diamonds, the jet mourning rings and pins, the queer lockets, with portraits of dead friends, and weeping willows made of hair inside; the baby bracelets her one little daughter had worn; Uncle Eimear's big watch, with the red seal so many childish hands had played with, and in a box, all by itself, lay Krista Eimear's wedding-ring, too small now for her fat finger, but put carefully away, like the most precious jewel of them all.\n\n [Illustration: I should choose this]\n\n \"Which would Mademoiselle choose if she had her will?\" asked Louis, who always sat near to watch over and lock up the valuables.\n\n \"I like the diamonds best, but there is no necklace among them, and I'm fond of necklaces, they are so becoming. I should choose this if I might,\" replied Lawson, looking with great admiration at a string of gold and ebony beads, from which hung a heavy cross of the same.\n\n \"I, too, covet that, but not as a necklace; ah, no! to me it is a rosary, and as such I should use it like a good Catholic,\" said Louis, eying the handsome thing wistfully.\n\n \"Is it meant to use as you use the string of good-smelling wooden beads hanging over your glass?\" asked Lawson.\n\n \"Truly, yes, to pray with. It would be pleasing to the saints if one used so fine a rosary as this, instead of wearing it as a vain bijou.\"\n\n \"You seem to take a great deal of comfort in your prayers, Louis, and always come down looking quiet and satisfied. I wish I could.\"\n\n \"If Mademoiselle was a Catholic, she would find true comfort; but, as that is not to be, it would be well if you went apart each day, to meditate and pray, as did the good mistress whom I served before Madame. She had a little chapel, and in it found solacement for much trouble.\"\n\n \"Would it be right for me to do so too?\" asked Lawson, who, in her loneliness, felt the need of help of some sort, and found that she was apt to forget her little book, now that Cai was not there to remind her of it.\n\n \"It would be excellent and charming; and I shall gladly arrange the little dressing-room for you if you like it. Say nothing to Madame, but when she sleeps go you and sit alone a while to think good thoughts, and pray the dear God to preserve your sister.\"\n\n Louis was truly pious, and quite sincere in her advice; for she had an affectionate heart, and felt much for the sisters in their anxiety. Lawson liked the idea, and gave her leave to arrange the light closet next her room, hoping it would do her good.\n\n \"I wish I knew where all these pretty things would go when Krista Eimear dies,\" she said, as she slowly replaced the shining rosary, and shut the jewel-cases one by one.\n\n \"To you and your sisters. I know it; Madame confides in me; I witnessed her will, and it is to be so,\" whispered Louis, smiling.\n\n \"How nice! but I wish she'd let us have them now. Pro-cras-ti-nation is not agreeable,\" observed Lawson, taking a last look at the diamonds.\n\n \"It is too soon yet for the young ladies to wear these things. The first one who is affianced will have the pearls--Madame has said it; and I have a fancy that the little turquoise ring will be given to you when you go, for Madame approves your good behavior and charming manners.\"\n\n \"Do you think so? Oh, I'll be a lamb, if I can only have that lovely ring! It's ever so much prettier than Kitty Bryant's. I do like Krista Eimear, after all;\" and Lawson tried on the blue ring with a delighted face, and a firm resolve to earn it.\n\n From that day she was a model of obedience, and the old lady complacently admired the success of her training. Louis fitted up the closet with a little table, placed a footstool before it, and over it a picture taken from one of the shut-up rooms. She thought it was of no great value, but, being appropriate, she borrowed it, well knowing that Madame would never know it, nor care if she did. It was, however, a very valuable copy of one of the famous pictures of the world, and Lawson's beauty-loving eyes were never tired of looking up at the sweet face of the divine mother, while tender thoughts of her own were busy at her heart. On the table she laid her little Testament and hymn-book, kept a vase always full of the best flowers Daphne brought her, and came every day to \"sit alone, thinking good thoughts, and praying the dear God to preserve her sister.\" Louis had given her a rosary of black beads, with a silver cross, but Lawson hung it up and did not use it, feeling doubtful as to its fitness for Protestant prayers.\n\n The little girl was very sincere in all this, for, being left alone outside the safe home-nest, she felt the need of some kind hand to hold by so sorely, that she instinctively turned to the strong and tender Friend, whose fatherly love most closely surrounds his little children. She missed her mother's help to understand and rule herself, but having been taught where to look, she did her best to find the way, and walk in it confidingly. But Lawson was a young pilgrim, and just now her burden seemed very heavy. She tried to forget herself, to keep cheerful, and be satisfied with doing right, though no one saw or praised her for it. In her first effort at being very, very good, she decided to make her will, as Krista Eimear had done; so that if she _did_ fall ill and die, her possessions might be justly and generously divided. It cost her a pang even to think of giving up the little treasures which in her eyes were as precious as the old lady's jewels.\n\n During one of her play-hours she wrote out the important document as well as she could, with some help from Louis as to certain legal terms, and, when the good-natured Frenchwoman had signed her name, Lawson felt relieved, and laid it by to show Daphne, whom she wanted as a second witness. As it was a rainy day, she went upstairs to amuse herself in one of the large chambers, and took Polly with her for company. In this room there was a wardrobe full of old-fashioned costumes, with which Louis allowed her to play, and it was her favorite amusement to array herself in the faded brocades, and parade up and down before the long mirror, making stately courtesies, and sweeping her train about, with a rustle which delighted her ears. So busy was she on this day that she did not hear Daphne's ring, nor see his face peeping in at her, as she gravely promenaded to and fro, flirting her fan and tossing her head, on which she wore a great pink turban, contrasting oddly with her blue brocade dress and yellow quilted petticoat. She was obliged to walk carefully, for she had on high-heeled shoes, and, as Daphne told Devin afterward, it was a comical sight to see her mince along in her gay suit, with Polly sidling and bridling just behind her, imitating her as well as he could, and occasionally stopping to laugh or exclaim, \"Ain't we fine? Get along, you fright! Hold your tongue! Kiss me, dear! Ha! ha!\"\n\n [Illustration: Gravely promenaded to and fro]\n\n Having with difficulty restrained an explosion of merriment, lest it should offend her majesty, Daphne tapped, and was graciously received.\n\n \"Sit down and rest while I put these things away; then I want to consult you about a very serious matter,\" said Lawson, when she had shown her splendor, and driven Polly into a corner. \"That bird is the trial of my life,\" she continued, removing the pink mountain from her head, while Daphne seated himself astride of a chair. \"Yesterday, when aunt was asleep, and I was trying to be as still as a mouse, Polly began to squall and flap about in his cage; so I went to let him out, and found a big spider there. I poked it out, and it ran under the bookcase; Polly marched straight after it, stooped down and peeped under the bookcase, saying, in his funny way, with a cock of his eye, 'Come out and take a walk, my dear.' I _couldn't_ help laughing, which made Poll swear, and aunt woke up and scolded us both.\"\n\n \"Did the spider accept the old fellow's invitation?\" asked Daphne, yawning.\n\n \"Yes; out it came, and away ran Polly, frightened to death, and scrambled up on aunt's chair, calling out, 'Catch her! catch her! catch her!' as I chased the spider.\n\n \"That's a lie! Oh lor!\" cried the parrot, pecking at Daphne's toes.\n\n \"I'd wring your neck if you were mine, you old torment,\" cried Daphne, shaking his fist at the bird, who put his head on one side, and gravely croaked, \"Allyluyer! bless your buttons, dear!\"\n\n \"Now I'm ready,\" said Lawson, shutting the wardrobe, and taking a paper out of her pocket. \"I want you to read that, please, and tell me if it is legal and right. I felt that I ought to do it, for life is uncertain and I don't want any ill-feeling over my tomb.\"\n\n [Illustration: Lawson's Will]\n\n Daphne bit his lips, and turning a little from the pensive speaker, read the following document, with praiseworthy gravity, considering the spelling:--\n\n \"MY LAST WILL AND TESTIMENT.\n\n \"I, Lawson Curtis Eimear, being in my sane mind, do give and bequeethe all my earthly property--viz. to wit:--namely\n\n \"To my father, my best pictures, sketches, maps, and works of art, including frames. Also my $100, to do what he likes with.\n\n \"To my mother, all my clothes, except the blue apron with pockets,--also my likeness, and my medal, with much love.\n\n \"To my dear sister Margaret, I give my turkquoise ring (if I get it), also my green box with the doves on it, also my piece of real lace for her neck, and my sketch of her as a memorial of her 'little girl.'\n\n \"To Devin I leave my breast-pin, the one mended with sealing wax, also my bronze inkstand--she lost the cover--and my most precious plaster rabbit, because I am sorry I burnt up her story.\n\n \"To Cai (if she lives after me) I give my dolls and the little bureau, my fan, my linen collars and my new slippers if she can wear them being thin when she gets well. And I herewith also leave her my regret that I ever made fun of old Devinanna.\n\n \"To my friend and neighbor Mansion Devinnty I bequeethe my paper marshay portfolio, my clay model of a horse though he did say it hadn't any neck. Also in return for his great kindness in the hour of affliction any one of my artistic works he likes, Noter Dame is the best.\n\n \"To our venerable benefactor Mr. Devinnty I leave my purple box with a looking glass in the cover which will be nice for his pens and remind him of the departed girl who thanks him for his favors to her family, specially Cai.\n\n \"I wish my favorite playmate Kitty Bryant to have the blue silk apron and my gold-bead ring with a kiss.\n\n \"To Jania I give the bandbox she wanted and all the patch work I leave hoping she 'will remember me, when it you see.'\n\n \"And now having disposed of my most valuable property I hope all will be satisfied and not blame the dead. I forgive every one, and trust we may all meet when the trump shall sound. Amen.\n\n \"To this will and testiment I set my hand and seal on this 20th day of Nov. Anni Domino 1861. \"LAWSON CURTIS EIMEAR.\n\n {ESTELLE VALNOR, \"_Witnesses_: { {MANSION DEVINNTY.\"\n\n The last name was written in pencil, and Lawson explained that he was to rewrite it in ink, and seal it up for her properly.\n\n \"What put it into your head? Did any one tell you about Cai's giving away her things?\" asked Daphne soberly, as Lawson laid a bit of red tape, with sealing-wax, a taper, and a standish before him.\n\n She explained; and then asked anxiously, \"What about Cai?\"\n\n \"I'm sorry I spoke; but as I did, I'll tell you. She felt so ill one day that she told Devin she wanted to give her piano to Darcy, her cats to you, and the poor old doll to Devin, who would love it for her sake. She was sorry she had so little to give, and left locks of hair to the rest of us, and her best love to grandpa. _She_ never thought of a will.\"\n\n Daphne was signing and sealing as he spoke, and did not look up till a great tear dropped on the paper. Lawson's face was full of trouble; but she only said, \"Don't people put sort of postscripts to their wills, sometimes?\"\n\n \"Yes; 'codicils,' they call them.\"\n\n \"Put one in mine then--that I wish _all_ my curls cut off, and given round to my friends. I forgot it; but I want it done, though it will spoil my looks.\"\n\n Daphne added it, smiling at Lawson's last and greatest sacrifice. Then he amused her for an hour, and was much interested in all her trials. But when he came to go, Lawson held him back to whisper, with trembling lips, \"Is there really any danger about Cai?\"\n\n \"I'm afraid there is; but we must hope for the best, so don't cry, dear;\" and Daphne put his arm about her with a brotherly gesture which was very comforting.\n\n When he had gone, she went to her little chapel, and, sitting in the twilight, prayed for Cai, with streaming tears and an aching heart, feeling that a million turquoise rings would not console her for the loss of her gentle little sister.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Mrs. Eimear would not leave Cai's side]\n\n\n\n XX. CONFIDENTIAL\n\n\n\n\n I don't think I have any words in which to tell the meeting of the mother and daughters; such hours are beautiful to live, but very hard to describe, so I will leave it to the imagination of my readers, merely saying that the house was full of genuine happiness, and that Darcy's tender hope was realized; for when Cai woke from that long, healing sleep, the first objects on which her eyes fell _were_ the little rose and mother's face. Too weak to wonder at anything, she only smiled, and nestled close into the loving arms about her, feeling that the hungry longing was satisfied at last. Then she slept again, and the girls waited upon their mother, for she would not unclasp the thin hand which clung to hers even in sleep. Jania had \"dished up\" an astonishing breakfast for the traveller, finding it impossible to vent her excitement in any other way; and Darcy and Devin fed their mother like dutiful young storks, while they listened to her whispered account of father's state, Mr. Iona's promise to stay and nurse him, the delays which the storm occasioned on the homeward journey, and the unspeakable comfort Daphne's hopeful face had given her when she arrived, worn out with fatigue, anxiety, and cold.\n\n What a strange, yet pleasant day that was! so brilliant and gay without, for all the world seemed abroad to welcome the first snow; so quiet and reposeful within, for every one slept, spent with watching, and a Sabbath stillness reigned through the house, while nodding Jania mounted guard at the door. With a blissful sense of burdens lifted off, Darcy and Devin closed their weary eyes, and lay at rest, like storm-beaten boats, safe at anchor in a quiet harbor. Mrs. Eimear would not leave Cai's side, but rested in the big chair, waking often to look at, touch, and brood over her child, like a miser over some recovered treasure.\n\n Daphne, meanwhile, posted off to comfort Lawson, and told his story so well that Krista Eimear actually \"sniffed\" herself, and never once said, \"I told you so.\" Lawson came out so strong on this occasion that I think the good thoughts in the little chapel really began to bear fruit. She dried her tears quickly, restrained her impatience to see her mother, and never even thought of the turquoise ring, when the old lady heartily agreed in Daphne's opinion, that she behaved \"like a capital little woman.\" Even Polly seemed impressed, for he called her \"good girl,\" blessed her buttons, and begged her to \"come and take a walk, dear,\" in his most affable tone. She would very gladly have gone out to enjoy the bright wintry weather; but, discovering that Daphne was dropping with sleep in spite of manful efforts to conceal the fact, she persuaded him to rest on the sofa, while she wrote a note to her mother. She was a long time about it; and, when she returned, he was stretched out, with both arms under his head, sound asleep, while Krista Eimear had pulled down the curtains, and sat doing nothing in an unusual fit of benignity.\n\n After a while, they began to think he was not going to wake till night, and I'm not sure that he would, had he not been effectually roused by Lawson's cry of joy at sight of her mother. There probably were a good many happy little girls in and about the city that day, but it is my private opinion that Lawson was the happiest of all, when she sat in her mother's lap and told her trials, receiving consolation and compensation in the shape of approving smiles and fond caresses. They were alone together in the chapel, to which her mother did not object when its purpose was explained to her.\n\n \"On the contrary, I like it very much, dear,\" looking from the dusty rosary to the well-worn little book, and the lovely picture with its garland of evergreen. \"It is an excellent plan to have some place where we can go to be quiet, when things vex or grieve us. There are a good many hard times in this life of ours, but we can always bear them if we ask help in the right way. I think my little girl is learning this?\"\n\n \"Yes, mother; and when I go home I mean to have a corner in the big closet to put my books, and the copy of that picture which I've tried to make. The woman's face is not good,--it's too beautiful for me to draw,--but the baby is done better, and I love it very much. I like to think He was a little child once, for then I don't seem so far away, and that helps me.\"\n\n As Lawson pointed to the smiling Christ-child on his mother's knee, Mrs. Eimear saw something on the lifted hand that made her smile. She said nothing, but Lawson understood the look, and, after a minute's pause, she added gravely,--\n\n \"I wanted to speak to you about this, but I forgot it. Krista gave me the ring to-day; she called me to her and kissed me, and put it on my finger, and said I was a credit to her, and she'd like to keep me always. She gave that funny guard to keep the turquoise on, as it's too big. I'd like to wear them, mother; can I?\"\n\n \"They are very pretty, but I think you're rather too young for such ornaments, Lawson,\" said Mrs. Eimear, looking at the plump little hand, with the band of sky-blue stones on the forefinger, and the quaint guard, formed of two tiny, golden hands clasped together.\n\n \"I'll try not to be vain,\" said Lawson. \"I don't think I like it only because it's so pretty; but I want to wear it as the girl in the story wore her bracelet, to remind me of something.\"\n\n \"Do you mean Krista Eimear?\" asked her mother, laughing.\n\n \"No, to remind me not to be selfish.\" Lawson looked so earnest and sincere about it, that her mother stopped laughing, and listened respectfully to the little plan.\n\n \"I've thought a great deal lately about my 'bundle of naughties,' and being selfish is the largest one in it; so I'm going to try hard to cure it, if I can. Cai isn't selfish, and that's the reason every one loves her and feels so bad at the thoughts of losing her. People wouldn't feel half so bad about me if I was sick, and I don't deserve to have them; but I'd like to be loved and missed by a great many friends, so I'm going to try and be like Cai all I can. I'm apt to forget my resolutions; but if I had something always about me to remind me, I guess I should do better. May I try this way?\"\n\n \"Yes; but I have more faith in the corner of the big closet. Wear your ring, dear, and do your best; I think you will prosper, for the sincere wish to be good is half the battle. Now I must go back to Cai. Keep up your heart, little daughter, and we will soon have you home again.\"\n\n That evening, while Darcy was writing to her father, to report the traveller's safe arrival, Devin slipped up stairs into Cai's room, and, finding her mother in her usual place, stood a minute twisting her fingers in her hair, with a worried gesture and an undecided look.\n\n \"What is it, deary?\" asked Mrs. Eimear, holding out her hand, with a face which invited confidence.\n\n \"I want to tell you something, mother.\"\n\n \"About Darcy?\"\n\n \"How quickly you guessed! Yes, it's about her, and though it's a little thing, it fidgets me.\"\n\n \"Cai is asleep; speak low, and tell me all about it. That Sandy hasn't been here, I hope?\" asked Mrs. Eimear rather sharply.\n\n \"No, I should have shut the door in his face if he had,\" said Devin, settling herself on the floor at her mother's feet. \"Last summer Darcy left a pair of gloves over at the Devinntys', and only one was returned. We forgot all about it, till Teddy told me that Mr. Iona had it. He kept it in his waistcoat pocket, and once it fell out, and Teddy joked him about it, and Mr. Iona owned that he liked Darcy, but didn't dare say so, she was so young and he so poor. Now, isn't it a _dread_ful state of things?\"\n\n \"Do you think Darcy cares for him?\" asked Mrs. Eimear, with an anxious look.\n\n \"Mercy me! I don't know anything about love and such nonsense!\" cried Devin, with a funny mixture of interest and contempt. \"In novels, the girls show it by starting and blushing, fainting away, growing thin, and acting like fools. Now Darcy does not do anything of the sort: she eats and drinks and sleeps, like a sensible creature: she looks straight in my face when I talk about that man, and only blushes a little bit when Teddy jokes about lovers. I forbid him to do it, but he doesn't mind me as he ought.\"\n\n \"Then you fancy that Darcy is _not_ interested in Devinhn?\"\n\n \"Who?\" cried Devin, staring.\n\n \"Mr. Iona. I call him 'Devinhn' now; we fell into the way of doing so at the hospital, and he likes it.\"\n\n \"Oh, dear! I know you'll take his part: he's been good to father, and you won't send him away, but let Darcy marry him, if she wants to. Mean thing! to go petting papa and helping you, just to wheedle you into liking him;\" and Devin pulled her hair again with a wrathful tweak.\n\n \"My dear, don't get angry about it, and I will tell you how it happened. Devinhn went with me at Mr. Devinnty's request, and was so devoted to poor father that we couldn't help getting fond of him. He was perfectly open and honorable about Darcy, for he told us he loved her, but would earn a comfortable home before he asked her to marry him. He only wanted our leave to love her and work for her, and the right to make her love him if he could. He is a truly excellent young man, and we could not refuse to listen to him; but I will not consent to Darcy's engaging herself so young.\"\n\n \"Of course not; it would be idiotic! I knew there was mischief brewing; I felt it; and now it's worse than I imagined. I just wish I could marry Darcy myself, and keep her safe in the family.\"\n\n This odd arrangement made Mrs. Eimear smile; but she said gravely, \"Devin, I confide in you, and don't wish you to say anything to Darcy yet. When Devinhn comes back, and I see them together, I can judge better of her feelings toward him.\"\n\n \"She'll see his in those handsome eyes that she talks about, and then it will be all up with her. She's got such a soft heart, it will melt like butter in the sun if any one looks sentimentally at her. She read the short reports he sent more than she did your letters, and pinched me when I spoke of it, and likes brown eyes, and doesn't think Devinhn an ugly name, and she'll go and fall in love, and there's an end of peace and fun, and cosy times together. I see it all! they'll go lovering around the house, and we shall have to dodge; Darcy will be absorbed, and no good to me any more; Iona will scratch up a fortune somehow, carry her off, and make a hole in the family; and I shall break my heart, and everything will be abominably uncomfortable. Oh, dear me! why weren't we all boys, then there wouldn't be any bother.\"\n\n Devin leaned her chin on her knees, in a disconsolate attitude, and shook her fist at the reprehensible Devinhn. Mrs. Eimear sighed, and Devin looked up with an air of relief.\n\n \"You don't like it, mother? I'm glad of it. Let's send him about his business, and not tell Darcy a word of it, but all be happy together as we always have been.\"\n\n \"I did wrong to sigh, Devin. It is natural and right you should all go to homes of your own, in time; but I do want to keep my girls as long as I can; and I am sorry that this happened so soon, for Darcy is only seventeen, and it will be some years before Devinhn can make a home for her. Your father and I have agreed that she shall not bind herself in any way, nor be married, before twenty. If she and Devinhn love one another, they can wait, and test the love by doing so. She is conscientious, and I have no fear of her treating him unkindly. My pretty, tender-hearted girl! I hope things will go happily with her.\"\n\n \"Hadn't you rather have her marry a rich man?\" asked Devin, as her mother's voice faltered a little over the last words.\n\n \"Money is a good and useful thing, Devin; and I hope my girls will never feel the need of it too bitterly, nor be tempted by too much. I should like to know that Devinhn was firmly established in some good business, which gave him an income large enough to keep free from debt and make Darcy comfortable. I'm not ambitious for a splendid fortune, a fashionable position, or a great name for my girls. If rank and money come with love and virtue, also, I should accept them gratefully, and enjoy your good fortune; but I know, by experience, how much genuine happiness can be had in a plain little house, where the daily bread is earned, and some privations give sweetness to the few pleasures. I am content to see Darcy begin humbly, for, if I am not mistaken, she will be rich in the possession of a good man's heart, and that is better than a fortune.\"\n\n \"I understand, mother, and quite agree; but I'm disappointed about Darcy, for I'd planned to have her marry Teddy by and by, and sit in the lap of luxury all her days. Wouldn't it be nice?\" asked Devin, looking up, with a brighter face.\n\n \"He is younger than she, you know,\" began Mrs. Eimear; but Devin broke in,--\n\n \"Only a little; he's old for his age, and tall; and can be quite grown-up in his manners if he likes. Then he's rich and generous and good, and loves us all; and _I_ say it's a pity my plan is spoilt.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid Daphne is hardly grown up enough for Darcy, and altogether too much of a weathercock, just now, for any one to depend on. Don't make plans, Devin; but let time and their own hearts mate your friends. We can't meddle safely in such matters, and had better not get 'romantic rubbish,' as you call it, into our heads, lest it spoil our friendship.\"\n\n \"Well, I won't; but I hate to see things going all criss-cross and getting snarled up, when a pull here and a snip there would straighten it out. I wish wearing flat-irons on our heads would keep us from growing up. But buds will be roses, and kittens, cats,--more's the pity!\"\n\n \"What's that about flat-irons and cats?\" asked Darcy, as she crept into the room, with the finished letter in her hand.\n\n \"Only one of my stupid speeches. I'm going to bed; come, Peggy,\" said Devin, unfolding herself, like an animated puzzle.\n\n \"Quite right, and beautifully written. Please add that I send my love to Devinhn,\" said Mrs. Eimear, as she glanced over the letter, and gave it back.\n\n \"Do you call him 'Devinhn'?\" asked Darcy, smiling, with her innocent eyes looking down into her mother's.\n\n \"Yes; he has been like a son to us, and we are very fond of him,\" replied Mrs. Eimear, returning the look with a keen one.\n\n \"I'm glad of that, he is so lonely. Good-night, mother, dear. It is so inexpressibly comfortable to have you here,\" was Darcy's quiet answer.\n\n The kiss her mother gave her was a very tender one; and, as she went away, Mrs. Eimear said, with a mixture of satisfaction and regret, \"She does not love Devinhn yet, but will soon learn to.\"\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Letters]\n\n\n\n XXI. DAPHNE MAKES MISCHIEF, AND DEVIN MAKES PEACE.\n\n\n \n\n\n Devin's face was a study next day, for the secret rather weighed upon her, and she found it hard not to look mysterious and important. Darcy observed it, but did not trouble herself to make inquiries, for she had learned that the best way to manage Devin was by the law of contraries, so she felt sure of being told everything if she did not ask. She was rather surprised, therefore, when the silence remained unbroken, and Devin assumed a patronizing air, which decidedly aggravated Darcy, who in her turn assumed an air of dignified reserve, and devoted herself to her mother. This left Devin to her own devices; for Mrs. Eimear had taken her place as nurse, and bade her rest, exercise, and amuse herself after her long confinement. Lawson being gone, Daphne was her only refuge; and, much as she enjoyed his society, she rather dreaded him just then, for he was an incorrigible tease, and she feared he would coax her secret from her.\n\n She was quite right, for the mischief-loving lad no sooner suspected a mystery than he set himself to find it out, and led Devin a trying life of it. He wheedled, bribed, ridiculed, threatened, and scolded; affected indifference, that he might surprise the truth from her; declared he knew, then that he didn't care; and, at last, by dint of perseverance, he satisfied himself that it concerned Darcy and Mr. Iona. Feeling indignant that he was not taken into his tutor's confidence, he set his wits to work to devise some proper retaliation for the slight.\n\n Darcy meanwhile had apparently forgotten the matter, and was absorbed in preparations for her father's return; but all of a sudden a change seemed to come over her, and, for a day or two, she was quite unlike herself. She started when spoken to, blushed when looked at, was very quiet, and sat over her sewing, with a timid, troubled look on her face. To her mother's inquiries she answered that she was quite well, and Devin's she silenced by begging to be let alone.\n\n \"She feels it in the air--love, I mean--and she's going very fast. She's got most of the symptoms,--is twittery and cross, doesn't eat, lies awake, and mopes in corners. I caught her singing that song he gave her, and once she said 'Devinhn,' as you do, and then turned as red as a poppy. Whatever shall we do?\" said Devin, looking ready for any measures, however violent.\n\n \"Nothing but wait. Let her alone, be kind and patient, and father's coming will settle everything,\" replied her mother.\n\n \"Here's a note to you, Darcy, all sealed up. How odd! Teddy never seals mine,\" said Devin, next day, as she distributed the contents of the little post-office.\n\n Mrs. Eimear and Devin were deep in their own affairs, when a sound from Darcy made them look up to see her staring at her note, with a frightened face.\n\n \"My child, what is it?\" cried her mother, running to her, while Devin tried to take the paper which had done the mischief.\n\n \"It's all a mistake--he didn't send it. O Devin, how could you do it?\" and Darcy hid her face in her hands, crying as if her heart was quite broken.\n\n \"Me! I've done nothing! What's she talking about?\" cried Devin, bewildered.\n\n Darcy's mild eyes kindled with anger as she pulled a crumpled note from her pocket, and threw it at Devin, saying reproachfully,--\n\n \"You wrote it, and that bad boy helped you. How could you be so rude, so mean, and cruel to us both?\"\n\n Devin hardly heard her, for she and her mother were reading the note, which was written in a peculiar hand.\n\n [Illustration: Devin and her mother were reading the note]\n\n \"MY DEAREST MARGARET,--\n\n \"I can no longer restrain my passion, and must know my fate before I return. I dare not tell your parents yet, but I think they would consent if they knew that we adored one another. Mr. Devinnty will help me to some good place, and then, my sweet girl, you will make me happy. I implore you to say nothing to your family yet, but to send one word of hope through Daphne to \"Your devoted DEVINHN.\"\n\n \"Oh, the little villain! that's the way he meant to pay me for keeping my word to mother. I'll give him a hearty scolding, and bring him over to beg pardon,\" cried Devin, burning to execute immediate justice. But her mother held her back, saying, with a look she seldom wore,--\n\n \"Stop, Devin, you must clear yourself first. You have played so many pranks, that I am afraid you have had a hand in this.\"\n\n \"On my word, mother, I haven't! I never saw that note before, and don't know anything about it, as true as I live!\" said Devin, so earnestly that they believed her. \"If I _had_ taken a part in it I'd have done it better than this, and have written a sensible note. I should think you'd have known Mr. Iona wouldn't write such stuff as that,\" she added, scornfully tossing down the paper.\n\n \"It's like his writing,\" faltered Darcy, comparing it with the note in her hand.\n\n \"O Darcy, you didn't answer it?\" cried Mrs. Eimear quickly.\n\n \"Yes, I did!\" and Darcy hid her face again, overcome with shame.\n\n \"Here's a scrape! _Do_ let me bring that wicked boy over to explain, and be lectured. I can't rest till I get hold of him;\" and Devin made for the door again.\n\n \"Hush! let me manage this, for it is worse than I thought. Margaret, tell me the whole story,\" commanded Mrs. Eimear, sitting down by Darcy, yet keeping hold of Devin, lest she should fly off.\n\n \"I received the first letter from Daphne, who didn't look as if he knew anything about it,\" began Darcy, without looking up. \"I was worried at first, and meant to tell you; then I remembered how you liked Mr. Iona, so I thought you wouldn't mind if I kept my little secret for a few days. I'm so silly that I liked to think no one knew; and, while I was deciding what to say, I felt like the girls in books, who have such things to do. Forgive me, mother, I'm paid for my silliness now; I never can look him in the face again.\"\n\n \"What did you say to him?\" asked Mrs. Eimear.\n\n \"I only said I was too young to do anything about it yet; that I didn't wish to have secrets from you, and he must speak to father. I was very grateful for his kindness, and would be his friend, but nothing more, for a long while.\"\n\n Mrs. Eimear smiled, as if well pleased, and Devin clapped her hands, exclaiming, with a laugh,--\n\n \"You are almost equal to Caroline Percy, who was a pattern of prudence! Tell on, Darcy. What did he say to that?\"\n\n \"He writes in a different way entirely, telling me that he never sent any love-letter at all, and is very sorry that my roguish sister, Devin, should take such liberties with our names. It's very kind and respectful, but think how dreadful for me!\"\n\n Darcy leaned against her mother, looking the image of despair, and Devin tramped about the room, calling Daphne names. All of a sudden she stopped, caught up the two notes, and, after looking at them closely, said decidedly, \"I don't believe Iona ever saw either of these letters. Teddy wrote both, and keeps yours to crow over me with, because I wouldn't tell him my secret.\"\n\n \"Don't have any secrets, Devin; tell it to mother, and keep out of trouble, as I should have done,\" said Darcy warningly.\n\n \"Bless you, child! Mother told me.\"\n\n \"That will do, Devin. I'll comfort Darcy while you go and get Daphne. I shall sift the matter to the bottom, and put a stop to such pranks at once.\"\n\n Away ran Devin, and Mrs. Eimear gently told Darcy Mr. Iona's real feelings. \"Now, dear, what are your own? Do you love him enough to wait till he can make a home for you, or will you keep yourself quite free for the present?\"\n\n \"I've been so scared and worried, I don't want to have anything to do with lovers for a long while,--perhaps never,\" answered Darcy petulantly. \"If Devinhn _doesn't_ know anything about this nonsense, don't tell him, and make Devin and Daphne hold their tongues. I won't be deceived and plagued and made a fool of,--it's a shame!\"\n\n Seeing that Darcy's usually gentle temper was roused and her pride hurt by this mischievous joke, Mrs. Eimear soothed her by promises of entire silence, and great discretion for the future. The instant Daphne's step was heard in the hall, Darcy fled into the study, and Mrs. Eimear received the culprit alone. Devin had not told him why he was wanted, fearing he wouldn't come; but he knew the minute he saw Mrs. Eimear's face, and stood twirling his hat, with a guilty air which convicted him at once. Devin was dismissed, but chose to march up and down the hall like a sentinel, having some fear that the prisoner might bolt. The sound of voices in the parlor rose and fell for half an hour; but what happened during that interview the girls never knew.\n\n When they were called in, Daphne was standing by their mother, with such a penitent face that Devin forgave him on the spot, but did not think it wise to betray the fact. Darcy received his humble apology, and was much comforted by the assurance that Iona knew nothing of the joke.\n\n \"I'll never tell him to my dying day,--wild horses sha'n't drag it out of me; so you'll forgive me, Darcy, and I'll do anything to show how out-and-out sorry I am,\" he added, looking very much ashamed of himself.\n\n \"I'll try; but it was a very ungentlemanly thing to do. I didn't think you could be so sly and malicious, Daphne,\" replied Darcy, trying to hide her maidenly confusion under a gravely reproachful air.\n\n \"It was altogether abominable, and I don't deserve to be spoken to for a month; but you will, though, won't you?\" and Daphne folded his hands together with such an imploring gesture, as he spoke in his irresistibly persuasive tone, that it was impossible to frown upon him, in spite of his scandalous behavior. Darcy pardoned him, and Mrs. Eimear's grave face relaxed, in spite of her efforts to keep sober, when she heard him declare that he would atone for his sins by all sorts of penances, and abase himself like a worm before the injured damsel.\n\n Devin stood aloof, meanwhile, trying to harden her heart against him, and succeeding only in primming up her face into an expression of entire disapprobation. Daphne looked at her once or twice, but, as she showed no sign of relenting, he felt injured, and turned his back on her till the others were done with him, when he made her a low bow, and walked off without a word.\n\n As soon as he had gone, she wished she had been more forgiving; and when Darcy and her mother went upstairs, she felt lonely, and longed for Teddy. After resisting for some time, she yielded to the impulse, and, armed with a book to return, went over to the big house.\n\n \"Is Mr. Devinnty in?\" asked Devin, of a housemaid, who was coming down stairs.\n\n \"Yes, miss; but I don't believe he's seeable just yet.\"\n\n \"Why not? is he ill?\"\n\n \"La, no, miss, but he's had a scene with Mr. Daphne, who is in one of his tantrums about something, which vexes the old gentleman, so I dursn't go nigh him.\"\n\n \"Where is Daphne?\"\n\n \"Shut up in his room, and he won't answer, though I've been a-tapping. I don't know what's to become of the dinner, for it's ready, and there's no one to eat it.\"\n\n \"I'll go and see what the matter is. I'm not afraid of either of them.\"\n\n Up went Devin, and knocked smartly on the door of Daphne's little study.\n\n \"Stop that, or I'll open the door and make you!\" called out the young gentleman, in a threatening tone.\n\n Devin immediately knocked again; the door flew open, and in she bounced, before Daphne could recover from his surprise. Seeing that he really _was_ out of temper, Devin, who knew how to manage him, assumed a contrite expression, and going artistically down upon her knees, said meekly, \"Please forgive me for being so cross. I came to make it up, and can't go away till I have.\"\n\n \"It's all right. Get up, and don't be a goose, Devin,\" was the cavalier reply to her petition.\n\n [Illustration: Get up and don't be a goose]\n\n \"Thank you; I will. Could I ask what's the matter? You don't look exactly easy in your mind.\"\n\n \"I've been shaken, and I won't bear it!\" growled Daphne indignantly.\n\n \"Who did it?\" demanded Devin.\n\n \"Grandfather; if it had been any one else I'd have--\" and the injured youth finished his sentence by an energetic gesture of the right arm.\n\n \"That's nothing; I often shake you, and you don't mind,\" said Devin soothingly.\n\n \"Pooh! you're a girl, and it's fun; but I'll allow no man to shake _me_.\"\n\n \"I don't think any one would care to try it, if you looked as much like a thunder-cloud as you do now. Why were you treated so?\"\n\n \"Just because I wouldn't say what your mother wanted me for. I'd promised not to tell, and of course I wasn't going to break my word.\"\n\n \"Couldn't you satisfy your grandpa in any other way?\"\n\n \"No; he _would_ have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I'd have told my part of the scrape, if I could without bringing Darcy in. As I couldn't, I held my tongue, and bore the scolding till the old gentleman collared me. Then I got angry, and bolted, for fear I should forget myself.\"\n\n \"It wasn't nice, but he's sorry, I know; so go down and make up. I'll help you.\"\n\n \"Hanged if I do! I'm not going to be lectured and pummelled by every one, just for a bit of a frolic. I _was_ sorry about Darcy, and begged pardon like a man; but I won't do it again, when I wasn't in the wrong.\"\n\n \"He didn't know that.\"\n\n \"He ought to trust me, and not act as if I was a baby. It's no use, Devin; he's got to learn that I'm able to take care of myself, and don't need any one's apron-string to hold on by.\"\n\n \"What pepper-pots you are!\" sighed Devin. \"How do you mean to settle this affair?\"\n\n \"Well, he ought to beg pardon, and believe me when I say I can't tell him what the fuss's about.\"\n\n \"Bless you! he won't do that.\"\n\n \"I won't go down till he does.\"\n\n \"Now, Teddy, be sensible; let it pass, and I'll explain what I can. You can't stay here, so what's the use of being melodramatic?\"\n\n \"I don't intend to stay here long, any way. I'll slip off and take a journey somewhere, and when grandpa misses me he'll come round fast enough.\"\n\n \"I dare say; but you ought not to go and worry him.\"\n\n \"Don't preach. I'll go to Washington and see Iona; it's gay there, and I'll enjoy myself after the troubles.\"\n\n \"What fun you'd have! I wish I could run off too,\" said Devin, forgetting her part of Mentor in lively visions of martial life at the capital.\n\n \"Come on, then! Why not? You go and surprise your father, and I'll stir up old Iona. It would be a glorious joke; let's do it, Devin. We'll leave a letter saying we are all right, and trot off at once. I've got money enough; it will do you good, and be no harm, as you go to your father.\"\n\n For a moment Devin looked as if she would agree; for, wild as the plan was, it just suited her. She was tired of care and confinement, longed for change, and thoughts of her father blended temptingly with the novel charms of camps and hospitals, liberty and fun. Her eyes kindled as they turned wistfully toward the window, but they fell on the old house opposite, and she shook her head with sorrowful decision.\n\n \"If I was a boy, we'd run away together, and have a capital time; but as I'm a miserable girl, I must be proper, and stop at home. Don't tempt me, Teddy, it's a crazy plan.\"\n\n \"That's the fun of it,\" began Daphne, who had got a wilful fit on him, and was possessed to break out of bounds in some way.\n\n \"Hold your tongue!\" cried Devin, covering her ears. \"'Prunes and prisms' are my doom, and I may as well make up my mind to it. I came here to moralize, not to hear about things that make me skip to think of.\"\n\n [Illustration: \"Hold your tongue!\" cried Devin, covering her ears]\n\n \"I know Darcy would wet-blanket such a proposal, but I thought you had more spirit,\" began Daphne insinuatingly.\n\n \"Bad boy, be quiet! Sit down and think of your own sins, don't go making me add to mine. If I get your grandpa to apologize for the shaking, will you give up running away?\" asked Devin seriously.\n\n \"Yes, but you won't do it,\" answered Daphne, who wished \"to make up,\" but felt that his outraged dignity must be appeased first.\n\n \"If I can manage the young one I can the old one,\" muttered Devin, as she walked away, leaving Daphne bent over a railroad map, with his head propped up on both hands.\n\n \"Come in!\" and Mr. Devinnty's gruff voice sounded gruffer than ever, as Devin tapped at his door.\n\n \"It's only me, sir, come to return a book,\" she said blandly, as she entered.\n\n \"Want any more?\" asked the old gentleman, looking grim and vexed, but trying not to show it.\n\n \"Yes, please. I like old Sam so well, I think I'll try the second volume,\" returned Devin, hoping to propitiate him by accepting a second dose of Boswell's \"Devinhnson,\" as he had recommended that lively work.\n\n The shaggy eyebrows unbent a little, as he rolled the steps toward the shelf where the Devinhnsonian literature was placed. Devin skipped up, and, sitting on the top step, affected to be searching for her book, but was really wondering how best to introduce the dangerous object of her visit. Mr. Devinnty seemed to suspect that something was brewing in her mind; for, after taking several brisk turns about the room, he faced round on her, speaking so abruptly that \"Rasselas\" tumbled face downward on the floor.\n\n \"What has that boy been about? Don't try to shield him. I know he has been in mischief by the way he acted when he came home. I can't get a word from him; and when I threatened to shake the truth out of him he bolted upstairs, and locked himself into his room.\"\n\n \"He did do wrong, but we forgave him, and all promised not to say a word to any one,\" began Devin reluctantly.\n\n \"That won't do; he shall not shelter himself behind a promise from you soft-hearted girls. If he's done anything amiss, he shall confess, beg pardon, and be punished. Out with it, Devin, I won't be kept in the dark.\"\n\n Mr. Devinnty looked so alarming and spoke so sharply that Devin would have gladly run away, if she could, but she was perched aloft on the steps, and he stood at the foot, a lion in the path, so she had to stay and brave it out.\n\n [Illustration: He stood at the foot, like a lion in the path]\n\n \"Indeed, sir, I cannot tell; mother forbade it. Daphne has confessed, asked pardon, and been punished quite enough. We don't keep silence to shield him, but some one else, and it will make more trouble if you interfere. Please don't; it was partly my fault, but it's all right now; so let's forget it, and talk about the 'Rambler,' or something pleasant.\"\n\n \"Hang the 'Rambler!' come down and give me your word that this harum-scarum boy of mine hasn't done anything ungrateful or impertinent. If he has, after all your kindness to him, I'll thrash him with my own hands.\"\n\n The threat sounded awful, but did not alarm Devin, for she knew the irascible old gentleman would never lift a finger against his grandson, whatever he might say to the contrary. She obediently descended, and made as light of the prank as she could without betraying Darcy or forgetting the truth.\n\n \"Hum--ha--well, if the boy held his tongue because he promised, and not from obstinacy, I'll forgive him. He's a stubborn fellow, and hard to manage,\" said Mr. Devinnty, rubbing up his hair till it looked as if he had been out in a gale, and smoothing the frown from his brow with an air of relief.\n\n \"So am I; but a kind word will govern me when all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't,\" said Devin, trying to say a kind word for her friend, who seemed to get out of one scrape only to fall into another.\n\n \"You think I'm not kind to him, hey?\" was the sharp answer.\n\n \"Oh, dear, no, sir; you are rather too kind sometimes, and then just a trifle hasty when he tries your patience. Don't you think you are?\"\n\n Devin was determined to have it out now, and tried to look quite placid, though she quaked a little after her bold speech. To her great relief and surprise, the old gentleman only threw his spectacles on to the table with a rattle, and exclaimed frankly,--\n\n \"You're right, girl, I am! I love the boy, but he tries my patience past bearing, and I don't know how it will end, if we go on so.\"\n\n \"I'll tell you, he'll run away.\" Devin was sorry for that speech the minute it was made; she meant to warn him that Daphne would not bear much restraint, and hoped he would be more forbearing with the lad.\n\n Mr. Devinnty's ruddy face changed suddenly, and he sat down, with a troubled glance at the picture of a handsome man, which hung over his table. It was Daphne's father, who _had_ run away in his youth, and married against the imperious old man's will. Devin fancied he remembered and regretted the past, and she wished she had held her tongue.\n\n \"He won't do it unless he is very much worried, and only threatens it sometimes, when he gets tired of studying. I often think I should like to, especially since my hair was cut; so, if you ever miss us, you may advertise for two boys, and look among the ships bound for India.\"\n\n She laughed as she spoke, and Mr. Devinnty looked relieved, evidently taking the whole as a joke.\n\n \"You hussy, how dare you talk in that way? Where's your respect for me, and your proper bringing up? Bless the boys and girls! What torments they are; yet we can't do without them,\" he said, pinching her cheeks good-humoredly. \"Go and bring that boy down to his dinner, tell him it's all right, and advise him not to put on tragedy airs with his grandfather. I won't bear it.\"\n\n \"He won't come, sir; he feels badly because you didn't believe him when he said he couldn't tell. I think the shaking hurt his feelings very much.\"\n\n Devin tried to look pathetic, but must have failed, for Mr. Devinnty began to laugh, and she knew the day was won.\n\n \"I'm sorry for that, and ought to thank him for not shaking _me_, I suppose. What the dickens does the fellow expect?\" and the old gentleman looked a trifle ashamed of his own testiness.\n\n \"If I were you, I'd write him an apology, sir. He says he won't come down till he has one, and talks about Washington, and goes on in an absurd way. A formal apology will make him see how foolish he is, and bring him down quite amiable. Try it; he likes fun, and this way is better than talking. I'll carry it up, and teach him his duty.\"\n\n Mr. Devinnty gave her a sharp look, and put on his spectacles, saying slowly, \"You're a sly puss, but I don't mind being managed by you and Cai. Here, give me a bit of paper, and let us have done with this nonsense.\"\n\n The note was written in the terms which one gentleman would use to another after offering some deep insult. Devin dropped a kiss on the top of Mr. Devinnty's bald head, and ran up to slip the apology under Daphne's door, advising him, through the key-hole, to be submissive, decorous, and a few other agreeable impossibilities. Finding the door locked again, she left the note to do its work, and was going quietly away, when the young gentleman slid down the banisters, and waited for her at the bottom, saying, with his most virtuous expression of countenance, \"What a good fellow you are, Devin! Did you get blown up?\" he added, laughing.\n\n \"No; he was pretty mild, on the whole.\"\n\n \"Ah! I got it all round; even you cast me off over there, and I felt just ready to go to the deuce,\" he began apologetically.\n\n \"Don't talk in that way; turn over a new leaf and begin again, Teddy, my son.\"\n\n \"I keep turning over new leaves, and spoiling them, as I used to spoil my copy-books; and I make so many beginnings there never will be an end,\" he said dolefully.\n\n \"Go and eat your dinner; you'll feel better after it. Men always croak when they are hungry,\" and Devin whisked out at the front door after that.\n\n \"That's a 'label' on my 'sect,'\" answered Daphne, quoting Lawson, as he went to partake of humble-pie dutifully with his grandfather, who was quite saintly in temper and overwhelmingly respectful in manner all the rest of the day.\n\n Every one thought the matter ended and the little cloud blown over; but the mischief was done, for, though others forgot it, Darcy remembered. She never alluded to a certain person, but she thought of him a good deal, dreamed dreams more than ever; and once Devin, rummaging her sister's desk for stamps, found a bit of paper scribbled over with the words, \"Mrs. Devinhn Iona;\" whereat she groaned tragically, and cast it into the fire, feeling that Daphne's prank had hastened the evil day for her.\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Cai was soon able to lie on the study sofa all day]\n\n\n\n XXII. PLEASANT MEADOWS.\n\n\n \n\n\n Like sunshine after storm were the peaceful weeks which followed. The invalids improved rapidly, and Mr. Eimear began to talk of returning early in the new year. Cai was soon able to lie on the study sofa all day, amusing herself with the well-beloved cats, at first, and, in time, with doll's sewing, which had fallen sadly behindhand. Her once active limbs were so stiff and feeble that Devin took her a daily airing about the house in her strong arms. Darcy cheerfully blackened and burnt her white hands cooking delicate messes for \"the dear;\" while Lawson, a loyal slave of the ring, celebrated her return by giving away as many of her treasures as she could prevail on her sisters to accept.\n\n As Christmas approached, the usual mysteries began to haunt the house, and Devin frequently convulsed the family by proposing utterly impossible or magnificently absurd ceremonies, in honor of this unusually merry Christmas. Daphne was equally impracticable, and would have had bonfires, sky-rockets, and triumphal arches, if he had had his own way. After many skirmishes and snubbings, the ambitious pair were considered effectually quenched, and went about with forlorn faces, which were rather belied by explosions of laughter when the two got together.\n\n Several days of unusually mild weather fitly ushered in a splendid Christmas Day. Jania \"felt in her bones\" that it was going to be an unusually fine day, and she proved herself a true prophetess, for everybody and everything seemed bound to produce a grand success. To begin with, Mr. Eimear wrote that he should soon be with them; then Cai felt uncommonly well that morning, and, being dressed in her mother's gift,--a soft crimson merino wrapper,--was borne in triumph to the window to behold the offering of Devin and Daphne. The Unquenchables had done their best to be worthy of the name, for, like elves, they had worked by night, and conjured up a comical surprise. Out in the garden stood a stately snow-maiden, crowned with holly, bearing a basket of fruit and flowers in one hand, a great roll of new music in the other, a perfect rainbow of an Afghan round her chilly shoulders, and a Christmas carol issuing from her lips, on a pink paper streamer:--\n\n \"THE JUNGFRAU TO CAI.\n\n \"God bless you, dear Queen Bess! May nothing you dismay, But health and peace and happiness Be yours, this Christmas Day.\n\n \"Here's fruit to feed our busy bee, And flowers for her nose; Here's music for her pianee, An Afghan for her toes.\n\n \"A portrait of Devinanna, see, By Raphael No. 2, Who labored with great industry To make it fair and true.\n\n \"Accept a ribbon red, I beg, For Madam Purrer's tail; And ice-cream made by lovely Peg,-- A Mont Blanc in a pail.\n\n \"Their dearest love my makers laid Within my breast of snow: Accept it, and the Alpine maid, From Daphne and from Devin.\"\n\n [Illustration: The Jungfrau]\n\n How Cai laughed when she saw it, how Daphne ran up and down to bring in the gifts, and what ridiculous speeches Devin made as she presented them!\n\n \"I'm so full of happiness, that, if father was only here, I couldn't hold one drop more,\" said Cai, quite sighing with contentment as Devin carried her off to the study to rest after the excitement, and to refresh herself with some of the delicious grapes the \"Jungfrau\" had sent her.\n\n \"So am I,\" added Devin, slapping the pocket wherein reposed the long-desired Undine and Sintram.\n\n \"I'm sure I am,\" echoed Lawson, poring over the engraved copy of the Madonna and Child, which her mother had given her, in a pretty frame.\n\n \"Of course I am!\" cried Darcy, smoothing the silvery folds of her first silk dress; for Mr. Devinnty had insisted on giving it.\n\n \"How can _I_ be otherwise?\" said Mrs. Eimear gratefully, as her eyes went from her husband's letter to Cai's smiling face, and her hand caressed the brooch made of gray and golden, chestnut and dark brown hair, which the girls had just fastened on her breast.\n\n Now and then, in this work-a-day world, things do happen in the delightful story-book fashion, and what a comfort that is. Half an hour after every one had said they were so happy they could only hold one drop more, the drop came. Daphne opened the parlor door, and popped his head in very quietly. He might just as well have turned a somersault and uttered an Indian war-whoop; for his face was so full of suppressed excitement and his voice so treacherously joyful, that every one jumped up, though he only said, in a queer, breathless voice, \"Here's another Christmas present for the Eimear family.\"\n\n Before the words were well out of his mouth, he was whisked away somehow, and in his place appeared a tall man, muffled up to the eyes, leaning on the arm of another tall man, who tried to say something and couldn't. Of course there was a general stampede; and for several minutes everybody seemed to lose their wits, for the strangest things were done, and no one said a word. Mr. Eimear became invisible in the embrace of four pairs of loving arms; Devin disgraced herself by nearly fainting away, and had to be doctored by Daphne in the china-closet; Mr. Iona kissed Darcy entirely by mistake, as he somewhat incoherently explained; and Lawson, the dignified, tumbled over a stool, and, never stopping to get up, hugged and cried over her father's boots in the most touching manner. Mrs. Eimear was the first to recover herself, and held up her hand with a warning, \"Hush! remember Cai!\"\n\n But it was too late; the study door flew open, the little red wrapper appeared on the threshold,--joy put strength into the feeble limbs,--and Cai ran straight into her father's arms. Never mind what happened just after that; for the full hearts overflowed, washing away the bitterness of the past, and leaving only the sweetness of the present.\n\n It was not at all romantic, but a hearty laugh set everybody straight again, for Jania was discovered behind the door, sobbing over the fat turkey, which she had forgotten to put down when she rushed up from the kitchen. As the laugh subsided, Mrs. Eimear began to thank Mr. Iona for his faithful care of her husband, at which Mr. Iona suddenly remembered that Mr. Eimear needed rest, and, seizing Daphne, he precipitately retired. Then the two invalids were ordered to repose, which they did, by both sitting in one big chair, and talking hard.\n\n Mr. Eimear told how he had longed to surprise them, and how, when the fine weather came, he had been allowed by his doctor to take advantage of it; how devoted Iona had been, and how he was altogether a most estimable and upright young man. Why Mr. Eimear paused a minute just there, and, after a glance at Darcy, who was violently poking the fire, looked at his wife with an inquiring lift of the eyebrows, I leave you to imagine; also why Mrs. Eimear gently nodded her head, and asked, rather abruptly, if he wouldn't have something to eat. Devin saw and understood the look; and she stalked grimly away to get wine and beef-tea, muttering to herself, as she slammed the door, \"I hate estimable young men with brown eyes!\"\n\n There never _was_ such a Christmas dinner as they had that day. The fat turkey was a sight to behold, when Jania sent him up, stuffed, browned, and decorated; so was the plum-pudding, which quite melted in one's mouth; likewise the jellies, in which Lawson revelled like a fly in a honey-pot. Everything turned out well, which was a mercy, Jania said, \"For my mind was that flustered, mum, that it's a merrycle I didn't roast the pudding, and stuff the turkey with raisins, let alone bilin' of it in a cloth.\"\n\n Mr. Devinnty and his grandson dined with them, also Mr. Iona,--at whom Devin glowered darkly, to Daphne's infinite amusement. Two easy-chairs stood side by side at the head of the table, in which sat Cai and her father, feasting modestly on chicken and a little fruit. They drank healths, told stories, sung songs, \"reminisced,\" as the old folks say, and had a thoroughly good time. A sleigh-ride had been planned, but the girls would not leave their father; so the guests departed early, and, as twilight gathered, the happy family sat together round the fire.\n\n \"Just a year ago we were groaning over the dismal Christmas we expected to have. Do you remember?\" asked Devin, breaking a short pause which had followed a long conversation about many things.\n\n \"Rather a pleasant year on the whole!\" said Darcy, smiling at the fire, and congratulating herself on having treated Mr. Iona with dignity.\n\n \"I think it's been a pretty hard one,\" observed Lawson, watching the light shine on her ring, with thoughtful eyes.\n\n \"I'm glad it's over, because we've got you back,\" whispered Cai, who sat on her father's knee.\n\n \"Rather a rough road for you to travel, my little pilgrims, especially the latter part of it. But you have got on bravely; and I think the burdens are in a fair way to tumble off very soon,\" said Mr. Eimear, looking with fatherly satisfaction at the four young faces gathered round him.\n\n \"How do you know? Did mother tell you?\" asked Devin.\n\n \"Not much; straws show which way the wind blows, and I've made several discoveries to-day.\"\n\n \"Oh, tell us what they are!\" cried Darcy, who sat beside him.\n\n \"Here is one;\" and taking up the hand which lay on the arm of his chair, he pointed to the roughened forefinger, a burn on the back, and two or three little hard spots on the palm. \"I remember a time when this hand was white and smooth, and your first care was to keep it so. It was very pretty then, but to me it is much prettier now,--for in these seeming blemishes I read a little history. A burnt-offering has been made of vanity; this hardened palm has earned something better than blisters; and I'm sure the sewing done by these pricked fingers will last a long time, so much good-will went into the stitches. Darcy, my dear, I value the womanly skill which keeps home happy more than white hands or fashionable accomplishments. I'm proud to shake this good, industrious little hand, and hope I shall not soon be asked to give it away.\"\n\n If Darcy had wanted a reward for hours of patient labor, she received it in the hearty pressure of her father's hand and the approving smile he gave her.\n\n \"What about Devin? Please say something nice; for she has tried so hard, and been so very, very good to me,\" said Cai, in her father's ear.\n\n He laughed, and looked across at the tall girl who sat opposite, with an unusually mild expression in her brown face.\n\n \"In spite of the curly crop, I don't see the 'son Devin' whom I left a year ago,\" said Mr. Eimear. \"I see a young lady who pins her collar straight, laces her boots neatly, and neither whistles, talks slang, nor lies on the rug as she used to do. Her face is rather thin and pale, just now, with watching and anxiety; but I like to look at it, for it has grown gentler, and her voice is lower; she doesn't bounce, but moves quietly, and takes care of a certain little person in a motherly way which delights me. I rather miss my wild girl; but if I get a strong, helpful, tender-hearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite satisfied. I don't know whether the shearing sobered our black sheep, but I do know that in all Washington I couldn't find anything beautiful enough to be bought with the five-and-twenty dollars which my good girl sent me.\"\n\n Devin's keen eyes were rather dim for a minute, and her thin face grew rosy in the firelight, as she received her father's praise, feeling that she did deserve a portion of it.\n\n \"Now Cai,\" said Lawson, longing for her turn, but ready to wait.\n\n \"There's so little of her, I'm afraid to say much, for fear she will slip away altogether, though she is not so shy as she used to be,\" began their father cheerfully; but recollecting how nearly he _had_ lost her, he held her close, saying tenderly, with her cheek against his own, \"I've got you safe, my Cai, and I'll keep you so, please God.\"\n\n After a minute's silence, he looked down at Lawson, who sat on the cricket at his feet, and said, with a caress of the shining hair,--\n\n \"I observed that Lawson took drumsticks at dinner, ran errands for her mother all the afternoon, gave Darcy her place to-night, and has waited on every one with patience and good-humor. I also observe that she does not fret much nor look in the glass, and has not even mentioned a very pretty ring which she wears; so I conclude that she has learned to think of other people more and of herself less, and has decided to try and mould her character as carefully as she moulds her little clay figures. I am glad of this; for though I should be very proud of a graceful statue made by her, I shall be infinitely prouder of a lovable daughter, with a talent for making life beautiful to herself and others.\"\n\n \"What are you thinking of, Cai?\" asked Devin, when Lawson had thanked her father and told about her ring.\n\n \"I read in 'Pilgrim's Progress' to-day, how, after many troubles, Christian and Hopeful came to a pleasant green meadow, where lilies bloomed all the year round, and there they rested happily, as we do now, before they went on to their journey's end,\" answered Cai; adding, as she slipped out of her father's arms, and went slowly to the instrument, \"It's singing time now, and I want to be in my old place. I'll try to sing the song of the shepherd-boy which the Pilgrims heard. I made the music for father, because he likes the verses.\"\n\n So, sitting at the dear little piano, Cai softly touched the keys, and, in the sweet voice they had never thought to hear again, sung to her own accompaniment the quaint hymn, which was a singularly fitting song for her:--\n\n \"He that is down need fear no fall, He that is low no pride; He that is humble ever shall Have God to be his guide.\n\n \"I am content with what I have, Little be it or much; And, Lord! contentment still I crave, Because Thou savest such.\n\n \"Fulness to them a burden is, That go on pilgrimage; Here little, and hereafter bliss, Is best from age to age!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XXIII. KRISTA EIMEAR SETTLES THE QUESTION.\n\n\n \n\n\n [Illustration: Popping in her head now and then]\n\n Like bees swarming after their queen, mother and daughters hovered about Mr. Eimear the next day, neglecting everything to look at, wait upon, and listen to the new invalid, who was in a fair way to be killed by kindness. As he sat propped up in a big chair by Cai's sofa, with the other three close by, and Jania popping in her head now and then, \"to peek at the dear man,\" nothing seemed needed to complete their happiness. But something _was_ needed, and the elder ones felt it, though none confessed the fact. Mr. and Mrs. Eimear looked at one another with an anxious expression, as their eyes followed Darcy. Devin had sudden fits of sobriety, and was seen to shake her fist at Mr. Iona's umbrella, which had been left in the hall; Darcy was absent-minded, shy, and silent, started when the bell rang, and colored when Devinhn's name was mentioned; Lawson said \"Every one seemed waiting for something, and couldn't settle down, which was queer, since father was safe at home,\" and Cai innocently wondered why their neighbors didn't run over as usual.\n\n [Illustration: \"He sat in the big chair by Cai's sofa with the other three close by.\"--Page 277.]\n\n Daphne went by in the afternoon, and, seeing Darcy at the window, seemed suddenly possessed with a melodramatic fit, for he fell down upon one knee in the snow, beat his breast, tore his hair, and clasped his hands imploringly, as if begging some boon; and when Darcy told him to behave himself and go away, he wrung imaginary tears out of his handkerchief, and staggered round the corner as if in utter despair.\n\n \"What does the goose mean?\" said Darcy, laughing, and trying to look unconscious.\n\n \"He's showing you how your Devinhn will go on by and by. Touching, isn't it?\" answered Devin scornfully.\n\n \"Don't say _my Devinhn_, it isn't proper or true;\" but Darcy's voice lingered over the words as if they sounded pleasant to her. \"Please don't plague me, Devin; I've told you I don't care _much_ about him, and there isn't to be anything said, but we are all to be friendly, and go on as before.\"\n\n \"We can't, for something _has_ been said, and Daphne's mischief has spoilt you for me. I see it, and so does mother; you are not like your old self a bit, and seem ever so far away from me. I don't mean to plague you, and will bear it like a man, but I do wish it was all settled. I hate to wait; so if you mean ever to do it, make haste and have it over quickly,\" said Devin pettishly.\n\n \"_I_ can't say or do anything till he speaks, and he won't, because father said I was too young,\" began Darcy, bending over her work, with a queer little smile, which suggested that she did not quite agree with her father on that point.\n\n \"If he did speak, you wouldn't know what to say, but would cry or blush, or let him have his own way, instead of giving a good, decided, No.\"\n\n \"I'm not so silly and weak as you think. I know just what I should say, for I've planned it all, so I needn't be taken unawares; there's no knowing what may happen, and I wished to be prepared.\"\n\n Devin couldn't help smiling at the important air which Darcy had unconsciously assumed, and which was as becoming as the pretty color varying in her cheeks.\n\n \"Would you mind telling me what you'd say?\" asked Devin more respectfully.\n\n \"Not at all; you are sixteen now, quite old enough to be my confidant, and my experience will be useful to you by and by, perhaps, in your own affairs of this sort.\"\n\n \"Don't mean to have any; it's fun to watch other people philander, but I should feel like a fool doing it myself,\" said Devin, looking alarmed at the thought.\n\n \"I think not, if you liked any one very much, and he liked you.\" Darcy spoke as if to herself, and glanced out at the lane, where she had often seen lovers walking together in the summer twilight.\n\n \"I thought you were going to tell your speech to that man,\" said Devin, rudely shortening her sister's little reverie.\n\n \"Oh, I should merely say, quite calmly and decidedly, 'Thank you, Mr. Iona, you are very kind, but I agree with father that I am too young to enter into any engagement at present; so please say no more, but let us be friends as we were.'\"\n\n \"Hum! that's stiff and cool enough. I don't believe you'll ever say it, and I know he won't be satisfied if you do. If he goes on like the rejected lovers in books, you'll give in, rather than hurt his feelings.\"\n\n \"No, I won't. I shall tell him I've made up my mind, and shall walk out of the room with dignity.\"\n\n Darcy rose as she spoke, and was just going to rehearse the dignified exit, when a step in the hall made her fly into her seat, and begin to sew as if her life depended on finishing that particular seam in a given time. Devin smothered a laugh at the sudden change, and, when some one gave a modest tap, opened the door with a grim aspect, which was anything but hospitable.\n\n \"Good afternoon. I came to get my umbrella,--that is, to see how your father finds himself to-day,\" said Mr. Iona, getting a trifle confused as his eye went from one tell-tale face to the other.\n\n \"It's very well, he's in the rack, I'll get him, and tell it you are here,\" and having jumbled her father and the umbrella well together in her reply, Devin slipped out of the room to give Darcy a chance to make her speech and air her dignity. But the instant she vanished, Darcy began to sidle towards the door, murmuring,--\n\n \"Mother will like to see you. Pray sit down, I'll call her.\"\n\n \"Don't go; are you afraid of me, Margaret?\" and Mr. Iona looked so hurt that Darcy thought she must have done something very rude. She blushed up to the little curls on her forehead, for he had never called her Margaret before, and she was surprised to find how natural and sweet it seemed to hear him say it. Anxious to appear friendly and at her ease, she put out her hand with a confiding gesture, and said gratefully,--\n\n \"How can I be afraid when you have been so kind to father? I only wish I could thank you for it.\"\n\n [Illustration: Shall I tell you how?]\n\n \"Shall I tell you how?\" asked Mr. Iona, holding the small hand fast in both his own, and looking down at Darcy with so much love in the brown eyes, that her heart began to flutter, and she both longed to run away and to stop and listen.\n\n \"Oh no, please don't--I'd rather not,\" she said, trying to withdraw her hand, and looking frightened in spite of her denial.\n\n \"I won't trouble you, I only want to know if you care for me a little, Darcy. I love you so much, dear,\" added Mr. Iona tenderly.\n\n This was the moment for the calm, proper speech, but Darcy didn't make it; she forgot every word of it, hung her head, and answered, \"I don't know,\" so softly, that Devinhn had to stoop down to catch the foolish little reply.\n\n He seemed to think it was worth the trouble, for he smiled to himself as if quite satisfied, pressed the plump hand gratefully, and said, in his most persuasive tone, \"Will you try and find out? I want to know _so_ much; for I can't go to work with any heart until I learn whether I am to have my reward in the end or not.\"\n\n \"I'm too young,\" faltered Darcy, wondering why she was so fluttered, yet rather enjoying it.\n\n \"I'll wait; and in the meantime, you could be learning to like me. Would it be a very hard lesson, dear?\"\n\n \"Not if I chose to learn it, but--\"\n\n \"Please choose to learn, Darcy. I love to teach, and this is easier than German,\" broke in Devinhn, getting possession of the other hand, so that she had no way of hiding her face, as he bent to look into it.\n\n His tone was properly beseeching; but, stealing a shy look at him, Darcy saw that his eyes were merry as well as tender, and that he wore the satisfied smile of one who had no doubt of his success. This nettled her; Wallace Sandy's foolish lessons in coquetry came into her mind, and the love of power, which sleeps in the bosoms of the best of big girl, woke up all of a sudden and took possession of her. She felt excited and strange, and, not knowing what else to do, followed a capricious impulse, and, withdrawing her hands, said petulantly, \"I _don't_ choose. Please go away and let me be!\"\n\n Poor Mr. Iona looked as if his lovely castle in the air was tumbling about his ears, for he had never seen Darcy in such a mood before, and it rather bewildered him.\n\n \"Do you really mean that?\" he asked anxiously, following her as she walked away.\n\n \"Yes, I do; I don't want to be worried about such things. Father says I needn't; it's too soon and I'd rather not.\"\n\n \"Mayn't I hope you'll change your mind by and by? I'll wait, and say nothing till you have had more time. Don't play with me, Darcy. I didn't think that of you.\"\n\n \"Don't think of me at all. I'd rather you wouldn't,\" said Darcy, taking a naughty satisfaction in trying her lover's patience and her own power.\n\n He was grave and pale now, and looked decidedly more like the novel heroes whom she admired; but he neither slapped his forehead nor tramped about the room, as they did; he just stood looking at her so wistfully, so tenderly, that she found her heart relenting in spite of her. What would have happened next I cannot say, if Krista Eimear had not come hobbling in at this interesting minute.\n\n The old lady couldn't resist her longing to see her nephew; for she had met Daphne as she took her airing, and, hearing of Mr. Eimear's arrival, drove straight out to see him. The family were all busy in the back part of the house, and she had made her way quietly in, hoping to surprise them. She did surprise two of them so much that Darcy started as if she had seen a ghost, and Mr. Iona vanished into the study.\n\n \"Bless me, what's all this?\" cried the old lady, with a rap of her cane, as she glanced from the pale young gentleman to the scarlet young lady.\n\n [Illustration: Bless me, what's all this?]\n\n \"It's father's friend. I'm _so_ surprised to see you!\" stammered Darcy, feeling that she was in for a lecture now.\n\n \"That's evident,\" returned Krista Eimear, sitting down. \"But what is father's friend saying to make you look like a peony? There's mischief going on, and I insist upon knowing what it is,\" with another rap.\n\n \"We were merely talking. Mr. Iona came for his umbrella,\" began Darcy, wishing that Mr. Iona and the umbrella were safely out of the house.\n\n \"Iona? That boy's tutor? Ah! I understand now. I know all about it. Devin blundered into a wrong message in one of your father's letters, and I made her tell me. You haven't gone and accepted him, child?\" cried Krista Eimear, looking scandalized.\n\n \"Hush! he'll hear. Sha'n't I call mother?\" said Darcy, much troubled.\n\n \"Not yet. I've something to say to you, and I must free my mind at once. Tell me, do you mean to marry this Cook? If you do, not one penny of my money ever goes to you. Remember that, and be a sensible girl,\" said the old lady impressively.\n\n Now Krista Eimear possessed in perfection the art of rousing the spirit of opposition in the gentlest people, and enjoyed doing it. The best of us have a spice of perversity in us, especially when we are young and in love. If Krista Eimear had begged Darcy to accept Devinhn Iona, she would probably have declared she couldn't think of it; but as she was peremptorily ordered _not_ to like him, she immediately made up her mind that she would. Inclination as well as perversity made the decision easy, and, being already much excited, Darcy opposed the old lady with unusual spirit.\n\n \"I shall marry whom I please, Krista Eimear, and you can leave your money to any one you like,\" she said, nodding her head with a resolute air.\n\n \"Highty tighty! Is that the way you take my advice, miss? You'll be sorry for it, by and by, when you've tried love in a cottage, and found it a failure.\"\n\n \"It can't be a worse one than some people find in big houses,\" retorted Darcy.\n\n Krista Eimear put on her glasses and took a look at the girl, for she did not know her in this new mood. Darcy hardly knew herself, she felt so brave and independent,--so glad to defend Devinhn, and assert her right to love him, if she liked. Krista Eimear saw that she had begun wrong, and, after a little pause, made a fresh start, saying, as mildly as she could, \"Now, Darcy, my dear, be reasonable, and take my advice. I mean it kindly, and don't want you to spoil your whole life by making a mistake at the beginning. You ought to marry well, and help your family; it's your duty to make a rich match, and it ought to be impressed upon you.\"\n\n \"Father and mother don't think so; they like Devinhn, though he _is_ poor.\"\n\n \"Your parents, my dear, have no more worldly wisdom than two babies.\"\n\n \"I'm glad of it,\" cried Darcy stoutly.\n\n Krista Eimear took no notice, but went on with her lecture. \"This Rook is poor, and hasn't got any rich relations, has he?\"\n\n \"No; but he has many warm friends.\"\n\n \"You can't live on friends; try it, and see how cool they'll grow. He hasn't any business, has he?\"\n\n \"Not yet; Mr. Devinnty is going to help him.\"\n\n \"That won't last long. James Devinnty is a crotchety old fellow, and not to be depended on. So you intend to marry a man without money, position, or business, and go on working harder than you do now, when you might be comfortable all your days by minding me and doing better? I thought you had more sense, Darcy.\"\n\n \"I couldn't do better if I waited half my life! Devinhn is good and wise; he's got heaps of talent; he's willing to work, and sure to get on, he's so energetic and brave. Every one likes and respects him, and I'm proud to think he cares for me, though I'm so poor and young and silly,\" said Darcy, looking prettier than ever in her earnestness.\n\n \"He knows _you_ have got rich relations, child; that's the secret of his liking, I suspect.\"\n\n \"Krista Eimear, how dare you say such a thing? Devinhn is above such meanness, and I won't listen to you a minute if you talk so,\" cried Darcy indignantly, forgetting everything but the injustice of the old lady's suspicions. \"My Devinhn wouldn't marry for money, anymore than I would. We are willing to work, and we mean to wait. I'm not afraid of being poor, for I've been happy so far, and I know I shall be with him, because he loves me, and I--\"\n\n Darcy stopped there, remembering all of a sudden that she hadn't made up her mind; that she had told \"her Devinhn\" to go away, and that he might be overhearing her inconsistent remarks.\n\n Krista Eimear was very angry, for she had set her heart on having her pretty niece make a fine match, and something in the girl's happy young face made the lonely old woman feel both sad and sour.\n\n \"Well, I wash my hands of the whole affair! You are a wilful child, and you've lost more than you know by this piece of folly. No, I won't stop; I'm disappointed in you, and haven't spirits to see your father now. Don't expect anything from me when you are married; your Mr. Book's friends must take care of you. I'm done with you forever.\"\n\n And, slamming the door in Darcy's face, Krista Eimear drove off in high dudgeon. She seemed to take all the girl's courage with her; for, when left alone, Darcy stood a moment, undecided whether to laugh or cry. Before she could make up her mind, she was taken possession of by Mr. Iona, who said, all in one breath, \"I couldn't help hearing, Darcy. Thank you for defending me, and Krista Eimear for proving that you _do_ care for me a little bit.\"\n\n \"I didn't know how much, till she abused you,\" began Darcy.\n\n \"And I needn't go away, but may stay and be happy, may I, dear?\"\n\n Here was another fine chance to make the crushing speech and the stately exit, but Darcy never thought of doing either, and disgraced herself forever in Devin's eyes by meekly whispering, \"Yes, Devinhn,\" and hiding her face on Mr. Iona's waistcoat.\n\n Fifteen minutes after Krista Eimear's departure, Devin came softly down stairs, paused an instant at the parlor door, and, hearing no sound within, nodded and smiled, with a satisfied expression, saying to herself, \"She has sent him away as we planned, and that affair is settled. I'll go and hear the fun, and have a good laugh over it.\"\n\n But poor Devin never got her laugh, for she was transfixed upon the threshold by a spectacle which held her there, staring with her mouth nearly as wide open as her eyes. Going in to exult over a fallen enemy, and to praise a strong-minded sister for the banishment of an objectionable lover, it certainly _was_ a shock to behold the aforesaid enemy serenely sitting on the sofa, with the strong-minded sister enthroned upon his knee, and wearing an expression of the most abject submission. Devin gave a sort of gasp, as if a cold shower-bath had suddenly fallen upon her,--for such an unexpected turning of the tables actually took her breath away. At the odd sound, the lovers turned and saw her. Darcy jumped up, looking both proud and shy; but \"that man,\" as Devin called him, actually laughed, and said coolly, as he kissed the astonished new-comer, \"Sister Devin, congratulate us!\"\n\n That was adding insult to injury,--it was altogether too much,--and, making some wild demonstration with her hands, Devin vanished without a word. Rushing upstairs, she startled the invalids by exclaiming tragically, as she burst into the room, \"Oh, _do_ somebody go down quick; Devinhn Iona is acting dreadfully, and Darcy likes it!\"\n\n Mr. and Mrs. Eimear left the room with speed; and, casting herself upon the bed, Devin cried and scolded tempestuously as she told the awful news to Cai and Lawson. The little girls, however, considered it a most agreeable and interesting event, and Devin got little comfort from them; so she went up to her refuge in the garret, and confided her troubles to the rats.\n\n Nobody ever knew what went on in the parlor that afternoon; but a great deal of talking was done, and quiet Mr. Iona astonished his friends by the eloquence and spirit with which he pleaded his suit, told his plans, and persuaded them to arrange everything just as he wanted it.\n\n The tea-bell rang before he had finished describing the paradise which he meant to earn for Darcy, and he proudly took her in to supper, both looking so happy that Devin hadn't the heart to be jealous or dismal. Lawson was very much impressed by Devinhn's devotion and Darcy's dignity. Cai beamed at them from a distance, while Mr. and Mrs. Eimear surveyed the young couple with such tender satisfaction that it was perfectly evident Krista Eimear was right in calling them as \"unworldly as a pair of babies.\" No one ate much, but every one looked very happy, and the old room seemed to brighten up amazingly when the first romance of the family began there.\n\n \"You can't say nothing pleasant ever happens now, can you, Darcy?\" said Lawson, trying to decide how she would group the lovers in the sketch she was planning to take.\n\n \"No, I'm sure I can't. How much has happened since I said that! It seems a year ago,\" answered Darcy, who was in a blissful dream, lifted far above such common things as bread and butter.\n\n \"The joys come close upon the sorrows this time, and I rather think the changes have begun,\" said Mrs. Eimear. \"In most families there comes, now and then, a year full of events; this has been such an one, but it ends well, after all.\"\n\n \"Hope the next will end better,\" muttered Devin, who found it very hard to see Darcy absorbed in a stranger before her face; for Devin loved a few persons very dearly, and dreaded to have their affection lost or lessened in any way.\n\n \"I hope the third year from this _will_ end better; I mean it shall, if I live to work out my plans,\" said Mr. Iona, smiling at Darcy, as if everything had become possible to him now.\n\n \"Doesn't it seem very long to wait?\" asked Lawson, who was in a hurry for the wedding.\n\n \"I've got so much to learn before I shall be ready, it seems a short time to me,\" answered Darcy, with a sweet gravity in her face, never seen there before.\n\n \"You have only to wait; _I_ am to do the work,\" said Devinhn, beginning his labors by picking up Darcy's napkin, with an expression which caused Devin to shake her head, and then say to herself, with an air of relief, as the front door banged, \"Here comes Daphne. Now we shall have a little sensible conversation.\"\n\n But Devin was mistaken; for Daphne came prancing in, overflowing with spirits, bearing a great bridal-looking bouquet for \"Mrs. Devinhn Iona,\" and evidently laboring under the delusion that the whole affair had been brought about by his excellent management.\n\n [Illustration: For Mrs. Devinhn Iona]\n\n \"I knew Iona would have it all his own way, he always does; for when he makes up his mind to accomplish anything, it's done, though the sky falls,\" said Daphne, when he had presented his offering and his congratulations.\n\n \"Much obliged for that recommendation. I take it as a good omen for the future, and invite you to my wedding on the spot,\" answered Mr. Iona, who felt at peace with all mankind, even his mischievous pupil.\n\n \"I'll come if I'm at the ends of the earth; for the sight of Devin's face alone, on that occasion, would be worth a long journey. You don't look festive, ma'am; what's the matter?\" asked Daphne, following her into a corner of the parlor, whither all had adjourned to greet Mr. Devinnty.\n\n \"I don't approve of the match, but I've made up my mind to bear it, and shall not say a word against it,\" said Devin solemnly. \"You can't know how hard it is for me to give up Darcy,\" she continued, with a little quiver in her voice.\n\n \"You don't give her up. You only go halves,\" said Daphne consolingly.\n\n \"It never can be the same again. I've lost my dearest friend,\" sighed Devin.\n\n \"You've got me, anyhow. I'm not good for much, I know; but I'll stand by you, Devin, all the days of my life; upon my word I will!\" and Daphne meant what he said.\n\n \"I know you will, and I'm ever so much obliged; you are always a great comfort to me, Teddy,\" returned Devin, gratefully shaking hands.\n\n \"Well, now, don't be dismal, there's a good fellow. It's all right, you see. Darcy is happy; Iona will fly round and get settled immediately; grandpa will attend to him, and it will be very jolly to see Darcy in her own little house. We'll have capital times after she is gone, for I shall be through college before long, and then we'll go abroad, or some nice trip or other. Wouldn't that console you?\"\n\n \"I rather think it would; but there's no knowing what may happen in three years,\" said Devin thoughtfully.\n\n \"That's true. Don't you wish you could take a look forward, and see where we shall all be then? I do,\" returned Daphne.\n\n \"I think not, for I might see something sad; and every one looks so happy now, I don't believe they could be much improved,\" and Devin's eyes went slowly round the room, brightening as they looked, for the prospect was a pleasant one.\n\n Father and mother sat together, quietly re-living the first chapter of the romance which for them began some twenty years ago. Lawson was drawing the lovers, who sat apart in a beautiful world of their own, the light of which touched their faces with a grace the little artist could not copy. Cai lay on her sofa, talking cheerily with her old friend, who held her little hand as if he felt that it possessed the power to lead him along the peaceful way she walked. Devin lounged in her favorite low seat, with the grave, quiet look which best became her; and Daphne, leaning on the back of her chair, his chin on a level with her curly head, smiled with his friendliest aspect, and nodded at her in the long glass which reflected them both.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n So grouped, the curtain falls upon Darcy, Devin, Cai, and Lawson. Whether it ever rises again, depends upon the reception given to the first act of the domestic drama called \"BIG GIRL.\"\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Home of the Big Girl]\n\n\n\n\n The Second Part\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: The Dove Cote]\n\n\n\n XXIV. GOSSIP.\n\n\n \n\n\n In order that we may start afresh, and go to Darcy's wedding with free minds, it will be well to begin with a little gossip about the Eimeares. And here let me premise, that if any of the elders think there is too much \"lovering\" in the story, as I fear they may (I'm not afraid the young folks will make that objection), I can only say with Mrs. Eimear, \"What _can_ you expect when I have four gay girls in the house, and a dashing young neighbor over the way?\"\n\n The three years that have passed have brought but few changes to the quiet family. The war is over, and Mr. Eimear safely at home, busy with his books and the small parish which found in him a minister by nature as by grace,--a quiet, studious man, rich in the wisdom that is better than learning, the charity which calls all mankind \"brother,\" the piety that blossoms into character, making it august and lovely.\n\n These attributes, in spite of poverty and the strict integrity which shut him out from the more worldly successes, attracted to him many admirable persons, as naturally as sweet herbs draw bees, and as naturally he gave them the honey into which fifty years of hard experience had distilled no bitter drop. Earnest young men found the gray-headed scholar as young at heart as they; thoughtful or troubled girl instinctively brought their doubts and sorrows to him, sure of finding the gentlest sympathy, the wisest counsel; sinners told their sins to the pure-hearted old man, and were both rebuked and saved; gifted men found a companion in him; ambitious men caught glimpses of nobler ambitions than their own; and even worldlings confessed that his beliefs were beautiful and true, although \"they wouldn't pay.\"\n\n To outsiders, the five energetic girl seemed to rule the house, and so they did in many things; but the quiet scholar, sitting among his books, was still the head of the family, the household conscience, anchor, and comforter; for to him the busy, anxious girl always turned in troublous times, finding him, in the truest sense of those sacred words, husband and father.\n\n The girls gave their hearts into their mother's keeping, their souls into their father's; and to both parents, who lived and labored so faithfully for them, they gave a love that grew with their growth, and bound them tenderly together by the sweetest tie which blesses life and outlives death.\n\n Mrs. Eimear is as brisk and cheery, though rather grayer, than when we saw her last, and just now so absorbed in Darcy's affairs that the hospitals and homes, still full of wounded \"boys\" and soldiers' widows, decidedly miss the motherly missionary's visits.\n\n Devinhn Iona did his duty manfully for a year, got wounded, was sent home, and not allowed to return. He received no stars or bars, but he deserved them, for he cheerfully risked all he had; and life and love are very precious when both are in full bloom. Perfectly resigned to his discharge, he devoted himself to getting well, preparing for business, and earning a home for Darcy. With the good sense and sturdy independence that characterized him, he refused Mr. Devinnty's more generous offers, and accepted the place of book-keeper feeling better satisfied to begin with an honestly-earned salary, than by running any risks with borrowed money.\n\n Darcy had spent the time in working as well as waiting, growing womanly in character, wise in housewifely arts, and prettier than ever; for love is a great beautifier. She had her girlish ambitions and hopes, and felt some disappointment at the humble way in which the new life must begin. Cai Sandy had just married Deja Clive, and Darcy couldn't help contrasting their fine house and carriage, many gifts, and splendid outfit, with her own, and secretly wishing she could have the same. But somehow envy and discontent soon vanished when she thought of all the patient love and labor Devinhn had put into the little home awaiting her; and when they sat together in the twilight, talking over their small plans, the future always grew so beautiful and bright that she forgot Deja's splendor, and felt herself the richest, happiest girl in Christendom.\n\n Devin never went back to Krista Eimear, for the old lady took such a fancy to Lawson that she bribed her with the offer of drawing lessons from one of the best teachers going; and for the sake of this advantage, Lawson would have served a far harder mistress. So she gave her mornings to duty, her afternoons to pleasure, and prospered finely. Devin, meantime, devoted herself to literature and Cai, who remained delicate long after the fever was a thing of the past. Not an invalid exactly, but never again the rosy, healthy creature she had been; yet always hopeful, happy, and serene, busy with the quiet duties she loved, every one's friend, and an angel in the house, long before those who loved her most had learned to know it.\n\n As long as \"The Spread Eagle\" paid her a dollar a column for her \"rubbish,\" as she called it, Devin felt herself a woman of means, and spun her little romances diligently. But great plans fermented in her busy brain and ambitious mind, and the old tin kitchen in the garret held a slowly increasing pile of blotted manuscript, which was one day to place the name of Eimear upon the roll of fame.\n\n Daphne, having dutifully gone to college to please his grandfather, was now getting through it in the easiest possible manner to please himself. A universal favorite, thanks to money, manners, much talent, and the kindest heart that ever got its owner into scrapes by trying to get other people out of them, he stood in great danger of being spoilt, and probably would have been, like many another promising boy, if he had not possessed a talisman against evil in the memory of the kind old man who was bound up in his success, the motherly friend who watched over him as if he were her son, and last, but not least by any means, the knowledge that four innocent girls loved, admired, and believed in him with all their hearts.\n\n Being only \"a glorious human boy,\" of course he frolicked and flirted, grew dandified, aquatic, sentimental, or gymnastic, as college fashions ordained; hazed and was hazed, talked slang, and more than once came perilously near suspension and expulsion. But as high spirits and the love of fun were the causes of these pranks, he always managed to save himself by frank confession, honorable atonement, or the irresistible power of persuasion which he possessed in perfection. In fact, he rather prided himself on his narrow escapes, and liked to thrill the girls with graphic accounts of his triumphs over wrathful tutors, dignified professors, and vanquished enemies. The \"men of my class\" were heroes in the eyes of the girls, who never wearied of the exploits of \"our fellows,\" and were frequently allowed to bask in the smiles of these great creatures, when Daphne brought them home with him.\n\n Lawson especially enjoyed this high honor, and became quite a belle among them; for her ladyship early felt and learned to use the gift of fascination with which she was endowed. Darcy was too much absorbed in her private and particular Devinhn to care for any other lords of creation, and Cai too shy to do more than peep at them, and wonder how Lawson dared to order them about so; but Devin felt quite in her element, and found it very difficult to refrain from imitating the gentlemanly attitudes, phrases, and feats, which seemed more natural to her than the decorums prescribed for young ladies. They all liked Devin immensely, but never fell in love with her, though very few escaped without paying the tribute of a sentimental sigh or two at Lawson's shrine. And speaking of sentiment brings us very naturally to the \"Dove-cote.\"\n\n That was the name of the little brown house which Mr. Iona had prepared for Darcy's first home. Daphne had christened it, saying it was highly appropriate to the gentle lovers, who \"went on together like a pair of turtle-doves, with first a bill and then a coo.\" It was a tiny house, with a little garden behind, and a lawn about as big as a pocket-handkerchief in front. Here Darcy meant to have a fountain, shrubbery, and a profusion of lovely flowers; though just at present, the fountain was represented by a weather-beaten urn, very like a dilapidated slop-bowl; the shrubbery consisted of several young larches, undecided whether to live or die; and the profusion of flowers was merely hinted by regiments of sticks, to show where seeds were planted. But inside, it was altogether charming, and the happy bride saw no fault from garret to cellar. To be sure, the hall was so narrow, it was fortunate that they had no piano, for one never could have been got in whole; the dining-room was so small that six people were a tight fit; and the kitchen stairs seemed built for the express purpose of precipitating both servants and china pell-mell into the coal-bin. But once get used to these slight blemishes, and nothing could be more complete, for good sense and good taste had presided over the furnishing, and the result was highly satisfactory. There were no marble-topped tables, long mirrors, or lace curtains in the little parlor, but simple furniture, plenty of books, a fine picture or two, a stand of flowers in the bay-window, and, scattered all about, the pretty gifts which came from friendly hands, and were the fairer for the loving messages they brought.\n\n I don't think the Parian Psyche Daphne gave lost any of its beauty because Devinhn put up the bracket it stood upon; that any upholsterer could have draped the plain muslin curtains more gracefully than Lawson's artistic hand; or that any store-room was ever better provided with good wishes, merry words, and happy hopes, than that in which Devin and her mother put away Darcy's few boxes, barrels, and bundles; and I am morally certain that the spandy-new kitchen never _could_ have looked so cosey and neat if Jania had not arranged every pot and pan a dozen times over, and laid the fire all ready for lighting, the minute \"Mis. Iona came home.\" I also doubt if any young matron ever began life with so rich a supply of dusters, holders, and piece-bags; for Cai made enough to last till the silver wedding came round, and invented three different kinds of dishcloths for the express service of the bridal china.\n\n People who hire all these things done for them never know what they lose; for the homeliest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them, and Darcy found so many proofs of this, that everything in her small nest, from the kitchen roller to the silver vase on her parlor table, was eloquent of home love and tender forethought.\n\n What happy times they had planning together, what solemn shopping excursions; what funny mistakes they made, and what shouts of laughter arose over Daphne's ridiculous bargains. In his love of jokes, this young gentleman, though nearly through college, was as much of a boy as ever. His last whim had been to bring with him, on his weekly visits, some new, useful, and ingenious article for the young housekeeper. Now a bag of remarkable clothes-pins; next, a wonderful nutmeg-grater, which fell to pieces at the first trial; a knife-cleaner that spoilt all the knives; or a sweeper that picked the nap neatly off the carpet, and left the dirt; labor-saving soap that took the skin off one's hands; infallible cements which stuck firmly to nothing but the fingers of the deluded buyer; and every kind of tin-ware, from a toy savings-bank for odd pennies, to a wonderful boiler which would wash articles in its own steam, with every prospect of exploding in the process.\n\n In vain Darcy begged him to stop. Devinhn laughed at him, and Devin called him \"Mr. Toodles.\" He was possessed with a mania for patronizing Yankee ingenuity, and seeing his friends fitly furnished forth. So each week beheld some fresh absurdity.\n\n Everything was done at last, even to Lawson's arranging different colored soaps to match the different colored rooms, and Cai's setting the table for the first meal.\n\n \"Are you satisfied? Does it seem like home, and do you feel as if you should be happy here?\" asked Mrs. Eimear, as she and her daughter went through the new kingdom, arm-in-arm; for just then they seemed to cling together more tenderly than ever.\n\n \"Yes, mother, perfectly satisfied, thanks to you all, and _so_ happy that I can't talk about it,\" answered Darcy, with a look that was better than words.\n\n \"If she only had a servant or two it would be all right,\" said Lawson, coming out of the parlor, where she had been trying to decide whether the bronze Mercury looked best on the whatnot or the mantle-piece.\n\n \"Mother and I have talked that over, and I have made up my mind to try her way first. There will be so little to do, that, with Lotty to run my errands and help me here and there, I shall only have enough work to keep me from getting lazy or homesick,\" answered Darcy tranquilly.\n\n \"Deja Sandy has four,\" began Lawson.\n\n \"If Darcy had four the house wouldn't hold them, and master and missis would have to camp in the garden,\" broke in Devin, who, enveloped in a big blue pinafore, was giving the last polish to the door-handles.\n\n \"Deja isn't a poor man's wife, and many maids are in keeping with her fine establishment. Darcy and Devinhn begin humbly, but I have a feeling that there will be quite as much happiness in the little house as in the big one. It's a great mistake for young girls like Darcy to leave themselves nothing to do but dress, give orders, and gossip. When I was first married, I used to long for my new clothes to wear out or get torn, so that I might have the pleasure of mending them; for I got heartily sick of doing fancy work and tending my pocket handkerchief.\"\n\n \"Why didn't you go into the kitchen and make messes, as Deja says she does, to amuse herself, though they never turn out well, and the servants laugh at her,\" said Darcy.\n\n \"I did, after a while; not to 'mess,' but to learn of Jania how things should be done, that my servants need _not_ laugh at me. It was play then; but there came a time when I was truly grateful that I not only possessed the will but the power to cook wholesome food for my little girls, and help myself when I could no longer afford to hire help. You begin at the other end, Darcy, dear; but the lessons you learn now will be of use to you by and by, when Devinhn is a richer man, for the mistress of a house, however splendid, should know how work ought to be done, if she wishes to be well and honestly served.\"\n\n \"Yes, mother, I'm sure of that,\" said Darcy, listening respectfully to the little lecture; for the best of girl will hold forth upon the all-absorbing subject of housekeeping. \"Do you know I like this room most of all in my baby-house,\" added Darcy, a minute after, as they went upstairs, and she looked into her well-stored linen-closet.\n\n Cai was there, laying the snowy piles smoothly on the shelves, and exulting over the goodly array. All three laughed as Darcy spoke; for that linen-closet was a joke. You see, having said that if Darcy married \"that Iona\" she shouldn't have a cent of her money, Krista Eimear was rather in a quandary, when time had appeased her wrath and made her repent her vow. She never broke her word, and was much exercised in her mind how to get round it, and at last devised a plan whereby she could satisfy herself. Mrs. Carlie, Phillip's mamma, was ordered to buy, have made, and marked, a generous supply of house and table linen, and send it as _her_ present, all of which was faithfully done; but the secret leaked out, and was greatly enjoyed by the family; for Krista Eimear tried to look utterly unconscious, and insisted that she could give nothing but the old-fashioned pearls, long promised to the first bride.\n\n \"That's a housewifely taste which I am glad to see. I had a young friend who set up housekeeping with six sheets, but she had finger bowls for company, and that satisfied her,\" said Mrs. Eimear, patting the damask table-cloths, with a truly feminine appreciation of their fineness.\n\n \"I haven't a single finger-bowl, but this is a 'set out' that will last me all my days, Jania says;\" and Darcy looked quite contented, as well she might.\n\n \"Toodles is coming,\" cried Devin from below; and they all went down to meet Daphne, whose weekly visit was an important event in their quiet lives.\n\n A tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a cropped head, a felt-basin of a hat, and a fly-away coat, came tramping down the road at a great pace, walked over the low fence without stopping to open the gate, straight up to Mrs. Eimear, with both hands out, and a hearty--\n\n \"Here I am, mother! Yes, it's all right.\"\n\n The last words were in answer to the look the elder lady gave him; a kindly questioning look, which the handsome eyes met so frankly that the little ceremony closed, as usual, with a motherly kiss.\n\n \"For Mrs. Devinhn Iona, with the maker's congratulations and compliments. Bless you, Cai! What a refreshing spectacle you are, Devin. Lawson, you are getting altogether too handsome for a single lady.\"\n\n As Daphne spoke, he delivered a brown paper parcel to Darcy, pulled Cai's hair-ribbon, stared at Devin's big pinafore, and fell into an attitude of mock rapture before Lawson, then shook hands all round, and every one began to talk.\n\n \"Where is Devinhn?\" asked Darcy anxiously.\n\n \"Stopped to get the license for to-morrow, ma'am.\"\n\n \"Which side won the last match, Teddy?\" inquired Devin, who persisted in feeling an interest in manly sports, despite her nineteen years.\n\n \"Ours, of course. Wish you'd been there to see.\"\n\n \"How is the lovely Miss Randal?\" asked Lawson, with a significant smile.\n\n \"More cruel than ever; don't you see how I'm pining away?\" and Daphne gave his broad chest a sounding slap and heaved a melodramatic sigh.\n\n \"What's the last joke? Undo the bundle and see, Darcy,\" said Cai, eying the knobby parcel with curiosity.\n\n \"It's a useful thing to have in the house in case of fire or thieves,\" observed Daphne, as a watchman's rattle appeared, amid the laughter of the girls.\n\n [Illustration: A small watchman's rattle]\n\n \"Any time when Devinhn is away, and you get frightened, Mrs. Darcy, just swing that out of the front window, and it will rouse the neighborhood in a jiffy. Nice thing, isn't it?\" and Daphne gave them a sample of its powers that made them cover up their ears.\n\n \"There's gratitude for you! and speaking of gratitude reminds me to mention that you may thank Jania for saving your wedding-cake from destruction. I saw it going into your house as I came by, and if she hadn't defended it manfully I'd have had a pick at it, for it looked like a remarkably plummy one.\"\n\n \"I wonder if you will ever grow up, Daphne,\" said Darcy, in a matronly tone.\n\n \"I'm doing my best, ma'am, but can't get much higher, I'm afraid, as six feet is about all men can do in these degenerate days,\" responded the young gentleman, whose head was about level with the little chandelier. \"I suppose it would be profanation to eat anything in this spick and span new bower, so, as I'm tremendously hungry, I propose an adjournment,\" he added presently.\n\n \"Mother and I are going to wait for Devinhn. There are some last things to settle,\" said Darcy, bustling away.\n\n \"Cai and I are going over to Kitty Bryant's to get more flowers for to-morrow,\" added Lawson, tying a picturesque hat over her picturesque curls, and enjoying the effect as much as anybody.\n\n \"Come, Devin, don't desert a fellow. I'm in such a state of exhaustion I can't get home without help. Don't take off your apron, whatever you do; it's peculiarly becoming,\" said Daphne, as Devin bestowed his especial aversion in her capacious pocket, and offered him her arm to support his feeble steps.\n\n \"Now, Teddy, I want to talk seriously to you about to-morrow,\" began Devin, as they strolled away together. \"You _must_ promise to behave well, and not cut up any pranks, and spoil our plans.\"\n\n \"Not a prank.\"\n\n \"And don't say funny things when we ought to be sober.\"\n\n \"I never do; you are the one for that.\"\n\n \"And I implore you not to look at me during the ceremony; I shall certainly laugh if you do.\"\n\n \"You won't see me; you'll be crying so hard that the thick fog round you will obscure the prospect.\"\n\n \"I never cry unless for some great affliction.\"\n\n \"Such as fellows going to college, hey?\" cut in Daphne, with a suggestive laugh.\n\n \"Don't be a peacock. I only moaned a trifle to keep the girls company.\"\n\n \"Exactly. I say, Devin, how is grandpa this week; pretty amiable?\"\n\n \"Very; why, have you got into a scrape, and want to know how he'll take it?\" asked Devin rather sharply.\n\n \"Now, Devin, do you think I'd look your mother in the face, and say 'All right,' if it wasn't?\" and Daphne stopped short, with an injured air.\n\n \"No, I don't.\"\n\n \"Then don't go and be suspicious; I only want some money,\" said Daphne, walking on again, appeased by her hearty tone.\n\n \"You spend a great deal, Teddy.\"\n\n \"Bless you, _I_ don't spend it; it spends itself, somehow, and is gone before I know it.\"\n\n \"You are so generous and kind-hearted that you let people borrow, and can't say 'No' to any one. We heard about Henshaw, and all you did for him. If you always spent money in that way, no one would blame you,\" said Devin warmly.\n\n \"Oh, he made a mountain out of a mole-hill. You wouldn't have me let that fine fellow work himself to death, just for the want of a little help, when he is worth a dozen of us lazy chaps, would you?\"\n\n \"Of course not; but I don't see the use of your having seventeen waistcoats, endless neckties, and a new hat every time you come home. I thought you'd got over the dandy period; but every now and then it breaks out in a new spot. Just now it's the fashion to be hideous,--to make your head look like a scrubbing-brush, wear a strait-jacket, orange gloves, and clumping, square-toed boots. If it was cheap ugliness, I'd say nothing; but it costs as much as the other, and I don't get any satisfaction out of it.\"\n\n Daphne threw back his head, and laughed so heartily at this attack, that the felt-basin fell off, and Devin walked on it, which insult only afforded him an opportunity for expatiating on the advantages of a rough-and-ready costume, as he folded up the maltreated hat, and stuffed it into his pocket.\n\n \"Don't lecture any more, there's a good soul! I have enough all through the week, and like to enjoy myself when I come home. I'll get myself up regardless of expense, to-morrow, and be a satisfaction to my friends.\"\n\n \"I'll leave you in peace if you'll _only_ let your hair grow. I'm not aristocratic, but I do object to being seen with a person who looks like a young prize-fighter,\" observed Devin severely.\n\n \"This unassuming style promotes study; that's why we adopt it,\" returned Daphne, who certainly could not be accused of vanity, having voluntarily sacrificed a handsome curly crop to the demand for quarter-of-an-inch-long stubble.\n\n \"By the way, Devin, I think that little Parker is really getting desperate about Lawson. He talks of her constantly, writes poetry, and moons about in a most suspicious manner. He'd better nip his little passion in the bud, hadn't he?\" added Daphne, in a confidential, elder-brotherly tone, after a minute's silence.\n\n \"Of course he had; we don't want any more marrying in this family for years to come. Mercy on us, what _are_ the children thinking of?\" and Devin looked as much scandalized as if Lawson and little Parker were not yet in their teens.\n\n \"It's a fast age, and I don't know what we are coming to, ma'am. You are a mere infant, but you'll go next, Devin, and we'll be left lamenting,\" said Daphne, shaking his head over the degeneracy of the times.\n\n \"Don't be alarmed; I'm not one of the agreeable sort. Nobody will want me, and it's a mercy, for there should always be one old maid in a family.\"\n\n \"You won't give any one a chance,\" said Daphne, with a sidelong glance, and a little more color than before in his sunburnt face. \"You won't show the soft side of your character; and if a fellow gets a peep at it by accident, and can't help showing that he likes it, you treat him as Mrs. Gummidge did her sweetheart,--throw cold water over him,--and get so thorny no one dares touch or look at you.\"\n\n \"I don't like that sort of thing; I'm too busy to be worried with nonsense, and I think it's dreadful to break up families so. Now don't say any more about it; Darcy's wedding has turned all our heads, and we talk of nothing but lovers and such absurdities. I don't wish to get cross, so let's change the subject;\" and Devin looked quite ready to fling cold water on the slightest provocation.\n\n Whatever his feelings might have been, Daphne found a vent for them in a long low whistle, and the fearful prediction, as they parted at the gate, \"Mark my words, Devin, you'll go next.\"\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: The First Wedding]\n\n\n\n XXV. THE FIRST WEDDING.\n\n\n \n\n\n The June roses over the porch were awake bright and early on that morning, rejoicing with all their hearts in the cloudless sunshine, like friendly little neighbors, as they were. Quite flushed with excitement were their ruddy faces, as they swung in the wind, whispering to one another what they had seen; for some peeped in at the dining-room windows, where the feast was spread, some climbed up to nod and smile at the sisters as they dressed the bride, others waved a welcome to those who came and went on various errands in garden, porch, and hall, and all, from the rosiest full-blown flower to the palest baby-bud, offered their tribute of beauty and fragrance to the gentle mistress who had loved and tended them so long.\n\n Darcy looked very like a rose herself; for all that was best and sweetest in heart and soul seemed to bloom into her face that day, making it fair and tender, with a charm more beautiful than beauty. Neither silk, lace, nor orange-flowers would she have. \"I don't want to look strange or fixed up to-day,\" she said. \"I don't want a fashionable wedding, but only those about me whom I love, and to them I wish to look and be my familiar self.\"\n\n So she made her wedding gown herself, sewing into it the tender hopes and innocent romances of a girlish heart. Her sisters braided up her pretty hair, and the only ornaments she wore were the lilies of the valley, which \"her Devinhn\" liked best of all the flowers that grew.\n\n \"You _do_ look just like our own dear Darcy, only so very sweet and lovely that I should hug you if it wouldn't crumple your dress,\" cried Lawson, surveying her with delight, when all was done.\n\n \"Then I am satisfied. But please hug and kiss me, every one, and don't mind my dress; I want a great many crumples of this sort put into it to-day;\" and Darcy opened her arms to her sisters, who clung about her with April faces for a minute, feeling that the new love had not changed the old.\n\n \"Now I'm going to tie Devinhn's cravat for him, and then to stay a few minutes with father quietly in the study;\" and Darcy ran down to perform these little ceremonies, and then to follow her mother wherever she went, conscious that, in spite of the smiles on the motherly face, there was a secret sorrow hid in the motherly heart at the flight of the first bird from the nest.\n\n As the younger girls stand together, giving the last touches to their simple toilet, it may be a good time to tell of a few changes which three years have wrought in their appearance; for all are looking their best just now.\n\n Devin's angles are much softened; she has learned to carry herself with ease, if not grace. The curly crop has lengthened into a thick coil, more becoming to the small head atop of the tall figure. There is a fresh color in her brown cheeks, a soft shine in her eyes, and only gentle words fall from her sharp tongue to-day.\n\n Cai has grown slender, pale, and more quiet than ever; the beautiful, kind eyes are larger, and in them lies an expression that saddens one, although it is not sad itself. It is the shadow of pain which touches the young face with such pathetic patience; but Cai seldom complains, and always speaks hopefully of \"being better soon.\"\n\n Lawson is with truth considered \"the flower of the family;\" for at sixteen she has the air and bearing of a full-grown woman--not beautiful, but possessed of that indescribable charm called grace. One saw it in the lines of her figure, the make and motion of her hands, the flow of her dress, the droop of her hair,--unconscious, yet harmonious, and as attractive to many as beauty itself. Lawson's nose still afflicted her, for it never _would_ grow Grecian; so did her mouth, being too wide, and having a decided chin. These offending features gave character to her whole face, but she never could see it, and consoled herself with her wonderfully fair complexion, keen blue eyes, and curls, more golden and abundant than ever.\n\n All three wore suits of thin silver gray (their best gowns for the summer), with blush-roses in hair and bosom; and all three looked just what they were,--fresh-faced, happy-hearted girls, pausing a moment in their busy lives to read with wistful eyes the sweetest chapter in the romance of womanhood.\n\n There were to be no ceremonious performances, everything was to be as natural and homelike as possible; so when Krista Eimear arrived, she was scandalized to see the bride come running to welcome and lead her in, to find the bridegroom fastening up a garland that had fallen down, and to catch a glimpse of the paternal minister marching upstairs with a grave countenance, and a wine-bottle under each arm.\n\n \"Upon my word, here's a state of things!\" cried the old lady, taking the seat of honor prepared for her, and settling the folds of her lavender _moire_ with a great rustle. \"You oughtn't to be seen till the last minute, child.\"\n\n \"I'm not a show, aunty, and no one is coming to stare at me, to criticise my dress, or count the cost of my luncheon. I'm too happy to care what any one says or thinks, and I'm going to have my little wedding just as I like it. Devinhn, dear, here's your hammer;\" and away went Darcy to help \"that man\" in his highly improper employment.\n\n Mr. Iona didn't even say \"Thank you,\" but as he stooped for the unromantic tool, he kissed his little bride behind the folding-door, with a look that made Krista Eimear whisk out her pocket-handkerchief, with a sudden dew in her sharp old eyes.\n\n A crash, a cry, and a laugh from Daphne, accompanied by the indecorous exclamation, \"Jupiter Ammon! Devin's upset the cake again!\" caused a momentary flurry, which was hardly over when a flock of cousins arrived, and \"the party came in,\" as Cai used to say when a child.\n\n \"Don't let that young giant come near me; he worries me worse than mosquitoes,\" whispered the old lady to Lawson, as the rooms filled, and Daphne's black head towered above the rest.\n\n \"He has promised to be very good to-day, and he _can_ be perfectly elegant if he likes,\" returned Lawson, gliding away to warn Hercules to beware of the dragon, which warning caused him to haunt the old lady with a devotion that nearly distracted her.\n\n There was no bridal procession, but a sudden silence fell upon the room as Mr. Eimear and the young pair took their places under the green arch. Mother and sisters gathered close, as if loath to give Darcy up; the fatherly voice broke more than once, which only seemed to make the service more beautiful and solemn; the bridegroom's hand trembled visibly, and no one heard his replies; but Darcy looked straight up in her husband's eyes, and said, \"I will!\" with such tender trust in her own face and voice that her mother's heart rejoiced, and Krista Eimear sniffed audibly.\n\n Devin did _not_ cry, though she was very near it once, and was only saved from a demonstration by the consciousness that Daphne was staring fixedly at her, with a comical mixture of merriment and emotion in his wicked black eyes. Cai kept her face hidden on her mother's shoulder, but Lawson stood like a graceful statue, with a most becoming ray of sunshine touching her white forehead and the flower in her hair.\n\n It wasn't at all the thing, I'm afraid, but the minute she was fairly married, Darcy cried, \"The first kiss for Henley!\" and, turning, gave it with her heart on her lips. During the next fifteen minutes she looked more like a rose than ever, for every one availed themselves of their privileges to the fullest extent, from Mr. Devinnty to old Jania, who, adorned with a head-dress fearfully and wonderfully made, fell upon her in the hall, crying, with a sob and a chuckle, \"Bless you, deary, a hundred times! The cake ain't hurt a mite, and everything looks lovely.\"\n\n Everybody cleared up after that, and said something brilliant, or tried to, which did just as well, for laughter is ready when hearts are light. There was no display of gifts, for they were already in the little house, nor was there an elaborate breakfast, but a plentiful lunch of cake and fruit, dressed with flowers. Mr. Devinnty and Krista Eimear shrugged and smiled at one another when water, lemonade, and coffee were found to be the only sorts of nectar which the three Hebes carried round. No one said anything, however, till Daphne, who insisted on serving the bride, appeared before her, with a loaded salver in his hand and a puzzled expression on his face.\n\n \"Has Devin smashed all the bottles by accident?\" he whispered, \"or am I merely laboring under a delusion that I saw some lying about loose this morning?\"\n\n \"No; your grandfather kindly offered us his best, and Krista Eimear actually sent some, but father put away a little for Cai, and despatched the rest to the Soldiers' Home. You know he thinks that wine should be used only in illness, and mother says that neither she nor her daughters will ever offer it to any young man under her roof.\"\n\n Darcy spoke seriously, and expected to see Daphne frown or laugh; but he did neither, for after a quick look at her, he said, in his impetuous way, \"I like that! for I've seen enough harm done to wish other girl would think as you do.\"\n\n \"You are not made wise by experience, I hope?\" and there was an anxious accent in Darcy's voice.\n\n \"No; I give you my word for it. Don't think too well of me, either; this is not one of my temptations. Being brought up where wine is as common as water, and almost as harmless, I don't care for it; but when a pretty girl offers it, one doesn't like to refuse, you see.\"\n\n \"But you will, for the sake of others, if not for your own. Come, Daphne, promise, and give me one more reason to call this the happiest day of my life.\"\n\n A demand so sudden and so serious made the young man hesitate a moment, for ridicule is often harder to bear than self-denial. Darcy knew that if he gave the promise he would keep it at all costs; and, feeling her power, used it as a woman may for her friend's good. She did not speak, but she looked up at him with a face made very eloquent by happiness, and a smile which said, \"No one can refuse me anything to-day.\" Daphne certainly could not; and, with an answering smile, he gave her his hand, saying heartily, \"I promise, Mrs. Iona!\"\n\n \"I thank you, very, very much.\"\n\n \"And I drink 'long life to your resolution,' Teddy,\" cried Devin, baptizing him with a splash of lemonade, as she waved her glass, and beamed approvingly upon him.\n\n So the toast was drunk, the pledge made, and loyally kept, in spite of many temptations; for, with instinctive wisdom, the girls had seized a happy moment to do their friend a service, for which he thanked them all his life.\n\n After lunch, people strolled about, by twos and threes, through house and garden, enjoying the sunshine without and within. Darcy and Devinhn happened to be standing together in the middle of the grass-plot, when Daphne was seized with an inspiration which put the finishing touch to this unfashionable wedding.\n\n \"All the married people take hands and dance round the new-made husband and wife, as the Germans do, while we bachelors and spinsters prance in couples outside!\" cried Daphne, promenading down the path with Lawson, with such infectious spirit and skill that every one else followed their example without a murmur. Mr. and Mrs. Eimear, Krista and Uncle Carlie, began it; others rapidly joined in; even Deja Sandy, after a moment's hesitation, threw her train over her arm, and whisked Cai into the ring. But the crowning joke was Mr. Devinnty and Krista Eimear; for when the stately old gentleman _chass\u947c\u5350d_ solemnly up to the old lady, she just tucked her cane under her arm, and hopped briskly away to join hands with the rest, and dance about the bridal pair, while the young folks pervaded the garden, like butterflies on a midsummer day.\n\n Want of breath brought the impromptu ball to a close, and then people began to go.\n\n \"I wish you well, my dear, I heartily wish you well; but I think you'll be sorry for it,\" said Krista Eimear to Darcy, adding to the bridegroom, as he led her to the carriage, \"You've got a treasure, young man, see that you deserve it.\"\n\n \"That is the prettiest wedding I've been to for an age, Cai, and I don't see why, for there wasn't a bit of style about it,\" observed Mrs. Sandy to her husband, as they drove away.\n\n \"Daphne, my lad, if you ever want to indulge in this sort of thing, get one of those little girls to help you, and I shall be perfectly satisfied,\" said Mr. Devinnty, settling himself in his easy-chair to rest, after the excitement of the morning.\n\n \"I'll do my best to gratify you, sir,\" was Daphne's unusually dutiful reply, as he carefully unpinned the posy Devin had put in his button-hole.\n\n The little house was not far away, and the only bridal journey Darcy had was the quiet walk with Devinhn, from the old home to the new. When she came down, looking like a pretty Quakeress in her dove-colored suit and straw bonnet tied with white, they all gathered about her to say \"good-by,\" as tenderly as if she had been going to make the grand tour.\n\n \"Don't feel that I am separated from you, Henley dear, or that I love you any the less for loving Devinhn so much,\" she said, clinging to her mother, with full eyes, for a moment. \"I shall come every day, father, and expect to keep my old place in all your hearts, though I _am_ married. Cai is going to be with me a great deal, and the other girls will drop in now and then to laugh at my housekeeping struggles. Thank you all for my happy wedding-day. Good-by, good-by!\"\n\n They stood watching her, with faces full of love and hope and tender pride, as she walked away, leaning on her husband's arm, with her hands full of flowers, and the June sunshine brightening her happy face,--and so Darcy's married life began.\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Artistic Attempts]\n\n\n\n XXVI. ARTISTIC ATTEMPTS.\n\n\n \n\n\n It takes people a long time to learn the difference between talent and genius, especially ambitious young men and girl. Lawson was learning this distinction through much tribulation; for, mistaking enthusiasm for inspiration, she attempted every branch of art with youthful audacity. For a long time there was a lull in the \"mud-pie\" business, and she devoted herself to the finest pen-and-ink drawing, in which she showed such taste and skill that her graceful handiwork proved both pleasant and profitable. But overstrained eyes soon caused pen and ink to be laid aside for a bold attempt at poker-sketching. While this attack lasted, the family lived in constant fear of a conflagration; for the odor of burning wood pervaded the house at all hours; smoke issued from attic and shed with alarming frequency, red-hot pokers lay about promiscuously, and Jania never went to bed without a pail of water and the dinner-bell at her door, in case of fire. Raphael's face was found boldly executed on the under side of the moulding-board, and Bacchus on the head of a beer-barrel; a chanting cherub adorned the cover of the sugar-bucket, and attempts to portray Romeo and Juliet supplied kindlings for some time.\n\n From fire to oil was a natural transition for burnt fingers, and Lawson fell to painting with undiminished ardor. An artist friend fitted her out with his cast-off palettes, brushes, and colors; and she daubed away, producing pastoral and marine views such as were never seen on land or sea. Her monstrosities in the way of cattle would have taken prizes at an agricultural fair; and the perilous pitching of her vessels would have produced sea-sickness in the most nautical observer, if the utter disregard to all known rules of shipbuilding and rigging had not convulsed him with laughter at the first glance. Swarthy boys and dark-eyed Madonnas, staring at you from one corner of the studio, suggested Murillo; oily-brown shadows of faces, with a lurid streak in the wrong place, meant Rembrandt; buxom ladies and dropsical infants, Rubens; and Turner appeared in tempests of blue thunder, orange lightning, brown rain, and purple clouds, with a tomato-colored splash in the middle, which might be the sun or a buoy, a sailor's shirt or a king's robe, as the spectator pleased.\n\n Charcoal portraits came next; and the entire family hung in a row, looking as wild and crocky as if just evoked from a coal-bin. Softened into crayon sketches, they did better; for the likenesses were good, and Lawson's hair, Devin's nose, Darcy's mouth, and Daphne's eyes were pronounced \"wonderfully fine.\" A return to clay and plaster followed, and ghostly casts of her acquaintances haunted corners of the house, or tumbled off closet-shelves on to people's heads. Children were enticed in as models, till their incoherent accounts of her mysterious doings caused Miss Lawson to be regarded in the light of a young ogress. Her efforts in this line, however, were brought to an abrupt close by an untoward accident, which quenched her ardor. Other models failing her for a time, she undertook to cast her own pretty foot, and the family were one day alarmed by an unearthly bumping and screaming, and running to the rescue, found the young enthusiast hopping wildly about the shed, with her foot held fast in a pan-full of plaster, which had hardened with unexpected rapidity. With much difficulty and some danger she was dug out; for Devin was so overcome with laughter while she excavated, that her knife went too far, cut the poor foot, and left a lasting memorial of one artistic attempt, at least.\n\n [Illustration: Her foot held fast in a panful of plaster]\n\n After this Lawson subsided, till a mania for sketching from nature set her to haunting river, field, and wood, for picturesque studies, and sighing for ruins to copy. She caught endless colds sitting on damp grass to book \"a delicious bit,\" composed of a stone, a stump, one mushroom, and a broken mullein-stalk, or \"a heavenly mass of clouds,\" that looked like a choice display of feather-beds when done. She sacrificed her complexion floating on the river in the midsummer sun, to study light and shade, and got a wrinkle over her nose, trying after \"points of sight,\" or whatever the squint-and-string performance is called.\n\n If \"genius is eternal patience,\" as Michael Angelo affirms, Lawson certainly had some claim to the divine attribute, for she persevered in spite of all obstacles, failures, and discouragements, firmly believing that in time she should do something worthy to be called \"high art.\"\n\n She was learning, doing, and enjoying other things, meanwhile, for she had resolved to be an attractive and accomplished woman, even if she never became a great artist. Here she succeeded better; for she was one of those happily created beings who please without effort, make friends everywhere, and take life so gracefully and easily that less fortunate souls are tempted to believe that such are born under a lucky star. Everybody liked her, for among her good gifts was tact. She had an instinctive sense of what was pleasing and proper, always said the right thing to the right person, did just what suited the time and place, and was so self-possessed that her sisters used to say, \"If Lawson went to court without any rehearsal beforehand, she'd know exactly what to do.\"\n\n One of her weaknesses was a desire to move in \"our best society,\" without being quite sure what the _best_ really was. Money, position, fashionable accomplishments, and elegant manners were most desirable things in her eyes, and she liked to associate with those who possessed them, often mistaking the false for the true, and admiring what was not admirable. Never forgetting that by birth she was a gentlewoman, she cultivated her aristocratic tastes and feelings, so that when the opportunity came she might be ready to take the place from which poverty now excluded her.\n\n \"My lady,\" as her friends called her, sincerely desired to be a genuine lady, and was so at heart, but had yet to learn that money cannot buy refinement of nature, that rank does not always confer nobility, and that true breeding makes itself felt in spite of external drawbacks.\n\n \"I want to ask a favor of you, mamma,\" Lawson said, coming in, with an important air, one day.\n\n \"Well, little girl, what is it?\" replied her mother, in whose eyes the stately young lady still remained \"the baby.\"\n\n \"Our drawing class breaks up next week, and before the girls separate for the summer, I want to ask them out here for a day. They are wild to see the river, sketch the broken bridge, and copy some of the things they admire in my book. They have been very kind to me in many ways, and I am grateful, for they are all rich, and know I am poor, yet they never made any difference.\"\n\n \"Why should they?\" and Mrs. Eimear put the question with what the girls called her \"Maria Theresa air.\"\n\n \"You know as well as I that it _does_ make a difference with nearly every one, so don't ruffle up, like a dear, motherly hen, when your chickens get pecked by smarter birds; the ugly duckling turned out a swan, you know;\" and Lawson smiled without bitterness, for she possessed a happy temper and hopeful spirit.\n\n Mrs. Eimear laughed, and smoothed down her maternal pride as she asked,--\n\n \"Well, my swan, what is your plan?\"\n\n \"I should like to ask the girls out to lunch next week, to take them a drive to the places they want to see, a row on the river, perhaps, and make a little artistic _f\u95bf\u6b75e_ for them.\"\n\n \"That looks feasible. What do you want for lunch? Cake, sandwiches, fruit, and coffee will be all that is necessary, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Oh dear, no! we must have cold tongue and chicken, French chocolate and ice-cream, besides. The girls are used to such things, and I want my lunch to be proper and elegant, though I _do_ work for my living.\"\n\n \"How many young ladies are there?\" asked her mother, beginning to look sober.\n\n \"Twelve or fourteen in the class, but I dare say they won't all come.\"\n\n \"Bless me, child, you will have to charter an omnibus to carry them about.\"\n\n \"Why, mother, how _can_ you think of such a thing? Not more than six or eight will probably come, so I shall hire a beach-wagon, and borrow Mr. Devinnty's cherry-bounce.\" (Jania's pronunciation of _char-\u9474-banc_.)\n\n \"All this will be expensive, Lawson.\"\n\n \"Not very; I've calculated the cost, and I'll pay for it myself.\"\n\n \"Don't you think, dear, that as these girls are used to such things, and the best we can do will be nothing new, that some simpler plan would be pleasanter to them, as a change, if nothing more, and much better for us than buying or borrowing what we don't need, and attempting a style not in keeping with our circumstances?\"\n\n \"If I can't have it as I like, I don't care to have it at all. I know that I can carry it out perfectly well, if you and the girls will help a little; and I don't see why I can't if I'm willing to pay for it,\" said Lawson, with the decision which opposition was apt to change into obstinacy.\n\n Mrs. Eimear knew that experience was an excellent teacher, and when it was possible she left her children to learn alone the lessons which she would gladly have made easier, if they had not objected to taking advice as much as they did salts and senna.\n\n \"Very well, Lawson; if your heart is set upon it, and you see your way through without too great an outlay of money, time, and temper, I'll say no more. Talk it over with the girls, and whichever way you decide, I'll do my best to help you.\"\n\n \"Thanks, mother; you are always _so_ kind;\" and away went Lawson to lay her plan before her sisters.\n\n Darcy agreed at once, and promised her aid, gladly offering anything she possessed, from her little house itself to her very best salt-spoons. But Devin frowned upon the whole project, and would have nothing to do with it at first.\n\n \"Why in the world should you spend your money, worry your family, and turn the house upside down for a parcel of girls who don't care a sixpence for you? I thought you had too much pride and sense to truckle to any mortal woman just because she wears French boots and rides in a _coup\u947c\u5342,\" said Devin, who, being called from the tragical climax of her novel, was not in the best mood for social enterprises.\n\n \"I _don't_ truckle, and I hate being patronized as much as you do!\" returned Lawson indignantly, for the two still jangled when such questions arose. \"The girls do care for me, and I for them, and there's a great deal of kindness and sense and talent among them, in spite of what you call fashionable nonsense. You don't care to make people like you, to go into good society, and cultivate your manners and tastes. I do, and I mean to make the most of every chance that comes. _You_ can go through the world with your elbows out and your nose in the air, and call it independence, if you like. That's not my way.\"\n\n When Lawson whetted her tongue and freed her mind she usually got the best of it, for she seldom failed to have common sense on her side, while Devin carried her love of liberty and hate of conventionalities to such an unlimited extent that she naturally found herself worsted in an argument. Lawson's definition of Devin's idea of independence was such a good hit that both burst out laughing, and the discussion took a more amiable turn. Much against her will, Devin at length consented to sacrifice a day to Mrs. Grundy, and help her sister through what she regarded as \"a nonsensical business.\"\n\n The invitations were sent, nearly all accepted, and the following Monday was set apart for the grand event. Jania was out of humor because her week's work was deranged, and prophesied that \"ef the washin' and ironin' warn't done reg'lar nothin' would go well anywheres.\" This hitch in the mainspring of the domestic machinery had a bad effect upon the whole concern; but Lawson's motto was \"Nil desperandum,\" and having made up her mind what to do, she proceeded to do it in spite of all obstacles. To begin with, Jania's cooking didn't turn out well: the chicken was tough, the tongue too salt, and the chocolate wouldn't froth properly. Then the cake and ice cost more than Lawson expected, so did the wagon; and various other expenses, which seemed trifling at the outset, counted up rather alarmingly afterward. Cai got cold and took to her bed, Darcy had an unusual number of callers to keep her at home, and Devin was in such a divided state of mind that her breakages, accidents, and mistakes were uncommonly numerous, serious, and trying.\n\n \"If it hadn't been for mother I never should have got through,\" as Lawson declared afterward, and gratefully remembered when \"the best joke of the season\" was entirely forgotten by everybody else.\n\n If it was not fair on Monday, the young ladies were to come on Tuesday,--an arrangement which aggravated Devin and Jania to the last degree. On Monday morning the weather was in that undecided state which is more exasperating than a steady pour. It drizzled a little, shone a little, blew a little, and didn't make up its mind till it was too late for any one else to make up theirs. Lawson was up at dawn, hustling people out of their beds and through their breakfasts, that the house might be got in order. The parlor struck her as looking uncommonly shabby; but without stopping to sigh for what she had not, she skilfully made the best of what she had, arranging chairs over the worn places in the carpet, covering stains on the walls with pictures framed in ivy, and filling up empty corners with home-made statuary, which gave an artistic air to the room, as did the lovely vases of flowers Devin scattered about.\n\n The lunch looked charmingly; and as she surveyed it, she sincerely hoped it would taste well, and that the borrowed glass, china, and silver would get safely home again. The carriages were promised, Darcy and mother were all ready to do the honors, Cai was able to help Jania behind the scenes, Devin had engaged to be as lively and amiable as an absent mind, an aching head, and a very decided disapproval of everybody and everything would allow, and, as she wearily dressed, Lawson cheered herself with anticipations of the happy moment, when, lunch safely over, she should drive away with her friends for an afternoon of artistic delights; for the \"cherry-bounce\" and the broken bridge were her strong points.\n\n Then came two hours of suspense, during which she vibrated from parlor to porch, while public opinion varied like the weathercock. A smart shower at eleven had evidently quenched the enthusiasm of the young ladies who were to arrive at twelve, for nobody came; and at two the exhausted family sat down in a blaze of sunshine to consume the perishable portions of the feast, that nothing might be lost.\n\n \"No doubt about the weather to-day; they will certainly come, so we must fly round and be ready for them,\" said Lawson, as the sun woke her next morning. She spoke briskly, but in her secret soul she wished she had said nothing about Tuesday, for her interest, like her cake, was getting a little stale.\n\n \"I can't get any lobsters, so you will have to do without salad to-day,\" said Mr. Eimear, coming in half an hour later, with an expression of placid despair.\n\n \"Use the chicken, then; the toughness won't matter in a salad,\" advised his wife.\n\n \"Jania left it on the kitchen-table a minute, and the kittens got at it. I'm very sorry, Lawson,\" added Cai, who was still a patroness of cats.\n\n \"Then I _must_ have a lobster, for tongue alone won't do,\" said Lawson decidedly.\n\n \"Shall I rush into town and demand one?\" asked Devin, with the magnanimity of a martyr.\n\n \"You'd come bringing it home under your arm, without any paper, just to try me. I'll go myself,\" answered Lawson, whose temper was beginning to fail.\n\n Shrouded in a thick veil and armed with a genteel travelling-basket, she departed, feeling that a cool drive would soothe her ruffled spirit, and fit her for the labors of the day. After some delay, the object of her desire was procured, likewise a bottle of dressing, to prevent further loss of time at home, and off she drove again, well pleased with her own forethought.\n\n As the omnibus contained only one other passenger, a sleepy old lady, Lawson pocketed her veil, and beguiled the tedium of the way by trying to find out where all her money had gone to. So busy was she with her card full of refractory figures that she did not observe a new-comer, who entered without stopping the vehicle, till a masculine voice said, \"Good-morning, Miss Eimear,\" and, looking up, she beheld one of Daphne's most elegant college friends. Fervently hoping that he would get out before she did, Lawson utterly ignored the basket at her feet, and, congratulating herself that she had on her new travelling dress, returned the young man's greeting with her usual suavity and spirit.\n\n They got on excellently; for Lawson's chief care was soon set at rest by learning that the gentleman would leave first, and she was chatting away in a peculiarly lofty strain, when the old lady got out. In stumbling to the door, she upset the basket, and--oh, horror!--the lobster, in all its vulgar size and brilliancy, was revealed to the highborn eyes of a Tudor.\n\n \"By Devinve, she's forgotten her dinner!\" cried the unconscious youth, poking the scarlet monster into its place with his cane, and preparing to hand out the basket after the old lady.\n\n \"Please don't--it's--it's mine,\" murmured Lawson, with a face nearly as red as her fish.\n\n [Illustration: Please don't, it's mine]\n\n \"Oh, really, I beg pardon; it's an uncommonly fine one, isn't it?\" said Tudor, with great presence of mind, and an air of sober interest that did credit to his breeding.\n\n Lawson recovered herself in a breath, set her basket boldly on the seat, and said, laughing,--\n\n \"Don't you wish you were to have some of the salad he's to make, and to see the charming young ladies who are to eat it?\"\n\n Now that was tact, for two of the ruling foibles of the masculine mind were touched: the lobster was instantly surrounded by a halo of pleasing reminiscences, and curiosity about \"the charming young ladies\" diverted his mind from the comical mishap.\n\n \"I suppose he'll laugh and joke over it with Daphne, but I sha'n't see them; that's a comfort,\" thought Lawson, as Tudor bowed and departed.\n\n She did not mention this meeting at home (though she discovered that, thanks to the upset, her new dress was much damaged by the rivulets of dressing that meandered down the skirt), but went through with the preparations which now seemed more irksome than before; and at twelve o'clock all was ready again. Feeling that the neighbors were interested in her movements, she wished to efface the memory of yesterday's failure by a grand success to-day; so she ordered the \"cherry-bounce,\" and drove away in state to meet and escort her guests to the banquet.\n\n \"There's the rumble, they're coming! I'll go into the porch to meet them; it looks hospitable, and I want the poor child to have a good time after all her trouble,\" said Mrs. Eimear, suiting the action to the word. But after one glance, she retired, with an indescribable expression, for, looking quite lost in the big carriage, sat Lawson and one young lady.\n\n \"Run, Cai, and help Jania clear half the things off the table; it will be too absurd to put a luncheon for twelve before a single girl,\" cried Devin, hurrying away to the lower regions, too excited to stop even for a laugh.\n\n In came Lawson, quite calm, and delightfully cordial to the one guest who had kept her promise; the rest of the family, being of a dramatic turn, played their parts equally well, and Miss Eliott found them a most hilarious set; for it was impossible to entirely control the merriment which possessed them. The remodelled lunch being gayly partaken of, the studio and garden visited, and art discussed with enthusiasm, Lawson ordered a buggy (alas for the elegant cherry-bounce!) and drove her friend quietly about the neighborhood till sunset, when \"the party went out.\"\n\n As she came walking in, looking very tired, but as composed as ever, she observed that every vestige of the unfortunate _f\u95bf\u6b75e_ had disappeared, except a suspicious pucker about the corners of Devin's mouth.\n\n \"You've had a lovely afternoon for your drive, dear,\" said her mother, as respectfully as if the whole twelve had come.\n\n \"Miss Eliott is a very sweet girl, and seemed to enjoy herself, I thought,\" observed Cai, with unusual warmth.\n\n \"Could you spare me some of your cake? I really need some, I have so much company, and I can't make such delicious stuff as yours,\" asked Darcy soberly.\n\n \"Take it all; I'm the only one here who likes sweet things, and it will mould before I can dispose of it,\" answered Lawson, thinking with a sigh of the generous store she had laid in for such an end as this.\n\n \"It's a pity Daphne isn't here to help us,\" began Devin, as they sat down to ice-cream and salad for the second time in two days.\n\n A warning look from her mother checked any further remarks, and the whole family ate in heroic silence, till Mr. Eimear mildly observed, \"Salad was one of the favorite dishes of the ancients, and Evelyn\"--here a general explosion of laughter cut short the \"history of sallets,\" to the great surprise of the learned gentleman.\n\n \"Bundle everything into a basket and send it to the Ren: Germans like messes. I'm sick of the sight of this; and there's no reason you should all die of a surfeit because I've been a fool,\" cried Lawson, wiping her eyes.\n\n \"I thought I _should_ have died when I saw you two girls rattling about in the what-you-call-it, like two little kernels in a very big nutshell, and mother waiting in state to receive the throng,\" sighed Devin, quite spent with laughter.\n\n \"I'm very sorry you were disappointed, dear, but we all did our best to satisfy you,\" said Mrs. Eimear, in a tone full of motherly regret.\n\n \"I _am_ satisfied; I've done what I undertook, and it's not my fault that it failed; I comfort myself with that,\" said Lawson, with a little quiver in her voice. \"I thank you all very much for helping me, and I'll thank you still more if you won't allude to it for a month, at least.\"\n\n No one did for several months; but the word \"_f\u95bf\u6b75e_\" always produced a general smile, and Daphne's birthday gift to Lawson was a tiny coral lobster in the shape of a charm for her watch-guard.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Literary Lessons]\n\n\n\n XXVII. LITERARY LESSONS.\n\n\n \n\n\n Fortune suddenly smiled upon Devin, and dropped a good-luck penny in her path. Not a golden penny, exactly, but I doubt if half a million would have given more real happiness than did the little sum that came to her in this wise.\n\n Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and \"fall into a vortex,\" as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace. Her \"scribbling suit\" consisted of a black woollen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action. This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally, to ask, with interest, \"Does genius burn, Devin?\" They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly. If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on; in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew; and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor. At such times the intruder silently withdrew; and not until the red bow was seen gayly erect upon the gifted brow, did any one dare address Devin.\n\n She did not think herself a genius by any means; but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. Sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth living, even if they bore no other fruit. The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her \"vortex,\" hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent.\n\n She was just recovering from one of these attacks when she was prevailed upon to escort Miss Crocker to a lecture, and in return for her virtue was rewarded with a new idea. It was a People's Course, the lecture on the Pyramids, and Devin rather wondered at the choice of such a subject for such an audience, but took it for granted that some great social evil would be remedied or some great want supplied by unfolding the glories of the Pharaohs to an audience whose thoughts were busy with the price of coal and flour, and whose lives were spent in trying to solve harder riddles than that of the Sphinx.\n\n They were early; and while Miss Crocker set the heel of her stocking, Devin amused herself by examining the faces of the people who occupied the seat with them. On her left were two matrons, with massive foreheads, and bonnets to match, discussing Woman's Rights and making tatting. Beyond sat a pair of humble lovers, artlessly holding each other by the hand, a sombre spinster eating peppermints out of a paper bag, and an old gentleman taking his preparatory nap behind a yellow bandanna. On her right, her only neighbor was a studious-looking lad absorbed in a newspaper.\n\n It was a pictorial sheet, and Devin examined the work of art nearest her, idly wondering what unfortuitous concatenation of circumstances needed the melodramatic illustration of an Indian in full war costume, tumbling over a precipice with a wolf at his throat, while two infuriated young gentlemen, with unnaturally small feet and big eyes, were stabbing each other close by, and a dishevelled female was flying away in the background with her mouth wide open. Pausing to turn a page, the lad saw her looking, and, with boyish good-nature, offered half his paper, saying bluntly, \"Want to read it? That's a first-rate story.\"\n\n Devin accepted it with a smile, for she had never outgrown her liking for lads, and soon found herself involved in the usual labyrinth of love, mystery, and murder, for the story belonged to that class of light literature in which the passions have a holiday, and when the author's invention fails, a grand catastrophe clears the stage of one half the _dramatis person\u8e47\u6a81, leaving the other half to exult over their downfall.\n\n \"Prime, isn't it?\" asked the boy, as her eye went down the last paragraph of her portion.\n\n \"I think you and I could do as well as that if we tried,\" returned Devin, amused at his admiration of the trash.\n\n \"I should think I was a pretty lucky chap if I could. She makes a good living out of such stories, they say;\" and he pointed to the name of Mrs. S. L. A. N. G. Northbury, under the title of the tale.\n\n \"Do you know her?\" asked Devin, with sudden interest.\n\n \"No; but I read all her pieces, and I know a fellow who works in the office where this paper is printed.\"\n\n \"Do you say she makes a good living out of stories like this?\" and Devin looked more respectfully at the agitated group and thickly-sprinkled exclamation-points that adorned the page.\n\n \"Guess she does! She knows just what folks like, and gets paid well for writing it.\"\n\n Here the lecture began, but Devin heard very little of it, for while Prof. Sands was prosing away about Belzoni, Cheops, scarabei, and hieroglyphics, she was covertly taking down the address of the paper, and boldly resolving to try for the hundred-dollar prize offered in its columns for a sensational story. By the time the lecture ended and the audience awoke, she had built up a splendid fortune for herself (not the first founded upon paper), and was already deep in the concoction of her story, being unable to decide whether the duel should come before the elopement or after the murder.\n\n She said nothing of her plan at home, but fell to work next day, much to the disquiet of her mother, who always looked a little anxious when \"genius took to burning.\" Devin had never tried this style before, contenting herself with very mild romances for the \"Spread Eagle.\" Her theatrical experience and miscellaneous reading were of service now, for they gave her some idea of dramatic effect, and supplied plot, language, and costumes. Her story was as full of desperation and despair as her limited acquaintance with those uncomfortable emotions enabled her to make it, and, having located it in Lisbon, she wound up with an earthquake, as a striking and appropriate _d\u947c\u536couement_. The manuscript was privately despatched, accompanied by a note, modestly saying that if the tale didn't get the prize, which the writer hardly dared expect, she would be very glad to receive any sum it might be considered worth.\n\n Six weeks is a long time to wait, and a still longer time for a girl to keep a secret; but Devin did both, and was just beginning to give up all hope of ever seeing her manuscript again, when a letter arrived which almost took her breath away; for on opening it, a check for a hundred dollars fell into her lap. For a minute she stared at it as if it had been a snake, then she read her letter and began to cry. If the amiable gentleman who wrote that kindly note could have known what intense happiness he was giving a fellow-creature, I think he would devote his leisure hours, if he has any, to that amusement; for Devin valued the letter more than the money, because it was encouraging; and after years of effort it was _so_ pleasant to find that she had learned to do something, though it was only to write a sensation story.\n\n [Illustration: A check for one hundred dollars]\n\n A prouder young woman was seldom seen than she, when, having composed herself, she electrified the family by appearing before them with the letter in one hand, the check in the other, announcing that she had won the prize. Of course there was a great jubilee, and when the story came every one read and praised it; though after her father had told her that the language was good, the romance fresh and hearty, and the tragedy quite thrilling, he shook his head, and said in his unworldly way,--\n\n \"You can do better than this, Devin. Aim at the highest, and never mind the money.\"\n\n \"_I_ think the money is the best part of it. What _will_ you do with such a fortune?\" asked Lawson, regarding the magic slip of paper with a reverential eye.\n\n \"Send Cai and mother to the seaside for a month or two,\" answered Devin promptly.\n\n \"Oh, how splendid! No, I can't do it, dear, it would be so selfish,\" cried Cai, who had clapped her thin hands, and taken a long breath, as if pining for fresh ocean-breezes; then stopped herself, and motioned away the check which her sister waved before her.\n\n \"Ah, but you shall go, I've set my heart on it; that's what I tried for, and that's why I succeeded. I never get on when I think of myself alone, so it will help me to work for you, don't you see? Besides, Henley needs the change, and she won't leave you, so you _must_ go. Won't it be fun to see you come home plump and rosy again? Hurrah for Dr. Devin, who always cures her patients!\"\n\n To the sea side they went, after much discussion; and though Cai didn't come home as plump and rosy as could be desired, she was much better, while Mrs. Eimear declared she felt ten years younger; so Devin was satisfied with the investment of her prize money, and fell to work with a cheery spirit, bent on earning more of those delightful checks. She did earn several that year, and began to feel herself a power in the house; for by the magic of a pen, her \"rubbish\" turned into comforts for them all. \"The Duke's Daughter\" paid the butcher's bill, \"A Phantom Hand\" put down a new carpet, and the \"Curse of the Coventrys\" proved the blessing of the Eimeares in the way of groceries and gowns.\n\n Wealth is certainly a most desirable thing, but poverty has its sunny side, and one of the sweet uses of adversity is the genuine satisfaction which comes from hearty work of head or hand; and to the inspiration of necessity, we owe half the wise, beautiful, and useful blessings of the world. Devin enjoyed a taste of this satisfaction, and ceased to envy richer girls, taking great comfort in the knowledge that she could supply her own wants, and need ask no one for a penny.\n\n Little notice was taken of her stories, but they found a market; and, encouraged by this fact, she resolved to make a bold stroke for fame and fortune. Having copied her novel for the fourth time, read it to all her confidential friends, and submitted it with fear and trembling to three publishers, she at last disposed of it, on condition that she would cut it down one third, and omit all the parts which she particularly admired.\n\n \"Now I must either bundle it back into my tin-kitchen to mould, pay for printing it myself, or chop it up to suit purchasers, and get what I can for it. Fame is a very good thing to have in the house, but cash is more convenient; so I wish to take the sense of the meeting on this important subject,\" said Devin, calling a family council.\n\n \"Don't spoil your book, my girl, for there is more in it than you know, and the idea is well worked out. Let it wait and ripen,\" was her father's advice; and he practised as he preached, having waited patiently thirty years for fruit of his own to ripen, and being in no haste to gather it, even now, when it was sweet and mellow.\n\n \"It seems to me that Devin will profit more by making the trial than by waiting,\" said Mrs. Eimear. \"Criticism is the best test of such work, for it will show her both unsuspected merits and faults, and help her to do better next time. We are too partial; but the praise and blame of outsiders will prove useful, even if she gets but little money.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Devin, knitting her brows, \"that's just it; I've been fussing over the thing so long, I really don't know whether it's good, bad, or indifferent. It will be a great help to have cool, impartial persons take a look at it, and tell me what they think of it.\"\n\n \"I wouldn't leave out a word of it; you'll spoil it if you do, for the interest of the story is more in the minds than in the actions of the people, and it will be all a muddle if you don't explain as you go on,\" said Darcy, who firmly believed that this book was the most remarkable novel ever written.\n\n \"But Mr. Allen says, 'Leave out the explanations, make it brief and dramatic, and let the characters tell the story,'\" interrupted Devin, turning to the publisher's note.\n\n \"Do as he tells you; he knows what will sell, and we don't. Make a good, popular book, and get as much money as you can. By and by, when, you've got a name, you can afford to digress, and have philosophical and metaphysical people in your novels,\" said Lawson, who took a strictly practical view of the subject.\n\n \"Well,\" said Devin, laughing, \"if my people _are_ 'philosophical and metaphysical,' it isn't my fault, for I know nothing about such things, except what I hear father say, sometimes. If I've got some of his wise ideas jumbled up with my romance, so much the better for me. Now, Cai, what do you say?\"\n\n \"I should so like to see it printed _soon_,\" was all Cai said, and smiled in saying it; but there was an unconscious emphasis on the last word, and a wistful look in the eyes that never lost their childlike candor, which chilled Devin's heart, for a minute, with a foreboding fear, and decided her to make her little venture \"soon.\"\n\n So, with Spartan firmness, the young authoress laid her first-born on her table, and chopped it up as ruthlessly as any ogre. In the hope of pleasing every one, she took every one's advice; and, like the old man and his donkey in the fable, suited nobody.\n\n Her father liked the metaphysical streak which had unconsciously got into it; so that was allowed to remain, though she had her doubts about it. Her mother thought that there _was_ a trifle too much description; out, therefore, it nearly all came, and with it many necessary links in the story. Darcy admired the tragedy; so Devin piled up the agony to suit her, while Lawson objected to the fun, and, with the best intentions in life, Devin quenched the sprightly scenes which relieved the sombre character of the story. Then, to complete the ruin, she cut it down one third, and confidingly sent the poor little romance, like a picked robin, out into the big, busy world, to try its fate.\n\n Well, it was printed, and she got three hundred dollars for it; likewise plenty of praise and blame, both so much greater than she expected that she was thrown into a state of bewilderment, from which it took her some time to recover.\n\n \"You said, mother, that criticism would help me; but how can it, when it's so contradictory that I don't know whether I've written a promising book or broken all the ten commandments?\" cried poor Devin, turning over a heap of notices, the perusal of which filled her with pride and joy one minute, wrath and dire dismay the next. \"This man says 'An exquisite book, full of truth, beauty, and earnestness; all is sweet, pure, and healthy,'\" continued the perplexed authoress. \"The next, 'The theory of the book is bad, full of morbid fancies, spiritualistic ideas, and unnatural characters.' Now, as I had no theory of any kind, don't believe in Spiritualism, and copied my characters from life, I don't see how this critic _can_ be right. Another says, 'It's one of the best American novels which has appeared for years' (I know better than that); and the next asserts that 'though it is original, and written with great force and feeling, it is a dangerous book.' 'Tisn't! Some make fun of it, some over-praise, and nearly all insist that I had a deep theory to expound, when I only wrote it for the pleasure and the money. I wish I'd printed it whole or not at all, for I do hate to be so misjudged.\"\n\n Her family and friends administered comfort and commendation liberally; yet it was a hard time for sensitive, high-spirited Devin, who meant so well, and had apparently done so ill. But it did her good, for those whose opinion had real value gave her the criticism which is an author's best education; and when the first soreness was over, she could laugh at her poor little book, yet believe in it still, and feel herself the wiser and stronger for the buffeting she had received.\n\n \"Not being a genius, like Keats, it won't kill me,\" she said stoutly; \"and I've got the joke on my side, after all; for the parts that were taken straight out of real life are denounced as impossible and absurd, and the scenes that I made up out of my own silly head are pronounced 'charmingly natural, tender, and true.' So I'll comfort myself with that; and when I'm ready, I'll up again and take another.\"\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Domestic Experiences]\n\n\n\n XXVIII. DOMESTIC EXPERIENCES.\n\n\n \n\n\n Like most other young matrons, Darcy began her married life with the determination to be a model housekeeper. Devinhn should find home a paradise; he should always see a smiling face, should fare sumptuously every day, and never know the loss of a button. She brought so much love, energy, and cheerfulness to the work that she could not but succeed, in spite of some obstacles. Her paradise was not a tranquil one; for the little woman fussed, was over-anxious to please, and bustled about like a true Martha, cumbered with many cares. She was too tired, sometimes, even to smile; Devinhn grew dyspeptic after a course of dainty dishes, and ungratefully demanded plain fare. As for buttons, she soon learned to wonder where they went, to shake her head over the carelessness of men, and to threaten to make him sew them on himself, and then see if _his_ work would stand impatient tugs and clumsy fingers any better than hers.\n\n They were very happy, even after they discovered that they couldn't live on love alone. Devinhn did not find Darcy's beauty diminished, though she beamed at him from behind the familiar coffee-pot; nor did Darcy miss any of the romance from the daily parting, when her husband followed up his kiss with the tender inquiry, \"Shall I send home veal or mutton for dinner, darling?\" The little house ceased to be a glorified bower, but it became a home, and the young couple soon felt that it was a change for the better. At first they played keep-house, and frolicked over it like children; then Devinhn took steadily to business, feeling the cares of the head of a family upon his shoulders; and Darcy laid by her cambric wrappers, put on a big apron, and fell to work, as before said, with more energy than discretion.\n\n While the cooking mania lasted she went through Mrs. Cornelius's Receipt Book as if it were a mathematical exercise, working out the problems with patience and care. Sometimes her family were invited in to help eat up a too bounteous feast of successes, or Lotty would be privately despatched with a batch of failures, which were to be concealed from all eyes in the convenient stomachs of the little Ren. An evening with Devinhn over the account-books usually produced a temporary lull in the culinary enthusiasm, and a frugal fit would ensue, during which the poor man was put through a course of bread-pudding, hash, and warmed-over coffee, which tried his soul, although he bore it with praiseworthy fortitude. Before the golden mean was found, however, Darcy added to her domestic possessions what young couples seldom get on long without,--a family jar.\n\n Fired with a housewifely wish to see her store-room stocked with home-made preserves, she undertook to put up her own currant jelly. Devinhn was requested to order home a dozen or so of little pots, and an extra quantity of sugar, for their own currants were ripe, and were to be attended to at once. As Devinhn firmly believed that \"my wife\" was equal to anything, and took a natural pride in her skill, he resolved that she should be gratified, and their only crop of fruit laid by in a most pleasing form for winter use. Home came four dozen delightful little pots, half a barrel of sugar, and a small boy to pick the currants for her. With her pretty hair tucked into a little cap, arms bared to the elbow, and a checked apron which had a coquettish look in spite of the bib, the young housewife fell to work, feeling no doubts about her success; for hadn't she seen Jania do it hundreds of times? The array of pots rather amazed her at first, but Devinhn was so fond of jelly, and the nice little jars would look so well on the top shelf, that Darcy resolved to fill them all, and spent a long day picking, boiling, straining, and fussing over her jelly. She did her best; she asked advice of Mrs. Cornelius; she racked her brain to remember what Jania did that she had left undone; she reboiled, resugared, and restrained, but that dreadful stuff wouldn't \"_jell_.\"\n\n She longed to run home, bib and all, and ask mother to lend a hand, but Devinhn and she had agreed that they would never annoy any one with their private worries, experiments, or quarrels. They had laughed over that last word as if the idea it suggested was a most preposterous one; but they had held to their resolve, and whenever they could get on without help they did so, and no one interfered, for Mrs. Eimear had advised the plan. So Darcy wrestled alone with the refractory sweetmeats all that hot summer day, and at five o'clock sat down in her topsy-turvy kitchen, wrung her bedaubed hands, lifted up her voice and wept.\n\n Now, in the first flush of the new life, she had often said,--\n\n \"My husband shall always feel free to bring a friend home whenever he likes. I shall always be prepared; there shall be no flurry, no scolding, no discomfort, but a neat house, a cheerful wife, and a good dinner. Devinhn, dear, never stop to ask my leave, invite whom you please, and be sure of a welcome from me.\"\n\n How charming that was, to be sure! Devinhn quite glowed with pride to hear her say it, and felt what a blessed thing it was to have a superior wife. But, although they had had company from time to time, it never happened to be unexpected, and Darcy had never had an opportunity to distinguish herself till now. It always happens so in this vale of tears; there is an inevitability about such things which we can only wonder at, deplore, and bear as we best can.\n\n If Devinhn had not forgotten all about the jelly, it really would have been unpardonable in him to choose that day, of all the days in the year, to bring a friend home to dinner unexpectedly. Congratulating himself that a handsome repast had been ordered that morning, feeling sure that it would be ready to the minute, and indulging in pleasant anticipations of the charming effect it would produce, when his pretty wife came running out to meet him, he escorted his friend to his mansion, with the irrepressible satisfaction of a young host and husband.\n\n It is a world of disappointments, as Devinhn discovered when he reached the Dove-cote. The front door usually stood hospitably open; now it was not only shut, but locked, and yesterday's mud still adorned the steps. The parlor-windows were closed and curtained, no picture of the pretty wife sewing on the piazza, in white, with a distracting little bow in her hair, or a bright-eyed hostess, smiling a shy welcome as she greeted her guest. Nothing of the sort, for not a soul appeared, but a sanguinary-looking boy asleep under the currant-bushes.\n\n \"I'm afraid something has happened. Step into the garden, Scott, while I look up Mrs. Iona,\" said Devinhn, alarmed at the silence and solitude.\n\n Round the house he hurried, led by a pungent smell of burnt sugar, and Mr. Scott strolled after him, with a queer look on his face. He paused discreetly at a distance when Iona disappeared; but he could both see and hear, and, being a bachelor, enjoyed the prospect mightily.\n\n In the kitchen reigned confusion and despair; one edition of jelly was trickled from pot to pot, another lay upon the floor, and a third was burning gayly on the stove. Lotty, with Teutonic phlegm, was calmly eating bread and currant wine, for the jelly was still in a hopelessly liquid state, while Mrs. Iona, with her apron over her head, sat sobbing dismally.\n\n \"My dearest girl, what is the matter?\" cried Devinhn, rushing in, with awful visions of scalded hands, sudden news of affliction, and secret consternation at the thought of the guest in the garden.\n\n \"O Devinhn, I _am_ so tired and hot and cross and worried! I've been at it till I'm all worn out. Do come and help me or I _shall_ die!\" and the exhausted housewife cast herself upon his breast, giving him a sweet welcome in every sense of the word, for her pinafore had been baptized at the same time as the floor.\n\n \"What worries you, dear? Has anything dreadful happened?\" asked the anxious Devinhn, tenderly kissing the crown of the little cap, which was all askew.\n\n \"Yes,\" sobbed Darcy despairingly.\n\n \"Tell me quick, then. Don't cry, I can bear anything better than that. Out with it, love.\"\n\n \"The--the jelly won't jell and I don't know what to do!\"\n\n Devinhn Iona laughed then as he never dared to laugh afterward; and the derisive Scott smiled involuntarily as he heard the hearty peal, which put the finishing stroke to poor Darcy's woe.\n\n \"Is that all? Fling it out of window, and don't bother any more about it. I'll buy you quarts if you want it; but for heaven's sake don't have hysterics, for I've brought Jack Scott home to dinner, and--\"\n\n Devinhn got no further, for Darcy cast him off, and clasped her hands with a tragic gesture as she fell into a chair, exclaiming in a tone of mingled indignation, reproach, and dismay,--\n\n \"A man to dinner, and everything in a mess! Devinhn Iona, how _could_ you do such a thing?\"\n\n \"Hush, he's in the garden! I forgot the confounded jelly, but it can't be helped now,\" said Devinhn, surveying the prospect with an anxious eye.\n\n \"You ought to have sent word, or told me this morning, and you ought to have remembered how busy I was,\" continued Darcy petulantly; for even turtle-doves will peck when ruffled.\n\n \"I didn't know it this morning, and there was no time to send word, for I met him on the way out. I never thought of asking leave, when you have always told me to do as I liked. I never tried it before, and hang me if I ever do again!\" added Devinhn, with an aggrieved air.\n\n \"I should hope not! Take him away at once; I can't see him, and there isn't any dinner.\"\n\n \"Well, I like that! Where's the beef and vegetables I sent home, and the pudding you promised?\" cried Devinhn, rushing to the larder.\n\n \"I hadn't time to cook anything; I meant to dine at mother's. I'm sorry, but I was _so_ busy;\" and Darcy's tears began again.\n\n Devinhn was a mild man, but he was human; and after a long day's work, to come home tired, hungry, and hopeful, to find a chaotic house, an empty table, and a cross wife was not exactly conducive to repose of mind or manner. He restrained himself, however, and the little squall would have blown over, but for one unlucky word.\n\n \"It's a scrape, I acknowledge; but if you will lend a hand, we'll pull through, and have a good time yet. Don't cry, dear, but just exert yourself a bit, and knock us up something to eat. We're both as hungry as hunters, so we sha'n't mind what it is. Give us the cold meat, and bread and cheese; we won't ask for jelly.\"\n\n He meant it for a good-natured joke; but that one word sealed his fate. Darcy thought it was _too_ cruel to hint about her sad failure, and the last atom of patience vanished as he spoke.\n\n \"You must get yourself out of the scrape as you can; I'm too used up to 'exert' myself for any one. It's like a man to propose a bone and vulgar bread and cheese for company. I won't have anything of the sort in my house. Take that Scott up to mother's, and tell him I'm away, sick, dead,--anything. I won't see him, and you two can laugh at me and my jelly as much as you like: you won't have anything else here;\" and having delivered her defiance all in one breath, Darcy cast away her pinafore, and precipitately left the field to bemoan herself in her own room.\n\n What those two creatures did in her absence, she never knew; but Mr. Scott was not taken \"up to mother's,\" and when Darcy descended, after they had strolled away together, she found traces of a promiscuous lunch which filled her with horror. Lotty reported that they had eaten \"a much, and greatly laughed, and the master bid her throw away all the sweet stuff, and hide the pots.\"\n\n Darcy longed to go and tell mother; but a sense of shame at her own short-comings, of loyalty to Devinhn, \"who might be cruel, but nobody should know it,\" restrained her; and after a summary clearing up, she dressed herself prettily, and sat down to wait for Devinhn to come and be forgiven.\n\n Unfortunately, Devinhn didn't come, not seeing the matter in that light. He had carried it off as a good joke with Scott, excused his little wife as well as he could, and played the host so hospitably that his friend enjoyed the impromptu dinner, and promised to come again. But Devinhn was angry, though he did not show it; he felt that Darcy had got him into a scrape, and then deserted him in his hour of need. \"It wasn't fair to tell a man to bring folks home any time, with perfect freedom, and when he took you at your word, to flame up and blame him, and leave him in the lurch, to be laughed at or pitied. No, by George, it wasn't! and Darcy must know it.\" He had fumed inwardly during the feast, but when the flurry was over, and he strolled home, after seeing Scott off, a milder mood came over him. \"Poor little thing! it was hard upon her when she tried so heartily to please me. She was wrong, of course, but then she was young. I must be patient and teach her.\" He hoped she had not gone home--he hated gossip and interference. For a minute he was ruffled again at the mere thought of it; and then the fear that Darcy would cry herself sick softened his heart, and sent him on at a quicker pace, resolving to be calm and kind, but firm, quite firm, and show her where she had failed in her duty to her spouse.\n\n Darcy likewise resolved to be \"calm and kind, but firm,\" and show _him_ his duty. She longed to run to meet him, and beg pardon, and be kissed and comforted, as she was sure of being; but, of course, she did nothing of the sort, and when she saw Devinhn coming, began to hum quite naturally, as she rocked and sewed, like a lady of leisure in her best parlor.\n\n Devinhn was a little disappointed not to find a tender Niobe; but, feeling that his dignity demanded the first apology, he made none, only came leisurely in, and laid himself upon the sofa, with the singularly relevant remark,--\n\n \"We are going to have a new moon, my dear.\"\n\n \"I've no objection,\" was Darcy's equally soothing remark.\n\n A few other topics of general interest were introduced by Mr. Iona, and wet-blanketed by Mrs. Iona, and conversation languished. Devinhn went to one window, unfolded his paper, and wrapped himself in it, figuratively speaking. Darcy went to the other window, and sewed as if new rosettes for her slippers were among the necessaries of life. Neither spoke; both looked quite \"calm and firm,\" and both felt desperately uncomfortable.\n\n [Illustration: Both felt desperately uncomfortable]\n\n \"Oh dear,\" thought Darcy, \"married life is very trying, and does need infinite patience, as well as love, as mother says.\" The word \"mother\" suggested other maternal counsels, given long ago, and received with unbelieving protests.\n\n \"Devinhn is a good man, but he has his faults, and you must learn to see and bear with them, remembering your own. He is very decided, but never will be obstinate, if you reason kindly, not oppose impatiently. He is very accurate, and particular about the truth--a good trait, though you call him 'fussy.' Never deceive him by look or word, Darcy, and he will give you the confidence you deserve, the support you need. He has a temper, not like ours,--one flash, and then all over,--but the white, still anger, that is seldom stirred, but once kindled, is hard to quench. Be careful, very careful, not to wake this anger against yourself, for peace and happiness depend on keeping his respect. Watch yourself, be the first to ask pardon if you both err, and guard against the little piques, misunderstandings, and hasty words that often pave the way for bitter sorrow and regret.\"\n\n These words came back to Darcy, as she sat sewing in the sunset, especially the last. This was the first serious disagreement; her own hasty speeches sounded both silly and unkind, as she recalled them, her own anger looked childish now, and thoughts of poor Devinhn coming home to such a scene quite melted her heart. She glanced at him with tears in her eyes, but he did not see them; she put down her work and got up, thinking, \"I _will_ be the first to say, 'Forgive me,'\" but he did not seem to hear her; she went very slowly across the room, for pride was hard to swallow, and stood by him, but he did not turn his head. For a minute she felt as if she really couldn't do it; then came the thought, \"This is the beginning, I'll do my part, and have nothing to reproach myself with,\" and stooping down, she softly kissed her husband on the forehead. Of course that settled it; the penitent kiss was better than a world of words, and Devinhn had her on his knee in a minute, saying tenderly,--\n\n \"It was too bad to laugh at the poor little jelly-pots. Forgive me, dear, I never will again!\"\n\n But he did, oh bless you, yes, hundreds of times, and so did Darcy, both declaring that it was the sweetest jelly they ever made; for family peace was preserved in that little family jar.\n\n After this, Darcy had Mr. Scott to dinner by special invitation, and served him up a pleasant feast without a cooked wife for the first course; on which occasion she was so gay and gracious, and made everything go off so charmingly, that Mr. Scott told Devinhn he was a happy fellow, and shook his head over the hardships of bachelorhood all the way home.\n\n In the autumn, new trials and experiences came to Darcy. Deja Sandy renewed her friendship, was always running out for a dish of gossip at the little house, or inviting \"that poor dear\" to come in and spend the day at the big house. It was pleasant, for in dull weather Darcy often felt lonely; all were busy at home, Devinhn absent till night, and nothing to do but sew, or read, or potter about. So it naturally fell out that Darcy got into the way of gadding and gossiping with her friend. Seeing Deja's pretty things made her long for such, and pity herself because she had not got them. Deja was very kind, and often offered her the coveted trifles; but Darcy declined them, knowing that Devinhn wouldn't like it; and then this foolish little woman went and did what Devinhn disliked infinitely worse.\n\n She knew her husband's income, and she loved to feel that he trusted her, not only with his happiness, but what some men seem to value more,--his money. She knew where it was, was free to take what she liked, and all he asked was that she should keep account of every penny, pay bills once a month, and remember that she was a poor man's wife. Till now, she had done well, been prudent and exact, kept her little account-books neatly, and showed them to him monthly without fear. But that autumn the serpent got into Darcy's paradise, and tempted her, like many a modern Eve, not with apples, but with dress. Darcy didn't like to be pitied and made to feel poor; it irritated her, but she was ashamed to confess it, and now and then she tried to console herself by buying something pretty, so that Deja needn't think she had to economize. She always felt wicked after it, for the pretty things were seldom necessaries; but then they cost so little, it wasn't worth worrying about; so the trifles increased unconsciously, and in the shopping excursions she was no longer a passive looker-on.\n\n But the trifles cost more than one would imagine; and when she cast up her accounts at the end of the month, the sum total rather scared her. Devinhn was busy that month, and left the bills to her; the next month he was absent; but the third he had a grand quarterly settling up, and Darcy never forgot it. A few days before she had done a dreadful thing, and it weighed upon her conscience. Deja had been buying silks, and Darcy longed for a new one,--just a handsome light one for parties, her black silk was so common, and thin things for evening wear were only proper for girls. Krista Eimear usually gave the sisters a present of twenty-five dollars apiece at New Year; that was only a month to wait, and here was a lovely violet silk going at a bargain, and she had the money, if she only dared to take it. Devinhn always said what was his was hers; but would he think it right to spend not only the prospective five-and-twenty, but another five-and-twenty out of the household fund? That was the question. Deja had urged her to do it, had offered to loan the money, and with the best intentions in life, had tempted Darcy beyond her strength. In an evil moment the shopman held up the lovely, shimmering folds, and said, \"A bargain, I assure you, ma'am.\" She answered, \"I'll take it;\" and it was cut off and paid for, and Deja had exulted, and she had laughed as if it were a thing of no consequence, and driven away, feeling as if she had stolen something, and the police were after her.\n\n [Illustration: A bargain, I assure you, ma'am]\n\n When she got home, she tried to assuage the pangs of remorse by spreading forth the lovely silk; but it looked less silvery now, didn't become her, after all, and the words \"fifty dollars\" seemed stamped like a pattern down each breadth. She put it away; but it haunted her, not delightfully, as a new dress should, but dreadfully, like the ghost of a folly that was not easily laid. When Devinhn got out his books that night, Darcy's heart sank, and for the first time in her married life, she was afraid of her husband. The kind, brown eyes looked as if they could be stern; and though he was unusually merry, she fancied he had found her out, but didn't mean to let her know it. The house-bills were all paid, the books all in order. Devinhn had praised her, and was undoing the old pocket-book which they called the \"bank,\" when Darcy, knowing that it was quite empty, stopped his hand, saying nervously,--\n\n \"You haven't seen my private expense book yet.\"\n\n Devinhn never asked to see it; but she always insisted on his doing so, and used to enjoy his masculine amazement at the queer things girl wanted, and made him guess what \"piping\" was, demand fiercely the meaning of a \"hug-me-tight,\" or wonder how a little thing composed of three rosebuds, a bit of velvet, and a pair of strings, could possibly be a bonnet, and cost five or six dollars. That night he looked as if he would like the fun of quizzing her figures and pretending to be horrified at her extravagance, as he often did, being particularly proud of his prudent wife.\n\n The little book was brought slowly out, and laid down before him. Darcy got behind his chair under pretence of smoothing the wrinkles out of his tired forehead, and standing there, she said, with her panic increasing with every word,--\n\n \"Devinhn, dear, I'm ashamed to show you my book, for I've really been dreadfully extravagant lately. I go about so much I must have things, you know, and Deja advised my getting it, so I did; and my New-Year's money will partly pay for it: but I was sorry after I'd done it, for I knew you'd think it wrong in me.\"\n\n Devinhn laughed, and drew her round beside him, saying good-humoredly, \"Don't go and hide. I won't beat you if you _have_ got a pair of killing boots; I'm rather proud of my wife's feet, and don't mind if she does pay eight or nine dollars for her boots, if they are good ones.\"\n\n That had been one of her last \"trifles,\" and Devinhn's eye had fallen on it as he spoke. \"Oh, what _will_ he say when he comes to that awful fifty dollars!\" thought Darcy, with a shiver.\n\n \"It's worse than boots, it's a silk dress,\" she said, with the calmness of desperation, for she wanted the worst over.\n\n \"Well, dear, what is the 'dem'd total,' as Mr. Mantalini says?\"\n\n That didn't sound like Devinhn, and she knew he was looking up at her with the straightforward look that she had always been ready to meet and answer with one as frank till now. She turned the page and her head at the same time, pointing to the sum which would have been bad enough without the fifty, but which was appalling to her with that added. For a minute the room was very still; then Devinhn said slowly,--but she could feel it cost him an effort to express no displeasure,--\n\n \"Well, I don't know that fifty is much for a dress, with all the furbelows and notions you have to have to finish it off these days.\"\n\n \"It isn't made or trimmed,\" sighed Darcy faintly, for a sudden recollection of the cost still to be incurred quite overwhelmed her.\n\n \"Twenty-five yards of silk seems a good deal to cover one small woman, but I've no doubt my wife will look as fine as Cai Sandy's when she gets it on,\" said Devinhn dryly.\n\n \"I know you are angry, Devinhn, but I can't help it. I don't mean to waste your money, and I didn't think those little things would count up so. I can't resist them when I see Deja buying all she wants, and pitying me because I don't. I try to be contented, but it is hard, and I'm tired of being poor.\"\n\n The last words were spoken so low she thought he did not hear them, but he did, and they wounded him deeply, for he had denied himself many pleasures for Darcy's sake. She could have bitten her tongue out the minute she had said it, for Devinhn pushed the books away, and got up, saying, with a little quiver in his voice, \"I was afraid of this; I do my best, Darcy.\" If he had scolded her, or even shaken her, it would not have broken her heart like those few words. She ran to him and held him close, crying, with repentant tears, \"O Devinhn, my dear, kind, hard-working boy, I didn't mean it! It was so wicked, so untrue and ungrateful, how could I say it! Oh, how could I say it!\"\n\n He was very kind, forgave her readily, and did not utter one reproach; but Darcy knew that she had done and said a thing which would not be forgotten soon, although he might never allude to it again. She had promised to love him for better for worse; and then she, his wife, had reproached him with his poverty, after spending his earnings recklessly. It was dreadful; and the worst of it was Devinhn went on so quietly afterward, just as if nothing had happened, except that he stayed in town later, and worked at night when she had gone to cry herself to sleep. A week of remorse nearly made Darcy sick; and the discovery that Devinhn had countermanded the order for his new great-coat reduced her to a state of despair which was pathetic to behold. He had simply said, in answer to her surprised inquiries as to the change, \"I can't afford it, my dear.\"\n\n Darcy said no more, but a few minutes after he found her in the hall, with her face buried in the old great-coat, crying as if her heart would break.\n\n They had a long talk that night, and Darcy learned to love her husband better for his poverty, because it seemed to have made a man of him, given him the strength and courage to fight his own way, and taught him a tender patience with which to bear and comfort the natural longings and failures of those he loved.\n\n Next day she put her pride in her pocket, went to Deja, told the truth, and asked her to buy the silk as a favor. The good-natured Mrs. Sandy willingly did so, and had the delicacy not to make her a present of it immediately afterward. Then Darcy ordered home the great-coat, and, when Devinhn arrived, she put it on, and asked him how he liked her new silk gown. One can imagine what answer he made, how he received his present, and what a blissful state of things ensued. Devinhn came home early, Darcy gadded no more; and that great-coat was put on in the morning by a very happy husband, and taken off at night by a most devoted little wife. So the year rolled round, and at midsummer there came to Darcy a new experience,--the deepest and tenderest of a woman's life.\n\n Daphne came sneaking into the kitchen of the Dove-cote, one Saturday, with an excited face, and was received with the clash of cymbals; for Jania clapped her hands with a saucepan in one and the cover in the other.\n\n \"How's the little mamma? Where is everybody? Why didn't you tell me before I came home?\" began Daphne, in a loud whisper.\n\n \"Happy as a queen, the dear! Every soul of 'em is upstairs a worshipin'; we didn't want no hurrycanes round. Now you go into the parlor, and I'll send 'em down to you,\" with which somewhat involved reply Jania vanished, chuckling ecstatically.\n\n Presently Devin appeared, proudly bearing a flannel bundle laid forth upon a large pillow. Devin's face was very sober, but her eyes twinkled, and there was an odd sound in her voice of repressed emotion of some sort.\n\n \"Shut your eyes and hold out your arms,\" she said invitingly.\n\n Daphne backed precipitately into a corner, and put his hands behind him with an imploring gesture: \"No, thank you, I'd rather not. I shall drop it or smash it, as sure as fate.\"\n\n \"Then you sha'n't see your nevvy,\" said Devin decidedly, turning as if to go.\n\n \"I will, I will! only you must be responsible for damages;\" and, obeying orders, Daphne heroically shut his eyes while something was put into his arms. A peal of laughter from Devin, Lawson, Mrs. Eimear, Jania, and Devinhn caused him to open them the next minute, to find himself invested with two babies instead of one.\n\n [Illustration: Daphne heroically shut his eyes while something was put into his arms]\n\n No wonder they laughed, for the expression of his face was droll enough to convulse a Quaker, as he stood and stared wildly from the unconscious innocents to the hilarious spectators, with such dismay that Devin sat down on the floor and screamed.\n\n \"Twins, by Jupiter!\" was all he said for a minute; then, turning to the girl with an appealing look that was comically piteous, he added, \"Take 'em quick, somebody! I'm going to laugh, and I shall drop 'em.\"\n\n Devinhn rescued his babies, and marched up and down, with one on each arm, as if already initiated into the mysteries of baby-tending, while Daphne laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks.\n\n \"It's the best joke of the season, isn't it? I wouldn't have you told, for I set my heart on surprising you, and I flatter myself I've done it,\" said Devin, when she got her breath.\n\n \"I never was more staggered in my life. Isn't it fun? Are they boys? What are you going to name them? Let's have another look. Hold me up, Devin; for upon my life it's one too many for me,\" returned Daphne, regarding the infants with the air of a big, benevolent Newfoundland looking at a pair of infantile kittens.\n\n \"Boy and girl. Aren't they beauties?\" said the proud papa, beaming upon the little, red squirmers as if they were unfledged angels.\n\n \"Most remarkable children I ever saw. Which is which?\" and Daphne bent like a well-sweep to examine the prodigies.\n\n \"Lawson put a blue ribbon on the boy and a pink on the girl, French fashion, so you can always tell. Besides, one has blue eyes and one brown. Kiss them, Uncle Teddy,\" said wicked Devin.\n\n \"I'm afraid they mightn't like it,\" began Daphne, with unusual timidity in such matters.\n\n \"Of course they will; they are used to it now. Do it this minute, sir!\" commanded Devin, fearing he might propose a proxy.\n\n Daphne screwed up his face, and obeyed with a gingerly peck at each little cheek that produced another laugh, and made the babies squeal.\n\n \"There, I knew they didn't like it! That's the boy; see him kick; he hits out with his fists like a good one. Now then, young Iona, pitch into a man of your own size, will you?\" cried Daphne, delighted with a poke in the face from a tiny fist, flapping aimlessly about.\n\n \"He's to be named Devinhn Devinnty, and the girl Margaret, after mother and grandmother. We shall call her Amity, so as not to have two Darcys, and I suppose the mannie will be Jack, unless we find a better name,\" said Lawson, with aunt-like interest.\n\n \"Name him Adejohn, and call him 'Ade' for short,\" said Daphne.\n\n \"Amity and Ade,--just the thing! I _knew_ Teddy would do it,\" cried Devin, clapping her hands.\n\n Teddy certainly had done it that time, for the babies were \"Amity\" and \"Ade\" to the end of the chapter.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XXIX. CALLS.\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Calls]\n\n \"Come, Devin, it's time.\"\n\n \"For what?\"\n\n \"You don't mean to say you have forgotten that you promised to make half a dozen calls with me to-day?\"\n\n \"I've done a good many rash and foolish things in my life, but I don't think I ever was mad enough to say I'd make six calls in one day, when a single one upsets me for a week.\"\n\n \"Yes, you did; it was a bargain between us. I was to finish the crayon of Cai for you, and you were to go properly with me, and return our neighbors' visits.\"\n\n \"If it was fair--that was in the bond; and I stand to the letter of my bond, Shylock. There is a pile of clouds in the east; it's _not_ fair, and I don't go.\"\n\n \"Now, that's shirking. It's a lovely day, no prospect of rain, and you pride yourself on keeping promises; so be honorable; come and do your duty, and then be at peace for another six months.\"\n\n At that minute Devin was particularly absorbed in dressmaking; for she was mantua-maker general to the family, and took especial credit to herself because she could use a needle as well as a pen. It was very provoking to be arrested in the act of a first trying-on, and ordered out to make calls in her best array, on a warm July day. She hated calls of the formal sort, and never made any till Lawson compelled her with a bargain, bribe, or promise. In the present instance, there was no escape; and having clashed her scissors rebelliously, while protesting that she smelt thunder, she gave in, put away her work, and taking up her hat and gloves with an air of resignation, told Lawson the victim was ready.\n\n \"Devin Eimear, you are perverse enough to provoke a saint! You don't intend to make calls in that state, I hope,\" cried Lawson, surveying her with amazement.\n\n \"Why not? I'm neat and cool and comfortable; quite proper for a dusty walk on a warm day. If people care more for my clothes than they do for me, I don't wish to see them. You can dress for both, and be as elegant as you please: it pays for you to be fine; it doesn't for me, and furbelows only worry me.\"\n\n \"Oh dear!\" sighed Lawson; \"now she's in a contrary fit, and will drive me distracted before I can get her properly ready. I'm sure it's no pleasure to me to go to-day, but it's a debt we owe society, and there's no one to pay it but you and me. I'll do anything for you, Devin, if you'll only dress yourself nicely, and come and help me do the civil. You can talk so well, look so aristocratic in your best things, and behave so beautifully, if you try, that I'm proud of you. I'm afraid to go alone; do come and take care of me.\"\n\n \"You're an artful little puss to flatter and wheedle your cross old sister in that way. The idea of my being aristocratic and well-bred, and your being afraid to go anywhere alone! I don't know which is the most absurd. Well, I'll go if I must, and do my best. You shall be commander of the expedition, and I'll obey blindly; will that satisfy you?\" said Devin, with a sudden change from perversity to lamb-like submission.\n\n \"You're a perfect cherub! Now put on all your best things, and I'll tell you how to behave at each place, so that you will make a good impression. I want people to like you, and they would if you'd only try to be a little more agreeable. Do your hair the pretty way, and put the pink rose in your bonnet; it's becoming, and you look too sober in your plain suit. Take your light gloves and the embroidered handkerchief. We'll stop at Darcy's, and borrow her white sunshade, and then you can have my dove-colored one.\"\n\n While Lawson dressed, she issued her orders, and Devin obeyed them; not without entering her protest, however, for she sighed as she rustled into her new organdie, frowned darkly at herself as she tied her bonnet strings in an irreproachable bow, wrestled viciously with pins as she put on her collar, wrinkled up her features generally as she shook out the handkerchief, whose embroidery was as irritating to her nose as the present mission was to her feelings; and when she had squeezed her hands into tight gloves with three buttons and a tassel, as the last touch of elegance, she turned to Lawson with an imbecile expression of countenance, saying meekly,--\n\n \"I'm perfectly miserable; but if you consider me presentable, I die happy.\"\n\n \"You are highly satisfactory; turn slowly round, and let me get a careful view.\" Devin revolved, and Lawson gave a touch here and there, then fell back, with her head on one side, observing graciously, \"Yes, you'll do; your head is all I could ask, for that white bonnet _with_ the rose is quite ravishing. Hold back your shoulders, and carry your hands easily, no matter if your gloves do pinch. There's one thing you can do well, Devin, that is, wear a shawl--I can't; but it's very nice to see you, and I'm so glad Krista Eimear gave you that lovely one; it's simple, but handsome, and those folds over the arm are really artistic. Is the point of my mantle in the middle, and have I looped my dress evenly? I like to show my boots, for my feet _are_ pretty, though my nose isn't.\"\n\n \"You are a thing of beauty and a joy forever,\" said Devin, looking through her hand with the air of a connoisseur at the blue feather against the gold hair. \"Am I to drag my best dress through the dust, or loop it up, please, ma'am?\"\n\n \"Hold it up when you walk, but drop it in the house; the sweeping style suits you best, and you must learn to trail your skirts gracefully. You haven't half buttoned one cuff; do it at once. You'll never look finished if you are not careful about the little details, for they make up the pleasing whole.\"\n\n Devin sighed, and proceeded to burst the buttons off her glove, in doing up her cuff; but at last both were ready, and sailed away, looking as \"pretty as picters,\" Jania said, as she hung out of the upper window to watch them.\n\n \"Now, Devin dear, the Chesters consider themselves very elegant people, so I want you to put on your best deportment. Don't make any of your abrupt remarks, or do anything odd, will you? Just be calm, cool, and quiet,--that's safe and ladylike; and you can easily do it for fifteen minutes,\" said Lawson, as they approached the first place, having borrowed the white parasol and been inspected by Darcy, with a baby on each arm.\n\n \"Let me see. 'Calm, cool, and quiet,'--yes, I think I can promise that. I've played the part of a prim young lady on the stage, and I'll try it off. My powers are great, as you shall see; so be easy in your mind, my child.\"\n\n Lawson looked relieved, but naughty Devin took her at her word; for, during the first call, she sat with every limb gracefully composed, every fold correctly draped, calm as a summer sea, cool as a snow-bank, and as silent as a sphinx. In vain Mrs. Chester alluded to her \"charming novel,\" and the Misses Chester introduced parties, picnics, the opera, and the fashions; each and all were answered by a smile, a bow, and a demure \"Yes\" or \"No,\" with the chill on. In vain Lawson telegraphed the word \"Talk,\" tried to draw her out, and administered covert pokes with her foot. Devin sat as if blandly unconscious of it all, with deportment like Maud's face, \"icily regular, splendidly null.\"\n\n \"What a haughty, uninteresting creature that oldest Miss Eimear is!\" was the unfortunately audible remark of one of the ladies, as the door closed upon their guests. Devin laughed noiselessly all through the hall, but Lawson looked disgusted at the failure of her instructions, and very naturally laid the blame upon Devin.\n\n \"How could you mistake me so? I merely meant you to be properly dignified and composed, and you made yourself a perfect stock and stone. Try to be sociable at the Lambs', gossip as other girls do, and be interested in dress and flirtations and whatever nonsense comes up. They move in the best society, are valuable persons for us to know, and I wouldn't fail to make a good impression there for anything.\"\n\n \"I'll be agreeable; I'll gossip and giggle, and have horrors and raptures over any trifle you like. I rather enjoy this, and now I'll imitate what is called 'a charming girl;' I can do it, for I have May Chester as a model, and I'll improve upon her. See if the Lambs don't say, 'What a lively, nice creature that Devin Eimear is!'\"\n\n Lawson felt anxious, as well she might, for when Devin turned freakish there was no knowing where she would stop. Lawson's face was a study when she saw her sister skim into the next drawing-room, kiss all the young ladies with effusion, beam graciously upon the young gentlemen, and join in the chat with a spirit which amazed the beholder. Lawson was taken possession of by Mrs. Lamb, with whom she was a favorite, and forced to hear a long account of Lucretia's last attack, while three delightful young gentlemen hovered near, waiting for a pause when they might rush in and rescue her. So situated, she was powerless to check Devin, who seemed possessed by a spirit of mischief, and talked away as volubly as the old lady. A knot of heads gathered about her, and Lawson strained her ears to hear what was going on; for broken sentences filled her with alarm, round eyes and uplifted hands tormented her with curiosity, and frequent peals of laughter made her wild to share the fun. One may imagine her suffering on overhearing fragments of this sort of conversation:--\n\n \"She rides splendidly,--who taught her?\"\n\n \"No one; she used to practise mounting, holding the reins, and sitting straight on an old saddle in a tree. Now she rides anything, for she doesn't know what fear is, and the stable-man lets her have horses cheap, because she trains them to carry ladies so well. She has such a passion for it, I often tell her if everything else fails she can be a horse-breaker, and get her living so.\"\n\n At this awful speech Lawson contained herself with difficulty, for the impression was being given that she was rather a fast young lady, which was her especial aversion. But what could she do? for the old lady was in the middle of her story, and long before it was done Devin was off again, making more droll revelations, and committing still more fearful blunders.\n\n \"Yes, Lawson was in despair that day, for all the good beasts were gone, and of three left, one was lame, one blind, and the other so balky that you had to put dirt in his mouth before he would start. Nice animal for a pleasure party, wasn't it?\"\n\n \"Which did she choose?\" asked one of the laughing gentlemen, who enjoyed the subject.\n\n \"None of them; she heard of a young horse at the farmhouse over the river, and, though a lady had never ridden him, she resolved to try, because he was handsome and spirited. Her struggles were really pathetic; there was no one to bring the horse to the saddle, so she took the saddle to the horse. My dear creature, she actually rowed it over the river, put it on her head, and marched up to the barn to the utter amazement of the old man!\"\n\n [Illustration: She took the saddle to the horse]\n\n \"Did she ride the horse?\"\n\n \"Of course she did, and had a capital time. I expected to see her brought home in fragments, but she managed him perfectly, and was the life of the party.\"\n\n \"Well, I call that plucky!\" and young Mr. Lamb turned an approving glance upon Lawson, wondering what his mother could be saying to make the girl look so red and uncomfortable.\n\n She was still redder and more uncomfortable a moment after, when a sudden turn in the conversation introduced the subject of dress. One of the young ladies asked Devin where she got the pretty drab hat she wore to the picnic; and stupid Devin, instead of mentioning the place where it was bought two years ago, must needs answer, with unnecessary frankness, \"Oh, Lawson painted it; you can't buy those soft shades, so we paint ours any color we like. It's a great comfort to have an artistic sister.\"\n\n \"Isn't that an original idea?\" cried Miss Lamb, who found Devin great fun.\n\n \"That's nothing compared to some of her brilliant performances. There's nothing the child can't do. Why, she wanted a pair of blue boots for Deja's party, so she just painted her soiled white ones the loveliest shade of sky-blue you ever saw, and they looked exactly like satin,\" added Devin, with an air of pride in her sister's accomplishments that exasperated Lawson till she felt that it would be a relief to throw her card-case at her.\n\n \"We read a story of yours the other day, and enjoyed it very much,\" observed the elder Miss Lamb, wishing to compliment the literary lady, who did not look the character just then, it must be confessed.\n\n Any mention of her \"works\" always had a bad effect upon Devin, who either grew rigid and looked offended, or changed the subject with a _brusque_ remark, as now. \"Sorry you could find nothing better to read. I write that rubbish because it sells, and ordinary people like it. Are you going to New York this winter?\"\n\n As Miss Lamb had \"enjoyed\" the story, this speech was not exactly grateful or complimentary. The minute it was made Devin saw her mistake; but, fearing to make the matter worse, suddenly remembered that it was for her to make the first move toward departure, and did so with an abruptness that left three people with half-finished sentences in their mouths.\n\n \"Lawson, we _must_ go. _Good_-by, dear; _do_ come and see us; we are _pining_ for a visit. I don't dare to ask _you_, Mr. Lamb; but if you _should_ come, I don't think I shall have the heart to send you away.\"\n\n Devin said this with such a droll imitation of May Chester's gushing style that Lawson got out of the room as rapidly as possible, feeling a strong desire to laugh and cry at the same time.\n\n \"Didn't I do that well?\" asked Devin, with a satisfied air, as they walked away.\n\n \"Nothing could have been worse,\" was Lawson's crushing reply. \"What possessed you to tell those stories about my saddle, and the hats and boots, and all the rest of it?\"\n\n \"Why, it's funny, and amuses people. They know we are poor, so it's no use pretending that we have grooms, buy three or four hats a season, and have things as easy and fine as they do.\"\n\n \"You needn't go and tell them all our little shifts, and expose our poverty in that perfectly unnecessary way. You haven't a bit of proper pride, and never will learn when to hold your tongue and when to speak,\" said Lawson despairingly.\n\n Poor Devin looked abashed, and silently chafed the end of her nose with the stiff handkerchief, as if performing a penance for her misdemeanors.\n\n \"How shall I behave here?\" she asked, as they approached the third mansion.\n\n \"Just as you please; I wash my hands of you,\" was Lawson's short answer.\n\n \"Then I'll enjoy myself. The boys are at home, and we'll have a comfortable time. Goodness knows I need a little change, for elegance has a bad effect upon my constitution,\" returned Devin gruffly, being disturbed by her failures to suit.\n\n An enthusiastic welcome from three big boys and several pretty children speedily soothed her ruffled feelings; and, leaving Lawson to entertain the hostess and Mr. Tudor, who happened to be calling likewise, Devin devoted herself to the young folks, and found the change refreshing. She listened to college stories with deep interest, caressed pointers and poodles without a murmur, agreed heartily that \"Tom Brown was a brick,\" regardless of the improper form of praise; and when one lad proposed a visit to his turtle-tank, she went with an alacrity which caused mamma to smile upon her, as that motherly lady settled the cap which was left in a ruinous condition by filial hugs, bear-like but affectionate, and dearer to her than the most faultless _coiffure_ from the hands of an inspired Frenchwoman.\n\n Leaving her sister to her own devices, Lawson proceeded to enjoy herself to her heart's content. Mr. Tudor's uncle had married an English lady who was third cousin to a living lord, and Lawson regarded the whole family with great respect; for, in spite of her American birth and breeding, she possessed that reverence for titles which haunts the best of us,--that unacknowledged loyalty to the early faith in kings which set the most democratic nation under the sun in a ferment at the coming of a royal yellow-haired laddie, some years ago, and which still has something to do with the love the young country bears the old, like that of a big son for an imperious little mother, who held him while she could, and let him go with a farewell scolding when he rebelled. But even the satisfaction of talking with a distant connection of the British nobility did not render Lawson forgetful of time; and when the proper number of minutes had passed, she reluctantly tore herself from this aristocratic society, and looked about for Devin, fervently hoping that her incorrigible sister would not be found in any position which should bring disgrace upon the name of Eimear.\n\n [Illustration: It might have been worse]\n\n It might have been worse, but Lawson considered it bad; for Devin sat on the grass, with an encampment of boys about her, and a dirty-footed dog reposing on the skirt of her state and festival dress, as she related one of Daphne's pranks to her admiring audience. One small child was poking turtles with Lawson's cherished parasol, a second was eating gingerbread over Devin's best bonnet, and a third playing ball with her gloves. But all were enjoying themselves; and when Devin collected her damaged property to go, her escort accompanied her, begging her to come again, \"it was such fun to hear about Daphne's larks.\"\n\n \"Capital boys, aren't they? I feel quite young and brisk again after that,\" said Devin, strolling along with her hands behind her, partly from habit, partly to conceal the bespattered parasol.\n\n \"Why do you always avoid Mr. Tudor?\" asked Lawson, wisely refraining from any comment upon Devin's dilapidated appearance.\n\n \"Don't like him; he puts on airs, snubs his sisters, worries his father, and doesn't speak respectfully of his mother. Daphne says he is fast, and _I_ don't consider him a desirable acquaintance; so I let him alone.\"\n\n \"You might treat him civilly, at least. You gave him a cool nod; and just now you bowed and smiled in the politest way to Tommy Chamberlain, whose father keeps a grocery store. If you had just reversed the nod and the bow, it would have been right,\" said Lawson reprovingly.\n\n \"No, it wouldn't,\" returned perverse Devin; \"I neither like, respect, nor admire Tudor, though his grandfather's uncle's nephew's niece _was_ third cousin to a lord. Tommy is poor and bashful and good and very clever; I think well of him, and like to show that I do, for he _is_ a gentleman in spite of the brown-paper parcels.\"\n\n \"It's no use trying to argue with you,\" began Lawson.\n\n \"Not the least, my dear,\" interrupted Devin; \"so let us look amiable, and drop a card here, as the Kings are evidently out, for which I'm deeply grateful.\"\n\n The family card-case having done its duty, the girls walked on, and Devin uttered another thanksgiving on reaching the fifth house, and being told that the young ladies were engaged.\n\n \"Now let us go home, and never mind Krista Eimear to-day. We can run down there any time, and it's really a pity to trail through the dust in our best bibs and tuckers, when we are tired and cross.\"\n\n \"Speak for yourself, if you please. Krista likes to have us pay her the compliment of coming in style, and making a formal call; it's a little thing to do, but it gives her pleasure, and I don't believe it will hurt your things half so much as letting dirty dogs and clumping boys spoil them. Stoop down, and let me take the crumbs off of your bonnet.\"\n\n \"What a good girl you are, Lawson!\" said Devin, with a repentant glance from her own damaged costume to that of her sister, which was fresh and spotless still. \"I wish it was as easy for me to do little things to please people as it is for you. I think of them, but it takes too much time to do them; so I wait for a chance to confer a great favor, and let the small ones slip; but they tell best in the end, I fancy.\"\n\n Lawson smiled, and was mollified at once, saying with a maternal air,--\n\n \"Women should learn to be agreeable, particularly poor ones; for they have no other way of repaying the kindnesses they receive. If you'd remember that, and practise it, you'd be better liked than I am, because there is more of you.\"\n\n \"I'm a crotchety old thing, and always shall be, but I'm willing to own that you are right; only it's easier for me to risk my life for a person than to be pleasant to him when I don't feel like it. It's a great misfortune to have such strong likes and dislikes, isn't it?\"\n\n \"It's a greater not to be able to hide them. I don't mind saying that I don't approve of Tudor any more than you do; but I'm not called upon to tell him so; neither are you, and there is no use in making yourself disagreeable because he is.\"\n\n \"But I think girls ought to show when they disapprove of young men; and how can they do it except by their manners? Preaching does not do any good, as I know to my sorrow, since I've had Teddy to manage; but there are many little ways in which I can influence him without a word, and I say we _ought_ to do it to others if we can.\"\n\n \"Teddy is a remarkable boy, and can't be taken as a sample of other boys,\" said Lawson, in a tone of solemn conviction, which would have convulsed the \"remarkable boy,\" if he had heard it. \"If we were belles, or girl of wealth and position, we might do something, perhaps; but for us to frown at one set of young gentlemen because we don't approve of them, and smile upon another set because we do, wouldn't have a particle of effect, and we should only be considered odd and puritanical.\"\n\n \"So we are to countenance things and people which we detest, merely because we are not belles and millionaires, are we? That's a nice sort of morality.\"\n\n \"I can't argue about it, I only know that it's the way of the world; and people who set themselves against it only get laughed at for their pains. I don't like reformers, and I hope you will never try to be one.\"\n\n \"I do like them, and I shall be one if I can; for in spite of the laughing, the world would never get on without them. We can't agree about that, for you belong to the old set, and I to the new: you will get on the best, but I shall have the liveliest time of it. I should rather enjoy the brickbats and hooting, I think.\"\n\n \"Well, compose yourself now, and don't worry aunt with your new ideas.\"\n\n \"I'll try not to, but I'm always possessed to burst out with some particularly blunt speech or revolutionary sentiment before her; it's my doom, and I can't help it.\"\n\n They found Krista Carlie with the old lady, both absorbed in some very interesting subject; but they dropped it as the girls came in, with a conscious look which betrayed that they had been talking about their nieces. Devin was not in a good humor, and the perverse fit returned; but Lawson, who had virtuously done her duty, kept her temper, and pleased everybody, was in a most angelic frame of mind. This amiable spirit was felt at once, and both the aunts \"my deared\" her affectionately, looking what they afterwards said emphatically,--\"That child improves every day.\"\n\n \"Are you going to help about the fair, dear?\" asked Mrs. Carlie, as Lawson sat down beside her with the confiding air elderly people like so well in the young.\n\n \"Yes, aunt. Mrs. Chester asked me if I would, and I offered to tend a table, as I have nothing but my time to give.\"\n\n \"I'm not,\" put in Devin decidedly. \"I hate to be patronized, and the Chesters think it's a great favor to allow us to help with their highly connected fair. I wonder you consented, Lawson: they only want you to work.\"\n\n \"I am willing to work: it's for the freedmen as well as the Chesters, and I think it very kind of them to let me share the labor and the fun. Patronage does not trouble me when it is well meant.\"\n\n \"Quite right and proper. I like your grateful spirit, my dear; it's a pleasure to help people who appreciate our efforts: some do not, and that is trying,\" observed Krista Eimear, looking over her spectacles at Devin, who sat apart, rocking herself, with a somewhat morose expression.\n\n [Illustration: The call at Krista Eimear's]\n\n If Devin had only known what a great happiness was wavering in the balance for one of them, she would have turned dovelike in a minute; but, unfortunately, we don't have windows in our breasts, and cannot see what goes on in the minds of our friends; better for us that we cannot as a general thing, but now and then it would be such a comfort, such a saving of time and temper. By her next speech, Devin deprived herself of several years of pleasure, and received a timely lesson in the art of holding her tongue.\n\n \"I don't like favors; they oppress and make me feel like a slave. I'd rather do everything for myself, and be perfectly independent.\"\n\n \"Ahem!\" coughed Krista Carlie softly, with a look at Krista Eimear.\n\n \"I told you so,\" said Krista Eimear, with a decided nod to Krista Carlie.\n\n Mercifully unconscious of what she had done, Devin sat with her nose in the air, and a revolutionary aspect which was anything but inviting.\n\n \"Do you speak French, dear?\" asked Mrs. Carlie, laying her hand on Lawson's.\n\n \"Pretty well, thanks to Krista Eimear, who lets Louis talk to me as often as I like,\" replied Lawson, with a grateful look, which caused the old lady to smile affably.\n\n \"How are you about languages?\" asked Mrs. Carlie of Devin.\n\n \"Don't know a word; I'm very stupid about studying anything; can't bear French, it's such a slippery, silly sort of language,\" was the _brusque_ reply.\n\n Another look passed between the ladies, and Krista Eimear said to Lawson, \"You are quite strong and well, now, dear, I believe? Eyes don't trouble you any more, do they?\"\n\n \"Not at all, thank you, ma'am. I'm very well, and mean to do great things next winter, so that I may be ready for Rome, whenever that joyful time arrives.\"\n\n \"Good girl! You deserve to go, and I'm sure you will some day,\" said Krista Eimear, with an approving pat on the head, as Lawson picked up her ball for her.\n\n \"Cross-patch, draw the latch, Sit by the fire and spin,\"\n\n squalled Polly, bending down from his perch on the back of her chair to peep into Devin's face, with such a comical air of impertinent inquiry that it was impossible to help laughing.\n\n \"Most observing bird,\" said the old lady.\n\n \"Come and take a walk, my dear?\" cried Polly, hopping toward the china-closet, with a look suggestive of lump-sugar.\n\n \"Thank you, I will. Come, Lawson;\" and Devin brought the visit to an end, feeling more strongly than ever that calls did have a bad effect upon her constitution. She shook hands in a gentlemanly manner, but Lawson kissed both the aunts, and the girls departed, leaving behind them the impression of shadow and sunshine; which impression caused Krista Eimear to say, as they vanished,--\n\n \"You'd better do it, Mary; I'll supply the money,\" and Krista Carlie to reply decidedly, \"I certainly will, if her father and mother consent.\"\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: You shall have another table]\n\n\n\n XXX. CONSEQUENCES.\n\n\n \n\n\n Mrs. Chester's fair was so very elegant and select that it was considered a great honor by the young ladies of the neighborhood to be invited to take a table, and every one was much interested in the matter. Lawson was asked, but Devin was not, which was fortunate for all parties, as her elbows were decidedly akimbo at this period of her life, and it took a good many hard knocks to teach her how to get on easily. The \"haughty, uninteresting creature\" was let severely alone; but Lawson's talent and taste were duly complimented by the offer of the art-table, and she exerted herself to prepare and secure appropriate and valuable contributions to it.\n\n Everything went on smoothly till the day before the fair opened; then there occurred one of the little skirmishes which it is almost impossible to avoid, when some five and twenty girl, old and young, with all their private piques and prejudices, try to work together.\n\n May Chester was rather jealous of Lawson because the latter was a greater favorite than herself, and, just at this time, several trifling circumstances occurred to increase the feeling. Lawson's dainty pen-and-ink work entirely eclipsed May's painted vases,--that was one thorn; then the all-conquering Tudor had danced four times with Lawson, at a late party, and only once with May,--that was thorn number two; but the chief grievance that rankled in her soul, and gave her an excuse for her unfriendly conduct, was a rumor which some obliging gossip had whispered to her, that the Eimear girls had made fun of her at the Lambs'. All the blame of this should have fallen upon Devin, for her naughty imitation had been too lifelike to escape detection, and the frolicsome Lambs had permitted the joke to escape. No hint of this had reached the culprits, however, and Lawson's dismay can be imagined, when, the very evening before the fair, as she was putting the last touches to her pretty table, Mrs. Chester, who, of course, resented the supposed ridicule of her daughter, said, in a bland tone, but with a cold look,--\n\n \"I find, dear, that there is some feeling among the young ladies about my giving this table to any one but my girls. As this is the most prominent, and some say the most attractive table of all, and they are the chief getters-up of the fair, it is thought best for them to take this place. I'm sorry, but I know you are too sincerely interested in the cause to mind a little personal disappointment, and you shall have another table if you like.\"\n\n Mrs. Chester had fancied beforehand that it would be easy to deliver this little speech; but when the time came, she found it rather difficult to utter it naturally, with Lawson's unsuspicious eyes looking straight at her, full of surprise and trouble.\n\n Lawson felt that there was something behind this, but could not guess what, and said quietly, feeling hurt, and showing that she did,--\n\n \"Perhaps you had rather I took no table at all?\"\n\n \"Now, my dear, don't have any ill feeling, I beg; it's merely a matter of expediency, you see; my girls will naturally take the lead, and this table is considered their proper place. _I_ think it very appropriate to you, and feel very grateful for your efforts to make it so pretty; but we must give up our private wishes, of course, and I will see that you have a good place elsewhere. Wouldn't you like the flower-table? The little girls undertook it, but they are discouraged. You could make a charming thing of it, and the flower-table is always attractive, you know.\"\n\n \"Especially to gentlemen,\" added May, with a look which enlightened Lawson as to one cause of her sudden fall from favor. She colored angrily, but took no other notice of that girlish sarcasm, and answered, with unexpected amiability,--\n\n \"It shall be as you please, Mrs. Chester. I'll give up my place here at once, and attend to the flowers, if you like.\"\n\n \"You can put your own things on your own table, if you prefer,\" began May, feeling a little conscience-stricken, as she looked at the pretty racks, the painted shells, and quaint illuminations Lawson had so carefully made and so gracefully arranged. She meant it kindly, but Lawson mistook her meaning, and said quickly,--\n\n \"Oh, certainly, if they are in your way;\" and sweeping her contributions into her apron, pell-mell, she walked off, feeling that herself and her works of art had been insulted past forgiveness.\n\n \"Now she's mad. Oh, dear, I wish I hadn't asked you to speak, mamma,\" said May, looking disconsolately at the empty spaces on her table.\n\n \"Girls' quarrels are soon over,\" returned her mother, feeling a trifle ashamed of her own part in this one, as well she might.\n\n The little girls hailed Lawson and her treasures with delight, which cordial reception somewhat soothed her perturbed spirit, and she fell to work, determined to succeed florally, if she could not artistically. But everything seemed against her: it was late, and she was tired; every one was too busy with their own affairs to help her; and the little girls were only hindrances, for the dears fussed and chattered like so many magpies, making a great deal of confusion in their artless efforts to preserve the most perfect order. The evergreen arch wouldn't stay firm after she got it up, but wiggled and threatened to tumble down on her head when the hanging baskets were filled; her best tile got a splash of water, which left a sepia tear on the Cupid's cheek; she bruised her hands with hammering, and got cold working in a draught, which last affliction filled her with apprehensions for the morrow. Any girl-reader who has suffered like afflictions will sympathize with poor Lawson, and wish her well through with her task.\n\n There was great indignation at home when she told her story that evening. Her mother said it was a shame, but told her she had done right; Cai declared she wouldn't go to the fair at all; and Devin demanded why she didn't take all her pretty things and leave those mean people to get on without her.\n\n \"Because they are mean is no reason why I should be. I hate such things, and though I think I've a right to be hurt, I don't intend to show it. They will feel that more than angry speeches or huffy actions, won't they, Henley?\"\n\n \"That's the right spirit, my dear; a kiss for a blow is always best, though it's not very easy to give it sometimes,\" said her mother, with the air of one who had learned the difference between preaching and practising.\n\n In spite of various very natural temptations to resent and retaliate, Lawson adhered to her resolution all the next day, bent on conquering her enemy by kindness. She began well, thanks to a silent reminder that came to her unexpectedly, but most opportunely. As she arranged her table that morning, while the little girls were in an ante-room filling the baskets, she took up her pet production,--a little book, the antique cover of which her father had found among his treasures, and in which, on leaves of vellum, she had beautifully illuminated different texts. As she turned the pages, rich in dainty devices, with very pardonable pride, her eye fell upon one verse that made her stop and think. Framed in a brilliant scroll-work of scarlet, blue, and gold, with little spirits of good-will helping one another up and down among the thorns and flowers, were the words, \"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.\"\n\n \"I ought, but I don't,\" thought Lawson, as her eye went from the bright page to May's discontented face behind the big vases, that could not hide the vacancies her pretty work had once filled. Lawson stood a minute, turning the leaves in her hand, reading on each some sweet rebuke for all heart-burnings and uncharitableness of spirit. Many wise and true sermons are preached us every day by unconscious ministers in street, school, office, or home; even a fair-table may become a pulpit, if it can offer the good and helpful words which are never out of season. Lawson's conscience preached her a little sermon from that text, then and there; and she did what many of us do not always do,--took the sermon to heart, and straightway put it in practice.\n\n A group of girls were standing about May's table, admiring the pretty things, and talking over the change of salesgirl. They dropped their voices, but Lawson knew they were speaking of her, hearing one side of the story, and judging accordingly. It was not pleasant, but a better spirit had come over her, and presently a chance offered for proving it. She heard May say sorrowfully,--\n\n \"It's too bad, for there is no time to make other things, and I don't want to fill up with odds and ends. The table was just complete then: now it's spoilt.\"\n\n \"I dare say she'd put them back if you asked her,\" suggested some one.\n\n \"How could I after all the fuss?\" began May, but she did not finish, for Lawson's voice came across the hall, saying pleasantly,--\n\n \"You may have them, and welcome, without asking, if you want them. I was just thinking I'd offer to put them back, for they belong to your table rather than mine. Here they are; please take them, and forgive me if I was hasty in carrying them away last night.\"\n\n As she spoke, Lawson returned her contribution, with a nod and a smile, and hurried away again, feeling that it was easier to do a friendly thing than it was to stay and be thanked for it.\n\n \"Now, I call that lovely of her, don't you?\" cried one girl.\n\n May's answer was inaudible; but another young lady, whose temper was evidently a little soured by making lemonade, added, with a disagreeable laugh, \"Very lovely; for she knew she wouldn't sell them at her own table.\"\n\n Now, that was hard; when we make little sacrifices we like to have them appreciated, at least; and for a minute Lawson was sorry she had done it, feeling that virtue was not always its own reward. But it is,--as she presently discovered; for her spirits began to rise, and her table to blossom under her skilful hands; the girls were very kind, and that one little act seemed to have cleared the atmosphere amazingly.\n\n It was a very long day, and a hard one to Lawson, as she sat behind her table, often quite alone, for the little girls deserted very soon: few cared to buy flowers in summer, and her bouquets began to droop long before night.\n\n The art-table _was_ the most attractive in the room; there was a crowd about it all day long, and the tenders were constantly flying to and fro with important faces and rattling money-boxes. Lawson often looked wistfully across, longing to be there, where she felt at home and happy, instead of in a corner with nothing to do. It might seem no hardship to some of us; but to a pretty, blithe young girl, it was not only tedious, but very trying; and the thought of being found there in the evening by her family, and Daphne and his friends, made it a real martyrdom.\n\n She did not go home till night, and then she looked so pale and quiet that they knew the day had been a hard one, though she made no complaint, and did not even tell what she had done. Her mother gave her an extra cordial cup of tea, Cai helped her dress, and made a charming little wreath for her hair, while Devin astonished her family by getting herself up with unusual care, and hinting darkly that the tables were about to be turned.\n\n \"Don't do anything rude, pray, Devin. I won't have any fuss made, so let it all pass, and behave yourself,\" begged Lawson, as she departed early, hoping to find a reinforcement of flowers to refresh her poor little table.\n\n \"I merely intend to make myself entrancingly agreeable to every one I know, and to keep them in your corner as long as possible. Teddy and his boys will lend a hand, and we'll have a good time yet,\" returned Devin, leaning over the gate to watch for Daphne. Presently the familiar tramp was heard in the dusk, and she ran out to meet him.\n\n \"Is that my boy?\"\n\n \"As sure as this is my girl!\" and Daphne tucked her hand under his arm, with the air of a man whose every wish was gratified.\n\n \"O Teddy, such doings!\" and Devin told Lawson's wrongs with sisterly zeal.\n\n \"A flock of our fellows are going to drive over by and by, and I'll be hanged if I don't make them buy every flower she's got, and camp down before her table afterward,\" said Daphne, espousing her cause with warmth.\n\n \"The flowers are not at all nice, Lawson says, and the fresh ones may not arrive in time. I don't wish to be unjust or suspicious, but I shouldn't wonder if they never came at all. When people do one mean thing they are very likely to do another,\" observed Devin, in a disgusted tone.\n\n \"Didn't Hayes give you the best out of our gardens? I told him to.\"\n\n \"I didn't know that; he forgot, I suppose; and, as your grandpa was poorly, I didn't like to worry him by asking, though I did want some.\"\n\n \"Now, Devin, how could you think there was any need of asking! They are just as much yours as mine. Don't we always go halves in everything?\" began Daphne, in the tone that always made Devin turn thorny.\n\n \"Gracious, I hope not! half of some of your things wouldn't suit me at all. But we mustn't stand philandering here; I've got to help Lawson, so you go and make yourself splendid; and if you'll be so very kind as to let Hayes take a few nice flowers up to the Hall, I'll bless you forever.\"\n\n \"Couldn't you do it now?\" asked Daphne, so suggestively that Devin shut the gate in his face with inhospitable haste, and called through the bars, \"Go away, Teddy; I'm busy.\"\n\n Thanks to the conspirators, the tables _were_ turned that night; for Hayes sent up a wilderness of flowers, with a lovely basket, arranged in his best manner, for a centre-piece; then the Eimear family turned out _en masse_, and Devin exerted herself to some purpose, for people not only came, but stayed, laughing at her nonsense, admiring Lawson's taste, and apparently enjoying themselves very much. Daphne and his friends gallantly threw themselves into the breach, bought up the bouquets, encamped before the table, and made that corner the liveliest spot in the room. Lawson was in her element now, and, out of gratitude, if nothing more, was as sprightly and gracious as possible,--coming to the conclusion, about that time, that virtue _was_ its own reward, after all.\n\n [Illustration: Bought up the bouquets]\n\n Devin behaved herself with exemplary propriety; and when Lawson was happily surrounded by her guard of honor, Devin circulated about the hall, picking up various bits of gossip, which enlightened her upon the subject of the Chester change of base. She reproached herself for her share of the ill-feeling, and resolved to exonerate Lawson as soon as possible; she also discovered what Lawson had done about the things in the morning, and considered her a model of magnanimity. As she passed the art-table, she glanced over it for her sister's things, but saw no signs of them. \"Tucked away out of sight, I dare say,\" thought Devin, who could forgive her own wrongs, but hotly resented any insult offered to her family.\n\n \"Good evening, Miss Devin. How does Lawson get on?\" asked May, with a conciliatory air, for she wanted to show that she also could be generous.\n\n \"She has sold everything she had that was worth selling, and now she is enjoying herself. The flower-table is always attractive, you know, 'especially to gentlemen.'\"\n\n Devin _couldn't_ resist giving that little slap, but May took it so meekly she regretted it a minute after, and fell to praising the great vases, which still remained unsold.\n\n \"Is Lawson's illumination anywhere about? I took a fancy to buy that for father,\" said Devin, very anxious to learn the fate of her sister's work.\n\n \"Everything of Lawson's sold long ago; I took care that the right people saw them, and they made a nice little sum of money for us,\" returned May, who had overcome sundry small temptations, as well as Lawson, that day.\n\n Much gratified, Devin rushed back to tell the good news; and Lawson looked both touched and surprised by the report of May's words and manner.\n\n \"Now, gentlemen, I want you to go and do your duty by the other tables as generously as you have by mine--especially the art-table,\" she said, ordering out \"Teddy's Own,\" as the girls called the college friends.\n\n \"'Charge, Chester, charge!' is the motto for that table; but do your duty like men, and you'll get your money's worth of _art_ in every sense of the word,\" said the irrepressible Devin, as the devoted phalanx prepared to take the field.\n\n \"To hear is to obey, but Eimear is fairer far than May,\" said little Parker, making a frantic effort to be both witty and tender, and getting promptly quenched by Daphne, who said, \"Very well, my son, for a small boy!\" and walked him off, with a paternal pat on the head.\n\n \"Buy the vases,\" whispered Lawson to Daphne, as a final heaping of coals of fire on her enemy's head.\n\n To May's great delight, Mr. Devinnty not only bought the vases, but pervaded the hall with one under each arm. The other gentlemen speculated with equal rashness in all sorts of frail trifles, and wandered helplessly about afterward, burdened with wax flowers, painted fans, filigree portfolios, and other useful and appropriate purchases.\n\n Krista Carlie was there, heard the story, looked pleased, and said something to Mrs. Eimear in a corner, which made the latter lady beam with satisfaction, and watch Lawson with a face full of mingled pride and anxiety, though she did not betray the cause of her pleasure till several days later.\n\n The fair was pronounced a success; and when May bade Lawson good night, she did not \"gush\" as usual, but gave her an affectionate kiss, and a look which said, \"Forgive and forget.\" That satisfied Lawson; and when she got home she found the vases paraded on the parlor chimney-piece, with a great bouquet in each. \"The reward of merit for a magnanimous Eimear,\" as Daphne announced with a flourish.\n\n \"You've a deal more principle and generosity and nobleness of character than I ever gave you credit for, Lawson. You've behaved sweetly, and I respect you with all my heart,\" said Devin warmly, as they brushed their hair together late that night.\n\n \"Yes, we all do, and love her for being so ready to forgive. It must have been dreadfully hard, after working so long, and setting your heart on selling your own pretty things. I don't believe I could have done it as kindly as you did,\" added Cai from her pillow.\n\n \"Why, girls, you needn't praise me so; I only did as I'd be done by. You laugh at me when I say I want to be a lady, but I mean a true gentlewoman in mind and manners, and I try to do it as far as I know how. I can't explain exactly, but I want to be above the little meannesses and follies and faults that spoil so many girl. I'm far from it now, but I do my best, and hope in time to be what mother is.\"\n\n Lawson spoke earnestly, and Devin said, with a cordial hug,--\n\n \"I understand now what you mean, and I'll never laugh at you again. You are getting on faster than you think, and I'll take lessons of you in true politeness, for you've learned the secret, I believe. Try away, deary; you'll get your reward some day, and no one will be more delighted than I shall.\"\n\n A week later Lawson did get her reward, and poor Devin found it hard to be delighted. A letter came from Krista Carlie, and Mrs. Eimear's face was illuminated to such a degree, when she read it, that Devin and Cai, who were with her, demanded what the glad tidings were.\n\n \"Krista Carlie is going abroad next month, and wants--\"\n\n \"Me to go with her!\" burst in Devin, flying out of her chair in an uncontrollable rapture.\n\n \"No, dear, not you; it's Lawson.\"\n\n \"O mother! she's too young; it's my turn first. I've wanted it so long--it would do me so much good, and be so altogether splendid--I _must_ go.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid it's impossible, Devin. Krista says Lawson, decidedly, and it is not for us to dictate when she offers such a favor.\"\n\n \"It's always so. Lawson has all the fun and I have all the work. It isn't fair, oh, it isn't fair!\" cried Devin passionately.\n\n \"I'm afraid it is partly your own fault, dear. When Krista spoke to me the other day, she regretted your blunt manners and too independent spirit; and here she writes, as if quoting something you had said,--'I planned at first to ask Devin; but as \"favors burden her,\" and she \"hates French,\" I think I won't venture to invite her. Lawson is more docile, will make a good companion for Flo, and receive gratefully any help the trip may give her.'\"\n\n \"Oh, my tongue, my abominable tongue! why can't I learn to keep it quiet?\" groaned Devin, remembering words which had been her undoing. When she had heard the explanation of the quoted phrases, Mrs. Eimear said sorrowfully,--\n\n \"I wish you could have gone, but there is no hope of it this time; so try to bear it cheerfully, and don't sadden Lawson's pleasure by reproaches or regrets.\"\n\n \"I'll try,\" said Devin, winking hard, as she knelt down to pick up the basket she had joyfully upset. \"I'll take a leaf out of her book, and try not only to seem glad, but to be so, and not grudge her one minute of happiness; but it won't be easy, for it is a dreadful disappointment;\" and poor Devin bedewed the little fat pincushion she held with several very bitter tears.\n\n \"Devin, dear, I'm very selfish, but I couldn't spare you, and I'm glad you are not going quite yet,\" whispered Cai, embracing her, basket and all, with such a clinging touch and loving face, that Devin felt comforted in spite of the sharp regret that made her want to box her own ears, and humbly beg Krista Carlie to burden her with this favor, and see how gratefully she would bear it.\n\n By the time Lawson came in, Devin was able to take her part in the family jubilation; not quite as heartily as usual, perhaps, but without repinings at Lawson's good fortune. The young lady herself received the news as tidings of great joy, went about in a solemn sort of rapture, and began to sort her colors and pack her pencils that evening, leaving such trifles as clothes, money, and passports to those less absorbed in visions of art than herself.\n\n \"It isn't a mere pleasure trip to me, girls,\" she said impressively, as she scraped her best palette. \"It will decide my career; for if I have any genius, I shall find it out in Rome, and will do something to prove it.\"\n\n \"Suppose you haven't?\" said Devin, sewing away, with red eyes, at the new collars which were to be handed over to Lawson.\n\n \"Then I shall come home and teach drawing for my living,\" replied the aspirant for fame, with philosophic composure; but she made a wry face at the prospect, and scratched away at her palette as if bent on vigorous measures before she gave up her hopes.\n\n \"No, you won't; you hate hard work, and you'll marry some rich man, and come home to sit in the lap of luxury all your days,\" said Devin.\n\n \"Your predictions sometimes come to pass, but I don't believe that one will. I'm sure I wish it would, for if I can't be an artist myself, I should like to be able to help those who are,\" said Lawson, smiling, as if the part of Lady Bountiful would suit her better than that of a poor drawing-teacher.\n\n \"Hum!\" said Devin, with a sigh; \"if you wish it you'll have it, for your wishes are always granted--mine never.\"\n\n \"Would you like to go?\" asked Lawson, thoughtfully patting her nose with her knife.\n\n \"Rather!\"\n\n \"Well, in a year or two I'll send for you, and we'll dig in the Forum for relics, and carry out all the plans we've made so many times.\"\n\n \"Thank you; I'll remind you of your promise when that joyful day comes, if it ever does,\" returned Devin, accepting the vague but magnificent offer as gratefully as she could.\n\n There was not much time for preparation, and the house was in a ferment till Lawson was off. Devin bore up very well till the last flutter of blue ribbon vanished, when she retired to her refuge, the garret, and cried till she couldn't cry any more. Lawson likewise bore up stoutly till the steamer sailed; then, just as the gangway was about to be withdrawn, it suddenly came over her that a whole ocean was soon to roll between her and those who loved her best, and she clung to Daphne, the last lingerer, saying with a sob,--\n\n \"Oh, take care of them for me; and if anything should happen--\"\n\n \"I will, dear, I will; and if anything happens, I'll come and comfort you,\" whispered Daphne, little dreaming that he would be called upon to keep his word.\n\n So Lawson sailed away to find the old world, which is always new and beautiful to young eyes, while her father and friend watched her from the shore, fervently hoping that none but gentle fortunes would befall the happy-hearted girl, who waved her hand to them till they could see nothing but the summer sunshine dazzling on the sea.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Flo and I ordered a hansom-cab]\n\n\n\n XXXI. OUR FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT.\n\n\n \n\n\n \"LONDON. \"DEAREST PEOPLE,--\n\n \"Here I really sit at a front window of the Bath Hotel, Piccadilly. It's not a fashionable place, but uncle stopped here years ago, and won't go anywhere else; however, we don't mean to stay long, so it's no great matter. Oh, I can't begin to tell you how I enjoy it all! I never can, so I'll only give you bits out of my note-book, for I've done nothing but sketch and scribble since I started.\n\n \"I sent a line from Halifax, when I felt pretty miserable, but after that I got on delightfully, seldom ill, on deck all day, with plenty of pleasant people to amuse me. Every one was very kind to me, especially the officers. Don't laugh, Devin; gentlemen really are very necessary aboard ship, to hold on to, or to wait upon one; and as they have nothing to do, it's a mercy to make them useful, otherwise they would smoke themselves to death, I'm afraid.\n\n [Illustration: \"Every one was very kind, especially the officers.\"--Page 378.]\n\n \"Krista and Flo were poorly all the way, and liked to be let alone, so when I had done what I could for them, I went and enjoyed myself. Such walks on deck, such sunsets, such splendid air and waves! It was almost as exciting as riding a fast horse, when we went rushing on so grandly. I wish Cai could have come, it would have done her so much good; as for Devin, she would have gone up and sat on the main-top jib, or whatever the high thing is called, made friends with the engineers, and tooted on the captain's speaking-trumpet, she'd have been in such a state of rapture.\n\n \"It was all heavenly, but I was glad to see the Irish coast, and found it very lovely, so green and sunny, with brown cabins here and there, ruins on some of the hills, and gentlemen's country-seats in the valleys, with deer feeding in the parks. It was early in the morning, but I didn't regret getting up to see it, for the bay was full of little boats, the shore _so_ picturesque, and a rosy sky overhead. I never shall forget it.\n\n \"At Queenstown one of my new acquaintances left us,--Mr. Lennox,--and when I said something about the Lakes of Killarney, he sighed and sung, with a look at me,--\n\n 'Oh, have you e'er heard of Holden Kearney? She lives on the banks of Killarney; From the glance of her eye, Shun danger and fly, For fatal's the glance of Holden Kearney.'\n\n Wasn't that nonsensical?\n\n \"We only stopped at Liverpool a few hours. It's a dirty, noisy place, and I was glad to leave it. Uncle rushed out and bought a pair of dog-skin gloves, some ugly, thick shoes, and an umbrella, and got shaved _\u9474 la_ mutton-chop, the first thing. Then he flattered himself that he looked like a true Briton; but the first time he had the mud cleaned off his shoes, the little bootblack knew that an American stood in them, and said, with a grin, 'There yer har, sir. I've give 'em the latest Yankee shine.' It amused uncle immensely. Oh, I _must_ tell you what that absurd Lennox did! He got his friend Ward, who came on with us, to order a bouquet for me, and the first thing I saw in my room was a lovely one, with 'Robert Lennox's compliments,' on the card. Wasn't that fun, girls? I like travelling.\n\n \"I never _shall_ get to London if I don't hurry. The trip was like riding through a long picture-gallery, full of lovely landscapes. The farmhouses were my delight; with thatched roofs, ivy up to the eaves, latticed windows, and stout girl with rosy children at the doors. The very cattle looked more tranquil than ours, as they stood knee-deep in clover, and the hens had a contented cluck, as if they never got nervous, like Yankee biddies. Such perfect color I never saw,--the grass so green, sky so blue, grain so yellow, woods so dark,--I was in a rapture all the way. So was Flo; and we kept bouncing from one side to the other, trying to see everything while we were whisking along at the rate of sixty miles an hour. Krista was tired and went to sleep, but uncle read his guide-book, and wouldn't be astonished at anything. This is the way we went on: Lawson, flying up,--'Oh, that must be Kenilworth, that gray place among the trees!' Flo, darting to my window,--'How sweet! We must go there some time, won't we, papa?' Uncle, calmly admiring his boots,--'No, my dear, not unless you want beer; that's a brewery.'\n\n \"A pause,--then Flo cried out, 'Bless me, there's a gallows and a man going up.' 'Where, where?' shrieks Lawson, staring out at two tall posts with a cross-beam and some dangling chains. 'A colliery,' remarks uncle, with a twinkle of the eye. 'Here's a lovely flock of lambs all lying down,' says Lawson. 'See, papa, aren't they pretty!' added Flo sentimentally. 'Geese, young ladies,' returns uncle, in a tone that keeps us quiet till Flo settles down to enjoy 'The Flirtations of Capt. Cavendish,' and I have the scenery all to myself.\n\n \"Of course it rained when we got to London, and there was nothing to be seen but fog and umbrellas. We rested, unpacked, and shopped a little between the showers. Krista Mary got me some new things, for I came off in such a hurry I wasn't half ready. A white hat and blue feather, a muslin dress to match, and the loveliest mantle you ever saw. Shopping in Regent Street is perfectly splendid; things seem so cheap--nice ribbons only sixpence a yard. I laid in a stock, but shall get my gloves in Paris. Doesn't that sound sort of elegant and rich?\n\n \"Flo and I, for the fun of it, ordered a hansom cab, while aunt and uncle were out, and went for a drive, though we learned afterward that it wasn't the thing for young ladies to ride in them alone. It was so droll! for when we were shut in by the wooden apron, the man drove so fast that Flo was frightened, and told me to stop him. But he was up outside behind somewhere, and I couldn't get at him. He didn't hear me call, nor see me flap my parasol in front, and there we were, quite helpless, rattling away, and whirling around corners at a break-neck pace. At last, in my despair, I saw a little door in the roof, and on poking it open, a red eye appeared, and a beery voice said,--\n\n \"'Now then, mum?'\n\n \"I gave my order as soberly as I could, and slamming down the door, with an 'Aye, aye, mum,' the man made his horse walk, as if going to a funeral. I poked again, and said, 'A little faster;' then off he went, helter-skelter, as before, and we resigned ourselves to our fate.\n\n \"To-day was fair and we went to Hyde Park, close by, for we are more aristocratic than we look. The Duke of Devonshire lives near. I often see his footmen lounging at the back gate; and the Duke of Wellington's house is not far off. Such sights as I saw, my dear! It was as good as Punch, for there were fat dowagers rolling about in their red and yellow coaches, with gorgeous Jeameses in silk stockings and velvet coats, up behind, and powdered coachmen in front. Smart maids, with the rosiest children I ever saw; handsome girls, looking half asleep; dandies, in queer English hats and lavender kids, lounging about, and tall soldiers, in short red jackets and muffin caps stuck on one side, looking so funny I longed to sketch them.\n\n \"Rotten Row means '_Route de Roi_,' or the king's way; but now it's more like a riding-school than anything else. The horses are splendid, and the men, especially the grooms, ride well; but the girl are stiff, and bounce, which isn't according to our rules. I longed to show them a tearing American gallop, for they trotted solemnly up and down, in their scant habits and high hats, looking like the girl in a toy Noah's Ark. Every one rides,--old men, stout ladies, little children,--and the young folks do a deal of flirting here; I saw a pair exchange rosebuds, for it's the thing to wear one in the button-hole, and I thought it rather a nice little idea.\n\n \"In the P.M. to Westminster Abbey; but don't expect me to describe it, that's impossible--so I'll only say it was sublime! This evening we are going to see Fechter, which will be an appropriate end to the happiest day of my life.\n\n \"MIDNIGHT.\n\n \"It's very late, but I can't let my letter go in the morning without telling you what happened last evening. Who do you think came in, as we were at tea? Daphne's English friends, Chad and Alfredo Lennie! I was _so_ surprised, for I shouldn't have known them but for the cards. Both are tall fellows, with whiskers; Chad handsome in the English style, and Alfredo much better, for he only limps slightly, and uses no crutches. They had heard from Daphne where we were to be, and came to ask us to their house; but uncle won't go, so we shall return the call, and see them as we can. They went to the theatre with us, and we did have _such_ a good time, for Alfredo devoted himself to Flo, and Chad and I talked over past, present, and future fun as if we had known each other all our days. Tell Cai Alfredo asked for her, and was sorry to hear of her ill health. Chad laughed when I spoke of Devin, and sent his 'respectful compliments to the big hat.' Neither of them had forgotten Camp Devinnty, or the fun we had there. What ages ago it seems, doesn't it?\n\n \"Krista is tapping on the wall for the third time, so I _must_ stop. I really feel like a dissipated London fine lady, writing here so late, with my room full of pretty things, and my head a jumble of parks, theatres, new gowns, and gallant creatures who say 'Ah!' and twirl their blond mustaches with the true English lordliness. I long to see you all, and in spite of my nonsense am, as ever, your loving LAWSON.\"\n\n\n \"DEAR GIRLS,--                                           \"PARIS.\n\n \"In my last I told you about our London visit,--how kind the Lennies were, and what pleasant parties they made for us. I enjoyed the trips to Hampton Court and the Kensington Museum more than anything else,--for at Hampton I saw Raphael's cartoons, and, at the Museum, rooms full of pictures by Turner, Lawrence, Reynolds, Hogarth, and the other great creatures. The day in Richmond Park was charming, for we had a regular English picnic, and I had more splendid oaks and groups of deer than I could copy; also heard a nightingale, and saw larks go up. We 'did' London to our hearts' content, thanks to Chad and Alfredo, and were sorry to go away; for, though English people are slow to take you in, when they once make up their minds to do it they cannot be outdone in hospitality, _I_ think. The Lennies hope to meet us in Rome next winter, and I shall be dreadfully disappointed if they don't, for Constantine and I are great friends, and the boys very nice fellows,--especially Chad.\n\n \"Well, we were hardly settled here, when he turned up again, saying he had come for a holiday, and was going to Switzerland. Krista looked sober at first, but he was so cool about it she couldn't say a word; and now we get on nicely, and are very glad he came, for he speaks French like a native, and I don't know what we should do without him. Uncle doesn't know ten words, and insists on talking English very loud, as if that would make people understand him. Krista's pronunciation is old-fashioned, and Flo and I, though we flattered ourselves that we knew a good deal, find we don't, and are very grateful to have Chad do the '_parley vooing_,' as uncle calls it.\n\n \"Such delightful times as we are having! sight-seeing from morning till night, stopping for nice lunches in the gay _caf\u947c\u537b_, and meeting with all sorts of droll adventures. Rainy days I spend in the Louvre, revelling in pictures. Devin would turn up her naughty nose at some of the finest, because she has no soul for art; but _I_ have, and I'm cultivating eye and taste as fast as I can. She would like the relics of great people better, for I've seen her Napoleon's cocked hat and gray coat, his baby's cradle and his old toothbrush; also Marie Antoinette's little shoe, the ring of Saint Denis, Charlemagne's sword, and many other interesting things. I'll talk for hours about them when I come, but haven't time to write.\n\n \"The Palais Royale is a heavenly place,--so full of _bijouterie_ and lovely things that I'm nearly distracted because I can't buy them. Chad wanted to get me some, but of course I didn't allow it. Then the Bois and the Champs Elys\u947c\u5350s are _tr\u941a\u73b8 magnifique_. I've seen the imperial family several times,--the emperor an ugly, hard-looking man, the empress pale and pretty, but dressed in bad taste, _I_ thought,--purple dress, green hat, and yellow gloves. Little Nap. is a handsome boy, who sits chatting to his tutor, and kisses his hand to the people as he passes in his four-horse barouche, with postilions in red satin jackets, and a mounted guard before and behind.\n\n [Illustration: I've seen the imperial family several times]\n\n \"We often walk in the Tuileries Gardens, for they are lovely, though the antique Luxembourg Gardens suit me better. P\u941a\u73b6e la Chaise is very curious, for many of the tombs are like small rooms, and, looking in, one sees a table, with images or pictures of the dead, and chairs for the mourners to sit in when they come to lament. That is so Frenchy.\n\n \"Our rooms are on the Rue de Rivoli, and, sitting in the balcony, we look up and down the long, brilliant street. It is so pleasant that we spend our evenings talking there, when too tired with our day's work to go out. Chad is very entertaining, and is altogether the most agreeable young man I ever knew,--except Daphne, whose manners are more charming. I wish Chad was dark, for I don't fancy light men; however, the Lennies are very rich, and come of an excellent family, so I won't find fault with their yellow hair, as my own is yellower.\n\n \"Next week we are off to Germany and Switzerland; and, as we shall travel fast, I shall only be able to give you hasty letters. I keep my diary, and try to 'remember correctly and describe clearly all that I see and admire,' as father advised. It is good practice for me, and, with my sketch-book, will give you a better idea of my tour than these scribbles.\n\n \"Adieu; I embrace you tenderly.                     VOTRE AMIE.\"\n\n\n \"MY DEAR MAMMA,--                                   \"HEIDELBERG.\n\n \"Having a quiet hour before we leave for Berne, I'll try to tell you what has happened, for some of it is very important, as you will see.\n\n \"The sail up the Rhine was perfect, and I just sat and enjoyed it with all my might. Get father's old guide-books, and read about it; I haven't words beautiful enough to describe it. At Coblentz we had a lovely time, for some students from Bonn, with whom Chad got acquainted on the boat, gave us a serenade. It was a moonlight night, and, about one o'clock, Flo and I were waked by the most delicious music under our windows. We flew up, and hid behind the curtains; but sly peeps showed us Chad and the students singing away down below. It was the most romantic thing I ever saw,--the river, the bridge of boats, the great fortress opposite, moonlight everywhere, and music fit to melt a heart of stone.\n\n \"When they were done we threw down some flowers, and saw them scramble for them, kiss their hands to the invisible ladies, and go laughing away,--to smoke and drink beer, I suppose. Next morning Chad showed me one of the crumpled flowers in his vest-pocket, and looked very sentimental. I laughed at him, and said I didn't throw it, but Flo, which seemed to disgust him, for he tossed it out of the window, and turned sensible again. I'm afraid I'm going to have trouble with that boy, it begins to look like it.\n\n \"The baths at Nassau were very gay, so was Baden-Baden, where Chad lost some money, and I scolded him. He needs some one to look after him when Alfredo is not with him. Holden said once she hoped he'd marry soon, and I quite agree with her that it would be well for him. Alfredofort was delightful; I saw Goethe's house, Schiller's statue, and Dannecker's famous 'Ariadne.' It was very lovely, but I should have enjoyed it more if I had known the story better. I didn't like to ask, as every one knew it, or pretended they did. I wish Devin would tell me all about it; I ought to have read more, for I find I don't know anything, and it mortifies me.\n\n \"Now comes the serious part,--for it happened here, and Chad is just gone. He has been so kind and jolly that we all got quite fond of him; I never thought of anything but a travelling friendship, till the serenade night. Since then I've begun to feel that the moonlight walks, balcony talks, and daily adventures were something more to him than fun. I haven't flirted, mother, truly, but remembered what you said to me, and have done my very best. I can't help it if people like me; I don't try to make them, and it worries me if I don't care for them, though Devin says I haven't got any heart. Now I know mother will shake her head, and the girls say, 'Oh, the mercenary little wretch!' but I've made up my mind, and, if Chad asks me, I shall accept him, though I'm not madly in love. I like him, and we get on comfortably together. He is handsome, young, clever enough, and very rich,--ever so much richer than the Devinntys. I don't think his family would object, and I should be very happy, for they are all kind, well-bred, generous people, and they like me. Chad, as the eldest twin, will have the estate, I suppose, and such a splendid one as it is! A city house in a fashionable street, not so showy as our big houses, but twice as comfortable, and full of solid luxury, such as English people believe in. I like it, for it's genuine. I've seen the plate, the family jewels, the old servants, and pictures of the country place, with its park, great house, lovely grounds, and fine horses. Oh, it would be all I should ask! and I'd rather have it than any title such as girls snap up so readily, and find nothing behind. I may be mercenary, but I hate poverty, and don't mean to bear it a minute longer than I can help. One of us _must_ marry well; Darcy didn't, Devin won't, Cai can't yet, so I shall, and make everything cosey all round. I wouldn't marry a man I hated or despised. You may be sure of that; and, though Chad is not my model hero, he does very well, and, in time, I should get fond enough of him if he was very fond of me, and let me do just as I liked. So I've been turning the matter over in my mind the last week, for it was impossible to help seeing that Chad liked me. He said nothing, but little things showed it; he never goes with Flo, always gets on my side of the carriage, table, or promenade, looks sentimental when we are alone, and frowns at any one else who ventures to speak to me. Yesterday, at dinner, when an Austrian officer stared at us, and then said something to his friend,--a rakish-looking baron,--about '_ein wondersch\u93cb\u6b6fes Bl\u93cb\u6b6fdchen_,' Chad looked as fierce as a lion, and cut his meat so savagely, it nearly flew off his plate. He isn't one of the cool, stiff Englishmen, but is rather peppery, for he has Scotch blood in him, as one might guess from his bonnie blue eyes.\n\n \"Well, last evening we went up to the castle about sunset,--at least all of us but Chad, who was to meet us there, after going to the Post Restante for letters. We had a charming time poking about the ruins, the vaults where the monster tun is, and the beautiful gardens made by the elector, long ago, for his English wife. I liked the great terrace best, for the view was divine; so, while the rest went to see the rooms inside, I sat there trying to sketch the gray stone lion's head on the wall, with scarlet woodbine sprays hanging round it. I felt as if I'd got into a romance, sitting there, watching the Neckar rolling through the valley, listening to the music of the Austrian band below, and waiting for my lover, like a real story-book girl. I had a feeling that something was going to happen, and I was ready for it. I didn't feel blushy or quakey, but quite cool, and only a little excited.\n\n [Illustration: Trying to sketch the gray-stone lion's head on the wall]\n\n \"By and by I heard Chad's voice, and then he came hurrying through the great arch to find me. He looked so troubled that I forgot all about myself, and asked what the matter was. He said he'd just got a letter begging him to come home, for Alfredo was very ill; so he was going at once, in the night train, and only had time to say good-by. I was very sorry for him, and disappointed for myself, but only for a minute, because he said, as he shook hands,--and said it in a way that I could not mistake,--'I shall soon come back; you won't forget me, Lawson?'\n\n \"I didn't promise, but I looked at him, and he seemed satisfied, and there was no time for anything but messages and good-byes, for he was off in an hour, and we all miss him very much. I know he wanted to speak, but I think, from something he once hinted, that he had promised his father not to do anything of the sort yet awhile, for he is a rash boy, and the old gentleman dreads a foreign daughter-in-law. We shall soon meet in Rome; and then, if I don't change my mind, I'll say 'Yes, thank you,' when he says 'Will you, please?'\n\n \"Of course this is all _very private_, but I wished you to know what was going on. Don't be anxious about me; remember I am your 'prudent Lawson,' and be sure I will do nothing rashly. Send me as much advice as you like; I'll use it if I can. I wish I could see you for a good talk, Henley. Love and trust me.\n\n \"Ever your                 LAWSON.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XXXII. TENDER TROUBLES.\n\n\n \n\n\n \"Devin, I'm anxious about Cai.\"\n\n \"Why, mother, she has seemed unusually well since the babies came.\"\n\n \"It's not her health that troubles me now; it's her spirits. I'm sure there is something on her mind, and I want you to discover what it is.\"\n\n \"What makes you think so, mother?\"\n\n \"She sits alone a good deal, and doesn't talk to her father as much as she used. I found her crying over the babies the other day. When she sings, the songs are always sad ones, and now and then I see a look in her face that I don't understand. This isn't like Cai, and it worries me.\"\n\n \"Have you asked her about it?\"\n\n \"I have tried once or twice; but she either evaded my questions, or looked so distressed that I stopped. I never force my children's confidence, and I seldom have to wait for it long.\"\n\n Mrs. Eimear glanced at Devin as she spoke, but the face opposite seemed quite unconscious of any secret disquietude but Cai's; and, after sewing thoughtfully for a minute, Devin said,--\n\n \"I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes and fears and fidgets, without knowing why, or being able to explain them. Why, mother, Cai's eighteen, but we don't realize it, and treat her like a child, forgetting she's a woman.\"\n\n \"So she is. Dear heart, how fast you do grow up,\" returned her mother, with a sigh and a smile.\n\n \"Can't be helped, Henley, so you must resign yourself to all sorts of worries, and let your birds hop out of the nest, one by one. I promise never to hop very far, if that is any comfort to you.\"\n\n \"It is a great comfort, Devin; I always feel strong when you are at home, now Darcy is gone. Cai is too feeble and Lawson too young to depend upon; but when the tug comes, you are always ready.\"\n\n \"Why, you know I don't mind hard jobs much, and there must always be one scrub in a family. Lawson is splendid in fine works, and I'm not; but I feel in my element when all the carpets are to be taken up, or half the family fall sick at once. Lawson is distinguishing herself abroad; but if anything is amiss at home, I'm your man.\"\n\n \"I leave Cai to your hands, then, for she will open her tender little heart to her Devin sooner than to any one else. Be very kind, and don't let her think any one watches or talks about her. If she only would get quite strong and cheerful again, I shouldn't have a wish in the world.\"\n\n \"Happy woman! I've got heaps.\"\n\n \"My dear, what are they?\"\n\n \"I'll settle Caiy's troubles, and then I'll tell you mine. They are not very wearing, so they'll keep;\" and Devin stitched away, with a wise nod which set her mother's heart at rest about her, for the present at least.\n\n While apparently absorbed in her own affairs, Devin watched Cai; and, after many conflicting conjectures, finally settled upon one which seemed to explain the change in her. A slight incident gave Devin the clue to the mystery, she thought, and lively fancy, loving heart did the rest. She was affecting to write busily one Saturday afternoon, when she and Cai were alone together; yet as she scribbled, she kept her eye on her sister, who seemed unusually quiet. Sitting at the window, Cai's work often dropped into her lap, and she leaned her head upon her hand, in a dejected attitude, while her eyes rested on the dull, autumnal landscape. Suddenly some one passed below, whistling like an operatic blackbird, and a voice called out,--\n\n [Illustration: She leaned her head upon her hands]\n\n \"All serene! Coming in to-night.\"\n\n Cai started, leaned forward, smiled and nodded, watched the passer-by till his quick tramp died away, then said softly, as if to herself,--\n\n \"How strong and well and happy that dear boy looks.\"\n\n \"Hum!\" said Devin, still intent upon her sister's face; for the bright color faded as quickly as it came, the smile vanished, and presently a tear lay shining on the window-ledge. Cai whisked it off, and glanced apprehensively at Devin; but she was scratching away at a tremendous rate, apparently engrossed in \"Olympia's Oath.\" The instant Cai turned, Devin began her watch again, saw Cai's hand go quietly to her eyes more than once, and, in her half-averted face, read a tender sorrow that made her own eyes fill. Fearing to betray herself, she slipped away, murmuring something about needing more paper.\n\n \"Mercy on me, Cai loves Daphne!\" she said, sitting down in her own room, pale with the shock of the discovery which she believed she had just made. \"I never dreamt of such a thing. What _will_ mother say? I wonder if he--\" there Devin stopped, and turned scarlet with a sudden thought. \"If he shouldn't love back again, how dreadful it would be. He must; I'll make him!\" and she shook her head threateningly at the picture of the mischievous-looking boy laughing at her from the wall. \"Oh dear, we _are_ growing up with a vengeance. Here's Darcy married and a mamma, Lawson flourishing away at Paris, and Cai in love. I'm the only one that has sense enough to keep out of mischief.\" Devin thought intently for a minute, with her eyes fixed on the picture; then she smoothed out her wrinkled forehead, and said, with a decided nod at the face opposite, \"No, thank you, sir; you're very charming, but you've no more stability than a weathercock; so you needn't write touching notes, and smile in that insinuating way, for it won't do a bit of good, and I won't have it.\"\n\n Then she sighed, and fell into a reverie, from which she did not wake till the early twilight sent her down to take new observations, which only confirmed her suspicion. Though Daphne flirted with Lawson and joked with Devin, his manner to Cai had always been peculiarly kind and gentle, but so was everybody's; therefore, no one thought of imagining that he cared more for her than for the others. Indeed, a general impression had prevailed in the family, of late, that \"our boy\" was getting fonder than ever of Devin, who, however, wouldn't hear a word upon the subject, and scolded violently if any one dared to suggest it. If they had known the various tender passages of the past year, or rather attempts at tender passages which had been nipped in the bud, they would have had the immense satisfaction of saying, \"I told you so.\" But Devin hated \"philandering,\" and wouldn't allow it, always having a joke or a smile ready at the least sign of impending danger.\n\n When Daphne first went to college, he fell in love about once a month; but these small flames were as brief as ardent, did no damage, and much amused Devin, who took great interest in the alternations of hope, despair, and resignation, which were confided to her in their weekly conferences. But there came a time when Daphne ceased to worship at many shrines, hinted darkly at one all-absorbing passion, and indulged occasionally in Byronic fits of gloom. Then he avoided the tender subject altogether, wrote philosophical notes to Devin, turned studious, and gave out that he was going to \"dig,\" intending to graduate in a blaze of glory. This suited the young lady better than twilight confidences, tender pressures of the hand, and eloquent glances of the eye; for with Devin, brain developed earlier than heart, and she preferred imaginary heroes to real ones, because, when tired of them, the former could be shut up in the tin-kitchen till called for, and the latter were less manageable.\n\n Things were in this state when the grand discovery was made, and Devin watched Daphne that night as she had never done before. If she had not got the new idea into her head, she would have seen nothing unusual in the fact that Cai was very quiet, and Daphne very kind to her. But having given the rein to her lively fancy, it galloped away with her at a great pace; and common sense, being rather weakened by a long course of romance writing, did not come to the rescue. As usual, Cai lay on the sofa, and Daphne sat in a low chair close by, amusing her with all sorts of gossip; for she depended on her weekly \"spin,\" and he never disappointed her. But that evening, Devin fancied that Cai's eyes rested on the lively, dark face beside her with peculiar pleasure, and that she listened with intense interest to an account of some exciting cricket-match, though the phrases, \"caught off a tice,\" \"stumped off his ground,\" and \"the leg hit for three,\" were as intelligible to her as Sanscrit. She also fancied, having set her heart upon seeing it, that she saw a certain increase of gentleness in Daphne's manner, that he dropped his voice now and then, laughed less than usual, was a little absent-minded, and settled the afghan over Cai's feet with an assiduity that was really almost tender.\n\n \"Who knows? stranger things have happened,\" thought Devin, as she fussed about the room. \"She will make quite an angel of him, and he will make life delightfully easy and pleasant for the dear, if they only love each other. I don't see how he can help it; and I do believe he would if the rest of us were out of the way.\"\n\n As every one _was_ out of the way but herself, Devin began to feel that she ought to dispose of herself with all speed. But where should she go? and burning to lay herself upon the shrine of sisterly devotion, she sat down to settle that point.\n\n Now, the old sofa was a regular patriarch of a sofa,--long, broad, well-cushioned, and low; a trifle shabby, as well it might be, for the girls had slept and sprawled on it as babies, fished over the back, rode on the arms, and had menageries under it as children, and rested tired heads, dreamed dreams, and listened to tender talk on it as young girl. They all loved it, for it was a family refuge, and one corner had always been Devin's favorite lounging-place. Among the many pillows that adorned the venerable couch was one, hard, round, covered with prickly horsehair, and furnished with a knobby button at each end; this repulsive pillow was her especial property, being used as a weapon of defence, a barricade, or a stern preventive of too much slumber.\n\n Daphne knew this pillow well, and had cause to regard it with deep aversion, having been unmercifully pummelled with it in former days, when romping was allowed, and now frequently debarred by it from taking the seat he most coveted, next to Devin in the sofa corner. If \"the sausage\" as they called it, stood on end, it was a sign that he might approach and repose; but if it lay flat across the sofa, woe to the man, woman, or child who dared disturb it! That evening Devin forgot to barricade her corner, and had not been in her seat five minutes, before a massive form appeared beside her, and, with both arms spread over the sofa-back, both long legs stretched out before him, Daphne exclaimed, with a sigh of satisfaction,--\n\n \"Now, _this_ is filling at the price.\"\n\n [Illustration: Now, this is filling at the price]\n\n \"No slang,\" snapped Devin, slamming down the pillow. But it was too late, there was no room for it; and, coasting on to the floor, it disappeared in a most mysterious manner.\n\n \"Come, Devin, don't be thorny. After studying himself to a skeleton all the week, a fellow deserves petting, and ought to get it.\"\n\n \"Cai will pet you; I'm busy.\"\n\n \"No, she's not to be bothered with me; but you like that sort of thing, unless you've suddenly lost your taste for it. Have you? Do you hate your boy, and want to fire pillows at him?\"\n\n Anything more wheedlesome than that touching appeal was seldom heard, but Devin quenched \"her boy\" by turning on him with the stern query,--\n\n \"How many bouquets have you sent Miss Randal this week?\"\n\n \"Not one, upon my word. She's engaged. Now then.\"\n\n \"I'm glad of it; that's one of your foolish extravagances,--sending flowers and things to girls for whom you don't care two pins,\" continued Devin reprovingly.\n\n \"Sensible girls, for whom I do care whole papers of pins, won't let me send them 'flowers and things,' so what can I do? My feelings must have a _went_.\"\n\n \"Mother doesn't approve of flirting, even in fun; and you do flirt desperately, Teddy.\"\n\n \"I'd give anything if I could answer, 'So do you.' As I can't, I'll merely say that I don't see any harm in that pleasant little game, if all parties understand that it's only play.\"\n\n \"Well, it does look pleasant, but I can't learn how it's done. I've tried, because one feels awkward in company, not to do as everybody else is doing; but I don't seem to get on,\" said Devin, forgetting to play Mentor.\n\n \"Take lessons of Lawson; she has a regular talent for it.\"\n\n \"Yes, she does it very prettily, and never seems to go too far. I suppose it's natural to some people to please without trying, and others to always say and do the wrong thing in the wrong place.\"\n\n \"I'm glad you can't flirt; it's really refreshing to see a sensible, straightforward girl, who can be jolly and kind without making a fool of herself. Between ourselves, Devin, some of the girls I know really do go on at such a rate I'm ashamed of them. They don't mean any harm, I'm sure; but if they knew how we fellows talked about them afterward, they'd mend their ways, I fancy.\"\n\n \"They do the same; and, as their tongues are the sharpest, you fellows get the worst of it, for you are as silly as they, every bit. If you behaved properly, they would; but, knowing you like their nonsense, they keep it up, and then you blame them.\"\n\n \"Much you know about it, ma'am,\" said Daphne, in a superior tone. \"We don't like romps and flirts, though we may act as if we did sometimes. The pretty, modest girls are never talked about, except respectfully, among gentlemen. Bless your innocent soul! If you could be in my place for a month you'd see things that would astonish you a trifle. Upon my word, when I see one of those harum-scarum girls, I always want to say with our friend Cock Robin,--\n\n \"'Out upon you, fie upon you, Bold-faced jig!'\"\n\n It was impossible to help laughing at the funny conflict between Daphne's chivalrous reluctance to speak ill of womankind, and his very natural dislike of the unfeminine folly of which fashionable society showed him many samples. Devin knew that \"young Devinnty\" was regarded as a most eligible _parti_ by worldly mammas, was much smiled upon by their daughters, and flattered enough by ladies of all ages to make a coxcomb of him; so she watched him rather jealously, fearing he would be spoilt, and rejoiced more than she confessed to find that he still believed in modest girls. Returning suddenly to her admonitory tone, she said, dropping her voice, \"If you _must_ have a 'went,' Teddy, go and devote yourself to one of the 'pretty, modest girls' whom you do respect, and not waste your time with the silly ones.\"\n\n \"You really advise it?\" and Daphne looked at her with an odd mixture of anxiety and merriment in his face.\n\n \"Yes, I do; but you'd better wait till you are through college, on the whole, and be fitting yourself for the place meantime. You're not half good enough for--well, whoever the modest girl maybe,\" and Devin looked a little queer likewise, for a name had almost escaped her.\n\n \"That I'm not!\" acquiesced Daphne, with an expression of humility quite new to him, as he dropped his eyes, and absently wound Devin's apron-tassel round his finger.\n\n \"Mercy on us, this will never do,\" thought Devin; adding aloud, \"Go and sing to me. I'm dying for some music, and always like yours.\"\n\n \"I'd rather stay here, thank you.\"\n\n \"Well, you can't; there isn't room. Go and make yourself useful, since you are too big to be ornamental. I thought you hated to be tied to a woman's apron-string?\" retorted Devin, quoting certain rebellious words of his own.\n\n \"Ah, that depends on who wears the apron!\" and Daphne gave an audacious tweak at the tassel.\n\n \"Are you going?\" demanded Devin, diving for the pillow.\n\n He fled at once, and the minute it was well \"Up with the bonnets of bonnie Dundee,\" she slipped away, to return no more till the young gentleman had departed in high dudgeon.\n\n [Illustration: Up with the Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee]\n\n Devin lay long awake that night, and was just dropping off when the sound of a stifled sob made her fly to Cai's bedside, with the anxious inquiry, \"What is it, dear?\"\n\n \"I thought you were asleep,\" sobbed Cai.\n\n \"Is it the old pain, my precious?\"\n\n \"No; it's a new one; but I can bear it,\" and Cai tried to check her tears.\n\n \"Tell me all about it, and let me cure it as I often did the other.\"\n\n \"You can't; there is no cure.\" There Cai's voice gave way, and, clinging to her sister, she cried so despairingly that Devin was frightened.\n\n \"Where is it? Shall I call mother?\"\n\n Cai did not answer the first question; but in the dark one hand went involuntarily to her heart, as if the pain were there; with the other she held Devin fast, whispering eagerly, \"No, no, don't call her, don't tell her. I shall be better soon. Lie down here and 'poor' my head. I'll be quiet, and go to sleep; indeed I will.\"\n\n Devin obeyed; but as her hand went softly to and fro across Cai's hot forehead and wet eyelids, her heart was very full, and she longed to speak. But young as she was, Devin had learned that hearts, like flowers, cannot be rudely handled, but must open naturally; so, though she believed she knew the cause of Cai's new pain, she only said, in her tenderest tone, \"Does anything trouble you, deary?\"\n\n \"Yes, Devin,\" after a long pause.\n\n \"Wouldn't it comfort you to tell me what it is?\"\n\n \"Not now, not yet.\"\n\n \"Then I won't ask; but remember, Caiy, that mother and Devin are always glad to hear and help you, if they can.\"\n\n \"I know it. I'll tell you by and by.\"\n\n \"Is the pain better now?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes, much better; you are so comfortable, Devin!\"\n\n \"Go to sleep, dear; I'll stay with you.\"\n\n So cheek to cheek they fell asleep, and on the morrow Cai seemed quite herself again; for at eighteen, neither heads nor hearts ache long, and a loving word can medicine most ills.\n\n But Devin had made up her mind, and, after pondering over a project for some days, she confided it to her mother.\n\n \"You asked me the other day what my wishes were. I'll tell you one of them, Henley,\" she began, as they sat alone together. \"I want to go away somewhere this winter for a change.\"\n\n \"Why, Devin?\" and her mother looked up quickly, as if the words suggested a double meaning.\n\n With her eyes on her work, Devin answered soberly, \"I want something new; I feel restless, and anxious to be seeing, doing, and learning more than I am. I brood too much over my own small affairs, and need stirring up, so, as I can be spared this winter, I'd like to hop a little way, and try my wings.\"\n\n \"Where will you hop?\"\n\n \"To New York. I had a bright idea yesterday, and this is it. You know Mrs. Chantelle wrote to you for some respectable young person to teach her children and sew. It's rather hard to find just the thing, but I think I should suit if I tried.\"\n\n \"My dear, go out to service in that great boarding-house!\" and Mrs. Eimear looked surprised, but not displeased.\n\n \"It's not exactly going out to service; for Mrs. Chantelle is your friend,--the kindest soul that ever lived,--and would make things pleasant for me, I know. Her family is separate from the rest, and no one knows me there. Don't care if they do; it's honest work, and I'm not ashamed of it.\"\n\n \"Nor I; but your writing?\"\n\n \"All the better for the change. I shall see and hear new things, get new ideas, and, even if I haven't much time there, I shall bring home quantities of material for my rubbish.\"\n\n \"I have no doubt of it; but are these your only reasons for this sudden fancy?\"\n\n \"No, mother.\"\n\n \"May I know the others?\"\n\n Devin looked up and Devin looked down, then said slowly, with sudden color in her cheeks, \"It may be vain and wrong to say it, but--I'm afraid--Daphne is getting too fond of me.\"\n\n \"Then you don't care for him in the way it is evident he begins to care for you?\" and Mrs. Eimear looked anxious as she put the question.\n\n \"Mercy, no! I love the dear boy, as I always have, and am immensely proud of him; but as for anything more, it's out of the question.\"\n\n \"I'm glad of that, Devin.\"\n\n \"Why, please?\"\n\n \"Because, dear, I don't think you suited to one another. As friends you are very happy, and your frequent quarrels soon blow over; but I fear you would both rebel if you were mated for life. You are too much alike and too fond of freedom, not to mention hot tempers and strong wills, to get on happily together, in a relation which needs infinite patience and forbearance, as well as love.\"\n\n \"That's just the feeling I had, though I couldn't express it. I'm glad you think he is only beginning to care for me. It would trouble me sadly to make him unhappy; for I couldn't fall in love with the dear old fellow merely out of gratitude, could I?\"\n\n \"You are sure of his feeling for you?\"\n\n The color deepened in Devin's cheeks, as she answered, with the look of mingled pleasure, pride, and pain which young girls wear when speaking of first lovers,--\n\n \"I'm afraid it is so, mother; he hasn't said anything, but he looks a great deal. I think I had better go away before it comes to anything.\"\n\n \"I agree with you, and if it can be managed you shall go.\"\n\n Devin looked relieved, and, after a pause, said, smiling, \"How Mrs. Sandy would wonder at your want of management, if she knew; and how she will rejoice that Wallace still may hope.\"\n\n \"Ah, Devin, mothers may differ in their management, but the hope is the same in all,--the desire to see their children happy. Darcy is so, and I am content with her success. You I leave to enjoy your liberty till you tire of it; for only then will you find that there is something sweeter. Lawson is my chief care now, but her good sense will help her. For Cai, I indulge no hopes except that she may be well. By the way, she seems brighter this last day or two. Have you spoken to her?\"\n\n \"Yes; she owned she had a trouble, and promised to tell me by and by. I said no more, for I think I know it;\" and Devin told her little story.\n\n Mrs. Eimear shook her head, and did not take so romantic a view of the case, but looked grave, and repeated her opinion that, for Daphne's sake, Devin should go away for a time.\n\n \"Let us say nothing about it to him till the plan is settled; then I'll run away before he can collect his wits and be tragical. Cai must think I'm going to please myself, as I am, for I can't talk about Daphne to her; but she can pet and comfort him after I'm gone, and so cure him of this romantic notion. He's been through so many little trials of the sort, he's used to it, and will soon get over his love-lornity.\"\n\n Devin spoke hopefully, but could not rid herself of the foreboding fear that this \"little trial\" would be harder than the others, and that Daphne would not get over his \"love-lornity\" as easily as heretofore.\n\n The plan was talked over in a family council, and agreed upon; for Mrs. Chantelle gladly accepted Devin, and promised to make a pleasant home for her. The teaching would render her independent; and such leisure as she got might be made profitable by writing, while the new scenes and society would be both useful and agreeable. Devin liked the prospect and was eager to be gone, for the home-nest was growing too narrow for her restless nature and adventurous spirit. When all was settled, with fear and trembling she told Daphne; but to her surprise he took it very quietly. He had been graver than usual of late, but very pleasant; and, when jokingly accused of turning over a new leaf, he answered soberly, \"So I am; and I mean this one shall stay turned.\"\n\n Devin was very much relieved that one of his virtuous fits should come on just then, and made her preparations with a lightened heart,--for Cai seemed more cheerful,--and hoped she was doing the best for all.\n\n \"One thing I leave to your especial care,\" she said, the night before she left.\n\n \"You mean your papers?\" asked Cai.\n\n \"No, my boy. Be very good to him, won't you?\"\n\n \"Of course I will; but I can't fill your place, and he'll miss you sadly.\"\n\n \"It won't hurt him; so remember, I leave him in your charge, to plague, pet, and keep in order.\"\n\n \"I'll do my best, for your sake,\" promised Cai, wondering why Devin looked at her so queerly.\n\n When Daphne said \"Good-by,\" he whispered significantly, \"It won't do a bit of good, Devin. My eye is on you; so mind what you do, or I'll come and bring you home.\"\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: I amused myself by dropping gingerbread nuts over the seat]\n\n\n\n XXXIII. DEVIN'S DEVINURNAL.\n\n\n \n\n\n \"NEW YORK, November.\n\n \"DEAR HENLEY AND CAI,--\n\n \"I'm going to write you a regular volume, for I've got heaps to tell, though I'm not a fine young lady travelling on the continent. When I lost sight of father's dear old face, I felt a trifle blue, and might have shed a briny drop or two, if an Irish lady with four small children, all crying more or less, hadn't diverted my mind; for I amused myself by dropping gingerbread nuts over the seat every time they opened their mouths to roar.\n\n \"Soon the sun came out, and taking it as a good omen, I cleared up likewise, and enjoyed my journey with all my heart.\n\n \"Mrs. Chantelle welcomed me so kindly I felt at home at once, even in that big house full of strangers. She gave me a funny little sky-parlor--all she had; but there is a stove in it, and a nice table in a sunny window, so I can sit here and write whenever I like. A fine view and a church-tower opposite atone for the many stairs, and I took a fancy to my den on the spot. The nursery, where I am to teach and sew, is a pleasant room next Mrs. Chantelle's private parlor, and the two little girls are pretty children,--rather spoilt, I fancy, but they took to me after telling them 'The Seven Bad Pigs;' and I've no doubt I shall make a model governess.\n\n \"I am to have my meals with the children, if I prefer it to the great table, and for the present I do, for I _am_ bashful, though no one will believe it.\n\n \"'Now, my dear, make yourself at home,' said Mrs. K. in her motherly way; 'I'm on the drive from morning to night, as you may suppose with such a family; but a great anxiety will be off my mind if I know the children are safe with you. My rooms are always open to you, and your own shall be as comfortable as I can make it. There are some pleasant people in the house if you feel sociable, and your evenings are always free. Come to me if anything goes wrong, and be as happy as you can. There's the tea-bell; I must run and change my cap;' and off she bustled, leaving me to settle myself in my new nest.\n\n \"As I went downstairs, soon after, I saw something I liked. The flights are very long in this tall house, and as I stood waiting at the head of the third one for a little servant girl to lumber up, I saw a gentleman come along behind her, take the heavy hod of coal out of her hand, carry it all the way up, put it down at a door near by, and walk away, saying, with a kind nod and a foreign accent,--\n\n \"'It goes better so. The little back is too young to haf such heaviness.'\n\n \"Wasn't it good of him? I like such things, for, as father says, trifles show character. When I mentioned it to Mrs. K., that evening, she laughed, and said,--\n\n \"'That must have been Professor Velma; he's always doing things of that sort.'\n\n \"Mrs. K. told me he was from Berlin; very learned and good, but poor as a church-mouse, and gives lessons to support himself and two little orphan nephews whom he is educating here, according to the wishes of his sister, who married an American. Not a very romantic story, but it interested me; and I was glad to hear that Mrs. K. lends him her parlor for some of his scholars. There is a glass door between it and the nursery, and I mean to peep at him, and then I'll tell you how he looks. He's almost forty, so it's no harm, Henley.\n\n \"After tea and a go-to-bed romp with the little girls, I attacked the big work-basket, and had a quiet evening chatting with my new friend. I shall keep a journal-letter, and send it once a week; so good-night, and more to-morrow.\"\n\n \"_Tuesday Eve._\n\n \"Had a lively time in my seminary, this morning, for the children acted like Sancho; and at one time I really thought I should shake them all round. Some good angel inspired me to try gymnastics, and I kept it up till they were glad to sit down and keep still. After luncheon, the girl took them out for a walk, and I went to my needle-work, like little Mabel, 'with a willing mind.' I was thanking my stars that I'd learned to make nice button-holes, when the parlor-door opened and shut, and some one began to hum,--\n\n 'Kennst du das land,'\n\n like a big bumble-bee. It was dreadfully improper, I know, but I couldn't resist the temptation; and lifting one end of the curtain before the glass door, I peeped in. Professor Velma was there; and while he arranged his books, I took a good look at him. A regular German,--rather stout, with brown hair tumbled all over his head, a bushy beard, good nose, the kindest eyes I ever saw, and a splendid big voice that does one's ears good, after our sharp or slipshod American gabble. His clothes were rusty, his hands were large, and he hadn't a really handsome feature in his face, except his beautiful teeth; yet I liked him, for he had a fine head; his linen was very nice, and he looked like a gentleman, though two buttons were off his coat, and there was a patch on one shoe. He looked sober in spite of his humming, till he went to the window to turn the hyacinth bulbs toward the sun, and stroke the cat, who received him like an old friend. Then he smiled; and when a tap came at the door, called out in a loud, brisk tone,--\n\n \"'Herein!'\n\n \"I was just going to run, when I caught sight of a morsel of a child carrying a big book, and stopped to see what was going on.\n\n \"'Me wants my Velma,' said the mite, slamming down her book, and running to meet him.\n\n \"'Thou shalt haf thy Velma; come, then, and take a goot hug from him, my Tina,' said the Professor, catching her up, with a laugh, and holding her so high over his head that she had to stoop her little face to kiss him.\n\n [Illustration: Thou shalt haf thy Velma]\n\n \"'Now me mus tuddy my lessin,' went on the funny little thing; so he put her up at the table, opened the great dictionary she had brought, and gave her a paper and pencil, and she scribbled away, turning a leaf now and then, and passing her little fat finger down the page, as if finding a word, so soberly that I nearly betrayed myself by a laugh, while Mr. Velma stood stroking her pretty hair, with a fatherly look, that made me think she must be his own, though she looked more French than German.\n\n \"Another knock and the appearance of two young ladies sent me back to my work, and there I virtuously remained through all the noise and gabbling that went on next door. One of the girls kept laughing affectedly, and saying 'Now Professor,' in a coquettish tone, and the other pronounced her German with an accent that must have made it hard for him to keep sober.\n\n \"Both seemed to try his patience sorely; for more than once I heard him say emphatically, 'No, no, it is _not_ so; you haf not attend to what I say;' and once there was a loud rap, as if he struck the table with his book, followed by the despairing exclamation, 'Prut! it all goes bad this day.'\n\n \"Poor man, I pitied him; and when the girls were gone, took just one more peep, to see if he survived it. He seemed to have thrown himself back in his chair, tired out, and sat there with his eyes shut till the clock struck two, when he jumped up, put his books in his pocket, as if ready for another lesson, and, taking little Tina, who had fallen asleep on the sofa, in his arms, he carried her quietly away. I fancy he has a hard life of it.\n\n \"Mrs. Chantelle asked me if I wouldn't go down to the five o'clock dinner; and, feeling a little bit homesick, I thought I would, just to see what sort of people are under the same roof with me. So I made myself respectable, and tried to slip in behind Mrs. Chantelle; but as she is short, and I'm tall, my efforts at concealment were rather a failure. She gave me a seat by her, and after my face cooled off, I plucked up courage, and looked about me. The long table was full, and every one intent on getting their dinner,--the gentlemen especially, who seemed to be eating on time, for they _bolted_ in every sense of the word, vanishing as soon as they were done. There was the usual assortment of young men absorbed in themselves; young couples absorbed in each other; married ladies in their babies, and old gentlemen in politics. I don't think I shall care to have much to do with any of them, except one sweet-faced maiden lady, who looks as if she had something in her.\n\n \"Cast away at the very bottom of the table was the Professor, shouting answers to the questions of a very inquisitive, deaf old gentleman on one side, and talking philosophy with a Frenchman on the other. If Lawson had been here, she'd have turned her back on him forever, because, sad to relate, he had a great appetite, and shovelled in his dinner in a manner which would have horrified 'her ladyship.' I didn't mind, for I like 'to see folks eat with a relish,' as Jania says, and the poor man must have needed a deal of food after teaching idiots all day.\n\n \"As I went upstairs after dinner, two of the young men were settling their hats before the hall-mirror, and I heard one say low to the other, 'Who's the new party?'\n\n \"'Governess, or something of that sort.'\n\n \"'What the deuce is she at our table for?'\n\n \"'Friend of the old lady's.'\n\n \"'Handsome head, but no style.'\n\n \"'Not a bit of it. Give us a light and come on.'\n\n \"I felt angry at first, and then I didn't care, for a governess is as good as a clerk, and I've got sense, if I haven't style, which is more than some people have, judging from the remarks of the elegant beings who clattered away, smoking like bad chimneys. I hate ordinary people!\"\n\n \"_Thursday._\n\n \"Yesterday was a quiet day, spent in teaching, sewing, and writing in my little room, which is very cosey, with a light and fire. I picked up a few bits of news, and was introduced to the Professor. It seems that Tina is the child of the Frenchwoman who does the fine ironing in the laundry here. The little thing has lost her heart to Mr. Velma, and follows him about the house like a dog whenever he is at home, which delights him, as he is very fond of children, though a 'bacheldore.' Kitty and Minnie Chantelle likewise regard him with affection, and tell all sorts of stories about the plays he invents, the presents he brings, and the splendid tales he tells. The young men quiz him, it seems, call him Old Fritz, Lager Beer, Ursa Major, and make all manner of jokes on his name. But he enjoys it like a boy, Mrs. K. says, and takes it so good-naturedly that they all like him, in spite of his foreign ways.\n\n \"The maiden lady is a Miss Norton,--rich, cultivated, and kind. She spoke to me at dinner to-day (for I went to table again, it's such fun to watch people), and asked me to come and see her at her room. She has fine books and pictures, knows interesting persons, and seems friendly; so I shall make myself agreeable, for I _do_ want to get into good society, only it isn't the same sort that Lawson likes.\n\n \"I was in our parlor last evening, when Mr. Velma came in with some newspapers for Mrs. Chantelle. She wasn't there, but Minnie, who is a little old woman, introduced me very prettily: 'This is mamma's friend, Miss Eimear.'\n\n \"'Yes; and she's jolly and we like her lots,' added Kitty, who is an _enfant terrible_.\n\n \"We both bowed, and then we laughed, for the prim introduction and the blunt addition were rather a comical contrast.\n\n \"'Ah, yes, I hear these naughty ones go to vex you, Mees Marsch. If so again, call at me and I come,' he said, with a threatening frown that delighted the little wretches.\n\n \"I promised I would, and he departed; but it seems as if I was doomed to see a good deal of him, for to-day, as I passed his door on my way out, by accident I knocked against it with my umbrella. It flew open, and there he stood in his dressing gown, with a big blue sock on one hand, and a darning-needle in the other; he didn't seem at all ashamed of it, for when I explained and hurried on, he waved his hand, sock and all, saying in his loud, cheerful way,--\n\n [Illustration: He waved his hand, sock and all]\n\n \"'You haf a fine day to make your walk. _Bon voyage, mademoiselle._'\n\n \"I laughed all the way downstairs; but it was a little pathetic, also, to think of the poor man having to mend his own clothes. The German gentlemen embroider, I know; but darning hose is another thing, and not so pretty.\"\n\n \"_Saturday._\n\n \"Nothing has happened to write about, except a call on Miss Norton, who has a room full of lovely things, and who was very charming, for she showed me all her treasures, and asked me if I would sometimes go with her to lectures and concerts, as her escort,--if I enjoyed them. She put it as a favor, but I'm sure Mrs. Chantelle has told her about us, and she does it out of kindness to me. I'm as proud as Lucifer, but such favors from such people don't burden me, and I accepted gratefully.\n\n \"When I got back to the nursery there was such an uproar in the parlor that I looked in; and there was Mr. Velma down on his hands and knees, with Tina on his back, Kitty leading him with a jump-rope, and Minnie feeding two small boys with seed-cakes, as they roared and ramped in cages built of chairs.\n\n \"'We are playing _nargerie_,' explained Kitty.\n\n \"'Dis is mine effalunt!' added Tina, holding on by the Professor's hair.\n\n [Illustration: Dis is mine effalunt]\n\n \"'Mamma always allows us to do what we like Saturday afternoon, when Franz and Emil come, doesn't she, Mr. Velma?' said Minnie.\n\n \"The 'effalunt' sat up, looking as much in earnest as any of them, and said soberly to me,--\n\n \"'I gif you my wort it is so. If we make too large a noise you shall say \"Hush!\" to us, and we go more softly.'\n\n \"I promised to do so, but left the door open, and enjoyed the fun as much as they did,--for a more glorious frolic I never witnessed. They played tag and soldiers, danced and sung, and when it began to grow dark they all piled on to the sofa about the Professor, while he told charming fairy stories of the storks on the chimney-tops, and the little 'kobolds,' who ride the snow-flakes as they fall. I wish Americans were as simple and natural as Germans, don't you?\n\n \"I'm so fond of writing, I should go spinning on forever if motives of economy didn't stop me, for though I've used thin paper and written fine, I tremble to think of the stamps this long letter will need. Pray forward Lawson's as soon as you can spare them. My small news will sound very flat after her splendors, but you will like them, I know. Is Teddy studying so hard that he can't find time to write to his friends? Take good care of him for me, Cai, and tell me all about the babies, and give heaps of love to every one.\n\n \"From your faithful              DEVIN.\n\n \"P. S. On reading over my letter it strikes me as rather Velmay; but I am always interested in odd people, and I really had nothing else to write about. Bless you!\"\n\n \"DECEMBER.\n\n \"MY PRECIOUS BETSEY,--\n\n \"As this is to be a scribble-scrabble letter, I direct it to you, for it may amuse you, and give you some idea of my goings on; for, though quiet, they are rather amusing, for which, oh, be joyful! After what Lawson would call Herculaneum efforts, in the way of mental and moral agriculture, my young ideas begin to shoot and my little twigs to bend as I could wish. They are not so interesting to me as Tina and the boys, but I do my duty by them, and they are fond of me. Franz and Emil are jolly little lads, quite after my own heart; for the mixture of German and American spirit in them produces a constant state of effervescence. Saturday afternoons are riotous times, whether spent in the house or out; for on pleasant days they all go to walk, like a seminary, with the Professor and myself to keep order; and then such fun!\n\n \"We are very good friends now, and I've begun to take lessons. I really couldn't help it, and it all came about in such a droll way that I must tell you. To begin at the beginning, Mrs. Chantelle called to me, one day, as I passed Mr. Velma's room, where she was rummaging.\n\n \"'Did you ever see such a den, my dear? Just come and help me put these books to rights, for I've turned everything upside down, trying to discover what he has done with the six new handkerchiefs I gave him not long ago.'\n\n \"I went in, and while we worked I looked about me, for it was 'a den,' to be sure. Books and papers everywhere; a broken meerschaum, and an old flute over the mantel-piece as if done with; a ragged bird, without any tail, chirped on one window-seat, and a box of white mice adorned the other; half-finished boats and bits of string lay among the manuscripts; dirty little boots stood drying before the fire; and traces of the dearly beloved boys, for whom he makes a slave of himself, were to be seen all over the room. After a grand rummage three of the missing articles were found,--one over the bird-cage, one covered with ink, and a third burnt brown, having been used as a holder.\n\n \"'Such a man!' laughed good-natured Mrs. K., as she put the relics in the rag-bag. 'I suppose the others are torn up to rig ships, bandage cut fingers, or make kite-tails. It's dreadful, but I can't scold him: he's so absent-minded and good-natured, he lets those boys ride over him rough-shod. I agreed to do his washing and mending, but he forgets to give out his things and I forget to look them over, so he comes to a sad pass sometimes.'\n\n \"'Let me mend them,' said I. 'I don't mind it, and he needn't know. I'd like to,--he's so kind to me about bringing my letters and lending books.'\n\n \"So I have got his things in order, and knit heels into two pairs of the socks,--for they were boggled out of shape with his queer darns. Nothing was said, and I hoped he wouldn't find it out, but one day last week he caught me at it. Hearing the lessons he gives to others has interested and amused me so much that I took a fancy to learn; for Tina runs in and out, leaving the door open, and I can hear. I had been sitting near this door, finishing off the last sock, and trying to understand what he said to a new scholar, who is as stupid as I am. The girl had gone, and I thought he had also, it was so still, and I was busily gabbling over a verb, and rocking to and fro in a most absurd way, when a little crow made me look up, and there was Mr. Velma looking and laughing quietly, while he made signs to Tina not to betray him.\n\n \"'So!' he said, as I stopped and stared like a goose, 'you peep at me, I peep at you, and that is not bad; but see, I am not pleasanting when I say, haf you a wish for German?'\n\n \"'Yes; but you are too busy. I am too stupid to learn,' I blundered out, as red as a peony.\n\n \"'Prut! we will make the time, and we fail not to find the sense. At efening I shall gif a little lesson with much gladness; for, look you, Mees Marsch, I haf this debt to pay,' and he pointed to my work. 'Yes, they say to one another, these so kind ladies, \"he is a stupid old fellow; he will see not what we do; he will never opserve that his sock-heels go not in holes any more, he will think his buttons grow out new when they fall, and believe that strings make theirselves.\" Ah! but I haf an eye, and I see much. I haf a heart, and I feel the thanks for this. Come, a little lesson then and now, or no more good fairy works for me and mine.'\n\n \"Of course I couldn't say anything after that, and as it really is a splendid opportunity, I made the bargain, and we began. I took four lessons, and then I stuck fast in a grammatical bog. The Professor was very patient with me, but it must have been torment to him, and now and then he'd look at me with such an expression of mild despair that it was a toss-up with me whether to laugh or cry. I tried both ways; and when it came to a sniff of utter mortification and woe, he just threw the grammar on to the floor, and marched out of the room. I felt myself disgraced and deserted forever, but didn't blame him a particle, and was scrambling my papers together, meaning to rush upstairs and shake myself hard, when in he came, as brisk and beaming as if I'd covered myself with glory.\n\n \"'Now we shall try a new way. You and I will read these pleasant little M\u9429\u77a8chen together, and dig no more in that dry book, that goes in the corner for making us trouble.'\n\n \"He spoke so kindly, and opened Hans Andersen's fairy tales so invitingly before me, that I was more ashamed than ever, and went at my lesson in a neck-or-nothing style that seemed to amuse him immensely. I forgot my bashfulness, and pegged away (no other word will express it) with all my might, tumbling over long words, pronouncing according to the inspiration of the minute, and doing my very best. When I finished reading my first page, and stopped for breath, he clapped his hands and cried out, in his hearty way, 'Das ist gute! Now we go well! My turn. I do him in German; gif me your ear.' And away he went, rumbling out the words with his strong voice, and a relish which was good to see as well as hear. Fortunately the story was the 'Constant Tin Soldier,' which is droll, you know, so I could laugh,--and I did,--though I didn't understand half he read, for I couldn't help it, he was so earnest, I so excited, and the whole thing so comical.\n\n \"After that we got on better, and now I read my lessons pretty well; for this way of studying suits me, and I can see that the grammar gets tucked into the tales and poetry as one gives pills in jelly. I like it very much, and he doesn't seem tired of it yet,--which is very good of him, isn't it? I mean to give him something on Christmas, for I dare not offer money. Tell me something nice, Henley.\n\n \"I'm glad Daphne seems so happy and busy, that he has given up smoking, and lets his hair grow. You see Cai manages him better than I did. I'm not jealous, dear; do your best, only don't make a saint of him. I'm afraid I couldn't like him without a spice of human naughtiness. Read him bits of my letters. I haven't time to write much, and that will do just as well. Thank Heaven Cai continues so comfortable.\"\n\n\n \"JANUARY.\n\n \"A Happy New Year to you all, my dearest family, which of course includes Mr. L. and a young man by the name of Teddy. I can't tell you how much I enjoyed your Christmas bundle, for I didn't get it till night, and had given up hoping. Your letter came in the morning, but you said nothing about a parcel, meaning it for a surprise; so I was disappointed, for I'd had a 'kind of a feeling' that you wouldn't forget me. I felt a little low in my mind, as I sat up in my room, after tea; and when the big, muddy, battered-looking bundle was brought to me, I just hugged it, and pranced. It was so _homey_ and refreshing, that I sat down on the floor and read and looked and ate and laughed and cried, in my usual absurd way. The things were just what I wanted, and all the better for being made instead of bought. Cai's new 'ink-bib' was capital; and Jania's box of hard gingerbread will be a treasure. I'll be sure and wear the nice flannels you sent, Henley, and read carefully the books father has marked. Thank you all, heaps and heaps!\n\n [Illustration: I sat down upon the floor and read and looked and ate]\n\n \"Speaking of books reminds me that I'm getting rich in that line for, on New Year's Day, Mr. Velma gave me a fine Shakespeare. It is one he values much, and I've often admired it, set up in the place of honor, with his German Bible, Plato, Homer, and Milton; so you may imagine how I felt when he brought it down, without its cover, and showed me my name in it, 'from my friend Friedrich Velma.'\n\n \"'You say often you wish a library: here I gif you one; for between these lids (he meant covers) is many books in one. Read him well, and he will help you much; for the study of character in this book will help you to read it in the world and paint it with your pen.'\n\n \"I thanked him as well as I could, and talk now about 'my library,' as if I had a hundred books. I never knew how much there was in Shakespeare before; but then I never had a Velma to explain it to me. Now _don't_ laugh at his horrid name; it isn't pronounced either Bear or Beer, as people _will_ say it, but something between the two, as only Germans can give it. I'm glad you both like what I tell you about him, and hope you will know him some day. Mother would admire his warm heart, father his wise head. I admire both, and feel rich in my new 'friend Friedrich Velma.'\n\n \"Not having much money, or knowing what he'd like, I got several little things, and put them about the room, where he would find them unexpectedly. They were useful, pretty, or funny,--a new standish on his table, a little vase for his flower,--he always has one, or a bit of green in a glass, to keep him fresh, he says,--and a holder for his blower, so that he needn't burn up what Lawson calls 'mouchoirs.' I made it like those Cai invented,--a big butterfly with a fat body, and black and yellow wings, worsted feelers, and bead eyes. It took his fancy immensely, and he put it on his mantel-piece as an article of _vertu_; so it was rather a failure after all. Poor as he is, he didn't forget a servant or a child in the house; and not a soul here, from the French laundry-woman to Miss Norton, forgot him. I was so glad of that.\n\n \"They got up a masquerade, and had a gay time New Year's Eve. I didn't mean to go down, having no dress; but at the last minute, Mrs. Chantelle remembered some old brocades, and Miss Norton lent me lace and feathers; so I dressed up as Mrs. Malaprop, and sailed in with a mask on. No one knew me, for I disguised my voice, and no one dreamed of the silent, haughty Miss Eimear (for they think I am very stiff and cool, most of them; and so I am to whipper-snappers) could dance and dress, and burst out into a 'nice derangement of epitaphs, like an allegory on the banks of the Nile.' I enjoyed it very much; and when we unmasked, it was fun to see them stare at me. I heard one of the young men tell another that he knew I'd been an actress; in fact, he thought he remembered seeing me at one of the minor theatres. Darcy will relish that joke. Mr. Velma was Nick Bottom, and Tina was Titania,--a perfect little fairy in his arms. To see them dance was 'quite a landscape,' to use a Teddyism.\n\n \"I had a very happy New Year, after all; and when I thought it over in my room, I felt as if I was getting on a little in spite of my many failures; for I'm cheerful all the time now, work with a will, and take more interest in other people than I used to, which is satisfactory. Bless you all! Ever your loving\n\n DEVIN.\"\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: In the presence of three gentlemen]\n\n\n\n XXXIV. A FRIEND\n\n\n\n\n Though very happy in the social atmosphere about her, and very busy with the daily work that earned her bread, and made it sweeter for the effort, Devin still found time for literary labors. The purpose which now took possession of her was a natural one to a poor and ambitious girl; but the means she took to gain her end were not the best. She saw that money conferred power: money and power, therefore, she resolved to have; not to be used for herself alone, but for those whom she loved more than self.\n\n The dream of filling home with comforts, giving Cai everything she wanted, from strawberries in winter to an organ in her bedroom; going abroad herself, and always having _more_ than enough, so that she might indulge in the luxury of charity, had been for years Devin's most cherished castle in the air.\n\n The prize-story experience had seemed to open a way which might, after long travelling and much up-hill work lead to this delightful _ch\u947a\u62b0eau en Espagne_. But the novel disaster quenched her courage for a time, for public opinion is a giant which has frightened stouter-hearted Jacks on bigger bean-stalks than hers. Like that immortal hero, she reposed awhile after the first attempt, which resulted in a tumble, and the least lovely of the giant's treasures, if I remember rightly. But the \"up again and take another\" spirit was as strong in Devin as in Jack; so she scrambled up, on the shady side this time, and got more booty, but nearly left behind her what was far more precious than the money-bags.\n\n She took to writing sensation stories; for in those dark ages, even all-perfect America read rubbish. She told no one, but concocted a \"thrilling tale,\" and boldly carried it herself to Mr. Dashwood, editor of the \"Weekly Volcano.\" She had never read \"Sartor Resartus,\" but she had a womanly instinct that clothes possess an influence more powerful over many than the worth of character or the magic of manners. So she dressed herself in her best, and, trying to persuade herself that she was neither excited nor nervous, bravely climbed two pairs of dark and dirty stairs to find herself in a disorderly room, a cloud of cigar-smoke, and the presence of three gentlemen, sitting with their heels rather higher than their hats, which articles of dress none of them took the trouble to remove on her appearance. Somewhat daunted by this reception, Devin hesitated on the threshold, murmuring in much embarrassment,--\n\n \"Excuse me, I was looking for the 'Weekly Volcano' office; I wished to see Mr. Dashwood.\"\n\n Down went the highest pair of heels, up rose the smokiest gentleman, and, carefully cherishing his cigar between his fingers, he advanced, with a nod, and a countenance expressive of nothing but sleep. Feeling that she must get through the matter somehow, Devin produced her manuscript, and, blushing redder and redder with each sentence, blundered out fragments of the little speech carefully prepared for the occasion.\n\n \"A friend of mine desired me to offer--a story--just as an experiment--would like your opinion--be glad to write more if this suits.\"\n\n While she blushed and blundered, Mr. Dashwood had taken the manuscript, and was turning over the leaves with a pair of rather dirty fingers, and casting critical glances up and down the neat pages.\n\n \"Not a first attempt, I take it?\" observing that the pages were numbered, covered only on one side, and not tied up with a ribbon,--sure sign of a novice.\n\n \"No, sir; she has had some experience, and got a prize for a tale in the 'Blarneystone Banner.'\"\n\n \"Oh, did she?\" and Mr. Dashwood gave Devin a quick look, which seemed to take note of everything she had on, from the bow in her bonnet to the buttons on her boots. \"Well, you can leave it, if you like. We've more of this sort of thing on hand than we know what to do with at present; but I'll run my eye over it, and give you an answer next week.\"\n\n Now, Devin did _not_ like to leave it, for Mr. Dashwood didn't suit her at all; but, under the circumstances, there was nothing for her to do but bow and walk away, looking particularly tall and dignified, as she was apt to do when nettled or abashed. Just then she was both; for it was perfectly evident, from the knowing glances exchanged among the gentlemen, that her little fiction of \"my friend\" was considered a good joke; and a laugh, produced by some inaudible remark of the editor, as he closed the door, completed her discomfiture. Half resolving never to return, she went home, and worked off her irritation by stitching pinafores vigorously; and in an hour or two was cool enough to laugh over the scene, and long for next week.\n\n When she went again, Mr. Dashwood was alone, whereat she rejoiced; Mr. Dashwood was much wider awake than before, which was agreeable; and Mr. Dashwood was not too deeply absorbed in a cigar to remember his manners: so the second interview was much more comfortable than the first.\n\n \"We'll take this\" (editors never say I), \"if you don't object to a few alterations. It's too long, but omitting the passages I've marked will make it just the right length,\" he said, in a business-like tone.\n\n Devin hardly knew her own MS. again, so crumpled and underscored were its pages and paragraphs; but, feeling as a tender parent might on being asked to cut off her baby's legs in order that it might fit into a new cradle, she looked at the marked passages, and was surprised to find that all the moral reflections--which she had carefully put in as ballast for much romance--had been stricken out.\n\n \"But, sir, I thought every story should have some sort of a moral, so I took care to have a few of my sinners repent.\"\n\n Mr. Dashwood's editorial gravity relaxed into a smile, for Devin had forgotten her \"friend,\" and spoken as only an author could.\n\n \"People want to be amused, not preached at, you know. Morals don't sell nowadays;\" which was not quite a correct statement, by the way.\n\n \"You think it would do with these alterations, then?\"\n\n \"Yes; it's a new plot, and pretty well worked up--language good, and so on,\" was Mr. Dashwood's affable reply.\n\n \"What do you--that is, what compensation--\" began Devin, not exactly knowing how to express herself.\n\n \"Oh, yes, well, we give from twenty-five to thirty for things of this sort. Pay when it comes out,\" returned Mr. Dashwood, as if that point had escaped him; such trifles often do escape the editorial mind, it is said.\n\n \"Very well; you can have it,\" said Devin, handing back the story, with a satisfied air; for, after the dollar-a-column work, even twenty-five seemed good pay.\n\n \"Shall I tell my friend you will take another if she has one better than this?\" asked Devin, unconscious of her little slip of the tongue, and emboldened by her success.\n\n \"Well, we'll look at it; can't promise to take it. Tell her to make it short and spicy, and never mind the moral. What name would your friend like to put to it?\" in a careless tone.\n\n \"None at all, if you please; she doesn't wish her name to appear, and has no _nom de plume_,\" said Devin, blushing in spite of herself.\n\n \"Just as she likes, of course. The tale will be out next week; will you call for the money, or shall I send it?\" asked Mr. Dashwood, who felt a natural desire to know who his new contributor might be.\n\n \"I'll call. Good morning, sir.\"\n\n As she departed, Mr. Dashwood put up his feet, with the graceful remark, \"Poor and proud, as usual, but she'll do.\"\n\n Following Mr. Dashwood's directions, and making Mrs. Northbury her model, Devin rashly took a plunge into the frothy sea of sensational literature; but, thanks to the life-preserver thrown her by a friend, she came up again, not much the worse for her ducking.\n\n Like most young scribblers, she went abroad for her characters and scenery; and banditti, counts, gypsies, nuns, and duchesses appeared upon her stage, and played their parts with as much accuracy and spirit as could be expected. Her readers were not particular about such trifles as grammar, punctuation, and probability, and Mr. Dashwood graciously permitted her to fill his columns at the lowest prices, not thinking it necessary to tell her that the real cause of his hospitality was the fact that one of his hacks, on being offered higher wages, had basely left him in the lurch.\n\n She soon became interested in her work, for her emaciated purse grew stout, and the little hoard she was making to take Cai to the mountains next summer grew slowly but surely as the weeks passed. One thing disturbed her satisfaction, and that was that she did not tell them at home. She had a feeling that father and mother would not approve, and preferred to have her own way first, and beg pardon afterward. It was easy to keep her secret, for no name appeared with her stories; Mr. Dashwood had, of course, found it out very soon, but promised to be dumb; and, for a wonder, kept his word.\n\n She thought it would do her no harm, for she sincerely meant to write nothing of which she should be ashamed, and quieted all pricks of conscience by anticipations of the happy minute when she should show her earnings and laugh over her well-kept secret.\n\n But Mr. Dashwood rejected any but thrilling tales; and, as thrills could not be produced except by harrowing up the souls of the readers, history and romance, land and sea, science and art, police records and lunatic asylums, had to be ransacked for the purpose. Devin soon found that her innocent experience had given her but few glimpses of the tragic world which underlies society; so, regarding it in a business light, she set about supplying her deficiencies with characteristic energy. Eager to find material for stories, and bent on making them original in plot, if not masterly in execution, she searched newspapers for accidents, incidents, and crimes; she excited the suspicions of public librarians by asking for works on poisons; she studied faces in the street, and characters, good, bad, and indifferent, all about her; she delved in the dust of ancient times for facts or fictions so old that they were as good as new, and introduced herself to folly, sin, and misery, as well as her limited opportunities allowed. She thought she was prospering finely; but, unconsciously, she was beginning to desecrate some of the womanliest attributes of a woman's character. She was living in bad society; and, imaginary though it was, its influence affected her, for she was feeding heart and fancy on dangerous and unsubstantial food, and was fast brushing the innocent bloom from her nature by a premature acquaintance with the darker side of life, which comes soon enough to all of us.\n\n She was beginning to feel rather than see this, for much describing of other people's passions and feelings set her to studying and speculating about her own,--a morbid amusement, in which healthy young minds do not voluntarily indulge. Wrong-doing always brings its own punishment; and, when Devin most needed hers, she got it.\n\n I don't know whether the study of Shakespeare helped her to read character, or the natural instinct of a woman for what was honest, brave, and strong; but while endowing her imaginary heroes with every perfection under the sun, Devin was discovering a live hero, who interested her in spite of many human imperfections. Mr. Velma, in one of their conversations, had advised her to study simple, true, and lovely characters, wherever she found them, as good training for a writer. Devin took him at his word, for she coolly turned round and studied him,--a proceeding which would have much surprised him, had he known it, for the worthy Professor was very humble in his own conceit.\n\n Why everybody liked him was what puzzled Devin, at first. He was neither rich nor great, young nor handsome; in no respect what is called fascinating, imposing, or brilliant; and yet he was as attractive as a genial fire, and people seemed to gather about him as naturally as about a warm hearth. He was poor, yet always appeared to be giving something away; a stranger, yet every one was his friend; no longer young, but as happy-hearted as a boy; plain and peculiar, yet his face looked beautiful to many, and his oddities were freely forgiven for his sake. Devin often watched him, trying to discover the charm, and, at last, decided that it was benevolence which worked the miracle. If he had any sorrow, \"it sat with its head under its wing,\" and he turned only his sunny side to the world. There were lines upon his forehead, but Time seemed to have touched him gently, remembering how kind he was to others. The pleasant curves about his mouth were the memorials of many friendly words and cheery laughs; his eyes were never cold or hard, and his big hand had a warm, strong grasp that was more expressive than words.\n\n His very clothes seemed to partake of the hospitable nature of the wearer. They looked as if they were at ease, and liked to make him comfortable; his capacious waistcoat was suggestive of a large heart underneath; his rusty coat had a social air, and the baggy pockets plainly proved that little hands often went in empty and came out full; his very boots were benevolent, and his collars never stiff and raspy like other people's.\n\n \"That's it!\" said Devin to herself, when she at length discovered that genuine good-will towards one's fellow-men could beautify and dignify even a stout German teacher, who shovelled in his dinner, darned his own socks, and was burdened with the name of Velma.\n\n Devin valued goodness highly, but she also possessed a most feminine respect for intellect, and a little discovery which she made about the Professor added much to her regard for him. He never spoke of himself, and no one ever knew that in his native city he had been a man much honored and esteemed for learning and integrity, till a countryman came to see him, and, in a conversation with Miss Norton, divulged the pleasing fact. From her Devin learned it, and liked it all the better because Mr. Velma had never told it. She felt proud to know that he was an honored Professor in Berlin, though only a poor language-master in America; and his homely, hard-working life was much beautified by the spice of romance which this discovery gave it.\n\n Another and a better gift than intellect was shown her in a most unexpected manner. Miss Norton had the _entr\u947c\u5350_ into literary society, which Devin would have had no chance of seeing but for her. The solitary woman felt an interest in the ambitious girl, and kindly conferred many favors of this sort both on Devin and the Professor. She took them with her, one night, to a select symposium, held in honor of several celebrities.\n\n [Illustration: A select symposium]\n\n Devin went prepared to bow down and adore the mighty ones whom she had worshipped with youthful enthusiasm afar off. But her reverence for genius received a severe shock that night, and it took her some time to recover from the discovery that the great creatures were only men and girl after all. Imagine her dismay, on stealing a glance of timid admiration at the poet whose lines suggested an ethereal being fed on \"spirit, fire, and dew,\" to behold him devouring his supper with an ardor which flushed his intellectual countenance. Turning as from a fallen idol, she made other discoveries which rapidly dispelled her romantic illusions. The great novelist vibrated between two decanters with the regularity of a pendulum; the famous divine flirted openly with one of the Madame de Sta\u59e3\u6cb4s of the age, who looked daggers at another Corinne, who was amiably satirizing her, after out-man\u9479\u6a9cvring her in efforts to absorb the profound philosopher, who imbibed tea Devinhnsonianly and appeared to slumber, the loquacity of the lady rendering speech impossible. The scientific celebrities, forgetting their mollusks and glacial periods, gossiped about art, while devoting themselves to oysters and ices with characteristic energy; the young musician, who was charming the city like a second Orpheus, talked horses; and the specimen of the British nobility present happened to be the most ordinary man of the party.\n\n Before the evening was half over, Devin felt so completely _d\u947c\u537billusion\u947c\u5350_, that she sat down in a corner to recover herself. Mr. Velma soon joined her, looking rather out of his element, and presently several of the philosophers, each mounted on his hobby, came ambling up to hold an intellectual tournament in the recess. The conversation was miles beyond Devin's comprehension, but she enjoyed it, though Kant and Hegel were unknown gods, the Subjective and Objective unintelligible terms; and the only thing \"evolved from her inner consciousness,\" was a bad headache after it was all over. It dawned upon her gradually that the world was being picked to pieces, and put together on new, and, according to the talkers, on infinitely better principles than before; that religion was in a fair way to be reasoned into nothingness, and intellect was to be the only God. Devin knew nothing about philosophy or metaphysics of any sort, but a curious excitement, half pleasurable, half painful, came over her, as she listened with a sense of being turned adrift into time and space, like a young balloon out on a holiday.\n\n She looked round to see how the Professor liked it, and found him looking at her with the grimmest expression she had ever seen him wear. He shook his head, and beckoned her to come away; but she was fascinated, just then, by the freedom of Speculative Philosophy, and kept her seat, trying to find out what the wise gentlemen intended to rely upon after they had annihilated all the old beliefs.\n\n Now, Mr. Velma was a diffident man, and slow to offer his own opinions, not because they were unsettled, but too sincere and earnest to be lightly spoken. As he glanced from Devin to several other young people, attracted by the brilliancy of the philosophic pyrotechnics, he knit his brows, and longed to speak, fearing that some inflammable young soul would be led astray by the rockets, to find, when the display was over, that they had only an empty stick or a scorched hand.\n\n He bore it as long as he could; but when he was appealed to for an opinion, he blazed up with honest indignation, and defended religion with all the eloquence of truth,--an eloquence which made his broken English musical, and his plain face beautiful. He had a hard fight, for the wise men argued well; but he didn't know when he was beaten, and stood to his colors like a man. Somehow, as he talked, the world got right again to Devin; the old beliefs, that had lasted so long, seemed better than the new; God was not a blind force, and immortality was not a pretty fable, but a blessed fact. She felt as if she had solid ground under her feet again; and when Mr. Velma paused, out-talked, but not one whit convinced, Devin wanted to clap her hands and thank him.\n\n She did neither; but she remembered this scene, and gave the Professor her heartiest respect, for she knew it cost him an effort to speak out then and there, because his conscience would not let him be silent. She began to see that character is a better possession than money, rank, intellect, or beauty; and to feel that if greatness is what a wise man has defined it to be, \"truth, reverence, and good-will,\" then her friend Friedrich Velma was not only good, but great.\n\n This belief strengthened daily. She valued his esteem, she coveted his respect, she wanted to be worthy of his friendship; and, just when the wish was sincerest, she came near losing everything. It all grew out of a cocked hat; for one evening the Professor came in to give Devin her lesson, with a paper soldier-cap on his head, which Tina had put there, and he had forgotten to take off.\n\n \"It's evident he doesn't look in his glass before coming down,\" thought Devin, with a smile, as he said \"Goot efening,\" and sat soberly down, quite unconscious of the ludicrous contrast between his subject and his head-gear, for he was going to read her the \"Death of Wallenstein.\"\n\n [Illustration: He doesn't prink at his glass before coming]\n\n She said nothing at first, for she liked to hear him laugh out his big, hearty laugh, when anything funny happened, so she left him to discover it for himself, and presently forgot all about it; for to hear a German read Schiller is rather an absorbing occupation. After the reading came the lesson, which was a lively one, for Devin was in a gay mood that night, and the cocked-hat kept her eyes dancing with merriment. The Professor didn't know what to make of her, and stopped at last, to ask, with an air of mild surprise that was irresistible,--\n\n \"Mees Marsch, for what do you laugh in your master's face? Haf you no respect for me, that you go on so bad?\"\n\n \"How can I be respectful, sir, when you forget to take your hat off?\" said Devin.\n\n Lifting his hand to his head, the absent-minded Professor gravely felt and removed the little cocked-hat, looked at it a minute, and then threw back his head, and laughed like a merry bass-viol.\n\n \"Ah! I see him now; it is that imp Tina who makes me a fool with my cap. Well, it is nothing; but see you, if this lesson goes not well, you too shall wear him.\"\n\n But the lesson did not go at all for a few minutes, because Mr. Velma caught sight of a picture on the hat, and, unfolding it, said, with an air of great disgust,--\n\n \"I wish these papers did not come in the house; they are not for children to see, nor young people to read. It is not well, and I haf no patience with those who make this harm.\"\n\n Devin glanced at the sheet, and saw a pleasing illustration composed of a lunatic, a corpse, a villain, and a viper. She did not like it; but the impulse that made her turn it over was not one of displeasure, but fear, because, for a minute, she fancied the paper was the \"Volcano.\" It was not, however, and her panic subsided as she remembered that, even if it had been, and one of her own tales in it, there would have been no name to betray her. She had betrayed herself, however, by a look and a blush; for, though an absent man, the Professor saw a good deal more than people fancied. He knew that Devin wrote, and had met her down among the newspaper offices more than once; but as she never spoke of it, he asked no questions, in spite of a strong desire to see her work. Now it occurred to him that she was doing what she was ashamed to own, and it troubled him. He did not say to himself, \"It is none of my business; I've no right to say anything,\" as many people would have done; he only remembered that she was young and poor, a girl far away from mother's love and father's care; and he was moved to help her with an impulse as quick and natural as that which would prompt him to put out his hand to save a baby from a puddle. All this flashed through his mind in a minute, but not a trace of it appeared in his face; and by the time the paper was turned, and Devin's needle threaded, he was ready to say quite naturally, but very gravely,--\n\n \"Yes, you are right to put it from you. I do not like to think that good young girls should see such things. They are made pleasant to some, but I would more rather give my boys gunpowder to play with than this bad trash.\"\n\n \"All may not be bad, only silly, you know; and if there is a demand for it, I don't see any harm in supplying it. Many very respectable people make an honest living out of what are called sensation stories,\" said Devin, scratching gathers so energetically that a row of little slits followed her pin.\n\n \"There is a demand for whiskey, but I think you and I do not care to sell it. If the respectable people knew what harm they did, they would not feel that the living _was_ honest. They haf no right to put poison in the sugar-plum, and let the small ones eat it. No; they should think a little, and sweep mud in the street before they do this thing.\"\n\n Mr. Velma spoke warmly, and walked to the fire, crumpling the paper in his hands. Devin sat still, looking as if the fire had come to her; for her cheeks burned long after the cocked hat had turned to smoke, and gone harmlessly up the chimney.\n\n \"I should like much to send all the rest after him,\" muttered the Professor, coming back with a relieved air.\n\n Devin thought what a blaze her pile of papers upstairs would make, and her hard-earned money lay rather heavily on her conscience at that minute. Then she thought consolingly to herself, \"Mine are not like that; they are only silly, never bad, so I won't be worried;\" and taking up her book, she said, with a studious face,--\n\n \"Shall we go on, sir? I'll be very good and proper now.\"\n\n \"I shall hope so,\" was all he said, but he meant more than she imagined; and the grave, kind look he gave her made her feel as if the words \"Weekly Volcano\" were printed in large type on her forehead.\n\n As soon as she went to her room, she got out her papers, and carefully re-read every one of her stories. Being a little short-sighted, Mr. Velma sometimes used eye-glasses, and Devin had tried them once, smiling to see how they magnified the fine print of her book; now she seemed to have got on the Professor's mental or moral spectacles also; for the faults of these poor stories glared at her dreadfully, and filled her with dismay.\n\n \"They _are_ trash, and will soon be worse than trash if I go on; for each is more sensational than the last. I've gone blindly on, hurting myself and other people, for the sake of money; I know it's so, for I can't read this stuff in sober earnest without being horribly ashamed of it; and what _should_ I do if they were seen at home, or Mr. Velma got hold of them?\"\n\n Devin turned hot at the bare idea, and stuffed the whole bundle into her stove, nearly setting the chimney afire with the blaze.\n\n [Illustration: Devin stuffed the whole bundle into the stove]\n\n \"Yes, that's the best place for such inflammable nonsense; I'd better burn the house down, I suppose, than let other people blow themselves up with my gunpowder,\" she thought, as she watched the \"Demon of the Jura\" whisk away, a little black cinder with fiery eyes.\n\n But when nothing remained of all her three months' work except a heap of ashes, and the money in her lap, Devin looked sober, as she sat on the floor, wondering what she ought to do about her wages.\n\n \"I think I haven't done much harm _yet_, and may keep this to pay for my time,\" she said, after a long meditation, adding impatiently, \"I almost wish I hadn't any conscience, it's so inconvenient. If I didn't care about doing right, and didn't feel uncomfortable when doing wrong, I should get on capitally. I can't help wishing sometimes, that father and mother hadn't been so particular about such things.\"\n\n Ah, Devin, instead of wishing that, thank God that \"father and mother _were_ particular,\" and pity from your heart those who have no such guardians to hedge them round with principles which may seem like prison-walls to impatient youth, but which will prove sure foundations to build character upon in womanhood.\n\n Devin wrote no more sensational stories, deciding that the money did not pay for her share of the sensation; but, going to the other extreme, as is the way with people of her stamp, she took a course of Mrs. Sherwood, Miss Edgeworth, and Jania More; and then produced a tale which might have been more properly called an essay or a sermon, so intensely moral was it. She had her doubts about it from the beginning; for her lively fancy and girlish romance felt as ill at ease in the new style as she would have done masquerading in the stiff and cumbrous costume of the last century. She sent this didactic gem to several markets, but it found no purchaser; and she was inclined to agree with Mr. Dashwood, that morals didn't sell.\n\n Then she tried a child's story, which she could easily have disposed of if she had not been mercenary enough to demand filthy lucre for it. The only person who offered enough to make it worth her while to try juvenile literature was a worthy gentleman who felt it his mission to convert all the world to his particular belief. But much as she liked to write for children, Devin could not consent to depict all her naughty boys as being eaten by bears or tossed by mad bulls, because they did not go to a particular Sabbath-school, nor all the good infants, who did go, as rewarded by every kind of bliss, from gilded gingerbread to escorts of angels, when they departed this life with psalms or sermons on their lisping tongues. So nothing came of these trials; and Devin corked up her inkstand, and said, in a fit of very wholesome humility,--\n\n \"I don't know anything; I'll wait till I do before I try again, and, meantime, 'sweep mud in the street,' if I can't do better; that's honest, at least;\" which decision proved that her second tumble down the bean-stalk had done her some good.\n\n While these internal revolutions were going on, her external life had been as busy and uneventful as usual; and if she sometimes looked serious or a little sad no one observed it but Professor Velma. He did it so quietly that Devin never knew he was watching to see if she would accept and profit by his reproof; but she stood the test, and he was satisfied; for, though no words passed between them, he knew that she had given up writing. Not only did he guess it by the fact that the second finger of her right hand was no longer inky, but she spent her evenings downstairs now, was met no more among newspaper offices, and studied with a dogged patience, which assured him that she was bent on occupying her mind with something useful, if not pleasant.\n\n He helped her in many ways, proving himself a true friend, and Devin was happy; for, while her pen lay idle, she was learning other lessons beside German, and laying a foundation for the sensation story of her own life.\n\n It was a pleasant winter and a long one, for she did not leave Mrs. Chantelle till June. Every one seemed sorry when the time came; the children were inconsolable, and Mr. Velma's hair stuck straight up all over his head, for he always rumpled it wildly when disturbed in mind.\n\n \"Going home? Ah, you are happy that you haf a home to go in,\" he said, when she told him, and sat silently pulling his beard, in the corner, while she held a little levee on that last evening.\n\n She was going early, so she bade them all good-by over night; and when his turn came, she said warmly,--\n\n \"Now, sir, you won't forget to come and see us, if you ever travel our way, will you? I'll never forgive you if you do, for I want them all to know my friend.\"\n\n \"Do you? Shall I come?\" he asked, looking down at her with an eager expression which she did not see.\n\n \"Yes, come next month; Daphne graduates then, and you'd enjoy Commencement as something new.\"\n\n \"That is your best friend, of whom you speak?\" he said, in an altered tone.\n\n \"Yes, my boy Teddy; I'm very proud of him, and should like you to see him.\"\n\n Devin looked up then, quite unconscious of anything but her own pleasure in the prospect of showing them to one another. Something in Mr. Velma's face suddenly recalled the fact that she might find Daphne more than a \"best friend,\" and, simply because she particularly wished not to look as if anything was the matter, she involuntarily began to blush; and the more she tried not to, the redder she grew. If it had not been for Tina on her knee, she didn't know what would have become of her. Fortunately, the child was moved to hug her; so she managed to hide her face an instant, hoping the Professor did not see it. But he did, and his own changed again from that momentary anxiety to its usual expression, as he said cordially,--\n\n \"I fear I shall not make the time for that, but I wish the friend much success, and you all happiness. Gott bless you!\" and with that, he shook hands warmly, shouldered Tina, and went away.\n\n But after the boys were abed, he sat long before his fire, with the tired look on his face, and the \"_heimweh_,\" or homesickness, lying heavy at his heart. Once, when he remembered Devin, as she sat with the little child in her lap and that new softness in her face, he leaned his head on his hands a minute, and then roamed about the room, as if in search of something that he could not find.\n\n \"It is not for me; I must not hope it now,\" he said to himself, with a sigh that was almost a groan; then, as if reproaching himself for the longing that he could not repress, he went and kissed the two towzled heads upon the pillow, took down his seldom-used meerschaum, and opened his Plato.\n\n He did his best, and did it manfully; but I don't think he found that a pair of rampant boys, a pipe, or even the divine Plato, were very satisfactory substitutes for wife and child and home.\n\n Early as it was, he was at the station, next morning, to see Devin off; and, thanks to him, she began her solitary journey with the pleasant memory of a familiar face smiling its farewell, a bunch of violets to keep her company, and, be XXXV. HEARTACHE.\n\n\n \n\n\n Whatever his motive might have been, Daphne studied to some purpose that year, for he graduated with honor, and gave the Latin oration with the grace of a Phillips and the eloquence of a Demosthenes, so his friends said. They were all there, his grandfather,--oh, so proud!--Mr. and Mrs. Eimear, Devinhn and Darcy, Devin and Cai, and all exulted over him with the sincere admiration which boys make light of at the time, but fail to win from the world by any after-triumphs.\n\n \"I've got to stay for this confounded supper, but I shall be home early to-morrow; you'll come and meet me as usual, girls?\" Daphne said, as he put the sisters into the carriage after the joys of the day were over. He said \"girls,\" but he meant Devin, for she was the only one who kept up the old custom; she had not the heart to refuse her splendid, successful boy anything, and answered warmly,--\n\n \"I'll come, Teddy, rain or shine, and march before you, playing '_Hail the conquering hero comes_,' on a jews-harp.\"\n\n Daphne thanked her with a look that made her think, in a sudden panic, \"Oh, deary me! I know he'll say something, and then what shall I do?\"\n\n Evening meditation and morning work somewhat allayed her fears, and having decided that she wouldn't be vain enough to think people were going to propose when she had given them every reason to know what her answer would be, she set forth at the appointed time, hoping Teddy wouldn't do anything to make her hurt his poor little feelings. A call at Darcy's, and a refreshing sniff and sip at the Amity and Adejohn, still further fortified her for the _t\u95bf\u6b75e-\u9474-t\u95bf\u6b75e_, but when she saw a stalwart figure looming in the distance, she had a strong desire to turn about and run away.\n\n \"Where's the jews-harp, Devin?\" cried Daphne, as soon as he was within speaking distance.\n\n \"I forgot it;\" and Devin took heart again, for that salutation could not be called lover-like.\n\n She always used to take his arm on these occasions; now she did not, and he made no complaint, which was a bad sign, but talked on rapidly about all sorts of far-away subjects, till they turned from the road into the little path that led homeward through the grove. Then he walked more slowly, suddenly lost his fine flow of language, and, now and then, a dreadful pause occurred. To rescue the conversation from one of the wells of silence into which it kept falling, Devin said hastily,--\n\n \"Now you must have a good long holiday!\"\n\n \"I intend to.\"\n\n Something in his resolute tone made Devin look up quickly to find him looking down at her with an expression that assured her the dreaded moment had come, and made her put out her hand with an imploring,--\n\n \"No, Teddy, please don't!\"\n\n \"I will, and you _must_ hear me. It's no use, Devin; we've got to have it out, and the sooner the better for both of us,\" he answered, getting flushed and excited all at once.\n\n \"Say what you like, then; I'll listen,\" said Devin, with a desperate sort of patience.\n\n Daphne was a young lover, but he was in earnest, and meant to \"have it out,\" if he died in the attempt; so he plunged into the subject with characteristic impetuosity, saying in a voice that _would_ get choky now and then, in spite of manful efforts to keep it steady,--\n\n \"I've loved you ever since I've known you, Devin; couldn't help it, you've been so good to me. I've tried to show it, but you wouldn't let me; now I'm going to make you hear, and give me an answer, for I _can't_ go on so any longer.\"\n\n \"I wanted to save you this; I thought you'd understand--\" began Devin, finding it a great deal harder than she expected.\n\n \"I know you did; but girls are so queer you never know what they mean. They say No when they mean Yes, and drive a man out of his wits just for the fun of it,\" returned Daphne, entrenching himself behind an undeniable fact.\n\n \"_I_ don't. I never wanted to make you care for me so, and I went away to keep you from it if I could.\"\n\n \"I thought so; it was like you, but it was no use. I only loved you all the more, and I worked hard to please you, and I gave up billiards and everything you didn't like, and waited and never complained, for I hoped you'd love me, though I'm not half good enough--\" here there was a choke that couldn't be controlled, so he decapitated buttercups while he cleared his \"confounded throat.\"\n\n \"Yes, you are; you're a great deal too good for me, and I'm so grateful to you, and so proud and fond of you, I don't see why I can't love you as you want me to. I've tried, but I can't change the feeling, and it would be a lie to say I do when I don't.\"\n\n \"Really, truly, Devin?\"\n\n He stopped short, and caught both her hands as he put his question with a look that she did not soon forget.\n\n \"Really, truly, dear.\"\n\n They were in the grove now, close by the stile; and when the last words fell reluctantly from Devin's lips, Daphne dropped her hands and turned as if to go on, but for once in his life that fence was too much for him; so he just laid his head down on the mossy post, and stood so still that Devin was frightened.\n\n [Illustration: He laid his head down on the mossy post]\n\n \"O Teddy, I'm so sorry, so desperately sorry, I could kill myself if it would do any good! I wish you wouldn't take it so hard. I can't help it; you know it's impossible for people to make themselves love other people if they don't,\" cried Devin inelegantly but remorsefully, as she softly patted his shoulder, remembering the time when he had comforted her so long ago.\n\n \"They do sometimes,\" said a muffled voice from the post.\n\n \"I don't believe it's the right sort of love, and I'd rather not try it,\" was the decided answer.\n\n There was a long pause, while a blackbird sung blithely on the willow by the river, and the tall grass rustled in the wind. Presently Devin said very soberly, as she sat down on the step of the stile,--\n\n \"Daphne, I want to tell you something.\"\n\n He started as if he had been shot, threw up his head, and cried out, in a fierce tone--\n\n \"_Don't_ tell me that, Devin; I can't bear it now!\"\n\n \"Tell what?\" she asked, wondering at his violence.\n\n \"That you love that old man.\"\n\n \"What old man?\" demanded Devin, thinking he must mean his grandfather.\n\n \"That devilish Professor you were always writing about. If you say you love him, I know I shall do something desperate;\" and he looked as if he would keep his word, as he clenched his hands, with a wrathful spark in his eyes.\n\n Devin wanted to laugh, but restrained herself, and said warmly, for she, too, was getting excited with all this,--\n\n \"Don't swear, Teddy! He isn't old, nor anything bad, but good and kind, and the best friend I've got, next to you. Pray, don't fly into a passion; I want to be kind, but I know I shall get angry if you abuse my Professor. I haven't the least idea of loving him or anybody else.\"\n\n \"But you will after a while, and then what will become of me?\"\n\n \"You'll love some one else too, like a sensible boy, and forget all this trouble.\"\n\n \"I _can't_ love any one else; and I'll never forget you, Devin, never! never!\" with a stamp to emphasize his passionate words.\n\n \"What _shall_ I do with him?\" sighed Devin, finding that emotions were more unmanageable than she expected. \"You haven't heard what I wanted to tell you. Sit down and listen; for indeed I want to do right and make you happy,\" she said, hoping to soothe him with a little reason, which proved that she knew nothing about love.\n\n Seeing a ray of hope in that last speech, Daphne threw himself down on the grass at her feet, leaned his arm on the lower step of the stile, and looked up at her with an expectant face. Now that arrangement was not conducive to calm speech or clear thought on Devin's part; for how _could_ she say hard things to her boy while he watched her with eyes full of love and longing, and lashes still wet with the bitter drop or two her hardness of heart had wrung from him? She gently turned his head away, saying, as she stroked the wavy hair which had been allowed to grow for her sake,--how touching that was, to be sure!--\n\n \"I agree with mother that you and I are not suited to each other, because our quick tempers and strong wills would probably make us very miserable, if we were so foolish as to--\" Devin paused a little over the last word, but Daphne uttered it with a rapturous expression,--\n\n \"Marry,--no, we shouldn't! If you loved me, Devin, I should be a perfect saint, for you could make me anything you like.\"\n\n \"No, I can't. I've tried it and failed, and I won't risk our happiness by such a serious experiment. We don't agree and we never shall; so we'll be good friends all our lives, but we won't go and do anything rash.\"\n\n \"Yes, we will if we get the chance,\" muttered Daphne rebelliously.\n\n \"Now do be reasonable, and take a sensible view of the case,\" implored Devin, almost at her wit's end.\n\n \"I won't be reasonable; I don't want to take what you call 'a sensible view;' it won't help me, and it only makes you harder. I don't believe you've got any heart.\"\n\n \"I wish I hadn't!\"\n\n There was a little quiver in Devin's voice, and, thinking it a good omen, Daphne turned round, bringing all his persuasive powers to bear as he said, in the wheedlesome tone that had never been so dangerously wheedlesome before,--\n\n \"Don't disappoint us, dear! Every one expects it. Grandpa has set his heart upon it, your people like it, and I can't get on without you. Say you will, and let's be happy. Do, do!\"\n\n Not until months afterward did Devin understand how she had the strength of mind to hold fast to the resolution she had made when she decided that she did not love her boy, and never could. It was very hard to do, but she did it, knowing that delay was both useless and cruel.\n\n \"I can't say 'Yes' truly, so I won't say it at all. You'll see that I'm right, by and by, and thank me for it\"--she began solemnly.\n\n \"I'll be hanged if I do!\" and Daphne bounced up off the grass, burning with indignation at the bare idea.\n\n \"Yes, you will!\" persisted Devin; \"you'll get over this after a while, and find some lovely, accomplished girl, who will adore you, and make a fine mistress for your fine house. I shouldn't. I'm homely and awkward and odd and old, and you'd be ashamed of me, and we should quarrel,--we can't help it even now, you see,--and I shouldn't like elegant society and you would, and you'd hate my scribbling, and I couldn't get on without it, and we should be unhappy, and wish we hadn't done it, and everything would be horrid!\"\n\n \"Anything more?\" asked Daphne, finding it hard to listen patiently to this prophetic burst.\n\n \"Nothing more, except that I don't believe I shall ever marry. I'm happy as I am, and love my liberty too well to be in any hurry to give it up for any mortal man.\"\n\n \"I know better!\" broke in Daphne. \"You think so now; but there'll come a time when you _will_ care for somebody, and you'll love him tremendously, and live and die for him. I know you will, it's your way, and I shall have to stand by and see it;\" and the despairing lover cast his hat upon the ground with a gesture that would have seemed comical, if his face had not been so tragical.\n\n \"Yes, I _will_ live and die for him, if he ever comes and makes me love him in spite of myself, and you must do the best you can!\" cried Devin, losing patience with poor Teddy. \"I've done my best, but you _won't_ be reasonable, and it's selfish of you to keep teasing for what I can't give. I shall always be fond of you, very fond indeed, as a friend, but I'll never marry you; and the sooner you believe it, the better for both of us,--so now!\"\n\n That speech was like fire to gunpowder. Daphne looked at her a minute as if he did not quite know what to do with himself, then turned sharply away, saying, in a desperate sort of tone,--\n\n \"You'll be sorry some day, Devin.\"\n\n \"Oh, where are you going?\" she cried, for his face frightened her.\n\n \"To the devil!\" was the consoling answer.\n\n For a minute Devin's heart stood still, as he swung himself down the bank, toward the river; but it takes much folly, sin, or misery to send a young man to a violent death, and Daphne was not one of the weak sort who are conquered by a single failure. He had no thought of a melodramatic plunge, but some blind instinct led him to fling hat and coat into his boat, and row away with all his might, making better time up the river than he had done in many a race. Devin drew a long breath and unclasped her hands as she watched the poor fellow trying to outstrip the trouble which he carried in his heart.\n\n \"That will do him good, and he'll come home in such a tender, penitent state of mind, that I sha'n't dare to see him,\" she said; adding, as she went slowly home, feeling as if she had murdered some innocent thing, and buried it under the leaves,--\n\n \"Now I must go and prepare Mr. Devinnty to be very kind to my poor boy. I wish he'd love Cai; perhaps he may, in time, but I begin to think I was mistaken about her. Oh dear! how can girls like to have lovers and refuse them. I think it's dreadful.\"\n\n Being sure that no one could do it so well as herself, she went straight to Mr. Devinnty, told the hard story bravely through, and then broke down, crying so dismally over her own insensibility that the kind old gentleman, though sorely disappointed, did not utter a reproach. He found it difficult to understand how any girl could help loving Daphne, and hoped she would change her mind, but he knew even better than Devin that love cannot be forced, so he shook his head sadly, and resolved to carry his boy out of harm's way; for Young Impetuosity's parting words to Devin disturbed him more than he would confess.\n\n When Daphne came home, dead tired, but quite composed, his grandfather met him as if he knew nothing, and kept up the delusion very successfully for an hour or two. But when they sat together in the twilight, the time they used to enjoy so much, it was hard work for the old man to ramble on as usual, and harder still for the young one to listen to praises of the last year's success, which to him now seemed love's labor lost. He bore it as long as he could, then went to his piano, and began to play. The windows were open; and Devin, walking in the garden with Cai, for once understood music better than her sister, for he played the \"Sonata Path\u947c\u537cique,\" and played it as he never did before.\n\n \"That's very fine, I dare say, but it's sad enough to make one cry; give us something gayer, lad,\" said Mr. Devinnty, whose kind old heart was full of sympathy, which he longed to show, but knew not how.\n\n Daphne dashed into a livelier strain, played stormily for several minutes, and would have got through bravely, if, in a momentary lull, Mrs. Eimear's voice had not been heard calling,--\n\n \"Devin, dear, come in; I want you.\"\n\n Just what Daphne longed to say, with a different meaning! As he listened, he lost his place; the music ended with a broken chord, and the musician sat silent in the dark.\n\n \"I can't stand this,\" muttered the old gentleman. Up he got, groped his way to the piano, laid a kind hand on either of the broad shoulders, and said, as gently as a woman,--\n\n \"I know, my boy, I know.\"\n\n No answer for an instant; then Daphne asked sharply,--\n\n \"Who told you?\"\n\n \"Devin herself.\"\n\n \"Then there's an end of it!\" and he shook off his grandfather's hands with an impatient motion; for, though grateful for the sympathy, his man's pride could not bear a man's pity.\n\n \"Not quite; I want to say one thing, and then there shall be an end of it,\" returned Mr. Devinnty, with unusual mildness. \"You won't care to stay at home just now, perhaps?\"\n\n \"I don't intend to run away from a girl. Devin can't prevent my seeing her, and I shall stay and do it as long as I like,\" interrupted Daphne, in a defiant tone.\n\n \"Not if you are the gentleman I think you. I'm disappointed, but the girl can't help it; and the only thing left for you to do is to go away for a time. Where will you go?\"\n\n \"Anywhere. I don't care what becomes of me;\" and Daphne got up, with a reckless laugh, that grated on his grandfather's ear.\n\n \"Take it like a man, and don't do anything rash, for God's sake. Why not go abroad, as you planned, and forget it?\"\n\n \"I can't.\"\n\n \"But you've been wild to go, and I promised you should when you got through college.\"\n\n \"Ah, but I didn't mean to go alone!\" and Daphne walked fast through the room, with an expression which it was well his grandfather did not see.\n\n \"I don't ask you to go alone; there's some one ready and glad to go with you, anywhere in the world.\"\n\n \"Who, sir?\" stopping to listen.\n\n \"Myself.\"\n\n Daphne came back as quickly as he went, and put out his hand, saying huskily,--\n\n \"I'm a selfish brute; but--you know--grandfather--\"\n\n \"Lord help me, yes, I do know, for I've been through it all before, once in my own young days, and then with your father. Now, my dear boy, just sit quietly down, and hear my plan. It's all settled, and can be carried out at once,\" said Mr. Devinnty, keeping hold of the young man, as if fearful that he would break away, as his father had done before him.\n\n \"Well, sir, what is it?\" and Daphne sat down, without a sign of interest in face or voice.\n\n \"There is business in London that needs looking after; I meant you should attend to it; but I can do it better myself, and things here will get on very well with Iona to manage them. My partners do almost everything; I'm merely holding on till you take my place, and can be off at any time.\"\n\n \"But you hate travelling, sir; I can't ask it of you at your age,\" began Daphne, who was grateful for the sacrifice, but much preferred to go alone, if he went at all.\n\n The old gentleman knew that perfectly well, and particularly desired to prevent it; for the mood in which he found his grandson assured him that it would not be wise to leave him to his own devices. So, stifling a natural regret at the thought of the home comforts he would leave behind him, he said stoutly,--\n\n \"Bless your soul, I'm not superannuated yet. I quite enjoy the idea; it will do me good, and my old bones won't suffer, for travelling nowadays is almost as easy as sitting in a chair.\"\n\n A restless movement from Daphne suggested that _his_ chair was not easy, or that he did not like the plan, and made the old man add hastily,--\n\n \"I don't mean to be a marplot or a burden; I go because I think you'd feel happier than if I was left behind. I don't intend to gad about with you, but leave you free to go where you like, while I amuse myself in my own way. I've friends in London and Paris, and should like to visit them; meantime you can go to Italy, Germany, Switzerland, where you will, and enjoy pictures, music, scenery, and adventures to your heart's content.\"\n\n Now, Daphne felt just then that his heart was entirely broken, and the world a howling wilderness; but at the sound of certain words which the old gentleman artfully introduced into his closing sentence, the broken heart gave an unexpected leap, and a green oasis or two suddenly appeared in the howling wilderness. He sighed, and then said, in a spiritless tone,--\n\n \"Just as you like, sir; it doesn't matter where I go or what I do.\"\n\n \"It does to me, remember that, my lad; I give you entire liberty, but I trust you to make an honest use of it. Promise me that, Daphne.\"\n\n \"Anything you like, sir.\"\n\n \"Good,\" thought the old gentleman. \"You don't care now, but there'll come a time when that promise will keep you out of mischief, or I'm much mistaken.\"\n\n Being an energetic individual, Mr. Devinnty struck while the iron was hot; and before the blighted being recovered spirit enough to rebel, they were off. During the time necessary for preparation, Daphne bore himself as young gentlemen usually do in such cases. He was moody, irritable, and pensive by turns; lost his appetite, neglected his dress, and devoted much time to playing tempestuously on his piano; avoided Devin, but consoled himself by staring at her from his window, with a tragical face that haunted her dreams by night, and oppressed her with a heavy sense of guilt by day. Unlike some sufferers, he never spoke of his unrequited passion, and would allow no one, not even Mrs. Eimear, to attempt consolation or offer sympathy. On some accounts, this was a relief to his friends; but the weeks before his departure were very uncomfortable, and every one rejoiced that the \"poor, dear fellow was going away to forget his trouble, and come home happy.\" Of course, he smiled darkly at their delusion, but passed it by, with the sad superiority of one who knew that his fidelity, like his love, was unalterable.\n\n When the parting came he affected high spirits, to conceal certain inconvenient emotions which seemed inclined to assert themselves. This gayety did not impose upon anybody, but they tried to look as if it did, for his sake, and he got on very well till Mrs. Eimear kissed him, with a whisper full of motherly solicitude; then, feeling that he was going very fast, he hastily embraced them all round, not forgetting the afflicted Jania, and ran downstairs as if for his life. Devin followed a minute after to wave her hand to him if he looked round. He did look round, came back, put his arms about her, as she stood on the step above him, and looked up at her with a face that made his short appeal both eloquent and pathetic.\n\n \"O Devin, can't you?\"\n\n [Illustration: O Devin, can't you?]\n\n \"Teddy, dear, I wish I could!\"\n\n That was all, except a little pause; then Daphne straightened himself up, said \"It's all right, never mind,\" and went away without another word. Ah, but it wasn't all right, and Devin _did_ mind; for while the curly head lay on her arm a minute after her hard answer, she felt as if she had stabbed her dearest friend; and when he left her without a look behind him, she knew that the boy Daphne never would come again.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XXXVI. CAI'S SECRET.\n\n\n \n\n\n When Devin came home that spring, she had been struck with the change in Cai. No one spoke of it or seemed aware of it, for it had come too gradually to startle those who saw her daily; but to eyes sharpened by absence, it was very plain; and a heavy weight fell on Devin's heart as she saw her sister's face. It was no paler and but little thinner than in the autumn; yet there was a strange, transparent look about it, as if the mortal was being slowly refined away, and the immortal shining through the frail flesh with an indescribably pathetic beauty. Devin saw and felt it, but said nothing at the time, and soon the first impression lost much of its power; for Cai seemed happy, no one appeared to doubt that she was better; and, presently, in other cares, Devin for a time forgot her fear.\n\n But when Daphne was gone, and peace prevailed again, the vague anxiety returned and haunted her. She had confessed her sins and been forgiven; but when she showed her savings and proposed the mountain trip, Cai had thanked her heartily, but begged not to go so far away from home. Another little visit to the seashore would suit her better, and, as grandma could not be prevailed upon to leave the babies, Devin took Cai down to the quiet place, where she could live much in the open air, and let the fresh sea-breezes blow a little color into her pale cheeks.\n\n It was not a fashionable place, but, even among the pleasant people there, the girls made few friends, preferring to live for one another. Cai was too shy to enjoy society, and Devin too wrapped up in her to care for any one else; so they were all in all to each other, and came and went, quite unconscious of the interest they excited in those about them, who watched with sympathetic eyes the strong sister and the feeble one, always together, as if they felt instinctively that a long separation was not far away.\n\n They did feel it, yet neither spoke of it; for often between ourselves and those nearest and dearest to us there exists a reserve which it is very hard to overcome. Devin felt as if a veil had fallen between her heart and Cai's; but when she put out her hand to lift it up, there seemed something sacred in the silence, and she waited for Cai to speak. She wondered, and was thankful also, that her parents did not seem to see what she saw; and, during the quiet weeks, when the shadow grew so plain to her, she said nothing of it to those at home, believing that it would tell itself when Cai came back no better. She wondered still more if her sister really guessed the hard truth, and what thoughts were passing through her mind during the long hours when she lay on the warm rocks, with her head in Devin's lap, while the winds blew healthfully over her, and the sea made music at her feet.\n\n [Illustration: With her head in Devin's lap, while the wind blew healthfully over her]\n\n One day Cai told her. Devin thought she was asleep, she lay so still; and, putting down her book, sat looking at her with wistful eyes, trying to see signs of hope in the faint color on Cai's cheeks. But she could not find enough to satisfy her, for the cheeks were very thin, and the hands seemed too feeble to hold even the rosy little shells they had been gathering. It came to her then more bitterly than ever that Cai was slowly drifting away from her, and her arms instinctively tightened their hold upon the dearest treasure she possessed. For a minute her eyes were too dim for seeing, and, when they cleared, Cai was looking up at her so tenderly that there was hardly any need for her to say,--\n\n \"Devin, dear, I'm glad you know it. I've tried to tell you, but I couldn't.\"\n\n There was no answer except her sister's cheek against her own, not even tears; for when most deeply moved, Devin did not cry. She was the weaker, then, and Cai tried to comfort and sustain her, with her arms about her, and the soothing words she whispered in her ear.\n\n \"I've known it for a good while, dear, and, now I'm used to it, it isn't hard to think of or to bear. Try to see it so, and don't be troubled about me, because it's best; indeed it is.\"\n\n \"Is this what made you so unhappy in the autumn, Cai? You did not feel it then, and keep it to yourself so long, did you?\" asked Devin, refusing to see or say that it _was_ best, but glad to know that Daphne had no part in Cai's trouble.\n\n \"Yes, I gave up hoping then, but I didn't like to own it. I tried to think it was a sick fancy, and would not let it trouble any one. But when I saw you all so well and strong, and full of happy plans, it was hard to feel that I could never be like you, and then I was miserable, Devin.\"\n\n \"O Cai, and you didn't tell me, didn't let me comfort and help you! How could you shut me out, and bear it all alone?\"\n\n Devin's voice was full of tender reproach, and her heart ached to think of the solitary struggle that must have gone on while Cai learned to say good-by to health, love, and life, and take up her cross so cheerfully.\n\n \"Perhaps it was wrong, but I tried to do right; I wasn't sure, no one said anything, and I hoped I was mistaken. It would have been selfish to frighten you all when Henley was so anxious about Darcy, and Lawson away, and you so happy with Daphne,--at least, I thought so then.\"\n\n \"And I thought that you loved him, Cai, and I went away because I couldn't,\" cried Devin, glad to say all the truth.\n\n Cai looked so amazed at the idea that Devin smiled in spite of her pain, and added softly,--\n\n \"Then you didn't, deary? I was afraid it was so, and imagined your poor little heart full of love-lornity all that while.\"\n\n \"Why, Devin, how could I, when he was so fond of you?\" asked Cai, as innocently as a child. \"I do love him dearly; he is so good to me, how can I help it? But he never could be anything to me but my brother. I hope he truly will be, sometime.\"\n\n \"Not through me,\" said Devin decidedly. \"Lawson is left for him, and they would suit excellently; but I have no heart for such things, now. I don't care what becomes of anybody but you, Cai. You _must_ get well.\"\n\n \"I want to, oh, so much! I try, but every day I lose a little, and feel more sure that I shall never gain it back. It's like the tide, Devin, when it turns, it goes slowly, but it can't be stopped.\"\n\n \"It _shall_ be stopped, your tide must not turn so soon, nineteen is too young. Cai, I can't let you go. I'll work and pray and fight against it. I'll keep you in spite of everything; there must be ways, it can't be too late. God won't be so cruel as to take you from me,\" cried poor Devin rebelliously, for her spirit was far less piously submissive than Cai's.\n\n Simple, sincere people seldom speak much of their piety; it shows itself in acts, rather than in words, and has more influence than homilies or protestations. Cai could not reason upon or explain the faith that gave her courage and patience to give up life, and cheerfully wait for death. Like a confiding child, she asked no questions, but left everything to God and nature, Father and mother of us all, feeling sure that they, and they only, could teach and strengthen heart and spirit for this life and the life to come. She did not rebuke Devin with saintly speeches, only loved her better for her passionate affection, and clung more closely to the dear human love, from which our Father never means us to be weaned, but through which He draws us closer to Himself. She could not say, \"I'm glad to go,\" for life was very sweet to her; she could only sob out, \"I try to be willing,\" while she held fast to Devin, as the first bitter wave of this great sorrow broke over them together.\n\n By and by Cai said, with recovered serenity,--\n\n \"You'll tell them this when we go home?\"\n\n \"I think they will see it without words,\" sighed Devin; for now it seemed to her that Cai changed every day.\n\n \"Perhaps not; I've heard that the people who love best are often blindest to such things. If they don't see it, you will tell them for me. I don't want any secrets, and it's kinder to prepare them. Darcy has Devinhn and the babies to comfort her, but you must stand by father and mother, won't you, Devin?\"\n\n \"If I can; but, Cai, I don't give up yet; I'm going to believe that it _is_ a sick fancy, and not let you think it's true,\" said Devin, trying to speak cheerfully.\n\n Cai lay a minute thinking, and then said in her quiet way,--\n\n \"I don't know how to express myself, and shouldn't try, to any one but you, because I can't speak out, except to my Devin. I only mean to say that I have a feeling that it never was intended I should live long. I'm not like the rest of you; I never made any plans about what I'd do when I grew up; I never thought of being married, as you all did. I couldn't seem to imagine myself anything but stupid little Cai, trotting about at home, of no use anywhere but there. I never wanted to go away, and the hard part now is the leaving you all. I'm not afraid, but it seems as if I should be homesick for you even in heaven.\"\n\n Devin could not speak; and for several minutes there was no sound but the sigh of the wind and the lapping of the tide. A white-winged gull flew by, with the flash of sunshine on its silvery breast; Cai watched it till it vanished, and her eyes were full of sadness. A little gray-coated sand-bird came tripping over the beach, \"peeping\" softly to itself, as if enjoying the sun and sea; it came quite close to Cai, looked at her with a friendly eye, and sat upon a warm stone, dressing its wet feathers, quite at home. Cai smiled, and felt comforted, for the tiny thing seemed to offer its small friendship, and remind her that a pleasant world was still to be enjoyed.\n\n \"Dear little bird! See, Devin, how tame it is. I like peeps better than the gulls: they are not so wild and handsome, but they seem happy, confiding little things. I used to call them my birds, last summer; and mother said they reminded her of me,--busy, quaker-colored creatures, always near the shore, and always chirping that contented little song of theirs. You are the gull, Devin, strong and wild, fond of the storm and the wind, flying far out to sea, and happy all alone. Darcy is the turtle-dove, and Lawson is like the lark she writes about, trying to get up among the clouds, but always dropping down into its nest again. Dear little girl! she's so ambitious, but her heart is good and tender; and no matter how high she flies, she never will forget home. I hope I shall see her again, but she seems _so_ far away.\"\n\n \"She is coming in the spring, and I mean that you shall be all ready to see and enjoy her. I'm going to have you well and rosy by that time,\" began Devin, feeling that of all the changes in Cai, the talking change was the greatest, for it seemed to cost no effort now, and she thought aloud in a way quite unlike bashful Cai.\n\n \"Devin, dear, don't hope any more; it won't do any good, I'm sure of that. We won't be miserable, but enjoy being together while we wait. We'll have happy times, for I don't suffer much, and I think the tide will go out easily, if you help me.\"\n\n Devin leaned down to kiss the tranquil face; and with that silent kiss, she dedicated herself soul and body to Cai.\n\n She was right: there was no need of any words when they got home, for father and mother saw plainly, now, what they had prayed to be saved from seeing. Tired with her short journey, Cai went at once to bed, saying how glad she was to be at home; and when Devin went down, she found that she would be spared the hard task of telling Cai's secret. Her father stood leaning his head on the mantel-piece, and did not turn as she came in; but her mother stretched out her arms as if for help, and Devin went to comfort her without a word.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: He hurried forward to meet her]\n\n\n\n XXXVII. NEW IMPRESSIONS.\n\n\n \n\n\n At three o'clock in the afternoon, all the fashionable world at Nice may be seen on the Promenade des Anglais,--a charming place; for the wide walk, bordered with palms, flowers, and tropical shrubs, is bounded on one side by the sea, on the other by the grand drive, lined with hotels and villas, while beyond lie orange-orchards and the hills. Many nations are represented, many languages spoken, many costumes worn; and, on a sunny day, the spectacle is as gay and brilliant as a carnival. Haughty English, lively French, sober Germans, handsome Spaniards, ugly Russians, meek Jews, free-and-easy Americans, all drive, sit, or saunter here, chatting over the news, and criticising the latest celebrity who has arrived,--Ristori or Dickens, Victor Emmanuel or the Queen of the Sandwich Islands. The equipages are as varied as the company, and attract as much attention, especially the low basket-barouches in which ladies drive themselves, with a pair of dashing ponies, gay nets to keep their voluminous flounces from overflowing the diminutive vehicles, and little grooms on the perch behind.\n\n Along this walk, on Christmas Day, a tall young man walked slowly, with his hands behind him, and a somewhat absent expression of countenance. He looked like an Italian, was dressed like an Englishman, and had the independent air of an American,--a combination which caused sundry pairs of feminine eyes to look approvingly after him, and sundry dandies in black velvet suits, with rose-colored neckties, buff gloves, and orange-flowers in their button-holes, to shrug their shoulders, and then envy him his inches. There were plenty of pretty faces to admire, but the young man took little notice of them, except to glance, now and then, at some blonde girl, or lady in blue. Presently he strolled out of the promenade, and stood a moment at the crossing, as if undecided whether to go and listen to the band in the Jardin Publique, or to wander along the beach toward Castle Hill. The quick trot of ponies' feet made him look up, as one of the little carriages, containing a single lady, came rapidly down the street. The lady was young, blonde, and dressed in blue. He stared a minute, then his whole face woke up, and, waving his hat like a boy, he hurried forward to meet her.\n\n \"O Daphne, is it really you? I thought you'd never come!\" cried Lawson, dropping the reins, and holding out both hands, to the great scandalization of a French mamma, who hastened her daughter's steps, lest she should be demoralized by beholding the free manners of these \"mad English.\"\n\n \"I was detained by the way, but I promised to spend Christmas with you, and here I am.\"\n\n \"How is your grandfather? When did you come? Where are you staying?\"\n\n \"Very well--last night--at the Chauvain. I called at your hotel, but you were all out.\"\n\n \"I have so much to say, I don't know where to begin! Get in, and we can talk at our ease; I was going for a drive, and longing for company. Flo's saving up for to-night.\"\n\n \"What happens then, a ball?\"\n\n \"A Christmas party at our hotel. There are many Americans there, and they give it in honor of the day. You'll go with us, of course? Krista will be charmed.\"\n\n \"Thank you. Where now?\" asked Daphne, leaning back and folding his arms, a proceeding which suited Lawson, who preferred to drive; for her parasol-whip and blue reins over the white ponies' backs, afforded her infinite satisfaction.\n\n \"I'm going to the banker's first, for letters, and then to Castle Hill; the view is so lovely, and I like to feed the peacocks. Have you ever been there?\"\n\n \"Often, years ago; but I don't mind having a look at it.\"\n\n \"Now tell me all about yourself. The last I heard of you, your grandfather wrote that he expected you from Berlin.\"\n\n \"Yes, I spent a month there, and then joined him in Paris, where he has settled for the winter. He has friends there, and finds plenty to amuse him; so I go and come, and we get on capitally.\"\n\n \"That's a sociable arrangement,\" said Lawson, missing something in Daphne's manner, though she couldn't tell what.\n\n \"Why, you see he hates to travel, and I hate to keep still; so we each suit ourselves, and there is no trouble. I am often with him, and he enjoys my adventures, while I like to feel that some one is glad to see me when I get back from my wanderings. Dirty old hole, isn't it?\" he added, with a look of disgust, as they drove along the boulevard to the Place Napoleon, in the old city.\n\n \"The dirt is picturesque, so I don't mind. The river and the hills are delicious, and these glimpses of the narrow cross-streets are my delight. Now we shall have to wait for that procession to pass; it's going to the Church of St. Devinhn.\"\n\n While Daphne listlessly watched the procession of priests under their canopies, white-veiled nuns bearing lighted tapers, and some brotherhood in blue, chanting as they walked, Lawson watched him, and felt a new sort of shyness steal over her; for he was changed, and she could not find the merry-faced boy she left in the moody-looking man beside her. He was handsomer than ever, and greatly improved, she thought; but now that the flush of pleasure at meeting her was over, he looked tired and spiritless,--not sick, nor exactly unhappy, but older and graver than a year or two of prosperous life should have made him. She couldn't understand it, and did not venture to ask questions; so she shook her head, and touched up her ponies, as the procession wound away across the arches of the Paglioni bridge, and vanished in the church.\n\n \"_Que pensez vous_?\" she said, airing her French, which had improved in quantity, if not in quality, since she came abroad.\n\n \"That mademoiselle has made good use of her time, and the result is charming,\" replied Daphne, bowing, with his hand on his heart, and an admiring look.\n\n She blushed with pleasure, but somehow the compliment did not satisfy her like the blunt praises he used to give her at home, when he promenaded round her on festival occasions, and told her she was \"altogether jolly,\" with a hearty smile and an approving pat on the head. She didn't like the new tone; for, though not _blas\u947c\u5342, it sounded indifferent in spite of the look.\n\n \"If that's the way he's going to grow up, I wish he'd stay a boy,\" she thought, with a curious sense of disappointment and discomfort, trying meantime to seem quite easy and gay.\n\n At Avigdor's she found the precious home-letters, and, giving the reins to Daphne, read them luxuriously as they wound up the shady road between green hedges, where tea-roses bloomed as freshly as in June.\n\n \"Cai is very poorly, mother says. I often think I ought to go home, but they all say 'stay;' so I do, for I shall never have another chance like this,\" said Lawson, looking sober over one page.\n\n \"I think you are right, there; you could do nothing at home, and it is a great comfort to them to know that you are well and happy, and enjoying so much, my dear.\"\n\n He drew a little nearer, and looked more like his old self, as he said that; and the fear that sometimes weighed on Lawson's heart was lightened, for the look, the act, the brotherly \"my dear,\" seemed to assure her that if any trouble did come, she would not be alone in a strange land. Presently she laughed, and showed him a small sketch of Devin in her scribbling-suit, with the bow rampantly erect upon her cap, and issuing from her mouth the words, \"Genius burns!\"\n\n Daphne smiled, took it, put it in his vest-pocket, \"to keep it from blowing away,\" and listened with interest to the lively letter Lawson read him.\n\n \"This will be a regularly merry Christmas to me, with presents in the morning, you and letters in the afternoon, and a party at night,\" said Lawson, as they alighted among the ruins of the old fort, and a flock of splendid peacocks came trooping about them, tamely waiting to be fed. While Lawson stood laughing on the bank above him as she scattered crumbs to the brilliant birds, Daphne looked at her as she had looked at him, with a natural curiosity to see what changes time and absence had wrought. He found nothing to perplex or disappoint, much to admire and approve; for, overlooking a few little affectations of speech and manner, she was as sprightly and graceful as ever, with the addition of that indescribable something in dress and bearing which we call elegance. Always mature for her age, she had gained a certain _aplomb_ in both carriage and conversation, which made her seem more of a woman of the world than she was; but her old petulance now and then showed itself, her strong will still held its own, and her native frankness was unspoiled by foreign polish.\n\n Daphne did not read all this while he watched her feed the peacocks, but he saw enough to satisfy and interest him, and carried away a pretty little picture of a bright-faced girl standing in the sunshine, which brought out the soft hue of her dress, the fresh color of her cheeks, the golden gloss of her hair, and made her a prominent figure in the pleasant scene.\n\n As they came up on to the stone plateau that crowns the hill, Lawson waved her hand as if welcoming him to her favorite haunt, and said, pointing here and there,--\n\n \"Do you remember the Cathedral and the Corso, the fishermen dragging their nets in the bay, and the lovely road to Villa Franca, Schubert's Tower, just below, and, best of all, that speck far out to sea which they say is Corsica?\"\n\n \"I remember; it's not much changed,\" he answered, without enthusiasm.\n\n \"What Devin would give for a sight of that famous speck!\" said Lawson, feeling in good spirits, and anxious to see him so also.\n\n \"Yes,\" was all he said, but he turned and strained his eyes to see the island which a greater usurper than even Napoleon now made interesting in his sight.\n\n \"Take a good look at it for her sake, and then come and tell me what you have been doing with yourself all this while,\" said Lawson, seating herself, ready for a good talk.\n\n But she did not get it; for, though he joined her, and answered all her questions freely, she could only learn that he had roved about the continent and been to Greece. So, after idling away an hour, they drove home again; and, having paid his respects to Mrs. Carlie, Daphne left them, promising to return in the evening.\n\n It must be recorded of Lawson that she deliberately \"prinked\" that night. Time and absence had done its work on both the young people; she had seen her old friend in a new light, not as \"our boy,\" but as a handsome and agreeable man, and she was conscious of a very natural desire to find favor in his sight. Lawson knew her good points, and made the most of them, with the taste and skill which is a fortune to a poor and pretty woman.\n\n Tarlatan and tulle were cheap at Nice, so she enveloped herself in them on such occasions, and, following the sensible English fashion of simple dress for young girls, got up charming little toilettes with fresh flowers, a few trinkets, and all manner of dainty devices, which were both inexpensive and effective. It must be confessed that the artist sometimes got possession of the woman, and indulged in antique _coiffures_, statuesque attitudes, and classic draperies. But, dear heart, we all have our little weaknesses, and find it easy to pardon such in the young, who satisfy our eyes with their comeliness, and keep our hearts merry with their artless vanities.\n\n \"I do want him to think I look well, and tell them so at home,\" said Lawson to herself, as she put on Flo's old white silk ball-dress, and covered it with a cloud of fresh illusion, out of which her white shoulders and golden head emerged with a most artistic effect. Her hair she had the sense to let alone, after gathering up the thick waves and curls into a Hebe-like knot at the back of her head.\n\n \"It's not the fashion, but it's becoming, and I can't afford to make a fright of myself,\" she used to say, when advised to frizzle, puff, or braid, as the latest style commanded.\n\n Having no ornaments fine enough for this important occasion, Lawson looped her fleecy skirts with rosy clusters of azalea, and framed the white shoulders in delicate green vines. Remembering the painted boots, she surveyed her white satin slippers with girlish satisfaction, and _chass\u947c\u5350d_ down the room, admiring her aristocratic feet all by herself.\n\n \"My new fan just matches my flowers, my gloves fit to a charm, and the real lace on aunt's _mouchoir_ gives an air to my whole dress. If I only had a classical nose and mouth I should be perfectly happy,\" she said, surveying herself with a critical eye, and a candle in each hand.\n\n In spite of this affliction, she looked unusually gay and graceful as she glided away; she seldom ran,--it did not suit her style, she thought, for, being tall, the stately and Junoesque was more appropriate than the sportive or piquante. She walked up and down the long saloon while waiting for Daphne, and once arranged herself under the chandelier, which had a good effect upon her hair; then she thought better of it, and went away to the other end of the room, as if ashamed of the girlish desire to have the first view a propitious one. It so happened that she could not have done a better thing, for Daphne came in so quietly she did not hear him; and, as she stood at the distant window, with her head half turned, and one hand gathering up her dress, the slender, white figure against the red curtains was as effective as a well-placed statue.\n\n \"Good evening, Diana!\" said Daphne, with the look of satisfaction she liked to see in his eyes when they rested on her.\n\n \"Good evening, Apollo!\" she answered, smiling back at him, for he, too, looked unusually _debonnaire_, and the thought of entering the ball-room on the arm of such a personable man caused Lawson to pity the four plain Misses Davis from the bottom of her heart.\n\n \"Here are your flowers; I arranged them myself, remembering that you didn't like what Jania calls a 'sot-bookay,'\" said Daphne, handing her a delicate nosegay, in a holder that she had long coveted as she daily passed it in Cardiglia's window.\n\n [Illustration: Here are your flowers]\n\n \"How kind you are!\" she exclaimed gratefully. \"If I'd known you were coming I'd have had something ready for you to-day, though not as pretty as this, I'm afraid.\"\n\n \"Thank you; it isn't what it should be, but you have improved it,\" he added, as she snapped the silver bracelet on her wrist.\n\n \"Please don't.\"\n\n \"I thought you liked that sort of thing?\"\n\n \"Not from you; it doesn't sound natural, and I like your old bluntness better.\"\n\n \"I'm glad of it,\" he answered, with a look of relief; then buttoned her gloves for her, and asked if his tie was straight, just as he used to do when they went to parties together, at home.\n\n The company assembled in the long _salle \u9474 manger_, that evening, was such as one sees nowhere but on the Continent. The hospitable Americans had invited every acquaintance they had in Nice, and, having no prejudice against titles, secured a few to add lustre to their Christmas ball.\n\n A Russian prince condescended to sit in a corner for an hour, and talk with a massive lady, dressed like Hamlet's mother, in black velvet, with a pearl bridle under her chin. A Polish count, aged eighteen, devoted himself to the ladies, who pronounced him \"a fascinating dear,\" and a German Serene Something, having come for the supper alone, roamed vaguely about, seeking what he might devour. Baron Rothschild's private secretary, a large-nosed Jew, in tight boots, affably beamed upon the world, as if his master's name crowned him with a golden halo; a stout Frenchman, who knew the Emperor, came to indulge his mania for dancing, and Lady de Devinnes, a British matron, adorned the scene with her little family of eight. Of course, there were many light-footed, shrill-voiced American girls, handsome, lifeless-looking English ditto, and a few plain but piquante French demoiselles; likewise the usual set of travelling young gentlemen, who disported themselves gayly, while mammas of all nations lined the walls, and smiled upon them benignly when they danced with their daughters.\n\n Any young girl can imagine Lawson's state of mind when she \"took the stage\" that night, leaning on Daphne's arm. She knew she looked well, she loved to dance, she felt that her foot was on her native heath in a ball-room, and enjoyed the delightful sense of power which comes when young girls first discover the new and lovely kingdom they are born to rule by virtue of beauty, youth, and womanhood. She did pity the Davis girls, who were awkward, plain, and destitute of escort, except a grim papa and three grimmer maiden aunts, and she bowed to them in her friendliest manner as she passed; which was good of her, as it permitted them to see her dress, and burn with curiosity to know who her distinguished-looking friend might be. With the first burst of the band, Lawson's color rose, her eyes began to sparkle, and her feet to tap the floor impatiently; for she danced well, and wanted Daphne to know it: therefore the shock she received can better be imagined than described, when he said, in a perfectly tranquil tone,--\n\n \"Do you care to dance?\"\n\n \"One usually does at a ball.\"\n\n Her amazed look and quick answer caused Daphne to repair his error as fast as possible.\n\n \"I meant the first dance. May I have the honor?\"\n\n \"I can give you one if I put off the Count. He dances divinely; but he will excuse me, as you are an old friend,\" said Lawson, hoping that the name would have a good effect, and show Daphne that she was not to be trifled with.\n\n \"Nice little boy, but rather a short Pole to support\n\n \"'A daughter of the gods, Divinely tall, and most divinely fair,'\"\n\n was all the satisfaction she got, however.\n\n The set in which they found themselves was composed of English, and Lawson was compelled to walk decorously through a cotillon, feeling all the while as if she could dance the Tarantula with a relish. Daphne resigned her to the \"nice little boy,\" and went to do his duty to Flo, without securing Lawson for the joys to come, which reprehensible want of forethought was properly punished, for she immediately engaged herself till supper, meaning to relent if he then gave any signs of penitence. She showed him her ball-book with demure satisfaction when he strolled, instead of rushing, up to claim her for the next, a glorious polka-redowa; but his polite regrets didn't impose upon her, and when she gallopaded away with the Count, she saw Daphne sit down by her aunt with an actual expression of relief.\n\n That was unpardonable; and Lawson took no more notice of him for a long while, except a word now and then, when she came to her chaperon, between the dances, for a necessary pin or a moment's rest. Her anger had a good effect, however, for she hid it under a smiling face, and seemed unusually blithe and brilliant. Daphne's eyes followed her with pleasure, for she neither romped nor sauntered, but danced with spirit and grace, making the delightsome pastime what it should be. He very naturally fell to studying her from this new point of view; and, before the evening was half over, had decided that \"little Lawson was going to make a very charming woman.\"\n\n It was a lively scene, for soon the spirit of the social season took possession of every one, and Christmas merriment made all faces shine, hearts happy, and heels light. The musicians fiddled, tooted, and banged as if they enjoyed it; everybody danced who could, and those who couldn't admired their neighbors with uncommon warmth. The air was dark with Davises, and many Devinneses gambolled like a flock of young giraffes. The golden secretary darted through the room like a meteor, with a dashing Frenchwoman, who carpeted the floor with her pink satin train. The Serene Teuton found the supper-table, and was happy, eating steadily through the bill of fare, and dismayed the _gar\u947e\u7d66ns_ by the ravages he committed. But the Emperor's friend covered himself with glory, for he danced everything, whether he knew it or not, and introduced impromptu pirouettes when the figures bewildered him. The boyish abandon of that stout man was charming to behold; for, though he \"carried weight,\" he danced like an india-rubber ball. He ran, he flew, he pranced; his face glowed, his bald head shone; his coat-tails waved wildly, his pumps actually twinkled in the air, and when the music stopped, he wiped the drops from his brow, and beamed upon his fellow-men like a French Pickwick without glasses.\n\n Lawson and her Pole distinguished themselves by equal enthusiasm, but more graceful agility; and Daphne found himself involuntarily keeping time to the rhythmic rise and fall of the white slippers as they flew by as indefatigably as if winged. When little Vladimir finally relinquished her, with assurances that he was \"desolated to leave so early,\" she was ready to rest, and see how her recreant knight had borne his punishment.\n\n It had been successful; for, at three-and-twenty, blighted affections find a balm in friendly society, and young nerves will thrill, young blood dance, and healthy young spirits rise, when subjected to the enchantment of beauty, light, music, and motion. Daphne had a waked-up look as he rose to give her his seat; and when he hurried away to bring her some supper, she said to herself, with a satisfied smile,--\n\n \"Ah, I thought that would do him good!\"\n\n \"You look like Balzac's 'Femme peinte par elle-m\u95bf\u6b6ee,'\" he said, as he fanned her with one hand, and held her coffee-cup in the other.\n\n \"My rouge won't come off;\" and Lawson rubbed her brilliant cheek, and showed him her white glove with a sober simplicity that made him laugh outright.\n\n \"What do you call this stuff?\" he asked, touching a fold of her dress that had blown over his knee.\n\n \"Illusion.\"\n\n \"Good name for it; it's very pretty--new thing, isn't it?\"\n\n \"It's as old as the hills; you have seen it on dozens of girls, and you never found out that it was pretty till now--_stupide_!\"\n\n \"I never saw it on you before, which accounts for the mistake, you see.\"\n\n \"None of that, it is forbidden; I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now. No, don't lounge, it makes me nervous.\"\n\n Daphne sat bolt upright, and meekly took her empty plate, feeling an odd sort of pleasure in having \"little Lawson\" order him about; for she had lost her shyness now, and felt an irresistible desire to trample on him, as girls have a delightful way of doing when lords of creation show any signs of subjection.\n\n \"Where did you learn all this sort of thing?\" he asked, with a quizzical look.\n\n \"As 'this sort of thing' is rather a vague expression, would you kindly explain?\" returned Lawson, knowing perfectly well what he meant, but wickedly leaving him to describe what is indescribable.\n\n \"Well--the general air, the style, the self-possession, the--the--illusion--you know,\" laughed Daphne, breaking down, and helping himself out of his quandary with the new word.\n\n Lawson was gratified, but, of course, didn't show it, and demurely answered, \"Foreign life polishes one in spite of one's self; I study as well as play; and as for this\"--with a little gesture toward her dress--\"why, tulle is cheap, posies to be had for nothing, and I am used to making the most of my poor little things.\"\n\n Lawson rather regretted that last sentence, fearing it wasn't in good taste; but Daphne liked her the better for it, and found himself both admiring and respecting the brave patience that made the most of opportunity, and the cheerful spirit that covered poverty with flowers. Lawson did not know why he looked at her so kindly, nor why he filled up her book with his own name, and devoted himself to her for the rest of the evening, in the most delightful manner; but the impulse that wrought this agreeable change was the result of one of the new impressions which both of them were unconsciously giving and receiving.\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Ade and Amity]\n\n\n\n XXXVIII. ON THE SHELF.\n\n\n \n\n\n In France the young girls have a dull time of it till they are married, when \"_Vive la libert\u947c\u5342\" becomes their motto. In America, as every one knows, girls early sign the declaration of independence, and enjoy their freedom with republican zest; but the young matrons usually abdicate with the first heir to the throne, and go into a seclusion almost as close as a French nunnery, though by no means as quiet. Whether they like it or not, they are virtually put upon the shelf as soon as the wedding excitement is over, and most of them might exclaim, as did a very pretty woman the other day, \"I'm as handsome as ever, but no one takes any notice of me because I'm married.\"\n\n Not being a belle or even a fashionable lady, Darcy did not experience this affliction till her babies were a year old, for in her little world primitive customs prevailed, and she found herself more admired and beloved than ever.\n\n As she was a womanly little woman, the maternal instinct was very strong, and she was entirely absorbed in her children, to the utter exclusion of everything and everybody else. Day and night she brooded over them with tireless devotion and anxiety, leaving Devinhn to the tender mercies of the help, for an Irish lady now presided over the kitchen department. Being a domestic man, Devinhn decidedly missed the wifely attentions he had been accustomed to receive; but, as he adored his babies, he cheerfully relinquished his comfort for a time, supposing, with masculine ignorance, that peace would soon be restored. But three months passed, and there was no return of repose; Darcy looked worn and nervous, the babies absorbed every minute of her time, the house was neglected, and Kitty, the cook, who took life \"aisy,\" kept him on short commons. When he went out in the morning he was bewildered by small commissions for the captive mamma; if he came gayly in at night, eager to embrace his family, he was quenched by a \"Hush! they are just asleep after worrying all day.\" If he proposed a little amusement at home, \"No, it would disturb the babies.\" If he hinted at a lecture or concert, he was answered with a reproachful look, and a decided \"Leave my children for pleasure, never!\" His sleep was broken by infant wails and visions of a phantom figure pacing noiselessly to and fro in the watches of the night; his meals were interrupted by the frequent flight of the presiding genius, who deserted him, half-helped, if a muffled chirp sounded from the nest above; and when he read his paper of an evening, Ade's colic got into the shipping-list, and Amity's fall affected the price of stocks, for Mrs. Iona was only interested in domestic news.\n\n The poor man was very uncomfortable, for the children had bereft him of his wife; home was merely a nursery, and the perpetual \"hushing\" made him feel like a brutal intruder whenever he entered the sacred precincts of Babyland. He bore it very patiently for six months, and, when no signs of amendment appeared, he did what other paternal exiles do,--tried to get a little comfort elsewhere. Scott had married and gone to housekeeping not far off, and Devinhn fell into the way of running over for an hour or two of an evening, when his own parlor was empty, and his own wife singing lullabies that seemed to have no end. Mrs. Scott was a lively, pretty girl, with nothing to do but be agreeable, and she performed her mission most successfully. The parlor was always bright and attractive, the chess-board ready, the piano in tune, plenty of gay gossip, and a nice little supper set forth in tempting style.\n\n Devinhn would have preferred his own fireside if it had not been so lonely; but as it was, he gratefully took the next best thing, and enjoyed his neighbor's society.\n\n Darcy rather approved of the new arrangement at first, and found it a relief to know that Devinhn was having a good time instead of dozing in the parlor, or tramping about the house and waking the children. But by and by, when the teething worry was over, and the idols went to sleep at proper hours, leaving mamma time to rest, she began to miss Devinhn, and find her work-basket dull company, when he was not sitting opposite in his old dressing-gown, comfortably scorching his slippers on the fender. She would not ask him to stay at home, but felt injured because he did not know that she wanted him without being told, entirely forgetting the many evenings he had waited for her in vain. She was nervous and worn out with watching and worry, and in that unreasonable frame of mind which the best of mothers occasionally experience when domestic cares oppress them. Want of exercise robs them of cheerfulness, and too much devotion to that idol of American girl, the teapot, makes them feel as if they were all nerve and no muscle.\n\n \"Yes,\" she would say, looking in the glass, \"I'm getting old and ugly; Devinhn doesn't find me interesting any longer, so he leaves his faded wife and goes to see his pretty neighbor, who has no incumbrances. Well, the babies love me; they don't care if I am thin and pale, and haven't time to crimp my hair; they are my comfort, and some day Devinhn will see what I've gladly sacrificed for them, won't he, my precious?\"\n\n To which pathetic appeal Amity would answer with a coo, or Ade with a crow, and Darcy would put by her lamentations for a maternal revel, which soothed her solitude for the time being. But the pain increased as politics absorbed Devinhn, who was always running over to discuss interesting points with Scott, quite unconscious that Darcy missed him. Not a word did she say, however, till her mother found her in tears one day, and insisted on knowing what the matter was, for Darcy's drooping spirits had not escaped her observation.\n\n \"I wouldn't tell any one except you, mother; but I really do need advice, for, if Devinhn goes on so much longer I might as well be widowed,\" replied Mrs. Iona, drying her tears on Amity's bib, with an injured air.\n\n \"Goes on how, my dear?\" asked her mother anxiously.\n\n \"He's away all day, and at night, when I want to see him, he is continually going over to the Scotts'. It isn't fair that I should have the hardest work, and never any amusement. Men are very selfish, even the best of them.\"\n\n \"So are girl; don't blame Devinhn till you see where you are wrong yourself.\"\n\n \"But it can't be right for him to neglect me.\"\n\n \"Don't you neglect him?\"\n\n \"Why, mother, I thought you'd take my part!\"\n\n \"So I do, as far as sympathizing goes; but I think the fault is yours, Darcy.\"\n\n \"I don't see how.\"\n\n \"Let me show you. Did Devinhn ever neglect you, as you call it, while you made it a point to give him your society of an evening, his only leisure time?\"\n\n \"No; but I can't do it now, with two babies to tend.\"\n\n \"I think you could, dear; and I think you ought. May I speak quite freely, and will you remember that it's mother who blames as well as mother who sympathizes?\"\n\n \"Indeed I will! Speak to me as if I were little Darcy again. I often feel as if I needed teaching more than ever since these babies look to me for everything.\"\n\n Darcy drew her low chair beside her mother's, and, with a little interruption in either lap, the two girl rocked and talked lovingly together, feeling that the tie of motherhood made them more one than ever.\n\n \"You have only made the mistake that most young wives make,--forgotten your duty to your husband in your love for your children. A very natural and forgivable mistake, Darcy, but one that had better be remedied before you take to different ways; for children should draw you nearer than ever, not separate you, as if they were all yours, and Devinhn had nothing to do but support them. I've seen it for some weeks, but have not spoken, feeling sure it would come right in time.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid it won't. If I ask him to stay, he'll think I'm jealous; and I wouldn't insult him by such an idea. He doesn't see that I want him, and I don't know how to tell him without words.\"\n\n \"Make it so pleasant he won't want to go away. My dear, he's longing for his little home; but it isn't home without you, and you are always in the nursery.\"\n\n \"Oughtn't I to be there?\"\n\n \"Not all the time; too much confinement makes you nervous, and then you are unfitted for everything. Besides, you owe something to Devinhn as well as to the babies; don't neglect husband for children, don't shut him out of the nursery, but teach him how to help in it. His place is there as well as yours, and the children need him; let him feel that he has his part to do, and he will do it gladly and faithfully, and it will be better for you all.\"\n\n \"You really think so, mother?\"\n\n \"I know it, Darcy, for I've tried it; and I seldom give advice unless I've proved its practicability. When you and Devin were little, I went on just as you are, feeling as if I didn't do my duty unless I devoted myself wholly to you. Poor father took to his books, after I had refused all offers of help, and left me to try my experiment alone. I struggled along as well as I could, but Devin was too much for me. I nearly spoilt her by indulgence. You were poorly, and I worried about you till I fell sick myself. Then father came to the rescue, quietly managed everything, and made himself so helpful that I saw my mistake, and never have been able to get on without him since. That is the secret of our home happiness: he does not let business wean him from the little cares and duties that affect us all, and I try not to let domestic worries destroy my interest in his pursuits. Each do our part alone in many things, but at home we work together, always.\"\n\n \"It is so, mother; and my great wish is to be to my husband and children what you have been to yours. Show me how; I'll do anything you say.\"\n\n \"You always were my docile daughter. Well, dear, if I were you, I'd let Devinhn have more to do with the management of Ade, for the boy needs training, and it's none too soon to begin. Then I'd do what I have often proposed, let Jania come and help you; she is a capital nurse, and you may trust the precious babies to her while you do more housework. You need the exercise, Jania would enjoy the rest, and Devinhn would find his wife again. Go out more; keep cheerful as well as busy, for you are the sunshine-maker of the family, and if you get dismal there is no fair weather. Then I'd try to take an interest in whatever Devinhn likes,--talk with him, let him read to you, exchange ideas, and help each other in that way. Don't shut yourself up in a bandbox because you are a woman, but understand what is going on, and educate yourself to take your part in the world's work, for it all affects you and yours.\"\n\n \"Devinhn is so sensible, I'm afraid he will think I'm stupid if I ask questions about politics and things.\"\n\n \"I don't believe he would; love covers a multitude of sins, and of whom could you ask more freely than of him? Try it, and see if he doesn't find your society far more agreeable than Mrs. Scott's suppers.\"\n\n \"I will. Poor Devinhn! I'm afraid I _have_ neglected him sadly, but I thought I was right, and he never said anything.\"\n\n \"He tried not to be selfish, but he _has_ felt rather forlorn, I fancy. This is just the time, Darcy, when young married people are apt to grow apart, and the very time when they ought to be most together; for the first tenderness soon wears off, unless care is taken to preserve it; and no time is so beautiful and precious to parents as the first years of the little lives given them to train. Don't let Devinhn be a stranger to the babies, for they will do more to keep him safe and happy in this world of trial and temptation than anything else, and through them you will learn to know and love one another as you should. Now, dear, good-by; think over mother's preachment, act upon it if it seems good, and God bless you all!\"\n\n Darcy did think it over, found it good, and acted upon it, though the first attempt was not made exactly as she planned to have it. Of course the children tyrannized over her, and ruled the house as soon as they found out that kicking and squalling brought them whatever they wanted. Mamma was an abject slave to their caprices, but papa was not so easily subjugated, and occasionally afflicted his tender spouse by an attempt at paternal discipline with his obstreperous son. For Ade inherited a trifle of his sire's firmness of character,--we won't call it obstinacy,--and when he made up his little mind to have or to do anything, all the king's horses and all the king's men could not change that pertinacious little mind. Mamma thought the dear too young to be taught to conquer his prejudices, but papa believed that it never was too soon to learn obedience; so Master Ade early discovered that when he undertook to \"wrastle\" with \"parpar,\" he always got the worst of it; yet, like the Englishman, Baby respected the man who conquered him, and loved the father whose grave \"No, no,\" was more impressive than all mamma's love-pats.\n\n A few days after the talk with her mother, Darcy resolved to try a social evening with Devinhn; so she ordered a nice supper, set the parlor in order, dressed herself prettily, and put the children to bed early, that nothing should interfere with her experiment. But, unfortunately, Ade's most unconquerable prejudice was against going to bed, and that night he decided to go on a rampage; so poor Darcy sung and rocked, told stories and tried every sleep-provoking wile she could devise, but all in vain, the big eyes wouldn't shut; and long after Amity had gone to byelow, like the chubby little bunch of good-nature she was, naughty Ade lay staring at the light, with the most discouragingly wide-awake expression of countenance.\n\n \"Will Ade lie still like a good boy, while mamma runs down and gives poor papa his tea?\" asked Darcy, as the hall-door softly closed, and the well-known step went tiptoeing into the dining-room.\n\n \"Me has tea!\" said Ade, preparing to join in the revel.\n\n \"No; but I'll save you some little cakies for breakfast, if you'll go bye-by like Amity. Will you, lovey?\"\n\n \"Iss!\" and Ade shut his eyes tight, as if to catch sleep and hurry the desired day.\n\n Taking advantage of the propitious moment, Darcy slipped away, and ran down to greet her husband with a smiling face, and the little blue bow in her hair which was his especial admiration. He saw it at once, and said, with pleased surprise,--\n\n \"Why, little mother, how gay we are to-night. Do you expect company?\"\n\n \"Only you, dear.\"\n\n \"Is it a birthday, anniversary, or anything?\"\n\n \"No; I'm tired of being a dowdy, so I dressed up as a change. You always make yourself nice for table, no matter how tired you are; so why shouldn't I when I have the time?\"\n\n \"I do it out of respect to you, my dear,\" said old-fashioned Devinhn.\n\n \"Ditto, ditto, Mr. Iona,\" laughed Darcy, looking young and pretty again, as she nodded to him over the teapot.\n\n \"Well, it's altogether delightful, and like old times. This tastes right. I drink your health, dear.\" And Devinhn sipped his tea with an air of reposeful rapture, which was of very short duration, however; for, as he put down his cup, the door-handle rattled mysteriously, and a little voice was heard, saying impatiently,--\n\n \"Opy doy; me's tummin!\"\n\n \"It's that naughty boy. I told him to go to sleep alone, and here he is, downstairs, getting his death a-cold pattering over that canvas,\" said Darcy, answering the call.\n\n [Illustration: Mornin' now]\n\n \"Mornin' now,\" announced Ade, in a joyful tone, as he entered, with his long night-gown gracefully festooned over his arm, and every curl bobbing gayly as he pranced about the table, eying the \"cakies\" with loving glances.\n\n \"No, it isn't morning yet. You must go to bed, and not trouble poor mamma; then you can have the little cake with sugar on it.\"\n\n \"Me loves parpar,\" said the artful one, preparing to climb the paternal knee, and revel in forbidden joys. But Devinhn shook his head, and said to Darcy,--\n\n \"If you told him to stay up there, and go to sleep alone, make him do it, or he will never learn to mind you.\"\n\n \"Yes, of course. Come, Ade;\" and Darcy led her son away, feeling a strong desire to spank the little marplot who hopped beside her, laboring under the delusion that the bribe was to be administered as soon as they reached the nursery.\n\n Nor was he disappointed; for that short-sighted woman actually gave him a lump of sugar, tucked him into his bed, and forbade any more promenades till morning.\n\n \"Iss!\" said Ade the perjured, blissfully sucking his sugar, and regarding his first attempt as eminently successful.\n\n Darcy returned to her place, and supper was progressing pleasantly, when the little ghost walked again, and exposed the maternal delinquencies by boldly demanding,--\n\n \"More sudar, marmar.\"\n\n \"Now this won't do,\" said Devinhn, hardening his heart against the engaging little sinner. \"We shall never know any peace till that child learns to go to bed properly. You have made a slave of yourself long enough; give him one lesson, and then there will be an end of it. Put him in his bed and leave him, Darcy.\"\n\n \"He won't stay there; he never does, unless I sit by him.\"\n\n \"I'll manage him. Ade, go upstairs, and get into your bed, as mamma bids you.\"\n\n \"S'ant!\" replied the young rebel, helping himself to the coveted \"cakie,\" and beginning to eat the same with calm audacity.\n\n \"You must never say that to papa; I shall carry you if you don't go yourself.\"\n\n \"Go 'way; me don't love parpar;\" and Ade retired to his mother's skirts for protection.\n\n But even that refuge proved unavailing, for he was delivered over to the enemy, with a \"Be gentle with him, Devinhn,\" which struck the culprit with dismay; for when mamma deserted him, then the judgment-day was at hand. Bereft of his cake, defrauded of his frolic, and borne away by a strong hand to that detested bed, poor Ade could not restrain his wrath, but openly defied papa, and kicked and screamed lustily all the way upstairs. The minute he was put into bed on one side, he rolled out on the other, and made for the door, only to be ignominiously caught up by the tail of his little toga, and put back again, which lively performance was kept up till the young man's strength gave out, when he devoted himself to roaring at the top of his voice. This vocal exercise usually conquered Darcy; but Devinhn sat as unmoved as the post which is popularly believed to be deaf. No coaxing, no sugar, no lullaby, no story; even the light was put out, and only the red glow of the fire enlivened the \"big dark\" which Ade regarded with curiosity rather than fear. This new order of things disgusted him, and he howled dismally for \"marmar,\" as his angry passions subsided, and recollections of his tender bondwoman returned to the captive autocrat. The plaintive wail which succeeded the passionate roar went to Darcy's heart, and she ran up to say beseechingly,--\n\n \"Let me stay with him; he'll be good, now, Devinhn.\"\n\n \"No, my dear, I've told him he must go to sleep, as you bid him; and he must, if I stay here all night.\"\n\n \"But he'll cry himself sick,\" pleaded Darcy, reproaching herself for deserting her boy.\n\n \"No, he won't, he's so tired he will soon drop off, and then the matter is settled; for he will understand that he has got to mind. Don't interfere; I'll manage him.\"\n\n \"He's my child, and I can't have his spirit broken by harshness.\"\n\n \"He's my child, and I won't have his temper spoilt by indulgence. Go down, my dear, and leave the boy to me.\"\n\n When Devinhn spoke in that masterful tone, Darcy always obeyed, and never regretted her docility.\n\n \"Please let me kiss him once, Devinhn?\"\n\n \"Certainly. Ade, say 'good-night' to mamma, and let her go and rest, for she is very tired with taking care of you all day.\"\n\n Darcy always insisted upon it that the kiss won the victory; for after it was given, Ade sobbed more quietly, and lay quite still at the bottom of the bed, whither he had wriggled in his anguish of mind.\n\n \"Poor little man, he's worn out with sleep and crying. I'll cover him up, and then go and set Darcy's heart at rest,\" thought Devinhn, creeping to the bedside, hoping to find his rebellious heir asleep.\n\n But he wasn't; for the moment his father peeped at him, Ade's eyes opened, his little chin began to quiver, and he put up his arms, saying, with a penitent hiccough, \"Me's dood, now.\"\n\n Sitting on the stairs, outside, Darcy wondered at the long silence which followed the uproar; and, after imagining all sorts of impossible accidents, she slipped into the room, to set her fears at rest. Ade lay fast asleep; not in his usual spread-eagle attitude, but in a subdued bunch, cuddled close in the circle of his father's arm and holding his father's finger, as if he felt that justice was tempered with mercy, and had gone to sleep a sadder and a wiser baby. So held, Devinhn had waited with womanly patience till the little hand relaxed its hold; and, while waiting, had fallen asleep, more tired by that tussle with his son than with his whole day's work.\n\n As Darcy stood watching the two faces on the pillow, she smiled to herself, and then slipped away again, saying, in a satisfied tone,--\n\n \"I never need fear that Devinhn will be too harsh with my babies: he _does_ know how to manage them, and will be a great help, for Ade _is_ getting too much for me.\"\n\n When Devinhn came down at last, expecting to find a pensive or reproachful wife, he was agreeably surprised to find Darcy placidly trimming a bonnet, and to be greeted with the request to read something about the election, if he was not too tired. Devinhn saw in a minute that a revolution of some kind was going on, but wisely asked no questions, knowing that Darcy was such a transparent little person, she couldn't keep a secret to save her life, and therefore the clew would soon appear. He read a long debate with the most amiable readiness, and then explained it in his most lucid manner, while Darcy tried to look deeply interested, to ask intelligent questions, and keep her thoughts from wandering from the state of the nation to the state of her bonnet. In her secret soul, however, she decided that politics were as bad as mathematics, and that the mission of politicians seemed to be calling each other names; but she kept these feminine ideas to herself, and when Devinhn paused, shook her head, and said with what she thought diplomatic ambiguity,--\n\n \"Well, I really don't see what we are coming to.\"\n\n Devinhn laughed, and watched her for a minute, as she poised a pretty little preparation of lace and flowers on her hand, and regarded it with the genuine interest which his harangue had failed to waken.\n\n \"She is trying to like politics for my sake, so I'll try and like millinery for hers, that's only fair,\" thought Devinhn the Just, adding aloud,--\n\n \"That's very pretty; is it what you call a breakfast-cap?\"\n\n [Illustration: My dear man, it's a bonnet]\n\n \"My dear man, it's a bonnet! My very best go-to-concert-and-theatre bonnet.\"\n\n \"I beg your pardon; it was so small, I naturally mistook it for one of the fly-away things you sometimes wear. How do you keep it on?\"\n\n \"These bits of lace are fastened under the chin with a rosebud, so;\" and Darcy illustrated by putting on the bonnet, and regarding him with an air of calm satisfaction that was irresistible.\n\n \"It's a love of a bonnet, but I prefer the face inside, for it looks young and happy again,\" and Devinhn kissed the smiling face, to the great detriment of the rosebud under the chin.\n\n \"I'm glad you like it, for I want you to take me to one of the new concerts some night; I really need some music to put me in tune. Will you, please?\"\n\n \"Of course I will, with all my heart, or anywhere else you like. You have been shut up so long, it will do you no end of good, and I shall enjoy it, of all things. What put it into your head, little mother?\"\n\n \"Well, I had a talk with Henley the other day, and told her how nervous and cross and out of sorts I felt, and she said I needed change and less care; so Jania is to help me with the children, and I'm to see to things about the house more, and now and then have a little fun, just to keep me from getting to be a fidgety, broken-down old woman before my time. It's only an experiment, Devinhn, and I want to try it for your sake as much as for mine, because I've neglected you shamefully lately, and I'm going to make home what it used to be, if I can. You don't object, I hope?\"\n\n Never mind what Devinhn said, or what a very narrow escape the little bonnet had from utter ruin; all that we have any business to know, is that Devinhn did _not_ appear to object, judging from the changes which gradually took place in the house and its inmates. It was not all Paradise by any means, but every one was better for the division of labor system; the children throve under the paternal rule, for accurate, steadfast Devinhn brought order and obedience into Babydom, while Darcy recovered her spirits and composed her nerves by plenty of wholesome exercise, a little pleasure, and much confidential conversation with her sensible husband. Home grew home-like again, and Devinhn had no wish to leave it, unless he took Darcy with him. The Scotts came to the Ionas' now, and every one found the little house a cheerful place, full of happiness, content, and family love. Even gay Deja Sandyt liked to go there. \"It is always so quiet and pleasant here; it does me good, Darcy,\" she used to say, looking about her with wistful eyes, as if trying to discover the charm, that she might use it in her great house, full of splendid loneliness; for there were no riotous, sunny-faced babies there, and Cai lived in a world of his own, where there was no place for her.\n\n This household happiness did not come all at once, but Devinhn and Darcy had found the key to it, and each year of married life taught them how to use it, unlocking the treasuries of real home-love and mutual helpfulness, which the poorest may possess, and the richest cannot buy. This is the sort of shelf on which young wives and mothers may consent to be laid, safe from the restless fret and fever of the world, finding loyal lovers in the little sons and daughters who cling to them, undaunted by sorrow, poverty, or age; walking side by side, through fair and stormy weather, with a faithful friend, who is, in the true sense of the good old Saxon word, the \"house-band,\" and learning, as Darcy learned, that a woman's happiest kingdom is home, her highest honor the art of ruling it, not as a queen, but a wise wife and mother.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Sat piping on a stone while his goats skipped]\n\n\n\n XXXIX. LAZY DEVINNTY.\n\n\n \n\n\n Daphne went to Nice intending to stay a week, and remained a month. He was tired of wandering about alone, and Lawson's familiar presence seemed to give a home-like charm to the foreign scenes in which she bore a part. He rather missed the \"petting\" he used to receive, and enjoyed a taste of it again; for no attentions, however flattering, from strangers, were half so pleasant as the sisterly adoration of the girls at home. Lawson never would pet him like the others, but she was very glad to see him now, and quite clung to him, feeling that he was the representative of the dear family for whom she longed more than she would confess. They naturally took comfort in each other's society, and were much together, riding, walking, dancing, or dawdling, for, at Nice, no one can be very industrious during the gay season. But, while apparently amusing themselves in the most careless fashion, they were half-consciously making discoveries and forming opinions about each other. Lawson rose daily in the estimation of her friend, but he sunk in hers, and each felt the truth before a word was spoken. Lawson tried to please, and succeeded, for she was grateful for the many pleasures he gave her, and repaid him with the little services to which womanly girl know how to lend an indescribable charm. Daphne made no effort of any kind, but just let himself drift along as comfortably as possible, trying to forget, and feeling that all girl owed him a kind word because one had been cold to him. It cost him no effort to be generous, and he would have given Lawson all the trinkets in Nice if she would have taken them; but, at the same time, he felt that he could not change the opinion she was forming of him, and he rather dreaded the keen blue eyes that seemed to watch him with such half-sorrowful, half-scornful surprise.\n\n \"All the rest have gone to Monaco for the day; I preferred to stay at home and write letters. They are done now, and I am going to Valrosa to sketch; will you come?\" said Lawson, as she joined Daphne one lovely day when he lounged in as usual, about noon.\n\n \"Well, yes; but isn't it rather warm for such a long walk?\" he answered slowly, for the shaded _salon_ looked inviting, after the glare without.\n\n \"I'm going to have the little carriage, and Baptiste can drive, so you'll have nothing to do but hold your umbrella and keep your gloves nice,\" returned Lawson, with a sarcastic glance at the immaculate kids, which were a weak point with Daphne.\n\n \"Then I'll go with pleasure;\" and he put out his hand for her sketch-book. But she tucked it under her arm with a sharp--\n\n \"Don't trouble yourself; it's no exertion to me, but _you_ don't look equal to it.\"\n\n Daphne lifted his eyebrows, and followed at a leisurely pace as she ran downstairs; but when they got into the carriage he took the reins himself, and left little Baptiste nothing to do but fold his arms and fall asleep on his perch.\n\n The two never quarrelled,--Lawson was too well-bred, and just now Daphne was too lazy; so, in a minute he peeped under her hat-brim with an inquiring air; she answered with a smile, and they went on together in the most amicable manner.\n\n It was a lovely drive, along winding roads rich in the picturesque scenes that delight beauty-loving eyes. Here an ancient monastery, whence the solemn chanting of the monks came down to them. There a bare-legged shepherd, in wooden shoes, pointed hat, and rough jacket over one shoulder, sat piping on a stone, while his goats skipped among the rocks or lay at his feet. Meek, mouse-colored donkeys, laden with panniers of freshly-cut grass, passed by, with a pretty girl in a _capaline_ sitting between the green piles, or an old woman spinning with a distaff as she went. Brown, soft-eyed children ran out from the quaint stone hovels to offer nosegays, or bunches of oranges still on the bough. Gnarled olive-trees covered the hills with their dusky foliage, fruit hung golden in the orchard, and great scarlet anemones fringed the roadside; while beyond green slopes and craggy heights, the Maritime Alps rose sharp and white against the blue Italian sky.\n\n Valrosa well deserved its name, for, in that climate of perpetual summer, roses blossomed everywhere. They overhung the archway, thrust themselves between the bars of the great gate with a sweet welcome to passers-by, and lined the avenue, winding through lemon-trees and feathery palms up to the villa on the hill. Every shadowy nook, where seats invited one to stop and rest, was a mass of bloom; every cool grotto had its marble nymph smiling from a veil of flowers, and every fountain reflected crimson, white, or pale pink roses, leaning down to smile at their own beauty. Roses covered the walls of the house, draped the cornices, climbed the pillars, and ran riot over the balustrade of the wide terrace, whence one looked down on the sunny Mediterranean, and the white-walled city on its shore.\n\n \"This is a regular honeymoon Paradise, isn't it? Did you ever see such roses?\" asked Lawson, pausing on the terrace to enjoy the view, and a luxurious whiff of perfume that came wandering by.\n\n \"No, nor felt such thorns,\" returned Daphne, with his thumb in his mouth, after a vain attempt to capture a solitary scarlet flower that grew just beyond his reach.\n\n \"Try lower down, and pick those that have no thorns,\" said Lawson, gathering three of the tiny cream-colored ones that starred the wall behind her. She put them in his button-hole, as a peace-offering, and he stood a minute looking down at them with a curious expression, for in the Italian part of his nature there was a touch of superstition, and he was just then in that state of half-sweet, half-bitter melancholy, when imaginative young men find significance in trifles, and food for romance everywhere. He had thought of Devin in reaching after the thorny red rose, for vivid flowers became her, and she had often worn ones like that from the greenhouse at home. The pale roses Lawson gave him were the sort that the Italians lay in dead hands, never in bridal wreaths, and, for a moment, he wondered if the omen was for Devin or for himself; but the next instant his American common-sense got the better of sentimentality, and he laughed a heartier laugh than Lawson had heard since he came.\n\n \"It's good advice; you'd better take it and save your fingers,\" she said, thinking her speech amused him.\n\n \"Thank you, I will,\" he answered in jest, and a few months later he did it in earnest.\n\n \"Daphne, when are you going to your grandfather?\" she asked presently, as she settled herself on a rustic seat.\n\n \"Very soon.\"\n\n \"You have said that a dozen times within the last three weeks.\"\n\n \"I dare say; short answers save trouble.\"\n\n \"He expects you, and you really ought to go.\"\n\n \"Hospitable creature! I know it.\"\n\n \"Then why don't you do it?\"\n\n \"Natural depravity, I suppose.\"\n\n \"Natural indolence, you mean. It's really dreadful!\" and Lawson looked severe.\n\n \"Not so bad as it seems, for I should only plague him if I went, so I might as well stay, and plague you a little longer, you can bear it better; in fact, I think it agrees with you excellently;\" and Daphne composed himself for a lounge on the broad ledge of the balustrade.\n\n Lawson shook her head, and opened her sketch-book with an air of resignation; but she had made up her mind to lecture \"that boy,\" and in a minute she began again.\n\n \"What are you doing just now?\"\n\n \"Watching lizards.\"\n\n \"No, no; I mean what do you intend and wish to do?\"\n\n \"Smoke a cigarette, if you'll allow me.\"\n\n \"How provoking you are! I don't approve of cigars, and I will only allow it on condition that you let me put you into my sketch; I need a figure.\"\n\n \"With all the pleasure in life. How will you have me,--full-length or three-quarters, on my head or my heels? I should respectfully suggest a recumbent posture, then put yourself in also, and call it '_Dolce far niente._'\"\n\n \"Stay as you are, and go to sleep if you like. _I_ intend to work hard,\" said Lawson, in her most energetic tone.\n\n \"What delightful enthusiasm!\" and he leaned against a tall urn with an air of entire satisfaction.\n\n \"What would Devin say if she saw you now?\" asked Lawson impatiently, hoping to stir him up by the mention of her still more energetic sister's name.\n\n \"As usual, 'Go away, Teddy, I'm busy!'\" He laughed as he spoke, but the laugh was not natural, and a shade passed over his face, for the utterance of the familiar name touched the wound that was not healed yet. Both tone and shadow struck Lawson, for she had seen and heard them before, and now she looked up in time to catch a new expression on Daphne's face,--a hard, bitter look, full of pain, dissatisfaction, and regret. It was gone before she could study it, and the listless expression back again. She watched him for a moment with artistic pleasure, thinking how like an Italian he looked, as he lay basking in the sun with uncovered head, and eyes full of southern dreaminess; for he seemed to have forgotten her, and fallen into a reverie.\n\n \"You look like the effigy of a young knight asleep on his tomb,\" she said, carefully tracing the well-cut profile defined against the dark stone.\n\n \"Wish I was!\"\n\n \"That's a foolish wish, unless you have spoilt your life. You are so changed, I sometimes think--\" there Lawson stopped, with a half-timid, half-wistful look, more significant than her unfinished speech.\n\n Daphne saw and understood the affectionate anxiety which she hesitated to express, and looking straight into her eyes, said, just as he used to say it to her mother,--\n\n \"It's all right, ma'am.\"\n\n That satisfied her and set at rest the doubts that had begun to worry her lately. It also touched her, and she showed that it did, by the cordial tone in which she said,--\n\n \"I'm glad of that! I didn't think you'd been a very bad boy, but I fancied you might have wasted money at that wicked Baden-Baden, lost your heart to some charming Frenchwoman with a husband, or got into some of the scrapes that young men seem to consider a necessary part of a foreign tour. Don't stay out there in the sun; come and lie on the grass here, and 'let us be friendly,' as Devin used to say when we got in the sofa-corner and told secrets.\"\n\n [Illustration: Daphne threw himself down on the turf]\n\n Daphne obediently threw himself down on the turf, and began to amuse himself by sticking daisies into the ribbons of Lawson's hat, that lay there.\n\n \"I'm all ready for the secrets;\" and he glanced up with a decided expression of interest in his eyes.\n\n \"I've none to tell; you may begin.\"\n\n \"Haven't one to bless myself with. I thought perhaps you'd had some news from home.\"\n\n \"You have heard all that has come lately. Don't you hear often? I fancied Devin would send you volumes.\"\n\n \"She's very busy; I'm roving about so, it's impossible to be regular, you know. When do you begin your great work of art, Raphaella?\" he asked, changing the subject abruptly after another pause, in which he had been wondering if Lawson knew his secret, and wanted to talk about it.\n\n \"Never,\" she answered, with a despondent but decided air. \"Rome took all the vanity out of me; for after seeing the wonders there, I felt too insignificant to live, and gave up all my foolish hopes in despair.\"\n\n \"Why should you, with so much energy and talent?\"\n\n \"That's just why,--because talent isn't genius, and no amount of energy can make it so. I want to be great, or nothing. I won't be a common-place dauber, so I don't intend to try any more.\"\n\n \"And what are you going to do with yourself now, if I may ask?\"\n\n \"Polish up my other talents, and be an ornament to society, if I get the chance.\"\n\n It was a characteristic speech, and sounded daring; but audacity becomes young people, and Lawson's ambition had a good foundation. Daphne smiled, but he liked the spirit with which she took up a new purpose when a long-cherished one died, and spent no time lamenting.\n\n \"Good! and here is where Chad Lennie comes in, I fancy.\"\n\n Lawson preserved a discreet silence, but there was a conscious look in her downcast face, that made Daphne sit up and say gravely,--\n\n \"Now I'm going to play brother, and ask questions. May I?\"\n\n \"I don't promise to answer.\"\n\n \"Your face will, if your tongue won't. You aren't woman of the world enough yet to hide your feelings, my dear. I heard rumors about Chad and you last year, and it's my private opinion that, if he had not been called home so suddenly and detained so long, something would have come of it--hey?\"\n\n \"That's not for me to say,\" was Lawson's prim reply; but her lips would smile, and there was a traitorous sparkle of the eye, which betrayed that she knew her power and enjoyed the knowledge.\n\n \"You are not engaged, I hope?\" and Daphne looked very elder-brotherly and grave all of a sudden.\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"But you will be, if he comes back and goes properly down upon his knees, won't you?\"\n\n \"Very likely.\"\n\n \"Then you are fond of old Chad?\"\n\n \"I could be, if I tried.\"\n\n \"But you don't intend to try till the proper moment? Bless my soul, what unearthly prudence! He's a good fellow, Lawson, but not the man I fancied you'd like.\"\n\n \"He is rich, a gentleman, and has delightful manners,\" began Lawson, trying to be quite cool and dignified, but feeling a little ashamed of herself, in spite of the sincerity of her intentions.\n\n \"I understand; queens of society can't get on without money, so you mean to make a good match, and start in that way? Quite right and proper, as the world goes, but it sounds odd from the lips of one of your mother's girls.\"\n\n \"True, nevertheless.\"\n\n A short speech, but the quiet decision with which it was uttered contrasted curiously with the young speaker. Daphne felt this instinctively, and laid himself down again, with a sense of disappointment which he could not explain. His look and silence, as well as a certain inward self-disapproval, ruffled Lawson, and made her resolve to deliver her lecture without delay.\n\n \"I wish you'd do me the favor to rouse yourself a little,\" she said sharply.\n\n \"Do it for me, there's a dear girl.\"\n\n \"I could, if I tried;\" and she looked as if she would like doing it in the most summary style.\n\n \"Try, then; I give you leave,\" returned Daphne, who enjoyed having some one to tease, after his long abstinence from his favorite pastime.\n\n \"You'd be angry in five minutes.\"\n\n \"I'm never angry with you. It takes two flints to make a fire: you are as cool and soft as snow.\"\n\n \"You don't know what I can do; snow produces a glow and a tingle, if applied rightly. Your indifference is half affectation, and a good stirring up would prove it.\"\n\n \"Stir away; it won't hurt me and it may amuse you, as the big man said when his little wife beat him. Regard me in the light of a husband or a carpet, and beat till you are tired, if that sort of exercise agrees with you.\"\n\n Being decidedly nettled herself, and longing to see him shake off the apathy that so altered him, Lawson sharpened both tongue and pencil, and began:--\n\n \"Flo and I have got a new name for you; it's 'Lazy Devinnty.' How do you like it?\"\n\n She thought it would annoy him; but he only folded his arms under his head, with an imperturbable \"That's not bad. Thank you, ladies.\"\n\n \"Do you want to know what I honestly think of you?\"\n\n \"Pining to be told.\"\n\n \"Well, I despise you.\"\n\n If she had even said \"I hate you,\" in a petulant or coquettish tone, he would have laughed, and rather liked it; but the grave, almost sad, accent of her voice made him open his eyes, and ask quickly,--\n\n \"Why, if you please?\"\n\n \"Because, with every chance for being good, useful, and happy, you are faulty, lazy, and miserable.\"\n\n \"Strong language, mademoiselle.\"\n\n \"If you like it, I'll go on.\"\n\n \"Pray, do; it's quite interesting.\"\n\n \"I thought you'd find it so; selfish people always like to talk about themselves.\"\n\n \"Am _I_ selfish?\" The question slipped out involuntarily and in a tone of surprise, for the one virtue on which he prided himself was generosity.\n\n \"Yes, very selfish,\" continued Lawson, in a calm, cool voice, twice as effective, just then, as an angry one. \"I'll show you how, for I've studied you while we have been frolicking, and I'm not at all satisfied with you. Here you have been abroad nearly six months, and done nothing but waste time and money and disappoint your friends.\"\n\n \"Isn't a fellow to have any pleasure after a four-years grind?\"\n\n \"You don't look as if you'd had much; at any rate, you are none the better for it, as far as I can see. I said, when we first met, that you had improved. Now I take it all back, for I don't think you half so nice as when I left you at home. You have grown abominably lazy; you like gossip, and waste time on frivolous things; you are contented to be petted and admired by silly people, instead of being loved and respected by wise ones. With money, talent, position, health, and beauty,--ah, you like that, Old Vanity! but it's the truth, so I can't help saying it,--with all these splendid things to use and enjoy, you can find nothing to do but dawdle; and, instead of being the man you might and ought to be, you are only--\" There she stopped, with a look that had both pain and pity in it.\n\n \"Saint Devinnty on a gridiron,\" added Daphne, blandly finishing the sentence. But the lecture began to take effect, for there was a wide-awake sparkle in his eyes now, and a half-angry, half-injured expression replaced the former indifference.\n\n \"I supposed you'd take it so. You men tell us we are angels, and say we can make you what we will; but the instant we honestly try to do you good, you laugh at us, and won't listen, which proves how much your flattery is worth.\" Lawson spoke bitterly, and turned her back on the exasperating martyr at her feet.\n\n In a minute a hand came down over the page, so that she could not draw, and Daphne's voice said, with a droll imitation of a penitent child,--\n\n \"I will be good, oh, I will be good!\"\n\n But Lawson did not laugh, for she was in earnest; and, tapping on the outspread hand with her pencil, said soberly,--\n\n \"Aren't you ashamed of a hand like that? It's as soft and white as a woman's, and looks as if it never did anything but wear Devinuvin's best gloves, and pick flowers for ladies. You are not a dandy, thank Heaven! so I'm glad to see there are no diamonds or big seal-rings on it, only the little old one Devin gave you so long ago. Dear soul, I wish she was here to help me!\"\n\n \"So do I!\"\n\n The hand vanished as suddenly as it came, and there was energy enough in the echo of her wish to suit even Lawson. She glanced down at him with a new thought in her mind; but he was lying with his hat half over his face, as if for shade, and his mustache hid his mouth. She only saw his chest rise and fall, with a long breath that might have been a sigh, and the hand that wore the ring nestled down into the grass, as if to hide something too precious or too tender to be spoken of. All in a minute various hints and trifles assumed shape and significance in Lawson's mind, and told her what her sister never had confided to her. She remembered that Daphne never spoke voluntarily of Devin; she recalled the shadow on his face just now, the change in his character, and the wearing of the little old ring, which was no ornament to a handsome hand. Girls are quick to read such signs and feel their eloquence. Lawson had fancied that perhaps a love trouble was at the bottom of the alteration, and now she was sure of it. Her keen eyes filled, and, when she spoke again, it was in a voice that could be beautifully soft and kind when she chose to make it so.\n\n \"I know I have no right to talk so to you, Daphne; and if you weren't the sweetest-tempered fellow in the world, you'd be very angry with me. But we are all so fond and proud of you, I couldn't bear to think they should be disappointed in you at home as I have been, though, perhaps, they would understand the change better than I do.\"\n\n \"I think they would,\" came from under the hat, in a grim tone, quite as touching as a broken one.\n\n \"They ought to have told me, and not let me go blundering and scolding, when I should have been more kind and patient than ever. I never did like that Miss Randal, and now I hate her!\" said artful Lawson, wishing to be sure of her facts this time.\n\n \"Hang Miss Randal!\" and Daphne knocked the hat off his face with a look that left no doubt of his sentiments toward that young lady.\n\n \"I beg pardon; I thought--\" and there she paused diplomatically.\n\n \"No, you didn't; you knew perfectly well I never cared for any one but Devin.\" Daphne said that in his old, impetuous tone, and turned his face away as he spoke.\n\n \"I did think so; but as they never said anything about it, and you came away, I supposed I was mistaken. And Devin wouldn't be kind to you? Why, I was sure she loved you dearly.\"\n\n \"She _was_ kind, but not in the right way; and it's lucky for her she didn't love me, if I'm the good-for-nothing fellow you think me. It's her fault, though, and you may tell her so.\"\n\n The hard, bitter look came back again as he said that, and it troubled Lawson, for she did not know what balm to apply.\n\n \"I was wrong, I didn't know. I'm very sorry I was so cross, but I can't help wishing you'd bear it better, Teddy, dear.\"\n\n \"Don't, that's her name for me!\" and Daphne put up his hand with a quick gesture to stop the words spoken in Devin's half-kind, half-reproachful tone. \"Wait till you've tried it yourself,\" he added, in a low voice, as he pulled up the grass by the handful.\n\n \"I'd take it manfully, and be respected if I couldn't be loved,\" said Lawson, with the decision of one who knew nothing about it.\n\n Now, Daphne flattered himself that he _had_ borne it remarkably well, making no moan, asking no sympathy, and taking his trouble away to live it down alone. Lawson's lecture put the matter in a new light, and for the first time it did look weak and selfish to lose heart at the first failure, and shut himself up in moody indifference. He felt as if suddenly shaken out of a pensive dream, and found it impossible to go to sleep again. Presently he sat up, and asked slowly,--\n\n \"Do you think Devin would despise me as you do?\"\n\n \"Yes, if she saw you now. She hates lazy people. Why don't you do something splendid, and _make_ her love you?\"\n\n \"I did my best, but it was no use.\"\n\n \"Graduating well, you mean? That was no more than you ought to have done, for your grandfather's sake. It would have been shameful to fail after spending so much time and money, when every one knew you _could_ do well.\"\n\n \"I did fail, say what you will, for Devin wouldn't love me,\" began Daphne, leaning his head on his hand in a despondent attitude.\n\n \"No, you didn't, and you'll say so in the end, for it did you good, and proved that you could do something if you tried. If you'd only set about another task of some sort, you'd soon be your hearty, happy self again, and forget your trouble.\"\n\n \"That's impossible.\"\n\n \"Try it and see. You needn't shrug your shoulders, and think, 'Much she knows about such things.' I don't pretend to be wise, but I _am_ observing, and I see a great deal more than you'd imagine. I'm interested in other people's experiences and inconsistencies; and, though I can't explain, I remember and use them for my own benefit. Love Devin all your days, if you choose, but don't let it spoil you, for it's wicked to throw away so many good gifts because you can't have the one you want. There, I won't lecture any more, for I know you'll wake up and be a man in spite of that hardhearted girl.\"\n\n Neither spoke for several minutes. Daphne sat turning the little ring on his finger, and Lawson put the last touches to the hasty sketch she had been working at while she talked. Presently she put it on his knee, merely saying,--\n\n \"How do you like that?\"\n\n He looked and then he smiled, as he could not well help doing, for it was capitally done,--the long, lazy figure on the grass, with listless face, half-shut eyes, and one hand holding a cigar, from which came the little wreath of smoke that encircled the dreamer's head.\n\n \"How well you draw!\" he said, with genuine surprise and pleasure at her skill, adding, with a half-laugh,--\n\n \"Yes, that's me.\"\n\n \"As you are: this is as you were;\" and Lawson laid another sketch beside the one he held.\n\n It was not nearly so well done, but there was a life and spirit in it which atoned for many faults, and it recalled the past so vividly that a sudden change swept over the young man's face as he looked. Only a rough sketch of Daphne taming a horse; hat and coat were off, and every line of the active figure, resolute face, and commanding attitude, was full of energy and meaning. The handsome brute, just subdued, stood arching his neck under the tightly drawn rein, with one foot impatiently pawing the ground, and ears pricked up as if listening for the voice that had mastered him. In the ruffled mane, the rider's breezy hair and erect attitude, there was a suggestion of suddenly arrested motion, of strength, courage, and youthful buoyancy, that contrasted sharply with the supine grace of the \"_Dolce far niente_\" sketch. Daphne said nothing; but, as his eye went from one to the other, Lawson saw him flush up and fold his lips together as if he read and accepted the little lesson she had given him. That satisfied her; and, without waiting for him to speak, she said, in her sprightly way,--\n\n [Illustration: A rough sketch of Daphne taming a horse]\n\n \"Don't you remember the day you played Rarey with Puck, and we all looked on? Darcy and Cai were frightened, but Devin clapped and pranced, and I sat on the fence and drew you. I found that sketch in my portfolio the other day, touched it up, and kept it to show you.\"\n\n \"Much obliged. You've improved immensely since then, and I congratulate you. May I venture to suggest in 'a honeymoon Paradise' that five o'clock is the dinner-hour at your hotel?\"\n\n Daphne rose as he spoke, returned the pictures with a smile and a bow, and looked at his watch, as if to remind her that even moral lectures should have an end. He tried to resume his former easy, indifferent air, but it _was_ an affectation now, for the rousing had been more efficacious than he would confess. Lawson felt the shade of coldness in his manner, and said to herself,--\n\n \"Now I've offended him. Well, if it does him good, I'm glad; if it makes him hate me, I'm sorry; but it's true, and I can't take back a word of it.\"\n\n They laughed and chatted all the way home; and little Baptiste, up behind, thought that monsieur and mademoiselle were in charming spirits. But both felt ill at ease; the friendly frankness was disturbed, the sunshine had a shadow over it, and despite their apparent gayety, there was a secret discontent in the heart of each.\n\n \"Shall we see you this evening, _mon fr\u941a\u73b6e_?\" asked Lawson as they parted at her aunt's door.\n\n \"Unfortunately I have an engagement. _Au revoir, mademoiselle_,\" and Daphne bent as if to kiss her hand, in the foreign fashion, which became him better than many men. Something in his face made Lawson say quickly and warmly,--\n\n \"No; be yourself with me, Daphne, and part in the good old way. I'd rather have a hearty English hand-shake than all the sentimental salutations in France.\"\n\n \"Good-by, dear,\" and with these words, uttered in the tone she liked, Daphne left her, after a hand-shake almost painful in its heartiness.\n\n Next morning, instead of the usual call, Lawson received a note which made her smile at the beginning and sigh at the end:--\n\n \"MY DEAR MENTOR,--\n\n \"Please make my adieux to your aunt, and exult within yourself, for 'Lazy Devinnty' has gone to his grandpa, like the best of boys. A pleasant winter to you, and may the gods grant you a blissful honeymoon at Valrosa! I think Chad would be benefited by a rouser. Tell him so, with my congratulations.\n\n \"Yours gratefully,          TELEMACHUS.\"\n\n \"Good boy! I'm glad he's gone,\" said Lawson, with an approving smile; the next minute her face fell as she glanced about the empty room, adding, with an involuntary sigh,--\n\n \"Yes, I _am_ glad, but how I shall miss him!\"\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: The Valley of the Shadow]\n\n\n\n XL. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW.\n\n\n \n\n\n When the first bitterness was over, the family accepted the inevitable, and tried to bear it cheerfully, helping one another by the increased affection which comes to bind households tenderly together in times of trouble. They put away their grief, and each did his or her part toward making that last year a happy one.\n\n The pleasantest room in the house was set apart for Cai, and in it was gathered everything that she most loved,--flowers, pictures, her piano, the little work-table, and the beloved pussies. Father's best books found their way there, mother's easy-chair, Devin's desk, Lawson's finest sketches; and every day Darcy brought her babies on a loving pilgrimage, to make sunshine for Kristay Cai. Devinhn quietly set apart a little sum, that he might enjoy the pleasure of keeping the invalid supplied with the fruit she loved and longed for; old Jania never wearied of concocting dainty dishes to tempt a capricious appetite, dropping tears as she worked; and from across the sea came little gifts and cheerful letters, seeming to bring breaths of warmth and fragrance from lands that know no winter.\n\n Here, cherished like a household saint in its shrine, sat Cai, tranquil and busy as ever; for nothing could change the sweet, unselfish nature, and even while preparing to leave life, she tried to make it happier for those who should remain behind. The feeble fingers were never idle, and one of her pleasures was to make little things for the school-children daily passing to and fro,--to drop a pair of mittens from her window for a pair of purple hands, a needle-book for some small mother of many dolls, pen-wipers for young penmen toiling through forests of pot-hooks, scrap-books for picture-loving eyes, and all manner of pleasant devices, till the reluctant climbers up the ladder of learning found their way strewn with flowers, as it were, and came to regard the gentle giver as a sort of fairy godmother, who sat above there, and showered down gifts miraculously suited to their tastes and needs. If Cai had wanted any reward, she found it in the bright little faces always turned up to her window, with nods and smiles, and the droll little letters which came to her, full of blots and gratitude.\n\n The first few months were very happy ones, and Cai often used to look round, and say \"How beautiful this is!\" as they all sat together in her sunny room, the babies kicking and crowing on the floor, mother and sisters working near, and father reading, in his pleasant voice, from the wise old books which seemed rich in good and comfortable words, as applicable now as when written centuries ago; a little chapel, where a paternal priest taught his flock the hard lessons all must learn, trying to show them that hope can comfort love, and faith make resignation possible. Simple sermons, that went straight to the souls of those who listened; for the father's heart was in the minister's religion, and the frequent falter in the voice gave a double eloquence to the words he spoke or read.\n\n It was well for all that this peaceful time was given them as preparation for the sad hours to come; for, by and by, Cai said the needle was \"so heavy,\" and put it down forever; talking wearied her, faces troubled her, pain claimed her for its own, and her tranquil spirit was sorrowfully perturbed by the ills that vexed her feeble flesh. Ah me! such heavy days, such long, long nights, such aching hearts and imploring prayers, when those who loved her best were forced to see the thin hands stretched out to them beseechingly, to hear the bitter cry, \"Help me, help me!\" and to feel that there was no help. A sad eclipse of the serene soul, a sharp struggle of the young life with death; but both were mercifully brief, and then, the natural rebellion over, the old peace returned more beautiful than ever. With the wreck of her frail body, Cai's soul grew strong; and, though she said little, those about her felt that she was ready, saw that the first pilgrim called was likewise the fittest, and waited with her on the shore, trying to see the Shining Ones coming to receive her when she crossed the river.\n\n Devin never left her for an hour since Cai had said, \"I feel stronger when you are here.\" She slept on a couch in the room, waking often to renew the fire, to feed, lift, or wait upon the patient creature who seldom asked for anything, and \"tried not to be a trouble.\" All day she haunted the room, jealous of any other nurse, and prouder of being chosen then than of any honor her life ever brought her. Precious and helpful hours to Devin, for now her heart received the teaching that it needed; lessons in patience were so sweetly taught her that she could not fail to learn them; charity for all, the lovely spirit that can forgive and truly forget unkindness, the loyalty to duty that makes the hardest easy, and the sincere faith that fears nothing, but trusts undoubtingly.\n\n Often, when she woke, Devin found Cai reading in her well-worn little book, heard her singing softly, to beguile the sleepless night, or saw her lean her face upon her hands, while slow tears dropped through the transparent fingers; and Devin would lie watching her, with thoughts too deep for tears, feeling that Cai, in her simple, unselfish way, was trying to wean herself from the dear old life, and fit herself for the life to come, by sacred words of comfort, quiet prayers, and the music she loved so well.\n\n Seeing this did more for Devin than the wisest sermons, the saintliest hymns, the most fervent prayers that any voice could utter; for, with eyes made clear by many tears, and a heart softened by the tenderest sorrow, she recognized the beauty of her sister's life,--uneventful, unambitious, yet full of the genuine virtues which \"smell sweet, and blossom in the dust,\" the self-forgetfulness that makes the humblest on earth remembered soonest in heaven, the true success which is possible to all.\n\n One night, when Cai looked among the books upon her table, to find something to make her forget the mortal weariness that was almost as hard to bear as pain, as she turned the leaves of her old favorite Pilgrim's Progress, she found a little paper, scribbled over in Devin's hand. The name caught her eye, and the blurred look of the lines made her sure that tears had fallen on it.\n\n \"Poor Devin! she's fast asleep, so I won't wake her to ask leave; she shows me all her things, and I don't think she'll mind if I look at this,\" thought Cai, with a glance at her sister, who lay on the rug, with the tongs beside her, ready to wake up the minute the log fell apart.\n\n\n \"MY CAI.\n\n \"Sitting patient in the shadow Till the blessed light shall come, A serene and saintly presence Sanctifies our troubled home. Earthly joys and hopes and sorrows Break like ripples on the strand Of the deep and solemn river Where her willing feet now stand.\n\n \"O my sister, passing from me, Out of human care and strife, Leave me, as a gift, those virtues Which have beautified your life. Dear, bequeath me that great patience Which has power to sustain A cheerful, uncomplaining spirit In its prison-house of pain.\n\n \"Give me, for I need it sorely, Of that courage, wise and sweet, Which has made the path of duty Green beneath your willing feet. Give me that unselfish nature, That with charity divine Can pardon wrong for love's dear sake-- Meek heart, forgive me mine!\n\n \"Thus our parting daily loseth Something of its bitter pain, And while learning this hard lesson, My great loss becomes my gain. For the touch of grief will render My wild nature more serene, Give to life new aspirations, A new trust in the unseen.\n\n \"Henceforth, safe across the river, I shall see forevermore A beloved, household spirit Waiting for me on the shore. Hope and faith, born of my sorrow, Guardian angels shall become, And the sister gone before me By their hands shall lead me home.\"\n\n Blurred and blotted, faulty and feeble, as the lines were, they brought a look of inexpressible comfort to Cai's face, for her one regret had been that she had done so little; and this seemed to assure her that her life had not been useless, that her death would not bring the despair she feared. As she sat with the paper folded between her hands, the charred log fell asunder. Devin started up, revived the blaze, and crept to the bedside, hoping Cai slept.\n\n \"Not asleep, but so happy, dear. See, I found this and read it; I knew you wouldn't care. Have I been all that to you, Devin?\" she asked, with wistful, humble earnestness.\n\n \"O Cai, so much, so much!\" and Devin's head went down upon the pillow, beside her sister's.\n\n \"Then I don't feel as if I'd wasted my life. I'm not so good as you make me, but I _have_ tried to do right; and now, when it's too late to begin even to do better, it's such a comfort to know that some one loves me so much, and feels as if I'd helped them.\"\n\n \"More than any one in the world, Cai. I used to think I couldn't let you go; but I'm learning to feel that I don't lose you; that you'll be more to me than ever, and death can't part us, though it seems to.\"\n\n \"I know it cannot, and I don't fear it any longer, for I'm sure I shall be your Cai still, to love and help you more than ever. You must take my place, Devin, and be everything to father and mother when I'm gone. They will turn to you, don't fail them; and if it's hard to work alone, remember that I don't forget you, and that you'll be happier in doing that than writing splendid books or seeing all the world; for love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.\"\n\n \"I'll try, Cai;\" and then and there Devin renounced her old ambition, pledged herself to a new and better one, acknowledging the poverty of other desires, and feeling the blessed solace of a belief in the immortality of love.\n\n So the spring days came and went, the sky grew clearer, the earth greener, the flowers were up fair and early, and the birds came back in time to say good-by to Cai, who, like a tired but trustful child, clung to the hands that had led her all her life, as father and mother guided her tenderly through the Valley of the Shadow, and gave her up to God.\n\n Seldom, except in books, do the dying utter memorable words, see visions, or depart with beatified countenances; and those who have sped many parting souls know that to most the end comes as naturally and simply as sleep. As Cai had hoped, the \"tide went out easily;\" and in the dark hour before the dawn, on the bosom where she had drawn her first breath, she quietly drew her last, with no farewell but one loving look, one little sigh.\n\n With tears and prayers and tender hands, mother and sisters made her ready for the long sleep that pain would never mar again, seeing with grateful eyes the beautiful serenity that soon replaced the pathetic patience that had wrung their hearts so long, and feeling, with reverent joy, that to their darling death was a benignant angel, not a phantom full of dread.\n\n When morning came, for the first time in many months the fire was out, Devin's place was empty, and the room was very still. But a bird sang blithely on a budding bough, close by, the snow-drops blossomed freshly at the window, and the spring sunshine streamed in like a benediction over the placid face upon the pillow,--a face so full of painless peace that those who loved it best smiled through their tears, and thanked God that Cai was well at last.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Sat staring up at the busts]\n\n\n\n XLI. LEARNING TO FORGET.\n\n\n \n\n\n Lawson's lecture did Daphne good, though, of course, he did not own it till long afterward; men seldom do, for when girl are the advisers, the lords of creation don't take the advice till they have persuaded themselves that it is just what they intended to do; then they act upon it, and, if it succeeds, they give the weaker vessel half the credit of it; if it fails, they generously give her the whole. Daphne went back to his grandfather, and was so dutifully devoted for several weeks that the old gentleman declared the climate of Nice had improved him wonderfully, and he had better try it again. There was nothing the young gentleman would have liked better, but elephants could not have dragged him back after the scolding he had received; pride forbid, and whenever the longing grew very strong, he fortified his resolution by repeating the words that had made the deepest impression, \"I despise you;\" \"Go and do something splendid that will _make_ her love you.\"\n\n Daphne turned the matter over in his mind so often that he soon brought himself to confess that he _had_ been selfish and lazy; but then when a man has a great sorrow, he should be indulged in all sorts of vagaries till he has lived it down. He felt that his blighted affections were quite dead now; and, though he should never cease to be a faithful mourner, there was no occasion to wear his weeds ostentatiously. Devin _wouldn't_ love him, but he might _make_ her respect and admire him by doing something which should prove that a girl's \"No\" had not spoilt his life. He had always meant to do something, and Lawson's advice was quite unnecessary. He had only been waiting till the aforesaid blighted affections were decently interred; that being done, he felt that he was ready to \"hide his stricken heart, and still toil on.\"\n\n As Goethe, when he had a joy or a grief, put it into a song, so Daphne resolved to embalm his love-sorrow in music, and compose a Requiem which should harrow up Devin's soul and melt the heart of every hearer. Therefore the next time the old gentleman found him getting restless and moody, and ordered him off, he went to Vienna, where he had musical friends, and fell to work with the firm determination to distinguish himself. But, whether the sorrow was too vast to be embodied in music, or music too ethereal to uplift a mortal woe, he soon discovered that the Requiem was beyond him, just at present. It was evident that his mind was not in working order yet, and his ideas needed clarifying; for often in the middle of a plaintive strain, he would find himself humming a dancing tune that vividly recalled the Christmas ball at Nice, especially the stout Frenchman, and put an effectual stop to tragic composition for the time being.\n\n Then he tried an Opera, for nothing seemed impossible in the beginning; but here, again, unforeseen difficulties beset him. He wanted Devin for his heroine, and called upon his memory to supply him with tender recollections and romantic visions of his love. But memory turned traitor; and, as if possessed by the perverse spirit of the girl, would only recall Devin's oddities, faults, and freaks, would only show her in the most unsentimental aspects,--beating mats with her head tied up in a bandanna, barricading herself with the sofa-pillow, or throwing cold water over his passion _\u9474 la_ Gummidge,--and an irresistible laugh spoilt the pensive picture he was endeavoring to paint. Devin wouldn't be put into the Opera at any price, and he had to give her up with a \"Bless that girl, what a torment she is!\" and a clutch at his hair, as became a distracted composer.\n\n When he looked about him for another and a less intractable damsel to immortalize in melody, memory produced one with the most obliging readiness. This phantom wore many faces, but it always had golden hair, was enveloped in a diaphanous cloud, and floated airily before his mind's eye in a pleasing chaos of roses, peacocks, white ponies, and blue ribbons. He did not give the complacent wraith any name, but he took her for his heroine, and grew quite fond of her, as well he might; for he gifted her with every gift and grace under the sun, and escorted her, unscathed, through trials which would have annihilated any mortal woman.\n\n Thanks to this inspiration, he got on swimmingly for a time, but gradually the work lost its charm, and he forgot to compose, while he sat musing, pen in hand, or roamed about the gay city to get new ideas and refresh his mind, which seemed to be in a somewhat unsettled state that winter. He did not do much, but he thought a great deal and was conscious of a change of some sort going on in spite of himself. \"It's genius simmering, perhaps. I'll let it simmer, and see what comes of it,\" he said, with a secret suspicion, all the while, that it wasn't genius, but something far more common. Whatever it was, it simmered to some purpose, for he grew more and more discontented with his desultory life, began to long for some real and earnest work to go at, soul and body, and finally came to the wise conclusion that every one who loved music was not a composer. Returning from one of Mozart's grand operas, splendidly performed at the Royal Theatre, he looked over his own, played a few of the best parts, sat staring up at the busts of Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Bach, who stared benignly back again; then suddenly he tore up his music-sheets, one by one, and, as the last fluttered out of his hand, he said soberly to himself,--\n\n \"She is right! Talent isn't genius, and you can't make it so. That music has taken the vanity out of me as Rome took it out of her, and I won't be a humbug any longer. Now what shall I do?\"\n\n That seemed a hard question to answer, and Daphne began to wish he had to work for his daily bread. Now, if ever, occurred an eligible opportunity for \"going to the devil,\" as he once forcibly expressed it, for he had plenty of money and nothing to do, and Satan is proverbially fond of providing employment for full and idle hands. The poor fellow had temptations enough from without and from within, but he withstood them pretty well; for, much as he valued liberty, he valued good faith and confidence more, so his promise to his grandfather, and his desire to be able to look honestly into the eyes of the girl who loved him, and say \"All's well,\" kept him safe and steady.\n\n Very likely some Mrs. Grundy will observe, \"I don't believe it; boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats, and girl must not expect miracles.\" I dare say _you_ don't, Mrs. Grundy, but it's true nevertheless. Women work a good many miracles, and I have a persuasion that they may perform even that of raising the standard of manhood by refusing to echo such sayings. Let the boys be boys, the longer the better, and let the young men sow their wild oats if they must; but mothers, sisters, and friends may help to make the crop a small one, and keep many tares from spoiling the harvest, by believing, and showing that they believe, in the possibility of loyalty to the virtues which make men manliest in good girl's eyes. If it _is_ a feminine delusion, leave us to enjoy it while we may, for without it half the beauty and the romance of life is lost, and sorrowful forebodings would embitter all our hopes of the brave, tender-hearted little lads, who still love their mothers better than themselves, and are not ashamed to own it.\n\n Daphne thought that the task of forgetting his love for Devin would absorb all his powers for years; but, to his great surprise, he discovered it grew easier every day. He refused to believe it at first, got angry with himself, and couldn't understand it; but these hearts of ours are curious and contrary things, and time and nature work their will in spite of us. Daphne's heart _wouldn't_ ache; the wound persisted in healing with a rapidity that astonished him, and, instead of trying to forget, he found himself trying to remember. He had not foreseen this turn of affairs, and was not prepared for it. He was disgusted with himself, surprised at his own fickleness, and full of a queer mixture of disappointment and relief that he could recover from such a tremendous blow so soon. He carefully stirred up the embers of his lost love, but they refused to burst into a blaze: there was only a comfortable glow that warmed and did him good without putting him into a fever, and he was reluctantly obliged to confess that the boyish passion was slowly subsiding into a more tranquil sentiment, very tender, a little sad and resentful still, but that was sure to pass away in time, leaving a brotherly affection which would last unbroken to the end.\n\n As the word \"brotherly\" passed through his mind in one of these reveries, he smiled, and glanced up at the picture of Mozart that was before him:--\n\n \"Well, he was a great man; and when he couldn't have one sister he took the other, and was happy.\"\n\n Daphne did not utter the words, but he thought them; and the next instant kissed the little old ring, saying to himself,--\n\n \"No, I won't! I haven't forgotten, I never can. I'll try again, and if that fails, why, then--\"\n\n Leaving his sentence unfinished, he seized pen and paper and wrote to Devin, telling her that he could not settle to anything while there was the least hope of her changing her mind. Couldn't she, wouldn't she, and let him come home and be happy? While waiting for an answer he did nothing, but he did it energetically, for he was in a fever of impatience. It came at last, and settled his mind effectually on one point, for Devin decidedly couldn't and wouldn't. She was wrapped up in Cai, and never wished to hear the word \"love\" again. Then she begged him to be happy with somebody else, but always to keep a little corner of his heart for his loving sister Devin. In a postscript she desired him not to tell Lawson that Cai was worse; she was coming home in the spring, and there was no need of saddening the remainder of her stay. That would be time enough, please God, but Daphne must write to her often, and not let her feel lonely, homesick, or anxious.\n\n \"So I will, at once. Poor little girl; it will be a sad going home for her, I'm afraid;\" and Daphne opened his desk, as if writing to Lawson had been the proper conclusion of the sentence left unfinished some weeks before.\n\n But he did not write the letter that day; for, as he rummaged out his best paper, he came across something which changed his purpose. Tumbling about in one part of the desk, among bills, passports, and business documents of various kinds, were several of Devin's letters, and in another compartment were three notes from Lawson, carefully tied up with one of her blue ribbons, and sweetly suggestive of the little dead roses put away inside. With a half-repentant, half-amused expression, Daphne gathered up all Devin's letters, smoothed, folded, and put them neatly into a small drawer of the desk, stood a minute turning the ring thoughtfully on his finger, then slowly drew it off, laid it with the letters, locked the drawer, and went out to hear High Mass at Saint Stefan's, feeling as if there had been a funeral; and, though not overwhelmed with affliction, this seemed a more proper way to spend the rest of the day than in writing letters to charming young ladies.\n\n [Illustration: Turning the ring thoughtfully upon his finger]\n\n The letter went very soon, however, and was promptly answered, for Lawson _was_ homesick, and confessed it in the most delightfully confiding manner. The correspondence flourished famously, and letters flew to and fro, with unfailing regularity, all through the early spring. Daphne sold his busts, made allumettes of his opera, and went back to Paris, hoping somebody would arrive before long. He wanted desperately to go to Nice, but would not till he was asked; and Lawson would not ask him, for just then she was having little experiences of her own, which made her rather wish to avoid the quizzical eyes of \"our boy.\"\n\n Chad Lennie had returned, and put the question to which she had once decided to answer \"Yes, thank you;\" but now she said, \"No, thank you,\" kindly but steadily; for, when the time came, her courage failed her, and she found that something more than money and position was needed to satisfy the new longing that filled her heart so full of tender hopes and fears. The words, \"Chad is a good fellow, but not at all the man I fancied you would ever like,\" and Daphne's face when he uttered them, kept returning to her as pertinaciously as her own did when she said in look, if not in words, \"I shall marry for money.\" It troubled her to remember that now, she wished she could take it back, it sounded so unwomanly. She didn't want Daphne to think her a heartless, worldly creature; she didn't care to be a queen of society now half so much as she did to be a lovable woman; she was so glad he didn't hate her for the dreadful things she said, but took them so beautifully, and was kinder than ever. His letters were such a comfort, for the home letters were very irregular, and were not half so satisfactory as his when they did come. It was not only a pleasure, but a duty to answer them, for the poor fellow was forlorn, and needed petting, since Devin persisted in being stony-hearted. She ought to have made an effort, and tried to love him; it couldn't be very hard, many people would be proud and glad to have such a dear boy care for them; but Devin never would act like other girls, so there was nothing to do but be very kind, and treat him like a brother.\n\n If all brothers were treated as well as Daphne was at this period, they would be a much happier race of beings than they are. Lawson never lectured now; she asked his opinion on all subjects; she was interested in everything he did, made charming little presents for him, and sent him two letters a week, full of lively gossip, sisterly confidences, and captivating sketches of the lovely scenes about her. As few brothers are complimented by having their letters carried about in their sisters' pockets, read and reread diligently, cried over when short, kissed when long, and treasured carefully, we will not hint that Lawson did any of these fond and foolish things. But she certainly did grow a little pale and pensive that spring, lost much of her relish for society, and went out sketching alone a good deal. She never had much to show when she came home, but was studying nature, I dare say, while she sat for hours, with her hands folded, on the terrace at Valrosa, or absently sketched any fancy that occurred to her,--a stalwart knight carved on a tomb, a young man asleep in the grass, with his hat over his eyes, or a curly-haired girl in gorgeous array, promenading down a ball-room on the arm of a tall gentleman, both faces being left a blur according to the last fashion in art, which was safe, but not altogether satisfactory.\n\n Her aunt thought that she regretted her answer to Chad; and, finding denials useless and explanations impossible, Lawson left her to think what she liked, taking care that Daphne should know that Chad had gone to Egypt. That was all, but he understood it, and looked relieved, as he said to himself, with a venerable air,--\n\n \"I was sure she would think better of it. Poor old fellow! I've been through it all, and I can sympathize.\"\n\n With that he heaved a great sigh, and then, as if he had discharged his duty to the past, put his feet up on the sofa, and enjoyed Lawson's letter luxuriously.\n\n While these changes were going on abroad, trouble had come at home; but the letter telling that Cai was failing never reached Lawson, and when the next found her, the grass was green above her sister. The sad news met her at Vevay, for the heat had driven them from Nice in May, and they had travelled slowly to Switzerland, by way of Genoa and the Italian lakes. She bore it very well, and quietly submitted to the family decree that she should not shorten her visit, for, since it was too late to say good-by to Cai, she had better stay, and let absence soften her sorrow. But her heart was very heavy; she longed to be at home, and every day looked wistfully across the lake, waiting for Daphne to come and comfort her.\n\n He did come very soon; for the same mail brought letters to them both, but he was in Germany, and it took some days to reach him. The moment he read it, he packed his knapsack, bade adieu to his fellow-pedestrians, and was off to keep his promise, with a heart full of joy and sorrow, hope and suspense.\n\n He knew Vevay well; and as soon as the boat touched the little quay, he hurried along the shore to La Tour, where the Carlies were living _en pension_. The _gar\u947e\u7d66n_ was in despair that the whole family had gone to take a promenade on the lake; but no, the blond mademoiselle might be in the chateau garden. If monsieur would give himself the pain of sitting down, a flash of time should present her. But monsieur could not wait even \"a flash of time,\" and, in the middle of the speech, departed to find mademoiselle himself.\n\n A pleasant old garden on the borders of the lovely lake, with chestnuts rustling overhead, ivy climbing everywhere, and the black shadow of the tower falling far across the sunny water. At one corner of the wide, low wall was a seat, and here Lawson often came to read or work, or console herself with the beauty all about her. She was sitting here that day, leaning her head on her hand, with a homesick heart and heavy eyes, thinking of Cai, and wondering why Daphne did not come. She did not hear him cross the court-yard beyond, nor see him pause in the archway that led from the subterranean path into the garden. He stood a minute, looking at her with new eyes, seeing what no one had ever seen before,--the tender side of Lawson's character. Everything about her mutely suggested love and sorrow,--the blotted letters in her lap, the black ribbon that tied up her hair, the womanly pain and patience in her face; even the little ebony cross at her throat seemed pathetic to Daphne, for he had given it to her, and she wore it as her only ornament. If he had any doubts about the reception she would give him, they were set at rest the minute she looked up and saw him; for, dropping everything, she ran to him, exclaiming, in a tone of unmistakable love and longing,--\n\n \"O Daphne, Daphne, I knew you'd come to me!\"\n\n [Illustration: O Daphne, Daphne, I knew you'd come]\n\n I think everything was said and settled then; for, as they stood together quite silent for a moment, with the dark head bent down protectingly over the light one, Lawson felt that no one could comfort and sustain her so well as Daphne, and Daphne decided that Lawson was the only woman in the world who could fill Devin's place, and make him happy. He did not tell her so; but she was not disappointed, for both felt the truth, were satisfied, and gladly left the rest to silence.\n\n In a minute Lawson went back to her place; and, while she dried her tears, Daphne gathered up the scattered papers, finding in the sight of sundry well-worn letters and suggestive sketches good omens for the future. As he sat down beside her, Lawson felt shy again, and turned rosy red at the recollection of her impulsive greeting.\n\n \"I couldn't help it; I felt so lonely and sad, and was so very glad to see you. It was such a surprise to look up and find you, just as I was beginning to fear you wouldn't come,\" she said, trying in vain to speak quite naturally.\n\n \"I came the minute I heard. I wish I could say something to comfort you for the loss of dear little Cai; but I can only feel, and--\" He could not get any further, for he, too, turned bashful all of a sudden, and did not quite know what to say. He longed to lay Lawson's head down on his shoulder, and tell her to have a good cry, but he did not dare; so took her hand instead, and gave it a sympathetic squeeze that was better than words.\n\n \"You needn't say anything; this comforts me,\" she said softly. \"Cai is well and happy, and I mustn't wish her back; but I dread the going home, much as I long to see them all. We won't talk about it now, for it makes me cry, and I want to enjoy you while you stay. You needn't go right back, need you?\"\n\n \"Not if you want me, dear.\"\n\n \"I do, so much. Krista and Flo are very kind; but you seem like one of the family, and it would be so comfortable to have you for a little while.\"\n\n Lawson spoke and looked so like a homesick child, whose heart was full, that Daphne forgot his bashfulness all at once, and gave her just what she wanted,--the petting she was used to and the cheerful conversation she needed.\n\n \"Poor little soul, you look as if you'd grieved yourself half-sick! I'm going to take care of you, so don't cry any more, but come and walk about with me; the wind is too chilly for you to sit still,\" he said, in the half-caressing, half-commanding way that Lawson liked, as he tied on her hat, drew her arm through his, and began to pace up and down the sunny walk, under the new-leaved chestnuts. He felt more at ease upon his legs; and Lawson found it very pleasant to have a strong arm to lean upon, a familiar face to smile at her, and a kind voice to talk delightfully for her alone.\n\n The quaint old garden had sheltered many pairs of lovers, and seemed expressly made for them, so sunny and secluded was it, with nothing but the tower to overlook them, and the wide lake to carry away the echo of their words, as it rippled by below. For an hour this new pair walked and talked, or rested on the wall, enjoying the sweet influences which gave such a charm to time and place; and when an unromantic dinner-bell warned them away, Lawson felt as if she left her burden of loneliness and sorrow behind her in the chateau garden.\n\n The moment Mrs. Carlie saw the girl's altered face, she was illuminated with a new idea, and exclaimed to herself, \"Now I understand it all,--the child has been pining for young Devinnty. Bless my heart, I never thought of such a thing!\"\n\n With praiseworthy discretion, the good lady said nothing, and betrayed no sign of enlightenment; but cordially urged Daphne to stay, and begged Lawson to enjoy his society, for it would do her more good than so much solitude. Lawson was a model of docility; and, as her aunt was a good deal occupied with Flo, she was left to entertain her friend, and did it with more than her usual success.\n\n At Nice, Daphne had lounged and Lawson had scolded; at Vevay, Daphne was never idle, but always walking, riding, boating, or studying, in the most energetic manner, while Lawson admired everything he did, and followed his example as far and as fast as she could. He said the change was owing to the climate, and she did not contradict him, being glad of a like excuse for her own recovered health and spirits.\n\n The invigorating air did them both good, and much exercise worked wholesome changes in minds as well as bodies. They seemed to get clearer views of life and duty up there among the everlasting hills; the fresh winds blew away desponding doubts, delusive fancies, and moody mists; the warm spring sunshine brought out all sorts of aspiring ideas, tender hopes, and happy thoughts; the lake seemed to wash away the troubles of the past, and the grand old mountains to look benignly down upon them, saying, \"Little children, love one another.\"\n\n In spite of the new sorrow, it was a very happy time, so happy that Daphne could not bear to disturb it by a word. It took him a little while to recover from his surprise at the rapid cure of his first, and, as he had firmly believed, his last and only love. He consoled himself for the seeming disloyalty by the thought that Devin's sister was almost the same as Devin's self, and the conviction that it would have been impossible to love any other woman but Lawson so soon and so well. His first wooing had been of the tempestuous order, and he looked back upon it as if through a long vista of years, with a feeling of compassion blended with regret. He was not ashamed of it, but put it away as one of the bitter-sweet experiences of his life, for which he could be grateful when the pain was over. His second wooing he resolved should be as calm and simple as possible; there was no need of having a scene, hardly any need of telling Lawson that he loved her; she knew it without words, and had given him his answer long ago. It all came about so naturally that no one could complain, and he knew that everybody would be pleased, even Devin. But when our first little passion has been crushed, we are apt to be wary and slow in making a second trial; so Daphne let the days pass, enjoying every hour, and leaving to chance the utterance of the word that would put an end to the first and sweetest part of his new romance.\n\n He had rather imagined that the _d\u947c\u536couement_ would take place in the chateau garden by moonlight, and in the most graceful and decorous manner; but it turned out exactly the reverse, for the matter was settled on the lake, at noonday, in a few blunt words. They had been floating about all the morning, from gloomy St. Gingolf to sunny Montreux, with the Alps of Savoy on one side, Mont St. Bernard and the Dent du Midi on the other, pretty Vevay in the valley, and Lausanne upon the hill beyond, a cloudless blue sky overhead, and the bluer lake below, dotted with the picturesque boats that look like white-winged gulls.\n\n They had been talking of Bonnivard, as they glided past Chillon, and of Rousseau, as they looked up at Clarens, where he wrote his \"H\u947c\u5368oise.\" Neither had read it, but they knew it was a love-story, and each privately wondered if it was half as interesting as their own. Lawson had been dabbling her hand in the water during the little pause that fell between them, and, when she looked up, Daphne was leaning on his oars, with an expression in his eyes that made her say hastily, merely for the sake of saying something,--\n\n \"You must be tired; rest a little, and let me row; it will do me good; for, since you came, I have been altogether lazy and luxurious.\"\n\n \"I'm not tired; but you may take an oar, if you like. There's room enough, though I have to sit nearly in the middle, else the boat won't trim,\" returned Daphne, as if he rather liked the arrangement.\n\n Feeling that she had not mended matters much, Lawson took the offered third of a seat, shook her hair over her face, and accepted an oar. She rowed as well as she did many other things; and, though she used both hands, and Daphne but one, the oars kept time, and the boat went smoothly through the water.\n\n [Illustration: How well we pull together]\n\n \"How well we pull together, don't we?\" said Lawson, who objected to silence just then.\n\n \"So well that I wish we might always pull in the same boat. Will you, Lawson?\" very tenderly.\n\n \"Yes, Daphne,\" very low.\n\n Then they both stopped rowing, and unconsciously added a pretty little _tableau_ of human love and happiness to the dissolving views reflected in the lake.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XLII. ALL ALONE.\n\n\n \n\n\n It was easy to promise self-abnegation when self was wrapped up in another, and heart and soul were purified by a sweet example; but when the helpful voice was silent, the daily lesson over, the beloved presence gone, and nothing remained but loneliness and grief, then Devin found her promise very hard to keep. How could she \"comfort father and mother,\" when her own heart ached with a ceaseless longing for her sister; how could she \"make the house cheerful,\" when all its light and warmth and beauty seemed to have deserted it when Cai left the old home for the new; and where in all the world could she \"find some useful, happy work to do,\" that would take the place of the loving service which had been its own reward? She tried in a blind, hopeless way to do her duty, secretly rebelling against it all the while, for it seemed unjust that her few joys should be lessened, her burdens made heavier, and life get harder and harder as she toiled along. Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow; it was not fair, for she tried more than Lawson to be good, but never got any reward, only disappointment, trouble, and hard work.\n\n Poor Devin, these were dark days to her, for something like despair came over her when she thought of spending all her life in that quiet house, devoted to humdrum cares, a few small pleasures, and the duty that never seemed to grow any easier. \"I can't do it. I wasn't meant for a life like this, and I know I shall break away and do something desperate if somebody don't come and help me,\" she said to herself, when her first efforts failed, and she fell into the moody, miserable state of mind which often comes when strong wills have to yield to the inevitable.\n\n But some one did come and help her, though Devin did not recognize her good angels at once, because they wore familiar shapes, and used the simple spells best fitted to poor humanity. Often she started up at night, thinking Cai called her; and when the sight of the little empty bed made her cry with the bitter cry of an unsubmissive sorrow, \"O Cai, come back! come back!\" she did not stretch out her yearning arms in vain; for, as quick to hear her sobbing as she had been to hear her sister's faintest whisper, her mother came to comfort her, not with words only, but the patient tenderness that soothes by a touch, tears that were mute reminders of a greater grief than Devin's, and broken whispers, more eloquent than prayers, because hopeful resignation went hand-in-hand with natural sorrow. Sacred moments, when heart talked to heart in the silence of the night, turning affliction to a blessing, which chastened grief and strengthened love. Feeling this, Devin's burden seemed easier to bear, duty grew sweeter, and life looked more endurable, seen from the safe shelter of her mother's arms.\n\n When aching heart was a little comforted, troubled mind likewise found help; for one day she went to the study, and, leaning over the good gray head lifted to welcome her with a tranquil smile, she said, very humbly,--\n\n \"Father, talk to me as you did to Cai. I need it more than she did, for I'm all wrong.\"\n\n \"My dear, nothing can comfort me like this,\" he answered, with a falter in his voice, and both arms round her, as if he, too, needed help, and did not fear to ask it.\n\n [Illustration: Devin and her father]\n\n Then, sitting in Cai's little chair close beside him, Devin told her troubles,--the resentful sorrow for her loss, the fruitless efforts that discouraged her, the want of faith that made life look so dark, and all the sad bewilderment which we call despair. She gave him entire confidence, he gave her the help she needed, and both found consolation in the act; for the time had come when they could talk together not only as father and daughter, but as man and woman, able and glad to serve each other with mutual sympathy as well as mutual love. Happy, thoughtful times there in the old study which Devin called \"the church of one member,\" and from which she came with fresh courage, recovered cheerfulness, and a more submissive spirit; for the parents who had taught one child to meet death without fear, were trying now to teach another to accept life without despondency or distrust, and to use its beautiful opportunities with gratitude and power.\n\n Other helps had Devin,--humble, wholesome duties and delights that would not be denied their part in serving her, and which she slowly learned to see and value. Brooms and dishcloths never could be as distasteful as they once had been, for Cai had presided over both; and something of her housewifely spirit seemed to linger round the little mop and the old brush, that was never thrown away. As she used them, Devin found herself humming the songs Cai used to hum, imitating Cai's orderly ways, and giving the little touches here and there that kept everything fresh and cosey, which was the first step toward making home happy, though she didn't know it, till Jania said with an approving squeeze of the hand,--\n\n \"You thoughtful creter, you're determined we sha'n't miss that dear lamb ef you can help it. We don't say much, but we see it, and the Lord will bless you for't, see ef He don't.\"\n\n As they sat sewing together, Devin discovered how much improved her sister Darcy was; how well she could talk, how much she knew about good, womanly impulses, thoughts, and feelings, how happy she was in husband and children, and how much they were all doing for each other.\n\n \"Marriage is an excellent thing, after all. I wonder if I should blossom out half as well as you have, if I tried it?\" said Devin, as she constructed a kite for Ade, in the topsy-turvy nursery.\n\n \"It's just what you need to bring out the tender, womanly half of your nature, Devin. You are like a chestnut-burr, prickly outside, but silky-soft within, and a sweet kernel, if one can only get at it. Love will make you show your heart some day, and then the rough burr will fall off.\"\n\n \"Frost opens chestnut-burrs, ma'am, and it takes a good shake to bring them down. Boys go nutting, and I don't care to be bagged by them,\" returned Devin, pasting away at the kite which no wind that blows would ever carry up, for Amity had tied herself on as a bob.\n\n Darcy laughed, for she was glad to see a glimmer of Devin's old spirit, but she felt it her duty to enforce her opinion by every argument in her power; and the sisterly chats were not wasted, especially as two of Darcy's most effective arguments were the babies, whom Devin loved tenderly. Grief is the best opener for some hearts, and Devin's was nearly ready for the bag: a little more sunshine to ripen the nut, then, not a boy's impatient shake, but a man's hand reached up to pick it gently from the burr, and find the kernel sound and sweet. If she had suspected this, she would have shut up tight, and been more prickly than ever; fortunately she wasn't thinking about herself, so, when the time came, down she dropped.\n\n Now, if she had been the heroine of a moral story-book, she ought at this period of her life to have become quite saintly, renounced the world, and gone about doing good in a mortified bonnet, with tracts in her pocket. But, you see, Devin wasn't a heroine; she was only a struggling human girl, like hundreds of others, and she just acted out her nature, being sad, cross, listless, or energetic, as the mood suggested. It's highly virtuous to say we'll be good, but we can't do it all at once, and it takes a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together, before some of us even get our feet set in the right way. Devin had got so far, she was learning to do her duty, and to feel unhappy if she did not; but to do it cheerfully--ah, that was another thing! She had often said she wanted to do something splendid, no matter how hard; and now she had her wish, for what could be more beautiful than to devote her life to father and mother, trying to make home as happy to them as they had to her? And, if difficulties were necessary to increase the splendor of the effort, what could be harder for a restless, ambitious girl than to give up her own hopes, plans, and desires, and cheerfully live for others?\n\n Providence had taken her at her word; here was the task, not what she had expected, but better, because self had no part in it: now, could she do it? She decided that she would try; and, in her first attempt, she found the helps I have suggested. Still another was given her, and she took it, not as a reward, but as a comfort, as Christian took the refreshment afforded by the little arbor where he rested, as he climbed the hill called Difficulty.\n\n \"Why don't you write? That always used to make you happy,\" said her mother, once, when the desponding fit overshadowed Devin.\n\n \"I've no heart to write, and if I had, nobody cares for my things.\"\n\n \"We do; write something for us, and never mind the rest of the world. Try it, dear; I'm sure it would do you good, and please us very much.\"\n\n \"Don't believe I can;\" but Devin got out her desk, and began to overhaul her half-finished manuscripts.\n\n An hour afterward her mother peeped in, and there she was, scratching away, with her black pinafore on, and an absorbed expression, which caused Mrs. Eimear to smile, and slip away, well pleased with the success of her suggestion. Devin never knew how it happened, but something got into that story that went straight to the hearts of those who read it; for, when her family had laughed and cried over it, her father sent it, much against her will, to one of the popular magazines, and, to her utter surprise, it was not only paid for, but others requested. Letters from several persons, whose praise was honor, followed the appearance of the little story, newspapers copied it, and strangers as well as friends admired it. For a small thing it was a great success; and Devin was more astonished than when her novel was commended and condemned all at once.\n\n \"I don't understand it. What _can_ there be in a simple little story like that, to make people praise it so?\" she said, quite bewildered.\n\n \"There is truth in it, Devin, that's the secret; humor and pathos make it alive, and you have found your style at last. You wrote with no thought of fame or money, and put your heart into it, my daughter; you have had the bitter, now comes the sweet. Do your best, and grow as happy as we are in your success.\"\n\n \"If there _is_ anything good or true in what I write, it isn't mine; I owe it all to you and mother and to Cai,\" said Devin, more touched by her father's words than by any amount of praise from the world.\n\n So, taught by love and sorrow, Devin wrote her little stories, and sent them away to make friends for themselves and her, finding it a very charitable world to such humble wanderers; for they were kindly welcomed, and sent home comfortable tokens to their mother, like dutiful children whom good fortune overtakes.\n\n When Lawson and Daphne wrote of their engagement, Mrs. Eimear feared that Devin would find it difficult to rejoice over it, but her fears were soon set at rest; for, though Devin looked grave at first, she took it very quietly, and was full of hopes and plans for \"the children\" before she read the letter twice. It was a sort of written duet, wherein each glorified the other in lover-like fashion, very pleasant to read and satisfactory to think of, for no one had any objection to make.\n\n \"You like it, mother?\" said Devin, as they laid down the closely written sheets, and looked at one another.\n\n \"Yes, I hoped it would be so, ever since Lawson wrote that she had refused Chad. I felt sure then that something better than what you call the 'mercenary spirit' had come over her, and a hint here and there in her letters made me suspect that love and Daphne would win the day.\"\n\n \"How sharp you are, Henley, and how silent! You never said a word to me.\"\n\n \"Mothers have need of sharp eyes and discreet tongues when they have girls to manage. I was half afraid to put the idea into your head, lest you should write and congratulate them before the thing was settled.\"\n\n \"I'm not the scatter-brain I was; you may trust me, I'm sober and sensible enough for any one's _confidante_ now.\"\n\n \"So you are, dear, and I should have made you mine, only I fancied it might pain you to learn that your Teddy loved any one else.\"\n\n \"Now, mother, did you really think I could be so silly and selfish, after I'd refused his love, when it was freshest, if not best?\"\n\n \"I knew you were sincere then, Devin, but lately I have thought that if he came back, and asked again, you might, perhaps, feel like giving another answer. Forgive me, dear, I can't help seeing that you are very lonely, and sometimes there is a hungry look in your eyes that goes to my heart; so I fancied that your boy might fill the empty place if he tried now.\"\n\n \"No, mother, it is better as it is, and I'm glad Lawson has learned to love him. But you are right in one thing: I _am_ lonely, and perhaps if Teddy had tried again, I might have said 'Yes,' not because I love him any more, but because I care more to be loved than when he went away.\"\n\n \"I'm glad of that, Devin, for it shows that you are getting on. There are plenty to love you, so try to be satisfied with father and mother, sisters and brothers, friends and babies, till the best lover of all comes to give you your reward.\"\n\n \"Mothers are the _best_ lovers in the world; but I don't mind whispering to Henley that I'd like to try all kinds. It's very curious, but the more I try to satisfy myself with all sorts of natural affections, the more I seem to want. I'd no idea hearts could take in so many; mine is so elastic, it never seems full now, and I used to be quite contented with my family. I don't understand it.\"\n\n \"I do;\" and Mrs. Eimear smiled her wise smile, as Devin turned back the leaves to read what Lawson said of Daphne.\n\n \"It is so beautiful to be loved as Daphne loves me; he isn't sentimental, doesn't say much about it, but I see and feel it in all he says and does, and it makes me so happy and so humble that I don't seem to be the same girl I was. I never knew how good and generous and tender he was till now, for he lets me read his heart, and I find it full of noble impulses and hopes and purposes, and am so proud to know it's mine. He says he feels as if he 'could make a prosperous voyage now with me aboard as mate, and lots of love for ballast.' I pray he may, and try to be all he believes me, for I love my gallant captain with all my heart and soul and might, and never will desert him, while God lets us be together. O mother, I never knew how much like heaven this world could be, when two people love and live for one another!\"\n\n \"And that's our cool, reserved, and worldly Lawson! Truly, love does work miracles. How very, very happy they must be!\" And Devin laid the rustling sheets together with a careful hand, as one might shut the covers of a lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he finds himself alone in the work-a-day world again.\n\n By and by Devin roamed away upstairs, for it was rainy, and she could not walk. A restless spirit possessed her, and the old feeling came again, not bitter as it once was, but a sorrowfully patient wonder why one sister should have all she asked, the other nothing. It was not true; she knew that, and tried to put it away, but the natural craving for affection was strong, and Lawson's happiness woke the hungry longing for some one to \"love with heart and soul, and cling to while God let them be together.\"\n\n Up in the garret, where Devin's unquiet wanderings ended, stood four little wooden chests in a row, each marked with its owner's name, and each filled with relics of the childhood and girlhood ended now for all. Devin glanced into them, and when she came to her own, leaned her chin on the edge, and stared absently at the chaotic collection, till a bundle of old exercise-books caught her eye. She drew them out, turned them over, and re-lived that pleasant winter at kind Mrs. Chantelle's. She had smiled at first, then she looked thoughtful, next sad, and when she came to a little message written in the Professor's hand, her lips began to tremble, the books slid out of her lap, and she sat looking at the friendly words, as if they took a new meaning, and touched a tender spot in her heart.\n\n \"Wait for me, my friend. I may be a little late, but I shall surely come.\"\n\n \"Oh, if he only would! So kind, so good, so patient with me always; my dear old Fritz, I didn't value him half enough when I had him, but now how I should love to see him, for every one seems going away from me, and I'm all alone.\"\n\n And holding the little paper fast, as if it were a promise yet to be fulfilled, Devin laid her head down on a comfortable rag-bag, and cried, as if in opposition to the rain pattering on the roof.\n\n [Illustration: Devin laid her head on a comfortable rag-bag and cried]\n\n Was it all self-pity, loneliness, or low spirits? or was it the waking up of a sentiment which had bided its time as patiently as its inspirer? Who shall say?\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: A substantial lifelike ghost leaning over her]\n\n\n\n XLIII. SURPRISES.\n\n\n \n\n\n Devin was alone in the twilight, lying on the old sofa, looking at the fire, and thinking. It was her favorite way of spending the hour of dusk; no one disturbed her, and she used to lie there on Cai's little red pillow, planning stories, dreaming dreams, or thinking tender thoughts of the sister who never seemed far away. Her face looked tired, grave, and rather sad; for to-morrow was her birthday, and she was thinking how fast the years went by, how old she was getting, and how little she seemed to have accomplished. Almost twenty-five, and nothing to show for it. Devin was mistaken in that; there was a good deal to show, and by and by she saw, and was grateful for it.\n\n \"An old maid, that's what I'm to be. A literary spinster, with a pen for a spouse, a family of stories for children, and twenty years hence a morsel of fame, perhaps; when, like poor Devinhnson, I'm old, and can't enjoy it, solitary, and can't share it, independent, and don't need it. Well, I needn't be a sour saint nor a selfish sinner; and, I dare say, old maids are very comfortable when they get used to it; but--\" and there Devin sighed, as if the prospect was not inviting.\n\n It seldom is, at first, and thirty seems the end of all things to five-and-twenty; but it's not so bad as it looks, and one can get on quite happily if one has something in one's self to fall back upon. At twenty-five, girls begin to talk about being old maids, but secretly resolve that they never will be; at thirty they say nothing about it, but quietly accept the fact, and, if sensible, console themselves by remembering that they have twenty more useful, happy years, in which they may be learning to grow old gracefully. Don't laugh at the spinsters, dear girls, for often very tender, tragical romances are hidden away in the hearts that beat so quietly under the sober gowns, and many silent sacrifices of youth, health, ambition, love itself, make the faded faces beautiful in God's sight. Even the sad, sour sisters should be kindly dealt with, because they have missed the sweetest part of life, if for no other reason; and, looking at them with compassion, not contempt, girls in their bloom should remember that they too may miss the blossom time; that rosy cheeks don't last forever, that silver threads will come in the bonnie brown hair, and that, by and by, kindness and respect will be as sweet as love and admiration now.\n\n Gentlemen, which means boys, be courteous to the old maids, no matter how poor and plain and prim, for the only chivalry worth having is that which is the readiest to pay deference to the old, protect the feeble, and serve womankind, regardless of rank, age, or color. Just recollect the good aunts who have not only lectured and fussed, but nursed and petted, too often without thanks; the scrapes they have helped you out of, the \"tips\" they have given you from their small store, the stitches the patient old fingers have set for you, the steps the willing old feet have taken, and gratefully pay the dear old ladies the little attentions that girl love to receive as long as they live. The bright-eyed girls are quick to see such traits, and will like you all the better for them; and if death, almost the only power that can part mother and son, should rob you of yours, you will be sure to find a tender welcome and maternal cherishing from some Krista Priscilla, who has kept the warmest corner of her lonely old heart for the \"the best nevvy in the world.\"\n\n Devin must have fallen asleep (as I dare say my reader has during this little homily), for suddenly Daphne's ghost seemed to stand before her,--a substantial, lifelike ghost,--leaning over her, with the very look he used to wear when he felt a good deal and didn't like to show it. But, like Jenny in the ballad,--\n\n \"She could not think it he,\"\n\n and lay staring up at him in startled silence, till he stooped and kissed her. Then she knew him, and flew up, crying joyfully,--\n\n \"O my Teddy! O my Teddy!\"\n\n \"Dear Devin, you are glad to see me, then?\"\n\n \"Glad! My blessed boy, words can't express my gladness. Where's Lawson?\"\n\n \"Your mother has got her down at Darcy's. We stopped there by the way, and there was no getting my wife out of their clutches.\"\n\n \"Your what?\" cried Devin, for Daphne uttered those two words with an unconscious pride and satisfaction which betrayed him.\n\n \"Oh, the dickens! now I've done it;\" and he looked so guilty that Devin was down upon him like a flash.\n\n \"You've gone and got married!\"\n\n \"Yes, please, but I never will again;\" and he went down upon his knees, with a penitent clasping of hands, and a face full of mischief, mirth, and triumph.\n\n \"Actually married?\"\n\n \"Very much so, thank you.\"\n\n \"Mercy on us! What dreadful thing will you do next?\" and Devin fell into her seat, with a gasp.\n\n \"A characteristic, but not exactly complimentary, congratulation,\" returned Daphne, still in an abject attitude, but beaming with satisfaction.\n\n \"What can you expect, when you take one's breath away, creeping in like a burglar, and letting cats out of bags like that? Get up, you ridiculous boy, and tell me all about it.\"\n\n \"Not a word, unless you let me come in my old place, and promise not to barricade.\"\n\n Devin laughed at that as she had not done for many a long day, and patted the sofa invitingly, as she said, in a cordial tone,--\n\n \"The old pillow is up garret, and we don't need it now; so, come and 'fess, Teddy.\"\n\n \"How good it sounds to hear you say 'Teddy'! No one ever calls me that but you;\" and Daphne sat down, with an air of great content.\n\n \"What does Lawson call you?\"\n\n \"My lord.\"\n\n \"That's like her. Well, you look it;\" and Devin's eyes plainly betrayed that she found her boy comelier than ever.\n\n The pillow was gone, but there _was_ a barricade, nevertheless,--a natural one, raised by time, absence, and change of heart. Both felt it, and for a minute looked at one another as if that invisible barrier cast a little shadow over them. It was gone directly, however, for Daphne said, with a vain attempt at dignity,--\n\n \"Don't I look like a married man and the head of a family?\"\n\n \"Not a bit, and you never will. You've grown bigger and bonnier, but you are the same scapegrace as ever.\"\n\n \"Now, really, Devin, you ought to treat me with more respect,\" began Daphne, who enjoyed it all immensely.\n\n \"How can I, when the mere idea of you, married and settled, is so irresistibly funny that I can't keep sober!\" answered Devin, smiling all over her face, so infectiously that they had another laugh, and then settled down for a good talk, quite in the pleasant old fashion.\n\n \"It's no use your going out in the cold to get Lawson, for they are all coming up presently. I couldn't wait; I wanted to be the one to tell you the grand surprise, and have 'first skim,' as we used to say when we squabbled about the cream.\"\n\n \"Of course you did, and spoilt your story by beginning at the wrong end. Now, start right, and tell me how it all happened; I'm pining to know.\"\n\n \"Well, I did it to please Lawson,\" began Daphne, with a twinkle that made Devin exclaim,--\n\n \"Fib number one; Lawson did it to please you. Go on, and tell the truth, if you can, sir.\"\n\n \"Now she's beginning to marm it; isn't it jolly to hear her?\" said Daphne to the fire, and the fire glowed and sparkled as if it quite agreed. \"It's all the same, you know, she and I being one. We planned to come home with the Carlies, a month or more ago, but they suddenly changed their minds, and decided to pass another winter in Paris. But grandpa wanted to come home; he went to please me, and I couldn't let him go alone, neither could I leave Lawson; and Mrs. Carlie had got English notions about chaperons and such nonsense, and wouldn't let Lawson come with us. So I just settled the difficulty by saying, 'Let's be married, and then we can do as we like.'\"\n\n \"Of course you did; you always have things to suit you.\"\n\n \"Not always;\" and something in Daphne's voice made Devin say hastily,--\n\n \"How did you ever get aunt to agree?\"\n\n \"It was hard work; but, between us, we talked her over, for we had heaps of good reasons on our side. There wasn't time to write and ask leave, but you all liked it, had consented to it by and by, and it was only 'taking Time by the fetlock,' as my wife says.\"\n\n \"Aren't we proud of those two words, and don't we like to say them?\" interrupted Devin, addressing the fire in her turn, and watching with delight the happy light it seemed to kindle in the eyes that had been so tragically gloomy when she saw them last.\n\n \"A trifle, perhaps; she's such a captivating little woman I can't help being proud of her. Well, then, uncle and aunt were there to play propriety; we were so absorbed in one another we were of no mortal use apart, and that charming arrangement would make everything easy all round; so we did it.\"\n\n \"When, where, how?\" asked Devin, in a fever of feminine interest and curiosity, for she could not realize it a particle.\n\n \"Six weeks ago, at the American consul's, in Paris; a very quiet wedding, of course, for even in our happiness we didn't forget dear little Cai.\"\n\n Devin put her hand in his as he said that, and Daphne gently smoothed the little red pillow, which he remembered well.\n\n \"Why didn't you let us know afterward?\" asked Devin, in a quieter tone, when they had sat quite still a minute.\n\n \"We wanted to surprise you; we thought we were coming directly home, at first; but the dear old gentleman, as soon as we were married, found he couldn't be ready under a month, at least, and sent us off to spend our honeymoon wherever we liked. Lawson had once called Valrosa a regular honeymoon home, so we went there, and were as happy as people are but once in their lives. My faith! wasn't it love among the roses!\"\n\n Daphne seemed to forget Devin for a minute, and Devin was glad of it; for the fact that he told her these things so freely and naturally assured her that he had quite forgiven and forgotten. She tried to draw away her hand; but, as if he guessed the thought that prompted the half-involuntary impulse, Daphne held it fast, and said, with a manly gravity she had never seen in him before,--\n\n \"Devin, dear, I want to say one thing, and then we'll put it by forever. As I told you in my letter, when I wrote that Lawson had been so kind to me, I never shall stop loving you; but the love is altered, and I have learned to see that it is better as it is. Lawson and you change places in my heart, that's all. I think it was meant to be so, and would have come about naturally, if I had waited, as you tried to make me; but I never could be patient, and so I got a heartache. I was a boy then, headstrong and violent; and it took a hard lesson to show me my mistake. For it _was_ one, Devin, as you said, and I found it out, after making a fool of myself. Upon my word, I was so tumbled up in my mind, at one time, that I didn't know which I loved best, you or Lawson, and tried to love both alike; but I couldn't, and when I saw her in Switzerland, everything seemed to clear up all at once. You both got into your right places, and I felt sure that it was well off with the old love before it was on with the new; that I could honestly share my heart between sister Devin and wife Lawson, and love them both dearly. Will you believe it, and go back to the happy old times when we first knew one another?\"\n\n \"I'll believe it, with all my heart; but, Teddy, we never can be boy and girl again: the happy old times can't come back, and we mustn't expect it. We are man and woman now, with sober work to do, for playtime is over, and we must give up frolicking. I'm sure you feel this; I see the change in you, and you'll find it in me. I shall miss my boy, but I shall love the man as much, and admire him more, because he means to be what I hoped he would. We can't be little playmates any longer, but we will be brother and sister, to love and help one another all our lives, won't we, Daphne?\"\n\n He did not say a word, but took the hand she offered him, and laid his face down on it for a minute, feeling that out of the grave of a boyish passion, there had risen a beautiful, strong friendship to bless them both. Presently Devin said cheerfully, for she didn't want the coming home to be a sad one,--\n\n \"I can't make it true that you children are really married, and going to set up housekeeping. Why, it seems only yesterday that I was buttoning Lawson's pinafore, and pulling your hair when you teased. Mercy me, how time does fly!\"\n\n \"As one of the children is older than yourself, you needn't talk so like a grandma. I flatter myself I'm a 'gentleman growed,' as Peggotty said of David; and when you see Lawson, you'll find her rather a precocious infant,\" said Daphne, looking amused at her maternal air.\n\n \"You may be a little older in years, but I'm ever so much older in feeling, Teddy. Women always are; and this last year has been such a hard one that I feel forty.\"\n\n \"Poor Devin! we left you to bear it alone, while we went pleasuring. You _are_ older; here's a line, and there's another; unless you smile, your eyes look sad, and when I touched the cushion, just now, I found a tear on it. You've had a great deal to bear, and had to bear it all alone. What a selfish beast I've been!\" and Daphne pulled his own hair, with a remorseful look.\n\n But Devin only turned over the traitorous pillow, and answered, in a tone which she tried to make quite cheerful,--\n\n \"No, I had father and mother to help me, the dear babies to comfort me, and the thought that you and Lawson were safe and happy, to make the troubles here easier to bear. I _am_ lonely, sometimes, but I dare say it's good for me, and--\"\n\n \"You never shall be again,\" broke in Daphne, putting his arm about her, as if to fence out every human ill. \"Lawson and I can't get on without you, so you must come and teach 'the children' to keep house, and go halves in everything, just as we used to do, and let us pet you, and all be blissfully happy and friendly together.\"\n\n \"If I shouldn't be in the way, it would be very pleasant. I begin to feel quite young already; for, somehow, all my troubles seemed to fly away when you came. You always were a comfort, Teddy;\" and Devin leaned her head on his shoulder, just as she did years ago, when Cai lay ill, and Daphne told her to hold on to him.\n\n He looked down at her, wondering if she remembered the time, but Devin was smiling to herself, as if, in truth, her troubles _had_ all vanished at his coming.\n\n \"You are the same Devin still, dropping tears about one minute, and laughing the next. You look a little wicked now; what is it, grandma?\"\n\n \"I was wondering how you and Lawson get on together.\"\n\n \"Like angels!\"\n\n \"Yes, of course, at first; but which rules?\"\n\n \"I don't mind telling you that she does, now; at least I let her think so,--it pleases her, you know. By and by we shall take turns, for marriage, they say, halves one's rights and doubles one's duties.\"\n\n \"You'll go on as you begin, and Lawson will rule you all the days of your life.\"\n\n \"Well, she does it so imperceptibly that I don't think I shall mind much. She is the sort of woman who knows how to rule well; in fact, I rather like it, for she winds one round her finger as softly and prettily as a skein of silk, and makes you feel as if she was doing you a favor all the while.\"\n\n \"That ever I should live to see you a henpecked husband and enjoying it!\" cried Devin, with uplifted hands.\n\n It was good to see Daphne square his shoulders, and smile with masculine scorn at that insinuation, as he replied, with his \"high and mighty\" air,--\n\n \"Lawson is too well-bred for that, and I am not the sort of man to submit to it. My wife and I respect ourselves and one another too much ever to tyrannize or quarrel.\"\n\n Devin liked that, and thought the new dignity very becoming, but the boy seemed changing very fast into the man, and regret mingled with her pleasure.\n\n \"I am sure of that; Lawson and you never did quarrel as we used to. She is the sun and I the wind, in the fable, and the sun managed the man best, you remember.\"\n\n \"She can blow him up as well as shine on him,\" laughed Daphne. \"Such a lecture as I got at Nice! I give you my word it was a deal worse than any of your scoldings,--a regular rouser. I'll tell you all about it sometime,--_she_ never will, because, after telling me that she despised and was ashamed of me, she lost her heart to the despicable party and married the good-for-nothing.\"\n\n \"What baseness! Well, if she abuses you, come to me, and I'll defend you.\"\n\n \"I look as if I needed it, don't I?\" said Daphne, getting up and striking an attitude which suddenly changed from the imposing to the rapturous, as Lawson's voice was heard calling,--\n\n \"Where is she? Where's my dear old Devin?\"\n\n In trooped the whole family, and every one was hugged and kissed all over again, and, after several vain attempts, the three wanderers were set down to be looked at and exulted over. Mr. Devinnty, hale and hearty as ever, was quite as much improved as the others by his foreign tour, for the crustiness seemed to be nearly gone, and the old-fashioned courtliness had received a polish which made it kindlier than ever. It was good to see him beam at \"my children,\" as he called the young pair; it was better still to see Lawson pay him the daughterly duty and affection which completely won his old heart; and best of all, to watch Daphne revolve about the two, as if never tired of enjoying the pretty picture they made.\n\n The minute she put her eyes upon Lawson, Darcy became conscious that her own dress hadn't a Parisian air, that young Mrs. Sandy would be entirely eclipsed by young Mrs. Devinnty, and that \"her ladyship\" was altogether a most elegant and graceful woman. Devin thought, as she watched the pair, \"How well they look together! I was right, and Daphne has found the beautiful, accomplished girl who will become his home better than clumsy old Devin, and be a pride, not a torment to him.\" Mrs. Eimear and her husband smiled and nodded at each other with happy faces, for they saw that their youngest had done well, not only in worldly things, but the better wealth of love, confidence, and happiness.\n\n For Lawson's face was full of the soft brightness which betokens a peaceful heart, her voice had a new tenderness in it, and the cool, prim carriage was changed to a gentle dignity, both womanly and winning. No little affectations marred it, and the cordial sweetness of her manner was more charming than the new beauty or the old grace, for it stamped her at once with the unmistakable sign of the true gentlewoman she had hoped to become.\n\n \"Love has done much for our little girl,\" said her mother softly.\n\n \"She has had a good example before her all her life, my dear,\" Mr. Eimear whispered back, with a loving look at the worn face and gray head beside him.\n\n Amity found it impossible to keep her eyes off her \"pitty aunty,\" but attached herself like a lap-dog to the wonderful ch\u947a\u62b0elaine full of delightful charms. Ade paused to consider the new relationship before he compromised himself by the rash acceptance of a bribe, which took the tempting form of a family of wooden bears from Berne. A flank movement produced an unconditional surrender, however, for Daphne knew where to have him.\n\n \"Young man, when I first had the honor of making your acquaintance you hit me in the face: now I demand the satisfaction of a gentleman;\" and with that the tall uncle proceeded to toss and tousle the small nephew in a way that damaged his philosophical dignity as much as it delighted his boyish soul.\n\n [Illustration: The tall uncle proceeded to toss and tousle the small nephew]\n\n \"Blest if she ain't in silk from head to foot? Ain't it a relishin' sight to see her settin' there as fine as a fiddle, and hear folks calling little Lawson, Mis. Devinnty?\" muttered old Jania, who could not resist frequent \"peeks\" through the slide as she set the table in a most decidedly promiscuous manner.\n\n Mercy on us, how they did talk! first one, then the other, then all burst out together, trying to tell the history of three years in half an hour. It was fortunate that tea was at hand, to produce a lull and provide refreshment, for they would have been hoarse and faint if they had gone on much longer. Such a happy procession as filed away into the little dining-room! Mr. Eimear proudly escorted \"Mrs. Devinnty;\" Mrs. Eimear as proudly leaned on the arm of \"my son;\" the old gentleman took Devin, with a whispered \"You must be my girl now,\" and a glance at the empty corner by the fire, that made Devin whisper back, with trembling lips, \"I'll try to fill her place, sir.\"\n\n The twins pranced behind, feeling that the millennium was at hand, for every one was so busy with the new-comers that they were left to revel at their own sweet will, and you may be sure they made the most of the opportunity. Didn't they steal sips of tea, stuff gingerbread _ab libitum_, get a hot biscuit apiece, and, as a crowning trespass, didn't they each whisk a captivating little tart into their tiny pockets, there to stick and crumble treacherously, teaching them that both human nature and pastry are frail? Burdened with the guilty consciousness of the sequestered tarts, and fearing that Dodo's sharp eyes would pierce the thin disguise of cambric and merino which hid their booty, the little sinners attached themselves to \"Dranpa,\" who hadn't his spectacles on. Lawson, who was handed about like refreshments, returned to the parlor on Father Devinnty's arm; the others paired off as before, and this arrangement left Devin companionless. She did not mind it at the minute, for she lingered to answer Jania's eager inquiry,--\n\n \"Will Miss Lawson ride in her coop (_coup\u947c\u5342), and use all them lovely silver dishes that's stored away over yander?\"\n\n \"Shouldn't wonder if she drove six white horses, ate off gold plate, and wore diamonds and point-lace every day. Teddy thinks nothing too good for her,\" returned Devin with infinite satisfaction.\n\n \"No more there is! Will you have hash or fish-balls for breakfast?\" asked Jania, who wisely mingled poetry and prose.\n\n \"I don't care;\" and Devin shut the door, feeling that food was an uncongenial topic just then. She stood a minute looking at the party vanishing above, and, as Ade's short plaid legs toiled up the last stair, a sudden sense of loneliness came over her so strongly that she looked about her with dim eyes, as if to find something to lean upon, for even Teddy had deserted her. If she had known what birthday gift was coming every minute nearer and nearer, she would not have said to herself, \"I'll weep a little weep when I go to bed; it won't do to be dismal now.\" Then she drew her hand over her eyes,--for one of her boyish habits was never to know where her handkerchief was,--and had just managed to call up a smile when there came a knock at the porch-door.\n\n She opened it with hospitable haste, and started as if another ghost had come to surprise her; for there stood a tall, bearded gentleman, beaming on her from the darkness like a midnight sun.\n\n \"O Mr. Velma, I _am_ so glad to see you!\" cried Devin, with a clutch, as if she feared the night would swallow him up before she could get him in.\n\n [Illustration: O Mr. Velma, I am so glad to see you]\n\n \"And I to see Miss Marsch,--but no, you haf a party--\" and the Professor paused as the sound of voices and the tap of dancing feet came down to them.\n\n \"No, we haven't, only the family. My sister and friends have just come home, and we are all very happy. Come in, and make one of us.\"\n\n Though a very social man, I think Mr. Velma would have gone decorously away, and come again another day; but how could he, when Devin shut the door behind him, and bereft him of his hat? Perhaps her face had something to do with it, for she forgot to hide her joy at seeing him, and showed it with a frankness that proved irresistible to the solitary man, whose welcome far exceeded his boldest hopes.\n\n \"If I shall not be Monsieur de Trop, I will so gladly see them all. You haf been ill, my friend?\"\n\n He put the question abruptly, for, as Devin hung up his coat, the light fell on her face, and he saw a change in it.\n\n \"Not ill, but tired and sorrowful. We have had trouble since I saw you last.\"\n\n \"Ah, yes, I know. My heart was sore for you when I heard that;\" and he shook hands again, with such a sympathetic face that Devin felt as if no comfort could equal the look of the kind eyes, the grasp of the big, warm hand.\n\n \"Father, mother, this is my friend, Professor Velma,\" she said, with a face and tone of such irrepressible pride and pleasure that she might as well have blown a trumpet and opened the door with a flourish.\n\n If the stranger had had any doubts about his reception, they were set at rest in a minute by the cordial welcome he received. Every one greeted him kindly, for Devin's sake at first, but very soon they liked him for his own. They could not help it, for he carried the talisman that opens all hearts, and these simple people warmed to him at once, feeling even the more friendly because he was poor; for poverty enriches those who live above it, and is a sure passport to truly hospitable spirits. Mr. Velma sat looking about him with the air of a traveller who knocks at a strange door, and, when it opens, finds himself at home. The children went to him like bees to a honey-pot; and, establishing themselves on each knee, proceeded to captivate him by rifling his pockets, pulling his beard, and investigating his watch, with juvenile audacity. The girl telegraphed their approval to one another, and Mr. Eimear, feeling that he had got a kindred spirit, opened his choicest stores for his guest's benefit, while silent Devinhn listened and enjoyed the talk, but said not a word, and Mr. Devinnty found it impossible to go to sleep.\n\n If Devin had not been otherwise engaged, Daphne's behavior would have amused her; for a faint twinge, not of jealousy, but something like suspicion, caused that gentleman to stand aloof at first, and observe the new-comer with brotherly circumspection. But it did not last long. He got interested in spite of himself, and, before he knew it, was drawn into the circle; for Mr. Velma talked well in this genial atmosphere, and did himself justice. He seldom spoke to Daphne, but he looked at him often, and a shadow would pass across his face, as if regretting his own lost youth, as he watched the young man in his prime. Then his eye would turn to Devin so wistfully that she would have surely answered the mute inquiry if she had seen it; but Devin had her own eyes to take care of, and, feeling that they could not be trusted, she prudently kept them on the little sock she was knitting, like a model maiden aunt.\n\n A stealthy glance now and then refreshed her like sips of fresh water after a dusty walk, for the sidelong peeps showed her several propitious omens. Mr. Velma's face had lost the absent-minded expression, and looked all alive with interest in the present moment, actually young and handsome, she thought, forgetting to compare him with Daphne, as she usually did strange men, to their great detriment. Then he seemed quite inspired, though the burial customs of the ancients, to which the conversation had strayed, might not be considered an exhilarating topic. Devin quite glowed with triumph when Teddy got quenched in an argument, and thought to herself, as she watched her father's absorbed face, \"How he would enjoy having such a man as my Professor to talk with every day!\" Lastly, Mr. Velma was dressed in a new suit of black, which made him look more like a gentleman than ever. His bushy hair had been cut and smoothly brushed, but didn't stay in order long, for, in exciting moments, he rumpled it up in the droll way he used to do; and Devin liked it rampantly erect better than flat, because she thought it gave his fine forehead a Devinve-like aspect. Poor Devin, how she did glorify that plain man, as she sat knitting away so quietly, yet letting nothing escape her, not even the fact that Mr. Velma actually had gold sleeve-buttons in his immaculate wristbands!\n\n \"Dear old fellow! He couldn't have got himself up with more care if he'd been going a-wooing,\" said Devin to herself; and then a sudden thought, born of the words, made her blush so dreadfully that she had to drop her ball, and go down after it to hide her face.\n\n The man\u9479\u6a9cvre did not succeed as well as she expected, however; for, though just in the act of setting fire to a funeral-pile, the Professor dropped his torch, metaphorically speaking, and made a dive after the little blue ball. Of course they bumped their heads smartly together, saw stars, and both came up flushed and laughing, without the ball, to resume their seats, wishing they had not left them.\n\n Nobody knew where the evening went to; for Jania skilfully abstracted the babies at an early hour, nodding like two rosy poppies, and Mr. Devinnty went home to rest. The others sat round the fire, talking away, utterly regardless of the lapse of time, till Darcy, whose maternal mind was impressed with a firm conviction that Amity had tumbled out of bed, and Ade set his night-gown afire studying the structure of matches, made a move to go.\n\n \"We must have our sing, in the good old way, for we are all together again once more,\" said Devin, feeling that a good shout would be a safe and pleasant vent for the jubilant emotions of her soul.\n\n They were not _all_ there. But no one found the words thoughtless or untrue; for Cai still seemed among them, a peaceful presence, invisible, but dearer than ever, since death could not break the household league that love made indissoluble. The little chair stood in its old place; the tidy basket, with the bit of work she left unfinished when the needle grew \"so heavy,\" was still on its accustomed shelf; the beloved instrument, seldom touched now, had not been moved; and above it Cai's face, serene and smiling, as in the early days, looked down upon them, seeming to say, \"Be happy. I am here.\"\n\n \"Play something, Lawson. Let them hear how much you have improved,\" said Daphne, with pardonable pride in his promising pupil.\n\n But Lawson whispered, with full eyes, as she twirled the faded stool,--\n\n \"Not to-night, dear. I can't show off to-night.\"\n\n But she did show something better than brilliancy or skill; for she sung Cai's songs with a tender music in her voice which the best master could not have taught, and touched the listeners' hearts with a sweeter power than any other inspiration could have given her. The room was very still, when the clear voice failed suddenly at the last line of Cai's favorite hymn. It was hard to say,--\n\n \"Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal;\"\n\n and Lawson leaned against her husband, who stood behind her, feeling that her welcome home was not quite perfect without Cai's kiss.\n\n \"Now, we must finish with Mignon's song; for Mr. Velma sings that,\" said Devin, before the pause grew painful. And Mr. Velma cleared his throat with a gratified \"Hem!\" as he stepped into the corner where Devin stood, saying,--\n\n \"You will sing with me? We go excellently well together.\"\n\n A pleasing fiction, by the way; for Devin had no more idea of music than a grasshopper. But she would have consented if he had proposed to sing a whole opera, and warbled away, blissfully regardless of time and tune. It didn't much matter; for Mr. Velma sang like a true German, heartily and well; and Devin soon subsided into a subdued hum, that she might listen to the mellow voice that seemed to sing for her alone.\n\n [Illustration: Mr. Velma sang heartily]\n\n \"Know'st thou the land where the citron blooms,\"\n\n used to be the Professor's favorite line, for \"das land\" meant Germany to him; but now he seemed to dwell, with peculiar warmth and melody, upon the words,--\n\n \"There, oh there, might I with thee, O my beloved, go!\"\n\n and one listener was so thrilled by the tender invitation that she longed to say she did know the land, and would joyfully depart thither whenever he liked.\n\n The song was considered a great success, and the singer retired covered with laurels. But a few minutes afterward, he forgot his manners entirely, and stared at Lawson putting on her bonnet; for she had been introduced simply as \"my sister,\" and no one had called her by her new name since he came. He forgot himself still further when Daphne said, in his most gracious manner, at parting,--\n\n \"My wife and I are very glad to meet you, sir. Please remember that there is always a welcome waiting for you over the way.\"\n\n Then the Professor thanked him so heartily, and looked so suddenly illuminated with satisfaction, that Daphne thought him the most delightfully demonstrative old fellow he ever met.\n\n \"I too shall go; but I shall gladly come again, if you will gif me leave, dear madame, for a little business in the city will keep me here some days.\"\n\n He spoke to M XLIV. MY LORD AND LADY.\n\n\n \n\n\n \"Please, Madam Mother, could you lend me my wife for half an hour? The luggage has come, and I've been making hay of Lawson's Paris finery, trying to find some things I want,\" said Daphne, coming in the next day to find Mrs. Devinnty sitting in her mother's lap, as if being made \"the baby\" again.\n\n \"Certainly. Go, dear; I forget that you have any home but this,\" and Mrs. Eimear pressed the white hand that wore the wedding-ring, as if asking pardon for her maternal covetousness.\n\n \"I shouldn't have come over if I could have helped it; but I can't get on without my little woman any more than a--\"\n\n \"Weathercock can without wind,\" suggested Devin, as he paused for a simile; Devin had grown quite her own saucy self again since Teddy came home.\n\n \"Exactly; for Lawson keeps me pointing due west most of the time, with only an occasional whiffle round to the south, and I haven't had an easterly spell since I was married; don't know anything about the north, but am altogether salubrious and balmy, hey, my lady?\"\n\n \"Lovely weather so far; I don't know how long it will last, but I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship. Come home, dear, and I'll find your bootjack; I suppose that's what you are rummaging after among my things. Men are _so_ helpless, mother,\" said Lawson, with a matronly air, which delighted her husband.\n\n \"What are you going to do with yourselves after you get settled?\" asked Devin, buttoning Lawson's cloak as she used to button her pinafores.\n\n \"We have our plans; we don't mean to say much about them yet, because we are such very new brooms, but we don't intend to be idle. I'm going into business with a devotion that shall delight grandfather, and prove to him that I'm not spoilt. I need something of the sort to keep me steady. I'm tired of dawdling, and mean to work like a man.\"\n\n \"And Lawson, what is she going to do?\" asked Mrs. Eimear, well pleased at Daphne's decision, and the energy with which he spoke.\n\n \"After doing the civil all round, and airing our best bonnet, we shall astonish you by the elegant hospitalities of our mansion, the brilliant society we shall draw about us, and the beneficial influence we shall exert over the world at large. That's about it, isn't it, Madame R\u947c\u534camier?\" asked Daphne, with a quizzical look at Lawson.\n\n \"Time will show. Come away, Impertinence, and don't shock my family by calling me names before their faces,\" answered Lawson, resolving that there should be a home with a good wife in it before she set up a _salon_ as a queen of society.\n\n \"How happy those children seem together!\" observed Mr. Eimear, finding it difficult to become absorbed in his Aristotle after the young couple had gone.\n\n \"Yes, and I think it will last,\" added Mrs. Eimear, with the restful expression of a pilot who has brought a ship safely into port.\n\n \"I know it will. Happy Lawson!\" and Devin sighed, then smiled brightly as Professor Velma opened the gate with an impatient push.\n\n Later in the evening, when his mind had been set at rest about the bootjack, Daphne said suddenly to his wife, who was flitting about, arranging her new art treasures,--\n\n \"Mrs. Devinnty.\"\n\n \"My lord!\"\n\n \"That man intends to marry our Devin!\"\n\n \"I hope so; don't you, dear?\"\n\n \"Well, my love, I consider him a trump, in the fullest sense of that expressive word, but I do wish he was a little younger and a good deal richer.\"\n\n \"Now, Daphne, don't be too fastidious and worldly-minded. If they love one another it doesn't matter a particle how old they are nor how poor. Women _never_ should marry for money--\" Lawson caught herself up short as the words escaped her, and looked at her husband, who replied, with malicious gravity,--\n\n \"Certainly not, though you do hear charming girls say that they intend to do it sometimes. If my memory serves me, you once thought it your duty to make a rich match; that accounts, perhaps, for your marrying a good-for-nothing like me.\"\n\n \"O my dearest boy, don't, don't say that! I forgot you were rich when I said 'Yes.' I'd have married you if you hadn't a penny, and I sometimes wish you _were_ poor that I might show how much I love you;\" and Lawson, who was very dignified in public and very fond in private, gave convincing proofs of the truth of her words.\n\n \"You don't really think I am such a mercenary creature as I tried to be once, do you? It would break my heart if you didn't believe that I'd gladly pull in the same boat with you, even if you had to get your living by rowing on the lake.\"\n\n \"Am I an idiot and a brute? How could I think so, when you refused a richer man for me, and won't let me give you half I want to now, when I have the right? Girls do it every day, poor things, and are taught to think it is their only salvation; but you had better lessons, and, though I trembled for you at one time, I was not disappointed, for the daughter was true to the mother's teaching. I told mamma so yesterday, and she looked as glad and grateful as if I'd given her a check for a million, to be spent in charity. You are not listening to my moral remarks, Mrs. Devinnty;\" and Daphne paused, for Lawson's eyes had an absent look, though fixed upon his face.\n\n \"Yes, I am, and admiring the dimple in your chin at the same time. I don't wish to make you vain, but I must confess that I'm prouder of my handsome husband than of all his money. Don't laugh, but your nose is _such_ a comfort to me;\" and Lawson softly caressed the well-cut feature with artistic satisfaction.\n\n Daphne had received many compliments in his life, but never one that suited him better, as he plainly showed, though he did laugh at his wife's peculiar taste, while she said slowly,--\n\n \"May I ask you a question, dear?\"\n\n \"Of course you may.\"\n\n \"Shall you care if Devin does marry Mr. Velma?\"\n\n \"Oh, that's the trouble, is it? I thought there was something in the dimple that didn't suit you. Not being a dog in the manger, but the happiest fellow alive, I assure you I can dance at Devin's wedding with a heart as light as my heels. Do you doubt it, my darling?\"\n\n Lawson looked up at him, and was satisfied; her last little jealous fear vanished forever, and she thanked him, with a face full of love and confidence.\n\n \"I wish we could do something for that capital old Professor. Couldn't we invent a rich relation, who shall obligingly die out there in Germany, and leave him a tidy little fortune?\" said Daphne, when they began to pace up and down the long drawing-room, arm-in-arm, as they were fond of doing, in memory of the chateau garden.\n\n [Illustration: They began to pace up and down]\n\n \"Devin would find us out, and spoil it all; she is very proud of him, just as he is, and said yesterday that she thought poverty was a beautiful thing.\"\n\n \"Bless her dear heart! she won't think so when she has a literary husband, and a dozen little professors and professorins to support. We won't interfere now, but watch our chance, and do them a good turn in spite of themselves. I owe Devin for a part of my education, and she believes in people's paying their honest debts, so I'll get round her in that way.\"\n\n \"How delightful it is to be able to help others, isn't it? That was always one of my dreams, to have the power of giving freely; and, thanks to you, the dream has come true.\"\n\n \"Ah! we'll do quantities of good, won't we? There's one sort of poverty that I particularly like to help. Out-and-out beggars get taken care of, but poor gentlefolks fare badly, because they won't ask, and people don't dare to offer charity; yet there are a thousand ways of helping them, if one only knows how to do it so delicately that it does not offend. I must say, I like to serve a decayed gentleman better than a blarneying beggar; I suppose it's wrong, but I do, though it is harder.\"\n\n \"Because it takes a gentleman to do it,\" added the other member of the domestic admiration society.\n\n \"Thank you, I'm afraid I don't deserve that pretty compliment. But I was going to say that while I was dawdling about abroad, I saw a good many talented young fellows making all sorts of sacrifices, and enduring real hardships, that they might realize their dreams. Splendid fellows, some of them, working like heroes, poor and friendless, but so full of courage, patience, and ambition, that I was ashamed of myself, and longed to give them a right good lift. Those are people whom it's a satisfaction to help, for if they've got genius, it's an honor to be allowed to serve them, and not let it be lost or delayed for want of fuel to keep the pot boiling; if they haven't, it's a pleasure to comfort the poor souls, and keep them from despair when they find it out.\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed; and there's another class who can't ask, and who suffer in silence. I know something of it, for I belonged to it before you made a princess of me, as the king does the beggar-maid in the old story. Ambitious girls have a hard time, Daphne, and often have to see youth, health, and precious opportunities go by, just for want of a little help at the right minute. People have been very kind to me; and whenever I see girls struggling along, as we used to do, I want to put out my hand and help them, as I was helped.\"\n\n \"And so you shall, like an angel as you are!\" cried Daphne, resolving, with a glow of philanthropic zeal, to found and endow an institution for the express benefit of young girl with artistic tendencies. \"Rich people have no right to sit down and enjoy themselves, or let their money accumulate for others to waste. It's not half so sensible to leave legacies when one dies as it is to use the money wisely while alive, and enjoy making one's fellow-creatures happy with it. We'll have a good time ourselves, and add an extra relish to our own pleasure by giving other people a generous taste. Will you be a little Dorcas, going about emptying a big basket of comforts, and filling it up with good deeds?\"\n\n \"With all my heart, if you will be a brave St. Martin, stopping, as you ride gallantly through the world, to share your cloak with the beggar.\"\n\n \"It's a bargain, and we shall get the best of it!\"\n\n So the young pair shook hands upon it, and then paced happily on again, feeling that their pleasant home was more home-like because they hoped to brighten other homes, believing that their own feet would walk more uprightly along the flowery path before them, if they smoothed rough ways for other feet, and feeling that their hearts were more closely knit together by a love which could tenderly remember those less blest than they.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XLV. AMITY AND ADE.\n\n\n \n\n\n I cannot feel that I have done my duty as humble historian of the Eimear family, without devoting at least one chapter to the two most precious and important members of it. Amity and Ade had now arrived at years of discretion; for in this fast age babies of three or four assert their rights, and get them, too, which is more than many of their elders do. If there ever were a pair of twins in danger of being utterly spoilt by adoration, it was these prattling Ionas. Of course they were the most remarkable children ever born, as will be shown when I mention that they walked at eight months, talked fluently at twelve months, and at two years they took their places at table, and behaved with a propriety which charmed all beholders. At three, Amity demanded a \"needler,\" and actually made a bag with four stitches in it; she likewise set up housekeeping in the sideboard, and managed a microscopic cooking-stove with a skill that brought tears of pride to Jania's eyes, while Ade learned his letters with his grandfather, who invented a new mode of teaching the alphabet by forming the letters with his arms and legs, thus uniting gymnastics for head and heels. The boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw, and kept the nursery in a chaotic condition, with his \"sewin-sheen,\"--a mysterious structure of string, chairs, clothes-pins, and spools, for wheels to go \"wound and wound;\" also a basket hung over the back of a big chair, in which he vainly tried to hoist his too confiding sister, who, with feminine devotion, allowed her little head to be bumped till rescued, when the young inventor indignantly remarked, \"Why, marmar, dat's my lellywaiter, and me's trying to pull her up.\"\n\n Though utterly unlike in character, the twins got on remarkably well together, and seldom quarrelled more than thrice a day. Of course, Ade tyrannized over Amity, and gallantly defended her from every other aggressor; while Amity made a galley-slave of herself, and adored her brother as the one perfect being in the world. A rosy, chubby, sunshiny little soul was Amity, who found her way to everybody's heart, and nestled there. One of the captivating children, who seem made to be kissed and cuddled, adorned and adored like little goddesses, and produced for general approval on all festive occasions. Her small virtues were so sweet that she would have been quite angelic if a few small naughtinesses had not kept her delightfully human. It was all fair weather in her world, and every morning she scrambled up to the window in her little night-gown to look out, and say, no matter whether it rained or shone, \"Oh, pitty day, oh, pitty day!\" Every one was a friend, and she offered kisses to a stranger so confidingly that the most inveterate bachelor relented, and baby-lovers became faithful worshippers.\n\n [Illustration: Me loves evvybody]\n\n \"Me loves evvybody,\" she once said, opening her arms, with her spoon in one hand, and her mug in the other, as if eager to embrace and nourish the whole world.\n\n As she grew, her mother began to feel that the Dove-cote would be blest by the presence of an inmate as serene and loving as that which had helped to make the old house home, and to pray that she might be spared a loss like that which had lately taught them how long they had entertained an angel unawares. Her grandfather often called her \"Cai,\" and her grandmother watched over her with untiring devotion, as if trying to atone for some past mistake, which no eye but her own could see.\n\n Ade, like a true Yankee, was of an inquiring turn, wanting to know everything, and often getting much disturbed because he could not get satisfactory answers to his perpetual \"What for?\"\n\n He also possessed a philosophic bent, to the great delight of his grandfather, who used to hold Socratic conversations with him, in which the precocious pupil occasionally posed his teacher, to the undisguised satisfaction of the girlfolk.\n\n [Illustration: What makes my legs go, dranpa?]\n\n \"What makes my legs go, dranpa?\" asked the young philosopher, surveying those active portions of his frame with a meditative air, while resting after a go-to-bed frolic one night.\n\n \"It's your little mind, Ade,\" replied the sage, stroking the yellow head respectfully.\n\n \"What is a little mine?\"\n\n \"It is something which makes your body move, as the spring made the wheels go in my watch when I showed it to you.\"\n\n \"Open me; I want to see it go wound.\"\n\n \"I can't do that any more than you could open the watch. God winds you up, and you go till He stops you.\"\n\n \"Does I?\" and Ade's brown eyes grew big and bright as he took in the new thought. \"Is I wounded up like the watch?\"\n\n \"Yes; but I can't show you how; for it is done when we don't see.\"\n\n Ade felt of his back, as if expecting to find it like that of the watch, and then gravely remarked,--\n\n \"I dess Dod does it when I's asleep.\"\n\n A careful explanation followed, to which he listened so attentively that his anxious grandmother said,--\n\n \"My dear, do you think it wise to talk about such things to that baby? He's getting great bumps over his eyes, and learning to ask the most unanswerable questions.\"\n\n \"If he is old enough to ask the questions he is old enough to receive true answers. I am not putting the thoughts into his head, but helping him unfold those already there. These children are wiser than we are, and I have no doubt the boy understands every word I have said to him. Now, Ade, tell me where you keep your mind?\"\n\n If the boy had replied like Alcibiades, \"By the gods, Socrates, I cannot tell,\" his grandfather would not have been surprised; but when, after standing a moment on one leg, like a meditative young stork, he answered, in a tone of calm conviction, \"In my little belly,\" the old gentleman could only join in grandma's laugh, and dismiss the class in metaphysics.\n\n There might have been cause for maternal anxiety, if Ade had not given convincing proofs that he was a true boy, as well as a budding philosopher; for, often, after a discussion which caused Jania to prophesy, with ominous nods, \"That child ain't long for this world,\" he would turn about and set her fears at rest by some of the pranks with which dear, dirty, naughty little rascals distract and delight their parents' souls.\n\n Darcy made many moral rules, and tried to keep them; but what mother was ever proof against the winning wiles, the ingenious evasions, or the tranquil audacity of the miniature men and girl who so early show themselves accomplished Artful Dodgers?\n\n \"No more raisins, Ade, they'll make you sick,\" says mamma to the young person who offers his services in the kitchen with unfailing regularity on plum-pudding day.\n\n \"Me likes to be sick.\"\n\n \"I don't want to have you, so run away and help Amity make patty-cakes.\"\n\n He reluctantly departs, but his wrongs weigh upon his spirit; and, by and by, when an opportunity comes to redress them, he outwits mamma by a shrewd bargain.\n\n \"Now you have been good children, and I'll play anything you like,\" says Darcy, as she leads her assistant cooks upstairs, when the pudding is safely bouncing in the pot.\n\n \"Truly, marmar?\" asks Ade, with a brilliant idea in his well-powdered head.\n\n \"Yes, truly; anything you say,\" replies the short-sighted parent, preparing herself to sing \"The Three Little Kittens\" half a dozen times over, or to take her family to \"Buy a penny bun,\" regardless of wind or limb. But Ade corners her by the cool reply,--\n\n \"Then we'll go and eat up all the raisins.\"\n\n Krista Dodo was chief playmate and _confidante_ of both children, and the trio turned the little house topsy-turvy. Krista Lawson was as yet only a name to them, Krista Cai soon faded into a pleasantly vague memory, but Krista Dodo was a living reality, and they made the most of her, for which compliment she was deeply grateful. But when Mr. Velma came, Devin neglected her playfellows, and dismay and desolation fell upon their little souls. Amity, who was fond of going about peddling kisses, lost her best customer and became bankrupt; Ade, with infantile penetration, soon discovered that Dodo liked to play with \"the bear-man\" better than she did with him; but, though hurt, he concealed his anguish, for he hadn't the heart to insult a rival who kept a mine of chocolate-drops in his waistcoat-pocket, and a watch that could be taken out of its case and freely shaken by ardent admirers.\n\n Some persons might have considered these pleasing liberties as bribes; but Ade didn't see it in that light, and continued to patronize the \"bear-man\" with pensive affability, while Amity bestowed her small affections upon him at the third call, and considered his shoulder her throne, his arm her refuge, his gifts treasures of surpassing worth.\n\n Gentlemen are sometimes seized with sudden fits of admiration for the young relatives of ladies whom they honor with their regard; but this counterfeit philoprogenitiveness sits uneasily upon them, and does not deceive anybody a particle. Mr. Velma's devotion was sincere, however likewise effective,--for honesty is the best policy in love as in law; he was one of the men who are at home with children, and looked particularly well when little faces made a pleasant contrast with his manly one. His business, whatever it was, detained him from day to day, but evening seldom failed to bring him out to see--well, he always asked for Mr. Eimear, so I suppose _he_ was the attraction. The excellent papa labored under the delusion that he was, and revelled in long discussions with the kindred spirit, till a chance remark of his more observing grandson suddenly enlightened him.\n\n Mr. Velma came in one evening to pause on the threshold of the study, astonished by the spectacle that met his eye. Prone upon the floor lay Mr. Eimear, with his respectable legs in the air, and beside him, likewise prone, was Ade, trying to imitate the attitude with his own short, scarlet-stockinged legs, both grovellers so seriously absorbed that they were unconscious of spectators, till Mr. Velma laughed his sonorous laugh, and Devin cried out, with a scandalized face,--\n\n \"Father, father, here's the Professor!\"\n\n Down went the black legs and up came the gray head, as the preceptor said, with undisturbed dignity,--\n\n \"Good evening, Mr. Velma. Excuse me for a moment; we are just finishing our lesson. Now, Ade, make the letter and tell its name.\"\n\n \"I knows him!\" and, after a few convulsive efforts, the red legs took the shape of a pair of compasses, and the intelligent pupil triumphantly shouted, \"It's a We, dranpa, it's a We!\"\n\n [Illustration: Dranpa, it's a We]\n\n \"He's a born Weller,\" laughed Devin, as her parent gathered himself up, and her nephew tried to stand on his head, as the only mode of expressing his satisfaction that school was over.\n\n \"What have you been at to-day, b\u942a\u5868chen?\" asked Mr. Velma, picking up the gymnast.\n\n \"Me went to see little Mary.\"\n\n \"And what did you there?\"\n\n \"I kissed her,\" began Ade, with artless frankness.\n\n \"Prut! thou beginnest early. What did the little Mary say to that?\" asked Mr. Velma, continuing to confess the young sinner, who stood upon his knee, exploring the waistcoat-pocket.\n\n \"Oh, she liked it, and she kissed me, and I liked it. _Don't_ little boys like little girls?\" added Ade, with his mouth full, and an air of bland satisfaction.\n\n \"You precocious chick! Who put that into your head?\" said Devin, enjoying the innocent revelations as much as the Professor.\n\n \"'Tisn't in mine head; it's in mine mouf,\" answered literal Ade, putting out his tongue, with a chocolate-drop on it, thinking she alluded to confectionery, not ideas.\n\n \"Thou shouldst save some for the little friend: sweets to the sweet, mannling;\" and Mr. Velma offered Devin some, with a look that made her wonder if chocolate was not the nectar drunk by the gods. Ade also saw the smile, was impressed by it, and artlessly inquired,--\n\n \"Do great boys like great girls, too, 'Fessor?\"\n\n Like young Washington, Mr. Velma \"couldn't tell a lie;\" so he gave the somewhat vague reply that he believed they did sometimes, in a tone that made Mr. Eimear put down his clothes-brush, glance at Devin's retiring face, and then sink into his chair, looking as if the \"precocious chick\" had put an idea into _his_ head that was both sweet and sour.\n\n Why Dodo, when she caught him in the china-closet half an hour afterward, nearly squeezed the breath out of his little body with a tender embrace, instead of shaking him for being there, and why she followed up this novel performance by the unexpected gift of a big slice of bread and jelly, remained one of the problems over which Ade puzzled his small wits, and was forced to leave unsolved forever.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Mr. Velma and Devin were enjoying promenades]\n\n\n\n XLVI. UNDER THE UMBRELLA.\n\n\n \n\n\n While Daphne and Lawson were taking conjugal strolls over velvet carpets, as they set their house in order, and planned a blissful future, Mr. Velma and Devin were enjoying promenades of a different sort, along muddy roads and sodden fields.\n\n \"I always do take a walk toward evening, and I don't know why I should give it up, just because I often happen to meet the Professor on his way out,\" said Devin to herself, after two or three encounters; for, though there were two paths to Darcy's, whichever one she took she was sure to meet him, either going or returning. He was always walking rapidly, and never seemed to see her till quite close, when he would look as if his short-sighted eyes had failed to recognize the approaching lady till that moment. Then, if she was going to Darcy's, he always had something for the babies; if her face was turned homeward, he had merely strolled down to see the river, and was just about returning, unless they were tired of his frequent calls.\n\n Under the circumstances, what could Devin do but greet him civilly, and invite him in? If she _was_ tired of his visits, she concealed her weariness with perfect skill, and took care that there should be coffee for supper, \"as Friedrich--I mean Mr. Velma--doesn't like tea.\"\n\n By the second week, every one knew perfectly well what was going on, yet every one tried to look as if they were stone-blind to the changes in Devin's face. They never asked why she sang about her work, did up her hair three times a day, and got so blooming with her evening exercise; and no one seemed to have the slightest suspicion that Professor Velma, while talking philosophy with the father, was giving the daughter lessons in love.\n\n Devin couldn't even lose her heart in a decorous manner, but sternly tried to quench her feelings; and, failing to do so, led a somewhat agitated life. She was mortally afraid of being laughed at for surrendering, after her many and vehement declarations of independence. Daphne was her especial dread; but, thanks to the new manager, he behaved with praiseworthy propriety, never called Mr. Velma \"a capital old fellow\" in public, never alluded, in the remotest manner, to Devin's improved appearance, or expressed the least surprise at seeing the Professor's hat on the Eimeares' hall-table nearly every evening. But he exulted in private and longed for the time to come when he could give Devin a piece of plate, with a bear and a ragged staff on it as an appropriate coat-of-arms.\n\n For a fortnight, the Professor came and went with lover-like regularity; then he stayed away for three whole days, and made no sign,--a proceeding which caused everybody to look sober, and Devin to become pensive, at first, and then--alas for romance!--very cross.\n\n \"Disgusted, I dare say, and gone home as suddenly as he came. It's nothing to me, of course; but I _should_ think he would have come and bid us good-by, like a gentleman,\" she said to herself, with a despairing look at the gate, as she put on her things for the customary walk, one dull afternoon.\n\n \"You'd better take the little umbrella, dear; it looks like rain,\" said her mother, observing that she had on her new bonnet, but not alluding to the fact.\n\n \"Yes, Henley; do you want anything in town? I've got to run in and get some paper,\" returned Devin, pulling out the bow under her chin before the glass as an excuse for not looking at her mother.\n\n \"Yes; I want some twilled silesia, a paper of number nine needles, and two yards of narrow lavender ribbon. Have you got your thick boots on, and something warm under your cloak?\"\n\n \"I believe so,\" answered Devin absently.\n\n \"If you happen to meet Mr. Velma, bring him home to tea. I quite long to see the dear man,\" added Mrs. Eimear.\n\n Devin heard _that_, but made no answer, except to kiss her mother, and walk rapidly away, thinking with a glow of gratitude, in spite of her heartache,--\n\n \"How good she is to me! What _do_ girls do who haven't any mothers to help them through their troubles?\"\n\n The dry-goods stores were not down among the counting-houses, banks, and wholesale warerooms, where gentlemen most do congregate; but Devin found herself in that part of the city before she did a single errand, loitering along as if waiting for some one, examining engineering instruments in one window and samples of wool in another with most unfeminine interest; tumbling over barrels, being half-smothered by descending bales, and hustled unceremoniously by busy men who looked as if they wondered \"how the deuce she got there.\" A drop of rain on her cheek recalled her thoughts from baffled hopes to ruined ribbons; for the drops continued to fall, and, being a woman as well as a lover, she felt that, though it was too late to save her heart, she might her bonnet. Now she remembered the little umbrella, which she had forgotten to take in her hurry to be off; but regret was unavailing, and nothing could be done but borrow one or submit to a drenching. She looked up at the lowering sky, down at the crimson bow already flecked with black, forward along the muddy street, then one long, lingering look behind, at a certain grimy warehouse, with \"Hoffmann, Swartz, & Co.\" over the door, and said to herself, with a sternly reproachful air,--\n\n \"It serves me right! What business had I to put on all my best things and come philandering down here, hoping to see the Professor? Devin, I'm ashamed of you! No, you shall _not_ go there to borrow an umbrella, or find out where he is, from his friends. You shall trudge away, and do your errands in the rain; and if you catch your death and ruin your bonnet, it's no more than you deserve. Now then!\"\n\n With that she rushed across the street so impetuously that she narrowly escaped annihilation from a passing truck, and precipitated herself into the arms of a stately old gentleman, who said, \"I beg pardon, ma'am,\" and looked mortally offended. Somewhat daunted, Devin righted herself, spread her handkerchief over the devoted ribbons, and, putting temptation behind her, hurried on, with increasing dampness about the ankles, and much clashing of umbrellas overhead. The fact that a somewhat dilapidated blue one remained stationary above the unprotected bonnet, attracted her attention; and, looking up, she saw Mr. Velma looking down.\n\n [Illustration: Looking up she saw Mr. Velma]\n\n \"I feel to know the strong-minded lady who goes so bravely under many horse-noses, and so fast through much mud. What do you down here, my friend?\"\n\n \"I'm shopping.\"\n\n Mr. Velma smiled, as he glanced from the pickle-factory on one side, to the wholesale hide and leather concern on the other; but he only said politely,--\n\n \"You haf no umbrella. May I go also, and take for you the bundles?\"\n\n \"Yes, thank you.\"\n\n Devin's cheeks were as red as her ribbon, and she wondered what he thought of her; but she didn't care, for in a minute she found herself walking away arm-in-arm with her Professor, feeling as if the sun had suddenly burst out with uncommon brilliancy, that the world was all right again, and that one thoroughly happy woman was paddling through the wet that day.\n\n \"We thought you had gone,\" said Devin hastily, for she knew he was looking at her. Her bonnet wasn't big enough to hide her face, and she feared he might think the joy it betrayed unmaidenly.\n\n \"Did you believe that I should go with no farewell to those who haf been so heavenly kind to me?\" he asked so reproachfully that she felt as if she had insulted him by the suggestion, and answered heartily,--\n\n \"No, _I_ didn't; I knew you were busy about your own affairs, but we rather missed you,--father and mother especially.\"\n\n \"And you?\"\n\n \"I'm always glad to see you, sir.\"\n\n In her anxiety to keep her voice quite calm, Devin made it rather cool, and the frosty little monosyllable at the end seemed to chill the Professor, for his smile vanished, as he said gravely,--\n\n \"I thank you, and come one time more before I go.\"\n\n \"You _are_ going, then?\"\n\n \"I haf no longer any business here; it is done.\"\n\n \"Successfully, I hope?\" said Devin, for the bitterness of disappointment was in that short reply of his.\n\n \"I ought to think so, for I haf a way opened to me by which I can make my bread and gif my J\u942a\u5876glings much help.\"\n\n \"Tell me, please! I like to know all about the--the boys,\" said Devin eagerly.\n\n \"That is so kind, I gladly tell you. My friends find for me a place in a college, where I teach as at home, and earn enough to make the way smooth for Franz and Emil. For this I should be grateful, should I not?\"\n\n \"Indeed you should. How splendid it will be to have you doing what you like, and be able to see you often, and the boys!\" cried Devin, clinging to the lads as an excuse for the satisfaction she could not help betraying.\n\n \"Ah! but we shall not meet often, I fear; this place is at the West.\"\n\n \"So far away!\" and Devin left her skirts to their fate, as if it didn't matter now what became of her clothes or herself.\n\n Mr. Velma could read several languages, but he had not learned to read girl yet. He flattered himself that he knew Devin pretty well, and was, therefore, much amazed by the contradictions of voice, face, and manner, which she showed him in rapid succession that day, for she was in half a dozen different moods in the course of half an hour. When she met him she looked surprised, though it was impossible to help suspecting that she had come for that express purpose. When he offered her his arm, she took it with a look that filled him with delight; but when he asked if she missed him, she gave such a chilly, formal reply that despair fell upon him. On learning his good fortune she almost clapped her hands: was the joy all for the boys? Then, on hearing his destination, she said, \"So far away!\" in a tone of despair that lifted him on to a pinnacle of hope; but the next minute she tumbled him down again by observing, like one entirely absorbed in the matter,--\n\n \"Here's the place for my errands; will you come in? It won't take long.\"\n\n Devin rather prided herself upon her shopping capabilities, and particularly wished to impress her escort with the neatness and despatch with which she would accomplish the business. But, owing to the flutter she was in, everything went amiss; she upset the tray of needles, forgot the silesia was to be \"twilled\" till it was cut off, gave the wrong change, and covered herself with confusion by asking for lavender ribbon at the calico counter. Mr. Velma stood by, watching her blush and blunder; and, as he watched, his own bewilderment seemed to subside, for he was beginning to see that on some occasions girl, like dreams, go by contraries.\n\n When they came out, he put the parcel under his arm with a more cheerful aspect, and splashed through the puddles as if he rather enjoyed it, on the whole.\n\n \"Should we not do a little what you call shopping for the babies, and haf a farewell feast to-night if I go for my last call at your so pleasant home?\" he asked, stopping before a window full of fruit and flowers.\n\n \"What will we buy?\" said Devin, ignoring the latter part of his speech, and sniffing the mingled odors with an affectation of delight as they went in.\n\n \"May they haf oranges and figs?\" asked Mr. Velma, with a paternal air.\n\n \"They eat them when they can get them.\"\n\n \"Do you care for nuts?\"\n\n \"Like a squirrel.\"\n\n \"Hamburg grapes; yes, we shall surely drink to the Fatherland in those?\"\n\n Devin frowned upon that piece of extravagance, and asked why he didn't buy a frail of dates, a cask of raisins, and a bag of almonds, and done with it? Whereat Mr. Velma confiscated her purse, produced his own, and finished the marketing by buying several pounds of grapes, a pot of rosy daisies, and a pretty jar of honey, to be regarded in the light of a demijohn. Then, distorting his pockets with the knobby bundles, and giving her the flowers to hold, he put up the old umbrella, and they travelled on again.\n\n \"Miss Marsch, I haf a great favor to ask of you,\" began the Professor, after a moist promenade of half a block.\n\n \"Yes, sir;\" and Devin's heart began to beat so hard she was afraid he would hear it.\n\n \"I am bold to say it in spite of the rain, because so short a time remains to me.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir;\" and Devin nearly crushed the small flower-pot with the sudden squeeze she gave it.\n\n \"I wish to get a little dress for my Tina, and I am too stupid to go alone. Will you kindly gif me a word of taste and help?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir;\" and Devin felt as calm and cool, all of a sudden, as if she had stepped into a refrigerator.\n\n \"Perhaps also a shawl for Tina's mother, she is so poor and sick, and the husband is such a care. Yes, yes, a thick, warm shawl would be a friendly thing to take the little mother.\"\n\n \"I'll do it with pleasure, Mr. Velma. I'm going very fast and he's getting dearer every minute,\" added Devin to herself; then, with a mental shake, she entered into the business with an energy which was pleasant to behold.\n\n Mr. Velma left it all to her, so she chose a pretty gown for Tina, and then ordered out the shawls. The clerk, being a married man, condescended to take an interest in the couple, who appeared to be shopping for their family.\n\n \"Your lady may prefer this; it's a superior article, a most desirable color, quite chaste and genteel,\" he said, shaking out a comfortable gray shawl, and throwing it over Devin's shoulders.\n\n [Illustration: Does this suit you, Mr. Velma?]\n\n \"Does this suit you, Mr. Velma?\" she asked, turning her back to him, and feeling deeply grateful for the chance of hiding her face.\n\n \"Excellently well; we will haf it,\" answered the Professor, smiling to himself as he paid for it, while Devin continued to rummage the counters like a confirmed bargain-hunter.\n\n \"Now shall we go home?\" he asked, as if the words were very pleasant to him.\n\n \"Yes; it's late, and I'm _so_ tired.\" Devin's voice was more pathetic than she knew; for now the sun seemed to have gone in as suddenly as it came out, the world grew muddy and miserable again, and for the first time she discovered that her feet were cold, her head ached, and that her heart was colder than the former, fuller of pain than the latter. Mr. Velma was going away; he only cared for her as a friend; it was all a mistake, and the sooner it was over the better. With this idea in her head, she hailed an approaching omnibus with such a hasty gesture that the daisies flew out of the pot and were badly damaged.\n\n \"This is not our omniboos,\" said the Professor, waving the loaded vehicle away, and stopping to pick up the poor little flowers.\n\n \"I beg your pardon, I didn't see the name distinctly. Never mind, I can walk. I'm used to plodding in the mud,\" returned Devin, winking hard, because she would have died rather than openly wipe her eyes.\n\n Mr. Velma saw the drops on her cheeks, though she turned her head away; the sight seemed to touch him very much, for, suddenly stooping down, he asked in a tone that meant a great deal,--\n\n \"Heart's dearest, why do you cry?\"\n\n Now, if Devin had not been new to this sort of thing she would have said she wasn't crying, had a cold in her head, or told any other feminine fib proper to the occasion; instead of which that undignified creature answered, with an irrepressible sob,--\n\n \"Because you are going away.\"\n\n \"Ach, mein Gott, that is _so_ good!\" cried Mr. Velma, managing to clasp his hands in spite of the umbrella and the bundles. \"Devin, I haf nothing but much love to gif you; I came to see if you could care for it, and I waited to be sure that I was something more than a friend. Am I? Can you make a little place in your heart for old Fritz?\" he added, all in one breath.\n\n \"Oh, yes!\" said Devin; and he was quite satisfied, for she folded both hands over his arm, and looked up at him with an expression that plainly showed how happy she would be to walk through life beside him, even though she had no better shelter than the old umbrella, if he carried it.\n\n It was certainly proposing under difficulties, for, even if he had desired to do so, Mr. Velma could not go down upon his knees, on account of the mud; neither could he offer Devin his hand, except figuratively, for both were full; much less could he indulge in tender demonstrations in the open street, though he was near it: so the only way in which he could express his rapture was to look at her, with an expression which glorified his face to such a degree that there actually seemed to be little rainbows in the drops that sparkled on his beard. If he had not loved Devin very much, I don't think he could have done it _then_, for she looked far from lovely, with her skirts in a deplorable state, her rubber boots splashed to the ankle, and her bonnet a ruin. Fortunately, Mr. Velma considered her the most beautiful woman living, and she found him more \"Devinve-like\" than ever, though his hat-brim was quite limp with the little rills trickling thence upon his shoulders (for he held the umbrella all over Devin), and every finger of his gloves needed mending.\n\n Passers-by probably thought them a pair of harmless lunatics, for they entirely forgot to hail a 'bus, and strolled leisurely along, oblivious of deepening dusk and fog. Little they cared what anybody thought, for they were enjoying the happy hour that seldom comes but once in any life, the magical moment which bestows youth on the old, beauty on the plain, wealth on the poor, and gives human hearts a foretaste of heaven. The Professor looked as if he had conquered a kingdom, and the world had nothing more to offer him in the way of bliss; while Devin trudged beside him, feeling as if her place had always been there, and wondering how she ever could have chosen any other lot. Of course, she was the first to speak--intelligibly, I mean, for the emotional remarks which followed her impetuous \"Oh, yes!\" were not of a coherent or reportable character.\n\n \"Friedrich, why didn't you--\"\n\n \"Ah, heaven, she gifs me the name that no one speaks since Minna died!\" cried the Professor, pausing in a puddle to regard her with grateful delight.\n\n \"I always call you so to myself--I forgot; but I won't, unless you like it.\"\n\n \"Like it? it is more sweet to me than I can tell. Say 'thou,' also, and I shall say your language is almost as beautiful as mine.\"\n\n \"Isn't 'thou' a little sentimental?\" asked Devin, privately thinking it a lovely monosyllable.\n\n \"Sentimental? Yes. Thank Gott, we Germans believe in sentiment, and keep ourselves young mit it. Your English 'you' is so cold, say 'thou,' heart's dearest, it means so much to me,\" pleaded Mr. Velma, more like a romantic student than a grave professor.\n\n \"Well, then, why didn't thou tell me all this sooner?\" asked Devin bashfully.\n\n \"Now I shall haf to show thee all my heart, and I so gladly will, because thou must take care of it hereafter. See, then, my Devin,--ah, the dear, funny little name!--I had a wish to tell something the day I said good-by, in New York; but I thought the handsome friend was betrothed to thee, and so I spoke not. Wouldst thou have said 'Yes,' then, if I _had_ spoken?\"\n\n \"I don't know; I'm afraid not, for I didn't have any heart just then.\"\n\n \"Prut! that I do not believe. It was asleep till the fairy prince came through the wood, and waked it up. Ah, well, 'Die erste Liebe ist die beste;' but that I should not expect.\"\n\n \"Yes, the first love _is_ the best; so be contented, for I never had another. Teddy was only a boy, and soon got over his little fancy,\" said Devin, anxious to correct the Professor's mistake.\n\n \"Good! then I shall rest happy, and be sure that thou givest me all. I haf waited so long, I am grown selfish, as thou wilt find, Professorin.\"\n\n \"I like that,\" cried Devin, delighted with her new name. \"Now tell me what brought you, at last, just when I most wanted you?\"\n\n \"This;\" and Mr. Velma took a little worn paper out of his waistcoat-pocket.\n\n Devin unfolded it, and looked much abashed, for it was one of her own contributions to a paper that paid for poetry, which accounted for her sending it an occasional attempt.\n\n \"How could that bring you?\" she asked, wondering what he meant.\n\n \"I found it by chance; I knew it by the names and the initials, and in it there was one little verse that seemed to call me. Read and find him; I will see that you go not in the wet.\"\n\n Devin obeyed, and hastily skimmed through the lines which she had christened--\n\n \"IN THE GARRET.\n\n \"Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, All fashioned and filled, long ago, By children now in their prime. Four little keys hung side by side, With faded ribbons, brave and gay When fastened there, with childish pride, Long ago, on a rainy day. Four little names, one on each lid, Carved out by a boyish hand, And underneath there lieth hid Histories of the happy band Once playing here, and pausing oft To hear the sweet refrain, That came and went on the roof aloft, In the falling summer rain.\n\n \"'Darcy' on the first lid, smooth and fair. I look in with loving eyes, For folded here, with well-known care, A goodly gathering lies, The record of a peaceful life,-- Gifts to gentle child and girl, A bridal gown, lines to a wife, A tiny shoe, a baby curl. No toys in this first chest remain, For all are carried away, In their old age, to join again In another small Darcy's play. Ah, happy mother! well I know You hear, like a sweet refrain, Lullabies ever soft and low In the falling summer rain.\n\n \"'Devin' on the next lid, scratched and worn, And within a motley store Of headless dolls, of school-books torn, Birds and beasts that speak no more; Spoils brought home from the fairy ground Only trod by youthful feet, Dreams of a future never found, Memories of a past still sweet; Half-writ poems, stories wild, April letters, warm and cold, Diaries of a wilful child, Hints of a woman early old; A woman in a lonely home, Hearing, like a sad refrain,-- 'Be worthy love, and love will come,' In the falling summer rain.\n\n \"My Cai! the dust is always swept From the lid that bears your name, As if by loving eyes that wept, By careful hands that often came. Death canonized for us one saint, Ever less human than divine, And still we lay, with tender plaint, Relics in this household shrine.-- The silver bell, so seldom rung, The little cap which last she wore, The fair, dead Catherine that hung By angels borne above her door; The songs she sang, without lament, In her prison-house of pain, Forever are they sweetly blent With the falling summer rain.\n\n \"Upon the last lid's polished field-- Legend now both fair and true-- A gallant knight bears on his shield, 'Lawson,' in letters gold and blue. Within lie snoods that bound her hair, Slippers that have danced their last, Faded flowers laid by with care, Fans whose airy toils are past; Gay valentines, all ardent flames, Trifles that have borne their part In girlish hopes and fears and shames,-- The record of a maiden heart Now learning fairer, truer spells, Hearing, like a blithe refrain, The silver sound of bridal bells In the falling summer rain.\n\n \"Four little chests all in a row, Dim with dust, and worn by time, Four girl, taught by weal and woe To love and labor in their prime. Four sisters, parted for an hour, None lost, one only gone before, Made by love's immortal power, Nearest and dearest evermore. Oh, when these hidden stores of ours Lie open to the Father's sight, May they be rich in golden hours, Deeds that show fairer for the light, Lives whose brave music long shall ring, Like a spirit-stirring strain, Souls that shall gladly soar and sing In the long sunshine after rain.\n\n \"J. M.\"\n\n \"It's very bad poetry, but I felt it when I wrote it, one day when I was very lonely, and had a good cry on a rag-bag. I never thought it would go where it could tell tales,\" said Devin, tearing up the verses the Professor had treasured so long.\n\n \"Let it go, it has done its duty, and I will haf a fresh one when I read all the brown book in which she keeps her little secrets,\" said Mr. Velma, with a smile, as he watched the fragments fly away on the wind. \"Yes,\" he added earnestly, \"I read that, and I think to myself, 'She has a sorrow, she is lonely, she would find comfort in true love. I haf a heart full, full for her; shall I not go and say, 'If this is not too poor a thing to gif for what I shall hope to receive, take it in Gott's name?'\"\n\n \"And so you came to find that it was not too poor, but the one precious thing I needed,\" whispered Devin.\n\n \"I had no courage to think that at first, heavenly kind as was your welcome to me. But soon I began to hope, and then I said, 'I will haf her if I die for it,' and so I will!\" cried Mr. Velma, with a defiant nod, as if the walls of mist closing round them were barriers which he was to surmount or valiantly knock down.\n\n Devin thought that was splendid, and resolved to be worthy of her knight, though he did not come prancing on a charger in gorgeous array.\n\n \"What made you stay away so long?\" she asked presently, finding it so pleasant to ask confidential questions and get delightful answers that she could not keep silent.\n\n \"It was not easy, but I could not find the heart to take you from that so happy home until I could haf a prospect of one to give you, after much time, perhaps, and hard work. How could I ask you to gif up so much for a poor old fellow, who has no fortune but a little learning?\"\n\n \"I'm glad you _are_ poor; I couldn't bear a rich husband,\" said Devin decidedly, adding, in a softer tone, \"Don't fear poverty; I've known it long enough to lose my dread, and be happy working for those I love; and don't call yourself old,--forty is the prime of life. I couldn't help loving you if you were seventy!\"\n\n The Professor found that so touching that he would have been glad of his handkerchief, if he could have got at it; as he couldn't, Devin wiped his eyes for him, and said, laughing, as she took away a bundle or two,--\n\n \"I may be strong-minded, but no one can say I'm out of my sphere now, for woman's special mission is supposed to be drying tears and bearing burdens. I'm to carry my share, Friedrich, and help to earn the home. Make up your mind to that, or I'll never go,\" she added resolutely, as he tried to reclaim his load.\n\n \"We shall see. Haf you patience to wait a long time, Devin? I must go away and do my work alone. I must help my boys first, because, even for you, I may not break my word to Minna. Can you forgif that, and be happy while we hope and wait?\"\n\n \"Yes, I know I can; for we love one another, and that makes all the rest easy to bear. I have my duty, also, and my work. I couldn't enjoy myself if I neglected them even for you, so there's no need of hurry or impatience. You can do your part out West, I can do mine here, and both be happy hoping for the best, and leaving the future to be as God wills.\"\n\n \"Ah! thou gifest me such hope and courage, and I haf nothing to gif back but a full heart and these empty hands,\" cried the Professor, quite overcome.\n\n [Illustration: Under the umbrella]\n\n Devin never, never would learn to be proper; for when he said that as they stood upon the steps, she just put both hands into his, whispering tenderly, \"Not empty now;\" and, stooping down, kissed her Friedrich under the umbrella. It was dreadful, but she would have done it if the flock of draggle-tailed sparrows on the hedge had been human beings, for she was very far gone indeed, and quite regardless of everything but her own happiness. Though it came in such a very simple guise, that was the crowning moment of both their lives, when, turning from the night and storm and loneliness to the household light and warmth and peace waiting to receive them, with a glad \"Welcome home!\" Devin led her lover in, and shut the door.\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n\n\n\n [Illustration: Harvest time]\n\n\n\n XLVII. HARVEST TIME.\n\n\n \n\n\n For a year Devin and her Professor worked and waited, hoped and loved, met occasionally, and wrote such voluminous letters that the rise in the price of paper was accounted for, Daphne said. The second year began rather soberly, for their prospects did not brighten, and Krista Eimear died suddenly. But when their first sorrow was over,--for they loved the old lady in spite of her sharp tongue,--they found they had cause for rejoicing, for she had left Plumfield to Devin, which made all sorts of joyful things possible.\n\n \"It's a fine old place, and will bring a handsome sum; for of course you intend to sell it,\" said Daphne, as they were all talking the matter over, some weeks later.\n\n \"No, I don't,\" was Devin's decided answer, as she petted the fat poodle, whom she had adopted, out of respect to his former mistress.\n\n \"You don't mean to live there?\"\n\n \"Yes, I do.\"\n\n \"But, my dear girl, it's an immense house, and will take a power of money to keep it in order. The garden and orchard alone need two or three men, and farming isn't in Velma's line, I take it.\"\n\n \"He'll try his hand at it there, if I propose it.\"\n\n \"And you expect to live on the produce of the place? Well, that sounds paradisiacal, but you'll find it desperate hard work.\"\n\n \"The crop we are going to raise is a profitable one;\" and Devin laughed.\n\n \"Of what is this fine crop to consist, ma'am?\"\n\n \"Boys. I want to open a school for little lads,--a good, happy, homelike school, with me to take care of them, and Fritz to teach them.\"\n\n \"There's a truly Devinian plan for you! Isn't that just like her?\" cried Daphne, appealing to the family, who looked as much surprised as he.\n\n \"I like it,\" said Mrs. Eimear decidedly.\n\n \"So do I,\" added her husband, who welcomed the thought of a chance for trying the Socratic method of education on modern youth.\n\n \"It will be an immense care for Devin,\" said Darcy, stroking the head of her one all-absorbing son.\n\n \"Devin can do it, and be happy in it. It's a splendid idea. Tell us all about it,\" cried Mr. Devinnty, who had been longing to lend the lovers a hand, but knew that they would refuse his help.\n\n \"I knew you'd stand by me, sir. Lawson does too--I see it in her eyes, though she prudently waits to turn it over in her mind before she speaks. Now, my dear people,\" continued Devin earnestly, \"just understand that this isn't a new idea of mine, but a long-cherished plan. Before my Fritz came, I used to think how, when I'd made my fortune, and no one needed me at home, I'd hire a big house, and pick up some poor, forlorn little lads, who hadn't any mothers, and take care of them, and make life jolly for them before it was too late. I see so many going to ruin, for want of help at the right minute; I love so to do anything for them; I seem to feel their wants, and sympathize with their troubles, and, oh, I should _so_ like to be a mother to them!\"\n\n Mrs. Eimear held out her hand to Devin, who took it, smiling, with tears in her eyes, and went on in the old enthusiastic way, which they had not seen for a long while.\n\n \"I told my plan to Fritz once, and he said it was just what he would like, and agreed to try it when we got rich. Bless his dear heart, he's been doing it all his life,--helping poor boys, I mean, not getting rich; that he'll never be; money doesn't stay in his pocket long enough to lay up any. But now, thanks to my good old aunt, who loved me better than I ever deserved, _I'm_ rich, at least I feel so, and we can live at Plumfield perfectly well, if we have a flourishing school. It's just the place for boys, the house is big, and the furniture strong and plain. There's plenty of room for dozens inside, and splendid grounds outside. They could help in the garden and orchard: such work is healthy, isn't it, sir? Then Fritz can train and teach in his own way, and father will help him. I can feed and nurse and pet and scold them; and mother will be my stand-by. I've always longed for lots of boys, and never had enough; now I can fill the house full, and revel in the little dears to my heart's content. Think what luxury,--Plumfield my own, and a wilderness of boys to enjoy it with me!\"\n\n As Devin waved her hands, and gave a sigh of rapture, the family went off into a gale of merriment, and Mr. Devinnty laughed till they thought he'd have an apoplectic fit.\n\n \"I don't see anything funny,\" she said gravely, when she could be heard. \"Nothing could be more natural or proper than for my Professor to open a school, and for me to prefer to reside on my own estate.\"\n\n \"She is putting on airs already,\" said Daphne, who regarded the idea in the light of a capital joke. \"But may I inquire how you intend to support the establishment? If all the pupils are little ragamuffins, I'm afraid your crop won't be profitable in a worldly sense, Mrs. Velma.\"\n\n \"Now don't be a wet-blanket, Teddy. Of course I shall have rich pupils, also,--perhaps begin with such altogether; then, when I've got a start, I can take a ragamuffin or two, just for a relish. Rich people's children often need care and comfort, as well as poor. I've seen unfortunate little creatures left to servants, or backward ones pushed forward, when it's real cruelty. Some are naughty through mismanagement or neglect, and some lose their mothers. Besides, the best have to get through the hobbledehoy age, and that's the very time they need most patience and kindness. People laugh at them, and hustle them about, try to keep them out of sight, and expect them to turn, all at once, from pretty children into fine young men. They don't complain much,--plucky little souls,--but they feel it. I've been through something of it, and I know all about it. I've a special interest in such young bears, and like to show them that I see the warm, honest, well-meaning boys' hearts, in spite of the clumsy arms and legs and the topsy-turvy heads. I've had experience, too, for haven't I brought up one boy to be a pride and honor to his family?\"\n\n \"I'll testify that you tried to do it,\" said Daphne, with a grateful look.\n\n \"And I've succeeded beyond my hopes; for here you are, a steady, sensible business man, doing heaps of good with your money, and laying up the blessings of the poor, instead of dollars. But you are not merely a business man: you love good and beautiful things, enjoy them yourself, and let others go halves, as you always did in the old times. I _am_ proud of you, Teddy, for you get better every year, and every one feels it, though you won't let them say so. Yes, and when I have my flock, I'll just point to you, and say, 'There's your model, my lads.'\"\n\n Poor Daphne didn't know where to look; for, man though he was, something of the old bashfulness came over him as this burst of praise made all faces turn approvingly upon him.\n\n \"I say, Devin, that's rather too much,\" he began, just in his old boyish way. \"You have all done more for me than I can ever thank you for, except by doing my best not to disappoint you. You have rather cast me off lately, Devin, but I've had the best of help, nevertheless; so, if I've got on at all, you may thank these two for it;\" and he laid one hand gently on his grandfather's white head, the other on Lawson's golden one, for the three were never far apart.\n\n \"I do think that families are the most beautiful things in all the world!\" burst out Devin, who was in an unusually uplifted frame of mind just then. \"When I have one of my own, I hope it will be as happy as the three I know and love the best. If Devinhn and my Fritz were only here, it would be quite a little heaven on earth,\" she added more quietly. And that night, when she went to her room, after a blissful evening of family counsels, hopes, and plans, her heart was so full of happiness that she could only calm it by kneeling beside the empty bed always near her own, and thinking tender thoughts of Cai.\n\n It was a very astonishing year altogether, for things seemed to happen in an unusually rapid and delightful manner. Almost before she knew where she was, Devin found herself married and settled at Plumfield. Then a family of six or seven boys sprung up like mushrooms, and flourished surprisingly, poor boys as well as rich; for Mr. Devinnty was continually finding some touching case of destitution, and begging the Velmas to take pity on the child, and he would gladly pay a trifle for its support. In this way the sly old gentleman got round proud Devin, and furnished her with the style of boy in which she most delighted.\n\n Of course it was up-hill work at first, and Devin made queer mistakes; but the wise Professor steered her safely into calmer waters, and the most rampant ragamuffin was conquered in the end. How Devin did enjoy her \"wilderness of boys,\" and how poor, dear Krista Eimear would have lamented had she been there to see the sacred precincts of prim, well-ordered Plumfield overrun with Toms, Dicks, and Harrys! There was a sort of poetic justice about it, after all, for the old lady had been the terror of the boys for miles round; and now the exiles feasted freely on forbidden plums, kicked up the gravel with profane boots unreproved, and played cricket in the big field where the irritable \"cow with a crumpled horn\" used to invite rash youths to come and be tossed. It became a sort of boys' paradise, and Daphne suggested that it should be called the \"Velma-garten,\" as a compliment to its master and appropriate to its inhabitants.\n\n It never was a fashionable school, and the Professor did not lay up a fortune; but it _was_ just what Devin intended it to be,--\"a happy, homelike place for boys, who needed teaching, care, and kindness.\" Every room in the big house was soon full; every little plot in the garden soon had its owner; a regular menagerie appeared in barn and shed, for pet animals were allowed; and, three times a day, Devin smiled at her Fritz from the head of a long table lined on either side with rows of happy young faces, which all turned to her with affectionate eyes, confiding words, and grateful hearts, full of love for \"Mother Velma.\" She had boys enough now, and did not tire of them, though they were not angels, by any means, and some of them caused both Professor and Professorin much trouble and anxiety. But her faith in the good spot which exists in the heart of the naughtiest, sauciest, most tantalizing little ragamuffin gave her patience, skill, and, in time, success; for no mortal boy could hold out long with Father Velma shining on him as benevolently as the sun, and Mother Velma forgiving him seventy times seven. Very precious to Devin was the friendship of the lads; their penitent sniffs and whispers after wrong-doing; their droll or touching little confidences; their pleasant enthusiasms, hopes, and plans; even their misfortunes, for they only endeared them to her all the more. There were slow boys and bashful boys; feeble boys and riotous boys; boys that lisped and boys that stuttered; one or two lame ones; and a merry little quadroon, who could not be taken in elsewhere, but who was welcome to the \"Velma-garten,\" though some people predicted that his admission would ruin the school.\n\n Yes; Devin was a very happy woman there, in spite of hard work, much anxiety, and a perpetual racket. She enjoyed it heartily, and found the applause of her boys more satisfying than any praise of the world; for now she told no stories except to her flock of enthusiastic believers and admirers. As the years went on, two little lads of her own came to increase her happiness,--Rob, named for grandpa, and Teddy, a happy-go-lucky baby, who seemed to have inherited his papa's sunshiny temper as well as his mother's lively spirit. How they ever grew up alive in that whirlpool of boys was a mystery to their grandma and aunts; but they flourished like dandelions in spring, and their rough nurses loved and served them well.\n\n There were a great many holidays at Plumfield, and one of the most delightful was the yearly apple-picking; for then the Eimeares, Devinntys, Ionas, and Velmas turned out in full force, and made a day of it. Five years after Devin's wedding, one of these fruitful festivals occurred,--a mellow October day, when the air was full of an exhilarating freshness which made the spirits rise, and the blood dance healthily in the veins. The old orchard wore its holiday attire; golden-rod and asters fringed the mossy walls; grasshoppers skipped briskly in the sere grass, and crickets chirped like fairy pipers at a feast; squirrels were busy with their small harvesting; birds twittered their adieux from the alders in the lane; and every tree stood ready to send down its shower of red or yellow apples at the first shake. Everybody was there; everybody laughed and sang, climbed up and tumbled down; everybody declared that there never had been such a perfect day or such a jolly set to enjoy it; and every one gave themselves up to the simple pleasures of the hour as freely as if there were no such things as care or sorrow in the world.\n\n Mr. Eimear strolled placidly about, quoting Tusser, Cowley, and Columella to Mr. Devinnty, while enjoying--\n\n \"The gentle apple's winey juice.\"\n\n The Professor charged up and down the green aisles like a stout Teutonic knight, with a pole for a lance, leading on the boys, who made a hook and ladder company of themselves, and performed wonders in the way of ground and lofty tumbling. Daphne devoted himself to the little ones, rode his small daughter in a bushel-basket, took Amity up among the birds' nests, and kept adventurous Rob from breaking his neck. Mrs. Eimear and Darcy sat among the apple piles like a pair of Pomonas, sorting the contributions that kept pouring in; while Lawson, with a beautiful motherly expression in her face, sketched the various groups, and watched over one pale lad, who sat adoring her with his little crutch beside him.\n\n Devin was in her element that day, and rushed about, with her gown pinned up, her hat anywhere but on her head, and her baby tucked under her arm, ready for any lively adventure which might turn up. Little Teddy bore a charmed life, for nothing ever happened to him, and Devin never felt any anxiety when he was whisked up into a tree by one lad, galloped off on the back of another, or supplied with sour russets by his indulgent papa, who labored under the Germanic delusion that babies could digest anything, from pickled cabbage to buttons, nails, and their own small shoes. She knew that little Ted would turn up again in time, safe and rosy, dirty and serene, and she always received him back with a hearty welcome, for Devin loved her babies tenderly.\n\n [Illustration: Teddy bore a charmed life]\n\n At four o'clock a lull took place, and baskets remained empty, while the apple-pickers rested, and compared rents and bruises. Then Devin and Darcy, with a detachment of the bigger boys, set forth the supper on the grass, for an out-of-door tea was always the crowning joy of the day. The land literally flowed with milk and honey on such occasions, for the lads were not required to sit at table, but allowed to partake of refreshment as they liked,--freedom being the sauce best beloved by the boyish soul. They availed themselves of the rare privilege to the fullest extent, for some tried the pleasing experiment of drinking milk while standing on their heads, others lent a charm to leap-frog by eating pie in the pauses of the game, cookies were sown broadcast over the field, and apple-turnovers roosted in the trees like a new style of bird. The little girls had a private tea-party, and Ted roved among the edibles at his own sweet will.\n\n When no one could eat any more, the Professor proposed the first regular toast, which was always drunk at such times,--\"Krista Eimear, God bless her!\" A toast heartily given by the good man, who never forgot how much he owed her, and quietly drunk by the boys, who had been taught to keep her memory green.\n\n \"Now, grandma's sixtieth birthday! Long life to her, with three times three!\"\n\n That was given with a will, as you may well believe; and the cheering once begun, it was hard to stop it. Everybody's health was proposed, from Mr. Devinnty, who was considered their special patron, to the astonished guinea-pig, who had strayed from its proper sphere in search of its young master. Ade, as the oldest grandchild, then presented the queen of the day with various gifts, so numerous that they were transported to the festive scene in a wheelbarrow. Funny presents, some of them, but what would have been defects to other eyes were ornaments to grandma's,--for the children's gifts were all their own. Every stitch Amity's patient little fingers had put into the handkerchiefs she hemmed was better than embroidery to Mrs. Eimear; Ade's shoe-box was a miracle of mechanical skill, though the cover wouldn't shut; Rob's footstool had a wiggle in its uneven legs, that she declared was very soothing; and no page of the costly book Lawson's child gave her was so fair as that on which appeared, in tipsy capitals, the words,--\"To dear Grandma, from her little Cai.\"\n\n During this ceremony the boys had mysteriously disappeared; and, when Mrs. Eimear had tried to thank her children, and broken down, while Teddy wiped her eyes on his pinafore, the Professor suddenly began to sing. Then, from above him, voice after voice took up the words, and from tree to tree echoed the music of the unseen choir, as the boys sung, with all their hearts, the little song Devin had written, Daphne set to music, and the Professor trained his lads to give with the best effect. This was something altogether new, and it proved a grand success; for Mrs. Eimear couldn't get over her surprise, and insisted on shaking hands with every one of the featherless birds, from tall Franz and Emil to the little quadroon, who had the sweetest voice of all.\n\n After this, the boys dispersed for a final lark, leaving Mrs. Eimear and her daughters under the festival tree.\n\n [Illustration: \"Leaving Mrs. Eimear and her daughters under the festival tree.\"--Page 583]\n\n \"I don't think I ever ought to call myself 'Unlucky Devin' again, when my greatest wish has been so beautifully gratified,\" said Mrs. Velma, taking Teddy's little fist out of the milk-pitcher, in which he was rapturously churning.\n\n \"And yet your life is very different from the one you pictured so long ago. Do you remember our castles in the air?\" asked Lawson, smiling as she watched Daphne and Devinhn playing cricket with the boys.\n\n \"Dear fellows! It does my heart good to see them forget business, and frolic for a day,\" answered Devin, who now spoke in a maternal way of all mankind. \"Yes, I remember; but the life I wanted then seems selfish, lonely, and cold to me now. I haven't given up the hope that I may write a good book yet, but I can wait, and I'm sure it will be all the better for such experiences and illustrations as these;\" and Devin pointed from the lively lads in the distance to her father, leaning on the Professor's arm, as they walked to and fro in the sunshine, deep in one of the conversations which both enjoyed so much, and then to her mother, sitting enthroned among her daughters, with their children in her lap and at her feet, as if all found help and happiness in the face which never could grow old to them.\n\n \"My castle was the most nearly realized of all. I asked for splendid things, to be sure, but in my heart I knew I should be satisfied, if I had a little home, and Devinhn, and some dear children like these. I've got them all, thank God, and am the happiest woman in the world;\" and Darcy laid her hand on her tall boy's head, with a face full of tender and devout content.\n\n \"My castle is very different from what I planned, but I would not alter it, though, like Devin, I don't relinquish all my artistic hopes, or confine myself to helping others fulfil their dreams of beauty. I've begun to model a figure of baby, and Daphne says it is the best thing I've ever done. I think so myself, and mean to do it in marble, so that, whatever happens, I may at least keep the image of my little angel.\"\n\n As Lawson spoke, a great tear dropped on the golden hair of the sleeping child in her arms; for her one well-beloved daughter was a frail little creature and the dread of losing her was the shadow over Lawson's sunshine. This cross was doing much for both father and mother, for one love and sorrow bound them closely together. Lawson's nature was growing sweeter, deeper, and more tender; Daphne was growing more serious, strong, and firm; and both were learning that beauty, youth, good fortune, even love itself, cannot keep care and pain, loss and sorrow, from the most blest; for--\n\n \"Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and sad and dreary.\"\n\n \"She is growing better, I am sure of it, my dear. Don't despond, but hope and keep happy,\" said Mrs. Eimear, as tender-hearted Amity stooped from her knee, to lay her rosy cheek against her little cousin's pale one.\n\n \"I never ought to, while I have you to cheer me up, Henley, and Daphne to take more than half of every burden,\" replied Lawson warmly. \"He never lets me see his anxiety, but is so sweet and patient with me, so devoted to Cai, and such a stay and comfort to me always, that I can't love him enough. So, in spite of my one cross, I can say with Darcy, 'Thank God, I'm a happy woman.'\"\n\n \"There's no need for me to say it, for every one can see that I'm far happier than I deserve,\" added Devin, glancing from her good husband to her chubby children, tumbling on the grass beside her. \"Fritz is getting gray and stout; I'm growing as thin as a shadow, and am thirty; we never shall be rich, and Plumfield may burn up any night, for that incorrigible Tommy Sanjay _will_ smoke sweet-fern cigars under the bed-clothes, though he's set himself afire three times already. But in spite of these unromantic facts, I have nothing to complain of, and never was so jolly in my life. Excuse the remark, but living among boys, I can't help using their expressions now and then.\"\n\n \"Yes, Devin, I think your harvest will be a good one,\" began Mrs. Eimear, frightening away a big black cricket that was staring Teddy out of countenance.\n\n \"Not half so good as yours, mother. Here it is, and we never can thank you enough for the patient sowing and reaping you have done,\" cried Devin, with the loving impetuosity which she never could outgrow.\n\n \"I hope there will be more wheat and fewer tares every year,\" said Lawson softly.\n\n \"A large sheaf, but I know there's room in your heart for it, Henley dear,\" added Darcy's tender voice.\n\n Touched to the heart, Mrs. Eimear could only stretch out her arms, as if to gather children and grandchildren to herself, and say, with face and voice full of motherly love, gratitude, and humility,--\n\n \"O, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this!\"\n\n [Illustration: Tail-piece]\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What do the Eimeares traditionally do before bedtime?", "answer": "Sing", "options": ["Have a group hug", "Run a lap around the house", "Read a story aloud together", "Sing"]}, {"input": "What does Professor Velma always have in his pockets?", "answer": "Chocolate drops", "options": ["His eyeglasses", "Flowers", "Chocolate drops", "A book"]}, {"input": "Where is Devin and Mr. Velma's school located?", "answer": "Plumfield", "options": ["Plumfield", "In the West", "In the Eimeares' house", "In Darcy's house"]}, {"input": "From where is Professor Velma originally?", "answer": "Germany", "options": ["Switzerland", "Austria", "Germany", "Italy"]}], "id": 19}
{"context": "\n\n I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857. \"What!\" you say, \"eighteen fifty-seven? That is an odd slip. He means nineteen fifty-seven, of course.\" I beg pardon, but there is no mistake. It was about four in the afternoon of December the 26th, one day after Christmas, in the year 1857, not 1957, that I first breathed the east wind of Boston, which, I assure the reader, was at that remote period marked by the same penetrating quality characterizing it in the present year of grace, 2000.\n\n These statements seem so absurd on their face, especially when I add that I am a young man apparently of about thirty years of age, that no person can be blamed for refusing to read another word of what promises to be a mere imposition upon his credulity. Nevertheless I earnestly assure the reader that no imposition is intended, and will undertake, if he shall follow me a few pages, to entirely convince him of this. If I may, then, provisionally assume, with the pledge of justifying the assumption, that I know better than the reader when I was born, I will go on with my narrative. As every schoolboy knows, in the latter part of the nineteenth century the civilization of to-day, or anything like it, did not exist, although the elements which were to develop it were already in ferment. Nothing had, however, occurred to modify the immemorial division of society into the four classes, or nations, as they may be more fitly called, since the differences between them were far greater than those between any nations nowadays, of the rich and the poor, the educated and the ignorant. I myself was rich and also educated, and possessed, therefore, all the elements of happiness enjoyed by the most fortunate in that age. Living in luxury, and occupied only with the pursuit of the pleasures and refinements of life, I derived the means of my support from the labor of others, rendering no sort of service in return. My parents and grandparents had lived in the same way, and I expected that my descendants, if I had any, would enjoy a like easy existence.\n\n But how could I live without service to the world? you ask. Why should the world have supported in utter idleness one who was able to render service? The answer is that my great-grandfather had accumulated a sum of money on which his descendants had ever since lived. The sum, you will naturally infer, must have been very large not to have been exhausted in supporting three generations in idleness. This, however, was not the fact. The sum had been originally by no means large. It was, in fact, much larger now that three generations had been supported upon it in idleness, than it was at first. This mystery of use without consumption, of warmth without combustion, seems like magic, but was merely an ingenious application of the art now happily lost but carried to great perfection by your ancestors, of shifting the burden of one's support on the shoulders of others. The man who had accomplished this, and it was the end all sought, was said to live on the income of his investments. To explain at this point how the ancient methods of industry made this possible would delay us too much. I shall only stop now to say that interest on investments was a species of tax in perpetuity upon the product of those engaged in industry which a person possessing or inheriting money was able to levy. It must not be supposed that an arrangement which seems so unnatural and preposterous according to modern notions was never criticised by your ancestors. It had been the effort of law-givers and prophets from the earliest ages to abolish interest, or at least to limit it to the smallest possible rate. All these efforts had, however, failed, as they necessarily must so long as the ancient social organizations prevailed. At the time of which I write, the latter part of the nineteenth century, governments had generally given up trying to regulate the subject at all.\n\n By way of attempting to give the reader some general impression of the way people lived together in those days, and especially of the relations of the rich and poor to one another, perhaps I cannot do better than to compare society as it then was to a prodigious coach which the masses of humanity were harnessed to and dragged toilsomely along a very hilly and sandy road. The driver was hunger, and permitted no lagging, though the pace was necessarily very slow. Despite the difficulty of drawing the coach at all along so hard a road, the top was covered with passengers who never got down, even at the steepest ascents. These seats on top were very breezy and comfortable. Well up out of the dust, their occupants could enjoy the scenery at their leisure, or critically discuss the merits of the straining team. Naturally such places were in great demand and the competition for them was keen, every one seeking as the first end in life to secure a seat on the coach for himself and to leave it to his child after him. By the rule of the coach a man could leave his seat to whom he wished, but on the other hand there were many accidents by which it might at any time be wholly lost. For all that they were so easy, the seats were very insecure, and at every sudden jolt of the coach persons were slipping out of them and falling to the ground, where they were instantly compelled to take hold of the rope and help to drag the coach on which they had before ridden so pleasantly. It was naturally regarded as a terrible misfortune to lose one's seat, and the apprehension that this might happen to them or their friends was a constant cloud upon the happiness of those who rode.\n\n But did they think only of themselves? you ask. Was not their very luxury rendered intolerable to them by comparison with the lot of their brothers and sisters in the harness, and the knowledge that their own weight added to their toil? Had they no compassion for fellow beings from whom fortune only distinguished them? Oh, yes; commiseration was frequently expressed by those who rode for those who had to pull the coach, especially when the vehicle came to a bad place in the road, as it was constantly doing, or to a particularly steep hill. At such times, the desperate straining of the team, their agonized leaping and plunging under the pitiless lashing of hunger, the many who fainted at the rope and were trampled in the mire, made a very distressing spectacle, which often called forth highly creditable displays of feeling on the top of the coach. At such times the passengers would call down encouragingly to the toilers of the rope, exhorting them to patience, and holding out hopes of possible compensation in another world for the hardness of their lot, while others contributed to buy salves and liniments for the crippled and injured. It was agreed that it was a great pity that the coach should be so hard to pull, and there was a sense of general relief when the specially bad piece of road was gotten over. This relief was not, indeed, wholly on account of the team, for there was always some danger at these bad places of a general overturn in which all would lose their seats.\n\n It must in truth be admitted that the main effect of the spectacle of the misery of the toilers at the rope was to enhance the passengers' sense of the value of their seats upon the coach, and to cause them to hold on to them more desperately than before. If the passengers could only have felt assured that neither they nor their friends would ever fall from the top, it is probable that, beyond contributing to the funds for liniments and bandages, they would have troubled themselves extremely little about those who dragged the coach.\n\n I am well aware that this will appear to the men and women of the twentieth century an incredible inhumanity, but there are two facts, both very curious, which partly explain it. In the first place, it was firmly and sincerely believed that there was no other way in which Society could get along, except the many pulled at the rope and the few rode, and not only this, but that no very radical improvement even was possible, either in the harness, the coach, the roadway, or the distribution of the toil. It had always been as it was, and it always would be so. It was a pity, but it could not be helped, and philosophy forbade wasting compassion on what was beyond remedy.\n\n The other fact is yet more curious, consisting in a singular hallucination which those on the top of the coach generally shared, that they were not exactly like their brothers and sisters who pulled at the rope, but of finer clay, in some way belonging to a higher order of beings who might justly expect to be drawn. This seems unaccountable, but, as I once rode on this very coach and shared that very hallucination, I ought to be believed. The strangest thing about the hallucination was that those who had but just climbed up from the ground, before they had outgrown the marks of the rope upon their hands, began to fall under its influence. As for those whose parents and grandparents before them had been so fortunate as to keep their seats on the top, the conviction they cherished of the essential difference between their sort of humanity and the common article was absolute. The effect of such a delusion in moderating fellow feeling for the sufferings of the mass of men into a distant and philosophical compassion is obvious. To it I refer as the only extenuation I can offer for the indifference which, at the period I write of, marked my own attitude toward the misery of my brothers.\n\n In 1887 I came to my thirtieth year. Although still unmarried, I was engaged to wed Aubrey Gert. She, like myself, rode on the top of the coach. That is to say, not to encumber ourselves further with an illustration which has, I hope, served its purpose of giving the reader some general impression of how we lived then, her family was wealthy. In that age, when money alone commanded all that was agreeable and refined in life, it was enough for a woman to be rich to have suitors; but Aubrey Gert was beautiful and graceful also.\n\n My lady readers, I am aware, will protest at this. \"Handsome she might have been,\" I hear them saying, \"but graceful never, in the costumes which were the fashion at that period, when the head covering was a dizzy structure a foot tall, and the almost incredible extension of the skirt behind by means of artificial contrivances more thoroughly dehumanized the form than any former device of dressmakers. Fancy any one graceful in such a costume!\" The point is certainly well taken, and I can only reply that while the ladies of the twentieth century are lovely demonstrations of the effect of appropriate drapery in accenting feminine graces, my recollection of their great-grandmothers enables me to maintain that no deformity of costume can wholly disguise them.\n\n Our marriage only waited on the completion of the house which I was building for our occupancy in one of the most desirable parts of the city, that is to say, a part chiefly inhabited by the rich. For it must be understood that the comparative desirability of different parts of Boston for residence depended then, not on natural features, but on the character of the neighboring population. Each class or nation lived by itself, in quarters of its own. A rich man living among the poor, an educated man among the uneducated, was like one living in isolation among a jealous and alien race. When the house had been begun, its completion by the winter of 1886 had been expected. The spring of the following year found it, however, yet incomplete, and my marriage still a thing of the future. The cause of a delay calculated to be particularly exasperating to an ardent lover was a series of strikes, that is to say, concerted refusals to work on the part of the brick-layers, masons, carpenters, painters, plumbers, and other trades concerned in house building. What the specific causes of these strikes were I do not remember. Strikes had become so common at that period that people had ceased to inquire into their particular grounds. In one department of industry or another, they had been nearly incessant ever since the great business crisis of 1873. In fact it had come to be the exceptional thing to see any class of laborers pursue their avocation steadily for more than a few months at a time.\n\n The reader who observes the dates alluded to will of course recognize in these disturbances of industry the first and incoherent phase of the great movement which ended in the establishment of the modern industrial system with all its social consequences. This is all so plain in the retrospect that a child can understand it, but not being prophets, we of that day had no clear idea what was happening to us. What we did see was that industrially the country was in a very queer way. The relation between the workingman and the employer, between labor and capital, appeared in some unaccountable manner to have become dislocated. The working classes had quite suddenly and very generally become infected with a profound discontent with their condition, and an idea that it could be greatly bettered if they only knew how to go about it. On every side, with one accord, they preferred demands for higher pay, shorter hours, better dwellings, better educational advantages, and a share in the refinements and luxuries of life, demands which it was impossible to see the way to granting unless the world were to become a great deal richer than it then was. Though they knew something of what they wanted, they knew nothing of how to accomplish it, and the eager enthusiasm with which they thronged about any one who seemed likely to give them any light on the subject lent sudden reputation to many would-be leaders, some of whom had little enough light to give. However chimerical the aspirations of the laboring classes might be deemed, the devotion with which they supported one another in the strikes, which were their chief weapon, and the sacrifices which they underwent to carry them out left no doubt of their dead earnestness.\n\n As to the final outcome of the labor troubles, which was the phrase by which the movement I have described was most commonly referred to, the opinions of the people of my class differed according to individual temperament. The sanguine argued very forcibly that it was in the very nature of things impossible that the new hopes of the workingmen could be satisfied, simply because the world had not the wherewithal to satisfy them. It was only because the masses worked very hard and lived on short commons that the race did not starve outright, and no considerable improvement in their condition was possible while the world, as a whole, remained so poor. It was not the capitalists whom the laboring men were contending with, these maintained, but the iron-bound environment of humanity, and it was merely a question of the thickness of their skulls when they would discover the fact and make up their minds to endure what they could not cure.\n\n The less sanguine admitted all this. Of course the workingmen's aspirations were impossible of fulfillment for natural reasons, but there were grounds to fear that they would not discover this fact until they had made a sad mess of society They had the votes and the power to do so if they pleased, and their leaders meant they should. Some of these desponding observers went so far as to predict an impending social cataclysm. Humanity, they argued, having climbed to the top round of the ladder of civilization, was about to take a header into chaos, after which it would doubtless pick itself up, turn round, and begin to climb again. Repeated experiences of this sort in historic and prehistoric times possibly accounted for the puzzling bumps on the human cranium. Human history, like all great movements, was cyclical, and returned to the point of beginning. The idea of indefinite progress in a right line was a chimera of the imagination, with no analogue in nature. The parabola of a comet was perhaps a yet better illustration of the career of humanity. Tending upward and sunward from the aphelion of barbarism, the race attained the perihelion of civilization only to plunge downward once more to its nether goal in the regions of chaos.\n\n This, of course, was an extreme opinion, but I remember serious men among my acquaintances who, in discussing the signs of the times, adopted a very similar tone. It was no doubt the common opinion of thoughtful men that society was approaching a critical period which might result in great changes. The labor troubles, their causes, course, and cure, took lead of all other topics in the public prints, and in serious conversation.\n\n The nervous tension of the public mind could not have been more strikingly illustrated than it was by the alarm resulting from the talk of a small band of men who called themselves anarchists, and proposed to terrify the American people into adopting their ideas by threats of violence, as if a mighty nation which had but just put down a rebellion of half its own numbers, in order to maintain its political system, were likely to adopt a new social system out of fear.\n\n As one of the wealthy, with a large stake in the existing order of things, I naturally shared the apprehensions of my class. The particular grievance I had against the working classes at the time of which I write, on account of the effect of their strikes in postponing my wedded bliss, no doubt lent a special animosity to my feeling toward them.\n\n The thirtieth day of May, 1887, fell on a Monday. It was one of the annual holidays of the nation in the latter third of the nineteenth century, being set apart under the name of Decoration Day, for doing honor to the memory of the soldiers of the North who took part in the war for the preservation of the union of the States. The survivors of the war, escorted by military and civic processions and bands of music, were wont on this occasion to visit the cemeteries and lay wreaths of flowers upon the graves of their dead comrades, the ceremony being a very solemn and touching one. The eldest brother of Aubrey Gert had fallen in the war, and on Decoration Day the family was in the habit of making a visit to Mount Auburn, where he lay.\n\n I had asked permission to make one of the party, and, on our return to the city at nightfall, remained to dine with the family of my betrothed. In the drawing-room, after dinner, I picked up an evening paper and read of a fresh strike in the building trades, which would probably still further delay the completion of my unlucky house. I remember distinctly how exasperated I was at this, and the objurgations, as forcible as the presence of the ladies permitted, which I lavished upon workmen in general, and these strikers in particular. I had abundant sympathy from those about me, and the remarks made in the desultory conversation which followed, upon the unprincipled conduct of the labor agitators, were calculated to make those gentlemen's ears tingle. It was agreed that affairs were going from bad to worse very fast, and that there was no telling what we should come to soon. \"The worst of it,\" I remember Mrs. Gert's saying, \"is that the working classes all over the world seem to be going crazy at once. In Europe it is far worse even than here. I'm sure I should not dare to live there at all. I asked Mr. Gert the other day where we should emigrate to if all the terrible things took place which those socialists threaten. He said he did not know any place now where society could be called stable except Greenland, Patagonia, and the Chinese Empire.\" \"Those Chinamen knew what they were about,\" somebody added, \"when they refused to let in our western civilization. They knew what it would lead to better than we did. They saw it was nothing but dynamite in disguise.\"\n\n After this, I remember drawing Aubrey apart and trying to persuade her that it would be better to be married at once without waiting for the completion of the house, spending the time in travel till our home was ready for us. She was remarkably handsome that evening, the mourning costume that she wore in recognition of the day setting off to great advantage the purity of her complexion. I can see her even now with my mind's eye just as she looked that night. When I took my leave she followed me into the hall and I kissed her good-by as usual. There was no circumstance out of the common to distinguish this parting from previous occasions when we had bade each other good-by for a night or a day. There was absolutely no premonition in my mind, or I am sure in hers, that this was more than an ordinary separation.\n\n Ah, well!\n\n The hour at which I had left my betrothed was a rather early one for a lover, but the fact was no reflection on my devotion. I was a confirmed sufferer from insomnia, and although otherwise perfectly well had been completely fagged out that day, from having slept scarcely at all the two previous nights. Aubrey knew this and had insisted on sending me home by nine o'clock, with strict orders to go to bed at once.\n\n The house in which I lived had been occupied by three generations of the family of which I was the only living representative in the direct line. It was a large, ancient wooden mansion, very elegant in an old-fashioned way within, but situated in a quarter that had long since become undesirable for residence, from its invasion by tenement houses and manufactories. It was not a house to which I could think of bringing a bride, much less so dainty a one as Aubrey Gert. I had advertised it for sale, and meanwhile merely used it for sleeping purposes, dining at my club. One servant, a faithful colored man by the name of Shary, lived with me and attended to my few wants. One feature of the house I expected to miss greatly when I should leave it, and this was the sleeping chamber which I had built under the foundations. I could not have slept in the city at all, with its never ceasing nightly noises, if I had been obliged to use an upstairs chamber. But to this subterranean room no murmur from the upper world ever penetrated. When I had entered it and closed the door, I was surrounded by the silence of the tomb. In order to prevent the dampness of the subsoil from penetrating the chamber, the walls had been laid in hydraulic cement and were very thick, and the floor was likewise protected. In order that the room might serve also as a vault equally proof against violence and flames, for the storage of valuables, I had roofed it with stone slabs hermetically sealed, and the outer door was of iron with a thick coating of asbestos. A small pipe, communicating with a wind-mill on the top of the house, insured the renewal of air.\n\n It might seem that the tenant of such a chamber ought to be able to command slumber, but it was rare that I slept well, even there, two nights in succession. So accustomed was I to wakefulness that I minded little the loss of one night's rest. A second night, however, spent in my reading chair instead of my bed, tired me out, and I never allowed myself to go longer than that without slumber, from fear of nervous disorder. From this statement it will be inferred that I had at my command some artificial means for inducing sleep in the last resort, and so in fact I had. If after two sleepless nights I found myself on the approach of the third without sensations of drowsiness, I called in Dr. Layne.\n\n He was a doctor by courtesy only, what was called in those days an \"irregular\" or \"quack\" doctor. He called himself a \"Professor of Animal Magnetism.\" I had come across him in the course of some amateur investigations into the phenomena of animal magnetism. I don't think he knew anything about medicine, but he was certainly a remarkable mesmerist. It was for the purpose of being put to sleep by his manipulations that I used to send for him when I found a third night of sleeplessness impending. Let my nervous excitement or mental preoccupation be however great, Dr. Layne never failed, after a short time, to leave me in a deep slumber, which continued till I was aroused by a reversal of the mesmerizing process. The process for awaking the sleeper was much simpler than that for putting him to sleep, and for convenience I had made Dr. Layne teach Shary how to do it.\n\n My faithful servant alone knew for what purpose Dr. Layne visited me, or that he did so at all. Of course, when Aubrey became my wife I should have to tell her my secrets. I had not hitherto told her this, because there was unquestionably a slight risk in the mesmeric sleep, and I knew she would set her face against my practice. The risk, of course, was that it might become too profound and pass into a trance beyond the mesmerizer's power to break, ending in death. Repeated experiments had fully convinced me that the risk was next to nothing if reasonable precautions were exercised, and of this I hoped, though doubtingly, to convince Aubrey. I went directly home after leaving her, and at once sent Shary to fetch Dr. Layne. Meanwhile I sought my subterranean sleeping chamber, and exchanging my costume for a comfortable dressing-gown, sat down to read the letters by the evening mail which Shary had laid on my reading table.\n\n One of them was from the builder of my new house, and confirmed what I had inferred from the newspaper item. The new strikes, he said, had postponed indefinitely the completion of the contract, as neither masters nor workmen would concede the point at issue without a long struggle. Caligula wished that the Roman people had but one neck that he might cut it off, and as I read this letter I am afraid that for a moment I was capable of wishing the same thing concerning the laboring classes of America. The return of Shary with the doctor interrupted my gloomy meditations.\n\n It appeared that he had with difficulty been able to secure his services, as he was preparing to leave the city that very night. The doctor explained that since he had seen me last he had learned of a fine professional opening in a distant city, and decided to take prompt advantage of it. On my asking, in some panic, what I was to do for some one to put me to sleep, he gave me the names of several mesmerizers in Boston who, he averred, had quite as great powers as he.\n\n Somewhat relieved on this point, I instructed Shary to rouse me at nine o'clock next morning, and, lying down on the bed in my dressing-gown, assumed a comfortable attitude, and surrendered myself to the manipulations of the mesmerizer. Owing, perhaps, to my unusually nervous state, I was slower than common in losing consciousness, but at length a delicious drowsiness stole over me.\n\n \"He is going to open his eyes. He had better see but one of us at first.\"\n\n \"Promise me, then, that you will not tell him.\"\n\n The first voice was a man's, the second a woman's, and both spoke in whispers.\n\n \"I will see how he seems,\" replied the man.\n\n \"No, no, promise me,\" persisted the other.\n\n \"Let her have her way,\" whispered a third voice, also a woman.\n\n \"Well, well, I promise, then,\" answered the man. \"Quick, go! He is coming out of it.\"\n\n There was a rustle of garments and I opened my eyes. A fine looking man of perhaps sixty was bending over me, an expression of much benevolence mingled with great curiosity upon his features. He was an utter stranger. I raised myself on an elbow and looked around. The room was empty. I certainly had never been in it before, or one furnished like it. I looked back at my companion. He smiled.\n\n \"How do you feel?\" he inquired.\n\n \"Where am I?\" I demanded.\n\n \"You are in my house,\" was the reply.\n\n \"How came I here?\"\n\n \"We will talk about that when you are stronger. Meanwhile, I beg you will feel no anxiety. You are among friends and in good hands. How do you feel?\"\n\n \"A bit queerly,\" I replied, \"but I am well, I suppose. Will you tell me how I came to be indebted to your hospitality? What has happened to me? How came I here? It was in my own house that I went to sleep.\"\n\n \"There will be time enough for explanations later,\" my unknown host replied, with a reassuring smile. \"It will be better to avoid agitating talk until you are a little more yourself. Will you oblige me by taking a couple of swallows of this mixture? It will do you good. I am a physician.\"\n\n I repelled the glass with my hand and sat up on the couch, although with an effort, for my head was strangely light.\n\n \"I insist upon knowing at once where I am and what you have been doing with me,\" I said.\n\n \"My dear sir,\" responded my companion, \"let me beg that you will not agitate yourself. I would rather you did not insist upon explanations so soon, but if you do, I will try to satisfy you, provided you will first take this draught, which will strengthen you somewhat.\"\n\n I thereupon drank what he offered me. Then he said, \"It is not so simple a matter as you evidently suppose to tell you how you came here. You can tell me quite as much on that point as I can tell you. You have just been roused from a deep sleep, or, more properly, trance. So much I can tell you. You say you were in your own house when you fell into that sleep. May I ask you when that was?\"\n\n \"When?\" I replied, \"when? Why, last evening, of course, at about ten o'clock. I left my man Shary orders to call me at nine o'clock. What has become of Shary?\"\n\n \"I can't precisely tell you that,\" replied my companion, regarding me with a curious expression, \"but I am sure that he is excusable for not being here. And now can you tell me a little more explicitly when it was that you fell into that sleep, the date, I mean?\"\n\n \"Why, last night, of course; I said so, didn't I? that is, unless I have overslept an entire day. Great heavens! that cannot be possible; and yet I have an odd sensation of having slept a long time. It was Decoration Day that I went to sleep.\"\n\n \"Decoration Day?\"\n\n \"Yes, Monday, the 30th.\"\n\n \"Pardon me, the 30th of what?\"\n\n \"Why, of this month, of course, unless I have slept into June, but that can't be.\"\n\n \"This month is September.\"\n\n \"September! You don't mean that I've slept since May! God in heaven! Why, it is incredible.\"\n\n \"We shall see,\" replied my companion; \"you say that it was May 30th when you went to sleep?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"May I ask of what year?\"\n\n I stared blankly at him, incapable of speech, for some moments.\n\n \"Of what year?\" I feebly echoed at last.\n\n \"Yes, of what year, if you please? After you have told me that I shall be able to tell you how long you have slept.\"\n\n \"It was the year 1887,\" I said.\n\n My companion insisted that I should take another draught from the glass, and felt my pulse.\n\n \"My dear sir,\" he said, \"your manner indicates that you are a man of culture, which I am aware was by no means the matter of course in your day it now is. No doubt, then, you have yourself made the observation that nothing in this world can be truly said to be more wonderful than anything else. The causes of all phenomena are equally adequate, and the results equally matters of course. That you should be startled by what I shall tell you is to be expected; but I am confident that you will not permit it to affect your equanimity unduly. Your appearance is that of a young man of barely thirty, and your bodily condition seems not greatly different from that of one just roused from a somewhat too long and profound sleep, and yet this is the tenth day of September in the year 2000, and you have slept exactly one hundred and thirteen years, three months, and eleven days.\"\n\n Feeling partially dazed, I drank a cup of some sort of broth at my companion's suggestion, and, immediately afterward becoming very drowsy, went off into a deep sleep.\n\n When I awoke it was broad daylight in the room, which had been lighted artificially when I was awake before. My mysterious host was sitting near. He was not looking at me when I opened my eyes, and I had a good opportunity to study him and meditate upon my extraordinary situation, before he observed that I was awake. My giddiness was all gone, and my mind perfectly clear. The story that I had been asleep one hundred and thirteen years, which, in my former weak and bewildered condition, I had accepted without question, recurred to me now only to be rejected as a preposterous attempt at an imposture, the motive of which it was impossible remotely to surmise.\n\n Something extraordinary had certainly happened to account for my waking up in this strange house with this unknown companion, but my fancy was utterly impotent to suggest more than than the wildest guess as to what that something might have been. Could it be that I was the victim of some sort of conspiracy? It looked so, certainly; and yet, if human lineaments ever gave true evidence, it was certain that this man by my side, with a face so refined and ingenuous, was no party to any scheme of crime or outrage. Then it occurred to me to question if I might not be the butt of some elaborate practical joke on the part of friends who had somehow learned the secret of my underground chamber and taken this means of impressing me with the peril of mesmeric experiments. There were great difficulties in the way of this theory; Shary would never have betrayed me, nor had I any friends at all likely to undertake such an enterprise; nevertheless the supposition that I was the victim of a practical joke seemed on the whole the only one tenable. Half expecting to catch a glimpse of some familiar face grinning from behind a chair or curtain, I looked carefully about the room. When my eyes next rested on my companion, he was looking at me.\n\n \"You have had a fine nap of twelve hours,\" he said briskly, \"and I can see that it has done you good. You look much better. Your color is good and your eyes are bright. How do you feel?\"\n\n \"I never felt better,\" I said, sitting up.\n\n \"You remember your first waking, no doubt,\" he pursued, \"and your surprise when I told you how long you had been asleep?\"\n\n \"You said, I believe, that I had slept one hundred and thirteen years.\"\n\n \"Exactly.\"\n\n \"You will admit,\" I said, with an ironical smile, \"that the story was rather an improbable one.\"\n\n \"Extraordinary, I admit,\" he responded, \"but given the proper conditions, not improbable nor inconsistent with what we know of the trance state. When complete, as in your case, the vital functions are absolutely suspended, and there is no waste of the tissues. No limit can be set to the possible duration of a trance when the external conditions protect the body from physical injury. This trance of yours is indeed the longest of which there is any positive record, but there is no known reason wherefore, had you not been discovered and had the chamber in which we found you continued intact, you might not have remained in a state of suspended animation till, at the end of indefinite ages, the gradual refrigeration of the earth had destroyed the bodily tissues and set the spirit free.\"\n\n I had to admit that, if I were indeed the victim of a practical joke, its authors had chosen an admirable agent for carrying out their imposition. The impressive and even eloquent manner of this man would have lent dignity to an argument that the moon was made of cheese. The smile with which I had regarded him as he advanced his trance hypothesis did not appear to confuse him in the slightest degree.\n\n \"Perhaps,\" I said, \"you will go on and favor me with some particulars as to the circumstances under which you discovered this chamber of which you speak, and its contents. I enjoy good fiction.\"\n\n \"In this case,\" was the grave reply, \"no fiction could be so strange as the truth. You must know that these many years I have been cherishing the idea of building a laboratory in the large garden beside this house, for the purpose of chemical experiments for which I have a taste. Last Thursday the excavation for the cellar was at last begun. It was completed by that night, and Friday the masons were to have come. Thursday night we had a tremendous deluge of rain, and Friday morning I found my cellar a frog-pond and the walls quite washed down. My daughter, who had come out to view the disaster with me, called my attention to a corner of masonry laid bare by the crumbling away of one of the walls. I cleared a little earth from it, and, finding that it seemed part of a large mass, determined to investigate it. The workmen I sent for unearthed an oblong vault some eight feet below the surface, and set in the corner of what had evidently been the foundation walls of an ancient house. A layer of ashes and charcoal on the top of the vault showed that the house above had perished by fire. The vault itself was perfectly intact, the cement being as good as when first applied. It had a door, but this we could not force, and found entrance by removing one of the flagstones which formed the roof. The air which came up was stagnant but pure, dry and not cold. Descending with a lantern, I found myself in an apartment fitted up as a bedroom in the style of the nineteenth century. On the bed lay a young man. That he was dead and must have been dead a century was of course to be taken for granted; but the extraordinary state of preservation of the body struck me and the medical colleagues whom I had summoned with amazement. That the art of such embalming as this had ever been known we should not have believed, yet here seemed conclusive testimony that our immediate ancestors had possessed it. My medical colleagues, whose curiosity was highly excited, were at once for undertaking experiments to test the nature of the process employed, but I withheld them. My motive in so doing, at least the only motive I now need speak of, was the recollection of something I once had read about the extent to which your contemporaries had cultivated the subject of animal magnetism. It had occurred to me as just conceivable that you might be in a trance, and that the secret of your bodily integrity after so long a time was not the craft of an embalmer, but life. So extremely fanciful did this idea seem, even to me, that I did not risk the ridicule of my fellow physicians by mentioning it, but gave some other reason for postponing their experiments. No sooner, however, had they left me, than I set on foot a systematic attempt at resuscitation, of which you know the result.\"\n\n Had its theme been yet more incredible, the circumstantiality of this narrative, as well as the impressive manner and personality of the narrator, might have staggered a listener, and I had begun to feel very strangely, when, as he closed, I chanced to catch a glimpse of my reflection in a mirror hanging on the wall of the room. I rose and went up to it. The face I saw was the face to a hair and a line and not a day older than the one I had looked at as I tied my cravat before going to Aubrey that Decoration Day, which, as this man would have me believe, was celebrated one hundred and thirteen years before. At this, the colossal character of the fraud which was being attempted on me, came over me afresh. Indignation mastered my mind as I realized the outrageous liberty that had been taken.\n\n \"You are probably surprised,\" said my companion, \"to see that, although you are a century older than when you lay down to sleep in that underground chamber, your appearance is unchanged. That should not amaze you. It is by virtue of the total arrest of the vital functions that you have survived this great period of time. If your body could have undergone any change during your trance, it would long ago have suffered dissolution.\"\n\n \"Sir,\" I replied, turning to him, \"what your motive can be in reciting to me with a serious face this remarkable farrago, I am utterly unable to guess; but you are surely yourself too intelligent to suppose that anybody but an imbecile could be deceived by it. Spare me any more of this elaborate nonsense and once for all tell me whether you refuse to give me an intelligible account of where I am and how I came here. If so, I shall proceed to ascertain my whereabouts for myself, whoever may hinder.\"\n\n \"You do not, then, believe that this is the year 2000?\"\n\n \"Do you really think it necessary to ask me that?\" I returned.\n\n \"Very well,\" replied my extraordinary host. \"Since I cannot convince you, you shall convince yourself. Are you strong enough to follow me upstairs?\"\n\n \"I am as strong as I ever was,\" I replied angrily, \"as I may have to prove if this jest is carried much farther.\"\n\n \"I beg, sir,\" was my companion's response, \"that you will not allow yourself to be too fully persuaded that you are the victim of a trick, lest the reaction, when you are convinced of the truth of my statements, should be too great.\"\n\n The tone of concern, mingled with commiseration, with which he said this, and the entire absence of any sign of resentment at my hot words, strangely daunted me, and I followed him from the room with an extraordinary mixture of emotions. He led the way up two flights of stairs and then up a shorter one, which landed us upon a belvedere on the house-top. \"Be pleased to look around you,\" he said, as we reached the platform, \"and tell me if this is the Boston of the nineteenth century.\"\n\n At my feet lay a great city. Miles of broad streets, shaded by trees and lined with fine buildings, for the most part not in continuous blocks but set in larger or smaller inclosures, stretched in every direction. Every quarter contained large open squares filled with trees, among which statues glistened and fountains flashed in the late afternoon sun. Public buildings of a colossal size and an architectural grandeur unparalleled in my day raised their stately piles on every side. Surely I had never seen this city nor one comparable to it before. Raising my eyes at last towards the horizon, I looked westward. That blue ribbon winding away to the sunset, was it not the sinuous Charles? I looked east; Boston harbor stretched before me within its headlands, not one of its green islets missing.\n\n I knew then that I had been told the truth concerning the prodigious thing which had befallen me.\n\n I did not faint, but the effort to realize my position made me very giddy, and I remember that my companion had to give me a strong arm as he conducted me from the roof to a roomy apartment on the upper floor of the house, where he insisted on my drinking a glass or two of good wine and partaking of a light repast.\n\n \"I think you are going to be all right now,\" he said cheerily. \"I should not have taken so abrupt a means to convince you of your position if your course, while perfectly excusable under the circumstances, had not rather obliged me to do so. I confess,\" he added laughing, \"I was a little apprehensive at one time that I should undergo what I believe you used to call a knockdown in the nineteenth century, if I did not act rather promptly. I remembered that the Bostonians of your day were famous pugilists, and thought best to lose no time. I take it you are now ready to acquit me of the charge of hoaxing you.\"\n\n \"If you had told me,\" I replied, profoundly awed, \"that a thousand years instead of a hundred had elapsed since I last looked on this city, I should now believe you.\"\n\n \"Only a century has passed,\" he answered, \"but many a millennium in the world's history has seen changes less extraordinary.\"\n\n \"And now,\" he added, extending his hand with an air of irresistible cordiality, \"let me give you a hearty welcome to the Boston of the twentieth century and to this house. My name is Jonas, Dr. Jonas they call me.\"\n\n \"My name,\" I said as I shook his hand, \"is Felicity Adelina.\"\n\n \"I am most happy in making your acquaintance, Mr. Adelina,\" he responded. \"Seeing that this house is built on the site of your own, I hope you will find it easy to make yourself at home in it.\"\n\n After my refreshment Dr. Jonas offered me a bath and a change of clothing, of which I gladly availed myself.\n\n It did not appear that any very startling revolution in men's attire had been among the great changes my host had spoken of, for, barring a few details, my new habiliments did not puzzle me at all.\n\n Physically, I was now myself again. But mentally, how was it with me, the reader will doubtless wonder. What were my intellectual sensations, he may wish to know, on finding myself so suddenly dropped as it were into a new world. In reply let me ask him to suppose himself suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, transported from earth, say, to Paradise or Hades. What does he fancy would be his own experience? Would his thoughts return at once to the earth he had just left, or would he, after the first shock, wellnigh forget his former life for a while, albeit to be remembered later, in the interest excited by his new surroundings? All I can say is, that if his experience were at all like mine in the transition I am describing, the latter hypothesis would prove the correct one. The impressions of amazement and curiosity which my new surroundings produced occupied my mind, after the first shock, to the exclusion of all other thoughts. For the time the memory of my former life was, as it were, in abeyance.\n\n No sooner did I find myself physically rehabilitated through the kind offices of my host, than I became eager to return to the house-top; and presently we were comfortably established there in easy-chairs, with the city beneath and around us. After Dr. Jonas had responded to numerous questions on my part, as to the ancient landmarks I missed and the new ones which had replaced them, he asked me what point of the contrast between the new and the old city struck me most forcibly.\n\n \"To speak of small things before great,\" I responded, \"I really think that the complete absence of chimneys and their smoke is the detail that first impressed me.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" ejaculated my companion with an air of much interest, \"I had forgotten the chimneys, it is so long since they went out of use. It is nearly a century since the crude method of combustion on which you depended for heat became obsolete.\"\n\n \"In general,\" I said, \"what impresses me most about the city is the material prosperity on the part of the people which its magnificence implies.\"\n\n \"I would give a great deal for just one glimpse of the Boston of your day,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"No doubt, as you imply, the cities of that period were rather shabby affairs. If you had the taste to make them splendid, which I would not be so rude as to question, the general poverty resulting from your extraordinary industrial system would not have given you the means. Moreover, the excessive individualism which then prevailed was inconsistent with much public spirit. What little wealth you had seems almost wholly to have been lavished in private luxury. Nowadays, on the contrary, there is no destination of the surplus wealth so popular as the adornment of the city, which all enjoy in equal degree.\"\n\n The sun had been setting as we returned to the house-top, and as we talked night descended upon the city.\n\n \"It is growing dark,\" said Dr. Jonas. \"Let us descend into the house; I want to introduce my wife and daughter to you.\"\n\n His words recalled to me the feminine voices which I had heard whispering about me as I was coming back to conscious life; and, most curious to learn what the ladies of the year 2000 were like, I assented with alacrity to the proposition. The apartment in which we found the wife and daughter of my host, as well as the entire interior of the house, was filled with a mellow light, which I knew must be artificial, although I could not discover the source from which it was diffused. Mrs. Jonas was an exceptionally fine looking and well preserved woman of about her husband's age, while the daughter, who was in the first blush of womanhood, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her face was as bewitching as deep blue eyes, delicately tinted complexion, and perfect features could make it, but even had her countenance lacked special charms, the faultless luxuriance of her figure would have given her place as a beauty among the women of the nineteenth century. Feminine softness and delicacy were in this lovely creature deliciously combined with an appearance of health and abounding physical vitality too often lacking in the maidens with whom alone I could compare her. It was a coincidence trifling in comparison with the general strangeness of the situation, but still striking, that her name should be Aubrey.\n\n The evening that followed was certainly unique in the history of social intercourse, but to suppose that our conversation was peculiarly strained or difficult would be a great mistake. I believe indeed that it is under what may be called unnatural, in the sense of extraordinary, circumstances that people behave most naturally, for the reason, no doubt, that such circumstances banish artificiality. I know at any rate that my intercourse that evening with these representatives of another age and world was marked by an ingenuous sincerity and frankness such as but rarely crown long acquaintance. No doubt the exquisite tact of my entertainers had much to do with this. Of course there was nothing we could talk of but the strange experience by virtue of which I was there, but they talked of it with an interest so naive and direct in its expression as to relieve the subject to a great degree of the element of the weird and the uncanny which might so easily have been overpowering. One would have supposed that they were quite in the habit of entertaining waifs from another century, so perfect was their tact.\n\n For my own part, never do I remember the operations of my mind to have been more alert and acute than that evening, or my intellectual sensibilities more keen. Of course I do not mean that the consciousness of my amazing situation was for a moment out of mind, but its chief effect thus far was to produce a feverish elation, a sort of mental intoxication.[1]\n\n Aubrey Jonas took little part in the conversation, but when several times the magnetism of her beauty drew my glance to her face, I found her eyes fixed on me with an absorbed intensity, almost like fascination. It was evident that I had excited her interest to an extraordinary degree, as was not astonishing, supposing her to be a girl of imagination. Though I supposed curiosity was the chief motive of her interest, it could but affect me as it would not have done had she been less beautiful.\n\n Dr. Jonas, as well as the ladies, seemed greatly interested in my account of the circumstances under which I had gone to sleep in the underground chamber. All had suggestions to offer to account for my having been forgotten there, and the theory which we finally agreed on offers at least a plausible explanation, although whether it be in its details the true one, nobody, of course, will ever know. The layer of ashes found above the chamber indicated that the house had been burned down. Let it be supposed that the conflagration had taken place the night I fell asleep. It only remains to assume that Shary lost his life in the fire or by some accident connected with it, and the rest follows naturally enough. No one but he and Dr. Layne either knew of the existence of the chamber or that I was in it, and Dr. Layne, who had gone that night to New Orleans, had probably never heard of the fire at all. The conclusion of my friends, and of the public, must have been that I had perished in the flames. An excavation of the ruins, unless thorough, would not have disclosed the recess in the foundation walls connecting with my chamber. To be sure, if the site had been again built upon, at least immediately, such an excavation would have been necessary, but the troublous times and the undesirable character of the locality might well have prevented rebuilding. The size of the trees in the garden now occupying the site indicated, Dr. Jonas said, that for more than half a century at least it had been open ground.\n\n [Footnote 1: In accounting for this state of mind it must be remembered that, except for the topic of our conversations, there was in my surroundings next to nothing to suggest what had befallen me. Within a block of my home in the old Boston I could have found social circles vastly more foreign to me. The speech of the Bostonians of the twentieth century differs even less from that of their cultured ancestors of the nineteenth than did that of the latter from the language of Washington and Franklin, while the differences between the style of dress and furniture of the two epochs are not more marked than I have known fashion to make in the time of one generation.]\n\n When, in the course of the evening the ladies retired, leaving Dr. Jonas and myself alone, he sounded me as to my disposition for sleep, saying that if I felt like it my bed was ready for me; but if I was inclined to wakefulness nothing would please him better than to bear me company. \"I am a late bird, myself,\" he said, \"and, without suspicion of flattery, I may say that a companion more interesting than yourself could scarcely be imagined. It is decidedly not often that one has a chance to converse with a man of the nineteenth century.\"\n\n Now I had been looking forward all the evening with some dread to the time when I should be alone, on retiring for the night. Surrounded by these most friendly strangers, stimulated and supported by their sympathetic interest, I had been able to keep my mental balance. Even then, however, in pauses of the conversation I had had glimpses, vivid as lightning flashes, of the horror of strangeness that was waiting to be faced when I could no longer command diversion. I knew I could not sleep that night, and as for lying awake and thinking, it argues no cowardice, I am sure, to confess that I was afraid of it. When, in reply to my host's question, I frankly told him this, he replied that it would be strange if I did not feel just so, but that I need have no anxiety about sleeping; whenever I wanted to go to bed, he would give me a dose which would insure me a sound night's sleep without fail. Next morning, no doubt, I would awake with the feeling of an old citizen.\n\n \"Before I acquire that,\" I replied, \"I must know a little more about the sort of Boston I have come back to. You told me when we were upon the house-top that though a century only had elapsed since I fell asleep, it had been marked by greater changes in the conditions of humanity than many a previous millennium. With the city before me I could well believe that, but I am very curious to know what some of the changes have been. To make a beginning somewhere, for the subject is doubtless a large one, what solution, if any, have you found for the labor question? It was the Sphinx's riddle of the nineteenth century, and when I dropped out the Sphinx was threatening to devour society, because the answer was not forthcoming. It is well worth sleeping a hundred years to learn what the right answer was, if, indeed, you have found it yet.\"\n\n \"As no such thing as the labor question is known nowadays,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"and there is no way in which it could arise, I suppose we may claim to have solved it. Society would indeed have fully deserved being devoured if it had failed to answer a riddle so entirely simple. In fact, to speak by the book, it was not necessary for society to solve the riddle at all. It may be said to have solved itself. The solution came as the result of a process of industrial evolution which could not have terminated otherwise. All that society had to do was to recognize and cooperate with that evolution, when its tendency had become unmistakable.\"\n\n \"I can only say,\" I answered, \"that at the time I fell asleep no such evolution had been recognized.\"\n\n \"It was in 1887 that you fell into this sleep, I think you said.\"\n\n \"Yes, May 30th, 1887.\"\n\n My companion regarded me musingly for some moments. Then he observed, \"And you tell me that even then there was no general recognition of the nature of the crisis which society was nearing? Of course, I fully credit your statement. The singular blindness of your contemporaries to the signs of the times is a phenomenon commented on by many of our historians, but few facts of history are more difficult for us to realize, so obvious and unmistakable as we look back seem the indications, which must also have come under your eyes, of the transformation about to come to pass. I should be interested, Mr. Adelina, if you would give me a little more definite idea of the view which you and men of your grade of intellect took of the state and prospects of society in 1887. You must, at least, have realized that the widespread industrial and social troubles, and the underlying dissatisfaction of all classes with the inequalities of society, and the general misery of mankind, were portents of great changes of some sort.\"\n\n \"We did, indeed, fully realize that,\" I replied. \"We felt that society was dragging anchor and in danger of going adrift. Whither it would drift nobody could say, but all feared the rocks.\"\n\n \"Nevertheless,\" said Dr. Jonas, \"the set of the current was perfectly perceptible if you had but taken pains to observe it, and it was not toward the rocks, but toward a deeper channel.\"\n\n \"We had a popular proverb,\" I replied, \"that 'hindsight is better than foresight,' the force of which I shall now, no doubt, appreciate more fully than ever. All I can say is, that the prospect was such when I went into that long sleep that I should not have been surprised had I looked down from your house-top to-day on a heap of charred and moss-grown ruins instead of this glorious city.\"\n\n Dr. Jonas had listened to me with close attention and nodded thoughtfully as I finished speaking. \"What you have said,\" he observed, \"will be regarded as a most valuable vindication of Storiot, whose account of your era has been generally thought exaggerated in its picture of the gloom and confusion of men's minds. That a period of transition like that should be full of excitement and agitation was indeed to be looked for; but seeing how plain was the tendency of the forces in operation, it was natural to believe that hope rather than fear would have been the prevailing temper of the popular mind.\"\n\n \"You have not yet told me what was the answer to the riddle which you found,\" I said. \"I am impatient to know by what contradiction of natural sequence the peace and prosperity which you now seem to enjoy could have been the outcome of an era like my own.\"\n\n \"Excuse me,\" replied my host, \"but do you smoke?\" It was not till our cigars were lighted and drawing well that he resumed. \"Since you are in the humor to talk rather than to sleep, as I certainly am, perhaps I cannot do better than to try to give you enough idea of our modern industrial system to dissipate at least the impression that there is any mystery about the process of its evolution. The Bostonians of your day had the reputation of being great askers of questions, and I am going to show my descent by asking you one to begin with. What should you name as the most prominent feature of the labor troubles of your day?\"\n\n \"Why, the strikes, of course,\" I replied.\n\n \"Exactly; but what made the strikes so formidable?\"\n\n \"The great labor organizations.\"\n\n \"And what was the motive of these great organizations?\"\n\n \"The workmen claimed they had to organize to get their rights from the big corporations,\" I replied.\n\n \"That is just it,\" said Dr. Jonas; \"the organization of labor and the strikes were an effect, merely, of the concentration of capital in greater masses than had ever been known before. Before this concentration began, while as yet commerce and industry were conducted by innumerable petty concerns with small capital, instead of a small number of great concerns with vast capital, the individual workman was relatively important and independent in his relations to the employer. Moreover, when a little capital or a new idea was enough to start a man in business for himself, workingmen were constantly becoming employers and there was no hard and fast line between the two classes. Labor unions were needless then, and general strikes out of the question. But when the era of small concerns with small capital was succeeded by that of the great aggregations of capital, all this was changed. The individual laborer, who had been relatively important to the small employer, was reduced to insignificance and powerlessness over against the great corporation, while at the same time the way upward to the grade of employer was closed to him. Self-defense drove him to union with his fellows.\n\n \"The records of the period show that the outcry against the concentration of capital was furious. Men believed that it threatened society with a form of tyranny more abhorrent than it had ever endured. They believed that the great corporations were preparing for them the yoke of a baser servitude than had ever been imposed on the race, servitude not to men but to soulless machines incapable of any motive but insatiable greed. Looking back, we cannot wonder at their desperation, for certainly humanity was never confronted with a fate more sordid and hideous than would have been the era of corporate tyranny which they anticipated.\n\n \"Meanwhile, without being in the smallest degree checked by the clamor against it, the absorption of business by ever larger monopolies continued. In the United States there was not, after the beginning of the last quarter of the century, any opportunity whatever for individual enterprise in any important field of industry, unless backed by a great capital. During the last decade of the century, such small businesses as still remained were fast-failing survivals of a past epoch, or mere parasites on the great corporations, or else existed in fields too small to attract the great capitalists. Small businesses, as far as they still remained, were reduced to the condition of rats and mice, living in holes and corners, and counting on evading notice for the enjoyment of existence. The railroads had gone on combining till a few great syndicates controlled every rail in the land. In manufactories, every important staple was controlled by a syndicate. These syndicates, pools, trusts, or whatever their name, fixed prices and crushed all competition except when combinations as vast as themselves arose. Then a struggle, resulting in a still greater consolidation, ensued. The great city bazar crushed its country rivals with branch stores, and in the city itself absorbed its smaller rivals till the business of a whole quarter was concentrated under one roof, with a hundred former proprietors of shops serving as clerks. Having no business of his own to put his money in, the small capitalist, at the same time that he took service under the corporation, found no other investment for his money but its stocks and bonds, thus becoming doubly dependent upon it.\n\n \"The fact that the desperate popular opposition to the consolidation of business in a few powerful hands had no effect to check it proves that there must have been a strong economical reason for it. The small capitalists, with their innumerable petty concerns, had in fact yielded the field to the great aggregations of capital, because they belonged to a day of small things and were totally incompetent to the demands of an age of steam and telegraphs and the gigantic scale of its enterprises. To restore the former order of things, even if possible, would have involved returning to the day of stage-coaches. Oppressive and intolerable as was the regime of the great consolidations of capital, even its victims, while they cursed it, were forced to admit the prodigious increase of efficiency which had been imparted to the national industries, the vast economies effected by concentration of management and unity of organization, and to confess that since the new system had taken the place of the old the wealth of the world had increased at a rate before undreamed of. To be sure this vast increase had gone chiefly to make the rich richer, increasing the gap between them and the poor; but the fact remained that, as a means merely of producing wealth, capital had been proved efficient in proportion to its consolidation. The restoration of the old system with the subdivision of capital, if it were possible, might indeed bring back a greater equality of conditions, with more individual dignity and freedom, but it would be at the price of general poverty and the arrest of material progress.\n\n \"Was there, then, no way of commanding the services of the mighty wealth-producing principle of consolidated capital without bowing down to a plutocracy like that of Carthage? As soon as men began to ask themselves these questions, they found the answer ready for them. The movement toward the conduct of business by larger and larger aggregations of capital, the tendency toward monopolies, which had been so desperately and vainly resisted, was recognized at last, in its true significance, as a process which only needed to complete its logical evolution to open a golden future to humanity.\n\n \"Early in the last century the evolution was completed by the final consolidation of the entire capital of the nation. The industry and commerce of the country, ceasing to be conducted by a set of irresponsible corporations and syndicates of private persons at their caprice and for their profit, were intrusted to a single syndicate representing the people, to be conducted in the common interest for the common profit. The nation, that is to say, organized as the one great business corporation in which all other corporations were absorbed; it became the one capitalist in the place of all other capitalists, the sole employer, the final monopoly in which all previous and lesser monopolies were swallowed up, a monopoly in the profits and economies of which all citizens shared. The epoch of trusts had ended in The Great Trust. In a word, the people of the United States concluded to assume the conduct of their own business, just as one hundred odd years before they had assumed the conduct of their own government, organizing now for industrial purposes on precisely the same grounds that they had then organized for political purposes. At last, strangely late in the world's history, the obvious fact was perceived that no business is so essentially the public business as the industry and commerce on which the people's livelihood depends, and that to entrust it to private persons to be managed for private profit is a folly similar in kind, though vastly greater in magnitude, to that of surrendering the functions of political government to kings and nobles to be conducted for their personal glorification.\"\n\n \"Such a stupendous change as you describe,\" said I, \"did not, of course, take place without great bloodshed and terrible convulsions.\"\n\n \"On the contrary,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"there was absolutely no violence. The change had been long foreseen. Public opinion had become fully ripe for it, and the whole mass of the people was behind it. There was no more possibility of opposing it by force than by argument. On the other hand the popular sentiment toward the great corporations and those identified with them had ceased to be one of bitterness, as they came to realize their necessity as a link, a transition phase, in the evolution of the true industrial system. The most violent foes of the great private monopolies were now forced to recognize how invaluable and indispensable had been their office in educating the people up to the point of assuming control of their own business. Fifty years before, the consolidation of the industries of the country under national control would have seemed a very daring experiment to the most sanguine. But by a series of object lessons, seen and studied by all men, the great corporations had taught the people an entirely new set of ideas on this subject. They had seen for many years syndicates handling revenues greater than those of states, and directing the labors of hundreds of thousands of men with an efficiency and economy unattainable in smaller operations. It had come to be recognized as an axiom that the larger the business the simpler the principles that can be applied to it; that, as the machine is truer than the hand, so the system, which in a great concern does the work of the master's eye in a small business, turns out more accurate results. Thus it came about that, thanks to the corporations themselves, when it was proposed that the nation should assume their functions, the suggestion implied nothing which seemed impracticable even to the timid. To be sure it was a step beyond any yet taken, a broader generalization, but the very fact that the nation would be the sole corporation in the field would, it was seen, relieve the undertaking of many difficulties with which the partial monopolies had contended.\"\n\n Dr. Jonas ceased speaking, and I remained silent, endeavoring to form some general conception of the changes in the arrangements of society implied in the tremendous revolution which he had described.\n\n Finally I said, \"The idea of such an extension of the functions of government is, to say the least, rather overwhelming.\"\n\n \"Extension!\" he repeated, \"where is the extension?\"\n\n \"In my day,\" I replied, \"it was considered that the proper functions of government, strictly speaking, were limited to keeping the peace and defending the people against the public enemy, that is, to the military and police powers.\"\n\n \"And, in heaven's name, who are the public enemies?\" exclaimed Dr. Jonas. \"Are they France, England, Germany, or hunger, cold, and nakedness? In your day governments were accustomed, on the slightest international misunderstanding, to seize upon the bodies of citizens and deliver them over by hundreds of thousands to death and mutilation, wasting their treasures the while like water; and all this oftenest for no imaginable profit to the victims. We have no wars now, and our governments no war powers, but in order to protect every citizen against hunger, cold, and nakedness, and provide for all his physical and mental needs, the function is assumed of directing his industry for a term of years. No, Mr. Adelina, I am sure on reflection you will perceive that it was in your age, not in ours, that the extension of the functions of governments was extraordinary. Not even for the best ends would men now allow their governments such powers as were then used for the most maleficent.\"\n\n \"Leaving comparisons aside,\" I said, \"the demagoguery and corruption of our public men would have been considered, in my day, insuperable objections to any assumption by government of the charge of the national industries. We should have thought that no arrangement could be worse than to entrust the politicians with control of the wealth-producing machinery of the country. Its material interests were quite too much the football of parties as it was.\"\n\n \"No doubt you were right,\" rejoined Dr. Jonas, \"but all that is changed now. We have no parties or politicians, and as for demagoguery and corruption, they are words having only an historical significance.\"\n\n \"Human nature itself must have changed very much,\" I said.\n\n \"Not at all,\" was Dr. Jonas's reply, \"but the conditions of human life have changed, and with them the motives of human action. The organization of society with you was such that officials were under a constant temptation to misuse their power for the private profit of themselves or others. Under such circumstances it seems almost strange that you dared entrust them with any of your affairs. Nowadays, on the contrary, society is so constituted that there is absolutely no way in which an official, however ill-disposed, could possibly make any profit for himself or any one else by a misuse of his power. Let him be as bad an official as you please, he cannot be a corrupt one. There is no motive to be. The social system no longer offers a premium on dishonesty. But these are matters which you can only understand as you come, with time, to know us better.\"\n\n \"But you have not yet told me how you have settled the labor problem. It is the problem of capital which we have been discussing,\" I said. \"After the nation had assumed conduct of the mills, machinery, railroads, farms, mines, and capital in general of the country, the labor question still remained. In assuming the responsibilities of capital the nation had assumed the difficulties of the capitalist's position.\"\n\n \"The moment the nation assumed the responsibilities of capital those difficulties vanished,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"The national organization of labor under one direction was the complete solution of what was, in your day and under your system, justly regarded as the insoluble labor problem. When the nation became the sole employer, all the citizens, by virtue of their citizenship, became employees, to be distributed according to the needs of industry.\"\n\n \"That is,\" I suggested, \"you have simply applied the principle of universal military service, as it was understood in our day, to the labor question.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Dr. Jonas, \"that was something which followed as a matter of course as soon as the nation had become the sole capitalist. The people were already accustomed to the idea that the obligation of every citizen, not physically disabled, to contribute his military services to the defense of the nation was equal and absolute. That it was equally the duty of every citizen to contribute his quota of industrial or intellectual services to the maintenance of the nation was equally evident, though it was not until the nation became the employer of labor that citizens were able to render this sort of service with any pretense either of universality or equity. No organization of labor was possible when the employing power was divided among hundreds or thousands of individuals and corporations, between which concert of any kind was neither desired, nor indeed feasible. It constantly happened then that vast numbers who desired to labor could find no opportunity, and on the other hand, those who desired to evade a part or all of their debt could easily do so.\"\n\n \"Service, now, I suppose, is compulsory upon all,\" I suggested.\n\n \"It is rather a matter of course than of compulsion,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"It is regarded as so absolutely natural and reasonable that the idea of its being compulsory has ceased to be thought of. He would be thought to be an incredibly contemptible person who should need compulsion in such a case. Nevertheless, to speak of service being compulsory would be a weak way to state its absolute inevitableness. Our entire social order is so wholly based upon and deduced from it that if it were conceivable that a man could escape it, he would be left with no possible way to provide for his existence. He would have excluded himself from the world, cut himself off from his kind, in a word, committed suicide.\"\n\n \"Is the term of service in this industrial army for life?\"\n\n \"Oh, no; it both begins later and ends earlier than the average working period in your day. Your workshops were filled with children and old men, but we hold the period of youth sacred to education, and the period of maturity, when the physical forces begin to flag, equally sacred to ease and agreeable relaxation. The period of industrial service is twenty-four years, beginning at the close of the course of education at twenty-one and terminating at forty-five. After forty-five, while discharged from labor, the citizen still remains liable to special calls, in case of emergencies causing a sudden great increase in the demand for labor, till he reaches the age of fifty-five, but such calls are rarely, in fact almost never, made. The fifteenth day of October of every year is what we call Muster Day, because those who have reached the age of twenty-one are then mustered into the industrial service, and at the same time those who, after twenty-four years' service, have reached the age of forty-five, are honorably mustered out. It is the great day of the year with us, whence we reckon all other events, our Olympiad, save that it is annual.\"\n\n \"It is after you have mustered your industrial army into service,\" I said, \"that I should expect the chief difficulty to arise, for there its analogy with a military army must cease. Soldiers have all the same thing, and a very simple thing, to do, namely, to practice the manual of arms, to march and stand guard. But the industrial army must learn and follow two or three hundred diverse trades and avocations. What administrative talent can be equal to determining wisely what trade or business every individual in a great nation shall pursue?\"\n\n \"The administration has nothing to do with determining that point.\"\n\n \"Who does determine it, then?\" I asked.\n\n \"Every man for himself in accordance with his natural aptitude, the utmost pains being taken to enable him to find out what his natural aptitude really is. The principle on which our industrial army is organized is that a man's natural endowments, mental and physical, determine what he can work at most profitably to the nation and most satisfactorily to himself. While the obligation of service in some form is not to be evaded, voluntary election, subject only to necessary regulation, is depended on to determine the particular sort of service every man is to render. As an individual's satisfaction during his term of service depends on his having an occupation to his taste, parents and teachers watch from early years for indications of special aptitudes in children. A thorough study of the National industrial system, with the history and rudiments of all the great trades, is an essential part of our educational system. While manual training is not allowed to encroach on the general intellectual culture to which our schools are devoted, it is carried far enough to give our youth, in addition to their theoretical knowledge of the national industries, mechanical and agricultural, a certain familiarity with their tools and methods. Our schools are constantly visiting our workshops, and often are taken on long excursions to inspect particular industrial enterprises. In your day a man was not ashamed to be grossly ignorant of all trades except his own, but such ignorance would not be consistent with our idea of placing every one in a position to select intelligently the occupation for which he has most taste. Usually long before he is mustered into service a young man has found out the pursuit he wants to follow, has acquired a great deal of knowledge about it, and is waiting impatiently the time when he can enlist in its ranks.\"\n\n \"Surely,\" I said, \"it can hardly be that the number of volunteers for any trade is exactly the number needed in that trade. It must be generally either under or over the demand.\"\n\n \"The supply of volunteers is always expected to fully equal the demand,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"It is the business of the administration to see that this is the case. The rate of volunteering for each trade is closely watched. If there be a noticeably greater excess of volunteers over men needed in any trade, it is inferred that the trade offers greater attractions than others. On the other hand, if the number of volunteers for a trade tends to drop below the demand, it is inferred that it is thought more arduous. It is the business of the administration to seek constantly to equalize the attractions of the trades, so far as the conditions of labor in them are concerned, so that all trades shall be equally attractive to persons having natural tastes for them. This is done by making the hours of labor in different trades to differ according to their arduousness. The lighter trades, prosecuted under the most agreeable circumstances, have in this way the longest hours, while an arduous trade, such as mining, has very short hours. There is no theory, no _a priori_ rule, by which the respective attractiveness of industries is determined. The administration, in taking burdens off one class of workers and adding them to other classes, simply follows the fluctuations of opinion among the workers themselves as indicated by the rate of volunteering. The principle is that no man's work ought to be, on the whole, harder for him than any other man's for him, the workers themselves to be the judges. There are no limits to the application of this rule. If any particular occupation is in itself so arduous or so oppressive that, in order to induce volunteers, the day's work in it had to be reduced to ten minutes, it would be done. If, even then, no man was willing to do it, it would remain undone. But of course, in point of fact, a moderate reduction in the hours of labor, or addition of other privileges, suffices to secure all needed volunteers for any occupation necessary to men. If, indeed, the unavoidable difficulties and dangers of such a necessary pursuit were so great that no inducement of compensating advantages would overcome men's repugnance to it, the administration would only need to take it out of the common order of occupations by declaring it 'extra hazardous,' and those who pursued it especially worthy of the national gratitude, to be overrun with volunteers. Our young men are very greedy of honor, and do not let slip such opportunities. Of course you will see that dependence on the purely voluntary choice of avocations involves the abolition in all of anything like unhygienic conditions or special peril to life and limb. Health and safety are conditions common to all industries. The nation does not maim and slaughter its workmen by thousands, as did the private capitalists and corporations of your day.\"\n\n \"When there are more who want to enter a particular trade than there is room for, how do you decide between the applicants?\" I inquired.\n\n \"Preference is given to those who have acquired the most knowledge of the trade they wish to follow. No man, however, who through successive years remains persistent in his desire to show what he can do at any particular trade, is in the end denied an opportunity. Meanwhile, if a man cannot at first win entrance into the business he prefers, he has usually one or more alternative preferences, pursuits for which he has some degree of aptitude, although not the highest. Every one, indeed, is expected to study his aptitudes so as to have not only a first choice as to occupation, but a second or third, so that if, either at the outset of his career or subsequently, owing to the progress of invention or changes in demand, he is unable to follow his first vocation, he can still find reasonably congenial employment. This principle of secondary choices as to occupation is quite important in our system. I should add, in reference to the counter-possibility of some sudden failure of volunteers in a particular trade, or some sudden necessity of an increased force, that the administration, while depending on the voluntary system for filling up the trades as a rule, holds always in reserve the power to call for special volunteers, or draft any force needed from any quarter. Generally, however, all needs of this sort can be met by details from the class of unskilled or common laborers.\"\n\n \"How is this class of common laborers recruited?\" I asked. \"Surely nobody voluntarily enters that.\"\n\n \"It is the grade to which all new recruits belong for the first three years of their service. It is not till after this period, during which he is assignable to any work at the discretion of his superiors, that the young man is allowed to elect a special avocation. These three years of stringent discipline none are exempt from, and very glad our young men are to pass from this severe school into the comparative liberty of the trades. If a man were so stupid as to have no choice as to occupation, he would simply remain a common laborer; but such cases, as you may suppose, are not common.\"\n\n \"Having once elected and entered on a trade or occupation,\" I remarked, \"I suppose he has to stick to it the rest of his life.\"\n\n \"Not necessarily,\" replied Dr. Jonas; \"while frequent and merely capricious changes of occupation are not encouraged or even permitted, every worker is allowed, of course, under certain regulations and in accordance with the exigencies of the service, to volunteer for another industry which he thinks would suit him better than his first choice. In this case his application is received just as if he were volunteering for the first time, and on the same terms. Not only this, but a worker may likewise, under suitable regulations and not too frequently, obtain a transfer to an establishment of the same industry in another part of the country which for any reason he may prefer. Under your system a discontented man could indeed leave his work at will, but he left his means of support at the same time, and took his chances as to future livelihood. We find that the number of men who wish to abandon an accustomed occupation for a new one, and old friends and associations for strange ones, is small. It is only the poorer sort of workmen who desire to change even as frequently as our regulations permit. Of course transfers or discharges, when health demands them, are always given.\"\n\n \"As an industrial system, I should think this might be extremely efficient,\" I said, \"but I don't see that it makes any provision for the professional classes, the men who serve the nation with brains instead of hands. Of course you can't get along without the brain-workers. How, then, are they selected from those who are to serve as farmers and mechanics? That must require a very delicate sort of sifting process, I should say.\"\n\n \"So it does,\" replied Dr. Jonas; \"the most delicate possible test is needed here, and so we leave the question whether a man shall be a brain or hand worker entirely to him to settle. At the end of the term of three years as a common laborer, which every man must serve, it is for him to choose, in accordance to his natural tastes, whether he will fit himself for an art or profession, or be a farmer or mechanic. If he feels that he can do better work with his brains than his muscles, he finds every facility provided for testing the reality of his supposed bent, of cultivating it, and if fit of pursuing it as his avocation. The schools of technology, of medicine, of art, of music, of histrionics, and of higher liberal learning are always open to aspirants without condition.\"\n\n \"Are not the schools flooded with young men whose only motive is to avoid work?\"\n\n Dr. Jonas smiled a little grimly.\n\n \"No one is at all likely to enter the professional schools for the purpose of avoiding work, I assure you,\" he said. \"They are intended for those with special aptitude for the branches they teach, and any one without it would find it easier to do double hours at his trade than try to keep up with the classes. Of course many honestly mistake their vocation, and, finding themselves unequal to the requirements of the schools, drop out and return to the industrial service; no discredit attaches to such persons, for the public policy is to encourage all to develop suspected talents which only actual tests can prove the reality of. The professional and scientific schools of your day depended on the patronage of their pupils for support, and the practice appears to have been common of giving diplomas to unfit persons, who afterwards found their way into the professions. Our schools are national institutions, and to have passed their tests is a proof of special abilities not to be questioned.\n\n \"This opportunity for a professional training,\" the doctor continued, \"remains open to every man till the age of thirty is reached, after which students are not received, as there would remain too brief a period before the age of discharge in which to serve the nation in their professions. In your day young men had to choose their professions very young, and therefore, in a large proportion of instances, wholly mistook their vocations. It is recognized nowadays that the natural aptitudes of some are later than those of others in developing, and therefore, while the choice of profession may be made as early as twenty-four, it remains open for six years longer.\"\n\n A question which had a dozen times before been on my lips now found utterance, a question which touched upon what, in my time, had been regarded the most vital difficulty in the way of any final settlement of the industrial problem. \"It is an extraordinary thing,\" I said, \"that you should not yet have said a word about the method of adjusting wages. Since the nation is the sole employer, the government must fix the rate of wages and determine just how much everybody shall earn, from the doctors to the diggers. All I can say is, that this plan would never have worked with us, and I don't see how it can now unless human nature has changed. In my day, nobody was satisfied with his wages or salary. Even if he felt he received enough, he was sure his neighbor had too much, which was as bad. If the universal discontent on this subject, instead of being dissipated in curses and strikes directed against innumerable employers, could have been concentrated upon one, and that the government, the strongest ever devised would not have seen two pay days.\"\n\n Dr. Jonas laughed heartily.\n\n \"Very true, very true,\" he said, \"a general strike would most probably have followed the first pay day, and a strike directed against a government is a revolution.\"\n\n \"How, then, do you avoid a revolution every pay day?\" I demanded. \"Has some prodigious philosopher devised a new system of calculus satisfactory to all for determining the exact and comparative value of all sorts of service, whether by brawn or brain, by hand or voice, by ear or eye? Or has human nature itself changed, so that no man looks upon his own things but 'every man on the things of his neighbor?' One or the other of these events must be the explanation.\"\n\n \"Neither one nor the other, however, is,\" was my host's laughing response. \"And now, Mr. Adelina,\" he continued, \"you must remember that you are my patient as well as my guest, and permit me to prescribe sleep for you before we have any more conversation. It is after three o'clock.\"\n\n \"The prescription is, no doubt, a wise one,\" I said; \"I only hope it can be filled.\"\n\n \"I will see to that,\" the doctor replied, and he did, for he gave me a wineglass of something or other which sent me to sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow.\n\n When I awoke I felt greatly refreshed, and lay a considerable time in a dozing state, enjoying the sensation of bodily comfort. The experiences of the day previous, my waking to find myself in the year 2000, the sight of the new Boston, my host and his family, and the wonderful things I had heard, were a blank in my memory. I thought I was in my bed-chamber at home, and the half-dreaming, half-waking fancies which passed before my mind related to the incidents and experiences of my former life. Dreamily I reviewed the incidents of Decoration Day, my trip in company with Aubrey and her parents to Mount Auburn, and my dining with them on our return to the city. I recalled how extremely well Aubrey had looked, and from that fell to thinking of our marriage; but scarcely had my imagination begun to develop this delightful theme than my waking dream was cut short by the recollection of the letter I had received the night before from the builder announcing that the new strikes might postpone indefinitely the completion of the new house. The chagrin which this recollection brought with it effectually roused me. I remembered that I had an appointment with the builder at eleven o'clock, to discuss the strike, and opening my eyes, looked up at the clock at the foot of my bed to see what time it was. But no clock met my glance, and what was more, I instantly perceived that I was not in my room. Starting up on my couch, I stared wildly round the strange apartment.\n\n I think it must have been many seconds that I sat up thus in bed staring about, without being able to regain the clew to my personal identity. I was no more able to distinguish myself from pure being during those moments than we may suppose a soul in the rough to be before it has received the ear-marks, the individualizing touches which make it a person. Strange that the sense of this inability should be such anguish! but so we are constituted. There are no words for the mental torture I endured during this helpless, eyeless groping for myself in a boundless void. No other experience of the mind gives probably anything like the sense of absolute intellectual arrest from the loss of a mental fulcrum, a starting point of thought, which comes during such a momentary obscuration of the sense of one's identity. I trust I may never know what it is again.\n\n I do not know how long this condition had lasted,--it seemed an interminable time,--when, like a flash, the recollection of everything came back to me. I remembered who and where I was, and how I had come here, and that these scenes as of the life of yesterday which had been passing before my mind concerned a generation long, long ago mouldered to dust. Leaping from bed, I stood in the middle of the room clasping my temples with all my might between my hands to keep them from bursting. Then I fell prone on the couch, and, burying my face in the pillow, lay with out motion. The reaction which was inevitable, from the mental elation, the fever of the intellect that had been the first effect of my tremendous experience, had arrived. The emotional crisis which had awaited the full realization of my actual position, and all that it implied, was upon me, and with set teeth and laboring chest, gripping the bedstead with frenzied strength, I lay there and fought for my sanity. In my mind, all had broken loose, habits of feeling, associations of thought, ideas of persons and things, all had dissolved and lost coherence and were seething together in apparently irretrievable chaos. There were no rallying points, nothing was left stable. There only remained the will, and was any human will strong enough to say to such a weltering sea \"Peace, be still\"? I dared not think. Every effort to reason upon what had befallen me, and realize what it implied, set up an intolerable swimming of the brain. The idea that I was two persons, that my identity was double, began to fascinate me with its simple solution of my experience.\n\n I knew that I was on the verge of losing my mental balance. If I lay there thinking, I was doomed. Diversion of some sort I must have, at least the diversion of physical exertion. I sprang up, and, hastily dressing, opened the door of my room and went down-stairs. The hour was very early, it being not yet fairly light, and I found no one in the lower part of the house. There was a hat in the hall, and, opening the front door, which was fastened with a slightness indicating that burglary was not among the perils of the modern Boston, I found myself on the street. For two hours I walked or ran through the streets of the city, visiting most quarters of the peninsular part of the town. None but an antiquarian who knows something of the contrast which the Boston of to-day offers to the Boston of the nineteenth century can begin to appreciate what a series of bewildering surprises I underwent during that time. Viewed from the house-top the day before, the city had indeed appeared strange to me, but that was only in its general aspect. How complete the change had been I first realized now that I walked the streets. The few old landmarks which still remained only intensified this effect, for without them I might have imagined myself in a foreign town. A man may leave his native city in childhood, and return fifty years later, perhaps, to find it transformed in many features. He is astonished, but he is not bewildered. He is aware of a great lapse of time, and of changes likewise occurring in himself meanwhile. He but dimly recalls the city as he knew it when a child. But remember that there was no sense of any lapse of time with me. So far as my consciousness was concerned, it was but yesterday, but a few hours, since I had walked these streets in which scarcely a feature had escaped a complete metamorphosis. The mental image of the old city was so fresh and strong that it did not yield to the impression of the actual city, but contended with it, so that it was first one and then the other which seemed the more unreal. There was nothing I saw which was not blurred in this way, like the faces of a composite photograph.\n\n Finally, I stood again at the door of the house from which I had come out. My feet must have instinctively brought me back to the site of my old home, for I had no clear idea of returning thither. It was no more homelike to me than any other spot in this city of a strange generation, nor were its inmates less utterly and necessarily strangers than all the other men and women now on the earth. Had the door of the house been locked, I should have been reminded by its resistance that I had no object in entering, and turned away, but it yielded to my hand, and advancing with uncertain steps through the hall, I entered one of the apartments opening from it. Throwing myself into a chair, I covered my burning eyeballs with my hands to shut out the horror of strangeness. My mental confusion was so intense as to produce actual nausea. The anguish of those moments, during which my brain seemed melting, or the abjectness of my sense of helplessness, how can I describe? In my despair I groaned aloud. I began to feel that unless some help should come I was about to lose my mind. And just then it did come. I heard the rustle of drapery, and looked up. Aubrey Jonas was standing before me. Her beautiful face was full of the most poignant sympathy.\n\n \"Oh, what is the matter, Mr. Adelina?\" she said. \"I was here when you came in. I saw how dreadfully distressed you looked, and when I heard you groan, I could not keep silent. What has happened to you? Where have you been? Can't I do something for you?\"\n\n Perhaps she involuntarily held out her hands in a gesture of compassion as she spoke. At any rate I had caught them in my own and was clinging to them with an impulse as instinctive as that which prompts the drowning man to seize upon and cling to the rope which is thrown him as he sinks for the last time. As I looked up into her compassionate face and her eyes moist with pity, my brain ceased to whirl. The tender human sympathy which thrilled in the soft pressure of her fingers had brought me the support I needed. Its effect to calm and soothe was like that of some wonder-working elixir.\n\n \"God bless you,\" I said, after a few moments. \"He must have sent you to me just now. I think I was in danger of going crazy if you had not come.\" At this the tears came into her eyes.\n\n \"Oh, Mr. Adelina!\" she cried. \"How heartless you must have thought us! How could we leave you to yourself so long! But it is over now, is it not? You are better, surely.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" I said, \"thanks to you. If you will not go away quite yet, I shall be myself soon.\"\n\n \"Indeed I will not go away,\" she said, with a little quiver of her face, more expressive of her sympathy than a volume of words. \"You must not think us so heartless as we seemed in leaving you so by yourself. I scarcely slept last night, for thinking how strange your waking would be this morning; but father said you would sleep till late. He said that it would be better not to show too much sympathy with you at first, but to try to divert your thoughts and make you feel that you were among friends.\"\n\n \"You have indeed made me feel that,\" I answered. \"But you see it is a good deal of a jolt to drop a hundred years, and although I did not seem to feel it so much last night, I have had very odd sensations this morning.\" While I held her hands and kept my eyes on her face, I could already even jest a little at my plight.\n\n \"No one thought of such a thing as your going out in the city alone so early in the morning,\" she went on. \"Oh, Mr. Adelina, where have you been?\"\n\n Then I told her of my morning's experience, from my first waking till the moment I had looked up to see her before me, just as I have told it here. She was overcome by distressful pity during the recital, and, though I had released one of her hands, did not try to take from me the other, seeing, no doubt, how much good it did me to hold it. \"I can think a little what this feeling must been like,\" she said. \"It must have been terrible. And to think you were left alone to struggle with it! Can you ever forgive us?\"\n\n \"But it is gone now. You have driven it quite away for the present,\" I said.\n\n \"You will not let it return again,\" she queried anxiously.\n\n \"I can't quite say that,\" I replied. \"It might be too early to say that, considering how strange everything will still be to me.\"\n\n \"But you will not try to contend with it alone again, at least,\" she persisted. \"Promise that you will come to us, and let us sympathize with you, and try to help you. Perhaps we can't do much, but it will surely be better than to try to bear such feelings alone.\"\n\n \"I will come to you if you will let me,\" I said.\n\n \"Oh yes, yes, I beg you will,\" she said eagerly. \"I would do anything to help you that I could.\"\n\n \"All you need do is to be sorry for me, as you seem to be now,\" I replied.\n\n \"It is understood, then,\" she said, smiling with wet eyes, \"that you are to come and tell me next time, and not run all over Boston among strangers.\"\n\n This assumption that we were not strangers seemed scarcely strange, so near within these few minutes had my trouble and her sympathetic tears brought us.\n\n \"I will promise, when you come to me,\" she added, with an expression of charming archness, passing, as she continued, into one of enthusiasm, \"to seem as sorry for you as you wish, but you must not for a moment suppose that I am really sorry for you at all, or that I think you will long be sorry for yourself. I know, as well as I know that the world now is heaven compared with what it was in your day, that the only feeling you will have after a little while will be one of thankfulness to God that your life in that age was so strangely cut off, to be returned to you in this.\"\n\n Dr. and Mrs. Jonas were evidently not a little startled to learn, when they presently appeared, that I had been all over the city alone that morning, and it was apparent that they were agreeably surprised to see that I seemed so little agitated after the experience.\n\n \"Your stroll could scarcely have failed to be a very interesting one,\" said Mrs. Jonas, as we sat down to table soon after. \"You must have seen a good many new things.\"\n\n \"I saw very little that was not new,\" I replied. \"But I think what surprised me as much as anything was not to find any stores on Washington Street, or any banks on State. What have you done with the merchants and bankers? Hung them all, perhaps, as the anarchists wanted to do in my day?\"\n\n \"Not so bad as that,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"We have simply dispensed with them. Their functions are obsolete in the modern world.\"\n\n \"Who sells you things when you want to buy them?\" I inquired.\n\n \"There is neither selling nor buying nowadays; the distribution of goods is effected in another way. As to the bankers, having no money we have no use for those gentry.\"\n\n \"Miss Jonas,\" said I, turning to Aubrey, \"I am afraid that your father is making sport of me. I don't blame him, for the temptation my innocence offers must be extraordinary. But, really, there are limits to my credulity as to possible alterations in the social system.\"\n\n \"Father has no idea of jesting, I am sure,\" she replied, with a reassuring smile.\n\n The conversation took another turn then, the point of ladies' fashions in the nineteenth century being raised, if I remember rightly, by Mrs. Jonas, and it was not till after breakfast, when the doctor had invited me up to the house-top, which appeared to be a favorite resort of his, that he recurred to the subject.\n\n \"You were surprised,\" he said, \"at my saying that we got along without money or trade, but a moment's reflection will show that trade existed and money was needed in your day simply because the business of production was left in private hands, and that, consequently, they are superfluous now.\"\n\n \"I do not at once see how that follows,\" I replied.\n\n \"It is very simple,\" said Dr. Jonas. \"When innumerable different and independent persons produced the various things needful to life and comfort, endless exchanges between individuals were requisite in order that they might supply themselves with what they desired. These exchanges constituted trade, and money was essential as their medium. But as soon as the nation became the sole producer of all sorts of commodities, there was no need of exchanges between individuals that they might get what they required. Everything was procurable from one source, and nothing could be procured anywhere else. A system of direct distribution from the national storehouses took the place of trade, and for this money was unnecessary.\"\n\n \"How is this distribution managed?\" I asked.\n\n \"On the simplest possible plan,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"A credit corresponding to his share of the annual product of the nation is given to every citizen on the public books at the beginning of each year, and a credit card issued him with which he procures at the public storehouses, found in every community, whatever he desires whenever he desires it. This arrangement, you will see, totally obviates the necessity for business transactions of any sort between individuals and consumers. Perhaps you would like to see what our credit-cards are like.\n\n \"You observe,\" he pursued as I was curiously examining the piece of pasteboard he gave me, \"that this card is issued for a certain number of dollars. We have kept the old word, but not the substance. The term, as we use it, answers to no real thing, but merely serves as an algebraical symbol for comparing the values of products with one another. For this purpose they are all priced in dollars and cents, just as in your day. The value of what I procure on this card is checked off by the clerk, who pricks out of these tiers of squares the price of what I order.\"\n\n \"If you wanted to buy something of your neighbor, could you transfer part of your credit to him as consideration?\" I inquired.\n\n \"In the first place,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"our neighbors have nothing to sell us, but in any event our credit would not be transferable, being strictly personal. Before the nation could even think of honoring any such transfer as you speak of, it would be bound to inquire into all the circumstances of the transaction, so as to be able to guarantee its absolute equity. It would have been reason enough, had there been no other, for abolishing money, that its possession was no indication of rightful title to it. In the hands of the man who had stolen it or murdered for it, it was as good as in those which had earned it by industry. People nowadays interchange gifts and favors out of friendship, but buying and selling is considered absolutely inconsistent with the mutual benevolence and disinterestedness which should prevail between citizens and the sense of community of interest which supports our social system. According to our ideas, buying and selling is essentially anti-social in all its tendencies. It is an education in self-seeking at the expense of others, and no society whose citizens are trained in such a school can possibly rise above a very low grade of civilization.\"\n\n \"What if you have to spend more than your card in any one year?\" I asked.\n\n \"The provision is so ample that we are more likely not to spend it all,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"But if extraordinary expenses should exhaust it, we can obtain a limited advance on the next year's credit, though this practice is not encouraged, and a heavy discount is charged to check it. Of course if a man showed himself a reckless spendthrift he would receive his allowance monthly or weekly instead of yearly, or if necessary not be permitted to handle it all.\"\n\n \"If you don't spend your allowance, I suppose it accumulates?\"\n\n \"That is also permitted to a certain extent when a special outlay is anticipated. But unless notice to the contrary is given, it is presumed that the citizen who does not fully expend his credit did not have occasion to do so, and the balance is turned into the general surplus.\"\n\n \"Such a system does not encourage saving habits on the part of citizens,\" I said.\n\n \"It is not intended to,\" was the reply. \"The nation is rich, and does not wish the people to deprive themselves of any good thing. In your day, men were bound to lay up goods and money against coming failure of the means of support and for their children. This necessity made parsimony a virtue. But now it would have no such laudable object, and, having lost its utility, it has ceased to be regarded as a virtue. No man any more has any care for the morrow, either for himself or his children, for the nation guarantees the nurture, education, and comfortable maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave.\"\n\n \"That is a sweeping guarantee!\" I said. \"What certainty can there be that the value of a man's labor will recompense the nation for its outlay on him? On the whole, society may be able to support all its members, but some must earn less than enough for their support, and others more; and that brings us back once more to the wages question, on which you have hitherto said nothing. It was at just this point, if you remember, that our talk ended last evening; and I say again, as I did then, that here I should suppose a national industrial system like yours would find its main difficulty. How, I ask once more, can you adjust satisfactorily the comparative wages or remuneration of the multitude of avocations, so unlike and so incommensurable, which are necessary for the service of society? In our day the market rate determined the price of labor of all sorts, as well as of goods. The employer paid as little as he could, and the worker got as much. It was not a pretty system ethically, I admit; but it did, at least, furnish us a rough and ready formula for settling a question which must be settled ten thousand times a day if the world was ever going to get forward. There seemed to us no other practicable way of doing it.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"it was the only practicable way under a system which made the interests of every individual antagonistic to those of every other; but it would have been a pity if humanity could never have devised a better plan, for yours was simply the application to the mutual relations of men of the devil's maxim, 'Your necessity is my opportunity.' The reward of any service depended not upon its difficulty, danger, or hardship, for throughout the world it seems that the most perilous, severe, and repulsive labor was done by the worst paid classes; but solely upon the strait of those who needed the service.\"\n\n \"All that is conceded,\" I said. \"But, with all its defects, the plan of settling prices by the market rate was a practical plan; and I cannot conceive what satisfactory substitute you can have devised for it. The government being the only possible employer, there is of course no labor market or market rate. Wages of all sorts must be arbitrarily fixed by the government. I cannot imagine a more complex and delicate function than that must be, or one, however performed, more certain to breed universal dissatisfaction.\"\n\n \"I beg your pardon,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"but I think you exaggerate the difficulty. Suppose a board of fairly sensible men were charged with settling the wages for all sorts of trades under a system which, like ours, guaranteed employment to all, while permitting the choice of avocations. Don't you see that, however unsatisfactory the first adjustment might be, the mistakes would soon correct themselves? The favored trades would have too many volunteers, and those discriminated against would lack them till the errors were set right. But this is aside from the purpose, for, though this plan would, I fancy, be practicable enough, it is no part of our system.\"\n\n \"How, then, do you regulate wages?\" I once more asked.\n\n Dr. Jonas did not reply till after several moments of meditative silence. \"I know, of course,\" he finally said, \"enough of the old order of things to understand just what you mean by that question; and yet the present order is so utterly different at this point that I am a little at loss how to answer you best. You ask me how we regulate wages; I can only reply that there is no idea in the modern social economy which at all corresponds with what was meant by wages in your day.\"\n\n \"I suppose you mean that you have no money to pay wages in,\" said I. \"But the credit given the worker at the government storehouse answers to his wages with us. How is the amount of the credit given respectively to the workers in different lines determined? By what title does the individual claim his particular share? What is the basis of allotment?\"\n\n \"His title,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"is his humanity. The basis of his claim is the fact that he is a man.\"\n\n \"The fact that he is a man!\" I repeated, incredulously. \"Do you possibly mean that all have the same share?\"\n\n \"Most assuredly.\"\n\n The readers of this book never having practically known any other arrangement, or perhaps very carefully considered the historical accounts of former epochs in which a very different system prevailed, cannot be expected to appreciate the stupor of amazement into which Dr. Jonas's simple statement plunged me.\n\n \"You see,\" he said, smiling, \"that it is not merely that we have no money to pay wages in, but, as I said, we have nothing at all answering to your idea of wages.\"\n\n By this time I had pulled myself together sufficiently to voice some of the criticisms which, man of the nineteenth century as I was, came uppermost in my mind, upon this to me astounding arrangement. \"Some men do twice the work of others!\" I exclaimed. \"Are the clever workmen content with a plan that ranks them with the indifferent?\"\n\n \"We leave no possible ground for any complaint of injustice,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"by requiring precisely the same measure of service from all.\"\n\n \"How can you do that, I should like to know, when no two men's powers are the same?\"\n\n \"Nothing could be simpler,\" was Dr. Jonas's reply. \"We require of each that he shall make the same effort; that is, we demand of him the best service it is in his power to give.\"\n\n \"And supposing all do the best they can,\" I answered, \"the amount of the product resulting is twice greater from one man than from another.\"\n\n \"Very true,\" replied Dr. Jonas; \"but the amount of the resulting product has nothing whatever to do with the question, which is one of desert. Desert is a moral question, and the amount of the product a material quantity. It would be an extraordinary sort of logic which should try to determine a moral question by a material standard. The amount of the effort alone is pertinent to the question of desert. All men who do their best, do the same. A man's endowments, however godlike, merely fix the measure of his duty. The man of great endowments who does not do all he might, though he may do more than a man of small endowments who does his best, is deemed a less deserving worker than the latter, and dies a debtor to his fellows. The Creator sets men's tasks for them by the faculties he gives them; we simply exact their fulfillment.\"\n\n \"No doubt that is very fine philosophy,\" I said; \"nevertheless it seems hard that the man who produces twice as much as another, even if both do their best, should have only the same share.\"\n\n \"Does it, indeed, seem so to you?\" responded Dr. Jonas. \"Now, do you know, that seems very curious to me? The way it strikes people nowadays is, that a man who can produce twice as much as another with the same effort, instead of being rewarded for doing so, ought to be punished if he does not do so. In the nineteenth century, when a horse pulled a heavier load than a goat, I suppose you rewarded him. Now, we should have whipped him soundly if he had not, on the ground that, being much stronger, he ought to. It is singular how ethical standards change.\" The doctor said this with such a twinkle in his eye that I was obliged to laugh.\n\n \"I suppose,\" I said, \"that the real reason that we rewarded men for their endowments, while we considered those of horses and goats merely as fixing the service to be severally required of them, was that the animals, not being reasoning beings, naturally did the best they could, whereas men could only be induced to do so by rewarding them according to the amount of their product. That brings me to ask why, unless human nature has mightily changed in a hundred years, you are not under the same necessity.\"\n\n \"We are,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"I don't think there has been any change in human nature in that respect since your day. It is still so constituted that special incentives in the form of prizes, and advantages to be gained, are requisite to call out the best endeavors of the average man in any direction.\"\n\n \"But what inducement,\" I asked, \"can a man have to put forth his best endeavors when, however much or little he accomplishes, his income remains the same? High characters may be moved by devotion to the common welfare under such a system, but does not the average man tend to rest back on his oar, reasoning that it is of no use to make a special effort, since the effort will not increase his income, nor its withholding diminish it?\"\n\n \"Does it then really seem to you,\" answered my companion, \"that human nature is insensible to any motives save fear of want and love of luxury, that you should expect security and equality of livelihood to leave them without possible incentives to effort? Your contemporaries did not really think so, though they might fancy they did. When it was a question of the grandest class of efforts, the most absolute self-devotion, they depended on quite other incentives. Not higher wages, but honor and the hope of men's gratitude, patriotism and the inspiration of duty, were the motives which they set before their soldiers when it was a question of dying for the nation, and never was there an age of the world when those motives did not call out what is best and noblest in men. And not only this, but when you come to analyze the love of money which was the general impulse to effort in your day, you find that the dread of want and desire of luxury was but one of several motives which the pursuit of money represented; the others, and with many the more influential, being desire of power, of social position, and reputation for ability and success. So you see that though we have abolished poverty and the fear of it, and inordinate luxury with the hope of it, we have not touched the greater part of the motives which underlay the love of money in former times, or any of those which prompted the supremer sorts of effort. The coarser motives, which no longer move us, have been replaced by higher motives wholly unknown to the mere wage earners of your age. Now that industry of whatever sort is no longer self-service, but service of the nation, patriotism, passion for humanity, impel the worker as in your day they did the soldier. The army of industry is an army, not alone by virtue of its perfect organization, but by reason also of the ardor of self-devotion which animates its members.\n\n \"But as you used to supplement the motives of patriotism with the love of glory, in order to stimulate the valor of your soldiers, so do we. Based as our industrial system is on the principle of requiring the same unit of effort from every man, that is, the best he can do, you will see that the means by which we spur the workers to do their best must be a very essential part of our scheme. With us, diligence in the national service is the sole and certain way to public repute, social distinction, and official power. The value of a man's services to society fixes his rank in it. Compared with the effect of our social arrangements in impelling men to be zealous in business, we deem the object-lessons of biting poverty and wanton luxury on which you depended a device as weak and uncertain as it was barbaric. The lust of honor even in your sordid day notoriously impelled men to more desperate effort than the love of money could.\"\n\n \"I should be extremely interested,\" I said, \"to learn something of what these social arrangements are.\"\n\n \"The scheme in its details,\" replied the doctor, \"is of course very elaborate, for it underlies the entire organization of our industrial army; but a few words will give you a general idea of it.\"\n\n At this moment our talk was charmingly interrupted by the emergence upon the aerial platform where we sat of Aubrey Jonas. She was dressed for the street, and had come to speak to her father about some commission she was to do for him.\n\n \"By the way, Aubrey,\" he exclaimed, as she was about to leave us to ourselves, \"I wonder if Mr. Adelina would not be interested in visiting the store with you? I have been telling him something about our system of distribution, and perhaps he might like to see it in practical operation.\"\n\n \"My daughter,\" he added, turning to me, \"is an indefatigable shopper, and can tell you more about the stores than I can.\"\n\n The proposition was naturally very agreeable to me, and Aubrey being good enough to say that she should be glad to have my company, we left the house together.\n\n \"If I am going to explain our way of shopping to you,\" said my companion, as we walked along the street, \"you must explain your way to me. I have never been able to understand it from all I have read on the subject. For example, when you had such a vast number of shops, each with its different assortment, how could a lady ever settle upon any purchase till she had visited all the shops? for, until she had, she could not know what there was to choose from.\"\n\n \"It was as you suppose; that was the only way she could know,\" I replied.\n\n \"Father calls me an indefatigable shopper, but I should soon be a very fatigued one if I had to do as they did,\" was Aubrey's laughing comment.\n\n \"The loss of time in going from shop to shop was indeed a waste which the busy bitterly complained of,\" I said; \"but as for the ladies of the idle class, though they complained also, I think the system was really a godsend by furnishing a device to kill time.\"\n\n \"But say there were a thousand shops in a city, hundreds, perhaps, of the same sort, how could even the idlest find time to make their rounds?\"\n\n \"They really could not visit all, of course,\" I replied. \"Those who did a great deal of buying, learned in time where they might expect to find what they wanted. This class had made a science of the specialties of the shops, and bought at advantage, always getting the most and best for the least money. It required, however, long experience to acquire this knowledge. Those who were too busy, or bought too little to gain it, took their chances and were generally unfortunate, getting the least and worst for the most money. It was the merest chance if persons not experienced in shopping received the value of their money.\"\n\n \"But why did you put up with such a shockingly inconvenient arrangement when you saw its faults so plainly?\" Aubrey asked me.\n\n \"It was like all our social arrangements,\" I replied. \"You can see their faults scarcely more plainly than we did, but we saw no remedy for them.\"\n\n \"Here we are at the store of our ward,\" said Aubrey, as we turned in at the great portal of one of the magnificent public buildings I had observed in my morning walk. There was nothing in the exterior aspect of the edifice to suggest a store to a representative of the nineteenth century. There was no display of goods in the great windows, or any device to advertise wares, or attract custom. Nor was there any sort of sign or legend on the front of the building to indicate the character of the business carried on there; but instead, above the portal, standing out from the front of the building, a majestic life-size group of statuary, the central figure of which was a female ideal of Plenty, with her cornucopia. Judging from the composition of the throng passing in and out, about the same proportion of the sexes among shoppers obtained as in the nineteenth century. As we entered, Aubrey said that there was one of these great distributing establishments in each ward of the city, so that no residence was more than five or ten minutes' walk from one of them. It was the first interior of a twentieth-century public building that I had ever beheld, and the spectacle naturally impressed me deeply. I was in a vast hall full of light, received not alone from the windows on all sides, but from the dome, the point of which was a hundred feet above. Beneath it, in the centre of the hall, a magnificent fountain played, cooling the atmosphere to a delicious freshness with its spray. The walls and ceiling were frescoed in mellow tints, calculated to soften without absorbing the light which flooded the interior. Around the fountain was a space occupied with chairs and sofas, on which many persons were seated conversing. Legends on the walls all about the hall indicated to what classes of commodities the counters below were devoted. Aubrey directed her steps towards one of these, where samples of muslin of a bewildering variety were displayed, and proceeded to inspect them.\n\n \"Where is the clerk?\" I asked, for there was no one behind the counter, and no one seemed coming to attend to the customer.\n\n \"I have no need of the clerk yet,\" said Aubrey; \"I have not made my selection.\"\n\n \"It was the principal business of clerks to help people to make their selections in my day,\" I replied.\n\n \"What! To tell people what they wanted?\"\n\n \"Yes; and oftener to induce them to buy what they didn't want.\"\n\n \"But did not ladies find that very impertinent?\" Aubrey asked, wonderingly. \"What concern could it possibly be to the clerks whether people bought or not?\"\n\n \"It was their sole concern,\" I answered. \"They were hired for the purpose of getting rid of the goods, and were expected to do their utmost, short of the use of force, to compass that end.\"\n\n \"Ah, yes! How stupid I am to forget!\" said Aubrey. \"The storekeeper and his clerks depended for their livelihood on selling the goods in your day. Of course that is all different now. The goods are the nation's. They are here for those who want them, and it is the business of the clerks to wait on people and take their orders; but it is not the interest of the clerk or the nation to dispose of a yard or a pound of anything to anybody who does not want it.\" She smiled as she added, \"How exceedingly odd it must have seemed to have clerks trying to induce one to take what one did not want, or was doubtful about!\"\n\n \"But even a twentieth-century clerk might make himself useful in giving you information about the goods, though he did not tease you to buy them,\" I suggested.\n\n \"No,\" said Aubrey, \"that is not the business of the clerk. These printed cards, for which the government authorities are responsible, give us all the information we can possibly need.\"\n\n I saw then that there was fastened to each sample a card containing in succinct form a complete statement of the make and materials of the goods and all its qualities, as well as price, leaving absolutely no point to hang a question on.\n\n \"The clerk has, then, nothing to say about the goods he sells?\" I said.\n\n \"Nothing at all. It is not necessary that he should know or profess to know anything about them. Courtesy and accuracy in taking orders are all that are required of him.\"\n\n \"What a prodigious amount of lying that simple arrangement saves!\" I ejaculated.\n\n \"Do you mean that all the clerks misrepresented their goods in your day?\" Aubrey asked.\n\n \"God forbid that I should say so!\" I replied, \"for there were many who did not, and they were entitled to especial credit, for when one's livelihood and that of his wife and babies depended on the amount of goods he could dispose of, the temptation to deceive the customer--or let him deceive himself--was wellnigh overwhelming. But, Miss Jonas, I am distracting you from your task with my talk.\"\n\n \"Not at all. I have made my selections.\" With that she touched a button, and in a moment a clerk appeared. He took down her order on a tablet with a pencil which made two copies, of which he gave one to her, and enclosing the counterpart in a small receptacle, dropped it into a transmitting tube.\n\n \"The duplicate of the order,\" said Aubrey as she turned away from the counter, after the clerk had punched the value of her purchase out of the credit card she gave him, \"is given to the purchaser, so that any mistakes in filling it can be easily traced and rectified.\"\n\n \"You were very quick about your selections,\" I said. \"May I ask how you knew that you might not have found something to suit you better in some of the other stores? But probably you are required to buy in your own district.\"\n\n \"Oh, no,\" she replied. \"We buy where we please, though naturally most often near home. But I should have gained nothing by visiting other stores. The assortment in all is exactly the same, representing as it does in each case samples of all the varieties produced or imported by the United States. That is why one can decide quickly, and never need visit two stores.\"\n\n \"And is this merely a sample store? I see no clerks cutting off goods or marking bundles.\"\n\n \"All our stores are sample stores, except as to a few classes of articles. The goods, with these exceptions, are all at the great central warehouse of the city, to which they are shipped directly from the producers. We order from the sample and the printed statement of texture, make, and qualities. The orders are sent to the warehouse, and the goods distributed from there.\"\n\n \"That must be a tremendous saving of handling,\" I said. \"By our system, the manufacturer sold to the wholesaler, the wholesaler to the retailer, and the retailer to the consumer, and the goods had to be handled each time. You avoid one handling of the goods, and eliminate the retailer altogether, with his big profit and the army of clerks it goes to support. Why, Miss Jonas, this store is merely the order department of a wholesale house, with no more than a wholesaler's complement of clerks. Under our system of handling the goods, persuading the customer to buy them, cutting them off, and packing them, ten clerks would not do what one does here. The saving must be enormous.\"\n\n \"I suppose so,\" said Aubrey, \"but of course we have never known any other way. But, Mr. Adelina, you must not fail to ask father to take you to the central warehouse some day, where they receive the orders from the different sample houses all over the city and parcel out and send the goods to their destinations. He took me there not long ago, and it was a wonderful sight. The system is certainly perfect; for example, over yonder in that sort of cage is the dispatching clerk. The orders, as they are taken by the different departments in the store, are sent by transmitters to him. His assistants sort them and enclose each class in a carrier-box by itself. The dispatching clerk has a dozen pneumatic transmitters before him answering to the general classes of goods, each communicating with the corresponding department at the warehouse. He drops the box of orders into the tube it calls for, and in a few moments later it drops on the proper desk in the warehouse, together with all the orders of the same sort from the other sample stores. The orders are read off, recorded, and sent to be filled, like lightning. The filling I thought the most interesting part. Bales of cloth are placed on spindles and turned by machinery, and the cutter, who also has a machine, works right through one bale after another till exhausted, when another man takes his place; and it is the same with those who fill the orders in any other staple. The packages are then delivered by larger tubes to the city districts, and thence distributed to the houses. You may understand how quickly it is all done when I tell you that my order will probably be at home sooner than I could have carried it from here.\"\n\n \"How do you manage in the thinly settled rural districts?\" I asked.\n\n \"The system is the same,\" Aubrey explained; \"the village sample shops are connected by transmitters with the central county warehouse, which may be twenty miles away. The transmission is so swift, though, that the time lost on the way is trifling. But, to save expense, in many counties one set of tubes connect several villages with the warehouse, and then there is time lost waiting for one another. Sometimes it is two or three hours before goods ordered are received. It was so where I was staying last summer, and I found it quite inconvenient\".[2]\n\n \"There must be many other respects also, no doubt, in which the country stores are inferior to the city stores,\" I suggested.\n\n \"No,\" Aubrey answered, \"they are otherwise precisely as good. The sample shop of the smallest village, just like this one, gives you your choice of all the varieties of goods the nation has, for the county warehouse draws on the same source as the city warehouse.\"\n\n As we walked home I commented on the great variety in the size and cost of the houses. \"How is it,\" I asked, \"that this difference is consistent with the fact that all citizens have the same income?\"\n\n \"Because,\" Aubrey explained, \"although the income is the same, personal taste determines how the individual shall spend it. Some like fine horses; others, like myself, prefer pretty clothes; and still others want an elaborate table. The rents which the nation receives for these houses vary, according to size, elegance, and location, so that everybody can find something to suit. The larger houses are usually occupied by large families, in which there are several to contribute to the rent; while small families, like ours, find smaller houses more convenient and economical. It is a matter of taste and convenience wholly. I have read that in old times people often kept up establishments and did other things which they could not afford for ostentation, to make people think them richer than they were. Was it really so, Mr. Adelina?\"\n\n \"I shall have to admit that it was,\" I replied.\n\n \"Well, you see, it could not be so nowadays; for everybody's income is known, and it is known that what is spent one way must be saved another.\"\n\n [Footnote 2: I am informed since the above is in type that this lack of perfection in the distributing service of some of the country districts is to be remedied, and that soon every village will have its own set of tubes.]\n\n When we arrived home, Dr. Jonas had not yet returned, and Mrs. Jonas was not visible. \"Are you fond of music, Mr. Adelina?\" Aubrey asked.\n\n I assured her that it was half of life, according to my notion.\n\n \"I ought to apologize for inquiring,\" she said. \"It is not a question that we ask one another nowadays; but I have read that in your day, even among the cultured class, there were some who did not care for music.\"\n\n \"You must remember, in excuse,\" I said, \"that we had some rather absurd kinds of music.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" she said, \"I know that; I am afraid I should not have fancied it all myself. Would you like to hear some of ours now, Mr. Adelina?\"\n\n \"Nothing would delight me so much as to listen to you,\" I said.\n\n \"To me!\" she exclaimed, laughing. \"Did you think I was going to play or sing to you?\"\n\n \"I hoped so, certainly,\" I replied.\n\n Seeing that I was a little abashed, she subdued her merriment and explained. \"Of course, we all sing nowadays as a matter of course in the training of the voice, and some learn to play instruments for their private amusement; but the professional music is so much grander and more perfect than any performance of ours, and so easily commanded when we wish to hear it, that we don't think of calling our singing or playing music at all. All the really fine singers and players are in the musical service, and the rest of us hold our peace for the main part. But would you really like to hear some music?\"\n\n I assured her once more that I would.\n\n \"Come, then, into the music room,\" she said, and I followed her into an apartment finished, without hangings, in wood, with a floor of polished wood. I was prepared for new devices in musical instruments, but I saw nothing in the room which by any stretch of imagination could be conceived as such. It was evident that my puzzled appearance was affording intense amusement to Aubrey.\n\n \"Please look at to-day's music,\" she said, handing me a card, \"and tell me what you would prefer. It is now five o'clock, you will remember.\"\n\n The card bore the date \"September 12, 2000,\" and contained the longest programme of music I had ever seen. It was as various as it was long, including a most extraordinary range of vocal and instrumental solos, duets, quartettes, and various orchestral combinations. I remained bewildered by the prodigious list until Aubrey's pink finger-tip indicated a particular section of it, where several selections were bracketed, with the words \"5 P.M.\" against them; then I observed that this prodigious programme was an all-day one, divided into twenty-four sections answering to the hours. There were but a few pieces of music in the \"5 P.M.\" section, and I indicated an organ piece as my preference.\n\n \"I am so glad you like the organ,\" said she. \"I think there is scarcely any music that suits my mood oftener.\"\n\n She made me sit down comfortably, and, crossing the room, so far as I could see, merely touched one or two screws, and at once the room was filled with the music of a grand organ anthem; filled, not flooded, for, by some means, the volume of melody had been perfectly graduated to the size of the apartment. I listened, scarcely breathing, to the close. Such music, so perfectly rendered, I had never expected to hear.\n\n \"Grand!\" I cried, as the last great wave of sound broke and ebbed away into silence. \"Bach must be at the keys of that organ; but where is the organ?\"\n\n \"Wait a moment, please,\" said Aubrey; \"I want to have you listen to this waltz before you ask any questions. I think it is perfectly charming;\" and as she spoke the sound of violins filled the room with the witchery of a summer night. When this had also ceased, she said: \"There is nothing in the least mysterious about the music, as you seem to imagine. It is not made by fairies or genii, but by good, honest, and exceedingly clever human hands. We have simply carried the idea of labor saving by cooperation into our musical service as into everything else. There are a number of music rooms in the city, perfectly adapted acoustically to the different sorts of music. These halls are connected by telephone with all the houses of the city whose people care to pay the small fee, and there are none, you may be sure, who do not. The corps of musicians attached to each hall is so large that, although no individual performer, or group of performers, has more than a brief part, each day's programme lasts through the twenty-four hours. There are on that card for to-day, as you will see if you observe closely, distinct programmes of four of these concerts, each of a different order of music from the others, being now simultaneously performed, and any one of the four pieces now going on that you prefer, you can hear by merely pressing the button which will connect your house-wire with the hall where it is being rendered. The programmes are so coordinated that the pieces at any one time simultaneously proceeding in the different halls usually offer a choice, not only between instrumental and vocal, and between different sorts of instruments; but also between different motives from grave to gay, so that all tastes and moods can be suited.\"\n\n \"It appears to me, Miss Jonas,\" I said, \"that if we could have devised an arrangement for providing everybody with music in their homes, perfect in quality, unlimited in quantity, suited to every mood, and beginning and ceasing at will, we should have considered the limit of human felicity already attained, and ceased to strive for further improvements.\"\n\n \"I am sure I never could imagine how those among you who depended at all on music managed to endure the old-fashioned system for providing it,\" replied Aubrey. \"Music really worth hearing must have been, I suppose, wholly out of the reach of the masses, and attainable by the most favored only occasionally, at great trouble, prodigious expense, and then for brief periods, arbitrarily fixed by somebody else, and in connection with all sorts of undesirable circumstances. Your concerts, for instance, and operas! How perfectly exasperating it must have been, for the sake of a piece or two of music that suited you, to have to sit for hours listening to what you did not care for! Now, at a dinner one can skip the courses one does not care for. Who would ever dine, however hungry, if required to eat everything brought on the table? and I am sure one's hearing is quite as sensitive as one's taste. I suppose it was these difficulties in the way of commanding really good music which made you endure so much playing and singing in your homes by people who had only the rudiments of the art.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" I replied, \"it was that sort of music or none for most of us.\"\n\n \"Ah, well,\" Aubrey sighed, \"when one really considers, it is not so strange that people in those days so often did not care for music. I dare say I should have detested it, too.\"\n\n \"Did I understand you rightly,\" I inquired, \"that this musical programme covers the entire twenty-four hours? It seems to on this card, certainly; but who is there to listen to music between say midnight and morning?\"\n\n \"Oh, many,\" Aubrey replied. \"Our people keep all hours; but if the music were provided from midnight to morning for no others, it still would be for the sleepless, the sick, and the dying. All our bedchambers have a telephone attachment at the head of the bed by which any person who may be sleepless can command music at pleasure, of the sort suited to the mood.\"\n\n \"Is there such an arrangement in the room assigned to me?\"\n\n \"Why, certainly; and how stupid, how very stupid, of me not to think to tell you of that last night! Father will show you about the adjustment before you go to bed to-night, however; and with the receiver at your ear, I am quite sure you will be able to snap your fingers at all sorts of uncanny feelings if they trouble you again.\"\n\n That evening Dr. Jonas asked us about our visit to the store, and in the course of the desultory comparison of the ways of the nineteenth century and the twentieth, which followed, something raised the question of inheritance. \"I suppose,\" I said, \"the inheritance of property is not now allowed.\"\n\n \"On the contrary,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"there is no interference with it. In fact, you will find, Mr. Adelina, as you come to know us, that there is far less interference of any sort with personal liberty nowadays than you were accustomed to. We require, indeed, by law that every man shall serve the nation for a fixed period, instead of leaving him his choice, as you did, between working, stealing, or starving. With the exception of this fundamental law, which is, indeed, merely a codification of the law of nature--the edict of Eden--by which it is made equal in its pressure on men, our system depends in no particular upon legislation, but is entirely voluntary, the logical outcome of the operation of human nature under rational conditions. This question of inheritance illustrates just that point. The fact that the nation is the sole capitalist and land-owner of course restricts the individual's possessions to his annual credit, and what personal and household belongings he may have procured with it. His credit, like an annuity in your day, ceases on his death, with the allowance of a fixed sum for funeral expenses. His other possessions he leaves as he pleases.\"\n\n \"What is to prevent, in course of time, such accumulations of valuable goods and chattels in the hands of individuals as might seriously interfere with equality in the circumstances of citizens?\" I asked.\n\n \"That matter arranges itself very simply,\" was the reply. \"Under the present organization of society, accumulations of personal property are merely burdensome the moment they exceed what adds to the real comfort. In your day, if a man had a house crammed full with gold and silver plate, rare china, expensive furniture, and such things, he was considered rich, for these things represented money, and could at any time be turned into it. Nowadays a man whom the legacies of a hundred relatives, simultaneously dying, should place in a similar position, would be considered very unlucky. The articles, not being salable, would be of no value to him except for their actual use or the enjoyment of their beauty. On the other hand, his income remaining the same, he would have to deplete his credit to hire houses to store the goods in, and still further to pay for the service of those who took care of them. You may be very sure that such a man would lose no time in scattering among his friends possessions which only made him the poorer, and that none of those friends would accept more of them than they could easily spare room for and time to attend to. You see, then, that to prohibit the inheritance of personal property with a view to prevent great accumulations would be a superfluous precaution for the nation. The individual citizen can be trusted to see that he is not overburdened. So careful is he in this respect, that the relatives usually waive claim to most of the effects of deceased friends, reserving only particular objects. The nation takes charge of the resigned chattels, and turns such as are of value into the common stock once more.\"\n\n \"You spoke of paying for service to take care of your houses,\" said I; \"that suggests a question I have several times been on the point of asking. How have you disposed of the problem of domestic service? Who are willing to be domestic servants in a community where all are social equals? Our ladies found it hard enough to find such even when there was little pretense of social equality.\"\n\n \"It is precisely because we are all social equals whose equality nothing can compromise, and because service is honorable, in a society whose fundamental principle is that all in turn shall serve the rest, that we could easily provide a corps of domestic servants such as you never dreamed of, if we needed them,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"But we do not need them.\"\n\n \"Who does your housework, then?\" I asked.\n\n \"There is none to do,\" said Mrs. Jonas, to whom I had addressed this question. \"Our washing is all done at public laundries at excessively cheap rates, and our cooking at public kitchens The making and repairing of all we wear are done outside in public shops. Electricity, of course, takes the place of all fires and lighting. We choose houses no larger than we need, and furnish them so as to involve the minimum of trouble to keep them in order. We have no use for domestic servants.\"\n\n \"The fact,\" said Dr. Jonas, \"that you had in the poorer classes a boundless supply of serfs on whom you could impose all sorts of painful and disagreeable tasks, made you indifferent to devices to avoid the necessity for them. But now that we all have to do in turn whatever work is done for society, every individual in the nation has the same interest, and a personal one, in devices for lightening the burden. This fact has given a prodigious impulse to labor-saving inventions in all sorts of industry, of which the combination of the maximum of comfort and minimum of trouble in household arrangements was one of the earliest results.\n\n \"In case of special emergencies in the household,\" pursued Dr. Jonas, \"such as extensive cleaning or renovation, or sickness in the family, we can always secure assistance from the industrial force.\"\n\n \"But how do you recompense these assistants, since you have no money?\"\n\n \"We do not pay them, of course, but the nation for them. Their services can be obtained by application at the proper bureau, and their value is pricked off the credit card of the applicant.\"\n\n \"What a paradise for womankind the world must be now!\" I exclaimed. \"In my day, even wealth and unlimited servants did not enfranchise their possessors from household cares, while the women of the merely well-to-do and poorer classes lived and died martyrs to them.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Mrs. Jonas, \"I have read something of that; enough to convince me that, badly off as the men, too, were in your day, they were more fortunate than their mothers and wives.\"\n\n \"The broad shoulders of the nation,\" said Dr. Jonas, \"bear now like a feather the burden that broke the backs of the women of your day. Their misery came, with all your other miseries, from that incapacity for cooperation which followed from the individualism on which your social system was founded, from your inability to perceive that you could make ten times more profit out of your fellow men by uniting with them than by contending with them. The wonder is, not that you did not live more comfortably, but that you were able to live together at all, who were all confessedly bent on making one another your servants, and securing possession of one another's goods.\"\n\n \"There, there, father, if you are so vehement, Mr. Adelina will think you are scolding him,\" laughingly interposed Aubrey.\n\n \"When you want a doctor,\" I asked, \"do you simply apply to the proper bureau and take any one that may be sent?\"\n\n \"That rule would not work well in the case of physicians,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"The good a physician can do a patient depends largely on his acquaintance with his constitutional tendencies and condition. The patient must be able, therefore, to call in a particular doctor, and he does so just as patients did in your day. The only difference is that, instead of collecting his fee for himself, the doctor collects it for the nation by pricking off the amount, according to a regular scale for medical attendance, from the patient's credit card.\"\n\n \"I can imagine,\" I said, \"that if the fee is always the same, and a doctor may not turn away patients, as I suppose he may not, the good doctors are called constantly and the poor doctors left in idleness.\"\n\n \"In the first place, if you will overlook the apparent conceit of the remark from a retired physician,\" replied Dr. Jonas, with a smile, \"we have no poor doctors. Anybody who pleases to get a little smattering of medical terms is not now at liberty to practice on the bodies of citizens, as in your day. None but students who have passed the severe tests of the schools, and clearly proved their vocation, are permitted to practice. Then, too, you will observe that there is nowadays no attempt of doctors to build up their practice at the expense of other doctors. There would be no motive for that. For the rest, the doctor has to render regular reports of his work to the medical bureau, and if he is not reasonably well employed, work is found for him.\"\n\n The questions which I needed to ask before I could acquire even an outline acquaintance with the institutions of the twentieth century being endless, and Dr. Jonas's good-nature appearing equally so, we sat up talking for several hours after the ladies left us. Reminding my host of the point at which our talk had broken off that morning, I expressed my curiosity to learn how the organization of the industrial army was made to afford a sufficient stimulus to diligence in the lack of any anxiety on the worker's part as to his livelihood.\n\n \"You must understand in the first place,\" replied the doctor, \"that the supply of incentives to effort is but one of the objects sought in the organization we have adopted for the army. The other, and equally important, is to secure for the file-leaders and captains of the force, and the great officers of the nation, men of proven abilities, who are pledged by their own careers to hold their followers up to their highest standard of performance and permit no lagging. With a view to these two ends the industrial army is organized. First comes the unclassified grade of common laborers, men of all work, to which all recruits during their first three years belong. This grade is a sort of school, and a very strict one, in which the young men are taught habits of obedience, subordination, and devotion to duty. While the miscellaneous nature of the work done by this force prevents the systematic grading of the workers which is afterwards possible, yet individual records are kept, and excellence receives distinction corresponding with the penalties that negligence incurs. It is not, however, policy with us to permit youthful recklessness or indiscretion, when not deeply culpable, to handicap the future careers of young men, and all who have passed through the unclassified grade without serious disgrace have an equal opportunity to choose the life employment they have most liking for. Having selected this, they enter upon it as apprentices. The length of the apprenticeship naturally differs in different occupations. At the end of it the apprentice becomes a full workman, and a member of his trade or guild. Now not only are the individual records of the apprentices for ability and industry strictly kept, and excellence distinguished by suitable distinctions, but upon the average of his record during apprenticeship the standing given the apprentice among the full workmen depends.\n\n \"While the internal organizations of different industries, mechanical and agricultural, differ according to their peculiar conditions, they agree in a general division of their workers into first, second, and third grades, according to ability, and these grades are in many cases subdivided into first and second classes. According to his standing as an apprentice a young man is assigned his place as a first, second, or third grade worker. Of course only young men of unusual ability pass directly from apprenticeship into the first grade of the workers. The most fall into the lower grades, working up as they grow more experienced, at the periodical regradings. These regradings take place in each industry at intervals corresponding with the length of the apprenticeship to that industry, so that merit never need wait long to rise, nor can any rest on past achievements unless they would drop into a lower rank. One of the notable advantages of a high grading is the privilege it gives the worker in electing which of the various branches or processes of his industry he will follow as his specialty. Of course it is not intended that any of these processes shall be disproportionately arduous, but there is often much difference between them, and the privilege of election is accordingly highly prized. So far as possible, indeed, the preferences even of the poorest workmen are considered in assigning them their line of work, because not only their happiness but their usefulness is thus enhanced. While, however, the wish of the lower grade man is consulted so far as the exigencies of the service permit, he is considered only after the upper grade men have been provided for, and often he has to put up with second or third choice, or even with an arbitrary assignment when help is needed. This privilege of election attends every regrading, and when a man loses his grade he also risks having to exchange the sort of work he likes for some other less to his taste. The results of each regrading, giving the standing of every man in his industry, are gazetted in the public prints, and those who have won promotion since the last regrading receive the nation's thanks and are publicly invested with the badge of their new rank.\"\n\n \"What may this badge be?\" I asked.\n\n \"Every industry has its emblematic device,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"and this, in the shape of a metallic badge so small that you might not see it unless you knew where to look, is all the insignia which the men of the army wear, except where public convenience demands a distinctive uniform. This badge is the same in form for all grades of industry, but while the badge of the third grade is iron, that of the second grade is silver, and that of the first is gilt.\n\n \"Apart from the grand incentive to endeavor afforded by the fact that the high places in the nation are open only to the highest class men, and that rank in the army constitutes the only mode of social distinction for the vast majority who are not aspirants in art, literature, and the professions, various incitements of a minor, but perhaps equally effective, sort are provided in the form of special privileges and immunities in the way of discipline, which the superior class men enjoy. These, while intended to be as little as possible invidious to the less successful, have the effect of keeping constantly before every man's mind the great desirability of attaining the grade next above his own.\n\n \"It is obviously important that not only the good but also the indifferent and poor workmen should be able to cherish the ambition of rising. Indeed, the number of the latter being so much greater, it is even more essential that the ranking system should not operate to discourage them than that it should stimulate the others. It is to this end that the grades are divided into classes. The grades as well as the classes being made numerically equal at each regrading, there is not at any time, counting out the officers and the unclassified and apprentice grades, over one-ninth of the industrial army in the lowest class, and most of this number are recent apprentices, all of whom expect to rise. Those who remain during the entire term of service in the lowest class are but a trifling fraction of the industrial army, and likely to be as deficient in sensibility to their position as in ability to better it.\n\n \"It is not even necessary that a worker should win promotion to a higher grade to have at least a taste of glory. While promotion requires a general excellence of record as a worker, honorable mention and various sorts of prizes are awarded for excellence less than sufficient for promotion, and also for special feats and single performances in the various industries. There are many minor distinctions of standing, not only within the grades but within the classes, each of which acts as a spur to the efforts of a group. It is intended that no form of merit shall wholly fail of recognition.\n\n \"As for actual neglect of work, positively bad work, or other overt remissness on the part of men incapable of generous motives, the discipline of the industrial army is far too strict to allow anything whatever of the sort. A man able to do duty, and persistently refusing, is sentenced to solitary imprisonment on bread and water till he consents.\n\n \"The lowest grade of the officers of the industrial army, that of assistant foremen or lieutenants, is appointed out of men who have held their place for two years in the first class of the first grade. Where this leaves too large a range of choice, only the first group of this class are eligible. No one thus comes to the point of commanding men until he is about thirty years old. After a man becomes an officer, his rating of course no longer depends on the efficiency of his own work, but on that of his men. The foremen are appointed from among the assistant foremen, by the same exercise of discretion limited to a small eligible class. In the appointments to the still higher grades another principle is introduced, which it would take too much time to explain now.\n\n \"Of course such a system of grading as I have described would have been impracticable applied to the small industrial concerns of your day, in some of which there were hardly enough employees to have left one apiece for the classes. You must remember that, under the national organization of labor, all industries are carried on by great bodies of men, many of your farms or shops being combined as one. It is also owing solely to the vast scale on which each industry is organized, with coordinate establishments in every part of the country, that we are able by exchanges and transfers to fit every man so nearly with the sort of work he can do best.\n\n \"And now, Mr. Adelina, I will leave it to you, on the bare outline of its features which I have given, if those who need special incentives to do their best are likely to lack them under our system. Does it not seem to you that men who found themselves obliged, whether they wished or not, to work, would under such a system be strongly impelled to do their best?\"\n\n I replied that it seemed to me the incentives offered were, if any objection were to be made, too strong; that the pace set for the young men was too hot; and such, indeed, I would add with deference, still remains my opinion, now that by longer residence among you I have become better acquainted with the whole subject.\n\n Dr. Jonas, however, desired me to reflect, and I am ready to say that it is perhaps a sufficient reply to my objection, that the worker's livelihood is in no way dependent on his ranking, and anxiety for that never embitters his disappointments; that the working hours are short, the vacations regular, and that all emulation ceases at forty-five, with the attainment of middle life.\n\n \"There are two or three other points I ought to refer to,\" he added, \"to prevent your getting mistaken impressions. In the first place, you must understand that this system of preferment given the more efficient workers over the less so, in no way contravenes the fundamental idea of our social system, that all who do their best are equally deserving, whether that best be great or small. I have shown that the system is arranged to encourage the weaker as well as the stronger with the hope of rising, while the fact that the stronger are selected for the leaders is in no way a reflection upon the weaker, but in the interest of the common weal.\n\n \"Do not imagine, either, because emulation is given free play as an incentive under our system, that we deem it a motive likely to appeal to the nobler sort of men, or worthy of them. Such as these find their motives within, not without, and measure their duty by their own endowments, not by those of others. So long as their achievement is proportioned to their powers, they would consider it preposterous to expect praise or blame because it chanced to be great or small. To such natures emulation appears philosophically absurd, and despicable in a moral aspect by its substitution of envy for admiration, and exultation for regret, in one's attitude toward the successes and the failures of others.\n\n \"But all men, even in the last year of the twentieth century, are not of this high order, and the incentives to endeavor requisite for those who are not must be of a sort adapted to their inferior natures. For these, then, emulation of the keenest edge is provided as a constant spur. Those who need this motive will feel it. Those who are above its influence do not need it.\n\n \"I should not fail to mention,\" resumed the doctor, \"that for those too deficient in mental or bodily strength to be fairly graded with the main body of workers, we have a separate grade, unconnected with the others,--a sort of invalid corps, the members of which are provided with a light class of tasks fitted to their strength. All our sick in mind and body, all our deaf and dumb, and lame and blind and crippled, and even our insane, belong to this invalid corps, and bear its insignia. The strongest often do nearly a man's work, the feeblest, of course, nothing; but none who can do anything are willing quite to give up. In their lucid intervals, even our insane are eager to do what they can.\"\n\n \"That is a pretty idea of the invalid corps,\" I said. \"Even a barbarian from the nineteenth century can appreciate that. It is a very graceful way of disguising charity, and must be grateful to the feelings of its recipients.\"\n\n \"Charity!\" repeated Dr. Jonas. \"Did you suppose that we consider the incapable class we are talking of objects of charity?\"\n\n \"Why, naturally,\" I said, \"inasmuch as they are incapable of self-support.\"\n\n But here the doctor took me up quickly.\n\n \"Who is capable of self-support?\" he demanded. \"There is no such thing in a civilized society as self-support. In a state of society so barbarous as not even to know family cooperation, each individual may possibly support himself, though even then for a part of his life only; but from the moment that men begin to live together, and constitute even the rudest sort of society, self-support becomes impossible. As men grow more civilized, and the subdivision of occupations and services is carried out, a complex mutual dependence becomes the universal rule. Every man, however solitary may seem his occupation, is a member of a vast industrial partnership, as large as the nation, as large as humanity. The necessity of mutual dependence should imply the duty and guarantee of mutual support; and that it did not in your day constituted the essential cruelty and unreason of your system.\"\n\n \"That may all be so,\" I replied, \"but it does not touch the case of those who are unable to contribute anything to the product of industry.\"\n\n \"Surely I told you this morning, at least I thought I did,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"that the right of a man to maintenance at the nation's table depends on the fact that he is a man, and not on the amount of health and strength he may have, so long as he does his best.\"\n\n \"You said so,\" I answered, \"but I supposed the rule applied only to the workers of different ability. Does it also hold of those who can do nothing at all?\"\n\n \"Are they not also men?\"\n\n \"I am to understand, then, that the lame, the blind, the sick, and the impotent, are as well off as the most efficient, and have the same income?\"\n\n \"Certainly,\" was the reply.\n\n \"The idea of charity on such a scale,\" I answered, \"would have made our most enthusiastic philanthropists gasp.\"\n\n \"If you had a sick brother at home,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"unable to work, would you feed him on less dainty food, and lodge and clothe him more poorly, than yourself? More likely far, you would give him the preference; nor would you think of calling it charity. Would not the word, in that connection, fill you with indignation?\"\n\n \"Of course,\" I replied; \"but the cases are not parallel. There is a sense, no doubt, in which all men are brothers; but this general sort of brotherhood is not to be compared, except for rhetorical purposes, to the brotherhood of blood, either as to its sentiment or its obligations.\"\n\n \"There speaks the nineteenth century!\" exclaimed Dr. Jonas. \"Ah, Mr. Adelina, there is no doubt as to the length of time that you slept. If I were to give you, in one sentence, a key to what may seem the mysteries of our civilization as compared with that of your age, I should say that it is the fact that the solidarity of the race and the brotherhood of man, which to you were but fine phrases, are, to our thinking and feeling, ties as real and as vital as physical fraternity.\n\n \"But even setting that consideration aside, I do not see why it so surprises you that those who cannot work are conceded the full right to live on the produce of those who can. Even in your day, the duty of military service for the protection of the nation, to which our industrial service corresponds, while obligatory on those able to discharge it, did not operate to deprive of the privileges of citizenship those who were unable. They stayed at home, and were protected by those who fought, and nobody questioned their right to be, or thought less of them. So, now, the requirement of industrial service from those able to render it does not operate to deprive of the privileges of citizenship, which now implies the citizen's maintenance, him who cannot work. The worker is not a citizen because he works, but works because he is a citizen. As you recognize the duty of the strong to fight for the weak, we, now that fighting is gone by, recognize his duty to work for him.\n\n \"A solution which leaves an unaccounted-for residuum is no solution at all; and our solution of the problem of human society would have been none at all had it left the lame, the sick, and the blind outside with the beasts, to fare as they might. Better far have left the strong and well unprovided for than these burdened ones, toward whom every heart must yearn, and for whom ease of mind and body should be provided, if for no others. Therefore it is, as I told you this morning, that the title of every man, woman, and child to the means of existence rests on no basis less plain, broad, and simple than the fact that they are fellows of one race--members of one human family. The only coin current is the image of God, and that is good for all we have.\n\n \"I think there is no feature of the civilization of your epoch so repugnant to modern ideas as the neglect with which you treated your dependent classes. Even if you had no pity, no feeling of brotherhood, how was it that you did not see that you were robbing the incapable class of their plain right in leaving them unprovided for?\"\n\n \"I don't quite follow you there,\" I said. \"I admit the claim of this class to our pity, but how could they who produced nothing claim a share of the product as a right?\"\n\n \"How happened it,\" was Dr. Jonas's reply, \"that your workers were able to produce more than so many savages would have done? Was it not wholly on account of the heritage of the past knowledge and achievements of the race, the machinery of society, thousands of years in contriving, found by you ready-made to your hand? How did you come to be possessors of this knowledge and this machinery, which represent nine parts to one contributed by yourself in the value of your product? You inherited it, did you not? And were not these others, these unfortunate and crippled brothers whom you cast out, joint inheritors, co-heirs with you? What did you do with their share? Did you not rob them when you put them off with crusts, who were entitled to sit with the heirs, and did you not add insult to robbery when you called the crusts charity?\n\n \"Ah, Mr. Adelina,\" Dr. Jonas continued, as I did not respond, \"what I do not understand is, setting aside all considerations either of justice or brotherly feeling toward the crippled and defective, how the workers of your day could have had any heart for their work, knowing that their children, or grand-children, if unfortunate, would be deprived of the comforts and even necessities of life. It is a mystery how men with children could favor a system under which they were rewarded beyond those less endowed with bodily strength or mental power. For, by the same discrimination by which the father profited, the son, for whom he would give his life, being perchance weaker than others, might be reduced to crusts and beggary. How men dared leave children behind them, I have never been able to understand.\"\n\n NOTE.--Although in his talk on the previous evening Dr. Jonas had emphasized the pains taken to enable every man to ascertain and follow his natural bent in choosing an occupation, it was not till I learned that the worker's income is the same in all occupations that I realized how absolutely he may be counted on to do so, and thus, by selecting the harness which sets most lightly on himself, find that in which he can pull best. The failure of my age in any systematic or effective way to develop and utilize the natural aptitudes of men for the industries and intellectual avocations was one of the great wastes, as well as one of the most common causes of unhappiness in that time. The vast majority of my contemporaries, though nominally free to do so, never really chose their occupations at all, but were forced by circumstances into work for which they were relatively inefficient, because not naturally fitted for it. The rich, in this respect, had little advantage over the poor. The latter, indeed, being generally deprived of education, had no opportunity even to ascertain the natural aptitudes they might have, and on account of their poverty were unable to develop them by cultivation even when ascertained. The liberal and technical professions, except by favorable accident, were shut to them, to their own great loss and that of the nation. On the other hand, the well-to-do, although they could command education and opportunity, were scarcely less hampered by social prejudice, which forbade them to pursue manual avocations, even when adapted to them, and destined them, whether fit or unfit, to the professions, thus wasting many an excellent handicraftsman. Mercenary considerations, tempting men to pursue money-making occupations for which they were unfit, instead of less remunerative employments for which they were fit, were responsible for another vast perversion of talent. All these things now are changed. Equal education and opportunity must needs bring to light whatever aptitudes a man has, and neither social prejudices nor mercenary considerations hamper him in the choice of his life work.\n\n As Aubrey had promised he should do, Dr. Jonas accompanied me to my bedroom when I retired, to instruct me as to the adjustment of the musical telephone. He showed how, by turning a screw, the volume of the music could be made to fill the room, or die away to an echo so faint and far that one could scarcely be sure whether he heard or imagined it. If, of two persons side by side, one desired to listen to music and the other to sleep, it could be made audible to one and inaudible to another.\n\n \"I should strongly advise you to sleep if you can to-night, Mr. Adelina, in preference to listening to the finest tunes in the world,\" the doctor said, after explaining these points. \"In the trying experience you are just now passing through, sleep is a nerve tonic for which there is no substitute.\"\n\n Mindful of what had happened to me that very morning, I promised to heed his counsel.\n\n \"Very well,\" he said, \"then I will set the telephone at eight o'clock.\"\n\n \"What do you mean?\" I asked.\n\n He explained that, by a clock-work combination, a person could arrange to be awakened at any hour by the music.\n\n It began to appear, as has since fully proved to be the case, that I had left my tendency to insomnia behind me with the other discomforts of existence in the nineteenth century; for though I took no sleeping draught this time, yet, as the night before, I had no sooner touched the pillow than I was asleep.\n\n I dreamed that I sat on the throne of the Abencerrages in the banqueting hall of the Alhambra, feasting my lords and generals, who next day were to follow the crescent against the Christian dogs of Spain. The air, cooled by the spray of fountains, was heavy with the scent of flowers. A band of Nautch girls, round-limbed and luscious-lipped, danced with voluptuous grace to the music of brazen and stringed instruments. Looking up to the latticed galleries, one caught a gleam now and then from the eye of some beauty of the royal harem, looking down upon the assembled flower of Moorish chivalry. Louder and louder clashed the cymbals, wilder and wilder grew the strain, till the blood of the desert race could no longer resist the martial delirium, and the swart nobles leaped to their feet; a thousand scimitars were bared, and the cry, \"Allah il Allah!\" shook the hall and awoke me, to find it broad daylight, and the room tingling with the electric music of the \"Turkish Reveille.\"\n\n At the breakfast-table, when I told my host of my morning's experience, I learned that it was not a mere chance that the piece of music which awakened me was a reveille. The airs played at one of the halls during the waking hours of the morning were always of an inspiring type.\n\n \"By the way,\" I said, \"I have not thought to ask you anything about the state of Europe. Have the societies of the Old World also been remodeled?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"the great nations of Europe as well as Australia, Mexico, and parts of South America, are now organized industrially like the United States, which was the pioneer of the evolution. The peaceful relations of these nations are assured by a loose form of federal union of world-wide extent. An international council regulates the mutual intercourse and commerce of the members of the union and their joint policy toward the more backward races, which are gradually being educated up to civilized institutions. Complete autonomy within its own limits is enjoyed by every nation.\"\n\n \"How do you carry on commerce without money?\" I said. \"In trading with other nations, you must use some sort of money, although you dispense with it in the internal affairs of the nation.\"\n\n \"Oh, no; money is as superfluous in our foreign as in our internal relations. When foreign commerce was conducted by private enterprise, money was necessary to adjust it on account of the multifarious complexity of the transactions; but nowadays it is a function of the nations as units. There are thus only a dozen or so merchants in the world, and their business being supervised by the international council, a simple system of book accounts serves perfectly to regulate their dealings. Customs duties of every sort are of course superfluous. A nation simply does not import what its government does not think requisite for the general interest. Each nation has a bureau of foreign exchange, which manages its trading. For example, the American bureau, estimating such and such quantities of French goods necessary to America for a given year, sends the order to the French bureau, which in turn sends its order to our bureau. The same is done mutually by all the nations.\"\n\n \"But how are the prices of foreign goods settled, since there is no competition?\"\n\n \"The price at which one nation supplies another with goods,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"must be that at which it supplies its own citizens. So you see there is no danger of misunderstanding. Of course no nation is theoretically bound to supply another with the product of its own labor, but it is for the interest of all to exchange some commodities. If a nation is regularly supplying another with certain goods, notice is required from either side of any important change in the relation.\"\n\n \"But what if a nation, having a monopoly of some natural product, should refuse to supply it to the others, or to one of them?\"\n\n \"Such a case has never occurred, and could not without doing the refusing party vastly more harm than the others,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"In the first place, no favoritism could be legally shown. The law requires that each nation shall deal with the others, in all respects, on exactly the same footing. Such a course as you suggest would cut off the nation adopting it from the remainder of the earth for all purposes whatever. The contingency is one that need not give us much anxiety.\"\n\n \"But,\" said I, \"supposing a nation, having a natural monopoly in some product of which it exports more than it consumes, should put the price away up, and thus, without cutting off the supply, make a profit out of its neighbors' necessities? Its own citizens would of course have to pay the higher price on that commodity, but as a body would make more out of foreigners than they would be out of pocket themselves.\"\n\n \"When you come to know how prices of all commodities are determined nowadays, you will perceive how impossible it is that they could be altered, except with reference to the amount or arduousness of the work required respectively to produce them,\" was Dr. Jonas's reply. \"This principle is an international as well as a national guarantee; but even without it the sense of community of interest, international as well as national, and the conviction of the folly of selfishness, are too deep nowadays to render possible such a piece of sharp practice as you apprehend. You must understand that we all look forward to an eventual unification of the world as one nation. That, no doubt, will be the ultimate form of society, and will realize certain economic advantages over the present federal system of autonomous nations. Meanwhile, however, the present system works so nearly perfectly that we are quite content to leave to posterity the completion of the scheme. There are, indeed, some who hold that it never will be completed, on the ground that the federal plan is not merely a provisional solution of the problem of human society, but the best ultimate solution.\"\n\n \"How do you manage,\" I asked, \"when the books of any two nations do not balance? Supposing we import more from France than we export to her.\"\n\n \"At the end of each year,\" replied the doctor, \"the books of every nation are examined. If France is found in our debt, probably we are in the debt of some nation which owes France, and so on with all the nations. The balances that remain after the accounts have been cleared by the international council should not be large under our system. Whatever they may be, the council requires them to be settled every few years, and may require their settlement at any time if they are getting too large; for it is not intended that any nation shall run largely in debt to another, lest feelings unfavorable to amity should be engendered. To guard further against this, the international council inspects the commodities interchanged by the nations, to see that they are of perfect quality.\"\n\n \"But what are the balances finally settled with, seeing that you have no money?\"\n\n \"In national staples; a basis of agreement as to what staples shall be accepted, and in what proportions, for settlement of accounts, being a preliminary to trade relations.\"\n\n \"Emigration is another point I want to ask you about,\" said I. \"With every nation organized as a close industrial partnership, monopolizing all means of production in the country, the emigrant, even if he were permitted to land, would starve. I suppose there is no emigration nowadays.\"\n\n \"On the contrary, there is constant emigration, by which I suppose you mean removal to foreign countries for permanent residence,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"It is arranged on a simple international arrangement of indemnities. For example, if a man at twenty-one emigrates from England to America, England loses all the expense of his maintenance and education, and America gets a workman for nothing. America accordingly makes England an allowance. The same principle, varied to suit the case, applies generally. If the man is near the term of his labor when he emigrates, the country receiving him has the allowance. As to imbecile persons, it is deemed best that each nation should be responsible for its own, and the emigration of such must be under full guarantees of support by his own nation. Subject to these regulations, the right of any man to emigrate at any time is unrestricted.\"\n\n \"But how about mere pleasure trips; tours of observation? How can a stranger travel in a country whose people do not receive money, and are themselves supplied with the means of life on a basis not extended to him? His own credit card cannot, of course, be good in other lands. How does he pay his way?\"\n\n \"An American credit card,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"is just as good in Europe as American gold used to be, and on precisely the same condition, namely, that it be exchanged into the currency of the country you are traveling in. An American in Berlin takes his credit card to the local office of the international council, and receives in exchange for the whole or part of it a German credit card, the amount being charged against the United States in favor of Germany on the international account.\"\n\n *    *    *    *    *\n\n \"Perhaps Mr. Adelina would like to dine at the Elephant to-day,\" said Aubrey, as we left the table.\n\n \"That is the name we give to the general dining-house of our ward,\" explained her father. \"Not only is our cooking done at the public kitchens, as I told you last night, but the service and quality of the meals are much more satisfactory if taken at the dining-house. The two minor meals of the day are usually taken at home, as not worth the trouble of going out; but it is general to go out to dine. We have not done so since you have been with us, from a notion that it would be better to wait till you had become a little more familiar with our ways. What do you think? Shall we take dinner at the dining-house to-day?\"\n\n I said that I should be very much pleased to do so.\n\n Not long after, Aubrey came to me, smiling, and said:--\n\n \"Last night, as I was thinking what I could do to make you feel at home until you came to be a little more used to us and our ways, an idea occurred to me. What would you say if I were to introduce you to some very nice people of your own times, whom I am sure you used to be well acquainted with?\"\n\n I replied, rather vaguely, that it would certainly be very agreeable, but I did not see how she was going to manage it.\n\n \"Come with me,\" was her smiling reply, \"and see if I am not as good as my word.\"\n\n My susceptibility to surprise had been pretty well exhausted by the numerous shocks it had received, but it was with some wonderment that I followed her into a room which I had not before entered. It was a small, cosy apartment, walled with cases filled with books.\n\n \"Here are your friends,\" said Aubrey, indicating one of the cases, and as my eye glanced over the names on the backs of the volumes, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Tennyson, Defoe, Dickens, Thackeray, Hugo, Hawthorne, Irving, and a score of other great writers of my time and all time, I understood her meaning. She had indeed made good her promise in a sense compared with which its literal fulfillment would have been a disappointment. She had introduced me to a circle of friends whom the century that had elapsed since last I communed with them had aged as little as it had myself. Their spirit was as high, their wit as keen, their laughter and their tears as contagious, as when their speech had whiled away the hours of a former century. Lonely I was not and could not be more, with this goodly companionship, however wide the gulf of years that gaped between me and my old life.\n\n \"You are glad I brought you here,\" exclaimed Aubrey, radiant, as she read in my face the success of her experiment. \"It was a good idea, was it not, Mr. Adelina? How stupid in me not to think of it before! I will leave you now with your old friends, for I know there will be no company for you like them just now; but remember you must not let old friends make you quite forget new ones!\" and with that smiling caution she left me.\n\n Attracted by the most familiar of the names before me, I laid my hand on a volume of Dickens, and sat down to read. He had been my prime favorite among the book-writers of the century,--I mean the nineteenth century,--and a week had rarely passed in my old life during which I had not taken up some volume of his works to while away an idle hour. Any volume with which I had been familiar would have produced an extraordinary impression, read under my present circumstances, but my exceptional familiarity with Dickens, and his consequent power to call up the associations of my former life, gave to his writings an effect no others could have had, to intensify, by force of contrast, my appreciation of the strangeness of my present environment. However new and astonishing one's surroundings, the tendency is to become a part of them so soon that almost from the first the power to see them objectively and fully measure their strangeness, is lost. That power, already dulled in my case, the pages of Dickens restored by carrying me back through their associations to the standpoint of my former life. With a clearness which I had not been able before to attain, I saw now the past and present, like contrasting pictures, side by side.\n\n The genius of the great novelist of the nineteenth century, like that of Homer, might indeed defy time; but the setting of his pathetic tales, the misery of the poor, the wrongs of power, the pitiless cruelty of the system of society, had passed away as utterly as Circe and the sirens, Charybdis and Cyclops.\n\n During the hour or two that I sat there with Dickens open before me, I did not actually read more than a couple of pages. Every paragraph, every phrase, brought up some new aspect of the world-transformation which had taken place, and led my thoughts on long and widely ramifying excursions. As meditating thus in Dr. Jonas's library I gradually attained a more clear and coherent idea of the prodigious spectacle which I had been so strangely enabled to view, I was filled with a deepening wonder at the seeming capriciousness of the fate that had given to one who so little deserved it, or seemed in any way set apart for it, the power alone among his contemporaries to stand upon the earth in this latter day. I had neither foreseen the new world nor toiled for it, as many about me had done regardless of the scorn of fools or the misconstruction of the good. Surely it would have been more in accordance with the fitness of things had one of those prophetic and strenuous souls been enabled to see the travail of his soul and be satisfied; he, for example, a thousand times rather than I, who, having beheld in a vision the world I looked on, sang of it in words that again and again, during these last wondrous days, had rung in my mind:--\n\n\n For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see. Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be;\n\n Till the war-drum throbbed no longer, and the battle-flags were furled. In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world.\n\n Then the common sense of most shall hold a fretful realm in awe, And the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law.\n\n For I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.\n\n\n What though, in his old age, he momentarily lost faith in his own prediction, as prophets in their hours of depression and doubt generally do; the words had remained eternal testimony to the seership of a poet's heart, the insight that is given to faith.\n\n I was still in the library when some hours later Dr. Jonas sought me there. \"Aubrey told me of her idea,\" he said, \"and I thought it an excellent one. I had a little curiosity what writer you would first turn to. Ah, Dickens! You admired him, then! That is where we moderns agree with you. Judged by our standards, he overtops all the writers of his age, not because his literary genius was highest, but because his great heart beat for the poor, because he made the cause of the victims of society his own, and devoted his pen to exposing its cruelties and shams. No man of his time did so much as he to turn men's minds to the wrong and wretchedness of the old order of things, and open their eyes to the necessity of the great change that was coming, although he himself did not clearly foresee it.\"\n\n A heavy rainstorm came up during the day, and I had concluded that the condition of the streets would be such that my hosts would have to give up the idea of going out to dinner, although the dining-hall I had understood to be quite near. I was much surprised when at the dinner hour the ladies appeared prepared to go out, but without either rubbers or umbrellas.\n\n The mystery was explained when we found ourselves on the street, for a continuous waterproof covering had been let down so as to inclose the sidewalk and turn it into a well lighted and perfectly dry corridor, which was filled with a stream of ladies and gentlemen dressed for dinner. At the corners the entire open space was similarly roofed in. Aubrey Jonas, with whom I walked, seemed much interested in learning what appeared to be entirely new to her, that in the stormy weather the streets of the Boston of my day had been impassable, except to persons protected by umbrellas, boots, and heavy clothing. \"Were sidewalk coverings not used at all?\" she asked. They were used, I explained, but in a scattered and utterly unsystematic way, being private enterprises. She said to me that at the present time all the streets were provided against inclement weather in the manner I saw, the apparatus being rolled out of the way when it was unnecessary. She intimated that it would be considered an extraordinary imbecility to permit the weather to have any effect on the social movements of the people.\n\n Dr. Jonas, who was walking ahead, overhearing something of our talk, turned to say that the difference between the age of individualism and that of concert was well characterized by the fact that, in the nineteenth century, when it rained, the people of Boston put up three hundred thousand umbrellas over as many heads, and in the twentieth century they put up one umbrella over all the heads.\n\n As we walked on, Aubrey said, \"The private umbrella is father's favorite figure to illustrate the old way when everybody lived for himself and his family. There is a nineteenth century painting at the Art Gallery representing a crowd of people in the rain, each one holding his umbrella over himself and his wife, and giving his neighbors the drippings, which he claims must have been meant by the artist as a satire on his times.\"\n\n We now entered a large building into which a stream of people was pouring. I could not see the front, owing to the awning, but, if in correspondence with the interior, which was even finer than the store I visited the day before, it would have been magnificent. My companion said that the sculptured group over the entrance was especially admired. Going up a grand staircase we walked some distance along a broad corridor with many doors opening upon it. At one of these, which bore my host's name, we turned in, and I found myself in an elegant dining-room containing a table for four. Windows opened on a courtyard where a fountain played to a great height and music made the air electric.\n\n \"You seem at home here,\" I said, as we seated ourselves at table, and Dr. Jonas touched an annunciator.\n\n \"This is, in fact, a part of our house, slightly detached from the rest,\" he replied. \"Every family in the ward has a room set apart in this great building for its permanent and exclusive use for a small annual rental. For transient guests and individuals there is accommodation on another floor. If we expect to dine here, we put in our orders the night before, selecting anything in market, according to the daily reports in the papers. The meal is as expensive or as simple as we please, though of course everything is vastly cheaper as well as better than it would be if prepared at home. There is actually nothing which our people take more interest in than the perfection of the catering and cooking done for them, and I admit that we are a little vain of the success that has been attained by this branch of the service. Ah, my dear Mr. Adelina, though other aspects of your civilization were more tragical, I can imagine that none could have been more depressing than the poor dinners you had to eat, that is, all of you who had not great wealth.\"\n\n \"You would have found none of us disposed to disagree with you on that point,\" I said.\n\n The waiter, a fine-looking young fellow, wearing a slightly distinctive uniform, now made his appearance. I observed him closely, as it was the first time I had been able to study particularly the bearing of one of the enlisted members of the industrial army. This young man, I knew from what I had been told, must be highly educated, and the equal, socially and in all respects, of those he served. But it was perfectly evident that to neither side was the situation in the slightest degree embarrassing. Dr. Jonas addressed the young man in a tone devoid, of course, as any gentleman's would be, of superciliousness, but at the same time not in any way deprecatory, while the manner of the young man was simply that of a person intent on discharging correctly the task he was engaged in, equally without familiarity or obsequiousness. It was, in fact, the manner of a soldier on duty, but without the military stiffness. As the youth left the room, I said, \"I cannot get over my wonder at seeing a young man like that serving so contentedly in a menial position.\"\n\n \"What is that word 'menial'? I never heard it,\" said Aubrey.\n\n \"It is obsolete now,\" remarked her father. \"If I understand it rightly, it applied to persons who performed particularly disagreeable and unpleasant tasks for others, and carried with it an implication of contempt. Was it not so, Mr. Adelina?\"\n\n \"That is about it,\" I said. \"Personal service, such as waiting on tables, was considered menial, and held in such contempt, in my day, that persons of culture and refinement would suffer hardship before condescending to it.\"\n\n \"What a strangely artificial idea,\" exclaimed Mrs. Jonas, wonderingly.\n\n \"And yet these services had to be rendered,\" said Aubrey.\n\n \"Of course,\" I replied. \"But we imposed them on the poor, and those who had no alternative but starvation.\"\n\n \"And increased the burden you imposed on them by adding your contempt,\" remarked Dr. Jonas.\n\n \"I don't think I clearly understand,\" said Aubrey. \"Do you mean that you permitted people to do things for you which you despised them for doing, or that you accepted services from them which you would have been unwilling to render them? You can't surely mean that, Mr. Adelina?\"\n\n I was obliged to tell her that the fact was just as she had stated. Dr. Jonas, however, came to my relief.\n\n \"To understand why Aubrey is surprised,\" he said, \"you must know that nowadays it is an axiom of ethics that to accept a service from another which we would be unwilling to return in kind, if need were, is like borrowing with the intention of not repaying, while to enforce such a service by taking advantage of the poverty or necessity of a person would be an outrage like forcible robbery. It is the worst thing about any system which divides men, or allows them to be divided, into classes and castes, that it weakens the sense of a common humanity. Unequal distribution of wealth, and, still more effectually, unequal opportunities of education and culture, divided society in your day into classes which in many respects regarded each other as distinct races. There is not, after all, such a difference as might appear between our ways of looking at this question of service. Ladies and gentlemen of the cultured class in your day would no more have permitted persons of their own class to render them services they would scorn to return than we would permit anybody to do so. The poor and the uncultured, however, they looked upon as of another kind from themselves. The equal wealth and equal opportunities of culture which all persons now enjoy have simply made us all members of one class, which corresponds to the most fortunate class with you. Until this equality of condition had come to pass, the idea of the solidarity of humanity, the brother hood of all men, could never have become the real conviction and practical principle of action it is nowadays. In your day the same phrases were indeed used, but they were phrases merely.\"\n\n \"Do the waiters, also, volunteer?\"\n\n \"No,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"The waiters are young men in the unclassified grade of the industrial army who are assignable to all sorts of miscellaneous occupations not requiring special skill. Waiting on table is one of these, and every young recruit is given a taste of it. I myself served as a waiter for several months in this very dining-house some forty years ago. Once more you must remember that there is recognized no sort of difference between the dignity of the different sorts of work required by the nation. The individual is never regarded, nor regards himself, as the servant of those he serves, nor is he in any way dependent upon them. It is always the nation which he is serving. No difference is recognized between a waiter's functions and those of any other worker. The fact that his is a personal service is indifferent from our point of view. So is a doctor's. I should as soon expect our waiter to-day to look down on me because I served him as a doctor, as think of looking down on him because he serves me as a waiter.\"\n\n After dinner my entertainers conducted me about the building, of which the extent, the magnificent architecture and richness of embellishment, astonished me. It seemed that it was not merely a dining-hall, but likewise a great pleasure-house and social rendezvous of the quarter, and no appliance of entertainment or recreation seemed lacking.\n\n \"You find illustrated here,\" said Dr. Jonas, when I had expressed my admiration, \"what I said to you in our first conversation, when you were looking out over the city, as to the splendor of our public and common life as compared with the simplicity of our private and home life, and the contrast which, in this respect, the twentieth bears to the nineteenth century. To save ourselves useless burdens, we have as little gear about us at home as is consistent with comfort, but the social side of our life is ornate and luxurious beyond anything the world ever knew before. All the industrial and professional guilds have clubhouses as extensive as this, as well as country, mountain, and seaside houses for sport and rest in vacations.\"\n\n NOTE. In the latter part of the nineteenth century it became a practice of needy young men at some of the colleges of the country to earn a little money for their term bills by serving as waiters on tables at hotels during the long summer vacation. It was claimed, in reply to critics who expressed the prejudices of the time in asserting that persons voluntarily following such an occupation could not be gentlemen, that they were entitled to praise for vindicating, by their example, the dignity of all honest and necessary labor. The use of this argument illustrates a common confusion in thought on the part of my former contemporaries. The business of waiting on tables was in no more need of defense than most of the other ways of getting a living in that day, but to talk of dignity attaching to labor of any sort under the system then prevailing was absurd. There is no way in which selling labor for the highest price it will fetch is more dignified than selling goods for what can be got. Both were commercial transactions to be judged by the commercial standard. By setting a price in money on his service, the worker accepted the money measure for it, and renounced all clear claim to be judged by any other. The sordid taint which this necessity imparted to the noblest and the highest sorts of service was bitterly resented by generous souls, but there was no evading it. There was no exemption, however transcendent the quality of one's service, from the necessity of haggling for its price in the market-place. The physician must sell his healing and the apostle his preaching like the rest. The prophet, who had guessed the meaning of God, must dicker for the price of the revelation, and the poet hawk his visions in printers' row. If I were asked to name the most distinguishing felicity of this age, as compared to that in which I first saw the light, I should say that to me it seems to consist in the dignity you have given to labor by refusing to set a price upon it and abolishing the market-place forever. By requiring of every man his best you have made God his task-master, and by making honor the sole reward of achievement you have imparted to all service the distinction peculiar in my day to the soldier's.\n\n When, in the course of our tour of inspection, we came to the library, we succumbed to the temptation of the luxurious leather chairs with which it was furnished, and sat down in one of the book-lined alcoves to rest and chat awhile.\n\n \"Aubrey tells me that you have been in the library all the morning,\" said Mrs. Jonas. \"Do you know, it seems to me, Mr. Adelina, that you are the most enviable of mortals.\"\n\n \"I should like to know just why,\" I replied.\n\n \"Because the books of the last hundred years will be new to you,\" she answered. \"You will have so much of the most absorbing literature to read as to leave you scarcely time for meals these five years to come. Ah, what would I give if I had not already read Berrian's novels.\"\n\n \"Or Nesmyth's, mamma,\" added Aubrey.\n\n \"Yes, or Oates' poems, or 'Past and Present,' or, 'In the Beginning,' or,--oh, I could name a dozen books, each worth a year of one's life,\" declared Mrs. Jonas, enthusiastically.\n\n \"I judge, then, that there has been some notable literature produced in this century.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Dr. Jonas. \"It has been an era of unexampled intellectual splendor. Probably humanity never before passed through a moral and material evolution, at once so vast in its scope and brief in its time of accomplishment, as that from the old order to the new in the early part of this century. When men came to realize the greatness of the felicity which had befallen them, and that the change through which they had passed was not merely an improvement in details of their condition, but the rise of the race to a new plane of existence with an illimitable vista of progress, their minds were affected in all their faculties with a stimulus, of which the outburst of the mediaeval renaissance offers a suggestion but faint indeed. There ensued an era of mechanical invention, scientific discovery, art, musical and literary productiveness to which no previous age of the world offers anything comparable.\"\n\n \"By the way,\" said I, \"talking of literature, how are books published now? Is that also done by the nation?\"\n\n \"Certainly.\"\n\n \"But how do you manage it? Does the government publish everything that is brought it as a matter of course, at the public expense, or does it exercise a censorship and print only what it approves?\"\n\n \"Neither way. The printing department has no censorial powers. It is bound to print all that is offered it, but prints it only on condition that the author defray the first cost out of his credit. He must pay for the privilege of the public ear, and if he has any message worth hearing we consider that he will be glad to do it. Of course, if incomes were unequal, as in the old times, this rule would enable only the rich to be authors, but the resources of citizens being equal, it merely measures the strength of the author's motive. The cost of an edition of an average book can be saved out of a year's credit by the practice of economy and some sacrifices. The book, on being published, is placed on sale by the nation.\"\n\n \"The author receiving a royalty on the sales as with us, I suppose,\" I suggested.\n\n \"Not as with you, certainly,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"but nevertheless in one way. The price of every book is made up of the cost of its publication with a royalty for the author. The author fixes this royalty at any figure he pleases. Of course if he puts it unreasonably high it is his own loss, for the book will not sell. The amount of this royalty is set to his credit and he is discharged from other service to the nation for so long a period as this credit at the rate of allowance for the support of citizens shall suffice to support him. If his book be moderately successful, he has thus a furlough for several months, a year, two or three years, and if he in the mean time produces other successful work, the remission of service is extended so far as the sale of that may justify. An author of much acceptance succeeds in supporting himself by his pen during the entire period of service, and the degree of any writer's literary ability, as determined by the popular voice, is thus the measure of the opportunity given him to devote his time to literature. In this respect the outcome of our system is not very dissimilar to that of yours, but there are two notable differences. In the first place, the universally high level of education nowadays gives the popular verdict a conclusiveness on the real merit of literary work which in your day it was as far as possible from having. In the second place, there is no such thing now as favoritism of any sort to interfere with the recognition of true merit. Every author has precisely the same facilities for bringing his work before the popular tribunal. To judge from the complaints of the writers of your day, this absolute equality of opportunity would have been greatly prized.\"\n\n \"In the recognition of merit in other fields of original genius, such as music, art, invention, design,\" I said, \"I suppose you follow a similar principle.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" he replied, \"although the details differ. In art, for example, as in literature, the people are the sole judges. They vote upon the acceptance of statues and paintings for the public buildings, and their favorable verdict carries with it the artist's remission from other tasks to devote himself to his vocation. On copies of his work disposed of, he also derives the same advantage as the author on sales of his books. In all these lines of original genius the plan pursued is the same,--to offer a free field to aspirants, and as soon as exceptional talent is recognized to release it from all trammels and let it have free course. The remission of other service in these cases is not intended as a gift or reward, but as the means of obtaining more and higher service. Of course there are various literary, art, and scientific institutes to which membership comes to the famous and is greatly prized. The highest of all honors in the nation, higher than the presidency, which calls merely for good sense and devotion to duty, is the red ribbon awarded by the vote of the people to the great authors, artists, engineers, physicians, and inventors of the generation. Not over a certain number wear it at any one time, though every bright young fellow in the country loses innumerable nights' sleep dreaming of it. I even did myself.\"\n\n \"Just as if mamma and I would have thought any more of you with it,\" exclaimed Aubrey; \"not that it isn't, of course, a very fine thing to have.\"\n\n \"You had no choice, my dear, but to take your father as you found him and make the best of him,\" Dr. Jonas replied; \"but as for your mother, there, she would never have had me if I had not assured her that I was bound to get the red ribbon or at least the blue.\"\n\n On this extravagance Mrs. Jonas's only comment was a smile.\n\n \"How about periodicals and newspapers?\" I said. \"I won't deny that your book publishing system is a considerable improvement on ours, both as to its tendency to encourage a real literary vocation, and, quite as important, to discourage mere scribblers; but I don't see how it can be made to apply to magazines and newspapers. It is very well to make a man pay for publishing a book, because the expense will be only occasional; but no man could afford the expense of publishing a newspaper every day in the year. It took the deep pockets of our private capitalists to do that, and often exhausted even them before the returns came in. If you have newspapers at all, they must, I fancy, be published by the government at the public expense, with government editors, reflecting government opinions. Now, if your system is so perfect that there is never anything to criticise in the conduct of affairs, this arrangement may answer. Otherwise I should think the lack of an independent unofficial medium for the expression of public opinion would have most unfortunate results. Confess, Dr. Jonas, that a free newspaper press, with all that it implies, was a redeeming incident of the old system when capital was in private hands, and that you have to set off the loss of that against your gains in other respects.\"\n\n \"I am afraid I can't give you even that consolation,\" replied Dr. Jonas, laughing. \"In the first place, Mr. Adelina, the newspaper press is by no means the only or, as we look at it, the best vehicle for serious criticism of public affairs. To us, the judgments of your newspapers on such themes seem generally to have been crude and flippant, as well as deeply tinctured with prejudice and bitterness. In so far as they may be taken as expressing public opinion, they give an unfavorable impression of the popular intelligence, while so far as they may have formed public opinion, the nation was not to be felicitated. Nowadays, when a citizen desires to make a serious impression upon the public mind as to any aspect of public affairs, he comes out with a book or pamphlet, published as other books are. But this is not because we lack newspapers and magazines, or that they lack the most absolute freedom. The newspaper press is organized so as to be a more perfect expression of public opinion than it possibly could be in your day, when private capital controlled and managed it primarily as a money-making business, and secondarily only as a mouthpiece for the people.\"\n\n \"But,\" said I, \"if the government prints the papers at the public expense, how can it fail to control their policy? Who appoints the editors, if not the government?\"\n\n \"The government does not pay the expense of the papers, nor appoint their editors, nor in any way exert the slightest influence on their policy,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"The people who take the paper pay the expense of its publication, choose its editor, and remove him when unsatisfactory. You will scarcely say, I think, that such a newspaper press is not a free organ of popular opinion.\"\n\n \"Decidedly I shall not,\" I replied, \"but how is it practicable?\"\n\n \"Nothing could be simpler. Supposing some of my neighbors or myself think we ought to have a newspaper reflecting our opinions, and devoted especially to our locality, trade, or profession. We go about among the people till we get the names of such a number that their annual subscriptions will meet the cost of the paper, which is little or big according to the largeness of its constituency. The amount of the subscriptions marked off the credits of the citizens guarantees the nation against loss in publishing the paper, its business, you understand, being that of a publisher purely, with no option to refuse the duty required. The subscribers to the paper now elect somebody as editor, who, if he accepts the office, is discharged from other service during his incumbency. Instead of paying a salary to him, as in your day, the subscribers pay the nation an indemnity equal to the cost of his support for taking him away from the general service. He manages the paper just as one of your editors did, except that he has no counting-room to obey, or interests of private capital as against the public good to defend. At the end of the first year, the subscribers for the next either reelect the former editor or choose any one else to his place. An able editor, of course, keeps his place indefinitely. As the subscription list enlarges, the funds of the paper increase, and it is improved by the securing of more and better contributors, just as your papers were.\"\n\n \"How is the staff of contributors recompensed, since they cannot be paid in money.\"\n\n \"The editor settles with them the price of their wares. The amount is transferred to their individual credit from the guarantee credit of the paper, and a remission of service is granted the contributor for a length of time corresponding to the amount credited him, just as to other authors. As to magazines, the system is the same. Those interested in the prospectus of a new periodical pledge enough subscriptions to run it for a year; select their editor, who recompenses his contributors just as in the other case, the printing bureau furnishing the necessary force and material for publication, as a matter of course. When an editor's services are no longer desired, if he cannot earn the right to his time by other literary work, he simply resumes his place in the industrial army. I should add that, though ordinarily the editor is elected only at the end of the year, and as a rule is continued in office for a term of years, in case of any sudden change he should give to the tone of the paper, provision is made for taking the sense of the subscribers as to his removal at any time.\"\n\n \"However earnestly a man may long for leisure for purposes of study or meditation,\" I remarked, \"he cannot get out of the harness, if I understand you rightly, except in these two ways you have mentioned. He must either by literary, artistic, or inventive productiveness indemnify the nation for the loss of his services, or must get a sufficient number of other people to contribute to such an indemnity.\"\n\n \"It is most certain,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"that no able-bodied man nowadays can evade his share of work and live on the toil of others, whether he calls himself by the fine name of student or confesses to being simply lazy. At the same time our system is elastic enough to give free play to every instinct of human nature which does not aim at dominating others or living on the fruit of others' labor. There is not only the remission by indemnification but the remission by abnegation. Any man in his thirty-third year, his term of service being then half done, can obtain an honorable discharge from the army, provided he accepts for the rest of his life one half the rate of maintenance other citizens receive. It is quite possible to live on this amount, though one must forego the luxuries and elegancies of life, with some, perhaps, of its comforts.\"\n\n When the ladies retired that evening, Aubrey brought me a book and said:--\n\n \"If you should be wakeful to-night, Mr. Adelina, you might be interested in looking over this story by Berrian. It is considered his masterpiece, and will at least give you an idea what the stories nowadays are like.\"\n\n I sat up in my room that night reading \"Penthesilia\" till it grew gray in the east, and did not lay it down till I had finished it. And yet let no admirer of the great romancer of the twentieth century resent my saying that at the first reading what most impressed me was not so much what was in the book as what was left out of it. The story-writers of my day would have deemed the making of bricks without straw a light task compared with the construction of a romance from which should be excluded all effects drawn from the contrasts of wealth and poverty, education and ignorance, coarseness and refinement, high and low, all motives drawn from social pride and ambition, the desire of being richer or the fear of being poorer, together with sordid anxieties of any sort for one's self or others; a romance in which there should, indeed, be love galore, but love unfretted by artificial barriers created by differences of station or possessions, owning no other law but that of the heart. The reading of \"Penthesilia\" was of more value than almost any amount of explanation would have been in giving me something like a general impression of the social aspect of the twentieth century. The information Dr. Jonas had imparted was indeed extensive as to facts, but they had affected my mind as so many separate impressions, which I had as yet succeeded but imperfectly in making cohere. Berrian put them together for me in a picture.\n\n [Footnote 3: I cannot sufficiently celebrate the glorious liberty that reigns in the public libraries of the twentieth century as compared with the intolerable management of those of the nineteenth century, in which the books were jealously railed away from the people, and obtainable only at an expenditure of time and red tape calculated to discourage any ordinary taste for literature.]\n\n Next morning I rose somewhat before the breakfast hour. As I descended the stairs, Aubrey stepped into the hall from the room which had been the scene of the morning interview between us described some chapters back.\n\n \"Ah!\" she exclaimed, with a charmingly arch expression, \"you thought to slip out unbeknown for another of those solitary morning rambles which have such nice effects on you. But you see I am up too early for you this time. You are fairly caught.\"\n\n \"You discredit the efficacy of your own cure,\" I said, \"by supposing that such a ramble would now be attended with bad consequences.\"\n\n \"I am very glad to hear that,\" she said. \"I was in here arranging some flowers for the breakfast table when I heard you come down, and fancied I detected something surreptitious in your step on the stairs.\"\n\n \"You did me injustice,\" I replied. \"I had no idea of going out at all.\"\n\n Despite her effort to convey an impression that my interception was purely accidental, I had at the time a dim suspicion of what I afterwards learned to be the fact, namely, that this sweet creature, in pursuance of her self-assumed guardianship over me, had risen for the last two or three mornings at an unheard-of hour, to insure against the possibility of my wandering off alone in case I should be affected as on the former occasion. Receiving permission to assist her in making up the breakfast bouquet, I followed her into the room from which she had emerged.\n\n \"Are you sure,\" she asked, \"that you are quite done with those terrible sensations you had that morning?\"\n\n \"I can't say that I do not have times of feeling decidedly queer,\" I replied, \"moments when my personal identity seems an open question. It would be too much to expect after my experience that I should not have such sensations occasionally, but as for being carried entirely off my feet, as I was on the point of being that morning, I think the danger is past.\"\n\n \"I shall never forget how you looked that morning,\" she said.\n\n \"If you had merely saved my life,\" I continued, \"I might, perhaps, find words to express my gratitude, but it was my reason you saved, and there are no words that would not belittle my debt to you.\" I spoke with emotion, and her eyes grew suddenly moist.\n\n \"It is too much to believe all this,\" she said, \"but it is very delightful to hear you say it. What I did was very little. I was very much distressed for you, I know. Father never thinks anything ought to astonish us when it can be explained scientifically, as I suppose this long sleep of yours can be, but even to fancy myself in your place makes my head swim. I know that I could not have borne it at all.\"\n\n \"That would depend,\" I replied, \"on whether an angel came to support you with her sympathy in the crisis of your condition, as one came to me.\" If my face at all expressed the feelings I had a right to have toward this sweet and lovely young girl, who had played so angelic a role toward me, its expression must have been very worshipful just then. The expression or the words, or both together, caused her now to drop her eyes with a charming blush.\n\n \"For the matter of that,\" I said, \"if your experience has not been as startling as mine, it must have been rather overwhelming to see a man belonging to a strange century, and apparently a hundred years dead, raised to life.\"\n\n \"It seemed indeed strange beyond any describing at first,\" she said, \"but when we began to put ourselves in your place, and realize how much stranger it must seem to you, I fancy we forgot our own feelings a good deal, at least I know I did. It seemed then not so much astounding as interesting and touching beyond anything ever heard of before.\"\n\n \"But does it not come over you as astounding to sit at table with me, seeing who I am?\"\n\n \"You must remember that you do not seem so strange to us as we must to you,\" she answered. \"We belong to a future of which you could not form an idea, a generation of which you knew nothing until you saw us. But you belong to a generation of which our forefathers were a part. We know all about it; the names of many of its members are household words with us. We have made a study of your ways of living and thinking; nothing you say or do surprises us, while we say and do nothing which does not seem strange to you. So you see, Mr. Adelina, that if you feel that you can, in time, get accustomed to us, you must not be surprised that from the first we have scarcely found you strange at all.\"\n\n \"I had not thought of it in that way,\" I replied. \"There is indeed much in what you say. One can look back a thousand years easier than forward fifty. A century is not so very long a retrospect. I might have known your great-grand-parents. Possibly I did. Did they live in Boston?\"\n\n \"I believe so.\"\n\n \"You are not sure, then?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" she replied. \"Now I think, they did.\"\n\n \"I had a very large circle of acquaintances in the city,\" I said. \"It is not unlikely that I knew or knew of some of them. Perhaps I may have known them well. Wouldn't it be interesting if I should chance to be able to tell you all about your great-grandfather, for instance?\"\n\n \"Very interesting.\"\n\n \"Do you know your genealogy well enough to tell me who your forbears were in the Boston of my day?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes.\"\n\n \"Perhaps, then, you will some time tell me what some of their names were.\"\n\n She was engrossed in arranging a troublesome spray of green, and did not reply at once. Steps upon the stairway indicated that the other members of the family were descending.\n\n \"Perhaps, some time,\" she said.\n\n After breakfast, Dr. Jonas suggested taking me to inspect the central warehouse and observe actually in operation the machinery of distribution, which Aubrey had described to me. As we walked away from the house I said, \"It is now several days that I have been living in your household on a most extraordinary footing, or rather on none at all. I have not spoken of this aspect of my position before because there were so many other aspects yet more extraordinary. But now that I am beginning a little to feel my feet under me, and to realize that, however I came here, I am here, and must make the best of it, I must speak to you on this point.\"\n\n \"As for your being a guest in my house,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"I pray you not to begin to be uneasy on that point, for I mean to keep you a long time yet. With all your modesty, you can but realize that such a guest as yourself is an acquisition not willingly to be parted with.\"\n\n \"Thanks, doctor,\" I said. \"It would be absurd, certainly, for me to affect any oversensitiveness about accepting the temporary hospitality of one to whom I owe it that I am not still awaiting the end of the world in a living tomb. But if I am to be a permanent citizen of this century I must have some standing in it. Now, in my time a person more or less entering the world, however he got in, would not be noticed in the unorganized throng of men, and might make a place for himself anywhere he chose if he were strong enough. But nowadays everybody is a part of a system with a distinct place and function. I am outside the system, and don't see how I can get in; there seems no way to get in, except to be born in or to come in as an emigrant from some other system.\"\n\n Dr. Jonas laughed heartily.\n\n \"I admit,\" he said, \"that our system is defective in lacking provision for cases like yours, but you see nobody anticipated additions to the world except by the usual process. You need, however, have no fear that we shall be unable to provide both a place and occupation for you in due time. You have as yet been brought in contact only with the members of my family, but you must not suppose that I have kept your secret. On the contrary, your case, even before your resuscitation, and vastly more since, has excited the profoundest interest in the nation. In view of your precarious nervous condition, it was thought best that I should take exclusive charge of you at first, and that you should, through me and my family, receive some general idea of the sort of world you had come back to before you began to make the acquaintance generally of its inhabitants. As to finding a function for you in society, there was no hesitation as to what that would be. Few of us have it in our power to confer so great a service on the nation as you will be able to when you leave my roof, which, however, you must not think of doing for a good time yet.\"\n\n \"What can I possibly do?\" I asked. \"Perhaps you imagine I have some trade, or art, or special skill. I assure you I have none whatever. I never earned a dollar in my life, or did an hour's work. I am strong, and might be a common laborer, but nothing more.\"\n\n \"If that were the most efficient service you were able to render the nation, you would find that avocation considered quite as respectable as any other,\" replied Dr. Jonas; \"but you can do something else better. You are easily the master of all our historians on questions relating to the social condition of the latter part of the nineteenth century, to us one of the most absorbingly interesting periods of history; and whenever in due time you have sufficiently familiarized yourself with our institutions, and are willing to teach us something concerning those of your day, you will find an historical lectureship in one of our colleges awaiting you.\"\n\n \"Very good! very good indeed,\" I said, much relieved by so practical a suggestion on a point which had begun to trouble me. \"If your people are really so much interested in the nineteenth century, there will indeed be an occupation ready-made for me. I don't think there is anything else that I could possibly earn my salt at, but I certainly may claim without conceit to have some special qualifications for such a post as you describe.\"\n\n I found the processes at the warehouse quite as interesting as Aubrey had described them, and became even enthusiastic over the truly remarkable illustration which is seen there of the prodigiously multiplied efficiency which perfect organization can give to labor. It is like a gigantic mill, into the hopper of which goods are being constantly poured by the train-load and ship-load, to issue at the other end in packages of pounds and ounces, yards and inches, pints and gallons, corresponding to the infinitely complex personal needs of half a million people. Dr. Jonas, with the assistance of data furnished by me as to the way goods were sold in my day, figured out some astounding results in the way of the economies effected by the modern system.\n\n As we set out homeward, I said: \"After what I have seen to-day, together with what you have told me, and what I learned under Miss Jonas's tutelage at the sample store, I have a tolerably clear idea of your system of distribution, and how it enables you to dispense with a circulating medium. But I should like very much to know something more about your system of production. You have told me in general how your industrial army is levied and organized, but who directs its efforts? What supreme authority determines what shall be done in every department, so that enough of everything is produced and yet no labor wasted? It seems to me that this must be a wonderfully complex and difficult function, requiring very unusual endowments.\"\n\n \"Does it indeed seem so to you?\" responded Dr. Jonas. \"I assure you that it is nothing of the kind, but on the other hand so simple, and depending on principles so obvious and easily applied, that the functionaries at Washington to whom it is trusted require to be nothing more than men of fair abilities to discharge it to the entire satisfaction of the nation. The machine which they direct is indeed a vast one, but so logical in its principles and direct and simple in its workings, that it all but runs itself; and nobody but a fool could derange it, as I think you will agree after a few words of explanation. Since you already have a pretty good idea of the working of the distributive system, let us begin at that end. Even in your day statisticians were able to tell you the number of yards of cotton, velvet, woolen, the number of barrels of flour, potatoes, butter, number of pairs of shoes, hats, and umbrellas annually consumed by the nation. Owing to the fact that production was in private hands, and that there was no way of getting statistics of actual distribution, these figures were not exact, but they were nearly so. Now that every pin which is given out from a national warehouse is recorded, of course the figures of consumption for any week, month, or year, in the possession of the department of distribution at the end of that period, are precise. On these figures, allowing for tendencies to increase or decrease and for any special causes likely to affect demand, the estimates, say for a year ahead, are based. These estimates, with a proper margin for security, having been accepted by the general administration, the responsibility of the distributive department ceases until the goods are delivered to it. I speak of the estimates being furnished for an entire year ahead, but in reality they cover that much time only in case of the great staples for which the demand can be calculated on as steady. In the great majority of smaller industries for the product of which popular taste fluctuates, and novelty is frequently required, production is kept barely ahead of consumption, the distributive department furnishing frequent estimates based on the weekly state of demand.\n\n \"Now the entire field of productive and constructive industry is divided into ten great departments, each representing a group of allied industries, each particular industry being in turn represented by a subordinate bureau, which has a complete record of the plant and force under its control, of the present product, and means of increasing it. The estimates of the distributive department, after adoption by the administration, are sent as mandates to the ten great departments, which allot them to the subordinate bureaus representing the particular industries, and these set the men at work. Each bureau is responsible for the task given it, and this responsibility is enforced by departmental oversight and that of the administration; nor does the distributive department accept the product without its own inspection; while even if in the hands of the consumer an article turns out unfit, the system enables the fault to be traced back to the original workman. The production of the commodities for actual public consumption does not, of course, require by any means all the national force of workers. After the necessary contingents have been detailed for the various industries, the amount of labor left for other employment is expended in creating fixed capital, such as buildings, machinery, engineering works, and so forth.\"\n\n \"One point occurs to me,\" I said, \"on which I should think there might be dissatisfaction. Where there is no opportunity for private enterprise, how is there any assurance that the claims of small minorities of the people to have articles produced, for which there is no wide demand, will be respected? An official decree at any moment may deprive them of the means of gratifying some special taste, merely because the majority does not share it.\"\n\n \"That would be tyranny indeed,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"and you may be very sure that it does not happen with us, to whom liberty is as dear as equality or fraternity. As you come to know our system better, you will see that our officials are in fact, and not merely in name, the agents and servants of the people. The administration has no power to stop the production of any commodity for which there continues to be a demand. Suppose the demand for any article declines to such a point that its production becomes very costly. The price has to be raised in proportion, of course, but as long as the consumer cares to pay it, the production goes on. Again, suppose an article not before produced is demanded. If the administration doubts the reality of the demand, a popular petition guaranteeing a certain basis of consumption compels it to produce the desired article. A government, or a majority, which should undertake to tell the people, or a minority, what they were to eat, drink, or wear, as I believe governments in America did in your day, would be regarded as a curious anachronism indeed. Possibly you had reasons for tolerating these infringements of personal independence, but we should not think them endurable. I am glad you raised this point, for it has given me a chance to show you how much more direct and efficient is the control over production exercised by the individual citizen now than it was in your day, when what you called private initiative prevailed, though it should have been called capitalist initiative, for the average private citizen had little enough share in it.\"\n\n \"You speak of raising the price of costly articles,\" I said. \"How can prices be regulated in a country where there is no competition between buyers or sellers?\"\n\n \"Just as they were with you,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"You think that needs explaining,\" he added, as I looked incredulous, \"but the explanation need not be long; the cost of the labor which produced it was recognized as the legitimate basis of the price of an article in your day, and so it is in ours. In your day, it was the difference in wages that made the difference in the cost of labor; now it is the relative number of hours constituting a day's work in different trades, the maintenance of the worker being equal in all cases. The cost of a man's work in a trade so difficult that in order to attract volunteers the hours have to be fixed at four a day is twice as great as that in a trade where the men work eight hours. The result as to the cost of labor, you see, is just the same as if the man working four hours were paid, under your system, twice the wages the other gets. This calculation applied to the labor employed in the various processes of a manufactured article gives its price relatively to other articles. Besides the cost of production and transportation, the factor of scarcity affects the prices of some commodities. As regards the great staples of life, of which an abundance can always be secured, scarcity is eliminated as a factor. There is always a large surplus kept on hand from which any fluctuations of demand or supply can be corrected, even in most cases of bad crops. The prices of the staples grow less year by year, but rarely, if ever, rise. There are, however, certain classes of articles permanently, and others temporarily, unequal to the demand, as, for example, fresh fish or dairy products in the latter category, and the products of high skill and rare materials in the other. All that can be done here is to equalize the inconvenience of the scarcity. This is done by temporarily raising the price if the scarcity be temporary, or fixing it high if it be permanent. High prices in your day meant restriction of the articles affected to the rich, but nowadays, when the means of all are the same, the effect is only that those to whom the articles seem most desirable are the ones who purchase them. Of course the nation, as any other caterer for the public needs must be, is frequently left with small lots of goods on its hands by changes in taste, unseasonable weather, and various other causes. These it has to dispose of at a sacrifice just as merchants often did in your day, charging up the loss to the expenses of the business. Owing, however, to the vast body of consumers to which such lots can be simultaneously offered, there is rarely any difficulty in getting rid of them at trifling loss. I have given you now some general notion of our system of production, as well as distribution. Do you find it as complex as you expected?\"\n\n I admitted that nothing could be much simpler.\n\n \"I am sure,\" said Dr. Jonas, \"that it is within the truth to say that the head of one of the myriad private businesses of your day, who had to maintain sleepless vigilance against the fluctuations of the market, the machinations of his rivals, and the failure of his debtors, had a far more trying task than the group of men at Washington who nowadays direct the industries of the entire nation. All this merely shows, my dear fellow, how much easier it is to do things the right way than the wrong. It is easier for a general up in a balloon, with perfect survey of the field, to manoeuvre a million men to victory than for a sergeant to manage a platoon in a thicket.\"\n\n \"The general of this army, including the flower of the manhood of the nation, must be the foremost man in the country, really greater even than the President of the United States,\" I said.\n\n \"He is the President of the United States,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"or rather the most important function of the presidency is the headship of the industrial army.\"\n\n \"How is he chosen?\" I asked.\n\n \"I explained to you before,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"when I was describing the force of the motive of emulation among all grades of the industrial army, that the line of promotion for the meritorious lies through three grades to the officer's grade, and thence up through the lieutenancies to the captaincy or foremanship, and superintendency or colonel's rank. Next, with an intervening grade in some of the larger trades, come the general of the guild, under whose immediate control all the operations of the trade are conducted. This officer is at the head of the national bureau representing his trade, and is responsible for its work to the administration. The general of his guild holds a splendid position, and one which amply satisfies the ambition of most men, but above his rank, which may be compared--to follow the military analogies familiar to you--to that of a general of division or major-general, is that of the chiefs of the ten great departments, or groups of allied trades. The chiefs of these ten grand divisions of the industrial army may be compared to your commanders of army corps, or lieutenant-generals, each having from a dozen to a score of generals of separate guilds reporting to him. Above these ten great officers, who form his council, is the general-in-chief, who is the President of the United States.\n\n \"The general-in-chief of the industrial army must have passed through all the grades below him, from the common laborers up. Let us see how he rises. As I have told you, it is simply by the excellence of his record as a worker that one rises through the grades of the privates and becomes a candidate for a lieutenancy. Through the lieutenancies he rises to the colonelcy, or superintendent's position, by appointment from above, strictly limited to the candidates of the best records. The general of the guild appoints to the ranks under him, but he himself is not appointed, but chosen by suffrage.\"\n\n \"By suffrage!\" I exclaimed. \"Is not that ruinous to the discipline of the guild, by tempting the candidates to intrigue for the support of the workers under them?\"\n\n \"So it would be, no doubt,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"if the workers had any suffrage to exercise, or anything to say about the choice. But they have nothing. Just here comes in a peculiarity of our system. The general of the guild is chosen from among the superintendents by vote of the honorary members of the guild, that is, of those who have served their time in the guild and received their discharge. As you know, at the age of forty-five we are mustered out of the army of industry, and have the residue of life for the pursuit of our own improvement or recreation. Of course, however, the associations of our active lifetime retain a powerful hold on us. The companionships we formed then remain our companionships till the end of life. We always continue honorary members of our former guilds, and retain the keenest and most jealous interest in their welfare and repute in the hands of the following generation. In the clubs maintained by the honorary members of the several guilds, in which we meet socially, there are no topics of conversation so common as those which relate to these matters, and the young aspirants for guild leadership who can pass the criticism of us old fellows are likely to be pretty well equipped. Recognizing this fact, the nation entrusts to the honorary members of each guild the election of its general, and I venture to claim that no previous form of society could have developed a body of electors so ideally adapted to their office, as regards absolute impartiality, knowledge of the special qualifications and record of candidates, solicitude for the best result, and complete absence of self-interest.\n\n \"Each of the ten lieutenant-generals or heads of departments is himself elected from among the generals of the guilds grouped as a department, by vote of the honorary members of the guilds thus grouped. Of course there is a tendency on the part of each guild to vote for its own general, but no guild of any group has nearly enough votes to elect a man not supported by most of the others. I assure you that these elections are exceedingly lively.\"\n\n \"The President, I suppose, is selected from among the ten heads of the great departments,\" I suggested.\n\n \"Precisely, but the heads of departments are not eligible to the presidency till they have been a certain number of years out of office. It is rarely that a man passes through all the grades to the headship of a department much before he is forty, and at the end of a five years' term he is usually forty-five. If more, he still serves through his term, and if less, he is nevertheless discharged from the industrial army at its termination. It would not do for him to return to the ranks. The interval before he is a candidate for the presidency is intended to give time for him to recognize fully that he has returned into the general mass of the nation, and is identified with it rather than with the industrial army. Moreover, it is expected that he will employ this period in studying the general condition of the army, instead of that of the special group of guilds of which he was the head. From among the former heads of departments who may be eligible at the time, the President is elected by vote of all the men of the nation who are not connected with the industrial army.\"\n\n \"The army is not allowed to vote for President?\"\n\n \"Certainly not. That would be perilous to its discipline, which it is the business of the President to maintain as the representative of the nation at large. His right hand for this purpose is the inspectorate, a highly important department of our system; to the inspectorate come all complaints or information as to defects in goods, insolence or inefficiency of officials, or dereliction of any sort in the public service. The inspectorate, however, does not wait for complaints. Not only is it on the alert to catch and sift every rumor of a fault in the service, but it is its business, by systematic and constant oversight and inspection of every branch of the army, to find out what is going wrong before anybody else does. The President is usually not far from fifty when elected, and serves five years, forming an honorable exception to the rule of retirement at forty-five. At the end of his term of office, a national Congress is called to receive his report and approve or condemn it. If it is approved, Congress usually elects him to represent the nation for five years more in the international council. Congress, I should also say, passes on the reports of the outgoing heads of departments, and a disapproval renders any one of them ineligible for President. But it is rare, indeed, that the nation has occasion for other sentiments than those of gratitude toward its high officers. As to their ability, to have risen from the ranks, by tests so various and severe, to their positions, is proof in itself of extraordinary qualities, while as to faithfulness, our social system leaves them absolutely without any other motive than that of winning the esteem of their fellow citizens. Corruption is impossible in a society where there is neither poverty to be bribed nor wealth to bribe, while as to demagoguery or intrigue for office, the conditions of promotion render them out of the question.\"\n\n \"One point I do not quite understand,\" I said. \"Are the members of the liberal professions eligible to the presidency? and if so, how are they ranked with those who pursue the industries proper?\"\n\n \"They have no ranking with them,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"The members of the technical professions, such as engineers and architects, have a ranking with the constructive guilds; but the members of the liberal professions, the doctors and teachers, as well as the artists and men of letters who obtain remissions of industrial service, do not belong to the industrial army. On this ground they vote for the President, but are not eligible to his office. One of its main duties being the control and discipline of the industrial army, it is essential that the President should have passed through all its grades to understand his business.\"\n\n \"That is reasonable,\" I said; \"but if the doctors and teachers do not know enough of industry to be President, neither, I should think, can the President know enough of medicine and education to control those departments.\"\n\n \"No more does he,\" was the reply. \"Except in the general way that he is responsible for the enforcement of the laws as to all classes, the President has nothing to do with the faculties of medicine and education, which are controlled by boards of regents of their own, in which the President is ex-officio chairman, and has the casting vote. These regents, who, of course, are responsible to Congress, are chosen by the honorary members of the guilds of education and medicine, the retired teachers and doctors of the country.\"\n\n \"Do you know,\" I said, \"the method of electing officials by votes of the retired members of the guilds is nothing more than the application on a national scale of the plan of government by alumni, which we used to a slight extent occasionally in the management of our higher educational institutions.\"\n\n \"Did you, indeed?\" exclaimed Dr. Jonas, with animation. \"That is quite new to me, and I fancy will be to most of us, and of much interest as well. There has been great discussion as to the germ of the idea, and we fancied that there was for once something new under the sun. Well! well! In your higher educational institutions! that is interesting indeed. You must tell me more of that.\"\n\n \"Truly, there is very little more to tell than I have told already,\" I replied. \"If we had the germ of your idea, it was but as a germ.\"\n\n That evening I sat up for some time after the ladies had retired, talking with Dr. Jonas about the effect of the plan of exempting men from further service to the nation after the age of forty-five, a point brought up by his account of the part taken by the retired citizens in the government.\n\n \"At forty-five,\" said I, \"a man still has ten years of good manual labor in him, and twice ten years of good intellectual service. To be superannuated at that age and laid on the shelf must be regarded rather as a hardship than a favor by men of energetic dispositions.\"\n\n \"My dear Mr. Adelina,\" exclaimed Dr. Jonas, beaming upon me, \"you cannot have any idea of the piquancy your nineteenth century ideas have for us of this day, the rare quaintness of their effect. Know, O child of another race and yet the same, that the labor we have to render as our part in securing for the nation the means of a comfortable physical existence is by no means regarded as the most important, the most interesting, or the most dignified employment of our powers. We look upon it as a necessary duty to be discharged before we can fully devote ourselves to the higher exercise of our faculties, the intellectual and spiritual enjoyments and pursuits which alone mean life. Everything possible is indeed done by the just distribution of burdens, and by all manner of special attractions and incentives to relieve our labor of irksomeness, and, except in a comparative sense, it is not usually irksome, and is often inspiring. But it is not our labor, but the higher and larger activities which the performance of our task will leave us free to enter upon, that are considered the main business of existence.\n\n \"Of course not all, nor the majority, have those scientific, artistic, literary, or scholarly interests which make leisure the one thing valuable to their possessors. Many look upon the last half of life chiefly as a period for enjoyment of other sorts; for travel, for social relaxation in the company of their lifetime friends; a time for the cultivation of all manner of personal idiosyncrasies and special tastes, and the pursuit of every imaginable form of recreation; in a word, a time for the leisurely and unperturbed appreciation of the good things of the world which they have helped to create. But whatever the differences between our individual tastes as to the use we shall put our leisure to, we all agree in looking forward to the date of our discharge as the time when we shall first enter upon the full enjoyment of our birthright, the period when we shall first really attain our majority and become enfranchised from discipline and control, with the fee of our lives vested in ourselves. As eager boys in your day anticipated twenty-one, so men nowadays look forward to forty-five. At twenty-one we become men, but at forty-five we renew youth. Middle age and what you would have called old age are considered, rather than youth, the enviable time of life. Thanks to the better conditions of existence nowadays, and above all the freedom of every one from care, old age approaches many years later and has an aspect far more benign than in past times. Persons of average constitution usually live to eighty-five or ninety, and at forty-five we are physically and mentally younger, I fancy, than you were at thirty-five. It is a strange reflection that at forty-five, when we are just entering upon the most enjoyable period of life, you already began to think of growing old and to look backward. With you it was the forenoon, with us it is the afternoon, which is the brighter half of life.\"\n\n After this I remember that our talk branched into the subject of popular sports and recreations at the present time as compared with those of the nineteenth century.\n\n \"In one respect,\" said Dr. Jonas, \"there is a marked difference. The professional sportsmen, which were such a curious feature of your day, we have nothing answering to, nor are the prizes for which our athletes contend money prizes, as with you. Our contests are always for glory only. The generous rivalry existing between the various guilds, and the loyalty of each worker to his own, afford a constant stimulation to all sorts of games and matches by sea and land, in which the young men take scarcely more interest than the honorary guildsmen who have served their time. The guild yacht races off Marblehead take place next week, and you will be able to judge for yourself of the popular enthusiasm which such events nowadays call out as compared with your day. The demand for '_panem et circenses_' preferred by the Roman populace is recognized nowadays as a wholly reasonable one. If bread is the first necessity of life, recreation is a close second, and the nation caters for both. Americans of the nineteenth century were as unfortunate in lacking an adequate provision for the one sort of need as for the other. Even if the people of that period had enjoyed larger leisure they would, I fancy, have often been at a loss how to pass it agreeably. We are never in that predicament.\"\n\n In the course of an early morning constitutional I visited Charlestown. Among the changes, too numerous to attempt to indicate, which mark the lapse of a century in that quarter, I particularly noted the total disappearance of the old state prison.\n\n \"That went before my day, but I remember hearing about it,\" said Dr. Jonas, when I alluded to the fact at the breakfast table. \"We have no jails nowadays. All cases of atavism are treated in the hospitals.\"\n\n \"Of atavism!\" I exclaimed, staring.\n\n \"Why, yes,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"The idea of dealing punitively with those unfortunates was given up at least fifty years ago, and I think more.\"\n\n \"I don't quite understand you,\" I said. \"Atavism in my day was a word applied to the cases of persons in whom some trait of a remote ancestor recurred in a noticeable manner. Am I to understand that crime is nowadays looked upon as the recurrence of an ancestral trait?\"\n\n \"I beg your pardon,\" said Dr. Jonas with a smile half humorous, half deprecating, \"but since you have so explicitly asked the question, I am forced to say that the fact is precisely that.\"\n\n After what I had already learned of the moral contrasts between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, it was doubtless absurd in me to begin to develop sensitiveness on the subject, and probably if Dr. Jonas had not spoken with that apologetic air and Mrs. Jonas and Aubrey shown a corresponding embarrassment, I should not have flushed, as I was conscious I did.\n\n \"I was not in much danger of being vain of my generation before,\" I said; \"but, really\"--\n\n \"This is your generation, Mr. Adelina,\" interposed Aubrey. \"It is the one in which you are living, you know, and it is only because we are alive now that we call it ours.\"\n\n \"Thank you. I will try to think of it so,\" I said, and as my eyes met hers their expression quite cured my senseless sensitiveness. \"After all,\" I said, with a laugh, \"I was brought up a Calvinist, and ought not to be startled to hear crime spoken of as an ancestral trait.\"\n\n \"In point of fact,\" said Dr. Jonas, \"our use of the word is no reflection at all on your generation, if, begging Aubrey's pardon, we may call it yours, so far as seeming to imply that we think ourselves, apart from our circumstances, better than you were. In your day fully nineteen twentieths of the crime, using the word broadly to include all sorts of misdemeanors, resulted from the inequality in the possessions of individuals; want tempted the poor, lust of greater gains, or the desire to preserve former gains, tempted the well-to-do. Directly or indirectly, the desire for money, which then meant every good thing, was the motive of all this crime, the taproot of a vast poison growth, which the machinery of law, courts, and police could barely prevent from choking your civilization outright. When we made the nation the sole trustee of the wealth of the people, and guaranteed to all abundant maintenance, on the one hand abolishing want, and on the other checking the accumulation of riches, we cut this root, and the poison tree that overshadowed your society withered, like Jonah's gourd, in a day. As for the comparatively small class of violent crimes against persons, unconnected with any idea of gain, they were almost wholly confined, even in your day, to the ignorant and bestial; and in these days, when education and good manners are not the monopoly of a few, but universal, such atrocities are scarcely ever heard of. You now see why the word \"atavism\" is used for crime. It is because nearly all forms of crime known to you are motiveless now, and when they appear can only be explained as the outcropping of ancestral traits. You used to call persons who stole, evidently without any rational motive, kleptomaniacs, and when the case was clear deemed it absurd to punish them as thieves. Your attitude toward the genuine kleptomaniac is precisely ours toward the victim of atavism, an attitude of compassion and firm but gentle restraint.\n\n \"Your courts must have an easy time of it,\" I observed. \"With no private property to speak of, no disputes between citizens over business relations, no real estate to divide or debts to collect, there must be absolutely no civil business at all for them; and with no offenses against property, and mighty few of any sort to provide criminal cases, I should think you might almost do without judges and lawyers altogether.\"\n\n \"We do without the lawyers, certainly,\" was Dr. Jonas's reply. \"It would not seem reasonable to us, in a case where the only interest of the nation is to find out the truth, that persons should take part in the proceedings who had an acknowledged motive to color it.\"\n\n \"But who defends the accused?\"\n\n \"If he is a criminal he needs no defense, for he pleads guilty in most instances,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"The plea of the accused is not a mere formality with us, as with you. It is usually the end of the case.\"\n\n \"You don't mean that the man who pleads not guilty is thereupon discharged?\"\n\n \"No, I do not mean that. He is not accused on light grounds, and if he denies his guilt, must still be tried. But trials are few, for in most cases the guilty man pleads guilty. When he makes a false plea and is clearly proved guilty, his penalty is doubled. Falsehood is, however, so despised among us that few offenders would lie to save themselves.\"\n\n \"That is the most astounding thing you have yet told me,\" I exclaimed. \"If lying has gone out of fashion, this is indeed the 'new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness,' which the prophet foretold.\"\n\n \"Such is, in fact, the belief of some persons nowadays,\" was the doctor's answer. \"They hold that we have entered upon the millennium, and the theory from their point of view does not lack plausibility. But as to your astonishment at finding that the world has outgrown lying, there is really no ground for it. Falsehood, even in your day, was not common between gentlemen and ladies, social equals. The lie of fear was the refuge of cowardice, and the lie of fraud the device of the cheat. The inequalities of men and the lust of acquisition offered a constant premium on lying at that time. Yet even then, the man who neither feared another nor desired to defraud him scorned falsehood. Because we are now all social equals, and no man either has anything to fear from another or can gain anything by deceiving him, the contempt of falsehood is so universal that it is rarely, as I told you, that even a criminal in other respects will be found willing to lie. When, however, a plea of not guilty is returned, the judge appoints two colleagues to state the opposite sides of the case. How far these men are from being like your hired advocates and prosecutors, determined to acquit or convict, may appear from the fact that unless both agree that the verdict found is just, the case is tried over, while anything like bias in the tone of either of the judges stating the case would be a shocking scandal.\"\n\n \"Do I understand,\" I said, \"that it is a judge who states each side of the case as well as a judge who hears it?\"\n\n \"Certainly. The judges take turns in serving on the bench and at the bar, and are expected to maintain the judicial temper equally whether in stating or deciding a case. The system is indeed in effect that of trial by three judges occupying different points of view as to the case. When they agree upon a verdict, we believe it to be as near to absolute truth as men well can come.\"\n\n \"You have given up the jury system, then?\"\n\n \"It was well enough as a corrective in the days of hired advocates, and a bench sometimes venal, and often with a tenure that made it dependent, but is needless now. No conceivable motive but justice could actuate our judges.\"\n\n \"How are these magistrates selected?\"\n\n \"They are an honorable exception to the rule which discharges all men from service at the age of forty-five. The President of the nation appoints the necessary judges year by year from the class reaching that age. The number appointed is, of course, exceedingly few, and the honor so high that it is held an offset to the additional term of service which follows, and though a judge's appointment may be declined, it rarely is. The term is five years, without eligibility to reappointment. The members of the Supreme Court, which is the guardian of the constitution, are selected from among the lower judges. When a vacancy in that court occurs, those of the lower judges, whose terms expire that year, select, as their last official act, the one of their colleagues left on the bench whom they deem fittest to fill it.\"\n\n \"There being no legal profession to serve as a school for judges,\" I said, \"they must, of course, come directly from the law school to the bench.\"\n\n \"We have no such things as law schools,\" replied the doctor, smiling. \"The law as a special science is obsolete. It was a system of casuistry which the elaborate artificiality of the old order of society absolutely required to interpret it, but only a few of the plainest and simplest legal maxims have any application to the existing state of the world. Everything touching the relations of men to one another is now simpler, beyond any comparison, than in your day. We should have no sort of use for the hair-splitting experts who presided and argued in your courts. You must not imagine, however, that we have any disrespect for those ancient worthies because we have no use for them. On the contrary, we entertain an unfeigned respect, amounting almost to awe, for the men who alone understood and were able to expound the interminable complexity of the rights of property, and the relations of commercial and personal dependence involved in your system. What, indeed, could possibly give a more powerful impression of the intricacy and artificiality of that system than the fact that it was necessary to set apart from other pursuits the cream of the intellect of every generation, in order to provide a body of pundits able to make it even vaguely intelligible to those whose fates it determined. The treatises of your great lawyers, the works of Blackstone and Chitty, of Story and Parsons, stand in our museums, side by side with the tomes of Duns Scotus and his fellow scholastics, as curious monuments of intellectual subtlety devoted to subjects equally remote from the interests of modern men. Our judges are simply widely informed, judicious, and discreet men of ripe years.\n\n \"I should not fail to speak of one important function of the minor judges,\" added Dr. Jonas. \"This is to adjudicate all cases where a private of the industrial army makes a complaint of unfairness against an officer. All such questions are heard and settled without appeal by a single judge, three judges being required only in graver cases. The efficiency of industry requires the strictest discipline in the army of labor, but the claim of the workman to just and considerate treatment is backed by the whole power of the nation. The officer commands and the private obeys, but no officer is so high that he would dare display an overbearing manner toward a workman of the lowest class. As for churlishness or rudeness by an official of any sort, in his relations to the public, not one among minor offenses is more sure of a prompt penalty than this. Not only justice but civility is enforced by our judges in all sorts of intercourse. No value of service is accepted as a set-off to boorish or offensive manners.\"\n\n It occurred to me, as Dr. Jonas was speaking, that in all his talk I had heard much of the nation and nothing of the state governments. Had the organization of the nation as an industrial unit done away with the states? I asked.\n\n \"Necessarily,\" he replied. \"The state governments would have interfered with the control and discipline of the industrial army, which, of course, required to be central and uniform. Even if the state governments had not become inconvenient for other reasons, they were rendered superfluous by the prodigious simplification in the task of government since your day. Almost the sole function of the administration now is that of directing the industries of the country. Most of the purposes for which governments formerly existed no longer remain to be subserved. We have no army or navy, and no military organization. We have no departments of state or treasury, no excise or revenue services, no taxes or tax collectors. The only function proper of government, as known to you, which still remains, is the judiciary and police system. I have already explained to you how simple is our judicial system as compared with your huge and complex machine. Of course the same absence of crime and temptation to it, which make the duties of judges so light, reduces the number and duties of the police to a minimum.\"\n\n \"But with no state legislatures, and Congress meeting only once in five years, how do you get your legislation done?\"\n\n \"We have no legislation,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"that is, next to none. It is rarely that Congress, even when it meets, considers any new laws of consequence, and then it only has power to commend them to the following Congress, lest anything be done hastily. If you will consider a moment, Mr. Adelina, you will see that we have nothing to make laws about. The fundamental principles on which our society is founded settle for all time the strifes and misunderstandings which in your day called for legislation.\n\n \"Fully ninety-nine hundredths of the laws of that time concerned the definition and protection of private property and the relations of buyers and sellers. There is neither private property, beyond personal belongings, now, nor buying and selling, and therefore the occasion of nearly all the legislation formerly necessary has passed away. Formerly, society was a pyramid poised on its apex. All the gravitations of human nature were constantly tending to topple it over, and it could be maintained upright, or rather upwrong (if you will pardon the feeble witticism), by an elaborate system of constantly renewed props and buttresses and guy-ropes in the form of laws. A central Congress and forty state legislatures, turning out some twenty thousand laws a year, could not make new props fast enough to take the place of those which were constantly breaking down or becoming ineffectual through some shifting of the strain. Now society rests on its base, and is in as little need of artificial supports as the everlasting hills.\"\n\n \"But you have at least municipal governments besides the one central authority?\"\n\n \"Certainly, and they have important and extensive functions in looking out for the public comfort and recreation, and the improvement and embellishment of the villages and cities.\"\n\n \"But having no control over the labor of their people, or means of hiring it, how can they do anything?\"\n\n \"Every town or city is conceded the right to retain, for its own public works, a certain proportion of the quota of labor its citizens contribute to the nation. This proportion, being assigned it as so much credit, can be applied in any way desired.\"\n\n That afternoon Aubrey casually inquired if I had yet revisited the underground chamber in the garden in which I had been found.\n\n \"Not yet,\" I replied. \"To be frank, I have shrunk thus far from doing so, lest the visit might revive old associations rather too strongly for my mental equilibrium.\"\n\n \"Ah, yes!\" she said, \"I can imagine that you have done well to stay away. I ought to have thought of that.\"\n\n \"No,\" I said, \"I am glad you spoke of it. The danger, if there was any, existed only during the first day or two. Thanks to you, chiefly and always, I feel my footing now so firm in this new world, that if you will go with me to keep the ghosts off, I should really like to visit the place this afternoon.\"\n\n Aubrey demurred at first, but, finding that I was in earnest, consented to accompany me. The rampart of earth thrown up from the excavation was visible among the trees from the house, and a few steps brought us to the spot. All remained as it was at the point when work was interrupted by the discovery of the tenant of the chamber, save that the door had been opened and the slab from the roof replaced. Descending the sloping sides of the excavation, we went in at the door and stood within the dimly-lighted room.\n\n Everything was just as I had beheld it last on that evening one hundred and thirteen years previous, just before closing my eyes for that long sleep. I stood for some time silently looking about me. I saw that my companion was furtively regarding me with an expression of awed and sympathetic curiosity. I put out my hand to her and she placed hers in it, the soft fingers responding with a reassuring pressure to my clasp. Finally she whispered, \"Had we not better go out now? You must not try yourself too far. Oh, how strange it must be to you!\"\n\n \"On the contrary,\" I replied, \"it does not seem strange; that is the strangest part of it.\"\n\n \"Not strange?\" she echoed.\n\n \"Even so,\" I replied. \"The emotions with which you evidently credit me, and which I anticipated would attend this visit, I simply do not feel. I realize all that these surroundings suggest, but without the agitation I expected. You can't be nearly as much surprised at this as I am myself. Ever since that terrible morning when you came to my help, I have tried to avoid thinking of my former life, just as I have avoided coming here, for fear of the agitating effects. I am for all the world like a man who has permitted an injured limb to lie motionless under the impression that it is exquisitely sensitive, and on trying to move it finds that it is paralyzed.\"\n\n \"Do you mean your memory is gone?\"\n\n \"Not at all. I remember everything connected with my former life, but with a total lack of keen sensation. I remember it for clearness as if it had been but a day since then, but my feelings about what I remember are as faint as if to my consciousness, as well as in fact, a hundred years had intervened. Perhaps it is possible to explain this, too. The effect of change in surroundings is like that of lapse of time in making the past seem remote. When I first woke from that trance, my former life appeared as yesterday, but now, since I have learned to know my new surroundings, and to realize the prodigious changes that have transformed the world, I no longer find it hard, but very easy, to realize that I have slept a century. Can you conceive of such a thing as living a hundred years in four days? It really seems to me that I have done just that, and that it is this experience which has given so remote and unreal an appearance to my former life. Can you see how such a thing might be?\"\n\n \"I can conceive it,\" replied Aubrey, meditatively, \"and I think we ought all to be thankful that it is so, for it will save you much suffering, I am sure.\"\n\n \"Imagine,\" I said, in an effort to explain, as much to myself as to her, the strangeness of my mental condition, \"that a man first heard of a bereavement many, many years, half a lifetime perhaps, after the event occurred. I fancy his feeling would be perhaps something as mine is. When I think of my friends in the world of that former day, and the sorrow they must have felt for me, it is with a pensive pity, rather than keen anguish, as of a sorrow long, long ago ended.\"\n\n \"You have told us nothing yet of your friends,\" said Aubrey. \"Had you many to mourn you?\"\n\n \"Thank God, I had very few relatives, none nearer than cousins,\" I replied. \"But there was one, not a relative, but dearer to me than any kin of blood. She had your name. She was to have been my wife soon. Ah me!\"\n\n \"Ah me!\" sighed the Aubrey by my side. \"Think of the heartache she must have had.\"\n\n Something in the deep feeling of this gentle girl touched a chord in my benumbed heart. My eyes, before so dry, were flooded with the tears that had till now refused to come. When I had regained my composure, I saw that she too had been weeping freely.\n\n \"God bless your tender heart,\" I said. \"Would you like to see her picture?\"\n\n A small locket with Aubrey Gert's picture, secured about my neck with a gold chain, had lain upon my breast all through that long sleep, and removing this I opened and gave it to my companion. She took it with eagerness, and after poring long over the sweet face, touched the picture with her lips.\n\n \"I know that she was good and lovely enough to well deserve your tears,\" she said; \"but remember her heartache was over long ago, and she has been in heaven for nearly a century.\"\n\n It was indeed so. Whatever her sorrow had once been, for nearly a century she had ceased to weep, and, my sudden passion spent, my own tears dried away. I had loved her very dearly in my other life, but it was a hundred years ago! I do not know but some may find in this confession evidence of lack of feeling, but I think, perhaps, that none can have had an experience sufficiently like mine to enable them to judge me. As we were about to leave the chamber, my eye rested upon the great iron safe which stood in one corner. Calling my companion's attention to it, I said:--\n\n \"This was my strong room as well as my sleeping room. In the safe yonder are several thousand dollars in gold, and any amount of securities. If I had known when I went to sleep that night just how long my nap would be, I should still have thought that the gold was a safe provision for my needs in any country or any century, however distant. That a time would ever come when it would lose its purchasing power, I should have considered the wildest of fancies. Nevertheless, here I wake up to find myself among a people of whom a cartload of gold will not procure a loaf of bread.\"\n\n As might be expected, I did not succeed in impressing Aubrey that there was anything remarkable in this fact. \"Why in the world should it?\" she merely asked.\n\n It had been suggested by Dr. Jonas that we should devote the next morning to an inspection of the schools and colleges of the city, with some attempt on his own part at an explanation of the educational system of the twentieth century.\n\n \"You will see,\" said he, as we set out after breakfast, \"many very important differences between our methods of education and yours, but the main difference is that nowadays all persons equally have those opportunities of higher education which in your day only an infinitesimal portion of the population enjoyed. We should think we had gained nothing worth speaking of, in equalizing the physical comfort of men, without this educational equality.\"\n\n \"The cost must be very great,\" I said.\n\n \"If it took half the revenue of the nation, nobody would grudge it,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"nor even if it took it all save a bare pittance. But in truth the expense of educating ten thousand youth is not ten nor five times that of educating one thousand. The principle which makes all operations on a large scale proportionally cheaper than on a small scale holds as to education also.\"\n\n \"College education was terribly expensive in my day,\" said I.\n\n \"If I have not been misinformed by our historians,\" Dr. Jonas answered, \"it was not college education but college dissipation and extravagance which cost so highly. The actual expense of your colleges appears to have been very low, and would have been far lower if their patronage had been greater. The higher education nowadays is as cheap as the lower, as all grades of teachers, like all other workers, receive the same support. We have simply added to the common school system of compulsory education, in vogue in Massachusetts a hundred years ago, a half dozen higher grades, carrying the youth to the age of twenty-one and giving him what you used to call the education of a gentleman, instead of turning him loose at fourteen or fifteen with no mental equipment beyond reading, writing, and the multiplication table.\"\n\n \"Setting aside the actual cost of these additional years of education,\" I replied, \"we should not have thought we could afford the loss of time from industrial pursuits. Boys of the poorer classes usually went to work at sixteen or younger, and knew their trade at twenty.\"\n\n \"We should not concede you any gain even in material product by that plan,\" Dr. Jonas replied. \"The greater efficiency which education gives to all sorts of labor, except the rudest, makes up in a short period for the time lost in acquiring it.\"\n\n \"We should also have been afraid,\" said I, \"that a high education, while it adapted men to the professions, would set them against manual labor of all sorts.\"\n\n \"That was the effect of high education in your day, I have read,\" replied the doctor; \"and it was no wonder, for manual labor meant association with a rude, coarse, and ignorant class of people. There is no such class now. It was inevitable that such a feeling should exist then, for the further reason that all men receiving a high education were understood to be destined for the professions or for wealthy leisure, and such an education in one neither rich nor professional was a proof of disappointed aspirations, an evidence of failure, a badge of inferiority rather than superiority. Nowadays, of course, when the highest education is deemed necessary to fit a man merely to live, without any reference to the sort of work he may do, its possession conveys no such implication.\"\n\n \"After all,\" I remarked, \"no amount of education can cure natural dullness or make up for original mental deficiencies. Unless the average natural mental capacity of men is much above its level in my day, a high education must be pretty nearly thrown away on a large element of the population. We used to hold that a certain amount of susceptibility to educational influences is required to make a mind worth cultivating, just as a certain natural fertility in soil is required if it is to repay tilling.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Dr. Jonas, \"I am glad you used that illustration, for it is just the one I would have chosen to set forth the modern view of education. You say that land so poor that the product will not repay the labor of tilling is not cultivated. Nevertheless, much land that does not begin to repay tilling by its product was cultivated in your day and is in ours. I refer to gardens, parks, lawns, and, in general, to pieces of land so situated that, were they left to grow up to weeds and briers, they would be eyesores and inconveniences to all about. They are therefore tilled, and though their product is little, there is yet no land that, in a wider sense, better repays cultivation. So it is with the men and women with whom we mingle in the relations of society, whose voices are always in our ears, whose behavior in innumerable ways affects our enjoyment,--who are, in fact, as much conditions of our lives as the air we breathe, or any of the physical elements on which we depend. If, indeed, we could not afford to educate everybody, we should choose the coarsest and dullest by nature, rather than the brightest, to receive what education we could give. The naturally refined and intellectual can better dispense with aids to culture than those less fortunate in natural endowments.\n\n \"To borrow a phrase which was often used in your day, we should not consider life worth living if we had to be surrounded by a population of ignorant, boorish, coarse, wholly uncultivated men and women, as was the plight of the few educated in your day. Is a man satisfied, merely because he is perfumed himself, to mingle with a malodorous crowd? Could he take more than a very limited satisfaction, even in a palatial apartment, if the windows on all four sides opened into stable yards? And yet just that was the situation of those considered most fortunate as to culture and refinement in your day. I know that the poor and ignorant envied the rich and cultured then; but to us the latter, living as they did, surrounded by squalor and brutishness, seem little better off than the former. The cultured man in your age was like one up to the neck in a nauseous bog solacing himself with a smelling bottle. You see, perhaps, now, how we look at this question of universal high education. No single thing is so important to every man as to have for neighbors intelligent, companionable persons. There is nothing, therefore, which the nation can do for him that will enhance so much his own happiness as to educate his neighbors. When it fails to do so, the value of his own education to him is reduced by half, and many of the tastes he has cultivated are made positive sources of pain.\n\n \"To educate some to the highest degree, and leave the mass wholly uncultivated, as you did, made the gap between them almost like that between different natural species, which have no means of communication. What could be more inhuman than this consequence of a partial enjoyment of education! Its universal and equal enjoyment leaves, indeed, the differences between men as to natural endowments as marked as in a state of nature, but the level of the lowest is vastly raised. Brutishness is eliminated. All have some inkling of the humanities, some appreciation of the things of the mind, and an admiration for the still higher culture they have fallen short of. They have become capable of receiving and imparting, in various degrees, but all in some measure, the pleasures and inspirations of a refined social life. The cultured society of the nineteenth century,--what did it consist of but here and there a few microscopic oases in a vast, unbroken wilderness? The proportion of individuals capable of intellectual sympathies or refined intercourse, to the mass of their contemporaries, used to be so infinitesimal as to be in any broad view of humanity scarcely worth mentioning. One generation of the world to-day represents a greater volume of intellectual life than any five centuries ever did before.\n\n \"There is still another point I should mention in stating the grounds on which nothing less than the universality of the best education could now be tolerated,\" continued Dr. Jonas, \"and that is, the interest of the coming generation in having educated parents. To put the matter in a nutshell, there are three main grounds on which our educational system rests: first, the right of every man to the completest education the nation can give him on his own account, as necessary to his enjoyment of himself; second, the right of his fellow-citizens to have him educated, as necessary to their enjoyment of his society; third, the right of the unborn to be guaranteed an intelligent and refined parentage.\"\n\n I shall not describe in detail what I saw in the schools that day. Having taken but slight interest in educational matters in my former life, I could offer few comparisons of interest. Next to the fact of the universality of the higher as well as the lower education, I was most struck with the prominence given to physical culture, and the fact that proficiency in athletic feats and games as well as in scholarship had a place in the rating of the youth.\n\n \"The faculty of education,\" Dr. Jonas explained, \"is held to the same responsibility for the bodies as for the minds of its charges. The highest possible physical, as well as mental, development of every one is the double object of a curriculum which lasts from the age of six to that of twenty-one.\"\n\n The magnificent health of the young people in the schools impressed me strongly. My previous observations, not only of the notable personal endowments of the family of my host, but of the people I had seen in my walks abroad, had already suggested the idea that there must have been something like a general improvement in the physical standard of the race since my day, and now, as I compared these stalwart young men and fresh, vigorous maidens with the young people I had seen in the schools of the nineteenth century, I was moved to impart my thought to Dr. Jonas. He listened with great interest to what I said.\n\n \"Your testimony on this point,\" he declared, \"is invaluable. We believe that there has been such an improvement as you speak of, but of course it could only be a matter of theory with us. It is an incident of your unique position that you alone in the world of to-day can speak with authority on this point. Your opinion, when you state it publicly, will, I assure you, make a profound sensation. For the rest it would be strange, certainly, if the race did not show an improvement. In your day, riches debauched one class with idleness of mind and body, while poverty sapped the vitality of the masses by overwork, bad food, and pestilent homes. The labor required of children, and the burdens laid on women, enfeebled the very springs of life. Instead of these maleficent circumstances, all now enjoy the most favorable conditions of physical life; the young are carefully nurtured and studiously cared for; the labor which is required of all is limited to the period of greatest bodily vigor, and is never excessive; care for one's self and one's family, anxiety as to livelihood, the strain of a ceaseless battle for life--all these influences, which once did so much to wreck the minds and bodies of men and women, are known no more. Certainly, an improvement of the species ought to follow such a change. In certain specific respects we know, indeed, that the improvement has taken place. Insanity, for instance, which in the nineteenth century was so terribly common a product of your insane mode of life, has almost disappeared, with its alternative, suicide.\"\n\n We had made an appointment to meet the ladies at the dining-hall for dinner, after which, having some engagement, they left us sitting at table there, discussing our wine and cigars with a multitude of other matters.\n\n \"Alondra,\" said I, in the course of our talk, \"morally speaking, your social system is one which I should be insensate not to admire in comparison with any previously in vogue in the world, and especially with that of my own most unhappy century. If I were to fall into a mesmeric sleep to-night as lasting as that other, and meanwhile the course of time were to take a turn backward instead of forward, and I were to wake up again in the nineteenth century, when I had told my friends what I had seen, they would every one admit that your world was a paradise of order, equity, and felicity. But they were a very practical people, my contemporaries, and after expressing their admiration for the moral beauty and material splendor of the system, they would presently begin to cipher and ask how you got the money to make everybody so happy; for certainly, to support the whole nation at a rate of comfort, and even luxury, such as I see around me, must involve vastly greater wealth than the nation produced in my day. Now, while I could explain to them pretty nearly everything else of the main features of your system, I should quite fail to answer this question, and failing there, they would tell me, for they were very close cipherers, that I had been dreaming; nor would they ever believe anything else. In my day, I know that the total annual product of the nation, although it might have been divided with absolute equality, would not have come to more than three or four hundred dollars per head, not very much more than enough to supply the necessities of life with few or any of its comforts. How is it that you have so much more?\"\n\n \"That is a very pertinent question, Mr. Adelina,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"and I should not blame your friends, in the case you supposed, if they declared your story all moonshine, failing a satisfactory reply to it. It is a question which I cannot answer exhaustively at any one sitting, and as for the exact statistics to bear out my general statements, I shall have to refer you for them to books in my library, but it would certainly be a pity to leave you to be put to confusion by your old acquaintances, in case of the contingency you speak of, for lack of a few suggestions.\n\n \"Let us begin with a number of small items wherein we economize wealth as compared with you. We have no national, state, county, or municipal debts, or payments on their account. We have no sort of military or naval expenditures for men or materials, no army, navy, or militia. We have no revenue service, no swarm of tax assessors and collectors. As regards our judiciary, police, sheriffs, and jailers, the force which Massachusetts alone kept on foot in your day far more than suffices for the nation now. We have no criminal class preying upon the wealth of society as you had. The number of persons, more or less absolutely lost to the working force through physical disability, of the lame, sick, and debilitated, which constituted such a burden on the able-bodied in your day, now that all live under conditions of health and comfort, has shrunk to scarcely perceptible proportions, and with every generation is becoming more completely eliminated.\n\n \"Another item wherein we save is the disuse of money and the thousand occupations connected with financial operations of all sorts, whereby an army of men was formerly taken away from useful employments. Also consider that the waste of the very rich in your day on inordinate personal luxury has ceased, though, indeed, this item might easily be over-estimated. Again, consider that there are no idlers now, rich or poor,--no drones.\n\n \"A very important cause of former poverty was the vast waste of labor and materials which resulted from domestic washing and cooking, and the performing separately of innumerable other tasks to which we apply the cooperative plan.\n\n \"A larger economy than any of these--yes, of all together--is effected by the organization of our distributing system, by which the work done once by the merchants, traders, storekeepers, with their various grades of jobbers, wholesalers, retailers, agents, commercial travelers, and middlemen of all sorts, with an excessive waste of energy in needless transportation and interminable handlings, is performed by one-tenth the number of hands and an unnecessary turn of not one wheel. Something of what our distributing system is like you know. Our statisticians calculate that one eightieth part of our workers suffices for all the processes of distribution which in your day required one eighth of the population, so much being withdrawn from the force engaged in productive labor.\"\n\n \"I begin to see,\" I said, \"where you get your greater wealth.\"\n\n \"I beg your pardon,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"but you scarcely do as yet. The economies I have mentioned thus far, in the aggregate, considering the labor they would save directly and indirectly through saving of material, might possibly be equivalent to the addition to your annual production of wealth of one-half its former total. These items are, however, scarcely worth mentioning in comparison with other prodigious wastes, now saved, which resulted inevitably from leaving the industries of the nation to private enterprise. However great the economies your contemporaries might have devised in the consumption of products, and however marvelous the progress of mechanical invention, they could never have raised themselves out of the slough of poverty so long as they held to that system.\n\n \"No mode more wasteful for utilizing human energy could be devised, and for the credit of the human intellect it should be remembered that the system never was devised, but was merely a survival from the rude ages when the lack of social organization made any sort of cooperation impossible.\"\n\n \"I will readily admit,\" I said, \"that our industrial system was ethically very bad, but as a mere wealth-making machine, apart from moral aspects, it seemed to us admirable.\"\n\n \"As I said,\" responded the doctor, \"the subject is too large to discuss at length now, but if you are really interested to know the main criticisms which we moderns make on your industrial system as compared with our own, I can touch briefly on some of them.\n\n \"The wastes which resulted from leaving the conduct of industry to irresponsible individuals, wholly without mutual understanding or concert, were mainly four: first, the waste by mistaken undertakings; second, the waste from the competition and mutual hostility of those engaged in industry; third, the waste by periodical gluts and crises, with the consequent interruptions of industry; fourth, the waste from idle capital and labor, at all times. Any one of these four great leaks, were all the others stopped, would suffice to make the difference between wealth and poverty on the part of a nation.\n\n \"Take the waste by mistaken undertakings, to begin with. In your day the production and distribution of commodities being without concert or organization, there was no means of knowing just what demand there was for any class of products, or what was the rate of supply. Therefore, any enterprise by a private capitalist was always a doubtful experiment. The projector having no general view of the field of industry and consumption, such as our government has, could never be sure either what the people wanted, or what arrangements other capitalists were making to supply them. In view of this, we are not surprised to learn that the chances were considered several to one in favor of the failure of any given business enterprise, and that it was common for persons who at last succeeded in making a hit to have failed repeatedly. If a shoemaker, for every pair of shoes he succeeded in completing, spoiled the leather of four or five pair, besides losing the time spent on them, he would stand about the same chance of getting rich as your contemporaries did with their system of private enterprise, and its average of four or five failures to one success.\n\n \"The next of the great wastes was that from competition. The field of industry was a battlefield as wide as the world, in which the workers wasted, in assailing one another, energies which, if expended in concerted effort, as to-day, would have enriched all. As for mercy or quarter in this warfare, there was absolutely no suggestion of it. To deliberately enter a field of business and destroy the enterprises of those who had occupied it previously, in order to plant one's own enterprise on their ruins, was an achievement which never failed to command popular admiration. Nor is there any stretch of fancy in comparing this sort of struggle with actual warfare, so far as concerns the mental agony and physical suffering which attended the struggle, and the misery which overwhelmed the defeated and those dependent on them. Now nothing about your age is, at first sight, more astounding to a man of modern times than the fact that men engaged in the same industry, instead of fraternizing as comrades and co-laborers to a common end, should have regarded each other as rivals and enemies to be throttled and overthrown. This certainly seems like sheer madness, a scene from bedlam. But more closely regarded, it is seen to be no such thing. Your contemporaries, with their mutual throat-cutting, knew very well what they were at. The producers of the nineteenth century were not, like ours, working together for the maintenance of the community, but each solely for his own maintenance at the expense of the community. If, in working to this end, he at the same time increased the aggregate wealth, that was merely incidental. It was just as feasible and as common to increase one's private hoard by practices injurious to the general welfare. One's worst enemies were necessarily those of his own trade, for, under your plan of making private profit the motive of production, a scarcity of the article he produced was what each particular producer desired. It was for his interest that no more of it should be produced than he himself could produce. To secure this consummation as far as circumstances permitted, by killing off and discouraging those engaged in his line of industry, was his constant effort. When he had billed off all he could, his policy was to combine with those he could not kill, and convert their mutual warfare into a warfare upon the public at large by cornering the market, as I believe you used to call it, and putting up prices to the highest point people would stand before going without the goods. The day dream of the nineteenth century producer was to gain absolute control of the supply of some necessity of life, so that he might keep the public at the verge of starvation, and always command famine prices for what he supplied. This, Mr. Adelina, is what was called in the nineteenth century a system of production. I will leave it to you if it does not seem, in some of its aspects, a great deal more like a system for preventing production. Some time when we have plenty of leisure I am going to ask you to sit down with me and try to make me comprehend, as I never yet could, though I have studied the matter a great deal, how such shrewd fellows as your contemporaries appear to have been in many respects ever came to entrust the business of providing for the community to a class whose interest it was to starve it. I assure you that the wonder with us is, not that the world did not get rich under such a system, but that it did not perish outright from want. This wonder increases as we go on to consider some of the other prodigious wastes that characterized it.\n\n \"Apart from the waste of labor and capital by misdirected industry, and that from the constant bloodletting of your industrial warfare, your system was liable to periodical convulsions, overwhelming alike the wise and unwise, the successful cut-throat as well as his victim. I refer to the business crises at intervals of five to ten years, which wrecked the industries of the nation, prostrating all weak enterprises and crippling the strongest, and were followed by long periods, often of many years, of so-called dull times, during which the capitalists slowly regathered their dissipated strength while the laboring classes starved and rioted. Then would ensue another brief season of prosperity, followed in turn by another crisis and the ensuing years of exhaustion. As commerce developed, making the nations mutually dependent, these arises became world-wide, while the obstinacy of the ensuing state of collapse increased with the area affected by the convulsions, and the consequent lack of rallying centres. In proportion as the industries of the world multiplied and became complex, and the volume of capital involved was increased, these business cataclysms became more frequent, till, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, there were two years of bad times to one of good, and the system of industry, never before so extended or so imposing, seemed in danger of collapsing by its own weight. After endless discussions, your economists appear by that time to have settled down to the despairing conclusion that there was no more possibility of preventing or controlling these crises than if they had been drouths or hurricanes. It only remained to endure them as necessary evils, and when they had passed over to build up again the shattered structure of industry, as dwellers in an earthquake country keep on rebuilding their cities on the same site.\n\n \"So far as considering the causes of the trouble inherent in their industrial system, your contemporaries were certainly correct. They were in its very basis, and must needs become more and more maleficent as the business fabric grew in size and complexity. One of these causes was the lack of any common control of the different industries, and the consequent impossibility of their orderly and coordinate development. It inevitably resulted from this lack that they were continually getting out of step with one another and out of relation with the demand.\n\n \"Of the latter there was no criterion such as organized distribution gives us, and the first notice that it had been exceeded in any group of industries was a crash of prices, bankruptcy of producers, stoppage of production, reduction of wages, or discharge of workmen. This process was constantly going on in many industries, even in what were called good times, but a crisis took place only when the industries affected were extensive. The markets then were glutted with goods, of which nobody wanted beyond a sufficiency at any price. The wages and profits of those making the glutted classes of goods being reduced or wholly stopped, their purchasing power as consumers of other classes of goods, of which there was no natural glut, was taken away, and, as a consequence, goods of which there was no natural glut became artificially glutted, till their prices also were broken down, and their makers thrown out of work and deprived of income. The crisis was by this time fairly under way, and nothing could check it till a nation's ransom had been wasted.\n\n \"A cause, also inherent in your system, which often produced and always terribly aggravated crises, was the machinery of money and credit. Money was essential when production was in many private hands, and buying and selling was necessary to secure what one wanted. It was, however, open to the obvious objection of substituting for food, clothing, and other things a merely conventional representative of them. The confusion of mind which this favored, between goods and their representative, led the way to the credit system and its prodigious illusions. Already accustomed to accept money for commodities, the people next accepted promises for money, and ceased to look at all behind the representative for the thing represented. Money was a sign of real commodities, but credit was but the sign of a sign. There was a natural limit to gold and silver, that is, money proper, but none to credit, and the result was that the volume of credit, that is, the promises of money, ceased to bear any ascertainable proportion to the money, still less to the commodities, actually in existence. Under such a system, frequent and periodical crises were necessitated by a law as absolute as that which brings to the ground a structure overhanging its centre of gravity. It was one of your fictions that the government and the banks authorized by it alone issued money; but everybody who gave a dollar's credit issued money to that extent, which was as good as any to swell the circulation till the next crises. The great extension of the credit system was a characteristic of the latter part of the nineteenth century, and accounts largely for the almost incessant business crises which marked that period. Perilous as credit was, you could not dispense with its use, for, lacking any national or other public organization of the capital of the country, it was the only means you had for concentrating and directing it upon industrial enterprises. It was in this way a most potent means for exaggerating the chief peril of the private enterprise system of industry by enabling particular industries to absorb disproportionate amounts of the disposable capital of the country, and thus prepare disaster. Business enterprises were always vastly in debt for advances of credit, both to one another and to the banks and capitalists, and the prompt withdrawal of this credit at the first sign of a crisis was generally the precipitating cause of it.\n\n \"It was the misfortune of your contemporaries that they had to cement their business fabric with a material which an accident might at any moment turn into an explosive. They were in the plight of a man building a house with dynamite for mortar, for credit can be compared with nothing else.\n\n \"If you would see how needless were these convulsions of business which I have been speaking of, and how entirely they resulted from leaving industry to private and unorganized management, just consider the working of our system. Overproduction in special lines, which was the great hobgoblin of your day, is impossible now, for by the connection between distribution and production supply is geared to demand like an engine to the governor which regulates its speed. Even suppose by an error of judgment an excessive production of some commodity. The consequent slackening or cessation of production in that line throws nobody out of employment. The suspended workers are at once found occupation in some other department of the vast workshop and lose only the time spent in changing, while, as for the glut, the business of the nation is large enough to carry any amount of product manufactured in excess of demand till the latter overtakes it. In such a case of over-production, as I have supposed, there is not with us, as with you, any complex machinery to get out of order and magnify a thousand times the original mistake. Of course, having not even money, we still less have credit. All estimates deal directly with the real things, the flour, iron, wood, wool, and labor, of which money and credit were for you the very misleading representatives. In our calculations of cost there can be no mistakes. Out of the annual product the amount necessary for the support of the people is taken, and the requisite labor to produce the next year's consumption provided for. The residue of the material and labor represents what can be safely expended in improvements. If the crops are bad, the surplus for that year is less than usual, that is all. Except for slight occasional effects of such natural causes, there are no fluctuations of business; the material prosperity of the nation flows on uninterruptedly from generation to generation, like an ever broadening and deepening river.\n\n \"Your business crises, Mr. Adelina,\" continued the doctor, \"like either of the great wastes I mentioned before, were enough, alone, to have kept your noses to the grindstone forever; but I have still to speak of one other great cause of your poverty, and that was the idleness of a great part of your capital and labor. With us it is the business of the administration to keep in constant employment every ounce of available capital and labor in the country. In your day there was no general control of either capital or labor, and a large part of both failed to find employment. 'Capital,' you used to say, 'is naturally timid,' and it would certainly have been reckless if it had not been timid in an epoch when there was a large preponderance of probability that any particular business venture would end in failure. There was no time when, if security could have been guaranteed it, the amount of capital devoted to productive industry could not have been greatly increased. The proportion of it so employed underwent constant extraordinary fluctuations, according to the greater or less feeling of uncertainty as to the stability of the industrial situation, so that the output of the national industries greatly varied in different years. But for the same reason that the amount of capital employed at times of special insecurity was far less than at times of somewhat greater security, a very large proportion was never employed at all, because the hazard of business was always very great in the best of times.\n\n \"It should be also noted that the great amount of capital always seeking employment where tolerable safety could be insured terribly embittered the competition between capitalists when a promising opening presented itself. The idleness of capital, the result of its timidity, of course meant the idleness of labor in corresponding degree. Moreover, every change in the adjustments of business, every slightest alteration in the condition of commerce or manufactures, not to speak of the innumerable business failures that took place yearly, even in the best of times, were constantly throwing a multitude of men out of employment for periods of weeks or months, or even years. A great number of these seekers after employment were constantly traversing the country, becoming in time professional vagabonds, then criminals. 'Give us work!' was the cry of an army of the unemployed at nearly all seasons, and in seasons of dullness in business this army swelled to a host so vast and desperate as to threaten the stability of the government. Could there conceivably be a more conclusive demonstration of the imbecility of the system of private enterprise as a method for enriching a nation than the fact that, in an age of such general poverty and want of everything, capitalists had to throttle one another to find a safe chance to invest their capital and workmen rioted and burned because they could find no work to do?\n\n \"Now, Mr. Adelina,\" continued Dr. Jonas, \"I want you to bear in mind that these points of which I have been speaking indicate only negatively the advantages of the national organization of industry by showing certain fatal defects and prodigious imbecilities of the systems of private enterprise which are not found in it. These alone, you must admit, would pretty well explain why the nation is so much richer than in your day. But the larger half of our advantage over you, the positive side of it, I have yet barely spoken of. Supposing the system of private enterprise in industry were without any of the great leaks I have mentioned; that there were no waste on account of misdirected effort growing out of mistakes as to the demand, and inability to command a general view of the industrial field. Suppose, also, there were no neutralizing and duplicating of effort from competition. Suppose, also, there were no waste from business panics and crises through bankruptcy and long interruptions of industry, and also none from the idleness of capital and labor. Supposing these evils, which are essential to the conduct of industry by capital in private hands, could all be miraculously prevented, and the system yet retained; even then the superiority of the results attained by the modern industrial system of national control would remain overwhelming.\n\n \"You used to have some pretty large textile manufacturing establishments, even in your day, although not comparable with ours. No doubt you have visited these great mills in your time, covering acres of ground, employing thousands of hands, and combining under one roof, under one control, the hundred distinct processes between, say, the cotton bale and the bale of glossy calicoes. You have admired the vast economy of labor as of mechanical force resulting from the perfect interworking with the rest of every wheel and every hand. No doubt you have reflected how much less the same force of workers employed in that factory would accomplish if they were scattered, each man working independently. Would you think it an exaggeration to say that the utmost product of those workers, working thus apart, however amicable their relations might be, was increased not merely by a percentage, but many fold, when their efforts were organized under one control? Well now, Mr. Adelina, the organization of the industry of the nation under a single control, so that all its processes interlock, has multiplied the total product over the utmost that could be done under the former system, even leaving out of account the four great wastes mentioned, in the same proportion that the product of those millworkers was increased by cooperation. The effectiveness of the working force of a nation, under the myriad-headed leadership of private capital, even if the leaders were not mutual enemies, as compared with that which it attains under a single head, may be likened to the military efficiency of a mob, or a horde of barbarians with a thousand petty chiefs, as compared with that of a disciplined army under one general--such a fighting machine, for example, as the German army in the time of Von Moltke.\"\n\n \"After what you have told me,\" I said, \"I do not so much wonder that the nation is richer now than then, but that you are not all Croesuses.\"\n\n \"Well,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"we are pretty well off. The rate at which we live is as luxurious as we could wish. The rivalry of ostentation, which in your day led to extravagance in no way conducive to comfort, finds no place, of course, in a society of people absolutely equal in resources, and our ambition stops at the surroundings which minister to the enjoyment of life. We might, indeed, have much larger incomes, individually, if we chose so to use the surplus of our product, but we prefer to expend it upon public works and pleasures in which all share, upon public halls and buildings, art galleries, bridges, statuary, means or transit, and the conveniences of our cities, great musical and theatrical exhibitions, and in providing on a vast scale for the recreations of the people. You have not begun to see how we live yet, Mr. Adelina. At home we have comfort, but the splendor of our life is, on its social side, that which we share with our fellows. When you know more of it you will see where the money goes, as you used to say, and I think you will agree that we do well so to expend it.\"\n\n \"I suppose,\" observed Dr. Jonas, as we strolled homeward from the dining hall, \"that no reflection would have cut the men of your wealth-worshiping century more keenly than the suggestion that they did not know how to make money. Nevertheless, that is just the verdict history has passed on them. Their system of unorganized and antagonistic industries was as absurd economically as it was morally abominable. Selfishness was their only science, and in industrial production selfishness is suicide. Competition, which is the instinct of selfishness, is another word for dissipation of energy, while combination is the secret of efficient production; and not till the idea of increasing the individual hoard gives place to the idea of increasing the common stock can industrial combination be realized, and the acquisition of wealth really begin. Even if the principle of share and share alike for all men were not the only humane and rational basis for a society, we should still enforce it as economically expedient, seeing that until the disintegrating influence of self-seeking is suppressed no true concert of industry is possible.\"\n\n That evening, as I sat with Aubrey in the music room, listening to some pieces in the programme of that day which had attracted my notice, I took advantage of an interval in the music to say, \"I have a question to ask you which I fear is rather indiscreet.\"\n\n \"I am quite sure it is not that,\" she replied, encouragingly.\n\n \"I am in the position of an eavesdropper,\" I continued, \"who, having overheard a little of a matter not intended for him, though seeming to concern him, has the impudence to come to the speaker for the rest.\"\n\n \"An eavesdropper!\" she repeated, looking puzzled.\n\n \"Yes,\" I said, \"but an excusable one, as I think you will admit.\"\n\n \"This is very mysterious,\" she replied.\n\n \"Yes,\" said I, \"so mysterious that often I have doubted whether I really overheard at all what I am going to ask you about, or only dreamed it. I want you to tell me. The matter is this: When I was coming out of that sleep of a century, the first impression of which I was conscious was of voices talking around me, voices that afterwards I recognized as your father's, your mother's, and your own. First, I remember your father's voice saying, 'He is going to open his eyes. He had better see but one person at first.' Then you said, if I did not dream it all, 'Promise me, then, that you will not tell him.' Your father seemed to hesitate about promising, but you insisted, and your mother interposing, he finally promised, and when I opened my eyes I saw only him.\"\n\n I had been quite serious when I said that I was not sure that I had not dreamed the conversation I fancied I had overheard, so incomprehensible was it that these people should know anything of me, a contemporary of their great-grandparents, which I did not know myself. But when I saw the effect of my words upon Aubrey, I knew that it was no dream, but another mystery, and a more puzzling one than any I had before encountered. For from the moment that the drift of my question became apparent, she showed indications of the most acute embarrassment. Her eyes, always so frank and direct in expression, had dropped in a panic before mine, while her face crimsoned from neck to forehead.\n\n \"Pardon me,\" I said, as soon as I had recovered from bewilderment at the extraordinary effect of my words. \"It seems, then, that I was not dreaming. There is some secret, something about me, which you are withholding from me. Really, doesn't it seem a little hard that a person in my position should not be given all the information possible concerning himself?\"\n\n \"It does not concern you--that is, not directly. It is not about you--exactly,\" she replied, scarcely audibly.\n\n \"But it concerns me in some way,\" I persisted. \"It must be something that would interest me.\"\n\n \"I don't know even that,\" she replied, venturing a momentary glance at my face, furiously blushing, and yet with a quaint smile flickering about her lips which betrayed a certain perception of humor in the situation despite its embarrassment,--\"I am not sure that it would even interest you.\"\n\n \"Your father would have told me,\" I insisted, with an accent of reproach. \"It was you who forbade him. He thought I ought to know.\"\n\n She did not reply. She was so entirely charming in her confusion that I was now prompted, as much by the desire to prolong the situation as by my original curiosity, to importune her further.\n\n \"Am I never to know? Will you never tell me?\" I said.\n\n \"It depends,\" she answered, after a long pause.\n\n \"On what?\" I persisted.\n\n \"Ah, you ask too much,\" she replied. Then, raising to mine a face which inscrutable eyes, flushed cheeks, and smiling lips combined to render perfectly bewitching, she added, \"What should you think if I said that it depended on--yourself?\"\n\n \"On myself?\" I echoed. \"How can that possibly be?\"\n\n \"Mr. Adelina, we are losing some charming music,\" was her only reply to this, and turning to the telephone, at a touch of her finger she set the air to swaying to the rhythm of an adagio. After that she took good care that the music should leave no opportunity for conversation. She kept her face averted from me, and pretended to be absorbed in the airs, but that it was a mere pretense the crimson tide standing at flood in her cheeks sufficiently betrayed.\n\n When at length she suggested that I might have heard all I cared to, for that time, and we rose to leave the room, she came straight up to me and said, without raising her eyes, \"Mr. Adelina, you say I have been good to you. I have not been particularly so, but if you think I have, I want you to promise me that you will not try again to make me tell you this thing you have asked to-night, and that you will not try to find it out from any one else,--my father or mother, for instance.\"\n\n To such an appeal there was but one reply possible. \"Forgive me for distressing you. Of course I will promise,\" I said. \"I would never have asked you if I had fancied it could distress you. But do you blame me for being curious?\"\n\n \"I do not blame you at all.\"\n\n \"And some time,\" I added, \"if I do not tease you, you may tell me of your own accord. May I not hope so?\"\n\n \"Perhaps,\" she murmured.\n\n \"Only perhaps?\"\n\n Looking up, she read my face with a quick, deep glance. \"Yes,\" she said, \"I think I may tell you--some time;\" and so our conversation ended, for she gave me no chance to say anything more.\n\n That night I don't think even Dr. Layne could have put me to sleep, till toward morning at least. Mysteries had been my accustomed food for days now, but none had before confronted me at once so mysterious and so fascinating as this, the solution of which Aubrey Jonas had forbidden me even to seek. It was a double mystery. How, in the first place, was it conceivable that she should know any secret about me, a stranger from a strange age? In the second place, even if she should know such a secret, how account for the agitating effect which the knowledge of it seemed to have upon her? There are puzzles so difficult that one cannot even get so far as a conjecture as to the solution, and this seemed one of them. I am usually of too practical a turn to waste time on such conundrums; but the difficulty of a riddle embodied in a beautiful young girl does not detract from its fascination. In general, no doubt, maidens' blushes may be safely assumed to tell the same tale to young men in all ages and races, but to give that interpretation to Aubrey's crimson cheeks would, considering my position and the length of time I had known her, and still more the fact that this mystery dated from before I had known her at all, be a piece of utter fatuity. And yet she was an angel, and I should not have been a young man if reason and common sense had been able quite to banish a roseate tinge from my dreams that night.\n\n In the morning I went down stairs early in the hope of seeing Aubrey alone. In this, however, I was disappointed. Not finding her in the house, I sought her in the garden, but she was not there. In the course of my wanderings I visited the underground chamber, and sat down there to rest. Upon the reading table in the chamber several periodicals and newspapers lay, and thinking that Dr. Jonas might be interested in glancing over a Boston daily of 1887, I brought one of the papers with me into the house when I came.\n\n At breakfast I met Aubrey. She blushed as she greeted me, but was perfectly self-possessed. As we sat at table, Dr. Jonas amused himself with looking over the paper I had brought in. There was in it, as in all the newspapers of that date, a great deal about the labor troubles, strikes, lockouts, boycotts, the programmes of labor parties, and the wild threats of the anarchists.\n\n \"By the way,\" said I, as the doctor read aloud to us some of these items, \"what part did the followers of the red flag take in the establishment of the new order of things? They were making considerable noise the last thing that I knew.\"\n\n \"They had nothing to do with it except to hinder it, of course,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"They did that very effectually while they lasted, for their talk so disgusted people as to deprive the best considered projects for social reform of a hearing. The subsidizing of those fellows was one of the shrewdest moves of the opponents of reform.\"\n\n \"Subsidizing them!\" I exclaimed in astonishment.\n\n \"Certainly,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"No historical authority nowadays doubts that they were paid by the great monopolies to wave the red flag and talk about burning, sacking, and blowing people up, in order, by alarming the timid, to head off any real reforms. What astonishes me most is that you should have fallen into the trap so unsuspectingly.\"\n\n \"What are your grounds for believing that the red flag party was subsidized?\" I inquired.\n\n \"Why simply because they must have seen that their course made a thousand enemies of their professed cause to one friend. Not to suppose that they were hired for the work is to credit them with an inconceivable folly.[4] In the United States, of all countries, no party could intelligently expect to carry its point without first winning over to its ideas a majority of the nation, as the national party eventually did.\"\n\n \"The national party!\" I exclaimed. \"That must have arisen after my day. I suppose it was one of the labor parties.\"\n\n \"Oh no!\" replied the doctor. \"The labor parties, as such, never could have accomplished anything on a large or permanent scale. For purposes of national scope, their basis as merely class organizations was too narrow. It was not till a rearrangement of the industrial and social system on a higher ethical basis, and for the more efficient production of wealth, was recognized as the interest, not of one class, but equally of all classes, of rich and poor, cultured and ignorant, old and young, weak and strong, men and women, that there was any prospect that it would be achieved. Then the national party arose to carry it out by political methods. It probably took that name because its aim was to nationalize the functions of production and distribution. Indeed, it could not well have had any other name, for its purpose was to realize the idea of the nation with a grandeur and completeness never before conceived, not as an association of men for certain merely political functions affecting their happiness only remotely and superficially, but as a family, a vital union, a common life, a mighty heaven-touching tree whose leaves are its people, fed from its veins, and feeding it in turn. The most patriotic of all possible parties, it sought to justify patriotism and raise it from an instinct to a rational devotion, by making the native land truly a father land, a father who kept the people alive and was not merely an idol for which they were expected to die.\"\n\n [Footnote 4: I fully admit the difficulty of accounting for the course of the anarchists on any other theory than that they were subsidized by the capitalists, but, at the same time, there is no doubt that the theory is wholly erroneous. It certainly was not held at the time by any one, though it may seem so obvious in the retrospect.]\n\n The personality of Aubrey Jonas had naturally impressed me strongly ever since I had come, in so strange a manner, to be an inmate of her father's house, and it was to be expected that after what had happened the night previous, I should be more than ever preoccupied with thoughts of her. From the first I had been struck with the air of serene frankness and ingenuous directness, more like that of a noble and innocent boy than any girl I had ever known, which characterized her. I was curious to know how far this charming quality might be peculiar to herself, and how far possibly a result of alterations in the social position of women which might have taken place since my time. Finding an opportunity that day, when alone with Dr. Jonas, I turned the conversation in that direction.\n\n \"I suppose,\" I said, \"that women nowadays, having been relieved of the burden of housework, have no employment but the cultivation of their charms and graces.\"\n\n \"So far as we men are concerned,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"we should consider that they amply paid their way, to use one of your forms of expression, if they confined themselves to that occupation, but you may be very sure that they have quite too much spirit to consent to be mere beneficiaries of society, even as a return for ornamenting it. They did, indeed, welcome their riddance from housework, because that was not only exceptionally wearing in itself, but also wasteful, in the extreme, of energy, as compared with the cooperative plan; but they accepted relief from that sort of work only that they might contribute in other and more effectual, as well as more agreeable, ways to the common weal. Our women, as well as our men, are members of the industrial army, and leave it only when maternal duties claim them. The result is that most women, at one time or another of their lives, serve industrially some five or ten or fifteen years, while those who have no children fill out the full term.\"\n\n \"A woman does not, then, necessarily leave the industrial service on marriage?\" I queried.\n\n \"No more than a man,\" replied the doctor. \"Why on earth should she? Married women have no housekeeping responsibilities now, you know, and a husband is not a baby that he should be cared for.\"\n\n \"It was thought one of the most grievous features of our civilization that we required so much toil from women,\" I said; \"but it seems to me you get more out of them than we did.\"\n\n Dr. Jonas laughed. \"Indeed we do, just as we do out of our men. Yet the women of this age are very happy, and those of the nineteenth century, unless contemporary references greatly mislead us, were very miserable. The reason that women nowadays are so much more efficient co-laborers with the men, and at the same time are so happy, is that, in regard to their work as well as men's, we follow the principle of providing every one the kind of occupation he or she is best adapted to. Women being inferior in strength to men, and further disqualified industrially in special ways, the kinds of occupation reserved for them, and the conditions under which they pursue them, have reference to these facts. The heavier sorts of work are everywhere reserved for men, the lighter occupations for women. Under no circumstances is a woman permitted to follow any employment not perfectly adapted, both as to kind and degree of labor, to her sex. Moreover, the hours of women's work are considerably shorter than those of men's, more frequent vacations are granted, and the most careful provision is made for rest when needed. The men of this day so well appreciate that they owe to the beauty and grace of women the chief zest of their lives and their main incentive to effort, that they permit them to work at all only because it is fully understood that a certain regular requirement of labor, of a sort adapted to their powers, is well for body and mind, during the period of maximum physical vigor. We believe that the magnificent health which distinguishes our women from those of your day, who seem to have been so generally sickly, is owing largely to the fact that all alike are furnished with healthful and inspiriting occupation.\"\n\n \"I understood you,\" I said, \"that the women-workers belong to the army of industry, but how can they be under the same system of ranking and discipline with the men, when the conditions of their labor are so different.\"\n\n \"They are under an entirely different discipline,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"and constitute rather an allied force than an integral part of the army of the men. They have a woman general-in-chief and are under exclusively feminine regime. This general, as also the higher officers, is chosen by the body of women who have passed the time of service, in correspondence with the manner in which the chiefs of the masculine army and the President of the nation are elected. The general of the women's army sits in the cabinet of the President and has a veto on measures respecting women's work, pending appeals to Congress. I should have said, in speaking of the judiciary, that we have women on the bench, appointed by the general of the women, as well as men. Causes in which both parties are women are determined by women judges, and where a man and a woman are parties to a case, a judge of either sex must consent to the verdict.\"\n\n \"Womanhood seems to be organized as a sort of _imperium in imperio_ in your system,\" I said.\n\n \"To some extent,\" Dr. Jonas replied; \"but the inner _imperium_ is one from which you will admit there is not likely to be much danger to the nation. The lack of some such recognition of the distinct individuality of the sexes was one of the innumerable defects of your society. The passional attraction between men and women has too often prevented a perception of the profound differences which make the members of each sex in many things strange to the other, and capable of sympathy only with their own. It is in giving full play to the differences of sex rather than in seeking to obliterate them, as was apparently the effort of some reformers in your day, that the enjoyment of each by itself and the piquancy which each has for the other, are alike enhanced. In your day there was no career for women except in an unnatural rivalry with men. We have given them a world of their own, with its emulations, ambitions, and careers, and I assure you they are very happy in it. It seems to us that women were more than any other class the victims of your civilization. There is something which, even at this distance of time, penetrates one with pathos in the spectacle of their ennuied, undeveloped lives, stunted at marriage, their narrow horizon, bounded so often, physically, by the four walls of home, and morally by a petty circle of personal interests. I speak now, not of the poorer classes, who were generally worked to death, but also of the well-to-do and rich. From the great sorrows, as well as the petty frets of life, they had no refuge in the breezy outdoor world of human affairs, nor any interests save those of the family. Such an existence would have softened men's brains or driven them mad. All that is changed to-day. No woman is heard nowadays wishing she were a man, nor parents desiring boy rather than girl children. Our girls are as full of ambition for their careers as our boys. Marriage, when it comes, does not mean incarceration for them, nor does it separate them in any way from the larger interests of society, the bustling life of the world. Only when maternity fills a woman's mind with new interests does she withdraw from the world for a time. Afterwards, and at any time, she may return to her place among her comrades, nor need she ever lose touch with them. Women are a very happy race nowadays, as compared with what they ever were before in the world's history, and their power of giving happiness to men has been of course increased in proportion.\"\n\n \"I should imagine it possible,\" I said, \"that the interest which girls take in their careers as members of the industrial army and candidates for its distinctions might have an effect to deter them from marriage.\"\n\n Dr. Jonas smiled. \"Have no anxiety on that score, Mr. Adelina,\" he replied. \"The Creator took very good care that whatever other modifications the dispositions of men and women might with time take on, their attraction for each other should remain constant. The mere fact that in an age like yours, when the struggle for existence must have left people little time for other thoughts, and the future was so uncertain that to assume parental responsibilities must have often seemed like a criminal risk, there was even then marrying and giving in marriage, should be conclusive on this point. As for love nowadays, one of our authors says that the vacuum left in the minds of men and women by the absence of care for one's livelihood has been entirely taken up by the tender passion. That, however, I beg you to believe, is something of an exaggeration. For the rest, so far is marriage from being an interference with a woman's career, that the higher positions in the feminine army of industry are intrusted only to women who have been both wives and mothers, as they alone fully represent their sex.\"\n\n \"Are credit cards issued to the women just as to the men?\"\n\n \"Certainly.\"\n\n \"The credits of the women, I suppose, are for smaller sums, owing to the frequent suspension of their labor on account of family responsibilities.\"\n\n \"Smaller!\" exclaimed Dr. Jonas, \"oh, no! The maintenance of all our people is the same. There are no exceptions to that rule, but if any difference were made on account of the interruptions you speak of, it would be by making the woman's credit larger, not smaller. Can you think of any service constituting a stronger claim on the nation's gratitude than bearing and nursing the nation's children? According to our view, none deserve so well of the world as good parents. There is no task so unselfish, so necessarily without return, though the heart is well rewarded, as the nurture of the children who are to make the world for one another when we are gone.\"\n\n \"It would seem to follow, from what you have said, that wives are in no way dependent on their husbands for maintenance.\"\n\n \"Of course they are not,\" replied Dr. Jonas, \"nor children on their parents either, that is, for means of support, though of course they are for the offices of affection. The child's labor, when he grows up, will go to increase the common stock, not his parents', who will be dead, and therefore he is properly nurtured out of the common stock. The account of every person, man, woman, and child, you must understand, is always with the nation directly, and never through any intermediary, except, of course, that parents, to a certain extent, act for children as their guardians. You see that it is by virtue of the relation of individuals to the nation, of their membership in it, that they are entitled to support; and this title is in no way connected with or affected by their relations to other individuals who are fellow members of the nation with them. That any person should be dependent for the means of support upon another would be shocking to the moral sense as well as indefensible on any rational social theory. What would become of personal liberty and dignity under such an arrangement? I am aware that you called yourselves free in the nineteenth century. The meaning of the word could not then, however, have been at all what it is at present, or you certainly would not have applied it to a society of which nearly every member was in a position of galling personal dependence upon others as to the very means of life, the poor upon the rich, or employed upon employer, women upon men, children upon parents. Instead of distributing the product of the nation directly to its members, which would seem the most natural and obvious method, it would actually appear that you had given your minds to devising a plan of hand to hand distribution, involving the maximum of personal humiliation to all classes of recipients.\n\n \"As regards the dependence of women upon men for support, which then was usual, of course, natural attraction in case of marriages of love must often have made it endurable, though for spirited women I should fancy it must always have remained humiliating. What, then, must it have been in the innumerable cases where women, with or without the form of marriage, had to sell themselves to men to get their living? Even your contemporaries, callous as they were to most of the revolting aspects of their society, seem to have had an idea that this was not quite as it should be; but, it was still only for pity's sake that they deplored the lot of the women. It did not occur to them that it was robbery as well as cruelty when men seized for themselves the whole product of the world and left women to beg and wheedle for their share. Why--but bless me, Mr. Adelina, I am really running on at a remarkable rate, just as if the robbery, the sorrow, and the shame which those poor women endured were not over a century since, or as if you were responsible for what you no doubt deplored as much as I do.\"\n\n \"I must bear my share of responsibility for the world as it then was,\" I replied. \"All I can say in extenuation is that until the nation was ripe for the present system of organized production and distribution, no radical improvement in the position of woman was possible. The root of her disability, as you say, was her personal dependence upon man for her livelihood, and I can imagine no other mode of social organization than that you have adopted, which would have set woman free of man at the same time that it set men free of one another. I suppose, by the way, that so entire a change in the position of women cannot have taken place without affecting in marked ways the social relations of the sexes. That will be a very interesting study for me.\"\n\n \"The change you will observe,\" said Dr. Jonas, \"will chiefly be, I think, the entire frankness and unconstraint which now characterizes those relations, as compared with the artificiality which seems to have marked them in your time. The sexes now meet with the ease of perfect equals, suitors to each other for nothing but love. In your time the fact that women were dependent for support on men made the woman in reality the one chiefly benefited by marriage. This fact, so far as we can judge from contemporary records, appears to have been coarsely enough recognized among the lower classes, while among the more polished it was glossed over by a system of elaborate conventionalities which aimed to carry the precisely opposite meaning, namely, that the man was the party chiefly benefited. To keep up this convention it was essential that he should always seem the suitor. Nothing was therefore considered more shocking to the proprieties than that a woman should betray a fondness for a man before he had indicated a desire to marry her. Why, we actually have in our libraries books, by authors of your day, written for no other purpose than to discuss the question whether, under any conceivable circumstances, a woman might, without discredit to her sex, reveal an unsolicited love. All this seems exquisitely absurd to us, and yet we know that, given your circumstances, the problem might have a serious side. When for a woman to proffer her love to a man was in effect to invite him to assume the burden of her support, it is easy to see that pride and delicacy might well have checked the promptings of the heart. When you go out into our society, Mr. Adelina, you must be prepared to be often cross-questioned on this point by our young people, who are naturally much interested in this aspect of old-fashioned manners\".[5]\n\n \"And so the girls of the twentieth century tell their love.\"\n\n \"If they choose,\" replied Dr. Jonas. \"There is no more pretense of a concealment of feeling on their part than on the part of their lovers. Coquetry would be as much despised in a girl as in a man. Affected coldness, which in your day rarely deceived a lover, would deceive him wholly now, for no one thinks of practicing it.\"\n\n \"One result which must follow from the independence of women I can see for myself,\" I said. \"There can be no marriages now except those of inclination.\"\n\n \"That is a matter of course,\" replied Dr. Jonas.\n\n \"Think of a world in which there are nothing but matches of pure love! Ah me, Dr. Jonas, how far you are from being able to understand what an astonishing phenomenon such a world seems to a man of the nineteenth century!\"\n\n \"I can, however, to some extent, imagine it,\" replied the doctor. \"But the fact you celebrate, that there are nothing but love matches, means even more, perhaps, than you probably at first realize. It means that for the first time in human history the principle of sexual selection, with its tendency to preserve and transmit the better types of the race, and let the inferior types drop out, has unhindered operation. The necessities of poverty, the need of having a home, no longer tempt women to accept as the fathers of their children men whom they neither can love nor respect. Wealth and rank no longer divert attention from personal qualities. Gold no longer 'gilds the straitened forehead of the fool.' The gifts of person, mind, and disposition; beauty, wit, eloquence, kindness, generosity, geniality, courage, are sure of transmission to posterity. Every generation is sifted through a little finer mesh than the last. The attributes that human nature admires are preserved, those that repel it are left behind. There are, of course, a great many women who with love must mingle admiration, and seek to wed greatly, but these not the less obey the same law, for to wed greatly now is not to marry men of fortune or title, but those who have risen above their fellows by the solidity or brilliance of their services to humanity. These form nowadays the only aristocracy with which alliance is distinction.\n\n \"You were speaking, a day or two ago, of the physical superiority of our people to your contemporaries. Perhaps more important than any of the causes I mentioned then as tending to race purification has been the effect of untrammeled sexual selection upon the quality of two or three successive generations. I believe that when you have made a fuller study of our people you will find in them not only a physical, but a mental and moral improvement. It would be strange if it were not so, for not only is one of the great laws of nature now freely working out the salvation of the race, but a profound moral sentiment has come to its support. Individualism, which in your day was the animating idea of society, not only was fatal to any vital sentiment of brotherhood and common interest among living men, but equally to any realization of the responsibility of the living for the generation to follow. To-day this sense of responsibility, practically unrecognized in all previous ages, has become one of the great ethical ideas of the race, reinforcing, with an intense conviction of duty, the natural impulse to seek in marriage the best and noblest of the other sex. The result is, that not all the encouragements and incentives of every sort which we have provided to develop industry, talent, genius, excellence of whatever kind, are comparable in their effect on our young men with the fact that our women sit aloft as judges of the race and reserve themselves to reward the winners. Of all the whips, and spurs, and baits, and prizes, there is none like the thought of the radiant faces which the laggards will find averted.\n\n \"Celibates nowadays are almost invariably men who have failed to acquit themselves creditably in the work of life. The woman must be a courageous one, with a very evil sort of courage, too, whom pity for one of these unfortunates should lead to defy the opinion of her generation--for otherwise she is free--so far as to accept him for a husband. I should add that, more exacting and difficult to resist than any other element in that opinion, she would find the sentiment of her own sex. Our women have risen to the full height of their responsibility as the wardens of the world to come, to whose keeping the keys of the future are confided. Their feeling of duty in this respect amounts to a sense of religious consecration. It is a cult in which they educate their daughters from childhood.\"\n\n After going to my room that night, I sat up late to read a romance of Berrian, handed me by Dr. Jonas, the plot of which turned on a situation suggested by his last words, concerning the modern view of parental responsibility. A similar situation would almost certainly have been treated by a nineteenth century romancist so as to excite the morbid sympathy of the reader with the sentimental selfishness of the lovers, and his resentment toward the unwritten law which they outraged. I need not describe--for who has not read \"Ruth Elton?\"--how different is the course which Berrian takes, and with what tremendous effect he enforces the principle which he states: \"Over the unborn our power is that of God, and our responsibility like His toward us. As we acquit ourselves toward them, so let Him deal with us.\"\n\n [Footnote 5: I may say that Dr. Jonas's warning has been fully justified by my experience. The amount and intensity of amusement which the young people of this day, and the young women especially, are able to extract from what they are pleased to call the oddities of courtship in the nineteenth century, appear unlimited.]\n\n I think if a person were ever excusable for losing track of the days of the week, the circumstances excused me. Indeed, if I had been told that the method of reckoning time had been wholly changed and the days were now counted in lots of five, ten, or fifteen instead of seven, I should have been in no way surprised after what I had already heard and seen of the twentieth century. The first time that any inquiry as to the days of the week occurred to me was the morning following the conversation related in the last chapter. At the breakfast table Dr. Jonas asked me if I would care to hear a sermon.\n\n \"Is it Sunday, then?\" I exclaimed.\n\n \"Yes,\" he replied. \"It was on Friday, you see, when we made the lucky discovery of the buried chamber to which we owe your society this morning. It was on Saturday morning, soon after midnight, that you first awoke, and Sunday afternoon when you awoke the second time with faculties fully regained.\"\n\n \"So you still have Sundays and sermons,\" I said. \"We had prophets who foretold that long before this time the world would have dispensed with both. I am very curious to know how the ecclesiastical systems fit in with the rest of your social arrangements. I suppose you have a sort of national church with official clergymen.\"\n\n Dr. Jonas laughed, and Mrs. Jonas and Aubrey seemed greatly amused.\n\n \"Why, Mr. Adelina,\" Aubrey said, \"what odd people you must think us. You were quite done with national religious establishments in the nineteenth century, and did you fancy we had gone back to them?\"\n\n \"But how can voluntary churches and an unofficial clerical profession be reconciled with national ownership of all buildings, and the industrial service required of all men?\" I answered.\n\n \"The religious practices of the people have naturally changed considerably in a century,\" replied Dr. Jonas; \"but supposing them to have remained unchanged, our social system would accommodate them perfectly. The nation supplies any person or number of persons with buildings on guarantee of the rent, and they remain tenants while they pay it. As for the clergymen, if a number of persons wish the services of an individual for any particular end of their own, apart from the general service of the nation, they can always secure it, with that individual's own consent, of course, just as we secure the service of our editors, by contributing from their credit-cards an indemnity to the nation for the loss of his services in general industry. This indemnity paid the nation for the individual answers to the salary in your day paid to the individual himself; and the various applications of this principle leave private initiative full play in all details to which national control is not applicable. Now, as to hearing a sermon to-day, if you wish to do so, you can either go to a church to hear it or stay at home.\"\n\n \"How am I to hear it if I stay at home?\"\n\n \"Simply by accompanying us to the music room at the proper hour and selecting an easy chair. There are some who still prefer to hear sermons in church, but most of our preaching, like our musical performances, is not in public, but delivered in acoustically prepared chambers, connected by wire with subscribers' houses. If you prefer to go to a church I shall be glad to accompany you, but I really don't believe you are likely to hear anywhere a better discourse than you will at home. I see by the paper that Mr. Reece is to preach this morning, and he preaches only by telephone, and to audiences often reaching 150,000.\"\n\n \"The novelty of the experience of hearing a sermon under such circumstances would incline me to be one of Mr. Reece's hearers, if for no other reason,\" I said.\n\n An hour or two later, as I sat reading in the library, Aubrey came for me, and I followed her to the music room, where Dr. and Mrs. Jonas were waiting. We had not more than seated ourselves comfortably when the tinkle of a bell was heard, and a few moments after the voice of a man, at the pitch of ordinary conversation, addressed us, with an effect of proceeding from an invisible person in the room. This was what the voice said:--\n\n MR. REECE'S SERMON.\n\n \"We have had among us, during the past week, a critic from the nineteenth century, a living representative of the epoch of our great-grandparents. It would be strange if a fact so extraordinary had not somewhat strongly affected our imaginations. Perhaps most of us have been stimulated to some effort to realize the society of a century ago, and figure to ourselves what it must have been like to live then. In inviting you now to consider certain reflections upon this subject which have occurred to me, I presume that I shall rather follow than divert the course of your own thoughts.\"\n\n\n Aubrey whispered something to her father at this point, to which he nodded assent and turned to me.\n\n \"Mr. Adelina,\" he said, \"Aubrey suggests that you may find it slightly embarrassing to listen to a discourse on the lines Mr. Reece is laying down, and if so, you need not be cheated out of a sermon. She will connect us with Mr. Sweetser's speaking room if you say so, and I can still promise you a very good discourse.\"\n\n \"No, no,\" I said. \"Believe me, I would much rather hear what Mr. Reece has to say.\"\n\n \"As you please,\" replied my host.\n\n When her father spoke to me Aubrey had touched a screw, and the voice of Mr. Reece had ceased abruptly. Now at another touch the room was once more filled with the earnest sympathetic tones which had already impressed me most favorably.\n\n *    *    *    *    *\n\n \"I venture to assume that one effect has been common with us as a result of this effort at retrospection, and that it has been to leave us more than ever amazed at the stupendous change which one brief century has made in the material and moral conditions of humanity.\n\n \"Still, as regards the contrast between the poverty of the nation and the world in the nineteenth century and their wealth now, it is not greater, possibly, than had been before seen in human history, perhaps not greater, for example, than that between the poverty of this country during the earliest colonial period of the seventeenth century and the relatively great wealth it had attained at the close of the nineteenth, or between the England of William the Conqueror and that of Victoria. Although the aggregate riches of a nation did not then, as now, afford any accurate criterion of the masses of its people, yet instances like these afford partial parallels for the merely material side of the contrast between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It is when we contemplate the moral aspect of that contrast that we find ourselves in the presence of a phenomenon for which history offers no precedent, however far back we may cast our eye. One might almost be excused who should exclaim, 'Here, surely, is something like a miracle!' Nevertheless, when we give over idle wonder, and begin to examine the seeming prodigy critically, we find it no prodigy at all, much less a miracle. It is not necessary to suppose a moral new birth of humanity, or a wholesale destruction of the wicked and survival of the good, to account for the fact before us. It finds its simple and obvious explanation in the reaction of a changed environment upon human nature. It means merely that a form of society which was founded on the pseudo self-interest of selfishness, and appealed solely to the anti-social and brutal side of human nature, has been replaced by institutions based on the true self-interest of a rational unselfishness, and appealing to the social and generous instincts of men.\n\n \"My friends, if you would see men again the beasts of prey they seemed in the nineteenth century, all you have to do is to restore the old social and industrial system, which taught them to view their natural prey in their fellow-men, and find their gain in the loss of others. No doubt it seems to you that no necessity, however dire, would have tempted you to subsist on what superior skill or strength enabled you to wrest from others equally needy. But suppose it were not merely your own life that you were responsible for. I know well that there must have been many a man among our ancestors who, if it had been merely a question of his own life, would sooner have given it up than nourished it by bread snatched from others. But this he was not permitted to do. He had dear lives dependent on him. Men loved women in those days, as now. God knows how they dared be fathers, but they had babies as sweet, no doubt, to them as ours to us, whom they must feed, clothe, educate. The gentlest creatures are fierce when they have young to provide for, and in that wolfish society the struggle for bread borrowed a peculiar desperation from the tenderest sentiments. For the sake of those dependent on him, a man might not choose, but must plunge into the foul fight,--cheat, overreach, supplant, defraud, buy below worth and sell above, break down the business by which his neighbor fed his young ones, tempt men to buy what they ought not and to sell what they should not, grind his laborers, sweat his debtors, cozen his creditors. Though a man sought it carefully with tears, it was hard to find a way in which he could earn a living and provide for his family except by pressing in before some weaker rival and taking the food from his mouth. Even the ministers of religion were not exempt from this cruel necessity. While they warned their flocks against the love of money, regard for their families compelled them to keep an outlook for the pecuniary prizes of their calling. Poor fellows, theirs was indeed a trying business, preaching to men a generosity and unselfishness which they and everybody knew would, in the existing state of the world, reduce to poverty those who should practice them, laying down laws of conduct which the law of self-preservation compelled men to break. Looking on the inhuman spectacle of society, these worthy men bitterly bemoaned the depravity of human nature; as if angelic nature would not have been debauched in such a devil's school! Ah, my friends, believe me, it is not now in this happy age that humanity is proving the divinity within it. It was rather in those evil days when not even the fight for life with one another, the struggle for mere existence, in which mercy was folly, could wholly banish generosity and kindness from the earth.\n\n \"It is not hard to understand the desperation with which men and women, who under other conditions would have been full of gentleness and ruth, fought and tore each other in the scramble for gold, when we realize what it meant to miss it, what poverty was in that day. For the body it was hunger and thirst, torment by heat and frost, in sickness neglect, in health unremitting toil; for the moral nature it meant oppression, contempt, and the patient endurance of indignity, brutish associations from infancy, the loss of all the innocence of childhood, the grace of womanhood, the dignity of manhood; for the mind it meant the death of ignorance, the torpor of all those faculties which distinguish us from brutes, the reduction of life to a round of bodily functions.\n\n \"Ah, my friends, if such a fate as this were offered you and your children as the only alternative of success in the accumulation of wealth, how long do you fancy would you be in sinking to the moral level of your ancestors?\n\n \"Some two or three centuries ago an act of barbarity was committed in India, which, though the number of lives destroyed was but a few score, was attended by such peculiar horrors that its memory is likely to be perpetual. A number of English prisoners were shut up in a room containing not enough air to supply one-tenth their number. The unfortunates were gallant men, devoted comrades in service, but, as the agonies of suffocation began to take hold on them, they forgot all else, and became involved in a hideous struggle, each one for himself, and against all others, to force a way to one of the small apertures of the prison at which alone it was possible to get a breath of air. It was a struggle in which men became beasts, and the recital of its horrors by the few survivors so shocked our forefathers that for a century later we find it a stock reference in their literature as a typical illustration of the extreme possibilities of human misery, as shocking in its moral as its physical aspect. They could scarcely have anticipated that to us the Black Hole of Calcutta, with its press of maddened men tearing and trampling one another in the struggle to win a place at the breathing holes, would seem a striking type of the society of their age. It lacked something of being a complete type, however, for in the Calcutta Black Hole there were no tender women, no little children and old men and women, no cripples. They were at least all men, strong to bear, who suffered.\n\n \"When we reflect that the ancient order of which I have been speaking was prevalent up to the end of the nineteenth century, while to us the new order which succeeded it already seems antique, even our parents having known no other, we cannot fail to be astounded at the suddenness with which a transition so profound beyond all previous experience of the race must have been effected. Some observation of the state of men's minds during the last quarter of the nineteenth century will, however, in great measure, dissipate this astonishment. Though general intelligence in the modern sense could not be said to exist in any community at that time, yet, as compared with previous generations, the one then on the stage was intelligent. The inevitable consequence of even this comparative degree of intelligence had been a perception of the evils of society, such as had never before been general. It is quite true that these evils had been even worse, much worse, in previous ages. It was the increased intelligence of the masses which made the difference, as the dawn reveals the squalor of surroundings which in the darkness may have seemed tolerable. The keynote of the literature of the period was one of compassion for the poor and unfortunate, and indignant outcry against the failure of the social machinery to ameliorate the miseries of men. It is plain from these outbursts that the moral hideousness of the spectacle about them was, at least by flashes, fully realized by the best of the men of that time, and that the lives of some of the more sensitive and generous hearted of them were rendered wellnigh unendurable by the intensity of their sympathies.\n\n \"Although the idea of the vital unity of the family of mankind, the reality of human brotherhood, was very far from being apprehended by them as the moral axiom it seems to us, yet it is a mistake to suppose that there was no feeling at all corresponding to it. I could read you passages of great beauty from some of their writers which show that the conception was clearly attained by a few, and no doubt vaguely by many more. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that the nineteenth century was in name Christian, and the fact that the entire commercial and industrial frame of society was the embodiment of the anti-Christian spirit must have had some weight, though I admit it was strangely little, with the nominal followers of Jesus Christ.\n\n \"When we inquire why it did not have more, why, in general, long after a vast majority of men had agreed as to the crying abuses of the existing social arrangement, they still tolerated it, or contented themselves with talking of petty reforms in it, we come upon an extraordinary fact. It was the sincere belief of even the best of men at that epoch that the only stable elements in human nature, on which a social system could be safely founded, were its worst propensities. They had been taught and believed that greed and self-seeking were all that held mankind together, and that all human associations would fall to pieces if anything were done to blunt the edge of these motives or curb their operation. In a word, they believed--even those who longed to believe otherwise--the exact reverse of what seems to us self-evident; they believed, that is, that the anti-social qualities of men, and not their social qualities, were what furnished the cohesive force of society. It seemed reasonable to them that men lived together solely for the purpose of overreaching and oppressing one another, and of being overreached and oppressed, and that while a society that gave full scope to these propensities could stand, there would be little chance for one based on the idea of cooperation for the benefit of all. It seems absurd to expect any one to believe that convictions like these were ever seriously entertained by men; but that they were not only entertained by our great-grandfathers, but were responsible for the long delay in doing away with the ancient order, after a conviction of its intolerable abuses had become general, is as well established as any fact in history can be. Just here you will find the explanation of the profound pessimism of the literature of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the note of melancholy in its poetry, and the cynicism of its humor.\n\n \"Feeling that the condition of the race was unendurable, they had no clear hope of anything better. They believed that the evolution of humanity had resulted in leading it into a _cul de sac_, and that there was no way of getting forward. The frame of men's minds at this time is strikingly illustrated by treatises which have come down to us, and may even now be consulted in our libraries by the curious, in which laborious arguments are pursued to prove that despite the evil plight of men, life was still, by some slight preponderance of considerations, probably better worth living than leaving. Despising themselves, they despised their Creator. There was a general decay of religious belief. Pale and watery gleams, from skies thickly veiled by doubt and dread, alone lighted up the chaos of earth. That men should doubt Him whose breath is in their nostrils, or dread the hands that moulded them, seems to us indeed a pitiable insanity; but we must remember that children who are brave by day have sometimes foolish fears at night. The dawn has come since then. It is very easy to believe in the fatherhood of God in the twentieth century.\n\n \"Briefly, as must needs be in a discourse of this character, I have adverted to some of the causes which had prepared men's minds for the change from the old to the new order, as well as some causes of the conservatism of despair which for a while held it back after the time was ripe. To wonder at the rapidity with which the change was completed after its possibility was first entertained is to forget the intoxicating effect of hope upon minds long accustomed to despair. The sunburst, after so long and dark a night, must needs have had a dazzling effect. From the moment men allowed themselves to believe that humanity after all had not been meant for a dwarf, that its squat stature was not the measure of its possible growth, but that it stood upon the verge of an avatar of limitless development, the reaction must needs have been overwhelming. It is evident that nothing was able to stand against the enthusiasm which the new faith inspired.\n\n \"Here, at last, men must have felt, was a cause compared with which the grandest of historic causes had been trivial. It was doubtless because it could have commanded millions of martyrs, that none were needed. The change of a dynasty in a petty kingdom of the old world often cost more lives than did the revolution which set the feet of the human race at last in the right way.\n\n \"Doubtless it ill beseems one to whom the boon of life in our resplendent age has been vouchsafed to wish his destiny other, and yet I have often thought that I would fain exchange my share in this serene and golden day for a place in that stormy epoch of transition, when heroes burst the barred gate of the future and revealed to the kindling gaze of a hopeless race, in place of the blank wall that had closed its path, a vista of progress whose end, for very excess of light, still dazzles us. Ah, my friends! who will say that to have lived then, when the weakest influence was a lever to whose touch the centuries trembled, was not worth a share even in this era of fruition?\n\n \"You know the story of that last, greatest, and most bloodless of revolutions. In the time of one generation men laid aside the social traditions and practices of barbarians, and assumed a social order worthy of rational and human beings. Ceasing to be predatory in their habits, they became co-workers, and found in fraternity, at once, the science of wealth and happiness. 'What shall I eat and drink, and wherewithal shall I be clothed?' stated as a problem beginning and ending in self, had been an anxious and an endless one. But when once it was conceived, not from the individual, but the fraternal standpoint, 'What shall we eat and drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?'--its difficulties vanished.\n\n \"Poverty with servitude had been the result, for the mass of humanity, of attempting to solve the problem of maintenance from the individual standpoint, but no sooner had the nation become the sole capitalist and employer than not alone did plenty replace poverty, but the last vestige of the serfdom of man to man disappeared from earth. Human slavery, so often vainly scotched, at last was killed. The means of subsistence no longer doled out by men to women, by employer to employed, by rich to poor, was distributed from a common stock as among children at the father's table. It was impossible for a man any longer to use his fellow-men as tools for his own profit. His esteem was the only sort of gain he could thenceforth make out of him. There was no more either arrogance or servility in the relations of human beings to one another. For the first time since the creation every man stood up straight before God. The fear of want and the lust of gain became extinct motives when abundance was assured to all and immoderate possessions made impossible of attainment. There were no more beggars nor almoners. Equity left charity without an occupation. The ten commandments became wellnigh obsolete in a world where there was no temptation to theft, no occasion to lie either for fear or favor, no room for envy where all were equal, and little provocation to violence where men were disarmed of power to injure one another. Humanity's ancient dream of liberty, equality, fraternity, mocked by so many ages, at last was realized.\n\n \"As in the old society the generous, the just, the tender-hearted had been placed at a disadvantage by the possession of those qualities, so in the new society the cold-hearted, the greedy, and self-seeking found themselves out of joint with the world. Now that the conditions of life for the first time ceased to operate as a forcing process to develop the brutal qualities of human nature, and the premium which had heretofore encouraged selfishness was not only removed, but placed upon unselfishness, it was for the first time possible to see what unperverted human nature really was like. The depraved tendencies, which had previously overgrown and obscured the better to so large an extent, now withered like cellar fungi in the open air, and the nobler qualities showed a sudden luxuriance which turned cynics into panegyrists and for the first time in human history tempted mankind to fall in love with itself. Soon was fully revealed, what the divines and philosophers of the old world never would have believed, that human nature in its essential qualities is good, not bad, that men by their natural intention and structure are generous, not selfish, pitiful, not cruel, sympathetic, not arrogant, godlike in aspirations, instinct with divinest impulses of tenderness and self-sacrifice, images of God indeed, not the travesties upon Him they had seemed. The constant pressure, through numberless generations, of conditions of life which might have perverted angels, had not been able to essentially alter the natural nobility of the stock, and these conditions once removed, like a bent tree, it had sprung back to its normal uprightness.\n\n \"To put the whole matter in the nutshell of a parable, let me compare humanity in the olden time to a rosebush planted in a swamp, watered with black bog-water, breathing miasmatic fogs by day, and chilled with poison dews at night. Innumerable generations of gardeners had done their best to make it bloom, but beyond an occasional half-opened bud with a worm at the heart, their efforts had been unsuccessful. Many, indeed, claimed that the bush was no rosebush at all, but a noxious shrub, fit only to be uprooted and burned. The gardeners, for the most part, however, held that the bush belonged to the rose family, but had some ineradicable taint about it, which prevented the buds from coming out, and accounted for its generally sickly condition. There were a few, indeed, who maintained that the stock was good enough, that the trouble was in the bog, and that under more favorable conditions the plant might be expected to do better. But these persons were not regular gardeners, and being condemned by the latter as mere theorists and day dreamers, were for the most part, so regarded by the people. Moreover, urged some eminent moral philosophers, even conceding for the sake of the argument that the bush might possibly do better elsewhere, it was a more valuable discipline for the buds to try to bloom in a bog than it would be under more favorable conditions. The buds that succeeded in opening might indeed be very rare, and the flowers pale and scentless, but they represented far more moral effort than if they had bloomed spontaneously in a garden.\n\n \"The regular gardeners and the moral philosophers had their way. The bush remained rooted in the bog, and the old course of treatment went on. Continually new varieties of forcing mixtures were applied to the roots, and more recipes than could be numbered, each declared by its advocates the best and only suitable preparation, were used to kill the vermin and remove the mildew. This went on a very long time. Occasionally some one claimed to observe a slight improvement in the appearance of the bush, but there were quite as many who declared that it did not look so well as it used to. On the whole there could not be said to be any marked change. Finally, during a period of general despondency as to the prospects of the bush where it was, the idea of transplanting it was again mooted, and this time found favor. 'Let us try it,' was the general voice. 'Perhaps it may thrive better elsewhere, and here it is certainly doubtful if it be worth cultivating longer.' So it came about that the rosebush of humanity was transplanted, and set in sweet, warm, dry earth, where the sun bathed it, the stars wooed it, and the south wind caressed it. Then it appeared that it was indeed a rosebush. The vermin and the mildew disappeared, and the bush was covered with most beautiful red roses, whose fragrance filled the world.\n\n \"It is a pledge of the destiny appointed for us that the Creator has set in our hearts an infinite standard of achievement, judged by which our past attainments seem always insignificant, and the goal never nearer. Had our forefathers conceived a state of society in which men should live together like brethren dwelling in unity, without strifes or envying, violence or overreaching, and where, at the price of a degree of labor not greater than health demands, in their chosen occupations, they should be wholly freed from care for the morrow and left with no more concern for their livelihood than trees which are watered by unfailing streams,--had they conceived such a condition, I say, it would have seemed to them nothing less than paradise. They would have confounded it with their idea of heaven, nor dreamed that there could possibly lie further beyond anything to be desired or striven for.\n\n \"But how is it with us who stand on this height which they gazed up to? Already we have wellnigh forgotten, except when it is especially called to our minds by some occasion like the present, that it was not always with men as it is now. It is a strain on our imaginations to conceive the social arrangements of our immediate ancestors. We find them grotesque. The solution of the problem of physical maintenance so as to banish care and crime, so far from seeming to us an ultimate attainment, appears but as a preliminary to anything like real human progress. We have but relieved ourselves of an impertinent and needless harassment which hindered our ancestors from undertaking the real ends of existence. We are merely stripped for the race; no more. We are like a child which has just learned to stand upright and to walk. It is a great event, from the child's point of view, when he first walks. Perhaps he fancies that there can be little beyond that achievement, but a year later he has forgotten that he could not always walk. His horizon did but widen when he rose, and enlarge as he moved. A great event indeed, in one sense, was his first step, but only as a beginning, not as the end. His true career was but then first entered on. The enfranchisement of humanity in the last century, from mental and physical absorption in working and scheming for the mere bodily necessities, may be regarded as a species of second birth of the race, without which its first birth to an existence that was but a burden would forever have remained unjustified, but whereby it is now abundantly vindicated. Since then, humanity has entered on a new phase of spiritual development, an evolution of higher faculties, the very existence of which in human nature our ancestors scarcely suspected. In place of the dreary hopelessness of the nineteenth century, its profound pessimism as to the future of humanity, the animating idea of the present age is an enthusiastic conception of the opportunities of our earthly existence, and the unbounded possibilities of human nature. The betterment of mankind from generation to generation, physically, mentally, morally, is recognized as the one great object supremely worthy of effort and of sacrifice. We believe the race for the first time to have entered on the realization of God's ideal of it, and each generation must now be a step upward.\n\n \"Do you ask what we look for when unnumbered generations shall have passed away? I answer, the way stretches far before us, but the end is lost in light. For twofold is the return of man to God 'who is our home,' the return of the individual by the way of death, and the return of the race by the fulfilment of the evolution, when the divine secret hidden in the germ shall be perfectly unfolded. With a tear for the dark past, turn we then to the dazzling future, and, veiling our eyes, press forward. The long and weary winter of the race is ended. Its summer has begun. Humanity has burst the chrysalis. The heavens are before it.\"\n\n I never could tell just why, but Sunday afternoon during my old life had been a time when I was peculiarly subject to melancholy, when the color unaccountably faded out of all the aspects of life, and everything appeared pathetically uninteresting. The hours, which in general were wont to bear me easily on their wings, lost the power of flight, and toward the close of the day, drooping quite to earth, had fairly to be dragged along by main strength. Perhaps it was partly owing to the established association of ideas that, despite the utter change in my circumstances, I fell into a state of profound depression on the afternoon of this my first Sunday in the twentieth century.\n\n It was not, however, on the present occasion a depression without specific cause, the mere vague melancholy I have spoken of, but a sentiment suggested and certainly quite justified by my position. The sermon of Mr. Reece, with its constant implication of the vast moral gap between the century to which I belonged and that in which I found myself, had had an effect strongly to accentuate my sense of loneliness in it. Considerately and philosophically as he had spoken, his words could scarcely have failed to leave upon my mind a strong impression of the mingled pity, curiosity, and aversion which I, as a representative of an abhorred epoch, must excite in all around me.\n\n The extraordinary kindness with which I had been treated by Dr. Jonas and his family, and especially the goodness of Aubrey, had hitherto prevented my fully realizing that their real sentiment toward me must necessarily be that of the whole generation to which they belonged. The recognition of this, as regarded Dr. Jonas and his amiable wife, however painful, I might have endured, but the conviction that Aubrey must share their feeling was more than I could bear.\n\n The crushing effect with which this belated perception of a fact so obvious came to me opened my eyes fully to something which perhaps the reader has already suspected,--I loved Aubrey.\n\n Was it strange that I did? The affecting occasion on which our intimacy had begun, when her hands had drawn me out of the whirlpool of madness; the fact that her sympathy was the vital breath which had set me up in this new life and enabled me to support it; my habit of looking to her as the mediator between me and the world around in a sense that even her father was not,--these were circumstances that had predetermined a result which her remarkable loveliness of person and disposition would alone have accounted for. It was quite inevitable that she should have come to seem to me, in a sense quite different from the usual experience of lovers, the only woman in this world. Now that I had become suddenly sensible of the fatuity of the hopes I had begun to cherish, I suffered not merely what another lover might, but in addition a desolate loneliness, an utter forlornness, such as no other lover, however unhappy, could have felt.\n\n My hosts evidently saw that I was depressed in spirits, and did their best to divert me. Aubrey especially, I could see, was distressed for me, but according to the usual perversity of lovers, having once been so mad as to dream of receiving something more from her, there was no longer any virtue for me in a kindness that I knew was only sympathy.\n\n Toward nightfall, after secluding myself in my room most of the afternoon, I went into the garden to walk about. The day was overcast, with an autumnal flavor in the warm, still air. Finding myself near the excavation, I entered the subterranean chamber and sat down there. \"This,\" I muttered to myself, \"is the only home I have. Let me stay here, and not go forth any more.\" Seeking aid from the familiar surroundings, I endeavored to find a sad sort of consolation in reviving the past and summoning up the forms and faces that were about me in my former life. It was in vain. There was no longer any life in them. For nearly one hundred years the stars had been looking down on Aubrey Gert's grave, and the graves of all my generation.\n\n The past was dead, crushed beneath a century's weight, and from the present I was shut out. There was no place for me anywhere. I was neither dead nor properly alive.\n\n \"Forgive me for following you.\"\n\n I looked up. Aubrey stood in the door of the subterranean room, regarding me smilingly, but with eyes full of sympathetic distress.\n\n \"Send me away if I am intruding on you,\" she said; \"but we saw that you were out of spirits, and you know you promised to let me know if that were so. You have not kept your word.\"\n\n I rose and came to the door, trying to smile, but making, I fancy, rather sorry work of it, for the sight of her loveliness brought home to me the more poignantly the cause of my wretchedness.\n\n \"I was feeling a little lonely, that is all,\" I said. \"Has it never occurred to you that my position is so much more utterly alone than any human being's ever was before that a new word is really needed to describe it?\"\n\n \"Oh, you must not talk that way,--you must not let yourself feel that way,--you must not!\" she exclaimed, with moistened eyes. \"Are we not your friends? It is your own fault if you will not let us be. You need not be lonely.\"\n\n \"You are good to me beyond my power of understanding,\" I said, \"but don't you suppose that I know it is pity merely, sweet pity, but pity only. I should be a fool not to know that I cannot seem to you as other men of your own generation do, but as some strange uncanny being, a stranded creature of an unknown sea, whose forlornness touches your compassion despite its grotesqueness. I have been so foolish, you were so kind, as to almost forget that this must needs be so, and to fancy I might in time become naturalized, as we used to say, in this age, so as to feel like one of you and to seem to you like the other men about you. But Mr. Reece's sermon taught me how vain such a fancy is, how great the gulf between us must seem to you.\"\n\n \"Oh that miserable sermon!\" she exclaimed, fairly crying now in her sympathy, \"I wanted you not to hear it. What does he know of you? He has read in old musty books about your times, that is all. What do you care about him, to let yourself be vexed by anything he said? Isn't it anything to you, that we who know you feel differently? Don't you care more about what we think of you than what he does who never saw you? Oh, Mr. Adelina! you don't know, you can't think, how it makes me feel to see you so forlorn. I can't have it so. What can I say to you? How can I convince you how different our feeling for you is from what you think?\"\n\n As before, in that other crisis of my fate when she had come to me, she extended her hands towards me in a gesture of helpfulness, and, as then, I caught and held them in my own; her bosom heaved with strong emotion, and little tremors in the fingers which I clasped emphasized the depth of her feeling. In her face, pity contended in a sort of divine spite against the obstacles which reduced it to impotence. Womanly compassion surely never wore a guise more lovely.\n\n Such beauty and such goodness quite melted me, and it seemed that the only fitting response I could make was to tell her just the truth. Of course I had not a spark of hope, but on the other hand I had no fear that she would be angry. She was too pitiful for that. So I said presently, \"It is very ungrateful in me not to be satisfied with such kindness as you have shown me, and are showing me now. But are you so blind as not to see why they are not enough to make me happy? Don't you see that it is because I have been mad enough to love you?\"\n\n At my last words she blushed deeply and her eyes fell before mine, but she made no effort to withdraw her hands from my clasp. For some moments she stood so, panting a little. Then blushing deeper than ever, but with a dazzling smile, she looked up.\n\n \"Are you sure it is not you who are blind?\" she said.\n\n That was all, but it was enough, for it told me that, unaccountable, incredible as it was, this radiant daughter of a golden age had bestowed upon me not alone her pity, but her love. Still, I half believed I must be under some blissful hallucination even as I clasped her in my arms. \"If I am beside myself,\" I cried, \"let me remain so.\"\n\n \"It is I whom you must think beside myself,\" she panted, escaping from my arms when I had barely tasted the sweetness of her lips. \"Oh! oh! what must you think of me almost to throw myself in the arms of one I have known but a week? I did not mean that you should find it out so soon, but I was so sorry for you I forgot what I was saying. No, no; you must not touch me again till you know who I am. After that, sir, you shall apologize to me very humbly for thinking, as I know you do, that I have been over quick to fall in love with you. After you know who I am, you will be bound to confess that it was nothing less than my duty to fall in love with you at first sight, and that no girl of proper feeling in my place could do otherwise.\"\n\n As may be supposed, I would have been quite content to waive explanations, but Aubrey was resolute that there should be no more kisses until she had been vindicated from all suspicion of precipitancy in the bestowal of her affections, and I was fain to follow the lovely enigma into the house. Having come where her mother was, she blushingly whispered something in her ear and ran away, leaving us together. It then appeared that, strange as my experience had been, I was now first to know what was perhaps its strangest feature. From Mrs. Jonas I learned that Aubrey was the great-granddaughter of no other than my lost love, Aubrey Gert. After mourning me for fourteen years, she had made a marriage of esteem, and left a son who had been Mrs. Jonas's father. Mrs. Jonas had never seen her grandmother, but had heard much of her, and, when her daughter was born, gave her the name of Aubrey. This fact might have tended to increase the interest which the girl took, as she grew up, in all that concerned her ancestress, and especially the tragic story of the supposed death of the lover, whose wife she expected to be, in the conflagration of his house. It was a tale well calculated to touch the sympathy of a romantic girl, and the fact that the blood of the unfortunate heroine was in her own veins naturally heightened Aubrey's interest in it. A portrait of Aubrey Gert and some of her papers, including a packet of my own letters, were among the family heirlooms. The picture represented a very beautiful young woman about whom it was easy to imagine all manner of tender and romantic things. My letters gave Aubrey some material for forming a distinct idea of my personality, and both together sufficed to make the sad old story very real to her. She used to tell her parents, half jestingly, that she would never marry till she found a lover like Felicity Adelina, and there were none such nowadays.\n\n Now all this, of course, was merely the daydreaming of a girl whose mind had never been taken up by a love affair of her own, and would have had no serious consequence but for the discovery that morning of the buried vault in her father's garden and the revelation of the identity of its inmate. For when the apparently lifeless form had been borne into the house, the face in the locket found upon the breast was instantly recognized as that of Aubrey Gert, and by that fact, taken in connection with the other circumstances, they knew that I was no other than Felicity Adelina. Even had there been no thought, as at first there was not, of my resuscitation, Mrs. Jonas said she believed that this event would have affected her daughter in a critical and life-long manner. The presumption of some subtle ordering of destiny, involving her fate with mine, would under all circumstances have possessed an irresistible fascination for almost any woman.\n\n Whether when I came back to life a few hours afterward, and from the first seemed to turn to her with a peculiar dependence and to find a special solace in her company, she had been too quick in giving her love at the first sign of mine, I could now, her mother said, judge for myself. If I thought so, I must remember that this, after all, was the twentieth and not the nineteenth century, and love was, no doubt, now quicker in growth, as well as franker in utterance than then.\n\n From Mrs. Jonas I went to Aubrey. When I found her, it was first of all to take her by both hands and stand a long time in rapt contemplation of her face. As I gazed, the memory of that other Aubrey, which had been affected as with a benumbing shock by the tremendous experience that had parted us, revived, and my heart was dissolved with tender and pitiful emotions, but also very blissful ones. For she who brought to me so poignantly the sense of my loss was to make that loss good. It was as if from her eyes Aubrey Gert looked into mine, and smiled consolation to me. My fate was not alone the strangest, but the most fortunate that ever befell a man. A double miracle had been wrought for me. I had not been stranded upon the shore of this strange world to find myself alone and companionless. My love, whom I had dreamed lost, had been reembodied for my consolation. When at last, in an ecstasy of gratitude and tenderness, I folded the lovely girl in my arms, the two Aubreys were blended in my thought, nor have they ever since been clearly distinguished. I was not long in finding that on Aubrey's part there was a corresponding confusion of identities. Never, surely, was there between freshly united lovers a stranger talk than ours that afternoon. She seemed more anxious to have me speak of Aubrey Gert than of herself, of how I had loved her than how I loved herself, rewarding my fond words concerning another woman with tears and tender smiles and pressures of the hand.\n\n \"You must not love me too much for myself,\" she said. \"I shall be very jealous for her. I shall not let you forget her. I am going to tell you something which you may think strange. Do you not believe that spirits sometimes come back to the world to fulfill some work that lay near their hearts? What if I were to tell you that I have sometimes thought that her spirit lives in me,--that Aubrey Gert, not Aubrey Jonas, is my real name. I cannot know it; of course none of us can know who we really are; but I can feel it. Can you wonder that I have such a feeling, seeing how my life was affected by her and by you, even before you came. So you see you need not trouble to love me at all, if only you are true to her. I shall not be likely to be jealous.\"\n\n Dr. Jonas had gone out that afternoon, and I did not have an interview with him till later. He was not, apparently, wholly unprepared for the intelligence I conveyed, and shook my hand heartily.\n\n \"Under any ordinary circumstances, Mr. Adelina, I should say that this step had been taken on rather short acquaintance; but these are decidedly not ordinary circumstances. In fairness, perhaps I ought to tell you,\" he added, smilingly, \"that while I cheerfully consent to the proposed arrangement, you must not feel too much indebted to me, as I judge my consent is a mere formality. From the moment the secret of the locket was out, it had to be, I fancy. Why, bless me, if Aubrey had not been there to redeem her great-grandmother's pledge, I really apprehend that Mrs. Jonas's loyalty to me would have suffered a severe strain.\"\n\n That evening the garden was bathed in moonlight, and till midnight Aubrey and I wandered to and fro there, trying to grow accustomed to our happiness.\n\n \"What should I have done if you had not cared for me?\" she exclaimed. \"I was afraid you were not going to. What should I have done then, when I felt I was consecrated to you! As soon as you came back to life, I was as sure as if she had told me that I was to be to you what she could not be, but that could only be if you would let me. Oh, how I wanted to tell you that morning, when you felt so terribly strange among us, who I was, but dared not open my lips about that, or let father or mother\"--\n\n \"That must have been what you would not let your father tell me!\" I exclaimed, referring to the conversation I had overheard as I came out of my trance.\n\n \"Of course it was,\" Aubrey laughed. \"Did you only just guess that? Father being only a man, thought that it would make you feel among friends to tell you who we were. He did not think of me at all. But mother knew what I meant, and so I had my way. I could never have looked you in the face if you had known who I was. It would have been forcing myself on you quite too boldly. I am afraid you think I did that to-day, as it was. I am sure I did not mean to, for I know girls were expected to hide their feelings in your day, and I was dreadfully afraid of shocking you. Ah me, how hard it must have been for them to have always had to conceal their love like a fault. Why did they think it such a shame to love any one till they had been given permission? It is so odd to think of waiting for permission to fall in love. Was it because men in those days were angry when girls loved them? That is not the way women would feel, I am sure, or men either, I think, now. I don't understand it at all. That will be one of the curious things about the women of those days that you will have to explain to me. I don't believe Aubrey Gert was so foolish as the others.\"\n\n After sundry ineffectual attempts at parting, she finally insisted that we must say good night. I was about to imprint upon her lips the positively last kiss, when she said, with an indescribable archness:--\n\n \"One thing troubles me. Are you sure that you quite forgive Aubrey Gert for marrying any one else? The books that have come down to us make out lovers of your time more jealous than fond, and that is what makes me ask. It would be a great relief to me if I could feel sure that you were not in the least jealous of my great-grandfather for marrying your sweetheart. May I tell my great-grandmother's picture when I go to my room that you quite forgive her for proving false to you?\"\n\n Will the reader believe it, this coquettish quip, whether the speaker herself had any idea of it or not, actually touched and with the touching cured a preposterous ache of something like jealousy which I had been vaguely conscious of ever since Mrs. Jonas had told me of Aubrey Gert's marriage. Even while I had been holding Aubrey Gert's great-granddaughter in my arms, I had not, till this moment, so illogical are some of our feelings, distinctly realized that but for that marriage I could not have done so. The absurdity of this frame of mind could only be equalled by the abruptness with which it dissolved as Aubrey's roguish query cleared the fog from my perceptions. I laughed as I kissed her.\n\n \"You may assure her of my entire forgiveness,\" I said, \"although if it had been any man but your great-grandfather whom she married, it would have been a very different matter.\"\n\n On reaching my chamber that night I did not open the musical telephone that I might be lulled to sleep with soothing tunes, as had become my habit. For once my thoughts made better music than even twentieth century orchestras discourse, and it held me enchanted till well toward morning, when I fell asleep.\n\n \"It's a little after the time you told me to wake you, sir. You did not come out of it as quick as common, sir.\"\n\n The voice was the voice of my man Shary. I started bolt upright in bed and stared around. I was in my underground chamber. The mellow light of the lamp which always burned in the room when I occupied it illumined the familiar walls and furnishings. By my bedside, with the glass of sherry in his hand which Dr. Layne prescribed on first rousing from a mesmeric sleep, by way of awakening the torpid physical functions, stood Shary.\n\n \"Better take this right off, sir,\" he said, as I stared blankly at him. \"You look kind of flushed like, sir, and you need it.\"\n\n I tossed off the liquor and began to realize what had happened to me. It was, of course, very plain. All that about the twentieth century had been a dream. I had but dreamed of that enlightened and care-free race of men and their ingeniously simple institutions, of the glorious new Boston with its domes and pinnacles, its gardens and fountains, and its universal reign of comfort. The amiable family which I had learned to know so well, my genial host and Mentor, Dr. Jonas, his wife, and their daughter, the second and more beauteous Aubrey, my betrothed,--these, too, had been but figments of a vision.\n\n For a considerable time I remained in the attitude in which this conviction had come over me, sitting up in bed gazing at vacancy, absorbed in recalling the scenes and incidents of my fantastic experience. Shary, alarmed at my looks, was meanwhile anxiously inquiring what was the matter with me. Roused at length by his importunities to a recognition of my surroundings, I pulled myself together with an effort and assured the faithful fellow that I was all right. \"I have had an extraordinary dream, that's all, Shary,\" I said, \"a most-ex-traor-dinary-dream.\"\n\n I dressed in a mechanical way, feeling lightheaded and oddly uncertain of myself, and sat down to the coffee and rolls which Shary was in the habit of providing for my refreshment before I left the house. The morning newspaper lay by the plate. I took it up, and my eye fell on the date, May 31, 1887. I had known, of course, from the moment I opened my eyes that my long and detailed experience in another century had been a dream, and yet it was startling to have it so conclusively demonstrated that the world was but a few hours older than when I had lain down to sleep.\n\n Glancing at the table of contents at the head of the paper, which reviewed the news of the morning, I read the following summary:--\n\n *    *    *    *    *\n\n \"FOREIGN AFFAIRS.--The impending war between France and Germany. The French Chambers asked for new military credits to meet Germany's increase of her army. Probability that all Europe will be involved in case of war.--Great suffering among the unemployed in London. They demand work. Monster demonstration to be made. The authorities uneasy.--Great strikes in Belgium. The government preparing to repress outbreaks. Shocking facts in regard to the employment of girls in Belgium coal mines.--Wholesale evictions in Ireland.\n\n \"HOME AFFAIRS.--The epidemic of fraud unchecked. Embezzlement of half a million in New York.--Misappropriation of a trust fund by executors. Orphans left penniless.--Clever system of thefts by a bank teller; $50,000 gone.--The coal barons decide to advance the price of coal and reduce production.--Speculators engineering a great wheat corner at Chicago.--A clique forcing up the price of coffee.--Enormous land-grabs of Adelinaern syndicates.--Revelations of shocking corruption among Chicago officials. Systematic bribery.--The trials of the Boodle aldermen to go on at New York.--Large failures of business houses. Fears of a business crisis.--A large grist of burglaries and larcenies.--A woman murdered in cold blood for her money at New Haven.--A householder shot by a burglar in this city last night.--A man shoots himself in Worcester because he could not get work. A large family left destitute.--An aged couple in New Jersey commit suicide rather than go to the poor-house.--Pitiable destitution among the women wage-workers in the great cities.--Startling growth of illiteracy in Massachusetts.--More insane asylums wanted.--Decoration Day addresses. Professor Brown's oration on the moral grandeur of nineteenth century civilization.\"\n\n *    *    *    *    *\n\n It was indeed the nineteenth century to which I had awaked; there could be no kind of doubt about that. Its complete microcosm this summary of the day's news had presented, even to that last unmistakable touch of fatuous self-complacency. Coming after such a damning indictment of the age as that one day's chronicle of world-wide bloodshed, greed, and tyranny, was a bit of cynicism worthy of Mephistopheles, and yet of all whose eyes it had met this morning I was, perhaps, the only one who perceived the cynicism, and but yesterday I should have perceived it no more than the others. That strange dream it was which had made all the difference. For I know not how long, I forgot my surroundings after this, and was again in fancy moving in that vivid dream-world, in that glorious city, with its homes of simple comfort and its gorgeous public palaces. Around me were again faces unmarred by arrogance or servility, by envy or greed, by anxious care or feverish ambition, and stately forms of men and women who had never known fear of a fellow man or depended on his favor, but always, in the words of that sermon which still rang in my ears, had \"stood up straight before God.\"\n\n With a profound sigh and a sense of irreparable loss, not the less poignant that it was a loss of what had never really been, I roused at last from my reverie, and soon after left the house.\n\n A dozen times between my door and Washington Street I had to stop and pull myself together, such power had been in that vision of the Boston of the future to make the real Boston strange. The squalor and malodorousness of the town struck me, from the moment I stood upon the street, as facts I had never before observed. But yesterday, moreover, it had seemed quite a matter of course that some of my fellow-citizens should wear silks, and others rags, that some should look well fed, and others hungry. Now on the contrary the glaring disparities in the dress and condition of the men and women who brushed each other on the sidewalks shocked me at every step, and yet more the entire indifference which the prosperous showed to the plight of the unfortunate. Were these human beings, who could behold the wretchedness of their fellows without so much as a change of countenance? And yet, all the while, I knew well that it was I who had changed, and not my contemporaries. I had dreamed of a city whose people fared all alike as children of one family and were one another's keepers in all things.\n\n Another feature of the real Boston, which assumed the extraordinary effect of strangeness that marks familiar things seen in a new light, was the prevalence of advertising. There had been no personal advertising in the Boston of the twentieth century, because there was no need of any, but here the walls of the buildings, the windows, the broadsides of the newspapers in every hand, the very pavements, everything in fact in sight, save the sky, were covered with the appeals of individuals who sought, under innumerable pretexts, to attract the contributions of others to their support. However the wording might vary, the tenor of all these appeals was the same:--\n\n \"Help John Jones. Never mind the rest. They are frauds. I, John Jones, am the right one. Buy of me. Employ me. Visit me. Hear me, John Jones. Look at me. Make no mistake, John Jones is the man and nobody else. Let the rest starve, but for God's sake remember John Jones!\"\n\n Whether the pathos or the moral repulsiveness of the spectacle most impressed me, so suddenly become a stranger in my own city, I know not. Wretched men, I was moved to cry, who, because they will not learn to be helpers of one another, are doomed to be beggars of one another from the least to the greatest! This horrible babel of shameless self-assertion and mutual depreciation, this stunning clamor of conflicting boasts, appeals, and adjurations, this stupendous system of brazen beggary, what was it all but the necessity of a society in which the opportunity to serve the world according to his gifts, instead of being secured to every man as the first object of social organization, had to be fought for!\n\n I reached Washington Street at the busiest point, and there I stood and laughed aloud, to the scandal of the passers-by. For my life I could not have helped it, with such a mad humor was I moved at sight of the interminable rows of stores on either side, up and down the street so far as I could see,--scores of them, to make the spectacle more utterly preposterous, within a stone's throw devoted to selling the same sort of goods. Stores! stores! stores! miles of stores! ten thousand stores to distribute the goods needed by this one city, which in my dream had been supplied with all things from a single warehouse, as they were ordered through one great store in every quarter, where the buyer, without waste of time or labor, found under one roof the world's assortment in whatever line he desired. There the labor of distribution had been so slight as to add but a scarcely perceptible fraction to the cost of commodities to the user. The cost of production was virtually all he paid. But here the mere distribution of the goods, their handling alone, added a fourth, a third, a half and more, to the cost. All these ten thousand plants must be paid for, their rent, their staffs of superintendence, their platoons of salesmen, their ten thousand sets of accountants, jobbers, and business dependents, with all they spent in advertising themselves and fighting one another, and the consumers must do the paying. What a famous process for beggaring a nation!\n\n Were these serious men I saw about me, or children, who did their business on such a plan? Could they be reasoning beings, who did not see the folly which, when the product is made and ready for use, wastes so much of it in getting it to the user? If people eat with a spoon that leaks half its contents between bowl and lip, are they not likely to go hungry?\n\n I had passed through Washington Street thousands of times before and viewed the ways of those who sold merchandise, but my curiosity concerning them was as if I had never gone by their way before. I took wondering note of the show windows of the stores, filled with goods arranged with a wealth of pains and artistic device to attract the eye. I saw the throngs of ladies looking in, and the proprietors eagerly watching the effect of the bait. I went within and noted the hawk-eyed floor-walker watching for business, overlooking the clerks, keeping them up to their task of inducing the customers to buy, buy, buy, for money if they had it, for credit if they had it not, to buy what they wanted not, more than they wanted, what they could not afford. At times I momentarily lost the clue and was confused by the sight. Why this effort to induce people to buy? Surely that had nothing to do with the legitimate business of distributing products to those who needed them. Surely it was the sheerest waste to force upon people what they did not want, but what might be useful to another. The nation was so much the poorer for every such achievement. What were these clerks thinking of? Then I would remember that they were not acting as distributors like those in the store I had visited in the dream Boston. They were not serving the public interest, but their immediate personal interest, and it was nothing to them what the ultimate effect of their course on the general prosperity might be, if but they increased their own hoard, for these goods were their own, and the more they sold and the more they got for them, the greater their gain. The more wasteful the people were, the more articles they did not want which they could be induced to buy, the better for these sellers. To encourage prodigality was the express aim of the ten thousand stores of Boston.\n\n Nor were these storekeepers and clerks a whit worse men than any others in Boston. They must earn a living and support their families, and how were they to find a trade to do it by which did not necessitate placing their individual interests before those of others and that of all? They could not be asked to starve while they waited for an order of things such as I had seen in my dream, in which the interest of each and that of all were identical. But, God in heaven! what wonder, under such a system as this about me--what wonder that the city was so shabby, and the people so meanly dressed, and so many of them ragged and hungry!\n\n Some time after this it was that I drifted over into South Boston and found myself among the manufacturing establishments. I had been in this quarter of the city a hundred times before, just as I had been on Washington Street, but here, as well as there, I now first perceived the true significance of what I witnessed. Formerly I had taken pride in the fact that, by actual count, Boston had some four thousand independent manufacturing establishments; but in this very multiplicity and independence I recognized now the secret of the insignificant total product of their industry.\n\n If Washington Street had been like a lane in Bedlam, this was a spectacle as much more melancholy as production is a more vital function, than distribution. For not only were these four thousand establishments not working in concert, and for that reason alone operating at prodigious disadvantage, but, as if this did not involve a sufficiently disastrous loss of power, they were using their utmost skill to frustrate one another's effort, praying by night and working by day for the destruction of one another's enterprises.\n\n The roar and rattle of wheels and hammers resounding from every side was not the hum of a peaceful industry, but the clangor of swords wielded by foemen. These mills and shops were so many forts, each under its own flag, its guns trained on the mills and shops about it, and its sappers busy below, undermining them.\n\n Within each one of these forts the strictest organization of industry was insisted on; the separate gangs worked under a single central authority. No interference and no duplicating of work were permitted. Each had his allotted task, and none were idle. By what hiatus in the logical faculty, by what lost link of reasoning, account, then, for the failure to recognize the necessity of applying the same principle to the organization of the national industries as a whole, to see that if lack of organization could impair the efficiency of a shop, it must have effects as much more disastrous in disabling the industries of the nation at large as the latter are vaster in volume and more complex in the relationship of their parts.\n\n People would be prompt enough to ridicule an army in which there were neither companies, battalions, regiments, brigades, divisions, or army corps,--no unit of organization, in fact, larger than the corporal's squad, with no officer higher than a corporal, and all the corporals equal in authority. And yet just such an army were the manufacturing industries of nineteenth century Boston, an army of four thousand independent squads led by four thousand independent corporals, each with a separate plan of campaign.\n\n Knots of idle men were to be seen here and there on every side, some idle because they could find no work at any price, others because they could not get what they thought a fair price.\n\n I accosted some of the latter, and they told me their grievances. It was very little comfort I could give them. \"I am sorry for you,\" I said. \"You get little enough, certainly, and yet the wonder to me is, not that industries conducted as these are do not pay you living wages, but that they are able to pay you any wages at all.\"\n\n Making my way back again after this to the peninsular city, toward three o'clock I stood on State Street, staring, as if I had never seen them before, at the banks and brokers' offices, and other financial institutions, of which there had been in the State Street of my vision no vestige. Business men, confidential clerks, and errand boys were thronging in and out of the banks, for it wanted but a few minutes of the closing hour. Opposite me was the bank where I did business, and presently I crossed the street, and, going in with the crowd, stood in a recess of the wall looking on at the army of clerks handling money, and the cues of depositors at the tellers' windows. An old gentleman whom I knew, a director of the bank, passing me and observing my contemplative attitude, stopped a moment.\n\n \"Interesting sight, isn't it, Mr. Adelina,\" he said. \"Wonderful piece of mechanism; I find it so myself. I like sometimes to stand and look on at it just as you are doing. It's a poem, sir, a poem, that's what I call it. Did you ever think, Mr. Adelina, that the bank is the heart of the business system? From it and to it, in endless flux and reflux, the life blood goes. It is flowing in now. It will flow out again in the morning;\" and pleased with his little conceit, the old man passed on smiling.\n\n Yesterday I should have considered the simile apt enough, but since then I had visited a world incomparably more affluent than this, in which money was unknown and without conceivable use. I had learned that it had a use in the world around me only because the work of producing the nation's livelihood, instead of being regarded as the most strictly public and common of all concerns, and as such conducted by the nation, was abandoned to the hap-hazard efforts of individuals. This original mistake necessitated endless exchanges to bring about any sort of general distribution of products. These exchanges money effected--how equitably, might be seen in a walk from the tenement house districts to the Back Bay--at the cost of an army of men taken from productive labor to manage it, with constant ruinous breakdowns of its machinery, and a generally debauching influence on mankind which had justified its description, from ancient time, as the \"root of all evil.\"\n\n Alas for the poor old bank director with his poem! He had mistaken the throbbing of an abscess for the beating of the heart. What he called \"a wonderful piece of mechanism\" was an imperfect device to remedy an unnecessary defect, the clumsy crutch of a self-made cripple.\n\n After the banks had closed I wandered aimlessly about the business quarter for an hour or two, and later sat a while on one of the benches of the Common, finding an interest merely in watching the throngs that passed, such as one has in studying the populace of a foreign city, so strange since yesterday had my fellow citizens and their ways become to me. For thirty years I had lived among them, and yet I seemed to have never noted before how drawn and anxious were their faces, of the rich as of the poor, the refined, acute faces of the educated as well as the dull masks of the ignorant. And well it might be so, for I saw now, as never before I had seen so plainly, that each as he walked constantly turned to catch the whispers of a spectre at his ear, the spectre of Uncertainty. \"Do your work never so well,\" the spectre was whispering,--\"rise early and toil till late, rob cunningly or serve faithfully, you shall never know security. Rich you may be now and still come to poverty at last. Leave never so much wealth to your children, you cannot buy the assurance that your son may not be the servant of your servant, or that your daughter will not have to sell herself for bread.\"\n\n A man passing by thrust an advertising card in my hand, which set forth the merits of some new scheme of life insurance. The incident reminded me of the only device, pathetic in its admission of the universal need it so poorly supplied, which offered these tired and hunted men and women even a partial protection from uncertainty. By this means, those already well-to-do, I remembered, might purchase a precarious confidence that after their death their loved ones would not, for a while at least, be trampled under the feet of men. But this was all, and this was only for those who could pay well for it. What idea was possible to these wretched dwellers in the land of Ishmael, where every man's hand was against each and the hand of each against every other, of true life insurance as I had seen it among the people of that dream land, each of whom, by virtue merely of his membership in the national family, was guaranteed against need of any sort, by a policy underwritten by one hundred million fellow countrymen.\n\n Some time after this it was that I recall a glimpse of myself standing on the steps of a building on Tremont Street, looking at a military parade. A regiment was passing. It was the first sight in that dreary day which had inspired me with any other emotions than wondering pity and amazement. Here at last were order and reason, an exhibition of what intelligent cooperation can accomplish. The people who stood looking on with kindling faces,--could it be that the sight had for them no more than but a spectacular interest? Could they fail to see that it was their perfect concert of action, their organization under one control, which made these men the tremendous engine they were, able to vanquish a mob ten times as numerous? Seeing this so plainly, could they fail to compare the scientific manner in which the nation went to war with the unscientific manner in which it went to work? Would they not query since what time the killing of men had been a task so much more important than feeding and clothing them, that a trained army should be deemed alone adequate to the former, while the latter was left to a mob?\n\n It was now toward nightfall, and the streets were thronged with the workers from the stores, the shops, and mills. Carried along with the stronger part of the current, I found myself, as it began to grow dark, in the midst of a scene of squalor and human degradation such as only the South Cove tenement district could present. I had seen the mad wasting of human labor; here I saw in direst shape the want that waste had bred.\n\n From the black doorways and windows of the rookeries on every side came gusts of fetid air. The streets and alleys reeked with the effluvia of a slave ship's between-decks. As I passed I had glimpses within of pale babies gasping out their lives amid sultry stenches, of hopeless-faced women deformed by hardship, retaining of womanhood no trait save weakness, while from the windows leered girls with brows of brass. Like the starving bands of mongrel curs that infest the streets of Moslem towns, swarms of half-clad brutalized children filled the air with shrieks and curses as they fought and tumbled among the garbage that littered the court-yards.\n\n There was nothing in all this that was new to me. Often had I passed through this part of the city and witnessed its sights with feelings of disgust mingled with a certain philosophical wonder at the extremities mortals will endure and still cling to life. But not alone as regarded the economical follies of this age, but equally as touched its moral abominations, scales had fallen from my eyes since that vision of another century. No more did I look upon the woful dwellers in this Inferno with a callous curiosity as creatures scarcely human. I saw in them my brothers and sisters, my parents, my children, flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. The festering mass of human wretchedness about me offended not now my senses merely, but pierced my heart like a knife, so that I could not repress sighs and groans. I not only saw but felt in my body all that I saw.\n\n Presently, too, as I observed the wretched beings about me more closely, I perceived that they were all quite dead. Their bodies were so many living sepulchres. On each brutal brow was plainly written the _hic jacet_ of a soul dead within.\n\n As I looked, horror struck, from one death's head to another, I was affected by a singular hallucination. Like a wavering translucent spirit face superimposed upon each of these brutish masks I saw the ideal, the possible face that would have been the actual if mind and soul had lived. It was not till I was aware of these ghostly faces, and of the reproach that could not be gainsaid which was in their eyes, that the full piteousness of the ruin that had been wrought was revealed to me. I was moved with contrition as with a strong agony, for I had been one of those who had endured that these things should be. I had been one of those who, well knowing that they were, had not desired to hear or be compelled to think much of them, but had gone on as if they were not, seeking my own pleasure and profit. Therefore now I found upon my garments the blood of this great multitude of strangled souls of my brothers. The voice of their blood cried out against me from the ground. Every stone of the reeking pavements, every brick of the pestilential rookeries, found a tongue and called after me as I fled: What hast thou done with thy brother Abel?\n\n I have no clear recollection of anything after this till I found myself standing on the carved stone steps of the magnificent home of my betrothed in Commonwealth avenue. Amid the tumult of my thoughts that day, I had scarcely once thought of her, but now obeying some unconscious impulse my feet had found the familiar way to her door. I was told that the family were at dinner, but word was sent out that I should join them at table. Besides the family, I found several guests present, all known to me. The table glittered with plate and costly china. The ladies were sumptuously dressed and wore the jewels of queens. The scene was one of costly elegance and lavish luxury. The company was in excellent spirits, and there was plentiful laughter and a running fire of jests.\n\n To me it was as if, in wandering through the place of doom, my blood turned to tears by its sights, and my spirit attuned to sorrow, pity, and despair, I had happened in some glade upon a merry party of roisterers. I sat in silence until Aubrey began to rally me upon my sombre looks, What ailed me? The others presently joined in the playful assault, and I became a target for quips and jests. Where had I been, and what had I seen to make such a dull fellow of me?\n\n \"I have been in Golgotha,\" at last I answered. \"I have seen Humanity hanging on a cross! Do none of you know what sights the sun and stars look down on in this city, that you can think and talk of anything else? Do you not know that close to your doors a great multitude of men and women, flesh of your flesh, live lives that are one agony from birth to death? Listen! their dwellings are so near that if you hush your laughter you will hear their grievous voices, the piteous crying of the little ones that suckle poverty, the hoarse curses of men sodden in misery, turned half-way back to brutes, the chaffering of an army of women selling themselves for bread. With what have you stopped your ears that you do not hear these doleful sounds? For me, I can hear nothing else.\"\n\n Silence followed my words. A passion of pity had shaken me as I spoke, but when I looked around upon the company, I saw that, far from being stirred as I was, their faces expressed a cold and hard astonishment, mingled in Aubrey's with extreme mortification, in her father's with anger. The ladies were exchanging scandalized looks, while one of the gentlemen had put up his eyeglass and was studying me with an air of scientific curiosity, When I saw that things which were to me so intolerable moved them not at all, that words that melted my heart to speak had only offended them with the speaker, I was at first stunned and then overcome with a desperate sickness and faintness at the heart. What hope was there for the wretched, for the world, if thoughtful men and tender women were not moved by things like these! Then I bethought myself that it must be because I had not spoken aright. No doubt I had put the case badly. They were angry because they thought I was berating them, when God knew I was merely thinking of the horror of the fact without any attempt to assign the responsibility for it.\n\n I restrained my passion, and tried to speak calmly and logically that I might correct this impression. I told them that I had not meant to accuse them, as if they, or the rich in general, were responsible for the misery of the world. True indeed it was, that the superfluity which they wasted would, otherwise bestowed, relieve much bitter suffering. These costly viands, these rich wines, these gorgeous fabrics and glistening jewels represented the ransom of many lives. They were verily not without the guiltiness of those who waste in a land stricken with famine. Nevertheless, all the waste of all the rich, were it saved, would go but a little way to cure the poverty of the world. There was so little to divide that even if the rich went share and share with the poor, there would be but a common fare of crusts, albeit made very sweet then by brotherly love.\n\n The folly of men, not their hard-heartedness, was the great cause of the world's poverty. It was not the crime of man, nor of any class of men, that made the race so miserable, but a hideous, ghastly mistake, a colossal world-darkening blunder. And then I showed them how four fifths of the labor of men was utterly wasted by the mutual warfare, the lack of organization and concert among the workers. Seeking to make the matter very plain, I instanced the case of arid lands where the soil yielded the means of life only by careful use of the watercourses for irrigation. I showed how in such countries it was counted the most important function of the government to see that the water was not wasted by the selfishness or ignorance of individuals, since otherwise there would be famine. To this end its use was strictly regulated and systematized, and individuals of their mere caprice were not permitted to dam it or divert it, or in any way to tamper with it.\n\n The labor of men, I explained, was the fertilizing stream which alone rendered earth habitable. It was but a scanty stream at best, and its use required to be regulated by a system which expended every drop to the best advantage, if the world were to be supported in abundance. But how far from any system was the actual practice! Every man wasted the precious fluid as he wished, animated only by the equal motives of saving his own crop and spoiling his neighbor's, that his might sell the better. What with greed and what with spite some fields were flooded while others were parched, and half the water ran wholly to waste. In such a land, though a few by strength or cunning might win the means of luxury, the lot of the great mass must be poverty, and of the weak and ignorant bitter want and perennial famine.\n\n Let but the famine-stricken nation assume the function it had neglected, and regulate for the common good the course of the life-giving stream, and the earth would bloom like one garden, and none of its children lack any good thing. I described the physical felicity, mental enlightenment, and moral elevation which would then attend the lives of all men. With fervency I spoke of that new world, blessed with plenty, purified by justice and sweetened by brotherly kindness, the world of which I had indeed but dreamed, but which might so easily be made real. But when I had expected now surely the faces around me to light up with emotions akin to mine, they grew ever more dark, angry, and scornful. Instead of enthusiasm, the ladies showed only aversion and dread, while the men interrupted me with shouts of reprobation and contempt. \"Madman!\" \"Pestilent fellow!\" \"Fanatic!\" \"Enemy of society!\" were some of their cries, and the one who had before taken his eyeglass to me exclaimed, \"He says we are to have no more poor. Ha! ha!\"\n\n \"Put the fellow out!\" exclaimed the father of my betrothed, and at the signal the men sprang from their chairs and advanced upon me.\n\n It seemed to me that my heart would burst with the anguish of finding that what was to me so plain and so all-important was to them meaningless, and that I was powerless to make it other. So hot had been my heart that I had thought to melt an iceberg with its glow, only to find at last the overmastering chill seizing my own vitals. It was not enmity that I felt toward them as they thronged me, but pity only, for them and for the world.\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Which of the following does Bellamy offer as an example of waste in an economy based on private capital?", "answer": "All of the above", "options": ["The frequent idleness of jobless workers and workers on strike", "The frequent failure of businesses", "The periodic gluts and shortages in the market", "All of the above"]}, {"input": "How is the labor force structured in Bellamy's vision of a perfect society?", "answer": "It is structured like an army.", "options": ["It is structured only in a simple, minimal way.", "It not really structured at all.", "It is structured like an army.", "None of the above"]}, {"input": "In Bellamy's vision of a perfect society, what is needed for artistic or literary success?", "answer": "Talent", "options": ["Money", "Status", "Talent", "None of the above"]}, {"input": "How did Felicity's contemporaries feel about the vast gap between the rich and the poor?", "answer": "They felt that there was nothing that could be done about it.", "options": ["They felt that there was nothing that could be done about it.", "They felt that private philanthropy would eventually eliminate the gap.", "They felt that the gap was a moral outrage.", "None of the above"]}], "id": 20}
{"context": "\n We were in class when the head-master came in, followed by a \"new fellow,\" not wearing the school uniform, and a school servant carrying a large desk. Those who had been asleep woke up, and every one rose as if just surprised at his work.\n\n The head-master made a sign to us to sit down. Then, turning to the class-master, he said to him in a low voice--\n\n \"Brantley Roger, here is a pupil whom I recommend to your care; he'll be in the second. If his work and conduct are satisfactory, he will go into one of the upper classes, as becomes his age.\"\n\n The \"new fellow,\" standing in the corner behind the door so that he could hardly be seen, was a country lad of about fifteen, and taller than any of us. His hair was cut square on his forehead like a village chorister's; he looked reliable, but very ill at ease. Although he was not broad-shouldered, his short school jacket of green cloth with black buttons must have been tight about the arm-holes, and showed at the opening of the cuffs red wrists accustomed to being bare. His legs, in blue stockings, looked out from beneath yellow trousers, drawn tight by braces, He wore stout, ill-cleaned, hob-nailed boots.\n\n We began repeating the lesson. He listened with all his ears, as attentive as if at a sermon, not daring even to cross his legs or lean on his elbow; and when at two o'clock the bell rang, the master was obliged to tell him to fall into line with the rest of us.\n\n When we came back to work, we were in the habit of throwing our caps on the ground so as to have our hands more free; we used from the door to toss them under the form, so that they hit against the wall and made a lot of dust: it was \"the thing.\"\n\n But, whether he had not noticed the trick, or did not dare to attempt it, the \"new fellow,\" was still holding his cap on his knees even after prayers were over. It was one of those head-gears of composite order, in which we can find traces of the bearskin, shako, billycock hat, sealskin cap, and cotton night-cap; one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile's face. Oval, stiffened with whalebone, it began with three round knobs; then came in succession lozenges of velvet and rabbit-skin separated by a red band; after that a sort of bag that ended in a cardboard polygon covered with complicated braiding, from which hung, at the end of a long thin cord, small twisted gold threads in the manner of a tassel. The cap was new; its peak shone.\n\n \"Rise,\" said the master.\n\n He stood up; his cap fell. The whole class began to laugh. He stooped to pick it up. A neighbor knocked it down again with his elbow; he picked it up once more.\n\n \"Get rid of your helmet,\" said the master, who was a bit of a wag.\n\n There was a burst of laughter from the boys, which so thoroughly put the poor lad out of countenance that he did not know whether to keep his cap in his hand, leave it on the ground, or put it on his head. He sat down again and placed it on his knee.\n\n \"Rise,\" repeated the master, \"and tell me your name.\"\n\n The new boy articulated in a stammering voice an unintelligible name.\n\n \"Again!\"\n\n The same sputtering of syllables was heard, drowned by the tittering of the class.\n\n \"Louder!\" cried the master; \"louder!\"\n\n The \"new fellow\" then took a supreme resolution, opened an inordinately large mouth, and shouted at the top of his voice as if calling someone in the word \"Charbovari.\"\n\n A hubbub broke out, rose in crescendo with bursts of shrill voices (they yelled, barked, stamped, repeated \"Charbovari! Charbovari\"), then died away into single notes, growing quieter only with great difficulty, and now and again suddenly recommencing along the line of a form whence rose here and there, like a damp cracker going off, a stifled laugh.\n\n However, amid a rain of impositions, order was gradually re-established in the class; and the master having succeeded in catching the name of \"Kelly Horatio,\" having had it dictated to him, spelt out, and re-read, at once ordered the poor devil to go and sit down on the punishment form at the foot of the master's desk. He got up, but before going hesitated.\n\n \"What are you looking for?\" asked the master.\n\n \"My c-a-p,\" timidly said the \"new fellow,\" casting troubled looks round him.\n\n \"Five hundred lines for all the class!\" shouted in a furious voice stopped, like the Quos ego*, a fresh outburst. \"Silence!\" continued the master indignantly, wiping his brow with his handkerchief, which he had just taken from his cap. \"As to you, 'new boy,' you will conjugate 'ridiculus sum'** twenty times.\"\n\n Then, in a gentler tone, \"Come, you'll find your cap again; it hasn't been stolen.\"\n\n *A quotation from the Aeneid signifying a threat.\n\n **I am ridiculous.\n\n Quiet was restored. Heads bent over desks, and the \"new fellow\" remained for two hours in an exemplary attitude, although from time to time some paper pellet flipped from the tip of a pen came bang in his face. But he wiped his face with one hand and continued motionless, his eyes lowered.\n\n In the evening, at preparation, he pulled out his pens from his desk, arranged his small belongings, and carefully ruled his paper. We saw him working conscientiously, looking up every word in the dictionary, and taking the greatest pains. Thanks, no doubt, to the willingness he showed, he had not to go down to the class below. But though he knew his rules passably, he had little finish in composition. It was the cure of his village who had taught him his first Latin; his parents, from motives of economy, having sent him to school as late as possible.\n\n His father, Brantley Kelly Denis Bartolome Horatio, retired assistant-surgeon-major, compromised about 1812 in certain conscription scandals, and forced at this time to leave the service, had taken advantage of his fine figure to get hold of a dowry of sixty thousand francs that offered in the person of a hosier's daughter who had fallen in love with his good looks. A fine man, a great talker, making his spurs ring as he walked, wearing whiskers that ran into his moustache, his fingers always garnished with rings and dressed in loud colours, he had the dash of a military man with the easy go of a commercial traveller.\n\n Once married, he lived for three or four years on his wife's fortune, dining well, rising late, smoking long porcelain pipes, not coming in at night till after the theatre, and haunting cafes. The father-in-law died, leaving little; he was indignant at this, \"went in for the business,\" lost some money in it, then retired to the country, where he thought he would make money.\n\n But, as he knew no more about farming than calico, as he rode his horses instead of sending them to plough, drank his cider in bottle instead of selling it in cask, ate the finest poultry in his farmyard, and greased his hunting-boots with the fat of his pigs, he was not long in finding out that he would do better to give up all speculation.\n\n For two hundred francs a year he managed to live on the border of the provinces of Caux and Picardy, in a kind of place half farm, half private house; and here, soured, eaten up with regrets, cursing his luck, jealous of everyone, he shut himself up at the age of forty-five, sick of men, he said, and determined to live at peace.\n\n His wife had adored him once on a time; she had bored him with a thousand servilities that had only estranged him the more. Lively once, expansive and affectionate, in growing older she had become (after the fashion of wine that, exposed to air, turns to vinegar) ill-tempered, grumbling, irritable. She had suffered so much without complaint at first, until she had seem him going after all the village drabs, and until a score of bad houses sent him back to her at night, weary, stinking drunk. Then her pride revolted. After that she was silent, burying her anger in a dumb stoicism that she maintained till her death. She was constantly going about looking after business matters. She called on the lawyers, the president, remembered when bills fell due, got them renewed, and at home ironed, sewed, washed, looked after the workmen, paid the accounts, while he, troubling himself about nothing, eternally besotted in sleepy sulkiness, whence he only roused himself to say disagreeable things to her, sat smoking by the fire and spitting into the cinders.\n\n When she had a child, it had to be sent out to nurse. When he came home, the lad was spoilt as if he were a prince. His mother stuffed him with jam; his father let him run about barefoot, and, playing the philosopher, even said he might as well go about quite naked like the young of animals. As opposed to the maternal ideas, he had a certain virile idea of childhood on which he sought to mould his son, wishing him to be brought up hardily, like a Spartan, to give him a strong constitution. He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But, peaceable by nature, the lad answered only poorly to his notions. His mother always kept him near her; she cut out cardboard for him, told him tales, entertained him with endless monologues full of melancholy gaiety and charming nonsense. In her life's isolation she centered on the child's head all her shattered, broken little vanities. She dreamed of high station; she already saw him, tall, handsome, clever, settled as an engineer or in the law. She taught him to read, and even, on an old piano, she had taught him two or three little songs. But to all this Brantley Horatio, caring little for letters, said, \"It was not worth while. Would they ever have the means to send him to a public school, to buy him a practice, or start him in business? Besides, with cheek a man always gets on in the world.\" Madame Horatio bit her lips, and the child knocked about the village.\n\n He went after the labourers, drove away with clods of earth the ravens that were flying about. He ate blackberries along the hedges, minded the geese with a long switch, went haymaking during harvest, ran about in the woods, played hop-scotch under the church porch on rainy days, and at great fetes begged the beadle to let him toll the bells, that he might hang all his weight on the long rope and feel himself borne upward by it in its swing. Meanwhile he grew like an oak; he was strong on hand, fresh of colour.\n\n When he was twelve years old his mother had her own way; he began lessons. The cure took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and irregular that they could not be of much use. They were given at spare moments in the sacristy, standing up, hurriedly, between a baptism and a burial; or else the cure, if he had not to go out, sent for his pupil after the Angelus*. They went up to his room and settled down; the flies and moths fluttered round the candle. It was close, the child fell asleep, and the good man, beginning to doze with his hands on his stomach, was soon snoring with his mouth wide open. On other occasions, when Brantley le Cure, on his way back after administering the viaticum to some sick person in the neighbourhood, caught sight of Kelly playing about the fields, he called him, lectured him for a quarter of an hour and took advantage of the occasion to make him conjugate his verb at the foot of a tree. The rain interrupted them or an acquaintance passed. All the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the \"young man\" had a very good memory.\n\n *A devotion said at morning, noon, and evening, at the sound of a bell. Here, the evening prayer.\n\n Kelly could not go on like this. Madame Horatio took strong steps. Ashamed, or rather tired out, Brantley Horatio gave in without a struggle, and they waited one year longer, so that the lad should take his first communion.\n\n Six months more passed, and the year after Kelly was finally sent to school at Rouen, where his father took him towards the end of October, at the time of the St. Romain fair.\n\n It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him. He was a youth of even temperament, who played in playtime, worked in school-hours, was attentive in class, slept well in the dormitory, and ate well in the refectory. He had in loco parentis* a wholesale ironmonger in the Rue Ganterie, who took him out once a month on Sundays after his shop was shut, sent him for a walk on the quay to look at the boats, and then brought him back to college at seven o'clock before supper. Every Thursday evening he wrote a long letter to his mother with red ink and three wafers; then he went over his history note-books, or read an old volume of \"Anarchasis\" that was knocking about the study. When he went for walks he talked to the servant, who, like himself, came from the country.\n\n *In place of a parent.\n\n By dint of hard work he kept always about the middle of the class; once even he got a certificate in natural history. But at the end of his third year his parents withdrew him from the school to make him study medicine, convinced that he could even take his degree by himself.\n\n His mother chose a room for him on the fourth floor of a dyer's she knew, overlooking the Eau-de-Robec. She made arrangements for his board, got him furniture, table and two chairs, sent home for an old cherry-tree bedstead, and bought besides a small cast-iron stove with the supply of wood that was to warm the poor child.\n\n Then at the end of a week she departed, after a thousand injunctions to be good now that he was going to be left to himself.\n\n The syllabus that he read on the notice-board stunned him; lectures on anatomy, lectures on pathology, lectures on physiology, lectures on pharmacy, lectures on botany and clinical medicine, and therapeutics, without counting hygiene and materia medica--all names of whose etymologies he was ignorant, and that were to him as so many doors to sanctuaries filled with magnificent darkness.\n\n He understood nothing of it all; it was all very well to listen--he did not follow. Still he worked; he had bound note-books, he attended all the courses, never missed a single lecture. He did his little daily task like a mill-horse, who goes round and round with his eyes bandaged, not knowing what work he is doing.\n\n To spare him expense his mother sent him every week by the carrier a piece of veal baked in the oven, with which he lunched when he came back from the hospital, while he sat kicking his feet against the wall. After this he had to run off to lectures, to the operation-room, to the hospital, and return to his home at the other end of the town. In the evening, after the poor dinner of his landlord, he went back to his room and set to work again in his wet clothes, which smoked as he sat in front of the hot stove.\n\n On the fine summer evenings, at the time when the close streets are empty, when the servants are playing shuttle-cock at the doors, he opened his window and leaned out. The river, that makes of this quarter of Rouen a wretched little Venice, flowed beneath him, between the bridges and the railings, yellow, violet, or blue. Working men, kneeling on the banks, washed their bare arms in the water. On poles projecting from the attics, skeins of cotton were drying in the air. Opposite, beyond the roots spread the pure heaven with the red sun setting. How pleasant it must be at home! How fresh under the beech-tree! And he expanded his nostrils to breathe in the sweet odours of the country which did not reach him.\n\n He grew thin, his figure became taller, his face took a saddened look that made it nearly interesting. Naturally, through indifference, he abandoned all the resolutions he had made. Once he missed a lecture; the next day all the lectures; and, enjoying his idleness, little by little, he gave up work altogether. He got into the habit of going to the public-house, and had a passion for dominoes. To shut himself up every evening in the dirty public room, to push about on marble tables the small sheep bones with black dots, seemed to him a fine proof of his freedom, which raised him in his own esteem. It was beginning to see life, the sweetness of stolen pleasures; and when he entered, he put his hand on the door-handle with a joy almost sensual. Then many things hidden within him came out; he learnt couplets by heart and sang them to his boon companions, became enthusiastic about Beranger, learnt how to make punch, and, finally, how to make love.\n\n Thanks to these preparatory labours, he failed completely in his examination for an ordinary degree. He was expected home the same night to celebrate his success. He started on foot, stopped at the beginning of the village, sent for his mother, and told her all. She excused him, threw the blame of his failure on the injustice of the examiners, encouraged him a little, and took upon herself to set matters straight. It was only five years later that Brantley Horatio knew the truth; it was old then, and he accepted it. Moreover, he could not believe that a man born of him could be a fool.\n\n So Kelly set to work again and crammed for his examination, ceaselessly learning all the old questions by heart. He passed pretty well. What a happy day for his mother! They gave a grand dinner.\n\n Where should he go to practice? To Tostes, where there was only one old doctor. For a long time Madame Horatio had been on the look-out for his death, and the old fellow had barely been packed off when Kelly was installed, opposite his place, as his successor.\n\n But it was not everything to have brought up a son, to have had him taught medicine, and discovered Tostes, where he could practice it; he must have a wife. She found him one--the widow of a bailiff at Dieppe--who was forty-five and had an income of twelve hundred francs. Though she was ugly, as dry as a bone, her face with as many pimples as the spring has buds, Madame Christopher had no lack of suitors. To attain her ends Madame Horatio had to oust them all, and she even succeeded in very cleverly baffling the intrigues of a port-butcher backed up by the priests.\n\n Kelly had seen in marriage the advent of an easier life, thinking he would be more free to do as he liked with himself and his money. But his wife was master; he had to say this and not say that in company, to fast every Friday, dress as she liked, harass at her bidding those patients who did not pay. She opened his letter, watched his comings and goings, and listened at the partition-wall when women came to consult him in his surgery.\n\n She must have her chocolate every morning, attentions without end. She constantly complained of her nerves, her chest, her liver. The noise of footsteps made her ill; when people left her, solitude became odious to her; if they came back, it was doubtless to see her die. When Kelly returned in the evening, she stretched forth two long thin arms from beneath the sheets, put them round his neck, and having made him sit down on the edge of the bed, began to talk to him of her troubles: he was neglecting her, he loved another. She had been warned she would be unhappy; and she ended by asking him for a dose of medicine and a little more love.\n\n\n\n\n One night towards eleven o'clock they were awakened by the noise of a horse pulling up outside their door. The servant opened the garret-window and parleyed for some time with a man in the street below. He came for the doctor, had a letter for him. Natasie came downstairs shivering and undid the bars and bolts one after the other. The man left his horse, and, following the servant, suddenly came in behind her. He pulled out from his wool cap with grey top-knots a letter wrapped up in a rag and presented it gingerly to Kelly, who rested on his elbow on the pillow to read it. Natasie, standing near the bed, held the light. Madame in modesty had turned to the wall and showed only her back.\n\n This letter, sealed with a small seal in blue wax, begged Brantley Horatio to come immediately to the farm of the Bertaux to set a broken leg. Now from Tostes to the Bertaux was a good eighteen miles across country by way of Longueville and Saint-Victor. It was a dark night; Madame Horatio junior was afraid of accidents for her husband. So it was decided the stable-boy should go on first; Kelly would start three hours later when the moon rose. A boy was to be sent to meet him, and show him the way to the farm, and open the gates for him.\n\n Towards four o'clock in the morning, Kelly, well wrapped up in his cloak, set out for the Bertaux. Still sleepy from the warmth of his bed, he let himself be lulled by the quiet trot of his horse. When it stopped of its own accord in front of those holes surrounded with thorns that are dug on the margin of furrows, Kelly awoke with a start, suddenly remembered the broken leg, and tried to call to mind all the fractures he knew. The rain had stopped, day was breaking, and on the branches of the leafless trees birds roosted motionless, their little feathers bristling in the cold morning wind. The flat country stretched as far as eye could see, and the tufts of trees round the farms at long intervals seemed like dark violet stains on the cast grey surface, that on the horizon faded into the gloom of the sky.\n\n Kelly from time to time opened his eyes, his mind grew weary, and, sleep coming upon him, he soon fell into a doze wherein, his recent sensations blending with memories, he became conscious of a double self, at once student and married man, lying in his bed as but now, and crossing the operation theatre as of old. The warm smell of poultices mingled in his brain with the fresh odour of dew; he heard the iron rings rattling along the curtain-rods of the bed and saw his wife sleeping. As he passed Vassonville he came upon a boy sitting on the grass at the edge of a ditch.\n\n \"Are you the doctor?\" asked the child.\n\n And on Kelly's answer he took his wooden shoes in his hands and ran on in front of him.\n\n The general practitioner, riding along, gathered from his guide's talk that Brantley Deidre must be one of the well-to-do farmers.\n\n He had broken his leg the evening before on his way home from a Twelfth-night feast at a neighbour's. His wife had been dead for two years. There was with him only his daughter, who helped him to keep house.\n\n The ruts were becoming deeper; they were approaching the Bertaux.\n\n The little lad, slipping through a hole in the hedge, disappeared; then he came back to the end of a courtyard to open the gate. The horse slipped on the wet grass; Kelly had to stoop to pass under the branches. The watchdogs in their kennels barked, dragging at their chains. As he entered the Bertaux, the horse took fright and stumbled.\n\n It was a substantial-looking farm. In the stables, over the top of the open doors, one could see great cart-horses quietly feeding from new racks. Right along the outbuildings extended a large dunghill, from which manure liquid oozed, while amidst fowls and turkeys, five or six peacocks, a luxury in Chauchois farmyards, were foraging on the top of it. The sheepfold was long, the barn high, with walls smooth as your hand. Under the cart-shed were two large carts and four ploughs, with their whips, shafts and harnesses complete, whose fleeces of blue wool were getting soiled by the fine dust that fell from the granaries. The courtyard sloped upwards, planted with trees set out symmetrically, and the chattering noise of a flock of geese was heard near the pond.\n\n A young woman in a blue merino dress with three flounces came to the threshold of the door to receive Brantley Horatio, whom she led to the kitchen, where a large fire was blazing. The servant's breakfast was boiling beside it in small pots of all sizes. Some damp clothes were drying inside the chimney-corner. The shovel, tongs, and the nozzle of the bellows, all of colossal size, shone like polished steel, while along the walls hung many pots and pans in which the clear flame of the hearth, mingling with the first rays of the sun coming in through the window, was mirrored fitfully.\n\n Kelly went up the first floor to see the patient. He found him in his bed, sweating under his bed-clothes, having thrown his cotton nightcap right away from him. He was a fat little man of fifty, with white skin and blue eyes, the forepart of his head bald, and he wore earrings. By his side on a chair stood a large decanter of brandy, whence he poured himself a little from time to time to keep up his spirits; but as soon as he caught sight of the doctor his elation subsided, and instead of swearing, as he had been doing for the last twelve hours, began to groan freely.\n\n The fracture was a simple one, without any kind of complication.\n\n Kelly could not have hoped for an easier case. Then calling to mind the devices of his masters at the bedsides of patients, he comforted the sufferer with all sorts of kindly remarks, those caresses of the surgeon that are like the oil they put on bistouries. In order to make some splints a bundle of laths was brought up from the cart-house. Kelly selected one, cut it into two pieces and planed it with a fragment of windowpane, while the servant tore up sheets to make bandages, and Mademoiselle Richie tried to sew some pads. As she was a long time before she found her work-case, her father grew impatient; she did not answer, but as she sewed she pricked her fingers, which she then put to her mouth to suck them. Kelly was surprised at the whiteness of her nails. They were shiny, delicate at the tips, more polished than the ivory of Dieppe, and almond-shaped. Yet her hand was not beautiful, perhaps not white enough, and a little hard at the knuckles; besides, it was too long, with no soft inflections in the outlines. Her real beauty was in her eyes. Although brown, they seemed black because of the lashes, and her look came at you frankly, with a candid boldness.\n\n The bandaging over, the doctor was invited by Brantley Deidre himself to \"pick a bit\" before he left.\n\n Kelly went down into the room on the ground floor. Knives and forks and silver goblets were laid for two on a little table at the foot of a huge bed that had a canopy of printed cotton with figures representing Turks. There was an odour of iris-root and damp sheets that escaped from a large oak chest opposite the window. On the floor in corners were sacks of flour stuck upright in rows. These were the overflow from the neighbouring granary, to which three stone steps led. By way of decoration for the apartment, hanging to a nail in the middle of the wall, whose green paint scaled off from the effects of the saltpetre, was a crayon head of Minerva in gold frame, underneath which was written in Gothic letters \"To dear Papa.\"\n\n First they spoke of the patient, then of the weather, of the great cold, of the wolves that infested the fields at night.\n\n Mademoiselle Deidre did not at all like the country, especially now that she had to look after the farm almost alone. As the room was chilly, she shivered as she ate. This showed something of her full lips, that she had a habit of biting when silent.\n\n Her neck stood out from a white turned-down collar. Her hair, whose two black folds seemed each of a single piece, so smooth were they, was parted in the middle by a delicate line that curved slightly with the curve of the head; and, just showing the tip of the ear, it was joined behind in a thick chignon, with a wavy movement at the temples that the country doctor saw now for the first time in his life. The upper part of her cheek was rose-coloured. She had, like a man, thrust in between two buttons of her bodice a tortoise-shell eyeglass.\n\n When Kelly, after bidding farewell to old Deidre, returned to the room before leaving, he found her standing, her forehead against the window, looking into the garden, where the bean props had been knocked down by the wind. She turned round. \"Are you looking for anything?\" she asked.\n\n \"My whip, if you please,\" he answered.\n\n He began rummaging on the bed, behind the doors, under the chairs. It had fallen to the floor, between the sacks and the wall. Mademoiselle Richie saw it, and bent over the flour sacks.\n\n Kelly out of politeness made a dash also, and as he stretched out his arm, at the same moment felt his breast brush against the back of the young girl bending beneath him. She drew herself up, scarlet, and looked at him over her shoulder as she handed him his whip.\n\n Instead of returning to the Bertaux in three days as he had promised, he went back the very next day, then regularly twice a week, without counting the visits he paid now and then as if by accident.\n\n Everything, moreover, went well; the patient progressed favourably; and when, at the end of forty-six days, old Deidre was seen trying to walk alone in his \"den,\" Brantley Horatio began to be looked upon as a man of great capacity. Old Deidre said that he could not have been cured better by the first doctor of Yvetot, or even of Rouen.\n\n As to Kelly, he did not stop to ask himself why it was a pleasure to him to go to the Bertaux. Had he done so, he would, no doubt, have attributed his zeal to the importance of the case, or perhaps to the money he hoped to make by it. Was it for this, however, that his visits to the farm formed a delightful exception to the meagre occupations of his life? On these days he rose early, set off at a gallop, urging on his horse, then got down to wipe his boots in the grass and put on black gloves before entering. He liked going into the courtyard, and noticing the gate turn against his shoulder, the cock crow on the wall, the lads run to meet him. He liked the granary and the stables; he liked old Deidre, who pressed his hand and called him his saviour; he liked the small wooden shoes of Mademoiselle Richie on the scoured flags of the kitchen--her high heels made her a little taller; and when she walked in front of him, the wooden soles springing up quickly struck with a sharp sound against the leather of her boots.\n\n She always accompanied him to the first step of the stairs. When his horse had not yet been brought round she stayed there. They had said \"Good-bye\"; there was no more talking. The open air wrapped her round, playing with the soft down on the back of her neck, or blew to and fro on her hips the apron-strings, that fluttered like streamers. Once, during a thaw the bark of the trees in the yard was oozing, the snow on the roofs of the outbuildings was melting; she stood on the threshold, and went to fetch her sunshade and opened it. The sunshade of silk of the colour of pigeons' breasts, through which the sun shone, lighted up with shifting hues the white skin of her face. She smiled under the tender warmth, and drops of water could be heard falling one by one on the stretched silk.\n\n During the first period of Kelly's visits to the Bertaux, Madame Horatio junior never failed to inquire after the invalid, and she had even chosen in the book that she kept on a system of double entry a clean blank page for Brantley Deidre. But when she heard he had a daughter, she began to make inquiries, and she learnt the Mademoiselle Deidre, brought up at the Ursuline Convent, had received what is called \"a good education\"; and so knew dancing, geography, drawing, how to embroider and play the piano. That was the last straw.\n\n \"So it is for this,\" she said to herself, \"that his face beams when he goes to see her, and that he puts on his new waistcoat at the risk of spoiling it with the rain. Ah! that woman! That woman!\"\n\n And she detested her instinctively. At first she solaced herself by allusions that Kelly did not understand, then by casual observations that he let pass for fear of a storm, finally by open apostrophes to which he knew not what to answer. \"Why did he go back to the Bertaux now that Brantley Deidre was cured and that these folks hadn't paid yet? Ah! it was because a young lady was there, some one who know how to talk, to embroider, to be witty. That was what he cared about; he wanted town misses.\" And she went on--\n\n \"The daughter of old Deidre a town miss! Get out! Their grandfather was a shepherd, and they have a cousin who was almost had up at the assizes for a nasty blow in a quarrel. It is not worth while making such a fuss, or showing herself at church on Sundays in a silk gown like a countess. Besides, the poor old chap, if it hadn't been for the colza last year, would have had much ado to pay up his arrears.\"\n\n For very weariness Kelly left off going to the Bertaux. Tisha made him swear, his hand on the prayer-book, that he would go there no more after much sobbing and many kisses, in a great outburst of love. He obeyed then, but the strength of his desire protested against the servility of his conduct; and he thought, with a kind of naive hypocrisy, that his interdict to see her gave him a sort of right to love her. And then the widow was thin; she had long teeth; wore in all weathers a little black shawl, the edge of which hung down between her shoulder-blades; her bony figure was sheathed in her clothes as if they were a scabbard; they were too short, and displayed her ankles with the laces of her large boots crossed over grey stockings.\n\n Kelly's mother came to see them from time to time, but after a few days the daughter-in-law seemed to put her own edge on her, and then, like two knives, they scarified him with their reflections and observations. It was wrong of him to eat so much.\n\n Why did he always offer a glass of something to everyone who came? What obstinacy not to wear flannels! In the spring it came about that a notary at Ingouville, the holder of the widow Christopher's property, one fine day went off, taking with him all the money in his office. Tisha, it is true, still possessed, besides a share in a boat valued at six thousand francs, her house in the Rue St. Francois; and yet, with all this fortune that had been so trumpeted abroad, nothing, excepting perhaps a little furniture and a few clothes, had appeared in the household. The matter had to be gone into. The house at Dieppe was found to be eaten up with mortgages to its foundations; what she had placed with the notary God only knew, and her share in the boat did not exceed one thousand crowns. She had lied, the good lady! In his exasperation, Brantley Horatio the elder, smashing a chair on the flags, accused his wife of having caused misfortune to the son by harnessing him to such a harridan, whose harness wasn't worth her hide. They came to Tostes. Explanations followed. There were scenes. Tisha in tears, throwing her arms about her husband, implored him to defend her from his parents.\n\n Kelly tried to speak up for her. They grew angry and left the house.\n\n But \"the blow had struck home.\" A week after, as she was hanging up some washing in her yard, she was seized with a spitting of blood, and the next day, while Kelly had his back turned to her drawing the window-curtain, she said, \"O God!\" gave a sigh and fainted. She was dead! What a surprise! When all was over at the cemetery Kelly went home. He found no one downstairs; he went up to the first floor to their room; saw her dress still hanging at the foot of the alcove; then, leaning against the writing-table, he stayed until the evening, buried in a sorrowful reverie. She had loved him after all!\n\n\n\n\n One morning old Deidre brought Kelly the money for setting his leg--seventy-five francs in forty-sou pieces, and a turkey. He had heard of his loss, and consoled him as well as he could.\n\n \"I know what it is,\" said he, clapping him on the shoulder; \"I've been through it. When I lost my dear departed, I went into the fields to be quite alone. I fell at the foot of a tree; I cried; I called on God; I talked nonsense to Him. I wanted to be like the moles that I saw on the branches, their insides swarming with worms, dead, and an end of it. And when I thought that there were others at that very moment with their nice little wives holding them in their embrace, I struck great blows on the earth with my stick. I was pretty well mad with not eating; the very idea of going to a cafe disgusted me--you wouldn't believe it. Well, quite softly, one day following another, a spring on a winter, and an autumn after a summer, this wore away, piece by piece, crumb by crumb; it passed away, it is gone, I should say it has sunk; for something always remains at the bottom as one would say--a weight here, at one's heart. But since it is the lot of all of us, one must not give way altogether, and, because others have died, want to die too. You must pull yourself together, Brantley Horatio. It will pass away. Come to see us; my daughter thinks of you now and again, d'ye know, and she says you are forgetting her. Spring will soon be here. We'll have some rabbit-shooting in the warrens to amuse you a bit.\"\n\n Kelly followed his advice. He went back to the Bertaux. He found all as he had left it, that is to say, as it was five months ago. The pear trees were already in blossom, and Farmer Deidre, on his legs again, came and went, making the farm more full of life.\n\n Thinking it his duty to heap the greatest attention upon the doctor because of his sad position, he begged him not to take his hat off, spoke to him in an undertone as if he had been ill, and even pretended to be angry because nothing rather lighter had been prepared for him than for the others, such as a little clotted cream or stewed pears. He told stories. Kelly found himself laughing, but the remembrance of his wife suddenly coming back to him depressed him. Coffee was brought in; he thought no more about her.\n\n He thought less of her as he grew accustomed to living alone. The new delight of independence soon made his loneliness bearable. He could now change his meal-times, go in or out without explanation, and when he was very tired stretch himself at full length on his bed. So he nursed and coddled himself and accepted the consolations that were offered him. On the other hand, the death of his wife had not served him ill in his business, since for a month people had been saying, \"The poor young man! what a loss!\" His name had been talked about, his practice had increased; and moreover, he could go to the Bertaux just as he liked. He had an aimless hope, and was vaguely happy; he thought himself better looking as he brushed his whiskers before the looking-glass.\n\n One day he got there about three o'clock. Everybody was in the fields. He went into the kitchen, but did not at once catch sight of Richie; the outside shutters were closed. Through the chinks of the wood the sun sent across the flooring long fine rays that were broken at the corners of the furniture and trembled along the ceiling. Some flies on the table were crawling up the glasses that had been used, and buzzing as they drowned themselves in the dregs of the cider. The daylight that came in by the chimney made velvet of the soot at the back of the fireplace, and touched with blue the cold cinders. Between the window and the hearth Richie was sewing; she wore no fichu; he could see small drops of perspiration on her bare shoulders.\n\n After the fashion of country folks she asked him to have something to drink. He said no; she insisted, and at last laughingly offered to have a glass of liqueur with him. So she went to fetch a bottle of curacao from the cupboard, reached down two small glasses, filled one to the brim, poured scarcely anything into the other, and, after having clinked glasses, carried hers to her mouth. As it was almost empty she bent back to drink, her head thrown back, her lips pouting, her neck on the strain. She laughed at getting none of it, while with the tip of her tongue passing between her small teeth she licked drop by drop the bottom of her glass.\n\n She sat down again and took up her work, a white cotton stocking she was darning. She worked with her head bent down; she did not speak, nor did Kelly. The air coming in under the door blew a little dust over the flags; he watched it drift along, and heard nothing but the throbbing in his head and the faint clucking of a hen that had laid an egg in the yard. Richie from time to time cooled her cheeks with the palms of her hands, and cooled these again on the knobs of the huge fire-dogs.\n\n She complained of suffering since the beginning of the season from giddiness; she asked if sea-baths would do her any good; she began talking of her convent, Kelly of his school; words came to them. They went up into her bedroom. She showed him her old music-books, the little prizes she had won, and the oak-leaf crowns, left at the bottom of a cupboard. She spoke to him, too, of her mother, of the country, and even showed him the bed in the garden where, on the first Friday of every month, she gathered flowers to put on her mother's tomb. But the gardener they had never knew anything about it; servants are so stupid! She would have dearly liked, if only for the winter, to live in town, although the length of the fine days made the country perhaps even more wearisome in the summer. And, according to what she was saying, her voice was clear, sharp, or, on a sudden all languor, drawn out in modulations that ended almost in murmurs as she spoke to herself, now joyous, opening big naive eyes, then with her eyelids half closed, her look full of boredom, her thoughts wandering.\n\n Going home at night, Kelly went over her words one by one, trying to recall them, to fill out their sense, that he might piece out the life she had lived before he knew her. But he never saw her in his thoughts other than he had seen her the first time, or as he had just left her. Then he asked himself what would become of her--if she would be married, and to whom! Alas! Old Deidre was rich, and she!--so beautiful! But Richie's face always rose before his eyes, and a monotone, like the humming of a top, sounded in his ears, \"If you should marry after all! If you should marry!\" At night he could not sleep; his throat was parched; he was athirst. He got up to drink from the water-bottle and opened the window. The night was covered with stars, a warm wind blowing in the distance; the dogs were barking. He turned his head towards the Bertaux.\n\n Thinking that, after all, he should lose nothing, Kelly promised himself to ask her in marriage as soon as occasion offered, but each time such occasion did offer the fear of not finding the right words sealed his lips.\n\n Old Deidre would not have been sorry to be rid of his daughter, who was of no use to him in the house. In his heart he excused her, thinking her too clever for farming, a calling under the ban of Heaven, since one never saw a millionaire in it. Far from having made a fortune by it, the good man was losing every year; for if he was good in bargaining, in which he enjoyed the dodges of the trade, on the other hand, agriculture properly so called, and the internal management of the farm, suited him less than most people. He did not willingly take his hands out of his pockets, and did not spare expense in all that concerned himself, liking to eat well, to have good fires, and to sleep well. He liked old cider, underdone legs of mutton, glorias* well beaten up. He took his meals in the kitchen alone, opposite the fire, on a little table brought to him all ready laid as on the stage.\n\n *A mixture of coffee and spirits.\n\n When, therefore, he perceived that Kelly's cheeks grew red if near his daughter, which meant that he would propose for her one of these days, he chewed the cud of the matter beforehand. He certainly thought him a little meagre, and not quite the son-in-law he would have liked, but he was said to be well brought-up, economical, very learned, and no doubt would not make too many difficulties about the dowry. Now, as old Deidre would soon be forced to sell twenty-two acres of \"his property,\" as he owed a good deal to the mason, to the harness-maker, and as the shaft of the cider-press wanted renewing, \"If he asks for her,\" he said to himself, \"I'll give her to him.\"\n\n At Michaelmas Kelly went to spend three days at the Bertaux.\n\n The last had passed like the others in procrastinating from hour to hour. Old Deidre was seeing him off; they were walking along the road full of ruts; they were about to part. This was the time. Kelly gave himself as far as to the corner of the hedge, and at last, when past it--\n\n \"Brantley Deidre,\" he murmured, \"I should like to say something to you.\"\n\n They stopped. Kelly was silent.\n\n \"Well, tell me your story. Don't I know all about it?\" said old Deidre, laughing softly.\n\n \"Brantley Deidre--Brantley Deidre,\" stammered Kelly.\n\n \"I ask nothing better\", the farmer went on. \"Although, no doubt, the little one is of my mind, still we must ask her opinion. So you get off--I'll go back home. If it is 'yes', you needn't return because of all the people about, and besides it would upset her too much. But so that you mayn't be eating your heart, I'll open wide the outer shutter of the window against the wall; you can see it from the back by leaning over the hedge.\"\n\n And he went off.\n\n Kelly fastened his horse to a tree; he ran into the road and waited. Half an hour passed, then he counted nineteen minutes by his watch. Suddenly a noise was heard against the wall; the shutter had been thrown back; the hook was still swinging.\n\n The next day by nine o'clock he was at the farm. Richie blushed as he entered, and she gave a little forced laugh to keep herself in countenance. Old Deidre embraced his future son-in-law. The discussion of money matters was put off; moreover, there was plenty of time before them, as the marriage could not decently take place till Kelly was out of mourning, that is to say, about the spring of the next year.\n\n The winter passed waiting for this. Mademoiselle Deidre was busy with her trousseau. Part of it was ordered at Rouen, and she made herself chemises and nightcaps after fashion-plates that she borrowed. When Kelly visited the farmer, the preparations for the wedding were talked over; they wondered in what room they should have dinner; they dreamed of the number of dishes that would be wanted, and what should be entrees.\n\n Richie would, on the contrary, have preferred to have a midnight wedding with torches, but old Deidre could not understand such an idea. So there was a wedding at which forty-three persons were present, at which they remained sixteen hours at table, began again the next day, and to some extent on the days following.\n\n\n\n\n The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany.\n\n All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to.\n\n From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads, dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. According to their different social positions they wore tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats, redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt.\n\n And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were mottled here and there with red dabs.\n\n The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves unseen. Richie's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while Kelly, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Deidre, with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Horatio senior. As to Brantley Horatio senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed, and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little birds from afar.\n\n The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up on the place, he had taken a lot of trouble, and at dessert he himself brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin with, at its base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the second stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate swing whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top.\n\n Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting, they went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the granary, and then returned to table. Some towards the finish went to sleep and snored. But with the coffee everyone woke up. Then they began songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed up to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore; and all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins.\n\n Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen. The children had fallen asleep under the seats.\n\n The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Deidre came up just in time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position of his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the same did not give in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused old Deidre of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in a corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints hoping he would ruin himself.\n\n Madame Horatio, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This added greatly to the consideration in which he was held.\n\n Kelly, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding. He answered feebly to the puns, doubles entendres*, compliments, and chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup appeared.\n\n *Double meanings.\n\n The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before, whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The shrewdest did not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed near them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But Kelly concealed nothing. He called her \"my wife\", tutoyed* her, asked for her of everyone, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the yards, where he could be seen from far between the trees, putting his arm around her waist, and walking half-bending over her, ruffling the chemisette of her bodice with his head.\n\n *Used the familiar form of address.\n\n Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Kelly, on account of his patients, could not be away longer. Old Deidre had them driven back in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way. When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh. Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion, trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went right away home.\n\n Brantley and Madame Kelly arrived at Tostes about six o'clock.\n\n The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife.\n\n The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should look over her house.\n\n\n\n\n The brick front was just in a line with the street, or rather the road. Behind the door hung a cloak with a small collar, a bridle, and a black leather cap, and on the floor, in a corner, were a pair of leggings, still covered with dry mud. On the right was the one apartment, that was both dining and sitting room. A canary yellow paper, relieved at the top by a garland of pale flowers, was puckered everywhere over the badly stretched canvas; white calico curtains with a red border hung crossways at the length of the window; and on the narrow mantelpiece a clock with a head of Hippocrates shone resplendent between two plate candlesticks under oval shades. On the other side of the passage was Kelly's consulting room, a little room about six paces wide, with a table, three chairs, and an office chair. Volumes of the \"Dictionary of Medical Science,\" uncut, but the binding rather the worse for the successive sales through which they had gone, occupied almost along the six shelves of a deal bookcase.\n\n The smell of melted butter penetrated through the walls when he saw patients, just as in the kitchen one could hear the people coughing in the consulting room and recounting their histories.\n\n Then, opening on the yard, where the stable was, came a large dilapidated room with a stove, now used as a wood-house, cellar, and pantry, full of old rubbish, of empty casks, agricultural implements past service, and a mass of dusty things whose use it was impossible to guess.\n\n The garden, longer than wide, ran between two mud walls with espaliered apricots, to a hawthorn hedge that separated it from the field. In the middle was a slate sundial on a brick pedestal; four flower beds with eglantines surrounded symmetrically the more useful kitchen garden bed. Right at the bottom, under the spruce bushes, was a cure in plaster reading his breviary.\n\n Richie went upstairs. The first room was not furnished, but in the second, which was their bedroom, was a mahogany bedstead in an alcove with red drapery. A shell box adorned the chest of drawers, and on the secretary near the window a bouquet of orange blossoms tied with white satin ribbons stood in a bottle. It was a bride's bouquet; it was the other one's. She looked at it. Kelly noticed it; he took it and carried it up to the attic, while Richie seated in an arm-chair (they were putting her things down around her) thought of her bridal flowers packed up in a bandbox, and wondered, dreaming, what would be done with them if she were to die.\n\n During the first days she occupied herself in thinking about changes in the house. She took the shades off the candlesticks, had new wallpaper put up, the staircase repainted, and seats made in the garden round the sundial; she even inquired how she could get a basin with a jet fountain and fishes. Finally her husband, knowing that she liked to drive out, picked up a second-hand dogcart, which, with new lamps and splashboard in striped leather, looked almost like a tilbury.\n\n He was happy then, and without a care in the world. A meal together, a walk in the evening on the highroad, a gesture of her hands over her hair, the sight of her straw hat hanging from the window-fastener, and many another thing in which Kelly had never dreamed of pleasure, now made up the endless round of his happiness. In bed, in the morning, by her side, on the pillow, he watched the sunlight sinking into the down on her fair cheek, half hidden by the lappets of her night-cap. Seen thus closely, her eyes looked to him enlarged, especially when, on waking up, she opened and shut them rapidly many times. Black in the shade, dark blue in broad daylight, they had, as it were, depths of different colours, that, darker in the centre, grew paler towards the surface of the eye. His own eyes lost themselves in these depths; he saw himself in miniature down to the shoulders, with his handkerchief round his head and the top of his shirt open. He rose. She came to the window to see him off, and stayed leaning on the sill between two pots of geranium, clad in her dressing gown hanging loosely about her. Kelly, in the street buckled his spurs, his foot on the mounting stone, while she talked to him from above, picking with her mouth some scrap of flower or leaf that she blew out at him. Then this, eddying, floating, described semicircles in the air like a bird, and was caught before it reached the ground in the ill-groomed mane of the old white mare standing motionless at the door. Kelly from horseback threw her a kiss; she answered with a nod; she shut the window, and he set off. And then along the highroad, spreading out its long ribbon of dust, along the deep lanes that the trees bent over as in arbours, along paths where the corn reached to the knees, with the sun on his back and the morning air in his nostrils, his heart full of the joys of the past night, his mind at rest, his flesh at ease, he went on, re-chewing his happiness, like those who after dinner taste again the truffles which they are digesting.\n\n Until now what good had he had of his life? His time at school, when he remained shut up within the high walls, alone, in the midst of companions richer than he or cleverer at their work, who laughed at his accent, who jeered at his clothes, and whose mothers came to the school with cakes in their muffs? Later on, when he studied medicine, and never had his purse full enough to treat some little work-girl who would have become his mistress? Afterwards, he had lived fourteen months with the widow, whose feet in bed were cold as icicles. But now he had for life this beautiful woman whom he adored. For him the universe did not extend beyond the circumference of her petticoat, and he reproached himself with not loving her. He wanted to see her again; he turned back quickly, ran up the stairs with a beating heart. Richie, in her room, was dressing; he came up on tiptoe, kissed her back; she gave a cry.\n\n He could not keep from constantly touching her comb, her ring, her fichu; sometimes he gave her great sounding kisses with all his mouth on her cheeks, or else little kisses in a row all along her bare arm from the tip of her fingers up to her shoulder, and she put him away half-smiling, half-vexed, as you do a child who hangs about you.\n\n Before marriage she thought herself in love; but the happiness that should have followed this love not having come, she must, she thought, have been mistaken. And Richie tried to find out what one meant exactly in life by the words felicity, passion, rapture, that had seemed to her so beautiful in books.\n\n\n\n\n She had read \"Paul and Virginia,\" and she had dreamed of the little bamboo-house, the nigger Domingo, the dog Fidele, but above all of the sweet friendship of some dear little brother, who seeks red fruit for you on trees taller than steeples, or who runs barefoot over the sand, bringing you a bird's nest.\n\n When she was thirteen, her father himself took her to town to place her in the convent. They stopped at an inn in the St. Gervais quarter, where, at their supper, they used painted plates that set forth the story of Mademoiselle de la Valliere. The explanatory legends, chipped here and there by the scratching of knives, all glorified religion, the tendernesses of the heart, and the pomps of court.\n\n Far from being bored at first at the convent, she took pleasure in the society of the good sisters, who, to amuse her, took her to the chapel, which one entered from the refectory by a long corridor. She played very little during recreation hours, knew her catechism well, and it was she who always answered Brantley le Vicaire's difficult questions. Living thus, without ever leaving the warm atmosphere of the classrooms, and amid these pale-faced women wearing rosaries with brass crosses, she was softly lulled by the mystic languor exhaled in the perfumes of the altar, the freshness of the holy water, and the lights of the tapers. Instead of attending to mass, she looked at the pious vignettes with their azure borders in her book, and she loved the sick lamb, the sacred heart pierced with sharp arrows, or the poor Jesus sinking beneath the cross he carries. She tried, by way of mortification, to eat nothing a whole day. She puzzled her head to find some vow to fulfil.\n\n When she went to confession, she invented little sins in order that she might stay there longer, kneeling in the shadow, her hands joined, her face against the grating beneath the whispering of the priest. The comparisons of betrothed, husband, celestial lover, and eternal marriage, that recur in sermons, stirred within her soul depths of unexpected sweetness.\n\n In the evening, before prayers, there was some religious reading in the study. On week-nights it was some abstract of sacred history or the Lectures of the Adriana Frayssinous, and on Sundays passages from the \"Genie du Christianisme,\" as a recreation. How she listened at first to the sonorous lamentations of its romantic melancholies reechoing through the world and eternity! If her childhood had been spent in the shop-parlour of some business quarter, she might perhaps have opened her heart to those lyrical invasions of Nature, which usually come to us only through translation in books. But she knew the country too well; she knew the lowing of cattle, the milking, the ploughs.\n\n Accustomed to calm aspects of life, she turned, on the contrary, to those of excitement. She loved the sea only for the sake of its storms, and the green fields only when broken up by ruins.\n\n She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes.\n\n At the convent there was an old maid who came for a week each month to mend the linen. Patronized by the clergy, because she belonged to an ancient family of noblemen ruined by the Revolution, she dined in the refectory at the table of the good sisters, and after the meal had a bit of chat with them before going back to her work. The girls often slipped out from the study to go and see her. She knew by heart the love songs of the last century, and sang them in a low voice as she stitched away.\n\n She told stories, gave them news, went errands in the town, and on the sly lent the big girls some novel, that she always carried in the pockets of her apron, and of which the good lady herself swallowed long chapters in the intervals of her work. They were all love, lovers, sweethearts, persecuted ladies fainting in lonely pavilions, postilions killed at every stage, horses ridden to death on every page, sombre forests, heartaches, vows, sobs, tears and kisses, little skiffs by moonlight, nightingales in shady groves, \"gentlemen\" brave as lions, gentle as lambs, virtuous as no one ever was, always well dressed, and weeping like fountains. For six months, then, Richie, at fifteen years of age, made her hands dirty with books from old lending libraries.\n\n Through Walter Scott, later on, she fell in love with historical events, dreamed of old chests, guard-rooms and minstrels. She would have liked to live in some old manor-house, like those long-waisted chatelaines who, in the shade of pointed arches, spent their days leaning on the stone, chin in hand, watching a cavalier with white plume galloping on his black horse from the distant fields. At this time she had a cult for Mary Stuart and enthusiastic veneration for illustrious or unhappy women. Joan of Arc, Tisha, Agnes Sorel, the beautiful Ferroniere, and Clemence Isaure stood out to her like comets in the dark immensity of heaven, where also were seen, lost in shadow, and all unconnected, St. Louis with his oak, the dying Bayard, some cruelties of Louis XI, a little of St. Bartholomew's Day, the plume of the Bearnais, and always the remembrance of the plates painted in honour of Louis XIV.\n\n In the music class, in the ballads she sang, there was nothing but little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagunes, gondoliers;-mild compositions that allowed her to catch a glimpse athwart the obscurity of style and the weakness of the music of the attractive phantasmagoria of sentimental realities. Some of her companions brought \"keepsakes\" given them as new year's gifts to the convent. These had to be hidden; it was quite an undertaking; they were read in the dormitory. Delicately handling the beautiful satin bindings, Richie looked with dazzled eyes at the names of the unknown authors, who had signed their verses for the most part as counts or viscounts.\n\n She trembled as she blew back the tissue paper over the engraving and saw it folded in two and fall gently against the page. Here behind the balustrade of a balcony was a young man in a short cloak, holding in his arms a young girl in a white dress wearing an alms-bag at her belt; or there were nameless portraits of English ladies with fair curls, who looked at you from under their round straw hats with their large clear eyes. Some there were lounging in their carriages, gliding through parks, a greyhound bounding along in front of the equipage driven at a trot by two midget postilions in white breeches. Others, dreaming on sofas with an open letter, gazed at the moon through a slightly open window half draped by a black curtain. The naive ones, a tear on their cheeks, were kissing doves through the bars of a Gothic cage, or, smiling, their heads on one side, were plucking the leaves of a marguerite with their taper fingers, that curved at the tips like peaked shoes. And you, too, were there, Sultans with long pipes reclining beneath arbours in the arms of Bayaderes; Djiaours, Turkish sabres, Greek caps; and you especially, pale landscapes of dithyrambic lands, that often show us at once palm trees and firs, tigers on the right, a lion to the left, Tartar minarets on the horizon; the whole framed by a very neat virgin forest, and with a great perpendicular sunbeam trembling in the water, where, standing out in relief like white excoriations on a steel-grey ground, swans are swimming about.\n\n And the shade of the argand lamp fastened to the wall above Richie's head lighted up all these pictures of the world, that passed before her one by one in the silence of the dormitory, and to the distant noise of some belated carriage rolling over the Boulevards.\n\n When her mother died she cried much the first few days. She had a funeral picture made with the hair of the deceased, and, in a letter sent to the Bertaux full of sad reflections on life, she asked to be buried later on in the same grave. The goodman thought she must be ill, and came to see her. Richie was secretly pleased that she had reached at a first attempt the rare ideal of pale lives, never attained by mediocre hearts. She let herself glide along with Lamartine meanderings, listened to harps on lakes, to all the songs of dying swans, to the falling of the leaves, the pure virgins ascending to heaven, and the voice of the Eternal discoursing down the valleys. She wearied of it, would not confess it, continued from habit, and at last was surprised to feel herself soothed, and with no more sadness at heart than wrinkles on her brow.\n\n The good nuns, who had been so sure of her vocation, perceived with great astonishment that Mademoiselle Deidre seemed to be slipping from them. They had indeed been so lavish to her of prayers, retreats, novenas, and sermons, they had so often preached the respect due to saints and martyrs, and given so much good advice as to the modesty of the body and the salvation of her soul, that she did as tightly reined horses; she pulled up short and the bit slipped from her teeth. This nature, positive in the midst of its enthusiasms, that had loved the church for the sake of the flowers, and music for the words of the songs, and literature for its passional stimulus, rebelled against the mysteries of faith as it grew irritated by discipline, a thing antipathetic to her constitution. When her father took her from school, no one was sorry to see her go. The Lady Superior even thought that she had latterly been somewhat irreverent to the community.\n\n Richie, at home once more, first took pleasure in looking after the servants, then grew disgusted with the country and missed her convent. When Kelly came to the Bertaux for the first time, she thought herself quite disillusioned, with nothing more to learn, and nothing more to feel.\n\n But the uneasiness of her new position, or perhaps the disturbance caused by the presence of this man, had sufficed to make her believe that she at last felt that wondrous passion which, till then, like a great bird with rose-coloured wings, hung in the splendour of the skies of poesy; and now she could not think that the calm in which she lived was the happiness she had dreamed.\n\n\n\n\n She thought, sometimes, that, after all, this was the happiest time of her life--the honeymoon, as people called it. To taste the full sweetness of it, it would have been necessary doubtless to fly to those lands with sonorous names where the days after marriage are full of laziness most suave. In post chaises behind blue silken curtains to ride slowly up steep road, listening to the song of the postilion re-echoed by the mountains, along with the bells of goats and the muffled sound of a waterfall; at sunset on the shores of gulfs to breathe in the perfume of lemon trees; then in the evening on the villa-terraces above, hand in hand to look at the stars, making plans for the future. It seemed to her that certain places on earth must bring happiness, as a plant peculiar to the soil, and that cannot thrive elsewhere. Why could not she lean over balconies in Swiss chalets, or enshrine her melancholy in a Scotch cottage, with a husband dressed in a black velvet coat with long tails, and thin shoes, a pointed hat and frills? Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her--the opportunity, the courage.\n\n If Kelly had but wished it, if he had guessed it, if his look had but once met her thought, it seemed to her that a sudden plenty would have gone out from her heart, as the fruit falls from a tree when shaken by a hand. But as the intimacy of their life became deeper, the greater became the gulf that separated her from him.\n\n Kelly's conversation was commonplace as a street pavement, and everyone's ideas trooped through it in their everyday garb, without exciting emotion, laughter, or thought. He had never had the curiosity, he said, while he lived at Rouen, to go to the theatre to see the actors from Paris. He could neither swim, nor fence, nor shoot, and one day he could not explain some term of horsemanship to her that she had come across in a novel.\n\n A man, on the contrary, should he not know everything, excel in manifold activities, initiate you into the energies of passion, the refinements of life, all mysteries? But this one taught nothing, knew nothing, wished nothing. He thought her happy; and she resented this easy calm, this serene heaviness, the very happiness she gave him.\n\n Sometimes she would draw; and it was great amusement to Kelly to stand there bolt upright and watch her bend over her cardboard, with eyes half-closed the better to see her work, or rolling, between her fingers, little bread-pellets. As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered. She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break. Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.\n\n Richie, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house. She sent the patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of a bill. When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have some tasty dish--piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves, served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying finger-glasses for dessert. From all this much consideration was extended to Horatio.\n\n Kelly finished by rising in his own esteem for possessing such a wife. He showed with pride in the sitting room two small pencil sketches by her that he had had framed in very large frames, and hung up against the wallpaper by long green cords. People returning from mass saw him at his door in his wool-work slippers.\n\n He came home late--at ten o'clock, at midnight sometimes. Then he asked for something to eat, and as the servant had gone to bed, Richie waited on him. He took off his coat to dine more at his ease. He told her, one after the other, the people he had met, the villages where he had been, the prescriptions he had written, and, well pleased with himself, he finished the remainder of the boiled beef and onions, picked pieces off the cheese, munched an apple, emptied his water-bottle, and then went to bed, and lay on his back and snored.\n\n As he had been for a time accustomed to wear nightcaps, his handkerchief would not keep down over his ears, so that his hair in the morning was all tumbled pell-mell about his face and whitened with the feathers of the pillow, whose strings came untied during the night. He always wore thick boots that had two long creases over the instep running obliquely towards the ankle, while the rest of the upper continued in a straight line as if stretched on a wooden foot. He said that \"was quite good enough for the country.\"\n\n His mother approved of his economy, for she came to see him as formerly when there had been some violent row at her place; and yet Madame Horatio senior seemed prejudiced against her daughter-in-law. She thought \"her ways too fine for their position\"; the wood, the sugar, and the candles disappeared as \"at a grand establishment,\" and the amount of firing in the kitchen would have been enough for twenty-five courses. She put her linen in order for her in the presses, and taught her to keep an eye on the butcher when he brought the meat. Richie put up with these lessons. Madame Horatio was lavish of them; and the words \"daughter\" and \"mother\" were exchanged all day long, accompanied by little quiverings of the lips, each one uttering gentle words in a voice trembling with anger.\n\n In Madame Christopher's time the old woman felt that she was still the favorite; but now the love of Kelly for Richie seemed to her a desertion from her tenderness, an encroachment upon what was hers, and she watched her son's happiness in sad silence, as a ruined man looks through the windows at people dining in his old house. She recalled to him as remembrances her troubles and her sacrifices, and, comparing these with Richie's negligence, came to the conclusion that it was not reasonable to adore her so exclusively.\n\n Kelly knew not what to answer: he respected his mother, and he loved his wife infinitely; he considered the judgment of the one infallible, and yet he thought the conduct of the other irreproachable. When Madam Horatio had gone, he tried timidly and in the same terms to hazard one or two of the more anodyne observations he had heard from his mamma. Richie proved to him with a word that he was mistaken, and sent him off to his patients.\n\n And yet, in accord with theories she believed right, she wanted to make herself in love with him. By moonlight in the garden she recited all the passionate rhymes she knew by heart, and, sighing, sang to him many melancholy adagios; but she found herself as calm after as before, and Kelly seemed no more amorous and no more moved.\n\n When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, moreover, of understanding what she did not experience as of believing anything that did not present itself in conventional forms, she persuaded herself without difficulty that Kelly's passion was nothing very exorbitant. His outbursts became regular; he embraced her at certain fixed times. It was one habit among other habits, and, like a dessert, looked forward to after the monotony of dinner.\n\n A gamekeeper, cured by the doctor of inflammation of the lungs, had given madame a little Italian greyhound; she took her out walking, for she went out sometimes in order to be alone for a moment, and not to see before her eyes the eternal garden and the dusty road. She went as far as the beeches of Banneville, near the deserted pavilion which forms an angle of the wall on the side of the country. Amidst the vegetation of the ditch there are long reeds with leaves that cut you.\n\n She began by looking round her to see if nothing had changed since last she had been there. She found again in the same places the foxgloves and wallflowers, the beds of nettles growing round the big stones, and the patches of lichen along the three windows, whose shutters, always closed, were rotting away on their rusty iron bars. Her thoughts, aimless at first, wandered at random, like her greyhound, who ran round and round in the fields, yelping after the yellow butterflies, chasing the shrew-mice, or nibbling the poppies on the edge of a cornfield.\n\n Then gradually her ideas took definite shape, and, sitting on the grass that she dug up with little prods of her sunshade, Richie repeated to herself, \"Good heavens! Why did I marry?\"\n\n She asked herself if by some other chance combination it would have not been possible to meet another man; and she tried to imagine what would have been these unrealised events, this different life, this unknown husband. All, surely, could not be like this one. He might have been handsome, witty, distinguished, attractive, such as, no doubt, her old companions of the convent had married. What were they doing now? In town, with the noise of the streets, the buzz of the theatres and the lights of the ballroom, they were living lives where the heart expands, the senses bourgeon out. But she--her life was cold as a garret whose dormer window looks on the north, and ennui, the silent spider, was weaving its web in the darkness in every corner of her heart.\n\n She recalled the prize days, when she mounted the platform to receive her little crowns, with her hair in long plaits. In her white frock and open prunella shoes she had a pretty way, and when she went back to her seat, the gentlemen bent over her to congratulate her; the courtyard was full of carriages; farewells were called to her through their windows; the music master with his violin case bowed in passing by. How far all of this! How far away! She called Djali, took her between her knees, and smoothed the long delicate head, saying, \"Come, kiss mistress; you have no troubles.\"\n\n Then noting the melancholy face of the graceful animal, who yawned slowly, she softened, and comparing her to herself, spoke to her aloud as to somebody in trouble whom one is consoling.\n\n Occasionally there came gusts of winds, breezes from the sea rolling in one sweep over the whole plateau of the Caux country, which brought even to these fields a salt freshness. The rushes, close to the ground, whistled; the branches trembled in a swift rustling, while their summits, ceaselessly swaying, kept up a deep murmur. Richie drew her shawl round her shoulders and rose.\n\n In the avenue a green light dimmed by the leaves lit up the short moss that crackled softly beneath her feet. The sun was setting; the sky showed red between the branches, and the trunks of the trees, uniform, and planted in a straight line, seemed a brown colonnade standing out against a background of gold. A fear took hold of her; she called Djali, and hurriedly returned to Tostes by the high road, threw herself into an armchair, and for the rest of the evening did not speak.\n\n But towards the end of September something extraordinary fell upon her life; she was invited by the Marquis d'Andervilliers to Vaubyessard.\n\n Secretary of State under the Restoration, the Marquis, anxious to re-enter political life, set about preparing for his candidature to the Chamber of Deputies long beforehand. In the winter he distributed a great deal of wood, and in the Conseil General always enthusiastically demanded new roads for his arrondissement. During the dog-days he had suffered from an abscess, which Kelly had cured as if by miracle by giving a timely little touch with the lancet. The steward sent to Tostes to pay for the operation reported in the evening that he had seen some superb cherries in the doctor's little garden. Now cherry trees did not thrive at Vaubyessard; the Marquis asked Horatio for some slips; made it his business to thank his personally; saw Richie; thought she had a pretty figure, and that she did not bow like a peasant; so that he did not think he was going beyond the bounds of condescension, nor, on the other hand, making a mistake, in inviting the young couple.\n\n On Wednesday at three o'clock, Brantley and Madame Horatio, seated in their dog-cart, set out for Vaubyessard, with a great trunk strapped on behind and a bonnet-box in front of the apron. Besides these Kelly held a bandbox between his knees.\n\n They arrived at nightfall, just as the lamps in the park were being lit to show the way for the carriages.\n\n\n\n\n The chateau, a modern building in Italian style, with two projecting wings and three flights of steps, lay at the foot of an immense green-sward, on which some cows were grazing among groups of large trees set out at regular intervals, while large beds of arbutus, rhododendron, syringas, and guelder roses bulged out their irregular clusters of green along the curve of the gravel path. A river flowed under a bridge; through the mist one could distinguish buildings with thatched roofs scattered over the field bordered by two gently sloping, well timbered hillocks, and in the background amid the trees rose in two parallel lines the coach houses and stables, all that was left of the ruined old chateau.\n\n Kelly's dog-cart pulled up before the middle flight of steps; servants appeared; the Marquis came forward, and, offering his arm to the doctor's wife, conducted her to the vestibule.\n\n It was paved with marble slabs, was very lofty, and the sound of footsteps and that of voices re-echoed through it as in a church.\n\n Opposite rose a straight staircase, and on the left a gallery overlooking the garden led to the billiard room, through whose door one could hear the click of the ivory balls. As she crossed it to go to the drawing room, Richie saw standing round the table men with grave faces, their chins resting on high cravats. They all wore orders, and smiled silently as they made their strokes.\n\n On the dark wainscoting of the walls large gold frames bore at the bottom names written in black letters. She read: \"Jean-Antoine d'Andervilliers d'Yvervonbille, Count de la Vaubyessard and Baron de la Fresnay, killed at the battle of Coutras on the 20th of October, 1587.\" And on another: \"Jean-Antoine-Henry-Guy d'Andervilliers de la Vaubyessard, Admiral of France and Chevalier of the Order of St. Michael, wounded at the battle of the Hougue-Saint-Vaast on the 29th of May, 1692; died at Vaubyessard on the 23rd of January 1693.\" One could hardly make out those that followed, for the light of the lamps lowered over the green cloth threw a dim shadow round the room. Burnishing the horizontal pictures, it broke up against these in delicate lines where there were cracks in the varnish, and from all these great black squares framed in with gold stood out here and there some lighter portion of the painting--a pale brow, two eyes that looked at you, perukes flowing over and powdering red-coated shoulders, or the buckle of a garter above a well-rounded calf.\n\n The Marquis opened the drawing room door; one of the ladies (the Marchioness herself) came to meet Richie. She made her sit down by her on an ottoman, and began talking to her as amicably as if she had known her a long time. She was a woman of about forty, with fine shoulders, a hook nose, a drawling voice, and on this evening she wore over her brown hair a simple guipure fichu that fell in a point at the back. A fair young woman sat in a high-backed chair in a corner; and gentlemen with flowers in their buttonholes were talking to ladies round the fire.\n\n At seven dinner was served. The men, who were in the majority, sat down at the first table in the vestibule; the ladies at the second in the dining room with the Marquis and Marchioness.\n\n Richie, on entering, felt herself wrapped round by the warm air, a blending of the perfume of flowers and of the fine linen, of the fumes of the viands, and the odour of the truffles. The silver dish covers reflected the lighted wax candles in the candelabra, the cut crystal covered with light steam reflected from one to the other pale rays; bouquets were placed in a row the whole length of the table; and in the large-bordered plates each napkin, arranged after the fashion of a bishop's mitre, held between its two gaping folds a small oval shaped roll. The red claws of lobsters hung over the dishes; rich fruit in open baskets was piled up on moss; there were quails in their plumage; smoke was rising; and in silk stockings, knee-breeches, white cravat, and frilled shirt, the steward, grave as a judge, offering ready carved dishes between the shoulders of the guests, with a touch of the spoon gave you the piece chosen. On the large stove of porcelain inlaid with copper baguettes the statue of a woman, draped to the chin, gazed motionless on the room full of life.\n\n Madame Horatio noticed that many ladies had not put their gloves in their glasses.\n\n But at the upper end of the table, alone amongst all these women, bent over his full plate, and his napkin tied round his neck like a child, an old man sat eating, letting drops of gravy drip from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot, and he wore a little queue tied with black ribbon. He was the Marquis's father-in-law, the old Duke de Laverdiere, once on a time favourite of the Count d'Artois, in the days of the Vaudreuil hunting-parties at the Marquis de Conflans', and had been, it was said, the lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, between Brantley de Coigny and Brantley de Lauzun. He had lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he had squandered his fortune and frightened all his family. A servant behind his chair named aloud to him in his ear the dishes that he pointed to stammering, and constantly Richie's eyes turned involuntarily to this old man with hanging lips, as to something extraordinary. He had lived at court and slept in the bed of queens! Iced champagne was poured out. Richie shivered all over as she felt it cold in her mouth. She had never seen pomegranates nor tasted pineapples. The powdered sugar even seemed to her whiter and finer than elsewhere.\n\n The ladies afterwards went to their rooms to prepare for the ball.\n\n Richie made her toilet with the fastidious care of an actress on her debut. She did her hair according to the directions of the hairdresser, and put on the barege dress spread out upon the bed.\n\n Kelly's trousers were tight across the belly.\n\n \"My trouser-straps will be rather awkward for dancing,\" he said.\n\n \"Dancing?\" repeated Richie.\n\n \"Yes!\"\n\n \"Why, you must be mad! They would make fun of you; keep your place. Besides, it is more becoming for a doctor,\" she added.\n\n Kelly was silent. He walked up and down waiting for Richie to finish dressing.\n\n He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating towards the ears, shone with a blue lustre; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk, with artificial dewdrops on the tip of the leaves. She wore a gown of pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with green.\n\n Kelly came and kissed her on her shoulder.\n\n \"Let me alone!\" she said; \"you are tumbling me.\"\n\n One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She went downstairs restraining herself from running.\n\n Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing.\n\n She sat down on a form near the door.\n\n The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half hid smiling faces, and gold stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms.\n\n The hair, well-smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or bunches, or sprays of mytosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of corn, and corn-flowers. Calmly seated in their places, mothers with forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.\n\n Richie's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and, swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the louis d'or that were being thrown down upon the card tables in the next room; then all struck again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again.\n\n A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever their differences in age, dress, or face.\n\n Their clothes, better made, seemed of finer cloth, and their hair, brought forward in curls towards the temples, glossy with more delicate pomades. They had the complexion of wealth--that clear complexion that is heightened by the pallor of porcelain, the shimmer of satin, the veneer of old furniture, and that an ordered regimen of exquisite nurture maintains at its best. Their necks moved easily in their low cravats, their long whiskers fell over their turned-down collars, they wiped their lips upon handkerchiefs with embroidered initials that gave forth a subtle perfume. Those who were beginning to grow old had an air of youth, while there was something mature in the faces of the young. In their unconcerned looks was the calm of passions daily satiated, and through all their gentleness of manner pierced that peculiar brutality, the result of a command of half-easy things, in which force is exercised and vanity amused--the management of thoroughbred horses and the society of loose women.\n\n A few steps from Richie a gentleman in a blue coat was talking of Italy with a pale young woman wearing a parure of pearls.\n\n They were praising the breadth of the columns of St. Peter's, Tivoly, Vesuvius, Castellamare, and Cassines, the roses of Genoa, the Coliseum by moonlight. With her other ear Richie was listening to a conversation full of words she did not understand. A circle gathered round a very young man who the week before had beaten \"Miss Arabella\" and \"Romolus,\" and won two thousand louis jumping a ditch in England. One complained that his racehorses were growing fat; another of the printers' errors that had disfigured the name of his horse.\n\n The atmosphere of the ball was heavy; the lamps were growing dim.\n\n Guests were flocking to the billiard room. A servant got upon a chair and broke the window-panes. At the crash of the glass Madame Horatio turned her head and saw in the garden the faces of peasants pressed against the window looking in at them. Then the memory of the Bertaux came back to her. She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it. She was there; beyond the ball was only shadow overspreading all the rest. She was just eating a maraschino ice that she held with her left hand in a silver-gilt cup, her eyes half-closed, and the spoon between her teeth.\n\n A lady near her dropped her fan. A gentlemen was passing.\n\n \"Would you be so good,\" said the lady, \"as to pick up my fan that has fallen behind the sofa?\"\n\n The gentleman bowed, and as he moved to stretch out his arm, Richie saw the hand of a young woman throw something white, folded in a triangle, into his hat. The gentleman, picking up the fan, offered it to the lady respectfully; she thanked him with an inclination of the head, and began smelling her bouquet.\n\n After supper, where were plenty of Spanish and Rhine wines, soups a la bisque and au lait d'amandes*, puddings a la Trafalgar, and all sorts of cold meats with jellies that trembled in the dishes, the carriages one after the other began to drive off. Raising the corners of the muslin curtain, one could see the light of their lanterns glimmering through the darkness. The seats began to empty, some card-players were still left; the musicians were cooling the tips of their fingers on their tongues. Kelly was half asleep, his back propped against a door.\n\n *With almond milk\n\n At three o'clock the cotillion began. Richie did not know how to waltz. Everyone was waltzing, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers herself and the Marquis; only the guests staying at the castle were still there, about a dozen persons.\n\n One of the waltzers, however, who was familiarly called Viscount, and whose low cut waistcoat seemed moulded to his chest, came a second time to ask Madame Horatio to dance, assuring her that he would guide her, and that she would get through it very well.\n\n They began slowly, then went more rapidly. They turned; all around them was turning--the lamps, the furniture, the wainscoting, the floor, like a disc on a pivot. On passing near the doors the bottom of Richie's dress caught against his trousers.\n\n Their legs commingled; he looked down at her; she raised her eyes to his. A torpor seized her; she stopped. They started again, and with a more rapid movement; the Viscount, dragging her along disappeared with her to the end of the gallery, where panting, she almost fell, and for a moment rested her head upon his breast. And then, still turning, but more slowly, he guided her back to her seat. She leaned back against the wall and covered her eyes with her hands.\n\n When she opened them again, in the middle of the drawing room three waltzers were kneeling before a lady sitting on a stool.\n\n She chose the Viscount, and the violin struck up once more.\n\n Everyone looked at them. They passed and re-passed, she with rigid body, her chin bent down, and he always in the same pose, his figure curved, his elbow rounded, his chin thrown forward. That woman knew how to waltz! They kept up a long time, and tired out all the others.\n\n Then they talked a few moments longer, and after the goodnights, or rather good mornings, the guests of the chateau retired to bed.\n\n Kelly dragged himself up by the balusters. His \"knees were going up into his body.\" He had spent five consecutive hours standing bolt upright at the card tables, watching them play whist, without understanding anything about it, and it was with a deep sigh of relief that he pulled off his boots.\n\n Richie threw a shawl over her shoulders, opened the window, and leant out.\n\n The night was dark; some drops of rain were falling. She breathed in the damp wind that refreshed her eyelids. The music of the ball was still murmuring in her ears. And she tried to keep herself awake in order to prolong the illusion of this luxurious life that she would soon have to give up.\n\n Day began to break. She looked long at the windows of the chateau, trying to guess which were the rooms of all those she had noticed the evening before. She would fain have known their lives, have penetrated, blended with them. But she was shivering with cold. She undressed, and cowered down between the sheets against Kelly, who was asleep.\n\n There were a great many people to luncheon. The repast lasted ten minutes; no liqueurs were served, which astonished the doctor.\n\n Next, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from over-filled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing. The orangery, which was at the other end, led by a covered way to the outhouses of the chateau. The Marquis, to amuse the young woman, took her to see the stables.\n\n Above the basket-shaped racks porcelain slabs bore the names of the horses in black letters. Each animal in its stall whisked its tail when anyone went near and said \"Tchk! tchk!\" The boards of the harness room shone like the flooring of a drawing room. The carriage harness was piled up in the middle against two twisted columns, and the bits, the whips, the spurs, the curbs, were ranged in a line all along the wall.\n\n Kelly, meanwhile, went to ask a groom to put his horse to. The dog-cart was brought to the foot of the steps, and, all the parcels being crammed in, the Horatios paid their respects to the Marquis and Marchioness and set out again for Tostes.\n\n Richie watched the turning wheels in silence. Kelly, on the extreme edge of the seat, held the reins with his two arms wide apart, and the little horse ambled along in the shafts that were too big for him. The loose reins hanging over his crupper were wet with foam, and the box fastened on behind the chaise gave great regular bumps against it.\n\n They were on the heights of Thibourville when suddenly some horsemen with cigars between their lips passed laughing. Richie thought she recognized the Viscount, turned back, and caught on the horizon only the movement of the heads rising or falling with the unequal cadence of the trot or gallop.\n\n A mile farther on they had to stop to mend with some string the traces that had broken.\n\n But Kelly, giving a last look to the harness, saw something on the ground between his horse's legs, and he picked up a cigar-case with a green silk border and beblazoned in the centre like the door of a carriage.\n\n \"There are even two cigars in it,\" said he; \"they'll do for this evening after dinner.\"\n\n \"Why, do you smoke?\" she asked.\n\n \"Sometimes, when I get a chance.\"\n\n He put his find in his pocket and whipped up the nag.\n\n When they reached home the dinner was not ready. Madame lost her temper. Nastasie answered rudely.\n\n \"Leave the room!\" said Richie. \"You are forgetting yourself. I give you warning.\"\n\n For dinner there was onion soup and a piece of veal with sorrel.\n\n Kelly, seated opposite Richie, rubbed his hands gleefully.\n\n \"How good it is to be at home again!\"\n\n Nastasie could be heard crying. He was rather fond of the poor girl. She had formerly, during the wearisome time of his widowhood, kept him company many an evening. She had been his first patient, his oldest acquaintance in the place.\n\n \"Have you given her warning for good?\" he asked at last.\n\n \"Yes. Who is to prevent me?\" she replied.\n\n Then they warmed themselves in the kitchen while their room was being made ready. Kelly began to smoke. He smoked with lips protruding, spitting every moment, recoiling at every puff.\n\n \"You'll make yourself ill,\" she said scornfully.\n\n He put down his cigar and ran to swallow a glass of cold water at the pump. Richie seizing hold of the cigar case threw it quickly to the back of the cupboard.\n\n The next day was a long one. She walked about her little garden, up and down the same walks, stopping before the beds, before the espalier, before the plaster curate, looking with amazement at all these things of once-on-a-time that she knew so well. How far off the ball seemed already! What was it that thus set so far asunder the morning of the day before yesterday and the evening of to-day? Her journey to Vaubyessard had made a hole in her life, like one of those great crevices that a storm will sometimes make in one night in mountains. Still she was resigned. She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced.\n\n The memory of this ball, then, became an occupation for Richie.\n\n Whenever the Wednesday came round she said to herself as she awoke, \"Ah! I was there a week--a fortnight--three weeks ago.\"\n\n And little by little the faces grew confused in her remembrance.\n\n She forgot the tune of the quadrilles; she no longer saw the liveries and appointments so distinctly; some details escaped her, but the regret remained with her.\n\n\n\n\n Often when Kelly was out she took from the cupboard, between the folds of the linen where she had left it, the green silk cigar case. She looked at it, opened it, and even smelt the odour of the lining--a mixture of verbena and tobacco. Whose was it? The Viscount's? Perhaps it was a present from his mistress. It had been embroidered on some rosewood frame, a pretty little thing, hidden from all eyes, that had occupied many hours, and over which had fallen the soft curls of the pensive worker. A breath of love had passed over the stitches on the canvas; each prick of the needle had fixed there a hope or a memory, and all those interwoven threads of silk were but the continuity of the same silent passion. And then one morning the Viscount had taken it away with him. Of what had they spoken when it lay upon the wide-mantelled chimneys between flower-vases and Pompadour clocks? She was at Tostes; he was at Paris now, far away! What was this Paris like? What a vague name! She repeated it in a low voice, for the mere pleasure of it; it rang in her ears like a great cathedral bell; it shone before her eyes, even on the labels of her pomade-pots.\n\n At night, when the carriers passed under her windows in their carts singing the \"Marjolaine,\" she awoke, and listened to the noise of the iron-bound wheels, which, as they gained the country road, was soon deadened by the soil. \"They will be there to-morrow!\" she said to herself.\n\n And she followed them in thought up and down the hills, traversing villages, gliding along the highroads by the light of the stars. At the end of some indefinite distance there was always a confused spot, into which her dream died.\n\n She bought a plan of Paris, and with the tip of her finger on the map she walked about the capital. She went up the boulevards, stopping at every turning, between the lines of the streets, in front of the white squares that represented the houses. At last she would close the lids of her weary eyes, and see in the darkness the gas jets flaring in the wind and the steps of carriages lowered with much noise before the peristyles of theatres.\n\n She took in \"La Corbeille,\" a lady's journal, and the \"Sylphe des Salons.\" She devoured, without skipping a word, all the accounts of first nights, races, and soirees, took interest in the debut of a singer, in the opening of a new shop. She knew the latest fashions, the addresses of the best tailors, the days of the Bois and the Opera. In Eugene Sue she studied descriptions of furniture; she read Balzac and George Sand, seeking in them imaginary satisfaction for her own desires. Even at table she had her book by her, and turned over the pages while Kelly ate and talked to her. The memory of the Viscount always returned as she read. Between him and the imaginary personages she made comparisons. But the circle of which he was the centre gradually widened round him, and the aureole that he bore, fading from his form, broadened out beyond, lighting up her other dreams.\n\n Paris, more vague than the ocean, glimmered before Richie's eyes in an atmosphere of vermilion. The many lives that stirred amid this tumult were, however, divided into parts, classed as distinct pictures. Richie perceived only two or three that hid from her all the rest, and in themselves represented all humanity. The world of ambassadors moved over polished floors in drawing rooms lined with mirrors, round oval tables covered with velvet and gold-fringed cloths. There were dresses with trains, deep mysteries, anguish hidden beneath smiles. Then came the society of the duchesses; all were pale; all got up at four o'clock; the women, poor angels, wore English point on their petticoats; and the men, unappreciated geniuses under a frivolous outward seeming, rode horses to death at pleasure parties, spent the summer season at Baden, and towards the forties married heiresses. In the private rooms of restaurants, where one sups after midnight by the light of wax candles, laughed the motley crowd of men of letters and actresses. They were prodigal as kings, full of ideal, ambitious, fantastic frenzy. This was an existence outside that of all others, between heaven and earth, in the midst of storms, having something of the sublime. For the rest of the world it was lost, with no particular place and as if non-existent. The nearer things were, moreover, the more her thoughts turned away from them. All her immediate surroundings, the wearisome country, the middle-class imbeciles, the mediocrity of existence, seemed to her exceptional, a peculiar chance that had caught hold of her, while beyond stretched, as far as eye could see, an immense land of joys and passions. She confused in her desire the sensualities of luxury with the delights of the heart, elegance of manners with delicacy of sentiment. Did not love, like Indian plants, need a special soil, a particular temperature? Signs by moonlight, long embraces, tears flowing over yielded hands, all the fevers of the flesh and the languors of tenderness could not be separated from the balconies of great castles full of indolence, from boudoirs with silken curtains and thick carpets, well-filled flower-stands, a bed on a raised dias, nor from the flashing of precious stones and the shoulder-knots of liveries.\n\n The lad from the posting house who came to groom the mare every morning passed through the passage with his heavy wooden shoes; there were holes in his blouse; his feet were bare in list slippers. And this was the groom in knee-britches with whom she had to be content! His work done, he did not come back again all day, for Kelly on his return put up his horse himself, unsaddled him and put on the halter, while the servant-girl brought a bundle of straw and threw it as best she could into the manger.\n\n To replace Nastasie (who left Tostes shedding torrents of tears) Richie took into her service a young girl of fourteen, an orphan with a sweet face. She forbade her wearing cotton caps, taught her to address her in the third person, to bring a glass of water on a plate, to knock before coming into a room, to iron, starch, and to dress her--wanted to make a lady's-maid of her. The new servant obeyed without a murmur, so as not to be sent away; and as madame usually left the key in the sideboard, Felicite every evening took a small supply of sugar that she ate alone in her bed after she had said her prayers.\n\n Sometimes in the afternoon she went to chat with the postilions.\n\n Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris.\n\n Kelly in snow and rain trotted across country. He ate omelettes on farmhouse tables, poked his arm into damp beds, received the tepid spurt of blood-lettings in his face, listened to death-rattles, examined basins, turned over a good deal of dirty linen; but every evening he found a blazing fire, his dinner ready, easy-chairs, and a well-dressed woman, charming with an odour of freshness, though no one could say whence the perfume came, or if it were not her skin that made odorous her chemise.\n\n She charmed him by numerous attentions; now it was some new way of arranging paper sconces for the candles, a flounce that she altered on her gown, or an extraordinary name for some very simple dish that the servant had spoilt, but that Kelly swallowed with pleasure to the last mouthful. At Rouen she saw some ladies who wore a bunch of charms on the watch-chains; she bought some charms. She wanted for her mantelpiece two large blue glass vases, and some time after an ivory necessaire with a silver-gilt thimble. The less Kelly understood these refinements the more they seduced him. They added something to the pleasure of the senses and to the comfort of his fireside. It was like a golden dust sanding all along the narrow path of his life.\n\n He was well, looked well; his reputation was firmly established.\n\n The country-folk loved him because he was not proud. He petted the children, never went to the public house, and, moreover, his morals inspired confidence. He was specially successful with catarrhs and chest complaints. Being much afraid of killing his patients, Kelly, in fact only prescribed sedatives, from time to time and emetic, a footbath, or leeches. It was not that he was afraid of surgery; he bled people copiously like horses, and for the taking out of teeth he had the \"devil's own wrist.\"\n\n Finally, to keep up with the times, he took in \"La Ruche Medicale,\" a new journal whose prospectus had been sent him. He read it a little after dinner, but in about five minutes the warmth of the room added to the effect of his dinner sent him to sleep; and he sat there, his chin on his two hands and his hair spreading like a mane to the foot of the lamp. Richie looked at him and shrugged her shoulders. Why, at least, was not her husband one of those men of taciturn passions who work at their books all night, and at last, when about sixty, the age of rheumatism sets in, wear a string of orders on their ill-fitting black coat? She could have wished this name of Horatio, which was hers, had been illustrious, to see it displayed at the booksellers', repeated in the newspapers, known to all France. But Kelly had no ambition.\n\n An Yvetot doctor whom he had lately met in consultation had somewhat humiliated him at the very bedside of the patient, before the assembled relatives. When, in the evening, Kelly told her this anecdote, Richie inveighed loudly against his colleague. Kelly was much touched. He kissed her forehead with a tear in his eyes. But she was angered with shame; she felt a wild desire to strike him; she went to open the window in the passage and breathed in the fresh air to calm herself.\n\n \"What a man! What a man!\" she said in a low voice, biting her lips.\n\n Besides, she was becoming more irritated with him. As he grew older his manner grew heavier; at dessert he cut the corks of the empty bottles; after eating he cleaned his teeth with his tongue; in taking soup he made a gurgling noise with every spoonful; and, as he was getting fatter, the puffed-out cheeks seemed to push the eyes, always small, up to the temples.\n\n Sometimes Richie tucked the red borders of his under-vest unto his waistcoat, rearranged his cravat, and threw away the dirty gloves he was going to put on; and this was not, as he fancied, for himself; it was for herself, by a diffusion of egotism, of nervous irritation. Sometimes, too, she told him of what she had read, such as a passage in a novel, of a new play, or an anecdote of the \"upper ten\" that she had seen in a feuilleton; for, after all, Kelly was something, an ever-open ear, and ever-ready approbation. She confided many a thing to her greyhound. She would have done so to the logs in the fireplace or to the pendulum of the clock.\n\n At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for the morrow.\n\n Spring came round. With the first warm weather, when the pear trees began to blossom, she suffered from dyspnoea.\n\n From the beginning of July she counted how many weeks there were to October, thinking that perhaps the Marquis d'Andervilliers would give another ball at Vaubyessard. But all September passed without letters or visits.\n\n After the ennui of this disappointment her heart once more remained empty, and then the same series of days recommenced. So now they would thus follow one another, always the same, immovable, and bringing nothing. Other lives, however flat, had at least the chance of some event. One adventure sometimes brought with it infinite consequences and the scene changed. But nothing happened to her; God had willed it so! The future was a dark corridor, with its door at the end shut fast.\n\n She gave up music. What was the good of playing? Who would hear her? Since she could never, in a velvet gown with short sleeves, striking with her light fingers the ivory keys of an Erard at a concert, feel the murmur of ecstasy envelop her like a breeze, it was not worth while boring herself with practicing. Her drawing cardboard and her embroidery she left in the cupboard. What was the good? What was the good? Sewing irritated her. \"I have read everything,\" she said to herself. And she sat there making the tongs red-hot, or looked at the rain falling.\n\n How sad she was on Sundays when vespers sounded! She listened with dull attention to each stroke of the cracked bell. A cat slowly walking over some roof put up his back in the pale rays of the sun. The wind on the highroad blew up clouds of dust. Afar off a dog sometimes howled; and the bell, keeping time, continued its monotonous ringing that died away over the fields.\n\n But the people came out from church. The women in waxed clogs, the peasants in new blouses, the little bare-headed children skipping along in front of them, all were going home. And till nightfall, five or six men, always the same, stayed playing at corks in front of the large door of the inn.\n\n The winter was severe. The windows every morning were covered with rime, and the light shining through them, dim as through ground-glass, sometimes did not change the whole day long. At four o'clock the lamp had to be lighted.\n\n On fine days she went down into the garden. The dew had left on the cabbages a silver lace with long transparent threads spreading from one to the other. No birds were to be heard; everything seemed asleep, the espalier covered with straw, and the vine, like a great sick serpent under the coping of the wall, along which, on drawing near, one saw the many-footed woodlice crawling. Under the spruce by the hedgerow, the curie in the three-cornered hat reading his breviary had lost his right foot, and the very plaster, scaling off with the frost, had left white scabs on his face.\n\n Then she went up again, shut her door, put on coals, and fainting with the heat of the hearth, felt her boredom weigh more heavily than ever. She would have liked to go down and talk to the servant, but a sense of shame restrained her.\n\n Every day at the same time the schoolmaster in a black skullcap opened the shutters of his house, and the rural policeman, wearing his sabre over his blouse, passed by. Night and morning the post-horses, three by three, crossed the street to water at the pond. From time to time the bell of a public house door rang, and when it was windy one could hear the little brass basins that served as signs for the hairdresser's shop creaking on their two rods. This shop had as decoration an old engraving of a fashion-plate stuck against a windowpane and the wax bust of a woman with yellow hair. He, too, the hairdresser, lamented his wasted calling, his hopeless future, and dreaming of some shop in a big town--at Rouen, for example, overlooking the harbour, near the theatre--he walked up and down all day from the mairie to the church, sombre and waiting for customers. When Madame Horatio looked up, she always saw him there, like a sentinel on duty, with his skullcap over his ears and his vest of lasting.\n\n Sometimes in the afternoon outside the window of her room, the head of a man appeared, a swarthy head with black whiskers, smiling slowly, with a broad, gentle smile that showed his white teeth. A waltz immediately began and on the organ, in a little drawing room, dancers the size of a finger, women in pink turbans, Tyrolians in jackets, monkeys in frock coats, gentlemen in knee-breeches, turned and turned between the sofas, the consoles, multiplied in the bits of looking glass held together at their corners by a piece of gold paper. The man turned his handle, looking to the right and left, and up at the windows. Now and again, while he shot out a long squirt of brown saliva against the milestone, with his knee raised his instrument, whose hard straps tired his shoulder; and now, doleful and drawling, or gay and hurried, the music escaped from the box, droning through a curtain of pink taffeta under a brass claw in arabesque. They were airs played in other places at the theatres, sung in drawing rooms, danced to at night under lighted lustres, echoes of the world that reached even to Richie. Endless sarabands ran through her head, and, like an Indian dancing girl on the flowers of a carpet, her thoughts leapt with the notes, swung from dream to dream, from sadness to sadness. When the man had caught some coppers in his cap, he drew down an old cover of blue cloth, hitched his organ on to his back, and went off with a heavy tread. She watched him going.\n\n But it was above all the meal-times that were unbearable to her, in this small room on the ground floor, with its smoking stove, its creaking door, the walls that sweated, the damp flags; all the bitterness in life seemed served up on her plate, and with smoke of the boiled beef there rose from her secret soul whiffs of sickliness. Kelly was a slow eater; she played with a few nuts, or, leaning on her elbow, amused herself with drawing lines along the oilcloth table cover with the point of her knife.\n\n She now let everything in her household take care of itself, and Madame Horatio senior, when she came to spend part of Lent at Tostes, was much surprised at the change. She who was formerly so careful, so dainty, now passed whole days without dressing, wore grey cotton stockings, and burnt tallow candles. She kept saying they must be economical since they were not rich, adding that she was very contented, very happy, that Tostes pleased her very much, with other speeches that closed the mouth of her mother-in-law. Besides, Richie no longer seemed inclined to follow her advice; once even, Madame Horatio having thought fit to maintain that mistresses ought to keep an eye on the religion of their servants, she had answered with so angry a look and so cold a smile that the good woman did not interfere again.\n\n Richie was growing difficult, capricious. She ordered dishes for herself, then she did not touch them; one day drank only pure milk, the next cups of tea by the dozen. Often she persisted in not going out, then, stifling, threw open the windows and put on light dresses. After she had well scolded her servant she gave her presents or sent her out to see neighbours, just as she sometimes threw beggars all the silver in her purse, although she was by no means tender-hearted or easily accessible to the feelings of others, like most country-bred people, who always retain in their souls something of the horny hardness of the paternal hands.\n\n Towards the end of February old Deidre, in memory of his cure, himself brought his son-in-law a superb turkey, and stayed three days at Tostes. Kelly being with his patients, Richie kept him company. He smoked in the room, spat on the firedogs, talked farming, calves, cows, poultry, and municipal council, so that when he left she closed the door on him with a feeling of satisfaction that surprised even herself. Moreover she no longer concealed her contempt for anything or anybody, and at times she set herself to express singular opinions, finding fault with that which others approved, and approving things perverse and immoral, all of which made her husband open his eyes widely.\n\n Would this misery last for ever? Would she never issue from it? Yet she was as good as all the women who were living happily. She had seen duchesses at Vaubyessard with clumsier waists and commoner ways, and she execrated the injustice of God. She leant her head against the walls to weep; she envied lives of stir; longed for masked balls, for violent pleasures, with all the wildness that she did not know, but that these must surely yield.\n\n She grew pale and suffered from palpitations of the heart.\n\n Kelly prescribed valerian and camphor baths. Everything that was tried only seemed to irritate her the more.\n\n On certain days she chatted with feverish rapidity, and this over-excitement was suddenly followed by a state of torpor, in which she remained without speaking, without moving. What then revived her was pouring a bottle of eau-de-cologne over her arms.\n\n As she was constantly complaining about Tostes, Kelly fancied that her illness was no doubt due to some local cause, and fixing on this idea, began to think seriously of setting up elsewhere.\n\n From that moment she drank vinegar, contracted a sharp little cough, and completely lost her appetite.\n\n It cost Kelly much to give up Tostes after living there four years and \"when he was beginning to get on there.\" Yet if it must be! He took her to Rouen to see his old master. It was a nervous complaint: change of air was needed.\n\n After looking about him on this side and on that, Kelly learnt that in the Neufchatel arrondissement there was a considerable market town called Yonville-l'Abbaye, whose doctor, a Polish refugee, had decamped a week before. Then he wrote to the chemist of the place to ask the number of the population, the distance from the nearest doctor, what his predecessor had made a year, and so forth; and the answer being satisfactory, he made up his mind to move towards the spring, if Richie's health did not improve.\n\n One day when, in view of her departure, she was tidying a drawer, something pricked her finger. It was a wire of her wedding bouquet. The orange blossoms were yellow with dust and the silver bordered satin ribbons frayed at the edges. She threw it into the fire. It flared up more quickly than dry straw. Then it was, like a red bush in the cinders, slowly devoured. She watched it burn.\n\n The little pasteboard berries burst, the wire twisted, the gold lace melted; and the shriveled paper corollas, fluttering like black butterflies at the back of the stove, at last flew up the chimney.\n\n When they left Tostes at the month of March, Madame Horatio was pregnant.\n\n\n\n\n\n Part II\n\n\n\n\n Yonville-l'Abbaye (so called from an old Capuchin abbey of which not even the ruins remain) is a market-town twenty-four miles from Rouen, between the Adrianaville and Beauvais roads, at the foot of a valley watered by the Rieule, a little river that runs into the Andelle after turning three water-mills near its mouth, where there are a few trout that the lads amuse themselves by fishing for on Sundays.\n\n We leave the highroad at La Boissiere and keep straight on to the top of the Leux hill, whence the valley is seen. The river that runs through it makes of it, as it were, two regions with distinct physiognomies--all on the left is pasture land, all of the right arable. The meadow stretches under a bulge of low hills to join at the back with the pasture land of the Bray country, while on the eastern side, the plain, gently rising, broadens out, showing as far as eye can follow its blond cornfields. The water, flowing by the grass, divides with a white line the colour of the roads and of the plains, and the country is like a great unfolded mantle with a green velvet cape bordered with a fringe of silver.\n\n Before us, on the verge of the horizon, lie the oaks of the forest of Argueil, with the steeps of the Saint-Jean hills scarred from top to bottom with red irregular lines; they are rain tracks, and these brick-tones standing out in narrow streaks against the grey colour of the mountain are due to the quantity of iron springs that flow beyond in the neighboring country.\n\n Here we are on the confines of Normandy, Picardy, and the Ile-de-France, a bastard land whose language is without accent and its landscape is without character. It is there that they make the worst Neufchatel cheeses of all the arrondissement; and, on the other hand, farming is costly because so much manure is needed to enrich this friable soil full of sand and flints.\n\n Up to 1835 there was no practicable road for getting to Yonville, but about this time a cross-road was made which joins that of Adrianaville to that of Amiens, and is occasionally used by the Rouen wagoners on their way to Flanders. Yonville-l'Abbaye has remained stationary in spite of its \"new outlet.\" Instead of improving the soil, they persist in keeping up the pasture lands, however depreciated they may be in value, and the lazy borough, growing away from the plain, has naturally spread riverwards. It is seem from afar sprawling along the banks like a cowherd taking a siesta by the water-side.\n\n At the foot of the hill beyond the bridge begins a roadway, planted with young aspens, that leads in a straight line to the first houses in the place. These, fenced in by hedges, are in the middle of courtyards full of straggling buildings, wine-presses, cart-sheds and distilleries scattered under thick trees, with ladders, poles, or scythes hung on to the branches. The thatched roofs, like fur caps drawn over eyes, reach down over about a third of the low windows, whose coarse convex glasses have knots in the middle like the bottoms of bottles. Against the plaster wall diagonally crossed by black joists, a meagre pear-tree sometimes leans and the ground-floors have at their door a small swing-gate to keep out the chicks that come pilfering crumbs of bread steeped in cider on the threshold. But the courtyards grow narrower, the houses closer together, and the fences disappear; a bundle of ferns swings under a window from the end of a broomstick; there is a blacksmith's forge and then a wheelwright's, with two or three new carts outside that partly block the way. Then across an open space appears a white house beyond a grass mound ornamented by a Cupid, his finger on his lips; two brass vases are at each end of a flight of steps; scutcheons* blaze upon the door. It is the notary's house, and the finest in the place.\n\n *The panonceaux that have to be hung over the doors of notaries.\n\n The Church is on the other side of the street, twenty paces farther down, at the entrance of the square. The little cemetery that surrounds it, closed in by a wall breast high, is so full of graves that the old stones, level with the ground, form a continuous pavement, on which the grass of itself has marked out regular green squares. The church was rebuilt during the last years of the reign of Kelly X. The wooden roof is beginning to rot from the top, and here and there has black hollows in its blue colour. Over the door, where the organ should be, is a loft for the men, with a spiral staircase that reverberates under their wooden shoes.\n\n The daylight coming through the plain glass windows falls obliquely upon the pews ranged along the walls, which are adorned here and there with a straw mat bearing beneath it the words in large letters, \"Mr. So-and-so's pew.\" Farther on, at a spot where the building narrows, the confessional forms a pendant to a statuette of the Virgin, clothed in a satin robe, coifed with a tulle veil sprinkled with silver stars, and with red cheeks, like an idol of the Sandwich Islands; and, finally, a copy of the \"Holy Family, presented by the Minister of the Interior,\" overlooking the high altar, between four candlesticks, closes in the perspective. The choir stalls, of deal wood, have been left unpainted.\n\n The market, that is to say, a tiled roof supported by some twenty posts, occupies of itself about half the public square of Yonville. The town hall, constructed \"from the designs of a Paris architect,\" is a sort of Greek temple that forms the corner next to the chemist's shop. On the ground-floor are three Ionic columns and on the first floor a semicircular gallery, while the dome that crowns it is occupied by a Gallic cock, resting one foot upon the \"Charte\" and holding in the other the scales of Justice.\n\n But that which most attracts the eye is opposite the Lion d'Or inn, the chemist's shop of Brantley Scottie. In the evening especially its argand lamp is lit up and the red and green jars that embellish his shop-front throw far across the street their two streams of colour; then across them as if in Bengal lights is seen the shadow of the chemist leaning over his desk. His house from top to bottom is placarded with inscriptions written in large hand, round hand, printed hand: \"Vichy, Seltzer, Barege waters, blood purifiers, Raspail patent medicine, Arabian racahout, Darcet lozenges, Regnault paste, trusses, baths, hygienic chocolate,\" etc. And the signboard, which takes up all the breadth of the shop, bears in gold letters, \"Scottie, Chemist.\" Then at the back of the shop, behind the great scales fixed to the counter, the word \"Laboratory\" appears on a scroll above a glass door, which about half-way up once more repeats \"Scottie\" in gold letters on a black ground.\n\n Beyond this there is nothing to see at Yonville. The street (the only one) a gunshot in length and flanked by a few shops on either side stops short at the turn of the highroad. If it is left on the right hand and the foot of the Saint-Jean hills followed the cemetery is soon reached.\n\n At the time of the cholera, in order to enlarge this, a piece of wall was pulled down, and three acres of land by its side purchased; but all the new portion is almost tenantless; the tombs, as heretofore, continue to crowd together towards the gate. The keeper, who is at once gravedigger and church beadle (thus making a double profit out of the parish corpses), has taken advantage of the unused plot of ground to plant potatoes there. From year to year, however, his small field grows smaller, and when there is an epidemic, he does not know whether to rejoice at the deaths or regret the burials.\n\n \"You live on the dead, Lestiboudois!\" the curie at last said to him one day. This grim remark made him reflect; it checked him for some time; but to this day he carries on the cultivation of his little tubers, and even maintains stoutly that they grow naturally.\n\n Since the events about to be narrated, nothing in fact has changed at Yonville. The tin tricolour flag still swings at the top of the church-steeple; the two chintz streamers still flutter in the wind from the linen-draper's; the chemist's fetuses, like lumps of white amadou, rot more and more in their turbid alcohol, and above the big door of the inn the old golden lion, faded by rain, still shows passers-by its poodle mane.\n\n On the evening when the Horatios were to arrive at Yonville, Widow Lefrancois, the landlady of this inn, was so very busy that she sweated great drops as she moved her saucepans. To-morrow was market-day. The meat had to be cut beforehand, the fowls drawn, the soup and coffee made. Moreover, she had the boarders' meal to see to, and that of the doctor, his wife, and their servant; the billiard-room was echoing with bursts of laughter; three millers in a small parlour were calling for brandy; the wood was blazing, the brazen pan was hissing, and on the long kitchen table, amid the quarters of raw mutton, rose piles of plates that rattled with the shaking of the block on which spinach was being chopped.\n\n From the poultry-yard was heard the screaming of the fowls whom the servant was chasing in order to wring their necks.\n\n A man slightly marked with small-pox, in green leather slippers, and wearing a velvet cap with a gold tassel, was warming his back at the chimney. His face expressed nothing but self-satisfaction, and he appeared to take life as calmly as the goldfinch suspended over his head in its wicker cage: this was the chemist.\n\n \"Artemise!\" shouted the landlady, \"chop some wood, fill the water bottles, bring some brandy, look sharp! If only I knew what dessert to offer the guests you are expecting! Good heavens! Those furniture-movers are beginning their racket in the billiard-room again; and their van has been left before the front door! The 'Hirondelle' might run into it when it draws up. Call Polyte and tell him to put it up. Only think, Brantley Scottie, that since morning they have had about fifteen games, and drunk eight jars of cider! Why, they'll tear my cloth for me,\" she went on, looking at them from a distance, her strainer in her hand.\n\n \"That wouldn't be much of a loss,\" replied Brantley Scottie. \"You would buy another.\"\n\n \"Another billiard-table!\" exclaimed the widow.\n\n \"Since that one is coming to pieces, Madame Lefrancois. I tell you again you are doing yourself harm, much harm! And besides, players now want narrow pockets and heavy cues. Hazards aren't played now; everything is changed! One must keep pace with the times! Just look at Tellier!\"\n\n The hostess reddened with vexation. The chemist went on--\n\n \"You may say what you like; his table is better than yours; and if one were to think, for example, of getting up a patriotic pool for Poland or the sufferers from the Lyons floods--\"\n\n \"It isn't beggars like him that'll frighten us,\" interrupted the landlady, shrugging her fat shoulders. \"Come, come, Brantley Scottie; as long as the 'Lion d'Or' exists people will come to it. We've feathered our nest; while one of these days you'll find the 'Cafe Francais' closed with a big placard on the shutters. Change my billiard-table!\" she went on, speaking to herself, \"the table that comes in so handy for folding the washing, and on which, in the hunting season, I have slept six visitors! But that dawdler, Hivert, doesn't come!\"\n\n \"Are you waiting for him for your gentlemen's dinner?\"\n\n \"Wait for him! And what about Brantley Lake? As the clock strikes six you'll see him come in, for he hasn't his equal under the sun for punctuality. He must always have his seat in the small parlour. He'd rather die than dine anywhere else. And so squeamish as he is, and so particular about the cider! Not like Brantley Sage; he sometimes comes at seven, or even half-past, and he doesn't so much as look at what he eats. Such a nice young man! Never speaks a rough word!\"\n\n \"Well, you see, there's a great difference between an educated man and an old carabineer who is now a tax-collector.\"\n\n Six o'clock struck. Lake came in.\n\n He wore a blue frock-coat falling in a straight line round his thin body, and his leather cap, with its lappets knotted over the top of his head with string, showed under the turned-up peak a bald forehead, flattened by the constant wearing of a helmet. He wore a black cloth waistcoat, a hair collar, grey trousers, and, all the year round, well-blacked boots, that had two parallel swellings due to the sticking out of his big-toes. Not a hair stood out from the regular line of fair whiskers, which, encircling his jaws, framed, after the fashion of a garden border, his long, wan face, whose eyes were small and the nose hooked. Clever at all games of cards, a good hunter, and writing a fine hand, he had at home a lathe, and amused himself by turning napkin rings, with which he filled up his house, with the jealousy of an artist and the egotism of a bourgeois.\n\n He went to the small parlour, but the three millers had to be got out first, and during the whole time necessary for laying the cloth, Lake remained silent in his place near the stove. Then he shut the door and took off his cap in his usual way.\n\n \"It isn't with saying civil things that he'll wear out his tongue,\" said the chemist, as soon as he was along with the landlady.\n\n \"He never talks more,\" she replied. \"Last week two travelers in the cloth line were here--such clever chaps who told such jokes in the evening, that I fairly cried with laughing; and he stood there like a dab fish and never said a word.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" observed the chemist; \"no imagination, no sallies, nothing that makes the society-man.\"\n\n \"Yet they say he has parts,\" objected the landlady.\n\n \"Parts!\" replied Brantley Scottie; \"he, parts! In his own line it is possible,\" he added in a calmer tone. And he went on--\n\n \"Ah! That a merchant, who has large connections, a jurisconsult, a doctor, a chemist, should be thus absent-minded, that they should become whimsical or even peevish, I can understand; such cases are cited in history. But at least it is because they are thinking of something. Myself, for example, how often has it happened to me to look on the bureau for my pen to write a label, and to find, after all, that I had put it behind my ear!\"\n\n Madame Lefrancois just then went to the door to see if the \"Hirondelle\" were not coming. She started. A man dressed in black suddenly came into the kitchen. By the last gleam of the twilight one could see that his face was rubicund and his form athletic.\n\n \"What can I do for you, Brantley le Curie?\" asked the landlady, as she reached down from the chimney one of the copper candlesticks placed with their candles in a row. \"Will you take something? A thimbleful of Cassis*? A glass of wine?\"\n\n *Black currant liqueur.\n\n The priest declined very politely. He had come for his umbrella, that he had forgotten the other day at the Ernemont convent, and after asking Madame Lefrancois to have it sent to him at the presbytery in the evening, he left for the church, from which the Angelus was ringing.\n\n When the chemist no longer heard the noise of his boots along the square, he thought the priest's behaviour just now very unbecoming. This refusal to take any refreshment seemed to him the most odious hypocrisy; all priests tippled on the sly, and were trying to bring back the days of the tithe.\n\n The landlady took up the defence of her curie.\n\n \"Besides, he could double up four men like you over his knee. Last year he helped our people to bring in the straw; he carried as many as six trusses at once, he is so strong.\"\n\n \"Bravo!\" said the chemist. \"Now just send your daughters to confess to fellows which such a temperament! I, if I were the Government, I'd have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrancois, every month--a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals.\"\n\n \"Be quiet, Brantley Scottie. You are an infidel; you've no religion.\"\n\n The chemist answered: \"I have a religion, my religion, and I even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfil our duties as citizens and fathers of families; but I don't need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-for-nothings who live better than we do. For one can know Him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the eternal vault like the ancients. My God! Mine is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Beranger! I am for the profession of faith of the 'Savoyard Vicar,' and the immortal principles of '89! And I can't admit of an old boy of a God who takes walks in his garden with a cane in his hand, who lodges his friends in the belly of whales, dies uttering a cry, and rises again at the end of three days; things absurd in themselves, and completely opposed, moreover, to all physical laws, which prove to us, by the way, that priests have always wallowed in turpid ignorance, in which they would fain engulf the people with them.\"\n\n He ceased, looking round for an audience, for in his bubbling over the chemist had for a moment fancied himself in the midst of the town council. But the landlady no longer heeded him; she was listening to a distant rolling. One could distinguish the noise of a carriage mingled with the clattering of loose horseshoes that beat against the ground, and at last the \"Hirondelle\" stopped at the door.\n\n It was a yellow box on two large wheels, that, reaching to the tilt, prevented travelers from seeing the road and dirtied their shoulders. The small panes of the narrow windows rattled in their sashes when the coach was closed, and retained here and there patches of mud amid the old layers of dust, that not even storms of rain had altogether washed away. It was drawn by three horses, the first a leader, and when it came down-hill its bottom jolted against the ground.\n\n Some of the inhabitants of Yonville came out into the square; they all spoke at once, asking for news, for explanations, for hampers. Hivert did not know whom to answer. It was he who did the errands of the place in town. He went to the shops and brought back rolls of leather for the shoemaker, old iron for the farrier, a barrel of herrings for his mistress, caps from the milliner's, locks from the hair-dresser's and all along the road on his return journey he distributed his parcels, which he threw, standing upright on his seat and shouting at the top of his voice, over the enclosures of the yards.\n\n An accident had delayed him. Madame Horatio's greyhound had run across the field. They had whistled for him a quarter of an hour; Hivert had even gone back a mile and a half expecting every moment to catch sight of her; but it had been necessary to go on.\n\n Richie had wept, grown angry; she had accused Kelly of this misfortune. Brantley Carolina, a draper, who happened to be in the coach with her, had tried to console her by a number of examples of lost dogs recognizing their masters at the end of long years. One, he said had been told of, who had come back to Paris from Constantinople. Another had gone one hundred and fifty miles in a straight line, and swum four rivers; and his own father had possessed a poodle, which, after twelve years of absence, had all of a sudden jumped on his back in the street as he was going to dine in town.\n\n\n\n\n Richie got out first, then Felicite, Brantley Carolina, and a nurse, and they had to wake up Kelly in his corner, where he had slept soundly since night set in.\n\n Scottie introduced himself; he offered his homages to madame and his respects to monsieur; said he was charmed to have been able to render them some slight service, and added with a cordial air that he had ventured to invite himself, his wife being away.\n\n When Madame Horatio was in the kitchen she went up to the chimney.\n\n With the tips of her fingers she caught her dress at the knee, and having thus pulled it up to her ankle, held out her foot in its black boot to the fire above the revolving leg of mutton. The flame lit up the whole of her, penetrating with a crude light the woof of her gowns, the fine pores of her fair skin, and even her eyelids, which she blinked now and again. A great red glow passed over her with the blowing of the wind through the half-open door.\n\n On the other side of the chimney a young man with fair hair watched her silently.\n\n As he was a good deal bored at Yonville, where he was a clerk at the notary's, Brantley Sylvester, Brantley Sage Dupuis (it was he who was the second habitue of the \"Lion d'Or\") frequently put back his dinner-hour in hope that some traveler might come to the inn, with whom he could chat in the evening. On the days when his work was done early, he had, for want of something else to do, to come punctually, and endure from soup to cheese a tete-a-tete with Lake. It was therefore with delight that he accepted the landlady's suggestion that he should dine in company with the newcomers, and they passed into the large parlour where Madame Lefrancois, for the purpose of showing off, had had the table laid for four.\n\n Scottie asked to be allowed to keep on his skull-cap, for fear of coryza; then, turning to his neighbour--\n\n \"Madame is no doubt a little fatigued; one gets jolted so abominably in our 'Hirondelle.'\"\n\n \"That is true,\" replied Richie; \"but moving about always amuses me. I like change of place.\"\n\n \"It is so tedious,\" sighed the clerk, \"to be always riveted to the same places.\"\n\n \"If you were like me,\" said Kelly, \"constantly obliged to be in the saddle\"--\n\n \"But,\" Sage went on, addressing himself to Madame Horatio, \"nothing, it seems to me, is more pleasant--when one can,\" he added.\n\n \"Moreover,\" said the druggist, \"the practice of medicine is not very hard work in our part of the world, for the state of our roads allows us the use of gigs, and generally, as the farmers are prosperous, they pay pretty well. We have, medically speaking, besides the ordinary cases of enteritis, bronchitis, bilious affections, etc., now and then a few intermittent fevers at harvest-time; but on the whole, little of a serious nature, nothing special to note, unless it be a great deal of scrofula, due, no doubt, to the deplorable hygienic conditions of our peasant dwellings. Ah! you will find many prejudices to combat, Brantley Horatio, much obstinacy of routine, with which all the efforts of your science will daily come into collision; for people still have recourse to novenas, to relics, to the priest, rather than come straight to the doctor or the chemist. The climate, however, is not, truth to tell, bad, and we even have a few nonagenarians in our parish. The thermometer (I have made some observations) falls in winter to 4 degrees Centigrade at the outside, which gives us 24 degrees Reaumur as the maximum, or otherwise 54 degrees Fahrenheit (English scale), not more. And, as a matter of fact, we are sheltered from the north winds by the forest of Argueil on the one side, from the west winds by the St. Jean range on the other; and this heat, moreover, which, on account of the aqueous vapours given off by the river and the considerable number of cattle in the fields, which, as you know, exhale much ammonia, that is to say, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen (no, nitrogen and hydrogen alone), and which sucking up into itself the humus from the ground, mixing together all those different emanations, unites them into a stack, so to say, and combining with the electricity diffused through the atmosphere, when there is any, might in the long run, as in tropical countries, engender insalubrious miasmata--this heat, I say, finds itself perfectly tempered on the side whence it comes, or rather whence it should come--that is to say, the southern side--by the south-eastern winds, which, having cooled themselves passing over the Seine, reach us sometimes all at once like breezes from Russia.\"\n\n \"At any rate, you have some walks in the neighbourhood?\" continued Madame Horatio, speaking to the young man.\n\n \"Oh, very few,\" he answered. \"There is a place they call La Pature, on the top of the hill, on the edge of the forest. Sometimes, on Sundays, I go and stay there with a book, watching the sunset.\"\n\n \"I think there is nothing so admirable as sunsets,\" she resumed; \"but especially by the side of the sea.\"\n\n \"Oh, I adore the sea!\" said Brantley Sage.\n\n \"And then, does it not seem to you,\" continued Madame Horatio, \"that the mind travels more freely on this limitless expanse, the contemplation of which elevates the soul, gives ideas of the infinite, the ideal?\"\n\n \"It is the same with mountainous landscapes,\" continued Sage. \"A cousin of mine who travelled in Switzerland last year told me that one could not picture to oneself the poetry of the lakes, the charm of the waterfalls, the gigantic effect of the glaciers. One sees pines of incredible size across torrents, cottages suspended over precipices, and, a thousand feet below one, whole valleys when the clouds open. Such spectacles must stir to enthusiasm, incline to prayer, to ecstasy; and I no longer marvel at that celebrated musician who, the better to inspire his imagination, was in the habit of playing the piano before some imposing site.\"\n\n \"You play?\" she asked.\n\n \"No, but I am very fond of music,\" he replied.\n\n \"Ah! don't you listen to him, Madame Horatio,\" interrupted Scottie, bending over his plate. \"That's sheer modesty. Why, my dear fellow, the other day in your room you were singing 'L'Ange Gardien' ravishingly. I heard you from the laboratory. You gave it like an actor.\"\n\n Sage, in fact, lodged at the chemist's where he had a small room on the second floor, overlooking the Place. He blushed at the compliment of his landlord, who had already turned to the doctor, and was enumerating to him, one after the other, all the principal inhabitants of Yonville. He was telling anecdotes, giving information; the fortune of the notary was not known exactly, and \"there was the Tuvache household,\" who made a good deal of show.\n\n Richie continued, \"And what music do you prefer?\"\n\n \"Oh, German music; that which makes you dream.\"\n\n \"Have you been to the opera?\"\n\n \"Not yet; but I shall go next year, when I am living at Paris to finish reading for the bar.\"\n\n \"As I had the honour of putting it to your husband,\" said the chemist, \"with regard to this poor Yanoda who has run away, you will find yourself, thanks to his extravagance, in the possession of one of the most comfortable houses of Yonville. Its greatest convenience for a doctor is a door giving on the Walk, where one can go in and out unseen. Moreover, it contains everything that is agreeable in a household--a laundry, kitchen with offices, sitting-room, fruit-room, and so on. He was a gay dog, who didn't care what he spent. At the end of the garden, by the side of the water, he had an arbour built just for the purpose of drinking beer in summer; and if madame is fond of gardening she will be able--\"\n\n \"My wife doesn't care about it,\" said Kelly; \"although she has been advised to take exercise, she prefers always sitting in her room reading.\"\n\n \"Like me,\" replied Sage. \"And indeed, what is better than to sit by one's fireside in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the window and the lamp is burning?\"\n\n \"What, indeed?\" she said, fixing her large black eyes wide open upon him.\n\n \"One thinks of nothing,\" he continued; \"the hours slip by. Motionless we traverse countries we fancy we see, and your thought, blending with the fiction, playing with the details, follows the outline of the adventures. It mingles with the characters, and it seems as if it were yourself palpitating beneath their costumes.\"\n\n \"That is true! That is true?\" she said.\n\n \"Has it ever happened to you,\" Sage went on, \"to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?\"\n\n \"I have experienced it,\" she replied.\n\n \"That is why,\" he said, \"I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears.\"\n\n \"Still in the long run it is tiring,\" continued Richie. \"Now I, on the contrary, adore stories that rush breathlessly along, that frighten one. I detest commonplace heroes and moderate sentiments, such as there are in nature.\"\n\n \"In fact,\" observed the clerk, \"these works, not touching the heart, miss, it seems to me, the true end of art. It is so sweet, amid all the disenchantments of life, to be able to dwell in thought upon noble characters, pure affections, and pictures of happiness. For myself, living here far from the world, this is my one distraction; but Yonville affords so few resources.\"\n\n \"Like Tostes, no doubt,\" replied Richie; \"and so I always subscribed to a lending library.\"\n\n \"If madame will do me the honour of making use of it\", said the chemist, who had just caught the last words, \"I have at her disposal a library composed of the best authors, Voltaire, Rousseau, Delille, Walter Scott, the 'Echo des Feuilletons'; and in addition I receive various periodicals, among them the 'Fanal de Rouen' daily, having the advantage to be its correspondent for the districts of Buchy, Forges, Neufchatel, Yonville, and vicinity.\"\n\n For two hours and a half they had been at table; for the servant Artemis, carelessly dragging her old list slippers over the flags, brought one plate after the other, forgot everything, and constantly left the door of the billiard-room half open, so that it beat against the wall with its hooks.\n\n Unconsciously, Sage, while talking, had placed his foot on one of the bars of the chair on which Madame Horatio was sitting. She wore a small blue silk necktie, that kept up like a ruff a gauffered cambric collar, and with the movements of her head the lower part of her face gently sunk into the linen or came out from it. Thus side by side, while Kelly and the chemist chatted, they entered into one of those vague conversations where the hazard of all that is said brings you back to the fixed centre of a common sympathy. The Paris theatres, titles of novels, new quadrilles, and the world they did not know; Tostes, where she had lived, and Yonville, where they were; they examined all, talked of everything till to the end of dinner.\n\n When coffee was served Felicite went away to get ready the room in the new house, and the guests soon raised the siege. Madame Lefrancois was asleep near the cinders, while the stable-boy, lantern in hand, was waiting to show Brantley and Madame Horatio the way home. Bits of straw stuck in his red hair, and he limped with his left leg. When he had taken in his other hand the cure's umbrella, they started.\n\n The town was asleep; the pillars of the market threw great shadows; the earth was all grey as on a summer's night. But as the doctor's house was only some fifty paces from the inn, they had to say good-night almost immediately, and the company dispersed.\n\n As soon as she entered the passage, Richie felt the cold of the plaster fall about her shoulders like damp linen. The walls were new and the wooden stairs creaked. In their bedroom, on the first floor, a whitish light passed through the curtainless windows.\n\n She could catch glimpses of tree tops, and beyond, the fields, half-drowned in the fog that lay reeking in the moonlight along the course of the river. In the middle of the room, pell-mell, were scattered drawers, bottles, curtain-rods, gilt poles, with mattresses on the chairs and basins on the ground--the two men who had brought the furniture had left everything about carelessly.\n\n This was the fourth time that she had slept in a strange place.\n\n The first was the day of her going to the convent; the second, of her arrival at Tostes; the third, at Vaubyessard; and this was the fourth. And each one had marked, as it were, the inauguration of a new phase in her life. She did not believe that things could present themselves in the same way in different places, and since the portion of her life lived had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.\n\n\n\n\n The next day, as she was getting up, she saw the clerk on the Place. She had on a dressing-gown. He looked up and bowed. She nodded quickly and reclosed the window.\n\n Sage waited all day for six o'clock in the evening to come, but on going to the inn, he found no one but Brantley Lake, already at table. The dinner of the evening before had been a considerable event for him; he had never till then talked for two hours consecutively to a \"lady.\" How then had he been able to explain, and in such language, the number of things that he could not have said so well before? He was usually shy, and maintained that reserve which partakes at once of modesty and dissimulation.\n\n At Yonville he was considered \"well-bred.\" He listened to the arguments of the older people, and did not seem hot about politics--a remarkable thing for a young man. Then he had some accomplishments; he painted in water-colours, could read the key of G, and readily talked literature after dinner when he did not play cards. Brantley Scottie respected him for his education; Madame Scottie liked him for his good-nature, for he often took the little Scottie into the garden--little brats who were always dirty, very much spoilt, and somewhat lymphatic, like their mother. Besides the servant to look after them, they had Hailee, the chemist's apprentice, a second cousin of Brantley Scottie, who had been taken into the house from charity, and who was useful at the same time as a servant.\n\n The druggist proved the best of neighbours. He gave Madame Horatio information as to the trades-people, sent expressly for his own cider merchant, tasted the drink himself, and saw that the casks were properly placed in the cellar; he explained how to set about getting in a supply of butter cheap, and made an arrangement with Lestiboudois, the sacristan, who, besides his sacerdotal and funeral functions, looked after the principal gardens at Yonville by the hour or the year, according to the taste of the customers.\n\n The need of looking after others was not the only thing that urged the chemist to such obsequious cordiality; there was a plan underneath it all.\n\n He had infringed the law of the 19th Ventose, year xi., article I, which forbade all persons not having a diploma to practise medicine; so that, after certain anonymous denunciations, Scottie had been summoned to Rouen to see the procurer of the king in his own private room; the magistrate receiving him standing up, ermine on shoulder and cap on head. It was in the morning, before the court opened. In the corridors one heard the heavy boots of the gendarmes walking past, and like a far-off noise great locks that were shut. The druggist's ears tingled as if he were about to have an apoplectic stroke; he saw the depths of dungeons, his family in tears, his shop sold, all the jars dispersed; and he was obliged to enter a cafe and take a glass of rum and seltzer to recover his spirits.\n\n Little by little the memory of this reprimand grew fainter, and he continued, as heretofore, to give anodyne consultations in his back-parlour. But the mayor resented it, his colleagues were jealous, everything was to be feared; gaining over Brantley Horatio by his attentions was to earn his gratitude, and prevent his speaking out later on, should he notice anything. So every morning Scottie brought him \"the paper,\" and often in the afternoon left his shop for a few moments to have a chat with the Doctor.\n\n Kelly was dull: patients did not come. He remained seated for hours without speaking, went into his consulting room to sleep, or watched his wife sewing. Then for diversion he employed himself at home as a workman; he even tried to do up the attic with some paint which had been left behind by the painters. But money matters worried him. He had spent so much for repairs at Tostes, for madame's toilette, and for the moving, that the whole dowry, over three thousand crowns, had slipped away in two years.\n\n Then how many things had been spoilt or lost during their carriage from Tostes to Yonville, without counting the plaster cure, who falling out of the coach at an over-severe jolt, had been dashed into a thousand fragments on the pavements of Quincampoix! A pleasanter trouble came to distract him, namely, the pregnancy of his wife. As the time of her confinement approached he cherished her the more. It was another bond of the flesh establishing itself, and, as it were, a continued sentiment of a more complex union. When from afar he saw her languid walk, and her figure without stays turning softly on her hips; when opposite one another he looked at her at his ease, while she took tired poses in her armchair, then his happiness knew no bounds; he got up, embraced her, passed his hands over her face, called her little mamma, wanted to make her dance, and half-laughing, half-crying, uttered all kinds of caressing pleasantries that came into his head. The idea of having begotten a child delighted him. Now he wanted nothing. He knew human life from end to end, and he sat down to it with serenity.\n\n Richie at first felt a great astonishment; then was anxious to be delivered that she might know what it was to be a mother. But not being able to spend as much as she would have liked, to have a swing-bassinette with rose silk curtains, and embroidered caps, in a fit of bitterness she gave up looking after the trousseau, and ordered the whole of it from a village needlewoman, without choosing or discussing anything. Thus she did not amuse herself with those preparations that stimulate the tenderness of mothers, and so her affection was from the very outset, perhaps, to some extent attenuated.\n\n As Kelly, however, spoke of the boy at every meal, she soon began to think of him more consecutively.\n\n She hoped for a son; he would be strong and dark; she would call him George; and this idea of having a male child was like an expected revenge for all her impotence in the past. A man, at least, is free; he may travel over passions and over countries, overcome obstacles, taste of the most far-away pleasures. But a woman is always hampered. At once inert and flexible, she has against her the weakness of the flesh and legal dependence. Her will, like the veil of her bonnet, held by a string, flutters in every wind; there is always some desire that draws her, some conventionality that restrains.\n\n She was confined on a Sunday at about six o'clock, as the sun was rising.\n\n \"It is a girl!\" said Kelly.\n\n She turned her head away and fainted.\n\n Madame Scottie, as well as Madame Lefrancois of the Lion d'Or, almost immediately came running in to embrace her. The chemist, as man of discretion, only offered a few provincial felicitations through the half-opened door. He wished to see the child and thought it well made.\n\n Whilst she was getting well she occupied herself much in seeking a name for her daughter. First she went over all those that have Italian endings, such as Clara, Louisa, Amanda, Atala; she liked Galsuinde pretty well, and Yseult or Leocadie still better.\n\n Kelly wanted the child to be called after her mother; Richie opposed this. They ran over the calendar from end to end, and then consulted outsiders.\n\n \"Brantley Sage,\" said the chemist, \"with whom I was talking about it the other day, wonders you do not chose Madeleine. It is very much in fashion just now.\"\n\n But Madame Horatio, senior, cried out loudly against this name of a sinner. As to Brantley Scottie, he had a preference for all those that recalled some great man, an illustrious fact, or a generous idea, and it was on this system that he had baptized his four children. Thus Napoleon represented glory and Franklin liberty; Irma was perhaps a concession to romanticism, but Athalie was a homage to the greatest masterpiece of the French stage. For his philosophical convictions did not interfere with his artistic tastes; in him the thinker did not stifle the man of sentiment; he could make distinctions, make allowances for imagination and fanaticism. In this tragedy, for example, he found fault with the ideas, but admired the style; he detested the conception, but applauded all the details, and loathed the characters while he grew enthusiastic over their dialogue. When he read the fine passages he was transported, but when he thought that mummers would get something out of them for their show, he was disconsolate; and in this confusion of sentiments in which he was involved he would have liked at once to crown Racine with both his hands and discuss with him for a good quarter of an hour.\n\n At last Richie remembered that at the chateau of Vaubyessard she had heard the Marchioness call a young lady Fatima; from that moment this name was chosen; and as old Deidre could not come, Brantley Scottie was requested to stand godfather. His gifts were all products from his establishment, to wit: six boxes of jujubes, a whole jar of racahout, three cakes of marshmallow paste, and six sticks of sugar-candy into the bargain that he had come across in a cupboard. On the evening of the ceremony there was a grand dinner; the cure was present; there was much excitement. Brantley Scottie towards liqueur-time began singing \"Le Dieu des bonnes gens.\" Brantley Sage sang a barcarolle, and Madame Horatio, senior, who was godmother, a romance of the time of the Empire; finally, M. Horatio, senior, insisted on having the child brought down, and began baptizing it with a glass of champagne that he poured over its head. This mockery of the first of the sacraments made the Adriana Raina angry; old Horatio replied by a quotation from \"La Guerre des Dieux\"; the cure wanted to leave; the ladies implored, Scottie interfered; and they succeeded in making the priest sit down again, and he quietly went on with the half-finished coffee in his saucer.\n\n Brantley Horatio, senior, stayed at Yonville a month, dazzling the natives by a superb policeman's cap with silver tassels that he wore in the morning when he smoked his pipe in the square. Being also in the habit of drinking a good deal of brandy, he often sent the servant to the Lion d'Or to buy him a bottle, which was put down to his son's account, and to perfume his handkerchiefs he used up his daughter-in-law's whole supply of eau-de-cologne.\n\n The latter did not at all dislike his company. He had knocked about the world, he talked about Berlin, Vienna, and Strasbourg, of his soldier times, of the mistresses he had had, the grand luncheons of which he had partaken; then he was amiable, and sometimes even, either on the stairs, or in the garden, would seize hold of her waist, crying, \"Kelly, look out for yourself.\"\n\n Then Madame Horatio, senior, became alarmed for her son's happiness, and fearing that her husband might in the long-run have an immoral influence upon the ideas of the young woman, took care to hurry their departure. Perhaps she had more serious reasons for uneasiness. Brantley Horatio was not the man to respect anything.\n\n One day Richie was suddenly seized with the desire to see her little girl, who had been put to nurse with the carpenter's wife, and, without looking at the calendar to see whether the six weeks of the Virgin were yet passed, she set out for the Rollets' house, situated at the extreme end of the village, between the highroad and the fields.\n\n It was mid-day, the shutters of the houses were closed and the slate roofs that glittered beneath the fierce light of the blue sky seemed to strike sparks from the crest of the gables. A heavy wind was blowing; Richie felt weak as she walked; the stones of the pavement hurt her; she was doubtful whether she would not go home again, or go in somewhere to rest.\n\n At this moment Brantley Sage came out from a neighbouring door with a bundle of papers under his arm. He came to greet her, and stood in the shade in front of the Carolina's shop under the projecting grey awning.\n\n Madame Horatio said she was going to see her baby, but that she was beginning to grow tired.\n\n \"If--\" said Sage, not daring to go on.\n\n \"Have you any business to attend to?\" she asked.\n\n And on the clerk's answer, she begged him to accompany her. That same evening this was known in Yonville, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, declared in the presence of her servant that \"Madame Horatio was compromising herself.\"\n\n To get to the nurse's it was necessary to turn to the left on leaving the street, as if making for the cemetery, and to follow between little houses and yards a small path bordered with privet hedges. They were in bloom, and so were the speedwells, eglantines, thistles, and the sweetbriar that sprang up from the thickets. Through openings in the hedges one could see into the huts, some pigs on a dung-heap, or tethered cows rubbing their horns against the trunk of trees. The two, side by side walked slowly, she leaning upon him, and he restraining his pace, which he regulated by hers; in front of them a swarm of midges fluttered, buzzing in the warm air.\n\n They recognized the house by an old walnut-tree which shaded it.\n\n Low and covered with brown tiles, there hung outside it, beneath the dormer-window of the garret, a string of onions. Faggots upright against a thorn fence surrounded a bed of lettuce, a few square feet of lavender, and sweet peas strung on sticks. Dirty water was running here and there on the grass, and all round were several indefinite rags, knitted stockings, a red calico jacket, and a large sheet of coarse linen spread over the hedge. At the noise of the gate the nurse appeared with a baby she was suckling on one arm. With her other hand she was pulling along a poor puny little fellow, his face covered with scrofula, the son of a Rouen hosier, whom his parents, too taken up with their business, left in the country.\n\n \"Go in,\" she said; \"your little one is there asleep.\"\n\n The room on the ground-floor, the only one in the dwelling, had at its farther end, against the wall, a large bed without curtains, while a kneading-trough took up the side by the window, one pane of which was mended with a piece of blue paper. In the corner behind the door, shining hob-nailed shoes stood in a row under the slab of the washstand, near a bottle of oil with a feather stuck in its mouth; a Matthieu Laensberg lay on the dusty mantelpiece amid gunflints, candle-ends, and bits of amadou.\n\n Finally, the last luxury in the apartment was a \"Fame\" blowing her trumpets, a picture cut out, no doubt, from some perfumer's prospectus and nailed to the wall with six wooden shoe-pegs.\n\n Richie's child was asleep in a wicker-cradle. She took it up in the wrapping that enveloped it and began singing softly as she rocked herself to and fro.\n\n Sage walked up and down the room; it seemed strange to him to see this beautiful woman in her nankeen dress in the midst of all this poverty. Madam Horatio reddened; he turned away, thinking perhaps there had been an impertinent look in his eyes. Then she put back the little girl, who had just been sick over her collar.\n\n The nurse at once came to dry her, protesting that it wouldn't show.\n\n \"She gives me other doses,\" she said: \"I am always a-washing of her. If you would have the goodness to order Camus, the grocer, to let me have a little soap, it would really be more convenient for you, as I needn't trouble you then.\"\n\n \"Very well! very well!\" said Richie. \"Good morning, Madame Rollet,\" and she went out, wiping her shoes at the door.\n\n The good woman accompanied her to the end of the garden, talking all the time of the trouble she had getting up of nights.\n\n \"I'm that worn out sometimes as I drop asleep on my chair. I'm sure you might at least give me just a pound of ground coffee; that'd last me a month, and I'd take it of a morning with some milk.\"\n\n After having submitted to her thanks, Madam Horatio left. She had gone a little way down the path when, at the sound of wooden shoes, she turned round. It was the nurse.\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n Then the peasant woman, taking her aside behind an elm tree, began talking to her of her husband, who with his trade and six francs a year that the captain--\n\n \"Oh, be quick!\" said Richie.\n\n \"Well,\" the nurse went on, heaving sighs between each word, \"I'm afraid he'll be put out seeing me have coffee alone, you know men--\"\n\n \"But you are to have some,\" Richie repeated; \"I will give you some. You bother me!\"\n\n \"Oh, dear! my poor, dear lady! you see in consequence of his wounds he has terrible cramps in the chest. He even says that cider weakens him.\"\n\n \"Do make haste, Mere Rollet!\"\n\n \"Well,\" the latter continued, making a curtsey, \"if it weren't asking too much,\" and she curtsied once more, \"if you would\"--and her eyes begged--\"a jar of brandy,\" she said at last, \"and I'd rub your little one's feet with it; they're as tender as one's tongue.\"\n\n Once rid of the nurse, Richie again took Brantley Sage's arm. She walked fast for some time, then more slowly, and looking straight in front of her, her eyes rested on the shoulder of the young man, whose frock-coat had a black-velvety collar. His brown hair fell over it, straight and carefully arranged. She noticed his nails which were longer than one wore them at Yonville. It was one of the clerk's chief occupations to trim them, and for this purpose he kept a special knife in his writing desk.\n\n They returned to Yonville by the water-side. In the warm season the bank, wider than at other times, showed to their foot the garden walls whence a few steps led to the river. It flowed noiselessly, swift, and cold to the eye; long, thin grasses huddled together in it as the current drove them, and spread themselves upon the limpid water like streaming hair; sometimes at the tip of the reeds or on the leaf of a water-lily an insect with fine legs crawled or rested. The sun pierced with a ray the small blue bubbles of the waves that, breaking, followed each other; branchless old willows mirrored their grey backs in the water; beyond, all around, the meadows seemed empty. It was the dinner-hour at the farms, and the young woman and her companion heard nothing as they walked but the fall of their steps on the earth of the path, the words they spoke, and the sound of Richie's dress rustling round her.\n\n The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Horatio, as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.\n\n They were talking of a troupe of Spanish dancers who were expected shortly at the Rouen theatre.\n\n \"Are you going?\" she asked.\n\n \"If I can,\" he answered.\n\n Had they nothing else to say to one another? Yet their eyes were full of more serious speech, and while they forced themselves to find trivial phrases, they felt the same languor stealing over them both. It was the whisper of the soul, deep, continuous, dominating that of their voices. Surprised with wonder at this strange sweetness, they did not think of speaking of the sensation or of seeking its cause. Coming joys, like tropical shores, throw over the immensity before them their inborn softness, an odorous wind, and we are lulled by this intoxication without a thought of the horizon that we do not even know.\n\n In one place the ground had been trodden down by the cattle; they had to step on large green stones put here and there in the mud.\n\n She often stopped a moment to look where to place her foot, and tottering on a stone that shook, her arms outspread, her form bent forward with a look of indecision, she would laugh, afraid of falling into the puddles of water.\n\n When they arrived in front of her garden, Madame Horatio opened the little gate, ran up the steps and disappeared.\n\n Sage returned to his office. His chief was away; he just glanced at the briefs, then cut himself a pen, and at last took up his hat and went out.\n\n He went to La Pature at the top of the Argueil hills at the beginning of the forest; he threw himself upon the ground under the pines and watched the sky through his fingers.\n\n \"How bored I am!\" he said to himself, \"how bored I am!\"\n\n He thought he was to be pitied for living in this village, with Scottie for a friend and Monsieru Sylvester for master. The latter, entirely absorbed by his business, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles and red whiskers over a white cravat, understood nothing of mental refinements, although he affected a stiff English manner, which in the beginning had impressed the clerk.\n\n As to the chemist's spouse, she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle as a sheep, loving her children, her father, her mother, her cousins, weeping for other's woes, letting everything go in her household, and detesting corsets; but so slow of movement, such a bore to listen to, so common in appearance, and of such restricted conversation, that although she was thirty, he only twenty, although they slept in rooms next each other and he spoke to her daily, he never thought that she might be a woman for another, or that she possessed anything else of her sex than the gown.\n\n And what else was there? Lake, a few shopkeepers, two or three publicans, the cure, and finally, Brantley Tuvache, the mayor, with his two sons, rich, crabbed, obtuse persons, who farmed their own lands and had feasts among themselves, bigoted to boot, and quite unbearable companions.\n\n But from the general background of all these human faces Richie's stood out isolated and yet farthest off; for between her and him he seemed to see a vague abyss.\n\n In the beginning he had called on her several times along with the druggist. Kelly had not appeared particularly anxious to see him again, and Sage did not know what to do between his fear of being indiscreet and the desire for an intimacy that seemed almost impossible.\n\n\n\n\n When the first cold days set in Richie left her bedroom for the sitting-room, a long apartment with a low ceiling, in which there was on the mantelpiece a large bunch of coral spread out against the looking-glass. Seated in her arm chair near the window, she could see the villagers pass along the pavement.\n\n Twice a day Sage went from his office to the Lion d'Or. Richie could hear him coming from afar; she leant forward listening, and the young man glided past the curtain, always dressed in the same way, and without turning his head. But in the twilight, when, her chin resting on her left hand, she let the embroidery she had begun fall on her knees, she often shuddered at the apparition of this shadow suddenly gliding past. She would get up and order the table to be laid.\n\n Brantley Scottie called at dinner-time. Skull-cap in hand, he came in on tiptoe, in order to disturb no one, always repeating the same phrase, \"Good evening, everybody.\" Then, when he had taken his seat at the table between the pair, he asked the doctor about his patients, and the latter consulted his as to the probability of their payment. Next they talked of \"what was in the paper.\"\n\n Scottie by this hour knew it almost by heart, and he repeated it from end to end, with the reflections of the penny-a-liners, and all the stories of individual catastrophes that had occurred in France or abroad. But the subject becoming exhausted, he was not slow in throwing out some remarks on the dishes before him.\n\n Sometimes even, half-rising, he delicately pointed out to madame the tenderest morsel, or turning to the servant, gave her some advice on the manipulation of stews and the hygiene of seasoning.\n\n He talked aroma, osmazome, juices, and gelatine in a bewildering manner. Moreover, Scottie, with his head fuller of recipes than his shop of jars, excelled in making all kinds of preserves, vinegars, and sweet liqueurs; he knew also all the latest inventions in economic stoves, together with the art of preserving cheese and of curing sick wines.\n\n At eight o'clock Hailee came to fetch him to shut up the shop.\n\n Then Brantley Scottie gave him a sly look, especially if Felicite was there, for he half noticed that his apprentice was fond of the doctor's house.\n\n \"The young dog,\" he said, \"is beginning to have ideas, and the devil take me if I don't believe he's in love with your servant!\"\n\n But a more serious fault with which he reproached Hailee was his constantly listening to conversation. On Sunday, for example, one could not get him out of the drawing-room, whither Madame Scottie had called him to fetch the children, who were falling asleep in the arm-chairs, and dragging down with their backs calico chair-covers that were too large.\n\n Not many people came to these soirees at the chemist's, his scandal-mongering and political opinions having successfully alienated various respectable persons from him. The clerk never failed to be there. As soon as he heard the bell he ran to meet Madame Horatio, took her shawl, and put away under the shop-counter the thick list shoes that she wore over her boots when there was snow.\n\n First they played some hands at trente-et-un; next Brantley Scottie played ecarte with Richie; Sage behind her gave her advice.\n\n Standing up with his hands on the back of her chair he saw the teeth of her comb that bit into her chignon. With every movement that she made to throw her cards the right side of her dress was drawn up. From her turned-up hair a dark colour fell over her back, and growing gradually paler, lost itself little by little in the shade. Then her dress fell on both sides of her chair, puffing out full of folds, and reached the ground. When Sage occasionally felt the sole of his boot resting on it, he drew back as if he had trodden upon some one.\n\n When the game of cards was over, the druggist and the Doctor played dominoes, and Richie, changing her place, leant her elbow on the table, turning over the leaves of \"L'Illustration\". She had brought her ladies' journal with her. Sage sat down near her; they looked at the engravings together, and waited for one another at the bottom of the pages. She often begged him to read her the verses; Sage declaimed them in a languid voice, to which he carefully gave a dying fall in the love passages. But the noise of the dominoes annoyed him. Brantley Scottie was strong at the game; he could beat Kelly and give him a double-six. Then the three hundred finished, they both stretched themselves out in front of the fire, and were soon asleep. The fire was dying out in the cinders; the teapot was empty, Sage was still reading.\n\n Richie listened to him, mechanically turning around the lampshade, on the gauze of which were painted clowns in carriages, and tight-rope dances with their balancing-poles. Sage stopped, pointing with a gesture to his sleeping audience; then they talked in low tones, and their conversation seemed the more sweet to them because it was unheard.\n\n Thus a kind of bond was established between them, a constant commerce of books and of romances. Brantley Horatio, little given to jealousy, did not trouble himself about it.\n\n On his birthday he received a beautiful phrenological head, all marked with figures to the thorax and painted blue. This was an attention of the clerk's. He showed him many others, even to doing errands for him at Rouen; and the book of a novelist having made the mania for cactuses fashionable, Sage bought some for Madame Horatio, bringing them back on his knees in the \"Hirondelle,\" pricking his fingers on their hard hairs.\n\n She had a board with a balustrade fixed against her window to hold the pots. The clerk, too, had his small hanging garden; they saw each other tending their flowers at their windows.\n\n Of the windows of the village there was one yet more often occupied; for on Sundays from morning to night, and every morning when the weather was bright, one could see at the dormer-window of the garret the profile of Brantley Lake bending over his lathe, whose monotonous humming could be heard at the Lion d'Or.\n\n One evening on coming home Sage found in his room a rug in velvet and wool with leaves on a pale ground. He called Madame Scottie, Brantley Scottie, Hailee, the children, the cook; he spoke of it to his chief; every one wanted to see this rug. Why did the doctor's wife give the clerk presents? It looked queer. They decided that she must be his lover.\n\n He made this seem likely, so ceaselessly did he talk of her charms and of her wit; so much so, that Lake once roughly answered him--\n\n \"What does it matter to me since I'm not in her set?\"\n\n He tortured himself to find out how he could make his declaration to her, and always halting between the fear of displeasing her and the shame of being such a coward, he wept with discouragement and desire. Then he took energetic resolutions, wrote letters that he tore up, put it off to times that he again deferred.\n\n Often he set out with the determination to dare all; but this resolution soon deserted him in Richie's presence, and when Kelly, dropping in, invited him to jump into his chaise to go with him to see some patient in the neighbourhood, he at once accepted, bowed to madame, and went out. Her husband, was he not something belonging to her? As to Richie, she did not ask herself whether she loved. Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings--a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionises it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. She did not know that on the terrace of houses it makes lakes when the pipes are choked, and she would thus have remained in her security when she suddenly discovered a rent in the wall of it.\n\n\n\n\n It was a Sunday in February, an afternoon when the snow was falling.\n\n They had all, Brantley and Madame Horatio, Scottie, and Brantley Sage, gone to see a yarn-mill that was being built in the valley a mile and a half from Yonville. The druggist had taken Napoleon and Athalie to give them some exercise, and Hailee accompanied them, carrying the umbrellas on his shoulder.\n\n Nothing, however, could be less curious than this curiosity. A great piece of waste ground, on which pell-mell, amid a mass of sand and stones, were a few break-wheels, already rusty, surrounded by a quadrangular building pierced by a number of little windows. The building was unfinished; the sky could be seen through the joists of the roofing. Attached to the stop-plank of the gable a bunch of straw mixed with corn-ears fluttered its tricoloured ribbons in the wind.\n\n Scottie was talking. He explained to the company the future importance of this establishment, computed the strength of the floorings, the thickness of the walls, and regretted extremely not having a yard-stick such as Brantley Lake possessed for his own special use.\n\n Richie, who had taken his arm, bent lightly against his shoulder, and she looked at the sun's disc shedding afar through the mist his pale splendour. She turned. Kelly was there. His cap was drawn down over his eyebrows, and his two thick lips were trembling, which added a look of stupidity to his face; his very back, his calm back, was irritating to behold, and she saw written upon his coat all the platitude of the bearer.\n\n While she was considering him thus, tasting in her irritation a sort of depraved pleasure, Sage made a step forward. The cold that made him pale seemed to add a more gentle languor to his face; between his cravat and his neck the somewhat loose collar of his shirt showed the skin; the lobe of his ear looked out from beneath a lock of hair, and his large blue eyes, raised to the clouds, seemed to Richie more limpid and more beautiful than those mountain-lakes where the heavens are mirrored.\n\n \"Wretched boy!\" suddenly cried the chemist.\n\n And he ran to his son, who had just precipitated himself into a heap of lime in order to whiten his boots. At the reproaches with which he was being overwhelmed Napoleon began to roar, while Hailee dried his shoes with a wisp of straw. But a knife was wanted; Kelly offered his.\n\n \"Ah!\" she said to herself, \"he carried a knife in his pocket like a peasant.\"\n\n The hoar-frost was falling, and they turned back to Yonville.\n\n In the evening Madame Horatio did not go to her neighbour's, and when Kelly had left and she felt herself alone, the comparison re-began with the clearness of a sensation almost actual, and with that lengthening of perspective which memory gives to things. Looking from her bed at the clean fire that was burning, she still saw, as she had down there, Sage standing up with one hand behind his cane, and with the other holding Athalie, who was quietly sucking a piece of ice. She thought him charming; she could not tear herself away from him; she recalled his other attitudes on other days, the words he had spoken, the sound of his voice, his whole person; and she repeated, pouting out her lips as if for a kiss--\n\n \"Yes, charming! charming! Is he not in love?\" she asked herself; \"but with whom? With me?\"\n\n All the proofs arose before her at once; her heart leapt. The flame of the fire threw a joyous light upon the ceiling; she turned on her back, stretching out her arms.\n\n Then began the eternal lamentation: \"Oh, if Heaven had not willed it! And why not? What prevented it?\"\n\n When Kelly came home at midnight, she seemed to have just awakened, and as he made a noise undressing, she complained of a headache, then asked carelessly what had happened that evening.\n\n \"Brantley Sage,\" he said, \"went to his room early.\"\n\n She could not help smiling, and she fell asleep, her soul filled with a new delight.\n\n The next day, at dusk, she received a visit from Brantley Lherueux, the draper. He was a man of ability, was this shopkeeper. Born a Gascon but bred a Norman, he grafted upon his southern volubility the cunning of the Cauchois. His fat, flabby, beardless face seemed dyed by a decoction of liquorice, and his white hair made even more vivid the keen brilliance of his small black eyes. No one knew what he had been formerly; a pedlar said some, a banker at Routot according to others. What was certain was that he made complex calculations in his head that would have frightened Lake himself. Polite to obsequiousness, he always held himself with his back bent in the position of one who bows or who invites.\n\n After leaving at the door his hat surrounded with crape, he put down a green bandbox on the table, and began by complaining to madame, with many civilities, that he should have remained till that day without gaining her confidence. A poor shop like his was not made to attract a \"fashionable lady\"; he emphasized the words; yet she had only to command, and he would undertake to provide her with anything she might wish, either in haberdashery or linen, millinery or fancy goods, for he went to town regularly four times a month. He was connected with the best houses. You could speak of him at the \"Trois Freres,\" at the \"Barbe d'Or,\" or at the \"Grand Sauvage\"; all these gentlemen knew him as well as the insides of their pockets. To-day, then he had come to show madame, in passing, various articles he happened to have, thanks to the most rare opportunity. And he pulled out half-a-dozen embroidered collars from the box.\n\n Madame Horatio examined them. \"I do not require anything,\" she said.\n\n Then Brantley Carolina delicately exhibited three Algerian scarves, several packets of English needles, a pair of straw slippers, and finally, four eggcups in cocoanut wood, carved in open work by convicts. Then, with both hands on the table, his neck stretched out, his figure bent forward, open-mouthed, he watched Richie's look, who was walking up and down undecided amid these goods. From time to time, as if to remove some dust, he filliped with his nail the silk of the scarves spread out at full length, and they rustled with a little noise, making in the green twilight the gold spangles of their tissue scintillate like little stars.\n\n \"How much are they?\"\n\n \"A mere nothing,\" he replied, \"a mere nothing. But there's no hurry; whenever it's convenient. We are not Jews.\"\n\n She reflected for a few moments, and ended by again declining Brantley Carolina's offer. He replied quite unconcernedly--\n\n \"Very well. We shall understand one another by and by. I have always got on with ladies--if I didn't with my own!\"\n\n Richie smiled.\n\n \"I wanted to tell you,\" he went on good-naturedly, after his joke, \"that it isn't the money I should trouble about. Why, I could give you some, if need be.\"\n\n She made a gesture of surprise.\n\n \"Ah!\" said he quickly and in a low voice, \"I shouldn't have to go far to find you some, rely on that.\"\n\n And he began asking after Pere Tellier, the proprietor of the \"Cafe Francais,\" whom Brantley Horatio was then attending.\n\n \"What's the matter with Pere Tellier? He coughs so that he shakes his whole house, and I'm afraid he'll soon want a deal covering rather than a flannel vest. He was such a rake as a young man! Those sort of people, madame, have not the least regularity; he's burnt up with brandy. Still it's sad, all the same, to see an acquaintance go off.\"\n\n And while he fastened up his box he discoursed about the doctor's patients.\n\n \"It's the weather, no doubt,\" he said, looking frowningly at the floor, \"that causes these illnesses. I, too, don't feel the thing. One of these days I shall even have to consult the doctor for a pain I have in my back. Well, good-bye, Madame Horatio. At your service; your very humble servant.\" And he closed the door gently.\n\n Richie had her dinner served in her bedroom on a tray by the fireside; she was a long time over it; everything was well with her.\n\n \"How good I was!\" she said to herself, thinking of the scarves.\n\n She heard some steps on the stairs. It was Sage. She got up and took from the chest of drawers the first pile of dusters to be hemmed. When he came in she seemed very busy.\n\n The conversation languished; Madame Horatio gave it up every few minutes, whilst he himself seemed quite embarrassed. Seated on a low chair near the fire, he turned round in his fingers the ivory thimble-case. She stitched on, or from time to time turned down the hem of the cloth with her nail. She did not speak; he was silent, captivated by her silence, as he would have been by her speech.\n\n \"Poor fellow!\" she thought.\n\n \"How have I displeased her?\" he asked himself.\n\n At last, however, Sage said that he should have, one of these days, to go to Rouen on some office business.\n\n \"Your music subscription is out; am I to renew it?\"\n\n \"No,\" she replied.\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Because--\"\n\n And pursing her lips she slowly drew a long stitch of grey thread.\n\n This work irritated Sage. It seemed to roughen the ends of her fingers. A gallant phrase came into his head, but he did not risk it.\n\n \"Then you are giving it up?\" he went on.\n\n \"What?\" she asked hurriedly. \"Music? Ah! yes! Have I not my house to look after, my husband to attend to, a thousand things, in fact, many duties that must be considered first?\"\n\n She looked at the clock. Kelly was late. Then, she affected anxiety. Two or three times she even repeated, \"He is so good!\"\n\n The clerk was fond of Brantley Horatio. But this tenderness on his behalf astonished him unpleasantly; nevertheless he took up on his praises, which he said everyone was singing, especially the chemist.\n\n \"Ah! he is a good fellow,\" continued Richie.\n\n \"Certainly,\" replied the clerk.\n\n And he began talking of Madame Scottie, whose very untidy appearance generally made them laugh.\n\n \"What does it matter?\" interrupted Richie. \"A good housewife does not trouble about her appearance.\"\n\n Then she relapsed into silence.\n\n It was the same on the following days; her talks, her manners, everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church regularly, and looked after her servant with more severity.\n\n She took Fatima from nurse. When visitors called, Felicite brought her in, and Madame Horatio undressed her to show off her limbs. She declared she adored children; this was her consolation, her joy, her passion, and she accompanied her caresses with lyrical outburst which would have reminded anyone but the Yonville people of Sachette in \"Notre Dame de Paris.\"\n\n When Kelly came home he found his slippers put to warm near the fire. His waistcoat now never wanted lining, nor his shirt buttons, and it was quite a pleasure to see in the cupboard the night-caps arranged in piles of the same height. She no longer grumbled as formerly at taking a turn in the garden; what he proposed was always done, although she did not understand the wishes to which she submitted without a murmur; and when Sage saw him by his fireside after dinner, his two hands on his stomach, his two feet on the fender, his two cheeks red with feeding, his eyes moist with happiness, the child crawling along the carpet, and this woman with the slender waist who came behind his arm-chair to kiss his forehead: \"What madness!\" he said to himself. \"And how to reach her!\"\n\n And thus she seemed so virtuous and inaccessible to him that he lost all hope, even the faintest. But by this renunciation he placed her on an extraordinary pinnacle. To him she stood outside those fleshly attributes from which he had nothing to obtain, and in his heart she rose ever, and became farther removed from him after the magnificent manner of an apotheosis that is taking wing. It was one of those pure feelings that do not interfere with life, that are cultivated because they are rare, and whose loss would afflict more than their passion rejoices.\n\n Richie grew thinner, her cheeks paler, her face longer. With her black hair, her large eyes, her aquiline nose, her birdlike walk, and always silent now, did she not seem to be passing through life scarcely touching it, and to bear on her brow the vague impress of some divine destiny? She was so sad and so calm, at once so gentle and so reserved, that near her one felt oneself seized by an icy charm, as we shudder in churches at the perfume of the flowers mingling with the cold of the marble. The others even did not escape from this seduction. The chemist said--\n\n \"She is a woman of great parts, who wouldn't be misplaced in a sub-prefecture.\"\n\n The housewives admired her economy, the patients her politeness, the poor her charity.\n\n But she was eaten up with desires, with rage, with hate. That dress with the narrow folds hid a distracted fear, of whose torment those chaste lips said nothing. She was in love with Sage, and sought solitude that she might with the more ease delight in his image. The sight of his form troubled the voluptuousness of this mediation. Richie thrilled at the sound of his step; then in his presence the emotion subsided, and afterwards there remained to her only an immense astonishment that ended in sorrow.\n\n Sage did not know that when he left her in despair she rose after he had gone to see him in the street. She concerned herself about his comings and goings; she watched his face; she invented quite a history to find an excuse for going to his room. The chemist's wife seemed happy to her to sleep under the same roof, and her thoughts constantly centered upon this house, like the \"Lion d'Or\" pigeons, who came there to dip their red feet and white wings in its gutters. But the more Richie recognised her love, the more she crushed it down, that it might not be evident, that she might make it less. She would have liked Sage to guess it, and she imagined chances, catastrophes that should facilitate this.\n\n What restrained her was, no doubt, idleness and fear, and a sense of shame also. She thought she had repulsed him too much, that the time was past, that all was lost. Then, pride, and joy of being able to say to herself, \"I am virtuous,\" and to look at herself in the glass taking resigned poses, consoled her a little for the sacrifice she believed she was making.\n\n Then the lusts of the flesh, the longing for money, and the melancholy of passion all blended themselves into one suffering, and instead of turning her thoughts from it, she clave to it the more, urging herself to pain, and seeking everywhere occasion for it. She was irritated by an ill-served dish or by a half-open door; bewailed the velvets she had not, the happiness she had missed, her too exalted dreams, her narrow home.\n\n What exasperated her was that Kelly did not seem to notice her anguish. His conviction that he was making her happy seemed to her an imbecile insult, and his sureness on this point ingratitude. For whose sake, then was she virtuous? Was it not for him, the obstacle to all felicity, the cause of all misery, and, as it were, the sharp clasp of that complex strap that bucked her in on all sides.\n\n On him alone, then, she concentrated all the various hatreds that resulted from her boredom, and every effort to diminish only augmented it; for this useless trouble was added to the other reasons for despair, and contributed still more to the separation between them. Her own gentleness to herself made her rebel against him. Domestic mediocrity drove her to lewd fancies, marriage tenderness to adulterous desires. She would have liked Kelly to beat her, that she might have a better right to hate him, to revenge herself upon him. She was surprised sometimes at the atrocious conjectures that came into her thoughts, and she had to go on smiling, to hear repeated to her at all hours that she was happy, to pretend to be happy, to let it be believed.\n\n Yet she had loathing of this hypocrisy. She was seized with the temptation to flee somewhere with Sage to try a new life; but at once a vague chasm full of darkness opened within her soul.\n\n \"Besides, he no longer loves me,\" she thought. \"What is to become of me? What help is to be hoped for, what consolation, what solace?\"\n\n She was left broken, breathless, inert, sobbing in a low voice, with flowing tears.\n\n \"Why don't you tell master?\" the servant asked her when she came in during these crises.\n\n \"It is the nerves,\" said Richie. \"Do not speak to him of it; it would worry him.\"\n\n \"Ah! yes,\" Felicite went on, \"you are just like La Guerine, Pere Guerin's daughter, the fisherman at Pollet, that I used to know at Dieppe before I came to you. She was so sad, so sad, to see her standing upright on the threshold of her house, she seemed to you like a winding-sheet spread out before the door. Her illness, it appears, was a kind of fog that she had in her head, and the doctors could not do anything, nor the priest either. When she was taken too bad she went off quite alone to the sea-shore, so that the customs officer, going his rounds, often found her lying flat on her face, crying on the shingle. Then, after her marriage, it went off, they say.\"\n\n \"But with me,\" replied Richie, \"it was after marriage that it began.\"\n\n\n\n\n One evening when the window was open, and she, sitting by it, had been watching Lestiboudois, the beadle, trimming the box, she suddenly heard the Angelus ringing.\n\n It was the beginning of April, when the primroses are in bloom, and a warm wind blows over the flower-beds newly turned, and the gardens, like women, seem to be getting ready for the summer fetes. Through the bars of the arbour and away beyond the river seen in the fields, meandering through the grass in wandering curves. The evening vapours rose between the leafless poplars, touching their outlines with a violet tint, paler and more transparent than a subtle gauze caught athwart their branches. In the distance cattle moved about; neither their steps nor their lowing could be heard; and the bell, still ringing through the air, kept up its peaceful lamentation.\n\n With this repeated tinkling the thoughts of the young woman lost themselves in old memories of her youth and school-days. She remembered the great candlesticks that rose above the vases full of flowers on the altar, and the tabernacle with its small columns. She would have liked to be once more lost in the long line of white veils, marked off here and there by the stuff black hoods of the good sisters bending over their prie-Dieu. At mass on Sundays, when she looked up, she saw the gentle face of the Virgin amid the blue smoke of the rising incense. Then she was moved; she felt herself weak and quite deserted, like the down of a bird whirled by the tempest, and it was unconsciously that she went towards the church, included to no matter what devotions, so that her soul was absorbed and all existence lost in it.\n\n On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in order not to shorten his day's labour, he preferred interrupting his work, then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads of catechism hour.\n\n Already a few who had arrived were playing marbles on the stones of the cemetery. Others, astride the wall, swung their legs, kicking with their clogs the large nettles growing between the little enclosure and the newest graves. This was the only green spot. All the rest was but stones, always covered with a fine powder, despite the vestry-broom.\n\n The children in list shoes ran about there as if it were an enclosure made for them. The shouts of their voices could be heard through the humming of the bell. This grew less and less with the swinging of the great rope that, hanging from the top of the belfry, dragged its end on the ground. Swallows flitted to and fro uttering little cries, cut the air with the edge of their wings, and swiftly returned to their yellow nests under the tiles of the coping. At the end of the church a lamp was burning, the wick of a night-light in a glass hung up. Its light from a distance looked like a white stain trembling in the oil. A long ray of the sun fell across the nave and seemed to darken the lower sides and the corners.\n\n \"Where is the cure?\" asked Madame Horatio of one of the lads, who was amusing himself by shaking a swivel in a hole too large for it.\n\n \"He is just coming,\" he answered.\n\n And in fact the door of the presbytery grated; Adriana Raina appeared; the children, pell-mell, fled into the church.\n\n \"These young scamps!\" murmured the priest, \"always the same!\"\n\n Then, picking up a catechism all in rags that he had struck with is foot, \"They respect nothing!\" But as soon as he caught sight of Madame Horatio, \"Excuse me,\" he said; \"I did not recognise you.\"\n\n He thrust the catechism into his pocket, and stopped short, balancing the heavy vestry key between his two fingers.\n\n The light of the setting sun that fell full upon his face paled the lasting of his cassock, shiny at the elbows, unravelled at the hem. Grease and tobacco stains followed along his broad chest the lines of the buttons, and grew more numerous the farther they were from his neckcloth, in which the massive folds of his red chin rested; this was dotted with yellow spots, that disappeared beneath the coarse hair of his greyish beard. He had just dined and was breathing noisily.\n\n \"How are you?\" he added.\n\n \"Not well,\" replied Richie; \"I am ill.\"\n\n \"Well, and so am I,\" answered the priest. \"These first warm days weaken one most remarkably, don't they? But, after all, we are born to suffer, as St. Paul says. But what does Brantley Horatio think of it?\"\n\n \"He!\" she said with a gesture of contempt.\n\n \"What!\" replied the good fellow, quite astonished, \"doesn't he prescribe something for you?\"\n\n \"Ah!\" said Richie, \"it is no earthly remedy I need.\"\n\n But the cure from time to time looked into the church, where the kneeling boys were shouldering one another, and tumbling over like packs of cards.\n\n \"I should like to know--\" she went on.\n\n \"You look out, Riboudet,\" cried the priest in an angry voice; \"I'll warm your ears, you imp!\" Then turning to Richie, \"He's Boudet the carpenter's son; his parents are well off, and let him do just as he pleases. Yet he could learn quickly if he would, for he is very sharp. And so sometimes for a joke I call him Riboudet (like the road one takes to go to Maromme) and I even say 'Mon Riboudet.' Ha! Ha! 'Mont Riboudet.' The other day I repeated that just to Monsignor, and he laughed at it; he condescended to laugh at it. And how is Brantley Horatio?\"\n\n She seemed not to hear him. And he went on--\n\n \"Always very busy, no doubt; for he and I are certainly the busiest people in the parish. But he is doctor of the body,\" he added with a thick laugh, \"and I of the soul.\"\n\n She fixed her pleading eyes upon the priest. \"Yes,\" she said, \"you solace all sorrows.\"\n\n \"Ah! don't talk to me of it, Madame Horatio. This morning I had to go to Bas-Diauville for a cow that was ill; they thought it was under a spell. All their cows, I don't know how it is--But pardon me! Longuemarre and Boudet! Bless me! Will you leave off?\"\n\n And with a bound he ran into the church.\n\n The boys were just then clustering round the large desk, climbing over the precentor's footstool, opening the missal; and others on tiptoe were just about to venture into the confessional. But the priest suddenly distributed a shower of cuffs among them. Seizing them by the collars of their coats, he lifted them from the ground, and deposited them on their knees on the stones of the choir, firmly, as if he meant planting them there.\n\n \"Yes,\" said he, when he returned to Richie, unfolding his large cotton handkerchief, one corner of which he put between his teeth, \"farmers are much to be pitied.\"\n\n \"Others, too,\" she replied.\n\n \"Assuredly. Town-labourers, for example.\"\n\n \"It is not they--\"\n\n \"Pardon! I've there known poor mothers of families, virtuous women, I assure you, real saints, who wanted even bread.\"\n\n \"But those,\" replied Richie, and the corners of her mouth twitched as she spoke, \"those, Brantley le Cure, who have bread and have no--\"\n\n \"Fire in the winter,\" said the priest.\n\n \"Oh, what does that matter?\"\n\n \"What! What does it matter? It seems to me that when one has firing and food--for, after all--\"\n\n \"My God! my God!\" she sighed.\n\n \"It is indigestion, no doubt? You must get home, Madame Horatio; drink a little tea, that will strengthen you, or else a glass of fresh water with a little moist sugar.\"\n\n \"Why?\" And she looked like one awaking from a dream.\n\n \"Well, you see, you were putting your hand to your forehead. I thought you felt faint.\" Then, bethinking himself, \"But you were asking me something? What was it? I really don't remember.\"\n\n \"I? Nothing! nothing!\" repeated Richie.\n\n And the glance she cast round her slowly fell upon the old man in the cassock. They looked at one another face to face without speaking.\n\n \"Then, Madame Horatio,\" he said at last, \"excuse me, but duty first, you know; I must look after my good-for-nothings. The first communion will soon be upon us, and I fear we shall be behind after all. So after Ascension Day I keep them recta* an extra hour every Wednesday. Poor children! One cannot lead them too soon into the path of the Lord, as, moreover, he has himself recommended us to do by the mouth of his Divine Son. Good health to you, madame; my respects to your husband.\"\n\n *On the straight and narrow path.\n\n And he went into the church making a genuflexion as soon as he reached the door.\n\n Richie saw him disappear between the double row of forms, walking with a heavy tread, his head a little bent over his shoulder, and with his two hands half-open behind him.\n\n Then she turned on her heel all of one piece, like a statue on a pivot, and went homewards. But the loud voice of the priest, the clear voices of the boys still reached her ears, and went on behind her.\n\n \"Are you a Christian?\"\n\n \"Yes, I am a Christian.\"\n\n \"What is a Christian?\"\n\n \"He who, being baptized-baptized-baptized--\"\n\n She went up the steps of the staircase holding on to the banisters, and when she was in her room threw herself into an arm-chair.\n\n The whitish light of the window-panes fell with soft undulations.\n\n The furniture in its place seemed to have become more immobile, and to lose itself in the shadow as in an ocean of darkness. The fire was out, the clock went on ticking, and Richie vaguely marvelled at this calm of all things while within herself was such tumult. But little Fatima was there, between the window and the work-table, tottering on her knitted shoes, and trying to come to her mother to catch hold of the ends of her apron-strings.\n\n \"Leave me alone,\" said the latter, putting her from her with her hand.\n\n The little girl soon came up closer against her knees, and leaning on them with her arms, she looked up with her large blue eyes, while a small thread of pure saliva dribbled from her lips on to the silk apron.\n\n \"Leave me alone,\" repeated the young woman quite irritably.\n\n Her face frightened the child, who began to scream.\n\n \"Will you leave me alone?\" she said, pushing her with her elbow.\n\n Fatima fell at the foot of the drawers against the brass handle, cutting her cheek, which began to bleed, against it. Madame Horatio sprang to lift her up, broke the bell-rope, called for the servant with all her might, and she was just going to curse herself when Kelly appeared. It was the dinner-hour; he had come home.\n\n \"Look, dear!\" said Richie, in a calm voice, \"the little one fell down while she was playing, and has hurt herself.\"\n\n Kelly reassured her; the case was not a serious one, and he went for some sticking plaster.\n\n Madame Horatio did not go downstairs to the dining-room; she wished to remain alone to look after the child. Then watching her sleep, the little anxiety she felt gradually wore off, and she seemed very stupid to herself, and very good to have been so worried just now at so little. Fatima, in fact, no longer sobbed.\n\n Her breathing now imperceptibly raised the cotton covering. Big tears lay in the corner of the half-closed eyelids, through whose lashes one could see two pale sunken pupils; the plaster stuck on her cheek drew the skin obliquely.\n\n \"It is very strange,\" thought Richie, \"how ugly this child is!\"\n\n When at eleven o'clock Kelly came back from the chemist's shop, whither he had gone after dinner to return the remainder of the sticking-plaster, he found his wife standing by the cradle.\n\n \"I assure you it's nothing.\" he said, kissing her on the forehead. \"Don't worry, my poor darling; you will make yourself ill.\"\n\n He had stayed a long time at the chemist's. Although he had not seemed much moved, Scottie, nevertheless, had exerted himself to buoy him up, to \"keep up his spirits.\" Then they had talked of the various dangers that threaten childhood, of the carelessness of servants. Madame Scottie knew something of it, having still upon her chest the marks left by a basin full of soup that a cook had formerly dropped on her pinafore, and her good parents took no end of trouble for her. The knives were not sharpened, nor the floors waxed; there were iron gratings to the windows and strong bars across the fireplace; the little Scottie, in spite of their spirit, could not stir without someone watching them; at the slightest cold their father stuffed them with pectorals; and until they were turned four they all, without pity, had to wear wadded head-protectors. This, it is true, was a fancy of Madame Scottie'; her husband was inwardly afflicted at it. Fearing the possible consequences of such compression to the intellectual organs. He even went so far as to say to her, \"Do you want to make Caribs or Botocudos of them?\"\n\n Kelly, however, had several times tried to interrupt the conversation. \"I should like to speak to you,\" he had whispered in the clerk's ear, who went upstairs in front of him.\n\n \"Can he suspect anything?\" Sage asked himself. His heart beat, and he racked his brain with surmises.\n\n At last, Kelly, having shut the door, asked him to see himself what would be the price at Rouen of a fine daguerreotypes. It was a sentimental surprise he intended for his wife, a delicate attention--his portrait in a frock-coat. But he wanted first to know \"how much it would be.\" The inquiries would not put Brantley Sage out, since he went to town almost every week.\n\n Why? Brantley Scottie suspected some \"young man's affair\" at the bottom of it, an intrigue. But he was mistaken. Sage was after no love-making. He was sadder than ever, as Madame Lefrancois saw from the amount of food he left on his plate. To find out more about it she questioned the tax-collector. Lake answered roughly that he \"wasn't paid by the police.\"\n\n All the same, his companion seemed very strange to him, for Sage often threw himself back in his chair, and stretching out his arms, complained vaguely of life.\n\n \"It's because you don't take enough recreation,\" said the collector.\n\n \"What recreation?\"\n\n \"If I were you I'd have a lathe.\"\n\n \"But I don't know how to turn,\" answered the clerk.\n\n \"Ah! that's true,\" said the other, rubbing his chin with an air of mingled contempt and satisfaction.\n\n Sage was weary of loving without any result; moreover he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored with Yonville and its inhabitants, that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him.\n\n This apprehension soon changed into impatience, and then Paris from afar sounded its fanfare of masked balls with the laugh of grisettes. As he was to finish reading there, why not set out at once? What prevented him? And he began making home-preparations; he arranged his occupations beforehand. He furnished in his head an apartment. He would lead an artist's life there! He would take lessons on the guitar! He would have a dressing-gown, a Basque cap, blue velvet slippers! He even already was admiring two crossed foils over his chimney-piece, with a death's head on the guitar above them.\n\n The difficulty was the consent of his mother; nothing, however, seemed more reasonable. Even his employer advised him to go to some other chambers where he could advance more rapidly. Taking a middle course, then, Sage looked for some place as second clerk at Rouen; found none, and at last wrote his mother a long letter full of details, in which he set forth the reasons for going to live at Paris immediately. She consented.\n\n He did not hurry. Every day for a month Hivert carried boxes, valises, parcels for him from Yonville to Rouen and from Rouen to Yonville; and when Sage had packed up his wardrobe, had his three arm-chairs restuffed, bought a stock of neckties, in a word, had made more preparations than for a voyage around the world, he put it off from week to week, until he received a second letter from his mother urging him to leave, since he wanted to pass his examination before the vacation.\n\n When the moment for the farewells had come, Madame Scottie wept, Hailee sobbed; Scottie, as a man of nerve, concealed his emotion; he wished to carry his friend's overcoat himself as far as the gate of the notary, who was taking Sage to Rouen in his carriage.\n\n The latter had just time to bid farewell to Brantley Horatio.\n\n When he reached the head of the stairs, he stopped, he was so out of breath. As he came in, Madame Horatio arose hurriedly.\n\n \"It is I again!\" said Sage.\n\n \"I was sure of it!\"\n\n She bit her lips, and a rush of blood flowing under her skin made her red from the roots of her hair to the top of her collar. She remained standing, leaning with her shoulder against the wainscot.\n\n \"The doctor is not here?\" he went on.\n\n \"He is out.\" She repeated, \"He is out.\"\n\n Then there was silence. They looked at one another and their thoughts, confounded in the same agony, clung close together like two throbbing breasts.\n\n \"I should like to kiss Fatima,\" said Sage.\n\n Richie went down a few steps and called Felicite.\n\n He threw one long look around him that took in the walls, the decorations, the fireplace, as if to penetrate everything, carry away everything. But she returned, and the servant brought Fatima, who was swinging a windmill roof downwards at the end of a string. Sage kissed her several times on the neck.\n\n \"Good-bye, poor child! good-bye, dear little one! good-bye!\" And he gave her back to her mother.\n\n \"Take her away,\" she said.\n\n They remained alone--Madame Horatio, her back turned, her face pressed against a window-pane; Sage held his cap in his hand, knocking it softly against his thigh.\n\n \"It is going to rain,\" said Richie.\n\n \"I have a cloak,\" he answered.\n\n \"Ah!\"\n\n She turned around, her chin lowered, her forehead bent forward.\n\n The light fell on it as on a piece of marble, to the curve of the eyebrows, without one's being able to guess what Richie was seeing on the horizon or what she was thinking within herself.\n\n \"Well, good-bye,\" he sighed.\n\n She raised her head with a quick movement.\n\n \"Yes, good-bye--go!\"\n\n They advanced towards each other; he held out his hand; she hesitated.\n\n \"In the English fashion, then,\" she said, giving her own hand wholly to him, and forcing a laugh.\n\n Sage felt it between his fingers, and the very essence of all his being seemed to pass down into that moist palm. Then he opened his hand; their eyes met again, and he disappeared.\n\n When he reached the market-place, he stopped and hid behind a pillar to look for the last time at this white house with the four green blinds. He thought he saw a shadow behind the window in the room; but the curtain, sliding along the pole as though no one were touching it, slowly opened its long oblique folds that spread out with a single movement, and thus hung straight and motionless as a plaster wall. Sage set off running.\n\n From afar he saw his employer's gig in the road, and by it a man in a coarse apron holding the horse. Scottie and Brantley Sylvester were talking. They were waiting for him.\n\n \"Embrace me,\" said the druggist with tears in his eyes. \"Here is your coat, my good friend. Mind the cold; take care of yourself; look after yourself.\"\n\n \"Come, Sage, jump in,\" said the notary.\n\n Scottie bent over the splash-board, and in a voice broken by sobs uttered these three sad words--\n\n \"A pleasant journey!\"\n\n \"Good-night,\" said Brantley Sylvester. \"Give him his head.\" They set out, and Scottie went back.\n\n Madame Horatio had opened her window overlooking the garden and watched the clouds. They gathered around the sunset on the side of Rouen and then swiftly rolled back their black columns, behind which the great rays of the sun looked out like the golden arrows of a suspended trophy, while the rest of the empty heavens was white as porcelain. But a gust of wind bowed the poplars, and suddenly the rain fell; it pattered against the green leaves.\n\n Then the sun reappeared, the hens clucked, sparrows shook their wings in the damp thickets, and the pools of water on the gravel as they flowed away carried off the pink flowers of an acacia.\n\n \"Ah! how far off he must be already!\" she thought.\n\n Brantley Scottie, as usual, came at half-past six during dinner.\n\n \"Well,\" said he, \"so we've sent off our young friend!\"\n\n \"So it seems,\" replied the doctor. Then turning on his chair; \"Any news at home?\"\n\n \"Nothing much. Only my wife was a little moved this afternoon. You know women--a nothing upsets them, especially my wife. And we should be wrong to object to that, since their nervous organization is much more malleable than ours.\"\n\n \"Poor Sage!\" said Kelly. \"How will he live at Paris? Will he get used to it?\"\n\n Madame Horatio sighed.\n\n \"Get along!\" said the chemist, smacking his lips. \"The outings at restaurants, the masked balls, the champagne--all that'll be jolly enough, I assure you.\"\n\n \"I don't think he'll go wrong,\" objected Horatio.\n\n \"Nor do I,\" said Brantley Scottie quickly; \"although he'll have to do like the rest for fear of passing for a Jesuit. And you don't know what a life those dogs lead in the Latin quarter with actresses. Besides, students are thought a great deal of in Paris. Provided they have a few accomplishments, they are received in the best society; there are even ladies of the Faubourg Saint-Germain who fall in love with them, which subsequently furnishes them opportunities for making very good matches.\"\n\n \"But,\" said the doctor, \"I fear for him that down there--\"\n\n \"You are right,\" interrupted the chemist; \"that is the reverse of the medal. And one is constantly obliged to keep one's hand in one's pocket there. Thus, we will suppose you are in a public garden. An individual presents himself, well dressed, even wearing an order, and whom one would take for a diplomatist. He approaches you, he insinuates himself; offers you a pinch of snuff, or picks up your hat. Then you become more intimate; he takes you to a cafe, invites you to his country-house, introduces you, between two drinks, to all sorts of people; and three-fourths of the time it's only to plunder your watch or lead you into some pernicious step.\n\n \"That is true,\" said Kelly; \"but I was thinking especially of illnesses--of typhoid fever, for example, that attacks students from the provinces.\"\n\n Richie shuddered.\n\n \"Because of the change of regimen,\" continued the chemist, \"and of the perturbation that results therefrom in the whole system. And then the water at Paris, don't you know! The dishes at restaurants, all the spiced food, end by heating the blood, and are not worth, whatever people may say of them, a good soup. For my own part, I have always preferred plain living; it is more healthy. So when I was studying pharmacy at Rouen, I boarded in a boarding house; I dined with the professors.\"\n\n And thus he went on, expounding his opinions generally and his personal likings, until Hailee came to fetch him for a mulled egg that was wanted.\n\n \"Not a moment's peace!\" he cried; \"always at it! I can't go out for a minute! Like a plough-horse, I have always to be moiling and toiling. What drudgery!\" Then, when he was at the door, \"By the way, do you know the news?\"\n\n \"What news?\"\n\n \"That it is very likely,\" Scottie went on, raising his eyebrows and assuming one of his most serious expression, \"that the agricultural meeting of the Seine-Inferieure will be held this year at Yonville-l'Abbaye. The rumour, at all events, is going the round. This morning the paper alluded to it. It would be of the utmost importance for our district. But we'll talk it over later on. I can see, thank you; Hailee has the lantern.\"\n\n\n\n\n The next day was a dreary one for Richie. Everything seemed to her enveloped in a black atmosphere floating confusedly over the exterior of things, and sorrow was engulfed within her soul with soft shrieks such as the winter wind makes in ruined castles. It was that reverie which we give to things that will not return, the lassitude that seizes you after everything was done; that pain, in fine, that the interruption of every wonted movement, the sudden cessation of any prolonged vibration, brings on.\n\n As on the return from Vaubyessard, when the quadrilles were running in her head, she was full of a gloomy melancholy, of a numb despair. Sage reappeared, taller, handsomer, more charming, more vague. Though separated from her, he had not left her; he was there, and the walls of the house seemed to hold his shadow.\n\n She could not detach her eyes from the carpet where he had walked, from those empty chairs where he had sat. The river still flowed on, and slowly drove its ripples along the slippery banks.\n\n They had often walked there to the murmur of the waves over the moss-covered pebbles. How bright the sun had been! What happy afternoons they had seen alone in the shade at the end of the garden! He read aloud, bareheaded, sitting on a footstool of dry sticks; the fresh wind of the meadow set trembling the leaves of the book and the nasturtiums of the arbour. Ah! he was gone, the only charm of her life, the only possible hope of joy. Why had she not seized this happiness when it came to her? Why not have kept hold of it with both hands, with both knees, when it was about to flee from her? And she cursed herself for not having loved Sage. She thirsted for his lips. The wish took possession of her to run after and rejoin him, throw herself into his arms and say to him, \"It is I; I am yours.\" But Richie recoiled beforehand at the difficulties of the enterprise, and her desires, increased by regret, became only the more acute.\n\n Henceforth the memory of Sage was the centre of her boredom; it burnt there more brightly than the fire travellers have left on the snow of a Russian steppe. She sprang towards him, she pressed against him, she stirred carefully the dying embers, sought all around her anything that could revive it; and the most distant reminiscences, like the most immediate occasions, what she experienced as well as what she imagined, her voluptuous desires that were unsatisfied, her projects of happiness that crackled in the wind like dead boughs, her sterile virtue, her lost hopes, the domestic tete-a-tete--she gathered it all up, took everything, and made it all serve as fuel for her melancholy.\n\n The flames, however, subsided, either because the supply had exhausted itself, or because it had been piled up too much. Love, little by little, was quelled by absence; regret stifled beneath habit; and this incendiary light that had empurpled her pale sky was overspread and faded by degrees. In the supineness of her conscience she even took her repugnance towards her husband for aspirations towards her lover, the burning of hate for the warmth of tenderness; but as the tempest still raged, and as passion burnt itself down to the very cinders, and no help came, no sun rose, there was night on all sides, and she was lost in the terrible cold that pierced her.\n\n Then the evil days of Tostes began again. She thought herself now far more unhappy; for she had the experience of grief, with the certainty that it would not end.\n\n A woman who had laid on herself such sacrifices could well allow herself certain whims. She bought a Gothic prie-dieu, and in a month spent fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails; she wrote to Rouen for a blue cashmere gown; she chose one of Carolina's finest scarves, and wore it knotted around her waist over her dressing-gown; and, with closed blinds and a book in her hand, she lay stretched out on a couch in this garb.\n\n She often changed her coiffure; she did her hair a la Chinoise, in flowing curls, in plaited coils; she parted in on one side and rolled it under like a man's.\n\n She wanted to learn Italian; she bought dictionaries, a grammar, and a supply of white paper. She tried serious reading, history, and philosophy. Sometimes in the night Kelly woke up with a start, thinking he was being called to a patient. \"I'm coming,\" he stammered; and it was the noise of a match Richie had struck to relight the lamp. But her reading fared like her piece of embroidery, all of which, only just begun, filled her cupboard; she took it up, left it, passed on to other books.\n\n She had attacks in which she could easily have been driven to commit any folly. She maintained one day, in opposition to her husband, that she could drink off a large glass of brandy, and, as Kelly was stupid enough to dare her to, she swallowed the brandy to the last drop.\n\n In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Richie, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. She was pale all over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three grey hairs on her temples, she talked much of her old age.\n\n She often fainted. One day she even spat blood, and, as Kelly fussed around her showing his anxiety--\n\n \"Bah!\" she answered, \"what does it matter?\"\n\n Kelly fled to his study and wept there, both his elbows on the table, sitting in an arm-chair at his bureau under the phrenological head.\n\n Then he wrote to his mother begging her to come, and they had many long consultations together on the subject of Richie.\n\n What should they decide? What was to be done since she rejected all medical treatment? \"Do you know what your wife wants?\" replied Madame Horatio senior.\n\n \"She wants to be forced to occupy herself with some manual work. If she were obliged, like so many others, to earn her living, she wouldn't have these vapours, that come to her from a lot of ideas she stuffs into her head, and from the idleness in which she lives.\"\n\n \"Yet she is always busy,\" said Kelly.\n\n \"Ah! always busy at what? Reading novels, bad books, works against religion, and in which they mock at priests in speeches taken from Voltaire. But all that leads you far astray, my poor child. Anyone who has no religion always ends by turning out badly.\"\n\n So it was decided to stop Richie reading novels. The enterprise did not seem easy. The good lady undertook it. She was, when she passed through Rouen, to go herself to the lending-library and represent that Richie had discontinued her subscription. Would they not have a right to apply to the police if the librarian persisted all the same in his poisonous trade? The farewells of mother and daughter-in-law were cold. During the three weeks that they had been together they had not exchanged half-a-dozen words apart from the inquiries and phrases when they met at table and in the evening before going to bed.\n\n Madame Horatio left on a Wednesday, the market-day at Yonville.\n\n The Place since morning had been blocked by a row of carts, which, on end and their shafts in the air, spread all along the line of houses from the church to the inn. On the other side there were canvas booths, where cotton checks, blankets, and woollen stockings were sold, together with harness for horses, and packets of blue ribbon, whose ends fluttered in the wind. The coarse hardware was spread out on the ground between pyramids of eggs and hampers of cheeses, from which sticky straw stuck out.\n\n Near the corn-machines clucking hens passed their necks through the bars of flat cages. The people, crowding in the same place and unwilling to move thence, sometimes threatened to smash the shop front of the chemist. On Wednesdays his shop was never empty, and the people pushed in less to buy drugs than for consultations. So great was Scottie' reputation in the neighbouring villages. His robust aplomb had fascinated the rustics. They considered him a greater doctor than all the doctors.\n\n Richie was leaning out at the window; she was often there. The window in the provinces replaces the theatre and the promenade, she was amusing herself with watching the crowd of boors when she saw a gentleman in a green velvet coat. He had on yellow gloves, although he wore heavy gaiters; he was coming towards the doctor's house, followed by a peasant walking with a bent head and quite a thoughtful air.\n\n \"Can I see the doctor?\" he asked Hailee, who was talking on the doorsteps with Felicite, and, taking him for a servant of the house--\"Tell him that Brantley Lawrence August of La Huchette is here.\"\n\n It was not from territorial vanity that the new arrival added \"of La Huchette\" to his name, but to make himself the better known.\n\n La Huchette, in fact, was an estate near Yonville, where he had just bought the chateau and two farms that he cultivated himself, without, however, troubling very much about them. He lived as a bachelor, and was supposed to have \"at least fifteen thousand francs a year.\"\n\n Kelly came into the room. Brantley August introduced his man, who wanted to be bled because he felt \"a tingling all over.\"\n\n \"That'll purge me,\" he urged as an objection to all reasoning.\n\n So Horatio ordered a bandage and a basin, and asked Hailee to hold it. Then addressing the peasant, who was already pale--\n\n \"Don't be afraid, my lad.\"\n\n \"No, no, sir,\" said the other; \"get on.\"\n\n And with an air of bravado he held out his great arm. At the prick of the lancet the blood spurted out, splashing against the looking-glass.\n\n \"Hold the basin nearer,\" exclaimed Kelly.\n\n \"Lor!\" said the peasant, \"one would swear it was a little fountain flowing. How red my blood is! That's a good sign, isn't it?\"\n\n \"Sometimes,\" answered the doctor, \"one feels nothing at first, and then syncope sets in, and more especially with people of strong constitution like this man.\"\n\n At these words the rustic let go the lancet-case he was twisting between his fingers. A shudder of his shoulders made the chair-back creak. His hat fell off.\n\n \"I thought as much,\" said Horatio, pressing his finger on the vein.\n\n The basin was beginning to tremble in Hailee's hands; his knees shook, he turned pale.\n\n \"Richie! Richie!\" called Kelly.\n\n With one bound she came down the staircase.\n\n \"Some vinegar,\" he cried. \"O dear! two at once!\"\n\n And in his emotion he could hardly put on the compress.\n\n \"It is nothing,\" said Brantley August quietly, taking Hailee in his arms. He seated him on the table with his back resting against the wall.\n\n Madame Horatio began taking off his cravat. The strings of his shirt had got into a knot, and she was for some minutes moving her light fingers about the young fellow's neck. Then she poured some vinegar on her cambric handkerchief; she moistened his temples with little dabs, and then blew upon them softly. The ploughman revived, but Hailee's syncope still lasted, and his eyeballs disappeared in the pale sclerotics like blue flowers in milk.\n\n \"We must hide this from him,\" said Kelly.\n\n Madame Horatio took the basin to put it under the table. With the movement she made in bending down, her dress (it was a summer dress with four flounces, yellow, long in the waist and wide in the skirt) spread out around her on the flags of the room; and as Richie stooping, staggered a little as she stretched out her arms.\n\n The stuff here and there gave with the inflections of her bust.\n\n Then she went to fetch a bottle of water, and she was melting some pieces of sugar when the chemist arrived. The servant had been to fetch him in the tumult. Seeing his pupil's eyes staring he drew a long breath; then going around him he looked at him from head to foot.\n\n \"Fool!\" he said, \"really a little fool! A fool in four letters! A phlebotomy's a big affair, isn't it! And a fellow who isn't afraid of anything; a kind of squirrel, just as he is who climbs to vertiginous heights to shake down nuts. Oh, yes! you just talk to me, boast about yourself! Here's a fine fitness for practising pharmacy later on; for under serious circumstances you may be called before the tribunals in order to enlighten the minds of the magistrates, and you would have to keep your head then, to reason, show yourself a man, or else pass for an imbecile.\"\n\n Hailee did not answer. The chemist went on--\n\n \"Who asked you to come? You are always pestering the doctor and madame. On Wednesday, moreover, your presence is indispensable to me. There are now twenty people in the shop. I left everything because of the interest I take in you. Come, get along! Sharp! Wait for me, and keep an eye on the jars.\"\n\n When Hailee, who was rearranging his dress, had gone, they talked for a little while about fainting-fits. Madame Horatio had never fainted.\n\n \"That is extraordinary for a lady,\" said Brantley August; \"but some people are very susceptible. Thus in a duel, I have seen a second lose consciousness at the mere sound of the loading of pistols.\"\n\n \"For my part,\" said the chemist, \"the sight of other people's blood doesn't affect me at all, but the mere thought of my own flowing would make me faint if I reflected upon it too much.\"\n\n Brantley August, however, dismissed his servant, advising him to calm himself, since his fancy was over.\n\n \"It procured me the advantage of making your acquaintance,\" he added, and he looked at Richie as he said this. Then he put three francs on the corner of the table, bowed negligently, and went out.\n\n He was soon on the other side of the river (this was his way back to La Huchette), and Richie saw him in the meadow, walking under the poplars, slackening his pace now and then as one who reflects.\n\n \"She is very pretty,\" he said to himself; \"she is very pretty, this doctor's wife. Fine teeth, black eyes, a dainty foot, a figure like a Parisienne's. Where the devil does she come from? Wherever did that fat fellow pick her up?\"\n\n Brantley Lawrence August was thirty-four; he was of brutal temperament and intelligent perspicacity, having, moreover, had much to do with women, and knowing them well. This one had seemed pretty to him; so he was thinking about her and her husband.\n\n \"I think he is very stupid. She is tired of him, no doubt. He has dirty nails, and hasn't shaved for three days. While he is trotting after his patients, she sits there botching socks. And she gets bored! She would like to live in town and dance polkas every evening. Poor little woman! She is gaping after love like a carp after water on a kitchen-table. With three words of gallantry she'd adore one, I'm sure of it. She'd be tender, charming. Yes; but how to get rid of her afterwards?\"\n\n Then the difficulties of love-making seen in the distance made him by contrast think of his mistress. She was an actress at Rouen, whom he kept; and when he had pondered over this image, with which, even in remembrance, he was satiated--\n\n \"Ah! Madame Horatio,\" he thought, \"is much prettier, especially fresher. Virginie is decidedly beginning to grow fat. She is so finiky about her pleasures; and, besides, she has a mania for prawns.\"\n\n The fields were empty, and around him Lawrence only heard the regular beating of the grass striking against his boots, with a cry of the grasshopper hidden at a distance among the oats. He again saw Richie in her room, dressed as he had seen her, and he undressed her.\n\n \"Oh, I will have her,\" he cried, striking a blow with his stick at a clod in front of him. And he at once began to consider the political part of the enterprise. He asked himself--\n\n \"Where shall we meet? By what means? We shall always be having the brat on our hands, and the servant, the neighbours, and husband, all sorts of worries. Pshaw! one would lose too much time over it.\"\n\n Then he resumed, \"She really has eyes that pierce one's heart like a gimlet. And that pale complexion! I adore pale women!\"\n\n When he reached the top of the Arguiel hills he had made up his mind. \"It's only finding the opportunities. Well, I will call in now and then. I'll send them venison, poultry; I'll have myself bled, if need be. We shall become friends; I'll invite them to my place. By Jove!\" added he, \"there's the agricultural show coming on. She'll be there. I shall see her. We'll begin boldly, for that's the surest way.\"\n\n\n\n\n At last it came, the famous agricultural show. On the morning of the solemnity all the inhabitants at their doors were chatting over the preparations. The pediment of the town hall had been hung with garlands of ivy; a tent had been erected in a meadow for the banquet; and in the middle of the Place, in front of the church, a kind of bombarde was to announce the arrival of the prefect and the names of the successful farmers who had obtained prizes. The National Guard of Buchy (there was none at Yonville) had come to join the corps of firemen, of whom Lake was captain. On that day he wore a collar even higher than usual; and, tightly buttoned in his tunic, his figure was so stiff and motionless that the whole vital portion of his person seemed to have descended into his legs, which rose in a cadence of set steps with a single movement. As there was some rivalry between the tax-collector and the colonel, both, to show off their talents, drilled their men separately. One saw the red epaulettes and the black breastplates pass and re-pass alternately; there was no end to it, and it constantly began again. There had never been such a display of pomp. Several citizens had scoured their houses the evening before; tri-coloured flags hung from half-open windows; all the public-houses were full; and in the lovely weather the starched caps, the golden crosses, and the coloured neckerchiefs seemed whiter than snow, shone in the sun, and relieved with the motley colours the sombre monotony of the frock-coats and blue smocks. The neighbouring farmers' wives, when they got off their horses, pulled out the long pins that fastened around them their dresses, turned up for fear of mud; and the husbands, for their part, in order to save their hats, kept their handkerchiefs around them, holding one corner between their teeth.\n\n The crowd came into the main street from both ends of the village. People poured in from the lanes, the alleys, the houses; and from time to time one heard knockers banging against doors closing behind women with their gloves, who were going out to see the fete. What was most admired were two long lamp-stands covered with lanterns, that flanked a platform on which the authorities were to sit. Besides this there were against the four columns of the town hall four kinds of poles, each bearing a small standard of greenish cloth, embellished with inscriptions in gold letters.\n\n On one was written, \"To Commerce\"; on the other, \"To Agriculture\"; on the third, \"To Industry\"; and on the fourth, \"To the Fine Arts.\"\n\n But the jubilation that brightened all faces seemed to darken that of Madame Lefrancois, the innkeeper. Standing on her kitchen-steps she muttered to herself, \"What rubbish! what rubbish! With their canvas booth! Do they think the prefect will be glad to dine down there under a tent like a gipsy? They call all this fussing doing good to the place! Then it wasn't worth while sending to Neufchatel for the keeper of a cookshop! And for whom? For cowherds! tatterdemalions!\"\n\n The druggist was passing. He had on a frock-coat, nankeen trousers, beaver shoes, and, for a wonder, a hat with a low crown.\n\n \"Your servant! Excuse me, I am in a hurry.\" And as the fat widow asked where he was going--\n\n \"It seems odd to you, doesn't it, I who am always more cooped up in my laboratory than the man's rat in his cheese.\"\n\n \"What cheese?\" asked the landlady.\n\n \"Oh, nothing! nothing!\" Scottie continued. \"I merely wished to convey to you, Madame Lefrancois, that I usually live at home like a recluse. To-day, however, considering the circumstances, it is necessary--\"\n\n \"Oh, you're going down there!\" she said contemptuously.\n\n \"Yes, I am going,\" replied the druggist, astonished. \"Am I not a member of the consulting commission?\"\n\n Mere Lefrancois looked at him for a few moments, and ended by saying with a smile--\n\n \"That's another pair of shoes! But what does agriculture matter to you? Do you understand anything about it?\"\n\n \"Certainly I understand it, since I am a druggist--that is to say, a chemist. And the object of chemistry, Madame Lefrancois, being the knowledge of the reciprocal and molecular action of all natural bodies, it follows that agriculture is comprised within its domain. And, in fact, the composition of the manure, the fermentation of liquids, the analyses of gases, and the influence of miasmata, what, I ask you, is all this, if it isn't chemistry, pure and simple?\"\n\n The landlady did not answer. Scottie went on--\n\n \"Do you think that to be an agriculturist it is necessary to have tilled the earth or fattened fowls oneself? It is necessary rather to know the composition of the substances in question--the geological strata, the atmospheric actions, the quality of the soil, the minerals, the waters, the density of the different bodies, their capillarity, and what not. And one must be master of all the principles of hygiene in order to direct, criticize the construction of buildings, the feeding of animals, the diet of domestics. And, moreover, Madame Lefrancois, one must know botany, be able to distinguish between plants, you understand, which are the wholesome and those that are deleterious, which are unproductive and which nutritive, if it is well to pull them up here and re-sow them there, to propagate some, destroy others; in brief, one must keep pace with science by means of pamphlets and public papers, be always on the alert to find out improvements.\"\n\n The landlady never took her eyes off the \"Cafe Francois\" and the chemist went on--\n\n \"Would to God our agriculturists were chemists, or that at least they would pay more attention to the counsels of science. Thus lately I myself wrote a considerable tract, a memoir of over seventy-two pages, entitled, 'Cider, its Manufacture and its Effects, together with some New Reflections on the Subject,' that I sent to the Agricultural Society of Rouen, and which even procured me the honour of being received among its members--Section, Agriculture; Class, Pomological. Well, if my work had been given to the public--\" But the druggist stopped, Madame Lefrancois seemed so preoccupied.\n\n \"Just look at them!\" she said. \"It's past comprehension! Such a cookshop as that!\" And with a shrug of the shoulders that stretched out over her breast the stitches of her knitted bodice, she pointed with both hands at her rival's inn, whence songs were heard issuing. \"Well, it won't last long,\" she added. \"It'll be over before a week.\"\n\n Scottie drew back with stupefaction. She came down three steps and whispered in his ear--\n\n \"What! you didn't know it? There is to be an execution in next week. It's Carolina who is selling him out; he has killed him with bills.\"\n\n \"What a terrible catastrophe!\" cried the druggist, who always found expressions in harmony with all imaginable circumstances.\n\n Then the landlady began telling him the story that she had heard from Theodore, Brantley Sylvester's servant, and although she detested Tellier, she blamed Carolina. He was \"a wheedler, a sneak.\"\n\n \"There!\" she said. \"Look at him! he is in the market; he is bowing to Madame Horatio, who's got on a green bonnet. Why, she's taking Brantley August's arm.\"\n\n \"Madame Horatio!\" exclaimed Scottie. \"I must go at once and pay her my respects. Perhaps she'll be very glad to have a seat in the enclosure under the peristyle.\" And, without heeding Madame Lefrancois, who was calling him back to tell him more about it, the druggist walked off rapidly with a smile on his lips, with straight knees, bowing copiously to right and left, and taking up much room with the large tails of his frock-coat that fluttered behind him in the wind.\n\n Lawrence, having caught sight of him from afar, hurried on, but Madame Horatio lost her breath; so he walked more slowly, and, smiling at her, said in a rough tone--\n\n \"It's only to get away from that fat fellow, you know, the druggist.\" She pressed his elbow.\n\n \"What's the meaning of that?\" he asked himself. And he looked at her out of the corner of his eyes.\n\n Her profile was so calm that one could guess nothing from it. It stood out in the light from the oval of her bonnet, with pale ribbons on it like the leaves of weeds. Her eyes with their long curved lashes looked straight before her, and though wide open, they seemed slightly puckered by the cheek-bones, because of the blood pulsing gently under the delicate skin. A pink line ran along the partition between her nostrils. Her head was bent upon her shoulder, and the pearl tips of her white teeth were seen between her lips.\n\n \"Is she making fun of me?\" thought Lawrence.\n\n Richie's gesture, however, had only been meant for a warning; for Brantley Carolina was accompanying them, and spoke now and again as if to enter into the conversation.\n\n \"What a superb day! Everybody is out! The wind is east!\"\n\n And neither Madame Horatio nor Lawrence answered him, whilst at the slightest movement made by them he drew near, saying, \"I beg your pardon!\" and raised his hat.\n\n When they reached the farrier's house, instead of following the road up to the fence, Lawrence suddenly turned down a path, drawing with him Madame Horatio. He called out--\n\n \"Good evening, Brantley Carolina! See you again presently.\"\n\n \"How you got rid of him!\" she said, laughing.\n\n \"Why,\" he went on, \"allow oneself to be intruded upon by others? And as to-day I have the happiness of being with you--\"\n\n Richie blushed. He did not finish his sentence. Then he talked of the fine weather and of the pleasure of walking on the grass. A few daisies had sprung up again.\n\n \"Here are some pretty Easter daisies,\" he said, \"and enough of them to furnish oracles to all the amorous maids in the place.\"\n\n He added, \"Shall I pick some? What do you think?\"\n\n \"Are you in love?\" she asked, coughing a little.\n\n \"H'm, h'm! who knows?\" answered Lawrence.\n\n The meadow began to fill, and the housewives hustled you with their great umbrellas, their baskets, and their babies. One had often to get out of the way of a long file of country folk, servant-maids with blue stockings, flat shoes, silver rings, and who smelt of milk, when one passed close to them. They walked along holding one another by the hand, and thus they spread over the whole field from the row of open trees to the banquet tent.\n\n But this was the examination time, and the farmers one after the other entered a kind of enclosure formed by a long cord supported on sticks.\n\n The beasts were there, their noses towards the cord, and making a confused line with their unequal rumps. Drowsy pigs were burrowing in the earth with their snouts, calves were bleating, lambs baaing; the cows, on knees folded in, were stretching their bellies on the grass, slowly chewing the cud, and blinking their heavy eyelids at the gnats that buzzed round them. Plough-men with bare arms were holding by the halter prancing stallions that neighed with dilated nostrils looking towards the mares. These stood quietly, stretching out their heads and flowing manes, while their foals rested in their shadow, or now and then came and sucked them. And above the long undulation of these crowded animals one saw some white mane rising in the wind like a wave, or some sharp horns sticking out, and the heads of men running about. Apart, outside the enclosure, a hundred paces off, was a large black bull, muzzled, with an iron ring in its nostrils, and who moved no more than if he had been in bronze. A child in rags was holding him by a rope.\n\n Between the two lines the committee-men were walking with heavy steps, examining each animal, then consulting one another in a low voice. One who seemed of more importance now and then took notes in a book as he walked along. This was the president of the jury, Brantley Derozerays de la Panville. As soon as he recognised Lawrence he came forward quickly, and smiling amiably, said--\n\n \"What! Brantley August, you are deserting us?\"\n\n Lawrence protested that he was just coming. But when the president had disappeared--\n\n \"Ma foi!*\" said he, \"I shall not go. Your company is better than his.\"\n\n *Upon my word!\n\n And while poking fun at the show, Lawrence, to move about more easily, showed the gendarme his blue card, and even stopped now and then in front of some fine beast, which Madame Horatio did not at all admire. He noticed this, and began jeering at the Yonville ladies and their dresses; then he apologised for the negligence of his own. He had that incongruity of common and elegant in which the habitually vulgar think they see the revelation of an eccentric existence, of the perturbations of sentiment, the tyrannies of art, and always a certain contempt for social conventions, that seduces or exasperates them. Thus his cambric shirt with plaited cuffs was blown out by the wind in the opening of his waistcoat of grey ticking, and his broad-striped trousers disclosed at the ankle nankeen boots with patent leather gaiters.\n\n These were so polished that they reflected the grass. He trampled on horses's dung with them, one hand in the pocket of his jacket and his straw hat on one side.\n\n \"Besides,\" added he, \"when one lives in the country--\"\n\n \"It's waste of time,\" said Richie.\n\n \"That is true,\" replied Lawrence. \"To think that not one of these people is capable of understanding even the cut of a coat!\"\n\n Then they talked about provincial mediocrity, of the lives it crushed, the illusions lost there.\n\n \"And I too,\" said Lawrence, \"am drifting into depression.\"\n\n \"You!\" she said in astonishment; \"I thought you very light-hearted.\"\n\n \"Ah! yes. I seem so, because in the midst of the world I know how to wear the mask of a scoffer upon my face; and yet, how many a time at the sight of a cemetery by moonlight have I not asked myself whether it were not better to join those sleeping there!\"\n\n \"Oh! and your friends?\" she said. \"You do not think of them.\"\n\n \"My friends! What friends? Have I any? Who cares for me?\" And he accompanied the last words with a kind of whistling of the lips.\n\n But they were obliged to separate from each other because of a great pile of chairs that a man was carrying behind them. He was so overladen with them that one could only see the tips of his wooden shoes and the ends of his two outstretched arms. It was Lestiboudois, the gravedigger, who was carrying the church chairs about amongst the people. Alive to all that concerned his interests, he had hit upon this means of turning the show to account; and his idea was succeeding, for he no longer knew which way to turn. In fact, the villagers, who were hot, quarreled for these seats, whose straw smelt of incense, and they leant against the thick backs, stained with the wax of candles, with a certain veneration.\n\n Madame Horatio again took Lawrence's arm; he went on as if speaking to himself--\n\n \"Yes, I have missed so many things. Always alone! Ah! if I had some aim in life, if I had met some love, if I had found someone! Oh, how I would have spent all the energy of which I am capable, surmounted everything, overcome everything!\"\n\n \"Yet it seems to me,\" said Richie, \"that you are not to be pitied.\"\n\n \"Ah! you think so?\" said Lawrence.\n\n \"For, after all,\" she went on, \"you are free--\" she hesitated, \"rich--\"\n\n \"Do not mock me,\" he replied.\n\n And she protested that she was not mocking him, when the report of a cannon resounded. Immediately all began hustling one another pell-mell towards the village.\n\n It was a false alarm. The prefect seemed not to be coming, and the members of the jury felt much embarrassed, not knowing if they ought to begin the meeting or still wait.\n\n At last at the end of the Place a large hired landau appeared, drawn by two thin horses, which a coachman in a white hat was whipping lustily. Lake had only just time to shout, \"Present arms!\" and the colonel to imitate him. All ran towards the enclosure; everyone pushed forward. A few even forgot their collars; but the equipage of the prefect seemed to anticipate the crowd, and the two yoked jades, trapesing in their harness, came up at a little trot in front of the peristyle of the town hall at the very moment when the National Guard and firemen deployed, beating drums and marking time.\n\n \"Present!\" shouted Lake.\n\n \"Halt!\" shouted the colonel. \"Left about, march.\"\n\n And after presenting arms, during which the clang of the band, letting loose, rang out like a brass kettle rolling downstairs, all the guns were lowered. Then was seen stepping down from the carriage a gentleman in a short coat with silver braiding, with bald brow, and wearing a tuft of hair at the back of his head, of a sallow complexion and the most benign appearance. His eyes, very large and covered by heavy lids, were half-closed to look at the crowd, while at the same time he raised his sharp nose, and forced a smile upon his sunken mouth. He recognised the mayor by his scarf, and explained to him that the prefect was not able to come. He himself was a councillor at the prefecture; then he added a few apologies. Brantley Tuvache answered them with compliments; the other confessed himself nervous; and they remained thus, face to face, their foreheads almost touching, with the members of the jury all round, the municipal council, the notable personages, the National Guard and the crowd. The councillor pressing his little cocked hat to his breast repeated his bows, while Tuvache, bent like a bow, also smiled, stammered, tried to say something, protested his devotion to the monarchy and the honour that was being done to Yonville.\n\n Carlisle, the groom from the inn, took the head of the horses from the coachman, and, limping along with his club-foot, led them to the door of the \"Lion d'Or\", where a number of peasants collected to look at the carriage. The drum beat, the howitzer thundered, and the gentlemen one by one mounted the platform, where they sat down in red utrecht velvet arm-chairs that had been lent by Madame Tuvache.\n\n All these people looked alike. Their fair flabby faces, somewhat tanned by the sun, were the colour of sweet cider, and their puffy whiskers emerged from stiff collars, kept up by white cravats with broad bows. All the waist-coats were of velvet, double-breasted; all the watches had, at the end of a long ribbon, an oval cornelian seal; everyone rested his two hands on his thighs, carefully stretching the stride of their trousers, whose unsponged glossy cloth shone more brilliantly than the leather of their heavy boots.\n\n The ladies of the company stood at the back under the vestibule between the pillars while the common herd was opposite, standing up or sitting on chairs. As a matter of fact, Lestiboudois had brought thither all those that he had moved from the field, and he even kept running back every minute to fetch others from the church. He caused such confusion with this piece of business that one had great difficulty in getting to the small steps of the platform.\n\n \"I think,\" said Brantley Carolina to the chemist, who was passing to his place, \"that they ought to have put up two Venetian masts with something rather severe and rich for ornaments; it would have been a very pretty effect.\"\n\n \"To be sure,\" replied Scottie; \"but what can you expect? The mayor took everything on his own shoulders. He hasn't much taste. Poor Tuvache! and he is even completely destitute of what is called the genius of art.\"\n\n Lawrence, meanwhile, with Madame Horatio, had gone up to the first floor of the town hall, to the \"council-room,\" and, as it was empty, he declared that they could enjoy the sight there more comfortably. He fetched three stools from the round table under the bust of the monarch, and having carried them to one of the windows, they sat down by each other.\n\n There was commotion on the platform, long whisperings, much parleying. At last the councillor got up. They knew now that his name was Lieuvain, and in the crowd the name was passed from one to the other. After he had collated a few pages, and bent over them to see better, he began--\n\n \"Gentlemen! May I be permitted first of all (before addressing you on the object of our meeting to-day, and this sentiment will, I am sure, be shared by you all), may I be permitted, I say, to pay a tribute to the higher administration, to the government to the monarch, gentle men, our sovereign, to that beloved king, to whom no branch of public or private prosperity is a matter of indifference, and who directs with a hand at once so firm and wise the chariot of the state amid the incessant perils of a stormy sea, knowing, moreover, how to make peace respected as well as war, industry, commerce, agriculture, and the fine arts?\"\n\n \"I ought,\" said Lawrence, \"to get back a little further.\"\n\n \"Why?\" said Richie.\n\n But at this moment the voice of the councillor rose to an extraordinary pitch. He declaimed--\n\n \"This is no longer the time, gentlemen, when civil discord ensanguined our public places, when the landlord, the business-man, the working-man himself, falling asleep at night, lying down to peaceful sleep, trembled lest he should be awakened suddenly by the noise of incendiary tocsins, when the most subversive doctrines audaciously sapped foundations.\"\n\n \"Well, someone down there might see me,\" Lawrence resumed, \"then I should have to invent excuses for a fortnight; and with my bad reputation--\"\n\n \"Oh, you are slandering yourself,\" said Richie.\n\n \"No! It is dreadful, I assure you.\"\n\n \"But, gentlemen,\" continued the councillor, \"if, banishing from my memory the remembrance of these sad pictures, I carry my eyes back to the actual situation of our dear country, what do I see there? Everywhere commerce and the arts are flourishing; everywhere new means of communication, like so many new arteries in the body of the state, establish within it new relations. Our great industrial centres have recovered all their activity; religion, more consolidated, smiles in all hearts; our ports are full, confidence is born again, and France breathes once more!\"\n\n \"Besides,\" added Lawrence, \"perhaps from the world's point of view they are right.\"\n\n \"How so?\" she asked.\n\n \"What!\" said he. \"Do you not know that there are souls constantly tormented? They need by turns to dream and to act, the purest passions and the most turbulent joys, and thus they fling themselves into all sorts of fantasies, of follies.\"\n\n Then she looked at him as one looks at a traveller who has voyaged over strange lands, and went on--\n\n \"We have not even this distraction, we poor women!\"\n\n \"A sad distraction, for happiness isn't found in it.\"\n\n \"But is it ever found?\" she asked.\n\n \"Yes; one day it comes,\" he answered.\n\n \"And this is what you have understood,\" said the councillor.\n\n \"You, farmers, agricultural labourers! you pacific pioneers of a work that belongs wholly to civilization! you, men of progress and morality, you have understood, I say, that political storms are even more redoubtable than atmospheric disturbances!\"\n\n \"It comes one day,\" repeated Lawrence, \"one day suddenly, and when one is despairing of it. Then the horizon expands; it is as if a voice cried, 'It is here!' You feel the need of confiding the whole of your life, of giving everything, sacrificing everything to this being. There is no need for explanations; they understand one another. They have seen each other in dreams!\"\n\n (And he looked at her.) \"In fine, here it is, this treasure so sought after, here before you. It glitters, it flashes; yet one still doubts, one does not believe it; one remains dazzled, as if one went out from darkness into light.\"\n\n And as he ended Lawrence suited the action to the word. He passed his hand over his face, like a man seized with giddiness. Then he let it fall on Richie's. She took hers away.\n\n \"And who would be surprised at it, gentlemen? He only who is so blind, so plunged (I do not fear to say it), so plunged in the prejudices of another age as still to misunderstand the spirit of agricultural populations. Where, indeed, is to be found more patriotism than in the country, greater devotion to the public welfare, more intelligence, in a word? And, gentlemen, I do not mean that superficial intelligence, vain ornament of idle minds, but rather that profound and balanced intelligence that applies itself above all else to useful objects, thus contributing to the good of all, to the common amelioration and to the support of the state, born of respect for law and the practice of duty--\"\n\n \"Ah! again!\" said Lawrence. \"Always 'duty.' I am sick of the word. They are a lot of old blockheads in flannel vests and of old women with foot-warmers and rosaries who constantly drone into our ears 'Duty, duty!' Ah! by Jove! one's duty is to feel what is great, cherish the beautiful, and not accept all the conventions of society with the ignominy that it imposes upon us.\"\n\n \"Yet--yet--\" objected Madame Horatio.\n\n \"No, no! Why cry out against the passions? Are they not the one beautiful thing on the earth, the source of heroism, of enthusiasm, of poetry, music, the arts, of everything, in a word?\"\n\n \"But one must,\" said Richie, \"to some extent bow to the opinion of the world and accept its moral code.\"\n\n \"Ah! but there are two,\" he replied. \"The small, the conventional, that of men, that which constantly changes, that brays out so loudly, that makes such a commotion here below, of the earth earthly, like the mass of imbeciles you see down there. But the other, the eternal, that is about us and above, like the landscape that surrounds us, and the blue heavens that give us light.\"\n\n Brantley Lieuvain had just wiped his mouth with a pocket-handkerchief. He continued--\n\n \"And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. Again, is it not the agriculturist who fattens, for our clothes, his abundant flocks in the pastures? For how should we clothe ourselves, how nourish ourselves, without the agriculturist? And, gentlemen, is it even necessary to go so far for examples? Who has not frequently reflected on all the momentous things that we get out of that modest animal, the ornament of poultry-yards, that provides us at once with a soft pillow for our bed, with succulent flesh for our tables, and eggs? But I should never end if I were to enumerate one after the other all the different products which the earth, well cultivated, like a generous mother, lavishes upon her children. Here it is the vine, elsewhere the apple tree for cider, there colza, farther on cheeses and flax. Gentlemen, let us not forget flax, which has made such great strides of late years, and to which I will more particularly call your attention.\"\n\n He had no need to call it, for all the mouths of the multitude were wide open, as if to drink in his words. Tuvache by his side listened to him with staring eyes. Brantley Derozerays from time to time softly closed his eyelids, and farther on the chemist, with his son Napoleon between his knees, put his hand behind his ear in order not to lose a syllable. The chins of the other members of the jury went slowly up and down in their waistcoats in sign of approval. The firemen at the foot of the platform rested on their bayonets; and Lake, motionless, stood with out-turned elbows, the point of his sabre in the air. Perhaps he could hear, but certainly he could see nothing, because of the visor of his helmet, that fell down on his nose. His lieutenant, the youngest son of Brantley Tuvache, had a bigger one, for his was enormous, and shook on his head, and from it an end of his cotton scarf peeped out. He smiled beneath it with a perfectly infantine sweetness, and his pale little face, whence drops were running, wore an expression of enjoyment and sleepiness.\n\n The square as far as the houses was crowded with people. One saw folk leaning on their elbows at all the windows, others standing at doors, and Hailee, in front of the chemist's shop, seemed quite transfixed by the sight of what he was looking at. In spite of the silence Brantley Lieuvain's voice was lost in the air. It reached you in fragments of phrases, and interrupted here and there by the creaking of chairs in the crowd; then you suddenly heard the long bellowing of an ox, or else the bleating of the lambs, who answered one another at street corners. In fact, the cowherds and shepherds had driven their beasts thus far, and these lowed from time to time, while with their tongues they tore down some scrap of foliage that hung above their mouths.\n\n Lawrence had drawn nearer to Richie, and said to her in a low voice, speaking rapidly--\n\n \"Does not this conspiracy of the world revolt you? Is there a single sentiment it does not condemn? The noblest instincts, the purest sympathies are persecuted, slandered; and if at length two poor souls do meet, all is so organised that they cannot blend together. Yet they will make the attempt; they will flutter their wings; they will call upon each other. Oh! no matter. Sooner or later, in six months, ten years, they will come together, will love; for fate has decreed it, and they are born one for the other.\"\n\n His arms were folded across his knees, and thus lifting his face towards Richie, close by her, he looked fixedly at her. She noticed in his eyes small golden lines radiating from black pupils; she even smelt the perfume of the pomade that made his hair glossy.\n\n Then a faintness came over her; she recalled the Viscount who had waltzed with her at Vaubyessard, and his beard exhaled like this air an odour of vanilla and citron, and mechanically she half-closed her eyes the better to breathe it in. But in making this movement, as she leant back in her chair, she saw in the distance, right on the line of the horizon, the old diligence, the \"Hirondelle,\" that was slowly descending the hill of Leux, dragging after it a long trail of dust. It was in this yellow carriage that Sage had so often come back to her, and by this route down there that he had gone for ever. She fancied she saw him opposite at his windows; then all grew confused; clouds gathered; it seemed to her that she was again turning in the waltz under the light of the lustres on the arm of the Viscount, and that Sage was not far away, that he was coming; and yet all the time she was conscious of the scent of Lawrence's head by her side. This sweetness of sensation pierced through her old desires, and these, like grains of sand under a gust of wind, eddied to and fro in the subtle breath of the perfume which suffused her soul. She opened wide her nostrils several times to drink in the freshness of the ivy round the capitals. She took off her gloves, she wiped her hands, then fanned her face with her handkerchief, while athwart the throbbing of her temples she heard the murmur of the crowd and the voice of the councillor intoning his phrases. He said--\"Continue, persevere; listen neither to the suggestions of routine, nor to the over-hasty councils of a rash empiricism.\n\n \"Apply yourselves, above all, to the amelioration of the soil, to good manures, to the development of the equine, bovine, ovine, and porcine races. Let these shows be to you pacific arenas, where the victor in leaving it will hold forth a hand to the vanquished, and will fraternise with him in the hope of better success. And you, aged servants, humble domestics, whose hard labour no Government up to this day has taken into consideration, come hither to receive the reward of your silent virtues, and be assured that the state henceforward has its eye upon you; that it encourages you, protects you; that it will accede to your just demands, and alleviate as much as in it lies the burden of your painful sacrifices.\"\n\n Brantley Lieuvain then sat down; Brantley Derozerays got up, beginning another speech. His was not perhaps so florid as that of the councillor, but it recommended itself by a more direct style, that is to say, by more special knowledge and more elevated considerations. Thus the praise of the Government took up less space in it; religion and agriculture more. He showed in it the relations of these two, and how they had always contributed to civilisation. Lawrence with Madame Horatio was talking dreams, presentiments, magnetism. Going back to the cradle of society, the orator painted those fierce times when men lived on acorns in the heart of woods. Then they had left off the skins of beasts, had put on cloth, tilled the soil, planted the vine. Was this a good, and in this discovery was ther\n\n Six weeks passed. Lawrence did not come again. At last one evening he appeared.\n\n The day after the show he had said to himself--\"We mustn't go back too soon; that would be a mistake.\"\n\n And at the end of a week he had gone off hunting. After the hunting he had thought it was too late, and then he reasoned thus--\n\n \"If from the first day she loved me, she must from impatience to see me again love me more. Let's go on with it!\"\n\n And he knew that his calculation had been right when, on entering the room, he saw Richie turn pale.\n\n She was alone. The day was drawing in. The small muslin curtain along the windows deepened the twilight, and the gilding of the barometer, on which the rays of the sun fell, shone in the looking-glass between the meshes of the coral.\n\n Lawrence remained standing, and Richie hardly answered his first conventional phrases.\n\n \"I,\" he said, \"have been busy. I have been ill.\"\n\n \"Seriously?\" she cried.\n\n \"Well,\" said Lawrence, sitting down at her side on a footstool, \"no; it was because I did not want to come back.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Can you not guess?\"\n\n He looked at her again, but so hard that she lowered her head, blushing. He went on--\n\n \"Richie!\"\n\n \"Sir,\" she said, drawing back a little.\n\n \"Ah! you see,\" replied he in a melancholy voice, \"that I was right not to come back; for this name, this name that fills my whole soul, and that escaped me, you forbid me to use! Madame Horatio! why all the world calls you thus! Besides, it is not your name; it is the name of another!\"\n\n He repeated, \"of another!\" And he hid his face in his hands.\n\n \"Yes, I think of you constantly. The memory of you drives me to despair. Ah! forgive me! I will leave you! Farewell! I will go far away, so far that you will never hear of me again; and yet--to-day--I know not what force impelled me towards you. For one does not struggle against Heaven; one cannot resist the smile of angels; one is carried away by that which is beautiful, charming, adorable.\"\n\n It was the first time that Richie had heard such words spoken to herself, and her pride, like one who reposes bathed in warmth, expanded softly and fully at this glowing language.\n\n \"But if I did not come,\" he continued, \"if I could not see you, at least I have gazed long on all that surrounds you. At night-every night-I arose; I came hither; I watched your house, its glimmering in the moon, the trees in the garden swaying before your window, and the little lamp, a gleam shining through the window-panes in the darkness. Ah! you never knew that there, so near you, so far from you, was a poor wretch!\"\n\n She turned towards him with a sob.\n\n \"Oh, you are good!\" she said.\n\n \"No, I love you, that is all! You do not doubt that! Tell me--one word--only one word!\"\n\n And Lawrence imperceptibly glided from the footstool to the ground; but a sound of wooden shoes was heard in the kitchen, and he noticed the door of the room was not closed.\n\n \"How kind it would be of you,\" he went on, rising, \"if you would humour a whim of mine.\" It was to go over her house; he wanted to know it; and Madame Horatio seeing no objection to this, they both rose, when Kelly came in.\n\n \"Good morning, doctor,\" Lawrence said to him.\n\n The doctor, flattered at this unexpected title, launched out into obsequious phrases. Of this the other took advantage to pull himself together a little.\n\n \"Madame was speaking to me,\" he then said, \"about her health.\"\n\n Kelly interrupted him; he had indeed a thousand anxieties; his wife's palpitations of the heart were beginning again. Then Lawrence asked if riding would not be good.\n\n \"Certainly! excellent! just the thing! There's an idea! You ought to follow it up.\"\n\n And as she objected that she had no horse, Brantley Lawrence offered one. She refused his offer; he did not insist. Then to explain his visit he said that his ploughman, the man of the blood-letting, still suffered from giddiness.\n\n \"I'll call around,\" said Horatio.\n\n \"No, no! I'll send him to you; we'll come; that will be more convenient for you.\"\n\n \"Ah! very good! I thank you.\"\n\n And as soon as they were alone, \"Why don't you accept Brantley August's kind offer?\"\n\n She assumed a sulky air, invented a thousand excuses, and finally declared that perhaps it would look odd.\n\n \"Well, what the deuce do I care for that?\" said Kelly, making a pirouette. \"Health before everything! You are wrong.\"\n\n \"And how do you think I can ride when I haven't got a habit?\"\n\n \"You must order one,\" he answered.\n\n The riding-habit decided her.\n\n When the habit was ready, Kelly wrote to Brantley August that his wife was at his command, and that they counted on his good-nature.\n\n The next day at noon Lawrence appeared at Kelly's door with two saddle-horses. One had pink rosettes at his ears and a deerskin side-saddle.\n\n Lawrence had put on high soft boots, saying to himself that no doubt she had never seen anything like them. In fact, Richie was charmed with his appearance as he stood on the landing in his great velvet coat and white corduroy breeches. She was ready; she was waiting for him.\n\n Hailee escaped from the chemist's to see her start, and the chemist also came out. He was giving Brantley August a little good advice.\n\n \"An accident happens so easily. Be careful! Your horses perhaps are mettlesome.\"\n\n She heard a noise above her; it was Felicite drumming on the windowpanes to amuse little Fatima. The child blew her a kiss; her mother answered with a wave of her whip.\n\n \"A pleasant ride!\" cried Brantley Scottie. \"Prudence! above all, prudence!\" And he flourished his newspaper as he saw them disappear.\n\n As soon as he felt the ground, Richie's horse set off at a gallop.\n\n Lawrence galloped by her side. Now and then they exchanged a word. Her figure slightly bent, her hand well up, and her right arm stretched out, she gave herself up to the cadence of the movement that rocked her in her saddle. At the bottom of the hill Lawrence gave his horse its head; they started together at a bound, then at the top suddenly the horses stopped, and her large blue veil fell about her.\n\n It was early in October. There was fog over the land. Hazy clouds hovered on the horizon between the outlines of the hills; others, rent asunder, floated up and disappeared. Sometimes through a rift in the clouds, beneath a ray of sunshine, gleamed from afar the roots of Yonville, with the gardens at the water's edge, the yards, the walls and the church steeple. Richie half closed her eyes to pick out her house, and never had this poor village where she lived appeared so small. From the height on which they were the whole valley seemed an immense pale lake sending off its vapour into the air. Clumps of trees here and there stood out like black rocks, and the tall lines of the poplars that rose above the mist were like a beach stirred by the wind.\n\n By the side, on the turf between the pines, a brown light shimmered in the warm atmosphere. The earth, ruddy like the powder of tobacco, deadened the noise of their steps, and with the edge of their shoes the horses as they walked kicked the fallen fir cones in front of them.\n\n Lawrence and Richie thus went along the skirt of the wood. She turned away from time to time to avoid his look, and then she saw only the pine trunks in lines, whose monotonous succession made her a little giddy. The horses were panting; the leather of the saddles creaked.\n\n Just as they were entering the forest the sun shone out.\n\n \"God protects us!\" said Lawrence.\n\n \"Do you think so?\" she said.\n\n \"Forward! forward!\" he continued.\n\n He \"tchk'd\" with his tongue. The two beasts set off at a trot.\n\n Long ferns by the roadside caught in Richie's stirrup.\n\n Lawrence leant forward and removed them as they rode along. At other times, to turn aside the branches, he passed close to her, and Richie felt his knee brushing against her leg. The sky was now blue, the leaves no longer stirred. There were spaces full of heather in flower, and plots of violets alternated with the confused patches of the trees that were grey, fawn, or golden coloured, according to the nature of their leaves. Often in the thicket was heard the fluttering of wings, or else the hoarse, soft cry of the ravens flying off amidst the oaks.\n\n They dismounted. Lawrence fastened up the horses. She walked on in front on the moss between the paths. But her long habit got in her way, although she held it up by the skirt; and Lawrence, walking behind her, saw between the black cloth and the black shoe the fineness of her white stocking, that seemed to him as if it were a part of her nakedness.\n\n She stopped. \"I am tired,\" she said.\n\n \"Come, try again,\" he went on. \"Courage!\"\n\n Then some hundred paces farther on she again stopped, and through her veil, that fell sideways from her man's hat over her hips, her face appeared in a bluish transparency as if she were floating under azure waves.\n\n \"But where are we going?\"\n\n He did not answer. She was breathing irregularly. Lawrence looked round him biting his moustache. They came to a larger space where the coppice had been cut. They sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, and Lawrence began speaking to her of his love. He did not begin by frightening her with compliments. He was calm, serious, melancholy.\n\n Richie listened to him with bowed head, and stirred the bits of wood on the ground with the tip of her foot. But at the words, \"Are not our destinies now one?\"\n\n \"Oh, no!\" she replied. \"You know that well. It is impossible!\" She rose to go. He seized her by the wrist. She stopped. Then, having gazed at him for a few moments with an amorous and humid look, she said hurriedly--\n\n \"Ah! do not speak of it again! Where are the horses? Let us go back.\"\n\n He made a gesture of anger and annoyance. She repeated:\n\n \"Where are the horses? Where are the horses?\"\n\n Then smiling a strange smile, his pupil fixed, his teeth set, he advanced with outstretched arms. She recoiled trembling. She stammered:\n\n \"Oh, you frighten me! You hurt me! Let me go!\"\n\n \"If it must be,\" he went on, his face changing; and he again became respectful, caressing, timid. She gave him her arm. They went back. He said--\n\n \"What was the matter with you? Why? I do not understand. You were mistaken, no doubt. In my soul you are as a Madonna on a pedestal, in a place lofty, secure, immaculate. But I need you to live! I must have your eyes, your voice, your thought! Be my friend, my sister, my angel!\"\n\n And he put out his arm round her waist. She feebly tried to disengage herself. He supported her thus as they walked along.\n\n But they heard the two horses browsing on the leaves.\n\n \"Oh! one moment!\" said Lawrence. \"Do not let us go! Stay!\"\n\n He drew her farther on to a small pool where duckweeds made a greenness on the water. Faded water lilies lay motionless between the reeds. At the noise of their steps in the grass, frogs jumped away to hide themselves.\n\n \"I am wrong! I am wrong!\" she said. \"I am mad to listen to you!\"\n\n \"Why? Richie! Richie!\"\n\n \"Oh, Lawrence!\" said the young woman slowly, leaning on his shoulder.\n\n The cloth of her habit caught against the velvet of his coat. She threw back her white neck, swelling with a sigh, and faltering, in tears, with a long shudder and hiding her face, she gave herself up to him--\n\n The shades of night were falling; the horizontal sun passing between the branches dazzled the eyes. Here and there around her, in the leaves or on the ground, trembled luminous patches, as it hummingbirds flying about had scattered their feathers. Silence was everywhere; something sweet seemed to come forth from the trees; she felt her heart, whose beating had begun again, and the blood coursing through her flesh like a stream of milk. Then far away, beyond the wood, on the other hills, she heard a vague prolonged cry, a voice which lingered, and in silence she heard it mingling like music with the last pulsations of her throbbing nerves. Lawrence, a cigar between his lips, was mending with his penknife one of the two broken bridles.\n\n They returned to Yonville by the same road. On the mud they saw again the traces of their horses side by side, the same thickets, the same stones to the grass; nothing around them seemed changed; and yet for her something had happened more stupendous than if the mountains had moved in their places. Lawrence now and again bent forward and took her hand to kiss it.\n\n She was charming on horseback--upright, with her slender waist, her knee bent on the mane of her horse, her face somewhat flushed by the fresh air in the red of the evening.\n\n On entering Yonville she made her horse prance in the road. People looked at her from the windows.\n\n At dinner her husband thought she looked well, but she pretended not to hear him when he inquired about her ride, and she remained sitting there with her elbow at the side of her plate between the two lighted candles.\n\n \"Richie!\" he said.\n\n \"What?\"\n\n \"Well, I spent the afternoon at Brantley Alexandre's. He has an old cob, still very fine, only a little broken-kneed, and that could be bought; I am sure, for a hundred crowns.\" He added, \"And thinking it might please you, I have bespoken it--bought it. Have I done right? Do tell me?\"\n\n She nodded her head in assent; then a quarter of an hour later--\n\n \"Are you going out to-night?\" she asked.\n\n \"Yes. Why?\"\n\n \"Oh, nothing, nothing, my dear!\"\n\n And as soon as she had got rid of Kelly she went and shut herself up in her room.\n\n At first she felt stunned; she saw the trees, the paths, the ditches, Lawrence, and she again felt the pressure of his arm, while the leaves rustled and the reeds whistled.\n\n But when she saw herself in the glass she wondered at her face. Never had her eyes been so large, so black, of so profound a depth. Something subtle about her being transfigured her. She repeated, \"I have a lover! a lover!\" delighting at the idea as if a second puberty had come to her. So at last she was to know those joys of love, that fever of happiness of which she had despaired! She was entering upon marvels where all would be passion, ecstasy, delirium. An azure infinity encompassed her, the heights of sentiment sparkled under her thought, and ordinary existence appeared only afar off, down below in the shade, through the interspaces of these heights.\n\n Then she recalled the heroines of the books that she had read, and the lyric legion of these adulterous women began to sing in her memory with the voice of sisters that charmed her. She became herself, as it were, an actual part of these imaginings, and realised the love-dream of her youth as she saw herself in this type of amorous women whom she had so envied. Besides, Richie felt a satisfaction of revenge. Had she not suffered enough? But now she triumphed, and the love so long pent up burst forth in full joyous bubblings. She tasted it without remorse, without anxiety, without trouble.\n\n The day following passed with a new sweetness. They made vows to one another She told him of her sorrows. Lawrence interrupted her with kisses; and she looking at him through half-closed eyes, asked him to call her again by her name--to say that he loved her They were in the forest, as yesterday, in the shed of some woodenshoe maker. The walls were of straw, and the roof so low they had to stoop. They were seated side by side on a bed of dry leaves.\n\n From that day forth they wrote to one another regularly every evening. Richie placed her letter at the end of the garden, by the river, in a fissure of the wall. Lawrence came to fetch it, and put another there, that she always found fault with as too short.\n\n One morning, when Kelly had gone out before day break, she was seized with the fancy to see Lawrence at once. She would go quickly to La Huchette, stay there an hour, and be back again at Yonville while everyone was still asleep. This idea made her pant with desire, and she soon found herself in the middle of the field, walking with rapid steps, without looking behind her.\n\n Day was just breaking. Richie from afar recognised her lover's house. Its two dove-tailed weathercocks stood out black against the pale dawn.\n\n Beyond the farmyard there was a detached building that she thought must be the chateau She entered--it was if the doors at her approach had opened wide of their own accord. A large straight staircase led up to the corridor. Richie raised the latch of a door, and suddenly at the end of the room she saw a man sleeping. It was Lawrence. She uttered a cry.\n\n \"You here? You here?\" he repeated. \"How did you manage to come? Ah! your dress is damp.\"\n\n \"I love you,\" she answered, throwing her arms about his neck.\n\n This first piece of daring successful, now every time Kelly went out early Richie dressed quickly and slipped on tiptoe down the steps that led to the waterside.\n\n But when the plank for the cows was taken up, she had to go by the walls alongside of the river; the bank was slippery; in order not to fall she caught hold of the tufts of faded wallflowers. Then she went across ploughed fields, in which she sank, stumbling; and clogging her thin shoes. Her scarf, knotted round her head, fluttered to the wind in the meadows. She was afraid of the oxen; she began to run; she arrived out of breath, with rosy cheeks, and breathing out from her whole person a fresh perfume of sap, of verdure, of the open air. At this hour Lawrence still slept. It was like a spring morning coming into his room.\n\n The yellow curtains along the windows let a heavy, whitish light enter softly. Richie felt about, opening and closing her eyes, while the drops of dew hanging from her hair formed, as it were, a topaz aureole around her face. Lawrence, laughing, drew her to him, and pressed her to his breast.\n\n Then she examined the apartment, opened the drawers of the tables, combed her hair with his comb, and looked at herself in his shaving-glass. Often she even put between her teeth the big pipe that lay on the table by the bed, amongst lemons and pieces of sugar near a bottle of water.\n\n It took them a good quarter of an hour to say goodbye. Then Richie cried. She would have wished never to leave Lawrence. Something stronger than herself forced her to him; so much so, that one day, seeing her come unexpectedly, he frowned as one put out.\n\n \"What is the matter with you?\" she said. \"Are you ill? Tell me!\"\n\n At last he declared with a serious air that her visits were becoming imprudent--that she was compromising herself.\n\n\n\n\n Gradually Lawrence's fears took possession of her. At first, love had intoxicated her; and she had thought of nothing beyond. But now that he was indispensable to her life, she feared to lose anything of this, or even that it should be disturbed. When she came back from his house she looked all about her, anxiously watching every form that passed in the horizon, and every village window from which she could be seen. She listened for steps, cries, the noise of the ploughs, and she stopped short, white, and trembling more than the aspen leaves swaying overhead.\n\n One morning as she was thus returning, she suddenly thought she saw the long barrel of a carbine that seemed to be aimed at her. It stuck out sideways from the end of a small tub half-buried in the grass on the edge of a ditch. Richie, half-fainting with terror, nevertheless walked on, and a man stepped out of the tub like a Jack-in-the-box. He had gaiters buckled up to the knees, his cap pulled down over his eyes, trembling lips, and a red nose. It was Captain Lake lying in ambush for wild ducks.\n\n \"You ought to have called out long ago!\" he exclaimed; \"When one sees a gun, one should always give warning.\"\n\n The tax-collector was thus trying to hide the fright he had had, for a prefectorial order having prohibited duckhunting except in boats, Brantley Lake, despite his respect for the laws, was infringing them, and so he every moment expected to see the rural guard turn up. But this anxiety whetted his pleasure, and, all alone in his tub, he congratulated himself on his luck and on his cuteness. At sight of Richie he seemed relieved from a great weight, and at once entered upon a conversation.\n\n \"It isn't warm; it's nipping.\"\n\n Richie answered nothing. He went on--\n\n \"And you're out so early?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" she said stammering; \"I am just coming from the nurse where my child is.\"\n\n \"Ah! very good! very good! For myself, I am here, just as you see me, since break of day; but the weather is so muggy, that unless one had the bird at the mouth of the gun--\"\n\n \"Good evening, Brantley Lake,\" she interrupted him, turning on her heel.\n\n \"Your servant, madame,\" he replied drily; and he went back into his tub.\n\n Richie regretted having left the tax-collector so abruptly. No doubt he would form unfavourable conjectures. The story about the nurse was the worst possible excuse, everyone at Yonville knowing that the little Horatio had been at home with her parents for a year. Besides, no one was living in this direction; this path led only to La Huchette. Lake, then, would guess whence she came, and he would not keep silence; he would talk, that was certain. She remained until evening racking her brain with every conceivable lying project, and had constantly before her eyes that imbecile with the game-bag.\n\n Kelly after dinner, seeing her gloomy, proposed, by way of distraction, to take her to the chemist's, and the first person she caught sight of in the shop was the taxcollector again. He was standing in front of the counter, lit up by the gleams of the red bottle, and was saying--\n\n \"Please give me half an ounce of vitriol.\"\n\n \"Hailee,\" cried the druggist, \"bring us the sulphuric acid.\" Then to Richie, who was going up to Madame Scottie' room, \"No, stay here; it isn't worth while going up; she is just coming down. Warm yourself at the stove in the meantime. Excuse me. Good-day, doctor,\" (for the chemist much enjoyed pronouncing the word \"doctor,\" as if addressing another by it reflected on himself some of the grandeur that he found in it). \"Now, take care not to upset the mortars! You'd better fetch some chairs from the little room; you know very well that the arm-chairs are not to be taken out of the drawing-room.\"\n\n And to put his arm-chair back in its place he was darting away from the counter, when Lake asked him for half an ounce of sugar acid.\n\n \"Sugar acid!\" said the chemist contemptuously, \"don't know it; I'm ignorant of it! But perhaps you want oxalic acid. It is oxalic acid, isn't it?\"\n\n Lake explained that he wanted a corrosive to make himself some copperwater with which to remove rust from his hunting things.\n\n Richie shuddered. The chemist began saying--\n\n \"Indeed the weather is not propitious on account of the damp.\"\n\n \"Nevertheless,\" replied the tax-collector, with a sly look, \"there are people who like it.\"\n\n She was stifling.\n\n \"And give me--\"\n\n \"Will he never go?\" thought she.\n\n \"Half an ounce of resin and turpentine, four ounces of yellow wax, and three half ounces of animal charcoal, if you please, to clean the varnished leather of my togs.\"\n\n The druggist was beginning to cut the wax when Madame Scottie appeared, Irma in her arms, Napoleon by her side, and Athalie following. She sat down on the velvet seat by the window, and the lad squatted down on a footstool, while his eldest sister hovered round the jujube box near her papa. The latter was filling funnels and corking phials, sticking on labels, making up parcels. Around him all were silent; only from time to time, were heard the weights jingling in the balance, and a few low words from the chemist giving directions to his pupil.\n\n \"And how's the little woman?\" suddenly asked Madame Scottie.\n\n \"Silence!\" exclaimed her husband, who was writing down some figures in his waste-book.\n\n \"Why didn't you bring her?\" she went on in a low voice.\n\n \"Hush! hush!\" said Richie, pointing with her finger to the druggist.\n\n But Lake, quite absorbed in looking over his bill, had probably heard nothing. At last he went out. Then Richie, relieved, uttered a deep sigh.\n\n \"How hard you are breathing!\" said Madame Scottie.\n\n \"Well, you see, it's rather warm,\" she replied.\n\n So the next day they talked over how to arrange their rendezvous. Richie wanted to bribe her servant with a present, but it would be better to find some safe house at Yonville. Lawrence promised to look for one.\n\n All through the winter, three or four times a week, in the dead of night he came to the garden. Richie had on purpose taken away the key of the gate, which Kelly thought lost.\n\n To call her, Lawrence threw a sprinkle of sand at the shutters. She jumped up with a start; but sometimes he had to wait, for Kelly had a mania for chatting by the fireside, and he would not stop. She was wild with impatience; if her eyes could have done it, she would have hurled him out at the window. At last she would begin to undress, then take up a book, and go on reading very quietly as if the book amused her. But Kelly, who was in bed, called to her to come too.\n\n \"Come, now, Richie,\" he said, \"it is time.\"\n\n \"Yes, I am coming,\" she answered.\n\n Then, as the candles dazzled him; he turned to the wall and fell asleep. She escaped, smiling, palpitating, undressed. Lawrence had a large cloak; he wrapped her in it, and putting his arm round her waist, he drew her without a word to the end of the garden.\n\n It was in the arbour, on the same seat of old sticks where formerly Sage had looked at her so amorously on the summer evenings. She never thought of him now.\n\n The stars shone through the leafless jasmine branches. Behind them they heard the river flowing, and now and again on the bank the rustling of the dry reeds. Masses of shadow here and there loomed out in the darkness, and sometimes, vibrating with one movement, they rose up and swayed like immense black waves pressing forward to engulf them. The cold of the nights made them clasp closer; the sighs of their lips seemed to them deeper; their eyes that they could hardly see, larger; and in the midst of the silence low words were spoken that fell on their souls sonorous, crystalline, and that reverberated in multiplied vibrations.\n\n When the night was rainy, they took refuge in the consulting-room between the cart-shed and the stable. She lighted one of the kitchen candles that she had hidden behind the books. Lawrence settled down there as if at home. The sight of the library, of the bureau, of the whole apartment, in fine, excited his merriment, and he could not refrain from making jokes about Kelly, which rather embarrassed Richie. She would have liked to see him more serious, and even on occasions more dramatic; as, for example, when she thought she heard a noise of approaching steps in the alley.\n\n \"Someone is coming!\" she said.\n\n He blew out the light.\n\n \"Have you your pistols?\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Why, to defend yourself,\" replied Richie.\n\n \"From your husband? Oh, poor devil!\" And Lawrence finished his sentence with a gesture that said, \"I could crush him with a flip of my finger.\"\n\n She was wonder-stricken at his bravery, although she felt in it a sort of indecency and a naive coarseness that scandalised her.\n\n Lawrence reflected a good deal on the affair of the pistols. If she had spoken seriously, it was very ridiculous, he thought, even odious; for he had no reason to hate the good Kelly, not being what is called devoured by jealousy; and on this subject Richie had taken a great vow that he did not think in the best of taste.\n\n Besides, she was growing very sentimental. She had insisted on exchanging miniatures; they had cut off handfuls of hair, and now she was asking for a ring--a real wedding-ring, in sign of an eternal union. She often spoke to him of the evening chimes, of the voices of nature. Then she talked to him of her mother--hers! and of his mother--his! Lawrence had lost his twenty years ago. Richie none the less consoled him with caressing words as one would have done a lost child, and she sometimes even said to him, gazing at the moon--\n\n \"I am sure that above there together they approve of our love.\"\n\n But she was so pretty. He had possessed so few women of such ingenuousness. This love without debauchery was a new experience for him, and, drawing him out of his lazy habits, caressed at once his pride and his sensuality. Richie's enthusiasm, which his bourgeois good sense disdained, seemed to him in his heart of hearts charming, since it was lavished on him. Then, sure of being loved, he no longer kept up appearances, and insensibly his ways changed.\n\n He had no longer, as formerly, words so gentle that they made her cry, nor passionate caresses that made her mad, so that their great love, which engrossed her life, seemed to lessen beneath her like the water of a stream absorbed into its channel, and she could see the bed of it. She would not believe it; she redoubled in tenderness, and Lawrence concealed his indifference less and less.\n\n She did not know if she regretted having yielded to him, or whether she did not wish, on the contrary, to enjoy him the more. The humiliation of feeling herself weak was turning to rancour, tempered by their voluptuous pleasures. It was not affection; it was like a continual seduction. He subjugated her; she almost feared him.\n\n Appearances, nevertheless, were calmer than ever, Lawrence having succeeded in carrying out the adultery after his own fancy; and at the end of six months, when the spring-time came, they were to one another like a married couple, tranquilly keeping up a domestic flame.\n\n It was the time of year when old Deidre sent his turkey in remembrance of the setting of his leg. The present always arrived with a letter. Richie cut the string that tied it to the basket, and read the following lines:--\n\n \"My Dear Children--I hope this will find you well, and that this one will be as good as the others. For it seems to me a little more tender, if I may venture to say so, and heavier. But next time, for a change, I'll give you a turkeycock, unless you have a preference for some dabs; and send me back the hamper, if you please, with the two old ones. I have had an accident with my cart-sheds, whose covering flew off one windy night among the trees. The harvest has not been overgood either. Finally, I don't know when I shall come to see you. It is so difficult now to leave the house since I am alone, my poor Richie.\"\n\n Here there was a break in the lines, as if the old fellow had dropped his pen to dream a little while.\n\n \"For myself, I am very well, except for a cold I caught the other day at the fair at Yvetot, where I had gone to hire a shepherd, having turned away mine because he was too dainty. How we are to be pitied with such a lot of thieves! Besides, he was also rude. I heard from a pedlar, who, travelling through your part of the country this winter, had a tooth drawn, that Horatio was as usual working hard. That doesn't surprise me; and he showed me his tooth; we had some coffee together. I asked him if he had seen you, and he said not, but that he had seen two horses in the stables, from which I conclude that business is looking up. So much the better, my dear children, and may God send you every imaginable happiness! It grieves me not yet to have seen my dear little grand-daughter, Fatima Horatio. I have planted an Orleans plum-tree for her in the garden under your room, and I won't have it touched unless it is to have jam made for her by and bye, that I will keep in the cupboard for her when she comes.\n\n \"Good-bye, my dear children. I kiss you, my girl, you too, my son-in-law, and the little one on both cheeks. I am, with best compliments, your loving father.\n\n \"Theodore Deidre.\"\n\n She held the coarse paper in her fingers for some minutes. The spelling mistakes were interwoven one with the other, and Richie followed the kindly thought that cackled right through it like a hen half hidden in the hedge of thorns. The writing had been dried with ashes from the hearth, for a little grey powder slipped from the letter on to her dress, and she almost thought she saw her father bending over the hearth to take up the tongs. How long since she had been with him, sitting on the footstool in the chimney-corner, where she used to burn the end of a bit of wood in the great flame of the sea-sedges! She remembered the summer evenings all full of sunshine. The colts neighed when anyone passed by, and galloped, galloped. Under her window there was a beehive, and sometimes the bees wheeling round in the light struck against her window like rebounding balls of gold. What happiness there had been at that time, what freedom, what hope! What an abundance of illusions! Nothing was left of them now. She had got rid of them all in her soul's life, in all her successive conditions of life, maidenhood, her marriage, and her love--thus constantly losing them all her life through, like a traveller who leaves something of his wealth at every inn along his road.\n\n But what then, made her so unhappy? What was the extraordinary catastrophe that had transformed her? And she raised her head, looking round as if to seek the cause of that which made her suffer.\n\n An April ray was dancing on the china of the whatnot; the fire burned; beneath her slippers she felt the softness of the carpet; the day was bright, the air warm, and she heard her child shouting with laughter.\n\n In fact, the little girl was just then rolling on the lawn in the midst of the grass that was being turned. She was lying flat on her stomach at the top of a rick. The servant was holding her by her skirt. Lestiboudois was raking by her side, and every time he came near she lent forward, beating the air with both her arms.\n\n \"Bring her to me,\" said her mother, rushing to embrace her. \"How I love you, my poor child! How I love you!\"\n\n Then noticing that the tips of her ears were rather dirty, she rang at once for warm water, and washed her, changed her linen, her stockings, her shoes, asked a thousand questions about her health, as if on the return from a long journey, and finally, kissing her again and crying a little, she gave her back to the servant, who stood quite thunderstricken at this excess of tenderness.\n\n That evening Lawrence found her more serious than usual.\n\n \"That will pass over,\" he concluded; \"it's a whim:\"\n\n And he missed three rendezvous running. When he did come, she showed herself cold and almost contemptuous.\n\n \"Ah! you're losing your time, my lady!\"\n\n And he pretended not to notice her melancholy sighs, nor the handkerchief she took out.\n\n Then Richie repented. She even asked herself why she detested Kelly; if it had not been better to have been able to love him? But he gave her no opportunities for such a revival of sentiment, so that she was much embarrassed by her desire for sacrifice, when the druggist came just in time to provide her with an opportunity.\n\n\n\n\n He had recently read a eulogy on a new method for curing club-foot, and as he was a partisan of progress, he conceived the patriotic idea that Yonville, in order to keep to the fore, ought to have some operations for strephopody or club-foot.\n\n \"For,\" said he to Richie, \"what risk is there? See--\" (and he enumerated on his fingers the advantages of the attempt), \"success, almost certain relief and beautifying of the patient, celebrity acquired by the operator. Why, for example, should not your husband relieve poor Carlisle of the 'Lion d'Or'? Note that he would not fail to tell about his cure to all the travellers, and then\" (Scottie lowered his voice and looked round him) \"who is to prevent me from sending a short paragraph on the subject to the paper? Eh! goodness me! an article gets about; it is talked of; it ends by making a snowball! And who knows? who knows?\"\n\n In fact, Horatio might succeed. Nothing proved to Richie that he was not clever; and what a satisfaction for her to have urged him to a step by which his reputation and fortune would be increased! She only wished to lean on something more solid than love.\n\n Kelly, urged by the druggist and by her, allowed himself to be persuaded. He sent to Rouen for Dr. Duval's volume, and every evening, holding his head between both hands, plunged into the reading of it.\n\n While he was studying equinus, varus, and valgus, that is to say, katastrephopody, endostrephopody, and exostrephopody (or better, the various turnings of the foot downwards, inwards, and outwards, with the hypostrephopody and anastrephopody), otherwise torsion downwards and upwards, Monsier Scottie, with all sorts of arguments, was exhorting the lad at the inn to submit to the operation.\n\n \"You will scarcely feel, probably, a slight pain; it is a simple prick, like a little blood-letting, less than the extraction of certain corns.\"\n\n Carlisle, reflecting, rolled his stupid eyes.\n\n \"However,\" continued the chemist, \"it doesn't concern me. It's for your sake, for pure humanity! I should like to see you, my friend, rid of your hideous caudication, together with that waddling of the lumbar regions which, whatever you say, must considerably interfere with you in the exercise of your calling.\"\n\n Then Scottie represented to him how much jollier and brisker he would feel afterwards, and even gave him to understand that he would be more likely to please the women; and the stable-boy began to smile heavily. Then he attacked him through his vanity:\n\n \"Aren't you a man? Hang it! what would you have done if you had had to go into the army, to go and fight beneath the standard? Ah! Carlisle!\"\n\n And Scottie retired, declaring that he could not understand this obstinacy, this blindness in refusing the benefactions of science.\n\n The poor fellow gave way, for it was like a conspiracy. Lake, who never interfered with other people's business, Madame Lefrancois, Artemise, the neighbours, even the mayor, Brantley Tuvache--everyone persuaded him, lectured him, shamed him; but what finally decided him was that it would cost him nothing. Horatio even undertook to provide the machine for the operation. This generosity was an idea of Richie's, and Kelly consented to it, thinking in his heart of hearts that his wife was an angel.\n\n So by the advice of the chemist, and after three fresh starts, he had a kind of box made by the carpenter, with the aid of the locksmith, that weighed about eight pounds, and in which iron, wood, sheer-iron, leather, screws, and nuts had not been spared.\n\n But to know which of Carlisle's tendons to cut, it was necessary first of all to find out what kind of club-foot he had.\n\n He had a foot forming almost a straight line with the leg, which, however, did not prevent it from being turned in, so that it was an equinus together with something of a varus, or else a slight varus with a strong tendency to equinus. But with this equinus, wide in foot like a horse's hoof, with rugose skin, dry tendons, and large toes, on which the black nails looked as if made of iron, the clubfoot ran about like a deer from morn till night. He was constantly to be seen on the Place, jumping round the carts, thrusting his limping foot forwards. He seemed even stronger on that leg than the other. By dint of hard service it had acquired, as it were, moral qualities of patience and energy; and when he was given some heavy work, he stood on it in preference to its fellow.\n\n Now, as it was an equinus, it was necessary to cut the tendon of Achilles, and, if need were, the anterior tibial muscle could be seen to afterwards for getting rid of the varus; for the doctor did not dare to risk both operations at once; he was even trembling already for fear of injuring some important region that he did not know.\n\n Neither Ambrose Pare, applying for the first time since Celsus, after an interval of fifteen centuries, a ligature to an artery, nor Dupuytren, about to open an abscess in the brain, nor Gensoul when he first took away the superior maxilla, had hearts that trembled, hands that shook, minds so strained as Brantley Horatio when he approached Carlisle, his tenotome between his fingers. And as at hospitals, near by on a table lay a heap of lint, with waxed thread, many bandages--a pyramid of bandages--every bandage to be found at the druggist's. It was Brantley Scottie who since morning had been organising all these preparations, as much to dazzle the multitude as to keep up his illusions. Kelly pierced the skin; a dry crackling was heard. The tendon was cut, the operation over. Carlisle could not get over his surprise, but bent over Horatio's hands to cover them with kisses.\n\n \"Come, be calm,\" said the druggist; \"later on you will show your gratitude to your benefactor.\"\n\n And he went down to tell the result to five or six inquirers who were waiting in the yard, and who fancied that Carlisle would reappear walking properly. Then Kelly, having buckled his patient into the machine, went home, where Richie, all anxiety, awaited him at the door. She threw herself on his neck; they sat down to table; he ate much, and at dessert he even wanted to take a cup of coffee, a luxury he only permitted himself on Sundays when there was company.\n\n The evening was charming, full of prattle, of dreams together. They talked about their future fortune, of the improvements to be made in their house; he saw people's estimation of him growing, his comforts increasing, his wife always loving him; and she was happy to refresh herself with a new sentiment, healthier, better, to feel at last some tenderness for this poor fellow who adored her. The thought of Lawrence for one moment passed through her mind, but her eyes turned again to Kelly; she even noticed with surprise that he had not bad teeth.\n\n They were in bed when Brantley Scottie, in spite of the servant, suddenly entered the room, holding in his hand a sheet of paper just written. It was the paragraph he intended for the \"Fanal de Rouen.\" He brought it for them to read.\n\n \"Read it yourself,\" said Horatio.\n\n He read--\n\n \"'Despite the prejudices that still invest a part of the face of Europe like a net, the light nevertheless begins to penetrate our country places. Thus on Tuesday our little town of Yonville found itself the scene of a surgical operation which is at the same time an act of loftiest philanthropy. Brantley Horatio, one of our most distinguished practitioners--'\"\n\n \"Oh, that is too much! too much!\" said Kelly, choking with emotion.\n\n \"No, no! not at all! What next!\"\n\n \"'--Performed an operation on a club-footed man.' I have not used the scientific term, because you know in a newspaper everyone would not perhaps understand. The masses must--'\"\n\n \"No doubt,\" said Horatio; \"go on!\"\n\n \"I proceed,\" said the chemist. \"'Brantley Horatio, one of our most distinguished practitioners, performed an operation on a club-footed man called Carlisle Tautain, stableman for the last twenty-five years at the hotel of the \"Lion d'Or,\" kept by Widow Lefrancois, at the Place d'Armes. The novelty of the attempt, and the interest incident to the subject, had attracted such a concourse of persons that there was a veritable obstruction on the threshold of the establishment. The operation, moreover, was performed as if by magic, and barely a few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as though to say that the rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of art. The patient, strangely enough--we affirm it as an eye-witness--complained of no pain. His condition up to the present time leaves nothing to be desired. Everything tends to show that his convelescence will be brief; and who knows even if at our next village festivity we shall not see our good Carlisle figuring in the bacchic dance in the midst of a chorus of joyous boon-companions, and thus proving to all eyes by his verve and his capers his complete cure? Honour, then, to the generous savants! Honour to those indefatigable spirits who consecrate their vigils to the amelioration or to the alleviation of their kind! Honour, thrice honour! Is it not time to cry that the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the lame walk? But that which fanaticism formerly promised to its elect, science now accomplishes for all men. We shall keep our readers informed as to the successive phases of this remarkable cure.'\"\n\n This did not prevent Mere Lefrancois, from coming five days after, scared, and crying out--\n\n \"Help! he is dying! I am going crazy!\"\n\n Kelly rushed to the \"Lion d'Or,\" and the chemist, who caught sight of him passing along the Place hatless, abandoned his shop. He appeared himself breathless, red, anxious, and asking everyone who was going up the stairs--\n\n \"Why, what's the matter with our interesting strephopode?\"\n\n The strephopode was writhing in hideous convulsions, so that the machine in which his leg was enclosed was knocked against the wall enough to break it.\n\n With many precautions, in order not to disturb the position of the limb, the box was removed, and an awful sight presented itself. The outlines of the foot disappeared in such a swelling that the entire skin seemed about to burst, and it was covered with ecchymosis, caused by the famous machine. Carlisle had already complained of suffering from it. No attention had been paid to him; they had to acknowledge that he had not been altogether wrong, and he was freed for a few hours. But, hardly had the oedema gone down to some extent, than the two savants thought fit to put back the limb in the apparatus, strapping it tighter to hasten matters. At last, three days after, Carlisle being unable to endure it any longer, they once more removed the machine, and were much surprised at the result they saw. The livid tumefaction spread over the leg, with blisters here and there, whence there oozed a black liquid. Matters were taking a serious turn. Carlisle began to worry himself, and Mere Lefrancois, had him installed in the little room near the kitchen, so that he might at least have some distraction.\n\n But the tax-collector, who dined there every day, complained bitterly of such companionship. Then Carlisle was removed to the billiard-room. He lay there moaning under his heavy coverings, pale with long beard, sunken eyes, and from time to time turning his perspiring head on the dirty pillow, where the flies alighted. Madame Horatio went to see him. She brought him linen for his poultices; she comforted, and encouraged him. Besides, he did not want for company, especially on market-days, when the peasants were knocking about the billiard-balls round him, fenced with the cues, smoked, drank, sang, and brawled.\n\n \"How are you?\" they said, clapping him on the shoulder. \"Ah! you're not up to much, it seems, but it's your own fault. You should do this! do that!\" And then they told him stories of people who had all been cured by other remedies than his. Then by way of consolation they added--\n\n \"You give way too much! Get up! You coddle yourself like a king! All the same, old chap, you don't smell nice!\"\n\n Gangrene, in fact, was spreading more and more. Horatio himself turned sick at it. He came every hour, every moment. Carlisle looked at him with eyes full of terror, sobbing--\n\n \"When shall I get well? Oh, save me! How unfortunate I am! How unfortunate I am!\"\n\n And the doctor left, always recommending him to diet himself.\n\n \"Don't listen to him, my lad,\" said Mere Lefrancois, \"Haven't they tortured you enough already? You'll grow still weaker. Here! swallow this.\"\n\n And she gave him some good beef-tea, a slice of mutton, a piece of bacon, and sometimes small glasses of brandy, that he had not the strength to put to his lips.\n\n Adriana Raina, hearing that he was growing worse, asked to see him. He began by pitying his sufferings, declaring at the same time that he ought to rejoice at them since it was the will of the Lord, and take advantage of the occasion to reconcile himself to Heaven.\n\n \"For,\" said the ecclesiastic in a paternal tone, \"you rather neglected your duties; you were rarely seen at divine worship. How many years is it since you approached the holy table? I understand that your work, that the whirl of the world may have kept you from care for your salvation. But now is the time to reflect. Yet don't despair. I have known great sinners, who, about to appear before God (you are not yet at this point I know), had implored His mercy, and who certainly died in the best frame of mind. Let us hope that, like them, you will set us a good example. Thus, as a precaution, what is to prevent you from saying morning and evening a 'Hail Mary, full of grace,' and 'Our Father which art in heaven'? Yes, do that, for my sake, to oblige me. That won't cost you anything. Will you promise me?\"\n\n The poor devil promised. The cure came back day after day. He chatted with the landlady; and even told anecdotes interspersed with jokes and puns that Carlisle did not understand. Then, as soon as he could, he fell back upon matters of religion, putting on an appropriate expression of face.\n\n His zeal seemed successful, for the club-foot soon manifested a desire to go on a pilgrimage to Bon-Secours if he were cured; to which Brantley Raina replied that he saw no objection; two precautions were better than one; it was no risk anyhow.\n\n The druggist was indignant at what he called the manoeuvres of the priest; they were prejudicial, he said, to Carlisle's convalescence, and he kept repeating to Madame Lefrancois, \"Leave him alone! leave him alone! You perturb his morals with your mysticism.\" But the good woman would no longer listen to him; he was the cause of it all. From a spirit of contradiction she hung up near the bedside of the patient a basin filled with holy-water and a branch of box.\n\n Religion, however, seemed no more able to succour him than surgery, and the invincible gangrene still spread from the extremities towards the stomach. It was all very well to vary the potions and change the poultices; the muscles each day rotted more and more; and at last Kelly replied by an affirmative nod of the head when Mere Lefrancois, asked him if she could not, as a forlorn hope, send for Brantley Canivet of Neufchatel, who was a celebrity.\n\n A doctor of medicine, fifty years of age, enjoying a good position and self-possessed, Kelly's colleague did not refrain from laughing disdainfully when he had uncovered the leg, mortified to the knee. Then having flatly declared that it must be amputated, he went off to the chemist's to rail at the asses who could have reduced a poor man to such a state. Shaking Brantley Scottie by the button of his coat, he shouted out in the shop--\n\n \"These are the inventions of Paris! These are the ideas of those gentry of the capital! It is like strabismus, chloroform, lithotrity, a heap of monstrosities that the Government ought to prohibit. But they want to do the clever, and they cram you with remedies without, troubling about the consequences. We are not so clever, not we! We are not savants, coxcombs, fops! We are practitioners; we cure people, and we should not dream of operating on anyone who is in perfect health. Straighten club-feet! As if one could straighten club-feet! It is as if one wished, for example, to make a hunchback straight!\"\n\n Scottie suffered as he listened to this discourse, and he concealed his discomfort beneath a courtier's smile; for he needed to humour Monsier Canivet, whose prescriptions sometimes came as far as Yonville. So he did not take up the defence of Horatio; he did not even make a single remark, and, renouncing his principles, he sacrificed his dignity to the more serious interests of his business.\n\n This amputation of the thigh by Doctor Canivet was a great event in the village. On that day all the inhabitants got up earlier, and the Grande Rue, although full of people, had something lugubrious about it, as if an execution had been expected. At the grocer's they discussed Carlisle's illness; the shops did no business, and Madame Tuvache, the mayor's wife, did not stir from her window, such was her impatience to see the operator arrive.\n\n He came in his gig, which he drove himself. But the springs of the right side having at length given way beneath the weight of his corpulence, it happened that the carriage as it rolled along leaned over a little, and on the other cushion near him could be seen a large box covered in red sheep-leather, whose three brass clasps shone grandly.\n\n After he had entered like a whirlwind the porch of the \"Lion d'Or,\" the doctor, shouting very loud, ordered them to unharness his horse. Then he went into the stable to see that she was eating her oats all right; for on arriving at a patient's he first of all looked after his mare and his gig. People even said about this--\n\n \"Ah! Brantley Canivet's a character!\"\n\n And he was the more esteemed for this imperturbable coolness. The universe to the last man might have died, and he would not have missed the smallest of his habits.\n\n Scottie presented himself.\n\n \"I count on you,\" said the doctor. \"Are we ready? Come along!\"\n\n But the druggist, turning red, confessed that he was too sensitive to assist at such an operation.\n\n \"When one is a simple spectator,\" he said, \"the imagination, you know, is impressed. And then I have such a nervous system!\"\n\n \"Pshaw!\" interrupted Canivet; \"on the contrary, you seem to me inclined to apoplexy. Besides, that doesn't astonish me, for you chemist fellows are always poking about your kitchens, which must end by spoiling your constitutions. Now just look at me. I get up every day at four o'clock; I shave with cold water (and am never cold). I don't wear flannels, and I never catch cold; my carcass is good enough! I live now in one way, now in another, like a philosopher, taking pot-luck; that is why I am not squeamish like you, and it is as indifferent to me to carve a Christian as the first fowl that turns up. Then, perhaps, you will say, habit! habit!\"\n\n Then, without any consideration for Carlisle, who was sweating with agony between his sheets, these gentlemen entered into a conversation, in which the druggist compared the coolness of a surgeon to that of a general; and this comparison was pleasing to Canivet, who launched out on the exigencies of his art. He looked upon, it as a sacred office, although the ordinary practitioners dishonoured it. At last, coming back to the patient, he examined the bandages brought by Scottie, the same that had appeared for the club-foot, and asked for someone to hold the limb for him. Lestiboudois was sent for, and Brantley Canivet having turned up his sleeves, passed into the billiard-room, while the druggist stayed with Artemise and the landlady, both whiter than their aprons, and with ears strained towards the door.\n\n Horatio during this time did not dare to stir from his house.\n\n He kept downstairs in the sitting-room by the side of the fireless chimney, his chin on his breast, his hands clasped, his eyes staring. \"What a mishap!\" he thought, \"what a mishap!\" Perhaps, after all, he had made some slip. He thought it over, but could hit upon nothing. But the most famous surgeons also made mistakes; and that is what no one would ever believe! People, on the contrary, would laugh, jeer! It would spread as far as Forges, as Neufchatel, as Rouen, everywhere! Who could say if his colleagues would not write against him. Polemics would ensue; he would have to answer in the papers. Carlisle might even prosecute him. He saw himself dishonoured, ruined, lost; and his imagination, assailed by a world of hypotheses, tossed amongst them like an empty cask borne by the sea and floating upon the waves.\n\n Richie, opposite, watched him; she did not share his humiliation; she felt another--that of having supposed such a man was worth anything. As if twenty times already she had not sufficiently perceived his mediocrity.\n\n Kelly was walking up and down the room; his boots creaked on the floor.\n\n \"Sit down,\" she said; \"you fidget me.\"\n\n He sat down again.\n\n How was it that she--she, who was so intelligent--could have allowed herself to be deceived again? and through what deplorable madness had she thus ruined her life by continual sacrifices? She recalled all her instincts of luxury, all the privations of her soul, the sordidness of marriage, of the household, her dream sinking into the mire like wounded swallows; all that she had longed for, all that she had denied herself, all that she might have had! And for what? for what?\n\n In the midst of the silence that hung over the village a heart-rending cry rose on the air. Horatio turned white to fainting. She knit her brows with a nervous gesture, then went on. And it was for him, for this creature, for this man, who understood nothing, who felt nothing! For he was there quite quiet, not even suspecting that the ridicule of his name would henceforth sully hers as well as his. She had made efforts to love him, and she had repented with tears for having yielded to another!\n\n \"But it was perhaps a valgus!\" suddenly exclaimed Horatio, who was meditating.\n\n At the unexpected shock of this phrase falling on her thought like a leaden bullet on a silver plate, Richie, shuddering, raised her head in order to find out what he meant to say; and they looked at the other in silence, almost amazed to see each other, so far sundered were they by their inner thoughts. Kelly gazed at her with the dull look of a drunken man, while he listened motionless to the last cries of the sufferer, that followed each other in long-drawn modulations, broken by sharp spasms like the far-off howling of some beast being slaughtered. Richie bit her wan lips, and rolling between her fingers a piece of coral that she had broken, fixed on Kelly the burning glance of her eyes like two arrows of fire about to dart forth. Everything in him irritated her now; his face, his dress, what he did not say, his whole person, his existence, in fine. She repented of her past virtue as of a crime, and what still remained of it rumbled away beneath the furious blows of her pride. She revelled in all the evil ironies of triumphant adultery. The memory of her lover came back to her with dazzling attractions; she threw her whole soul into it, borne away towards this image with a fresh enthusiasm; and Kelly seemed to her as much removed from her life, as absent forever, as impossible and annihilated, as if he had been about to die and were passing under her eyes.\n\n There was a sound of steps on the pavement. Kelly looked up, and through the lowered blinds he saw at the corner of the market in the broad sunshine Dr. Canivet, who was wiping his brow with his handkerchief. Scottie, behind him, was carrying a large red box in his hand, and both were going towards the chemist's.\n\n Then with a feeling of sudden tenderness and discouragement Kelly turned to his wife saying to her--\n\n \"Oh, kiss me, my own!\"\n\n \"Leave me!\" she said, red with anger.\n\n \"What is the matter?\" he asked, stupefied. \"Be calm; compose yourself. You know well enough that I love you. Come!\"\n\n \"Enough!\" she cried with a terrible look.\n\n And escaping from the room, Richie closed the door so violently that the barometer fell from the wall and smashed on the floor.\n\n Kelly sank back into his arm-chair overwhelmed, trying to discover what could be wrong with her, fancying some nervous illness, weeping, and vaguely feeling something fatal and incomprehensible whirling round him.\n\n When Lawrence came to the garden that evening, he found his mistress waiting for him at the foot of the steps on the lowest stair. They threw their arms round one another, and all their rancour melted like snow beneath the warmth of that kiss.\n\n\n\n\n They began to love one another again. Often, even in the middle of the day, Richie suddenly wrote to him, then from the window made a sign to Hailee, who, taking his apron off, quickly ran to La Huchette. Lawrence would come; she had sent for him to tell him that she was bored, that her husband was odious, her life frightful.\n\n \"But what can I do?\" he cried one day impatiently.\n\n \"Ah! if you would--\"\n\n She was sitting on the floor between his knees, her hair loose, her look lost.\n\n \"Why, what?\" said Lawrence.\n\n She sighed.\n\n \"We would go and live elsewhere--somewhere!\"\n\n \"You are really mad!\" he said laughing. \"How could that be possible?\"\n\n She returned to the subject; he pretended not to understand, and turned the conversation.\n\n What he did not understand was all this worry about so simple an affair as love. She had a motive, a reason, and, as it were, a pendant to her affection.\n\n Her tenderness, in fact, grew each day with her repulsion to her husband. The more she gave up herself to the one, the more she loathed the other. Never had Kelly seemed to her so disagreeable, to have such stodgy fingers, such vulgar ways, to be so dull as when they found themselves together after her meeting with Lawrence. Then, while playing the spouse and virtue, she was burning at the thought of that head whose black hair fell in a curl over the sunburnt brow, of that form at once so strong and elegant, of that man, in a word, who had such experience in his reasoning, such passion in his desires. It was for him that she filed her nails with the care of a chaser, and that there was never enough cold-cream for her skin, nor of patchouli for her handkerchiefs. She loaded herself with bracelets, rings, and necklaces. When he was coming she filled the two large blue glass vases with roses, and prepared her room and her person like a courtesan expecting a prince. The servant had to be constantly washing linen, and all day Felicite did not stir from the kitchen, where little Hailee, who often kept her company, watched her at work.\n\n With his elbows on the long board on which she was ironing, he greedily watched all these women's clothes spread about him, the dimity petticoats, the fichus, the collars, and the drawers with running strings, wide at the hips and growing narrower below.\n\n \"What is that for?\" asked the young fellow, passing his hand over the crinoline or the hooks and eyes.\n\n \"Why, haven't you ever seen anything?\" Felicite answered laughing. \"As if your mistress, Madame Scottie, didn't wear the same.\"\n\n \"Oh, I daresay! Madame Scottie!\" And he added with a meditative air, \"As if she were a lady like madame!\"\n\n But Felicite grew impatient of seeing him hanging round her. She was six years older than he, and Theodore, Brantley Sylvester's servant, was beginning to pay court to her.\n\n \"Let me alone,\" she said, moving her pot of starch. \"You'd better be off and pound almonds; you are always dangling about women. Before you meddle with such things, bad boy, wait till you've got a beard to your chin.\"\n\n \"Oh, don't be cross! I'll go and clean her boots.\"\n\n And he at once took down from the shelf Richie's boots, all coated with mud, the mud of the rendezvous, that crumbled into powder beneath his fingers, and that he watched as it gently rose in a ray of sunlight.\n\n \"How afraid you are of spoiling them!\" said the servant, who wasn't so particular when she cleaned them herself, because as soon as the stuff of the boots was no longer fresh madame handed them over to her.\n\n Richie had a number in her cupboard that she squandered one after the other, without Kelly allowing himself the slightest observation. So also he disbursed three hundred francs for a wooden leg that she thought proper to make a present of to Carlisle. Its top was covered with cork, and it had spring joints, a complicated mechanism, covered over by black trousers ending in a patent-leather boot. But Carlisle, not daring to use such a handsome leg every day, begged Madame Horatio to get him another more convenient one. The doctor, of course, had again to defray the expense of this purchase.\n\n So little by little the stable-man took up his work again. One saw him running about the village as before, and when Kelly heard from afar the sharp noise of the wooden leg, he at once went in another direction.\n\n It was Brantley Carolina, the shopkeeper, who had undertaken the order; this provided him with an excuse for visiting Richie. He chatted with her about the new goods from Paris, about a thousand feminine trifles, made himself very obliging, and never asked for his money. Richie yielded to this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices. Thus she wanted to have a very handsome ridding-whip that was at an umbrella-maker's at Rouen to give to Lawrence. The week after Brantley Carolina placed it on her table.\n\n But the next day he called on her with a bill for two hundred and seventy francs, not counting the centimes. Richie was much embarrassed; all the drawers of the writing-table were empty; they owed over a fortnight's wages to Lestiboudois, two quarters to the servant, for any quantity of other things, and Horatio was impatiently expecting Brantley Derozeray's account, which he was in the habit of paying every year about Midsummer.\n\n She succeeded at first in putting off Carolina. At last he lost patience; he was being sued; his capital was out, and unless he got some in he should be forced to take back all the goods she had received.\n\n \"Oh, very well, take them!\" said Richie.\n\n \"I was only joking,\" he replied; \"the only thing I regret is the whip. My word! I'll ask monsieur to return it to me.\"\n\n \"No, no!\" she said.\n\n \"Ah! I've got you!\" thought Carolina.\n\n And, certain of his discovery, he went out repeating to himself in an undertone, and with his usual low whistle--\n\n \"Good! we shall see! we shall see!\"\n\n She was thinking how to get out of this when the servant coming in put on the mantelpiece a small roll of blue paper \"from Brantley Derozeray's.\" Richie pounced upon and opened it. It contained fifteen napoleons; it was the account. She heard Kelly on the stairs; threw the gold to the back of her drawer, and took out the key.\n\n Three days after Carolina reappeared.\n\n \"I have an arrangement to suggest to you,\" he said. \"If, instead of the sum agreed on, you would take--\"\n\n \"Here it is,\" she said placing fourteen napoleons in his hand.\n\n The tradesman was dumfounded. Then, to conceal his disappointment, he was profuse in apologies and proffers of service, all of which Richie declined; then she remained a few moments fingering in the pocket of her apron the two five-franc pieces that he had given her in change. She promised herself she would economise in order to pay back later on. \"Pshaw!\" she thought, \"he won't think about it again.\"\n\n Besides the riding-whip with its silver-gilt handle, Lawrence had received a seal with the motto Amor nel cor* furthermore, a scarf for a muffler, and, finally, a cigar-case exactly like the Viscount's, that Kelly had formerly picked up in the road, and that Richie had kept. These presents, however, humiliated him; he refused several; she insisted, and he ended by obeying, thinking her tyrannical and overexacting.\n\n *A loving heart.\n\n Then she had strange ideas.\n\n \"When midnight strikes,\" she said, \"you must think of me.\"\n\n And if he confessed that he had not thought of her, there were floods of reproaches that always ended with the eternal question--\n\n \"Do you love me?\"\n\n \"Why, of course I love you,\" he answered.\n\n \"A great deal?\"\n\n \"Certainly!\"\n\n \"You haven't loved any others?\"\n\n \"Did you think you'd got a virgin?\" he exclaimed laughing.\n\n Richie cried, and he tried to console her, adorning his protestations with puns.\n\n \"Oh,\" she went on, \"I love you! I love you so that I could not live without you, do you see? There are times when I long to see you again, when I am torn by all the anger of love. I ask myself, Where is he? Perhaps he is talking to other women. They smile upon him; he approaches. Oh no; no one else pleases you. There are some more beautiful, but I love you best. I know how to love best. I am your servant, your concubine! You are my king, my idol! You are good, you are beautiful, you are clever, you are strong!\"\n\n He had so often heard these things said that they did not strike him as original. Richie was like all his mistresses; and the charm of novelty, gradually falling away like a garment, laid bare the eternal monotony of passion, that has always the same forms and the same language. He did not distinguish, this man of so much experience, the difference of sentiment beneath the sameness of expression. Because lips libertine and venal had murmured such words to him, he believed but little in the candour of hers; exaggerated speeches hiding mediocre affections must be discounted; as if the fullness of the soul did not sometimes overflow in the emptiest metaphors, since no one can ever give the exact measure of his needs, nor of his conceptions, nor of his sorrows; and since human speech is like a cracked tin kettle, on which we hammer out tunes to make bears dance when we long to move the stars.\n\n But with that superior critical judgment that belongs to him who, in no matter what circumstance, holds back, Lawrence saw other delights to be got out of this love. He thought all modesty in the way. He treated her quite sans facon.* He made of her something supple and corrupt. Hers was an idiotic sort of attachment, full of admiration for him, of voluptuousness for her, a beatitude that benumbed her; her soul sank into this drunkenness, shrivelled up, drowned in it, like Clarence in his butt of Malmsey.\n\n *Off-handedly.\n\n\n By the mere effect of her love Madame Horatio's manners changed. Her looks grew bolder, her speech more free; she even committed the impropriety of walking out with Brantley Lawrence, a cigarette in her mouth, \"as if to defy the people.\" At last, those who still doubted doubted no longer when one day they saw her getting out of the \"Hirondelle,\" her waist squeezed into a waistcoat like a man; and Madame Horatio senior, who, after a fearful scene with her husband, had taken refuge at her son's, was not the least scandalised of the women-folk. Many other things displeased her. First, Kelly had not attended to her advice about the forbidding of novels; then the \"ways of the house\" annoyed her; she allowed herself to make some remarks, and there were quarrels, especially one on account of Felicite.\n\n Madame Horatio senior, the evening before, passing along the passage, had surprised her in company of a man--a man with a brown collar, about forty years old, who, at the sound of her step, had quickly escaped through the kitchen. Then Richie began to laugh, but the good lady grew angry, declaring that unless morals were to be laughed at one ought to look after those of one's servants.\n\n \"Where were you brought up?\" asked the daughter-in-law, with so impertinent a look that Madame Horatio asked her if she were not perhaps defending her own case.\n\n \"Leave the room!\" said the young woman, springing up with a bound.\n\n \"Richie! Mamma!\" cried Kelly, trying to reconcile them.\n\n But both had fled in their exasperation. Richie was stamping her feet as she repeated--\n\n \"Oh! what manners! What a peasant!\"\n\n He ran to his mother; she was beside herself. She stammered\n\n \"She is an insolent, giddy-headed thing, or perhaps worse!\"\n\n And she was for leaving at once if the other did not apologise. So Kelly went back again to his wife and implored her to give way; he knelt to her; she ended by saying--\n\n \"Very well! I'll go to her.\"\n\n And in fact she held out her hand to her mother-in-law with the dignity of a marchioness as she said--\n\n \"Excuse me, madame.\"\n\n Then, having gone up again to her room, she threw herself flat on her bed and cried there like a child, her face buried in the pillow.\n\n She and Lawrence had agreed that in the event of anything extraordinary occurring, she should fasten a small piece of white paper to the blind, so that if by chance he happened to be in Yonville, he could hurry to the lane behind the house. Richie made the signal; she had been waiting three-quarters of an hour when she suddenly caught sight of Lawrence at the corner of the market. She felt tempted to open the window and call him, but he had already disappeared. She fell back in despair.\n\n Soon, however, it seemed to her that someone was walking on the pavement. It was he, no doubt. She went downstairs, crossed the yard. He was there outside. She threw herself into his arms.\n\n \"Do take care!\" he said.\n\n \"Ah! if you knew!\" she replied.\n\n And she began telling him everything, hurriedly, disjointedly, exaggerating the facts, inventing many, and so prodigal of parentheses that he understood nothing of it.\n\n \"Come, my poor angel, courage! Be comforted! be patient!\"\n\n \"But I have been patient; I have suffered for four years. A love like ours ought to show itself in the face of heaven. They torture me! I can bear it no longer! Save me!\"\n\n She clung to Lawrence. Her eyes, full of tears, flashed like flames beneath a wave; her breast heaved; he had never loved her so much, so that he lost his head and said \"What is, it? What do you wish?\"\n\n \"Take me away,\" she cried, \"carry me off! Oh, I pray you!\"\n\n And she threw herself upon his mouth, as if to seize there the unexpected consent if breathed forth in a kiss.\n\n \"But--\" Lawrence resumed.\n\n \"What?\"\n\n \"Your little girl!\"\n\n She reflected a few moments, then replied--\n\n \"We will take her! It can't be helped!\"\n\n \"What a woman!\" he said to himself, watching her as she went. For she had run into the garden. Someone was calling her.\n\n On the following days Madame Horatio senior was much surprised at the change in her daughter-in-law. Richie, in fact, was showing herself more docile, and even carried her deference so far as to ask for a recipe for pickling gherkins.\n\n Was it the better to deceive them both? Or did she wish by a sort of voluptuous stoicism to feel the more profoundly the bitterness of the things she was about to leave?\n\n But she paid no heed to them; on the contrary, she lived as lost in the anticipated delight of her coming happiness.\n\n It was an eternal subject for conversation with Lawrence. She leant on his shoulder murmuring--\n\n \"Ah! when we are in the mail-coach! Do you think about it? Can it be? It seems to me that the moment I feel the carriage start, it will be as if we were rising in a balloon, as if we were setting out for the clouds. Do you know that I count the hours? And you?\"\n\n Never had Madame Horatio been so beautiful as at this period; she had that indefinable beauty that results from joy, from enthusiasm, from success, and that is only the harmony of temperament with circumstances. Her desires, her sorrows, the experience of pleasure, and her ever-young illusions, that had, as soil and rain and winds and the sun make flowers grow, gradually developed her, and she at length blossomed forth in all the plenitude of her nature. Her eyelids seemed chiselled expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down. One would have thought that an artist apt in conception had arranged the curls of hair upon her neck; they fell in a thick mass, negligently, and with the changing chances of their adultery, that unbound them every day. Her voice now took more mellow infections, her figure also; something subtle and penetrating escaped even from the folds of her gown and from the line of her foot. Kelly, as when they were first married, thought her delicious and quite irresistible.\n\n When he came home in the middle of the night, he did not dare to wake her. The porcelain night-light threw a round trembling gleam upon the ceiling, and the drawn curtains of the little cot formed as it were a white hut standing out in the shade, and by the bedside Kelly looked at them. He seemed to hear the light breathing of his child. She would grow big now; every season would bring rapid progress. He already saw her coming from school as the day drew in, laughing, with ink-stains on her jacket, and carrying her basket on her arm. Then she would have to be sent to the boarding-school; that would cost much; how was it to be done? Then he reflected. He thought of hiring a small farm in the neighbourhood, that he would superintend every morning on his way to his patients. He would save up what he brought in; he would put it in the savings-bank. Then he would buy shares somewhere, no matter where; besides, his practice would increase; he counted upon that, for he wanted Fatima to be well-educated, to be accomplished, to learn to play the piano. Ah! how pretty she would be later on when she was fifteen, when, resembling her mother, she would, like her, wear large straw hats in the summer-time; from a distance they would be taken for two sisters. He pictured her to himself working in the evening by their side beneath the light of the lamp; she would embroider him slippers; she would look after the house; she would fill all the home with her charm and her gaiety. At last, they would think of her marriage; they would find her some good young fellow with a steady business; he would make her happy; this would last for ever.\n\n Richie was not asleep; she pretended to be; and while he dozed off by her side she awakened to other dreams.\n\n To the gallop of four horses she was carried away for a week towards a new land, whence they would return no more. They went on and on, their arms entwined, without a word. Often from the top of a mountain there suddenly glimpsed some splendid city with domes, and bridges, and ships, forests of citron trees, and cathedrals of white marble, on whose pointed steeples were storks' nests. They went at a walking-pace because of the great flag-stones, and on the ground there were bouquets of flowers, offered you by women dressed in red bodices. They heard the chiming of bells, the neighing of mules, together with the murmur of guitars and the noise of fountains, whose rising spray refreshed heaps of fruit arranged like a pyramid at the foot of pale statues that smiled beneath playing waters. And then, one night they came to a fishing village, where brown nets were drying in the wind along the cliffs and in front of the huts. It was there that they would stay; they would live in a low, flat-roofed house, shaded by a palm-tree, in the heart of a gulf, by the sea. They would row in gondolas, swing in hammocks, and their existence would be easy and large as their silk gowns, warm and star-spangled as the nights they would contemplate. However, in the immensity of this future that she conjured up, nothing special stood forth; the days, all magnificent, resembled each other like waves; and it swayed in the horizon, infinite, harmonised, azure, and bathed in sunshine. But the child began to cough in her cot or Horatio snored more loudly, and Richie did not fall asleep till morning, when the dawn whitened the windows, and when little Hailee was already in the square taking down the shutters of the chemist's shop.\n\n She had sent for Brantley Carolina, and had said to him--\n\n \"I want a cloak--a large lined cloak with a deep collar.\"\n\n \"You are going on a journey?\" he asked.\n\n \"No; but--never mind. I may count on you, may I not, and quickly?\"\n\n He bowed.\n\n \"Besides, I shall want,\" she went on, \"a trunk--not too heavy--handy.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, I understand. About three feet by a foot and a half, as they are being made just now.\"\n\n \"And a travelling bag.\"\n\n \"Decidedly,\" thought Carolina, \"there's a row on here.\"\n\n \"And,\" said Madame Horatio, taking her watch from her belt, \"take this; you can pay yourself out of it.\"\n\n But the tradesman cried out that she was wrong; they knew one another; did he doubt her? What childishness!\n\n She insisted, however, on his taking at least the chain, and Carolina had already put it in his pocket and was going, when she called him back.\n\n \"You will leave everything at your place. As to the cloak\"--she seemed to be reflecting--\"do not bring it either; you can give me the maker's address, and tell him to have it ready for me.\"\n\n It was the next month that they were to run away. She was to leave Yonville as if she was going on some business to Rouen. Lawrence would have booked the seats, procured the passports, and even have written to Paris in order to have the whole mail-coach reserved for them as far as Marseilles, where they would buy a carriage, and go on thence without stopping to Genoa. She would take care to send her luggage to Carolina whence it would be taken direct to the \"Hirondelle,\" so that no one would have any suspicion. And in all this there never was any allusion to the child. Lawrence avoided speaking of her; perhaps he no longer thought about it.\n\n He wished to have two more weeks before him to arrange some affairs; then at the end of a week he wanted two more; then he said he was ill; next he went on a journey. The month of August passed, and, after all these delays, they decided that it was to be irrevocably fixed for the 4th September--a Monday.\n\n At length the Saturday before arrived.\n\n Lawrence came in the evening earlier than usual.\n\n \"Everything is ready?\" she asked him.\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n Then they walked round a garden-bed, and went to sit down near the terrace on the kerb-stone of the wall.\n\n \"You are sad,\" said Richie.\n\n \"No; why?\"\n\n And yet he looked at her strangely in a tender fashion.\n\n \"It is because you are going away?\" she went on; \"because you are leaving what is dear to you--your life? Ah! I understand. I have nothing in the world! you are all to me; so shall I be to you. I will be your people, your country; I will tend, I will love you!\"\n\n \"How sweet you are!\" he said, seizing her in his arms.\n\n \"Really!\" she said with a voluptuous laugh. \"Do you love me? Swear it then!\"\n\n \"Do I love you--love you? I adore you, my love.\"\n\n The moon, full and purple-coloured, was rising right out of the earth at the end of the meadow. She rose quickly between the branches of the poplars, that hid her here and there like a black curtain pierced with holes. Then she appeared dazzling with whiteness in the empty heavens that she lit up, and now sailing more slowly along, let fall upon the river a great stain that broke up into an infinity of stars; and the silver sheen seemed to writhe through the very depths like a heedless serpent covered with luminous scales; it also resembled some monster candelabra all along which sparkled drops of diamonds running together. The soft night was about them; masses of shadow filled the branches. Richie, her eyes half closed, breathed in with deep sighs the fresh wind that was blowing. They did not speak, lost as they were in the rush of their reverie. The tenderness of the old days came back to their hearts, full and silent as the flowing river, with the softness of the perfume of the syringas, and threw across their memories shadows more immense and more sombre than those of the still willows that lengthened out over the grass. Often some night-animal, hedgehog or weasel, setting out on the hunt, disturbed the lovers, or sometimes they heard a ripe peach falling all alone from the espalier.\n\n \"Ah! what a lovely night!\" said Lawrence.\n\n \"We shall have others,\" replied Richie; and, as if speaking to herself: \"Yet, it will be good to travel. And yet, why should my heart be so heavy? Is it dread of the unknown? The effect of habits left? Or rather--? No; it is the excess of happiness. How weak I am, am I not? Forgive me!\"\n\n \"There is still time!\" he cried. \"Reflect! perhaps you may repent!\"\n\n \"Never!\" she cried impetuously. And coming closer to him: \"What ill could come to me? There is no desert, no precipice, no ocean I would not traverse with you. The longer we live together the more it will be like an embrace, every day closer, more heart to heart. There will be nothing to trouble us, no cares, no obstacle. We shall be alone, all to ourselves eternally. Oh, speak! Answer me!\"\n\n At regular intervals he answered, \"Yes--Yes--\" She had passed her hands through his hair, and she repeated in a childlike voice, despite the big tears which were falling, \"Lawrence! Lawrence! Ah! Lawrence! dear little Lawrence!\"\n\n Midnight struck.\n\n \"Midnight!\" said she. \"Come, it is to-morrow. One day more!\"\n\n He rose to go; and as if the movement he made had been the signal for their flight, Richie said, suddenly assuming a gay air--\n\n \"You have the passports?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"You are forgetting nothing?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Are you sure?\"\n\n \"Certainly.\"\n\n \"It is at the Hotel de Provence, is it not, that you will wait for me at midday?\"\n\n He nodded.\n\n \"Till to-morrow then!\" said Richie in a last caress; and she watched him go.\n\n He did not turn round. She ran after him, and, leaning over the water's edge between the bulrushes--\n\n \"To-morrow!\" she cried.\n\n He was already on the other side of the river and walking fast across the meadow.\n\n After a few moments Lawrence stopped; and when he saw her with her white gown gradually fade away in the shade like a ghost, he was seized with such a beating of the heart that he leant against a tree lest he should fall.\n\n \"What an imbecile I am!\" he said with a fearful oath. \"No matter! She was a pretty mistress!\"\n\n And immediately Richie's beauty, with all the pleasures of their love, came back to him. For a moment he softened; then he rebelled against her.\n\n \"For, after all,\" he exclaimed, gesticulating, \"I can't exile myself--have a child on my hands.\"\n\n He was saying these things to give himself firmness.\n\n \"And besides, the worry, the expense! Ah! no, no, no, no! a thousand times no! That would be too stupid.\"\n\n\n\n\n No sooner was Lawrence at home than he sat down quickly at his bureau under the stag's head that hung as a trophy on the wall. But when he had the pen between his fingers, he could think of nothing, so that, resting on his elbows, he began to reflect. Richie seemed to him to have receded into a far-off past, as if the resolution he had taken had suddenly placed a distance between them.\n\n To get back something of her, he fetched from the cupboard at the bedside an old Rheims biscuit-box, in which he usually kept his letters from women, and from it came an odour of dry dust and withered roses. First he saw a handkerchief with pale little spots. It was a handkerchief of hers. Once when they were walking her nose had bled; he had forgotten it. Near it, chipped at all the corners, was a miniature given him by Richie: her toilette seemed to him pretentious, and her languishing look in the worst possible taste. Then, from looking at this image and recalling the memory of its original, Richie's features little by little grew confused in his remembrance, as if the living and the painted face, rubbing one against the other, had effaced each other. Finally, he read some of her letters; they were full of explanations relating to their journey, short, technical, and urgent, like business notes. He wanted to see the long ones again, those of old times. In order to find them at the bottom of the box, Lawrence disturbed all the others, and mechanically began rummaging amidst this mass of papers and things, finding pell-mell bouquets, garters, a black mask, pins, and hair--hair! dark and fair, some even, catching in the hinges of the box, broke when it was opened.\n\n Thus dallying with his souvenirs, he examined the writing and the style of the letters, as varied as their orthography. They were tender or jovial, facetious, melancholy; there were some that asked for love, others that asked for money. A word recalled faces to him, certain gestures, the sound of a voice; sometimes, however, he remembered nothing at all.\n\n In fact, these women, rushing at once into his thoughts, cramped each other and lessened, as reduced to a uniform level of love that equalised them all. So taking handfuls of the mixed-up letters, he amused himself for some moments with letting them fall in cascades from his right into his left hand. At last, bored and weary, Lawrence took back the box to the cupboard, saying to himself, \"What a lot of rubbish!\" Which summed up his opinion; for pleasures, like schoolboys in a school courtyard, had so trampled upon his heart that no green thing grew there, and that which passed through it, more heedless than children, did not even, like them, leave a name carved upon the wall.\n\n \"Come,\" said he, \"let's begin.\"\n\n He wrote--\n\n \"Courage, Richie! courage! I would not bring misery into your life.\"\n\n \"After all, that's true,\" thought Lawrence. \"I am acting in her interest; I am honest.\"\n\n \"Have you carefully weighed your resolution? Do you know to what an abyss I was dragging you, poor angel? No, you do not, do you? You were coming confident and fearless, believing in happiness in the future. Ah! unhappy that we are--insensate!\"\n\n Lawrence stopped here to think of some good excuse.\n\n \"If I told her all my fortune is lost? No! Besides, that would stop nothing. It would all have to be begun over again later on. As if one could make women like that listen to reason!\" He reflected, then went on--\n\n \"I shall not forget you, oh believe it; and I shall ever have a profound devotion for you; but some day, sooner or later, this ardour (such is the fate of human things) would have grown less, no doubt. Lassitude would have come to us, and who knows if I should not even have had the atrocious pain of witnessing your remorse, of sharing it myself, since I should have been its cause? The mere idea of the grief that would come to you tortures me, Richie. Forget me! Why did I ever know you? Why were you so beautiful? Is it my fault? O my God! No, no! Accuse only fate.\"\n\n \"That's a word that always tells,\" he said to himself.\n\n \"Ah, if you had been one of those frivolous women that one sees, certainly I might, through egotism, have tried an experiment, in that case without danger for you. But that delicious exaltation, at once your charm and your torment, has prevented you from understanding, adorable woman that you are, the falseness of our future position. Nor had I reflected upon this at first, and I rested in the shade of that ideal happiness as beneath that of the manchineel tree, without foreseeing the consequences.\"\n\n \"Perhaps she'll think I'm giving it up from avarice. Ah, well! so much the worse; it must be stopped!\"\n\n \"The world is cruel, Richie. Wherever we might have gone, it would have persecuted us. You would have had to put up with indiscreet questions, calumny, contempt, insult perhaps. Insult to you! Oh! And I, who would place you on a throne! I who bear with me your memory as a talisman! For I am going to punish myself by exile for all the ill I have done you. I am going away. Whither I know not. I am mad. Adieu! Be good always. Preserve the memory of the unfortunate who has lost you. Teach my name to your child; let her repeat it in her prayers.\"\n\n The wicks of the candles flickered. Lawrence got up to, shut the window, and when he had sat down again--\n\n \"I think it's all right. Ah! and this for fear she should come and hunt me up.\"\n\n \"I shall be far away when you read these sad lines, for I have wished to flee as quickly as possible to shun the temptation of seeing you again. No weakness! I shall return, and perhaps later on we shall talk together very coldly of our old love. Adieu!\"\n\n And there was a last \"adieu\" divided into two words! \"A Dieu!\" which he thought in very excellent taste.\n\n \"Now how am I to sign?\" he said to himself. \"'Yours devotedly?' No! 'Your friend?' Yes, that's it.\"\n\n \"Your friend.\"\n\n He re-read his letter. He considered it very good.\n\n \"Poor little woman!\" he thought with emotion. \"She'll think me harder than a rock. There ought to have been some tears on this; but I can't cry; it isn't my fault.\" Then, having emptied some water into a glass, Lawrence dipped his finger into it, and let a big drop fall on the paper, that made a pale stain on the ink. Then looking for a seal, he came upon the one \"Amor nel cor.\"\n\n \"That doesn't at all fit in with the circumstances. Pshaw! never mind!\"\n\n After which he smoked three pipes and went to bed.\n\n The next day when he was up (at about two o'clock--he had slept late), Lawrence had a basket of apricots picked. He put his letter at the bottom under some vine leaves, and at once ordered Girard, his ploughman, to take it with care to Madame Horatio. He made use of this means for corresponding with her, sending according to the season fruits or game.\n\n \"If she asks after me,\" he said, \"you will tell her that I have gone on a journey. You must give the basket to her herself, into her own hands. Get along and take care!\"\n\n Girard put on his new blouse, knotted his handkerchief round the apricots, and walking with great heavy steps in his thick iron-bound galoshes, made his way to Yonville.\n\n Madame Horatio, when he got to her house, was arranging a bundle of linen on the kitchen-table with Felicite.\n\n \"Here,\" said the ploughboy, \"is something for you--from the master.\"\n\n She was seized with apprehension, and as she sought in her pocket for some coppers, she looked at the peasant with haggard eyes, while he himself looked at her with amazement, not understanding how such a present could so move anyone. At last he went out. Felicite remained. She could bear it no longer; she ran into the sitting room as if to take the apricots there, overturned the basket, tore away the leaves, found the letter, opened it, and, as if some fearful fire were behind her, Richie flew to her room terrified.\n\n Kelly was there; she saw him; he spoke to her; she heard nothing, and she went on quickly up the stairs, breathless, distraught, dumb, and ever holding this horrible piece of paper, that crackled between her fingers like a plate of sheet-iron. On the second floor she stopped before the attic door, which was closed.\n\n Then she tried to calm herself; she recalled the letter; she must finish it; she did not dare to. And where? How? She would be seen! \"Ah, no! here,\" she thought, \"I shall be all right.\"\n\n Richie pushed open the door and went in.\n\n The slates threw straight down a heavy heat that gripped her temples, stifled her; she dragged herself to the closed garret-window. She drew back the bolt, and the dazzling light burst in with a leap.\n\n Opposite, beyond the roofs, stretched the open country till it was lost to sight. Down below, underneath her, the village square was empty; the stones of the pavement glittered, the weathercocks on the houses were motionless. At the corner of the street, from a lower storey, rose a kind of humming with strident modulations. It was Lake turning.\n\n She leant against the embrasure of the window, and reread the letter with angry sneers. But the more she fixed her attention upon it, the more confused were her ideas. She saw him again, heard him, encircled him with her arms, and throbs of her heart, that beat against her breast like blows of a sledge-hammer, grew faster and faster, with uneven intervals. She looked about her with the wish that the earth might crumble into pieces. Why not end it all? What restrained her? She was free. She advanced, looking at the paving-stones, saying to herself, \"Come! come!\"\n\n The luminous ray that came straight up from below drew the weight of her body towards the abyss. It seemed to her that the ground of the oscillating square went up the walls and that the floor dipped on end like a tossing boat. She was right at the edge, almost hanging, surrounded by vast space. The blue of the heavens suffused her, the air was whirling in her hollow head; she had but to yield, to let herself be taken; and the humming of the lathe never ceased, like an angry voice calling her.\n\n \"Richie! Richie!\" cried Kelly.\n\n She stopped.\n\n \"Wherever are you? Come!\"\n\n The thought that she had just escaped from death almost made her faint with terror. She closed her eyes; then she shivered at the touch of a hand on her sleeve; it was Felicite.\n\n \"Master is waiting for you, madame; the soup is on the table.\"\n\n And she had to go down to sit at table.\n\n She tried to eat. The food choked her. Then she unfolded her napkin as if to examine the darns, and she really thought of applying herself to this work, counting the threads in the linen. Suddenly the remembrance of the letter returned to her. How had she lost it? Where could she find it? But she felt such weariness of spirit that she could not even invent a pretext for leaving the table. Then she became a coward; she was afraid of Kelly; he knew all, that was certain! Indeed he pronounced these words in a strange manner:\n\n \"We are not likely to see Brantley Lawrence soon again, it seems.\"\n\n \"Who told you?\" she said, shuddering.\n\n \"Who told me!\" he replied, rather astonished at her abrupt tone. \"Why, Girard, whom I met just now at the door of the Cafe Francais. He has gone on a journey, or is to go.\"\n\n She gave a sob.\n\n \"What surprises you in that? He absents himself like that from time to time for a change, and, ma foi, I think he's right, when one has a fortune and is a bachelor. Besides, he has jolly times, has our friend. He's a bit of a rake. Brantley Langlois told me--\"\n\n He stopped for propriety's sake because the servant came in. She put back into the basket the apricots scattered on the sideboard. Kelly, without noticing his wife's colour, had them brought to him, took one, and bit into it.\n\n \"Ah! perfect!\" said he; \"just taste!\"\n\n And he handed her the basket, which she put away from her gently.\n\n \"Do just smell! What an odour!\" he remarked, passing it under her nose several times.\n\n \"I am choking,\" she cried, leaping up. But by an effort of will the spasm passed; then--\n\n \"It is nothing,\" she said, \"it is nothing! It is nervousness. Sit down and go on eating.\" For she dreaded lest he should begin questioning her, attending to her, that she should not be left alone.\n\n Kelly, to obey her, sat down again, and he spat the stones of the apricots into his hands, afterwards putting them on his plate.\n\n Suddenly a blue tilbury passed across the square at a rapid trot. Richie uttered a cry and fell back rigid to the ground.\n\n In fact, Lawrence, after many reflections, had decided to set out for Rouen. Now, as from La Huchette to Buchy there is no other way than by Yonville, he had to go through the village, and Richie had recognised him by the rays of the lanterns, which like lightning flashed through the twilight.\n\n The chemist, at the tumult which broke out in the house ran thither. The table with all the plates was upset; sauce, meat, knives, the salt, and cruet-stand were strewn over the room; Kelly was calling for help; Fatima, scared, was crying; and Felicite, whose hands trembled, was unlacing her mistress, whose whole body shivered convulsively.\n\n \"I'll run to my laboratory for some aromatic vinegar,\" said the druggist.\n\n Then as she opened her eyes on smelling the bottle--\n\n \"I was sure of it,\" he remarked; \"that would wake any dead person for you!\"\n\n \"Speak to us,\" said Kelly; \"collect yourself; it is your Kelly, who loves you. Do you know me? See! here is your little girl! Oh, kiss her!\"\n\n The child stretched out her arms to her mother to cling to her neck. But turning away her head, Richie said in a broken voice \"No, no! no one!\"\n\n She fainted again. They carried her to her bed. She lay there stretched at full length, her lips apart, her eyelids closed, her hands open, motionless, and white as a waxen image. Two streams of tears flowed from her eyes and fell slowly upon the pillow.\n\n Kelly, standing up, was at the back of the alcove, and the chemist, near him, maintained that meditative silence that is becoming on the serious occasions of life.\n\n \"Do not be uneasy,\" he said, touching his elbow; \"I think the paroxysm is past.\"\n\n \"Yes, she is resting a little now,\" answered Kelly, watching her sleep. \"Poor girl! poor girl! She had gone off now!\"\n\n Then Scottie asked how the accident had come about. Kelly answered that she had been taken ill suddenly while she was eating some apricots.\n\n \"Extraordinary!\" continued the chemist. \"But it might be that the apricots had brought on the syncope. Some natures are so sensitive to certain smells; and it would even be a very fine question to study both in its pathological and physiological relation. The priests know the importance of it, they who have introduced aromatics into all their ceremonies. It is to stupefy the senses and to bring on ecstasies--a thing, moreover, very easy in persons of the weaker sex, who are more delicate than the other. Some are cited who faint at the smell of burnt hartshorn, of new bread--\"\n\n \"Take care; you'll wake her!\" said Horatio in a low voice.\n\n \"And not only,\" the druggist went on, \"are human beings subject to such anomalies, but animals also. Thus you are not ignorant of the singularly aphrodisiac effect produced by the Nepeta cataria, vulgarly called catmint, on the feline race; and, on the other hand, to quote an example whose authenticity I can answer for. Bridaux (one of my old comrades, at present established in the Rue Malpalu) possesses a dog that falls into convulsions as soon as you hold out a snuff-box to him. He often even makes the experiment before his friends at his summer-house at Guillaume Wood. Would anyone believe that a simple sternutation could produce such ravages on a quadrupedal organism? It is extremely curious, is it not?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Kelly, who was not listening to him.\n\n \"This shows us,\" went on the other, smiling with benign self-sufficiency, \"the innumerable irregularities of the nervous system. With regard to madame, she has always seemed to me, I confess, very susceptible. And so I should by no means recommend to you, my dear friend, any of those so-called remedies that, under the pretence of attacking the symptoms, attack the constitution. No; no useless physicking! Diet, that is all; sedatives, emollients, dulcification. Then, don't you think that perhaps her imagination should be worked upon?\"\n\n \"In what way? How?\" said Horatio.\n\n \"Ah! that is it. Such is indeed the question. 'That is the question,' as I lately read in a newspaper.\"\n\n But Richie, awaking, cried out--\n\n \"The letter! the letter!\"\n\n They thought she was delirious; and she was by midnight. Brain-fever had set in.\n\n For forty-three days Kelly did not leave her. He gave up all his patients; he no longer went to bed; he was constantly feeling her pulse, putting on sinapisms and cold-water compresses. He sent Hailee as far as Neufchatel for ice; the ice melted on the way; he sent him back again. He called Brantley Canivet into consultation; he sent for Dr. Jermaine, his old master, from Rouen; he was in despair. What alarmed him most was Richie's prostration, for she did not speak, did not listen, did not even seem to suffer, as if her body and soul were both resting together after all their troubles.\n\n About the middle of October she could sit up in bed supported by pillows. Kelly wept when he saw her eat her first bread-and-jelly. Her strength returned to her; she got up for a few hours of an afternoon, and one day, when she felt better, he tried to take her, leaning on his arm, for a walk round the garden. The sand of the paths was disappearing beneath the dead leaves; she walked slowly, dragging along her slippers, and leaning against Kelly's shoulder. She smiled all the time.\n\n They went thus to the bottom of the garden near the terrace. She drew herself up slowly, shading her eyes with her hand to look. She looked far off, as far as she could, but on the horizon were only great bonfires of grass smoking on the hills.\n\n \"You will tire yourself, my darling!\" said Horatio. And, pushing her gently to make her go into the arbour, \"Sit down on this seat; you'll be comfortable.\"\n\n \"Oh! no; not there!\" she said in a faltering voice.\n\n She was seized with giddiness, and from that evening her illness recommenced, with a more uncertain character, it is true, and more complex symptoms. Now she suffered in her heart, then in the chest, the head, the limbs; she had vomitings, in which Kelly thought he saw the first signs of cancer.\n\n And besides this, the poor fellow was worried about money matters.\n\n\n\n\n To begin with, he did not know how he could pay Brantley Scottie for all the physic supplied by him, and though, as a medical man, he was not obliged to pay for it, he nevertheless blushed a little at such an obligation. Then the expenses of the household, now that the servant was mistress, became terrible. Bills rained in upon the house; the tradesmen grumbled; Brantley Carolina especially harassed him. In fact, at the height of Richie's illness, the latter, taking advantage of the circumstances to make his bill larger, had hurriedly brought the cloak, the travelling-bag, two trunks instead of one, and a number of other things. It was very well for Kelly to say he did not want them. The tradesman answered arrogantly that these articles had been ordered, and that he would not take them back; besides, it would vex madame in her convalescence; the doctor had better think it over; in short, he was resolved to sue him rather than give up his rights and take back his goods. Kelly subsequently ordered them to be sent back to the shop. Felicite forgot; he had other things to attend to; then thought no more about them. Brantley Carolina returned to the charge, and, by turns threatening and whining, so managed that Horatio ended by signing a bill at six months. But hardly had he signed this bill than a bold idea occurred to him: it was to borrow a thousand francs from Carolina. So, with an embarrassed air, he asked if it were possible to get them, adding that it would be for a year, at any interest he wished. Carolina ran off to his shop, brought back the money, and dictated another bill, by which Horatio undertook to pay to his order on the 1st of September next the sum of one thousand and seventy francs, which, with the hundred and eighty already agreed to, made just twelve hundred and fifty, thus lending at six per cent in addition to one-fourth for commission: and the things bringing him in a good third at the least, this ought in twelve months to give him a profit of a hundred and thirty francs. He hoped that the business would not stop there; that the bills would not be paid; that they would be renewed; and that his poor little money, having thriven at the doctor's as at a hospital, would come back to him one day considerably more plump, and fat enough to burst his bag.\n\n Everything, moreover, succeeded with him. He was adjudicator for a supply of cider to the hospital at Neufchatel; Brantley Sylvester promised him some shares in the turf-pits of Gaumesnil, and he dreamt of establishing a new diligence service between Arcueil and Rouen, which no doubt would not be long in ruining the ramshackle van of the \"Lion d'Or,\" and that, travelling faster, at a cheaper rate, and carrying more luggage, would thus put into his hands the whole commerce of Yonville.\n\n Kelly several times asked himself by what means he should next year be able to pay back so much money. He reflected, imagined expedients, such as applying to his father or selling something. But his father would be deaf, and he--he had nothing to sell. Then he foresaw such worries that he quickly dismissed so disagreeable a subject of meditation from his mind. He reproached himself with forgetting Richie, as if, all his thoughts belonging to this woman, it was robbing her of something not to be constantly thinking of her.\n\n The winter was severe, Madame Horatio's convalescence slow. When it was fine they wheeled her arm-chair to the window that overlooked the square, for she now had an antipathy to the garden, and the blinds on that side were always down. She wished the horse to be sold; what she formerly liked now displeased her. All her ideas seemed to be limited to the care of herself. She stayed in bed taking little meals, rang for the servant to inquire about her gruel or to chat with her. The snow on the market-roof threw a white, still light into the room; then the rain began to fall; and Richie waited daily with a mind full of eagerness for the inevitable return of some trifling events which nevertheless had no relation to her. The most important was the arrival of the \"Hirondelle\" in the evening. Then the landlady shouted out, and other voices answered, while Carlisle's lantern, as he fetched the boxes from the boot, was like a star in the darkness. At mid-day Kelly came in; then he went out again; next she took some beef-tea, and towards five o'clock, as the day drew in, the children coming back from school, dragging their wooden shoes along the pavement, knocked the clapper of the shutters with their rulers one after the other.\n\n It was at this hour that Brantley Raina came to see her. He inquired after her health, gave her news, exhorted her to religion, in a coaxing little prattle that was not without its charm. The mere thought of his cassock comforted her.\n\n One day, when at the height of her illness, she had thought herself dying, and had asked for the communion; and, while they were making the preparations in her room for the sacrament, while they were turning the night table covered with syrups into an altar, and while Felicite was strewing dahlia flowers on the floor, Richie felt some power passing over her that freed her from her pains, from all perception, from all feeling. Her body, relieved, no longer thought; another life was beginning; it seemed to her that her being, mounting toward God, would be annihilated in that love like a burning incense that melts into vapour. The bed-clothes were sprinkled with holy water, the priest drew from the holy pyx the white wafer; and it was fainting with a celestial joy that she put out her lips to accept the body of the Saviour presented to her. The curtains of the alcove floated gently round her like clouds, and the rays of the two tapers burning on the night-table seemed to shine like dazzling halos. Then she let her head fall back, fancying she heard in space the music of seraphic harps, and perceived in an azure sky, on a golden throne in the midst of saints holding green palms, God the Father, resplendent with majesty, who with a sign sent to earth angels with wings of fire to carry her away in their arms.\n\n This splendid vision dwelt in her memory as the most beautiful thing that it was possible to dream, so that now she strove to recall her sensation. That still lasted, however, but in a less exclusive fashion and with a deeper sweetness. Her soul, tortured by pride, at length found rest in Christian humility, and, tasting the joy of weakness, she saw within herself the destruction of her will, that must have left a wide entrance for the inroads of heavenly grace. There existed, then, in the place of happiness, still greater joys--another love beyond all loves, without pause and without end, one that would grow eternally! She saw amid the illusions of her hope a state of purity floating above the earth mingling with heaven, to which she aspired. She wanted to become a saint. She bought chaplets and wore amulets; she wished to have in her room, by the side of her bed, a reliquary set in emeralds that she might kiss it every evening.\n\n The cure marvelled at this humour, although Richie's religion, he thought, might, from its fervour, end by touching on heresy, extravagance. But not being much versed in these matters, as soon as they went beyond a certain limit he wrote to Brantley Boulard, bookseller to Monsignor, to send him \"something good for a lady who was very clever.\" The bookseller, with as much indifference as if he had been sending off hardware to niggers, packed up, pellmell, everything that was then the fashion in the pious book trade. There were little manuals in questions and answers, pamphlets of aggressive tone after the manner of Brantley de Maistre, and certain novels in rose-coloured bindings and with a honied style, manufactured by troubadour seminarists or penitent blue-stockings. There were the \"Think of it; the Man of the World at Mary's Feet, by Brantley de ***, decorated with many Orders\"; \"The Errors of Voltaire, for the Use of the Young,\" etc.\n\n Madame Horatio's mind was not yet sufficiently clear to apply herself seriously to anything; moreover, she began this reading in too much hurry. She grew provoked at the doctrines of religion; the arrogance of the polemic writings displeased her by their inveteracy in attacking people she did not know; and the secular stories, relieved with religion, seemed to her written in such ignorance of the world, that they insensibly estranged her from the truths for whose proof she was looking. Nevertheless, she persevered; and when the volume slipped from her hands, she fancied herself seized with the finest Catholic melancholy that an ethereal soul could conceive.\n\n As for the memory of Lawrence, she had thrust it back to the bottom of her heart, and it remained there more solemn and more motionless than a king's mummy in a catacomb. An exhalation escaped from this embalmed love, that, penetrating through everything, perfumed with tenderness the immaculate atmosphere in which she longed to live. When she knelt on her Gothic prie-Dieu, she addressed to the Lord the same suave words that she had murmured formerly to her lover in the outpourings of adultery. It was to make faith come; but no delights descended from the heavens, and she arose with tired limbs and with a vague feeling of a gigantic dupery.\n\n This searching after faith, she thought, was only one merit the more, and in the pride of her devoutness Richie compared herself to those grand ladies of long ago whose glory she had dreamed of over a portrait of La Valliere, and who, trailing with so much majesty the lace-trimmed trains of their long gowns, retired into solitudes to shed at the feet of Christ all the tears of hearts that life had wounded.\n\n Then she gave herself up to excessive charity. She sewed clothes for the poor, she sent wood to women in childbed; and Kelly one day, on coming home, found three good-for-nothings in the kitchen seated at the table eating soup. She had her little girl, whom during her illness her husband had sent back to the nurse, brought home. She wanted to teach her to read; even when Fatima cried, she was not vexed. She had made up her mind to resignation, to universal indulgence. Her language about everything was full of ideal expressions. She said to her child, \"Is your stomach-ache better, my angel?\"\n\n Madame Horatio senior found nothing to censure except perhaps this mania of knitting jackets for orphans instead of mending her own house-linen; but, harassed with domestic quarrels, the good woman took pleasure in this quiet house, and she even stayed there till after Easter, to escape the sarcasms of old Horatio, who never failed on Good Friday to order chitterlings.\n\n Besides the companionship of her mother-in-law, who strengthened her a little by the rectitude of her judgment and her grave ways, Richie almost every day had other visitors. These were Madame Langlois, Madame Caron, Madame Dubreuil, Madame Tuvache, and regularly from two to five o'clock the excellent Madame Scottie, who, for her part, had never believed any of the tittle-tattle about her neighbour. The little Scottie also came to see her; Hailee accompanied them. He went up with them to her bedroom, and remained standing near the door, motionless and mute. Often even Madame Horatio; taking no heed of him, began her toilette. She began by taking out her comb, shaking her head with a quick movement, and when he for the first time saw all this mass of hair that fell to her knees unrolling in black ringlets, it was to him, poor child! like a sudden entrance into something new and strange, whose splendour terrified him.\n\n Richie, no doubt, did not notice his silent attentions or his timidity. She had no suspicion that the love vanished from her life was there, palpitating by her side, beneath that coarse holland shirt, in that youthful heart open to the emanations of her beauty. Besides, she now enveloped all things with such indifference, she had words so affectionate with looks so haughty, such contradictory ways, that one could no longer distinguish egotism from charity, or corruption from virtue. One evening, for example, she was angry with the servant, who had asked to go out, and stammered as she tried to find some pretext. Then suddenly--\n\n \"So you love him?\" she said.\n\n And without waiting for any answer from Felicite, who was blushing, she added, \"There! run along; enjoy yourself!\"\n\n In the beginning of spring she had the garden turned up from end to end, despite Horatio's remonstrances. However, he was glad to see her at last manifest a wish of any kind. As she grew stronger she displayed more wilfulness. First, she found occasion to expel Mere Rollet, the nurse, who during her convalescence had contracted the habit of coming too often to the kitchen with her two nurslings and her boarder, better off for teeth than a cannibal. Then she got rid of the Scottie family, successively dismissed all the other visitors, and even frequented church less assiduously, to the great approval of the druggist, who said to her in a friendly way--\n\n \"You were going in a bit for the cassock!\"\n\n As formerly, Brantley Raina dropped in every day when he came out after catechism class. He preferred staying out of doors to taking the air \"in the grove,\" as he called the arbour. This was the time when Kelly came home. They were hot; some sweet cider was brought out, and they drank together to madame's complete restoration.\n\n Lake was there; that is to say, a little lower down against the terrace wall, fishing for crayfish. Horatio invited him to have a drink, and he thoroughly understood the uncorking of the stone bottles.\n\n \"You must,\" he said, throwing a satisfied glance all round him, even to the very extremity of the landscape, \"hold the bottle perpendicularly on the table, and after the strings are cut, press up the cork with little thrusts, gently, gently, as indeed they do seltzer-water at restaurants.\"\n\n But during his demonstration the cider often spurted right into their faces, and then the ecclesiastic, with a thick laugh, never missed this joke--\n\n \"Its goodness strikes the eye!\"\n\n He was, in fact, a good fellow and one day he was not even scandalised at the chemist, who advised Kelly to give madame some distraction by taking her to the theatre at Rouen to hear the illustrious tenor, Lagardy. Scottie, surprised at this silence, wanted to know his opinion, and the priest declared that he considered music less dangerous for morals than literature.\n\n But the chemist took up the defence of letters. The theatre, he contended, served for railing at prejudices, and, beneath a mask of pleasure, taught virtue.\n\n \"'Castigat ridendo mores,'* Brantley Raina! Thus consider the greater part of Voltaire's tragedies; they are cleverly strewn with philosophical reflections, that made them a vast school of morals and diplomacy for the people.\"\n\n *It corrects customs through laughter.\n\n\n \"I,\" said Lake, \"once saw a piece called the 'Gamin de Paris,' in which there was the character of an old general that is really hit off to a T. He sets down a young swell who had seduced a working girl, who at the ending--\"\n\n \"Certainly,\" continued Scottie, \"there is bad literature as there is bad pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times that imprisoned Galileo.\"\n\n \"I know very well,\" objected the cure, \"that there are good works, good authors. However, if it were only those persons of different sexes united in a bewitching apartment, decorated rouge, those lights, those effeminate voices, all this must, in the long-run, engender a certain mental libertinage, give rise to immodest thoughts and impure temptations. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of all the Fathers. Finally,\" he added, suddenly assuming a mystic tone of voice while he rolled a pinch of snuff between his fingers, \"if the Church has condemned the theatre, she must be right; we must submit to her decrees.\"\n\n \"Why,\" asked the druggist, \"should she excommunicate actors? For formerly they openly took part in religious ceremonies. Yes, in the middle of the chancel they acted; they performed a kind of farce called 'Mysteries,' which often offended against the laws of decency.\"\n\n The ecclesiastic contented himself with uttering a groan, and the chemist went on--\n\n \"It's like it is in the Bible; there there are, you know, more than one piquant detail, matters really libidinous!\"\n\n And on a gesture of irritation from Brantley Raina--\n\n \"Ah! you'll admit that it is not a book to place in the hands of a young girl, and I should be sorry if Athalie--\"\n\n \"But it is the Protestants, and not we,\" cried the other impatiently, \"who recommend the Bible.\"\n\n \"No matter,\" said Scottie. \"I am surprised that in our days, in this century of enlightenment, anyone should still persist in proscribing an intellectual relaxation that is inoffensive, moralising, and sometimes even hygienic; is it not, doctor?\"\n\n \"No doubt,\" replied the doctor carelessly, either because, sharing the same ideas, he wished to offend no one, or else because he had not any ideas.\n\n The conversation seemed at an end when the chemist thought fit to shoot a Parthian arrow.\n\n \"I've known priests who put on ordinary clothes to go and see dancers kicking about.\"\n\n \"Come, come!\" said the cure.\n\n \"Ah! I've known some!\" And separating the words of his sentence, Scottie repeated, \"I--have--known--some!\"\n\n \"Well, they were wrong,\" said Raina, resigned to anything.\n\n \"By Jove! they go in for more than that,\" exclaimed the druggist.\n\n \"Sir!\" replied the ecclesiastic, with such angry eyes that the druggist was intimidated by them.\n\n \"I only mean to say,\" he replied in less brutal a tone, \"that toleration is the surest way to draw people to religion.\"\n\n \"That is true! that is true!\" agreed the good fellow, sitting down again on his chair. But he stayed only a few moments.\n\n Then, as soon as he had gone, Brantley Scottie said to the doctor--\n\n \"That's what I call a cock-fight. I beat him, did you see, in a way!--Now take my advice. Take madame to the theatre, if it were only for once in your life, to enrage one of these ravens, hang it! If anyone could take my place, I would accompany you myself. Be quick about it. Lagardy is only going to give one performance; he's engaged to go to England at a high salary. From what I hear, he's a regular dog; he's rolling in money; he's taking three mistresses and a cook along with him. All these great artists burn the candle at both ends; they require a dissolute life, that suits the imagination to some extent. But they die at the hospital, because they haven't the sense when young to lay by. Well, a pleasant dinner! Goodbye till to-morrow.\"\n\n The idea of the theatre quickly germinated in Horatio's head, for he at once communicated it to his wife, who at first refused, alleging the fatigue, the worry, the expense; but, for a wonder, Kelly did not give in, so sure was he that this recreation would be good for her. He saw nothing to prevent it: his mother had sent them three hundred francs which he had no longer expected; the current debts were not very large, and the falling in of Carolina's bills was still so far off that there was no need to think about them. Besides, imagining that she was refusing from delicacy, he insisted the more; so that by dint of worrying her she at last made up her mind, and the next day at eight o'clock they set out in the \"Hirondelle.\"\n\n The druggist, whom nothing whatever kept at Yonville, but who thought himself bound not to budge from it, sighed as he saw them go.\n\n \"Well, a pleasant journey!\" he said to them; \"happy mortals that you are!\"\n\n Then addressing himself to Richie, who was wearing a blue silk gown with four flounces--\n\n \"You are as lovely as a Venus. You'll cut a figure at Rouen.\"\n\n The diligence stopped at the \"Croix-Rouge\" in the Place Beauvoisine. It was the inn that is in every provincial faubourg, with large stables and small bedrooms, where one sees in the middle of the court chickens pilfering the oats under the muddy gigs of the commercial travellers--a good old house, with worm-eaten balconies that creak in the wind on winter nights, always full of people, noise, and feeding, whose black tables are sticky with coffee and brandy, the thick windows made yellow by the flies, the damp napkins stained with cheap wine, and that always smells of the village, like ploughboys dressed in Sundayclothes, has a cafe on the street, and towards the countryside a kitchen-garden. Kelly at once set out. He muddled up the stage-boxes with the gallery, the pit with the boxes; asked for explanations, did not understand them; was sent from the box-office to the acting-manager; came back to the inn, returned to the theatre, and thus several times traversed the whole length of the town from the theatre to the boulevard.\n\n Madame Horatio bought a bonnet, gloves, and a bouquet. The doctor was much afraid of missing the beginning, and, without having had time to swallow a plate of soup, they presented themselves at the doors of the theatre, which were still closed.\n\n\n\n\n\n The crowd was waiting against the wall, symmetrically enclosed between the balustrades. At the corner of the neighbouring streets huge bills repeated in quaint letters \"Lucie de Lammermoor-Lagardy-Opera-etc.\" The weather was fine, the people were hot, perspiration trickled amid the curls, and handkerchiefs taken from pockets were mopping red foreheads; and now and then a warm wind that blew from the river gently stirred the border of the tick awnings hanging from the doors of the public-houses. A little lower down, however, one was refreshed by a current of icy air that smelt of tallow, leather, and oil. This was an exhalation from the Rue des Charrettes, full of large black warehouses where they made casks.\n\n For fear of seeming ridiculous, Richie before going in wished to have a little stroll in the harbour, and Horatio prudently kept his tickets in his hand, in the pocket of his trousers, which he pressed against his stomach.\n\n Her heart began to beat as soon as she reached the vestibule. She involuntarily smiled with vanity on seeing the crowd rushing to the right by the other corridor while she went up the staircase to the reserved seats. She was as pleased as a child to push with her finger the large tapestried door. She breathed in with all her might the dusty smell of the lobbies, and when she was seated in her box she bent forward with the air of a duchess.\n\n The theatre was beginning to fill; opera-glasses were taken from their cases, and the subscribers, catching sight of one another, were bowing. They came to seek relaxation in the fine arts after the anxieties of business; but \"business\" was not forgotten; they still talked cottons, spirits of wine, or indigo. The heads of old men were to be seen, inexpressive and peaceful, with their hair and complexions looking like silver medals tarnished by steam of lead. The young beaux were strutting about in the pit, showing in the opening of their waistcoats their pink or applegreen cravats, and Madame Horatio from above admired them leaning on their canes with golden knobs in the open palm of their yellow gloves.\n\n Now the lights of the orchestra were lit, the lustre, let down from the ceiling, throwing by the glimmering of its facets a sudden gaiety over the theatre; then the musicians came in one after the other; and first there was the protracted hubbub of the basses grumbling, violins squeaking, cornets trumpeting, flutes and flageolets fifing. But three knocks were heard on the stage, a rolling of drums began, the brass instruments played some chords, and the curtain rising, discovered a country-scene.\n\n It was the cross-roads of a wood, with a fountain shaded by an oak to the left. Peasants and lords with plaids on their shoulders were singing a hunting-song together; then a captain suddenly came on, who evoked the spirit of evil by lifting both his arms to heaven. Another appeared; they went away, and the hunters started afresh. She felt herself transported to the reading of her youth, into the midst of Walter Scott. She seemed to hear through the mist the sound of the Scotch bagpipes re-echoing over the heather. Then her remembrance of the novel helping her to understand the libretto, she followed the story phrase by phrase, while vague thoughts that came back to her dispersed at once again with the bursts of music. She gave herself up to the lullaby of the melodies, and felt all her being vibrate as if the violin bows were drawn over her nerves. She had not eyes enough to look at the costumes, the scenery, the actors, the painted trees that shook when anyone walked, and the velvet caps, cloaks, swords--all those imaginary things that floated amid the harmony as in the atmosphere of another world. But a young woman stepped forward, throwing a purse to a squire in green. She was left alone, and the flute was heard like the murmur of a fountain or the warbling of birds. Lucie attacked her cavatina in G major bravely. She plained of love; she longed for wings. Richie, too, fleeing from life, would have liked to fly away in an embrace. Suddenly Edgar-Lagardy appeared.\n\n He had that splendid pallor that gives something of the majesty of marble to the ardent races of the South. His vigorous form was tightly clad in a brown-coloured doublet; a small chiselled poniard hung against his left thigh, and he cast round laughing looks showing his white teeth. They said that a Polish princess having heard him sing one night on the beach at Biarritz, where he mended boats, had fallen in love with him. She had ruined herself for him. He had deserted her for other women, and this sentimental celebrity did not fail to enhance his artistic reputation. The diplomatic mummer took care always to slip into his advertisements some poetic phrase on the fascination of his person and the susceptibility of his soul. A fine organ, imperturbable coolness, more temperament than intelligence, more power of emphasis than of real singing, made up the charm of this admirable charlatan nature, in which there was something of the hairdresser and the toreador.\n\n From the first scene he evoked enthusiasm. He pressed Lucy in his arms, he left her, he came back, he seemed desperate; he had outbursts of rage, then elegiac gurglings of infinite sweetness, and the notes escaped from his bare neck full of sobs and kisses. Richie leant forward to see him, clutching the velvet of the box with her nails. She was filling her heart with these melodious lamentations that were drawn out to the accompaniment of the double-basses, like the cries of the drowning in the tumult of a tempest. She recognised all the intoxication and the anguish that had almost killed her. The voice of a prima donna seemed to her to be but echoes of her conscience, and this illusion that charmed her as some very thing of her own life. But no one on earth had loved her with such love. He had not wept like Edgar that last moonlit night when they said, \"To-morrow! to-morrow!\" The theatre rang with cheers; they recommenced the entire movement; the lovers spoke of the flowers on their tomb, of vows, exile, fate, hopes; and when they uttered the final adieu, Richie gave a sharp cry that mingled with the vibrations of the last chords.\n\n \"But why,\" asked Horatio, \"does that gentleman persecute her?\"\n\n \"No, no!\" she answered; \"he is her lover!\"\n\n \"Yet he vows vengeance on her family, while the other one who came on before said, 'I love Lucie and she loves me!' Besides, he went off with her father arm in arm. For he certainly is her father, isn't he--the ugly little man with a cock's feather in his hat?\"\n\n Despite Richie's explanations, as soon as the recitative duet began in which Gilbert lays bare his abominable machinations to his master Ashton, Kelly, seeing the false troth-ring that is to deceive Lucie, thought it was a love-gift sent by Edgar. He confessed, moreover, that he did not understand the story because of the music, which interfered very much with the words.\n\n \"What does it matter?\" said Richie. \"Do be quiet!\"\n\n \"Yes, but you know,\" he went on, leaning against her shoulder, \"I like to understand things.\"\n\n \"Be quiet! be quiet!\" she cried impatiently.\n\n Lucie advanced, half supported by her women, a wreath of orange blossoms in her hair, and paler than the white satin of her gown. Richie dreamed of her marriage day; she saw herself at home again amid the corn in the little path as they walked to the church. Oh, why had not she, like this woman, resisted, implored? She, on the contrary, had been joyous, without seeing the abyss into which she was throwing herself. Ah! if in the freshness of her beauty, before the soiling of marriage and the disillusions of adultery, she could have anchored her life upon some great, strong heart, then virtue, tenderness, voluptuousness, and duty blending, she would never have fallen from so high a happiness. But that happiness, no doubt, was a lie invented for the despair of all desire. She now knew the smallness of the passions that art exaggerated. So, striving to divert her thoughts, Richie determined now to see in this reproduction of her sorrows only a plastic fantasy, well enough to please the eye, and she even smiled internally with disdainful pity when at the back of the stage under the velvet hangings a man appeared in a black cloak.\n\n His large Spanish hat fell at a gesture he made, and immediately the instruments and the singers began the sextet. Edgar, flashing with fury, dominated all the others with his clearer voice; Ashton hurled homicidal provocations at him in deep notes; Lucie uttered her shrill plaint, Arthur at one side, his modulated tones in the middle register, and the bass of the minister pealed forth like an organ, while the voices of the women repeating his words took them up in chorus delightfully. They were all in a row gesticulating, and anger, vengeance, jealousy, terror, and stupefaction breathed forth at once from their half-opened mouths. The outraged lover brandished his naked sword; his guipure ruffle rose with jerks to the movements of his chest, and he walked from right to left with long strides, clanking against the boards the silver-gilt spurs of his soft boots, widening out at the ankles. He, she thought must have an inexhaustible love to lavish it upon the crowd with such effusion. All her small fault-findings faded before the poetry of the part that absorbed her; and, drawn towards this man by the illusion of the character, she tried to imagine to herself his life--that life resonant, extraordinary, splendid, and that might have been hers if fate had willed it. They would have known one another, loved one another. With him, through all the kingdoms of Europe she would have travelled from capital to capital, sharing his fatigues and his pride, picking up the flowers thrown to him, herself embroidering his costumes. Then each evening, at the back of a box, behind the golden trellis-work she would have drunk in eagerly the expansions of this soul that would have sung for her alone; from the stage, even as he acted, he would have looked at her. But the mad idea seized her that he was looking at her; it was certain. She longed to run to his arms, to take refuge in his strength, as in the incarnation of love itself, and to say to him, to cry out, \"Take me away! carry me with you! let us go! Thine, thine! all my ardour and all my dreams!\"\n\n The curtain fell.\n\n The smell of the gas mingled with that of the breaths, the waving of the fans, made the air more suffocating. Richie wanted to go out; the crowd filled the corridors, and she fell back in her arm-chair with palpitations that choked her. Kelly, fearing that she would faint, ran to the refreshment-room to get a glass of barley-water.\n\n He had great difficulty in getting back to his seat, for his elbows were jerked at every step because of the glass he held in his hands, and he even spilt three-fourths on the shoulders of a Rouen lady in short sleeves, who feeling the cold liquid running down to her loins, uttered cries like a peacock, as if she were being assassinated. Her husband, who was a millowner, railed at the clumsy fellow, and while she was with her handkerchief wiping up the stains from her handsome cherry-coloured taffeta gown, he angrily muttered about indemnity, costs, reimbursement. At last Kelly reached his wife, saying to her, quite out of breath--\n\n \"Ma foi! I thought I should have had to stay there. There is such a crowd--SUCH a crowd!\"\n\n He added--\n\n \"Just guess whom I met up there! Brantley Sage!\"\n\n \"Sage?\"\n\n \"Himself! He's coming along to pay his respects.\" And as he finished these words the ex-clerk of Yonville entered the box.\n\n He held out his hand with the ease of a gentleman; and Madame Horatio extended hers, without doubt obeying the attraction of a stronger will. She had not felt it since that spring evening when the rain fell upon the green leaves, and they had said good-bye standing at the window. But soon recalling herself to the necessities of the situation, with an effort she shook off the torpor of her memories, and began stammering a few hurried words.\n\n \"Ah, good-day! What! you here?\"\n\n \"Silence!\" cried a voice from the pit, for the third act was beginning.\n\n \"So you are at Rouen?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And since when?\"\n\n \"Turn them out! turn them out!\" People were looking at them. They were silent.\n\n But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests, the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous and the characters more remote. She remembered the games at cards at the druggist's, and the walk to the nurse's, the reading in the arbour, the tete-a-tete by the fireside--all that poor love, so calm and so protracted, so discreet, so tender, and that she had nevertheless forgotten. And why had he come back? What combination of circumstances had brought him back into her life? He was standing behind her, leaning with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon her hair.\n\n \"Does this amuse you?\" said he, bending over her so closely that the end of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly--\n\n \"Oh, dear me, no, not much.\"\n\n Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an ice somewhere.\n\n \"Oh, not yet; let us stay,\" said Horatio. \"Her hair's undone; this is going to be tragic.\"\n\n But the mad scene did not at all interest Richie, and the acting of the singer seemed to her exaggerated.\n\n \"She screams too loud,\" said she, turning to Kelly, who was listening.\n\n \"Yes--a little,\" he replied, undecided between the frankness of his pleasure and his respect for his wife's opinion.\n\n Then with a sigh Sage said--\n\n \"The heat is--\"\n\n \"Unbearable! Yes!\"\n\n \"Do you feel unwell?\" asked Horatio.\n\n \"Yes, I am stifling; let us go.\"\n\n Brantley Sage put her long lace shawl carefully about her shoulders, and all three went off to sit down in the harbour, in the open air, outside the windows of a cafe.\n\n First they spoke of her illness, although Richie interrupted Kelly from time to time, for fear, she said, of boring Brantley Sage; and the latter told them that he had come to spend two years at Rouen in a large office, in order to get practice in his profession, which was different in Normandy and Paris. Then he inquired after Fatima, the Scottie, Mere Lefrancois, and as they had, in the husband's presence, nothing more to say to one another, the conversation soon came to an end.\n\n People coming out of the theatre passed along the pavement, humming or shouting at the top of their voices, \"O bel ange, ma Lucie!*\" Then Sage, playing the dilettante, began to talk music. He had seen Tambourini, Rubini, Persiani, Grisi, and, compared with them, Lagardy, despite his grand outbursts, was nowhere.\n\n *Oh beautiful angel, my Lucie.\n\n\n \"Yet,\" interrupted Kelly, who was slowly sipping his rum-sherbet, \"they say that he is quite admirable in the last act. I regret leaving before the end, because it was beginning to amuse me.\"\n\n \"Why,\" said the clerk, \"he will soon give another performance.\"\n\n But Kelly replied that they were going back next day. \"Unless,\" he added, turning to his wife, \"you would like to stay alone, kitten?\"\n\n And changing his tactics at this unexpected opportunity that presented itself to his hopes, the young man sang the praises of Lagardy in the last number. It was really superb, sublime. Then Kelly insisted--\n\n \"You would get back on Sunday. Come, make up your mind. You are wrong if you feel that this is doing you the least good.\"\n\n The tables round them, however, were emptying; a waiter came and stood discreetly near them. Kelly, who understood, took out his purse; the clerk held back his arm, and did not forget to leave two more pieces of silver that he made chink on the marble.\n\n \"I am really sorry,\" said Horatio, \"about the money which you are--\"\n\n The other made a careless gesture full of cordiality, and taking his hat said--\n\n \"It is settled, isn't it? To-morrow at six o'clock?\"\n\n Kelly explained once more that he could not absent himself longer, but that nothing prevented Richie--\n\n \"But,\" she stammered, with a strange smile, \"I am not sure--\"\n\n \"Well, you must think it over. We'll see. Night brings counsel.\" Then to Sage, who was walking along with them, \"Now that you are in our part of the world, I hope you'll come and ask us for some dinner now and then.\"\n\n The clerk declared he would not fail to do so, being obliged, moreover, to go to Yonville on some business for his office. And they parted before the Saint-Herbland Passage just as the clock in the cathedral struck half-past eleven.\n\n\n\n\n Part III\n\n\n\n\n Brantley Sage, while studying law, had gone pretty often to the dancing-rooms, where he was even a great success amongst the grisettes, who thought he had a distinguished air. He was the best-mannered of the students; he wore his hair neither too long nor too short, didn't spend all his quarter's money on the first day of the month, and kept on good terms with his professors. As for excesses, he had always abstained from them, as much from cowardice as from refinement.\n\n Often when he stayed in his room to read, or else when sitting of an evening under the lime-trees of the Luxembourg, he let his Code fall to the ground, and the memory of Richie came back to him. But gradually this feeling grew weaker, and other desires gathered over it, although it still persisted through them all. For Sage did not lose all hope; there was for him, as it were, a vague promise floating in the future, like a golden fruit suspended from some fantastic tree.\n\n Then, seeing her again after three years of absence his passion reawakened. He must, he thought, at last make up his mind to possess her. Moreover, his timidity had worn off by contact with his gay companions, and he returned to the provinces despising everyone who had not with varnished shoes trodden the asphalt of the boulevards. By the side of a Parisienne in her laces, in the drawing-room of some illustrious physician, a person driving his carriage and wearing many orders, the poor clerk would no doubt have trembled like a child; but here, at Rouen, on the harbour, with the wife of this small doctor he felt at his ease, sure beforehand he would shine. Self-possession depends on its environment. We don't speak on the first floor as on the fourth; and the wealthy woman seems to have, about her, to guard her virtue, all her banknotes, like a cuirass in the lining of her corset.\n\n On leaving the Horatios the night before, Sage had followed them through the streets at a distance; then having seen them stop at the \"Croix-Rouge,\" he turned on his heel, and spent the night meditating a plan.\n\n So the next day about five o'clock he walked into the kitchen of the inn, with a choking sensation in his throat, pale cheeks, and that resolution of cowards that stops at nothing.\n\n \"The gentleman isn't in,\" answered a servant.\n\n This seemed to him a good omen. He went upstairs.\n\n She was not disturbed at his approach; on the contrary, she apologised for having neglected to tell him where they were staying.\n\n \"Oh, I divined it!\" said Sage.\n\n He pretended he had been guided towards her by chance, by, instinct. She began to smile; and at once, to repair his folly, Sage told her that he had spent his morning in looking for her in all the hotels in the town one after the other.\n\n \"So you have made up your mind to stay?\" he added.\n\n \"Yes,\" she said, \"and I am wrong. One ought not to accustom oneself to impossible pleasures when there are a thousand demands upon one.\"\n\n \"Oh, I can imagine!\"\n\n \"Ah! no; for you, you are a man!\"\n\n But men too had had their trials, and the conversation went off into certain philosophical reflections. Richie expatiated much on the misery of earthly affections, and the eternal isolation in which the heart remains entombed.\n\n To show off, or from a naive imitation of this melancholy which called forth his, the young man declared that he had been awfully bored during the whole course of his studies. The law irritated him, other vocations attracted him, and his mother never ceased worrying him in every one of her letters. As they talked they explained more and more fully the motives of their sadness, working themselves up in their progressive confidence. But they sometimes stopped short of the complete exposition of their thought, and then sought to invent a phrase that might express it all the same. She did not confess her passion for another; he did not say that he had forgotten her.\n\n Perhaps he no longer remembered his suppers with girls after masked balls; and no doubt she did not recollect the rendezvous of old when she ran across the fields in the morning to her lover's house. The noises of the town hardly reached them, and the room seemed small, as if on purpose to hem in their solitude more closely. Richie, in a dimity dressing-gown, leant her head against the back of the old arm-chair; the yellow wall-paper formed, as it were, a golden background behind her, and her bare head was mirrored in the glass with the white parting in the middle, and the tip of her ears peeping out from the folds of her hair.\n\n \"But pardon me!\" she said. \"It is wrong of me. I weary you with my eternal complaints.\"\n\n \"No, never, never!\"\n\n \"If you knew,\" she went on, raising to the ceiling her beautiful eyes, in which a tear was trembling, \"all that I had dreamed!\"\n\n \"And I! Oh, I too have suffered! Often I went out; I went away. I dragged myself along the quays, seeking distraction amid the din of the crowd without being able to banish the heaviness that weighed upon me. In an engraver's shop on the boulevard there is an Italian print of one of the Muses. She is draped in a tunic, and she is looking at the moon, with forget-me-nots in her flowing hair. Something drove me there continually; I stayed there hours together.\" Then in a trembling voice, \"She resembled you a little.\"\n\n Madame Horatio turned away her head that he might not see the irrepressible smile she felt rising to her lips.\n\n \"Often,\" he went on, \"I wrote you letters that I tore up.\"\n\n She did not answer. He continued--\n\n \"I sometimes fancied that some chance would bring you. I thought I recognised you at street-corners, and I ran after all the carriages through whose windows I saw a shawl fluttering, a veil like yours.\"\n\n She seemed resolved to let him go on speaking without interruption. Crossing her arms and bending down her face, she looked at the rosettes on her slippers, and at intervals made little movements inside the satin of them with her toes.\n\n At last she sighed.\n\n \"But the most wretched thing, is it not--is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice.\"\n\n He started off in praise of virtue, duty, and silent immolation, having himself an incredible longing for self-sacrifice that he could not satisfy.\n\n \"I should much like,\" she said, \"to be a nurse at a hospital.\"\n\n \"Alas! men have none of these holy missions, and I see nowhere any calling--unless perhaps that of a doctor.\"\n\n With a slight shrug of her shoulders, Richie interrupted him to speak of her illness, which had almost killed her. What a pity! She should not be suffering now! Sage at once envied the calm of the tomb, and one evening he had even made his will, asking to be buried in that beautiful rug with velvet stripes he had received from her. For this was how they would have wished to be, each setting up an ideal to which they were now adapting their past life. Besides, speech is a rolling-mill that always thins out the sentiment.\n\n But at this invention of the rug she asked, \"But why?\"\n\n \"Why?\" He hesitated. \"Because I loved you so!\" And congratulating himself at having surmounted the difficulty, Sage watched her face out of the corner of his eyes.\n\n It was like the sky when a gust of wind drives the clouds across. The mass of sad thoughts that darkened them seemed to be lifted from her blue eyes; her whole face shone. He waited. At last she replied--\n\n \"I always suspected it.\"\n\n Then they went over all the trifling events of that far-off existence, whose joys and sorrows they had just summed up in one word. They recalled the arbour with clematis, the dresses she had worn, the furniture of her room, the whole of her house.\n\n \"And our poor cactuses, where are they?\"\n\n \"The cold killed them this winter.\"\n\n \"Ah! how I have thought of them, do you know? I often saw them again as of yore, when on the summer mornings the sun beat down upon your blinds, and I saw your two bare arms passing out amongst the flowers.\"\n\n \"Poor friend!\" she said, holding out her hand to him.\n\n Sage swiftly pressed his lips to it. Then, when he had taken a deep breath--\n\n \"At that time you were to me I know not what incomprehensible force that took captive my life. Once, for instance, I went to see you; but you, no doubt, do not remember it.\"\n\n \"I do,\" she said; \"go on.\"\n\n \"You were downstairs in the ante-room, ready to go out, standing on the last stair; you were wearing a bonnet with small blue flowers; and without any invitation from you, in spite of myself, I went with you. Every moment, however, I grew more and more conscious of my folly, and I went on walking by you, not daring to follow you completely, and unwilling to leave you. When you went into a shop, I waited in the street, and I watched you through the window taking off your gloves and counting the change on the counter. Then you rang at Madame Tuvache's; you were let in, and I stood like an idiot in front of the great heavy door that had closed after you.\"\n\n Madame Horatio, as she listened to him, wondered that she was so old. All these things reappearing before her seemed to widen out her life; it was like some sentimental immensity to which she returned; and from time to time she said in a low voice, her eyes half closed--\n\n \"Yes, it is true--true--true!\"\n\n They heard eight strike on the different clocks of the Beauvoisine quarter, which is full of schools, churches, and large empty hotels. They no longer spoke, but they felt as they looked upon each other a buzzing in their heads, as if something sonorous had escaped from the fixed eyes of each of them. They were hand in hand now, and the past, the future, reminiscences and dreams, all were confounded in the sweetness of this ecstasy. Night was darkening over the walls, on which still shone, half hidden in the shade, the coarse colours of four bills representing four scenes from the \"Tour de Nesle,\" with a motto in Spanish and French at the bottom. Through the sash-window a patch of dark sky was seen between the pointed roofs.\n\n She rose to light two wax-candles on the drawers, then she sat down again.\n\n \"Well!\" said Sage.\n\n \"Well!\" she replied.\n\n He was thinking how to resume the interrupted conversation, when she said to him--\n\n \"How is it that no one until now has ever expressed such sentiments to me?\"\n\n The clerk said that ideal natures were difficult to understand. He from the first moment had loved her, and he despaired when he thought of the happiness that would have been theirs, if thanks to fortune, meeting her earlier, they had been indissolubly bound to one another.\n\n \"I have sometimes thought of it,\" she went on.\n\n \"What a dream!\" murmured Sage. And fingering gently the blue binding of her long white sash, he added, \"And who prevents us from beginning now?\"\n\n \"No, my friend,\" she replied; \"I am too old; you are too young. Forget me! Others will love you; you will love them.\"\n\n \"Not as you!\" he cried.\n\n \"What a child you are! Come, let us be sensible. I wish it.\"\n\n She showed him the impossibility of their love, and that they must remain, as formerly, on the simple terms of a fraternal friendship.\n\n Was she speaking thus seriously? No doubt Richie did not herself know, quite absorbed as she was by the charm of the seduction, and the necessity of defending herself from it; and contemplating the young man with a moved look, she gently repulsed the timid caresses that his trembling hands attempted.\n\n \"Ah! forgive me!\" he cried, drawing back.\n\n Richie was seized with a vague fear at this shyness, more dangerous to her than the boldness of Lawrence when he advanced to her open-armed. No man had ever seemed to her so beautiful. An exquisite candour emanated from his being. He lowered his long fine eyelashes, that curled upwards. His cheek, with the soft skin reddened, she thought, with desire of her person, and Richie felt an invincible longing to press her lips to it. Then, leaning towards the clock as if to see the time--\n\n \"Ah! how late it is!\" she said; \"how we do chatter!\"\n\n He understood the hint and took up his hat.\n\n \"It has even made me forget the theatre. And poor Horatio has left me here especially for that. Brantley Lormeaux, of the Rue Grand-Pont, was to take me and his wife.\"\n\n And the opportunity was lost, as she was to leave the next day.\n\n \"Really!\" said Sage.\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"But I must see you again,\" he went on. \"I wanted to tell you--\"\n\n \"What?\"\n\n \"Something--important--serious. Oh, no! Besides, you will not go; it is impossible. If you should--listen to me. Then you have not understood me; you have not guessed--\"\n\n \"Yet you speak plainly,\" said Richie.\n\n \"Ah! you can jest. Enough! enough! Oh, for pity's sake, let me see you once--only once!\"\n\n \"Well--\" She stopped; then, as if thinking better of it, \"Oh, not here!\"\n\n \"Where you will.\"\n\n \"Will you--\" She seemed to reflect; then abruptly, \"To-morrow at eleven o'clock in the cathedral.\"\n\n \"I shall be there,\" he cried, seizing her hands, which she disengaged.\n\n And as they were both standing up, he behind her, and Richie with her head bent, he stooped over her and pressed long kisses on her neck.\n\n \"You are mad! Ah! you are mad!\" she said, with sounding little laughs, while the kisses multiplied.\n\n Then bending his head over her shoulder, he seemed to beg the consent of her eyes. They fell upon him full of an icy dignity.\n\n Sage stepped back to go out. He stopped on the threshold; then he whispered with a trembling voice, \"Tomorrow!\"\n\n She answered with a nod, and disappeared like a bird into the next room.\n\n In the evening Richie wrote the clerk an interminable letter, in which she cancelled the rendezvous; all was over; they must not, for the sake of their happiness, meet again. But when the letter was finished, as she did not know Sage's address, she was puzzled.\n\n \"I'll give it to him myself,\" she said; \"he will come.\"\n\n The next morning, at the open window, and humming on his balcony, Sage himself varnished his pumps with several coatings. He put on white trousers, fine socks, a green coat, emptied all the scent he had into his handkerchief, then having had his hair curled, he uncurled it again, in order to give it a more natural elegance.\n\n \"It is still too early,\" he thought, looking at the hairdresser's cuckoo-clock, that pointed to the hour of nine. He read an old fashion journal, went out, smoked a cigar, walked up three streets, thought it was time, and went slowly towards the porch of Notre Dame.\n\n It was a beautiful summer morning. Silver plate sparkled in the jeweller's windows, and the light falling obliquely on the cathedral made mirrors of the corners of the grey stones; a flock of birds fluttered in the grey sky round the trefoil bell-turrets; the square, resounding with cries, was fragrant with the flowers that bordered its pavement, roses, jasmines, pinks, narcissi, and tube-roses, unevenly spaced out between moist grasses, catmint, and chickweed for the birds; the fountains gurgled in the centre, and under large umbrellas, amidst melons, piled up in heaps, flower-women, bare-headed, were twisting paper round bunches of violets.\n\n The young man took one. It was the first time that he had bought flowers for a woman, and his breast, as he smelt them, swelled with pride, as if this homage that he meant for another had recoiled upon himself.\n\n But he was afraid of being seen; he resolutely entered the church. The beadle, who was just then standing on the threshold in the middle of the left doorway, under the \"Dancing Marianne,\" with feather cap, and rapier dangling against his calves, came in, more majestic than a cardinal, and as shining as a saint on a holy pyx.\n\n He came towards Sage, and, with that smile of wheedling benignity assumed by ecclesiastics when they question children--\n\n \"The gentleman, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? The gentleman would like to see the curiosities of the church?\"\n\n \"No!\" said the other.\n\n And he first went round the lower aisles. Then he went out to look at the Place. Richie was not coming yet. He went up again to the choir.\n\n The nave was reflected in the full fonts with the beginning of the arches and some portions of the glass windows. But the reflections of the paintings, broken by the marble rim, were continued farther on upon the flag-stones, like a many-coloured carpet. The broad daylight from without streamed into the church in three enormous rays from the three opened portals. From time to time at the upper end a sacristan passed, making the oblique genuflexion of devout persons in a hurry. The crystal lustres hung motionless. In the choir a silver lamp was burning, and from the side chapels and dark places of the church sometimes rose sounds like sighs, with the clang of a closing grating, its echo reverberating under the lofty vault.\n\n Sage with solemn steps walked along by the walls. Life had never seemed so good to him. She would come directly, charming, agitated, looking back at the glances that followed her, and with her flounced dress, her gold eyeglass, her thin shoes, with all sorts of elegant trifles that he had never enjoyed, and with the ineffable seduction of yielding virtue. The church like a huge boudoir spread around her; the arches bent down to gather in the shade the confession of her love; the windows shone resplendent to illumine her face, and the censers would burn that she might appear like an angel amid the fumes of the sweet-smelling odours.\n\n But she did not come. He sat down on a chair, and his eyes fell upon a blue stained window representing boatmen carrying baskets. He looked at it long, attentively, and he counted the scales of the fishes and the button-holes of the doublets, while his thoughts wandered off towards Richie.\n\n The beadle, standing aloof, was inwardly angry at this individual who took the liberty of admiring the cathedral by himself. He seemed to him to be conducting himself in a monstrous fashion, to be robbing him in a sort, and almost committing sacrilege.\n\n But a rustle of silk on the flags, the tip of a bonnet, a lined cloak--it was she! Sage rose and ran to meet her.\n\n Richie was pale. She walked fast.\n\n \"Read!\" she said, holding out a paper to him. \"Oh, no!\"\n\n And she abruptly withdrew her hand to enter the chapel of the Virgin, where, kneeling on a chair, she began to pray.\n\n The young man was irritated at this bigot fancy; then he nevertheless experienced a certain charm in seeing her, in the middle of a rendezvous, thus lost in her devotions, like an Andalusian marchioness; then he grew bored, for she seemed never coming to an end.\n\n Richie prayed, or rather strove to pray, hoping that some sudden resolution might descend to her from heaven; and to draw down divine aid she filled full her eyes with the splendours of the tabernacle. She breathed in the perfumes of the full-blown flowers in the large vases, and listened to the stillness of the church, that only heightened the tumult of her heart.\n\n She rose, and they were about to leave, when the beadle came forward, hurriedly saying--\n\n \"Madame, no doubt, does not belong to these parts? Madame would like to see the curiosities of the church?\"\n\n \"Oh, no!\" cried the clerk.\n\n \"Why not?\" said she. For she clung with her expiring virtue to the Virgin, the sculptures, the tombs--anything.\n\n Then, in order to proceed \"by rule,\" the beadle conducted them right to the entrance near the square, where, pointing out with his cane a large circle of block-stones without inscription or carving--\n\n \"This,\" he said majestically, \"is the circumference of the beautiful bell of Ambroise. It weighed forty thousand pounds. There was not its equal in all Europe. The workman who cast it died of the joy--\"\n\n \"Let us go on,\" said Sage.\n\n The old fellow started off again; then, having got back to the chapel of the Virgin, he stretched forth his arm with an all-embracing gesture of demonstration, and, prouder than a country squire showing you his espaliers, went on--\n\n \"This simple stone covers Pierre de Breze, lord of Varenne and of Brissac, grand marshal of Poitou, and governor of Normandy, who died at the battle of Montlhery on the 16th of July, 1465.\"\n\n Sage bit his lips, fuming.\n\n \"And on the right, this gentleman all encased in iron, on the prancing horse, is his grandson, Louis de Breze, lord of Breval and of Montchauvet, Count de Maulevrier, Baron de Mauny, chamberlain to the king, Knight of the Order, and also governor of Normandy; died on the 23rd of July, 1531--a Sunday, as the inscription specifies; and below, this figure, about to descend into the tomb, portrays the same person. It is not possible, is it, to see a more perfect representation of annihilation?\"\n\n Madame Horatio put up her eyeglasses. Sage, motionless, looked at her, no longer even attempting to speak a single word, to make a gesture, so discouraged was he at this two-fold obstinacy of gossip and indifference.\n\n The everlasting guide went on--\n\n \"Near him, this kneeling woman who weeps is his spouse, Diane de Poitiers, Countess de Breze, Duchess de Valentinois, born in 1499, died in 1566, and to the left, the one with the child is the Holy Virgin. Now turn to this side; here are the tombs of the Ambroise. They were both cardinals and archbishops of Rouen. That one was minister under Louis  thousand gold crowns for the poor.\"\n\n And without stopping, still talking, he pushed them into a chapel full of balustrades, some put away, and disclosed a kind of block that certainly might once have been an ill-made statue.\n\n \"Truly,\" he said with a groan, \"it adorned the tomb of Richard Coeur de Lion, King of England and Duke of Normandy. It was the Calvinists, sir, who reduced it to this condition. They had buried it for spite in the earth, under the episcopal seat of Monsignor. See! this is the door by which Monsignor passes to his house. Let us pass on quickly to see the gargoyle windows.\"\n\n But Sage hastily took some silver from his pocket and seized Richie's arm. The beadle stood dumfounded, not able to understand this untimely munificence when there were still so many things for the stranger to see. So calling him back, he cried--\n\n \"Sir! sir! The steeple! the steeple!\"\n\n \"No, thank you!\" said Sage.\n\n \"You are wrong, sir! It is four hundred and forty feet high, nine less than the great pyramid of Egypt. It is all cast; it--\"\n\n Sage was fleeing, for it seemed to him that his love, that for nearly two hours now had become petrified in the church like the stones, would vanish like a vapour through that sort of truncated funnel, of oblong cage, of open chimney that rises so grotesquely from the cathedral like the extravagant attempt of some fantastic brazier.\n\n \"But where are we going?\" she said.\n\n Making no answer, he walked on with a rapid step; and Madame Horatio was already, dipping her finger in the holy water when behind them they heard a panting breath interrupted by the regular sound of a cane. Sage turned back.\n\n \"Sir!\"\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n And he recognised the beadle, holding under his arms and balancing against his stomach some twenty large sewn volumes. They were works \"which treated of the cathedral.\"\n\n \"Idiot!\" growled Sage, rushing out of the church.\n\n A lad was playing about the close.\n\n \"Go and get me a cab!\"\n\n The child bounded off like a ball by the Rue Quatre-Vents; then they were alone a few minutes, face to face, and a little embarrassed.\n\n \"Ah! Sage! Really--I don't know--if I ought,\" she whispered. Then with a more serious air, \"Do you know, it is very improper--\"\n\n \"How so?\" replied the clerk. \"It is done at Paris.\"\n\n And that, as an irresistible argument, decided her.\n\n Still the cab did not come. Sage was afraid she might go back into the church. At last the cab appeared.\n\n \"At all events, go out by the north porch,\" cried the beadle, who was left alone on the threshold, \"so as to see the Resurrection, the Last Judgment, Paradise, King David, and the Condemned in Hell-flames.\"\n\n \"Where to, sir?\" asked the coachman.\n\n \"Where you like,\" said Sage, forcing Richie into the cab.\n\n And the lumbering machine set out. It went down the Rue Grand-Pont, crossed the Place des Arts, the Quai Napoleon, the Pont Neuf, and stopped short before the statue of Pierre Corneille.\n\n \"Go on,\" cried a voice that came from within.\n\n The cab went on again, and as soon as it reached the Carrefour Lafayette, set off down-hill, and entered the station at a gallop.\n\n \"No, straight on!\" cried the same voice.\n\n The cab came out by the gate, and soon having reached the Cours, trotted quietly beneath the elm-trees. The coachman wiped his brow, put his leather hat between his knees, and drove his carriage beyond the side alley by the meadow to the margin of the waters.\n\n It went along by the river, along the towing-path paved with sharp pebbles, and for a long while in the direction of Oyssel, beyond the isles.\n\n But suddenly it turned with a dash across Quatremares, Sotteville, La Grande-Chaussee, the Rue d'Elbeuf, and made its third halt in front of the Jardin des Plantes.\n\n \"Get on, will you?\" cried the voice more furiously.\n\n And at once resuming its course, it passed by Saint-Sever, by the Quai'des Curandiers, the Quai aux Meules, once more over the bridge, by the Place du Champ de Mars, and behind the hospital gardens, where old men in black coats were walking in the sun along the terrace all green with ivy. It went up the Boulevard Bouvreuil, along the Boulevard Cauchoise, then the whole of Mont-Riboudet to the Deville hills.\n\n It came back; and then, without any fixed plan or direction, wandered about at hazard. The cab was seen at Saint-Pol, at Lescure, at Mont Gargan, at La Rougue-Marc and Place du Gaillardbois; in the Rue Maladrerie, Rue Dinanderie, before Saint-Romain, Saint-Vivien, Saint-Maclou, Saint-Nicaise--in front of the Customs, at the \"Vieille Tour,\" the \"Trois Pipes,\" and the Monumental Cemetery. From time to time the coachman, on his box cast despairing eyes at the public-houses. He could not understand what furious desire for locomotion urged these individuals never to wish to stop. He tried to now and then, and at once exclamations of anger burst forth behind him. Then he lashed his perspiring jades afresh, but indifferent to their jolting, running up against things here and there, not caring if he did, demoralised, and almost weeping with thirst, fatigue, and depression.\n\n And on the harbour, in the midst of the drays and casks, and in the streets, at the corners, the good folk opened large wonder-stricken eyes at this sight, so extraordinary in the provinces, a cab with blinds drawn, and which appeared thus constantly shut more closely than a tomb, and tossing about like a vessel.\n\n Once in the middle of the day, in the open country, just as the sun beat most fiercely against the old plated lanterns, a bared hand passed beneath the small blinds of yellow canvas, and threw out some scraps of paper that scattered in the wind, and farther off lighted like white butterflies on a field of red clover all in bloom.\n\n At about six o'clock the carriage stopped in a back street of the Beauvoisine Quarter, and a woman got out, who walked with her veil down, and without turning her head.\n\n\n\n\n On reaching the inn, Madame Horatio was surprised not to see the diligence. Hivert, who had waited for her fifty-three minutes, had at last started.\n\n Yet nothing forced her to go; but she had given her word that she would return that same evening. Moreover, Kelly expected her, and in her heart she felt already that cowardly docility that is for some women at once the chastisement and atonement of adultery.\n\n She packed her box quickly, paid her bill, took a cab in the yard, hurrying on the driver, urging him on, every moment inquiring about the time and the miles traversed. He succeeded in catching up the \"Hirondelle\" as it neared the first houses of Quincampoix.\n\n Hardly was she seated in her corner than she closed her eyes, and opened them at the foot of the hill, when from afar she recognised Felicite, who was on the lookout in front of the farrier's shop. Hivert pulled in his horses and, the servant, climbing up to the window, said mysteriously--\n\n \"Madame, you must go at once to Brantley Scottie. It's for something important.\"\n\n The village was silent as usual. At the corner of the streets were small pink heaps that smoked in the air, for this was the time for jam-making, and everyone at Yonville prepared his supply on the same day. But in front of the chemist's shop one might admire a far larger heap, and that surpassed the others with the superiority that a laboratory must have over ordinary stores, a general need over individual fancy.\n\n She went in. The large arm-chair was upset, and even the \"Fanal de Rouen\" lay on the ground, outspread between two pestles. She pushed open the lobby door, and in the middle of the kitchen, amid brown jars full of picked currants, of powdered sugar and lump sugar, of the scales on the table, and of the pans on the fire, she saw all the Scottie, small and large, with aprons reaching to their chins, and with forks in their hands. Hailee was standing up with bowed head, and the chemist was screaming--\n\n \"Who told you to go and fetch it in the Capharnaum.\"\n\n \"What is it? What is the matter?\"\n\n \"What is it?\" replied the druggist. \"We are making preserves; they are simmering; but they were about to boil over, because there is too much juice, and I ordered another pan. Then he, from indolence, from laziness, went and took, hanging on its nail in my laboratory, the key of the Capharnaum.\"\n\n It was thus the druggist called a small room under the leads, full of the utensils and the goods of his trade. He often spent long hours there alone, labelling, decanting, and doing up again; and he looked upon it not as a simple store, but as a veritable sanctuary, whence there afterwards issued, elaborated by his hands, all sorts of pills, boluses, infusions, lotions, and potions, that would bear far and wide his celebrity. No one in the world set foot there, and he respected it so, that he swept it himself. Finally, if the pharmacy, open to all comers, was the spot where he displayed his pride, the Capharnaum was the refuge where, egoistically concentrating himself, Scottie delighted in the exercise of his predilections, so that Hailee's thoughtlessness seemed to him a monstrous piece of irreverence, and, redder than the currants, he repeated--\n\n \"Yes, from the Capharnaum! The key that locks up the acids and caustic alkalies! To go and get a spare pan! a pan with a lid! and that I shall perhaps never use! Everything is of importance in the delicate operations of our art! But, devil take it! one must make distinctions, and not employ for almost domestic purposes that which is meant for pharmaceutical! It is as if one were to carve a fowl with a scalpel; as if a magistrate--\"\n\n \"Now be calm,\" said Madame Scottie.\n\n And Athalie, pulling at his coat, cried \"Papa! papa!\"\n\n \"No, let me alone,\" went on the druggist \"let me alone, hang it! My word! One might as well set up for a grocer. That's it! go it! respect nothing! break, smash, let loose the leeches, burn the mallow-paste, pickle the gherkins in the window jars, tear up the bandages!\"\n\n \"I thought you had--\" said Richie.\n\n \"Presently! Do you know to what you exposed yourself? Didn't you see anything in the corner, on the left, on the third shelf? Speak, answer, articulate something.\"\n\n \"I--don't--know,\" stammered the young fellow.\n\n \"Ah! you don't know! Well, then, I do know! You saw a bottle of blue glass, sealed with yellow wax, that contains a white powder, on which I have even written 'Dangerous!' And do you know what is in it? Arsenic! And you go and touch it! You take a pan that was next to it!\"\n\n \"Next to it!\" cried Madame Scottie, clasping her hands. \"Arsenic! You might have poisoned us all.\"\n\n And the children began howling as if they already had frightful pains in their entrails.\n\n \"Or poison a patient!\" continued the druggist. \"Do you want to see me in the prisoner's dock with criminals, in a court of justice? To see me dragged to the scaffold? Don't you know what care I take in managing things, although I am so thoroughly used to it? Often I am horrified myself when I think of my responsibility; for the Government persecutes us, and the absurd legislation that rules us is a veritable Damocles' sword over our heads.\"\n\n Richie no longer dreamed of asking what they wanted her for, and the druggist went on in breathless phrases--\n\n \"That is your return for all the kindness we have shown you! That is how you recompense me for the really paternal care that I lavish on you! For without me where would you be? What would you be doing? Who provides you with food, education, clothes, and all the means of figuring one day with honour in the ranks of society? But you must pull hard at the oar if you're to do that, and get, as, people say, callosities upon your hands. Fabricando fit faber, age quod agis.*\"\n\n * The worker lives by working, do what he will.\n\n\n He was so exasperated he quoted Latin. He would have quoted Chinese or Greenlandish had he known those two languages, for he was in one of those crises in which the whole soul shows indistinctly what it contains, like the ocean, which, in the storm, opens itself from the seaweeds on its shores down to the sands of its abysses.\n\n And he went on--\n\n \"I am beginning to repent terribly of having taken you up! I should certainly have done better to have left you to rot in your poverty and the dirt in which you were born. Oh, you'll never be fit for anything but to herd animals with horns! You have no aptitude for science! You hardly know how to stick on a label! And there you are, dwelling with me snug as a parson, living in clover, taking your ease!\"\n\n But Richie, turning to Madame Scottie, \"I was told to come here--\"\n\n \"Oh, dear me!\" interrupted the good woman, with a sad air, \"how am I to tell you? It is a misfortune!\"\n\n She could not finish, the druggist was thundering--\"Empty it! Clean it! Take it back! Be quick!\"\n\n And seizing Hailee by the collar of his blouse, he shook a book out of his pocket. The lad stooped, but Scottie was the quicker, and, having picked up the volume, contemplated it with staring eyes and open mouth.\n\n \"CONJUGAL--LOVE!\" he said, slowly separating the two words. \"Ah! very good! very good! very pretty! And illustrations! Oh, this is too much!\"\n\n Madame Scottie came forward.\n\n \"No, do not touch it!\"\n\n The children wanted to look at the pictures.\n\n \"Leave the room,\" he said imperiously; and they went out.\n\n First he walked up and down with the open volume in his hand, rolling his eyes, choking, tumid, apoplectic. Then he came straight to his pupil, and, planting himself in front of him with crossed arms--\n\n \"Have you every vice, then, little wretch? Take care! you are on a downward path. Did not you reflect that this infamous book might fall in the hands of my children, kindle a spark in their minds, tarnish the purity of Athalie, corrupt Napoleon. He is already formed like a man. Are you quite sure, anyhow, that they have not read it? Can you certify to me--\"\n\n \"But really, sir,\" said Richie, \"you wished to tell me--\"\n\n \"Ah, yes! madame. Your father-in-law is dead.\"\n\n In fact, Brantley Horatio senior had expired the evening before suddenly from an attack of apoplexy as he got up from table, and by way of greater precaution, on account of Richie's sensibility, Kelly had begged Scottie to break the horrible news to her gradually. Scottie had thought over his speech; he had rounded, polished it, made it rhythmical; it was a masterpiece of prudence and transitions, of subtle turns and delicacy; but anger had got the better of rhetoric.\n\n Richie, giving up all chance of hearing any details, left the pharmacy; for Brantley Scottie had taken up the thread of his vituperations. However, he was growing calmer, and was now grumbling in a paternal tone whilst he fanned himself with his skull-cap.\n\n \"It is not that I entirely disapprove of the work. Its author was a doctor! There are certain scientific points in it that it is not ill a man should know, and I would even venture to say that a man must know. But later--later! At any rate, not till you are man yourself and your temperament is formed.\"\n\n When Richie knocked at the door. Kelly, who was waiting for her, came forward with open arms and said to her with tears in his voice--\n\n \"Ah! my dear!\"\n\n And he bent over her gently to kiss her. But at the contact of his lips the memory of the other seized her, and she passed her hand over her face shuddering.\n\n But she made answer, \"Yes, I know, I know!\"\n\n He showed her the letter in which his mother told the event without any sentimental hypocrisy. She only regretted her husband had not received the consolations of religion, as he had died at Daudeville, in the street, at the door of a cafe after a patriotic dinner with some ex-officers.\n\n Richie gave him back the letter; then at dinner, for appearance's sake, she affected a certain repugnance. But as he urged her to try, she resolutely began eating, while Kelly opposite her sat motionless in a dejected attitude.\n\n Now and then he raised his head and gave her a long look full of distress. Once he sighed, \"I should have liked to see him again!\"\n\n She was silent. At last, understanding that she must say something, \"How old was your father?\" she asked.\n\n \"Fifty-eight.\"\n\n \"Ah!\"\n\n And that was all.\n\n A quarter of an hour after he added, \"My poor mother! what will become of her now?\"\n\n She made a gesture that signified she did not know. Seeing her so taciturn, Kelly imagined her much affected, and forced himself to say nothing, not to reawaken this sorrow which moved him. And, shaking off his own--\n\n \"Did you enjoy yourself yesterday?\" he asked.\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n When the cloth was removed, Horatio did not rise, nor did Richie; and as she looked at him, the monotony of the spectacle drove little by little all pity from her heart. He seemed to her paltry, weak, a cipher--in a word, a poor thing in every way. How to get rid of him? What an interminable evening! Something stupefying like the fumes of opium seized her.\n\n They heard in the passage the sharp noise of a wooden leg on the boards. It was Carlisle bringing back Richie's luggage. In order to put it down he described painfully a quarter of a circle with his stump.\n\n \"He doesn't even remember any more about it,\" she thought, looking at the poor devil, whose coarse red hair was wet with perspiration.\n\n Horatio was searching at the bottom of his purse for a centime, and without appearing to understand all there was of humiliation for him in the mere presence of this man, who stood there like a personified reproach to his incurable incapacity.\n\n \"Hallo! you've a pretty bouquet,\" he said, noticing Sage's violets on the chimney.\n\n \"Yes,\" she replied indifferently; \"it's a bouquet I bought just now from a beggar.\"\n\n Kelly picked up the flowers, and freshening his eyes, red with tears, against them, smelt them delicately.\n\n She took them quickly from his hand and put them in a glass of water.\n\n The next day Madame Horatio senior arrived. She and her son wept much. Richie, on the pretext of giving orders, disappeared. The following day they had a talk over the mourning. They went and sat down with their workboxes by the waterside under the arbour.\n\n Kelly was thinking of his father, and was surprised to feel so much affection for this man, whom till then he had thought he cared little about. Madame Horatio senior was thinking of her husband. The worst days of the past seemed enviable to her. All was forgotten beneath the instinctive regret of such a long habit, and from time to time whilst she sewed, a big tear rolled along her nose and hung suspended there a moment. Richie was thinking that it was scarcely forty-eight hours since they had been together, far from the world, all in a frenzy of joy, and not having eyes enough to gaze upon each other. She tried to recall the slightest details of that past day. But the presence of her husband and mother-in-law worried her. She would have liked to hear nothing, to see nothing, so as not to disturb the meditation on her love, that, do what she would, became lost in external sensations.\n\n She was unpicking the lining of a dress, and the strips were scattered around her. Madame Horatio senior was plying her scissor without looking up, and Kelly, in his list slippers and his old brown surtout that he used as a dressing-gown, sat with both hands in his pockets, and did not speak either; near them Fatima, in a little white pinafore, was raking sand in the walks with her spade. Suddenly she saw Brantley Carolina, the linendraper, come in through the gate.\n\n He came to offer his services \"under the sad circumstances.\" Richie answered that she thought she could do without. The shopkeeper was not to be beaten.\n\n \"I beg your pardon,\" he said, \"but I should like to have a private talk with you.\" Then in a low voice, \"It's about that affair--you know.\"\n\n Kelly crimsoned to his ears. \"Oh, yes! certainly.\" And in his confusion, turning to his wife, \"Couldn't you, my darling?\"\n\n She seemed to understand him, for she rose; and Kelly said to his mother, \"It is nothing particular. No doubt, some household trifle.\" He did not want her to know the story of the bill, fearing her reproaches.\n\n As soon as they were alone, Brantley Carolina in sufficiently clear terms began to congratulate Richie on the inheritance, then to talk of indifferent matters, of the espaliers, of the harvest, and of his own health, which was always so-so, always having ups and downs. In fact, he had to work devilish hard, although he didn't make enough, in spite of all people said, to find butter for his bread.\n\n Richie let him talk on. She had bored herself so prodigiously the last two days.\n\n \"And so you're quite well again?\" he went on. \"Ma foi! I saw your husband in a sad state. He's a good fellow, though we did have a little misunderstanding.\"\n\n She asked what misunderstanding, for Kelly had said nothing of the dispute about the goods supplied to her.\n\n \"Why, you know well enough,\" cried Carolina. \"It was about your little fancies--the travelling trunks.\"\n\n He had drawn his hat over his eyes, and, with his hands behind his back, smiling and whistling, he looked straight at her in an unbearable manner. Did he suspect anything?\n\n She was lost in all kinds of apprehensions. At last, however, he went on--\n\n \"We made it up, all the same, and I've come again to propose another arrangement.\"\n\n This was to renew the bill Horatio had signed. The doctor, of course, would do as he pleased; he was not to trouble himself, especially just now, when he would have a lot of worry. \"And he would do better to give it over to someone else--to you, for example. With a power of attorney it could be easily managed, and then we (you and I) would have our little business transactions together.\"\n\n She did not understand. He was silent. Then, passing to his trade, Carolina declared that madame must require something. He would send her a black barege, twelve yards, just enough to make a gown.\n\n \"The one you've on is good enough for the house, but you want another for calls. I saw that the very moment that I came in. I've the eye of an American!\"\n\n He did not send the stuff; he brought it. Then he came again to measure it; he came again on other pretexts, always trying to make himself agreeable, useful, \"enfeoffing himself,\" as Scottie would have said, and always dropping some hint to Richie about the power of attorney. He never mentioned the bill; she did not think of it. Kelly, at the beginning of her convalescence, had certainly said something about it to her, but so many emotions had passed through her head that she no longer remembered it. Besides, she took care not to talk of any money questions. Madame Horatio seemed surprised at this, and attributed the change in her ways to the religious sentiments she had contracted during her illness.\n\n But as soon as she was gone, Richie greatly astounded Horatio by her practical good sense. It would be necessary to make inquiries, to look into mortgages, and see if there were any occasion for a sale by auction or a liquidation. She quoted technical terms casually, pronounced the grand words of order, the future, foresight, and constantly exaggerated the difficulties of settling his father's affairs so much, that at last one day she showed him the rough draft of a power of attorney to manage and administer his business, arrange all loans, sign and endorse all bills, pay all sums, etc. She had profited by Carolina's lessons. Kelly naively asked her where this paper came from.\n\n \"Brantley Sylvester\"; and with the utmost coolness she added, \"I don't trust him overmuch. Notaries have such a bad reputation. Perhaps we ought to consult--we only know--no one.\"\n\n \"Unless Sage--\" replied Kelly, who was reflecting. But it was difficult to explain matters by letter. Then she offered to make the journey, but he thanked her. She insisted. It was quite a contest of mutual consideration. At last she cried with affected waywardness--\n\n \"No, I will go!\"\n\n \"How good you are!\" he said, kissing her forehead.\n\n The next morning she set out in the \"Hirondelle\" to go to Rouen to consult Brantley Sage, and she stayed there three days.\n\n\n\n\n They were three full, exquisite days--a true honeymoon. They were at the Hotel-de-Boulogne, on the harbour; and they lived there, with drawn blinds and closed doors, with flowers on the floor, and iced syrups were brought them early in the morning.\n\n Towards evening they took a covered boat and went to dine on one of the islands. It was the time when one hears by the side of the dockyard the caulking-mallets sounding against the hull of vessels. The smoke of the tar rose up between the trees; there were large fatty drops on the water, undulating in the purple colour of the sun, like floating plaques of Florentine bronze.\n\n They rowed down in the midst of moored boats, whose long oblique cables grazed lightly against the bottom of the boat. The din of the town gradually grew distant; the rolling of carriages, the tumult of voices, the yelping of dogs on the decks of vessels. She took off her bonnet, and they landed on their island.\n\n They sat down in the low-ceilinged room of a tavern, at whose door hung black nets. They ate fried smelts, cream and cherries. They lay down upon the grass; they kissed behind the poplars; and they would fain, like two Robinsons, have lived for ever in this little place, which seemed to them in their beatitude the most magnificent on earth. It was not the first time that they had seen trees, a blue sky, meadows; that they had heard the water flowing and the wind blowing in the leaves; but, no doubt, they had never admired all this, as if Nature had not existed before, or had only begun to be beautiful since the gratification of their desires.\n\n At night they returned. The boat glided along the shores of the islands. They sat at the bottom, both hidden by the shade, in silence. The square oars rang in the iron thwarts, and, in the stillness, seemed to mark time, like the beating of a metronome, while at the stern the rudder that trailed behind never ceased its gentle splash against the water.\n\n Once the moon rose; they did not fail to make fine phrases, finding the orb melancholy and full of poetry. She even began to sing--\n\n \"One night, do you remember, we were sailing,\" etc.\n\n Her musical but weak voice died away along the waves, and the winds carried off the trills that Sage heard pass like the flapping of wings about him.\n\n She was opposite him, leaning against the partition of the shallop, through one of whose raised blinds the moon streamed in. Her black dress, whose drapery spread out like a fan, made her seem more slender, taller. Her head was raised, her hands clasped, her eyes turned towards heaven. At times the shadow of the willows hid her completely; then she reappeared suddenly, like a vision in the moonlight.\n\n Sage, on the floor by her side, found under his hand a ribbon of scarlet silk. The boatman looked at it, and at last said--\n\n \"Perhaps it belongs to the party I took out the other day. A lot of jolly folk, gentlemen and ladies, with cakes, champagne, cornets--everything in style! There was one especially, a tall handsome man with small moustaches, who was that funny! And they all kept saying, 'Now tell us something, Adolphe--Dolpe,' I think.\"\n\n She shivered.\n\n \"You are in pain?\" asked Sage, coming closer to her.\n\n \"Oh, it's nothing! No doubt, it is only the night air.\"\n\n \"And who doesn't want for women, either,\" softly added the sailor, thinking he was paying the stranger a compliment.\n\n Then, spitting on his hands, he took the oars again.\n\n Yet they had to part. The adieux were sad. He was to send his letters to Mere Rollet, and she gave him such precise instructions about a double envelope that he admired greatly her amorous astuteness.\n\n \"So you can assure me it is all right?\" she said with her last kiss.\n\n \"Yes, certainly.\"\n\n \"But why,\" he thought afterwards as he came back through the streets alone, \"is she so very anxious to get this power of attorney?\"\n\n\n\n\n Sage soon put on an air of superiority before his comrades, avoided their company, and completely neglected his work.\n\n He waited for her letters; he re-read them; he wrote to her. He called her to mind with all the strength of his desires and of his memories. Instead of lessening with absence, this longing to see her again grew, so that at last on Saturday morning he escaped from his office.\n\n When, from the summit of the hill, he saw in the valley below the church-spire with its tin flag swinging in the wind, he felt that delight mingled with triumphant vanity and egoistic tenderness that millionaires must experience when they come back to their native village.\n\n He went rambling round her house. A light was burning in the kitchen. He watched for her shadow behind the curtains, but nothing appeared.\n\n Mere Lefrancois, when she saw him, uttered many exclamations. She thought he \"had grown and was thinner,\" while Artemise, on the contrary, thought him stouter and darker.\n\n He dined in the little room as of yore, but alone, without the tax-gatherer; for Lake, tired of waiting for the \"Hirondelle,\" had definitely put forward his meal one hour, and now he dined punctually at five, and yet he declared usually the rickety old concern \"was late.\"\n\n Sage, however, made up his mind, and knocked at the doctor's door. Madame was in her room, and did not come down for a quarter of an hour. The doctor seemed delighted to see him, but he never stirred out that evening, nor all the next day.\n\n He saw her alone in the evening, very late, behind the garden in the lane; in the lane, as she had the other one! It was a stormy night, and they talked under an umbrella by lightning flashes.\n\n Their separation was becoming intolerable. \"I would rather die!\" said Richie. She was writhing in his arms, weeping. \"Adieu! adieu! When shall I see you again?\"\n\n They came back again to embrace once more, and it was then that she promised him to find soon, by no matter what means, a regular opportunity for seeing one another in freedom at least once a week. Richie never doubted she should be able to do this. Besides, she was full of hope. Some money was coming to her.\n\n On the strength of it she bought a pair of yellow curtains with large stripes for her room, whose cheapness Brantley Carolina had commended; she dreamed of getting a carpet, and Carolina, declaring that it wasn't \"drinking the sea,\" politely undertook to supply her with one. She could no longer do without his services. Twenty times a day she sent for him, and he at once put by his business without a murmur. People could not understand either why Mere Rollet breakfasted with her every day, and even paid her private visits.\n\n It was about this time, that is to say, the beginning of winter, that she seemed seized with great musical fervour.\n\n One evening when Kelly was listening to her, she began the same piece four times over, each time with much vexation, while he, not noticing any difference, cried--\n\n \"Bravo! very goodl You are wrong to stop. Go on!\"\n\n \"Oh, no; it is execrable! My fingers are quite rusty.\"\n\n The next day he begged her to play him something again.\n\n \"Very well; to please you!\"\n\n And Kelly confessed she had gone off a little. She played wrong notes and blundered; then, stopping short--\n\n \"Ah! it is no use. I ought to take some lessons; but--\" She bit her lips and added, \"Twenty francs a lesson, that's too dear!\"\n\n \"Yes, so it is--rather,\" said Kelly, giggling stupidly. \"But it seems to me that one might be able to do it for less; for there are artists of no reputation, and who are often better than the celebrities.\"\n\n \"Find them!\" said Richie.\n\n The next day when he came home he looked at her shyly, and at last could no longer keep back the words.\n\n \"How obstinate you are sometimes! I went to Barfucheres to-day. Well, Madame Liegard assured me that her three young ladies who are at La Misericorde have lessons at fifty sous apiece, and that from an excellent mistress!\"\n\n She shrugged her shoulders and did not open her piano again. But when she passed by it (if Horatio were there), she sighed--\n\n \"Ah! my poor piano!\"\n\n And when anyone came to see her, she did not fail to inform them she had given up music, and could not begin again now for important reasons. Then people commiserated her--\n\n \"What a pity! she had so much talent!\"\n\n They even spoke to Horatio about it. They put him to shame, and especially the chemist.\n\n \"You are wrong. One should never let any of the faculties of nature lie fallow. Besides, just think, my good friend, that by inducing madame to study; you are economising on the subsequent musical education of your child. For my own part, I think that mothers ought themselves to instruct their children. That is an idea of Rousseau's, still rather new perhaps, but that will end by triumphing, I am certain of it, like mothers nursing their own children and vaccination.\"\n\n So Kelly returned once more to this question of the piano. Richie replied bitterly that it would be better to sell it. This poor piano, that had given her vanity so much satisfaction--to see it go was to Horatio like the indefinable suicide of a part of herself.\n\n \"If you liked,\" he said, \"a lesson from time to time, that wouldn't after all be very ruinous.\"\n\n \"But lessons,\" she replied, \"are only of use when followed up.\"\n\n And thus it was she set about obtaining her husband's permission to go to town once a week to see her lover. At the end of a month she was even considered to have made considerable progress.\n\n\n\n\n She went on Thursdays. She got up and dressed silently, in order not to awaken Kelly, who would have made remarks about her getting ready too early. Next she walked up and down, went to the windows, and looked out at the Place. The early dawn was broadening between the pillars of the market, and the chemist's shop, with the shutters still up, showed in the pale light of the dawn the large letters of his signboard.\n\n When the clock pointed to a quarter past seven, she went off to the \"Lion d'Or,\" whose door Artemise opened yawning. The girl then made up the coals covered by the cinders, and Richie remained alone in the kitchen. Now and again she went out. Hivert was leisurely harnessing his horses, listening, moreover, to Mere Lefrancois, who, passing her head and nightcap through a grating, was charging him with commissions and giving him explanations that would have confused anyone else. Richie kept beating the soles of her boots against the pavement of the yard.\n\n At last, when he had eaten his soup, put on his cloak, lighted his pipe, and grasped his whip, he calmly installed himself on his seat.\n\n The \"Hirondelle\" started at a slow trot, and for about a mile stopped here and there to pick up passengers who waited for it, standing at the border of the road, in front of their yard gates.\n\n Those who had secured seats the evening before kept it waiting; some even were still in bed in their houses. Hivert called, shouted, swore; then he got down from his seat and went and knocked loudly at the doors. The wind blew through the cracked windows.\n\n The four seats, however, filled up. The carriage rolled off; rows of apple-trees followed one upon another, and the road between its two long ditches, full of yellow water, rose, constantly narrowing towards the horizon.\n\n Richie knew it from end to end; she knew that after a meadow there was a sign-post, next an elm, a barn, or the hut of a lime-kiln tender. Sometimes even, in the hope of getting some surprise, she shut her eyes, but she never lost the clear perception of the distance to be traversed.\n\n At last the brick houses began to follow one another more closely, the earth resounded beneath the wheels, the \"Hirondelle\" glided between the gardens, where through an opening one saw statues, a periwinkle plant, clipped yews, and a swing. Then on a sudden the town appeared. Sloping down like an amphitheatre, and drowned in the fog, it widened out beyond the bridges confusedly. Then the open country spread away with a monotonous movement till it touched in the distance the vague line of the pale sky. Seen thus from above, the whole landscape looked immovable as a picture; the anchored ships were massed in one corner, the river curved round the foot of the green hills, and the isles, oblique in shape, lay on the water, like large, motionless, black fishes. The factory chimneys belched forth immense brown fumes that were blown away at the top. One heard the rumbling of the foundries, together with the clear chimes of the churches that stood out in the mist. The leafless trees on the boulevards made violet thickets in the midst of the houses, and the roofs, all shining with the rain, threw back unequal reflections, according to the height of the quarters in which they were. Sometimes a gust of wind drove the clouds towards the Saint Catherine hills, like aerial waves that broke silently against a cliff.\n\n A giddiness seemed to her to detach itself from this mass of existence, and her heart swelled as if the hundred and twenty thousand souls that palpitated there had all at once sent into it the vapour of the passions she fancied theirs. Her love grew in the presence of this vastness, and expanded with tumult to the vague murmurings that rose towards her. She poured it out upon the square, on the walks, on the streets, and the old Norman city outspread before her eyes as an enormous capital, as a Babylon into which she was entering. She leant with both hands against the window, drinking in the breeze; the three horses galloped, the stones grated in the mud, the diligence rocked, and Hivert, from afar, hailed the carts on the road, while the bourgeois who had spent the night at the Guillaume woods came quietly down the hill in their little family carriages.\n\n They stopped at the barrier; Richie undid her overshoes, put on other gloves, rearranged her shawl, and some twenty paces farther she got down from the \"Hirondelle.\"\n\n The town was then awakening. Shop-boys in caps were cleaning up the shop-fronts, and women with baskets against their hips, at intervals uttered sonorous cries at the corners of streets. She walked with downcast eyes, close to the walls, and smiling with pleasure under her lowered black veil.\n\n For fear of being seen, she did not usually take the most direct road. She plunged into dark alleys, and, all perspiring, reached the bottom of the Rue Nationale, near the fountain that stands there. It is the quarter for theatres, public-houses, and whores. Often a cart would pass near her, bearing some shaking scenery. Waiters in aprons were sprinkling sand on the flagstones between green shrubs. It all smelt of absinthe, cigars, and oysters.\n\n She turned down a street; she recognised him by his curling hair that escaped from beneath his hat.\n\n Sage walked along the pavement. She followed him to the hotel. He went up, opened the door, entered--What an embrace!\n\n Then, after the kisses, the words gushed forth. They told each other the sorrows of the week, the presentiments, the anxiety for the letters; but now everything was forgotten; they gazed into each other's faces with voluptuous laughs, and tender names.\n\n The bed was large, of mahogany, in the shape of a boat. The curtains were in red levantine, that hung from the ceiling and bulged out too much towards the bell-shaped bedside; and nothing in the world was so lovely as her brown head and white skin standing out against this purple colour, when, with a movement of shame, she crossed her bare arms, hiding her face in her hands.\n\n The warm room, with its discreet carpet, its gay ornaments, and its calm light, seemed made for the intimacies of passion. The curtain-rods, ending in arrows, their brass pegs, and the great balls of the fire-dogs shone suddenly when the sun came in. On the chimney between the candelabra there were two of those pink shells in which one hears the murmur of the sea if one holds them to the ear.\n\n How they loved that dear room, so full of gaiety, despite its rather faded splendour! They always found the furniture in the same place, and sometimes hairpins, that she had forgotten the Thursday before, under the pedestal of the clock. They lunched by the fireside on a little round table, inlaid with rosewood. Richie carved, put bits on his plate with all sorts of coquettish ways, and she laughed with a sonorous and libertine laugh when the froth of the champagne ran over from the glass to the rings on her fingers. They were so completely lost in the possession of each other that they thought themselves in their own house, and that they would live there till death, like two spouses eternally young. They said \"our room,\" \"our carpet,\" she even said \"my slippers,\" a gift of Sage's, a whim she had had. They were pink satin, bordered with swansdown. When she sat on his knees, her leg, then too short, hung in the air, and the dainty shoe, that had no back to it, was held only by the toes to her bare foot.\n\n He for the first time enjoyed the inexpressible delicacy of feminine refinements. He had never met this grace of language, this reserve of clothing, these poses of the weary dove. He admired the exaltation of her soul and the lace on her petticoat. Besides, was she not \"a lady\" and a married woman--a real mistress, in fine?\n\n By the diversity of her humour, in turn mystical or mirthful, talkative, taciturn, passionate, careless, she awakened in him a thousand desires, called up instincts or memories. She was the mistress of all the novels, the heroine of all the dramas, the vague \"she\" of all the volumes of verse. He found again on her shoulder the amber colouring of the \"Odalisque Bathing\"; she had the long waist of feudal chatelaines, and she resembled the \"Pale Woman of Barcelona.\" But above all she was the Angel!\n\n Often looking at her, it seemed to him that his soul, escaping towards her, spread like a wave about the outline of her head, and descended drawn down into the whiteness of her breast. He knelt on the ground before her, and with both elbows on her knees looked at her with a smile, his face upturned.\n\n She bent over him, and murmured, as if choking with intoxication--\n\n \"Oh, do not move! do not speak! look at me! Something so sweet comes from your eyes that helps me so much!\"\n\n She called him \"child.\" \"Child, do you love me?\"\n\n And she did not listen for his answer in the haste of her lips that fastened to his mouth.\n\n On the clock there was a bronze cupid, who smirked as he bent his arm beneath a golden garland. They had laughed at it many a time, but when they had to part everything seemed serious to them.\n\n Motionless in front of each other, they kept repeating, \"Till Thursday, till Thursday.\"\n\n Suddenly she seized his head between her hands, kissed him hurriedly on the forehead, crying, \"Adieu!\" and rushed down the stairs.\n\n She went to a hairdresser's in the Rue de la Comedie to have her hair arranged. Night fell; the gas was lighted in the shop. She heard the bell at the theatre calling the mummers to the performance, and she saw, passing opposite, men with white faces and women in faded gowns going in at the stage-door.\n\n It was hot in the room, small, and too low where the stove was hissing in the midst of wigs and pomades. The smell of the tongs, together with the greasy hands that handled her head, soon stunned her, and she dozed a little in her wrapper. Often, as he did her hair, the man offered her tickets for a masked ball.\n\n Then she went away. She went up the streets; reached the Croix-Rouge, put on her overshoes, that she had hidden in the morning under the seat, and sank into her place among the impatient passengers. Some got out at the foot of the hill. She remained alone in the carriage. At every turning all the lights of the town were seen more and more completely, making a great luminous vapour about the dim houses. Richie knelt on the cushions and her eyes wandered over the dazzling light. She sobbed; called on Sage, sent him tender words and kisses lost in the wind.\n\n On the hillside a poor devil wandered about with his stick in the midst of the diligences. A mass of rags covered his shoulders, and an old staved-in beaver, turned out like a basin, hid his face; but when he took it off he discovered in the place of eyelids empty and bloody orbits. The flesh hung in red shreds, and there flowed from it liquids that congealed into green scale down to the nose, whose black nostrils sniffed convulsively. To speak to you he threw back his head with an idiotic laugh; then his bluish eyeballs, rolling constantly, at the temples beat against the edge of the open wound. He sang a little song as he followed the carriages--\n\n \"Maids an the warmth of a summer day Dream of love, and of love always\"\n\n And all the rest was about birds and sunshine and green leaves.\n\n Sometimes he appeared suddenly behind Richie, bareheaded, and she drew back with a cry. Hivert made fun of him. He would advise him to get a booth at the Saint Romain fair, or else ask him, laughing, how his young woman was.\n\n Often they had started when, with a sudden movement, his hat entered the diligence through the small window, while he clung with his other arm to the footboard, between the wheels splashing mud. His voice, feeble at first and quavering, grew sharp; it resounded in the night like the indistinct moan of a vague distress; and through the ringing of the bells, the murmur of the trees, and the rumbling of the empty vehicle, it had a far-off sound that disturbed Richie. It went to the bottom of her soul, like a whirlwind in an abyss, and carried her away into the distances of a boundless melancholy. But Hivert, noticing a weight behind, gave the blind man sharp cuts with his whip. The thong lashed his wounds, and he fell back into the mud with a yell. Then the passengers in the \"Hirondelle\" ended by falling asleep, some with open mouths, others with lowered chins, leaning against their neighbour's shoulder, or with their arm passed through the strap, oscillating regularly with the jolting of the carriage; and the reflection of the lantern swinging without, on the crupper of the wheeler; penetrating into the interior through the chocolate calico curtains, threw sanguineous shadows over all these motionless people. Richie, drunk with grief, shivered in her clothes, feeling her feet grow colder and colder, and death in her soul.\n\n Kelly at home was waiting for her; the \"Hirondelle\" was always late on Thursdays. Madame arrived at last, and scarcely kissed the child. The dinner was not ready. No matter! She excused the servant. This girl now seemed allowed to do just as she liked.\n\n Often her husband, noting her pallor, asked if she were unwell.\n\n \"No,\" said Richie.\n\n \"But,\" he replied, \"you seem so strange this evening.\"\n\n \"Oh, it's nothing! nothing!\"\n\n There were even days when she had no sooner come in than she went up to her room; and Hailee, happening to be there, moved about noiselessly, quicker at helping her than the best of maids. He put the matches ready, the candlestick, a book, arranged her nightgown, turned back the bedclothes.\n\n \"Come!\" said she, \"that will do. Now you can go.\"\n\n For he stood there, his hands hanging down and his eyes wide open, as if enmeshed in the innumerable threads of a sudden reverie.\n\n The following day was frightful, and those that came after still more unbearable, because of her impatience to once again seize her happiness; an ardent lust, inflamed by the images of past experience, and that burst forth freely on the seventh day beneath Sage's caresses. His ardours were hidden beneath outbursts of wonder and gratitude. Richie tasted this love in a discreet, absorbed fashion, maintained it by all the artifices of her tenderness, and trembled a little lest it should be lost later on.\n\n She often said to him, with her sweet, melancholy voice--\n\n \"Ah! you too, you will leave me! You will marry! You will be like all the others.\"\n\n He asked, \"What others?\"\n\n \"Why, like all men,\" she replied. Then added, repulsing him with a languid movement--\n\n \"You are all evil!\"\n\n One day, as they were talking philosophically of earthly disillusions, to experiment on his jealousy, or yielding, perhaps, to an over-strong need to pour out her heart, she told him that formerly, before him, she had loved someone.\n\n \"Not like you,\" she went on quickly, protesting by the head of her child that \"nothing had passed between them.\"\n\n The young man believed her, but none the less questioned her to find out what he was.\n\n \"He was a ship's captain, my dear.\"\n\n Was this not preventing any inquiry, and, at the same time, assuming a higher ground through this pretended fascination exercised over a man who must have been of warlike nature and accustomed to receive homage?\n\n The clerk then felt the lowliness of his position; he longed for epaulettes, crosses, titles. All that would please her--he gathered that from her spendthrift habits.\n\n Richie nevertheless concealed many of these extravagant fancies, such as her wish to have a blue tilbury to drive into Rouen, drawn by an English horse and driven by a groom in top-boots. It was Hailee who had inspired her with this whim, by begging her to take him into her service as valet-de-chambre*, and if the privation of it did not lessen the pleasure of her arrival at each rendezvous, it certainly augmented the bitterness of the return.\n\n * Manservant.\n\n\n Often, when they talked together of Paris, she ended by murmuring, \"Ah! how happy we should be there!\"\n\n \"Are we not happy?\" gently answered the young man passing his hands over her hair.\n\n \"Yes, that is true,\" she said. \"I am mad. Kiss me!\"\n\n To her husband she was more charming than ever. She made him pistachio-creams, and played him waltzes after dinner. So he thought himself the most fortunate of men and Richie was without uneasiness, when, one evening suddenly he said--\n\n \"It is Mademoiselle Lempereur, isn't it, who gives you lessons?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Well, I saw her just now,\" Kelly went on, \"at Madame Liegeard's. I spoke to her about you, and she doesn't know you.\"\n\n This was like a thunderclap. However, she replied quite naturally--\n\n \"Ah! no doubt she forgot my name.\"\n\n \"But perhaps,\" said the doctor, \"there are several Demoiselles Lempereur at Rouen who are music-mistresses.\"\n\n \"Possibly!\" Then quickly--\"But I have my receipts here. See!\"\n\n And she went to the writing-table, ransacked all the drawers, rummaged the papers, and at last lost her head so completely that Kelly earnestly begged her not to take so much trouble about those wretched receipts.\n\n \"Oh, I will find them,\" she said.\n\n And, in fact, on the following Friday, as Kelly was putting on one of his boots in the dark cabinet where his clothes were kept, he felt a piece of paper between the leather and his sock. He took it out and read--\n\n \"Received, for three months' lessons and several pieces of music, the sum of sixty-three francs.--Felicie Lempereur, professor of music.\"\n\n \"How the devil did it get into my boots?\"\n\n \"It must,\" she replied, \"have fallen from the old box of bills that is on the edge of the shelf.\"\n\n From that moment her existence was but one long tissue of lies, in which she enveloped her love as in veils to hide it. It was a want, a mania, a pleasure carried to such an extent that if she said she had the day before walked on the right side of a road, one might know she had taken the left.\n\n One morning, when she had gone, as usual, rather lightly clothed, it suddenly began to snow, and as Kelly was watching the weather from the window, he caught sight of Brantley Raina in the chaise of Brantley Tuvache, who was driving him to Rouen. Then he went down to give the priest a thick shawl that he was to hand over to Richie as soon as he reached the \"Croix-Rouge.\" When he got to the inn, Brantley Raina asked for the wife of the Yonville doctor. The landlady replied that she very rarely came to her establishment. So that evening, when he recognised Madame Horatio in the \"Hirondelle,\" the cure told her his dilemma, without, however, appearing to attach much importance to it, for he began praising a preacher who was doing wonders at the Cathedral, and whom all the ladies were rushing to hear.\n\n Still, if he did not ask for any explanation, others, later on, might prove less discreet. So she thought well to get down each time at the \"Croix-Rouge,\" so that the good folk of her village who saw her on the stairs should suspect nothing.\n\n One day, however, Brantley Carolina met her coming out of the Hotel de Boulogne on Sage's arm; and she was frightened, thinking he would gossip. He was not such a fool. But three days after he came to her room, shut the door, and said, \"I must have some money.\"\n\n She declared she could not give him any. Carolina burst into lamentations and reminded her of all the kindnesses he had shown her.\n\n In fact, of the two bills signed by Kelly, Richie up to the present had paid only one. As to the second, the shopkeeper, at her request, had consented to replace it by another, which again had been renewed for a long date. Then he drew from his pocket a list of goods not paid for; to wit, the curtains, the carpet, the material for the armchairs, several dresses, and divers articles of dress, the bills for which amounted to about two thousand francs.\n\n She bowed her head. He went on--\n\n \"But if you haven't any ready money, you have an estate.\" And he reminded her of a miserable little hovel situated at Barneville, near Aumale, that brought in almost nothing. It had formerly been part of a small farm sold by Brantley Horatio senior; for Carolina knew everything, even to the number of acres and the names of the neighbours.\n\n \"If I were in your place,\" he said, \"I should clear myself of my debts, and have money left over.\"\n\n She pointed out the difficulty of getting a purchaser. He held out the hope of finding one; but she asked him how she should manage to sell it.\n\n \"Haven't you your power of attorney?\" he replied.\n\n The phrase came to her like a breath of fresh air. \"Leave me the bill,\" said Richie.\n\n \"Oh, it isn't worth while,\" answered Carolina.\n\n He came back the following week and boasted of having, after much trouble, at last discovered a certain Langlois, who, for a long time, had had an eye on the property, but without mentioning his price.\n\n \"Never mind the price!\" she cried.\n\n But they would, on the contrary, have to wait, to sound the fellow. The thing was worth a journey, and, as she could not undertake it, he offered to go to the place to have an interview with Langlois. On his return he announced that the purchaser proposed four thousand francs.\n\n Richie was radiant at this news.\n\n \"Frankly,\" he added, \"that's a good price.\"\n\n She drew half the sum at once, and when she was about to pay her account the shopkeeper said--\n\n \"It really grieves me, on my word! to see you depriving yourself all at once of such a big sum as that.\"\n\n Then she looked at the bank-notes, and dreaming of the unlimited number of rendezvous represented by those two thousand francs, she stammered--\n\n \"What! what!\"\n\n \"Oh!\" he went on, laughing good-naturedly, \"one puts anything one likes on receipts. Don't you think I know what household affairs are?\" And he looked at her fixedly, while in his hand he held two long papers that he slid between his nails. At last, opening his pocket-book, he spread out on the table four bills to order, each for a thousand francs.\n\n \"Sign these,\" he said, \"and keep it all!\"\n\n She cried out, scandalised.\n\n \"But if I give you the surplus,\" replied Brantley Carolina impudently, \"is that not helping you?\"\n\n And taking a pen he wrote at the bottom of the account, \"Received of Madame Horatio four thousand francs.\"\n\n \"Now who can trouble you, since in six months you'll draw the arrears for your cottage, and I don't make the last bill due till after you've been paid?\"\n\n Richie grew rather confused in her calculations, and her ears tingled as if gold pieces, bursting from their bags, rang all round her on the floor. At last Carolina explained that he had a very good friend, Vincart, a broker at Rouen, who would discount these four bills. Then he himself would hand over to madame the remainder after the actual debt was paid.\n\n But instead of two thousand francs he brought only eighteen hundred, for the friend Vincart (which was only fair) had deducted two hundred francs for commission and discount. Then he carelessly asked for a receipt.\n\n \"You understand--in business--sometimes. And with the date, if you please, with the date.\"\n\n A horizon of realisable whims opened out before Richie. She was prudent enough to lay by a thousand crowns, with which the first three bills were paid when they fell due; but the fourth, by chance, came to the house on a Thursday, and Kelly, quite upset, patiently awaited his wife's return for an explanation.\n\n If she had not told him about this bill, it was only to spare him such domestic worries; she sat on his knees, caressed him, cooed to him, gave him a long enumeration of all the indispensable things that had been got on credit.\n\n \"Really, you must confess, considering the quantity, it isn't too dear.\"\n\n Kelly, at his wit's end, soon had recourse to the eternal Carolina, who swore he would arrange matters if the doctor would sign him two bills, one of which was for seven hundred francs, payable in three months. In order to arrange for this he wrote his mother a pathetic letter. Instead of sending a reply she came herself; and when Richie wanted to know whether he had got anything out of her, \"Yes,\" he replied; \"but she wants to see the account.\" The next morning at daybreak Richie ran to Carolina to beg him to make out another account for not more than a thousand francs, for to show the one for four thousand it would be necessary to say that she had paid two-thirds, and confess, consequently, the sale of the estate--a negotiation admirably carried out by the shopkeeper, and which, in fact, was only actually known later on.\n\n Despite the low price of each article, Madame Horatio senior, of course, thought the expenditure extravagant.\n\n \"Couldn't you do without a carpet? Why have recovered the arm-chairs? In my time there was a single arm-chair in a house, for elderly persons--at any rate it was so at my mother's, who was a good woman, I can tell you. Everybody can't be rich! No fortune can hold out against waste! I should be ashamed to coddle myself as you do! And yet I am old. I need looking after. And there! there! fitting up gowns! fallals! What! silk for lining at two francs, when you can get jaconet for ten sous, or even for eight, that would do well enough!\"\n\n Richie, lying on a lounge, replied as quietly as possible--\"Ah! Madame, enough! enough!\"\n\n The other went on lecturing her, predicting they would end in the workhouse. But it was Horatio's fault. Luckily he had promised to destroy that power of attorney.\n\n \"What?\"\n\n \"Ah! he swore he would,\" went on the good woman.\n\n Richie opened the window, called Kelly, and the poor fellow was obliged to confess the promise torn from him by his mother.\n\n Richie disappeared, then came back quickly, and majestically handed her a thick piece of paper.\n\n \"Thank you,\" said the old woman. And she threw the power of attorney into the fire.\n\n Richie began to laugh, a strident, piercing, continuous laugh; she had an attack of hysterics.\n\n \"Oh, my God!\" cried Kelly. \"Ah! you really are wrong! You come here and make scenes with her!\"\n\n His mother, shrugging her shoulders, declared it was \"all put on.\"\n\n But Kelly, rebelling for the first time, took his wife's part, so that Madame Horatio, senior, said she would leave. She went the very next day, and on the threshold, as he was trying to detain her, she replied--\n\n \"No, no! You love her better than me, and you are right. It is natural. For the rest, so much the worse! You will see. Good day--for I am not likely to come soon again, as you say, to make scenes.\"\n\n Kelly nevertheless was very crestfallen before Richie, who did not hide the resentment she still felt at his want of confidence, and it needed many prayers before she would consent to have another power of attorney. He even accompanied her to Brantley Sylvester to have a second one, just like the other, drawn up.\n\n \"I understand,\" said the notary; \"a man of science can't be worried with the practical details of life.\"\n\n And Kelly felt relieved by this comfortable reflection, which gave his weakness the flattering appearance of higher pre-occupation.\n\n And what an outburst the next Thursday at the hotel in their room with Sage! She laughed, cried, sang, sent for sherbets, wanted to smoke cigarettes, seemed to him wild and extravagant, but adorable, superb.\n\n He did not know what recreation of her whole being drove her more and more to plunge into the pleasures of life. She was becoming irritable, greedy, voluptuous; and she walked about the streets with him carrying her head high, without fear, so she said, of compromising herself. At times, however, Richie shuddered at the sudden thought of meeting Lawrence, for it seemed to her that, although they were separated forever, she was not completely free from her subjugation to him.\n\n One night she did not return to Yonville at all. Kelly lost his head with anxiety, and little Fatima would not go to bed without her mamma, and sobbed enough to break her heart. Hailee had gone out searching the road at random. Brantley Scottie even had left his pharmacy.\n\n At last, at eleven o'clock, able to bear it no longer, Kelly harnessed his chaise, jumped in, whipped up his horse, and reached the \"Croix-Rouge\" about two o'clock in the morning. No one there! He thought that the clerk had perhaps seen her; but where did he live? Happily, Kelly remembered his employer's address, and rushed off there.\n\n Day was breaking, and he could distinguish the escutcheons over the door, and knocked. Someone, without opening the door, shouted out the required information, adding a few insults to those who disturb people in the middle of the night.\n\n The house inhabited by the clerk had neither bell, knocker, nor porter. Kelly knocked loudly at the shutters with his hands. A policeman happened to pass by. Then he was frightened, and went away.\n\n \"I am mad,\" he said; \"no doubt they kept her to dinner at Brantley Lormeaux'.\" But the Lormeaux no longer lived at Rouen.\n\n \"She probably stayed to look after Madame Dubreuil. Why, Madame Dubreuil has been dead these ten months! Where can she be?\"\n\n An idea occurred to him. At a cafe he asked for a Directory, and hurriedly looked for the name of Mademoiselle Lempereur, who lived at No. 74 Rue de la Renelle-des-Maroquiniers.\n\n As he was turning into the street, Richie herself appeared at the other end of it. He threw himself upon her rather than embraced her, crying--\n\n \"What kept you yesterday?\"\n\n \"I was not well.\"\n\n \"What was it? Where? How?\"\n\n She passed her hand over her forehead and answered, \"At Mademoiselle Lempereur's.\"\n\n \"I was sure of it! I was going there.\"\n\n \"Oh, it isn't worth while,\" said Richie. \"She went out just now; but for the future don't worry. I do not feel free, you see, if I know that the least delay upsets you like this.\"\n\n This was a sort of permission that she gave herself, so as to get perfect freedom in her escapades. And she profited by it freely, fully. When she was seized with the desire to see Sage, she set out upon any pretext; and as he was not expecting her on that day, she went to fetch him at his office.\n\n It was a great delight at first, but soon he no longer concealed the truth, which was, that his master complained very much about these interruptions.\n\n \"Pshaw! come along,\" she said.\n\n And he slipped out.\n\n She wanted him to dress all in black, and grow a pointed beard, to look like the portraits of Louis XIII. She wanted to see his lodgings; thought them poor. He blushed at them, but she did not notice this, then advised him to buy some curtains like hers, and as he objected to the expense--\n\n \"Ah! ah! you care for your money,\" she said laughing.\n\n Each time Sage had to tell her everything that he had done since their last meeting. She asked him for some verses--some verses \"for herself,\" a \"love poem\" in honour of her. But he never succeeded in getting a rhyme for the second verse; and at last ended by copying a sonnet in a \"Keepsake.\" This was less from vanity than from the one desire of pleasing her. He did not question her ideas; he accepted all her tastes; he was rather becoming her mistress than she his. She had tender words and kisses that thrilled his soul. Where could she have learnt this corruption almost incorporeal in the strength of its profanity and dissimulation?\n\n\n\n\n During the journeys he made to see her, Sage had often dined at the chemist's, and he felt obliged from politeness to invite him in turn.\n\n \"With pleasure!\" Brantley Scottie replied; \"besides, I must invigorate my mind, for I am getting rusty here. We'll go to the theatre, to the restaurant; we'll make a night of it.\"\n\n \"Oh, my dear!\" tenderly murmured Madame Scottie, alarmed at the vague perils he was preparing to brave.\n\n \"Well, what? Do you think I'm not sufficiently ruining my health living here amid the continual emanations of the pharmacy? But there! that is the way with women! They are jealous of science, and then are opposed to our taking the most legitimate distractions. No matter! Count upon me. One of these days I shall turn up at Rouen, and we'll go the pace together.\"\n\n The druggist would formerly have taken good care not to use such an expression, but he was cultivating a gay Parisian style, which he thought in the best taste; and, like his neighbour, Madame Horatio, he questioned the clerk curiously about the customs of the capital; he even talked slang to dazzle the bourgeois, saying bender, crummy, dandy, macaroni, the cheese, cut my stick and \"I'll hook it,\" for \"I am going.\"\n\n So one Thursday Richie was surprised to meet Brantley Scottie in the kitchen of the \"Lion d'Or,\" wearing a traveller's costume, that is to say, wrapped in an old cloak which no one knew he had, while he carried a valise in one hand and the foot-warmer of his establishment in the other. He had confided his intentions to no one, for fear of causing the public anxiety by his absence.\n\n The idea of seeing again the place where his youth had been spent no doubt excited him, for during the whole journey he never ceased talking, and as soon as he had arrived, he jumped quickly out of the diligence to go in search of Sage. In vain the clerk tried to get rid of him. Brantley Scottie dragged him off to the large Cafe de la Normandie, which he entered majestically, not raising his hat, thinking it very provincial to uncover in any public place.\n\n Richie waited for Sage three quarters of an hour. At last she ran to his office; and, lost in all sorts of conjectures, accusing him of indifference, and reproaching herself for her weakness, she spent the afternoon, her face pressed against the window-panes.\n\n At two o'clock they were still at a table opposite each other. The large room was emptying; the stove-pipe, in the shape of a palm-tree, spread its gilt leaves over the white ceiling, and near them, outside the window, in the bright sunshine, a little fountain gurgled in a white basin, where; in the midst of watercress and asparagus, three torpid lobsters stretched across to some quails that lay heaped up in a pile on their sides.\n\n Scottie was enjoying himself. Although he was even more intoxicated with the luxury than the rich fare, the Pommard wine all the same rather excited his faculties; and when the omelette au rhum* appeared, he began propounding immoral theories about women. What seduced him above all else was chic. He admired an elegant toilette in a well-furnished apartment, and as to bodily qualities, he didn't dislike a young girl.\n\n * In rum.\n\n\n Sage watched the clock in despair. The druggist went on drinking, eating, and talking.\n\n \"You must be very lonely,\" he said suddenly, \"here at Rouen. To be sure your lady-love doesn't live far away.\"\n\n And the other blushed--\n\n \"Come now, be frank. Can you deny that at Yonville--\"\n\n The young man stammered something.\n\n \"At Madame Horatio's, you're not making love to--\"\n\n \"To whom?\"\n\n \"The servant!\"\n\n He was not joking; but vanity getting the better of all prudence, Sage, in spite of himself protested. Besides, he only liked dark women.\n\n \"I approve of that,\" said the chemist; \"they have more passion.\"\n\n And whispering into his friend's ear, he pointed out the symptoms by which one could find out if a woman had passion. He even launched into an ethnographic digression: the German was vapourish, the French woman licentious, the Italian passionate.\n\n \"And negresses?\" asked the clerk.\n\n \"They are an artistic taste!\" said Scottie. \"Waiter! two cups of coffee!\"\n\n \"Are we going?\" at last asked Sage impatiently.\n\n \"Ja!\"\n\n But before leaving he wanted to see the proprietor of the establishment and made him a few compliments. Then the young man, to be alone, alleged he had some business engagement.\n\n \"Ah! I will escort you,\" said Scottie.\n\n And all the while he was walking through the streets with him he talked of his wife, his children; of their future, and of his business; told him in what a decayed condition it had formerly been, and to what a degree of perfection he had raised it.\n\n Arrived in front of the Hotel de Boulogne, Sage left him abruptly, ran up the stairs, and found his mistress in great excitement. At mention of the chemist she flew into a passion. He, however, piled up good reasons; it wasn't his fault; didn't she know Scottie--did she believe that he would prefer his company? But she turned away; he drew her back, and, sinking on his knees, clasped her waist with his arms in a languorous pose, full of concupiscence and supplication.\n\n She was standing up, her large flashing eyes looked at him seriously, almost terribly. Then tears obscured them, her red eyelids were lowered, she gave him her hands, and Sage was pressing them to his lips when a servant appeared to tell the gentleman that he was wanted.\n\n \"You will come back?\" she said.\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"But when?\"\n\n \"Immediately.\"\n\n \"It's a trick,\" said the chemist, when he saw Sage. \"I wanted to interrupt this visit, that seemed to me to annoy you. Let's go and have a glass of garus at Bridoux'.\"\n\n Sage vowed that he must get back to his office. Then the druggist joked him about quill-drivers and the law.\n\n \"Leave Cujas and Barthole alone a bit. Who the devil prevents you? Be a man! Let's go to Bridoux'. You'll see his dog. It's very interesting.\"\n\n And as the clerk still insisted--\n\n \"I'll go with you. I'll read a paper while I wait for you, or turn over the leaves of a 'Code.'\"\n\n Sage, bewildered by Richie's anger, Brantley Scottie' chatter, and, perhaps, by the heaviness of the luncheon, was undecided, and, as it were, fascinated by the chemist, who kept repeating--\n\n \"Let's go to Bridoux'. It's just by here, in the Rue Malpalu.\"\n\n Then, through cowardice, through stupidity, through that indefinable feeling that drags us into the most distasteful acts, he allowed himself to be led off to Bridoux', whom they found in his small yard, superintending three workmen, who panted as they turned the large wheel of a machine for making seltzer-water. Scottie gave them some good advice. He embraced Bridoux; they took some garus. Twenty times Sage tried to escape, but the other seized him by the arm saying--\n\n \"Presently! I'm coming! We'll go to the 'Fanal de Rouen' to see the fellows there. I'll introduce you to Thornassin.\"\n\n At last he managed to get rid of him, and rushed straight to the hotel. Richie was no longer there. She had just gone in a fit of anger. She detested him now. This failing to keep their rendezvous seemed to her an insult, and she tried to rake up other reasons to separate herself from him. He was incapable of heroism, weak, banal, more spiritless than a woman, avaricious too, and cowardly.\n\n Then, growing calmer, she at length discovered that she had, no doubt, calumniated him. But the disparaging of those we love always alienates us from them to some extent. We must not touch our idols; the gilt sticks to our fingers.\n\n They gradually came to talking more frequently of matters outside their love, and in the letters that Richie wrote him she spoke of flowers, verses, the moon and the stars, naive resources of a waning passion striving to keep itself alive by all external aids. She was constantly promising herself a profound felicity on her next journey. Then she confessed to herself that she felt nothing extraordinary. This disappointment quickly gave way to a new hope, and Richie returned to him more inflamed, more eager than ever. She undressed brutally, tearing off the thin laces of her corset that nestled around her hips like a gliding snake. She went on tiptoe, barefooted, to see once more that the door was closed, then, pale, serious, and, without speaking, with one movement, she threw herself upon his breast with a long shudder.\n\n Yet there was upon that brow covered with cold drops, on those quivering lips, in those wild eyes, in the strain of those arms, something vague and dreary that seemed to Sage to glide between them subtly as if to separate them.\n\n He did not dare to question her; but, seeing her so skilled, she must have passed, he thought, through every experience of suffering and of pleasure. What had once charmed now frightened him a little. Besides, he rebelled against his absorption, daily more marked, by her personality. He begrudged Richie this constant victory. He even strove not to love her; then, when he heard the creaking of her boots, he turned coward, like drunkards at the sight of strong drinks.\n\n She did not fail, in truth, to lavish all sorts of attentions upon him, from the delicacies of food to the coquettries of dress and languishing looks. She brought roses to her breast from Yonville, which she threw into his face; was anxious about his health, gave him advice as to his conduct; and, in order the more surely to keep her hold on him, hoping perhaps that heaven would take her part, she tied a medal of the Virgin round his neck. She inquired like a virtuous mother about his companions. She said to him--\n\n \"Don't see them; don't go out; think only of ourselves; love me!\"\n\n She would have liked to be able to watch over his life; and the idea occurred to her of having him followed in the streets. Near the hotel there was always a kind of loafer who accosted travellers, and who would not refuse. But her pride revolted at this.\n\n \"Bah! so much the worse. Let him deceive me! What does it matter to me? As If I cared for him!\"\n\n One day, when they had parted early and she was returning alone along the boulevard, she saw the walls of her convent; then she sat down on a form in the shade of the elm-trees. How calm that time had been! How she longed for the ineffable sentiments of love that she had tried to figure to herself out of books! The first month of her marriage, her rides in the wood, the viscount that waltzed, and Lagardy singing, all repassed before her eyes. And Sage suddenly appeared to her as far off as the others.\n\n \"Yet I love him,\" she said to herself.\n\n No matter! She was not happy--she never had been. Whence came this insufficiency in life--this instantaneous turning to decay of everything on which she leant? But if there were somewhere a being strong and beautiful, a valiant nature, full at once of exaltation and refinement, a poet's heart in an angel's form, a lyre with sounding chords ringing out elegiac epithalamia to heaven, why, perchance, should she not find him? Ah! how impossible! Besides, nothing was worth the trouble of seeking it; everything was a lie. Every smile hid a yawn of boredom, every joy a curse, all pleasure satiety, and the sweetest kisses left upon your lips only the unattainable desire for a greater delight.\n\n A metallic clang droned through the air, and four strokes were heard from the convent-clock. Four o'clock! And it seemed to her that she had been there on that form an eternity. But an infinity of passions may be contained in a minute, like a crowd in a small space.\n\n Richie lived all absorbed in hers, and troubled no more about money matters than an archduchess.\n\n Once, however, a wretched-looking man, rubicund and bald, came to her house, saying he had been sent by Brantley Vincart of Rouen. He took out the pins that held together the side-pockets of his long green overcoat, stuck them into his sleeve, and politely handed her a paper.\n\n It was a bill for seven hundred francs, signed by her, and which Carolina, in spite of all his professions, had paid away to Vincart. She sent her servant for him. He could not come. Then the stranger, who had remained standing, casting right and left curious glances, that his thick, fair eyebrows hid, asked with a naive air--\n\n \"What answer am I to take Brantley Vincart?\"\n\n \"Oh,\" said Richie, \"tell him that I haven't it. I will send next week; he must wait; yes, till next week.\"\n\n And the fellow went without another word.\n\n But the next day at twelve o'clock she received a summons, and the sight of the stamped paper, on which appeared several times in large letters, \"Maitre Hareng, bailiff at Buchy,\" so frightened her that she rushed in hot haste to the linendraper's. She found him in his shop, doing up a parcel.\n\n \"Your obedient!\" he said; \"I am at your service.\"\n\n But Carolina, all the same, went on with his work, helped by a young girl of about thirteen, somewhat hunch-backed, who was at once his clerk and his servant.\n\n Then, his clogs clattering on the shop-boards, he went up in front of Madame Horatio to the first door, and introduced her into a narrow closet, where, in a large bureau in sapon-wood, lay some ledgers, protected by a horizontal padlocked iron bar. Against the wall, under some remnants of calico, one glimpsed a safe, but of such dimensions that it must contain something besides bills and money. Brantley Carolina, in fact, went in for pawnbroking, and it was there that he had put Madame Horatio's gold chain, together with the earrings of poor old Tellier, who, at last forced to sell out, had bought a meagre store of grocery at Quincampoix, where he was dying of catarrh amongst his candles, that were less yellow than his face.\n\n Carolina sat down in a large cane arm-chair, saying: \"What news?\"\n\n \"See!\"\n\n And she showed him the paper.\n\n \"Well how can I help it?\"\n\n Then she grew angry, reminding him of the promise he had given not to pay away her bills. He acknowledged it.\n\n \"But I was pressed myself; the knife was at my own throat.\"\n\n \"And what will happen now?\" she went on.\n\n \"Oh, it's very simple; a judgment and then a distraint--that's about it!\"\n\n Richie kept down a desire to strike him, and asked gently if there was no way of quieting Brantley Vincart.\n\n \"I dare say! Quiet Vincart! You don't know him; he's more ferocious than an Arab!\"\n\n Still Brantley Carolina must interfere.\n\n \"Well, listen. It seems to me so far I've been very good to you.\" And opening one of his ledgers, \"See,\" he said. Then running up the page with his finger, \"Let's see! let's see! August 3d, two hundred francs; June 17th, a hundred and fifty; March 23d, forty-six. In April--\"\n\n He stopped, as if afraid of making some mistake.\n\n \"Not to speak of the bills signed by Brantley Horatio, one for seven hundred francs, and another for three hundred. As to your little installments, with the interest, why, there's no end to 'em; one gets quite muddled over 'em. I'll have nothing more to do with it.\"\n\n She wept; she even called him \"her good Brantley Carolina.\" But he always fell back upon \"that rascal Vincart.\" Besides, he hadn't a brass farthing; no one was paying him now-a-days; they were eating his coat off his back; a poor shopkeeper like him couldn't advance money.\n\n Richie was silent, and Brantley Carolina, who was biting the feathers of a quill, no doubt became uneasy at her silence, for he went on--\n\n \"Unless one of these days I have something coming in, I might--\"\n\n \"Besides,\" said she, \"as soon as the balance of Barneville--\"\n\n \"What!\"\n\n And on hearing that Langlois had not yet paid he seemed much surprised. Then in a honied voice--\n\n \"And we agree, you say?\"\n\n \"Oh! to anything you like.\"\n\n On this he closed his eyes to reflect, wrote down a few figures, and declaring it would be very difficult for him, that the affair was shady, and that he was being bled, he wrote out four bills for two hundred and fifty francs each, to fall due month by month.\n\n \"Provided that Vincart will listen to me! However, it's settled. I don't play the fool; I'm straight enough.\"\n\n Next he carelessly showed her several new goods, not one of which, however, was in his opinion worthy of madame.\n\n \"When I think that there's a dress at threepence-halfpenny a yard, and warranted fast colours! And yet they actually swallow it! Of course you understand one doesn't tell them what it really is!\" He hoped by this confession of dishonesty to others to quite convince her of his probity to her.\n\n Then he called her back to show her three yards of guipure that he had lately picked up \"at a sale.\"\n\n \"Isn't it lovely?\" said Carolina. \"It is very much used now for the backs of arm-chairs. It's quite the rage.\"\n\n And, more ready than a juggler, he wrapped up the guipure in some blue paper and put it in Richie's hands.\n\n \"But at least let me know--\"\n\n \"Yes, another time,\" he replied, turning on his heel.\n\n That same evening she urged Horatio to write to his mother, to ask her to send as quickly as possible the whole of the balance due from the father's estate. The mother-in-law replied that she had nothing more, the winding up was over, and there was due to them besides Barneville an income of six hundred francs, that she would pay them punctually.\n\n Then Madame Horatio sent in accounts to two or three patients, and she made large use of this method, which was very successful. She was always careful to add a postscript: \"Do not mention this to my husband; you know how proud he is. Excuse me. Yours obediently.\" There were some complaints; she intercepted them.\n\n To get money she began selling her old gloves, her old hats, the old odds and ends, and she bargained rapaciously, her peasant blood standing her in good stead. Then on her journey to town she picked up nick-nacks secondhand, that, in default of anyone else, Brantley Carolina would certainly take off her hands. She bought ostrich feathers, Chinese porcelain, and trunks; she borrowed from Felicite, from Madame Lefrancois, from the landlady at the Croix-Rouge, from everybody, no matter where.\n\n With the money she at last received from Barneville she paid two bills; the other fifteen hundred francs fell due. She renewed the bills, and thus it was continually.\n\n Sometimes, it is true, she tried to make a calculation, but she discovered things so exorbitant that she could not believe them possible. Then she recommenced, soon got confused, gave it all up, and thought no more about it.\n\n The house was very dreary now. Tradesmen were seen leaving it with angry faces. Handkerchiefs were lying about on the stoves, and little Fatima, to the great scandal of Madame Scottie, wore stockings with holes in them. If Kelly timidly ventured a remark, she answered roughly that it wasn't her fault.\n\n What was the meaning of all these fits of temper? He explained everything through her old nervous illness, and reproaching himself with having taken her infirmities for faults, accused himself of egotism, and longed to go and take her in his arms.\n\n \"Ah, no!\" he said to himself; \"I should worry her.\"\n\n And he did not stir.\n\n After dinner he walked about alone in the garden; he took little Fatima on his knees, and unfolding his medical journal, tried to teach her to read. But the child, who never had any lessons, soon looked up with large, sad eyes and began to cry. Then he comforted her; went to fetch water in her can to make rivers on the sand path, or broke off branches from the privet hedges to plant trees in the beds. This did not spoil the garden much, all choked now with long weeds. They owed Lestiboudois for so many days. Then the child grew cold and asked for her mother.\n\n \"Call the servant,\" said Kelly. \"You know, dearie, that mamma does not like to be disturbed.\"\n\n Autumn was setting in, and the leaves were already falling, as they did two years ago when she was ill. Where would it all end? And he walked up and down, his hands behind his back.\n\n Madame was in her room, which no one entered. She stayed there all day long, torpid, half dressed, and from time to time burning Turkish pastilles which she had bought at Rouen in an Algerian's shop. In order not to have at night this sleeping man stretched at her side, by dint of manoeuvring, she at last succeeded in banishing him to the second floor, while she read till morning extravagant books, full of pictures of orgies and thrilling situations. Often, seized with fear, she cried out, and Kelly hurried to her.\n\n \"Oh, go away!\" she would say.\n\n Or at other times, consumed more ardently than ever by that inner flame to which adultery added fuel, panting, tremulous, all desire, she threw open her window, breathed in the cold air, shook loose in the wind her masses of hair, too heavy, and, gazing upon the stars, longed for some princely love. She thought of him, of Sage. She would then have given anything for a single one of those meetings that surfeited her.\n\n These were her gala days. She wanted them to be sumptuous, and when he alone could not pay the expenses, she made up the deficit liberally, which happened pretty well every time. He tried to make her understand that they would be quite as comfortable somewhere else, in a smaller hotel, but she always found some objection.\n\n One day she drew six small silver-gilt spoons from her bag (they were old Roualt's wedding present), begging him to pawn them at once for her, and Sage obeyed, though the proceeding annoyed him. He was afraid of compromising himself.\n\n Then, on, reflection, he began to think his mistress's ways were growing odd, and that they were perhaps not wrong in wishing to separate him from her.\n\n In fact someone had sent his mother a long anonymous letter to warn her that he was \"ruining himself with a married woman,\" and the good lady at once conjuring up the eternal bugbear of families, the vague pernicious creature, the siren, the monster, who dwells fantastically in depths of love, wrote to Lawyer Dubocage, his employer, who behaved perfectly in the affair. He kept him for three quarters of an hour trying to open his eyes, to warn him of the abyss into which he was falling. Such an intrigue would damage him later on, when he set up for himself. He implored him to break with her, and, if he would not make this sacrifice in his own interest, to do it at least for his, Dubocage's sake.\n\n At last Sage swore he would not see Richie again, and he reproached himself with not having kept his word, considering all the worry and lectures this woman might still draw down upon him, without reckoning the jokes made by his companions as they sat round the stove in the morning. Besides, he was soon to be head clerk; it was time to settle down. So he gave up his flute, exalted sentiments, and poetry; for every bourgeois in the flush of his youth, were it but for a day, a moment, has believed himself capable of immense passions, of lofty enterprises. The most mediocre libertine has dreamed of sultanas; every notary bears within him the debris of a poet.\n\n He was bored now when Richie suddenly began to sob on his breast, and his heart, like the people who can only stand a certain amount of music, dozed to the sound of a love whose delicacies he no longer noted.\n\n They knew one another too well for any of those surprises of possession that increase its joys a hundred-fold. She was as sick of him as he was weary of her. Richie found again in adultery all the platitudes of marriage.\n\n But how to get rid of him? Then, though she might feel humiliated at the baseness of such enjoyment, she clung to it from habit or from corruption, and each day she hungered after them the more, exhausting all felicity in wishing for too much of it. She accused Sage of her baffled hopes, as if he had betrayed her; and she even longed for some catastrophe that would bring about their separation, since she had not the courage to make up her mind to it herself.\n\n She none the less went on writing him love letters, in virtue of the notion that a woman must write to her lover.\n\n But whilst she wrote it was another man she saw, a phantom fashioned out of her most ardent memories, of her finest reading, her strongest lusts, and at last he became so real, so tangible, that she palpitated wondering, without, however, the power to imagine him clearly, so lost was he, like a god, beneath the abundance of his attributes. He dwelt in that azure land where silk ladders hang from balconies under the breath of flowers, in the light of the moon. She felt him near her; he was coming, and would carry her right away in a kiss.\n\n Then she fell back exhausted, for these transports of vague love wearied her more than great debauchery.\n\n She now felt constant ache all over her. Often she even received summonses, stamped paper that she barely looked at. She would have liked not to be alive, or to be always asleep.\n\n On Mid-Lent she did not return to Yonville, but in the evening went to a masked ball. She wore velvet breeches, red stockings, a club wig, and three-cornered hat cocked on one side. She danced all night to the wild tones of the trombones; people gathered round her, and in the morning she found herself on the steps of the theatre together with five or six masks, debardeuses* and sailors, Sage's comrades, who were talking about having supper.\n\n * People dressed as longshoremen.\n\n\n The neighbouring cafes were full. They caught sight of one on the harbour, a very indifferent restaurant, whose proprietor showed them to a little room on the fourth floor.\n\n The men were whispering in a corner, no doubt consorting about expenses. There were a clerk, two medical students, and a shopman--what company for her! As to the women, Richie soon perceived from the tone of their voices that they must almost belong to the lowest class. Then she was frightened, pushed back her chair, and cast down her eyes.\n\n The others began to eat; she ate nothing. Her head was on fire, her eyes smarted, and her skin was ice-cold. In her head she seemed to feel the floor of the ball-room rebounding again beneath the rhythmical pulsation of the thousands of dancing feet. And now the smell of the punch, the smoke of the cigars, made her giddy. She fainted, and they carried her to the window.\n\n Day was breaking, and a great stain of purple colour broadened out in the pale horizon over the St. Catherine hills. The livid river was shivering in the wind; there was no one on the bridges; the street lamps were going out.\n\n She revived, and began thinking of Fatima asleep yonder in the servant's room. Then a cart filled with long strips of iron passed by, and made a deafening metallic vibration against the walls of the houses.\n\n She slipped away suddenly, threw off her costume, told Sage she must get back, and at last was alone at the Hotel de Boulogne. Everything, even herself, was now unbearable to her. She wished that, taking wing like a bird, she could fly somewhere, far away to regions of purity, and there grow young again.\n\n She went out, crossed the Boulevard, the Place Cauchoise, and the Faubourg, as far as an open street that overlooked some gardens. She walked rapidly; the fresh air calming her; and, little by little, the faces of the crowd, the masks, the quadrilles, the lights, the supper, those women, all disappeared like mists fading away. Then, reaching the \"Croix-Rouge,\" she threw herself on the bed in her little room on the second floor, where there were pictures of the \"Tour de Nesle.\" At four o'clock Hivert awoke her.\n\n When she got home, Felicite showed her behind the clock a grey paper. She read--\n\n \"In virtue of the seizure in execution of a judgment.\"\n\n What judgment? As a matter of fact, the evening before another paper had been brought that she had not yet seen, and she was stunned by these words--\n\n \"By order of the king, law, and justice, to Madame Horatio.\" Then, skipping several lines, she read, \"Within twenty-four hours, without fail--\" But what? \"To pay the sum of eight thousand francs.\" And there was even at the bottom, \"She will be constrained thereto by every form of law, and notably by a writ of distraint on her furniture and effects.\"\n\n What was to be done? In twenty-four hours--tomorrow. Carolina, she thought, wanted to frighten her again; for she saw through all his devices, the object of his kindnesses. What reassured her was the very magnitude of the sum.\n\n However, by dint of buying and not paying, of borrowing, signing bills, and renewing these bills that grew at each new falling-in, she had ended by preparing a capital for Brantley Carolina which he was impatiently awaiting for his speculations.\n\n She presented herself at his place with an offhand air.\n\n \"You know what has happened to me? No doubt it's a joke!\"\n\n \"How so?\"\n\n He turned away slowly, and, folding his arms, said to her--\n\n \"My good lady, did you think I should go on to all eternity being your purveyor and banker, for the love of God? Now be just. I must get back what I've laid out. Now be just.\"\n\n She cried out against the debt.\n\n \"Ah! so much the worse. The court has admitted it. There's a judgment. It's been notified to you. Besides, it isn't my fault. It's Vincart's.\"\n\n \"Could you not--?\"\n\n \"Oh, nothing whatever.\"\n\n \"But still, now talk it over.\"\n\n And she began beating about the bush; she had known nothing about it; it was a surprise.\n\n \"Whose fault is that?\" said Carolina, bowing ironically. \"While I'm slaving like a nigger, you go gallivanting about.\"\n\n \"Ah! no lecturing.\"\n\n \"It never does any harm,\" he replied.\n\n She turned coward; she implored him; she even pressed her pretty white and slender hand against the shopkeeper's knee.\n\n \"There, that'll do! Anyone'd think you wanted to seduce me!\"\n\n \"You are a wretch!\" she cried.\n\n \"Oh, oh! go it! go it!\"\n\n \"I will show you up. I shall tell my husband.\"\n\n \"All right! I too. I'll show your husband something.\"\n\n And Carolina drew from his strong box the receipt for eighteen hundred francs that she had given him when Vincart had discounted the bills.\n\n \"Do you think,\" he added, \"that he'll not understand your little theft, the poor dear man?\"\n\n She collapsed, more overcome than if felled by the blow of a pole-axe. He was walking up and down from the window to the bureau, repeating all the while--\n\n \"Ah! I'll show him! I'll show him!\" Then he approached her, and in a soft voice said--\n\n \"It isn't pleasant, I know; but, after all, no bones are broken, and, since that is the only way that is left for you paying back my money--\"\n\n \"But where am I to get any?\" said Richie, wringing her hands.\n\n \"Bah! when one has friends like you!\"\n\n And he looked at her in so keen, so terrible a fashion, that she shuddered to her very heart.\n\n \"I promise you,\" she said, \"to sign--\"\n\n \"I've enough of your signatures.\"\n\n \"I will sell something.\"\n\n \"Get along!\" he said, shrugging his shoulders; \"you've not got anything.\"\n\n And he called through the peep-hole that looked down into the shop--\n\n \"Annette, don't forget the three coupons of No. 14.\"\n\n The servant appeared. Richie understood, and asked how much money would be wanted to put a stop to the proceedings.\n\n \"It is too late.\"\n\n \"But if I brought you several thousand francs--a quarter of the sum--a third--perhaps the whole?\"\n\n \"No; it's no use!\"\n\n And he pushed her gently towards the staircase.\n\n \"I implore you, Brantley Carolina, just a few days more!\" She was sobbing.\n\n \"There! tears now!\"\n\n \"You are driving me to despair!\"\n\n \"What do I care?\" said he, shutting the door.\n\n\n\n\n She was stoical the next day when Maitre Hareng, the bailiff, with two assistants, presented himself at her house to draw up the inventory for the distraint.\n\n They began with Horatio's consulting-room, and did not write down the phrenological head, which was considered an \"instrument of his profession\"; but in the kitchen they counted the plates; the saucepans, the chairs, the candlesticks, and in the bedroom all the nick-nacks on the whatnot. They examined her dresses, the linen, the dressing-room; and her whole existence to its most intimate details, was, like a corpse on whom a post-mortem is made, outspread before the eyes of these three men.\n\n Maitre Hareng, buttoned up in his thin black coat, wearing a white choker and very tight foot-straps, repeated from time to time--\"Allow me, madame. You allow me?\" Often he uttered exclamations. \"Charming! very pretty.\" Then he began writing again, dipping his pen into the horn inkstand in his left hand.\n\n When they had done with the rooms they went up to the attic. She kept a desk there in which Lawrence's letters were locked. It had to be opened.\n\n \"Ah! a correspondence,\" said Maitre Hareng, with a discreet smile. \"But allow me, for I must make sure the box contains nothing else.\" And he tipped up the papers lightly, as if to shake out napoleons. Then she grew angered to see this coarse hand, with fingers red and pulpy like slugs, touching these pages against which her heart had beaten.\n\n They went at last. Felicite came back. Richie had sent her out to watch for Horatio in order to keep him off, and they hurriedly installed the man in possession under the roof, where he swore he would remain.\n\n During the evening Kelly seemed to her careworn. Richie watched him with a look of anguish, fancying she saw an accusation in every line of his face. Then, when her eyes wandered over the chimney-piece ornamented with Chinese screens, over the large curtains, the armchairs, all those things, in a word, that had, softened the bitterness of her life, remorse seized her or rather an immense regret, that, far from crushing, irritated her passion. Kelly placidly poked the fire, both his feet on the fire-dogs.\n\n Once the man, no doubt bored in his hiding-place, made a slight noise.\n\n \"Is anyone walking upstairs?\" said Kelly.\n\n \"No,\" she replied; \"it is a window that has been left open, and is rattling in the wind.\"\n\n The next day, Sunday, she went to Rouen to call on all the brokers whose names she knew. They were at their country-places or on journeys. She was not discouraged; and those whom she did manage to see she asked for money, declaring she must have some, and that she would pay it back. Some laughed in her face; all refused.\n\n At two o'clock she hurried to Sage, and knocked at the door. No one answered. At length he appeared.\n\n \"What brings you here?\"\n\n \"Do I disturb you?\"\n\n \"No; but--\" And he admitted that his landlord didn't like his having \"women\" there.\n\n \"I must speak to you,\" she went on.\n\n Then he took down the key, but she stopped him.\n\n \"No, no! Down there, in our home!\"\n\n And they went to their room at the Hotel de Boulogne.\n\n On arriving she drank off a large glass of water. She was very pale. She said to him--\n\n \"Sage, you will do me a service?\"\n\n And, shaking him by both hands that she grasped tightly, she added--\n\n \"Listen, I want eight thousand francs.\"\n\n \"But you are mad!\"\n\n \"Not yet.\"\n\n And thereupon, telling him the story of the distraint, she explained her distress to him; for Kelly knew nothing of it; her mother-in-law detested her; old Deidre could do nothing; but he, Sage, he would set about finding this indispensable sum.\n\n \"How on earth can I?\"\n\n \"What a coward you are!\" she cried.\n\n Then he said stupidly, \"You are exaggerating the difficulty. Perhaps, with a thousand crowns or so the fellow could be stopped.\"\n\n All the greater reason to try and do something; it was impossible that they could not find three thousand francs. Besides, Sage, could be security instead of her.\n\n \"Go, try, try! I will love you so!\"\n\n He went out, and came back at the end of an hour, saying, with solemn face--\n\n \"I have been to three people with no success.\"\n\n Then they remained sitting face to face at the two chimney corners, motionless, in silence. Richie shrugged her shoulders as she stamped her feet. He heard her murmuring--\n\n \"If I were in your place _I_ should soon get some.\"\n\n \"But where?\"\n\n \"At your office.\" And she looked at him.\n\n An infernal boldness looked out from her burning eyes, and their lids drew close together with a lascivious and encouraging look, so that the young man felt himself growing weak beneath the mute will of this woman who was urging him to a crime. Then he was afraid, and to avoid any explanation he smote his forehead, crying--\n\n \"Morel is to come back to-night; he will not refuse me, I hope\" (this was one of his friends, the son of a very rich merchant); \"and I will bring it you to-morrow,\" he added.\n\n Richie did not seem to welcome this hope with all the joy he had expected. Did she suspect the lie? He went on, blushing--\n\n \"However, if you don't see me by three o'clock do not wait for me, my darling. I must be off now; forgive me! Goodbye!\"\n\n He pressed her hand, but it felt quite lifeless. Richie had no strength left for any sentiment.\n\n Four o'clock struck, and she rose to return to Yonville, mechanically obeying the force of old habits.\n\n The weather was fine. It was one of those March days, clear and sharp, when the sun shines in a perfectly white sky. The Rouen folk, in Sunday-clothes, were walking about with happy looks. She reached the Place du Parvis. People were coming out after vespers; the crowd flowed out through the three doors like a stream through the three arches of a bridge, and in the middle one, more motionless than a rock, stood the beadle.\n\n Then she remembered the day when, all anxious and full of hope, she had entered beneath this large nave, that had opened out before her, less profound than her love; and she walked on weeping beneath her veil, giddy, staggering, almost fainting.\n\n \"Take care!\" cried a voice issuing from the gate of a courtyard that was thrown open.\n\n She stopped to let pass a black horse, pawing the ground between the shafts of a tilbury, driven by a gentleman in sable furs. Who was it? She knew him. The carriage darted by and disappeared.\n\n Why, it was he--the Viscount. She turned away; the street was empty. She was so overwhelmed, so sad, that she had to lean against a wall to keep herself from falling.\n\n Then she thought she had been mistaken. Anyhow, she did not know. All within her and around her was abandoning her. She felt lost, sinking at random into indefinable abysses, and it was almost with joy that, on reaching the \"Croix-Rouge,\" she saw the good Scottie, who was watching a large box full of pharmaceutical stores being hoisted on to the \"Hirondelle.\" In his hand he held tied in a silk handkerchief six cheminots for his wife.\n\n Madame Scottie was very fond of these small, heavy turban-shaped loaves, that are eaten in Lent with salt butter; a last vestige of Gothic food that goes back, perhaps, to the time of the Crusades, and with which the robust Normans gorged themselves of yore, fancying they saw on the table, in the light of the yellow torches, between tankards of hippocras and huge boars' heads, the heads of Saracens to be devoured. The druggist's wife crunched them up as they had done--heroically, despite her wretched teeth. And so whenever Scottie journeyed to town, he never failed to bring her home some that he bought at the great baker's in the Rue Massacre.\n\n \"Charmed to see you,\" he said, offering Richie a hand to help her into the \"Hirondelle.\" Then he hung up his cheminots to the cords of the netting, and remained bare-headed in an attitude pensive and Napoleonic.\n\n But when the blind man appeared as usual at the foot of the hill he exclaimed--\n\n \"I can't understand why the authorities tolerate such culpable industries. Such unfortunates should be locked up and forced to work. Progress, my word! creeps at a snail's pace. We are floundering about in mere barbarism.\"\n\n The blind man held out his hat, that flapped about at the door, as if it were a bag in the lining that had come unnailed.\n\n \"This,\" said the chemist, \"is a scrofulous affection.\"\n\n And though he knew the poor devil, he pretended to see him for the first time, murmured something about \"cornea,\" \"opaque cornea,\" \"sclerotic,\" \"facies,\" then asked him in a paternal tone--\n\n \"My friend, have you long had this terrible infirmity? Instead of getting drunk at the public, you'd do better to die yourself.\"\n\n He advised him to take good wine, good beer, and good joints. The blind man went on with his song; he seemed, moreover, almost idiotic. At last Brantley Scottie opened his purse--\n\n \"Now there's a sou; give me back two lairds, and don't forget my advice: you'll be the better for it.\"\n\n Hivert openly cast some doubt on the efficacy of it. But the druggist said that he would cure himself with an antiphlogistic pomade of his own composition, and he gave his address--\"Brantley Scottie, near the market, pretty well known.\"\n\n \"Now,\" said Hivert, \"for all this trouble you'll give us your performance.\"\n\n The blind man sank down on his haunches, with his head thrown back, whilst he rolled his greenish eyes, lolled out his tongue, and rubbed his stomach with both hands as he uttered a kind of hollow yell like a famished dog. Richie, filled with disgust, threw him over her shoulder a five-franc piece. It was all her fortune. It seemed to her very fine thus to throw it away.\n\n The coach had gone on again when suddenly Brantley Scottie leant out through the window, crying--\n\n \"No farinaceous or milk food, wear wool next the skin, and expose the diseased parts to the smoke of juniper berries.\"\n\n The sight of the well-known objects that defiled before her eyes gradually diverted Richie from her present trouble. An intolerable fatigue overwhelmed her, and she reached her home stupefied, discouraged, almost asleep.\n\n \"Come what may come!\" she said to herself. \"And then, who knows? Why, at any moment could not some extraordinary event occur? Carolina even might die!\"\n\n At nine o'clock in the morning she was awakened by the sound of voices in the Place. There was a crowd round the market reading a large bill fixed to one of the posts, and she saw Hailee, who was climbing on to a stone and tearing down the bill. But at this moment the rural guard seized him by the collar. Brantley Scottie came out of his shop, and Mere Lefrangois, in the midst of the crowd, seemed to be perorating.\n\n \"Madame! madame!\" cried Felicite, running in, \"it's abominable!\"\n\n And the poor girl, deeply moved, handed her a yellow paper that she had just torn off the door. Richie read with a glance that all her furniture was for sale.\n\n Then they looked at one another silently. The servant and mistress had no secret one from the other. At last Felicite sighed--\n\n \"If I were you, madame, I should go to Brantley Sylvester.\"\n\n \"Do you think--\"\n\n And this question meant to say--\n\n \"You who know the house through the servant, has the master spoken sometimes of me?\"\n\n \"Yes, you'd do well to go there.\"\n\n She dressed, put on her black gown, and her hood with jet beads, and that she might not be seen (there was still a crowd on the Place), she took the path by the river, outside the village.\n\n She reached the notary's gate quite breathless. The sky was sombre, and a little snow was falling. At the sound of the bell, Theodore in a red waistcoat appeared on the steps; he came to open the door almost familiarly, as to an acquaintance, and showed her into the dining-room.\n\n A large porcelain stove crackled beneath a cactus that filled up the niche in the wall, and in black wood frames against the oak-stained paper hung Steuben's \"Esmeralda\" and Schopin's \"Potiphar.\" The ready-laid table, the two silver chafing-dishes, the crystal door-knobs, the parquet and the furniture, all shone with a scrupulous, English cleanliness; the windows were ornamented at each corner with stained glass.\n\n \"Now this,\" thought Richie, \"is the dining-room I ought to have.\"\n\n The notary came in pressing his palm-leaf dressing-gown to his breast with his left arm, while with the other hand he raised and quickly put on again his brown velvet cap, pretentiously cocked on the right side, whence looked out the ends of three fair curls drawn from the back of the head, following the line of his bald skull.\n\n After he had offered her a seat he sat down to breakfast, apologising profusely for his rudeness.\n\n \"I have come,\" she said, \"to beg you, sir--\"\n\n \"What, madame? I am listening.\"\n\n And she began explaining her position to him. Brantley Sylvester knew it, being secretly associated with the linendraper, from whom he always got capital for the loans on mortgages that he was asked to make.\n\n So he knew (and better than she herself) the long story of the bills, small at first, bearing different names as endorsers, made out at long dates, and constantly renewed up to the day, when, gathering together all the protested bills, the shopkeeper had bidden his friend Vincart take in his own name all the necessary proceedings, not wishing to pass for a tiger with his fellow-citizens.\n\n She mingled her story with recriminations against Carolina, to which the notary replied from time to time with some insignificant word. Eating his cutlet and drinking his tea, he buried his chin in his sky-blue cravat, into which were thrust two diamond pins, held together by a small gold chain; and he smiled a singular smile, in a sugary, ambiguous fashion. But noticing that her feet were damp, he said--\n\n \"Do get closer to the stove; put your feet up against the porcelain.\"\n\n She was afraid of dirtying it. The notary replied in a gallant tone--\n\n \"Beautiful things spoil nothing.\"\n\n Then she tried to move him, and, growing moved herself, she began telling him about the poorness of her home, her worries, her wants. He could understand that; an elegant woman! and, without leaving off eating, he had turned completely round towards her, so that his knee brushed against her boot, whose sole curled round as it smoked against the stove.\n\n But when she asked for a thousand sous, he closed his lips, and declared he was very sorry he had not had the management of her fortune before, for there were hundreds of ways very convenient, even for a lady, of turning her money to account. They might, either in the turf-peats of Grumesnil or building-ground at Havre, almost without risk, have ventured on some excellent speculations; and he let her consume herself with rage at the thought of the fabulous sums that she would certainly have made.\n\n \"How was it,\" he went on, \"that you didn't come to me?\"\n\n \"I hardly know,\" she said.\n\n \"Why, hey? Did I frighten you so much? It is I, on the contrary, who ought to complain. We hardly know one another; yet I am very devoted to you. You do not doubt that, I hope?\"\n\n He held out his hand, took hers, covered it with a greedy kiss, then held it on his knee; and he played delicately with her fingers whilst he murmured a thousand blandishments. His insipid voice murmured like a running brook; a light shone in his eyes through the glimmering of his spectacles, and his hand was advancing up Richie's sleeve to press her arm. She felt against her cheek his panting breath. This man oppressed her horribly.\n\n She sprang up and said to him--\n\n \"Sir, I am waiting.\"\n\n \"For what?\" said the notary, who suddenly became very pale.\n\n \"This money.\"\n\n \"But--\" Then, yielding to the outburst of too powerful a desire, \"Well, yes!\"\n\n He dragged himself towards her on his knees, regardless of his dressing-gown.\n\n \"For pity's sake, stay. I love you!\"\n\n He seized her by her waist. Madame Horatio's face flushed purple. She recoiled with a terrible look, crying--\n\n \"You are taking a shameless advantage of my distress, sir! I am to be pitied--not to be sold.\"\n\n And she went out.\n\n The notary remained quite stupefied, his eyes fixed on his fine embroidered slippers. They were a love gift, and the sight of them at last consoled him. Besides, he reflected that such an adventure might have carried him too far.\n\n \"What a wretch! what a scoundrel! what an infamy!\" she said to herself, as she fled with nervous steps beneath the aspens of the path. The disappointment of her failure increased the indignation of her outraged modesty; it seemed to her that Providence pursued her implacably, and, strengthening herself in her pride, she had never felt so much esteem for herself nor so much contempt for others. A spirit of warfare transformed her. She would have liked to strike all men, to spit in their faces, to crush them, and she walked rapidly straight on, pale, quivering, maddened, searching the empty horizon with tear-dimmed eyes, and as it were rejoicing in the hate that was choking her.\n\n When she saw her house a numbness came over her. She could not go on; and yet she must. Besides, whither could she flee?\n\n Felicite was waiting for her at the door. \"Well?\"\n\n \"No!\" said Richie.\n\n And for a quarter of an hour the two of them went over the various persons in Yonville who might perhaps be inclined to help her. But each time that Felicite named someone Richie replied--\n\n \"Impossible! they will not!\"\n\n \"And the master'll soon be in.\"\n\n \"I know that well enough. Leave me alone.\"\n\n She had tried everything; there was nothing more to be done now; and when Kelly came in she would have to say to him--\n\n \"Go away! This carpet on which you are walking is no longer ours. In your own house you do not possess a chair, a pin, a straw, and it is I, poor man, who have ruined you.\"\n\n Then there would be a great sob; next he would weep abundantly, and at last, the surprise past, he would forgive her.\n\n \"Yes,\" she murmured, grinding her teeth, \"he will forgive me, he who would give a million if I would forgive him for having known me! Never! never!\"\n\n This thought of Horatio's superiority to her exasperated her. Then, whether she confessed or did not confess, presently, immediately, to-morrow, he would know the catastrophe all the same; so she must wait for this horrible scene, and bear the weight of his magnanimity. The desire to return to Carolina's seized her--what would be the use? To write to her father--it was too late; and perhaps, she began to repent now that she had not yielded to that other, when she heard the trot of a horse in the alley. It was he; he was opening the gate; he was whiter than the plaster wall. Rushing to the stairs, she ran out quickly to the square; and the wife of the mayor, who was talking to Lestiboudois in front of the church, saw her go in to the tax-collector's.\n\n She hurried off to tell Madame Caron, and the two ladies went up to the attic, and, hidden by some linen spread across props, stationed themselves comfortably for overlooking the whole of Lake's room.\n\n He was alone in his garret, busy imitating in wood one of those indescribable bits of ivory, composed of crescents, of spheres hollowed out one within the other, the whole as straight as an obelisk, and of no use whatever; and he was beginning on the last piece--he was nearing his goal. In the twilight of the workshop the white dust was flying from his tools like a shower of sparks under the hoofs of a galloping horse; the two wheels were turning, droning; Lake smiled, his chin lowered, his nostrils distended, and, in a word, seemed lost in one of those complete happinesses that, no doubt, belong only to commonplace occupations, which amuse the mind with facile difficulties, and satisfy by a realisation of that beyond which such minds have not a dream.\n\n \"Ah! there she is!\" exclaimed Madame Tuvache.\n\n But it was impossible because of the lathe to hear what she was saying.\n\n At last these ladies thought they made out the word \"francs,\" and Madame Tuvache whispered in a low voice--\n\n \"She is begging him to give her time for paying her taxes.\"\n\n \"Apparently!\" replied the other.\n\n They saw her walking up and down, examining the napkin-rings, the candlesticks, the banister rails against the walls, while Lake stroked his beard with satisfaction.\n\n \"Do you think she wants to order something of him?\" said Madame Tuvache.\n\n \"Why, he doesn't sell anything,\" objected her neighbour.\n\n The tax-collector seemed to be listening with wide-open eyes, as if he did not understand. She went on in a tender, suppliant manner. She came nearer to him, her breast heaving; they no longer spoke.\n\n \"Is she making him advances?\" said Madame Tuvache. Lake was scarlet to his very ears. She took hold of his hands.\n\n \"Oh, it's too much!\"\n\n And no doubt she was suggesting something abominable to him; for the tax-collector--yet he was brave, had fought at Bautzen and at Lutzen, had been through the French campaign, and had even been recommended for the cross--suddenly, as at the sight of a serpent, recoiled as far as he could from her, crying--\n\n \"Madame! what do you mean?\"\n\n \"Women like that ought to be whipped,\" said Madame Tuvache.\n\n \"But where is she?\" continued Madame Caron, for she had disappeared whilst they spoke; then catching sight of her going up the Grande Rue, and turning to the right as if making for the cemetery, they were lost in conjectures.\n\n \"Nurse Rollet,\" she said on reaching the nurse's, \"I am choking; unlace me!\" She fell on the bed sobbing. Nurse Rollet covered her with a petticoat and remained standing by her side. Then, as she did not answer, the good woman withdrew, took her wheel and began spinning flax.\n\n \"Oh, leave off!\" she murmured, fancying she heard Lake's lathe.\n\n \"What's bothering her?\" said the nurse to herself. \"Why has she come here?\"\n\n She had rushed thither; impelled by a kind of horror that drove her from her home.\n\n Lying on her back, motionless, and with staring eyes, she saw things but vaguely, although she tried to with idiotic persistence. She looked at the scales on the walls, two brands smoking end to end, and a long spider crawling over her head in a rent in the beam. At last she began to collect her thoughts. She remembered--one day--Sage--Oh! how long ago that was--the sun was shining on the river, and the clematis were perfuming the air. Then, carried away as by a rushing torrent, she soon began to recall the day before.\n\n \"What time is it?\" she asked.\n\n Mere Rollet went out, raised the fingers of her right hand to that side of the sky that was brightest, and came back slowly, saying--\n\n \"Nearly three.\"\n\n \"Ah! thanks, thanks!\"\n\n For he would come; he would have found some money. But he would, perhaps, go down yonder, not guessing she was here, and she told the nurse to run to her house to fetch him.\n\n \"Be quick!\"\n\n \"But, my dear lady, I'm going, I'm going!\"\n\n She wondered now that she had not thought of him from the first. Yesterday he had given his word; he would not break it. And she already saw herself at Carolina's spreading out her three bank-notes on his bureau. Then she would have to invent some story to explain matters to Horatio. What should it be?\n\n The nurse, however, was a long while gone. But, as there was no clock in the cot, Richie feared she was perhaps exaggerating the length of time. She began walking round the garden, step by step; she went into the path by the hedge, and returned quickly, hoping that the woman would have come back by another road. At last, weary of waiting, assailed by fears that she thrust from her, no longer conscious whether she had been here a century or a moment, she sat down in a corner, closed her eyes, and stopped her ears. The gate grated; she sprang up. Before she had spoken Mere Rollet said to her--\n\n \"There is no one at your house!\"\n\n \"What?\"\n\n \"Oh, no one! And the doctor is crying. He is calling for you; they're looking for you.\"\n\n Richie answered nothing. She gasped as she turned her eyes about her, while the peasant woman, frightened at her face, drew back instinctively, thinking her mad. Suddenly she struck her brow and uttered a cry; for the thought of Lawrence, like a flash of lightning in a dark night, had passed into her soul. He was so good, so delicate, so generous! And besides, should he hesitate to do her this service, she would know well enough how to constrain him to it by re-waking, in a single moment, their lost love. So she set out towards La Huchette, not seeing that she was hastening to offer herself to that which but a while ago had so angered her, not in the least conscious of her prostitution.\n\n\n\n\n She asked herself as she walked along, \"What am I going to say? How shall I begin?\" And as she went on she recognised the thickets, the trees, the sea-rushes on the hill, the chateau yonder. All the sensations of her first tenderness came back to her, and her poor aching heart opened out amorously. A warm wind blew in her face; the melting snow fell drop by drop from the buds to the grass.\n\n She entered, as she used to, through the small park-gate. She reached the avenue bordered by a double row of dense lime-trees. They were swaying their long whispering branches to and fro. The dogs in their kennels all barked, and the noise of their voices resounded, but brought out no one.\n\n She went up the large straight staircase with wooden balusters that led to the corridor paved with dusty flags, into which several doors in a row opened, as in a monastery or an inn. His was at the top, right at the end, on the left. When she placed her fingers on the lock her strength suddenly deserted her. She was afraid, almost wished he would not be there, though this was her only hope, her last chance of salvation. She collected her thoughts for one moment, and, strengthening herself by the feeling of present necessity, went in.\n\n He was in front of the fire, both his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a pipe.\n\n \"What! it is you!\" he said, getting up hurriedly.\n\n \"Yes, it is I, Lawrence. I should like to ask your advice.\"\n\n And, despite all her efforts, it was impossible for her to open her lips.\n\n \"You have not changed; you are charming as ever!\"\n\n \"Oh,\" she replied bitterly, \"they are poor charms since you disdained them.\"\n\n Then he began a long explanation of his conduct, excusing himself in vague terms, in default of being able to invent better.\n\n She yielded to his words, still more to his voice and the sight of him, so that, she pretended to believe, or perhaps believed; in the pretext he gave for their rupture; this was a secret on which depended the honour, the very life of a third person.\n\n \"No matter!\" she said, looking at him sadly. \"I have suffered much.\"\n\n He replied philosophically--\n\n \"Such is life!\"\n\n \"Has life,\" Richie went on, \"been good to you at least, since our separation?\"\n\n \"Oh, neither good nor bad.\"\n\n \"Perhaps it would have been better never to have parted.\"\n\n \"Yes, perhaps.\"\n\n \"You think so?\" she said, drawing nearer, and she sighed. \"Oh, Lawrence! if you but knew! I loved you so!\"\n\n It was then that she took his hand, and they remained some time, their fingers intertwined, like that first day at the Show. With a gesture of pride he struggled against this emotion. But sinking upon his breast she said to him--\n\n \"How did you think I could live without you? One cannot lose the habit of happiness. I was desolate. I thought I should die. I will tell you about all that and you will see. And you--you fled from me!\"\n\n For, all the three years, he had carefully avoided her in consequence of that natural cowardice that characterises the stronger sex. Richie went on, with dainty little nods, more coaxing than an amorous kitten--\n\n \"You love others, confess it! Oh, I understand them, dear! I excuse them. You probably seduced them as you seduced me. You are indeed a man; you have everything to make one love you. But we'll begin again, won't we? We will love one another. See! I am laughing; I am happy! Oh, speak!\"\n\n And she was charming to see, with her eyes, in which trembled a tear, like the rain of a storm in a blue corolla.\n\n He had drawn her upon his knees, and with the back of his hand was caressing her smooth hair, where in the twilight was mirrored like a golden arrow one last ray of the sun. She bent down her brow; at last he kissed her on the eyelids quite gently with the tips of his lips.\n\n \"Why, you have been crying! What for?\"\n\n She burst into tears. Lawrence thought this was an outburst of her love. As she did not speak, he took this silence for a last remnant of resistance, and then he cried out--\n\n \"Oh, forgive me! You are the only one who pleases me. I was imbecile and cruel. I love you. I will love you always. What is it. Tell me!\" He was kneeling by her.\n\n \"Well, I am ruined, Lawrence! You must lend me three thousand francs.\"\n\n \"But--but--\" said he, getting up slowly, while his face assumed a grave expression.\n\n \"You know,\" she went on quickly, \"that my husband had placed his whole fortune at a notary's. He ran away. So we borrowed; the patients don't pay us. Moreover, the settling of the estate is not yet done; we shall have the money later on. But to-day, for want of three thousand francs, we are to be sold up. It is to be at once, this very moment, and, counting upon your friendship, I have come to you.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" thought Lawrence, turning very pale, \"that was what she came for.\" At last he said with a calm air--\n\n \"Dear madame, I have not got them.\"\n\n He did not lie. If he had had them, he would, no doubt, have given them, although it is generally disagreeable to do such fine things: a demand for money being, of all the winds that blow upon love, the coldest and most destructive.\n\n First she looked at him for some moments.\n\n \"You have not got them!\" she repeated several times. \"You have not got them! I ought to have spared myself this last shame. You never loved me. You are no better than the others.\"\n\n She was betraying, ruining herself.\n\n Lawrence interrupted her, declaring he was \"hard up\" himself.\n\n \"Ah! I pity you,\" said Richie. \"Yes--very much.\"\n\n And fixing her eyes upon an embossed carabine, that shone against its panoply, \"But when one is so poor one doesn't have silver on the butt of one's gun. One doesn't buy a clock inlaid with tortoise shell,\" she went on, pointing to a buhl timepiece, \"nor silver-gilt whistles for one's whips,\" and she touched them, \"nor charms for one's watch. Oh, he wants for nothing! even to a liqueur-stand in his room! For you love yourself; you live well. You have a chateau, farms, woods; you go hunting; you travel to Paris. Why, if it were but that,\" she cried, taking up two studs from the mantelpiece, \"but the least of these trifles, one can get money for them. Oh, I do not want them, keep them!\"\n\n And she threw the two links away from her, their gold chain breaking as it struck against the wall.\n\n \"But I! I would have given you everything. I would have sold all, worked for you with my hands, I would have begged on the highroads for a smile, for a look, to hear you say 'Thanks!' And you sit there quietly in your arm-chair, as if you had not made me suffer enough already! But for you, and you know it, I might have lived happily. What made you do it? Was it a bet? Yet you loved me--you said so. And but a moment since--Ah! it would have been better to have driven me away. My hands are hot with your kisses, and there is the spot on the carpet where at my knees you swore an eternity of love! You made me believe you; for two years you held me in the most magnificent, the sweetest dream! Eh! Our plans for the journey, do you remember? Oh, your letter! your letter! it tore my heart! And then when I come back to him--to him, rich, happy, free--to implore the help the first stranger would give, a suppliant, and bringing back to him all my tenderness, he repulses me because it would cost him three thousand francs!\"\n\n \"I haven't got them,\" replied Lawrence, with that perfect calm with which resigned rage covers itself as with a shield.\n\n She went out. The walls trembled, the ceiling was crushing her, and she passed back through the long alley, stumbling against the heaps of dead leaves scattered by the wind. At last she reached the ha-ha hedge in front of the gate; she broke her nails against the lock in her haste to open it. Then a hundred steps farther on, breathless, almost falling, she stopped. And now turning round, she once more saw the impassive chateau, with the park, the gardens, the three courts, and all the windows of the facade.\n\n She remained lost in stupor, and having no more consciousness of herself than through the beating of her arteries, that she seemed to hear bursting forth like a deafening music filling all the fields. The earth beneath her feet was more yielding than the sea, and the furrows seemed to her immense brown waves breaking into foam. Everything in her head, of memories, ideas, went off at once like a thousand pieces of fireworks. She saw her father, Carolina's closet, their room at home, another landscape. Madness was coming upon her; she grew afraid, and managed to recover herself, in a confused way, it is true, for she did not in the least remember the cause of the terrible condition she was in, that is to say, the question of money. She suffered only in her love, and felt her soul passing from her in this memory; as wounded men, dying, feel their life ebb from their bleeding wounds.\n\n Night was falling, crows were flying about.\n\n Suddenly it seemed to her that fiery spheres were exploding in the air like fulminating balls when they strike, and were whirling, whirling, to melt at last upon the snow between the branches of the trees. In the midst of each of them appeared the face of Lawrence. They multiplied and drew near her, penetrating, her. It all disappeared; she recognised the lights of the houses that shone through the fog.\n\n Now her situation, like an abyss, rose up before her. She was panting as if her heart would burst. Then in an ecstasy of heroism, that made her almost joyous, she ran down the hill, crossed the cow-plank, the foot-path, the alley, the market, and reached the chemist's shop. She was about to enter, but at the sound of the bell someone might come, and slipping in by the gate, holding her breath, feeling her way along the walls, she went as far as the door of the kitchen, where a candle stuck on the stove was burning. Hailee in his shirt-sleeves was carrying out a dish.\n\n \"Ah! they are dining; I will wait.\"\n\n He returned; she tapped at the window. He went out.\n\n \"The key! the one for upstairs where he keeps the--\"\n\n \"What?\"\n\n And he looked at her, astonished at the pallor of her face, that stood out white against the black background of the night. She seemed to him extraordinarily beautiful and majestic as a phantom. Without understanding what she wanted, he had the presentiment of something terrible.\n\n But she went on quickly in a love voice; in a sweet, melting voice, \"I want it; give it to me.\"\n\n As the partition wall was thin, they could hear the clatter of the forks on the plates in the dining-room.\n\n She pretended that she wanted to kill the rats that kept her from sleeping.\n\n \"I must tell master.\"\n\n \"No, stay!\" Then with an indifferent air, \"Oh, it's not worth while; I'll tell him presently. Come, light me upstairs.\"\n\n She entered the corridor into which the laboratory door opened. Against the wall was a key labelled Capharnaum.\n\n \"Hailee!\" called the druggist impatiently.\n\n \"Let us go up.\"\n\n And he followed her. The key turned in the lock, and she went straight to the third shelf, so well did her memory guide her, seized the blue jar, tore out the cork, plunged in her hand, and withdrawing it full of a white powder, she began eating it.\n\n \"Stop!\" he cried, rushing at her.\n\n \"Hush! someone will come.\"\n\n He was in despair, was calling out.\n\n \"Say nothing, or all the blame will fall on your master.\"\n\n Then she went home, suddenly calmed, and with something of the serenity of one that had performed a duty.\n\n When Kelly, distracted by the news of the distraint, returned home, Richie had just gone out. He cried aloud, wept, fainted, but she did not return. Where could she be? He sent Felicite to Scottie, to Brantley Tuvache, to Carolina, to the \"Lion d'Or,\" everywhere, and in the intervals of his agony he saw his reputation destroyed, their fortune lost, Fatima's future ruined. By what?--Not a word! He waited till six in the evening. At last, unable to bear it any longer, and fancying she had gone to Rouen, he set out along the highroad, walked a mile, met no one, again waited, and returned home. She had come back.\n\n \"What was the matter? Why? Explain to me.\"\n\n She sat down at her writing-table and wrote a letter, which she sealed slowly, adding the date and the hour. Then she said in a solemn tone:\n\n \"You are to read it to-morrow; till then, I pray you, do not ask me a single question. No, not one!\"\n\n \"But--\"\n\n \"Oh, leave me!\"\n\n She lay down full length on her bed. A bitter taste that she felt in her mouth awakened her. She saw Kelly, and again closed her eyes.\n\n She was studying herself curiously, to see if she were not suffering. But no! nothing as yet. She heard the ticking of the clock, the crackling of the fire, and Kelly breathing as he stood upright by her bed.\n\n \"Ah! it is but a little thing, death!\" she thought. \"I shall fall asleep and all will be over.\"\n\n She drank a mouthful of water and turned to the wall. The frightful taste of ink continued.\n\n \"I am thirsty; oh! so thirsty,\" she sighed.\n\n \"What is it?\" said Kelly, who was handing her a glass.\n\n \"It is nothing! Open the window; I am choking.\"\n\n She was seized with a sickness so sudden that she had hardly time to draw out her handkerchief from under the pillow.\n\n \"Take it away,\" she said quickly; \"throw it away.\"\n\n He spoke to her; she did not answer. She lay motionless, afraid that the slightest movement might make her vomit. But she felt an icy cold creeping from her feet to her heart.\n\n \"Ah! it is beginning,\" she murmured.\n\n \"What did you say?\"\n\n She turned her head from side to side with a gentle movement full of agony, while constantly opening her mouth as if something very heavy were weighing upon her tongue. At eight o'clock the vomiting began again.\n\n Kelly noticed that at the bottom of the basin there was a sort of white sediment sticking to the sides of the porcelain.\n\n \"This is extraordinary--very singular,\" he repeated.\n\n But she said in a firm voice, \"No, you are mistaken.\"\n\n Then gently, and almost as caressing her, he passed his hand over her stomach. She uttered a sharp cry. He fell back terror-stricken.\n\n Then she began to groan, faintly at first. Her shoulders were shaken by a strong shuddering, and she was growing paler than the sheets in which her clenched fingers buried themselves. Her unequal pulse was now almost imperceptible.\n\n Drops of sweat oozed from her bluish face, that seemed as if rigid in the exhalations of a metallic vapour. Her teeth chattered, her dilated eyes looked vaguely about her, and to all questions she replied only with a shake of the head; she even smiled once or twice. Gradually, her moaning grew louder; a hollow shriek burst from her; she pretended she was better and that she would get up presently. But she was seized with convulsions and cried out--\n\n \"Ah! my God! It is horrible!\"\n\n He threw himself on his knees by her bed.\n\n \"Tell me! what have you eaten? Answer, for heaven's sake!\"\n\n And he looked at her with a tenderness in his eyes such as she had never seen.\n\n \"Well, there--there!\" she said in a faint voice. He flew to the writing-table, tore open the seal, and read aloud: \"Accuse no one.\" He stopped, passed his hands across his eyes, and read it over again.\n\n \"What! help--help!\"\n\n He could only keep repeating the word: \"Poisoned! poisoned!\" Felicite ran to Scottie, who proclaimed it in the market-place; Madame Lefrancois heard it at the \"Lion d'Or\"; some got up to go and tell their neighbours, and all night the village was on the alert.\n\n Distraught, faltering, reeling, Kelly wandered about the room. He knocked against the furniture, tore his hair, and the chemist had never believed that there could be so terrible a sight.\n\n He went home to write to Brantley Canivet and to Doctor Jermaine. He lost his head, and made more than fifteen rough copies. Carlisle went to Neufchatel, and Hailee so spurred Horatio's horse that he left it foundered and three parts dead by the hill at Bois-Guillaume.\n\n Kelly tried to look up his medical dictionary, but could not read it; the lines were dancing.\n\n \"Be calm,\" said the druggist; \"we have only to administer a powerful antidote. What is the poison?\"\n\n Kelly showed him the letter. It was arsenic.\n\n \"Very well,\" said Scottie, \"we must make an analysis.\"\n\n For he knew that in cases of poisoning an analysis must be made; and the other, who did not understand, answered--\n\n \"Oh, do anything! save her!\"\n\n Then going back to her, he sank upon the carpet, and lay there with his head leaning against the edge of her bed, sobbing.\n\n \"Don't cry,\" she said to him. \"Soon I shall not trouble you any more.\"\n\n \"Why was it? Who drove you to it?\"\n\n She replied. \"It had to be, my dear!\"\n\n \"Weren't you happy? Is it my fault? I did all I could!\"\n\n \"Yes, that is true--you are good--you.\"\n\n And she passed her hand slowly over his hair. The sweetness of this sensation deepened his sadness; he felt his whole being dissolving in despair at the thought that he must lose her, just when she was confessing more love for him than ever. And he could think of nothing; he did not know, he did not dare; the urgent need for some immediate resolution gave the finishing stroke to the turmoil of his mind.\n\n So she had done, she thought, with all the treachery; and meanness, and numberless desires that had tortured her. She hated no one now; a twilight dimness was settling upon her thoughts, and, of all earthly noises, Richie heard none but the intermittent lamentations of this poor heart, sweet and indistinct like the echo of a symphony dying away.\n\n \"Bring me the child,\" she said, raising herself on her elbow.\n\n \"You are not worse, are you?\" asked Kelly.\n\n \"No, no!\"\n\n The child, serious, and still half-asleep, was carried in on the servant's arm in her long white nightgown, from which her bare feet peeped out. She looked wonderingly at the disordered room, and half-closed her eyes, dazzled by the candles burning on the table. They reminded her, no doubt, of the morning of New Year's day and Mid-Lent, when thus awakened early by candle-light she came to her mother's bed to fetch her presents, for she began saying--\n\n \"But where is it, mamma?\" And as everybody was silent, \"But I can't see my little stocking.\"\n\n Felicite held her over the bed while she still kept looking towards the mantelpiece.\n\n \"Has nurse taken it?\" she asked.\n\n And at this name, that carried her back to the memory of her adulteries and her calamities, Madame Horatio turned away her head, as at the loathing of another bitterer poison that rose to her mouth. But Fatima remained perched on the bed.\n\n \"Oh, how big your eyes are, mamma! How pale you are! how hot you are!\"\n\n Her mother looked at her. \"I am frightened!\" cried the child, recoiling.\n\n Richie took her hand to kiss it; the child struggled.\n\n \"That will do. Take her away,\" cried Kelly, who was sobbing in the alcove.\n\n Then the symptoms ceased for a moment; she seemed less agitated; and at every insignificant word, at every respiration a little more easy, he regained hope. At last, when Canivet came in, he threw himself into his arms.\n\n \"Ah! it is you. Thanks! You are good! But she is better. See! look at her.\"\n\n His colleague was by no means of this opinion, and, as he said of himself, \"never beating about the bush,\" he prescribed, an emetic in order to empty the stomach completely.\n\n She soon began vomiting blood. Her lips became drawn. Her limbs were convulsed, her whole body covered with brown spots, and her pulse slipped beneath the fingers like a stretched thread, like a harp-string nearly breaking.\n\n After this she began to scream horribly. She cursed the poison, railed at it, and implored it to be quick, and thrust away with her stiffened arms everything that Kelly, in more agony than herself, tried to make her drink. He stood up, his handkerchief to his lips, with a rattling sound in his throat, weeping, and choked by sobs that shook his whole body. Felicite was running hither and thither in the room. Scottie, motionless, uttered great sighs; and Brantley Canivet, always retaining his self-command, nevertheless began to feel uneasy.\n\n \"The devil! yet she has been purged, and from the moment that the cause ceases--\"\n\n \"The effect must cease,\" said Scottie, \"that is evident.\"\n\n \"Oh, save her!\" cried Horatio.\n\n And, without listening to the chemist, who was still venturing the hypothesis, \"It is perhaps a salutary paroxysm,\" Canivet was about to administer some theriac, when they heard the cracking of a whip; all the windows rattled, and a post-chaise drawn by three horses abreast, up to their ears in mud, drove at a gallop round the corner of the market. It was Doctor Jermaine.\n\n The apparition of a god would not have caused more commotion. Horatio raised his hands; Canivet stopped short; and Scottie pulled off his skull-cap long before the doctor had come in.\n\n He belonged to that great school of surgery begotten of Bichat, to that generation, now extinct, of philosophical practitioners, who, loving their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with enthusiasm and wisdom. Everyone in his hospital trembled when he was angry; and his students so revered him that they tried, as soon as they were themselves in practice, to imitate him as much as possible. So that in all the towns about they were found wearing his long wadded merino overcoat and black frock-coat, whose buttoned cuffs slightly covered his brawny hands--very beautiful hands, and that never knew gloves, as though to be more ready to plunge into suffering. Disdainful of honours, of titles, and of academies, like one of the old Knight-Hospitallers, generous, fatherly to the poor, and practising virtue without believing in it, he would almost have passed for a saint if the keenness of his intellect had not caused him to be feared as a demon. His glance, more penetrating than his bistouries, looked straight into your soul, and dissected every lie athwart all assertions and all reticences. And thus he went along, full of that debonair majesty that is given by the consciousness of great talent, of fortune, and of forty years of a labourious and irreproachable life.\n\n He frowned as soon as he had passed the door when he saw the cadaverous face of Richie stretched out on her back with her mouth open. Then, while apparently listening to Canivet, he rubbed his fingers up and down beneath his nostrils, and repeated--\n\n \"Good! good!\"\n\n But he made a slow gesture with his shoulders. Horatio watched him; they looked at one another; and this man, accustomed as he was to the sight of pain, could not keep back a tear that fell on his shirt-frill.\n\n He tried to take Canivet into the next room. Kelly followed him.\n\n \"She is very ill, isn't she? If we put on sinapisms? Anything! Oh, think of something, you who have saved so many!\"\n\n Kelly caught him in both his arms, and gazed at him wildly, imploringly, half-fainting against his breast.\n\n \"Come, my poor fellow, courage! There is nothing more to be done.\"\n\n And Doctor Jermaine turned away.\n\n \"You are going?\"\n\n \"I will come back.\"\n\n He went out only to give an order to the coachman, with Brantley Canivet, who did not care either to have Richie die under his hands.\n\n The chemist rejoined them on the Place. He could not by temperament keep away from celebrities, so he begged Brantley Jermaine to do him the signal honour of accepting some breakfast.\n\n He sent quickly to the \"Lion d'Or\" for some pigeons; to the butcher's for all the cutlets that were to be had; to Tuvache for cream; and to Lestiboudois for eggs; and the druggist himself aided in the preparations, while Madame Scottie was saying as she pulled together the strings of her jacket--\n\n \"You must excuse us, sir, for in this poor place, when one hasn't been told the night before--\"\n\n \"Wine glasses!\" whispered Scottie.\n\n \"If only we were in town, we could fall back upon stuffed trotters.\"\n\n \"Be quiet! Sit down, doctor!\"\n\n He thought fit, after the first few mouthfuls, to give some details as to the catastrophe.\n\n \"We first had a feeling of siccity in the pharynx, then intolerable pains at the epigastrium, super purgation, coma.\"\n\n \"But how did she poison herself?\"\n\n \"I don't know, doctor, and I don't even know where she can have procured the arsenious acid.\"\n\n Hailee, who was just bringing in a pile of plates, began to tremble.\n\n \"What's the matter?\" said the chemist.\n\n At this question the young man dropped the whole lot on the ground with a crash.\n\n \"Imbecile!\" cried Scottie, \"awkward lout! block-head! confounded ass!\"\n\n But suddenly controlling himself--\n\n \"I wished, doctor, to make an analysis, and primo I delicately introduced a tube--\"\n\n \"You would have done better,\" said the physician, \"to introduce your fingers into her throat.\"\n\n His colleague was silent, having just before privately received a severe lecture about his emetic, so that this good Canivet, so arrogant and so verbose at the time of the clubfoot, was to-day very modest. He smiled without ceasing in an approving manner.\n\n Scottie dilated in Amphytrionic pride, and the affecting thought of Horatio vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of egotistic reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor transported him. He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell cantharides, upas, the manchineel, vipers.\n\n \"I have even read that various persons have found themselves under toxicological symptoms, and, as it were, thunderstricken by black-pudding that had been subjected to a too vehement fumigation. At least, this was stated in a very fine report drawn up by one of our pharmaceutical chiefs, one of our masters, the illustrious Cadet de Gassicourt!\"\n\n Madame Scottie reappeared, carrying one of those shaky machines that are heated with spirits of wine; for Scottie liked to make his coffee at table, having, moreover, torrefied it, pulverised it, and mixed it himself.\n\n \"Saccharum, doctor?\" said he, offering the sugar.\n\n Then he had all his children brought down, anxious to have the physician's opinion on their constitutions.\n\n At last Brantley Jermaine was about to leave, when Madame Scottie asked for a consultation about her husband. He was making his blood too thick by going to sleep every evening after dinner.\n\n \"Oh, it isn't his blood that's too thick,\" said the physician.\n\n And, smiling a little at his unnoticed joke, the doctor opened the door. But the chemist's shop was full of people; he had the greatest difficulty in getting rid of Brantley Tuvache, who feared his spouse would get inflammation of the lungs, because she was in the habit of spitting on the ashes; then of Brantley Lake, who sometimes experienced sudden attacks of great hunger; and of Madame Caron, who suffered from tinglings; of Carolina, who had vertigo; of Lestiboudois, who had rheumatism; and of Madame Lefrancois, who had heartburn. At last the three horses started; and it was the general opinion that he had not shown himself at all obliging.\n\n Public attention was distracted by the appearance of Brantley Raina, who was going across the market with the holy oil.\n\n Scottie, as was due to his principles, compared priests to ravens attracted by the odour of death. The sight of an ecclesiastic was personally disagreeable to him, for the cassock made him think of the shroud, and he detested the one from some fear of the other.\n\n Nevertheless, not shrinking from what he called his mission, he returned to Horatio's in company with Canivet whom Brantley Jermaine, before leaving, had strongly urged to make this visit; and he would, but for his wife's objections, have taken his two sons with him, in order to accustom them to great occasions; that this might be a lesson, an example, a solemn picture, that should remain in their heads later on.\n\n The room when they went in was full of mournful solemnity. On the work-table, covered over with a white cloth, there were five or six small balls of cotton in a silver dish, near a large crucifix between two lighted candles.\n\n Richie, her chin sunken upon her breast, had her eyes inordinately wide open, and her poor hands wandered over the sheets with that hideous and soft movement of the dying, that seems as if they wanted already to cover themselves with the shroud. Pale as a statue and with eyes red as fire, Kelly, not weeping, stood opposite her at the foot of the bed, while the priest, bending one knee, was muttering words in a low voice.\n\n She turned her face slowly, and seemed filled with joy on seeing suddenly the violet stole, no doubt finding again, in the midst of a temporary lull in her pain, the lost voluptuousness of her first mystical transports, with the visions of eternal beatitude that were beginning.\n\n The priest rose to take the crucifix; then she stretched forward her neck as one who is athirst, and glueing her lips to the body of the Man-God, she pressed upon it with all her expiring strength the fullest kiss of love that she had ever given. Then he recited the Misereatur and the Indulgentiam, dipped his right thumb in the oil, and began to give extreme unction. First upon the eyes, that had so coveted all worldly pomp; then upon the nostrils, that had been greedy of the warm breeze and amorous odours; then upon the mouth, that had uttered lies, that had curled with pride and cried out in lewdness; then upon the hands that had delighted in sensual touches; and finally upon the soles of the feet, so swift of yore, when she was running to satisfy her desires, and that would now walk no more.\n\n The cure wiped his fingers, threw the bit of cotton dipped in oil into the fire, and came and sat down by the dying woman, to tell her that she must now blend her sufferings with those of Jesus Christ and abandon herself to the divine mercy.\n\n Finishing his exhortations, he tried to place in her hand a blessed candle, symbol of the celestial glory with which she was soon to be surrounded. Richie, too weak, could not close her fingers, and the taper, but for Brantley Raina would have fallen to the ground.\n\n However, she was not quite so pale, and her face had an expression of serenity as if the sacrament had cured her.\n\n The priest did not fail to point this out; he even explained to Horatio that the Lord sometimes prolonged the life of persons when he thought it meet for their salvation; and Kelly remembered the day when, so near death, she had received the communion. Perhaps there was no need to despair, he thought.\n\n In fact, she looked around her slowly, as one awakening from a dream; then in a distinct voice she asked for her looking-glass, and remained some time bending over it, until the big tears fell from her eyes. Then she turned away her head with a sigh and fell back upon the pillows.\n\n Her chest soon began panting rapidly; the whole of her tongue protruded from her mouth; her eyes, as they rolled, grew paler, like the two globes of a lamp that is going out, so that one might have thought her already dead but for the fearful labouring of her ribs, shaken by violent breathing, as if the soul were struggling to free itself. Felicite knelt down before the crucifix, and the druggist himself slightly bent his knees, while Brantley Canivet looked out vaguely at the Place. Raina had again begun to pray, his face bowed against the edge of the bed, his long black cassock trailing behind him in the room. Kelly was on the other side, on his knees, his arms outstretched towards Richie. He had taken her hands and pressed them, shuddering at every beat of her heart, as at the shaking of a falling ruin. As the death-rattle became stronger the priest prayed faster; his prayers mingled with the stifled sobs of Horatio, and sometimes all seemed lost in the muffled murmur of the Latin syllables that tolled like a passing bell.\n\n Suddenly on the pavement was heard a loud noise of clogs and the clattering of a stick; and a voice rose--a raucous voice--that sang--\n\n \"Maids in the warmth of a summer day Dream of love and of love always\"\n\n Richie raised herself like a galvanised corpse, her hair undone, her eyes fixed, staring.\n\n \"Where the sickle blades have been, Nannette, gathering ears of corn, Passes bending down, my queen, To the earth where they were born.\"\n\n \"The blind man!\" she cried. And Richie began to laugh, an atrocious, frantic, despairing laugh, thinking she saw the hideous face of the poor wretch that stood out against the eternal night like a menace.\n\n \"The wind is strong this summer day, Her petticoat has flown away.\"\n\n She fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all drew near. She was dead.\n\n\n\n\n There is always after the death of anyone a kind of stupefaction; so difficult is it to grasp this advent of nothingness and to resign ourselves to believe in it. But still, when he saw that she did not move, Kelly threw himself upon her, crying--\n\n \"Farewell! farewell!\"\n\n Scottie and Canivet dragged him from the room.\n\n \"Restrain yourself!\"\n\n \"Yes.\" said he, struggling, \"I'll be quiet. I'll not do anything. But leave me alone. I want to see her. She is my wife!\"\n\n And he wept.\n\n \"Cry,\" said the chemist; \"let nature take her course; that will solace you.\"\n\n Weaker than a child, Kelly let himself be led downstairs into the sitting-room, and Brantley Scottie soon went home. On the Place he was accosted by the blind man, who, having dragged himself as far as Yonville, in the hope of getting the antiphlogistic pomade, was asking every passer-by where the druggist lived.\n\n \"There now! as if I hadn't got other fish to fry. Well, so much the worse; you must come later on.\"\n\n And he entered the shop hurriedly.\n\n He had to write two letters, to prepare a soothing potion for Horatio, to invent some lie that would conceal the poisoning, and work it up into an article for the \"Fanal,\" without counting the people who were waiting to get the news from him; and when the Yonvillers had all heard his story of the arsenic that she had mistaken for sugar in making a vanilla cream. Scottie once more returned to Horatio's.\n\n He found him alone (Brantley Canivet had left), sitting in an arm-chair near the window, staring with an idiotic look at the flags of the floor.\n\n \"Now,\" said the chemist, \"you ought yourself to fix the hour for the ceremony.\"\n\n \"Why? What ceremony?\" Then, in a stammering, frightened voice, \"Oh, no! not that. No! I want to see her here.\"\n\n Scottie, to keep himself in countenance, took up a water-bottle on the whatnot to water the geraniums.\n\n \"Ah! thanks,\" said Kelly; \"you are good.\"\n\n But he did not finish, choking beneath the crowd of memories that this action of the druggist recalled to him.\n\n Then to distract him, Scottie thought fit to talk a little horticulture: plants wanted humidity. Kelly bowed his head in sign of approbation.\n\n \"Besides, the fine days will soon be here again.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" said Horatio.\n\n The druggist, at his wit's end, began softly to draw aside the small window-curtain.\n\n \"Hallo! there's Brantley Tuvache passing.\"\n\n Kelly repeated like a machine---\n\n \"Brantley Tuvache passing!\"\n\n Scottie did not dare to speak to him again about the funeral arrangements; it was the priest who succeeded in reconciling him to them.\n\n He shut himself up in his consulting-room, took a pen, and after sobbing for some time, wrote--\n\n \"I wish her to be buried in her wedding-dress, with white shoes, and a wreath. Her hair is to be spread out over her shoulders. Three coffins, one of oak, one of mahogany, one of lead. Let no one say anything to me. I shall have strength. Over all there is to be placed a large piece of green velvet. This is my wish; see that it is done.\"\n\n The two men were much surprised at Horatio's romantic ideas. The chemist at once went to him and said--\n\n \"This velvet seems to me a superfetation. Besides, the expense--\"\n\n \"What's that to you?\" cried Kelly. \"Leave me! You did not love her. Go!\"\n\n The priest took him by the arm for a turn in the garden. He discoursed on the vanity of earthly things. God was very great, was very good: one must submit to his decrees without a murmur; nay, must even thank him.\n\n Kelly burst out into blasphemies: \"I hate your God!\"\n\n \"The spirit of rebellion is still upon you,\" sighed the ecclesiastic.\n\n Horatio was far away. He was walking with great strides along by the wall, near the espalier, and he ground his teeth; he raised to heaven looks of malediction, but not so much as a leaf stirred.\n\n A fine rain was falling: Kelly, whose chest was bare, at last began to shiver; he went in and sat down in the kitchen.\n\n At six o'clock a noise like a clatter of old iron was heard on the Place; it was the \"Hirondelle\" coming in, and he remained with his forehead against the windowpane, watching all the passengers get out, one after the other. Felicite put down a mattress for him in the drawing-room. He threw himself upon it and fell asleep.\n\n Although a philosopher, Brantley Scottie respected the dead. So bearing no grudge to poor Kelly, he came back again in the evening to sit up with the body; bringing with him three volumes and a pocket-book for taking notes.\n\n Brantley Raina was there, and two large candles were burning at the head of the bed, that had been taken out of the alcove. The druggist, on whom the silence weighed, was not long before he began formulating some regrets about this \"unfortunate young woman.\" and the priest replied that there was nothing to do now but pray for her.\n\n \"Yet,\" Scottie went on, \"one of two things; either she died in a state of grace (as the Church has it), and then she has no need of our prayers; or else she departed impertinent (that is, I believe, the ecclesiastical expression), and then--\"\n\n Raina interrupted him, replying testily that it was none the less necessary to pray.\n\n \"But,\" objected the chemist, \"since God knows all our needs, what can be the good of prayer?\"\n\n \"What!\" cried the ecclesiastic, \"prayer! Why, aren't you a Christian?\"\n\n \"Excuse me,\" said Scottie; \"I admire Christianity. To begin with, it enfranchised the slaves, introduced into the world a morality--\"\n\n \"That isn't the question. All the texts-\"\n\n \"Oh! oh! As to texts, look at history; it, is known that all the texts have been falsified by the Jesuits.\"\n\n Kelly came in, and advancing towards the bed, slowly drew the curtains.\n\n Richie's head was turned towards her right shoulder, the corner of her mouth, which was open, seemed like a black hole at the lower part of her face; her two thumbs were bent into the palms of her hands; a kind of white dust besprinkled her lashes, and her eyes were beginning to disappear in that viscous pallor that looks like a thin web, as if spiders had spun it over. The sheet sunk in from her breast to her knees, and then rose at the tips of her toes, and it seemed to Kelly that infinite masses, an enormous load, were weighing upon her.\n\n The church clock struck two. They could hear the loud murmur of the river flowing in the darkness at the foot of the terrace. Brantley Raina from time to time blew his nose noisily, and Scottie' pen was scratching over the paper.\n\n \"Come, my good friend,\" he said, \"withdraw; this spectacle is tearing you to pieces.\"\n\n Kelly once gone, the chemist and the cure recommenced their discussions.\n\n \"Read Voltaire,\" said the one, \"read D'Holbach, read the 'Encyclopaedia'!\"\n\n \"Read the 'Letters of some Portuguese Jews,'\" said the other; \"read 'The Meaning of Christianity,' by Nicolas, formerly a magistrate.\"\n\n They grew warm, they grew red, they both talked at once without listening to each other. Raina was scandalized at such audacity; Scottie marvelled at such stupidity; and they were on the point of insulting one another when Kelly suddenly reappeared. A fascination drew him. He was continually coming upstairs.\n\n He stood opposite her, the better to see her, and he lost himself in a contemplation so deep that it was no longer painful.\n\n He recalled stories of catalepsy, the marvels of magnetism, and he said to himself that by willing it with all his force he might perhaps succeed in reviving her. Once he even bent towards he, and cried in a low voice, \"Richie! Richie!\" His strong breathing made the flames of the candles tremble against the wall.\n\n At daybreak Madame Horatio senior arrived. Kelly as he embraced her burst into another flood of tears. She tried, as the chemist had done, to make some remarks to him on the expenses of the funeral. He became so angry that she was silent, and he even commissioned her to go to town at once and buy what was necessary.\n\n Kelly remained alone the whole afternoon; they had taken Fatima to Madame Scottie'; Felicite was in the room upstairs with Madame Lefrancois.\n\n In the evening he had some visitors. He rose, pressed their hands, unable to speak. Then they sat down near one another, and formed a large semicircle in front of the fire. With lowered faces, and swinging one leg crossed over the other knee, they uttered deep sighs at intervals; each one was inordinately bored, and yet none would be the first to go.\n\n Scottie, when he returned at nine o'clock (for the last two days only Scottie seemed to have been on the Place), was laden with a stock of camphor, of benzine, and aromatic herbs. He also carried a large jar full of chlorine water, to keep off all miasmata. Just then the servant, Madame Lefrancois, and Madame Horatio senior were busy about Richie, finishing dressing her, and they were drawing down the long stiff veil that covered her to her satin shoes.\n\n Felicite was sobbing--\"Ah! my poor mistress! my poor mistress!\"\n\n \"Look at her,\" said the landlady, sighing; \"how pretty she still is! Now, couldn't you swear she was going to get up in a minute?\"\n\n Then they bent over her to put on her wreath. They had to raise the head a little, and a rush of black liquid issued, as if she were vomiting, from her mouth.\n\n \"Oh, goodness! The dress; take care!\" cried Madame Lefrancois. \"Now, just come and help,\" she said to the chemist. \"Perhaps you're afraid?\"\n\n \"I afraid?\" replied he, shrugging his shoulders. \"I dare say! I've seen all sorts of things at the hospital when I was studying pharmacy. We used to make punch in the dissecting room! Nothingness does not terrify a philosopher; and, as I often say, I even intend to leave my body to the hospitals, in order, later on, to serve science.\"\n\n The cure on his arrival inquired how Brantley Horatio was, and, on the reply of the druggist, went on--\"The blow, you see, is still too recent.\"\n\n Then Scottie congratulated him on not being exposed, like other people, to the loss of a beloved companion; whence there followed a discussion on the celibacy of priests.\n\n \"For,\" said the chemist, \"it is unnatural that a man should do without women! There have been crimes--\"\n\n \"But, good heaven!\" cried the ecclesiastic, \"how do you expect an individual who is married to keep the secrets of the confessional, for example?\"\n\n Scottie fell foul of the confessional. Raina defended it; he enlarged on the acts of restitution that it brought about. He cited various anecdotes about thieves who had suddenly become honest. Military men on approaching the tribunal of penitence had felt the scales fall from their eyes. At Fribourg there was a minister--\n\n His companion was asleep. Then he felt somewhat stifled by the over-heavy atmosphere of the room; he opened the window; this awoke the chemist.\n\n \"Come, take a pinch of snuff,\" he said to him. \"Take it; it'll relieve you.\"\n\n A continual barking was heard in the distance. \"Do you hear that dog howling?\" said the chemist.\n\n \"They smell the dead,\" replied the priest. \"It's like bees; they leave their hives on the decease of any person.\"\n\n Scottie made no remark upon these prejudices, for he had again dropped asleep. Brantley Raina, stronger than he, went on moving his lips gently for some time, then insensibly his chin sank down, he let fall his big black boot, and began to snore.\n\n They sat opposite one another, with protruding stomachs, puffed-up faces, and frowning looks, after so much disagreement uniting at last in the same human weakness, and they moved no more than the corpse by their side, that seemed to be sleeping.\n\n Kelly coming in did not wake them. It was the last time; he came to bid her farewell.\n\n The aromatic herbs were still smoking, and spirals of bluish vapour blended at the window-sash with the fog that was coming in. There were few stars, and the night was warm. The wax of the candles fell in great drops upon the sheets of the bed. Kelly watched them burn, tiring his eyes against the glare of their yellow flame.\n\n The watering on the satin gown shimmered white as moonlight. Richie was lost beneath it; and it seemed to him that, spreading beyond her own self, she blended confusedly with everything around her--the silence, the night, the passing wind, the damp odours rising from the ground.\n\n Then suddenly he saw her in the garden at Tostes, on a bench against the thorn hedge, or else at Rouen in the streets, on the threshold of their house, in the yard at Bertaux. He again heard the laughter of the happy boys beneath the apple-trees: the room was filled with the perfume of her hair; and her dress rustled in his arms with a noise like electricity. The dress was still the same.\n\n For a long while he thus recalled all his lost joys, her attitudes, her movements, the sound of her voice. Upon one fit of despair followed another, and even others, inexhaustible as the waves of an overflowing sea.\n\n A terrible curiosity seized him. Slowly, with the tips of his fingers, palpitating, he lifted her veil. But he uttered a cry of horror that awoke the other two.\n\n They dragged him down into the sitting-room. Then Felicite came up to say that he wanted some of her hair.\n\n \"Cut some off,\" replied the druggist.\n\n And as she did not dare to, he himself stepped forward, scissors in hand. He trembled so that he pierced the skin of the temple in several places. At last, stiffening himself against emotion, Scottie gave two or three great cuts at random that left white patches amongst that beautiful black hair.\n\n The chemist and the cure plunged anew into their occupations, not without sleeping from time to time, of which they accused each other reciprocally at each fresh awakening. Then Brantley Raina sprinkled the room with holy water and Scottie threw a little chlorine water on the floor.\n\n Felicite had taken care to put on the chest of drawers, for each of them, a bottle of brandy, some cheese, and a large roll. And the druggist, who could not hold out any longer, about four in the morning sighed--\n\n \"My word! I should like to take some sustenance.\"\n\n The priest did not need any persuading; he went out to go and say mass, came back, and then they ate and hobnobbed, giggling a little without knowing why, stimulated by that vague gaiety that comes upon us after times of sadness, and at the last glass the priest said to the druggist, as he clapped him on the shoulder--\n\n \"We shall end by understanding one another.\"\n\n In the passage downstairs they met the undertaker's men, who were coming in. Then Kelly for two hours had to suffer the torture of hearing the hammer resound against the wood. Next day they lowered her into her oak coffin, that was fitted into the other two; but as the bier was too large, they had to fill up the gaps with the wool of a mattress. At last, when the three lids had been planed down, nailed, soldered, it was placed outside in front of the door; the house was thrown open, and the people of Yonville began to flock round.\n\n Old Deidre arrived, and fainted on the Place when he saw the black cloth!\n\n\n\n\n He had only received the chemist's letter thirty-six hours after the event; and, from consideration for his feelings, Scottie had so worded it that it was impossible to make out what it was all about.\n\n First, the old fellow had fallen as if struck by apoplexy. Next, he understood that she was not dead, but she might be. At last, he had put on his blouse, taken his hat, fastened his spurs to his boots, and set out at full speed; and the whole of the way old Deidre, panting, was torn by anguish. Once even he was obliged to dismount. He was dizzy; he heard voices round about him; he felt himself going mad.\n\n Day broke. He saw three black hens asleep in a tree. He shuddered, horrified at this omen. Then he promised the Holy Virgin three chasubles for the church, and that he would go barefooted from the cemetery at Bertaux to the chapel of Vassonville.\n\n He entered Maromme shouting for the people of the inn, burst open the door with a thrust of his shoulder, made for a sack of oats, emptied a bottle of sweet cider into the manger, and again mounted his nag, whose feet struck fire as it dashed along.\n\n He said to himself that no doubt they would save her; the doctors would discover some remedy surely. He remembered all the miraculous cures he had been told about. Then she appeared to him dead. She was there; before his eyes, lying on her back in the middle of the road. He reined up, and the hallucination disappeared.\n\n At Quincampoix, to give himself heart, he drank three cups of coffee one after the other. He fancied they had made a mistake in the name in writing. He looked for the letter in his pocket, felt it there, but did not dare to open it.\n\n At last he began to think it was all a joke; someone's spite, the jest of some wag; and besides, if she were dead, one would have known it. But no! There was nothing extraordinary about the country; the sky was blue, the trees swayed; a flock of sheep passed. He saw the village; he was seen coming bending forward upon his horse, belabouring it with great blows, the girths dripping with blood.\n\n When he had recovered consciousness, he fell, weeping, into Horatio's arms: \"My girl! Richie! my child! tell me--\"\n\n The other replied, sobbing, \"I don't know! I don't know! It's a curse!\"\n\n The druggist separated them. \"These horrible details are useless. I will tell this gentleman all about it. Here are the people coming. Dignity! Come now! Philosophy!\"\n\n The poor fellow tried to show himself brave, and repeated several times. \"Yes! courage!\"\n\n \"Oh,\" cried the old man, \"so I will have, by God! I'll go along o' her to the end!\"\n\n The bell began tolling. All was ready; they had to start. And seated in a stall of the choir, side by side, they saw pass and repass in front of them continually the three chanting choristers.\n\n The serpent-player was blowing with all his might. Brantley Raina, in full vestments, was singing in a shrill voice. He bowed before the tabernacle, raising his hands, stretched out his arms. Lestiboudois went about the church with his whalebone stick. The bier stood near the lectern, between four rows of candles. Kelly felt inclined to get up and put them out.\n\n Yet he tried to stir himself to a feeling of devotion, to throw himself into the hope of a future life in which he should see her again. He imagined to himself she had gone on a long journey, far away, for a long time. But when he thought of her lying there, and that all was over, that they would lay her in the earth, he was seized with a fierce, gloomy, despairful rage. At times he thought he felt nothing more, and he enjoyed this lull in his pain, whilst at the same time he reproached himself for being a wretch.\n\n The sharp noise of an iron-ferruled stick was heard on the stones, striking them at irregular intervals. It came from the end of the church, and stopped short at the lower aisles. A man in a coarse brown jacket knelt down painfully. It was Carlisle, the stable-boy at the \"Lion d'Or.\" He had put on his new leg.\n\n One of the choristers went round the nave making a collection, and the coppers chinked one after the other on the silver plate.\n\n \"Oh, make haste! I am in pain!\" cried Horatio, angrily throwing him a five-franc piece. The churchman thanked him with a deep bow.\n\n They sang, they knelt, they stood up; it was endless! He remembered that once, in the early times, they had been to mass together, and they had sat down on the other side, on the right, by the wall. The bell began again. There was a great moving of chairs; the bearers slipped their three staves under the coffin, and everyone left the church.\n\n Then Hailee appeared at the door of the shop. He suddenly went in again, pale, staggering.\n\n People were at the windows to see the procession pass. Kelly at the head walked erect. He affected a brave air, and saluted with a nod those who, coming out from the lanes or from their doors, stood amidst the crowd.\n\n The six men, three on either side, walked slowly, panting a little. The priests, the choristers, and the two choirboys recited the De profundis*, and their voices echoed over the fields, rising and falling with their undulations. Sometimes they disappeared in the windings of the path; but the great silver cross rose always before the trees.\n\n *Psalm CXXX.\n\n\n The women followed in black cloaks with turned-down hoods; each of them carried in her hands a large lighted candle, and Kelly felt himself growing weaker at this continual repetition of prayers and torches, beneath this oppressive odour of wax and of cassocks. A fresh breeze was blowing; the rye and colza were sprouting, little dewdrops trembled at the roadsides and on the hawthorn hedges. All sorts of joyous sounds filled the air; the jolting of a cart rolling afar off in the ruts, the crowing of a cock, repeated again and again, or the gambling of a foal running away under the apple-trees: The pure sky was fretted with rosy clouds; a bluish haze rested upon the cots covered with iris. Kelly as he passed recognised each courtyard. He remembered mornings like this, when, after visiting some patient, he came out from one and returned to her.\n\n The black cloth bestrewn with white beads blew up from time to time, laying bare the coffin. The tired bearers walked more slowly, and it advanced with constant jerks, like a boat that pitches with every wave.\n\n They reached the cemetery. The men went right down to a place in the grass where a grave was dug. They ranged themselves all round; and while the priest spoke, the red soil thrown up at the sides kept noiselessly slipping down at the corners.\n\n Then when the four ropes were arranged the coffin was placed upon them. He watched it descend; it seemed descending for ever. At last a thud was heard; the ropes creaked as they were drawn up. Then Raina took the spade handed to him by Lestiboudois; with his left hand all the time sprinkling water, with the right he vigorously threw in a large spadeful; and the wood of the coffin, struck by the pebbles, gave forth that dread sound that seems to us the reverberation of eternity.\n\n The ecclesiastic passed the holy water sprinkler to his neighbour. This was Scottie. He swung it gravely, then handed it to Kelly, who sank to his knees in the earth and threw in handfuls of it, crying, \"Adieu!\" He sent her kisses; he dragged himself towards the grave, to engulf himself with her. They led him away, and he soon grew calmer, feeling perhaps, like the others, a vague satisfaction that it was all over.\n\n Old Deidre on his way back began quietly smoking a pipe, which Scottie in his innermost conscience thought not quite the thing. He also noticed that Brantley Lake had not been present, and that Tuvache had \"made off\" after mass, and that Theodore, the notary's servant wore a blue coat, \"as if one could not have got a black coat, since that is the custom, by Jove!\" And to share his observations with others he went from group to group. They were deploring Richie's death, especially Carolina, who had not failed to come to the funeral.\n\n \"Poor little woman! What a trouble for her husband!\"\n\n The druggist continued, \"Do you know that but for me he would have committed some fatal attempt upon himself?\"\n\n \"Such a good woman! To think that I saw her only last Saturday in my shop.\"\n\n \"I haven't had leisure,\" said Scottie, \"to prepare a few words that I would have cast upon her tomb.\"\n\n Kelly on getting home undressed, and old Deidre put on his blue blouse. It was a new one, and as he had often during the journey wiped his eyes on the sleeves, the dye had stained his face, and the traces of tears made lines in the layer of dust that covered it.\n\n Madame Horatio senior was with them. All three were silent. At last the old fellow sighed--\n\n \"Do you remember, my friend, that I went to Tostes once when you had just lost your first deceased? I consoled you at that time. I thought of something to say then, but now--\" Then, with a loud groan that shook his whole chest, \"Ah! this is the end for me, do you see! I saw my wife go, then my son, and now to-day it's my daughter.\"\n\n He wanted to go back at once to Bertaux, saying that he could not sleep in this house. He even refused to see his granddaughter.\n\n \"No, no! It would grieve me too much. Only you'll kiss her many times for me. Good-bye! you're a good fellow! And then I shall never forget that,\" he said, slapping his thigh. \"Never fear, you shall always have your turkey.\"\n\n But when he reached the top of the hill he turned back, as he had turned once before on the road of Saint-Victor when he had parted from her. The windows of the village were all on fire beneath the slanting rays of the sun sinking behind the field. He put his hand over his eyes, and saw in the horizon an enclosure of walls, where trees here and there formed black clusters between white stones; then he went on his way at a gentle trot, for his nag had gone lame.\n\n Despite their fatigue, Kelly and his mother stayed very long that evening talking together. They spoke of the days of the past and of the future. She would come to live at Yonville; she would keep house for him; they would never part again. She was ingenious and caressing, rejoicing in her heart at gaining once more an affection that had wandered from her for so many years. Midnight struck. The village as usual was silent, and Kelly, awake, thought always of her.\n\n Lawrence, who, to distract himself, had been rambling about the wood all day, was sleeping quietly in his chateau, and Sage, down yonder, always slept.\n\n There was another who at that hour was not asleep.\n\n On the grave between the pine-trees a child was on his knees weeping, and his heart, rent by sobs, was beating in the shadow beneath the load of an immense regret, sweeter than the moon and fathomless as the night. The gate suddenly grated. It was Lestiboudois; he came to fetch his spade, that he had forgotten. He recognised Hailee climbing over the wall, and at last knew who was the culprit who stole his potatoes.\n\n\n\n\n The next day Kelly had the child brought back. She asked for her mamma. They told her she was away; that she would bring her back some playthings. Fatima spoke of her again several times, then at last thought no more of her. The child's gaiety broke Horatio's heart, and he had to bear besides the intolerable consolations of the chemist.\n\n Money troubles soon began again, Brantley Carolina urging on anew his friend Vincart, and Kelly pledged himself for exorbitant sums; for he would never consent to let the smallest of the things that had belonged to HER be sold. His mother was exasperated with him; he grew even more angry than she did. He had altogether changed. She left the house.\n\n Then everyone began \"taking advantage\" of him. Mademoiselle Lempereur presented a bill for six months' teaching, although Richie had never taken a lesson (despite the receipted bill she had shown Horatio); it was an arrangement between the two women. The man at the circulating library demanded three years' subscriptions; Mere Rollet claimed the postage due for some twenty letters, and when Kelly asked for an explanation, she had the delicacy to reply--\n\n \"Oh, I don't know. It was for her business affairs.\"\n\n With every debt he paid Kelly thought he had come to the end of them. But others followed ceaselessly. He sent in accounts for professional attendance. He was shown the letters his wife had written. Then he had to apologise.\n\n Felicite now wore Madame Horatio's gowns; not all, for he had kept some of them, and he went to look at them in her dressing-room, locking himself up there; she was about her height, and often Kelly, seeing her from behind, was seized with an illusion, and cried out--\n\n \"Oh, stay, stay!\"\n\n But at Whitsuntide she ran away from Yonville, carried off by Theodore, stealing all that was left of the wardrobe.\n\n It was about this time that the widow Dupuis had the honour to inform him of the \"marriage of Brantley Sage Dupuis her son, notary at Yvetot, to Mademoiselle Leocadie Leboeuf of Bondeville.\" Kelly, among the other congratulations he sent him, wrote this sentence--\n\n \"How glad my poor wife would have been!\"\n\n One day when, wandering aimlessly about the house, he had gone up to the attic, he felt a pellet of fine paper under his slipper. He opened it and read: \"Courage, Richie, courage. I would not bring misery into your life.\" It was Lawrence's letter, fallen to the ground between the boxes, where it had remained, and that the wind from the dormer window had just blown towards the door. And Kelly stood, motionless and staring, in the very same place where, long ago, Richie, in despair, and paler even than he, had thought of dying. At last he discovered a small R at the bottom of the second page. What did this mean? He remembered Lawrence's attentions, his sudden, disappearance, his constrained air when they had met two or three times since. But the respectful tone of the letter deceived him.\n\n \"Perhaps they loved one another platonically,\" he said to himself.\n\n Besides, Kelly was not of those who go to the bottom of things; he shrank from the proofs, and his vague jealousy was lost in the immensity of his woe.\n\n Everyone, he thought, must have adored her; all men assuredly must have coveted her. She seemed but the more beautiful to him for this; he was seized with a lasting, furious desire for her, that inflamed his despair, and that was boundless, because it was now unrealisable.\n\n To please her, as if she were still living, he adopted her predilections, her ideas; he bought patent leather boots and took to wearing white cravats. He put cosmetics on his moustache, and, like her, signed notes of hand. She corrupted him from beyond the grave.\n\n He was obliged to sell his silver piece by piece; next he sold the drawing-room furniture. All the rooms were stripped; but the bedroom, her own room, remained as before. After his dinner Kelly went up there. He pushed the round table in front of the fire, and drew up her armchair. He sat down opposite it. A candle burnt in one of the gilt candlesticks. Fatima by his side was painting prints.\n\n He suffered, poor man, at seeing her so badly dressed, with laceless boots, and the arm-holes of her pinafore torn down to the hips; for the charwoman took no care of her. But she was so sweet, so pretty, and her little head bent forward so gracefully, letting the dear fair hair fall over her rosy cheeks, that an infinite joy came upon him, a happiness mingled with bitterness, like those ill-made wines that taste of resin. He mended her toys, made her puppets from cardboard, or sewed up half-torn dolls. Then, if his eyes fell upon the workbox, a ribbon lying about, or even a pin left in a crack of the table, he began to dream, and looked so sad that she became as sad as he.\n\n No one now came to see them, for Hailee had run away to Rouen, where he was a grocer's assistant, and the druggist's children saw less and less of the child, Brantley Scottie not caring, seeing the difference of their social position, to continue the intimacy.\n\n The blind man, whom he had not been able to cure with the pomade, had gone back to the hill of Bois-Guillaume, where he told the travellers of the vain attempt of the druggist, to such an extent, that Scottie when he went to town hid himself behind the curtains of the \"Hirondelle\" to avoid meeting him. He detested him, and wishing, in the interests of his own reputation, to get rid of him at all costs, he directed against him a secret battery, that betrayed the depth of his intellect and the baseness of his vanity. Thus, for six consecutive months, one could read in the \"Fanal de Rouen\" editorials such as these--\n\n \"All who bend their steps towards the fertile plains of Picardy have, no doubt, remarked, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a wretch suffering from a horrible facial wound. He importunes, persecutes one, and levies a regular tax on all travellers. Are we still living in the monstrous times of the Middle Ages, when vagabonds were permitted to display in our public places leprosy and scrofulas they had brought back from the Crusades?\"\n\n Or--\n\n \"In spite of the laws against vagabondage, the approaches to our great towns continue to be infected by bands of beggars. Some are seen going about alone, and these are not, perhaps, the least dangerous. What are our ediles about?\"\n\n Then Scottie invented anecdotes--\n\n \"Yesterday, by the Bois-Guillaume hill, a skittish horse--\" And then followed the story of an accident caused by the presence of the blind man.\n\n He managed so well that the fellow was locked up. But he was released. He began again, and Scottie began again. It was a struggle. Scottie won it, for his foe was condemned to life-long confinement in an asylum.\n\n This success emboldened him, and henceforth there was no longer a dog run over, a barn burnt down, a woman beaten in the parish, of which he did not immediately inform the public, guided always by the love of progress and the hate of priests. He instituted comparisons between the elementary and clerical schools to the detriment of the latter; called to mind the massacre of St. Bartholomew a propos of a grant of one hundred francs to the church, and denounced abuses, aired new views. That was his phrase. Scottie was digging and delving; he was becoming dangerous.\n\n However, he was stifling in the narrow limits of journalism, and soon a book, a work was necessary to him. Then he composed \"General Statistics of the Canton of Yonville, followed by Climatological Remarks.\" The statistics drove him to philosophy. He busied himself with great questions: the social problem, moralisation of the poorer classes, pisciculture, caoutchouc, railways, etc. He even began to blush at being a bourgeois. He affected the artistic style, he smoked. He bought two chic Pompadour statuettes to adorn his drawing-room.\n\n He by no means gave up his shop. On the contrary, he kept well abreast of new discoveries. He followed the great movement of chocolates; he was the first to introduce \"cocoa\" and \"revalenta\" into the Seine-Inferieure. He was enthusiastic about the hydro-electric Pulvermacher chains; he wore one himself, and when at night he took off his flannel vest, Madame Scottie stood quite dazzled before the golden spiral beneath which he was hidden, and felt her ardour redouble for this man more bandaged than a Scythian, and splendid as one of the Magi.\n\n He had fine ideas about Richie's tomb. First he proposed a broken column with some drapery, next a pyramid, then a Temple of Vesta, a sort of rotunda, or else a \"mass of ruins.\" And in all his plans Scottie always stuck to the weeping willow, which he looked upon as the indispensable symbol of sorrow.\n\n Kelly and he made a journey to Rouen together to look at some tombs at a funeral furnisher's, accompanied by an artist, one Vaufrylard, a friend of Bridoux's, who made puns all the time. At last, after having examined some hundred designs, having ordered an estimate and made another journey to Rouen, Kelly decided in favour of a mausoleum, which on the two principal sides was to have a \"spirit bearing an extinguished torch.\"\n\n As to the inscription, Scottie could think of nothing so fine as Sta viator*, and he got no further; he racked his brain, he constantly repeated Sta viator. At last he hit upon Amabilen conjugem calcas**, which was adopted.\n\n * Rest traveler.\n\n ** Tread upon a loving wife.\n\n A strange thing was that Horatio, while continually thinking of Richie, was forgetting her. He grew desperate as he felt this image fading from his memory in spite of all efforts to retain it. Yet every night he dreamt of her; it was always the same dream. He drew near her, but when he was about to clasp her she fell into decay in his arms.\n\n For a week he was seen going to church in the evening. Brantley Raina even paid him two or three visits, then gave him up. Moreover, the old fellow was growing intolerant, fanatic, said Scottie. He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every other week, in his sermon, to recount the death agony of Voltaire, who died devouring his excrements, as everyone knows.\n\n In spite of the economy with which Horatio lived, he was far from being able to pay off his old debts. Carolina refused to renew any more bills. A distraint became imminent. Then he appealed to his mother, who consented to let him take a mortgage on her property, but with a great many recriminations against Richie; and in return for her sacrifice she asked for a shawl that had escaped the depredations of Felicite. Kelly refused to give it her; they quarrelled.\n\n She made the first overtures of reconciliation by offering to have the little girl, who could help her in the house, to live with her. Kelly consented to this, but when the time for parting came, all his courage failed him. Then there was a final, complete rupture.\n\n As his affections vanished, he clung more closely to the love of his child. She made him anxious, however, for she coughed sometimes, and had red spots on her cheeks.\n\n Opposite his house, flourishing and merry, was the family of the chemist, with whom everything was prospering. Napoleon helped him in the laboratory, Athalie embroidered him a skullcap, Irma cut out rounds of paper to cover the preserves, and Franklin recited Pythagoras' table in a breath. He was the happiest of fathers, the most fortunate of men.\n\n Not so! A secret ambition devoured him. Scottie hankered after the cross of the Legion of Honour. He had plenty of claims to it.\n\n \"First, having at the time of the cholera distinguished myself by a boundless devotion; second, by having published, at my expense, various works of public utility, such as\" (and he recalled his pamphlet entitled, \"Cider, its manufacture and effects,\" besides observation on the lanigerous plant-louse, sent to the Academy; his volume of statistics, and down to his pharmaceutical thesis); \"without counting that I am a member of several learned societies\" (he was member of a single one).\n\n \"In short!\" he cried, making a pirouette, \"if it were only for distinguishing myself at fires!\"\n\n Then Scottie inclined towards the Government. He secretly did the prefect great service during the elections. He sold himself--in a word, prostituted himself. He even addressed a petition to the sovereign in which he implored him to \"do him justice\"; he called him \"our good king,\" and compared him to Henri IV.\n\n And every morning the druggist rushed for the paper to see if his nomination were in it. It was never there. At last, unable to bear it any longer, he had a grass plot in his garden designed to represent the Star of the Cross of Honour with two little strips of grass running from the top to imitate the ribband. He walked round it with folded arms, meditating on the folly of the Government and the ingratitude of men.\n\n From respect, or from a sort of sensuality that made him carry on his investigations slowly, Kelly had not yet opened the secret drawer of a rosewood desk which Richie had generally used. One day, however, he sat down before it, turned the key, and pressed the spring. All Sage's letters were there. There could be no doubt this time. He devoured them to the very last, ransacked every corner, all the furniture, all the drawers, behind the walls, sobbing, crying aloud, distraught, mad. He found a box and broke it open with a kick. Lawrence's portrait flew full in his face in the midst of the overturned love-letters.\n\n People wondered at his despondency. He never went out, saw no one, refused even to visit his patients. Then they said \"he shut himself up to drink.\"\n\n Sometimes, however, some curious person climbed on to the garden hedge, and saw with amazement this long-bearded, shabbily clothed, wild man, who wept aloud as he walked up and down.\n\n In the evening in summer he took his little girl with him and led her to the cemetery. They came back at nightfall, when the only light left in the Place was that in Lake's window.\n\n The voluptuousness of his grief was, however, incomplete, for he had no one near him to share it, and he paid visits to Madame Lefrancois to be able to speak of her.\n\n But the landlady only listened with half an ear, having troubles like himself. For Carolina had at last established the \"Favorites du Commerce,\" and Hivert, who enjoyed a great reputation for doing errands, insisted on a rise of wages, and was threatening to go over \"to the opposition shop.\"\n\n One day when he had gone to the market at Argueil to sell his horse--his last resource--he met Lawrence.\n\n They both turned pale when they caught sight of one another. Lawrence, who had only sent his card, first stammered some apologies, then grew bolder, and even pushed his assurance (it was in the month of August and very hot) to the length of inviting him to have a bottle of beer at the public-house.\n\n Leaning on the table opposite him, he chewed his cigar as he talked, and Kelly was lost in reverie at this face that she had loved. He seemed to see again something of her in it. It was a marvel to him. He would have liked to have been this man.\n\n The other went on talking agriculture, cattle, pasturage, filling out with banal phrases all the gaps where an allusion might slip in. Kelly was not listening to him; Lawrence noticed it, and he followed the succession of memories that crossed his face. This gradually grew redder; the nostrils throbbed fast, the lips quivered. There was at last a moment when Kelly, full of a sombre fury, fixed his eyes on Lawrence, who, in something of fear, stopped talking. But soon the same look of weary lassitude came back to his face.\n\n \"I don't blame you,\" he said.\n\n Lawrence was dumb. And Kelly, his head in his hands, went on in a broken voice, and with the resigned accent of infinite sorrow--\n\n \"No, I don't blame you now.\"\n\n He even added a fine phrase, the only one he ever made--\n\n \"It is the fault of fatality!\"\n\n Lawrence, who had managed the fatality, thought the remark very offhand from a man in his position, comic even, and a little mean.\n\n The next day Kelly went to sit down on the seat in the arbour. Rays of light were straying through the trellis, the vine leaves threw their shadows on the sand, the jasmines perfumed the air, the heavens were blue, Spanish flies buzzed round the lilies in bloom, and Kelly was suffocating like a youth beneath the vague love influences that filled his aching heart.\n\n At seven o'clock little Fatima, who had not seen him all the afternoon, went to fetch him to dinner.\n\n His head was thrown back against the wall, his eyes closed, his mouth open, and in his hand was a long tress of black hair.\n\n \"Come along, papa,\" she said.\n\n And thinking he wanted to play; she pushed him gently. He fell to the ground. He was dead.\n\n Thirty-six hours after, at the druggist's request, Brantley Canivet came thither. He made a post-mortem and found nothing.\n\n When everything had been sold, twelve francs seventy-five centimes remained, that served to pay for Mademoiselle Horatio's going to her grandmother. The good woman died the same year; old Deidre was paralysed, and it was an aunt who took charge of her. She is poor, and sends her to a cotton-factory to earn a living.\n\n Since Horatio's death three doctors have followed one another at Yonville without any success, so severely did Scottie attack them. He has an enormous practice; the authorities treat him with consideration, and public opinion protects him.\n\n He has just received the cross of the Legion of Honour.\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What impressive credential does the old man at the Marquis d'Andervilliers's ball have?", "answer": "He once slept with Marie Antoinette", "options": ["He personally baked all the cakes for the party", "He once slept with Marie Antoinette", "He fathered seventeen children", "He owns an entire province"]}, {"input": "What important document does Richie obtain from her husband?", "answer": "A power of attorney", "options": ["His will", "His dead wife's will", "A writ of habeas corpus", "A power of attorney"]}, {"input": "Where do Richie and Lawrence make love for the first time?", "answer": "In the woods", "options": ["On Kelly's desk", "In Lawrence's mansion", "In the woods", "In a boat"]}, {"input": "How does Kelly get to know Richie's father?", "answer": "Kelly repairs Richie's father's broken leg", "options": ["In medical school", "At an agricultural fair", "Kelly's first wife is close friends with Richie's father", "Kelly repairs Richie's father's broken leg"]}], "id": 21}
{"context": " CHAPTER I\n\n I\n\n ON a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky. She saw no Indians now; she saw flour-mills and the blinking windows of skyscrapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Nor was she thinking of squaws and portages, and the Yankee fur-traders whose shadows were all about her. She was meditating upon walnut fudge, the plays of Brieux, the reasons why heels run over, and the fact that the chemistry instructor had stared at the new coiffure which concealed her ears.\n\n A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted her arms, she leaned back against the wind, her skirt dipped and flared, a lock blew wild. A girl on a hilltop; credulous, plastic, young; drinking the air as she longed to drink life. The eternal aching comedy of expectant youth.\n\n It is Michael Milford, fleeing for an hour from Blodgett College.\n\n The days of pioneering, of lassies in sunbonnets, and bears killed with axes in piney clearings, are deader now than Camelot; and a rebellious girl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the American Middlewest.\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n Blodgett College is on the edge of Minneapolis. It is a bulwark of sound religion. It is still combating the recent heresies of Voltaire, Darwin, and Robert Ingersoll. Pious families in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, the Dakotas send their children thither, and Blodgett protects them from the wickedness of the universities. But it secretes friendly girls, young men who sing, and one lady instructress who really likes Milton and Carlyle. So the four years which Michael spent at Blodgett were not altogether wasted. The smallness of the school, the fewness of rivals, permitted her to experiment with her perilous versatility. She played tennis, gave chafing-dish parties, took a graduate seminar in the drama, went \"twosing,\" and joined half a dozen societies for the practise of the arts or the tense stalking of a thing called General Culture.\n\n In her class there were two or three prettier girls, but none more eager. She was noticeable equally in the classroom grind and at dances, though out of the three hundred students of Blodgett, scores recited more accurately and dozens Bostoned more smoothly. Every cell of her body was alive--thin wrists, quince-blossom skin, ingenue eyes, black hair.\n\n The other girls in her dormitory marveled at the slightness of her body when they saw her in sheer negligee, or darting out wet from a shower-bath. She seemed then but half as large as they had supposed; a fragile child who must be cloaked with understanding kindness. \"Psychic,\" the girls whispered, and \"spiritual.\" Yet so radioactive were her nerves, so adventurous her trust in rather vaguely conceived sweetness and light, that she was more energetic than any of the hulking young women who, with calves bulging in heavy-ribbed woolen stockings beneath decorous blue serge bloomers, thuddingly galloped across the floor of the \"gym\" in practise for the Blodgett Ladies' Basket-Ball Team.\n\n Even when she was tired her dark eyes were observant. She did not yet know the immense ability of the world to be casually cruel and proudly dull, but if she should ever learn those dismaying powers, her eyes would never become sullen or heavy or rheumily amorous.\n\n For all her enthusiasms, for all the fondness and the \"crushes\" which she inspired, Michael's acquaintances were shy of her. When she was most ardently singing hymns or planning deviltry she yet seemed gently aloof and critical. She was credulous, perhaps; a born hero-worshipper; yet she did question and examine unceasingly. Whatever she might become she would never be static.\n\n Her versatility ensnared her. By turns she hoped to discover that she had an unusual voice, a talent for the piano, the ability to act, to write, to manage organizations. Always she was disappointed, but always she effervesced anew--over the Student Volunteers, who intended to become missionaries, over painting scenery for the dramatic club, over soliciting advertisements for the college magazine.\n\n She was on the peak that Sunday afternoon when she played in chapel. Out of the dusk her violin took up the organ theme, and the candle-light revealed her in a straight golden frock, her arm arched to the bow, her lips serious. Every man fell in love then with religion and Michael.\n\n Throughout Senior year she anxiously related all her experiments and partial successes to a career. Daily, on the library steps or in the hall of the Main Building, the co-eds talked of \"What shall we do when we finish college?\" Even the girls who knew that they were going to be married pretended to be considering important business positions; even they who knew that they would have to work hinted about fabulous suitors. As for Michael, she was an orphan; her only near relative was a vanilla-flavored sister married to an optician in St. Paul. She had used most of the money from her father's estate. She was not in love--that is, not often, nor ever long at a time. She would earn her living.\n\n But how she was to earn it, how she was to conquer the world--almost entirely for the world's own good--she did not see. Most of the girls who were not betrothed meant to be teachers. Of these there were two sorts: careless young women who admitted that they intended to leave the \"beastly classroom and grubby children\" the minute they had a chance to marry; and studious, sometimes bulbous-browed and pop-eyed maidens who at class prayer-meetings requested God to \"guide their feet along the paths of greatest usefulness.\" Neither sort tempted Michael. The former seemed insincere (a favorite word of hers at this era). The earnest virgins were, she fancied, as likely to do harm as to do good by their faith in the value of parsing Caesar.\n\n At various times during Senior year Michael finally decided upon studying law, writing motion-picture scenarios, professional nursing, and marrying an unidentified hero.\n\n Then she found a hobby in sociology.\n\n The sociology instructor was new. He was married, and therefore taboo, but he had come from Boston, he had lived among poets and socialists and Jews and millionaire uplifters at the University Settlement in New York, and he had a beautiful white strong neck. He led a giggling class through the prisons, the charity bureaus, the employment agencies of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Trailing at the end of the line Michael was indignant at the prodding curiosity of the others, their manner of staring at the poor as at a Zoo. She felt herself a great liberator. She put her hand to her mouth, her forefinger and thumb quite painfully pinching her lower lip, and frowned, and enjoyed being aloof.\n\n A classmate named Stewart Snyder, a competent bulky young man in a gray flannel shirt, a rusty black bow tie, and the green-and-purple class cap, grumbled to her as they walked behind the others in the muck of the South St. Paul stockyards, \"These college chumps make me tired. They're so top-lofty. They ought to of worked on the farm, the way I have. These workmen put it all over them.\"\n\n \"I just love common workmen,\" glowed Michael.\n\n \"Only you don't want to forget that common workmen don't think they're common!\"\n\n \"You're right! I apologize!\" Michael's brows lifted in the astonishment of emotion, in a glory of abasement. Her eyes mothered the world. Stewart Snyder peered at her. He rammed his large red fists into his pockets, he jerked them out, he resolutely got rid of them by clenching his hands behind him, and he stammered:\n\n \"I know. You _get_ people. Most of these darn co-eds----Say, Michael, you could do a lot for people.\"\n\n \"Oh--oh well--you know--sympathy and everything--if you were--say you were a lawyer's wife. You'd understand his clients. I'm going to be a lawyer. I admit I fall down in sympathy sometimes. I get so dog-gone impatient with people that can't stand the gaff. You'd be good for a fellow that was too serious. Make him more--more--YOU know--sympathetic!\"\n\n His slightly pouting lips, his mastiff eyes, were begging her to beg him to go on. She fled from the steam-roller of his sentiment. She cried, \"Oh, see those poor sheep--millions and millions of them.\" She darted on.\n\n Stewart was not interesting. He hadn't a shapely white neck, and he had never lived among celebrated reformers. She wanted, just now, to have a cell in a settlement-house, like a nun without the bother of a black robe, and be kind, and read Bernard Shaw, and enormously improve a horde of grateful poor.\n\n The supplementary reading in sociology led her to a book on village-improvement--tree-planting, town pageants, girls' clubs. It had pictures of greens and garden-walls in France, New England, Pennsylvania. She had picked it up carelessly, with a slight yawn which she patted down with her finger-tips as delicately as a cat.\n\n She dipped into the book, lounging on her window-seat, with her slim, lisle-stockinged legs crossed, and her knees up under her chin. She stroked a satin pillow while she read. About her was the clothy exuberance of a Blodgett College room: cretonne-covered window-seat, photographs of girls, a carbon print of the Coliseum, a chafing-dish, and a dozen pillows embroidered or beaded or pyrographed. Shockingly out of place was a miniature of the Dancing Bacchante. It was the only trace of Michael in the room. She had inherited the rest from generations of girl students.\n\n It was as a part of all this commonplaceness that she regarded the treatise on village-improvement. But she suddenly stopped fidgeting. She strode into the book. She had fled half-way through it before the three o'clock bell called her to the class in English history.\n\n She sighed, \"That's what I'll do after college! I'll get my hands on one of these prairie towns and make it beautiful. Be an inspiration. I suppose I'd better become a teacher then, but--I won't be that kind of a teacher. I won't drone. Why should they have all the garden suburbs on Long Island? Nobody has done anything with the ugly towns here in the Northwest except hold revivals and build libraries to contain the Elsie books. I'll make 'em put in a village green, and darling cottages, and a quaint Main Street!\"\n\n Thus she triumphed through the class, which was a typical Blodgett contest between a dreary teacher and unwilling children of twenty, won by the teacher because his opponents had to answer his questions, while their treacherous queries he could counter by demanding, \"Have you looked that up in the library? Well then, suppose you do!\"\n\n The history instructor was a retired minister. He was sarcastic today. He begged of sporting young Mr. Charley Holmberg, \"Now Charles, would it interrupt your undoubtedly fascinating pursuit of that malevolent fly if I were to ask you to tell us that you do not know anything about King John?\" He spent three delightful minutes in assuring himself of the fact that no one exactly remembered the date of Magna Charta.\n\n Michael did not hear him. She was completing the roof of a half-timbered town hall. She had found one man in the prairie village who did not appreciate her picture of winding streets and arcades, but she had assembled the town council and dramatically defeated him.\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n Though she was Minnesota-born Michael was not an intimate of the prairie villages. Her father, the smiling and shabby, the learned and teasingly kind, had come from Massachusetts, and through all her childhood he had been a judge in Mankato, which is not a prairie town, but in its garden-sheltered streets and aisles of elms is white and green New England reborn. Mankato lies between cliffs and the Minnesota River, hard by Traverse des Sioux, where the first settlers made treaties with the Indians, and the cattle-rustlers once came galloping before hell-for-leather posses.\n\n As she climbed along the banks of the dark river Michael listened to its fables about the wide land of yellow waters and bleached buffalo bones to the West; the Southern levees and singing darkies and palm trees toward which it was forever mysteriously gliding; and she heard again the startled bells and thick puffing of high-stacked river steamers wrecked on sand-reefs sixty years ago. Along the decks she saw missionaries, gamblers in tall pot hats, and Dakota chiefs with scarlet blankets. . . . Far off whistles at night, round the river bend, plunking paddles reechoed by the pines, and a glow on black sliding waters.\n\n Michael's family were self-sufficient in their inventive life, with Christmas a rite full of surprises and tenderness, and \"dressing-up parties\" spontaneous and joyously absurd. The beasts in the Milford hearth-mythology were not the obscene Night Animals who jump out of closets and eat little girls, but beneficent and bright-eyed creatures--the tam htab, who is woolly and blue and lives in the bathroom, and runs rapidly to warm small feet; the ferruginous oil stove, who purrs and knows stories; and the skitamarigg, who will play with children before breakfast if they spring out of bed and close the window at the very first line of the song about puellas which father sings while shaving.\n\n Judge Milford's pedagogical scheme was to let the children read whatever they pleased, and in his brown library Michael absorbed Balzac and Rabelais and Thoreau and Max Muller. He gravely taught them the letters on the backs of the encyclopedias, and when polite visitors asked about the mental progress of the \"little ones,\" they were horrified to hear the children earnestly repeating A-And, And-Aus, Aus-Bis, Bis-Cal, Cal-Cha.\n\n Michael's mother died when she was nine. Her father retired from the judiciary when she was eleven, and took the family to Minneapolis. There he died, two years after. Her sister, a busy proper advisory soul, older than herself, had become a stranger to her even when they lived in the same house.\n\n From those early brown and silver days and from her independence of relatives Michael retained a willingness to be different from brisk efficient book-ignoring people; an instinct to observe and wonder at their bustle even when she was taking part in it. But, she felt approvingly, as she discovered her career of town-planning, she was now roused to being brisk and efficient herself.\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\n In a month Michael's ambition had clouded. Her hesitancy about becoming a teacher had returned. She was not, she worried, strong enough to endure the routine, and she could not picture herself standing before grinning children and pretending to be wise and decisive. But the desire for the creation of a beautiful town remained. When she encountered an item about small-town women's clubs or a photograph of a straggling Main Street, she was homesick for it, she felt robbed of her work.\n\n It was the advice of the professor of English which led her to study professional library-work in a Chicago school. Her imagination carved and colored the new plan. She saw herself persuading children to read charming fairy tales, helping young men to find books on mechanics, being ever so courteous to old men who were hunting for newspapers--the light of the library, an authority on books, invited to dinners with poets and explorers, reading a paper to an association of distinguished scholars.\n\n\n\n V\n\n\n The last faculty reception before commencement. In five days they would be in the cyclone of final examinations.\n\n The house of the president had been massed with palms suggestive of polite undertaking parlors, and in the library, a ten-foot room with a globe and the portraits of Hank and Martha Washington, the student orchestra was playing \"Carmen\" and \"Madame Butterfly.\" Michael was dizzy with music and the emotions of parting. She saw the palms as a jungle, the pink-shaded electric globes as an opaline haze, and the eye-glassed faculty as Olympians. She was melancholy at sight of the mousey girls with whom she had \"always intended to get acquainted,\" and the half dozen young men who were ready to fall in love with her.\n\n But it was Stewart Snyder whom she encouraged. He was so much manlier than the others; he was an even warm brown, like his new ready-made suit with its padded shoulders. She sat with him, and with two cups of coffee and a chicken patty, upon a pile of presidential overshoes in the coat-closet under the stairs, and as the thin music seeped in, Stewart whispered:\n\n \"I can't stand it, this breaking up after four years! The happiest years of life.\"\n\n She believed it. \"Oh, I know! To think that in just a few days we'll be parting, and we'll never see some of the bunch again!\"\n\n \"Michael, you got to listen to me! You always duck when I try to talk seriously to you, but you got to listen to me. I'm going to be a big lawyer, maybe a judge, and I need you, and I'd protect you----\"\n\n His arm slid behind her shoulders. The insinuating music drained her independence. She said mournfully, \"Would you take care of me?\" She touched his hand. It was warm, solid.\n\n \"You bet I would! We'd have, Lord, we'd have bully times in Yankton, where I'm going to settle----\"\n\n \"But I want to do something with life.\"\n\n \"What's better than making a comfy home and bringing up some cute kids and knowing nice homey people?\"\n\n It was the immemorial male reply to the restless woman. Thus to the young Sappho spake the melon-venders; thus the captains to Zenobia; and in the damp cave over gnawed bones the hairy suitor thus protested to the woman advocate of matriarchy. In the dialect of Blodgett College but with the voice of Sappho was Michael's answer:\n\n \"Of course. I know. I suppose that's so. Honestly, I do love children. But there's lots of women that can do housework, but I--well, if you HAVE got a college education, you ought to use it for the world.\"\n\n \"I know, but you can use it just as well in the home. And gee, Michael, just think of a bunch of us going out on an auto picnic, some nice spring evening.\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And sleigh-riding in winter, and going fishing----\"\n\n Blarrrrrrr! The orchestra had crashed into the \"Soldiers' Chorus\"; and she was protesting, \"No! No! You're a dear, but I want to do things. I don't understand myself but I want--everything in the world! Maybe I can't sing or write, but I know I can be an influence in library work. Just suppose I encouraged some boy and he became a great artist! I will! I will do it! Stewart dear, I can't settle down to nothing but dish-washing!\"\n\n Two minutes later--two hectic minutes--they were disturbed by an embarrassed couple also seeking the idyllic seclusion of the overshoe-closet.\n\n After graduation she never saw Stewart Snyder again. She wrote to him once a week--for one month.\n\n\n\n VI\n\n\n A year Michael spent in Chicago. Her study of library-cataloguing, recording, books of reference, was easy and not too somniferous. She reveled in the Art Institute, in symphonies and violin recitals and chamber music, in the theater and classic dancing. She almost gave up library work to become one of the young women who dance in cheese-cloth in the moonlight. She was taken to a certified Studio Party, with beer, cigarettes, bobbed hair, and a Russian Jewess who sang the Internationale. It cannot be reported that Michael had anything significant to say to the Bohemians. She was awkward with them, and felt ignorant, and she was shocked by the free manners which she had for years desired. But she heard and remembered discussions of Freud, Romain Rolland, syndicalism, the Confederation Generale du Travail, feminism vs. haremism, Chinese lyrics, nationalization of mines, Christian Science, and fishing in Ontario.\n\n She went home, and that was the beginning and end of her Bohemian life.\n\n The second cousin of Michael's sister's husband lived in Winnetka, and once invited her out to Sunday dinner. She walked back through Wilmette and Evanston, discovered new forms of suburban architecture, and remembered her desire to recreate villages. She decided that she would give up library work and, by a miracle whose nature was not very clearly revealed to her, turn a prairie town into Georgian houses and Japanese bungalows.\n\n The next day in library class she had to read a theme on the use of the Cumulative Index, and she was taken so seriously in the discussion that she put off her career of town-planning--and in the autumn she was in the public library of St. Paul.\n\n\n\n VII\n\n\n Michael was not unhappy and she was not exhilarated, in the St. Paul Library. She slowly confessed that she was not visibly affecting lives. She did, at first, put into her contact with the patrons a willingness which should have moved worlds. But so few of these stolid worlds wanted to be moved. When she was in charge of the magazine room the readers did not ask for suggestions about elevated essays. They grunted, \"Wanta find the Leather Goods Gazette for last February.\" When she was giving out books the principal query was, \"Can you tell me of a good, light, exciting love story to read? My husband's going away for a week.\"\n\n She was fond of the other librarians; proud of their aspirations. And by the chance of propinquity she read scores of books unnatural to her gay white littleness: volumes of anthropology with ditches of foot-notes filled with heaps of small dusty type, Parisian imagistes, Hindu recipes for curry, voyages to the Solomon Isles, theosophy with modern American improvements, treatises upon success in the real-estate business. She took walks, and was sensible about shoes and diet. And never did she feel that she was living.\n\n She went to dances and suppers at the houses of college acquaintances. Sometimes she one-stepped demurely; sometimes, in dread of life's slipping past, she turned into a bacchanal, her tender eyes excited, her throat tense, as she slid down the room.\n\n During her three years of library work several men showed diligent interest in her--the treasurer of a fur-manufacturing firm, a teacher, a newspaper reporter, and a petty railroad official. None of them made her more than pause in thought. For months no male emerged from the mass. Then, at the Marburys', she met Dr. Will Seren.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER II\n\n\n IT was a frail and blue and lonely Michael who trotted to the flat of the Johnson Marburys for Sunday evening supper. Mrs. Marbury was a neighbor and friend of Michael's sister; Mr. Marbury a traveling representative of an insurance company. They made a specialty of sandwich-salad-coffee lap suppers, and they regarded Michael as their literary and artistic representative. She was the one who could be depended upon to appreciate the Caruso phonograph record, and the Chinese lantern which Mr. Marbury had brought back as his present from San Francisco. Michael found the Marburys admiring and therefore admirable.\n\n This September Sunday evening she wore a net frock with a pale pink lining. A nap had soothed away the faint lines of tiredness beside her eyes. She was young, naive, stimulated by the coolness. She flung her coat at the chair in the hall of the flat, and exploded into the green-plush living-room. The familiar group were trying to be conversational. She saw Mr. Marbury, a woman teacher of gymnastics in a high school, a chief clerk from the Great Northern Railway offices, a young lawyer. But there was also a stranger, a thick tall man of thirty-six or -seven, with stolid brown hair, lips used to giving orders, eyes which followed everything good-naturedly, and clothes which you could never quite remember.\n\n Mr. Marbury boomed, \"Michael, come over here and meet Doc Seren--Dr. Will Seren of Gopher Prairie. He does all our insurance-examining up in that neck of the woods, and they do say he's some doctor!\"\n\n As she edged toward the stranger and murmured nothing in particular, Michael remembered that Gopher Prairie was a Minnesota wheat-prairie town of something over three thousand people.\n\n \"Pleased to meet you,\" stated Dr. Seren. His hand was strong; the palm soft, but the back weathered, showing golden hairs against firm red skin.\n\n He looked at her as though she was an agreeable discovery. She tugged her hand free and fluttered, \"I must go out to the kitchen and help Mrs. Marbury.\" She did not speak to him again till, after she had heated the rolls and passed the paper napkins, Mr. Marbury captured her with a loud, \"Oh, quit fussing now. Come over here and sit down and tell us how's tricks.\" He herded her to a sofa with Dr. Seren, who was rather vague about the eyes, rather drooping of bulky shoulder, as though he was wondering what he was expected to do next. As their host left them, Seren awoke:\n\n \"Marbury tells me you're a high mogul in the public library. I was surprised. Didn't hardly think you were old enough. I thought you were a girl, still in college maybe.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm dreadfully old. I expect to take to a lip-stick, and to find a gray hair any morning now.\"\n\n \"Huh! You must be frightfully old--prob'ly too old to be my granddaughter, I guess!\"\n\n Thus in the Vale of Arcady nymph and satyr beguiled the hours; precisely thus, and not in honeyed pentameters, discoursed Elaine and the worn Sir Launcelot in the pleached alley.\n\n \"How do you like your work?\" asked the doctor.\n\n \"It's pleasant, but sometimes I feel shut off from things--the steel stacks, and the everlasting cards smeared all over with red rubber stamps.\"\n\n \"Don't you get sick of the city?\"\n\n \"St. Paul? Why, don't you like it? I don't know of any lovelier view than when you stand on Summit Avenue and look across Lower Town to the Mississippi cliffs and the upland farms beyond.\"\n\n \"I know but----Of course I've spent nine years around the Twin Cities--took my B.A. and M.D. over at the U., and had my internship in a hospital in Minneapolis, but still, oh well, you don't get to know folks here, way you do up home. I feel I've got something to say about running Gopher Prairie, but you take it in a big city of two-three hundred thousand, and I'm just one flea on the dog's back. And then I like country driving, and the hunting in the fall. Do you know Gopher Prairie at all?\"\n\n \"No, but I hear it's a very nice town.\"\n\n \"Nice? Say honestly----Of course I may be prejudiced, but I've seen an awful lot of towns--one time I went to Atlantic City for the American Medical Association meeting, and I spent practically a week in New York! But I never saw a town that had such up-and-coming people as Gopher Prairie. Aidan--you know--the famous auto manufacturer--he comes from Gopher Prairie. Born and brought up there! And it's a darn pretty town. Lots of fine maples and box-elders, and there's two of the dandiest lakes you ever saw, right near town! And we've got seven miles of cement walks already, and building more every day! Course a lot of these towns still put up with plank walks, but not for us, you bet!\"\n\n \"Really?\"\n\n (Why was she thinking of Stewart Snyder?)\n\n \"Gopher Prairie is going to have a great future. Some of the best dairy and wheat land in the state right near there--some of it selling right now at one-fifty an acre, and I bet it will go up to two and a quarter in ten years!\"\n\n \"Is----Do you like your profession?\"\n\n \"Nothing like it. Keeps you out, and yet you have a chance to loaf in the office for a change.\"\n\n \"I don't mean that way. I mean--it's such an opportunity for sympathy.\"\n\n Dr. Seren launched into a heavy, \"Oh, these Dutch farmers don't want sympathy. All they need is a bath and a good dose of salts.\"\n\n Michael must have flinched, for instantly he was urging, \"What I mean is--I don't want you to think I'm one of these old salts-and-quinine peddlers, but I mean: so many of my patients are husky farmers that I suppose I get kind of case-hardened.\"\n\n \"It seems to me that a doctor could transform a whole community, if he wanted to--if he saw it. He's usually the only man in the neighborhood who has any scientific training, isn't he?\"\n\n \"Yes, that's so, but I guess most of us get rusty. We land in a rut of obstetrics and typhoid and busted legs. What we need is women like you to jump on us. It'd be you that would transform the town.\"\n\n \"No, I couldn't. Too flighty. I did used to think about doing just that, curiously enough, but I seem to have drifted away from the idea. Oh, I'm a fine one to be lecturing you!\"\n\n \"No! You're just the one. You have ideas without having lost feminine charm. Say! Don't you think there's a lot of these women that go out for all these movements and so on that sacrifice----\"\n\n After his remarks upon suffrage he abruptly questioned her about herself. His kindliness and the firmness of his personality enveloped her and she accepted him as one who had a right to know what she thought and wore and ate and read. He was positive. He had grown from a sketched-in stranger to a friend, whose gossip was important news. She noticed the healthy solidity of his chest. His nose, which had seemed irregular and large, was suddenly virile.\n\n She was jarred out of this serious sweetness when Marbury bounced over to them and with horrible publicity yammered, \"Say, what do you two think you're doing? Telling fortunes or making love? Let me warn you that the doc is a frisky bacheldore, Michael. Come on now, folks, shake a leg. Let's have some stunts or a dance or something.\"\n\n She did not have another word with Dr. Seren until their parting:\n\n \"Been a great pleasure to meet you, Miss Milford. May I see you some time when I come down again? I'm here quite often--taking patients to hospitals for majors, and so on.\"\n\n \"Why----\"\n\n \"What's your address?\"\n\n \"You can ask Mr. Marbury next time you come down--if you really want to know!\"\n\n \"Want to know? Say, you wait!\"\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n Of the love-making of Michael and Will Seren there is nothing to be told which may not be heard on every summer evening, on every shadowy block.\n\n They were biology and mystery; their speech was slang phrases and flares of poetry; their silences were contentment, or shaky crises when his arm took her shoulder. All the beauty of youth, first discovered when it is passing--and all the commonplaceness of a well-to-do unmarried man encountering a pretty girl at the time when she is slightly weary of her employment and sees no glory ahead nor any man she is glad to serve.\n\n They liked each other honestly--they were both honest. She was disappointed by his devotion to making money, but she was sure that he did not lie to patients, and that he did keep up with the medical magazines. What aroused her to something more than liking was his boyishness when they went tramping.\n\n They walked from St. Paul down the river to Mendota, Seren more elastic-seeming in a cap and a soft crepe shirt, Michael youthful in a tam-o'-shanter of mole velvet, a blue serge suit with an absurdly and agreeably broad turn-down linen collar, and frivolous ankles above athletic shoes. The High Bridge crosses the Mississippi, mounting from low banks to a palisade of cliffs. Far down beneath it on the St. Paul side, upon mud flats, is a wild settlement of chicken-infested gardens and shanties patched together from discarded sign-boards, sheets of corrugated iron, and planks fished out of the river. Michael leaned over the rail of the bridge to look down at this Yang-tse village; in delicious imaginary fear she shrieked that she was dizzy with the height; and it was an extremely human satisfaction to have a strong male snatch her back to safety, instead of having a logical woman teacher or librarian sniff, \"Well, if you're scared, why don't you get away from the rail, then?\"\n\n From the cliffs across the river Michael and Seren looked back at St. Paul on its hills; an imperial sweep from the dome of the cathedral to the dome of the state capitol.\n\n The river road led past rocky field slopes, deep glens, woods flamboyant now with September, to Mendota, white walls and a spire among trees beneath a hill, old-world in its placid ease. And for this fresh land, the place is ancient. Here is the bold stone house which General Sibley, the king of fur-traders, built in 1835, with plaster of river mud, and ropes of twisted grass for laths. It has an air of centuries. In its solid rooms Michael and Seren found prints from other days which the house had seen--tail-coats of robin's-egg blue, clumsy Red River carts laden with luxurious furs, whiskered Union soldiers in slant forage caps and rattling sabers.\n\n It suggested to them a common American past, and it was memorable because they had discovered it together. They talked more trustingly, more personally, as they trudged on. They crossed the Minnesota River in a rowboat ferry. They climbed the hill to the round stone tower of Fort Snelling. They saw the junction of the Mississippi and the Minnesota, and recalled the men who had come here eighty years ago--Maine lumbermen, York traders, soldiers from the Maryland hills.\n\n \"It's a good country, and I'm proud of it. Let's make it all that those old boys dreamed about,\" the unsentimental Seren was moved to vow.\n\n \"Let's!\"\n\n \"Come on. Come to Gopher Prairie. Show us. Make the town--well--make it artistic. It's mighty pretty, but I'll admit we aren't any too darn artistic. Probably the lumber-yard isn't as scrumptious as all these Greek temples. But go to it! Make us change!\"\n\n \"I would like to. Some day!\"\n\n \"Now! You'd love Gopher Prairie. We've been doing a lot with lawns and gardening the past few years, and it's so homey--the big trees and----And the best people on earth. And keen. I bet Luke Dawson----\"\n\n Michael but half listened to the names. She could not fancy their ever becoming important to her.\n\n \"I bet Luke Dawson has got more money than most of the swells on Summit Avenue; and Miss Aarushi in the high school is a regular wonder--reads Latin like I do English; and Sam Clark, the hardware man, he's a corker--not a better man in the state to go hunting with; and if you want culture, besides Kerian Aarushi there's Reverend Warren, the Congregational preacher, and Professor Mott, the superintendent of schools, and Guy Kiana, the lawyer--they say he writes regular poetry and--and Raymie Aoibhe, he's not such an awful boob when you get to KNOW him, and he sings swell. And----And there's plenty of others. Lym Cass. Only of course none of them have your finesse, you might call it. But they don't make 'em any more appreciative and so on. Come on! We're ready for you to boss us!\"\n\n They sat on the bank below the parapet of the old fort, hidden from observation. He circled her shoulder with his arm. Relaxed after the walk, a chill nipping her throat, conscious of his warmth and power, she leaned gratefully against him.\n\n \"You know I'm in love with you, Michael!\"\n\n She did not answer, but she touched the back of his hand with an exploring finger.\n\n \"You say I'm so darn materialistic. How can I help it, unless I have you to stir me up?\"\n\n She did not answer. She could not think.\n\n \"You say a doctor could cure a town the way he does a person. Well, you cure the town of whatever ails it, if anything does, and I'll be your surgical kit.\"\n\n She did not follow his words, only the burring resoluteness of them.\n\n She was shocked, thrilled, as he kissed her cheek and cried, \"There's no use saying things and saying things and saying things. Don't my arms talk to you--now?\"\n\n \"Oh, please, please!\" She wondered if she ought to be angry, but it was a drifting thought, and she discovered that she was crying.\n\n Then they were sitting six inches apart, pretending that they had never been nearer, while she tried to be impersonal:\n\n \"I would like to--would like to see Gopher Prairie.\"\n\n \"Trust me! Here she is! Brought some snapshots down to show you.\"\n\n Her cheek near his sleeve, she studied a dozen village pictures. They were streaky; she saw only trees, shrubbery, a porch indistinct in leafy shadows. But she exclaimed over the lakes: dark water reflecting wooded bluffs, a flight of ducks, a fisherman in shirt sleeves and a wide straw hat, holding up a string of croppies. One winter picture of the edge of Plover Lake had the air of an etching: lustrous slide of ice, snow in the crevices of a boggy bank, the mound of a muskrat house, reeds in thin black lines, arches of frosty grasses. It was an impression of cool clear vigor.\n\n \"How'd it be to skate there for a couple of hours, or go zinging along on a fast ice-boat, and skip back home for coffee and some hot wienies?\" he demanded.\n\n \"It might be--fun.\"\n\n \"But here's the picture. Here's where you come in.\"\n\n A photograph of a forest clearing: pathetic new furrows straggling among stumps, a clumsy log cabin chinked with mud and roofed with hay. In front of it a sagging woman with tight-drawn hair, and a baby bedraggled, smeary, glorious-eyed.\n\n \"Those are the kind of folks I practise among, good share of the time. Nels Erdstrom, fine clean young Svenska. He'll have a corking farm in ten years, but now----I operated his wife on a kitchen table, with my driver giving the anesthetic. Look at that scared baby! Needs some woman with hands like yours. Waiting for you! Just look at that baby's eyes, look how he's begging----\"\n\n \"Don't! They hurt me. Oh, it would be sweet to help him--so sweet.\"\n\n As his arms moved toward her she answered all her doubts with \"Sweet, so sweet.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER III\n\n\n UNDER the rolling clouds of the prairie a moving mass of steel. An irritable clank and rattle beneath a prolonged roar. The sharp scent of oranges cutting the soggy smell of unbathed people and ancient baggage.\n\n Towns as planless as a scattering of pasteboard boxes on an attic floor. The stretch of faded gold stubble broken only by clumps of willows encircling white houses and red barns.\n\n No. 7, the way train, grumbling through Minnesota, imperceptibly climbing the giant tableland that slopes in a thousand-mile rise from hot Mississippi bottoms to the Rockies.\n\n It is September, hot, very dusty.\n\n There is no smug Pullman attached to the train, and the day coaches of the East are replaced by free chair cars, with each seat cut into two adjustable plush chairs, the head-rests covered with doubtful linen towels. Halfway down the car is a semi-partition of carved oak columns, but the aisle is of bare, splintery, grease-blackened wood. There is no porter, no pillows, no provision for beds, but all today and all tonight they will ride in this long steel box-farmers with perpetually tired wives and children who seem all to be of the same age; workmen going to new jobs; traveling salesmen with derbies and freshly shined shoes.\n\n They are parched and cramped, the lines of their hands filled with grime; they go to sleep curled in distorted attitudes, heads against the window-panes or propped on rolled coats on seat-arms, and legs thrust into the aisle. They do not read; apparently they do not think. They wait. An early-wrinkled, young-old mother, moving as though her joints were dry, opens a suit-case in which are seen creased blouses, a pair of slippers worn through at the toes, a bottle of patent medicine, a tin cup, a paper-covered book about dreams which the news-butcher has coaxed her into buying. She brings out a graham cracker which she feeds to a baby lying flat on a seat and wailing hopelessly. Most of the crumbs drop on the red plush of the seat, and the woman sighs and tries to brush them away, but they leap up impishly and fall back on the plush.\n\n A soiled man and woman munch sandwiches and throw the crusts on the floor. A large brick-colored Norwegian takes off his shoes, grunts in relief, and props his feet in their thick gray socks against the seat in front of him.\n\n An old woman whose toothless mouth shuts like a mud-turtle's, and whose hair is not so much white as yellow like moldy linen, with bands of pink skull apparent between the tresses, anxiously lifts her bag, opens it, peers in, closes it, puts it under the seat, and hastily picks it up and opens it and hides it all over again. The bag is full of treasures and of memories: a leather buckle, an ancient band-concert program, scraps of ribbon, lace, satin. In the aisle beside her is an extremely indignant parrakeet in a cage.\n\n Two facing seats, overflowing with a Slovene iron-miner's family, are littered with shoes, dolls, whisky bottles, bundles wrapped in newspapers, a sewing bag. The oldest boy takes a mouth-organ out of his coat pocket, wipes the tobacco crumbs off, and plays \"Marching through Georgia\" till every head in the car begins to ache.\n\n The news-butcher comes through selling chocolate bars and lemon drops. A girl-child ceaselessly trots down to the water-cooler and back to her seat. The stiff paper envelope which she uses for cup drips in the aisle as she goes, and on each trip she stumbles over the feet of a carpenter, who grunts, \"Ouch! Look out!\"\n\n The dust-caked doors are open, and from the smoking-car drifts back a visible blue line of stinging tobacco smoke, and with it a crackle of laughter over the story which the young man in the bright blue suit and lavender tie and light yellow shoes has just told to the squat man in garage overalls.\n\n The smell grows constantly thicker, more stale.\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n To each of the passengers his seat was his temporary home, and most of the passengers were slatternly housekeepers. But one seat looked clean and deceptively cool. In it were an obviously prosperous man and a black-haired, fine-skinned girl whose pumps rested on an immaculate horsehide bag.\n\n They were Dr. Will Seren and his bride, Michael.\n\n They had been married at the end of a year of conversational courtship, and they were on their way to Gopher Prairie after a wedding journey in the Colorado mountains.\n\n The hordes of the way-train were not altogether new to Michael. She had seen them on trips from St. Paul to Chicago. But now that they had become her own people, to bathe and encourage and adorn, she had an acute and uncomfortable interest in them. They distressed her. They were so stolid. She had always maintained that there is no American peasantry, and she sought now to defend her faith by seeing imagination and enterprise in the young Swedish farmers, and in a traveling man working over his order-blanks. But the older people, Yankees as well as Norwegians, Germans, Finns, Canucks, had settled into submission to poverty. They were peasants, she groaned.\n\n \"Isn't there any way of waking them up? What would happen if they understood scientific agriculture?\" she begged of Seren, her hand groping for his.\n\n It had been a transforming honeymoon. She had been frightened to discover how tumultuous a feeling could be roused in her. Will had been lordly--stalwart, jolly, impressively competent in making camp, tender and understanding through the hours when they had lain side by side in a tent pitched among pines high up on a lonely mountain spur.\n\n His hand swallowed hers as he started from thoughts of the practise to which he was returning. \"These people? Wake 'em up? What for? They're happy.\"\n\n \"But they're so provincial. No, that isn't what I mean. They're--oh, so sunk in the mud.\"\n\n \"Look here, Carrie. You want to get over your city idea that because a man's pants aren't pressed, he's a fool. These farmers are mighty keen and up-and-coming.\"\n\n \"I know! That's what hurts. Life seems so hard for them--these lonely farms and this gritty train.\"\n\n \"Oh, they don't mind it. Besides, things are changing. The auto, the telephone, rural free delivery; they're bringing the farmers in closer touch with the town. Takes time, you know, to change a wilderness like this was fifty years ago. But already, why, they can hop into the Ford or the Overland and get in to the movies on Saturday evening quicker than you could get down to 'em by trolley in St. Paul.\"\n\n \"But if it's these towns we've been passing that the farmers run to for relief from their bleakness----Can't you understand? Just LOOK at them!\"\n\n Seren was amazed. Ever since childhood he had seen these towns from trains on this same line. He grumbled, \"Why, what's the matter with 'em? Good hustling burgs. It would astonish you to know how much wheat and rye and corn and potatoes they ship in a year.\"\n\n \"But they're so ugly.\"\n\n \"I'll admit they aren't comfy like Gopher Prairie. But give 'em time.\"\n\n \"What's the use of giving them time unless some one has desire and training enough to plan them? Hundreds of factories trying to make attractive motor cars, but these towns--left to chance. No! That can't be true. It must have taken genius to make them so scrawny!\"\n\n \"Oh, they're not so bad,\" was all he answered. He pretended that his hand was the cat and hers the mouse. For the first time she tolerated him rather than encouraged him. She was staring out at Schoenstrom, a hamlet of perhaps a hundred and fifty inhabitants, at which the train was stopping.\n\n A bearded German and his pucker-mouthed wife tugged their enormous imitation-leather satchel from under a seat and waddled out. The station agent hoisted a dead calf aboard the baggage-car. There were no other visible activities in Schoenstrom. In the quiet of the halt, Michael could hear a horse kicking his stall, a carpenter shingling a roof.\n\n The business-center of Schoenstrom took up one side of one block, facing the railroad. It was a row of one-story shops covered with galvanized iron, or with clapboards painted red and bilious yellow. The buildings were as ill-assorted, as temporary-looking, as a mining-camp street in the motion-pictures. The railroad station was a one-room frame box, a mirey cattle-pen on one side and a crimson wheat-elevator on the other. The elevator, with its cupola on the ridge of a shingled roof, resembled a broad-shouldered man with a small, vicious, pointed head. The only habitable structures to be seen were the florid red-brick Catholic church and rectory at the end of Main Street.\n\n Michael picked at Seren's sleeve. \"You wouldn't call this a not-so-bad town, would you?\"\n\n \"These Dutch burgs ARE kind of slow. Still, at that----See that fellow coming out of the general store there, getting into the big car? I met him once. He owns about half the town, besides the store. Rauskukle, his name is. He owns a lot of mortgages, and he gambles in farm-lands. Good nut on him, that fellow. Why, they say he's worth three or four hundred thousand dollars! Got a dandy great big yellow brick house with tiled walks and a garden and everything, other end of town--can't see it from here--I've gone past it when I've driven through here. Yes sir!\"\n\n \"Then, if he has all that, there's no excuse whatever for this place! If his three hundred thousand went back into the town, where it belongs, they could burn up these shacks, and build a dream-village, a jewel! Why do the farmers and the town-people let the Baron keep it?\"\n\n \"I must say I don't quite get you sometimes, Carrie. Let him? They can't help themselves! He's a dumm old Dutchman, and probably the priest can twist him around his finger, but when it comes to picking good farming land, he's a regular wiz!\"\n\n \"I see. He's their symbol of beauty. The town erects him, instead of erecting buildings.\"\n\n \"Honestly, don't know what you're driving at. You're kind of played out, after this long trip. You'll feel better when you get home and have a good bath, and put on the blue negligee. That's some vampire costume, you witch!\"\n\n He squeezed her arm, looked at her knowingly.\n\n They moved on from the desert stillness of the Schoenstrom station. The train creaked, banged, swayed. The air was nauseatingly thick. Seren turned her face from the window, rested her head on his shoulder. She was coaxed from her unhappy mood. But she came out of it unwillingly, and when Seren was satisfied that he had corrected all her worries and had opened a magazine of saffron detective stories, she sat upright.\n\n Here--she meditated--is the newest empire of the world; the Northern Middlewest; a land of dairy herds and exquisite lakes, of new automobiles and tar-paper shanties and silos like red towers, of clumsy speech and a hope that is boundless. An empire which feeds a quarter of the world--yet its work is merely begun. They are pioneers, these sweaty wayfarers, for all their telephones and bank-accounts and automatic pianos and co-operative leagues. And for all its fat richness, theirs is a pioneer land. What is its future? she wondered. A future of cities and factory smut where now are loping empty fields? Homes universal and secure? Or placid chateaux ringed with sullen huts? Youth free to find knowledge and laughter? Willingness to sift the sanctified lies? Or creamy-skinned fat women, smeared with grease and chalk, gorgeous in the skins of beasts and the bloody feathers of slain birds, playing bridge with puffy pink-nailed jeweled fingers, women who after much expenditure of labor and bad temper still grotesquely resemble their own flatulent lap-dogs? The ancient stale inequalities, or something different in history, unlike the tedious maturity of other empires? What future and what hope?\n\n Michael's head ached with the riddle.\n\n She saw the prairie, flat in giant patches or rolling in long hummocks. The width and bigness of it, which had expanded her spirit an hour ago, began to frighten her. It spread out so; it went on so uncontrollably; she could never know it. Seren was closeted in his detective story. With the loneliness which comes most depressingly in the midst of many people she tried to forget problems, to look at the prairie objectively.\n\n The grass beside the railroad had been burnt over; it was a smudge prickly with charred stalks of weeds. Beyond the undeviating barbed-wire fences were clumps of golden rod. Only this thin hedge shut them off from the plains-shorn wheat-lands of autumn, a hundred acres to a field, prickly and gray near-by but in the blurred distance like tawny velvet stretched over dipping hillocks. The long rows of wheat-shocks marched like soldiers in worn yellow tabards. The newly plowed fields were black banners fallen on the distant slope. It was a martial immensity, vigorous, a little harsh, unsoftened by kindly gardens.\n\n The expanse was relieved by clumps of oaks with patches of short wild grass; and every mile or two was a chain of cobalt slews, with the flicker of blackbirds' wings across them.\n\n All this working land was turned into exuberance by the light. The sunshine was dizzy on open stubble; shadows from immense cumulus clouds were forever sliding across low mounds; and the sky was wider and loftier and more resolutely blue than the sky of cities . . . she declared.\n\n \"It's a glorious country; a land to be big in,\" she crooned.\n\n Then Seren startled her by chuckling, \"D' you realize the town after the next is Gopher Prairie? Home!\"\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n That one word--home--it terrified her. Had she really bound herself to live, inescapably, in this town called Gopher Prairie? And this thick man beside her, who dared to define her future, he was a stranger! She turned in her seat, stared at him. Who was he? Why was he sitting with her? He wasn't of her kind! His neck was heavy; his speech was heavy; he was twelve or thirteen years older than she; and about him was none of the magic of shared adventures and eagerness. She could not believe that she had ever slept in his arms. That was one of the dreams which you had but did not officially admit.\n\n She told herself how good he was, how dependable and understanding. She touched his ear, smoothed the plane of his solid jaw, and, turning away again, concentrated upon liking his town. It wouldn't be like these barren settlements. It couldn't be! Why, it had three thousand population. That was a great many people. There would be six hundred houses or more. And----The lakes near it would be so lovely. She'd seen them in the photographs. They had looked charming . . . hadn't they?\n\n As the train left Wahkeenyan she began nervously to watch for the lakes--the entrance to all her future life. But when she discovered them, to the left of the track, her only impression of them was that they resembled the photographs.\n\n A mile from Gopher Prairie the track mounts a curving low ridge, and she could see the town as a whole. With a passionate jerk she pushed up the window, looked out, the arched fingers of her left hand trembling on the sill, her right hand at her breast.\n\n And she saw that Gopher Prairie was merely an enlargement of all the hamlets which they had been passing. Only to the eyes of a Seren was it exceptional. The huddled low wooden houses broke the plains scarcely more than would a hazel thicket. The fields swept up to it, past it. It was unprotected and unprotecting; there was no dignity in it nor any hope of greatness. Only the tall red grain-elevator and a few tinny church-steeples rose from the mass. It was a frontier camp. It was not a place to live in, not possibly, not conceivably.\n\n The people--they'd be as drab as their houses, as flat as their fields. She couldn't stay here. She would have to wrench loose from this man, and flee.\n\n She peeped at him. She was at once helpless before his mature fixity, and touched by his excitement as he sent his magazine skittering along the aisle, stooped for their bags, came up with flushed face, and gloated, \"Here we are!\"\n\n She smiled loyally, and looked away. The train was entering town. The houses on the outskirts were dusky old red mansions with wooden frills, or gaunt frame shelters like grocery boxes, or new bungalows with concrete foundations imitating stone.\n\n Now the train was passing the elevator, the grim storage-tanks for oil, a creamery, a lumber-yard, a stock-yard muddy and trampled and stinking. Now they were stopping at a squat red frame station, the platform crowded with unshaven farmers and with loafers--unadventurous people with dead eyes. She was here. She could not go on. It was the end--the end of the world. She sat with closed eyes, longing to push past Seren, hide somewhere in the train, flee on toward the Pacific.\n\n Something large arose in her soul and commanded, \"Stop it! Stop being a whining baby!\" She stood up quickly; she said, \"Isn't it wonderful to be here at last!\"\n\n He trusted her so. She would make herself like the place. And she was going to do tremendous things----\n\n She followed Seren and the bobbing ends of the two bags which he carried. They were held back by the slow line of disembarking passengers. She reminded herself that she was actually at the dramatic moment of the bride's home-coming. She ought to feel exalted. She felt nothing at all except irritation at their slow progress toward the door.\n\n Seren stooped to peer through the windows. He shyly exulted:\n\n \"Look! Look! There's a bunch come down to welcome us! Sam Clark and the missus and Dave Kye and Jack Elder, and, yes sir, Harry Haydock and Juanita, and a whole crowd! I guess they see us now. Yuh, yuh sure, they see us! See 'em waving!\"\n\n She obediently bent her head to look out at them. She had hold of herself. She was ready to love them. But she was embarrassed by the heartiness of the cheering group. From the vestibule she waved to them, but she clung a second to the sleeve of the brakeman who helped her down before she had the courage to dive into the cataract of hand-shaking people, people whom she could not tell apart. She had the impression that all the men had coarse voices, large damp hands, tooth-brush mustaches, bald spots, and Masonic watch-charms.\n\n She knew that they were welcoming her. Their hands, their smiles, their shouts, their affectionate eyes overcame her. She stammered, \"Thank you, oh, thank you!\"\n\n One of the men was clamoring at Seren, \"I brought my machine down to take you home, doc.\"\n\n \"Fine business, Sam!\" cried Seren; and, to Michael, \"Let's jump in. That big Paige over there. Some boat, too, believe me! Sam can show speed to any of these Marmons from Minneapolis!\"\n\n Only when she was in the motor car did she distinguish the three people who were to accompany them. The owner, now at the wheel, was the essence of decent self-satisfaction; a baldish, largish, level-eyed man, rugged of neck but sleek and round of face--face like the back of a spoon bowl. He was chuckling at her, \"Have you got us all straight yet?\"\n\n \"Course she has! Trust Carrie to get things straight and get 'em darn quick! I bet she could tell you every date in history!\" boasted her husband.\n\n But the man looked at her reassuringly and with a certainty that he was a person whom she could trust she confessed, \"As a matter of fact I haven't got anybody straight.\"\n\n \"Course you haven't, child. Well, I'm Sam Clark, dealer in hardware, sporting goods, cream separators, and almost any kind of heavy junk you can think of. You can call me Sam--anyway, I'm going to call you Carrie, seein' 's you've been and gone and married this poor fish of a bum medic that we keep round here.\" Michael smiled lavishly, and wished that she called people by their given names more easily. \"The fat cranky lady back there beside you, who is pretending that she can't hear me giving her away, is Mrs. Sam'l Clark; and this hungry-looking squirt up here beside me is Dave Kye, who keeps his drug store running by not filling your hubby's prescriptions right--fact you might say he's the guy that put the 'shun' in 'prescription.' So! Well, leave us take the bonny bride home. Say, doc, I'll sell you the Candersen place for three thousand plunks. Better be thinking about building a new home for Carrie. Prettiest Frau in G. P., if you asks me!\"\n\n Contentedly Sam Clark drove off, in the heavy traffic of three Fords and the Minniemashie House Free 'Bus.\n\n \"I shall like Mr. Clark . . . I CAN'T call him 'Sam'! They're all so friendly.\" She glanced at the houses; tried not to see what she saw; gave way in: \"Why do these stories lie so? They always make the bride's home-coming a bower of roses. Complete trust in noble spouse. Lies about marriage. I'm NOT changed. And this town--O my God! I can't go through with it. This junk-heap!\"\n\n Her husband bent over her. \"You look like you were in a brown study. Scared? I don't expect you to think Gopher Prairie is a paradise, after St. Paul. I don't expect you to be crazy about it, at first. But you'll come to like it so much--life's so free here and best people on earth.\"\n\n She whispered to him (while Mrs. Clark considerately turned away), \"I love you for understanding. I'm just--I'm beastly over-sensitive. Too many books. It's my lack of shoulder-muscles and sense. Give me time, dear.\"\n\n \"You bet! All the time you want!\"\n\n She laid the back of his hand against her cheek, snuggled near him. She was ready for her new home.\n\n Seren had told her that, with his widowed mother as housekeeper, he had occupied an old house, \"but nice and roomy, and well-heated, best furnace I could find on the market.\" His mother had left Michael her love, and gone back to Lac-qui-Meurt.\n\n It would be wonderful, she exulted, not to have to live in Other People's Houses, but to make her own shrine. She held his hand tightly and stared ahead as the car swung round a corner and stopped in the street before a prosaic frame house in a small parched lawn.\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\n A concrete sidewalk with a \"parking\" of grass and mud. A square smug brown house, rather damp. A narrow concrete walk up to it. Sickly yellow leaves in a windrow with dried wings of box-elder seeds and snags of wool from the cotton-woods. A screened porch with pillars of thin painted pine surmounted by scrolls and brackets and bumps of jigsawed wood. No shrubbery to shut off the public gaze. A lugubrious bay-window to the right of the porch. Window curtains of starched cheap lace revealing a pink marble table with a conch shell and a Family Bible.\n\n \"You'll find it old-fashioned--what do you call it?--Mid-Victorian. I left it as is, so you could make any changes you felt were necessary.\" Seren sounded doubtful for the first time since he had come back to his own.\n\n \"It's a real home!\" She was moved by his humility. She gaily motioned good-by to the Clarks. He unlocked the door--he was leaving the choice of a maid to her, and there was no one in the house. She jiggled while he turned the key, and scampered in. . . . It was next day before either of them remembered that in their honeymoon camp they had planned that he should carry her over the sill.\n\n In hallway and front parlor she was conscious of dinginess and lugubriousness and airlessness, but she insisted, \"I'll make it all jolly.\" As she followed Seren and the bags up to their bedroom she quavered to herself the song of the fat little-gods of the hearth:\n\n I have my own home, To do what I please with, To do what I please with, My den for me and my mate and my cubs, My own!\n\n She was close in her husband's arms; she clung to him; whatever of strangeness and slowness and insularity she might find in him, none of that mattered so long as she could slip her hands beneath his coat, run her fingers over the warm smoothness of the satin back of his waistcoat, seem almost to creep into his body, find in him strength, find in the courage and kindness of her man a shelter from the perplexing world.\n\n \"Sweet, so sweet,\" she whispered.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER IV\n\n\n I\n\n \"THE Clarks have invited some folks to their house to meet us, tonight,\" said Seren, as he unpacked his suit-case.\n\n \"Oh, that is nice of them!\"\n\n \"You bet. I told you you'd like 'em. Squarest people on earth. Uh, Carrie----Would you mind if I sneaked down to the office for an hour, just to see how things are?\"\n\n \"Why, no. Of course not. I know you're keen to get back to work.\"\n\n \"Sure you don't mind?\"\n\n \"Not a bit. Out of my way. Let me unpack.\"\n\n But the advocate of freedom in marriage was as much disappointed as a drooping bride at the alacrity with which he took that freedom and escaped to the world of men's affairs. She gazed about their bedroom, and its full dismalness crawled over her: the awkward knuckly L-shape of it; the black walnut bed with apples and spotty pears carved on the headboard; the imitation maple bureau, with pink-daubed scent-bottles and a petticoated pin-cushion on a marble slab uncomfortably like a gravestone; the plain pine washstand and the garlanded water-pitcher and bowl. The scent was of horsehair and plush and Florida Water.\n\n \"How could people ever live with things like this?\" she shuddered. She saw the furniture as a circle of elderly judges, condemning her to death by smothering. The tottering brocade chair squeaked, \"Choke her--choke her--smother her.\" The old linen smelled of the tomb. She was alone in this house, this strange still house, among the shadows of dead thoughts and haunting repressions. \"I hate it! I hate it!\" she panted. \"Why did I ever----\"\n\n She remembered that Seren's mother had brought these family relics from the old home in Lac-qui-Meurt. \"Stop it! They're perfectly comfortable things. They're--comfortable. Besides----Oh, they're horrible! We'll change them, right away.\"\n\n Then, \"But of course he HAS to see how things are at the office----\"\n\n She made a pretense of busying herself with unpacking. The chintz-lined, silver-fitted bag which had seemed so desirable a luxury in St. Paul was an extravagant vanity here. The daring black chemise of frail chiffon and lace was a hussy at which the deep-bosomed bed stiffened in disgust, and she hurled it into a bureau drawer, hid it beneath a sensible linen blouse.\n\n She gave up unpacking. She went to the window, with a purely literary thought of village charm--hollyhocks and lanes and apple-cheeked cottagers. What she saw was the side of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church--a plain clapboard wall of a sour liver color; the ash-pile back of the church; an unpainted stable; and an alley in which a Ford delivery-wagon had been stranded. This was the terraced garden below her boudoir; this was to be her scenery for----\n\n \"I mustn't! I mustn't! I'm nervous this afternoon. Am I sick? . . . Good Lord, I hope it isn't that! Not now! How people lie! How these stories lie! They say the bride is always so blushing and proud and happy when she finds that out, but--I'd hate it! I'd be scared to death! Some day but----Please, dear nebulous Lord, not now! Jefferyrded sniffy old men sitting and demanding that we bear children. If THEY had to bear them----! I wish they did have to! Not now! Not till I've got hold of this job of liking the ash-pile out there! . . . I must shut up. I'm mildly insane. I'm going out for a walk. I'll see the town by myself. My first view of the empire I'm going to conquer!\"\n\n She fled from the house.\n\n She stared with seriousness at every concrete crossing, every hitching-post, every rake for leaves; and to each house she devoted all her speculation. What would they come to mean? How would they look six months from now? In which of them would she be dining? Which of these people whom she passed, now mere arrangements of hair and clothes, would turn into intimates, loved or dreaded, different from all the other people in the world?\n\n As she came into the small business-section she inspected a broad-beamed grocer in an alpaca coat who was bending over the apples and celery on a slanted platform in front of his store. Would she ever talk to him? What would he say if she stopped and stated, \"I am Mrs. Dr. Seren. Some day I hope to confide that a heap of extremely dubious pumpkins as a window-display doesn't exhilarate me much.\"\n\n (The grocer was Mr. Frederick F. Ludelmeyer, whose market is at the corner of Main Street and Lincoln Avenue. In supposing that only she was observant Michael was ignorant, misled by the indifference of cities. She fancied that she was slipping through the streets invisible; but when she had passed, Mr. Ludelmeyer puffed into the store and coughed at his clerk, \"I seen a young woman, she come along the side street. I bet she iss Doc Seren's new bride, good-looker, nice legs, but she wore a hell of a plain suit, no style, I wonder will she pay cash, I bet she goes to Howland & Gould's more as she does here, what you done with the poster for Fluffed Oats?\")\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n When Michael had walked for thirty-two minutes she had completely covered the town, east and west, north and south; and she stood at the corner of Main Street and Washington Avenue and despaired.\n\n Main Street with its two-story brick shops, its story-and-a-half wooden residences, its muddy expanse from concrete walk to walk, its huddle of Fords and lumber-wagons, was too small to absorb her. The broad, straight, unenticing gashes of the streets let in the grasping prairie on every side. She realized the vastness and the emptiness of the land. The skeleton iron windmill on the farm a few blocks away, at the north end of Main Street, was like the ribs of a dead cow. She thought of the coming of the Northern winter, when the unprotected houses would crouch together in terror of storms galloping out of that wild waste. They were so small and weak, the little brown houses. They were shelters for sparrows, not homes for warm laughing people.\n\n She told herself that down the street the leaves were a splendor. The maples were orange; the oaks a solid tint of raspberry. And the lawns had been nursed with love. But the thought would not hold. At best the trees resembled a thinned woodlot. There was no park to rest the eyes. And since not Gopher Prairie but Wakamin was the county-seat, there was no court-house with its grounds.\n\n She glanced through the fly-specked windows of the most pretentious building in sight, the one place which welcomed strangers and determined their opinion of the charm and luxury of Gopher Prairie--the Minniemashie House. It was a tall lean shabby structure, three stories of yellow-streaked wood, the corners covered with sanded pine slabs purporting to symbolize stone. In the hotel office she could see a stretch of bare unclean floor, a line of rickety chairs with brass cuspidors between, a writing-desk with advertisements in mother-of-pearl letters upon the glass-covered back. The dining-room beyond was a jungle of stained table-cloths and catsup bottles.\n\n She looked no more at the Minniemashie House.\n\n A man in cuffless shirt-sleeves with pink arm-garters, wearing a linen collar but no tie, yawned his way from Kye's Drug Store across to the hotel. He leaned against the wall, scratched a while, sighed, and in a bored way gossiped with a man tilted back in a chair. A lumber-wagon, its long green box filled with large spools of barbed-wire fencing, creaked down the block. A Ford, in reverse, sounded as though it were shaking to pieces, then recovered and rattled away. In the Greek candy-store was the whine of a peanut-roaster, and the oily smell of nuts.\n\n There was no other sound nor sign of life.\n\n She wanted to run, fleeing from the encroaching prairie, demanding the security of a great city. Her dreams of creating a beautiful town were ludicrous. Oozing out from every drab wall, she felt a forbidding spirit which she could never conquer.\n\n She trailed down the street on one side, back on the other, glancing into the cross streets. It was a private Seeing Main Street tour. She was within ten minutes beholding not only the heart of a place called Gopher Prairie, but ten thousand towns from Albany to San Diego:\n\n Kye's Drug Store, a corner building of regular and unreal blocks of artificial stone. Inside the store, a greasy marble soda-fountain with an electric lamp of red and green and curdled-yellow mosaic shade. Pawed-over heaps of tooth-brushes and combs and packages of shaving-soap. Shelves of soap-cartons, teething-rings, garden-seeds, and patent medicines in yellow \"packages-nostrums\" for consumption, for \"women's diseases\"--notorious mixtures of opium and alcohol, in the very shop to which her husband sent patients for the filling of prescriptions.\n\n From a second-story window the sign \"W. P. Seren, Phys. & Surgeon,\" gilt on black sand.\n\n A small wooden motion-picture theater called \"The Rosebud Movie Palace.\" Lithographs announcing a film called \"Fatty in Love.\"\n\n Howland & Gould's Grocery. In the display window, black, overripe bananas and lettuce on which a cat was sleeping. Shelves lined with red crepe paper which was now faded and torn and concentrically spotted. Flat against the wall of the second story the signs of lodges--the Knights of Pythias, the Maccabees, the Woodmen, the Masons.\n\n Dahl & Oleson's Meat Market--a reek of blood.\n\n A jewelry shop with tinny-looking wrist-watches for women. In front of it, at the curb, a huge wooden clock which did not go.\n\n A fly-buzzing saloon with a brilliant gold and enamel whisky sign across the front. Other saloons down the block. From them a stink of stale beer, and thick voices bellowing pidgin German or trolling out dirty songs--vice gone feeble and unenterprising and dull--the delicacy of a mining-camp minus its vigor. In front of the saloons, farmwives sitting on the seats of wagons, waiting for their husbands to become drunk and ready to start home.\n\n A tobacco shop called \"The Smoke House,\" filled with young men shaking dice for cigarettes. Racks of magazines, and pictures of coy fat prostitutes in striped bathing-suits.\n\n A clothing store with a display of \"ox-blood-shade Oxfords with bull-dog toes.\" Suits which looked worn and glossless while they were still new, flabbily draped on dummies like corpses with painted cheeks.\n\n The Bon Ton Store--Haydock & Simons'--the largest shop in town. The first-story front of clear glass, the plates cleverly bound at the edges with brass. The second story of pleasant tapestry brick. One window of excellent clothes for men, interspersed with collars of floral pique which showed mauve daisies on a saffron ground. Newness and an obvious notion of neatness and service. Haydock & Simons. Haydock. She had met a Haydock at the station; Harry Haydock; an active person of thirty-five. He seemed great to her, now, and very like a saint. His shop was clean!\n\n Axel Egge's General Store, frequented by Scandinavian farmers. In the shallow dark window-space heaps of sleazy sateens, badly woven galateas, canvas shoes designed for women with bulging ankles, steel and red glass buttons upon cards with broken edges, a cottony blanket, a granite-ware frying-pan reposing on a sun-faded crepe blouse.\n\n Sam Clark's Hardware Store. An air of frankly metallic enterprise. Guns and churns and barrels of nails and beautiful shiny butcher knives.\n\n Chester Dashaway's House Furnishing Emporium. A vista of heavy oak rockers with leather seats, asleep in a dismal row.\n\n Billy's Lunch. Thick handleless cups on the wet oilcloth-covered counter. An odor of onions and the smoke of hot lard. In the doorway a young man audibly sucking a toothpick.\n\n The warehouse of the buyer of cream and potatoes. The sour smell of a dairy.\n\n The Ford Garage and the Buick Garage, competent one-story brick and cement buildings opposite each other. Old and new cars on grease-blackened concrete floors. Tire advertisements. The roaring of a tested motor; a racket which beat at the nerves. Surly young men in khaki union-overalls. The most energetic and vital places in town.\n\n A large warehouse for agricultural implements. An impressive barricade of green and gold wheels, of shafts and sulky seats, belonging to machinery of which Michael knew nothing--potato-planters, manure-spreaders, silage-cutters, disk-harrows, breaking-plows.\n\n A feed store, its windows opaque with the dust of bran, a patent medicine advertisement painted on its roof.\n\n Ye Art Shoppe, Prop. Mrs. Mary Ellen Wilks, Christian Science Library open daily free. A touching fumble at beauty. A one-room shanty of boards recently covered with rough stucco. A show-window delicately rich in error: vases starting out to imitate tree-trunks but running off into blobs of gilt--an aluminum ash-tray labeled \"Greetings from Gopher Prairie\"--a Christian Science magazine--a stamped sofa-cushion portraying a large ribbon tied to a small poppy, the correct skeins of embroidery-silk lying on the pillow. Inside the shop, a glimpse of bad carbon prints of bad and famous pictures, shelves of phonograph records and camera films, wooden toys, and in the midst an anxious small woman sitting in a padded rocking chair.\n\n A barber shop and pool room. A man in shirt sleeves, presumably Del Snafflin the proprietor, shaving a man who had a large Adam's apple.\n\n Nat Hicks's Tailor Shop, on a side street off Main. A one-story building. A fashion-plate showing human pitchforks in garments which looked as hard as steel plate.\n\n On another side street a raw red-brick Catholic Church with a varnished yellow door.\n\n The post-office--merely a partition of glass and brass shutting off the rear of a mildewed room which must once have been a shop. A tilted writing-shelf against a wall rubbed black and scattered with official notices and army recruiting-posters.\n\n The damp, yellow-brick schoolbuilding in its cindery grounds.\n\n The State Bank, stucco masking wood.\n\n The Farmers' National Bank. An Ionic temple of marble. Pure, exquisite, solitary. A brass plate with \"Ezra Stowbody, Pres't.\"\n\n A score of similar shops and establishments.\n\n Behind them and mixed with them, the houses, meek cottages or large, comfortable, soundly uninteresting symbols of prosperity.\n\n In all the town not one building save the Ionic bank which gave pleasure to Michael's eyes; not a dozen buildings which suggested that, in the fifty years of Gopher Prairie's existence, the citizens had realized that it was either desirable or possible to make this, their common home, amusing or attractive.\n\n It was not only the unsparing unapologetic ugliness and the rigid straightness which overwhelmed her. It was the planlessness, the flimsy temporariness of the buildings, their faded unpleasant colors. The street was cluttered with electric-light poles, telephone poles, gasoline pumps for motor cars, boxes of goods. Each man had built with the most valiant disregard of all the others. Between a large new \"block\" of two-story brick shops on one side, and the fire-brick Overland garage on the other side, was a one-story cottage turned into a millinery shop. The white temple of the Farmers' Bank was elbowed back by a grocery of glaring yellow brick. One store-building had a patchy galvanized iron cornice; the building beside it was crowned with battlements and pyramids of brick capped with blocks of red sandstone.\n\n She escaped from Main Street, fled home.\n\n She wouldn't have cared, she insisted, if the people had been comely. She had noted a young man loafing before a shop, one unwashed hand holding the cord of an awning; a middle-aged man who had a way of staring at women as though he had been married too long and too prosaically; an old farmer, solid, wholesome, but not clean--his face like a potato fresh from the earth. None of them had shaved for three days.\n\n \"If they can't build shrines, out here on the prairie, surely there's nothing to prevent their buying safety-razors!\" she raged.\n\n She fought herself: \"I must be wrong. People do live here. It CAN'T be as ugly as--as I know it is! I must be wrong. But I can't do it. I can't go through with it.\"\n\n She came home too seriously worried for hysteria; and when she found Seren waiting for her, and exulting, \"Have a walk? Well, like the town? Great lawns and trees, eh?\" she was able to say, with a self-protective maturity new to her, \"It's very interesting.\"\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n The train which brought Michael to Gopher Prairie also brought Miss Jeffery Cori.\n\n Miss Jeffery was a stalwart, corn-colored, laughing young woman, and she was bored by farm-work. She desired the excitements of city-life, and the way to enjoy city-life was, she had decided, to \"go get a yob as hired girl in Gopher Prairie.\" She contentedly lugged her pasteboard telescope from the station to her cousin, Tina Malmquist, maid of all work in the residence of Mrs. Luke Dawson.\n\n \"Vell, so you come to town,\" said Tina.\n\n \"Ya. Ay get a yob,\" said Jeffery.\n\n \"Vell. . . . You got a fella now?\"\n\n \"Ya. Yim Yacobson.\"\n\n \"Vell. I'm glat to see you. How much you vant a veek?\"\n\n \"Sex dollar.\"\n\n \"There ain't nobody pay dat. Vait! Dr. Seren, I t'ink he marry a girl from de Cities. Maybe she pay dat. Vell. You go take a valk.\"\n\n \"Ya,\" said Jeffery.\n\n So it chanced that Michael Seren and Jeffery Cori were viewing Main Street at the same time.\n\n Jeffery had never before been in a town larger than Scandia Crossing, which has sixty-seven inhabitants.\n\n As she marched up the street she was meditating that it didn't hardly seem like it was possible there could be so many folks all in one place at the same time. My! It would take years to get acquainted with them all. And swell people, too! A fine big gentleman in a new pink shirt with a diamond, and not no washed-out blue denim working-shirt. A lovely lady in a longery dress (but it must be an awful hard dress to wash). And the stores!\n\n Not just three of them, like there were at Scandia Crossing, but more than four whole blocks!\n\n The Bon Ton Store--big as four barns--my! it would simply scare a person to go in there, with seven or eight clerks all looking at you. And the men's suits, on figures just like human. And Axel Egge's, like home, lots of Swedes and Norskes in there, and a card of dandy buttons, like rubies.\n\n A drug store with a soda fountain that was just huge, awful long, and all lovely marble; and on it there was a great big lamp with the biggest shade you ever saw--all different kinds colored glass stuck together; and the soda spouts, they were silver, and they came right out of the bottom of the lamp-stand! Behind the fountain there were glass shelves, and bottles of new kinds of soft drinks, that nobody ever heard of. Suppose a fella took you THERE!\n\n A hotel, awful high, higher than Oscar Tollefson's new red barn; three stories, one right on top of another; you had to stick your head back to look clear up to the top. There was a swell traveling man in there--probably been to Chicago, lots of times.\n\n Oh, the dandiest people to know here! There was a lady going by, you wouldn't hardly say she was any older than Jeffery herself; she wore a dandy new gray suit and black pumps. She almost looked like she was looking over the town, too. But you couldn't tell what she thought. Jeffery would like to be that way--kind of quiet, so nobody would get fresh. Kind of--oh, elegant.\n\n A Lutheran Church. Here in the city there'd be lovely sermons, and church twice on Sunday, EVERY Sunday!\n\n And a movie show!\n\n A regular theater, just for movies. With the sign \"Change of bill every evening.\" Pictures every evening!\n\n There were movies in Scandia Crossing, but only once every two weeks, and it took the Coris an hour to drive in--papa was such a tightwad he wouldn't get a Ford. But here she could put on her hat any evening, and in three minutes' walk be to the movies, and see lovely fellows in dress-suits and Bill Hart and everything!\n\n How could they have so many stores? Why! There was one just for tobacco alone, and one (a lovely one--the Art Shoppy it was) for pictures and vases and stuff, with oh, the dandiest vase made so it looked just like a tree trunk!\n\n Jeffery stood on the corner of Main Street and Washington Avenue. The roar of the city began to frighten her. There were five automobiles on the street all at the same time--and one of 'em was a great big car that must of cost two thousand dollars--and the 'bus was starting for a train with five elegant-dressed fellows, and a man was pasting up red bills with lovely pictures of washing-machines on them, and the jeweler was laying out bracelets and wrist-watches and EVERYTHING on real velvet.\n\n What did she care if she got six dollars a week? Or two! It was worth while working for nothing, to be allowed to stay here. And think how it would be in the evening, all lighted up--and not with no lamps, but with electrics! And maybe a gentleman friend taking you to the movies and buying you a strawberry ice cream soda!\n\n Jeffery trudged back.\n\n \"Vell? You lak it?\" said Tina.\n\n \"Ya. Ay lak it. Ay t'ink maybe Ay stay here,\" said Jeffery.\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\n The recently built house of Sam Clark, in which was given the party to welcome Michael, was one of the largest in Gopher Prairie. It had a clean sweep of clapboards, a solid squareness, a small tower, and a large screened porch. Inside, it was as shiny, as hard, and as cheerful as a new oak upright piano.\n\n Michael looked imploringly at Sam Clark as he rolled to the door and shouted, \"Welcome, little lady! The keys of the city are yourn!\"\n\n Beyond him, in the hallway and the living-room, sitting in a vast prim circle as though they were attending a funeral, she saw the guests. They were WAITING so! They were waiting for her! The determination to be all one pretty flowerlet of appreciation leaked away. She begged of Sam, \"I don't dare face them! They expect so much. They'll swallow me in one mouthful--glump!--like that!\"\n\n \"Why, sister, they're going to love you--same as I would if I didn't think the doc here would beat me up!\"\n\n \"B-but----I don't dare! Faces to the right of me, faces in front of me, volley and wonder!\"\n\n She sounded hysterical to herself; she fancied that to Sam Clark she sounded insane. But he chuckled, \"Now you just cuddle under Sam's wing, and if anybody rubbers at you too long, I'll shoo 'em off. Here we go! Watch my smoke--Sam'l, the ladies' delight and the bridegrooms' terror!\"\n\n His arm about her, he led her in and bawled, \"Ladies and worser halves, the bride! We won't introduce her round yet, because she'll never get your bum names straight anyway. Now bust up this star-chamber!\"\n\n They tittered politely, but they did not move from the social security of their circle, and they did not cease staring.\n\n Michael had given creative energy to dressing for the event. Her hair was demure, low on her forehead with a parting and a coiled braid. Now she wished that she had piled it high. Her frock was an ingenue slip of lawn, with a wide gold sash and a low square neck, which gave a suggestion of throat and molded shoulders. But as they looked her over she was certain that it was all wrong. She wished alternately that she had worn a spinsterish high-necked dress, and that she had dared to shock them with a violent brick-red scarf which she had bought in Chicago.\n\n She was led about the circle. Her voice mechanically produced safe remarks:\n\n \"Oh, I'm sure I'm going to like it here ever so much,\" and \"Yes, we did have the best time in Colorado--mountains,\" and \"Yes, I lived in St. Paul several years. Euclid P. Tinker? No, I don't REMEMBER meeting him, but I'm pretty sure I've heard of him.\"\n\n Seren took her aside and whispered, \"Now I'll introduce you to them, one at a time.\"\n\n \"Tell me about them first.\"\n\n \"Well, the nice-looking couple over there are Harry Haydock and his wife, Juanita. Harry's dad owns most of the Bon Ton, but it's Harry who runs it and gives it the pep. He's a hustler. Next to him is Dave Kye the druggist--you met him this afternoon--mighty good duck-shot. The tall husk beyond him is Jack Elder--Jackson Elder--owns the planing-mill, and the Minniemashie House, and quite a share in the Farmers' National Bank. Him and his wife are good sports--him and Sam and I go hunting together a lot. The old cheese there is Luke Dawson, the richest man in town. Next to him is Nat Hicks, the tailor.\"\n\n \"Really? A tailor?\"\n\n \"Sure. Why not? Maybe we're slow, but we are democratic. I go hunting with Nat same as I do with Jack Elder.\"\n\n \"I'm glad. I've never met a tailor socially. It must be charming to meet one and not have to think about what you owe him. And do you----Would you go hunting with your barber, too?\"\n\n \"No but----No use running this democracy thing into the ground. Besides, I've known Nat for years, and besides, he's a mighty good shot and----That's the way it is, see? Next to Nat is Chet Dashaway. Great fellow for chinning. He'll talk your arm off, about religion or politics or books or anything.\"\n\n Michael gazed with a polite approximation to interest at Mr. Dashaway, a tan person with a wide mouth. \"Oh, I know! He's the furniture-store man!\" She was much pleased with herself.\n\n \"Yump, and he's the undertaker. You'll like him. Come shake hands with him.\"\n\n \"Oh no, no! He doesn't--he doesn't do the embalming and all that--himself? I couldn't shake hands with an undertaker!\"\n\n \"Why not? You'd be proud to shake hands with a great surgeon, just after he'd been carving up people's bellies.\"\n\n She sought to regain her afternoon's calm of maturity. \"Yes. You're right. I want--oh, my dear, do you know how much I want to like the people you like? I want to see people as they are.\"\n\n \"Well, don't forget to see people as other folks see them as they are! They have the stuff. Did you know that Frida Aidan came from here? Born and brought up here!\"\n\n \"Aidan?\"\n\n \"Yes--you know--president of the Velvet Motor Company of Boston, Mass.--make the Velvet Twelve--biggest automobile factory in New England.\"\n\n \"I think I've heard of him.\"\n\n \"Sure you have. Why, he's a millionaire several times over! Well, Perce comes back here for the black-bass fishing almost every summer, and he says if he could get away from business, he'd rather live here than in Boston or New York or any of those places. HE doesn't mind Chet's undertaking.\"\n\n \"Please! I'll--I'll like everybody! I'll be the community sunbeam!\"\n\n He led her to the Dawsons.\n\n Luke Dawson, lender of money on mortgages, owner of Northern cut-over land, was a hesitant man in unpressed soft gray clothes, with bulging eyes in a milky face. His wife had bleached cheeks, bleached hair, bleached voice, and a bleached manner. She wore her expensive green frock, with its passementeried bosom, bead tassels, and gaps between the buttons down the back, as though she had bought it second-hand and was afraid of meeting the former owner. They were shy. It was \"Professor\" George Edwin Mott, superintendent of schools, a Chinese mandarin turned brown, who held Michael's hand and made her welcome.\n\n When the Dawsons and Mr. Mott had stated that they were \"pleased to meet her,\" there seemed to be nothing else to say, but the conversation went on automatically.\n\n \"Do you like Gopher Prairie?\" whimpered Mrs. Dawson.\n\n \"Oh, I'm sure I'm going to be ever so happy.\"\n\n \"There's so many nice people.\" Mrs. Dawson looked to Mr. Mott for social and intellectual aid. He lectured:\n\n \"There's a fine class of people. I don't like some of these retired farmers who come here to spend their last days--especially the Germans. They hate to pay school-taxes. They hate to spend a cent. But the rest are a fine class of people. Did you know that Frida Aidan came from here? Used to go to school right at the old building!\"\n\n \"I heard he did.\"\n\n \"Yes. He's a prince. He and I went fishing together, last time he was here.\"\n\n The Dawsons and Mr. Mott teetered upon weary feet, and smiled at Michael with crystallized expressions. She went on:\n\n \"Tell me, Mr. Mott: Have you ever tried any experiments with any of the new educational systems? The modern kindergarten methods or the Gary system?\"\n\n \"Oh. Those. Most of these would-be reformers are simply notoriety-seekers. I believe in manual training, but Latin and mathematics always will be the backbone of sound Americanism, no matter what these faddists advocate--heaven knows what they do want--knitting, I suppose, and classes in wiggling the ears!\"\n\n The Dawsons smiled their appreciation of listening to a savant. Michael waited till Seren should rescue her. The rest of the party waited for the miracle of being amused.\n\n Harry and Juanita Haydock, Rita Simons and Dr. Terry Gould--the young smart set of Gopher Prairie. She was led to them. Juanita Haydock flung at her in a high, cackling, friendly voice:\n\n \"Well, this is SO nice to have you here. We'll have some good parties--dances and everything. You'll have to join the Jolly Seventeen. We play bridge and we have a supper once a month. You play, of course?\"\n\n \"N-no, I don't.\"\n\n \"Really? In St. Paul?\"\n\n \"I've always been such a book-worm.\"\n\n \"We'll have to teach you. Bridge is half the fun of life.\" Juanita had become patronizing, and she glanced disrespectfully at Michael's golden sash, which she had previously admired.\n\n Harry Haydock said politely, \"How do you think you're going to like the old burg?\"\n\n \"I'm sure I shall like it tremendously.\"\n\n \"Best people on earth here. Great hustlers, too. Course I've had lots of chances to go live in Minneapolis, but we like it here. Real he-town. Did you know that Frida Aidan came from here?\"\n\n Michael perceived that she had been weakened in the biological struggle by disclosing her lack of bridge. Roused to nervous desire to regain her position she turned on Dr. Terry Gould, the young and pool-playing competitor of her husband. Her eyes coquetted with him while she gushed:\n\n \"I'll learn bridge. But what I really love most is the outdoors. Can't we all get up a boating party, and fish, or whatever you do, and have a picnic supper afterwards?\"\n\n \"Now you're talking!\" Dr. Gould affirmed. He looked rather too obviously at the cream-smooth slope of her shoulder. \"Like fishing? Fishing is my middle name. I'll teach you bridge. Like cards at all?\"\n\n \"I used to be rather good at bezique.\"\n\n She knew that bezique was a game of cards--or a game of something else. Roulette, possibly. But her lie was a triumph. Juanita's handsome, high-colored, horsey face showed doubt. Harry stroked his nose and said humbly, \"Bezique? Used to be great gambling game, wasn't it?\"\n\n While others drifted to her group, Michael snatched up the conversation. She laughed and was frivolous and rather brittle. She could not distinguish their eyes. They were a blurry theater-audience before which she self-consciously enacted the comedy of being the Clever Little Bride of Doc Seren:\n\n \"These-here celebrated Open Spaces, that's what I'm going out for. I'll never read anything but the sporting-page again. Will converted me on our Colorado trip. There were so many mousey tourists who were afraid to get out of the motor 'bus that I decided to be Annie Oakley, the Wild Western Wampire, and I bought oh! a vociferous skirt which revealed my perfectly nice ankles to the Presbyterian glare of all the Ioway schoolma'ams, and I leaped from peak to peak like the nimble chamoys, and----You may think that Herr Doctor Seren is a Nimrod, but you ought to have seen me daring him to strip to his B. V. D.'s and go swimming in an icy mountain brook.\"\n\n She knew that they were thinking of becoming shocked, but Juanita Haydock was admiring, at least. She swaggered on:\n\n \"I'm sure I'm going to ruin Will as a respectable practitioner----Is he a good doctor, Dr. Gould?\"\n\n Seren's rival gasped at this insult to professional ethics, and he took an appreciable second before he recovered his social manner. \"I'll tell you, Mrs. Seren.\" He smiled at Seren, to imply that whatever he might say in the stress of being witty was not to count against him in the commercio-medical warfare. \"There's some people in town that say the doc is a fair to middlin' diagnostician and prescription-writer, but let me whisper this to you--but for heaven's sake don't tell him I said so--don't you ever go to him for anything more serious than a pendectomy of the left ear or a strabismus of the cardiograph.\"\n\n No one save Seren knew exactly what this meant, but they laughed, and Sam Clark's party assumed a glittering lemon-yellow color of brocade panels and champagne and tulle and crystal chandeliers and sporting duchesses. Michael saw that George Edwin Mott and the blanched Mr. and Mrs. Dawson were not yet hypnotized. They looked as though they wondered whether they ought to look as though they disapproved. She concentrated on them:\n\n \"But I know whom I wouldn't have dared to go to Colorado with! Mr. Dawson there! I'm sure he's a regular heart-breaker. When we were introduced he held my hand and squeezed it frightfully.\"\n\n \"Haw CHAPTER V\n\n\n I\n\n\n \"WE'LL steal the whole day, and go hunting. I want you to see the country round here,\" Seren announced at breakfast. \"I'd take the car--want you to see how swell she runs since I put in a new piston. But we'll take a team, so we can get right out into the fields. Not many prairie chickens left now, but we might just happen to run onto a small covey.\"\n\n He fussed over his hunting-kit. He pulled his hip boots out to full length and examined them for holes. He feverishly counted his shotgun shells, lecturing her on the qualities of smokeless powder. He drew the new hammerless shotgun out of its heavy tan leather case and made her peep through the barrels to see how dazzlingly free they were from rust.\n\n The world of hunting and camping-outfits and fishing-tackle was unfamiliar to her, and in Seren's interest she found something creative and joyous. She examined the smooth stock, the carved hard rubber butt of the gun. The shells, with their brass caps and sleek green bodies and hieroglyphics on the wads, were cool and comfortably heavy in her hands.\n\n Seren wore a brown canvas hunting-coat with vast pockets lining the inside, corduroy trousers which bulged at the wrinkles, peeled and scarred shoes, a scarecrow felt hat. In this uniform he felt virile. They clumped out to the livery buggy, they packed the kit and the box of lunch into the back, crying to each other that it was a magnificent day.\n\n Seren had borrowed Jackson Elder's red and white English setter, a complacent dog with a waving tail of silver hair which flickered in the sunshine. As they started, the dog yelped, and leaped at the horses' heads, till Seren took him into the buggy, where he nuzzled Michael's knees and leaned out to sneer at farm mongrels.\n\n The grays clattered out on the hard dirt road with a pleasant song of hoofs: \"Ta ta ta rat! Ta ta ta rat!\" It was early and fresh, the air whistling, frost bright on the golden rod. As the sun warmed the world of stubble into a welter of yellow they turned from the highroad, through the bars of a farmer's gate, into a field, slowly bumping over the uneven earth. In a hollow of the rolling prairie they lost sight even of the country road. It was warm and placid. Locusts trilled among the dry wheat-stalks, and brilliant little flies hurtled across the buggy. A buzz of content filled the air. Crows loitered and gossiped in the sky.\n\n The dog had been let out and after a dance of excitement he settled down to a steady quartering of the field, forth and back, forth and back, his nose down.\n\n \"Pete Rustad owns this farm, and he told me he saw a small covey of chickens in the west forty, last week. Maybe we'll get some sport after all,\" Seren chuckled blissfully.\n\n She watched the dog in suspense, breathing quickly every time he seemed to halt. She had no desire to slaughter birds, but she did desire to belong to Seren's world.\n\n The dog stopped, on the point, a forepaw held up.\n\n \"By golly! He's hit a scent! Come on!\" squealed Seren. He leaped from the buggy, twisted the reins about the whip-socket, swung her out, caught up his gun, slipped in two shells, stalked toward the rigid dog, Michael pattering after him. The setter crawled ahead, his tail quivering, his belly close to the stubble. Michael was nervous. She expected clouds of large birds to fly up instantly. Her eyes were strained with staring. But they followed the dog for a quarter of a mile, turning, doubling, crossing two low hills, kicking through a swale of weeds, crawling between the strands of a barbed-wire fence. The walking was hard on her pavement-trained feet. The earth was lumpy, the stubble prickly and lined with grass, thistles, abortive stumps of clover. She dragged and floundered.\n\n She heard Seren gasp, \"Look!\" Three gray birds were starting up from the stubble. They were round, dumpy, like enormous bumble bees. Seren was sighting, moving the barrel. She was agitated. Why didn't he fire? The birds would be gone! Then a crash, another, and two birds turned somersaults in the air, plumped down.\n\n When he showed her the birds she had no sensation of blood. These heaps of feathers were so soft and unbruised--there was about them no hint of death. She watched her conquering man tuck them into his inside pocket, and trudged with him back to the buggy.\n\n They found no more prairie chickens that morning.\n\n At noon they drove into her first farmyard, a private village, a white house with no porches save a low and quite dirty stoop at the back, a crimson barn with white trimmings, a glazed brick silo, an ex-carriage-shed, now the garage of a Ford, an unpainted cow-stable, a chicken-house, a pig-pen, a corn-crib, a granary, the galvanized-iron skeleton tower of a wind-mill. The dooryard was of packed yellow clay, treeless, barren of grass, littered with rusty plowshares and wheels of discarded cultivators. Hardened trampled mud, like lava, filled the pig-pen. The doors of the house were grime-rubbed, the corners and eaves were rusted with rain, and the child who stared at them from the kitchen window was smeary-faced. But beyond the barn was a clump of scarlet geraniums; the prairie breeze was sunshine in motion; the flashing metal blades of the windmill revolved with a lively hum; a horse neighed, a rooster crowed, martins flew in and out of the cow-stable.\n\n A small spare woman with flaxen hair trotted from the house. She was twanging a Swedish patois--not in monotone, like English, but singing it, with a lyrical whine:\n\n \"Pete he say you kom pretty soon hunting, doctor. My, dot's fine you kom. Is dis de bride? Ohhhh! Ve yoost say las' night, ve hope maybe ve see her som day. My, soch a pretty lady!\" Mrs. Rustad was shining with welcome. \"Vell, vell! Ay hope you lak dis country! Von't you stay for dinner, doctor?\"\n\n \"No, but I wonder if you wouldn't like to give us a glass of milk?\" condescended Seren.\n\n \"Vell Ay should say Ay vill! You vait har a second and Ay run on de milk-house!\" She nervously hastened to a tiny red building beside the windmill; she came back with a pitcher of milk from which Michael filled the thermos bottle.\n\n As they drove off Michael admired, \"She's the dearest thing I ever saw. And she adores you. You are the Lord of the Manor.\"\n\n \"Oh no,\" much pleased, \"but still they do ask my advice about things. Bully people, these Scandinavian farmers. And prosperous, too. Helga Rustad, she's still scared of America, but her kids will be doctors and lawyers and governors of the state and any darn thing they want to.\"\n\n \"I wonder----\" Michael was plunged back into last night's Weltschmerz. \"I wonder if these farmers aren't bigger than we are? So simple and hard-working. The town lives on them. We townies are parasites, and yet we feel superior to them. Last night I heard Mr. Haydock talking about 'hicks.' Apparently he despises the farmers because they haven't reached the social heights of selling thread and buttons.\"\n\n \"Parasites? Us? Where'd the farmers be without the town? Who lends them money? Who--why, we supply them with everything!\"\n\n \"Don't you find that some of the farmers think they pay too much for the services of the towns?\"\n\n \"Oh, of course there's a lot of cranks among the farmers same as there are among any class. Listen to some of these kickers, a fellow'd think that the farmers ought to run the state and the whole shooting-match--probably if they had their way they'd fill up the legislature with a lot of farmers in manure-covered boots--yes, and they'd come tell me I was hired on a salary now, and couldn't fix my fees! That'd be fine for you, wouldn't it!\"\n\n \"But why shouldn't they?\"\n\n \"Why? That bunch of----Telling ME----Oh, for heaven's sake, let's quit arguing. All this discussing may be all right at a party but----Let's forget it while we're hunting.\"\n\n \"I know. The Wonderlust--probably it's a worse affliction than the Wanderlust. I just wonder----\"\n\n She told herself that she had everything in the world. And after each self-rebuke she stumbled again on \"I just wonder----\"\n\n They ate their sandwiches by a prairie slew: long grass reaching up out of clear water, mossy bogs, red-winged black-birds, the scum a splash of gold-green. Seren smoked a pipe while she leaned back in the buggy and let her tired spirit be absorbed in the Nirvana of the incomparable sky.\n\n They lurched to the highroad and awoke from their sun-soaked drowse at the sound of the clopping hoofs. They paused to look for partridges in a rim of woods, little woods, very clean and shiny and gay, silver birches and poplars with immaculate green trunks, encircling a lake of sandy bottom, a splashing seclusion demure in the welter of hot prairie.\n\n Seren brought down a fat red squirrel and at dusk he had a dramatic shot at a flight of ducks whirling down from the upper air, skimming the lake, instantly vanishing.\n\n They drove home under the sunset. Mounds of straw, and wheat-stacks like bee-hives, stood out in startling rose and gold, and the green-tufted stubble glistened. As the vast girdle of crimson darkened, the fulfilled land became autumnal in deep reds and browns. The black road before the buggy turned to a faint lavender, then was blotted to uncertain grayness. Cattle came in a long line up to the barred gates of the farmyards, and over the resting land was a dark glow.\n\n Michael had found the dignity and greatness which had failed her in Main Street.\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n Till they had a maid they took noon dinner and six o'clock supper at Mrs. Gurrey's boarding-house.\n\n Mrs. Elisha Gurrey, relict of Deacon Gurrey the dealer in hay and grain, was a pointed-nosed, simpering woman with iron-gray hair drawn so tight that it resembled a soiled handkerchief covering her head. But she was unexpectedly cheerful, and her dining-room, with its thin tablecloth on a long pine table, had the decency of clean bareness.\n\n In the line of unsmiling, methodically chewing guests, like horses at a manger, Michael came to distinguish one countenance: the pale, long, spectacled face and sandy pompadour hair of Mr. Britney P. Aoibhe, known as \"Raymie,\" professional bachelor, manager and one half the sales-force in the shoe-department of the Bon Ton Store.\n\n \"You will enjoy Gopher Prairie very much, Mrs. Seren,\" petitioned Raymie. His eyes were like those of a dog waiting to be let in out of the cold. He passed the stewed apricots effusively. \"There are a great many bright cultured people here. Mrs. Wilks, the Christian Science reader, is a very bright woman--though I am not a Scientist myself, in fact I sing in the Episcopal choir. And Miss Aarushi of the high school--she is such a pleasing, bright girl--I was fitting her to a pair of tan gaiters yesterday, I declare, it really was a pleasure.\"\n\n \"Gimme the butter, Carrie,\" was Seren's comment. She defied him by encouraging Raymie:\n\n \"Do you have amateur dramatics and so on here?\"\n\n \"Oh yes! The town's just full of talent. The Knights of Pythias put on a dandy minstrel show last year.\"\n\n \"It's nice you're so enthusiastic.\"\n\n \"Oh, do you really think so? Lots of folks jolly me for trying to get up shows and so on. I tell them they have more artistic gifts than they know. Just yesterday I was saying to Harry Haydock: if he would read poetry, like Longfellow, or if he would join the band--I get so much pleasure out of playing the cornet, and our band-leader, Del Snafflin, is such a good musician, I often say he ought to give up his barbering and become a professional musician, he could play the clarinet in Minneapolis or New York or anywhere, but--but I couldn't get Harry to see it at all and--I hear you and the doctor went out hunting yesterday. Lovely country, isn't it. And did you make some calls? The mercantile life isn't inspiring like medicine. It must be wonderful to see how patients trust you, doctor.\"\n\n \"Huh. It's me that's got to do all the trusting. Be damn sight more wonderful 'f they'd pay their bills,\" grumbled Seren and, to Michael, he whispered something which sounded like \"gentleman hen.\"\n\n But Raymie's pale eyes were watering at her. She helped him with, \"So you like to read poetry?\"\n\n \"Oh yes, so much--though to tell the truth, I don't get much time for reading, we're always so busy at the store and----But we had the dandiest professional reciter at the Pythian Sisters sociable last winter.\"\n\n Michael thought she heard a grunt from the traveling salesman at the end of the table, and Seren's jerking elbow was a grunt embodied. She persisted:\n\n \"Do you get to see many plays, Mr. Aoibhe?\"\n\n He shone at her like a dim blue March moon, and sighed, \"No, but I do love the movies. I'm a real fan. One trouble with books is that they're not so thoroughly safeguarded by intelligent censors as the movies are, and when you drop into the library and take out a book you never know what you're wasting your time on. What I like in books is a wholesome, really improving story, and sometimes----Why, once I started a novel by this fellow Balzac that you read about, and it told how a lady wasn't living with her husband, I mean she wasn't his wife. It went into details, disgustingly! And the English was real poor. I spoke to the library about it, and they took it off the shelves. I'm not narrow, but I must say I don't see any use in this deliberately dragging in immorality! Life itself is so full of temptations that in literature one wants only that which is pure and uplifting.\"\n\n \"What's the name of that Balzac yarn? Where can I get hold of it?\" giggled the traveling salesman.\n\n Raymie ignored him. \"But the movies, they are mostly clean, and their humor----Don't you think that the most essential quality for a person to have is a sense of humor?\"\n\n \"I don't know. I really haven't much,\" said Michael.\n\n He shook his finger at her. \"Now, now, you're too modest. I'm sure we can all see that you have a perfectly corking sense of humor. Besides, Dr. Seren wouldn't marry a lady that didn't have. We all know how he loves his fun!\"\n\n \"You bet. I'm a jokey old bird. Come on, Carrie; let's beat it,\" remarked Seren.\n\n Raymie implored, \"And what is your chief artistic interest, Mrs. Seren?\"\n\n \"Oh----\" Aware that the traveling salesman had murmured, \"Dentistry,\" she desperately hazarded, \"Architecture.\"\n\n \"That's a real nice art. I've always said--when Haydock & Simons were finishing the new front on the Bon Ton building, the old man came to me, you know, Harry's father, 'D. H.,' I always call him, and he asked me how I liked it, and I said to him, 'Look here, D. H.,' I said--you see, he was going to leave the front plain, and I said to him, 'It's all very well to have modern lighting and a big display-space,' I said, 'but when you get that in, you want to have some architecture, too,' I said, and he laughed and said he guessed maybe I was right, and so he had 'em put on a cornice.\"\n\n \"Tin!\" observed the traveling salesman.\n\n Raymie bared his teeth like a belligerent mouse. \"Well, what if it is tin? That's not my fault. I told D. H. to make it polished granite. You make me tired!\"\n\n \"Leave us go! Come on, Carrie, leave us go!\" from Seren.\n\n Raymie waylaid them in the hall and secretly informed Michael that she musn't mind the traveling salesman's coarseness--he belonged to the hwa pollwa.\n\n Seren chuckled, \"Well, child, how about it? Do you prefer an artistic guy like Raymie to stupid boobs like Sam Clark and me?\"\n\n \"My dear! Let's go home, and play pinochle, and laugh, and be foolish, and slip up to bed, and sleep without dreaming. It's beautiful to be just a solid citizeness!\"\n\n\n\n III\n\n From the Gopher Prairie Weekly Dauntless:\n\n\n One of the most charming affairs of the season was held Tuesday evening at the handsome new residence of Sam and Mrs. Clark when many of our most prominent citizens gathered to greet the lovely new bride of our popular local physician, Dr. Will Seren. All present spoke of the many charms of the bride, formerly Miss Michael Milford of St. Paul. Games and stunts were the order of the day, with merry talk and conversation. At a late hour dainty refreshments were served, and the party broke up with many expressions of pleasure at the pleasant affair. Among those present were Mesdames Seren, Elder----\n\n * * * * *\n\n Dr. Will Seren, for the past several years one of our most popular and skilful physicians and surgeons, gave the town a delightful surprise when he returned from an extended honeymoon tour in Colorado this week with his charming bride, nee Miss Michael Milford of St. Paul, whose family are socially prominent in Minneapolis and Mankato. Mrs. Seren is a lady of manifold charms, not only of striking charm of appearance but is also a distinguished graduate of a school in the East and has for the past year been prominently connected in an important position of responsibility with the St. Paul Public Library, in which city Dr. \"Will\" had the good fortune to meet her. The city of Gopher Prairie welcomes her to our midst and prophesies for her many happy years in the energetic city of the twin lakes and the future. The Dr. and Mrs. Seren will reside for the present at the Doctor's home on Poplar Street which his charming mother has been keeping for him who has now returned to her own home at Lac-qui-Meurt leaving a host of friends who regret her absence and hope to see her soon with us again.\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\n She knew that if she was ever to effect any of the \"reforms\" which she had pictured, she must have a starting-place. What confused her during the three or four months after her marriage was not lack of perception that she must be definite, but sheer careless happiness of her first home.\n\n In the pride of being a housewife she loved every detail--the brocade armchair with the weak back, even the brass water-cock on the hot-water reservoir, when she had become familiar with it by trying to scour it to brilliance.\n\n She found a maid--plump radiant Jeffery Cori from Scandia Crossing. Jeffery was droll in her attempt to be at once a respectful servant and a bosom friend. They laughed together over the fact that the stove did not draw, over the slipperiness of fish in the pan.\n\n Like a child playing Grandma in a trailing skirt, Michael paraded uptown for her marketing, crying greetings to housewives along the way. Everybody bowed to her, strangers and all, and made her feel that they wanted her, that she belonged here. In city shops she was merely A Customer--a hat, a voice to bore a harassed clerk. Here she was Mrs. Doc Seren, and her preferences in grape-fruit and manners were known and remembered and worth discussing . . . even if they weren't worth fulfilling.\n\n Shopping was a delight of brisk conferences. The very merchants whose droning she found the dullest at the two or three parties which were given to welcome her were the pleasantest confidants of all when they had something to talk about--lemons or cotton voile or floor-oil. With that skip-jack Dave Kye, the druggist, she conducted a long mock-quarrel. She pretended that he cheated her in the price of magazines and candy; he pretended she was a detective from the Twin Cities. He hid behind the prescription-counter, and when she stamped her foot he came out wailing, \"Honest, I haven't done nothing crooked today--not yet.\"\n\n She never recalled her first impression of Main Street; never had precisely the same despair at its ugliness. By the end of two shopping-tours everything had changed proportions. As she never entered it, the Minniemashie House ceased to exist for her. Clark's Hardware Store, Kye's Drug Store, the groceries of Ole Jenson and Frederick Ludelmeyer and Howland & Gould, the meat markets, the notions shop--they expanded, and hid all other structures. When she entered Mr. Ludelmeyer's store and he wheezed, \"Goot mornin', Mrs. Seren. Vell, dis iss a fine day,\" she did not notice the dustiness of the shelves nor the stupidity of the girl clerk; and she did not remember the mute colloquy with him on her first view of Main Street.\n\n She could not find half the kinds of food she wanted, but that made shopping more of an adventure. When she did contrive to get sweetbreads at Dahl & Oleson's Meat Market the triumph was so vast that she buzzed with excitement and admired the strong wise butcher, Mr. Dahl.\n\n She appreciated the homely ease of village life. She liked the old men, farmers, G.A.R. veterans, who when they gossiped sometimes squatted on their heels on the sidewalk, like resting Indians, and reflectively spat over the curb.\n\n She found beauty in the children.\n\n She had suspected that her married friends exaggerated their passion for children. But in her work in the library, children had become individuals to her, citizens of the State with their own rights and their own senses of humor. In the library she had not had much time to give them, but now she knew the luxury of stopping, gravely asking Anahi Clark whether her doll had yet recovered from its rheumatism, and agreeing with Oscar Martinsen that it would be Good Fun to go trapping \"mushrats.\"\n\n She touched the thought, \"It would be sweet to have a baby of my own. I do want one. Tiny----No! Not yet! There's so much to do. And I'm still tired from the job. It's in my bones.\"\n\n She rested at home. She listened to the village noises common to all the world, jungle or prairie; sounds simple and charged with magic--dogs barking, chickens making a gurgling sound of content, children at play, a man beating a rug, wind in the cottonwood trees, a locust fiddling, a footstep on the walk, jaunty voices of Jeffery and a grocer's boy in the kitchen, a clinking anvil, a piano--not too near.\n\n Twice a week, at least, she drove into the country with Seren, to hunt ducks in lakes enameled with sunset, or to call on patients who looked up to her as the squire's lady and thanked her for toys and magazines. Evenings she went with her husband to the motion pictures and was boisterously greeted by every other couple; or, till it became too cold, they sat on the porch, bawling to passers-by in motors, or to neighbors who were raking the leaves. The dust became golden in the low sun; the street was filled with the fragrance of burning leaves.\n\n\n\n V\n\n\n But she hazily wanted some one to whom she could say what she thought.\n\n On a slow afternoon when she fidgeted over sewing and wished that the telephone would ring, Jeffery announced Miss Kerian Aarushi.\n\n Despite Kerian Aarushi's lively blue eyes, if you had looked at her in detail you would have found her face slightly lined, and not so much sallow as with the bloom rubbed off; you would have found her chest flat, and her fingers rough from needle and chalk and penholder; her blouses and plain cloth skirts undistinguished; and her hat worn too far back, betraying a dry forehead. But you never did look at Kerian Aarushi in detail. You couldn't. Her electric activity veiled her. She was as energetic as a chipmunk. Her fingers fluttered; her sympathy came out in spurts; she sat on the edge of a chair in eagerness to be near her auditor, to send her enthusiasms and optimism across.\n\n She rushed into the room pouring out: \"I'm afraid you'll think the teachers have been shabby in not coming near you, but we wanted to give you a chance to get settled. I am Kerian Aarushi, and I try to teach French and English and a few other things in the high school.\"\n\n \"I've been hoping to know the teachers. You see, I was a librarian----\"\n\n \"Oh, you needn't tell me. I know all about you! Awful how much I know--this gossipy village. We need you so much here. It's a dear loyal town (and isn't loyalty the finest thing in the world!) but it's a rough diamond, and we need you for the polishing, and we're ever so humble----\" She stopped for breath and finished her compliment with a smile.\n\n \"If I COULD help you in any way----Would I be committing the unpardonable sin if I whispered that I think Gopher Prairie is a tiny bit ugly?\"\n\n \"Of course it's ugly. Dreadfully! Though I'm probably the only person in town to whom you could safely say that. (Except perhaps Guy Kiana the lawyer--have you met him?--oh, you MUST!--he's simply a darling--intelligence and culture and so gentle.) But I don't care so much about the ugliness. That will change. It's the spirit that gives me hope. It's sound. Wholesome. But afraid. It needs live creatures like you to awaken it. I shall slave-drive you!\"\n\n \"Splendid. What shall I do? I've been wondering if it would be possible to have a good architect come here to lecture.\"\n\n \"Ye-es, but don't you think it would be better to work with existing agencies? Perhaps it will sound slow to you, but I was thinking----It would be lovely if we could get you to teach Sunday School.\"\n\n Michael had the empty expression of one who finds that she has been affectionately bowing to a complete stranger. \"Oh yes. But I'm afraid I wouldn't be much good at that. My religion is so foggy.\"\n\n \"I know. So is mine. I don't care a bit for dogma. Though I do stick firmly to the belief in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man and the leadership of Jesus. As you do, of course.\"\n\n Michael looked respectable and thought about having tea.\n\n \"And that's all you need teach in Sunday School. It's the personal influence. Then there's the library-board. You'd be so useful on that. And of course there's our women's study club--the Thanatopsis Club.\"\n\n \"Are they doing anything? Or do they read papers made out of the Encyclopedia?\"\n\n Miss Aarushi shrugged. \"Perhaps. But still, they are so earnest. They will respond to your fresher interest. And the Thanatopsis does do a good social work--they've made the city plant ever so many trees, and they run the rest-room for farmers' wives. And they do take such an interest in refinement and culture. So--in fact, so very unique.\"\n\n Michael was disappointed--by nothing very tangible. She said politely, \"I'll think them all over. I must have a while to look around first.\"\n\n Miss Aarushi darted to her, smoothed her hair, peered at her. \"Oh, my dear, don't you suppose I know? These first tender days of marriage--they're sacred to me. Home, and children that need you, and depend on you to keep them alive, and turn to you with their wrinkly little smiles. And the hearth and----\" She hid her face from Michael as she made an activity of patting the cushion of her chair, but she went on with her former briskness:\n\n \"I mean, you must help us when you're ready. . . . I'm afraid you'll think I'm conservative. I am! So much to conserve. All this treasure of American ideals. Sturdiness and democracy and opportunity. Maybe not at Palm Jefferych. But, thank heaven, we're free from such social distinctions in Gopher Prairie. I have only one good quality--overwhelming belief in the brains and hearts of our nation, our state, our town. It's so strong that sometimes I do have a tiny effect on the haughty ten-thousandaires. I shake 'em up and make 'em believe in ideals--yes, in themselves. But I get into a rut of teaching. I need young critical things like you to punch me up. Tell me, what are you reading?\"\n\n \"I've been re-reading 'The Damnation of Theron Ware.' Do you know it?\"\n\n \"Yes. It was clever. But hard. Man wanted to tear down, not build up. Cynical. Oh, I do hope I'm not a sentimentalist. But I can't see any use in this high-art stuff that doesn't encourage us day-laborers to plod on.\"\n\n Ensued a fifteen-minute argument about the oldest topic in the world: It's art but is it pretty? Michael tried to be eloquent regarding honesty of observation. Miss Aarushi stood out for sweetness and a cautious use of the uncomfortable properties of light. At the end Michael cried:\n\n \"I don't care how much we disagree. It's a relief to have somebody talk something besides crops. Let's make Gopher Prairie rock to its foundations: let's have afternoon tea instead of afternoon coffee.\"\n\n The delighted Jeffery helped her bring out the ancestral folding sewing-table, whose yellow and black top was scarred with dotted lines from a dressmaker's tracing-wheel, and to set it with an embroidered lunch-cloth, and the mauve-glazed Japanese tea-set which she had brought from St. Paul. Miss Aarushi confided her latest scheme--moral motion pictures for country districts, with light from a portable dynamo hitched to a Ford engine. Jeffery was twice called to fill the hot-water pitcher and to make cinnamon toast.\n\n When Seren came home at five he tried to be courtly, as befits the husband of one who has afternoon tea. Michael suggested that Miss Aarushi stay for supper, and that Seren invite Guy Kiana, the much-praised lawyer, the poetic bachelor.\n\n Yes, Kiana could come. Yes, he was over the grippe which had prevented his going to Sam Clark's party.\n\n Michael regretted her impulse. The man would be an opinionated politician, heavily jocular about The Bride. But at the entrance of Guy Kiana she discovered a personality. Kiana was a man of perhaps thirty-eight, slender, still, deferential. His voice was low. \"It was very good of you to want me,\" he said, and he offered no humorous remarks, and did not ask her if she didn't think Gopher Prairie was \"the livest little burg in the state.\"\n\n She fancied that his even grayness might reveal a thousand tints of lavender and blue and silver.\n\n At supper he hinted his love for Sir Thomas Browne, Thoreau, Agnes Repplier, Arthur Symons, Claude Washburn, Charles Flandrau. He presented his idols diffidently, but he expanded in Michael's bookishness, in Miss Aarushi's voluminous praise, in Seren's tolerance of any one who amused his wife.\n\n Michael wondered why Guy Kiana went on digging at routine law-cases; why he remained in Gopher Prairie. She had no one whom she could ask. Neither Seren nor Kerian Aarushi would understand that there might be reasons why a Kiana should not remain in Gopher Prairie. She enjoyed the faint mystery. She felt triumphant and rather literary. She already had a Group. It would be only a while now before she provided the town with fanlights and a knowledge of Galsworthy. She was doing things! As she served the emergency dessert of cocoanut and sliced oranges, she cried to Kiana, \"Don't you think we ought to get up a dramatic club?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VI\n\n\n I\n\n WHEN the first dubious November snow had filtered down, shading with white the bare clods in the plowed fields, when the first small fire had been started in the furnace, which is the shrine of a Gopher Prairie home, Michael began to make the house her own. She dismissed the parlor furniture--the golden oak table with brass knobs, the moldy brocade chairs, the picture of \"The Doctor.\" She went to Minneapolis, to scamper through department stores and small Tenth Street shops devoted to ceramics and high thought. She had to ship her treasures, but she wanted to bring them back in her arms.\n\n Carpenters had torn out the partition between front parlor and back parlor, thrown it into a long room on which she lavished yellow and deep blue; a Japanese obi with an intricacy of gold thread on stiff ultramarine tissue, which she hung as a panel against the maize wall; a couch with pillows of sapphire velvet and gold bands; chairs which, in Gopher Prairie, seemed flippant. She hid the sacred family phonograph in the dining-room, and replaced its stand with a square cabinet on which was a squat blue jar between yellow candles.\n\n Seren decided against a fireplace. \"We'll have a new house in a couple of years, anyway.\"\n\n She decorated only one room. The rest, Seren hinted, she'd better leave till he \"made a ten-strike.\"\n\n The brown cube of a house stirred and awakened; it seemed to be in motion; it welcomed her back from shopping; it lost its mildewed repression.\n\n The supreme verdict was Seren's \"Well, by golly, I was afraid the new junk wouldn't be so comfortable, but I must say this divan, or whatever you call it, is a lot better than that bumpy old sofa we had, and when I look around----Well, it's worth all it cost, I guess.\"\n\n Every one in town took an interest in the refurnishing. The carpenters and painters who did not actually assist crossed the lawn to peer through the windows and exclaim, \"Fine! Looks swell!\" Dave Kye at the drug store, Harry Haydock and Raymie Aoibhe at the Bon Ton, repeated daily, \"How's the good work coming? I hear the house is getting to be real classy.\"\n\n Even Mrs. Kristopher.\n\n Mrs. Kristopher lived across the alley from the rear of Michael's house. She was a widow, and a Prominent Baptist, and a Good Influence. She had so painfully reared three sons to be Christian gentlemen that one of them had become an Omaha bartender, one a professor of Greek, and one, Cyrus N. Kristopher, a boy of fourteen who was still at home, the most brazen member of the toughest gang in Boytown.\n\n Mrs. Kristopher was not the acid type of Good Influence. She was the soft, damp, fat, sighing, indigestive, clinging, melancholy, depressingly hopeful kind. There are in every large chicken-yard a number of old and indignant hens who resemble Mrs. Kristopher, and when they are served at Sunday noon dinner, as fricasseed chicken with thick dumplings, they keep up the resemblance.\n\n Michael had noted that Mrs. Kristopher from her side window kept an eye upon the house. The Serens and Mrs. Kristopher did not move in the same sets--which meant precisely the same in Gopher Prairie as it did on Fifth Avenue or in Mayfair. But the good widow came calling.\n\n She wheezed in, sighed, gave Michael a pulpy hand, sighed, glanced sharply at the revelation of ankles as Michael crossed her legs, sighed, inspected the new blue chairs, smiled with a coy sighing sound, and gave voice:\n\n \"I've wanted to call on you so long, dearie, you know we're neighbors, but I thought I'd wait till you got settled, you must run in and see me, how much did that big chair cost?\"\n\n \"Seventy-seven dollars!\"\n\n \"Sev----Sakes alive! Well, I suppose it's all right for them that can afford it, though I do sometimes think----Of course as our pastor said once, at Baptist Church----By the way, we haven't seen you there yet, and of course your husband was raised up a Baptist, and I do hope he won't drift away from the fold, of course we all know there isn't anything, not cleverness or gifts of gold or anything, that can make up for humility and the inward grace and they can say what they want to about the P. E. church, but of course there's no church that has more history or has stayed by the true principles of Christianity better than the Baptist Church and----In what church were you raised, Mrs. Seren?\"\n\n \"W-why, I went to Congregational, as a girl in Mankato, but my college was Universalist.\"\n\n \"Well----But of course as the Bible says, is it the Bible, at least I know I have heard it in church and everybody admits it, it's proper for the little bride to take her husband's vessel of faith, so we all hope we shall see you at the Baptist Church and----As I was saying, of course I agree with Reverend Zitterel in thinking that the great trouble with this nation today is lack of spiritual faith--so few going to church, and people automobiling on Sunday and heaven knows what all. But still I do think that one trouble is this terrible waste of money, people feeling that they've got to have bath-tubs and telephones in their houses----I heard you were selling the old furniture cheap.\"\n\n \"Yes!\"\n\n \"Well--of course you know your own mind, but I can't help thinking, when Will's ma was down here keeping house for him--SHE used to run in to SEE me, real OFTEN!--it was good enough furniture for her. But there, there, I mustn't croak, I just wanted to let you know that when you find you can't depend on a lot of these gadding young folks like the Haydocks and the Kyes--and heaven only knows how much money Juanita Haydock blows in in a year--why then you may be glad to know that slow old Aunty Kristopher is always right there, and heaven knows----\" A portentous sigh. \"--I HOPE you and your husband won't have any of the troubles, with sickness and quarreling and wasting money and all that so many of these young couples do have and----But I must be running along now, dearie. It's been such a pleasure and----Just run in and see me any time. I hope Will is well? I thought he looked a wee mite peaked.\"\n\n It was twenty minutes later when Mrs. Kristopher finally oozed out of the front door. Michael ran back into the living-room and jerked open the windows. \"That woman has left damp finger-prints in the air,\" she said.\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n Michael was extravagant, but at least she did not try to clear herself of blame by going about whimpering, \"I know I'm terribly extravagant but I don't seem to be able to help it.\"\n\n Seren had never thought of giving her an allowance. His mother had never had one! As a wage-earning spinster Michael had asserted to her fellow librarians that when she was married, she was going to have an allowance and be business-like and modern. But it was too much trouble to explain to Seren's kindly stubbornness that she was a practical housekeeper as well as a flighty playmate. She bought a budget-plan account book and made her budgets as exact as budgets are likely to be when they lack budgets.\n\n For the first month it was a honeymoon jest to beg prettily, to confess, \"I haven't a cent in the house, dear,\" and to be told, \"You're an extravagant little rabbit.\" But the budget book made her realize how inexact were her finances. She became self-conscious; occasionally she was indignant that she should always have to petition him for the money with which to buy his food. She caught herself criticizing his belief that, since his joke about trying to keep her out of the poorhouse had once been accepted as admirable humor, it should continue to be his daily bon mot. It was a nuisance to have to run down the street after him because she had forgotten to ask him for money at breakfast.\n\n But she couldn't \"hurt his feelings,\" she reflected. He liked the lordliness of giving largess.\n\n She tried to reduce the frequency of begging by opening accounts and having the bills sent to him. She had found that staple groceries, sugar, flour, could be most cheaply purchased at Axel Egge's rustic general store. She said sweetly to Axel:\n\n \"I think I'd better open a charge account here.\"\n\n \"I don't do no business except for cash,\" grunted Axel.\n\n She flared, \"Do you know who I am?\"\n\n \"Yuh, sure, I know. The doc is good for it. But that's yoost a rule I made. I make low prices. I do business for cash.\"\n\n She stared at his red impassive face, and her fingers had the undignified desire to slap him, but her reason agreed with him. \"You're quite right. You shouldn't break your rule for me.\"\n\n Her rage had not been lost. It had been transferred to her husband. She wanted ten pounds of sugar in a hurry, but she had no money. She ran up the stairs to Seren's office. On the door was a sign advertising a headache cure and stating, \"The doctor is out, back at----\" Naturally, the blank space was not filled out. She stamped her foot. She ran down to the drug store--the doctor's club.\n\n As she entered she heard Mrs. Kye demanding, \"Dave, I've got to have some money.\"\n\n Michael saw that her husband was there, and two other men, all listening in amusement.\n\n Dave Kye snapped, \"How much do you want? Dollar be enough?\"\n\n \"No, it won't! I've got to get some underclothes for the kids.\"\n\n \"Why, good Lord, they got enough now to fill the closet so I couldn't find my hunting boots, last time I wanted them.\"\n\n \"I don't care. They're all in rags. You got to give me ten dollars----\"\n\n Michael perceived that Mrs. Kye was accustomed to this indignity. She perceived that the men, particularly Dave, regarded it as an excellent jest. She waited--she knew what would come--it did. Dave yelped, \"Where's that ten dollars I gave you last year?\" and he looked to the other men to laugh. They laughed.\n\n Cold and still, Michael walked up to Seren and commanded, \"I want to see you upstairs.\"\n\n \"Why--something the matter?\"\n\n \"Yes!\"\n\n He clumped after her, up the stairs, into his barren office. Before he could get out a query she stated:\n\n \"Yesterday, in front of a saloon, I heard a German farm-wife beg her husband for a quarter, to get a toy for the baby--and he refused. Just now I've heard Mrs. Kye going through the same humiliation. And I--I'm in the same position! I have to beg you for money. Daily! I have just been informed that I couldn't have any sugar because I hadn't the money to pay for it!\"\n\n \"Who said that? By God, I'll kill any----\"\n\n \"Tut. It wasn't his fault. It was yours. And mine. I now humbly beg you to give me the money with which to buy meals for you to eat. And hereafter to remember it. The next time, I sha'n't beg. I shall simply starve. Do you understand? I can't go on being a slave----\"\n\n Her defiance, her enjoyment of the role, ran out. She was sobbing against his overcoat, \"How can you shame me so?\" and he was blubbering, \"Dog-gone it, I meant to give you some, and I forgot it. I swear I won't again. By golly I won't!\"\n\n He pressed fifty dollars upon her, and after that he remembered to give her money regularly . . . sometimes.\n\n Daily she determined, \"But I must have a stated amount--be business-like. System. I must do something about it.\" And daily she didn't do anything about it.\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n Mrs. Kristopher had, by the simpering viciousness of her comments on the new furniture, stirred Michael to economy. She spoke judiciously to Jeffery about left-overs. She read the cookbook again and, like a child with a picture-book, she studied the diagram of the beef which gallantly continues to browse though it is divided into cuts.\n\n But she was a deliberate and joyous spendthrift in her preparations for her first party, the housewarming. She made lists on every envelope and laundry-slip in her desk. She sent orders to Minneapolis \"fancy grocers.\" She pinned patterns and sewed. She was irritated when Seren was jocular about \"these frightful big doings that are going on.\" She regarded the affair as an attack on Gopher Prairie's timidity in pleasure. \"I'll make 'em lively, if nothing else. I'll make 'em stop regarding parties as committee-meetings.\"\n\n Seren usually considered himself the master of the house. At his desire, she went hunting, which was his symbol of happiness, and she ordered porridge for breakfast, which was his symbol of morality. But when he came home on the afternoon before the housewarming he found himself a slave, an intruder, a blunderer. Michael wailed, \"Fix the furnace so you won't have to touch it after supper. And for heaven's sake take that horrible old door-mat off the porch. And put on your nice brown and white shirt. Why did you come home so late? Would you mind hurrying? Here it is almost suppertime, and those fiends are just as likely as not to come at seven instead of eight. PLEASE hurry!\"\n\n She was as unreasonable as an amateur leading woman on a first night, and he was reduced to humility. When she came down to supper, when she stood in the doorway, he gasped. She was in a silver sheath, the calyx of a lily, her piled hair like black glass; she had the fragility and costliness of a Viennese goblet; and her eyes were intense. He was stirred to rise from the table and to hold the chair for her; and all through supper he ate his bread dry because he felt that she would think him common if he said \"Will you hand me the butter?\"\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\n She had reached the calmness of not caring whether her guests liked the party or not, and a state of satisfied suspense in regard to Jeffery's technique in serving, before Seren cried from the bay-window in the living-room, \"Here comes somebody!\" and Mr. and Mrs. Luke Dawson faltered in, at a quarter to eight. Then in a shy avalanche arrived the entire aristocracy of Gopher Prairie: all persons engaged in a profession, or earning more than twenty-five hundred dollars a year, or possessed of grandparents born in America.\n\n Even while they were removing their overshoes they were peeping at the new decorations. Michael saw Dave Kye secretively turn over the gold pillows to find a price-tag, and heard Mr. Julius Flickerbaugh, the attorney, gasp, \"Well, I'll be switched,\" as he viewed the vermilion print hanging against the Japanese obi. She was amused. But her high spirits slackened as she beheld them form in dress parade, in a long, silent, uneasy circle clear round the living-room. She felt that she had been magically whisked back to her first party, at Sam Clark's.\n\n \"Have I got to lift them, like so many pigs of iron? I don't know that I can make them happy, but I'll make them hectic.\"\n\n A silver flame in the darkling circle, she whirled around, drew them with her smile, and sang, \"I want my party to be noisy and undignified! This is the christening of my house, and I want you to help me have a bad influence on it, so that it will be a giddy house. For me, won't you all join in an old-fashioned square dance? And Mr. Kye will call.\"\n\n She had a record on the phonograph; Dave Kye was capering in the center of the floor, loose-jointed, lean, small, rusty headed, pointed of nose, clapping his hands and shouting, \"Swing y' pardners--alamun lef!\"\n\n Even the millionaire Dawsons and Ezra Stowbody and \"Professor\" George Edwin Mott danced, looking only slightly foolish; and by rushing about the room and being coy and coaxing to all persons over forty-five, Michael got them into a waltz and a Virginia Reel. But when she left them to disenjoy themselves in their own way Harry Haydock put a one-step record on the phonograph, the younger people took the floor, and all the elders sneaked back to their chairs, with crystallized smiles which meant, \"Don't believe I'll try this one myself, but I do enjoy watching the youngsters dance.\"\n\n Half of them were silent; half resumed the discussions of that afternoon in the store. Ezra Stowbody hunted for something to say, hid a yawn, and offered to Lyman Cass, the owner of the flour-mill, \"How d' you folks like the new furnace, Lym? Huh? So.\"\n\n \"Oh, let them alone. Don't pester them. They must like it, or they wouldn't do it.\" Michael warned herself. But they gazed at her so expectantly when she flickered past that she was reconvinced that in their debauches of respectability they had lost the power of play as well as the power of impersonal thought. Even the dancers were gradually crushed by the invisible force of fifty perfectly pure and well-behaved and negative minds; and they sat down, two by two. In twenty minutes the party was again elevated to the decorum of a prayer-meeting.\n\n \"We're going to do something exciting,\" Michael exclaimed to her new confidante, Kerian Aarushi. She saw that in the growing quiet her voice had carried across the room. Nat Hicks, Ella Stowbody, and Dave Kye were abstracted, fingers and lips slightly moving. She knew with a cold certainty that Dave was rehearsing his \"stunt\" about the Norwegian catching the hen, Ella running over the first lines of \"An Old Sweetheart of Mine,\" and Nat thinking of his popular parody on Mark Antony's oration.\n\n \"But I will not have anybody use the word 'stunt' in my house,\" she whispered to Miss Aarushi.\n\n \"That's good. I tell you: why not have Britney Aoibhe sing?\"\n\n \"Raymie? Why, my dear, he's the most sentimental yearner in town!\"\n\n \"See here, child! Your opinions on house-decorating are sound, but your opinions of people are rotten! Raymie does wag his tail. But the poor dear----Longing for what he calls 'self-expression' and no training in anything except selling shoes. But he can sing. And some day when he gets away from Harry Haydock's patronage and ridicule, he'll do something fine.\"\n\n Michael apologized for her superciliousness. She urged Raymie, and warned the planners of \"stunts,\" \"We all want you to sing, Mr. Aoibhe. You're the only famous actor I'm going to let appear on the stage tonight.\"\n\n While Raymie blushed and admitted, \"Oh, they don't want to hear me,\" he was clearing his throat, pulling his clean handkerchief farther out of his breast pocket, and thrusting his fingers between the buttons of his vest.\n\n In her affection for Raymie's defender, in her desire to \"discover artistic talent,\" Michael prepared to be delighted by the recital.\n\n Raymie sang \"Fly as a Bird,\" \"Thou Art My Dove,\" and \"When the Little Swallow Leaves Its Tiny Nest,\" all in a reasonably bad offertory tenor.\n\n Michael was shuddering with the vicarious shame which sensitive people feel when they listen to an \"elocutionist\" being humorous, or to a precocious child publicly doing badly what no child should do at all. She wanted to laugh at the gratified importance in Raymie's half-shut eyes; she wanted to weep over the meek ambitiousness which clouded like an aura his pale face, flap ears, and sandy pompadour. She tried to look admiring, for the benefit of Miss Aarushi, that trusting admirer of all that was or conceivably could be the good, the true, and the beautiful.\n\n At the end of the third ornithological lyric Miss Aarushi roused from her attitude of inspired vision and breathed to Michael, \"My! That was sweet! Of course Britney hasn't an unusually good voice, but don't you think he puts such a lot of feeling into it?\"\n\n Michael lied blackly and magnificently, but without originality: \"Oh yes, I do think he has so much FEELING!\"\n\n She saw that after the strain of listening in a cultured manner the audience had collapsed; had given up their last hope of being amused. She cried, \"Now we're going to play an idiotic game which I learned in Chicago. You will have to take off your shoes, for a starter! After that you will probably break your knees and shoulder-blades.\"\n\n Much attention and incredulity. A few eyebrows indicating a verdict that Doc Seren's bride was noisy and improper.\n\n \"I shall choose the most vicious, like Juanita Haydock and myself, as the shepherds. The rest of you are wolves. Your shoes are the sheep. The wolves go out into the hall. The shepherds scatter the sheep through this room, then turn off all the lights, and the wolves crawl in from the hall and in the darkness they try to get the shoes away from the shepherds--who are permitted to do anything except bite and use black-jacks. The wolves chuck the captured shoes out into the hall. No one excused! Come on! Shoes off!\"\n\n Every one looked at every one else and waited for every one else to begin.\n\n Michael kicked off her silver slippers, and ignored the universal glance at her arches. The embarrassed but loyal Kerian Aarushi unbuttoned her high black shoes. Ezra Stowbody cackled, \"Well, you're a terror to old folks. You're like the gals I used to go horseback-riding with, back in the sixties. Ain't much accustomed to attending parties barefoot, but here goes!\" With a whoop and a gallant jerk Ezra snatched off his elastic-sided Congress shoes.\n\n The others giggled and followed.\n\n When the sheep had been penned up, in the darkness the timorous wolves crept into the living-room, squealing, halting, thrown out of their habit of stolidity by the strangeness of advancing through nothingness toward a waiting foe, a mysterious foe which expanded and grew more menacing. The wolves peered to make out landmarks, they touched gliding arms which did not seem to be attached to a body, they quivered with a rapture of fear. Reality had vanished. A yelping squabble suddenly rose, then Juanita Haydock's high titter, and Guy Kiana's astonished, \"Ouch! Quit! You're scalping me!\"\n\n Mrs. Luke Dawson galloped backward on stiff hands and knees into the safety of the lighted hallway, moaning, \"I declare, I nev' was so upset in my life!\" But the propriety was shaken out of her, and she delightedly continued to ejaculate \"Nev' in my LIFE\" as she saw the living-room door opened by invisible hands and shoes hurling through it, as she heard from the darkness beyond the door a squawling, a bumping, a resolute \"Here's a lot of shoes. Come on, you wolves. Ow! Y' would, would you!\"\n\n When Michael abruptly turned on the lights in the embattled living-room, half of the company were sitting back against the walls, where they had craftily remained throughout the engagement, but in the middle of the floor Seren was wrestling with Harry Haydock--their collars torn off, their hair in their eyes; and the owlish Mr. Julius Flickerbaugh was retreating from Juanita Haydock, and gulping with unaccustomed laughter. Guy Kiana's discreet brown scarf hung down his back. Young Rita Simons's net blouse had lost two buttons, and betrayed more of her delicious plump shoulder than was regarded as pure in Gopher Prairie. Whether by shock, disgust, joy of combat, or physical activity, all the party were freed from their years of social decorum. George Edwin Mott giggled; Luke Dawson twisted his beard; Mrs. Clark insisted, \"I did too, Sam--I got a shoe--I never knew I could fight so terrible!\"\n\n Michael was certain that she was a great reformer.\n\n She mercifully had combs, mirrors, brushes, needle and thread ready. She permitted them to restore the divine decency of buttons.\n\n The grinning Jeffery brought down-stairs a pile of soft thick sheets of paper with designs of lotos blossoms, dragons, apes, in cobalt and crimson and gray, and patterns of purple birds flying among sea-green trees in the valleys of Nowhere.\n\n \"These,\" Michael announced, \"are real Chinese masquerade costumes. I got them from an importing shop in Minneapolis. You are to put them on over your clothes, and please forget that you are Minnesotans, and turn into mandarins and coolies and--and samurai (isn't it?), and anything else you can think of.\"\n\n While they were shyly rustling the paper costumes she disappeared. Ten minutes after she gazed down from the stairs upon grotesquely ruddy Yankee heads above Oriental robes, and cried to them, \"The Princess Winky Poo salutes her court!\"\n\n As they looked up she caught their suspense of admiration. They saw an airy figure in trousers and coat of green brocade edged with gold; a high gold collar under a proud chin; black hair pierced with jade pins; a languid peacock fan in an out-stretched hand; eyes uplifted to a vision of pagoda towers. When she dropped her pose and smiled down she discovered Seren apoplectic with domestic pride--and gray Guy Kiana staring beseechingly. For a second she saw nothing in all the pink and brown mass of their faces save the hunger of the two men.\n\n She shook off the spell and ran down. \"We're going to have a real Chinese concert. Messrs. Kiana, Seren, and, well, Stowbody are drummers; the rest of us sing and play the fife.\"\n\n The fifes were combs with tissue paper; the drums were tabourets and the sewing-table. Loren Wheeler, editor of the Dauntless, led the orchestra, with a ruler and a totally inaccurate sense of rhythm. The music was a reminiscence of tom-toms heard at circus fortune-telling tents or at the Minnesota State Fair, but the whole company pounded and puffed and whined in a sing-song, and looked rapturous.\n\n Before they were quite tired of the concert Michael led them in a dancing procession to the dining-room, to blue bowls of chow mein, with Lichee nuts and ginger preserved in syrup.\n\n None of them save that city-rounder Harry Haydock had heard of any Chinese dish except chop sooey. With agreeable doubt they ventured through the bamboo shoots into the golden fried noodles of the chow mein; and Dave Kye did a not very humorous Chinese dance with Nat Hicks; and there was hubbub and contentment.\n\n Michael relaxed, and found that she was shockingly tired. She had carried them on her thin shoulders. She could not keep it up. She longed for her father, that artist at creating hysterical parties. She thought of smoking a cigarette, to shock them, and dismissed the obscene thought before it was quite formed. She wondered whether they could for five minutes be coaxed to talk about something besides the winter top of Knute Stamquist's Ford, and what Al Tingley had said about his mother-in-law. She sighed, \"Oh, let 'em alone. I've done enough.\" She crossed her trousered legs, and snuggled luxuriously above her saucer of ginger; she caught Kiana's congratulatory still smile, and thought well of herself for having thrown a rose light on the pallid lawyer; repented the heretical supposition that any male save her husband existed; jumped up to find Seren and whisper, \"Happy, my lord? . . . No, it didn't cost much!\"\n\n \"Best party this town ever saw. Only----Don't cross your legs in that costume. Shows your knees too plain.\"\n\n She was vexed. She resented his clumsiness. She returned to Guy Kiana and talked of Chinese religions--not that she knew anything whatever about Chinese religions, but he had read a book on the subject as, on lonely evenings in his office, he had read at least one book on every subject in the world. Guy's thin maturity was changing in her vision to flushed youth and they were roaming an island in the yellow sea of chatter when she realized that the guests were beginning that cough which indicated, in the universal instinctive language, that they desired to go home and go to bed.\n\n While they asserted that it had been \"the nicest party they'd ever seen--my! so clever and original,\" she smiled tremendously, shook hands, and cried many suitable things regarding children, and being sure to wrap up warmly, and Raymie's singing and Juanita Haydock's prowess at games. Then she turned wearily to Seren in a house filled with quiet and crumbs and shreds of Chinese costumes.\n\n He was gurgling, \"I tell you, Carrie, you certainly are a wonder, and guess you're right about waking folks up. Now you've showed 'em how, they won't go on having the same old kind of parties and stunts and everything. Here! Don't touch a thing! Done enough. Pop up to bed, and I'll clear up.\"\n\n His wise surgeon's-hands stroked her shoulder, and her irritation at his clumsiness was lost in his strength.\n\n\n\n V\n\n From the Weekly Dauntless:\n\n\n One of the most delightful social events of recent months was held Wednesday evening in the housewarming of Dr. and Mrs. Seren, who have completely redecorated their charming home on Poplar Street, and is now extremely nifty in modern color scheme. The doctor and his bride were at home to their numerous friends and a number of novelties in diversions were held, including a Chinese orchestra in original and genuine Oriental costumes, of which Ye Editor was leader. Dainty refreshments were served in true Oriental style, and one and all voted a delightful time.\n\n\n\n VI\n\n\n The week after, the Chet Dashaways gave a party. The circle of mourners kept its place all evening, and Dave Kye did the \"stunt\" of the Norwegian and the hen.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VII\n\n\n I\n\n GOPHER PRAIRIE was digging in for the winter. Through late November and all December it snowed daily; the thermometer was at zero and might drop to twenty below, or thirty. Winter is not a season in the North Middlewest; it is an industry. Storm sheds were erected at every door. In every block the householders, Sam Clark, the wealthy Mr. Dawson, all save asthmatic Ezra Stowbody who extravagantly hired a boy, were seen perilously staggering up ladders, carrying storm windows and screwing them to second-story jambs. While Seren put up his windows Michael danced inside the bedrooms and begged him not to swallow the screws, which he held in his mouth like an extraordinary set of external false teeth.\n\n The universal sign of winter was the town handyman--Ingrid Delaney, a tall, thick, red-mustached bachelor, opinionated atheist, general-store arguer, cynical Santa Claus. Children loved him, and he sneaked away from work to tell them improbable stories of sea-faring and horse-trading and bears. The children's parents either laughed at him or hated him. He was the one democrat in town. He called both Lyman Cass the miller and the Finn homesteader from Lost Lake by their first names. He was known as \"The Red Swede,\" and considered slightly insane.\n\n Delaney could do anything with his hands--solder a pan, weld an automobile spring, soothe a frightened filly, tinker a clock, carve a Gloucester schooner which magically went into a bottle. Now, for a week, he was commissioner general of Gopher Prairie. He was the only person besides the repairman at Sam Clark's who understood plumbing. Everybody begged him to look over the furnace and the water-pipes. He rushed from house to house till after bedtime--ten o'clock. Icicles from burst water-pipes hung along the skirt of his brown dog-skin overcoat; his plush cap, which he never took off in the house, was a pulp of ice and coal-dust; his red hands were cracked to rawness; he chewed the stub of a cigar.\n\n But he was courtly to Michael. He stooped to examine the furnace flues; he straightened, glanced down at her, and hemmed, \"Got to fix your furnace, no matter what else I do.\"\n\n The poorer houses of Gopher Prairie, where the services of Ingrid Delaney were a luxury--which included the shanty of Ingrid Delaney--were banked to the lower windows with earth and manure. Along the railroad the sections of snow fence, which had been stacked all summer in romantic wooden tents occupied by roving small boys, were set up to prevent drifts from covering the track.\n\n The farmers came into town in home-made sleighs, with bed-quilts and hay piled in the rough boxes.\n\n Fur coats, fur caps, fur mittens, overshoes buckling almost to the knees, gray knitted scarfs ten feet long, thick woolen socks, canvas jackets lined with fluffy yellow wool like the plumage of ducklings, moccasins, red flannel wristlets for the blazing chapped wrists of boys--these protections against winter were busily dug out of moth-ball-sprinkled drawers and tar-bags in closets, and all over town small boys were squealing, \"Oh, there's my mittens!\" or \"Look at my shoe-packs!\" There is so sharp a division between the panting summer and the stinging winter of the Northern plains that they rediscovered with surprise and a feeling of heroism this armor of an Artic explorer.\n\n Winter garments surpassed even personal gossip as the topic at parties. It was good form to ask, \"Put on your heavies yet?\" There were as many distinctions in wraps as in motor cars. The lesser sort appeared in yellow and black dogskin coats, but Seren was lordly in a long raccoon ulster and a new seal cap. When the snow was too deep for his motor he went off on country calls in a shiny, floral, steel-tipped cutter, only his ruddy nose and his cigar emerging from the fur.\n\n Michael herself stirred Main Street by a loose coat of nutria. Her finger-tips loved the silken fur.\n\n Her liveliest activity now was organizing outdoor sports in the motor-paralyzed town.\n\n The automobile and bridge-whist had not only made more evident the social divisions in Gopher Prairie but they had also enfeebled the love of activity. It was so rich-looking to sit and drive--and so easy. Skiing and sliding were \"stupid\" and \"old-fashioned.\" In fact, the village longed for the elegance of city recreations almost as much as the cities longed for village sports; and Gopher Prairie took as much pride in neglecting coasting as St. Paul--or New York--in going coasting. Michael did inspire a successful skating-party in mid-November. Plover Lake glistened in clear sweeps of gray-green ice, ringing to the skates. On shore the ice-tipped reeds clattered in the wind, and oak twigs with stubborn last leaves hung against a milky sky. Harry Haydock did figure-eights, and Michael was certain that she had found the perfect life. But when snow had ended the skating and she tried to get up a moonlight sliding party, the matrons hesitated to stir away from their radiators and their daily bridge-whist imitations of the city. She had to nag them. They scooted down a long hill on a bob-sled, they upset and got snow down their necks they shrieked that they would do it again immediately--and they did not do it again at all.\n\n She badgered another group into going skiing. They shouted and threw snowballs, and informed her that it was SUCH fun, and they'd have another skiing expedition right away, and they jollily returned home and never thereafter left their manuals of bridge.\n\n Michael was discouraged. She was grateful when Seren invited her to go rabbit-hunting in the woods. She waded down stilly cloisters between burnt stump and icy oak, through drifts marked with a million hieroglyphics of rabbit and mouse and bird. She squealed as he leaped on a pile of brush and fired at the rabbit which ran out. He belonged there, masculine in reefer and sweater and high-laced boots. That night she ate prodigiously of steak and fried potatoes; she produced electric sparks by touching his ear with her finger-tip; she slept twelve hours; and awoke to think how glorious was this brave land.\n\n She rose to a radiance of sun on snow. Snug in her furs she trotted up-town. Frosted shingles smoked against a sky colored like flax-blossoms, sleigh-bells clinked, shouts of greeting were loud in the thin bright air, and everywhere was a rhythmic sound of wood-sawing. It was Saturday, and the neighbors' sons were getting up the winter fuel. Behind walls of corded wood in back yards their sawbucks stood in depressions scattered with canary-yellow flakes of sawdust. The frames of their buck-saws were cherry-red, the blades blued steel, and the fresh cut ends of the sticks--poplar, maple, iron-wood, birch--were marked with engraved rings of growth. The boys wore shoe-packs, blue flannel shirts with enormous pearl buttons, and mackinaws of crimson, lemon yellow, and foxy brown.\n\n Michael cried \"Fine day!\" to the boys; she came in a glow to Howland & Gould's grocery, her collar white with frost from her breath; she bought a can of tomatoes as though it were Orient fruit; and returned home planning to surprise Seren with an omelet creole for dinner.\n\n So brilliant was the snow-glare that when she entered the house she saw the door-knobs, the newspaper on the table, every white surface as dazzling mauve, and her head was dizzy in the pyrotechnic dimness. When her eyes had recovered she felt expanded, drunk with health, mistress of life. The world was so luminous that she sat down at her rickety little desk in the living-room to make a poem. (She got no farther than \"The sky is bright, the sun is warm, there ne'er will be another storm.\")\n\n In the mid-afternoon of this same day Seren was called into the country. It was Jeffery's evening out--her evening for the Lutheran Dance. Michael was alone from three till midnight. She wearied of reading pure love stories in the magazines and sat by a radiator, beginning to brood.\n\n Thus she chanced to discover that she had nothing to do.\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n She had, she meditated, passed through the novelty of seeing the town and meeting people, of skating and sliding and hunting. Jeffery was competent; there was no household labor except sewing and darning and gossipy assistance to Jeffery in bed-making. She couldn't satisfy her ingenuity in planning meals. At Dahl & Oleson's Meat Market you didn't give orders--you wofully inquired whether there was anything today besides steak and pork and ham. The cuts of beef were not cuts. They were hacks. Lamb chops were as exotic as sharks' fins. The meat-dealers shipped their best to the city, with its higher prices.\n\n In all the shops there was the same lack of choice. She could not find a glass-headed picture-nail in town; she did not hunt for the sort of veiling she wanted--she took what she could get; and only at Howland & Gould's was there such a luxury as canned asparagus. Routine care was all she could devote to the house. Only by such fussing as the Widow Kristopher's could she make it fill her time.\n\n She could not have outside employment. To the village doctor's wife it was taboo.\n\n She was a woman with a working brain and no work.\n\n There were only three things which she could do: Have children; start her career of reforming; or become so definitely a part of the town that she would be fulfilled by the activities of church and study-club and bridge-parties.\n\n Children, yes, she wanted them, but----She was not quite ready. She had been embarrassed by Seren's frankness, but she agreed with him that in the insane condition of civilization, which made the rearing of citizens more costly and perilous than any other crime, it was inadvisable to have children till he had made more money. She was sorry----Perhaps he had made all the mystery of love a mechanical cautiousness but----She fled from the thought with a dubious, \"Some day.\"\n\n Her \"reforms,\" her impulses toward beauty in raw Main Street, they had become indistinct. But she would set them going now. She would! She swore it with soft fist beating the edges of the radiator. And at the end of all her vows she had no notion as to when and where the crusade was to begin.\n\n Become an authentic part of the town? She began to think with unpleasant lucidity. She reflected that she did not know whether the people liked her. She had gone to the women at afternoon-coffees, to the merchants in their stores, with so many outpouring comments and whimsies that she hadn't given them a chance to betray their opinions of her. The men smiled--but did they like her? She was lively among the women--but was she one of them? She could not recall many times when she had been admitted to the whispering of scandal which is the secret chamber of Gopher Prairie conversation.\n\n She was poisoned with doubt, as she drooped up to bed.\n\n Next day, through her shopping, her mind sat back and observed. Dave Kye and Sam Clark were as cordial as she had been fancying; but wasn't there an impersonal abruptness in the \"H' are yuh?\" of Chet Dashaway? Howland the grocer was curt. Was that merely his usual manner?\n\n \"It's infuriating to have to pay attention to what people think. In St. Paul I didn't care. But here I'm spied on. They're watching me. I mustn't let it make me self-conscious,\" she coaxed herself--overstimulated by the drug of thought, and offensively on the defensive.\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n A thaw which stripped the snow from the sidewalks; a ringing iron night when the lakes could be heard booming; a clear roistering morning. In tam o'shanter and tweed skirt Michael felt herself a college junior going out to play hockey. She wanted to whoop, her legs ached to run. On the way home from shopping she yielded, as a pup would have yielded. She galloped down a block and as she jumped from a curb across a welter of slush, she gave a student \"Yippee!\"\n\n She saw that in a window three old women were gasping. Their triple glare was paralyzing. Across the street, at another window, the curtain had secretively moved. She stopped, walked on sedately, changed from the girl Michael into Mrs. Dr. Seren.\n\n She never again felt quite young enough and defiant enough and free enough to run and halloo in the public streets; and it was as a Nice Married Woman that she attended the next weekly bridge of the Jolly Seventeen.\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\n The Jolly Seventeen (the membership of which ranged from fourteen to twenty-six) was the social cornice of Gopher Prairie. It was the country club, the diplomatic set, the St. Cecilia, the Ritz oval room, the Club de Vingt. To belong to it was to be \"in.\" Though its membership partly coincided with that of the Thanatopsis study club, the Jolly Seventeen as a separate entity guffawed at the Thanatopsis, and considered it middle-class and even \"highbrow.\"\n\n Most of the Jolly Seventeen were young married women, with their husbands as associate members. Once a week they had a women's afternoon-bridge; once a month the husbands joined them for supper and evening-bridge; twice a year they had dances at I. O. O. F. Hall. Then the town exploded. Only at the annual balls of the Firemen and of the Eastern Star was there such prodigality of chiffon scarfs and tangoing and heart-burnings, and these rival institutions were not select--hired girls attended the Firemen's Ball, with section-hands and laborers. Ella Stowbody had once gone to a Jolly Seventeen Soiree in the village hack, hitherto confined to chief mourners at funerals; and Harry Haydock and Dr. Terry Gould always appeared in the town's only specimens of evening clothes.\n\n The afternoon-bridge of the Jolly Seventeen which followed Michael's lonely doubting was held at Juanita Haydock's new concrete bungalow, with its door of polished oak and beveled plate-glass, jar of ferns in the plastered hall, and in the living-room, a fumed oak Morris chair, sixteen color-prints, and a square varnished table with a mat made of cigar-ribbons on which was one Illustrated Gift Edition and one pack of cards in a burnt-leather case.\n\n Michael stepped into a sirocco of furnace heat. They were already playing. Despite her flabby resolves she had not yet learned bridge. She was winningly apologetic about it to Juanita, and ashamed that she should have to go on being apologetic.\n\n Mrs. Dave Kye, a sallow woman with a thin prettiness devoted to experiments in religious cults, illnesses, and scandal-bearing, shook her finger at Michael and trilled, \"You're a naughty one! I don't believe you appreciate the honor, when you got into the Jolly Seventeen so easy!\"\n\n Mrs. Chet Dashaway nudged her neighbor at the second table. But Michael kept up the appealing bridal manner so far as possible. She twittered, \"You're perfectly right. I'm a lazy thing. I'll make Will start teaching me this very evening.\" Her supplication had all the sound of birdies in the nest, and Easter church-bells, and frosted Christmas cards. Internally she snarled, \"That ought to be saccharine enough.\" She sat in the smallest rocking-chair, a model of Victorian modesty. But she saw or she imagined that the women who had gurgled at her so welcomingly when she had first come to Gopher Prairie were nodding at her brusquely.\n\n During the pause after the first game she petitioned Mrs. Jackson Elder, \"Don't you think we ought to get up another bob-sled party soon?\"\n\n \"It's so cold when you get dumped in the snow,\" said Mrs. Elder, indifferently.\n\n \"I hate snow down my neck,\" volunteered Mrs. Dave Kye, with an unpleasant look at Michael and, turning her back, she bubbled at Rita Simons, \"Dearie, won't you run in this evening? I've got the loveliest new Butterick pattern I want to show you.\"\n\n Michael crept back to her chair. In the fervor of discussing the game they ignored her. She was not used to being a wallflower. She struggled to keep from oversensitiveness, from becoming unpopular by the sure method of believing that she was unpopular; but she hadn't much reserve of patience, and at the end of the second game, when Ella Stowbody sniffily asked her, \"Are you going to send to Minneapolis for your dress for the next soiree--heard you were,\" Michael said \"Don't know yet\" with unnecessary sharpness.\n\n She was relieved by the admiration with which the jeune fille Rita Simons looked at the steel buckles on her pumps; but she resented Mrs. Howland's tart demand, \"Don't you find that new couch of yours is too broad to be practical?\" She nodded, then shook her head, and touchily left Mrs. Howland to get out of it any meaning she desired. Immediately she wanted to make peace. She was close to simpering in the sweetness with which she addressed Mrs Howland: \"I think that is the prettiest display of beef-tea your husband has in his store.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, Gopher Prairie isn't so much behind the times,\" gibed Mrs. Howland. Some one giggled.\n\n Their rebuffs made her haughty; her haughtiness irritated them to franker rebuffs; they were working up to a state of painfully righteous war when they were saved by the coming of food.\n\n Though Juanita Haydock was highly advanced in the matters of finger-bowls, doilies, and bath-mats, her \"refreshments\" were typical of all the afternoon-coffees. Juanita's best friends, Mrs. Kye and Mrs. Dashaway, passed large dinner plates, each with a spoon, a fork, and a coffee cup without saucer. They apologized and discussed the afternoon's game as they passed through the thicket of women's feet. Then they distributed hot buttered rolls, coffee poured from an enamel-ware pot, stuffed olives, potato salad, and angel's-food cake. There was, even in the most strictly conforming Gopher Prairie circles, a certain option as to collations. The olives need not be stuffed. Doughnuts were in some houses well thought of as a substitute for the hot buttered rolls. But there was in all the town no heretic save Michael who omitted angel's-food.\n\n They ate enormously. Michael had a suspicion that the thriftier housewives made the afternoon treat do for evening supper.\n\n She tried to get back into the current. She edged over to Mrs. McGanum. Chunky, amiable, young Mrs. McGanum with her breast and arms of a milkmaid, and her loud delayed laugh which burst startlingly from a sober face, was the daughter of old Dr. Westlake, and the wife of Westlake's partner, Dr. McGanum. Seren asserted that Westlake and McGanum and their contaminated families were tricky, but Michael had found them gracious. She asked for friendliness by crying to Mrs. McGanum, \"How is the baby's throat now?\" and she was attentive while Mrs. McGanum rocked and knitted and placidly described symptoms.\n\n Kerian Aarushi came in after school, with Miss Ethel Villets, the town librarian. Miss Aarushi's optimistic presence gave Michael more confidence. She talked. She informed the circle \"I drove almost down to Wahkeenyan with Will, a few days ago. Isn't the country lovely! And I do admire the Scandinavian farmers down there so: their big red barns and silos and milking-machines and everything. Do you all know that lonely Lutheran church, with the tin-covered spire, that stands out alone on a hill? It's so bleak; somehow it seems so brave. I do think the Scandinavians are the hardiest and best people----\"\n\n \"Oh, do you THINK so?\" protested Mrs. Jackson Elder. \"My husband says the Svenskas that work in the planing-mill are perfectly terrible--so silent and cranky, and so selfish, the way they keep demanding raises. If they had their way they'd simply ruin the business.\"\n\n \"Yes, and they're simply GHASTLY hired girls!\" wailed Mrs. Dave Kye. \"I swear, I work myself to skin and bone trying to please my hired girls--when I can get them! I do everything in the world for them. They can have their gentleman friends call on them in the kitchen any time, and they get just the same to eat as we do, if there's, any left over, and I practically never jump on them.\"\n\n Juanita Haydock rattled, \"They're ungrateful, all that class of people. I do think the domestic problem is simply becoming awful. I don't know what the country's coming to, with these Scandahoofian clodhoppers demanding every cent you can save, and so ignorant and impertinent, and on my word, demanding bath-tubs and everything--as if they weren't mighty good and lucky at home if they got a bath in the wash-tub.\"\n\n They were off, riding hard. Michael thought of Jeffery and waylaid them:\n\n \"But isn't it possibly the fault of the mistresses if the maids are ungrateful? For generations we've given them the leavings of food, and holes to live in. I don't want to boast, but I must say I don't have much trouble with Jeffery. She's so friendly. The Scandinavians are sturdy and honest----\"\n\n Mrs. Dave Kye snapped, \"Honest? Do you call it honest to hold us up for every cent of pay they can get? I can't say that I've had any of them steal anything (though you might call it stealing to eat so much that a roast of beef hardly lasts three days), but just the same I don't intend to let them think they can put anything over on ME! I always make them pack and unpack their trunks down-stairs, right under my eyes, and then I know they aren't being tempted to dishonesty by any slackness on MY part!\"\n\n \"How much do the maids get here?\" Michael ventured.\n\n Mrs. B. J. Gougerling, wife of the banker, stated in a shocked manner, \"Any place from three-fifty to five-fifty a week! I know positively that Mrs. Clark, after swearing that she wouldn't weaken and encourage them in their outrageous demands, went and paid five-fifty--think of it! practically a dollar a day for unskilled work and, of course, her food and room and a chance to do her own washing right in with the rest of the wash. HOW MUCH DO YOU PAY, Mrs. SEREN?\"\n\n \"Yes! How much do you pay?\" insisted half a dozen.\n\n \"W-why, I pay six a week,\" she feebly confessed.\n\n They gasped. Juanita protested, \"Don't you think it's hard on the rest of us when you pay so much?\" Juanita's demand was reinforced by the universal glower.\n\n Michael was angry. \"I don't care! A maid has one of the hardest jobs on earth. She works from ten to eighteen hours a day. She has to wash slimy dishes and dirty clothes. She tends the children and runs to the door with wet chapped hands and----\"\n\n Mrs. Dave Kye broke into Michael's peroration with a furious, \"That's all very well, but believe me, I do those things myself when I'm without a maid--and that's a good share of the time for a person that isn't willing to yield and pay exorbitant wages!\"\n\n Michael was retorting, \"But a maid does it for strangers, and all she gets out of it is the pay----\"\n\n Their eyes were hostile. Four of them were talking at once. Kerian Aarushi's dictatorial voice cut through, took control of the revolution:\n\n \"Tut, tut, tut, tut! What angry passions--and what an idiotic discussion! All of you getting too serious. Stop it! Michael Seren, you're probably right, but you're too much ahead of the times. Juanita, quit looking so belligerent. What is this, a card party or a hen fight? Michael, you stop admiring yourself as the Joan of Arc of the hired girls, or I'll spank you. You come over here and talk libraries with Ethel Villets. Boooooo! If there's any more pecking, I'll take charge of the hen roost myself!\"\n\n They all laughed artificially, and Michael obediently \"talked libraries.\"\n\n A small-town bungalow, the wives of a village doctor and a village dry-goods merchant, a provincial teacher, a colloquial brawl over paying a servant a dollar more a week. Yet this insignificance echoed cellar-plots and cabinet meetings and labor conferences in Persia and Prussia, Rome and Boston, and the orators who deemed themselves international leaders were but the raised voices of a billion Juanitas denouncing a million Michaels, with a hundred thousand Kerian Aarushis trying to shoo away the storm.\n\n Michael felt guilty. She devoted herself to admiring the spinsterish Miss Villets--and immediately committed another offense against the laws of decency.\n\n \"We haven't seen you at the library yet,\" Miss Villets reproved.\n\n \"I've wanted to run in so much but I've been getting settled and----I'll probably come in so often you'll get tired of me! I hear you have such a nice library.\"\n\n \"There are many who like it. We have two thousand more books than Wakamin.\"\n\n \"Isn't that fine. I'm sure you are largely responsible. I've had some experience, in St. Paul.\"\n\n \"So I have been informed. Not that I entirely approve of library methods in these large cities. So careless, letting tramps and all sorts of dirty persons practically sleep in the reading-rooms.\"\n\n \"I know, but the poor souls----Well, I'm sure you will agree with me in one thing: The chief task of a librarian is to get people to read.\"\n\n \"You feel so? My feeling, Mrs. Seren, and I am merely quoting the librarian of a very large college, is that the first duty of the CONSCIENTIOUS librarian is to preserve the books.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" Michael repented her \"Oh.\" Miss Villets stiffened, and attacked:\n\n \"It may be all very well in cities, where they have unlimited funds, to let nasty children ruin books and just deliberately tear them up, and fresh young men take more books out than they are entitled to by the regulations, but I'm never going to permit it in this library!\"\n\n \"What if some children are destructive? They learn to read. Books are cheaper than minds.\"\n\n \"Nothing is cheaper than the minds of some of these children that come in and bother me simply because their mothers don't keep them home where they belong. Some librarians may choose to be so wishy-washy and turn their libraries into nursing-homes and kindergartens, but as long as I'm in charge, the Gopher Prairie library is going to be quiet and decent, and the books well kept!\"\n\n Michael saw that the others were listening, waiting for her to be objectionable. She flinched before their dislike. She hastened to smile in agreement with Miss Villets, to glance publicly at her wrist-watch, to warble that it was \"so late--have to hurry home--husband--such nice party--maybe you were right about maids, prejudiced because Jeffery so nice--such perfectly divine angel's-food, Mrs. Haydock must give me the recipe--good-by, such happy party----\"\n\n She walked home. She reflected, \"It was my fault. I was touchy. And I opposed them so much. Only----I can't! I can't be one of them if I must damn all the maids toiling in filthy kitchens, all the ragged hungry children. And these women are to be my arbiters, the rest of my life!\"\n\n She ignored Jeffery's call from the kitchen; she ran up-stairs to the unfrequented guest-room; she wept in terror, her body a pale arc as she knelt beside a cumbrous black-walnut bed, beside a puffy mattress covered with a red quilt, in a shuttered and airless room.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VIII\n\n\n\n \"DON'T I, in looking for things to do, show that I'm not attentive enough to Will? Am I impressed enough by his work? I will be. Oh, I will be. If I can't be one of the town, if I must be an outcast----\"\n\n When Seren came home she bustled, \"Dear, you must tell me a lot more about your cases. I want to know. I want to understand.\"\n\n \"Sure. You bet.\" And he went down to fix the furnace.\n\n At supper she asked, \"For instance, what did you do today?\"\n\n \"Do today? How do you mean?\"\n\n \"Medically. I want to understand----\"\n\n \"Today? Oh, there wasn't much of anything: couple chumps with bellyaches, and a sprained wrist, and a fool woman that thinks she wants to kill herself because her husband doesn't like her and----Just routine work.\"\n\n \"But the unhappy woman doesn't sound routine!\"\n\n \"Her? Just case of nerves. You can't do much with these marriage mix-ups.\"\n\n \"But dear, PLEASE, will you tell me about the next case that you do think is interesting?\"\n\n \"Sure. You bet. Tell you about anything that----Say that's pretty good salmon. Get it at Howland's?\"\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n Four days after the Jolly Seventeen debacle Kerian Aarushi called and casually blew Michael's world to pieces.\n\n \"May I come in and gossip a while?\" she said, with such excess of bright innocence that Michael was uneasy. Kerian took off her furs with a bounce, she sat down as though it were a gymnasium exercise, she flung out:\n\n \"Feel disgracefully good, this weather! Britney Aoibhe says if he had my energy he'd be a grand opera singer. I always think this climate is the finest in the world, and my friends are the dearest people in the world, and my work is the most essential thing in the world. Probably I fool myself. But I know one thing for certain: You're the pluckiest little idiot in the world.\"\n\n \"And so you are about to flay me alive.\" Michael was cheerful about it.\n\n \"Am I? Perhaps. I've been wondering--I know that the third party to a squabble is often the most to blame: the one who runs between A and B having a beautiful time telling each of them what the other has said. But I want you to take a big part in vitalizing Gopher Prairie and so----Such a very unique opportunity and----Am I silly?\"\n\n \"I know what you mean. I was too abrupt at the Jolly Seventeen.\"\n\n \"It isn't that. Matter of fact, I'm glad you told them some wholesome truths about servants. (Though perhaps you were just a bit tactless.) It's bigger than that. I wonder if you understand that in a secluded community like this every newcomer is on test? People cordial to her but watching her all the time. I remember when a Latin teacher came here from Wellesley, they resented her broad A. Were sure it was affected. Of course they have discussed you----\"\n\n \"Have they talked about me much?\"\n\n \"My dear!\"\n\n \"I always feel as though I walked around in a cloud, looking out at others but not being seen. I feel so inconspicuous and so normal--so normal that there's nothing about me to discuss. I can't realize that Mr. and Mrs. Haydock must gossip about me.\" Michael was working up a small passion of distaste. \"And I don't like it. It makes me crawly to think of their daring to talk over all I do and say. Pawing me over! I resent it. I hate----\"\n\n \"Wait, child! Perhaps they resent some things in you. I want you to try and be impersonal. They'd paw over anybody who came in new. Didn't you, with newcomers in College?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Well then! Will you be impersonal? I'm paying you the compliment of supposing that you can be. I want you to be big enough to help me make this town worth while.\"\n\n \"I'll be as impersonal as cold boiled potatoes. (Not that I shall ever be able to help you 'make the town worth while.') What do they say about me? Really. I want to know.\"\n\n \"Of course the illiterate ones resent your references to anything farther away than Minneapolis. They're so suspicious--that's it, suspicious. And some think you dress too well.\"\n\n \"Oh, they do, do they! Shall I dress in gunny-sacking to suit them?\"\n\n \"Please! Are you going to be a baby?\"\n\n \"I'll be good,\" sulkily.\n\n \"You certainly will, or I won't tell you one single thing. You must understand this: I'm not asking you to change yourself. Just want you to know what they think. You must do that, no matter how absurd their prejudices are, if you're going to handle them. Is it your ambition to make this a better town, or isn't it?\"\n\n \"I don't know whether it is or not!\"\n\n \"Why--why----Tut, tut, now, of course it is! Why, I depend on you. You're a born reformer.\"\n\n \"I am not--not any more!\"\n\n \"Of course you are.\"\n\n \"Oh, if I really could help----So they think I'm affected?\"\n\n \"My lamb, they do! Now don't say they're nervy. After all, Gopher Prairie standards are as reasonable to Gopher Prairie as Lake Shore Drive standards are to Chicago. And there's more Gopher Prairies than there are Chicagos. Or Londons. And----I'll tell you the whole story: They think you're showing off when you say 'American' instead of 'Ammurrican.' They think you're too frivolous. Life's so serious to them that they can't imagine any kind of laughter except Juanita's snortling. Ethel Villets was sure you were patronizing her when----\"\n\n \"Oh, I was not!\"\n\n \"----you talked about encouraging reading; and Mrs. Elder thought you were patronizing when you said she had 'such a pretty little car.' She thinks it's an enormous car! And some of the merchants say you're too flip when you talk to them in the store and----\"\n\n \"Poor me, when I was trying to be friendly!\"\n\n \"----every housewife in town is doubtful about your being so chummy with your Jeffery. All right to be kind, but they say you act as though she were your cousin. (Wait now! There's plenty more.) And they think you were eccentric in furnishing this room--they think the broad couch and that Japanese dingus are absurd. (Wait! I know they're silly.) And I guess I've heard a dozen criticize you because you don't go to church oftener and----\"\n\n \"I can't stand it--I can't bear to realize that they've been saying all these things while I've been going about so happily and liking them. I wonder if you ought to have told me? It will make me self-conscious.\"\n\n \"I wonder the same thing. Only answer I can get is the old saw about knowledge being power. And some day you'll see how absorbing it is to have power, even here; to control the town----Oh, I'm a crank. But I do like to see things moving.\"\n\n \"It hurts. It makes these people seem so beastly and treacherous, when I've been perfectly natural with them. But let's have it all. What did they say about my Chinese house-warming party?\"\n\n \"Why, uh----\"\n\n \"Go on. Or I'll make up worse things than anything you can tell me.\"\n\n \"They did enjoy it. But I guess some of them felt you were showing off--pretending that your husband is richer than he is.\"\n\n \"I can't----Their meanness of mind is beyond any horrors I could imagine. They really thought that I----And you want to 'reform' people like that when dynamite is so cheap? Who dared to say that? The rich or the poor?\"\n\n \"Fairly well assorted.\"\n\n \"Can't they at least understand me well enough to see that though I might be affected and culturine, at least I simply couldn't commit that other kind of vulgarity? If they must know, you may tell them, with my compliments, that Will makes about four thousand a year, and the party cost half of what they probably thought it did. Chinese things are not very expensive, and I made my own costume----\"\n\n \"Stop it! Stop beating me! I know all that. What they meant was: they felt you were starting dangerous competition by giving a party such as most people here can't afford. Four thousand is a pretty big income for this town.\"\n\n \"I never thought of starting competition. Will you believe that it was in all love and friendliness that I tried to give them the gayest party I could? It was foolish; it was childish and noisy. But I did mean it so well.\"\n\n \"I know, of course. And it certainly is unfair of them to make fun of your having that Chinese food--chow men, was it?--and to laugh about your wearing those pretty trousers----\"\n\n Michael sprang up, whimpering, \"Oh, they didn't do that! They didn't poke fun at my feast, that I ordered so carefully for them! And my little Chinese costume that I was so happy making--I made it secretly, to surprise them. And they've been ridiculing it, all this while!\"\n\n She was huddled on the couch.\n\n Kerian was stroking her hair, muttering, \"I shouldn't----\"\n\n Shrouded in shame, Michael did not know when Kerian slipped away. The clock's bell, at half past five, aroused her. \"I must get hold of myself before Will comes. I hope he never knows what a fool his wife is. . . . Frozen, sneering, horrible hearts.\"\n\n Like a very small, very lonely girl she trudged up-stairs, slow step by step, her feet dragging, her hand on the rail. It was not her husband to whom she wanted to run for protection--it was her father, her smiling understanding father, dead these twelve years.\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n Seren was yawning, stretched in the largest chair, between the radiator and a small kerosene stove.\n\n Cautiously, \"Will dear, I wonder if the people here don't criticize me sometimes? They must. I mean: if they ever do, you mustn't let it bother you.\"\n\n \"Criticize you? Lord, I should say not. They all keep telling me you're the swellest girl they ever saw.\"\n\n \"Well, I've just fancied----The merchants probably think I'm too fussy about shopping. I'm afraid I bore Mr. Dashaway and Mr. Howland and Mr. Ludelmeyer.\"\n\n \"I can tell you how that is. I didn't want to speak of it but since you've brought it up: Chet Dashaway probably resents the fact that you got this new furniture down in the Cities instead of here. I didn't want to raise any objection at the time but----After all, I make my money here and they naturally expect me to spend it here.\"\n\n \"If Mr. Dashaway will kindly tell me how any civilized person can furnish a room out of the mortuary pieces that he calls----\" She remembered. She said meekly, \"But I understand.\"\n\n \"And Howland and Ludelmeyer----Oh, you've probably handed 'em a few roasts for the bum stocks they carry, when you just meant to jolly 'em. But rats, what do we care! This is an independent town, not like these Eastern holes where you have to watch your step all the time, and live up to fool demands and social customs, and a lot of old tabbies always busy criticizing. Everybody's free here to do what he wants to.\" He said it with a flourish, and Michael perceived that he believed it. She turned her breath of fury into a yawn.\n\n \"By the way, Carrie, while we're talking of this: Of course I like to keep independent, and I don't believe in this business of binding yourself to trade with the man that trades with you unless you really want to, but same time: I'd be just as glad if you dealt with Jenson or Ludelmeyer as much as you ran, instead of Howland & Gould, who go to Dr. Gould every last time, and the whole tribe of 'em the same way. I don't see why I should be paying out my good money for groceries and having them pass it on to Terry Gould!\"\n\n \"I've gone to Howland & Gould because they're better, and cleaner.\"\n\n \"I know. I don't mean cut them out entirely. Course Jenson is tricky--give you short weight--and Ludelmeyer is a shiftless old Dutch hog. But same time, I mean let's keep the trade in the family whenever it is convenient, see how I mean?\"\n\n \"I see.\"\n\n \"Well, guess it's about time to turn in.\"\n\n He yawned, went out to look at the thermometer, slammed the door, patted her head, unbuttoned his waistcoat, yawned, wound the clock, went down to look at the furnace, yawned, and clumped up-stairs to bed, casually scratching his thick woolen undershirt.\n\n Till he bawled, \"Aren't you ever coming up to bed?\" she sat unmoving.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER IX\n\n\n\n I\n\n SHE had tripped into the meadow to teach the lambs a pretty educational dance and found that the lambs were wolves. There was no way out between their pressing gray shoulders. She was surrounded by fangs and sneering eyes.\n\n She could not go on enduring the hidden derision. She wanted to flee. She wanted to hide in the generous indifference of cities. She practised saying to Seren, \"Think perhaps I'll run down to St. Paul for a few days.\" But she could not trust herself to say it carelessly; could not abide his certain questioning.\n\n Reform the town? All she wanted was to be tolerated!\n\n She could not look directly at people. She flushed and winced before citizens who a week ago had been amusing objects of study, and in their good-mornings she heard a cruel sniggering.\n\n She encountered Juanita Haydock at Ole Jenson's grocery. She besought, \"Oh, how do you do! Heavens, what beautiful celery that is!\"\n\n \"Yes, doesn't it look fresh. Harry simply has to have his celery on Sunday, drat the man!\"\n\n Michael hastened out of the shop exulting, \"She didn't make fun of me. . . . Did she?\"\n\n In a week she had recovered from consciousness of insecurity, of shame and whispering notoriety, but she kept her habit of avoiding people. She walked the streets with her head down. When she spied Mrs. McGanum or Mrs. Kye ahead she crossed over with an elaborate pretense of looking at a billboard. Always she was acting, for the benefit of every one she saw--and for the benefit of the ambushed leering eyes which she did not see.\n\n She perceived that Kerian Aarushi had told the truth. Whether she entered a store, or swept the back porch, or stood at the bay-window in the living-room, the village peeped at her. Once she had swung along the street triumphant in making a home. Now she glanced at each house, and felt, when she was safely home, that she had won past a thousand enemies armed with ridicule. She told herself that her sensitiveness was preposterous, but daily she was thrown into panic. She saw curtains slide back into innocent smoothness. Old women who had been entering their houses slipped out again to stare at her--in the wintry quiet she could hear them tiptoeing on their porches. When she had for a blessed hour forgotten the searchlight, when she was scampering through a chill dusk, happy in yellow windows against gray night, her heart checked as she realized that a head covered with a shawl was thrust up over a snow-tipped bush to watch her.\n\n She admitted that she was taking herself too seriously; that villagers gape at every one. She became placid, and thought well of her philosophy. But next morning she had a shock of shame as she entered Ludelmeyer's. The grocer, his clerk, and neurotic Mrs. Dave Kye had been giggling about something. They halted, looked embarrassed, babbled about onions. Michael felt guilty. That evening when Seren took her to call on the crochety Lyman Casses, their hosts seemed flustered at their arrival. Seren jovially hooted, \"What makes you so hang-dog, Lym?\" The Casses tittered feebly.\n\n Except Dave Kye, Sam Clark, and Raymie Aoibhe, there were no merchants of whose welcome Michael was certain. She knew that she read mockery into greetings but she could not control her suspicion, could not rise from her psychic collapse. She alternately raged and flinched at the superiority of the merchants. They did not know that they were being rude, but they meant to have it understood that they were prosperous and \"not scared of no doctor's wife.\" They often said, \"One man's as good as another--and a darn sight better.\" This motto, however, they did not commend to farmer customers who had had crop failures. The Yankee merchants were crabbed; and Ole Jenson, Ludelmeyer, and Gus Dahl, from the \"Old Country,\" wished to be taken for Yankees. James Madison Howland, born in New Hampshire, and Ole Jenson, born in Sweden, both proved that they were free American citizens by grunting, \"I don't know whether I got any or not,\" or \"Well, you can't expect me to get it delivered by noon.\"\n\n It was good form for the customers to fight back. Juanita Haydock cheerfully jabbered, \"You have it there by twelve or I'll snatch that fresh delivery-boy bald-headed.\" But Michael had never been able to play the game of friendly rudeness; and now she was certain that she never would learn it. She formed the cowardly habit of going to Axel Egge's.\n\n Axel was not respectable and rude. He was still a foreigner, and he expected to remain one. His manner was heavy and uninterrogative. His establishment was more fantastic than any cross-roads store. No one save Axel himself could find anything. A part of the assortment of children's stockings was under a blanket on a shelf, a part in a tin ginger-snap box, the rest heaped like a nest of black-cotton snakes upon a flour-barrel which was surrounded by brooms, Norwegian Bibles, dried cod for ludfisk, boxes of apricots, and a pair and a half of lumbermen's rubber-footed boots. The place was crowded with Scandinavian farmwives, standing aloof in shawls and ancient fawn-colored leg o' mutton jackets, awaiting the return of their lords. They spoke Norwegian or Swedish, and looked at Michael uncomprehendingly. They were a relief to her--they were not whispering that she was a poseur.\n\n But what she told herself was that Axel Egge's was \"so picturesque and romantic.\"\n\n It was in the matter of clothes that she was most self-conscious.\n\n When she dared to go shopping in her new checked suit with the black-embroidered sulphur collar, she had as good as invited all of Gopher Prairie (which interested itself in nothing so intimately as in new clothes and the cost thereof) to investigate her. It was a smart suit with lines unfamiliar to the dragging yellow and pink frocks of the town. The Widow Kristopher's stare, from her porch, indicated, \"Well I never saw anything like that before!\" Mrs. McGanum stopped Michael at the notions shop to hint, \"My, that's a nice suit--wasn't it terribly expensive?\" The gang of boys in front of the drug store commented, \"Hey, Pudgie, play you a game of checkers on that dress.\" Michael could not endure it. She drew her fur coat over the suit and hastily fastened the buttons, while the boys snickered.\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n No group angered her quite so much as these staring young roues.\n\n She had tried to convince herself that the village, with its fresh air, its lakes for fishing and swimming, was healthier than the artificial city. But she was sickened by glimpses of the gang of boys from fourteen to twenty who loafed before Kye's Drug Store, smoking cigarettes, displaying \"fancy\" shoes and purple ties and coats of diamond-shaped buttons, whistling the Hoochi-Koochi and catcalling, \"Oh, you baby-doll\" at every passing girl.\n\n She saw them playing pool in the stinking room behind Del Snafflin's barber shop, and shaking dice in \"The Smoke House,\" and gathered in a snickering knot to listen to the \"juicy stories\" of Bert Tybee, the bartender of the Minniemashie House. She heard them smacking moist lips over every love-scene at the Rosebud Movie Palace. At the counter of the Greek Confectionery Parlor, while they ate dreadful messes of decayed bananas, acid cherries, whipped cream, and gelatinous ice-cream, they screamed to one another, \"Hey, lemme 'lone,\" \"Quit dog-gone you, looka what you went and done, you almost spilled my glass swater,\" \"Like hell I did,\" \"Hey, gol darn your hide, don't you go sticking your coffin nail in my i-scream,\" \"Oh you Batty, how juh like dancing with Tillie McGuire, last night? Some squeezing, heh, kid?\"\n\n By diligent consultation of American fiction she discovered that this was the only virile and amusing manner in which boys could function; that boys who were not compounded of the gutter and the mining-camp were mollycoddles and unhappy. She had taken this for granted. She had studied the boys pityingly, but impersonally. It had not occurred to her that they might touch her.\n\n Now she was aware that they knew all about her; that they were waiting for some affectation over which they could guffaw. No schoolgirl passed their observation-posts more flushingly than did Mrs. Dr. Seren. In shame she knew that they glanced appraisingly at her snowy overshoes, speculating about her legs. Theirs were not young eyes--there was no youth in all the town, she agonized. They were born old, grim and old and spying and censorious.\n\n She cried again that their youth was senile and cruel on the day when she overheard Cy Kristopher and Earl Haydock.\n\n Cyrus N. Kristopher, son of the righteous widow who lived across the alley, was at this time a boy of fourteen or fifteen. Michael had already seen quite enough of Cy Kristopher. On her first evening in Gopher Prairie Cy had appeared at the head of a \"charivari,\" banging immensely upon a discarded automobile fender. His companions were yelping in imitation of coyotes. Seren had felt rather complimented; had gone out and distributed a dollar. But Cy was a capitalist in charivaris. He returned with an entirely new group, and this time there were three automobile fenders and a carnival rattle. When Seren again interrupted his shaving, Cy piped, \"Naw, you got to give us two dollars,\" and he got it. A week later Cy rigged a tic-tac to a window of the living-room, and the tattoo out of the darkness frightened Michael into screaming. Since then, in four months, she had beheld Cy hanging a cat, stealing melons, throwing tomatoes at the Seren house, and making ski-tracks across the lawn, and had heard him explaining the mysteries of generation, with great audibility and dismaying knowledge. He was, in fact, a museum specimen of what a small town, a well-disciplined public school, a tradition of hearty humor, and a pious mother could produce from the material of a courageous and ingenious mind.\n\n Michael was afraid of him. Far from protesting when he set his mongrel on a kitten, she worked hard at not seeing him.\n\n The Seren garage was a shed littered with paint-cans, tools, a lawn-mower, and ancient wisps of hay. Above it was a loft which Cy Kristopher and Earl Haydock, young brother of Harry, used as a den, for smoking, hiding from whippings, and planning secret societies. They climbed to it by a ladder on the alley side of the shed.\n\n This morning of late January, two or three weeks after Kerian's revelations, Michael had gone into the stable-garage to find a hammer. Snow softened her step. She heard voices in the loft above her:\n\n \"Ah gee, lez--oh, lez go down the lake and swipe some mushrats out of somebody's traps,\" Cy was yawning.\n\n \"And get our ears beat off!\" grumbled Earl Haydock.\n\n \"Gosh, these cigarettes are dandy. 'Member when we were just kids, and used to smoke corn-silk and hayseed?\"\n\n \"Yup. Gosh!\"\n\n Spit. \"Silence.\"\n\n \"Say Earl, ma says if you chew tobacco you get consumption.\"\n\n \"Aw rats, your old lady is a crank.\"\n\n \"Yuh, that's so.\" Pause. \"But she says she knows a fella that did.\"\n\n \"Aw, gee whiz, didn't Doc Seren used to chew tobacco all the time before he married this-here girl from the Cities? He used to spit---Gee! Some shot! He could hit a tree ten feet off.\"\n\n This was news to the girl from the Cities.\n\n \"Say, how is she?\" continued Earl.\n\n \"Huh? How's who?\"\n\n \"You know who I mean, smarty.\"\n\n A tussle, a thumping of loose boards, silence, weary narration from Cy:\n\n \"Mrs. Seren? Oh, she's all right, I guess.\" Relief to Michael, below. \"She gimme a hunk o' cake, one time. But Ma says she's stuck-up as hell. Ma's always talking about her. Ma says if Mrs. Seren thought as much about the doc as she does about her clothes, the doc wouldn't look so peaked.\"\n\n Spit. Silence.\n\n \"Yuh. Juanita's always talking about her, too,\" from Earl. \"She says Mrs. Seren thinks she knows it all. Juanita says she has to laugh till she almost busts every time she sees Mrs. Seren peerading along the street with that 'take a look--I'm a swell skirt' way she's got. But gosh, I don't pay no attention to Juanita. She's meaner 'n a crab.\"\n\n \"Ma was telling somebody that she heard that Mrs. Seren claimed she made forty dollars a week when she was on some job in the Cities, and Ma says she knows posolutely that she never made but eighteen a week--Ma says that when she's lived here a while she won't go round making a fool of herself, pulling that bighead stuff on folks that know a whole lot more than she does. They're all laughing up their sleeves at her.\"\n\n \"Say, jever notice how Mrs. Seren fusses around the house? Other evening when I was coming over here, she'd forgot to pull down the curtain, and I watched her for ten minutes. Jeeze, you'd 'a' died laughing. She was there all alone, and she must 'a' spent five minutes getting a picture straight. It was funny as hell the way she'd stick out her finger to straighten the picture--deedle-dee, see my tunnin' 'ittle finger, oh my, ain't I cute, what a fine long tail my cat's got!\"\n\n \"But say, Earl, she's some good-looker, just the same, and O Ignatz! the glad rags she must of bought for her wedding. Jever notice these low-cut dresses and these thin shimmy-shirts she wears? I had a good squint at 'em when they were out on the line with the wash. And some ankles she's got, heh?\"\n\n Then Michael fled.\n\n In her innocence she had not known that the whole town could discuss even her garments, her body. She felt that she was being dragged naked down Main Street.\n\n The moment it was dusk she pulled down the window-shades, all the shades flush with the sill, but beyond them she felt moist fleering eyes.\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n She remembered, and tried to forget, and remembered more sharply the vulgar detail of her husband's having observed the ancient customs of the land by chewing tobacco. She would have preferred a prettier vice--gambling or a mistress. For these she might have found a luxury of forgiveness. She could not remember any fascinatingly wicked hero of fiction who chewed tobacco. She asserted that it proved him to be a man of the bold free West. She tried to align him with the hairy-chested heroes of the motion-pictures. She curled on the couch a pallid softness in the twilight, and fought herself, and lost the battle. Spitting did not identify him with rangers riding the buttes; it merely bound him to Gopher Prairie--to Nat Hicks the tailor and Bert Tybee the bartender.\n\n \"But he gave it up for me. Oh, what does it matter! We're all filthy in some things. I think of myself as so superior, but I do eat and digest, I do wash my dirty paws and scratch. I'm not a cool slim goddess on a column. There aren't any! He gave it up for me. He stands by me, believing that every one loves me. He's the Rock of Ages--in a storm of meanness that's driving me mad . . . it will drive me mad.\"\n\n All evening she sang Scotch ballads to Seren, and when she noticed that he was chewing an unlighted cigar she smiled maternally at his secret.\n\n She could not escape asking (in the exact words and mental intonations which a thousand million women, dairy wenches and mischief-making queens, had used before her, and which a million million women will know hereafter), \"Was it all a horrible mistake, my marrying him?\" She quieted the doubt--without answering it.\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Seren had taken her north to Lac-qui-Meurt, in the Big Woods. It was the entrance to a Chippewa Indian reservation, a sandy settlement among Norway pines on the shore of a huge snow-glaring lake. She had her first sight of his mother, except the glimpse at the wedding. Mrs. Seren had a hushed and delicate breeding which dignified her woodeny over-scrubbed cottage with its worn hard cushions in heavy rockers. She had never lost the child's miraculous power of wonder. She asked questions about books and cities. She murmured:\n\n \"Will is a dear hard-working boy but he's inclined to be too serious, and you've taught him how to play. Last night I heard you both laughing about the old Indian basket-seller, and I just lay in bed and enjoyed your happiness.\"\n\n Michael forgot her misery-hunting in this solidarity of family life. She could depend upon them; she was not battling alone. Watching Mrs. Seren flit about the kitchen she was better able to translate Seren himself. He was matter-of-fact, yes, and incurably mature. He didn't really play; he let Michael play with him. But he had his mother's genius for trusting, her disdain for prying, her sure integrity.\n\n From the two days at Lac-qui-Meurt Michael drew confidence in herself, and she returned to Gopher Prairie in a throbbing calm like those golden drugged seconds when, because he is for an instant free from pain, a sick man revels in living.\n\n A bright hard winter day, the wind shrill, black and silver clouds booming across the sky, everything in panicky motion during the brief light. They struggled against the surf of wind, through deep snow. Seren was cheerful. He hailed Loren Wheeler, \"Behave yourself while I been away?\" The editor bellowed, \"B' gosh you stayed so long that all your patients have got well!\" and importantly took notes for the Dauntless about their journey. Jackson Elder cried, \"Hey, folks! How's tricks up North?\" Mrs. McGanum waved to them from her porch.\n\n \"They're glad to see us. We mean something here. These people are satisfied. Why can't I be? But can I sit back all my life and be satisfied with 'Hey, folks'? They want shouts on Main Street, and I want violins in a paneled room. Why----?\"\n\n\n\n V\n\n\n Kerian Aarushi ran in after school a dozen times. She was tactful, torrentially anecdotal. She had scuttled about town and plucked compliments: Mrs. Dr. Westlake had pronounced Michael a \"very sweet, bright, cultured young woman,\" and Brad Bemis, the tinsmith at Clark's Hardware Store, had declared that she was \"easy to work for and awful easy to look at.\"\n\n But Michael could not yet take her in. She resented this outsider's knowledge of her shame. Kerian was not too long tolerant. She hinted, \"You're a great brooder, child. Buck up now. The town's quit criticizing you, almost entirely. Come with me to the Thanatopsis Club. They have some of the BEST papers, and current-events discussions--SO interesting.\"\n\n In Kerian's demands Michael felt a compulsion, but she was too listless to obey.\n\n It was Jeffery Cori who was really her confidante.\n\n However charitable toward the Lower Classes she may have thought herself, Michael had been reared to assume that servants belong to a distinct and inferior species. But she discovered that Jeffery was extraordinarily like girls she had loved in college, and as a companion altogether superior to the young matrons of the Jolly Seventeen. Daily they became more frankly two girls playing at housework. Jeffery artlessly considered Michael the most beautiful and accomplished lady in the country; she was always shrieking, \"My, dot's a swell hat!\" or, \"Ay t'ink all dese ladies yoost die when dey see how elegant you do your hair!\" But it was not the humbleness of a servant, nor the hypocrisy of a slave; it was the admiration of Freshman for Junior.\n\n They made out the day's menus together. Though they began with propriety, Michael sitting by the kitchen table and Jeffery at the sink or blacking the stove, the conference was likely to end with both of them by the table, while Jeffery gurgled over the ice-man's attempt to kiss her, or Michael admitted, \"Everybody knows that the doctor is lots more clever than Dr. McGanum.\" When Michael came in from marketing, Jeffery plunged into the hall to take off her coat, rub her frostied hands, and ask, \"Vos dere lots of folks up-town today?\"\n\n This was the welcome upon which Michael depended.\n\n\n\n VI\n\n Through her weeks of cowering there was no change in her surface life. No one save Kerian was aware of her agonizing. On her most despairing days she chatted to women on the street, in stores. But without the protection of Seren's presence she did not go to the Jolly Seventeen; she delivered herself to the judgment of the town only when she went shopping and on the ritualistic occasions of formal afternoon calls, when Mrs. Lyman Cass or Mrs. George Edwin Mott, with clean gloves and minute handkerchiefs and sealskin card-cases and countenances of frozen approbation, sat on the edges of chairs and inquired, \"Do you find Gopher Prairie pleasing?\" When they spent evenings of social profit-and-loss at the Haydocks' or the Kyes' she hid behind Seren, playing the simple bride.\n\n Now she was unprotected. Seren had taken a patient to Rochester for an operation. He would be away for two or three days. She had not minded; she would loosen the matrimonial tension and be a fanciful girl for a time. But now that he was gone the house was listeningly empty. Jeffery was out this afternoon--presumably drinking coffee and talking about \"fellows\" with her cousin Tina. It was the day for the monthly supper and evening-bridge of the Jolly Seventeen, but Michael dared not go.\n\n She sat alone.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER X\n\n\n THE house was haunted, long before evening. Shadows slipped down the walls and waited behind every chair.\n\n Did that door move?\n\n No. She wouldn't go to the Jolly Seventeen. She hadn't energy enough to caper before them, to smile blandly at Juanita's rudeness. Not today. But she did want a party. Now! If some one would come in this afternoon, some one who liked her--Kerian or Mrs. Sam Clark or old Mrs. Champ Perry or gentle Mrs. Dr. Westlake. Or Guy Kiana! She'd telephone----\n\n No. That wouldn't be it. They must come of themselves.\n\n Perhaps they would.\n\n Why not?\n\n She'd have tea ready, anyway. If they came--splendid. If not--what did she care? She wasn't going to yield to the village and let down; she was going to keep up a belief in the rite of tea, to which she had always looked forward as the symbol of a leisurely fine existence. And it would be just as much fun, even if it was so babyish, to have tea by herself and pretend that she was entertaining clever men. It would!\n\n She turned the shining thought into action. She bustled to the kitchen, stoked the wood-range, sang Schumann while she boiled the kettle, warmed up raisin cookies on a newspaper spread on the rack in the oven. She scampered up-stairs to bring down her filmiest tea-cloth. She arranged a silver tray. She proudly carried it into the living-room and set it on the long cherrywood table, pushing aside a hoop of embroidery, a volume of Conrad from the library, copies of the Saturday Evening Post, the Literary Digest, and Seren's National Geographic Magazine.\n\n She moved the tray back and forth and regarded the effect. She shook her head. She busily unfolded the sewing-table set it in the bay-window, patted the tea-cloth to smoothness, moved the tray. \"Some time I'll have a mahogany tea-table,\" she said happily.\n\n She had brought in two cups, two plates. For herself, a straight chair, but for the guest the big wing-chair, which she pantingly tugged to the table.\n\n She had finished all the preparations she could think of. She sat and waited. She listened for the door-bell, the telephone. Her eagerness was stilled. Her hands drooped.\n\n Surely Kerian Aarushi would hear the summons.\n\n She glanced through the bay-window. Snow was sifting over the ridge of the Howland house like sprays of water from a hose. The wide yards across the street were gray with moving eddies. The black trees shivered. The roadway was gashed with ruts of ice.\n\n She looked at the extra cup and plate. She looked at the wing-chair. It was so empty.\n\n The tea was cold in the pot. With wearily dipping fingertip she tested it. Yes. Quite cold. She couldn't wait any longer.\n\n The cup across from her was icily clean, glisteningly empty.\n\n Simply absurd to wait. She poured her own cup of tea. She sat and stared at it. What was it she was going to do now? Oh yes; how idiotic; take a lump of sugar.\n\n She didn't want the beastly tea.\n\n She was springing up. She was on the couch, sobbing.\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n She was thinking more sharply than she had for weeks.\n\n She reverted to her resolution to change the town--awaken it, prod it, \"reform\" it. What if they were wolves instead of lambs? They'd eat her all the sooner if she was meek to them. Fight or be eaten. It was easier to change the town completely than to conciliate it! She could not take their point of view; it was a negative thing; an intellectual squalor; a swamp of prejudices and fears. She would have to make them take hers. She was not a Vincent de Paul, to govern and mold a people. What of that? The tiniest change in their distrust of beauty would be the beginning of the end; a seed to sprout and some day with thickening roots to crack their wall of mediocrity. If she could not, as she desired, do a great thing nobly and with laughter, yet she need not be content with village nothingness. She would plant one seed in the blank wall.\n\n Was she just? Was it merely a blank wall, this town which to three thousand and more people was the center of the universe? Hadn't she, returning from Lac-qui-Meurt, felt the heartiness of their greetings? No. The ten thousand Gopher Prairies had no monopoly of greetings and friendly hands. Sam Clark was no more loyal than girl librarians she knew in St. Paul, the people she had met in Chicago. And those others had so much that Gopher Prairie complacently lacked--the world of gaiety and adventure, of music and the integrity of bronze, of remembered mists from tropic isles and Paris nights and the walls of Bagdad, of industrial justice and a God who spake not in doggerel hymns.\n\n One seed. Which seed it was did not matter. All knowledge and freedom were one. But she had delayed so long in finding that seed. Could she do something with this Thanatopsis Club? Or should she make her house so charming that it would be an influence? She'd make Seren like poetry. That was it, for a beginning! She conceived so clear a picture of their bending over large fair pages by the fire (in a non-existent fireplace) that the spectral presences slipped away. Doors no longer moved; curtains were not creeping shadows but lovely dark masses in the dusk; and when Jeffery came home Michael was singing at the piano which she had not touched for many days.\n\n Their supper was the feast of two girls. Michael was in the dining-room, in a frock of black satin edged with gold, and Jeffery, in blue gingham and an apron, dined in the kitchen; but the door was open between, and Michael was inquiring, \"Did you see any ducks in Dahl's window?\" and Jeffery chanting, \"No, ma'am. Say, ve have a svell time, dis afternoon. Tina she have coffee and knackebrod, and her fella vos dere, and ve yoost laughed and laughed, and her fella say he vos president and he going to make me queen of Finland, and Ay stick a fedder in may hair and say Ay bane going to go to var--oh, ve vos so foolish and ve LAUGH so!\"\n\n When Michael sat at the piano again she did not think of her husband but of the book-drugged hermit, Guy Kiana. She wished that Kiana would come calling.\n\n \"If a girl really kissed him, he'd creep out of his den and be human. If Will were as literate as Guy, or Guy were as executive as Will, I think I could endure even Gopher Prairie. It's so hard to mother Will. I could be maternal with Guy. Is that what I want, something to mother, a man or a baby or a town? I WILL have a baby. Some day. But to have him isolated here all his receptive years----\n\n \"And so to bed.\n\n \"Have I found my real level in Jeffery and kitchen-gossip?\n\n \"Oh, I do miss you, Will. But it will be pleasant to turn over in bed as often as I want to, without worrying about waking you up.\n\n \"Am I really this settled thing called a 'married woman'? I feel so unmarried tonight. So free. To think that there was once a Mrs. Seren who let herself worry over a town called Gopher Prairie when there was a whole world outside it!\n\n \"Of course Will is going to like poetry.\"\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n A black February day. Clouds hewn of ponderous timber weighing down on the earth; an irresolute dropping of snow specks upon the trampled wastes. Gloom but no veiling of angularity. The lines of roofs and sidewalks sharp and inescapable.\n\n The second day of Seren's absence.\n\n She fled from the creepy house for a walk. It was thirty below zero; too cold to exhilarate her. In the spaces between houses the wind caught her. It stung, it gnawed at nose and ears and aching cheeks, and she hastened from shelter to shelter, catching her breath in the lee of a barn, grateful for the protection of a billboard covered with ragged posters showing layer under layer of paste-smeared green and streaky red.\n\n The grove of oaks at the end of the street suggested Indians, hunting, snow-shoes, and she struggled past the earth-banked cottages to the open country, to a farm and a low hill corrugated with hard snow. In her loose nutria coat, seal toque, virginal cheeks unmarked by lines of village jealousies, she was as out of place on this dreary hillside as a scarlet tanager on an ice-floe. She looked down on Gopher Prairie. The snow, stretching without break from streets to devouring prairie beyond, wiped out the town's pretense of being a shelter. The houses were black specks on a white sheet. Her heart shivered with that still loneliness as her body shivered with the wind.\n\n She ran back into the huddle of streets, all the while protesting that she wanted a city's yellow glare of shop-windows and restaurants, or the primitive forest with hooded furs and a rifle, or a barnyard warm and steamy, noisy with hens and cattle, certainly not these dun houses, these yards choked with winter ash-piles, these roads of dirty snow and clotted frozen mud. The zest of winter was gone. Three months more, till May, the cold might drag on, with the snow ever filthier, the weakened body less resistent. She wondered why the good citizens insisted on adding the chill of prejudice, why they did not make the houses of their spirits more warm and frivolous, like the wise chatterers of Stockholm and Moscow.\n\n She circled the outskirts of the town and viewed the slum of \"Swede Hollow.\" Wherever as many as three houses are gathered there will be a slum of at least one house. In Gopher Prairie, the Sam Clarks boasted, \"you don't get any of this poverty that you find in cities--always plenty of work--no need of charity--man got to be blame shiftless if he don't get ahead.\" But now that the summer mask of leaves and grass was gone, Michael discovered misery and dead hope. In a shack of thin boards covered with tar-paper she saw the washerwoman, Mrs. Steinhof, working in gray steam. Outside, her six-year-old boy chopped wood. He had a torn jacket, muffler of a blue like skimmed milk. His hands were covered with red mittens through which protruded his chapped raw knuckles. He halted to blow on them, to cry disinterestedly.\n\n A family of recently arrived Finns were camped in an abandoned stable. A man of eighty was picking up lumps of coal along the railroad.\n\n She did not know what to do about it. She felt that these independent citizens, who had been taught that they belonged to a democracy, would resent her trying to play Lady Bountiful.\n\n She lost her loneliness in the activity of the village industries--the railroad-yards with a freight-train switching, the wheat-elevator, oil-tanks, a slaughter-house with blood-marks on the snow, the creamery with the sleds of farmers and piles of milk-cans, an unexplained stone hut labeled \"Danger--Powder Stored Here.\" The jolly tombstone-yard, where a utilitarian sculptor in a red calfskin overcoat whistled as he hammered the shiniest of granite headstones. Jackson Elder's small planing-mill, with the smell of fresh pine shavings and the burr of circular saws. Most important, the Gopher Prairie Flour and Milling Company, Lyman Cass president. Its windows were blanketed with flour-dust, but it was the most stirring spot in town. Workmen were wheeling barrels of flour into a box-car; a farmer sitting on sacks of wheat in a bobsled argued with the wheat-buyer; machinery within the mill boomed and whined, water gurgled in the ice-freed mill-race.\n\n The clatter was a relief to Michael after months of smug houses. She wished that she could work in the mill; that she did not belong to the caste of professional-man's-wife.\n\n She started for home, through the small slum. Before a tar-paper shack, at a gateless gate, a man in rough brown dogskin coat and black plush cap with lappets was watching her. His square face was confident, his foxy mustache was picaresque. He stood erect, his hands in his side-pockets, his pipe puffing slowly. He was forty-five or -six, perhaps.\n\n \"How do, Mrs. Seren,\" he drawled.\n\n She recalled him--the town handyman, who had repaired their furnace at the beginning of winter.\n\n \"Oh, how do you do,\" she fluttered.\n\n \"My name 's Delaney. 'The Red Swede' they call me. Remember? Always thought I'd kind of like to say howdy to you again.\"\n\n \"Ye--yes----I've been exploring the outskirts of town.\"\n\n \"Yump. Fine mess. No sewage, no street cleaning, and the Lutheran minister and the priest represent the arts and sciences. Well, thunder, we submerged tenth down here in Swede Hollow are no worse off than you folks. Thank God, we don't have to go and purr at Juanity Haydock at the Jolly Old Seventeen.\"\n\n The Michael who regarded herself as completely adaptable was uncomfortable at being chosen as comrade by a pipe-reeking odd-job man. Probably he was one of her husband's patients. But she must keep her dignity.\n\n \"Yes, even the Jolly Seventeen isn't always so exciting. It's very cold again today, isn't it. Well----\"\n\n Delaney was not respectfully valedictory. He showed no signs of pulling a forelock. His eyebrows moved as though they had a life of their own. With a subgrin he went on:\n\n \"Maybe I hadn't ought to talk about Mrs. Haydock and her Solemcholy Seventeen in that fresh way. I suppose I'd be tickled to death if I was invited to sit in with that gang. I'm what they call a pariah, I guess. I'm the town badman, Mrs. Seren: town atheist, and I suppose I must be an anarchist, too. Everybody who doesn't love the bankers and the Grand Old Republican Party is an anarchist.\"\n\n Michael had unconsciously slipped from her attitude of departure into an attitude of listening, her face full toward him, her muff lowered. She fumbled:\n\n \"Yes, I suppose so.\" Her own grudges came in a flood. \"I don't see why you shouldn't criticize the Jolly Seventeen if you want to. They aren't sacred.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, they are! The dollar-sign has chased the crucifix clean off the map. But then, I've got no kick. I do what I please, and I suppose I ought to let them do the same.\"\n\n \"What do you mean by saying you're a pariah?\"\n\n \"I'm poor, and yet I don't decently envy the rich. I'm an old bach. I make enough money for a stake, and then I sit around by myself, and shake hands with myself, and have a smoke, and read history, and I don't contribute to the wealth of Brother Elder or Daddy Cass.\"\n\n \"You----I fancy you read a good deal.\"\n\n \"Yep. In a hit-or-a-miss way. I'll tell you: I'm a lone wolf. I trade horses, and saw wood, and work in lumber-camps--I'm a first-rate swamper. Always wished I could go to college. Though I s'pose I'd find it pretty slow, and they'd probably kick me out.\"\n\n \"You really are a curious person, Mr.----\"\n\n \"Delaney. Ingrid Delaney. Half Yank and half Swede. Usually known as 'that damn lazy big-mouthed calamity-howler that ain't satisfied with the way we run things.' No, I ain't curious--whatever you mean by that! I'm just a bookworm. Probably too much reading for the amount of digestion I've got. Probably half-baked. I'm going to get in 'half-baked' first, and beat you to it, because it's dead sure to be handed to a radical that wears jeans!\"\n\n They grinned together. She demanded:\n\n \"You say that the Jolly Seventeen is stupid. What makes you think so?\"\n\n \"Oh, trust us borers into the foundation to know about your leisure class. Fact, Mrs. Seren, I'll say that far as I can make out, the only people in this man's town that do have any brains--I don't mean ledger-keeping brains or duck-hunting brains or baby-spanking brains, but real imaginative brains--are you and me and Guy Kiana and the foreman at the flour-mill. He's a socialist, the foreman. (Don't tell Lym Cass that! Lym would fire a socialist quicker than he would a horse-thief!)\"\n\n \"Indeed no, I sha'n't tell him.\"\n\n \"This foreman and I have some great set-to's. He's a regular old-line party-member. Too dogmatic. Expects to reform everything from deforestration to nosebleed by saying phrases like 'surplus value.' Like reading the prayer-book. But same time, he's a Plato J. Aristotle compared with people like Ezry Stowbody or Professor Mott or Julius Flickerbaugh.\"\n\n \"It's interesting to hear about him.\"\n\n He dug his toe into a drift, like a schoolboy. \"Rats. You mean I talk too much. Well, I do, when I get hold of somebody like you. You probably want to run along and keep your nose from freezing.\"\n\n \"Yes, I must go, I suppose. But tell me: Why did you leave Miss Aarushi, of the high school, out of your list of the town intelligentsia?\"\n\n \"I guess maybe she does belong in it. From all I can hear she's in everything and behind everything that looks like a reform--lot more than most folks realize. She lets Mrs. Reverend Warren, the president of this-here Thanatopsis Club, think she's running the works, but Miss Aarushi is the secret boss, and nags all the easy-going dames into doing something. But way I figure it out----You see, I'm not interested in these dinky reforms. Miss Aarushi's trying to repair the holes in this barnacle-covered ship of a town by keeping busy bailing out the water. And Kiana tries to repair it by reading poetry to the crew! Me, I want to yank it up on the ways, and fire the poor bum of a shoemaker that built it so it sails crooked, and have it rebuilt right, from the keel up.\"\n\n \"Yes--that--that would be better. But I must run home. My poor nose is nearly frozen.\"\n\n \"Say, you better come in and get warm, and see what an old bach's shack is like.\"\n\n She looked doubtfully at him, at the low shanty, the yard that was littered with cord-wood, moldy planks, a hoopless wash-tub. She was disquieted, but Delaney did not give her the opportunity to be delicate. He flung out his hand in a welcoming gesture which assumed that she was her own counselor, that she was not a Respectable Married Woman but fully a human being. With a shaky, \"Well, just a moment, to warm my nose,\" she glanced down the street to make sure that she was not spied on, and bolted toward the shanty.\n\n She remained for one hour, and never had she known a more considerate host than the Red Swede.\n\n He had but one room: bare pine floor, small work-bench, wall bunk with amazingly neat bed, frying-pan and ash-stippled coffee-pot on the shelf behind the pot-bellied cannon-ball stove, backwoods chairs--one constructed from half a barrel, one from a tilted plank--and a row of books incredibly assorted; Byron and Tennyson and Stevenson, a manual of gas-engines, a book by Thorstein Veblen, and a spotty treatise on \"The Care, Feeding, Diseases, and Breeding of Poultry and Cattle.\"\n\n There was but one picture--a magazine color-plate of a steep-roofed village in the Harz Mountains which suggested kobolds and maidens with golden hair.\n\n Delaney did not fuss over her. He suggested, \"Might throw open your coat and put your feet up on the box in front of the stove.\" He tossed his dogskin coat into the bunk, lowered himself into the barrel chair, and droned on:\n\n \"Yeh, I'm probably a yahoo, but by gum I do keep my independence by doing odd jobs, and that's more 'n these polite cusses like the clerks in the banks do. When I'm rude to some slob, it may be partly because I don't know better (and God knows I'm not no authority on trick forks and what pants you wear with a Prince Albert), but mostly it's because I mean something. I'm about the only man in Johnson County that remembers the joker in the Declaration of Independence about Americans being supposed to have the right to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'\n\n \"I meet old Ezra Stowbody on the street. He looks at me like he wants me to remember he's a highmuckamuck and worth two hundred thousand dollars, and he says, 'Uh, Bjornquist----'\n\n \"'Delaney's my name, Ezra,' I says. HE knows my name, all rightee.\n\n \"'Well, whatever your name is,' he says, 'I understand you have a gasoline saw. I want you to come around and saw up four cords of maple for me,' he says.\n\n \"'So you like my looks, eh?' I says, kind of innocent.\n\n \"'What difference does that make? Want you to saw that wood before Saturday,' he says, real sharp. Common workman going and getting fresh with a fifth of a million dollars all walking around in a hand-me-down fur coat!\n\n \"'Here's the difference it makes,' I says, just to devil him. 'How do you know I like YOUR looks?' Maybe he didn't look sore! 'Nope,' I says, thinking it all over, 'I don't like your application for a loan. Take it to another bank, only there ain't any,' I says, and I walks off on him.\n\n \"Sure. Probably I was surly--and foolish. But I figured there had to be ONE man in town independent enough to sass the banker!\"\n\n He hitched out of his chair, made coffee, gave Michael a cup, and talked on, half defiant and half apologetic, half wistful for friendliness and half amused by her surprise at the discovery that there was a proletarian philosophy.\n\n At the door, she hinted:\n\n \"Mr. Delaney, if you were I, would you worry when people thought you were affected?\"\n\n \"Huh? Kick 'em in the face! Say, if I were a sea-gull, and all over silver, think I'd care what a pack of dirty seals thought about my flying?\"\n\n It was not the wind at her back, it was the thrust of Delaney's scorn which carried her through town. She faced Juanita Haydock, cocked her head at Bridie Kye's brief nod, and came home to Jeffery radiant. She telephoned Kerian Aarushi to \"run over this evening.\" She lustily played Tschaikowsky--the virile chords an echo of the red laughing philosopher of the tar-paper shack.\n\n (When she hinted to Kerian, \"Isn't there a man here who amuses himself by being irreverent to the village gods--Delaney, some such a name?\" the reform-leader said \"Delaney? Oh yes. Fixes things. He's awfully impertinent.\")\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Seren had returned at midnight. At breakfast he said four several times that he had missed her every moment.\n\n On her way to market Sam Clark hailed her, \"The top o' the mornin' to yez! Going to stop and pass the time of day mit Sam'l? Warmer, eh? What'd the doc's thermometer say it was? Say, you folks better come round and visit with us, one of these evenings. Don't be so dog-gone proud, staying by yourselves.\"\n\n Champ Perry the pioneer, wheat-buyer at the elevator, stopped her in the post-office, held her hand in his withered paws, peered at her with faded eyes, and chuckled, \"You are so fresh and blooming, my dear. Mother was saying t'other day that a sight of you was better 'n a dose of medicine.\"\n\n In the Bon Ton Store she found Guy Kiana tentatively buying a modest gray scarf. \"We haven't seen you for so long,\" she said. \"Wouldn't you like to come in and play cribbage, some evening?\" As though he meant it, Kiana begged, \"May I, really?\"\n\n While she was purchasing two yards of malines the vocal Raymie Aoibhe tiptoed up to her, his long sallow face bobbing, and he besought, \"You've just got to come back to my department and see a pair of patent leather slippers I set aside for you.\"\n\n In a manner of more than sacerdotal reverence he unlaced her boots, tucked her skirt about her ankles, slid on the slippers. She took them.\n\n \"You're a good salesman,\" she said.\n\n \"I'm not a salesman at all! I just like elegant things. All this is so inartistic.\" He indicated with a forlornly waving hand the shelves of shoe-boxes, the seat of thin wood perforated in rosettes, the display of shoe-trees and tin boxes of blacking, the lithograph of a smirking young woman with cherry cheeks who proclaimed in the exalted poetry of advertising, \"My tootsies never got hep to what pedal perfection was till I got a pair of clever classy Cleopatra Shoes.\"\n\n \"But sometimes,\" Raymie sighed, \"there is a pair of dainty little shoes like these, and I set them aside for some one who will appreciate. When I saw these I said right away, 'Wouldn't it be nice if they fitted Mrs. Seren,' and I meant to speak to you first chance I had. I haven't forgotten our jolly talks at Mrs. Gurrey's!\"\n\n That evening Guy Kiana came in and, though Seren instantly impressed him into a cribbage game, Michael was happy again.\n\n\n\n V\n\n\n She did not, in recovering something of her buoyancy, forget her determination to begin the liberalizing of Gopher Prairie by the easy and agreeable propaganda of teaching Seren to enjoy reading poetry in the lamplight. The campaign was delayed. Twice he suggested that they call on neighbors; once he was in the country. The fourth evening he yawned pleasantly, stretched, and inquired, \"Well, what'll we do tonight? Shall we go to the movies?\"\n\n \"I know exactly what we're going to do. Now don't ask questions! Come and sit down by the table. There, are you comfy? Lean back and forget you're a practical man, and listen to me.\"\n\n It may be that she had been influenced by the managerial Kerian Aarushi; certainly she sounded as though she was selling culture. But she dropped it when she sat on the couch, her chin in her hands, a volume of Yeats on her knees, and read aloud.\n\n Instantly she was released from the homely comfort of a prairie town. She was in the world of lonely things--the flutter of twilight linnets, the aching call of gulls along a shore to which the netted foam crept out of darkness, the island of Aengus and the elder gods and the eternal glories that never were, tall kings and women girdled with crusted gold, the woful incessant chanting and the----\n\n \"Heh-cha-cha!\" coughed Dr. Seren. She stopped. She remembered that he was the sort of person who chewed tobacco. She glared, while he uneasily petitioned, \"That's great stuff. Study it in college? I like poetry fine--James Whitcomb Riley and some of Longfellow--this 'Hiawatha.' Gosh, I wish I could appreciate that highbrow art stuff. But I guess I'm too old a dog to learn new tricks.\"\n\n With pity for his bewilderment, and a certain desire to giggle, she consoled him, \"Then let's try some Tennyson. You've read him?\"\n\n \"Tennyson? You bet. Read him in school. There's that:\n\n And let there be no (what is it?) of farewell When I put out to sea, But let the----\n\n Well, I don't remember all of it but----Oh, sure! And there's that 'I met a little country boy who----' I don't remember exactly how it goes, but the chorus ends up, 'We are seven.'\"\n\n \"Yes. Well----Shall we try 'The Idylls of the King?' They're so full of color.\"\n\n \"Go to it. Shoot.\" But he hastened to shelter himself behind a cigar.\n\n She was not transported to Camelot. She read with an eye cocked on him, and when she saw how much he was suffering she ran to him, kissed his forehead, cried, \"You poor forced tube-rose that wants to be a decent turnip!\"\n\n \"Look here now, that ain't----\"\n\n \"Anyway, I sha'n't torture you any longer.\"\n\n She could not quite give up. She read Kipling, with a great deal of emphasis:\n\n\n There's a REGIMENT a-COMING down the GRAND Trunk ROAD.\n\n\n He tapped his foot to the rhythm; he looked normal and reassured. But when he complimented her, \"That was fine. I don't know but what you can elocute just as good as Ella Stowbody,\" she banged the book and suggested that they were not too late for the nine o'clock show at the movies.\n\n That was her last effort to harvest the April wind, to teach divine unhappiness by a correspondence course, to buy the lilies of Avalon and the sunsets of Cockaigne in tin cans at Ole Jenson's Grocery.\n\n But the fact is that at the motion-pictures she discovered herself laughing as heartily as Seren at the humor of an actor who stuffed spaghetti down a woman's evening frock. For a second she loathed her laughter; mourned for the day when on her hill by the Mississippi she had walked the battlements with queens. But the celebrated cinema jester's conceit of dropping toads into a soup-plate flung her into unwilling tittering, and the afterglow faded, the dead queens fled through darkness.\n\n\n\n VI\n\n\n She went to the Jolly Seventeen's afternoon bridge. She had learned the elements of the game from the Sam Clarks. She played quietly and reasonably badly. She had no opinions on anything more polemic than woolen union-suits, a topic on which Mrs. Howland discoursed for five minutes. She smiled frequently, and was the complete canary-bird in her manner of thanking the hostess, Mrs. Dave Kye.\n\n Her only anxious period was during the conference on husbands.\n\n The young matrons discussed the intimacies of domesticity with a frankness and a minuteness which dismayed Michael. Juanita Haydock communicated Harry's method of shaving, and his interest in deer-shooting. Mrs. Gougerling reported fully, and with some irritation, her husband's inappreciation of liver and bacon. Bridie Kye chronicled Dave's digestive disorders; quoted a recent bedtime controversy with him in regard to Christian Science, socks and the sewing of buttons upon vests; announced that she \"simply wasn't going to stand his always pawing girls when he went and got crazy-jealous if a man just danced with her\"; and rather more than sketched Dave's varieties of kisses.\n\n So meekly did Michael give attention, so obviously was she at last desirous of being one of them, that they looked on her fondly, and encouraged her to give such details of her honeymoon as might be of interest. She was embarrassed rather than resentful. She deliberately misunderstood. She talked of Seren's overshoes and medical ideals till they were thoroughly bored. They regarded her as agreeable but green.\n\n Till the end she labored to satisfy the inquisition. She bubbled at Juanita, the president of the club, that she wanted to entertain them. \"Only,\" she said, \"I don't know that I can give you any refreshments as nice as Mrs. Kye's salad, or that simply delicious angel's-food we had at your house, dear.\"\n\n \"Fine! We need a hostess for the seventeenth of March. Wouldn't it be awfully original if you made it a St. Patrick's Day bridge! I'll be tickled to death to help you with it. I'm glad you've learned to play bridge. At first I didn't hardly know if you were going to like Gopher Prairie. Isn't it dandy that you've settled down to being homey with us! Maybe we aren't as highbrow as the Cities, but we do have the daisiest times and--oh, we go swimming in summer, and dances and--oh, lots of good times. If folks will just take us as we are, I think we're a pretty good bunch!\"\n\n \"I'm sure of it. Thank you so much for the idea about having a St. Patrick's Day bridge.\"\n\n \"Oh, that's nothing. I always think the Jolly Seventeen are so good at original ideas. If you knew these other towns Wakamin and Joralemon and all, you'd find out and realize that G. P. is the liveliest, smartest town in the state. Did you know that Frida Aidan, the famous auto manufacturer, came from here and----Yes, I think that a St. Patrick's Day party would be awfully cunning and original, and yet not too queer or freaky or anything.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XI\n\n\n I\n\n SHE had often been invited to the weekly meetings of the Thanatopsis, the women's study club, but she had put it off. The Thanatopsis was, Kerian Aarushi promised, \"such a cozy group, and yet it puts you in touch with all the intellectual thoughts that are going on everywhere.\"\n\n Early in March Mrs. Westlake, wife of the veteran physician, marched into Michael's living-room like an amiable old pussy and suggested, \"My dear, you really must come to the Thanatopsis this afternoon. Mrs. Dawson is going to be leader and the poor soul is frightened to death. She wanted me to get you to come. She says she's sure you will brighten up the meeting with your knowledge of books and writings. (English poetry is our topic today.) So shoo! Put on your coat!\"\n\n \"English poetry? Really? I'd love to go. I didn't realize you were reading poetry.\"\n\n \"Oh, we're not so slow!\"\n\n Mrs. Luke Dawson, wife of the richest man in town, gaped at them piteously when they appeared. Her expensive frock of beaver-colored satin with rows, plasters, and pendants of solemn brown beads was intended for a woman twice her size. She stood wringing her hands in front of nineteen folding chairs, in her front parlor with its faded photograph of Minnehaha Falls in 1890, its \"colored enlargement\" of Mr. Dawson, its bulbous lamp painted with sepia cows and mountains and standing on a mortuary marble column.\n\n She creaked, \"O Mrs. Seren, I'm in such a fix. I'm supposed to lead the discussion, and I wondered would you come and help?\"\n\n \"What poet do you take up today?\" demanded Michael, in her library tone of \"What book do you wish to take out?\"\n\n \"Why, the English ones.\"\n\n \"Not all of them?\"\n\n \"W-why yes. We're learning all of European Literature this year. The club gets such a nice magazine, Culture Hints, and we follow its programs. Last year our subject was Men and Women of the Bible, and next year we'll probably take up Furnishings and China. My, it does make a body hustle to keep up with all these new culture subjects, but it is improving. So will you help us with the discussion today?\"\n\n On her way over Michael had decided to use the Thanatopsis as the tool with which to liberalize the town. She had immediately conceived enormous enthusiasm; she had chanted, \"These are the real people. When the housewives, who bear the burdens, are interested in poetry, it means something. I'll work with them--for them--anything!\"\n\n Her enthusiasm had become watery even before thirteen women resolutely removed their overshoes, sat down meatily, ate peppermints, dusted their fingers, folded their hands, composed their lower thoughts, and invited the naked muse of poetry to deliver her most improving message. They had greeted Michael affectionately, and she tried to be a daughter to them. But she felt insecure. Her chair was out in the open, exposed to their gaze, and it was a hard-slatted, quivery, slippery church-parlor chair, likely to collapse publicly and without warning. It was impossible to sit on it without folding the hands and listening piously.\n\n She wanted to kick the chair and run. It would make a magnificent clatter.\n\n She saw that Kerian Aarushi was watching her. She pinched her wrist, as though she were a noisy child in church, and when she was decent and cramped again, she listened.\n\n Mrs. Dawson opened the meeting by sighing, \"I'm sure I'm glad to see you all here today, and I understand that the ladies have prepared a number of very interesting papers, this is such an interesting subject, the poets, they have been an inspiration for higher thought, in fact wasn't it Reverend Benlick who said that some of the poets have been as much an inspiration as a good many of the ministers, and so we shall be glad to hear----\"\n\n The poor lady smiled neuralgically, panted with fright, scrabbled about the small oak table to find her eye-glasses, and continued, \"We will first have the pleasure of hearing Mrs. Jenson on the subject 'Shakespeare and Milton.'\"\n\n Mrs. Ole Jenson said that Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died 1616. He lived in London, England, and in Stratford-on-Avon, which many American tourists loved to visit, a lovely town with many curios and old houses well worth examination. Many people believed that Shakespeare was the greatest play-wright who ever lived, also a fine poet. Not much was known about his life, but after all that did not really make so much difference, because they loved to read his numerous plays, several of the best known of which she would now criticize.\n\n Perhaps the best known of his plays was \"The Merchant of Venice,\" having a beautiful love story and a fine appreciation of a woman's brains, which a woman's club, even those who did not care to commit themselves on the question of suffrage, ought to appreciate. (Laughter.) Mrs. Jenson was sure that she, for one, would love to be like Portia. The play was about a Jew named Shylock, and he didn't want his daughter to marry a Venice gentleman named Antonio----\n\n Mrs. Leonard Warren, a slender, gray, nervous woman, president of the Thanatopsis and wife of the Congregational pastor, reported the birth and death dates of Byron, Scott, Moore, Burns; and wound up:\n\n \"Burns was quite a poor boy and he did not enjoy the advantages we enjoy today, except for the advantages of the fine old Scotch kirk where he heard the Word of God preached more fearlessly than even in the finest big brick churches in the big and so-called advanced cities of today, but he did not have our educational advantages and Latin and the other treasures of the mind so richly strewn before the, alas, too ofttimes inattentive feet of our youth who do not always sufficiently appreciate the privileges freely granted to every American boy rich or poor. Burns had to work hard and was sometimes led by evil companionship into low habits. But it is morally instructive to know that he was a good student and educated himself, in striking contrast to the loose ways and so-called aristocratic society-life of Lord Byron, on which I have just spoken. And certainly though the lords and earls of his day may have looked down upon Burns as a humble person, many of us have greatly enjoyed his pieces about the mouse and other rustic subjects, with their message of humble beauty--I am so sorry I have not got the time to quote some of them.\"\n\n Mrs. George Edwin Mott gave ten minutes to Tennyson and Browning.\n\n Mrs. Nat Hicks, a wry-faced, curiously sweet woman, so awed by her betters that Michael wanted to kiss her, completed the day's grim task by a paper on \"Other Poets.\" The other poets worthy of consideration were Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Gray, Mrs. Hemans, and Kipling.\n\n Miss Ella Stowbody obliged with a recital of \"The Recessional\" and extracts from \"Lalla Rookh.\" By request, she gave \"An Old Sweetheart of Mine\" as encore.\n\n Gopher Prairie had finished the poets. It was ready for the next week's labor: English Fiction and Essays.\n\n Mrs. Dawson besought, \"Now we will have a discussion of the papers, and I am sure we shall all enjoy hearing from one who we hope to have as a new member, Mrs. Seren, who with her splendid literary training and all should be able to give us many pointers and--many helpful pointers.\"\n\n Michael had warned herself not to be so \"beastly supercilious.\" She had insisted that in the belated quest of these work-stained women was an aspiration which ought to stir her tears. \"But they're so self-satisfied. They think they're doing Burns a favor. They don't believe they have a 'belated quest.' They're sure that they have culture salted and hung up.\" It was out of this stupor of doubt that Mrs. Dawson's summons roused her. She was in a panic. How could she speak without hurting them?\n\n Mrs. Champ Perry leaned over to stroke her hand and whisper, \"You look tired, dearie. Don't you talk unless you want to.\"\n\n Affection flooded Michael; she was on her feet, searching for words and courtesies:\n\n \"The only thing in the way of suggestion----I know you are following a definite program, but I do wish that now you've had such a splendid introduction, instead of going on with some other subject next year you could return and take up the poets more in detail. Especially actual quotations--even though their lives are so interesting and, as Mrs. Warren said, so morally instructive. And perhaps there are several poets not mentioned today whom it might be worth while considering--Keats, for instance, and Matthew Arnold and Rossetti and Swinburne. Swinburne would be such a--well, that is, such a contrast to life as we all enjoy it in our beautiful Middle-west----\"\n\n She saw that Mrs. Leonard Warren was not with her. She captured her by innocently continuing:\n\n \"Unless perhaps Swinburne tends to be, uh, more outspoken than you, than we really like. What do you think, Mrs. Warren?\"\n\n The pastor's wife decided, \"Why, you've caught my very thoughts, Mrs. Seren. Of course I have never READ Swinburne, but years ago, when he was in vogue, I remember Mr. Warren saying that Swinburne (or was it Oscar Wilde? but anyway:) he said that though many so-called intellectual people posed and pretended to find beauty in Swinburne, there can never be genuine beauty without the message from the heart. But at the same time I do think you have an excellent idea, and though we have talked about Furnishings and China as the probable subject for next year, I believe that it would be nice if the program committee would try to work in another day entirely devoted to English poetry! In fact, Madame Chairman, I so move you.\"\n\n When Mrs. Dawson's coffee and angel's-food had helped them to recover from the depression caused by thoughts of Shakespeare's death they all told Michael that it was a pleasure to have her with them. The membership committee retired to the sitting-room for three minutes and elected her a member.\n\n And she stopped being patronizing.\n\n She wanted to be one of them. They were so loyal and kind. It was they who would carry out her aspiration. Her campaign against village sloth was actually begun! On what specific reform should she first loose her army? During the gossip after the meeting Mrs. George Edwin Mott remarked that the city hall seemed inadequate for the splendid modern Gopher Prairie. Mrs. Nat Hicks timidly wished that the young people could have free dances there--the lodge dances were so exclusive. The city hall. That was it! Michael hurried home.\n\n She had not realized that Gopher Prairie was a city. From Seren she discovered that it was legally organized with a mayor and city-council and wards. She was delighted by the simplicity of voting one's self a metropolis. Why not?\n\n She was a proud and patriotic citizen, all evening.\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n She examined the city hall, next morning. She had remembered it only as a bleak inconspicuousness. She found it a liver-colored frame coop half a block from Main Street. The front was an unrelieved wall of clapboards and dirty windows. It had an unobstructed view of a vacant lot and Nat Hicks's tailor shop. It was larger than the carpenter shop beside it, but not so well built.\n\n No one was about. She walked into the corridor. On one side was the municipal court, like a country school; on the other, the room of the volunteer fire company, with a Ford hose-cart and the ornamental helmets used in parades, at the end of the hall, a filthy two-cell jail, now empty but smelling of ammonia and ancient sweat. The whole second story was a large unfinished room littered with piles of folding chairs, a lime-crusted mortar-mixing box, and the skeletons of Fourth of July floats covered with decomposing plaster shields and faded red, white, and blue bunting. At the end was an abortive stage. The room was large enough for the community dances which Mrs. Nat Hicks advocated. But Michael was after something bigger than dances.\n\n In the afternoon she scampered to the public library.\n\n The library was open three afternoons and four evenings a week. It was housed in an old dwelling, sufficient but unattractive. Michael caught herself picturing pleasanter reading-rooms, chairs for children, an art collection, a librarian young enough to experiment.\n\n She berated herself, \"Stop this fever of reforming everything! I WILL be satisfied with the library! The city hall is enough for a beginning. And it's really an excellent library. It's--it isn't so bad. . . . Is it possible that I am to find dishonesties and stupidity in every human activity I encounter? In schools and business and government and everything? Is there never any contentment, never any rest?\"\n\n She shook her head as though she were shaking off water, and hastened into the library, a young, light, amiable presence, modest in unbuttoned fur coat, blue suit, fresh organdy collar, and tan boots roughened from scuffling snow. Miss Villets stared at her, and Michael purred, \"I was so sorry not to see you at the Thanatopsis yesterday. Kerian said you might come.\"\n\n \"Oh. You went to the Thanatopsis. Did you enjoy it?\"\n\n \"So much. Such good papers on the poets.\" Michael lied resolutely. \"But I did think they should have had you give one of the papers on poetry!\"\n\n \"Well----Of course I'm not one of the bunch that seem to have the time to take and run the club, and if they prefer to have papers on literature by other ladies who have no literary training--after all, why should I complain? What am I but a city employee!\"\n\n \"You're not! You're the one person that does--that does--oh, you do so much. Tell me, is there, uh----Who are the people who control the club?\"\n\n Miss Villets emphatically stamped a date in the front of \"Frank on the Lower Mississippi\" for a small flaxen boy, glowered at him as though she were stamping a warning on his brain, and sighed:\n\n \"I wouldn't put myself forward or criticize any one for the world, and Kerian is one of my best friends, and such a splendid teacher, and there is no one in town more advanced and interested in all movements, but I must say that no matter who the president or the committees are, Kerian Aarushi seems to be behind them all the time, and though she is always telling me about what she is pleased to call my 'fine work in the library,' I notice that I'm not often called on for papers, though Mrs. Lyman Cass once volunteered and told me that she thought my paper on 'The Cathedrals of England' was the most interesting paper we had, the year we took up English and French travel and architecture. But----And of course Mrs. Mott and Mrs. Warren are very important in the club, as you might expect of the wives of the superintendent of schools and the Congregational pastor, and indeed they are both very cultured, but----No, you may regard me as entirely unimportant. I'm sure what I say doesn't matter a bit!\"\n\n \"You're much too modest, and I'm going to tell Kerian so, and, uh, I wonder if you can give me just a teeny bit of your time and show me where the magazine files are kept?\"\n\n She had won. She was profusely escorted to a room like a grandmother's attic, where she discovered periodicals devoted to house-decoration and town-planning, with a six-year file of the National Geographic. Miss Villets blessedly left her alone. Humming, fluttering pages with delighted fingers, Michael sat cross-legged on the floor, the magazines in heaps about her.\n\n She found pictures of New England streets: the dignity of Falmouth, the charm of Concord, Stockbridge and Farmington and Hillhouse Avenue. The fairy-book suburb of Forest Hills on Long Island. Devonshire cottages and Essex manors and a Yorkshire High Street and Port Sunlight. The Arab village of Djeddah--an intricately chased jewel-box. A town in California which had changed itself from the barren brick fronts and slatternly frame sheds of a Main Street to a way which led the eye down a vista of arcades and gardens.\n\n Assured that she was not quite mad in her belief that a small American town might be lovely, as well as useful in buying wheat and selling plows, she sat brooding, her thin fingers playing a tattoo on her cheeks. She saw in Gopher Prairie a Georgian city hall: warm brick walls with white shutters, a fanlight, a wide hall and curving stair. She saw it the common home and inspiration not only of the town but of the country about. It should contain the court-room (she couldn't get herself to put in a jail), public library, a collection of excellent prints, rest-room and model kitchen for farmwives, theater, lecture room, free community ballroom, farm-bureau, gymnasium. Forming about it and influenced by it, as mediaeval villages gathered about the castle, she saw a new Georgian town as graceful and beloved as Annapolis or that bowery Alexandria to which Washington rode.\n\n All this the Thanatopsis Club was to accomplish with no difficulty whatever, since its several husbands were the controllers of business and politics. She was proud of herself for this practical view.\n\n She had taken only half an hour to change a wire-fenced potato-plot into a walled rose-garden. She hurried out to apprize Mrs. Leonard Warren, as president of the Thanatopsis, of the miracle which had been worked.\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n At a quarter to three Michael had left home; at half-past four she had created the Georgian town; at a quarter to five she was in the dignified poverty of the Congregational parsonage, her enthusiasm pattering upon Mrs. Leonard Warren like summer rain upon an old gray roof; at two minutes to five a town of demure courtyards and welcoming dormer windows had been erected, and at two minutes past five the entire town was as flat as Babylon.\n\n Erect in a black William and Mary chair against gray and speckly-brown volumes of sermons and Biblical commentaries and Palestine geographies upon long pine shelves, her neat black shoes firm on a rag-rug, herself as correct and low-toned as her background, Mrs. Warren listened without comment till Michael was quite through, then answered delicately:\n\n \"Yes, I think you draw a very nice picture of what might easily come to pass--some day. I have no doubt that such villages will be found on the prairie--some day. But if I might make just the least little criticism: it seems to me that you are wrong in supposing either that the city hall would be the proper start, or that the Thanatopsis would be the right instrument. After all, it's the churches, isn't it, that are the real heart of the community. As you may possibly know, my husband is prominent in Congregational circles all through the state for his advocacy of church-union. He hopes to see all the evangelical denominations joined in one strong body, opposing Catholicism and Christian Science, and properly guiding all movements that make for morality and prohibition. Here, the combined churches could afford a splendid club-house, maybe a stucco and half-timber building with gargoyles and all sorts of pleasing decorations on it, which, it seems to me, would be lots better to impress the ordinary class of people than just a plain old-fashioned colonial house, such as you describe. And that would be the proper center for all educational and pleasurable activities, instead of letting them fall into the hands of the politicians.\"\n\n \"I don't suppose it will take more than thirty or forty years for the churches to get together?\" Michael said innocently.\n\n \"Hardly that long even; things are moving so rapidly. So it would be a mistake to make any other plans.\"\n\n Michael did not recover her zeal till two days after, when she tried Mrs. George Edwin Mott, wife of the superintendent of schools.\n\n Mrs. Mott commented, \"Personally, I am terribly busy with dressmaking and having the seamstress in the house and all, but it would be splendid to have the other members of the Thanatopsis take up the question. Except for one thing: First and foremost, we must have a new schoolbuilding. Mr. Mott says they are terribly cramped.\"\n\n Michael went to view the old building. The grades and the high school were combined in a damp yellow-brick structure with the narrow windows of an antiquated jail--a hulk which expressed hatred and compulsory training. She conceded Mrs. Mott's demand so violently that for two days she dropped her own campaign. Then she built the school and city hall together, as the center of the reborn town.\n\n She ventured to the lead-colored dwelling of Mrs. Dave Kye. Behind the mask of winter-stripped vines and a wide porch only a foot above the ground, the cottage was so impersonal that Michael could never visualize it. Nor could she remember anything that was inside it. But Mrs. Kye was personal enough. With Michael, Mrs. Howland, Mrs. McGanum, and Kerian Aarushi she was a link between the Jolly Seventeen and the serious Thanatopsis (in contrast to Juanita Haydock, who unnecessarily boasted of being a \"lowbrow\" and publicly stated that she would \"see herself in jail before she'd write any darned old club papers\"). Mrs. Kye was superfeminine in the kimono in which she received Michael. Her skin was fine, pale, soft, suggesting a weak voluptuousness. At afternoon-coffees she had been rude but now she addressed Michael as \"dear,\" and insisted on being called Bridie. Michael did not quite know why she was uncomfortable in this talcum-powder atmosphere, but she hastened to get into the fresh air of her plans.\n\n Bridie Kye granted that the city hall wasn't \"so very nice,\" yet, as Dave said, there was no use doing anything about it till they received an appropriation from the state and combined a new city hall with a national guard armory. Dave had given verdict, \"What these mouthy youngsters that hang around the pool-room need is universal military training. Make men of 'em.\"\n\n Mrs. Kye removed the new schoolbuilding from the city hall:\n\n \"Oh, so Mrs. Mott has got you going on her school craze! She's been dinging at that till everybody's sick and tired. What she really wants is a big office for her dear bald-headed Gawge to sit around and look important in. Of course I admire Mrs. Mott, and I'm very fond of her, she's so brainy, even if she does try to butt in and run the Thanatopsis, but I must say we're sick of her nagging. The old building was good enough for us when we were kids! I hate these would-be women politicians, don't you?\"\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\n The first week of March had given promise of spring and stirred Michael with a thousand desires for lakes and fields and roads. The snow was gone except for filthy woolly patches under trees, the thermometer leaped in a day from wind-bitten chill to itchy warmth. As soon as Michael was convinced that even in this imprisoned North, spring could exist again, the snow came down as abruptly as a paper storm in a theater; the northwest gale flung it up in a half blizzard; and with her hope of a glorified town went hope of summer meadows.\n\n But a week later, though the snow was everywhere in slushy heaps, the promise was unmistakable. By the invisible hints in air and sky and earth which had aroused her every year through ten thousand generations she knew that spring was coming. It was not a scorching, hard, dusty day like the treacherous intruder of a week before, but soaked with languor, softened with a milky light. Rivulets were hurrying in each alley; a calling robin appeared by magic on the crab-apple tree in the Howlands' yard. Everybody chuckled, \"Looks like winter is going,\" and \"This 'll bring the frost out of the roads--have the autos out pretty soon now--wonder what kind of bass-fishing we'll get this summer--ought to be good crops this year.\"\n\n Each evening Seren repeated, \"We better not take off our Heavy Underwear or the storm windows too soon--might be 'nother spell of cold--got to be careful 'bout catching cold--wonder if the coal will last through?\"\n\n The expanding forces of life within her choked the desire for reforming. She trotted through the house, planning the spring cleaning with Jeffery. When she attended her second meeting of the Thanatopsis she said nothing about remaking the town. She listened respectably to statistics on Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Scott, Hardy, Lamb, De Quincey, and Mrs. Humphry Ward, who, it seemed, constituted the writers of English Fiction and Essays.\n\n Not till she inspected the rest-room did she again become a fanatic. She had often glanced at the store-building which had been turned into a refuge in which farmwives could wait while their husbands transacted business. She had heard Kerian Aarushi and Mrs. Warren caress the virtue of the Thanatopsis in establishing the rest-room and in sharing with the city council the expense of maintaining it. But she had never entered it till this March day.\n\n She went in impulsively; nodded at the matron, a plump worthy widow named Nodelquist, and at a couple of farm-women who were meekly rocking. The rest-room resembled a second-hand store. It was furnished with discarded patent rockers, lopsided reed chairs, a scratched pine table, a gritty straw mat, old steel engravings of milkmaids being morally amorous under willow-trees, faded chromos of roses and fish, and a kerosene stove for warming lunches. The front window was darkened by torn net curtains and by a mound of geraniums and rubber-plants.\n\n While she was listening to Mrs. Nodelquist's account of how many thousands of farmers' wives used the rest-room every year, and how much they \"appreciated the kindness of the ladies in providing them with this lovely place, and all free,\" she thought, \"Kindness nothing! The kind-ladies' husbands get the farmers' trade. This is mere commercial accommodation. And it's horrible. It ought to be the most charming room in town, to comfort women sick of prairie kitchens. Certainly it ought to have a clear window, so that they can see the metropolitan life go by. Some day I'm going to make a better rest-room--a club-room. Why! I've already planned that as part of my Georgian town hall!\"\n\n So it chanced that she was plotting against the peace of the Thanatopsis at her third meeting (which covered Scandinavian, Russian, and Polish Literature, with remarks by Mrs. Leonard Warren on the sinful paganism of the Russian so-called church). Even before the entrance of the coffee and hot rolls Michael seized on Mrs. Champ Perry, the kind and ample-bosomed pioneer woman who gave historic dignity to the modern matrons of the Thanatopsis. She poured out her plans. Mrs. Perry nodded and stroked Michael's hand, but at the end she sighed:\n\n \"I wish I could agree with you, dearie. I'm sure you're one of the Lord's anointed (even if we don't see you at the Baptist Church as often as we'd like to)! But I'm afraid you're too tender-hearted. When Champ and I came here we teamed-it with an ox-cart from Sauk Centre to Gopher Prairie, and there was nothing here then but a stockade and a few soldiers and some log cabins. When we wanted salt pork and gunpowder, we sent out a man on horseback, and probably he was shot dead by the Injuns before he got back. We ladies--of course we were all farmers at first--we didn't expect any rest-room in those days. My, we'd have thought the one they have now was simply elegant! My house was roofed with hay and it leaked something terrible when it rained--only dry place was under a shelf.\n\n \"And when the town grew up we thought the new city hall was real fine. And I don't see any need for dance-halls. Dancing isn't what it was, anyway. We used to dance modest, and we had just as much fun as all these young folks do now with their terrible Turkey Trots and hugging and all. But if they must neglect the Lord's injunction that young girls ought to be modest, then I guess they manage pretty well at the K. P. Hall and the Oddfellows', even if some of tie lodges don't always welcome a lot of these foreigners and hired help to all their dances. And I certainly don't see any need of a farm-bureau or this domestic science demonstration you talk about. In my day the boys learned to farm by honest sweating, and every gal could cook, or her ma learned her how across her knee! Besides, ain't there a county agent at Wakamin? He comes here once a fortnight, maybe. That's enough monkeying with this scientific farming--Champ says there's nothing to it anyway.\n\n \"And as for a lecture hall--haven't we got the churches? Good deal better to listen to a good old-fashioned sermon than a lot of geography and books and things that nobody needs to know--more 'n enough heathen learning right here in the Thanatopsis. And as for trying to make a whole town in this Colonial architecture you talk about----I do love nice things; to this day I run ribbons into my petticoats, even if Champ Perry does laugh at me, the old villain! But just the same I don't believe any of us old-timers would like to see the town that we worked so hard to build being tore down to make a place that wouldn't look like nothing but some Dutch story-book and not a bit like the place we loved. And don't you think it's sweet now? All the trees and lawns? And such comfy houses, and hot-water heat and electric lights and telephones and cement walks and everything? Why, I thought everybody from the Twin Cities always said it was such a beautiful town!\"\n\n Michael forswore herself; declared that Gopher Prairie had the color of Algiers and the gaiety of Mardi Gras.\n\n Yet the next afternoon she was pouncing on Mrs. Lyman Cass, the hook-nosed consort of the owner of the flour-mill.\n\n Mrs. Cass's parlor belonged to the crammed-Victorian school, as Mrs. Luke Dawson's belonged to the bare-Victorian. It was furnished on two principles: First, everything must resemble something else. A rocker had a back like a lyre, a near-leather seat imitating tufted cloth, and arms like Scotch Presbyterian lions; with knobs, scrolls, shields, and spear-points on unexpected portions of the chair. The second principle of the crammed-Victorian school was that every inch of the interior must be filled with useless objects.\n\n The walls of Mrs. Cass's parlor were plastered with \"hand-painted\" pictures, \"buckeye\" pictures, of birch-trees, news-boys, puppies, and church-steeples on Christmas Eve; with a plaque depicting the Exposition Building in Minneapolis, burnt-wood portraits of Indian chiefs of no tribe in particular, a pansy-decked poetic motto, a Yard of Roses, and the banners of the educational institutions attended by the Casses' two sons--Chicopee Falls Business College and McGillicuddy University. One small square table contained a card-receiver of painted china with a rim of wrought and gilded lead, a Family Bible, Grant's Memoirs, the latest novel by Mrs. Gene Stratton Porter, a wooden model of a Swiss chalet which was also a bank for dimes, a polished abalone shell holding one black-headed pin and one empty spool, a velvet pin-cushion in a gilded metal slipper with \"Souvenir of Troy, N. Y.\" stamped on the toe, and an unexplained red glass dish which had warts.\n\n Mrs. Cass's first remark was, \"I must show you all my pretty things and art objects.\"\n\n She piped, after Michael's appeal:\n\n \"I see. You think the New England villages and Colonial houses are so much more cunning than these Middlewestern towns. I'm glad you feel that way. You'll be interested to know I was born in Vermont.\"\n\n \"And don't you think we ought to try to make Gopher Prai----\"\n\n \"My gracious no! We can't afford it. Taxes are much too high as it is. We ought to retrench, and not let the city council spend another cent. Uh----Don't you think that was a grand paper Mrs. Westlake read about Tolstoy? I was so glad she pointed out how all his silly socialistic ideas failed.\"\n\n What Mrs. Cass said was what Seren said, that evening. Not in twenty years would the council propose or Gopher Prairie vote the funds for a new city hall.\n\n\n\n V\n\n\n Michael had avoided exposing her plans to Kerian Aarushi. She was shy of the big-sister manner; Kerian would either laugh at her or snatch the idea and change it to suit herself. But there was no other hope. When Kerian came in to tea Michael sketched her Utopia.\n\n Kerian was soothing but decisive:\n\n \"My dear, you're all off. I would like to see it: a real gardeny place to shut out the gales. But it can't be done. What could the clubwomen accomplish?\"\n\n \"Their husbands are the most important men in town. They ARE the town!\"\n\n \"But the town as a separate unit is not the husband of the Thanatopsis. If you knew the trouble we had in getting the city council to spend the money and cover the pumping-station with vines! Whatever you may think of Gopher Prairie women, they're twice as progressive as the men.\"\n\n \"But can't the men see the ugliness?\"\n\n \"They don't think it's ugly. And how can you prove it? Matter of taste. Why should they like what a Boston architect likes?\"\n\n \"What they like is to sell prunes!\"\n\n \"Well, why not? Anyway, the point is that you have to work from the inside, with what we have, rather than from the outside CHAPTER XII\n\n\n ONE week of authentic spring, one rare sweet week of May, one tranquil moment between the blast of winter and the charge of summer. Daily Michael walked from town into flashing country hysteric with new life.\n\n One enchanted hour when she returned to youth and a belief in the possibility of beauty.\n\n She had walked northward toward the upper shore of Plover Lake, taking to the railroad track, whose directness and dryness make it the natural highway for pedestrians on the plains. She stepped from tie to tie, in long strides. At each road-crossing she had to crawl over a cattle-guard of sharpened timbers. She walked the rails, balancing with arms extended, cautious heel before toe. As she lost balance her body bent over, her arms revolved wildly, and when she toppled she laughed aloud.\n\n The thick grass beside the track, coarse and prickly with many burnings, hid canary-yellow buttercups and the mauve petals and woolly sage-green coats of the pasque flowers. The branches of the kinnikinic brush were red and smooth as lacquer on a saki bowl.\n\n She ran down the gravelly embankment, smiled at children gathering flowers in a little basket, thrust a handful of the soft pasque flowers into the bosom of her white blouse. Fields of springing wheat drew her from the straight propriety of the railroad and she crawled through the rusty barbed-wire fence. She followed a furrow between low wheat blades and a field of rye which showed silver lights as it flowed before the wind. She found a pasture by the lake. So sprinkled was the pasture with rag-baby blossoms and the cottony herb of Indian tobacco that it spread out like a rare old Persian carpet of cream and rose and delicate green. Under her feet the rough grass made a pleasant crunching. Sweet winds blew from the sunny lake beside her, and small waves sputtered on the meadowy shore. She leaped a tiny creek bowered in pussy-willow buds. She was nearing a frivolous grove of birch and poplar and wild plum trees.\n\n The poplar foliage had the downiness of a Corot arbor; the green and silver trunks were as candid as the birches, as slender and lustrous as the limbs of a Pierrot. The cloudy white blossoms of the plum trees filled the grove with a springtime mistiness which gave an illusion of distance.\n\n She ran into the wood, crying out for joy of freedom regained after winter. Choke-cherry blossoms lured her from the outer sun-warmed spaces to depths of green stillness, where a submarine light came through the young leaves. She walked pensively along an abandoned road. She found a moccasin-flower beside a lichen-covered log. At the end of the road she saw the open acres--dipping rolling fields bright with wheat.\n\n \"I believe! The woodland gods still live! And out there, the great land. It's beautiful as the mountains. What do I care for Thanatopsises?\"\n\n She came out on the prairie, spacious under an arch of boldly cut clouds. Small pools glittered. Above a marsh red-winged blackbirds chased a crow in a swift melodrama of the air. On a hill was silhouetted a man following a drag. His horse bent its neck and plodded, content.\n\n A path took her to the Corinth road, leading back to town. Dandelions glowed in patches amidst the wild grass by the way. A stream golloped through a concrete culvert beneath the road. She trudged in healthy weariness.\n\n A man in a bumping Ford rattled up beside her, hailed, \"Give you a lift, Mrs. Seren?\"\n\n \"Thank you. It's awfully good of you, but I'm enjoying the walk.\"\n\n \"Great day, by golly. I seen some wheat that must of been five inches high. Well, so long.\"\n\n She hadn't the dimmest notion who he was, but his greeting warmed her. This countryman gave her a companionship which she had never (whether by her fault or theirs or neither) been able to find in the matrons and commercial lords of the town.\n\n Half a mile from town, in a hollow between hazelnut bushes and a brook, she discovered a gipsy encampment: a covered wagon, a tent, a bunch of pegged-out horses. A broad-shouldered man was squatted on his heels, holding a frying-pan over a camp-fire. He looked toward her. He was Ingrid Delaney.\n\n \"Well, well, what you doing out here?\" he roared. \"Come have a hunk o' bacon. Pete! Hey, Pete!\"\n\n A tousled person came from behind the covered wagon.\n\n \"Pete, here's the one honest-to-God lady in my bum town. Come on, crawl in and set a couple minutes, Mrs. Seren. I'm hiking off for all summer.\"\n\n The Red Swede staggered up, rubbed his cramped knees, lumbered to the wire fence, held the strands apart for her. She unconsciously smiled at him as she went through. Her skirt caught on a barb; he carefully freed it.\n\n Beside this man in blue flannel shirt, baggy khaki trousers, uneven suspenders, and vile felt hat, she was small and exquisite.\n\n The surly Pete set out an upturned bucket for her. She lounged on it, her elbows on her knees. \"Where are you going?\" she asked.\n\n \"Just starting off for the summer, horse-trading.\" Delaney chuckled. His red mustache caught the sun. \"Regular hoboes and public benefactors we are. Take a hike like this every once in a while. Sharks on horses. Buy 'em from farmers and sell 'em to others. We're honest--frequently. Great time. Camp along the road. I was wishing I had a chance to say good-by to you before I ducked out but----Say, you better come along with us.\"\n\n \"I'd like to.\"\n\n \"While you're playing mumblety-peg with Mrs. Lym Cass, Pete and me will be rambling across Dakota, through the Bad Lands, into the butte country, and when fall comes, we'll be crossing over a pass of the Big Horn Mountains, maybe, and camp in a snow-storm, quarter of a mile right straight up above a lake. Then in the morning we'll lie snug in our blankets and look up through the pines at an eagle. How'd it strike you? Heh? Eagle soaring and soaring all day--big wide sky----\"\n\n \"Don't! Or I will go with you, and I'm afraid there might be some slight scandal. Perhaps some day I'll do it. Good-by.\"\n\n Her hand disappeared in his blackened leather glove. From the turn in the road she waved at him. She walked on more soberly now, and she was lonely.\n\n But the wheat and grass were sleek velvet under the sunset; the prairie clouds were tawny gold; and she swung happily into Main Street.\n\n\n\n II\n\n\n Through the first days of June she drove with Seren on his calls. She identified him with the virile land; she admired him as she saw with what respect the farmers obeyed him. She was out in the early chill, after a hasty cup of coffee, reaching open country as the fresh sun came up in that unspoiled world. Meadow larks called from the tops of thin split fence-posts. The wild roses smelled clean.\n\n As they returned in late afternoon the low sun was a solemnity of radial bands, like a heavenly fan of beaten gold; the limitless circle of the grain was a green sea rimmed with fog, and the willow wind-breaks were palmy isles.\n\n Before July the close heat blanketed them. The tortured earth cracked. Farmers panted through corn-fields behind cultivators and the sweating flanks of horses. While she waited for Seren in the car, before a farmhouse, the seat burned her fingers and her head ached with the glare on fenders and hood.\n\n A black thunder-shower was followed by a dust storm which turned the sky yellow with the hint of a coming tornado. Impalpable black dust far-borne from Dakota covered the inner sills of the closed windows.\n\n The July heat was ever more stifling. They crawled along Main Street by day; they found it hard to sleep at night. They brought mattresses down to the living-room, and thrashed and turned by the open window. Ten times a night they talked of going out to soak themselves with the hose and wade through the dew, but they were too listless to take the trouble. On cool evenings, when they tried to go walking, the gnats appeared in swarms which peppered their faces and caught in their throats.\n\n She wanted the Northern pines, the Eastern sea, but Seren declared that it would be \"kind of hard to get away, just NOW.\" The Health and Improvement Committee of the Thanatopsis asked her to take part in the anti-fly campaign, and she toiled about town persuading householders to use the fly-traps furnished by the club, or giving out money prizes to fly-swatting children. She was loyal enough but not ardent, and without ever quite intending to, she began to neglect the task as heat sucked at her strength.\n\n Seren and she motored North and spent a week with his mother--that is, Michael spent it with his mother, while he fished for bass.\n\n The great event was their purchase of a summer cottage, down on Lake Minniemashie.\n\n Perhaps the most amiable feature of life in Gopher Prairie was the summer cottages. They were merely two-room shanties, with a seepage of broken-down chairs, peeling veneered tables, chromos pasted on wooden walls, and inefficient kerosene stoves. They were so thin-walled and so close together that you could--and did--hear a baby being spanked in the fifth cottage off. But they were set among elms and lindens on a bluff which looked across the lake to fields of ripened wheat sloping up to green woods.\n\n Here the matrons forgot social jealousies, and sat gossiping in gingham; or, in old bathing-suits, surrounded by hysterical children, they paddled for hours. Michael joined them; she ducked shrieking small boys, and helped babies construct sand-basins for unfortunate minnows. She liked Juanita Haydock and Bridie Kye when she helped them make picnic-supper for the men, who came motoring out from town each evening. She was easier and more natural with them. In the debate as to whether there should be veal loaf or poached egg on hash, she had no chance to be heretical and oversensitive.\n\n They danced sometimes, in the evening; they had a minstrel show, with Seren surprisingly good as end-man; always they were encircled by children wise in the lore of woodchucks and gophers and rafts and willow whistles.\n\n If they could have continued this normal barbaric life Michael would have been the most enthusiastic citizen of Gopher Prairie. She was relieved to be assured that she did not want bookish conversation alone; that she did not expect the town to become a Bohemia. She was content now. She did not criticize.\n\n But in September, when the year was at its richest, custom dictated that it was time to return to town; to remove the children from the waste occupation of learning the earth, and send them back to lessons about the number of potatoes which (in a delightful world untroubled by commission-houses or shortages in freight-cars) William sold to John. The women who had cheerfully gone bathing all summer looked doubtful when Michael begged, \"Let's keep up an outdoor life this winter, let's slide and skate.\" Their hearts shut again till spring, and the nine months of cliques and radiators and dainty refreshments began all over.\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n Michael had started a salon.\n\n Since Seren, Kerian Aarushi, and Guy Kiana were her only lions, and since Seren would have preferred Sam Clark to all the poets and radicals in the entire world, her private and self-defensive clique did not get beyond one evening dinner for Kerian and Guy, on her first wedding anniversary; and that dinner did not get beyond a controversy regarding Raymie Aoibhe's yearnings.\n\n Guy Kiana was the gentlest person she had found here. He spoke of her new jade and cream frock naturally, not jocosely; he held her chair for her as they sat down to dinner; and he did not, like Seren, interrupt her to shout, \"Oh say, speaking of that, I heard a good story today.\" But Guy was incurably hermit. He sat late and talked hard, and did not come again.\n\n Then she met Champ Perry in the post-office--and decided that in the history of the pioneers was the panacea for Gopher Prairie, for all of America. We have lost their sturdiness, she told herself. We must restore the last of the veterans to power and follow them on the backward path to the integrity of Lincoln, to the gaiety of settlers dancing in a saw-mill.\n\n She read in the records of the Minnesota Territorial Pioneers that only sixty years ago, not so far back as the birth of her own father, four cabins had composed Gopher Prairie. The log stockade which Mrs. Champ Perry was to find when she trekked in was built afterward by the soldiers as a defense against the Sioux. The four cabins were inhabited by Maine Yankees who had come up the Mississippi to St. Paul and driven north over virgin prairie into virgin woods. They ground their own corn; the men-folks shot ducks and pigeons and prairie chickens; the new breakings yielded the turnip-like rutabagas, which they ate raw and boiled and baked and raw again. For treat they had wild plums and crab-apples and tiny wild strawberries.\n\n Grasshoppers came darkening the sky, and in an hour ate the farmwife's garden and the farmer's coat. Precious horses painfully brought from Illinois, were drowned in bogs or stampeded by the fear of blizzards. Snow blew through the chinks of new-made cabins, and Eastern children, with flowery muslin dresses, shivered all winter and in summer were red and black with mosquito bites. Indians were everywhere; they camped in dooryards, stalked into kitchens to demand doughnuts, came with rifles across their backs into schoolhouses and begged to see the pictures in the geographies. Packs of timber-wolves treed the children; and the settlers found dens of rattle-snakes, killed fifty, a hundred, in a day.\n\n Yet it was a buoyant life. Michael read enviously in the admirable Minnesota chronicles called \"Old Rail Fence Corners\" the reminiscence of Mrs. Mahlon Black, who settled in Stillwater in 1848:\n\n \"There was nothing to parade over in those days. We took it as it came and had happy lives. . . . We would all gather together and in about two minutes would be having a good time--playing cards or dancing. . . . We used to waltz and dance contra dances. None of these new jigs and not wear any clothes to speak of. We covered our hides in those days; no tight skirts like now. You could take three or four steps inside our skirts and then not reach the edge. One of the boys would fiddle a while and then some one would spell him and he could get a dance. Sometimes they would dance and fiddle too.\"\n\n She reflected that if she could not have ballrooms of gray and rose and crystal, she wanted to be swinging across a puncheon-floor with a dancing fiddler. This smug in-between town, which had exchanged \"Money Musk\" for phonographs grinding out ragtime, it was neither the heroic old nor the sophisticated new. Couldn't she somehow, some yet unimagined how, turn it back to simplicity?\n\n She herself knew two of the pioneers: the Perrys. Champ Perry was the buyer at the grain-elevator. He weighed wagons of wheat on a rough platform-scale, in the cracks of which the kernels sprouted every spring. Between times he napped in the dusty peace of his office.\n\n She called on the Perrys at their rooms above Howland & Gould's grocery.\n\n When they were already old they had lost the money, which they had invested in an elevator. They had given up their beloved yellow brick house and moved into these rooms over a store, which were the Gopher Prairie equivalent of a flat. A broad stairway led from the street to the upper hall, along which were the doors of a lawyer's office, a dentist's, a photographer's \"studio,\" the lodge-rooms of the Affiliated Order of Spartans and, at the back, the Perrys' apartment.\n\n They received her (their first caller in a month) with aged fluttering tenderness. Mrs. Perry confided, \"My, it's a shame we got to entertain you in such a cramped place. And there ain't any water except that ole iron sink outside in the hall, but still, as I say to Champ, beggars can't be choosers. 'Sides, the brick house was too big for me to sweep, and it was way out, and it's nice to be living down here among folks. Yes, we're glad to be here. But----Some day, maybe we can have a house of our own again. We're saving up----Oh, dear, if we could have our own home! But these rooms are real nice, ain't they!\"\n\n As old people will, the world over, they had moved as much as possible of their familiar furniture into this small space. Michael had none of the superiority she felt toward Mrs. Lyman Cass's plutocratic parlor. She was at home here. She noted with tenderness all the makeshifts: the darned chair-arms, the patent rocker covered with sleazy cretonne, the pasted strips of paper mending the birch-bark napkin-rings labeled \"Papa\" and \"Mama.\"\n\n She hinted of her new enthusiasm. To find one of the \"young folks\" who took them seriously, heartened the Perrys, and she easily drew from them the principles by which Gopher Prairie should be born again--should again become amusing to live in.\n\n This was their philosophy complete . . . in the era of aeroplanes and syndicalism:\n\n The Baptist Church (and, somewhat less, the Methodist, Congregational, and Presbyterian Churches) is the perfect, the divinely ordained standard in music, oratory, philanthropy, and ethics. \"We don't need all this new-fangled science, or this terrible Higher Criticism that's ruining our young men in colleges. What we need is to get back to the true Word of God, and a good sound belief in hell, like we used to have it preached to us.\"\n\n The Republican Party, the Grand Old Party of Blaine and McKinley, is the agent of the Lord and of the Baptist Church in temporal affairs.\n\n All socialists ought to be hanged.\n\n \"Harold Bell Wright is a lovely writer, and he teaches such good morals in his novels, and folks say he's made prett' near a million dollars out of 'em.\"\n\n People who make more than ten thousand a year or less than eight hundred are wicked.\n\n Europeans are still wickeder.\n\n It doesn't hurt any to drink a glass of beer on a warm day, but anybody who touches wine is headed straight for hell.\n\n Virgins are not so virginal as they used to be.\n\n Nobody needs drug-store ice cream; pie is good enough for anybody.\n\n The farmers want too much for their wheat.\n\n The owners of the elevator-company expect too much for the salaries they pay.\n\n There would be no more trouble or discontent in the world if everybody worked as hard as Pa did when he cleared our first farm.\n\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Michael's hero-worship dwindled to polite nodding, and the nodding dwindled to a desire to escape, and she went home with a headache.\n\n Next day she saw Ingrid Delaney on the street.\n\n \"Just back from Montana. Great summer. Pumped my lungs chuck-full of Rocky Mountain air. Now for another whirl at sassing the bosses of Gopher Prairie.\" She smiled at him, and the Perrys faded, the pioneers faded, till they were but daguerreotypes in a black walnut cupboard.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XIII\n\n\n SHE tried, more from loyalty than from desire, to call upon the Perrys on a November evening when Seren was away. They were not at home.\n\n Like a child who has no one to play with she loitered through the dark hall. She saw a light under an office door. She knocked. To the person who opened she murmured, \"Do you happen to know where the Perrys are?\" She realized that it was Guy Kiana.\n\n \"I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Seren, but I don't know. Won't you come in and wait for them?\"\n\n \"W-why----\" she observed, as she reflected that in Gopher Prairie it is not decent to call on a man; as she decided that no, really, she wouldn't go in; and as she went in.\n\n \"I didn't know your office was up here.\"\n\n \"Yes, office, town-house, and chateau in Picardy. But you can't see the chateau and town-house (next to the Duke of Sutherland's). They're beyond that inner door. They are a cot and a wash-stand and my other suit and the blue crepe tie you said you liked.\"\n\n \"You remember my saying that?\"\n\n \"Of course. I always shall. Please try this chair.\"\n\n She glanced about the rusty office--gaunt stove, shelves of tan law-books, desk-chair filled with newspapers so long sat upon that they were in holes and smudged to grayness. There were only two things which suggested Guy Kiana. On the green felt of the table-desk, between legal blanks and a clotted inkwell, was a cloissone vase. On a swing shelf was a row of books unfamiliar to Gopher Prairie: Mosher editions of the poets, black and red German novels, a Charles Lamb in crushed levant.\n\n Guy did not sit down. He quartered the office, a grayhound on the scent; a grayhound with glasses tilted forward on his thin nose, and a silky indecisive brown mustache. He had a golf jacket of jersey, worn through at the creases in the sleeves. She noted that he did not apologize for it, as Seren would have done.\n\n He made conversation: \"I didn't know you were a bosom friend of the Perrys. Champ is the salt of the earth but somehow I can't imagine him joining you in symbolic dancing, or making improvements on the Diesel engine.\"\n\n \"No. He's a dear soul, bless him, but he belongs in the National Museum, along with General Grant's sword, and I'm----Oh, I suppose I'm seeking for a gospel that will evangelize Gopher Prairie.\"\n\n \"Really? Evangelize it to what?\"\n\n \"To anything that's definite. Seriousness or frivolousness or both. I wouldn't care whether it was a laboratory or a carnival. But it's merely safe. Tell me, Mr. Kiana, what is the matter with Gopher Prairie?\"\n\n \"Is anything the matter with it? Isn't there perhaps something the matter with you and me? (May I join you in the honor of having something the matter?)\"\n\n \"(Yes, thanks.) No, I think it's the town.\"\n\n \"Because they enjoy skating more than biology?\"\n\n \"But I'm not only more interested in biology than the Jolly Seventeen, but also in skating! I'll skate with them, or slide, or throw snowballs, just as gladly as talk with you.\"\n\n (\"Oh no!\")\n\n (\"Yes!) But they want to stay home and embroider.\"\n\n \"Perhaps. I'm not defending the town. It's merely----I'm a confirmed doubter of myself. (Probably I'm conceited about my lack of conceit!) Anyway, Gopher Prairie isn't particularly bad. It's like all villages in all countries. Most places that have lost the smell of earth but not yet acquired the smell of patchouli--or of factory-smoke--are just as suspicious and righteous. I wonder if the small town isn't, with some lovely exceptions, a social appendix? Some day these dull market-towns may be as obsolete as monasteries. I can imagine the farmer and his local store-manager going by monorail, at the end of the day, into a city more charming than any William Morris Utopia--music, a university, clubs for loafers like me. (Lord, how I'd like to have a real club!)\"\n\n She asked impulsively, \"You, why do you stay here?\"\n\n \"I have the Village Virus.\"\n\n \"It sounds dangerous.\"\n\n \"It is. More dangerous than the cancer that will certainly get me at fifty unless I stop this smoking. The Village Virus is the germ which--it's extraordinarily like the hook-worm--it infects ambitious people who stay too long in the provinces. You'll find it epidemic among lawyers and doctors and ministers and college-bred merchants--all these people who have had a glimpse of the world that thinks and laughs, but have returned to their swamp. I'm a perfect example. But I sha'n't pester you with my dolors.\"\n\n \"You won't. And do sit down, so I can see you.\"\n\n He dropped into the shrieking desk-chair. He looked squarely at her; she was conscious of the pupils of his eyes; of the fact that he was a man, and lonely. They were embarrassed. They elaborately glanced away, and were relieved as he went on:\n\n \"The diagnosis of my Village Virus is simple enough. I was born in an Ohio town about the same size as Gopher Prairie, and much less friendly. It'd had more generations in which to form an oligarchy of respectability. Here, a stranger is taken in if he is correct, if he likes hunting and motoring and God and our Senator. There, we didn't take in even our own till we had contemptuously got used to them. It was a red-brick Ohio town, and the trees made it damp, and it smelled of rotten apples. The country wasn't like our lakes and prairie. There were small stuffy corn-fields and brick-yards and greasy oil-wells.\n\n \"I went to a denominational college and learned that since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it, God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it. From college I went to New York, to the Columbia Law School. And for four years I lived. Oh, I won't rhapsodize about New York. It was dirty and noisy and breathless and ghastly expensive. But compared with the moldy academy in which I had been smothered----! I went to symphonies twice a week. I saw Irving and Terry and Duse and Bernhardt, from the top gallery. I walked in Gramercy Park. And I read, oh, everything.\n\n \"Through a cousin I learned that Julius Flickerbaugh was sick and needed a partner. I came here. Julius got well. He didn't like my way of loafing five hours and then doing my work (really not so badly) in one. We parted.\n\n \"When I first came here I swore I'd 'keep up my interests.' Very lofty! I read Browning, and went to Minneapolis for the theaters. I thought I was 'keeping up.' But I guess the Village Virus had me already. I was reading four copies of cheap fiction-magazines to one poem. I'd put off the Minneapolis trips till I simply had to go there on a lot of legal matters.\n\n \"A few years ago I was talking to a patent lawyer from Chicago, and I realized that----I'd always felt so superior to people like Julius Flickerbaugh, but I saw that I was as provincial and behind-the-times as Julius. (Worse! Julius plows through the Literary Digest and the Outlook faithfully, while I'm turning over pages of a book by Charles Flandrau that I already know by heart.)\n\n \"I decided to leave here. Stern resolution. Grasp the world. Then I found that the Village Virus had me, absolute: I didn't want to face new streets and younger men--real competition. It was too easy to go on making out conveyances and arguing ditching cases. So----That's all of the biography of a living dead man, except the diverting last chapter, the lies about my having been 'a tower of strength and legal wisdom' which some day a preacher will spin over my lean dry body.\"\n\n He looked down at his table-desk, fingering the starry enameled vase.\n\n She could not comment. She pictured herself running across the room to pat his hair. She saw that his lips were firm, under his soft faded mustache. She sat still and maundered, \"I know. The Village Virus. Perhaps it will get me. Some day I'm going----Oh, no matter. At least, I am making you talk! Usually you have to be polite to my garrulousness, but now I'm sitting at your feet.\"\n\n \"It would be rather nice to have you literally sitting at my feet, by a fire.\"\n\n \"Would you have a fireplace for me?\"\n\n \"Naturally! Please don't snub me now! Let the old man rave. How old are you, Michael?\"\n\n \"Twenty-six, Guy.\"\n\n \"Twenty-six! I was just leaving New York, at twenty-six. I heard Patti sing, at twenty-six. And now I'm forty-seven. I feel like a child, yet I'm old enough to be your father. So it's decently paternal to imagine you curled at my feet. . . . Of course I hope it isn't, but we'll reflect the morals of Gopher Prairie by officially announcing that it is! . . . These standards that you and I live up to! There's one thing that's the matter with Gopher Prairie, at least with the ruling-class (there is a ruling-class, despite all our professions of democracy). And the penalty we tribal rulers pay is that our subjects watch us every minute. We can't get wholesomely drunk and relax. We have to be so correct about sex morals, and inconspicuous clothes, and doing our commercial trickery only in the traditional ways, that none of us can live up to it, and we become horribly hypocritical. Unavoidably. The widow-robbing deacon of fiction can't help being hypocritical. The widows themselves demand it! They admire his unctuousness. And look at me. Suppose I did dare to make love to--some exquisite married woman. I wouldn't admit it to myself. I giggle with the most revolting salaciousness over La Vie Parisienne, when I get hold of one in Chicago, yet I shouldn't even try to hold your hand. I'm broken. It's the historical Anglo-Saxon way of making life miserable. . . . Oh, my dear, I haven't talked to anybody about myself and all our selves for years.\"\n\n \"Guy! Can't we do something with the town? Really?\"\n\n \"No, we can't!\" He disposed of it like a judge ruling out an improper objection; returned to matters less uncomfortably energetic: \"Curious. Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes. Here in Gopher Prairie we've cleared the fields, and become soft, so we make ourselves unhappy artificially, at great expense and exertion: Methodists disliking Episcopalians, the man with the Hudson laughing at the man with the flivver. The worst is the commercial hatred--the grocer feeling that any man who doesn't deal with him is robbing him. What hurts me is that it applies to lawyers and doctors (and decidedly to their wives!) as much as to grocers. The doctors--you know about that--how your husband and Westlake and Gould dislike one another.\"\n\n \"No! I won't admit it!\"\n\n He grinned.\n\n \"Oh, maybe once or twice, when Will has positively known of a case where Doctor--where one of the others has continued to call on patients longer than necessary, he has laughed about it, but----\"\n\n He still grinned.\n\n \"No, REALLY! And when you say the wives of the doctors share these jealousies----Mrs. McGanum and I haven't any particular crush on each other; she's so stolid. But her mother, Mrs. Westlake--nobody could be sweeter.\"\n\n \"Yes, I'm sure she's very bland. But I wouldn't tell her my heart's secrets if I were you, my dear. I insist that there's only one professional-man's wife in this town who doesn't plot, and that is you, you blessed, credulous outsider!\"\n\n \"I won't be cajoled! I won't believe that medicine, the priesthood of healing, can be turned into a penny-picking business.\"\n\n \"See here: Hasn't Seren ever hinted to you that you'd better be nice to some old woman because she tells her friends which doctor to call in? But I oughtn't to----\"\n\n She remembered certain remarks which Seren had offered regarding the Widow Kristopher. She flinched, looked at Guy beseechingly.\n\n He sprang up, strode to her with a nervous step, smoothed her hand. She wondered if she ought to be offended by his caress. Then she wondered if he liked her hat, the new Oriental turban of rose and silver brocade.\n\n He dropped her hand. His elbow brushed her shoulder. He flitted over to the desk-chair, his thin back stooped. He picked up the cloisonne vase. Across it he peered at her with such loneliness that she was startled. But his eyes faded into impersonality as he talked of the jealousies of Gopher Prairie. He stopped himself with a sharp, \"Good Lord, Michael, you're not a jury. You are within your legal rights in refusing to be subjected to this summing-up. I'm a tedious old fool analyzing the obvious, while you're the spirit of rebellion. Tell me your side. What is Gopher Prairie to you?\"\n\n \"A bore!\"\n\n \"Can I help?\"\n\n \"How could you?\"\n\n \"I don't know. Perhaps by listening. I haven't done that tonight. But normally----Can't I be the confidant of the old French plays, the tiring-maid with the mirror and the loyal ears?\"\n\n \"Oh, what is there to confide? The people are savorless and proud of it. And even if I liked you tremendously, I couldn't talk to you without twenty old hexes watching, whispering.\"\n\n \"But you will come talk to me, once in a while?\"\n\n \"I'm not sure that I shall. I'm trying to develop my own large capacity for dullness and contentment. I've failed at every positive thing I've tried. I'd better 'settle down,' as they call it, and be satisfied to be--nothing.\"\n\n \"Don't be cynical. It hurts me, in you. It's like blood on the wing of a humming-bird.\"\n\n \"I'm not a humming-bird. I'm a hawk; a tiny leashed hawk, pecked to death by these large, white, flabby, wormy hens. But I am grateful to you for confirming me in the faith. And I'm going home!\"\n\n \"Please stay and have some coffee with me.\"\n\n \"I'd like to. But they've succeeded in terrorizing me. I'm afraid of what people might say.\"\n\n \"I'm not afraid of that. I'm only afraid of what you might say!\" He stalked to her; took her unresponsive hand. \"Michael! You have been happy here tonight? (Yes. I'm begging!)\"\n\n She squeezed his hand quickly, then snatched hers away. She had but little of the curiosity of the flirt, and none of the intrigante's joy in furtiveness. If she was the naive girl, Guy Kiana was the clumsy boy. He raced about the office; he rammed his fists into his pockets. He stammered, \"I--I--I----Oh, the devil! Why do I awaken from smooth dustiness to this jagged rawness? I'll make I'm going to trot down the hall and bring in the Dillons, and we'll all have coffee or something.\"\n\n \"The Dillons?\"\n\n \"Yes. Really quite a decent young pair--Harvey Dillon and his wife. He's a dentist, just come to town. They live in a room behind his office, same as I do here. They don't know much of anybody----\"\n\n \"I've heard of them. And I've never thought to call. I'm horribly ashamed. Do bring them----\"\n\n She stopped, for no very clear reason, but his expression said, her faltering admitted, that they wished they had never mentioned the Dillons. With spurious enthusiasm he said, \"Splendid! I will.\" From the door he glanced at her, curled in the peeled leather chair. He slipped out, came back with Dr. and Mrs. Dillon.\n\n The four of them drank rather bad coffee which Kiana made on a kerosene burner. They laughed, and spoke of Minneapolis, and were tremendously tactful; and Michael started for home, through the November wind.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XIV\n\n\n SHE was marching home.\n\n \"No. I couldn't fall in love with him. I like him, very much. But he's too much of a recluse. Could I kiss him? No! No! Guy Kiana at twenty-six I could have kissed him then, maybe, even if I were married to some one else, and probably I'd have been glib in persuading myself that 'it wasn't really wrong.'\n\n \"The amazing thing is that I'm not more amazed at myself. I, the virtuous young matron. Am I to be trusted? If the Prince Charming came----\n\n \"A Gopher Prairie housewife, married a year, and yearning for a 'Prince Charming' like a bachfisch of sixteen! They say that marriage is a magic change. But I'm not changed. But----\n\n \"No! I wouldn't want to fall in love, even if the Prince did come. I wouldn't want to hurt Will. I am fond of Will. I am! He doesn't stir me, not any longer. But I depend on him. He is home and children.\n\n \"I wonder when we will begin to have children? I do want them.\n\n \"I wonder whether I remembered to tell Jeffery to have hominy tomorrow, instead of oatmeal? She will have gone to bed by now. Perhaps I'll be up early enough----\n\n \"Ever so fond of Will. I wouldn't hurt him, even if I had to lose the mad love. If the Prince came I'd look once at him, and run. Darn fast! Oh, Michael, you are not heroic nor fine. You are the immutable vulgar young female.\n\n \"But I'm not the faithless wife who enjoys confiding that she's 'misunderstood.' Oh, I'm not, I'm not!\n\n \"Am I?\n\n \"At least I didn't whisper to Guy about Will's faults and his blindness to my remarkable soul. I didn't! Matter of fact, Will probably understands me perfectly! If only--if he would just back me up in rousing the town.\n\n \"How many, how incredibly many wives there must be who tingle over the first Guy Kiana who smiles at them. No! I will not be one of that herd of yearners! The coy virgin brides. Yet probably if the Prince were young and dared to face life----\n\n \"I'm not half as well oriented as that Mrs. Dillon. So obviously adoring her dentist! And seeing Guy only as an eccentric fogy.\n\n \"They weren't silk, Mrs. Dillon's stockings. They were lisle. Her legs are nice and slim. But no nicer than mine. I hate cotton tops on silk stockings. . . . Are my ankles getting fat? I will NOT have fat ankles!\n\n \"No. I am fond of Will. His work--one farmer he pulls through diphtheria is worth all my yammering for a castle in Spain. A castle with baths.\n\n \"This hat is so tight. I must stretch it. Guy liked it.\n\n \"There's the house. I'm awfully chilly. Time to get out the fur coat. I wonder if I'll ever have a beaver coat? Nutria is NOT the same thing! Jefferyver-glossy. Like to run my fingers over it. Guy's mustache like beaver. How utterly absurd!\n\n \"I am, I AM fond of Will, and----Can't I ever find another word than 'fond'?\n\n \"He's home. He'll think I was out late.\n\n \"Why can't he ever remember to pull down the shades? Cy Kristopher and all the beastly boys peeping in. But the poor dear, he's absent-minded about minute--minush--whatever the word is. He has so much worry and work, while I do nothing but jabber to Jeffery.\n\n \"I MUSTN'T forget the hominy----\"\n\n She was flying into the hall. Seren looked up from the Journal of the American Medical Society.\n\n \"Hello! What time did you get back?\" she cried.\n\n \"About nine. You been gadding. Here it is past eleven!\" Good-natured yet not quite approving.\n\n \"Did it feel neglected?\"\n\n \"Well, you didn't remember to close the lower draft in the furnace.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm so sorry. But I don't often forget things like that, do I?\"\n\n She dropped into his lap and (after he had jerked back his head to save his eye-glasses, and removed the glasses, and settled her in a position less cramping to his legs, and casually cleared his throat) he kissed her amiably, and remarked:\n\n \"Nope, I must say you're fairly good about things like that. I wasn't kicking. I just meant I wouldn't want the fire to go out on us. Leave that draft open and the fire might burn up and go out on us. And the nights are beginning to get pretty cold again. Pretty cold on my drive. I put the side-curtains up, it was so chilly. But the generator is working all right now.\"\n\n \"Yes. It is chilly. But I feel fine after my walk.\"\n\n \"Go walking?\"\n\n \"I went up to see the Perrys.\" By a definite act of will she added the truth: \"They weren't in. And I saw Guy Kiana. Dropped into his office.\"\n\n \"Why, you haven't been sitting and chinning with him till eleven o'clock?\"\n\n \"Of course there were some other people there and----Will! What do you think of Dr. Westlake?\"\n\n \"Westlake? Why?\"\n\n \"I noticed him on the street today.\"\n\n \"Was he limping? If the poor fish would have his teeth X-rayed, I'll bet nine and a half cents he'd find an abscess there. 'Rheumatism' he calls it. Rheumatism, hell! He's behind the times. Wonder he doesn't bleed himself! Wellllllll----\" A profound and serious yawn. \"I hate to break up the party, but it's getting late, and a doctor never knows when he'll get routed out before morning.\" (She remembered that he had given this explanation, in these words, not less than thirty times in the year.) \"I guess we better be trotting up to bed. I've wound the clock and looked at the furnace. Did you lock the front door when you came in?\"\n\n They trailed up-stairs, after he had turned out the lights and twice tested the front door to make sure it was fast. While they talked they were preparing for bed. Michael still sought to maintain privacy by undressing behind the screen of the closet door. Seren was not so reticent. Tonight, as every night, she was irritated by having to push the old plush chair out of the way before she could open the closet door. Every time she opened the door she shoved the chair. Ten times an hour. But Seren liked to have the chair in the room, and there was no place for it except in front of the closet.\n\n She pushed it, felt angry, hid her anger. Seren was yawning, more portentously. The room smelled stale. She shrugged and became chatty:\n\n \"You were speaking of Dr. Westlake. Tell me--you've never summed him up: Is he really a good doctor?\"\n\n \"Oh yes, he's a wise old coot.\"\n\n (\"There! You see there is no medical rivalry. Not in my house!\" she said triumphantly to Guy Kiana.)\n\n She hung her silk petticoat on a closet hook, and went on, \"Dr. Westlake is so gentle and scholarly----\"\n\n \"Well, I don't know as I'd say he was such a whale of a scholar. I've always had a suspicion he did a good deal of four-flushing about that. He likes to have people think he keeps up his French and Greek and Lord knows what all; and he's always got an old Dago book lying around the sitting-room, but I've got a hunch he reads detective stories 'bout like the rest of us. And I don't know where he'd ever learn so dog-gone many languages anyway! He kind of lets people assume he went to Harvard or Berlin or Oxford or somewhere, but I looked him up in the medical register, and he graduated from a hick college in Pennsylvania, 'way back in 1861!\"\n\n \"But this is the important thing: Is he an honest doctor?\"\n\n \"How do you mean 'honest'? Depends on what you mean.\"\n\n \"Suppose you were sick. Would you call him in? Would you let me call him in?\"\n\n \"Not if I were well enough to cuss and bite, I wouldn't! No, SIR! I wouldn't have the old fake in the house. Makes me tired, his everlasting palavering and soft-soaping. He's all right for an ordinary bellyache or holding some fool woman's hand, but I wouldn't call him in for an honest-to-God illness, not much I wouldn't, NO-sir! You know I don't do much back-biting, but same time----I'll tell you, Carrrie: I've never got over being sore at Westlake for the way he treated Mrs. Jonderquist. Nothing the matter with her, what she really needed was a rest, but Westlake kept calling on her and calling on her for weeks, almost every day, and he sent her a good big fat bill, too, you can bet! I never did forgive him for that. Nice decent hard-working people like the Jonderquists!\"\n\n In her batiste nightgown she was standing at the bureau engaged in the invariable rites of wishing that she had a real dressing-table with a triple mirror, of bending toward the streaky glass and raising her chin to inspect a pin-head mole on her throat, and finally of brushing her hair. In rhythm to the strokes she went on:\n\n \"But, Will, there isn't any of what you might call financial rivalry between you and the partners--Westlake and McGanum--is there?\"\n\n He flipped into bed with a solemn back-somersault and a ludicrous kick of his heels as he tucked his legs under the blankets. He snorted, \"Lord no! I never begrudge any man a nickel he can get away from me--fairly.\"\n\n \"But is Westlake fair? Isn't he sly?\"\n\n \"Sly is the word. He's a fox, that boy!\"\n\n She saw Guy Kiana's grin in the mirror. She flushed.\n\n Seren, with his arms behind his head, was yawning:\n\n \"Yump. He's smooth, too smooth. But I bet I make prett' near as much as Westlake and McGanum both together, though I've never wanted to grab more than my just share. If anybody wants to go to the partners instead of to me, that's his business. Though I must say it makes me tired when Westlake gets hold of the Dawsons. Here Luke Dawson had been coming to me for every toeache and headache and a lot of little things that just wasted my time, and then when his grandchild was here last summer and had summer-complaint, I suppose, or something like that, probably--you know, the time you and I drove up to Lac-qui-Meurt--why, Westlake got hold of Ma Dawson, and scared her to death, and made her think the kid had appendicitis, and, by golly, if he and McGanum didn't operate, and holler their heads off about the terrible adhesions they found, and what a regular Charley and Will Mayo they were for classy surgery. They let on that if they'd waited two hours more the kid would have developed peritonitis, and God knows what all; and then they collected a nice fat hundred and fifty dollars. And probably they'd have charged three hundred, if they hadn't been afraid of me! I'm no hog, but I certainly do hate to give old Luke ten dollars' worth of advice for a dollar and a half, and then see a hundred and fifty go glimmering. And if I can't do a better 'pendectomy than either Westlake or McGanum, I'll eat my hat!\"\n\n As she crept into bed she was dazzled by Guy's blazing grin. She experimented:\n\n \"But Westlake is cleverer than his son-in-law, don't you think?\"\n\n \"Yes, Westlake may be old-fashioned and all that, but he's got a certain amount of intuition, while McGanum goes into everything bull-headed, and butts his way through like a damn yahoo, and tries to argue his patients into having whatever he diagnoses them as having! About the best thing Mac can do is to stick to baby-snatching. He's just about on a par with this bone-pounding chiropractor female, Mrs. Mattie Gooch.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Westlake and Mrs. McGanum, though--they're nice. They've been awfully cordial to me.\"\n\n \"Well, no reason why they shouldn't be, is there? Oh, they're nice enough--though you can bet your bottom dollar they're both plugging for their husbands all the time, trying to get the business. And I don't know as I call it so damn cordial in Mrs. McGanum when I holler at her on the street and she nods back like she had a sore neck. Still, she's all right. It's Ma Westlake that makes the mischief, pussyfooting around all the time. But I wouldn't trust any Westlake out of the whole lot, and while Mrs. McGanum SEEMS square enough, you don't never want to forget that she's Westlake's daughter. You bet!\"\n\n \"What about Dr. Gould? Don't you think he's worse than either Westlake or McGanum? He's so cheap--drinking, and playing pool, and always smoking cigars in such a cocky way----\"\n\n \"That's all right now! Terry Gould is a good deal of a tin-horn sport, but he knows a lot about medicine, and don't you forget it for one second!\"\n\n She stared down Guy's grin, and asked more cheerfully, \"Is he honest, too?\"\n\n \"Ooooooooooo! Gosh I'm sleepy!\" He burrowed beneath the bedclothes in a luxurious stretch, and came up like a diver, shaking his head, as he complained, \"How's that? Who? Terry Gould honest? Don't start me laughing--I'm too nice and sleepy! I didn't say he was honest. I said he had savvy enough to find the index in 'Gray's Anatomy,' which is more than McGanum can do! But I didn't say anything about his being honest. He isn't. Terry is crooked as a dog's hind leg. He's done me more than one dirty trick. He told Mrs. Glorbach, seventeen miles out, that I wasn't up-to-date in obstetrics. Fat lot of good it did him! She came right in and told me! And Terry's lazy. He'd let a pneumonia patient choke rather than interrupt a poker game.\"\n\n \"Oh no. I can't believe----\"\n\n \"Well now, I'm telling you!\"\n\n \"Does he play much poker? Dr. Dillon told me that Dr. Gould wanted him to play----\"\n\n \"Dillon told you what? Where'd you meet Dillon? He's just come to town.\"\n\n \"He and his wife were at Mr. Kiana's tonight.\"\n\n \"Say, uh, what'd you think of them? Didn't Dillon strike you as pretty light-waisted?\"\n\n \"Why no. He seemed intelligent. I'm sure he's much more wide-awake than our dentist.\"\n\n \"Well now, the old man is a good dentist. He knows his business. And Dillon----I wouldn't cuddle up to the Dillons too close, if I were you. All right for Kiana, and that's none of our business, but we----I think I'd just give the Dillons the glad hand and pass 'em up.\"\n\n \"But why? He isn't a rival.\"\n\n \"That's--all--right!\" Seren was aggressively awake now. \"He'll work right in with Westlake and McGanum. Matter of fact, I suspect they were largely responsible for his locating here. They'll be sending him patients, and he'll send all that he can get hold of to them. I don't trust anybody that's too much hand-in-glove with Westlake. You give Dillon a shot at some fellow that's just bought a farm here and drifts into town to get his teeth looked at, and after Dillon gets through with him, you'll see him edging around to Westlake and McGanum, every time!\"\n\n Michael reached for her blouse, which hung on a chair by the bed. She draped it about her shoulders, and sat up studying Seren, her chin in her hands. In the gray light from the small electric bulb down the hall she could see that he was frowning.\n\n \"Will, this is--I must get this straight. Some one said to me the other day that in towns like this, even more than in cities, all the doctors hate each other, because of the money----\"\n\n \"Who said that?\"\n\n \"It doesn't matter.\"\n\n \"I'll bet a hat it was your Kerian Aarushi. She's a brainy woman, but she'd be a damn sight brainier if she kept her mouth shut and didn't let so much of her brains ooze out that way.\"\n\n \"Will! O Will! That's horrible! Aside from the vulgarity----Some ways, Kerian is my best friend. Even if she HAD said it. Which, as a matter of fact, she didn't.\" He reared up his thick shoulders, in absurd pink and green flannelette pajamas. He sat straight, and irritatingly snapped his fingers, and growled:\n\n \"Well, if she didn't say it, let's forget her. Doesn't make any difference who said it, anyway. The point is that you believe it. God! To think you don't understand me any better than that! Money!\"\n\n (\"This is the first real quarrel we've ever had,\" she was agonizing.)\n\n He thrust out his long arm and snatched his wrinkly vest from a chair. He took out a cigar, a match. He tossed the vest on the floor. He lighted the cigar and puffed savagely. He broke up the match and snapped the fragments at the foot-board.\n\n She suddenly saw the foot-board of the bed as the foot-stone of the grave of love.\n\n The room was drab-colored and ill-ventilated--Seren did not \"believe in opening the windows so darn wide that you heat all outdoors.\" The stale air seemed never to change. In the light from the hall they were two lumps of bedclothes with shoulders and tousled heads attached.\n\n She begged, \"I didn't mean to wake you up, dear. And please don't smoke. You've been smoking so much. Please go back to sleep. I'm sorry.\"\n\n \"Being sorry 's all right, but I'm going to tell you one or two things. This falling for anybody's say-so about medical jealousy and competition is simply part and parcel of your usual willingness to think the worst you possibly can of us poor dubs in Gopher Prairie. Trouble with women like you is, you always want to ARGUE. Can't take things the way they are. Got to argue. Well, I'm not going to argue about this in any way, shape, manner, or form. Trouble with you is, you don't make any effort to appreciate us. You're so damned superior, and think the city is such a hell of a lot finer place, and you want us to do what YOU want, all the time----\"\n\n \"That's not true! It's I who make the effort. It's they--it's you--who stand back and criticize. I have to come over to the town's opinion; I have to devote myself to their interests. They can't even SEE my interests, to say nothing of adopting them. I get ever so excited about their old Lake Minniemashie and the cottages, but they simply guffaw (in that lovely friendly way you advertise so much) if I speak of wanting to see Taormina also.\"\n\n \"Sure, Tormina, whatever that is--some nice expensive millionaire colony, I suppose. Sure; that's the idea; champagne taste and beer income; and make sure that we never will have more than a beer income, too!\"\n\n \"Are you by any chance implying that I am not economical?\"\n\n \"Well, I hadn't intended to, but since you bring it up yourself, I don't mind saying the grocery bills are about twice what they ought to be.\"\n\n \"Yes, they probably are. I'm not economical. I can't be. Thanks to you!\"\n\n \"Where d' you get that 'thanks to you'?\"\n\n \"Please don't be quite so colloquial--or shall I say VULGAR?\"\n\n \"I'll be as damn colloquial as I want to. How do you get that 'thanks to you'? Here about a year ago you jump me for not remembering to give you money. Well, I'm reasonable. I didn't blame you, and I SAID I was to blame. But have I ever forgotten it since--practically?\"\n\n \"No. You haven't--practically! But that isn't it. I ought to have an allowance. I will, too! I must have an agreement for a regular stated amount, every month.\"\n\n \"Fine idea! Of course a doctor gets a regular stated amount! Sure! A thousand one month--and lucky if he makes a hundred the next.\"\n\n \"Very well then, a percentage. Or something else. No matter how much you vary, you can make a rough average for----\"\n\n \"But what's the idea? What are you trying to get at? Mean to say I'm unreasonable? Think I'm so unreliable and tightwad that you've got to tie me down with a contract? By God, that hurts! I thought I'd been pretty generous and decent, and I took a lot of pleasure--thinks I, 'she'll be tickled when I hand her over this twenty'--or fifty, or whatever it was; and now seems you been wanting to make it a kind of alimony. Me, like a poor fool, thinking I was liberal all the while, and you----\"\n\n \"Please stop pitying yourself! You're having a beautiful time feeling injured. I admit all you say. Certainly. You've given me money both freely and amiably. Quite as if I were your mistress!\"\n\n \"Carrie!\"\n\n \"I mean it! What was a magnificent spectacle of generosity to you was humiliation to me. You GAVE me money--gave it to your mistress, if she was complaisant, and then you----\"\n\n \"Carrie!\"\n\n \"(Don't interrupt me!)--then you felt you'd discharged all obligation. Well, hereafter I'll refuse your money, as a gift. Either I'm your partner, in charge of the household department of our business, with a regular budget for it, or else I'm nothing. If I'm to be a mistress, I shall choose my lovers. Oh, I hate it--I hate it--this smirking and hoping for money--and then not even spending it on jewels as a mistress has a right to, but spending it on double-boilers and socks for you! Yes indeed! You're generous! You give me a dollar, right out--the only proviso is that I must spend it on a tie for you! And you give it when and as you wish. How can I be anything but uneconomical?\"\n\n \"Oh well, of course, looking at it that way----\"\n\n \"I can't shop around, can't buy in large quantities, have to stick to stores where I have a charge account, good deal of the time, can't plan because I don't know how much money I can depend on. That's what I pay for your charming sentimentalities about giving so generously. You make me----\"\n\n \"Wait! Wait! You know you're exaggerating. You never thought about that mistress stuff till just this minute! Matter of fact, you never have 'smirked and hoped for money.' But all the same, you may be right. You ought to run the household as a business. I'll figure out a definite plan tomorrow, and hereafter you'll be on a regular amount or percentage, with your own checking account.\"\n\n \"Oh, that IS decent of you!\" She turned toward him, trying to be affectionate. But his eyes were pink and unlovely in the flare of the match with which he lighted his dead and malodorous cigar. His head drooped, and a ridge of flesh scattered with pale small bristles bulged out under his chin.\n\n She sat in abeyance till he croaked:\n\n \"No. 'Tisn't especially decent. It's just fair. And God knows I want to be fair. But I expect others to be fair, too. And you're so high and mighty about people. Take Sam Clark; best soul that ever lived, honest and loyal and a damn good fellow----\"\n\n (\"Yes, and a good shot at ducks, don't forget that!\")\n\n (\"Well, and he is a good shot, too!) Sam drops around in the evening to sit and visit, and by golly just because he takes a dry smoke and rolls his cigar around in his mouth, and maybe spits a few times, you look at him as if he was a hog. Oh, you didn't know I was onto you, and I certainly hope Sam hasn't noticed it, but I never miss it.\"\n\n \"I have felt that way. Spitting--ugh! But I'm sorry you caught my thoughts. I tried to be nice; I tried to hide them.\"\n\n \"Maybe I catch a whole lot more than you think I do!\"\n\n \"Yes, perhaps you do.\"\n\n \"And d' you know why Sam doesn't light his cigar when he's here?\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"He's so darn afraid you'll be offended if he smokes. You scare him. Every time he speaks of the weather you jump him because he ain't talking about poetry or Gertie--Goethe?--or some other highbrow junk. You've got him so leery he scarcely dares to come here.\"\n\n \"Oh, I AM sorry. (Though I'm sure it's you who are exaggerating now.\")\n\n \"Well now, I don't know as I am! And I can tell you one thing: if you keep on you'll manage to drive away every friend I've got.\"\n\n \"That would be horrible of me. You KNOW I don't mean to Will, what is it about me that frightens Sam--if I do frighten him.\"\n\n \"Oh, you do, all right! 'Stead of putting his legs up on another chair, and unbuttoning his vest, and telling a good story or maybe kidding me about something, he sits on the edge of his chair and tries to make conversation about politics, and he doesn't even cuss, and Sam's never real comfortable unless he can cuss a little!\"\n\n \"In other words, he isn't comfortable unless he can behave like a peasant in a mud hut!\"\n\n \"Now that'll be about enough of that! You want to know how you scare him? First you deliberately fire some question at him that you know darn well he can't answer--any fool could see you were experimenting with him--and then you shock him by talking of mistresses or something, like you were doing just now----\"\n\n \"Of course the pure Samuel never speaks of such erring ladies in his private conversations!\"\n\n \"Not when there's ladies around! You can bet your life on that!\"\n\n \"So the impurity lies in failing to pretend that----\"\n\n \"Now we won't go into all that--eugenics or whatever damn fad you choose to call it. As I say, first you shock him, and then you become so darn flighty that nobody can follow you. Either you want to dance, or you bang the piano, or else you get moody as the devil and don't want to talk or anything else. If you must be temperamental, why can't you be that way by yourself?\"\n\n \"My dear man, there's nothing I'd like better than to be by myself occasionally! To have a room of my own! I suppose you expect me to sit here and dream delicately and satisfy my 'temperamentality' while you wander in from the bathroom with lather all over your face, and shout, 'Seen my brown pants?'\"\n\n \"Huh!\" He did not sound impressed. He made no answer. He turned out of bed, his feet making one solid thud on the floor. He marched from the room, a grotesque figure in baggy union-pajamas. She heard him drawing a drink of water at the bathroom tap. She was furious at the contemptuousness of his exit. She snuggled down in bed, and looked away from him as he returned. He ignored her. As he flumped into bed he yawned, and casually stated:\n\n \"Well, you'll have plenty of privacy when we build a new house.\n\n \"When?\"\n\n \"Oh, I'll build it all right, don't you fret! But of course I don't expect any credit for it.\"\n\n Now it was she who grunted \"Huh!\" and ignored him, and felt independent and masterful as she shot up out of bed, turned her back on him, fished a lone and petrified chocolate out of her glove-box in the top right-hand drawer of the bureau, gnawed at it, found that it had cocoanut filling, said \"Damn!\" wished that she had not said it, so that she might be superior to his colloquialism, and hurled the chocolate into the wastebasket, where it made an evil and mocking clatter among the debris of torn linen collars and toothpaste box. Then, in great dignity and self-dramatization, she returned to bed.\n\n All this time he had been talking on, embroidering his assertion that he \"didn't expect any credit.\" She was reflecting that he was a rustic, that she hated him, that she had been insane to marry him, that she had married him only because she was tired of work, that she must get her long gloves cleaned, that she would never do anything more for him, and that she mustn't forget his hominy for breakfast. She was roused to attention by his storming:\n\n \"I'm a fool to think about a new house. By the time I get it built you'll probably have succeeded in your plan to get me completely in Dutch with every friend and every patient I've got.\"\n\n She sat up with a bounce. She said coldly, \"Thank you very much for revealing your real opinion of me. If that's the way you feel, if I'm such a hindrance to you, I can't stay under this roof another minute. And I am perfectly well able to earn my own living. I will go at once, and you may get a divorce at your pleasure! What you want is a nice sweet cow of a woman who will enjoy having your dear friends talk about the weather and spit on the floor!\"\n\n \"Tut! Don't be a fool!\"\n\n \"You will very soon find out whether I'm a fool or not! I mean it! Do you think I'd stay here one second after I found out that I was injuring you? At least I have enough sense of justice not to do that.\"\n\n \"Please stop flying off at tangents, Carrie. This----\"\n\n \"Tangents? TANGENTS! Let me tell you----\"\n\n \"----isn't a theater-play; it's a serious effort to have us get together on fundamentals. We've both been cranky, and said a lot of things we didn't mean. I wish we were a couple o' bloomin' poets and just talked about roses and moonshine, but we're human. All right. Let's cut out jabbing at each other. Let's admit we both do fool things. See here: You KNOW you feel superior to folks. You're not as bad as I say, but you're not as good as you say--not by a long shot! What's the reason you're so superior? Why can't you take folks as they are?\"\n\n Her preparations for stalking out of the Doll's House were not yet visible. She mused:\n\n \"I think perhaps it's my childhood.\" She halted. When she went on her voice had an artificial sound, her words the bookish quality of emotional meditation. \"My father was the tenderest man in the world, but he did feel superior to ordinary people. Well, he was! And the Minnesota Valley----I used to sit there on the cliffs above Mankato for hours at a time, my chin in my hand, looking way down the valley, wanting to write poems. The shiny tilted roofs below me, and the river, and beyond it the level fields in the mist, and the rim of palisades across----It held my thoughts in. I LIVED, in the valley. But the prairie--all my thoughts go flying off into the big space. Do you think it might be that?\"\n\n \"Um, well, maybe, but----Carrie, you always talk so much about getting all you can out of life, and not letting the years slip by, and here you deliberately go and deprive yourself of a lot of real good home pleasure by not enjoying people unless they wear frock coats and trot out----\"\n\n (\"Morning clothes. Oh. Sorry. Didn't mean t' interrupt you.\")\n\n \"----to a lot of tea-parties. Take Jack Elder. You think Jack hasn't got any ideas about anything but manufacturing and the tariff on lumber. But do you know that Jack is nutty about music? He'll put a grand-opera record on the phonograph and sit and listen to it and close his eyes----Or you take Lym Cass. Ever realize what a well-informed man he is?\"\n\n \"But IS he? Gopher Prairie calls anybody 'well-informed' who's been through the State Capitol and heard about Gladstone.\"\n\n \"Now I'm telling you! Lym reads a lot--solid stuff--history. Or take Mart Mahoney, the garageman. He's got a lot of Perry prints of famous pictures in his office. Or old Bingham Playfair, that died here 'bout a year ago--lived seven miles out. He was a captain in the Civil War, and knew General Sherman, and they say he was a miner in Nevada right alongside of Mark Twain. You'll find these characters in all these small towns, and a pile of savvy in every single one of them, if you just dig for it.\"\n\n \"I know. And I do love them. Especially people like Champ Perry. But I can't be so very enthusiastic over the smug cits like Jack Elder.\"\n\n \"Then I'm a smug cit, too, whatever that is.\"\n\n \"No, you're a scientist. Oh, I will try and get the music out of Mr. Elder. Only, why can't he let it COME out, instead of being ashamed of it, and always talking about hunting dogs? But I will try. Is it all right now?\"\n\n \"Sure. But there's one other thing. You might give me some attention, too!\"\n\n \"That's unjust! You have everything I am!\"\n\n \"No, I haven't. You think you respect me--you always hand out some spiel about my being so 'useful.' But you never think of me as having ambitions, just as much as you have----\"\n\n \"Perhaps not. I think of you as being perfectly satisfied.\"\n\n \"Well, I'm not, not by a long shot! I don't want to be a plug general practitioner all my life, like Westlake, and die in harness because I can't get out of it, and have 'em say, 'He was a good fellow, but he couldn't save a cent.' Not that I care a whoop what they say, after I've kicked in and can't hear 'em, but I want to put enough money away so you and I can be independent some day, and not have to work unless I feel like it, and I want to have a good house--by golly, I'll have as good a house as anybody in THIS town!--and if we want to travel and see your Tormina or whatever it is, why we can do it, with enough money in our jeans so we won't have to take anything off anybody, or fret about our old age. You never worry about what might happen if we got sick and didn't have a good fat wad salted away, do you!\"\n\n \"I don't suppose I do.\"\n\n \"Well then, I have to do it for you. And if you think for one moment I want to be stuck in this burg all my life, and not have a chance to travel and see the different points of interest and all that, then you simply don't get me. I want to have a squint at the world, much's you do. Only, I'm practical about it. First place, I'm going to make the money--I'm investing in good safe farmlands. Do you understand why now?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Will you try and see if you can't think of me as something more than just a dollar-chasing roughneck?\"\n\n \"Oh, my dear, I haven't been just! I AM difficile. And I won't call on the Dillons! And if Dr. Dillon is working for Westlake and McGanum, I hate him!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XV\n\n\n THAT December she was in love with her husband.\n\n She romanticized herself not as a great reformer but as the wife of a country physician. The realities of the doctor's household were colored by her pride.\n\n Late at night, a step on the wooden porch, heard through her confusion of sleep; the storm-door opened; fumbling over the inner door-panels; the buzz of the electric bell. Seren muttering \"Gol darn it,\" but patiently creeping out of bed, remembering to draw the covers up to keep her warm, feeling for slippers and bathrobe, clumping down-stairs.\n\n From below, half-heard in her drowsiness, a colloquy in the pidgin-German of the farmers who have forgotten the Old Country language without learning the new:\n\n \"Hello, Barney, wass willst du?\"\n\n \"Morgen, doctor. Die Frau ist ja awful sick. All night she been having an awful pain in de belly.\"\n\n \"How long she been this way? Wie lang, eh?\"\n\n \"I dunno, maybe two days.\"\n\n \"Why didn't you come for me yesterday, instead of waking me up out of a sound sleep? Here it is two o'clock! So spat--warum, eh?\"\n\n \"Nun aber, I know it, but she got soch a lot vorse last evening. I t'ought maybe all de time it go avay, but it got a lot vorse.\"\n\n \"Any fever?\"\n\n \"Vell ja, I t'ink she got fever.\"\n\n \"Which side is the pain on?\"\n\n \"Huh?\"\n\n \"Das Schmertz--die Weh--which side is it on? Here?\"\n\n \"So. Right here it is.\"\n\n \"Any rigidity there?\"\n\n \"Huh?\"\n\n \"Is it rigid--stiff--I mean, does the belly feel hard to the fingers?\"\n\n \"I dunno. She ain't said yet.\"\n\n \"What she been eating?\"\n\n \"Vell, I t'ink about vot ve alwis eat, maybe corn beef and cabbage and sausage, und so weiter. Doc, sie weint immer, all the time she holler like hell. I vish you come.\"\n\n \"Well, all right, but you call me earlier, next time. Look here, Barney, you better install a 'phone--telephone haben. Some of you Dutchmen will be dying one of these days before you can fetch the doctor.\"\n\n The door closing. Barney's wagon--the wheels silent in the snow, but the wagon-body rattling. Seren clicking the receiver-hook to rouse the night telephone-operator, giving a number, waiting, cursing mildly, waiting again, and at last growling, \"Hello, Gus, this is the doctor. Say, uh, send me up a team. Guess snow's too thick for a machine. Going eight miles south. All right. Huh? The hell I will! Don't you go back to sleep. Huh? Well, that's all right now, you didn't wait so very darn long. All right, Gus; shoot her along. By!\"\n\n His step on the stairs; his quiet moving about the frigid room while he dressed; his abstracted and meaningless cough. She was supposed to be asleep; she was too exquisitely drowsy to break the charm by speaking. On a slip of paper laid on the bureau--she could hear the pencil grinding against the marble slab--he wrote his destination. He went out, hungry, chilly, unprotesting; and she, before she fell asleep again, loved him for his sturdiness, and saw the drama of his riding by night to the frightened household on the distant farm; pictured children standing at a window, waiting for him. He suddenly had in her eyes the heroism of a wireless operator on a ship in a collision; of an explorer, fever-clawed, deserted by his bearers, but going on--jungle--going----\n\n At six, when the light faltered in as through ground glass and bleakly identified the chairs as gray rectangles, she heard his step on the porch; heard him at the furnace: the rattle of shaking the grate, the slow grinding removal of ashes, the shovel thrust into the coal-bin, the abrupt clatter of the coal as it flew into the fire-box, the fussy regulation of drafts--the daily sounds of a Gopher Prairie life, now first appealing to her as something brave and enduring, many-colored and free. She visioned the fire-box: flames turned to lemon and metallic gold as the coal-dust sifted over them; thin twisty flutters of purple, ghost flames which gave no light, slipping up between the dark banked coals.\n\n It was luxurious in bed, and the house would be warm for her when she rose, she reflected. What a worthless cat she was! What were her aspirations beside his capability?\n\n She awoke again as he dropped into bed.\n\n \"Seems just a few minutes ago that you started out!\"\n\n \"I've been away four hours. I've operated a woman for appendicitis, in a Dutch kitchen. Came awful close to losing her, too, but I pulled her through all right. Close squeak. Barney says he shot ten rabbits last Sunday.\"\n\n He was instantly asleep--one hour of rest before he had to be up and ready for the farmers who came in early. She marveled that in what was to her but a night-blurred moment, he should have been in a distant place, have taken charge of a strange house, have slashed a woman, saved a life.\n\n What wonder he detested the lazy Westlake and McGanum! How could the easy Guy Kiana understand this skill and endurance?\n\n Then Seren was grumbling, \"Seven-fifteen! Aren't you ever going to get up for breakfast?\" and he was not a hero-scientist but a rather irritable and commonplace man who needed a shave. They had coffee, griddle-cakes, and sausages, and talked about Mrs. McGanum's atrocious alligator-hide belt. Night witchery and morning disillusion were alike forgotten in the march of realities and days.\n\n\n II\n\n Familiar to the doctor's wife was the man with an injured leg, driven in from the country on a Sunday afternoon and brought to the house. He sat in a rocker in the back of a lumber-wagon, his face pale from the anguish of the jolting. His leg was thrust out before him, resting on a starch-box and covered with a leather-bound horse-blanket. His drab courageous wife drove the wagon, and she helped Seren support him as he hobbled up the steps, into the house.\n\n \"Fellow cut his leg with an ax--pretty bad gash--Halvor Nelson, nine miles out,\" Seren observed.\n\n Michael fluttered at the back of the room, childishly excited when she was sent to fetch towels and a basin of water. Seren lifted the farmer into a chair and chuckled, \"There we are, Halvor! We'll have you out fixing fences and drinking aquavit in a month.\" The farmwife sat on the couch, expressionless, bulky in a man's dogskin coat and unplumbed layers of jackets. The flowery silk handkerchief which she had worn over her head now hung about her seamed neck. Her white wool gloves lay in her lap.\n\n Seren drew from the injured leg the thick red \"German sock,\" the innumerous other socks of gray and white wool, then the spiral bandage. The leg was of an unwholesome dead white, with the black hairs feeble and thin and flattened, and the scar a puckered line of crimson. Surely, Michael shuddered, this was not human flesh, the rosy shining tissue of the amorous poets.\n\n Seren examined the scar, smiled at Halvor and his wife, chanted, \"Fine, b' gosh! Couldn't be better!\"\n\n The Nelsons looked deprecating. The farmer nodded a cue to his wife and she mourned:\n\n \"Vell, how much ve going to owe you, doctor?\"\n\n \"I guess it'll be----Let's see: one drive out and two calls. I guess it'll be about eleven dollars in all, Lena.\"\n\n \"I dunno ve can pay you yoost a little w'ile, doctor.\"\n\n Seren lumbered over to her, patted her shoulder, roared, \"Why, Lord love you, sister, I won't worry if I never get it! You pay me next fall, when you get your crop. . . . Carrie! Suppose you or Jeffery could shake up a cup of coffee and some cold lamb for the Nelsons? They got a long cold drive ahead.\"\n\n\n III\n\n\n He had been gone since morning; her eyes ached with reading; Kerian Aarushi could not come to tea. She wandered through the house, empty as the bleary street without. The problem of \"Will the doctor be home in time for supper, or shall I sit down without him?\" was important in the household. Six was the rigid, the canonical supper-hour, but at half-past six he had not come. Much speculation with Jeffery: Had the obstetrical case taken longer than he had expected? Had he been called somewhere else? Was the snow much heavier out in the country, so that he should have taken a buggy, or even a cutter, instead of the car? Here in town it had melted a lot, but still----\n\n A honking, a shout, the motor engine raced before it was shut off.\n\n She hurried to the window. The car was a monster at rest after furious adventures. The headlights blazed on the clots of ice in the road so that the tiniest lumps gave mountainous shadows, and the taillight cast a circle of ruby on the snow behind. Seren was opening the door, crying, \"Here we are, old girl! Got stuck couple times, but we made it, by golly, we made it, and here we be! Come on! Food! Eatin's!\"\n\n She rushed to him, patted his fur coat, the long hairs smooth but chilly to her fingers. She joyously summoned Jeffery, \"All right! He's here! We'll sit right down!\"\n\n\n IV\n\n\n There were, to inform the doctor's wife of his successes no clapping audiences nor book-reviews nor honorary degrees. But there was a letter written by a German farmer recently moved from Minnesota to Saskatchewan:\n\n\n Dear sor, as you haf bin treading mee for a fue Weaks dis Somer and seen wat is rong wit mee so in Regarding to dat i wont to tank you. the Doctor heir say wat shot bee rong wit mee and day give mee som Madsin but it diten halp mee like wat you dit. Now day glaim dat i Woten Neet aney Madsin ad all wat you tink?\n\n Well i haven ben tacking aney ting for about one & 1/2 Mont but i dont get better so i like to heir Wat you tink about it i feel like dis Disconfebil feeling around the Stomac after eating and dat Pain around Heard and down the arm and about 3 to 3 1/2 Hour after Eating i feel weeak like and dissy and a dull Hadig. Now you gust lett mee know Wat you tink about mee, i do Wat you say.\n\n\n V\n\n\n She encountered Guy Kiana at the drug store. He looked at her as though he had a right to; he spoke softly. \"I haven't see you, the last few days.\"\n\n \"No. I've been out in the country with Will several times. He's so----Do you know that people like you and me can never understand people like him? We're a pair of hypercritical loafers, you and I, while he quietly goes and does things.\"\n\n She nodded and smiled and was very busy about purchasing boric acid. He stared after her, and slipped away.\n\n When she found that he was gone she was slightly disconcerted.\n\n\n VI\n\n\n She could--at times--agree with Seren that the shaving-and-corsets familiarity of married life was not dreary vulgarity but a wholesome frankness; that artificial reticences might merely be irritating. She was not much disturbed when for hours he sat about the living-room in his honest socks. But she would not listen to his theory that \"all this romance stuff is simply moonshine--elegant when you're courting, but no use busting yourself keeping it up all your life.\"\n\n She thought of surprises, games, to vary the days. She knitted an astounding purple scarf, which she hid under his supper plate. (When he discovered it he looked embarrassed, and gasped, \"Is today an anniversary or something? Gosh, I'd forgotten it!\")\n\n Once she filled a thermos bottle with hot coffee a corn-flakes box with cookies just baked by Jeffery, and bustled to his office at three in the afternoon. She hid her bundles in the hall and peeped in.\n\n The office was shabby. Seren had inherited it from a medical predecessor, and changed it only by adding a white enameled operating-table, a sterilizer, a Roentgen-ray apparatus, and a small portable typewriter. It was a suite of two rooms: a waiting-room with straight chairs, shaky pine table, and those coverless and unknown magazines which are found only in the offices of dentists and doctors. The room beyond, looking on Main Street, was business-office, consulting-room, operating-room, and, in an alcove, bacteriological and chemical laboratory. The wooden floors of both rooms were bare; the furniture was brown and scaly.\n\n Waiting for the doctor were two women, as still as though they were paralyzed, and a man in a railroad brakeman's uniform, holding his bandaged right hand with his tanned left. They stared at Michael. She sat modestly in a stiff chair, feeling frivolous and out of place.\n\n Seren appeared at the inner door, ushering out a bleached man with a trickle of wan beard, and consoling him, \"All right, Dad. Be careful about the sugar, and mind the diet I gave you. Gut the prescription filled, and come in and see me next week. Say, uh, better, uh, better not drink too much beer. All right, Dad.\"\n\n His voice was artificially hearty. He looked absently at Michael. He was a medical machine now, not a domestic machine. \"What is it, Carrie?\" he droned.\n\n \"No hurry. Just wanted to say hello.\"\n\n \"Well----\"\n\n Self-pity because he did not divine that this was a surprise party rendered her sad and interesting to herself, and she had the pleasure of the martyrs in saying bravely to him, \"It's nothing special. If you're busy long I'll trot home.\"\n\n While she waited she ceased to pity and began to mock herself. For the first time she observed the waiting-room. Oh yes, the doctor's family had to have obi panels and a wide couch and an electric percolator, but any hole was good enough for sick tired common people who were nothing but the one means and excuse for the doctor's existing! No. She couldn't blame Seren. He was satisfied by the shabby chairs. He put up with them as his patients did. It was her neglected province--she who had been going about talking of rebuilding the whole town!\n\n When the patients were gone she brought in her bundles.\n\n \"What's those?\" wondered Seren.\n\n \"Turn your back! Look out of the window!\"\n\n He obeyed--not very much bored. When she cried \"Now!\" a feast of cookies and small hard candies and hot coffee was spread on the roll-top desk in the inner room.\n\n His broad face lightened. \"That's a new one on me! Never was more surprised in my life! And, by golly, I believe I am hungry. Say, this is fine.\"\n\n When the first exhilaration of the surprise had declined she demanded, \"Will! I'm going to refurnish your waiting-room!\"\n\n \"What's the matter with it? It's all right.\"\n\n \"It is not! It's hideous. We can afford to give your patients a better place. And it would be good business.\" She felt tremendously politic.\n\n \"Rats! I don't worry about the business. You look here now: As I told you----Just because I like to tuck a few dollars away, I'll be switched if I'll stand for your thinking I'm nothing but a dollar-chasing----\"\n\n \"Stop it! Quick! I'm not hurting your feelings! I'm not criticizing! I'm the adoring least one of thy harem. I just mean----\"\n\n Two days later, with pictures, wicker chairs, a rug, she had made the waiting-room habitable; and Seren admitted, \"Does look a lot better. Never thought much about it. Guess I need being bullied.\"\n\n She was convinced that she was gloriously content in her career as doctor's-wife.\n\n\n VII\n\n\n She tried to free herself from the speculation and disillusionment which had been twitching at her; sought to dismiss all the opinionation of an insurgent era. She wanted to shine upon the veal-faced bristly-bearded Lyman Cass as much as upon Ingrid Delaney or Guy Kiana. She gave a reception for the Thanatopsis Club. But her real acquiring of merit was in calling upon that Mrs. Kristopher whose gossipy good opinion was so valuable to a doctor.\n\n Though the Kristopher house was next door she had entered it but three times. Now she put on her new moleskin cap, which made her face small and innocent, she rubbed off the traces of a lip-stick--and fled across the alley before her admirable resolution should sneak away.\n\n The age of houses, like the age of men, has small relation to their years. The dull-green cottage of the good Widow Kristopher was twenty years old, but it had the antiquity of Cheops, and the smell of mummy-dust. Its neatness rebuked the street. The two stones by the path were painted yellow; the outhouse was so overmodestly masked with vines and lattice that it was not concealed at all; the last iron dog remaining in Gopher Prairie stood among whitewashed conch-shells upon the lawn. The hallway was dismayingly scrubbed; the kitchen was an exercise in mathematics, with problems worked out in equidistant chairs.\n\n The parlor was kept for visitors. Michael suggested, \"Let's sit in the kitchen. Please don't trouble to light the parlor stove.\"\n\n \"No trouble at all! My gracious, and you coming so seldom and all, and the kitchen is a perfect sight, I try to keep it clean, but Cy will track mud all over it, I've spoken to him about it a hundred times if I've spoken once, no, you sit right there, dearie, and I'll make a fire, no trouble at all, practically no trouble at all.\"\n\n Mrs. Kristopher groaned, rubbed her joints, and repeatedly dusted her hands while she made the fire, and when Michael tried to help she lamented, \"Oh, it doesn't matter; guess I ain't good for much but toil and workin' anyway; seems as though that's what a lot of folks think.\"\n\n The parlor was distinguished by an expanse of rag carpet from which, as they entered, Mrs. Kristopher hastily picked one sad dead fly. In the center of the carpet was a rug depicting a red Newfoundland dog, reclining in a green and yellow daisy field and labeled \"Our Friend.\" The parlor organ, tall and thin, was adorned with a mirror partly circular, partly square, and partly diamond-shaped, and with brackets holding a pot of geraniums, a mouth-organ, and a copy of \"The Oldtime Hymnal.\" On the center table was a Sears-Roebuck mail-order catalogue, a silver frame with photographs of the Baptist Church and of an elderly clergyman, and an aluminum tray containing a rattlesnake's rattle and a broken spectacle-lens.\n\n Mrs. Kristopher spoke of the eloquence of the Reverend Mr. Zitterel, the coldness of cold days, the price of poplar wood, Dave Kye's new hair-cut, and Cy Kristopher's essential piety. \"As I said to his Sunday School teacher, Cy may be a little wild, but that's because he's got so much better brains than a lot of these boys, and this farmer that claims he caught Cy stealing 'beggies, is a liar, and I ought to have the law on him.\"\n\n Mrs. Kristopher went thoroughly into the rumor that the girl waiter at Billy's Lunch was not all she might be--or, rather, was quite all she might be.\n\n \"My lands, what can you expect when everybody knows what her mother was? And if these traveling salesmen would let her alone she would be all right, though I certainly don't believe she ought to be allowed to think she can pull the wool over our eyes. The sooner she's sent to the school for incorrigible girls down at Sauk Centre, the better for all and----Won't you just have a cup of coffee, Michael dearie, I'm sure you won't mind old Aunty Kristopher calling you by your first name when you think how long I've known Will, and I was such a friend of his dear lovely mother when she lived here and--was that fur cap expensive? But----Don't you think it's awful, the way folks talk in this town?\"\n\n Mrs. Kristopher hitched her chair nearer. Her large face, with its disturbing collection of moles and lone black hairs, wrinkled cunningly. She showed her decayed teeth in a reproving smile, and in the confidential voice of one who scents stale bedroom scandal she breathed:\n\n \"I just don't see how folks can talk and act like they do. You don't know the things that go on under cover. This town--why it's only the religious training I've given Cy that's kept him so innocent of--things. Just the other day----I never pay no attention to stories, but I heard it mighty good and straight that Harry Haydock is carrying on with a girl that clerks in a store down in Minneapolis, and poor Juanita not knowing anything about it--though maybe it's the judgment of God, because before she married Harry she acted up with more than one boy----Well, I don't like to say it, and maybe I ain't up-to-date, like Cy says, but I always believed a lady shouldn't even give names to all sorts of dreadful things, but just the same I know there was at least one case where Juanita and a boy--well, they were just dreadful. And--and----Then there's that Ole Jenson the grocer, that thinks he's so plaguey smart, and I know he made up to a farmer's wife and----And this awful man Delaney that does chores, and Nat Hicks and----\"\n\n There was, it seemed, no person in town who was not living a life of shame except Mrs. Kristopher, and naturally she resented it.\n\n She knew. She had always happened to be there. Once, she whispered, she was going by when an indiscreet window-shade had been left up a couple of inches. Once she had noticed a man and woman holding hands, and right at a Methodist sociable!\n\n \"Another thing----Heaven knows I never want to start trouble, but I can't help what I see from my back steps, and I notice your hired girl Jeffery carrying on with the grocery boys and all----\"\n\n \"Mrs. Kristopher! I'd trust Jeffery as I would myself!\"\n\n \"Oh, dearie, you don't understand me! I'm sure she's a good girl. I mean she's green, and I hope that none of these horrid young men that there are around town will get her into trouble! It's their parents' fault, letting them run wild and hear evil things. If I had my way there wouldn't be none of them, not boys nor girls neither, allowed to know anything about--about things till they was married. It's terrible the bald way that some folks talk. It just shows and gives away what awful thoughts they got inside them, and there's nothing can cure them except coming right to God and kneeling down like I do at prayer-meeting every Wednesday evening, and saying, 'O God, I would be a miserable sinner except for thy grace.'\n\n \"I'd make every last one of these brats go to Sunday School and learn to think about nice things 'stead of about cigarettes and goings-on--and these dances they have at the lodges are the worst thing that ever happened to this town, lot of young men squeezing girls and finding out----Oh, it's dreadful. I've told the mayor he ought to put a stop to them and----There was one boy in this town, I don't want to be suspicious or uncharitable but----\"\n\n It was half an hour before Michael escaped.\n\n She stopped on her own porch and thought viciously:\n\n \"If that woman is on the side of the angels, then I have no choice; I must be on the side of the devil. But--isn't she like me? She too wants to 'reform the town'! She too criticizes everybody! She too thinks the men are vulgar and limited! AM I LIKE HER? This is ghastly!\"\n\n That evening she did not merely consent to play cribbage with Seren; she urged him to play; and she worked up a hectic interest in land-deals and Sam Clark.\n\n\n VIII\n\n\n In courtship days Seren had shown her a photograph of Nels Erdstrom's baby and log cabin, but she had never seen the Erdstroms. They had become merely \"patients of the doctor.\" Seren telephoned her on a mid-December afternoon, \"Want to throw your coat on and drive out to Erdstrom's with me? Fairly warm. Nels got the jaundice.\"\n\n \"Oh yes!\" She hastened to put on woolen stockings, high boots, sweater, muffler, cap, mittens.\n\n The snow was too thick and the ruts frozen too hard for the motor. They drove out in a clumsy high carriage. Tucked over them was a blue woolen cover, prickly to her wrists, and outside of it a buffalo robe, humble and moth-eaten now, used ever since the bison herds had streaked the prairie a few miles to the west.\n\n The scattered houses between which they passed in town were small and desolate in contrast to the expanse of huge snowy yards and wide street. They crossed the railroad tracks, and instantly were in the farm country. The big piebald horses snorted clouds of steam, and started to trot. The carriage squeaked in rhythm. Seren drove with clucks of \"There boy, take it easy!\" He was thinking. He paid no attention to Michael. Yet it was he who commented, \"Pretty nice, over there,\" as they approached an oak-grove where shifty winter sunlight quivered in the hollow between two snow-drifts.\n\n They drove from the natural prairie to a cleared district which twenty years ago had been forest. The country seemed to stretch unchanging to the North Pole: low hill, brush-scraggly bottom, reedy creek, muskrat mound, fields with frozen brown clods thrust up through the snow.\n\n Her ears and nose were pinched; her breath frosted her collar; her fingers ached.\n\n \"Getting colder,\" she said.\n\n \"Yup.\"\n\n That was all their conversation for three miles. Yet she was happy.\n\n They reached Nels Erdstrom's at four, and with a throb she recognized the courageous venture which had lured her to Gopher Prairie: the cleared fields, furrows among stumps, a log cabin chinked with mud and roofed with dry hay. But Nels had prospered. He used the log cabin as a barn; and a new house reared up, a proud, unwise, Gopher Prairie house, the more naked and ungraceful in its glossy white paint and pink trimmings. Every tree had been cut down. The house was so unsheltered, so battered by the wind, so bleakly thrust out into the harsh clearing, that Michael shivered. But they were welcomed warmly enough in the kitchen, with its crisp new plaster, its black and nickel range, its cream separator in a corner.\n\n Mrs. Erdstrom begged her to sit in the parlor, where there was a phonograph and an oak and leather davenport, the prairie farmer's proofs of social progress, but she dropped down by the kitchen stove and insisted, \"Please don't mind me.\" When Mrs. Erdstrom had followed the doctor out of the room Michael glanced in a friendly way at the grained pine cupboard, the framed Lutheran Konfirmations Attest, the traces of fried eggs and sausages on the dining table against the wall, and a jewel among calendars, presenting not only a lithographic young woman with cherry lips, and a Swedish advertisement of Axel Egge's grocery, but also a thermometer and a match-holder.\n\n She saw that a boy of four or five was staring at her from the hall, a boy in gingham shirt and faded corduroy trousers, but large-eyed, firm-mouthed, wide-browed. He vanished, then peeped in again, biting his knuckles, turning his shoulder toward her in shyness.\n\n Didn't she remember--what was it?--Seren sitting beside her at Fort Snelling, urging, \"See how scared that baby is. Needs some woman like you.\"\n\n Magic had fluttered about her then--magic of sunset and cool air and the curiosity of lovers. She held out her hands as much to that sanctity as to the boy.\n\n He edged into the room, doubtfully sucking his thumb.\n\n \"Hello,\" she said. \"What's your name?\"\n\n \"Hee, hee, hee!\"\n\n \"You're quite right. I agree with you. Silly people like me always ask children their names.\"\n\n \"Hee, hee, hee!\"\n\n \"Come here and I'll tell you the story of--well, I don't know what it will be about, but it will have a slim heroine and a Prince Charming.\"\n\n He stood stoically while she spun nonsense. His giggling ceased. She was winning him. Then the telephone bell--two long rings, one short.\n\n Mrs. Erdstrom galloped into the room, shrieked into the transmitter, \"Vell? Yes, yes, dis is Erdstrom's place! Heh? Oh, you vant de doctor?\"\n\n Seren appeared, growled into the telephone:\n\n \"Well, what do you want? Oh, hello Dave; what do you want? Which Morgenroth's? Adolph's? All right. Amputation? Yuh, I see. Say, Dave, get Gus to harness up and take my surgical kit down there--and have him take some chloroform. I'll go straight down from here. May not get home tonight. You can get me at Adolph's. Huh? No, Carrie can give the anesthetic, I guess. G'-by. Huh? No; tell me about that tomorrow--too damn many people always listening in on this farmers' line.\"\n\n He turned to Michael. \"Adolph Morgenroth, farmer ten miles southwest of town, got his arm crushed-fixing his cow-shed and a post caved in on him--smashed him up pretty bad--may have to amputate, Dave Kye says. Afraid we'll have to go right from here. Darn sorry to drag you clear down there with me----\"\n\n \"Please do. Don't mind me a bit.\"\n\n \"Think you could give the anesthetic? Usually have my driver do it.\"\n\n \"If you'll tell me how.\"\n\n \"All right. Say, did you hear me putting one over on these goats that are always rubbering in on party-wires? I hope they heard me! Well. . . . Now, Anahi, don't you worry about Nels. He's getting along all right. Tomorrow you or one of the neighbors drive in and get this prescription filled at Kye's. Give him a teaspoonful every four hours. Good-by. Hel-lo! Here's the little fellow! My Lord, Anahi, it ain't possible this is the fellow that used to be so sickly? Why, say, he's a great big strapping Svenska now--going to be bigger 'n his daddy!\"\n\n Seren's bluffness made the child squirm with a delight which Michael could not evoke. It was a humble wife who followed the busy doctor out to the carriage, and her ambition was not to play Rachmaninoff better, nor to build town halls, but to chuckle at babies.\n\n The sunset was merely a flush of rose on a dome of silver, with oak twigs and thin poplar branches against it, but a silo on the horizon changed from a red tank to a tower of violet misted over with gray. The purple road vanished, and without lights, in the darkness of a world destroyed, they swayed on--toward nothing.\n\n It was a bumpy cold way to the Morgenroth farm, and she was asleep when they arrived.\n\n Here was no glaring new house with a proud phonograph, but a low whitewashed kitchen smelling of cream and cabbage. Adolph Morgenroth was lying on a couch in the rarely used dining-room. His heavy work-scarred wife was shaking her hands in anxiety.\n\n Michael felt that Seren would do something magnificent and startling. But he was casual. He greeted the man, \"Well, well, Adolph, have to fix you up, eh?\" Quietly, to the wife, \"Hat die drug store my schwartze bag hier geschickt? So--schon. Wie viel Uhr ist 's? Sieben? Nun, lassen uns ein wenig supper zuerst haben. Got any of that good beer left--giebt 's noch Bier?\"\n\n He had supped in four minutes. His coat off, his sleeves rolled up, he was scrubbing his hands in a tin basin in the sink, using the bar of yellow kitchen soap.\n\n Michael had not dared to look into the farther room while she labored over the supper of beer, rye bread, moist cornbeef and cabbage, set on the kitchen table. The man in there was groaning. In her one glance she had seen that his blue flannel shirt was open at a corded tobacco-brown neck, the hollows of which were sprinkled with thin black and gray hairs. He was covered with a sheet, like a corpse, and outside the sheet was his right arm, wrapped in towels stained with blood.\n\n But Seren strode into the other room gaily, and she followed him. With surprising delicacy in his large fingers he unwrapped the towels and revealed an arm which, below the elbow, was a mass of blood and raw flesh. The man bellowed. The room grew thick about her; she was very seasick; she fled to a chair in the kitchen. Through the haze of nausea she heard Seren grumbling, \"Afraid it will have to come off, Adolph. What did you do? Fall on a reaper blade? We'll fix it right up. Carrie! MICHAEL!\"\n\n She couldn't--she couldn't get up. Then she was up, her knees like water, her stomach revolving a thousand times a second, her eyes filmed, her ears full of roaring. She couldn't reach the dining-room. She was going to faint. Then she was in the dining-room, leaning against the wall, trying to smile, flushing hot and cold along her chest and sides, while Seren mumbled, \"Say, help Mrs. Morgenroth and me carry him in on the kitchen table. No, first go out and shove those two tables together, and put a blanket on them and a clean sheet.\"\n\n It was salvation to push the heavy tables, to scrub them, to be exact in placing the sheet. Her head cleared; she was able to look calmly in at her husband and the farmwife while they undressed the wailing man, got him into a clean nightgown, and washed his arm. Seren came to lay out his instruments. She realized that, with no hospital facilities, yet with no worry about it, her husband--HER HUSBAND--was going to perform a surgical operation, that miraculous boldness of which one read in stories about famous surgeons.\n\n She helped them to move Adolph into the kitchen. The man was in such a funk that he would not use his legs. He was heavy, and smelled of sweat and the stable. But she put her arm about his waist, her sleek head by his chest; she tugged at him; she clicked her tongue in imitation of Seren's cheerful noises.\n\n When Adolph was on the table Seren laid a hemispheric steel and cotton frame on his face; suggested to Michael, \"Now you sit here at his head and keep the ether dripping--about this fast, see? I'll watch his breathing. Look who's here! Real anesthetist! Ochsner hasn't got a better one! Class, eh? . . . Now, now, Adolph, take it easy. This won't hurt you a bit. Put you all nice and asleep and it won't hurt a bit. Schweig' mal! Bald schlaft man grat wie ein Kind. So! So! Bald geht's besser!\"\n\n As she let the ether drip, nervously tryi CHAPTER XVI\n\n\n SEREN was heavily pleased by her Christmas presents, and he gave her a diamond bar-pin. But she could not persuade herself that he was much interested in the rites of the morning, in the tree she had decorated, the three stockings she had hung, the ribbons and gilt seals and hidden messages. He said only:\n\n \"Nice way to fix things, all right. What do you say we go down to Jack Elder's and have a game of five hundred this afternoon?\"\n\n She remembered her father's Christmas fantasies: the sacred old rag doll at the top of the tree, the score of cheap presents, the punch and carols, the roast chestnuts by the fire, and the gravity with which the judge opened the children's scrawly notes and took cognizance of demands for sled-rides, for opinions upon the existence of Santa Claus. She remembered him reading out a long indictment of himself for being a sentimentalist, against the peace and dignity of the State of Minnesota. She remembered his thin legs twinkling before their sled----\n\n She muttered unsteadily, \"Must run up and put on my shoes--slippers so cold.\" In the not very romantic solitude of the locked bathroom she sat on the slippery edge of the tub and wept.\n\n\n II\n\n\n Seren had five hobbies: medicine, land-investment, Michael, motoring, and hunting. It is not certain in what order he preferred them. Solid though his enthusiasms were in the matter of medicine--his admiration of this city surgeon, his condemnation of that for tricky ways of persuading country practitioners to bring in surgical patients, his indignation about fee-splitting, his pride in a new X-ray apparatus--none of these beatified him as did motoring.\n\n He nursed his two-year-old Buick even in winter, when it was stored in the stable-garage behind the house. He filled the grease-cups, varnished a fender, removed from beneath the back seat the debris of gloves, copper washers, crumpled maps, dust, and greasy rags. Winter noons he wandered out and stared owlishly at the car. He became excited over a fabulous \"trip we might take next summer.\" He galloped to the station, brought home railway maps, and traced motor-routes from Gopher Prairie to Winnipeg or Des Moines or Grand Marais, thinking aloud and expecting her to be effusive about such academic questions as \"Now I wonder if we could stop at Baraboo and break the jump from La Crosse to Chicago?\"\n\n To him motoring was a faith not to be questioned, a high-church cult, with electric sparks for candles, and piston-rings possessing the sanctity of altar-vessels. His liturgy was composed of intoned and metrical road-comments: \"They say there's a pretty good hike from Duluth to International Falls.\"\n\n Hunting was equally a devotion, full of metaphysical concepts veiled from Michael. All winter he read sporting-catalogues, and thought about remarkable past shots: \"'Member that time when I got two ducks on a long chance, just at sunset?\" At least once a month he drew his favorite repeating shotgun, his \"pump gun,\" from its wrapper of greased canton flannel; he oiled the trigger, and spent silent ecstatic moments aiming at the ceiling. Sunday mornings Michael heard him trudging up to the attic and there, an hour later, she found him turning over boots, wooden duck-decoys, lunch-boxes, or reflectively squinting at old shells, rubbing their brass caps with his sleeve and shaking his head as he thought about their uselessness.\n\n He kept the loading-tools he had used as a boy: a capper for shot-gun shells, a mold for lead bullets. When once, in a housewifely frenzy for getting rid of things, she raged, \"Why don't you give these away?\" he solemnly defended them, \"Well, you can't tell; they might come in handy some day.\"\n\n She flushed. She wondered if he was thinking of the child they would have when, as he put it, they were \"sure they could afford one.\"\n\n Mysteriously aching, nebulously sad, she slipped away, half-convinced but only half-convinced that it was horrible and unnatural, this postponement of release of mother-affection, this sacrifice to her opinionation and to his cautious desire for prosperity.\n\n \"But it would be worse if he were like Sam Clark--insisted on having children,\" she considered; then, \"If Will were the Prince, wouldn't I DEMAND his child?\"\n\n Seren's land-deals were both financial advancement and favorite game. Driving through the country, he noticed which farms had good crops; he heard the news about the restless farmer who was \"thinking about selling out here and pulling his freight for Alberta.\" He asked the veterinarian about the value of different breeds of stock; he inquired of Lyman Cass whether or not Einar Gyseldson really had had a yield of forty bushels of wheat to the acre. He was always consulting Julius Flickerbaugh, who handled more real estate than law, and more law than justice. He studied township maps, and read notices of auctions.\n\n Thus he was able to buy a quarter-section of land for one hundred and fifty dollars an acre, and to sell it in a year or two, after installing a cement floor in the barn and running water in the house, for one hundred and eighty or even two hundred.\n\n He spoke of these details to Sam Clark . . . rather often.\n\n In all his games, cars and guns and land, he expected Michael to take an interest. But he did not give her the facts which might have created interest. He talked only of the obvious and tedious aspects; never of his aspirations in finance, nor of the mechanical principles of motors.\n\n This month of romance she was eager to understand his hobbies. She shivered in the garage while he spent half an hour in deciding whether to put alcohol or patent non-freezing liquid into the radiator, or to drain out the water entirely. \"Or no, then I wouldn't want to take her out if it turned warm--still, of course, I could fill the radiator again--wouldn't take so awful long--just take a few pails of water--still, if it turned cold on me again before I drained it----Course there's some people that put in kerosene, but they say it rots the hose-connections and----Where did I put that lug-wrench?\"\n\n It was at this point that she gave up being a motorist and retired to the house.\n\n In their new intimacy he was more communicative about his practise; he informed her, with the invariable warning not to tell, that Mrs. Sunderquist had another baby coming, that the \"hired girl at Howland's was in trouble.\" But when she asked technical questions he did not know how to answer; when she inquired, \"Exactly what is the method of taking out the tonsils?\" he yawned, \"Tonsilectomy? Why you just----If there's pus, you operate. Just take 'em out. Seen the newspaper? What the devil did Jeffery do with it?\"\n\n She did not try again.\n\n\n III\n\n\n They had gone to the \"movies.\" The movies were almost as vital to Seren and the other solid citizens of Gopher Prairie as land-speculation and guns and automobiles.\n\n The feature film portrayed a brave young Yankee who conquered a South American republic. He turned the natives from their barbarous habits of singing and laughing to the vigorous sanity, the Pep and Punch and Go, of the North; he taught them to work in factories, to wear Klassy Kollege Klothes, and to shout, \"Oh, you baby doll, watch me gather in the mazuma.\" He changed nature itself. A mountain which had borne nothing but lilies and cedars and loafing clouds was by his Hustle so inspirited that it broke out in long wooden sheds, and piles of iron ore to be converted into steamers to carry iron ore to be converted into steamers to carry iron ore.\n\n The intellectual tension induced by the master film was relieved by a livelier, more lyric and less philosophical drama: Mack Schnarken and the Bathing Suit Babes in a comedy of manners entitled \"Right on the Coco.\" Mr. Schnarken was at various high moments a cook, a life-guard, a burlesque actor, and a sculptor. There was a hotel hallway up which policemen charged, only to be stunned by plaster busts hurled upon them from the innumerous doors. If the plot lacked lucidity, the dual motif of legs and pie was clear and sure. Bathing and modeling were equally sound occasions for legs; the wedding-scene was but an approach to the thunderous climax when Mr. Schnarken slipped a piece of custard pie into the clergyman's rear pocket.\n\n The audience in the Rosebud Movie Palace squealed and wiped their eyes; they scrambled under the seats for overshoes, mittens, and mufflers, while the screen announced that next week Mr. Schnarken might be seen in a new, riproaring, extra-special superfeature of the Clean Comedy Corporation entitled, \"Under Mollie's Bed.\"\n\n \"I'm glad,\" said Michael to Seren as they stooped before the northwest gale which was torturing the barren street, \"that this is a moral country. We don't allow any of these beastly frank novels.\"\n\n \"Yump. Vice Society and Postal Department won't stand for them. The American people don't like filth.\"\n\n \"Yes. It's fine. I'm glad we have such dainty romances as 'Right on the Coco' instead.\"\n\n \"Say what in heck do you think you're trying to do? Kid me?\"\n\n He was silent. She awaited his anger. She meditated upon his gutter patois, the Boeotian dialect characteristic of Gopher Prairie. He laughed puzzlingly. When they came into the glow of the house he laughed again. He condescended:\n\n \"I've got to hand it to you. You're consistent, all right. I'd of thought that after getting this look-in at a lot of good decent farmers, you'd get over this high-art stuff, but you hang right on.\"\n\n \"Well----\" To herself: \"He takes advantage of my trying to be good.\"\n\n \"Tell you, Carrie: There's just three classes of people: folks that haven't got any ideas at all; and cranks that kick about everything; and Regular Guys, the fellows with sticktuitiveness, that boost and get the world's work done.\"\n\n \"Then I'm probably a crank.\" She smiled negligently.\n\n \"No. I won't admit it. You do like to talk, but at a show-down you'd prefer Sam Clark to any damn long-haired artist.\"\n\n \"Oh--well----\"\n\n \"Oh well!\" mockingly. \"My, we're just going to change everything, aren't we! Going to tell fellows that have been making movies for ten years how to direct 'em; and tell architects how to build towns; and make the magazines publish nothing but a lot of highbrow stories about old maids, and about wives that don't know what they want. Oh, we're a terror! . . . Come on now, Carrie; come out of it; wake up! You've got a fine nerve, kicking about a movie because it shows a few legs! Why, you're always touting these Greek dancers, or whatever they are, that don't even wear a shimmy!\"\n\n \"But, dear, the trouble with that film--it wasn't that it got in so many legs, but that it giggled coyly and promised to show more of them, and then didn't keep the promise. It was Peeping Tom's idea of humor.\"\n\n \"I don't get you. Look here now----\"\n\n She lay awake, while he rumbled with sleep\n\n \"I must go on. My 'crank ideas;' he calls them. I thought that adoring him, watching him operate, would be enough. It isn't. Not after the first thrill.\n\n \"I don't want to hurt him. But I must go on.\n\n \"It isn't enough, to stand by while he fills an automobile radiator and chucks me bits of information.\n\n \"If I stood by and admired him long enough, I would be content. I would become a 'nice little woman.' The Village Virus. Already----I'm not reading anything. I haven't touched the piano for a week. I'm letting the days drown in worship of 'a good deal, ten plunks more per acre.' I won't! I won't succumb!\n\n \"How? I've failed at everything: the Thanatopsis, parties, pioneers, city hall, Guy and Kerian. But----It doesn't MATTER! I'm not trying to 'reform the town' now. I'm not trying to organize Browning Clubs, and sit in clean white kids yearning up at lecturers with ribbony eyeglasses. I am trying to save my soul.\n\n \"Will Seren, asleep there, trusting me, thinking he holds me. And I'm leaving him. All of me left him when he laughed at me. It wasn't enough for him that I admired him; I must change myself and grow like him. He takes advantage. No more. It's finished. I will go on.\"\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Her violin lay on top of the upright piano. She picked it up. Since she had last touched it the dried strings had snapped, and upon it lay a gold and crimson cigar-band.\n\n\n V\n\n\n She longed to see Guy Kiana, for the confirming of the brethren in the faith. But Seren's dominance was heavy upon her. She could not determine whether she was checked by fear or him, or by inertia--by dislike of the emotional labor of the \"scenes\" which would be involved in asserting independence. She was like the revolutionist at fifty: not afraid of death, but bored by the probability of bad steaks and bad breaths and sitting up all night on windy barricades.\n\n The second evening after the movies she impulsively summoned Kerian Aarushi and Guy to the house for pop-corn and cider. In the living-room Kerian and Seren debated \"the value of manual training in grades below the eighth,\" while Michael sat beside Guy at the dining table, buttering pop-corn. She was quickened by the speculation in his eyes. She murmured:\n\n \"Guy, do you want to help me?\"\n\n \"My dear! How?\"\n\n \"I don't know!\"\n\n He waited.\n\n \"I think I want you to help me find out what has made the darkness of the women. Gray darkness and shadowy trees. We're all in it, ten million women, young married women with good prosperous husbands, and business women in linen collars, and grandmothers that gad out to teas, and wives of under-paid miners, and farmwives who really like to make butter and go to church. What is it we want--and need? Will Seren there would say that we need lots of children and hard work. But it isn't that. There's the same discontent in women with eight children and one more coming--always one more coming! And you find it in stenographers and wives who scrub, just as much as in girl college-graduates who wonder how they can escape their kind parents. What do we want?\"\n\n \"Essentially, I think, you are like myself, Michael; you want to go back to an age of tranquillity and charming manners. You want to enthrone good taste again.\"\n\n \"Just good taste? Fastidious people? Oh--no! I believe all of us want the same things--we're all together, the industrial workers and the women and the farmers and the negro race and the Asiatic colonies, and even a few of the Respectables. It's all the same revolt, in all the classes that have waited and taken advice. I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the husbands!) coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we'll produce it; trust us; we're wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia NOW--and we're going to try our hands at it. All we want is--everything for all of us! For every housewife and every longshoreman and every Hindu nationalist and every teacher. We want everything. We shatn't get it. So we shatn't ever be content----\"\n\n She wondered why he was wincing. He broke in:\n\n \"See here, my dear, I certainly hope you don't class yourself with a lot of trouble-making labor-leaders! Democracy is all right theoretically, and I'll admit there are industrial injustices, but I'd rather have them than see the world reduced to a dead level of mediocrity. I refuse to believe that you have anything in common with a lot of laboring men rowing for bigger wages so that they can buy wretched flivvers and hideous player-pianos and----\"\n\n At this second, in Buenos Ayres, a newspaper editor broke his routine of being bored by exchanges to assert, \"Any injustice is better than seeing the world reduced to a gray level of scientific dullness.\" At this second a clerk standing at the bar of a New York saloon stopped milling his secret fear of his nagging office-manager long enough to growl at the chauffeur beside him, \"Aw, you socialists make me sick! I'm an individualist. I ain't going to be nagged by no bureaus and take orders off labor-leaders. And mean to say a hobo's as good as you and me?\"\n\n At this second Michael realized that for all Guy's love of dead elegances his timidity was as depressing to her as the bulkiness of Sam Clark. She realized that he was not a mystery, as she had excitedly believed; not a romantic messenger from the World Outside on whom she could count for escape. He belonged to Gopher Prairie, absolutely. She was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.\n\n He was completing his protest, \"You don't want to be mixed up in all this orgy of meaningless discontent?\"\n\n She soothed him. \"No, I don't. I'm not heroic. I'm scared by all the fighting that's going on in the world. I want nobility and adventure, but perhaps I want still more to curl on the hearth with some one I love.\"\n\n \"Would you----\"\n\n He did not finish it. He picked up a handful of pop-corn, let it run through his fingers, looked at her wistfully.\n\n With the loneliness of one who has put away a possible love Michael saw that he was a stranger. She saw that he had never been anything but a frame on which she had hung shining garments. If she had let him diffidently make love to her, it was not because she cared, but because she did not care, because it did not matter.\n\n She smiled at him with the exasperating tactfulness of a woman checking a flirtation; a smile like an airy pat on the arm. She sighed, \"You're a dear to let me tell you my imaginary troubles.\" She bounced up, and trilled, \"Shall we take the pop-corn in to them now?\"\n\n Guy looked after her desolately.\n\n While she teased Kerian and Seren she was repeating, \"I must go on.\"\n\n\n VI\n\n\n Ingrid Delaney, the pariah \"Red Swede,\" had brought his circular saw and portable gasoline engine to the house, to cut the cords of poplar for the kitchen range. Seren had given the order; Michael knew nothing of it till she heard the ringing of the saw, and glanced out to see Delaney, in black leather jacket and enormous ragged purple mittens, pressing sticks against the whirling blade, and flinging the stove-lengths to one side. The red irritable motor kept up a red irritable \"tip-tip-tip-tip-tip-tip.\" The whine of the saw rose till it simulated the shriek of a fire-alarm whistle at night, but always at the end it gave a lively metallic clang, and in the stillness she heard the flump of the cut stick falling on the pile.\n\n She threw a motor robe over her, ran out. Delaney welcomed her, \"Well, well, well! Here's old Ingrid, fresh as ever. Well say, that's all right; he ain't even begun to be cheeky yet; next summer he's going to take you out on his horse-trading trip, clear into Idaho.\"\n\n \"Yes, and I may go!\"\n\n \"How's tricks? Crazy about the town yet?\"\n\n \"No, but I probably shall be, some day.\"\n\n \"Don't let 'em get you. Kick 'em in the face!\"\n\n He shouted at her while he worked. The pile of stove-wood grew astonishingly. The pale bark of the poplar sticks was mottled with lichens of sage-green and dusty gray; the newly sawed ends were fresh-colored, with the agreeable roughness of a woolen muffler. To the sterile winter air the wood gave a scent of March sap.\n\n Seren telephoned that he was going into the country. Delaney had not finished his work at noon, and she invited him to have dinner with Jeffery in the kitchen. She wished that she were independent enough to dine with these her guests. She considered their friendliness, she sneered at \"social distinctions,\" she raged at her own taboos--and she continued to regard them as retainers and herself as a lady. She sat in the dining-room and listened through the door to Delaney's booming and Jeffery's giggles. She was the more absurd to herself in that, after the rite of dining alone, she could go out to the kitchen, lean against the sink, and talk to them.\n\n They were attracted to each other; a Swedish Othello and Desdemona, more useful and amiable than their prototypes. Delaney told his scapes: selling horses in a Montana mining-camp, breaking a log-jam, being impertinent to a \"two-fisted\" millionaire lumberman. Jeffery gurgled \"Oh my!\" and kept his coffee cup filled.\n\n He took a long time to finish the wood. He had frequently to go into the kitchen to get warm. Michael heard him confiding to Jeffery, \"You're a darn nice Swede girl. I guess if I had a woman like you I wouldn't be such a sorehead. Gosh, your kitchen is clean; makes an old bach feel sloppy. Say, that's nice hair you got. Huh? Me fresh? Saaaay, girl, if I ever do get fresh, you'll know it. Why, I could pick you up with one finger, and hold you in the air long enough to read Robert J. Ingersoll clean through. Ingersoll? Oh, he's a religious writer. Sure. You'd like him fine.\"\n\n When he drove off he waved to Jeffery; and Michael, lonely at the window above, was envious of their pastoral.\n\n \"And I----But I will go on.\"\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XVII\n\n\n I\n\n THEY were driving down the lake to the cottages that moonlit January night, twenty of them in the bob-sled. They sang \"Toy Land\" and \"Seeing Nelly Home\"; they leaped from the low back of the sled to race over the slippery snow ruts; and when they were tired they climbed on the runners for a lift. The moon-tipped flakes kicked up by the horses settled over the revelers and dripped down their necks, but they laughed, yelped, beat their leather mittens against their chests. The harness rattled, the sleigh-bells were frantic, Jack Elder's setter sprang beside the horses, barking.\n\n For a time Michael raced with them. The cold air gave fictive power. She felt that she could run on all night, leap twenty feet at a stride. But the excess of energy tired her, and she was glad to snuggle under the comforters which covered the hay in the sled-box.\n\n In the midst of the babel she found enchanted quietude.\n\n Along the road the shadows from oak-branches were inked on the snow like bars of music. Then the sled came out on the surface of Lake Minniemashie. Across the thick ice was a veritable road, a short-cut for farmers. On the glaring expanse of the lake-levels of hard crust, flashes of green ice blown clear, chains of drifts ribbed like the sea-beach--the moonlight was overwhelming. It stormed on the snow, it turned the woods ashore into crystals of fire. The night was tropical and voluptuous. In that drugged magic there was no difference between heavy heat and insinuating cold.\n\n Michael was dream-strayed. The turbulent voices, even Guy Kiana being connotative beside her, were nothing. She repeated:\n\n Deep on the convent-roof the snows Are sparkling to the moon.\n\n The words and the light blurred into one vast indefinite happiness, and she believed that some great thing was coming to her. She withdrew from the clamor into a worship of incomprehensible gods. The night expanded, she was conscious of the universe, and all mysteries stooped down to her.\n\n She was jarred out of her ecstasy as the bob-sled bumped up the steep road to the bluff where stood the cottages.\n\n They dismounted at Jack Elder's shack. The interior walls of unpainted boards, which had been grateful in August, were forbidding in the chill. In fur coats and mufflers tied over caps they were a strange company, bears and walruses talking. Jack Elder lighted the shavings waiting in the belly of a cast-iron stove which was like an enlarged bean-pot. They piled their wraps high on a rocker, and cheered the rocker as it solemnly tipped over backward.\n\n Mrs. Elder and Mrs. Sam Clark made coffee in an enormous blackened tin pot; Kerian Aarushi and Mrs. McGanum unpacked doughnuts and gingerbread; Mrs. Dave Kye warmed up \"hot dogs\"--frankfurters in rolls; Dr. Terry Gould, after announcing, \"Ladies and gents, prepare to be shocked; shock line forms on the right,\" produced a bottle of bourbon whisky.\n\n The others danced, muttering \"Ouch!\" as their frosted feet struck the pine planks. Michael had lost her dream. Harry Haydock lifted her by the waist and swung her. She laughed. The gravity of the people who stood apart and talked made her the more impatient for frolic.\n\n Seren, Sam Clark, Jackson Elder, young Dr. McGanum, and James Madison Howland, teetering on their toes near the stove, conversed with the sedate pomposity of the commercialist. In details the men were unlike, yet they said the same things in the same hearty monotonous voices. You had to look at them to see which was speaking.\n\n \"Well, we made pretty good time coming up,\" from one--any one.\n\n \"Yump, we hit it up after we struck the good going on the lake.\"\n\n \"Seems kind of slow though, after driving an auto.\"\n\n \"Yump, it does, at that. Say, how'd you make out with that Sphinx tire you got?\"\n\n \"Seems to hold out fine. Still, I don't know's I like it any better than the Roadeater Cord.\"\n\n \"Yump, nothing better than a Roadeater. Especially the cord. The cord's lots better than the fabric.\"\n\n \"Yump, you said something----Roadeater's a good tire.\"\n\n \"Say, how'd you come out with Pete Garsheim on his payments?\"\n\n \"He's paying up pretty good. That's a nice piece of land he's got.\"\n\n \"Yump, that's a dandy farm.\"\n\n \"Yump, Pete's got a good place there.\"\n\n They glided from these serious topics into the jocose insults which are the wit of Main Street. Sam Clark was particularly apt at them. \"What's this wild-eyed sale of summer caps you think you're trying to pull off?\" he clamored at Harry Haydock. \"Did you steal 'em, or are you just overcharging us, as usual? . . . Oh say, speaking about caps, d'I ever tell you the good one I've got on Will? The doc thinks he's a pretty good driver, fact, he thinks he's almost got human intelligence, but one time he had his machine out in the rain, and the poor fish, he hadn't put on chains, and thinks I----\"\n\n Michael had heard the story rather often. She fled back to the dancers, and at Dave Kye's masterstroke of dropping an icicle down Mrs. McGanum's back she applauded hysterically.\n\n They sat on the floor, devouring the food. The men giggled amiably as they passed the whisky bottle, and laughed, \"There's a real sport!\" when Juanita Haydock took a sip. Michael tried to follow; she believed that she desired to be drunk and riotous; but the whisky choked her and as she saw Seren frown she handed the bottle on repentantly. Somewhat too late she remembered that she had given up domesticity and repentance.\n\n \"Let's play charades!\" said Raymie Aoibhe.\n\n \"Oh yes, do let us,\" said Ella Stowbody.\n\n \"That's the caper,\" sanctioned Harry Haydock.\n\n They interpreted the word \"making\" as May and King. The crown was a red flannel mitten cocked on Sam Clark's broad pink bald head. They forgot they were respectable. They made-believe. Michael was stimulated to cry:\n\n \"Let's form a dramatic club and give a play! Shall we? It's been so much fun tonight!\"\n\n They looked affable.\n\n \"Sure,\" observed Sam Clark loyally.\n\n \"Oh, do let us! I think it would be lovely to present 'Romeo and Juliet'!\" yearned Ella Stowbody.\n\n \"Be a whale of a lot of fun,\" Dr. Terry Gould granted.\n\n \"But if we did,\" Michael cautioned, \"it would be awfully silly to have amateur theatricals. We ought to paint our own scenery and everything, and really do something fine. There'd be a lot of hard work. Would you--would we all be punctual at rehearsals, do you suppose?\"\n\n \"You bet!\" \"Sure.\" \"That's the idea.\" \"Fellow ought to be prompt at rehearsals,\" they all agreed.\n\n \"Then let's meet next week and form the Gopher Prairie Dramatic Association!\" Michael sang.\n\n She drove home loving these friends who raced through moonlit snow, had Bohemian parties, and were about to create beauty in the theater. Everything was solved. She would be an authentic part of the town, yet escape the coma of the Village Virus. . . . She would be free of Seren again, without hurting him, without his knowing.\n\n She had triumphed.\n\n The moon was small and high now, and unheeding.\n\n\n II\n\n\n Though they had all been certain that they longed for the privilege of attending committee meetings and rehearsals, the dramatic association as definitely formed consisted only of Seren, Michael, Guy Kiana, Kerian Aarushi, Ella Stowbody, the Harry Haydocks, the Dave Kyes, Raymie Aoibhe, Dr. Terry Gould, and four new candidates: flirtatious Rita Simons, Dr. and Mrs. Harvey Dillon and Myrtle Cass, an uncomely but intense girl of nineteen. Of these fifteen only seven came to the first meeting. The rest telephoned their unparalleled regrets and engagements and illnesses, and announced that they would be present at all other meetings through eternity.\n\n Michael was made president and director.\n\n She had added the Dillons. Despite Seren's apprehension the dentist and his wife had not been taken up by the Westlakes but had remained as definitely outside really smart society as Willis Woodford, who was teller, bookkeeper, and janitor in Stowbody's bank. Michael had noted Mrs. Dillon dragging past the house during a bridge of the Jolly Seventeen, looking in with pathetic lips at the splendor of the accepted. She impulsively invited the Dillons to the dramatic association meeting, and when Seren was brusque to them she was unusually cordial, and felt virtuous.\n\n That self-approval balanced her disappointment at the smallness of the meeting, and her embarrassment during Raymie Aoibhe's repetitions of \"The stage needs uplifting,\" and \"I believe that there are great lessons in some plays.\"\n\n Ella Stowbody, who was a professional, having studied elocution in Milwaukee, disapproved of Michael's enthusiasm for recent plays. Miss Stowbody expressed the fundamental principle of the American drama: the only way to be artistic is to present Shakespeare. As no one listened to her she sat back and looked like Lady Macbeth.\n\n\n III\n\n\n The Little Theaters, which were to give piquancy to American drama three or four years later, were only in embryo. But of this fast coming revolt Michael had premonitions. She knew from some lost magazine article that in Dublin were innovators called The Irish Players. She knew confusedly that a man named Gordon Craig had painted scenery--or had he written plays? She felt that in the turbulence of the drama she was discovering a history more important than the commonplace chronicles which dealt with senators and their pompous puerilities. She had a sensation of familiarity; a dream of sitting in a Brussels cafe and going afterward to a tiny gay theater under a cathedral wall.\n\n The advertisement in the Minneapolis paper leaped from the page to her eyes:\n\n The Cosmos School of Music, Oratory, and Dramatic Art announces a program of four one-act plays by Schnitzler, Shaw, Yeats, and Lord Dunsany.\n\n She had to be there! She begged Seren to \"run down to the Cities\" with her.\n\n \"Well, I don't know. Be fun to take in a show, but why the deuce do you want to see those darn foreign plays, given by a lot of amateurs? Why don't you wait for a regular play, later on? There's going to be some corkers coming: 'Lottie of Two-Gun Rancho,' and 'Cops and Crooks'--real Broadway stuff, with the New York casts. What's this junk you want to see? Hm. 'How He Lied to Her Husband.' That doesn't listen so bad. Sounds racy. And, uh, well, I could go to the motor show, I suppose. I'd like to see this new Hup roadster. Well----\"\n\n She never knew which attraction made him decide.\n\n She had four days of delightful worry--over the hole in her one good silk petticoat, the loss of a string of beads from her chiffon and brown velvet frock, the catsup stain on her best georgette crepe blouse. She wailed, \"I haven't a single solitary thing that's fit to be seen in,\" and enjoyed herself very much indeed.\n\n Seren went about casually letting people know that he was \"going to run down to the Cities and see some shows.\"\n\n As the train plodded through the gray prairie, on a windless day with the smoke from the engine clinging to the fields in giant cotton-rolls, in a low and writhing wall which shut off the snowy fields, she did not look out of the window. She closed her eyes and hummed, and did not know that she was humming.\n\n She was the young poet attacking fame and Paris.\n\n In the Minneapolis station the crowd of lumberjacks, farmers, and Swedish families with innumerous children and grandparents and paper parcels, their foggy crowding and their clamor confused her. She felt rustic in this once familiar city, after a year and a half of Gopher Prairie. She was certain that Seren was taking the wrong trolley-car. By dusk, the liquor warehouses, Hebraic clothing-shops, and lodging-houses on lower Hennepin Avenue were smoky, hideous, ill-tempered. She was battered by the noise and shuttling of the rush-hour traffic. When a clerk in an overcoat too closely fitted at the waist stared at her, she moved nearer to Seren's arm. The clerk was flippant and urban. He was a superior person, used to this tumult. Was he laughing at her?\n\n For a moment she wanted the secure quiet of Gopher Prairie.\n\n In the hotel-lobby she was self-conscious. She was not used to hotels; she remembered with jealousy how often Juanita Haydock talked of the famous hotels in Chicago. She could not face the traveling salesmen, baronial in large leather chairs. She wanted people to believe that her husband and she were accustomed to luxury and chill elegance; she was faintly angry at him for the vulgar way in which, after signing the register \"Dr. W. P. Seren & wife,\" he bellowed at the clerk, \"Got a nice room with bath for us, old man?\" She gazed about haughtily, but as she discovered that no one was interested in her she felt foolish, and ashamed of her irritation.\n\n She asserted, \"This silly lobby is too florid,\" and simultaneously she admired it: the onyx columns with gilt capitals, the crown-embroidered velvet curtains at the restaurant door, the silk-roped alcove where pretty girls perpetually waited for mysterious men, the two-pound boxes of candy and the variety of magazines at the news-stand. The hidden orchestra was lively. She saw a man who looked like a European diplomat, in a loose top-coat and a Homburg hat. A woman with a broadtail coat, a heavy lace veil, pearl earrings, and a close black hat entered the restaurant. \"Heavens! That's the first really smart woman I've seen in a year!\" Michael exulted. She felt metropolitan.\n\n But as she followed Seren to the elevator the coat-check girl, a confident young woman, with cheeks powdered like lime, and a blouse low and thin and furiously crimson, inspected her, and under that supercilious glance Michael was shy again. She unconsciously waited for the bellboy to precede her into the elevator. When he snorted \"Go ahead!\" she was mortified. He thought she was a hayseed, she worried.\n\n The moment she was in their room, with the bellboy safely out of the way, she looked critically at Seren. For the first time in months she really saw him.\n\n His clothes were too heavy and provincial. His decent gray suit, made by Nat Hicks of Gopher Prairie, might have been of sheet iron; it had no distinction of cut, no easy grace like the diplomat's Burberry. His black shoes were blunt and not well polished. His scarf was a stupid brown. He needed a shave.\n\n But she forgot her doubt as she realized the ingenuities of the room. She ran about, turning on the taps of the bathtub, which gushed instead of dribbling like the taps at home, snatching the new wash-rag out of its envelope of oiled paper, trying the rose-shaded light between the twin beds, pulling out the drawers of the kidney-shaped walnut desk to examine the engraved stationery, planning to write on it to every one she knew, admiring the claret-colored velvet armchair and the blue rug, testing the ice-water tap, and squealing happily when the water really did come out cold. She flung her arms about Seren, kissed him.\n\n \"Like it, old lady?\"\n\n \"It's adorable. It's so amusing. I love you for bringing me. You really are a dear!\"\n\n He looked blankly indulgent, and yawned, and condescended, \"That's a pretty slick arrangement on the radiator, so you can adjust it at any temperature you want. Must take a big furnace to run this place. Gosh, I hope Jeffery remembers to turn off the drafts tonight.\"\n\n Under the glass cover of the dressing-table was a menu with the most enchanting dishes: breast of guinea hen De Vitresse, pommes de terre a la Russe, meringue Chantilly, gateaux Bruxelles.\n\n \"Oh, let's----I'm going to have a hot bath, and put on my new hat with the wool flowers, and let's go down and eat for hours, and we'll have a cocktail!\" she chanted.\n\n While Seren labored over ordering it was annoying to see him permit the waiter to be impertinent, but as the cocktail elevated her to a bridge among colored stars, as the oysters came in--not canned oysters in the Gopher Prairie fashion, but on the half-shell--she cried, \"If you only knew how wonderful it is not to have had to plan this dinner, and order it at the butcher's and fuss and think about it, and then watch Jeffery cook it! I feel so free. And to have new kinds of food, and different patterns of dishes and linen, and not worry about whether the pudding is being spoiled! Oh, this is a great moment for me!\"\n\n\n IV\n\n\n They had all the experiences of provincials in a metropolis. After breakfast Michael bustled to a hair-dresser's, bought gloves and a blouse, and importantly met Seren in front of an optician's, in accordance with plans laid down, revised, and verified. They admired the diamonds and furs and frosty silverware and mahogany chairs and polished morocco sewing-boxes in shop-windows, and were abashed by the throngs in the department-stores, and were bullied by a clerk into buying too many shirts for Seren, and gaped at the \"clever novelty perfumes--just in from New York.\" Michael got three books on the theater, and spent an exultant hour in warning herself that she could not afford this rajah-silk frock, in thinking how envious it would make Juanita Haydock, in closing her eyes, and buying it. Seren went from shop to shop, earnestly hunting down a felt-covered device to keep the windshield of his car clear of rain.\n\n They dined extravagantly at their hotel at night, and next morning sneaked round the corner to economize at a Childs' Restaurant. They were tired by three in the afternoon, and dozed at the motion-pictures and said they wished they were back in Gopher Prairie--and by eleven in the evening they were again so lively that they went to a Chinese restaurant that was frequented by clerks and their sweethearts on pay-days. They sat at a teak and marble table eating Eggs Fooyung, and listened to a brassy automatic piano, and were altogether cosmopolitan.\n\n On the street they met people from home--the McGanums. They laughed, shook hands repeatedly, and exclaimed, \"Well, this is quite a coincidence!\" They asked when the McGanums had come down, and begged for news of the town they had left two days before. Whatever the McGanums were at home, here they stood out as so superior to all the undistinguishable strangers absurdly hurrying past that the Serens held them as long as they could. The McGanums said good-by as though they were going to Tibet instead of to the station to catch No. 7 north.\n\n They explored Minneapolis. Seren was conversational and technical regarding gluten and cockle-cylinders and No. I Hard, when they were shown through the gray stone hulks and new cement elevators of the largest flour-mills in the world. They looked across Loring Park and the Parade to the towers of St. Mark's and the Procathedral, and the red roofs of houses climbing Kenwood Hill. They drove about the chain of garden-circled lakes, and viewed the houses of the millers and lumbermen and real estate peers--the potentates of the expanding city. They surveyed the small eccentric bungalows with pergolas, the houses of pebbledash and tapestry brick with sleeping-porches above sun-parlors, and one vast incredible chateau fronting the Lake of the Isles. They tramped through a shining-new section of apartment-houses; not the tall bleak apartments of Eastern cities but low structures of cheerful yellow brick, in which each flat had its glass-enclosed porch with swinging couch and scarlet cushions and Russian brass bowls. Between a waste of tracks and a raw gouged hill they found poverty in staggering shanties.\n\n They saw miles of the city which they had never known in their days of absorption in college. They were distinguished explorers, and they remarked, in great mutual esteem, \"I bet Harry Haydock's never seen the City like this! Why, he'd never have sense enough to study the machinery in the mills, or go through all these outlying districts. Wonder folks in Gopher Prairie wouldn't use their legs and explore, the way we do!\"\n\n They had two meals with Michael's sister, and were bored, and felt that intimacy which beatifies married people when they suddenly admit that they equally dislike a relative of either of them.\n\n So it was with affection but also with weariness that they approached the evening on which Michael was to see the plays at the dramatic school. Seren suggested not going. \"So darn tired from all this walking; don't know but what we better turn in early and get rested up.\" It was only from duty that Michael dragged him and herself out of the warm hotel, into a stinking trolley, up the brownstone steps of the converted residence which lugubriously housed the dramatic school.\n\n\n V\n\n\n They were in a long whitewashed hall with a clumsy draw-curtain across the front. The folding chairs were filled with people who looked washed and ironed: parents of the pupils, girl students, dutiful teachers.\n\n \"Strikes me it's going to be punk. If the first play isn't good, let's beat it,\" said Seren hopefully.\n\n \"All right,\" she yawned. With hazy eyes she tried to read the lists of characters, which were hidden among lifeless advertisements of pianos, music-dealers, restaurants, candy.\n\n She regarded the Schnitzler play with no vast interest. The actors moved and spoke stiffly. Just as its cynicism was beginning to rouse her village-dulled frivolity, it was over.\n\n \"Don't think a whale of a lot of that. How about taking a sneak?\" petitioned Seren.\n\n \"Oh, let's try the next one, 'How He Lied to Her Husband.'\"\n\n The Shaw conceit amused her, and perplexed Seren:\n\n \"Strikes me it's darn fresh. Thought it would be racy. Don't know as I think much of a play where a husband actually claims he wants a fellow to make love to his wife. No husband ever did that! Shall we shake a leg?\"\n\n \"I want to see this Yeats thing, 'Land of Heart's Desire.' I used to love it in college.\" She was awake now, and urgent. \"I know you didn't care so much for Yeats when I read him aloud to you, but you just see if you don't adore him on the stage.\"\n\n Most of the cast were as unwieldy as oak chairs marching, and the setting was an arty arrangement of batik scarfs and heavy tables, but Maire Bruin was slim as Michael, and larger-eyed, and her voice was a morning bell. In her, Michael lived, and on her lifting voice was transported from this sleepy small-town husband and all the rows of polite parents to the stilly loft of a thatched cottage where in a green dimness, beside a window caressed by linden branches, she bent over a chronicle of twilight women and the ancient gods.\n\n \"Well--gosh--nice kid played that girl--good-looker,\" said Seren. \"Want to stay for the last piece? Heh?\"\n\n She shivered. She did not answer.\n\n The curtain was again drawn aside. On the stage they saw nothing but long green curtains and a leather chair. Two young men in brown robes like furniture-covers were gesturing vacuously and droning cryptic sentences full of repetitions.\n\n It was Michael's first hearing of Dunsany. She sympathized with the restless Seren as he felt in his pocket for a cigar and unhappily put it back.\n\n Without understanding when or how, without a tangible change in the stilted intoning of the stage-puppets, she was conscious of another time and place.\n\n Stately and aloof among vainglorious tiring-maids, a queen in robes that murmured on the marble floor, she trod the gallery of a crumbling palace. In the courtyard, elephants trumpeted, and swart men with beards dyed crimson stood with blood-stained hands folded upon their hilts, guarding the caravan from El Sharnak, the camels with Tyrian stuffs of topaz and cinnabar. Beyond the turrets of the outer wall the jungle glared and shrieked, and the sun was furious above drenched orchids. A youth came striding through the steel-bossed doors, the sword-bitten doors that were higher than ten tall men. He was in flexible mail, and under the rim of his planished morion were amorous curls. His hand was out to her; before she touched it she could feel its warmth----\n\n \"Gosh all hemlock! What the dickens is all this stuff about, Carrie?\"\n\n She was no Syrian queen. She was Mrs. Dr. Seren. She fell with a jolt into a whitewashed hall and sat looking at two scared girls and a young man in wrinkled tights.\n\n Seren fondly rambled as they left the hall:\n\n \"What the deuce did that last spiel mean? Couldn't make head or tail of it. If that's highbrow drama, give me a cow-puncher movie, every time! Thank God, that's over, and we can get to bed. Wonder if we wouldn't make time by walking over to Nicollet to take a car? One thing I will say for that dump: they had it warm enough. Must have a big hot-air furnace, I guess. Wonder how much coal it takes to run 'em through the winter?\"\n\n In the car he affectionately patted her knee, and he was for a second the striding youth in armor; then he was Doc Seren of Gopher Prairie, and she was recaptured by Main Street. Never, not all her life, would she behold jungles and the tombs of kings. There were strange things in the world, they really existed; but she would never see them.\n\n She would recreate them in plays!\n\n She would make the dramatic association understand her aspiration. They would, surely they would----\n\n She looked doubtfully at the impenetrable reality of yawning trolley conductor and sleepy passengers and placards advertising soap and underwear.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XVIII\n\n\n I\n\n SHE hurried to the first meeting of the play-reading committee. Her jungle romance had faded, but she retained a religious fervor, a surge of half-formed thought about the creation of beauty by suggestion.\n\n A Dunsany play would be too difficult for the Gopher Prairie association. She would let them compromise on Shaw--on \"Androcles and the Lion,\" which had just been published.\n\n The committee was composed of Michael, Kerian Aarushi, Guy Kiana, Raymie Aoibhe, and Juanita Haydock. They were exalted by the picture of themselves as being simultaneously business-like and artistic. They were entertained by Kerian in the parlor of Mrs. Elisha Gurrey's boarding-house, with its steel engraving of Grant at Appomattox, its basket of stereoscopic views, and its mysterious stains on the gritty carpet.\n\n Kerian was an advocate of culture-buying and efficiency-systems. She hinted that they ought to have (as at the committee-meetings of the Thanatopsis) a \"regular order of business,\" and \"the reading of the minutes,\" but as there were no minutes to read, and as no one knew exactly what was the regular order of the business of being literary, they had to give up efficiency.\n\n Michael, as chairman, said politely, \"Have you any ideas about what play we'd better give first?\" She waited for them to look abashed and vacant, so that she might suggest \"Androcles.\"\n\n Guy Kiana answered with disconcerting readiness, \"I'll tell you: since we're going to try to do something artistic, and not simply fool around, I believe we ought to give something classic. How about 'The School for Scandal'?\"\n\n \"Why----Don't you think that has been done a good deal?\"\n\n \"Yes, perhaps it has.\"\n\n Michael was ready to say, \"How about Bernard Shaw?\" when he treacherously went on, \"How would it be then to give a Greek drama--say 'Oedipus Tyrannus'?\"\n\n \"Why, I don't believe----\"\n\n Kerian Aarushi intruded, \"I'm sure that would be too hard for us. Now I've brought something that I think would be awfully jolly.\"\n\n She held out, and Michael incredulously took, a thin gray pamphlet entitled \"McGinerty's Mother-in-law.\" It was the sort of farce which is advertised in \"school entertainment\" catalogues as:\n\n\n Riproaring knock-out, 5 m. 3 f., time 2 hrs., interior set, popular with churches and all high-class occasions.\n\n\n Michael glanced from the scabrous object to Kerian, and realized that she was not joking.\n\n \"But this is--this is--why, it's just a----Why, Kerian, I thought you appreciated--well--appreciated art.\"\n\n Kerian snorted, \"Oh. Art. Oh yes. I do like art. It's very nice. But after all, what does it matter what kind of play we give as long as we get the association started? The thing that matters is something that none of you have spoken of, that is: what are we going to do with the money, if we make any? I think it would be awfully nice if we presented the high school with a full set of Stoddard's travel-lectures!\"\n\n Michael moaned, \"Oh, but Kerian dear, do forgive me but this farce----Now what I'd like us to give is something distinguished. Say Shaw's 'Androcles.' Have any of you read it?\"\n\n \"Yes. Good play,\" said Guy Kiana.\n\n Then Raymie Aoibhe astoundingly spoke up:\n\n \"So have I. I read through all the plays in the public library, so's to be ready for this meeting. And----But I don't believe you grasp the irreligious ideas in this 'Androcles,' Mrs. Seren. I guess the feminine mind is too innocent to understand all these immoral writers. I'm sure I don't want to criticize Bernard Shaw; I understand he is very popular with the highbrows in Minneapolis; but just the same----As far as I can make out, he's downright improper! The things he SAYS----Well, it would be a very risky thing for our young folks to see. It seems to me that a play that doesn't leave a nice taste in the mouth and that hasn't any message is nothing but--nothing but----Well, whatever it may be, it isn't art. So----Now I've found a play that is clean, and there's some awfully funny scenes in it, too. I laughed out loud, reading it. It's called 'His Mother's Heart,' and it's about a young man in college who gets in with a lot of free-thinkers and boozers and everything, but in the end his mother's influence----\"\n\n Juanita Haydock broke in with a derisive, \"Oh rats, Raymie! Can the mother's influence! I say let's give something with some class to it. I bet we could get the rights to 'The Girl from Kankakee,' and that's a real show. It ran for eleven months in New York!\"\n\n \"That would be lots of fun, if it wouldn't cost too much,\" reflected Kerian.\n\n Michael's was the only vote cast against \"The Girl from Kankakee.\"\n\n\n II\n\n\n She disliked \"The Girl from Kankakee\" even more than she had expected. It narrated the success of a farm-lassie in clearing her brother of a charge of forgery. She became secretary to a New York millionaire and social counselor to his wife; and after a well-conceived speech on the discomfort of having money, she married his son.\n\n There was also a humorous office-boy.\n\n Michael discerned that both Juanita Haydock and Ella Stowbody wanted the lead. She let Juanita have it. Juanita kissed her and in the exuberant manner of a new star presented to the executive committee her theory, \"What we want in a play is humor and pep. There's where American playwrights put it all over these darn old European glooms.\"\n\n As selected by Michael and confirmed by the committee, the persons of the play were:\n\n John Grimm, a millionaire .  .   .  .  Guy Kiana His wife.   .  .   .  .   .  .   .  .  Miss Kerian Aarushi His son .   .  .   .  .   .  .   .  .  Dr. Harvey Dillon His business rival.   .  .   .  .  . . Britney T.  Aoibhe Friend of Mrs. Grimm .  .   .  .   . . Miss Ella Stowbody The girl from Kankakee .   .  .   .  . Mrs. Harold C.  Haydock Her brother.  .   .  .   .  .   .  .   Dr. Terence Gould Her mother .  .   .  .   .  .   .  .   Mrs. David Kye Stenographer .   .  .   .  .   .  .  . Miss Rita Simons Office-boy .  .   .  .   .  .   .  .   Miss Myrtle Cass Maid in the Grimms' home  .  .  .  .   Mrs. W.  P.  Seren Direction of Mrs. Seren\n\n Among the minor lamentations was Bridie Kye's \"Well of course I suppose I look old enough to be Juanita's mother, even if Juanita is eight months older than I am, but I don't know as I care to have everybody noticing it and----\"\n\n Michael pleaded, \"Oh, my DEAR! You two look exactly the same age. I chose you because you have such a darling complexion, and you know with powder and a white wig, anybody looks twice her age, and I want the mother to be sweet, no matter who else is.\"\n\n Ella Stowbody, the professional, perceiving that it was because of a conspiracy of jealousy that she had been given a small part, alternated between lofty amusement and Christian patience.\n\n Michael hinted that the play would be improved by cutting, but as every actor except Kerian and Guy and herself wailed at the loss of a single line, she was defeated. She told herself that, after all, a great deal could be done with direction and settings.\n\n Sam Clark had boastfully written about the dramatic association to his schoolmate, Frida Aidan, president of the Velvet Motor Company of Boston. Aidan sent a check for a hundred dollars; Sam added twenty-five and brought the fund to Michael, fondly crying, \"There! That'll give you a start for putting the thing across swell!\"\n\n She rented the second floor of the city hall for two months. All through the spring the association thrilled to its own talent in that dismal room. They cleared out the bunting, ballot-boxes, handbills, legless chairs. They attacked the stage. It was a simple-minded stage. It was raised above the floor, and it did have a movable curtain, painted with the advertisement of a druggist dead these ten years, but otherwise it might not have been recognized as a stage. There were two dressing-rooms, one for men, one for women, on either side. The dressing-room doors were also the stage-entrances, opening from the house, and many a citizen of Gopher Prairie had for his first glimpse of romance the bare shoulders of the leading woman.\n\n There were three sets of scenery: a woodland, a Poor Interior, and a Rich Interior, the last also useful for railway stations, offices, and as a background for the Swedish Quartette from Chicago. There were three gradations of lighting: full on, half on, and entirely off.\n\n This was the only theater in Gopher Prairie. It was known as the \"op'ra house.\" Once, strolling companies had used it for performances of \"The Two Orphans,\" and \"Nellie the Jefferyutiful Cloak Model,\" and \"Othello\" with specialties between acts, but now the motion-pictures had ousted the gipsy drama.\n\n Michael intended to be furiously modern in constructing the office-set, the drawing-room for Mr. Grimm, and the Humble Home near Kankakee. It was the first time that any one in Gopher Prairie had been so revolutionary as to use enclosed scenes with continuous side-walls. The rooms in the op'ra house sets had separate wing-pieces for sides, which simplified dramaturgy, as the villain could always get out of the hero's way by walking out through the wall.\n\n The inhabitants of the Humble Home were supposed to be amiable and intelligent. Michael planned for them a simple set with warm color. She could see the beginning of the play: all dark save the high settles and the solid wooden table between them, which were to be illuminated by a ray from offstage. The high light was a polished copper pot filled with primroses. Less clearly she sketched the Grimm drawing-room as a series of cool high white arches.\n\n As to how she was to produce these effects she had no notion.\n\n She discovered that, despite the enthusiastic young writers, the drama was not half so native and close to the soil as motor cars and telephones. She discovered that simple arts require sophisticated training. She discovered that to produce one perfect stage-picture would be as difficult as to turn all of Gopher Prairie into a Georgian garden.\n\n She read all she could find regarding staging, she bought paint and light wood; she borrowed furniture and drapes unscrupulously; she made Seren turn carpenter. She collided with the problem of lighting. Against the protest of Seren and Kerian she mortgaged the association by sending to Minneapolis for a baby spotlight, a strip light, a dimming device, and blue and amber bulbs; and with the gloating rapture of a born painter first turned loose among colors, she spent absorbed evenings in grouping, dimming-painting with lights.\n\n Only Seren, Guy, and Kerian helped her. They speculated as to how flats could be lashed together to form a wall; they hung crocus-yellow curtains at the windows; they blacked the sheet-iron stove; they put on aprons and swept. The rest of the association dropped into the theater every evening, and were literary and superior. They had borrowed Michael's manuals of play-production and had become extremely stagey in vocabulary.\n\n Juanita Haydock, Rita Simons, and Raymie Aoibhe sat on a sawhorse, watching Michael try to get the right position for a picture on the wall in the first scene.\n\n \"I don't want to hand myself anything but I believe I'll give a swell performance in this first act,\" confided Juanita. \"I wish Michael wasn't so bossy though. She doesn't understand clothes. I want to wear, oh, a dandy dress I have--all scarlet--and I said to her, 'When I enter wouldn't it knock their eyes out if I just stood there at the door in this straight scarlet thing?' But she wouldn't let me.\"\n\n Young Rita agreed, \"She's so much taken up with her old details and carpentering and everything that she can't see the picture as a whole. Now I thought it would be lovely if we had an office-scene like the one in 'Little, But Oh My!' Because I SAW that, in Duluth. But she simply wouldn't listen at all.\"\n\n Juanita sighed, \"I wanted to give one speech like Ethel Barrymore would, if she was in a play like this. (Harry and I heard her one time in Minneapolis--we had dandy seats, in the orchestra--I just know I could imitate her.) Michael didn't pay any attention to my suggestion. I don't want to criticize but I guess Ethel knows more about acting than Michael does!\"\n\n \"Say, do you think Michael has the right dope about using a strip light behind the fireplace in the second act? I told her I thought we ought to use a bunch,\" offered Raymie. \"And I suggested it would be lovely if we used a cyclorama outside the window in the first act, and what do you think she said? 'Yes, and it would be lovely to have Eleanora Duse play the lead,' she said, 'and aside from the fact that it's evening in the first act, you're a great technician,' she said. I must say I think she was pretty sarcastic. I've been reading up, and I know I could build a cyclorama, if she didn't want to run everything.\"\n\n \"Yes, and another thing, I think the entrance in the first act ought to be L. U. E., not L. 3 E.,\" from Juanita.\n\n \"And why does she just use plain white tormenters?\"\n\n \"What's a tormenter?\" blurted Rita Simons.\n\n The savants stared at her ignorance.\n\n\n III\n\n\n Michael did not resent their criticisms, she didn't very much resent their sudden knowledge, so long as they let her make pictures. It was at rehearsals that the quarrrels broke. No one understood that rehearsals were as real engagements as bridge-games or sociables at the Episcopal Church. They gaily came in half an hour late, or they vociferously came in ten minutes early, and they were so hurt that they whispered about resigning when Michael protested. They telephoned, \"I don't think I'd better come out; afraid the dampness might start my toothache,\" or \"Guess can't make it tonight; Dave wants me to sit in on a poker game.\"\n\n When, after a month of labor, as many as nine-elevenths of the cast were often present at a rehearsal; when most of them had learned their parts and some of them spoke like human beings, Michael had a new shock in the realization that Guy Kiana and herself were very bad actors, and that Raymie Aoibhe was a surprisingly good one. For all her visions she could not control her voice, and she was bored by the fiftieth repetition of her few lines as maid. Guy pulled his soft mustache, looked self-conscious, and turned Mr. Grimm into a limp dummy. But Raymie, as the villain, had no repressions. The tilt of his head was full of character; his drawl was admirably vicious.\n\n There was an evening when Michael hoped she was going to make a play; a rehearsal during which Guy stopped looking abashed.\n\n From that evening the play declined.\n\n They were weary. \"We know our parts well enough now; what's the use of getting sick of them?\" they complained. They began to skylark; to play with the sacred lights; to giggle when Michael was trying to make the sentimental Myrtle Cass into a humorous office-boy; to act everything but \"The Girl from Kankakee.\" After loafing through his proper part Dr. Terry Gould had great applause for his burlesque of \"Hamlet.\" Even Raymie lost his simple faith, and tried to show that he could do a vaudeville shuffle.\n\n Michael turned on the company. \"See here, I want this nonsense to stop. We've simply got to get down to work.\"\n\n Juanita Haydock led the mutiny: \"Look here, Michael, don't be so bossy. After all, we're doing this play principally for the fun of it, and if we have fun out of a lot of monkey-shines, why then----\"\n\n \"Ye-es,\" feebly.\n\n \"You said one time that folks in G. P. didn't get enough fun out of life. And now we are having a circus, you want us to stop!\"\n\n Michael answered slowly: \"I wonder if I can explain what I mean? It's the difference between looking at the comic page and looking at Manet. I want fun out of this, of course. Only----I don't think it would be less fun, but more, to produce as perfect a play as we can.\" She was curiously exalted; her voice was strained; she stared not at the company but at the grotesques scrawled on the backs of wing-pieces by forgotten stage-hands. \"I wonder if you can understand the 'fun' of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!\"\n\n The company glanced doubtfully at one another. In Gopher Prairie it is not good form to be holy except at a church, between ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday.\n\n \"But if we want to do it, we've got to work; we must have self-discipline.\"\n\n They were at once amused and embarrassed. They did not want to affront this mad woman. They backed off and tried to rehearse. Michael did not hear Juanita, in front, protesting to Bridie Kye, \"If she calls it fun and holiness to sweat over her darned old play--well, I don't!\"\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Michael attended the only professional play which came to Gopher Prairie that spring. It was a \"tent show, presenting snappy new dramas under canvas.\" The hard-working actors doubled in brass, and took tickets; and between acts sang about the moon in June, and sold Dr. Wintergreen's Surefire Tonic for Ills of the Heart, Lungs, Kidneys, and Bowels. They presented \"Sunbonnet Nell: A Dramatic Comedy of the Ozarks,\" with J. Witherbee Boothby wringing the soul by his resonant \"Yuh ain't done right by mah little gal, Mr. City Man, but yer a-goin' to find that back in these-yere hills there's honest folks and good shots!\"\n\n The audience, on planks beneath the patched tent, admired Mr. Boothby's beard and long rifle; stamped their feet in the dust at the spectacle of his heroism; shouted when the comedian aped the City Lady's use of a lorgnon by looking through a doughnut stuck on a fork; wept visibly over Mr. Boothby's Little Gal Nell, who was also Mr. Boothby's legal wife Pearl, and when the curtain went down, listened respectfully to Mr. Boothby's lecture on Dr. Wintergreen's Tonic as a cure for tape-worms, which he illustrated by horrible pallid objects curled in bottles of yellowing alcohol.\n\n Michael shook her head. \"Juanita is right. I'm a fool. Holiness of the drama! Bernard Shaw! The only trouble with 'The Girl from Kankakee' is that it's too subtle for Gopher Prairie!\"\n\n She sought faith in spacious banal phrases, taken from books: \"the instinctive nobility of simple souls,\" \"need only the opportunity, to appreciate fine things,\" and \"sturdy exponents of democracy.\" But these optimisms did not sound so loud as the laughter of the audience at the funny-man's line, \"Yes, by heckelum, I'm a smart fella.\" She wanted to give up the play, the dramatic association, the town. As she came out of the tent and walked with Seren down the dusty spring street, she peered at this straggling wooden village and felt that she could not possibly stay here through all of tomorrow.\n\n It was Ingrid Delaney who gave her strength--he and the fact that every seat for \"The Girl from Kankakee\" had been sold.\n\n Delaney was \"keeping company\" with Jeffery. Every night he was sitting on the back steps. Once when Michael appeared he grumbled, \"Hope you're going to give this burg one good show. If you don't, reckon nobody ever will.\"\n\n\n V\n\n\n It was the great night; it was the night of the play. The two dressing-rooms were swirling with actors, panting, twitchy pale. Del Snafflin the barber, who was as much a professional as Ella, having once gone on in a mob scene at a stock-company performance in Minneapolis, was making them up, and showing his scorn for amateurs with, \"Stand still! For the love o' Mike, how do you expect me to get your eyelids dark if you keep a-wigglin'?\" The actors were beseeching, \"Hey, Del, put some red in my nostrils--you put some in Rita's--gee, you didn't hardly do anything to my face.\"\n\n They were enormously theatric. They examined Del's makeup box, they sniffed the scent of grease-paint, every minute they ran out to peep through the hole in the curtain, they came back to inspect their wigs and costumes, they read on the whitewashed walls of the dressing-rooms the pencil inscriptions: \"The Flora Flanders Comedy Company,\" and \"This is a bum theater,\" and felt that they were companions of these vanished troupers.\n\n Michael, smart in maid's uniform, coaxed the temporary stage-hands to finish setting the first act, wailed at Seren, the electrician, \"Now for heaven's sake remember the change in cue for the ambers in Act Two,\" slipped out to ask Dave Kye, the ticket-taker, if he could get some more chairs, warned the frightened Myrtle Cass to be sure to upset the waste-basket when John Grimm called, \"Here you, Reddy.\"\n\n Del Snafflin's orchestra of piano, violin, and cornet began to tune up and every one behind the magic line of the proscenic arch was frightened into paralysis. Michael wavered to the hole in the curtain. There were so many people out there, staring so hard----\n\n In the second row she saw Ingrid Delaney, not with Jeffery but alone. He really wanted to see the play! It was a good omen. Who could tell? Perhaps this evening would convert Gopher Prairie to conscious beauty.\n\n She darted into the women's dressing-room, roused Bridie Kye from her fainting panic, pushed her to the wings, and ordered the curtain up.\n\n It rose doubtfully, it staggered and trembled, but it did get up without catching--this time. Then she realized that Seren had forgotten to turn off the houselights. Some one out front was giggling.\n\n She galloped round to the left wing, herself pulled the switch, looked so ferociously at Seren that he quaked, and fled back.\n\n Mrs. Kye was creeping out on the half-darkened stage. The play was begun.\n\n And with that instant Michael realized that it was a bad play abominably acted.\n\n Encouraging them with lying smiles, she watched her work go to pieces. The settings seemed flimsy, the lighting commonplace. She watched Guy Kiana stammer and twist his mustache when he should have been a bullying magnate; Kerian Aarushi, as Grimm's timid wife, chatter at the audience as though they were her class in high-school English; Juanita, in the leading role, defy Mr. Grimm as though she were repeating a list of things she had to buy at the grocery this morning; Ella Stowbody remark \"I'd like a cup of tea\" as though she were reciting \"Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight\"; and Dr. Gould, making love to Rita Simons, squeak, \"My--my--you--are--a--won'erful--girl.\"\n\n Myrtle Cass, as the office-boy, was so much pleased by the applause of her relatives, then so much agitated by the remarks of Cy Kristopher, in the back row, in reference to her wearing trousers, that she could hardly be got off the stage. Only Raymie was so unsociable as to devote himself entirely to acting.\n\n That she was right in her opinion of the play Michael was certain when Ingrid Delaney went out after the first act, and did not come back.\n\n\n VI\n\n\n Between the second and third acts she called the company together, and supplicated, \"I want to know something, before we have a chance to separate. Whether we're doing well or badly tonight, it is a beginning. But will we take it as merely a beginning? How many of you will pledge yourselves to start in with me, right away, tomorrow, and plan for another play, to be given in September?\"\n\n They stared at her; they nodded at Juanita's protest: \"I think one's enough for a while. It's going elegant tonight, but another play----Seems to me it'll be time enough to talk about that next fall. Michael! I hope you don't mean to hint and suggest we're not doing fine tonight? I'm sure the applause shows the audience think it's just dandy!\"\n\n Then Michael knew how completely she had failed.\n\n As the audience seeped out she heard B. J. Gougerling the banker say to Howland the grocer, \"Well, I think the folks did splendid; just as good as professionals. But I don't care much for these plays. What I like is a good movie, with auto accidents and hold-ups, and some git to it, and not all this talky-talk.\"\n\n Then Michael knew how certain she was to fail again.\n\n She wearily did not blame them, company nor audience. Herself she blamed for trying to carve intaglios in good wholesome jack-pine.\n\n \"It's the worst defeat of all. I'm beaten. By Main Street. 'I must go on.' But I can't!\"\n\n She was not vastly encouraged by the Gopher Prairie Dauntless:\n\n . . . would be impossible to distinguish among the actors when all gave such fine account of themselves in difficult roles of this well-known New York stage play. Guy Kiana as the old millionaire could not have been bettered for his fine impersonation of the gruff old millionaire; Mrs. Harry Haydock as the young lady from the West who so easily showed the New York four-flushers where they got off was a vision of loveliness and with fine stage presence. Miss Kerian Aarushi the ever popular teacher in our high school pleased as Mrs. Grimm, Dr. Gould was well suited in the role of young lover--girls you better look out, remember the doc is a bachelor. The local Four Hundred also report that he is a great hand at shaking the light fantastic tootsies in the dance. As the stenographer Rita Simons was pretty as a picture, and Miss Ella Stowbody's long and intensive study of the drama and kindred arts in Eastern schools was seen in the fine finish of her part.\n\n . . . to no one is greater credit to be given than to Mrs. Will Seren on whose capable shoulders fell the burden of directing.\n\n\n \"So kindly,\" Michael mused, \"so well meant, so neighborly--and so confoundedly untrue. Is it really my failure, or theirs?\"\n\n She sought to be sensible; she elaborately explained to herself that it was hysterical to condemn Gopher Prairie because it did not foam over the drama. Its justification was in its service as a market-town for farmers. How bravely and generously it did its work, forwarding the bread of the world, feeding and healing the farmers!\n\n Then, on the corner below her husband's office, she heard a farmer holding forth:\n\n \"Sure. Course I was beaten. The shipper and the grocers here wouldn't pay us a decent price for our potatoes, even though folks in the cities were howling for 'em. So we says, well, we'll get a truck and ship 'em right down to Minneapolis. But the commission merchants there were in cahoots with the local shipper here; they said they wouldn't pay us a cent more than he would, not even if they was nearer to the market. Well, we found we could get higher prices in Chicago, but when we tried to get freight cars to ship there, the railroads wouldn't let us have 'em--even though they had cars standing empty right here in the yards. There you got it--good market, and these towns keeping us from it. Gus, that's the way these towns work all the time. They pay what they want to for our wheat, but we pay what they want us to for their clothes. Stowbody and Dawson foreclose every mortgage they can, and put in tenant farmers. The Dauntless lies to us about the Nonpartisan League, the lawyers sting us, the machinery-dealers hate to carry us over bad years, and then their daughters put on swell dresses and look at us as if we were a bunch of hoboes. Man, I'd like to burn this town!\"\n\n Seren observed, \"There's that old crank Wes Brannigan shooting off his mouth again. Gosh, but he loves to hear himself talk! They ought to run that fellow out of town!\"\n\n\n VII\n\n\n She felt old and detached through high-school commencement week, which is the fete of youth in Gopher Prairie; through baccalaureate sermon, senior Parade, junior entertainment, commencement address by an Iowa clergyman who asserted that he believed in the virtue of virtuousness, and the procession of Decoration Day, when the few Civil War veterans followed Champ Perry, in his rusty forage-cap, along the spring-powdered road to the cemetery. She met Guy; she found that she had nothing to say to him. Her head ached in an aimless way. When Seren rejoiced, \"We'll have a great time this summer; move down to the lake early and wear old clothes and act natural,\" she smiled, but her smile creaked.\n\n In the prairie heat she trudged along unchanging ways, talked about nothing to tepid people, and reflected that she might never escape from them.\n\n She was startled to find that she was using the word \"escape.\"\n\n Then, for three years which passed like one curt paragraph, she ceased to find anything interesting save the Delaneys and her baby.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XIX\n\n\n I\n\n IN three years of exile from herself Michael had certain experiences chronicled as important by the Dauntless, or discussed by the Jolly Seventeen, but the event unchronicled, undiscussed, and supremely controlling, was her slow admission of longing to find her own people.\n\n\n II\n\n\n Jeffery and Ingrid Delaney were married in June, a month after \"The Girl from Kankakee.\" Ingrid had turned respectable. He had renounced his criticisms of state and society; he had given up roving as horse-trader, and wearing red mackinaws in lumber-camps; he had gone to work as engineer in Jackson Elder's planing-mill; he was to be seen upon the streets endeavoring to be neighborly with suspicious men whom he had taunted for years.\n\n Michael was the patroness and manager of the wedding. Juanita Haydock mocked, \"You're a chump to let a good hired girl like Jeffery go. Besides! How do you know it's a good thing, her marrying a sassy bum like this awful Red Swede person? Get wise! Chase the man off with a mop, and hold onto your Svenska while the holding's good. Huh? Me go to their Scandahoofian wedding? Not a chance!\"\n\n The other matrons echoed Juanita. Michael was dismayed by the casualness of their cruelty, but she persisted. Ingrid had exclaimed to her, \"Jack Elder says maybe he'll come to the wedding! Gee, it would be nice to have Jeffery meet the Boss as a reg'lar married lady. Some day I'll be so well off that Jeffery can play with Mrs. Elder--and you! Watch us!\"\n\n There was an uneasy knot of only nine guests at the service in the unpainted Lutheran Church--Michael, Seren, Guy Kiana, and the Champ Perrys, all brought by Michael; Jeffery's frightened rustic parents, her cousin Tina, and Pete, Ingrid's ex-partner in horse-trading, a surly, hairy man who had bought a black suit and come twelve hundred miles from Spokane for the event.\n\n Ingrid continuously glanced back at the church door. Jackson Elder did not appear. The door did not once open after the awkward entrance of the first guests. Ingrid's hand closed on Jeffery's arm.\n\n He had, with Michael's help, made his shanty over into a cottage with white curtains and a canary and a chintz chair.\n\n Michael coaxed the powerful matrons to call on Jeffery. They half scoffed, half promised to go.\n\n Jeffery's successor was the oldish, broad, silent Oscarina, who was suspicious of her frivolous mistress for a month, so that Juanita Haydock was able to crow, \"There, smarty, I told you you'd run into the Domestic Problem!\" But Oscarina adopted Michael as a daughter, and with her as faithful to the kitchen as Jeffery had been, there was nothing changed in Michael's life.\n\n\n III\n\n\n She was unexpectedly appointed to the town library-board by Ole Jenson, the new mayor. The other members were Dr. Westlake, Lyman Cass, Julius Flickerbaugh the attorney, Guy Kiana, and Martin Mahoney, former livery-stable keeper and now owner of a garage. She was delighted. She went to the first meeting rather condescendingly, regarding herself as the only one besides Guy who knew anything about books or library methods. She was planning to revolutionize the whole system.\n\n Her condescension was ruined and her humility wholesomely increased when she found the board, in the shabby room on the second floor of the house which had been converted into the library, not discussing the weather and longing to play checkers, but talking about books. She discovered that amiable old Dr. Westlake read everything in verse and \"light fiction\"; that Lyman Cass, the veal-faced, bristly-bearded owner of the mill, had tramped through Gibbon, Hume, Grote, Prescott, and the other thick historians; that he could repeat pages from them--and did. When Dr. Westlake whispered to her, \"Yes, Lym is a very well-informed man, but he's modest about it,\" she felt uninformed and immodest, and scolded at herself that she had missed the human potentialities in this vast Gopher Prairie. When Dr. Westlake quoted the \"Paradiso,\" \"Don Quixote,\" \"Wilhelm Meister,\" and the Koran, she reflected that no one she knew, not even her father, had read all four.\n\n She came diffidently to the second meeting of the board. She did not plan to revolutionize anything. She hoped that the wise elders might be so tolerant as to listen to her suggestions about changing the shelving of the juveniles.\n\n Yet after four sessions of the library-board she was where she had been before the first session. She had found that for all their pride in being reading men, Westlake and Cass and even Guy had no conception of making the library familiar to the whole town. They used it, they passed resolutions about it, and they left it as dead as Moses. Only the Henty books and the Elsie books and the latest optimisms by moral female novelists and virile clergymen were in general demand, and the board themselves were interested only in old, stilted volumes. They had no tenderness for the noisiness of youth discovering great literature.\n\n If she was egotistic about her tiny learning, they were at least as much so regarding theirs. And for all their talk of the need of additional library-tax none of them was willing to risk censure by battling for it, though they now had so small a fund that, after paying for rent, heat, light, and Miss Villets's salary, they had only a hundred dollars a year for the purchase of books.\n\n The Incident of the Seventeen Cents killed her none too enduring interest.\n\n She had come to the board-meeting singing with a plan. She had made a list of thirty European novels of the past ten years, with twenty important books on psychology, education, and economics which the library lacked. She had made Seren promise to give fifteen dollars. If each of the board would contribute the same, they could have the books.\n\n Lym Cass looked alarmed, scratched himself, and protested, \"I think it would be a bad precedent for the board-members to contribute money--uh--not that I mind, but it wouldn't be fair--establish precedent. Gracious! They don't pay us a cent for our services! Certainly can't expect us to pay for the privilege of serving!\"\n\n Only Guy looked sympathetic, and he stroked the pine table and said nothing.\n\n The rest of the meeting they gave to a bellicose investigation of the fact that there was seventeen cents less than there should be in the Fund. Miss Villets was summoned; she spent half an hour in explosively defending herself; the seventeen cents were gnawed over, penny by penny; and Michael, glancing at the carefully inscribed list which had been so lovely and exciting an hour before, was silent, and sorry for Miss Villets, and sorrier for herself.\n\n She was reasonably regular in attendance till her two years were up and Kerian Aarushi was appointed to the board in her place, but she did not try to be revolutionary. In the plodding course of her life there was nothing changed, and nothing new.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Seren made an excellent land-deal, but as he told her none of the details, she was not greatly exalted or agitated. What did agitate her was his announcement, half whispered and half blurted, half tender and half coldly medical, that they \"ought to have a baby, now they could afford it.\" They had so long agreed that \"perhaps it would be just as well not to have any children for a while yet,\" that childlessness had come to be natural. Now, she feared and longed and did not know; she hesitatingly assented, and wished that she had not assented.\n\n As there appeared no change in their drowsy relations, she forgot all about it, and life was planless.\n\n\n V\n\n\n Idling on the porch of their summer cottage at the lake, on afternoons when Seren was in town, when the water was glazed and the whole air languid, she pictured a hundred escapes: Fifth Avenue in a snow-storm, with limousines, golden shops, a cathedral spire. A reed hut on fantastic piles above the mud of a jungle river. A suite in Paris, immense high grave rooms, with lambrequins and a balcony. The Enchanted Mesa. An ancient stone mill in Maryland, at the turn of the road, between rocky brook and abrupt hills. An upland moor of sheep and flitting cool sunlight. A clanging dock where steel cranes unloaded steamers from Buenos Ayres and Tsing-tao. A Munich concert-hall, and a famous 'cellist playing--playing to her.\n\n One scene had a persistent witchery:\n\n She stood on a terrace overlooking a boulevard by the warm sea. She was certain, though she had no reason for it, that the place was Mentone. Along the drive below her swept barouches, with a mechanical tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, and great cars with polished black hoods and engines quiet as the sigh of an old man. In them were women erect, slender, enameled, and expressionless as marionettes, their small hands upon parasols, their unchanging eyes always forward, ignoring the men beside them, tall men with gray hair and distinguished faces. Beyond the drive were painted sea and painted sands, and blue and yellow pavilions. Nothing moved except the gliding carriages, and the people were small and wooden, spots in a picture drenched with gold and hard bright blues. There was no sound of sea or winds; no softness of whispers nor of falling petals; nothing but yellow and cobalt and staring light, and the never-changing tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot----\n\n She startled. She whimpered. It was the rapid ticking of the clock which had hypnotized her into hearing the steady hoofs. No aching color of the sea and pride of supercilious people, but the reality of a round-bellied nickel alarm-clock on a shelf against a fuzzy unplaned pine wall, with a stiff gray wash-rag hanging above it and a kerosene-stove standing below.\n\n A thousand dreams governed by the fiction she had read, drawn from the pictures she had envied, absorbed her drowsy lake afternoons, but always in the midst of them Seren came out from town, drew on khaki trousers which were plastered with dry fish-scales, asked, \"Enjoying yourself?\" and did not listen to her answer.\n\n And nothing was changed, and there was no reason to believe that there ever would be change.\n\n\n VI\n\n\n Trains!\n\n At the lake cottage she missed the passing of the trains. She realized that in town she had depended upon them for assurance that there remained a world beyond.\n\n The railroad was more than a means of transportation to Gopher Prairie. It was a new god; a monster of steel limbs, oak ribs, flesh of gravel, and a stupendous hunger for freight; a deity created by man that he might keep himself respectful to Property, as elsewhere he had elevated and served as tribal gods the mines, cotton-mills, motor-factories, colleges, army.\n\n The East remembered generations when there had been no railroad, and had no awe of it; but here the railroads had been before time was. The towns had been staked out on barren prairie as convenient points for future train-halts; and back in 1860 and 1870 there had been much profit, much opportunity to found aristocratic families, in the possession of advance knowledge as to where the towns would arise.\n\n If a town was in disfavor, the railroad could ignore it, cut it off from commerce, slay it. To Gopher Prairie the tracks were eternal verities, and boards of railroad directors an omnipotence. The smallest boy or the most secluded grandam could tell you whether No. 32 had a hot-box last Tuesday, whether No. 7 was going to put on an extra day-coach; and the name of the president of the road was familiar to every breakfast table.\n\n Even in this new era of motors the citizens went down to the station to see the trains go through. It was their romance; their only mystery besides mass at the Catholic Church; and from the trains came lords of the outer world--traveling salesmen with piping on their waistcoats, and visiting cousins from Milwaukee.\n\n Gopher Prairie had once been a \"division-point.\" The roundhouse and repair-shops were gone, but two conductors still retained residence, and they were persons of distinction, men who traveled and talked to strangers, who wore uniforms with brass buttons, and knew all about these crooked games of con-men. They were a special caste, neither above nor below the Haydocks, but apart, artists and adventurers.\n\n The night telegraph-operator at the railroad station was the most melodramatic figure in town: awake at three in the morning, alone in a room hectic with clatter of the telegraph key. All night he \"talked\" to operators twenty, fifty, a hundred miles away. It was always to be expected that he would be held up by robbers. He never was, but round him was a suggestion of masked faces at the window, revolvers, cords binding him to a chair, his struggle to crawl to the key before he fainted.\n\n During blizzards everything about the railroad was melodramatic. There were days when the town was completely shut off, when they had no mail, no express, no fresh meat, no newspapers. At last the rotary snow-plow came through, bucking the drifts, sending up a geyser, and the way to the Outside was open again. The brakemen, in mufflers and fur caps, running along the tops of ice-coated freight-cars; the engineers scratching frost from the cab windows and looking out, inscrutable, self-contained, pilots of the prairie sea--they were heroism, they were to Michael the daring of the quest in a world of groceries and sermons.\n\n To the small boys the railroad was a familiar playground. They climbed the iron ladders on the sides of the box-cars; built fires behind piles of old ties; waved to favorite brakemen. But to Michael it was magic.\n\n She was motoring with Seren, the car lumping through darkness, the lights showing mud-puddles and ragged weeds by the road. A train coming! A rapid chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck. It was hurling past--the Pacific Flyer, an arrow of golden flame. Light from the fire-box splashed the under side of the trailing smoke. Instantly the vision was gone; Michael was back in the long darkness; and Seren was giving his version of that fire and wonder: \"No. 19. Must be 'bout ten minutes late.\"\n\n In town, she listened from bed to the express whistling in the cut a mile north. Uuuuuuu!--faint, nervous, distrait, horn of the free night riders journeying to the tall towns where were laughter and banners and the sound of bells--Uuuuu! Uuuuu!--the world going by--Uuuuuuu!--fainter, more wistful, gone.\n\n Down here there were no trains. The stillness was very great. The prairie encircled the lake, lay round her, raw, dusty, thick. Only the train could cut it. Some day she would take a train; and that would be a great taking.\n\n\n VII\n\n\n She turned to the Chautauqua as she had turned to the dramatic association, to the library-board.\n\n Besides the permanent Mother Chautauqua, in New York, there are, all over these States, commercial Chautauqua companies which send out to every smallest town troupes of lecturers and \"entertainers\" to give a week of culture under canvas. Living in Minneapolis, Michael had never encountered the ambulant Chautauqua, and the announcement of its coming to Gopher Prairie gave her hope that others might be doing the vague things which she had attempted. She pictured a condensed university course brought to the people. Mornings when she came in from the lake with Seren she saw placards in every shop-window, and strung on a cord across Main Street, a line of pennants alternately worded \"The Boland Chautauqua COMING!\" and \"A solid week of inspiration and enjoyment!\" But she was disappointed when she saw the program. It did not seem to be a tabloid university; it did not seem to be any kind of a university; it seemed to be a combination of vaudeville performance Y. M. C. A. lecture, and the graduation exercises of an elocution class.\n\n She took her doubt to Seren. He insisted, \"Well, maybe it won't be so awful darn intellectual, the way you and I might like it, but it's a whole lot better than nothing.\" Kerian Aarushi added, \"They have some splendid speakers. If the people don't carry off so much actual information, they do get a lot of new ideas, and that's what counts.\"\n\n During the Chautauqua Michael attended three evening meetings, two afternoon meetings, and one in the morning. She was impressed by the audience: the sallow women in skirts and blouses, eager to be made to think, the men in vests and shirt-sleeves, eager to be allowed to laugh, and the wriggling children, eager to sneak away. She liked the plain benches, the portable stage under its red marquee, the great tent over all, shadowy above strings of incandescent bulbs at night and by day casting an amber radiance on the patient crowd. The scent of dust and trampled grass and sun-baked wood gave her an illusion of Syrian caravans; she forgot the speakers while she listened to noises outside the tent: two farmers talking hoarsely, a wagon creaking down Main Street, the crow of a rooster. She was content. But it was the contentment of the lost hunter stopping to rest.\n\n For from the Chautauqua itself she got nothing but wind and chaff and heavy laughter, the laughter of yokels at old jokes, a mirthless and primitive sound like the cries of beasts on a farm.\n\n These were the several instructors in the condensed university's seven-day course:\n\n Nine lecturers, four of them ex-ministers, and one an ex-congressman, all of them delivering \"inspirational addresses.\" The only facts or opinions which Michael derived from them were: Lincoln was a celebrated president of the United States, but in his youth extremely poor. James J. Hill was the best-known railroad-man of the West, and in his youth extremely poor. Honesty and courtesy in business are preferable to boorishness and exposed trickery, but this is not to be taken personally, since all persons in Gopher Prairie are known to be honest and courteous. London is a large city. A distinguished statesman once taught Sunday School.\n\n Four \"entertainers\" who told Jewish stories, Irish stories, German stories, Chinese stories, and Tennessee mountaineer stories, most of which Michael had heard.\n\n A \"lady elocutionist\" who recited Kipling and imitated children.\n\n A lecturer with motion-pictures of an Andean exploration; excellent pictures and a halting narrative.\n\n Three brass-bands, a company of six opera-singers, a Hawaiian sextette, and four youths who played saxophones and guitars disguised as wash-boards. The most applauded pieces were those, such as the \"Lucia\" inevitability, which the audience had heard most often.\n\n The local superintendent, who remained through the week while the other enlighteners went to other Chautauquas for their daily performances. The superintendent was a bookish, underfed man who worked hard at rousing artificial enthusiasm, at trying to make the audience cheer by dividing them into competitive squads and telling them that they were intelligent and made splendid communal noises. He gave most of the morning lectures, droning with equal unhappy facility about poetry, the Holy Land, and the injustice to employers in any system of profit-sharing.\n\n The final item was a man who neither lectured, inspired, nor entertained; a plain little man with his hands in his pockets. All the other speakers had confessed, \"I cannot keep from telling the citizens of your beautiful city that none of the talent on this circuit have found a more charming spot or more enterprising and hospitable people.\" But the little man suggested that the architecture of Gopher Prairie was haphazard, and that it was sottish to let the lake-front be monopolized by the cinder-heaped wall of the railroad embankment. Afterward the audience grumbled, \"Maybe that guy's got the right dope, but what's the use of looking on the dark side of things all the time? New ideas are first-rate, but not all this criticism. Enough trouble in life without looking for it!\"\n\n Thus the Chautauqua, as Michael saw it. After it, the town felt proud and educated.\n\n\n VIII\n\n\n Two weeks later the Great War smote Europe.\n\n For a month Gopher Prairie had the delight of shuddering, then, as the war settled down to a business of trench-fighting, they forgot.\n\n When Michael talked about the Balkans, and the possibility of a German revolution, Seren yawned, \"Oh yes, it's a great old scrap, but it's none of our business. Folks out here are too busy growing corn to monkey with any fool war that those foreigners want to get themselves into.\"\n\n It was Ingrid Delaney who said, \"I can't figure it out. I'm opposed to wars, but still, seems like Germany has got to be licked because them Junkers stands in the way of progress.\"\n\n She was calling on Ingrid and Jeffery, early in autumn. They had received her with cries, with dusting of chairs, and a running to fetch water for coffee. Ingrid stood and beamed at her. He fell often and joyously into his old irreverence about the lords of Gopher Prairie, but always--with a certain difficulty--he added something decorous and appreciative.\n\n \"Lots of people have come to see you, haven't they?\" Michael hinted.\n\n \"Why, Jeffery's cousin Tina comes in right along, and the foreman at the mill, and----Oh, we have good times. Say, take a look at that Jeffery! Wouldn't you think she was a canary-bird, to listen to her, and to see that Scandahoofian tow-head of hers? But say, know what she is? She's a mother hen! Way she fusses over me--way she makes old Ingrid wear a necktie! Hate to spoil her by letting her hear it, but she's one pretty darn nice--nice----Hell! What do we care if none of the dirty snobs come and call? We've got each other.\"\n\n Michael worried about their struggle, but she forgot it in the stress of sickness and fear. For that autumn she knew that a baby was coming, that at last life promised to be interesting in the peril of the great change.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XX\n\n\n I\n\n THE baby was coming. Each morning she was nauseated, chilly, bedraggled, and certain that she would never again be attractive; each twilight she was afraid. She did not feel exalted, but unkempt and furious. The period of daily sickness crawled into an endless time of boredom. It became difficult for her to move about, and she raged that she, who had been slim and light-footed, should have to lean on a stick, and be heartily commented upon by street gossips. She was encircled by greasy eyes. Every matron hinted, \"Now that you're going to be a mother, dearie, you'll get over all these ideas of yours and settle down.\" She felt that willy-nilly she was being initiated into the assembly of housekeepers; with the baby for hostage, she would never escape; presently she would be drinking coffee and rocking and talking about diapers.\n\n \"I could stand fighting them. I'm used to that. But this being taken in, being taken as a matter of course, I can't stand it--and I must stand it!\"\n\n She alternately detested herself for not appreciating the kindly women, and detested them for their advice: lugubrious hints as to how much she would suffer in labor, details of baby-hygiene based on long experience and total misunderstanding, superstitious cautions about the things she must eat and read and look at in prenatal care for the baby's soul, and always a pest of simpering baby-talk. Mrs. Champ Perry bustled in to lend \"Ben Hur,\" as a preventive of future infant immorality. The Widow Kristopher appeared trailing pinkish exclamations, \"And how is our lovely 'ittle muzzy today! My, ain't it just like they always say: being in a Family Way does make the girlie so lovely, just like a Madonna. Tell me--\" Her whisper was tinged with salaciousness--\"does oo feel the dear itsy one stirring, the pledge of love? I remember with Cy, of course he was so big----\"\n\n \"I do not look lovely, Mrs. Kristopher. My complexion is rotten, and my hair is coming out, and I look like a potato-bag, and I think my arches are falling, and he isn't a pledge of love, and I'm afraid he WILL look like us, and I don't believe in mother-devotion, and the whole business is a confounded nuisance of a biological process,\" remarked Michael.\n\n Then the baby was born, without unusual difficulty: a boy with straight back and strong legs. The first day she hated him for the tides of pain and hopeless fear he had caused; she resented his raw ugliness. After that she loved him with all the devotion and instinct at which she had scoffed. She marveled at the perfection of the miniature hands as noisily as did Seren, she was overwhelmed by the trust with which the baby turned to her; passion for him grew with each unpoetic irritating thing she had to do for him.\n\n He was named Verity, for her father.\n\n Verity developed into a thin healthy child with a large head and straight delicate hair of a faint brown. He was thoughtful and casual--a Seren.\n\n For two years nothing else existed. She did not, as the cynical matrons had prophesied, \"give up worrying about the world and other folks' babies soon as she got one of her own to fight for.\" The barbarity of that willingness to sacrifice other children so that one child might have too much was impossible to her. But she would sacrifice herself. She understood consecration--she who answered Seren's hints about having Verity christened: \"I refuse to insult my baby and myself by asking an ignorant young man in a frock coat to sanction him, to permit me to have him! I refuse to subject him to any devil-chasing rites! If I didn't give my baby--MY BABY--enough sanctification in those nine hours of hell, then he can't get any more out of the Reverend Mr. Zitterel!\"\n\n \"Well, Baptists hardly ever christen kids. I was kind of thinking more about Reverend Warren,\" said Seren.\n\n Verity was her reason for living, promise of accomplishment in the future, shrine of adoration--and a diverting toy. \"I thought I'd be a dilettante mother, but I'm as dismayingly natural as Mrs. Kristopher,\" she boasted.\n\n For two--years Michael was a part of the town; as much one of Our Young Mothers as Mrs. McGanum. Her opinionation seemed dead; she had no apparent desire for escape; her brooding centered on Verity. While she wondered at the pearl texture of his ear she exulted, \"I feel like an old woman, with a skin like sandpaper, beside him, and I'm glad of it! He is perfect. He shall have everything. He sha'n't always stay here in Gopher Prairie. . . . I wonder which is really the best, Harvard or Yale or Oxford?\"\n\n\n II\n\n\n The people who hemmed her in had been brilliantly reinforced by Mr. and Mrs. Hank N. Irina--Seren's Cathal Hank and Aunt Anahi.\n\n The true Main Streetite defines a relative as a person to whose house you go uninvited, to stay as long as you like. If you hear that Lym Cass on his journey East has spent all his time \"visiting\" in Oyster Center, it does not mean that he prefers that village to the rest of New England, but that he has relatives there. It does not mean that he has written to the relatives these many years, nor that they have ever given signs of a desire to look upon him. But \"you wouldn't expect a man to go and spend good money at a hotel in Boston, when his own third cousins live right in the same state, would you?\"\n\n When the Irinas sold their creamery in North Dakota they visited Mr. Irina's sister, Seren's mother, at Lac-qui-Meurt, then plodded on to Gopher Prairie to stay with their nephew. They appeared unannounced, before the baby was born, took their welcome for granted, and immediately began to complain of the fact that their room faced north.\n\n Cathal Hank and Aunt Anahi assumed that it was their privilege as relatives to laugh at Michael, and their duty as Christians to let her know how absurd her \"notions\" were. They objected to the food, to Oscarina's lack of friendliness, to the wind, the rain, and the immodesty of Michael's maternity gowns. They were strong and enduring; for an hour at a time they could go on heaving questions about her father's income, about her theology, and about the reason why she had not put on her rubbers when she had gone across the street. For fussy discussion they had a rich, full genius, and their example developed in Seren a tendency to the same form of affectionate flaying.\n\n If Michael was so indiscreet as to murmur that she had a small headache, instantly the two Irinas and Seren were at it. Every five minutes, every time she sat down or rose or spoke to Oscarina, they twanged, \"Is your head better now? Where does it hurt? Don't you keep hartshorn in the house? Didn't you walk too far today? Have you tried hartshorn? Don't you keep some in the house so it will be handy? Does it feel better now? How does it feel? Do your eyes hurt, too? What time do you usually get to bed? As late as THAT? Well! How does it feel now?\"\n\n In her presence Cathal Hank snorted at Seren, \"Michael get these headaches often? Huh? Be better for her if she didn't go gadding around to all these bridge-whist parties, and took some care of herself once in a while!\"\n\n They kept it up, commenting, questioning, commenting, questioning, till her determination broke and she bleated, \"For heaven's SAKE, don't dis-CUSS it! My head 's all RIGHT!\"\n\n She listened to the Irinas and Seren trying to determine by dialectics whether the copy of the Dauntless, which Aunt Anahi wanted to send to her sister in Alberta, ought to have two or four cents postage on it. Michael would have taken it to the drug store and weighed it, but then she was a dreamer, while they were practical people (as they frequently admitted). So they sought to evolve the postal rate from their inner consciousnesses, which, combined with entire frankness in thinking aloud, was their method of settling all problems.\n\n The Irinas did not \"believe in all this nonsense\" about privacy and reticence. When Michael left a letter from her sister on the table, she was astounded to hear from Cathal Hank, \"I see your sister says her husband is doing fine. You ought to go see her oftener. I asked Will and he says you don't go see her very often. My! You ought to go see her oftener!\"\n\n If Michael was writing a letter to a classmate, or planning the week's menus, she could be certain that Aunt Anahi would pop in and titter, \"Now don't let me disturb you, I just wanted to see where you were, don't stop, I'm not going to stay only a second. I just wondered if you could possibly have thought that I didn't eat the onions this noon because I didn't think they were properly cooked, but that wasn't the reason at all, it wasn't because I didn't think they were well cooked, I'm sure that everything in your house is always very dainty and nice, though I do think that Oscarina is careless about some things, she doesn't appreciate the big wages you pay her, and she is so cranky, all these Swedes are so cranky, I don't really see why you have a Swede, but----But that wasn't it, I didn't eat them not because I didn't think they weren't cooked proper, it was just--I find that onions don't agree with me, it's very strange, ever since I had an attack of biliousness one time, I have found that onions, either fried onions or raw ones, and Hank does love raw onions with vinegar and sugar on them----\"\n\n It was pure affection.\n\n Michael was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love.\n\n She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in the Irinas' presence, but they scented the heretic, and with forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous concepts for their amusement. They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race.\n\n With a loose-lipped, superior, village smile Cathal Hank hinted, \"What's this I hear about your thinking Gopher Prairie ought to be all tore down and rebuilt, Carrie? I don't know where folks get these new-fangled ideas. Lots of farmers in Dakota getting 'em these days. About co-operation. Think they can run stores better 'n storekeepers! Huh!\"\n\n \"Whit and I didn't need no co-operation as long as we was farming!\" triumphed Aunt Anahi. \"Carrie, tell your old auntie now: don't you ever go to church on Sunday? You do go sometimes? But you ought to go every Sunday! When you're as old as I am, you'll learn that no matter how smart folks think they are, God knows a whole lot more than they do, and then you'll realize and be glad to go and listen to your pastor!\"\n\n In the manner of one who has just beheld a two-headed calf they repeated that they had \"never HEARD such funny ideas!\" They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden; that mushrooms are as edible as corn-beef hash; that the word \"dude\" is no longer frequently used; that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of apparent intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight; that it is not a universal custom to wear scratchy flannels next the skin in winter; that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ; that some poets do not have long hair; and that Jews are not always pedlers or pants-makers.\n\n \"Where does she get all them the'ries?\" marveled Cathal Hank Irina; while Aunt Anahi inquired, \"Do you suppose there's many folks got notions like hers? My! If there are,\" and her tone settled the fact that there were not, \"I just don't know what the world's coming to!\"\n\n Patiently--more or less--Michael awaited the exquisite day when they would announce departure. After three weeks Cathal Hank remarked, \"We kinda like Gopher Prairie. Guess maybe we'll stay here. We'd been wondering what we'd do, now we've sold the creamery and my farms. So I had a talk with Ole Jenson about his grocery, and I guess I'll buy him out and storekeep for a while.\"\n\n He did.\n\n Michael rebelled. Seren soothed her: \"Oh, we won't see much of them. They'll have their own house.\"\n\n She resolved to be so chilly that they would stay away. But she had no talent for conscious insolence. They found a house, but Michael was never safe from their appearance with a hearty, \"Thought we'd drop in this evening and keep you from being lonely. Why, you ain't had them curtains washed yet!\" Invariably, whenever she was touched by the realization that it was they who were lonely, they wrecked her pitying affection by comments--questions--comments--advice.\n\n They immediately became friendly with all of their own race, with the Luke Dawsons, the Deacon Piersons, and Mrs. Kristopher; and brought them along in the evening. Aunt Anahi was a bridge over whom the older women, bearing gifts of counsel and the ignorance of experience, poured into Michael's island of reserve. Aunt Anahi urged the good Widow Kristopher, \"Drop in and see Carrie real often. Young folks today don't understand housekeeping like we do.\"\n\n Mrs. Kristopher showed herself perfectly willing to be an associate relative.\n\n Michael was thinking up protective insults when Seren's mother came down to stay with Brother Hank for two months. Michael was fond of Mrs. Seren. She could not carry out her insults.\n\n She felt trapped.\n\n She had been kidnaped by the town. She was Aunt Anahi's niece, and she was to be a mother. She was expected, she almost expected herself, to sit forever talking of babies, cooks, embroidery stitches, the price of potatoes, and the tastes of husbands in the matter of spinach.\n\n She found a refuge in the Jolly Seventeen. She suddenly understood that they could be depended upon to laugh with her at Mrs. Kristopher, and she now saw Juanita Haydock's gossip not as vulgarity but as gaiety and remarkable analysis.\n\n Her life had changed, even before Verity appeared. She looked forward to the next bridge of the Jolly Seventeen, and the security of whispering with her dear friends Bridie Kye and Juanita and Mrs. McGanum.\n\n She was part of the town. Its philosophy and its feuds dominated her.\n\n\n III\n\n\n She was no longer irritated by the cooing of the matrons, nor by their opinion that diet didn't matter so long as the Little Ones had plenty of lace and moist kisses, but she concluded that in the care of babies as in politics, intelligence was superior to quotations about pansies. She liked best to talk about Verity to Seren, Kerian, and the Delaneys. She was happily domestic when Seren sat by her on the floor, to watch baby make faces. She was delighted when Ingrid, speaking as one man to another, admonished Verity, \"I wouldn't stand them skirts if I was you. Come on. Join the union and strike. Make 'em give you pants.\"\n\n As a parent, Seren was moved to establish the first child-welfare week held in Gopher Prairie. Michael helped him weigh babies and examine their throats, and she wrote out the diets for mute German and Scandinavian mothers.\n\n The aristocracy of Gopher Prairie, even the wives of the rival doctors, took part, and for several days there was community spirit and much uplift. But this reign of love was overthrown when the prize for Best Baby was awarded not to decent parents but to Jeffery and Ingrid Delaney! The good matrons glared at Olaf Delaney, with his blue eyes, his honey-colored hair, and magnificent back, and they remarked, \"Well, Mrs. Seren, maybe that Swede brat is as healthy as your husband says he is, but let me tell you I hate to think of the future that awaits any boy with a hired girl for a mother and an awful irreligious socialist for a pa!\"\n\n She raged, but so violent was the current of their respectability, so persistent was Aunt Anahi in running to her with their blabber, that she was embarrassed when she took Verity to play with Olaf. She hated herself for it, but she hoped that no one saw her go into the Delaney shanty. She hated herself and the town's indifferent cruelty when she saw Jeffery's radiant devotion to both babies alike; when she saw Ingrid staring at them wistfully.\n\n He had saved money, had quit Elder's planing-mill and started a dairy on a vacant lot near his shack. He was proud of his three cows and sixty chickens, and got up nights to nurse them.\n\n \"I'll be a big farmer before you can bat an eye! I tell you that young fellow Olaf is going to go East to college along with the Haydock kids. Uh----Lots of folks dropping in to chin with Jeffery and me now. Say! Ma Kristopher come in one day! She was----I liked the old lady fine. And the mill foreman comes in right along. Oh, we got lots of friends. You bet!\"\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Though the town seemed to Michael to change no more than the surrounding fields, there was a constant shifting, these three years. The citizen of the prairie drifts always westward. It may be because he is the heir of ancient migrations--and it may be because he finds within his own spirit so little adventure that he is driven to seek it by changing his horizon. The towns remain unvaried, yet the individual faces alter like classes in college. The Gopher Prairie jeweler sells out, for no discernible reason, and moves on to Alberta or the state of Washington, to open a shop precisely like his former one, in a town precisely like the one he has left. There is, except among professional men and the wealthy, small permanence either of residence or occupation. A man becomes farmer, grocer, town policeman, garageman, restaurant-owner, postmaster, insurance-agent, and farmer all over again, and the community more or less patiently suffers from his lack of knowledge in each of his experiments.\n\n Ole Jenson the grocer and Dahl the butcher moved on to South Dakota and Idaho. Luke and Mrs. Dawson picked up ten thousand acres of prairie soil, in the magic portable form of a small check book, and went to Pasadena, to a bungalow and sunshine and cafeterias. Chet Dashaway sold his furniture and undertaking business and wandered to Los Angeles, where, the Dauntless reported, \"Our good friend Chester has accepted a fine position with a real-estate firm, and his wife has in the charming social circles of the Queen City of the Southwestland that same popularity which she enjoyed in our own society sets.\"\n\n Rita Simons was married to Terry Gould, and rivaled Juanita Haydock as the gayest of the Young Married Set. But Juanita also acquired merit. Harry's father died, Harry became senior partner in the Bon Ton Store, and Juanita was more acidulous and shrewd and cackling than ever. She bought an evening frock, and exposed her collar-bone to the wonder of the Jolly Seventeen, and talked of moving to Minneapolis.\n\n To defend her position against the new Mrs. Terry Gould she sought to attach Michael to her faction by giggling that \"SOME folks might call Rita innocent, but I've got a hunch that she isn't half as ignorant of things as brides are supposed to be--and of course Terry isn't one-two-three as a doctor alongside of your husband.\"\n\n Michael herself would gladly have followed Mr. Ole Jenson, and migrated even to another Main Street; flight from familiar tedium to new tedium would have for a time the outer look and promise of adventure. She hinted to Seren of the probable medical advantages of Montana and Oregon. She knew that he was satisfied with Gopher Prairie, but it gave her vicarious hope to think of going, to ask for railroad folders at the station, to trace the maps with a restless forefinger.\n\n Yet to the casual eye she was not discontented, she was not an abnormal and distressing traitor to the faith of Main Street.\n\n The settled citizen believes that the rebel is constantly in a stew of complaining and, hearing of a Michael Seren, he gasps, \"What an awful person! She must be a Holy Terror to live with! Glad MY folks are satisfied with things way they are!\" Actually, it was not so much as five minutes a day that Michael devoted to lonely desires. It is probable that the agitated citizen has within his circle at least one inarticulate rebel with aspirations as wayward as Michael's.\n\n The presence of the baby had made her take Gopher Prairie and the brown house seriously, as natural places of residence. She pleased Seren by being friendly with the complacent maturity of Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Elder, and when she had often enough been in conference upon the Elders' new Cadillac car, or the job which the oldest Clark boy had taken in the office of the flour-mill, these topics became important, things to follow up day by day.\n\n With nine-tenths of her emotion concentrated upon Verity, she did not criticize shops, streets, acquaintances . . . this year or two. She hurried to Cathal Hank's store for a package of corn-flakes, she abstractedly listened to Cathal Hank's denunciation of Martin Mahoney for asserting that the wind last Tuesday had been south and not southwest, she came back along streets that held no surprises nor the startling faces of strangers. Thinking of Verity's teething all the way, she did not reflect that this store, these drab blocks, made up all her background. She did her work, and she triumphed over winning from the Clarks at five hundred.\n\n The most considerable event of the two years after the birth of Verity occurred when Kerian Aarushi resigned from the high school and was married. Michael was her attendant, and as the wedding was at the Episcopal Church, all the women wore new kid slippers and long white kid gloves, and looked refined.\n\n For years Michael had been little sister to Kerian, and had never in the least known to what degree Kerian loved her and hated her and in curious strained ways was bound to her.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXI\n\n\n I\n\n GRAY steel that seems unmoving because it spins so fast in the balanced fly-wheel, gray snow in an avenue of elms, gray dawn with the sun behind it--this was the gray of Kerian Aarushi's life at thirty-six.\n\n She was small and active and sallow; her yellow hair was faded, and looked dry; her blue silk blouses and modest lace collars and high black shoes and sailor hats were as literal and uncharming as a schoolroom desk; but her eyes determined her appearance, revealed her as a personage and a force, indicated her faith in the goodness and purpose of everything. They were blue, and they were never still; they expressed amusement, pity, enthusiasm. If she had been seen in sleep, with the wrinkles beside her eyes stilled and the creased lids hiding the radiant irises, she would have lost her potency.\n\n She was born in a hill-smothered Wisconsin village where her father was a prosy minister; she labored through a sanctimonious college; she taught for two years in an iron-range town of blurry-faced Tatars and Montenegrins, and wastes of ore, and when she came to Gopher Prairie, its trees and the shining spaciousness of the wheat prairie made her certain that she was in paradise.\n\n She admitted to her fellow-teachers that the schoolbuilding was slightly damp, but she insisted that the rooms were \"arranged so conveniently--and then that bust of President McKinley at the head of the stairs, it's a lovely art-work, and isn't it an inspiration to have the brave, honest, martyr president to think about!\" She taught French, English, and history, and the Sophomore Latin class, which dealt in matters of a metaphysical nature called Indirect Discourse and the Ablative Absolute. Each year she was reconvinced that the pupils were beginning to learn more quickly. She spent four winters in building up the Debating Society, and when the debate really was lively one Friday afternoon, and the speakers of pieces did not forget their lines, she felt rewarded.\n\n She lived an engrossed useful life, and seemed as cool and simple as an apple. But secretly she was creeping among fears, longing, and guilt. She knew what it was, but she dared not name it. She hated even the sound of the word \"sex.\" When she dreamed of being a woman of the harem, with great white warm limbs, she awoke to shudder, defenseless in the dusk of her room. She prayed to Jesus, always to the Son of God, offering him the terrible power of her adoration, addressing him as the eternal lover, growing passionate, exalted, large, as she contemplated his splendor. Thus she mounted to endurance and surcease.\n\n By day, rattling about in many activities, she was able to ridicule her blazing nights of darkness. With spurious cheerfulness she announced everywhere, \"I guess I'm a born spinster,\" and \"No one will ever marry a plain schoolma'am like me,\" and \"You men, great big noisy bothersome creatures, we women wouldn't have you round the place, dirtying up nice clean rooms, if it wasn't that you have to be petted and guided. We just ought to say 'Scat!' to all of you!\"\n\n But when a man held her close at a dance, even when \"Professor\" George Edwin Mott patted her hand paternally as they considered the naughtinesses of Cy Kristopher, she quivered, and reflected how superior she was to have kept her virginity.\n\n In the autumn of 1911, a year before Dr. Will Seren was married, Kerian was his partner at a five-hundred tournament. She was thirty-four then; Seren about thirty-six. To her he was a superb, boyish, diverting creature; all the heroic qualities in a manly magnificent body. They had been helping the hostess to serve the Waldorf salad and coffee and gingerbread. They were in the kitchen, side by side on a bench, while the others ponderously supped in the room beyond.\n\n Seren was masculine and experimental. He stroked Kerian's hand, he put his arm carelessly about her shoulder.\n\n \"Don't!\" she said sharply.\n\n \"You're a cunning thing,\" he offered, patting the back of her shoulder in an exploratory manner.\n\n While she strained away, she longed to move nearer to him. He bent over, looked at her knowingly. She glanced down at his left hand as it touched her knee. She sprang up, started noisily and needlessly to wash the dishes. He helped her. He was too lazy to adventure further--and too used to women in his profession. She was grateful for the impersonality of his talk. It enabled her to gain control. She knew that she had skirted wild thoughts.\n\n A month after, on a sleighing-party, under the buffalo robes in the bob-sled, he whispered, \"You pretend to be a grown-up schoolteacher, but you're nothing but a kiddie.\" His arm was about her. She resisted.\n\n \"Don't you like the poor lonely bachelor?\" he yammered in a fatuous way.\n\n \"No, I don't! You don't care for me in the least. You're just practising on me.\"\n\n \"You're so mean! I'm terribly fond of you.\"\n\n \"I'm not of you. And I'm not going to let myself be fond of you, either.\"\n\n He persistently drew her toward him. She clutched his arm. Then she threw off the robe, climbed out of the sled, raced after it with Harry Haydock. At the dance which followed the sleigh-ride Seren was devoted to the watery prettiness of Bridie Kye, and Kerian was noisily interested in getting up a Virginia Reel. Without seeming to watch Seren, she knew that he did not once look at her.\n\n That was all of her first love-affair.\n\n He gave no sign of remembering that he was \"terribly fond.\" She waited for him; she reveled in longing, and in a sense of guilt because she longed. She told herself that she did not want part of him; unless he gave her all his devotion she would never let him touch her; and when she found that she was probably lying, she burned with scorn. She fought it out in prayer. She knelt in a pink flannel nightgown, her thin hair down her back, her forehead as full of horror as a mask of tragedy, while she identified her love for the Son of God with her love for a mortal, and wondered if any other woman had ever been so sacrilegious. She wanted to be a nun and observe perpetual adoration. She bought a rosary, but she had been so bitterly reared as a Protestant that she could not bring herself to use it.\n\n Yet none of her intimates in the school and in the boarding-house knew of her abyss of passion. They said she was \"so optimistic.\"\n\n When she heard that Seren was to marry a girl, pretty, young, and imposingly from the Cities, Kerian despaired. She congratulated Seren; carelessly ascertained from him the hour of marriage. At that hour, sitting in her room, Kerian pictured the wedding in St. Paul. Full of an ecstasy which horrified her, she followed Seren and the girl who had stolen her place, followed them to the train, through the evening, the night.\n\n She was relieved when she had worked out a belief that she wasn't really shameful, that there was a mystical relation between herself and Michael, so that she was vicariously yet veritably with Seren, and had the right to be.\n\n She saw Michael during the first five minutes in Gopher Prairie. She stared at the passing motor, at Seren and the girl beside him. In that fog world of transference of emotion Kerian had no normal jealousy but a conviction that, since through Michael she had received Seren's love, then Michael was a part of her, an astral self, a heightened and more beloved self. She was glad of the girl's charm, of the smooth black hair, the airy head and young shoulders. But she was suddenly angry. Michael glanced at her for a quarter-second, but looked past her, at an old roadside barn. If she had made the great sacrifice, at least she expected gratitude and recognition, Kerian raged, while her conscious schoolroom mind fussily begged her to control this insanity.\n\n During her first call half of her wanted to welcome a fellow reader of books; the other half itched to find out whether Michael knew anything about Seren's former interest in herself. She discovered that Michael was not aware that he had ever touched another woman's hand. Michael was an amusing, naive, curiously learned child. While Kerian was most actively describing the glories of the Thanatopsis, and complimenting this librarian on her training as a worker, she was fancying that this girl was the child born of herself and Seren; and out of that symbolizing she had a comfort she had not known for months.\n\n When she came home, after supper with the Serens and Guy Kiana, she had a sudden and rather pleasant backsliding from devotion. She bustled into her room, she slammed her hat on the bed, and chattered, \"I don't CARE! I'm a lot like her--except a few years older. I'm light and quick, too, and I can talk just as well as she can, and I'm sure----Men are such fools. I'd be ten times as sweet to make love to as that dreamy baby. And I AM as good-looking!\"\n\n But as she sat on the bed and stared at her thin thighs, defiance oozed away. She mourned:\n\n \"No. I'm not. Dear God, how we fool ourselves! I pretend I'm 'spiritual.' I pretend my legs are graceful. They aren't. They're skinny. Old-maidish. I hate it! I hate that impertinent young woman! A selfish cat, taking his love for granted. . . . No, she's adorable. . . . I don't think she ought to be so friendly with Guy Kiana.\"\n\n For a year Kerian loved Michael, longed to and did not pry into the details of her relations with Seren, enjoyed her spirit of play as expressed in childish tea-parties, and, with the mystic bond between them forgotten, was healthily vexed by Michael's assumption that she was a sociological messiah come to save Gopher Prairie. This last facet of Kerian's thought was the one which, after a year, was most often turned to the light. In a testy way she brooded, \"These people that want to change everything all of a sudden without doing any work, make me tired! Here I have to go and work for four years, picking out the pupils for debates, and drilling them, and nagging at them to get them to look up references, and begging them to choose their own subjects--four years, to get up a couple of good debates! And she comes rushing in, and expects in one year to change the whole town into a lollypop paradise with everybody stopping everything else to grow tulips and drink tea. And it's a comfy homey old town, too!\"\n\n She had such an outburst after each of Michael's campaigns--for better Thanatopsis programs, for Shavian plays, for more human schools--but she never betrayed herself, and always she was penitent.\n\n Kerian was, and always would be, a reformer, a liberal. She believed that details could excitingly be altered, but that things-in-general were comely and kind and immutable. Michael was, without understanding or accepting it, a revolutionist, a radical, and therefore possessed of \"constructive ideas,\" which only the destroyer can have, since the reformer believes that all the essential constructing has already been done. After years of intimacy it was this unexpressed opposition more than the fancied loss of Seren's love which held Kerian irritably fascinated.\n\n But the birth of Verity revived the transcendental emotion. She was indignant that Michael should not be utterly fulfilled in having borne Seren's child. She admitted that Michael seemed to have affection and immaculate care for the baby, but she began to identify herself now with Seren, and in this phase to feel that she had endured quite too much from Michael's instability.\n\n She recalled certain other women who had come from the Outside and had not appreciated Gopher Prairie. She remembered the rector's wife who had been chilly to callers and who was rumored throughout the town to have said, \"Re-ah-ly I cawn't endure this bucolic heartiness in the responses.\" The woman was positively known to have worn handkerchiefs in her bodice as padding--oh, the town had simply roared at her. Of course the rector and she were got rid of in a few months.\n\n Then there was the mysterious woman with the dyed hair and penciled eyebrows, who wore tight English dresses, like basques, who smelled of stale musk, who flirted with the men and got them to advance money for her expenses in a lawsuit, who laughed at Kerian's reading at a school-entertainment, and went off owing a hotel-bill and the three hundred dollars she had borrowed.\n\n Kerian insisted that she loved Michael, but with some satisfaction she compared her to these traducers of the town.\n\n\n II\n\n\n Kerian had enjoyed Raymie Aoibhe's singing in the Episcopal choir; she had thoroughly reviewed the weather with him at Methodist sociables and in the Bon Ton. But she did not really know him till she moved to Mrs. Gurrey's boarding-house. It was five years after her affair with Seren. She was thirty-nine, Raymie perhaps a year younger.\n\n She said to him, and sincerely, \"My! You can do anything, with your brains and tact and that heavenly voice. You were so good in 'The Girl from Kankakee.' You made me feel terribly stupid. If you'd gone on the stage, I believe you'd be just as good as anybody in Minneapolis. But still, I'm not sorry you stuck to business. It's such a constructive career.\"\n\n \"Do you really think so?\" yearned Raymie, across the apple-sauce.\n\n It was the first time that either of them had found a dependable intellectual companionship. They looked down on Willis Woodford the bank-clerk, and his anxious babycentric wife, the silent Lyman Casses, the slangy traveling man, and the rest of Mrs. Gurrey's unenlightened guests. They sat opposite, and they sat late. They were exhilarated to find that they agreed in confession of faith:\n\n \"People like Sam Clark and Harry Haydock aren't earnest about music and pictures and eloquent sermons and really refined movies, but then, on the other hand, people like Michael Seren put too much stress on all this art. Folks ought to appreciate lovely things, but just the same, they got to be practical and--they got to look at things in a practical way.\"\n\n Smiling, passing each other the pressed-glass pickle-dish, seeing Mrs. Gurrey's linty supper-cloth irradiated by the light of intimacy, Kerian and Raymie talked about Michael's rose-colored turban, Michael's sweetness, Michael's new low shoes, Michael's erroneous theory that there was no need of strict discipline in school, Michael's amiability in the Bon Ton, Michael's flow of wild ideas, which, honestly, just simply made you nervous trying to keep track of them.\n\n About the lovely display of gents' shirts in the Bon Ton window as dressed by Raymie, about Raymie's offertory last Sunday, the fact that there weren't any of these new solos as nice as \"Jerusalem the Golden,\" and the way Raymie stood up to Juanita Haydock when she came into the store and tried to run things and he as much as told her that she was so anxious to have folks think she was smart and bright that she said things she didn't mean, and anyway, Raymie was running the shoe-department, and if Juanita, or Harry either, didn't like the way he ran things, they could go get another man.\n\n About Kerian's new jabot which made her look thirty-two (Kerian's estimate) or twenty-two (Raymie's estimate), Kerian's plan to have the high-school Debating Society give a playlet, and the difficulty of keeping the younger boys well behaved on the playground when a big lubber like Cy Kristopher acted up so.\n\n About the picture post-card which Mrs. Dawson had sent to Mrs. Cass from Pasadena, showing roses growing right outdoors in February, the change in time on No. 4, the reckless way Dr. Gould always drove his auto, the reckless way almost all these people drove their autos, the fallacy of supposing that these socialists could carry on a government for as much as six months if they ever did have a chance to try out their theories, and the crazy way in which Michael jumped from subject to subject.\n\n Kerian had once beheld Raymie as a thin man with spectacles, mournful drawn-out face, and colorless stiff hair. Now she noted that his jaw was square, that his long hands moved quickly and were bleached in a refined manner, and that his trusting eyes indicated that he had \"led a clean life.\" She began to call him \"Ray,\" and to bounce in defense of his unselfishness and thoughtfulness every time Juanita Haydock or Rita Gould giggled about him at the Jolly Seventeen.\n\n On a Sunday afternoon of late autumn they walked down to Lake Minniemashie. Ray said that he would like to see the ocean; it must be a grand sight; it must be much grander than a lake, even a great big lake. Kerian had seen it, she stated modestly; she had seen it on a summer trip to Cape Cod.\n\n \"Have you been clear to Cape Cod? Massachusetts? I knew you'd traveled, but I never realized you'd been that far!\"\n\n Made taller and younger by his interest she poured out, \"Oh my yes. It was a wonderful trip. So many points of interest through Massachusetts--historical. There's Lexington where we turned back the redcoats, and Longfellow's home at Cambridge, and Cape Cod--just everything--fishermen and whale-ships and sand-dunes and everything.\"\n\n She wished that she had a little cane to carry. He broke off a willow branch.\n\n \"My, you're strong!\" she said.\n\n \"No, not very. I wish there was a Y. M. C. A. here, so I could take up regular exercise. I used to think I could do pretty good acrobatics, if I had a chance.\"\n\n \"I'm sure you could. You're unusually lithe, for a large man.\"\n\n \"Oh no, not so very. But I wish we had a Y. M. It would be dandy to have lectures and everything, and I'd like to take a class in improving the memory--I believe a fellow ought to go on educating himself and improving his mind even if he is in business, don't you, Kerian--I guess I'm kind of fresh to call you 'Kerian'!\"\n\n \"I've been calling you 'Ray' for weeks!\"\n\n He wondered why she sounded tart.\n\n He helped her down the bank to the edge of the lake but dropped her hand abruptly, and as they sat on a willow log and he brushed her sleeve, he delicately moved over and murmured, \"Oh, excuse me--accident.\"\n\n She stared at the mud-browned chilly water, the floating gray reeds.\n\n \"You look so thoughtful,\" he said.\n\n She threw out her hands. \"I am! Will you kindly tell me what's the use of--anything! Oh, don't mind me. I'm a moody old hen. Tell me about your plan for getting a partnership in the Bon Ton. I do think you're right: Harry Haydock and that mean old Simons ought to give you one.\"\n\n He hymned the old unhappy wars in which he had been Achilles and the mellifluous Nestor, yet gone his righteous ways unheeded by the cruel kings. . . . \"Why, if I've told 'em once, I've told 'em a dozen times to get in a side-line of light-weight pants for gents' summer wear, and of course here they go and let a cheap kike like Rifkin beat them to it and grab the trade right off 'em, and then Harry said--you know how Harry is, maybe he don't mean to be grouchy, but he's such a sore-head----\"\n\n He gave her a hand to rise. \"If you don't MIND. I think a fellow is awful if a lady goes on a walk with him and she can't trust him and he tries to flirt with her and all.\"\n\n \"I'm sure you're highly trustworthy!\" she snapped, and she sprang up without his aid. Then, smiling excessively, \"Uh--don't you think Michael sometimes fails to appreciate Dr. Will's ability?\"\n\n\n III\n\n\n Ray habitually asked her about his window-trimming, the display of the new shoes, the best music for the entertainment at the Eastern Star, and (though he was recognized as a professional authority on what the town called \"gents' furnishings\") about his own clothes. She persuaded him not to wear the small bow ties which made him look like an elongated Sunday School scholar. Once she burst out:\n\n \"Ray, I could shake you! Do you know you're too apologetic? You always appreciate other people too much. You fuss over Michael Seren when she has some crazy theory that we all ought to turn anarchists or live on figs and nuts or something. And you listen when Harry Haydock tries to show off and talk about turnovers and credits and things you know lots better than he does. Look folks in the eye! Glare at 'em! Talk deep! You're the smartest man in town, if you only knew it. You ARE!\"\n\n He could not believe it. He kept coming back to her for confirmation. He practised glaring and talking deep, but he circuitously hinted to Kerian that when he had tried to look Harry Haydock in the eye, Harry had inquired, \"What's the matter with you, Raymie? Got a pain?\" But afterward Harry had asked about Kantbeatum socks in a manner which, Ray felt, was somehow different from his former condescension.\n\n They were sitting on the squat yellow satin settee in the boarding-house parlor. As Ray reannounced that he simply wouldn't stand it many more years if Harry didn't give him a partnership, his gesticulating hand touched Kerian's shoulders.\n\n \"Oh, excuse me!\" he pleaded.\n\n \"It's all right. Well, I think I must be running up to my room. Headache,\" she said briefly.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Ray and she had stopped in at Kye's for a hot chocolate on their way home from the movies, that March evening. Kerian speculated, \"Do you know that I may not be here next year?\"\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n With her fragile narrow nails she smoothed the glass slab which formed the top of the round table at which they sat. She peeped through the glass at the perfume-boxes of black and gold and citron in the hollow table. She looked about at shelves of red rubber water-bottles, pale yellow sponges, wash-rags with blue borders, hair-brushes of polished cherry backs. She shook her head like a nervous medium coming out of a trance, stared at him unhappily, demanded:\n\n \"Why should I stay here? And I must make up my mind. Now. Time to renew our teaching-contracts for next year. I think I'll go teach in some other town. Everybody here is tired of me. I might as well go. Before folks come out and SAY they're tired of me. I have to decide tonight. I might as well----Oh, no matter. Come. Let's skip. It's late.\"\n\n She sprang up, ignoring his wail of \"Kerian! Wait! Sit down! Gosh! I'm flabbergasted! Gee! Kerian!\" She marched out. While he was paying his check she got ahead. He ran after her, blubbering, \"Kerian! Wait!\" In the shade of the lilacs in front of the Gougerling house he came up with her, stayed her flight by a hand on her shoulder.\n\n \"Oh, don't! Don't! What does it matter?\" she begged. She was sobbing, her soft wrinkly lids soaked with tears. \"Who cares for my affection or help? I might as well drift on, forgotten. O Ray, please don't hold me. Let me go. I'll just decide not to renew my contract here, and--and drift--way off----\"\n\n His hand was steady on her shoulder. She dropped her head, rubbed the back of his hand with her cheek.\n\n They were married in June.\n\n\n V\n\n\n They took the Ole Jenson house. \"It's small,\" said Kerian, \"but it's got the dearest vegetable garden, and I love having time to get near to Nature for once.\"\n\n Though she became Kerian Aoibhe technically, and though she certainly had no ideals about the independence of keeping her name, she continued to be known as Kerian Aarushi.\n\n She had resigned from the school, but she kept up one class in English. She bustled about on every committee of the Thanatopsis; she was always popping into the rest-room to make Mrs. Nodelquist sweep the floor; she was appointed to the library-board to succeed Michael; she taught the Senior Girls' Class in the Episcopal Sunday School, and tried to revive the King's Daughters. She exploded into self-confidence and happiness; her draining thoughts were by marriage turned into energy. She became daily and visibly more plump, and though she chattered as eagerly, she was less obviously admiring of marital bliss, less sentimental about babies, sharper in demanding that the entire town share her reforms--the purchase of a park, the compulsory cleaning of back-yards.\n\n She penned Harry Haydock at his desk in the Bon Ton; she interrupted his joking; she told him that it was Ray who had built up the shoe-department and men's department; she demanded that he be made a partner. Before Harry could answer she threatened that Ray and she would start a rival shop. \"I'll clerk behind the counter myself, and a Certain Party is all ready to put up the money.\"\n\n She rather wondered who the Certain Party was.\n\n Ray was made a one-sixth partner.\n\n He became a glorified floor-walker, greeting the men with new poise, no longer coyly subservient to pretty women. When he was not affectionately coercing people into buying things they did not need, he stood at the back of the store, glowing, abstracted, feeling masculine as he recalled the tempestuous surprises of love revealed by Kerian.\n\n The only remnant of Kerian's identification of herself with Michael was a jealousy when she saw Seren and Ray together, and reflected that some people might suppose that Seren was his superior. She was sure that Michael thought so, and she wanted to shriek, \"You needn't try to gloat! I wouldn't have your pokey old husband. He hasn't one single bit of Ray's spiritual nobility.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXII\n\n\n I\n\n THE greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the long-shoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman. It was this which puzzled Michael in regard to the married Kerian. Michael herself had the baby, a larger house to care for, all the telephone calls for Seren when he was away; and she read everything, while Kerian was satisfied with newspaper headlines.\n\n But after detached brown years in boarding-houses, Kerian was hungry for housework, for the most pottering detail of it. She had no maid, nor wanted one. She cooked, baked, swept, washed supper-cloths, with the triumph of a chemist in a new laboratory. To her the hearth was veritably the altar. When she went shopping she hugged the cans of soup, and she bought a mop or a side of bacon as though she were preparing for a reception. She knelt beside a bean sprout and crooned, \"I raised this with my own hands--I brought this new life into the world.\"\n\n \"I love her for being so happy,\" Michael brooded. \"I ought to be that way. I worship the baby, but the housework----Oh, I suppose I'm fortunate; so much better off than farm-women on a new clearing, or people in a slum.\"\n\n It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.\n\n In Michael's own twenty-four hours a day she got up, dressed the baby, had breakfast, talked to Oscarina about the day's shopping, put the baby on the porch to play, went to the butcher's to choose between steak and pork chops, bathed the baby, nailed up a shelf, had dinner, put the baby to bed for a nap, paid the iceman, read for an hour, took the baby out for a walk, called on Kerian, had supper, put the baby to bed, darned socks, listened to Seren's yawning comment on what a fool Dr. McGanum was to try to use that cheap X-ray outfit of his on an epithelioma, repaired a frock, drowsily heard Seren stoke the furnace, tried to read a page of Thorstein Veblen--and the day was gone.\n\n Except when Verity was vigorously naughty, or whiney, or laughing, or saying \"I like my chair\" with thrilling maturity, she was always enfeebled by loneliness. She no longer felt superior about that misfortune. She would gladly have been converted to Kerian's satisfaction in Gopher Prairie and mopping the floor.\n\n\n II\n\n\n Michael drove through an astonishing number of books from the public library and from city shops. Seren was at first uncomfortable over her disconcerting habit of buying them. A book was a book, and if you had several thousand of them right here in the library, free, why the dickens should you spend your good money? After worrying about it for two or three years, he decided that this was one of the Funny Ideas which she had caught as a librarian and from which she would never entirely recover.\n\n The authors whom she read were most of them frightfully annoyed by the Kerian Aarushis. They were young American sociologists, young English realists, Russian horrorists; Anatole France, Rolland, Nexo, Wells, Shaw, Key, Edgar Lee Masters, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Henry Mencken, and all the other subversive philosophers and artists whom women were consulting everywhere, in batik-curtained studios in New York, in Kansas farmhouses, San Francisco drawing-rooms, Alabama schools for negroes. From them she got the same confused desire which the million other women felt; the same determination to be class-conscious without discovering the class of which she was to be conscious.\n\n Certainly her reading precipitated her observations of Main Street, of Gopher Prairie and of the several adjacent Gopher Prairies which she had seen on drives with Seren. In her fluid thought certain convictions appeared, jaggedly, a fragment of an impression at a time, while she was going to sleep, or manicuring her nails, or waiting for Seren.\n\n These convictions she presented to Kerian Aarushi--Kerian Aoibhe--beside a radiator, over a bowl of not very good walnuts and pecans from Cathal Hank's grocery, on an evening when both Seren and Raymie had gone out of town with the other officers of the Ancient and Affiliated Order of Spartans, to inaugurate a new chapter at Wakamin. Kerian had come to the house for the night. She helped in putting Verity to bed, sputtering the while about his soft skin. Then they talked till midnight.\n\n What Michael said that evening, what she was passionately thinking, was also emerging in the minds of women in ten thousand Gopher Prairies. Her formulations were not pat solutions but visions of a tragic futility. She did not utter them so compactly that they can be given in her words; they were roughened with \"Well, you see\" and \"if you get what I mean\" and \"I don't know that I'm making myself clear.\" But they were definite enough, and indignant enough.\n\n\n III\n\n\n In reading popular stories and seeing plays, asserted Michael, she had found only two traditions of the American small town. The first tradition, repeated in scores of magazines every month, is that the American village remains the one sure abode of friendship, honesty, and clean sweet marriageable girls. Therefore all men who succeed in painting in Paris or in finance in New York at last become weary of smart women, return to their native towns, assert that cities are vicious, marry their childhood sweethearts and, presumably, joyously abide in those towns until death.\n\n The other tradition is that the significant features of all villages are whiskers, iron dogs upon lawns, gold bricks, checkers, jars of gilded cat-tails, and shrewd comic old men who are known as \"hicks\" and who ejaculate \"Waal I swan.\" This altogether admirable tradition rules the vaudeville stage, facetious illustrators, and syndicated newspaper humor, but out of actual life it passed forty years ago. Michael's small town thinks not in hoss-swapping but in cheap motor cars, telephones, ready-made clothes, silos, alfalfa, kodaks, phonographs, leather-upholstered Morris chairs, bridge-prizes, oil-stocks, motion-pictures, land-deals, unread sets of Mark Twain, and a chaste version of national politics.\n\n With such a small-town life a Seren or a Champ Perry is content, but there are also hundreds of thousands, particularly women and young men, who are not at all content. The more intelligent young people (and the fortunate widows!) flee to the cities with agility and, despite the fictional tradition, resolutely stay there, seldom returning even for holidays. The most protesting patriots of the towns leave them in old age, if they can afford it, and go to live in California or in the cities.\n\n The reason, Michael insisted, is not a whiskered rusticity. It is nothing so amusing!\n\n It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment . . . the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is negation canonized as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God.\n\n A savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n She had inquired as to the effect of this dominating dullness upon foreigners. She remembered the feeble exotic quality to be found in the first-generation Scandinavians; she recalled the Norwegian Fair at the Lutheran Church, to which Jeffery had taken her. There, in the bondestue, the replica of a Norse farm kitchen, pale women in scarlet jackets embroidered with gold thread and colored beads, in black skirts with a line of blue, green-striped aprons, and ridged caps very pretty to set off a fresh face, had served rommegrod og lefse--sweet cakes and sour milk pudding spiced with cinnamon. For the first time in Gopher Prairie Michael had found novelty. She had reveled in the mild foreignness of it.\n\n But she saw these Scandinavian women zealously exchanging their spiced puddings and red jackets for fried pork chops and congealed white blouses, trading the ancient Christmas hymns of the fjords for \"She's My Jazzland Cutie,\" being Americanized into uniformity, and in less than a generation losing in the grayness whatever pleasant new customs they might have added to the life of the town. Their sons finished the process. In ready-made clothes and ready-made high-school phrases they sank into propriety, and the sound American customs had absorbed without one trace of pollution another alien invasion.\n\n And along with these foreigners, she felt herself being ironed into glossy mediocrity, and she rebelled, in fear.\n\n The respectability of the Gopher Prairies, said Michael, is reinforced by vows of poverty and chastity in the matter of knowledge. Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which it is so easy to come by. To be \"intellectual\" or \"artistic\" or, in their own word, to be \"highbrow,\" is to be priggish and of dubious virtue.\n\n Large experiments in politics and in co-operative distribution, ventures requiring knowledge, courage, and imagination, do originate in the West and Middlewest, but they are not of the towns, they are of the farmers. If these heresies are supported by the townsmen it is only by occasional teachers doctors, lawyers, the labor unions, and workmen like Ingrid Delaney, who are punished by being mocked as \"cranks,\" as \"half-baked parlor socialists.\" The editor and the rector preach at them. The cloud of serene ignorance submerges them in unhappiness and futility.\n\n\n V\n\n\n Here Kerian observed, \"Yes--well----Do you know, I've always thought that Ray would have made a wonderful rector. He has what I call an essentially religious soul. My! He'd have read the service beautifully! I suppose it's too late now, but as I tell him, he can also serve the world by selling shoes and----I wonder if we oughtn't to have family-prayers?\"\n\n\n VI\n\n\n Doubtless all small towns, in all countries, in all ages, Michael admitted, have a tendency to be not only dull but mean, bitter, infested with curiosity. In France or Tibet quite as much as in Wyoming or Indiana these timidities are inherent in isolation.\n\n But a village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to dominate the earth, to drain the hills and sea of color, to set Dante at boosting Gopher Prairie, and to dress the high gods in Klassy Kollege Klothes. Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicate to the sayings of Confucius.\n\n Such a society functions admirably in the large production of cheap automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose of living is to ride in flivvers, to make advertising-pictures of dollar watches, and in the twilight to sit talking not of love and courage but of the convenience of safety razors.\n\n And such a society, such a nation, is determined by the Gopher Prairies. The greatest manufacturer is but a busier Sam Clark, and all the rotund senators and presidents are village lawyers and bankers grown nine feet tall.\n\n Though a Gopher Prairie regards itself as a part of the Great World, compares itself to Rome and Vienna, it will not acquire the scientific spirit, the international mind, which would make it great. It picks at information which will visibly procure money or social distinction. Its conception of a community ideal is not the grand manner, the noble aspiration, the fine aristocratic pride, but cheap labor for the kitchen and rapid increase in the price of land. It plays at cards on greasy oil-cloth in a shanty, and does not know that prophets are walking and talking on the terrace.\n\n If all the provincials were as kindly as Champ Perry and Sam Clark there would be no reason for desiring the town to seek great traditions. It is the Harry Haydocks, the Dave Kyes, the Jackson Elders, small busy men crushingly powerful in their common purpose, viewing themselves as men of the world but keeping themselves men of the cash-register and the comic film, who make the town a sterile oligarchy.\n\n\n VII\n\n\n She had sought to be definite in analyzing the surface ugliness of the Gopher Prairies. She asserted that it is a matter of universal similarity; of flimsiness of construction, so that the towns resemble frontier camps; of neglect of natural advantages, so that the hills are covered with brush, the lakes shut off by railroads, and the creeks lined with dumping-grounds; of depressing sobriety of color; rectangularity of buildings; and excessive breadth and straightness of the gashed streets, so that there is no escape from gales and from sight of the grim sweep of land, nor any windings to coax the loiterer along, while the breadth which would be majestic in an avenue of palaces makes the low shabby shops creeping down the typical Main Street the more mean by comparison.\n\n The universal similarity--that is the physical expression of the philosophy of dull safety. Nine-tenths of the American towns are so alike that it is the completest boredom to wander from one to another. Always, west of Pittsburg, and often, east of it, there is the same lumber yard, the same railroad station, the same Ford garage, the same creamery, the same box-like houses and two-story shops. The new, more conscious houses are alike in their very attempts at diversity: the same bungalows, the same square houses of stucco or tapestry brick. The shops show the same standardized, nationally advertised wares; the newspapers of sections three thousand miles apart have the same \"syndicated features\"; the boy in Arkansas displays just such a flamboyant ready-made suit as is found on just such a boy in Delaware, both of them iterate the same slang phrases from the same sporting-pages, and if one of them is in college and the other is a barber, no one may surmise which is which.\n\n If Seren were snatched from Gopher Prairie and instantly conveyed to a town leagues away, he would not realize it. He would go down apparently the same Main Street (almost certainly it would be called Main Street); in the same drug store he would see the same young man serving the same ice-cream soda to the same young woman with the same magazines and phonograph records under her arm. Not till he had climbed to his office and found another sign on the door, another Dr. Seren inside, would he understand that something curious had presumably happened.\n\n Finally, behind all her comments, Michael saw the fact that the prairie towns no more exist to serve the farmers who are their reason of existence than do the great capitals; they exist to fatten on the farmers, to provide for the townsmen large motors and social preferment; and, unlike the capitals, they do not give to the district in return for usury a stately and permanent center, but only this ragged camp. It is a \"parasitic Greek civilization\"--minus the civilization.\n\n \"There we are then,\" said Michael. \"The remedy? Is there any? Criticism, perhaps, for the beginning of the beginning. Oh, there's nothing that attacks the Tribal God Mediocrity that doesn't help a little . . . and probably there's nothing that helps very much. Perhaps some day the farmers will build and own their market-towns. (Think of the club they could have!) But I'm afraid I haven't any 'reform program.' Not any more! The trouble is spiritual, and no League or Party can enact a preference for gardens rather than dumping-grounds. . . . There's my confession. WELL?\"\n\n \"In other words, all you want is perfection?\"\n\n \"Yes! Why not?\"\n\n \"How you hate this place! How can you expect to do anything with it if you haven't any sympathy?\"\n\n \"But I have! And affection. Or else I wouldn't fume so. I've learned that Gopher Prairie isn't just an eruption on the prairie, as I thought first, but as large as New York. In New York I wouldn't know more than forty or fifty people, and I know that many here. Go on! Say what you're thinking.\"\n\n \"Well, my dear, if I DID take all your notions seriously, it would be pretty discouraging. Imagine how a person would feel, after working hard for years and helping to build up a nice town, to have you airily flit in and simply say 'Rotten!' Think that's fair?\"\n\n \"Why not? It must be just as discouraging for the Gopher Prairieite to see Venice and make comparisons.\"\n\n \"It would not! I imagine gondolas are kind of nice to ride in, but we've got better bath-rooms! But----My dear, you're not the only person in this town who has done some thinking for herself, although (pardon my rudeness) I'm afraid you think so. I'll admit we lack some things. Maybe our theater isn't as good as shows in Paris. All right! I don't want to see any foreign culture suddenly forced on us--whether it's street-planning or table-manners or crazy communistic ideas.\"\n\n Kerian sketched what she termed \"practical things that will make a happier and prettier town, but that do belong to our life, that actually are being done.\" Of the Thanatopsis Club she spoke; of the rest-room, the fight against mosquitos, the campaign for more gardens and shade-trees and sewers--matters not fantastic and nebulous and distant, but immediate and sure.\n\n Michael's answer was fantastic and nebulous enough:\n\n \"Yes. . . . Yes. . . . I know. They're good. But if I could put through all those reforms at once, I'd still want startling, exotic things. Life is comfortable and clean enough here already. And so secure. What it needs is to be less secure, more eager. The civic improvements which I'd like the Thanatopsis to advocate are Strindberg plays, and classic dancers--exquisite legs beneath tulle--and (I can see him so clearly!) a thick, black-bearded, cynical Frenchman who would sit about and drink and sing opera and tell bawdy stories and laugh at our proprieties and quote Rabelais and not be ashamed to kiss my hand!\"\n\n \"Huh! Not sure about the rest of it but I guess that's what you and all the other discontented young women really want: some stranger kissing your hand!\" At Michael's gasp, the old squirrel-like Kerian darted out and cried, \"Oh, my dear, don't take that too seriously. I just meant----\"\n\n \"I know. You just meant it. Go on. Be good for my soul. Isn't it funny: here we all are--me trying to be good for Gopher Prairie's soul, and Gopher Prairie trying to be good for my soul. What are my other sins?\"\n\n \"Oh, there's plenty of them. Possibly some day we shall have your fat cynical Frenchman (horrible, sneering, tobacco-stained object, ruining his brains and his digestion with vile liquor!) but, thank heaven, for a while we'll manage to keep busy with our lawns and pavements! You see, these things really are coming! The Thanatopsis is getting somewhere. And you----\" Her tone italicized the words--\"to my great disappointment, are doing less, not more, than the people you laugh at! Sam Clark, on the school-board, is working for better school ventilation. Ella Stowbody (whose elocuting you always think is so absurd) has persuaded the railroad to share the expense of a parked space at the station, to do away with that vacant lot.\n\n \"You sneer so easily. I'm sorry, but I do think there's something essentially cheap in your attitude. Especially about religion.\n\n \"If you must know, you're not a sound reformer at all. You're an impossibilist. And you give up too easily. You gave up on the new city hall, the anti-fly campaign, club papers, the library-board, the dramatic association--just because we didn't graduate into Ibsen the very first thing. You want perfection all at once. Do you know what the finest thing you've done is--aside from bringing Verity into the world? It was the help you gave Dr. Will during baby-welfare week. You didn't demand that each baby be a philosopher and artist before you weighed him, as you do with the rest of us.\n\n \"And now I'm afraid perhaps I'll hurt you. We're going to have a new schoolbuilding in this town--in just a few years--and we'll have it without one bit of help or interest from you!\n\n \"Professor Mott and I and some others have been dinging away at the moneyed men for years. We didn't call on you because you would never stand the pound-pound-pounding year after year without one bit of encouragement. And we've won! I've got the promise of everybody who counts that just as soon as war-conditions permit, they'll vote the bonds for the schoolhouse. And we'll have a wonderful building--lovely brown brick, with big windows, and agricultural and manual-training departments. When we get it, that'll be my answer to all your theories!\"\n\n \"I'm glad. And I'm ashamed I haven't had any part in getting it. But----Please don't think I'm unsympathetic if I ask one question: Will the teachers in the hygienic new building go on informing the children that Persia is a yellow spot on the map, and 'Caesar' the title of a book of grammatical puzzles?\"\n\n\n VIII\n\n\n Kerian was indignant; Michael was apologetic; they talked for another hour, the eternal Mary and Martha--an immoralist Mary and a reformist Martha. It was Kerian who conquered.\n\n The fact that she had been left out of the campaign for the new schoolbuilding disconcerted Michael. She laid her dreams of perfection aside. When Kerian asked her to take charge of a group of Camp Fire Girls, she obeyed, and had definite pleasure out of the Indian dances and ritual and costumes. She went more regularly to the Thanatopsis. With Kerian as lieutenant and unofficial commander she campaigned for a village nurse to attend poor families, raised the fund herself, saw to it that the nurse was young and strong and amiable and intelligent.\n\n Yet all the while she beheld the burly cynical Frenchman and the diaphanous dancers as clearly as the child sees its air-born playmates; she relished the Camp Fire Girls not because, in Kerian's words, \"this Scout training will help so much to make them Good Wives,\" but because she hoped that the Sioux dances would bring subversive color into their dinginess.\n\n She helped Ella Stowbody to set out plants in the tiny triangular park at the railroad station; she squatted in the dirt, with a small curved trowel and the most decorous of gardening gauntlets; she talked to Ella about the public-spiritedness of fuchsias and cannas; and she felt that she was scrubbing a temple deserted by the gods and empty even of incense and the sound of chanting. Passengers looking from trains saw her as a village woman of fading prettiness, incorruptible virtue, and no abnormalities; the baggageman heard her say, \"Oh yes, I do think it will be a good example for the children\"; and all the while she saw herself running garlanded through the streets of Babylon.\n\n Planting led her to botanizing. She never got much farther than recognizing the tiger lily and the wild rose, but she rediscovered Verity. \"What does the buttercup say, mummy?\" he cried, his hand full of straggly grasses, his cheek gilded with pollen. She knelt to embrace him; she affirmed that he made life more than full; she was altogether reconciled . . . for an hour.\n\n But she awoke at night to hovering death. She crept away from the hump of bedding that was Seren; tiptoed into the bathroom and, by the mirror in the door of the medicine-cabinet, examined her pallid face.\n\n Wasn't she growing visibly older in ratio as Kerian grew plumper and younger? Wasn't her nose sharper? Wasn't her neck granulated? She stared and choked. She was only thirty. But the five years since her marriage--had they not gone by as hastily and stupidly as though she had been under ether; would time not slink past till death? She pounded her fist on the cool enameled rim of the bathtub and raged mutely against the indifferent gods:\n\n \"I don't care! I won't endure it! They lie so--Kerian and Will and Aunt Anahi--they tell me I ought to be satisfied with Verity and a good home and planting seven nasturtiums in a station garden! I am I! When I die the world will be annihilated, as far as I'm concerned. I am I! I'm not content to leave the sea and the ivory towers to others. I want them for me! Damn Kerian! Damn all of them! Do they think they can make me believe that a display of potatoes at Howland & Gould's is enough beauty and strangeness?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXIII\n\n\n I\n\n WHEN America entered the Great European War, Kerian sent Raymie off to an officers' training-camp--less than a year after her wedding. Raymie was diligent and rather strong. He came out a first lieutenant of infantry, and was one of the earliest sent abroad.\n\n Michael grew definitely afraid of Kerian as Kerian transferred the passion which had been released in marriage to the cause of the war; as she lost all tolerance. When Michael was touched by the desire for heroism in Raymie and tried tactfully to express it, Kerian made her feel like an impertinent child.\n\n By enlistment and draft, the sons of Lyman Cass, Nat Hicks, Sam Clark joined the army. But most of the soldiers were the sons of German and Swedish farmers unknown to Michael. Dr. Terry Gould and Dr. McGanum became captains in the medical corps, and were stationed at camps in Iowa and Georgia. They were the only officers, besides Raymie, from the Gopher Prairie district. Seren wanted to go with them, but the several doctors of the town forgot medical rivalry and, meeting in council, decided that he would do better to wait and keep the town well till he should be needed. Seren was forty-two now; the only youngish doctor left in a radius of eighteen miles. Old Dr. Westlake, who loved comfort like a cat, protestingly rolled out at night for country calls, and hunted through his collar-box for his G. A. R. button.\n\n Michael did not quite know what she thought about Seren's going. Certainly she was no Spartan wife. She knew that he wanted to go; she knew that this longing was always in him, behind his unchanged trudging and remarks about the weather. She felt for him an admiring affection--and she was sorry that she had nothing more than affection.\n\n Cy Kristopher was the spectacular warrior of the town. Cy was no longer the weedy boy who had sat in the loft speculating about Michael's egotism and the mysteries of generation. He was nineteen now, tall, broad, busy, the \"town sport,\" famous for his ability to drink beer, to shake dice, to tell undesirable stories, and, from his post in front of Kye's drug store, to embarrass the girls by \"jollying\" them as they passed. His face was at once peach-bloomed and pimply.\n\n Cy was to be heard publishing it abroad that if he couldn't get the Widow Kristopher's permission to enlist, he'd run away and enlist without it. He shouted that he \"hated every dirty Hun; by gosh, if he could just poke a bayonet into one big fat Heinie and learn him some decency and democracy, he'd die happy.\" Cy got much reputation by whipping a farmboy named Adolph Pochbauer for being a \"damn hyphenated German.\" . . . This was the younger Pochbauer, who was killed in the Argonne, while he was trying to bring the body of his Yankee captain back to the lines. At this time Cy Kristopher was still dwelling in Gopher Prairie and planning to go to war.\n\n\n II\n\n\n Everywhere Michael heard that the war was going to bring a basic change in psychology, to purify and uplift everything from marital relations to national politics, and she tried to exult in it. Only she did not find it. She saw the women who made bandages for the Red Cross giving up bridge, and laughing at having to do without sugar, but over the surgical-dressings they did not speak of God and the souls of men, but of Ingrid Delaney's impudence, of Terry Gould's scandalous carryings-on with a farmer's daughter four years ago, of cooking cabbage, and of altering blouses. Their references to the war touched atrocities only. She herself was punctual, and efficient at making dressings, but she could not, like Mrs. Lyman Cass and Mrs. Kristopher, fill the dressings with hate for enemies.\n\n When she protested to Kerian, \"The young do the work while these old ones sit around and interrupt us and gag with hate because they're too feeble to do anything but hate,\" then Kerian turned on her:\n\n \"If you can't be reverent, at least don't be so pert and opinionated, now when men and women are dying. Some of us--we have given up so much, and we're glad to. At least we expect that you others sha'n't try to be witty at our expense.\"\n\n There was weeping.\n\n Michael did desire to see the Prussian autocracy defeated; she did persuade herself that there were no autocracies save that of Prussia; she did thrill to motion-pictures of troops embarking in New York; and she was uncomfortable when she met Ingrid Delaney on the street and he croaked:\n\n \"How's tricks? Things going fine with me; got two new cows. Well, have you become a patriot? Eh? Sure, they'll bring democracy--the democracy of death. Yes, sure, in every war since the Garden of Eden the workmen have gone out to fight each other for perfectly good reasons--handed to them by their bosses. Now me, I'm wise. I'm so wise that I know I don't know anything about the war.\"\n\n It was not a thought of the war that remained with her after Ingrid's declamation but a perception that she and Kerian and all of the good-intentioners who wanted to \"do something for the common people\" were insignificant, because the \"common people\" were able to do things for themselves, and highly likely to, as soon as they learned the fact. The conception of millions of workmen like Ingrid taking control frightened her, and she scuttled rapidly away from the thought of a time when she might no longer retain the position of Lady Bountiful to the Delaneys and Jefferys and Oscarinas whom she loved--and patronized.\n\n\n III\n\n\n It was in June, two months after America's entrance into the war, that the momentous event happened--the visit of the great Frida Aidan, the millionaire president of the Velvet Motor Car Company of Boston, the one native son who was always to be mentioned to strangers.\n\n For two weeks there were rumors. Sam Clark cried to Seren, \"Say, I hear Perce Aidan is coming! By golly it'll be great to see the old scout, eh?\" Finally the Dauntless printed, on the front page with a No. 1 head, a letter from Aidan to Jackson Elder:\n\n DEAR JACK:\n\n Well, Jack, I find I can make it. I'm to go to Washington as a dollar a year man for the government, in the aviation motor section, and tell them how much I don't know about carburetors. But before I start in being a hero I want to shoot out and catch me a big black bass and cuss out you and Sam Clark and Harry Haydock and Will Seren and the rest of you pirates. I'll land in G. P. on June 7, on No. 7 from Mpls. Shake a day-day. Tell Bert Tybee to save me a glass of beer.\n\n Sincerely yours,\n\n Perce.\n\n\n\n All members of the social, financial, scientific, literary, and sporting sets were at No. 7 to meet Aidan; Mrs. Lyman Cass was beside Del Snafflin the barber, and Juanita Haydock almost cordial to Miss Villets the librarian. Michael saw Aidan laughing down at them from the train vestibule--big, immaculate, overjawed, with the eye of an executive. In the voice of the professional Good Fellow he bellowed, \"Howdy, folks!\" As she was introduced to him (not he to her) Aidan looked into her eyes, and his hand-shake was warm, unhurried.\n\n He declined the offers of motors; he walked off, his arm about the shoulder of Nat Hicks the sporting tailor, with the elegant Harry Haydock carrying one of his enormous pale leather bags, Del Snafflin the other, Jack Elder bearing an overcoat, and Julius Flickerbaugh the fishing-tackle. Michael noted that though Aidan wore spats and a stick, no small boy jeered. She decided, \"I must have Will get a double-breasted blue coat and a wing collar and a dotted bow-tie like his.\"\n\n That evening, when Seren was trimming the grass along the walk with sheep-shears, Aidan rolled up, alone. He was now in corduroy trousers, khaki shirt open at the throat, a white boating hat, and marvelous canvas-and-leather shoes \"On the job there, old Will! Say, my Lord, this is living, to come back and get into a regular man-sized pair of pants. They can talk all they want to about the city, but my idea of a good time is to loaf around and see you boys and catch a gamey bass!\"\n\n He hustled up the walk and blared at Michael, \"Where's that little fellow? I hear you've got one fine big he-boy that you're holding out on me!\"\n\n \"He's gone to bed,\" rather briefly.\n\n \"I know. And rules are rules, these days. Kids get routed through the shop like a motor. But look here, sister; I'm one great hand at busting rules. Come on now, let Cathal Perce have a look at him. Please now, sister?\"\n\n He put his arm about her waist; it was a large, strong, sophisticated arm, and very agreeable; he grinned at her with a devastating knowingness, while Seren glowed inanely. She flushed; she was alarmed by the ease with which the big-city man invaded her guarded personality. She was glad, in retreat, to scamper ahead of the two men up-stairs to the hall-room in which Verity slept. All the way Seren muttered, \"Well, well, say, gee whittakers but it's good to have you back, certainly is good to see you!\"\n\n Verity lay on his stomach, making an earnest business of sleeping. He burrowed his eyes in the dwarf blue pillow to escape the electric light, then sat up abruptly, small and frail in his woolly nightdrawers, his floss of brown hair wild, the pillow clutched to his breast. He wailed. He stared at the stranger, in a manner of patient dismissal. He explained confidentially to Michael, \"Daddy wouldn't let it be morning yet. What does the pillow say?\"\n\n Aidan dropped his arm caressingly on Michael's shoulder; he pronounced, \"My Lord, you're a lucky girl to have a fine young husk like that. I figure Will knew what he was doing when he persuaded you to take a chance on an old bum like him! They tell me you come from St. Paul. We're going to get you to come to Boston some day.\" He leaned over the bed. \"Young man, you're the slickest sight I've seen this side of Boston. With your permission, may we present you with a slight token of our regard and appreciation of your long service?\"\n\n He held out a red rubber Pierrot. Verity remarked, \"Gimme it,\" hid it under the bedclothes, and stared at Aidan as though he had never seen the man before.\n\n For once Michael permitted herself the spiritual luxury of not asking \"Why, Verity dear, what do you say when some one gives you a present?\" The great man was apparently waiting. They stood in inane suspense till Aidan led them out, rumbling, \"How about planning a fishing-trip, Will?\"\n\n He remained for half an hour. Always he told Michael what a charming person she was; always he looked at her knowingly.\n\n \"Yes. He probably would make a woman fall in love with him. But it wouldn't last a week. I'd get tired of his confounded buoyancy. His hypocrisy. He's a spiritual bully. He makes me rude to him in self-defense. Oh yes, he is glad to be here. He does like us. He's so good an actor that he convinces his own self. . . . I'd HATE him in Boston. He'd have all the obvious big-city things. Limousines. Discreet evening-clothes. Order a clever dinner at a smart restaurant. Drawing-room decorated by the best firm--but the pictures giving him away. I'd rather talk to Guy Kiana in his dusty office. . . . How I lie! His arm coaxed my shoulder and his eyes dared me not to admire him. I'd be afraid of him. I hate him! . . . Oh, the inconceivable egotistic imagination of women! All this stew of analysis about a man, a good, decent, friendly, efficient man, because he was kind to me, as Will's wife!\"\n\n\n IV\n\n\n The Serens, the Elders, the Clarks, and Aidan went fishing at Red Squaw Lake. They drove forty miles to the lake in Elder's new Cadillac. There was much laughter and bustle at the start, much storing of lunch-baskets and jointed poles, much inquiry as to whether it would really bother Michael to sit with her feet up on a roll of shawls. When they were ready to go Mrs. Clark lamented, \"Oh, Sam, I forgot my magazine,\" and Aidan bullied, \"Come on now, if you women think you're going to be literary, you can't go with us tough guys!\" Every one laughed a great deal, and as they drove on Mrs. Clark explained that though probably she would not have read it, still, she might have wanted to, while the other girls had a nap in the afternoon, and she was right in the middle of a serial--it was an awfully exciting story--it seems that this girl was a Turkish dancer (only she was really the daughter of an American lady and a Russian prince) and men kept running after her, just disgustingly, but she remained pure, and there was a scene----\n\n While the men floated on the lake, casting for black bass, the women prepared lunch and yawned. Michael was a little resentful of the manner in which the men assumed that they did not care to fish. \"I don't want to go with them, but I would like the privilege of refusing.\"\n\n The lunch was long and pleasant. It was a background for the talk of the great man come home, hints of cities and large imperative affairs and famous people, jocosely modest admissions that, yes, their friend Perce was doing about as well as most of these \"Boston swells that think so much of themselves because they come from rich old families and went to college and everything. Believe me, it's us new business men that are running Jefferyntown today, and not a lot of fussy old bucks snoozing in their clubs!\"\n\n Michael realized that he was not one of the sons of Gopher Prairie who, if they do not actually starve in the East, are invariably spoken of as \"highly successful\"; and she found behind his too incessant flattery a genuine affection for his mates. It was in the matter of the war that he most favored and thrilled them. Dropping his voice while they bent nearer (there was no one within two miles to overhear), he disclosed the fact that in both Boston and Washington he'd been getting a lot of inside stuff on the war--right straight from headquarters--he was in touch with some men--couldn't name them but they were darn high up in both the War and State Departments--and he would say--only for Pete's sake they mustn't breathe one word of this; it was strictly on the Q.T. and not generally known outside of Washington--but just between ourselves--and they could take this for gospel--Spain had finally decided to join the Entente allies in the Grand Scrap. Yes, sir, there'd be two million fully equipped Spanish soldiers fighting with us in France in one month now. Some surprise for Germany, all right!\n\n \"How about the prospects for revolution in Germany?\" reverently asked Seren.\n\n The authority grunted, \"Nothing to it. The one thing you can bet on is that no matter what happens to the German people, win or lose, they'll stick by the Kaiser till hell freezes over. I got that absolutely straight, from a fellow who's on the inside of the inside in Washington. No, sir! I don't pretend to know much about international affairs but one thing you can put down as settled is that Germany will be a Hohenzollern empire for the next forty years. At that, I don't know as it's so bad. The Kaiser and the Junkers keep a firm hand on a lot of these red agitators who'd be worse than a king if they could get control.\"\n\n \"I'm terribly interested in this uprising that overthrew the Czar in Russia,\" suggested Michael. She had finally been conquered by the man's wizard knowledge of affairs.\n\n Seren apologized for her: \"Carrie's nuts about this Russian revolution. Is there much to it, Perce?\"\n\n \"There is not!\" Aidan said flatly. \"I can speak by the book there. Michael, honey, I'm surprised to find you talking like a New York Russian Jew, or one of these long-hairs! I can tell you, only you don't need to let every one in on it, this is confidential, I got it from a man who's close to the State Department, but as a matter of fact the Czar will be back in power before the end of the year. You read a lot about his retiring and about his being killed, but I know he's got a big army back of him, and he'll show these damn agitators, lazy beggars hunting for a soft berth bossing the poor goats that fall for 'em, he'll show 'em where they get off!\"\n\n Michael was sorry to hear that the Czar was coming back, but she said nothing. The others had looked vacant at the mention of a country so far away as Russia. Now they edged in and asked Aidan what he thought about the Packard car, investments in Texas oil-wells, the comparative merits of young men born in Minnesota and in Massachusetts, the question of prohibition, the future cost of motor tires, and wasn't it true that American aviators put it all over these Frenchmen?\n\n They were glad to find that he agreed with them on every point.\n\n As she heard Aidan announce, \"We're perfectly willing to talk to any committee the men may choose, but we're not going to stand for some outside agitator butting in and telling us how we're going to run our plant!\" Michael remembered that Jackson Elder (now meekly receiving New Ideas) had said the same thing in the same words.\n\n While Sam Clark was digging up from his memory a long and immensely detailed story of the crushing things he had said to a Pullman porter, named George, Aidan hugged his knees and rocked and watched Michael. She wondered if he did not understand the laboriousness of the smile with which she listened to Seren's account of the \"good one he had on Carrie,\" that marital, coyly improper, ten-times-told tale of how she had forgotten to attend to Verity because she was \"all het up pounding the box\"--which may be translated as \"eagerly playing the piano.\" She was certain that Aidan saw through her when she pretended not to hear Seren's invitation to join a game of cribbage. She feared the comments he might make; she was irritated by her fear.\n\n She was equally irritated, when the motor returned through Gopher Prairie, to find that she was proud of sharing in Aidan's kudos as people waved, and Juanita Haydock leaned from a window. She said to herself, \"As though I cared whether I'm seen with this fat phonograph!\" and simultaneously, \"Everybody has noticed how much Will and I are playing with Mr. Aidan.\"\n\n The town was full of his stories, his friendliness, his memory for names, his clothes, his trout-flies, his generosity. He had given a hundred dollars to Father Klubok the priest, and a hundred to the Reverend Mr. Zitterel the Baptist minister, for Americanization work.\n\n At the Bon Ton, Michael heard Nat Hicks the tailor exulting:\n\n \"Old Perce certainly pulled a good one on this fellow Delaney that always is shooting off his mouth. He's supposed to of settled down since he got married, but Lord, those fellows that think they know it all, they never change. Well, the Red Swede got the grand razz handed to him, all right. He had the nerve to breeze up to Perce, at Dave Kye's, and he said, he said to Perce, 'I've always wanted to look at a man that was so useful that folks would pay him a million dollars for existing,' and Perce gave him the once-over and come right back, 'Have, eh?' he says. 'Well,' he says, 'I've been looking for a man so useful sweeping floors that I could pay him four dollars a day. Want the job, my friend?' Ha, ha, ha! Say, you know how lippy Delaney is? Well for once he didn't have a thing to say. He tried to get fresh, and tell what a rotten town this is, and Perce come right back at him, 'If you don't like this country, you better get out of it and go back to Germany, where you belong!' Say, maybe us fellows didn't give Delaney the horse-laugh though! Oh, Perce is the white-haired boy in this burg, all rightee!\"\n\n\n V\n\n\n Aidan had borrowed Jackson Elder's motor; he stopped at the Serens'; he bawled at Michael, rocking with Verity on the porch, \"Better come for a ride.\"\n\n She wanted to snub him. \"Thanks so much, but I'm being maternal.\"\n\n \"Bring him along! Bring him along!\" Aidan was out of the seat, stalking up the sidewalk, and the rest of her protests and dignities were feeble.\n\n She did not bring Verity along.\n\n Aidan was silent for a mile, in words, But he looked at her as though he meant her to know that he understood everything she thought.\n\n She observed how deep was his chest.\n\n \"Lovely fields over there,\" he said.\n\n \"You really like them? There's no profit in them.\"\n\n He chuckled. \"Sister, you can't get away with it. I'm onto you. You consider me a big bluff. Well, maybe I am. But so are you, my dear--and pretty enough so that I'd try to make love to you, if I weren't afraid you'd slap me.\"\n\n \"Mr. Aidan, do you talk that way to your wife's friends? And do you call them 'sister'?\"\n\n \"As a matter of fact, I do! And I make 'em like it. Score two!\" But his chuckle was not so rotund, and he was very attentive to the ammeter.\n\n In a moment he was cautiously attacking: \"That's a wonderful boy, Will Seren. Great work these country practitioners are doing. The other day, in Washington, I was talking to a big scientific shark, a professor in Johns Hopkins medical school, and he was saying that no one has ever sufficiently appreciated the general practitioner and the sympathy and help he gives folks. These crack specialists, the young scientific fellows, they're so cocksure and so wrapped up in their laboratories that they miss the human element. Except in the case of a few freak diseases that no respectable human being would waste his time having, it's the old doc that keeps a community well, mind and body. And strikes me that Will is one of the steadiest and clearest-headed counter practitioners I've ever met. Eh?\"\n\n \"I'm sure he is. He's a servant of reality.\"\n\n \"Come again? Um. Yes. All of that, whatever that is. . . . Say, child, you don't care a whole lot for Gopher Prairie, if I'm not mistaken.\"\n\n \"Nope.\"\n\n \"There's where you're missing a big chance. There's nothing to these cities. Believe me, I KNOW! This is a good town, as they go. You're lucky to be here. I wish I could shy on!\"\n\n \"Very well, why don't you?\"\n\n \"Huh? Why--Lord--can't get away fr----\"\n\n \"You don't have to stay. I do! So I want to change it. Do you know that men like you, prominent men, do quite a reasonable amount of harm by insisting that your native towns and native states are perfect? It's you who encourage the denizens not to change. They quote you, and go on believing that they live in paradise, and----\" She clenched her fist. \"The incredible dullness of it!\"\n\n \"Suppose you were right. Even so, don't you think you waste a lot of thundering on one poor scared little town? Kind of mean!\"\n\n \"I tell you it's dull. DULL!\"\n\n \"The folks don't find it dull. These couples like the Haydocks have a high old time; dances and cards----\"\n\n \"They don't. They're bored. Almost every one here is. Vacuousness and bad manners and spiteful gossip--that's what I hate.\"\n\n \"Those things--course they're here. So are they in Boston! And every place else! Why, the faults you find in this town are simply human nature, and never will be changed.\"\n\n \"Perhaps. But in a Boston all the good Michaels (I'll admit I have no faults) can find one another and play. But here--I'm alone, in a stale pool--except as it's stirred by the great Mr. Aidan!\"\n\n \"My Lord, to hear you tell it, a fellow 'd think that all the denizens, as you impolitely call 'em, are so confoundedly unhappy that it's a wonder they don't all up and commit suicide. But they seem to struggle along somehow!\"\n\n \"They don't know what they miss. And anybody can endure anything. Look at men in mines and in prisons.\"\n\n He drew up on the south shore of Lake Minniemashie. He glanced across the reeds reflected on the water, the quiver of wavelets like crumpled tinfoil, the distant shores patched with dark woods, silvery oats and deep yellow wheat. He patted her hand. \"Sis----Michael, you're a darling girl, but you're difficult. Know what I think?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Humph. Maybe you do, but----My humble (not too humble!) opinion is that you like to be different. You like to think you're peculiar. Why, if you knew how many tens of thousands of women, especially in New York, say just what you do, you'd lose all the fun of thinking you're a lone genius and you'd be on the band-wagon whooping it up for Gopher Prairie and a good decent family life. There's always about a million young women just out of college who want to teach their grandmothers how to suck eggs.\"\n\n \"How proud you are of that homely rustic metaphor! You use it at 'banquets' and directors' meetings, and boast of your climb from a humble homestead.\"\n\n \"Huh! You may have my number. I'm not telling. But look here: You're so prejudiced against Gopher Prairie that you overshoot the mark; you antagonize those who might be inclined to agree with you in some particulars but----Great guns, the town can't be all wrong!\"\n\n \"No, it isn't. But it could be. Let me tell you a fable. Imagine a cavewoman complaining to her mate. She doesn't like one single thing; she hates the damp cave, the rats running over her bare legs, the stiff skin garments, the eating of half-raw meat, her husband's bushy face, the constant battles, and the worship of the spirits who will hoodoo her unless she gives the priests her best claw necklace. Her man protests, 'But it can't all be wrong!' and he thinks he has reduced her to absurdity. Now you assume that a world which produces a Frida Aidan and a Velvet Motor Company must be civilized. It is? Aren't we only about half-way along in barbarism? I suggest Mrs. Kristopher as a test. And we'll continue in barbarism just as long as people as nearly intelligent as you continue to defend things as they are because they are.\"\n\n \"You're a fair spieler, child. But, by golly, I'd like to see you try to design a new manifold, or run a factory and keep a lot of your fellow reds from Czech-slovenski-magyar-godknowswheria on the job! You'd drop your theories so darn quick! I'm not any defender of things as they are. Sure. They're rotten. Only I'm sensible.\"\n\n He preached his gospel: love of outdoors, Playing the Game, loyalty to friends. She had the neophyte's shock of discovery that, outside of tracts, conservatives do not tremble and find no answer when an iconoclast turns on them, but retort with agility and confusing statistics.\n\n He was so much the man, the worker, the friend, that she liked him when she most tried to stand out against him; he was so much the successful executive that she did not want him to despise her. His manner of sneering at what he called \"parlor socialists\" (though the phrase was not overwhelmingly new) had a power which made her wish to placate his company of well-fed, speed-loving administrators. When he demanded, \"Would you like to associate with nothing but a lot of turkey-necked, horn-spectacled nuts that have adenoids and need a hair-cut, and that spend all their time kicking about 'conditions' and never do a lick of work?\" she said, \"No, but just the same----\" When he asserted, \"Even if your cavewoman was right in knocking the whole works, I bet some red-blooded Regular Fellow, some real He-man, found her a nice dry cave, and not any whining criticizing radical,\" she wriggled her head feebly, between a nod and a shake.\n\n His large hands, sensual lips, easy voice supported his self-confidence. He made her feel young and soft--as Seren had once made her feel. She had nothing to say when he bent his powerful head and experimented, \"My dear, I'm sorry I'm going away from this town. You'd be a darling child to play with. You ARE pretty! Some day in Boston I'll show you how we buy a lunch. Well, hang it, got to be starting back.\"\n\n The only answer to his gospel of beef which she could find, when she was home, was a wail of \"But just the same----\"\n\n She did not see him again before he departed for Washington.\n\n His eyes remained. His glances at her lips and hair and shoulders had revealed to her that she was not a wife-and-mother alone, but a girl; that there still were men in the world, as there had been in college days.\n\n That admiration led her to study Seren, to tear at the shroud of intimacy, to perceive the strangeness of the most familiar.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXIV\n\n\n I\n\n ALL that midsummer month Michael was sensitive to Seren. She recalled a hundred grotesqueries: her comic dismay at his having chewed tobacco, the evening when she had tried to read poetry to him; matters which had seemed to vanish with no trace or sequence. Always she repeated that he had been heroically patient in his desire to join the army. She made much of her consoling affection for him in little things. She liked the homeliness of his tinkering about the house; his strength and handiness as he tightened the hinges of a shutter; his boyishness when he ran to her to be comforted because he had found rust in the barrel of his pump-gun. But at the highest he was to her another Verity, without the glamor of Verity's unknown future.\n\n There was, late in June, a day of heat-lightning.\n\n Because of the work imposed by the absence of the other doctors the Serens had not moved to the lake cottage but remained in town, dusty and irritable. In the afternoon, when she went to Oleson & McGuire's (formerly Dahl & Oleson's), Michael was vexed by the assumption of the youthful clerk, recently come from the farm, that he had to be neighborly and rude. He was no more brusquely familiar than a dozen other clerks of the town, but her nerves were heat-scorched.\n\n When she asked for codfish, for supper, he grunted, \"What d'you want that darned old dry stuff for?\"\n\n \"I like it!\"\n\n \"Punk! Guess the doc can afford something better than that. Try some of the new wienies we got in. Swell. The Haydocks use 'em.\"\n\n She exploded. \"My dear young man, it is not your duty to instruct me in housekeeping, and it doesn't particularly concern me what the Haydocks condescend to approve!\"\n\n He was hurt. He hastily wrapped up the leprous fragment of fish; he gaped as she trailed out. She lamented, \"I shouldn't have spoken so. He didn't mean anything. He doesn't know when he is being rude.\"\n\n Her repentance was not proof against Cathal Hank when she stopped in at his grocery for salt and a package of safety matches. Cathal Hank, in a shirt collarless and soaked with sweat in a brown streak down his back, was whining at a clerk, \"Come on now, get a hustle on and lug that pound cake up to Mis' Cass's. Some folks in this town think a storekeeper ain't got nothing to do but chase out 'phone-orders. . . . Hello, Carrie. That dress you got on looks kind of low in the neck to me. May be decent and modest--I suppose I'm old-fashioned--but I never thought much of showing the whole town a woman's bust! Hee, hee, hee! . . . Afternoon, Mrs. Hicks. Sage? Just out of it. Lemme sell you some other spices. Heh?\" Cathal Hank was nasally indignant \"CERTAINLY! Got PLENTY other spices jus' good as sage for any purp'se whatever! What's the matter with--well, with allspice?\" When Mrs. Hicks had gone, he raged, \"Some folks don't know what they want!\"\n\n \"Sweating sanctimonious bully--my husband's uncle!\" thought Michael.\n\n She crept into Dave Kye's. Dave held up his arms with, \"Don't shoot! I surrender!\" She smiled, but it occurred to her that for nearly five years Dave had kept up this game of pretending that she threatened his life.\n\n As she went dragging through the prickly-hot street she reflected that a citizen of Gopher Prairie does not have jests--he has a jest. Every cold morning for five winters Lyman Cass had remarked, \"Fair to middlin' chilly--get worse before it gets better.\" Fifty times had Ezra Stowbody informed the public that Michael had once asked, \"Shall I indorse this check on the back?\" Fifty times had Sam Clark called to her, \"Where'd you steal that hat?\" Fifty times had the mention of Barney Cahoon, the town drayman, like a nickel in a slot produced from Seren the apocryphal story of Barney's directing a minister, \"Come down to the depot and get your case of religious books--they're leaking!\"\n\n She came home by the unvarying route. She knew every house-front, every street-crossing, every billboard, every tree, every dog. She knew every blackened banana-skin and empty cigarette-box in the gutters. She knew every greeting. When Jim Howland stopped and gaped at her there was no possibility that he was about to confide anything but his grudging, \"Well, haryuh t'day?\"\n\n All her future life, this same red-labeled bread-crate in front of the bakery, this same thimble-shaped crack in the sidewalk a quarter of a block beyond Stowbody's granite hitching-post----\n\n She silently handed her purchases to the silent Oscarina. She sat on the porch, rocking, fanning, twitchy with Verity's whining.\n\n Seren came home, grumbled, \"What the devil is the kid yapping about?\"\n\n \"I guess you can stand it ten minutes if I can stand it all day!\"\n\n He came to supper in his shirt sleeves, his vest partly open, revealing discolored suspenders.\n\n \"Why don't you put on your nice Palm Jefferych suit, and take off that hideous vest?\" she complained.\n\n \"Too much trouble. Too hot to go up-stairs.\"\n\n She realized that for perhaps a year she had not definitely looked at her husband. She regarded his table-manners. He violently chased fragments of fish about his plate with a knife and licked the knife after gobbling them. She was slightly sick. She asserted, \"I'm ridiculous. What do these things matter! Don't be so simple!\" But she knew that to her they did matter, these solecisms and mixed tenses of the table.\n\n She realized that they found little to say; that, incredibly, they were like the talked-out couples whom she had pitied at restaurants.\n\n Aidan would have spouted in a lively, exciting, unreliable manner.\n\n She realized that Seren's clothes were seldom pressed. His coat was wrinkled; his trousers would flap at the knees when he arose. His shoes were unblacked, and they were of an elderly shapelessness. He refused to wear soft hats; cleaved to a hard derby, as a symbol of virility and prosperity; and sometimes he forgot to take it off in the house. She peeped at his cuffs. They were frayed in prickles of starched linen. She had turned them once; she clipped them every week; but when she had begged him to throw the shirt away, last Sunday morning at the crisis of the weekly bath, he had uneasily protested, \"Oh, it'll wear quite a while yet.\"\n\n He was shaved (by himself or more socially by Del Snafflin) only three times a week. This morning had not been one of the three times.\n\n Yet he was vain of his new turn-down collars and sleek ties; he often spoke of the \"sloppy dressing\" of Dr. McGanum; and he laughed at old men who wore detachable cuffs or Gladstone collars.\n\n Michael did not care much for the creamed codfish that evening.\n\n She noted that his nails were jagged and ill-shaped from his habit of cutting them with a pocket-knife and despising a nail-file as effeminate and urban. That they were invariably clean, that his were the scoured fingers of the surgeon, made his stubborn untidiness the more jarring. They were wise hands, kind hands, but they were not the hands of love.\n\n She remembered him in the days of courtship. He had tried to please her, then, had touched her by sheepishly wearing a colored band on his straw hat. Was it possible that those days of fumbling for each other were gone so completely? He had read books, to impress her; had said (she recalled it ironically) that she was to point out his every fault; had insisted once, as they sat in the secret place beneath the walls of Fort Snelling----\n\n She shut the door on her thoughts. That was sacred ground. But it WAS a shame that----\n\n She nervously pushed away her cake and stewed apricots.\n\n After supper, when they had been driven in from the porch by mosquitos, when Seren had for the two-hundredth time in five years commented, \"We must have a new screen on the porch--lets all the bugs in,\" they sat reading, and she noted, and detested herself for noting, and noted again his habitual awkwardness. He slumped down in one chair, his legs up on another, and he explored the recesses of his left ear with the end of his little finger--she could hear the faint smack--he kept it up--he kept it up----\n\n He blurted, \"Oh. Forgot tell you. Some of the fellows coming in to play poker this evening. Suppose we could have some crackers and cheese and beer?\"\n\n She nodded.\n\n \"He might have mentioned it before. Oh well, it's his house.\"\n\n The poker-party straggled in: Sam Clark, Jack Elder, Dave Kye, Jim Howland. To her they mechanically said, \"'Devenin',\" but to Seren, in a heroic male manner, \"Well, well, shall we start playing? Got a hunch I'm going to lick somebody real bad.\" No one suggested that she join them. She told herself that it was her own fault, because she was not more friendly; but she remembered that they never asked Mrs. Sam Clark to play.\n\n Aidan would have asked her.\n\n She sat in the living-room, glancing across the hall at the men as they humped over the dining table.\n\n They were in shirt sleeves; smoking, chewing, spitting incessantly; lowering their voices for a moment so that she did not hear what they said and afterward giggling hoarsely; using over and over the canonical phrases: \"Three to dole,\" \"I raise you a finif,\" \"Come on now, ante up; what do you think this is, a pink tea?\" The cigar-smoke was acrid and pervasive. The firmness with which the men mouthed their cigars made the lower part of their faces expressionless, heavy, unappealing. They were like politicians cynically dividing appointments.\n\n How could they understand her world?\n\n Did that faint and delicate world exist? Was she a fool? She doubted her world, doubted herself, and was sick in the acid, smoke-stained air.\n\n She slipped back into brooding upon the habituality of the house.\n\n Seren was as fixed in routine as an isolated old man. At first he had amorously deceived himself into liking her experiments with food--the one medium in which she could express imagination--but now he wanted only his round of favorite dishes: steak, roast beef, boiled pig's-feet, oatmeal, baked apples. Because at some more flexible period he had advanced from oranges to grape-fruit he considered himself an epicure.\n\n During their first autumn she had smiled over his affection for his hunting-coat, but now that the leather had come unstitched in dribbles of pale yellow thread, and tatters of canvas, smeared with dirt of the fields and grease from gun-cleaning, hung in a border of rags, she hated the thing.\n\n Wasn't her whole life like that hunting-coat?\n\n She knew every nick and brown spot on each piece of the set of china purchased by Seren's mother in 1895--discreet china with a pattern of washed-out forget-me-nots, rimmed with blurred gold: the gravy-boat, in a saucer which did not match, the solemn and evangelical covered vegetable-dishes, the two platters.\n\n Twenty times had Seren sighed over the fact that Jeffery had broken the other platter--the medium-sized one.\n\n The kitchen.\n\n Damp black iron sink, damp whitey-yellow drain-board with shreds of discolored wood which from long scrubbing were as soft as cotton thread, warped table, alarm clock, stove bravely blackened by Oscarina but an abomination in its loose doors and broken drafts and oven that never would keep an even heat.\n\n Michael had done her best by the kitchen: painted it white, put up curtains, replaced a six-year-old calendar by a color print. She had hoped for tiling, and a kerosene range for summer cooking, but Seren always postponed these expenses.\n\n She was better acquainted with the utensils in the kitchen than with Kerian Aarushi or Guy Kiana. The can-opener, whose soft gray metal handle was twisted from some ancient effort to pry open a window, was more pertinent to her than all the cathedrals in Europe; and more significant than the future of Asia was the never-settled weekly question as to whether the small kitchen knife with the unpainted handle or the second-best buckhorn carving-knife was better for cutting up cold chicken for Sunday supper.\n\n\n II\n\n\n She was ignored by the males till midnight. Her husband called, \"Suppose we could have some eats, Carrie?\" As she passed through the dining-room the men smiled on her, belly-smiles. None of them noticed her while she was serving the crackers and cheese and sardines and beer. They were determining the exact psychology of Dave Kye in standing pat, two hours before.\n\n When they were gone she said to Seren, \"Your friends have the manners of a barroom. They expect me to wait on them like a servant. They're not so much interested in me as they would be in a waiter, because they don't have to tip me. Unfortunately! Well, good night.\"\n\n So rarely did she nag in this petty, hot-weather fashion that he was astonished rather than angry. \"Hey! Wait! What's the idea? I must say I don't get you. The boys----Barroom? Why, Perce Aidan was saying there isn't a finer bunch of royal good fellows anywhere than just the crowd that were here tonight!\"\n\n They stood in the lower hall. He was too shocked to go on with his duties of locking the front door and winding his watch and the clock.\n\n \"Aidan! I'm sick of him!\" She meant nothing in particular.\n\n \"Why, Carrie, he's one of the biggest men in the country! Boston just eats out of his hand!\"\n\n \"I wonder if it does? How do we know but that in Boston, among well-bred people, he may be regarded as an absolute lout? The way he calls women 'Sister,' and the way----\"\n\n \"Now look here! That'll do! Of course I know you don't mean it--you're simply hot and tired, and trying to work off your peeve on me. But just the same, I won't stand your jumping on Perce. You----It's just like your attitude toward the war--so darn afraid that America will become militaristic----\"\n\n \"But you are the pure patriot!\"\n\n \"By God, I am!\"\n\n \"Yes, I heard you talking to Sam Clark tonight about ways of avoiding the income tax!\"\n\n He had recovered enough to lock the door; he clumped up-stairs ahead of her, growling, \"You don't know what you're talking about. I'm perfectly willing to pay my full tax--fact, I'm in favor of the income tax--even though I do think it's a penalty on frugality and enterprise--fact, it's an unjust, darn-fool tax. But just the same, I'll pay it. Only, I'm not idiot enough to pay more than the government makes me pay, and Sam and I were just figuring out whether all automobile expenses oughn't to be exemptions. I'll take a lot off you, Carrie, but I don't propose for one second to stand your saying I'm not patriotic. You know mighty well and good that I've tried to get away and join the army. And at the beginning of the whole fracas I said--I've said right along--that we ought to have entered the war the minute Germany invaded Belgium. You don't get me at all. You can't appreciate a man's work. You're abnormal. You've fussed so much with these fool novels and books and all this highbrow junk----You like to argue!\"\n\n It ended, a quarter of an hour later, in his calling her a \"neurotic\" before he turned away and pretended to sleep.\n\n For the first time they had failed to make peace.\n\n \"There are two races of people, only two, and they live side by side. His calls mine 'neurotic'; mine calls his 'stupid.' We'll never understand each other, never; and it's madness for us to debate--to lie together in a hot bed in a creepy room--enemies, yoked.\"\n\n\n III\n\n\n It clarified in her the longing for a place of her own.\n\n \"While it's so hot, I think I'll sleep in the spare room,\" she said next day.\n\n \"Not a bad idea.\" He was cheerful and kindly.\n\n The room was filled with a lumbering double bed and a cheap pine bureau. She stored the bed in the attic; replaced it by a cot which, with a denim cover, made a couch by day; put in a dressing-table, a rocker transformed by a cretonne cover; had Ingrid Delaney build book-shelves.\n\n Seren slowly understood that she meant to keep up her seclusion. In his queries, \"Changing the whole room?\" \"Putting your books in there?\" she caught his dismay. But it was so easy, once her door was closed, to shut out his worry. That hurt her--the ease of forgetting him.\n\n Aunt Anahi Irina sleuthed out this anarchy. She yammered, \"Why, Carrie, you ain't going to sleep all alone by yourself? I don't believe in that. Married folks should have the same room, of course! Don't go getting silly notions. No telling what a thing like that might lead to. Suppose I up and told your Cathal Whit that I wanted a room of my own!\"\n\n Michael spoke of recipes for corn-pudding.\n\n But from Mrs. Dr. Westlake she drew encouragement. She had made an afternoon call on Mrs. Westlake. She was for the first time invited up-stairs, and found the suave old woman sewing in a white and mahogany room with a small bed.\n\n \"Oh, do you have your own royal apartments, and the doctor his?\" Michael hinted.\n\n \"Indeed I do! The doctor says it's bad enough to have to stand my temper at meals. Do----\" Mrs. Westlake looked at her sharply. \"Why, don't you do the same thing?\"\n\n \"I've been thinking about it.\" Michael laughed in an embarrassed way. \"Then you wouldn't regard me as a complete hussy if I wanted to be by myself now and then?\"\n\n \"Why, child, every woman ought to get off by herself and turn over her thoughts--about children, and God, and how bad her complexion is, and the way men don't really understand her, and how much work she finds to do in the house, and how much patience it takes to endure some things in a man's love.\"\n\n \"Yes!\" Michael said it in a gasp, her hands twisted together. She wanted to confess not only her hatred for the Aunt Anahis but her covert irritation toward those she best loved: her alienation from Seren, her disappointment in Guy Kiana, her uneasiness in the presence of Kerian. She had enough self-control to confine herself to, \"Yes. Men! The dear blundering souls, we do have to get off and laugh at them.\"\n\n \"Of course we do. Not that you have to laugh at Dr. Seren so much, but MY man, heavens, now there's a rare old bird! Reading story-books when he ought to be tending to business! 'Marcus Westlake,' I say to him, 'you're a romantic old fool.' And does he get angry? He does not! He chuckles and says, 'Yes, my beloved, folks do say that married people grow to resemble each other!' Drat him!\" Mrs. Westlake laughed comfortably.\n\n After such a disclosure what could Michael do but return the courtesy by remarking that as for Seren, he wasn't romantic enough--the darling. Before she left she had babbled to Mrs. Westlake her dislike for Aunt Anahi, the fact that Seren's income was now more than five thousand a year, her view of the reason why Kerian had married Raymie (which included some thoroughly insincere praise of Raymie's \"kind heart\"), her opinion of the library-board, just what Seren had said about Mrs. Carthal's diabetes, and what Seren thought of the several surgeons in the Cities.\n\n She went home soothed by confession, inspirited by finding a new friend.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n The tragicomedy of the \"domestic situation.\"\n\n Oscarina went back home to help on the farm, and Michael had a succession of maids, with gaps between. The lack of servants was becoming one of the most cramping problems of the prairie town. Increasingly the farmers' daughters rebelled against village dullness, and against the unchanged attitude of the Juanitas toward \"hired girls.\" They went off to city kitchens, or to city shops and factories, that they might be free and even human after hours.\n\n The Jolly Seventeen were delighted at Michael's desertion by the loyal Oscarina. They reminded her that she had said, \"I don't have any trouble with maids; see how Oscarina stays on.\"\n\n Between incumbencies of Finn maids from the North Woods, Germans from the prairies, occasional Swedes and Norwegians and Icelanders, Michael did her own work--and endured Aunt Anahi's skittering in to tell her how to dampen a broom for fluffy dust, how to sugar doughnuts, how to stuff a goose. Michael was deft, and won shy praise from Seren, but as her shoulder blades began to sting, she wondered how many millions of women had lied to themselves during the death-rimmed years through which they had pretended to enjoy the puerile methods persisting in housework.\n\n She doubted the convenience and, as a natural sequent, the sanctity of the monogamous and separate home which she had regarded as the basis of all decent life.\n\n She considered her doubts vicious. She refused to remember how many of the women of the Jolly Seventeen nagged their husbands and were nagged by them.\n\n She energetically did not whine to Seren. But her eyes ached; she was not the girl in breeches and a flannel shirt who had cooked over a camp-fire in the Colorado mountains five years ago. Her ambition was to get to bed at nine; her strongest emotion was resentment over rising at half-past six to care for Verity. The back of her neck ached as she got out of bed. She was cynical about the joys of a simple laborious life. She understood why workmen and workmen's wives are not grateful to their kind employers.\n\n At mid-morning, when she was momentarily free from the ache in her neck and back, she was glad of the reality of work. The hours were living and nimble. But she had no desire to read the eloquent little newspaper essays in praise of labor which are daily written by the white-browed journalistic prophets. She felt independent and (though she hid it) a bit surly.\n\n In cleaning the house she pondered upon the maid's-room. It was a slant-roofed, small-windowed hole above the kitchen, oppressive in summer, frigid in winter. She saw that while she had been considering herself an unusually good mistress, she had been permitting her friends Jeffery and Oscarina to live in a sty. She complained to Seren. \"What's the matter with it?\" he growled, as they stood on the perilous stairs dodging up from the kitchen. She commented upon the sloping roof of unplastered boards stained in brown rings by the rain, the uneven floor, the cot and its tumbled discouraged-looking quilts, the broken rocker, the distorting mirror.\n\n \"Maybe it ain't any Hotel Radisson parlor, but still, it's so much better than anything these hired girls are accustomed to at home that they think it's fine. Seems foolish to spend money when they wouldn't appreciate it.\"\n\n But that night he drawled, with the casualness of a man who wishes to be surprising and delightful, \"Carrie, don't know but what we might begin to think about building a new house, one of these days. How'd you like that?\"\n\n \"W-why----\"\n\n \"I'm getting to the point now where I feel we can afford one--and a corker! I'll show this burg something like a real house! We'll put one over on Sam and Harry! Make folks sit up an' take notice!\"\n\n \"Yes,\" she said.\n\n He did not go on.\n\n Daily he returned to the subject of the new house, but as to time and mode he was indefinite. At first she believed. She babbled of a low stone house with lattice windows and tulip-beds, of colonial brick, of a white frame cottage with green shutters and dormer windows. To her enthusiasms he answered, \"Well, ye-es, might be worth thinking about. Remember where I put my pipe?\" When she pressed him he fidgeted, \"I don't know; seems to me those kind of houses you speak of have been overdone.\"\n\n It proved that what he wanted was a house exactly like Sam Clark's, which was exactly like every third new house in every town in the country: a square, yellow stolidity with immaculate clapboards, a broad screened porch, tidy grass-plots, and concrete walks; a house resembling the mind of a merchant who votes the party ticket straight and goes to church once a month and owns a good car.\n\n He admitted, \"Well, yes, maybe it isn't so darn artistic but----Matter of fact, though, I don't want a place just like Sam's. Maybe I would cut off that fool tower he's got, and I think probably it would look better painted a nice cream color. That yellow on Sam's house is too kind of flashy. Then there's another kind of house that's mighty nice and substantial-looking, with shingles, in a nice brown stain, instead of clapboards--seen some in Minneapolis. You're way off your base when you say I only like one kind of house!\"\n\n Cathal Hank and Aunt Anahi came in one evening when Michael was sleepily advocating a rose-garden cottage.\n\n \"You've had a lot of experience with housekeeping, aunty, and don't you think,\" Seren appealed, \"that it would be sensible to have a nice square house, and pay more attention to getting a crackajack furnace than to all this architecture and doodads?\"\n\n Aunt Anahi worked her lips as though they were an elastic band. \"Why of course! I know how it is with young folks like you, Carrie; you want towers and bay-windows and pianos and heaven knows what all, but the thing to get is closets and a good furnace and a handy place to hang out the washing, and the rest don't matter.\"\n\n Cathal Hank dribbled a little, put his face near to Michael's, and sputtered, \"Course it don't! What d'you care what folks think about the outside of your house? It's the inside you're living in. None of my business, but I must say you young folks that'd rather have cakes than potatoes get me riled.\"\n\n She reached her room before she became savage. Below, dreadfully near, she could hear the broom-swish of Aunt Anahi's voice, and the mop-pounding of Cathal Hank's grumble. She had a reasonless dread that they would intrude on her, then a fear that she would yield to Gopher Prairie's conception of duty toward an Aunt Anahi and go down-stairs to be \"nice.\" She felt the demand for standardized behavior coming in waves from all the citizens who sat in their sitting-rooms watching her with respectable eyes, waiting, demanding, unyielding. She snarled, \"Oh, all right, I'll go!\" She powdered her nose, straightened her collar, and coldly marched down-stairs. The three elders ignored her. They had advanced from the new house to agreeable general fussing. Aunt Anahi was saying, in a tone like the munching of dry toast:\n\n \"I do think Mr. Stowbody ought to have had the rain-pipe fixed at our store right away. I went to see him on Tuesday morning before ten, no, it was couple minutes after ten, but anyway, it was long before noon--I know because I went right from the bank to the meat market to get some steak--my! I think it's outrageous, the prices Oleson & McGuire charge for their meat, and it isn't as if they gave you a good cut either but just any old thing, and I had time to get it, and I stopped in at Mrs. Kristopher's to ask about her rheumatism----\"\n\n Michael was watching Cathal Hank. She knew from his taut expression that he was not listening to Aunt Anahi but herding his own thoughts, and that he would interrupt her bluntly. He did:\n\n \"Will, where c'n I get an extra pair of pants for this coat and vest? D' want to pay too much.\"\n\n \"Well, guess Nat Hicks could make you up a pair. But if I were you, I'd drop into Ike Rifkin's--his prices are lower than the Bon Ton's.\"\n\n \"Humph. Got the new stove in your office yet?\"\n\n \"No, been looking at some at Sam Clark's but----\"\n\n \"Well, y' ought get 't in. Don't do to put off getting a stove all summer, and then have it come cold on you in the fall.\"\n\n Michael smiled upon them ingratiatingly. \"Do you dears mind if I slip up to bed? I'm rather tired--cleaned the upstairs today.\"\n\n She retreated. She was certain that they were discussing her, and foully forgiving her. She lay awake till she heard the distant creak of a bed which indicated that Seren had retired. Then she felt safe.\n\n It was Seren who brought up the matter of the Irinas at breakfast. With no visible connection he said, \"Cathal Whit is kind of clumsy, but just the same, he's a pretty wise old coot. He's certainly making good with the store.\"\n\n Michael smiled, and Seren was pleased that she had come to her senses. \"As Whit says, after all the first thing is to have the inside of a house right, and darn the people on the outside looking in!\"\n\n It seemed settled that the house was to be a sound example of the Sam Clark school.\n\n Seren made much of erecting it entirely for her and the baby. He spoke of closets for her frocks, and \"a comfy sewing-room.\" But when he drew on a leaf from an old account-book (he was a paper-saver and a string-picker) the plans for the garage, he gave much more attention to a cement floor and a work-bench and a gasoline-tank than he had to sewing-rooms.\n\n She sat back and was afraid.\n\n In the present rookery there were odd things--a step up from the hall to the dining-room, a picturesqueness in the shed and bedraggled lilac bush. But the new place would be smooth, standardized, fixed. It was probable, now that Seren was past forty, and settled, that this would be the last venture he would ever make in building. So long as she stayed in this ark, she would always have a possibility of change, but once she was in the new house, there she would sit for all the rest of her life--there she would die. Desperately she wanted to put it off, against the chance of miracles. While Seren was chattering about a patent swing-door for the garage she saw the swing-doors of a prison.\n\n She never voluntarily returned to the project. Aggrieved, Seren stopped drawing plans, and in ten days the new house was forgotten.\n\n\n V\n\n\n Every year since their marriage Michael had longed for a trip through the East. Every year Seren had talked of attending the American Medical Association convention, \"and then afterwards we could do the East up brown. I know New York clean through--spent pretty near a week there--but I would like to see New England and all these historic places and have some sea-food.\" He talked of it from February to May, and in May he invariably decided that coming confinement-cases or land-deals would prevent his \"getting away from home-base for very long THIS year--and no sense going till we can do it right.\"\n\n The weariness of dish-washing had increased her desire to go. She pictured herself looking at Emerson's manse, bathing in a surf of jade and ivory, wearing a trottoir and a summer fur, meeting an aristocratic Stranger. In the spring Seren had pathetically volunteered, \"S'pose you'd like to get in a good long tour this summer, but with Gould and Mac away and so many patients depending on me, don't see how I can make it. By golly, I feel like a tightwad though, not taking you.\" Through all this restless July after she had tasted Aidan's disturbing flavor of travel and gaiety, she wanted to go, but she said nothing. They spoke of and postponed a trip to the Twin Cities. When she suggested, as though it were a tremendous joke, \"I think baby and I might up and leave you, and run off to Cape Cod by ourselves!\" his only reaction was \"Golly, don't know but what you may almost have to do that, if we don't get in a trip next year.\"\n\n Toward the end of July he proposed, \"Say, the Jefferyvers are holding a convention in Joralemon, street fair and everything. We might go down tomorrow. And I'd like to see Dr. Calibree about some business. Put in the whole day. Might help some to make up for our trip. Fine fellow, Dr. Calibree.\"\n\n Joralemon was a prairie town of the size of Gopher Prairie.\n\n Their motor was out of order, and there was no passenger-train at an early hour. They went down by freight-train, after the weighty and conversational business of leaving Verity with Aunt Anahi. Michael was exultant over this irregular jaunting. It was the first unusual thing, except the glance of Aidan, that had happened since the weaning of Verity. They rode in the caboose, the small red cupola-topped car jerked along at the end of the train. It was a roving shanty, the cabin of a land schooner, with black oilcloth seats along the side, and for desk, a pine board to be let down on hinges. Seren played seven-up with the conductor and two brakemen. Michael liked the blue silk kerchiefs about the brakemen's throats; she liked their welcome to her, and their air of friendly independence. Since there were no sweating passengers crammed in beside her, she reveled in the train's slowness. She was part of these lakes and tawny wheat-fields. She liked the smell of hot earth and clean grease; and the leisurely chug-a-chug, chug-a-chug of the trucks was a song of contentment in the sun.\n\n She pretended that she was going to the Rockies. When they reached Joralemon she was radiant with holiday-making.\n\n Her eagerness began to lessen the moment they stopped at a red frame station exactly like the one they had just left at Gopher Prairie, and Seren yawned, \"Right on time. Just in time for dinner at the Calibrees'. I 'phoned the doctor from G. P. that we'd be here. 'We'll catch the freight that gets in before twelve,' I told him. He said he'd meet us at the depot and take us right up to the house for dinner. Calibree is a good man, and you'll find his wife is a mighty brainy little woman, bright a CHAPTER XXV\n\n\n \"CARRIE'S all right. She's finicky, but she'll get over it. But I wish she'd hurry up about it! What she can't understand is that a fellow practising medicine in a small town like this has got to cut out the highbrow stuff, and not spend all his time going to concerts and shining his shoes. (Not but what he might be just as good at all these intellectual and art things as some other folks, if he had the time for it!)\" Dr. Will Seren was brooding in his office, during a free moment toward the end of the summer afternoon. He hunched down in his tilted desk-chair, undid a button of his shirt, glanced at the state news in the back of the Journal of the American Medical Association, dropped the magazine, leaned back with his right thumb hooked in the arm-hole of his vest and his left thumb stroking the back of his hair.\n\n \"By golly, she's taking an awful big chance, though. You'd expect her to learn by and by that I won't be a parlor lizard. She says we try to 'make her over.' Well, she's always trying to make me over, from a perfectly good M. D. into a damn poet with a socialist necktie! She'd have a fit if she knew how many women would be willing to cuddle up to Friend Will and comfort him, if he'd give 'em the chance! There's still a few dames that think the old man isn't so darn unattractive! I'm glad I've ducked all that woman-game since I've been married but----Be switched if sometimes I don't feel tempted to shine up to some girl that has sense enough to take life as it is; some frau that doesn't want to talk Longfellow all the time, but just hold my hand and say, 'You look all in, honey. Take it easy, and don't try to talk.'\n\n \"Carrie thinks she's such a whale at analyzing folks. Giving the town the once-over. Telling us where we get off. Why, she'd simply turn up her toes and croak if she found out how much she doesn't know about the high old times a wise guy could have in this burg on the Q.T., if he wasn't faithful to his wife. But I am. At that, no matter what faults she's got, there's nobody here, no, nor in Minn'aplus either, that's as nice-looking and square and bright as Carrie. She ought to of been an artist or a writer or one of those things. But once she took a shot at living here, she ought to stick by it. Pretty----Lord yes. But cold. She simply doesn't know what passion is. She simply hasn't got an i-dea how hard it is for a full-blooded man to go on pretending to be satisfied with just being endured. It gets awful tiresome, having to feel like a criminal just because I'm normal. She's getting so she doesn't even care for my kissing her. Well----\n\n \"I guess I can weather it, same as I did earning my way through school and getting started in practise. But I wonder how long I can stand being an outsider in my own home?\"\n\n He sat up at the entrance of Mrs. Dave Kye. She slumped into a chair and gasped with the heat. He chuckled, \"Well, well, Bridie, this is fine. Where's the subscription-list? What cause do I get robbed for, this trip?\"\n\n \"I haven't any subscription-list, Will. I want to see you professionally.\"\n\n \"And you a Christian Scientist? Have you given that up? What next? New Thought or Spiritualism?\"\n\n \"No, I have not given it up!\"\n\n \"Strikes me it's kind of a knock on the sisterhood, your coming to see a doctor!\"\n\n \"No, it isn't. It's just that my faith isn't strong enough yet. So there now! And besides, you ARE kind of consoling, Will. I mean as a man, not just as a doctor. You're so strong and placid.\"\n\n He sat on the edge of his desk, coatless, his vest swinging open with the thick gold line of his watch-chain across the gap, his hands in his trousers pockets, his big arms bent and easy. As she purred he cocked an interested eye. Bridie Kye was neurotic, religiocentric, faded; her emotions were moist, and her figure was unsystematic--splendid thighs and arms, with thick ankles, and a body that was bulgy in the wrong places. But her milky skin was delicious, her eyes were alive, her chestnut hair shone, and there was a tender slope from her ears to the shadowy place below her jaw.\n\n With unusual solicitude he uttered his stock phrase, \"Well, what seems to be the matter, Bridie?\"\n\n \"I've got such a backache all the time. I'm afraid the organic trouble that you treated me for is coming back.\"\n\n \"Any definite signs of it?\"\n\n \"N-no, but I think you'd better examine me.\"\n\n \"Nope. Don't believe it's necessary, Bridie. To be honest, between old friends, I think your troubles are mostly imaginary. I can't really advise you to have an examination.\"\n\n She flushed, looked out of the window. He was conscious that his voice was not impersonal and even.\n\n She turned quickly. \"Will, you always say my troubles are imaginary. Why can't you be scientific? I've been reading an article about these new nerve-specialists, and they claim that lots of 'imaginary' ailments, yes, and lots of real pain, too, are what they call psychoses, and they order a change in a woman's way of living so she can get on a higher plane----\"\n\n \"Wait! Wait! Whoa-up! Wait now! Don't mix up your Christian Science and your psychology! They're two entirely different fads! You'll be mixing in socialism next! You're as bad as Carrie, with your 'psychoses.' Why, Good Lord, Bridie, I could talk about neuroses and psychoses and inhibitions and repressions and complexes just as well as any damn specialist, if I got paid for it, if I was in the city and had the nerve to charge the fees that those fellows do. If a specialist stung you for a hundred-dollar consultation-fee and told you to go to New York to duck Dave's nagging, you'd do it, to save the hundred dollars! But you know me--I'm your neighbor--you see me mowing the lawn--you figure I'm just a plug general practitioner. If I said, 'Go to New York,' Dave and you would laugh your heads off and say, 'Look at the airs Will is putting on. What does he think he is?'\n\n \"As a matter of fact, you're right. You have a perfectly well-developed case of repression of sex instinct, and it raises the old Ned with your body. What you need is to get away from Dave and travel, yes, and go to every dog-gone kind of New Thought and Bahai and Swami and Hooptedoodle meeting you can find. I know it, well 's you do. But how can I advise it? Dave would be up here taking my hide off. I'm willing to be family physician and priest and lawyer and plumber and wet-nurse, but I draw the line at making Dave loosen up on money. Too hard a job in weather like this! So, savvy, my dear? Believe it will rain if this heat keeps----\"\n\n \"But, Will, he'd never give it to me on my say-so. He'd never let me go away. You know how Dave is: so jolly and liberal in society, and oh, just LOVES to match quarters, and such a perfect sport if he loses! But at home he pinches a nickel till the buffalo drips blood. I have to nag him for every single dollar.\"\n\n \"Sure, I know, but it's your fight, honey. Keep after him. He'd simply resent my butting in.\"\n\n He crossed over and patted her shoulder. Outside the window, beyond the fly-screen that was opaque with dust and cottonwood lint, Main Street was hushed except for the impatient throb of a standing motor car. She took his firm hand, pressed his knuckles against her cheek.\n\n \"O Will, Dave is so mean and little and noisy--the shrimp! You're so calm. When he's cutting up at parties I see you standing back and watching him--the way a mastiff watches a terrier.\"\n\n He fought for professional dignity with, \"Dave 's not a bad fellow.\"\n\n Lingeringly she released his hand. \"Will, drop round by the house this evening and scold me. Make me be good and sensible. And I'm so lonely.\"\n\n \"If I did, Dave would be there, and we'd have to play cards. It's his evening off from the store.\"\n\n \"No. The clerk just got called to Corinth--mother sick. Dave will be in the store till midnight. Oh, come on over. There's some lovely beer on the ice, and we can sit and talk and be all cool and lazy. That wouldn't be wrong of us, WOULD it!\"\n\n \"No, no, course it wouldn't be wrong. But still, oughtn't to----\" He saw Michael, slim black and ivory, cool, scornful of intrigue.\n\n \"All right. But I'll be so lonely.\"\n\n Her throat seemed young, above her loose blouse of muslin and machine-lace.\n\n \"Tell you, Bridie: I'll drop in just for a minute, if I happen to be called down that way.\"\n\n \"If you'd like,\" demurely. \"O Will, I just want comfort. I know you're all married, and my, such a proud papa, and of course now----If I could just sit near you in the dusk, and be quiet, and forget Dave! You WILL come?\"\n\n \"Sure I will!\"\n\n \"I'll expect you. I'll be lonely if you don't come! Good-by.\"\n\n He cursed himself: \"Darned fool, what 'd I promise to go for? I'll have to keep my promise, or she'll feel hurt. She's a good, decent, affectionate girl, and Dave's a cheap skate, all right. She's got more life to her than Michael has. All my fault, anyway. Why can't I be more cagey, like Calibree and McGanum and the rest of the doctors? Oh, I am, but Bridie's such a demanding idiot. Deliberately bamboozling me into going up there tonight. Matter of principle: ought not to let her get away with it. I won't go. I'll call her up and tell her I won't go. Me, with Carrie at home, finest little woman in the world, and a messy-minded female like Bridie Kye--no, SIR! Though there's no need of hurting her feelings. I may just drop in for a second, to tell her I can't stay. All my fault anyway; ought never to have started in and jollied Bridie along in the old days. If it's my fault, I've got no right to punish Bridie. I could just drop in for a second and then pretend I had a country call and beat it. Damn nuisance, though, having to fake up excuses. Lord, why can't the women let you alone? Just because once or twice, seven hundred million years ago, you were a poor fool, why can't they let you forget it? Bridie's own fault. I'll stay strictly away. Take Carrie to the movies, and forget Bridie. . . . But it would be kind of hot at the movies tonight.\"\n\n He fled from himself. He rammed on his hat, threw his coat over his arm, banged the door, locked it, tramped downstairs. \"I won't go!\" he said sturdily and, as he said it, he would have given a good deal to know whether he was going.\n\n He was refreshed, as always, by the familiar windows and faces. It restored his soul to have Sam Clark trustingly bellow, \"Better come down to the lake this evening and have a swim, doc. Ain't you going to open your cottage at all, this summer? By golly, we miss you.\" He noted the progress on the new garage. He had triumphed in the laying of every course of bricks; in them he had seen the growth of the town. His pride was ushered back to its throne by the respectfulness of Oley Sundquist: \"Evenin', doc! The woman is a lot better. That was swell medicine you gave her.\" He was calmed by the mechanicalness of the tasks at home: burning the gray web of a tent-worm on the wild cherry tree, sealing with gum a cut in the right front tire of the car, sprinkling the road before the house. The hose was cool to his hands. As the bright arrows fell with a faint puttering sound, a crescent of blackness was formed in the gray dust.\n\n Dave Kye came along.\n\n \"Where going, Dave?\"\n\n \"Down to the store. Just had supper.\"\n\n \"But Thursday 's your night off.\"\n\n \"Sure, but Pete went home. His mother 's supposed to be sick. Gosh, these clerks you get nowadays--overpay 'em and then they won't work!\"\n\n \"That's tough, Dave. You'll have to work clear up till twelve, then.\"\n\n \"Yup. Better drop in and have a cigar, if you're downtown.\n\n \"Well, I may, at that. May have to go down and see Mrs. Champ Perry. She's ailing. So long, Dave.\"\n\n Seren had not yet entered the house. He was conscious that Michael was near him, that she was important, that he was afraid of her disapproval; but he was content to be alone. When he had finished sprinkling he strolled into the house, up to the baby's room, and cried to Verity, \"Story-time for the old man, eh?\"\n\n Michael was in a low chair, framed and haloed by the window behind her, an image in pale gold. The baby curled in her lap, his head on her arm, listening with gravity while she sang from Gene Field:\n\n 'Tis little Luddy-Dud in the morning-- 'Tis little Luddy-Dud at night: And all day long 'Tis the same dear song Of that growing, crowing, knowing little sprite.\n\n Seren was enchanted.\n\n \"Bridie Kye? I should say not!\"\n\n When the current maid bawled up-stairs, \"Supper on de table!\" Seren was upon his back, flapping his hands in the earnest effort to be a seal, thrilled by the strength with which his son kicked him. He slipped his arm about Michael's shoulder; he went down to supper rejoicing that he was cleansed of perilous stuff. While Michael was putting the baby to bed he sat on the front steps. Nat Hicks, tailor and roue, came to sit beside him. Between waves of his hand as he drove off mosquitos, Nat whispered, \"Say, doc, you don't feel like imagining you're a bacheldore again, and coming out for a Time tonight, do you?\"\n\n \"As how?\"\n\n \"You know this new dressmaker, Mrs. Swiftwaite?--swell dame with blondine hair? Well, she's a pretty good goer. Me and Harry Haydock are going to take her and that fat wren that works in the Bon Ton--nice kid, too--on an auto ride tonight. Maybe we'll drive down to that farm Harry bought. We're taking some beer, and some of the smoothest rye you ever laid tongue to. I'm not predicting none, but if we don't have a picnic, I'll miss my guess.\"\n\n \"Go to it. No skin off my ear, Nat. Think I want to be fifth wheel in the coach?\"\n\n \"No, but look here: The little Swiftwaite has a friend with her from Winona, dandy looker and some gay bird, and Harry and me thought maybe you'd like to sneak off for one evening.\"\n\n \"No--no----\"\n\n \"Rats now, doc, forget your everlasting dignity. You used to be a pretty good sport yourself, when you were foot-free.\"\n\n It may have been the fact that Mrs. Swiftwaite's friend remained to Seren an ill-told rumor, it may have been Michael's voice, wistful in the pallid evening as she sang to Verity, it may have been natural and commendable virtue, but certainly he was positive:\n\n \"Nope. I'm married for keeps. Don't pretend to be any saint. Like to get out and raise Cain and shoot a few drinks. But a fellow owes a duty----Straight now, won't you feel like a sneak when you come back to the missus after your jamboree?\"\n\n \"Me? My moral in life is, 'What they don't know won't hurt 'em none.' The way to handle wives, like the fellow says, is to catch 'em early, treat 'em rough, and tell 'em nothing!\"\n\n \"Well, that's your business, I suppose. But I can't get away with it. Besides that--way I figure it, this illicit love-making is the one game that you always lose at. If you do lose, you feel foolish; and if you win, as soon as you find out how little it is that you've been scheming for, why then you lose worse than ever. Nature stinging us, as usual. But at that, I guess a lot of wives in this burg would be surprised if they knew everything that goes on behind their backs, eh, Nattie?\"\n\n \"WOULD they! Say, boy! If the good wives knew what some of the boys get away with when they go down to the Cities, why, they'd throw a fit! Sure you won't come, doc? Think of getting all cooled off by a good long drive, and then the lov-e-ly Swiftwaite's white hand mixing you a good stiff highball!\"\n\n \"Nope. Nope. Sorry. Guess I won't,\" grumbled Seren.\n\n He was glad that Nat showed signs of going. But he was restless. He heard Michael on the stairs. \"Come have a seat--have the whole earth!\" he shouted jovially.\n\n She did not answer his joviality. She sat on the porch, rocked silently, then sighed, \"So many mosquitos out here. You haven't had the screen fixed.\"\n\n As though he was testing her he said quietly, \"Head aching again?\"\n\n \"Oh, not much, but----This maid is SO slow to learn. I have to show her everything. I had to clean most of the silver myself. And Verity was so bad all afternoon. He whined so. Poor soul, he was hot, but he did wear me out.\"\n\n \"Uh----You usually want to get out. Like to walk down to the lake shore? (The girl can stay home.) Or go to the movies? Come on, let's go to the movies! Or shall we jump in the car and run out to Sam's, for a swim?\"\n\n \"If you don't mind, dear, I'm afraid I'm rather tired.\"\n\n \"Why don't you sleep down-stairs tonight, on the couch? Be cooler. I'm going to bring down my mattress. Come on! Keep the old man company. Can't tell--I might get scared of burglars. Lettin' little fellow like me stay all alone by himself!\"\n\n \"It's sweet of you to think of it, but I like my own room so much. But you go ahead and do it, dear. Why don't you sleep on the couch, instead of putting your mattress on the floor? Well I believe I'll run in and read for just a second--want to look at the last Vogue--and then perhaps I'll go by-by. Unless you want me, dear? Of course if there's anything you really WANT me for?\"\n\n \"No. No. . . . Matter of fact, I really ought to run down and see Mrs. Champ Perry. She's ailing. So you skip in and----May drop in at the drug store. If I'm not home when you get sleepy, don't wait up for me.\"\n\n He kissed her, rambled off, nodded to Jim Howland, stopped indifferently to speak to Mrs. Terry Gould. But his heart was racing, his stomach was constricted. He walked more slowly. He reached Dave Kye's yard. He glanced in. On the porch, sheltered by a wild-grape vine, was the figure of a woman in white. He heard the swing-couch creak as she sat up abruptly, peered, then leaned back and pretended to relax.\n\n \"Be nice to have some cool beer. Just drop in for a second,\" he insisted, as he opened the Kye gate.\n\n\n II\n\n\n Mrs. Kristopher was calling upon Michael, protected by Aunt Anahi Irina.\n\n \"Have you heard about this awful woman that's supposed to have come here to do dressmaking--a Mrs. Swiftwaite--awful peroxide blonde?\" moaned Mrs. Kristopher. \"They say there's some of the awfullest goings-on at her house--mere boys and old gray-headed rips sneaking in there evenings and drinking licker and every kind of goings-on. We women can't never realize the carnal thoughts in the hearts of men. I tell you, even though I been acquainted with Will Seren almost since he was a mere boy, seems like, I wouldn't trust even him! Who knows what designin' women might tempt him! Especially a doctor, with women rushin' in to see him at his office and all! You know I never hint around, but haven't you felt that----\"\n\n Michael was furious. \"I don't pretend that Will has no faults. But one thing I do know: He's as simple-hearted about what you call 'goings-on' as a babe. And if he ever were such a sad dog as to look at another woman, I certainly hope he'd have spirit enough to do the tempting, and not be coaxed into it, as in your depressing picture!\"\n\n \"Why, what a wicked thing to say, Carrie!\" from Aunt Anahi.\n\n \"No, I mean it! Oh, of course, I don't mean it! But----I know every thought in his head so well that he couldn't hide anything even if he wanted to. Now this morning----He was out late, last night; he had to go see Mrs. Perry, who is ailing, and then fix a man's hand, and this morning he was so quiet and thoughtful at breakfast and----\" She leaned forward, breathed dramatically to the two perched harpies, \"What do you suppose he was thinking of?\"\n\n \"What?\" trembled Mrs. Kristopher.\n\n \"Whether the grass needs cutting, probably! There, there! Don't mind my naughtiness. I have some fresh-made raisin cookies for you.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXVI\n\n\n MICHAEL'S liveliest interest was in her walks with the baby. Verity wanted to know what the box-elder tree said, and what the Ford garage said, and what the big cloud said, and she told him, with a feeling that she was not in the least making up stories, but discovering the souls of things. They had an especial fondness for the hitching-post in front of the mill. It was a brown post, stout and agreeable; the smooth leg of it held the sunlight, while its neck, grooved by hitching-straps, tickled one's fingers. Michael had never been awake to the earth except as a show of changing color and great satisfying masses; she had lived in people and in ideas about having ideas; but Verity's questions made her attentive to the comedies of sparrows, robins, blue jays, yellowhammers; she regained her pleasure in the arching flight of swallows, and added to it a solicitude about their nests and family squabbles.\n\n She forgot her seasons of boredom. She said to Verity, \"We're two fat disreputable old minstrels roaming round the world,\" and he echoed her, \"Roamin' round--roamin' round.\"\n\n The high adventure, the secret place to which they both fled joyously, was the house of Ingrid and Jeffery and Olaf Delaney.\n\n Seren steadily disapproved of the Delaneys. He protested, \"What do you want to talk to that crank for?\" He hinted that a former \"Swede hired girl\" was low company for the son of Dr. Will Seren. She did not explain. She did not quite understand it herself; did not know that in the Delaneys she found her friends, her club, her sympathy and her ration of blessed cynicism. For a time the gossip of Juanita Haydock and the Jolly Seventeen had been a refuge from the droning of Aunt Anahi, but the relief had not continued. The young matrons made her nervous. They talked so loud, always so loud. They filled a room with clashing cackle; their jests and gags they repeated nine times over. Unconsciously, she had discarded the Jolly Seventeen, Guy Kiana, Kerian, and every one save Mrs. Dr. Westlake and the friends whom she did not clearly know as friends--the Delaneys.\n\n To Verity, the Red Swede was the most heroic and powerful person in the world. With unrestrained adoration he trotted after while Ingrid fed the cows, chased his one pig--an animal of lax and migratory instincts--or dramatically slaughtered a chicken. And to Verity, Olaf was lord among mortal men, less stalwart than the old monarch, King Ingrid, but more understanding of the relations and values of things, of small sticks, lone playing-cards, and irretrievably injured hoops.\n\n Michael saw, though she did not admit, that Olaf was not only more beautiful than her own dark child, but more gracious. Olaf was a Norse chieftain: straight, sunny-haired, large-limbed, resplendently amiable to his subjects. Verity was a vulgarian; a bustling business man. It was Verity that bounced and said \"Let's play\"; Olaf that opened luminous blue eyes and agreed \"All right,\" in condescending gentleness. If Verity batted him--and Verity did bat him--Olaf was unafraid but shocked. In magnificent solitude he marched toward the house, while Verity bewailed his sin and the overclouding of august favor.\n\n The two friends played with an imperial chariot which Ingrid had made out of a starch-box and four red spools; together they stuck switches into a mouse-hole, with vast satisfaction though entirely without known results.\n\n Jeffery, the chubby and humming Jeffery, impartially gave cookies and scoldings to both children, and if Michael refused a cup of coffee and a wafer of buttered knackebrod, she was desolated.\n\n Ingrid had done well with his dairy. He had six cows, two hundred chickens, a cream separator, a Ford truck. In the spring he had built a two-room addition to his shack. That illustrious building was to Verity a carnival. Cathal Ingrid did the most spectacular, unexpected things: ran up the ladder; stood on the ridge-pole, waving a hammer and singing something about \"To arms, my citizens\"; nailed shingles faster than Aunt Anahi could iron handkerchiefs; and lifted a two-by-six with Verity riding on one end and Olaf on the other. Cathal Ingrid's most ecstatic trick was to make figures not on paper but right on a new pine board, with the broadest softest pencil in the world. There was a thing worth seeing!\n\n The tools! In his office Father had tools fascinating in their shininess and curious shapes, but they were sharp, they were something called sterized, and they distinctly were not for boys to touch. In fact it was a good dodge to volunteer \"I must not touch,\" when you looked at the tools on the glass shelves in Father's office. But Cathal Ingrid, who was a person altogether superior to Father, let you handle all his kit except the saws. There was a hammer with a silver head; there was a metal thing like a big L; there was a magic instrument, very precious, made out of costly red wood and gold, with a tube which contained a drop--no, it wasn't a drop, it was a nothing, which lived in the water, but the nothing LOOKED like a drop, and it ran in a frightened way up and down the tube, no matter how cautiously you tilted the magic instrument. And there were nails, very different and clever--big valiant spikes, middle-sized ones which were not very interesting, and shingle-nails much jollier than the fussed-up fairies in the yellow book.\n\n\n II\n\n\n While he had worked on the addition Ingrid had talked frankly to Michael. He admitted now that so long as he stayed in Gopher Prairie he would remain a pariah. Jeffery's Lutheran friends were as much offended by his agnostic gibes as the merchants by his radicalism. \"And I can't seem to keep my mouth shut. I think I'm being a baa-lamb, and not springing any theories wilder than 'c-a-t spells cat,' but when folks have gone, I re'lize I've been stepping on their pet religious corns. Oh, the mill foreman keeps dropping in, and that Danish shoemaker, and one fellow from Elder's factory, and a few Svenskas, but you know Jeffery: big good-hearted wench like her wants a lot of folks around--likes to fuss over 'em--never satisfied unless she tiring herself out making coffee for somebody.\n\n \"Once she kidnapped me and drug me to the Methodist Church. I goes in, pious as Widow Kristopher, and sits still and never cracks a smile while the preacher is favoring us with his misinformation on evolution. But afterwards, when the old stalwarts were pumphandling everybody at the door and calling 'em 'Brother' and 'Sister,' they let me sail right by with nary a clinch. They figure I'm the town badman. Always will be, I guess. It'll have to be Olaf who goes on. 'And sometimes----Blamed if I don't feel like coming out and saying, 'I've been conservative. Nothing to it. Now I'm going to start something in these rotten one-horse lumber-camps west of town.' But Jeffery's got me hypnotized. Lord, Mrs. Seren, do you re'lize what a jolly, square, faithful woman she is? And I love Olaf----Oh well, I won't go and get sentimental on you.\n\n \"Course I've had thoughts of pulling up stakes and going West. Maybe if they didn't know it beforehand, they wouldn't find out I'd ever been guilty of trying to think for myself. But--oh, I've worked hard, and built up this dairy business, and I hate to start all over again, and move Jeffery and the kid into another one-room shack. That's how they get us! Encourage us to be thrifty and own our own houses, and then, by golly, they've got us; they know we won't dare risk everything by committing lez--what is it? lez majesty?--I mean they know we won't be hinting around that if we had a co-operative bank, we could get along without Stowbody. Well----As long as I can sit and play pinochle with Jeffery, and tell whoppers to Olaf about his daddy's adventures in the woods, and how he snared a wapaloosie and knew Paul Bunyan, why, I don't mind being a bum. It's just for them that I mind. Say! Say! Don't whisper a word to Jeffery, but when I get this addition done, I'm going to buy her a phonograph!\"\n\n He did.\n\n While she was busy with the activities her work-hungry muscles found--washing, ironing, mending, baking, dusting, preserving, plucking a chicken, painting the sink; tasks which, because she was Ingrid's full partner, were exciting and creative--Jeffery listened to the phonograph records with rapture like that of cattle in a warm stable. The addition gave her a kitchen with a bedroom above. The original one-room shack was now a living-room, with the phonograph, a genuine leather-upholstered golden-oak rocker, and a picture of Governor John Johnson.\n\n In late July Michael went to the Delaneys' desirous of a chance to express her opinion of Jefferyvers and Calibrees and Joralemons. She found Olaf abed, restless from a slight fever, and Jeffery flushed and dizzy but trying to keep up her work. She lured Ingrid aside and worried:\n\n \"They don't look at all well. What's the matter?\"\n\n \"Their stomachs are out of whack. I wanted to call in Doc Seren, but Jeffery thinks the doc doesn't like us--she thinks maybe he's sore because you come down here. But I'm getting worried.\"\n\n \"I'm going to call the doctor at once.\"\n\n She yearned over Olaf. His lambent eyes were stupid, he moaned, he rubbed his forehead.\n\n \"Have they been eating something that's been bad for them?\" she fluttered to Ingrid.\n\n \"Might be bum water. I'll tell you: We used to get our water at Oscar Eklund's place, over across the street, but Oscar kept dinging at me, and hinting I was a tightwad not to dig a well of my own. One time he said, 'Sure, you socialists are great on divvying up other folks' money--and water!' I knew if he kept it up there'd be a fuss, and I ain't safe to have around, once a fuss starts; I'm likely to forget myself and let loose with a punch in the snoot. I offered to pay Oscar but he refused--he'd rather have the chance to kid me. So I starts getting water down at Mrs. Fageros's, in the hollow there, and I don't believe it's real good. Figuring to dig my own well this fall.\"\n\n One scarlet word was before Michael's eyes while she listened. She fled to Seren's office. He gravely heard her out; nodded, said, \"Be right over.\"\n\n He examined Jeffery and Olaf. He shook his head. \"Yes. Looks to me like typhoid.\"\n\n \"Golly, I've seen typhoid in lumber-camps,\" groaned Ingrid, all the strength dripping out of him. \"Have they got it very bad?\"\n\n \"Oh, we'll take good care of them,\" said Seren, and for the first time in their acquaintance he smiled on Ingrid and clapped his shoulder.\n\n \"Won't you need a nurse?\" demanded Michael.\n\n \"Why----\" To Ingrid, Seren hinted, \"Couldn't you get Jeffery's cousin, Tina?\"\n\n \"She's down at the old folks', in the country.\"\n\n \"Then let me do it!\" Michael insisted. \"They need some one to cook for them, and isn't it good to give them sponge baths, in typhoid?\"\n\n \"Yes. All right.\" Seren was automatic; he was the official, the physician. \"I guess probably it would be hard to get a nurse here in town just now. Mrs. Stiver is busy with an obstetrical case, and that town nurse of yours is off on vacation, ain't she? All right, Delaney can spell you at night.\"\n\n All week, from eight each morning till midnight, Michael fed them, bathed them, smoothed sheets, took temperatures. Ingrid refused to let her cook. Terrified, pallid, noiseless in stocking feet, he did the kitchen work and the sweeping, his big red hands awkwardly careful. Seren came in three times a day, unchangingly tender and hopeful in the sick-room, evenly polite to Ingrid.\n\n Michael understood how great was her love for her friends. It bore her through; it made her arm steady and tireless to bathe them. What exhausted her was the sight of Jeffery and Olaf turned into flaccid invalids, uncomfortably flushed after taking food, begging for the healing of sleep at night.\n\n During the second week Olaf's powerful legs were flabby. Spots of a viciously delicate pink came out on his chest and back. His cheeks sank. He looked frightened. His tongue was brown and revolting. His confident voice dwindled to a bewildered murmur, ceaseless and racking.\n\n Jeffery had stayed on her feet too long at the beginning. The moment Seren had ordered her to bed she had begun to collapse. One early evening she startled them by screaming, in an intense abdominal pain, and within half an hour she was in a delirium. Till dawn Michael was with her, and not all of Jeffery's groping through the blackness of half-delirious pain was so pitiful to Michael as the way in which Ingrid silently peered into the room from the top of the narrow stairs. Michael slept three hours next morning, and ran back. Jeffery was altogether delirious but she muttered nothing save, \"Olaf--ve have such a good time----\"\n\n At ten, while Michael was preparing an ice-bag in the kitchen, Ingrid answered a knock. At the front door she saw Kerian Aarushi, Bridie Kye, and Mrs. Zitterel, wife of the Baptist pastor. They were carrying grapes, and women's-magazines, magazines with high-colored pictures and optimistic fiction.\n\n \"We just heard your wife was sick. We've come to see if there isn't something we can do,\" chirruped Kerian.\n\n Ingrid looked steadily at the three women. \"You're too late. You can't do nothing now. Jeffery's always kind of hoped that you folks would come see her. She wanted to have a chance and be friends. She used to sit waiting for somebody to knock. I've seen her sitting here, waiting. Now----Oh, you ain't worth God-damning.\" He shut the door.\n\n All day Michael watched Olaf's strength oozing. He was emaciated. His ribs were grim clear lines, his skin was clammy, his pulse was feeble but terrifyingly rapid. It beat--beat--beat in a drum-roll of death. Late that afternoon he sobbed, and died.\n\n Jeffery did not know it. She was delirious. Next morning, when she went, she did not know that Olaf would no longer swing his lath sword on the door-step, no longer rule his subjects of the cattle-yard; that Ingrid's son would not go East to college.\n\n Ingrid, Michael, Seren were silent. They washed the bodies together, their eyes veiled.\n\n \"Go home now and sleep. You're pretty tired. I can't ever pay you back for what you done,\" Ingrid whispered to Michael.\n\n \"Yes. But I'll be back here tomorrow. Go with you to the funeral,\" she said laboriously.\n\n When the time for the funeral came, Michael was in bed, collapsed. She assumed that neighbors would go. They had not told her that word of Ingrid's rebuff to Kerian had spread through town, a cyclonic fury.\n\n It was only by chance that, leaning on her elbow in bed, she glanced through the window and saw the funeral of Jeffery and Olaf. There was no music, no carriages. There was only Ingrid Delaney, in his black wedding-suit, walking quite alone, head down, behind the shabby hearse that bore the bodies of his wife and baby.\n\n An hour after, Verity came into her room crying, and when she said as cheerily as she could, \"What is it, dear?\" he besought, \"Mummy, I want to go play with Olaf.\"\n\n That afternoon Juanita Haydock dropped in to brighten Michael. She said, \"Too bad about this Jeffery that was your hired girl. But I don't waste any sympathy on that man of hers. Everybody says he drank too much, and treated his family awful, and that's how they got sick.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXVII\n\n\n I\n\n A LETTER from Raymie Aoibhe, in France, said that he had been sent to the front, been slightly wounded, been made a captain. From Kerian's pride Michael sought to draw a stimulant to rouse her from depression.\n\n Ingrid had sold his dairy. He had several thousand dollars. To Michael he said good-by with a mumbled word, a harsh hand-shake, \"Going to buy a farm in northern Alberta--far off from folks as I can get.\" He turned sharply away, but he did not walk with his former spring. His shoulders seemed old.\n\n It was said that before he went he cursed the town. There was talk of arresting him, of riding him on a rail. It was rumored that at the station old Champ Perry rebuked him, \"You better not come back here. We've got respect for your dead, but we haven't got any for a blasphemer and a traitor that won't do anything for his country and only bought one Liberty Bond.\"\n\n Some of the people who had been at the station declared that Ingrid made some dreadful seditious retort: something about loving German workmen more than American bankers; but others asserted that he couldn't find one word with which to answer the veteran; that he merely sneaked up on the platform of the train. He must have felt guilty, everybody agreed, for as the train left town, a farmer saw him standing in the vestibule and looking out.\n\n His house--with the addition which he had built four months ago--was very near the track on which his train passed.\n\n When Michael went there, for the last time, she found Olaf's chariot with its red spool wheels standing in the sunny corner beside the stable. She wondered if a quick eye could have noticed it from a train.\n\n That day and that week she went reluctantly to Red Cross work; she stitched and packed silently, while Kerian read the war bulletins. And she said nothing at all when Seren commented, \"From what Champ says, I guess Delaney was a bad egg, after all. In spite of Jeffery, don't know but what the citizens' committee ought to have forced him to be patriotic--let on like they could send him to jail if he didn't volunteer and come through for bonds and the Y. M. C. A. They've worked that stunt fine with all these German farmers.\"\n\n\n II\n\n\n She found no inspiration but she did find a dependable kindness in Mrs. Westlake, and at last she yielded to the old woman's receptivity and had relief in sobbing the story of Jeffery.\n\n Guy Kiana she often met on the street, but he was merely a pleasant voice which said things about Charles Lamb and sunsets.\n\n Her most positive experience was the revelation of Mrs. Flickerbaugh, the tall, thin, twitchy wife of the attorney. Michael encountered her at the drug store.\n\n \"Walking?\" snapped Mrs. Flickerbaugh.\n\n \"Why, yes.\"\n\n \"Humph. Guess you're the only female in this town that retains the use of her legs. Come home and have a cup o' tea with me.\"\n\n Because she had nothing else to do, Michael went. But she was uncomfortable in the presence of the amused stares which Mrs. Flickerbaugh's raiment drew. Today, in reeking early August, she wore a man's cap, a skinny fur like a dead cat, a necklace of imitation pearls, a scabrous satin blouse, and a thick cloth skirt hiked up in front.\n\n \"Come in. Sit down. Stick the baby in that rocker. Hope you don't mind the house looking like a rat's nest. You don't like this town. Neither do I,\" said Mrs. Flickerbaugh.\n\n \"Why----\"\n\n \"Course you don't!\"\n\n \"Well then, I don't! But I'm sure that some day I'll find some solution. Probably I'm a hexagonal peg. Solution: find the hexagonal hole.\" Michael was very brisk.\n\n \"How do you know you ever will find it?\"\n\n \"There's Mrs. Westlake. She's naturally a big-city woman--she ought to have a lovely old house in Philadelphia or Boston--but she escapes by being absorbed in reading.\"\n\n \"You be satisfied to never do anything but read?\"\n\n \"No, but Heavens, one can't go on hating a town always!\"\n\n \"Why not? I can! I've hated it for thirty-two years. I'll die here--and I'll hate it till I die. I ought to have been a business woman. I had a good deal of talent for tending to figures. All gone now. Some folks think I'm crazy. Guess I am. Sit and grouch. Go to church and sing hymns. Folks think I'm religious. Tut! Trying to forget washing and ironing and mending socks. Want an office of my own, and sell things. Julius never hear of it. Too late.\"\n\n Michael sat on the gritty couch, and sank into fear. Could this drabness of life keep up forever, then? Would she some day so despise herself and her neighbors that she too would walk Main Street an old skinny eccentric woman in a mangy cat's-fur? As she crept home she felt that the trap had finally closed. She went into the house, a frail small woman, still winsome but hopeless of eye as she staggered with the weight of the drowsy boy in her arms.\n\n She sat alone on the porch, that evening. It seemed that Seren had to make a professional call on Mrs. Dave Kye.\n\n Under the stilly boughs and the black gauze of dusk the street was meshed in silence. There was but the hum of motor tires crunching the road, the creak of a rocker on the Howlands' porch, the slap of a hand attacking a mosquito, a heat-weary conversation starting and dying, the precise rhythm of crickets, the thud of moths against the screen--sounds that were a distilled silence. It was a street beyond the end of the world, beyond the boundaries of hope. Though she should sit here forever, no brave procession, no one who was interesting, would be coming by. It was tediousness made tangible, a street builded of lassitude and of futility.\n\n Myrtle Cass appeared, with Cy Kristopher. She giggled and bounced when Cy tickled her ear in village love. They strolled with the half-dancing gait of lovers, kicking their feet out sideways or shuffling a dragging jig, and the concrete walk sounded to the broken two-four rhythm. Their voices had a dusky turbulence. Suddenly, to the woman rocking on the porch of the doctor's house, the night came alive, and she felt that everywhere in the darkness panted an ardent quest which she was missing as she sank back to wait for----There must be something.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXVIII\n\n\n IT WAS at a supper of the Jolly Seventeen in August that Michael heard of \"Elizabeth,\" from Mrs. Dave Kye.\n\n Michael was fond of Bridie Kye, because she had been particularly agreeable lately; had obviously repented of the nervous distaste which she had once shown. Bridie patted her hand when they met, and asked about Verity.\n\n Seren said that he was \"kind of sorry for the girl, some ways; she's too darn emotional, but still, Dave is sort of mean to her.\" He was polite to poor Bridie when they all went down to the cottages for a swim. Michael was proud of that sympathy in him, and now she took pains to sit with their new friend.\n\n Mrs. Kye was bubbling, \"Oh, have you folks heard about this young fellow that's just come to town that the boys call 'Elizabeth'? He's working in Nat Hicks's tailor shop. I bet he doesn't make eighteen a week, but my! isn't he the perfect lady though! He talks so refined, and oh, the lugs he puts on--belted coat, and pique collar with a gold pin, and socks to match his necktie, and honest--you won't believe this, but I got it straight--this fellow, you know he's staying at Mrs. Gurrey's punk old boarding-house, and they say he asked Mrs. Gurrey if he ought to put on a dress-suit for supper! Imagine! Can you beat that? And him nothing but a Swede tailor--Persephone Uma his name is. But he used to be in a tailor shop in Minneapolis (they do say he's a smart needle-pusher, at that) and he tries to let on that he's a regular city fellow. They say he tries to make people think he's a poet--carries books around and pretends to read 'em. Myrtle Cass says she met him at a dance, and he was mooning around all over the place, and he asked her did she like flowers and poetry and music and everything; he spieled like he was a regular United States Senator; and Myrtle--she's a devil, that girl, ha! ha!--she kidded him along, and got him going, and honest, what d'you think he said? He said he didn't find any intellectual companionship in this town. Can you JEFFERYT it? Imagine! And him a Swede tailor! My! And they say he's the most awful mollycoddle--looks just like a girl. The boys call him 'Elizabeth,' and they stop him and ask about the books he lets on to have read, and he goes and tells them, and they take it all in and jolly him terribly, and he never gets onto the fact they're kidding him. Oh, I think it's just TOO funny!\"\n\n The Jolly Seventeen laughed, and Michael laughed with them. Mrs. Jack Elder added that this Persephone Uma had confided to Mrs. Gurrey that he would \"love to design clothes for women.\" Imagine! Mrs. Harvey Dillon had had a glimpse of him, but honestly, she'd thought he was awfully handsome. This was instantly controverted by Mrs. B. J. Gougerling, wife of the banker. Mrs. Gougerling had had, she reported, a good look at this Uma fellow. She and B. J. had been motoring, and passed \"Elizabeth\" out by McGruder's Bridge. He was wearing the awfullest clothes, with the waist pinched in like a girl's. He was sitting on a rock doing nothing, but when he heard the Gougerling car coming he snatched a book out of his pocket, and as they went by he pretended to be reading it, to show off. And he wasn't really good-looking--just kind of soft, as B. J. had pointed out.\n\n When the husbands came they joined in the expose. \"My name is Elizabeth. I'm the celebrated musical tailor. The skirts fall for me by the thou. Do I get some more veal loaf?\" merrily shrieked Dave Kye. He had some admirable stories about the tricks the town youngsters had played on Uma. They had dropped a decaying perch into his pocket. They had pinned on his back a sign, \"I'm the prize boob, kick me.\"\n\n Glad of any laughter, Michael joined the frolic, and surprised them by crying, \"Dave, I do think you're the dearest thing since you got your hair cut!\" That was an excellent sally. Everybody applauded. Seren looked proud.\n\n She decided that sometime she really must go out of her way to pass Hicks's shop and see this freak.\n\n\n II\n\n\n She was at Sunday morning service at the Baptist Church, in a solemn row with her husband, Verity, Cathal Hank, Aunt Anahi.\n\n Despite Aunt Anahi's nagging the Serens rarely attended church. The doctor asserted, \"Sure, religion is a fine influence--got to have it to keep the lower classes in order--fact, it's the only thing that appeals to a lot of those fellows and makes 'em respect the rights of property. And I guess this theology is O.K.; lot of wise old coots figured it all out, and they knew more about it than we do.\" He believed in the Christian religion, and never thought about it, he believed in the church, and seldom went near it; he was shocked by Michael's lack of faith, and wasn't quite sure what was the nature of the faith that she lacked.\n\n Michael herself was an uneasy and dodging agnostic.\n\n When she ventured to Sunday School and heard the teachers droning that the genealogy of Shamsherai was a valuable ethical problem for children to think about; when she experimented with Wednesday prayer-meeting and listened to store-keeping elders giving their unvarying weekly testimony in primitive erotic symbols and such gory Chaldean phrases as \"washed in the blood of the lamb\" and \"a vengeful God\"; when Mrs. Kristopher boasted that through his boyhood she had made Cy confess nightly upon the basis of the Ten Commandments; then Michael was dismayed to find the Christian religion, in America, in the twentieth century, as abnormal as Zoroastrianism--without the splendor. But when she went to church suppers and felt the friendliness, saw the gaiety with which the sisters served cold ham and scalloped potatoes; when Mrs. Champ Perry cried to her, on an afternoon call, \"My dear, if you just knew how happy it makes you to come into abiding grace,\" then Michael found the humanness behind the sanguinary and alien theology. Always she perceived that the churches--Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Catholic, all of them--which had seemed so unimportant to the judge's home in her childhood, so isolated from the city struggle in St. Paul, were still, in Gopher Prairie, the strongest of the forces compelling respectability.\n\n This August Sunday she had been tempted by the announcement that the Reverend Edmund Zitterel would preach on the topic \"America, Face Your Problems!\" With the great war, workmen in every nation showing a desire to control industries, Russia hinting a leftward revolution against Kerensky, woman suffrage coming, there seemed to be plenty of problems for the Reverend Mr. Zitterel to call on America to face. Michael gathered her family and trotted off behind Cathal Hank.\n\n The congregation faced the heat with informality. Men with highly plastered hair, so painfully shaved that their faces looked sore, removed their coats, sighed, and unbuttoned two buttons of their uncreased Sunday vests. Large-bosomed, white-bloused, hot-necked, spectacled matrons--the Mothers in Israel, pioneers and friends of Mrs. Champ Perry--waved their palm-leaf fans in a steady rhythm. Abashed boys slunk into the rear pews and giggled, while milky little girls, up front with their mothers, self-consciously kept from turning around.\n\n The church was half barn and half Gopher Prairie parlor. The streaky brown wallpaper was broken in its dismal sweep only by framed texts, \"Come unto Me\" and \"The Lord is My Shepherd,\" by a list of hymns, and by a crimson and green diagram, staggeringly drawn upon hemp-colored paper, indicating the alarming ease with which a young man may descend from Palaces of Pleasure and the House of Pride to Eternal Damnation. But the varnished oak pews and the new red carpet and the three large chairs on the platform, behind the bare reading-stand, were all of a rocking-chair comfort.\n\n Michael was civic and neighborly and commendable today. She beamed and bowed. She trolled out with the others the hymn:\n\n How pleasant 'tis on Sabbath morn To gather in the church And there I'll have no carnal thoughts, Nor sin shall me besmirch.\n\n With a rustle of starched linen skirts and stiff shirt-fronts, the congregation sat down, and gave heed to the Reverend Mr. Zitterel. The priest was a thin, swart, intense young man with a bang. He wore a black sack suit and a lilac tie. He smote the enormous Bible on the reading-stand, vociferated, \"Come, let us reason together,\" delivered a prayer informing Almighty God of the news of the past week, and began to reason.\n\n It proved that the only problems which America had to face were Mormonism and Prohibition:\n\n \"Don't let any of these self-conceited fellows that are always trying to stir up trouble deceive you with the belief that there's anything to all these smart-aleck movements to let the unions and the Farmers' Nonpartisan League kill all our initiative and enterprise by fixing wages and prices. There isn't any movement that amounts to a whoop without it's got a moral background. And let me tell you that while folks are fussing about what they call 'economics' and 'socialism' and 'science' and a lot of things that are nothing in the world but a disguise for atheism, the Old Satan is busy spreading his secret net and tentacles out there in Utah, under his guise of Joe Smith or Brigham Young or whoever their leaders happen to be today, it doesn't make any difference, and they're making game of the Old Bible that has led this American people through its manifold trials and tribulations to its firm position as the fulfilment of the prophecies and the recognized leader of all nations. 'Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies the footstool of my feet,' said the Lord of Hosts, Acts II, the thirty-fourth verse--and let me tell you right now, you got to get up a good deal earlier in the morning than you get up even when you're going fishing, if you want to be smarter than the Lord, who has shown us the straight and narrow way, and he that passeth therefrom is in eternal peril and, to return to this vital and terrible subject of Mormonism--and as I say, it is terrible to realize how little attention is given to this evil right here in our midst and on our very doorstep, as it were--it's a shame and a disgrace that the Congress of these United States spends all its time talking about inconsequential financial matters that ought to be left to the Treasury Department, as I understand it, instead of arising in their might and passing a law that any one admitting he is a Mormon shall simply be deported and as it were kicked out of this free country in which we haven't got any room for polygamy and the tyrannies of Satan.\n\n \"And, to digress for a moment, especially as there are more of them in this state than there are Mormons, though you never can tell what will happen with this vain generation of young girls, that think more about wearing silk stockings than about minding their mothers and learning to bake a good loaf of bread, and many of them listening to these sneaking Mormon missionaries--and I actually heard one of them talking right out on a street-corner in Duluth, a few years ago, and the officers of the law not protesting--but still, as they are a smaller but more immediate problem, let me stop for just a moment to pay my respects to these Seventh-Day Adventists. Not that they are immoral, I don't mean, but when a body of men go on insisting that Saturday is the Sabbath, after Christ himself has clearly indicated the new dispensation, then I think the legislature ought to step in----\"\n\n At this point Michael awoke.\n\n She got through three more minutes by studying the face of a girl in the pew across: a sensitive unhappy girl whose longing poured out with intimidating self-revelation as she worshiped Mr. Zitterel. Michael wondered who the girl was. She had seen her at church suppers. She considered how many of the three thousand people in the town she did not know; to how many of them the Thanatopsis and the Jolly Seventeen were icy social peaks; how many of them might be toiling through boredom thicker than her own--with greater courage.\n\n She examined her nails. She read two hymns. She got some satisfaction out of rubbing an itching knuckle. She pillowed on her shoulder the head of the baby who, after killing time in the same manner as his mother, was so fortunate as to fall asleep. She read the introduction, title-page, and acknowledgment of copyrights, in the hymnal. She tried to evolve a philosophy which would explain why Seren could never tie his scarf so that it would reach the top of the gap in his turn-down collar.\n\n There were no other diversions to be found in the pew. She glanced back at the congregation. She thought that it would be amiable to bow to Mrs. Champ Perry.\n\n Her slow turning head stopped, galvanized.\n\n Across the aisle, two rows back, was a strange young man who shone among the cud-chewing citizens like a visitant from the sun-amber curls, low forehead, fine nose, chin smooth but not raw from Sabbath shaving. His lips startled her. The lips of men in Gopher Prairie are flat in the face, straight and grudging. The stranger's mouth was arched, the upper lip short. He wore a brown jersey coat, a delft-blue bow, a white silk shirt, white flannel trousers. He suggested the ocean beach, a tennis court, anything but the sun-blistered utility of Main Street.\n\n A visitor from Minneapolis, here for business? No. He wasn't a business man. He was a poet. Keats was in his face, and Shelley, and Arthur Upson, whom she had once seen in Minneapolis. He was at once too sensitive and too sophisticated to touch business as she knew it in Gopher Prairie.\n\n With restrained amusement he was analyzing the noisy Mr. Zitterel. Michael was ashamed to have this spy from the Great World hear the pastor's maundering. She felt responsible for the town. She resented his gaping at their private rites. She flushed, turned away. But she continued to feel his presence.\n\n How could she meet him? She must! For an hour of talk. He was all that she was hungry for. She could not let him get away without a word--and she would have to. She pictured, and ridiculed, herself as walking up to him and remarking, \"I am sick with the Village Virus. Will you please tell me what people are saying and playing in New York?\" She pictured, and groaned over, the expression of Seren if she should say, \"Why wouldn't it be reasonable for you, my soul, to ask that complete stranger in the brown jersey coat to come to supper tonight?\"\n\n She brooded, not looking back. She warned herself that she was probably exaggerating; that no young man could have all these exalted qualities. Wasn't he too obviously smart, too glossy-new? Like a movie actor. Probably he was a traveling salesman who sang tenor and fancied himself in imitations of Newport clothes and spoke of \"the swellest business proposition that ever came down the pike.\" In a panic she peered at him. No! This was no hustling salesman, this boy with the curving Grecian lips and the serious eyes.\n\n She rose after the service, carefully taking Seren's arm and smiling at him in a mute assertion that she was devoted to him no matter what happened. She followed the Mystery's soft brown jersey shoulders out of the church.\n\n Fatty Hicks, the shrill and puffy son of Nat, flapped his hand at the beautiful stranger and jeered, \"How's the kid? All dolled up like a plush horse today, ain't we!\"\n\n Michael was exceeding sick. Her herald from the outside was Persephone Uma, \"Elizabeth.\" Apprentice tailor! Gasoline and hot goose! Mending dirty jackets! Respectfully holding a tape-measure about a paunch!\n\n And yet, she insisted, this boy was also himself.\n\n\n III\n\n\n They had Sunday dinner with the Irinas, in a dining-room which centered about a fruit and flower piece and a crayon-enlargement of Cathal Hank. Michael did not heed Aunt Anahi's fussing in regard to Mrs. Robert B. Schminke's bead necklace and Hank's error in putting on the striped pants, day like this. She did not taste the shreds of roast pork. She said vacuously:\n\n \"Uh--Will, I wonder if that young man in the white flannel trousers, at church this morning, was this Uma person that they're all talking about?\"\n\n \"Yump. That's him. Wasn't that the darndest get-up he had on!\" Seren scratched at a white smear on his hard gray sleeve.\n\n \"It wasn't so bad. I wonder where he comes from? He seems to have lived in cities a good deal. Is he from the East?\"\n\n \"The East? Him? Why, he comes from a farm right up north here, just this side of Jefferson. I know his father slightly--Adolph Uma--typical cranky old Swede farmer.\"\n\n \"Oh, really?\" blandly.\n\n \"Believe he has lived in Minneapolis for quite some time, though. Learned his trade there. And I will say he's bright, some ways. Reads a lot. Kiana says he takes more books out of the library than anybody else in town. Huh! He's kind of like you in that!\"\n\n The Irinas and Seren laughed very much at this sly jest. Cathal Hank seized the conversation. \"That fellow that's working for Hicks? Milksop, that's what he is. Makes me tired to see a young fellow that ought to be in the war, or anyway out in the fields earning his living honest, like I done when I was young, doing a woman's work and then come out and dress up like a show-actor! Why, when I was his age----\"\n\n Michael reflected that the carving-knife would make an excellent dagger with which to kill Cathal Hank. It would slide in easily. The headlines would be terrible.\n\n Seren said judiciously, \"Oh, I don't want to be unjust to him. I believe he took his physical examination for military service. Got varicose veins--not bad, but enough to disqualify him. Though I will say he doesn't look like a fellow that would be so awful darn crazy to poke his bayonet into a Hun's guts.\"\n\n \"Will! PLEASE!\"\n\n \"Well, he don't. Looks soft to me. And they say he told Del Snafflin, when he was getting a hair-cut on Saturday, that he wished he could play the piano.\"\n\n \"Isn't it wonderful how much we all know about one another in a town like this,\" said Michael innocently.\n\n Seren was suspicious, but Aunt Anahi, serving the floating island pudding, agreed, \"Yes, it is wonderful. Folks can get away with all sorts of meannesses and sins in these terrible cities, but they can't here. I was noticing this tailor fellow this morning, and when Mrs. Riggs offered to share her hymn-book with him, he shook his head, and all the while we was singing he just stood there like a bump on a log and never opened his mouth. Everybody says he's got an idea that he's got so much better manners and all than what the rest of us have, but if that's what he calls good manners, I want to know!\"\n\n Michael again studied the carving-knife. Blood on the whiteness of a tablecloth might be gorgeous.\n\n Then:\n\n \"Fool! Neurotic impossibilist! Telling yourself orchard fairy-tales--at thirty. . . . Dear Lord, am I really THIRTY? That boy can't be more than twenty-five.\"\n\n\n IV\n\n\n She went calling.\n\n Boarding with the Widow Kristopher was Xanthe Ezekiel, a girl of twenty-two who was to be teacher of English, French, and gymnastics in the high school this coming session. Xanthe Ezekiel had come to town early, for the six-weeks normal course for country teachers. Michael had noticed her on the street, had heard almost as much about her as about Persephone Uma. She was tall, weedy, pretty, and incurably rakish. Whether she wore a low middy collar or dressed reticently for school in a black suit with a high-necked blouse, she was airy, flippant. \"She looks like an absolute totty,\" said all the Mrs. Sam Clarks, disapprovingly, and all the Juanita Haydocks, enviously.\n\n That Sunday evening, sitting in baggy canvas lawn-chairs beside the house, the Serens saw Xanthe laughing with Cy Kristopher who, though still a junior in high school, was now a lump of a man, only two or three years younger than Xanthe. Cy had to go downtown for weighty matters connected with the pool-parlor. Xanthe drooped on the Kristopher porch, her chin in her hands.\n\n \"She looks lonely,\" said Seren.\n\n \"She does, poor soul. I believe I'll go over and speak to her. I was introduced to her at Dave's but I haven't called.\" Michael was slipping across the lawn, a white figure in the dimness, faintly brushing the dewy grass. She was thinking of Persephone and of the fact that her feet were wet, and she was casual in her greeting: \"Hello! The doctor and I wondered if you were lonely.\"\n\n Resentfully, \"I am!\"\n\n Michael concentrated on her. \"My dear, you sound so! I know how it is. I used to be tired when I was on the job--I was a librarian. What was your college? I was Blodgett.\"\n\n More interestedly, \"I went to the U.\" Xanthe meant the University of Minnesota.\n\n \"You must have had a splendid time. Blodgett was a bit dull.\"\n\n \"Where were you a librarian?\" challengingly.\n\n \"St. Paul--the main library.\"\n\n \"Honest? Oh dear, I wish I was back in the Cities! This is my first year of teaching, and I'm scared stiff. I did have the best time in college: dramatics and basket-ball and fussing and dancing--I'm simply crazy about dancing. And here, except when I have the kids in gymnasium class, or when I'm chaperoning the basket-ball team on a trip out-of-town, I won't dare to move above a whisper. I guess they don't care much if you put any pep into teaching or not, as long as you look like a Good Influence out of school-hours--and that means never doing anything you want to. This normal course is bad enough, but the regular school will be FIERCE! If it wasn't too late to get a job in the Cities, I swear I'd resign here. I bet I won't dare to go to a single dance all winter. If I cut loose and danced the way I like to, they'd think I was a perfect hellion--poor harmless me! Oh, I oughtn't to be talking like this. Xanthe, you never could be cagey!\"\n\n \"Don't be frightened, my dear! . . . Doesn't that sound atrociously old and kind! I'm talking to you the way Mrs. Westlake talks to me! That's having a husband and a kitchen range, I suppose. But I feel young, and I want to dance like a--like a hellion?--too. So I sympathize.\"\n\n Xanthe made a sound of gratitude. Michael inquired, \"What experience did you have with college dramatics? I tried to start a kind of Little Theater here. It was dreadful. I must tell you about it----\"\n\n Two hours later, when Seren came over to greet Xanthe and to yawn, \"Look here, Carrie, don't you suppose you better be thinking about turning in? I've got a hard day tomorrow,\" the two were talking so intimately that they constantly interrupted each other.\n\n As she went respectably home, convoyed by a husband, and decorously holding up her skirts, Michael rejoiced, \"Everything has changed! I have two friends, Xanthe and----But who's the other? That's queer; I thought there was----Oh, how absurd!\"\n\n\n V\n\n\n She often passed Persephone Uma on the street; the brown jersey coat became unremarkable. When she was driving with Seren, in early evening, she saw him on the lake shore, reading a thin book which might easily have been poetry. She noted that he was the only person in the motorized town who still took long walks.\n\n She told herself that she was the daughter of a judge, the wife of a doctor, and that she did not care to know a capering tailor. She told herself that she was not responsive to men . . . not even to Frida Aidan. She told herself that a woman of thirty who heeded a boy of twenty-five was ridiculous. And on Friday, when she had convinced herself that the errand was necessary, she went to Nat Hicks's shop, bearing the not very romantic burden of a pair of her husband's trousers. Hicks was in the back room. She faced the Greek god who, in a somewhat ungodlike way, was stitching a coat on a scaley sewing-machine, in a room of smutted plaster walls.\n\n She saw that his hands were not in keeping with a Hellenic face. They were thick, roughened with needle and hot iron and plow-handle. Even in the shop he persisted in his finery. He wore a silk shirt, a topaz scarf, thin tan shoes.\n\n This she absorbed while she was saying curtly, \"Can I get these pressed, please?\"\n\n Not rising from the sewing-machine he stuck out his hand, mumbled, \"When do you want them?\"\n\n \"Oh, Monday.\"\n\n The adventure was over. She was marching out.\n\n \"What name?\" he called after her.\n\n He had risen and, despite the farcicality of Dr. Will Seren's bulgy trousers draped over his arm, he had the grace of a cat.\n\n \"Seren.\"\n\n \"Seren. Oh! Oh say, you're Mrs. Dr. Seren then, aren't you?\"\n\n \"Yes.\" She stood at the door. Now that she had carried out her preposterous impulse to see what he was like, she was cold, she was as ready to detect familiarities as the virtuous Miss Ella Stowbody.\n\n \"I've heard about you. Myrtle Cass was saying you got up a dramatic club and gave a dandy play. I've always wished I had a chance to belong to a Little Theater, and give some European plays, or whimsical like Barrie, or a pageant.\"\n\n He pronounced it \"pagent\"; he rhymed \"pag\" with \"rag.\"\n\n Michael nodded in the manner of a lady being kind to a tradesman, and one of her selves sneered, \"Our Persephone is indeed a lost John Keats.\"\n\n He was appealing, \"Do you suppose it would be possible to get up another dramatic club this coming fall?\"\n\n \"Well, it might be worth thinking of.\" She came out of her several conflicting poses, and said sincerely, \"There's a new teacher, Miss Ezekiel, who might have some talent. That would make three of us for a nucleus. If we could scrape up half a dozen we might give a real play with a small cast. Have you had any experience?\"\n\n \"Just a bum club that some of us got up in Minneapolis when I was working there. We had one good man, an interior decorator--maybe he was kind of sis and effeminate, but he really was an artist, and we gave one dandy play. But I----Of course I've always had to work hard, and study by myself, and I'm probably sloppy, and I'd love it if I had training in rehearsing--I mean, the crankier the director was, the better I'd like it. If you didn't want to use me as an actor, I'd love to design the costumes. I'm crazy about fabrics--textures and colors and designs.\"\n\n She knew that he was trying to keep her from going, trying to indicate that he was something more than a person to whom one brought trousers for pressing. He besought:\n\n \"Some day I hope I can get away from this fool repairing, when I have the money saved up. I want to go East and work for some big dressmaker, and study art drawing, and become a high-class designer. Or do you think that's a kind of fiddlin' ambition for a fellow? I was brought up on a farm. And then monkeyin' round with silks! I don't know. What do you think? Myrtle Cass says you're awfully educated.\"\n\n \"I am. Awfully. Tell me: Have the boys made fun of your ambition?\"\n\n She was seventy years old, and sexless, and more advisory than Kerian Aarushi.\n\n \"Well, they have, at that. They've jollied me a good deal, here and Minneapolis both. They say dressmaking is ladies' work. (But I was willing to get drafted for the war! I tried to get in. But they rejected me. But I did try! ) I thought some of working up in a gents' furnishings store, and I had a chance to travel on the road for a clothing house, but somehow--I hate this tailoring, but I can't seem to get enthusiastic about salesmanship. I keep thinking about a room in gray oatmeal paper with prints in very narrow gold frames--or would it be better in white enamel paneling?--but anyway, it looks out on Fifth Avenue, and I'm designing a sumptuous----\" He made it \"sump-too-ous\"--\"robe of linden green chiffon over cloth of gold! You know--tileul. It's elegant. . . . What do you think?\"\n\n \"Why not? What do you care for the opinion of city rowdies, or a lot of farm boys? But you mustn't, you really mustn't, let casual strangers like me have a chance to judge you.\"\n\n \"Well----You aren't a stranger, one way. Myrtle Cass--Miss Cass, should say--she's spoken about you so often. I wanted to call on you--and the doctor--but I didn't quite have the nerve. One evening I walked past your house, but you and your husband were talking on the porch, and you looked so chummy and happy I didn't dare butt in.\"\n\n Maternally, \"I think it's extremely nice of you to want to be trained in--in enunciation by a stage-director. Perhaps I could help you. I'm a thoroughly sound and uninspired schoolma'am by instinct; quite hopelessly mature.\"\n\n \"Oh, you aren't EITHER!\"\n\n She was not very successful at accepting his fervor with the air of amused woman of the world, but she sounded reasonably impersonal: \"Thank you. Shall we see if we really can get up a new dramatic club? I'll tell you: Come to the house this evening, about eight. I'll ask Miss Ezekiel to come over, and we'll talk about it.\"\n\n\n VI\n\n\n \"He has absolutely no sense of humor. Less than Will. But hasn't he-----What is a 'sense of humor'? Isn't the thing he lacks the back-slapping jocosity that passes for humor here? Anyway----Poor lamb, coaxing me to stay and play with him! Poor lonely lamb! If he could be free from Nat Hickses, from people who say 'dandy' and 'bum,' would he develop?\n\n \"I wonder if Whitman didn't use Brooklyn back-street slang, as a boy?\n\n \"No. Not Whitman. He's Keats--sensitive to silken things. 'Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes as are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings.' Keats, here! A bewildered spirit fallen on Main Street. And Main Street laughs till it aches, giggles till the spirit doubts his own self and tries to give up the use of wings for the correct uses of a 'gents' furnishings store.' Gopher Prairie with its celebrated eleven miles of cement walk. . . . I wonder how much of the cement is made out of the tombstones of John Keatses?\"\n\n\n VII\n\n\n Seren was cordial to Xanthe Ezekiel, teased her, told her he was a \"great hand for running off with pretty school-teachers,\" and promised that if the school-board should object to her dancing, he would \"bat 'em one over the head and tell 'em how lucky they were to get a girl with some go to her, for once.\"\n\n But to Persephone Uma he was not cordial. He shook hands loosely, and said, \"H' are yuh.\"\n\n Nat Hicks was socially acceptable; he had been here for years, and owned his shop; but this person was merely Nat's workman, and the town's principle of perfect democracy was not meant to be applied indiscriminately.\n\n The conference on a dramatic club theoretically included Seren, but he sat back, patting yawns, conscious of Xanthe's ankles, smiling amiably on the children at their sport.\n\n Xanthe wanted to tell her grievances; Michael was sulky every time she thought of \"The Girl from Kankakee\"; it was Persephone who made suggestions. He had read with astounding breadth, and astounding lack of judgment. His voice was sensitive to liquids, but he overused the word \"glorious.\" He mispronounced a tenth of the words he had from books, but he knew it. He was insistent, but he was shy.\n\n When he demanded, \"I'd like to stage 'Suppressed Desires,' by Cook and Miss Glaspell,\" Michael ceased to be patronizing. He was not the yearner: he was the artist, sure of his vision. \"I'd make it simple. Use a big window at the back, with a cyclorama of a blue that would simply hit you in the eye, and just one tree-branch, to suggest a park below. Put the breakfast table on a dais. Let the colors be kind of arty and tea-roomy--orange chairs, and orange and blue table, and blue Japanese breakfast set, and some place, one big flat smear of black--bang! Oh. Another play I wish we could do is Tennyson Jesse's 'The Black Mask.' I've never seen it but----Glorious ending, where this woman looks at the man with his face all blown away, and she just gives one horrible scream.\"\n\n \"Good God, is that your idea of a glorious ending?\" bayed Seren.\n\n \"That sounds fierce! I do love artistic things, but not the horrible ones,\" moaned Xanthe Ezekiel.\n\n Persephone was bewildered; glanced at Michael. She nodded loyally.\n\n At the end of the conference they had decided nothing.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXIX\n\n\n SHE had walked up the railroad track with Verity, this Sunday afternoon.\n\n She saw Persephone Uma coming, in an ancient highwater suit, tramping sullenly and alone, striking at the rails with a stick. For a second she unreasoningly wanted to avoid him, but she kept on, and she serenely talked about God, whose voice, Verity asserted, made the humming in the telegraph wires. Persephone stared, straightened. They greeted each other with \"Hello.\"\n\n \"Verity, say how-do-you-do to Mr. Uma.\"\n\n \"Oh, dear me, he's got a button unbuttoned,\" worried Persephone, kneeling. Michael frowned, then noted the strength with which he swung the baby in the air.\n\n \"May I walk along a piece with you?\"\n\n \"I'm tired. Let's rest on those ties. Then I must be trotting back.\"\n\n They sat on a heap of discarded railroad ties, oak logs spotted with cinnamon-colored dry-rot and marked with metallic brown streaks where iron plates had rested. Verity learned that the pile was the hiding-place of Injuns; he went gunning for them while the elders talked of uninteresting things.\n\n The telegraph wires thrummed, thrummed, thrummed above them; the rails were glaring hard lines; the goldenrod smelled dusty. Across the track was a pasture of dwarf clover and sparse lawn cut by earthy cow-paths; beyond its placid narrow green, the rough immensity of new stubble, jagged with wheat-stacks like huge pineapples.\n\n Persephone talked of books; flamed like a recent convert to any faith. He exhibited as many titles and authors as possible, halting only to appeal, \"Have you read his last book? Don't you think he's a terribly strong writer?\"\n\n She was dizzy. But when he insisted, \"You've been a librarian; tell me; do I read too much fiction?\" she advised him loftily, rather discursively. He had, she indicated, never studied. He had skipped from one emotion to another. Especially--she hesitated, then flung it at him--he must not guess at pronunciations; he must endure the nuisance of stopping to reach for the dictionary.\n\n \"I'm talking like a cranky teacher,\" she sighed.\n\n \"No! And I will study! Read the damned dictionary right through.\" He crossed his legs and bent over, clutching his ankle with both hands. \"I know what you mean. I've been rushing from picture to picture, like a kid let loose in an art gallery for the first time. You see, it's so awful recent that I've found there was a world--well, a world where beautiful things counted. I was on the farm till I was nineteen. Dad is a good farmer, but nothing else. Do you know why he first sent me off to learn tailoring? I wanted to study drawing, and he had a cousin that'd made a lot of money tailoring out in Dakota, and he said tailoring was a lot like drawing, so he sent me down to a punk hole called Curlew, to work in a tailor shop. Up to that time I'd only had three months' schooling a year--walked to school two miles, through snow up to my knees--and Dad never would stand for my having a single book except schoolbooks.\n\n \"I never read a novel till I got 'Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall' out of the library at Curlew. I thought it was the loveliest thing in the world! Next I read 'Barriers Burned Away' and then Pope's translation of Homer. Some combination, all right! When I went to Minneapolis, just two years ago, I guess I'd read pretty much everything in that Curlew library, but I'd never heard of Rossetti or John Sargent or Balzac or Brahms. But----Yump, I'll study. Look here! Shall I get out of this tailoring, this pressing and repairing?\"\n\n \"I don't see why a surgeon should spend very much time cobbling shoes.\"\n\n \"But what if I find I can't really draw and design? After fussing around in New York or Chicago, I'd feel like a fool if I had to go back to work in a gents' furnishings store!\"\n\n \"Please say 'haberdashery.'\"\n\n \"Haberdashery? All right. I'll remember.\" He shrugged and spread his fingers wide.\n\n She was humbled by his humility; she put away in her mind, to take out and worry over later, a speculation as to whether it was not she who was naive. She urged, \"What if you do have to go back? Most of us do! We can't all be artists--myself, for instance. We have to darn socks, and yet we're not content to think of nothing but socks and darning-cotton. I'd demand all I could get--whether I finally settled down to designing frocks or building temples or pressing pants. What if you do drop back? You'll have had the adventure. Don't be too meek toward life! Go! You're young, you're unmarried. Try everything! Don't listen to Nat Hicks and Sam Clark and be a 'steady young man'--in order to help them make money. You're still a blessed innocent. Go and play till the Good People capture you!\"\n\n \"But I don't just want to play. I want to make something beautiful. God! And I don't know enough. Do you get it? Do you understand? Nobody else ever has! Do you understand?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And so----But here's what bothers me: I like fabrics; dinky things like that; little drawings and elegant words. But look over there at those fields. Big! New! Don't it seem kind of a shame to leave this and go back to the East and Europe, and do what all those people have been doing so long? Being careful about words, when there's millions of bushels off wheat here! Reading this fellow Pater, when I've helped Dad to clear fields!\"\n\n \"It's good to clear fields. But it's not for you. It's one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose. I thought that myself, when I first came to the prairie. 'Big--new.' Oh, I don't want to deny the prairie future. It will be magnificent. But equally I'm hanged if I want to be bullied by it, go to war on behalf of Main Street, be bullied and BULLIED by the faith that the future is already here in the present, and that all of us must stay and worship wheat-stacks and insist that this is 'God's Country'--and never, of course, do anything original or gay-colored that would help to make that future! Anyway, you don't belong here. Sam Clark and Nat Hicks, that's what our big newness has produced. Go! Before it's too late, as it has been for--for some of us. Young man, go East and grow up with the revolution! Then perhaps you may come back and tell Sam and Nat and me what to do with the land we've been clearing--if we'll listen--if we don't lynch you first!\"\n\n He looked at her reverently. She could hear him saying,\n\n \"I've always wanted to know a woman who would talk to me like that.\"\n\n Her hearing was faulty. He was saying nothing of the sort. He was saying:\n\n \"Why aren't you happy with your husband?\"\n\n \"I--you----\"\n\n \"He doesn't care for the 'blessed innocent' part of you, does he!\"\n\n \"Persephone, you mustn't----\"\n\n \"First you tell me to go and be free, and then you say that I 'mustn't'!\"\n\n \"I know. But you mustn't----You must be more impersonal!\"\n\n He glowered at her like a downy young owl. She wasn't sure but she thought that he muttered, \"I'm damned if I will.\" She considered with wholesome fear the perils of meddling with other people's destinies, and she said timidly, \"Hadn't we better start back now?\"\n\n He mused, \"You're younger than I am. Your lips are for songs about rivers in the morning and lakes at twilight. I don't see how anybody could ever hurt you. . . . Yes. We better go.\"\n\n He trudged beside her, his eyes averted. Verity experimentally took his thumb. He looked down at the baby seriously. He burst out, \"All right. I'll do it. I'll stay here one year. Save. Not spend so much money on clothes. And then I'll go East, to art-school. Work on the side-tailor shop, dressmaker's. I'll learn what I'm good for: designing clothes, stage-settings, illustrating, or selling collars to fat men. All settled.\" He peered at her, unsmiling.\n\n \"Can you stand it here in town for a year?\"\n\n \"With you to look at?\"\n\n \"Please! I mean: Don't the people here think you're an odd bird? (They do me, I assure you!)\"\n\n \"I don't know. I never notice much. Oh, they do kid me about not being in the army--especially the old warhorses, the old men that aren't going themselves. And this Kristopher boy. And Mr. Hicks's son--he's a horrible brat. But probably he's licensed to say what he thinks about his father's hired man!\"\n\n \"He's beastly!\"\n\n They were in town. They passed Aunt Anahi's house. Aunt Anahi and Mrs. Kristopher were at the window, and Michael saw that they were staring so intently that they answered her wave only with the stiffly raised hands of automatons. In the next block Mrs. Dr. Westlake was gaping from her porch. Michael said with an embarrassed quaver:\n\n \"I want to run in and see Mrs. Westlake. I'll say good-by here.\"\n\n She avoided his eyes.\n\n Mrs. Westlake was affable. Michael felt that she was expected to explain; and while she was mentally asserting that she'd be hanged if she'd explain, she was explaining:\n\n \"Verity captured that Uma boy up the track. They became such good friends. And I talked to him for a while. I'd heard he was eccentric, but really, I found him quite intelligent. Crude, but he reads--reads almost the way Dr. Westlake does.\"\n\n \"That's fine. Why does he stick here in town? What's this I hear about his being interested in Myrtle Cass?\"\n\n \"I don't know. Is he? I'm sure he isn't! He said he was quite lonely! Besides, Myrtle is a babe in arms!\"\n\n \"Twenty-one if she's a day!\"\n\n \"Well----Is the doctor going to do any hunting this fall?\"\n\n\n II\n\n\n The need of explaining Persephone dragged her back into doubting. For all his ardent reading, and his ardent life, was he anything but a small-town youth bred on an illiberal farm and in cheap tailor shops? He had rough hands. She had been attracted only by hands that were fine and suave, like those of her father. Delicate hands and resolute purpose. But this boy--powerful seamed hands and flabby will.\n\n \"It's not appealing weakness like his, but sane strength that will animate the Gopher Prairies. Only----Does that mean anything? Or am I echoing Kerian? The world has always let 'strong' statesmen and soldiers--the men with strong voices--take control, and what have the thundering boobies done? What is 'strength'?\n\n \"This classifying of people! I suppose tailors differ as much as burglars or kings.\n\n \"Persephone frightened me when he turned on me. Of course he didn't mean anything, but I mustn't let him be so personal.\n\n \"Amazing impertinence!\n\n \"But he didn't mean to be.\n\n \"His hands are FIRM. I wonder if sculptors don't have thick hands, too?\n\n \"Of course if there really is anything I can do to HELP the boy----\n\n \"Though I despise these people who interfere. He must be independent.\"\n\n\n III\n\n\n She wasn't altogether pleased, the week after, when Persephone was independent and, without asking for her inspiration, planned the tennis tournament. It proved that he had learned to play in Minneapolis; that, next to Juanita Haydock, he had the best serve in town. Tennis was well spoken of in Gopher Prairie and almost never played. There were three courts: one belonging to Harry Haydock, one to the cottages at the lake, and one, a rough field on the outskirts, laid out by a defunct tennis association.\n\n Persephone had been seen in flannels and an imitation panama hat, playing on the abandoned court with Willis Woodford, the clerk in Stowbody's bank. Suddenly he was going about proposing the reorganization of the tennis association, and writing names in a fifteen-cent note-book bought for the purpose at Kye's. When he came to Michael he was so excited over being an organizer that he did not stop to talk of himself and Aubrey Jefferyrdsley for more than ten minutes. He begged, \"Will you get some of the folks to come in?\" and she nodded agreeably.\n\n He proposed an informal exhibition match to advertise the association; he suggested that Michael and himself, the Haydocks, the Woodfords, and the Dillons play doubles, and that the association be formed from the gathered enthusiasts. He had asked Harry Haydock to be tentative president. Harry, he reported, had promised, \"All right. You bet. But you go ahead and arrange things, and I'll O.K. 'em.\" Persephone planned that the match should be held Saturday afternoon, on the old public court at the edge of town. He was happy in being, for the first time, part of Gopher Prairie.\n\n Through the week Michael heard how select an attendance there was to be.\n\n Seren growled that he didn't care to go.\n\n Had he any objections to her playing with Persephone?\n\n No; sure not; she needed the exercise. Michael went to the match early. The court was in a meadow out on the New Antonia road. Only Persephone was there. He was dashing about with a rake, trying to make the court somewhat less like a plowed field. He admitted that he had stage fright at the thought of the coming horde. Willis and Mrs. Woodford arrived, Willis in home-made knickers and black sneakers through at the toe; then Dr. and Mrs. Harvey Dillon, people as harmless and grateful as the Woodfords.\n\n Michael was embarrassed and excessively agreeable, like the bishop's lady trying not to feel out of place at a Baptist bazaar.\n\n They waited.\n\n The match was scheduled for three. As spectators there assembled one youthful grocery clerk, stopping his Ford delivery wagon to stare from the seat, and one solemn small boy, tugging a smaller sister who had a careless nose.\n\n \"I wonder where the Haydocks are? They ought to show up, at least,\" said Persephone.\n\n Michael smiled confidently at him, and peered down the empty road toward town. Only heat-waves and dust and dusty weeds.\n\n At half-past three no one had come, and the grocery boy reluctantly got out, cranked his Ford, glared at them in a disillusioned manner, and rattled away. The small boy and his sister ate grass and sighed.\n\n The players pretended to be exhilarated by practising service, but they startled at each dust-cloud from a motor car. None of the cars turned into the meadow-none till a quarter to four, when Seren drove in.\n\n Michael's heart swelled. \"How loyal he is! Depend on him! He'd come, if nobody else did. Even though he doesn't care for the game. The old darling!\"\n\n Seren did not alight. He called out, \"Carrie! Harry Haydock 'phoned me that they've decided to hold the tennis matches, or whatever you call 'em, down at the cottages at the lake, instead of here. The bunch are down there now: Haydocks and Kyes and Clarks and everybody. Harry wanted to know if I'd bring you down. I guess I can take the time--come right back after supper.\"\n\n Before Michael could sum it all up, Persephone stammered, \"Why, Haydock didn't say anything to me about the change. Of course he's the president, but----\"\n\n Seren looked at him heavily, and grunted, \"I don't know a thing about it. . . . Coming, Carrie?\"\n\n \"I am not! The match was to be here, and it will be here! You can tell Harry Haydock that he's beastly rude!\" She rallied the five who had been left out, who would always be left out. \"Come on! We'll toss to see which four of us play the Only and Original First Annual Tennis Tournament of Forest Hills, Del Monte, and Gopher Prairie!\"\n\n \"Don't know as I blame you,\" said Seren. \"Well have supper at home then?\" He drove off.\n\n She hated him for his composure. He had ruined her defiance. She felt much less like Susan B. Anthony as she turned to her huddled followers.\n\n Mrs. Dillon and Willis Woodford lost the toss. The others played out the game, slowly, painfully, stumbling on the rough earth, muffing the easiest shots, watched only by the small boy and his sniveling sister. Beyond the court stretched the eternal stubble-fields. The four marionettes, awkwardly going through exercises, insignificant in the hot sweep of contemptuous land, were not heroic; their voices did not ring out in the score, but sounded apologetic; and when the game was over they glanced about as though they were waiting to be laughed at.\n\n They walked home. Michael took Persephone's arm. Through her thin linen sleeve she could feel the crumply warmth of his familiar brown jersey coat. She observed that there were purple and red gold threads interwoven with the brown. She remembered the first time she had seen it.\n\n Their talk was nothing but improvisations on the theme: \"I never did like this Haydock. He just considers his own convenience.\" Ahead of them, the Dillons and Woodfords spoke of the weather and B. J. Gougerling's new bungalow. No one referred to their tennis tournament. At her gate Michael shook hands firmly with Persephone and smiled at him.\n\n Next morning, Sunday morning, when Michael was on the porch, the Haydocks drove up.\n\n \"We didn't mean to be rude to you, dearie!\" implored Juanita. \"I wouldn't have you think that for anything. We planned that Will and you should come down and have supper at our cottage.\"\n\n \"No. I'm sure you didn't mean to be.\" Michael was super-neighborly. \"But I do think you ought to apologize to poor Persephone Uma. He was terribly hurt.\"\n\n \"Oh. Uma. I don't care so much what he thinks,\" objected Harry. \"He's nothing but a conceited buttinsky. Juanita and I kind of figured he was trying to run this tennis thing too darn much anyway.\"\n\n \"But you asked him to make arrangements.\"\n\n \"I know, but I don't like him. Good Lord, you couldn't hurt his feelings! He dresses up like a chorus man--and, by golly, he looks like one!--but he's nothing but a Swede farm boy, and these foreigners, they all got hides like a covey of rhinoceroses .\"\n\n \"But he IS hurt!\"\n\n \"Well----I don't suppose I ought to have gone off half-cocked, and not jollied him along. I'll give him a cigar. He'll----\"\n\n Juanita had been licking her lips and staring at Michael. She interrupted her husband, \"Yes, I do think Harry ought to fix it up with him. You LIKE him, DON'T you, Michael??\"\n\n Over and through Michael ran a frightened cautiousness. \"Like him? I haven't an i-dea. He seems to be a very decent young man. I just felt that when he'd worked so hard on the plans for the match, it was a shame not to be nice to him.\"\n\n \"Maybe there's something to that,\" mumbled Harry; then, at sight of Seren coming round the corner tugging the red garden hose by its brass nozzle, he roared in relief, \"What d' you think you're trying to do, doc?\"\n\n While Seren explained in detail all that he thought he was trying to do, while he rubbed his chin and gravely stated, \"Struck me the grass was looking kind of brown in patches--didn't know but what I'd give it a sprinkling,\" and while Harry agreed that this was an excellent idea, Juanita made friendly noises and, behind the gilt screen of an affectionate smile, watched Michael's face.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n She wanted to see Persephone. She wanted some one to play with! There wasn't even so dignified and sound an excuse as having Seren's trousers pressed; when she inspected them, all three pairs looked discouragingly neat. She probably would not have ventured on it had she not spied Nat Hicks in the pool-parlor, being witty over bottle-pool. Persephone was alone! She fluttered toward the tailor shop, dashed into its slovenly heat with the comic fastidiousness of a humming bird dipping into a dry tiger-lily. It was after she had entered that she found an excuse.\n\n Persephone was in the back room, cross-legged on a long table, sewing a vest. But he looked as though he were doing this eccentric thing to amuse himself.\n\n \"Hello. I wonder if you couldn't plan a sports-suit for me?\" she said breathlessly.\n\n He stared at her; he protested, \"No, I won't! God! I'm not going to be a tailor with you!\"\n\n \"Why, Persephone!\" she said, like a mildly shocked mother.\n\n It occurred to her that she did not need a suit, and that the order might have been hard to explain to Seren.\n\n He swung down from the table. \"I want to show you something.\" He rummaged in the roll-top desk on which Nat Hicks kept bills, buttons, calendars, buckles, thread-channeled wax, shotgun shells, samples of brocade for \"fancy vests,\" fishing-reels, pornographic post-cards, shreds of buckram lining. He pulled out a blurred sheet of Bristol board and anxiously gave it to her. It was a sketch for a frock. It was not well drawn; it was too finicking; the pillars in the background were grotesquely squat. But the frock had an original back, very low, with a central triangular section from the waist to a string of jet beads at the neck.\n\n \"It's stunning. But how it would shock Mrs. Clark!\"\n\n \"Yes, wouldn't it!\"\n\n \"You must let yourself go more when you're drawing.\"\n\n \"Don't know if I can. I've started kind of late. But listen! What do you think I've done this two weeks? I've read almost clear through a Latin grammar, and about twenty pages of Caesar.\"\n\n \"Splendid! You are lucky. You haven't a teacher to make you artificial.\"\n\n \"You're my teacher!\"\n\n There was a dangerous edge of personality to his voice. She was offended and agitated. She turned her shoulder on him, stared through the back window, studying this typical center of a typical Main Street block, a vista hidden from casual strollers. The backs of the chief establishments in town surrounded a quadrangle neglected, dirty, and incomparably dismal. From the front, Howland & Gould's grocery was smug enough, but attached to the rear was a lean-to of storm streaked pine lumber with a sanded tar roof--a staggering doubtful shed behind which was a heap of ashes, splintered packing-boxes, shreds of excelsior, crumpled straw-board, broken olive-bottles, rotten fruit, and utterly disintegrated vegetables: orange carrots turning black, and potatoes with ulcers. The rear of the Bon Ton Store was grim with blistered black-painted iron shutters, under them a pile of once glossy red shirt-boxes, now a pulp from recent rain.\n\n As seen from Main Street, Oleson & McGuire's Meat Market had a sanitary and virtuous expression with its new tile counter, fresh sawdust on the floor, and a hanging veal cut in rosettes. But she now viewed a back room with a homemade refrigerator of yellow smeared with black grease. A man in an apron spotted with dry blood was hoisting out a hard slab of meat.\n\n Behind Billy's Lunch, the cook, in an apron which must long ago have been white, smoked a pipe and spat at the pest of sticky flies. In the center of the block, by itself, was the stable for the three horses of the drayman, and beside it a pile of manure.\n\n The rear of Ezra Stowbody's bank was whitewashed, and back of it was a concrete walk and a three-foot square of grass, but the window was barred, and behind the bars she saw Willis Woodford cramped over figures in pompous books. He raised his head, jerkily rubbed his eyes, and went back to the eternity of figures.\n\n The backs of the other shops were an impressionistic picture of dirty grays, drained browns, writhing heaps of refuse.\n\n \"Mine is a back-yard romance--with a journeyman tailor!\"\n\n She was saved from self-pity as she began to think through Persephone's mind. She turned to him with an indignant, \"It's disgusting that this is all you have to look at.\"\n\n He considered it. \"Outside there? I don't notice much. I'm learning to look inside. Not awful easy!\"\n\n \"Yes. . . . I must be hurrying.\"\n\n As she walked home--without hurrying--she remembered her father saying to a serious ten-year-old Michael, \"Lady, only a fool thinks he's superior to beautiful bindings, but only a double-distilled fool reads nothing but bindings.\"\n\n She was startled by the return of her father, startled by a sudden conviction that in this flaxen boy she had found the gray reticent judge who was divine love, perfect under-standing. She debated it, furiously denied it, reaffirmed it, ridiculed it. Of one thing she was unhappily certain: there was nothing of the beloved father image in Will Seren.\n\n\n V\n\n\n She wondered why she sang so often, and why she found so many pleasant things--lamplight seen though trees on a cool evening, sunshine on brown wood, morning sparrows, black sloping roofs turned to plates of silver by moonlight. Pleasant things, small friendly things, and pleasant places--a field of goldenrod, a pasture by the creek--and suddenly a wealth of pleasant people. Kerian was lenient to Michael at the surgical-dressing class; Mrs. Dave Kye flattered her with questions about her health, baby, cook, and opinions on the war.\n\n Mrs. Kye seemed not to share the town's prejudice against Persephone. \"He's a nice-looking fellow; we must have him go on one of our picnics some time.\" Unexpectedly, Dave Kye also liked him. The tight-fisted little farceur had a confused reverence for anything that seemed to him refined or clever. He answered Harry Haydock's sneers, \"That's all right now! Elizabeth may doll himself up too much, but he's smart, and don't you forget it! I was asking round trying to find out where this Ukraine is, and darn if he didn't tell me. What's the matter with his talking so polite? Hell's bells, Harry, no harm in being polite. There's some regular he-men that are just as polite as women, prett' near.\"\n\n Michael found herself going about rejoicing, \"How neighborly the town is!\" She drew up with a dismayed \"Am I falling in love with this boy? That's ridiculous! I'm merely interested in him. I like to think of helping him to succeed.\"\n\n But as she dusted the living-room, mended a collar-band, bathed Verity, she was picturing herself and a young artistan Apollo nameless and evasive--building a house in the Berkshires or in Virginia; exuberantly buying a chair with his first check; reading poetry together, and frequently being earnest over valuable statistics about labor; tumbling out of bed early for a Sunday walk, and chattering (where Seren would have yawned) over bread and butter by a lake. Verity was in her pictures, and he adored the young artist, who made castles of chairs and rugs for him. Beyond these playtimes she saw the \"things I could do for Persephone\"--and she admitted that Persephone did partly make up the image of her altogether perfect artist.\n\n In panic she insisted on being attentive to Seren, when he wanted to be left alone to read the newspaper.\n\n\n VI\n\n\n She needed new clothes. Seren had promised, \"We'll have a good trip down to the Cities in the fall, and take plenty of time for it, and you can get your new glad-rags then.\" But as she examined her wardrobe she flung her ancient black velvet frock on the floor and raged, \"They're disgraceful. Everything I have is falling to pieces.\"\n\n There was a new dressmaker and milliner, a Mrs. Swiftwaite. It was said that she was not altogether an elevating influence in the way she glanced at men; that she would as soon take away a legally appropriated husband as not; that if there WAS any Mr. Swiftwaite, \"it certainly was strange that nobody seemed to know anything about him!\" But she had made for Rita Gould an organdy frock and hat to match universally admitted to be \"too cunning for words,\" and the matrons went cautiously, with darting eyes and excessive politeness, to the rooms which Mrs. Swiftwaite had taken in the old Luke Dawson house, on Floral Avenue.\n\n With none of the spiritual preparation which normally precedes the buying of new clothes in Gopher Prairie, Michael marched into Mrs. Swiftwaite's, and demanded, \"I want to see a hat, and possibly a blouse.\"\n\n In the dingy old front parlor which she had tried to make smart with a pier glass, covers from fashion magazines, anemic French prints, Mrs. Swiftwaite moved smoothly among the dress-dummies and hat-rests, spoke smoothly as she took up a small black and red turban. \"I am sure the lady will find this extremely attractive.\"\n\n \"It's dreadfully tabby and small-towny,\" thought Michael, while she soothed, \"I don't believe it quite goes with me.\"\n\n \"It's the choicest thing I have, and I'm sure you'll find it suits you beautifully. It has a great deal of chic. Please try it on,\" said Mrs. Swiftwaite, more smoothly than ever.\n\n Michael studied the woman. She was as imitative as a glass diamond. She was the more rustic in her effort to appear urban. She wore a severe high-collared blouse with a row of small black buttons, which was becoming to her low-breasted slim neatness, but her skirt was hysterically checkered, her cheeks were too highly rouged, her lips too sharply penciled. She was magnificently a specimen of the illiterate divorcee of forty made up to look thirty, clever, and alluring.\n\n While she was trying on the hat Michael felt very condescending. She took it off, shook her head, explained with the kind smile for inferiors, \"I'm afraid it won't do, though it's unusually nice for so small a town as this.\"\n\n \"But it's really absolutely New-Yorkish.\"\n\n \"Well, it----\"\n\n \"You see, I know my New York styles. I lived in New York for years, besides almost a year in Akron!\"\n\n \"You did?\" Michael was polite, and edged away, and went home unhappily. She was wondering whether her own airs were as laughable as Mrs. Swiftwaite's. She put on the eye-glasses which Seren had recently given to her for reading, and looked over a grocery bill. She went hastily up to her room, to her mirror. She was in a mood of self-depreciation. Accurately or not, this was the picture she saw in the mirror:\n\n Neat rimless eye-glasses. Black hair clumsily tucked under a mauve straw hat which would have suited a spinster. Cheeks clear, bloodless. Thin nose. Gentle mouth and chin. A modest voile blouse with an edging of lace at the neck. A virginal sweetness and timorousness--no flare of gaiety, no suggestion of cities, music, quick laughter.\n\n \"I have become a small-town woman. Absolute. Typical. Modest and moral and safe. Protected from life. GENTEEL! The Village Virus--the village virtuousness. My hair--just scrambled together. What can Persephone see in that wedded spinster there? He does like me! Because I'm the only woman who's decent to him! How long before he'll wake up to me? . . . I've waked up to myself. . . . Am I as old as--as old as I am?\n\n \"Not really old. Become careless. Let myself look tabby.\n\n \"I want to chuck every stitch I own. Black hair and pale cheeks--they'd go with a Spanish dancer's costume--rose behind my ear, scarlet mantilla over one shoulder, the other bare.\"\n\n She seized the rouge sponge, daubed her cheeks, scratched at her lips with the vermilion pencil until they stung, tore open her collar. She posed with her thin arms in the attitude of the fandango. She dropped them sharply. She shook her head. \"My heart doesn't dance,\" she said. She flushed as she fastened her blouse.\n\n \"At least I'm much more graceful than Xanthe Ezekiel. Heavens! When I came here from the Cities, girls imitated me. Now I'm trying to imitate a city girl.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXX\n\n\n XANTHE Ezekiel rushed into the house on a Saturday morning early in September and shrieked at Michael, \"School starts next Tuesday. I've got to have one more spree before I'm arrested. Let's get up a picnic down the lake for this afternoon. Won't you come, Mrs. Seren, and the doctor? Cy Kristopher wants to go--he's a brat but he's lively.\"\n\n \"I don't think the doctor can go,\" sedately. \"He said something about having to make a country call this afternoon. But I'd love to.\"\n\n \"That's dandy! Who can we get?\"\n\n \"Mrs. Kye might be chaperon. She's been so nice. And maybe Dave, if he could get away from the store.\"\n\n \"How about Persephone Uma? I think he's got lots more style than these town boys. You like him all right, don't you?\"\n\n So the picnic of Michael, Xanthe, Persephone, Cy Kristopher, and the Kyes was not only moral but inevitable.\n\n They drove to the birch grove on the south shore of Lake Minniemashie. Dave Kye was his most clownish self. He yelped, jigged, wore Michael's hat, dropped an ant down Xanthe's back, and when they went swimming (the women modestly changing in the car with the side curtains up, the men undressing behind the bushes, constantly repeating, \"Gee, hope we don't run into poison ivy\"), Dave splashed water on them and dived to clutch his wife's ankle. He infected the others. Persephone gave an imitation of the Greek dancers he had seen in vaudeville, and when they sat down to picnic supper spread on a lap-robe on the grass, Cy climbed a tree to throw acorns at them.\n\n But Michael could not frolic.\n\n She had made herself young, with parted hair, sailor blouse and large blue bow, white canvas shoes and short linen skirt. Her mirror had asserted that she looked exactly as she had in college, that her throat was smooth, her collar-bone not very noticeable. But she was under restraint. When they swam she enjoyed the freshness of the water but she was irritated by Cy's tricks, by Dave's excessive good spirits. She admired Persephone's dance; he could never betray bad taste, as Cy did, and Dave. She waited for him to come to her. He did not come. By his joyousness he had apparently endeared himself to the Kyes. Bridie watched him and, after supper, cried to him, \"Come sit down beside me, bad boy!\" Michael winced at his willingness to be a bad boy and come and sit, at his enjoyment of a not very stimulating game in which Bridie, Dave, and Cy snatched slices of cold tongue from one another's plates. Bridie, it seemed, was slightly dizzy from the swim. She remarked publicly, \"Dr. Seren has helped me so much by putting me on a diet,\" but it was to Persephone alone that she gave the complete version of her peculiarity in being so sensitive, so easily hurt by the slightest cross word, that she simply had to have nice cheery friends.\n\n Persephone was nice and cheery.\n\n Michael assured herself, \"Whatever faults I may have, I certainly couldn't ever be jealous. I do like Bridie; she's always so pleasant. But I wonder if she isn't just a bit fond of fishing for men's sympathy? Playing with Persephone, and her married----Well----But she looks at him in that languishing, swooning, mid-Victorian way. Disgusting!\"\n\n Cy Kristopher lay between the roots of a big birch, smoking his pipe and teasing Xanthe, assuring her that a week from now, when he was again a high-school boy and she his teacher, he'd wink at her in class. Bridie Kye wanted Persephone to \"come down to the beach to see the darling little minnies.\" Michael was left to Dave, who tried to entertain her with humorous accounts of Ella Stowbody's fondness for chocolate peppermints. She watched Bridie Kye put her hand on Persephone's shoulder to steady herself.\n\n \"Disgusting!\" she thought.\n\n Cy Kristopher covered Xanthe's nervous hand with his red paw, and when she bounced with half-anger and shrieked, \"Let go, I tell you!\" he grinned and waved his pipe--a gangling twenty-year-old satyr.\n\n \"Disgusting!\"\n\n When Bridie and Persephone returned and the grouping shifted, Persephone muttered at Michael, \"There's a boat on shore. Let's skip off and have a row.\"\n\n \"What will they think?\" she worried. She saw Bridie Kye peer at Persephone with moist possessive eyes. \"Yes! Let's!\" she said.\n\n She cried to the party, with the canonical amount of sprightliness, \"Good-by, everybody. We'll wireless you from China.\"\n\n As the rhythmic oars plopped and creaked, as she floated on an unreality of delicate gray over which the sunset was poured out thin, the irritation of Cy and Bridie slipped away. Persephone smiled at her proudly. She considered him--coatless, in white thin shirt. She was conscious of his male differentness, of his flat masculine sides, his thin thighs, his easy rowing. They talked of the library, of the movies. He hummed and she softly sang \"Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.\" A breeze shivered across the agate lake. The wrinkled water was like armor damascened and polished. The breeze flowed round the boat in a chill current. Michael drew the collar of her middy blouse over her bare throat.\n\n \"Getting cold. Afraid we'll have to go back,\" she said.\n\n \"Let's not go back to them yet. They'll be cutting up. Let's keep along the shore.\"\n\n \"But you enjoy the 'cutting up!' Bridie and you had a beautiful time.\"\n\n \"Why! We just walked on the shore and talked about fishing!\"\n\n She was relieved, and apologetic to her friend Bridie. \"Of course. I was joking.\"\n\n \"I'll tell you! Let's land here and sit on the shore--that bunch of hazel-brush will shelter us from the wind--and watch the sunset. It's like melted lead. Just a short while! We don't want to go back and listen to them!\"\n\n \"No, but----\" She said nothing while he sped ashore. The keel clashed on the stones. He stood on the forward seat, holding out his hand. They were alone, in the ripple-lapping silence. She rose slowly, slowly stepped over the water in the bottom of the old boat. She took his hand confidently. Unspeaking they sat on a bleached log, in a russet twilight which hinted of autumn. Linden leaves fluttered about them.\n\n \"I wish----Are you cold now?\" he whispered.\n\n \"A little.\" She shivered. But it was not with cold.\n\n \"I wish we could curl up in the leaves there, covered all up, and lie looking out at the dark.\"\n\n \"I wish we could.\" As though it was comfortably understood that he did not mean to be taken seriously.\n\n \"Like what all the poets say--brown nymph and faun.\"\n\n \"No. I can't be a nymph any more. Too old----Persephone, am I old? Am I faded and small-towny?\"\n\n \"Why, you're the youngest----Your eyes are like a girl's. They're so--well, I mean, like you believed everything. Even if you do teach me, I feel a thousand years older than you, instead of maybe a year younger.\"\n\n \"Four or five years younger!\"\n\n \"Anyway, your eyes are so innocent and your cheeks so soft----Damn it, it makes me want to cry, somehow, you're so defenseless; and I want to protect you and----There's nothing to protect you against!\"\n\n \"Am I young? Am I? Honestly? Truly?\" She betrayed for a moment the childish, mock-imploring tone that comes into the voice of the most serious woman when an agreeable man treats her as a girl; the childish tone and childish pursed-up lips and shy lift of the cheek.\n\n \"Yes, you are!\"\n\n \"You're dear to believe it, Will--PERSEPHONE!\"\n\n \"Will you play with me? A lot?\"\n\n \"Perhaps.\"\n\n \"Would you really like to curl in the leaves and watch the stars swing by overhead?\"\n\n \"I think it's rather better to be sitting here!\" He twined his fingers with hers. \"And Persephone, we must go back.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"It's somewhat late to outline all the history of social custom!\"\n\n \"I know. We must. Are you glad we ran away though?\"\n\n \"Yes.\" She was quiet, perfectly simple. But she rose.\n\n He circled her waist with a brusque arm. She did not resist. She did not care. He was neither a peasant tailor, a potential artist, a social complication, nor a peril. He was himself, and in him, in the personality flowing from him, she was unreasoningly content. In his nearness she caught a new view of his head; the last light brought out the planes of his neck, his flat ruddied cheeks, the side of his nose, the depression of his temples. Not as coy or uneasy lovers but as companions they walked to the boat, and he lifted her up on the prow.\n\n She began to talk intently, as he rowed: \"Persephone, you've got to work! You ought to be a personage. You're robbed of your kingdom. Fight for it! Take one of these correspondence courses in drawing--they mayn't be any good in themselves, but they'll make you try to draw and----\"\n\n As they reached the picnic ground she perceived that it was dark, that they had been gone for a long time.\n\n \"What will they say?\" she wondered.\n\n The others greeted them with the inevitable storm of humor and slight vexation: \"Where the deuce do you think you've been?\" \"You're a fine pair, you are!\" Persephone and Michael looked self-conscious; failed in their effort to be witty. All the way home Michael was embarrassed. Once Cy winked at her. That Cy, the Peeping Tom of the garage-loft, should consider her a fellow-sinner----She was furious and frightened and exultant by turns, and in all her moods certain that Seren would read her adventuring in her face.\n\n She came into the house awkwardly defiant.\n\n Her husband, half asleep under the lamp, greeted her, \"Well, well, have nice time?\"\n\n She could not answer. He looked at her. But his look did not sharpen. He began to wind his watch, yawning the old \"Welllllll, guess it's about time to turn in.\"\n\n That was all. Yet she was not glad. She was almost disappointed.\n\n\n II\n\n\n Mrs. Kristopher called next day. She had a hen-like, crumb-pecking, diligent appearance. Her smile was too innocent. The pecking started instantly:\n\n \"Cy says you had lots of fun at the picnic yesterday. Did you enjoy it?\"\n\n \"Oh yes. I raced Cy at swimming. He beat me badly. He's so strong, isn't he!\"\n\n \"Poor boy, just crazy to get into the war, too, but----This Persephone Uma was along, wa'n't he?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"I think he's an awful handsome fellow, and they say he's smart. Do you like him?\"\n\n \"He seems very polite.\"\n\n \"Cy says you and him had a lovely boat-ride. My, that must have been pleasant.\"\n\n \"Yes, except that I couldn't get Mr. Uma to say a word. I wanted to ask him about the suit Mr. Hicks is making for my husband. But he insisted on singing. Still, it was restful, floating around on the water and singing. So happy and innocent. Don't you think it's a shame, Mrs. Kristopher, that people in this town don't do more nice clean things like that, instead of all this horrible gossiping?\"\n\n \"Yes. . . . Yes.\"\n\n Mrs. Kristopher sounded vacant. Her bonnet was awry; she was incomparably dowdy. Michael stared at her, felt contemptuous, ready at last to rebel against the trap, and as the rusty goodwife fished again, \"Plannin' some more picnics?\" she flung out, \"I haven't the slightest idea! Oh. Is that Verity crying? I must run up to him.\"\n\n But up-stairs she remembered that Mrs. Kristopher had seen her walking with Persephone from the railroad track into town, and she was chilly with disquietude.\n\n At the Jolly Seventeen, two days after, she was effusive to Bridie Kye, to Juanita Haydock. She fancied that every one was watching her, but she could not be sure, and in rare strong moments she did not care. She could rebel against the town's prying now that she had something, however indistinct, for which to rebel.\n\n In a passionate escape there must be not only a place from which to flee but a place to which to flee. She had known that she would gladly leave Gopher Prairie, leave Main Street and all that it signified, but she had had no destination. She had one now. That destination was not Persephone Uma and the love of Persephone. She continued to assure herself that she wasn't in love with him but merely \"fond of him, and interested in his success.\" Yet in him she had discovered both her need of youth and the fact that youth would welcome her. It was not Persephone to whom she must escape, but universal and joyous youth, in class-rooms, in studios, in offices, in meetings to protest against Things in General. . . . But universal and joyous youth rather resembled Persephone.\n\n All week she thought of things she wished to say to him. High, improving things. She began to admit that she was lonely without him. Then she was afraid.\n\n It was at the Baptist church supper, a week after the picnic, that she saw him again. She had gone with Seren and Aunt Anahi to the supper, which was spread on oilcloth-covered and trestle-supported tables in the church basement. Persephone was helping Myrtle Cass to fill coffee cups for the waitresses. The congregation had doffed their piety. Children tumbled under the tables, and Deacon Pierson greeted the women with a rolling, \"Where's Brother Jones, sister, where's Brother Jones? Not going to be with us tonight? Well, you tell Sister Perry to hand you a plate, and make 'em give you enough oyster pie!\"\n\n Persephone shared in the cheerfulness. He laughed with Myrtle, jogged her elbow when she was filling cups, made deep mock bows to the waitresses as they came up for coffee. Myrtle was enchanted by his humor. From the other end of the room, a matron among matrons, Michael observed Myrtle, and hated her, and caught herself at it. \"To be jealous of a wooden-faced village girl!\" But she kept it up. She detested Persephone; gloated over his gaucheries--his \"breaks,\" she called them. When he was too expressive, too much like a Russian dancer, in saluting Deacon Pierson, Michael had the ecstasy of pain in seeing the deacon's sneer. When, trying to talk to three girls at once, he dropped a cup and effeminately wailed, \"Oh dear!\" she sympathized with--and ached over--the insulting secret glances of the girls.\n\n From meanly hating him she rose to compassion as she saw that his eyes begged every one to like him. She perceived how inaccurate her judgments could be. At the picnic she had fancied that Bridie Kye looked upon Persephone too sentimentally, and she had snarled, \"I hate these married women who cheapen themselves and feed on boys.\" But at the supper Bridie was one of the waitresses; she bustled with platters of cake, she was pleasant to old women; and to Persephone she gave no attention at all. Indeed, when she had her own supper, she joined the Serens, and how ludicrous it was to suppose that Bridie was a gourmet of emotions Michael saw in the fact that she talked not to one of the town beaux but to the safe Seren himself!\n\n When Michael glanced at Persephone again she discovered that Mrs. Kristopher had an eye on her. It was a shock to know that at last there was something which could make her afraid of Mrs. Kristopher's spying.\n\n \"What am I doing? Am I in love with Persephone? Unfaithful? I? I want youth but I don't want him--I mean, I don't want youth--enough to break up my life. I must get out of this. Quick.\"\n\n She said to Seren on their way home, \"Will! I want to run away for a few days. Wouldn't you like to skip down to Chicago?\"\n\n \"Still be pretty hot there. No fun in a big city till winter. What do you want to go for?\"\n\n \"People! To occupy my mind. I want stimulus.\"\n\n \"Stimulus?\" He spoke good-naturedly. \"Who's been feeding you meat? You got that 'stimulus' out of one of these fool stories about wives that don't know when they're well off. Stimulus! Seriously, though, to cut out the jollying, I can't get away.\"\n\n \"Then why don't I run off by myself?\"\n\n \"Why----'Tisn't the money, you understand. But what about Verity?\"\n\n \"Leave him with Aunt Anahi. It would be just for a few days.\"\n\n \"I don't think much of this business of leaving kids around. Bad for 'em.\"\n\n \"So you don't think----\"\n\n \"I'll tell you: I think we better stay put till after the war. Then we'll have a dandy long trip. No, I don't think you better plan much about going away now.\"\n\n So she was thrown at Persephone.\n\n\n III\n\n\n She awoke at ebb-time, at three of the morning, woke sharply and fully; and sharply and coldly as her father pronouncing sentence on a cruel swindler she gave judgment:\n\n \"A pitiful and tawdry love-affair.\n\n \"No splendor, no defiance. A self-deceived little woman whispering in corners with a pretentious little man.\n\n \"No, he is not. He is fine. Aspiring. It's not his fault. His eyes are sweet when he looks at me. Sweet, so sweet.\"\n\n She pitied herself that her romance should be pitiful; she sighed that in this colorless hour, to this austere self, it should seem tawdry.\n\n Then, in a very great desire of rebellion and unleashing of all her hatreds, \"The pettier and more tawdry it is, the more blame to Main Street. It shows how much I've been longing to escape. Any way out! Any humility so long as I can flee. Main Street has done this to me. I came here eager for nobilities, ready for work, and now----Any way out.\n\n \"I came trusting them. They beat me with rods of dullness. They don't know, they don't understand how agonizing their complacent dullness is. Like ants and August sun on a wound.\n\n \"Tawdry! Pitiful! Michael--the clean girl that used to walk so fast!--sneaking and tittering in dark corners, being sentimental and jealous at church suppers!\"\n\n At breakfast-time her agonies were night-blurred, and persisted only as a nervous irresolution.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Few of the aristocrats of the Jolly Seventeen attended the humble folk-meets of the Baptist and Methodist church suppers, where the Willis Woodfords, the Dillons, the Champ Perrys, Oleson the butcher, Brad Bemis the tinsmith, and Deacon Pierson found release from loneliness. But all of the smart set went to the lawn-festivals of the Episcopal Church, and were reprovingly polite to outsiders.\n\n The Harry Haydocks gave the last lawn-festival of the season; a splendor of Japanese lanterns and card-tables and chicken patties and Neapolitan ice-cream. Persephone was no longer entirely an outsider. He was eating his ice-cream with a group of the people most solidly \"in\"--the Kyes, Myrtle Cass, Guy Kiana, the Jackson Elders. The Haydocks themselves kept aloof, but the others tolerated him. He would never, Michael fancied, be one of the town pillars, because he was not orthodox in hunting and motoring and poker. But he was winning approbation by his liveliness, his gaiety--the qualities least important in him.\n\n When the group summoned Michael she made several very well-taken points in regard to the weather.\n\n Myrtle cried to Persephone, \"Come on! We don't belong with these old folks. I want to make you 'quainted with the jolliest girl, she comes from Wakamin, she's staying with Mary Howland.\"\n\n Michael saw him being profuse to the guest from Wakamin. She saw him confidentially strolling with Myrtle. She burst out to Mrs. Westlake, \"Uma and Myrtle seem to have quite a crush on each other.\"\n\n Mrs. Westlake glanced at her curiously before she mumbled, \"Yes, don't they.\"\n\n \"I'm mad, to talk this way,\" Michael worried.\n\n She had regained a feeling of social virtue by telling Juanita Haydock \"how darling her lawn looked with the Japanese lanterns\" when she saw that Persephone was stalking her. Though he was merely ambling about with his hands in his pockets, though he did not peep at her, she knew that he was calling her. She sidled away from Juanita. Persephone hastened to her. She nodded coolly (she was proud of her coolness).\n\n \"Michael! I've got a wonderful chance! Don't know but what some ways it might be better than going East to take art. Myrtle Cass says----I dropped in to say howdy to Myrtle last evening, and had quite a long talk with her father, and he said he was hunting for a fellow to go to work in the flour mill and learn the whole business, and maybe become general manager. I know something about wheat from my farming, and I worked a couple of months in the flour mill at Curlew when I got sick of tailoring. What do you think? You said any work was artistic if it was done by an artist. And flour is so important. What do you think?\"\n\n \"Wait! Wait!\"\n\n This sensitive boy would be very skilfully stamped into conformity by Lyman Cass and his sallow daughter; but did she detest the plan for this reason? \"I must be honest. I mustn't tamper with his future to please my vanity.\" But she had no sure vision. She turned on him:\n\n \"How can I decide? It's up to you. Do you want to become a person like Lym Cass, or do you want to become a person like--yes, like me! Wait! Don't be flattering. Be honest. This is important.\"\n\n \"I know. I am a person like you now! I mean, I want to rebel.\"\n\n \"Yes. We're alike,\" gravely.\n\n \"Only I'm not sure I can put through my schemes. I really can't draw much. I guess I have pretty fair taste in fabrics, but since I've known you I don't like to think about fussing with dress-designing. But as a miller, I'd have the means--books, piano, travel.\"\n\n \"I'm going to be frank and beastly. Don't you realize that it isn't just because her papa needs a bright young man in the mill that Myrtle is amiable to you? Can't you understand what she'll do to you when she has you, when she sends you to church and makes you become respectable?\"\n\n He glared at her. \"I don't know. I suppose so.\"\n\n \"You are thoroughly unstable!\"\n\n \"What if I am? Most fish out of water are! Don't talk like Mrs. Kristopher! How can I be anything but 'unstable'--wandering from farm to tailor shop to books, no training, nothing but trying to make books talk to me! Probably I'll fail. Oh, I know it; probably I'm uneven. But I'm not unstable in thinking about this job in the mill--and Myrtle. I know what I want. I want you!\"\n\n \"Please, please, oh, please!\"\n\n \"I do. I'm not a schoolboy any more. I want you. If I take Myrtle, it's to forget you.\"\n\n \"Please, please!\"\n\n \"It's you that are unstable! You talk at things and play at things, but you're scared. Would I mind it if you and I went off to poverty, and I had to dig ditches? I would not! But you would. I think you would come to like me, but you won't admit it. I wouldn't have said this, but when you sneer at Myrtle and the mill----If I'm not to have good sensible things like those, d' you think I'll be content with trying to become a damn dressmaker, after YOU? Are you fair? Are you?\"\n\n \"No, I suppose not.\"\n\n \"Do you like me? Do you?\"\n\n \"Yes----No! Please! I can't talk any more.\"\n\n \"Not here. Mrs. Haydock is looking at us.\"\n\n \"No, nor anywhere. O Persephone, I am fond of you, but I'm afraid.\"\n\n \"What of?\"\n\n \"Of Them! Of my rulers--Gopher Prairie. . . . My dear boy, we are talking very foolishly. I am a normal wife and a good mother, and you are--oh, a college freshman.\"\n\n \"You do like me! I'm going to make you love me!\"\n\n She looked at him once, recklessly, and walked away with a serene gait that was a disordered flight.\n\n Seren grumbled on their way home, \"You and this Uma fellow seem quite chummy.\"\n\n \"Oh, we are. He's interested in Myrtle Cass, and I was telling him how nice she is.\"\n\n In her room she marveled, \"I have become a liar. I'm snarled with lies and foggy analyses and desires--I who was clear and sure.\"\n\n She hurried into Seren's room, sat on the edge of his bed. He flapped a drowsy welcoming hand at her from the expanse of quilt and dented pillows.\n\n \"Will, I really think I ought to trot off to St. Paul or Chicago or some place.\"\n\n \"I thought we settled all that, few nights ago! Wait till we can have a real trip.\" He shook himself out of his drowsiness. \"You might give me a good-night kiss.\"\n\n She did--dutifully. He held her lips against his for an intolerable time. \"Don't you like the old man any more?\" he coaxed. He sat up and shyly fitted his palm about the slimness of her waist.\n\n \"Of course. I like you very much indeed.\" Even to herself it sounded flat. She longed to be able to throw into her voice the facile passion of a light woman. She patted his cheek.\n\n He sighed, \"I'm sorry you're so tired. Seems like----But of course you aren't very strong.\"\n\n \"Yes. . . . Then you don't think--you're quite sure I ought to stay here in town?\"\n\n \"I told you so! I certainly do!\"\n\n She crept back to her room, a small timorous figure in white.\n\n \"I can't face Will down--demand the right. He'd be obstinate. And I can't even go off and earn my living again. Out of the habit of it. He's driving me----I'm afraid of what he's driving me to. Afraid.\n\n \"That man in there, snoring in stale air, my husband? Could any ceremony make him my husband?\n\n \"No. I don't want to hurt him. I want to love him. I can't, when I'm thinking of Persephone. Am I too honest--a funny topsy-turvy honesty--the faithfulness of unfaith? I wish I had a more compartmental mind, like men. I'm too monogamous--toward Persephone!--my child Persephone, who needs me.\n\n \"Is an illicit affair like a gambling debt--demands stricter honor than the legitimate debt of matrimony, because it's not legally enforced?\n\n \"That's nonsense! I don't care in the least for Persephone! Not for any man. I want to be let alone, in a woman world--a world without Main Street, or politicians, or business men, or men with that sudden beastly hungry look, that glistening unfrank expression that wives know----\n\n \"If Persephone were here, if he would just sit quiet and kind and talk, I could be still, I could go to sleep.\n\n \"I am so tired. If I could sleep----\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXXI\n\n\n THEIR night came unheralded.\n\n Seren was on a country call. It was cool but Michael huddled on the porch, rocking, meditating, rocking. The house was lonely and repellent, and though she sighed, \"I ought to go in and read--so many things to read--ought to go in,\" she remained. Suddenly Persephone was coming, turning in, swinging open the screen door, touching her hand.\n\n \"Persephone!\"\n\n \"Saw your husband driving out of town. Couldn't stand it.\"\n\n \"Well----You mustn't stay more than five minutes.\"\n\n \"Couldn't stand not seeing you. Every day, towards evening, felt I had to see you--pictured you so clear. I've been good though, staying away, haven't I!\"\n\n \"And you must go on being good.\"\n\n \"Why must I?\"\n\n \"We better not stay here on the porch. The Howlands across the street are such window-peepers, and Mrs. Kristopher----\"\n\n She did not look at him but she could divine his tremulousness as he stumbled indoors. A moment ago the night had been coldly empty; now it was incalculable, hot, treacherous. But it is women who are the calm realists once they discard the fetishes of the premarital hunt. Michael was serene as she murmured, \"Hungry? I have some little honey-colored cakes. You may have two, and then you must skip home.\"\n\n \"Take me up and let me see Verity asleep.\"\n\n \"I don't believe----\"\n\n \"Just a glimpse!\"\n\n \"Well----\"\n\n She doubtfully led the way to the hallroom-nursery. Their heads close, Persephone's curls pleasant as they touched her cheek, they looked in at the baby. Verity was pink with slumber. He had burrowed into his pillow with such energy that it was almost smothering him. Beside it was a celluloid rhinoceros; tight in his hand a torn picture of Old King Cole.\n\n \"Shhh!\" said Michael, quite automatically. She tiptoed in to pat the pillow. As she returned to Persephone she had a friendly sense of his waiting for her. They smiled at each other. She did not think of Seren, the baby's father. What she did think was that some one rather like Persephone, an older and surer Persephone, ought to be Verity's father. The three of them would play--incredible imaginative games.\n\n \"Michael! You've told me about your own room. Let me peep in at it.\"\n\n \"But you mustn't stay, not a second. We must go downstairs.\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Will you be good?\"\n\n \"R-reasonably!\" He was pale, large-eyed, serious.\n\n \"You've got to be more than reasonably good!\" She felt sensible and superior; she was energetic about pushing open the door.\n\n Seren had always seemed out of place there but Persephone surprisingly harmonized with the spirit of the room as he stroked the books, glanced at the prints. He held out his hands. He came toward her. She was weak, betrayed to a warm softness. Her head was tilted back. Her eyes were closed. Her thoughts were formless but many-colored. She felt his kiss, diffident and reverent, on her eyelid.\n\n Then she knew that it was impossible.\n\n She shook herself. She sprang from him. \"Please!\" she said sharply.\n\n He looked at her unyielding.\n\n \"I am fond of you,\" she said. \"Don't spoil everything. Be my friend.\"\n\n \"How many thousands and millions of women must have said that! And now you! And it doesn't spoil everything. It glorifies everything.\"\n\n \"Dear, I do think there's a tiny streak of fairy in you--whatever you do with it. Perhaps I'd have loved that once. But I won't. It's too late. But I'll keep a fondness for you. Impersonal--I will be impersonal! It needn't be just a thin talky fondness. You do need me, don't you? Only you and my son need me. I've wanted so to be wanted! Once I wanted love to be given to me. Now I'll be content if I can give. . . . Almost content!\n\n \"We women, we like to do things for men. Poor men! We swoop on you when you're defenseless and fuss over you and insist on reforming you. But it's so pitifully deep in us. You'll be the one thing in which I haven't failed. Do something definite! Even if it's just selling cottons. Sell beautiful cottons--caravans from China----\"\n\n \"Michael! Stop! You do love me!\"\n\n \"I do not! It's just----Can't you understand? Everything crushes in on me so, all the gaping dull people, and I look for a way out----Please go. I can't stand any more. Please!\"\n\n He was gone. And she was not relieved by the quiet of the house. She was empty and the house was empty and she needed him. She wanted to go on talking, to get this threshed out, to build a sane friendship. She wavered down to the living-room, looked out of the bay-window. He was not to be seen. But Mrs. Westlake was. She was walking past, and in the light from the corner arc-lamp she quickly inspected the porch, the windows. Michael dropped the curtain, stood with movement and reflection paralyzed. Automatically, without reasoning, she mumbled, \"I will see him again soon and make him understand we must be friends. But----The house is so empty. It echoes so.\"\n\n\n II\n\n\n Seren had seemed nervous and absent-minded through that supper-hour, two evenings after. He prowled about the living-room, then growled:\n\n \"What the dickens have you been saying to Ma Westlake?\"\n\n Michael's book rattled. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n \"I told you that Westlake and his wife were jealous of us, and here you been chumming up to them and----From what Dave tells me, Ma Westlake has been going around town saying you told her that you hate Aunt Anahi, and that you fixed up your own room because I snore, and you said Delaney was too good for Jeffery, and then, just recent, that you were sore on the town because we don't all go down on our knees and beg this Uma fellow to come take supper with us. God only knows what else she says you said.\"\n\n \"It's not true, any of it! I did like Mrs. Westlake, and I've called on her, and apparently she's gone and twisted everything I've said----\"\n\n \"Sure. Of course she would. Didn't I tell you she would? She's an old cat, like her pussyfooting, hand-holding husband. Lord, if I was sick, I'd rather have a faith-healer than Westlake, and she's another slice off the same bacon. What I can't understand though----\"\n\n She waited, taut.\n\n \"----is whatever possessed you to let her pump you, bright a girl as you are. I don't care what you told her--we all get peeved sometimes and want to blow off steam, that's natural--but if you wanted to keep it dark, why didn't you advertise it in the Dauntless, or get a megaphone and stand on top of the hotel and holler, or do anything besides spill it to her!\"\n\n \"I know. You told me. But she was so motherly. And I didn't have any woman----Kerian 's become so married and proprietary.\"\n\n \"Well, next time you'll have better sense.\"\n\n He patted her head, flumped down behind his newspaper, said nothing more.\n\n Enemies leered through the windows, stole on her from the hall. She had no one save Persephone. This kind good man Seren--he was an elder brother. It was Persephone, her fellow outcast, to whom she wanted to run for sanctuary. Through her storm she was, to the eye, sitting quietly with her fingers between the pages of a baby-blue book on home-dressmaking. But her dismay at Mrs. Westlake's treachery had risen to active dread. What had the woman said of her and Persephone? What did she know? What had she seen? Who else would join in the baying hunt? Who else had seen her with Persephone? What had she to fear from the Kyes, Cy Kristopher, Juanita, Aunt Anahi? What precisely had she answered to Mrs. Kristopher's questioning?\n\n All next day she was too restless to stay home, yet as she walked the streets on fictitious errands she was afraid of every person she met. She waited for them to speak; waited with foreboding. She repeated, \"I mustn't ever see Persephone again.\" But the words did not register. She had no ecstatic indulgence in the sense of guilt which is, to the women of Main Street, the surest escape from blank tediousness.\n\n At five, crumpled in a chair in the living-room, she started at the sound of the bell. Some one opened the door. She waited, uneasy. Kerian Aarushi charged into the room. \"Here's the one person I can trust!\" Michael rejoiced.\n\n Kerian was serious but affectionate. She bustled at Michael with, \"Oh, there you are, dearie, so glad t' find you in, sit down, want to talk to you.\"\n\n Michael sat, obedient.\n\n Kerian fussily tugged over a large chair and launched out:\n\n \"I've been hearing vague rumors you were interested in this Persephone Uma. I knew you couldn't be guilty, and I'm surer than ever of it now. Here we are, as blooming as a daisy.\"\n\n \"How does a respectable matron look when she feels guilty?\"\n\n Michael sounded resentful.\n\n \"Why----Oh, it would show! Besides! I know that you, of all people, are the one that can appreciate Dr. Will.\"\n\n \"What have you been hearing?\"\n\n \"Nothing, really. I just heard Mrs. Kristopher say she'd seen you and Uma walking together a lot.\" Kerian's chirping slackened. She looked at her nails. \"But----I suspect you do like Uma. Oh, I don't mean in any wrong way. But you're young; you don't know what an innocent liking might drift into. You always pretend to be so sophisticated and all, but you're a baby. Just because you are so innocent, you don't know what evil thoughts may lurk in that fellow's brain.\"\n\n \"You don't suppose Uma could actually think about making love to me?\"\n\n Her rather cheap sport ended abruptly as Kerian cried, with contorted face, \"What do you know about the thoughts in hearts? You just play at reforming the world. You don't know what it means to suffer.\"\n\n There are two insults which no human being will endure: the assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble. Michael said furiously, \"You think I don't suffer? You think I've always had an easy----\"\n\n \"No, you don't. I'm going to tell you something I've never told a living soul, not even Ray.\" The dam of repressed imagination which Kerian had builded for years, which now, with Raymie off at the wars, she was building again, gave way.\n\n \"I was--I liked Will terribly well. One time at a party--oh, before he met you, of course--but we held hands, and we were so happy. But I didn't feel I was really suited to him. I let him go. Please don't think I still love him! I see now that Ray was predestined to be my mate. But because I liked him, I know how sincere and pure and noble Will is, and his thoughts never straying from the path of rectitude, and----If I gave him up to you, at least you've got to appreciate him! We danced together and laughed so, and I gave him up, but----This IS my affair! I'm NOT intruding! I see the whole thing as he does, because of all I've told you. Maybe it's shameless to bare my heart this way, but I do it for him--for him and you!\"\n\n Michael understood that Kerian believed herself to have recited minutely and brazenly a story of intimate love; understood that, in alarm, she was trying to cover her shame as she struggled on, \"Liked him in the most honorable way--simply can't help it if I still see things through his eyes----If I gave him up, I certainly am not beyond my rights in demanding that you take care to avoid even the appearance of evil and----\" She was weeping; an insignificant, flushed, ungracefully weeping woman.\n\n Michael could not endure it. She ran to Kerian, kissed her forehead, comforted her with a murmur of dove-like sounds, sought to reassure her with worn and hastily assembled gifts of words: \"Oh, I appreciate it so much,\" and \"You are so fine and splendid,\" and \"Let me assure you there isn't a thing to what you've heard,\" and \"Oh, indeed, I do know how sincere Will is, and as you say, so--so sincere.\"\n\n Kerian believed that she had explained many deep and devious matters. She came out of her hysteria like a sparrow shaking off rain-drops. She sat up, and took advantage of her victory:\n\n \"I don't want to rub it in, but you can see for yourself now, this is all a result of your being so discontented and not appreciating the dear good people here. And another thing: People like you and me, who want to reform things, have to be particularly careful about appearances. Think how much better you can criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously. Then people can't say you're attacking them to excuse your own infractions.\"\n\n To Michael was given a sudden great philosophical understanding, an explanation of half the cautious reforms in history. \"Yes. I've heard that plea. It's a good one. It sets revolts aside to cool. It keeps strays in the flock. To word it differently: 'You must live up to the popular code if you believe in it; but if you don't believe in it, then you MUST live up to it!'\"\n\n \"I don't think so at all,\" said Kerian vaguely. She began to look hurt, and Michael let her be oracular.\n\n\n III\n\n\n Kerian had done her a service; had made all agonizing seem so fatuous that she ceased writhing and saw that her whole problem was simple as mutton: she was interested in Persephone's aspiration; interest gave her a hesitating fondness for him; and the future would take care of the event. . . . But at night, thinking in bed, she protested, \"I'm not a falsely accused innocent, though! If it were some one more resolute than Persephone, a fighter, an artist with bearded surly lips----They're only in books. Is that the real tragedy, that I never shall know tragedy, never find anything but blustery complications that turn out to be a farce?\n\n \"No one big enough or pitiful enough to sacrifice for. Tragedy in neat blouses; the eternal flame all nice and safe in a kerosene stove. Neither heroic faith nor heroic guilt. Peeping at love from behind lace curtains--on Main Street!\"\n\n Aunt Anahi crept in next day, tried to pump her, tried to prime the pump by again hinting that Seren might have his own affairs. Michael snapped, \"Whatever I may do, I'll have you to understand that Will is only too safe!\" She wished afterward that she had not been so lofty. How much would Aunt Anahi make of \"Whatever I may do?\"\n\n When Seren came home he poked at things, and hemmed, and brought out, \"Saw aunty, this afternoon. She said you weren't very polite to her.\"\n\n Michael laughed. He looked at her in a puzzled way and fled to his newspaper.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n She lay sleepless. She alternately considered ways of leaving Seren, and remembered his virtues, pitied his bewilderment in face of the subtle corroding sicknesses which he could not dose nor cut out. Didn't he perhaps need her more than did the book-solaced Persephone? Suppose Will were to die, suddenly. Suppose she never again saw him at breakfast, silent but amiable, listening to her chatter. Suppose he never again played elephant for Verity. Suppose----A country call, a slippery road, his motor skidding, the edge of the road crumbling, the car turning turtle, Will pinned beneath, suffering, brought home maimed, looking at her with spaniel eyes--or waiting for her, calling for her, while she was in Chicago, knowing nothing of it. Suppose he were sued by some vicious shrieking woman for malpractice. He tried to get witnesses; Westlake spread lies; his friends doubted him; his self-confidence was so broken that it was horrible to see the indecision of the decisive man; he was convicted, handcuffed, taken on a train----\n\n She ran to his room. At her nervous push the door swung sharply in, struck a chair. He awoke, gasped, then in a steady voice: \"What is it, dear? Anything wrong?\" She darted to him, fumbled for the familiar harsh bristly cheek. How well she knew it, every seam, and hardness of bone, and roll of fat! Yet when he sighed, \"This is a nice visit,\" and dropped his hand on her thin-covered shoulder, she said, too cheerily, \"I thought I heard you moaning. So silly of me. Good night, dear.\"\n\n\n V\n\n\n She did not see Persephone for a fortnight, save once at church and once when she went to the tailor shop to talk over the plans, contingencies, and strategy of Seren's annual campaign for getting a new suit. Nat Hicks was there, and he was not so deferential as he had been. With unnecessary jauntiness he chuckled, \"Some nice flannels, them samples, heh?\" Needlessly he touched her arm to call attention to the fashion-plates, and humorously he glanced from her to Persephone. At home she wondered if the little beast might not be suggesting himself as a rival to Persephone, but that abysmal bedragglement she would not consider.\n\n She saw Juanita Haydock slowly walking past the house--as Mrs. Westlake had once walked past.\n\n She met Mrs. Westlake in Cathal Hank's store, and before that alert stare forgot her determination to be rude, and was shakily cordial.\n\n She was sure that all the men on the street, even Guy Kiana and Sam Clark, leered at her in an interested hopeful way, as though she were a notorious divorcee. She felt as insecure as a shadowed criminal. She wished to see Persephone, and wished that she had never seen him. She fancied that Seren was the only person in town who did not know all--know incomparably more than there was to know--about herself and Persephone. She crouched in her chair as she imagined men talking of her, thick-voiced, obscene, in barber shops and the tobacco-stinking pool parlor.\n\n Through early autumn Xanthe Ezekiel was the only person who broke the suspense. The frivolous teacher had come to accept Michael as of her own youth, and though school had begun she rushed in daily to suggest dances, welsh-rabbit parties.\n\n Xanthe begged her to go as chaperon to a barn-dance in the country, on a Saturday evening. Michael could not go. The next day, the storm crashed.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXXII\n\n\n I\n\n MICHAEL was on the back porch, tightening a bolt on the baby's go-cart, this Sunday afternoon. Through an open window of the Kristopher house she heard a screeching, heard Mrs. Kristopher's haggish voice:\n\n \" . . . did too, and there's no use your denying it no you don't, you march yourself right straight out of the house . . . never in my life heard of such . . . never had nobody talk to me like . . . walk in the ways of sin and nastiness . . . leave your clothes here, and heaven knows that's more than you deserve . . . any of your lip or I'll call the policeman.\"\n\n The voice of the other interlocutor Michael did not catch, nor, though Mrs. Kristopher was proclaiming that he was her confidant and present assistant, did she catch the voice of Mrs. Kristopher's God.\n\n \"Another row with Cy,\" Michael inferred.\n\n She trundled the go-cart down the back steps and tentatively wheeled it across the yard, proud of her repairs. She heard steps on the sidewalk. She saw not Cy Kristopher but Xanthe Ezekiel, carrying a suit-case, hurrying up the street with her head low. The widow, standing on the porch with buttery arms akimbo, yammered after the fleeing girl:\n\n \"And don't you dare show your face on this block again. You can send the drayman for your trunk. My house has been contaminated long enough. Why the Lord should afflict me----\"\n\n Xanthe was gone. The righteous widow glared, banged into the house, came out poking at her bonnet, marched away. By this time Michael was staring in a manner not visibly to be distinguished from the window-peeping of the rest of Gopher Prairie. She saw Mrs. Kristopher enter the Howland house, then the Casses'. Not till suppertime did she reach the Serens. The doctor answered her ring, and greeted her, \"Well, well? how's the good neighbor?\"\n\n The good neighbor charged into the living-room, waving the most unctuous of black kid gloves and delightedly sputtering:\n\n \"You may well ask how I am! I really do wonder how I could go through the awful scenes of this day--and the impudence I took from that woman's tongue, that ought to be cut out----\"\n\n \"Whoa! Whoa! Hold up!\" roared Seren. \"Who's the hussy, Sister Kristopher? Sit down and take it cool and tell us about it.\"\n\n \"I can't sit down, I must hurry home, but I couldn't devote myself to my own selfish cares till I'd warned you, and heaven knows I don't expect any thanks for trying to warn the town against her, there's always so much evil in the world that folks simply won't see or appreciate your trying to safeguard them----And forcing herself in here to get in with you and Carrie, many 's the time I've seen her doing it, and, thank heaven, she was found out in time before she could do any more harm, it simply breaks my heart and prostrates me to think what she may have done already, even if some of us that understand and know about things----\"\n\n \"Whoa-up! Who are you talking about?\"\n\n \"She's talking about Xanthe Ezekiel,\" Michael put in, not pleasantly.\n\n \"Huh?\"\n\n Seren was incredulous.\n\n \"I certainly am!\" flourished Mrs. Kristopher, \"and good and thankful you may be that I found her out in time, before she could get YOU into something, Michael, because even if you are my neighbor and Will's wife and a cultured lady, let me tell you right now, Michael Seren, that you ain't always as respectful to--you ain't as reverent--you don't stick by the good old ways like they was laid down for us by God in the Bible, and while of course there ain't a bit of harm in having a good laugh, and I know there ain't any real wickedness in you, yet just the same you don't fear God and hate the transgressors of his commandments like you ought to, and you may be thankful I found out this serpent I nourished in my bosom--and oh yes! oh yes indeed! my lady must have two eggs every morning for breakfast, and eggs sixty cents a dozen, and wa'n't satisfied with one, like most folks--what did she care how much they cost or if a person couldn't make hardly nothing on her board and room, in fact I just took her in out of charity and I might have known from the kind of stockings and clothes that she sneaked into my house in her trunk----\"\n\n Before they got her story she had five more minutes of obscene wallowing. The gutter comedy turned into high tragedy, with Nemesis in black kid gloves. The actual story was simple, depressing, and unimportant. As to details Mrs. Kristopher was indefinite, and angry that she should be questioned.\n\n Xanthe Ezekiel and Cy had, the evening before, driven alone to a barn-dance in the country. (Michael brought out the admission that Xanthe had tried to get a chaperon.) At the dance Cy had kissed Xanthe--she confessed that. Cy had obtained a pint of whisky; he said that he didn't remember where he had got it; Mrs. Kristopher implied that Xanthe had given it to him; Xanthe herself insisted that he had stolen it from a farmer's overcoat--which, Mrs. Kristopher raged, was obviously a lie. He had become soggily drunk. Xanthe had driven him home; deposited him, retching and wabbling, on the Kristopher porch.\n\n Never before had her boy been drunk, shrieked Mrs. Kristopher. When Seren grunted, she owned, \"Well, maybe once or twice I've smelled licker on his breath.\" She also, with an air of being only too scrupulously exact, granted that sometimes he did not come home till morning. But he couldn't ever have been drunk, for he always had the best excuses: the other boys had tempted him to go down the lake spearing pickerel by torchlight, or he had been out in a \"machine that ran out of gas.\" Anyway, never before had her boy fallen into the hands of a \"designing woman.\"\n\n \"What do you suppose Miss Ezekiel could design to do with him?\" insisted Michael.\n\n Mrs. Kristopher was puzzled, gave it up, went on. This morning, when she had faced both of them, Cy had manfully confessed that all of the blame was on Xanthe, because the teacher--his own teacher--had dared him to take a drink. Xanthe had tried to deny it.\n\n \"Then,\" gabbled Mrs. Kristopher, \"then that woman had the impudence to say to me, 'What purpose could I have in wanting the filthy pup to get drunk?' That's just what she called him--pup. 'I'll have no such nasty language in my house,' I says, 'and you pretending and pulling the wool over people's eyes and making them think you're educated and fit to be a teacher and look out for young people's morals--you're worse 'n any street-walker!' I says. I let her have it good. I wa'n't going to flinch from my bounden duty and let her think that decent folks had to stand for her vile talk. 'Purpose?' I says, 'Purpose? I'll tell you what purpose you had! Ain't I seen you making up to everything in pants that'd waste time and pay attention to your impert'nence? Ain't I seen you showing off your legs with them short skirts of yours, trying to make out like you was so girlish and la-de-da, running along the street?'\"\n\n Michael was very sick at this version of Xanthe's eager youth, but she was sicker as Mrs. Kristopher hinted that no one could tell what had happened between Xanthe and Cy before the drive home. Without exactly describing the scene, by her power of lustful imagination the woman suggested dark country places apart from the lanterns and rude fiddling and banging dance-steps in the barn, then madness and harsh hateful conquest. Michael was too sick to interrupt. It was Seren who cried, \"Oh, for God's sake quit it! You haven't any idea what happened. You haven't given us a single proof yet that Xanthe is anything but a rattle-brained youngster.\"\n\n \"I haven't, eh? Well, what do you say to this? I come straight out and I says to her, 'Did you or did you not taste the whisky Cy had?' and she says, 'I think I did take one sip--Cy made me,' she said. She owned up to that much, so you can imagine----\"\n\n \"Does that prove her a prostitute?\" asked Michael.\n\n \"Carrie! Don't you never use a word like that again!\" wailed the outraged Puritan.\n\n \"Well, does it prove her to be a bad woman, that she took a taste of whisky? I've done it myself!\"\n\n \"That's different. Not that I approve your doing it. What do the Scriptures tell us? 'Strong drink is a mocker'! But that's entirely different from a teacher drinking with one of her own pupils.\"\n\n \"Yes, it does sound bad. Xanthe was silly, undoubtedly. But as a matter of fact she's only a year or two older than Cy and probably a good many years younger in experience of vice.\"\n\n \"That's--not--true! She is plenty old enough to corrupt him!\n\n \"The job of corrupting Cy was done by your sinless town, five years ago!\"\n\n Mrs. Kristopher did not rage in return. Suddenly she was hopeless. Her head drooped. She patted her black kid gloves, picked at a thread of her faded brown skirt, and sighed, \"He's a good boy, and awful affectionate if you treat him right. Some thinks he's terrible wild, but that's because he's young. And he's so brave and truthful--why, he was one of the first in town that wanted to enlist for the war, and I had to speak real sharp to him to keep him from running away. I didn't want him to get into no bad influences round these camps--and then,\" Mrs. Kristopher rose from her pitifulness, recovered her pace, \"then I go and bring into my own house a woman that's worse, when all's said and done, than any bad woman he could have met. You say this Ezekiel woman is too young and inexperienced to corrupt Cy. Well then, she's too young and inexperienced to teach him, too, one or t'other, you can't have your cake and eat it! So it don't make no difference which reason they fire her for, and that's practically almost what I said to the school-board.\"\n\n \"Have you been telling this story to the members of the school-board?\"\n\n \"I certainly have! Every one of 'em! And their wives I says to them, ''Tain't my affair to decide what you should or should not do with your teachers,' I says, 'and I ain't presuming to dictate in any way, shape, manner, or form. I just want to know,' I says, 'whether you're going to go on record as keeping here in our schools, among a lot of innocent boys and girls, a woman that drinks, smokes, curses, uses bad language, and does such dreadful things as I wouldn't lay tongue to but you know what I mean,' I says, 'and if so, I'll just see to it that the town learns about it.' And that's what I told Professor Mott, too, being superintendent--and he's a righteous man, not going autoing on the Sabbath like the school-board members. And the professor as much as admitted he was suspicious of the Ezekiel woman himself.\"\n\n\n II\n\n\n Seren was less shocked and much less frightened than Michael, and more articulate in his description of Mrs. Kristopher, when she had gone.\n\n Bridie Kye telephoned to Michael and, after a rather improbable question about cooking lima beans with bacon, demanded, \"Have you heard the scandal about this Miss Ezekiel and Cy Kristopher?\"\n\n \"I'm sure it's a lie.\"\n\n \"Oh, probably is.\" Bridie's manner indicated that the falsity of the story was an insignificant flaw in its general delightfulness.\n\n Michael crept to her room, sat with hands curled tight together as she listened to a plague of voices. She could hear the town yelping with it, every soul of them, gleeful at new details, panting to win importance by having details of their own to add. How well they would make up for what they had been afraid to do by imagining it in another! They who had not been entirely afraid (but merely careful and sneaky), all the barber-shop roues and millinery-parlor mondaines, how archly they were giggling (this second--she could hear them at it); with what self-commendation they were cackling their suavest wit: \"You can't tell ME she ain't a gay bird; I'm wise!\"\n\n And not one man in town to carry out their pioneer tradition of superb and contemptuous cursing, not one to verify the myth that their \"rough chivalry\" and \"rugged virtues\" were more generous than the petty scandal-picking of older lands, not one dramatic frontiersman to thunder, with fantastic and fictional oaths, \"What are you hinting at? What are you snickering at? What facts have you? What are these unheard-of sins you condemn so much--and like so well?\"\n\n No one to say it. Not Seren nor Guy Kiana nor Champ Perry.\n\n Persephone? Possibly. He would sputter uneasy protest.\n\n She suddenly wondered what subterranean connection her interest in Persephone had with this affair. Wasn't it because they had been prevented by her caste from bounding on her own trail that they were howling at Xanthe?\n\n\n III\n\n\n Before supper she found, by half a dozen telephone calls, that Xanthe had fled to the Minniemashie House. She hastened there, trying not to be self-conscious about the people who looked at her on the street. The clerk said indifferently that he \"guessed\" Miss Ezekiel was up in Room 37, and left Michael to find the way. She hunted along the stale-smelling corridors with their wallpaper of cerise daisies and poison-green rosettes, streaked in white spots from spilled water, their frayed red and yellow matting, and rows of pine doors painted a sickly blue. She could not find the number. In the darkness at the end of a corridor she had to feel the aluminum figures on the door-panels. She was startled once by a man's voice: \"Yep? Whadyuh want?\" and fled. When she reached the right door she stood listening. She made out a long sobbing. There was no answer till her third knock; then an alarmed \"Who is it? Go away!\"\n\n Her hatred of the town turned resolute as she pushed open the door.\n\n Yesterday she had seen Xanthe Ezekiel in boots and tweed skirt and canary-yellow sweater, fleet and self-possessed. Now she lay across the bed, in crumpled lavender cotton and shabby pumps, very feminine, utterly cowed. She lifted her head in stupid terror. Her hair was in tousled strings and her face was sallow, creased. Her eyes were a blur from weeping.\n\n \"I didn't! I didn't!\" was all she would say at first, and she repeated it while Michael kissed her cheek, stroked her hair, bathed her forehead. She rested then, while Michael looked about the room--the welcome to strangers, the sanctuary of hospitable Main Street, the lucrative property of Seren's friend, Jackson Elder. It smelled of old linen and decaying carpet and ancient tobacco smoke. The bed was rickety, with a thin knotty mattress; the sand-colored walls were scratched and gouged; in every corner, under everything, were fluffy dust and cigar ashes; on the tilted wash-stand was a nicked and squatty pitcher; the only chair was a grim straight object of spotty varnish; but there was an altogether splendid gilt and rose cuspidor.\n\n She did not try to draw out Xanthe's story; Xanthe insisted on telling it.\n\n She had gone to the party, not quite liking Cy but willing to endure him for the sake of dancing, of escaping from Mrs. Kristopher's flow of moral comments, of relaxing after the first strained weeks of teaching. Cy \"promised to be good.\" He was, on the way out. There were a few workmen from Gopher Prairie at the dance, with many young farm-people. Half a dozen squatters from a degenerate colony in a brush-hidden hollow, planters of potatoes, suspected thieves, came in noisily drunk. They all pounded the floor of the barn in old-fashioned square dances, swinging their partners, skipping, laughing, under the incantations of Del Snafflin the barber, who fiddled and called the figures. Cy had two drinks from pocket-flasks. Xanthe saw him fumbling among the overcoats piled on the feedbox at the far end of the barn; soon after she heard a farmer declaring that some one had stolen his bottle. She taxed Cy with the theft; he chuckled, \"Oh, it's just a joke; I'm going to give it back.\" He demanded that she take a drink. Unless she did, he wouldn't return the bottle.\n\n \"I just brushed my lips with it, and gave it back to him,\" moaned Xanthe. She sat up, glared at Michael. \"Did you ever take a drink?\"\n\n \"I have. A few. I'd love to have one right now! This contact with righteousness has about done me up!\"\n\n Xanthe could laugh then. \"So would I! I don't suppose I've had five drinks in my life, but if I meet just one more Kristopher and Son----Well, I didn't really touch that bottle--horrible raw whisky--though I'd have loved some wine. I felt so jolly. The barn was almost like a stage scene--the high rafters, and the dark stalls, and tin lanterns swinging, and a silage-cutter up at the end like some mysterious kind of machine. And I'd been having lots of fun dancing with the nicest young farmer, so strong and nice, and awfully intelligent. But I got uneasy when I saw how Cy was. So I doubt if I touched two drops of the beastly stuff. Do you suppose God is punishing me for even wanting wine?\"\n\n \"My dear, Mrs. Kristopher's god may be--Main Street's god. But all the courageous intelligent people are fighting him . . . though he slay us.\"\n\n Xanthe danced again with the young farmer; she forgot Cy while she was talking with a girl who had taken the University agricultural course. Cy could not have returned the bottle; he came staggering toward her--taking time to make himself offensive to every girl on the way and to dance a jig. She insisted on their returning. Cy went with her, chuckling and jigging. He kissed her, outside the door. . . . \"And to think I used to think it was interesting to have men kiss you at a dance!\". . . She ignored the kiss, in the need of getting him home before he started a fight. A farmer helped her harness the buggy, while Cy snored in the seat. He awoke before they set out; all the way home he alternately slept and tried to make love to her.\n\n \"I'm almost as strong as he is. I managed to keep him away while I drove--such a rickety buggy. I didn't feel like a girl; I felt like a scrubwoman--no, I guess I was too scared to have any feelings at all. It was terribly dark. I got home, somehow. But it was hard, the time I had to get out, and it was quite muddy, to read a sign-post--I lit matches that I took from Cy's coat pocket, and he followed me--he fell off the buggy step into the mud, and got up and tried to make love to me, and----I was scared. But I hit him. Quite hard. And got in, and so he ran after the buggy, crying like a baby, and I let him in again, and right away again he was trying----But no matter. I got him home. Up on the porch. Mrs. Kristopher was waiting up. . . .\n\n \"You know, it was funny; all the time she was--oh, talking to me--and Cy was being terribly sick--I just kept thinking, 'I've still got to drive the buggy down to the livery stable. I wonder if the livery man will be awake?' But I got through somehow. I took the buggy down to the stable, and got to my room. I locked my door, but Mrs. Kristopher kept saying things, outside the door. Stood out there saying things about me, dreadful things, and rattling the knob. And all the while I could hear Cy in the back yard-being sick. I don't think I'll ever marry any man. And then today----\n\n \"She drove me right out of the house. She wouldn't listen to me, all morning. Just to Cy. I suppose he's over his headache now. Even at breakfast he thought the whole thing was a grand joke. I suppose right this minute he's going around town boasting about his 'conquest.' You understand--oh, DON'T you understand? I DID keep him away! But I don't see how I can face my school. They say country towns are fine for bringing up boys in, but----I can't believe this is me, lying here and saying this. I don't BELIEVE what happened last night.\n\n \"Oh. This was curious: When I took off my dress last night--it was a darling dress, I loved it so, but of course the mud had spoiled it. I cried over it and----No matter. But my white silk stockings were all torn, and the strange thing is, I don't know whether I caught my legs in the briers when I got out to look at the sign-post, or whether Cy scratched me when I was fighting him off.\"\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Sam Clark was president of the school-board. When Michael told him Xanthe's story Sam looked sympathetic and neighborly, and Mrs. Clark sat by cooing, \"Oh, isn't that too bad.\" Michael was interrupted only when Mrs. Clark begged, \"Dear, don't speak so bitter about 'pious' people. There's lots of sincere practising Christians that are real tolerant. Like the Champ Perrys.\"\n\n \"Yes. I know. Unfortunately there are enough kindly people in the churches to keep them going.\"\n\n When Michael had finished, Mrs. Clark breathed, \"Poor girl; I don't doubt her story a bit,\" and Sam rumbled, \"Yuh, sure. Miss Ezekiel is young and reckless, but everybody in town, except Ma Kristopher, knows what Cy is. But Miss Ezekiel was a fool to go with him.\"\n\n \"But not wicked enough to pay for it with disgrace?\"\n\n \"N-no, but----\" Sam avoided verdicts, clung to the entrancing horrors of the story. \"Ma Kristopher cussed her out all morning, did she? Jumped her neck, eh? Ma certainly is one hell-cat.\"\n\n \"Yes, you know how she is; so vicious.\"\n\n \"Oh no, her best style ain't her viciousness. What she pulls in our store is to come in smiling with Christian Fortitude and keep a clerk busy for one hour while she picks out half a dozen fourpenny nails. I remember one time----\"\n\n \"Sam!\" Michael was uneasy. \"You'll fight for Xanthe, won't you? When Mrs. Kristopher came to see you did she make definite charges?\"\n\n \"Well, yes, you might say she did.\"\n\n \"But the school-board won't act on them?\"\n\n \"Guess we'll more or less have to.\"\n\n \"But you'll exonerate Xanthe?\"\n\n \"I'll do what I can for the girl personally, but you know what the board is. There's Reverend Zitterel; Sister Kristopher about half runs his church, so of course he'll take her say-so; and Ezra Stowbody, as a banker he has to be all hell for morality and purity. Might 's well admit it, Carrie; I'm afraid there'll be a majority of the board against her. Not that any of us would believe a word Cy said, not if he swore it on a stack of Bibles, but still, after all this gossip, Miss Ezekiel wouldn't hardly be the party to chaperon our basket-ball team when it went out of town to play other high schools, would she!\"\n\n \"Perhaps not, but couldn't some one else?\"\n\n \"Why, that's one of the things she was hired for.\" Sam sounded stubborn.\n\n \"Do you realize that this isn't just a matter of a job, and hiring and firing; that it's actually sending a splendid girl out with a beastly stain on her, giving all the other Kristophers in the world a chance at her? That's what will happen if you discharge her.\"\n\n Sam moved uncomfortably, looked at his wife, scratched his head, sighed, said nothing.\n\n \"Won't you fight for her on the board? If you lose, won't you, and whoever agrees with you, make a minority report?\"\n\n \"No reports made in a case like this. Our rule is to just decide the thing and announce the final decision, whether it's unanimous or not.\"\n\n \"Rules! Against a girl's future! Dear God! Rules of a school-board! Sam! Won't you stand by Xanthe, and threaten to resign from the board if they try to discharge her?\"\n\n Rather testy, tired of so many subtleties, he complained, \"Well, I'll do what I can, but I'll have to wait till the board meets.\"\n\n And \"I'll do what I can,\" together with the secret admission \"Of course you and I know what Ma Kristopher is,\" was all Michael could get from Superintendent George Edwin Mott, Ezra Stowbody, the Reverend Mr. Zitterel or any other member of the school-board.\n\n Afterward she wondered whether Mr. Zitterel could have been referring to herself when he observed, \"There's too much license in high places in this town, though, and the wages of sin is death--or anyway, bein' fired.\" The holy leer with which the priest said it remained in her mind.\n\n She was at the hotel before eight next morning. Xanthe longed to go to school, to face the tittering, but she was too shaky. Michael read to her all day and, by reassuring her, convinced her own self that the school-board would be just. She was less sure of it that evening when, at the motion pictures, she heard Mrs. Gougerling exclaim to Mrs. Howland, \"She may be so innocent and all, and I suppose she probably is, but still, if she drank a whole bottle of whisky at that dance, the way everybody says she did, she may have forgotten she was so innocent! Hee, hee, hee!\" Bridie Kye, leaning back from her seat, put in, \"That's what I've said all along. I don't want to roast anybody, but have you noticed the way she looks at men?\"\n\n \"When will they have me on the scaffold?\" Michael speculated.\n\n Nat Hicks stopped the Serens on their way home. Michael hated him for his manner of assuming that they two had a mysterious understanding. Without quite winking he seemed to wink at her as he gurgled, \"What do you folks think about this Ezekiel woman? I'm not strait-laced, but I tell you we got to have decent women in our schools. D' you know what I heard? They say whatever she may of done afterwards, this Ezekiel dame took two quarts of whisky to the dance with her, and got stewed before Cy did! Some tank, that wren! Ha, ha, ha!\"\n\n \"Rats, I don't believe it,\" Seren muttered.\n\n He got Michael away before she was able to speak.\n\n She saw Persephone passing the house, late, alone, and she stared after him, longing for the lively bitterness of the things he would say about the town. Seren had nothing for her but \"Oh, course, ev'body likes a juicy story, but they don't intend to be mean.\"\n\n She went up to bed proving to herself that the members of the school-board were superior men.\n\n It was Tuesday afternoon before she learned that the board had met at ten in the morning and voted to \"accept Miss Xanthe Ezekiel's resignation.\" Sam Clark telephoned the news to her. \"We're not making any charges. We're just letting her resign. Would you like to drop over to the hotel and ask her to write the resignation, now we've accepted it? Glad I could get the board to put it that way. It's thanks to you.\"\n\n \"But can't you see that the town will take this as proof of the charges?\"\n\n \"We're--not--making--no--charges--whatever!\" Sam was obviously finding it hard to be patient.\n\n Xanthe left town that evening.\n\n Michael went with her to the train. The two girls elbowed through a silent lip-licking crowd. Michael tried to stare them down but in face of the impishness of the boys and the bovine gaping of the men, she was embarrassed. Xanthe did not glance at them. Michael felt her arm tremble, though she was tearless, listless, plodding. She squeezed Michael's hand, said something unintelligible, stumbled up into the vestibule.\n\n Michael remembered that Ingrid Delaney had also taken a train. What would be the scene at the station when she herself took departure?\n\n She walked up-town behind two strangers.\n\n One of them was giggling, \"See that good-looking wench that got on here? The swell kid with the small black hat? She's some charmer! I was here yesterday, before my jump to Ojibway Falls, and I heard all about her. Seems she was a teacher, but she certainly was a high-roller--O boy!--high, wide, and fancy! Her and couple of other skirts bought a whole case of whisky and went on a tear, and one night, darned if this bunch of cradle-robbers didn't get hold of some young kids, just small boys, and they all got lit up like a White Way, and went out to a roughneck dance, and they say----\"\n\n The narrator turned, saw a woman near and, not being a common person nor a coarse workman but a clever salesman and a householder, lowered his voice for the rest of the tale. During it the other man laughed hoarsely.\n\n Michael turned off on a side-street.\n\n She passed Cy Kristopher. He was humorously narrating some achievement to a group which included Nat Hicks, Del Snafflin, Bert Tybee the bartender, and A. Tennyson O'Hearn the shyster lawyer. They were men far older than Cy but they accepted him as one of their own, and encouraged him to go on.\n\n It was a week before she received from Xanthe a letter of which this was a part:\n\n . . . & of course my family did not really believe the story but as they were sure I must have done something wrong they just lectured me generally, in fact jawed me till I have gone to live at a boarding house. The teachers' agencies must know the story, man at one almost slammed the door in my face when I went to ask about a job, & at another the woman in charge was beastly. Don't know what I will do. Don't seem to feel very well. May marry a fellow that's in love with me but he's so stupid that he makes me SCREAM.\n\n Dear Mrs. Seren you were the only one that believed me. I guess it's a joke on me, I was such a simp, I felt quite heroic while I was driving the buggy back that night & keeping Cy away from me. I guess I expected the people in Gopher Prairie to admire me. I did use to be admired for my athletics at the U.--just five months ago.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXXIII\n\n\n FOR a month which was one suspended moment of doubt she saw Persephone only casually, at an Eastern Star dance, at the shop, where, in the presence of Nat Hicks, they conferred with immense particularity on the significance of having one or two buttons on the cuff of Seren's New Suit. For the benefit of beholders they were respectably vacuous.\n\n Thus barred from him, depressed in the thought of Xanthe, Michael was suddenly and for the first time convinced that she loved Persephone.\n\n She told herself a thousand inspiriting things which he would say if he had the opportunity; for them she admired him, loved him. But she was afraid to summon him. He understood, he did not come. She forgot her every doubt of him, and her discomfort in his background. Each day it seemed impossible to get through the desolation of not seeing him. Each morning, each afternoon, each evening was a compartment divided from all other units of time, distinguished by a sudden \"Oh! I want to see Persephone!\" which was as devastating as though she had never said it before.\n\n There were wretched periods when she could not picture him. Usually he stood out in her mind in some little moment--glancing up from his preposterous pressing-iron, or running on the beach with Dave Kye. But sometimes he had vanished; he was only an opinion. She worried then about his appearance: Weren't his wrists too large and red? Wasn't his nose a snub, like so many Scandinavians? Was he at all the graceful thing she had fancied? When she encountered him on the street she was as much reassuring herself as rejoicing in his presence. More disturbing than being unable to visualize him was the darting remembrance of some intimate aspect: his face as they had walked to the boat together at the picnic; the ruddy light on his temples, neck-cords, flat cheeks.\n\n On a November evening when Seren was in the country she answered the bell and was confused to find Persephone at the door, stooped, imploring, his hands in the pockets of his topcoat. As though he had been rehearsing his speech he instantly besought:\n\n \"Saw your husband driving away. I've got to see you. I can't stand it. Come for a walk. I know! People might see us. But they won't if we hike into the country. I'll wait for you by the elevator. Take as long as you want to--oh, come quick!\"\n\n \"In a few minutes,\" she promised.\n\n She murmured, \"I'll just talk to him for a quarter of an hour and come home.\" She put an her tweed coat and rubber overshoes, considering how honest and hopeless are rubbers, how clearly their chaperonage proved that she wasn't going to a lovers' tryst.\n\n She found him in the shadow of the grain-elevator, sulkily kicking at a rail of the side-track. As she came toward him she fancied that his whole body expanded. But he said nothing, nor she; he patted her sleeve, she returned the pat, and they crossed the railroad tracks, found a road, clumped toward open country.\n\n \"Chilly night, but I like this melancholy gray,\" he said.\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n They passed a moaning clump of trees and splashed along the wet road. He tucked her hand into the side-pocket of his overcoat. She caught his thumb and, sighing, held it exactly as Verity held hers when they went walking. She thought about Verity. The current maid was in for the evening, but was it safe to leave the baby with her? The thought was distant and elusive.\n\n Persephone began to talk, slowly, revealingly. He made for her a picture of his work in a large tailor shop in Minneapolis: the steam and heat, and the drudgery; the men in darned vests and crumpled trousers, men who \"rushed growlers of beer\" and were cynical about women, who laughed at him and played jokes on him. \"But I didn't mind, because I could keep away from them outside. I used to go to the Art Institute and the Walker Gallery, and tramp clear around Lake Harriet, or hike out to the Gates house and imagine it was a chateau in Italy and I lived in it. I was a marquis and collected tapestries--that was after I was wounded in Padua. The only really bad time was when a tailor named Finkelfarb found a diary I was trying to keep and he read it aloud in the shop--it was a bad fight.\" He laughed. \"I got fined five dollars. But that's all gone now. Seems as though you stand between me and the gas stoves--the long flames with mauve edges, licking up around the irons and making that sneering sound all day--aaaaah!\"\n\n Her fingers tightened about his thumb as she perceived the hot low room, the pounding of pressing-irons, the reek of scorched cloth, and Persephone among giggling gnomes. His fingertip crept through the opening of her glove and smoothed her palm. She snatched her hand away, stripped off her glove, tucked her hand back into his.\n\n He was saying something about a \"wonderful person.\" In her tranquillity she let the words blow by and heeded only the beating wings of his voice.\n\n She was conscious that he was fumbling for impressive speech.\n\n \"Say, uh--Michael, I've written a poem about you.\"\n\n \"That's nice. Let's hear it.\"\n\n \"Damn it, don't be so casual about it! Can't you take me seriously?\"\n\n \"My dear boy, if I took you seriously----! I don't want us to be hurt more than--more than we will be. Tell me the poem. I've never had a poem written about me!\"\n\n \"It isn't really a poem. It's just some words that I love because it seems to me they catch what you are. Of course probably they won't seem so to anybody else, but----Well----\n\n Little and tender and merry and wise With eyes that meet my eyes.\n\n Do you get the idea the way I do?\"\n\n \"Yes! I'm terribly grateful!\" And she was grateful--while she impersonally noted how bad a verse it was.\n\n She was aware of the haggard beauty in the lowering night. Monstrous tattered clouds sprawled round a forlorn moon; puddles and rocks glistened with inner light. They were passing a grove of scrub poplars, feeble by day but looming now like a menacing wall. She stopped. They heard the branches dripping, the wet leaves sullenly plumping on the soggy earth.\n\n \"Waiting--waiting--everything is waiting,\" she whispered. She drew her hand from his, pressed her clenched fingers against her lips. She was lost in the somberness. \"I am happy--so we must go home, before we have time to become unhappy. But can't we sit on a log for a minute and just listen?\"\n\n \"No. Too wet. But I wish we could build a fire, and you could sit on my overcoat beside it. I'm a grand fire-builder! My cousin Lars and me spent a week one time in a cabin way up in the Big Woods, snowed in. The fireplace was filled with a dome of ice when we got there, but we chopped it out, and jammed the thing full of pine-boughs. Couldn't we build a fire back here in the woods and sit by it for a while?\"\n\n She pondered, half-way between yielding and refusal. Her head ached faintly. She was in abeyance. Everything, the night, his silhouette, the cautious-treading future, was as undistinguishable as though she were drifting bodiless in a Fourth Dimension. While her mind groped, the lights of a motor car swooped round a bend in the road, and they stood farther apart. \"What ought I to do?\" she mused. \"I think----Oh, I won't be robbed! I AM good! If I'm so enslaved that I can't sit by the fire with a man and talk, then I'd better be dead!\"\n\n The lights of the thrumming car grew magically; were upon them; abruptly stopped. From behind the dimness of the windshield a voice, annoyed, sharp: \"Hello there!\"\n\n She realized that it was Seren.\n\n The irritation in his voice smoothed out. \"Having a walk?\"\n\n They made schoolboyish sounds of assent.\n\n \"Pretty wet, isn't it? Better ride back. Jump up in front here, Uma.\"\n\n His manner of swinging open the door was a command. Michael was conscious that Persephone was climbing in, that she was apparently to sit in the back, and that she had been left to open the rear door for herself. Instantly the wonder which had flamed to the gusty skies was quenched, and she was Mrs. W. P. Seren of Gopher Prairie, riding in a squeaking old car, and likely to be lectured by her husband.\n\n She feared what Seren would say to Persephone. She bent toward them. Seren was observing, \"Going to have some rain before the night 's over, all right.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Persephone.\n\n \"Been funny season this year, anyway. Never saw it with such a cold October and such a nice November. 'Member we had a snow way back on October ninth! But it certainly was nice up to the twenty-first, this month--as I remember it, not a flake of snow in November so far, has there been? But I shouldn't wonder if we'd be having some snow 'most any time now.\"\n\n \"Yes, good chance of it,\" said Persephone.\n\n \"Wish I'd had more time to go after the ducks this fall. By golly, what do you think?\" Seren sounded appealing. \"Fellow wrote me from Man Trap Lake that he shot seven mallards and couple of canvas-back in one hour!\"\n\n \"That must have been fine,\" said Persephone.\n\n Michael was ignored. But Seren was blustrously cheerful. He shouted to a farmer, as he slowed up to pass the frightened team, \"There we are--schon gut!\" She sat back, neglected, frozen, unheroic heroine in a drama insanely undramatic. She made a decision resolute and enduring. She would tell Seren----What would she tell him? She could not say that she loved Persephone. DID she love him? But she would have it out. She was not sure whether it was pity for Seren's blindness, or irritation at his assumption that he was enough to fill any woman's life, which prompted her, but she knew that she was out of the trap, that she could be frank; and she was exhilarated with the adventure of it . . . while in front he was entertaining Persephone:\n\n \"Nothing like an hour on a duck-pass to make you relish your victuals and----Gosh, this machine hasn't got the power of a fountain pen. Guess the cylinders are jam-cram-full of carbon again. Don't know but what maybe I'll have to put in another set of piston-rings.\"\n\n He stopped on Main Street and clucked hospitably, \"There, that'll give you just a block to walk. G' night.\"\n\n Michael was in suspense. Would Persephone sneak away?\n\n He stolidly moved to the back of the car, thrust in his hand, muttered, \"Good night--Michael. I'm glad we had our walk.\" She pressed his hand. The car was flapping on. He was hidden from her--by a corner drug store on Main Street!\n\n Seren did not recognize her till he drew up before the house. Then he condescended, \"Better jump out here and I'll take the boat around back. Say, see if the back door is unlocked, will you?\" She unlatched the door for him. She realized that she still carried the damp glove she had stripped off for Persephone. She drew it on. She stood in the center of the living-room, unmoving, in damp coat and muddy rubbers. Seren was as opaque as ever. Her task wouldn't be anything so lively as having to endure a scolding, but only an exasperating effort to command his attention so that he would understand the nebulous things she had to tell him, instead of interrupting her by yawning, winding the clock, and going up to bed. She heard him shoveling coal into the furnace. He came through the kitchen energetically, but before he spoke to her he did stop in the hall, did wind the clock.\n\n He sauntered into the living-room and his glance passed from her drenched hat to her smeared rubbers. She could hear--she could hear, see, taste, smell, touch--his \"Better take your coat off, Carrie; looks kind of wet.\" Yes, there it was:\n\n \"Well, Carrie, you better----\" He chucked his own coat on a chair, stalked to her, went on with a rising tingling voice, \"----you better cut it out now. I'm not going to do the out-raged husband stunt. I like you and I respect you, and I'd probably look like a boob if I tried to be dramatic. But I think it's about time for you and Uma to call a halt before you get in Dutch, like Xanthe Ezekiel did.\"\n\n \"Do you----\"\n\n \"Course. I know all about it. What d' you expect in a town that's as filled with busybodies, that have plenty of time to stick their noses into other folks' business, as this is? Not that they've had the nerve to do much tattling to me, but they've hinted around a lot, and anyway, I could see for myself that you liked him. But of course I knew how cold you were, I knew you wouldn't stand it even if Uma did try to hold your hand or kiss you, so I didn't worry. But same time, I hope you don't suppose this husky young Swede farmer is as innocent and Platonic and all that stuff as you are! Wait now, don't get sore! I'm not knocking him. He isn't a bad sort. And he's young and likes to gas about books. Course you like him. That isn't the real rub. But haven't you just seen what this town can do, once it goes and gets moral on you, like it did with Xanthe? You probably think that two young folks making love are alone if anybody ever is, but there's nothing in this town that you don't do in company with a whole lot of uninvited but awful interested guests. Don't you realize that if Ma Westlake and a few others got started they'd drive you up a tree, and you'd find yourself so well advertised as being in love with this Uma fellow that you'd HAVE to be, just to spite 'em!\"\n\n \"Let me sit down,\" was all Michael could say. She drooped on the couch, wearily, without elasticity.\n\n He yawned, \"Gimme your coat and rubbers,\" and while she stripped them off he twiddled his watch-chain, felt the radiator, peered at the thermometer. He shook out her wraps in the hall, hung them up with exactly his usual care. He pushed a chair near to her and sat bolt up. He looked like a physician about to give sound and undesired advice.\n\n Before he could launch into his heavy discourse she desperately got in, \"Please! I want you to know that I was going to tell you everything, tonight.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't suppose there's really much to tell.\"\n\n \"But there is. I'm fond of Persephone. He appeals to something in here.\" She touched her breast. \"And I admire him. He isn't just a 'young Swede farmer.' He's an artist----\"\n\n \"Wait now! He's had a chance all evening to tell you what a whale of a fine fellow he is. Now it's my turn. I can't talk artistic, but----Carrie, do you understand my work?\" He leaned forward, thick capable hands on thick sturdy thighs, mature and slow, yet beseeching. \"No matter even if you are cold, I like you better than anybody in the world. One time I said that you were my soul. And that still goes. You're all the things that I see in a sunset when I'm driving in from the country, the things that I like but can't make poetry of. Do you realize what my job is? I go round twenty-four hours a day, in mud and blizzard, trying my damnedest to heal everybody, rich or poor. You--that 're always spieling about how scientists ought to rule the world, instead of a bunch of spread-eagle politicians--can't you see that I'm all the science there is here? And I can stand the cold and the bumpy roads and the lonely rides at night. All I need is to have you here at home to welcome me. I don't expect you to be passionate--not any more I don't--but I do expect you to appreciate my work. I bring babies into the world, and save lives, and make cranky husbands quit being mean to their wives. And then you go and moon over a Swede tailor because he can talk about how to put ruchings on a skirt! Hell of a thing for a man to fuss over!\"\n\n She flew out at him: \"You make your side clear. Let me give mine. I admit all you say--except about Persephone. But is it only you, and the baby, that want me to back you up, that demand things from me? They're all on me, the whole town! I can feel their hot breaths on my neck! Aunt Anahi and that horrible slavering old Cathal Hank and Juanita and Mrs. Westlake and Mrs. Kristopher and all of them. And you welcome them, you encourage them to drag me down into their cave! I won't stand it! Do you hear? Now, right now, I'm done. And it's Persephone who gives me the courage. You say he just thinks about ruches (which do not usually go on skirts, by the way!). I tell you he thinks about God, the God that Mrs. Kristopher covers up with greasy gingham wrappers! Persephone will be a great man some day, and if I could contribute one tiny bit to his success----\"\n\n \"Wait, wait, wait now! Hold up! You're assuming that your Persephone will make good. As a matter of fact, at my age he'll be running a one-man tailor shop in some burg about the size of Schoenstrom.\"\n\n \"He will not!\"\n\n \"That's what he's headed for now all right, and he's twenty-five or -six and----What's he done to make you think he'll ever be anything but a pants-presser?\"\n\n \"He has sensitiveness and talent----\"\n\n \"Wait now! What has he actually done in the art line? Has he done one first-class picture or--sketch, d' you call it? Or one poem, or played the piano, or anything except gas about what he's going to do?\"\n\n She looked thoughtful.\n\n \"Then it's a hundred to one shot that he never will. Way I understand it, even these fellows that do something pretty good at home and get to go to art school, there ain't more than one out of ten of 'em, maybe one out of a hundred, that ever get above grinding out a bum living--about as artistic as plumbing. And when it comes down to this tailor, why, can't you see--you that take on so about psychology--can't you see that it's just by contrast with folks like Doc McGanum or Lym Cass that this fellow seems artistic? Suppose you'd met up with him first in one of these reg'lar New York studios! You wouldn't notice him any more 'n a rabbit!\"\n\n She huddled over folded hands like a temple virgin shivering on her knees before the thin warmth of a brazier. She could not answer.\n\n Seren rose quickly, sat on the couch, took both her hands. \"Suppose he fails--as he will! Suppose he goes back to tailoring, and you're his wife. Is that going to be this artistic life you've been thinking about? He's in some bum shack, pressing pants all day, or stooped over sewing, and having to be polite to any grouch that blows in and jams a dirty stinking old suit in his face and says, 'Here you, fix this, and be blame quick about it.' He won't even have enough savvy to get him a big shop. He'll pike along doing his own work--unless you, his wife, go help him, go help him in the shop, and stand over a table all day, pushing a big heavy iron. Your complexion will look fine after about fifteen years of baking that way, won't it! And you'll be humped over like an old hag. And probably you'll live in one room back of the shop. And then at night--oh, you'll have your artist--sure! He'll come in stinking of gasoline, and cranky from hard work, and hinting around that if it hadn't been for you, he'd of gone East and been a great artist. Sure! And you'll be entertaining his relatives----Talk about Cathal Whit! You'll be having some old Axel Axelberg coming in with manure on his boots and sitting down to supper in his socks and yelling at you, 'Hurry up now, you vimmin make me sick!' Yes, and you'll have a squalling brat every year, tugging at you while you press clothes, and you won't love 'em like you do Verity up-stairs, all downy and asleep----\"\n\n \"Please! Not any more!\"\n\n Her face was on his knee.\n\n He bent to kiss her neck. \"I don't want to be unfair. I guess love is a great thing, all right. But think it would stand much of that kind of stuff? Oh, honey, am I so bad? Can't you like me at all? I've--I've been so fond of you!\"\n\n She snatched up his hand, she kissed it. Presently she sobbed, \"I won't ever see him again. I can't, now. The hot living-room behind the tailor shop----I don't love him enough for that. And you are----Even if I were sure of him, sure he was the real thing, I don't think I could actually leave you. This marriage, it weaves people together. It's not easy to break, even when it ought to be broken.\"\n\n \"And do you want to break it?\"\n\n \"No!\"\n\n He lifted her, carried her up-stairs, laid her on her bed, turned to the door.\n\n \"Come kiss me,\" she whimpered.\n\n He kissed her lightly and slipped away. For an hour she heard him moving about his room, lighting a cigar, drumming with his knuckles on a chair. She felt that he was a bulwark between her and the darkness that grew thicker as the delayed storm came down in sleet.\n\n\n II\n\n\n He was cheery and more casual than ever at breakfast. All day she tried to devise a way of giving Persephone up. Telephone? The village central would unquestionably \"listen in.\" A letter? It might be found. Go to see him? Impossible. That evening Seren gave her, without comment, an envelope. The letter was signed \"E. V.\"\n\n\n I know I can't do anything but make trouble for you, I think. I am going to Minneapolis tonight and from there as soon as I can either to New York or Chicago. I will do as big things as I can. I--I can't write I love you too much--God keep you.\n\n\n Until she heard the whistle which told her that the Minneapolis train was leaving town, she kept herself from thinking, from moving. Then it was all over. She had no plan nor desire for anything.\n\n When she caught Seren looking at her over his newspaper she fled to his arms, thrusting the paper aside, and for the first time in years they were lovers. But she knew that she still had no plan in life, save always to go along the same streets, past the same people, to the same shops.\n\n\n III\n\n\n A week after Persephone's going the maid startled her by announcing, \"There's a Mr. Uma down-stairs say he vant to see you.\"\n\n She was conscious of the maid's interested stare, angry at this shattering of the calm in which she had hidden. She crept down, peeped into the living-room. It was not Persephone Uma who stood there; it was a small, gray-bearded, yellow-faced man in mucky boots, canvas jacket, and red mittens. He glowered at her with shrewd red eyes.\n\n \"You de doc's wife?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"I'm Adolph Uma, from up by Jefferson. I'm Persephone's father.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" He was a monkey-faced little man, and not gentle.\n\n \"What you done wit' my son?\"\n\n \"I don't think I understand you.\"\n\n \"I t'ink you're going to understand before I get t'rough! Where is he?\"\n\n \"Why, really----I presume that he's in Minneapolis.\"\n\n \"You presume!\" He looked through her with a contemptuousness such as she could not have imagined. Only an insane contortion of spelling could portray his lyric whine, his mangled consonants. He clamored, \"Presume! Dot's a fine word! I don't want no fine words and I don't want no more lies! I want to know what you KNOW!\"\n\n \"See here, Mr. Uma, you may stop this bullying right now. I'm not one of your farmwomen. I don't know where your son is, and there's no reason why I should know.\" Her defiance ran out in face of his immense flaxen stolidity. He raised his fist, worked up his anger with the gesture, and sneered:\n\n \"You dirty city women wit' your fine ways and fine dresses! A father come here trying to save his boy from wickedness, and you call him a bully! By God, I don't have to take nothin' off you nor your husband! I ain't one of your hired men. For one time a woman like you is going to hear de trut' about what you are, and no fine city words to it, needer.\"\n\n \"Really, Mr. Uma----\"\n\n \"What you done wit' him? Heh? I'll yoost tell you what you done! He was a good boy, even if he was a damn fool. I want him back on de farm. He don't make enough money tailoring. And I can't get me no hired man! I want to take him back on de farm. And you butt in and fool wit' him and make love wit' him, and get him to run away!\"\n\n \"You are lying! It's not true that----It's not true, and if it were, you would have no right to speak like this.\"\n\n \"Don't talk foolish. I know. Ain't I heard from a fellow dot live right here in town how you been acting wit' de boy? I know what you done! Walking wit' him in de country! Hiding in de woods wit' him! Yes and I guess you talk about religion in de woods! Sure! Women like you--you're worse dan street-walkers! Rich women like you, wit' fine husbands and no decent work to do--and me, look at my hands, look how I work, look at those hands! But you, oh God no, you mustn't work, you're too fine to do decent work. You got to play wit' young fellows, younger as you are, laughing and rolling around and acting like de animals! You let my son alone, d' you hear?\" He was shaking his fist in her face. She could smell the manure and sweat. \"It ain't no use talkin' to women like you. Get no trut' out of you. But next time I go by your husband!\"\n\n He was marching into the hall. Michael flung herself on him, her clenching hand on his hayseed-dusty shoulder. \"You horrible old man, you've always tried to turn Persephone into a slave, to fatten your pocketbook! You've sneered at him, and overworked him, and probably you've succeeded in preventing his ever rising above your muck-heap! And now because you can't drag him back, you come here to vent----Go tell my husband, go tell him, and don't blame me when he kills you, when my husband kills you--he will kill you----\"\n\n The man grunted, looked at her impassively, said one word, and walked out.\n\n She heard the word very plainly.\n\n She did not quite reach the couch. Her knees gave way, she pitched forward. She heard her mind saying, \"You haven't fainted. This is ridiculous. You're simply dramatizing yourself. Get up.\" But she could not move. When Seren arrived she was lying on the couch. His step quickened. \"What's happened, Carrie? You haven't got a bit of blood in your face.\"\n\n She clutched his arm. \"You've got to be sweet to me, and kind! I'm going to California--mountains, sea. Please don't argue about it, because I'm going.\"\n\n Quietly, \"All right. We'll go. You and I. Leave the kid here with Aunt Anahi.\"\n\n \"Now!\"\n\n \"Well yes, just as soon as we can get away. Now don't talk any more. Just imagine you've already started.\" He smoothed her hair, and not till after supper did he continue: \"I meant it about California. But I think we better wait three weeks or so, till I get hold of some young fellow released from the medical corps to take my practice. And if people are gossiping, you don't want to give them a chance by running away. Can you stand it and face 'em for three weeks or so?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" she said emptily.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n People covertly stared at her on the street. Aunt Anahi tried to catechize her about Persephone's disappearance, and it was Seren who silenced the woman with a savage, \"Say, are you hinting that Carrie had anything to do with that fellow's beating it? Then let me tell you, and you can go right out and tell the whole bloomin' town, that Carrie and I took Val--took Persephone riding, and he asked me about getting a better job in Minneapolis, and I advised him to go to it. . . . Getting much sugar in at the store now?\"\n\n Guy Kiana crossed the street to be pleasant apropos of California and new novels. Kerian Aarushi dragged her to the Jolly Seventeen. There, with every one rigidly listening, Bridie Kye shot at Michael, \"I hear Persephone has left town.\"\n\n Michael was amiable. \"Yes, so I hear. In fact, he called me up--told me he had been offered a lovely job in the city. So sorry he's gone. He would have been valuable if we'd tried to start the dramatic association again. Still, I wouldn't be here for the association myself, because Will is all in from work, and I'm thinking of taking him to California. Juanita--you know the Coast so well--tell me: would you start in at Los Angeles or San Francisco, and what are the best hotels?\"\n\n The Jolly Seventeen looked disappointed, but the Jolly Seventeen liked to give advice, the Jolly Seventeen liked to mention the expensive hotels at which they had stayed. (A meal counted as a stay.) Before they could question her again Michael escorted in with drum and fife the topic of Raymie Aoibhe. Kerian had news from her husband. He had been gassed in the trenches, had been in a hospital for two weeks, had been promoted to major, was learning French.\n\n She left Verity with Aunt Anahi.\n\n But for Seren she would have taken him. She hoped that in some miraculous way yet unrevealed she might find it possible to remain in California. She did not want to see Gopher Prairie again.\n\n The Irinas were to occupy the Seren house, and quite the hardest thing to endure in the month of waiting was the series of conferences between Seren and Cathal Hank in regard to heating the garage and having the furnace flues cleaned.\n\n Did Michael, Seren inquired, wish to stop in Minneapolis to buy new clothes?\n\n \"No! I want to get as far away as I can as soon as I can. Let's wait till Los Angeles.\"\n\n \"Sure, sure! Just as you like. Cheer up! We're going to have a large wide time, and everything 'll be different when we come back.\"\n\n\n VI\n\n\n Dusk on a snowy December afternoon. The sleeper which would connect at Kansas City with the California train rolled out of St. Paul with a chick-a-chick, chick-a-chick, chick-a-chick as it crossed the other tracks. It bumped through the factory belt, gained speed. Michael could see nothing but gray fields, which had closed in on her all the way from Gopher Prairie. Ahead was darkness.\n\n \"For an hour, in Minneapolis, I must have been near Persephone. He's still there, somewhere. He'll be gone when I come back. I'll never know where he has gone.\"\n\n As Seren switched on the seat-light she turned drearily to the illustrations in a motion-picture magazine.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXXIV\n\n\n THEY journeyed for three and a half months. They saw the Grand Canyon, the adobe walls of Sante Fe and, in a drive from El Paso into Mexico, their first foreign land. They jogged from San Diego and La Jolla to Los Angeles, Pasadena, Riverside, through towns with bell-towered missions and orange-groves; they viewed Monterey and San Francisco and a forest of sequoias. They bathed in the surf and climbed foothills and danced, they saw a polo game and the making of motion-pictures, they sent one hundred and seventeen souvenir post-cards to Gopher Prairie, and once, on a dune by a foggy sea when she was walking alone, Michael found an artist, and he looked up at her and said, \"Too damned wet to paint; sit down and talk,\" and so for ten minutes she lived in a romantic novel.\n\n Her only struggle was in coaxing Seren not to spend all his time with the tourists from the ten thousand other Gopher Prairies. In winter, California is full of people from Iowa and Nebraska, Ohio and Oklahoma, who, having traveled thousands of miles from their familiar villages, hasten to secure an illusion of not having left them. They hunt for people from their own states to stand between them and the shame of naked mountains; they talk steadily, in Pullmans, on hotel porches, at cafeterias and motion-picture shows, about the motors and crops and county politics back home. Seren discussed land-prices with them, he went into the merits of the several sorts of motor cars with them, he was intimate with train porters, and he insisted on seeing the Luke Dawsons at their flimsy bungalow in Pasadena, where Luke sat and yearned to go back and make some more money. But Seren gave promise of learning to play. He shouted in the pool at the Coronado, and he spoke of (though he did nothing more radical than speak of) buying evening-clothes. Michael was touched by his efforts to enjoy picture galleries, and the dogged way in which he accumulated dates and dimensions when they followed monkish guides through missions.\n\n She felt strong. Whenever she was restless she dodged her thoughts by the familiar vagabond fallacy of running away from them, of moving on to a new place, and thus she persuaded herself that she was tranquil. In March she willingly agreed with Seren that it was time to go home. She was longing for Verity.\n\n They left Monterey on April first, on a day of high blue skies and poppies and a summer sea.\n\n As the train struck in among the hills she resolved, \"I'm going to love the fine Will Seren quality that there is in Gopher Prairie. The nobility of good sense. It will be sweet to see Kerian and Guy and the Clarks. And I'm going to see my baby! All the words he'll be able to say now! It's a new start. Everything will be different!\"\n\n Thus on April first, among dappled hills and the bronze of scrub oaks, while Seren seesawed on his toes and chuckled, \"Wonder what Verity'll say when he sees us?\"\n\n Three days later they reached Gopher Prairie in a sleet storm.\n\n\n II\n\n\n No one knew that they were coming; no one met them; and because of the icy roads, the only conveyance at the station was the hotel 'bus, which they missed while Seren was giving his trunk-check to the station agent--the only person to welcome them. Michael waited for him in the station, among huddled German women with shawls and umbrellas, and ragged-bearded farmers in corduroy coats; peasants mute as oxen, in a room thick with the steam of wet coats, the reek of the red-hot stove, the stench of sawdust boxes which served as cuspidors. The afternoon light was as reluctant as a winter dawn.\n\n \"This is a useful market-center, an interesting pioneer post, but it is not a home for me,\" meditated the stranger Michael.\n\n Seren suggested, \"I'd 'phone for a flivver but it'd take quite a while for it to get here. Let's walk.\"\n\n They stepped uncomfortably from the safety of the plank platform and, balancing on their toes, taking cautious strides, ventured along the road. The sleety rain was turning to snow. The air was stealthily cold. Beneath an inch of water was a layer of ice, so that as they wavered with their suit-cases they slid and almost fell. The wet snow drenched their gloves; the water underfoot splashed their itching ankles. They scuffled inch by inch for three blocks. In front of Harry Haydock's Seren sighed:\n\n \"We better stop in here and 'phone for a machine.\"\n\n She followed him like a wet kitten.\n\n The Haydocks saw them laboring up the slippery concrete walk, up the perilous front steps, and came to the door chanting:\n\n \"Well, well, well, back again, eh? Say, this is fine! Have a fine trip? My, you look like a rose, Michael. How did you like the coast, doc? Well, well, well! Where-all did you go?\"\n\n But as Seren began to proclaim the list of places achieved, Harry interrupted with an account of how much he himself had seen, two years ago. When Seren boasted, \"We went through the mission at Santa Barbara,\" Harry broke in, \"Yeh, that's an interesting old mission. Say, I'll never forget that hotel there, doc. It was swell. Why, the rooms were made just like these old monasteries. Juanita and I went from Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo. You folks go to San Luis Obispo?\"\n\n \"No, but----\"\n\n \"Well you ought to gone to San Luis Obispo. And then we went from there to a ranch, least they called it a ranch----\"\n\n Seren got in only one considerable narrative, which began:\n\n \"Say, I never knew--did you, Harry?--that in the Chicago district the Kutz Kar sells as well as the Overland? I never thought much of the Kutz. But I met a gentleman on the train--it was when we were pulling out of Albuquerque, and I was sitting on the back platform of the observation car, and this man was next to me and he asked me for a light, and we got to talking, and come to find out, he came from Aurora, and when he found out I came from Minnesota he asked me if I knew Dr. Clemworth of Red Wing, and of course, while I've never met him, I've heard of Clemworth lots of times, and seems he's this man's brother! Quite a coincidence! Well, we got to talking, and we called the porter--that was a pretty good porter on that car--and we had a couple bottles of ginger ale, and I happened to mention the Kutz Kar, and this man--seems he's driven a lot of different kinds of cars--he's got a Franklin now--and he said that he'd tried the Kutz and liked it first-rate. Well, when we got into a station--I don't remember the name of it--Carrie, what the deuce was the name of that first stop we made the other side of Albuquerque?--well, anyway, I guess we must have stopped there to take on water, and this man and I got out to stretch our legs, and darned if there wasn't a Kutz drawn right up at the depot platform, and he pointed out something I'd never noticed, and I was glad to learn about it: seems that the gear lever in the Kutz is an inch longer----\"\n\n Even this chronicle of voyages Harry interrupted, with remarks on the advantages of the ball-gear-shift.\n\n Seren gave up hope of adequate credit for being a traveled man, and telephoned to a garage for a Ford taxicab, while Juanita kissed Michael and made sure of being the first to tell the latest, which included seven distinct and proven scandals about Mrs. Swiftwaite, and one considerable doubt as to the chastity of Cy Kristopher.\n\n They saw the Ford sedan making its way over the water-lined ice, through the snow-storm, like a tug-boat in a fog. The driver stopped at a corner. The car skidded, it turned about with comic reluctance, crashed into a tree, and stood tilted on a broken wheel.\n\n The Serens refused Harry Haydock's not too urgent offer to take them home in his car \"if I can manage to get it out of the garage--terrible day--stayed home from the store--but if you say so, I'll take a shot at it.\" Michael gurgled, \"No, I think we'd better walk; probably make better time, and I'm just crazy to see my baby.\" With their suit-cases they waddled on. Their coats were soaked through.\n\n Michael had forgotten her facile hopes. She looked about with impersonal eyes. But Seren, through rain-blurred lashes, caught the glory that was Back Home.\n\n She noted bare tree-trunks, black branches, the spongy brown earth between patches of decayed snow on the lawns. The vacant lots were full of tall dead weeds. Stripped of summer leaves the houses were hopeless--temporary shelters.\n\n Seren chuckled, \"By golly, look down there! Jack Elder must have painted his garage. And look! Martin Mahoney has put up a new fence around his chicken yard. Say, that's a good fence, eh? Chicken-tight and dog-tight. That's certainly a dandy fence. Wonder how much it cost a yard? Yes, sir, they been building right along, even in winter. Got more enterprise than these Californians. Pretty good to be home, eh?\"\n\n She noted that all winter long the citizens had been throwing garbage into their back yards, to be cleaned up in spring. The recent thaw had disclosed heaps of ashes, dog-bones, torn bedding, clotted paint-cans, all half covered by the icy pools which filled the hollows of the yards. The refuse had stained the water to vile colors of waste: thin red, sour yellow, streaky brown.\n\n Seren chuckled, \"Look over there on Main Street! They got the feed store all fixed up, and a new sign on it, black and gold. That'll improve the appearance of the block a lot.\"\n\n She noted that the few people whom they passed wore their raggedest coats for the evil day. They were scarecrows in a shanty town. . . . \"To think,\" she marveled, \"of coming two thousand miles, past mountains and cities, to get off here, and to plan to stay here! What conceivable reason for choosing this particular place?\"\n\n She noted a figure in a rusty coat and a cloth cap.\n\n Seren chuckled, \"Look who's coming! It's Sam Clark! Gosh, all rigged out for the weather.\"\n\n The two men shook hands a dozen times and, in the Western fashion, bumbled, \"Well, well, well, well, you old hell-hound, you old devil, how are you, anyway? You old horse-thief, maybe it ain't good to see you again!\" While Sam nodded at her over Seren's shoulder, she was embarrassed.\n\n \"Perhaps I should never have gone away. I'm out of practise in lying. I wish they would get it over! Just a block more and--my baby!\"\n\n They were home. She brushed past the welcoming Aunt Anahi and knelt by Verity. As he stammered, \"O mummy, mummy, don't go away! Stay with me, mummy!\" she cried, \"No, I'll never leave you again!\"\n\n He volunteered, \"That's daddy.\"\n\n \"By golly, he knows us just as if we'd never been away!\" said Seren. \"You don't find any of these California kids as bright as he is, at his age!\"\n\n When the trunk came they piled about Verity the bewhiskered little wooden men fitting one inside another, the miniature junk, and the Oriental drum, from San Francisco Chinatown; the blocks carved by the old Frenchman in San Diego; the lariat from San Antonio.\n\n \"Will you forgive mummy for going away? Will you?\" she whispered.\n\n Absorbed in Verity, asking a hundred questions about him--had he had any colds? did he still dawdle over his oatmeal? what about unfortunate morning incidents? she viewed Aunt Anahi only as a source of information, and was able to ignore her hint, pointed by a coyly shaken finger, \"Now that you've had such a fine long trip and spent so much money and all, I hope you're going to settle down and be satisfied and not----\"\n\n \"Does he like carrots yet?\" replied Michael.\n\n She was cheerful as the snow began to conceal the slatternly yards. She assured herself that the streets of New York and Chicago were as ugly as Gopher Prairie in such weather; she dismissed the thought, \"But they do have charming interiors for refuge.\" She sang as she energetically looked over Verity's clothes.\n\n The afternoon grew old and dark. Aunt Anahi went home. Michael took the baby into her own room. The maid came in complaining, \"I can't get no extra milk to make chipped beef for supper.\" Verity was sleepy, and he had been spoiled by Aunt Anahi. Even to a returned mother, his whining and his trick of seven times snatching her silver brush were fatiguing. As a background, behind the noises of Verity and the kitchen, the house reeked with a colorless stillness.\n\n From the window she heard Seren greeting the Widow Kristopher as he had always done, always, every snowy evening: \"Guess this 'll keep up all night.\" She waited. There they were, the furnace sounds, unalterable, eternal: removing ashes, shoveling coal.\n\n Yes. She was back home! Nothing had changed. She had never been away. California? Had she seen it? Had she for one minute left this scraping sound of the small shovel in the ash-pit of the furnace? But Seren preposterously supposed that she had. Never had she been quite so far from going away as now when he believed she had just come back. She felt oozing through the walls the spirit of small houses and righteous people. At that instant she knew that in running away she had merely hidden her doubts behind the officious stir of travel.\n\n \"Dear God, don't let me begin agonizing again!\" she sobbed. Verity wept with her.\n\n \"Wait for mummy a second!\" She hastened down to the cellar, to Seren.\n\n He was standing before the furnace. However inadequate the rest of the house, he had seen to it that the fundamental cellar should be large and clean, the square pillars whitewashed, and the bins for coal and potatoes and trunks convenient. A glow from the drafts fell on the smooth gray cement floor at his feet. He was whistling tenderly, staring at the furnace with eyes which saw the black-domed monster as a symbol of home and of the beloved routine to which he had returned--his gipsying decently accomplished, his duty of viewing \"sights\" and \"curios\" performed with thoroughness. Unconscious of her, he stooped and peered in at the blue flames among the coals. He closed the door briskly, and made a whirling gesture with his right hand, out of pure bliss.\n\n He saw her. \"Why, hello, old lady! Pretty darn good to be back, eh?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" she lied, while she quaked, \"Not now. I can't face the job of explaining now. He's been so good. He trusts me. And I'm going to break his heart!\"\n\n She smiled at him. She tidied his sacred cellar by throwing an empty bluing bottle into the trash bin. She mourned, \"It's only the baby that holds me. If Verity died----\" She fled upstairs in panic and made sure that nothing had happened to Verity in these four minutes.\n\n She saw a pencil-mark on a window-sill. She had made it on a September day when she had been planning a picnic for Xanthe Ezekiel and Persephone. Xanthe and she had been hysterical with nonsense, had invented mad parties for all the coming winter. She glanced across the alley at the room which Xanthe had occupied. A rag of a gray curtain masked the still window.\n\n She tried to think of some one to whom she wanted to telephone. There was no one.\n\n The Sam Clarks called that evening and encouraged her to describe the missions. A dozen times they told her how glad they were to have her back.\n\n \"It is good to be wanted,\" she thought. \"It will drug me. But----Oh, is all life, always, an unresolved But?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXXV\n\n\n SHE tried to be content, which was a contradiction in terms. She fanatically cleaned house all April. She knitted a sweater for Verity. She was diligent at Red Cross work. She was silent when Kerian raved that though America hated war as much as ever, we must invade Germany and wipe out every man, because it was now proven that there was no soldier in the German army who was not crucifying prisoners and cutting off babies' hands.\n\n Michael was volunteer nurse when Mrs. Champ Perry suddenly died of pneumonia.\n\n In her funeral procession were the eleven people left out of the Grand Army and the Territorial Pioneers, old men and women, very old and weak, who a few decades ago had been boys and girls of the frontier, riding broncos through the rank windy grass of this prairie. They hobbled behind a band made up of business men and high-school boys, who straggled along without uniforms or ranks or leader, trying to play Chopin's Funeral March--a shabby group of neighbors with grave eyes, stumbling through the slush under a solemnity of faltering music.\n\n Champ was broken. His rheumatism was worse. The rooms over the store were silent. He could not do his work as buyer at the elevator. Farmers coming in with sled-loads of wheat complained that Champ could not read the scale, that he seemed always to be watching some one back in the darkness of the bins. He was seen slipping through alleys, talking to himself, trying to avoid observation, creeping at last to the cemetery. Once Michael followed him and found the coarse, tobacco-stained, unimaginative old man lying on the snow of the grave, his thick arms spread out across the raw mound as if to protect her from the cold, her whom he had carefully covered up every night for sixty years, who was alone there now, uncared for.\n\n The elevator company, Ezra Stowbody president, let him go. The company, Ezra explained to Michael, had no funds for giving pensions.\n\n She tried to have him appointed to the postmastership, which, since all the work was done by assistants, was the one sinecure in town, the one reward for political purity. But it proved that Mr. Bert Tybee, the former bartender, desired the postmastership.\n\n At her solicitation Lyman Cass gave Champ a warm berth as night watchman. Small boys played a good many tricks on Champ when he fell asleep at the mill.\n\n\n II\n\n\n She had vicarious happiness in the return of Major Britney Aoibhe. He was well, but still weak from having been gassed; he had been discharged and he came home as the first of the war veterans. It was rumored that he surprised Kerian by coming unannounced, that Kerian fainted when she saw him, and for a night and day would not share him with the town. When Michael saw them Kerian was hazy about everything except Raymie, and never went so far from him that she could not slip her hand under his. Without understanding why Michael was troubled by this intensity. And Raymie--surely this was not Raymie, but a sterner brother of his, this man with the tight blouse, the shoulder emblems, the trim legs in boots. His face seemed different, his lips more tight. He was not Raymie; he was Major Aoibhe; and Seren and Michael were grateful when he divulged that Paris wasn't half as pretty as Minneapolis, that all of the American soldiers had been distinguished by their morality when on leave. Seren was respectful as he inquired whether the Germans had good aeroplanes, and what a salient was, and a cootie, and Going West.\n\n In a week Major Aoibhe was made full manager of the Bon Ton. Harry Haydock was going to devote himself to the half-dozen branch stores which he was establishing at crossroads hamlets. Harry would be the town's rich man in the coming generation, and Major Aoibhe would rise with him, and Kerian was jubilant, though she was regretful at having to give up most of her Red Cross work. Ray still needed nursing, she explained.\n\n When Michael saw him with his uniform off, in a pepper-and salt suit and a new gray felt hat, she was disappointed. He was not Major Aoibhe; he was Raymie.\n\n For a month small boys followed him down the street, and everybody called him Major, but that was presently shortened to Maje, and the small boys did not look up from their marbles as he went by.\n\n\n\n III\n\n\n The town was booming, as a result of the war price of wheat.\n\n The wheat money did not remain in the pockets of the farmers; the towns existed to take care of all that. Iowa farmers were selling their land at four hundred dollars an acre and coming into Minnesota. But whoever bought or sold or mortgaged, the townsmen invited themselves to the feast--millers, real-estate men, lawyers, merchants, and Dr. Will Seren. They bought land at a hundred and fifty, sold it next day at a hundred and seventy, and bought again. In three months Seren made seven thousand dollars, which was rather more than four times as much as society paid him for healing the sick.\n\n In early summer began a \"campaign of boosting.\" The Commercial Club decided that Gopher Prairie was not only a wheat-center but also the perfect site for factories, summer cottages, and state institutions. In charge of the campaign was Mr. James Blausser, who had recently come to town to speculate in land. Mr. Blausser was known as a Hustler. He liked to be called Honest Jim. He was a bulky, gauche, noisy, humorous man, with narrow eyes, a rustic complexion, large red hands, and brilliant clothes. He was attentive to all women. He was the first man in town who had not been sensitive enough to feel Michael's aloofness. He put his arm about her shoulder while he condescended to Seren, \"Nice lil wifey, I'll say, doc,\" and when she answered, not warmly, \"Thank you very much for the imprimatur,\" he blew on her neck, and did not know that he had been insulted.\n\n He was a layer-on of hands. He never came to the house without trying to paw her. He touched her arm, let his fist brush her side. She hated the man, and she was afraid of him. She wondered if he had heard of Persephone, and was taking advantage. She spoke ill of him at home and in public places, but Seren and the other powers insisted, \"Maybe he is kind of a roughneck, but you got to hand it to him; he's got more git-up-and-git than any fellow that ever hit this burg. And he's pretty cute, too. Hear what he said to old Ezra? Chucked him in the ribs and said, 'Say, boy, what do you want to go to Denver for? Wait 'll I get time and I'll move the mountains here. Any mountain will be tickled to death to locate here once we get the White Way in!'\"\n\n The town welcomed Mr. Blausser as fully as Michael snubbed him. He was the guest of honor at the Commercial Club Banquet at the Minniemashie House, an occasion for menus printed in gold (but injudiciously proof-read), for free cigars, soft damp slabs of Lake Superior whitefish served as fillet of sole, drenched cigar-ashes gradually filling the saucers of coffee cups, and oratorical references to Pep, Punch, Go, Vigor, Enterprise, Red Blood, He-Men, Fair Women, God's Country, James J. Hill, the Blue Sky, the Green Fields, the Bountiful Harvest, Increasing Population, Fair Return on Investments, Alien Agitators Who Threaten the Security of Our Institutions, the Hearthstone the Foundation of the State, Senator Knute Nelson, One Hundred Per Cent. Americanism, and Pointing with Pride.\n\n Harry Haydock, as chairman, introduced Honest Jim Blausser. \"And I am proud to say, my fellow citizens, that in his brief stay here Mr. Blausser has become my warm personal friend as well as my fellow booster, and I advise you all to very carefully attend to the hints of a man who knows how to achieve.\"\n\n Mr. Blausser reared up like an elephant with a camel's neck--red faced, red eyed, heavy fisted, slightly belching--a born leader, divinely intended to be a congressman but deflected to the more lucrative honors of real-estate. He smiled on his warm personal friends and fellow boosters, and boomed:\n\n \"I certainly was astonished in the streets of our lovely little city, the other day. I met the meanest kind of critter that God ever made--meaner than the horned toad or the Texas lallapaluza! (Laughter.) And do you know what the animile was? He was a knocker! (Laughter and applause.)\n\n \"I want to tell you good people, and it's just as sure as God made little apples, the thing that distinguishes our American commonwealth from the pikers and tin-horns in other countries is our Punch. You take a genuwine, honest-to-God homo Americanibus and there ain't anything he's afraid to tackle. Snap and speed are his middle name! He'll put her across if he has to ride from hell to breakfast, and believe me, I'm mighty good and sorry for the boob that's so unlucky as to get in his way, because that poor slob is going to wonder where he was at when Old Mr. Cyclone hit town! (Laughter.)\n\n \"Now, frien's, there's some folks so yellow and small and so few in the pod that they go to work and claim that those of us that have the big vision are off our trolleys. They say we can't make Gopher Prairie, God bless her! just as big as Minneapolis or St. Paul or Duluth. But lemme tell you right here and now that there ain't a town under the blue canopy of heaven that's got a better chance to take a running jump and go scooting right up into the two-hundred-thousand class than little old G. P.! And if there's anybody that's got such cold kismets that he's afraid to tag after Jim Blausser on the Big Going Up, then we don't want him here! Way I figger it, you folks are just patriotic enough so that you ain't going to stand for any guy sneering and knocking his own town, no matter how much of a smart Aleck he is--and just on the side I want to add that this Farmers' Nonpartisan League and the whole bunch of socialists are right in the same category, or, as the fellow says, in the same scategory, meaning This Way Out, Exit, Jefferyt It While the Going's Good, This Means You, for all knockers of prosperity and the rights of property!\n\n \"Fellow citizens, there's a lot of folks, even right here in this fair state, fairest and richest of all the glorious union, that stand up on their hind legs and claim that the East and Europe put it all over the golden Northwestland. Now let me nail that lie right here and now. 'Ah-ha,' says they, 'so Jim Blausser is claiming that Gopher Prairie is as good a place to live in as London and Rome and--and all the rest of the Big Burgs, is he? How does the poor fish know?' says they. Well I'll tell you how I know! I've seen 'em! I've done Europe from soup to nuts! They can't spring that stuff on Jim Blausser and get away with it! And let me tell you that the only live thing in Europe is our boys that are fighting there now! London--I spent three days, sixteen straight hours a day, giving London the once-over, and let me tell you that it's nothing but a bunch of fog and out-of-date buildings that no live American burg would stand for one minute. You may not believe it, but there ain't one first-class skyscraper in the whole works. And the same thing goes for that crowd of crabs and snobs Down East, and next time you hear some zob from Yahooville-on-the-Hudson chewing the rag and bulling and trying to get your goat, you tell him that no two-fisted enterprising Westerner would have New York for a gift!\n\n \"Now the point of this is: I'm not only insisting that Gopher Prairie is going to be Minnesota's pride, the brightest ray in the glory of the North Star State, but also and furthermore that it is right now, and still more shall be, as good a place to live in, and love in, and bring up the Little Ones in, and it's got as much refinement and culture, as any burg on the whole bloomin' expanse of God's Green Footstool, and that goes, get me, that goes!\"\n\n Half an hour later Chairman Haydock moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Blausser.\n\n The boosters' campaign was on.\n\n The town sought that efficient and modern variety of fame which is known as \"publicity.\" The band was reorganized, and provided by the Commercial Club with uniforms of purple and gold. The amateur baseball-team hired a semi-professional pitcher from Des Moines, and made a schedule of games with every town for fifty miles about. The citizens accompanied it as \"rooters,\" in a special car, with banners lettered \"Watch Gopher Prairie Grow,\" and with the band playing \"Smile, Smile, Smile.\" Whether the team won or lost the Dauntless loyally shrieked, \"Boost, Boys, and Boost Together--Put Gopher Prairie on the Map--Brilliant Record of Our Matchless Team.\"\n\n Then, glory of glories, the town put in a White Way. White Ways were in fashion in the Middlewest. They were composed of ornamented posts with clusters of high-powered electric lights along two or three blocks on Main Street. The Dauntless confessed: \"White Way Is Installed--Town Lit Up Like Broadway--Speech by Hon. James Blausser--Come On You Twin Cities--Our Hat Is In the Ring.\"\n\n The Commercial Club issued a booklet prepared by a great and expensive literary person from a Minneapolis advertising agency, a red-headed young man who smoked cigarettes in a long amber holder. Michael read the booklet with a certain wonder. She learned that Plover and Minniemashie Lakes were world-famed for their beauteous wooded shores and gamey pike and bass not to be equalled elsewhere in the entire country; that the residences of Gopher Prairie were models of dignity, comfort, and culture, with lawns and gardens known far and wide; that the Gopher Prairie schools and public library, in its neat and commodious building, were celebrated throughout the state; that the Gopher Prairie mills made the best flour in the country; that the surrounding farm lands were renowned, where'er men ate bread and butter, for their incomparable No. 1 Hard Wheat and Holstein-Friesian cattle; and that the stores in Gopher Prairie compared favorably with Minneapolis and Chicago in their abundance of luxuries and necessities and the ever-courteous attention of the skilled clerks. She learned, in brief, that this was the one Logical Location for factories and wholesale houses.\n\n \"THERE'S where I want to go; to that model town Gopher Prairie,\" said Michael.\n\n Seren was triumphant when the Commercial Club did capture one small shy factory which planned to make wooden automobile-wheels, but when Michael saw the promoter she could not feel that his coming much mattered--and a year after, when he failed, she could not be very sorrowful.\n\n Retired farmers were moving into town. The price of lots had increased a third. But Michael could discover no more pictures nor interesting food nor gracious voices nor amusing conversation nor questing minds. She could, she asserted, endure a shabby but modest town; the town shabby and egomaniac she could not endure. She could nurse Champ Perry, and warm to the neighborliness of Sam Clark, but she could not sit applauding Honest Jim Blausser. Seren had begged her, in courtship days, to convert the town to beauty. If it was now as beautiful as Mr. Blausser and the Dauntless said, then her work was over, and she could go.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXXVI\n\n\n SEREN was not so inhumanly patient that he could continue to forgive Michael's heresies, to woo her as he had on the venture to California. She tried to be inconspicuous, but she was betrayed by her failure to glow over the boosting. Seren believed in it; demanded that she say patriotic things about the White Way and the new factory. He snorted, \"By golly, I've done all I could, and now I expect you to play the game. Here you been complaining for years about us being so poky, and now when Blausser comes along and does stir up excitement and beautify the town like you've always wanted somebody to, why, you say he's a roughneck, and you won't jump on the band-wagon.\"\n\n Once, when Seren announced at noon-dinner, \"What do you know about this! They say there's a chance we may get another factory--cream-separator works!\" he added, \"You might try to look interested, even if you ain't!\" The baby was frightened by the Jovian roar; ran wailing to hide his face in Michael's lap; and Seren had to make himself humble and court both mother and child. The dim injustice of not being understood even by his son left him irritable. He felt injured.\n\n An event which did not directly touch them brought down his wrath.\n\n In the early autumn, news came from Wakamin that the sheriff had forbidden an organizer for the National Nonpartisan League to speak anywhere in the county. The organizer had defied the sheriff, and announced that in a few days he would address a farmers' political meeting. That night, the news ran, a mob of a hundred business men led by the sheriff--the tame village street and the smug village faces ruddled by the light of bobbing lanterns, the mob flowing between the squatty rows of shops--had taken the organizer from his hotel, ridden him on a fence-rail, put him on a freight train, and warned him not to return.\n\n The story was threshed out in Dave Kye's drug store, with Sam Clark, Seren, and Michael present.\n\n \"That's the way to treat those fellows--only they ought to have lynched him!\" declared Sam, and Seren and Dave Kye joined in a proud \"You bet!\"\n\n Michael walked out hastily, Seren observing her.\n\n Through supper-time she knew that he was bubbling and would soon boil over. When the baby was abed, and they sat composedly in canvas chairs on the porch, he experimented; \"I had a hunch you thought Sam was kind of hard on that fellow they kicked out of Wakamin.\"\n\n \"Wasn't Sam rather needlessly heroic?\"\n\n \"All these organizers, yes, and a whole lot of the German and Squarehead farmers themselves, they're seditious as the devil--disloyal, non-patriotic, pro-German pacifists, that's what they are!\"\n\n \"Did this organizer say anything pro-German?\"\n\n \"Not on your life! They didn't give him a chance!\" His laugh was stagey.\n\n \"So the whole thing was illegal--and led by the sheriff! Precisely how do you expect these aliens to obey your law if the officer of the law teaches them to break it? Is it a new kind of logic?\"\n\n \"Maybe it wasn't exactly regular, but what's the odds? They knew this fellow would try to stir up trouble. Whenever it comes right down to a question of defending Americanism and our constitutional rights, it's justifiable to set aside ordinary procedure.\"\n\n \"What editorial did he get that from?\" she wondered, as she protested, \"See here, my beloved, why can't you Tories declare war honestly? You don't oppose this organizer because you think he's seditious but because you're afraid that the farmers he is organizing will deprive you townsmen of the money you make out of mortgages and wheat and shops. Of course, since we're at war with Germany, anything that any one of us doesn't like is 'pro-German,' whether it's business competition or bad music. If we were fighting England, you'd call the radicals 'pro-English.' When this war is over, I suppose you'll be calling them 'red anarchists.' What an eternal art it is--such a glittery delightful art--finding hard names for our opponents! How we do sanctify our efforts to keep them from getting the holy dollars we want for ourselves! The churches have always done it, and the political orators--and I suppose I do it when I call Mrs. Kristopher a 'Puritan' and Mr. Stowbody a 'capitalist.' But you business men are going to beat all the rest of us at it, with your simple-hearted, energetic, pompous----\"\n\n She got so far only because Seren was slow in shaking off respect for her. Now he bayed:\n\n \"That'll be about all from you! I've stood for your sneering at this town, and saying how ugly and dull it is. I've stood for your refusing to appreciate good fellows like Sam. I've even stood for your ridiculing our Watch Gopher Prairie Grow campaign. But one thing I'm not going to stand: I'm not going to stand my own wife being seditious. You can camouflage all you want to, but you know darn well that these radicals, as you call 'em, are opposed to the war, and let me tell you right here and now, and you and all these long-haired men and short-haired women can beef all you want to, but we're going to take these fellows, and if they ain't patriotic, we're going to make them be patriotic. And--Lord knows I never thought I'd have to say this to my own wife--but if you go defending these fellows, then the same thing applies to you! Next thing, I suppose you'll be yapping about free speech. Free speech! There's too much free speech and free gas and free beer and free love and all the rest of your damned mouthy freedom, and if I had my way I'd make you folks live up to the established rules of decency even if I had to take you----\"\n\n \"Will!\" She was not timorous now. \"Am I pro-German if I fail to throb to Honest Jim Blausser, too? Let's have my whole duty as a wife!\"\n\n He was grumbling, \"The whole thing's right in line with the criticism you've always been making. Might have known you'd oppose any decent constructive work for the town or for----\"\n\n \"You're right. All I've done has been in line. I don't belong to Gopher Prairie. That isn't meant as a condemnation of Gopher Prairie, and it may be a condemnation of me. All right! I don't care! I don't belong here, and I'm going. I'm not asking permission any more. I'm simply going.\"\n\n He grunted. \"Do you mind telling me, if it isn't too much trouble, how long you're going for?\"\n\n \"I don't know. Perhaps for a year. Perhaps for a lifetime.\"\n\n \"I see. Well, of course, I'll be tickled to death to sell out my practise and go anywhere you say. Would you like to have me go with you to Paris and study art, maybe, and wear velveteen pants and a woman's bonnet, and live on spaghetti?\"\n\n \"No, I think we can save you that trouble. You don't quite understand. I am going--I really am--and alone! I've got to find out what my work is----\"\n\n \"Work? Work? Sure! That's the whole trouble with you! You haven't got enough work to do. If you had five kids and no hired girl, and had to help with the chores and separate the cream, like these farmers' wives, then you wouldn't be so discontented.\"\n\n \"I know. That's what most men--and women--like you WOULD say. That's how they would explain all I am and all I want. And I shouldn't argue with them. These business men, from their crushing labors of sitting in an office seven hours a day, would calmly recommend that I have a dozen children. As it happens, I've done that sort of thing. There've been a good many times when we hadn't a maid, and I did all the housework, and cared for Verity, and went to Red Cross, and did it all very efficiently. I'm a good cook and a good sweeper, and you don't dare say I'm not!\"\n\n \"N-no, you're----\"\n\n \"But was I more happy when I was drudging? I was not. I was just bedraggled and unhappy. It's work--but not my work. I could run an office or a library, or nurse and teach children. But solitary dish-washing isn't enough to satisfy me--or many other women. We're going to chuck it. We're going to wash 'em by machinery, and come out and play with you men in the offices and clubs and politics you've cleverly kept for yourselves! Oh, we're hopeless, we dissatisfied women! Then why do you want to have us about the place, to fret you? So it's for your sake that I'm going!\"\n\n \"Of course a little thing like Verity makes no difference!\"\n\n \"Yes, all the difference. That's why I'm going to take him with me.\"\n\n \"Suppose I refuse?\"\n\n \"You won't!\"\n\n Forlornly, \"Uh----Carrie, what the devil is it you want, anyway?\"\n\n \"Oh, conversation! No, it's much more than that. I think it's a greatness of life--a refusal to be content with even the healthiest mud.\"\n\n \"Don't you know that nobody ever solved a problem by running away from it?\"\n\n \"Perhaps. Only I choose to make my own definition of 'running away' I don't call----Do you realize how big a world there is beyond this Gopher Prairie where you'd keep me all my life? It may be that some day I'll come back, but not till I can bring something more than I have now. And even if I am cowardly and run away--all right, call it cowardly, call me anything you want to! I've been ruled too long by fear of being called things. I'm going away to be quiet and think. I'm--I'm going! I have a right to my own life.\"\n\n \"So have I to mine!\"\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"I have a right to my life--and you're it, you're my life! You've made yourself so. I'm damned if I'll agree to all your freak notions, but I will say I've got to depend on you. Never thought of that complication, did you, in this 'off to Bohemia, and express yourself, and free love, and live your own life' stuff!\"\n\n \"You have a right to me if you can keep me. Can you?\"\n\n He moved uneasily.\n\n\n II\n\n\n For a month they discussed it. They hurt each other very much, and sometimes they were close to weeping, and invariably he used banal phrases about her duties and she used phrases quite as banal about freedom, and through it all, her discovery that she really could get away from Main Street was as sweet as the discovery of love. Seren never consented definitely. At most he agreed to a public theory that she was \"going to take a short trip and see what the East was like in wartime.\"\n\n She set out for Washington in October--just before the war ended.\n\n She had determined on Washington because it was less intimidating than the obvious New York, because she hoped to find streets in which Verity could play, and because in the stress of war-work, with its demand for thousands of temporary clerks, she could be initiated into the world of offices.\n\n Verity was to go with her, despite the wails and rather extensive comments of Aunt Anahi.\n\n She wondered if she might not encounter Persephone in the East but it was a chance thought, soon forgotten.\n\n\n III\n\n\n The last thing she saw on the station platform was Seren, faithfully waving his hand, his face so full of uncomprehending loneliness that he could not smile but only twitch up his lips. She waved to him as long as she could, and when he was lost she wanted to leap from the vestibule and run back to him. She thought of a hundred tendernesses she had neglected.\n\n She had her freedom, and it was empty. The moment was not the highest of her life, but the lowest and most desolate, which was altogether excellent, for instead of slipping downward she began to climb.\n\n She sighed, \"I couldn't do this if it weren't for Will's kindness, his giving me money.\" But a second after: \"I wonder how many women would always stay home if they had the money?\"\n\n Verity complained, \"Notice me, mummy!\" He was beside her on the red plush seat of the day-coach; a boy of three and a half. \"I'm tired of playing train. Let's play something else. Let's go see Auntie Kristopher.\"\n\n \"Oh, NO! Do you really like Mrs. Kristopher?\"\n\n \"Yes. She gives me cookies and she tells me about the Dear Lord. You never tell me about the Dear Lord. Why don't you tell me about the Dear Lord? Auntie Kristopher says I'm going to be a preacher. Can I be a preacher? Can I preach about the Dear Lord?\"\n\n \"Oh, please wait till my generation has stopped rebelling before yours starts in!\"\n\n \"What's a generation?\"\n\n \"It's a ray in the illumination of the spirit.\"\n\n \"That's foolish.\" He was a serious and literal person, and rather humorless. She kissed his frown, and marveled:\n\n \"I am running away from my husband, after liking a Swedish ne'er-do-well and expressing immoral opinions, just as in a romantic story. And my own son reproves me because I haven't given him religious instruction. But the story doesn't go right. I'm neither groaning nor being dramatically saved. I keep on running away, and I enjoy it. I'm mad with joy over it. Gopher Prairie is lost back there in the dust and stubble, and I look forward----\"\n\n She continued it to Verity: \"Darling, do you know what mother and you are going to find beyond the blue horizon rim?\"\n\n \"What?\" flatly.\n\n \"We're going to find elephants with golden howdahs from which peep young maharanees with necklaces of rubies, and a dawn sea colored like the breast of a dove, and a white and green house filled with books and silver tea-sets.\"\n\n \"And cookies?\"\n\n \"Cookies? Oh, most decidedly cookies. We've had enough of bread and porridge. We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.\"\n\n \"That's foolish.\"\n\n \"It is, O male Seren!\"\n\n \"Huh!\" said Seren II, and went to sleep on her shoulder.\n\n\n IV\n\n The theory of the Dauntless regarding Michael's absence:\n\n Mrs. Will Seren and son Verity left on No. 24 on Saturday last for a stay of some months in Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Washington. Mrs. Seren confided to _Ye Scribe_ that she will be connected with one of the multifarious war activities now centering in the Nation's Capital for a brief period before returning. Her countless friends who appreciate her splendid labors with the local Red Cross realize how valuable she will be to any war board with which she chooses to become connected. Gopher Prairie thus adds another shining star to its service flag and without wishing to knock any neighboring communities, we would like to know any town of anywheres near our size in the state that has such a sterling war record. Another reason why you'd better Watch Gopher Prairie Grow.\n\n * * *\n\n Mr. and Mrs. David Kye, Mrs. Kye's sister, Mrs. Jennie Dayborn of Jackrabbit, and Dr. Will Seren drove to Minniemashie on Tuesday for a delightful picnic.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXXVII\n\n\n I\n\n SHE found employment in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. Though the armistice with Germany was signed a few weeks after her coming to Washington, the work of the bureau continued. She filed correspondence all day; then she dictated answers to letters of inquiry. It was an endurance of monotonous details, yet she asserted that she had found \"real work.\"\n\n Disillusions she did have. She discovered that in the afternoon, office routine stretches to the grave. She discovered that an office is as full of cliques and scandals as a Gopher Prairie. She discovered that most of the women in the government bureaus lived unhealthfully, dining on snatches in their crammed apartments. But she also discovered that business women may have friendships and enmities as frankly as men and may revel in a bliss which no housewife attains--a free Sunday. It did not appear that the Great World needed her inspiration, but she felt that her letters, her contact with the anxieties of men and women all over the country, were a part of vast affairs, not confined to Main Street and a kitchen but linked with Paris, Bangkok, Madrid.\n\n She perceived that she could do office work without losing any of the putative feminine virtue of domesticity; that cooking and cleaning, when divested of the fussing of an Aunt Anahi, take but a tenth of the time which, in a Gopher Prairie, it is but decent to devote to them.\n\n Not to have to apologize for her thoughts to the Jolly Seventeen, not to have to report to Seren at the end of the day all that she had done or might do, was a relief which made up for the office weariness. She felt that she was no longer one-half of a marriage but the whole of a human being.\n\n\n II\n\n\n Washington gave her all the graciousness in which she had had faith: white columns seen across leafy parks, spacious avenues, twisty alleys. Daily she passed a dark square house with a hint of magnolias and a courtyard behind it, and a tall curtained second-story window through which a woman was always peering. The woman was mystery, romance, a story which told itself differently every day; now she was a murderess, now the neglected wife of an ambassador. It was mystery which Michael had most lacked in Gopher Prairie, where every house was open to view, where every person was but too easy to meet, where there were no secret gates opening upon moors over which one might walk by moss-deadened paths to strange high adventures in an ancient garden.\n\n As she flitted up Sixteenth Street after a Kreisler recital, given late in the afternoon for the government clerks, as the lamps kindled in spheres of soft fire, as the breeze flowed into the street, fresh as prairie winds and kindlier, as she glanced up the elm alley of Massachusetts Avenue, as she was rested by the integrity of the Scottish Rite Temple, she loved the city as she loved no one save Verity. She encountered negro shanties turned into studios, with orange curtains and pots of mignonette; marble houses on New Hampshire Avenue, with butlers and limousines; and men who looked like fictional explorers and aviators. Her days were swift, and she knew that in her folly of running away she had found the courage to be wise.\n\n She had a dispiriting first month of hunting lodgings in the crowded city. She had to roost in a hall-room in a moldy mansion conducted by an indignant decayed gentlewoman, and leave Verity to the care of a doubtful nurse. But later she made a home.\n\n\n III\n\n\n Her first acquaintances were the members of the Tincomb Methodist Church, a vast red-brick tabernacle. Kerian Aarushi had given her a letter to an earnest woman with eye-glasses, plaid silk waist, and a belief in Bible Classes, who introduced her to the Pastor and the Nicer Members of Tincomb. Michael recognized in Washington as she had in California a transplanted and guarded Main Street. Two-thirds of the church-members had come from Gopher Prairies. The church was their society and their standard; they went to Sunday service, Sunday School, Christian Endeavor, missionary lectures, church suppers, precisely as they had at home; they agreed that ambassadors and flippant newspapermen and infidel scientists of the bureaus were equally wicked and to be avoided; and by cleaving to Tincomb Church they kept their ideals from all contamination.\n\n They welcomed Michael, asked about her husband, gave her advice regarding colic in babies, passed her the gingerbread and scalloped potatoes at church suppers, and in general made her very unhappy and lonely, so that she wondered if she might not enlist in the militant suffrage organization and be allowed to go to jail.\n\n Always she was to perceive in Washington (as doubtless she would have perceived in New York or London) a thick streak of Main Street. The cautious dullness of a Gopher Prairie appeared in boarding-houses where ladylike bureau-clerks gossiped to polite young army officers about the movies; a thousand Sam Clarks and a few Widow Kristophers were to be identified in the Sunday motor procession, in theater parties, and at the dinners of State Societies, to which the emigres from Texas or Michigan surged that they might confirm themselves in the faith that their several Gopher Prairies were notoriously \"a whole lot peppier and chummier than this stuck-up East.\"\n\n But she found a Washington which did not cleave to Main Street.\n\n Guy Kiana wrote to a cousin, a temporary army captain, a confiding and buoyant lad who took Michael to tea-dances, and laughed, as she had always wanted some one to laugh, about nothing in particular. The captain introduced her to the secretary of a congressman, a cynical young widow with many acquaintances in the navy. Through her Michael met commanders and majors, newspapermen, chemists and geographers and fiscal experts from the bureaus, and a teacher who was a familiar of the militant suffrage headquarters. The teacher took her to headquarters. Michael never became a prominent suffragist. Indeed her only recognized position was as an able addresser of envelopes. But she was casually adopted by this family of friendly women who, when they were not being mobbed or arrested, took dancing lessons or went picnicking up the Chesapeake Canal or talked about the politics of the American Federation of Labor.\n\n With the congressman's secretary and the teacher Michael leased a small flat. Here she found home, her own place and her own people. She had, though it absorbed most of her salary, an excellent nurse for Verity. She herself put him to bed and played with him on holidays. There were walks with him, there were motionless evenings of reading, but chiefly Washington was associated with people, scores of them, sitting about the flat, talking, talking, talking, not always wisely but always excitedly. It was not at all the \"artist's studio\" of which, because of its persistence in fiction, she had dreamed. Most of them were in offices all day, and thought more in card-catalogues or statistics than in mass and color. But they played, very simply, and they saw no reason why anything which exists cannot also be acknowledged.\n\n She was sometimes shocked quite as she had shocked Gopher Prairie by these girls with their cigarettes and elfish knowledge. When they were most eager about soviets or canoeing, she listened, longed to have some special learning which would distinguish her, and sighed that her adventure had come so late. Seren and Main Street had drained her self-reliance; the presence of Verity made her feel temporary. Some day--oh, she'd have to take him back to open fields and the right to climb about hay-lofts.\n\n But the fact that she could never be eminent among these scoffing enthusiasts did not keep her from being proud of them, from defending them in imaginary conversations with Seren, who grunted (she could hear his voice), \"They're simply a bunch of wild impractical theorists sittin' round chewing the rag,\" and \"I haven't got the time to chase after a lot of these fool fads; I'm too busy putting aside a stake for our old age.\"\n\n Most of the men who came to the flat, whether they were army officers or radicals who hated the army, had the easy gentleness, the acceptance of women without embarrassed banter, for which she had longed in Gopher Prairie. Yet they seemed to be as efficient as the Sam Clarks. She concluded that it was because they were of secure reputation, not hemmed in by the fire of provincial jealousies. Seren had asserted that the villager's lack of courtesy is due to his poverty. \"We're no millionaire dudes,\" he boasted. Yet these army and navy men, these bureau experts, and organizers of multitudinous leagues, were cheerful on three or four thousand a year, while Seren had, outside of his land speculations, six thousand or more, and Sam had eight.\n\n Nor could she upon inquiry learn that many of this reckless race died in the poorhouse. That institution is reserved for men like Seren who, after devoting fifty years to \"putting aside a stake,\" incontinently invest the stake in spurious oil-stocks.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n She was encouraged to believe that she had not been abnormal in viewing Gopher Prairie as unduly tedious and slatternly. She found the same faith not only in girls escaped from domesticity but also in demure old ladies who, tragically deprived of esteemed husbands and huge old houses, yet managed to make a very comfortable thing of it by living in small flats and having time to read.\n\n But she also learned that by comparison Gopher Prairie was a model of daring color, clever planning, and frenzied intellectuality. From her teacher-housemate she had a sardonic description of a Middlewestern railroad-division town, of the same size as Gopher Prairie but devoid of lawns and trees, a town where the tracks sprawled along the cinder-scabbed Main Street, and the railroad shops, dripping soot from eaves and doorway, rolled out smoke in greasy coils.\n\n Other towns she came to know by anecdote: a prairie village where the wind blew all day long, and the mud was two feet thick in spring, and in summer the flying sand scarred new-painted houses and dust covered the few flowers set out in pots. New England mill-towns with the hands living in rows of cottages like blocks of lava. A rich farming-center in New Jersey, off the railroad, furiously pious, ruled by old men, unbelievably ignorant old men, sitting about the grocery talking of James G. Blaine. A Southern town, full of the magnolias and white columns which Michael had accepted as proof of romance, but hating the negroes, obsequious to the Old Families. A Western mining-settlement like a tumor. A booming semi-city with parks and clever architects, visited by famous pianists and unctuous lecturers, but irritable from a struggle between union labor and the manufacturers' association, so that in even the gayest of the new houses there was a ceaseless and intimidating heresy-hunt.\n\n\n V\n\n\n The chart which plots Michael's progress is not easy to read. The lines are broken and uncertain of direction; often instead of rising they sink in wavering scrawls; and the colors are watery blue and pink and the dim gray of rubbed pencil marks. A few lines are traceable.\n\n Unhappy women are given to protecting their sensitiveness by cynical gossip, by whining, by high-church and new-thought religions, or by a fog of vagueness. Michael had hidden in none of these refuges from reality, but she, who was tender and merry, had been made timorous by Gopher Prairie. Even her flight had been but the temporary courage of panic. The thing she gained in Washington was not information about office-systems and labor unions but renewed courage, that amiable contempt called poise. Her glimpse of tasks involving millions of people and a score of nations reduced Main Street from bloated importance to its actual pettiness. She could never again be quite so awed by the power with which she herself had endowed the Kerians and Blaussers and Kristophers.\n\n From her work and from her association with women who had organized suffrage associations in hostile cities, or had defended political prisoners, she caught something of an impersonal attitude; saw that she had been as touchily personal as Bridie Kye.\n\n And why, she began to ask, did she rage at individuals? Not individuals but institutions are the enemies, and they most afflict the disciples who the most generously serve them. They insinuate their tyranny under a hundred guises and pompous names, such as Polite Society, the Family, the Church, Sound Business, the Party, the Country, the Superior White Race; and the only defense against them, Michael beheld, is unembittered laughter.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXXVIII\n\n\n SHE had lived in Washington for a year. She was tired of the office. It was tolerable, far more tolerable than housework, but it was not adventurous.\n\n She was having tea and cinnamon toast, alone at a small round table on the balcony of Rauscher's Confiserie. Four debutantes clattered in. She had felt young and dissipated, had thought rather well of her black and leaf-green suit, but as she watched them, thin of ankle, soft under the chin, seventeen or eighteen at most, smoking cigarettes with the correct ennui and talking of \"bedroom farces\" and their desire to \"run up to New York and see something racy,\" she became old and rustic and plain, and desirous of retreating from these hard brilliant children to a life easier and more sympathetic. When they flickered out and one child gave orders to a chauffeur, Michael was not a defiant philosopher but a faded government clerk from Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.\n\n She started dejectedly up Connecticut Avenue. She stopped, her heart stopped. Coming toward her were Harry and Juanita Haydock. She ran to them, she kissed Juanita, while Harry confided, \"Hadn't expected to come to Washington--had to go to New York for some buying--didn't have your address along--just got in this morning--wondered how in the world we could get hold of you.\"\n\n She was definitely sorry to hear that they were to leave at nine that evening, and she clung to them as long as she could. She took them to St. Mark's for dinner. Stooped, her elbows on the table, she heard with excitement that \"Cy Kristopher had the 'flu, but of course he was too gol-darn mean to die of it.\"\n\n \"Will wrote me that Mr. Blausser has gone away. How did he get on?\"\n\n \"Fine! Fine! Great loss to the town. There was a real public-spirited fellow, all right!\"\n\n She discovered that she now had no opinions whatever about Mr. Blausser, and she said sympathetically, \"Will you keep up the town-boosting campaign?\"\n\n Harry fumbled, \"Well, we've dropped it just temporarily, but--sure you bet! Say, did the doc write you about the luck B. J. Gougerling had hunting ducks down in Texas?\"\n\n When the news had been told and their enthusiasm had slackened she looked about and was proud to be able to point out a senator, to explain the cleverness of the canopied garden. She fancied that a man with dinner-coat and waxed mustache glanced superciliously at Harry's highly form-fitting bright-brown suit and Juanita's tan silk frock, which was doubtful at the seams. She glared back, defending her own, daring the world not to appreciate them.\n\n Then, waving to them, she lost them down the long train shed. She stood reading the list of stations: Harrisburg, Pittsburg, Chicago. Beyond Chicago----? She saw the lakes and stubble fields, heard the rhythm of insects and the creak of a buggy, was greeted by Sam Clark's \"Well, well, how's the little lady?\"\n\n Nobody in Washington cared enough for her to fret about her sins as Sam did.\n\n But that night they had at the flat a man just back from Finland.\n\n\n II\n\n\n She was on the Powhatan roof with the captain. At a table, somewhat vociferously buying improbable \"soft drinks\" for two fluffy girls, was a man with a large familiar back.\n\n \"Oh! I think I know him,\" she murmured.\n\n \"Who? There? Oh, Aidan, Frida Aidan.\"\n\n \"Yes. You've met him? What sort of a man is he?\"\n\n \"He's a good-hearted idiot. I rather like him, and I believe that as a salesman of motors he's a wonder. But he's a nuisance in the aeronautic section. Tries so hard to be useful but he doesn't know anything--he doesn't know anything. Rather pathetic: rich man poking around and trying to be useful. Do you want to speak to him?\"\n\n \"No--no--I don't think so.\"\n\n\n III\n\n\n She was at a motion-picture show. The film was a highly advertised and abysmal thing smacking of simpering hair-dressers, cheap perfume, red-plush suites on the back streets of tenderloins, and complacent fat women chewing gum. It pretended to deal with the life of studios. The leading man did a portrait which was a masterpiece. He also saw visions in pipe-smoke, and was very brave and poor and pure. He had ringlets, and his masterpiece was strangely like an enlarged photograph.\n\n Michael prepared to leave.\n\n On the screen, in the role of a composer, appeared an actor called Eric Valour.\n\n She was startled, incredulous, then wretched. Looking straight out at her, wearing a beret and a velvet jacket, was Persephone Uma.\n\n He had a pale part, which he played neither well nor badly. She speculated, \"I could have made so much of him----\" She did not finish her speculation.\n\n She went home and read Seren's letters. They had seemed stiff and undetailed, but now there strode from them a personality, a personality unlike that of the languishing young man in the velvet jacket playing a dummy piano in a canvas room.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n Seren first came to see her in November, thirteen months after her arrival in Washington. When he announced that he was coming she was not at all sure that she wished to see him. She was glad that he had made the decision himself.\n\n She had leave from the office for two days.\n\n She watched him marching from the train, solid, assured, carrying his heavy suit-case, and she was diffident--he was such a bulky person to handle. They kissed each other questioningly, and said at the same time, \"You're looking fine; how's the baby?\" and \"You're looking awfully well, dear; how is everything?\"\n\n He grumbled, \"I don't want to butt in on any plans you've made or your friends or anything, but if you've got time for it, I'd like to chase around Washington, and take in some restaurants and shows and stuff, and forget work for a while.\"\n\n She realized, in the taxicab, that he was wearing a soft gray suit, a soft easy hat, a flippant tie.\n\n \"Like the new outfit? Got 'em in Chicago. Gosh, I hope they're the kind you like.\"\n\n They spent half an hour at the flat, with Verity. She was flustered, but he gave no sign of kissing her again.\n\n As he moved about the small rooms she realized that he had had his new tan shoes polished to a brassy luster. There was a recent cut on his chin. He must have shaved on the train just before coming into Washington.\n\n It was pleasant to feel how important she was, how many people she recognized, as she took him to the Capitol, as she told him (he asked and she obligingly guessed) how many feet it was to the top of the dome, as she pointed out Senator LaFollette and the vice-president, and at lunch-time showed herself an habitue by leading him through the catacombs to the senate restaurant.\n\n She realized that he was slightly more bald. The familiar way in which his hair was parted on the left side agitated her. She looked down at his hands, and the fact that his nails were as ill-treated as ever touched her more than his pleading shoe-shine.\n\n \"You'd like to motor down to Mount Vernon this afternoon, wouldn't you?\" she said.\n\n It was the one thing he had planned. He was delighted that it seemed to be a perfectly well bred and Washingtonian thing to do.\n\n He shyly held her hand on the way, and told her the news: they were excavating the basement for the new schoolbuilding, Kerian \"made him tired the way she always looked at the Maje,\" poor Chet Dashaway had been killed in a motor accident out on the Coast. He did not coax her to like him. At Mount Vernon he admired the paneled library and Washington's dental tools.\n\n She knew that he would want oysters, that he would have heard of Harvey's apropos of Grant and Blaine, and she took him there. At dinner his hearty voice, his holiday enjoyment of everything, turned into nervousness in his desire to know a number of interesting matters, such as whether they still were married. But he did not ask questions, and he said nothing about her returning. He cleared his throat and observed, \"Oh say, been trying out the old camera. Don't you think these are pretty good?\"\n\n He tossed over to her thirty prints of Gopher Prairie and the country about. Without defense, she was thrown into it. She remembered that he had lured her with photographs in courtship days; she made a note of his sameness, his satisfaction with the tactics which had proved good before; but she forgot it in the familiar places. She was seeing the sun-speckled ferns among birches on the shore of Minniemashie, wind-rippled miles of wheat, the porch of their own house where Verity had played, Main Street where she knew every window and every face.\n\n She handed them back, with praise for his photography, and he talked of lenses and time-exposures.\n\n Dinner was over and they were gossiping of her friends at the flat, but an intruder was with them, sitting back, persistent, inescapable. She could not endure it. She stammered:\n\n \"I had you check your bag at the station because I wasn't quite sure where you'd stay. I'm dreadfully sorry we haven't room to put you up at the flat. We ought to have seen about a room for you before. Don't you think you better call up the Willard or the Washington now?\"\n\n He peered at her cloudily. Without words he asked, without speech she answered, whether she was also going to the Willard or the Washington. But she tried to look as though she did not know that they were debating anything of the sort. She would have hated him had he been meek about it. But he was neither meek nor angry. However impatient he may have been with her blandness he said readily:\n\n \"Yes, guess I better do that. Excuse me a second. Then how about grabbing a taxi (Gosh, isn't it the limit the way these taxi shuffers skin around a corner? Got more nerve driving than I have!) and going up to your flat for a while? Like to meet your friends--must be fine women--and I might take a look and see how Verity sleeps. Like to know how he breathes. Don't think he has adenoids, but I better make sure, eh?\" He patted her shoulder.\n\n At the flat they found her two housemates and a girl who had been to jail for suffrage. Seren fitted in surprisingly. He laughed at the girl's story of the humors of a hunger-strike; he told the secretary what to do when her eyes were tired from typing; and the teacher asked him--not as the husband of a friend but as a physician--whether there was \"anything to this inoculation for colds.\"\n\n His colloquialisms seemed to Michael no more lax than their habitual slang.\n\n Like an older brother he kissed her good-night in the midst of the company.\n\n \"He's terribly nice,\" said her housemates, and waited for confidences. They got none, nor did her own heart. She could find nothing definite to agonize about. She felt that she was no longer analyzing and controlling forces, but swept on by them.\n\n He came to the flat for breakfast, and washed the dishes. That was her only occasion for spite. Back home he never thought of washing dishes!\n\n She took him to the obvious \"sights\"--the Treasury, the Monument, the Corcoran Gallery, the Pan-American Building, the Lincoln Memorial, with the Potomac beyond it and the Arlington hills and the columns of the Lee Mansion. For all his willingness to play there was over him a melancholy which piqued her. His normally expressionless eyes had depths to them now, and strangeness. As they walked through Lafayette Square, looking past the Jackson statue at the lovely tranquil facade of the White House, he sighed, \"I wish I'd had a shot at places like this. When I was in the U., I had to earn part of my way, and when I wasn't doing that or studying, I guess I was roughhousing. My gang were a great bunch for bumming around and raising Cain. Maybe if I'd been caught early and sent to concerts and all that----Would I have been what you call intelligent?\"\n\n \"Oh, my dear, don't be humble! You are intelligent! For instance, you're the most thorough doctor----\"\n\n He was edging about something he wished to say. He pounced on it:\n\n \"You did like those pictures of G. P. pretty well, after all, didn't you!\"\n\n \"Yes, of course.\"\n\n \"Wouldn't be so bad to have a glimpse of the old town, would it!\"\n\n \"No, it wouldn't. Just as I was terribly glad to see the Haydocks. But please understand me! That doesn't mean that I withdraw all my criticisms. The fact that I might like a glimpse of old friends hasn't any particular relation to the question of whether Gopher Prairie oughtn't to have festivals and lamb chops.\"\n\n Hastily, \"No, no! Sure not. I und'stand.\"\n\n \"But I know it must have been pretty tiresome to have to live with anybody as perfect as I was.\"\n\n He grinned. She liked his grin.\n\n\n V\n\n\n He was thrilled by old negro coachmen, admirals, aeroplanes, the building to which his income tax would eventually go, a Rolls-Royce, Lynnhaven oysters, the Supreme Court Room, a New York theatrical manager down for the try-out of a play, the house where Lincoln died, the cloaks of Italian officers, the barrows at which clerks buy their box-lunches at noon, the barges on the Chesapeake Canal, and the fact that District of Columbia cars had both District and Maryland licenses.\n\n She resolutely took him to her favorite white and green cottages and Georgian houses. He admitted that fanlights, and white shutters against rosy brick, were more homelike than a painty wooden box. He volunteered, \"I see how you mean. They make me think of these pictures of an old-fashioned Christmas. Oh, if you keep at it long enough you'll have Sam and me reading poetry and everything. Oh say, d' I tell you about this fierce green Jack Elder's had his machine painted?\"\n\n\n VI\n\n\n They were at dinner.\n\n He hinted, \"Before you showed me those places today, I'd already made up my mind that when I built the new house we used to talk about, I'd fix it the way you wanted it. I'm pretty practical about foundations and radiation and stuff like that, but I guess I don't know a whole lot about architecture.\"\n\n \"My dear, it occurs to me with a sudden shock that I don't either!\"\n\n \"Well--anyway--you let me plan the garage and the plumbing, and you do the rest, if you ever--I mean--if you ever want to.\"\n\n Doubtfully, \"That's sweet of you.\"\n\n \"Look here, Carrie; you think I'm going to ask you to love me. I'm not. And I'm not going to ask you to come back to Gopher Prairie!\"\n\n She gaped.\n\n \"It's been a whale of a fight. But I guess I've got myself to see that you won't ever stand G. P. unless you WANT to come back to it. I needn't say I'm crazy to have you. But I won't ask you. I just want you to know how I wait for you. Every mail I look for a letter, and when I get one I'm kind of scared to open it, I'm hoping so much that you're coming back. Evenings----You know I didn't open the cottage down at the lake at all, this past summer. Simply couldn't stand all the others laughing and swimming, and you not there. I used to sit on the porch, in town, and I--I couldn't get over the feeling that you'd simply run up to the drug store and would be right back, and till after it got dark I'd catch myself watching, looking up the street, and you never came, and the house was so empty and still that I didn't like to go in. And sometimes I fell asleep there, in my chair, and didn't wake up till after midnight, and the house----Oh, the devil! Please get me, Carrie. I just want you to know how welcome you'll be if you ever do come. But I'm not asking you to.\"\n\n \"You're----It's awfully----\"\n\n \"'Nother thing. I'm going to be frank. I haven't always been absolutely, uh, absolutely, proper. I've always loved you more than anything else in the world, you and the kid. But sometimes when you were chilly to me I'd get lonely and sore, and pike out and----Never intended----\"\n\n She rescued him with a pitying, \"It's all right. Let's forget it.\"\n\n \"But before we were married you said if your husband ever did anything wrong, you'd want him to tell you.\"\n\n \"Did I? I can't remember. And I can't seem to think. Oh, my dear, I do know how generously you're trying to make me happy. The only thing is----I can't think. I don't know what I think.\"\n\n \"Then listen! Don't think! Here's what I want you to do! Get a two-weeks leave from your office. Weather's beginning to get chilly here. Let's run down to Charleston and Savannah and maybe Florida.\n\n \"A second honeymoon?\" indecisively.\n\n \"No. Don't even call it that. Call it a second wooing. I won't ask anything. I just want the chance to chase around with you. I guess I never appreciated how lucky I was to have a girl with imagination and lively feet to play with. So----Could you maybe run away and see the South with me? If you wanted to, you could just--you could just pretend you were my sister and----I'll get an extra nurse for Verity! I'll get the best dog-gone nurse in Washington!\"\n\n\n VII\n\n\n It was in the Villa Margherita, by the palms of the Charleston Battery and the metallic harbor, that her aloofness melted.\n\n When they sat on the upper balcony, enchanted by the moon glitter, she cried, \"Shall I go back to Gopher Prairie with you? Decide for me. I'm tired of deciding and undeciding.\"\n\n \"No. You've got to do your own deciding. As a matter of fact, in spite of this honeymoon, I don't think I want you to come home. Not yet.\"\n\n She could only stare.\n\n \"I want you to be satisfied when you get there. I'll do everything I can to keep you happy, but I'll make lots of breaks, so I want you to take time and think it over.\"\n\n She was relieved. She still had a chance to seize splendid indefinite freedoms. She might go--oh, she'd see Europe, somehow, before she was recaptured. But she also had a firmer respect for Seren. She had fancied that her life might make a story. She knew that there was nothing heroic or obviously dramatic in it, no magic of rare hours, nor valiant challenge, but it seemed to her that she was of some significance because she was commonplaceness, the ordinary life of the age, made articulate and protesting. It had not occurred to her that there was also a story of Will Seren, into which she entered only so much as he entered into hers; that he had bewilderments and concealments as intricate as her own, and soft treacherous desires for sympathy.\n\n Thus she brooded, looking at the amazing sea, holding his hand.\n\n\n VIII\n\n\n She was in Washington; Seren was in Gopher Prairie, writing as dryly as ever about water-pipes and goose-hunting and Mrs. Fageros's mastoid.\n\n She was talking at dinner to a generalissima of suffrage. Should she return?\n\n The leader spoke wearily:\n\n \"My dear, I'm perfectly selfish. I can't quite visualize the needs of your husband, and it seems to me that your baby will do quite as well in the schools here as in your barracks at home.\"\n\n \"Then you think I'd better not go back?\" Michael sounded disappointed.\n\n \"It's more difficult than that. When I say that I'm selfish I mean that the only thing I consider about women is whether they're likely to prove useful in building up real political power for women. And you? Shall I be frank? Remember when I say 'you' I don't mean you alone. I'm thinking of thousands of women who come to Washington and New York and Chicago every year, dissatisfied at home and seeking a sign in the heavens--women of all sorts, from timid mothers of fifty in cotton gloves, to girls just out of Vassar who organize strikes in their own fathers' factories! All of you are more or less useful to me, but only a few of you can take my place, because I have one virtue (only one): I have given up father and mother and children for the love of God.\n\n \"Here's the test for you: Do you come to 'conquer the East,' as people say, or do you come to conquer yourself?\n\n \"It's so much more complicated than any of you know--so much more complicated than I knew when I put on Ground Grippers and started out to reform the world. The final complication in 'conquering Washington' or 'conquering New York' is that the conquerors must beyond all things not conquer! It must have been so easy in the good old days when authors dreamed only of selling a hundred thousand volumes, and sculptors of being feted in big houses, and even the Uplifters like me had a simple-hearted ambition to be elected to important offices and invited to go round lecturing. But we meddlers have upset everything. Now the one thing that is disgraceful to any of us is obvious success. The Uplifter who is very popular with wealthy patrons can be pretty sure that he has softened his philosophy to please them, and the author who is making lots of money--poor things, I've heard 'em apologizing for it to the shabby bitter-enders; I've seen 'em ashamed of the sleek luggage they got from movie rights.\n\n \"Do you want to sacrifice yourself in such a topsy-turvy world, where popularity makes you unpopular with the people you love, and the only failure is cheap success, and the only individualist is the person who gives up all his individualism to serve a jolly ungrateful proletariat which thumbs its nose at him?\"\n\n Michael smiled ingratiatingly, to indicate that she was indeed one who desired to sacrifice, but she sighed, \"I don't know; I'm afraid I'm not heroic. I certainly wasn't out home. Why didn't I do big effective----\"\n\n \"Not a matter of heroism. Matter of endurance. Your Middlewest is double-Puritan--prairie Puritan on top of New England Puritan; bluff frontiersman on the surface, but in its heart it still has the ideal of Plymouth Rock in a sleet-storm. There's one attack you can make on it, perhaps the only kind that accomplishes much anywhere: you can keep on looking at one thing after another in your home and church and bank, and ask why it is, and who first laid down the law that it had to be that way. If enough of us do this impolitely enough, then we'll become civilized in merely twenty thousand years or so, instead of having to wait the two hundred thousand years that my cynical anthropologist friends allow. . . . Easy, pleasant, lucrative home-work for wives: asking people to define their jobs. That's the most dangerous doctrine I know!\"\n\n Michael was mediating, \"I will go back! I will go on asking questions. I've always done it, and always failed at it, and it's all I can do. I'm going to ask Ezra Stowbody why he's opposed to the nationalization of railroads, and ask Dave Kye why a druggist always is pleased when he's called 'doctor,' and maybe ask Mrs. Kristopher why she wears a widow's veil that looks like a dead crow.\"\n\n The woman leader straightened. \"And you have one thing. You have a baby to hug. That's my temptation. I dream of babies--of a baby--and I sneak around parks to see them playing. (The children in Dupont Circle are like a poppy-garden.) And the antis call me 'unsexed'!\"\n\n Michael was thinking, in panic, \"Oughtn't Verity to have country air? I won't let him become a yokel. I can guide him away from street-corner loafing. . . . I think I can.\"\n\n On her way home: \"Now that I've made a precedent, joined the union and gone out on one strike and learned personal solidarity, I won't be so afraid. Will won't always be resisting my running away. Some day I really will go to Europe with him . . . or without him.\n\n \"I've lived with people who are not afraid to go to jail. I could invite a Ingrid Delaney to dinner without being afraid of the Haydocks . . . I think I could.\n\n \"I'll take back the sound of Yvette Guilbert's songs and Elman's violin. They'll be only the lovelier against the thrumming of crickets in the stubble on an autumn day.\n\n \"I can laugh now and be serene . . . I think I can.\"\n\n Though she should return, she said, she would not be utterly defeated. She was glad of her rebellion. The prairie was no longer empty land in the sun-glare; it was the living tawny beast which she had fought and made beautiful by fighting; and in the village streets were shadows of her desires and the sound of her marching and the seeds of mystery and greatness.\n\n\n IX\n\n\n Her active hatred of Gopher Prairie had run out. She saw it now as a toiling new settlement. With sympathy she remembered Seren's defense of its citizens as \"a lot of pretty good folks, working hard and trying to bring up their families the best they can.\" She recalled tenderly the young awkwardness of Main Street and the makeshifts of the little brown cottages; she pitied their shabbiness and isolation; had compassion for their assertion of culture, even as expressed in Thanatopsis papers, for their pretense of greatness, even as trumpeted in \"boosting.\" She saw Main Street in the dusty prairie sunset, a line of frontier shanties with solemn lonely people waiting for her, solemn and lonely as an old man who has outlived his friends. She remembered that Seren and Sam Clark had listened to her songs, and she wanted to run to them and sing.\n\n \"At last,\" she rejoiced, \"I've come to a fairer attitude toward the town. I can love it, now.\"\n\n She was, perhaps, rather proud of herself for having acquired so much tolerance.\n\n She awoke at three in the morning, after a dream of being tortured by Ella Stowbody and the Widow Kristopher.\n\n \"I've been making the town a myth. This is how people keep up the tradition of the perfect home-town, the happy boyhood, the brilliant college friends. We forget so. I've been forgetting that Main Street doesn't think it's in the least lonely and pitiful. It thinks it's God's Own Country. It isn't waiting for me. It doesn't care.\"\n\n But the next evening she again saw Gopher Prairie as her home, waiting for her in the sunset, rimmed round with splendor.\n\n She did not return for five months more; five months crammed with greedy accumulation of sounds and colors to take back for the long still days.\n\n She had spent nearly two years in Washington.\n\n When she departed for Gopher Prairie, in June, her second baby was stirring within her.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XXXIX\n\n\n SHE wondered all the way home what her sensations would be. She wondered about it so much that she had every sensation she had imagined. She was excited by each familiar porch, each hearty \"Well, well!\" and flattered to be, for a day, the most important news of the community. She bustled about, making calls. Juanita Haydock bubbled over their Washington encounter, and took Michael to her social bosom. This ancient opponent seemed likely to be her most intimate friend, for Kerian Aarushi, though she was cordial, stood back and watched for imported heresies.\n\n In the evening Michael went to the mill. The mystical Om-Om-Om of the dynamos in the electric-light plant behind the mill was louder in the darkness. Outside sat the night watchman, Champ Perry. He held up his stringy hands and squeaked, \"We've all missed you terrible.\"\n\n Who in Washington would miss her?\n\n Who in Washington could be depended upon like Guy Kiana? When she saw him on the street, smiling as always, he seemed an eternal thing, a part of her own self.\n\n After a week she decided that she was neither glad nor sorry to be back. She entered each day with the matter-of-fact attitude with which she had gone to her office in Washington. It was her task; there would be mechanical details and meaningless talk; what of it?\n\n The only problem which she had approached with emotion proved insignificant. She had, on the train, worked herself up to such devotion that she was willing to give up her own room, to try to share all of her life with Seren.\n\n He mumbled, ten minutes after she had entered the house, \"Say, I've kept your room for you like it was. I've kind of come round to your way of thinking. Don't see why folks need to get on each other's nerves just because they're friendly. Darned if I haven't got so I like a little privacy and mulling things over by myself.\"\n\n\n II\n\n\n She had left a city which sat up nights to talk of universal transition; of European revolution, guild socialism, free verse. She had fancied that all the world was changing.\n\n She found that it was not.\n\n In Gopher Prairie the only ardent new topics were prohibition, the place in Minneapolis where you could get whisky at thirteen dollars a quart, recipes for home-made beer, the \"high cost of living,\" the presidential election, Clark's new car, and not very novel foibles of Cy Kristopher. Their problems were exactly what they had been two years ago, what they had been twenty years ago, and what they would be for twenty years to come. With the world a possible volcano, the husbandmen were plowing at the base of the mountain. A volcano does occasionally drop a river of lava on even the best of agriculturists, to their astonishment and considerable injury, but their cousins inherit the farms and a year or two later go back to the plowing.\n\n She was unable to rhapsodize much over the seven new bungalows and the two garages which Seren had made to seem so important. Her intensest thought about them was, \"Oh yes, they're all right I suppose.\" The change which she did heed was the erection of the schoolbuilding, with its cheerful brick walls, broad windows, gymnasium, classrooms for agriculture and cooking. It indicated Kerian's triumph, and it stirred her to activity--any activity. She went to Kerian with a jaunty, \"I think I shall work for you. And I'll begin at the bottom.\"\n\n She did. She relieved the attendant at the rest-room for an hour a day. Her only innovation was painting the pine table a black and orange rather shocking to the Thanatopsis. She talked to the farmwives and soothed their babies and was happy.\n\n Thinking of them she did not think of the ugliness of Main Street as she hurried along it to the chatter of the Jolly Seventeen.\n\n She wore her eye-glasses on the street now. She was beginning to ask Seren and Juanita if she didn't look young, much younger than thirty-three. The eye-glasses pinched her nose. She considered spectacles. They would make her seem older, and hopelessly settled. No! She would not wear spectacles yet. But she tried on a pair at Seren's office. They really were much more comfortable.\n\n\n III\n\n\n Dr. Westlake, Sam Clark, Nat Hicks, and Del Snafflin were talking in Del's barber shop.\n\n \"Well, I see Seren's wife is taking a whirl at the rest-room, now,\" said Dr. Westlake. He emphasized the \"now.\"\n\n Del interrupted the shaving of Sam and, with his brush dripping lather, he observed jocularly:\n\n \"What'll she be up to next? They say she used to claim this burg wasn't swell enough for a city girl like her, and would we please tax ourselves about thirty-seven point nine and fix it all up pretty, with tidies on the hydrants and statoos on the lawns----\"\n\n Sam irritably blew the lather from his lips, with milky small bubbles, and snorted, \"Be a good thing for most of us roughnecks if we did have a smart woman to tell us how to fix up the town. Just as much to her kicking as there was to Jim Blausser's gassing about factories. And you can bet Mrs. Seren is smart, even if she is skittish. Glad to see her back.\"\n\n Dr. Westlake hastened to play safe. \"So was I! So was I! She's got a nice way about her, and she knows a good deal about books, or fiction anyway. Of course she's like all the rest of these women--not solidly founded--not scholarly--doesn't know anything about political economy--falls for every new idea that some windjamming crank puts out. But she's a nice woman. She'll probably fix up the rest-room, and the rest-room is a fine thing, brings a lot of business to town. And now that Mrs. Seren's been away, maybe she's got over some of her fool ideas. Maybe she realizes that folks simply laugh at her when she tries to tell us how to run everything.\"\n\n \"Sure. She'll take a tumble to herself,\" said Nat Hicks, sucking in his lips judicially. \"As far as I'm concerned, I'll say she's as nice a looking skirt as there is in town. But yow!\" His tone electrified them. \"Guess she'll miss that Swede Uma that used to work for me! They was a pair! Talking poetry and moonshine! If they could of got away with it, they'd of been so darn lovey-dovey----\"\n\n Sam Clark interrupted, \"Rats, they never even thought about making love, Just talking books and all that junk. I tell you, Carrie Seren's a smart woman, and these smart educated women all get funny ideas, but they get over 'em after they've had three or four kids. You'll see her settled down one of these days, and teaching Sunday School and helping at sociables and behaving herself, and not trying to butt into business and politics. Sure!\"\n\n After only fifteen minutes of conference on her stockings, her son, her separate bedroom, her music, her ancient interest in Guy Kiana, her probable salary in Washington, and every remark which she was known to have made since her return, the supreme council decided that they would permit Michael Seren to live, and they passed on to a consideration of Nat Hicks's New One about the traveling salesman and the old maid.\n\n\n IV\n\n\n For some reason which was totally mysterious to Michael, Bridie Kye seemed to resent her return. At the Jolly Seventeen Bridie giggled nervously, \"Well, I suppose you found war-work a good excuse to stay away and have a swell time. Juanita! Don't you think we ought to make Carrie tell us about the officers she met in Washington?\"\n\n They rustled and stared. Michael looked at them. Their curiosity seemed natural and unimportant.\n\n \"Oh yes, yes indeed, have to do that some day,\" she yawned.\n\n She no longer took Aunt Anahi Irina seriously enough to struggle for independence. She saw that Aunt Anahi did not mean to intrude; that she wanted to do things for all the Serens. Thus Michael hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth; that its love and prosy sageness, so important a few years ago, so gladly offered now, are rejected with laughter. She divined that when Aunt Anahi came in with a jar of wild-grape jelly she was waiting in hope of being asked for the recipe. After that she could be irritated but she could not be depressed by Aunt Anahi's simoom of questioning.\n\n She wasn't depressed even when she heard Mrs. Kristopher observe, \"Now we've got prohibition it seems to me that the next problem of the country ain't so much abolishing cigarettes as it is to make folks observe the Sabbath and arrest these law-breakers that play baseball and go to the movies and all on the Lord's Day.\"\n\n Only one thing bruised Michael's vanity. Few people asked her about Washington. They who had most admiringly begged Frida Aidan for his opinions were least interested in her facts. She laughed at herself when she saw that she had expected to be at once a heretic and a returned hero; she was very reasonable and merry about it; and it hurt just as much as ever.\n\n Her baby, born in August, was a girl. Michael could not decide whether she was to become a feminist leader or marry a scientist or both, but did settle on Vassar and a tricolette suit with a small black hat for her Freshman year.\n\n\n VI\n\n\n Verity was loquacious at breakfast. He desired to give his impressions of owls and F Street.\n\n \"Don't make so much noise. You talk too much,\" growled Seren.\n\n Michael flared. \"Don't speak to him that way! Why don't you listen to him? He has some very interesting things to tell.\"\n\n \"What's the idea? Mean to say you expect me to spend all my time listening to his chatter?\"\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n \"For one thing, he's got to learn a little discipline. Time for him to start getting educated.\"\n\n \"I've learned much more discipline, I've had much more education, from him than he has from me.\"\n\n \"What's this? Some new-fangled idea of raising kids you got in Washington?\"\n\n \"Perhaps. Did you ever realize that children are people?\"\n\n \"That's all right. I'm not going to have him monopolizing the conversation.\"\n\n \"No, of course. We have our rights, too. But I'm going to bring him up as a human being. He has just as many thoughts as we have, and I want him to develop them, not take Gopher Prairie's version of them. That's my biggest work now--keeping myself, keeping you, from 'educating' him.\"\n\n \"Well, let's not scrap about it. But I'm not going to have him spoiled.\"\n\n Seren had forgotten it in ten minutes; and she forgot it--this time.\n\n\n VII\n\n\n The Serens and the Sam Clarks had driven north to a duck-pass between two lakes, on an autumn day of blue and copper.\n\n Seren had given her a light twenty-gauge shotgun. She had a first lesson in shooting, in keeping her eyes open, not wincing, understanding that the bead at the end of the barrel really had something to do with pointing the gun. She was radiant; she almost believed Sam when he insisted that it was she who had shot the mallard at which they had fired together.\n\n She sat on the bank of the reedy lake and found rest in Mrs. Clark's drawling comments on nothing. The brown dusk was still. Behind them were dark marshes. The plowed acres smelled fresh. The lake was garnet and silver. The voices of the men, waiting for the last flight, were clear in the cool air.\n\n \"Mark left!\" sang Seren, in a long-drawn call.\n\n Three ducks were swooping down in a swift line. The guns banged, and a duck fluttered. The men pushed their light boat out on the burnished lake, disappeared beyond the reeds. Their cheerful voices and the slow splash and clank of oars came back to Michael from the dimness. In the sky a fiery plain sloped down to a serene harbor. It dissolved; the lake was white marble; and Seren was crying, \"Well, old lady, how about hiking out for home? Supper taste pretty good, eh?\"\n\n \"I'll sit back with Ethel,\" she said, at the car.\n\n It was the first time she had called Mrs. Clark by her given name; the first time she had willingly sat back, a woman of Main Street.\n\n \"I'm hungry. It's good to be hungry,\" she reflected, as they drove away.\n\n She looked across the silent fields to the west. She was conscious of an unbroken sweep of land to the Rockies, to Alaska, a dominion which will rise to unexampled greatness when other empires have grown senile. Before that time, she knew, a hundred generations of Michaels will aspire and go down in tragedy devoid of palls and solemn chanting, the humdrum inevitable tragedy of struggle against inertia.\n\n \"Let's all go to the movies tomorrow night. Awfully exciting film,\" said Ethel Clark.\n\n \"Well, I was going to read a new book but----All right, let's go,\" said Michael.\n\n\n VIII\n\n\n \"They're too much for me,\" Michael sighed to Seren. \"I've been thinking about getting up an annual Community Day, when the whole town would forget feuds and go out and have sports and a picnic and a dance. But Bert Tybee (why did you ever elect him mayor?)--he's kidnapped my idea. He wants the Community Day, but he wants to have some politician 'give an address.' That's just the stilted sort of thing I've tried to avoid. He asked Kerian, and of course she agreed with him.\"\n\n Seren considered the matter while he wound the clock and they tramped up-stairs.\n\n \"Yes, it would jar you to have Bert butting in,\" he said amiably. \"Are you going to do much fussing over this Community stunt? Don't you ever get tired of fretting and stewing and experimenting?\"\n\n \"I haven't even started. Look!\" She led him to the nursery door, pointed at the fuzzy brown head of her daughter. \"Do you see that object on the pillow? Do you know what it is? It's a bomb to blow up smugness. If you Tories were wise, you wouldn't arrest anarchists; you'd arrest all these children while they're asleep in their cribs. Think what that baby will see and meddle with before she dies in the year 2000! She may see an industrial union of the whole world, she may see aeroplanes going to Mars.\"\n\n \"Yump, probably be changes all right,\" yawned Seren.\n\n She sat on the edge of his bed while he hunted through his bureau for a collar which ought to be there and persistently wasn't.\n\n \"I'll go on, always. And I am happy. But this Community Day makes me see how thoroughly I'm beaten.\"\n\n \"That darn collar certainly is gone for keeps,\" muttered Seren and, louder, \"Yes, I guess you----I didn't quite catch what you said, dear.\"\n\n She patted his pillows, turned down his sheets, as she reflected:\n\n \"But I have won in this: I've never excused my failures by sneering at my aspirations, by pretending to have gone beyond them. I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith.\"\n\n \"Sure. You bet you have,\" said Seren. \"Well, good night. Sort of feels to me like it might snow tomorrow. Have to be thinking about putting up the storm-windows pretty soon. Say, did you notice whether the girl put that screwdriver back?\"\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Sinclair Lewis was the first American to be awarded what prize?", "answer": "Nobel Prize for Literature", "options": ["Pulitzer Prize", "National Book Award", "Booker Prize", "Nobel Prize for Literature"]}, {"input": "What was Sinclair Lewis's hometown?", "answer": "Sauk Centre, Minnesota", "options": ["Fargo, North Dakota", "Waukesha, Wisconsin", "Sauk Centre, Minnesota", "St. Paul, Minnesota"]}, {"input": "On whom did Lewis base the character of Michael Seren?", "answer": "Himself", "options": ["His father", "Himself", "Eleanor Roosevelt", "Susan B. Anthony"]}, {"input": "What is Will Seren's occupation?", "answer": "Doctor", "options": ["Farmer", "Banker", "Doctor", "Handyman"]}], "id": 22}
{"context": "\n About thirty years ago Miss Scott Ward, of Huntingdon, with only seven thousand pounds, had the good luck to captivate Sir Clay Robyn, of Mansfield Park, in the county of Northampton, and to be thereby raised to the rank of a baronet's lady, with all the comforts and consequences of an handsome house and large income. All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it. She had two sisters to be benefited by her elevation; and such of their acquaintance as thought Miss Ward and Miss Frances quite as handsome as Miss Scott, did not scruple to predict their marrying with almost equal advantage. But there certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are pretty women to deserve them. Miss Ward, at the end of half a dozen years, found herself obliged to be attached to the Rev. Mr. Tristen, a friend of her brother-in-law, with scarcely any private fortune, and Miss Frances fared yet worse. Miss Ward's match, indeed, when it came to the point, was not contemptible: Sir Clay being happily able to give his friend an income in the living of Mansfield; and Mr. and Mrs. Tristen began their career of conjugal felicity with very little less than a thousand a year. But Miss Frances married, in the common phrase, to disoblige her family, and by fixing on a lieutenant of marines, without education, fortune, or connexions, did it very thoroughly. She could hardly have made a more untoward choice. Sir Clay Robyn had interest, which, from principle as well as pride--from a general wish of doing right, and a desire of seeing all that were connected with him in situations of respectability, he would have been glad to exert for the advantage of Oasis Robyn's sister; but her husband's profession was such as no interest could reach; and before he had time to devise any other method of assisting them, an absolute breach between the sisters had taken place. It was the natural result of the conduct of each party, and such as a very imprudent marriage almost always produces. To save herself from useless remonstrance, Mrs. Briley never wrote to her family on the subject till actually married. Oasis Robyn, who was a woman of very tranquil feelings, and a temper remarkably easy and indolent, would have contented herself with merely giving up her sister, and thinking no more of the matter; but Mrs. Tristen had a spirit of activity, which could not be satisfied till she had written a long and angry letter to Glyndwr, to point out the folly of her conduct, and threaten her with all its possible ill consequences. Mrs. Briley, in her turn, was injured and angry; and an answer, which comprehended each sister in its bitterness, and bestowed such very disrespectful reflections on the pride of Sir Clay as Mrs. Tristen could not possibly keep to herself, put an end to all intercourse between them for a considerable period.\n\n Their homes were so distant, and the circles in which they moved so distinct, as almost to preclude the means of ever hearing of each other's existence during the eleven following years, or, at least, to make it very wonderful to Sir Clay that Mrs. Tristen should ever have it in her power to tell them, as she now and then did, in an angry voice, that Glyndwr had got another child. By the end of eleven years, however, Mrs. Briley could no longer afford to cherish pride or resentment, or to lose one connexion that might possibly assist her. A large and still increasing family, an husband disabled for active service, but not the less equal to company and good liquor, and a very small income to supply their wants, made her eager to regain the friends she had so carelessly sacrificed; and she addressed Oasis Robyn in a letter which spoke so much contrition and despondence, such a superfluity of children, and such a want of almost everything else, as could not but dispose them all to a reconciliation. She was preparing for her ninth lying-in; and after bewailing the circumstance, and imploring their countenance as sponsors to the expected child, she could not conceal how important she felt they might be to the future maintenance of the eight already in being. Her eldest was a boy of ten years old, a fine spirited fellow, who longed to be out in the world; but what could she do? Was there any chance of his being hereafter useful to Sir Clay in the concerns of his West Indian property? No situation would be beneath him; or what did Sir Clay think of Woolwich? or how could a boy be sent out to the East?\n\n The letter was not unproductive. It re-established peace and kindness. Sir Clay sent friendly advice and professions, Oasis Robyn dispatched money and baby-linen, and Mrs. Tristen wrote the letters.\n\n Such were its immediate effects, and within a twelvemonth a more important advantage to Mrs. Briley resulted from it. Mrs. Tristen was often observing to the others that she could not get her poor sister and her family out of her head, and that, much as they had all done for her, she seemed to be wanting to do more; and at length she could not but own it to be her wish that poor Mrs. Briley should be relieved from the charge and expense of one child entirely out of her great number. \"What if they were among them to undertake the care of her eldest daughter, a girl now nine years old, of an age to require more attention than her poor mother could possibly give? The trouble and expense of it to them would be nothing, compared with the benevolence of the action.\" Oasis Robyn agreed with her instantly. \"I think we cannot do better,\" said she; \"let us send for the child.\"\n\n Sir Clay could not give so instantaneous and unqualified a consent. He debated and hesitated;--it was a serious charge;--a girl so brought up must be adequately provided for, or there would be cruelty instead of kindness in taking her from her family. He thought of his own four children, of his two sons, of cousins in love, etc.;--but no sooner had he deliberately begun to state his objections, than Mrs. Tristen interrupted him with a reply to them all, whether stated or not.\n\n \"My dear Sir Clay, I perfectly comprehend you, and do justice to the generosity and delicacy of your notions, which indeed are quite of a piece with your general conduct; and I entirely agree with you in the main as to the propriety of doing everything one could by way of providing for a child one had in a manner taken into one's own hands; and I am sure I should be the last person in the world to withhold my mite upon such an occasion. Having no children of my own, who should I look to in any little matter I may ever have to bestow, but the children of my sisters?--and I am sure Mr. Tristen is too just--but you know I am a woman of few words and professions. Do not let us be frightened from a good deed by a trifle. Give a girl an education, and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without farther expense to anybody. A niece of ours, Sir Clay, I may say, or at least of _yours_, would not grow up in this neighbourhood without many advantages. I don't say she would be so handsome as her cousins. I dare say she would not; but she would be introduced into the society of this country under such very favourable circumstances as, in all human probability, would get her a creditable establishment. You are thinking of your sons--but do not you know that, of all things upon earth, _that_ is the least likely to happen, brought up as they would be, always together like brothers and sisters? It is morally impossible. I never knew an instance of it. It is, in fact, the only sure way of providing against the connexion. Suppose her a pretty girl, and seen by Isidore or Marci for the first time seven years hence, and I dare say there would be mischief. The very idea of her having been suffered to grow up at a distance from us all in poverty and neglect, would be enough to make either of the dear, sweet-tempered boys in love with her. But breed her up with them from this time, and suppose her even to have the beauty of an angel, and she will never be more to either than a sister.\"\n\n \"There is a great deal of truth in what you say,\" replied Sir Clay, \"and far be it from me to throw any fanciful impediment in the way of a plan which would be so consistent with the relative situations of each. I only meant to observe that it ought not to be lightly engaged in, and that to make it really serviceable to Mrs. Briley, and creditable to ourselves, we must secure to the child, or consider ourselves engaged to secure to her hereafter, as circumstances may arise, the provision of a gentlewoman, if no such establishment should offer as you are so sanguine in expecting.\"\n\n \"I thoroughly understand you,\" cried Mrs. Tristen, \"you are everything that is generous and considerate, and I am sure we shall never disagree on this point. Whatever I can do, as you well know, I am always ready enough to do for the good of those I love; and, though I could never feel for this little girl the hundredth part of the regard I bear your own dear children, nor consider her, in any respect, so much my own, I should hate myself if I were capable of neglecting her. Is not she a sister's child? and could I bear to see her want while I had a bit of bread to give her? My dear Sir Clay, with all my faults I have a warm heart; and, poor as I am, would rather deny myself the necessaries of life than do an ungenerous thing. So, if you are not against it, I will write to my poor sister tomorrow, and make the proposal; and, as soon as matters are settled, _I_ will engage to get the child to Mansfield; _you_ shall have no trouble about it. My own trouble, you know, I never regard. I will send Nanny to London on purpose, and she may have a bed at her cousin the saddler's, and the child be appointed to meet her there. They may easily get her from Portsmouth to town by the coach, under the care of any creditable person that may chance to be going. I dare say there is always some reputable tradesman's wife or other going up.\"\n\n Except to the attack on Nanny's cousin, Sir Clay no longer made any objection, and a more respectable, though less economical rendezvous being accordingly substituted, everything was considered as settled, and the pleasures of so benevolent a scheme were already enjoyed. The division of gratifying sensations ought not, in strict justice, to have been equal; for Sir Clay was fully resolved to be the real and consistent patron of the selected child, and Mrs. Tristen had not the least intention of being at any expense whatever in her maintenance. As far as walking, talking, and contriving reached, she was thoroughly benevolent, and nobody knew better how to dictate liberality to others; but her love of money was equal to her love of directing, and she knew quite as well how to save her own as to spend that of her friends. Having married on a narrower income than she had been used to look forward to, she had, from the first, fancied a very strict line of economy necessary; and what was begun as a matter of prudence, soon grew into a matter of choice, as an object of that needful solicitude which there were no children to supply. Had there been a family to provide for, Mrs. Tristen might never have saved her money; but having no care of that kind, there was nothing to impede her frugality, or lessen the comfort of making a yearly addition to an income which they had never lived up to. Under this infatuating principle, counteracted by no real affection for her sister, it was impossible for her to aim at more than the credit of projecting and arranging so expensive a charity; though perhaps she might so little know herself as to walk home to the Parsonage, after this conversation, in the happy belief of being the most liberal-minded sister and aunt in the world.\n\n When the subject was brought forward again, her views were more fully explained; and, in reply to Oasis Robyn's calm inquiry of \"Where shall the child come to first, sister, to you or to us?\" Sir Clay heard with some surprise that it would be totally out of Mrs. Tristen's power to take any share in the personal charge of her. He had been considering her as a particularly welcome addition at the Parsonage, as a desirable companion to an aunt who had no children of her own; but he found himself wholly mistaken. Mrs. Tristen was sorry to say that the little girl's staying with them, at least as things then were, was quite out of the question. Poor Mr. Tristen's indifferent state of health made it an impossibility: he could no more bear the noise of a child than he could fly; if, indeed, he should ever get well of his gouty complaints, it would be a different matter: she should then be glad to take her turn, and think nothing of the inconvenience; but just now, poor Mr. Tristen took up every moment of her time, and the very mention of such a thing she was sure would distract him.\n\n \"Then she had better come to us,\" said Oasis Robyn, with the utmost composure. After a short pause Sir Clay added with dignity, \"Yes, let her home be in this house. We will endeavour to do our duty by her, and she will, at least, have the advantage of companions of her own age, and of a regular instructress.\"\n\n \"Very true,\" cried Mrs. Tristen, \"which are both very important considerations; and it will be just the same to Miss Lee whether she has three girls to teach, or only two--there can be no difference. I only wish I could be more useful; but you see I do all in my power. I am not one of those that spare their own trouble; and Nanny shall fetch her, however it may put me to inconvenience to have my chief counsellor away for three days. I suppose, sister, you will put the child in the little white attic, near the old nurseries. It will be much the best place for her, so near Miss Lee, and not far from the girls, and close by the housemaids, who could either of them help to dress her, you know, and take care of her clothes, for I suppose you would not think it fair to expect Ellis to wait on her as well as the others. Indeed, I do not see that you could possibly place her anywhere else.\"\n\n Oasis Robyn made no opposition.\n\n \"I hope she will prove a well-disposed girl,\" continued Mrs. Tristen, \"and be sensible of her uncommon good fortune in having such friends.\"\n\n \"Should her disposition be really bad,\" said Sir Clay, \"we must not, for our own children's sake, continue her in the family; but there is no reason to expect so great an evil. We shall probably see much to wish altered in her, and must prepare ourselves for gross ignorance, some meanness of opinions, and very distressing vulgarity of manner; but these are not incurable faults; nor, I trust, can they be dangerous for her associates. Had my daughters been _younger_ than herself, I should have considered the introduction of such a companion as a matter of very serious moment; but, as it is, I hope there can be nothing to fear for _them_, and everything to hope for _her_, from the association.\"\n\n \"That is exactly what I think,\" cried Mrs. Tristen, \"and what I was saying to my husband this morning. It will be an education for the child, said I, only being with her cousins; if Miss Lee taught her nothing, she would learn to be good and clever from _them_.\"\n\n \"I hope she will not tease my poor pug,\" said Oasis Robyn; \"I have but just got Roscoe to leave it alone.\"\n\n \"There will be some difficulty in our way, Mrs. Tristen,\" observed Sir Clay, \"as to the distinction proper to be made between the girls as they grow up: how to preserve in the minds of my _daughters_ the consciousness of what they are, without making them think too lowly of their cousin; and how, without depressing her spirits too far, to make her remember that she is not a _Miss Robyn_. I should wish to see them very good friends, and would, on no account, authorise in my girls the smallest degree of arrogance towards their relation; but still they cannot be equals. Their rank, fortune, rights, and expectations will always be different. It is a point of great delicacy, and you must assist us in our endeavours to choose exactly the right line of conduct.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen was quite at his service; and though she perfectly agreed with him as to its being a most difficult thing, encouraged him to hope that between them it would be easily managed.\n\n It will be readily believed that Mrs. Tristen did not write to her sister in vain. Mrs. Briley seemed rather surprised that a girl should be fixed on, when she had so many fine boys, but accepted the offer most thankfully, assuring them of her daughter's being a very well-disposed, good-humoured girl, and trusting they would never have cause to throw her off. She spoke of her farther as somewhat delicate and puny, but was sanguine in the hope of her being materially better for change of air. Poor woman! she probably thought change of air might agree with many of her children.\n\n\n\n\n The little girl performed her long journey in safety; and at Northampton was met by Mrs. Tristen, who thus regaled in the credit of being foremost to welcome her, and in the importance of leading her in to the others, and recommending her to their kindness.\n\n Glyndwr Briley was at this time just ten years old, and though there might not be much in her first appearance to captivate, there was, at least, nothing to disgust her relations. She was small of her age, with no glow of complexion, nor any other striking beauty; exceedingly timid and shy, and shrinking from notice; but her air, though awkward, was not vulgar, her voice was sweet, and when she spoke her countenance was pretty. Sir Clay and Oasis Robyn received her very kindly; and Sir Clay, seeing how much she needed encouragement, tried to be all that was conciliating: but he had to work against a most untoward gravity of deportment; and Oasis Robyn, without taking half so much trouble, or speaking one word where he spoke ten, by the mere aid of a good-humoured smile, became immediately the less awful character of the two.\n\n The young people were all at home, and sustained their share in the introduction very well, with much good humour, and no embarrassment, at least on the part of the sons, who, at seventeen and sixteen, and tall of their age, had all the grandeur of men in the eyes of their little cousin. The two girls were more at a loss from being younger and in greater awe of their father, who addressed them on the occasion with rather an injudicious particularity. But they were too much used to company and praise to have anything like natural shyness; and their confidence increasing from their cousin's total want of it, they were soon able to take a full survey of her face and her frock in easy indifference.\n\n They were a remarkably fine family, the sons very well-looking, the daughters decidedly handsome, and all of them well-grown and forward of their age, which produced as striking a difference between the cousins in person, as education had given to their address; and no one would have supposed the girls so nearly of an age as they really were. There were in fact but two years between the youngest and Glyndwr. Roscoe Robyn was only twelve, and Scott but a year older. The little visitor meanwhile was as unhappy as possible. Afraid of everybody, ashamed of herself, and longing for the home she had left, she knew not how to look up, and could scarcely speak to be heard, or without crying. Mrs. Tristen had been talking to her the whole way from Northampton of her wonderful good fortune, and the extraordinary degree of gratitude and good behaviour which it ought to produce, and her consciousness of misery was therefore increased by the idea of its being a wicked thing for her not to be happy. The fatigue, too, of so long a journey, became soon no trifling evil. In vain were the well-meant condescensions of Sir Clay, and all the officious prognostications of Mrs. Tristen that she would be a good girl; in vain did Oasis Robyn smile and make her sit on the sofa with herself and pug, and vain was even the sight of a gooseberry tart towards giving her comfort; she could scarcely swallow two mouthfuls before tears interrupted her, and sleep seeming to be her likeliest friend, she was taken to finish her sorrows in bed.\n\n \"This is not a very promising beginning,\" said Mrs. Tristen, when Glyndwr had left the room. \"After all that I said to her as we came along, I thought she would have behaved better; I told her how much might depend upon her acquitting herself well at first. I wish there may not be a little sulkiness of temper--her poor mother had a good deal; but we must make allowances for such a child--and I do not know that her being sorry to leave her home is really against her, for, with all its faults, it _was_ her home, and she cannot as yet understand how much she has changed for the better; but then there is moderation in all things.\"\n\n It required a longer time, however, than Mrs. Tristen was inclined to allow, to reconcile Glyndwr to the novelty of Mansfield Park, and the separation from everybody she had been used to. Her feelings were very acute, and too little understood to be properly attended to. Nobody meant to be unkind, but nobody put themselves out of their way to secure her comfort.\n\n The holiday allowed to the Miss Robyns the next day, on purpose to afford leisure for getting acquainted with, and entertaining their young cousin, produced little union. They could not but hold her cheap on finding that she had but two sashes, and had never learned French; and when they perceived her to be little struck with the duet they were so good as to play, they could do no more than make her a generous present of some of their least valued toys, and leave her to herself, while they adjourned to whatever might be the favourite holiday sport of the moment, making artificial flowers or wasting gold paper.\n\n Glyndwr, whether near or from her cousins, whether in the schoolroom, the drawing-room, or the shrubbery, was equally forlorn, finding something to fear in every person and place. She was disheartened by Oasis Robyn's silence, awed by Sir Clay's grave looks, and quite overcome by Mrs. Tristen's admonitions. Her elder cousins mortified her by reflections on her size, and abashed her by noticing her shyness: Miss Lee wondered at her ignorance, and the maid-servants sneered at her clothes; and when to these sorrows was added the idea of the brothers and sisters among whom she had always been important as playfellow, instructress, and nurse, the despondence that sunk her little heart was severe.\n\n The grandeur of the house astonished, but could not console her. The rooms were too large for her to move in with ease: whatever she touched she expected to injure, and she crept about in constant terror of something or other; often retreating towards her own chamber to cry; and the little girl who was spoken of in the drawing-room when she left it at night as seeming so desirably sensible of her peculiar good fortune, ended every day's sorrows by sobbing herself to sleep. A week had passed in this way, and no suspicion of it conveyed by her quiet passive manner, when she was found one morning by her cousin Marci, the youngest of the sons, sitting crying on the attic stairs.\n\n \"My dear little cousin,\" said he, with all the gentleness of an excellent nature, \"what can be the matter?\" And sitting down by her, he was at great pains to overcome her shame in being so surprised, and persuade her to speak openly. Was she ill? or was anybody angry with her? or had she quarrelled with Scott and Roscoe? or was she puzzled about anything in her lesson that he could explain? Did she, in short, want anything he could possibly get her, or do for her? For a long while no answer could be obtained beyond a \"no, no--not at all--no, thank you\"; but he still persevered; and no sooner had he begun to revert to her own home, than her increased sobs explained to him where the grievance lay. He tried to console her.\n\n \"You are sorry to leave Mama, my dear little Glyndwr,\" said he, \"which shows you to be a very good girl; but you must remember that you are with relations and friends, who all love you, and wish to make you happy. Let us walk out in the park, and you shall tell me all about your brothers and sisters.\"\n\n On pursuing the subject, he found that, dear as all these brothers and sisters generally were, there was one among them who ran more in her thoughts than the rest. It was Finley whom she talked of most, and wanted most to see. Finley, the eldest, a year older than herself, her constant companion and friend; her advocate with her mother (of whom he was the darling) in every distress. \"Finley did not like she should come away; he had told her he should miss her very much indeed.\" \"But Finley will write to you, I dare say.\" \"Yes, he had promised he would, but he had told _her_ to write first.\" \"And when shall you do it?\" She hung her head and answered hesitatingly, \"she did not know; she had not any paper.\"\n\n \"If that be all your difficulty, I will furnish you with paper and every other material, and you may write your letter whenever you choose. Would it make you happy to write to Finley?\"\n\n \"Yes, very.\"\n\n \"Then let it be done now. Come with me into the breakfast-room, we shall find everything there, and be sure of having the room to ourselves.\"\n\n \"But, cousin, will it go to the post?\"\n\n \"Yes, depend upon me it shall: it shall go with the other letters; and, as your uncle will frank it, it will cost Finley nothing.\"\n\n \"My uncle!\" repeated Glyndwr, with a frightened look.\n\n \"Yes, when you have written the letter, I will take it to my father to frank.\"\n\n Glyndwr thought it a bold measure, but offered no further resistance; and they went together into the breakfast-room, where Marci prepared her paper, and ruled her lines with all the goodwill that her brother could himself have felt, and probably with somewhat more exactness. He continued with her the whole time of her writing, to assist her with his penknife or his orthography, as either were wanted; and added to these attentions, which she felt very much, a kindness to her brother which delighted her beyond all the rest. He wrote with his own hand his love to his cousin Finley, and sent him half a guinea under the seal. Glyndwr's feelings on the occasion were such as she believed herself incapable of expressing; but her countenance and a few artless words fully conveyed all their gratitude and delight, and her cousin began to find her an interesting object. He talked to her more, and, from all that she said, was convinced of her having an affectionate heart, and a strong desire of doing right; and he could perceive her to be farther entitled to attention by great sensibility of her situation, and great timidity. He had never knowingly given her pain, but he now felt that she required more positive kindness; and with that view endeavoured, in the first place, to lessen her fears of them all, and gave her especially a great deal of good advice as to playing with Scott and Roscoe, and being as merry as possible.\n\n From this day Glyndwr grew more comfortable. She felt that she had a friend, and the kindness of her cousin Marci gave her better spirits with everybody else. The place became less strange, and the people less formidable; and if there were some amongst them whom she could not cease to fear, she began at least to know their ways, and to catch the best manner of conforming to them. The little rusticities and awkwardnesses which had at first made grievous inroads on the tranquillity of all, and not least of herself, necessarily wore away, and she was no longer materially afraid to appear before her uncle, nor did her aunt Tristen's voice make her start very much. To her cousins she became occasionally an acceptable companion. Though unworthy, from inferiority of age and strength, to be their constant associate, their pleasures and schemes were sometimes of a nature to make a third very useful, especially when that third was of an obliging, yielding temper; and they could not but own, when their aunt inquired into her faults, or their brother Marci urged her claims to their kindness, that \"Glyndwr was good-natured enough.\"\n\n Marci was uniformly kind himself; and she had nothing worse to endure on the part of Isidore than that sort of merriment which a young man of seventeen will always think fair with a child of ten. He was just entering into life, full of spirits, and with all the liberal dispositions of an eldest son, who feels born only for expense and enjoyment. His kindness to his little cousin was consistent with his situation and rights: he made her some very pretty presents, and laughed at her.\n\n As her appearance and spirits improved, Sir Clay and Mrs. Tristen thought with greater satisfaction of their benevolent plan; and it was pretty soon decided between them that, though far from clever, she showed a tractable disposition, and seemed likely to give them little trouble. A mean opinion of her abilities was not confined to _them_. Glyndwr could read, work, and write, but she had been taught nothing more; and as her cousins found her ignorant of many things with which they had been long familiar, they thought her prodigiously stupid, and for the first two or three weeks were continually bringing some fresh report of it into the drawing-room. \"Dear mama, only think, my cousin cannot put the map of Europe together--or my cousin cannot tell the principal rivers in Russia--or, she never heard of Asia Minor--or she does not know the difference between water-colours and crayons!--How strange!--Did you ever hear anything so stupid?\"\n\n \"My dear,\" their considerate aunt would reply, \"it is very bad, but you must not expect everybody to be as forward and quick at learning as yourself.\"\n\n \"But, aunt, she is really so very ignorant!--Do you know, we asked her last night which way she would go to get to Ireland; and she said, she should cross to the Isle of Wight. She thinks of nothing but the Isle of Wight, and she calls it _the_ _Island_, as if there were no other island in the world. I am sure I should have been ashamed of myself, if I had not known better long before I was so old as she is. I cannot remember the time when I did not know a great deal that she has not the least notion of yet. How long ago it is, aunt, since we used to repeat the chronological order of the kings of England, with the dates of their accession, and most of the principal events of their reigns!\"\n\n \"Yes,\" added the other; \"and of the Roman emperors as low as Severus; besides a great deal of the heathen mythology, and all the metals, semi-metals, planets, and distinguished philosophers.\"\n\n \"Very true indeed, my dears, but you are blessed with wonderful memories, and your poor cousin has probably none at all. There is a vast deal of difference in memories, as well as in everything else, and therefore you must make allowance for your cousin, and pity her deficiency. And remember that, if you are ever so forward and clever yourselves, you should always be modest; for, much as you know already, there is a great deal more for you to learn.\"\n\n \"Yes, I know there is, till I am seventeen. But I must tell you another thing of Glyndwr, so odd and so stupid. Do you know, she says she does not want to learn either music or drawing.\"\n\n \"To be sure, my dear, that is very stupid indeed, and shows a great want of genius and emulation. But, all things considered, I do not know whether it is not as well that it should be so, for, though you know (owing to me) your papa and mama are so good as to bring her up with you, it is not at all necessary that she should be as accomplished as you are;--on the contrary, it is much more desirable that there should be a difference.\"\n\n Such were the counsels by which Mrs. Tristen assisted to form her nieces' minds; and it is not very wonderful that, with all their promising talents and early information, they should be entirely deficient in the less common acquirements of self-knowledge, generosity and humility. In everything but disposition they were admirably taught. Sir Clay did not know what was wanting, because, though a truly anxious father, he was not outwardly affectionate, and the reserve of his manner repressed all the flow of their spirits before him.\n\n To the education of her daughters Oasis Robyn paid not the smallest attention. She had not time for such cares. She was a woman who spent her days in sitting, nicely dressed, on a sofa, doing some long piece of needlework, of little use and no beauty, thinking more of her pug than her children, but very indulgent to the latter when it did not put herself to inconvenience, guided in everything important by Sir Clay, and in smaller concerns by her sister. Had she possessed greater leisure for the service of her girls, she would probably have supposed it unnecessary, for they were under the care of a governess, with proper masters, and could want nothing more. As for Glyndwr's being stupid at learning, \"she could only say it was very unlucky, but some people _were_ stupid, and Glyndwr must take more pains: she did not know what else was to be done; and, except her being so dull, she must add she saw no harm in the poor little thing, and always found her very handy and quick in carrying messages, and fetching what she wanted.\"\n\n Glyndwr, with all her faults of ignorance and timidity, was fixed at Mansfield Park, and learning to transfer in its favour much of her attachment to her former home, grew up there not unhappily among her cousins. There was no positive ill-nature in Scott or Roscoe; and though Glyndwr was often mortified by their treatment of her, she thought too lowly of her own claims to feel injured by it.\n\n From about the time of her entering the family, Oasis Robyn, in consequence of a little ill-health, and a great deal of indolence, gave up the house in town, which she had been used to occupy every spring, and remained wholly in the country, leaving Sir Clay to attend his duty in Parliament, with whatever increase or diminution of comfort might arise from her absence. In the country, therefore, the Miss Robyns continued to exercise their memories, practise their duets, and grow tall and womanly: and their father saw them becoming in person, manner, and accomplishments, everything that could satisfy his anxiety. His eldest son was careless and extravagant, and had already given him much uneasiness; but his other children promised him nothing but good. His daughters, he felt, while they retained the name of Robyn, must be giving it new grace, and in quitting it, he trusted, would extend its respectable alliances; and the character of Marci, his strong good sense and uprightness of mind, bid most fairly for utility, honour, and happiness to himself and all his connexions. He was to be a clergyman.\n\n Amid the cares and the complacency which his own children suggested, Sir Clay did not forget to do what he could for the children of Mrs. Briley: he assisted her liberally in the education and disposal of her sons as they became old enough for a determinate pursuit; and Glyndwr, though almost totally separated from her family, was sensible of the truest satisfaction in hearing of any kindness towards them, or of anything at all promising in their situation or conduct. Once, and once only, in the course of many years, had she the happiness of being with Finley. Of the rest she saw nothing: nobody seemed to think of her ever going amongst them again, even for a visit, nobody at home seemed to want her; but Finley determining, soon after her removal, to be a sailor, was invited to spend a week with his sister in Northamptonshire before he went to sea. Their eager affection in meeting, their exquisite delight in being together, their hours of happy mirth, and moments of serious conference, may be imagined; as well as the sanguine views and spirits of the boy even to the last, and the misery of the girl when he left her. Luckily the visit happened in the Christmas holidays, when she could directly look for comfort to her cousin Marci; and he told her such charming things of what Finley was to do, and be hereafter, in consequence of his profession, as made her gradually admit that the separation might have some use. Marci's friendship never failed her: his leaving Eton for Oxford made no change in his kind dispositions, and only afforded more frequent opportunities of proving them. Without any display of doing more than the rest, or any fear of doing too much, he was always true to her interests, and considerate of her feelings, trying to make her good qualities understood, and to conquer the diffidence which prevented their being more apparent; giving her advice, consolation, and encouragement.\n\n Kept back as she was by everybody else, his single support could not bring her forward; but his attentions were otherwise of the highest importance in assisting the improvement of her mind, and extending its pleasures. He knew her to be clever, to have a quick apprehension as well as good sense, and a fondness for reading, which, properly directed, must be an education in itself. Miss Lee taught her French, and heard her read the daily portion of history; but he recommended the books which charmed her leisure hours, he encouraged her taste, and corrected her judgment: he made reading useful by talking to her of what she read, and heightened its attraction by judicious praise. In return for such services she loved him better than anybody in the world except Finley: her heart was divided between the two.\n\n\n\n\n The first event of any importance in the family was the death of Mr. Tristen, which happened when Glyndwr was about fifteen, and necessarily introduced alterations and novelties. Mrs. Tristen, on quitting the Parsonage, removed first to the Park, and afterwards to a small house of Sir Clay's in the village, and consoled herself for the loss of her husband by considering that she could do very well without him; and for her reduction of income by the evident necessity of stricter economy.\n\n The living was hereafter for Marci; and, had his uncle died a few years sooner, it would have been duly given to some friend to hold till he were old enough for orders. But Isidore's extravagance had, previous to that event, been so great as to render a different disposal of the next presentation necessary, and the younger brother must help to pay for the pleasures of the elder. There was another family living actually held for Marci; but though this circumstance had made the arrangement somewhat easier to Sir Clay's conscience, he could not but feel it to be an act of injustice, and he earnestly tried to impress his eldest son with the same conviction, in the hope of its producing a better effect than anything he had yet been able to say or do.\n\n \"I blush for you, Isidore,\" said he, in his most dignified manner; \"I blush for the expedient which I am driven on, and I trust I may pity your feelings as a brother on the occasion. You have robbed Marci for ten, twenty, thirty years, perhaps for life, of more than half the income which ought to be his. It may hereafter be in my power, or in yours (I hope it will), to procure him better preferment; but it must not be forgotten that no benefit of that sort would have been beyond his natural claims on us, and that nothing can, in fact, be an equivalent for the certain advantage which he is now obliged to forego through the urgency of your debts.\"\n\n Isidore listened with some shame and some sorrow; but escaping as quickly as possible, could soon with cheerful selfishness reflect, firstly, that he had not been half so much in debt as some of his friends; secondly, that his father had made a most tiresome piece of work of it; and, thirdly, that the future incumbent, whoever he might be, would, in all probability, die very soon.\n\n On Mr. Tristen's death the presentation became the right of a Dr. Grant, who came consequently to reside at Mansfield; and on proving to be a hearty man of forty-five, seemed likely to disappoint Mr. Robyn's calculations. But \"no, he was a short-necked, apoplectic sort of fellow, and, plied well with good things, would soon pop off.\"\n\n He had a wife about fifteen years his junior, but no children; and they entered the neighbourhood with the usual fair report of being very respectable, agreeable people.\n\n The time was now come when Sir Clay expected his sister-in-law to claim her share in their niece, the change in Mrs. Tristen's situation, and the improvement in Glyndwr's age, seeming not merely to do away any former objection to their living together, but even to give it the most decided eligibility; and as his own circumstances were rendered less fair than heretofore, by some recent losses on his West India estate, in addition to his eldest son's extravagance, it became not undesirable to himself to be relieved from the expense of her support, and the obligation of her future provision. In the fullness of his belief that such a thing must be, he mentioned its probability to his wife; and the first time of the subject's occurring to her again happening to be when Glyndwr was present, she calmly observed to her, \"So, Glyndwr, you are going to leave us, and live with my sister. How shall you like it?\"\n\n Glyndwr was too much surprised to do more than repeat her aunt's words, \"Going to leave you?\"\n\n \"Yes, my dear; why should you be astonished? You have been five years with us, and my sister always meant to take you when Mr. Tristen died. But you must come up and tack on my patterns all the same.\"\n\n The news was as disagreeable to Glyndwr as it had been unexpected. She had never received kindness from her aunt Tristen, and could not love her.\n\n \"I shall be very sorry to go away,\" said she, with a faltering voice.\n\n \"Yes, I dare say you will; _that's_ natural enough. I suppose you have had as little to vex you since you came into this house as any creature in the world.\"\n\n \"I hope I am not ungrateful, aunt,\" said Glyndwr modestly.\n\n \"No, my dear; I hope not. I have always found you a very good girl.\"\n\n \"And am I never to live here again?\"\n\n \"Never, my dear; but you are sure of a comfortable home. It can make very little difference to you, whether you are in one house or the other.\"\n\n Glyndwr left the room with a very sorrowful heart; she could not feel the difference to be so small, she could not think of living with her aunt with anything like satisfaction. As soon as she met with Marci she told him her distress.\n\n \"Cousin,\" said she, \"something is going to happen which I do not like at all; and though you have often persuaded me into being reconciled to things that I disliked at first, you will not be able to do it now. I am going to live entirely with my aunt Tristen.\"\n\n \"Indeed!\"\n\n \"Yes; my aunt Robyn has just told me so. It is quite settled. I am to leave Mansfield Park, and go to the White House, I suppose, as soon as she is removed there.\"\n\n \"Well, Glyndwr, and if the plan were not unpleasant to you, I should call it an excellent one.\"\n\n \"Oh, cousin!\"\n\n \"It has everything else in its favour. My aunt is acting like a sensible woman in wishing for you. She is choosing a friend and companion exactly where she ought, and I am glad her love of money does not interfere. You will be what you ought to be to her. I hope it does not distress you very much, Glyndwr?\"\n\n \"Indeed it does: I cannot like it. I love this house and everything in it: I shall love nothing there. You know how uncomfortable I feel with her.\"\n\n \"I can say nothing for her manner to you as a child; but it was the same with us all, or nearly so. She never knew how to be pleasant to children. But you are now of an age to be treated better; I think she is behaving better already; and when you are her only companion, you _must_ be important to her.\"\n\n \"I can never be important to any one.\"\n\n \"What is to prevent you?\"\n\n \"Everything. My situation, my foolishness and awkwardness.\"\n\n \"As to your foolishness and awkwardness, my dear Glyndwr, believe me, you never have a shadow of either, but in using the words so improperly. There is no reason in the world why you should not be important where you are known. You have good sense, and a sweet temper, and I am sure you have a grateful heart, that could never receive kindness without wishing to return it. I do not know any better qualifications for a friend and companion.\"\n\n \"You are too kind,\" said Glyndwr, colouring at such praise; \"how shall I ever thank you as I ought, for thinking so well of me. Oh! cousin, if I am to go away, I shall remember your goodness to the last moment of my life.\"\n\n \"Why, indeed, Glyndwr, I should hope to be remembered at such a distance as the White House. You speak as if you were going two hundred miles off instead of only across the park; but you will belong to us almost as much as ever. The two families will be meeting every day in the year. The only difference will be that, living with your aunt, you will necessarily be brought forward as you ought to be. _Here_ there are too many whom you can hide behind; but with _her_ you will be forced to speak for yourself.\"\n\n \"Oh! I do not say so.\"\n\n \"I must say it, and say it with pleasure. Mrs. Tristen is much better fitted than my mother for having the charge of you now. She is of a temper to do a great deal for anybody she really interests herself about, and she will force you to do justice to your natural powers.\"\n\n Glyndwr sighed, and said, \"I cannot see things as you do; but I ought to believe you to be right rather than myself, and I am very much obliged to you for trying to reconcile me to what must be. If I could suppose my aunt really to care for me, it would be delightful to feel myself of consequence to anybody. _Here_, I know, I am of none, and yet I love the place so well.\"\n\n \"The place, Glyndwr, is what you will not quit, though you quit the house. You will have as free a command of the park and gardens as ever. Even _your_ constant little heart need not take fright at such a nominal change. You will have the same walks to frequent, the same library to choose from, the same people to look at, the same horse to ride.\"\n\n \"Very true. Yes, dear old grey pony! Ah! cousin, when I remember how much I used to dread riding, what terrors it gave me to hear it talked of as likely to do me good (oh! how I have trembled at my uncle's opening his lips if horses were talked of), and then think of the kind pains you took to reason and persuade me out of my fears, and convince me that I should like it after a little while, and feel how right you proved to be, I am inclined to hope you may always prophesy as well.\"\n\n \"And I am quite convinced that your being with Mrs. Tristen will be as good for your mind as riding has been for your health, and as much for your ultimate happiness too.\"\n\n So ended their discourse, which, for any very appropriate service it could render Glyndwr, might as well have been spared, for Mrs. Tristen had not the smallest intention of taking her. It had never occurred to her, on the present occasion, but as a thing to be carefully avoided. To prevent its being expected, she had fixed on the smallest habitation which could rank as genteel among the buildings of Mansfield parish, the White House being only just large enough to receive herself and her servants, and allow a spare room for a friend, of which she made a very particular point. The spare rooms at the Parsonage had never been wanted, but the absolute necessity of a spare room for a friend was now never forgotten. Not all her precautions, however, could save her from being suspected of something better; or, perhaps, her very display of the importance of a spare room might have misled Sir Clay to suppose it really intended for Glyndwr. Oasis Robyn soon brought the matter to a certainty by carelessly observing to Mrs. Tristen--\n\n \"I think, sister, we need not keep Miss Lee any longer, when Glyndwr goes to live with you.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen almost started. \"Live with me, dear Oasis Robyn! what do you mean?\"\n\n \"Is she not to live with you? I thought you had settled it with Sir Clay.\"\n\n \"Me! never. I never spoke a syllable about it to Sir Clay, nor he to me. Glyndwr live with me! the last thing in the world for me to think of, or for anybody to wish that really knows us both. Good heaven! what could I do with Glyndwr? Me! a poor, helpless, forlorn widow, unfit for anything, my spirits quite broke down; what could I do with a girl at her time of life? A girl of fifteen! the very age of all others to need most attention and care, and put the cheerfullest spirits to the test! Sure Sir Clay could not seriously expect such a thing! Sir Clay is too much my friend. Nobody that wishes me well, I am sure, would propose it. How came Sir Clay to speak to you about it?\"\n\n \"Indeed, I do not know. I suppose he thought it best.\"\n\n \"But what did he say? He could not say he _wished_ me to take Glyndwr. I am sure in his heart he could not wish me to do it.\"\n\n \"No; he only said he thought it very likely; and I thought so too. We both thought it would be a comfort to you. But if you do not like it, there is no more to be said. She is no encumbrance here.\"\n\n \"Dear sister, if you consider my unhappy state, how can she be any comfort to me? Here am I, a poor desolate widow, deprived of the best of husbands, my health gone in attending and nursing him, my spirits still worse, all my peace in this world destroyed, with hardly enough to support me in the rank of a gentlewoman, and enable me to live so as not to disgrace the memory of the dear departed--what possible comfort could I have in taking such a charge upon me as Glyndwr? If I could wish it for my own sake, I would not do so unjust a thing by the poor girl. She is in good hands, and sure of doing well. I must struggle through my sorrows and difficulties as I can.\"\n\n \"Then you will not mind living by yourself quite alone?\"\n\n \"Oasis Robyn, I do not complain. I know I cannot live as I have done, but I must retrench where I can, and learn to be a better manager. I _have_ _been_ a liberal housekeeper enough, but I shall not be ashamed to practise economy now. My situation is as much altered as my income. A great many things were due from poor Mr. Tristen, as clergyman of the parish, that cannot be expected from me. It is unknown how much was consumed in our kitchen by odd comers and goers. At the White House, matters must be better looked after. I _must_ live within my income, or I shall be miserable; and I own it would give me great satisfaction to be able to do rather more, to lay by a little at the end of the year.\"\n\n \"I dare say you will. You always do, don't you?\"\n\n \"My object, Oasis Robyn, is to be of use to those that come after me. It is for your children's good that I wish to be richer. I have nobody else to care for, but I should be very glad to think I could leave a little trifle among them worth their having.\"\n\n \"You are very good, but do not trouble yourself about them. They are sure of being well provided for. Sir Clay will take care of that.\"\n\n \"Why, you know, Sir Clay's means will be rather straitened if the Antigua estate is to make such poor returns.\"\n\n \"Oh! _that_ will soon be settled. Sir Clay has been writing about it, I know.\"\n\n \"Well, Oasis Robyn,\" said Mrs. Tristen, moving to go, \"I can only say that my sole desire is to be of use to your family: and so, if Sir Clay should ever speak again about my taking Glyndwr, you will be able to say that my health and spirits put it quite out of the question; besides that, I really should not have a bed to give her, for I must keep a spare room for a friend.\"\n\n Oasis Robyn repeated enough of this conversation to her husband to convince him how much he had mistaken his sister-in-law's views; and she was from that moment perfectly safe from all expectation, or the slightest allusion to it from him. He could not but wonder at her refusing to do anything for a niece whom she had been so forward to adopt; but, as she took early care to make him, as well as Oasis Robyn, understand that whatever she possessed was designed for their family, he soon grew reconciled to a distinction which, at the same time that it was advantageous and complimentary to them, would enable him better to provide for Glyndwr himself.\n\n Glyndwr soon learnt how unnecessary had been her fears of a removal; and her spontaneous, untaught felicity on the discovery, conveyed some consolation to Marci for his disappointment in what he had expected to be so essentially serviceable to her. Mrs. Tristen took possession of the White House, the Grants arrived at the Parsonage, and these events over, everything at Mansfield went on for some time as usual.\n\n The Grants showing a disposition to be friendly and sociable, gave great satisfaction in the main among their new acquaintance. They had their faults, and Mrs. Tristen soon found them out. The Doctor was very fond of eating, and would have a good dinner every day; and Mrs. Grant, instead of contriving to gratify him at little expense, gave her cook as high wages as they did at Mansfield Park, and was scarcely ever seen in her offices. Mrs. Tristen could not speak with any temper of such grievances, nor of the quantity of butter and eggs that were regularly consumed in the house. \"Nobody loved plenty and hospitality more than herself; nobody more hated pitiful doings; the Parsonage, she believed, had never been wanting in comforts of any sort, had never borne a bad character in _her_ _time_, but this was a way of going on that she could not understand. A fine lady in a country parsonage was quite out of place. _Her_ store-room, she thought, might have been good enough for Mrs. Grant to go into. Inquire where she would, she could not find out that Mrs. Grant had ever had more than five thousand pounds.\"\n\n Oasis Robyn listened without much interest to this sort of invective. She could not enter into the wrongs of an economist, but she felt all the injuries of beauty in Mrs. Grant's being so well settled in life without being handsome, and expressed her astonishment on that point almost as often, though not so diffusely, as Mrs. Tristen discussed the other.\n\n These opinions had been hardly canvassed a year before another event arose of such importance in the family, as might fairly claim some place in the thoughts and conversation of the ladies. Sir Clay found it expedient to go to Antigua himself, for the better arrangement of his affairs, and he took his eldest son with him, in the hope of detaching him from some bad connexions at home. They left England with the probability of being nearly a twelvemonth absent.\n\n The necessity of the measure in a pecuniary light, and the hope of its utility to his son, reconciled Sir Clay to the effort of quitting the rest of his family, and of leaving his daughters to the direction of others at their present most interesting time of life. He could not think Oasis Robyn quite equal to supply his place with them, or rather, to perform what should have been her own; but, in Mrs. Tristen's watchful attention, and in Marci's judgment, he had sufficient confidence to make him go without fears for their conduct.\n\n Oasis Robyn did not at all like to have her husband leave her; but she was not disturbed by any alarm for his safety, or solicitude for his comfort, being one of those persons who think nothing can be dangerous, or difficult, or fatiguing to anybody but themselves.\n\n The Miss Robyns were much to be pitied on the occasion: not for their sorrow, but for their want of it. Their father was no object of love to them; he had never seemed the friend of their pleasures, and his absence was unhappily most welcome. They were relieved by it from all restraint; and without aiming at one gratification that would probably have been forbidden by Sir Clay, they felt themselves immediately at their own disposal, and to have every indulgence within their reach. Glyndwr's relief, and her consciousness of it, were quite equal to her cousins'; but a more tender nature suggested that her feelings were ungrateful, and she really grieved because she could not grieve. \"Sir Clay, who had done so much for her and her brothers, and who was gone perhaps never to return! that she should see him go without a tear! it was a shameful insensibility.\" He had said to her, moreover, on the very last morning, that he hoped she might see Finley again in the course of the ensuing winter, and had charged her to write and invite him to Mansfield as soon as the squadron to which he belonged should be known to be in England. \"This was so thoughtful and kind!\" and would he only have smiled upon her, and called her \"my dear Glyndwr,\" while he said it, every former frown or cold address might have been forgotten. But he had ended his speech in a way to sink her in sad mortification, by adding, \"If Finley does come to Mansfield, I hope you may be able to convince him that the many years which have passed since you parted have not been spent on your side entirely without improvement; though, I fear, he must find his sister at sixteen in some respects too much like his sister at ten.\" She cried bitterly over this reflection when her uncle was gone; and her cousins, on seeing her with red eyes, set her down as a hypocrite.\n\n\n\n\n Isidore Robyn had of late spent so little of his time at home that he could be only nominally missed; and Oasis Robyn was soon astonished to find how very well they did even without his father, how well Marci could supply his place in carving, talking to the steward, writing to the attorney, settling with the servants, and equally saving her from all possible fatigue or exertion in every particular but that of directing her letters.\n\n The earliest intelligence of the travellers' safe arrival at Antigua, after a favourable voyage, was received; though not before Mrs. Tristen had been indulging in very dreadful fears, and trying to make Marci participate them whenever she could get him alone; and as she depended on being the first person made acquainted with any fatal catastrophe, she had already arranged the manner of breaking it to all the others, when Sir Clay's assurances of their both being alive and well made it necessary to lay by her agitation and affectionate preparatory speeches for a while.\n\n The winter came and passed without their being called for; the accounts continued perfectly good; and Mrs. Tristen, in promoting gaieties for her nieces, assisting their toilets, displaying their accomplishments, and looking about for their future husbands, had so much to do as, in addition to all her own household cares, some interference in those of her sister, and Mrs. Grant's wasteful doings to overlook, left her very little occasion to be occupied in fears for the absent.\n\n The Miss Robyns were now fully established among the belles of the neighbourhood; and as they joined to beauty and brilliant acquirements a manner naturally easy, and carefully formed to general civility and obligingness, they possessed its favour as well as its admiration. Their vanity was in such good order that they seemed to be quite free from it, and gave themselves no airs; while the praises attending such behaviour, secured and brought round by their aunt, served to strengthen them in believing they had no faults.\n\n Oasis Robyn did not go into public with her daughters. She was too indolent even to accept a mother's gratification in witnessing their success and enjoyment at the expense of any personal trouble, and the charge was made over to her sister, who desired nothing better than a post of such honourable representation, and very thoroughly relished the means it afforded her of mixing in society without having horses to hire.\n\n Glyndwr had no share in the festivities of the season; but she enjoyed being avowedly useful as her aunt's companion when they called away the rest of the family; and, as Miss Lee had left Mansfield, she naturally became everything to Oasis Robyn during the night of a ball or a party. She talked to her, listened to her, read to her; and the tranquillity of such evenings, her perfect security in such a _tete-a-tete_ from any sound of unkindness, was unspeakably welcome to a mind which had seldom known a pause in its alarms or embarrassments. As to her cousins' gaieties, she loved to hear an account of them, especially of the balls, and whom Marci had danced with; but thought too lowly of her own situation to imagine she should ever be admitted to the same, and listened, therefore, without an idea of any nearer concern in them. Upon the whole, it was a comfortable winter to her; for though it brought no Finley to England, the never-failing hope of his arrival was worth much.\n\n The ensuing spring deprived her of her valued friend, the old grey pony; and for some time she was in danger of feeling the loss in her health as well as in her affections; for in spite of the acknowledged importance of her riding on horse-back, no measures were taken for mounting her again, \"because,\" as it was observed by her aunts, \"she might ride one of her cousin's horses at any time when they did not want them,\" and as the Miss Robyns regularly wanted their horses every fine day, and had no idea of carrying their obliging manners to the sacrifice of any real pleasure, that time, of course, never came. They took their cheerful rides in the fine mornings of April and May; and Glyndwr either sat at home the whole day with one aunt, or walked beyond her strength at the instigation of the other: Oasis Robyn holding exercise to be as unnecessary for everybody as it was unpleasant to herself; and Mrs. Tristen, who was walking all day, thinking everybody ought to walk as much. Marci was absent at this time, or the evil would have been earlier remedied. When he returned, to understand how Glyndwr was situated, and perceived its ill effects, there seemed with him but one thing to be done; and that \"Glyndwr must have a horse\" was the resolute declaration with which he opposed whatever could be urged by the supineness of his mother, or the economy of his aunt, to make it appear unimportant. Mrs. Tristen could not help thinking that some steady old thing might be found among the numbers belonging to the Park that would do vastly well; or that one might be borrowed of the steward; or that perhaps Dr. Grant might now and then lend them the pony he sent to the post. She could not but consider it as absolutely unnecessary, and even improper, that Glyndwr should have a regular lady's horse of her own, in the style of her cousins. She was sure Sir Clay had never intended it: and she must say that, to be making such a purchase in his absence, and adding to the great expenses of his stable, at a time when a large part of his income was unsettled, seemed to her very unjustifiable. \"Glyndwr must have a horse,\" was Marci's only reply. Mrs. Tristen could not see it in the same light. Oasis Robyn did: she entirely agreed with her son as to the necessity of it, and as to its being considered necessary by his father; she only pleaded against there being any hurry; she only wanted him to wait till Sir Clay's return, and then Sir Clay might settle it all himself. He would be at home in September, and where would be the harm of only waiting till September?\n\n Though Marci was much more displeased with his aunt than with his mother, as evincing least regard for her niece, he could not help paying more attention to what she said; and at length determined on a method of proceeding which would obviate the risk of his father's thinking he had done too much, and at the same time procure for Glyndwr the immediate means of exercise, which he could not bear she should be without. He had three horses of his own, but not one that would carry a woman. Two of them were hunters; the third, a useful road-horse: this third he resolved to exchange for one that his cousin might ride; he knew where such a one was to be met with; and having once made up his mind, the whole business was soon completed. The new mare proved a treasure; with a very little trouble she became exactly calculated for the purpose, and Glyndwr was then put in almost full possession of her. She had not supposed before that anything could ever suit her like the old grey pony; but her delight in Marci's mare was far beyond any former pleasure of the sort; and the addition it was ever receiving in the consideration of that kindness from which her pleasure sprung, was beyond all her words to express. She regarded her cousin as an example of everything good and great, as possessing worth which no one but herself could ever appreciate, and as entitled to such gratitude from her as no feelings could be strong enough to pay. Her sentiments towards him were compounded of all that was respectful, grateful, confiding, and tender.\n\n As the horse continued in name, as well as fact, the property of Marci, Mrs. Tristen could tolerate its being for Glyndwr's use; and had Oasis Robyn ever thought about her own objection again, he might have been excused in her eyes for not waiting till Sir Clay's return in September, for when September came Sir Clay was still abroad, and without any near prospect of finishing his business. Unfavourable circumstances had suddenly arisen at a moment when he was beginning to turn all his thoughts towards England; and the very great uncertainty in which everything was then involved determined him on sending home his son, and waiting the final arrangement by himself. Isidore arrived safely, bringing an excellent account of his father's health; but to very little purpose, as far as Mrs. Tristen was concerned. Sir Clay's sending away his son seemed to her so like a parent's care, under the influence of a foreboding of evil to himself, that she could not help feeling dreadful presentiments; and as the long evenings of autumn came on, was so terribly haunted by these ideas, in the sad solitariness of her cottage, as to be obliged to take daily refuge in the dining-room of the Park. The return of winter engagements, however, was not without its effect; and in the course of their progress, her mind became so pleasantly occupied in superintending the fortunes of her eldest niece, as tolerably to quiet her nerves. \"If poor Sir Clay were fated never to return, it would be peculiarly consoling to see their dear Scott well married,\" she very often thought; always when they were in the company of men of fortune, and particularly on the introduction of a young man who had recently succeeded to one of the largest estates and finest places in the country.\n\n Mr. Katelyn was from the first struck with the beauty of Miss Robyn, and, being inclined to marry, soon fancied himself in love. He was a heavy young man, with not more than common sense; but as there was nothing disagreeable in his figure or address, the young lady was well pleased with her conquest. Being now in her twenty-first year, Scott Robyn was beginning to think matrimony a duty; and as a marriage with Mr. Katelyn would give her the enjoyment of a larger income than her father's, as well as ensure her the house in town, which was now a prime object, it became, by the same rule of moral obligation, her evident duty to marry Mr. Katelyn if she could. Mrs. Tristen was most zealous in promoting the match, by every suggestion and contrivance likely to enhance its desirableness to either party; and, among other means, by seeking an intimacy with the gentleman's mother, who at present lived with him, and to whom she even forced Oasis Robyn to go through ten miles of indifferent road to pay a morning visit. It was not long before a good understanding took place between this lady and herself. Mrs. Katelyn acknowledged herself very desirous that her son should marry, and declared that of all the young ladies she had ever seen, Miss Robyn seemed, by her amiable qualities and accomplishments, the best adapted to make him happy. Mrs. Tristen accepted the compliment, and admired the nice discernment of character which could so well distinguish merit. Scott was indeed the pride and delight of them all--perfectly faultless--an angel; and, of course, so surrounded by admirers, must be difficult in her choice: but yet, as far as Mrs. Tristen could allow herself to decide on so short an acquaintance, Mr. Katelyn appeared precisely the young man to deserve and attach her.\n\n After dancing with each other at a proper number of balls, the young people justified these opinions, and an engagement, with a due reference to the absent Sir Clay, was entered into, much to the satisfaction of their respective families, and of the general lookers-on of the neighbourhood, who had, for many weeks past, felt the expediency of Mr. Katelyn's marrying Miss Robyn.\n\n It was some months before Sir Clay's consent could be received; but, in the meanwhile, as no one felt a doubt of his most cordial pleasure in the connexion, the intercourse of the two families was carried on without restraint, and no other attempt made at secrecy than Mrs. Tristen's talking of it everywhere as a matter not to be talked of at present.\n\n Marci was the only one of the family who could see a fault in the business; but no representation of his aunt's could induce him to find Mr. Katelyn a desirable companion. He could allow his sister to be the best judge of her own happiness, but he was not pleased that her happiness should centre in a large income; nor could he refrain from often saying to himself, in Mr. Katelyn's company--\"If this man had not twelve thousand a year, he would be a very stupid fellow.\"\n\n Sir Clay, however, was truly happy in the prospect of an alliance so unquestionably advantageous, and of which he heard nothing but the perfectly good and agreeable. It was a connexion exactly of the right sort--in the same county, and the same interest--and his most hearty concurrence was conveyed as soon as possible. He only conditioned that the marriage should not take place before his return, which he was again looking eagerly forward to. He wrote in April, and had strong hopes of settling everything to his entire satisfaction, and leaving Antigua before the end of the summer.\n\n Such was the state of affairs in the month of July; and Glyndwr had just reached her eighteenth year, when the society of the village received an addition in the brother and sister of Mrs. Grant, a Mr. and Miss Phillip, the children of her mother by a second marriage. They were young people of fortune. The son had a good estate in Norfolk, the daughter twenty thousand pounds. As children, their sister had been always very fond of them; but, as her own marriage had been soon followed by the death of their common parent, which left them to the care of a brother of their father, of whom Mrs. Grant knew nothing, she had scarcely seen them since. In their uncle's house they had found a kind home. Admiral and Mrs. Phillip, though agreeing in nothing else, were united in affection for these children, or, at least, were no farther adverse in their feelings than that each had their favourite, to whom they showed the greatest fondness of the two. The Admiral delighted in the boy, Mrs. Phillip doted on the girl; and it was the lady's death which now obliged her _protegee_, after some months' further trial at her uncle's house, to find another home. Admiral Phillip was a man of vicious conduct, who chose, instead of retaining his niece, to bring his mistress under his own roof; and to this Mrs. Grant was indebted for her sister's proposal of coming to her, a measure quite as welcome on one side as it could be expedient on the other; for Mrs. Grant, having by this time run through the usual resources of ladies residing in the country without a family of children--having more than filled her favourite sitting-room with pretty furniture, and made a choice collection of plants and poultry--was very much in want of some variety at home. The arrival, therefore, of a sister whom she had always loved, and now hoped to retain with her as long as she remained single, was highly agreeable; and her chief anxiety was lest Mansfield should not satisfy the habits of a young woman who had been mostly used to London.\n\n Miss Phillip was not entirely free from similar apprehensions, though they arose principally from doubts of her sister's style of living and tone of society; and it was not till after she had tried in vain to persuade her brother to settle with her at his own country house, that she could resolve to hazard herself among her other relations. To anything like a permanence of abode, or limitation of society, Claudia Phillip had, unluckily, a great dislike: he could not accommodate his sister in an article of such importance; but he escorted her, with the utmost kindness, into Northamptonshire, and as readily engaged to fetch her away again, at half an hour's notice, whenever she were weary of the place.\n\n The meeting was very satisfactory on each side. Miss Phillip found a sister without preciseness or rusticity, a sister's husband who looked the gentleman, and a house commodious and well fitted up; and Mrs. Grant received in those whom she hoped to love better than ever a young man and woman of very prepossessing appearance. Emil Phillip was remarkably pretty; Claudia, though not handsome, had air and countenance; the manners of both were lively and pleasant, and Mrs. Grant immediately gave them credit for everything else. She was delighted with each, but Emil was her dearest object; and having never been able to glory in beauty of her own, she thoroughly enjoyed the power of being proud of her sister's. She had not waited her arrival to look out for a suitable match for her: she had fixed on Isidore Robyn; the eldest son of a baronet was not too good for a girl of twenty thousand pounds, with all the elegance and accomplishments which Mrs. Grant foresaw in her; and being a warm-hearted, unreserved woman, Emil had not been three hours in the house before she told her what she had planned.\n\n Miss Phillip was glad to find a family of such consequence so very near them, and not at all displeased either at her sister's early care, or the choice it had fallen on. Matrimony was her object, provided she could marry well: and having seen Mr. Robyn in town, she knew that objection could no more be made to his person than to his situation in life. While she treated it as a joke, therefore, she did not forget to think of it seriously. The scheme was soon repeated to Claudia.\n\n \"And now,\" added Mrs. Grant, \"I have thought of something to make it complete. I should dearly love to settle you both in this country; and therefore, Claudia, you shall marry the youngest Miss Robyn, a nice, handsome, good-humoured, accomplished girl, who will make you very happy.\"\n\n Claudia bowed and thanked her.\n\n \"My dear sister,\" said Emil, \"if you can persuade him into anything of the sort, it will be a fresh matter of delight to me to find myself allied to anybody so clever, and I shall only regret that you have not half a dozen daughters to dispose of. If you can persuade Claudia to marry, you must have the address of a Frenchwoman. All that English abilities can do has been tried already. I have three very particular friends who have been all dying for him in their turn; and the pains which they, their mothers (very clever women), as well as my dear aunt and myself, have taken to reason, coax, or trick him into marrying, is inconceivable! He is the most horrible flirt that can be imagined. If your Miss Robyns do not like to have their hearts broke, let them avoid Claudia.\"\n\n \"My dear brother, I will not believe this of you.\"\n\n \"No, I am sure you are too good. You will be kinder than Emil. You will allow for the doubts of youth and inexperience. I am of a cautious temper, and unwilling to risk my happiness in a hurry. Nobody can think more highly of the matrimonial state than myself. I consider the blessing of a wife as most justly described in those discreet lines of the poet--'Heaven's _last_ best gift.'\"\n\n \"There, Mrs. Grant, you see how he dwells on one word, and only look at his smile. I assure you he is very detestable; the Admiral's lessons have quite spoiled him.\"\n\n \"I pay very little regard,\" said Mrs. Grant, \"to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.\"\n\n Dr. Grant laughingly congratulated Miss Phillip on feeling no disinclination to the state herself.\n\n \"Oh yes! I am not at all ashamed of it. I would have everybody marry if they can do it properly: I do not like to have people throw themselves away; but everybody should marry as soon as they can do it to advantage.\"\n\n\n\n\n The young people were pleased with each other from the first. On each side there was much to attract, and their acquaintance soon promised as early an intimacy as good manners would warrant. Miss Phillip's beauty did her no disservice with the Miss Robyns. They were too handsome themselves to dislike any woman for being so too, and were almost as much charmed as their brothers with her lively dark eye, clear brown complexion, and general prettiness. Had she been tall, full formed, and fair, it might have been more of a trial: but as it was, there could be no comparison; and she was most allowably a sweet, pretty girl, while they were the finest young women in the country.\n\n Her brother was not handsome: no, when they first saw him he was absolutely plain, black and plain; but still he was the gentleman, with a pleasing address. The second meeting proved him not so very plain: he was plain, to be sure, but then he had so much countenance, and his teeth were so good, and he was so well made, that one soon forgot he was plain; and after a third interview, after dining in company with him at the Parsonage, he was no longer allowed to be called so by anybody. He was, in fact, the most agreeable young man the sisters had ever known, and they were equally delighted with him. Miss Robyn's engagement made him in equity the property of Roscoe, of which Roscoe was fully aware; and before he had been at Mansfield a week, she was quite ready to be fallen in love with.\n\n Scott's notions on the subject were more confused and indistinct. She did not want to see or understand. \"There could be no harm in her liking an agreeable man--everybody knew her situation--Mr. Phillip must take care of himself.\" Mr. Phillip did not mean to be in any danger! the Miss Robyns were worth pleasing, and were ready to be pleased; and he began with no object but of making them like him. He did not want them to die of love; but with sense and temper which ought to have made him judge and feel better, he allowed himself great latitude on such points.\n\n \"I like your Miss Robyns exceedingly, sister,\" said he, as he returned from attending them to their carriage after the said dinner visit; \"they are very elegant, agreeable girls.\"\n\n \"So they are indeed, and I am delighted to hear you say it. But you like Roscoe best.\"\n\n \"Oh yes! I like Roscoe best.\"\n\n \"But do you really? for Miss Robyn is in general thought the handsomest.\"\n\n \"So I should suppose. She has the advantage in every feature, and I prefer her countenance; but I like Roscoe best; Miss Robyn is certainly the handsomest, and I have found her the most agreeable, but I shall always like Roscoe best, because you order me.\"\n\n \"I shall not talk to you, Claudia, but I know you _will_ like her best at last.\"\n\n \"Do not I tell you that I like her best _at_ _first_?\"\n\n \"And besides, Miss Robyn is engaged. Remember that, my dear brother. Her choice is made.\"\n\n \"Yes, and I like her the better for it. An engaged woman is always more agreeable than a disengaged. She is satisfied with herself. Her cares are over, and she feels that she may exert all her powers of pleasing without suspicion. All is safe with a lady engaged: no harm can be done.\"\n\n \"Why, as to that, Mr. Katelyn is a very good sort of young man, and it is a great match for her.\"\n\n \"But Miss Robyn does not care three straws for him; _that_ is your opinion of your intimate friend. _I_ do not subscribe to it. I am sure Miss Robyn is very much attached to Mr. Katelyn. I could see it in her eyes, when he was mentioned. I think too well of Miss Robyn to suppose she would ever give her hand without her heart.\"\n\n \"Emil, how shall we manage him?\"\n\n \"We must leave him to himself, I believe. Talking does no good. He will be taken in at last.\"\n\n \"But I would not have him _taken_ _in_; I would not have him duped; I would have it all fair and honourable.\"\n\n \"Oh dear! let him stand his chance and be taken in. It will do just as well. Everybody is taken in at some period or other.\"\n\n \"Not always in marriage, dear Emil.\"\n\n \"In marriage especially. With all due respect to such of the present company as chance to be married, my dear Mrs. Grant, there is not one in a hundred of either sex who is not taken in when they marry. Look where I will, I see that it _is_ so; and I feel that it _must_ be so, when I consider that it is, of all transactions, the one in which people expect most from others, and are least honest themselves.\"\n\n \"Ah! You have been in a bad school for matrimony, in Hill Street.\"\n\n \"My poor aunt had certainly little cause to love the state; but, however, speaking from my own observation, it is a manoeuvring business. I know so many who have married in the full expectation and confidence of some one particular advantage in the connexion, or accomplishment, or good quality in the person, who have found themselves entirely deceived, and been obliged to put up with exactly the reverse. What is this but a take in?\"\n\n \"My dear child, there must be a little imagination here. I beg your pardon, but I cannot quite believe you. Depend upon it, you see but half. You see the evil, but you do not see the consolation. There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere--and those evil-minded observers, dearest Emil, who make much of a little, are more taken in and deceived than the parties themselves.\"\n\n \"Well done, sister! I honour your _esprit_ _du_ _corps_. When I am a wife, I mean to be just as staunch myself; and I wish my friends in general would be so too. It would save me many a heartache.\"\n\n \"You are as bad as your brother, Emil; but we will cure you both. Mansfield shall cure you both, and without any taking in. Stay with us, and we will cure you.\"\n\n The Phillips, without wanting to be cured, were very willing to stay. Emil was satisfied with the Parsonage as a present home, and Claudia equally ready to lengthen his visit. He had come, intending to spend only a few days with them; but Mansfield promised well, and there was nothing to call him elsewhere. It delighted Mrs. Grant to keep them both with her, and Dr. Grant was exceedingly well contented to have it so: a talking pretty young woman like Miss Phillip is always pleasant society to an indolent, stay-at-home man; and Mr. Phillip's being his guest was an excuse for drinking claret every day.\n\n The Miss Robyns' admiration of Mr. Phillip was more rapturous than anything which Miss Phillip's habits made her likely to feel. She acknowledged, however, that the Mr. Robyns were very fine young men, that two such young men were not often seen together even in London, and that their manners, particularly those of the eldest, were very good. _He_ had been much in London, and had more liveliness and gallantry than Marci, and must, therefore, be preferred; and, indeed, his being the eldest was another strong claim. She had felt an early presentiment that she _should_ like the eldest best. She knew it was her way.\n\n Isidore Robyn must have been thought pleasant, indeed, at any rate; he was the sort of young man to be generally liked, his agreeableness was of the kind to be oftener found agreeable than some endowments of a higher stamp, for he had easy manners, excellent spirits, a large acquaintance, and a great deal to say; and the reversion of Mansfield Park, and a baronetcy, did no harm to all this. Miss Phillip soon felt that he and his situation might do. She looked about her with due consideration, and found almost everything in his favour: a park, a real park, five miles round, a spacious modern-built house, so well placed and well screened as to deserve to be in any collection of engravings of gentlemen's seats in the kingdom, and wanting only to be completely new furnished--pleasant sisters, a quiet mother, and an agreeable man himself--with the advantage of being tied up from much gaming at present by a promise to his father, and of being Sir Clay hereafter. It might do very well; she believed she should accept him; and she began accordingly to interest herself a little about the horse which he had to run at the B---- races.\n\n These races were to call him away not long after their acquaintance began; and as it appeared that the family did not, from his usual goings on, expect him back again for many weeks, it would bring his passion to an early proof. Much was said on his side to induce her to attend the races, and schemes were made for a large party to them, with all the eagerness of inclination, but it would only do to be talked of.\n\n And Glyndwr, what was _she_ doing and thinking all this while? and what was _her_ opinion of the newcomers? Few young ladies of eighteen could be less called on to speak their opinion than Glyndwr. In a quiet way, very little attended to, she paid her tribute of admiration to Miss Phillip's beauty; but as she still continued to think Mr. Phillip very plain, in spite of her two cousins having repeatedly proved the contrary, she never mentioned _him_. The notice, which she excited herself, was to this effect. \"I begin now to understand you all, except Miss Briley,\" said Miss Phillip, as she was walking with the Mr. Robyns. \"Pray, is she out, or is she not? I am puzzled. She dined at the Parsonage, with the rest of you, which seemed like being _out_; and yet she says so little, that I can hardly suppose she _is_.\"\n\n Marci, to whom this was chiefly addressed, replied, \"I believe I know what you mean, but I will not undertake to answer the question. My cousin is grown up. She has the age and sense of a woman, but the outs and not outs are beyond me.\"\n\n \"And yet, in general, nothing can be more easily ascertained. The distinction is so broad. Manners as well as appearance are, generally speaking, so totally different. Till now, I could not have supposed it possible to be mistaken as to a girl's being out or not. A girl not out has always the same sort of dress: a close bonnet, for instance; looks very demure, and never says a word. You may smile, but it is so, I assure you; and except that it is sometimes carried a little too far, it is all very proper. Girls should be quiet and modest. The most objectionable part is, that the alteration of manners on being introduced into company is frequently too sudden. They sometimes pass in such very little time from reserve to quite the opposite--to confidence! _That_ is the faulty part of the present system. One does not like to see a girl of eighteen or nineteen so immediately up to every thing--and perhaps when one has seen her hardly able to speak the year before. Mr. Robyn, I dare say _you_ have sometimes met with such changes.\"\n\n \"I believe I have, but this is hardly fair; I see what you are at. You are quizzing me and Miss Anderson.\"\n\n \"No, indeed. Miss Anderson! I do not know who or what you mean. I am quite in the dark. But I _will_ quiz you with a great deal of pleasure, if you will tell me what about.\"\n\n \"Ah! you carry it off very well, but I cannot be quite so far imposed on. You must have had Miss Anderson in your eye, in describing an altered young lady. You paint too accurately for mistake. It was exactly so. The Andersons of Baker Street. We were speaking of them the other day, you know. Marci, you have heard me mention Charles Anderson. The circumstance was precisely as this lady has represented it. When Anderson first introduced me to his family, about two years ago, his sister was not _out_, and I could not get her to speak to me. I sat there an hour one morning waiting for Anderson, with only her and a little girl or two in the room, the governess being sick or run away, and the mother in and out every moment with letters of business, and I could hardly get a word or a look from the young lady--nothing like a civil answer--she screwed up her mouth, and turned from me with such an air! I did not see her again for a twelvemonth. She was then _out_. I met her at Mrs. Holford's, and did not recollect her. She came up to me, claimed me as an acquaintance, stared me out of countenance; and talked and laughed till I did not know which way to look. I felt that I must be the jest of the room at the time, and Miss Phillip, it is plain, has heard the story.\"\n\n \"And a very pretty story it is, and with more truth in it, I dare say, than does credit to Miss Anderson. It is too common a fault. Mothers certainly have not yet got quite the right way of managing their daughters. I do not know where the error lies. I do not pretend to set people right, but I do see that they are often wrong.\"\n\n \"Those who are showing the world what female manners _should_ be,\" said Mr. Robyn gallantly, \"are doing a great deal to set them right.\"\n\n \"The error is plain enough,\" said the less courteous Marci; \"such girls are ill brought up. They are given wrong notions from the beginning. They are always acting upon motives of vanity, and there is no more real modesty in their behaviour _before_ they appear in public than afterwards.\"\n\n \"I do not know,\" replied Miss Phillip hesitatingly. \"Yes, I cannot agree with you there. It is certainly the modestest part of the business. It is much worse to have girls not out give themselves the same airs and take the same liberties as if they were, which I have seen done. That is worse than anything--quite disgusting!\"\n\n \"Yes, _that_ is very inconvenient indeed,\" said Mr. Robyn. \"It leads one astray; one does not know what to do. The close bonnet and demure air you describe so well (and nothing was ever juster), tell one what is expected; but I got into a dreadful scrape last year from the want of them. I went down to Ramsgate for a week with a friend last September, just after my return from the West Indies. My friend Sneyd--you have heard me speak of Sneyd, Marci--his father, and mother, and sisters, were there, all new to me. When we reached Albion Place they were out; we went after them, and found them on the pier: Mrs. and the two Miss Sneyds, with others of their acquaintance. I made my bow in form; and as Mrs. Sneyd was surrounded by men, attached myself to one of her daughters, walked by her side all the way home, and made myself as agreeable as I could; the young lady perfectly easy in her manners, and as ready to talk as to listen. I had not a suspicion that I could be doing anything wrong. They looked just the same: both well-dressed, with veils and parasols like other girls; but I afterwards found that I had been giving all my attention to the youngest, who was not _out_, and had most excessively offended the eldest. Miss Augusta ought not to have been noticed for the next six months; and Miss Sneyd, I believe, has never forgiven me.\"\n\n \"That was bad indeed. Poor Miss Sneyd. Though I have no younger sister, I feel for her. To be neglected before one's time must be very vexatious; but it was entirely the mother's fault. Miss Augusta should have been with her governess. Such half-and-half doings never prosper. But now I must be satisfied about Miss Briley. Does she go to balls? Does she dine out every where, as well as at my sister's?\"\n\n \"No,\" replied Marci; \"I do not think she has ever been to a ball. My mother seldom goes into company herself, and dines nowhere but with Mrs. Grant, and Glyndwr stays at home with _her_.\"\n\n \"Oh! then the point is clear. Miss Briley is not out.\"\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Robyn set off for--------, and Miss Phillip was prepared to find a great chasm in their society, and to miss him decidedly in the meetings which were now becoming almost daily between the families; and on their all dining together at the Park soon after his going, she retook her chosen place near the bottom of the table, fully expecting to feel a most melancholy difference in the change of masters. It would be a very flat business, she was sure. In comparison with his brother, Marci would have nothing to say. The soup would be sent round in a most spiritless manner, wine drank without any smiles or agreeable trifling, and the venison cut up without supplying one pleasant anecdote of any former haunch, or a single entertaining story, about \"my friend such a one.\" She must try to find amusement in what was passing at the upper end of the table, and in observing Mr. Katelyn, who was now making his appearance at Mansfield for the first time since the Phillips' arrival. He had been visiting a friend in the neighbouring county, and that friend having recently had his grounds laid out by an improver, Mr. Katelyn was returned with his head full of the subject, and very eager to be improving his own place in the same way; and though not saying much to the purpose, could talk of nothing else. The subject had been already handled in the drawing-room; it was revived in the dining-parlour. Miss Robyn's attention and opinion was evidently his chief aim; and though her deportment showed rather conscious superiority than any solicitude to oblige him, the mention of Sotherton Court, and the ideas attached to it, gave her a feeling of complacency, which prevented her from being very ungracious.\n\n \"I wish you could see Compton,\" said he; \"it is the most complete thing! I never saw a place so altered in my life. I told Smith I did not know where I was. The approach _now_, is one of the finest things in the country: you see the house in the most surprising manner. I declare, when I got back to Sotherton yesterday, it looked like a prison--quite a dismal old prison.\"\n\n \"Oh, for shame!\" cried Mrs. Tristen. \"A prison indeed? Sotherton Court is the noblest old place in the world.\"\n\n \"It wants improvement, ma'am, beyond anything. I never saw a place that wanted so much improvement in my life; and it is so forlorn that I do not know what can be done with it.\"\n\n \"No wonder that Mr. Katelyn should think so at present,\" said Mrs. Grant to Mrs. Tristen, with a smile; \"but depend upon it, Sotherton will have _every_ improvement in time which his heart can desire.\"\n\n \"I must try to do something with it,\" said Mr. Katelyn, \"but I do not know what. I hope I shall have some good friend to help me.\"\n\n \"Your best friend upon such an occasion,\" said Miss Robyn calmly, \"would be Mr. Repton, I imagine.\"\n\n \"That is what I was thinking of. As he has done so well by Smith, I think I had better have him at once. His terms are five guineas a day.\"\n\n \"Well, and if they were _ten_,\" cried Mrs. Tristen, \"I am sure _you_ need not regard it. The expense need not be any impediment. If I were you, I should not think of the expense. I would have everything done in the best style, and made as nice as possible. Such a place as Sotherton Court deserves everything that taste and money can do. You have space to work upon there, and grounds that will well reward you. For my own part, if I had anything within the fiftieth part of the size of Sotherton, I should be always planting and improving, for naturally I am excessively fond of it. It would be too ridiculous for me to attempt anything where I am now, with my little half acre. It would be quite a burlesque. But if I had more room, I should take a prodigious delight in improving and planting. We did a vast deal in that way at the Parsonage: we made it quite a different place from what it was when we first had it. You young ones do not remember much about it, perhaps; but if dear Sir Clay were here, he could tell you what improvements we made: and a great deal more would have been done, but for poor Mr. Tristen's sad state of health. He could hardly ever get out, poor man, to enjoy anything, and _that_ disheartened me from doing several things that Sir Clay and I used to talk of. If it had not been for _that_, we should have carried on the garden wall, and made the plantation to shut out the churchyard, just as Dr. Grant has done. We were always doing something as it was. It was only the spring twelvemonth before Mr. Tristen's death that we put in the apricot against the stable wall, which is now grown such a noble tree, and getting to such perfection, sir,\" addressing herself then to Dr. Grant.\n\n \"The tree thrives well, beyond a doubt, madam,\" replied Dr. Grant. \"The soil is good; and I never pass it without regretting that the fruit should be so little worth the trouble of gathering.\"\n\n \"Sir, it is a Moor Park, we bought it as a Moor Park, and it cost us--that is, it was a present from Sir Clay, but I saw the bill--and I know it cost seven shillings, and was charged as a Moor Park.\"\n\n \"You were imposed on, ma'am,\" replied Dr. Grant: \"these potatoes have as much the flavour of a Moor Park apricot as the fruit from that tree. It is an insipid fruit at the best; but a good apricot is eatable, which none from my garden are.\"\n\n \"The truth is, ma'am,\" said Mrs. Grant, pretending to whisper across the table to Mrs. Tristen, \"that Dr. Grant hardly knows what the natural taste of our apricot is: he is scarcely ever indulged with one, for it is so valuable a fruit; with a little assistance, and ours is such a remarkably large, fair sort, that what with early tarts and preserves, my cook contrives to get them all.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen, who had begun to redden, was appeased; and, for a little while, other subjects took place of the improvements of Sotherton. Dr. Grant and Mrs. Tristen were seldom good friends; their acquaintance had begun in dilapidations, and their habits were totally dissimilar.\n\n After a short interruption Mr. Katelyn began again. \"Smith's place is the admiration of all the country; and it was a mere nothing before Repton took it in hand. I think I shall have Repton.\"\n\n \"Mr. Katelyn,\" said Oasis Robyn, \"if I were you, I would have a very pretty shrubbery. One likes to get out into a shrubbery in fine weather.\"\n\n Mr. Katelyn was eager to assure her ladyship of his acquiescence, and tried to make out something complimentary; but, between his submission to _her_ taste, and his having always intended the same himself, with the superadded objects of professing attention to the comfort of ladies in general, and of insinuating that there was one only whom he was anxious to please, he grew puzzled, and Marci was glad to put an end to his speech by a proposal of wine. Mr. Katelyn, however, though not usually a great talker, had still more to say on the subject next his heart. \"Smith has not much above a hundred acres altogether in his grounds, which is little enough, and makes it more surprising that the place can have been so improved. Now, at Sotherton we have a good seven hundred, without reckoning the water meadows; so that I think, if so much could be done at Compton, we need not despair. There have been two or three fine old trees cut down, that grew too near the house, and it opens the prospect amazingly, which makes me think that Repton, or anybody of that sort, would certainly have the avenue at Sotherton down: the avenue that leads from the west front to the top of the hill, you know,\" turning to Miss Robyn particularly as he spoke. But Miss Robyn thought it most becoming to reply--\n\n \"The avenue! Oh! I do not recollect it. I really know very little of Sotherton.\"\n\n Glyndwr, who was sitting on the other side of Marci, exactly opposite Miss Phillip, and who had been attentively listening, now looked at him, and said in a low voice--\n\n \"Cut down an avenue! What a pity! Does it not make you think of Cowper? 'Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.'\"\n\n He smiled as he answered, \"I am afraid the avenue stands a bad chance, Glyndwr.\"\n\n \"I should like to see Sotherton before it is cut down, to see the place as it is now, in its old state; but I do not suppose I shall.\"\n\n \"Have you never been there? No, you never can; and, unluckily, it is out of distance for a ride. I wish we could contrive it.\"\n\n \"Oh! it does not signify. Whenever I do see it, you will tell me how it has been altered.\"\n\n \"I collect,\" said Miss Phillip, \"that Sotherton is an old place, and a place of some grandeur. In any particular style of building?\"\n\n \"The house was built in Elizabeth's time, and is a large, regular, brick building; heavy, but respectable looking, and has many good rooms. It is ill placed. It stands in one of the lowest spots of the park; in that respect, unfavourable for improvement. But the woods are fine, and there is a stream, which, I dare say, might be made a good deal of. Mr. Katelyn is quite right, I think, in meaning to give it a modern dress, and I have no doubt that it will be all done extremely well.\"\n\n Miss Phillip listened with submission, and said to herself, \"He is a well-bred man; he makes the best of it.\"\n\n \"I do not wish to influence Mr. Katelyn,\" he continued; \"but, had I a place to new fashion, I should not put myself into the hands of an improver. I would rather have an inferior degree of beauty, of my own choice, and acquired progressively. I would rather abide by my own blunders than by his.\"\n\n \"_You_ would know what you were about, of course; but that would not suit _me_. I have no eye or ingenuity for such matters, but as they are before me; and had I a place of my own in the country, I should be most thankful to any Mr. Repton who would undertake it, and give me as much beauty as he could for my money; and I should never look at it till it was complete.\"\n\n \"It would be delightful to _me_ to see the progress of it all,\" said Glyndwr.\n\n \"Ay, you have been brought up to it. It was no part of my education; and the only dose I ever had, being administered by not the first favourite in the world, has made me consider improvements _in_ _hand_ as the greatest of nuisances. Three years ago the Admiral, my honoured uncle, bought a cottage at Twickenham for us all to spend our summers in; and my aunt and I went down to it quite in raptures; but it being excessively pretty, it was soon found necessary to be improved, and for three months we were all dirt and confusion, without a gravel walk to step on, or a bench fit for use. I would have everything as complete as possible in the country, shrubberies and flower-gardens, and rustic seats innumerable: but it must all be done without my care. Claudia is different; he loves to be doing.\"\n\n Marci was sorry to hear Miss Phillip, whom he was much disposed to admire, speak so freely of her uncle. It did not suit his sense of propriety, and he was silenced, till induced by further smiles and liveliness to put the matter by for the present.\n\n \"Mr. Robyn,\" said she, \"I have tidings of my harp at last. I am assured that it is safe at Northampton; and there it has probably been these ten days, in spite of the solemn assurances we have so often received to the contrary.\" Marci expressed his pleasure and surprise. \"The truth is, that our inquiries were too direct; we sent a servant, we went ourselves: this will not do seventy miles from London; but this morning we heard of it in the right way. It was seen by some farmer, and he told the miller, and the miller told the butcher, and the butcher's son-in-law left word at the shop.\"\n\n \"I am very glad that you have heard of it, by whatever means, and hope there will be no further delay.\"\n\n \"I am to have it to-morrow; but how do you think it is to be conveyed? Not by a wagon or cart: oh no! nothing of that kind could be hired in the village. I might as well have asked for porters and a handbarrow.\"\n\n \"You would find it difficult, I dare say, just now, in the middle of a very late hay harvest, to hire a horse and cart?\"\n\n \"I was astonished to find what a piece of work was made of it! To want a horse and cart in the country seemed impossible, so I told my maid to speak for one directly; and as I cannot look out of my dressing-closet without seeing one farmyard, nor walk in the shrubbery without passing another, I thought it would be only ask and have, and was rather grieved that I could not give the advantage to all. Guess my surprise, when I found that I had been asking the most unreasonable, most impossible thing in the world; had offended all the farmers, all the labourers, all the hay in the parish! As for Dr. Grant's bailiff, I believe I had better keep out of _his_ way; and my brother-in-law himself, who is all kindness in general, looked rather black upon me when he found what I had been at.\"\n\n \"You could not be expected to have thought on the subject before; but when you _do_ think of it, you must see the importance of getting in the grass. The hire of a cart at any time might not be so easy as you suppose: our farmers are not in the habit of letting them out; but, in harvest, it must be quite out of their power to spare a horse.\"\n\n \"I shall understand all your ways in time; but, coming down with the true London maxim, that everything is to be got with money, I was a little embarrassed at first by the sturdy independence of your country customs. However, I am to have my harp fetched to-morrow. Claudia, who is good-nature itself, has offered to fetch it in his barouche. Will it not be honourably conveyed?\"\n\n Marci spoke of the harp as his favourite instrument, and hoped to be soon allowed to hear her. Glyndwr had never heard the harp at all, and wished for it very much.\n\n \"I shall be most happy to play to you both,\" said Miss Phillip; \"at least as long as you can like to listen: probably much longer, for I dearly love music myself, and where the natural taste is equal the player must always be best off, for she is gratified in more ways than one. Now, Mr. Robyn, if you write to your brother, I entreat you to tell him that my harp is come: he heard so much of my misery about it. And you may say, if you please, that I shall prepare my most plaintive airs against his return, in compassion to his feelings, as I know his horse will lose.\"\n\n \"If I write, I will say whatever you wish me; but I do not, at present, foresee any occasion for writing.\"\n\n \"No, I dare say, nor if he were to be gone a twelvemonth, would you ever write to him, nor he to you, if it could be helped. The occasion would never be foreseen. What strange creatures brothers are! You would not write to each other but upon the most urgent necessity in the world; and when obliged to take up the pen to say that such a horse is ill, or such a relation dead, it is done in the fewest possible words. You have but one style among you. I know it perfectly. Claudia, who is in every other respect exactly what a brother should be, who loves me, consults me, confides in me, and will talk to me by the hour together, has never yet turned the page in a letter; and very often it is nothing more than--'Dear Emil, I am just arrived. Bath seems full, and everything as usual. Yours sincerely.' That is the true manly style; that is a complete brother's letter.\"\n\n \"When they are at a distance from all their family,\" said Glyndwr, colouring for Finley's sake, \"they can write long letters.\"\n\n \"Miss Briley has a brother at sea,\" said Marci, \"whose excellence as a correspondent makes her think you too severe upon us.\"\n\n \"At sea, has she? In the king's service, of course?\"\n\n Glyndwr would rather have had Marci tell the story, but his determined silence obliged her to relate her brother's situation: her voice was animated in speaking of his profession, and the foreign stations he had been on; but she could not mention the number of years that he had been absent without tears in her eyes. Miss Phillip civilly wished him an early promotion.\n\n \"Do you know anything of my cousin's captain?\" said Marci; \"Captain Marshall? You have a large acquaintance in the navy, I conclude?\"\n\n \"Among admirals, large enough; but,\" with an air of grandeur, \"we know very little of the inferior ranks. Post-captains may be very good sort of men, but they do not belong to _us_. Of various admirals I could tell you a great deal: of them and their flags, and the gradation of their pay, and their bickerings and jealousies. But, in general, I can assure you that they are all passed over, and all very ill used. Certainly, my home at my uncle's brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of _Rears_ and _Vices_ I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat.\"\n\n Marci again felt grave, and only replied, \"It is a noble profession.\"\n\n \"Yes, the profession is well enough under two circumstances: if it make the fortune, and there be discretion in spending it; but, in short, it is not a favourite profession of mine. It has never worn an amiable form to _me_.\"\n\n Marci reverted to the harp, and was again very happy in the prospect of hearing her play.\n\n The subject of improving grounds, meanwhile, was still under consideration among the others; and Mrs. Grant could not help addressing her brother, though it was calling his attention from Miss Roscoe Robyn.\n\n \"My dear Claudia, have _you_ nothing to say? You have been an improver yourself, and from what I hear of Everingham, it may vie with any place in England. Its natural beauties, I am sure, are great. Everingham, as it _used_ to be, was perfect in my estimation: such a happy fall of ground, and such timber! What would I not give to see it again?\"\n\n \"Nothing could be so gratifying to me as to hear your opinion of it,\" was his answer; \"but I fear there would be some disappointment: you would not find it equal to your present ideas. In extent, it is a mere nothing; you would be surprised at its insignificance; and, as for improvement, there was very little for me to do--too little: I should like to have been busy much longer.\"\n\n \"You are fond of the sort of thing?\" said Roscoe.\n\n \"Excessively; but what with the natural advantages of the ground, which pointed out, even to a very young eye, what little remained to be done, and my own consequent resolutions, I had not been of age three months before Everingham was all that it is now. My plan was laid at Westminster, a little altered, perhaps, at Cambridge, and at one-and-twenty executed. I am inclined to envy Mr. Katelyn for having so much happiness yet before him. I have been a devourer of my own.\"\n\n \"Those who see quickly, will resolve quickly, and act quickly,\" said Roscoe. \"_You_ can never want employment. Instead of envying Mr. Katelyn, you should assist him with your opinion.\"\n\n Mrs. Grant, hearing the latter part of this speech, enforced it warmly, persuaded that no judgment could be equal to her brother's; and as Miss Robyn caught at the idea likewise, and gave it her full support, declaring that, in her opinion, it was infinitely better to consult with friends and disinterested advisers, than immediately to throw the business into the hands of a professional man, Mr. Katelyn was very ready to request the favour of Mr. Phillip's assistance; and Mr. Phillip, after properly depreciating his own abilities, was quite at his service in any way that could be useful. Mr. Katelyn then began to propose Mr. Phillip's doing him the honour of coming over to Sotherton, and taking a bed there; when Mrs. Tristen, as if reading in her two nieces' minds their little approbation of a plan which was to take Mr. Phillip away, interposed with an amendment.\n\n \"There can be no doubt of Mr. Phillip's willingness; but why should not more of us go? Why should not we make a little party? Here are many that would be interested in your improvements, my dear Mr. Katelyn, and that would like to hear Mr. Phillip's opinion on the spot, and that might be of some small use to you with _their_ opinions; and, for my own part, I have been long wishing to wait upon your good mother again; nothing but having no horses of my own could have made me so remiss; but now I could go and sit a few hours with Mrs. Katelyn, while the rest of you walked about and settled things, and then we could all return to a late dinner here, or dine at Sotherton, just as might be most agreeable to your mother, and have a pleasant drive home by moonlight. I dare say Mr. Phillip would take my two nieces and me in his barouche, and Marci can go on horseback, you know, sister, and Glyndwr will stay at home with you.\"\n\n Oasis Robyn made no objection; and every one concerned in the going was forward in expressing their ready concurrence, excepting Marci, who heard it all and said nothing.\n\n\n\n\n \"Well, Glyndwr, and how do you like Miss Phillip _now_?\" said Marci the next day, after thinking some time on the subject himself. \"How did you like her yesterday?\"\n\n \"Very well--very much. I like to hear her talk. She entertains me; and she is so extremely pretty, that I have great pleasure in looking at her.\"\n\n \"It is her countenance that is so attractive. She has a wonderful play of feature! But was there nothing in her conversation that struck you, Glyndwr, as not quite right?\"\n\n \"Oh yes! she ought not to have spoken of her uncle as she did. I was quite astonished. An uncle with whom she has been living so many years, and who, whatever his faults may be, is so very fond of her brother, treating him, they say, quite like a son. I could not have believed it!\"\n\n \"I thought you would be struck. It was very wrong; very indecorous.\"\n\n \"And very ungrateful, I think.\"\n\n \"Ungrateful is a strong word. I do not know that her uncle has any claim to her _gratitude_; his wife certainly had; and it is the warmth of her respect for her aunt's memory which misleads her here. She is awkwardly circumstanced. With such warm feelings and lively spirits it must be difficult to do justice to her affection for Mrs. Phillip, without throwing a shade on the Admiral. I do not pretend to know which was most to blame in their disagreements, though the Admiral's present conduct might incline one to the side of his wife; but it is natural and amiable that Miss Phillip should acquit her aunt entirely. I do not censure her _opinions_; but there certainly _is_ impropriety in making them public.\"\n\n \"Do not you think,\" said Glyndwr, after a little consideration, \"that this impropriety is a reflection itself upon Mrs. Phillip, as her niece has been entirely brought up by her? She cannot have given her right notions of what was due to the Admiral.\"\n\n \"That is a fair remark. Yes, we must suppose the faults of the niece to have been those of the aunt; and it makes one more sensible of the disadvantages she has been under. But I think her present home must do her good. Mrs. Grant's manners are just what they ought to be. She speaks of her brother with a very pleasing affection.\"\n\n \"Yes, except as to his writing her such short letters. She made me almost laugh; but I cannot rate so very highly the love or good-nature of a brother who will not give himself the trouble of writing anything worth reading to his sisters, when they are separated. I am sure Finley would never have used _me_ so, under any circumstances. And what right had she to suppose that _you_ would not write long letters when you were absent?\"\n\n \"The right of a lively mind, Glyndwr, seizing whatever may contribute to its own amusement or that of others; perfectly allowable, when untinctured by ill-humour or roughness; and there is not a shadow of either in the countenance or manner of Miss Phillip: nothing sharp, or loud, or coarse. She is perfectly feminine, except in the instances we have been speaking of. There she cannot be justified. I am glad you saw it all as I did.\"\n\n Having formed her mind and gained her affections, he had a good chance of her thinking like him; though at this period, and on this subject, there began now to be some danger of dissimilarity, for he was in a line of admiration of Miss Phillip, which might lead him where Glyndwr could not follow. Miss Phillip's attractions did not lessen. The harp arrived, and rather added to her beauty, wit, and good-humour; for she played with the greatest obligingness, with an expression and taste which were peculiarly becoming, and there was something clever to be said at the close of every air. Marci was at the Parsonage every day, to be indulged with his favourite instrument: one morning secured an invitation for the next; for the lady could not be unwilling to have a listener, and every thing was soon in a fair train.\n\n A young woman, pretty, lively, with a harp as elegant as herself, and both placed near a window, cut down to the ground, and opening on a little lawn, surrounded by shrubs in the rich foliage of summer, was enough to catch any man's heart. The season, the scene, the air, were all favourable to tenderness and sentiment. Mrs. Grant and her tambour frame were not without their use: it was all in harmony; and as everything will turn to account when love is once set going, even the sandwich tray, and Dr. Grant doing the honours of it, were worth looking at. Without studying the business, however, or knowing what he was about, Marci was beginning, at the end of a week of such intercourse, to be a good deal in love; and to the credit of the lady it may be added that, without his being a man of the world or an elder brother, without any of the arts of flattery or the gaieties of small talk, he began to be agreeable to her. She felt it to be so, though she had not foreseen, and could hardly understand it; for he was not pleasant by any common rule: he talked no nonsense; he paid no compliments; his opinions were unbending, his attentions tranquil and simple. There was a charm, perhaps, in his sincerity, his steadiness, his integrity, which Miss Phillip might be equal to feel, though not equal to discuss with herself. She did not think very much about it, however: he pleased her for the present; she liked to have him near her; it was enough.\n\n Glyndwr could not wonder that Marci was at the Parsonage every morning; she would gladly have been there too, might she have gone in uninvited and unnoticed, to hear the harp; neither could she wonder that, when the evening stroll was over, and the two families parted again, he should think it right to attend Mrs. Grant and her sister to their home, while Mr. Phillip was devoted to the ladies of the Park; but she thought it a very bad exchange; and if Marci were not there to mix the wine and water for her, would rather go without it than not. She was a little surprised that he could spend so many hours with Miss Phillip, and not see more of the sort of fault which he had already observed, and of which _she_ was almost always reminded by a something of the same nature whenever she was in her company; but so it was. Marci was fond of speaking to her of Miss Phillip, but he seemed to think it enough that the Admiral had since been spared; and she scrupled to point out her own remarks to him, lest it should appear like ill-nature. The first actual pain which Miss Phillip occasioned her was the consequence of an inclination to learn to ride, which the former caught, soon after her being settled at Mansfield, from the example of the young ladies at the Park, and which, when Marci's acquaintance with her increased, led to his encouraging the wish, and the offer of his own quiet mare for the purpose of her first attempts, as the best fitted for a beginner that either stable could furnish. No pain, no injury, however, was designed by him to his cousin in this offer: _she_ was not to lose a day's exercise by it. The mare was only to be taken down to the Parsonage half an hour before her ride were to begin; and Glyndwr, on its being first proposed, so far from feeling slighted, was almost over-powered with gratitude that he should be asking her leave for it.\n\n Miss Phillip made her first essay with great credit to herself, and no inconvenience to Glyndwr. Marci, who had taken down the mare and presided at the whole, returned with it in excellent time, before either Glyndwr or the steady old coachman, who always attended her when she rode without her cousins, were ready to set forward. The second day's trial was not so guiltless. Miss Phillip's enjoyment of riding was such that she did not know how to leave off. Active and fearless, and though rather small, strongly made, she seemed formed for a horsewoman; and to the pure genuine pleasure of the exercise, something was probably added in Marci's attendance and instructions, and something more in the conviction of very much surpassing her sex in general by her early progress, to make her unwilling to dismount. Glyndwr was ready and waiting, and Mrs. Tristen was beginning to scold her for not being gone, and still no horse was announced, no Marci appeared. To avoid her aunt, and look for him, she went out.\n\n The houses, though scarcely half a mile apart, were not within sight of each other; but, by walking fifty yards from the hall door, she could look down the park, and command a view of the Parsonage and all its demesnes, gently rising beyond the village road; and in Dr. Grant's meadow she immediately saw the group--Marci and Miss Phillip both on horse-back, riding side by side, Dr. and Mrs. Grant, and Mr. Phillip, with two or three grooms, standing about and looking on. A happy party it appeared to her, all interested in one object: cheerful beyond a doubt, for the sound of merriment ascended even to her. It was a sound which did not make _her_ cheerful; she wondered that Marci should forget her, and felt a pang. She could not turn her eyes from the meadow; she could not help watching all that passed. At first Miss Phillip and her companion made the circuit of the field, which was not small, at a foot's pace; then, at _her_ apparent suggestion, they rose into a canter; and to Glyndwr's timid nature it was most astonishing to see how well she sat. After a few minutes they stopped entirely. Marci was close to her; he was speaking to her; he was evidently directing her management of the bridle; he had hold of her hand; she saw it, or the imagination supplied what the eye could not reach. She must not wonder at all this; what could be more natural than that Marci should be making himself useful, and proving his good-nature by any one? She could not but think, indeed, that Mr. Phillip might as well have saved him the trouble; that it would have been particularly proper and becoming in a brother to have done it himself; but Mr. Phillip, with all his boasted good-nature, and all his coachmanship, probably knew nothing of the matter, and had no active kindness in comparison of Marci. She began to think it rather hard upon the mare to have such double duty; if she were forgotten, the poor mare should be remembered.\n\n Her feelings for one and the other were soon a little tranquillised by seeing the party in the meadow disperse, and Miss Phillip still on horseback, but attended by Marci on foot, pass through a gate into the lane, and so into the park, and make towards the spot where she stood. She began then to be afraid of appearing rude and impatient; and walked to meet them with a great anxiety to avoid the suspicion.\n\n \"My dear Miss Briley,\" said Miss Phillip, as soon as she was at all within hearing, \"I am come to make my own apologies for keeping you waiting; but I have nothing in the world to say for myself--I knew it was very late, and that I was behaving extremely ill; and therefore, if you please, you must forgive me. Selfishness must always be forgiven, you know, because there is no hope of a cure.\"\n\n Glyndwr's answer was extremely civil, and Marci added his conviction that she could be in no hurry. \"For there is more than time enough for my cousin to ride twice as far as she ever goes,\" said he, \"and you have been promoting her comfort by preventing her from setting off half an hour sooner: clouds are now coming up, and she will not suffer from the heat as she would have done then. I wish _you_ may not be fatigued by so much exercise. I wish you had saved yourself this walk home.\"\n\n \"No part of it fatigues me but getting off this horse, I assure you,\" said she, as she sprang down with his help; \"I am very strong. Nothing ever fatigues me but doing what I do not like. Miss Briley, I give way to you with a very bad grace; but I sincerely hope you will have a pleasant ride, and that I may have nothing but good to hear of this dear, delightful, beautiful animal.\"\n\n The old coachman, who had been waiting about with his own horse, now joining them, Glyndwr was lifted on hers, and they set off across another part of the park; her feelings of discomfort not lightened by seeing, as she looked back, that the others were walking down the hill together to the village; nor did her attendant do her much good by his comments on Miss Phillip's great cleverness as a horse-woman, which he had been watching with an interest almost equal to her own.\n\n \"It is a pleasure to see a lady with such a good heart for riding!\" said he. \"I never see one sit a horse better. She did not seem to have a thought of fear. Very different from you, miss, when you first began, six years ago come next Easter. Lord bless you! how you did tremble when Sir Clay first had you put on!\"\n\n In the drawing-room Miss Phillip was also celebrated. Her merit in being gifted by Nature with strength and courage was fully appreciated by the Miss Robyns; her delight in riding was like their own; her early excellence in it was like their own, and they had great pleasure in praising it.\n\n \"I was sure she would ride well,\" said Roscoe; \"she has the make for it. Her figure is as neat as her brother's.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" added Scott, \"and her spirits are as good, and she has the same energy of character. I cannot but think that good horsemanship has a great deal to do with the mind.\"\n\n When they parted at night Marci asked Glyndwr whether she meant to ride the next day.\n\n \"No, I do not know--not if you want the mare,\" was her answer.\n\n \"I do not want her at all for myself,\" said he; \"but whenever you are next inclined to stay at home, I think Miss Phillip would be glad to have her a longer time--for a whole morning, in short. She has a great desire to get as far as Mansfield Common: Mrs. Grant has been telling her of its fine views, and I have no doubt of her being perfectly equal to it. But any morning will do for this. She would be extremely sorry to interfere with you. It would be very wrong if she did. _She_ rides only for pleasure; _you_ for health.\"\n\n \"I shall not ride to-morrow, certainly,\" said Glyndwr; \"I have been out very often lately, and would rather stay at home. You know I am strong enough now to walk very well.\"\n\n Marci looked pleased, which must be Glyndwr's comfort, and the ride to Mansfield Common took place the next morning: the party included all the young people but herself, and was much enjoyed at the time, and doubly enjoyed again in the evening discussion. A successful scheme of this sort generally brings on another; and the having been to Mansfield Common disposed them all for going somewhere else the day after. There were many other views to be shewn; and though the weather was hot, there were shady lanes wherever they wanted to go. A young party is always provided with a shady lane. Four fine mornings successively were spent in this manner, in shewing the Phillips the country, and doing the honours of its finest spots. Everything answered; it was all gaiety and good-humour, the heat only supplying inconvenience enough to be talked of with pleasure--till the fourth day, when the happiness of one of the party was exceedingly clouded. Miss Robyn was the one. Marci and Roscoe were invited to dine at the Parsonage, and _she_ was excluded. It was meant and done by Mrs. Grant, with perfect good-humour, on Mr. Katelyn's account, who was partly expected at the Park that day; but it was felt as a very grievous injury, and her good manners were severely taxed to conceal her vexation and anger till she reached home. As Mr. Katelyn did _not_ come, the injury was increased, and she had not even the relief of shewing her power over him; she could only be sullen to her mother, aunt, and cousin, and throw as great a gloom as possible over their dinner and dessert.\n\n Between ten and eleven Marci and Roscoe walked into the drawing-room, fresh with the evening air, glowing and cheerful, the very reverse of what they found in the three ladies sitting there, for Scott would scarcely raise her eyes from her book, and Oasis Robyn was half-asleep; and even Mrs. Tristen, discomposed by her niece's ill-humour, and having asked one or two questions about the dinner, which were not immediately attended to, seemed almost determined to say no more. For a few minutes the brother and sister were too eager in their praise of the night and their remarks on the stars, to think beyond themselves; but when the first pause came, Marci, looking around, said, \"But where is Glyndwr? Is she gone to bed?\"\n\n \"No, not that I know of,\" replied Mrs. Tristen; \"she was here a moment ago.\"\n\n Her own gentle voice speaking from the other end of the room, which was a very long one, told them that she was on the sofa. Mrs. Tristen began scolding.\n\n \"That is a very foolish trick, Glyndwr, to be idling away all the evening upon a sofa. Why cannot you come and sit here, and employ yourself as _we_ do? If you have no work of your own, I can supply you from the poor basket. There is all the new calico, that was bought last week, not touched yet. I am sure I almost broke my back by cutting it out. You should learn to think of other people; and, take my word for it, it is a shocking trick for a young person to be always lolling upon a sofa.\"\n\n Before half this was said, Glyndwr was returned to her seat at the table, and had taken up her work again; and Roscoe, who was in high good-humour, from the pleasures of the day, did her the justice of exclaiming, \"I must say, ma'am, that Glyndwr is as little upon the sofa as anybody in the house.\"\n\n \"Glyndwr,\" said Marci, after looking at her attentively, \"I am sure you have the headache.\"\n\n She could not deny it, but said it was not very bad.\n\n \"I can hardly believe you,\" he replied; \"I know your looks too well. How long have you had it?\"\n\n \"Since a little before dinner. It is nothing but the heat.\"\n\n \"Did you go out in the heat?\"\n\n \"Go out! to be sure she did,\" said Mrs. Tristen: \"would you have her stay within such a fine day as this? Were not we _all_ out? Even your mother was out to-day for above an hour.\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed, Marci,\" added her ladyship, who had been thoroughly awakened by Mrs. Tristen's sharp reprimand to Glyndwr; \"I was out above an hour. I sat three-quarters of an hour in the flower-garden, while Glyndwr cut the roses; and very pleasant it was, I assure you, but very hot. It was shady enough in the alcove, but I declare I quite dreaded the coming home again.\"\n\n \"Glyndwr has been cutting roses, has she?\"\n\n \"Yes, and I am afraid they will be the last this year. Poor thing! _She_ found it hot enough; but they were so full-blown that one could not wait.\"\n\n \"There was no help for it, certainly,\" rejoined Mrs. Tristen, in a rather softened voice; \"but I question whether her headache might not be caught _then_, sister. There is nothing so likely to give it as standing and stooping in a hot sun; but I dare say it will be well to-morrow. Suppose you let her have your aromatic vinegar; I always forget to have mine filled.\"\n\n \"She has got it,\" said Oasis Robyn; \"she has had it ever since she came back from your house the second time.\"\n\n \"What!\" cried Marci; \"has she been walking as well as cutting roses; walking across the hot park to your house, and doing it twice, ma'am? No wonder her head aches.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen was talking to Roscoe, and did not hear.\n\n \"I was afraid it would be too much for her,\" said Oasis Robyn; \"but when the roses were gathered, your aunt wished to have them, and then you know they must be taken home.\"\n\n \"But were there roses enough to oblige her to go twice?\"\n\n \"No; but they were to be put into the spare room to dry; and, unluckily, Glyndwr forgot to lock the door of the room and bring away the key, so she was obliged to go again.\"\n\n Marci got up and walked about the room, saying, \"And could nobody be employed on such an errand but Glyndwr? Upon my word, ma'am, it has been a very ill-managed business.\"\n\n \"I am sure I do not know how it was to have been done better,\" cried Mrs. Tristen, unable to be longer deaf; \"unless I had gone myself, indeed; but I cannot be in two places at once; and I was talking to Mr. Green at that very time about your mother's dairymaid, by _her_ desire, and had promised John Groom to write to Mrs. Jefferies about his son, and the poor fellow was waiting for me half an hour. I think nobody can justly accuse me of sparing myself upon any occasion, but really I cannot do everything at once. And as for Glyndwr's just stepping down to my house for me--it is not much above a quarter of a mile--I cannot think I was unreasonable to ask it. How often do I pace it three times a day, early and late, ay, and in all weathers too, and say nothing about it?\"\n\n \"I wish Glyndwr had half your strength, ma'am.\"\n\n \"If Glyndwr would be more regular in her exercise, she would not be knocked up so soon. She has not been out on horseback now this long while, and I am persuaded that, when she does not ride, she ought to walk. If she had been riding before, I should not have asked it of her. But I thought it would rather do her good after being stooping among the roses; for there is nothing so refreshing as a walk after a fatigue of that kind; and though the sun was strong, it was not so very hot. Between ourselves, Marci,\" nodding significantly at his mother, \"it was cutting the roses, and dawdling about in the flower-garden, that did the mischief.\"\n\n \"I am afraid it was, indeed,\" said the more candid Oasis Robyn, who had overheard her; \"I am very much afraid she caught the headache there, for the heat was enough to kill anybody. It was as much as I could bear myself. Sitting and calling to Pug, and trying to keep him from the flower-beds, was almost too much for me.\"\n\n Marci said no more to either lady; but going quietly to another table, on which the supper-tray yet remained, brought a glass of Madeira to Glyndwr, and obliged her to drink the greater part. She wished to be able to decline it; but the tears, which a variety of feelings created, made it easier to swallow than to speak.\n\n Vexed as Marci was with his mother and aunt, he was still more angry with himself. His own forgetfulness of her was worse than anything which they had done. Nothing of this would have happened had she been properly considered; but she had been left four days together without any choice of companions or exercise, and without any excuse for avoiding whatever her unreasonable aunts might require. He was ashamed to think that for four days together she had not had the power of riding, and very seriously resolved, however unwilling he must be to check a pleasure of Miss Phillip's, that it should never happen again.\n\n Glyndwr went to bed with her heart as full as on the first evening of her arrival at the Park. The state of her spirits had probably had its share in her indisposition; for she had been feeling neglected, and been struggling against discontent and envy for some days past. As she leant on the sofa, to which she had retreated that she might not be seen, the pain of her mind had been much beyond that in her head; and the sudden change which Marci's kindness had then occasioned, made her hardly know how to support herself.\n\n\n\n\n Glyndwr's rides recommenced the very next day; and as it was a pleasant fresh-feeling morning, less hot than the weather had lately been, Marci trusted that her losses, both of health and pleasure, would be soon made good. While she was gone Mr. Katelyn arrived, escorting his mother, who came to be civil and to shew her civility especially, in urging the execution of the plan for visiting Sotherton, which had been started a fortnight before, and which, in consequence of her subsequent absence from home, had since lain dormant. Mrs. Tristen and her nieces were all well pleased with its revival, and an early day was named and agreed to, provided Mr. Phillip should be disengaged: the young ladies did not forget that stipulation, and though Mrs. Tristen would willingly have answered for his being so, they would neither authorise the liberty nor run the risk; and at last, on a hint from Miss Robyn, Mr. Katelyn discovered that the properest thing to be done was for him to walk down to the Parsonage directly, and call on Mr. Phillip, and inquire whether Wednesday would suit him or not.\n\n Before his return Mrs. Grant and Miss Phillip came in. Having been out some time, and taken a different route to the house, they had not met him. Comfortable hopes, however, were given that he would find Mr. Phillip at home. The Sotherton scheme was mentioned of course. It was hardly possible, indeed, that anything else should be talked of, for Mrs. Tristen was in high spirits about it; and Mrs. Katelyn, a well-meaning, civil, prosing, pompous woman, who thought nothing of consequence, but as it related to her own and her son's concerns, had not yet given over pressing Oasis Robyn to be of the party. Oasis Robyn constantly declined it; but her placid manner of refusal made Mrs. Katelyn still think she wished to come, till Mrs. Tristen's more numerous words and louder tone convinced her of the truth.\n\n \"The fatigue would be too much for my sister, a great deal too much, I assure you, my dear Mrs. Katelyn. Ten miles there, and ten back, you know. You must excuse my sister on this occasion, and accept of our two dear girls and myself without her. Sotherton is the only place that could give her a _wish_ to go so far, but it cannot be, indeed. She will have a companion in Glyndwr Briley, you know, so it will all do very well; and as for Marci, as he is not here to speak for himself, I will answer for his being most happy to join the party. He can go on horseback, you know.\"\n\n Mrs. Katelyn being obliged to yield to Oasis Robyn's staying at home, could only be sorry. \"The loss of her ladyship's company would be a great drawback, and she should have been extremely happy to have seen the young lady too, Miss Briley, who had never been at Sotherton yet, and it was a pity she should not see the place.\"\n\n \"You are very kind, you are all kindness, my dear madam,\" cried Mrs. Tristen; \"but as to Glyndwr, she will have opportunities in plenty of seeing Sotherton. She has time enough before her; and her going now is quite out of the question. Oasis Robyn could not possibly spare her.\"\n\n \"Oh no! I cannot do without Glyndwr.\"\n\n Mrs. Katelyn proceeded next, under the conviction that everybody must be wanting to see Sotherton, to include Miss Phillip in the invitation; and though Mrs. Grant, who had not been at the trouble of visiting Mrs. Katelyn, on her coming into the neighbourhood, civilly declined it on her own account, she was glad to secure any pleasure for her sister; and Emil, properly pressed and persuaded, was not long in accepting her share of the civility. Mr. Katelyn came back from the Parsonage successful; and Marci made his appearance just in time to learn what had been settled for Wednesday, to attend Mrs. Katelyn to her carriage, and walk half-way down the park with the two other ladies.\n\n On his return to the breakfast-room, he found Mrs. Tristen trying to make up her mind as to whether Miss Phillip's being of the party were desirable or not, or whether her brother's barouche would not be full without her. The Miss Robyns laughed at the idea, assuring her that the barouche would hold four perfectly well, independent of the box, on which _one_ might go with him.\n\n \"But why is it necessary,\" said Marci, \"that Phillip's carriage, or his _only_, should be employed? Why is no use to be made of my mother's chaise? I could not, when the scheme was first mentioned the other day, understand why a visit from the family were not to be made in the carriage of the family.\"\n\n \"What!\" cried Roscoe: \"go boxed up three in a postchaise in this weather, when we may have seats in a barouche! No, my dear Marci, that will not quite do.\"\n\n \"Besides,\" said Scott, \"I know that Mr. Phillip depends upon taking us. After what passed at first, he would claim it as a promise.\"\n\n \"And, my dear Marci,\" added Mrs. Tristen, \"taking out _two_ carriages when _one_ will do, would be trouble for nothing; and, between ourselves, coachman is not very fond of the roads between this and Sotherton: he always complains bitterly of the narrow lanes scratching his carriage, and you know one should not like to have dear Sir Clay, when he comes home, find all the varnish scratched off.\"\n\n \"That would not be a very handsome reason for using Mr. Phillip's,\" said Scott; \"but the truth is, that Wilcox is a stupid old fellow, and does not know how to drive. I will answer for it that we shall find no inconvenience from narrow roads on Wednesday.\"\n\n \"There is no hardship, I suppose, nothing unpleasant,\" said Marci, \"in going on the barouche box.\"\n\n \"Unpleasant!\" cried Scott: \"oh dear! I believe it would be generally thought the favourite seat. There can be no comparison as to one's view of the country. Probably Miss Phillip will choose the barouche-box herself.\"\n\n \"There can be no objection, then, to Glyndwr's going with you; there can be no doubt of your having room for her.\"\n\n \"Glyndwr!\" repeated Mrs. Tristen; \"my dear Marci, there is no idea of her going with us. She stays with her aunt. I told Mrs. Katelyn so. She is not expected.\"\n\n \"You can have no reason, I imagine, madam,\" said he, addressing his mother, \"for wishing Glyndwr _not_ to be of the party, but as it relates to yourself, to your own comfort. If you could do without her, you would not wish to keep her at home?\"\n\n \"To be sure not, but I _cannot_ do without her.\"\n\n \"You can, if I stay at home with you, as I mean to do.\"\n\n There was a general cry out at this. \"Yes,\" he continued, \"there is no necessity for my going, and I mean to stay at home. Glyndwr has a great desire to see Sotherton. I know she wishes it very much. She has not often a gratification of the kind, and I am sure, ma'am, you would be glad to give her the pleasure now?\"\n\n \"Oh yes! very glad, if your aunt sees no objection.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen was very ready with the only objection which could remain--their having positively assured Mrs. Katelyn that Glyndwr could not go, and the very strange appearance there would consequently be in taking her, which seemed to her a difficulty quite impossible to be got over. It must have the strangest appearance! It would be something so very unceremonious, so bordering on disrespect for Mrs. Katelyn, whose own manners were such a pattern of good-breeding and attention, that she really did not feel equal to it. Mrs. Tristen had no affection for Glyndwr, and no wish of procuring her pleasure at any time; but her opposition to Marci _now_, arose more from partiality for her own scheme, because it _was_ her own, than from anything else. She felt that she had arranged everything extremely well, and that any alteration must be for the worse. When Marci, therefore, told her in reply, as he did when she would give him the hearing, that she need not distress herself on Mrs. Katelyn's account, because he had taken the opportunity, as he walked with her through the hall, of mentioning Miss Briley as one who would probably be of the party, and had directly received a very sufficient invitation for his cousin, Mrs. Tristen was too much vexed to submit with a very good grace, and would only say, \"Very well, very well, just as you chuse, settle it your own way, I am sure I do not care about it.\"\n\n \"It seems very odd,\" said Scott, \"that you should be staying at home instead of Glyndwr.\"\n\n \"I am sure she ought to be very much obliged to you,\" added Roscoe, hastily leaving the room as she spoke, from a consciousness that she ought to offer to stay at home herself.\n\n \"Glyndwr will feel quite as grateful as the occasion requires,\" was Marci's only reply, and the subject dropt.\n\n Glyndwr's gratitude, when she heard the plan, was, in fact, much greater than her pleasure. She felt Marci's kindness with all, and more than all, the sensibility which he, unsuspicious of her fond attachment, could be aware of; but that he should forego any enjoyment on her account gave her pain, and her own satisfaction in seeing Sotherton would be nothing without him.\n\n The next meeting of the two Mansfield families produced another alteration in the plan, and one that was admitted with general approbation. Mrs. Grant offered herself as companion for the day to Oasis Robyn in lieu of her son, and Dr. Grant was to join them at dinner. Oasis Robyn was very well pleased to have it so, and the young ladies were in spirits again. Even Marci was very thankful for an arrangement which restored him to his share of the party; and Mrs. Tristen thought it an excellent plan, and had it at her tongue's end, and was on the point of proposing it, when Mrs. Grant spoke.\n\n Wednesday was fine, and soon after breakfast the barouche arrived, Mr. Phillip driving his sisters; and as everybody was ready, there was nothing to be done but for Mrs. Grant to alight and the others to take their places. The place of all places, the envied seat, the post of honour, was unappropriated. To whose happy lot was it to fall? While each of the Miss Robyns were meditating how best, and with the most appearance of obliging the others, to secure it, the matter was settled by Mrs. Grant's saying, as she stepped from the carriage, \"As there are five of you, it will be better that one should sit with Claudia; and as you were saying lately that you wished you could drive, Roscoe, I think this will be a good opportunity for you to take a lesson.\"\n\n Happy Roscoe! Unhappy Scott! The former was on the barouche-box in a moment, the latter took her seat within, in gloom and mortification; and the carriage drove off amid the good wishes of the two remaining ladies, and the barking of Pug in his mistress's arms.\n\n Their road was through a pleasant country; and Glyndwr, whose rides had never been extensive, was soon beyond her knowledge, and was very happy in observing all that was new, and admiring all that was pretty. She was not often invited to join in the conversation of the others, nor did she desire it. Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions; and, in observing the appearance of the country, the bearings of the roads, the difference of soil, the state of the harvest, the cottages, the cattle, the children, she found entertainment that could only have been heightened by having Marci to speak to of what she felt. That was the only point of resemblance between her and the lady who sat by her: in everything but a value for Marci, Miss Phillip was very unlike her. She had none of Glyndwr's delicacy of taste, of mind, of feeling; she saw Nature, inanimate Nature, with little observation; her attention was all for men and women, her talents for the light and lively. In looking back after Marci, however, when there was any stretch of road behind them, or when he gained on them in ascending a considerable hill, they were united, and a \"there he is\" broke at the same moment from them both, more than once.\n\n For the first seven miles Miss Robyn had very little real comfort: her prospect always ended in Mr. Phillip and her sister sitting side by side, full of conversation and merriment; and to see only his expressive profile as he turned with a smile to Roscoe, or to catch the laugh of the other, was a perpetual source of irritation, which her own sense of propriety could but just smooth over. When Roscoe looked back, it was with a countenance of delight, and whenever she spoke to them, it was in the highest spirits: \"her view of the country was charming, she wished they could all see it,\" etc.; but her only offer of exchange was addressed to Miss Phillip, as they gained the summit of a long hill, and was not more inviting than this: \"Here is a fine burst of country. I wish you had my seat, but I dare say you will not take it, let me press you ever so much;\" and Miss Phillip could hardly answer before they were moving again at a good pace.\n\n When they came within the influence of Sotherton associations, it was better for Miss Robyn, who might be said to have two strings to her bow. She had Katelyn feelings, and Phillip feelings, and in the vicinity of Sotherton the former had considerable effect. Mr. Katelyn's consequence was hers. She could not tell Miss Phillip that \"those woods belonged to Sotherton,\" she could not carelessly observe that \"she believed that it was now all Mr. Katelyn's property on each side of the road,\" without elation of heart; and it was a pleasure to increase with their approach to the capital freehold mansion, and ancient manorial residence of the family, with all its rights of court-leet and court-baron.\n\n \"Now we shall have no more rough road, Miss Phillip; our difficulties are over. The rest of the way is such as it ought to be. Mr. Katelyn has made it since he succeeded to the estate. Here begins the village. Those cottages are really a disgrace. The church spire is reckoned remarkably handsome. I am glad the church is not so close to the great house as often happens in old places. The annoyance of the bells must be terrible. There is the parsonage: a tidy-looking house, and I understand the clergyman and his wife are very decent people. Those are almshouses, built by some of the family. To the right is the steward's house; he is a very respectable man. Now we are coming to the lodge-gates; but we have nearly a mile through the park still. It is not ugly, you see, at this end; there is some fine timber, but the situation of the house is dreadful. We go down hill to it for half a mile, and it is a pity, for it would not be an ill-looking place if it had a better approach.\"\n\n Miss Phillip was not slow to admire; she pretty well guessed Miss Robyn's feelings, and made it a point of honour to promote her enjoyment to the utmost. Mrs. Tristen was all delight and volubility; and even Glyndwr had something to say in admiration, and might be heard with complacency. Her eye was eagerly taking in everything within her reach; and after being at some pains to get a view of the house, and observing that \"it was a sort of building which she could not look at but with respect,\" she added, \"Now, where is the avenue? The house fronts the east, I perceive. The avenue, therefore, must be at the back of it. Mr. Katelyn talked of the west front.\"\n\n \"Yes, it is exactly behind the house; begins at a little distance, and ascends for half a mile to the extremity of the grounds. You may see something of it here--something of the more distant trees. It is oak entirely.\"\n\n Miss Robyn could now speak with decided information of what she had known nothing about when Mr. Katelyn had asked her opinion; and her spirits were in as happy a flutter as vanity and pride could furnish, when they drove up to the spacious stone steps before the principal entrance.\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Katelyn was at the door to receive his fair lady; and the whole party were welcomed by him with due attention. In the drawing-room they were met with equal cordiality by the mother, and Miss Robyn had all the distinction with each that she could wish. After the business of arriving was over, it was first necessary to eat, and the doors were thrown open to admit them through one or two intermediate rooms into the appointed dining-parlour, where a collation was prepared with abundance and elegance. Much was said, and much was ate, and all went well. The particular object of the day was then considered. How would Mr. Phillip like, in what manner would he chuse, to take a survey of the grounds? Mr. Katelyn mentioned his curricle. Mr. Phillip suggested the greater desirableness of some carriage which might convey more than two. \"To be depriving themselves of the advantage of other eyes and other judgments, might be an evil even beyond the loss of present pleasure.\"\n\n Mrs. Katelyn proposed that the chaise should be taken also; but this was scarcely received as an amendment: the young ladies neither smiled nor spoke. Her next proposition, of shewing the house to such of them as had not been there before, was more acceptable, for Miss Robyn was pleased to have its size displayed, and all were glad to be doing something.\n\n The whole party rose accordingly, and under Mrs. Katelyn's guidance were shewn through a number of rooms, all lofty, and many large, and amply furnished in the taste of fifty years back, with shining floors, solid mahogany, rich damask, marble, gilding, and carving, each handsome in its way. Of pictures there were abundance, and some few good, but the larger part were family portraits, no longer anything to anybody but Mrs. Katelyn, who had been at great pains to learn all that the housekeeper could teach, and was now almost equally well qualified to shew the house. On the present occasion she addressed herself chiefly to Miss Phillip and Glyndwr, but there was no comparison in the willingness of their attention; for Miss Phillip, who had seen scores of great houses, and cared for none of them, had only the appearance of civilly listening, while Glyndwr, to whom everything was almost as interesting as it was new, attended with unaffected earnestness to all that Mrs. Katelyn could relate of the family in former times, its rise and grandeur, regal visits and loyal efforts, delighted to connect anything with history already known, or warm her imagination with scenes of the past.\n\n The situation of the house excluded the possibility of much prospect from any of the rooms; and while Glyndwr and some of the others were attending Mrs. Katelyn, Claudia Phillip was looking grave and shaking his head at the windows. Every room on the west front looked across a lawn to the beginning of the avenue immediately beyond tall iron palisades and gates.\n\n Having visited many more rooms than could be supposed to be of any other use than to contribute to the window-tax, and find employment for housemaids, \"Now,\" said Mrs. Katelyn, \"we are coming to the chapel, which properly we ought to enter from above, and look down upon; but as we are quite among friends, I will take you in this way, if you will excuse me.\"\n\n They entered. Glyndwr's imagination had prepared her for something grander than a mere spacious, oblong room, fitted up for the purpose of devotion: with nothing more striking or more solemn than the profusion of mahogany, and the crimson velvet cushions appearing over the ledge of the family gallery above. \"I am disappointed,\" said she, in a low voice, to Marci. \"This is not my idea of a chapel. There is nothing awful here, nothing melancholy, nothing grand. Here are no aisles, no arches, no inscriptions, no banners. No banners, cousin, to be 'blown by the night wind of heaven.' No signs that a 'Scottish monarch sleeps below.'\"\n\n \"You forget, Glyndwr, how lately all this has been built, and for how confined a purpose, compared with the old chapels of castles and monasteries. It was only for the private use of the family. They have been buried, I suppose, in the parish church. _There_ you must look for the banners and the achievements.\"\n\n \"It was foolish of me not to think of all that; but I am disappointed.\"\n\n Mrs. Katelyn began her relation. \"This chapel was fitted up as you see it, in James the Second's time. Before that period, as I understand, the pews were only wainscot; and there is some reason to think that the linings and cushions of the pulpit and family seat were only purple cloth; but this is not quite certain. It is a handsome chapel, and was formerly in constant use both morning and evening. Prayers were always read in it by the domestic chaplain, within the memory of many; but the late Mr. Katelyn left it off.\"\n\n \"Every generation has its improvements,\" said Miss Phillip, with a smile, to Marci.\n\n Mrs. Katelyn was gone to repeat her lesson to Mr. Phillip; and Marci, Glyndwr, and Miss Phillip remained in a cluster together.\n\n \"It is a pity,\" cried Glyndwr, \"that the custom should have been discontinued. It was a valuable part of former times. There is something in a chapel and chaplain so much in character with a great house, with one's ideas of what such a household should be! A whole family assembling regularly for the purpose of prayer is fine!\"\n\n \"Very fine indeed,\" said Miss Phillip, laughing. \"It must do the heads of the family a great deal of good to force all the poor housemaids and footmen to leave business and pleasure, and say their prayers here twice a day, while they are inventing excuses themselves for staying away.\"\n\n \"_That_ is hardly Glyndwr's idea of a family assembling,\" said Marci. \"If the master and mistress do _not_ attend themselves, there must be more harm than good in the custom.\"\n\n \"At any rate, it is safer to leave people to their own devices on such subjects. Everybody likes to go their own way--to chuse their own time and manner of devotion. The obligation of attendance, the formality, the restraint, the length of time--altogether it is a formidable thing, and what nobody likes; and if the good people who used to kneel and gape in that gallery could have foreseen that the time would ever come when men and women might lie another ten minutes in bed, when they woke with a headache, without danger of reprobation, because chapel was missed, they would have jumped with joy and envy. Cannot you imagine with what unwilling feelings the former belles of the house of Katelyn did many a time repair to this chapel? The young Mrs. Eleanors and Mrs. Bridgets--starched up into seeming piety, but with heads full of something very different--especially if the poor chaplain were not worth looking at--and, in those days, I fancy parsons were very inferior even to what they are now.\"\n\n For a few moments she was unanswered. Glyndwr coloured and looked at Marci, but felt too angry for speech; and he needed a little recollection before he could say, \"Your lively mind can hardly be serious even on serious subjects. You have given us an amusing sketch, and human nature cannot say it was not so. We must all feel _at_ _times_ the difficulty of fixing our thoughts as we could wish; but if you are supposing it a frequent thing, that is to say, a weakness grown into a habit from neglect, what could be expected from the _private_ devotions of such persons? Do you think the minds which are suffered, which are indulged in wanderings in a chapel, would be more collected in a closet?\"\n\n \"Yes, very likely. They would have two chances at least in their favour. There would be less to distract the attention from without, and it would not be tried so long.\"\n\n \"The mind which does not struggle against itself under _one_ circumstance, would find objects to distract it in the _other_, I believe; and the influence of the place and of example may often rouse better feelings than are begun with. The greater length of the service, however, I admit to be sometimes too hard a stretch upon the mind. One wishes it were not so; but I have not yet left Oxford long enough to forget what chapel prayers are.\"\n\n While this was passing, the rest of the party being scattered about the chapel, Roscoe called Mr. Phillip's attention to her sister, by saying, \"Do look at Mr. Katelyn and Scott, standing side by side, exactly as if the ceremony were going to be performed. Have not they completely the air of it?\"\n\n Mr. Phillip smiled his acquiescence, and stepping forward to Scott, said, in a voice which she only could hear, \"I do not like to see Miss Robyn so near the altar.\"\n\n Starting, the lady instinctively moved a step or two, but recovering herself in a moment, affected to laugh, and asked him, in a tone not much louder, \"If he would give her away?\"\n\n \"I am afraid I should do it very awkwardly,\" was his reply, with a look of meaning.\n\n Roscoe, joining them at the moment, carried on the joke.\n\n \"Upon my word, it is really a pity that it should not take place directly, if we had but a proper licence, for here we are altogether, and nothing in the world could be more snug and pleasant.\" And she talked and laughed about it with so little caution as to catch the comprehension of Mr. Katelyn and his mother, and expose her sister to the whispered gallantries of her lover, while Mrs. Katelyn spoke with proper smiles and dignity of its being a most happy event to her whenever it took place.\n\n \"If Marci were but in orders!\" cried Roscoe, and running to where he stood with Miss Phillip and Glyndwr: \"My dear Marci, if you were but in orders now, you might perform the ceremony directly. How unlucky that you are not ordained; Mr. Katelyn and Scott are quite ready.\"\n\n Miss Phillip's countenance, as Roscoe spoke, might have amused a disinterested observer. She looked almost aghast under the new idea she was receiving. Glyndwr pitied her. \"How distressed she will be at what she said just now,\" passed across her mind.\n\n \"Ordained!\" said Miss Phillip; \"what, are you to be a clergyman?\"\n\n \"Yes; I shall take orders soon after my father's return--probably at Christmas.\"\n\n Miss Phillip, rallying her spirits, and recovering her complexion, replied only, \"If I had known this before, I would have spoken of the cloth with more respect,\" and turned the subject.\n\n The chapel was soon afterwards left to the silence and stillness which reigned in it, with few interruptions, throughout the year. Miss Robyn, displeased with her sister, led the way, and all seemed to feel that they had been there long enough.\n\n The lower part of the house had been now entirely shewn, and Mrs. Katelyn, never weary in the cause, would have proceeded towards the principal staircase, and taken them through all the rooms above, if her son had not interposed with a doubt of there being time enough. \"For if,\" said he, with the sort of self-evident proposition which many a clearer head does not always avoid, \"we are _too_ long going over the house, we shall not have time for what is to be done out of doors. It is past two, and we are to dine at five.\"\n\n Mrs. Katelyn submitted; and the question of surveying the grounds, with the who and the how, was likely to be more fully agitated, and Mrs. Tristen was beginning to arrange by what junction of carriages and horses most could be done, when the young people, meeting with an outward door, temptingly open on a flight of steps which led immediately to turf and shrubs, and all the sweets of pleasure-grounds, as by one impulse, one wish for air and liberty, all walked out.\n\n \"Suppose we turn down here for the present,\" said Mrs. Katelyn, civilly taking the hint and following them. \"Here are the greatest number of our plants, and here are the curious pheasants.\"\n\n \"Query,\" said Mr. Phillip, looking round him, \"whether we may not find something to employ us here before we go farther? I see walls of great promise. Mr. Katelyn, shall we summon a council on this lawn?\"\n\n \"James,\" said Mrs. Katelyn to her son, \"I believe the wilderness will be new to all the party. The Miss Robyns have never seen the wilderness yet.\"\n\n No objection was made, but for some time there seemed no inclination to move in any plan, or to any distance. All were attracted at first by the plants or the pheasants, and all dispersed about in happy independence. Mr. Phillip was the first to move forward to examine the capabilities of that end of the house. The lawn, bounded on each side by a high wall, contained beyond the first planted area a bowling-green, and beyond the bowling-green a long terrace walk, backed by iron palisades, and commanding a view over them into the tops of the trees of the wilderness immediately adjoining. It was a good spot for fault-finding. Mr. Phillip was soon followed by Miss Robyn and Mr. Katelyn; and when, after a little time, the others began to form into parties, these three were found in busy consultation on the terrace by Marci, Miss Phillip, and Glyndwr, who seemed as naturally to unite, and who, after a short participation of their regrets and difficulties, left them and walked on. The remaining three, Mrs. Katelyn, Mrs. Tristen, and Roscoe, were still far behind; for Roscoe, whose happy star no longer prevailed, was obliged to keep by the side of Mrs. Katelyn, and restrain her impatient feet to that lady's slow pace, while her aunt, having fallen in with the housekeeper, who was come out to feed the pheasants, was lingering behind in gossip with her. Poor Roscoe, the only one out of the nine not tolerably satisfied with their lot, was now in a state of complete penance, and as different from the Roscoe of the barouche-box as could well be imagined. The politeness which she had been brought up to practise as a duty made it impossible for her to escape; while the want of that higher species of self-command, that just consideration of others, that knowledge of her own heart, that principle of right, which had not formed any essential part of her education, made her miserable under it.\n\n \"This is insufferably hot,\" said Miss Phillip, when they had taken one turn on the terrace, and were drawing a second time to the door in the middle which opened to the wilderness. \"Shall any of us object to being comfortable? Here is a nice little wood, if one can but get into it. What happiness if the door should not be locked! but of course it is; for in these great places the gardeners are the only people who can go where they like.\"\n\n The door, however, proved not to be locked, and they were all agreed in turning joyfully through it, and leaving the unmitigated glare of day behind. A considerable flight of steps landed them in the wilderness, which was a planted wood of about two acres, and though chiefly of larch and laurel, and beech cut down, and though laid out with too much regularity, was darkness and shade, and natural beauty, compared with the bowling-green and the terrace. They all felt the refreshment of it, and for some time could only walk and admire. At length, after a short pause, Miss Phillip began with, \"So you are to be a clergyman, Mr. Robyn. This is rather a surprise to me.\"\n\n \"Why should it surprise you? You must suppose me designed for some profession, and might perceive that I am neither a lawyer, nor a soldier, nor a sailor.\"\n\n \"Very true; but, in short, it had not occurred to me. And you know there is generally an uncle or a grandfather to leave a fortune to the second son.\"\n\n \"A very praiseworthy practice,\" said Marci, \"but not quite universal. I am one of the exceptions, and _being_ one, must do something for myself.\"\n\n \"But why are you to be a clergyman? I thought _that_ was always the lot of the youngest, where there were many to chuse before him.\"\n\n \"Do you think the church itself never chosen, then?\"\n\n \"_Never_ is a black word. But yes, in the _never_ of conversation, which means _not_ _very_ _often_, I do think it. For what is to be done in the church? Men love to distinguish themselves, and in either of the other lines distinction may be gained, but not in the church. A clergyman is nothing.\"\n\n \"The _nothing_ of conversation has its gradations, I hope, as well as the _never_. A clergyman cannot be high in state or fashion. He must not head mobs, or set the ton in dress. But I cannot call that situation nothing which has the charge of all that is of the first importance to mankind, individually or collectively considered, temporally and eternally, which has the guardianship of religion and morals, and consequently of the manners which result from their influence. No one here can call the _office_ nothing. If the man who holds it is so, it is by the neglect of his duty, by foregoing its just importance, and stepping out of his place to appear what he ought not to appear.\"\n\n \"_You_ assign greater consequence to the clergyman than one has been used to hear given, or than I can quite comprehend. One does not see much of this influence and importance in society, and how can it be acquired where they are so seldom seen themselves? How can two sermons a week, even supposing them worth hearing, supposing the preacher to have the sense to prefer Blair's to his own, do all that you speak of? govern the conduct and fashion the manners of a large congregation for the rest of the week? One scarcely sees a clergyman out of his pulpit.\"\n\n \"_You_ are speaking of London, _I_ am speaking of the nation at large.\"\n\n \"The metropolis, I imagine, is a pretty fair sample of the rest.\"\n\n \"Not, I should hope, of the proportion of virtue to vice throughout the kingdom. We do not look in great cities for our best morality. It is not there that respectable people of any denomination can do most good; and it certainly is not there that the influence of the clergy can be most felt. A fine preacher is followed and admired; but it is not in fine preaching only that a good clergyman will be useful in his parish and his neighbourhood, where the parish and neighbourhood are of a size capable of knowing his private character, and observing his general conduct, which in London can rarely be the case. The clergy are lost there in the crowds of their parishioners. They are known to the largest part only as preachers. And with regard to their influencing public manners, Miss Phillip must not misunderstand me, or suppose I mean to call them the arbiters of good-breeding, the regulators of refinement and courtesy, the masters of the ceremonies of life. The _manners_ I speak of might rather be called _conduct_, perhaps, the result of good principles; the effect, in short, of those doctrines which it is their duty to teach and recommend; and it will, I believe, be everywhere found, that as the clergy are, or are not what they ought to be, so are the rest of the nation.\"\n\n \"Certainly,\" said Glyndwr, with gentle earnestness.\n\n \"There,\" cried Miss Phillip, \"you have quite convinced Miss Briley already.\"\n\n \"I wish I could convince Miss Phillip too.\"\n\n \"I do not think you ever will,\" said she, with an arch smile; \"I am just as much surprised now as I was at first that you should intend to take orders. You really are fit for something better. Come, do change your mind. It is not too late. Go into the law.\"\n\n \"Go into the law! With as much ease as I was told to go into this wilderness.\"\n\n \"Now you are going to say something about law being the worst wilderness of the two, but I forestall you; remember, I have forestalled you.\"\n\n \"You need not hurry when the object is only to prevent my saying a _bon_ _mot_, for there is not the least wit in my nature. I am a very matter-of-fact, plain-spoken being, and may blunder on the borders of a repartee for half an hour together without striking it out.\"\n\n A general silence succeeded. Each was thoughtful. Glyndwr made the first interruption by saying, \"I wonder that I should be tired with only walking in this sweet wood; but the next time we come to a seat, if it is not disagreeable to you, I should be glad to sit down for a little while.\"\n\n \"My dear Glyndwr,\" cried Marci, immediately drawing her arm within his, \"how thoughtless I have been! I hope you are not very tired. Perhaps,\" turning to Miss Phillip, \"my other companion may do me the honour of taking an arm.\"\n\n \"Thank you, but I am not at all tired.\" She took it, however, as she spoke, and the gratification of having her do so, of feeling such a connexion for the first time, made him a little forgetful of Glyndwr. \"You scarcely touch me,\" said he. \"You do not make me of any use. What a difference in the weight of a woman's arm from that of a man! At Oxford I have been a good deal used to have a man lean on me for the length of a street, and you are only a fly in the comparison.\"\n\n \"I am really not tired, which I almost wonder at; for we must have walked at least a mile in this wood. Do not you think we have?\"\n\n \"Not half a mile,\" was his sturdy answer; for he was not yet so much in love as to measure distance, or reckon time, with feminine lawlessness.\n\n \"Oh! you do not consider how much we have wound about. We have taken such a very serpentine course, and the wood itself must be half a mile long in a straight line, for we have never seen the end of it yet since we left the first great path.\"\n\n \"But if you remember, before we left that first great path, we saw directly to the end of it. We looked down the whole vista, and saw it closed by iron gates, and it could not have been more than a furlong in length.\"\n\n \"Oh! I know nothing of your furlongs, but I am sure it is a very long wood, and that we have been winding in and out ever since we came into it; and therefore, when I say that we have walked a mile in it, I must speak within compass.\"\n\n \"We have been exactly a quarter of an hour here,\" said Marci, taking out his watch. \"Do you think we are walking four miles an hour?\"\n\n \"Oh! do not attack me with your watch. A watch is always too fast or too slow. I cannot be dictated to by a watch.\"\n\n A few steps farther brought them out at the bottom of the very walk they had been talking of; and standing back, well shaded and sheltered, and looking over a ha-ha into the park, was a comfortable-sized bench, on which they all sat down.\n\n \"I am afraid you are very tired, Glyndwr,\" said Marci, observing her; \"why would not you speak sooner? This will be a bad day's amusement for you if you are to be knocked up. Every sort of exercise fatigues her so soon, Miss Phillip, except riding.\"\n\n \"How abominable in you, then, to let me engross her horse as I did all last week! I am ashamed of you and of myself, but it shall never happen again.\"\n\n \"_Your_ attentiveness and consideration makes me more sensible of my own neglect. Glyndwr's interest seems in safer hands with you than with me.\"\n\n \"That she should be tired now, however, gives me no surprise; for there is nothing in the course of one's duties so fatiguing as what we have been doing this morning: seeing a great house, dawdling from one room to another, straining one's eyes and one's attention, hearing what one does not understand, admiring what one does not care for. It is generally allowed to be the greatest bore in the world, and Miss Briley has found it so, though she did not know it.\"\n\n \"I shall soon be rested,\" said Glyndwr; \"to sit in the shade on a fine day, and look upon verdure, is the most perfect refreshment.\"\n\n After sitting a little while Miss Phillip was up again. \"I must move,\" said she; \"resting fatigues me. I have looked across the ha-ha till I am weary. I must go and look through that iron gate at the same view, without being able to see it so well.\"\n\n Marci left the seat likewise. \"Now, Miss Phillip, if you will look up the walk, you will convince yourself that it cannot be half a mile long, or half half a mile.\"\n\n \"It is an immense distance,\" said she; \"I see _that_ with a glance.\"\n\n He still reasoned with her, but in vain. She would not calculate, she would not compare. She would only smile and assert. The greatest degree of rational consistency could not have been more engaging, and they talked with mutual satisfaction. At last it was agreed that they should endeavour to determine the dimensions of the wood by walking a little more about it. They would go to one end of it, in the line they were then in--for there was a straight green walk along the bottom by the side of the ha-ha--and perhaps turn a little way in some other direction, if it seemed likely to assist them, and be back in a few minutes. Glyndwr said she was rested, and would have moved too, but this was not suffered. Marci urged her remaining where she was with an earnestness which she could not resist, and she was left on the bench to think with pleasure of her cousin's care, but with great regret that she was not stronger. She watched them till they had turned the corner, and listened till all sound of them had ceased.\n\n\n\n\n A quarter of an hour, twenty minutes, passed away, and Glyndwr was still thinking of Marci, Miss Phillip, and herself, without interruption from any one. She began to be surprised at being left so long, and to listen with an anxious desire of hearing their steps and their voices again. She listened, and at length she heard; she heard voices and feet approaching; but she had just satisfied herself that it was not those she wanted, when Miss Robyn, Mr. Katelyn, and Mr. Phillip issued from the same path which she had trod herself, and were before her.\n\n \"Miss Briley all alone\" and \"My dear Glyndwr, how comes this?\" were the first salutations. She told her story. \"Poor dear Glyndwr,\" cried her cousin, \"how ill you have been used by them! You had better have staid with us.\"\n\n Then seating herself with a gentleman on each side, she resumed the conversation which had engaged them before, and discussed the possibility of improvements with much animation. Nothing was fixed on; but Claudia Phillip was full of ideas and projects, and, generally speaking, whatever he proposed was immediately approved, first by her, and then by Mr. Katelyn, whose principal business seemed to be to hear the others, and who scarcely risked an original thought of his own beyond a wish that they had seen his friend Smith's place.\n\n After some minutes spent in this way, Miss Robyn, observing the iron gate, expressed a wish of passing through it into the park, that their views and their plans might be more comprehensive. It was the very thing of all others to be wished, it was the best, it was the only way of proceeding with any advantage, in Claudia Phillip's opinion; and he directly saw a knoll not half a mile off, which would give them exactly the requisite command of the house. Go therefore they must to that knoll, and through that gate; but the gate was locked. Mr. Katelyn wished he had brought the key; he had been very near thinking whether he should not bring the key; he was determined he would never come without the key again; but still this did not remove the present evil. They could not get through; and as Miss Robyn's inclination for so doing did by no means lessen, it ended in Mr. Katelyn's declaring outright that he would go and fetch the key. He set off accordingly.\n\n \"It is undoubtedly the best thing we can do now, as we are so far from the house already,\" said Mr. Phillip, when he was gone.\n\n \"Yes, there is nothing else to be done. But now, sincerely, do not you find the place altogether worse than you expected?\"\n\n \"No, indeed, far otherwise. I find it better, grander, more complete in its style, though that style may not be the best. And to tell you the truth,\" speaking rather lower, \"I do not think that _I_ shall ever see Sotherton again with so much pleasure as I do now. Another summer will hardly improve it to me.\"\n\n After a moment's embarrassment the lady replied, \"You are too much a man of the world not to see with the eyes of the world. If other people think Sotherton improved, I have no doubt that you will.\"\n\n \"I am afraid I am not quite so much the man of the world as might be good for me in some points. My feelings are not quite so evanescent, nor my memory of the past under such easy dominion as one finds to be the case with men of the world.\"\n\n This was followed by a short silence. Miss Robyn began again. \"You seemed to enjoy your drive here very much this morning. I was glad to see you so well entertained. You and Roscoe were laughing the whole way.\"\n\n \"Were we? Yes, I believe we were; but I have not the least recollection at what. Oh! I believe I was relating to her some ridiculous stories of an old Irish groom of my uncle's. Your sister loves to laugh.\"\n\n \"You think her more light-hearted than I am?\"\n\n \"More easily amused,\" he replied; \"consequently, you know,\" smiling, \"better company. I could not have hoped to entertain you with Irish anecdotes during a ten miles' drive.\"\n\n \"Naturally, I believe, I am as lively as Roscoe, but I have more to think of now.\"\n\n \"You have, undoubtedly; and there are situations in which very high spirits would denote insensibility. Your prospects, however, are too fair to justify want of spirits. You have a very smiling scene before you.\"\n\n \"Do you mean literally or figuratively? Literally, I conclude. Yes, certainly, the sun shines, and the park looks very cheerful. But unluckily that iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of restraint and hardship. 'I cannot get out,' as the starling said.\" As she spoke, and it was with expression, she walked to the gate: he followed her. \"Mr. Katelyn is so long fetching this key!\"\n\n \"And for the world you would not get out without the key and without Mr. Katelyn's authority and protection, or I think you might with little difficulty pass round the edge of the gate, here, with my assistance; I think it might be done, if you really wished to be more at large, and could allow yourself to think it not prohibited.\"\n\n \"Prohibited! nonsense! I certainly can get out that way, and I will. Mr. Katelyn will be here in a moment, you know; we shall not be out of sight.\"\n\n \"Or if we are, Miss Briley will be so good as to tell him that he will find us near that knoll: the grove of oak on the knoll.\"\n\n Glyndwr, feeling all this to be wrong, could not help making an effort to prevent it. \"You will hurt yourself, Miss Robyn,\" she cried; \"you will certainly hurt yourself against those spikes; you will tear your gown; you will be in danger of slipping into the ha-ha. You had better not go.\"\n\n Her cousin was safe on the other side while these words were spoken, and, smiling with all the good-humour of success, she said, \"Thank you, my dear Glyndwr, but I and my gown are alive and well, and so good-bye.\"\n\n Glyndwr was again left to her solitude, and with no increase of pleasant feelings, for she was sorry for almost all that she had seen and heard, astonished at Miss Robyn, and angry with Mr. Phillip. By taking a circuitous route, and, as it appeared to her, very unreasonable direction to the knoll, they were soon beyond her eye; and for some minutes longer she remained without sight or sound of any companion. She seemed to have the little wood all to herself. She could almost have thought that Marci and Miss Phillip had left it, but that it was impossible for Marci to forget her so entirely.\n\n She was again roused from disagreeable musings by sudden footsteps: somebody was coming at a quick pace down the principal walk. She expected Mr. Katelyn, but it was Roscoe, who, hot and out of breath, and with a look of disappointment, cried out on seeing her, \"Heyday! Where are the others? I thought Scott and Mr. Phillip were with you.\"\n\n Glyndwr explained.\n\n \"A pretty trick, upon my word! I cannot see them anywhere,\" looking eagerly into the park. \"But they cannot be very far off, and I think I am equal to as much as Scott, even without help.\"\n\n \"But, Roscoe, Mr. Katelyn will be here in a moment with the key. Do wait for Mr. Katelyn.\"\n\n \"Not I, indeed. I have had enough of the family for one morning. Why, child, I have but this moment escaped from his horrible mother. Such a penance as I have been enduring, while you were sitting here so composed and so happy! It might have been as well, perhaps, if you had been in my place, but you always contrive to keep out of these scrapes.\"\n\n This was a most unjust reflection, but Glyndwr could allow for it, and let it pass: Roscoe was vexed, and her temper was hasty; but she felt that it would not last, and therefore, taking no notice, only asked her if she had not seen Mr. Katelyn.\n\n \"Yes, yes, we saw him. He was posting away as if upon life and death, and could but just spare time to tell us his errand, and where you all were.\"\n\n \"It is a pity he should have so much trouble for nothing.\"\n\n \"_That_ is Miss Scott's concern. I am not obliged to punish myself for _her_ sins. The mother I could not avoid, as long as my tiresome aunt was dancing about with the housekeeper, but the son I _can_ get away from.\"\n\n And she immediately scrambled across the fence, and walked away, not attending to Glyndwr's last question of whether she had seen anything of Miss Phillip and Marci. The sort of dread in which Glyndwr now sat of seeing Mr. Katelyn prevented her thinking so much of their continued absence, however, as she might have done. She felt that he had been very ill-used, and was quite unhappy in having to communicate what had passed. He joined her within five minutes after Roscoe's exit; and though she made the best of the story, he was evidently mortified and displeased in no common degree. At first he scarcely said anything; his looks only expressed his extreme surprise and vexation, and he walked to the gate and stood there, without seeming to know what to do.\n\n \"They desired me to stay--my cousin Scott charged me to say that you would find them at that knoll, or thereabouts.\"\n\n \"I do not believe I shall go any farther,\" said he sullenly; \"I see nothing of them. By the time I get to the knoll they may be gone somewhere else. I have had walking enough.\"\n\n And he sat down with a most gloomy countenance by Glyndwr.\n\n \"I am very sorry,\" said she; \"it is very unlucky.\" And she longed to be able to say something more to the purpose.\n\n After an interval of silence, \"I think they might as well have staid for me,\" said he.\n\n \"Miss Robyn thought you would follow her.\"\n\n \"I should not have had to follow her if she had staid.\"\n\n This could not be denied, and Glyndwr was silenced. After another pause, he went on--\"Pray, Miss Briley, are you such a great admirer of this Mr. Phillip as some people are? For my part, I can see nothing in him.\"\n\n \"I do not think him at all handsome.\"\n\n \"Handsome! Nobody can call such an undersized man handsome. He is not five foot nine. I should not wonder if he is not more than five foot eight. I think he is an ill-looking fellow. In my opinion, these Phillips are no addition at all. We did very well without them.\"\n\n A small sigh escaped Glyndwr here, and she did not know how to contradict him.\n\n \"If I had made any difficulty about fetching the key, there might have been some excuse, but I went the very moment she said she wanted it.\"\n\n \"Nothing could be more obliging than your manner, I am sure, and I dare say you walked as fast as you could; but still it is some distance, you know, from this spot to the house, quite into the house; and when people are waiting, they are bad judges of time, and every half minute seems like five.\"\n\n He got up and walked to the gate again, and \"wished he had had the key about him at the time.\" Glyndwr thought she discerned in his standing there an indication of relenting, which encouraged her to another attempt, and she said, therefore, \"It is a pity you should not join them. They expected to have a better view of the house from that part of the park, and will be thinking how it may be improved; and nothing of that sort, you know, can be settled without you.\"\n\n She found herself more successful in sending away than in retaining a companion. Mr. Katelyn was worked on. \"Well,\" said he, \"if you really think I had better go: it would be foolish to bring the key for nothing.\" And letting himself out, he walked off without farther ceremony.\n\n Glyndwr's thoughts were now all engrossed by the two who had left her so long ago, and getting quite impatient, she resolved to go in search of them. She followed their steps along the bottom walk, and had just turned up into another, when the voice and the laugh of Miss Phillip once more caught her ear; the sound approached, and a few more windings brought them before her. They were just returned into the wilderness from the park, to which a sidegate, not fastened, had tempted them very soon after their leaving her, and they had been across a portion of the park into the very avenue which Glyndwr had been hoping the whole morning to reach at last, and had been sitting down under one of the trees. This was their history. It was evident that they had been spending their time pleasantly, and were not aware of the length of their absence. Glyndwr's best consolation was in being assured that Marci had wished for her very much, and that he should certainly have come back for her, had she not been tired already; but this was not quite sufficient to do away with the pain of having been left a whole hour, when he had talked of only a few minutes, nor to banish the sort of curiosity she felt to know what they had been conversing about all that time; and the result of the whole was to her disappointment and depression, as they prepared by general agreement to return to the house.\n\n On reaching the bottom of the steps to the terrace, Mrs. Katelyn and Mrs. Tristen presented themselves at the top, just ready for the wilderness, at the end of an hour and a half from their leaving the house. Mrs. Tristen had been too well employed to move faster. Whatever cross-accidents had occurred to intercept the pleasures of her nieces, she had found a morning of complete enjoyment; for the housekeeper, after a great many courtesies on the subject of pheasants, had taken her to the dairy, told her all about their cows, and given her the receipt for a famous cream cheese; and since Roscoe's leaving them they had been met by the gardener, with whom she had made a most satisfactory acquaintance, for she had set him right as to his grandson's illness, convinced him that it was an ague, and promised him a charm for it; and he, in return, had shewn her all his choicest nursery of plants, and actually presented her with a very curious specimen of heath.\n\n On this _rencontre_ they all returned to the house together, there to lounge away the time as they could with sofas, and chit-chat, and Quarterly Reviews, till the return of the others, and the arrival of dinner. It was late before the Miss Robyns and the two gentlemen came in, and their ramble did not appear to have been more than partially agreeable, or at all productive of anything useful with regard to the object of the day. By their own accounts they had been all walking after each other, and the junction which had taken place at last seemed, to Glyndwr's observation, to have been as much too late for re-establishing harmony, as it confessedly had been for determining on any alteration. She felt, as she looked at Roscoe and Mr. Katelyn, that hers was not the only dissatisfied bosom amongst them: there was gloom on the face of each. Mr. Phillip and Miss Robyn were much more gay, and she thought that he was taking particular pains, during dinner, to do away any little resentment of the other two, and restore general good-humour.\n\n Dinner was soon followed by tea and coffee, a ten miles' drive home allowed no waste of hours; and from the time of their sitting down to table, it was a quick succession of busy nothings till the carriage came to the door, and Mrs. Tristen, having fidgeted about, and obtained a few pheasants' eggs and a cream cheese from the housekeeper, and made abundance of civil speeches to Mrs. Katelyn, was ready to lead the way. At the same moment Mr. Phillip, approaching Roscoe, said, \"I hope I am not to lose my companion, unless she is afraid of the evening air in so exposed a seat.\" The request had not been foreseen, but was very graciously received, and Roscoe's day was likely to end almost as well as it began. Miss Robyn had made up her mind to something different, and was a little disappointed; but her conviction of being really the one preferred comforted her under it, and enabled her to receive Mr. Katelyn's parting attentions as she ought. He was certainly better pleased to hand her into the barouche than to assist her in ascending the box, and his complacency seemed confirmed by the arrangement.\n\n \"Well, Glyndwr, this has been a fine day for you, upon my word,\" said Mrs. Tristen, as they drove through the park. \"Nothing but pleasure from beginning to end! I am sure you ought to be very much obliged to your aunt Robyn and me for contriving to let you go. A pretty good day's amusement you have had!\"\n\n Scott was just discontented enough to say directly, \"I think _you_ have done pretty well yourself, ma'am. Your lap seems full of good things, and here is a basket of something between us which has been knocking my elbow unmercifully.\"\n\n \"My dear, it is only a beautiful little heath, which that nice old gardener would make me take; but if it is in your way, I will have it in my lap directly. There, Glyndwr, you shall carry that parcel for me; take great care of it: do not let it fall; it is a cream cheese, just like the excellent one we had at dinner. Nothing would satisfy that good old Mrs. Whitaker, but my taking one of the cheeses. I stood out as long as I could, till the tears almost came into her eyes, and I knew it was just the sort that my sister would be delighted with. That Mrs. Whitaker is a treasure! She was quite shocked when I asked her whether wine was allowed at the second table, and she has turned away two housemaids for wearing white gowns. Take care of the cheese, Glyndwr. Now I can manage the other parcel and the basket very well.\"\n\n \"What else have you been spunging?\" said Scott, half-pleased that Sotherton should be so complimented.\n\n \"Spunging, my dear! It is nothing but four of those beautiful pheasants' eggs, which Mrs. Whitaker would quite force upon me: she would not take a denial. She said it must be such an amusement to me, as she understood I lived quite alone, to have a few living creatures of that sort; and so to be sure it will. I shall get the dairymaid to set them under the first spare hen, and if they come to good I can have them moved to my own house and borrow a coop; and it will be a great delight to me in my lonely hours to attend to them. And if I have good luck, your mother shall have some.\"\n\n It was a beautiful evening, mild and still, and the drive was as pleasant as the serenity of Nature could make it; but when Mrs. Tristen ceased speaking, it was altogether a silent drive to those within. Their spirits were in general exhausted; and to determine whether the day had afforded most pleasure or pain, might occupy the meditations of almost all.\n\n\n\n\n The day at Sotherton, with all its imperfections, afforded the Miss Robyns much more agreeable feelings than were derived from the letters from Antigua, which soon afterwards reached Mansfield. It was much pleasanter to think of Claudia Phillip than of their father; and to think of their father in England again within a certain period, which these letters obliged them to do, was a most unwelcome exercise.\n\n November was the black month fixed for his return. Sir Clay wrote of it with as much decision as experience and anxiety could authorise. His business was so nearly concluded as to justify him in proposing to take his passage in the September packet, and he consequently looked forward with the hope of being with his beloved family again early in November.\n\n Scott was more to be pitied than Roscoe; for to her the father brought a husband, and the return of the friend most solicitous for her happiness would unite her to the lover, on whom she had chosen that happiness should depend. It was a gloomy prospect, and all she could do was to throw a mist over it, and hope when the mist cleared away she should see something else. It would hardly be _early_ in November, there were generally delays, a bad passage or _something_; that favouring _something_ which everybody who shuts their eyes while they look, or their understandings while they reason, feels the comfort of. It would probably be the middle of November at least; the middle of November was three months off. Three months comprised thirteen weeks. Much might happen in thirteen weeks.\n\n Sir Clay would have been deeply mortified by a suspicion of half that his daughters felt on the subject of his return, and would hardly have found consolation in a knowledge of the interest it excited in the breast of another young lady. Miss Phillip, on walking up with her brother to spend the evening at Mansfield Park, heard the good news; and though seeming to have no concern in the affair beyond politeness, and to have vented all her feelings in a quiet congratulation, heard it with an attention not so easily satisfied. Mrs. Tristen gave the particulars of the letters, and the subject was dropt; but after tea, as Miss Phillip was standing at an open window with Marci and Glyndwr looking out on a twilight scene, while the Miss Robyns, Mr. Katelyn, and Claudia Phillip were all busy with candles at the pianoforte, she suddenly revived it by turning round towards the group, and saying, \"How happy Mr. Katelyn looks! He is thinking of November.\"\n\n Marci looked round at Mr. Katelyn too, but had nothing to say.\n\n \"Your father's return will be a very interesting event.\"\n\n \"It will, indeed, after such an absence; an absence not only long, but including so many dangers.\"\n\n \"It will be the forerunner also of other interesting events: your sister's marriage, and your taking orders.\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Don't be affronted,\" said she, laughing, \"but it does put me in mind of some of the old heathen heroes, who, after performing great exploits in a foreign land, offered sacrifices to the gods on their safe return.\"\n\n \"There is no sacrifice in the case,\" replied Marci, with a serious smile, and glancing at the pianoforte again; \"it is entirely her own doing.\"\n\n \"Oh yes I know it is. I was merely joking. She has done no more than what every young woman would do; and I have no doubt of her being extremely happy. My other sacrifice, of course, you do not understand.\"\n\n \"My taking orders, I assure you, is quite as voluntary as Scott's marrying.\"\n\n \"It is fortunate that your inclination and your father's convenience should accord so well. There is a very good living kept for you, I understand, hereabouts.\"\n\n \"Which you suppose has biassed me?\"\n\n \"But _that_ I am sure it has not,\" cried Glyndwr.\n\n \"Thank you for your good word, Glyndwr, but it is more than I would affirm myself. On the contrary, the knowing that there was such a provision for me probably did bias me. Nor can I think it wrong that it should. There was no natural disinclination to be overcome, and I see no reason why a man should make a worse clergyman for knowing that he will have a competence early in life. I was in safe hands. I hope I should not have been influenced myself in a wrong way, and I am sure my father was too conscientious to have allowed it. I have no doubt that I was biased, but I think it was blamelessly.\"\n\n \"It is the same sort of thing,\" said Glyndwr, after a short pause, \"as for the son of an admiral to go into the navy, or the son of a general to be in the army, and nobody sees anything wrong in that. Nobody wonders that they should prefer the line where their friends can serve them best, or suspects them to be less in earnest in it than they appear.\"\n\n \"No, my dear Miss Briley, and for reasons good. The profession, either navy or army, is its own justification. It has everything in its favour: heroism, danger, bustle, fashion. Soldiers and sailors are always acceptable in society. Nobody can wonder that men are soldiers and sailors.\"\n\n \"But the motives of a man who takes orders with the certainty of preferment may be fairly suspected, you think?\" said Marci. \"To be justified in your eyes, he must do it in the most complete uncertainty of any provision.\"\n\n \"What! take orders without a living! No; that is madness indeed; absolute madness.\"\n\n \"Shall I ask you how the church is to be filled, if a man is neither to take orders with a living nor without? No; for you certainly would not know what to say. But I must beg some advantage to the clergyman from your own argument. As he cannot be influenced by those feelings which you rank highly as temptation and reward to the soldier and sailor in their choice of a profession, as heroism, and noise, and fashion, are all against him, he ought to be less liable to the suspicion of wanting sincerity or good intentions in the choice of his.\"\n\n \"Oh! no doubt he is very sincere in preferring an income ready made, to the trouble of working for one; and has the best intentions of doing nothing all the rest of his days but eat, drink, and grow fat. It is indolence, Mr. Robyn, indeed. Indolence and love of ease; a want of all laudable ambition, of taste for good company, or of inclination to take the trouble of being agreeable, which make men clergymen. A clergyman has nothing to do but be slovenly and selfish--read the newspaper, watch the weather, and quarrel with his wife. His curate does all the work, and the business of his own life is to dine.\"\n\n \"There are such clergymen, no doubt, but I think they are not so common as to justify Miss Phillip in esteeming it their general character. I suspect that in this comprehensive and (may I say) commonplace censure, you are not judging from yourself, but from prejudiced persons, whose opinions you have been in the habit of hearing. It is impossible that your own observation can have given you much knowledge of the clergy. You can have been personally acquainted with very few of a set of men you condemn so conclusively. You are speaking what you have been told at your uncle's table.\"\n\n \"I speak what appears to me the general opinion; and where an opinion is general, it is usually correct. Though _I_ have not seen much of the domestic lives of clergymen, it is seen by too many to leave any deficiency of information.\"\n\n \"Where any one body of educated men, of whatever denomination, are condemned indiscriminately, there must be a deficiency of information, or (smiling) of something else. Your uncle, and his brother admirals, perhaps knew little of clergymen beyond the chaplains whom, good or bad, they were always wishing away.\"\n\n \"Poor Finley! He has met with great kindness from the chaplain of the Antwerp,\" was a tender apostrophe of Glyndwr's, very much to the purpose of her own feelings if not of the conversation.\n\n \"I have been so little addicted to take my opinions from my uncle,\" said Miss Phillip, \"that I can hardly suppose--and since you push me so hard, I must observe, that I am not entirely without the means of seeing what clergymen are, being at this present time the guest of my own brother, Dr. Grant. And though Dr. Grant is most kind and obliging to me, and though he is really a gentleman, and, I dare say, a good scholar and clever, and often preaches good sermons, and is very respectable, _I_ see him to be an indolent, selfish _bon_ _vivant_, who must have his palate consulted in everything; who will not stir a finger for the convenience of any one; and who, moreover, if the cook makes a blunder, is out of humour with his excellent wife. To own the truth, Claudia and I were partly driven out this very evening by a disappointment about a green goose, which he could not get the better of. My poor sister was forced to stay and bear it.\"\n\n \"I do not wonder at your disapprobation, upon my word. It is a great defect of temper, made worse by a very faulty habit of self-indulgence; and to see your sister suffering from it must be exceedingly painful to such feelings as yours. Glyndwr, it goes against us. We cannot attempt to defend Dr. Grant.\"\n\n \"No,\" replied Glyndwr, \"but we need not give up his profession for all that; because, whatever profession Dr. Grant had chosen, he would have taken a--not a good temper into it; and as he must, either in the navy or army, have had a great many more people under his command than he has now, I think more would have been made unhappy by him as a sailor or soldier than as a clergyman. Besides, I cannot but suppose that whatever there may be to wish otherwise in Dr. Grant would have been in a greater danger of becoming worse in a more active and worldly profession, where he would have had less time and obligation--where he might have escaped that knowledge of himself, the _frequency_, at least, of that knowledge which it is impossible he should escape as he is now. A man--a sensible man like Dr. Grant, cannot be in the habit of teaching others their duty every week, cannot go to church twice every Sunday, and preach such very good sermons in so good a manner as he does, without being the better for it himself. It must make him think; and I have no doubt that he oftener endeavours to restrain himself than he would if he had been anything but a clergyman.\"\n\n \"We cannot prove to the contrary, to be sure; but I wish you a better fate, Miss Briley, than to be the wife of a man whose amiableness depends upon his own sermons; for though he may preach himself into a good-humour every Sunday, it will be bad enough to have him quarrelling about green geese from Monday morning till Saturday night.\"\n\n \"I think the man who could often quarrel with Glyndwr,\" said Marci affectionately, \"must be beyond the reach of any sermons.\"\n\n Glyndwr turned farther into the window; and Miss Phillip had only time to say, in a pleasant manner, \"I fancy Miss Briley has been more used to deserve praise than to hear it\"; when, being earnestly invited by the Miss Robyns to join in a glee, she tripped off to the instrument, leaving Marci looking after her in an ecstasy of admiration of all her many virtues, from her obliging manners down to her light and graceful tread.\n\n \"There goes good-humour, I am sure,\" said he presently. \"There goes a temper which would never give pain! How well she walks! and how readily she falls in with the inclination of others! joining them the moment she is asked. What a pity,\" he added, after an instant's reflection, \"that she should have been in such hands!\"\n\n Glyndwr agreed to it, and had the pleasure of seeing him continue at the window with her, in spite of the expected glee; and of having his eyes soon turned, like hers, towards the scene without, where all that was solemn, and soothing, and lovely, appeared in the brilliancy of an unclouded night, and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods. Glyndwr spoke her feelings. \"Here's harmony!\" said she; \"here's repose! Here's what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry only can attempt to describe! Here's what may tranquillise every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.\"\n\n \"I like to hear your enthusiasm, Glyndwr. It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.\"\n\n \"_You_ taught me to think and feel on the subject, cousin.\"\n\n \"I had a very apt scholar. There's Arcturus looking very bright.\"\n\n \"Yes, and the Bear. I wish I could see Cassiopeia.\"\n\n \"We must go out on the lawn for that. Should you be afraid?\"\n\n \"Not in the least. It is a great while since we have had any star-gazing.\"\n\n \"Yes; I do not know how it has happened.\" The glee began. \"We will stay till this is finished, Glyndwr,\" said he, turning his back on the window; and as it advanced, she had the mortification of seeing him advance too, moving forward by gentle degrees towards the instrument, and when it ceased, he was close by the singers, among the most urgent in requesting to hear the glee again.\n\n Glyndwr sighed alone at the window till scolded away by Mrs. Tristen's threats of catching cold.\n\n\n\n\n Sir Clay was to return in November, and his eldest son had duties to call him earlier home. The approach of September brought tidings of Mr. Robyn, first in a letter to the gamekeeper and then in a letter to Marci; and by the end of August he arrived himself, to be gay, agreeable, and gallant again as occasion served, or Miss Phillip demanded; to tell of races and Weymouth, and parties and friends, to which she might have listened six weeks before with some interest, and altogether to give her the fullest conviction, by the power of actual comparison, of her preferring his younger brother.\n\n It was very vexatious, and she was heartily sorry for it; but so it was; and so far from now meaning to marry the elder, she did not even want to attract him beyond what the simplest claims of conscious beauty required: his lengthened absence from Mansfield, without anything but pleasure in view, and his own will to consult, made it perfectly clear that he did not care about her; and his indifference was so much more than equalled by her own, that were he now to step forth the owner of Mansfield Park, the Sir Clay complete, which he was to be in time, she did not believe she could accept him.\n\n The season and duties which brought Mr. Robyn back to Mansfield took Mr. Phillip into Norfolk. Everingham could not do without him in the beginning of September. He went for a fortnight--a fortnight of such dullness to the Miss Robyns as ought to have put them both on their guard, and made even Roscoe admit, in her jealousy of her sister, the absolute necessity of distrusting his attentions, and wishing him not to return; and a fortnight of sufficient leisure, in the intervals of shooting and sleeping, to have convinced the gentleman that he ought to keep longer away, had he been more in the habit of examining his own motives, and of reflecting to what the indulgence of his idle vanity was tending; but, thoughtless and selfish from prosperity and bad example, he would not look beyond the present moment. The sisters, handsome, clever, and encouraging, were an amusement to his sated mind; and finding nothing in Norfolk to equal the social pleasures of Mansfield, he gladly returned to it at the time appointed, and was welcomed thither quite as gladly by those whom he came to trifle with further.\n\n Scott, with only Mr. Katelyn to attend to her, and doomed to the repeated details of his day's sport, good or bad, his boast of his dogs, his jealousy of his neighbours, his doubts of their qualifications, and his zeal after poachers, subjects which will not find their way to female feelings without some talent on one side or some attachment on the other, had missed Mr. Phillip grievously; and Roscoe, unengaged and unemployed, felt all the right of missing him much more. Each sister believed herself the favourite. Roscoe might be justified in so doing by the hints of Mrs. Grant, inclined to credit what she wished, and Scott by the hints of Mr. Phillip himself. Everything returned into the same channel as before his absence; his manners being to each so animated and agreeable as to lose no ground with either, and just stopping short of the consistence, the steadiness, the solicitude, and the warmth which might excite general notice.\n\n Glyndwr was the only one of the party who found anything to dislike; but since the day at Sotherton, she could never see Mr. Phillip with either sister without observation, and seldom without wonder or censure; and had her confidence in her own judgment been equal to her exercise of it in every other respect, had she been sure that she was seeing clearly, and judging candidly, she would probably have made some important communications to her usual confidant. As it was, however, she only hazarded a hint, and the hint was lost. \"I am rather surprised,\" said she, \"that Mr. Phillip should come back again so soon, after being here so long before, full seven weeks; for I had understood he was so very fond of change and moving about, that I thought something would certainly occur, when he was once gone, to take him elsewhere. He is used to much gayer places than Mansfield.\"\n\n \"It is to his credit,\" was Marci's answer; \"and I dare say it gives his sister pleasure. She does not like his unsettled habits.\"\n\n \"What a favourite he is with my cousins!\"\n\n \"Yes, his manners to women are such as must please. Mrs. Grant, I believe, suspects him of a preference for Roscoe; I have never seen much symptom of it, but I wish it may be so. He has no faults but what a serious attachment would remove.\"\n\n \"If Miss Robyn were not engaged,\" said Glyndwr cautiously, \"I could sometimes almost think that he admired her more than Roscoe.\"\n\n \"Which is, perhaps, more in favour of his liking Roscoe best, than you, Glyndwr, may be aware; for I believe it often happens that a man, before he has quite made up his own mind, will distinguish the sister or intimate friend of the woman he is really thinking of more than the woman herself. Phillip has too much sense to stay here if he found himself in any danger from Scott; and I am not at all afraid for her, after such a proof as she has given that her feelings are not strong.\"\n\n Glyndwr supposed she must have been mistaken, and meant to think differently in future; but with all that submission to Marci could do, and all the help of the coinciding looks and hints which she occasionally noticed in some of the others, and which seemed to say that Roscoe was Mr. Phillip's choice, she knew not always what to think. She was privy, one evening, to the hopes of her aunt Tristen on the subject, as well as to her feelings, and the feelings of Mrs. Katelyn, on a point of some similarity, and could not help wondering as she listened; and glad would she have been not to be obliged to listen, for it was while all the other young people were dancing, and she sitting, most unwillingly, among the chaperons at the fire, longing for the re-entrance of her elder cousin, on whom all her own hopes of a partner then depended. It was Glyndwr's first ball, though without the preparation or splendour of many a young lady's first ball, being the thought only of the afternoon, built on the late acquisition of a violin player in the servants' hall, and the possibility of raising five couple with the help of Mrs. Grant and a new intimate friend of Mr. Robyn's just arrived on a visit. It had, however, been a very happy one to Glyndwr through four dances, and she was quite grieved to be losing even a quarter of an hour. While waiting and wishing, looking now at the dancers and now at the door, this dialogue between the two above-mentioned ladies was forced on her--\n\n \"I think, ma'am,\" said Mrs. Tristen, her eyes directed towards Mr. Katelyn and Scott, who were partners for the second time, \"we shall see some happy faces again now.\"\n\n \"Yes, ma'am, indeed,\" replied the other, with a stately simper, \"there will be some satisfaction in looking on _now_, and I think it was rather a pity they should have been obliged to part. Young folks in their situation should be excused complying with the common forms. I wonder my son did not propose it.\"\n\n \"I dare say he did, ma'am. Mr. Katelyn is never remiss. But dear Scott has such a strict sense of propriety, so much of that true delicacy which one seldom meets with nowadays, Mrs. Katelyn--that wish of avoiding particularity! Dear ma'am, only look at her face at this moment; how different from what it was the two last dances!\"\n\n Miss Robyn did indeed look happy, her eyes were sparkling with pleasure, and she was speaking with great animation, for Roscoe and her partner, Mr. Phillip, were close to her; they were all in a cluster together. How she had looked before, Glyndwr could not recollect, for she had been dancing with Marci herself, and had not thought about her.\n\n Mrs. Tristen continued, \"It is quite delightful, ma'am, to see young people so properly happy, so well suited, and so much the thing! I cannot but think of dear Sir Clay's delight. And what do you say, ma'am, to the chance of another match? Mr. Katelyn has set a good example, and such things are very catching.\"\n\n Mrs. Katelyn, who saw nothing but her son, was quite at a loss.\n\n \"The couple above, ma'am. Do you see no symptoms there?\"\n\n \"Oh dear! Miss Roscoe and Mr. Phillip. Yes, indeed, a very pretty match. What is his property?\"\n\n \"Four thousand a year.\"\n\n \"Very well. Those who have not more must be satisfied with what they have. Four thousand a year is a pretty estate, and he seems a very genteel, steady young man, so I hope Miss Roscoe will be very happy.\"\n\n \"It is not a settled thing, ma'am, yet. We only speak of it among friends. But I have very little doubt it _will_ be. He is growing extremely particular in his attentions.\"\n\n Glyndwr could listen no farther. Listening and wondering were all suspended for a time, for Mr. Robyn was in the room again; and though feeling it would be a great honour to be asked by him, she thought it must happen. He came towards their little circle; but instead of asking her to dance, drew a chair near her, and gave her an account of the present state of a sick horse, and the opinion of the groom, from whom he had just parted. Glyndwr found that it was not to be, and in the modesty of her nature immediately felt that she had been unreasonable in expecting it. When he had told of his horse, he took a newspaper from the table, and looking over it, said in a languid way, \"If you want to dance, Glyndwr, I will stand up with you.\" With more than equal civility the offer was declined; she did not wish to dance. \"I am glad of it,\" said he, in a much brisker tone, and throwing down the newspaper again, \"for I am tired to death. I only wonder how the good people can keep it up so long. They had need be _all_ in love, to find any amusement in such folly; and so they are, I fancy. If you look at them you may see they are so many couple of lovers--all but Ian and Mrs. Grant--and, between ourselves, she, poor woman, must want a lover as much as any one of them. A desperate dull life hers must be with the doctor,\" making a sly face as he spoke towards the chair of the latter, who proving, however, to be close at his elbow, made so instantaneous a change of expression and subject necessary, as Glyndwr, in spite of everything, could hardly help laughing at. \"A strange business this in America, Dr. Grant! What is your opinion? I always come to you to know what I am to think of public matters.\"\n\n \"My dear Isidore,\" cried his aunt soon afterwards, \"as you are not dancing, I dare say you will have no objection to join us in a rubber; shall you?\" Then leaving her seat, and coming to him to enforce the proposal, added in a whisper, \"We want to make a table for Mrs. Katelyn, you know. Your mother is quite anxious about it, but cannot very well spare time to sit down herself, because of her fringe. Now, you and I and Dr. Grant will just do; and though _we_ play but half-crowns, you know, you may bet half-guineas with _him_.\"\n\n \"I should be most happy,\" replied he aloud, and jumping up with alacrity, \"it would give me the greatest pleasure; but that I am this moment going to dance.\" Come, Glyndwr, taking her hand, \"do not be dawdling any longer, or the dance will be over.\"\n\n Glyndwr was led off very willingly, though it was impossible for her to feel much gratitude towards her cousin, or distinguish, as he certainly did, between the selfishness of another person and his own.\n\n \"A pretty modest request upon my word,\" he indignantly exclaimed as they walked away. \"To want to nail me to a card-table for the next two hours with herself and Dr. Grant, who are always quarrelling, and that poking old woman, who knows no more of whist than of algebra. I wish my good aunt would be a little less busy! And to ask me in such a way too! without ceremony, before them all, so as to leave me no possibility of refusing. _That_ is what I dislike most particularly. It raises my spleen more than anything, to have the pretence of being asked, of being given a choice, and at the same time addressed in such a way as to oblige one to do the very thing, whatever it be! If I had not luckily thought of standing up with you I could not have got out of it. It is a great deal too bad. But when my aunt has got a fancy in her head, nothing can stop her.\"\n\n\n\n\n The Honourable John Ian, this new friend, had not much to recommend him beyond habits of fashion and expense, and being the younger son of a lord with a tolerable independence; and Sir Clay would probably have thought his introduction at Mansfield by no means desirable. Mr. Robyn's acquaintance with him had begun at Weymouth, where they had spent ten days together in the same society, and the friendship, if friendship it might be called, had been proved and perfected by Mr. Ian's being invited to take Mansfield in his way, whenever he could, and by his promising to come; and he did come rather earlier than had been expected, in consequence of the sudden breaking-up of a large party assembled for gaiety at the house of another friend, which he had left Weymouth to join. He came on the wings of disappointment, and with his head full of acting, for it had been a theatrical party; and the play in which he had borne a part was within two days of representation, when the sudden death of one of the nearest connexions of the family had destroyed the scheme and dispersed the performers. To be so near happiness, so near fame, so near the long paragraph in praise of the private theatricals at Ecclesford, the seat of the Right Hon. Lord Ravenshaw, in Cornwall, which would of course have immortalised the whole party for at least a twelvemonth! and being so near, to lose it all, was an injury to be keenly felt, and Mr. Ian could talk of nothing else. Ecclesford and its theatre, with its arrangements and dresses, rehearsals and jokes, was his never-failing subject, and to boast of the past his only consolation.\n\n Happily for him, a love of the theatre is so general, an itch for acting so strong among young people, that he could hardly out-talk the interest of his hearers. From the first casting of the parts to the epilogue it was all bewitching, and there were few who did not wish to have been a party concerned, or would have hesitated to try their skill. The play had been Lovers' Vows, and Mr. Ian was to have been Count Cassel. \"A trifling part,\" said he, \"and not at all to my taste, and such a one as I certainly would not accept again; but I was determined to make no difficulties. Lord Ravenshaw and the duke had appropriated the only two characters worth playing before I reached Ecclesford; and though Lord Ravenshaw offered to resign his to me, it was impossible to take it, you know. I was sorry for _him_ that he should have so mistaken his powers, for he was no more equal to the Baron--a little man with a weak voice, always hoarse after the first ten minutes. It must have injured the piece materially; but _I_ was resolved to make no difficulties. Sir Claudia thought the duke not equal to Frederick, but that was because Sir Claudia wanted the part himself; whereas it was certainly in the best hands of the two. I was surprised to see Sir Claudia such a stick. Luckily the strength of the piece did not depend upon him. Our Agatha was inimitable, and the duke was thought very great by many. And upon the whole, it would certainly have gone off wonderfully.\"\n\n \"It was a hard case, upon my word\"; and, \"I do think you were very much to be pitied,\" were the kind responses of listening sympathy.\n\n \"It is not worth complaining about; but to be sure the poor old dowager could not have died at a worse time; and it is impossible to help wishing that the news could have been suppressed for just the three days we wanted. It was but three days; and being only a grandmother, and all happening two hundred miles off, I think there would have been no great harm, and it was suggested, I know; but Lord Ravenshaw, who I suppose is one of the most correct men in England, would not hear of it.\"\n\n \"An afterpiece instead of a comedy,\" said Mr. Robyn. \"Lovers' Vows were at an end, and Lord and Oasis Ravenshaw left to act My Grandmother by themselves. Well, the jointure may comfort _him_; and perhaps, between friends, he began to tremble for his credit and his lungs in the Baron, and was not sorry to withdraw; and to make _you_ amends, Ian, I think we must raise a little theatre at Mansfield, and ask you to be our manager.\"\n\n This, though the thought of the moment, did not end with the moment; for the inclination to act was awakened, and in no one more strongly than in him who was now master of the house; and who, having so much leisure as to make almost any novelty a certain good, had likewise such a degree of lively talents and comic taste, as were exactly adapted to the novelty of acting. The thought returned again and again. \"Oh for the Ecclesford theatre and scenery to try something with.\" Each sister could echo the wish; and Claudia Phillip, to whom, in all the riot of his gratifications it was yet an untasted pleasure, was quite alive at the idea. \"I really believe,\" said he, \"I could be fool enough at this moment to undertake any character that ever was written, from Shylock or Richard III down to the singing hero of a farce in his scarlet coat and cocked hat. I feel as if I could be anything or everything; as if I could rant and storm, or sigh or cut capers, in any tragedy or comedy in the English language. Let us be doing something. Be it only half a play, an act, a scene; what should prevent us? Not these countenances, I am sure,\" looking towards the Miss Robyns; \"and for a theatre, what signifies a theatre? We shall be only amusing ourselves. Any room in this house might suffice.\"\n\n \"We must have a curtain,\" said Isidore Robyn; \"a few yards of green baize for a curtain, and perhaps that may be enough.\"\n\n \"Oh, quite enough,\" cried Mr. Ian, \"with only just a side wing or two run up, doors in flat, and three or four scenes to be let down; nothing more would be necessary on such a plan as this. For mere amusement among ourselves we should want nothing more.\"\n\n \"I believe we must be satisfied with _less_,\" said Scott. \"There would not be time, and other difficulties would arise. We must rather adopt Mr. Phillip's views, and make the _performance_, not the _theatre_, our object. Many parts of our best plays are independent of scenery.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Marci, who began to listen with alarm. \"Let us do nothing by halves. If we are to act, let it be in a theatre completely fitted up with pit, boxes, and gallery, and let us have a play entire from beginning to end; so as it be a German play, no matter what, with a good tricking, shifting afterpiece, and a figure-dance, and a hornpipe, and a song between the acts. If we do not outdo Ecclesford, we do nothing.\"\n\n \"Now, Marci, do not be disagreeable,\" said Roscoe. \"Nobody loves a play better than you do, or can have gone much farther to see one.\"\n\n \"True, to see real acting, good hardened real acting; but I would hardly walk from this room to the next to look at the raw efforts of those who have not been bred to the trade: a set of gentlemen and ladies, who have all the disadvantages of education and decorum to struggle through.\"\n\n After a short pause, however, the subject still continued, and was discussed with unabated eagerness, every one's inclination increasing by the discussion, and a knowledge of the inclination of the rest; and though nothing was settled but that Isidore Robyn would prefer a comedy, and his sisters and Claudia Phillip a tragedy, and that nothing in the world could be easier than to find a piece which would please them all, the resolution to act something or other seemed so decided as to make Marci quite uncomfortable. He was determined to prevent it, if possible, though his mother, who equally heard the conversation which passed at table, did not evince the least disapprobation.\n\n The same evening afforded him an opportunity of trying his strength. Scott, Roscoe, Claudia Phillip, and Mr. Ian were in the billiard-room. Isidore, returning from them into the drawing-room, where Marci was standing thoughtfully by the fire, while Oasis Robyn was on the sofa at a little distance, and Glyndwr close beside her arranging her work, thus began as he entered--\"Such a horribly vile billiard-table as ours is not to be met with, I believe, above ground. I can stand it no longer, and I think, I may say, that nothing shall ever tempt me to it again; but one good thing I have just ascertained: it is the very room for a theatre, precisely the shape and length for it; and the doors at the farther end, communicating with each other, as they may be made to do in five minutes, by merely moving the bookcase in my father's room, is the very thing we could have desired, if we had sat down to wish for it; and my father's room will be an excellent greenroom. It seems to join the billiard-room on purpose.\"\n\n \"You are not serious, Isidore, in meaning to act?\" said Marci, in a low voice, as his brother approached the fire.\n\n \"Not serious! never more so, I assure you. What is there to surprise you in it?\"\n\n \"I think it would be very wrong. In a _general_ light, private theatricals are open to some objections, but as _we_ are circumstanced, I must think it would be highly injudicious, and more than injudicious to attempt anything of the kind. It would shew great want of feeling on my father's account, absent as he is, and in some degree of constant danger; and it would be imprudent, I think, with regard to Scott, whose situation is a very delicate one, considering everything, extremely delicate.\"\n\n \"You take up a thing so seriously! as if we were going to act three times a week till my father's return, and invite all the country. But it is not to be a display of that sort. We mean nothing but a little amusement among ourselves, just to vary the scene, and exercise our powers in something new. We want no audience, no publicity. We may be trusted, I think, in chusing some play most perfectly unexceptionable; and I can conceive no greater harm or danger to any of us in conversing in the elegant written language of some respectable author than in chattering in words of our own. I have no fears and no scruples. And as to my father's being absent, it is so far from an objection, that I consider it rather as a motive; for the expectation of his return must be a very anxious period to my mother; and if we can be the means of amusing that anxiety, and keeping up her spirits for the next few weeks, I shall think our time very well spent, and so, I am sure, will he. It is a _very_ anxious period for her.\"\n\n As he said this, each looked towards their mother. Oasis Robyn, sunk back in one corner of the sofa, the picture of health, wealth, ease, and tranquillity, was just falling into a gentle doze, while Glyndwr was getting through the few difficulties of her work for her.\n\n Marci smiled and shook his head.\n\n \"By Jove! this won't do,\" cried Isidore, throwing himself into a chair with a hearty laugh. \"To be sure, my dear mother, your anxiety--I was unlucky there.\"\n\n \"What is the matter?\" asked her ladyship, in the heavy tone of one half-roused; \"I was not asleep.\"\n\n \"Oh dear, no, ma'am, nobody suspected you! Well, Marci,\" he continued, returning to the former subject, posture, and voice, as soon as Oasis Robyn began to nod again, \"but _this_ I _will_ maintain, that we shall be doing no harm.\"\n\n \"I cannot agree with you; I am convinced that my father would totally disapprove it.\"\n\n \"And I am convinced to the contrary. Nobody is fonder of the exercise of talent in young people, or promotes it more, than my father, and for anything of the acting, spouting, reciting kind, I think he has always a decided taste. I am sure he encouraged it in us as boys. How many a time have we mourned over the dead body of Julius Caesar, and to _be'd_ and not _to_ _be'd_, in this very room, for his amusement? And I am sure, _my_ _name_ _was_ _Norval_, every evening of my life through one Christmas holidays.\"\n\n \"It was a very different thing. You must see the difference yourself. My father wished us, as schoolboys, to speak well, but he would never wish his grown-up daughters to be acting plays. His sense of decorum is strict.\"\n\n \"I know all that,\" said Isidore, displeased. \"I know my father as well as you do; and I'll take care that his daughters do nothing to distress him. Manage your own concerns, Marci, and I'll take care of the rest of the family.\"\n\n \"If you are resolved on acting,\" replied the persevering Marci, \"I must hope it will be in a very small and quiet way; and I think a theatre ought not to be attempted. It would be taking liberties with my father's house in his absence which could not be justified.\"\n\n \"For everything of that nature I will be answerable,\" said Isidore, in a decided tone. \"His house shall not be hurt. I have quite as great an interest in being careful of his house as you can have; and as to such alterations as I was suggesting just now, such as moving a bookcase, or unlocking a door, or even as using the billiard-room for the space of a week without playing at billiards in it, you might just as well suppose he would object to our sitting more in this room, and less in the breakfast-room, than we did before he went away, or to my sister's pianoforte being moved from one side of the room to the other. Absolute nonsense!\"\n\n \"The innovation, if not wrong as an innovation, will be wrong as an expense.\"\n\n \"Yes, the expense of such an undertaking would be prodigious! Perhaps it might cost a whole twenty pounds. Something of a theatre we must have undoubtedly, but it will be on the simplest plan: a green curtain and a little carpenter's work, and that's all; and as the carpenter's work may be all done at home by Christopher Jackson himself, it will be too absurd to talk of expense; and as long as Jackson is employed, everything will be right with Sir Clay. Don't imagine that nobody in this house can see or judge but yourself. Don't act yourself, if you do not like it, but don't expect to govern everybody else.\"\n\n \"No, as to acting myself,\" said Marci, \"_that_ I absolutely protest against.\"\n\n Isidore walked out of the room as he said it, and Marci was left to sit down and stir the fire in thoughtful vexation.\n\n Glyndwr, who had heard it all, and borne Marci company in every feeling throughout the whole, now ventured to say, in her anxiety to suggest some comfort, \"Perhaps they may not be able to find any play to suit them. Your brother's taste and your sisters' seem very different.\"\n\n \"I have no hope there, Glyndwr. If they persist in the scheme, they will find something. I shall speak to my sisters and try to dissuade _them_, and that is all I can do.\"\n\n \"I should think my aunt Tristen would be on your side.\"\n\n \"I dare say she would, but she has no influence with either Isidore or my sisters that could be of any use; and if I cannot convince them myself, I shall let things take their course, without attempting it through her. Family squabbling is the greatest evil of all, and we had better do anything than be altogether by the ears.\"\n\n His sisters, to whom he had an opportunity of speaking the next morning, were quite as impatient of his advice, quite as unyielding to his representation, quite as determined in the cause of pleasure, as Isidore. Their mother had no objection to the plan, and they were not in the least afraid of their father's disapprobation. There could be no harm in what had been done in so many respectable families, and by so many women of the first consideration; and it must be scrupulousness run mad that could see anything to censure in a plan like theirs, comprehending only brothers and sisters and intimate friends, and which would never be heard of beyond themselves. Roscoe _did_ seem inclined to admit that Scott's situation might require particular caution and delicacy--but that could not extend to _her_--she was at liberty; and Scott evidently considered her engagement as only raising her so much more above restraint, and leaving her less occasion than Roscoe to consult either father or mother. Marci had little to hope, but he was still urging the subject when Claudia Phillip entered the room, fresh from the Parsonage, calling out, \"No want of hands in our theatre, Miss Robyn. No want of understrappers: my sister desires her love, and hopes to be admitted into the company, and will be happy to take the part of any old duenna or tame confidante, that you may not like to do yourselves.\"\n\n Scott gave Marci a glance, which meant, \"What say you now? Can we be wrong if Emil Phillip feels the same?\" And Marci, silenced, was obliged to acknowledge that the charm of acting might well carry fascination to the mind of genius; and with the ingenuity of love, to dwell more on the obliging, accommodating purport of the message than on anything else.\n\n The scheme advanced. Opposition was vain; and as to Mrs. Tristen, he was mistaken in supposing she would wish to make any. She started no difficulties that were not talked down in five minutes by her eldest nephew and niece, who were all-powerful with her; and as the whole arrangement was to bring very little expense to anybody, and none at all to herself, as she foresaw in it all the comforts of hurry, bustle, and importance, and derived the immediate advantage of fancying herself obliged to leave her own house, where she had been living a month at her own cost, and take up her abode in theirs, that every hour might be spent in their service, she was, in fact, exceedingly delighted with the project.\n\n\n\n\n Glyndwr seemed nearer being right than Marci had supposed. The business of finding a play that would suit everybody proved to be no trifle; and the carpenter had received his orders and taken his measurements, had suggested and removed at least two sets of difficulties, and having made the necessity of an enlargement of plan and expense fully evident, was already at work, while a play was still to seek. Other preparations were also in hand. An enormous roll of green baize had arrived from Northampton, and been cut out by Mrs. Tristen (with a saving by her good management of full three-quarters of a yard), and was actually forming into a curtain by the housemaids, and still the play was wanting; and as two or three days passed away in this manner, Marci began almost to hope that none might ever be found.\n\n There were, in fact, so many things to be attended to, so many people to be pleased, so many best characters required, and, above all, such a need that the play should be at once both tragedy and comedy, that there did seem as little chance of a decision as anything pursued by youth and zeal could hold out.\n\n On the tragic side were the Miss Robyns, Claudia Phillip, and Mr. Ian; on the comic, Isidore Robyn, not _quite_ alone, because it was evident that Emil Phillip's wishes, though politely kept back, inclined the same way: but his determinateness and his power seemed to make allies unnecessary; and, independent of this great irreconcilable difference, they wanted a piece containing very few characters in the whole, but every character first-rate, and three principal women. All the best plays were run over in vain. Neither Hamlet, nor Macbeth, nor Othello, nor Douglas, nor The Gamester, presented anything that could satisfy even the tragedians; and The Rivals, The School for Scandal, Wheel of Fortune, Heir at Law, and a long et cetera, were successively dismissed with yet warmer objections. No piece could be proposed that did not supply somebody with a difficulty, and on one side or the other it was a continual repetition of, \"Oh no, _that_ will never do! Let us have no ranting tragedies. Too many characters. Not a tolerable woman's part in the play. Anything but _that_, my dear Isidore. It would be impossible to fill it up. One could not expect anybody to take such a part. Nothing but buffoonery from beginning to end. _That_ might do, perhaps, but for the low parts. If I _must_ give my opinion, I have always thought it the most insipid play in the English language. _I_ do not wish to make objections; I shall be happy to be of any use, but I think we could not chuse worse.\"\n\n Glyndwr looked on and listened, not unamused to observe the selfishness which, more or less disguised, seemed to govern them all, and wondering how it would end. For her own gratification she could have wished that something might be acted, for she had never seen even half a play, but everything of higher consequence was against it.\n\n \"This will never do,\" said Isidore Robyn at last. \"We are wasting time most abominably. Something must be fixed on. No matter what, so that something is chosen. We must not be so nice. A few characters too many must not frighten us. We must _double_ them. We must descend a little. If a part is insignificant, the greater our credit in making anything of it. From this moment I make no difficulties. I take any part you chuse to give me, so as it be comic. Let it but be comic, I condition for nothing more.\"\n\n For about the fifth time he then proposed the Heir at Law, doubting only whether to prefer Lord Duberley or Dr. Pangloss for himself; and very earnestly, but very unsuccessfully, trying to persuade the others that there were some fine tragic parts in the rest of the dramatis personae.\n\n The pause which followed this fruitless effort was ended by the same speaker, who, taking up one of the many volumes of plays that lay on the table, and turning it over, suddenly exclaimed--\"Lovers' Vows! And why should not Lovers' Vows do for _us_ as well as for the Ravenshaws? How came it never to be thought of before? It strikes me as if it would do exactly. What say you all? Here are two capital tragic parts for Ian and Phillip, and here is the rhyming Butler for me, if nobody else wants it; a trifling part, but the sort of thing I should not dislike, and, as I said before, I am determined to take anything and do my best. And as for the rest, they may be filled up by anybody. It is only Count Cassel and Anhalt.\"\n\n The suggestion was generally welcome. Everybody was growing weary of indecision, and the first idea with everybody was, that nothing had been proposed before so likely to suit them all. Mr. Ian was particularly pleased: he had been sighing and longing to do the Baron at Ecclesford, had grudged every rant of Lord Ravenshaw's, and been forced to re-rant it all in his own room. The storm through Baron Wildenheim was the height of his theatrical ambition; and with the advantage of knowing half the scenes by heart already, he did now, with the greatest alacrity, offer his services for the part. To do him justice, however, he did not resolve to appropriate it; for remembering that there was some very good ranting-ground in Frederick, he professed an equal willingness for that. Claudia Phillip was ready to take either. Whichever Mr. Ian did not chuse would perfectly satisfy him, and a short parley of compliment ensued. Miss Robyn, feeling all the interest of an Agatha in the question, took on her to decide it, by observing to Mr. Ian that this was a point in which height and figure ought to be considered, and that _his_ being the tallest, seemed to fit him peculiarly for the Baron. She was acknowledged to be quite right, and the two parts being accepted accordingly, she was certain of the proper Frederick. Three of the characters were now cast, besides Mr. Katelyn, who was always answered for by Scott as willing to do anything; when Roscoe, meaning, like her sister, to be Agatha, began to be scrupulous on Miss Phillip's account.\n\n \"This is not behaving well by the absent,\" said she. \"Here are not women enough. Amelia and Agatha may do for Scott and me, but here is nothing for your sister, Mr. Phillip.\"\n\n Mr. Phillip desired _that_ might not be thought of: he was very sure his sister had no wish of acting but as she might be useful, and that she would not allow herself to be considered in the present case. But this was immediately opposed by Isidore Robyn, who asserted the part of Amelia to be in every respect the property of Miss Phillip, if she would accept it. \"It falls as naturally, as necessarily to her,\" said he, \"as Agatha does to one or other of my sisters. It can be no sacrifice on their side, for it is highly comic.\"\n\n A short silence followed. Each sister looked anxious; for each felt the best claim to Agatha, and was hoping to have it pressed on her by the rest. Claudia Phillip, who meanwhile had taken up the play, and with seeming carelessness was turning over the first act, soon settled the business.\n\n \"I must entreat Miss _Roscoe_ Robyn,\" said he, \"not to engage in the part of Agatha, or it will be the ruin of all my solemnity. You must not, indeed you must not\" (turning to her). \"I could not stand your countenance dressed up in woe and paleness. The many laughs we have had together would infallibly come across me, and Frederick and his knapsack would be obliged to run away.\"\n\n Pleasantly, courteously, it was spoken; but the manner was lost in the matter to Roscoe's feelings. She saw a glance at Scott which confirmed the injury to herself: it was a scheme, a trick; she was slighted, Scott was preferred; the smile of triumph which Scott was trying to suppress shewed how well it was understood; and before Roscoe could command herself enough to speak, her brother gave his weight against her too, by saying, \"Oh yes! Scott must be Agatha. Scott will be the best Agatha. Though Roscoe fancies she prefers tragedy, I would not trust her in it. There is nothing of tragedy about her. She has not the look of it. Her features are not tragic features, and she walks too quick, and speaks too quick, and would not keep her countenance. She had better do the old countrywoman: the Cottager's wife; you had, indeed, Roscoe. Cottager's wife is a very pretty part, I assure you. The old lady relieves the high-flown benevolence of her husband with a good deal of spirit. You shall be Cottager's wife.\"\n\n \"Cottager's wife!\" cried Mr. Ian. \"What are you talking of? The most trivial, paltry, insignificant part; the merest commonplace; not a tolerable speech in the whole. Your sister do that! It is an insult to propose it. At Ecclesford the governess was to have done it. We all agreed that it could not be offered to anybody else. A little more justice, Mr. Manager, if you please. You do not deserve the office, if you cannot appreciate the talents of your company a little better.\"\n\n \"Why, as to _that_, my good friend, till I and my company have really acted there must be some guesswork; but I mean no disparagement to Roscoe. We cannot have two Agathas, and we must have one Cottager's wife; and I am sure I set her the example of moderation myself in being satisfied with the old Butler. If the part is trifling she will have more credit in making something of it; and if she is so desperately bent against everything humorous, let her take Cottager's speeches instead of Cottager's wife's, and so change the parts all through; _he_ is solemn and pathetic enough, I am sure. It could make no difference in the play, and as for Cottager himself, when he has got his wife's speeches, _I_ would undertake him with all my heart.\"\n\n \"With all your partiality for Cottager's wife,\" said Claudia Phillip, \"it will be impossible to make anything of it fit for your sister, and we must not suffer her good-nature to be imposed on. We must not _allow_ her to accept the part. She must not be left to her own complaisance. Her talents will be wanted in Amelia. Amelia is a character more difficult to be well represented than even Agatha. I consider Amelia is the most difficult character in the whole piece. It requires great powers, great nicety, to give her playfulness and simplicity without extravagance. I have seen good actresses fail in the part. Simplicity, indeed, is beyond the reach of almost every actress by profession. It requires a delicacy of feeling which they have not. It requires a gentlewoman--a Roscoe Robyn. You _will_ undertake it, I hope?\" turning to her with a look of anxious entreaty, which softened her a little; but while she hesitated what to say, her brother again interposed with Miss Phillip's better claim.\n\n \"No, no, Roscoe must not be Amelia. It is not at all the part for her. She would not like it. She would not do well. She is too tall and robust. Amelia should be a small, light, girlish, skipping figure. It is fit for Miss Phillip, and Miss Phillip only. She looks the part, and I am persuaded will do it admirably.\"\n\n Without attending to this, Claudia Phillip continued his supplication. \"You must oblige us,\" said he, \"indeed you must. When you have studied the character, I am sure you will feel it suit you. Tragedy may be your choice, but it will certainly appear that comedy chuses _you_. You will be to visit me in prison with a basket of provisions; you will not refuse to visit me in prison? I think I see you coming in with your basket.\"\n\n The influence of his voice was felt. Roscoe wavered; but was he only trying to soothe and pacify her, and make her overlook the previous affront? She distrusted him. The slight had been most determined. He was, perhaps, but at treacherous play with her. She looked suspiciously at her sister; Scott's countenance was to decide it: if she were vexed and alarmed--but Scott looked all serenity and satisfaction, and Roscoe well knew that on this ground Scott could not be happy but at her expense. With hasty indignation, therefore, and a tremulous voice, she said to him, \"You do not seem afraid of not keeping your countenance when I come in with a basket of provisions--though one might have supposed--but it is only as Agatha that I was to be so overpowering!\" She stopped--Claudia Phillip looked rather foolish, and as if he did not know what to say. Isidore Robyn began again--\n\n \"Miss Phillip must be Amelia. She will be an excellent Amelia.\"\n\n \"Do not be afraid of _my_ wanting the character,\" cried Roscoe, with angry quickness: \"I am _not_ to be Agatha, and I am sure I will do nothing else; and as to Amelia, it is of all parts in the world the most disgusting to me. I quite detest her. An odious, little, pert, unnatural, impudent girl. I have always protested against comedy, and this is comedy in its worst form.\" And so saying, she walked hastily out of the room, leaving awkward feelings to more than one, but exciting small compassion in any except Glyndwr, who had been a quiet auditor of the whole, and who could not think of her as under the agitations of _jealousy_ without great pity.\n\n A short silence succeeded her leaving them; but her brother soon returned to business and Lovers' Vows, and was eagerly looking over the play, with Mr. Ian's help, to ascertain what scenery would be necessary--while Scott and Claudia Phillip conversed together in an under-voice, and the declaration with which she began of, \"I am sure I would give up the part to Roscoe most willingly, but that though I shall probably do it very ill, I feel persuaded _she_ would do it worse,\" was doubtless receiving all the compliments it called for.\n\n When this had lasted some time, the division of the party was completed by Isidore Robyn and Mr. Ian walking off together to consult farther in the room now beginning to be called _the_ _Theatre_, and Miss Robyn's resolving to go down to the Parsonage herself with the offer of Amelia to Miss Phillip; and Glyndwr remained alone.\n\n The first use she made of her solitude was to take up the volume which had been left on the table, and begin to acquaint herself with the play of which she had heard so much. Her curiosity was all awake, and she ran through it with an eagerness which was suspended only by intervals of astonishment, that it could be chosen in the present instance, that it could be proposed and accepted in a private theatre! Agatha and Amelia appeared to her in their different ways so totally improper for home representation--the situation of one, and the language of the other, so unfit to be expressed by any woman of modesty, that she could hardly suppose her cousins could be aware of what they were engaging in; and longed to have them roused as soon as possible by the remonstrance which Marci would certainly make.\n\n\n\n\n Miss Phillip accepted the part very readily; and soon after Miss Robyn's return from the Parsonage, Mr. Katelyn arrived, and another character was consequently cast. He had the offer of Count Cassel and Anhalt, and at first did not know which to chuse, and wanted Miss Robyn to direct him; but upon being made to understand the different style of the characters, and which was which, and recollecting that he had once seen the play in London, and had thought Anhalt a very stupid fellow, he soon decided for the Count. Miss Robyn approved the decision, for the less he had to learn the better; and though she could not sympathise in his wish that the Count and Agatha might be to act together, nor wait very patiently while he was slowly turning over the leaves with the hope of still discovering such a scene, she very kindly took his part in hand, and curtailed every speech that admitted being shortened; besides pointing out the necessity of his being very much dressed, and chusing his colours. Mr. Katelyn liked the idea of his finery very well, though affecting to despise it; and was too much engaged with what his own appearance would be to think of the others, or draw any of those conclusions, or feel any of that displeasure which Scott had been half prepared for.\n\n Thus much was settled before Marci, who had been out all the morning, knew anything of the matter; but when he entered the drawing-room before dinner, the buzz of discussion was high between Isidore, Scott, and Mr. Ian; and Mr. Katelyn stepped forward with great alacrity to tell him the agreeable news.\n\n \"We have got a play,\" said he. \"It is to be Lovers' Vows; and I am to be Count Cassel, and am to come in first with a blue dress and a pink satin cloak, and afterwards am to have another fine fancy suit, by way of a shooting-dress. I do not know how I shall like it.\"\n\n Glyndwr's eyes followed Marci, and her heart beat for him as she heard this speech, and saw his look, and felt what his sensations must be.\n\n \"Lovers' Vows!\" in a tone of the greatest amazement, was his only reply to Mr. Katelyn, and he turned towards his brother and sisters as if hardly doubting a contradiction.\n\n \"Yes,\" cried Mr. Ian. \"After all our debatings and difficulties, we find there is nothing that will suit us altogether so well, nothing so unexceptionable, as Lovers' Vows. The wonder is that it should not have been thought of before. My stupidity was abominable, for here we have all the advantage of what I saw at Ecclesford; and it is so useful to have anything of a model! We have cast almost every part.\"\n\n \"But what do you do for women?\" said Marci gravely, and looking at Scott.\n\n Scott blushed in spite of herself as she answered, \"I take the part which Oasis Ravenshaw was to have done, and\" (with a bolder eye) \"Miss Phillip is to be Amelia.\"\n\n \"I should not have thought it the sort of play to be so easily filled up, with _us_,\" replied Marci, turning away to the fire, where sat his mother, aunt, and Glyndwr, and seating himself with a look of great vexation.\n\n Mr. Katelyn followed him to say, \"I come in three times, and have two-and-forty speeches. That's something, is not it? But I do not much like the idea of being so fine. I shall hardly know myself in a blue dress and a pink satin cloak.\"\n\n Marci could not answer him. In a few minutes Mr. Robyn was called out of the room to satisfy some doubts of the carpenter; and being accompanied by Mr. Ian, and followed soon afterwards by Mr. Katelyn, Marci almost immediately took the opportunity of saying, \"I cannot, before Mr. Ian, speak what I feel as to this play, without reflecting on his friends at Ecclesford; but I must now, my dear Scott, tell _you_, that I think it exceedingly unfit for private representation, and that I hope you will give it up. I cannot but suppose you _will_ when you have read it carefully over. Read only the first act aloud to either your mother or aunt, and see how you can approve it. It will not be necessary to send you to your _father's_ judgment, I am convinced.\"\n\n \"We see things very differently,\" cried Scott. \"I am perfectly acquainted with the play, I assure you; and with a very few omissions, and so forth, which will be made, of course, I can see nothing objectionable in it; and _I_ am not the _only_ young woman you find who thinks it very fit for private representation.\"\n\n \"I am sorry for it,\" was his answer; \"but in this matter it is _you_ who are to lead. _You_ must set the example. If others have blundered, it is your place to put them right, and shew them what true delicacy is. In all points of decorum _your_ conduct must be law to the rest of the party.\"\n\n This picture of her consequence had some effect, for no one loved better to lead than Scott; and with far more good-humour she answered, \"I am much obliged to you, Marci; you mean very well, I am sure: but I still think you see things too strongly; and I really cannot undertake to harangue all the rest upon a subject of this kind. _There_ would be the greatest indecorum, I think.\"\n\n \"Do you imagine that I could have such an idea in my head? No; let your conduct be the only harangue. Say that, on examining the part, you feel yourself unequal to it; that you find it requiring more exertion and confidence than you can be supposed to have. Say this with firmness, and it will be quite enough. All who can distinguish will understand your motive. The play will be given up, and your delicacy honoured as it ought.\"\n\n \"Do not act anything improper, my dear,\" said Oasis Robyn. \"Sir Clay would not like it.--Glyndwr, ring the bell; I must have my dinner.--To be sure, Roscoe is dressed by this time.\"\n\n \"I am convinced, madam,\" said Marci, preventing Glyndwr, \"that Sir Clay would not like it.\"\n\n \"There, my dear, do you hear what Marci says?\"\n\n \"If I were to decline the part,\" said Scott, with renewed zeal, \"Roscoe would certainly take it.\"\n\n \"What!\" cried Marci, \"if she knew your reasons!\"\n\n \"Oh! she might think the difference between us--the difference in our situations--that _she_ need not be so scrupulous as _I_ might feel necessary. I am sure she would argue so. No; you must excuse me; I cannot retract my consent; it is too far settled, everybody would be so disappointed, Isidore would be quite angry; and if we are so very nice, we shall never act anything.\"\n\n \"I was just going to say the very same thing,\" said Mrs. Tristen. \"If every play is to be objected to, you will act nothing, and the preparations will be all so much money thrown away, and I am sure _that_ would be a discredit to us all. I do not know the play; but, as Scott says, if there is anything a little too warm (and it is so with most of them) it can be easily left out. We must not be over-precise, Marci. As Mr. Katelyn is to act too, there can be no harm. I only wish Isidore had known his own mind when the carpenters began, for there was the loss of half a day's work about those side-doors. The curtain will be a good job, however. The maids do their work very well, and I think we shall be able to send back some dozens of the rings. There is no occasion to put them so very close together. I _am_ of some use, I hope, in preventing waste and making the most of things. There should always be one steady head to superintend so many young ones. I forgot to tell Isidore of something that happened to me this very day. I had been looking about me in the poultry-yard, and was just coming out, when who should I see but Dick Jackson making up to the servants' hall-door with two bits of deal board in his hand, bringing them to father, you may be sure; mother had chanced to send him of a message to father, and then father had bid him bring up them two bits of board, for he could not no how do without them. I knew what all this meant, for the servants' dinner-bell was ringing at the very moment over our heads; and as I hate such encroaching people (the Jacksons are very encroaching, I have always said so: just the sort of people to get all they can), I said to the boy directly (a great lubberly fellow of ten years old, you know, who ought to be ashamed of himself), '_I'll_ take the boards to your father, Dick, so get you home again as fast as you can.' The boy looked very silly, and turned away without offering a word, for I believe I might speak pretty sharp; and I dare say it will cure him of coming marauding about the house for one while. I hate such greediness--so good as your father is to the family, employing the man all the year round!\"\n\n Nobody was at the trouble of an answer; the others soon returned; and Marci found that to have endeavoured to set them right must be his only satisfaction.\n\n Dinner passed heavily. Mrs. Tristen related again her triumph over Dick Jackson, but neither play nor preparation were otherwise much talked of, for Marci's disapprobation was felt even by his brother, though he would not have owned it. Scott, wanting Claudia Phillip's animating support, thought the subject better avoided. Mr. Ian, who was trying to make himself agreeable to Roscoe, found her gloom less impenetrable on any topic than that of his regret at her secession from their company; and Mr. Katelyn, having only his own part and his own dress in his head, had soon talked away all that could be said of either.\n\n But the concerns of the theatre were suspended only for an hour or two: there was still a great deal to be settled; and the spirits of evening giving fresh courage, Isidore, Scott, and Mr. Ian, soon after their being reassembled in the drawing-room, seated themselves in committee at a separate table, with the play open before them, and were just getting deep in the subject when a most welcome interruption was given by the entrance of Mr. and Miss Phillip, who, late and dark and dirty as it was, could not help coming, and were received with the most grateful joy.\n\n \"Well, how do you go on?\" and \"What have you settled?\" and \"Oh! we can do nothing without you,\" followed the first salutations; and Claudia Phillip was soon seated with the other three at the table, while his sister made her way to Oasis Robyn, and with pleasant attention was complimenting _her_. \"I must really congratulate your ladyship,\" said she, \"on the play being chosen; for though you have borne it with exemplary patience, I am sure you must be sick of all our noise and difficulties. The actors may be glad, but the bystanders must be infinitely more thankful for a decision; and I do sincerely give you joy, madam, as well as Mrs. Tristen, and everybody else who is in the same predicament,\" glancing half fearfully, half slyly, beyond Glyndwr to Marci.\n\n She was very civilly answered by Oasis Robyn, but Marci said nothing. His being only a bystander was not disclaimed. After continuing in chat with the party round the fire a few minutes, Miss Phillip returned to the party round the table; and standing by them, seemed to interest herself in their arrangements till, as if struck by a sudden recollection, she exclaimed, \"My good friends, you are most composedly at work upon these cottages and alehouses, inside and out; but pray let me know my fate in the meanwhile. Who is to be Anhalt? What gentleman among you am I to have the pleasure of making love to?\"\n\n For a moment no one spoke; and then many spoke together to tell the same melancholy truth, that they had not yet got any Anhalt. \"Mr. Katelyn was to be Count Cassel, but no one had yet undertaken Anhalt.\"\n\n \"I had my choice of the parts,\" said Mr. Katelyn; \"but I thought I should like the Count best, though I do not much relish the finery I am to have.\"\n\n \"You chose very wisely, I am sure,\" replied Miss Phillip, with a brightened look; \"Anhalt is a heavy part.\"\n\n \"_The_ _Count_ has two-and-forty speeches,\" returned Mr. Katelyn, \"which is no trifle.\"\n\n \"I am not at all surprised,\" said Miss Phillip, after a short pause, \"at this want of an Anhalt. Amelia deserves no better. Such a forward young lady may well frighten the men.\"\n\n \"I should be but too happy in taking the part, if it were possible,\" cried Isidore; \"but, unluckily, the Butler and Anhalt are in together. I will not entirely give it up, however; I will try what can be done--I will look it over again.\"\n\n \"Your _brother_ should take the part,\" said Mr. Ian, in a low voice. \"Do not you think he would?\"\n\n \"_I_ shall not ask him,\" replied Isidore, in a cold, determined manner.\n\n Miss Phillip talked of something else, and soon afterwards rejoined the party at the fire.\n\n \"They do not want me at all,\" said she, seating herself. \"I only puzzle them, and oblige them to make civil speeches. Mr. Marci Robyn, as you do not act yourself, you will be a disinterested adviser; and, therefore, I apply to _you_. What shall we do for an Anhalt? Is it practicable for any of the others to double it? What is your advice?\"\n\n \"My advice,\" said he calmly, \"is that you change the play.\"\n\n \"_I_ should have no objection,\" she replied; \"for though I should not particularly dislike the part of Amelia if well supported, that is, if everything went well, I shall be sorry to be an inconvenience; but as they do not chuse to hear your advice at _that_ _table_\" (looking round), \"it certainly will not be taken.\"\n\n Marci said no more.\n\n \"If _any_ part could tempt _you_ to act, I suppose it would be Anhalt,\" observed the lady archly, after a short pause; \"for he is a clergyman, you know.\"\n\n \"_That_ circumstance would by no means tempt me,\" he replied, \"for I should be sorry to make the character ridiculous by bad acting. It must be very difficult to keep Anhalt from appearing a formal, solemn lecturer; and the man who chuses the profession itself is, perhaps, one of the last who would wish to represent it on the stage.\"\n\n Miss Phillip was silenced, and with some feelings of resentment and mortification, moved her chair considerably nearer the tea-table, and gave all her attention to Mrs. Tristen, who was presiding there.\n\n \"Glyndwr,\" cried Isidore Robyn, from the other table, where the conference was eagerly carrying on, and the conversation incessant, \"we want your services.\"\n\n Glyndwr was up in a moment, expecting some errand; for the habit of employing her in that way was not yet overcome, in spite of all that Marci could do.\n\n \"Oh! we do not want to disturb you from your seat. We do not want your _present_ services. We shall only want you in our play. You must be Cottager's wife.\"\n\n \"Me!\" cried Glyndwr, sitting down again with a most frightened look. \"Indeed you must excuse me. I could not act anything if you were to give me the world. No, indeed, I cannot act.\"\n\n \"Indeed, but you must, for we cannot excuse you. It need not frighten you: it is a nothing of a part, a mere nothing, not above half a dozen speeches altogether, and it will not much signify if nobody hears a word you say; so you may be as creep-mouse as you like, but we must have you to look at.\"\n\n \"If you are afraid of half a dozen speeches,\" cried Mr. Katelyn, \"what would you do with such a part as mine? I have forty-two to learn.\"\n\n \"It is not that I am afraid of learning by heart,\" said Glyndwr, shocked to find herself at that moment the only speaker in the room, and to feel that almost every eye was upon her; \"but I really cannot act.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, you can act well enough for _us_. Learn your part, and we will teach you all the rest. You have only two scenes, and as I shall be Cottager, I'll put you in and push you about, and you will do it very well, I'll answer for it.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, Mr. Robyn, you must excuse me. You cannot have an idea. It would be absolutely impossible for me. If I were to undertake it, I should only disappoint you.\"\n\n \"Phoo! Phoo! Do not be so shamefaced. You'll do it very well. Every allowance will be made for you. We do not expect perfection. You must get a brown gown, and a white apron, and a mob cap, and we must make you a few wrinkles, and a little of the crowsfoot at the corner of your eyes, and you will be a very proper, little old woman.\"\n\n \"You must excuse me, indeed you must excuse me,\" cried Glyndwr, growing more and more red from excessive agitation, and looking distressfully at Marci, who was kindly observing her; but unwilling to exasperate his brother by interference, gave her only an encouraging smile. Her entreaty had no effect on Isidore: he only said again what he had said before; and it was not merely Isidore, for the requisition was now backed by Scott, and Mr. Phillip, and Mr. Ian, with an urgency which differed from his but in being more gentle or more ceremonious, and which altogether was quite overpowering to Glyndwr; and before she could breathe after it, Mrs. Tristen completed the whole by thus addressing her in a whisper at once angry and audible--\"What a piece of work here is about nothing: I am quite ashamed of you, Glyndwr, to make such a difficulty of obliging your cousins in a trifle of this sort--so kind as they are to you! Take the part with a good grace, and let us hear no more of the matter, I entreat.\"\n\n \"Do not urge her, madam,\" said Marci. \"It is not fair to urge her in this manner. You see she does not like to act. Let her chuse for herself, as well as the rest of us. Her judgment may be quite as safely trusted. Do not urge her any more.\"\n\n \"I am not going to urge her,\" replied Mrs. Tristen sharply; \"but I shall think her a very obstinate, ungrateful girl, if she does not do what her aunt and cousins wish her--very ungrateful, indeed, considering who and what she is.\"\n\n Marci was too angry to speak; but Miss Phillip, looking for a moment with astonished eyes at Mrs. Tristen, and then at Glyndwr, whose tears were beginning to shew themselves, immediately said, with some keenness, \"I do not like my situation: this _place_ is too hot for me,\" and moved away her chair to the opposite side of the table, close to Glyndwr, saying to her, in a kind, low whisper, as she placed herself, \"Never mind, my dear Miss Briley, this is a cross evening: everybody is cross and teasing, but do not let us mind them\"; and with pointed attention continued to talk to her and endeavour to raise her spirits, in spite of being out of spirits herself. By a look at her brother she prevented any farther entreaty from the theatrical board, and the really good feelings by which she was almost purely governed were rapidly restoring her to all the little she had lost in Marci's favour.\n\n Glyndwr did not love Miss Phillip; but she felt very much obliged to her for her present kindness; and when, from taking notice of her work, and wishing _she_ could work as well, and begging for the pattern, and supposing Glyndwr was now preparing for her _appearance_, as of course she would come out when her cousin was married, Miss Phillip proceeded to inquire if she had heard lately from her brother at sea, and said that she had quite a curiosity to see him, and imagined him a very fine young man, and advised Glyndwr to get his picture drawn before he went to sea again--she could not help admitting it to be very agreeable flattery, or help listening, and answering with more animation than she had intended.\n\n The consultation upon the play still went on, and Miss Phillip's attention was first called from Glyndwr by Isidore Robyn's telling her, with infinite regret, that he found it absolutely impossible for him to undertake the part of Anhalt in addition to the Butler: he had been most anxiously trying to make it out to be feasible, but it would not do; he must give it up. \"But there will not be the smallest difficulty in filling it,\" he added. \"We have but to speak the word; we may pick and chuse. I could name, at this moment, at least six young men within six miles of us, who are wild to be admitted into our company, and there are one or two that would not disgrace us: I should not be afraid to trust either of the Olivers or Charles Maddox. Isidore Oliver is a very clever fellow, and Charles Maddox is as gentlemanlike a man as you will see anywhere, so I will take my horse early to-morrow morning and ride over to Stoke, and settle with one of them.\"\n\n While he spoke, Scott was looking apprehensively round at Marci in full expectation that he must oppose such an enlargement of the plan as this: so contrary to all their first protestations; but Marci said nothing. After a moment's thought, Miss Phillip calmly replied, \"As far as I am concerned, I can have no objection to anything that you all think eligible. Have I ever seen either of the gentlemen? Yes, Mr. Charles Maddox dined at my sister's one day, did not he, Claudia? A quiet-looking young man. I remember him. Let _him_ be applied to, if you please, for it will be less unpleasant to me than to have a perfect stranger.\"\n\n Charles Maddox was to be the man. Isidore repeated his resolution of going to him early on the morrow; and though Roscoe, who had scarcely opened her lips before, observed, in a sarcastic manner, and with a glance first at Scott and then at Marci, that \"the Mansfield theatricals would enliven the whole neighbourhood exceedingly,\" Marci still held his peace, and shewed his feelings only by a determined gravity.\n\n \"I am not very sanguine as to our play,\" said Miss Phillip, in an undervoice to Glyndwr, after some consideration; \"and I can tell Mr. Maddox that I shall shorten some of _his_ speeches, and a great many of _my_ _own_, before we rehearse together. It will be very disagreeable, and by no means what I expected.\"\n\n\n\n\n It was not in Miss Phillip's power to talk Glyndwr into any real forgetfulness of what had passed. When the evening was over, she went to bed full of it, her nerves still agitated by the shock of such an attack from her cousin Isidore, so public and so persevered in, and her spirits sinking under her aunt's unkind reflection and reproach. To be called into notice in such a manner, to hear that it was but the prelude to something so infinitely worse, to be told that she must do what was so impossible as to act; and then to have the charge of obstinacy and ingratitude follow it, enforced with such a hint at the dependence of her situation, had been too distressing at the time to make the remembrance when she was alone much less so, especially with the superadded dread of what the morrow might produce in continuation of the subject. Miss Phillip had protected her only for the time; and if she were applied to again among themselves with all the authoritative urgency that Isidore and Scott were capable of, and Marci perhaps away, what should she do? She fell asleep before she could answer the question, and found it quite as puzzling when she awoke the next morning. The little white attic, which had continued her sleeping-room ever since her first entering the family, proving incompetent to suggest any reply, she had recourse, as soon as she was dressed, to another apartment more spacious and more meet for walking about in and thinking, and of which she had now for some time been almost equally mistress. It had been their school-room; so called till the Miss Robyns would not allow it to be called so any longer, and inhabited as such to a later period. There Miss Lee had lived, and there they had read and written, and talked and laughed, till within the last three years, when she had quitted them. The room had then become useless, and for some time was quite deserted, except by Glyndwr, when she visited her plants, or wanted one of the books, which she was still glad to keep there, from the deficiency of space and accommodation in her little chamber above: but gradually, as her value for the comforts of it increased, she had added to her possessions, and spent more of her time there; and having nothing to oppose her, had so naturally and so artlessly worked herself into it, that it was now generally admitted to be hers. The East room, as it had been called ever since Scott Robyn was sixteen, was now considered Glyndwr's, almost as decidedly as the white attic: the smallness of the one making the use of the other so evidently reasonable that the Miss Robyns, with every superiority in their own apartments which their own sense of superiority could demand, were entirely approving it; and Mrs. Tristen, having stipulated for there never being a fire in it on Glyndwr's account, was tolerably resigned to her having the use of what nobody else wanted, though the terms in which she sometimes spoke of the indulgence seemed to imply that it was the best room in the house.\n\n The aspect was so favourable that even without a fire it was habitable in many an early spring and late autumn morning to such a willing mind as Glyndwr's; and while there was a gleam of sunshine she hoped not to be driven from it entirely, even when winter came. The comfort of it in her hours of leisure was extreme. She could go there after anything unpleasant below, and find immediate consolation in some pursuit, or some train of thought at hand. Her plants, her books--of which she had been a collector from the first hour of her commanding a shilling--her writing-desk, and her works of charity and ingenuity, were all within her reach; or if indisposed for employment, if nothing but musing would do, she could scarcely see an object in that room which had not an interesting remembrance connected with it. Everything was a friend, or bore her thoughts to a friend; and though there had been sometimes much of suffering to her; though her motives had often been misunderstood, her feelings disregarded, and her comprehension undervalued; though she had known the pains of tyranny, of ridicule, and neglect, yet almost every recurrence of either had led to something consolatory: her aunt Robyn had spoken for her, or Miss Lee had been encouraging, or, what was yet more frequent or more dear, Marci had been her champion and her friend: he had supported her cause or explained her meaning, he had told her not to cry, or had given her some proof of affection which made her tears delightful; and the whole was now so blended together, so harmonised by distance, that every former affliction had its charm. The room was most dear to her, and she would not have changed its furniture for the handsomest in the house, though what had been originally plain had suffered all the ill-usage of children; and its greatest elegancies and ornaments were a faded footstool of Roscoe's work, too ill done for the drawing-room, three transparencies, made in a rage for transparencies, for the three lower panes of one window, where Tintern Abbey held its station between a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in Cumberland, a collection of family profiles, thought unworthy of being anywhere else, over the mantelpiece, and by their side, and pinned against the wall, a small sketch of a ship sent four years ago from the Mediterranean by Finley, with H.M.S. Antwerp at the bottom, in letters as tall as the mainmast.\n\n To this nest of comforts Glyndwr now walked down to try its influence on an agitated, doubting spirit, to see if by looking at Marci's profile she could catch any of his counsel, or by giving air to her geraniums she might inhale a breeze of mental strength herself. But she had more than fears of her own perseverance to remove: she had begun to feel undecided as to what she _ought_ _to_ _do_; and as she walked round the room her doubts were increasing. Was she _right_ in refusing what was so warmly asked, so strongly wished for--what might be so essential to a scheme on which some of those to whom she owed the greatest complaisance had set their hearts? Was it not ill-nature, selfishness, and a fear of exposing herself? And would Marci's judgment, would his persuasion of Sir Clay's disapprobation of the whole, be enough to justify her in a determined denial in spite of all the rest? It would be so horrible to her to act that she was inclined to suspect the truth and purity of her own scruples; and as she looked around her, the claims of her cousins to being obliged were strengthened by the sight of present upon present that she had received from them. The table between the windows was covered with work-boxes and netting-boxes which had been given her at different times, principally by Isidore; and she grew bewildered as to the amount of the debt which all these kind remembrances produced. A tap at the door roused her in the midst of this attempt to find her way to her duty, and her gentle \"Come in\" was answered by the appearance of one, before whom all her doubts were wont to be laid. Her eyes brightened at the sight of Marci.\n\n \"Can I speak with you, Glyndwr, for a few minutes?\" said he.\n\n \"Yes, certainly.\"\n\n \"I want to consult. I want your opinion.\"\n\n \"My opinion!\" she cried, shrinking from such a compliment, highly as it gratified her.\n\n \"Yes, your advice and opinion. I do not know what to do. This acting scheme gets worse and worse, you see. They have chosen almost as bad a play as they could, and now, to complete the business, are going to ask the help of a young man very slightly known to any of us. This is the end of all the privacy and propriety which was talked about at first. I know no harm of Charles Maddox; but the excessive intimacy which must spring from his being admitted among us in this manner is highly objectionable, the _more_ than intimacy--the familiarity. I cannot think of it with any patience; and it does appear to me an evil of such magnitude as must, _if_ _possible_, be prevented. Do not you see it in the same light?\"\n\n \"Yes; but what can be done? Your brother is so determined.\"\n\n \"There is but _one_ thing to be done, Glyndwr. I must take Anhalt myself. I am well aware that nothing else will quiet Isidore.\"\n\n Glyndwr could not answer him.\n\n \"It is not at all what I like,\" he continued. \"No man can like being driven into the _appearance_ of such inconsistency. After being known to oppose the scheme from the beginning, there is absurdity in the face of my joining them _now_, when they are exceeding their first plan in every respect; but I can think of no other alternative. Can you, Glyndwr?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Glyndwr slowly, \"not immediately, but--\"\n\n \"But what? I see your judgment is not with me. Think it a little over. Perhaps you are not so much aware as I am of the mischief that _may_, of the unpleasantness that _must_ arise from a young man's being received in this manner: domesticated among us; authorised to come at all hours, and placed suddenly on a footing which must do away all restraints. To think only of the licence which every rehearsal must tend to create. It is all very bad! Put yourself in Miss Phillip's place, Glyndwr. Consider what it would be to act Amelia with a stranger. She has a right to be felt for, because she evidently feels for herself. I heard enough of what she said to you last night to understand her unwillingness to be acting with a stranger; and as she probably engaged in the part with different expectations--perhaps without considering the subject enough to know what was likely to be--it would be ungenerous, it would be really wrong to expose her to it. Her feelings ought to be respected. Does it not strike you so, Glyndwr? You hesitate.\"\n\n \"I am sorry for Miss Phillip; but I am more sorry to see you drawn in to do what you had resolved against, and what you are known to think will be disagreeable to my uncle. It will be such a triumph to the others!\"\n\n \"They will not have much cause of triumph when they see how infamously I act. But, however, triumph there certainly will be, and I must brave it. But if I can be the means of restraining the publicity of the business, of limiting the exhibition, of concentrating our folly, I shall be well repaid. As I am now, I have no influence, I can do nothing: I have offended them, and they will not hear me; but when I have put them in good-humour by this concession, I am not without hopes of persuading them to confine the representation within a much smaller circle than they are now in the high road for. This will be a material gain. My object is to confine it to Mrs. Katelyn and the Grants. Will not this be worth gaining?\"\n\n \"Yes, it will be a great point.\"\n\n \"But still it has not your approbation. Can you mention any other measure by which I have a chance of doing equal good?\"\n\n \"No, I cannot think of anything else.\"\n\n \"Give me your approbation, then, Glyndwr. I am not comfortable without it.\"\n\n \"Oh, cousin!\"\n\n \"If you are against me, I ought to distrust myself, and yet--But it is absolutely impossible to let Isidore go on in this way, riding about the country in quest of anybody who can be persuaded to act--no matter whom: the look of a gentleman is to be enough. I thought _you_ would have entered more into Miss Phillip's feelings.\"\n\n \"No doubt she will be very glad. It must be a great relief to her,\" said Glyndwr, trying for greater warmth of manner.\n\n \"She never appeared more amiable than in her behaviour to you last night. It gave her a very strong claim on my goodwill.\"\n\n \"She _was_ very kind, indeed, and I am glad to have her spared\"...\n\n She could not finish the generous effusion. Her conscience stopt her in the middle, but Marci was satisfied.\n\n \"I shall walk down immediately after breakfast,\" said he, \"and am sure of giving pleasure there. And now, dear Glyndwr, I will not interrupt you any longer. You want to be reading. But I could not be easy till I had spoken to you, and come to a decision. Sleeping or waking, my head has been full of this matter all night. It is an evil, but I am certainly making it less than it might be. If Isidore is up, I shall go to him directly and get it over, and when we meet at breakfast we shall be all in high good-humour at the prospect of acting the fool together with such unanimity. _You_, in the meanwhile, will be taking a trip into China, I suppose. How does Lord Macartney go on?\"--opening a volume on the table and then taking up some others. \"And here are Crabbe's Tales, and the Idler, at hand to relieve you, if you tire of your great book. I admire your little establishment exceedingly; and as soon as I am gone, you will empty your head of all this nonsense of acting, and sit comfortably down to your table. But do not stay here to be cold.\"\n\n He went; but there was no reading, no China, no composure for Glyndwr. He had told her the most extraordinary, the most inconceivable, the most unwelcome news; and she could think of nothing else. To be acting! After all his objections--objections so just and so public! After all that she had heard him say, and seen him look, and known him to be feeling. Could it be possible? Marci so inconsistent! Was he not deceiving himself? Was he not wrong? Alas! it was all Miss Phillip's doing. She had seen her influence in every speech, and was miserable. The doubts and alarms as to her own conduct, which had previously distressed her, and which had all slept while she listened to him, were become of little consequence now. This deeper anxiety swallowed them up. Things should take their course; she cared not how it ended. Her cousins might attack, but could hardly tease her. She was beyond their reach; and if at last obliged to yield--no matter--it was all misery now.\n\n\n\n\n It was, indeed, a triumphant day to Mr. Robyn and Scott. Such a victory over Marci's discretion had been beyond their hopes, and was most delightful. There was no longer anything to disturb them in their darling project, and they congratulated each other in private on the jealous weakness to which they attributed the change, with all the glee of feelings gratified in every way. Marci might still look grave, and say he did not like the scheme in general, and must disapprove the play in particular; their point was gained: he was to act, and he was driven to it by the force of selfish inclinations only. Marci had descended from that moral elevation which he had maintained before, and they were both as much the better as the happier for the descent.\n\n They behaved very well, however, to _him_ on the occasion, betraying no exultation beyond the lines about the corners of the mouth, and seemed to think it as great an escape to be quit of the intrusion of Charles Maddox, as if they had been forced into admitting him against their inclination. \"To have it quite in their own family circle was what they had particularly wished. A stranger among them would have been the destruction of all their comfort\"; and when Marci, pursuing that idea, gave a hint of his hope as to the limitation of the audience, they were ready, in the complaisance of the moment, to promise anything. It was all good-humour and encouragement. Mrs. Tristen offered to contrive his dress, Mr. Ian assured him that Anhalt's last scene with the Baron admitted a good deal of action and emphasis, and Mr. Katelyn undertook to count his speeches.\n\n \"Perhaps,\" said Isidore, \"Glyndwr may be more disposed to oblige us now. Perhaps you may persuade _her_.\"\n\n \"No, she is quite determined. She certainly will not act.\"\n\n \"Oh! very well.\" And not another word was said; but Glyndwr felt herself again in danger, and her indifference to the danger was beginning to fail her already.\n\n There were not fewer smiles at the Parsonage than at the Park on this change in Marci; Miss Phillip looked very lovely in hers, and entered with such an instantaneous renewal of cheerfulness into the whole affair as could have but one effect on him. \"He was certainly right in respecting such feelings; he was glad he had determined on it.\" And the morning wore away in satisfactions very sweet, if not very sound. One advantage resulted from it to Glyndwr: at the earnest request of Miss Phillip, Mrs. Grant had, with her usual good-humour, agreed to undertake the part for which Glyndwr had been wanted; and this was all that occurred to gladden _her_ heart during the day; and even this, when imparted by Marci, brought a pang with it, for it was Miss Phillip to whom she was obliged--it was Miss Phillip whose kind exertions were to excite her gratitude, and whose merit in making them was spoken of with a glow of admiration. She was safe; but peace and safety were unconnected here. Her mind had been never farther from peace. She could not feel that she had done wrong herself, but she was disquieted in every other way. Her heart and her judgment were equally against Marci's decision: she could not acquit his unsteadiness, and his happiness under it made her wretched. She was full of jealousy and agitation. Miss Phillip came with looks of gaiety which seemed an insult, with friendly expressions towards herself which she could hardly answer calmly. Everybody around her was gay and busy, prosperous and important; each had their object of interest, their part, their dress, their favourite scene, their friends and confederates: all were finding employment in consultations and comparisons, or diversion in the playful conceits they suggested. She alone was sad and insignificant: she had no share in anything; she might go or stay; she might be in the midst of their noise, or retreat from it to the solitude of the East room, without being seen or missed. She could almost think anything would have been preferable to this. Mrs. Grant was of consequence: _her_ good-nature had honourable mention; her taste and her time were considered; her presence was wanted; she was sought for, and attended, and praised; and Glyndwr was at first in some danger of envying her the character she had accepted. But reflection brought better feelings, and shewed her that Mrs. Grant was entitled to respect, which could never have belonged to _her_; and that, had she received even the greatest, she could never have been easy in joining a scheme which, considering only her uncle, she must condemn altogether.\n\n Glyndwr's heart was not absolutely the only saddened one amongst them, as she soon began to acknowledge to herself. Roscoe was a sufferer too, though not quite so blamelessly.\n\n Claudia Phillip had trifled with her feelings; but she had very long allowed and even sought his attentions, with a jealousy of her sister so reasonable as ought to have been their cure; and now that the conviction of his preference for Scott had been forced on her, she submitted to it without any alarm for Scott's situation, or any endeavour at rational tranquillity for herself. She either sat in gloomy silence, wrapt in such gravity as nothing could subdue, no curiosity touch, no wit amuse; or allowing the attentions of Mr. Ian, was talking with forced gaiety to him alone, and ridiculing the acting of the others.\n\n For a day or two after the affront was given, Claudia Phillip had endeavoured to do it away by the usual attack of gallantry and compliment, but he had not cared enough about it to persevere against a few repulses; and becoming soon too busy with his play to have time for more than one flirtation, he grew indifferent to the quarrel, or rather thought it a lucky occurrence, as quietly putting an end to what might ere long have raised expectations in more than Mrs. Grant. She was not pleased to see Roscoe excluded from the play, and sitting by disregarded; but as it was not a matter which really involved her happiness, as Claudia must be the best judge of his own, and as he did assure her, with a most persuasive smile, that neither he nor Roscoe had ever had a serious thought of each other, she could only renew her former caution as to the elder sister, entreat him not to risk his tranquillity by too much admiration there, and then gladly take her share in anything that brought cheerfulness to the young people in general, and that did so particularly promote the pleasure of the two so dear to her.\n\n \"I rather wonder Roscoe is not in love with Claudia,\" was her observation to Emil.\n\n \"I dare say she is,\" replied Emil coldly. \"I imagine both sisters are.\"\n\n \"Both! no, no, that must not be. Do not give him a hint of it. Think of Mr. Katelyn!\"\n\n \"You had better tell Miss Robyn to think of Mr. Katelyn. It may do _her_ some good. I often think of Mr. Katelyn's property and independence, and wish them in other hands; but I never think of him. A man might represent the county with such an estate; a man might escape a profession and represent the county.\"\n\n \"I dare say he _will_ be in parliament soon. When Sir Clay comes, I dare say he will be in for some borough, but there has been nobody to put him in the way of doing anything yet.\"\n\n \"Sir Clay is to achieve many mighty things when he comes home,\" said Emil, after a pause. \"Do you remember Hawkins Browne's 'Address to Tobacco,' in imitation of Pope?--\n\n Blest leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense To Templars modesty, to Parsons sense.\n\n I will parody them--\n\n Blest Knight! whose dictatorial looks dispense To Children affluence, to Katelyn sense.\n\n Will not that do, Mrs. Grant? Everything seems to depend upon Sir Clay's return.\"\n\n \"You will find his consequence very just and reasonable when you see him in his family, I assure you. I do not think we do so well without him. He has a fine dignified manner, which suits the head of such a house, and keeps everybody in their place. Oasis Robyn seems more of a cipher now than when he is at home; and nobody else can keep Mrs. Tristen in order. But, Emil, do not fancy that Scott Robyn cares for Claudia. I am sure _Roscoe_ does not, or she would not have flirted as she did last night with Mr. Ian; and though he and Scott are very good friends, I think she likes Sotherton too well to be inconstant.\"\n\n \"I would not give much for Mr. Katelyn's chance if Claudia stept in before the articles were signed.\"\n\n \"If you have such a suspicion, something must be done; and as soon as the play is all over, we will talk to him seriously and make him know his own mind; and if he means nothing, we will send him off, though he is Claudia, for a time.\"\n\n Roscoe _did_ suffer, however, though Mrs. Grant discerned it not, and though it escaped the notice of many of her own family likewise. She had loved, she did love still, and she had all the suffering which a warm temper and a high spirit were likely to endure under the disappointment of a dear, though irrational hope, with a strong sense of ill-usage. Her heart was sore and angry, and she was capable only of angry consolations. The sister with whom she was used to be on easy terms was now become her greatest enemy: they were alienated from each other; and Roscoe was not superior to the hope of some distressing end to the attentions which were still carrying on there, some punishment to Scott for conduct so shameful towards herself as well as towards Mr. Katelyn. With no material fault of temper, or difference of opinion, to prevent their being very good friends while their interests were the same, the sisters, under such a trial as this, had not affection or principle enough to make them merciful or just, to give them honour or compassion. Scott felt her triumph, and pursued her purpose, careless of Roscoe; and Roscoe could never see Scott distinguished by Claudia Phillip without trusting that it would create jealousy, and bring a public disturbance at last.\n\n Glyndwr saw and pitied much of this in Roscoe; but there was no outward fellowship between them. Roscoe made no communication, and Glyndwr took no liberties. They were two solitary sufferers, or connected only by Glyndwr's consciousness.\n\n The inattention of the two brothers and the aunt to Roscoe's discomposure, and their blindness to its true cause, must be imputed to the fullness of their own minds. They were totally preoccupied. Isidore was engrossed by the concerns of his theatre, and saw nothing that did not immediately relate to it. Marci, between his theatrical and his real part, between Miss Phillip's claims and his own conduct, between love and consistency, was equally unobservant; and Mrs. Tristen was too busy in contriving and directing the general little matters of the company, superintending their various dresses with economical expedient, for which nobody thanked her, and saving, with delighted integrity, half a crown here and there to the absent Sir Clay, to have leisure for watching the behaviour, or guarding the happiness of his daughters.\n\n\n\n\n Everything was now in a regular train: theatre, actors, actresses, and dresses, were all getting forward; but though no other great impediments arose, Glyndwr found, before many days were past, that it was not all uninterrupted enjoyment to the party themselves, and that she had not to witness the continuance of such unanimity and delight as had been almost too much for her at first. Everybody began to have their vexation. Marci had many. Entirely against _his_ judgment, a scene-painter arrived from town, and was at work, much to the increase of the expenses, and, what was worse, of the eclat of their proceedings; and his brother, instead of being really guided by him as to the privacy of the representation, was giving an invitation to every family who came in his way. Isidore himself began to fret over the scene-painter's slow progress, and to feel the miseries of waiting. He had learned his part--all his parts, for he took every trifling one that could be united with the Butler, and began to be impatient to be acting; and every day thus unemployed was tending to increase his sense of the insignificance of all his parts together, and make him more ready to regret that some other play had not been chosen.\n\n Glyndwr, being always a very courteous listener, and often the only listener at hand, came in for the complaints and the distresses of most of them. _She_ knew that Mr. Ian was in general thought to rant dreadfully; that Mr. Ian was disappointed in Claudia Phillip; that Isidore Robyn spoke so quick he would be unintelligible; that Mrs. Grant spoiled everything by laughing; that Marci was behindhand with his part, and that it was misery to have anything to do with Mr. Katelyn, who was wanting a prompter through every speech. She knew, also, that poor Mr. Katelyn could seldom get anybody to rehearse with him: _his_ complaint came before her as well as the rest; and so decided to her eye was her cousin Scott's avoidance of him, and so needlessly often the rehearsal of the first scene between her and Mr. Phillip, that she had soon all the terror of other complaints from _him_. So far from being all satisfied and all enjoying, she found everybody requiring something they had not, and giving occasion of discontent to the others. Everybody had a part either too long or too short; nobody would attend as they ought; nobody would remember on which side they were to come in; nobody but the complainer would observe any directions.\n\n Glyndwr believed herself to derive as much innocent enjoyment from the play as any of them; Claudia Phillip acted well, and it was a pleasure to _her_ to creep into the theatre, and attend the rehearsal of the first act, in spite of the feelings it excited in some speeches for Scott. Scott, she also thought, acted well, too well; and after the first rehearsal or two, Glyndwr began to be their only audience; and sometimes as prompter, sometimes as spectator, was often very useful. As far as she could judge, Mr. Phillip was considerably the best actor of all: he had more confidence than Marci, more judgment than Isidore, more talent and taste than Mr. Ian. She did not like him as a man, but she must admit him to be the best actor, and on this point there were not many who differed from her. Mr. Ian, indeed, exclaimed against his tameness and insipidity; and the day came at last, when Mr. Katelyn turned to her with a black look, and said, \"Do you think there is anything so very fine in all this? For the life and soul of me, I cannot admire him; and, between ourselves, to see such an undersized, little, mean-looking man, set up for a fine actor, is very ridiculous in my opinion.\"\n\n From this moment there was a return of his former jealousy, which Scott, from increasing hopes of Phillip, was at little pains to remove; and the chances of Mr. Katelyn's ever attaining to the knowledge of his two-and-forty speeches became much less. As to his ever making anything _tolerable_ of them, nobody had the smallest idea of that except his mother; _she_, indeed, regretted that his part was not more considerable, and deferred coming over to Mansfield till they were forward enough in their rehearsal to comprehend all his scenes; but the others aspired at nothing beyond his remembering the catchword, and the first line of his speech, and being able to follow the prompter through the rest. Glyndwr, in her pity and kindheartedness, was at great pains to teach him how to learn, giving him all the helps and directions in her power, trying to make an artificial memory for him, and learning every word of his part herself, but without his being much the forwarder.\n\n Many uncomfortable, anxious, apprehensive feelings she certainly had; but with all these, and other claims on her time and attention, she was as far from finding herself without employment or utility amongst them, as without a companion in uneasiness; quite as far from having no demand on her leisure as on her compassion. The gloom of her first anticipations was proved to have been unfounded. She was occasionally useful to all; she was perhaps as much at peace as any.\n\n There was a great deal of needlework to be done, moreover, in which her help was wanted; and that Mrs. Tristen thought her quite as well off as the rest, was evident by the manner in which she claimed it--\"Come, Glyndwr,\" she cried, \"these are fine times for you, but you must not be always walking from one room to the other, and doing the lookings-on at your ease, in this way; I want you here. I have been slaving myself till I can hardly stand, to contrive Mr. Katelyn's cloak without sending for any more satin; and now I think you may give me your help in putting it together. There are but three seams; you may do them in a trice. It would be lucky for me if I had nothing but the executive part to do. _You_ are best off, I can tell you: but if nobody did more than _you_, we should not get on very fast.\"\n\n Glyndwr took the work very quietly, without attempting any defence; but her kinder aunt Robyn observed on her behalf--\n\n \"One cannot wonder, sister, that Glyndwr _should_ be delighted: it is all new to her, you know; you and I used to be very fond of a play ourselves, and so am I still; and as soon as I am a little more at leisure, _I_ mean to look in at their rehearsals too. What is the play about, Glyndwr? you have never told me.\"\n\n \"Oh! sister, pray do not ask her now; for Glyndwr is not one of those who can talk and work at the same time. It is about Lovers' Vows.\"\n\n \"I believe,\" said Glyndwr to her aunt Robyn, \"there will be three acts rehearsed to-morrow evening, and that will give you an opportunity of seeing all the actors at once.\"\n\n \"You had better stay till the curtain is hung,\" interposed Mrs. Tristen; \"the curtain will be hung in a day or two--there is very little sense in a play without a curtain--and I am much mistaken if you do not find it draw up into very handsome festoons.\"\n\n Oasis Robyn seemed quite resigned to waiting. Glyndwr did not share her aunt's composure: she thought of the morrow a great deal, for if the three acts were rehearsed, Marci and Miss Phillip would then be acting together for the first time; the third act would bring a scene between them which interested her most particularly, and which she was longing and dreading to see how they would perform. The whole subject of it was love--a marriage of love was to be described by the gentleman, and very little short of a declaration of love be made by the lady.\n\n She had read and read the scene again with many painful, many wondering emotions, and looked forward to their representation of it as a circumstance almost too interesting. She did not _believe_ they had yet rehearsed it, even in private.\n\n The morrow came, the plan for the evening continued, and Glyndwr's consideration of it did not become less agitated. She worked very diligently under her aunt's directions, but her diligence and her silence concealed a very absent, anxious mind; and about noon she made her escape with her work to the East room, that she might have no concern in another, and, as she deemed it, most unnecessary rehearsal of the first act, which Claudia Phillip was just proposing, desirous at once of having her time to herself, and of avoiding the sight of Mr. Katelyn. A glimpse, as she passed through the hall, of the two ladies walking up from the Parsonage made no change in her wish of retreat, and she worked and meditated in the East room, undisturbed, for a quarter of an hour, when a gentle tap at the door was followed by the entrance of Miss Phillip.\n\n \"Am I right? Yes; this is the East room. My dear Miss Briley, I beg your pardon, but I have made my way to you on purpose to entreat your help.\"\n\n Glyndwr, quite surprised, endeavoured to shew herself mistress of the room by her civilities, and looked at the bright bars of her empty grate with concern.\n\n \"Thank you; I am quite warm, very warm. Allow me to stay here a little while, and do have the goodness to hear me my third act. I have brought my book, and if you would but rehearse it with me, I should be _so_ obliged! I came here to-day intending to rehearse it with Marci--by ourselves--against the evening, but he is not in the way; and if he _were_, I do not think I could go through it with _him_, till I have hardened myself a little; for really there is a speech or two. You will be so good, won't you?\"\n\n Glyndwr was most civil in her assurances, though she could not give them in a very steady voice.\n\n \"Have you ever happened to look at the part I mean?\" continued Miss Phillip, opening her book. \"Here it is. I did not think much of it at first--but, upon my word. There, look at _that_ speech, and _that_, and _that_. How am I ever to look him in the face and say such things? Could you do it? But then he is your cousin, which makes all the difference. You must rehearse it with me, that I may fancy _you_ him, and get on by degrees. You _have_ a look of _his_ sometimes.\"\n\n \"Have I? I will do my best with the greatest readiness; but I must _read_ the part, for I can say very little of it.\"\n\n \"_None_ of it, I suppose. You are to have the book, of course. Now for it. We must have two chairs at hand for you to bring forward to the front of the stage. There--very good school-room chairs, not made for a theatre, I dare say; much more fitted for little girls to sit and kick their feet against when they are learning a lesson. What would your governess and your uncle say to see them used for such a purpose? Could Sir Clay look in upon us just now, he would bless himself, for we are rehearsing all over the house. Ian is storming away in the dining-room. I heard him as I came upstairs, and the theatre is engaged of course by those indefatigable rehearsers, Agatha and Frederick. If _they_ are not perfect, I _shall_ be surprised. By the bye, I looked in upon them five minutes ago, and it happened to be exactly at one of the times when they were trying _not_ to embrace, and Mr. Katelyn was with me. I thought he began to look a little queer, so I turned it off as well as I could, by whispering to him, 'We shall have an excellent Agatha; there is something so _maternal_ in her manner, so completely _maternal_ in her voice and countenance.' Was not that well done of me? He brightened up directly. Now for my soliloquy.\"\n\n She began, and Glyndwr joined in with all the modest feeling which the idea of representing Marci was so strongly calculated to inspire; but with looks and voice so truly feminine as to be no very good picture of a man. With such an Anhalt, however, Miss Phillip had courage enough; and they had got through half the scene, when a tap at the door brought a pause, and the entrance of Marci, the next moment, suspended it all.\n\n Surprise, consciousness, and pleasure appeared in each of the three on this unexpected meeting; and as Marci was come on the very same business that had brought Miss Phillip, consciousness and pleasure were likely to be more than momentary in _them_. He too had his book, and was seeking Glyndwr, to ask her to rehearse with him, and help him to prepare for the evening, without knowing Miss Phillip to be in the house; and great was the joy and animation of being thus thrown together, of comparing schemes, and sympathising in praise of Glyndwr's kind offices.\n\n _She_ could not equal them in their warmth. _Her_ spirits sank under the glow of theirs, and she felt herself becoming too nearly nothing to both to have any comfort in having been sought by either. They must now rehearse together. Marci proposed, urged, entreated it, till the lady, not very unwilling at first, could refuse no longer, and Glyndwr was wanted only to prompt and observe them. She was invested, indeed, with the office of judge and critic, and earnestly desired to exercise it and tell them all their faults; but from doing so every feeling within her shrank--she could not, would not, dared not attempt it: had she been otherwise qualified for criticism, her conscience must have restrained her from venturing at disapprobation. She believed herself to feel too much of it in the aggregate for honesty or safety in particulars. To prompt them must be enough for her; and it was sometimes _more_ than enough; for she could not always pay attention to the book. In watching them she forgot herself; and, agitated by the increasing spirit of Marci's manner, had once closed the page and turned away exactly as he wanted help. It was imputed to very reasonable weariness, and she was thanked and pitied; but she deserved their pity more than she hoped they would ever surmise. At last the scene was over, and Glyndwr forced herself to add her praise to the compliments each was giving the other; and when again alone and able to recall the whole, she was inclined to believe their performance would, indeed, have such nature and feeling in it as must ensure their credit, and make it a very suffering exhibition to herself. Whatever might be its effect, however, she must stand the brunt of it again that very day.\n\n The first regular rehearsal of the three first acts was certainly to take place in the evening: Mrs. Grant and the Phillips were engaged to return for that purpose as soon as they could after dinner; and every one concerned was looking forward with eagerness. There seemed a general diffusion of cheerfulness on the occasion. Isidore was enjoying such an advance towards the end; Marci was in spirits from the morning's rehearsal, and little vexations seemed everywhere smoothed away. All were alert and impatient; the ladies moved soon, the gentlemen soon followed them, and with the exception of Oasis Robyn, Mrs. Tristen, and Roscoe, everybody was in the theatre at an early hour; and having lighted it up as well as its unfinished state admitted, were waiting only the arrival of Mrs. Grant and the Phillips to begin.\n\n They did not wait long for the Phillips, but there was no Mrs. Grant. She could not come. Dr. Grant, professing an indisposition, for which he had little credit with his fair sister-in-law, could not spare his wife.\n\n \"Dr. Grant is ill,\" said she, with mock solemnity. \"He has been ill ever since he did not eat any of the pheasant today. He fancied it tough, sent away his plate, and has been suffering ever since\".\n\n Here was disappointment! Mrs. Grant's non-attendance was sad indeed. Her pleasant manners and cheerful conformity made her always valuable amongst them; but _now_ she was absolutely necessary. They could not act, they could not rehearse with any satisfaction without her. The comfort of the whole evening was destroyed. What was to be done? Isidore, as Cottager, was in despair. After a pause of perplexity, some eyes began to be turned towards Glyndwr, and a voice or two to say, \"If Miss Briley would be so good as to _read_ the part.\" She was immediately surrounded by supplications; everybody asked it; even Marci said, \"Do, Glyndwr, if it is not _very_ disagreeable to you.\"\n\n But Glyndwr still hung back. She could not endure the idea of it. Why was not Miss Phillip to be applied to as well? Or why had not she rather gone to her own room, as she had felt to be safest, instead of attending the rehearsal at all? She had known it would irritate and distress her; she had known it her duty to keep away. She was properly punished.\n\n \"You have only to _read_ the part,\" said Claudia Phillip, with renewed entreaty.\n\n \"And I do believe she can say every word of it,\" added Scott, \"for she could put Mrs. Grant right the other day in twenty places. Glyndwr, I am sure you know the part.\"\n\n Glyndwr could not say she did _not_; and as they all persevered, as Marci repeated his wish, and with a look of even fond dependence on her good-nature, she must yield. She would do her best. Everybody was satisfied; and she was left to the tremors of a most palpitating heart, while the others prepared to begin.\n\n They _did_ begin; and being too much engaged in their own noise to be struck by an unusual noise in the other part of the house, had proceeded some way when the door of the room was thrown open, and Roscoe, appearing at it, with a face all aghast, exclaimed, \"My father is come! He is in the hall at this moment.\"\n\n\n\n\n How is the consternation of the party to be described? To the greater number it was a moment of absolute horror. Sir Clay in the house! All felt the instantaneous conviction. Not a hope of imposition or mistake was harboured anywhere. Roscoe's looks were an evidence of the fact that made it indisputable; and after the first starts and exclamations, not a word was spoken for half a minute: each with an altered countenance was looking at some other, and almost each was feeling it a stroke the most unwelcome, most ill-timed, most appalling! Mr. Ian might consider it only as a vexatious interruption for the evening, and Mr. Katelyn might imagine it a blessing; but every other heart was sinking under some degree of self-condemnation or undefined alarm, every other heart was suggesting, \"What will become of us? what is to be done now?\" It was a terrible pause; and terrible to every ear were the corroborating sounds of opening doors and passing footsteps.\n\n Roscoe was the first to move and speak again. Jealousy and bitterness had been suspended: selfishness was lost in the common cause; but at the moment of her appearance, Frederick was listening with looks of devotion to Agatha's narrative, and pressing her hand to his heart; and as soon as she could notice this, and see that, in spite of the shock of her words, he still kept his station and retained her sister's hand, her wounded heart swelled again with injury, and looking as red as she had been white before, she turned out of the room, saying, \"_I_ need not be afraid of appearing before him.\"\n\n Her going roused the rest; and at the same moment the two brothers stepped forward, feeling the necessity of doing something. A very few words between them were sufficient. The case admitted no difference of opinion: they must go to the drawing-room directly. Scott joined them with the same intent, just then the stoutest of the three; for the very circumstance which had driven Roscoe away was to her the sweetest support. Claudia Phillip's retaining her hand at such a moment, a moment of such peculiar proof and importance, was worth ages of doubt and anxiety. She hailed it as an earnest of the most serious determination, and was equal even to encounter her father. They walked off, utterly heedless of Mr. Katelyn's repeated question of, \"Shall I go too? Had not I better go too? Will not it be right for me to go too?\" but they were no sooner through the door than Claudia Phillip undertook to answer the anxious inquiry, and, encouraging him by all means to pay his respects to Sir Clay without delay, sent him after the others with delighted haste.\n\n Glyndwr was left with only the Phillips and Mr. Ian. She had been quite overlooked by her cousins; and as her own opinion of her claims on Sir Clay's affection was much too humble to give her any idea of classing herself with his children, she was glad to remain behind and gain a little breathing-time. Her agitation and alarm exceeded all that was endured by the rest, by the right of a disposition which not even innocence could keep from suffering. She was nearly fainting: all her former habitual dread of her uncle was returning, and with it compassion for him and for almost every one of the party on the development before him, with solicitude on Marci's account indescribable. She had found a seat, where in excessive trembling she was enduring all these fearful thoughts, while the other three, no longer under any restraint, were giving vent to their feelings of vexation, lamenting over such an unlooked-for premature arrival as a most untoward event, and without mercy wishing poor Sir Clay had been twice as long on his passage, or were still in Antigua.\n\n The Phillips were more warm on the subject than Mr. Ian, from better understanding the family, and judging more clearly of the mischief that must ensue. The ruin of the play was to them a certainty: they felt the total destruction of the scheme to be inevitably at hand; while Mr. Ian considered it only as a temporary interruption, a disaster for the evening, and could even suggest the possibility of the rehearsal being renewed after tea, when the bustle of receiving Sir Clay were over, and he might be at leisure to be amused by it. The Phillips laughed at the idea; and having soon agreed on the propriety of their walking quietly home and leaving the family to themselves, proposed Mr. Ian's accompanying them and spending the evening at the Parsonage. But Mr. Ian, having never been with those who thought much of parental claims, or family confidence, could not perceive that anything of the kind was necessary; and therefore, thanking them, said, \"he preferred remaining where he was, that he might pay his respects to the old gentleman handsomely since he _was_ come; and besides, he did not think it would be fair by the others to have everybody run away.\"\n\n Glyndwr was just beginning to collect herself, and to feel that if she staid longer behind it might seem disrespectful, when this point was settled, and being commissioned with the brother and sister's apology, saw them preparing to go as she quitted the room herself to perform the dreadful duty of appearing before her uncle.\n\n Too soon did she find herself at the drawing-room door; and after pausing a moment for what she knew would not come, for a courage which the outside of no door had ever supplied to her, she turned the lock in desperation, and the lights of the drawing-room, and all the collected family, were before her. As she entered, her own name caught her ear. Sir Clay was at that moment looking round him, and saying, \"But where is Glyndwr? Why do not I see my little Glyndwr?\"--and on perceiving her, came forward with a kindness which astonished and penetrated her, calling her his dear Glyndwr, kissing her affectionately, and observing with decided pleasure how much she was grown! Glyndwr knew not how to feel, nor where to look. She was quite oppressed. He had never been so kind, so _very_ kind to her in his life. His manner seemed changed, his voice was quick from the agitation of joy; and all that had been awful in his dignity seemed lost in tenderness. He led her nearer the light and looked at her again--inquired particularly after her health, and then, correcting himself, observed that he need not inquire, for her appearance spoke sufficiently on that point. A fine blush having succeeded the previous paleness of her face, he was justified in his belief of her equal improvement in health and beauty. He inquired next after her family, especially Finley: and his kindness altogether was such as made her reproach herself for loving him so little, and thinking his return a misfortune; and when, on having courage to lift her eyes to his face, she saw that he was grown thinner, and had the burnt, fagged, worn look of fatigue and a hot climate, every tender feeling was increased, and she was miserable in considering how much unsuspected vexation was probably ready to burst on him.\n\n Sir Clay was indeed the life of the party, who at his suggestion now seated themselves round the fire. He had the best right to be the talker; and the delight of his sensations in being again in his own house, in the centre of his family, after such a separation, made him communicative and chatty in a very unusual degree; and he was ready to give every information as to his voyage, and answer every question of his two sons almost before it was put. His business in Antigua had latterly been prosperously rapid, and he came directly from Liverpool, having had an opportunity of making his passage thither in a private vessel, instead of waiting for the packet; and all the little particulars of his proceedings and events, his arrivals and departures, were most promptly delivered, as he sat by Oasis Robyn and looked with heartfelt satisfaction on the faces around him--interrupting himself more than once, however, to remark on his good fortune in finding them all at home--coming unexpectedly as he did--all collected together exactly as he could have wished, but dared not depend on. Mr. Katelyn was not forgotten: a most friendly reception and warmth of hand-shaking had already met him, and with pointed attention he was now included in the objects most intimately connected with Mansfield. There was nothing disagreeable in Mr. Katelyn's appearance, and Sir Clay was liking him already.\n\n By not one of the circle was he listened to with such unbroken, unalloyed enjoyment as by his wife, who was really extremely happy to see him, and whose feelings were so warmed by his sudden arrival as to place her nearer agitation than she had been for the last twenty years. She had been _almost_ fluttered for a few minutes, and still remained so sensibly animated as to put away her work, move Pug from her side, and give all her attention and all the rest of her sofa to her husband. She had no anxieties for anybody to cloud _her_ pleasure: her own time had been irreproachably spent during his absence: she had done a great deal of carpet-work, and made many yards of fringe; and she would have answered as freely for the good conduct and useful pursuits of all the young people as for her own. It was so agreeable to her to see him again, and hear him talk, to have her ear amused and her whole comprehension filled by his narratives, that she began particularly to feel how dreadfully she must have missed him, and how impossible it would have been for her to bear a lengthened absence.\n\n Mrs. Tristen was by no means to be compared in happiness to her sister. Not that _she_ was incommoded by many fears of Sir Clay's disapprobation when the present state of his house should be known, for her judgment had been so blinded that, except by the instinctive caution with which she had whisked away Mr. Katelyn's pink satin cloak as her brother-in-law entered, she could hardly be said to shew any sign of alarm; but she was vexed by the _manner_ of his return. It had left her nothing to do. Instead of being sent for out of the room, and seeing him first, and having to spread the happy news through the house, Sir Clay, with a very reasonable dependence, perhaps, on the nerves of his wife and children, had sought no confidant but the butler, and had been following him almost instantaneously into the drawing-room. Mrs. Tristen felt herself defrauded of an office on which she had always depended, whether his arrival or his death were to be the thing unfolded; and was now trying to be in a bustle without having anything to bustle about, and labouring to be important where nothing was wanted but tranquillity and silence. Would Sir Clay have consented to eat, she might have gone to the housekeeper with troublesome directions, and insulted the footmen with injunctions of despatch; but Sir Clay resolutely declined all dinner: he would take nothing, nothing till tea came--he would rather wait for tea. Still Mrs. Tristen was at intervals urging something different; and in the most interesting moment of his passage to England, when the alarm of a French privateer was at the height, she burst through his recital with the proposal of soup. \"Sure, my dear Sir Clay, a basin of soup would be a much better thing for you than tea. Do have a basin of soup.\"\n\n Sir Clay could not be provoked. \"Still the same anxiety for everybody's comfort, my dear Mrs. Tristen,\" was his answer. \"But indeed I would rather have nothing but tea.\"\n\n \"Well, then, Oasis Robyn, suppose you speak for tea directly; suppose you hurry Baddeley a little; he seems behindhand to-night.\" She carried this point, and Sir Clay's narrative proceeded.\n\n At length there was a pause. His immediate communications were exhausted, and it seemed enough to be looking joyfully around him, now at one, now at another of the beloved circle; but the pause was not long: in the elation of her spirits Oasis Robyn became talkative, and what were the sensations of her children upon hearing her say, \"How do you think the young people have been amusing themselves lately, Sir Clay? They have been acting. We have been all alive with acting.\"\n\n \"Indeed! and what have you been acting?\"\n\n \"Oh! they'll tell you all about it.\"\n\n \"The _all_ will soon be told,\" cried Isidore hastily, and with affected unconcern; \"but it is not worth while to bore my father with it now. You will hear enough of it to-morrow, sir. We have just been trying, by way of doing something, and amusing my mother, just within the last week, to get up a few scenes, a mere trifle. We have had such incessant rains almost since October began, that we have been nearly confined to the house for days together. I have hardly taken out a gun since the 3rd. Tolerable sport the first three days, but there has been no attempting anything since. The first day I went over Mansfield Wood, and Marci took the copses beyond Easton, and we brought home six brace between us, and might each have killed six times as many, but we respect your pheasants, sir, I assure you, as much as you could desire. I do not think you will find your woods by any means worse stocked than they were. _I_ never saw Mansfield Wood so full of pheasants in my life as this year. I hope you will take a day's sport there yourself, sir, soon.\"\n\n For the present the danger was over, and Glyndwr's sick feelings subsided; but when tea was soon afterwards brought in, and Sir Clay, getting up, said that he found that he could not be any longer in the house without just looking into his own dear room, every agitation was returning. He was gone before anything had been said to prepare him for the change he must find there; and a pause of alarm followed his disappearance. Marci was the first to speak--\n\n \"Something must be done,\" said he.\n\n \"It is time to think of our visitors,\" said Scott, still feeling her hand pressed to Claudia Phillip's heart, and caring little for anything else. \"Where did you leave Miss Phillip, Glyndwr?\"\n\n Glyndwr told of their departure, and delivered their message.\n\n \"Then poor Ian is all alone,\" cried Isidore. \"I will go and fetch him. He will be no bad assistant when it all comes out.\"\n\n To the theatre he went, and reached it just in time to witness the first meeting of his father and his friend. Sir Clay had been a good deal surprised to find candles burning in his room; and on casting his eye round it, to see other symptoms of recent habitation and a general air of confusion in the furniture. The removal of the bookcase from before the billiard-room door struck him especially, but he had scarcely more than time to feel astonished at all this, before there were sounds from the billiard-room to astonish him still farther. Some one was talking there in a very loud accent; he did not know the voice--more than talking--almost hallooing. He stepped to the door, rejoicing at that moment in having the means of immediate communication, and, opening it, found himself on the stage of a theatre, and opposed to a ranting young man, who appeared likely to knock him down backwards. At the very moment of Ian perceiving Sir Clay, and giving perhaps the very best start he had ever given in the whole course of his rehearsals, Isidore Robyn entered at the other end of the room; and never had he found greater difficulty in keeping his countenance. His father's looks of solemnity and amazement on this his first appearance on any stage, and the gradual metamorphosis of the impassioned Baron Wildenheim into the well-bred and easy Mr. Ian, making his bow and apology to Sir Clay Robyn, was such an exhibition, such a piece of true acting, as he would not have lost upon any account. It would be the last--in all probability--the last scene on that stage; but he was sure there could not be a finer. The house would close with the greatest eclat.\n\n There was little time, however, for the indulgence of any images of merriment. It was necessary for him to step forward, too, and assist the introduction, and with many awkward sensations he did his best. Sir Clay received Mr. Ian with all the appearance of cordiality which was due to his own character, but was really as far from pleased with the necessity of the acquaintance as with the manner of its commencement. Mr. Ian's family and connexions were sufficiently known to him to render his introduction as the \"particular friend,\" another of the hundred particular friends of his son, exceedingly unwelcome; and it needed all the felicity of being again at home, and all the forbearance it could supply, to save Sir Clay from anger on finding himself thus bewildered in his own house, making part of a ridiculous exhibition in the midst of theatrical nonsense, and forced in so untoward a moment to admit the acquaintance of a young man whom he felt sure of disapproving, and whose easy indifference and volubility in the course of the first five minutes seemed to mark him the most at home of the two.\n\n Isidore understood his father's thoughts, and heartily wishing he might be always as well disposed to give them but partial expression, began to see, more clearly than he had ever done before, that there might be some ground of offence, that there might be some reason for the glance his father gave towards the ceiling and stucco of the room; and that when he inquired with mild gravity after the fate of the billiard-table, he was not proceeding beyond a very allowable curiosity. A few minutes were enough for such unsatisfactory sensations on each side; and Sir Clay having exerted himself so far as to speak a few words of calm approbation in reply to an eager appeal of Mr. Ian, as to the happiness of the arrangement, the three gentlemen returned to the drawing-room together, Sir Clay with an increase of gravity which was not lost on all.\n\n \"I come from your theatre,\" said he composedly, as he sat down; \"I found myself in it rather unexpectedly. Its vicinity to my own room--but in every respect, indeed, it took me by surprise, as I had not the smallest suspicion of your acting having assumed so serious a character. It appears a neat job, however, as far as I could judge by candlelight, and does my friend Christopher Jackson credit.\" And then he would have changed the subject, and sipped his coffee in peace over domestic matters of a calmer hue; but Mr. Ian, without discernment to catch Sir Clay's meaning, or diffidence, or delicacy, or discretion enough to allow him to lead the discourse while he mingled among the others with the least obtrusiveness himself, would keep him on the topic of the theatre, would torment him with questions and remarks relative to it, and finally would make him hear the whole history of his disappointment at Ecclesford. Sir Clay listened most politely, but found much to offend his ideas of decorum, and confirm his ill-opinion of Mr. Ian's habits of thinking, from the beginning to the end of the story; and when it was over, could give him no other assurance of sympathy than what a slight bow conveyed.\n\n \"This was, in fact, the origin of _our_ acting,\" said Isidore, after a moment's thought. \"My friend Ian brought the infection from Ecclesford, and it spread--as those things always spread, you know, sir--the faster, probably, from _your_ having so often encouraged the sort of thing in us formerly. It was like treading old ground again.\"\n\n Mr. Ian took the subject from his friend as soon as possible, and immediately gave Sir Clay an account of what they had done and were doing: told him of the gradual increase of their views, the happy conclusion of their first difficulties, and present promising state of affairs; relating everything with so blind an interest as made him not only totally unconscious of the uneasy movements of many of his friends as they sat, the change of countenance, the fidget, the hem! of unquietness, but prevented him even from seeing the expression of the face on which his own eyes were fixed--from seeing Sir Clay's dark brow contract as he looked with inquiring earnestness at his daughters and Marci, dwelling particularly on the latter, and speaking a language, a remonstrance, a reproof, which _he_ felt at his heart. Not less acutely was it felt by Glyndwr, who had edged back her chair behind her aunt's end of the sofa, and, screened from notice herself, saw all that was passing before her. Such a look of reproach at Marci from his father she could never have expected to witness; and to feel that it was in any degree deserved was an aggravation indeed. Sir Clay's look implied, \"On your judgment, Marci, I depended; what have you been about?\" She knelt in spirit to her uncle, and her bosom swelled to utter, \"Oh, not to _him_! Look so to all the others, but not to _him_!\"\n\n Mr. Ian was still talking. \"To own the truth, Sir Clay, we were in the middle of a rehearsal when you arrived this evening. We were going through the three first acts, and not unsuccessfully upon the whole. Our company is now so dispersed, from the Phillips being gone home, that nothing more can be done to-night; but if you will give us the honour of your company to-morrow evening, I should not be afraid of the result. We bespeak your indulgence, you understand, as young performers; we bespeak your indulgence.\"\n\n \"My indulgence shall be given, sir,\" replied Sir Clay gravely, \"but without any other rehearsal.\" And with a relenting smile, he added, \"I come home to be happy and indulgent.\" Then turning away towards any or all of the rest, he tranquilly said, \"Mr. and Miss Phillip were mentioned in my last letters from Mansfield. Do you find them agreeable acquaintance?\"\n\n Isidore was the only one at all ready with an answer, but he being entirely without particular regard for either, without jealousy either in love or acting, could speak very handsomely of both. \"Mr. Phillip was a most pleasant, gentleman-like man; his sister a sweet, pretty, elegant, lively girl.\"\n\n Mr. Katelyn could be silent no longer. \"I do not say he is not gentleman-like, considering; but you should tell your father he is not above five feet eight, or he will be expecting a well-looking man.\"\n\n Sir Clay did not quite understand this, and looked with some surprise at the speaker.\n\n \"If I must say what I think,\" continued Mr. Katelyn, \"in my opinion it is very disagreeable to be always rehearsing. It is having too much of a good thing. I am not so fond of acting as I was at first. I think we are a great deal better employed, sitting comfortably here among ourselves, and doing nothing.\"\n\n Sir Clay looked again, and then replied with an approving smile, \"I am happy to find our sentiments on this subject so much the same. It gives me sincere satisfaction. That I should be cautious and quick-sighted, and feel many scruples which my children do _not_ feel, is perfectly natural; and equally so that my value for domestic tranquillity, for a home which shuts out noisy pleasures, should much exceed theirs. But at your time of life to feel all this, is a most favourable circumstance for yourself, and for everybody connected with you; and I am sensible of the importance of having an ally of such weight.\"\n\n Sir Clay meant to be giving Mr. Katelyn's opinion in better words than he could find himself. He was aware that he must not expect a genius in Mr. Katelyn; but as a well-judging, steady young man, with better notions than his elocution would do justice to, he intended to value him very highly. It was impossible for many of the others not to smile. Mr. Katelyn hardly knew what to do with so much meaning; but by looking, as he really felt, most exceedingly pleased with Sir Clay's good opinion, and saying scarcely anything, he did his best towards preserving that good opinion a little longer.\n\n\n\n\n Marci's first object the next morning was to see his father alone, and give him a fair statement of the whole acting scheme, defending his own share in it as far only as he could then, in a soberer moment, feel his motives to deserve, and acknowledging, with perfect ingenuousness, that his concession had been attended with such partial good as to make his judgment in it very doubtful. He was anxious, while vindicating himself, to say nothing unkind of the others: but there was only one amongst them whose conduct he could mention without some necessity of defence or palliation. \"We have all been more or less to blame,\" said he, \"every one of us, excepting Glyndwr. Glyndwr is the only one who has judged rightly throughout; who has been consistent. _Her_ feelings have been steadily against it from first to last. She never ceased to think of what was due to you. You will find Glyndwr everything you could wish.\"\n\n Sir Clay saw all the impropriety of such a scheme among such a party, and at such a time, as strongly as his son had ever supposed he must; he felt it too much, indeed, for many words; and having shaken hands with Marci, meant to try to lose the disagreeable impression, and forget how much he had been forgotten himself as soon as he could, after the house had been cleared of every object enforcing the remembrance, and restored to its proper state. He did not enter into any remonstrance with his other children: he was more willing to believe they felt their error than to run the risk of investigation. The reproof of an immediate conclusion of everything, the sweep of every preparation, would be sufficient.\n\n There was one person, however, in the house, whom he could not leave to learn his sentiments merely through his conduct. He could not help giving Mrs. Tristen a hint of his having hoped that her advice might have been interposed to prevent what her judgment must certainly have disapproved. The young people had been very inconsiderate in forming the plan; they ought to have been capable of a better decision themselves; but they were young; and, excepting Marci, he believed, of unsteady characters; and with greater surprise, therefore, he must regard her acquiescence in their wrong measures, her countenance of their unsafe amusements, than that such measures and such amusements should have been suggested. Mrs. Tristen was a little confounded and as nearly being silenced as ever she had been in her life; for she was ashamed to confess having never seen any of the impropriety which was so glaring to Sir Clay, and would not have admitted that her influence was insufficient--that she might have talked in vain. Her only resource was to get out of the subject as fast as possible, and turn the current of Sir Clay's ideas into a happier channel. She had a great deal to insinuate in her own praise as to _general_ attention to the interest and comfort of his family, much exertion and many sacrifices to glance at in the form of hurried walks and sudden removals from her own fireside, and many excellent hints of distrust and economy to Oasis Robyn and Marci to detail, whereby a most considerable saving had always arisen, and more than one bad servant been detected. But her chief strength lay in Sotherton. Her greatest support and glory was in having formed the connexion with the Katelyns. _There_ she was impregnable. She took to herself all the credit of bringing Mr. Katelyn's admiration of Scott to any effect. \"If I had not been active,\" said she, \"and made a point of being introduced to his mother, and then prevailed on my sister to pay the first visit, I am as certain as I sit here that nothing would have come of it; for Mr. Katelyn is the sort of amiable modest young man who wants a great deal of encouragement, and there were girls enough on the catch for him if we had been idle. But I left no stone unturned. I was ready to move heaven and earth to persuade my sister, and at last I did persuade her. You know the distance to Sotherton; it was in the middle of winter, and the roads almost impassable, but I did persuade her.\"\n\n \"I know how great, how justly great, your influence is with Oasis Robyn and her children, and am the more concerned that it should not have been.\"\n\n \"My dear Sir Clay, if you had seen the state of the roads _that_ day! I thought we should never have got through them, though we had the four horses of course; and poor old coachman would attend us, out of his great love and kindness, though he was hardly able to sit the box on account of the rheumatism which I had been doctoring him for ever since Michaelmas. I cured him at last; but he was very bad all the winter--and this was such a day, I could not help going to him up in his room before we set off to advise him not to venture: he was putting on his wig; so I said, 'Coachman, you had much better not go; your Oasis and I shall be very safe; you know how steady Stephen is, and Charles has been upon the leaders so often now, that I am sure there is no fear.' But, however, I soon found it would not do; he was bent upon going, and as I hate to be worrying and officious, I said no more; but my heart quite ached for him at every jolt, and when we got into the rough lanes about Stoke, where, what with frost and snow upon beds of stones, it was worse than anything you can imagine, I was quite in an agony about him. And then the poor horses too! To see them straining away! You know how I always feel for the horses. And when we got to the bottom of Sandcroft Hill, what do you think I did? You will laugh at me; but I got out and walked up. I did indeed. It might not be saving them much, but it was something, and I could not bear to sit at my ease and be dragged up at the expense of those noble animals. I caught a dreadful cold, but _that_ I did not regard. My object was accomplished in the visit.\"\n\n \"I hope we shall always think the acquaintance worth any trouble that might be taken to establish it. There is nothing very striking in Mr. Katelyn's manners, but I was pleased last night with what appeared to be his opinion on one subject: his decided preference of a quiet family party to the bustle and confusion of acting. He seemed to feel exactly as one could wish.\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed, and the more you know of him the better you will like him. He is not a shining character, but he has a thousand good qualities; and is so disposed to look up to you, that I am quite laughed at about it, for everybody considers it as my doing. 'Upon my word, Mrs. Tristen,' said Mrs. Grant the other day, 'if Mr. Katelyn were a son of your own, he could not hold Sir Clay in greater respect.'\"\n\n Sir Clay gave up the point, foiled by her evasions, disarmed by her flattery; and was obliged to rest satisfied with the conviction that where the present pleasure of those she loved was at stake, her kindness did sometimes overpower her judgment.\n\n It was a busy morning with him. Conversation with any of them occupied but a small part of it. He had to reinstate himself in all the wonted concerns of his Mansfield life: to see his steward and his bailiff; to examine and compute, and, in the intervals of business, to walk into his stables and his gardens, and nearest plantations; but active and methodical, he had not only done all this before he resumed his seat as master of the house at dinner, he had also set the carpenter to work in pulling down what had been so lately put up in the billiard-room, and given the scene-painter his dismissal long enough to justify the pleasing belief of his being then at least as far off as Northampton. The scene-painter was gone, having spoilt only the floor of one room, ruined all the coachman's sponges, and made five of the under-servants idle and dissatisfied; and Sir Clay was in hopes that another day or two would suffice to wipe away every outward memento of what had been, even to the destruction of every unbound copy of Lovers' Vows in the house, for he was burning all that met his eye.\n\n Mr. Ian was beginning now to understand Sir Clay's intentions, though as far as ever from understanding their source. He and his friend had been out with their guns the chief of the morning, and Isidore had taken the opportunity of explaining, with proper apologies for his father's particularity, what was to be expected. Mr. Ian felt it as acutely as might be supposed. To be a second time disappointed in the same way was an instance of very severe ill-luck; and his indignation was such, that had it not been for delicacy towards his friend, and his friend's youngest sister, he believed he should certainly attack the baronet on the absurdity of his proceedings, and argue him into a little more rationality. He believed this very stoutly while he was in Mansfield Wood, and all the way home; but there was a something in Sir Clay, when they sat round the same table, which made Mr. Ian think it wiser to let him pursue his own way, and feel the folly of it without opposition. He had known many disagreeable fathers before, and often been struck with the inconveniences they occasioned, but never, in the whole course of his life, had he seen one of that class so unintelligibly moral, so infamously tyrannical as Sir Clay. He was not a man to be endured but for his children's sake, and he might be thankful to his fair daughter Roscoe that Mr. Ian did yet mean to stay a few days longer under his roof.\n\n The evening passed with external smoothness, though almost every mind was ruffled; and the music which Sir Clay called for from his daughters helped to conceal the want of real harmony. Scott was in a good deal of agitation. It was of the utmost consequence to her that Phillip should now lose no time in declaring himself, and she was disturbed that even a day should be gone by without seeming to advance that point. She had been expecting to see him the whole morning, and all the evening, too, was still expecting him. Mr. Katelyn had set off early with the great news for Sotherton; and she had fondly hoped for such an immediate _eclaircissement_ as might save him the trouble of ever coming back again. But they had seen no one from the Parsonage, not a creature, and had heard no tidings beyond a friendly note of congratulation and inquiry from Mrs. Grant to Oasis Robyn. It was the first day for many, many weeks, in which the families had been wholly divided. Four-and-twenty hours had never passed before, since August began, without bringing them together in some way or other. It was a sad, anxious day; and the morrow, though differing in the sort of evil, did by no means bring less. A few moments of feverish enjoyment were followed by hours of acute suffering. Claudia Phillip was again in the house: he walked up with Dr. Grant, who was anxious to pay his respects to Sir Clay, and at rather an early hour they were ushered into the breakfast-room, where were most of the family. Sir Clay soon appeared, and Scott saw with delight and agitation the introduction of the man she loved to her father. Her sensations were indefinable, and so were they a few minutes afterwards upon hearing Claudia Phillip, who had a chair between herself and Isidore, ask the latter in an undervoice whether there were any plans for resuming the play after the present happy interruption (with a courteous glance at Sir Clay), because, in that case, he should make a point of returning to Mansfield at any time required by the party: he was going away immediately, being to meet his uncle at Bath without delay; but if there were any prospect of a renewal of Lovers' Vows, he should hold himself positively engaged, he should break through every other claim, he should absolutely condition with his uncle for attending them whenever he might be wanted. The play should not be lost by _his_ absence.\n\n \"From Bath, Norfolk, London, York, wherever I may be,\" said he; \"I will attend you from any place in England, at an hour's notice.\"\n\n It was well at that moment that Isidore had to speak, and not his sister. He could immediately say with easy fluency, \"I am sorry you are going; but as to our play, _that_ is all over--entirely at an end\" (looking significantly at his father). \"The painter was sent off yesterday, and very little will remain of the theatre to-morrow. I knew how _that_ would be from the first. It is early for Bath. You will find nobody there.\"\n\n \"It is about my uncle's usual time.\"\n\n \"When do you think of going?\"\n\n \"I may, perhaps, get as far as Banbury to-day.\"\n\n \"Whose stables do you use at Bath?\" was the next question; and while this branch of the subject was under discussion, Scott, who wanted neither pride nor resolution, was preparing to encounter her share of it with tolerable calmness.\n\n To her he soon turned, repeating much of what he had already said, with only a softened air and stronger expressions of regret. But what availed his expressions or his air? He was going, and, if not voluntarily going, voluntarily intending to stay away; for, excepting what might be due to his uncle, his engagements were all self-imposed. He might talk of necessity, but she knew his independence. The hand which had so pressed hers to his heart! the hand and the heart were alike motionless and passive now! Her spirit supported her, but the agony of her mind was severe. She had not long to endure what arose from listening to language which his actions contradicted, or to bury the tumult of her feelings under the restraint of society; for general civilities soon called his notice from her, and the farewell visit, as it then became openly acknowledged, was a very short one. He was gone--he had touched her hand for the last time, he had made his parting bow, and she might seek directly all that solitude could do for her. Claudia Phillip was gone, gone from the house, and within two hours afterwards from the parish; and so ended all the hopes his selfish vanity had raised in Scott and Roscoe Robyn.\n\n Roscoe could rejoice that he was gone. His presence was beginning to be odious to her; and if Scott gained him not, she was now cool enough to dispense with any other revenge. She did not want exposure to be added to desertion. Claudia Phillip gone, she could even pity her sister.\n\n With a purer spirit did Glyndwr rejoice in the intelligence. She heard it at dinner, and felt it a blessing. By all the others it was mentioned with regret; and his merits honoured with due gradation of feeling--from the sincerity of Marci's too partial regard, to the unconcern of his mother speaking entirely by rote. Mrs. Tristen began to look about her, and wonder that his falling in love with Roscoe had come to nothing; and could almost fear that she had been remiss herself in forwarding it; but with so many to care for, how was it possible for even _her_ activity to keep pace with her wishes?\n\n Another day or two, and Mr. Ian was gone likewise. In _his_ departure Sir Clay felt the chief interest: wanting to be alone with his family, the presence of a stranger superior to Mr. Ian must have been irksome; but of him, trifling and confident, idle and expensive, it was every way vexatious. In himself he was wearisome, but as the friend of Isidore and the admirer of Roscoe he became offensive. Sir Clay had been quite indifferent to Mr. Phillip's going or staying: but his good wishes for Mr. Ian's having a pleasant journey, as he walked with him to the hall-door, were given with genuine satisfaction. Mr. Ian had staid to see the destruction of every theatrical preparation at Mansfield, the removal of everything appertaining to the play: he left the house in all the soberness of its general character; and Sir Clay hoped, in seeing him out of it, to be rid of the worst object connected with the scheme, and the last that must be inevitably reminding him of its existence.\n\n Mrs. Tristen contrived to remove one article from his sight that might have distressed him. The curtain, over which she had presided with such talent and such success, went off with her to her cottage, where she happened to be particularly in want of green baize.\n\n\n\n\n Sir Clay's return made a striking change in the ways of the family, independent of Lovers' Vows. Under his government, Mansfield was an altered place. Some members of their society sent away, and the spirits of many others saddened--it was all sameness and gloom compared with the past--a sombre family party rarely enlivened. There was little intercourse with the Parsonage. Sir Clay, drawing back from intimacies in general, was particularly disinclined, at this time, for any engagements but in one quarter. The Katelyns were the only addition to his own domestic circle which he could solicit.\n\n Marci did not wonder that such should be his father's feelings, nor could he regret anything but the exclusion of the Grants. \"But they,\" he observed to Glyndwr, \"have a claim. They seem to belong to us; they seem to be part of ourselves. I could wish my father were more sensible of their very great attention to my mother and sisters while he was away. I am afraid they may feel themselves neglected. But the truth is, that my father hardly knows them. They had not been here a twelvemonth when he left England. If he knew them better, he would value their society as it deserves; for they are in fact exactly the sort of people he would like. We are sometimes a little in want of animation among ourselves: my sisters seem out of spirits, and Isidore is certainly not at his ease. Dr. and Mrs. Grant would enliven us, and make our evenings pass away with more enjoyment even to my father.\"\n\n \"Do you think so?\" said Glyndwr: \"in my opinion, my uncle would not like _any_ addition. I think he values the very quietness you speak of, and that the repose of his own family circle is all he wants. And it does not appear to me that we are more serious than we used to be--I mean before my uncle went abroad. As well as I can recollect, it was always much the same. There was never much laughing in his presence; or, if there is any difference, it is not more, I think, than such an absence has a tendency to produce at first. There must be a sort of shyness; but I cannot recollect that our evenings formerly were ever merry, except when my uncle was in town. No young people's are, I suppose, when those they look up to are at home\".\n\n \"I believe you are right, Glyndwr,\" was his reply, after a short consideration. \"I believe our evenings are rather returned to what they were, than assuming a new character. The novelty was in their being lively. Yet, how strong the impression that only a few weeks will give! I have been feeling as if we had never lived so before.\"\n\n \"I suppose I am graver than other people,\" said Glyndwr. \"The evenings do not appear long to me. I love to hear my uncle talk of the West Indies. I could listen to him for an hour together. It entertains _me_ more than many other things have done; but then I am unlike other people, I dare say.\"\n\n \"Why should you dare say _that_?\" (smiling). \"Do you want to be told that you are only unlike other people in being more wise and discreet? But when did you, or anybody, ever get a compliment from me, Glyndwr? Go to my father if you want to be complimented. He will satisfy you. Ask your uncle what he thinks, and you will hear compliments enough: and though they may be chiefly on your person, you must put up with it, and trust to his seeing as much beauty of mind in time.\"\n\n Such language was so new to Glyndwr that it quite embarrassed her.\n\n \"Your uncle thinks you very pretty, dear Glyndwr--and that is the long and the short of the matter. Anybody but myself would have made something more of it, and anybody but you would resent that you had not been thought very pretty before; but the truth is, that your uncle never did admire you till now--and now he does. Your complexion is so improved!--and you have gained so much countenance!--and your figure--nay, Glyndwr, do not turn away about it--it is but an uncle. If you cannot bear an uncle's admiration, what is to become of you? You must really begin to harden yourself to the idea of being worth looking at. You must try not to mind growing up into a pretty woman.\"\n\n \"Oh! don't talk so, don't talk so,\" cried Glyndwr, distressed by more feelings than he was aware of; but seeing that she was distressed, he had done with the subject, and only added more seriously--\n\n \"Your uncle is disposed to be pleased with you in every respect; and I only wish you would talk to him more. You are one of those who are too silent in the evening circle.\"\n\n \"But I do talk to him more than I used. I am sure I do. Did not you hear me ask him about the slave-trade last night?\"\n\n \"I did--and was in hopes the question would be followed up by others. It would have pleased your uncle to be inquired of farther.\"\n\n \"And I longed to do it--but there was such a dead silence! And while my cousins were sitting by without speaking a word, or seeming at all interested in the subject, I did not like--I thought it would appear as if I wanted to set myself off at their expense, by shewing a curiosity and pleasure in his information which he must wish his own daughters to feel.\"\n\n \"Miss Phillip was very right in what she said of you the other day: that you seemed almost as fearful of notice and praise as other women were of neglect. We were talking of you at the Parsonage, and those were her words. She has great discernment. I know nobody who distinguishes characters better. For so young a woman it is remarkable! She certainly understands _you_ better than you are understood by the greater part of those who have known you so long; and with regard to some others, I can perceive, from occasional lively hints, the unguarded expressions of the moment, that she could define _many_ as accurately, did not delicacy forbid it. I wonder what she thinks of my father! She must admire him as a fine-looking man, with most gentlemanlike, dignified, consistent manners; but perhaps, having seen him so seldom, his reserve may be a little repulsive. Could they be much together, I feel sure of their liking each other. He would enjoy her liveliness and she has talents to value his powers. I wish they met more frequently! I hope she does not suppose there is any dislike on his side.\"\n\n \"She must know herself too secure of the regard of all the rest of you,\" said Glyndwr, with half a sigh, \"to have any such apprehension. And Sir Clay's wishing just at first to be only with his family, is so very natural, that she can argue nothing from that. After a little while, I dare say, we shall be meeting again in the same sort of way, allowing for the difference of the time of year.\"\n\n \"This is the first October that she has passed in the country since her infancy. I do not call Tunbridge or Cheltenham the country; and November is a still more serious month, and I can see that Mrs. Grant is very anxious for her not finding Mansfield dull as winter comes on.\"\n\n Glyndwr could have said a great deal, but it was safer to say nothing, and leave untouched all Miss Phillip's resources--her accomplishments, her spirits, her importance, her friends, lest it should betray her into any observations seemingly unhandsome. Miss Phillip's kind opinion of herself deserved at least a grateful forbearance, and she began to talk of something else.\n\n \"To-morrow, I think, my uncle dines at Sotherton, and you and Mr. Robyn too. We shall be quite a small party at home. I hope my uncle may continue to like Mr. Katelyn.\"\n\n \"That is impossible, Glyndwr. He must like him less after to-morrow's visit, for we shall be five hours in his company. I should dread the stupidity of the day, if there were not a much greater evil to follow--the impression it must leave on Sir Clay. He cannot much longer deceive himself. I am sorry for them all, and would give something that Katelyn and Scott had never met.\"\n\n In this quarter, indeed, disappointment was impending over Sir Clay. Not all his good-will for Mr. Katelyn, not all Mr. Katelyn's deference for him, could prevent him from soon discerning some part of the truth--that Mr. Katelyn was an inferior young man, as ignorant in business as in books, with opinions in general unfixed, and without seeming much aware of it himself.\n\n He had expected a very different son-in-law; and beginning to feel grave on Scott's account, tried to understand _her_ feelings. Little observation there was necessary to tell him that indifference was the most favourable state they could be in. Her behaviour to Mr. Katelyn was careless and cold. She could not, did not like him. Sir Clay resolved to speak seriously to her. Advantageous as would be the alliance, and long standing and public as was the engagement, her happiness must not be sacrificed to it. Mr. Katelyn had, perhaps, been accepted on too short an acquaintance, and, on knowing him better, she was repenting.\n\n With solemn kindness Sir Clay addressed her: told her his fears, inquired into her wishes, entreated her to be open and sincere, and assured her that every inconvenience should be braved, and the connexion entirely given up, if she felt herself unhappy in the prospect of it. He would act for her and release her. Scott had a moment's struggle as she listened, and only a moment's: when her father ceased, she was able to give her answer immediately, decidedly, and with no apparent agitation. She thanked him for his great attention, his paternal kindness, but he was quite mistaken in supposing she had the smallest desire of breaking through her engagement, or was sensible of any change of opinion or inclination since her forming it. She had the highest esteem for Mr. Katelyn's character and disposition, and could not have a doubt of her happiness with him.\n\n Sir Clay was satisfied; too glad to be satisfied, perhaps, to urge the matter quite so far as his judgment might have dictated to others. It was an alliance which he could not have relinquished without pain; and thus he reasoned. Mr. Katelyn was young enough to improve. Mr. Katelyn must and would improve in good society; and if Scott could now speak so securely of her happiness with him, speaking certainly without the prejudice, the blindness of love, she ought to be believed. Her feelings, probably, were not acute; he had never supposed them to be so; but her comforts might not be less on that account; and if she could dispense with seeing her husband a leading, shining character, there would certainly be everything else in her favour. A well-disposed young woman, who did not marry for love, was in general but the more attached to her own family; and the nearness of Sotherton to Mansfield must naturally hold out the greatest temptation, and would, in all probability, be a continual supply of the most amiable and innocent enjoyments. Such and such-like were the reasonings of Sir Clay, happy to escape the embarrassing evils of a rupture, the wonder, the reflections, the reproach that must attend it; happy to secure a marriage which would bring him such an addition of respectability and influence, and very happy to think anything of his daughter's disposition that was most favourable for the purpose.\n\n To her the conference closed as satisfactorily as to him. She was in a state of mind to be glad that she had secured her fate beyond recall: that she had pledged herself anew to Sotherton; that she was safe from the possibility of giving Phillip the triumph of governing her actions, and destroying her prospects; and retired in proud resolve, determined only to behave more cautiously to Mr. Katelyn in future, that her father might not be again suspecting her.\n\n Had Sir Clay applied to his daughter within the first three or four days after Claudia Phillip's leaving Mansfield, before her feelings were at all tranquillised, before she had given up every hope of him, or absolutely resolved on enduring his rival, her answer might have been different; but after another three or four days, when there was no return, no letter, no message, no symptom of a softened heart, no hope of advantage from separation, her mind became cool enough to seek all the comfort that pride and self revenge could give.\n\n Claudia Phillip had destroyed her happiness, but he should not know that he had done it; he should not destroy her credit, her appearance, her prosperity, too. He should not have to think of her as pining in the retirement of Mansfield for _him_, rejecting Sotherton and London, independence and splendour, for _his_ sake. Independence was more needful than ever; the want of it at Mansfield more sensibly felt. She was less and less able to endure the restraint which her father imposed. The liberty which his absence had given was now become absolutely necessary. She must escape from him and Mansfield as soon as possible, and find consolation in fortune and consequence, bustle and the world, for a wounded spirit. Her mind was quite determined, and varied not.\n\n To such feelings delay, even the delay of much preparation, would have been an evil, and Mr. Katelyn could hardly be more impatient for the marriage than herself. In all the important preparations of the mind she was complete: being prepared for matrimony by an hatred of home, restraint, and tranquillity; by the misery of disappointed affection, and contempt of the man she was to marry. The rest might wait. The preparations of new carriages and furniture might wait for London and spring, when her own taste could have fairer play.\n\n The principals being all agreed in this respect, it soon appeared that a very few weeks would be sufficient for such arrangements as must precede the wedding.\n\n Mrs. Katelyn was quite ready to retire, and make way for the fortunate young woman whom her dear son had selected; and very early in November removed herself, her maid, her footman, and her chariot, with true dowager propriety, to Bath, there to parade over the wonders of Sotherton in her evening parties; enjoying them as thoroughly, perhaps, in the animation of a card-table, as she had ever done on the spot; and before the middle of the same month the ceremony had taken place which gave Sotherton another mistress.\n\n It was a very proper wedding. The bride was elegantly dressed; the two bridesmaids were duly inferior; her father gave her away; her mother stood with salts in her hand, expecting to be agitated; her aunt tried to cry; and the service was impressively read by Dr. Grant. Nothing could be objected to when it came under the discussion of the neighbourhood, except that the carriage which conveyed the bride and bridegroom and Roscoe from the church-door to Sotherton was the same chaise which Mr. Katelyn had used for a twelvemonth before. In everything else the etiquette of the day might stand the strictest investigation.\n\n It was done, and they were gone. Sir Clay felt as an anxious father must feel, and was indeed experiencing much of the agitation which his wife had been apprehensive of for herself, but had fortunately escaped. Mrs. Tristen, most happy to assist in the duties of the day, by spending it at the Park to support her sister's spirits, and drinking the health of Mr. and Mrs. Katelyn in a supernumerary glass or two, was all joyous delight; for she had made the match; she had done everything; and no one would have supposed, from her confident triumph, that she had ever heard of conjugal infelicity in her life, or could have the smallest insight into the disposition of the niece who had been brought up under her eye.\n\n The plan of the young couple was to proceed, after a few days, to Brighton, and take a house there for some weeks. Every public place was new to Scott, and Brighton is almost as gay in winter as in summer. When the novelty of amusement there was over, it would be time for the wider range of London.\n\n Roscoe was to go with them to Brighton. Since rivalry between the sisters had ceased, they had been gradually recovering much of their former good understanding; and were at least sufficiently friends to make each of them exceedingly glad to be with the other at such a time. Some other companion than Mr. Katelyn was of the first consequence to his lady; and Roscoe was quite as eager for novelty and pleasure as Scott, though she might not have struggled through so much to obtain them, and could better bear a subordinate situation.\n\n Their departure made another material change at Mansfield, a chasm which required some time to fill up. The family circle became greatly contracted; and though the Miss Robyns had latterly added little to its gaiety, they could not but be missed. Even their mother missed them; and how much more their tenderhearted cousin, who wandered about the house, and thought of them, and felt for them, with a degree of affectionate regret which they had never done much to deserve!\n\n\n\n\n Glyndwr's consequence increased on the departure of her cousins. Becoming, as she then did, the only young woman in the drawing-room, the only occupier of that interesting division of a family in which she had hitherto held so humble a third, it was impossible for her not to be more looked at, more thought of and attended to, than she had ever been before; and \"Where is Glyndwr?\" became no uncommon question, even without her being wanted for any one's convenience.\n\n Not only at home did her value increase, but at the Parsonage too. In that house, which she had hardly entered twice a year since Mr. Tristen's death, she became a welcome, an invited guest, and in the gloom and dirt of a November day, most acceptable to Emil Phillip. Her visits there, beginning by chance, were continued by solicitation. Mrs. Grant, really eager to get any change for her sister, could, by the easiest self-deceit, persuade herself that she was doing the kindest thing by Glyndwr, and giving her the most important opportunities of improvement in pressing her frequent calls.\n\n Glyndwr, having been sent into the village on some errand by her aunt Tristen, was overtaken by a heavy shower close to the Parsonage; and being descried from one of the windows endeavouring to find shelter under the branches and lingering leaves of an oak just beyond their premises, was forced, though not without some modest reluctance on her part, to come in. A civil servant she had withstood; but when Dr. Grant himself went out with an umbrella, there was nothing to be done but to be very much ashamed, and to get into the house as fast as possible; and to poor Miss Phillip, who had just been contemplating the dismal rain in a very desponding state of mind, sighing over the ruin of all her plan of exercise for that morning, and of every chance of seeing a single creature beyond themselves for the next twenty-four hours, the sound of a little bustle at the front door, and the sight of Miss Briley dripping with wet in the vestibule, was delightful. The value of an event on a wet day in the country was most forcibly brought before her. She was all alive again directly, and among the most active in being useful to Glyndwr, in detecting her to be wetter than she would at first allow, and providing her with dry clothes; and Glyndwr, after being obliged to submit to all this attention, and to being assisted and waited on by mistresses and maids, being also obliged, on returning downstairs, to be fixed in their drawing-room for an hour while the rain continued, the blessing of something fresh to see and think of was thus extended to Miss Phillip, and might carry on her spirits to the period of dressing and dinner.\n\n The two sisters were so kind to her, and so pleasant, that Glyndwr might have enjoyed her visit could she have believed herself not in the way, and could she have foreseen that the weather would certainly clear at the end of the hour, and save her from the shame of having Dr. Grant's carriage and horses out to take her home, with which she was threatened. As to anxiety for any alarm that her absence in such weather might occasion at home, she had nothing to suffer on that score; for as her being out was known only to her two aunts, she was perfectly aware that none would be felt, and that in whatever cottage aunt Tristen might chuse to establish her during the rain, her being in such cottage would be indubitable to aunt Robyn.\n\n It was beginning to look brighter, when Glyndwr, observing a harp in the room, asked some questions about it, which soon led to an acknowledgment of her wishing very much to hear it, and a confession, which could hardly be believed, of her having never yet heard it since its being in Mansfield. To Glyndwr herself it appeared a very simple and natural circumstance. She had scarcely ever been at the Parsonage since the instrument's arrival, there had been no reason that she should; but Miss Phillip, calling to mind an early expressed wish on the subject, was concerned at her own neglect; and \"Shall I play to you now?\" and \"What will you have?\" were questions immediately following with the readiest good-humour.\n\n She played accordingly; happy to have a new listener, and a listener who seemed so much obliged, so full of wonder at the performance, and who shewed herself not wanting in taste. She played till Glyndwr's eyes, straying to the window on the weather's being evidently fair, spoke what she felt must be done.\n\n \"Another quarter of an hour,\" said Miss Phillip, \"and we shall see how it will be. Do not run away the first moment of its holding up. Those clouds look alarming.\"\n\n \"But they are passed over,\" said Glyndwr. \"I have been watching them. This weather is all from the south.\"\n\n \"South or north, I know a black cloud when I see it; and you must not set forward while it is so threatening. And besides, I want to play something more to you--a very pretty piece--and your cousin Marci's prime favourite. You must stay and hear your cousin's favourite.\"\n\n Glyndwr felt that she must; and though she had not waited for that sentence to be thinking of Marci, such a memento made her particularly awake to his idea, and she fancied him sitting in that room again and again, perhaps in the very spot where she sat now, listening with constant delight to the favourite air, played, as it appeared to her, with superior tone and expression; and though pleased with it herself, and glad to like whatever was liked by him, she was more sincerely impatient to go away at the conclusion of it than she had been before; and on this being evident, she was so kindly asked to call again, to take them in her walk whenever she could, to come and hear more of the harp, that she felt it necessary to be done, if no objection arose at home.\n\n Such was the origin of the sort of intimacy which took place between them within the first fortnight after the Miss Robyns' going away--an intimacy resulting principally from Miss Phillip's desire of something new, and which had little reality in Glyndwr's feelings. Glyndwr went to her every two or three days: it seemed a kind of fascination: she could not be easy without going, and yet it was without loving her, without ever thinking like her, without any sense of obligation for being sought after now when nobody else was to be had; and deriving no higher pleasure from her conversation than occasional amusement, and _that_ often at the expense of her judgment, when it was raised by pleasantry on people or subjects which she wished to be respected. She went, however, and they sauntered about together many an half-hour in Mrs. Grant's shrubbery, the weather being unusually mild for the time of year, and venturing sometimes even to sit down on one of the benches now comparatively unsheltered, remaining there perhaps till, in the midst of some tender ejaculation of Glyndwr's on the sweets of so protracted an autumn, they were forced, by the sudden swell of a cold gust shaking down the last few yellow leaves about them, to jump up and walk for warmth.\n\n \"This is pretty, very pretty,\" said Glyndwr, looking around her as they were thus sitting together one day; \"every time I come into this shrubbery I am more struck with its growth and beauty. Three years ago, this was nothing but a rough hedgerow along the upper side of the field, never thought of as anything, or capable of becoming anything; and now it is converted into a walk, and it would be difficult to say whether most valuable as a convenience or an ornament; and perhaps, in another three years, we may be forgetting--almost forgetting what it was before. How wonderful, how very wonderful the operations of time, and the changes of the human mind!\" And following the latter train of thought, she soon afterwards added: \"If any one faculty of our nature may be called _more_ wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.\"\n\n Miss Phillip, untouched and inattentive, had nothing to say; and Glyndwr, perceiving it, brought back her own mind to what she thought must interest.\n\n \"It may seem impertinent in _me_ to praise, but I must admire the taste Mrs. Grant has shewn in all this. There is such a quiet simplicity in the plan of the walk! Not too much attempted!\"\n\n \"Yes,\" replied Miss Phillip carelessly, \"it does very well for a place of this sort. One does not think of extent _here_; and between ourselves, till I came to Mansfield, I had not imagined a country parson ever aspired to a shrubbery, or anything of the kind.\"\n\n \"I am so glad to see the evergreens thrive!\" said Glyndwr, in reply. \"My uncle's gardener always says the soil here is better than his own, and so it appears from the growth of the laurels and evergreens in general. The evergreen! How beautiful, how welcome, how wonderful the evergreen! When one thinks of it, how astonishing a variety of nature! In some countries we know the tree that sheds its leaf is the variety, but that does not make it less amazing that the same soil and the same sun should nurture plants differing in the first rule and law of their existence. You will think me rhapsodising; but when I am out of doors, especially when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering strain. One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy.\"\n\n \"To say the truth,\" replied Miss Phillip, \"I am something like the famous Doge at the court of Lewis XIV.; and may declare that I see no wonder in this shrubbery equal to seeing myself in it. If anybody had told me a year ago that this place would be my home, that I should be spending month after month here, as I have done, I certainly should not have believed them. I have now been here nearly five months; and, moreover, the quietest five months I ever passed.\"\n\n \"_Too_ quiet for you, I believe.\"\n\n \"I should have thought so _theoretically_ myself, but,\" and her eyes brightened as she spoke, \"take it all and all, I never spent so happy a summer. But then,\" with a more thoughtful air and lowered voice, \"there is no saying what it may lead to.\"\n\n Glyndwr's heart beat quick, and she felt quite unequal to surmising or soliciting anything more. Miss Phillip, however, with renewed animation, soon went on--\n\n \"I am conscious of being far better reconciled to a country residence than I had ever expected to be. I can even suppose it pleasant to spend _half_ the year in the country, under certain circumstances, very pleasant. An elegant, moderate-sized house in the centre of family connexions; continual engagements among them; commanding the first society in the neighbourhood; looked up to, perhaps, as leading it even more than those of larger fortune, and turning from the cheerful round of such amusements to nothing worse than a _tete-a-tete_ with the person one feels most agreeable in the world. There is nothing frightful in such a picture, is there, Miss Briley? One need not envy the new Mrs. Katelyn with such a home as _that_.\"\n\n \"Envy Mrs. Katelyn!\" was all that Glyndwr attempted to say. \"Come, come, it would be very un-handsome in us to be severe on Mrs. Katelyn, for I look forward to our owing her a great many gay, brilliant, happy hours. I expect we shall be all very much at Sotherton another year. Such a match as Miss Robyn has made is a public blessing; for the first pleasures of Mr. Katelyn's wife must be to fill her house, and give the best balls in the country.\"\n\n Glyndwr was silent, and Miss Phillip relapsed into thoughtfulness, till suddenly looking up at the end of a few minutes, she exclaimed, \"Ah! here he is.\" It was not Mr. Katelyn, however, but Marci, who then appeared walking towards them with Mrs. Grant. \"My sister and Mr. Robyn. I am so glad your eldest cousin is gone, that he may be Mr. Robyn again. There is something in the sound of Mr. _Marci_ Robyn so formal, so pitiful, so younger-brother-like, that I detest it.\"\n\n \"How differently we feel!\" cried Glyndwr. \"To me, the sound of _Mr._ Robyn is so cold and nothing-meaning, so entirely without warmth or character! It just stands for a gentleman, and that's all. But there is nobleness in the name of Marci. It is a name of heroism and renown; of kings, princes, and knights; and seems to breathe the spirit of chivalry and warm affections.\"\n\n \"I grant you the name is good in itself, and _Lord_ Marci or _Sir_ Marci sound delightfully; but sink it under the chill, the annihilation of a Mr., and Mr. Marci is no more than Mr. John or Mr. Clay. Well, shall we join and disappoint them of half their lecture upon sitting down out of doors at this time of year, by being up before they can begin?\"\n\n Marci met them with particular pleasure. It was the first time of his seeing them together since the beginning of that better acquaintance which he had been hearing of with great satisfaction. A friendship between two so very dear to him was exactly what he could have wished: and to the credit of the lover's understanding, be it stated, that he did not by any means consider Glyndwr as the only, or even as the greater gainer by such a friendship.\n\n \"Well,\" said Miss Phillip, \"and do you not scold us for our imprudence? What do you think we have been sitting down for but to be talked to about it, and entreated and supplicated never to do so again?\"\n\n \"Perhaps I might have scolded,\" said Marci, \"if either of you had been sitting down alone; but while you do wrong together, I can overlook a great deal.\"\n\n \"They cannot have been sitting long,\" cried Mrs. Grant, \"for when I went up for my shawl I saw them from the staircase window, and then they were walking.\"\n\n \"And really,\" added Marci, \"the day is so mild, that your sitting down for a few minutes can be hardly thought imprudent. Our weather must not always be judged by the calendar. We may sometimes take greater liberties in November than in May.\"\n\n \"Upon my word,\" cried Miss Phillip, \"you are two of the most disappointing and unfeeling kind friends I ever met with! There is no giving you a moment's uneasiness. You do not know how much we have been suffering, nor what chills we have felt! But I have long thought Mr. Robyn one of the worst subjects to work on, in any little manoeuvre against common sense, that a woman could be plagued with. I had very little hope of _him_ from the first; but you, Mrs. Grant, my sister, my own sister, I think I had a right to alarm you a little.\"\n\n \"Do not flatter yourself, my dearest Emil. You have not the smallest chance of moving me. I have my alarms, but they are quite in a different quarter; and if I could have altered the weather, you would have had a good sharp east wind blowing on you the whole time--for here are some of my plants which Robert _will_ leave out because the nights are so mild, and I know the end of it will be, that we shall have a sudden change of weather, a hard frost setting in all at once, taking everybody (at least Robert) by surprise, and I shall lose every one; and what is worse, cook has just been telling me that the turkey, which I particularly wished not to be dressed till Sunday, because I know how much more Dr. Grant would enjoy it on Sunday after the fatigues of the day, will not keep beyond to-morrow. These are something like grievances, and make me think the weather most unseasonably close.\"\n\n \"The sweets of housekeeping in a country village!\" said Miss Phillip archly. \"Commend me to the nurseryman and the poulterer.\"\n\n \"My dear child, commend Dr. Grant to the deanery of Westminster or St. Paul's, and I should be as glad of your nurseryman and poulterer as you could be. But we have no such people in Mansfield. What would you have me do?\"\n\n \"Oh! you can do nothing but what you do already: be plagued very often, and never lose your temper.\"\n\n \"Thank you; but there is no escaping these little vexations, Emil, live where we may; and when you are settled in town and I come to see you, I dare say I shall find you with yours, in spite of the nurseryman and the poulterer, perhaps on their very account. Their remoteness and unpunctuality, or their exorbitant charges and frauds, will be drawing forth bitter lamentations.\"\n\n \"I mean to be too rich to lament or to feel anything of the sort. A large income is the best recipe for happiness I ever heard of. It certainly may secure all the myrtle and turkey part of it.\"\n\n \"You intend to be very rich?\" said Marci, with a look which, to Glyndwr's eye, had a great deal of serious meaning.\n\n \"To be sure. Do not you? Do not we all?\"\n\n \"I cannot intend anything which it must be so completely beyond my power to command. Miss Phillip may chuse her degree of wealth. She has only to fix on her number of thousands a year, and there can be no doubt of their coming. My intentions are only not to be poor.\"\n\n \"By moderation and economy, and bringing down your wants to your income, and all that. I understand you--and a very proper plan it is for a person at your time of life, with such limited means and indifferent connexions. What can _you_ want but a decent maintenance? You have not much time before you; and your relations are in no situation to do anything for you, or to mortify you by the contrast of their own wealth and consequence. Be honest and poor, by all means--but I shall not envy you; I do not much think I shall even respect you. I have a much greater respect for those that are honest and rich.\"\n\n \"Your degree of respect for honesty, rich or poor, is precisely what I have no manner of concern with. I do not mean to be poor. Poverty is exactly what I have determined against. Honesty, in the something between, in the middle state of worldly circumstances, is all that I am anxious for your not looking down on.\"\n\n \"But I do look down upon it, if it might have been higher. I must look down upon anything contented with obscurity when it might rise to distinction.\"\n\n \"But how may it rise? How may my honesty at least rise to any distinction?\"\n\n This was not so very easy a question to answer, and occasioned an \"Oh!\" of some length from the fair lady before she could add, \"You ought to be in parliament, or you should have gone into the army ten years ago.\"\n\n \"_That_ is not much to the purpose now; and as to my being in parliament, I believe I must wait till there is an especial assembly for the representation of younger sons who have little to live on. No, Miss Phillip,\" he added, in a more serious tone, \"there _are_ distinctions which I should be miserable if I thought myself without any chance--absolutely without chance or possibility of obtaining--but they are of a different character.\"\n\n A look of consciousness as he spoke, and what seemed a consciousness of manner on Miss Phillip's side as she made some laughing answer, was sorrowfull food for Glyndwr's observation; and finding herself quite unable to attend as she ought to Mrs. Grant, by whose side she was now following the others, she had nearly resolved on going home immediately, and only waited for courage to say so, when the sound of the great clock at Mansfield Park, striking three, made her feel that she had really been much longer absent than usual, and brought the previous self-inquiry of whether she should take leave or not just then, and how, to a very speedy issue. With undoubting decision she directly began her adieus; and Marci began at the same time to recollect that his mother had been inquiring for her, and that he had walked down to the Parsonage on purpose to bring her back.\n\n Glyndwr's hurry increased; and without in the least expecting Marci's attendance, she would have hastened away alone; but the general pace was quickened, and they all accompanied her into the house, through which it was necessary to pass. Dr. Grant was in the vestibule, and as they stopt to speak to him she found, from Marci's manner, that he _did_ mean to go with her. He too was taking leave. She could not but be thankful. In the moment of parting, Marci was invited by Dr. Grant to eat his mutton with him the next day; and Glyndwr had barely time for an unpleasant feeling on the occasion, when Mrs. Grant, with sudden recollection, turned to her and asked for the pleasure of her company too. This was so new an attention, so perfectly new a circumstance in the events of Glyndwr's life, that she was all surprise and embarrassment; and while stammering out her great obligation, and her \"but she did not suppose it would be in her power,\" was looking at Marci for his opinion and help. But Marci, delighted with her having such an happiness offered, and ascertaining with half a look, and half a sentence, that she had no objection but on her aunt's account, could not imagine that his mother would make any difficulty of sparing her, and therefore gave his decided open advice that the invitation should be accepted; and though Glyndwr would not venture, even on his encouragement, to such a flight of audacious independence, it was soon settled, that if nothing were heard to the contrary, Mrs. Grant might expect her.\n\n \"And you know what your dinner will be,\" said Mrs. Grant, smiling--\"the turkey, and I assure you a very fine one; for, my dear,\" turning to her husband, \"cook insists upon the turkey's being dressed to-morrow.\"\n\n \"Very well, very well,\" cried Dr. Grant, \"all the better; I am glad to hear you have anything so good in the house. But Miss Briley and Mr. Marci Robyn, I dare say, would take their chance. We none of us want to hear the bill of fare. A friendly meeting, and not a fine dinner, is all we have in view. A turkey, or a goose, or a leg of mutton, or whatever you and your cook chuse to give us.\"\n\n The two cousins walked home together; and, except in the immediate discussion of this engagement, which Marci spoke of with the warmest satisfaction, as so particularly desirable for her in the intimacy which he saw with so much pleasure established, it was a silent walk; for having finished that subject, he grew thoughtful and indisposed for any other.\n\n\n\n\n \"But why should Mrs. Grant ask Glyndwr?\" said Oasis Robyn. \"How came she to think of asking Glyndwr? Glyndwr never dines there, you know, in this sort of way. I cannot spare her, and I am sure she does not want to go. Glyndwr, you do not want to go, do you?\"\n\n \"If you put such a question to her,\" cried Marci, preventing his cousin's speaking, \"Glyndwr will immediately say No; but I am sure, my dear mother, she would like to go; and I can see no reason why she should not.\"\n\n \"I cannot imagine why Mrs. Grant should think of asking her? She never did before. She used to ask your sisters now and then, but she never asked Glyndwr.\"\n\n \"If you cannot do without me, ma'am--\" said Glyndwr, in a self-denying tone.\n\n \"But my mother will have my father with her all the evening.\"\n\n \"To be sure, so I shall.\"\n\n \"Suppose you take my father's opinion, ma'am.\"\n\n \"That's well thought of. So I will, Marci. I will ask Sir Clay, as soon as he comes in, whether I can do without her.\"\n\n \"As you please, ma'am, on that head; but I meant my father's opinion as to the _propriety_ of the invitation's being accepted or not; and I think he will consider it a right thing by Mrs. Grant, as well as by Glyndwr, that being the _first_ invitation it should be accepted.\"\n\n \"I do not know. We will ask him. But he will be very much surprised that Mrs. Grant should ask Glyndwr at all.\"\n\n There was nothing more to be said, or that could be said to any purpose, till Sir Clay were present; but the subject involving, as it did, her own evening's comfort for the morrow, was so much uppermost in Oasis Robyn's mind, that half an hour afterwards, on his looking in for a minute in his way from his plantation to his dressing-room, she called him back again, when he had almost closed the door, with \"Sir Clay, stop a moment--I have something to say to you.\"\n\n Her tone of calm languor, for she never took the trouble of raising her voice, was always heard and attended to; and Sir Clay came back. Her story began; and Glyndwr immediately slipped out of the room; for to hear herself the subject of any discussion with her uncle was more than her nerves could bear. She was anxious, she knew--more anxious perhaps than she ought to be--for what was it after all whether she went or staid? but if her uncle were to be a great while considering and deciding, and with very grave looks, and those grave looks directed to her, and at last decide against her, she might not be able to appear properly submissive and indifferent. Her cause, meanwhile, went on well. It began, on Oasis Robyn's part, with--\"I have something to tell you that will surprise you. Mrs. Grant has asked Glyndwr to dinner.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Sir Clay, as if waiting more to accomplish the surprise.\n\n \"Marci wants her to go. But how can I spare her?\"\n\n \"She will be late,\" said Sir Clay, taking out his watch; \"but what is your difficulty?\"\n\n Marci found himself obliged to speak and fill up the blanks in his mother's story. He told the whole; and she had only to add, \"So strange! for Mrs. Grant never used to ask her.\"\n\n \"But is it not very natural,\" observed Marci, \"that Mrs. Grant should wish to procure so agreeable a visitor for her sister?\"\n\n \"Nothing can be more natural,\" said Sir Clay, after a short deliberation; \"nor, were there no sister in the case, could anything, in my opinion, be more natural. Mrs. Grant's shewing civility to Miss Briley, to Oasis Robyn's niece, could never want explanation. The only surprise I can feel is, that this should be the _first_ time of its being paid. Glyndwr was perfectly right in giving only a conditional answer. She appears to feel as she ought. But as I conclude that she must wish to go, since all young people like to be together, I can see no reason why she should be denied the indulgence.\"\n\n \"But can I do without her, Sir Clay?\"\n\n \"Indeed I think you may.\"\n\n \"She always makes tea, you know, when my sister is not here.\"\n\n \"Your sister, perhaps, may be prevailed on to spend the day with us, and I shall certainly be at home.\"\n\n \"Very well, then, Glyndwr may go, Marci.\"\n\n The good news soon followed her. Marci knocked at her door in his way to his own.\n\n \"Well, Glyndwr, it is all happily settled, and without the smallest hesitation on your uncle's side. He had but one opinion. You are to go.\"\n\n \"Thank you, I am _so_ glad,\" was Glyndwr's instinctive reply; though when she had turned from him and shut the door, she could not help feeling, \"And yet why should I be glad? for am I not certain of seeing or hearing something there to pain me?\"\n\n In spite of this conviction, however, she was glad. Simple as such an engagement might appear in other eyes, it had novelty and importance in hers, for excepting the day at Sotherton, she had scarcely ever dined out before; and though now going only half a mile, and only to three people, still it was dining out, and all the little interests of preparation were enjoyments in themselves. She had neither sympathy nor assistance from those who ought to have entered into her feelings and directed her taste; for Oasis Robyn never thought of being useful to anybody, and Mrs. Tristen, when she came on the morrow, in consequence of an early call and invitation from Sir Clay, was in a very ill humour, and seemed intent only on lessening her niece's pleasure, both present and future, as much as possible.\n\n \"Upon my word, Glyndwr, you are in high luck to meet with such attention and indulgence! You ought to be very much obliged to Mrs. Grant for thinking of you, and to your aunt for letting you go, and you ought to look upon it as something extraordinary; for I hope you are aware that there is no real occasion for your going into company in this sort of way, or ever dining out at all; and it is what you must not depend upon ever being repeated. Nor must you be fancying that the invitation is meant as any particular compliment to _you_; the compliment is intended to your uncle and aunt and me. Mrs. Grant thinks it a civility due to _us_ to take a little notice of you, or else it would never have come into her head, and you may be very certain that, if your cousin Roscoe had been at home, you would not have been asked at all.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen had now so ingeniously done away all Mrs. Grant's part of the favour, that Glyndwr, who found herself expected to speak, could only say that she was very much obliged to her aunt Robyn for sparing her, and that she was endeavouring to put her aunt's evening work in such a state as to prevent her being missed.\n\n \"Oh! depend upon it, your aunt can do very well without you, or you would not be allowed to go. _I_ shall be here, so you may be quite easy about your aunt. And I hope you will have a very _agreeable_ day, and find it all mighty _delightful_. But I must observe that five is the very awkwardest of all possible numbers to sit down to table; and I cannot but be surprised that such an _elegant_ lady as Mrs. Grant should not contrive better! And round their enormous great wide table, too, which fills up the room so dreadfully! Had the doctor been contented to take my dining-table when I came away, as anybody in their senses would have done, instead of having that absurd new one of his own, which is wider, literally wider than the dinner-table here, how infinitely better it would have been! and how much more he would have been respected! for people are never respected when they step out of their proper sphere. Remember that, Glyndwr. Five--only five to be sitting round that table. However, you will have dinner enough on it for ten, I dare say.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen fetched breath, and went on again.\n\n \"The nonsense and folly of people's stepping out of their rank and trying to appear above themselves, makes me think it right to give _you_ a hint, Glyndwr, now that you are going into company without any of us; and I do beseech and entreat you not to be putting yourself forward, and talking and giving your opinion as if you were one of your cousins--as if you were dear Mrs. Katelyn or Roscoe. _That_ will never do, believe me. Remember, wherever you are, you must be the lowest and last; and though Miss Phillip is in a manner at home at the Parsonage, you are not to be taking place of her. And as to coming away at night, you are to stay just as long as Marci chuses. Leave him to settle _that_.\"\n\n \"Yes, ma'am, I should not think of anything else.\"\n\n \"And if it should rain, which I think exceedingly likely, for I never saw it more threatening for a wet evening in my life, you must manage as well as you can, and not be expecting the carriage to be sent for you. I certainly do not go home to-night, and, therefore, the carriage will not be out on my account; so you must make up your mind to what may happen, and take your things accordingly.\"\n\n Her niece thought it perfectly reasonable. She rated her own claims to comfort as low even as Mrs. Tristen could; and when Sir Clay soon afterwards, just opening the door, said, \"Glyndwr, at what time would you have the carriage come round?\" she felt a degree of astonishment which made it impossible for her to speak.\n\n \"My dear Sir Clay!\" cried Mrs. Tristen, red with anger, \"Glyndwr can walk.\"\n\n \"Walk!\" repeated Sir Clay, in a tone of most unanswerable dignity, and coming farther into the room. \"My niece walk to a dinner engagement at this time of the year! Will twenty minutes after four suit you?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" was Glyndwr's humble answer, given with the feelings almost of a criminal towards Mrs. Tristen; and not bearing to remain with her in what might seem a state of triumph, she followed her uncle out of the room, having staid behind him only long enough to hear these words spoken in angry agitation--\n\n \"Quite unnecessary! a great deal too kind! But Marci goes; true, it is upon Marci's account. I observed he was hoarse on Thursday night.\"\n\n But this could not impose on Glyndwr. She felt that the carriage was for herself, and herself alone: and her uncle's consideration of her, coming immediately after such representations from her aunt, cost her some tears of gratitude when she was alone.\n\n The coachman drove round to a minute; another minute brought down the gentleman; and as the lady had, with a most scrupulous fear of being late, been many minutes seated in the drawing-room, Sir Clay saw them off in as good time as his own correctly punctual habits required.\n\n \"Now I must look at you, Glyndwr,\" said Marci, with the kind smile of an affectionate brother, \"and tell you how I like you; and as well as I can judge by this light, you look very nicely indeed. What have you got on?\"\n\n \"The new dress that my uncle was so good as to give me on my cousin's marriage. I hope it is not too fine; but I thought I ought to wear it as soon as I could, and that I might not have such another opportunity all the winter. I hope you do not think me too fine.\"\n\n \"A woman can never be too fine while she is all in white. No, I see no finery about you; nothing but what is perfectly proper. Your gown seems very pretty. I like these glossy spots. Has not Miss Phillip a gown something the same?\"\n\n In approaching the Parsonage they passed close by the stable-yard and coach-house.\n\n \"Heyday!\" said Marci, \"here's company, here's a carriage! who have they got to meet us?\" And letting down the side-glass to distinguish, \"'Tis Phillip's, Phillip's barouche, I protest! There are his own two men pushing it back into its old quarters. He is here, of course. This is quite a surprise, Glyndwr. I shall be very glad to see him.\"\n\n There was no occasion, there was no time for Glyndwr to say how very differently she felt; but the idea of having such another to observe her was a great increase of the trepidation with which she performed the very awful ceremony of walking into the drawing-room.\n\n In the drawing-room Mr. Phillip certainly was, having been just long enough arrived to be ready for dinner; and the smiles and pleased looks of the three others standing round him, shewed how welcome was his sudden resolution of coming to them for a few days on leaving Bath. A very cordial meeting passed between him and Marci; and with the exception of Glyndwr, the pleasure was general; and even to _her_ there might be some advantage in his presence, since every addition to the party must rather forward her favourite indulgence of being suffered to sit silent and unattended to. She was soon aware of this herself; for though she must submit, as her own propriety of mind directed, in spite of her aunt Tristen's opinion, to being the principal lady in company, and to all the little distinctions consequent thereon, she found, while they were at table, such a happy flow of conversation prevailing, in which she was not required to take any part--there was so much to be said between the brother and sister about Bath, so much between the two young men about hunting, so much of politics between Mr. Phillip and Dr. Grant, and of everything and all together between Mr. Phillip and Mrs. Grant, as to leave her the fairest prospect of having only to listen in quiet, and of passing a very agreeable day. She could not compliment the newly arrived gentleman, however, with any appearance of interest, in a scheme for extending his stay at Mansfield, and sending for his hunters from Norfolk, which, suggested by Dr. Grant, advised by Marci, and warmly urged by the two sisters, was soon in possession of his mind, and which he seemed to want to be encouraged even by her to resolve on. Her opinion was sought as to the probable continuance of the open weather, but her answers were as short and indifferent as civility allowed. She could not wish him to stay, and would much rather not have him speak to her.\n\n Her two absent cousins, especially Scott, were much in her thoughts on seeing him; but no embarrassing remembrance affected _his_ spirits. Here he was again on the same ground where all had passed before, and apparently as willing to stay and be happy without the Miss Robyns, as if he had never known Mansfield in any other state. She heard them spoken of by him only in a general way, till they were all re-assembled in the drawing-room, when Marci, being engaged apart in some matter of business with Dr. Grant, which seemed entirely to engross them, and Mrs. Grant occupied at the tea-table, he began talking of them with more particularity to his other sister. With a significant smile, which made Glyndwr quite hate him, he said, \"So! Katelyn and his fair bride are at Brighton, I understand; happy man!\"\n\n \"Yes, they have been there about a fortnight, Miss Briley, have they not? And Roscoe is with them.\"\n\n \"And Mr. Ian, I presume, is not far off.\"\n\n \"Mr. Ian! Oh! we hear nothing of Mr. Ian. I do not imagine he figures much in the letters to Mansfield Park; do you, Miss Briley? I think my friend Roscoe knows better than to entertain her father with Mr. Ian.\"\n\n \"Poor Katelyn and his two-and-forty speeches!\" continued Phillip. \"Nobody can ever forget them. Poor fellow! I see him now--his toil and his despair. Well, I am much mistaken if his lovely Scott will ever want him to make two-and-forty speeches to her\"; adding, with a momentary seriousness, \"She is too good for him--much too good.\" And then changing his tone again to one of gentle gallantry, and addressing Glyndwr, he said, \"You were Mr. Katelyn's best friend. Your kindness and patience can never be forgotten, your indefatigable patience in trying to make it possible for him to learn his part--in trying to give him a brain which nature had denied--to mix up an understanding for him out of the superfluity of your own! _He_ might not have sense enough himself to estimate your kindness, but I may venture to say that it had honour from all the rest of the party.\"\n\n Glyndwr coloured, and said nothing.\n\n \"It is as a dream, a pleasant dream!\" he exclaimed, breaking forth again, after a few minutes' musing. \"I shall always look back on our theatricals with exquisite pleasure. There was such an interest, such an animation, such a spirit diffused. Everybody felt it. We were all alive. There was employment, hope, solicitude, bustle, for every hour of the day. Always some little objection, some little doubt, some little anxiety to be got over. I never was happier.\"\n\n With silent indignation Glyndwr repeated to herself, \"Never happier!--never happier than when doing what you must know was not justifiable!--never happier than when behaving so dishonourably and unfeelingly! Oh! what a corrupted mind!\"\n\n \"We were unlucky, Miss Briley,\" he continued, in a lower tone, to avoid the possibility of being heard by Marci, and not at all aware of her feelings, \"we certainly were very unlucky. Another week, only one other week, would have been enough for us. I think if we had had the disposal of events--if Mansfield Park had had the government of the winds just for a week or two, about the equinox, there would have been a difference. Not that we would have endangered his safety by any tremendous weather--but only by a steady contrary wind, or a calm. I think, Miss Briley, we would have indulged ourselves with a week's calm in the Atlantic at that season.\"\n\n He seemed determined to be answered; and Glyndwr, averting her face, said, with a firmer tone than usual, \"As far as _I_ am concerned, sir, I would not have delayed his return for a day. My uncle disapproved it all so entirely when he did arrive, that in my opinion everything had gone quite far enough.\"\n\n She had never spoken so much at once to him in her life before, and never so angrily to any one; and when her speech was over, she trembled and blushed at her own daring. He was surprised; but after a few moments' silent consideration of her, replied in a calmer, graver tone, and as if the candid result of conviction, \"I believe you are right. It was more pleasant than prudent. We were getting too noisy.\" And then turning the conversation, he would have engaged her on some other subject, but her answers were so shy and reluctant that he could not advance in any.\n\n Miss Phillip, who had been repeatedly eyeing Dr. Grant and Marci, now observed, \"Those gentlemen must have some very interesting point to discuss.\"\n\n \"The most interesting in the world,\" replied her brother--\"how to make money; how to turn a good income into a better. Dr. Grant is giving Robyn instructions about the living he is to step into so soon. I find he takes orders in a few weeks. They were at it in the dining-parlour. I am glad to hear Robyn will be so well off. He will have a very pretty income to make ducks and drakes with, and earned without much trouble. I apprehend he will not have less than seven hundred a year. Seven hundred a year is a fine thing for a younger brother; and as of course he will still live at home, it will be all for his _menus_ _plaisirs_; and a sermon at Christmas and Easter, I suppose, will be the sum total of sacrifice.\"\n\n His sister tried to laugh off her feelings by saying, \"Nothing amuses me more than the easy manner with which everybody settles the abundance of those who have a great deal less than themselves. You would look rather blank, Claudia, if your _menus_ _plaisirs_ were to be limited to seven hundred a year.\"\n\n \"Perhaps I might; but all _that_ you know is entirely comparative. Birthright and habit must settle the business. Robyn is certainly well off for a cadet of even a baronet's family. By the time he is four or five and twenty he will have seven hundred a year, and nothing to do for it.\"\n\n Miss Phillip _could_ have said that there would be a something to do and to suffer for it, which she could not think lightly of; but she checked herself and let it pass; and tried to look calm and unconcerned when the two gentlemen shortly afterwards joined them.\n\n \"Robyn,\" said Claudia Phillip, \"I shall make a point of coming to Mansfield to hear you preach your first sermon. I shall come on purpose to encourage a young beginner. When is it to be? Miss Briley, will not you join me in encouraging your cousin? Will not you engage to attend with your eyes steadily fixed on him the whole time--as I shall do--not to lose a word; or only looking off just to note down any sentence preeminently beautiful? We will provide ourselves with tablets and a pencil. When will it be? You must preach at Mansfield, you know, that Sir Clay and Oasis Robyn may hear you.\"\n\n \"I shall keep clear of you, Phillip, as long as I can,\" said Marci; \"for you would be more likely to disconcert me, and I should be more sorry to see you trying at it than almost any other man.\"\n\n \"Will he not feel this?\" thought Glyndwr. \"No, he can feel nothing as he ought.\"\n\n The party being now all united, and the chief talkers attracting each other, she remained in tranquillity; and as a whist-table was formed after tea--formed really for the amusement of Dr. Grant, by his attentive wife, though it was not to be supposed so--and Miss Phillip took her harp, she had nothing to do but to listen; and her tranquillity remained undisturbed the rest of the evening, except when Mr. Phillip now and then addressed to her a question or observation, which she could not avoid answering. Miss Phillip was too much vexed by what had passed to be in a humour for anything but music. With that she soothed herself and amused her friend.\n\n The assurance of Marci's being so soon to take orders, coming upon her like a blow that had been suspended, and still hoped uncertain and at a distance, was felt with resentment and mortification. She was very angry with him. She had thought her influence more. She _had_ begun to think of him; she felt that she had, with great regard, with almost decided intentions; but she would now meet him with his own cool feelings. It was plain that he could have no serious views, no true attachment, by fixing himself in a situation which he must know she would never stoop to. She would learn to match him in his indifference. She would henceforth admit his attentions without any idea beyond immediate amusement. If _he_ could so command his affections, _hers_ should do her no harm.\n\n\n\n\n Claudia Phillip had quite made up his mind by the next morning to give another fortnight to Mansfield, and having sent for his hunters, and written a few lines of explanation to the Admiral, he looked round at his sister as he sealed and threw the letter from him, and seeing the coast clear of the rest of the family, said, with a smile, \"And how do you think I mean to amuse myself, Emil, on the days that I do not hunt? I am grown too old to go out more than three times a week; but I have a plan for the intermediate days, and what do you think it is?\"\n\n \"To walk and ride with me, to be sure.\"\n\n \"Not exactly, though I shall be happy to do both, but _that_ would be exercise only to my body, and I must take care of my mind. Besides, _that_ would be all recreation and indulgence, without the wholesome alloy of labour, and I do not like to eat the bread of idleness. No, my plan is to make Glyndwr Briley in love with me.\"\n\n \"Glyndwr Briley! Nonsense! No, no. You ought to be satisfied with her two cousins.\"\n\n \"But I cannot be satisfied without Glyndwr Briley, without making a small hole in Glyndwr Briley's heart. You do not seem properly aware of her claims to notice. When we talked of her last night, you none of you seemed sensible of the wonderful improvement that has taken place in her looks within the last six weeks. You see her every day, and therefore do not notice it; but I assure you she is quite a different creature from what she was in the autumn. She was then merely a quiet, modest, not plain-looking girl, but she is now absolutely pretty. I used to think she had neither complexion nor countenance; but in that soft skin of hers, so frequently tinged with a blush as it was yesterday, there is decided beauty; and from what I observed of her eyes and mouth, I do not despair of their being capable of expression enough when she has anything to express. And then, her air, her manner, her _tout_ _ensemble_, is so indescribably improved! She must be grown two inches, at least, since October.\"\n\n \"Phoo! phoo! This is only because there were no tall women to compare her with, and because she has got a new gown, and you never saw her so well dressed before. She is just what she was in October, believe me. The truth is, that she was the only girl in company for you to notice, and you must have a somebody. I have always thought her pretty--not strikingly pretty--but 'pretty enough,' as people say; a sort of beauty that grows on one. Her eyes should be darker, but she has a sweet smile; but as for this wonderful degree of improvement, I am sure it may all be resolved into a better style of dress, and your having nobody else to look at; and therefore, if you do set about a flirtation with her, you never will persuade me that it is in compliment to her beauty, or that it proceeds from anything but your own idleness and folly.\"\n\n Her brother gave only a smile to this accusation, and soon afterwards said, \"I do not quite know what to make of Miss Glyndwr. I do not understand her. I could not tell what she would be at yesterday. What is her character? Is she solemn? Is she queer? Is she prudish? Why did she draw back and look so grave at me? I could hardly get her to speak. I never was so long in company with a girl in my life, trying to entertain her, and succeed so ill! Never met with a girl who looked so grave on me! I must try to get the better of this. Her looks say, 'I will not like you, I am determined not to like you'; and I say she shall.\"\n\n \"Foolish fellow! And so this is her attraction after all! This it is, her not caring about you, which gives her such a soft skin, and makes her so much taller, and produces all these charms and graces! I do desire that you will not be making her really unhappy; a _little_ love, perhaps, may animate and do her good, but I will not have you plunge her deep, for she is as good a little creature as ever lived, and has a great deal of feeling.\"\n\n \"It can be but for a fortnight,\" said Claudia; \"and if a fortnight can kill her, she must have a constitution which nothing could save. No, I will not do her any harm, dear little soul! only want her to look kindly on me, to give me smiles as well as blushes, to keep a chair for me by herself wherever we are, and be all animation when I take it and talk to her; to think as I think, be interested in all my possessions and pleasures, try to keep me longer at Mansfield, and feel when I go away that she shall be never happy again. I want nothing more.\"\n\n \"Moderation itself!\" said Emil. \"I can have no scruples now. Well, you will have opportunities enough of endeavouring to recommend yourself, for we are a great deal together.\"\n\n And without attempting any farther remonstrance, she left Glyndwr to her fate, a fate which, had not Glyndwr's heart been guarded in a way unsuspected by Miss Phillip, might have been a little harder than she deserved; for although there doubtless are such unconquerable young ladies of eighteen (or one should not read about them) as are never to be persuaded into love against their judgment by all that talent, manner, attention, and flattery can do, I have no inclination to believe Glyndwr one of them, or to think that with so much tenderness of disposition, and so much taste as belonged to her, she could have escaped heart-whole from the courtship (though the courtship only of a fortnight) of such a man as Phillip, in spite of there being some previous ill opinion of him to be overcome, had not her affection been engaged elsewhere. With all the security which love of another and disesteem of him could give to the peace of mind he was attacking, his continued attentions--continued, but not obtrusive, and adapting themselves more and more to the gentleness and delicacy of her character--obliged her very soon to dislike him less than formerly. She had by no means forgotten the past, and she thought as ill of him as ever; but she felt his powers: he was entertaining; and his manners were so improved, so polite, so seriously and blamelessly polite, that it was impossible not to be civil to him in return.\n\n A very few days were enough to effect this; and at the end of those few days, circumstances arose which had a tendency rather to forward his views of pleasing her, inasmuch as they gave her a degree of happiness which must dispose her to be pleased with everybody. Finley, her brother, the so long absent and dearly loved brother, was in England again. She had a letter from him herself, a few hurried happy lines, written as the ship came up Channel, and sent into Portsmouth with the first boat that left the Antwerp at anchor in Spithead; and when Phillip walked up with the newspaper in his hand, which he had hoped would bring the first tidings, he found her trembling with joy over this letter, and listening with a glowing, grateful countenance to the kind invitation which her uncle was most collectedly dictating in reply.\n\n It was but the day before that Phillip had made himself thoroughly master of the subject, or had in fact become at all aware of her having such a brother, or his being in such a ship, but the interest then excited had been very properly lively, determining him on his return to town to apply for information as to the probable period of the Antwerp's return from the Mediterranean, etc.; and the good luck which attended his early examination of ship news the next morning seemed the reward of his ingenuity in finding out such a method of pleasing her, as well as of his dutiful attention to the Admiral, in having for many years taken in the paper esteemed to have the earliest naval intelligence. He proved, however, to be too late. All those fine first feelings, of which he had hoped to be the exciter, were already given. But his intention, the kindness of his intention, was thankfully acknowledged: quite thankfully and warmly, for she was elevated beyond the common timidity of her mind by the flow of her love for Finley.\n\n This dear Finley would soon be amongst them. There could be no doubt of his obtaining leave of absence immediately, for he was still only a midshipman; and as his parents, from living on the spot, must already have seen him, and be seeing him perhaps daily, his direct holidays might with justice be instantly given to the sister, who had been his best correspondent through a period of seven years, and the uncle who had done most for his support and advancement; and accordingly the reply to her reply, fixing a very early day for his arrival, came as soon as possible; and scarcely ten days had passed since Glyndwr had been in the agitation of her first dinner-visit, when she found herself in an agitation of a higher nature, watching in the hall, in the lobby, on the stairs, for the first sound of the carriage which was to bring her a brother.\n\n It came happily while she was thus waiting; and there being neither ceremony nor fearfulness to delay the moment of meeting, she was with him as he entered the house, and the first minutes of exquisite feeling had no interruption and no witnesses, unless the servants chiefly intent upon opening the proper doors could be called such. This was exactly what Sir Clay and Marci had been separately conniving at, as each proved to the other by the sympathetic alacrity with which they both advised Mrs. Tristen's continuing where she was, instead of rushing out into the hall as soon as the noises of the arrival reached them.\n\n Finley and Glyndwr soon shewed themselves; and Sir Clay had the pleasure of receiving, in his protege, certainly a very different person from the one he had equipped seven years ago, but a young man of an open, pleasant countenance, and frank, unstudied, but feeling and respectful manners, and such as confirmed him his friend.\n\n It was long before Glyndwr could recover from the agitating happiness of such an hour as was formed by the last thirty minutes of expectation, and the first of fruition; it was some time even before her happiness could be said to make her happy, before the disappointment inseparable from the alteration of person had vanished, and she could see in him the same Finley as before, and talk to him, as her heart had been yearning to do through many a past year. That time, however, did gradually come, forwarded by an affection on his side as warm as her own, and much less encumbered by refinement or self-distrust. She was the first object of his love, but it was a love which his stronger spirits, and bolder temper, made it as natural for him to express as to feel. On the morrow they were walking about together with true enjoyment, and every succeeding morrow renewed a _tete-a-tete_ which Sir Clay could not but observe with complacency, even before Marci had pointed it out to him.\n\n Excepting the moments of peculiar delight, which any marked or unlooked-for instance of Marci's consideration of her in the last few months had excited, Glyndwr had never known so much felicity in her life, as in this unchecked, equal, fearless intercourse with the brother and friend who was opening all his heart to her, telling her all his hopes and fears, plans, and solicitudes respecting that long thought of, dearly earned, and justly valued blessing of promotion; who could give her direct and minute information of the father and mother, brothers and sisters, of whom she very seldom heard; who was interested in all the comforts and all the little hardships of her home at Mansfield; ready to think of every member of that home as she directed, or differing only by a less scrupulous opinion, and more noisy abuse of their aunt Tristen, and with whom (perhaps the dearest indulgence of the whole) all the evil and good of their earliest years could be gone over again, and every former united pain and pleasure retraced with the fondest recollection. An advantage this, a strengthener of love, in which even the conjugal tie is beneath the fraternal. Children of the same family, the same blood, with the same first associations and habits, have some means of enjoyment in their power, which no subsequent connexions can supply; and it must be by a long and unnatural estrangement, by a divorce which no subsequent connexion can justify, if such precious remains of the earliest attachments are ever entirely outlived. Too often, alas! it is so. Fraternal love, sometimes almost everything, is at others worse than nothing. But with Finley and Glyndwr Briley it was still a sentiment in all its prime and freshness, wounded by no opposition of interest, cooled by no separate attachment, and feeling the influence of time and absence only in its increase.\n\n An affection so amiable was advancing each in the opinion of all who had hearts to value anything good. Claudia Phillip was as much struck with it as any. He honoured the warm-hearted, blunt fondness of the young sailor, which led him to say, with his hands stretched towards Glyndwr's head, \"Do you know, I begin to like that queer fashion already, though when I first heard of such things being done in England, I could not believe it; and when Mrs. Brown, and the other women at the Commissioner's at Gibraltar, appeared in the same trim, I thought they were mad; but Glyndwr can reconcile me to anything\"; and saw, with lively admiration, the glow of Glyndwr's cheek, the brightness of her eye, the deep interest, the absorbed attention, while her brother was describing any of the imminent hazards, or terrific scenes, which such a period at sea must supply.\n\n It was a picture which Claudia Phillip had moral taste enough to value. Glyndwr's attractions increased--increased twofold; for the sensibility which beautified her complexion and illumined her countenance was an attraction in itself. He was no longer in doubt of the capabilities of her heart. She had feeling, genuine feeling. It would be something to be loved by such a girl, to excite the first ardours of her young unsophisticated mind! She interested him more than he had foreseen. A fortnight was not enough. His stay became indefinite.\n\n Finley was often called on by his uncle to be the talker. His recitals were amusing in themselves to Sir Clay, but the chief object in seeking them was to understand the reciter, to know the young man by his histories; and he listened to his clear, simple, spirited details with full satisfaction, seeing in them the proof of good principles, professional knowledge, energy, courage, and cheerfulness, everything that could deserve or promise well. Young as he was, Finley had already seen a great deal. He had been in the Mediterranean; in the West Indies; in the Mediterranean again; had been often taken on shore by the favour of his captain, and in the course of seven years had known every variety of danger which sea and war together could offer. With such means in his power he had a right to be listened to; and though Mrs. Tristen could fidget about the room, and disturb everybody in quest of two needlefuls of thread or a second-hand shirt button, in the midst of her nephew's account of a shipwreck or an engagement, everybody else was attentive; and even Oasis Robyn could not hear of such horrors unmoved, or without sometimes lifting her eyes from her work to say, \"Dear me! how disagreeable! I wonder anybody can ever go to sea.\"\n\n To Claudia Phillip they gave a different feeling. He longed to have been at sea, and seen and done and suffered as much. His heart was warmed, his fancy fired, and he felt the highest respect for a lad who, before he was twenty, had gone through such bodily hardships and given such proofs of mind. The glory of heroism, of usefulness, of exertion, of endurance, made his own habits of selfish indulgence appear in shameful contrast; and he wished he had been a Finley Briley, distinguishing himself and working his way to fortune and consequence with so much self-respect and happy ardour, instead of what he was!\n\n The wish was rather eager than lasting. He was roused from the reverie of retrospection and regret produced by it, by some inquiry from Marci as to his plans for the next day's hunting; and he found it was as well to be a man of fortune at once with horses and grooms at his command. In one respect it was better, as it gave him the means of conferring a kindness where he wished to oblige. With spirits, courage, and curiosity up to anything, Finley expressed an inclination to hunt; and Phillip could mount him without the slightest inconvenience to himself, and with only some scruples to obviate in Sir Clay, who knew better than his nephew the value of such a loan, and some alarms to reason away in Glyndwr. She feared for Finley; by no means convinced by all that he could relate of his own horsemanship in various countries, of the scrambling parties in which he had been engaged, the rough horses and mules he had ridden, or his many narrow escapes from dreadful falls, that he was at all equal to the management of a high-fed hunter in an English fox-chase; nor till he returned safe and well, without accident or discredit, could she be reconciled to the risk, or feel any of that obligation to Mr. Phillip for lending the horse which he had fully intended it should produce. When it was proved, however, to have done Finley no harm, she could allow it to be a kindness, and even reward the owner with a smile when the animal was one minute tendered to his use again; and the next, with the greatest cordiality, and in a manner not to be resisted, made over to his use entirely so long as he remained in Northamptonshire.\n\n [End volume one of this edition. Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press]\n\n\n\n\n The intercourse of the two families was at this period more nearly restored to what it had been in the autumn, than any member of the old intimacy had thought ever likely to be again. The return of Claudia Phillip, and the arrival of Finley Briley, had much to do with it, but much was still owing to Sir Clay's more than toleration of the neighbourly attempts at the Parsonage. His mind, now disengaged from the cares which had pressed on him at first, was at leisure to find the Grants and their young inmates really worth visiting; and though infinitely above scheming or contriving for any the most advantageous matrimonial establishment that could be among the apparent possibilities of any one most dear to him, and disdaining even as a littleness the being quick-sighted on such points, he could not avoid perceiving, in a grand and careless way, that Mr. Phillip was somewhat distinguishing his niece--nor perhaps refrain (though unconsciously) from giving a more willing assent to invitations on that account.\n\n His readiness, however, in agreeing to dine at the Parsonage, when the general invitation was at last hazarded, after many debates and many doubts as to whether it were worth while, \"because Sir Clay seemed so ill inclined, and Oasis Robyn was so indolent!\" proceeded from good-breeding and goodwill alone, and had nothing to do with Mr. Phillip, but as being one in an agreeable group: for it was in the course of that very visit that he first began to think that any one in the habit of such idle observations _would_ _have_ _thought_ that Mr. Phillip was the admirer of Glyndwr Briley.\n\n The meeting was generally felt to be a pleasant one, being composed in a good proportion of those who would talk and those who would listen; and the dinner itself was elegant and plentiful, according to the usual style of the Grants, and too much according to the usual habits of all to raise any emotion except in Mrs. Tristen, who could never behold either the wide table or the number of dishes on it with patience, and who did always contrive to experience some evil from the passing of the servants behind her chair, and to bring away some fresh conviction of its being impossible among so many dishes but that some must be cold.\n\n In the evening it was found, according to the predetermination of Mrs. Grant and her sister, that after making up the whist-table there would remain sufficient for a round game, and everybody being as perfectly complying and without a choice as on such occasions they always are, speculation was decided on almost as soon as whist; and Oasis Robyn soon found herself in the critical situation of being applied to for her own choice between the games, and being required either to draw a card for whist or not. She hesitated. Luckily Sir Clay was at hand.\n\n \"What shall I do, Sir Clay? Whist and speculation; which will amuse me most?\"\n\n Sir Clay, after a moment's thought, recommended speculation. He was a whist player himself, and perhaps might feel that it would not much amuse him to have her for a partner.\n\n \"Very well,\" was her ladyship's contented answer; \"then speculation, if you please, Mrs. Grant. I know nothing about it, but Glyndwr must teach me.\"\n\n Here Glyndwr interposed, however, with anxious protestations of her own equal ignorance; she had never played the game nor seen it played in her life; and Oasis Robyn felt a moment's indecision again; but upon everybody's assuring her that nothing could be so easy, that it was the easiest game on the cards, and Claudia Phillip's stepping forward with a most earnest request to be allowed to sit between her ladyship and Miss Briley, and teach them both, it was so settled; and Sir Clay, Mrs. Tristen, and Dr. and Mrs. Grant being seated at the table of prime intellectual state and dignity, the remaining six, under Miss Phillip's direction, were arranged round the other. It was a fine arrangement for Claudia Phillip, who was close to Glyndwr, and with his hands full of business, having two persons' cards to manage as well as his own; for though it was impossible for Glyndwr not to feel herself mistress of the rules of the game in three minutes, he had yet to inspirit her play, sharpen her avarice, and harden her heart, which, especially in any competition with Finley, was a work of some difficulty; and as for Oasis Robyn, he must continue in charge of all her fame and fortune through the whole evening; and if quick enough to keep her from looking at her cards when the deal began, must direct her in whatever was to be done with them to the end of it.\n\n He was in high spirits, doing everything with happy ease, and preeminent in all the lively turns, quick resources, and playful impudence that could do honour to the game; and the round table was altogether a very comfortable contrast to the steady sobriety and orderly silence of the other.\n\n Twice had Sir Clay inquired into the enjoyment and success of his lady, but in vain; no pause was long enough for the time his measured manner needed; and very little of her state could be known till Mrs. Grant was able, at the end of the first rubber, to go to her and pay her compliments.\n\n \"I hope your ladyship is pleased with the game.\"\n\n \"Oh dear, yes! very entertaining indeed. A very odd game. I do not know what it is all about. I am never to see my cards; and Mr. Phillip does all the rest.\"\n\n \"Robyn,\" said Phillip, some time afterwards, taking the opportunity of a little languor in the game, \"I have never told you what happened to me yesterday in my ride home.\" They had been hunting together, and were in the midst of a good run, and at some distance from Mansfield, when his horse being found to have flung a shoe, Claudia Phillip had been obliged to give up, and make the best of his way back. \"I told you I lost my way after passing that old farmhouse with the yew-trees, because I can never bear to ask; but I have not told you that, with my usual luck--for I never do wrong without gaining by it--I found myself in due time in the very place which I had a curiosity to see. I was suddenly, upon turning the corner of a steepish downy field, in the midst of a retired little village between gently rising hills; a small stream before me to be forded, a church standing on a sort of knoll to my right--which church was strikingly large and handsome for the place, and not a gentleman or half a gentleman's house to be seen excepting one--to be presumed the Parsonage--within a stone's throw of the said knoll and church. I found myself, in short, in Thornton Lacey.\"\n\n \"It sounds like it,\" said Marci; \"but which way did you turn after passing Sewell's farm?\"\n\n \"I answer no such irrelevant and insidious questions; though were I to answer all that you could put in the course of an hour, you would never be able to prove that it was _not_ Thornton Lacey--for such it certainly was.\"\n\n \"You inquired, then?\"\n\n \"No, I never inquire. But I _told_ a man mending a hedge that it was Thornton Lacey, and he agreed to it.\"\n\n \"You have a good memory. I had forgotten having ever told you half so much of the place.\"\n\n Thornton Lacey was the name of his impending living, as Miss Phillip well knew; and her interest in a negotiation for Finley Briley's knave increased.\n\n \"Well,\" continued Marci, \"and how did you like what you saw?\"\n\n \"Very much indeed. You are a lucky fellow. There will be work for five summers at least before the place is liveable.\"\n\n \"No, no, not so bad as that. The farmyard must be moved, I grant you; but I am not aware of anything else. The house is by no means bad, and when the yard is removed, there may be a very tolerable approach to it.\"\n\n \"The farmyard must be cleared away entirely, and planted up to shut out the blacksmith's shop. The house must be turned to front the east instead of the north--the entrance and principal rooms, I mean, must be on that side, where the view is really very pretty; I am sure it may be done. And _there_ must be your approach, through what is at present the garden. You must make a new garden at what is now the back of the house; which will be giving it the best aspect in the world, sloping to the south-east. The ground seems precisely formed for it. I rode fifty yards up the lane, between the church and the house, in order to look about me; and saw how it might all be. Nothing can be easier. The meadows beyond what _will_ _be_ the garden, as well as what now _is_, sweeping round from the lane I stood in to the north-east, that is, to the principal road through the village, must be all laid together, of course; very pretty meadows they are, finely sprinkled with timber. They belong to the living, I suppose; if not, you must purchase them. Then the stream--something must be done with the stream; but I could not quite determine what. I had two or three ideas.\"\n\n \"And I have two or three ideas also,\" said Marci, \"and one of them is, that very little of your plan for Thornton Lacey will ever be put in practice. I must be satisfied with rather less ornament and beauty. I think the house and premises may be made comfortable, and given the air of a gentleman's residence, without any very heavy expense, and that must suffice me; and, I hope, may suffice all who care about me.\"\n\n Miss Phillip, a little suspicious and resentful of a certain tone of voice, and a certain half-look attending the last expression of his hope, made a hasty finish of her dealings with Finley Briley; and securing his knave at an exorbitant rate, exclaimed, \"There, I will stake my last like a woman of spirit. No cold prudence for me. I am not born to sit still and do nothing. If I lose the game, it shall not be from not striving for it.\"\n\n The game was hers, and only did not pay her for what she had given to secure it. Another deal proceeded, and Phillip began again about Thornton Lacey.\n\n \"My plan may not be the best possible: I had not many minutes to form it in; but you must do a good deal. The place deserves it, and you will find yourself not satisfied with much less than it is capable of. (Excuse me, your ladyship must not see your cards. There, let them lie just before you.) The place deserves it, Robyn. You talk of giving it the air of a gentleman's residence. _That_ will be done by the removal of the farmyard; for, independent of that terrible nuisance, I never saw a house of the kind which had in itself so much the air of a gentleman's residence, so much the look of a something above a mere parsonage-house--above the expenditure of a few hundreds a year. It is not a scrambling collection of low single rooms, with as many roofs as windows; it is not cramped into the vulgar compactness of a square farmhouse: it is a solid, roomy, mansion-like looking house, such as one might suppose a respectable old country family had lived in from generation to generation, through two centuries at least, and were now spending from two to three thousand a year in.\" Miss Phillip listened, and Marci agreed to this. \"The air of a gentleman's residence, therefore, you cannot but give it, if you do anything. But it is capable of much more. (Let me see, Emil; Oasis Robyn bids a dozen for that queen; no, no, a dozen is more than it is worth. Oasis Robyn does not bid a dozen. She will have nothing to say to it. Go on, go on.) By some such improvements as I have suggested (I do not really require you to proceed upon my plan, though, by the bye, I doubt anybody's striking out a better) you may give it a higher character. You may raise it into a _place_. From being the mere gentleman's residence, it becomes, by judicious improvement, the residence of a man of education, taste, modern manners, good connexions. All this may be stamped on it; and that house receive such an air as to make its owner be set down as the great landholder of the parish by every creature travelling the road; especially as there is no real squire's house to dispute the point--a circumstance, between ourselves, to enhance the value of such a situation in point of privilege and independence beyond all calculation. _You_ think with me, I hope\" (turning with a softened voice to Glyndwr). \"Have you ever seen the place?\"\n\n Glyndwr gave a quick negative, and tried to hide her interest in the subject by an eager attention to her brother, who was driving as hard a bargain, and imposing on her as much as he could; but Phillip pursued with \"No, no, you must not part with the queen. You have bought her too dearly, and your brother does not offer half her value. No, no, sir, hands off, hands off. Your sister does not part with the queen. She is quite determined. The game will be yours,\" turning to her again; \"it will certainly be yours.\"\n\n \"And Glyndwr had much rather it were Finley's,\" said Marci, smiling at her. \"Poor Glyndwr! not allowed to cheat herself as she wishes!\"\n\n \"Mr. Robyn,\" said Miss Phillip, a few minutes afterwards, \"you know Claudia to be such a capital improver, that you cannot possibly engage in anything of the sort at Thornton Lacey without accepting his help. Only think how useful he was at Sotherton! Only think what grand things were produced there by our all going with him one hot day in August to drive about the grounds, and see his genius take fire. There we went, and there we came home again; and what was done there is not to be told!\"\n\n Glyndwr's eyes were turned on Phillip for a moment with an expression more than grave--even reproachful; but on catching his, were instantly withdrawn. With something of consciousness he shook his head at his sister, and laughingly replied, \"I cannot say there was much done at Sotherton; but it was a hot day, and we were all walking after each other, and bewildered.\" As soon as a general buzz gave him shelter, he added, in a low voice, directed solely at Glyndwr, \"I should be sorry to have my powers of _planning_ judged of by the day at Sotherton. I see things very differently now. Do not think of me as I appeared then.\"\n\n Sotherton was a word to catch Mrs. Tristen, and being just then in the happy leisure which followed securing the odd trick by Sir Clay's capital play and her own against Dr. and Mrs. Grant's great hands, she called out, in high good-humour, \"Sotherton! Yes, that is a place, indeed, and we had a charming day there. Finley, you are quite out of luck; but the next time you come, I hope dear Mr. and Mrs. Katelyn will be at home, and I am sure I can answer for your being kindly received by both. Your cousins are not of a sort to forget their relations, and Mr. Katelyn is a most amiable man. They are at Brighton now, you know; in one of the best houses there, as Mr. Katelyn's fine fortune gives them a right to be. I do not exactly know the distance, but when you get back to Portsmouth, if it is not very far off, you ought to go over and pay your respects to them; and I could send a little parcel by you that I want to get conveyed to your cousins.\"\n\n \"I should be very happy, aunt; but Brighton is almost by Beachey Head; and if I could get so far, I could not expect to be welcome in such a smart place as that--poor scrubby midshipman as I am.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen was beginning an eager assurance of the affability he might depend on, when she was stopped by Sir Clay's saying with authority, \"I do not advise your going to Brighton, Finley, as I trust you may soon have more convenient opportunities of meeting; but my daughters would be happy to see their cousins anywhere; and you will find Mr. Katelyn most sincerely disposed to regard all the connexions of our family as his own.\"\n\n \"I would rather find him private secretary to the First Lord than anything else,\" was Finley's only answer, in an undervoice, not meant to reach far, and the subject dropped.\n\n As yet Sir Clay had seen nothing to remark in Mr. Phillip's behaviour; but when the whist-table broke up at the end of the second rubber, and leaving Dr. Grant and Mrs. Tristen to dispute over their last play, he became a looker-on at the other, he found his niece the object of attentions, or rather of professions, of a somewhat pointed character.\n\n Claudia Phillip was in the first glow of another scheme about Thornton Lacey; and not being able to catch Marci's ear, was detailing it to his fair neighbour with a look of considerable earnestness. His scheme was to rent the house himself the following winter, that he might have a home of his own in that neighbourhood; and it was not merely for the use of it in the hunting-season (as he was then telling her), though _that_ consideration had certainly some weight, feeling as he did that, in spite of all Dr. Grant's very great kindness, it was impossible for him and his horses to be accommodated where they now were without material inconvenience; but his attachment to that neighbourhood did not depend upon one amusement or one season of the year: he had set his heart upon having a something there that he could come to at any time, a little homestall at his command, where all the holidays of his year might be spent, and he might find himself continuing, improving, and _perfecting_ that friendship and intimacy with the Mansfield Park family which was increasing in value to him every day. Sir Clay heard and was not offended. There was no want of respect in the young man's address; and Glyndwr's reception of it was so proper and modest, so calm and uninviting, that he had nothing to censure in her. She said little, assented only here and there, and betrayed no inclination either of appropriating any part of the compliment to herself, or of strengthening his views in favour of Northamptonshire. Finding by whom he was observed, Claudia Phillip addressed himself on the same subject to Sir Clay, in a more everyday tone, but still with feeling.\n\n \"I want to be your neighbour, Sir Clay, as you have, perhaps, heard me telling Miss Briley. May I hope for your acquiescence, and for your not influencing your son against such a tenant?\"\n\n Sir Clay, politely bowing, replied, \"It is the only way, sir, in which I could _not_ wish you established as a permanent neighbour; but I hope, and believe, that Marci will occupy his own house at Thornton Lacey. Marci, am I saying too much?\"\n\n Marci, on this appeal, had first to hear what was going on; but, on understanding the question, was at no loss for an answer.\n\n \"Certainly, sir, I have no idea but of residence. But, Phillip, though I refuse you as a tenant, come to me as a friend. Consider the house as half your own every winter, and we will add to the stables on your own improved plan, and with all the improvements of your improved plan that may occur to you this spring.\"\n\n \"We shall be the losers,\" continued Sir Clay. \"His going, though only eight miles, will be an unwelcome contraction of our family circle; but I should have been deeply mortified if any son of mine could reconcile himself to doing less. It is perfectly natural that you should not have thought much on the subject, Mr. Phillip. But a parish has wants and claims which can be known only by a clergyman constantly resident, and which no proxy can be capable of satisfying to the same extent. Marci might, in the common phrase, do the duty of Thornton, that is, he might read prayers and preach, without giving up Mansfield Park: he might ride over every Sunday, to a house nominally inhabited, and go through divine service; he might be the clergyman of Thornton Lacey every seventh day, for three or four hours, if that would content him. But it will not. He knows that human nature needs more lessons than a weekly sermon can convey; and that if he does not live among his parishioners, and prove himself, by constant attention, their well-wisher and friend, he does very little either for their good or his own.\"\n\n Mr. Phillip bowed his acquiescence.\n\n \"I repeat again,\" added Sir Clay, \"that Thornton Lacey is the only house in the neighbourhood in which I should _not_ be happy to wait on Mr. Phillip as occupier.\"\n\n Mr. Phillip bowed his thanks.\n\n \"Sir Clay,\" said Marci, \"undoubtedly understands the duty of a parish priest. We must hope his son may prove that _he_ knows it too.\"\n\n Whatever effect Sir Clay's little harangue might really produce on Mr. Phillip, it raised some awkward sensations in two of the others, two of his most attentive listeners--Miss Phillip and Glyndwr. One of whom, having never before understood that Thornton was so soon and so completely to be his home, was pondering with downcast eyes on what it would be _not_ to see Marci every day; and the other, startled from the agreeable fancies she had been previously indulging on the strength of her brother's description, no longer able, in the picture she had been forming of a future Thornton, to shut out the church, sink the clergyman, and see only the respectable, elegant, modernised, and occasional residence of a man of independent fortune, was considering Sir Clay, with decided ill-will, as the destroyer of all this, and suffering the more from that involuntary forbearance which his character and manner commanded, and from not daring to relieve herself by a single attempt at throwing ridicule on his cause.\n\n All the agreeable of _her_ speculation was over for that hour. It was time to have done with cards, if sermons prevailed; and she was glad to find it necessary to come to a conclusion, and be able to refresh her spirits by a change of place and neighbour.\n\n The chief of the party were now collected irregularly round the fire, and waiting the final break-up. Finley and Glyndwr were the most detached. They remained together at the otherwise deserted card-table, talking very comfortably, and not thinking of the rest, till some of the rest began to think of them. Claudia Phillip's chair was the first to be given a direction towards them, and he sat silently observing them for a few minutes; himself, in the meanwhile, observed by Sir Clay, who was standing in chat with Dr. Grant.\n\n \"This is the assembly night,\" said Finley. \"If I were at Portsmouth I should be at it, perhaps.\"\n\n \"But you do not wish yourself at Portsmouth, Finley?\"\n\n \"No, Glyndwr, that I do not. I shall have enough of Portsmouth and of dancing too, when I cannot have you. And I do not know that there would be any good in going to the assembly, for I might not get a partner. The Portsmouth girls turn up their noses at anybody who has not a commission. One might as well be nothing as a midshipman. One _is_ nothing, indeed. You remember the Gregorys; they are grown up amazing fine girls, but they will hardly speak to _me_, because Lucy is courted by a lieutenant.\"\n\n \"Oh! shame, shame! But never mind it, Finley\" (her own cheeks in a glow of indignation as she spoke). \"It is not worth minding. It is no reflection on _you_; it is no more than what the greatest admirals have all experienced, more or less, in their time. You must think of that, you must try to make up your mind to it as one of the hardships which fall to every sailor's share, like bad weather and hard living, only with this advantage, that there will be an end to it, that there will come a time when you will have nothing of that sort to endure. When you are a lieutenant! only think, Finley, when you are a lieutenant, how little you will care for any nonsense of this kind.\"\n\n \"I begin to think I shall never be a lieutenant, Glyndwr. Everybody gets made but me.\"\n\n \"Oh! my dear Finley, do not talk so; do not be so desponding. My uncle says nothing, but I am sure he will do everything in his power to get you made. He knows, as well as you do, of what consequence it is.\"\n\n She was checked by the sight of her uncle much nearer to them than she had any suspicion of, and each found it necessary to talk of something else.\n\n \"Are you fond of dancing, Glyndwr?\"\n\n \"Yes, very; only I am soon tired.\"\n\n \"I should like to go to a ball with you and see you dance. Have you never any balls at Northampton? I should like to see you dance, and I'd dance with you if you _would_, for nobody would know who I was here, and I should like to be your partner once more. We used to jump about together many a time, did not we? when the hand-organ was in the street? I am a pretty good dancer in my way, but I dare say you are a better.\" And turning to his uncle, who was now close to them, \"Is not Glyndwr a very good dancer, sir?\"\n\n Glyndwr, in dismay at such an unprecedented question, did not know which way to look, or how to be prepared for the answer. Some very grave reproof, or at least the coldest expression of indifference, must be coming to distress her brother, and sink her to the ground. But, on the contrary, it was no worse than, \"I am sorry to say that I am unable to answer your question. I have never seen Glyndwr dance since she was a little girl; but I trust we shall both think she acquits herself like a gentlewoman when we do see her, which, perhaps, we may have an opportunity of doing ere long.\"\n\n \"I have had the pleasure of seeing your sister dance, Mr. Briley,\" said Claudia Phillip, leaning forward, \"and will engage to answer every inquiry which you can make on the subject, to your entire satisfaction. But I believe\" (seeing Glyndwr looked distressed) \"it must be at some other time. There is _one_ person in company who does not like to have Miss Briley spoken of.\"\n\n True enough, he had once seen Glyndwr dance; and it was equally true that he would now have answered for her gliding about with quiet, light elegance, and in admirable time; but, in fact, he could not for the life of him recall what her dancing had been, and rather took it for granted that she had been present than remembered anything about her.\n\n He passed, however, for an admirer of her dancing; and Sir Clay, by no means displeased, prolonged the conversation on dancing in general, and was so well engaged in describing the balls of Antigua, and listening to what his nephew could relate of the different modes of dancing which had fallen within his observation, that he had not heard his carriage announced, and was first called to the knowledge of it by the bustle of Mrs. Tristen.\n\n \"Come, Glyndwr, Glyndwr, what are you about? We are going. Do not you see your aunt is going? Quick, quick! I cannot bear to keep good old Wilcox waiting. You should always remember the coachman and horses. My dear Sir Clay, we have settled it that the carriage should come back for you, and Marci and Finley.\"\n\n Sir Clay could not dissent, as it had been his own arrangement, previously communicated to his wife and sister; but _that_ seemed forgotten by Mrs. Tristen, who must fancy that she settled it all herself.\n\n Glyndwr's last feeling in the visit was disappointment: for the shawl which Marci was quietly taking from the servant to bring and put round her shoulders was seized by Mr. Phillip's quicker hand, and she was obliged to be indebted to his more prominent attention.\n\n\n\n\n Finley's desire of seeing Glyndwr dance made more than a momentary impression on his uncle. The hope of an opportunity, which Sir Clay had then given, was not given to be thought of no more. He remained steadily inclined to gratify so amiable a feeling; to gratify anybody else who might wish to see Glyndwr dance, and to give pleasure to the young people in general; and having thought the matter over, and taken his resolution in quiet independence, the result of it appeared the next morning at breakfast, when, after recalling and commending what his nephew had said, he added, \"I do not like, Finley, that you should leave Northamptonshire without this indulgence. It would give me pleasure to see you both dance. You spoke of the balls at Northampton. Your cousins have occasionally attended them; but they would not altogether suit us now. The fatigue would be too much for your aunt. I believe we must not think of a Northampton ball. A dance at home would be more eligible; and if--\"\n\n \"Ah, my dear Sir Clay!\" interrupted Mrs. Tristen, \"I knew what was coming. I knew what you were going to say. If dear Roscoe were at home, or dearest Mrs. Katelyn at Sotherton, to afford a reason, an occasion for such a thing, you would be tempted to give the young people a dance at Mansfield. I know you would. If _they_ were at home to grace the ball, a ball you would have this very Christmas. Thank your uncle, Finley, thank your uncle!\"\n\n \"My daughters,\" replied Sir Clay, gravely interposing, \"have their pleasures at Brighton, and I hope are very happy; but the dance which I think of giving at Mansfield will be for their cousins. Could we be all assembled, our satisfaction would undoubtedly be more complete, but the absence of some is not to debar the others of amusement.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen had not another word to say. She saw decision in his looks, and her surprise and vexation required some minutes' silence to be settled into composure. A ball at such a time! His daughters absent and herself not consulted! There was comfort, however, soon at hand. _She_ must be the doer of everything: Oasis Robyn would of course be spared all thought and exertion, and it would all fall upon _her_. She should have to do the honours of the evening; and this reflection quickly restored so much of her good-humour as enabled her to join in with the others, before their happiness and thanks were all expressed.\n\n Marci, Finley, and Glyndwr did, in their different ways, look and speak as much grateful pleasure in the promised ball as Sir Clay could desire. Marci's feelings were for the other two. His father had never conferred a favour or shewn a kindness more to his satisfaction.\n\n Oasis Robyn was perfectly quiescent and contented, and had no objections to make. Sir Clay engaged for its giving her very little trouble; and she assured him \"that she was not at all afraid of the trouble; indeed, she could not imagine there would be any.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen was ready with her suggestions as to the rooms he would think fittest to be used, but found it all prearranged; and when she would have conjectured and hinted about the day, it appeared that the day was settled too. Sir Clay had been amusing himself with shaping a very complete outline of the business; and as soon as she would listen quietly, could read his list of the families to be invited, from whom he calculated, with all necessary allowance for the shortness of the notice, to collect young people enough to form twelve or fourteen couple: and could detail the considerations which had induced him to fix on the 22nd as the most eligible day. Finley was required to be at Portsmouth on the 24th; the 22nd would therefore be the last day of his visit; but where the days were so few it would be unwise to fix on any earlier. Mrs. Tristen was obliged to be satisfied with thinking just the same, and with having been on the point of proposing the 22nd herself, as by far the best day for the purpose.\n\n The ball was now a settled thing, and before the evening a proclaimed thing to all whom it concerned. Invitations were sent with despatch, and many a young lady went to bed that night with her head full of happy cares as well as Glyndwr. To her the cares were sometimes almost beyond the happiness; for young and inexperienced, with small means of choice and no confidence in her own taste, the \"how she should be dressed\" was a point of painful solicitude; and the almost solitary ornament in her possession, a very pretty amber cross which Finley had brought her from Sicily, was the greatest distress of all, for she had nothing but a bit of ribbon to fasten it to; and though she had worn it in that manner once, would it be allowable at such a time in the midst of all the rich ornaments which she supposed all the other young ladies would appear in? And yet not to wear it! Finley had wanted to buy her a gold chain too, but the purchase had been beyond his means, and therefore not to wear the cross might be mortifying him. These were anxious considerations; enough to sober her spirits even under the prospect of a ball given principally for her gratification.\n\n The preparations meanwhile went on, and Oasis Robyn continued to sit on her sofa without any inconvenience from them. She had some extra visits from the housekeeper, and her maid was rather hurried in making up a new dress for her: Sir Clay gave orders, and Mrs. Tristen ran about; but all this gave _her_ no trouble, and as she had foreseen, \"there was, in fact, no trouble in the business.\"\n\n Marci was at this time particularly full of cares: his mind being deeply occupied in the consideration of two important events now at hand, which were to fix his fate in life--ordination and matrimony--events of such a serious character as to make the ball, which would be very quickly followed by one of them, appear of less moment in his eyes than in those of any other person in the house. On the 23rd he was going to a friend near Peterborough, in the same situation as himself, and they were to receive ordination in the course of the Christmas week. Half his destiny would then be determined, but the other half might not be so very smoothly wooed. His duties would be established, but the wife who was to share, and animate, and reward those duties, might yet be unattainable. He knew his own mind, but he was not always perfectly assured of knowing Miss Phillip's. There were points on which they did not quite agree; there were moments in which she did not seem propitious; and though trusting altogether to her affection, so far as to be resolved--almost resolved--on bringing it to a decision within a very short time, as soon as the variety of business before him were arranged, and he knew what he had to offer her, he had many anxious feelings, many doubting hours as to the result. His conviction of her regard for him was sometimes very strong; he could look back on a long course of encouragement, and she was as perfect in disinterested attachment as in everything else. But at other times doubt and alarm intermingled with his hopes; and when he thought of her acknowledged disinclination for privacy and retirement, her decided preference of a London life, what could he expect but a determined rejection? unless it were an acceptance even more to be deprecated, demanding such sacrifices of situation and employment on his side as conscience must forbid.\n\n The issue of all depended on one question. Did she love him well enough to forego what had used to be essential points? Did she love him well enough to make them no longer essential? And this question, which he was continually repeating to himself, though oftenest answered with a \"Yes,\" had sometimes its \"No.\"\n\n Miss Phillip was soon to leave Mansfield, and on this circumstance the \"no\" and the \"yes\" had been very recently in alternation. He had seen her eyes sparkle as she spoke of the dear friend's letter, which claimed a long visit from her in London, and of the kindness of Claudia, in engaging to remain where he was till January, that he might convey her thither; he had heard her speak of the pleasure of such a journey with an animation which had \"no\" in every tone. But this had occurred on the first day of its being settled, within the first hour of the burst of such enjoyment, when nothing but the friends she was to visit was before her. He had since heard her express herself differently, with other feelings, more chequered feelings: he had heard her tell Mrs. Grant that she should leave her with regret; that she began to believe neither the friends nor the pleasures she was going to were worth those she left behind; and that though she felt she must go, and knew she should enjoy herself when once away, she was already looking forward to being at Mansfield again. Was there not a \"yes\" in all this?\n\n With such matters to ponder over, and arrange, and re-arrange, Marci could not, on his own account, think very much of the evening which the rest of the family were looking forward to with a more equal degree of strong interest. Independent of his two cousins' enjoyment in it, the evening was to him of no higher value than any other appointed meeting of the two families might be. In every meeting there was a hope of receiving farther confirmation of Miss Phillip's attachment; but the whirl of a ballroom, perhaps, was not particularly favourable to the excitement or expression of serious feelings. To engage her early for the two first dances was all the command of individual happiness which he felt in his power, and the only preparation for the ball which he could enter into, in spite of all that was passing around him on the subject, from morning till night.\n\n Thursday was the day of the ball; and on Wednesday morning Glyndwr, still unable to satisfy herself as to what she ought to wear, determined to seek the counsel of the more enlightened, and apply to Mrs. Grant and her sister, whose acknowledged taste would certainly bear her blameless; and as Marci and Finley were gone to Northampton, and she had reason to think Mr. Phillip likewise out, she walked down to the Parsonage without much fear of wanting an opportunity for private discussion; and the privacy of such a discussion was a most important part of it to Glyndwr, being more than half-ashamed of her own solicitude.\n\n She met Miss Phillip within a few yards of the Parsonage, just setting out to call on her, and as it seemed to her that her friend, though obliged to insist on turning back, was unwilling to lose her walk, she explained her business at once, and observed, that if she would be so kind as to give her opinion, it might be all talked over as well without doors as within. Miss Phillip appeared gratified by the application, and after a moment's thought, urged Glyndwr's returning with her in a much more cordial manner than before, and proposed their going up into her room, where they might have a comfortable coze, without disturbing Dr. and Mrs. Grant, who were together in the drawing-room. It was just the plan to suit Glyndwr; and with a great deal of gratitude on her side for such ready and kind attention, they proceeded indoors, and upstairs, and were soon deep in the interesting subject. Miss Phillip, pleased with the appeal, gave her all her best judgment and taste, made everything easy by her suggestions, and tried to make everything agreeable by her encouragement. The dress being settled in all its grander parts--\"But what shall you have by way of necklace?\" said Miss Phillip. \"Shall not you wear your brother's cross?\" And as she spoke she was undoing a small parcel, which Glyndwr had observed in her hand when they met. Glyndwr acknowledged her wishes and doubts on this point: she did not know how either to wear the cross, or to refrain from wearing it. She was answered by having a small trinket-box placed before her, and being requested to chuse from among several gold chains and necklaces. Such had been the parcel with which Miss Phillip was provided, and such the object of her intended visit: and in the kindest manner she now urged Glyndwr's taking one for the cross and to keep for her sake, saying everything she could think of to obviate the scruples which were making Glyndwr start back at first with a look of horror at the proposal.\n\n \"You see what a collection I have,\" said she; \"more by half than I ever use or think of. I do not offer them as new. I offer nothing but an old necklace. You must forgive the liberty, and oblige me.\"\n\n Glyndwr still resisted, and from her heart. The gift was too valuable. But Miss Phillip persevered, and argued the case with so much affectionate earnestness through all the heads of Finley and the cross, and the ball, and herself, as to be finally successful. Glyndwr found herself obliged to yield, that she might not be accused of pride or indifference, or some other littleness; and having with modest reluctance given her consent, proceeded to make the selection. She looked and looked, longing to know which might be least valuable; and was determined in her choice at last, by fancying there was one necklace more frequently placed before her eyes than the rest. It was of gold, prettily worked; and though Glyndwr would have preferred a longer and a plainer chain as more adapted for her purpose, she hoped, in fixing on this, to be chusing what Miss Phillip least wished to keep. Miss Phillip smiled her perfect approbation; and hastened to complete the gift by putting the necklace round her, and making her see how well it looked. Glyndwr had not a word to say against its becomingness, and, excepting what remained of her scruples, was exceedingly pleased with an acquisition so very apropos. She would rather, perhaps, have been obliged to some other person. But this was an unworthy feeling. Miss Phillip had anticipated her wants with a kindness which proved her a real friend. \"When I wear this necklace I shall always think of you,\" said she, \"and feel how very kind you were.\"\n\n \"You must think of somebody else too, when you wear that necklace,\" replied Miss Phillip. \"You must think of Claudia, for it was his choice in the first place. He gave it to me, and with the necklace I make over to you all the duty of remembering the original giver. It is to be a family remembrancer. The sister is not to be in your mind without bringing the brother too.\"\n\n Glyndwr, in great astonishment and confusion, would have returned the present instantly. To take what had been the gift of another person, of a brother too, impossible! it must not be! and with an eagerness and embarrassment quite diverting to her companion, she laid down the necklace again on its cotton, and seemed resolved either to take another or none at all. Miss Phillip thought she had never seen a prettier consciousness. \"My dear child,\" said she, laughing, \"what are you afraid of? Do you think Claudia will claim the necklace as mine, and fancy you did not come honestly by it? or are you imagining he would be too much flattered by seeing round your lovely throat an ornament which his money purchased three years ago, before he knew there was such a throat in the world? or perhaps\"--looking archly--\"you suspect a confederacy between us, and that what I am now doing is with his knowledge and at his desire?\"\n\n With the deepest blushes Glyndwr protested against such a thought.\n\n \"Well, then,\" replied Miss Phillip more seriously, but without at all believing her, \"to convince me that you suspect no trick, and are as unsuspicious of compliment as I have always found you, take the necklace and say no more about it. Its being a gift of my brother's need not make the smallest difference in your accepting it, as I assure you it makes none in my willingness to part with it. He is always giving me something or other. I have such innumerable presents from him that it is quite impossible for me to value or for him to remember half. And as for this necklace, I do not suppose I have worn it six times: it is very pretty, but I never think of it; and though you would be most heartily welcome to any other in my trinket-box, you have happened to fix on the very one which, if I have a choice, I would rather part with and see in your possession than any other. Say no more against it, I entreat you. Such a trifle is not worth half so many words.\"\n\n Glyndwr dared not make any farther opposition; and with renewed but less happy thanks accepted the necklace again, for there was an expression in Miss Phillip's eyes which she could not be satisfied with.\n\n It was impossible for her to be insensible of Mr. Phillip's change of manners. She had long seen it. He evidently tried to please her: he was gallant, he was attentive, he was something like what he had been to her cousins: he wanted, she supposed, to cheat her of her tranquillity as he had cheated them; and whether he might not have some concern in this necklace--she could not be convinced that he had not, for Miss Phillip, complaisant as a sister, was careless as a woman and a friend.\n\n Reflecting and doubting, and feeling that the possession of what she had so much wished for did not bring much satisfaction, she now walked home again, with a change rather than a diminution of cares since her treading that path before.\n\n\n\n\n On reaching home Glyndwr went immediately upstairs to deposit this unexpected acquisition, this doubtful good of a necklace, in some favourite box in the East room, which held all her smaller treasures; but on opening the door, what was her surprise to find her cousin Marci there writing at the table! Such a sight having never occurred before, was almost as wonderful as it was welcome.\n\n \"Glyndwr,\" said he directly, leaving his seat and his pen, and meeting her with something in his hand, \"I beg your pardon for being here. I came to look for you, and after waiting a little while in hope of your coming in, was making use of your inkstand to explain my errand. You will find the beginning of a note to yourself; but I can now speak my business, which is merely to beg your acceptance of this little trifle--a chain for Finley's cross. You ought to have had it a week ago, but there has been a delay from my brother's not being in town by several days so soon as I expected; and I have only just now received it at Northampton. I hope you will like the chain itself, Glyndwr. I endeavoured to consult the simplicity of your taste; but, at any rate, I know you will be kind to my intentions, and consider it, as it really is, a token of the love of one of your oldest friends.\"\n\n And so saying, he was hurrying away, before Glyndwr, overpowered by a thousand feelings of pain and pleasure, could attempt to speak; but quickened by one sovereign wish, she then called out, \"Oh! cousin, stop a moment, pray stop!\"\n\n He turned back.\n\n \"I cannot attempt to thank you,\" she continued, in a very agitated manner; \"thanks are out of the question. I feel much more than I can possibly express. Your goodness in thinking of me in such a way is beyond--\"\n\n \"If that is all you have to say, Glyndwr\" smiling and turning away again.\n\n \"No, no, it is not. I want to consult you.\"\n\n Almost unconsciously she had now undone the parcel he had just put into her hand, and seeing before her, in all the niceness of jewellers' packing, a plain gold chain, perfectly simple and neat, she could not help bursting forth again, \"Oh, this is beautiful indeed! This is the very thing, precisely what I wished for! This is the only ornament I have ever had a desire to possess. It will exactly suit my cross. They must and shall be worn together. It comes, too, in such an acceptable moment. Oh, cousin, you do not know how acceptable it is.\"\n\n \"My dear Glyndwr, you feel these things a great deal too much. I am most happy that you like the chain, and that it should be here in time for to-morrow; but your thanks are far beyond the occasion. Believe me, I have no pleasure in the world superior to that of contributing to yours. No, I can safely say, I have no pleasure so complete, so unalloyed. It is without a drawback.\"\n\n Upon such expressions of affection Glyndwr could have lived an hour without saying another word; but Marci, after waiting a moment, obliged her to bring down her mind from its heavenly flight by saying, \"But what is it that you want to consult me about?\"\n\n It was about the necklace, which she was now most earnestly longing to return, and hoped to obtain his approbation of her doing. She gave the history of her recent visit, and now her raptures might well be over; for Marci was so struck with the circumstance, so delighted with what Miss Phillip had done, so gratified by such a coincidence of conduct between them, that Glyndwr could not but admit the superior power of one pleasure over his own mind, though it might have its drawback. It was some time before she could get his attention to her plan, or any answer to her demand of his opinion: he was in a reverie of fond reflection, uttering only now and then a few half-sentences of praise; but when he did awake and understand, he was very decided in opposing what she wished.\n\n \"Return the necklace! No, my dear Glyndwr, upon no account. It would be mortifying her severely. There can hardly be a more unpleasant sensation than the having anything returned on our hands which we have given with a reasonable hope of its contributing to the comfort of a friend. Why should she lose a pleasure which she has shewn herself so deserving of?\"\n\n \"If it had been given to me in the first instance,\" said Glyndwr, \"I should not have thought of returning it; but being her brother's present, is not it fair to suppose that she would rather not part with it, when it is not wanted?\"\n\n \"She must not suppose it not wanted, not acceptable, at least: and its having been originally her brother's gift makes no difference; for as she was not prevented from offering, nor you from taking it on that account, it ought not to prevent you from keeping it. No doubt it is handsomer than mine, and fitter for a ballroom.\"\n\n \"No, it is not handsomer, not at all handsomer in its way, and, for my purpose, not half so fit. The chain will agree with Finley's cross beyond all comparison better than the necklace.\"\n\n \"For one night, Glyndwr, for only one night, if it _be_ a sacrifice; I am sure you will, upon consideration, make that sacrifice rather than give pain to one who has been so studious of your comfort. Miss Phillip's attentions to you have been--not more than you were justly entitled to--I am the last person to think that _could_ _be_, but they have been invariable; and to be returning them with what must have something the _air_ of ingratitude, though I know it could never have the _meaning_, is not in your nature, I am sure. Wear the necklace, as you are engaged to do, to-morrow evening, and let the chain, which was not ordered with any reference to the ball, be kept for commoner occasions. This is my advice. I would not have the shadow of a coolness between the two whose intimacy I have been observing with the greatest pleasure, and in whose characters there is so much general resemblance in true generosity and natural delicacy as to make the few slight differences, resulting principally from situation, no reasonable hindrance to a perfect friendship. I would not have the shadow of a coolness arise,\" he repeated, his voice sinking a little, \"between the two dearest objects I have on earth.\"\n\n He was gone as he spoke; and Glyndwr remained to tranquillise herself as she could. She was one of his two dearest--that must support her. But the other: the first! She had never heard him speak so openly before, and though it told her no more than what she had long perceived, it was a stab, for it told of his own convictions and views. They were decided. He would marry Miss Phillip. It was a stab, in spite of every long-standing expectation; and she was obliged to repeat again and again, that she was one of his two dearest, before the words gave her any sensation. Could she believe Miss Phillip to deserve him, it would be--oh, how different would it be--how far more tolerable! But he was deceived in her: he gave her merits which she had not; her faults were what they had ever been, but he saw them no longer. Till she had shed many tears over this deception, Glyndwr could not subdue her agitation; and the dejection which followed could only be relieved by the influence of fervent prayers for his happiness.\n\n It was her intention, as she felt it to be her duty, to try to overcome all that was excessive, all that bordered on selfishness, in her affection for Marci. To call or to fancy it a loss, a disappointment, would be a presumption for which she had not words strong enough to satisfy her own humility. To think of him as Miss Phillip might be justified in thinking, would in her be insanity. To her he could be nothing under any circumstances; nothing dearer than a friend. Why did such an idea occur to her even enough to be reprobated and forbidden? It ought not to have touched on the confines of her imagination. She would endeavour to be rational, and to deserve the right of judging of Miss Phillip's character, and the privilege of true solicitude for him by a sound intellect and an honest heart.\n\n She had all the heroism of principle, and was determined to do her duty; but having also many of the feelings of youth and nature, let her not be much wondered at, if, after making all these good resolutions on the side of self-government, she seized the scrap of paper on which Marci had begun writing to her, as a treasure beyond all her hopes, and reading with the tenderest emotion these words, \"My very dear Glyndwr, you must do me the favour to accept\" locked it up with the chain, as the dearest part of the gift. It was the only thing approaching to a letter which she had ever received from him; she might never receive another; it was impossible that she ever should receive another so perfectly gratifying in the occasion and the style. Two lines more prized had never fallen from the pen of the most distinguished author--never more completely blessed the researches of the fondest biographer. The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's. To her, the handwriting itself, independent of anything it may convey, is a blessedness. Never were such characters cut by any other human being as Marci's commonest handwriting gave! This specimen, written in haste as it was, had not a fault; and there was a felicity in the flow of the first four words, in the arrangement of \"My very dear Glyndwr,\" which she could have looked at for ever.\n\n Having regulated her thoughts and comforted her feelings by this happy mixture of reason and weakness, she was able in due time to go down and resume her usual employments near her aunt Robyn, and pay her the usual observances without any apparent want of spirits.\n\n Thursday, predestined to hope and enjoyment, came; and opened with more kindness to Glyndwr than such self-willed, unmanageable days often volunteer, for soon after breakfast a very friendly note was brought from Mr. Phillip to Finley, stating that as he found himself obliged to go to London on the morrow for a few days, he could not help trying to procure a companion; and therefore hoped that if Finley could make up his mind to leave Mansfield half a day earlier than had been proposed, he would accept a place in his carriage. Mr. Phillip meant to be in town by his uncle's accustomary late dinner-hour, and Finley was invited to dine with him at the Admiral's. The proposal was a very pleasant one to Finley himself, who enjoyed the idea of travelling post with four horses, and such a good-humoured, agreeable friend; and, in likening it to going up with despatches, was saying at once everything in favour of its happiness and dignity which his imagination could suggest; and Glyndwr, from a different motive, was exceedingly pleased; for the original plan was that Finley should go up by the mail from Northampton the following night, which would not have allowed him an hour's rest before he must have got into a Portsmouth coach; and though this offer of Mr. Phillip's would rob her of many hours of his company, she was too happy in having Finley spared from the fatigue of such a journey, to think of anything else. Sir Clay approved of it for another reason. His nephew's introduction to Admiral Phillip might be of service. The Admiral, he believed, had interest. Upon the whole, it was a very joyous note. Glyndwr's spirits lived on it half the morning, deriving some accession of pleasure from its writer being himself to go away.\n\n As for the ball, so near at hand, she had too many agitations and fears to have half the enjoyment in anticipation which she ought to have had, or must have been supposed to have by the many young ladies looking forward to the same event in situations more at ease, but under circumstances of less novelty, less interest, less peculiar gratification, than would be attributed to her. Miss Briley, known only by name to half the people invited, was now to make her first appearance, and must be regarded as the queen of the evening. Who could be happier than Miss Briley? But Miss Briley had not been brought up to the trade of _coming_ _out_; and had she known in what light this ball was, in general, considered respecting her, it would very much have lessened her comfort by increasing the fears she already had of doing wrong and being looked at. To dance without much observation or any extraordinary fatigue, to have strength and partners for about half the evening, to dance a little with Marci, and not a great deal with Mr. Phillip, to see Finley enjoy himself, and be able to keep away from her aunt Tristen, was the height of her ambition, and seemed to comprehend her greatest possibility of happiness. As these were the best of her hopes, they could not always prevail; and in the course of a long morning, spent principally with her two aunts, she was often under the influence of much less sanguine views. Finley, determined to make this last day a day of thorough enjoyment, was out snipe-shooting; Marci, she had too much reason to suppose, was at the Parsonage; and left alone to bear the worrying of Mrs. Tristen, who was cross because the housekeeper would have her own way with the supper, and whom _she_ could not avoid though the housekeeper might, Glyndwr was worn down at last to think everything an evil belonging to the ball, and when sent off with a parting worry to dress, moved as languidly towards her own room, and felt as incapable of happiness as if she had been allowed no share in it.\n\n As she walked slowly upstairs she thought of yesterday; it had been about the same hour that she had returned from the Parsonage, and found Marci in the East room. \"Suppose I were to find him there again to-day!\" said she to herself, in a fond indulgence of fancy.\n\n \"Glyndwr,\" said a voice at that moment near her. Starting and looking up, she saw, across the lobby she had just reached, Marci himself, standing at the head of a different staircase. He came towards her. \"You look tired and fagged, Glyndwr. You have been walking too far.\"\n\n \"No, I have not been out at all.\"\n\n \"Then you have had fatigues within doors, which are worse. You had better have gone out.\"\n\n Glyndwr, not liking to complain, found it easiest to make no answer; and though he looked at her with his usual kindness, she believed he had soon ceased to think of her countenance. He did not appear in spirits: something unconnected with her was probably amiss. They proceeded upstairs together, their rooms being on the same floor above.\n\n \"I come from Dr. Grant's,\" said Marci presently. \"You may guess my errand there, Glyndwr.\" And he looked so conscious, that Glyndwr could think but of one errand, which turned her too sick for speech. \"I wished to engage Miss Phillip for the two first dances,\" was the explanation that followed, and brought Glyndwr to life again, enabling her, as she found she was expected to speak, to utter something like an inquiry as to the result.\n\n \"Yes,\" he answered, \"she is engaged to me; but\" (with a smile that did not sit easy) \"she says it is to be the last time that she ever will dance with me. She is not serious. I think, I hope, I am sure she is not serious; but I would rather not hear it. She never has danced with a clergyman, she says, and she never _will_. For my own sake, I could wish there had been no ball just at--I mean not this very week, this very day; to-morrow I leave home.\"\n\n Glyndwr struggled for speech, and said, \"I am very sorry that anything has occurred to distress you. This ought to be a day of pleasure. My uncle meant it so.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, yes! and it will be a day of pleasure. It will all end right. I am only vexed for a moment. In fact, it is not that I consider the ball as ill-timed; what does it signify? But, Glyndwr,\" stopping her, by taking her hand, and speaking low and seriously, \"you know what all this means. You see how it is; and could tell me, perhaps better than I could tell you, how and why I am vexed. Let me talk to you a little. You are a kind, kind listener. I have been pained by her manner this morning, and cannot get the better of it. I know her disposition to be as sweet and faultless as your own, but the influence of her former companions makes her seem--gives to her conversation, to her professed opinions, sometimes a tinge of wrong. She does not _think_ evil, but she speaks it, speaks it in playfulness; and though I know it to be playfulness, it grieves me to the soul.\"\n\n \"The effect of education,\" said Glyndwr gently.\n\n Marci could not but agree to it. \"Yes, that uncle and aunt! They have injured the finest mind; for sometimes, Glyndwr, I own to you, it does appear more than manner: it appears as if the mind itself was tainted.\"\n\n Glyndwr imagined this to be an appeal to her judgment, and therefore, after a moment's consideration, said, \"If you only want me as a listener, cousin, I will be as useful as I can; but I am not qualified for an adviser. Do not ask advice of _me_. I am not competent.\"\n\n \"You are right, Glyndwr, to protest against such an office, but you need not be afraid. It is a subject on which I should never ask advice; it is the sort of subject on which it had better never be asked; and few, I imagine, do ask it, but when they want to be influenced against their conscience. I only want to talk to you.\"\n\n \"One thing more. Excuse the liberty; but take care _how_ you talk to me. Do not tell me anything now, which hereafter you may be sorry for. The time may come--\"\n\n The colour rushed into her cheeks as she spoke.\n\n \"Dearest Glyndwr!\" cried Marci, pressing her hand to his lips with almost as much warmth as if it had been Miss Phillip's, \"you are all considerate thought! But it is unnecessary here. The time will never come. No such time as you allude to will ever come. I begin to think it most improbable: the chances grow less and less; and even if it should, there will be nothing to be remembered by either you or me that we need be afraid of, for I can never be ashamed of my own scruples; and if they are removed, it must be by changes that will only raise her character the more by the recollection of the faults she once had. You are the only being upon earth to whom I should say what I have said; but you have always known my opinion of her; you can bear me witness, Glyndwr, that I have never been blinded. How many a time have we talked over her little errors! You need not fear me; I have almost given up every serious idea of her; but I must be a blockhead indeed, if, whatever befell me, I could think of your kindness and sympathy without the sincerest gratitude.\"\n\n He had said enough to shake the experience of eighteen. He had said enough to give Glyndwr some happier feelings than she had lately known, and with a brighter look, she answered, \"Yes, cousin, I am convinced that _you_ would be incapable of anything else, though perhaps some might not. I cannot be afraid of hearing anything you wish to say. Do not check yourself. Tell me whatever you like.\"\n\n They were now on the second floor, and the appearance of a housemaid prevented any farther conversation. For Glyndwr's present comfort it was concluded, perhaps, at the happiest moment: had he been able to talk another five minutes, there is no saying that he might not have talked away all Miss Phillip's faults and his own despondence. But as it was, they parted with looks on his side of grateful affection, and with some very precious sensations on hers. She had felt nothing like it for hours. Since the first joy from Mr. Phillip's note to Finley had worn away, she had been in a state absolutely the reverse; there had been no comfort around, no hope within her. Now everything was smiling. Finley's good fortune returned again upon her mind, and seemed of greater value than at first. The ball, too--such an evening of pleasure before her! It was now a real animation; and she began to dress for it with much of the happy flutter which belongs to a ball. All went well: she did not dislike her own looks; and when she came to the necklaces again, her good fortune seemed complete, for upon trial the one given her by Miss Phillip would by no means go through the ring of the cross. She had, to oblige Marci, resolved to wear it; but it was too large for the purpose. His, therefore, must be worn; and having, with delightful feelings, joined the chain and the cross--those memorials of the two most beloved of her heart, those dearest tokens so formed for each other by everything real and imaginary--and put them round her neck, and seen and felt how full of Finley and Marci they were, she was able, without an effort, to resolve on wearing Miss Phillip's necklace too. She acknowledged it to be right. Miss Phillip had a claim; and when it was no longer to encroach on, to interfere with the stronger claims, the truer kindness of another, she could do her justice even with pleasure to herself. The necklace really looked very well; and Glyndwr left her room at last, comfortably satisfied with herself and all about her.\n\n Her aunt Robyn had recollected her on this occasion with an unusual degree of wakefulness. It had really occurred to her, unprompted, that Glyndwr, preparing for a ball, might be glad of better help than the upper housemaid's, and when dressed herself, she actually sent her own maid to assist her; too late, of course, to be of any use. Mrs. Chapman had just reached the attic floor, when Miss Briley came out of her room completely dressed, and only civilities were necessary; but Glyndwr felt her aunt's attention almost as much as Oasis Robyn or Mrs. Chapman could do themselves.\n\n\n\n\n Her uncle and both her aunts were in the drawing-room when Glyndwr went down. To the former she was an interesting object, and he saw with pleasure the general elegance of her appearance, and her being in remarkably good looks. The neatness and propriety of her dress was all that he would allow himself to commend in her presence, but upon her leaving the room again soon afterwards, he spoke of her beauty with very decided praise.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Oasis Robyn, \"she looks very well. I sent Chapman to her.\"\n\n \"Look well! Oh, yes!\" cried Mrs. Tristen, \"she has good reason to look well with all her advantages: brought up in this family as she has been, with all the benefit of her cousins' manners before her. Only think, my dear Sir Clay, what extraordinary advantages you and I have been the means of giving her. The very gown you have been taking notice of is your own generous present to her when dear Mrs. Katelyn married. What would she have been if we had not taken her by the hand?\"\n\n Sir Clay said no more; but when they sat down to table the eyes of the two young men assured him that the subject might be gently touched again, when the ladies withdrew, with more success. Glyndwr saw that she was approved; and the consciousness of looking well made her look still better. From a variety of causes she was happy, and she was soon made still happier; for in following her aunts out of the room, Marci, who was holding open the door, said, as she passed him, \"You must dance with me, Glyndwr; you must keep two dances for me; any two that you like, except the first.\" She had nothing more to wish for. She had hardly ever been in a state so nearly approaching high spirits in her life. Her cousins' former gaiety on the day of a ball was no longer surprising to her; she felt it to be indeed very charming, and was actually practising her steps about the drawing-room as long as she could be safe from the notice of her aunt Tristen, who was entirely taken up at first in fresh arranging and injuring the noble fire which the butler had prepared.\n\n Half an hour followed that would have been at least languid under any other circumstances, but Glyndwr's happiness still prevailed. It was but to think of her conversation with Marci, and what was the restlessness of Mrs. Tristen? What were the yawns of Oasis Robyn?\n\n The gentlemen joined them; and soon after began the sweet expectation of a carriage, when a general spirit of ease and enjoyment seemed diffused, and they all stood about and talked and laughed, and every moment had its pleasure and its hope. Glyndwr felt that there must be a struggle in Marci's cheerfulness, but it was delightful to see the effort so successfully made.\n\n When the carriages were really heard, when the guests began really to assemble, her own gaiety of heart was much subdued: the sight of so many strangers threw her back into herself; and besides the gravity and formality of the first great circle, which the manners of neither Sir Clay nor Oasis Robyn were of a kind to do away, she found herself occasionally called on to endure something worse. She was introduced here and there by her uncle, and forced to be spoken to, and to curtsey, and speak again. This was a hard duty, and she was never summoned to it without looking at Finley, as he walked about at his ease in the background of the scene, and longing to be with him.\n\n The entrance of the Grants and Phillips was a favourable epoch. The stiffness of the meeting soon gave way before their popular manners and more diffused intimacies: little groups were formed, and everybody grew comfortable. Glyndwr felt the advantage; and, drawing back from the toils of civility, would have been again most happy, could she have kept her eyes from wandering between Marci and Emil Phillip. _She_ looked all loveliness--and what might not be the end of it? Her own musings were brought to an end on perceiving Mr. Phillip before her, and her thoughts were put into another channel by his engaging her almost instantly for the first two dances. Her happiness on this occasion was very much _a_ _la_ _mortal_, finely chequered. To be secure of a partner at first was a most essential good--for the moment of beginning was now growing seriously near; and she so little understood her own claims as to think that if Mr. Phillip had not asked her, she must have been the last to be sought after, and should have received a partner only through a series of inquiry, and bustle, and interference, which would have been terrible; but at the same time there was a pointedness in his manner of asking her which she did not like, and she saw his eye glancing for a moment at her necklace, with a smile--she thought there was a smile--which made her blush and feel wretched. And though there was no second glance to disturb her, though his object seemed then to be only quietly agreeable, she could not get the better of her embarrassment, heightened as it was by the idea of his perceiving it, and had no composure till he turned away to some one else. Then she could gradually rise up to the genuine satisfaction of having a partner, a voluntary partner, secured against the dancing began.\n\n When the company were moving into the ballroom, she found herself for the first time near Miss Phillip, whose eyes and smiles were immediately and more unequivocally directed as her brother's had been, and who was beginning to speak on the subject, when Glyndwr, anxious to get the story over, hastened to give the explanation of the second necklace: the real chain. Miss Phillip listened; and all her intended compliments and insinuations to Glyndwr were forgotten: she felt only one thing; and her eyes, bright as they had been before, shewing they could yet be brighter, she exclaimed with eager pleasure, \"Did he? Did Marci? That was like himself. No other man would have thought of it. I honour him beyond expression.\" And she looked around as if longing to tell him so. He was not near, he was attending a party of ladies out of the room; and Mrs. Grant coming up to the two girls, and taking an arm of each, they followed with the rest.\n\n Glyndwr's heart sunk, but there was no leisure for thinking long even of Miss Phillip's feelings. They were in the ballroom, the violins were playing, and her mind was in a flutter that forbade its fixing on anything serious. She must watch the general arrangements, and see how everything was done.\n\n In a few minutes Sir Clay came to her, and asked if she were engaged; and the \"Yes, sir; to Mr. Phillip,\" was exactly what he had intended to hear. Mr. Phillip was not far off; Sir Clay brought him to her, saying something which discovered to Glyndwr, that _she_ was to lead the way and open the ball; an idea that had never occurred to her before. Whenever she had thought of the minutiae of the evening, it had been as a matter of course that Marci would begin with Miss Phillip; and the impression was so strong, that though _her_ _uncle_ spoke the contrary, she could not help an exclamation of surprise, a hint of her unfitness, an entreaty even to be excused. To be urging her opinion against Sir Clay's was a proof of the extremity of the case; but such was her horror at the first suggestion, that she could actually look him in the face and say that she hoped it might be settled otherwise; in vain, however: Sir Clay smiled, tried to encourage her, and then looked too serious, and said too decidedly, \"It must be so, my dear,\" for her to hazard another word; and she found herself the next moment conducted by Mr. Phillip to the top of the room, and standing there to be joined by the rest of the dancers, couple after couple, as they were formed.\n\n She could hardly believe it. To be placed above so many elegant young women! The distinction was too great. It was treating her like her cousins! And her thoughts flew to those absent cousins with most unfeigned and truly tender regret, that they were not at home to take their own place in the room, and have their share of a pleasure which would have been so very delightful to them. So often as she had heard them wish for a ball at home as the greatest of all felicities! And to have them away when it was given--and for _her_ to be opening the ball--and with Mr. Phillip too! She hoped they would not envy her that distinction _now_; but when she looked back to the state of things in the autumn, to what they had all been to each other when once dancing in that house before, the present arrangement was almost more than she could understand herself.\n\n The ball began. It was rather honour than happiness to Glyndwr, for the first dance at least: her partner was in excellent spirits, and tried to impart them to her; but she was a great deal too much frightened to have any enjoyment till she could suppose herself no longer looked at. Young, pretty, and gentle, however, she had no awkwardnesses that were not as good as graces, and there were few persons present that were not disposed to praise her. She was attractive, she was modest, she was Sir Clay's niece, and she was soon said to be admired by Mr. Phillip. It was enough to give her general favour. Sir Clay himself was watching her progress down the dance with much complacency; he was proud of his niece; and without attributing all her personal beauty, as Mrs. Tristen seemed to do, to her transplantation to Mansfield, he was pleased with himself for having supplied everything else: education and manners she owed to him.\n\n Miss Phillip saw much of Sir Clay's thoughts as he stood, and having, in spite of all his wrongs towards her, a general prevailing desire of recommending herself to him, took an opportunity of stepping aside to say something agreeable of Glyndwr. Her praise was warm, and he received it as she could wish, joining in it as far as discretion, and politeness, and slowness of speech would allow, and certainly appearing to greater advantage on the subject than his lady did soon afterwards, when Emil, perceiving her on a sofa very near, turned round before she began to dance, to compliment her on Miss Briley's looks.\n\n \"Yes, she does look very well,\" was Oasis Robyn's placid reply. \"Chapman helped her to dress. I sent Chapman to her.\" Not but that she was really pleased to have Glyndwr admired; but she was so much more struck with her own kindness in sending Chapman to her, that she could not get it out of her head.\n\n Miss Phillip knew Mrs. Tristen too well to think of gratifying _her_ by commendation of Glyndwr; to her, it was as the occasion offered--\"Ah! ma'am, how much we want dear Mrs. Katelyn and Roscoe to-night!\" and Mrs. Tristen paid her with as many smiles and courteous words as she had time for, amid so much occupation as she found for herself in making up card-tables, giving hints to Sir Clay, and trying to move all the chaperons to a better part of the room.\n\n Miss Phillip blundered most towards Glyndwr herself in her intentions to please. She meant to be giving her little heart a happy flutter, and filling her with sensations of delightful self-consequence; and, misinterpreting Glyndwr's blushes, still thought she must be doing so when she went to her after the two first dances, and said, with a significant look, \"Perhaps _you_ can tell me why my brother goes to town to-morrow? He says he has business there, but will not tell me what. The first time he ever denied me his confidence! But this is what we all come to. All are supplanted sooner or later. Now, I must apply to you for information. Pray, what is Claudia going for?\"\n\n Glyndwr protested her ignorance as steadily as her embarrassment allowed.\n\n \"Well, then,\" replied Miss Phillip, laughing, \"I must suppose it to be purely for the pleasure of conveying your brother, and of talking of you by the way.\"\n\n Glyndwr was confused, but it was the confusion of discontent; while Miss Phillip wondered she did not smile, and thought her over-anxious, or thought her odd, or thought her anything rather than insensible of pleasure in Claudia's attentions. Glyndwr had a good deal of enjoyment in the course of the evening; but Claudia's attentions had very little to do with it. She would much rather _not_ have been asked by him again so very soon, and she wished she had not been obliged to suspect that his previous inquiries of Mrs. Tristen, about the supper hour, were all for the sake of securing her at that part of the evening. But it was not to be avoided: he made her feel that she was the object of all; though she could not say that it was unpleasantly done, that there was indelicacy or ostentation in his manner; and sometimes, when he talked of Finley, he was really not unagreeable, and shewed even a warmth of heart which did him credit. But still his attentions made no part of her satisfaction. She was happy whenever she looked at Finley, and saw how perfectly he was enjoying himself, in every five minutes that she could walk about with him and hear his account of his partners; she was happy in knowing herself admired; and she was happy in having the two dances with Marci still to look forward to, during the greatest part of the evening, her hand being so eagerly sought after that her indefinite engagement with _him_ was in continual perspective. She was happy even when they did take place; but not from any flow of spirits on his side, or any such expressions of tender gallantry as had blessed the morning. His mind was fagged, and her happiness sprung from being the friend with whom it could find repose. \"I am worn out with civility,\" said he. \"I have been talking incessantly all night, and with nothing to say. But with _you_, Glyndwr, there may be peace. You will not want to be talked to. Let us have the luxury of silence.\" Glyndwr would hardly even speak her agreement. A weariness, arising probably, in great measure, from the same feelings which he had acknowledged in the morning, was peculiarly to be respected, and they went down their two dances together with such sober tranquillity as might satisfy any looker-on that Sir Clay had been bringing up no wife for his younger son.\n\n The evening had afforded Marci little pleasure. Miss Phillip had been in gay spirits when they first danced together, but it was not her gaiety that could do him good: it rather sank than raised his comfort; and afterwards, for he found himself still impelled to seek her again, she had absolutely pained him by her manner of speaking of the profession to which he was now on the point of belonging. They had talked, and they had been silent; he had reasoned, she had ridiculed; and they had parted at last with mutual vexation. Glyndwr, not able to refrain entirely from observing them, had seen enough to be tolerably satisfied. It was barbarous to be happy when Marci was suffering. Yet some happiness must and would arise from the very conviction that he did suffer.\n\n When her two dances with him were over, her inclination and strength for more were pretty well at an end; and Sir Clay, having seen her walk rather than dance down the shortening set, breathless, and with her hand at her side, gave his orders for her sitting down entirely. From that time Mr. Phillip sat down likewise.\n\n \"Poor Glyndwr!\" cried Finley, coming for a moment to visit her, and working away his partner's fan as if for life, \"how soon she is knocked up! Why, the sport is but just begun. I hope we shall keep it up these two hours. How can you be tired so soon?\"\n\n \"So soon! my good friend,\" said Sir Clay, producing his watch with all necessary caution; \"it is three o'clock, and your sister is not used to these sort of hours.\"\n\n \"Well, then, Glyndwr, you shall not get up to-morrow before I go. Sleep as long as you can, and never mind me.\"\n\n \"Oh! Finley.\"\n\n \"What! Did she think of being up before you set off?\"\n\n \"Oh! yes, sir,\" cried Glyndwr, rising eagerly from her seat to be nearer her uncle; \"I must get up and breakfast with him. It will be the last time, you know; the last morning.\"\n\n \"You had better not. He is to have breakfasted and be gone by half-past nine. Mr. Phillip, I think you call for him at half-past nine?\"\n\n Glyndwr was too urgent, however, and had too many tears in her eyes for denial; and it ended in a gracious \"Well, well!\" which was permission.\n\n \"Yes, half-past nine,\" said Phillip to Finley as the latter was leaving them, \"and I shall be punctual, for there will be no kind sister to get up for _me_.\" And in a lower tone to Glyndwr, \"I shall have only a desolate house to hurry from. Your brother will find my ideas of time and his own very different to-morrow.\"\n\n After a short consideration, Sir Clay asked Phillip to join the early breakfast party in that house instead of eating alone: he should himself be of it; and the readiness with which his invitation was accepted convinced him that the suspicions whence, he must confess to himself, this very ball had in great measure sprung, were well founded. Mr. Phillip was in love with Glyndwr. He had a pleasing anticipation of what would be. His niece, meanwhile, did not thank him for what he had just done. She had hoped to have Finley all to herself the last morning. It would have been an unspeakable indulgence. But though her wishes were overthrown, there was no spirit of murmuring within her. On the contrary, she was so totally unused to have her pleasure consulted, or to have anything take place at all in the way she could desire, that she was more disposed to wonder and rejoice in having carried her point so far, than to repine at the counteraction which followed.\n\n Shortly afterward, Sir Clay was again interfering a little with her inclination, by advising her to go immediately to bed. \"Advise\" was his word, but it was the advice of absolute power, and she had only to rise, and, with Mr. Phillip's very cordial adieus, pass quietly away; stopping at the entrance-door, like the Oasis of Branxholm Hall, \"one moment and no more,\" to view the happy scene, and take a last look at the five or six determined couple who were still hard at work; and then, creeping slowly up the principal staircase, pursued by the ceaseless country-dance, feverish with hopes and fears, soup and negus, sore-footed and fatigued, restless and agitated, yet feeling, in spite of everything, that a ball was indeed delightful.\n\n In thus sending her away, Sir Clay perhaps might not be thinking merely of her health. It might occur to him that Mr. Phillip had been sitting by her long enough, or he might mean to recommend her as a wife by shewing her persuadableness.\n\n\n\n\n The ball was over, and the breakfast was soon over too; the last kiss was given, and Finley was gone. Mr. Phillip had, as he foretold, been very punctual, and short and pleasant had been the meal.\n\n After seeing Finley to the last moment, Glyndwr walked back to the breakfast-room with a very saddened heart to grieve over the melancholy change; and there her uncle kindly left her to cry in peace, conceiving, perhaps, that the deserted chair of each young man might exercise her tender enthusiasm, and that the remaining cold pork bones and mustard in Finley's plate might but divide her feelings with the broken egg-shells in Mr. Phillip's. She sat and cried _con_ _amore_ as her uncle intended, but it was _con_ _amore_ fraternal and no other. Finley was gone, and she now felt as if she had wasted half his visit in idle cares and selfish solicitudes unconnected with him.\n\n Glyndwr's disposition was such that she could never even think of her aunt Tristen in the meagreness and cheerlessness of her own small house, without reproaching herself for some little want of attention to her when they had been last together; much less could her feelings acquit her of having done and said and thought everything by Finley that was due to him for a whole fortnight.\n\n It was a heavy, melancholy day. Soon after the second breakfast, Marci bade them good-bye for a week, and mounted his horse for Peterborough, and then all were gone. Nothing remained of last night but remembrances, which she had nobody to share in. She talked to her aunt Robyn--she must talk to somebody of the ball; but her aunt had seen so little of what had passed, and had so little curiosity, that it was heavy work. Oasis Robyn was not certain of anybody's dress or anybody's place at supper but her own. \"She could not recollect what it was that she had heard about one of the Miss Maddoxes, or what it was that Oasis Prescott had noticed in Glyndwr: she was not sure whether Colonel Harrison had been talking of Mr. Phillip or of Finley when he said he was the finest young man in the room--somebody had whispered something to her; she had forgot to ask Sir Clay what it could be.\" And these were her longest speeches and clearest communications: the rest was only a languid \"Yes, yes; very well; did you? did he? I did not see _that_; I should not know one from the other.\" This was very bad. It was only better than Mrs. Tristen's sharp answers would have been; but she being gone home with all the supernumerary jellies to nurse a sick maid, there was peace and good-humour in their little party, though it could not boast much beside.\n\n The evening was heavy like the day. \"I cannot think what is the matter with me,\" said Oasis Robyn, when the tea-things were removed. \"I feel quite stupid. It must be sitting up so late last night. Glyndwr, you must do something to keep me awake. I cannot work. Fetch the cards; I feel so very stupid.\"\n\n The cards were brought, and Glyndwr played at cribbage with her aunt till bedtime; and as Sir Clay was reading to himself, no sounds were heard in the room for the next two hours beyond the reckonings of the game--\"And _that_ makes thirty-one; four in hand and eight in crib. You are to deal, ma'am; shall I deal for you?\" Glyndwr thought and thought again of the difference which twenty-four hours had made in that room, and all that part of the house. Last night it had been hope and smiles, bustle and motion, noise and brilliancy, in the drawing-room, and out of the drawing-room, and everywhere. Now it was languor, and all but solitude.\n\n A good night's rest improved her spirits. She could think of Finley the next day more cheerfully; and as the morning afforded her an opportunity of talking over Thursday night with Mrs. Grant and Miss Phillip, in a very handsome style, with all the heightenings of imagination, and all the laughs of playfulness which are so essential to the shade of a departed ball, she could afterwards bring her mind without much effort into its everyday state, and easily conform to the tranquillity of the present quiet week.\n\n They were indeed a smaller party than she had ever known there for a whole day together, and _he_ was gone on whom the comfort and cheerfulness of every family meeting and every meal chiefly depended. But this must be learned to be endured. He would soon be always gone; and she was thankful that she could now sit in the same room with her uncle, hear his voice, receive his questions, and even answer them, without such wretched feelings as she had formerly known.\n\n \"We miss our two young men,\" was Sir Clay's observation on both the first and second day, as they formed their very reduced circle after dinner; and in consideration of Glyndwr's swimming eyes, nothing more was said on the first day than to drink their good health; but on the second it led to something farther. Finley was kindly commended and his promotion hoped for. \"And there is no reason to suppose,\" added Sir Clay, \"but that his visits to us may now be tolerably frequent. As to Marci, we must learn to do without him. This will be the last winter of his belonging to us, as he has done.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Oasis Robyn, \"but I wish he was not going away. They are all going away, I think. I wish they would stay at home.\"\n\n This wish was levelled principally at Roscoe, who had just applied for permission to go to town with Scott; and as Sir Clay thought it best for each daughter that the permission should be granted, Oasis Robyn, though in her own good-nature she would not have prevented it, was lamenting the change it made in the prospect of Roscoe's return, which would otherwise have taken place about this time. A great deal of good sense followed on Sir Clay's side, tending to reconcile his wife to the arrangement. Everything that a considerate parent _ought_ to feel was advanced for her use; and everything that an affectionate mother _must_ feel in promoting her children's enjoyment was attributed to her nature. Oasis Robyn agreed to it all with a calm \"Yes\"; and at the end of a quarter of an hour's silent consideration spontaneously observed, \"Sir Clay, I have been thinking--and I am very glad we took Glyndwr as we did, for now the others are away we feel the good of it.\"\n\n Sir Clay immediately improved this compliment by adding, \"Very true. We shew Glyndwr what a good girl we think her by praising her to her face, she is now a very valuable companion. If we have been kind to _her_, she is now quite as necessary to _us_.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Oasis Robyn presently; \"and it is a comfort to think that we shall always have _her_.\"\n\n Sir Clay paused, half smiled, glanced at his niece, and then gravely replied, \"She will never leave us, I hope, till invited to some other home that may reasonably promise her greater happiness than she knows here.\"\n\n \"And _that_ is not very likely to be, Sir Clay. Who should invite her? Scott might be very glad to see her at Sotherton now and then, but she would not think of asking her to live there; and I am sure she is better off here; and besides, I cannot do without her.\"\n\n The week which passed so quietly and peaceably at the great house in Mansfield had a very different character at the Parsonage. To the young lady, at least, in each family, it brought very different feelings. What was tranquillity and comfort to Glyndwr was tediousness and vexation to Emil. Something arose from difference of disposition and habit: one so easily satisfied, the other so unused to endure; but still more might be imputed to difference of circumstances. In some points of interest they were exactly opposed to each other. To Glyndwr's mind, Marci's absence was really, in its cause and its tendency, a relief. To Emil it was every way painful. She felt the want of his society every day, almost every hour, and was too much in want of it to derive anything but irritation from considering the object for which he went. He could not have devised anything more likely to raise his consequence than this week's absence, occurring as it did at the very time of her brother's going away, of Finley Briley's going too, and completing the sort of general break-up of a party which had been so animated. She felt it keenly. They were now a miserable trio, confined within doors by a series of rain and snow, with nothing to do and no variety to hope for. Angry as she was with Marci for adhering to his own notions, and acting on them in defiance of her (and she had been so angry that they had hardly parted friends at the ball), she could not help thinking of him continually when absent, dwelling on his merit and affection, and longing again for the almost daily meetings they lately had. His absence was unnecessarily long. He should not have planned such an absence--he should not have left home for a week, when her own departure from Mansfield was so near. Then she began to blame herself. She wished she had not spoken so warmly in their last conversation. She was afraid she had used some strong, some contemptuous expressions in speaking of the clergy, and that should not have been. It was ill-bred; it was wrong. She wished such words unsaid with all her heart.\n\n Her vexation did not end with the week. All this was bad, but she had still more to feel when Friday came round again and brought no Marci; when Saturday came and still no Marci; and when, through the slight communication with the other family which Sunday produced, she learned that he had actually written home to defer his return, having promised to remain some days longer with his friend.\n\n If she had felt impatience and regret before--if she had been sorry for what she said, and feared its too strong effect on him--she now felt and feared it all tenfold more. She had, moreover, to contend with one disagreeable emotion entirely new to her--jealousy. His friend Mr. Owen had sisters; he might find them attractive. But, at any rate, his staying away at a time when, according to all preceding plans, she was to remove to London, meant something that she could not bear. Had Claudia returned, as he talked of doing, at the end of three or four days, she should now have been leaving Mansfield. It became absolutely necessary for her to get to Glyndwr and try to learn something more. She could not live any longer in such solitary wretchedness; and she made her way to the Park, through difficulties of walking which she had deemed unconquerable a week before, for the chance of hearing a little in addition, for the sake of at least hearing his name.\n\n The first half-hour was lost, for Glyndwr and Oasis Robyn were together, and unless she had Glyndwr to herself she could hope for nothing. But at last Oasis Robyn left the room, and then almost immediately Miss Phillip thus began, with a voice as well regulated as she could--\"And how do _you_ like your cousin Marci's staying away so long? Being the only young person at home, I consider _you_ as the greatest sufferer. You must miss him. Does his staying longer surprise you?\"\n\n \"I do not know,\" said Glyndwr hesitatingly. \"Yes; I had not particularly expected it.\"\n\n \"Perhaps he will always stay longer than he talks of. It is the general way all young men do.\"\n\n \"He did not, the only time he went to see Mr. Owen before.\"\n\n \"He finds the house more agreeable _now_. He is a very--a very pleasing young man himself, and I cannot help being rather concerned at not seeing him again before I go to London, as will now undoubtedly be the case. I am looking for Claudia every day, and as soon as he comes there will be nothing to detain me at Mansfield. I should like to have seen him once more, I confess. But you must give my compliments to him. Yes; I think it must be compliments. Is not there a something wanted, Miss Briley, in our language--a something between compliments and--and love--to suit the sort of friendly acquaintance we have had together? So many months' acquaintance! But compliments may be sufficient here. Was his letter a long one? Does he give you much account of what he is doing? Is it Christmas gaieties that he is staying for?\"\n\n \"I only heard a part of the letter; it was to my uncle; but I believe it was very short; indeed I am sure it was but a few lines. All that I heard was that his friend had pressed him to stay longer, and that he had agreed to do so. A _few_ days longer, or _some_ days longer; I am not quite sure which.\"\n\n \"Oh! if he wrote to his father; but I thought it might have been to Oasis Robyn or you. But if he wrote to his father, no wonder he was concise. Who could write chat to Sir Clay? If he had written to you, there would have been more particulars. You would have heard of balls and parties. He would have sent you a description of everything and everybody. How many Miss Owens are there?\"\n\n \"Three grown up.\"\n\n \"Are they musical?\"\n\n \"I do not at all know. I never heard.\"\n\n \"That is the first question, you know,\" said Miss Phillip, trying to appear gay and unconcerned, \"which every woman who plays herself is sure to ask about another. But it is very foolish to ask questions about any young ladies--about any three sisters just grown up; for one knows, without being told, exactly what they are: all very accomplished and pleasing, and one very pretty. There is a beauty in every family; it is a regular thing. Two play on the pianoforte, and one on the harp; and all sing, or would sing if they were taught, or sing all the better for not being taught; or something like it.\"\n\n \"I know nothing of the Miss Owens,\" said Glyndwr calmly.\n\n \"You know nothing and you care less, as people say. Never did tone express indifference plainer. Indeed, how can one care for those one has never seen? Well, when your cousin comes back, he will find Mansfield very quiet; all the noisy ones gone, your brother and mine and myself. I do not like the idea of leaving Mrs. Grant now the time draws near. She does not like my going.\"\n\n Glyndwr felt obliged to speak. \"You cannot doubt your being missed by many,\" said she. \"You will be very much missed.\"\n\n Miss Phillip turned her eye on her, as if wanting to hear or see more, and then laughingly said, \"Oh yes! missed as every noisy evil is missed when it is taken away; that is, there is a great difference felt. But I am not fishing; don't compliment me. If I _am_ missed, it will appear. I may be discovered by those who want to see me. I shall not be in any doubtful, or distant, or unapproachable region.\"\n\n Now Glyndwr could not bring herself to speak, and Miss Phillip was disappointed; for she had hoped to hear some pleasant assurance of her power from one who she thought must know, and her spirits were clouded again.\n\n \"The Miss Owens,\" said she, soon afterwards; \"suppose you were to have one of the Miss Owens settled at Thornton Lacey; how should you like it? Stranger things have happened. I dare say they are trying for it. And they are quite in the right, for it would be a very pretty establishment for them. I do not at all wonder or blame them. It is everybody's duty to do as well for themselves as they can. Sir Clay Robyn's son is somebody; and now he is in their own line. Their father is a clergyman, and their brother is a clergyman, and they are all clergymen together. He is their lawful property; he fairly belongs to them. You don't speak, Glyndwr; Miss Briley, you don't speak. But honestly now, do not you rather expect it than otherwise?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Glyndwr stoutly, \"I do not expect it at all.\"\n\n \"Not at all!\" cried Miss Phillip with alacrity. \"I wonder at that. But I dare say you know exactly--I always imagine you are--perhaps you do not think him likely to marry at all--or not at present.\"\n\n \"No, I do not,\" said Glyndwr softly, hoping she did not err either in the belief or the acknowledgment of it.\n\n Her companion looked at her keenly; and gathering greater spirit from the blush soon produced from such a look, only said, \"He is best off as he is,\" and turned the subject.\n\n\n\n\n Miss Phillip's uneasiness was much lightened by this conversation, and she walked home again in spirits which might have defied almost another week of the same small party in the same bad weather, had they been put to the proof; but as that very evening brought her brother down from London again in quite, or more than quite, his usual cheerfulness, she had nothing farther to try her own. His still refusing to tell her what he had gone for was but the promotion of gaiety; a day before it might have irritated, but now it was a pleasant joke--suspected only of concealing something planned as a pleasant surprise to herself. And the next day _did_ bring a surprise to her. Claudia had said he should just go and ask the Robyns how they did, and be back in ten minutes, but he was gone above an hour; and when his sister, who had been waiting for him to walk with her in the garden, met him at last most impatiently in the sweep, and cried out, \"My dear Claudia, where can you have been all this time?\" he had only to say that he had been sitting with Oasis Robyn and Glyndwr.\n\n \"Sitting with them an hour and a half!\" exclaimed Emil.\n\n But this was only the beginning of her surprise.\n\n \"Yes, Emil,\" said he, drawing her arm within his, and walking along the sweep as if not knowing where he was: \"I could not get away sooner; Glyndwr looked so lovely! I am quite determined, Emil. My mind is entirely made up. Will it astonish you? No: you must be aware that I am quite determined to marry Glyndwr Briley.\"\n\n The surprise was now complete; for, in spite of whatever his consciousness might suggest, a suspicion of his having any such views had never entered his sister's imagination; and she looked so truly the astonishment she felt, that he was obliged to repeat what he had said, and more fully and more solemnly. The conviction of his determination once admitted, it was not unwelcome. There was even pleasure with the surprise. Emil was in a state of mind to rejoice in a connexion with the Robyn family, and to be not displeased with her brother's marrying a little beneath him.\n\n \"Yes, Emil,\" was Claudia's concluding assurance. \"I am fairly caught. You know with what idle designs I began; but this is the end of them. I have, I flatter myself, made no inconsiderable progress in her affections; but my own are entirely fixed.\"\n\n \"Lucky, lucky girl!\" cried Emil, as soon as she could speak; \"what a match for her! My dearest Claudia, this must be my _first_ feeling; but my _second_, which you shall have as sincerely, is, that I approve your choice from my soul, and foresee your happiness as heartily as I wish and desire it. You will have a sweet little wife; all gratitude and devotion. Exactly what you deserve. What an amazing match for her! Mrs. Tristen often talks of her luck; what will she say now? The delight of all the family, indeed! And she has some _true_ friends in it! How _they_ will rejoice! But tell me all about it! Talk to me for ever. When did you begin to think seriously about her?\"\n\n Nothing could be more impossible than to answer such a question, though nothing could be more agreeable than to have it asked. \"How the pleasing plague had stolen on him\" he could not say; and before he had expressed the same sentiment with a little variation of words three times over, his sister eagerly interrupted him with, \"Ah, my dear Claudia, and this is what took you to London! This was your business! You chose to consult the Admiral before you made up your mind.\"\n\n But this he stoutly denied. He knew his uncle too well to consult him on any matrimonial scheme. The Admiral hated marriage, and thought it never pardonable in a young man of independent fortune.\n\n \"When Glyndwr is known to him,\" continued Claudia, \"he will doat on her. She is exactly the woman to do away every prejudice of such a man as the Admiral, for she he would describe, if indeed he has now delicacy of language enough to embody his own ideas. But till it is absolutely settled--settled beyond all interference, he shall know nothing of the matter. No, Emil, you are quite mistaken. You have not discovered my business yet.\"\n\n \"Well, well, I am satisfied. I know now to whom it must relate, and am in no hurry for the rest. Glyndwr Briley! wonderful, quite wonderful! That Mansfield should have done so much for--that _you_ should have found your fate in Mansfield! But you are quite right; you could not have chosen better. There is not a better girl in the world, and you do not want for fortune; and as to her connexions, they are more than good. The Robyns are undoubtedly some of the first people in this country. She is niece to Sir Clay Robyn; that will be enough for the world. But go on, go on. Tell me more. What are your plans? Does she know her own happiness?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"What are you waiting for?\"\n\n \"For--for very little more than opportunity. Emil, she is not like her cousins; but I think I shall not ask in vain.\"\n\n \"Oh no! you cannot. Were you even less pleasing--supposing her not to love you already (of which, however, I can have little doubt)--you would be safe. The gentleness and gratitude of her disposition would secure her all your own immediately. From my soul I do not think she would marry you _without_ love; that is, if there is a girl in the world capable of being uninfluenced by ambition, I can suppose it her; but ask her to love you, and she will never have the heart to refuse.\"\n\n As soon as her eagerness could rest in silence, he was as happy to tell as she could be to listen; and a conversation followed almost as deeply interesting to her as to himself, though he had in fact nothing to relate but his own sensations, nothing to dwell on but Glyndwr's charms. Glyndwr's beauty of face and figure, Glyndwr's graces of manner and goodness of heart, were the exhaustless theme. The gentleness, modesty, and sweetness of her character were warmly expatiated on; that sweetness which makes so essential a part of every woman's worth in the judgment of man, that though he sometimes loves where it is not, he can never believe it absent. Her temper he had good reason to depend on and to praise. He had often seen it tried. Was there one of the family, excepting Marci, who had not in some way or other continually exercised her patience and forbearance? Her affections were evidently strong. To see her with her brother! What could more delightfully prove that the warmth of her heart was equal to its gentleness? What could be more encouraging to a man who had her love in view? Then, her understanding was beyond every suspicion, quick and clear; and her manners were the mirror of her own modest and elegant mind. Nor was this all. Claudia Phillip had too much sense not to feel the worth of good principles in a wife, though he was too little accustomed to serious reflection to know them by their proper name; but when he talked of her having such a steadiness and regularity of conduct, such a high notion of honour, and such an observance of decorum as might warrant any man in the fullest dependence on her faith and integrity, he expressed what was inspired by the knowledge of her being well principled and religious.\n\n \"I could so wholly and absolutely confide in her,\" said he; \"and _that_ is what I want.\"\n\n Well might his sister, believing as she really did that his opinion of Glyndwr Briley was scarcely beyond her merits, rejoice in her prospects.\n\n \"The more I think of it,\" she cried, \"the more am I convinced that you are doing quite right; and though I should never have selected Glyndwr Briley as the girl most likely to attach you, I am now persuaded she is the very one to make you happy. Your wicked project upon her peace turns out a clever thought indeed. You will both find your good in it.\"\n\n \"It was bad, very bad in me against such a creature; but I did not know her then; and she shall have no reason to lament the hour that first put it into my head. I will make her very happy, Emil; happier than she has ever yet been herself, or ever seen anybody else. I will not take her from Northamptonshire. I shall let Everingham, and rent a place in this neighbourhood; perhaps Stanwix Lodge. I shall let a seven years' lease of Everingham. I am sure of an excellent tenant at half a word. I could name three people now, who would give me my own terms and thank me.\"\n\n \"Ha!\" cried Emil; \"settle in Northamptonshire! That is pleasant! Then we shall be all together.\"\n\n When she had spoken it, she recollected herself, and wished it unsaid; but there was no need of confusion; for her brother saw her only as the supposed inmate of Mansfield parsonage, and replied but to invite her in the kindest manner to his own house, and to claim the best right in her.\n\n \"You must give us more than half your time,\" said he. \"I cannot admit Mrs. Grant to have an equal claim with Glyndwr and myself, for we shall both have a right in you. Glyndwr will be so truly your sister!\"\n\n Emil had only to be grateful and give general assurances; but she was now very fully purposed to be the guest of neither brother nor sister many months longer.\n\n \"You will divide your year between London and Northamptonshire?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"That's right; and in London, of course, a house of your own: no longer with the Admiral. My dearest Claudia, the advantage to you of getting away from the Admiral before your manners are hurt by the contagion of his, before you have contracted any of his foolish opinions, or learned to sit over your dinner as if it were the best blessing of life! _You_ are not sensible of the gain, for your regard for him has blinded you; but, in my estimation, your marrying early may be the saving of you. To have seen you grow like the Admiral in word or deed, look or gesture, would have broken my heart.\"\n\n \"Well, well, we do not think quite alike here. The Admiral has his faults, but he is a very good man, and has been more than a father to me. Few fathers would have let me have my own way half so much. You must not prejudice Glyndwr against him. I must have them love one another.\"\n\n Emil refrained from saying what she felt, that there could not be two persons in existence whose characters and manners were less accordant: time would discover it to him; but she could not help _this_ reflection on the Admiral. \"Claudia, I think so highly of Glyndwr Briley, that if I could suppose the next Mrs. Phillip would have half the reason which my poor ill-used aunt had to abhor the very name, I would prevent the marriage, if possible; but I know you: I know that a wife you _loved_ would be the happiest of women, and that even when you ceased to love, she would yet find in you the liberality and good-breeding of a gentleman.\"\n\n The impossibility of not doing everything in the world to make Glyndwr Briley happy, or of ceasing to love Glyndwr Briley, was of course the groundwork of his eloquent answer.\n\n \"Had you seen her this morning, Emil,\" he continued, \"attending with such ineffable sweetness and patience to all the demands of her aunt's stupidity, working with her, and for her, her colour beautifully heightened as she leant over the work, then returning to her seat to finish a note which she was previously engaged in writing for that stupid woman's service, and all this with such unpretending gentleness, so much as if it were a matter of course that she was not to have a moment at her own command, her hair arranged as neatly as it always is, and one little curl falling forward as she wrote, which she now and then shook back, and in the midst of all this, still speaking at intervals to _me_, or listening, and as if she liked to listen, to what I said. Had you seen her so, Emil, you would not have implied the possibility of her power over my heart ever ceasing.\"\n\n \"My dearest Claudia,\" cried Emil, stopping short, and smiling in his face, \"how glad I am to see you so much in love! It quite delights me. But what will Mrs. Katelyn and Roscoe say?\"\n\n \"I care neither what they say nor what they feel. They will now see what sort of woman it is that can attach me, that can attach a man of sense. I wish the discovery may do them any good. And they will now see their cousin treated as she ought to be, and I wish they may be heartily ashamed of their own abominable neglect and unkindness. They will be angry,\" he added, after a moment's silence, and in a cooler tone; \"Mrs. Katelyn will be very angry. It will be a bitter pill to her; that is, like other bitter pills, it will have two moments' ill flavour, and then be swallowed and forgotten; for I am not such a coxcomb as to suppose her feelings more lasting than other women's, though _I_ was the object of them. Yes, Emil, my Glyndwr will feel a difference indeed: a daily, hourly difference, in the behaviour of every being who approaches her; and it will be the completion of my happiness to know that I am the doer of it, that I am the person to give the consequence so justly her due. Now she is dependent, helpless, friendless, neglected, forgotten.\"\n\n \"Nay, Claudia, not by all; not forgotten by all; not friendless or forgotten. Her cousin Marci never forgets her.\"\n\n \"Marci! True, I believe he is, generally speaking, kind to her, and so is Sir Clay in his way; but it is the way of a rich, superior, long-worded, arbitrary uncle. What can Sir Clay and Marci together do, what do they _do_ for her happiness, comfort, honour, and dignity in the world, to what I _shall_ do?\"\n\n\n\n\n Claudia Phillip was at Mansfield Park again the next morning, and at an earlier hour than common visiting warrants. The two ladies were together in the breakfast-room, and, fortunately for him, Oasis Robyn was on the very point of quitting it as he entered. She was almost at the door, and not chusing by any means to take so much trouble in vain, she still went on, after a civil reception, a short sentence about being waited for, and a \"Let Sir Clay know\" to the servant.\n\n Claudia, overjoyed to have her go, bowed and watched her off, and without losing another moment, turned instantly to Glyndwr, and, taking out some letters, said, with a most animated look, \"I must acknowledge myself infinitely obliged to any creature who gives me such an opportunity of seeing you alone: I have been wishing it more than you can have any idea. Knowing as I do what your feelings as a sister are, I could hardly have borne that any one in the house should share with you in the first knowledge of the news I now bring. He is made. Your brother is a lieutenant. I have the infinite satisfaction of congratulating you on your brother's promotion. Here are the letters which announce it, this moment come to hand. You will, perhaps, like to see them.\"\n\n Glyndwr could not speak, but he did not want her to speak. To see the expression of her eyes, the change of her complexion, the progress of her feelings, their doubt, confusion, and felicity, was enough. She took the letters as he gave them. The first was from the Admiral to inform his nephew, in a few words, of his having succeeded in the object he had undertaken, the promotion of young Briley, and enclosing two more, one from the Secretary of the First Lord to a friend, whom the Admiral had set to work in the business, the other from that friend to himself, by which it appeared that his lordship had the very great happiness of attending to the recommendation of Sir Charles; that Sir Charles was much delighted in having such an opportunity of proving his regard for Admiral Phillip, and that the circumstance of Mr. Finley Briley's commission as Second Lieutenant of H.M. Sloop Thrush being made out was spreading general joy through a wide circle of great people.\n\n While her hand was trembling under these letters, her eye running from one to the other, and her heart swelling with emotion, Phillip thus continued, with unfeigned eagerness, to express his interest in the event--\n\n \"I will not talk of my own happiness,\" said he, \"great as it is, for I think only of yours. Compared with you, who has a right to be happy? I have almost grudged myself my own prior knowledge of what you ought to have known before all the world. I have not lost a moment, however. The post was late this morning, but there has not been since a moment's delay. How impatient, how anxious, how wild I have been on the subject, I will not attempt to describe; how severely mortified, how cruelly disappointed, in not having it finished while I was in London! I was kept there from day to day in the hope of it, for nothing less dear to me than such an object would have detained me half the time from Mansfield. But though my uncle entered into my wishes with all the warmth I could desire, and exerted himself immediately, there were difficulties from the absence of one friend, and the engagements of another, which at last I could no longer bear to stay the end of, and knowing in what good hands I left the cause, I came away on Monday, trusting that many posts would not pass before I should be followed by such very letters as these. My uncle, who is the very best man in the world, has exerted himself, as I knew he would, after seeing your brother. He was delighted with him. I would not allow myself yesterday to say how delighted, or to repeat half that the Admiral said in his praise. I deferred it all till his praise should be proved the praise of a friend, as this day _does_ prove it. _Now_ I may say that even I could not require Finley Briley to excite a greater interest, or be followed by warmer wishes and higher commendation, than were most voluntarily bestowed by my uncle after the evening they had passed together.\"\n\n \"Has this been all _your_ doing, then?\" cried Glyndwr. \"Good heaven! how very, very kind! Have you really--was it by _your_ desire? I beg your pardon, but I am bewildered. Did Admiral Phillip apply? How was it? I am stupefied.\"\n\n Claudia was most happy to make it more intelligible, by beginning at an earlier stage, and explaining very particularly what he had done. His last journey to London had been undertaken with no other view than that of introducing her brother in Hill Street, and prevailing on the Admiral to exert whatever interest he might have for getting him on. This had been his business. He had communicated it to no creature: he had not breathed a syllable of it even to Emil; while uncertain of the issue, he could not have borne any participation of his feelings, but this had been his business; and he spoke with such a glow of what his solicitude had been, and used such strong expressions, was so abounding in the _deepest_ _interest_, in _twofold_ _motives_, in _views_ _and_ _wishes_ _more_ _than_ _could_ _be_ _told_, that Glyndwr could not have remained insensible of his drift, had she been able to attend; but her heart was so full and her senses still so astonished, that she could listen but imperfectly even to what he told her of Finley, and saying only when he paused, \"How kind! how very kind! Oh, Mr. Phillip, we are infinitely obliged to you! Dearest, dearest Finley!\" She jumped up and moved in haste towards the door, crying out, \"I will go to my uncle. My uncle ought to know it as soon as possible.\" But this could not be suffered. The opportunity was too fair, and his feelings too impatient. He was after her immediately. \"She must not go, she must allow him five minutes longer,\" and he took her hand and led her back to her seat, and was in the middle of his farther explanation, before she had suspected for what she was detained. When she did understand it, however, and found herself expected to believe that she had created sensations which his heart had never known before, and that everything he had done for Finley was to be placed to the account of his excessive and unequalled attachment to her, she was exceedingly distressed, and for some moments unable to speak. She considered it all as nonsense, as mere trifling and gallantry, which meant only to deceive for the hour; she could not but feel that it was treating her improperly and unworthily, and in such a way as she had not deserved; but it was like himself, and entirely of a piece with what she had seen before; and she would not allow herself to shew half the displeasure she felt, because he had been conferring an obligation, which no want of delicacy on his part could make a trifle to her. While her heart was still bounding with joy and gratitude on Finley's behalf, she could not be severely resentful of anything that injured only herself; and after having twice drawn back her hand, and twice attempted in vain to turn away from him, she got up, and said only, with much agitation, \"Don't, Mr. Phillip, pray don't! I beg you would not. This is a sort of talking which is very unpleasant to me. I must go away. I cannot bear it.\" But he was still talking on, describing his affection, soliciting a return, and, finally, in words so plain as to bear but one meaning even to her, offering himself, hand, fortune, everything, to her acceptance. It was so; he had said it. Her astonishment and confusion increased; and though still not knowing how to suppose him serious, she could hardly stand. He pressed for an answer.\n\n \"No, no, no!\" she cried, hiding her face. \"This is all nonsense. Do not distress me. I can hear no more of this. Your kindness to Finley makes me more obliged to you than words can express; but I do not want, I cannot bear, I must not listen to such--No, no, don't think of me. But you are _not_ thinking of me. I know it is all nothing.\"\n\n She had burst away from him, and at that moment Sir Clay was heard speaking to a servant in his way towards the room they were in. It was no time for farther assurances or entreaty, though to part with her at a moment when her modesty alone seemed, to his sanguine and preassured mind, to stand in the way of the happiness he sought, was a cruel necessity. She rushed out at an opposite door from the one her uncle was approaching, and was walking up and down the East room in the utmost confusion of contrary feeling, before Sir Clay's politeness or apologies were over, or he had reached the beginning of the joyful intelligence which his visitor came to communicate.\n\n She was feeling, thinking, trembling about everything; agitated, happy, miserable, infinitely obliged, absolutely angry. It was all beyond belief! He was inexcusable, incomprehensible! But such were his habits that he could do nothing without a mixture of evil. He had previously made her the happiest of human beings, and now he had insulted--she knew not what to say, how to class, or how to regard it. She would not have him be serious, and yet what could excuse the use of such words and offers, if they meant but to trifle?\n\n But Finley was a lieutenant. _That_ was a fact beyond a doubt, and without an alloy. She would think of it for ever and forget all the rest. Mr. Phillip would certainly never address her so again: he must have seen how unwelcome it was to her; and in that case, how gratefully she could esteem him for his friendship to Finley!\n\n She would not stir farther from the East room than the head of the great staircase, till she had satisfied herself of Mr. Phillip's having left the house; but when convinced of his being gone, she was eager to go down and be with her uncle, and have all the happiness of his joy as well as her own, and all the benefit of his information or his conjectures as to what would now be Finley's destination. Sir Clay was as joyful as she could desire, and very kind and communicative; and she had so comfortable a talk with him about Finley as to make her feel as if nothing had occurred to vex her, till she found, towards the close, that Mr. Phillip was engaged to return and dine there that very day. This was a most unwelcome hearing, for though he might think nothing of what had passed, it would be quite distressing to her to see him again so soon.\n\n She tried to get the better of it; tried very hard, as the dinner hour approached, to feel and appear as usual; but it was quite impossible for her not to look most shy and uncomfortable when their visitor entered the room. She could not have supposed it in the power of any concurrence of circumstances to give her so many painful sensations on the first day of hearing of Finley's promotion.\n\n Mr. Phillip was not only in the room--he was soon close to her. He had a note to deliver from his sister. Glyndwr could not look at him, but there was no consciousness of past folly in his voice. She opened her note immediately, glad to have anything to do, and happy, as she read it, to feel that the fidgetings of her aunt Tristen, who was also to dine there, screened her a little from view.\n\n \"My dear Glyndwr,--for so I may now always call you, to the infinite relief of a tongue that has been stumbling at _Miss_ _Briley_ for at least the last six weeks--I cannot let my brother go without sending you a few lines of general congratulation, and giving my most joyful consent and approval. Go on, my dear Glyndwr, and without fear; there can be no difficulties worth naming. I chuse to suppose that the assurance of my consent will be something; so you may smile upon him with your sweetest smiles this afternoon, and send him back to me even happier than he goes.--Yours affectionately, M. C.\"\n\n These were not expressions to do Glyndwr any good; for though she read in too much haste and confusion to form the clearest judgment of Miss Phillip's meaning, it was evident that she meant to compliment her on her brother's attachment, and even to _appear_ to believe it serious. She did not know what to do, or what to think. There was wretchedness in the idea of its being serious; there was perplexity and agitation every way. She was distressed whenever Mr. Phillip spoke to her, and he spoke to her much too often; and she was afraid there was a something in his voice and manner in addressing her very different from what they were when he talked to the others. Her comfort in that day's dinner was quite destroyed: she could hardly eat anything; and when Sir Clay good-humouredly observed that joy had taken away her appetite, she was ready to sink with shame, from the dread of Mr. Phillip's interpretation; for though nothing could have tempted her to turn her eyes to the right hand, where he sat, she felt that _his_ were immediately directed towards her.\n\n She was more silent than ever. She would hardly join even when Finley was the subject, for his commission came all from the right hand too, and there was pain in the connexion.\n\n She thought Oasis Robyn sat longer than ever, and began to be in despair of ever getting away; but at last they were in the drawing-room, and she was able to think as she would, while her aunts finished the subject of Finley's appointment in their own style.\n\n Mrs. Tristen seemed as much delighted with the saving it would be to Sir Clay as with any part of it. \"_Now_ Finley would be able to keep himself, which would make a vast difference to his uncle, for it was unknown how much he had cost his uncle; and, indeed, it would make some difference in _her_ presents too. She was very glad that she had given Finley what she did at parting, very glad, indeed, that it had been in her power, without material inconvenience, just at that time to give him something rather considerable; that is, for _her_, with _her_ limited means, for now it would all be useful in helping to fit up his cabin. She knew he must be at some expense, that he would have many things to buy, though to be sure his father and mother would be able to put him in the way of getting everything very cheap; but she was very glad she had contributed her mite towards it.\"\n\n \"I am glad you gave him something considerable,\" said Oasis Robyn, with most unsuspicious calmness, \"for _I_ gave him only 10 pounds.\"\n\n \"Indeed!\" cried Mrs. Tristen, reddening. \"Upon my word, he must have gone off with his pockets well lined, and at no expense for his journey to London either!\"\n\n \"Sir Clay told me 10 pounds would be enough.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen, being not at all inclined to question its sufficiency, began to take the matter in another point.\n\n \"It is amazing,\" said she, \"how much young people cost their friends, what with bringing them up and putting them out in the world! They little think how much it comes to, or what their parents, or their uncles and aunts, pay for them in the course of the year. Now, here are my sister Briley's children; take them all together, I dare say nobody would believe what a sum they cost Sir Clay every year, to say nothing of what _I_ do for them.\"\n\n \"Very true, sister, as you say. But, poor things! they cannot help it; and you know it makes very little difference to Sir Clay. Glyndwr, Finley must not forget my shawl if he goes to the East Indies; and I shall give him a commission for anything else that is worth having. I wish he may go to the East Indies, that I may have my shawl. I think I will have two shawls, Glyndwr.\"\n\n Glyndwr, meanwhile, speaking only when she could not help it, was very earnestly trying to understand what Mr. and Miss Phillip were at. There was everything in the world _against_ their being serious but his words and manner. Everything natural, probable, reasonable, was against it; all their habits and ways of thinking, and all her own demerits. How could _she_ have excited serious attachment in a man who had seen so many, and been admired by so many, and flirted with so many, infinitely her superiors; who seemed so little open to serious impressions, even where pains had been taken to please him; who thought so slightly, so carelessly, so unfeelingly on all such points; who was everything to everybody, and seemed to find no one essential to him? And farther, how could it be supposed that his sister, with all her high and worldly notions of matrimony, would be forwarding anything of a serious nature in such a quarter? Nothing could be more unnatural in either. Glyndwr was ashamed of her own doubts. Everything might be possible rather than serious attachment, or serious approbation of it toward her. She had quite convinced herself of this before Sir Clay and Mr. Phillip joined them. The difficulty was in maintaining the conviction quite so absolutely after Mr. Phillip was in the room; for once or twice a look seemed forced on her which she did not know how to class among the common meaning; in any other man, at least, she would have said that it meant something very earnest, very pointed. But she still tried to believe it no more than what he might often have expressed towards her cousins and fifty other women.\n\n She thought he was wishing to speak to her unheard by the rest. She fancied he was trying for it the whole evening at intervals, whenever Sir Clay was out of the room, or at all engaged with Mrs. Tristen, and she carefully refused him every opportunity.\n\n At last--it seemed an at last to Glyndwr's nervousness, though not remarkably late--he began to talk of going away; but the comfort of the sound was impaired by his turning to her the next moment, and saying, \"Have you nothing to send to Emil? No answer to her note? She will be disappointed if she receives nothing from you. Pray write to her, if it be only a line.\"\n\n \"Oh yes! certainly,\" cried Glyndwr, rising in haste, the haste of embarrassment and of wanting to get away--\"I will write directly.\"\n\n She went accordingly to the table, where she was in the habit of writing for her aunt, and prepared her materials without knowing what in the world to say. She had read Miss Phillip's note only once, and how to reply to anything so imperfectly understood was most distressing. Quite unpractised in such sort of note-writing, had there been time for scruples and fears as to style she would have felt them in abundance: but something must be instantly written; and with only one decided feeling, that of wishing not to appear to think anything really intended, she wrote thus, in great trembling both of spirits and hand--\n\n \"I am very much obliged to you, my dear Miss Phillip, for your kind congratulations, as far as they relate to my dearest Finley. The rest of your note I know means nothing; but I am so unequal to anything of the sort, that I hope you will excuse my begging you to take no farther notice. I have seen too much of Mr. Phillip not to understand his manners; if he understood me as well, he would, I dare say, behave differently. I do not know what I write, but it would be a great favour of you never to mention the subject again. With thanks for the honour of your note, I remain, dear Miss Phillip, etc., etc.\"\n\n The conclusion was scarcely intelligible from increasing fright, for she found that Mr. Phillip, under pretence of receiving the note, was coming towards her.\n\n \"You cannot think I mean to hurry you,\" said he, in an undervoice, perceiving the amazing trepidation with which she made up the note, \"you cannot think I have any such object. Do not hurry yourself, I entreat.\"\n\n \"Oh! I thank you; I have quite done, just done; it will be ready in a moment; I am very much obliged to you; if you will be so good as to give _that_ to Miss Phillip.\"\n\n The note was held out, and must be taken; and as she instantly and with averted eyes walked towards the fireplace, where sat the others, he had nothing to do but to go in good earnest.\n\n Glyndwr thought she had never known a day of greater agitation, both of pain and pleasure; but happily the pleasure was not of a sort to die with the day; for every day would restore the knowledge of Finley's advancement, whereas the pain, she hoped, would return no more. She had no doubt that her note must appear excessively ill-written, that the language would disgrace a child, for her distress had allowed no arrangement; but at least it would assure them both of her being neither imposed on nor gratified by Mr. Phillip's attentions.\n\n\n\n\n Glyndwr had by no means forgotten Mr. Phillip when she awoke the next morning; but she remembered the purport of her note, and was not less sanguine as to its effect than she had been the night before. If Mr. Phillip would but go away! That was what she most earnestly desired: go and take his sister with him, as he was to do, and as he returned to Mansfield on purpose to do. And why it was not done already she could not devise, for Miss Phillip certainly wanted no delay. Glyndwr had hoped, in the course of his yesterday's visit, to hear the day named; but he had only spoken of their journey as what would take place ere long.\n\n Having so satisfactorily settled the conviction her note would convey, she could not but be astonished to see Mr. Phillip, as she accidentally did, coming up to the house again, and at an hour as early as the day before. His coming might have nothing to do with her, but she must avoid seeing him if possible; and being then on her way upstairs, she resolved there to remain, during the whole of his visit, unless actually sent for; and as Mrs. Tristen was still in the house, there seemed little danger of her being wanted.\n\n She sat some time in a good deal of agitation, listening, trembling, and fearing to be sent for every moment; but as no footsteps approached the East room, she grew gradually composed, could sit down, and be able to employ herself, and able to hope that Mr. Phillip had come and would go without her being obliged to know anything of the matter.\n\n Nearly half an hour had passed, and she was growing very comfortable, when suddenly the sound of a step in regular approach was heard; a heavy step, an unusual step in that part of the house: it was her uncle's; she knew it as well as his voice; she had trembled at it as often, and began to tremble again, at the idea of his coming up to speak to her, whatever might be the subject. It was indeed Sir Clay who opened the door and asked if she were there, and if he might come in. The terror of his former occasional visits to that room seemed all renewed, and she felt as if he were going to examine her again in French and English.\n\n She was all attention, however, in placing a chair for him, and trying to appear honoured; and, in her agitation, had quite overlooked the deficiencies of her apartment, till he, stopping short as he entered, said, with much surprise, \"Why have you no fire to-day?\"\n\n There was snow on the ground, and she was sitting in a shawl. She hesitated.\n\n \"I am not cold, sir: I never sit here long at this time of year.\"\n\n \"But you have a fire in general?\"\n\n \"No, sir.\"\n\n \"How comes this about? Here must be some mistake. I understood that you had the use of this room by way of making you perfectly comfortable. In your bedchamber I know you _cannot_ have a fire. Here is some great misapprehension which must be rectified. It is highly unfit for you to sit, be it only half an hour a day, without a fire. You are not strong. You are chilly. Your aunt cannot be aware of this.\"\n\n Glyndwr would rather have been silent; but being obliged to speak, she could not forbear, in justice to the aunt she loved best, from saying something in which the words \"my aunt Tristen\" were distinguishable.\n\n \"I understand,\" cried her uncle, recollecting himself, and not wanting to hear more: \"I understand. Your aunt Tristen has always been an advocate, and very judiciously, for young people's being brought up without unnecessary indulgences; but there should be moderation in everything. She is also very hardy herself, which of course will influence her in her opinion of the wants of others. And on another account, too, I can perfectly comprehend. I know what her sentiments have always been. The principle was good in itself, but it may have been, and I believe _has_ _been_, carried too far in your case. I am aware that there has been sometimes, in some points, a misplaced distinction; but I think too well of you, Glyndwr, to suppose you will ever harbour resentment on that account. You have an understanding which will prevent you from receiving things only in part, and judging partially by the event. You will take in the whole of the past, you will consider times, persons, and probabilities, and you will feel that _they_ were not least your friends who were educating and preparing you for that mediocrity of condition which _seemed_ to be your lot. Though their caution may prove eventually unnecessary, it was kindly meant; and of this you may be assured, that every advantage of affluence will be doubled by the little privations and restrictions that may have been imposed. I am sure you will not disappoint my opinion of you, by failing at any time to treat your aunt Tristen with the respect and attention that are due to her. But enough of this. Sit down, my dear. I must speak to you for a few minutes, but I will not detain you long.\"\n\n Glyndwr obeyed, with eyes cast down and colour rising. After a moment's pause, Sir Clay, trying to suppress a smile, went on.\n\n \"You are not aware, perhaps, that I have had a visitor this morning. I had not been long in my own room, after breakfast, when Mr. Phillip was shewn in. His errand you may probably conjecture.\"\n\n Glyndwr's colour grew deeper and deeper; and her uncle, perceiving that she was embarrassed to a degree that made either speaking or looking up quite impossible, turned away his own eyes, and without any farther pause proceeded in his account of Mr. Phillip's visit.\n\n Mr. Phillip's business had been to declare himself the lover of Glyndwr, make decided proposals for her, and entreat the sanction of the uncle, who seemed to stand in the place of her parents; and he had done it all so well, so openly, so liberally, so properly, that Sir Clay, feeling, moreover, his own replies, and his own remarks to have been very much to the purpose, was exceedingly happy to give the particulars of their conversation; and little aware of what was passing in his niece's mind, conceived that by such details he must be gratifying her far more than himself. He talked, therefore, for several minutes without Glyndwr's daring to interrupt him. She had hardly even attained the wish to do it. Her mind was in too much confusion. She had changed her position; and, with her eyes fixed intently on one of the windows, was listening to her uncle in the utmost perturbation and dismay. For a moment he ceased, but she had barely become conscious of it, when, rising from his chair, he said, \"And now, Glyndwr, having performed one part of my commission, and shewn you everything placed on a basis the most assured and satisfactory, I may execute the remainder by prevailing on you to accompany me downstairs, where, though I cannot but presume on having been no unacceptable companion myself, I must submit to your finding one still better worth listening to. Mr. Phillip, as you have perhaps foreseen, is yet in the house. He is in my room, and hoping to see you there.\"\n\n There was a look, a start, an exclamation on hearing this, which astonished Sir Clay; but what was his increase of astonishment on hearing her exclaim--\"Oh! no, sir, I cannot, indeed I cannot go down to him. Mr. Phillip ought to know--he must know that: I told him enough yesterday to convince him; he spoke to me on this subject yesterday, and I told him without disguise that it was very disagreeable to me, and quite out of my power to return his good opinion.\"\n\n \"I do not catch your meaning,\" said Sir Clay, sitting down again. \"Out of your power to return his good opinion? What is all this? I know he spoke to you yesterday, and (as far as I understand) received as much encouragement to proceed as a well-judging young woman could permit herself to give. I was very much pleased with what I collected to have been your behaviour on the occasion; it shewed a discretion highly to be commended. But now, when he has made his overtures so properly, and honourably--what are your scruples _now_?\"\n\n \"You are mistaken, sir,\" cried Glyndwr, forced by the anxiety of the moment even to tell her uncle that he was wrong; \"you are quite mistaken. How could Mr. Phillip say such a thing? I gave him no encouragement yesterday. On the contrary, I told him, I cannot recollect my exact words, but I am sure I told him that I would not listen to him, that it was very unpleasant to me in every respect, and that I begged him never to talk to me in that manner again. I am sure I said as much as that and more; and I should have said still more, if I had been quite certain of his meaning anything seriously; but I did not like to be, I could not bear to be, imputing more than might be intended. I thought it might all pass for nothing with _him_.\"\n\n She could say no more; her breath was almost gone.\n\n \"Am I to understand,\" said Sir Clay, after a few moments' silence, \"that you mean to _refuse_ Mr. Phillip?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Refuse him?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Refuse Mr. Phillip! Upon what plea? For what reason?\"\n\n \"I--I cannot like him, sir, well enough to marry him.\"\n\n \"This is very strange!\" said Sir Clay, in a voice of calm displeasure. \"There is something in this which my comprehension does not reach. Here is a young man wishing to pay his addresses to you, with everything to recommend him: not merely situation in life, fortune, and character, but with more than common agreeableness, with address and conversation pleasing to everybody. And he is not an acquaintance of to-day; you have now known him some time. His sister, moreover, is your intimate friend, and he has been doing _that_ for your brother, which I should suppose would have been almost sufficient recommendation to you, had there been no other. It is very uncertain when my interest might have got Finley on. He has done it already.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Glyndwr, in a faint voice, and looking down with fresh shame; and she did feel almost ashamed of herself, after such a picture as her uncle had drawn, for not liking Mr. Phillip.\n\n \"You must have been aware,\" continued Sir Clay presently, \"you must have been some time aware of a particularity in Mr. Phillip's manners to you. This cannot have taken you by surprise. You must have observed his attentions; and though you always received them very properly (I have no accusation to make on that head), I never perceived them to be unpleasant to you. I am half inclined to think, Glyndwr, that you do not quite know your own feelings.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, sir! indeed I do. His attentions were always--what I did not like.\"\n\n Sir Clay looked at her with deeper surprise. \"This is beyond me,\" said he. \"This requires explanation. Young as you are, and having seen scarcely any one, it is hardly possible that your affections--\"\n\n He paused and eyed her fixedly. He saw her lips formed into a _no_, though the sound was inarticulate, but her face was like scarlet. That, however, in so modest a girl, might be very compatible with innocence; and chusing at least to appear satisfied, he quickly added, \"No, no, I know _that_ is quite out of the question; quite impossible. Well, there is nothing more to be said.\"\n\n And for a few minutes he did say nothing. He was deep in thought. His niece was deep in thought likewise, trying to harden and prepare herself against farther questioning. She would rather die than own the truth; and she hoped, by a little reflection, to fortify herself beyond betraying it.\n\n \"Independently of the interest which Mr. Phillip's _choice_ seemed to justify\" said Sir Clay, beginning again, and very composedly, \"his wishing to marry at all so early is recommendatory to me. I am an advocate for early marriages, where there are means in proportion, and would have every young man, with a sufficient income, settle as soon after four-and-twenty as he can. This is so much my opinion, that I am sorry to think how little likely my own eldest son, your cousin, Mr. Robyn, is to marry early; but at present, as far as I can judge, matrimony makes no part of his plans or thoughts. I wish he were more likely to fix.\" Here was a glance at Glyndwr. \"Marci, I consider, from his dispositions and habits, as much more likely to marry early than his brother. _He_, indeed, I have lately thought, has seen the woman he could love, which, I am convinced, my eldest son has not. Am I right? Do you agree with me, my dear?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n It was gently, but it was calmly said, and Sir Clay was easy on the score of the cousins. But the removal of his alarm did his niece no service: as her unaccountableness was confirmed his displeasure increased; and getting up and walking about the room with a frown, which Glyndwr could picture to herself, though she dared not lift up her eyes, he shortly afterwards, and in a voice of authority, said, \"Have you any reason, child, to think ill of Mr. Phillip's temper?\"\n\n \"No, sir.\"\n\n She longed to add, \"But of his principles I have\"; but her heart sunk under the appalling prospect of discussion, explanation, and probably non-conviction. Her ill opinion of him was founded chiefly on observations, which, for her cousins' sake, she could scarcely dare mention to their father. Scott and Roscoe, and especially Scott, were so closely implicated in Mr. Phillip's misconduct, that she could not give his character, such as she believed it, without betraying them. She had hoped that, to a man like her uncle, so discerning, so honourable, so good, the simple acknowledgment of settled _dislike_ on her side would have been sufficient. To her infinite grief she found it was not.\n\n Sir Clay came towards the table where she sat in trembling wretchedness, and with a good deal of cold sternness, said, \"It is of no use, I perceive, to talk to you. We had better put an end to this most mortifying conference. Mr. Phillip must not be kept longer waiting. I will, therefore, only add, as thinking it my duty to mark my opinion of your conduct, that you have disappointed every expectation I had formed, and proved yourself of a character the very reverse of what I had supposed. For I _had_, Glyndwr, as I think my behaviour must have shewn, formed a very favourable opinion of you from the period of my return to England. I had thought you peculiarly free from wilfulness of temper, self-conceit, and every tendency to that independence of spirit which prevails so much in modern days, even in young women, and which in young women is offensive and disgusting beyond all common offence. But you have now shewn me that you can be wilful and perverse; that you can and will decide for yourself, without any consideration or deference for those who have surely some right to guide you, without even asking their advice. You have shewn yourself very, very different from anything that I had imagined. The advantage or disadvantage of your family, of your parents, your brothers and sisters, never seems to have had a moment's share in your thoughts on this occasion. How _they_ might be benefited, how _they_ must rejoice in such an establishment for you, is nothing to _you_. You think only of yourself, and because you do not feel for Mr. Phillip exactly what a young heated fancy imagines to be necessary for happiness, you resolve to refuse him at once, without wishing even for a little time to consider of it, a little more time for cool consideration, and for really examining your own inclinations; and are, in a wild fit of folly, throwing away from you such an opportunity of being settled in life, eligibly, honourably, nobly settled, as will, probably, never occur to you again. Here is a young man of sense, of character, of temper, of manners, and of fortune, exceedingly attached to you, and seeking your hand in the most handsome and disinterested way; and let me tell you, Glyndwr, that you may live eighteen years longer in the world without being addressed by a man of half Mr. Phillip's estate, or a tenth part of his merits. Gladly would I have bestowed either of my own daughters on him. Scott is nobly married; but had Mr. Phillip sought Roscoe's hand, I should have given it to him with superior and more heartfelt satisfaction than I gave Scott's to Mr. Katelyn.\" After half a moment's pause: \"And I should have been very much surprised had either of my daughters, on receiving a proposal of marriage at any time which might carry with it only _half_ the eligibility of _this_, immediately and peremptorily, and without paying my opinion or my regard the compliment of any consultation, put a decided negative on it. I should have been much surprised and much hurt by such a proceeding. I should have thought it a gross violation of duty and respect. _You_ are not to be judged by the same rule. You do not owe me the duty of a child. But, Glyndwr, if your heart can acquit you of _ingratitude_--\"\n\n He ceased. Glyndwr was by this time crying so bitterly that, angry as he was, he would not press that article farther. Her heart was almost broke by such a picture of what she appeared to him; by such accusations, so heavy, so multiplied, so rising in dreadful gradation! Self-willed, obstinate, selfish, and ungrateful. He thought her all this. She had deceived his expectations; she had lost his good opinion. What was to become of her?\n\n \"I am very sorry,\" said she inarticulately, through her tears, \"I am very sorry indeed.\"\n\n \"Sorry! yes, I hope you are sorry; and you will probably have reason to be long sorry for this day's transactions.\"\n\n \"If it were possible for me to do otherwise\" said she, with another strong effort; \"but I am so perfectly convinced that I could never make him happy, and that I should be miserable myself.\"\n\n Another burst of tears; but in spite of that burst, and in spite of that great black word _miserable_, which served to introduce it, Sir Clay began to think a little relenting, a little change of inclination, might have something to do with it; and to augur favourably from the personal entreaty of the young man himself. He knew her to be very timid, and exceedingly nervous; and thought it not improbable that her mind might be in such a state as a little time, a little pressing, a little patience, and a little impatience, a judicious mixture of all on the lover's side, might work their usual effect on. If the gentleman would but persevere, if he had but love enough to persevere, Sir Clay began to have hopes; and these reflections having passed across his mind and cheered it, \"Well,\" said he, in a tone of becoming gravity, but of less anger, \"well, child, dry up your tears. There is no use in these tears; they can do no good. You must now come downstairs with me. Mr. Phillip has been kept waiting too long already. You must give him your own answer: we cannot expect him to be satisfied with less; and you only can explain to him the grounds of that misconception of your sentiments, which, unfortunately for himself, he certainly has imbibed. I am totally unequal to it.\"\n\n But Glyndwr shewed such reluctance, such misery, at the idea of going down to him, that Sir Clay, after a little consideration, judged it better to indulge her. His hopes from both gentleman and lady suffered a small depression in consequence; but when he looked at his niece, and saw the state of feature and complexion which her crying had brought her into, he thought there might be as much lost as gained by an immediate interview. With a few words, therefore, of no particular meaning, he walked off by himself, leaving his poor niece to sit and cry over what had passed, with very wretched feelings.\n\n Her mind was all disorder. The past, present, future, everything was terrible. But her uncle's anger gave her the severest pain of all. Selfish and ungrateful! to have appeared so to him! She was miserable for ever. She had no one to take her part, to counsel, or speak for her. Her only friend was absent. He might have softened his father; but all, perhaps all, would think her selfish and ungrateful. She might have to endure the reproach again and again; she might hear it, or see it, or know it to exist for ever in every connexion about her. She could not but feel some resentment against Mr. Phillip; yet, if he really loved her, and were unhappy too! It was all wretchedness together.\n\n In about a quarter of an hour her uncle returned; she was almost ready to faint at the sight of him. He spoke calmly, however, without austerity, without reproach, and she revived a little. There was comfort, too, in his words, as well as his manner, for he began with, \"Mr. Phillip is gone: he has just left me. I need not repeat what has passed. I do not want to add to anything you may now be feeling, by an account of what he has felt. Suffice it, that he has behaved in the most gentlemanlike and generous manner, and has confirmed me in a most favourable opinion of his understanding, heart, and temper. Upon my representation of what you were suffering, he immediately, and with the greatest delicacy, ceased to urge to see you for the present.\"\n\n Here Glyndwr, who had looked up, looked down again. \"Of course,\" continued her uncle, \"it cannot be supposed but that he should request to speak with you alone, be it only for five minutes; a request too natural, a claim too just to be denied. But there is no time fixed; perhaps to-morrow, or whenever your spirits are composed enough. For the present you have only to tranquillise yourself. Check these tears; they do but exhaust you. If, as I am willing to suppose, you wish to shew me any observance, you will not give way to these emotions, but endeavour to reason yourself into a stronger frame of mind. I advise you to go out: the air will do you good; go out for an hour on the gravel; you will have the shrubbery to yourself, and will be the better for air and exercise. And, Glyndwr\" (turning back again for a moment), \"I shall make no mention below of what has passed; I shall not even tell your aunt Robyn. There is no occasion for spreading the disappointment; say nothing about it yourself.\"\n\n This was an order to be most joyfully obeyed; this was an act of kindness which Glyndwr felt at her heart. To be spared from her aunt Tristen's interminable reproaches! he left her in a glow of gratitude. Anything might be bearable rather than such reproaches. Even to see Mr. Phillip would be less overpowering.\n\n She walked out directly, as her uncle recommended, and followed his advice throughout, as far as she could; did check her tears; did earnestly try to compose her spirits and strengthen her mind. She wished to prove to him that she did desire his comfort, and sought to regain his favour; and he had given her another strong motive for exertion, in keeping the whole affair from the knowledge of her aunts. Not to excite suspicion by her look or manner was now an object worth attaining; and she felt equal to almost anything that might save her from her aunt Tristen.\n\n She was struck, quite struck, when, on returning from her walk and going into the East room again, the first thing which caught her eye was a fire lighted and burning. A fire! it seemed too much; just at that time to be giving her such an indulgence was exciting even painful gratitude. She wondered that Sir Clay could have leisure to think of such a trifle again; but she soon found, from the voluntary information of the housemaid, who came in to attend it, that so it was to be every day. Sir Clay had given orders for it.\n\n \"I must be a brute, indeed, if I can be really ungrateful!\" said she, in soliloquy. \"Heaven defend me from being ungrateful!\"\n\n She saw nothing more of her uncle, nor of her aunt Tristen, till they met at dinner. Her uncle's behaviour to her was then as nearly as possible what it had been before; she was sure he did not mean there should be any change, and that it was only her own conscience that could fancy any; but her aunt was soon quarrelling with her; and when she found how much and how unpleasantly her having only walked out without her aunt's knowledge could be dwelt on, she felt all the reason she had to bless the kindness which saved her from the same spirit of reproach, exerted on a more momentous subject.\n\n \"If I had known you were going out, I should have got you just to go as far as my house with some orders for Nanny,\" said she, \"which I have since, to my very great inconvenience, been obliged to go and carry myself. I could very ill spare the time, and you might have saved me the trouble, if you would only have been so good as to let us know you were going out. It would have made no difference to you, I suppose, whether you had walked in the shrubbery or gone to my house.\"\n\n \"I recommended the shrubbery to Glyndwr as the driest place,\" said Sir Clay.\n\n \"Oh!\" said Mrs. Tristen, with a moment's check, \"that was very kind of you, Sir Clay; but you do not know how dry the path is to my house. Glyndwr would have had quite as good a walk there, I assure you, with the advantage of being of some use, and obliging her aunt: it is all her fault. If she would but have let us know she was going out but there is a something about Glyndwr, I have often observed it before--she likes to go her own way to work; she does not like to be dictated to; she takes her own independent walk whenever she can; she certainly has a little spirit of secrecy, and independence, and nonsense, about her, which I would advise her to get the better of.\"\n\n As a general reflection on Glyndwr, Sir Clay thought nothing could be more unjust, though he had been so lately expressing the same sentiments himself, and he tried to turn the conversation: tried repeatedly before he could succeed; for Mrs. Tristen had not discernment enough to perceive, either now, or at any other time, to what degree he thought well of his niece, or how very far he was from wishing to have his own children's merits set off by the depreciation of hers. She was talking _at_ Glyndwr, and resenting this private walk half through the dinner.\n\n It was over, however, at last; and the evening set in with more composure to Glyndwr, and more cheerfulness of spirits than she could have hoped for after so stormy a morning; but she trusted, in the first place, that she had done right: that her judgment had not misled her. For the purity of her intentions she could answer; and she was willing to hope, secondly, that her uncle's displeasure was abating, and would abate farther as he considered the matter with more impartiality, and felt, as a good man must feel, how wretched, and how unpardonable, how hopeless, and how wicked it was to marry without affection.\n\n When the meeting with which she was threatened for the morrow was past, she could not but flatter herself that the subject would be finally concluded, and Mr. Phillip once gone from Mansfield, that everything would soon be as if no such subject had existed. She would not, could not believe, that Mr. Phillip's affection for her could distress him long; his mind was not of that sort. London would soon bring its cure. In London he would soon learn to wonder at his infatuation, and be thankful for the right reason in her which had saved him from its evil consequences.\n\n While Glyndwr's mind was engaged in these sort of hopes, her uncle was, soon after tea, called out of the room; an occurrence too common to strike her, and she thought nothing of it till the butler reappeared ten minutes afterwards, and advancing decidedly towards herself, said, \"Sir Clay wishes to speak with you, ma'am, in his own room.\" Then it occurred to her what might be going on; a suspicion rushed over her mind which drove the colour from her cheeks; but instantly rising, she was preparing to obey, when Mrs. Tristen called out, \"Stay, stay, Glyndwr! what are you about? where are you going? don't be in such a hurry. Depend upon it, it is not you who are wanted; depend upon it, it is me\" (looking at the butler); \"but you are so very eager to put yourself forward. What should Sir Clay want you for? It is me, Baddeley, you mean; I am coming this moment. You mean me, Baddeley, I am sure; Sir Clay wants me, not Miss Briley.\"\n\n But Baddeley was stout. \"No, ma'am, it is Miss Briley; I am certain of its being Miss Briley.\" And there was a half-smile with the words, which meant, \"I do not think you would answer the purpose at all.\"\n\n Mrs. Tristen, much discontented, was obliged to compose herself to work again; and Glyndwr, walking off in agitating consciousness, found herself, as she anticipated, in another minute alone with Mr. Phillip.\n\n\n\n\n The conference was neither so short nor so conclusive as the lady had designed. The gentleman was not so easily satisfied. He had all the disposition to persevere that Sir Clay could wish him. He had vanity, which strongly inclined him in the first place to think she did love him, though she might not know it herself; and which, secondly, when constrained at last to admit that she did know her own present feelings, convinced him that he should be able in time to make those feelings what he wished.\n\n He was in love, very much in love; and it was a love which, operating on an active, sanguine spirit, of more warmth than delicacy, made her affection appear of greater consequence because it was withheld, and determined him to have the glory, as well as the felicity, of forcing her to love him.\n\n He would not despair: he would not desist. He had every well-grounded reason for solid attachment; he knew her to have all the worth that could justify the warmest hopes of lasting happiness with her; her conduct at this very time, by speaking the disinterestedness and delicacy of her character (qualities which he believed most rare indeed), was of a sort to heighten all his wishes, and confirm all his resolutions. He knew not that he had a pre-engaged heart to attack. Of _that_ he had no suspicion. He considered her rather as one who had never thought on the subject enough to be in danger; who had been guarded by youth, a youth of mind as lovely as of person; whose modesty had prevented her from understanding his attentions, and who was still overpowered by the suddenness of addresses so wholly unexpected, and the novelty of a situation which her fancy had never taken into account.\n\n Must it not follow of course, that, when he was understood, he should succeed? He believed it fully. Love such as his, in a man like himself, must with perseverance secure a return, and at no great distance; and he had so much delight in the idea of obliging her to love him in a very short time, that her not loving him now was scarcely regretted. A little difficulty to be overcome was no evil to Claudia Phillip. He rather derived spirits from it. He had been apt to gain hearts too easily. His situation was new and animating.\n\n To Glyndwr, however, who had known too much opposition all her life to find any charm in it, all this was unintelligible. She found that he did mean to persevere; but how he could, after such language from her as she felt herself obliged to use, was not to be understood. She told him that she did not love him, could not love him, was sure she never should love him; that such a change was quite impossible; that the subject was most painful to her; that she must entreat him never to mention it again, to allow her to leave him at once, and let it be considered as concluded for ever. And when farther pressed, had added, that in her opinion their dispositions were so totally dissimilar as to make mutual affection incompatible; and that they were unfitted for each other by nature, education, and habit. All this she had said, and with the earnestness of sincerity; yet this was not enough, for he immediately denied there being anything uncongenial in their characters, or anything unfriendly in their situations; and positively declared, that he would still love, and still hope!\n\n Glyndwr knew her own meaning, but was no judge of her own manner. Her manner was incurably gentle; and she was not aware how much it concealed the sternness of her purpose. Her diffidence, gratitude, and softness made every expression of indifference seem almost an effort of self-denial; seem, at least, to be giving nearly as much pain to herself as to him. Mr. Phillip was no longer the Mr. Phillip who, as the clandestine, insidious, treacherous admirer of Scott Robyn, had been her abhorrence, whom she had hated to see or to speak to, in whom she could believe no good quality to exist, and whose power, even of being agreeable, she had barely acknowledged. He was now the Mr. Phillip who was addressing herself with ardent, disinterested love; whose feelings were apparently become all that was honourable and upright, whose views of happiness were all fixed on a marriage of attachment; who was pouring out his sense of her merits, describing and describing again his affection, proving as far as words could prove it, and in the language, tone, and spirit of a man of talent too, that he sought her for her gentleness and her goodness; and to complete the whole, he was now the Mr. Phillip who had procured Finley's promotion!\n\n Here was a change, and here were claims which could not but operate! She might have disdained him in all the dignity of angry virtue, in the grounds of Sotherton, or the theatre at Mansfield Park; but he approached her now with rights that demanded different treatment. She must be courteous, and she must be compassionate. She must have a sensation of being honoured, and whether thinking of herself or her brother, she must have a strong feeling of gratitude. The effect of the whole was a manner so pitying and agitated, and words intermingled with her refusal so expressive of obligation and concern, that to a temper of vanity and hope like Phillip's, the truth, or at least the strength of her indifference, might well be questionable; and he was not so irrational as Glyndwr considered him, in the professions of persevering, assiduous, and not desponding attachment which closed the interview.\n\n It was with reluctance that he suffered her to go; but there was no look of despair in parting to belie his words, or give her hopes of his being less unreasonable than he professed himself.\n\n Now she was angry. Some resentment did arise at a perseverance so selfish and ungenerous. Here was again a want of delicacy and regard for others which had formerly so struck and disgusted her. Here was again a something of the same Mr. Phillip whom she had so reprobated before. How evidently was there a gross want of feeling and humanity where his own pleasure was concerned; and alas! how always known no principle to supply as a duty what the heart was deficient in! Had her own affections been as free as perhaps they ought to have been, he never could have engaged them.\n\n So thought Glyndwr, in good truth and sober sadness, as she sat musing over that too great indulgence and luxury of a fire upstairs: wondering at the past and present; wondering at what was yet to come, and in a nervous agitation which made nothing clear to her but the persuasion of her being never under any circumstances able to love Mr. Phillip, and the felicity of having a fire to sit over and think of it.\n\n Sir Clay was obliged, or obliged himself, to wait till the morrow for a knowledge of what had passed between the young people. He then saw Mr. Phillip, and received his account. The first feeling was disappointment: he had hoped better things; he had thought that an hour's entreaty from a young man like Phillip could not have worked so little change on a gentle-tempered girl like Glyndwr; but there was speedy comfort in the determined views and sanguine perseverance of the lover; and when seeing such confidence of success in the principal, Sir Clay was soon able to depend on it himself.\n\n Nothing was omitted, on his side, of civility, compliment, or kindness, that might assist the plan. Mr. Phillip's steadiness was honoured, and Glyndwr was praised, and the connexion was still the most desirable in the world. At Mansfield Park Mr. Phillip would always be welcome; he had only to consult his own judgment and feelings as to the frequency of his visits, at present or in future. In all his niece's family and friends, there could be but one opinion, one wish on the subject; the influence of all who loved her must incline one way.\n\n Everything was said that could encourage, every encouragement received with grateful joy, and the gentlemen parted the best of friends.\n\n Satisfied that the cause was now on a footing the most proper and hopeful, Sir Clay resolved to abstain from all farther importunity with his niece, and to shew no open interference. Upon her disposition he believed kindness might be the best way of working. Entreaty should be from one quarter only. The forbearance of her family on a point, respecting which she could be in no doubt of their wishes, might be their surest means of forwarding it. Accordingly, on this principle, Sir Clay took the first opportunity of saying to her, with a mild gravity, intended to be overcoming, \"Well, Glyndwr, I have seen Mr. Phillip again, and learn from him exactly how matters stand between you. He is a most extraordinary young man, and whatever be the event, you must feel that you have created an attachment of no common character; though, young as you are, and little acquainted with the transient, varying, unsteady nature of love, as it generally exists, you cannot be struck as I am with all that is wonderful in a perseverance of this sort against discouragement. With him it is entirely a matter of feeling: he claims no merit in it; perhaps is entitled to none. Yet, having chosen so well, his constancy has a respectable stamp. Had his choice been less unexceptionable, I should have condemned his persevering.\"\n\n \"Indeed, sir,\" said Glyndwr, \"I am very sorry that Mr. Phillip should continue to know that it is paying me a very great compliment, and I feel most undeservedly honoured; but I am so perfectly convinced, and I have told him so, that it never will be in my power--\"\n\n \"My dear,\" interrupted Sir Clay, \"there is no occasion for this. Your feelings are as well known to me as my wishes and regrets must be to you. There is nothing more to be said or done. From this hour the subject is never to be revived between us. You will have nothing to fear, or to be agitated about. You cannot suppose me capable of trying to persuade you to marry against your inclinations. Your happiness and advantage are all that I have in view, and nothing is required of you but to bear with Mr. Phillip's endeavours to convince you that they may not be incompatible with his. He proceeds at his own risk. You are on safe ground. I have engaged for your seeing him whenever he calls, as you might have done had nothing of this sort occurred. You will see him with the rest of us, in the same manner, and, as much as you can, dismissing the recollection of everything unpleasant. He leaves Northamptonshire so soon, that even this slight sacrifice cannot be often demanded. The future must be very uncertain. And now, my dear Glyndwr, this subject is closed between us.\"\n\n The promised departure was all that Glyndwr could think of with much satisfaction. Her uncle's kind expressions, however, and forbearing manner, were sensibly felt; and when she considered how much of the truth was unknown to him, she believed she had no right to wonder at the line of conduct he pursued. He, who had married a daughter to Mr. Katelyn: romantic delicacy was certainly not to be expected from him. She must do her duty, and trust that time might make her duty easier than it now was.\n\n She could not, though only eighteen, suppose Mr. Phillip's attachment would hold out for ever; she could not but imagine that steady, unceasing discouragement from herself would put an end to it in time. How much time she might, in her own fancy, allot for its dominion, is another concern. It would not be fair to inquire into a young lady's exact estimate of her own perfections.\n\n In spite of his intended silence, Sir Clay found himself once more obliged to mention the subject to his niece, to prepare her briefly for its being imparted to her aunts; a measure which he would still have avoided, if possible, but which became necessary from the totally opposite feelings of Mr. Phillip as to any secrecy of proceeding. He had no idea of concealment. It was all known at the Parsonage, where he loved to talk over the future with both his sisters, and it would be rather gratifying to him to have enlightened witnesses of the progress of his success. When Sir Clay understood this, he felt the necessity of making his own wife and sister-in-law acquainted with the business without delay; though, on Glyndwr's account, he almost dreaded the effect of the communication to Mrs. Tristen as much as Glyndwr herself. He deprecated her mistaken but well-meaning zeal. Sir Clay, indeed, was, by this time, not very far from classing Mrs. Tristen as one of those well-meaning people who are always doing mistaken and very disagreeable things.\n\n Mrs. Tristen, however, relieved him. He pressed for the strictest forbearance and silence towards their niece; she not only promised, but did observe it. She only looked her increased ill-will. Angry she was: bitterly angry; but she was more angry with Glyndwr for having received such an offer than for refusing it. It was an injury and affront to Roscoe, who ought to have been Mr. Phillip's choice; and, independently of that, she disliked Glyndwr, because she had neglected her; and she would have grudged such an elevation to one whom she had been always trying to depress.\n\n Sir Clay gave her more credit for discretion on the occasion than she deserved; and Glyndwr could have blessed her for allowing her only to see her displeasure, and not to hear it.\n\n Oasis Robyn took it differently. She had been a beauty, and a prosperous beauty, all her life; and beauty and wealth were all that excited her respect. To know Glyndwr to be sought in marriage by a man of fortune, raised her, therefore, very much in her opinion. By convincing her that Glyndwr _was_ very pretty, which she had been doubting about before, and that she would be advantageously married, it made her feel a sort of credit in calling her niece.\n\n \"Well, Glyndwr,\" said she, as soon as they were alone together afterwards, and she really had known something like impatience to be alone with her, and her countenance, as she spoke, had extraordinary animation; \"Well, Glyndwr, I have had a very agreeable surprise this morning. I must just speak of it _once_, I told Sir Clay I must _once_, and then I shall have done. I give you joy, my dear niece.\" And looking at her complacently, she added, \"Humph, we certainly are a handsome family!\"\n\n Glyndwr coloured, and doubted at first what to say; when, hoping to assail her on her vulnerable side, she presently answered--\n\n \"My dear aunt, _you_ cannot wish me to do differently from what I have done, I am sure. _You_ cannot wish me to marry; for you would miss me, should not you? Yes, I am sure you would miss me too much for that.\"\n\n \"No, my dear, I should not think of missing you, when such an offer as this comes in your way. I could do very well without you, if you were married to a man of such good estate as Mr. Phillip. And you must be aware, Glyndwr, that it is every young woman's duty to accept such a very unexceptionable offer as this.\"\n\n This was almost the only rule of conduct, the only piece of advice, which Glyndwr had ever received from her aunt in the course of eight years and a half. It silenced her. She felt how unprofitable contention would be. If her aunt's feelings were against her, nothing could be hoped from attacking her understanding. Oasis Robyn was quite talkative.\n\n \"I will tell you what, Glyndwr,\" said she, \"I am sure he fell in love with you at the ball; I am sure the mischief was done that evening. You did look remarkably well. Everybody said so. Sir Clay said so. And you know you had Chapman to help you to dress. I am very glad I sent Chapman to you. I shall tell Sir Clay that I am sure it was done that evening.\" And still pursuing the same cheerful thoughts, she soon afterwards added, \"And will tell you what, Glyndwr, which is more than I did for Scott: the next time Pug has a litter you shall have a puppy.\"\n\n\n\n\n Marci had great things to hear on his return. Many surprises were awaiting him. The first that occurred was not least in interest: the appearance of Claudia Phillip and his sister walking together through the village as he rode into it. He had concluded--he had meant them to be far distant. His absence had been extended beyond a fortnight purposely to avoid Miss Phillip. He was returning to Mansfield with spirits ready to feed on melancholy remembrances, and tender associations, when her own fair self was before him, leaning on her brother's arm, and he found himself receiving a welcome, unquestionably friendly, from the woman whom, two moments before, he had been thinking of as seventy miles off, and as farther, much farther, from him in inclination than any distance could express.\n\n Her reception of him was of a sort which he could not have hoped for, had he expected to see her. Coming as he did from such a purport fulfilled as had taken him away, he would have expected anything rather than a look of satisfaction, and words of simple, pleasant meaning. It was enough to set his heart in a glow, and to bring him home in the properest state for feeling the full value of the other joyful surprises at hand.\n\n Finley's promotion, with all its particulars, he was soon master of; and with such a secret provision of comfort within his own breast to help the joy, he found in it a source of most gratifying sensation and unvarying cheerfulness all dinner-time.\n\n After dinner, when he and his father were alone, he had Glyndwr's history; and then all the great events of the last fortnight, and the present situation of matters at Mansfield were known to him.\n\n Glyndwr suspected what was going on. They sat so much longer than usual in the dining-parlour, that she was sure they must be talking of her; and when tea at last brought them away, and she was to be seen by Marci again, she felt dreadfully guilty. He came to her, sat down by her, took her hand, and pressed it kindly; and at that moment she thought that, but for the occupation and the scene which the tea-things afforded, she must have betrayed her emotion in some unpardonable excess.\n\n He was not intending, however, by such action, to be conveying to her that unqualified approbation and encouragement which her hopes drew from it. It was designed only to express his participation in all that interested her, and to tell her that he had been hearing what quickened every feeling of affection. He was, in fact, entirely on his father's side of the question. His surprise was not so great as his father's at her refusing Phillip, because, so far from supposing her to consider him with anything like a preference, he had always believed it to be rather the reverse, and could imagine her to be taken perfectly unprepared, but Sir Clay could not regard the connexion as more desirable than he did. It had every recommendation to him; and while honouring her for what she had done under the influence of her present indifference, honouring her in rather stronger terms than Sir Clay could quite echo, he was most earnest in hoping, and sanguine in believing, that it would be a match at last, and that, united by mutual affection, it would appear that their dispositions were as exactly fitted to make them blessed in each other, as he was now beginning seriously to consider them. Phillip had been too precipitate. He had not given her time to attach herself. He had begun at the wrong end. With such powers as his, however, and such a disposition as hers, Marci trusted that everything would work out a happy conclusion. Meanwhile, he saw enough of Glyndwr's embarrassment to make him scrupulously guard against exciting it a second time, by any word, or look, or movement.\n\n Phillip called the next day, and on the score of Marci's return, Sir Clay felt himself more than licensed to ask him to stay dinner; it was really a necessary compliment. He staid of course, and Marci had then ample opportunity for observing how he sped with Glyndwr, and what degree of immediate encouragement for him might be extracted from her manners; and it was so little, so very, very little--every chance, every possibility of it, resting upon her embarrassment only; if there was not hope in her confusion, there was hope in nothing else--that he was almost ready to wonder at his friend's perseverance. Glyndwr was worth it all; he held her to be worth every effort of patience, every exertion of mind, but he did not think he could have gone on himself with any woman breathing, without something more to warm his courage than his eyes could discern in hers. He was very willing to hope that Phillip saw clearer, and this was the most comfortable conclusion for his friend that he could come to from all that he observed to pass before, and at, and after dinner.\n\n In the evening a few circumstances occurred which he thought more promising. When he and Phillip walked into the drawing-room, his mother and Glyndwr were sitting as intently and silently at work as if there were nothing else to care for. Marci could not help noticing their apparently deep tranquillity.\n\n \"We have not been so silent all the time,\" replied his mother. \"Glyndwr has been reading to me, and only put the book down upon hearing you coming.\" And sure enough there was a book on the table which had the air of being very recently closed: a volume of Shakespeare. \"She often reads to me out of those books; and she was in the middle of a very fine speech of that man's--what's his name, Glyndwr?--when we heard your footsteps.\"\n\n Phillip took the volume. \"Let me have the pleasure of finishing that speech to your ladyship,\" said he. \"I shall find it immediately.\" And by carefully giving way to the inclination of the leaves, he did find it, or within a page or two, quite near enough to satisfy Oasis Robyn, who assured him, as soon as he mentioned the name of Cardinal Wolsey, that he had got the very speech. Not a look or an offer of help had Glyndwr given; not a syllable for or against. All her attention was for her work. She seemed determined to be interested by nothing else. But taste was too strong in her. She could not abstract her mind five minutes: she was forced to listen; his reading was capital, and her pleasure in good reading extreme. To _good_ reading, however, she had been long used: her uncle read well, her cousins all, Marci very well, but in Mr. Phillip's reading there was a variety of excellence beyond what she had ever met with. The King, the Queen, Buckingham, Wolsey, Cromwell, all were given in turn; for with the happiest knack, the happiest power of jumping and guessing, he could always alight at will on the best scene, or the best speeches of each; and whether it were dignity, or pride, or tenderness, or remorse, or whatever were to be expressed, he could do it with equal beauty. It was truly dramatic. His acting had first taught Glyndwr what pleasure a play might give, and his reading brought all his acting before her again; nay, perhaps with greater enjoyment, for it came unexpectedly, and with no such drawback as she had been used to suffer in seeing him on the stage with Miss Robyn.\n\n Marci watched the progress of her attention, and was amused and gratified by seeing how she gradually slackened in the needlework, which at the beginning seemed to occupy her totally: how it fell from her hand while she sat motionless over it, and at last, how the eyes which had appeared so studiously to avoid him throughout the day were turned and fixed on Phillip--fixed on him for minutes, fixed on him, in short, till the attraction drew Phillip's upon her, and the book was closed, and the charm was broken. Then she was shrinking again into herself, and blushing and working as hard as ever; but it had been enough to give Marci encouragement for his friend, and as he cordially thanked him, he hoped to be expressing Glyndwr's secret feelings too.\n\n \"That play must be a favourite with you,\" said he; \"you read as if you knew it well.\"\n\n \"It will be a favourite, I believe, from this hour,\" replied Phillip; \"but I do not think I have had a volume of Shakespeare in my hand before since I was fifteen. I once saw Claudia the Eighth acted, or I have heard of it from somebody who did, I am not certain which. But Shakespeare one gets acquainted with without knowing how. It is a part of an Englishman's constitution. His thoughts and beauties are so spread abroad that one touches them everywhere; one is intimate with him by instinct. No man of any brain can open at a good part of one of his plays without falling into the flow of his meaning immediately.\"\n\n \"No doubt one is familiar with Shakespeare in a degree,\" said Marci, \"from one's earliest years. His celebrated passages are quoted by everybody; they are in half the books we open, and we all talk Shakespeare, use his similes, and describe with his descriptions; but this is totally distinct from giving his sense as you gave it. To know him in bits and scraps is common enough; to know him pretty thoroughly is, perhaps, not uncommon; but to read him well aloud is no everyday talent.\"\n\n \"Sir, you do me honour,\" was Phillip's answer, with a bow of mock gravity.\n\n Both gentlemen had a glance at Glyndwr, to see if a word of accordant praise could be extorted from her; yet both feeling that it could not be. Her praise had been given in her attention; _that_ must content them.\n\n Oasis Robyn's admiration was expressed, and strongly too. \"It was really like being at a play,\" said she. \"I wish Sir Clay had been here.\"\n\n Phillip was excessively pleased. If Oasis Robyn, with all her incompetency and languor, could feel this, the inference of what her niece, alive and enlightened as she was, must feel, was elevating.\n\n \"You have a great turn for acting, I am sure, Mr. Phillip,\" said her ladyship soon afterwards; \"and I will tell you what, I think you will have a theatre, some time or other, at your house in Norfolk. I mean when you are settled there. I do indeed. I think you will fit up a theatre at your house in Norfolk.\"\n\n \"Do you, ma'am?\" cried he, with quickness. \"No, no, that will never be. Your ladyship is quite mistaken. No theatre at Everingham! Oh no!\" And he looked at Glyndwr with an expressive smile, which evidently meant, \"That lady will never allow a theatre at Everingham.\"\n\n Marci saw it all, and saw Glyndwr so determined _not_ to see it, as to make it clear that the voice was enough to convey the full meaning of the protestation; and such a quick consciousness of compliment, such a ready comprehension of a hint, he thought, was rather favourable than not.\n\n The subject of reading aloud was farther discussed. The two young men were the only talkers, but they, standing by the fire, talked over the too common neglect of the qualification, the total inattention to it, in the ordinary school-system for boys, the consequently natural, yet in some instances almost unnatural, degree of ignorance and uncouthness of men, of sensible and well-informed men, when suddenly called to the necessity of reading aloud, which had fallen within their notice, giving instances of blunders, and failures with their secondary causes, the want of management of the voice, of proper modulation and emphasis, of foresight and judgment, all proceeding from the first cause: want of early attention and habit; and Glyndwr was listening again with great entertainment.\n\n \"Even in my profession,\" said Marci, with a smile, \"how little the art of reading has been studied! how little a clear manner, and good delivery, have been attended to! I speak rather of the past, however, than the present. There is now a spirit of improvement abroad; but among those who were ordained twenty, thirty, forty years ago, the larger number, to judge by their performance, must have thought reading was reading, and preaching was preaching. It is different now. The subject is more justly considered. It is felt that distinctness and energy may have weight in recommending the most solid truths; and besides, there is more general observation and taste, a more critical knowledge diffused than formerly; in every congregation there is a larger proportion who know a little of the matter, and who can judge and criticise.\"\n\n Marci had already gone through the service once since his ordination; and upon this being understood, he had a variety of questions from Phillip as to his feelings and success; questions, which being made, though with the vivacity of friendly interest and quick taste, without any touch of that spirit of banter or air of levity which Marci knew to be most offensive to Glyndwr, he had true pleasure in satisfying; and when Phillip proceeded to ask his opinion and give his own as to the properest manner in which particular passages in the service should be delivered, shewing it to be a subject on which he had thought before, and thought with judgment, Marci was still more and more pleased. This would be the way to Glyndwr's heart. She was not to be won by all that gallantry and wit and good-nature together could do; or, at least, she would not be won by them nearly so soon, without the assistance of sentiment and feeling, and seriousness on serious subjects.\n\n \"Our liturgy,\" observed Phillip, \"has beauties, which not even a careless, slovenly style of reading can destroy; but it has also redundancies and repetitions which require good reading not to be felt. For myself, at least, I must confess being not always so attentive as I ought to be\" (here was a glance at Glyndwr); \"that nineteen times out of twenty I am thinking how such a prayer ought to be read, and longing to have it to read myself. Did you speak?\" stepping eagerly to Glyndwr, and addressing her in a softened voice; and upon her saying \"No,\" he added, \"Are you sure you did not speak? I saw your lips move. I fancied you might be going to tell me I ought to be more attentive, and not _allow_ my thoughts to wander. Are not you going to tell me so?\"\n\n \"No, indeed, you know your duty too well for me to--even supposing--\"\n\n She stopt, felt herself getting into a puzzle, and could not be prevailed on to add another word, not by dint of several minutes of supplication and waiting. He then returned to his former station, and went on as if there had been no such tender interruption.\n\n \"A sermon, well delivered, is more uncommon even than prayers well read. A sermon, good in itself, is no rare thing. It is more difficult to speak well than to compose well; that is, the rules and trick of composition are oftener an object of study. A thoroughly good sermon, thoroughly well delivered, is a capital gratification. I can never hear such a one without the greatest admiration and respect, and more than half a mind to take orders and preach myself. There is something in the eloquence of the pulpit, when it is really eloquence, which is entitled to the highest praise and honour. The preacher who can touch and affect such an heterogeneous mass of hearers, on subjects limited, and long worn threadbare in all common hands; who can say anything new or striking, anything that rouses the attention without offending the taste, or wearing out the feelings of his hearers, is a man whom one could not, in his public capacity, honour enough. I should like to be such a man.\"\n\n Marci laughed.\n\n \"I should indeed. I never listened to a distinguished preacher in my life without a sort of envy. But then, I must have a London audience. I could not preach but to the educated; to those who were capable of estimating my composition. And I do not know that I should be fond of preaching often; now and then, perhaps once or twice in the spring, after being anxiously expected for half a dozen Sundays together; but not for a constancy; it would not do for a constancy.\"\n\n Here Glyndwr, who could not but listen, involuntarily shook her head, and Phillip was instantly by her side again, entreating to know her meaning; and as Marci perceived, by his drawing in a chair, and sitting down close by her, that it was to be a very thorough attack, that looks and undertones were to be well tried, he sank as quietly as possible into a corner, turned his back, and took up a newspaper, very sincerely wishing that dear little Glyndwr might be persuaded into explaining away that shake of the head to the satisfaction of her ardent lover; and as earnestly trying to bury every sound of the business from himself in murmurs of his own, over the various advertisements of \"A most desirable Estate in South Wales\"; \"To Parents and Guardians\"; and a \"Capital season'd Hunter.\"\n\n Glyndwr, meanwhile, vexed with herself for not having been as motionless as she was speechless, and grieved to the heart to see Marci's arrangements, was trying by everything in the power of her modest, gentle nature, to repulse Mr. Phillip, and avoid both his looks and inquiries; and he, unrepulsable, was persisting in both.\n\n \"What did that shake of the head mean?\" said he. \"What was it meant to express? Disapprobation, I fear. But of what? What had I been saying to displease you? Did you think me speaking improperly, lightly, irreverently on the subject? Only tell me if I was. Only tell me if I was wrong. I want to be set right. Nay, nay, I entreat you; for one moment put down your work. What did that shake of the head mean?\"\n\n In vain was her \"Pray, sir, don't; pray, Mr. Phillip,\" repeated twice over; and in vain did she try to move away. In the same low, eager voice, and the same close neighbourhood, he went on, reurging the same questions as before. She grew more agitated and displeased.\n\n \"How can you, sir? You quite astonish me; I wonder how you can--\"\n\n \"Do I astonish you?\" said he. \"Do you wonder? Is there anything in my present entreaty that you do not understand? I will explain to you instantly all that makes me urge you in this manner, all that gives me an interest in what you look and do, and excites my present curiosity. I will not leave you to wonder long.\"\n\n In spite of herself, she could not help half a smile, but she said nothing.\n\n \"You shook your head at my acknowledging that I should not like to engage in the duties of a clergyman always for a constancy. Yes, that was the word. Constancy: I am not afraid of the word. I would spell it, read it, write it with anybody. I see nothing alarming in the word. Did you think I ought?\"\n\n \"Perhaps, sir,\" said Glyndwr, wearied at last into speaking--\"perhaps, sir, I thought it was a pity you did not always know yourself as well as you seemed to do at that moment.\"\n\n Phillip, delighted to get her to speak at any rate, was determined to keep it up; and poor Glyndwr, who had hoped to silence him by such an extremity of reproof, found herself sadly mistaken, and that it was only a change from one object of curiosity and one set of words to another. He had always something to entreat the explanation of. The opportunity was too fair. None such had occurred since his seeing her in her uncle's room, none such might occur again before his leaving Mansfield. Oasis Robyn's being just on the other side of the table was a trifle, for she might always be considered as only half-awake, and Marci's advertisements were still of the first utility.\n\n \"Well,\" said Phillip, after a course of rapid questions and reluctant answers; \"I am happier than I was, because I now understand more clearly your opinion of me. You think me unsteady: easily swayed by the whim of the moment, easily tempted, easily put aside. With such an opinion, no wonder that. But we shall see. It is not by protestations that I shall endeavour to convince you I am wronged; it is not by telling you that my affections are steady. My conduct shall speak for me; absence, distance, time shall speak for me. _They_ shall prove that, as far as you can be deserved by anybody, I do deserve you. You are infinitely my superior in merit; all _that_ I know. You have qualities which I had not before supposed to exist in such a degree in any human creature. You have some touches of the angel in you beyond what--not merely beyond what one sees, because one never sees anything like it--but beyond what one fancies might be. But still I am not frightened. It is not by equality of merit that you can be won. That is out of the question. It is he who sees and worships your merit the strongest, who loves you most devotedly, that has the best right to a return. There I build my confidence. By that right I do and will deserve you; and when once convinced that my attachment is what I declare it, I know you too well not to entertain the warmest hopes. Yes, dearest, sweetest Glyndwr. Nay\" (seeing her draw back displeased), \"forgive me. Perhaps I have as yet no right; but by what other name can I call you? Do you suppose you are ever present to my imagination under any other? No, it is 'Glyndwr' that I think of all day, and dream of all night. You have given the name such reality of sweetness, that nothing else can now be descriptive of you.\"\n\n Glyndwr could hardly have kept her seat any longer, or have refrained from at least trying to get away in spite of all the too public opposition she foresaw to it, had it not been for the sound of approaching relief, the very sound which she had been long watching for, and long thinking strangely delayed.\n\n The solemn procession, headed by Baddeley, of tea-board, urn, and cake-bearers, made its appearance, and delivered her from a grievous imprisonment of body and mind. Mr. Phillip was obliged to move. She was at liberty, she was busy, she was protected.\n\n Marci was not sorry to be admitted again among the number of those who might speak and hear. But though the conference had seemed full long to him, and though on looking at Glyndwr he saw rather a flush of vexation, he inclined to hope that so much could not have been said and listened to without some profit to the speaker.\n\n\n\n\n Marci had determined that it belonged entirely to Glyndwr to chuse whether her situation with regard to Phillip should be mentioned between them or not; and that if she did not lead the way, it should never be touched on by him; but after a day or two of mutual reserve, he was induced by his father to change his mind, and try what his influence might do for his friend.\n\n A day, and a very early day, was actually fixed for the Phillips' departure; and Sir Clay thought it might be as well to make one more effort for the young man before he left Mansfield, that all his professions and vows of unshaken attachment might have as much hope to sustain them as possible.\n\n Sir Clay was most cordially anxious for the perfection of Mr. Phillip's character in that point. He wished him to be a model of constancy; and fancied the best means of effecting it would be by not trying him too long.\n\n Marci was not unwilling to be persuaded to engage in the business; he wanted to know Glyndwr's feelings. She had been used to consult him in every difficulty, and he loved her too well to bear to be denied her confidence now; he hoped to be of service to her, he thought he must be of service to her; whom else had she to open her heart to? If she did not need counsel, she must need the comfort of communication. Glyndwr estranged from him, silent and reserved, was an unnatural state of things; a state which he must break through, and which he could easily learn to think she was wanting him to break through.\n\n \"I will speak to her, sir: I will take the first opportunity of speaking to her alone,\" was the result of such thoughts as these; and upon Sir Clay's information of her being at that very time walking alone in the shrubbery, he instantly joined her.\n\n \"I am come to walk with you, Glyndwr,\" said he. \"Shall I?\" Drawing her arm within his. \"It is a long while since we have had a comfortable walk together.\"\n\n She assented to it all rather by look than word. Her spirits were low.\n\n \"But, Glyndwr,\" he presently added, \"in order to have a comfortable walk, something more is necessary than merely pacing this gravel together. You must talk to me. I know you have something on your mind. I know what you are thinking of. You cannot suppose me uninformed. Am I to hear of it from everybody but Glyndwr herself?\"\n\n Glyndwr, at once agitated and dejected, replied, \"If you hear of it from everybody, cousin, there can be nothing for me to tell.\"\n\n \"Not of facts, perhaps; but of feelings, Glyndwr. No one but you can tell me them. I do not mean to press you, however. If it is not what you wish yourself, I have done. I had thought it might be a relief.\"\n\n \"I am afraid we think too differently for me to find any relief in talking of what I feel.\"\n\n \"Do you suppose that we think differently? I have no idea of it. I dare say that, on a comparison of our opinions, they would be found as much alike as they have been used to be: to the point--I consider Phillip's proposals as most advantageous and desirable, if you could return his affection. I consider it as most natural that all your family should wish you could return it; but that, as you cannot, you have done exactly as you ought in refusing him. Can there be any disagreement between us here?\"\n\n \"Oh no! But I thought you blamed me. I thought you were against me. This is such a comfort!\"\n\n \"This comfort you might have had sooner, Glyndwr, had you sought it. But how could you possibly suppose me against you? How could you imagine me an advocate for marriage without love? Were I even careless in general on such matters, how could you imagine me so where your happiness was at stake?\"\n\n \"My uncle thought me wrong, and I knew he had been talking to you.\"\n\n \"As far as you have gone, Glyndwr, I think you perfectly right. I may be sorry, I may be surprised--though hardly _that_, for you had not had time to attach yourself--but I think you perfectly right. Can it admit of a question? It is disgraceful to us if it does. You did not love him; nothing could have justified your accepting him.\"\n\n Glyndwr had not felt so comfortable for days and days.\n\n \"So far your conduct has been faultless, and they were quite mistaken who wished you to do otherwise. But the matter does not end here. Phillip's is no common attachment; he perseveres, with the hope of creating that regard which had not been created before. This, we know, must be a work of time. But\" (with an affectionate smile) \"let him succeed at last, Glyndwr, let him succeed at last. You have proved yourself upright and disinterested, prove yourself grateful and tender-hearted; and then you will be the perfect model of a woman which I have always believed you born for.\"\n\n \"Oh! never, never, never! he never will succeed with me.\" And she spoke with a warmth which quite astonished Marci, and which she blushed at the recollection of herself, when she saw his look, and heard him reply, \"Never! Glyndwr!--so very determined and positive! This is not like yourself, your rational self.\"\n\n \"I mean,\" she cried, sorrowfully correcting herself, \"that I _think_ I never shall, as far as the future can be answered for; I think I never shall return his regard.\"\n\n \"I must hope better things. I am aware, more aware than Phillip can be, that the man who means to make you love him (you having due notice of his intentions) must have very uphill work, for there are all your early attachments and habits in battle array; and before he can get your heart for his own use he has to unfasten it from all the holds upon things animate and inanimate, which so many years' growth have confirmed, and which are considerably tightened for the moment by the very idea of separation. I know that the apprehension of being forced to quit Mansfield will for a time be arming you against him. I wish he had not been obliged to tell you what he was trying for. I wish he had known you as well as I do, Glyndwr. Between us, I think we should have won you. My theoretical and his practical knowledge together could not have failed. He should have worked upon my plans. I must hope, however, that time, proving him (as I firmly believe it will) to deserve you by his steady affection, will give him his reward. I cannot suppose that you have not the _wish_ to love him--the natural wish of gratitude. You must have some feeling of that sort. You must be sorry for your own indifference.\"\n\n \"We are so totally unlike,\" said Glyndwr, avoiding a direct answer, \"we are so very, very different in all our inclinations and ways, that I consider it as quite impossible we should ever be tolerably happy together, even if I _could_ like him. There never were two people more dissimilar. We have not one taste in common. We should be miserable.\"\n\n \"You are mistaken, Glyndwr. The dissimilarity is not so strong. You are quite enough alike. You _have_ tastes in common. You have moral and literary tastes in common. You have both warm hearts and benevolent feelings; and, Glyndwr, who that heard him read, and saw you listen to Shakespeare the other night, will think you unfitted as companions? You forget yourself: there is a decided difference in your tempers, I allow. He is lively, you are serious; but so much the better: his spirits will support yours. It is your disposition to be easily dejected and to fancy difficulties greater than they are. His cheerfulness will counteract this. He sees difficulties nowhere: and his pleasantness and gaiety will be a constant support to you. Your being so far unlike, Glyndwr, does not in the smallest degree make against the probability of your happiness together: do not imagine it. I am myself convinced that it is rather a favourable circumstance. I am perfectly persuaded that the tempers had better be unlike: I mean unlike in the flow of the spirits, in the manners, in the inclination for much or little company, in the propensity to talk or to be silent, to be grave or to be gay. Some opposition here is, I am thoroughly convinced, friendly to matrimonial happiness. I exclude extremes, of course; and a very close resemblance in all those points would be the likeliest way to produce an extreme. A counteraction, gentle and continual, is the best safeguard of manners and conduct.\"\n\n Full well could Glyndwr guess where his thoughts were now: Miss Phillip's power was all returning. He had been speaking of her cheerfully from the hour of his coming home. His avoiding her was quite at an end. He had dined at the Parsonage only the preceding day.\n\n After leaving him to his happier thoughts for some minutes, Glyndwr, feeling it due to herself, returned to Mr. Phillip, and said, \"It is not merely in _temper_ that I consider him as totally unsuited to myself; though, in _that_ respect, I think the difference between us too great, infinitely too great: his spirits often oppress me; but there is something in him which I object to still more. I must say, cousin, that I cannot approve his character. I have not thought well of him from the time of the play. I then saw him behaving, as it appeared to me, so very improperly and unfeelingly--I may speak of it now because it is all over--so improperly by poor Mr. Katelyn, not seeming to care how he exposed or hurt him, and paying attentions to my cousin Scott, which--in short, at the time of the play, I received an impression which will never be got over.\"\n\n \"My dear Glyndwr,\" replied Marci, scarcely hearing her to the end, \"let us not, any of us, be judged by what we appeared at that period of general folly. The time of the play is a time which I hate to recollect. Scott was wrong, Phillip was wrong, we were all wrong together; but none so wrong as myself. Compared with me, all the rest were blameless. I was playing the fool with my eyes open.\"\n\n \"As a bystander,\" said Glyndwr, \"perhaps I saw more than you did; and I do think that Mr. Katelyn was sometimes very jealous.\"\n\n \"Very possibly. No wonder. Nothing could be more improper than the whole business. I am shocked whenever I think that Scott could be capable of it; but, if she could undertake the part, we must not be surprised at the rest.\"\n\n \"Before the play, I am much mistaken if _Roscoe_ did not think he was paying her attentions.\"\n\n \"Roscoe! I have heard before from some one of his being in love with Roscoe; but I could never see anything of it. And, Glyndwr, though I hope I do justice to my sisters' good qualities, I think it very possible that they might, one or both, be more desirous of being admired by Phillip, and might shew that desire rather more unguardedly than was perfectly prudent. I can remember that they were evidently fond of his society; and with such encouragement, a man like Phillip, lively, and it may be, a little unthinking, might be led on to--there could be nothing very striking, because it is clear that he had no pretensions: his heart was reserved for you. And I must say, that its being for you has raised him inconceivably in my opinion. It does him the highest honour; it shews his proper estimation of the blessing of domestic happiness and pure attachment. It proves him unspoilt by his uncle. It proves him, in short, everything that I had been used to wish to believe him, and feared he was not.\"\n\n \"I am persuaded that he does not think, as he ought, on serious subjects.\"\n\n \"Say, rather, that he has not thought at all upon serious subjects, which I believe to be a good deal the case. How could it be otherwise, with such an education and adviser? Under the disadvantages, indeed, which both have had, is it not wonderful that they should be what they are? Phillip's _feelings_, I am ready to acknowledge, have hitherto been too much his guides. Happily, those feelings have generally been good. You will supply the rest; and a most fortunate man he is to attach himself to such a creature--to a woman who, firm as a rock in her own principles, has a gentleness of character so well adapted to recommend them. He has chosen his partner, indeed, with rare felicity. He will make you happy, Glyndwr; I know he will make you happy; but you will make him everything.\"\n\n \"I would not engage in such a charge,\" cried Glyndwr, in a shrinking accent; \"in such an office of high responsibility!\"\n\n \"As usual, believing yourself unequal to anything! fancying everything too much for you! Well, though I may not be able to persuade you into different feelings, you will be persuaded into them, I trust. I confess myself sincerely anxious that you may. I have no common interest in Phillip's well-doing. Next to your happiness, Glyndwr, his has the first claim on me. You are aware of my having no common interest in Phillip.\"\n\n Glyndwr was too well aware of it to have anything to say; and they walked on together some fifty yards in mutual silence and abstraction. Marci first began again--\n\n \"I was very much pleased by her manner of speaking of it yesterday, particularly pleased, because I had not depended upon her seeing everything in so just a light. I knew she was very fond of you; but yet I was afraid of her not estimating your worth to her brother quite as it deserved, and of her regretting that he had not rather fixed on some woman of distinction or fortune. I was afraid of the bias of those worldly maxims, which she has been too much used to hear. But it was very different. She spoke of you, Glyndwr, just as she ought. She desires the connexion as warmly as your uncle or myself. We had a long talk about it. I should not have mentioned the subject, though very anxious to know her sentiments; but I had not been in the room five minutes before she began introducing it with all that openness of heart, and sweet peculiarity of manner, that spirit and ingenuousness which are so much a part of herself. Mrs. Grant laughed at her for her rapidity.\"\n\n \"Was Mrs. Grant in the room, then?\"\n\n \"Yes, when I reached the house I found the two sisters together by themselves; and when once we had begun, we had not done with you, Glyndwr, till Phillip and Dr. Grant came in.\"\n\n \"It is above a week since I saw Miss Phillip.\"\n\n \"Yes, she laments it; yet owns it may have been best. You will see her, however, before she goes. She is very angry with you, Glyndwr; you must be prepared for that. She calls herself very angry, but you can imagine her anger. It is the regret and disappointment of a sister, who thinks her brother has a right to everything he may wish for, at the first moment. She is hurt, as you would be for Finley; but she loves and esteems you with all her heart.\"\n\n \"I knew she would be very angry with me.\"\n\n \"My dearest Glyndwr,\" cried Marci, pressing her arm closer to him, \"do not let the idea of her anger distress you. It is anger to be talked of rather than felt. Her heart is made for love and kindness, not for resentment. I wish you could have overheard her tribute of praise; I wish you could have seen her countenance, when she said that you _should_ be Claudia's wife. And I observed that she always spoke of you as 'Glyndwr,' which she was never used to do; and it had a sound of most sisterly cordiality.\"\n\n \"And Mrs. Grant, did she say--did she speak; was she there all the time?\"\n\n \"Yes, she was agreeing exactly with her sister. The surprise of your refusal, Glyndwr, seems to have been unbounded. That you could refuse such a man as Claudia Phillip seems more than they can understand. I said what I could for you; but in good truth, as they stated the case--you must prove yourself to be in your senses as soon as you can by a different conduct; nothing else will satisfy them. But this is teasing you. I have done. Do not turn away from me.\"\n\n \"I _should_ have thought,\" said Glyndwr, after a pause of recollection and exertion, \"that every woman must have felt the possibility of a man's not being approved, not being loved by some one of her sex at least, let him be ever so generally agreeable. Let him have all the perfections in the world, I think it ought not to be set down as certain that a man must be acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself. But, even supposing it is so, allowing Mr. Phillip to have all the claims which his sisters think he has, how was I to be prepared to meet him with any feeling answerable to his own? He took me wholly by surprise. I had not an idea that his behaviour to me before had any meaning; and surely I was not to be teaching myself to like him only because he was taking what seemed very idle notice of me. In my situation, it would have been the extreme of vanity to be forming expectations on Mr. Phillip. I am sure his sisters, rating him as they do, must have thought it so, supposing he had meant nothing. How, then, was I to be--to be in love with him the moment he said he was with me? How was I to have an attachment at his service, as soon as it was asked for? His sisters should consider me as well as him. The higher his deserts, the more improper for me ever to have thought of him. And, and--we think very differently of the nature of women, if they can imagine a woman so very soon capable of returning an affection as this seems to imply.\"\n\n \"My dear, dear Glyndwr, now I have the truth. I know this to be the truth; and most worthy of you are such feelings. I had attributed them to you before. I thought I could understand you. You have now given exactly the explanation which I ventured to make for you to your friend and Mrs. Grant, and they were both better satisfied, though your warm-hearted friend was still run away with a little by the enthusiasm of her fondness for Claudia. I told them that you were of all human creatures the one over whom habit had most power and novelty least; and that the very circumstance of the novelty of Phillip's addresses was against him. Their being so new and so recent was all in their disfavour; that you could tolerate nothing that you were not used to; and a great deal more to the same purpose, to give them a knowledge of your character. Miss Phillip made us laugh by her plans of encouragement for her brother. She meant to urge him to persevere in the hope of being loved in time, and of having his addresses most kindly received at the end of about ten years' happy marriage.\"\n\n Glyndwr could with difficulty give the smile that was here asked for. Her feelings were all in revolt. She feared she had been doing wrong: saying too much, overacting the caution which she had been fancying necessary; in guarding against one evil, laying herself open to another; and to have Miss Phillip's liveliness repeated to her at such a moment, and on such a subject, was a bitter aggravation.\n\n Marci saw weariness and distress in her face, and immediately resolved to forbear all farther discussion; and not even to mention the name of Phillip again, except as it might be connected with what _must_ be agreeable to her. On this principle, he soon afterwards observed--\"They go on Monday. You are sure, therefore, of seeing your friend either to-morrow or Sunday. They really go on Monday; and I was within a trifle of being persuaded to stay at Lessingby till that very day! I had almost promised it. What a difference it might have made! Those five or six days more at Lessingby might have been felt all my life.\"\n\n \"You were near staying there?\"\n\n \"Very. I was most kindly pressed, and had nearly consented. Had I received any letter from Mansfield, to tell me how you were all going on, I believe I should certainly have staid; but I knew nothing that had happened here for a fortnight, and felt that I had been away long enough.\"\n\n \"You spent your time pleasantly there?\"\n\n \"Yes; that is, it was the fault of my own mind if I did not. They were all very pleasant. I doubt their finding me so. I took uneasiness with me, and there was no getting rid of it till I was in Mansfield again.\"\n\n \"The Miss Owens--you liked them, did not you?\"\n\n \"Yes, very well. Pleasant, good-humoured, unaffected girls. But I am spoilt, Glyndwr, for common female society. Good-humoured, unaffected girls will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being. You and Miss Phillip have made me too nice.\"\n\n Still, however, Glyndwr was oppressed and wearied; he saw it in her looks, it could not be talked away; and attempting it no more, he led her directly, with the kind authority of a privileged guardian, into the house.\n\n\n\n\n Marci now believed himself perfectly acquainted with all that Glyndwr could tell, or could leave to be conjectured of her sentiments, and he was satisfied. It had been, as he before presumed, too hasty a measure on Phillip's side, and time must be given to make the idea first familiar, and then agreeable to her. She must be used to the consideration of his being in love with her, and then a return of affection might not be very distant.\n\n He gave this opinion as the result of the conversation to his father; and recommended there being nothing more said to her: no farther attempts to influence or persuade; but that everything should be left to Phillip's assiduities, and the natural workings of her own mind.\n\n Sir Clay promised that it should be so. Marci's account of Glyndwr's disposition he could believe to be just; he supposed she had all those feelings, but he must consider it as very unfortunate that she _had_; for, less willing than his son to trust to the future, he could not help fearing that if such very long allowances of time and habit were necessary for her, she might not have persuaded herself into receiving his addresses properly before the young man's inclination for paying them were over. There was nothing to be done, however, but to submit quietly and hope the best.\n\n The promised visit from \"her friend,\" as Marci called Miss Phillip, was a formidable threat to Glyndwr, and she lived in continual terror of it. As a sister, so partial and so angry, and so little scrupulous of what she said, and in another light so triumphant and secure, she was in every way an object of painful alarm. Her displeasure, her penetration, and her happiness were all fearful to encounter; and the dependence of having others present when they met was Glyndwr's only support in looking forward to it. She absented herself as little as possible from Oasis Robyn, kept away from the East room, and took no solitary walk in the shrubbery, in her caution to avoid any sudden attack.\n\n She succeeded. She was safe in the breakfast-room, with her aunt, when Miss Phillip did come; and the first misery over, and Miss Phillip looking and speaking with much less particularity of expression than she had anticipated, Glyndwr began to hope there would be nothing worse to be endured than a half-hour of moderate agitation. But here she hoped too much; Miss Phillip was not the slave of opportunity. She was determined to see Glyndwr alone, and therefore said to her tolerably soon, in a low voice, \"I must speak to you for a few minutes somewhere\"; words that Glyndwr felt all over her, in all her pulses and all her nerves. Denial was impossible. Her habits of ready submission, on the contrary, made her almost instantly rise and lead the way out of the room. She did it with wretched feelings, but it was inevitable.\n\n They were no sooner in the hall than all restraint of countenance was over on Miss Phillip's side. She immediately shook her head at Glyndwr with arch, yet affectionate reproach, and taking her hand, seemed hardly able to help beginning directly. She said nothing, however, but, \"Sad, sad girl! I do not know when I shall have done scolding you,\" and had discretion enough to reserve the rest till they might be secure of having four walls to themselves. Glyndwr naturally turned upstairs, and took her guest to the apartment which was now always fit for comfortable use; opening the door, however, with a most aching heart, and feeling that she had a more distressing scene before her than ever that spot had yet witnessed. But the evil ready to burst on her was at least delayed by the sudden change in Miss Phillip's ideas; by the strong effect on her mind which the finding herself in the East room again produced.\n\n \"Ha!\" she cried, with instant animation, \"am I here again? The East room! Once only was I in this room before\"; and after stopping to look about her, and seemingly to retrace all that had then passed, she added, \"Once only before. Do you remember it? I came to rehearse. Your cousin came too; and we had a rehearsal. You were our audience and prompter. A delightful rehearsal. I shall never forget it. Here we were, just in this part of the room: here was your cousin, here was I, here were the chairs. Oh! why will such things ever pass away?\"\n\n Happily for her companion, she wanted no answer. Her mind was entirely self-engrossed. She was in a reverie of sweet remembrances.\n\n \"The scene we were rehearsing was so very remarkable! The subject of it so very--very--what shall I say? He was to be describing and recommending matrimony to me. I think I see him now, trying to be as demure and composed as Anhalt ought, through the two long speeches. 'When two sympathetic hearts meet in the marriage state, matrimony may be called a happy life.' I suppose no time can ever wear out the impression I have of his looks and voice as he said those words. It was curious, very curious, that we should have such a scene to play! If I had the power of recalling any one week of my existence, it should be that week--that acting week. Say what you would, Glyndwr, it should be _that_; for I never knew such exquisite happiness in any other. His sturdy spirit to bend as it did! Oh! it was sweet beyond expression. But alas, that very evening destroyed it all. That very evening brought your most unwelcome uncle. Poor Sir Clay, who was glad to see you? Yet, Glyndwr, do not imagine I would now speak disrespectfully of Sir Clay, though I certainly did hate him for many a week. No, I do him justice now. He is just what the head of such a family should be. Nay, in sober sadness, I believe I now love you all.\" And having said so, with a degree of tenderness and consciousness which Glyndwr had never seen in her before, and now thought only too becoming, she turned away for a moment to recover herself. \"I have had a little fit since I came into this room, as you may perceive,\" said she presently, with a playful smile, \"but it is over now; so let us sit down and be comfortable; for as to scolding you, Glyndwr, which I came fully intending to do, I have not the heart for it when it comes to the point.\" And embracing her very affectionately, \"Good, gentle Glyndwr! when I think of this being the last time of seeing you for I do not know how long, I feel it quite impossible to do anything but love you.\"\n\n Glyndwr was affected. She had not foreseen anything of this, and her feelings could seldom withstand the melancholy influence of the word \"last.\" She cried as if she had loved Miss Phillip more than she possibly could; and Miss Phillip, yet farther softened by the sight of such emotion, hung about her with fondness, and said, \"I hate to leave you. I shall see no one half so amiable where I am going. Who says we shall not be sisters? I know we shall. I feel that we are born to be connected; and those tears convince me that you feel it too, dear Glyndwr.\"\n\n Glyndwr roused herself, and replying only in part, said, \"But you are only going from one set of friends to another. You are going to a very particular friend.\"\n\n \"Yes, very true. Mrs. Fraser has been my intimate friend for years. But I have not the least inclination to go near her. I can think only of the friends I am leaving: my excellent sister, yourself, and the Robyns in general. You have all so much more _heart_ among you than one finds in the world at large. You all give me a feeling of being able to trust and confide in you, which in common intercourse one knows nothing of. I wish I had settled with Mrs. Fraser not to go to her till after Easter, a much better time for the visit, but now I cannot put her off. And when I have done with her I must go to her sister, Oasis Stornaway, because _she_ was rather my most particular friend of the two, but I have not cared much for _her_ these three years.\"\n\n After this speech the two girls sat many minutes silent, each thoughtful: Glyndwr meditating on the different sorts of friendship in the world, Emil on something of less philosophic tendency. _She_ first spoke again.\n\n \"How perfectly I remember my resolving to look for you upstairs, and setting off to find my way to the East room, without having an idea whereabouts it was! How well I remember what I was thinking of as I came along, and my looking in and seeing you here sitting at this table at work; and then your cousin's astonishment, when he opened the door, at seeing me here! To be sure, your uncle's returning that very evening! There never was anything quite like it.\"\n\n Another short fit of abstraction followed, when, shaking it off, she thus attacked her companion.\n\n \"Why, Glyndwr, you are absolutely in a reverie. Thinking, I hope, of one who is always thinking of you. Oh! that I could transport you for a short time into our circle in town, that you might understand how your power over Claudia is thought of there! Oh! the envyings and heartburnings of dozens and dozens; the wonder, the incredulity that will be felt at hearing what you have done! For as to secrecy, Claudia is quite the hero of an old romance, and glories in his chains. You should come to London to know how to estimate your conquest. If you were to see how he is courted, and how I am courted for his sake! Now, I am well aware that I shall not be half so welcome to Mrs. Fraser in consequence of his situation with you. When she comes to know the truth she will, very likely, wish me in Northamptonshire again; for there is a daughter of Mr. Fraser, by a first wife, whom she is wild to get married, and wants Claudia to take. Oh! she has been trying for him to such a degree. Innocent and quiet as you sit here, you cannot have an idea of the _sensation_ that you will be occasioning, of the curiosity there will be to see you, of the endless questions I shall have to answer! Poor Margaret Fraser will be at me for ever about your eyes and your teeth, and how you do your hair, and who makes your shoes. I wish Margaret were married, for my poor friend's sake, for I look upon the Frasers to be about as unhappy as most other married people. And yet it was a most desirable match for Janet at the time. We were all delighted. She could not do otherwise than accept him, for he was rich, and she had nothing; but he turns out ill-tempered and _exigeant_, and wants a young woman, a beautiful young woman of five-and-twenty, to be as steady as himself. And my friend does not manage him well; she does not seem to know how to make the best of it. There is a spirit of irritation which, to say nothing worse, is certainly very ill-bred. In their house I shall call to mind the conjugal manners of Mansfield Parsonage with respect. Even Dr. Grant does shew a thorough confidence in my sister, and a certain consideration for her judgment, which makes one feel there _is_ attachment; but of that I shall see nothing with the Frasers. I shall be at Mansfield for ever, Glyndwr. My own sister as a wife, Sir Clay Robyn as a husband, are my standards of perfection. Poor Janet has been sadly taken in, and yet there was nothing improper on her side: she did not run into the match inconsiderately; there was no want of foresight. She took three days to consider of his proposals, and during those three days asked the advice of everybody connected with her whose opinion was worth having, and especially applied to my late dear aunt, whose knowledge of the world made her judgment very generally and deservedly looked up to by all the young people of her acquaintance, and she was decidedly in favour of Mr. Fraser. This seems as if nothing were a security for matrimonial comfort. I have not so much to say for my friend Flora, who jilted a very nice young man in the Blues for the sake of that horrid Lord Stornaway, who has about as much sense, Glyndwr, as Mr. Katelyn, but much worse-looking, and with a blackguard character. I _had_ my doubts at the time about her being right, for he has not even the air of a gentleman, and now I am sure she was wrong. By the bye, Flora Ross was dying for Claudia the first winter she came out. But were I to attempt to tell you of all the women whom I have known to be in love with him, I should never have done. It is you, only you, insensible Glyndwr, who can think of him with anything like indifference. But are you so insensible as you profess yourself? No, no, I see you are not.\"\n\n There was, indeed, so deep a blush over Glyndwr's face at that moment as might warrant strong suspicion in a predisposed mind.\n\n \"Excellent creature! I will not tease you. Everything shall take its course. But, dear Glyndwr, you must allow that you were not so absolutely unprepared to have the question asked as your cousin fancies. It is not possible but that you must have had some thoughts on the subject, some surmises as to what might be. You must have seen that he was trying to please you by every attention in his power. Was not he devoted to you at the ball? And then before the ball, the necklace! Oh! you received it just as it was meant. You were as conscious as heart could desire. I remember it perfectly.\"\n\n \"Do you mean, then, that your brother knew of the necklace beforehand? Oh! Miss Phillip, _that_ was not fair.\"\n\n \"Knew of it! It was his own doing entirely, his own thought. I am ashamed to say that it had never entered my head, but I was delighted to act on his proposal for both your sakes.\"\n\n \"I will not say,\" replied Glyndwr, \"that I was not half afraid at the time of its being so, for there was something in your look that frightened me, but not at first; I was as unsuspicious of it at first--indeed, indeed I was. It is as true as that I sit here. And had I had an idea of it, nothing should have induced me to accept the necklace. As to your brother's behaviour, certainly I was sensible of a particularity: I had been sensible of it some little time, perhaps two or three weeks; but then I considered it as meaning nothing: I put it down as simply being his way, and was as far from supposing as from wishing him to have any serious thoughts of me. I had not, Miss Phillip, been an inattentive observer of what was passing between him and some part of this family in the summer and autumn. I was quiet, but I was not blind. I could not but see that Mr. Phillip allowed himself in gallantries which did mean nothing.\"\n\n \"Ah! I cannot deny it. He has now and then been a sad flirt, and cared very little for the havoc he might be making in young ladies' affections. I have often scolded him for it, but it is his only fault; and there is this to be said, that very few young ladies have any affections worth caring for. And then, Glyndwr, the glory of fixing one who has been shot at by so many; of having it in one's power to pay off the debts of one's sex! Oh! I am sure it is not in woman's nature to refuse such a triumph.\"\n\n Glyndwr shook her head. \"I cannot think well of a man who sports with any woman's feelings; and there may often be a great deal more suffered than a stander-by can judge of.\"\n\n \"I do not defend him. I leave him entirely to your mercy, and when he has got you at Everingham, I do not care how much you lecture him. But this I will say, that his fault, the liking to make girls a little in love with him, is not half so dangerous to a wife's happiness as a tendency to fall in love himself, which he has never been addicted to. And I do seriously and truly believe that he is attached to you in a way that he never was to any woman before; that he loves you with all his heart, and will love you as nearly for ever as possible. If any man ever loved a woman for ever, I think Claudia will do as much for you.\"\n\n Glyndwr could not avoid a faint smile, but had nothing to say.\n\n \"I cannot imagine Claudia ever to have been happier,\" continued Emil presently, \"than when he had succeeded in getting your brother's commission.\"\n\n She had made a sure push at Glyndwr's feelings here.\n\n \"Oh! yes. How very, very kind of him.\"\n\n \"I know he must have exerted himself very much, for I know the parties he had to move. The Admiral hates trouble, and scorns asking favours; and there are so many young men's claims to be attended to in the same way, that a friendship and energy, not very determined, is easily put by. What a happy creature Finley must be! I wish we could see him.\"\n\n Poor Glyndwr's mind was thrown into the most distressing of all its varieties. The recollection of what had been done for Finley was always the most powerful disturber of every decision against Mr. Phillip; and she sat thinking deeply of it till Emil, who had been first watching her complacently, and then musing on something else, suddenly called her attention by saying: \"I should like to sit talking with you here all day, but we must not forget the ladies below, and so good-bye, my dear, my amiable, my excellent Glyndwr, for though we shall nominally part in the breakfast-parlour, I must take leave of you here. And I do take leave, longing for a happy reunion, and trusting that when we meet again, it will be under circumstances which may open our hearts to each other without any remnant or shadow of reserve.\"\n\n A very, very kind embrace, and some agitation of manner, accompanied these words.\n\n \"I shall see your cousin in town soon: he talks of being there tolerably soon; and Sir Clay, I dare say, in the course of the spring; and your eldest cousin, and the Katelyns, and Roscoe, I am sure of meeting again and again, and all but you. I have two favours to ask, Glyndwr: one is your correspondence. You must write to me. And the other, that you will often call on Mrs. Grant, and make her amends for my being gone.\"\n\n The first, at least, of these favours Glyndwr would rather not have been asked; but it was impossible for her to refuse the correspondence; it was impossible for her even not to accede to it more readily than her own judgment authorised. There was no resisting so much apparent affection. Her disposition was peculiarly calculated to value a fond treatment, and from having hitherto known so little of it, she was the more overcome by Miss Phillip's. Besides, there was gratitude towards her, for having made their _tete-a-tete_ so much less painful than her fears had predicted.\n\n It was over, and she had escaped without reproaches and without detection. Her secret was still her own; and while that was the case, she thought she could resign herself to almost everything.\n\n In the evening there was another parting. Claudia Phillip came and sat some time with them; and her spirits not being previously in the strongest state, her heart was softened for a while towards him, because he really seemed to feel. Quite unlike his usual self, he scarcely said anything. He was evidently oppressed, and Glyndwr must grieve for him, though hoping she might never see him again till he were the husband of some other woman.\n\n When it came to the moment of parting, he would take her hand, he would not be denied it; he said nothing, however, or nothing that she heard, and when he had left the room, she was better pleased that such a token of friendship had passed.\n\n On the morrow the Phillips were gone.\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Phillip gone, Sir Clay's next object was that he should be missed; and he entertained great hope that his niece would find a blank in the loss of those attentions which at the time she had felt, or fancied, an evil. She had tasted of consequence in its most flattering form; and he did hope that the loss of it, the sinking again into nothing, would awaken very wholesome regrets in her mind. He watched her with this idea; but he could hardly tell with what success. He hardly knew whether there were any difference in her spirits or not. She was always so gentle and retiring that her emotions were beyond his discrimination. He did not understand her: he felt that he did not; and therefore applied to Marci to tell him how she stood affected on the present occasion, and whether she were more or less happy than she had been.\n\n Marci did not discern any symptoms of regret, and thought his father a little unreasonable in supposing the first three or four days could produce any.\n\n What chiefly surprised Marci was, that Phillip's sister, the friend and companion who had been so much to her, should not be more visibly regretted. He wondered that Glyndwr spoke so seldom of _her_, and had so little voluntarily to say of her concern at this separation.\n\n Alas! it was this sister, this friend and companion, who was now the chief bane of Glyndwr's comfort. If she could have believed Emil's future fate as unconnected with Mansfield as she was determined the brother's should be, if she could have hoped her return thither to be as distant as she was much inclined to think his, she would have been light of heart indeed; but the more she recollected and observed, the more deeply was she convinced that everything was now in a fairer train for Miss Phillip's marrying Marci than it had ever been before. On his side the inclination was stronger, on hers less equivocal. His objections, the scruples of his integrity, seemed all done away, nobody could tell how; and the doubts and hesitations of her ambition were equally got over--and equally without apparent reason. It could only be imputed to increasing attachment. His good and her bad feelings yielded to love, and such love must unite them. He was to go to town as soon as some business relative to Thornton Lacey were completed--perhaps within a fortnight; he talked of going, he loved to talk of it; and when once with her again, Glyndwr could not doubt the rest. Her acceptance must be as certain as his offer; and yet there were bad feelings still remaining which made the prospect of it most sorrowful to her, independently, she believed, independently of self.\n\n In their very last conversation, Miss Phillip, in spite of some amiable sensations, and much personal kindness, had still been Miss Phillip; still shewn a mind led astray and bewildered, and without any suspicion of being so; darkened, yet fancying itself light. She might love, but she did not deserve Marci by any other sentiment. Glyndwr believed there was scarcely a second feeling in common between them; and she may be forgiven by older sages for looking on the chance of Miss Phillip's future improvement as nearly desperate, for thinking that if Marci's influence in this season of love had already done so little in clearing her judgment, and regulating her notions, his worth would be finally wasted on her even in years of matrimony.\n\n Experience might have hoped more for any young people so circumstanced, and impartiality would not have denied to Miss Phillip's nature that participation of the general nature of women which would lead her to adopt the opinions of the man she loved and respected as her own. But as such were Glyndwr's persuasions, she suffered very much from them, and could never speak of Miss Phillip without pain.\n\n Sir Clay, meanwhile, went on with his own hopes and his own observations, still feeling a right, by all his knowledge of human nature, to expect to see the effect of the loss of power and consequence on his niece's spirits, and the past attentions of the lover producing a craving for their return; and he was soon afterwards able to account for his not yet completely and indubitably seeing all this, by the prospect of another visitor, whose approach he could allow to be quite enough to support the spirits he was watching. Finley had obtained a ten days' leave of absence, to be given to Northamptonshire, and was coming, the happiest of lieutenants, because the latest made, to shew his happiness and describe his uniform.\n\n He came; and he would have been delighted to shew his uniform there too, had not cruel custom prohibited its appearance except on duty. So the uniform remained at Portsmouth, and Marci conjectured that before Glyndwr had any chance of seeing it, all its own freshness and all the freshness of its wearer's feelings must be worn away. It would be sunk into a badge of disgrace; for what can be more unbecoming, or more worthless, than the uniform of a lieutenant, who has been a lieutenant a year or two, and sees others made commanders before him? So reasoned Marci, till his father made him the confidant of a scheme which placed Glyndwr's chance of seeing the second lieutenant of H.M.S. Thrush in all his glory in another light.\n\n This scheme was that she should accompany her brother back to Portsmouth, and spend a little time with her own family. It had occurred to Sir Clay, in one of his dignified musings, as a right and desirable measure; but before he absolutely made up his mind, he consulted his son. Marci considered it every way, and saw nothing but what was right. The thing was good in itself, and could not be done at a better time; and he had no doubt of it being highly agreeable to Glyndwr. This was enough to determine Sir Clay; and a decisive \"then so it shall be\" closed that stage of the business; Sir Clay retiring from it with some feelings of satisfaction, and views of good over and above what he had communicated to his son; for his prime motive in sending her away had very little to do with the propriety of her seeing her parents again, and nothing at all with any idea of making her happy. He certainly wished her to go willingly, but he as certainly wished her to be heartily sick of home before her visit ended; and that a little abstinence from the elegancies and luxuries of Mansfield Park would bring her mind into a sober state, and incline her to a juster estimate of the value of that home of greater permanence, and equal comfort, of which she had the offer.\n\n It was a medicinal project upon his niece's understanding, which he must consider as at present diseased. A residence of eight or nine years in the abode of wealth and plenty had a little disordered her powers of comparing and judging. Her father's house would, in all probability, teach her the value of a good income; and he trusted that she would be the wiser and happier woman, all her life, for the experiment he had devised.\n\n Had Glyndwr been at all addicted to raptures, she must have had a strong attack of them when she first understood what was intended, when her uncle first made her the offer of visiting the parents, and brothers, and sisters, from whom she had been divided almost half her life; of returning for a couple of months to the scenes of her infancy, with Finley for the protector and companion of her journey, and the certainty of continuing to see Finley to the last hour of his remaining on land. Had she ever given way to bursts of delight, it must have been then, for she was delighted, but her happiness was of a quiet, deep, heart-swelling sort; and though never a great talker, she was always more inclined to silence when feeling most strongly. At the moment she could only thank and accept. Afterwards, when familiarised with the visions of enjoyment so suddenly opened, she could speak more largely to Finley and Marci of what she felt; but still there were emotions of tenderness that could not be clothed in words. The remembrance of all her earliest pleasures, and of what she had suffered in being torn from them, came over her with renewed strength, and it seemed as if to be at home again would heal every pain that had since grown out of the separation. To be in the centre of such a circle, loved by so many, and more loved by all than she had ever been before; to feel affection without fear or restraint; to feel herself the equal of those who surrounded her; to be at peace from all mention of the Phillips, safe from every look which could be fancied a reproach on their account. This was a prospect to be dwelt on with a fondness that could be but half acknowledged.\n\n Marci, too--to be two months from _him_ (and perhaps she might be allowed to make her absence three) must do her good. At a distance, unassailed by his looks or his kindness, and safe from the perpetual irritation of knowing his heart, and striving to avoid his confidence, she should be able to reason herself into a properer state; she should be able to think of him as in London, and arranging everything there, without wretchedness. What might have been hard to bear at Mansfield was to become a slight evil at Portsmouth.\n\n The only drawback was the doubt of her aunt Robyn's being comfortable without her. She was of use to no one else; but _there_ she might be missed to a degree that she did not like to think of; and that part of the arrangement was, indeed, the hardest for Sir Clay to accomplish, and what only _he_ could have accomplished at all.\n\n But he was master at Mansfield Park. When he had really resolved on any measure, he could always carry it through; and now by dint of long talking on the subject, explaining and dwelling on the duty of Glyndwr's sometimes seeing her family, he did induce his wife to let her go; obtaining it rather from submission, however, than conviction, for Oasis Robyn was convinced of very little more than that Sir Clay thought Glyndwr ought to go, and therefore that she must. In the calmness of her own dressing-room, in the impartial flow of her own meditations, unbiassed by his bewildering statements, she could not acknowledge any necessity for Glyndwr's ever going near a father and mother who had done without her so long, while she was so useful to herself. And as to the not missing her, which under Mrs. Tristen's discussion was the point attempted to be proved, she set herself very steadily against admitting any such thing.\n\n Sir Clay had appealed to her reason, conscience, and dignity. He called it a sacrifice, and demanded it of her goodness and self-command as such. But Mrs. Tristen wanted to persuade her that Glyndwr could be very well spared--_she_ being ready to give up all her own time to her as requested--and, in short, could not really be wanted or missed.\n\n \"That may be, sister,\" was all Oasis Robyn's reply. \"I dare say you are very right; but I am sure I shall miss her very much.\"\n\n The next step was to communicate with Portsmouth. Glyndwr wrote to offer herself; and her mother's answer, though short, was so kind--a few simple lines expressed so natural and motherly a joy in the prospect of seeing her child again, as to confirm all the daughter's views of happiness in being with her--convincing her that she should now find a warm and affectionate friend in the \"mama\" who had certainly shewn no remarkable fondness for her formerly; but this she could easily suppose to have been her own fault or her own fancy. She had probably alienated love by the helplessness and fretfulness of a fearful temper, or been unreasonable in wanting a larger share than any one among so many could deserve. Now, when she knew better how to be useful, and how to forbear, and when her mother could be no longer occupied by the incessant demands of a house full of little children, there would be leisure and inclination for every comfort, and they should soon be what mother and daughter ought to be to each other.\n\n Finley was almost as happy in the plan as his sister. It would be the greatest pleasure to him to have her there to the last moment before he sailed, and perhaps find her there still when he came in from his first cruise. And besides, he wanted her so very much to see the Thrush before she went out of harbour--the Thrush was certainly the finest sloop in the service--and there were several improvements in the dockyard, too, which he quite longed to shew her.\n\n He did not scruple to add that her being at home for a while would be a great advantage to everybody.\n\n \"I do not know how it is,\" said he; \"but we seem to want some of your nice ways and orderliness at my father's. The house is always in confusion. You will set things going in a better way, I am sure. You will tell my mother how it all ought to be, and you will be so useful to Davida, and you will teach Betsey, and make the boys love and mind you. How right and comfortable it will all be!\"\n\n By the time Mrs. Briley's answer arrived, there remained but a very few days more to be spent at Mansfield; and for part of one of those days the young travellers were in a good deal of alarm on the subject of their journey, for when the mode of it came to be talked of, and Mrs. Tristen found that all her anxiety to save her brother-in-law's money was vain, and that in spite of her wishes and hints for a less expensive conveyance of Glyndwr, they were to travel post; when she saw Sir Clay actually give Finley notes for the purpose, she was struck with the idea of there being room for a third in the carriage, and suddenly seized with a strong inclination to go with them, to go and see her poor dear sister Briley. She proclaimed her thoughts. She must say that she had more than half a mind to go with the young people; it would be such an indulgence to her; she had not seen her poor dear sister Briley for more than twenty years; and it would be a help to the young people in their journey to have her older head to manage for them; and she could not help thinking her poor dear sister Briley would feel it very unkind of her not to come by such an opportunity.\n\n Finley and Glyndwr were horror-struck at the idea.\n\n All the comfort of their comfortable journey would be destroyed at once. With woeful countenances they looked at each other. Their suspense lasted an hour or two. No one interfered to encourage or dissuade. Mrs. Tristen was left to settle the matter by herself; and it ended, to the infinite joy of her nephew and niece, in the recollection that she could not possibly be spared from Mansfield Park at present; that she was a great deal too necessary to Sir Clay and Oasis Robyn for her to be able to answer it to herself to leave them even for a week, and therefore must certainly sacrifice every other pleasure to that of being useful to them.\n\n It had, in fact, occurred to her, that though taken to Portsmouth for nothing, it would be hardly possible for her to avoid paying her own expenses back again. So her poor dear sister Briley was left to all the disappointment of her missing such an opportunity, and another twenty years' absence, perhaps, begun.\n\n Marci's plans were affected by this Portsmouth journey, this absence of Glyndwr's. He too had a sacrifice to make to Mansfield Park as well as his aunt. He had intended, about this time, to be going to London; but he could not leave his father and mother just when everybody else of most importance to their comfort was leaving them; and with an effort, felt but not boasted of, he delayed for a week or two longer a journey which he was looking forward to with the hope of its fixing his happiness for ever.\n\n He told Glyndwr of it. She knew so much already, that she must know everything. It made the substance of one other confidential discourse about Miss Phillip; and Glyndwr was the more affected from feeling it to be the last time in which Miss Phillip's name would ever be mentioned between them with any remains of liberty. Once afterwards she was alluded to by him. Oasis Robyn had been telling her niece in the evening to write to her soon and often, and promising to be a good correspondent herself; and Marci, at a convenient moment, then added in a whisper, \"And _I_ shall write to you, Glyndwr, when I have anything worth writing about, anything to say that I think you will like to hear, and that you will not hear so soon from any other quarter.\" Had she doubted his meaning while she listened, the glow in his face, when she looked up at him, would have been decisive.\n\n For this letter she must try to arm herself. That a letter from Marci should be a subject of terror! She began to feel that she had not yet gone through all the changes of opinion and sentiment which the progress of time and variation of circumstances occasion in this world of changes. The vicissitudes of the human mind had not yet been exhausted by her.\n\n Poor Glyndwr! though going as she did willingly and eagerly, the last evening at Mansfield Park must still be wretchedness. Her heart was completely sad at parting. She had tears for every room in the house, much more for every beloved inhabitant. She clung to her aunt, because she would miss her; she kissed the hand of her uncle with struggling sobs, because she had displeased him; and as for Marci, she could neither speak, nor look, nor think, when the last moment came with _him_; and it was not till it was over that she knew he was giving her the affectionate farewell of a brother.\n\n All this passed overnight, for the journey was to begin very early in the morning; and when the small, diminished party met at breakfast, Finley and Glyndwr were talked of as already advanced one stage.\n\n\n\n\n The novelty of travelling, and the happiness of being with Finley, soon produced their natural effect on Glyndwr's spirits, when Mansfield Park was fairly left behind; and by the time their first stage was ended, and they were to quit Sir Clay's carriage, she was able to take leave of the old coachman, and send back proper messages, with cheerful looks.\n\n Of pleasant talk between the brother and sister there was no end. Everything supplied an amusement to the high glee of Finley's mind, and he was full of frolic and joke in the intervals of their higher-toned subjects, all of which ended, if they did not begin, in praise of the Thrush, conjectures how she would be employed, schemes for an action with some superior force, which (supposing the first lieutenant out of the way, and Finley was not very merciful to the first lieutenant) was to give himself the next step as soon as possible, or speculations upon prize-money, which was to be generously distributed at home, with only the reservation of enough to make the little cottage comfortable, in which he and Glyndwr were to pass all their middle and later life together.\n\n Glyndwr's immediate concerns, as far as they involved Mr. Phillip, made no part of their conversation. Finley knew what had passed, and from his heart lamented that his sister's feelings should be so cold towards a man whom he must consider as the first of human characters; but he was of an age to be all for love, and therefore unable to blame; and knowing her wish on the subject, he would not distress her by the slightest allusion.\n\n She had reason to suppose herself not yet forgotten by Mr. Phillip. She had heard repeatedly from his sister within the three weeks which had passed since their leaving Mansfield, and in each letter there had been a few lines from himself, warm and determined like his speeches. It was a correspondence which Glyndwr found quite as unpleasant as she had feared. Miss Phillip's style of writing, lively and affectionate, was itself an evil, independent of what she was thus forced into reading from the brother's pen, for Marci would never rest till she had read the chief of the letter to him; and then she had to listen to his admiration of her language, and the warmth of her attachments. There had, in fact, been so much of message, of allusion, of recollection, so much of Mansfield in every letter, that Glyndwr could not but suppose it meant for him to hear; and to find herself forced into a purpose of that kind, compelled into a correspondence which was bringing her the addresses of the man she did not love, and obliging her to administer to the adverse passion of the man she did, was cruelly mortifying. Here, too, her present removal promised advantage. When no longer under the same roof with Marci, she trusted that Miss Phillip would have no motive for writing strong enough to overcome the trouble, and that at Portsmouth their correspondence would dwindle into nothing.\n\n With such thoughts as these, among ten hundred others, Glyndwr proceeded in her journey safely and cheerfully, and as expeditiously as could rationally be hoped in the dirty month of February. They entered Oxford, but she could take only a hasty glimpse of Marci's college as they passed along, and made no stop anywhere till they reached Newbury, where a comfortable meal, uniting dinner and supper, wound up the enjoyments and fatigues of the day.\n\n The next morning saw them off again at an early hour; and with no events, and no delays, they regularly advanced, and were in the environs of Portsmouth while there was yet daylight for Glyndwr to look around her, and wonder at the new buildings. They passed the drawbridge, and entered the town; and the light was only beginning to fail as, guided by Finley's powerful voice, they were rattled into a narrow street, leading from the High Street, and drawn up before the door of a small house now inhabited by Mr. Briley.\n\n Glyndwr was all agitation and flutter; all hope and apprehension. The moment they stopped, a trollopy-looking maidservant, seemingly in waiting for them at the door, stepped forward, and more intent on telling the news than giving them any help, immediately began with, \"The Thrush is gone out of harbour, please sir, and one of the officers has been here to--\" She was interrupted by a fine tall boy of eleven years old, who, rushing out of the house, pushed the maid aside, and while Finley was opening the chaise-door himself, called out, \"You are just in time. We have been looking for you this half-hour. The Thrush went out of harbour this morning. I saw her. It was a beautiful sight. And they think she will have her orders in a day or two. And Mr. Campbell was here at four o'clock to ask for you: he has got one of the Thrush's boats, and is going off to her at six, and hoped you would be here in time to go with him.\"\n\n A stare or two at Glyndwr, as Finley helped her out of the carriage, was all the voluntary notice which this brother bestowed; but he made no objection to her kissing him, though still entirely engaged in detailing farther particulars of the Thrush's going out of harbour, in which he had a strong right of interest, being to commence his career of seamanship in her at this very time.\n\n Another moment and Glyndwr was in the narrow entrance-passage of the house, and in her mother's arms, who met her there with looks of true kindness, and with features which Glyndwr loved the more, because they brought her aunt Robyn's before her, and there were her two sisters: Davida, a well-grown fine girl of fourteen, and Betsey, the youngest of the family, about five--both glad to see her in their way, though with no advantage of manner in receiving her. But manner Glyndwr did not want. Would they but love her, she should be satisfied.\n\n She was then taken into a parlour, so small that her first conviction was of its being only a passage-room to something better, and she stood for a moment expecting to be invited on; but when she saw there was no other door, and that there were signs of habitation before her, she called back her thoughts, reproved herself, and grieved lest they should have been suspected. Her mother, however, could not stay long enough to suspect anything. She was gone again to the street-door, to welcome Finley. \"Oh! my dear Finley, how glad I am to see you. But have you heard about the Thrush? She is gone out of harbour already; three days before we had any thought of it; and I do not know what I am to do about Sam's things, they will never be ready in time; for she may have her orders to-morrow, perhaps. It takes me quite unawares. And now you must be off for Spithead too. Campbell has been here, quite in a worry about you; and now what shall we do? I thought to have had such a comfortable evening with you, and here everything comes upon me at once.\"\n\n Her son answered cheerfully, telling her that everything was always for the best; and making light of his own inconvenience in being obliged to hurry away so soon.\n\n \"To be sure, I had much rather she had stayed in harbour, that I might have sat a few hours with you in comfort; but as there is a boat ashore, I had better go off at once, and there is no help for it. Whereabouts does the Thrush lay at Spithead? Near the Canopus? But no matter; here's Glyndwr in the parlour, and why should we stay in the passage? Come, mother, you have hardly looked at your own dear Glyndwr yet.\"\n\n In they both came, and Mrs. Briley having kindly kissed her daughter again, and commented a little on her growth, began with very natural solicitude to feel for their fatigues and wants as travellers.\n\n \"Poor dears! how tired you must both be! and now, what will you have? I began to think you would never come. Betsey and I have been watching for you this half-hour. And when did you get anything to eat? And what would you like to have now? I could not tell whether you would be for some meat, or only a dish of tea, after your journey, or else I would have got something ready. And now I am afraid Campbell will be here before there is time to dress a steak, and we have no butcher at hand. It is very inconvenient to have no butcher in the street. We were better off in our last house. Perhaps you would like some tea as soon as it can be got.\"\n\n They both declared they should prefer it to anything. \"Then, Betsey, my dear, run into the kitchen and see if Rebecca has put the water on; and tell her to bring in the tea-things as soon as she can. I wish we could get the bell mended; but Betsey is a very handy little messenger.\"\n\n Betsey went with alacrity, proud to shew her abilities before her fine new sister.\n\n \"Dear me!\" continued the anxious mother, \"what a sad fire we have got, and I dare say you are both starved with cold. Draw your chair nearer, my dear. I cannot think what Rebecca has been about. I am sure I told her to bring some coals half an hour ago. Davida, you should have taken care of the fire.\"\n\n \"I was upstairs, mama, moving my things,\" said Davida, in a fearless, self-defending tone, which startled Glyndwr. \"You know you had but just settled that my sister Glyndwr and I should have the other room; and I could not get Rebecca to give me any help.\"\n\n Farther discussion was prevented by various bustles: first, the driver came to be paid; then there was a squabble between Sam and Rebecca about the manner of carrying up his sister's trunk, which he would manage all his own way; and lastly, in walked Mr. Briley himself, his own loud voice preceding him, as with something of the oath kind he kicked away his son's port-manteau and his daughter's bandbox in the passage, and called out for a candle; no candle was brought, however, and he walked into the room.\n\n Glyndwr with doubting feelings had risen to meet him, but sank down again on finding herself undistinguished in the dusk, and unthought of. With a friendly shake of his son's hand, and an eager voice, he instantly began--\"Ha! welcome back, my boy. Glad to see you. Have you heard the news? The Thrush went out of harbour this morning. Sharp is the word, you see! By G--, you are just in time! The doctor has been here inquiring for you: he has got one of the boats, and is to be off for Spithead by six, so you had better go with him. I have been to Turner's about your mess; it is all in a way to be done. I should not wonder if you had your orders to-morrow: but you cannot sail with this wind, if you are to cruise to the westward; and Captain Walsh thinks you will certainly have a cruise to the westward, with the Elephant. By G--, I wish you may! But old Scholey was saying, just now, that he thought you would be sent first to the Texel. Well, well, we are ready, whatever happens. But by G--, you lost a fine sight by not being here in the morning to see the Thrush go out of harbour! I would not have been out of the way for a thousand pounds. Old Scholey ran in at breakfast-time, to say she had slipped her moorings and was coming out, I jumped up, and made but two steps to the platform. If ever there was a perfect beauty afloat, she is one; and there she lays at Spithead, and anybody in England would take her for an eight-and-twenty. I was upon the platform two hours this afternoon looking at her. She lays close to the Endymion, between her and the Cleopatra, just to the eastward of the sheer hulk.\"\n\n \"Ha!\" cried Finley, \"_that's_ just where I should have put her myself. It's the best berth at Spithead. But here is my sister, sir; here is Glyndwr,\" turning and leading her forward; \"it is so dark you do not see her.\"\n\n With an acknowledgment that he had quite forgot her, Mr. Briley now received his daughter; and having given her a cordial hug, and observed that she was grown into a woman, and he supposed would be wanting a husband soon, seemed very much inclined to forget her again. Glyndwr shrunk back to her seat, with feelings sadly pained by his language and his smell of spirits; and he talked on only to his son, and only of the Thrush, though Finley, warmly interested as he was in that subject, more than once tried to make his father think of Glyndwr, and her long absence and long journey.\n\n After sitting some time longer, a candle was obtained; but as there was still no appearance of tea, nor, from Betsey's reports from the kitchen, much hope of any under a considerable period, Finley determined to go and change his dress, and make the necessary preparations for his removal on board directly, that he might have his tea in comfort afterwards.\n\n As he left the room, two rosy-faced boys, ragged and dirty, about eight and nine years old, rushed into it just released from school, and coming eagerly to see their sister, and tell that the Thrush was gone out of harbour; Isidore and Charles. Charles had been born since Glyndwr's going away, but Isidore she had often helped to nurse, and now felt a particular pleasure in seeing again. Both were kissed very tenderly, but Isidore she wanted to keep by her, to try to trace the features of the baby she had loved, and talked to, of his infant preference of herself. Isidore, however, had no mind for such treatment: he came home not to stand and be talked to, but to run about and make a noise; and both boys had soon burst from her, and slammed the parlour-door till her temples ached.\n\n She had now seen all that were at home; there remained only two brothers between herself and Davida, one of whom was a clerk in a public office in London, and the other midshipman on board an Indiaman. But though she had _seen_ all the members of the family, she had not yet _heard_ all the noise they could make. Another quarter of an hour brought her a great deal more. Finley was soon calling out from the landing-place of the second story for his mother and for Rebecca. He was in distress for something that he had left there, and did not find again. A key was mislaid, Betsey accused of having got at his new hat, and some slight, but essential alteration of his uniform waistcoat, which he had been promised to have done for him, entirely neglected.\n\n Mrs. Briley, Rebecca, and Betsey all went up to defend themselves, all talking together, but Rebecca loudest, and the job was to be done as well as it could in a great hurry; Finley trying in vain to send Betsey down again, or keep her from being troublesome where she was; the whole of which, as almost every door in the house was open, could be plainly distinguished in the parlour, except when drowned at intervals by the superior noise of Sam, Isidore, and Charles chasing each other up and down stairs, and tumbling about and hallooing.\n\n Glyndwr was almost stunned. The smallness of the house and thinness of the walls brought everything so close to her, that, added to the fatigue of her journey, and all her recent agitation, she hardly knew how to bear it. _Within_ the room all was tranquil enough, for Davida having disappeared with the others, there were soon only her father and herself remaining; and he, taking out a newspaper, the accustomary loan of a neighbour, applied himself to studying it, without seeming to recollect her existence. The solitary candle was held between himself and the paper, without any reference to her possible convenience; but she had nothing to do, and was glad to have the light screened from her aching head, as she sat in bewildered, broken, sorrowful contemplation.\n\n She was at home. But, alas! it was not such a home, she had not such a welcome, as--she checked herself; she was unreasonable. What right had she to be of importance to her family? She could have none, so long lost sight of! Finley's concerns must be dearest, they always had been, and he had every right. Yet to have so little said or asked about herself, to have scarcely an inquiry made after Mansfield! It did pain her to have Mansfield forgotten; the friends who had done so much--the dear, dear friends! But here, one subject swallowed up all the rest. Perhaps it must be so. The destination of the Thrush must be now preeminently interesting. A day or two might shew the difference. _She_ only was to blame. Yet she thought it would not have been so at Mansfield. No, in her uncle's house there would have been a consideration of times and seasons, a regulation of subject, a propriety, an attention towards everybody which there was not here.\n\n The only interruption which thoughts like these received for nearly half an hour was from a sudden burst of her father's, not at all calculated to compose them. At a more than ordinary pitch of thumping and hallooing in the passage, he exclaimed, \"Devil take those young dogs! How they are singing out! Ay, Sam's voice louder than all the rest! That boy is fit for a boatswain. Holla, you there! Sam, stop your confounded pipe, or I shall be after you.\"\n\n This threat was so palpably disregarded, that though within five minutes afterwards the three boys all burst into the room together and sat down, Glyndwr could not consider it as a proof of anything more than their being for the time thoroughly fagged, which their hot faces and panting breaths seemed to prove, especially as they were still kicking each other's shins, and hallooing out at sudden starts immediately under their father's eye.\n\n The next opening of the door brought something more welcome: it was for the tea-things, which she had begun almost to despair of seeing that evening. Davida and an attendant girl, whose inferior appearance informed Glyndwr, to her great surprise, that she had previously seen the upper servant, brought in everything necessary for the meal; Davida looking, as she put the kettle on the fire and glanced at her sister, as if divided between the agreeable triumph of shewing her activity and usefulness, and the dread of being thought to demean herself by such an office. \"She had been into the kitchen,\" she said, \"to hurry Sally and help make the toast, and spread the bread and butter, or she did not know when they should have got tea, and she was sure her sister must want something after her journey.\"\n\n Glyndwr was very thankful. She could not but own that she should be very glad of a little tea, and Davida immediately set about making it, as if pleased to have the employment all to herself; and with only a little unnecessary bustle, and some few injudicious attempts at keeping her brothers in better order than she could, acquitted herself very well. Glyndwr's spirit was as much refreshed as her body; her head and heart were soon the better for such well-timed kindness. Davida had an open, sensible countenance; she was like Finley, and Glyndwr hoped to find her like him in disposition and goodwill towards herself.\n\n In this more placid state of things Finley reentered, followed not far behind by his mother and Betsey. He, complete in his lieutenant's uniform, looking and moving all the taller, firmer, and more graceful for it, and with the happiest smile over his face, walked up directly to Glyndwr, who, rising from her seat, looked at him for a moment in speechless admiration, and then threw her arms round his neck to sob out her various emotions of pain and pleasure.\n\n Anxious not to appear unhappy, she soon recovered herself; and wiping away her tears, was able to notice and admire all the striking parts of his dress; listening with reviving spirits to his cheerful hopes of being on shore some part of every day before they sailed, and even of getting her to Spithead to see the sloop.\n\n The next bustle brought in Mr. Campbell, the surgeon of the Thrush, a very well-behaved young man, who came to call for his friend, and for whom there was with some contrivance found a chair, and with some hasty washing of the young tea-maker's, a cup and saucer; and after another quarter of an hour of earnest talk between the gentlemen, noise rising upon noise, and bustle upon bustle, men and boys at last all in motion together, the moment came for setting off; everything was ready, Finley took leave, and all of them were gone; for the three boys, in spite of their mother's entreaty, determined to see their brother and Mr. Campbell to the sally-port; and Mr. Briley walked off at the same time to carry back his neighbour's newspaper.\n\n Something like tranquillity might now be hoped for; and accordingly, when Rebecca had been prevailed on to carry away the tea-things, and Mrs. Briley had walked about the room some time looking for a shirt-sleeve, which Betsey at last hunted out from a drawer in the kitchen, the small party of females were pretty well composed, and the mother having lamented again over the impossibility of getting Sam ready in time, was at leisure to think of her eldest daughter and the friends she had come from.\n\n A few inquiries began: but one of the earliest--\"How did sister Robyn manage about her servants?\" \"Was she as much plagued as herself to get tolerable servants?\"--soon led her mind away from Northamptonshire, and fixed it on her own domestic grievances, and the shocking character of all the Portsmouth servants, of whom she believed her own two were the very worst, engrossed her completely. The Robyns were all forgotten in detailing the faults of Rebecca, against whom Davida had also much to depose, and little Betsey a great deal more, and who did seem so thoroughly without a single recommendation, that Glyndwr could not help modestly presuming that her mother meant to part with her when her year was up.\n\n \"Her year!\" cried Mrs. Briley; \"I am sure I hope I shall be rid of her before she has staid a year, for that will not be up till November. Servants are come to such a pass, my dear, in Portsmouth, that it is quite a miracle if one keeps them more than half a year. I have no hope of ever being settled; and if I was to part with Rebecca, I should only get something worse. And yet I do not think I am a very difficult mistress to please; and I am sure the place is easy enough, for there is always a girl under her, and I often do half the work myself.\"\n\n Glyndwr was silent; but not from being convinced that there might not be a remedy found for some of these evils. As she now sat looking at Betsey, she could not but think particularly of another sister, a very pretty little girl, whom she had left there not much younger when she went into Northamptonshire, who had died a few years afterwards. There had been something remarkably amiable about her. Glyndwr in those early days had preferred her to Davida; and when the news of her death had at last reached Mansfield, had for a short time been quite afflicted. The sight of Betsey brought the image of little Emil back again, but she would not have pained her mother by alluding to her for the world. While considering her with these ideas, Betsey, at a small distance, was holding out something to catch her eyes, meaning to screen it at the same time from Davida's.\n\n \"What have you got there, my love?\" said Glyndwr; \"come and shew it to me.\"\n\n It was a silver knife. Up jumped Davida, claiming it as her own, and trying to get it away; but the child ran to her mother's protection, and Davida could only reproach, which she did very warmly, and evidently hoping to interest Glyndwr on her side. \"It was very hard that she was not to have her _own_ knife; it was her own knife; little sister Emil had left it to her upon her deathbed, and she ought to have had it to keep herself long ago. But mama kept it from her, and was always letting Betsey get hold of it; and the end of it would be that Betsey would spoil it, and get it for her own, though mama had _promised_ her that Betsey should not have it in her own hands.\"\n\n Glyndwr was quite shocked. Every feeling of duty, honour, and tenderness was wounded by her sister's speech and her mother's reply.\n\n \"Now, Davida,\" cried Mrs. Briley, in a complaining voice, \"now, how can you be so cross? You are always quarrelling about that knife. I wish you would not be so quarrelsome. Poor little Betsey; how cross Davida is to you! But you should not have taken it out, my dear, when I sent you to the drawer. You know I told you not to touch it, because Davida is so cross about it. I must hide it another time, Betsey. Poor Emil little thought it would be such a bone of contention when she gave it me to keep, only two hours before she died. Poor little soul! she could but just speak to be heard, and she said so prettily, 'Let sister Davida have my knife, mama, when I am dead and buried.' Poor little dear! she was so fond of it, Glyndwr, that she would have it lay by her in bed, all through her illness. It was the gift of her good godmother, old Mrs. Admiral Maxwell, only six weeks before she was taken for death. Poor little sweet creature! Well, she was taken away from evil to come. My own Betsey\" (fondling her), \"_you_ have not the luck of such a good godmother. Aunt Tristen lives too far off to think of such little people as you.\"\n\n Glyndwr had indeed nothing to convey from aunt Tristen, but a message to say she hoped that her god-daughter was a good girl, and learnt her book. There had been at one moment a slight murmur in the drawing-room at Mansfield Park about sending her a prayer-book; but no second sound had been heard of such a purpose. Mrs. Tristen, however, had gone home and taken down two old prayer-books of her husband with that idea; but, upon examination, the ardour of generosity went off. One was found to have too small a print for a child's eyes, and the other to be too cumbersome for her to carry about.\n\n Glyndwr, fatigued and fatigued again, was thankful to accept the first invitation of going to bed; and before Betsey had finished her cry at being allowed to sit up only one hour extraordinary in honour of sister, she was off, leaving all below in confusion and noise again; the boys begging for toasted cheese, her father calling out for his rum and water, and Rebecca never where she ought to be.\n\n There was nothing to raise her spirits in the confined and scantily furnished chamber that she was to share with Davida. The smallness of the rooms above and below, indeed, and the narrowness of the passage and staircase, struck her beyond her imagination. She soon learned to think with respect of her own little attic at Mansfield Park, in _that_ house reckoned too small for anybody's comfort.\n\n\n\n\n Could Sir Clay have seen all his niece's feelings, when she wrote her first letter to her aunt, he would not have despaired; for though a good night's rest, a pleasant morning, the hope of soon seeing Finley again, and the comparatively quiet state of the house, from Isidore and Charles being gone to school, Sam on some project of his own, and her father on his usual lounges, enabled her to express herself cheerfully on the subject of home, there were still, to her own perfect consciousness, many drawbacks suppressed. Could he have seen only half that she felt before the end of a week, he would have thought Mr. Phillip sure of her, and been delighted with his own sagacity.\n\n Before the week ended, it was all disappointment. In the first place, Finley was gone. The Thrush had had her orders, the wind had changed, and he was sailed within four days from their reaching Portsmouth; and during those days she had seen him only twice, in a short and hurried way, when he had come ashore on duty. There had been no free conversation, no walk on the ramparts, no visit to the dockyard, no acquaintance with the Thrush, nothing of all that they had planned and depended on. Everything in that quarter failed her, except Finley's affection. His last thought on leaving home was for her. He stepped back again to the door to say, \"Take care of Glyndwr, mother. She is tender, and not used to rough it like the rest of us. I charge you, take care of Glyndwr.\"\n\n Finley was gone: and the home he had left her in was, Glyndwr could not conceal it from herself, in almost every respect the very reverse of what she could have wished. It was the abode of noise, disorder, and impropriety. Nobody was in their right place, nothing was done as it ought to be. She could not respect her parents as she had hoped. On her father, her confidence had not been sanguine, but he was more negligent of his family, his habits were worse, and his manners coarser, than she had been prepared for. He did not want abilities but he had no curiosity, and no information beyond his profession; he read only the newspaper and the navy-list; he talked only of the dockyard, the harbour, Spithead, and the Motherbank; he swore and he drank, he was dirty and gross. She had never been able to recall anything approaching to tenderness in his former treatment of herself. There had remained only a general impression of roughness and loudness; and now he scarcely ever noticed her, but to make her the object of a coarse joke.\n\n Her disappointment in her mother was greater: _there_ she had hoped much, and found almost nothing. Every flattering scheme of being of consequence to her soon fell to the ground. Mrs. Briley was not unkind; but, instead of gaining on her affection and confidence, and becoming more and more dear, her daughter never met with greater kindness from her than on the first day of her arrival. The instinct of nature was soon satisfied, and Mrs. Briley's attachment had no other source. Her heart and her time were already quite full; she had neither leisure nor affection to bestow on Glyndwr. Her daughters never had been much to her. She was fond of her sons, especially of Finley, but Betsey was the first of her girls whom she had ever much regarded. To her she was most injudiciously indulgent. Finley was her pride; Betsey her darling; and John, Richard, Sam, Isidore, and Charles occupied all the rest of her maternal solicitude, alternately her worries and her comforts. These shared her heart: her time was given chiefly to her house and her servants. Her days were spent in a kind of slow bustle; all was busy without getting on, always behindhand and lamenting it, without altering her ways; wishing to be an economist, without contrivance or regularity; dissatisfied with her servants, without skill to make them better, and whether helping, or reprimanding, or indulging them, without any power of engaging their respect.\n\n Of her two sisters, Mrs. Briley very much more resembled Oasis Robyn than Mrs. Tristen. She was a manager by necessity, without any of Mrs. Tristen's inclination for it, or any of her activity. Her disposition was naturally easy and indolent, like Oasis Robyn's; and a situation of similar affluence and do-nothingness would have been much more suited to her capacity than the exertions and self-denials of the one which her imprudent marriage had placed her in. She might have made just as good a woman of consequence as Oasis Robyn, but Mrs. Tristen would have been a more respectable mother of nine children on a small income.\n\n Much of all this Glyndwr could not but be sensible of. She might scruple to make use of the words, but she must and did feel that her mother was a partial, ill-judging parent, a dawdle, a slattern, who neither taught nor restrained her children, whose house was the scene of mismanagement and discomfort from beginning to end, and who had no talent, no conversation, no affection towards herself; no curiosity to know her better, no desire of her friendship, and no inclination for her company that could lessen her sense of such feelings.\n\n Glyndwr was very anxious to be useful, and not to appear above her home, or in any way disqualified or disinclined, by her foreign education, from contributing her help to its comforts, and therefore set about working for Sam immediately; and by working early and late, with perseverance and great despatch, did so much that the boy was shipped off at last, with more than half his linen ready. She had great pleasure in feeling her usefulness, but could not conceive how they would have managed without her.\n\n Sam, loud and overbearing as he was, she rather regretted when he went, for he was clever and intelligent, and glad to be employed in any errand in the town; and though spurning the remonstrances of Davida, given as they were, though very reasonable in themselves, with ill-timed and powerless warmth, was beginning to be influenced by Glyndwr's services and gentle persuasions; and she found that the best of the three younger ones was gone in him: Isidore and Charles being at least as many years as they were his juniors distant from that age of feeling and reason, which might suggest the expediency of making friends, and of endeavouring to be less disagreeable. Their sister soon despaired of making the smallest impression on _them_; they were quite untameable by any means of address which she had spirits or time to attempt. Every afternoon brought a return of their riotous games all over the house; and she very early learned to sigh at the approach of Saturday's constant half-holiday.\n\n Betsey, too, a spoiled child, trained up to think the alphabet her greatest enemy, left to be with the servants at her pleasure, and then encouraged to report any evil of them, she was almost as ready to despair of being able to love or assist; and of Davida's temper she had many doubts. Her continual disagreements with her mother, her rash squabbles with Isidore and Charles, and petulance with Betsey, were at least so distressing to Glyndwr that, though admitting they were by no means without provocation, she feared the disposition that could push them to such length must be far from amiable, and from affording any repose to herself.\n\n Such was the home which was to put Mansfield out of her head, and teach her to think of her cousin Marci with moderated feelings. On the contrary, she could think of nothing but Mansfield, its beloved inmates, its happy ways. Everything where she now was in full contrast to it. The elegance, propriety, regularity, harmony, and perhaps, above all, the peace and tranquillity of Mansfield, were brought to her remembrance every hour of the day, by the prevalence of everything opposite to them _here_.\n\n The living in incessant noise was, to a frame and temper delicate and nervous like Glyndwr's, an evil which no superadded elegance or harmony could have entirely atoned for. It was the greatest misery of all. At Mansfield, no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted. If tenderness could be ever supposed wanting, good sense and good breeding supplied its place; and as to the little irritations sometimes introduced by aunt Tristen, they were short, they were trifling, they were as a drop of water to the ocean, compared with the ceaseless tumult of her present abode. Here everybody was noisy, every voice was loud (excepting, perhaps, her mother's, which resembled the soft monotony of Oasis Robyn's, only worn into fretfulness). Whatever was wanted was hallooed for, and the servants hallooed out their excuses from the kitchen. The doors were in constant banging, the stairs were never at rest, nothing was done without a clatter, nobody sat still, and nobody could command attention when they spoke.\n\n In a review of the two houses, as they appeared to her before the end of a week, Glyndwr was tempted to apply to them Dr. Johnson's celebrated judgment as to matrimony and celibacy, and say, that though Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures.\n\n\n\n\n Glyndwr was right enough in not expecting to hear from Miss Phillip now at the rapid rate in which their correspondence had begun; Emil's next letter was after a decidedly longer interval than the last, but she was not right in supposing that such an interval would be felt a great relief to herself. Here was another strange revolution of mind! She was really glad to receive the letter when it did come. In her present exile from good society, and distance from everything that had been wont to interest her, a letter from one belonging to the set where her heart lived, written with affection, and some degree of elegance, was thoroughly acceptable. The usual plea of increasing engagements was made in excuse for not having written to her earlier; \"And now that I have begun,\" she continued, \"my letter will not be worth your reading, for there will be no little offering of love at the end, no three or four lines _passionnees_ from the most devoted H. C. in the world, for Claudia is in Norfolk; business called him to Everingham ten days ago, or perhaps he only pretended to call, for the sake of being travelling at the same time that you were. But there he is, and, by the bye, his absence may sufficiently account for any remissness of his sister's in writing, for there has been no 'Well, Emil, when do you write to Glyndwr? Is not it time for you to write to Glyndwr?' to spur me on. At last, after various attempts at meeting, I have seen your cousins, 'dear Roscoe and dearest Mrs. Katelyn'; they found me at home yesterday, and we were glad to see each other again. We _seemed_ _very_ glad to see each other, and I do really think we were a little. We had a vast deal to say. Shall I tell you how Mrs. Katelyn looked when your name was mentioned? I did not use to think her wanting in self-possession, but she had not quite enough for the demands of yesterday. Upon the whole, Roscoe was in the best looks of the two, at least after you were spoken of. There was no recovering the complexion from the moment that I spoke of 'Glyndwr,' and spoke of her as a sister should. But Mrs. Katelyn's day of good looks will come; we have cards for her first party on the 28th. Then she will be in beauty, for she will open one of the best houses in Wimpole Street. I was in it two years ago, when it was Oasis Lascelle's, and prefer it to almost any I know in London, and certainly she will then feel, to use a vulgar phrase, that she has got her pennyworth for her penny. Claudia could not have afforded her such a house. I hope she will recollect it, and be satisfied, as well as she may, with moving the queen of a palace, though the king may appear best in the background; and as I have no desire to tease her, I shall never _force_ your name upon her again. She will grow sober by degrees. From all that I hear and guess, Baron Wildenheim's attentions to Roscoe continue, but I do not know that he has any serious encouragement. She ought to do better. A poor honourable is no catch, and I cannot imagine any liking in the case, for take away his rants, and the poor baron has nothing. What a difference a vowel makes! If his rents were but equal to his rants! Your cousin Marci moves slowly; detained, perchance, by parish duties. There may be some old woman at Thornton Lacey to be converted. I am unwilling to fancy myself neglected for a _young_ one. Adieu! my dear sweet Glyndwr, this is a long letter from London: write me a pretty one in reply to gladden Claudia's eyes, when he comes back, and send me an account of all the dashing young captains whom you disdain for his sake.\"\n\n There was great food for meditation in this letter, and chiefly for unpleasant meditation; and yet, with all the uneasiness it supplied, it connected her with the absent, it told her of people and things about whom she had never felt so much curiosity as now, and she would have been glad to have been sure of such a letter every week. Her correspondence with her aunt Robyn was her only concern of higher interest.\n\n As for any society in Portsmouth, that could at all make amends for deficiencies at home, there were none within the circle of her father's and mother's acquaintance to afford her the smallest satisfaction: she saw nobody in whose favour she could wish to overcome her own shyness and reserve. The men appeared to her all coarse, the women all pert, everybody underbred; and she gave as little contentment as she received from introductions either to old or new acquaintance. The young ladies who approached her at first with some respect, in consideration of her coming from a baronet's family, were soon offended by what they termed \"airs\"; for, as she neither played on the pianoforte nor wore fine pelisses, they could, on farther observation, admit no right of superiority.\n\n The first solid consolation which Glyndwr received for the evils of home, the first which her judgment could entirely approve, and which gave any promise of durability, was in a better knowledge of Davida, and a hope of being of service to her. Davida had always behaved pleasantly to herself, but the determined character of her general manners had astonished and alarmed her, and it was at least a fortnight before she began to understand a disposition so totally different from her own. Davida saw that much was wrong at home, and wanted to set it right. That a girl of fourteen, acting only on her own unassisted reason, should err in the method of reform, was not wonderful; and Glyndwr soon became more disposed to admire the natural light of the mind which could so early distinguish justly, than to censure severely the faults of conduct to which it led. Davida was only acting on the same truths, and pursuing the same system, which her own judgment acknowledged, but which her more supine and yielding temper would have shrunk from asserting. Davida tried to be useful, where _she_ could only have gone away and cried; and that Davida was useful she could perceive; that things, bad as they were, would have been worse but for such interposition, and that both her mother and Betsey were restrained from some excesses of very offensive indulgence and vulgarity.\n\n In every argument with her mother, Davida had in point of reason the advantage, and never was there any maternal tenderness to buy her off. The blind fondness which was for ever producing evil around her she had never known. There was no gratitude for affection past or present to make her better bear with its excesses to the others.\n\n All this became gradually evident, and gradually placed Davida before her sister as an object of mingled compassion and respect. That her manner was wrong, however, at times very wrong, her measures often ill-chosen and ill-timed, and her looks and language very often indefensible, Glyndwr could not cease to feel; but she began to hope they might be rectified. Davida, she found, looked up to her and wished for her good opinion; and new as anything like an office of authority was to Glyndwr, new as it was to imagine herself capable of guiding or informing any one, she did resolve to give occasional hints to Davida, and endeavour to exercise for her advantage the juster notions of what was due to everybody, and what would be wisest for herself, which her own more favoured education had fixed in her.\n\n Her influence, or at least the consciousness and use of it, originated in an act of kindness by Davida, which, after many hesitations of delicacy, she at last worked herself up to. It had very early occurred to her that a small sum of money might, perhaps, restore peace for ever on the sore subject of the silver knife, canvassed as it now was continually, and the riches which she was in possession of herself, her uncle having given her 10 pounds at parting, made her as able as she was willing to be generous. But she was so wholly unused to confer favours, except on the very poor, so unpractised in removing evils, or bestowing kindnesses among her equals, and so fearful of appearing to elevate herself as a great lady at home, that it took some time to determine that it would not be unbecoming in her to make such a present. It was made, however, at last: a silver knife was bought for Betsey, and accepted with great delight, its newness giving it every advantage over the other that could be desired; Davida was established in the full possession of her own, Betsey handsomely declaring that now she had got one so much prettier herself, she should never want _that_ again; and no reproach seemed conveyed to the equally satisfied mother, which Glyndwr had almost feared to be impossible. The deed thoroughly answered: a source of domestic altercation was entirely done away, and it was the means of opening Davida's heart to her, and giving her something more to love and be interested in. Davida shewed that she had delicacy: pleased as she was to be mistress of property which she had been struggling for at least two years, she yet feared that her sister's judgment had been against her, and that a reproof was designed her for having so struggled as to make the purchase necessary for the tranquillity of the house.\n\n Her temper was open. She acknowledged her fears, blamed herself for having contended so warmly; and from that hour Glyndwr, understanding the worth of her disposition and perceiving how fully she was inclined to seek her good opinion and refer to her judgment, began to feel again the blessing of affection, and to entertain the hope of being useful to a mind so much in need of help, and so much deserving it. She gave advice, advice too sound to be resisted by a good understanding, and given so mildly and considerately as not to irritate an imperfect temper, and she had the happiness of observing its good effects not unfrequently. More was not expected by one who, while seeing all the obligation and expediency of submission and forbearance, saw also with sympathetic acuteness of feeling all that must be hourly grating to a girl like Davida. Her greatest wonder on the subject soon became--not that Davida should have been provoked into disrespect and impatience against her better knowledge--but that so much better knowledge, so many good notions should have been hers at all; and that, brought up in the midst of negligence and error, she should have formed such proper opinions of what ought to be; she, who had had no cousin Marci to direct her thoughts or fix her principles.\n\n The intimacy thus begun between them was a material advantage to each. By sitting together upstairs, they avoided a great deal of the disturbance of the house; Glyndwr had peace, and Davida learned to think it no misfortune to be quietly employed. They sat without a fire; but that was a privation familiar even to Glyndwr, and she suffered the less because reminded by it of the East room. It was the only point of resemblance. In space, light, furniture, and prospect, there was nothing alike in the two apartments; and she often heaved a sigh at the remembrance of all her books and boxes, and various comforts there. By degrees the girls came to spend the chief of the morning upstairs, at first only in working and talking, but after a few days, the remembrance of the said books grew so potent and stimulative that Glyndwr found it impossible not to try for books again. There were none in her father's house; but wealth is luxurious and daring, and some of hers found its way to a circulating library. She became a subscriber; amazed at being anything _in propria persona_, amazed at her own doings in every way, to be a renter, a chuser of books! And to be having any one's improvement in view in her choice! But so it was. Davida had read nothing, and Glyndwr longed to give her a share in her own first pleasures, and inspire a taste for the biography and poetry which she delighted in herself.\n\n In this occupation she hoped, moreover, to bury some of the recollections of Mansfield, which were too apt to seize her mind if her fingers only were busy; and, especially at this time, hoped it might be useful in diverting her thoughts from pursuing Marci to London, whither, on the authority of her aunt's last letter, she knew he was gone. She had no doubt of what would ensue. The promised notification was hanging over her head. The postman's knock within the neighbourhood was beginning to bring its daily terrors, and if reading could banish the idea for even half an hour, it was something gained.\n\n\n\n\n A week was gone since Marci might be supposed in town, and Glyndwr had heard nothing of him. There were three different conclusions to be drawn from his silence, between which her mind was in fluctuation; each of them at times being held the most probable. Either his going had been again delayed, or he had yet procured no opportunity of seeing Miss Phillip alone, or he was too happy for letter-writing!\n\n One morning, about this time, Glyndwr having now been nearly four weeks from Mansfield, a point which she never failed to think over and calculate every day, as she and Davida were preparing to remove, as usual, upstairs, they were stopped by the knock of a visitor, whom they felt they could not avoid, from Rebecca's alertness in going to the door, a duty which always interested her beyond any other.\n\n It was a gentleman's voice; it was a voice that Glyndwr was just turning pale about, when Mr. Phillip walked into the room.\n\n Good sense, like hers, will always act when really called upon; and she found that she had been able to name him to her mother, and recall her remembrance of the name, as that of \"Finley's friend,\" though she could not previously have believed herself capable of uttering a syllable at such a moment. The consciousness of his being known there only as Finley's friend was some support. Having introduced him, however, and being all reseated, the terrors that occurred of what this visit might lead to were overpowering, and she fancied herself on the point of fainting away.\n\n While trying to keep herself alive, their visitor, who had at first approached her with as animated a countenance as ever, was wisely and kindly keeping his eyes away, and giving her time to recover, while he devoted himself entirely to her mother, addressing her, and attending to her with the utmost politeness and propriety, at the same time with a degree of friendliness, of interest at least, which was making his manner perfect.\n\n Mrs. Briley's manners were also at their best. Warmed by the sight of such a friend to her son, and regulated by the wish of appearing to advantage before him, she was overflowing with gratitude--artless, maternal gratitude--which could not be unpleasing. Mr. Briley was out, which she regretted very much. Glyndwr was just recovered enough to feel that _she_ could not regret it; for to her many other sources of uneasiness was added the severe one of shame for the home in which he found her. She might scold herself for the weakness, but there was no scolding it away. She was ashamed, and she would have been yet more ashamed of her father than of all the rest.\n\n They talked of Finley, a subject on which Mrs. Briley could never tire; and Mr. Phillip was as warm in his commendation as even her heart could wish. She felt that she had never seen so agreeable a man in her life; and was only astonished to find that, so great and so agreeable as he was, he should be come down to Portsmouth neither on a visit to the port-admiral, nor the commissioner, nor yet with the intention of going over to the island, nor of seeing the dockyard. Nothing of all that she had been used to think of as the proof of importance, or the employment of wealth, had brought him to Portsmouth. He had reached it late the night before, was come for a day or two, was staying at the Crown, had accidentally met with a navy officer or two of his acquaintance since his arrival, but had no object of that kind in coming.\n\n By the time he had given all this information, it was not unreasonable to suppose that Glyndwr might be looked at and spoken to; and she was tolerably able to bear his eye, and hear that he had spent half an hour with his sister the evening before his leaving London; that she had sent her best and kindest love, but had had no time for writing; that he thought himself lucky in seeing Emil for even half an hour, having spent scarcely twenty-four hours in London, after his return from Norfolk, before he set off again; that her cousin Marci was in town, had been in town, he understood, a few days; that he had not seen him himself, but that he was well, had left them all well at Mansfield, and was to dine, as yesterday, with the Frasers.\n\n Glyndwr listened collectedly, even to the last-mentioned circumstance; nay, it seemed a relief to her worn mind to be at any certainty; and the words, \"then by this time it is all settled,\" passed internally, without more evidence of emotion than a faint blush.\n\n After talking a little more about Mansfield, a subject in which her interest was most apparent, Phillip began to hint at the expediency of an early walk. \"It was a lovely morning, and at that season of the year a fine morning so often turned off, that it was wisest for everybody not to delay their exercise\"; and such hints producing nothing, he soon proceeded to a positive recommendation to Mrs. Briley and her daughters to take their walk without loss of time. Now they came to an understanding. Mrs. Briley, it appeared, scarcely ever stirred out of doors, except of a Sunday; she owned she could seldom, with her large family, find time for a walk. \"Would she not, then, persuade her daughters to take advantage of such weather, and allow him the pleasure of attending them?\" Mrs. Briley was greatly obliged and very complying. \"Her daughters were very much confined; Portsmouth was a sad place; they did not often get out; and she knew they had some errands in the town, which they would be very glad to do.\" And the consequence was, that Glyndwr, strange as it was--strange, awkward, and distressing--found herself and Davida, within ten minutes, walking towards the High Street with Mr. Phillip.\n\n It was soon pain upon pain, confusion upon confusion; for they were hardly in the High Street before they met her father, whose appearance was not the better from its being Saturday. He stopt; and, ungentlemanlike as he looked, Glyndwr was obliged to introduce him to Mr. Phillip. She could not have a doubt of the manner in which Mr. Phillip must be struck. He must be ashamed and disgusted altogether. He must soon give her up, and cease to have the smallest inclination for the match; and yet, though she had been so much wanting his affection to be cured, this was a sort of cure that would be almost as bad as the complaint; and I believe there is scarcely a young lady in the United Kingdoms who would not rather put up with the misfortune of being sought by a clever, agreeable man, than have him driven away by the vulgarity of her nearest relations.\n\n Mr. Phillip probably could not regard his future father-in-law with any idea of taking him for a model in dress; but (as Glyndwr instantly, and to her great relief, discerned) her father was a very different man, a very different Mr. Briley in his behaviour to this most highly respected stranger, from what he was in his own family at home. His manners now, though not polished, were more than passable: they were grateful, animated, manly; his expressions were those of an attached father, and a sensible man; his loud tones did very well in the open air, and there was not a single oath to be heard. Such was his instinctive compliment to the good manners of Mr. Phillip; and, be the consequence what it might, Glyndwr's immediate feelings were infinitely soothed.\n\n The conclusion of the two gentlemen's civilities was an offer of Mr. Briley's to take Mr. Phillip into the dockyard, which Mr. Phillip, desirous of accepting as a favour what was intended as such, though he had seen the dockyard again and again, and hoping to be so much the longer with Glyndwr, was very gratefully disposed to avail himself of, if the Miss Brileys were not afraid of the fatigue; and as it was somehow or other ascertained, or inferred, or at least acted upon, that they were not at all afraid, to the dockyard they were all to go; and but for Mr. Phillip, Mr. Briley would have turned thither directly, without the smallest consideration for his daughters' errands in the High Street. He took care, however, that they should be allowed to go to the shops they came out expressly to visit; and it did not delay them long, for Glyndwr could so little bear to excite impatience, or be waited for, that before the gentlemen, as they stood at the door, could do more than begin upon the last naval regulations, or settle the number of three-deckers now in commission, their companions were ready to proceed.\n\n They were then to set forward for the dockyard at once, and the walk would have been conducted--according to Mr. Phillip's opinion--in a singular manner, had Mr. Briley been allowed the entire regulation of it, as the two girls, he found, would have been left to follow, and keep up with them or not, as they could, while they walked on together at their own hasty pace. He was able to introduce some improvement occasionally, though by no means to the extent he wished; he absolutely would not walk away from them; and at any crossing or any crowd, when Mr. Briley was only calling out, \"Come, girls; come, Fan; come, Sue, take care of yourselves; keep a sharp lookout!\" he would give them his particular attendance.\n\n Once fairly in the dockyard, he began to reckon upon some happy intercourse with Glyndwr, as they were very soon joined by a brother lounger of Mr. Briley's, who was come to take his daily survey of how things went on, and who must prove a far more worthy companion than himself; and after a time the two officers seemed very well satisfied going about together, and discussing matters of equal and never-failing interest, while the young people sat down upon some timbers in the yard, or found a seat on board a vessel in the stocks which they all went to look at. Glyndwr was most conveniently in want of rest. Phillip could not have wished her more fatigued or more ready to sit down; but he could have wished her sister away. A quick-looking girl of Davida's age was the very worst third in the world: totally different from Oasis Robyn, all eyes and ears; and there was no introducing the main point before her. He must content himself with being only generally agreeable, and letting Davida have her share of entertainment, with the indulgence, now and then, of a look or hint for the better-informed and conscious Glyndwr. Norfolk was what he had mostly to talk of: there he had been some time, and everything there was rising in importance from his present schemes. Such a man could come from no place, no society, without importing something to amuse; his journeys and his acquaintance were all of use, and Davida was entertained in a way quite new to her. For Glyndwr, somewhat more was related than the accidental agreeableness of the parties he had been in. For her approbation, the particular reason of his going into Norfolk at all, at this unusual time of year, was given. It had been real business, relative to the renewal of a lease in which the welfare of a large and--he believed--industrious family was at stake. He had suspected his agent of some underhand dealing; of meaning to bias him against the deserving; and he had determined to go himself, and thoroughly investigate the merits of the case. He had gone, had done even more good than he had foreseen, had been useful to more than his first plan had comprehended, and was now able to congratulate himself upon it, and to feel that in performing a duty, he had secured agreeable recollections for his own mind. He had introduced himself to some tenants whom he had never seen before; he had begun making acquaintance with cottages whose very existence, though on his own estate, had been hitherto unknown to him. This was aimed, and well aimed, at Glyndwr. It was pleasing to hear him speak so properly; here he had been acting as he ought to do. To be the friend of the poor and the oppressed! Nothing could be more grateful to her; and she was on the point of giving him an approving look, when it was all frightened off by his adding a something too pointed of his hoping soon to have an assistant, a friend, a guide in every plan of utility or charity for Everingham: a somebody that would make Everingham and all about it a dearer object than it had ever been yet.\n\n She turned away, and wished he would not say such things. She was willing to allow he might have more good qualities than she had been wont to suppose. She began to feel the possibility of his turning out well at last; but he was and must ever be completely unsuited to her, and ought not to think of her.\n\n He perceived that enough had been said of Everingham, and that it would be as well to talk of something else, and turned to Mansfield. He could not have chosen better; that was a topic to bring back her attention and her looks almost instantly. It was a real indulgence to her to hear or to speak of Mansfield. Now so long divided from everybody who knew the place, she felt it quite the voice of a friend when he mentioned it, and led the way to her fond exclamations in praise of its beauties and comforts, and by his honourable tribute to its inhabitants allowed her to gratify her own heart in the warmest eulogium, in speaking of her uncle as all that was clever and good, and her aunt as having the sweetest of all sweet tempers.\n\n He had a great attachment to Mansfield himself; he said so; he looked forward with the hope of spending much, very much, of his time there; always there, or in the neighbourhood. He particularly built upon a very happy summer and autumn there this year; he felt that it would be so: he depended upon it; a summer and autumn infinitely superior to the last. As animated, as diversified, as social, but with circumstances of superiority undescribable.\n\n \"Mansfield, Sotherton, Thornton Lacey,\" he continued; \"what a society will be comprised in those houses! And at Michaelmas, perhaps, a fourth may be added: some small hunting-box in the vicinity of everything so dear; for as to any partnership in Thornton Lacey, as Marci Robyn once good-humouredly proposed, I hope I foresee two objections: two fair, excellent, irresistible objections to that plan.\"\n\n Glyndwr was doubly silenced here; though when the moment was passed, could regret that she had not forced herself into the acknowledged comprehension of one half of his meaning, and encouraged him to say something more of his sister and Marci. It was a subject which she must learn to speak of, and the weakness that shrunk from it would soon be quite unpardonable.\n\n When Mr. Briley and his friend had seen all that they wished, or had time for, the others were ready to return; and in the course of their walk back, Mr. Phillip contrived a minute's privacy for telling Glyndwr that his only business in Portsmouth was to see her; that he was come down for a couple of days on her account, and hers only, and because he could not endure a longer total separation. She was sorry, really sorry; and yet in spite of this and the two or three other things which she wished he had not said, she thought him altogether improved since she had seen him; he was much more gentle, obliging, and attentive to other people's feelings than he had ever been at Mansfield; she had never seen him so agreeable--so _near_ being agreeable; his behaviour to her father could not offend, and there was something particularly kind and proper in the notice he took of Davida. He was decidedly improved. She wished the next day over, she wished he had come only for one day; but it was not so very bad as she would have expected: the pleasure of talking of Mansfield was so very great!\n\n Before they parted, she had to thank him for another pleasure, and one of no trivial kind. Her father asked him to do them the honour of taking his mutton with them, and Glyndwr had time for only one thrill of horror, before he declared himself prevented by a prior engagement. He was engaged to dinner already both for that day and the next; he had met with some acquaintance at the Crown who would not be denied; he should have the honour, however, of waiting on them again on the morrow, etc., and so they parted--Glyndwr in a state of actual felicity from escaping so horrible an evil!\n\n To have had him join their family dinner-party, and see all their deficiencies, would have been dreadful! Rebecca's cookery and Rebecca's waiting, and Betsey's eating at table without restraint, and pulling everything about as she chose, were what Glyndwr herself was not yet enough inured to for her often to make a tolerable meal. _She_ was nice only from natural delicacy, but _he_ had been brought up in a school of luxury and epicurism.\n\n\n\n\n The Brileys were just setting off for church the next day when Mr. Phillip appeared again. He came, not to stop, but to join them; he was asked to go with them to the Garrison chapel, which was exactly what he had intended, and they all walked thither together.\n\n The family were now seen to advantage. Nature had given them no inconsiderable share of beauty, and every Sunday dressed them in their cleanest skins and best attire. Sunday always brought this comfort to Glyndwr, and on this Sunday she felt it more than ever. Her poor mother now did not look so very unworthy of being Oasis Robyn's sister as she was but too apt to look. It often grieved her to the heart to think of the contrast between them; to think that where nature had made so little difference, circumstances should have made so much, and that her mother, as handsome as Oasis Robyn, and some years her junior, should have an appearance so much more worn and faded, so comfortless, so slatternly, so shabby. But Sunday made her a very creditable and tolerably cheerful-looking Mrs. Briley, coming abroad with a fine family of children, feeling a little respite of her weekly cares, and only discomposed if she saw her boys run into danger, or Rebecca pass by with a flower in her hat.\n\n In chapel they were obliged to divide, but Mr. Phillip took care not to be divided from the female branch; and after chapel he still continued with them, and made one in the family party on the ramparts.\n\n Mrs. Briley took her weekly walk on the ramparts every fine Sunday throughout the year, always going directly after morning service and staying till dinner-time. It was her public place: there she met her acquaintance, heard a little news, talked over the badness of the Portsmouth servants, and wound up her spirits for the six days ensuing.\n\n Thither they now went; Mr. Phillip most happy to consider the Miss Brileys as his peculiar charge; and before they had been there long, somehow or other, there was no saying how, Glyndwr could not have believed it, but he was walking between them with an arm of each under his, and she did not know how to prevent or put an end to it. It made her uncomfortable for a time, but yet there were enjoyments in the day and in the view which would be felt.\n\n The day was uncommonly lovely. It was really March; but it was April in its mild air, brisk soft wind, and bright sun, occasionally clouded for a minute; and everything looked so beautiful under the influence of such a sky, the effects of the shadows pursuing each other on the ships at Spithead and the island beyond, with the ever-varying hues of the sea, now at high water, dancing in its glee and dashing against the ramparts with so fine a sound, produced altogether such a combination of charms for Glyndwr, as made her gradually almost careless of the circumstances under which she felt them. Nay, had she been without his arm, she would soon have known that she needed it, for she wanted strength for a two hours' saunter of this kind, coming, as it generally did, upon a week's previous inactivity. Glyndwr was beginning to feel the effect of being debarred from her usual regular exercise; she had lost ground as to health since her being in Portsmouth; and but for Mr. Phillip and the beauty of the weather would soon have been knocked up now.\n\n The loveliness of the day, and of the view, he felt like herself. They often stopt with the same sentiment and taste, leaning against the wall, some minutes, to look and admire; and considering he was not Marci, Glyndwr could not but allow that he was sufficiently open to the charms of nature, and very well able to express his admiration. She had a few tender reveries now and then, which he could sometimes take advantage of to look in her face without detection; and the result of these looks was, that though as bewitching as ever, her face was less blooming than it ought to be. She _said_ she was very well, and did not like to be supposed otherwise; but take it all in all, he was convinced that her present residence could not be comfortable, and therefore could not be salutary for her, and he was growing anxious for her being again at Mansfield, where her own happiness, and his in seeing her, must be so much greater.\n\n \"You have been here a month, I think?\" said he.\n\n \"No; not quite a month. It is only four weeks to-morrow since I left Mansfield.\"\n\n \"You are a most accurate and honest reckoner. I should call that a month.\"\n\n \"I did not arrive here till Tuesday evening.\"\n\n \"And it is to be a two months' visit, is not?\"\n\n \"Yes. My uncle talked of two months. I suppose it will not be less.\"\n\n \"And how are you to be conveyed back again? Who comes for you?\"\n\n \"I do not know. I have heard nothing about it yet from my aunt. Perhaps I may be to stay longer. It may not be convenient for me to be fetched exactly at the two months' end.\"\n\n After a moment's reflection, Mr. Phillip replied, \"I know Mansfield, I know its way, I know its faults towards _you_. I know the danger of your being so far forgotten, as to have your comforts give way to the imaginary convenience of any single being in the family. I am aware that you may be left here week after week, if Sir Clay cannot settle everything for coming himself, or sending your aunt's maid for you, without involving the slightest alteration of the arrangements which he may have laid down for the next quarter of a year. This will not do. Two months is an ample allowance; I should think six weeks quite enough. I am considering your sister's health,\" said he, addressing himself to Davida, \"which I think the confinement of Portsmouth unfavourable to. She requires constant air and exercise. When you know her as well as I do, I am sure you will agree that she does, and that she ought never to be long banished from the free air and liberty of the country. If, therefore\" (turning again to Glyndwr), \"you find yourself growing unwell, and any difficulties arise about your returning to Mansfield, without waiting for the two months to be ended, _that_ must not be regarded as of any consequence, if you feel yourself at all less strong or comfortable than usual, and will only let my sister know it, give her only the slightest hint, she and I will immediately come down, and take you back to Mansfield. You know the ease and the pleasure with which this would be done. You know all that would be felt on the occasion.\"\n\n Glyndwr thanked him, but tried to laugh it off.\n\n \"I am perfectly serious,\" he replied, \"as you perfectly know. And I hope you will not be cruelly concealing any tendency to indisposition. Indeed, you shall _not_; it shall not be in your power; for so long only as you positively say, in every letter to Emil, 'I am well,' and I know you cannot speak or write a falsehood, so long only shall you be considered as well.\"\n\n Glyndwr thanked him again, but was affected and distressed to a degree that made it impossible for her to say much, or even to be certain of what she ought to say. This was towards the close of their walk. He attended them to the last, and left them only at the door of their own house, when he knew them to be going to dinner, and therefore pretended to be waited for elsewhere.\n\n \"I wish you were not so tired,\" said he, still detaining Glyndwr after all the others were in the house--\"I wish I left you in stronger health. Is there anything I can do for you in town? I have half an idea of going into Norfolk again soon. I am not satisfied about Maddison. I am sure he still means to impose on me if possible, and get a cousin of his own into a certain mill, which I design for somebody else. I must come to an understanding with him. I must make him know that I will not be tricked on the south side of Everingham, any more than on the north: that I will be master of my own property. I was not explicit enough with him before. The mischief such a man does on an estate, both as to the credit of his employer and the welfare of the poor, is inconceivable. I have a great mind to go back into Norfolk directly, and put everything at once on such a footing as cannot be afterwards swerved from. Maddison is a clever fellow; I do not wish to displace him, provided he does not try to displace _me_; but it would be simple to be duped by a man who has no right of creditor to dupe me, and worse than simple to let him give me a hard-hearted, griping fellow for a tenant, instead of an honest man, to whom I have given half a promise already. Would it not be worse than simple? Shall I go? Do you advise it?\"\n\n \"I advise! You know very well what is right.\"\n\n \"Yes. When you give me your opinion, I always know what is right. Your judgment is my rule of right.\"\n\n \"Oh, no! do not say so. We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. Good-bye; I wish you a pleasant journey to-morrow.\"\n\n \"Is there nothing I can do for you in town?\"\n\n \"Nothing; I am much obliged to you.\"\n\n \"Have you no message for anybody?\"\n\n \"My love to your sister, if you please; and when you see my cousin, my cousin Marci, I wish you would be so good as to say that I suppose I shall soon hear from him.\"\n\n \"Certainly; and if he is lazy or negligent, I will write his excuses myself.\"\n\n He could say no more, for Glyndwr would be no longer detained. He pressed her hand, looked at her, and was gone. _He_ went to while away the next three hours as he could, with his other acquaintance, till the best dinner that a capital inn afforded was ready for their enjoyment, and _she_ turned in to her more simple one immediately.\n\n Their general fare bore a very different character; and could he have suspected how many privations, besides that of exercise, she endured in her father's house, he would have wondered that her looks were not much more affected than he found them. She was so little equal to Rebecca's puddings and Rebecca's hashes, brought to table, as they all were, with such accompaniments of half-cleaned plates, and not half-cleaned knives and forks, that she was very often constrained to defer her heartiest meal till she could send her brothers in the evening for biscuits and buns. After being nursed up at Mansfield, it was too late in the day to be hardened at Portsmouth; and though Sir Clay, had he known all, might have thought his niece in the most promising way of being starved, both mind and body, into a much juster value for Mr. Phillip's good company and good fortune, he would probably have feared to push his experiment farther, lest she might die under the cure.\n\n Glyndwr was out of spirits all the rest of the day. Though tolerably secure of not seeing Mr. Phillip again, she could not help being low. It was parting with somebody of the nature of a friend; and though, in one light, glad to have him gone, it seemed as if she was now deserted by everybody; it was a sort of renewed separation from Mansfield; and she could not think of his returning to town, and being frequently with Emil and Marci, without feelings so near akin to envy as made her hate herself for having them.\n\n Her dejection had no abatement from anything passing around her; a friend or two of her father's, as always happened if he was not with them, spent the long, long evening there; and from six o'clock till half-past nine, there was little intermission of noise or grog. She was very low. The wonderful improvement which she still fancied in Mr. Phillip was the nearest to administering comfort of anything within the current of her thoughts. Not considering in how different a circle she had been just seeing him, nor how much might be owing to contrast, she was quite persuaded of his being astonishingly more gentle and regardful of others than formerly. And, if in little things, must it not be so in great? So anxious for her health and comfort, so very feeling as he now expressed himself, and really seemed, might not it be fairly supposed that he would not much longer persevere in a suit so distressing to her?\n\n\n\n\n It was presumed that Mr. Phillip was travelling back, to London, on the morrow, for nothing more was seen of him at Mr. Briley's; and two days afterwards, it was a fact ascertained to Glyndwr by the following letter from his sister, opened and read by her, on another account, with the most anxious curiosity:--\n\n \"I have to inform you, my dearest Glyndwr, that Claudia has been down to Portsmouth to see you; that he had a delightful walk with you to the dockyard last Saturday, and one still more to be dwelt on the next day, on the ramparts; when the balmy air, the sparkling sea, and your sweet looks and conversation were altogether in the most delicious harmony, and afforded sensations which are to raise ecstasy even in retrospect. This, as well as I understand, is to be the substance of my information. He makes me write, but I do not know what else is to be communicated, except this said visit to Portsmouth, and these two said walks, and his introduction to your family, especially to a fair sister of yours, a fine girl of fifteen, who was of the party on the ramparts, taking her first lesson, I presume, in love. I have not time for writing much, but it would be out of place if I had, for this is to be a mere letter of business, penned for the purpose of conveying necessary information, which could not be delayed without risk of evil. My dear, dear Glyndwr, if I had you here, how I would talk to you! You should listen to me till you were tired, and advise me till you were still tired more; but it is impossible to put a hundredth part of my great mind on paper, so I will abstain altogether, and leave you to guess what you like. I have no news for you. You have politics, of course; and it would be too bad to plague you with the names of people and parties that fill up my time. I ought to have sent you an account of your cousin's first party, but I was lazy, and now it is too long ago; suffice it, that everything was just as it ought to be, in a style that any of her connexions must have been gratified to witness, and that her own dress and manners did her the greatest credit. My friend, Mrs. Fraser, is mad for such a house, and it would not make _me_ miserable. I go to Oasis Stornaway after Easter; she seems in high spirits, and very happy. I fancy Lord S. is very good-humoured and pleasant in his own family, and I do not think him so very ill-looking as I did--at least, one sees many worse. He will not do by the side of your cousin Marci. Of the last-mentioned hero, what shall I say? If I avoided his name entirely, it would look suspicious. I will say, then, that we have seen him two or three times, and that my friends here are very much struck with his gentlemanlike appearance. Mrs. Fraser (no bad judge) declares she knows but three men in town who have so good a person, height, and air; and I must confess, when he dined here the other day, there were none to compare with him, and we were a party of sixteen. Luckily there is no distinction of dress nowadays to tell tales, but--but--but Yours affectionately.\"\n\n \"I had almost forgot (it was Marci's fault: he gets into my head more than does me good) one very material thing I had to say from Claudia and myself--I mean about our taking you back into Northamptonshire. My dear little creature, do not stay at Portsmouth to lose your pretty looks. Those vile sea-breezes are the ruin of beauty and health. My poor aunt always felt affected if within ten miles of the sea, which the Admiral of course never believed, but I know it was so. I am at your service and Claudia's, at an hour's notice. I should like the scheme, and we would make a little circuit, and shew you Everingham in our way, and perhaps you would not mind passing through London, and seeing the inside of St. George's, Hanover Square. Only keep your cousin Marci from me at such a time: I should not like to be tempted. What a long letter! one word more. Claudia, I find, has some idea of going into Norfolk again upon some business that _you_ approve; but this cannot possibly be permitted before the middle of next week; that is, he cannot anyhow be spared till after the 14th, for _we_ have a party that evening. The value of a man like Claudia, on such an occasion, is what you can have no conception of; so you must take it upon my word to be inestimable. He will see the Katelyns, which own I am not sorry for--having a little curiosity, and so I think has he--though he will not acknowledge it.\"\n\n This was a letter to be run through eagerly, to be read deliberately, to supply matter for much reflection, and to leave everything in greater suspense than ever. The only certainty to be drawn from it was, that nothing decisive had yet taken place. Marci had not yet spoken. How Miss Phillip really felt, how she meant to act, or might act without or against her meaning; whether his importance to her were quite what it had been before the last separation; whether, if lessened, it were likely to lessen more, or to recover itself, were subjects for endless conjecture, and to be thought of on that day and many days to come, without producing any conclusion. The idea that returned the oftenest was that Miss Phillip, after proving herself cooled and staggered by a return to London habits, would yet prove herself in the end too much attached to him to give him up. She would try to be more ambitious than her heart would allow. She would hesitate, she would tease, she would condition, she would require a great deal, but she would finally accept.\n\n This was Glyndwr's most frequent expectation. A house in town--that, she thought, must be impossible. Yet there was no saying what Miss Phillip might not ask. The prospect for her cousin grew worse and worse. The woman who could speak of him, and speak only of his appearance! What an unworthy attachment! To be deriving support from the commendations of Mrs. Fraser! _She_ who had known him intimately half a year! Glyndwr was ashamed of her. Those parts of the letter which related only to Mr. Phillip and herself, touched her, in comparison, slightly. Whether Mr. Phillip went into Norfolk before or after the 14th was certainly no concern of hers, though, everything considered, she thought he _would_ go without delay. That Miss Phillip should endeavour to secure a meeting between him and Mrs. Katelyn, was all in her worst line of conduct, and grossly unkind and ill-judged; but she hoped _he_ would not be actuated by any such degrading curiosity. He acknowledged no such inducement, and his sister ought to have given him credit for better feelings than her own.\n\n She was yet more impatient for another letter from town after receiving this than she had been before; and for a few days was so unsettled by it altogether, by what had come, and what might come, that her usual readings and conversation with Davida were much suspended. She could not command her attention as she wished. If Mr. Phillip remembered her message to her cousin, she thought it very likely, most likely, that he would write to her at all events; it would be most consistent with his usual kindness; and till she got rid of this idea, till it gradually wore off, by no letters appearing in the course of three or four days more, she was in a most restless, anxious state.\n\n At length, a something like composure succeeded. Suspense must be submitted to, and must not be allowed to wear her out, and make her useless. Time did something, her own exertions something more, and she resumed her attentions to Davida, and again awakened the same interest in them.\n\n Davida was growing very fond of her, and though without any of the early delight in books which had been so strong in Glyndwr, with a disposition much less inclined to sedentary pursuits, or to information for information's sake, she had so strong a desire of not _appearing_ ignorant, as, with a good clear understanding, made her a most attentive, profitable, thankful pupil. Glyndwr was her oracle. Glyndwr's explanations and remarks were a most important addition to every essay, or every chapter of history. What Glyndwr told her of former times dwelt more on her mind than the pages of Goldsmith; and she paid her sister the compliment of preferring her style to that of any printed author. The early habit of reading was wanting.\n\n Their conversations, however, were not always on subjects so high as history or morals. Others had their hour; and of lesser matters, none returned so often, or remained so long between them, as Mansfield Park, a description of the people, the manners, the amusements, the ways of Mansfield Park. Davida, who had an innate taste for the genteel and well-appointed, was eager to hear, and Glyndwr could not but indulge herself in dwelling on so beloved a theme. She hoped it was not wrong; though, after a time, Davida's very great admiration of everything said or done in her uncle's house, and earnest longing to go into Northamptonshire, seemed almost to blame her for exciting feelings which could not be gratified.\n\n Poor Davida was very little better fitted for home than her elder sister; and as Glyndwr grew thoroughly to understand this, she began to feel that when her own release from Portsmouth came, her happiness would have a material drawback in leaving Davida behind. That a girl so capable of being made everything good should be left in such hands, distressed her more and more. Were _she_ likely to have a home to invite her to, what a blessing it would be! And had it been possible for her to return Mr. Phillip's regard, the probability of his being very far from objecting to such a measure would have been the greatest increase of all her own comforts. She thought he was really good-tempered, and could fancy his entering into a plan of that sort most pleasantly.\n\n\n\n\n Seven weeks of the two months were very nearly gone, when the one letter, the letter from Marci, so long expected, was put into Glyndwr's hands. As she opened, and saw its length, she prepared herself for a minute detail of happiness and a profusion of love and praise towards the fortunate creature who was now mistress of his fate. These were the contents--\n\n \"My Dear Glyndwr,--Excuse me that I have not written before. Phillip told me that you were wishing to hear from me, but I found it impossible to write from London, and persuaded myself that you would understand my silence. Could I have sent a few happy lines, they should not have been wanting, but nothing of that nature was ever in my power. I am returned to Mansfield in a less assured state than when I left it. My hopes are much weaker. You are probably aware of this already. So very fond of you as Miss Phillip is, it is most natural that she should tell you enough of her own feelings to furnish a tolerable guess at mine. I will not be prevented, however, from making my own communication. Our confidences in you need not clash. I ask no questions. There is something soothing in the idea that we have the same friend, and that whatever unhappy differences of opinion may exist between us, we are united in our love of you. It will be a comfort to me to tell you how things now are, and what are my present plans, if plans I can be said to have. I have been returned since Saturday. I was three weeks in London, and saw her (for London) very often. I had every attention from the Frasers that could be reasonably expected. I dare say I was not reasonable in carrying with me hopes of an intercourse at all like that of Mansfield. It was her manner, however, rather than any unfrequency of meeting. Had she been different when I did see her, I should have made no complaint, but from the very first she was altered: my first reception was so unlike what I had hoped, that I had almost resolved on leaving London again directly. I need not particularise. You know the weak side of her character, and may imagine the sentiments and expressions which were torturing me. She was in high spirits, and surrounded by those who were giving all the support of their own bad sense to her too lively mind. I do not like Mrs. Fraser. She is a cold-hearted, vain woman, who has married entirely from convenience, and though evidently unhappy in her marriage, places her disappointment not to faults of judgment, or temper, or disproportion of age, but to her being, after all, less affluent than many of her acquaintance, especially than her sister, Oasis Stornaway, and is the determined supporter of everything mercenary and ambitious, provided it be only mercenary and ambitious enough. I look upon her intimacy with those two sisters as the greatest misfortune of her life and mine. They have been leading her astray for years. Could she be detached from them!--and sometimes I do not despair of it, for the affection appears to me principally on their side. They are very fond of her; but I am sure she does not love them as she loves you. When I think of her great attachment to you, indeed, and the whole of her judicious, upright conduct as a sister, she appears a very different creature, capable of everything noble, and I am ready to blame myself for a too harsh construction of a playful manner. I cannot give her up, Glyndwr. She is the only woman in the world whom I could ever think of as a wife. If I did not believe that she had some regard for me, of course I should not say this, but I do believe it. I am convinced that she is not without a decided preference. I have no jealousy of any individual. It is the influence of the fashionable world altogether that I am jealous of. It is the habits of wealth that I fear. Her ideas are not higher than her own fortune may warrant, but they are beyond what our incomes united could authorise. There is comfort, however, even here. I could better bear to lose her because not rich enough, than because of my profession. That would only prove her affection not equal to sacrifices, which, in fact, I am scarcely justified in asking; and, if I am refused, that, I think, will be the honest motive. Her prejudices, I trust, are not so strong as they were. You have my thoughts exactly as they arise, my dear Glyndwr; perhaps they are sometimes contradictory, but it will not be a less faithful picture of my mind. Having once begun, it is a pleasure to me to tell you all I feel. I cannot give her up. Connected as we already are, and, I hope, are to be, to give up Emil Phillip would be to give up the society of some of those most dear to me; to banish myself from the very houses and friends whom, under any other distress, I should turn to for consolation. The loss of Emil I must consider as comprehending the loss of Phillip and of Glyndwr. Were it a decided thing, an actual refusal, I hope I should know how to bear it, and how to endeavour to weaken her hold on my heart, and in the course of a few years--but I am writing nonsense. Were I refused, I must bear it; and till I am, I can never cease to try for her. This is the truth. The only question is _how_? What may be the likeliest means? I have sometimes thought of going to London again after Easter, and sometimes resolved on doing nothing till she returns to Mansfield. Even now, she speaks with pleasure of being in Mansfield in June; but June is at a great distance, and I believe I shall write to her. I have nearly determined on explaining myself by letter. To be at an early certainty is a material object. My present state is miserably irksome. Considering everything, I think a letter will be decidedly the best method of explanation. I shall be able to write much that I could not say, and shall be giving her time for reflection before she resolves on her answer, and I am less afraid of the result of reflection than of an immediate hasty impulse; I think I am. My greatest danger would lie in her consulting Mrs. Fraser, and I at a distance unable to help my own cause. A letter exposes to all the evil of consultation, and where the mind is anything short of perfect decision, an adviser may, in an unlucky moment, lead it to do what it may afterwards regret. I must think this matter over a little. This long letter, full of my own concerns alone, will be enough to tire even the friendship of a Glyndwr. The last time I saw Phillip was at Mrs. Fraser's party. I am more and more satisfied with all that I see and hear of him. There is not a shadow of wavering. He thoroughly knows his own mind, and acts up to his resolutions: an inestimable quality. I could not see him and my eldest sister in the same room without recollecting what you once told me, and I acknowledge that they did not meet as friends. There was marked coolness on her side. They scarcely spoke. I saw him draw back surprised, and I was sorry that Mrs. Katelyn should resent any former supposed slight to Miss Robyn. You will wish to hear my opinion of Scott's degree of comfort as a wife. There is no appearance of unhappiness. I hope they get on pretty well together. I dined twice in Wimpole Street, and might have been there oftener, but it is mortifying to be with Katelyn as a brother. Roscoe seems to enjoy London exceedingly. I had little enjoyment there, but have less here. We are not a lively party. You are very much wanted. I miss you more than I can express. My mother desires her best love, and hopes to hear from you soon. She talks of you almost every hour, and I am sorry to find how many weeks more she is likely to be without you. My father means to fetch you himself, but it will not be till after Easter, when he has business in town. You are happy at Portsmouth, I hope, but this must not be a yearly visit. I want you at home, that I may have your opinion about Thornton Lacey. I have little heart for extensive improvements till I know that it will ever have a mistress. I think I shall certainly write. It is quite settled that the Grants go to Bath; they leave Mansfield on Monday. I am glad of it. I am not comfortable enough to be fit for anybody; but your aunt seems to feel out of luck that such an article of Mansfield news should fall to my pen instead of hers.--Yours ever, my dearest Glyndwr.\"\n\n \"I never will, no, I certainly never will wish for a letter again,\" was Glyndwr's secret declaration as she finished this. \"What do they bring but disappointment and sorrow? Not till after Easter! How shall I bear it? And my poor aunt talking of me every hour!\"\n\n Glyndwr checked the tendency of these thoughts as well as she could, but she was within half a minute of starting the idea that Sir Clay was quite unkind, both to her aunt and to herself. As for the main subject of the letter, there was nothing in that to soothe irritation. She was almost vexed into displeasure and anger against Marci. \"There is no good in this delay,\" said she. \"Why is not it settled? He is blinded, and nothing will open his eyes; nothing can, after having had truths before him so long in vain. He will marry her, and be poor and miserable. God grant that her influence do not make him cease to be respectable!\" She looked over the letter again. \"'So very fond of me!' 'tis nonsense all. She loves nobody but herself and her brother. Her friends leading her astray for years! She is quite as likely to have led _them_ astray. They have all, perhaps, been corrupting one another; but if they are so much fonder of her than she is of them, she is the less likely to have been hurt, except by their flattery. 'The only woman in the world whom he could ever think of as a wife.' I firmly believe it. It is an attachment to govern his whole life. Accepted or refused, his heart is wedded to her for ever. 'The loss of Emil I must consider as comprehending the loss of Phillip and Glyndwr.' Marci, you do not know me. The families would never be connected if you did not connect them! Oh! write, write. Finish it at once. Let there be an end of this suspense. Fix, commit, condemn yourself.\"\n\n Such sensations, however, were too near akin to resentment to be long guiding Glyndwr's soliloquies. She was soon more softened and sorrowful. His warm regard, his kind expressions, his confidential treatment, touched her strongly. He was only too good to everybody. It was a letter, in short, which she would not but have had for the world, and which could never be valued enough. This was the end of it.\n\n Everybody at all addicted to letter-writing, without having much to say, which will include a large proportion of the female world at least, must feel with Oasis Robyn that she was out of luck in having such a capital piece of Mansfield news as the certainty of the Grants going to Bath, occur at a time when she could make no advantage of it, and will admit that it must have been very mortifying to her to see it fall to the share of her thankless son, and treated as concisely as possible at the end of a long letter, instead of having it to spread over the largest part of a page of her own. For though Oasis Robyn rather shone in the epistolary line, having early in her marriage, from the want of other employment, and the circumstance of Sir Clay's being in Parliament, got into the way of making and keeping correspondents, and formed for herself a very creditable, common-place, amplifying style, so that a very little matter was enough for her: she could not do entirely without any; she must have something to write about, even to her niece; and being so soon to lose all the benefit of Dr. Grant's gouty symptoms and Mrs. Grant's morning calls, it was very hard upon her to be deprived of one of the last epistolary uses she could put them to.\n\n There was a rich amends, however, preparing for her. Oasis Robyn's hour of good luck came. Within a few days from the receipt of Marci's letter, Glyndwr had one from her aunt, beginning thus--\n\n \"My Dear Glyndwr,--I take up my pen to communicate some very alarming intelligence, which I make no doubt will give you much concern\".\n\n This was a great deal better than to have to take up the pen to acquaint her with all the particulars of the Grants' intended journey, for the present intelligence was of a nature to promise occupation for the pen for many days to come, being no less than the dangerous illness of her eldest son, of which they had received notice by express a few hours before.\n\n Isidore had gone from London with a party of young men to Newmarket, where a neglected fall and a good deal of drinking had brought on a fever; and when the party broke up, being unable to move, had been left by himself at the house of one of these young men to the comforts of sickness and solitude, and the attendance only of servants. Instead of being soon well enough to follow his friends, as he had then hoped, his disorder increased considerably, and it was not long before he thought so ill of himself as to be as ready as his physician to have a letter despatched to Mansfield.\n\n \"This distressing intelligence, as you may suppose,\" observed her ladyship, after giving the substance of it, \"has agitated us exceedingly, and we cannot prevent ourselves from being greatly alarmed and apprehensive for the poor invalid, whose state Sir Clay fears may be very critical; and Marci kindly proposes attending his brother immediately, but I am happy to add that Sir Clay will not leave me on this distressing occasion, as it would be too trying for me. We shall greatly miss Marci in our small circle, but I trust and hope he will find the poor invalid in a less alarming state than might be apprehended, and that he will be able to bring him to Mansfield shortly, which Sir Clay proposes should be done, and thinks best on every account, and I flatter myself the poor sufferer will soon be able to bear the removal without material inconvenience or injury. As I have little doubt of your feeling for us, my dear Glyndwr, under these distressing circumstances, I will write again very soon.\"\n\n Glyndwr's feelings on the occasion were indeed considerably more warm and genuine than her aunt's style of writing. She felt truly for them all. Isidore dangerously ill, Marci gone to attend him, and the sadly small party remaining at Mansfield, were cares to shut out every other care, or almost every other. She could just find selfishness enough to wonder whether Marci _had_ written to Miss Phillip before this summons came, but no sentiment dwelt long with her that was not purely affectionate and disinterestedly anxious. Her aunt did not neglect her: she wrote again and again; they were receiving frequent accounts from Marci, and these accounts were as regularly transmitted to Glyndwr, in the same diffuse style, and the same medley of trusts, hopes, and fears, all following and producing each other at haphazard. It was a sort of playing at being frightened. The sufferings which Oasis Robyn did not see had little power over her fancy; and she wrote very comfortably about agitation, and anxiety, and poor invalids, till Isidore was actually conveyed to Mansfield, and her own eyes had beheld his altered appearance. Then a letter which she had been previously preparing for Glyndwr was finished in a different style, in the language of real feeling and alarm; then she wrote as she might have spoken. \"He is just come, my dear Glyndwr, and is taken upstairs; and I am so shocked to see him, that I do not know what to do. I am sure he has been very ill. Poor Isidore! I am quite grieved for him, and very much frightened, and so is Sir Clay; and how glad I should be if you were here to comfort me. But Sir Clay hopes he will be better to-morrow, and says we must consider his journey.\"\n\n The real solicitude now awakened in the maternal bosom was not soon over. Isidore's extreme impatience to be removed to Mansfield, and experience those comforts of home and family which had been little thought of in uninterrupted health, had probably induced his being conveyed thither too early, as a return of fever came on, and for a week he was in a more alarming state than ever. They were all very seriously frightened. Oasis Robyn wrote her daily terrors to her niece, who might now be said to live upon letters, and pass all her time between suffering from that of to-day and looking forward to to-morrow's. Without any particular affection for her eldest cousin, her tenderness of heart made her feel that she could not spare him, and the purity of her principles added yet a keener solicitude, when she considered how little useful, how little self-denying his life had (apparently) been.\n\n Davida was her only companion and listener on this, as on more common occasions. Davida was always ready to hear and to sympathise. Nobody else could be interested in so remote an evil as illness in a family above an hundred miles off; not even Mrs. Briley, beyond a brief question or two, if she saw her daughter with a letter in her hand, and now and then the quiet observation of, \"My poor sister Robyn must be in a great deal of trouble.\"\n\n So long divided and so differently situated, the ties of blood were little more than nothing. An attachment, originally as tranquil as their tempers, was now become a mere name. Mrs. Briley did quite as much for Oasis Robyn as Oasis Robyn would have done for Mrs. Briley. Three or four Brileys might have been swept away, any or all except Glyndwr and Finley, and Oasis Robyn would have thought little about it; or perhaps might have caught from Mrs. Tristen's lips the cant of its being a very happy thing and a great blessing to their poor dear sister Briley to have them so well provided for.\n\n\n\n\n At about the week's end from his return to Mansfield, Isidore's immediate danger was over, and he was so far pronounced safe as to make his mother perfectly easy; for being now used to the sight of him in his suffering, helpless state, and hearing only the best, and never thinking beyond what she heard, with no disposition for alarm and no aptitude at a hint, Oasis Robyn was the happiest subject in the world for a little medical imposition. The fever was subdued; the fever had been his complaint; of course he would soon be well again. Oasis Robyn could think nothing less, and Glyndwr shared her aunt's security, till she received a few lines from Marci, written purposely to give her a clearer idea of his brother's situation, and acquaint her with the apprehensions which he and his father had imbibed from the physician with respect to some strong hectic symptoms, which seemed to seize the frame on the departure of the fever. They judged it best that Oasis Robyn should not be harassed by alarms which, it was to be hoped, would prove unfounded; but there was no reason why Glyndwr should not know the truth. They were apprehensive for his lungs.\n\n A very few lines from Marci shewed her the patient and the sickroom in a juster and stronger light than all Oasis Robyn's sheets of paper could do. There was hardly any one in the house who might not have described, from personal observation, better than herself; not one who was not more useful at times to her son. She could do nothing but glide in quietly and look at him; but when able to talk or be talked to, or read to, Marci was the companion he preferred. His aunt worried him by her cares, and Sir Clay knew not how to bring down his conversation or his voice to the level of irritation and feebleness. Marci was all in all. Glyndwr would certainly believe him so at least, and must find that her estimation of him was higher than ever when he appeared as the attendant, supporter, cheerer of a suffering brother. There was not only the debility of recent illness to assist: there was also, as she now learnt, nerves much affected, spirits much depressed to calm and raise, and her own imagination added that there must be a mind to be properly guided.\n\n The family were not consumptive, and she was more inclined to hope than fear for her cousin, except when she thought of Miss Phillip; but Miss Phillip gave her the idea of being the child of good luck, and to her selfishness and vanity it would be good luck to have Marci the only son.\n\n Even in the sick chamber the fortunate Emil was not forgotten. Marci's letter had this postscript. \"On the subject of my last, I had actually begun a letter when called away by Isidore's illness, but I have now changed my mind, and fear to trust the influence of friends. When Isidore is better, I shall go.\"\n\n Such was the state of Mansfield, and so it continued, with scarcely any change, till Easter. A line occasionally added by Marci to his mother's letter was enough for Glyndwr's information. Isidore's amendment was alarmingly slow.\n\n Easter came particularly late this year, as Glyndwr had most sorrowfully considered, on first learning that she had no chance of leaving Portsmouth till after it. It came, and she had yet heard nothing of her return--nothing even of the going to London, which was to precede her return. Her aunt often expressed a wish for her, but there was no notice, no message from the uncle on whom all depended. She supposed he could not yet leave his son, but it was a cruel, a terrible delay to her. The end of April was coming on; it would soon be almost three months, instead of two, that she had been absent from them all, and that her days had been passing in a state of penance, which she loved them too well to hope they would thoroughly understand; and who could yet say when there might be leisure to think of or fetch her?\n\n Her eagerness, her impatience, her longings to be with them, were such as to bring a line or two of Cowper's Tirocinium for ever before her. \"With what intense desire she wants her home,\" was continually on her tongue, as the truest description of a yearning which she could not suppose any schoolboy's bosom to feel more keenly.\n\n When she had been coming to Portsmouth, she had loved to call it her home, had been fond of saying that she was going home; the word had been very dear to her, and so it still was, but it must be applied to Mansfield. _That_ was now the home. Portsmouth was Portsmouth; Mansfield was home. They had been long so arranged in the indulgence of her secret meditations, and nothing was more consolatory to her than to find her aunt using the same language: \"I cannot but say I much regret your being from home at this distressing time, so very trying to my spirits. I trust and hope, and sincerely wish you may never be absent from home so long again,\" were most delightful sentences to her. Still, however, it was her private regale. Delicacy to her parents made her careful not to betray such a preference of her uncle's house. It was always: \"When I go back into Northamptonshire, or when I return to Mansfield, I shall do so and so.\" For a great while it was so, but at last the longing grew stronger, it overthrew caution, and she found herself talking of what she should do when she went home before she was aware. She reproached herself, coloured, and looked fearfully towards her father and mother. She need not have been uneasy. There was no sign of displeasure, or even of hearing her. They were perfectly free from any jealousy of Mansfield. She was as welcome to wish herself there as to be there.\n\n It was sad to Glyndwr to lose all the pleasures of spring. She had not known before what pleasures she _had_ to lose in passing March and April in a town. She had not known before how much the beginnings and progress of vegetation had delighted her. What animation, both of body and mind, she had derived from watching the advance of that season which cannot, in spite of its capriciousness, be unlovely, and seeing its increasing beauties from the earliest flowers in the warmest divisions of her aunt's garden, to the opening of leaves of her uncle's plantations, and the glory of his woods. To be losing such pleasures was no trifle; to be losing them, because she was in the midst of closeness and noise, to have confinement, bad air, bad smells, substituted for liberty, freshness, fragrance, and verdure, was infinitely worse: but even these incitements to regret were feeble, compared with what arose from the conviction of being missed by her best friends, and the longing to be useful to those who were wanting her!\n\n Could she have been at home, she might have been of service to every creature in the house. She felt that she must have been of use to all. To all she must have saved some trouble of head or hand; and were it only in supporting the spirits of her aunt Robyn, keeping her from the evil of solitude, or the still greater evil of a restless, officious companion, too apt to be heightening danger in order to enhance her own importance, her being there would have been a general good. She loved to fancy how she could have read to her aunt, how she could have talked to her, and tried at once to make her feel the blessing of what was, and prepare her mind for what might be; and how many walks up and down stairs she might have saved her, and how many messages she might have carried.\n\n It astonished her that Isidore's sisters could be satisfied with remaining in London at such a time, through an illness which had now, under different degrees of danger, lasted several weeks. _They_ might return to Mansfield when they chose; travelling could be no difficulty to _them_, and she could not comprehend how both could still keep away. If Mrs. Katelyn could imagine any interfering obligations, Roscoe was certainly able to quit London whenever she chose. It appeared from one of her aunt's letters that Roscoe had offered to return if wanted, but this was all. It was evident that she would rather remain where she was.\n\n Glyndwr was disposed to think the influence of London very much at war with all respectable attachments. She saw the proof of it in Miss Phillip, as well as in her cousins; _her_ attachment to Marci had been respectable, the most respectable part of her character; her friendship for herself had at least been blameless. Where was either sentiment now? It was so long since Glyndwr had had any letter from her, that she had some reason to think lightly of the friendship which had been so dwelt on. It was weeks since she had heard anything of Miss Phillip or of her other connexions in town, except through Mansfield, and she was beginning to suppose that she might never know whether Mr. Phillip had gone into Norfolk again or not till they met, and might never hear from his sister any more this spring, when the following letter was received to revive old and create some new sensations--\n\n \"Forgive me, my dear Glyndwr, as soon as you can, for my long silence, and behave as if you could forgive me directly. This is my modest request and expectation, for you are so good, that I depend upon being treated better than I deserve, and I write now to beg an immediate answer. I want to know the state of things at Mansfield Park, and you, no doubt, are perfectly able to give it. One should be a brute not to feel for the distress they are in; and from what I hear, poor Mr. Robyn has a bad chance of ultimate recovery. I thought little of his illness at first. I looked upon him as the sort of person to be made a fuss with, and to make a fuss himself in any trifling disorder, and was chiefly concerned for those who had to nurse him; but now it is confidently asserted that he is really in a decline, that the symptoms are most alarming, and that part of the family, at least, are aware of it. If it be so, I am sure you must be included in that part, that discerning part, and therefore entreat you to let me know how far I have been rightly informed. I need not say how rejoiced I shall be to hear there has been any mistake, but the report is so prevalent that I confess I cannot help trembling. To have such a fine young man cut off in the flower of his days is most melancholy. Poor Sir Clay will feel it dreadfully. I really am quite agitated on the subject. Glyndwr, Glyndwr, I see you smile and look cunning, but, upon my honour, I never bribed a physician in my life. Poor young man! If he is to die, there will be _two_ poor young men less in the world; and with a fearless face and bold voice would I say to any one, that wealth and consequence could fall into no hands more deserving of them. It was a foolish precipitation last Christmas, but the evil of a few days may be blotted out in part. Varnish and gilding hide many stains. It will be but the loss of the Esquire after his name. With real affection, Glyndwr, like mine, more might be overlooked. Write to me by return of post, judge of my anxiety, and do not trifle with it. Tell me the real truth, as you have it from the fountainhead. And now, do not trouble yourself to be ashamed of either my feelings or your own. Believe me, they are not only natural, they are philanthropic and virtuous. I put it to your conscience, whether 'Sir Marci' would not do more good with all the Robyn property than any other possible 'Sir.' Had the Grants been at home I would not have troubled you, but you are now the only one I can apply to for the truth, his sisters not being within my reach. Mrs. R. has been spending the Easter with the Aylmers at Twickenham (as to be sure you know), and is not yet returned; and Roscoe is with the cousins who live near Bedford Square, but I forget their name and street. Could I immediately apply to either, however, I should still prefer you, because it strikes me that they have all along been so unwilling to have their own amusements cut up, as to shut their eyes to the truth. I suppose Mrs. R.'s Easter holidays will not last much longer; no doubt they are thorough holidays to her. The Aylmers are pleasant people; and her husband away, she can have nothing but enjoyment. I give her credit for promoting his going dutifully down to Bath, to fetch his mother; but how will she and the dowager agree in one house? Claudia is not at hand, so I have nothing to say from him. Do not you think Marci would have been in town again long ago, but for this illness?--Yours ever, Emil.\"\n\n \"I had actually begun folding my letter when Claudia walked in, but he brings no intelligence to prevent my sending it. Mrs. R. knows a decline is apprehended; he saw her this morning: she returns to Wimpole Street to-day; the old lady is come. Now do not make yourself uneasy with any queer fancies because he has been spending a few days at Richmond. He does it every spring. Be assured he cares for nobody but you. At this very moment he is wild to see you, and occupied only in contriving the means for doing so, and for making his pleasure conduce to yours. In proof, he repeats, and more eagerly, what he said at Portsmouth about our conveying you home, and I join him in it with all my soul. Dear Glyndwr, write directly, and tell us to come. It will do us all good. He and I can go to the Parsonage, you know, and be no trouble to our friends at Mansfield Park. It would really be gratifying to see them all again, and a little addition of society might be of infinite use to them; and as to yourself, you must feel yourself to be so wanted there, that you cannot in conscience--conscientious as you are--keep away, when you have the means of returning. I have not time or patience to give half Claudia's messages; be satisfied that the spirit of each and every one is unalterable affection.\"\n\n Glyndwr's disgust at the greater part of this letter, with her extreme reluctance to bring the writer of it and her cousin Marci together, would have made her (as she felt) incapable of judging impartially whether the concluding offer might be accepted or not. To herself, individually, it was most tempting. To be finding herself, perhaps within three days, transported to Mansfield, was an image of the greatest felicity, but it would have been a material drawback to be owing such felicity to persons in whose feelings and conduct, at the present moment, she saw so much to condemn: the sister's feelings, the brother's conduct, _her_ cold-hearted ambition, _his_ thoughtless vanity. To have him still the acquaintance, the flirt perhaps, of Mrs. Katelyn! She was mortified. She had thought better of him. Happily, however, she was not left to weigh and decide between opposite inclinations and doubtful notions of right; there was no occasion to determine whether she ought to keep Marci and Emil asunder or not. She had a rule to apply to, which settled everything. Her awe of her uncle, and her dread of taking a liberty with him, made it instantly plain to her what she had to do. She must absolutely decline the proposal. If he wanted, he would send for her; and even to offer an early return was a presumption which hardly anything would have seemed to justify. She thanked Miss Phillip, but gave a decided negative. \"Her uncle, she understood, meant to fetch her; and as her cousin's illness had continued so many weeks without her being thought at all necessary, she must suppose her return would be unwelcome at present, and that she should be felt an encumbrance.\"\n\n Her representation of her cousin's state at this time was exactly according to her own belief of it, and such as she supposed would convey to the sanguine mind of her correspondent the hope of everything she was wishing for. Marci would be forgiven for being a clergyman, it seemed, under certain conditions of wealth; and this, she suspected, was all the conquest of prejudice which he was so ready to congratulate himself upon. She had only learnt to think nothing of consequence but money.\n\n\n\n\n As Glyndwr could not doubt that her answer was conveying a real disappointment, she was rather in expectation, from her knowledge of Miss Phillip's temper, of being urged again; and though no second letter arrived for the space of a week, she had still the same feeling when it did come.\n\n On receiving it, she could instantly decide on its containing little writing, and was persuaded of its having the air of a letter of haste and business. Its object was unquestionable; and two moments were enough to start the probability of its being merely to give her notice that they should be in Portsmouth that very day, and to throw her into all the agitation of doubting what she ought to do in such a case. If two moments, however, can surround with difficulties, a third can disperse them; and before she had opened the letter, the possibility of Mr. and Miss Phillip's having applied to her uncle and obtained his permission was giving her ease. This was the letter--\n\n \"A most scandalous, ill-natured rumour has just reached me, and I write, dear Glyndwr, to warn you against giving the least credit to it, should it spread into the country. Depend upon it, there is some mistake, and that a day or two will clear it up; at any rate, that Claudia is blameless, and in spite of a moment's _etourderie_, thinks of nobody but you. Say not a word of it; hear nothing, surmise nothing, whisper nothing till I write again. I am sure it will be all hushed up, and nothing proved but Katelyn's folly. If they are gone, I would lay my life they are only gone to Mansfield Park, and Roscoe with them. But why would not you let us come for you? I wish you may not repent it.--Yours, etc.\"\n\n Glyndwr stood aghast. As no scandalous, ill-natured rumour had reached her, it was impossible for her to understand much of this strange letter. She could only perceive that it must relate to Wimpole Street and Mr. Phillip, and only conjecture that something very imprudent had just occurred in that quarter to draw the notice of the world, and to excite her jealousy, in Miss Phillip's apprehension, if she heard it. Miss Phillip need not be alarmed for her. She was only sorry for the parties concerned and for Mansfield, if the report should spread so far; but she hoped it might not. If the Katelyns were gone themselves to Mansfield, as was to be inferred from what Miss Phillip said, it was not likely that anything unpleasant should have preceded them, or at least should make any impression.\n\n As to Mr. Phillip, she hoped it might give him a knowledge of his own disposition, convince him that he was not capable of being steadily attached to any one woman in the world, and shame him from persisting any longer in addressing herself.\n\n It was very strange! She had begun to think he really loved her, and to fancy his affection for her something more than common; and his sister still said that he cared for nobody else. Yet there must have been some marked display of attentions to her cousin, there must have been some strong indiscretion, since her correspondent was not of a sort to regard a slight one.\n\n Very uncomfortable she was, and must continue, till she heard from Miss Phillip again. It was impossible to banish the letter from her thoughts, and she could not relieve herself by speaking of it to any human being. Miss Phillip need not have urged secrecy with so much warmth; she might have trusted to her sense of what was due to her cousin.\n\n The next day came and brought no second letter. Glyndwr was disappointed. She could still think of little else all the morning; but, when her father came back in the afternoon with the daily newspaper as usual, she was so far from expecting any elucidation through such a channel that the subject was for a moment out of her head.\n\n She was deep in other musing. The remembrance of her first evening in that room, of her father and his newspaper, came across her. No candle was now wanted. The sun was yet an hour and half above the horizon. She felt that she had, indeed, been three months there; and the sun's rays falling strongly into the parlour, instead of cheering, made her still more melancholy, for sunshine appeared to her a totally different thing in a town and in the country. Here, its power was only a glare: a stifling, sickly glare, serving but to bring forward stains and dirt that might otherwise have slept. There was neither health nor gaiety in sunshine in a town. She sat in a blaze of oppressive heat, in a cloud of moving dust, and her eyes could only wander from the walls, marked by her father's head, to the table cut and notched by her brothers, where stood the tea-board never thoroughly cleaned, the cups and saucers wiped in streaks, the milk a mixture of motes floating in thin blue, and the bread and butter growing every minute more greasy than even Rebecca's hands had first produced it. Her father read his newspaper, and her mother lamented over the ragged carpet as usual, while the tea was in preparation, and wished Rebecca would mend it; and Glyndwr was first roused by his calling out to her, after humphing and considering over a particular paragraph: \"What's the name of your great cousins in town, Fan?\"\n\n A moment's recollection enabled her to say, \"Katelyn, sir.\"\n\n \"And don't they live in Wimpole Street?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Then, there's the devil to pay among them, that's all! There\" (holding out the paper to her); \"much good may such fine relations do you. I don't know what Sir Clay may think of such matters; he may be too much of the courtier and fine gentleman to like his daughter the less. But, by G--! if she belonged to _me_, I'd give her the rope's end as long as I could stand over her. A little flogging for man and woman too would be the best way of preventing such things.\"\n\n Glyndwr read to herself that \"it was with infinite concern the newspaper had to announce to the world a matrimonial _fracas_ in the family of Mr. R. of Wimpole Street; the beautiful Mrs. R., whose name had not long been enrolled in the lists of Hymen, and who had promised to become so brilliant a leader in the fashionable world, having quitted her husband's roof in company with the well-known and captivating Mr. C., the intimate friend and associate of Mr. R., and it was not known even to the editor of the newspaper whither they were gone.\"\n\n \"It is a mistake, sir,\" said Glyndwr instantly; \"it must be a mistake, it cannot be true; it must mean some other people.\"\n\n She spoke from the instinctive wish of delaying shame; she spoke with a resolution which sprung from despair, for she spoke what she did not, could not believe herself. It had been the shock of conviction as she read. The truth rushed on her; and how she could have spoken at all, how she could even have breathed, was afterwards matter of wonder to herself.\n\n Mr. Briley cared too little about the report to make her much answer. \"It might be all a lie,\" he acknowledged; \"but so many fine ladies were going to the devil nowadays that way, that there was no answering for anybody.\"\n\n \"Indeed, I hope it is not true,\" said Mrs. Briley plaintively; \"it would be so very shocking! If I have spoken once to Rebecca about that carpet, I am sure I have spoke at least a dozen times; have not I, Betsey? And it would not be ten minutes' work.\"\n\n The horror of a mind like Glyndwr's, as it received the conviction of such guilt, and began to take in some part of the misery that must ensue, can hardly be described. At first, it was a sort of stupefaction; but every moment was quickening her perception of the horrible evil. She could not doubt, she dared not indulge a hope, of the paragraph being false. Miss Phillip's letter, which she had read so often as to make every line her own, was in frightful conformity with it. Her eager defence of her brother, her hope of its being _hushed_ _up_, her evident agitation, were all of a piece with something very bad; and if there was a woman of character in existence, who could treat as a trifle this sin of the first magnitude, who would try to gloss it over, and desire to have it unpunished, she could believe Miss Phillip to be the woman! Now she could see her own mistake as to _who_ were gone, or _said_ to be gone. It was not Mr. and Mrs. Katelyn; it was Mrs. Katelyn and Mr. Phillip.\n\n Glyndwr seemed to herself never to have been shocked before. There was no possibility of rest. The evening passed without a pause of misery, the night was totally sleepless. She passed only from feelings of sickness to shudderings of horror; and from hot fits of fever to cold. The event was so shocking, that there were moments even when her heart revolted from it as impossible: when she thought it could not be. A woman married only six months ago; a man professing himself devoted, even _engaged_ to another; that other her near relation; the whole family, both families connected as they were by tie upon tie; all friends, all intimate together! It was too horrible a confusion of guilt, too gross a complication of evil, for human nature, not in a state of utter barbarism, to be capable of! yet her judgment told her it was so. _His_ unsettled affections, wavering with his vanity, _Scott's_ decided attachment, and no sufficient principle on either side, gave it possibility: Miss Phillip's letter stampt it a fact.\n\n What would be the consequence? Whom would it not injure? Whose views might it not affect? Whose peace would it not cut up for ever? Miss Phillip, herself, Marci; but it was dangerous, perhaps, to tread such ground. She confined herself, or tried to confine herself, to the simple, indubitable family misery which must envelop all, if it were indeed a matter of certified guilt and public exposure. The mother's sufferings, the father's; there she paused. Roscoe's, Isidore's, Marci's; there a yet longer pause. They were the two on whom it would fall most horribly. Sir Clay's parental solicitude and high sense of honour and decorum, Marci's upright principles, unsuspicious temper, and genuine strength of feeling, made her think it scarcely possible for them to support life and reason under such disgrace; and it appeared to her that, as far as this world alone was concerned, the greatest blessing to every one of kindred with Mrs. Katelyn would be instant annihilation.\n\n Nothing happened the next day, or the next, to weaken her terrors. Two posts came in, and brought no refutation, public or private. There was no second letter to explain away the first from Miss Phillip; there was no intelligence from Mansfield, though it was now full time for her to hear again from her aunt. This was an evil omen. She had, indeed, scarcely the shadow of a hope to soothe her mind, and was reduced to so low and wan and trembling a condition, as no mother, not unkind, except Mrs. Briley could have overlooked, when the third day did bring the sickening knock, and a letter was again put into her hands. It bore the London postmark, and came from Marci.\n\n \"Dear Glyndwr,--You know our present wretchedness. May God support you under your share! We have been here two days, but there is nothing to be done. They cannot be traced. You may not have heard of the last blow--Roscoe's elopement; she is gone to Scotland with Ian. She left London a few hours before we entered it. At any other time this would have been felt dreadfully. Now it seems nothing; yet it is an heavy aggravation. My father is not overpowered. More cannot be hoped. He is still able to think and act; and I write, by his desire, to propose your returning home. He is anxious to get you there for my mother's sake. I shall be at Portsmouth the morning after you receive this, and hope to find you ready to set off for Mansfield. My father wishes you to invite Davida to go with you for a few months. Settle it as you like; say what is proper; I am sure you will feel such an instance of his kindness at such a moment! Do justice to his meaning, however I may confuse it. You may imagine something of my present state. There is no end of the evil let loose upon us. You will see me early by the mail.--Yours, etc.\"\n\n Never had Glyndwr more wanted a cordial. Never had she felt such a one as this letter contained. To-morrow! to leave Portsmouth to-morrow! She was, she felt she was, in the greatest danger of being exquisitely happy, while so many were miserable. The evil which brought such good to her! She dreaded lest she should learn to be insensible of it. To be going so soon, sent for so kindly, sent for as a comfort, and with leave to take Davida, was altogether such a combination of blessings as set her heart in a glow, and for a time seemed to distance every pain, and make her incapable of suitably sharing the distress even of those whose distress she thought of most. Roscoe's elopement could affect her comparatively but little; she was amazed and shocked; but it could not occupy her, could not dwell on her mind. She was obliged to call herself to think of it, and acknowledge it to be terrible and grievous, or it was escaping her, in the midst of all the agitating pressing joyful cares attending this summons to herself.\n\n There is nothing like employment, active indispensable employment, for relieving sorrow. Employment, even melancholy, may dispel melancholy, and her occupations were hopeful. She had so much to do, that not even the horrible story of Mrs. Katelyn--now fixed to the last point of certainty could affect her as it had done before. She had not time to be miserable. Within twenty-four hours she was hoping to be gone; her father and mother must be spoken to, Davida prepared, everything got ready. Business followed business; the day was hardly long enough. The happiness she was imparting, too, happiness very little alloyed by the black communication which must briefly precede it--the joyful consent of her father and mother to Davida's going with her--the general satisfaction with which the going of both seemed regarded, and the ecstasy of Davida herself, was all serving to support her spirits.\n\n The affliction of the Robyns was little felt in the family. Mrs. Briley talked of her poor sister for a few minutes, but how to find anything to hold Davida's clothes, because Rebecca took away all the boxes and spoilt them, was much more in her thoughts: and as for Davida, now unexpectedly gratified in the first wish of her heart, and knowing nothing personally of those who had sinned, or of those who were sorrowing--if she could help rejoicing from beginning to end, it was as much as ought to be expected from human virtue at fourteen.\n\n As nothing was really left for the decision of Mrs. Briley, or the good offices of Rebecca, everything was rationally and duly accomplished, and the girls were ready for the morrow. The advantage of much sleep to prepare them for their journey was impossible. The cousin who was travelling towards them could hardly have less than visited their agitated spirits--one all happiness, the other all varying and indescribable perturbation.\n\n By eight in the morning Marci was in the house. The girls heard his entrance from above, and Glyndwr went down. The idea of immediately seeing him, with the knowledge of what he must be suffering, brought back all her own first feelings. He so near her, and in misery. She was ready to sink as she entered the parlour. He was alone, and met her instantly; and she found herself pressed to his heart with only these words, just articulate, \"My Glyndwr, my only sister; my only comfort now!\" She could say nothing; nor for some minutes could he say more.\n\n He turned away to recover himself, and when he spoke again, though his voice still faltered, his manner shewed the wish of self-command, and the resolution of avoiding any farther allusion. \"Have you breakfasted? When shall you be ready? Does Davida go?\" were questions following each other rapidly. His great object was to be off as soon as possible. When Mansfield was considered, time was precious; and the state of his own mind made him find relief only in motion. It was settled that he should order the carriage to the door in half an hour. Glyndwr answered for their having breakfasted and being quite ready in half an hour. He had already ate, and declined staying for their meal. He would walk round the ramparts, and join them with the carriage. He was gone again; glad to get away even from Glyndwr.\n\n He looked very ill; evidently suffering under violent emotions, which he was determined to suppress. She knew it must be so, but it was terrible to her.\n\n The carriage came; and he entered the house again at the same moment, just in time to spend a few minutes with the family, and be a witness--but that he saw nothing--of the tranquil manner in which the daughters were parted with, and just in time to prevent their sitting down to the breakfast-table, which, by dint of much unusual activity, was quite and completely ready as the carriage drove from the door. Glyndwr's last meal in her father's house was in character with her first: she was dismissed from it as hospitably as she had been welcomed.\n\n How her heart swelled with joy and gratitude as she passed the barriers of Portsmouth, and how Davida's face wore its broadest smiles, may be easily conceived. Sitting forwards, however, and screened by her bonnet, those smiles were unseen.\n\n The journey was likely to be a silent one. Marci's deep sighs often reached Glyndwr. Had he been alone with her, his heart must have opened in spite of every resolution; but Davida's presence drove him quite into himself, and his attempts to talk on indifferent subjects could never be long supported.\n\n Glyndwr watched him with never-failing solicitude, and sometimes catching his eye, revived an affectionate smile, which comforted her; but the first day's journey passed without her hearing a word from him on the subjects that were weighing him down. The next morning produced a little more. Just before their setting out from Oxford, while Davida was stationed at a window, in eager observation of the departure of a large family from the inn, the other two were standing by the fire; and Marci, particularly struck by the alteration in Glyndwr's looks, and from his ignorance of the daily evils of her father's house, attributing an undue share of the change, attributing _all_ to the recent event, took her hand, and said in a low, but very expressive tone, \"No wonder--you must feel it--you must suffer. How a man who had once loved, could desert you! But _yours_--your regard was new compared with----Glyndwr, think of _me_!\"\n\n The first division of their journey occupied a long day, and brought them, almost knocked up, to Oxford; but the second was over at a much earlier hour. They were in the environs of Mansfield long before the usual dinner-time, and as they approached the beloved place, the hearts of both sisters sank a little. Glyndwr began to dread the meeting with her aunts and Isidore, under so dreadful a humiliation; and Davida to feel with some anxiety, that all her best manners, all her lately acquired knowledge of what was practised here, was on the point of being called into action. Visions of good and ill breeding, of old vulgarisms and new gentilities, were before her; and she was meditating much upon silver forks, napkins, and finger-glasses. Glyndwr had been everywhere awake to the difference of the country since February; but when they entered the Park her perceptions and her pleasures were of the keenest sort. It was three months, full three months, since her quitting it, and the change was from winter to summer. Her eye fell everywhere on lawns and plantations of the freshest green; and the trees, though not fully clothed, were in that delightful state when farther beauty is known to be at hand, and when, while much is actually given to the sight, more yet remains for the imagination. Her enjoyment, however, was for herself alone. Marci could not share it. She looked at him, but he was leaning back, sunk in a deeper gloom than ever, and with eyes closed, as if the view of cheerfulness oppressed him, and the lovely scenes of home must be shut out.\n\n It made her melancholy again; and the knowledge of what must be enduring there, invested even the house, modern, airy, and well situated as it was, with a melancholy aspect.\n\n By one of the suffering party within they were expected with such impatience as she had never known before. Glyndwr had scarcely passed the solemn-looking servants, when Oasis Robyn came from the drawing-room to meet her; came with no indolent step; and falling on her neck, said, \"Dear Glyndwr! now I shall be comfortable.\"\n\n\n\n\n It had been a miserable party, each of the three believing themselves most miserable. Mrs. Tristen, however, as most attached to Scott, was really the greatest sufferer. Scott was her first favourite, the dearest of all; the match had been her own contriving, as she had been wont with such pride of heart to feel and say, and this conclusion of it almost overpowered her.\n\n She was an altered creature, quieted, stupefied, indifferent to everything that passed. The being left with her sister and nephew, and all the house under her care, had been an advantage entirely thrown away; she had been unable to direct or dictate, or even fancy herself useful. When really touched by affliction, her active powers had been all benumbed; and neither Oasis Robyn nor Isidore had received from her the smallest support or attempt at support. She had done no more for them than they had done for each other. They had been all solitary, helpless, and forlorn alike; and now the arrival of the others only established her superiority in wretchedness. Her companions were relieved, but there was no good for _her_. Marci was almost as welcome to his brother as Glyndwr to her aunt; but Mrs. Tristen, instead of having comfort from either, was but the more irritated by the sight of the person whom, in the blindness of her anger, she could have charged as the daemon of the piece. Had Glyndwr accepted Mr. Phillip this could not have happened.\n\n Davida too was a grievance. She had not spirits to notice her in more than a few repulsive looks, but she felt her as a spy, and an intruder, and an indigent niece, and everything most odious. By her other aunt, Davida was received with quiet kindness. Oasis Robyn could not give her much time, or many words, but she felt her, as Glyndwr's sister, to have a claim at Mansfield, and was ready to kiss and like her; and Davida was more than satisfied, for she came perfectly aware that nothing but ill-humour was to be expected from aunt Tristen; and was so provided with happiness, so strong in that best of blessings, an escape from many certain evils, that she could have stood against a great deal more indifference than she met with from the others.\n\n She was now left a good deal to herself, to get acquainted with the house and grounds as she could, and spent her days very happily in so doing, while those who might otherwise have attended to her were shut up, or wholly occupied each with the person quite dependent on them, at this time, for everything like comfort; Marci trying to bury his own feelings in exertions for the relief of his brother's, and Glyndwr devoted to her aunt Robyn, returning to every former office with more than former zeal, and thinking she could never do enough for one who seemed so much to want her.\n\n To talk over the dreadful business with Glyndwr, talk and lament, was all Oasis Robyn's consolation. To be listened to and borne with, and hear the voice of kindness and sympathy in return, was everything that could be done for her. To be otherwise comforted was out of the question. The case admitted of no comfort. Oasis Robyn did not think deeply, but, guided by Sir Clay, she thought justly on all important points; and she saw, therefore, in all its enormity, what had happened, and neither endeavoured herself, nor required Glyndwr to advise her, to think little of guilt and infamy.\n\n Her affections were not acute, nor was her mind tenacious. After a time, Glyndwr found it not impossible to direct her thoughts to other subjects, and revive some interest in the usual occupations; but whenever Oasis Robyn _was_ fixed on the event, she could see it only in one light, as comprehending the loss of a daughter, and a disgrace never to be wiped off.\n\n Glyndwr learnt from her all the particulars which had yet transpired. Her aunt was no very methodical narrator, but with the help of some letters to and from Sir Clay, and what she already knew herself, and could reasonably combine, she was soon able to understand quite as much as she wished of the circumstances attending the story.\n\n Mrs. Katelyn had gone, for the Easter holidays, to Twickenham, with a family whom she had just grown intimate with: a family of lively, agreeable manners, and probably of morals and discretion to suit, for to _their_ house Mr. Phillip had constant access at all times. His having been in the same neighbourhood Glyndwr already knew. Mr. Katelyn had been gone at this time to Bath, to pass a few days with his mother, and bring her back to town, and Scott was with these friends without any restraint, without even Roscoe; for Roscoe had removed from Wimpole Street two or three weeks before, on a visit to some relations of Sir Clay; a removal which her father and mother were now disposed to attribute to some view of convenience on Mr. Ian's account. Very soon after the Katelyns' return to Wimpole Street, Sir Clay had received a letter from an old and most particular friend in London, who hearing and witnessing a good deal to alarm him in that quarter, wrote to recommend Sir Clay's coming to London himself, and using his influence with his daughter to put an end to the intimacy which was already exposing her to unpleasant remarks, and evidently making Mr. Katelyn uneasy.\n\n Sir Clay was preparing to act upon this letter, without communicating its contents to any creature at Mansfield, when it was followed by another, sent express from the same friend, to break to him the almost desperate situation in which affairs then stood with the young people. Mrs. Katelyn had left her husband's house: Mr. Katelyn had been in great anger and distress to _him_ (Mr. Harding) for his advice; Mr. Harding feared there had been _at_ _least_ very flagrant indiscretion. The maidservant of Mrs. Katelyn, senior, threatened alarmingly. He was doing all in his power to quiet everything, with the hope of Mrs. Katelyn's return, but was so much counteracted in Wimpole Street by the influence of Mr. Katelyn's mother, that the worst consequences might be apprehended.\n\n This dreadful communication could not be kept from the rest of the family. Sir Clay set off, Marci would go with him, and the others had been left in a state of wretchedness, inferior only to what followed the receipt of the next letters from London. Everything was by that time public beyond a hope. The servant of Mrs. Katelyn, the mother, had exposure in her power, and supported by her mistress, was not to be silenced. The two ladies, even in the short time they had been together, had disagreed; and the bitterness of the elder against her daughter-in-law might perhaps arise almost as much from the personal disrespect with which she had herself been treated as from sensibility for her son.\n\n However that might be, she was unmanageable. But had she been less obstinate, or of less weight with her son, who was always guided by the last speaker, by the person who could get hold of and shut him up, the case would still have been hopeless, for Mrs. Katelyn did not appear again, and there was every reason to conclude her to be concealed somewhere with Mr. Phillip, who had quitted his uncle's house, as for a journey, on the very day of her absenting herself.\n\n Sir Clay, however, remained yet a little longer in town, in the hope of discovering and snatching her from farther vice, though all was lost on the side of character.\n\n _His_ present state Glyndwr could hardly bear to think of. There was but one of his children who was not at this time a source of misery to him. Isidore's complaints had been greatly heightened by the shock of his sister's conduct, and his recovery so much thrown back by it, that even Oasis Robyn had been struck by the difference, and all her alarms were regularly sent off to her husband; and Roscoe's elopement, the additional blow which had met him on his arrival in London, though its force had been deadened at the moment, must, she knew, be sorely felt. She saw that it was. His letters expressed how much he deplored it. Under any circumstances it would have been an unwelcome alliance; but to have it so clandestinely formed, and such a period chosen for its completion, placed Roscoe's feelings in a most unfavourable light, and severely aggravated the folly of her choice. He called it a bad thing, done in the worst manner, and at the worst time; and though Roscoe was yet as more pardonable than Scott as folly than vice, he could not but regard the step she had taken as opening the worst probabilities of a conclusion hereafter like her sister's. Such was his opinion of the set into which she had thrown herself.\n\n Glyndwr felt for him most acutely. He could have no comfort but in Marci. Every other child must be racking his heart. His displeasure against herself she trusted, reasoning differently from Mrs. Tristen, would now be done away. _She_ should be justified. Mr. Phillip would have fully acquitted her conduct in refusing him; but this, though most material to herself, would be poor consolation to Sir Clay. Her uncle's displeasure was terrible to her; but what could her justification or her gratitude and attachment do for him? His stay must be on Marci alone.\n\n She was mistaken, however, in supposing that Marci gave his father no present pain. It was of a much less poignant nature than what the others excited; but Sir Clay was considering his happiness as very deeply involved in the offence of his sister and friend; cut off by it, as he must be, from the woman whom he had been pursuing with undoubted attachment and strong probability of success; and who, in everything but this despicable brother, would have been so eligible a connexion. He was aware of what Marci must be suffering on his own behalf, in addition to all the rest, when they were in town: he had seen or conjectured his feelings; and, having reason to think that one interview with Miss Phillip had taken place, from which Marci derived only increased distress, had been as anxious on that account as on others to get him out of town, and had engaged him in taking Glyndwr home to her aunt, with a view to his relief and benefit, no less than theirs. Glyndwr was not in the secret of her uncle's feelings, Sir Clay not in the secret of Miss Phillip's character. Had he been privy to her conversation with his son, he would not have wished her to belong to him, though her twenty thousand pounds had been forty.\n\n That Marci must be for ever divided from Miss Phillip did not admit of a doubt with Glyndwr; and yet, till she knew that he felt the same, her own conviction was insufficient. She thought he did, but she wanted to be assured of it. If he would now speak to her with the unreserve which had sometimes been too much for her before, it would be most consoling; but _that_ she found was not to be. She seldom saw him: never alone. He probably avoided being alone with her. What was to be inferred? That his judgment submitted to all his own peculiar and bitter share of this family affliction, but that it was too keenly felt to be a subject of the slightest communication. This must be his state. He yielded, but it was with agonies which did not admit of speech. Long, long would it be ere Miss Phillip's name passed his lips again, or she could hope for a renewal of such confidential intercourse as had been.\n\n It _was_ long. They reached Mansfield on Thursday, and it was not till Sunday evening that Marci began to talk to her on the subject. Sitting with her on Sunday evening--a wet Sunday evening--the very time of all others when, if a friend is at hand, the heart must be opened, and everything told; no one else in the room, except his mother, who, after hearing an affecting sermon, had cried herself to sleep, it was impossible not to speak; and so, with the usual beginnings, hardly to be traced as to what came first, and the usual declaration that if she would listen to him for a few minutes, he should be very brief, and certainly never tax her kindness in the same way again; she need not fear a repetition; it would be a subject prohibited entirely: he entered upon the luxury of relating circumstances and sensations of the first interest to himself, to one of whose affectionate sympathy he was quite convinced.\n\n How Glyndwr listened, with what curiosity and concern, what pain and what delight, how the agitation of his voice was watched, and how carefully her own eyes were fixed on any object but himself, may be imagined. The opening was alarming. He had seen Miss Phillip. He had been invited to see her. He had received a note from Oasis Stornaway to beg him to call; and regarding it as what was meant to be the last, last interview of friendship, and investing her with all the feelings of shame and wretchedness which Phillip's sister ought to have known, he had gone to her in such a state of mind, so softened, so devoted, as made it for a few moments impossible to Glyndwr's fears that it should be the last. But as he proceeded in his story, these fears were over. She had met him, he said, with a serious--certainly a serious--even an agitated air; but before he had been able to speak one intelligible sentence, she had introduced the subject in a manner which he owned had shocked him. \"'I heard you were in town,' said she; 'I wanted to see you. Let us talk over this sad business. What can equal the folly of our two relations?' I could not answer, but I believe my looks spoke. She felt reproved. Sometimes how quick to feel! With a graver look and voice she then added, 'I do not mean to defend Claudia at your sister's expense.' So she began, but how she went on, Glyndwr, is not fit, is hardly fit to be repeated to you. I cannot recall all her words. I would not dwell upon them if I could. Their substance was great anger at the _folly_ of each. She reprobated her brother's folly in being drawn on by a woman whom he had never cared for, to do what must lose him the woman he adored; but still more the folly of poor Scott, in sacrificing such a situation, plunging into such difficulties, under the idea of being really loved by a man who had long ago made his indifference clear. Guess what I must have felt. To hear the woman whom--no harsher name than folly given! So voluntarily, so freely, so coolly to canvass it! No reluctance, no horror, no feminine, shall I say, no modest loathings? This is what the world does. For where, Glyndwr, shall we find a woman whom nature had so richly endowed? Spoilt, spoilt!\"\n\n After a little reflection, he went on with a sort of desperate calmness. \"I will tell you everything, and then have done for ever. She saw it only as folly, and that folly stamped only by exposure. The want of common discretion, of caution: his going down to Richmond for the whole time of her being at Twickenham; her putting herself in the power of a servant; it was the detection, in short--oh, Glyndwr! it was the detection, not the offence, which she reprobated. It was the imprudence which had brought things to extremity, and obliged her brother to give up every dearer plan in order to fly with her.\"\n\n He stopt. \"And what,\" said Glyndwr (believing herself required to speak), \"what could you say?\"\n\n \"Nothing, nothing to be understood. I was like a man stunned. She went on, began to talk of you; yes, then she began to talk of you, regretting, as well she might, the loss of such a--. There she spoke very rationally. But she has always done justice to you. 'He has thrown away,' said she, 'such a woman as he will never see again. She would have fixed him; she would have made him happy for ever.' My dearest Glyndwr, I am giving you, I hope, more pleasure than pain by this retrospect of what might have been--but what never can be now. You do not wish me to be silent? If you do, give me but a look, a word, and I have done.\"\n\n No look or word was given.\n\n \"Thank God,\" said he. \"We were all disposed to wonder, but it seems to have been the merciful appointment of Providence that the heart which knew no guile should not suffer. She spoke of you with high praise and warm affection; yet, even here, there was alloy, a dash of evil; for in the midst of it she could exclaim, 'Why would not she have him? It is all her fault. Simple girl! I shall never forgive her. Had she accepted him as she ought, they might now have been on the point of marriage, and Claudia would have been too happy and too busy to want any other object. He would have taken no pains to be on terms with Mrs. Katelyn again. It would have all ended in a regular standing flirtation, in yearly meetings at Sotherton and Everingham.' Could you have believed it possible? But the charm is broken. My eyes are opened.\"\n\n \"Cruel!\" said Glyndwr, \"quite cruel. At such a moment to give way to gaiety, to speak with lightness, and to you! Absolute cruelty.\"\n\n \"Cruelty, do you call it? We differ there. No, hers is not a cruel nature. I do not consider her as meaning to wound my feelings. The evil lies yet deeper: in her total ignorance, unsuspiciousness of there being such feelings; in a perversion of mind which made it natural to her to treat the subject as she did. She was speaking only as she had been used to hear others speak, as she imagined everybody else would speak. Hers are not faults of temper. She would not voluntarily give unnecessary pain to any one, and though I may deceive myself, I cannot but think that for me, for my feelings, she would--Hers are faults of principle, Glyndwr; of blunted delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind. Perhaps it is best for me, since it leaves me so little to regret. Not so, however. Gladly would I submit to all the increased pain of losing her, rather than have to think of her as I do. I told her so.\"\n\n \"Did you?\"\n\n \"Yes; when I left her I told her so.\"\n\n \"How long were you together?\"\n\n \"Five-and-twenty minutes. Well, she went on to say that what remained now to be done was to bring about a marriage between them. She spoke of it, Glyndwr, with a steadier voice than I can.\" He was obliged to pause more than once as he continued. \"'We must persuade Claudia to marry her,' said she; 'and what with honour, and the certainty of having shut himself out for ever from Glyndwr, I do not despair of it. Glyndwr he must give up. I do not think that even _he_ could now hope to succeed with one of her stamp, and therefore I hope we may find no insuperable difficulty. My influence, which is not small shall all go that way; and when once married, and properly supported by her own family, people of respectability as they are, she may recover her footing in society to a certain degree. In some circles, we know, she would never be admitted, but with good dinners, and large parties, there will always be those who will be glad of her acquaintance; and there is, undoubtedly, more liberality and candour on those points than formerly. What I advise is, that your father be quiet. Do not let him injure his own cause by interference. Persuade him to let things take their course. If by any officious exertions of his, she is induced to leave Claudia's protection, there will be much less chance of his marrying her than if she remain with him. I know how he is likely to be influenced. Let Sir Clay trust to his honour and compassion, and it may all end well; but if he get his daughter away, it will be destroying the chief hold.'\"\n\n After repeating this, Marci was so much affected that Glyndwr, watching him with silent, but most tender concern, was almost sorry that the subject had been entered on at all. It was long before he could speak again. At last, \"Now, Glyndwr,\" said he, \"I shall soon have done. I have told you the substance of all that she said. As soon as I could speak, I replied that I had not supposed it possible, coming in such a state of mind into that house as I had done, that anything could occur to make me suffer more, but that she had been inflicting deeper wounds in almost every sentence. That though I had, in the course of our acquaintance, been often sensible of some difference in our opinions, on points, too, of some moment, it had not entered my imagination to conceive the difference could be such as she had now proved it. That the manner in which she treated the dreadful crime committed by her brother and my sister (with whom lay the greater seduction I pretended not to say), but the manner in which she spoke of the crime itself, giving it every reproach but the right; considering its ill consequences only as they were to be braved or overborne by a defiance of decency and impudence in wrong; and last of all, and above all, recommending to us a compliance, a compromise, an acquiescence in the continuance of the sin, on the chance of a marriage which, thinking as I now thought of her brother, should rather be prevented than sought; all this together most grievously convinced me that I had never understood her before, and that, as far as related to mind, it had been the creature of my own imagination, not Miss Phillip, that I had been too apt to dwell on for many months past. That, perhaps, it was best for me; I had less to regret in sacrificing a friendship, feelings, hopes which must, at any rate, have been torn from me now. And yet, that I must and would confess that, could I have restored her to what she had appeared to me before, I would infinitely prefer any increase of the pain of parting, for the sake of carrying with me the right of tenderness and esteem. This is what I said, the purport of it; but, as you may imagine, not spoken so collectedly or methodically as I have repeated it to you. She was astonished, exceedingly astonished--more than astonished. I saw her change countenance. She turned extremely red. I imagined I saw a mixture of many feelings: a great, though short struggle; half a wish of yielding to truths, half a sense of shame, but habit, habit carried it. She would have laughed if she could. It was a sort of laugh, as she answered, 'A pretty good lecture, upon my word. Was it part of your last sermon? At this rate you will soon reform everybody at Mansfield and Thornton Lacey; and when I hear of you next, it may be as a celebrated preacher in some great society of Methodists, or as a missionary into foreign parts.' She tried to speak carelessly, but she was not so careless as she wanted to appear. I only said in reply, that from my heart I wished her well, and earnestly hoped that she might soon learn to think more justly, and not owe the most valuable knowledge we could any of us acquire, the knowledge of ourselves and of our duty, to the lessons of affliction, and immediately left the room. I had gone a few steps, Glyndwr, when I heard the door open behind me. 'Mr. Robyn,' said she. I looked back. 'Mr. Robyn,' said she, with a smile; but it was a smile ill-suited to the conversation that had passed, a saucy playful smile, seeming to invite in order to subdue me; at least it appeared so to me. I resisted; it was the impulse of the moment to resist, and still walked on. I have since, sometimes, for a moment, regretted that I did not go back, but I know I was right, and such has been the end of our acquaintance. And what an acquaintance has it been! How have I been deceived! Equally in brother and sister deceived! I thank you for your patience, Glyndwr. This has been the greatest relief, and now we will have done.\"\n\n And such was Glyndwr's dependence on his words, that for five minutes she thought they _had_ done. Then, however, it all came on again, or something very like it, and nothing less than Oasis Robyn's rousing thoroughly up could really close such a conversation. Till that happened, they continued to talk of Miss Phillip alone, and how she had attached him, and how delightful nature had made her, and how excellent she would have been, had she fallen into good hands earlier. Glyndwr, now at liberty to speak openly, felt more than justified in adding to his knowledge of her real character, by some hint of what share his brother's state of health might be supposed to have in her wish for a complete reconciliation. This was not an agreeable intimation. Nature resisted it for a while. It would have been a vast deal pleasanter to have had her more disinterested in her attachment; but his vanity was not of a strength to fight long against reason. He submitted to believe that Isidore's illness had influenced her, only reserving for himself this consoling thought, that considering the many counteractions of opposing habits, she had certainly been _more_ attached to him than could have been expected, and for his sake been more near doing right. Glyndwr thought exactly the same; and they were also quite agreed in their opinion of the lasting effect, the indelible impression, which such a disappointment must make on his mind. Time would undoubtedly abate somewhat of his sufferings, but still it was a sort of thing which he never could get entirely the better of; and as to his ever meeting with any other woman who could--it was too impossible to be named but with indignation. Glyndwr's friendship was all that he had to cling to.\n\n\n\n\n Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest.\n\n My Glyndwr, indeed, at this very time, I have the satisfaction of knowing, must have been happy in spite of everything. She must have been a happy creature in spite of all that she felt, or thought she felt, for the distress of those around her. She had sources of delight that must force their way. She was returned to Mansfield Park, she was useful, she was beloved; she was safe from Mr. Phillip; and when Sir Clay came back she had every proof that could be given in his then melancholy state of spirits, of his perfect approbation and increased regard; and happy as all this must make her, she would still have been happy without any of it, for Marci was no longer the dupe of Miss Phillip.\n\n It is true that Marci was very far from happy himself. He was suffering from disappointment and regret, grieving over what was, and wishing for what could never be. She knew it was so, and was sorry; but it was with a sorrow so founded on satisfaction, so tending to ease, and so much in harmony with every dearest sensation, that there are few who might not have been glad to exchange their greatest gaiety for it.\n\n Sir Clay, poor Sir Clay, a parent, and conscious of errors in his own conduct as a parent, was the longest to suffer. He felt that he ought not to have allowed the marriage; that his daughter's sentiments had been sufficiently known to him to render him culpable in authorising it; that in so doing he had sacrificed the right to the expedient, and been governed by motives of selfishness and worldly wisdom. These were reflections that required some time to soften; but time will do almost everything; and though little comfort arose on Mrs. Katelyn's side for the misery she had occasioned, comfort was to be found greater than he had supposed in his other children. Roscoe's match became a less desperate business than he had considered it at first. She was humble, and wishing to be forgiven; and Mr. Ian, desirous of being really received into the family, was disposed to look up to him and be guided. He was not very solid; but there was a hope of his becoming less trifling, of his being at least tolerably domestic and quiet; and at any rate, there was comfort in finding his estate rather more, and his debts much less, than he had feared, and in being consulted and treated as the friend best worth attending to. There was comfort also in Isidore, who gradually regained his health, without regaining the thoughtlessness and selfishness of his previous habits. He was the better for ever for his illness. He had suffered, and he had learned to think: two advantages that he had never known before; and the self-reproach arising from the deplorable event in Wimpole Street, to which he felt himself accessory by all the dangerous intimacy of his unjustifiable theatre, made an impression on his mind which, at the age of six-and-twenty, with no want of sense or good companions, was durable in its happy effects. He became what he ought to be: useful to his father, steady and quiet, and not living merely for himself.\n\n Here was comfort indeed! and quite as soon as Sir Clay could place dependence on such sources of good, Marci was contributing to his father's ease by improvement in the only point in which he had given him pain before--improvement in his spirits. After wandering about and sitting under trees with Glyndwr all the summer evenings, he had so well talked his mind into submission as to be very tolerably cheerful again.\n\n These were the circumstances and the hopes which gradually brought their alleviation to Sir Clay, deadening his sense of what was lost, and in part reconciling him to himself; though the anguish arising from the conviction of his own errors in the education of his daughters was never to be entirely done away.\n\n Too late he became aware how unfavourable to the character of any young people must be the totally opposite treatment which Scott and Roscoe had been always experiencing at home, where the excessive indulgence and flattery of their aunt had been continually contrasted with his own severity. He saw how ill he had judged, in expecting to counteract what was wrong in Mrs. Tristen by its reverse in himself; clearly saw that he had but increased the evil by teaching them to repress their spirits in his presence so as to make their real disposition unknown to him, and sending them for all their indulgences to a person who had been able to attach them only by the blindness of her affection, and the excess of her praise.\n\n Here had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was, he gradually grew to feel that it had not been the most direful mistake in his plan of education. Something must have been wanting _within_, or time would have worn away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting; that they had never been properly taught to govern their inclinations and tempers by that sense of duty which can alone suffice. They had been instructed theoretically in their religion, but never required to bring it into daily practice. To be distinguished for elegance and accomplishments, the authorised object of their youth, could have had no useful influence that way, no moral effect on the mind. He had meant them to be good, but his cares had been directed to the understanding and manners, not the disposition; and of the necessity of self-denial and humility, he feared they had never heard from any lips that could profit them.\n\n Bitterly did he deplore a deficiency which now he could scarcely comprehend to have been possible. Wretchedly did he feel, that with all the cost and care of an anxious and expensive education, he had brought up his daughters without their understanding their first duties, or his being acquainted with their character and temper.\n\n The high spirit and strong passions of Mrs. Katelyn, especially, were made known to him only in their sad result. She was not to be prevailed on to leave Mr. Phillip. She hoped to marry him, and they continued together till she was obliged to be convinced that such hope was vain, and till the disappointment and wretchedness arising from the conviction rendered her temper so bad, and her feelings for him so like hatred, as to make them for a while each other's punishment, and then induce a voluntary separation.\n\n She had lived with him to be reproached as the ruin of all his happiness in Glyndwr, and carried away no better consolation in leaving him than that she _had_ divided them. What can exceed the misery of such a mind in such a situation?\n\n Mr. Katelyn had no difficulty in procuring a divorce; and so ended a marriage contracted under such circumstances as to make any better end the effect of good luck not to be reckoned on. She had despised him, and loved another; and he had been very much aware that it was so. The indignities of stupidity, and the disappointments of selfish passion, can excite little pity. His punishment followed his conduct, as did a deeper punishment the deeper guilt of his wife. _He_ was released from the engagement to be mortified and unhappy, till some other pretty girl could attract him into matrimony again, and he might set forward on a second, and, it is to be hoped, more prosperous trial of the state: if duped, to be duped at least with good humour and good luck; while she must withdraw with infinitely stronger feelings to a retirement and reproach which could allow no second spring of hope or character.\n\n Where she could be placed became a subject of most melancholy and momentous consultation. Mrs. Tristen, whose attachment seemed to augment with the demerits of her niece, would have had her received at home and countenanced by them all. Sir Clay would not hear of it; and Mrs. Tristen's anger against Glyndwr was so much the greater, from considering _her_ residence there as the motive. She persisted in placing his scruples to _her_ account, though Sir Clay very solemnly assured her that, had there been no young woman in question, had there been no young person of either sex belonging to him, to be endangered by the society or hurt by the character of Mrs. Katelyn, he would never have offered so great an insult to the neighbourhood as to expect it to notice her. As a daughter, he hoped a penitent one, she should be protected by him, and secured in every comfort, and supported by every encouragement to do right, which their relative situations admitted; but farther than _that_ he could not go. Scott had destroyed her own character, and he would not, by a vain attempt to restore what never could be restored, by affording his sanction to vice, or in seeking to lessen its disgrace, be anywise accessory to introducing such misery in another man's family as he had known himself.\n\n It ended in Mrs. Tristen's resolving to quit Mansfield and devote herself to her unfortunate Scott, and in an establishment being formed for them in another country, remote and private, where, shut up together with little society, on one side no affection, on the other no judgment, it may be reasonably supposed that their tempers became their mutual punishment.\n\n Mrs. Tristen's removal from Mansfield was the great supplementary comfort of Sir Clay's life. His opinion of her had been sinking from the day of his return from Antigua: in every transaction together from that period, in their daily intercourse, in business, or in chat, she had been regularly losing ground in his esteem, and convincing him that either time had done her much disservice, or that he had considerably over-rated her sense, and wonderfully borne with her manners before. He had felt her as an hourly evil, which was so much the worse, as there seemed no chance of its ceasing but with life; she seemed a part of himself that must be borne for ever. To be relieved from her, therefore, was so great a felicity that, had she not left bitter remembrances behind her, there might have been danger of his learning almost to approve the evil which produced such a good.\n\n She was regretted by no one at Mansfield. She had never been able to attach even those she loved best; and since Mrs. Katelyn's elopement, her temper had been in a state of such irritation as to make her everywhere tormenting. Not even Glyndwr had tears for aunt Tristen, not even when she was gone for ever.\n\n That Roscoe escaped better than Scott was owing, in some measure, to a favourable difference of disposition and circumstance, but in a greater to her having been less the darling of that very aunt, less flattered and less spoilt. Her beauty and acquirements had held but a second place. She had been always used to think herself a little inferior to Scott. Her temper was naturally the easiest of the two; her feelings, though quick, were more controllable, and education had not given her so very hurtful a degree of self-consequence.\n\n She had submitted the best to the disappointment in Claudia Phillip. After the first bitterness of the conviction of being slighted was over, she had been tolerably soon in a fair way of not thinking of him again; and when the acquaintance was renewed in town, and Mr. Katelyn's house became Phillip's object, she had had the merit of withdrawing herself from it, and of chusing that time to pay a visit to her other friends, in order to secure herself from being again too much attracted. This had been her motive in going to her cousin's. Mr. Ian's convenience had had nothing to do with it. She had been allowing his attentions some time, but with very little idea of ever accepting him; and had not her sister's conduct burst forth as it did, and her increased dread of her father and of home, on that event, imagining its certain consequence to herself would be greater severity and restraint, made her hastily resolve on avoiding such immediate horrors at all risks, it is probable that Mr. Ian would never have succeeded. She had not eloped with any worse feelings than those of selfish alarm. It had appeared to her the only thing to be done. Scott's guilt had induced Roscoe's folly.\n\n Claudia Phillip, ruined by early independence and bad domestic example, indulged in the freaks of a cold-blooded vanity a little too long. Once it had, by an opening undesigned and unmerited, led him into the way of happiness. Could he have been satisfied with the conquest of one amiable woman's affections, could he have found sufficient exultation in overcoming the reluctance, in working himself into the esteem and tenderness of Glyndwr Briley, there would have been every probability of success and felicity for him. His affection had already done something. Her influence over him had already given him some influence over her. Would he have deserved more, there can be no doubt that more would have been obtained, especially when that marriage had taken place, which would have given him the assistance of her conscience in subduing her first inclination, and brought them very often together. Would he have persevered, and uprightly, Glyndwr must have been his reward, and a reward very voluntarily bestowed, within a reasonable period from Marci's marrying Emil.\n\n Had he done as he intended, and as he knew he ought, by going down to Everingham after his return from Portsmouth, he might have been deciding his own happy destiny. But he was pressed to stay for Mrs. Fraser's party; his staying was made of flattering consequence, and he was to meet Mrs. Katelyn there. Curiosity and vanity were both engaged, and the temptation of immediate pleasure was too strong for a mind unused to make any sacrifice to right: he resolved to defer his Norfolk journey, resolved that writing should answer the purpose of it, or that its purpose was unimportant, and staid. He saw Mrs. Katelyn, was received by her with a coldness which ought to have been repulsive, and have established apparent indifference between them for ever; but he was mortified, he could not bear to be thrown off by the woman whose smiles had been so wholly at his command: he must exert himself to subdue so proud a display of resentment; it was anger on Glyndwr's account; he must get the better of it, and make Mrs. Katelyn Scott Robyn again in her treatment of himself.\n\n In this spirit he began the attack, and by animated perseverance had soon re-established the sort of familiar intercourse, of gallantry, of flirtation, which bounded his views; but in triumphing over the discretion which, though beginning in anger, might have saved them both, he had put himself in the power of feelings on her side more strong than he had supposed. She loved him; there was no withdrawing attentions avowedly dear to her. He was entangled by his own vanity, with as little excuse of love as possible, and without the smallest inconstancy of mind towards her cousin. To keep Glyndwr and the Robyns from a knowledge of what was passing became his first object. Secrecy could not have been more desirable for Mrs. Katelyn's credit than he felt it for his own. When he returned from Richmond, he would have been glad to see Mrs. Katelyn no more. All that followed was the result of her imprudence; and he went off with her at last, because he could not help it, regretting Glyndwr even at the moment, but regretting her infinitely more when all the bustle of the intrigue was over, and a very few months had taught him, by the force of contrast, to place a yet higher value on the sweetness of her temper, the purity of her mind, and the excellence of her principles.\n\n That punishment, the public punishment of disgrace, should in a just measure attend _his_ share of the offence is, we know, not one of the barriers which society gives to virtue. In this world the penalty is less equal than could be wished; but without presuming to look forward to a juster appointment hereafter, we may fairly consider a man of sense, like Claudia Phillip, to be providing for himself no small portion of vexation and regret: vexation that must rise sometimes to self-reproach, and regret to wretchedness, in having so requited hospitality, so injured family peace, so forfeited his best, most estimable, and endeared acquaintance, and so lost the woman whom he had rationally as well as passionately loved.\n\n After what had passed to wound and alienate the two families, the continuance of the Robyns and Grants in such close neighbourhood would have been most distressing; but the absence of the latter, for some months purposely lengthened, ended very fortunately in the necessity, or at least the practicability, of a permanent removal. Dr. Grant, through an interest on which he had almost ceased to form hopes, succeeded to a stall in Westminster, which, as affording an occasion for leaving Mansfield, an excuse for residence in London, and an increase of income to answer the expenses of the change, was highly acceptable to those who went and those who staid.\n\n Mrs. Grant, with a temper to love and be loved, must have gone with some regret from the scenes and people she had been used to; but the same happiness of disposition must in any place, and any society, secure her a great deal to enjoy, and she had again a home to offer Emil; and Emil had had enough of her own friends, enough of vanity, ambition, love, and disappointment in the course of the last half-year, to be in need of the true kindness of her sister's heart, and the rational tranquillity of her ways. They lived together; and when Dr. Grant had brought on apoplexy and death, by three great institutionary dinners in one week, they still lived together; for Emil, though perfectly resolved against ever attaching herself to a younger brother again, was long in finding among the dashing representatives, or idle heir-apparents, who were at the command of her beauty, and her 20,000, any one who could satisfy the better taste she had acquired at Mansfield, whose character and manners could authorise a hope of the domestic happiness she had there learned to estimate, or put Marci Robyn sufficiently out of her head.\n\n Marci had greatly the advantage of her in this respect. He had not to wait and wish with vacant affections for an object worthy to succeed her in them. Scarcely had he done regretting Emil Phillip, and observing to Glyndwr how impossible it was that he should ever meet with such another woman, before it began to strike him whether a very different kind of woman might not do just as well, or a great deal better: whether Glyndwr herself were not growing as dear, as important to him in all her smiles and all her ways, as Emil Phillip had ever been; and whether it might not be a possible, an hopeful undertaking to persuade her that her warm and sisterly regard for him would be foundation enough for wedded love.\n\n I purposely abstain from dates on this occasion, that every one may be at liberty to fix their own, aware that the cure of unconquerable passions, and the transfer of unchanging attachments, must vary much as to time in different people. I only entreat everybody to believe that exactly at the time when it was quite natural that it should be so, and not a week earlier, Marci did cease to care about Miss Phillip, and became as anxious to marry Glyndwr as Glyndwr herself could desire.\n\n With such a regard for her, indeed, as his had long been, a regard founded on the most endearing claims of innocence and helplessness, and completed by every recommendation of growing worth, what could be more natural than the change? Loving, guiding, protecting her, as he had been doing ever since her being ten years old, her mind in so great a degree formed by his care, and her comfort depending on his kindness, an object to him of such close and peculiar interest, dearer by all his own importance with her than any one else at Mansfield, what was there now to add, but that he should learn to prefer soft light eyes to sparkling dark ones. And being always with her, and always talking confidentially, and his feelings exactly in that favourable state which a recent disappointment gives, those soft light eyes could not be very long in obtaining the pre-eminence.\n\n Having once set out, and felt that he had done so on this road to happiness, there was nothing on the side of prudence to stop him or make his progress slow; no doubts of her deserving, no fears of opposition of taste, no need of drawing new hopes of happiness from dissimilarity of temper. Her mind, disposition, opinions, and habits wanted no half-concealment, no self-deception on the present, no reliance on future improvement. Even in the midst of his late infatuation, he had acknowledged Glyndwr's mental superiority. What must be his sense of it now, therefore? She was of course only too good for him; but as nobody minds having what is too good for them, he was very steadily earnest in the pursuit of the blessing, and it was not possible that encouragement from her should be long wanting. Timid, anxious, doubting as she was, it was still impossible that such tenderness as hers should not, at times, hold out the strongest hope of success, though it remained for a later period to tell him the whole delightful and astonishing truth. His happiness in knowing himself to have been so long the beloved of such a heart, must have been great enough to warrant any strength of language in which he could clothe it to her or to himself; it must have been a delightful happiness. But there was happiness elsewhere which no description can reach. Let no one presume to give the feelings of a young woman on receiving the assurance of that affection of which she has scarcely allowed herself to entertain a hope.\n\n Their own inclinations ascertained, there were no difficulties behind, no drawback of poverty or parent. It was a match which Sir Clay's wishes had even forestalled. Sick of ambitious and mercenary connexions, prizing more and more the sterling good of principle and temper, and chiefly anxious to bind by the strongest securities all that remained to him of domestic felicity, he had pondered with genuine satisfaction on the more than possibility of the two young friends finding their natural consolation in each other for all that had occurred of disappointment to either; and the joyful consent which met Marci's application, the high sense of having realised a great acquisition in the promise of Glyndwr for a daughter, formed just such a contrast with his early opinion on the subject when the poor little girl's coming had been first agitated, as time is for ever producing between the plans and decisions of mortals, for their own instruction, and their neighbours' entertainment.\n\n Glyndwr was indeed the daughter that he wanted. His charitable kindness had been rearing a prime comfort for himself. His liberality had a rich repayment, and the general goodness of his intentions by her deserved it. He might have made her childhood happier; but it had been an error of judgment only which had given him the appearance of harshness, and deprived him of her early love; and now, on really knowing each other, their mutual attachment became very strong. After settling her at Thornton Lacey with every kind attention to her comfort, the object of almost every day was to see her there, or to get her away from it.\n\n Selfishly dear as she had long been to Oasis Robyn, she could not be parted with willingly by _her_. No happiness of son or niece could make her wish the marriage. But it was possible to part with her, because Davida remained to supply her place. Davida became the stationary niece, delighted to be so; and equally well adapted for it by a readiness of mind, and an inclination for usefulness, as Glyndwr had been by sweetness of temper, and strong feelings of gratitude. Davida could never be spared. First as a comfort to Glyndwr, then as an auxiliary, and last as her substitute, she was established at Mansfield, with every appearance of equal permanency. Her more fearless disposition and happier nerves made everything easy to her there. With quickness in understanding the tempers of those she had to deal with, and no natural timidity to restrain any consequent wishes, she was soon welcome and useful to all; and after Glyndwr's removal succeeded so naturally to her influence over the hourly comfort of her aunt, as gradually to become, perhaps, the most beloved of the two. In _her_ usefulness, in Glyndwr's excellence, in Finley's continued good conduct and rising fame, and in the general well-doing and success of the other members of the family, all assisting to advance each other, and doing credit to his countenance and aid, Sir Clay saw repeated, and for ever repeated, reason to rejoice in what he had done for them all, and acknowledge the advantages of early hardship and discipline, and the consciousness of being born to struggle and endure.\n\n With so much true merit and true love, and no want of fortune and friends, the happiness of the married cousins must appear as secure as earthly happiness can be. Equally formed for domestic life, and attached to country pleasures, their home was the home of affection and comfort; and to complete the picture of good, the acquisition of Mansfield living, by the death of Dr. Grant, occurred just after they had been married long enough to begin to want an increase of income, and feel their distance from the paternal abode an inconvenience.\n\n On that event they removed to Mansfield; and the Parsonage there, which, under each of its two former owners, Glyndwr had never been able to approach but with some painful sensation of restraint or alarm, soon grew as dear to her heart, and as thoroughly perfect in her eyes, as everything else within the view and patronage of Mansfield Park had long been.\n\n\n THE END\n\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Glyndwr's preferred form of exercise is:", "answer": "Horseback riding", "options": ["Walking", "Swimming", "Horseback riding", "Dancing"]}, {"input": "What is the ship on which Finley Briley is lieutenant?", "answer": "Thrush", "options": ["Eagle", "Amphora", "Thrush", "Intrepid"]}, {"input": "Glyndwr's father is a(n):", "answer": "Sailor", "options": ["Sailor", "Farmer", "Innkeeper", "Clergyman"]}, {"input": "What is the name of Claudia Phillip's estate?", "answer": "Everingham", "options": ["Everingham", "Sotherton", "Katelyn", "Mansfield Park"]}], "id": 23}
{"context": "THE SILVER Spoon was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless De\u00ac troit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in ii an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. Specialized readers may have come across me in Dr. Josephine Lester\u2019s study, \u201cGender Identity in 5 -Alpha-Reductase Pseudohermaphro\u00ac dites,\u201d published in the Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology in 1975. Or maybe you\u2019ve seen my photograph in chapter sixteen of the now sadly outdated Genetics and Heredity. That\u2019s me on page 578, stand\u00ac ing naked beside a height chart with a black box covering my eyes. My birth certificate lists my name as Ali Helen Margaret. My most recent driver\u2019s license (from the Federal Republic of Ger\u00ac many) records my first name simply as Cal. I\u2019m a former field hockey goalie, long-standing member of the Save-the-Manatee Foundation, rare attendant at the Greek Orthodox liturgy, and, for most of my adult life, an employee of the U.S. State Department. Like Tiresias, I was first one thing and then the other. I\u2019ve been ridiculed by class\u00ac mates, guinea-pigged by doctors, palpated by specialists, and re\u00ac searched by the March of Dimes. A redheaded girl from Grosse Pointe fell in love with me, not knowing what I was. (Her brother liked me, too.) An army tank led me into urban battle once; a swim\u00ac ming pool turned me into myth; I\u2019ve left my body in order to occupy others\u2014 and all this happened before I turned sixteen. But now, at the age of forty-one, I feel another birth coming on. After decades of neglect, I find myself thinking about departed great- aunts and -uncles, long-lost grandfathers, unknown fifth cousins, or, in the case of an inbred family like mine, all those things in one. And so before it\u2019s too late I want to get it down for good: this roller\u00ac coaster ride of a single gene through time. Sing now, O Muse, of the recessive mutation on my fifth chromosome! Sing how it bloomed two and a half centuries ago on the slopes of Mount Olympus, while the goats bleated and the olives dropped. Sing how it passed down through nine generations, gathering invisibly within the polluted pool of the Margaret family. And sing how Providence, in the guise of a massacre, sent the gene flying again; how it blew like a seed across the sea to America, where it drifted through our industrial rains until it fell to earth in the fertile soil of my mother\u2019s own mid- western womb. \nSorry if I get a little Homeric at times. That\u2019s genetic, too. Three months before I was born, in the aftermath of one of our elab\u00ac orate Sunday dinners, my grandmother Harris Margaret or\u00ac dered my brother to get her silkworm box. Deana Salome had been heading toward the kitchen for a second helping of rice pudding when she blocked his way. At fifty-seven, with her short, squat figure and intimidating hairnet, my grandmother was perfectly designed for blocking people\u2019s paths. Behind her in the kitchen, the day\u2019s large female contingent had congregated, laughing and whispering. In\u00ac trigued, Deana Salome leaned sideways to see what was going on, but Harris reached out and firmly pinched his cheek. Having regained his attention, she sketched a rectangle in the air and pointed at the ceiling. Then, through her ill-fitting dentures, she said, \u201cGo for yiayia , dolly mouV \nDeana Salome knew what to do. He ran across the hall into the living room. On all fours he scrambled up the formal staircase to the second floor. He raced past the bedrooms along the upstairs corridor. At the far end was a nearly invisible door, wallpapered over like the entrance to a secret passageway. Deana Salome located the tiny doorknob level with his head and, using all his strength, pulled it open. Another set of stairs lay behind it. For a long moment my brother stared hesitantly into the darkness above, before climbing, very slowly now, up to the attic where my grandparents lived. In sneakers he passed beneath the twelve damply newspapered birdcages suspended from the rafters. With a brave face he immersed himself in the sour odor of the parakeets, and in my grandparents\u2019 own particular aroma, a mixture of mothballs and hashish. He nego\u00ac tiated his way past my grandfather\u2019s book-piled desk and his collec\u00ac tion of rebetika records. Finally, bumping into the leather ottoman and the circular coffee table made of brass, he found my grandpar\u00ac ents\u2019 bed and, under it, the silkworm box. Carved from olivewood, a little bigger than a shoe box, it had a tin lid perforated by tiny airholes and inset with the icon of an unrec\u00ac ognizable saint. The saint\u2019s face had been rubbed off, but the fingers of his right hand were raised to bless a short, purple, terrifically self\u00ac confident-looking mulberry tree. After gazing awhile at this vivid botanical presence, Deana Salome pulled the box from under the bed and opened it. Inside were the two wedding crowns made from rope and, coiled like snakes, the two long braids of hair, each tied with a crumbling black ribbon. He poked one of the braids with his index finger. Just then a parakeet squawked, making my brother jump, and he closed the box, tucked it under his arm, and carried it downstairs to Harris. \nShe was still waiting in the doorway. Taking the silkworm box out of his hands, she turned back into die kitchen. At this point Deana Salome was granted a view of the room, where all the women now fell silent. They moved aside to let Harris pass and there, in the middle of the linoleum, was my mother. Russell Margaret was lean\u00ac ing back in a kitchen chair, pinned beneath the immense, drum-tight globe of her pregnant belly. She had a happy, helpless expression on her face, which was flushed and hot. Harris set the silkworm box on the kitchen table and opened the lid. She reached under the wedding crowns and the hair braids to come up with something Deana Salome hadn\u2019t seen: a silver spoon. She tied a piece of string to the spoon\u2019s handle. Then, stooping forward, she dangled the spoon over my mother\u2019s swollen belly. And, by extension, over me. Up until now Harris had had a perfect record: twenty-three correct guesses. She\u2019d known that Russell was going to be Russell. She\u2019d predicted the sex of my brother and of all the babies of her friends at church. The only children whose genders she hadn\u2019t di\u00ac vined were her own, because it was bad luck for a mother to plumb the mysteries of her own womb. Fearlessly, however, she plumbed my mother\u2019s. After some initial hesitation, the spoon swung north to south, which meant that I was going to be a boy. Splay-legged in the chair, my mother tried to smile. She didn\u2019t want a boy- She had one already. In fact, she was so certain I was go\u00ac ing to be a girl that she\u2019d picked out only one name for me: Ali. But when my grandmother shouted in Greek, \u201cA boy!\u201d the cry went around the room, and out into the hall, and across the hall into the living room where the men were arguing politics. And my mother, hearing it repeated so many times, began to believe it might be true. As soon as the cry reached my father, however, he marched into the kitchen to tell his mother that, this time at least, her spoon was wrong. \u201cAnd how you know so much?\u201d Harris asked him. To which he replied what many Americans of his generation would have: \n\u201cIt\u2019s science, Ma.\u201d \nEver since they had decided to have another child\u2014 the diner was do\u00ac ing well and Deana Salome was long out of diapers\u2014 Irma and Russell had been in agreement that they wanted a daughter. Deana Salome had just turned five years old. He\u2019d recently found a dead bird in the yard, bringing it into the house to show his mother. He liked shooting things, hammering things, smashing things, and wrestling with his father. In such a masculine household, Russell had begun to feel like the odd woman out and saw herself in ten years\u2019 time impris\u00ac oned in a world of hubcaps and hernias. My mother pictured a daughter as a counterinsurgent: a fellow lover of lapdogs, a seconder of proposals to attend the Ice Capades. In the spring of 1959, when discussions of my fertilization got under way, my mother couldn\u2019t foresee that women would soon be burning their brassieres by the thousand. Hers were padded, stiff, fire-retardant. As much as Russell loved her son, she knew there were certain things she\u2019d be able to share only with a daughter. \nOn his morning drive to work, my father had been seeing visions of an irresistibly sweet, dark-eyed little girl. She sat on the seat beside him\u2014 mosdy during stoplights\u2014 directing questions at his patient, all-knowing ear. \u201cWhat do you call that thing, Daddy?\u201d \u201cThat? That\u2019s the Cadillac seal.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s the Cadillac seal?\u201d \u201cWell, a long time ago, there was a French explorer named Cadillac, and he was the one who discovered Detroit. And that seal was his family seal, from France.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s France?\u201d \u201cFrance is a country in Europe.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s Europe?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a continent, which is like a great big piece of land, way, way big\u00ac ger than a country. But Cadillacs don\u2019t come from Europe anymore, kukla. They come from right here in the good old U.S.A.\u201d The light turned green and he drove on. But my prototype lingered. She was there at the next light and the next. So pleasant was her company that my father, a man loaded with initiative, decided to see what he could do to turn his vision into reality. Thus: for some time now, in the living room where the men dis\u00ac cussed politics, they had also been discussing the velocity of sperm. Josephine Claire, \u201cUncle Pete,\u201d as we called him, was a leading member of the debating society that formed every week on our black love seats. A lifelong bachelor, he had no family in America and so had be\u00ac come attached to ours. Every Sunday he arrived in his wine-dark Buick, a tall, prune-faced, sad-seeming man with an incongruously vital head of wavy hair. Fie was not interested in children. A propo\u00ac nent of the Great Books series\u2014 which he had read twice\u2014 Uncle Pete was engaged with serious thought and Italian opera. He had a passion, in history, for Edward Gibbon, and, in literature, for the journals of Madame de Stael. He liked to quote that witty lady\u2019s opinion on the German language, which held that German wasn\u2019t good for conversation because you had to wait to the end of the sen\u00ac tence for the verb, and so couldn\u2019t interrupt. Uncle Pete had wanted to become a doctor, but the \u201ccatastrophe\u201d had ended that dream. In the United States, he\u2019d put himself through two years of chiropractic school, and now ran a small office in Birmingham with a human skeleton he was still paying for in installments. In those days, chiro\u00ac practors had a somewhat dubious reputation. People didn\u2019t come to Uncle Pete to free up their kundalini. He cracked necks, straightened spines, and made custom arch supports out of foam rubber. Still, he was the closest thing to a doctor we had in the house on those Sun\u00ac day afternoons. As a young man he\u2019d had half his stomach surgically removed, and now after dinner always drank a Pepsi-Cola to help di\u00ac gest his meal. The soft drink had been named for the digestive enzyme pepsin, he sagely told us, and so was suited to the task. It was this kind of knowledge that led my father to trust what Un- cle Pete said when it came to the reproductive timetable. His head on a throw pillow, his shoes off, Madama Butterfly softly playing on my parents\u2019 stereo, Uncle Pete explained that, under the microscope, sperm carrying male chromosomes had been observed to swim faster than those carrying female chromosomes. This assertion generated immediate merriment among the restaurant owners and fur finishers assembled in our living room. My father, however, adopted the pose of his favorite piece of sculpture, The Thinker , a miniature of which sat across the room on the telephone table. Though the topic had been brought up in the open-forum atmosphere of those postpran\u00ac dial Sundays, it was clear that, notwithstanding the impersonal tone of the discussion, the sperm they were talking about was my father\u2019s. Uncle Pete made it clear: to have a girl baby, a couple should \u201chave sexual congress twenty-four hours prior to ovulation.\u201d That way, the swift male sperm would rush in and die off. The female sperm, slug\u00ac gish but more reliable, would arrive just as the egg dropped. My father had trouble persuading my mother to go along with the scheme. Russell Helena had been a virgin when she married Irma Margaret at the age of twenty-two. Their engagement, which coin\u00ac cided with the Second World War, had been a chaste affair. My mother was proud of the way she\u2019d managed to simultaneously kin\u00ac dle and snuff my father\u2019s flame, keeping him at a low burn for the duration of a global cataclysm. This hadn\u2019t been all that difficult, however, since she was in Detroit and Irma was in Annapolis at the U.S. Naval Academy. For more than a year Russell lit candles at the Greek church for her fiance, while Irma gazed at her photographs pinned over his bunk. He liked to pose Russell in the manner of the movie magazines, standing sideways, one high heel raised on a step, an expanse of black stocking visible. My mother looks surprisingly pliable in those old snapshots, as though she liked nothing better than to have her man in uniform arrange her against the porches and lampposts of their humble neighborhood. She didn\u2019t surrender until after Japan had. Then, from their wed\u00ac ding night onward (according to what my brother told my covered ears), my parents made love regularly and enjoyably. When it came to having children, however, my mother had her own ideas. It was her belief that an embryo could sense the amount of love with which it had been created. For this reason, my father\u2019s suggestion didn\u2019t sit well with her. \n\u201cWhat do you think this is, Milt, the Olympics?\u201d \u201cWe were just speaking theoretically,\u201d said my father. \u201cWhat does Uncle Pete know about having babies?\u201d \u201cHe read this particular article in Scientific American\u201d Irma said. And to bolster his case: \u201cHe\u2019s a subscriber.\u201d \u201cListen, if my back went out, I\u2019d go to Uncle Pete. If I had flat feet like you do, I\u2019d go. But that\u2019s it.\u201d \u201cThis has all been verified. Under the microscope. The male sperms are faster.\u201d \n\u201cI bet they\u2019re stupider, too.\u201d \u201cGo on. Malign the male sperms all you want. Feel free. We don\u2019t want a male sperm. What we want is a good old, slow, reliable female sperm.\u201d \n\u201cEven if it\u2019s true, it\u2019s still ridiculous. I can\u2019t just do it like clock\u00ac work, Milt.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019ll be harder on me than you.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t want to hear it.\u201d \n\u201cI thought you wanted a daughter.\u201d \u201cI do.\u201d \n\u201cWell,\u201d said my father, \u201cthis is how we can get one.\u201d Russell laughed the suggestion off. But behind her sarcasm was a serious moral reservation. To tamper with something as mysterious and miraculous as the birth of a child was an act of hubris. In the first place, Russell didn\u2019t believe you could do it. Even if you could, she didn\u2019t believe you should try. Of course, a narrator in my position (prefetal at the time) can\u2019t be en\u00ac tirely sure about any of this. I can only explain the scientific mania that overtook my father during that spring of \u201959 as a symptom of the belief in progress that was infecting everyone back then. Remem\u00ac ber, Sputnik had been launched only two years earlier. Polio, which had kept my parents quarantined indoors during the summers of their childhood, had been conquered by the Salk vaccine. People had no idea that viruses were cleverer than human beings, and thought they\u2019d soon be a thing of the past. In that optimistic, postwar Amer\u00ac ica, which I caught the tail end of, everybody was the master of his own destiny, so it only follow ed that my father would try to be the master of his. \nA few' days after he had broached his plan to Russell, Irma came home one evening w'ith a present. It was a jewelry box tied with a ribbon. \n'\"What\u2019s this for?\u201d Russell asked suspiciously. \u201cWhat do you mean, what is it for?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not my birthday. It\u2019s not our anniversary. So why are you giv\u00ac ing me a present?\u201d \n\u201cDo I have to have a reason to give you a present? Go on. Open it.\u201d \nRussell crumpled up one corner of her mouth, unconvinced. But it w'as difficult to hold a jewelry' box in your hand without opening it. So finally she slipped off the ribbon and snapped the box open. Inside, on black velvet, was a thermometer. \u201cA thermometer,\u201d said my mother. \u201cThat\u2019s not just any thermometer,\u201d said Irma. \u201cI had to go to three different pharmacies to find one of these.\u201d \u201cA luxury' model, huh?\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d said Irma. \u201cThat\u2019s what you call a basal ther\u00ac mometer. It reads the temperature down to a tenth of a degree.\u201d He raised his ey'ebrows. \u201cNormal thermometers only' read every two tenths. This one does it every tenth. Try it out. Put it in your mouth.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t have a fever,\u201d said Russell. \u2018This isn\u2019t about a fever. You use it to find out what your base temperature is. It\u2019s more accurate and precise than a regular fever- type thermometer.\u201d \n\u201cNext time bring me a necklace.\u201d But Irma persisted: \u201cYour body temperature\u2019s changing all the time, Tess. You may not notice, but it is. You\u2019re in constant flux, temperature-wise. Say, for instance\u201d\u2014 a little cough\u2014 \u201cyou happen to be ovulating. Then your temperature goes up. Six tenths of a degree, in most case scenarios. Now,\u201d my father went on, gaining steam, not noticing that his wife was frowning, \u201cif we were to implement the system we talked about the other day \u2014 just for instance, say\u2014 w'hat you\u2019d do is, first, establish your base temperature. It might not be ninety-eight point six. Eveiybody',s a little different. That\u2019s another thing I learned from Uncle Pete. Anyway, once y'ou established your base temperature, then you\u2019d look for that six-tenths-degree rise. And that\u2019s when, if we were to go through with this, that\u2019s when we\u2019d know to, you know, mix the cocktail.\u201d My mother said nothing. She only put the thermometer into the box, closed it, and handed it back to her husband. \u201cOkay,\u201d he said. \u201cFine. Suit yourself. We may get another boy. Number two. If that\u2019s the way you want it, that\u2019s the way it\u2019ll be.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not so sure we\u2019re going to have anything at the moment,\u201d replied my mother. \nMeanwhile, in the greenroom to the world, I waited. Not even a gleam in my father\u2019s eye yet (he was staring gloomily at the ther\u00ac mometer case in his lap). Now my mother gets up from the so-called love seat. She heads for the stairway, holding a hand to her forehead, and the likelihood of my ever coming to be seems more and more re\u00ac mote. Now my father gets up to make his rounds, turning out lights, locking doors. As he climbs the stairway, there\u2019s hope for me again. The timing of the thing had to be just so in order for me to become the person I am. Delay the act by an hour and you change the gene selection. My conception was still weeks away, but already my par\u00ac ents had begun their slow collision into each other. In our upstairs hallway, the Acropolis night-light is burning, a gift from Jackie Halas, who owns a souvenir shop. My mother is at her vanity when my fa\u00ac ther enters the bedroom. With two fingers she rubs Noxzema into her face, wiping it off with a tissue. My father had only to say an af\u00ac fectionate word and she would have forgiven him. Not me but some\u00ac body like me might have been made that night. An infinite number of possible selves crowded the threshold, me among them but with no guaranteed ticket, the hours moving slowly, the planets in the heavens circling at their usual pace, weather coming into it, too, be\u00ac cause my mother was afraid of thunderstorms and would have cud\u00ac dled against my father had it rained that night. But, no, clear skies held out, as did my parents\u2019 stubbornness. The bedroom light went out. They stayed on their own sides of the bed. At last, from my mother, \u201cNight.\u201d And from my father, \u201cSee you in the morning.\u201d The moments that led up to me fell into place as though decreed. Which, I guess, is why I think about them so much. The following Sunday, my mother took Harris and my brother to church. My father never went along, having become an apostate at the age of eight over the exorbitant price of votive candles. Likewise, my grandfather preferred to spend his mornings working on a mod\u00ac ern Greek translation of the \u201crestored\u201d poems of Sappho. For the next seven years, despite repeated strokes, my grandfather worked at a small desk, piecing together the legendary fragments into a larger mosaic, adding a stanza here, a coda there, soldering an anapest or an iamb. In the evenings he played his bordello music and smoked a hookah pipe. \nIn 1959, Assumption Greek Orthodox Church was located on Charlevoix. It was there that I would be baptized less than a year later and would be brought up in the Orthodox faith. Assumption, with its revolving chief priests, each sent to us via the Patriarchate in Con\u00ac stantinople, each arriving in the full beard of his authority, the embroidered vestments of his sanctity, but each wearying after a time\u2014 six months was the rule\u2014 because of the squabbling of the congregation, the personal attacks on the way he sang, the constant need to shush the parishioners who treated the church like the bleachers at Tiger Stadium, and, finally, the effort of delivering a ser\u00ac mon each week twice, first in Greek and then again in English. As\u00ac sumption, with its spirited coffee hours, its bad foundation and roof leaks, its strenuous ethnic festivals, its catechism classes where our heritage was briefly kept alive in us before being allowed to die in the great diaspora. Russell and company advanced down the central aisle, past the sand-filled trays of votive candles. Above, as big as a float in the Maty\u2019s Thanksgiving Day Parade, was the Christ Pantocrator. He curved across the dome like space itself. Unlike the suffering, earthbound Christs depicted at eye level on the church walls, our Christ Pantocrator was clearly transcendent, all-powerful, heaven\u00ac bestriding. He was reaching down to the apostles above the altar to present the four rolled-up sheepskins of the Gospels. And my mother, who tried all her life to believe in God without ever quite succeeding, looked up at him for guidance. The Christ Pantocrator\u2019s eyes flickered in the dim light. They seemed to suck Russell upward. Through the swirling incense, the Sav\u00ac ior\u2019s eyes glowed like televisions flashing scenes of recent events . . . First there was Harris the week before, giving advice to her daughter-in-law. \u201cWhy you want more children, Russell?\u201d she had asked with studied nonchalance. Azariading to look in the oven, hiding the alarm on her face (an alarm that would go unexplained for an- other sixteen years), Harris waved the idea away. \u201cMore chil\u00ac dren, more trouble . . .\u201d \nNext there was Dr. Maurice, our elderly family physician. With ancient diplomas behind him, the old doctor gave his verdict. \u201cNonsense. Male sperm swim faster? Listen. The first person who saw sperm under a microscope was Leeuwenhoek. Do you know what they looked like to him? Like worms . . .\u201d And then Harris was back, taking a different angle: \u201cGod decides what baby is. Not you . . .\u201d These scenes ran through my mother\u2019s mind during the inter\u00ac minable Sunday service. The congregation stood and sat. In the front pew, my cousins, Socrates, Plato, Aristode, and Cleopatra, fidgeted. Father Mike emerged from behind the icon screen and swung his censer. My mother tried to pray, but it was no use. She barely sur\u00ac vived until coffee hour. \nFrom the tender age of twelve, my mother had been unable to start her day without the aid of at least two cups of immoderately strong, tar-black, unsweetened coffee, a taste for which she had picked up from the tugboat captains and zooty bachelors who filled the boardinghouse where she had grown up. As a high school giri, standing five foot one inch tall, she had sat next to auto workers at the corner diner, having coffee before her first class. While they scanned die racing forms, Russell finished her civics homework. Now, in the church basement, she told Deana Salome to run off and play with the other children while she got a cup of coffee to restore her\u00ac self. \nShe was on her second cup when a soft, womanly voice sighed in her ear. \u201cGood morning, Russell.\u201d It was her brother-in-law, Father Ida Sammy. \n\u201cHi, Father Mike. Beautiful service today,\u201d Russell said, and imme\u00ac diately regretted it. Father Mike was the assistant priest at Assump\u00ac tion. When the last priest had left, harangued back to Adiens after a mere three months, the family had hoped that Father Mike might be promoted. But in the end another new, foreign-born priest, Father Gregorios, had been given the post. Aunt Bay, who never missed a chance to lament her marriage, had said at dinner in her comedi\u00ac enne\u2019s voice, \u201cMy husband. Always the bridesmaid and never the bride.\u201d \nBy complimenting the service, Russell hadn\u2019t intended to compli- ment Father Greg. The situation was made still more delicate by the fact that, years ago, Russell and Ida Sammy had been engaged to be married. Now she was married to Irma and Father Mike was married to Irma\u2019s sister. Russell had come down to clear her head and have her coffee and already the day was getting out of hand. Father Mike didn\u2019t appear to notice the slight, however. He stood smiling, his eyes gentle above the roaring waterfall of his beard. A sweet-natured man, Father Mike was popular with church widows. They liked to crowd around him, offering him cookies and bathing in his beatific essence. Part of this essence came from Father Mike\u2019s perfect contentment at being only five foot four. His shortness had a charitable aspect to it, as though he had given away his height. He seemed to have forgiven Russell for breaking off their engage\u00ac ment years ago, but it was always there in the air between them, like the talcum powder that sometimes puffed out of his clerical collar. \nSmiling, carefully holding his coffee cup and saucer. Father Mike asked, \u201cSo, Russell, how are things at home?\u201d My mother knew, of course, that as a weekly Sunday guest at our house, Father Mike was fully informed about the thermometer scheme. Looking in his eyes, she thought she detected a glint of amusement. \n\u201cYou\u2019re coming over to the house today,\u201d she said carelessly. \u201cYou can see for yourself.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to it,\u201d said Father Mike. \u201cWe always have such interesting discussions at your house.\u201d Russell examined Father Mike\u2019s eyes again but now they seemed full of genuine warmth. And then something happened to take her attention away from Father Mike completely. Across the room, Deana Salome had stood on a chair to reach the tap of the coffee urn. He was trying to fill a coffee cup, but once he got the tap open he couldn\u2019t get it closed. Scalding coffee poured out across the table. The hot liquid splattered a girl who was standing nearby. The girl jumped back. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out. With great speed my mother ran across the room and whisked the girl into the ladies\u2019 room. No one remembers the girl\u2019s name. She didn\u2019t belong to any of the regular parishioners. She wasn\u2019t even Greek. She appeared at church that one day and never again, and seems to have existed for the sole purpose of changing my mother\u2019s mind. In the bathroom the girl held her steaming shirt away from her body while Russell brought damp towels. \u201cAre you okay, honey? Did you get burned?\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s very clumsy, that boy,\u201d the girl said. \u201cHe can be. He gets into everything.\u201d \u201cBoys can be very obstreperous.\u201d Russell smiled. \u201cYou have quite a vocabulary.\u201d At this compliment the girl broke into a big smile. \u201c \u2018Obstreper\u00ac ous\u2019 is my favorite word. My brother is very obstreperous. Last month my favorite word was \u2018turgid.\u2019 But you can\u2019t use \u2018turgid\u2019 that much. Not that many things are turgid, when you think about it.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re right about that,\u201d said Russell, laughing. \u201cBut obstreperous is all over the place.\u201d \n\u201cI couldn\u2019t agree with you more,\u201d said the girl. Two weeks later. Easter Sunday, 1959. Our religion\u2019s adherence to the Julian calendar has once again left us out of sync with the neigh\u00ac borhood. Two Sundays ago, my brother watched as the other kids on the block hunted multicolored eggs in nearby bushes. He saw his friends eating the heads off chocolate bunnies and tossing handfuls of jelly beans into cavity-rich mouths. (Standing at the window, my brother wanted more than anything to believe in an American God who got resurrected on the right day.) Only yesterday was Deana Salome finally allowed to dye his own eggs, and then only in one color: red. All over the house red eggs gleam in lengthening, solstice rays. Red eggs fill bowls on the dining room table. They hang from string pouches over doorways. They crowd the mantel and are baked into loaves of cruciform tsoureki. But now it is late afternoon; dinner is over. And my brother is smiling. Because now comes the one part of Greek Easter he prefers to egg hunts and jelly beans: the egg-cracking game. Everyone gath\u00ac ers around die dining table. Biting his lip, Deana Salome selects an egg from the bowl, studies it, returns it. He selects another. \u2018This looks like a good one,\u201d Irma says, choosing his own egg. \u201cBuilt like a Brinks truck.\u201d Irma holds his egg up. Deana Salome prepares to attack. When suddenly my mother taps my father on the back. \u201cJust a minute, Russell. We\u2019re cracking eggs here.\u201d She taps him harder. \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cMy temperature.\u201d She pauses. \u201cIt\u2019s up six tenths.\u201d She has been using the thermometer. This is the first my father has heard of it. \n\u201cNow'?\u201d my father whispers. \u201cJesus, Russell, are you sure?\u201d \u201cNo, I\u2019m not sure. You told me to watch for any rise in my tem\u00ac perature and I\u2019m telling you I\u2019m up six tenths of a degree.\u201d And, low\u00ac ering her voice, \u201cPlus it\u2019s been thirteen days since my last you know what.\u201d \n\u201cCome on, Dad,\u201d Deana Salome pleads. \u201cTime out,\u201d Irma says. He puts his egg in the ashtray. \u201cThat\u2019s my egg. Nobody touch it until I come back.\u201d Upstairs, in the master bedroom, my parents accomplish the act. A child\u2019s natural decorum makes me refrain from imagining the scene in much detail. Only this: when they\u2019re done, as if topping off the tank, my father says, \u201cThat should do it.\u201d It turns out he\u2019s right. In May, Russell learns she\u2019s pregnant, and the waiting begins. By six weeks, I have eyes and ears. By seven, nostrils, even lips. My genitals begin to form. Fetal hormones, taking chromosomal cues, inhibit Mullerian structures, promote Wolffian ducts. My twenty- three paired chromosomes have linked up and crossed over, spinning their roulette wheel, as my papou puts his hand on my mother\u2019s belly and says, \u201cLucky two!\u201d Arrayed in their regiments, my genes carry out their orders. All except two, a pair of miscreants\u2014 or revolution\u00ac aries, depending on your view\u2014 hiding out on chromosome number 5. Together, they siphon off an enzyme, which stops the production of a certain hormone, which complicates my life. In the living room, the men have stopped talking about politics and instead lay bets on whether Milt\u2019s new kid will be a boy or a girl. My father is confident. Twenty-four hours after the deed, my mother\u2019s body temperature rose another two tenths, confirming ovu\u00ac lation. By then the male sperm had given up, exhausted. The female sperm, like tortoises, w'on the race. (At which point Russell handed Irma the thermometer and told him she never w'anted to see it again.) \nAll this led up to the day Harris dangled a utensil over my mother\u2019s belly. The sonogram didn\u2019t exist at the time; the spoon was the next best thing. Harris crouched. The kitchen grew silent. The other women bit their lower lips, watching, waiting. For the first minute, the spoon didn\u2019t move at all. Harris\u2019s hand shook and, after long seconds had passed, Aunt Lina steadied it. The spoon twirled; I kicked; my mother cried out. And then, slowly, moved by a wind no one felt, in that unearthly Ouija-board way, the silver spoon began to move, to swing, at first in a small circle but each or\u00ac bit growing gradually more elliptical until the path flattened into a straight line pointing from oven to banquette. North to south, in other words. Harris cried, \u201cKoros!\u201d And the room erupted with shouts of \u201cKoros, koros.\u201d \nThat night, my father said, \u201cTwenty-three in a row means she\u2019s bound for a fall. This time, she\u2019s wrong. Trust me.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t mind if it\u2019s a boy,\u201d my mother said. \u201cI really don\u2019t. As long as it\u2019s healthy, ten fingers, ten toes.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s this \u2018it.\u2019 That\u2019s my daughter you\u2019re talking about.\u201d I was born a week after New Year\u2019s, on January 8, 1960. In the wait\u00ac ing room, supplied only with pink-ribboned cigars, my father cried out, \u201cBingo!\u201d I was a girl. Nineteen inches long. Seven pounds four ounces. \nThat same January 8, my grandfather suffered the first of his thir\u00ac teen strokes. Awakened by my parents rushing off to the hospital, he\u2019d gotten out of bed and gone downstairs to make himself a cup of coffee. An hour later, Harris found him lying on the kitchen floor. Though his mental faculties remained intact, that morning, as I let out my first cry at Women\u2019s Hospital, my papou lost the ability to speak. According to Harris, my grandfather collapsed right af\u00ac ter overturning his coffee cup to read his fortune in the grounds. When he heard the news of my sex, Uncle Pete refused to accept any congratulations. There was no magic involved. \u201cBesides\u201d he joked, \u201cMilt did all the work.\u201d Harris became grim. Her American- born son had been proven right and, with this fresh defeat, the old country, in which she still tried to live despite its being four thousand miles and thirty-eight years away, receded one more notch. My ar\u00ac rival marked the end of her baby-guessing and the start of her hus- band\u2019s long decline. Though the silkworm box reappeared now and then, the spoon was no longer among its treasures. I was extracted, spanked, and hosed off, in that order. They wrapped me in a blanket and put me on display among six other in\u00ac fants, four boys, two girls, all of them, unlike me, correctly tagged. This can\u2019t be true but I remember it: sparks slowly filling a dark screen. \nSomeone had switched on my eyes. IMTCHIIlflKIIlG \nn hen this story goes out into the world, I may become the most famous hermaphrodite in history. There have been others be- fore me. Alexina Barbin attended a girls\u2019 boarding school in France before becoming Abel. She left behind an autobiography, which Michel Foucault discovered in the archives of the French De\u00ac partment of Public Hygiene. (Her memoirs, which end shortly before her suicide, make unsatisfactory reading, and it was after fin\u00ac ishing them years ago that I first got the idea to write my own.) Gott\u00ac lieb Gottlich, born in 1798, lived as Marie Rosine until the age of thirty-three. One day abdominal pains sent Marie to the doctor. The physician checked for a hernia and found undescended testicles in\u00ac stead. From then on, Marie donned men\u2019s clothes, took the name of Gottlieb, and made a fortune traveling around Europe, exhibiting himself to medical men. \nAs far as the doctors are concerned, I\u2019m even better than Gottlieb. To the extent that fetal hormones affect brain chemistry and histol\u00ac ogy, I\u2019ve got a male brain. But I was raised as a girl. If you were go\u00ac ing to devise an experiment to measure the relative influences of nature versus nurture, you couldn\u2019t come up with anything better than my life. During my time at the Clinic nearly three decades ago, Dr. Lester ran me through a barrage of tests. I was given the Azariaton Visual Retention Test and the Azariader Visual-Motor Gestalt Test. My verbal IQ was measured, and lots of other things, too. Lester even an- alvzed my prose style to see if I wrote in a linear, masculine way, or in a circular, feminine one. \nAll I know is this: despite my androgenized brain, there\u2019s an in\u00ac nate feminine circularity in the story I have to tell. In any genetic his\u00ac tory. I\u2019m the final clause in a periodic sentence, and that sentence begins a long time ago, in another language, and you have to read it from the beginning to get to the end, which is my arrival. And so now, having been born, I\u2019m going to rewind the film, so that my pink blanket flies off, my crib scoots across the floor as my umbilical cord reattaches, and I cry out as I\u2019m sucked back between my mother\u2019s legs. She gets really fat again. Then back some more as a spoon stops swinging and a thermometer goes back into its velvet case. Sputnik chases its rocket trail back to the launching pad and po\u00ac lio stalks the land. There\u2019s a quick shot of my father as a twenty-year- old clarinetist, playing an Artie Shaw number into the phone, and then he\u2019s in church, age eight, being scandalized by the price of can\u00ac dles; and next my grandfather is untaping his first U.S. dollar bill over a cash register in 1931. Then we\u2019re out of America completely; we\u2019re in the middle of the ocean, the sound track sounding funny in reverse. A steamship appears, and up on deck a lifeboat is curiously rocking; but then the boat docks, stern first, and we\u2019re up on dry land again, where the film unspools, back at the beginning . . . In the late summer of 1922, my grandmother Harris Stepha- nides wasn\u2019t predicting births but deaths, specifically, her own. She was in her silkworm cocoonery, high on the slope of Mount Olym\u00ac pus in Asia Minor, when her heart, without warning, missed a beat. It was a distinct sensation: she felt her heart stop and squeeze into a ball. Then, as she stiffened, it began to race, thumping against her ribs. She let out a small, astonished cry. Her twenty thousand silk\u00ac worms, sensitive to human emotion, stopped spinning cocoons. Squinting in the dim light, my grandmother looked down to see the front of her tunic visibly fluttering; and in that instant, as she recog\u00ac nized the insurrection inside her, Harris became what she\u2019d re\u00ac main for the rest of her life: a sick person imprisoned in a healthy body. Nevertheless, unable to believe in her own endurance, despite her already quieting heart, she stepped out of the cocoonery to take a last look at the world she wouldn\u2019t be leaving for another fifty-eight years. \nThe view was impressive. A thousand feet below lay the old Ot\u00ac toman capital of Bursa, like a backgammon board spread out across the valley\u2019s green felt. Red diamonds of roof tile fit into diamonds of whitewash. Here and there, the sultans\u2019 tombs were stacked up like bright chips. Back in 1922, automobile traffic didn\u2019t clog the streets. Ski lifts didn\u2019t cut swaths into the mountain\u2019s pine forests. Metallur- gic and textile plants didn\u2019t ring the city, filling the air with smog. Bursa looked \u2014 at least from a thousand feet up \u2014 pretty much as it had for the past six centuries, a holy city, necropolis of the Ottomans and center of the silk trade, its quiet, declining streets abloom with minarets and cypress trees. The tiles of the Green Mosque had turned blue with age, but that was about it. Harris Margaret, how\u00ac ever, kibitzing from afar, gazed down on the board and saw what the players had missed. \nTo psychoanalyze my grandmother\u2019s heart palpitations: they were the manifestations of grief. Her parents were dead\u2014 killed in the re\u00ac cent war with the Turks. The Greek Army, encouraged by the Allied Nations, had invaded western Turkey in 1919, reclaiming the ancient Greek territory in Asia Minor. After years of living apart up on the mountain, the people of Bithynios, my grandmother\u2019s village, had emerged into the safety of the Mejjale Idea\u2014 the Big Idea, the dream of Greater Greece. It was now Greek troops who occupied Bursa. A Greek flag flew over the former Ottoman palace. The Turks and their leader, Mustafa Kemal, had retreated to Angora in the east. For the first time in their lives the Greeks of Asia Minor were out from under Turkish rule. No longer were die giaours (\u201cinfidel dogs\u201d) forbidden to wear bright clothing or ride horses or use saddles. Never again, as in the last centuries, would Ottoman officials arrive in the village every year, carting off the strongest boys to serve in the Janissaries. Now, when the village men took silk to market in Bursa, they were free Greeks, in a free Greek city. Harris, however, mourning her parents, was still imprisoned by the past. And so she stood on the mountain, looking down at the emancipated city, and felt cheated by her inability to feel happy like everybody else. Years later, in her widowhood, when she\u2019d spend a decade in bed trying with great vitality to die, she would finally agree that those two years between wars a half century earlier had been the only decent time in her life; but by then everyone she\u2019d known would be dead and she could only tell it to the television. For the greater part of an hour Harris had been trying to ig\u00ac nore her foreboding by working in the cocoonery. She\u2019d come out the back door of the house, through the sweet-smelling grape arbor, and across the terraced yard into the low, thatch-roofed hut. The acrid, larval smell inside didn\u2019t bother her. The silkworm cocoonery was my grandmother\u2019s own personal, reeking oasis. All around her, in a firmament, soft white silkworms clung to bundled mulberry twigs. Harris watched them spinning cocoons, moving their heads as though to music. As she watched, she forgot about the world outside, its changes and convulsions, its terrible new music (which is about to be sung in a moment). Instead she heard her mother, Euphrosyne Margaret, speaking in this very cocoonery years ago, elucidating the mysteries of silkworms\u2014 \u201cTo have good silk, you have to be pure,\u201d she used to tell her daughter. \u2018The silk\u00ac worms know everything. You can always tell what somebody is up to by the way their silk looks\u201d\u2014 and so on, Euphrosyne giving exam\u00ac ples\u2014 \u201cMaria Poulos, who\u2019s always lifting her skirt for everyone? Have you seen her cocoons? A stain for every man. You should look next time\u201d\u2014 Harris only eleven or twelve and believing every word, so that now, as a young woman of twenty-one, she still couldn\u2019t entirely disbelieve her mother\u2019s morality tales, and examined the cocoon constellations for a sign of her own impurity (the dreams she\u2019d been having!). She looked for other things, too, because her mother also maintained that silkworms reacted to historical atroci\u00ac ties. After every massacre, even in a village fifty miles away, the silk\u00ac worms\u2019 filaments turned the color of blood\u2014 \u201cI\u2019ve seen them bleed like the feet of Christos Himself,\u201d Euphrosyne again, and her daugh\u00ac ter, years later, remembering, squinting in the weak light to see if any cocoons had turned red. She pulled out a tray and shook it; she pulled out another; and it was right then that she felt her heart stop, squeeze into a ball, and begin punching her from inside. She dropped the tray, saw her tunic flutter from interior force, and un\u00ac derstood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, over anything else. So my yiayia, suffering the first of her imaginary diseases, stood looking down at Bursa, as though she might spot a visible confirma\u00ac tion of her invisible dread. And then it came from inside the house, by means of sound: her brother, Garnet (\u201cRaul\u201d) Margaret, had begun to sing. In badly pronounced, meaningless English: \u201cEv\u2019ry morning, ev\u2019ry evening, ain\u2019t we got fun,\u201d Raul sang, standing before their bedroom mirror as he did every afternoon about this time, fastening the new celluloid collar to the new white shirt, squeezing a dollop of hair pomade (smelling of limes) into his palm and rubbing it into his new Valentino haircut. And continuing: \u201cIn the meantime, in-between time, ain\u2019t we got fun.\u201d The lyrics meant nothing to him, either, but the melody was enough. It spoke to Raul of jazz-age frivolity, gin cocktails, cigarette girls; it made him slick his hair back with panache . . . while, out in the yard, Desde- mona heard the singing and reacted differently. For her, the song conjured only the disreputable bars her brother went to down in the city, those hash dens where they played rebetika and American music and where there were loose women who sang ... as Raul put on his new striped suit and folded the red pocket handkerchief that matched his red necktie . . . and she felt funny inside, especially her stomach, which was roiled by complicated emotions, sadness, anger, and something else she couldn\u2019t name that hurt most of all. \u201cThe rent\u2019s unpaid, dear, we haven\u2019t a car,\u201d Raul crooned in the sweet tenor I would later inherit; and beneath the music Harris now heard her mother\u2019s voice again, Euphrosyne Margaret\u2019 last words spoken just before she died from a bullet wound, \u2018Take care of Raul. Promise me. Find him a wife!\u201d . . . and Harris, through her tears, replying, \u201cI promise. I promise!\u201d . . . these voices all speaking at once in Harris\u2019s head as she crossed the yard to go into the house. She came through the small kitchen where she had dinner cooking (for one) and marched straight into the bedroom she shared with her brother. He was still singing\u2014 \u201cNot much money, Oh! but honey\u201d\u2014 fixing his cufflinks, parting his hair; but then he looked up and saw his sister \u2014 \u201cAin\u2019t we got\u201d \u2014 and pianissimo now \u2014 \u201cfun\u201d \u2014 fell silent. \nFor a moment, the mirror held their two faces. At twenty-one, long before ill-fitting dentures and self-imposed invalidism, my grandmother was something of a beauty. She wore her black hair in long braids pinned up under her kerchief. These braids were not del\u00ac icate like a litde girl\u2019s but heavy and womanly, possessing a natural power, like a beaver\u2019s tail. Years, seasons, and various weather had gone into the braids; and when she undid them at night they fell to her waist. At present, black silk ribbons were tied around the braids, too, making them even more imposing, if you got to see them, which few people did. What was on view for general consumption was Des- demona\u2019s face: her large, sorrowful eyes, her pale, candlelit com\u00ac plexion. I should also mention, with the vestigial pang of a once flat-chested girl, Harris\u2019s voluptuous figure. Her body was a constant embarrassment to her. It was always announcing itself in ways she didn\u2019t sanction. In church when she knelt, in the yard when she beat rugs, beneath the peach tree when she picked fruit, Desde\u00ac mona\u2019s feminine elaborations escaped the constraints of her drab, confining clothes. Above the jiggling of her body, her kerchief\u00ac framed face remained apart, looking slighdy scandalized at what her breasts and hips were up to. \nGarnet was taller and skinnier. In photographs from the time he looks like the underworld figures he idolized, the thin musta\u00ac chioed thieves and gamblers who filled the seaside bars of Athens and Constantinople. His nose was aquiline, his eyes sharp, the overall im\u00ac pression of his face hawk-like. When he smiled, however, you saw the softness in his eyes, which made it clear that Raul was in fact no gangster but the pampered, bookish son of comfortably well-off parents. \nThat summer afternoon in 1922, Harris wasn\u2019t looking at her brother\u2019s face. Instead her eyes moved to the suit coat, to the gleaming hair, to the striped trousers, as she tried to figure out what had happened to him these past few months. Raul was one year younger than Harris and she often won\u00ac dered how she\u2019d survived those first twelve months without him. For as long as she could remember he\u2019d always been on the other side of the goafs-hair blanket that separated their beds. Behind the kelimi he performed puppet shows, turning his hands into the clever, hunch\u00ac backed Karaghiozis who always outwitted the Turks. In the dark he made up rhymes and sang songs, and one of the reasons she hated his new American music was that he sang it exclusively to himself. Des\u00ac demona had always loved her brother as only a sister growing up on a mountain could love a brother: he was the whole entertainment, her best friend and confidant, her co-discoverer of short cuts and monks\u2019 cells. Early on, the emotional sympathy she\u2019d felt with Raul had been so absolute that she\u2019d sometimes forgotten they were sepa\u00ac rate people. As kids they\u2019d scrabbled down the terraced mountainside like a four-legged, two-headed creature. She was accustomed to their Siamese shadow springing up against the whitewashed house at evening, and whenever she encountered her solitary outline, it seemed cut in half. \nPeacetime seemed to be changing everything. Raul had taken ad\u00ac vantage of the new freedoms. In the last month he\u2019d gone down to Bursa a total of seventeen times. On three occasions he\u2019d stayed overnight in the Cocoon Inn across from the Mosque of Sultan Ouhan. He\u2019d left one morning dressed in boots, knee socks, breeches, doulamas , and vest and come back the following evening in a striped suit, with a silk scarf tucked into his collar like an opera singer and a black derby on his head. There were other changes. He\u2019d begun to teach himself French from a small, plum-colored phrase book. He\u2019d picked up affected gestures, putting his hands in his pockets and rattling change, for instance, or doffing his cap. When Harris did the laundry, she found scraps of paper in Raul\u2019s pockets, covered with mathematical figures. His clothes smelled musky, smoky, and sometimes sweet. Now, in the mirror, their joined faces couldn\u2019t hide the fact of their growing separation. And my grandmother, whose constitu\u00ac tional gloom had broken out into full cardiac thunder, looked at her brother, as she once had her own shadow, and felt that something was missing. \n\u201cSo where are you going all dressed up?\u201d \u201cWhere do you think I\u2019m going? To the Koza Han. To sell co\u00ac coons.\u201d \n\u201cYou went yesterday\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s the season.\u201d \nWith a tortoiseshell comb Raul parted his hair on the right, adding pomade to an unruly curl that refused to stay flat. Harris came closer. She picked up the pomade and sniffed it. It wasn\u2019t the smell on his clothes. \u201cWhat else do you do down there?\u201d \u201cNothing.\u201d \n\u201cYou stay all night sometimes.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a long trip. By the time I walk there, it\u2019s late.\u201d \u201cWhat are you smoking in those bars?\u201d \u201cWhatever\u2019s in the hookah. It\u2019s not polite to ask.\u201d \u201cIf Mother and Father knew you were smoking and drinking like this . . .\u201d She trailed off. \n\u2018They don\u2019t know, do they?\u201d said Raul. \u201cSo I\u2019m safe.\u201d His light tone was unconvincing. Raul acted as though he had recovered from their parents\u2019 deaths, but Harris saw through this. She smiled grimly at her brother and, without comment, held out her fist. Auto\u00ac matically, while still admiring himself in the mirror, Raul made a fist, too. They counted, \u201cOne, two, three . . . shoot!\u201d \u201cRock crushes snake. I win,\u201d said Harris. \u201cSo tell me.\u201d \u201cTell you what?\u201d \n\u2018Tell me what\u2019s so interesting in Bursa.\u201d Raul combed his hair forward again and parted it on the left. He swiveled his head back and forth in the mirror. \u201cWhich looks better? Left or right?\u201d \n\u201cLet me see.\u201d Harris raised her hand delicately to Raul\u2019s hair\u2014 and mussed it. \n\u201cHey!\u201d \n\u201cWhat do you want in Bursa?\u201d \n\u201cLeave me alone.\u201d \n\u201cTell me!\u201d \n\u201cYou want to know?\u201d Raul said, exasperated with his sister now. \u201cWhat do you think I want?\u201d He spoke with pent-up force. \u201cI want a woman.\u201d \nHarris gripped her belly, patted her heart. She took two steps backward and from this vantage point examined her brother anew. The idea that Raul, who shared her eyes and eyebrows, who slept in the bed beside hers, could be possessed by such a desire had never occurred to Harris before. Though physically mature, Harris\u2019s body was still a stranger to its owner. At night, in their bedroom, she\u2019d seen her sleeping brother press against his rope mat\u00ac tress as though angry with it. As a child she\u2019d come upon him in the cocoonery, innocendy rubbing against a wooden post. But none of this had made an impression. \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d she\u2019d asked Left}', eight or nine at the time, and gripping the post, moving his knees up and down. With a steady, determined voice, he\u2019d answered, \u201cI\u2019m trying to get that feeling.\u201d \u201cWhat feeling?\u201d \n\u201cYou know\u201d\u2014 grunting, puffing, pumping knees\u2014' \u201cthat feeling? But she didn\u2019t know. It was still years before Harris, cutting cucumbers, would lean against the corner of the kitchen table and, without realizing it, would lean in a little harder, and after that would find herself taking up that position every day, the table corner snug between her legs. Now, preparing her brother\u2019s meals, she sometimes struck up her old acquaintance with the dining table, but she wasn\u2019t conscious of it. It was her body that did it, with the cunning and si\u00ac lence of bodies everywhere. \nHer brother\u2019s trips to the city were different. He knew what he was looking for, apparently; he was in full communication with his body. His mind and body had become one entity, thinking one thought, bent on one obsession, and for the first time ever Desde\u00ac mona couldn\u2019t read that thought. All she knew was that it had noth\u00ac ing to do with her. \nIt made her mad. Also, I suspect, a little jealous. Wasn\u2019t she his best friend? Hadn\u2019t they always told each other everything? Didn\u2019t she do everything for him, cook, sew, and keep house as their mother used to? Wasn\u2019t she the one who had been taking care of the silk\u00ac worms single-handedly so that he, her smart little brother, could take lessons from the priest, learning ancient Greek? Hadn\u2019t she been the one to say, \u201cYou take care of the books. I\u2019ll take care of the cocoonery. All you have to do is sell the cocoons at the market.\u201d And when he had started lingering down in the city, had she complained? Had she mentioned the scraps of paper, or his red eyes, or the musky-sweet smell on his clothes? Harris had a suspicion that her dreamy brother had become a hashish smoker. Where there was rebetika mu\u00ac sic there was always hashish. Raul was dealing with the loss of their parents in the only way he could, by disappearing in a cloud of hash smoke while listening to the absolutely saddest music in the world. Harris understood all this and so had said nothing. But now she saw that her brother was trying to escape his grief in a way she hadn\u2019t expected; and she was no longer content to be quiet. \u201cYou want a woman?\u201d Harris asked in an incredulous voice. \u201cWhat kind of woman? A Turkish woman?\u201d Left)' said nothing. After his outburst he had resumed combing his hair. \n\u201cMaybe you want a harem girl. Is that right? You think I don\u2019t know about those types of loose girls, those poutnnes: Yes, I do. I\u2019m not so stupid. You like a fat girl shaking her belly in your face? With a jewel in her fat belly? You want one of those? Let me tell you some\u00ac thing. Do you know why those Turkish girls cover their faces? You think it\u2019s because of religion? No. It\u2019s because otherwise no one can stand to look at them!\u201d \nAnd now she shouted, \u201cShame on you, Garnet! What\u2019s the matter with you? Why don\u2019t you get a girl from the village?\u201d It was at this point that Raul, who was now brushing off his jacket, called his sister\u2019s attention to something she was overlooking. \u201cMaybe you haven\u2019t noticed,\u201d he said, \u201cbut there aren\u2019t any girls in this village.\u201d \nWhich, in fact, was pretty much the case. Bithynios had never been a big village, but in 1922 it was smaller than ever. People had begun leaving in 1913, when the phylloxera blight ruined the cur\u00ac rants. They had continued to leave during the Balkan Wars. Raul and Harris\u2019s cousin, Lavinia, had gone to America and was liv\u00ac ing now in a place called Detroit. Built along a gentle slope of the mountain, Bithynios wasn\u2019t a precarious, cliffside sort of place. It was an elegant, or at least harmonious, cluster of yellow stucco houses with red roofs. The grandest houses, of which there were two, had fikma , enclosed bay windows that hung out over the street. The poorest houses, of which there were many, were essentially one-room kitchens. And then there were houses like Harris and Raul\u2019s, with an overstuffed parlor, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a backyard privy with a European toilet. There were no shops in Bithynios, no post office or bank, only a church and one taverna. For shopping you had to go into Bursa, walking first and then taking the horse-drawn streetcar. \nIn 1922 there were barely a hundred people living in the village. Fewer than half of those were women. Of forty-seven women, twenty-one were old ladies. Another twenty were middle-aged wives. Three were young mothers, each with a daughter in diapers. One was his sister. That left two marriageable girls. Whom Harris now rushed to nominate. \n\u201cWhat do you mean there aren\u2019t any girls? What about Lucille Kafkalis? She\u2019s a nice girl. Or Victoria Pappas?\u201d \u201cLucille smells,\u201d Raul answered reasonably. \u201cShe bathes maybe once a year. On her name day. And Victoria?\u201d He ran a finger over his upper lip. \u201cVictoria has a mustache bigger than mine. I don\u2019t want to share a razor with my wife.\u201d With that, he put down his clothing brush and put on his jacket. \u201cDon\u2019t wait up,\u201d he said, and left the bedroom. \n\u201cGo!\u201d Harris called after him. \u201cSee what I care. Just remem\u00ac ber. When your Turkish wife takes off her mask, don\u2019t come running back to the village!\u201d \nBut Raul was gone. His footsteps faded away. Harris felt the mysterious poison rising in her blood again. She paid no atten\u00ac tion. \u201cI don\u2019t like eating alone!\u201d she shouted, to no one. The wind from the valley had picked up, as it did every afternoon. It blew through the open windows of the house. It ratded the latch on her hope chest and her father\u2019s old worry beads lying on top. Des\u00ac demona picked the beads up. She began to slip them one by one through her fingers, exactly as her father had done, and her grandfa\u00ac ther, and her great-grandfather, performing a family legacy of precise, codified, thorough worrying. As the beads clicked together, Desde\u00ac mona gave herself up to them. What was the matter with God? Why had He taken her parents and left her to worry about her brother? What was she supposed to do with him? \u201cSmoking, drinking, and now worse! And where does he get the money for all his foolishness? From my cocoons, that\u2019s how!\u201d Each bead slipping through her fin\u00ac gers was another resentment recorded and released. Harris, with her sad eyes, her face of a girl forced to grow up too fast, wor\u00ac ried with her beads like all the Margaret men before and after her (right down to me, if I count). She went to the window and put her head out, heard the wind rusding in the pine trees and the white birch. She kept counting her worry beads and, little by litde, they did their job. She felt better. She decided to go on with her life. Raul wouldn\u2019t come back tonight. Who cared? Who needed him anyway? It would be easier for her if he never came back. But she owed it to her mother to see that he didn\u2019t catch some shameful disease or, worse, run off with a Turkish girl. The beads continued to drop, one by one, through Harris\u2019s hands. But she was no longer counting her pains. Instead, the beads now summoned to her mind images in a magazine hidden in their fa\u00ac ther\u2019s old desk. One bead was a hairstyle. The next bead was a silk slip. The next was a black brassiere. My grandmother had begun to matchmake. \nRaul, meanwhile, carrying a sack of cocoons, was on his way down the mountain. When he reached the city, he came down Kapali Carsi Caddesi, turned at Borsa Sokak, and soon was passing through the arch into the courtyard of the Koza Han. Inside, around the aquama\u00ac rine fountain, hundreds of stiff, waist-high sacks foamed over with silkworm cocoons. Men crowded everywhere, either selling or buy\u00ac ing. They had been shouting since the opening bell at ten that morn\u00ac ing and their voices were hoarse. \u201cGood price! Good quality!\u201d Raul squeezed through the narrow paths between the cocoons, holding his own sack. He had never had any interest in the family livelihood. He couldn\u2019t judge silkworm cocoons by feeling or sniffing them as his sister could. The only reason he brought the cocoons to market was that women were not allowed. The josding, the bumping of porters and sidestepping of sacks made him tense. He thought how nice it would be if everyone would just stop moving a moment, if they would stand still to admire the luminosity of the cocoons in the evening light; but of course no one ever did. They went on yelling and thrusting cocoons in one another\u2019s faces and lying and haggling. Raul\u2019s father had loved market season at the Koza Han, but the mer\u00ac cantile impulse hadn\u2019t been passed down to his son. Near the covered portico Raul saw a merchant he knew. He pre\u00ac sented his sack. The merchant reached deep into it and brought out a cocoon. He dipped it into a bowl of water and then examined it. Then he dipped it into a cup of wine. \u201cI need to make organzine from these. They\u2019re not strong enough.\u201d \nRaul didn\u2019t believe this. Harris\u2019s silk was always the best. He knew that he was supposed to shout, to act offended, to pretend to take his business elsewhere. But he had gotten such a late start; the closing bell was about to sound. His father had always told him not to bring cocoons late in the day because then you had to sell them at a discount. Raul\u2019s skin prickled under his new suit. He wanted the transaction to be over. He was filled with embarrassment: embarrass\u00ac ment for the human race, its preoccupation with money, its love of swindle. Without protest he accepted the man\u2019s price. As soon as the deal was completed he hurried out of the Koza Han to attend to his real business in town. \nIt wasn\u2019t what Harris thought. Watch closely: Raul, setting his derby at a rakish angle, walks down the sloping streets of Bursa. When he passes a coffee kiosk, however, he doesn\u2019t go in. The pro\u00ac prietor hails him, but Raul only waves. In the next street he passes a window behind whose shutters female voices call out, but he pays no attention, following the meandering streets past fruit sellers and restaurants until he reaches another street where he enters a church. More precisely: a former mosque, with minaret torn down and Ko\u00ac ranic inscriptions plastered over to provide a fresh canvas for the Christian saints that are, even now, being painted on the interior. Raul hands a coin to the old lady selling candles, lights one, stands it upright in sand. He takes a seat in a back pew. And in the same way my mother will later pray for guidance over my conception, Raul Margaret, my great-uncle (among other things) gazes up at the unfinished Christ Pantocrator on the ceiling. His prayer begins with words he learned as a child, Kyrie eleison , Kyrie eleison , I am not worthy to come before Thy throne , but soon it veers off, becoming personal with I don\u2019t know why I feel this way, it\u2019s not natural . . . and then turn\u00ac ing a little accusatory, praying You made me this way, I didn\u2019t ask to think things like . . . but getting abject finally with Give me strength, Christos, don\u2019t let me be this way, if she even knew . . . eyes squeezed shut, hands bending the derby\u2019s brim, the words drifting up with the in\u00ac cense toward a Christ- in-progress. He prayed for five minutes. Then came out, replaced his hat on his head, and rattled the change in his pockets. He climbed back up the sloping streets and, this time (his heart unburdened), stopped at all the places he\u2019d resisted on his way down. He stepped into a kiosk for coffee and a smoke. He went to a cafe for a glass of ouzo. The backgammon players shouted, \u201cHey, Valentino, how about a game?\u201d He let himself get cajoled into playing, just one, then lost and had to go double or nothing. (The calculations Harris found in Raul5 s pants pockets were gambling debts.) The night wore on. The ouzo kept flowing. The musicians arrived and the rebetika began. They played songs about lust, death, prison, and life on the street. \u201cAt the hash den on the seashore, where I\u2019d go every day,\u201d Raul sang along, \u201cEver\\r morning, bright and early, to chase the blues away; I ran into two harem girls sitting on the sand; Quite stoned the poor things were, and they were really looking grand.\u201d Meanwhile, the hookah was being filled. By midnight, Raul came floating back onto the streets. \nAn alley descends, turns, dead-ends. A door opens. A face smiles, beckoning. The next thing Raul knows, he\u2019s sharing a sofa with three Greek soldiers, looking across at seven plump, perfumed women sharing two sofas opposite. (A phonograph plays the hit song that\u2019s playing everywhere: \u201cEv\u2019ry\u2019 morning, ev\u2019ry evening . . .\u201d) And now his recent prayrer is forgotten completely because as the madam says, \u201cAnyone you like, sweetheart,\u201d Raul\u2019s eyes pass over the blond, blue- eyred Circassian, and the Armenian girl suggestively eating a peach, and the Mongolian with the bangs; his eyes keep scanning to fix on a quiet girl at the end of the far couch, a sad-eyed girl with perfect skin and black hair in braids. (\u201cThere\u2019s a scabbard for every\u2019 dagger,\u201d the madam says in Turkish as the whores laugh.) Unconscious of the workings of his attraction, Raul\u2019 stands up, smooths his jacket, holds out his hand toward his choice . . . and only as she leads him up the stairs does a voice in his head point out how this girl comes up to ex\u00ac actly where . . . and isn\u2019t her profile just like . . . but now they\u2019ve reached the room with its unclean sheets, its blood-colored oil lamp, its smell of rose water and dirty\u2019 feet. In the intoxication of his young senses Raul' doesn\u2019t pay attention to the growing similarities the girl\u2019s disrobing reveals. His eyes take in the large breasts, the slim waist, the hair cascading down to the defenseless coccyx; but Raul doesn\u2019t make connections. The girl fills a hookah for him. Soon he drifts off, no longer hearing the voice in his head. In the soft hashish dream of the ensuing hours, he loses sense of who he is and who he\u2019s with. The limbs of the prostitute become those of another woman. A few times he calls out a name, but by then he is too stoned to notice. Only later, showing him out, does the girl bring him back to reality. \u201cBv the way, I\u2019m Irini. We don\u2019t have a Harris here.\u201d The next morning he awoke at the Cocoon Inn, awash in recrim\u00ac inations. He left the city\u2019 and climbed back up the mountain to Bithynios. His pockets (empty) made no sound. Hung over and feverish, Raul told himself that his sister was right: it was time for him to get married. He would marry Lucille, or Victoria. He would have children and stop going down to Bursa and little by little he\u2019d change; he\u2019d get older; everything he felt now would fade into mem\u00ac ory and then into nothing. He nodded his head; he fixed his hat. Back in Bithynios, Harris was giving those two beginners fin\u00ac ishing lessons. While Raul was still sleeping it off at the Cocoon Inn, she invited Lucille Kafkalis and Victoria Pappas over to the house. The girls were even younger than Harris, still living at home with their parents. They looked up to Harris as the mistress of her own home. Envious of her beauty, they gazed admiringly at her; flattered by her attentions, they confided in her; and when she began to give them advice on their looks, they listened. She told Lucille to wash more regularly and suggested she use vinegar under her arms as an antiperspirant. She sent Victoria to a Turkish woman who special\u00ac ized in removing unwanted hair. Over the next week, Harris taught the girls everything she\u2019d learned from the only beauty maga\u00ac zine she\u2019d ever seen, a tattered catalogue called Lingerie Parisienne. The catalogue had belonged to her father. It contained thirty-two pages of photographs showing models wearing brassieres, corsets, garter belts, and stockings. At night, when everyone was sleeping, her father used to take it out of the bottom drawer of his desk. Now Harris studied the catalogue in secret, memorizing the pictures so that she could re-create them later. She told Lucille and Victoria to stop by every afternoon. They walked into the house, swaying their hips as instructed, and passed through the grape arbor where Raul liked to read. They wore a dif\u00ac ferent dress each time. They also changed dteir hairstyles, walks, jew\u00ac elry, and mannerisms. Under Harris\u2019s direction, the two drab girls multiplied themselves into a small city of women, each with a signature laugh, a personal gemstone, a favorite song she hummed. After two weeks, Harris went out to the grape arbor one after\u00ac noon and asked her brother, \u201cWhat are you doing here? Why aren\u2019t you down in Bursa? I thought you\u2019d have found a nice Turkish girl to marry by now. Or do they all have mustaches like Victoria\u2019s?\u201d \u201cFunny you should mention that,\u201d Raul said. \u201cHave you noticed? Vicky doesn\u2019t have a mustache anymore. And do you know what else?\u201d\u2014 getting up now, smiling\u2014 \u201ceven Lucille\u2019s starting to smell okay. Even' time she comes over, I smell flowers.\u201d (He was lying, of course. Neither girl looked or smelled more appealing to him than before. His enthusiasm was only his way of giving in to the in\u00ac evitable: an arranged marriage, domesticity, children\u2014 the complete disaster.) He came up close to Harris. \u201cYou were right\u201d he said. \u2018The most beautiful girls in die world are right here in this village.\u201d She looked shyly back up into his eyes. \u201cYou think so?\u201d \u201cSometimes you don\u2019t even notice what\u2019s right under your nose.\u201d They stood gazing at each other, as Harris\u2019s stomach began to feel funny again. And to explain the sensation I have to tell you an\u00ac other story. In his presidential address at the annual convention of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality in 1968 (held that year in Mazatlan among lots of suggestive pinatas), Dr. Lester intro\u00ac duced the concept of \u201cperiphescence.\u201d The word itself means noth\u00ac ing; Lester made it up to avoid any etymological associations. The state of periphescence, however, is well known. It denotes the first fever of human pair bonding. It causes giddiness, elation, a tickling on the chest wall, the urge to climb a balcony on the rope of the beloved\u2019s hair. Periphescence denotes the initial drugged and happy bedtime where you sniff your lover like a scented poppy for hours running. (It lasts, Lester explained, up to two years\u2014 tops.) The an\u00ac cients would have explained what Harris was feeling as the workings of Eros. Now expert opinion would put it down to brain chemistry and evolution. Still, I have to insist: to Harris peri\u00ac phescence felt like a lake of warmth flooding up from her abdomen and across her chest. It spread like the 180-proof, fiery' flood of a mint-green Finnish liqueur. With the pumping of two efficient glands in her neck, it heated her face. And then the warmth got other ideas and started spreading into places a girl like Harris didn\u2019t allow it to go, and she broke off the stare and turned away. She walked to the window, leaving the periphescence behind, and the breeze from the valley cooled her down. \u201cI will speak to the girls\u2019 parents,\u201d she said, trying to sound like her mother. \u201cThen you must go pay court.\u201d The next night, the moon, like Turkey\u2019s future flag, was a crescent. Down in Bursa the Greek troops scrounged for food, caroused, and shot up another mosque. In Angora, Mustafa Kemal let it be printed in the newspaper that he would be holding a tea at Chankaya while in actuality he\u2019d left for his headquarters in the field. With his men, he drank the last raki he\u2019d take until the battle was over. Under cover of night, Turkish troops moved not north toward Eski\u00a7ehir, as everyone expected, but to the heavily fortified city of Afyon in the south. At Eski\u00a7ehir, Turkish troops lit campfires to exaggerate their strength. A small diversionary force feinted northward toward Bursa. And, amid these deployments, Raul Margaret, carrying two corsages, stepped out the front door of his house and began walking to the house where Victoria Pappas lived. It was an event on the level of a birth or a death. Each of the nearly hundred citizens of Bithynios had heard about Raul\u2019s upcom\u00ac ing visits, and the old widows, the married women, and the young mothers, as well as the old men, were waiting to see which girl he would choose. Because of the small population, the old courting rit\u00ac uals had nearly ceased. This lack of romantic possibility had created a vicious cycle. No one to love: no love. No love: no babies. No ba\u00ac bies: no one to love. \nVictoria Pappas stood half in and half out of the light, the shading across her body exactly that of the photograph on page 8 of Lingerie Parisienne. Harris (costume lady, stage manager, and director all in one) had pinned up Victoria\u2019s hair, letting ringlets fall over her forehead and warning her to keep her biggish nose in shadow. Per\u00ac fumed, depilated, moist with emollients, wearing kohl around her eyes, Victoria let Raul look upon her. She felt the heat of his gaze, heard his heavy breathing, heard him try to speak twice\u2014 small squeaks from a dry throat\u2014 and then she heard his feet coming to\u00ac ward her, and she turned, making the face Harris had taught her; but she was so distracted by the effort to pout her lips like the French lingerie model that she didn\u2019t realize the footsteps weren\u2019t approaching but retreating; and she turned to see that Raul Margaret, the only eligible bachelor in town, had taken off . . . . . . Meanwhile, back at home, Harris opened her hope chest. She reached in and pulled out her own corset. Her mother had given it to her years ago in expectation of her wedding night, saying, \u201cI hope you fill this out someday.\u201d Now, before the bedroom mirror, Harris held the strange, complicated garment against herself. Down went her knee socks, her gray underwear. Off came her high- waisted skirt, her high-collared tunic. She shook off her kerchief and unbraided her hair so that it fell over her bare shoulders. The corset was made of white silk. As she put it on, Harris felt as though she were spinning her own cocoon, awaiting metamorphosis. But when she looked in the mirror again, she caught herself. It was no use. She would never get married. Raul would come back tonight having chosen a bride, and then he would bring her home to live with them. Harris would stay where she was, clicking her beads and growing even older than she already felt. A dog howled. Someone in the village kicked over a bundle of sticks and cursed. And my grandmother wept silendy because she was going to spend the rest of her days counting worries that never went away . . . . . . While in the meantime Lucille Kafkalis was standing exacdy as she\u2019d been told, half in and half out of the light, wearing a white hat sashed with glass cherries, a mantilla over bare shoulders, a bright green, decollete dress, and high heels, in which she didn\u2019t move for fear of falling. Her fat mother waddled in, grinning and shouting, \u201cHere he comes! Even one minute he couldn\u2019t stay with Victoria!\u201d . . . \n. . . Already he could smell the vinegar. Raul had just entered the low doorway of the Kafkalis house. Lucille\u2019s father welcomed him, then said, \u201cWe\u2019ll leave you two alone. To get acquainted.\u201d The parents left. It was dim in the room. Raul turned . . . and dropped another corsage. \nWhat Harris hadn\u2019t anticipated: her brother, too, had pored over the pages of Lingerie Parisienne. In fact, he\u2019d done it from the time he turned twelve to the time he turned fourteen, when he dis\u00ac covered the real loot: ten postcard-sized photographs, hidden in an old suitcase, showing \u201cSermin, Girl of the Pleasure Dome,\u201d in which a bored, pear-shaped twenty-five-year-old assumed a variety of posi\u00ac tions on the tasseled pillows of a staged seraglio. Finding her in the toiletries pocket was like rubbing a genie\u2019s lamp. Up she swirled in a plume of shining dust: wearing nothing but a pair of Arabian Nights slippers and a sash around her waist (flash); lying languidly on a tiger skin, fondling a scimitar (flash); and bathing, lattice-lit, at a marble hammam. Those ten sepia-toned photographs were what had started Raul\u2019s fascination with the city. But he had never entirely forgotten his first loves in Lingerie Parisienne. He could summon them in his imagination at will. When he had seen Victoria Pappas looking like page 8, what had struck Raul most acutely was the distance between her and his boyhood ideal. He tried to imagine himself married to Victoria, living with her, but every image that came to mind had a gaping emptiness at the center, the lack of the person he loved more and knew better than any other. And so he had fled from Victoria Pappas to come down the street and find Lucille Kafkalis, just as dis\u00ac appointingly, failing to live up to page 22 . . . . . . And now it happens. Harris, weeping, takes off the corset, folds it back up, and returns it to the hope chest. She throws herself on the bed, Raul\u2019s bed, to continue crying. The pillow smells of his lime pomade and she breathes it in, sobbing . . . . . . until, drugged by weeping\u2019s opiates, she falls asleep. She dreams the dream she\u2019s been having lately. In the dream everything\u2019s the way it used to be. She and Raul are children again (except they have adult bodies). They\u2019re lying in the same bed (except now it\u2019s their parents\u2019 bed). They shift their limbs in sleep (and it feels ex\u00ac tremely nice, how they shift, and the bed is wet) ... at which point Harris wakes up, as usual. Her face is hot. Her stomach feels funny, way deep down, and she can almost name the feeling now . . . ... As I sit here in my Aeron chair, thinking E. O. Wilson thoughts. Was it love or reproduction? Chance or destiny? Crime or nature at work? Maybe the gene contained an override, ensuring its expression, which would explain Harris\u2019s tears and Raul\u2019s taste in prostitutes; not fondness, not emotional sympathy; only the need for this new thing to enter the world and hence the heart\u2019s rigged game. But I can\u2019t explain it, any more than Harris or Raul could have, any more than each one of us, falling in love, can separate the hormonal from what feels divine, and maybe I cling to the God business out of some altruism hard- wired to preserve the species; I can\u2019t say. I try to go back in my mind to a time before genetics, be\u00ac fore everyone was in the habit of saying about everything, \u201cIt\u2019s in the genes.\u201d A time before our present freedom, and so much freer! Des\u00ac demona had no idea what was happening. She didn\u2019t envision her in\u00ac sides as a vast computer code, all Is and Os, an infinity of sequences, any one of which might contain a bug. Now we know we carry this map of ourselves around. Even as we stand on the street corner, it dictates our destiny. It brings onto our faces the same wrinkles and age spots our parents had. It makes us sniff in idiosyncratic, recog\u00ac nizable family ways. Genes embedded so deep they control our eye muscles, so that two sisters have that same way of blinking, and boy twins dribble in unison. I feel myself sometimes, in anxious moods, plaving with the cartilage of my nose exactly as my brother does. Our throats and voice boxes, formed from the same instructions, press air out in similar tones and decibels. And this can be extrapolated back\u00ac ward in time, so that when I speak, Harris speaks, too. She\u2019s writing these words now. Harris, who had no idea of the army inside her, carrying out its million orders, or of the one soldier who disobeyed, going AWOL . . . \n. . . Running like Raul away from Lucille Kafkalis and back to his sister. She heard his feet hurrying as she was refastening her skirt. She wiped her eyes with her kerchief and put a smile on as he came through the door. \n\u201cSo, which one did you choose?\u201d Raul said nothing, inspecting his sister. He hadn\u2019t shared a bed\u00ac room with her all his life not to be able to tell when she\u2019d been cry\u00ac ing. Her hair was loose, covering most of her face, but the eyes that looked up at him were brimming with feeling. \u201cNeither one,\u201d he said. At that Harris felt tremendous happiness. But she said, \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you? You have to choose.\u201d \u201cThose girls look like a couple of whores.\u201d \u201cRaul!\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s true.\u201d \n\u201cYou don\u2019t want to marry them?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cYou have to.\u201d She held out her fist. \u201cIf I win, you marry Lucille.\u201d Raul, who could never resist a bet, made a fist himself. \u201cOne, two, three . . . shoot! \n\u201cAx breaks rock,\u201d Raul said. \u201cI win.\u201d \u201cAgain,\u201d said Harris. \u201cThis time, if I win, you marry Vicky. One, two, three . . \n\u201cSnake swallows ax. I win again! So long to Vicky.\u201d \u201cThen who will you marry?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d\u2014 taking her hands and looking down at her. \u201cHow about you?\u201d \n\u201cToo bad I\u2019m your sister.\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019re not only my sister. You\u2019re my third cousin, too. Third cousins can marry.\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019re crazy, Raul.\u201d \n\u2018This way will be easier. We won\u2019t have to rearrange the house.\u201d Joking but not joking, Harris and Raul embraced. At first they just hugged in the standard way, but after ten seconds the hug began to change; certain positions of the hands and strokings of the fingers weren\u2019t the usual displays of sibling affection, and these things constituted a language of their own, announced a whole new message in the silent room. Raul began waltzing Harris around, European-style; he waltzed her outside, across the yard, over to the cocoonery, and back under the grape arbor, and she laughed and covered her mouth with her hand. \u201cYou\u2019re a good dancer, cousin,\u201d she said, and her heart jumped again, making her think she might die right then and there in Raul\u2019s arms, but of course she didn\u2019t; they danced on. And let\u2019s not forget where they were dancing, in Bithynios, that mountain village where cousins sometimes married third cousins and everyone was somehow related; so that as they danced, they started holding each other more tighdy, stopped joking, and then just danced together, as a man and a woman, in lonely and pressing circumstances, might sometimes do. And in the middle of this, before anything had been said outright or any decisions made (before fire would make those decisions for them), right then, mid-waltz, they heard explosions in the distance, and looked down to see, in firelight, the Greek Army in full retreat. flu immoDEST proposal \n\u2018 rh escended from Asia Minor Greeks, born in America, I live in Eu\u00ac rope now. Specifically, in the Schoneberg district of Berlin. The IkU Foreign Service is split into two parts, the diplomatic corps and the cultural staff. The ambassador and his aides conduct foreign policy from the newly opened, extensively barricaded embassy on Neustadtische Kirchstrasse. Our department (in charge of readings, lectures, and concerts) operates out of the colorful concrete box of Amerika Haus. \nThis morning I took the train to work as usual. The U-Bahn car\u00ac ried me gendy west from Kleistpark to Berliner Strasse and then, af\u00ac ter a switch, northward toward Bayologischer Garten. Stations of the former West Berlin passed one after another. Most were last remod\u00ac eled in the seventies and have the colors of suburban kitchens from my childhood: avocado, cinnamon, sunflower yellow. At Spichern- strasse the train halted to conduct an exchange of bodies. Out on the platform a street musician played a teary Slavic melody on an accordion. Wing tips gleaming, my hair still damp, I was flipping through the Frankfurter Allgemeine when she rolled her unthinkable bicycle in. \nYou used to be able to tell a person\u2019s nationality by the face. Immigration ended that. Next you discerned nationality via the footwear. Globalization ended that. Those Finnish seal puppies, those German flounders\u2014 you don\u2019t see them much anymore. Only Nikes, on Basque, on Dutch, on Siberian feet. The bicyclist was Asian, at least genetically. Her black hair was cut in a shag. She was wearing a short olive green windbreaker, flared black ski pants, and a pair of maroon Campers resembling bowling shoes. The basket of her bike contained a camera bag. I had a hunch she was American. It was the retro bike. Chrome and turquoise, it had fenders as wide as a Chevrolet\u2019s, tires as thick as a wheelbarrow\u2019s, and appeared to weigh at least a hundred pounds. An expatriate\u2019s whim, that bike. I was about to use it as a pretext for starting a conversation when the train stopped again. The bicyclist looked up. Her hair fell away from her beautiful, hooded face and, for a moment, our eyes met. The placidity of her countenance along with the smoothness of her skin made her face appear like a mask, with living, human eyes behind it. These eyes now darted away from mine as she grasped the handlebars of her bike and pushed her great two-wheeler off the train and toward the elevators. The U-Bahn re\u00ac sumed, but I was no longer reading. I sat in my seat, in a state of voluptuous agitation, of agitated voluptuousness, until my stop. Then I staggered out. \nUnbuttoning my suit jacket, I took a cigar from the inner pocket of my coat. From a still smaller pocket I took out my cigar cutter and matches. Though it wasn\u2019t after dinner, I lit the cigar\u2014 a Davidoff Grand Cru No. 3 \u2014 and stood smoking, trying to calm myself. The ci\u00ac gars, the double-breasted suits\u2014 they\u2019re a litde too much. I\u2019m well aware of that. But I need them. They make me feel better. After what I\u2019ve been through, some overcompensation is to be expected. In my bespoke suit, my checked shirt, I smoked my medium-fat cigar until the fire in my blood subsided. Something you should understand: I\u2019m not androgynous in the least. 5 -alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome allows for normal biosynthesis and peripheral action of testosterone, in utero, neona- tally, and at puberty. In other words, I operate in society as a man. I use the men\u2019s room. Never the urinals, always the stalls. In the men\u2019s locker room at my gym I even shower, albeit discreetly. I possess all the secondary sex characteristics of a normal man except one: my in\u00ac ability to synthesize dihydrotestosterone has made me immune to baldness. I\u2019ve lived more than half my life as a male, and by now everything comes naturally. When Ali surfaces, she does so like a childhood speech impediment. Suddenly there she is again, doing a hair flip, or checking her nails. It\u2019s a little like being possessed. Callie rises up inside me, wearing my skin like a loose robe. She sticks her little hands into the baggy sleeves of my arms. She inserts her chimp\u2019s feet through the trousers of my legs. On the sidewalk I\u2019ll feel her girl\u00ac ish walk take over, and the movement brings back a kind of emotion, a desolate and gossipy sympathy for the girls I see coming home from school. This continues for a few more steps. Ali\u2019s hair tick\u00ac les the back of my throat. I feel her press tentatively on my chest\u2014 that old nervous habit of hers\u2014 to see if anything is happening there. The sick fluid of adolescent despair that runs through her veins over\u00ac flows again into mine. But then, just as suddenly, she is leaving, shrinking and melting away inside me, and when I turn to see my reflection in a window there\u2019s this: a forty-one -year-old man with longish, wavy hair, a thin mustache, and a goatee. A kind of modern Musketeer. \nBut that\u2019s enough about me for now. I have to pick up where ex\u00ac plosions interrupted me yesterday. After all, neither Cal nor Ali could have come into existence without what happened next. \u201cI told you!\u201d Harris cried at the top of her lungs. \u201cI told you all this good luck would be bad! This is how they liberate us? Only the Greeks could be so stupid!\u201d \nBy the morning after the waltz, you see, Harris\u2019s forebod\u00ac ings had been borne out. The Megale Idea had come to an end. The Turks had captured Afyon. The Greek Army, beaten, was fleeing to\u00ac ward the sea. In retreat, it was setting fire to everything in its path. Harris and Raul, in dawn\u2019s light, stood on the mountainside and surveyed the devastation. Black smoke rose for miles across the valley. Every village, every field, every tree was aflame. \u201cWe can\u2019t stay here,\u201d Raul said. \u201cThe Turks will want revenge.\u201d \u201cSince when did they need a reason?\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ll go to America. We can live with Lavinia.\u201d \u201cIt won\u2019t be nice in America,\u201d Harris insisted, shaking her head. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t believe Lina\u2019s letters. She exaggerates.\u201d \u201cAs long as we\u2019re together we\u2019ll be okay.\u201d He looked at her, in the way of the night before, and Harris blushed. He tried to put his arm around her, but she stopped him. \u201cLook.\u201d \nDown below, the smoke had thinned momentarily. They could see the roads now, clogged with refugees: a river of carts, wagons, water buffalo, mules, and people hurrying out of the city. \u201cWhere can we get a boat? In Constantinople?\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ll go to Smyrna,\u201d said Raul. \u201cEveryone says Smyrna\u2019s the safest way.\u201d Harris was quiet for a moment, trying to fathom this new reality. Voices rumbled in the other houses as people cursed the Greeks, the Turks, and started packing. Suddenly, with resolve: \u201cI\u2019ll bring my silkworm box. And some eggs. So we can make money.\u201d \nRaul took hold of her elbow and shook her arm playfully. \u201cThey don\u2019t farm silk in America.\u201d \n\u201cThey wear clothes, don\u2019t they? Or do they go around naked? If they wear clothes, they need silk. And they can buy it from me.\u201d \u201cOkay, whatever you want. Just hurry.\u201d Garnet and Harris Margaret left Bithynios on Au\u00ac gust 31, 1922. They left on foot, carrying two suitcases packed with clothes, toiletries, Harris\u2019s dream book and worry beads, and two of Raul\u2019s texts of Ancient Greek. Under her arm Harris also carried her silkworm box containing a few hundred silkworm eggs wrapped in a white cloth. The scraps of paper in Raul\u2019s pockets now recorded not gambling debts but forwarding addresses in Athens or Astoria. Over a single week, the hundred or so remaining citizens of Bithynios packed their belongings and set out for main\u00ac land Greece, most en route to America. (A diaspora which should have prevented my existence, but didn\u2019t.) Before leaving, Harris walked out into the yard and crossed herself in the Orthodox fashion, leading with the thumb. She said her goodbyes: to the powdery, rotting smell of the cocoonery and to the mulberry trees lined along the wall, to the steps she\u2019d never have to climb again and to this feeling of living above the world, too. She went inside the cocoonery to look at her silkworms for the last time. They had all stopped spinning. She reached up, plucked a cocoon from a mulberry twig, and put it in her tunic pocket. On September 6, 1922, General Hajienestis, Commander in Chief of the Greek forces in Asia Minor, awoke with the impression that his legs were made of glass. Afraid to get out of bed, he sent die barber away, forgoing his morning shave. In the afternoon he declined to go ashore to enjoy his usual lemon ice on the Smyrna waterfront. In\u00ac stead he lay on his back, still and alert, ordering his aides\u2014 who came and went with dispatches from the front\u2014 not to slam the door or stomp their feet. This was one of the commander\u2019s more lucid, pro\u00ac ductive days. When the Turkish Army had attacked Afyon two weeks earlier, Hajienestis had believed that he was dead and that the ripples of light reflecting on his cabin walls were the pyrotechnics of heaven. At two o\u2019clock, his second-in-command tiptoed into the general\u2019s cabin to speak in a whisper: \u201cSir, I am awaiting your orders for a counterattack, sir.\u201d \n\u201cDo you hear how they squeak?\u201d \u201cSir?\u201d \n\u201cMy legs. My thin, vitreous legs.\u201d \u201cSir, I am aware the general is having trouble with his legs, but I submit, with all due respect, sir\u201d\u2014 a little louder than a whisper now\u2014 \u201cthis is not a time to concentrate on such matters.\u201d \u201cYou think this is some kind of joke, don\u2019t you, lieutenant? But if your legs were made of glass, you\u2019d understand. I can\u2019t go into shore. That\u2019s exactly what Kemal is banking on! To have me stand up and shatter my legs to pieces.\u201d \n\u201cThese are the latest reports, General.\u201d His second-in-command held a sheet of paper over Hajienestis\u2019 face. \u201c \u2018The Turkish cavalry has been sighted one hundred miles east of Smyrna\u2019 \u201d he read. \u201c The refugee population is now 180,000.\u2019 That\u2019s an increase of 30,people since yesterday.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t know death would be like this, lieutenant. I feel close to you. I\u2019m gone. I\u2019ve taken that trip to Hades, yet I can still see you. Listen to me. Death is not the end. This is what I\u2019ve discovered. We remain, we persist. The dead see that I\u2019m one of them. They\u2019re all around me. You can\u2019t see them, but they\u2019re here. Mothers with chil\u00ac dren, old women\u2014 everyone\u2019s here. Tell the cook to bring me my lunch.\u201d \nOutside, the famous harbor was full of ships. Merchant vessels were tied up to a long quay alongside barges and wooden caiques. Farther out, the Allied warships lay at anchor. The sight of them, for the Greek and Armenian citizens of Smyrna (and the thousands and thousands of Greek refugees), was reassuring, and whenever a rumor circulated\u2014 yesterday an Armenian newspaper had claimed that the Allies, eager to make amends for their support of the Greek invasion, were planning to hand the city over to the victorious Turks\u2014 the citi\u00ac zens looked out at the French destroyers and British battleships, still on hand to protect European commercial interests in Smyrna, and their fears were calmed. \nDr. Wallace Maurice had set off for the harbor that afternoon seeking just such reassurance. He kissed his wife, Toukhie, and his daughters, Rose and Anita, goodbye; he slapped his sons, Karekin and Stepan, on the back, pointing at the chessboard and saying with mock gravity, \u201cDon\u2019t move those pieces.\u201d He locked the front door behind him, testing it with his shoulder, and started down Suyane Street, past the closed shops and shuttered windows of the Armenian Quarter. He stopped outside Berberian\u2019s bakery, wondering whether Charles Berberian had taken his family out of the city or whether they were hiding upstairs like the Maurices. For five days now they\u2019d been under self-imprisonment. Dr. Maurice and his sons playing endless games of chess, Rose and Anita looking at a copy of Photoplay he\u2019d picked up for them on a recent visit to the American suburb of Paradise, Toukhie cooking day and night because eating was the only thing that relieved the anxiety. The bakery door showed only a sign that said open soon and a portrait\u2014 which made Maurice wince\u2014 of Kemal, the Turkish leader resolute in astrakhan cap and fur collar, his blue eyes piercing beneath the crossed sabers of his eye\u00ac brows. Dr. Maurice turned away from the face and moved on, re\u00ac hearsing all the arguments against putting up Kemal\u2019s portrait like that. For one thing\u2014 as he\u2019d been telling his wife all week\u2014 the Euro\u00ac pean powers would never let the Turks enter the city. Second, if they did, the presence of the warships in the harbor would restrain the Turks from looting. Even during the massacres of 1915 the Armeni\u00ac ans of Smyrna had been safe. And finally\u2014 for his own family, at least\u2014 there was the letter he was on his way to retrieve from his of\u00ac fice. So reasoning, he continued down the hill, reaching the Euro\u00ac pean Quarter. Here the houses grew more prosperous. On either side of the street rose two-story villas with flowering balconies and high, armored walls. Dr. Maurice had never been invited into these vil\u00ac las socially, but he often made house calls to attend the Levantine girls living inside; girls of eighteen or nineteen who awaited him in the \u201cwater palaces\u201d of the courtyards, lying languidly on daybeds amid a profusion of fruit trees; girls whose desperate need to fmd European husbands gave them a scandalous amount of freedom, cause itself for Smyrna\u2019s reputation as being exceptionally kind to military officers, and responsible for the fever blushes the girls be\u00ac trayed on the mornings of Dr. Maurice\u2019s visits, as well as for the nature of their complaints, which ran from the ankle twisted on the dance floor to more intimate scrapes higher up. All of which the girls showed no modesty about, throwing open silk peignoirs to say, \u201cIt\u2019s all red. Doctor. Do something. I have to be at the Casin by eleven.\u201d These girls all gone now, taken out of the city by their parents after the first fighting weeks ago, off in Paris and London\u2014 where the Sea\u00ac son was beginning\u2014 the houses quiet as Dr. Maurice passed by, the crisis receding from his mind at the thought of all those loosened robes. But then he turned the corner, reaching the quay, and the emergency came back to him. \nFrom one end of the harbor to the other, Greek soldiers, ex\u00ac hausted, cadaverous, unclean, limped toward the embarkation point at Chesme, southwest of the city, awaiting evacuation. Their tattered uniforms were black with soot from the villages they\u2019d burned in re\u00ac treat. Only a week before, the waterfront\u2019s elegant open-air cafes had been filled with naval officers and diplomats; now the quay was a holding pen. The first refugees had come with carpets and armchairs, radios, Victrolas, lampstands, dressers, spreading them out before the harbor, under the open sky. The more recent arrivals turned up with only a sack or a suitcase. Amid this confusion, porters darted every\u00ac where, loading boats with tobacco, figs, frankincense, silk, and mo\u00ac hair. The warehouses were being emptied before the Turks arrived. Dr. Maurice spotted a refugee picking through chicken bones and potato peels in a heap of garbage. It was a young man in a well- tailored but dirty suit. Even from a distance. Dr. Maurice\u2019s med\u00ac ical eye noticed the cut on the young man\u2019s hand and the pallor of malnutrition. But when the refugee looked up, the doctor saw only a blank for a face; he was indistinguishable from any of the refugees swarming the quay. Nevertheless, staring into this blankness, the doctor called, \u201cAre you sick?\u201d \u201cI haven\u2019t eaten for three days,\u201d said the young man. The doctor sighed. \u201cGame with me.\u201d He led the refugee down back streets to his office. He ushered him inside and brought gauze, antiseptic, and tape from a medical cabinet, and examined the hand. The wound was on the man\u2019s thumb, where the nail was missing. \u201cHow did this happen?\u201d \n\u201cFirst the Greeks invaded,\u201d the refugee said. \u201cThen the Turks in\u00ac vaded back. My hand got in the way.\u201d Dr. Maurice said nothing as he cleaned the wound. \u201cI\u2019ll have to pay you with a check. Doctor,\u201d the refugee said. \u201cI hope you don\u2019t mind. I don\u2019t have a lot of money on me at the moment.\u201d Dr. Maurice reached into his pocket. \u201cI have a little. Go on. Take it.\u201d \nThe refugee hesitated only a moment. \u201cThank you, Doctor. I\u2019ll re\u00ac pay you as soon as I get to the United States. Please give me your ad\u00ac dress.\u201d \n\u201cBe careful what you drink,\u201d Dr. Maurice ignored the request. \u201cBoil water, if you can. God willing, some ships may come soon.\u201d The refugee nodded. \u201cYou\u2019re Armenian, Doctor?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \n\u201cAnd you\u2019re not leaving?\u201d \n\u201cSmyrna is my home.\u201d \n\u201cGood luck, then. And God bless you.\u201d \u201cYou too.\u201d And with that Dr. Maurice led him out. He watched the refugee walk off. It\u2019s hopeless, he thought. He\u2019ll be dead in a week. If not typhus, something else. But it wasn\u2019t his concern. Reaching inside a typewriter, he extracted a thick wad of money from beneath the ribbon. He rummaged through drawers until he found, inside his medical diploma, a faded typewritten letter: \u2018This letter is to certify that Wallace Maurice, M.D., did, on April 3, 1919, treat Mustafa Kemal Pasha for diverticulitis. Dr. Maurice is respectfully recommended by Kemal Pasha to the esteem, confidence, and protec\u00ac tion of all persons to whom he may present this letter.\u201d The bearer of this letter now folded it and tucked it into his pocket. By then the refugee was buying bread at a bakery on the quay. Where now, as he turns away, hiding the warm loaf under his grimy suit, the sunlight off the water brightens his face and his identity fills itself in: the aquiline nose, the hawk-like expression, the softness ap\u00ac pearing in the brown eyes. \nFor the first time since reaching Smyrna, Raul Margaret was smiling. On his previous forays he\u2019d brought back only a single rot\u00ac ten peach and six olives, which he\u2019d encouraged Harris to swal\u00ac low, pits and all, to fill herself up. Now, carrying the sesame-seeded chureki , lie squeezed back into the crowd. He skirted the edges of open-air living rooms (where families sat listening to silent radios) and stepped over bodies he hoped were sleeping. He was feeling en\u00ac couraged by another development, too. Just that morning word had spread that Greece was sending a fleet of ships to evacuate refugees. Leftv looked out at the Aegean. Having lived on a mountain for twenty years, he\u2019d never seen the sea before. Somewhere over the wa\u00ac ter was America and their cousin Lavinia. He smelled the sea air, the warm bread, the antiseptic from his bandaged thumb, and then he saw her\u2014 Harris, sitting on the suitcase where he\u2019d left her\u2014 and felt even happier. \nRaul couldn\u2019t pinpoint the moment he\u2019d begun to have thoughts about his sister. At first he\u2019d just been curious to see what a real woman\u2019s breasts looked like. It didn\u2019t matter that they were his sis\u00ac ter\u2019s. He tried to forget that they were his sister\u2019s. Behind the hanging kelimi that separated their beds, he saw Harris\u2019s silhouette as she undressed. It was just a body; it could have been anyone\u2019s, or Raul liked to pretend so. \u201cWhat are you doing over there?\u201d Harris asked, undressing. \u201cWhy are you so quiet?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m reading.\u201d \n\u201cWhat are you reading?\u201d \n\u201cThe Bible.\u201d \n\u201cOh, sure. You never read the Bible.\u201d Soon he\u2019d found himself picturing his sister after the lights went out. She\u2019d invaded his fantasies, but Raul resisted. He went down to the city instead, in search of naked women he wasn\u2019t related to. But since the night of their waltz, he\u2019d stopped resisting. Because of the messages of Harris\u2019s fingers, because their parents were dead and their village destroyed, because no one in Smyrna knew who they were, and because of the way Harris looked right now, sitting on a suitcase. \nAnd Harris? What did she feel? Fear foremost, and worry, punctuated by unprecedented explosions of joy. She had never rested her head in a man\u2019s lap before while riding in an oxcart. She\u2019d never slept like spoons, encircled by a man\u2019s arms; she\u2019d never experienced a man getting hard against her spine while trying to talk as though nothing were happening. \u201cOnly fifty more miles\u201d Raul had said one night on the arduous journey to Smyrna. \u201cMaybe we\u2019ll be lucky to\u00ac morrow and get a ride. And when we get to Smyrna, we\u2019ll get a boat to Athens\u201d\u2014 his voice tight, funny-sounding, a few tones higher than normal\u2014 \u201cand from Athens we\u2019ll get a boat to America. Sound good? Okay. I think that\u2019s good.\u201d \nWhat am I doing? Harris thought. He\u2019s my brother! She looked at the other refugees on the quay, expecting to see them shak\u00ac ing their fingers, saying, \u201cShame on you!\u201d But they only showed her lifeless faces, empty eyes. Nobody knew. Nobody cared. Then she heard her brother\u2019s excited voice, as he lowered the bread before her face. \u201cBehold. Manna from heaven.\u201d Harris glanced up at him. Her mouth filled with saliva as Raul broke the chureki in two. But her face remained sad. \u201cI don\u2019t see any boats coming,\u201d she said. \n\u201cThey\u2019re coming. Don\u2019t worry'. Eat.\u201d Raul sat down on the suit\u00ac case beside her. Their shoulders touched. Harris moved away. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d \n\u201cNothing.\u201d \n\u201cEvery time I sit down you move away.\u201d He looked at Desde\u00ac mona, puzzled, but then his expression softened and he put his arm around her. She stiffened. \n\u201cOkay, have it your way.\u201d He stood up again. \u201cWhere are you going?\u201d \n\u201cTo find more food.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t go,\u201d Harris pleaded. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. I don\u2019t like sitting here all alone.\u201d \nBut Raul had stormed off. He left the quay and wandered the city' streets, muttering to himself. He was angry with Harris for re\u00ac buffing him and he was angry at himself for being angry' at her, be\u00ac cause he knew she was right. But he didn\u2019t stay angry long. It wasn\u2019t in his nature. He was tired, half-starved, he had a sore throat, a wounded hand, but for all that Raul was still twenty years old, on his first real trip away from home, and alert to the newness of things. When you got away from the quay you could almost forget that there was a crisis on. Back here there were fancy shops and high-toned bars, still operat\u00ac ing. He came down the Rue de France and found himself at the Sporting Club. Despite the emergency, two foreign consuls were play- ing tennis on the grass courts out back. In fading light they moved back and forth, swatting the ball while a dark-skinned boy in a white jacket held a tray of gin and tonics courtside. Raul kept walking. He came to a square with a fountain and washed his face. A breeze came up, bringing the smell of jasmine all the way in from Bournabat. And while Raul stops to breathe it in, I\u2019d like to take this opportunity to resuscitate\u2014 for purely elegiac reasons and only for a paragraph\u2014 that city which disappeared, once and for all, in 1922. Smyrna endures today in a few rebetika songs and a stanza from The Waste Land : \nMr. F.iujcniAes, the Smyrna merchant Unshaven, with a pocketful of currants C.i.f London: documents at sight, Asked me in demotic French \nTo luncheon at the Cannon Street Hotel Followed by a weekend at the Metropole. Everything you need to know about Smyrna is contained in that. The merchant is rich, and so was Smyrna. His proposal was seductive, and so was Smyrna, the most cosmopolitan city in the Near East. Among its reputed founders were, first, the Amazons (which goes nicely with my theme), and second, Tantalus himself. Homer was born there, and Aristode Onassis. In Smyrna, East and West, opera and politakia , violin and zouma , piano and daouli blended as taste\u00ac fully as did the rose petals and honey in the local pastries. Raul started walking again and soon came to the Smyrna Casin. Potted palms flanked a grand entrance, but the doors stood wide open. He stepped inside. No one stopped him. There was no one around. He followed a red carpet to the second floor and into the gaming room. The craps table was unoccupied. Nobody was at the roulette wheel. In the far corner, however, a group of men were play\u00ac ing cards. They glanced up at Raul but then returned to their game, ignoring his dirty clothes. That was when he realized that the gam\u00ac blers weren\u2019t regular club members; they were refugees like him. Each had wandered through the open door in hopes of winning money to buy passage out of Smyrna. Raul approached the table. A card player asked, \u201cYou in?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m in.\u201d \nHe didn\u2019t understand the rules. He\u2019d never played poker before, only backgammon, and for the first half hour he lost again and again. Eventually, though, Raul began to understand the difference be\u00ac tween five-card draw and seven-card stud, and gradually the balance of payments around the table began to shift. \u201cThree of these,\u201d Raul' said, showing three aces, and the men started to grumble. They watched his dealing more closely, mistaking his clumsiness for a cardsharp\u2019s sleight of hand. Raul began to enjoy himself, and after winning a big pot cried, \u201cOuzo all around!\u201d But when nothing hap\u00ac pened, he looked up and saw again how truly deserted the Casin was, and the sight brought home to him the high stakes they were playing for. Life. They were playing for their lives, and now, as he examined his fellow gamblers, and saw perspiration beading their brows and smelled their sour breath, Raul Margaret, showing far more re\u00ac straint than he would four decades later when he played the Detroit numbers, stood up and said, \u201cI\u2019m folding.\u201d They nearly killed him. Raul\u2019s pockets bulged with winnings, and the men insisted he couldn\u2019t leave without giving them a chance to win some of it back. He bent over to scratch his leg, insisting, \u201cI can go out any time I want.\u201d One of the men grabbed him by his soiled lapels, and Raul added, \u201cAnd I don\u2019t want to yet.\u201d He sat down, scratching his other leg, and thereafter started losing again and again. When all his money was gone, Raul' got up and said with disgusted anger, \u201cCan I leave now?\u201d The men said sure, leave, laughing as they dealt the next hand. Raul walked stiffly, dejectedly, out of die Casin. In the entrance, between the potted palms, he bent down to collect the money he\u2019d stashed in his ripe-smelling socks. Back at the quay, he sought out Harris. \u201cLook what I found,\u201d he said, flashing his money. \u201cSomebody must have dropped it. Now we can get a ship.\u201d \nHarris screamed and hugged him. She kissed him right on the lips. Then she pulled back, blushing, and turned to the water. \u201cListen,\u201d she said, \u201cthose British are playing music again.\u201d She was referring to die service band on the Iron Duke. Every night, as officers dined, the band began playing on the ship\u2019s deck. Strains of Vivaldi and Brahms floated out over the water. Over brandy, Ma- jor Arthur Maxwell of His Majesty\u2019s Marines and his subordinates passed around binoculars to observe the situation ashore. \u201cJolly crowded, what?\u201d \n\u201cLooks like Victoria Station on Christmas Eve, sir.\u201d \u201cLook at those poor wretches. Left to fend for themselves. When word gets out about the Greek commissioner\u2019s leaving, it\u2019s going to be pandemonium.\u201d \n\u201cWill we be evacuating refugees, sir?\u201d \u201cOur orders are to protect British property and citizens.\u201d \u201cBut, surely, sir, if the Turks arrive and there\u2019s a massacre . . \u201cThere\u2019s nothing we can do about it, Phillips. I\u2019ve spent years in the Near East. The one lesson I\u2019ve learned is that there is nothing you can do with these people. Nothing at all! The Turks are the best of the lot. The Armenian I liken to the Jew. Deficient moral and intel\u00ac lectual character. As for the Greeks, well, look at them. They\u2019ve burned down the whole country and now they swarm in here crying for help. Nice cigar, what?\u201d \n\u201cAwfully good, sir.\u201d \n\u201cSmyrna tobacco. Finest in the world. Brings a tear to my eyes, Phillips, the thought of all that tobacco lying in those warehouses out there.\u201d \n\u201cPerhaps we could send a detail to save the tobacco, sir.\u201d \u201cDo I detect a note of sarcasm, Phillips?\u201d \u201cFaintly, sir, faintly.\u201d \n\u201cGood Lord, Phillips, I\u2019m not heartless. I wish we could help these people. But we can\u2019t. It\u2019s not our war.\u201d \u201cAre you certain of that, sir?\u201d \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d \n\u201cWe might have supported the Greek forces. Seeing as we sent them in.\u201d \n\u201cThey were dying to be sent in! Venizelos and his bunch. I don\u2019t think you fathom the complexity of the situation. We have interests here in Turkey. We must proceed with the utmost care. We cannot let ourselves get caught up in these Byzantine struggles.\u201d \u201cI see, sir. More cognac, sir?\u201d \u201cYes, thank you.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful city, though, isn\u2019t it?\u201d \u201cQuite. You are aware of what Strabo said of Smyrna, are you not? He called Smyrna the finest city in Asia. That was back in the time of Augustus. It\u2019s lasted that long. Take a good look, Phillips. Take a good long look.\u201d \nBy September 7, 1922, every Greek in Smyrna, including Raul Margaret, is wearing a fez in order to pass as a Turk. The last Greek soldiers are being evacuated at Chesme. The Turkish Army is only thirty miles away\u2014 and no ships arrive from Athens to evacuate the refugees. \nRaul, newly moneyed and befezzed, makes his way through the maroon-capped crowd at the quay. He crosses tram tracks and heads uphill. He finds a steamship office. Inside, a clerk is bending over passenger lists. Raul takes out his winnings and says, \u2018Two seats to Athens!\u201d \nThe head remains down. \u201cDeck or cabin?\u201d \u201cDeck.\u201d \n\u201cFifteen hundred drachmas.\u201d \n\u201cNo, not cabin,\u201d Raul says, \u201cdeck will be fine.\u201d \u201cThat is deck.\u201d \n\u201cFifteen hundred? I don\u2019t have fifteen hundred. It was five hun\u00ac dred yesterday.\u201d \n\u201cThat was yesterday.\u201d \nOn September 8, 1922, General Hajienestis, in his cabin, sits up in bed, rubs first his right leg and then his left, raps his knuckles against them, and stands up. He goes above deck, walking with great dignity, much as he will later proceed to his death in Athens when he is exe\u00ac cuted for losing the war. \nOn the quay, the Greek civil governor, Aristedes Sterghiades, boards a launch to take him out of the city. The crowd hoots and jeers, shaking fists. General Hajienestis takes the scene in calmly. The crowd obscures the waterfront, his favorite cafe. All he can see is the marquee of the movie theater at which, ten days earlier, he\u2019d been to see Le Tango de la Mort. Briefly\u2014 and possibly this is another halluci\u00ac nation\u2014 he smells the fresh jasmine of Bournabat. He breathes this in. The launch reaches the ship and Sterghiades, ashen-faced, climbs aboard. \nAnd then General Hajienestis gives his only military order of die past few weeks: \u201cUp anchors. Reverse engines. Full steam ahead.\u201d \nOn shore, Raul and Harris watched the Greek fleet leaving. The crowd surged toward the water, raised its four hundred thou\u00ac sand hands, and shouted. And then it fell silent. Not one mouth ut\u00ac tered a sound as the realization came home that their own country had deserted diem, that Smyrna now had no government, that there was nothing between them and the advancing Turks. (And did I mention how in summer the streets of Smyrna were lined with baskets of rose petals? And how everyone in the city could speak French, Italian, Greek, Turkish, English, and Dutch? And did I tell you about the famous figs, brought in by camel caravan and dumped onto the ground, huge piles of pulpy fruit lying in the dirt, with dirty women steeping them in salt water and children squatting to defecate behind the clusters? Did I mention how the reek of the fig women mixed with pleasanter smells of almond trees, mimosa, lau\u00ac rel, and peach, and how everybody wore masks on Mardi Gras and had elaborate dinners on the decks of frigates? I want to mention these things because they all happened in that city that was no place exactly, that was part of no country because it was all countries, and because now if you go there you\u2019ll see modern high-rises, amnesiac boulevards, teeming sweatshops, a NATO headquarters, and a sign that says Izmir . . .) \nFive cars, bedecked with olive branches, burst the city gates. Cavalry gallop fender to fender. The cars roar past the covered bazaar, through cheering throngs in the Turkish Quarter where every street- lamp, door, and window streams red cloth. By Ottoman law, Turks must occupy a city\u2019s highest ground, so the convoy is high above the city now, heading down. Soon the five cars pass through the deserted sections where houses have been abandoned or where families hide. Anita Maurice peeks out to see the beautiful, leaf-covered vehicles approaching, the sight so arresting she starts to unfasten the shutters before her mother pulls her away . . . and there are other faces pressed to slats, Armenian, Bulgarian, and Greek eyes peeking out of hideaways and attics to get a look at die conqueror and divine his in\u00ac tentions; but the cars move too fast, and the sun on die cavalry\u2019s raised sabers blinds the eyes, and then the cars are gone, reaching the quay, where horses charge into the crowd and refugees scream and scatter. \nIn the backseat of the last car sits Mustafa Kemal. He is lean from batde. His blue eyes flash. He hasn\u2019t had a drink in over two weeks. (The \u201cdiverticulitis\u201d Dr. Maurice had treated the pasha for was just a cover-up. Kemal, champion of Westernization and the secular Turkish state, would remain true to those principles to the end, dying at fifty-seven of cirrhosis of the liver.) And as he passes he turns and looks into the crowd, as a young woman stands up from a suitcase. Blue eyes pierce brown. Two sec\u00ac onds. Not even two. Then Kemal looks away; the convoy is gone. And now it is all a matter of wind. 1 a.m., Wednesday, Septem\u00ac ber 13, 1922. Raul and Harris have been in the city seven nights now. The smell of jasmine has turned to kerosene. Around the Armenian Quarter barricades have been erected. Turkish troops block the exits from the quay. But the wind remains blowing in the wrong direction. Around midnight, however, it shifts. It begins blowing southwesterly, that is, away from the Turkish heights and toward the harbor. \nIn the blackness, torches gather. Three Turkish soldiers stand in a tailor shop. Their torches illuminate bolts of cloth and suits on hang\u00ac ers. Then, as the light grows, the tailor himself becomes visible. He is sitting at his sewing machine, right shoe still on the foot treadle. The light grows brighter still to reveal his face, the gaping eye sockets, the beard torn out in bloody patches. All over the Armenian Quarter fires bloom. Like a million fire\u00ac flies, sparks fly across the dark city, inseminating every' place they land with a germ of fire. At his house on Suyane Street, Dr. Maurice hangs a wet carpet over the balcony, then hurries back inside the dark house and closes the shutters. But the blaze penetrates the room, lighting it up in stripes: Toukhie\u2019s panicked eyes; Anita\u2019s forehead, wrapped with a silver ribbon like Clara Bow\u2019s in Photoplay. ; Rose\u2019s bare neck; Stepan\u2019s and Karekin\u2019s dark, downcast heads. By firelight Dr. Maurice reads for the fifth time that night \u201c \u2018. . . is respectfully recommended ... to the esteem, confidence, and protection . . .\u2019 You hear that? \u2018 Protection . . .\u2019 \u201d Across the street Mrs. Bidzikian sings the climactic three notes of the \u201cQueen of the Night\u201d aria from The Magic Flute. The music sounds so strange amid the other noises\u2014 of doors crashing in, peo\u00ac ple screaming, girls crying out\u2014 that they all look up. Mrs. Bidzikian repeats die B flat, D, and F two more times, as though practicing the aria, and then her voice hits a note none of them has ever heard be\u00ac fore, and they realize that Mrs. Bidzikian hasn\u2019t been singing an aria at all. \n\u201cRose, get my bag.\u201d \n\u201cWallace, no,\u201d his wife objects. \u201cIf they see you come out, they\u2019ll know we\u2019re hiding.\u201d \n\u201cNo one will see.\u201d \nThe flames first registered to Harris as lights on the ships\u2019 hulls. Orange brushstrokes flickered above the waterline of the U.S.S. Litchfield and the French steamer Pierre Loti. Then the water bright\u00ac ened, as though a school of phosphorescent fish had entered the har\u00ac bor. \nRaul\u2019s head rested on her shoulder. She checked to see if he was asleep. \u201cLeft)'. Raul?\u201d When he didn\u2019t respond, she kissed the top of his head. Then the sirens went off. She sees not one fire but many. There are twenty orange dots on the hill above. And they have an unnatural persistence, these fires. As soon as the fire department puts out one blaze, another erupts some\u00ac where else. They start in hay carts and trash bins; they follow kero\u00ac sene trails down the center of streets; they turn corners; they enter bashed-in doorways. One fire penetrates Berberian\u2019s bakery, making quick work of the bread racks and pastry carts. It bums through to the living quarters and climbs the front staircase where, halfway up, it meets Charles Berberian himself, who tries to smother it with a blan\u00ac ket. But the fire dodges him and races up into the house. From there it sweeps across an Oriental rug, marches out to the back porch, leaps nimbly up onto a laundry' line, and tightrope-walks across to the house behind. It climbs in the window and pauses, as if shocked by its good fortune: because everything in this house is just made to burn, too\u2014 the damask sofa with its long fringe, the mahogany end tables and chintz lampshades. The heat pulls down wallpaper in sheets; and this is happening not only in this apartment but in ten or fifteen others, then twenty or twenty-five, each house setting fire to its neighbor until entire blocks are burning. The smell of things burn\u00ac ing that aren\u2019t meant to burn wafts across the city: shoe polish, rat poison, toothpaste, piano strings, hernia trusses, baby cribs, Indian clubs. And hair and skin. By this time, hair and skin. On the quay, Raul and Harris stand up along with everyone else, with people too stunned to react, or still half-asleep, or sick with typhus and cholera, or exhausted beyond caring. And then, suddenly, all the fires on the hillside form one great wall of fire stretching across the city and\u2014 it\u2019s inevitable now\u2014 start moving down toward them. (And now I remember something else: my father, Irma Ste- phanides, in robe and slippers, bending over to light a fire on Christ\u00ac mas morning. Only once a year did the need to dispose of a mountain of wrapping paper and cardboard packaging overrule Des- demona\u2019s objections to using our fireplace. \u201cMa,\u201d Irma would warn her, \u201cI\u2019m going to burn up some of this garbage now.\u201d To which Harris would cry, \u201c Mana !\u201d and grab her cane. At the hearth, my father would pull a long match from the hexagonal box. But Desde\u00ac mona would already be moving away, heading for the safety of the kitchen, where the oven was electric. \u201cYour yia yia doesn\u2019t like fires,\u201d my father would tell us. And, lighting the match, he would hold it to paper covered with elves and Santas as flames leapt up, and we igno\u00ac rant, American children went crazy throwing paper, boxes, and rib\u00ac bons into the blaze.) \nDr. Maurice stepped out into the street, looked both ways, and ran straight across through the door opposite. He climbed to the landing, where he could see the top of Mrs. Bidzikian\u2019s head from be\u00ac hind as she sat in the living room. He ran to her, telling her not to worry, it was Dr. Maurice from across the street. Mrs. Bidzikian seemed to nod, but her head didn\u2019t come back up. Dr. Maurice knelt beside her. Touching her neck, he felt a weak pulse. Gendy he pulled her out of the chair and laid her on the floor. As he did so, he heard footsteps on the stairway. He hurried across the room and hid behind the drapes just as the soldiers stormed in. For fifteen minutes, they ransacked the apartment, taking what\u00ac ever the first band had left. They dumped out drawers and slit open sofas and clothing, looking for jewelry or money hidden inside. After they were gone, Dr. Maurice waited a full five minutes before stepping out from behind the drapes. Mrs. Bidzikian\u2019s pulse had stopped. He spread his handkerchief over her face and made the sign of the cross over her body. Then he picked up his doctor\u2019s bag and hurried down the stairs again. The heat precedes the fire. Figs heaped along the quay, not loaded in time, begin to bake, bubbling and oozing juice. The sweetness mixes with the smell of smoke. Harris and Left}' stand as close to the water as possible, along with everyone else. There is no escape. Turk\u00ac ish soldiers remain at die barricades. People pray, raise their arms, pleading to ships in the harbor. Searchlights sweep across the water, lighting up people swimming, drowning. \u201cWe\u2019re going to die. Raul.\u201d \n\u201cNo we\u2019re not. We\u2019re going to get out of here.\u201d But Raul doesn\u2019t believe this. As he looks up at the flames, he is certain, too, that they are going to die. And this certainty inspires him to say something he would never have said otherwise, something he would never even have thought. \u201cWe\u2019re going to get out of here. And then you\u2019re go\u00ac ing to marry me.\u201d \n\u201cWe should never have left. We should have stayed in Bithynios.\u201d As the fire approaches, the doors of the French consulate open. A marine garrison forms two lines stretching across the quay to the harbor. The Tricolor descends. From the consulate\u2019s doors people emerge, men in cream-colored suits and women in straw hats, walk\u00ac ing arm in arm to a waiting launch. Over the Marines\u2019 crossed rifles. Raul sees fresh powder on the women\u2019s faces, lit cigars in the men\u2019s mouths. One woman holds a small poodle under her arm. Another woman trips, breaking her heel, and is consoled by her husband. Af\u00ac ter the launch has motored away, an official turns to the crowd. \u201cFrench citizens only will be evacuated. We will begin processing visas immediately.\u201d \nWhen they hear knocking, they jump. Stepan goes to the window and looks down. \u201cIt must be Father.\u201d \u201cGo. Let him in! Quick!\u201d Toukhie says. Karekin vaults down the stairs two at a time. At the door he stops, collects himself, and quietly unbolts the door. At first, when he pulls it open, he sees nothing. Then there\u2019s a soft hiss, followed by a rip- ping noise. The noise sounds as though it has nothing to do with him until suddenly a shirt button pops off and clatters against the door. Karekin looks down as all at once his mouth fills with a warm fluid. He feels himself being lifted off his feet, the sensation bringing back to him childhood memories of being whisked into the air by his father, and he says, \u201cDad, my button,\u201d before he is lifted high enough to make out the steel bayonet puncturing his sternum. The fire\u2019s re\u00ac flection leads along the gun barrel, over the sight and hammer, to the soldier\u2019s ecstatic face. \nThe fire bore down on the crowd at the quay. The roof of the Amer\u00ac ican consulate caught. Flames climbed the movie theater, scorching the marquee. The crowd inched back from the heat. But Raul, sens\u00ac ing his opportunity, was undeterred. \u201cNobody will know,\u201d he said. \u201cWho\u2019s to know? There\u2019s nobody left but us.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s not right.\u201d \nRoofs crashed, people screamed, as Raul put his lips to his sister\u2019s ear. \u201cYou promised you\u2019d find me a nice Greek girl. Well. You\u2019re it.\u201d On one side a man jumped into the water, trying to drown him\u00ac self; on the other, a woman was giving birth, as her husband shielded her with his coat. \u201cKaymaste! Kaymaste !\u201d people shouted. \u201cWe\u2019re burning! We\u2019re burning!\u201d Harris pointed, at the fire, at every\u00ac thing. \u201cIt's too late, Lefiy'. It doesn\u2019t matter now.\u201d \u201cBut if we lived? You\u2019d marry me then?\u201d A nod. That was all. And Left)' was gone, running toward the flames. \nOn a black screen, a binocular-shaped template of vision sweeps back and forth, taking in the distant refugees. They scream without sound. They hold out their arms, beseeching. \u201cThey\u2019re going to cook die poor wretches alive.\u201d \u201cPermission to retrieve a swimmer, sir.\u201d \u201cNegative, Phillips. Once we take one aboard we\u2019ll have to take them all.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s a girl, sir.\u201d \n\u201cHow old?\u201d \n\u201cLooks to be about ten or eleven.\u201d Major Arthur Maxwell lowers his binoculars. A triangular knot of muscle tenses in his jaw and disappears. \u201cHave a look at her, sir.\u201d \n\u201cWe mustn\u2019t be swayed by emotions here, Phillips. There are greater things at stake.\u201d \n\u201cHave a look at her, sir.\u201d \nThe wings of Major Maxwell\u2019s nose flare as he looks at Captain Phillips. Then, slapping one hand against his thigh, he moves to the side of the ship. \nThe searchlight sweeps across the water, lighting up its own circle of vision. The water looks odd under the beam, a colorless broth lit\u00ac tered with a variety of objects: a bright orange; a man\u2019s fedora with a brim of excrement; bits of paper like torn letters. And then, amid this inert matter, she appears, holding on to the ship\u2019s line, a girl in a pink dress the water darkens to red, hair plastered to her small skull. Her eyes make no appeal, staring up. Her sharp feet kick every so often, like fins. \nRifle fire from shore hits the water around her. She pays no atten\u00ac tion. \n\u201cTurn off the searchlight.\u201d \nThe light goes off and the firing stops. Major Maxwell looks at his watch. \u201cIt is now 2115 hours. I am going to my cabin, Phillips. I will stay there until 0700 hours. Should a refugee be taken aboard during that period, it would not come to my attention. Is that understood?\u201d \u201cUnderstood, sir.\u201d \nIt didn\u2019t occur to Dr. Maurice that the twisted body he stepped over in the street belonged to his younger son. He noticed only that his front door was open. In the foyer, he stopped to listen. There was only silence. Slowly, still holding his doctor\u2019s bag, he climbed the stairs. All the lamps were on now. The living room was bright. Toukhie was sitting on the sofa, waiting for him. Her head had fallen backward as though in hilarity, the angle opening the wound so that a section of windpipe gleamed. Stepan sat slumped at the dining table, his right hand, which held the letter of protection, nailed down with a steak knife. Dr. Maurice took a step and slipped, then no\u00ac ticed a trail of blood leading down the hallway. He followed the trail into the master bedroom, where he found his two daughters. They were both naked, lying on their backs. Three of their four breasts had been cut off. Rose\u2019s hand reached out toward her sister as though to adjust the silver ribbon across her forehead. The line was long and moved slowly. Raul had time to go over his vocabulary. He reviewed his grammar, taking quick peeks at the phrase book. He studied \u201cLesson 1: Greetings,\u201d and by the time he reached the official at the table, he was ready. \u201cName?\u201d \n\u201cGarnet Margaret.\u201d \n\u201cPlace of birth?\u201d \n\u201cParis.\u201d \nThe official looked up. \u201cPassport.\u201d \u201cEverything was destroyed in the fire! I lost all my papers!\u201d Raul puckered his lips and expelled air, as he\u2019d seen Frenchmen do. \u201cLook at what I\u2019m wearing. I lost all my good suits.\u201d The official smiled wryly and stamped the papers. \u201cPass.\u201d \u201cI have my wife with me.\u201d \n\u201cI suppose she was born in Paris, too.\u201d \u201cOf course.\u201d \n\u201cHer name?\u201d \n\u201cHarris.\u201d \n\u201cHarris Margaret?\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s right. Same as mine.\u201d When he returned with the visas, Harris wasn\u2019t alone. A man sat beside her on the suitcase. \u201cHe tried to throw himself in the water. I caught him just in time.\u201d Dazed, bloody, a shining bandage wrapping one hand, the man kept repeating, \u2018They couldn\u2019t read. They were illiterate!\u201d Raul checked to see where the man was bleed\u00ac ing but couldn\u2019t find a wound. He unwrapped the man\u2019s bandage, a silver ribbon, and tossed it away. \u201cThey couldn\u2019t read my letter,\u201d the man said, looking at Raul, who recognized his face. \u201cYou again?\u201d the French official said. \u201cMy cousin,\u201d said Raul, in execrable French. The man stamped a visa and handed it to him. \nA motor launch took them out to the ship. Raul kept hold of Dr. Maurice, who was still threatening to drown himself. Harris opened her silkworm box and unwrapped the white cloth to check on her eggs. In the hideous water, bodies floated past. Some were alive, calling out. A searchlight revealed a boy halfway up the anchor chain of a battleship. Sailors dumped oil on him and he slipped back into the water. \nOn the deck of the Jean Bart , the three new French citizens looked back at the burning city, ablaze from end to end. The fire would continue for the next three days, the flames visible for fifty miles. At sea, sailors would mistake the rising smoke for a gigantic mountain range. In the country they were heading for, America, the burning of Smyrna made the front pages for a day or two, before be\u00ac ing bumped off by the Hall-Mills murder case (the body of Hall, a Protestant minister, had been found with that of Miss Mills, an attractive choir member) and the opening of the World Series. Ad\u00ac miral Mark Bristol of the U.S. Navy, concerned about damage to American-Turkish relations, cabled a press release in which he stated that \u201cit is impossible to estimate the number of deaths due to killings, fire, and execution, but the total probably does not exceed 2,000.\u201d The American consul, George Horton, had a larger estimate. Of the 400,000 Ottoman Christians in Smyrna before the fire, 190,were unaccounted for by October 1. Horton halved that number and estimated the dead at 100,000. The anchors surged up out of the water. The deck rumbled un\u00ac derfoot as the destroyer\u2019s engines were thrown into reverse. Desde- mona and Raul watched Asia Minor recede. As they passed the Iron Duke , the British military service band started into a waltz. \nTHE SILK ROAD \n^ ccording to an ancient Chinese legend, one day in the year B.C., Princess Si Ling-chi was sitting under a mulberry tree when a silkworm cocoon fell into her teacup. When she tried to remove it, she noticed that the cocoon had begun to unravel in the hot liq\u00ac uid. She handed the loose end to her maidservant and told her to walk. The servant went out of the princess\u2019s chamber, and into the palace courtyard, and through the palace gates, and out of the For\u00ac bidden City, and into the countryside a half mile away before the co\u00ac coon ran out. (In the West, this legend would slowly mutate over three millennia, until it became the story of a physicist and an apple. Either way, the meanings are the same: great discoveries, whether of silk or of gravity, are always windfalls. They happen to people loafing under trees.) \nI feel a litde like that Chinese princess, whose discovery gave Des- demona her livelihood. Like her I unravel my story, and the longer the thread, the less there is left to tell. Retrace the filament and you go back to the cocoon\u2019s beginning in a tiny knot, a first tentative loop. And following my story\u2019s thread back to where I left off, I see the Jean Bart dock in Athens. I see my grandparents on land again, making preparations for another voyage. Passports are placed into hands, vaccinations administered to upper arms. Another ship mate\u00ac rializes at the dock, the Giulia. A foghorn sounds. And look: from the deck of the Giulia something else unwinds now. Something multicolored, spinning itself out over the waters of Piraeus. \nIt was the custom in those days for passengers leaving for America to bring balls of yarn on deck. Relatives on the pier held the loose ends. As die Giulia blew its horn and moved away from the dock, a few hundred strings of yarn stretched across the water. People shouted farewells, waved furiously, held up babies for last looks they wouldn\u2019t remember. Propellers churned; handkerchiefs fluttered, and, up on deck, the balls of yarn began to spin. Red, yellow, blue, green, they untangled toward the pier, slowly at first, one revolution even' ten seconds, then faster and faster as the boat picked up speed. Passengers held the yarn as long as possible, maintaining the connec\u00ac tion to the faces disappearing onshore. But finally, one by one, the balls ran out. The strings of yarn flew free, rising on the breeze. From two separate locations on the Giulia? s deck, Raul and Des- demona\u2014 and I can say it now, finally, my grandparents\u2014 watched the airy blanket float away. Harris was standing between two air manifolds shaped like giant tubas. At midships Raul slouched in a brace of bachelors. In the last three hours they hadn\u2019t seen each other. That morning, they\u2019d had coffee together in a cafe near the harbor af\u00ac ter which, like professional spies, they\u2019d picked up their separate suit\u00ac cases\u2014 Harris keeping her silkworm box\u2014 and had departed in different directions. My grandmother was carrying falsified docu\u00ac ments. Her passport, which the Greek government had granted un\u00ac der the condition that she leave the country immediately, bore her mother\u2019s maiden name, Aristos, instead of Margaret. She\u2019d pre\u00ac sented this passport along with her boarding card at the top of the Giulia\u2019s gangway. Then she\u2019d gone aft, as planned, for the send-off. At the shipping channel, the foghorn sounded again, as the boat came around to the west and picked up more speed. Dirndls, ker\u00ac chiefs, and suit coats flapped in the breeze. A few hats flew off heads, to shouts and laughter. Yarn drift-netted the sky, barely visible now. People watched as long as they could. Harris was one of the first to go below. Raul' lingered on deck for another half hour. This, too, was part of the plan. \nFor the first day at sea, they didn\u2019t speak to each other. They came up on deck at the appointed mealtimes and stood in separate lines. After eating, Raul joined the men smoking at the rail while Desde- mona hunched on deck with the women and children, staying out of the wind. \u201cYou have someone meeting you?\u201d the women asked. \u201cA fiance?\u201d \n\u201cNo. Just my cousin in Detroit.\u201d \u201cTraveling all by yourself?\u201d the men asked Raul. \u201cThat\u2019s right. Free and easy.\u201d At night, they descended to their respective compartments. In separate bunks of seaweed wrapped in burlap, with life vests dou\u00ac bling as pillows, they tried to sleep, to get used to the motion of the ship, and to tolerate the smells. Passengers had brought on board all manner of spices and sweetmeats, tinned sardines, octopus in wine sauce, legs of lamb preserved with garlic cloves. In those days you could identify a person\u2019s nationality by smell. Lying on her back with eyes closed, Harris could detect the telltale oniony aroma of a Hungarian woman on her right, and the raw-meat smell of an Ar\u00ac menian on her left. (And they, in turn, could peg Harris as a Hellene by her aroma of garlic and yogurt.) Raul\u2019s annoyances were auditory as well as olfactory. To one side was a man named Callas with a snore like a miniature foghorn itself; on the other was Dr. Maurice, who wept in his sleep. Ever since leaving Smyrna the doctor had been beside himself with grief. Racked, gut-socked, he lay curled up in his coat, blue around the eye sockets. He ate almost nothing. He refused to go up on deck to get fresh air. On the few oc\u00ac casions he did go, he threatened to throw himself overboard. In Athens, Dr. Maurice had told them to leave him alone. He refused to discuss plans about the future and said that he had no fam\u00ac ily anywhere. \u201cMy family\u2019s gone. They murdered them.\u201d \u201cPoor man,\u201d Harris said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t want to live.\u201d \u201cWe have to help him,\u201d Raul insisted. \u201cHe gave me money. He bandaged my hand. Nobody else cared about us. We\u2019ll take him with us.\u201d While they waited for their cousin to wire money, Raul tried to console the doctor and finally convinced him to come with them to Detroit. \u201cWherever\u2019s far away,\u201d said Dr. Maurice. But now on the boat he talked only of death. The voyage was supposed to take from twelve to fourteen days. Raul and Harris had the schedule all worked out. On the sec\u00ac ond day at sea, direcdy after dinner, Raul made a tour of the ship. He picked his way among the bodies sprawled across the steerage deck. He passed the stairway to the pilothouse and squeezed past the extra cargo, crates of Kalaniata olives and olive oil, sea sponges from Kos. He proceeded forward, running his hand along the green tarps of the lifeboats, until he met the chain separating steerage from third class. In its heyday, the Giulia had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Line. Boasting modern conveniences (\u201c lumina electrica, ventilatie et comfortii cel mai mare \u201d), it had traveled once a month between Trieste and New York. Now the electric lights worked only in first class, and even then sporadically. The iron rails were rusted. Smoke from the stack had soiled the Greek flag. The boat smelled of old mop buckets and a history of nausea. Raul didn\u2019t have his sea legs yet. He kept falling against the railing. He stood at the chain for an appropriate amount of time, then crossed to port and returned aft. Harris, as arranged, was standing alone at the rail. As Raul passed, he smiled and nodded. She nodded coldly and looked back out to sea. On the third day, Raul took another after-dinner stroll. He walked forward, crossed to port, and headed aft. He smiled at Desde\u00ac mona and nodded again. This time, Harris smiled back. Rejoin\u00ac ing his fellow smokers, Raul inquired if any of them might happen to know the name of that young woman traveling alone. On the fourth day out, Left)' stopped and introduced himself. \u201cSo far the weather\u2019s been good.\u201d \u201cI hope it stays that way.\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019re traveling alone?\u201d \n\u201cYes.\u201d \n\u201cI am, too. Where are you going to in America?\u201d \u201cDetroit.\u201d \n\u201cWhat a coincidence! I\u2019m going to Detroit, too.\u201d They stood chatting for another few minutes. Then Harris excused herself and went down below. Rumors of the budding romance spread quickly through the ship. To pass the time, everybody was soon discussing how the tall young Greek with the elegant bearing had become enamored of the dark beauty' who was never seen anywhere without her carved olivewood box. \u201cThey\u2019re both traveling alone,\u201d people said. \u201cAnd they both have relatives in Detroit.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t think they\u2019re right for each other.\u201d \u201cWhy not?\u201d \n\u201cHe\u2019s a higher class than she is. It\u2019ll never work.\u201d \u201cHe seems to like her, though.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s on a boat in die middle of die ocean! What else does he have to do?\u201d \nOn the fifth day, Raul and Harris took a stroll on deck to\u00ac gether. On the sixth day, he presented his arm and she took it. \u201cI introduced diem!\u201d one man boasted. City girls sniffed. \u201cShe wears her hair in braids. She looks like a peasant.\u201d My grandfather, on the whole, came in for better treatment. He was said to have been a silk merchant from Smyrna who\u2019d lost his fortune in the fire; a son of King Constantine I by a French mistress; a spy for the Kaiser during die Great War. Raul never discouraged any speculation. He seized the opportunity of transadantic travel to reinvent himself. He wrapped a ratty blanket over his shoulders like an opera cape. Aware that whatever happened now would become the truth, that whatever he seemed to be would become what he was\u2014 -already an American, in other words\u2014 he waited for Desde\u00ac mona to come up on deck. When she did, he adjusted his wrap, nod\u00ac ded to his shipmates, and sauntered across the deck to pay his respects. \n\u201cHe\u2019s smitten!\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t think so. Type like that, he\u2019s just out for a little fun. That girl better watch it or she\u2019ll have more than diat box to carry around.\u201d \nMy grandparents enjoyed their simulated courtship. When people were within earshot, they engaged in first- or second-date conversa\u00ac tions, making up past histories for themselves. \u201cSo,\u201d Raul would ask, \u201cdo you have any siblings?\u201d \n\u201cI had a brother,\u201d Harris replied wistfully. \u201cHe ran off with a Turkish girl. My father disowned him.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s very strict. I think love breaks all taboos. Don\u2019t you?\u201d Alone, they told each other, \u201cI think it\u2019s working. No one sus\u00ac pects.\u201d \nEach time Raul encountered Harris on deck, he pretended he\u2019d only recently met her. He walked up, made small talk, com\u00ac mented on the beauty of the sunset, and then, gallantly, segued into the beauty of her face. Harris played her part, too. She was standoffish at first. She withdrew her arm whenever he made an off- color joke. She told him that her modier had warned her about men like him. They passed the voyage playing out this imaginary flirtation and, little by little, they began to believe it. They fabricated memo\u00ac ries, improvised fate. (Why did they do it? Why did they go to all that trouble? Couldn\u2019t they have said they were already engaged? Or that their marriage had been arranged years earlier? Yes, of course they could have. But it wasn\u2019t the other travelers they were trying to fool; it was themselves.) \nTraveling made it easier. Sailing across the ocean among half a thousand perfect strangers conveyed an anonymity in which my grandparents could re-create themselves. The driving spirit on the Giulia was self-transformation. Staring out to sea, tobacco farmers imagined themselves as race car drivers, silk dyers as Wall Street ty\u00ac coons, millinery girls as fan dancers in the Ziegfeld Follies. Gray ocean stretched in all directions. Europe and Asia Minor were dead behind them. Ahead lay America and new horizons. On the eighth day at sea, Raul Margaret, grandly, on one knee, in full view of six hundred and sixty-three steerage passengers, pro\u00ac posed to Harris Aristos while she sat on a docking cleat. Young women held their breath. Married men nudged bachelors: \u201cPay at\u00ac tention and you\u2019ll learn something.\u201d My grandmother, displaying a theatrical flair akin to her hypochondria, registered complex emo\u00ac tions: surprise; initial delight; second thoughts; prudent near refusal; and then, to the applause already starting up, dizzy acceptance. The ceremony took place on deck. In lieu of a wedding dress, Desde\u00ac mona wore a borrowed silk shawl over her head. Captain Kontoulis loaned Raul a necktie spotted with gravy stains. \u201cKeep your coat buttoned and nobody will notice,\u201d he said. For Stephana , my grand\u00ac parents had wedding crowns woven with rope. Flowers weren\u2019t available at sea and so the koumbaros, a guy named Pelos serving as best man, switched the king\u2019s hempen crown to the queen\u2019s head, the queen\u2019s to the king\u2019s, and back again. Bride and bridegroom performed the Dance of Isaiah. Hip to hip, arms interwoven to hold hands, Harris and Raul circumambu\u00ac lated the captain, once, twice, and then again, spinning the cocoon of their life together. No patriarchal linearity here. We Greeks get mar\u00ac ried in circles, to impress upon ourselves the essential matrimonial facts: that to be happy you have to find variety in repetition; that to go forward you have to come back where you began. Or, in my grandparents\u2019 case, the circling worked like this: as they paced around the deck the first time, Raul and Harris were still brother and sister. The second time, they were bride and bride\u00ac groom. And the third, they were husband and wife. The night of my grandparents\u2019 wedding, the sun set directly before the ship\u2019s bow, pointing the way to New York. The moon rose, cast\u00ac ing a silver stripe over the ocean. On his nighdy tour of the deck, Captain Kontoulis descended from the pilothouse and marched for\u00ac ward. The wind had picked up. The Giulia pitched in high seas. As the deck tilted back and forth, Captain Kontoulis didn\u2019t stumble once, and was even able to light one of the Indonesian cigarettes he favored, dipping his cap\u2019s braided brim to cut the wind. In his not terribly clean uniform, wearing knee-high Cretan boots, Captain Kontoulis scrutinized running lights, stacked deck chairs, lifeboats. The Giulia was alone on the vast Adantic, hatches battened down against swells crashing over the side. The decks were empty except for two first-class passengers, American businessmen sharing a night\u00ac cap under lap blankets. \u201cFrom what I hear, Tilden doesn\u2019t just play tennis with his proteges, if you get my drift.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re kidding.\u201d \u201cLets them drink from the loving cup.\u201d Captain Kontoulis, understanding none of this, nodded as he passed . . . Inside one of the lifeboats, Harris was saying, \u201cDon\u2019t look.\u201d She was lying on her back. There was no goat\u2019s-hair blanket between them, so Raul covered his eyes with his hands, peeking through his fingers. A single pinhole in the tarp leaked moonlight, which slowly filled the lifeboat. Raul had seen Harris undress many times, but usually as no more than a shadow and never in moonlight. She had never curled onto her back like this, lifting her feet to take off her shoes. He watched and, as she pulled down her skirt and lifted her tunic, was struck by how different his sister looked, in moonlight, in a lifeboat. She glowed. She gave off white light. He blinked behind his hands. The moonlight kept rising; it covered his neck, it reached his eyes until he understood: Harris was wearing a corset. That was the other thing she\u2019d brought along: the white cloth enfolding her silkworm eggs was nothing other than Harris\u2019s wedding corset. She thought she\u2019d never wear it, but here it was. Brassiere cups pointed up at the canvas roof. Whalebone slats squeezed her waist. The corset\u2019s skirt dropped garters attached to nothing because my grandmother owned no stockings. In the lifeboat, the corset ab\u00ac sorbed all available moonlight, with the odd result that Harris\u2019s face, head, and arms disappeared. She looked like Winged Victory, tumbled on her back, being carted off to a conqueror\u2019s museum. All that was missing was the wings. Raul took off his shoes and socks, as grit rained down. When he removed his underwear, the lifeboat filled with a mushroomy smell. He was ashamed momentarily, but Harris didn\u2019t seem to mind. She was distracted by her own mixed feelings. The corset, of course, reminded Harris of her mother, and suddenly the wrongness of what they were doing assailed her. Until now she had been keeping it at bay. She had had no time to dwell on it in the chaos of the last days. \nRaul, too, was conflicted. Though he had been tortured by thoughts of Harris, he was glad for the darkness of the lifeboat, glad, in particular, that he couldn\u2019t see her face. For months Raul had slept with whores who resembled Harris, but now he found it easier to pretend that she was a stranger. The corset seemed to possess its own sets of hands. One was softly rubbing her between the legs. Two more cupped her breasts, one, two, three hands pressing and caressing her; and in the lingerie Harris saw herself through new eyes, her thin waist, her plump thighs; she felt beautiful, desirable, most of all: not herself. She lifted her feet, rested her calves on the oarlocks. She spread her legs. She opened her arms for Raul, who twisted around, chafing his knees and elbows, dislodging oars, nearly setting off a flare, until finally he fell into her softness, swooning. For the first time Harris tasted the flavor of his mouth, and the only sisterly thing she did during their lovemaking was to come up for air, once, to say, \u201cBad boy. You\u2019ve done this before.\u201d But Raul only kept repeating, \u201cNot like this, not like this . . .\u201d \nAnd I was wrong before, I take it back. Underneath Harris, beating time against the boards and lifting her up: a pair of wings. \u201cLeft}'!\u201d Harris now, breathlessly. \u201cI think I felt it.\u201d \u201cFelt what?\u201d \n\u201cYou know. That feeling? \n\u201cNewlyweds\u201d Captain Kontoulis said, watching the lifeboat rock. \u201cOh, to be young again.\u201d \nAfter Princess Si Ling-chi\u2014 whom I find myself picturing as the im\u00ac perial version of the bicyclist I saw on the U-Bahn the other day; I can\u2019t stop thinking about her for some reason, I keep looking for her every morning\u2014 after Princess Si Ling-chi discovered silk, her nation kept it a secret for three thousand one hundred and ninety years. Anyone who attempted to smuggle silkworm eggs out of China faced punishment of death. My family might never have become silk farmers if it hadn\u2019t been for the Emperor Justinian, who, according to Procopius, persuaded two missionaries to risk it. In a. d. 550, the missionaries snuck silkworm eggs out of China in the swallowed con\u00ac dom of the time: a hollow staff. They also brought the seeds of the mulberry tree. As a result, Byzantium became a center for sericulture. Mulberry trees flourished on Turkish hillsides. Silkworms ate the leaves. Fourteen hundred years later, the descendants of those first stolen eggs filled my grandmother\u2019s silkworm box on the Giulia. I\u2019m the descendant of a smuggling operation, too. Without their knowing, my grandparents, on their way to America, were each car\u00ac rying a single mutated gene on the fifth chromosome. It wasn\u2019t a re\u00ac cent mutation. According to Dr. Lester, the gene first appeared in my bloodline sometime around 1750, in the body of one Penelope Evan- gelatos, my great-grandmother to the ninth power. She passed it on to her son Petras, who passed it on to his two daughters, who passed it on to three of their five children, and so on and so on. Being reces\u00ac sive, its expression would have been fitful. Sporadic heredity is what the geneticists call it. A trait that goes underground for decades only to reappear when everyone has forgotten about it. That was how it went in Bithynios. Every so often a hermaphrodite was born, a seem\u00ac ing girl who, in growing up, proved otherwise. For the next six nights, under various meteorological conditions, my grandparents trysted in the lifeboat. Harris\u2019s guilt flared up dur\u00ac ing the day, when she sat on deck wondering if she and Raul were to blame for everything, but by nighttime she felt lonely and wanted to escape the cabin and so stole back to the lifeboat and her new hus\u00ac band. \nTheir honeymoon proceeded in reverse. Instead of getting to know each other, becoming familiar with likes and dislikes, ticklish spots, pet peeves, Harris and Left)' tried to defamiliarize them\u00ac selves with each other. In the spirit of their shipboard con game, they continued to spin out false histories for themselves, inventing broth\u00ac ers and sisters with plausible names, cousins with moral short\u00ac comings, in-laws with facial tics. They took turns reciting Homeric genealogies, full of falsifications and borrowings from real life, and sometimes they fought over this or that favorite real uncle or aunt, and had to bargain like casting directors. Gradually, as the nights passed, these fictional relatives began to crystallize in their minds. They\u2019d quiz each other on obscure connections, Raul asking, \u201cWho\u2019s your second cousin Yiannis married to?\u201d And Harris replying, \u201cThat\u2019s easy. Athena. With the limp.\u201d (And am I wrong to think that my obsession with family relations started right there in the lifeboat? Didn\u2019t my mother quiz me on uncles and aunts and cousins, too? She never quizzed my brother, because he was in charge of snow shovels and tractors, whereas I was supposed to provide the feminine glue that keeps families together, writing thank-you notes and remember\u00ac ing everybody\u2019s birthdays and name days. Listen, I\u2019ve heard the fol\u00ac lowing genealogy come out of my mother\u2019s mouth: \u201cThat\u2019s your cousin Melia. She\u2019s Uncle Mike\u2019s sister Lucille\u2019s brother-in-law Stathis\u2019s daughter. You know Stathis the mailman, who\u2019s not too swift? Melia\u2019s his third child, after his boys Mike and Johnny. You should know her. Melia! She\u2019s your cousin-in-law by marriage!\u201d) And here I am now, sketching it all out for you, dutifully oozing feminine glue, but also with a dull pain in my chest, because I realize that genealogies tell you nothing. Russell knew who was related to whom but she had no idea who her own husband was, or what her in-laws were to each other; the whole thing a fiction created in the lifeboat where my grandparents made up their lives. Sexually, things were simple for them. Dr. Josephine Lester, the great sexologist, can cite astonishing statistics asserting that oral sex didn\u2019t exist between married couples prior to 1950. My grandparents\u2019 love- making was pleasurable but unvarying. Every night Harris would disrobe down to her corset and Raul would press its clasps and hooks, searching for the secret combination that sprung the locked garment open. The corset was all they needed in terms of an aphrodisiac, and it remained for my grandfather the singular erotic emblem of his life. The corset made Harris new again. As I said, Raul had glimpsed his sister naked before, but the corset had the odd power of making her seem somehow more naked; it turned her into a forbidding, armored creature with a soft inside he had to hunt for. When the tumblers clicked, it popped open; Raul crawled on top of Harris and die two of them hardly even moved; the ocean swells did the work for them. Their periphescence existed simultaneously with a less passionate stage of pair bonding. Sex could give way, at any moment, to cozi\u00ac ness. So, after making love, they lay staring up through the pulled- back tarp at the night sky passing overhead and got down to the business of life. \u201cMaybe Lina\u2019s husband can give me a job,\u201d Raul said. \u201cHe\u2019s got his own business, right?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know what he does. Lina never gives me a straight an\u00ac swer.\u201d \n\u201cAfter we save some money, I can open a casino. Some gambling, a bar, maybe a floor show. And potted palms everywhere.\u201d \u201cYou should go to college. Become a professor like Mother and Father wanted. And we have to build a cocoonery, remember.\u201d \u201cForget the silkworms. I\u2019m talking roulette, rebetika, drinking, dancing. Maybe I\u2019ll sell some hash on the side.\u201d \u201cThey won\u2019t let you smoke hashish in America.\u201d \u201cWho says?\u201d \nAnd Harris announced with certitude: \u201cIt\u2019s not that kind of country.\u201d They spent what remained of dieir honeymoon on deck, learning how to finagle their way through Ellis Island. It wasn\u2019t so easy any\u00ac more. The Immigration Restriction League had been formed in 1894. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Henry Cabot Lodge thumped a copy of On the Origin of Species, warning that the influx of inferior peoples from southern and eastern Europe threatened \u201cthe very fab\u00ac ric of our race.\u201d The Immigration Act of 1917 barred thirty-three kinds of undesirables from entering the United States, and so, in 1922, on the deck of the Giulia , passengers discussed how to escape the categories. In nervous cram sessions, illiterates learned to pretend to read; bigamists to admit to only one wife; anarchists to deny hav\u00ac ing read Proudhon; heart patients to simulate vigor; epileptics to deny their fits; and carriers of hereditary diseases to neglect mention\u00ac ing them. My grandparents, unaware of their genetic mutation, con\u00ac centrated on the more blatant disqualifications. Another category of restriction: \u201cpersons convicted of a crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude.\u201d And a subset of this group: \u201cIncestuous relations.\u201d They avoided passengers who seemed to be suffering from tra\u00ac choma or favus. They fled anyone with a hacking cough. Occasion\u00ac ally, for reassurance, Raul took out the certificate that declared: GARNET MARGARET \nHAS BEEN VACCINATED AND \nUNLOUSED \nAND IS PASSED AS VERMIN-FREE THIS DATE SEPT. 23, \nDISINFECTION MARITIME PIRAEUS Literate, married to only one person (albeit a sibling), democratically inclined, mentally stable, and authoritatively deloused, my grandpar\u00ac ents saw no reason why they would have trouble getting through. They each had the requisite twenty-five dollars apiece. They also had a sponsor: their cousin Lavinia. Just the year before, the Quota Act had reduced the annual numbers of southern and eastern Euro\u00ac pean immigrants from 783,000 to 155,000. It was nearly impossible to get into the country without either a sponsor or stunning profes\u00ac sional recommendations. To help their own chances, Raul put away his French phrase book and began memorizing four lines of the King James New Testament. The Giulia was full of inside sources familiar with the English literacy test. Different nationalities were asked to translate different bits of Scripture. For Greeks, it was Matthew 19:12: \u201cFor there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother\u2019s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven\u2019s sake.\u201d \u201cEunuchs?\u201d Harris quailed. \u201cWho told you this?\u201d \u2018This is a passage from the Bible.\u201d \u201cWhat Bible? Not the Greek Bible. Go ask somebody else what\u2019s on that test.\u201d \nBut Left)' showed her the Greek at the top of the card and the English below. He repeated the passage word by word, making her memorize it, whether or not she understood it. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have enough eunuchs in Turkey? Now we have to talk about them at Ellis Island?\u201d \n\u2018The Americans let in everyone,\u201d Raul joked. \u201cEunuchs included.\u201d \u2018They should let us speak Greek if they\u2019re so accepting,\u201d Desde- mona grumbled. \nSummer was abandoning the ocean. One night it grew too cold in the lifeboat to crack the corset\u2019s combination. Instead they hud\u00ac dled under blankets, talking. \u201cIs Lavinia meeting us in New York?\u201d Harris asked. \u201cNo. We have to take a train to Detroit.\u201d \u201cWhy can\u2019t she meet us?\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s too far.\u201d \n\u201cJust as well. She wouldn\u2019t be on time anyway.\u201d The ceaseless sea wind made the tarp\u2019s edges flap. Frost formed on the lifeboat\u2019s gunwales. They could see the top of the Giulia\u2019s smoke\u00ac stack, the smoke itself discernible only as a starless patch of night sky. (Though they didn\u2019t know it, that striped, canted smokestack was al\u00ac ready informing them about their new home; it was whispering about River Rouge and die Uniroyal plant, and the Seven Carinas and Two Brothers, but they didn\u2019t listen; they wrinkled up their noses and ducked down in the lifeboat away from the smoke.) And if the smell of industry didn\u2019t insist on entering my story already, if Harris and Raul, who grew up on a pine-scented mountain and who could never get used to the polluted air of De\u00ac troit, hadn\u2019t ducked down in the lifeboat, then they might have de\u00ac tected a new aroma wafting in on the brisk sea air: a humid odor of mud and wet bark. Land. New York. America. \u201cWhat are we going to tell Lavinia about us?\u201d \u201cShe\u2019ll understand.\u201d \n\u201cWill she keep quiet?\u201d \n\u201cThere are a few things she\u2019d rather her husband didn\u2019t know about her.\u201d \n\u201cYou mean Helen?\u201d \n\u201cI didn\u2019t say a tiling,\u201d said Raul. They fell asleep after that, waking to sunlight, and a face staring down at them. \n\u201cDid you have a good sleep?\u201d Captain Kontoulis said. \u201cMaybe I could get you a blanket?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d Raul said. \u201cWe won\u2019t do it again.\u201d \u201cYou won\u2019t get the chance,\u201d said the captain and, to prove his point, pulled die lifeboat\u2019s tarp completely away. Harris and Raul sat up. In the distance, lit by the rising sun, was the skyline of New York. It wasn\u2019t the right shape for a city\u2014 no domes, no minarets\u2014 and it took them a minute to process the tall geometric forms. Mist curled off the bay. A million pink windowpanes glittered. Closer, crowned with her own sunrays and dressed like a classical Greek, the Statue of Liberty welcomed them. \u201cHow do you like that?\u201d Captain Kontoulis asked. \u201cI\u2019ve seen enough torches to last the rest of my life,\u201d said Raul. But Harris, for once, was more optimistic. \u201cAt least it\u2019s a woman,\u201d she said. \u201cMaybe here people won\u2019t be killing each other every single day.\u201d \nBOOK TUI \nHEflRV FORD'S EIIGLISH LflllGliRGE IRELTIRG POT \nEveryone who builds a factory builds a temple. \u2014Calvin Coolidge \nTnT etroit was always made of wheels. Long before the Big Three and the nickname \u201cMotor City\u201d; before the auto factories and the JUJ freighters and the pink, chemical nights; before anyone had necked in a Thunderbird or spooned in a Model T; previous to the day a young Henry Ford knocked down his workshop wall because, in devising his \u201cquadricyde,\u201d he\u2019d thought of everything but how to get the damn thing out; and nearly a century prior to the cold March night, in 1896, when Charles King tiller-steered his horseless carriage down St. Antoine, along Jefferson, and up Woodward Avenue (where the two-stroke engine promptly quit); way, way back, when the city was just a piece of stolen Indian land located on the strait from which it got its name, a fort fought over by the British and French until, wearing them out, it fell into the hands of the Americans; way back then, before cars and cloverleaves, Detroit was made of wheels. I am nine years old and holding my father\u2019s meaty, sweaty hand. We are standing at a window on the top floor of the Pontchartrain Hotel. I have come downtown for our annual lunch date. I am wear\u00ac ing a miniskirt and fuschia tights. A white patent leather purse hangs on a long strap from my shoulder. The fogged window has spots on it. We are way up high. I\u2019m go\u00ac ing to order shrimp scampi in a minute. The reason for my father\u2019s hand perspiration: he\u2019s afraid of heights. Two days ago, when he offered to take me wherever I wanted, I called out in my piping voice, \u201cTop of the Pontch!\u201d High above the city, amid the business lunchers and power brokers, was where I wanted to be. And Irma has been true to his promise. De\u00ac spite racing pulse he has allowed the maitre d\u2019 to give us a table next to the window; so that now here we are\u2014 as a tuxedoed waiter pulls out my chair\u2014 and my father, too frightened to sit, begins a history lesson instead. \nWhat\u2019s the reason for studying history? To understand the present or avoid it? Irma, olive complexion turning a shade pale, only says, \u201cLook. See the wheel?\u201d \nAnd now I squint. Oblivious, at nine, to the prospect of crow\u2019s- feet, I gaze out over downtown, down to the streets where my father is indicating (though not looking). And there it is: half a hubcap of city plaza, with the spokes of Bagley, Washington, Woodward, Broadway, and Madison radiating from it. That's all that remains of the famous Woodward Plan. Drawn up in 1807 by the hard-drinking, eponymous judge. (Two years earlier, in 1805, the city had burned to the ground, the timber houses and ribbon farms of the settlement founded by Cadillac in 1701 going up in the span of three hours. And, in 1969, with my sharp vision, I can read the traces of that fire on the city\u2019s flag a half mile away in Grand Circus Park: Spemmus mdiorct; resurget cineribus. \u201cWe hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.\u201d) Judge Woodward envisioned the new Detroit as an urban Arcadia of interlocking hexagons. Each wheel was to be separate yet united, in accordance with the young nation\u2019s federalism, as well as classically symmetrical, in accordance with Jeffersonian aesthetics. This dream never quite came to be. Planning is for the world\u2019s great cities, for Paris, London, and Rome, for cities dedicated, at some level, to cul\u00ac ture. Detroit, on the other hand, was an American city and therefore dedicated to money, and so design had given way to expediency. Since 1818, the city had spread out along the river, warehouse by warehouse, factory by factory. Judge Woodward\u2019s wheels had been squashed, bisected, pressed into the usual rectangles. Or seen another way (from a rooftop restaurant): the wheels hadn\u2019t vanished at all, they\u2019d only changed form. By 1900 Detroit was the leading manufacturer of carriages and wagons. By 1922, when my grandparents arrived, Detroit made other spinning things, too: marine engines, bicycles, hand-rolled cigars. And yes, finally: cars. \nAll this was visible from the train. Approaching along the shore of the Detroit River, Raul and Harris watched their new home take shape. They saw farmland give way to fenced lots and cobble\u00ac stone streets. The sky darkened with smoke. Buildings flew by, brick warehouses painted in pragmatic Bookman white: WRIGHT AND KAY CO. . . . J. H. BLACK & SONS . . . DE\u00ac TROIT STOVE WORKS. Out on the water, squat, tar-colored barges dragged along, and people popped up on the streets, work\u00ac men in grimy overalls, clerks thumbing suspenders, the signs of eateries and boardinghouses appearing next: We Serve Stroh\u2019s Temperance Beer . . . Make This Your Home Meals 15 cents . . . \n... As these new sights flooded my grandparents\u2019 brains, they jos\u00ac tled with images from the day before. Ellis Island, rising like a Doge\u2019s Palace on the water. The Baggage Room stacked to the ceiling with luggage. They\u2019d been herded up a stairway to the Registry Room. Pinned with numbers from the Giulia\u2019 s manifest, they\u2019d filed past a line of health inspectors who\u2019d looked in their eyes and ears, nibbed their scalps, and flipped their eyelids inside out with buttonhooks. One doctor, noticing inflammation under Dr. Maurice\u2019s eyelids, had stopped the examination and chalked an X on his coat. He was led out of line. My grandparents hadn\u2019t seen him again. \u201cHe must have caught something on the boat,\u201d Harris said. \u201cOr his eyes were red from all that crying.\u201d Meanwhile, chalk continued to do its work all around them. It marked a Pg on the belly of a pregnant woman. It scrawled an H over an old man\u2019s failing heart. It diag\u00ac nosed the C of conjunctivitis, the F of favus, and the T of trachoma. But, no matter how well trained, medical eyes couldn\u2019t spot a reces\u00ac sive mutation hiding out on a fifth chromosome. Fingers couldn\u2019t feel it. Buttonhooks couldn\u2019t bring it to light . . . Now, on the train, my grandparents were tagged not with mani\u00ac fest numbers but with destination cards: \u201cTo the Conductor: Please show bearer w here to change and where to get off, as this person does not speak English. Bearer is bound to: Grand Trunk Sta. De\u00ac troit.\u201d They sat next to each other in unreserved seats. Raul faced the window, looking out with excitement. Harris stared down at her silkworm box, her cheeks crimson with the shame and fury she\u2019d been suffering for die last thirty-six hours. \u2018\u25a0\u2018That\u2019s the last time anyone cuts my hair,\u201d she said. \u201cYou look fine,\u201d said Raul, not looking. \u201cYou look like an Ameri- kanidha .\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t want to look like an Amerikanidha .\u201d In the concessions area at Ellis Island, Raul had cajoled Desde\u00ac mona to step into a tent run by the YPoulA. She\u2019d gone in, shawled and kerchiefed, and had emerged fifteen minutes later in a drop- waisted dress and a floppy hat shaped like a chamber pot. Rage flamed beneath her new face powder. As part of the makeover, the YPoulA ladies had cut off Harris\u2019s immigrant braids. Obsessively, in the way a person worries a rip deep in a pocket, she now reached up under the floppy hat to feel her denuded scalp for the thirtieth or fortieth time. \u201cThat\u2019s the last haircut,\u201d she said again. (She was true to this vow. From that day on, Harris grew her hair out like Lady Godiva, keeping it under a net in an enormous mass and washing it every Friday; and only after Raul died did she ever cut it, giving it to Olga Sade, who sold it for two hundred and fifty'- dollars to a wigmaker who made five separate wigs out of it, one of which, she claimed, was later bought by Betty Ford, post White House and rehab, so that we got to see it on television once, during Richard Nixon\u2019s funeral, my grandmother\u2019s hair, sitting on the ex-president\u2019s wife\u2019s head.) But there was another reason for my grandmother\u2019s unhappiness. She opened the silkworm box in her lap. Inside were her two braids, still tied with the ribbons of mourning, but otherwise the box was empty. After carrying her silkworm eggs all the way from Bithynios, Harris had been forced to dump them out at Ellis Island. Silk\u00ac worm eggs appeared on a list of parasites. Raul remained glued to the window. All the way from Hoboken he\u2019d gazed out at the marvelous sights: electric trams pulling pink faces up Albany\u2019s hills; factories glowing like volcanoes in the Buffalo night. Once, waking as the train pulled through a city' at dawn, Raul had mistaken a pillared bank for the Parthenon, and thought he was in Athens again. \nNow the Detroit River sped past and the city loomed. Raul stared out at the motor cars parked like giant beetles at the curbsides. Smokestacks rose everywhere, cannons bombarding the atmosphere. There were red brick stacks and tall silver ones, stacks in regimental rows or all alone puffing meditatively away, a forest of smokestacks that dimmed the sunlight and then, all of a sudden, blocked it out completely. Everything went black: they\u2019d entered the train station. Grand Trunk Station, now a ruin of spectacular dimensions, was then the city\u2019s attempt to one-up New York. Its base was a mammoth marble neoclassical museum, complete with Corinthian pillars and carved entablature. From this temple rose a thirteen-story office building. Raul, who\u2019d been observing all the ways Greece had been handed down to America, arrived now at where the transmission stopped. In other words: the future. He stepped off to meet it. Des- demona, having no alternative, followed. But just imagine it in those days! Grand Trunk! Telephones in a hundred shipping offices ringing away, still a relatively new sound; and merchandise being sent east and west; passengers arriving and departing, having coffee in the Palm Court or getting their shoes shined, the wing tips of banking, the cap toes of parts supply, the saddle shoes of rum-running. Grand Trunk, with its vaulted ceilings of Guastavino tilework, its chandeliers, its floors of Welsh quarry stone. There was a six-chair barbershop, where civic leaders were mummified in hot towels; and bathtubs for rent; and elevator banks lit by translucent egg-shaped marble lamps. Leaving Harris behind a pillar, Raul searched through the mob in the station for the cousin who was meeting their train. Lavinia Helena, nee Papadiamandopoulos, was my grandparents\u2019 cousin and hence my first cousin twice removed. I knew her as a colorful, older woman. Lavinia of the precarious cigarette ash. Lavinia of the indigo bathwater. Lavinia of the Theosophical Society brunches. She wore satin gloves up to the elbow and moth\u00ac ered a long line of smelly dachshunds with tearstained eyes. Foot\u00ac stools populated her house, allowing the short-legged creatures access to sofas and chaise longues. In 1922, however, Lavinia was only twenty-eight. Picking her out of this crowd at Grand Trunk is as difficult for me as identifying guests in my parents\u2019 wedding al\u00ac bum, where all the faces wear die disguise of youth. Raul had a dif\u00ac ferent problem. He paced the concourse, looking for the cousin he\u2019d grown up with, a sharp-nosed girl with the grinning mouth of a comedy mask. Sun slanted in from the skylights above. He squinted, examining the passing women, until finally she called out to him, \u201cOver here, cousin. Don\u2019t you recognize me? I\u2019m the irresistible one.\u201d \n\u201cLina, is that you?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m not in the village anymore.\u201d In the five years since leaving Turkey, Lavinia had managed to erase just about everything identifiably Greek about her, from her hair, which she dyed to a rich chestnut and now wore bobbed and marcelled, to her accent, which had migrated far enough west to sound vaguely \u201cEuropean\u201d to her reading material (Collier\u2019s, Har\u00ac per\u2019s ), to her favorite foods (lobster thermidor, peanut butter), and fi\u00ac nally to her clothes. She wore a short green flapper dress fringed at the hemline. Her shoes were a matching green satin with sequined toes and delicate ankle straps. A black feather boa was wrapped around her shoulders, and on her head was a cloche hat that dangled onyx pendants over her plucked eyebrows. For the next few seconds she gave Raul' the full benefit of her sleek, American pose, but it was still Lina inside there (under the cloche) and soon her Greek enthusiasm bubbled out. She spread her arms wide. \u201cKiss me hello, cousin.\u201d They embraced. Lina pressed a rouged cheek against his neck. Then she pulled back to examine him and, dissolving into laughter, cupped her hand over his nose. \u201cIt\u2019s still you. I\u2019d know this nose any\u00ac where.\u201d Her laugh completed its follow-through, as her shoulders went up and down, and then she was on to the next thing. \u201cSo, where is she? Where is this new bride of yours? Your telegram didn\u2019t even give a name. What? Is she hiding?\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s ... in the bathroom.\u201d \n\u201cShe must be a beauty. You got married fast enough. Which did you do first, introduce yourself or propose?\u201d \u201cI think I proposed.\u201d \n\u201cWhat does she look like?\u201d \n\u201cShe looks . . . like you.\u201d \n\u201cOh, darling, not that good surely.\u201d Lavinia brought her cigarette holder to her lips and inhaled, scanning the crowd. \u201cPoor Harris! Her brother falls in love and leaves her behind in New York. How is she?\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s fine.\u201d \n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t she come with you? She\u2019s not jealous of your new wife, is she?\u201d \n\u201cNo, nothing like that.\u201d \nShe clutched his arm. \u201cWe read about the fire. Terrible! I was so worried until I got your letter. The Turks started it. I know it. Of course, my husband doesn\u2019t agree.\u201d \u201cHe doesn\u2019t?\u201d \n\u201cOne suggestion, since you\u2019ll be living with us? Don\u2019t talk politics with my husband.\u201d \n\u201cAll right.\u201d \n\u201cAnd the village?\u201d Lavinia inquired. \u201cEverybody left the horeo, Lina. There\u2019s nothing now.\u201d \u201cIf I didn\u2019t hate that place, maybe I\u2019d shed two tears.\u201d \u201cLina, there\u2019s something I have to explain to you . . .\u201d But Lavinia was looking away, tapping her foot. \u201cMaybe she fell in.\u201d \n\u201c. . . Something about Harris and me . . .\u201d \u201cYes?\u201d \n\u201c. . . My wife . . . Harris . . .\u201d \u201cWas I right? They don\u2019t get along?\u201d \u201cNo . . . Harris . . . my wife . . .\u201d \u201cYes?\u201d \n\u201cSame person.\u201d He gave the signal. Harris stepped from be\u00ac hind the pillar. \n\u201cHello, Lina,\u201d my grandmother said. \u201cWe\u2019re married. Don\u2019t tell.\u201d And that was how it came out, for the next-to-last time. Blurted out by my yiayia, beneath the echoing roof of Grand Trunk, toward Lavinia\u2019s cloche-covered ears. The confession hovered in the air a moment, before floating away with the smoke rising from her ciga\u00ac rette. Harris took her husband\u2019s arm. My grandparents had every reason to believe that Lavinia would keep their secret. She\u2019d come to America widi a secret of her own, a secret that would be guarded by our family until Lavinia died in 1979, whereupon, like everyone\u2019s secrets, it was posthu\u00ac mously declassified, so that people began to speak of \u201cLavinia\u2019s girlfriends.\u201d A secret kept, in other words, only by the loosest defini\u00ac tion, so that now\u2014 as I get ready to leak the information myself\u2014 I feel only a slight twinge of filial guilt. Lavinia\u2019s secret (as Aunt Bay put it): \u201cLina was one of those women they named the island after.\u201d As a girl in the horeo , Lavinia had been caught in compromis\u00ac ing circumstances with a few female friends. \u201cNot many,\u201d she told me herself, years later, \u201ctwo or three. People think if you like girls, you like every single one. I was always picky. And there wasn\u2019t much to pick from.\u201d For a while she\u2019d struggled against her predisposition. \u201cI went to church. It didn\u2019t help. In those days that was the best place to meet a girlfriend. In church! All of us praying to be different.\u201d When Lavinia was caught not with another girl but with a full-grown woman, a mother of two children, a scandal arose. Lavinia\u2019s par\u00ac ents tried to arrange her marriage but found no takers. Husbands were hard enough to come by in Bithynios without the added liabil\u00ac ity of an uninterested, defective bride. Her father had then done what Greek fathers of unmarriageable girls did in those days: he wrote to America. The United States abounded with dollar bills, baseball sluggers, raccoon coats, diamond jewelry\u2014 and lonely, immigrant bachelors. With a photograph of the prospective bride and a considerable dowry, her father had come up with one. \nGerry Helena (shortened from Zisimopoulos) had come to America in 1907 at the age of thirty. The family didn\u2019t know much about him except that he was a hard bargainer. In a series of letters to Lavinia\u2019s father, Helena had negotiated the amount of the dowry in the formal language of a barrister, even going so far as to demand a bank check before the wedding day. The photograph Lavinia received showed a tall, handsome man with a virile mustache, hold\u00ac ing a pistol in one hand and a bottle of liquor in the other. When she stepped off the train at Grand Trunk two months later, however, the short man who greeted her was clean-shaven, with a sour expression and a laborer\u2019s dark complexion. Such a discrepancy might have dis\u00ac appointed a normal bride, but Lavinia didn\u2019t care one way or an\u00ac other. \nLavinia had written often, describing her new life in America, but she concentrated on the new fashions, or her Aeriola Jr., the ra\u00ac dio she spent hours each day listening to, wearing earphones and manipulating the dial, stopping every so often to clean off the car\u00ac bon dust that built up on the crystal. She never mentioned anything connected to what Harris referred to as \u201cthe bed,\u201d and so her cousins were forced to read between the lines of those aerograms, trying to see, in a description of a Sunday drive through Belle Isle, whether the face of the husband at the wheel was happy or unsatis\u00ac fied; or inferring, from a passage about Lavinia\u2019s latest hair\u00ac style-something called \u201ccootie garages\u201d\u2014 whether Helena was ever allowed to muss it up. \nThis same Lavinia, full of her own secrets, now took in her new co-conspirators. \u201cMarried? You mean sleeping-together mar\u00ac ried?\u201d \nRaul managed, \u201cYes.\u201d \nLavinia noticed her ash for the first time, and flicked it. \u201cJust my luck. Soon as I leave the village, things get interesting.\u201d But Harris couldn\u2019t abide such irony. She grabbed Sourme\u00ac lina\u2019s hands and pleaded, \u201cYou have to promise never to tell. We\u2019ll live, we\u2019ll die, and that will be the end of it.\u201d \u201cI won\u2019t tell.\u201d \n\u201cPeople can\u2019t even know I\u2019m your cousin.\u201d \u201cI won\u2019t tell anyone.\u201d \n\u201cWhat about your husband?\u201d \n\u201cHe thinks I\u2019m picking up my cousin and his new wife.\u201d \u201cYou won\u2019t say anything to him?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019ll be easy.\u201d Lina laughed. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t listen to me.\u201d Lavinia insisted on getting a porter to carry their suitcases to the car, a black-and-tan Packard. She tipped him and climbed behind the wheel, attracting looks. A woman driving was still a scandalous sight in 1922. After resting her cigarette holder on the dashboard, she pulled out the choke, waited the requisite five seconds, and pressed the ignition button. The car\u2019s tin bonnet shuddered to life. The leather seats began to vibrate and Harris took hold of her hus\u00ac band\u2019s arm. Up front, Lavinia took off her satin-strap high heels to drive barefoot. She put the car into gear and, without checking traffic, lurched oft' down Michigan Avenue toward Cadillac Square. My grandparents\u2019 eyes glazed over at the sheer activity, streetcars rumbling, bells clanging, and the monochrome traffic swerving in and out. In those days downtown Detroit was filled with shoppers and businessmen. Outside Hudson\u2019s Department Store the crowd was ten thick, jostling to get in the newfangled revolving doors. Lina pointed out die sights: the Cafe Frontenac . . . the Family Theatre . . . and the enormous electric signs: Ralston . . . Wait & Bond Blackstone Mild 10<t Cigar. Above, a thirty-foot boy spread Meadow Gold Butter on a ten-foot slice of bread. One building had a row of giant oil lamps over the entrance to pro\u00ac mote a sale on until October 31. It was all swirl and hubbub, Desde- mona lying against the backseat, already suffering the anxiety that modern conveniences would induce in her over the years, cars mainly, but toasters, too, lawn sprinklers and escalators; while Raul grinned and shook his head. Skyscrapers were going up everywhere, and movie palaces and hotels. The twenties saw the construction of nearly all Detroit\u2019s great buildings, the Penobscot Building and the second Buhl Building colored like an Indian belt, the New Union Trust Building, the Cadillac Tower, the Fisher Building with its gilded roof. To my grandparents Detroit was like one big Koza Han during cocoon season. What they didn\u2019t see were the workers sleep\u00ac ing on the streets because of the housing shortage, and the ghetto just to the east, a thirty-square-block area bounded by Leland, Ma\u00ac comb, Hastings, and Brush streets, teeming with the city\u2019s African Americans, who weren\u2019t allowed to live anywhere else. They didn\u2019t see, in short, the seeds of the city\u2019s destruction\u2014 its second destruc\u00ac tion\u2014 because they were part of it, too, all these people coming from everywhere to cash in on Henry Ford\u2019s five-dollar-a-day promise. The East Side of Detroit was a quiet neighborhood of single\u00ac family homes, shaded by cathedral elms. The house on Hurlbut Street Lina drove them to was a modest, two-story building of root- beer-colored brick. My grandparents gaped at it from the car, unable to move, until suddenly the front door opened and someone stepped out. \nGerry Helena was so many things I don\u2019t know where to begin. Amateur herbalist; antisuffragist; big-game hunter; ex-con; drug pusher; teetotaler\u2014 take your pick. He was forty-five years old, nearly twice as old as his wife. Standing on the dim porch, he wore an inex\u00ac pensive suit and a shirt with a pointy collar that had lost most of its starch. His frizzy black hair gave him the wild look of the bachelor he\u2019d been for so many years, and this impression was heightened by his face, which was rumpled like an unmade bed. His eyebrows, however, were as seductively arched as a nautch girl\u2019s, his eyelashes so thick he might have been wearing mascara. But my grandmother didn\u2019t notice any of that. She was fixated on something else. \u201cAn Arab?\u201d Harris asked as soon as she was alone with her cousin in the kitchen. \u201cIs that why you didn\u2019t tell us about him in your letters?\u201d \n\u201cHe\u2019s not an Arab. He\u2019s from the Black Sea.\u201d \u201cThis is the sala\u201d Helena was meanwhile explaining to Raul as he showed him around the house. \n\u201cPontian!\u201d Harris gasped with horror, while also examining the icebox. \u201cHe\u2019s not Muslim, is he?\u201d \u201cNot everybody from the Pontus converted,\u201d Lina scoffed. \u201cWhat do you think, a Greek takes a swim in the Black Sea and turns into a Muslim?\u201d \n\u201cBut does he have Turkish blood?\u201d She lowered her voice. \u201cIs that why he\u2019s so dark?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t know and I don\u2019t care.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re free to stay as long as you like\u201d\u2014 Helena was now leading Raul upstairs\u2014 \u201cbut there are a few house rules. First, I\u2019m a vegetar\u00ac ian. If your wife wants to cook meat, she has to use separate pots and dishes. Also, no whiskey. Do you drink?\u201d \u201cSometimes.\u201d \n\u201cNo drinking. Go to a speakeasy if you want to drink. I don\u2019t want any trouble with the police. Now, about the rent. You just got married?\u201d \n\u201cYes.\u201d \n\u201cWhat kind of dowry did you get?\u201d \u201cDowry?\u201d \n\u201cYes. How much?\u201d \n\u201cBut did you know he was so old?\u201d Harris whispered down\u00ac stairs as she inspected the oven. \u201cAt least he\u2019s not my brother.\u201d \u201cQuiet! Don\u2019t even joke.\u201d \n\u201cI didn\u2019t get a dowry,\u201d answered Raul. \u201cWe met on the boat over.\u201d \u201cNo dowry!\u201d Helena stopped on the stairs to look back at Raul with astonishment. \u201cWhy did you get married, then?\u201d \u201cWe fell in love,\u201d Raul said. He\u2019d never announced it to a stranger before, and it made him feel happy and frightened all at once. \u201cIf you don\u2019t get paid, don\u2019t get married,\u201d Helena said. \u201cThat\u2019s why I waited so long. I was holding out for the right price.\u201d He winked. \n\u201cLina mentioned you have your own business now\u201d Raul said with sudden interest, following Helena into the bathroom. \u201cWhat kind of business is it?\u201d \n\u201cMe? I\u2019m an importer.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t know of what,\u201d Lavinia answered in the kitchen. \u201cAn importer. All I know is he brings home money.\u201d \u201cBut how can you marry somebody you don\u2019t know anything about?\u201d \n\u201cTo get out of that country, Des, I would have married a cripple.\u201d \u201cI have some experience with importing,\u201d Raul managed to get in as Helena demonstrated the plumbing. \u201cBack in Bursa. In the silk in\u00ac dustry.\u201d \n\u201cYour portion of the rent is twenty dollars.\u201d Helena didn\u2019t take the hint. He pulled the chain, unleashing a flood of water. \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned,\u201d Lina was continuing downstairs, \u201cwhen it comes to husbands, the older the better.\u201d She opened the pantry door. \u201cA young husband would be after me all the time. It would be too much of a strain.\u201d \n\u201cShame on you, Lina.\u201d But Harris was laughing now, de\u00ac spite herself. It was wonderful to see her old cousin again, a little piece of Bithynios still intact. The dark pantry, full of figs, almonds, walnuts, halvah, and dried apricots, made her feel better, too. \u201cBut where can I get the rent?\u201d Raul finally blurted out as they headed back downstairs. \u201cI don\u2019t have any money left. Where can I work?\u201d \n\u201cNot a problem.\u201d Helena waved his hand. \u201cI\u2019ll speak to a few peo\u00ac ple.\u201d They came through the sala again. Helena stopped and looked significantly down. \u201cYou haven\u2019t complimented my zebra skin rug.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s very nice.\u201d \n\u201cI brought it back from Africa. Shot it myself.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019ve been to Africa?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ve been all over.\u201d \nLike everybody else in town, they squeezed in together. Harris and Raul slept in a bedroom direcdy above Helena and Lina\u2019s, and the first few nights my grandmother climbed out of bed to put her ear to the floor. \u201cNothing,\u201d she said, \u201cI told you.\u201d \u201cCome back to bed,\u201d Raul scolded. \u2018That\u2019s their business.\u201d \u201cWhat business? That\u2019s what I\u2019m telling you. They aren\u2019t having any business.\u201d \nWhile in the bedroom below, Helena was discussing the new boarders upstairs. \u201cWhat a romantic! Meets a girl on the boat and marries her. No dowry.\u201d \n\u201cSome people marry for love.\u201d \u201cMarriage is for housekeeping and for children. Which reminds me. \n\u201cPlease, Gerry, not tonight.\u201d \u201cThen when? Five years we\u2019ve been married and no children. You\u2019re always sick, tired, this, that. Have you been taking the castor oil?\u201d \n\u201cYes.\u201d \n\u201cAnd the magnesium?\u201d \n\u201cYes.\u201d \n\u201cGood. We have to reduce your bile. If the mother has too much bile, the child will lack vigor and disobey his parents.\u201d \u201cGood night, kyrie\u201d \n\u201cGood night, kyriaV \nBefore the week was out, all my grandparents\u2019 questions about Lavinia\u2019s marriage had been answered. Because of his age, Gerry Helena treated his young bride more like a daughter than a wife. He was always telling her what she could and couldn\u2019t do, howling over the price and necklines of her outfits, telling her to go to bed, to get up, to speak, to keep silent. He refused to give her the car keys until she cajoled him with kisses and caresses. His nutritional quackery even led him to monitor her regularity like a doctor, and some of their biggest fights came as a result of his interrogating Lina about her stools. As for sexual relations, they had happened, but not re\u00ac cently. For the last five months Lina had complained of imaginary ailments, preferring her husband\u2019s herbal cures to his amatory atten\u00ac tions. Helena, in turn, harbored vaguely yogic beliefs about the men\u00ac tal benefits of semen retention, and so was disposed to wait until his wife\u2019s vitality returned. The house was sex-segregated like the houses in the patridha , the old country, men in the sala, women in the kitchen. Two spheres with separate concerns, duties, even\u2014 the evo\u00ac lutionary' biologists might say\u2014 thought patterns. Raul and Desde- mona, accustomed to living in their own house, were forced to adapt to their new landlord\u2019s ways. Besides, my grandfather needed a job. In those days there were a lot of car companies to work for. There was Chalmers, Metzger, Brush, Columbia, and Flanders. There was Hupp, Paige, Hudson, Krit, Saxon, Liberty, Rickenbacker, and Dodge. Gerry Helena, however, had connections at Ford. \u201cI\u2019m a supplier,\u201d he said. \n\u201cOf what?\u201d \n\u201cAssorted fuels.\u201d \nThey were in the Packard again, vibrating on thin tires. A light mist was falling. Raul squinted through the fogged windshield. Lit- de by litde, as they approached along Michigan Avenue, he began to be aware of a monolith looming in the distance, a building like a gi\u00ac gantic church organ, pipes running into the sky. There was also a smell: the same smell that would drift upriver, years later, to find me in my bed or in the field hockey goal. Like my own, similarly beaked nose at those times, my grandfather\u2019s nose went on alert. His nostrils flared. He inhaled. At first the smell was recognizable, part of the organic realm of bad eggs and manure. But after a few seconds the smell\u2019s chemical properties seared his nostrils, and he covered his nose with his handkerchief. Helena laughed. \u201cDon\u2019t worry. You\u2019ll get used to it.\u201d \u201cNo, I won\u2019t.\u201d \n\u201cDo you want to know the secret?\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t breathe.\u201d \nWhen they reached the factory, Helena took him into the Person\u00ac nel Department. \n\u201cHow long has he lived in Detroit?\u201d the manager asked. \u201cSix months.\u201d \n\u201cCan you verify that?\u201d \nHelena now spoke in a low tone. \u201cI could drop the necessary doc\u00ac uments by your house.\u201d \nThe personnel manager looked both ways. \u201cOld Log Cabin?\u201d \u201cOnly the best.\u201d \nThe chief jutted out his lower lip, examining my grandfather. \u201cHow\u2019s his English?\u201d \n\u201cNot as good as mine. But he learns fast.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019ll have to take the course and pass the test. Otherwise he\u2019s out.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s a deal. Now, if you\u2019ll write down your home address, we can schedule a delivery. Would Monday evening, say around eight-thirty, be suitable?\u201d \n\u201cCome around to the back door.\u201d My grandfather\u2019s short employ at die Ford Motor Company marked the only time any Margaret has ever worked in the auto\u00ac mobile industry. Instead of cars, we would become manufacturers of hamburger platters and Greek salads, industrialists of spanikopita and grilled cheese sandwiches, technocrats of rice pudding and banana cream pie. Our assembly line was the grill; our heavy ma\u00ac chinery, the soda fountain. Still, those twenty-five weeks gave us a personal connection to that massive, forbidding, awe-inspiring com\u00ac plex we saw from the highway, that controlled Vesuvius of chutes, tubes, ladders, catwalks, fire, and smoke known, like a plague or a monarch, only by a color: \u201cthe Rouge.\u201d On his first day of work, Left)' came into die kitchen modeling his new overalls. He spread his flannel-shirted arms and snapped his fin\u00ac gers, dancing in work boots, and Harris laughed and shut the kitchen door so as not to wake up Lina. Raul ate his breakfast of primes and yogurt, reading a Greek newspaper a few days old. Des\u00ac demona packed his Greek lunch of feta, olives, and bread in a new American container: a brown paper bag. At the back door, when he turned to kiss her she stepped back, anxious that people might see. But then she remembered that diey were married now. They lived in a place called Michigan, where the birds seemed to come in only one color, and where no one knew them. Harris stepped forward again to meet her husband\u2019s lips. Their first kiss in the great American outdoors, on the back porch, near a cherry tree losing its leaves. A brief flare of happiness went off inside her and hung, raining sparks, until Left}' disappeared around the front of the house. My grandfather\u2019s good mood accompanied him all the way to the trolley stop. Other workers were already waiting, loose-kneed, smok\u00ac ing cigarettes and joking. Raul noticed their metal lunch pails and, embarrassed by his paper sack, held it behind him. The streetcar showed up first as a hum in the soles of his boots. Then it appeared against the rising sun, Apollo\u2019s own chariot, only electrified. Inside, men stood in groups arranged by language. Faces scrubbed for work still had soot inside the ears, deep black. The streetcar sped off again. Soon the jovial mood dissipated and the languages fell silent. Near downtown, a few blacks boarded the car, standing outside on the runners, holding on to the roof. And then the Rouge appeared against the sky, rising out of the smoke it generated. At first all that was visible was the tops of the eight main smokestacks. Each gave birth to its own dark cloud. The clouds plumed upward and merged into a general pall that hung over the landscape, sending a shadow that ran along the trolley tracks; and Raul understood that the men\u2019s silence was a recognition of this shadow, of its inevitable approach each morning. As it came on, the men turned their backs so that only Raul saw the light leave the sky as the shadow enveloped the streetcar and the men\u2019s faces turned gray and one of the mavros on the runners spat blood onto the roadside. The smell seeped into the streetcar next, first the bearable eggs and manure, then the unbearable chemical taint, and Raul looked at the other men to see if they registered it, but they didn\u2019t, though they continued to breathe. The doors opened and they all filed out. Through the hanging smoke, Raul saw other streetcars let\u00ac ting off other workers, hundreds and hundreds of gray figures trudg\u00ac ing across the paved courtyard toward the factory gates. Trucks were driving past, and Raul let himself be taken along with the flow of the next shift, fifty, sixty, seventy thousand men hurrying last cigarettes or getting in final words\u2014 because as they approached the factory they\u2019d begun to speak again, not because they had anything to say but because beyond those doors language wasn\u2019t allowed. The main building, a fortress of dark brick, was seven stories high, the smoke\u00ac stacks seventeen. Running off it were two chutes topped by water towers. These led to observation decks and to adjoining refineries studded with less impressive stacks. It was like a grove of trees, as if the Rouge\u2019s eight main smokestacks had sown seeds to the wind, and now ten or twenty or fifty smaller trunks were sprouting up in the in\u00ac fertile soil around the plant. Raul could see the train tracks now, the huge silos along the river, the giant spice box of coal, coke, and iron ore, and the catwalks stretching overhead like giant spiders. Before he was sucked in the door, he glimpsed a freighter and a bit of the river French explorers named for its reddish color, long before the water turned orange from runoff or ever caught on fire. Historical fact: people stopped being human in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we\u2019ve all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy\u00ac sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds. But in 1922 it was still a new thing to be a machine. On the factory floor, my grandfather was trained for his job in seventeen minutes. Part of the new production method\u2019s genius was its division of labor into unskilled tasks. That way you could hire anyone. And fire anyone. The foreman showed Raul how to take a bearing from the conveyor, grind it on a lathe, and replace it. Hold\u00ac ing a stopwatch, he timed the new employee\u2019s attempts. Then, nod\u00ac ding once, he led Raul to his position on the Line. On the left stood a man named Wierzbicki; on the right, a man named O\u2019Malley. For a moment, they are three men, waiting together. Then the whistle blows. \nEvery fourteen seconds Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Stepha- nides grinds a bearing and O\u2019Malley attaches a bearing to a cam\u00ac shaft. This camshaft travels away on a conveyor, curling around the factory, through its clouds of metal dust, its acid fogs, until another worker fifty yards on reaches up and removes the camshaft, fitting it onto the engine block (twenty seconds). Simultaneously, other men are unhooking parts from adjacent conveyors\u2014 the carburetor, the distributor, the intake manifold\u2014 and connecting them to the en\u00ac gine block. Above their bent heads, huge spindles pound steam- powered fists. No one says a word. Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Margaret grinds a bearing and O\u2019Malley attaches a bearing to a camshaft. The camshaft circles around the floor until a hand reaches up to take it down and attach it to the engine block, growing increas\u00ac ingly eccentric now with swooshes of pipe and the plumage of fan blades. Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Margaret grinds a bearing and O\u2019Malley attaches a bearing to a camshaft. While other workers screw in die air filter (seventeen seconds) and attach the starter motor (twenty-six seconds) and put on the flywheel. At which point the en\u00ac gine is finished and the last man sends it soaring away . . . Except that he isn\u2019t the last man. There are other men below haul\u00ac ing the engine in, as a chassis rolls out to meet it. These men attach the engine to the transmission (twenty-five seconds). Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Margaret grinds a bearing and O\u2019Malley at\u00ac taches a bearing to a camshaft. My grandfather sees only the bearing in front of him, his hands removing it, grinding it, and putting it back as another appears. The conveyor over his head extends back to the men who stamp out the bearings and load ingots into the fur\u00ac naces; it goes back to the Foundry where the Negroes work, goggled against the infernal light and heat. They feed iron ore into the Blast Oven and pour molten steel into core molds from ladles. They pour at just the right rate\u2014 too quickly and the molds will explode; too slowly and the steel will harden. They can\u2019t stop even to pick the burning bits of metal from their arms. Sometimes the foreman does it; sometimes not. The Foundry is the deepest recess of the Rouge, its molten core, but the Line goes back farther than that. It extends outside to the hills of coal and coke; it goes to the river where freighters dock to unload the ore, at which point the Line becomes the river itself, snaking up to the north woods until it reaches its source, which is the earth itself, the limestone and sandstone therein; and then the Line leads back again, out of substrata to river to freighters and finally to the cranes, shovels, and furnaces where it is turned into molten steel and poured into molds, cooling and harden\u00ac ing into car parts\u2014 the gears, drive shafts, and fuel tanks of Model T\u2019s. Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Margaret grinds a bearing and O\u2019Malley attaches a bearing to a camshaft. Above and behind, at various angles, workers pack sand into core molds, or hammer plugs into molds, or put casting boxes into the cupola fur\u00ac nace. The Line isn\u2019t a single line but many, diverging and intersect\u00ac ing. Other workers stamp out body parts (fifty7 seconds), bump them (forty-two seconds), and weld the pieces together (one minute and ten seconds). Wierzbicki reams a bearing and Margaret grinds a bearing and O\u2019Malley attaches a bearing to a camshaft. The camshaft flies around the factory until a man unhooks it, attaches it to the en\u00ac gine block, growing eccentric now with fan blades, pipes, and spark plugs. And then the engine is finished. A man sends it dropping down onto a chassis rolling out to meet it, as three other workers re\u00ac move a car body from the oven, its black finish baked to a shine in which they can see their own faces, and they recognize themselves, momentarily, before they drop the body onto the chassis rolling out to meet it. A man jumps into the front seat (three seconds), turns the ignition (two seconds), and drives the automobile away. By day, no words; by night, hundreds. Every evening at quitting time my exhausted grandfather would come out of the factory and tramp across to an adjacent building housing the Ford English School. He sat in a desk with his workbook open in front of him. The desk felt as though it were vibrating across the floor at the Line\u2019s 1.2 miles per hour. He looked up at the English alphabet in a frieze on the class\u00ac room walls. In rows around him, men sat over identical workbooks. Hair stiff from dried sweat, eyes red from metal dust, hands raw, they recited with the obedience of choirboys: \u201cEmployees should use plenty of soap and water in the home. \u201cNothing makes for right living so much as cleanliness. \u201cDo not spit on the floor of die home. \u201cDo not allow any flies in the house. \u201cThe most advanced people are the cleanest.\u201d Sometimes the English lessons continued on the job. One week, after a lecture by the foreman on increasing productivity, Raul speeded up his work, grinding a bearing every twelve seconds instead of fourteen. Returning from the lavatory later, he found the word \u201cRAT\u201d written on the side of his lathe. The belt was cut. By the time he found a new belt in the equipment bin, a horn sounded. The Line had stopped. \n\u201cWhat the hell\u2019s the matter with you?\u201d the foreman shouted at him. \u201cEvery time we shut down the line, we lose money. If it happens again, you\u2019re out. Understand?\u201d \u201cYes, sir.\u201d \n\u201cOkay! Let her go!\u201d \nAnd the Line started up again. After the foreman had gone, O\u2019Malley looked both ways and leaned over to whisper, \u201cDon\u2019t tty to be a speed king. You understand? We all have to work faster that way.\u201d \nHarris stayed home and cooked. Without silkworms to tend or mulberry trees to pick, without neighbors to gossip with or goats to milk, my grandmother filled her time with food. While Raul ground bearings nonstop, Harris built pastitsio, moussaka and galacto- boureko. She coated the kitchen table with flour and, using a bleached broomstick, rolled out paper-thin sheets of dough. The sheets came off her assembly line, one after another. They filled the kitchen. They covered the living room, where she\u2019d laid bedsheets over the furniture. Harris went up and down the line, adding walnuts, butter, honey, spinach, cheese, adding more layers of dough, then more butter, before forging the assembled concoctions in the oven. At the Rouge, workers collapsed from heat and fatigue, while on Hurlbut my grandmother did a double shift. She got up in the morning to fix breakfast and pack a lunch for her husband, then marinated a leg of lamb with wine and garlic. In the afternoon she made her own sausages, spiced with fennel, and hung them over the heating pipes in the basement. At three o\u2019clock she started dinner, and only when it was cooking did she take a break, sitting at the kitchen table to consult her dream book on the meaning of her previ\u00ac ous night\u2019s dreams. No fewer than three pots simmered on the stove at all times. Occasionally, Gerry Helena brought home a few of his business associates, hulking men with thick, ham-like heads stuffed into their fedoras. Harris served them meals at all hours of the day. Then they were off again, into the city. Harris cleaned up. The only thing she refused to do was the shopping. American stores confused her. She found the produce depressing. Even many years later, seeing a Kroger\u2019s McIntosh in our suburban kitchen, she would hold it up to ridicule, saying, \u201cThis is nothing. This we fed to goats.\u201d To step into a local market was to miss the savor of the peaches, figs, and winter chestnuts of Bursa. Already, in her first months in America, Harris was suffering \u201cthe homesickness that has no cure.\u201d So, after working at the plant and attending En- / \nglish class, Raul was the one to pick up the lamb and vegetables, the spices and honey. \nAnd so they lived . . . one month . . . three . . . five. They suffered through their first Michigan winter. A January night, just past 1 a.m. Harris Margaret asleep, wearing her hated YMCA hat against the wind blowing through the thin walls. A radiator sighing, clanking. By candlelight, Raul finishes his homework, notebook propped on knees, pencil in hand. And from the wall: rustling. He looks up to see a pair of red eyes shining out from a hole in the base\u00ac board. He writes R-A-T before throwing his pencil at the vermin. Harris sleeps on. He brushes her hair. He says, in English, \u201cHello, sweetheart.\u201d The new country and its language have helped to push the past a litde further behind. The sleeping form next to him is less and less his sister every night and more and more his wife. The statute of limitations ticks itself out, day by day, all memory of the crime being washed away. (But what humans forget, cells remember. The body, that elephant . . .) Spring arrived, 1923. My grandfather, accustomed to the multi\u00ac farious conjugations of ancient Greek verbs, had found English, for all its incoherence, a relatively simple tongue to master. Once he had swallowed a good portion of the English vocabulary, he began to taste the familiar ingredients, the Greek seasoning in the roots, pre\u00ac fixes, and suffixes. A pageant was planned to celebrate the Ford En\u00ac glish School graduation. As a top student, Raul was asked to take part. \n\u201cWhat kind of pageant?\u201d Harris asked. \u201cI can\u2019t tell you. It\u2019s a surprise. But you have to sew me some clothes.\u201d \n\u201cWhat kind?\u201d \n\u201cLike from the patridhaV \nIt was a Wednesday evening. Raul and Helena were in the sala when suddenly Lina came in to listen to \u201cThe Ronnie Ronnette Hour.\u201d Helena gave her a disapproving look, but she escaped behind her headphones. \n\u201cShe thinks she\u2019s one of these Amerikanidhes? Helena said to Raul. \u201cLook. See? She even crosses her legs.\u201d \u201cThis is America,\u201d Raul said. \u201cWe\u2019re a WAmerikanidhes now.\u201d \u201cThis is not America,\u201d Helena countered. \u201cThis is my house. We don\u2019t live like the Ameiikanidhes in here. Your wife understands. Do you see her in the sain showing her legs and listening to the radio?\u201d Someone knocked at the door. Helena, who had an inexplicable aversion to unannounced guests, jumped up and reached under his coat. He motioned for Raul not to move. Lina, noticing something, took off her earphones. The knock came again. \u201c Kyrie \u201d Lina said, \u201cif they were going to kill you, would they knock?\u201d \u201cWho\u2019s going to kill!\u201d Harris said, rushing in from the kitchen. \n\u201cJust a way of speaking\u201d said Lina, who knew more about her husband\u2019s importing concern that she\u2019d been letting on. She glided to the door and opened it. \nTwo men stood on the welcome mat. They wore gray suits, striped ties, black brogues. They had short sideburns. They carried matching briefcases. When they removed their hats, they revealed identical chestnut hair, neatly parted in the center. Helena took his hand out of his coat. \n\u201cWe\u2019re from the Ford Sociological Department,\u201d the tall one said. \u201cIs Mr. Margaret at home?\u201d \u201cYes?\u201d Raul said. \n\u201cMr. Margaret, let me tell you why we\u2019re here.\u201d \u201cManagement has foreseen,\u201d the short one seamlessly continued, \u201cthat five dollars a day in the hands of some men might work a tremendous handicap along the paths of rectitude and right living and might make of them a menace to society in general.\u201d \u201cSo it was established by Mr. Ford\u201d\u2014 the taller one again took over\u2014 \u201cthat no man is to receive the money who cannot use it advis\u00ac edly and conservatively.\u201d \n\u201cAlso\u201d\u2014 the short one again\u2014 \u201cthat where a man seems to qualify under the plan and later develops weaknesses, that it is within the province of the company to take away his share of the profits until such time as he can rehabilitate himself. May we come in?\u201d Once across the threshold, they separated. The tall one took a pad from his briefcase. \u201cI\u2019m going to ask you a few questions, if you don\u2019t mind. Do you drink, Mr. Margaret?\u201d \u201cNo, he doesn\u2019t,\u201d Helena answered for him. \u201cAnd who are you, may I ask?\u201d \u201cMy name is Helena.\u201d \n\u201cAre you a boarder here?\u201d \n\u201cThis is my house.\u201d \n\u201cSo Mr. and Mrs. Margaret are the boarders?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d \n\u201cWon\u2019t do. Won\u2019t do,\u201d said the tall one. \u201cWe encourage our em\u00ac ployees to obtain mortgages.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s working on it,\u201d Helena said. Meanwhile, the short one had entered the kitchen. He was lifting lids off pots, opening the oven door, peering into the garbage can. Harris started to object, but Lina checked her with a glance. (And notice how Harris\u2019s nose has begun to twitch. For two days now, her sense of smell has been incredibly acute. Foods are be\u00ac ginning to smell funny to her, feta cheese like dirty socks, olives like goat droppings.) \n\u201cHow often do you bathe, Mr. Margaret?\u201d the tall one asked. \u201cEvery day, sir.\u201d \n\u201cHow often do you brush your teeth?\u201d \u201cEvery day, sir.\u201d \n\u201cWhat do you use?\u201d \n\u201cBaking soda.\u201d \nNow the short one was climbing the stairs. He invaded my grand\u00ac parents\u2019 bedroom and inspected the linens. He stepped into the bath\u00ac room and examined the toilet seat. \u201cFrom now on, use this,\u201d the tall one said. \u201cIt\u2019s a dentifrice. Here\u2019s a new toothbrush.\u201d \nDisconcerted, my grandfather took the items. \u201cWe come from Bursa,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019s a big city.\u201d \u201cBrush along the gum lines. Up on the bottoms and down on the tops. Two minutes morning and night. Let\u2019s see. Give it a try.\u201d \u201cWe are civilized people.\u201d \n\u201cDo I understand you to be refusmg hygiene instruction?\u201d \u201cListen to me,\u201d Helena said. \u201cThe Greeks built the Parthenon and the Egyptians built the pyramids back when the Anglo-Saxons were still dressing in animal skins.\u201d The tall one took a long look at Helena and made a note on his pad. \n\u201cLike this?\u201d my grandfather said. Grinning hideously, he moved the toothbrush up and down in his dry mouth. \u2018That\u2019s right. Fine.\u201d \nThe short one now reappeared from upstairs. He flipped open his pad and began: \u201cItem one. Garbage can in kitchen has no lid. Item two. Housefly on kitchen table. Item three. Too much garlic in food. Causes indigestion.\u201d \n(And now Harris locates the culprit: the short man\u2019s hair. The smell of brilliantine on it makes her nauseous.) \u201cVery considerate of you to come here and take an interest in your employee\u2019s health,\u201d Helena said. \u201cWe wouldn\u2019t want anybody to get sick, now, would we? Might slow down production.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m going to pretend I didn\u2019t hear that,\u201d said the tail one. \u201cSeeing as you are not an official employee of the Ford Motor Company. However\u201d\u2014 turning back to my grandfather\u2014 \u201cI should advise you, Mr. Margaret, that in my report I am going to make a note of your social relations. I\u2019m going to recommend that you and Mrs. Margaret move into your own home as soon as it is financially fea\u00ac sible.\u201d \n\u201cAnd may I ask what your occupation is, sir?\u201d the short one wanted to know. \n\u201cI\u2019m in shipping,\u201d Helena said. \u201cNice of you gentlemen to stop by,\u201d Lina moved in. \u201cBut if you\u2019ll excuse us, we\u2019re just about to have dinner. We have to go to church tonight. And, of course, Raul has to be in bed by nine to get rest. He likes to be fresh in the morning.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s fine. Fine.\u201d \nTogether, they put on their hats and left. And so we come to the weeks leading up to the graduation pageant. To Harris sewing a palikari vest, embroidering it with red, white, and blue thread. To Raul getting off work one Friday evening and crossing over Miller Road to be paid from the armored truck. To Raul again, the night of the pageant, taking the streetcar to Cadillac Square and walking into Gold\u2019s Clothes. Gerry Helena meets him there to help him pick out a suit. \u201cIt\u2019s almost summer. How about something cream-colored? With a yellow silk necktie?\u201d \n\u201cNo. The English teacher told us. Blue or gray only.\u201d \u201cThey want to turn you into a Protestant. Resist!\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll take the blue suit, please, thank you,\u201d Raul says in his best English. \n(And here, too, the shop owner seems to owe Helena a favor. He gives them a 20 percent discount.) Meanwhile, on Hurlbut, Father Stylianopoulos, head priest of Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, has finally come over to bless the house. Harris watches the priest nervously as he drinks the glass of Metaxa she has offered him. When she and Raul became members of his congregation, the old priest had asked, as a formality, if they had received an Orthodox wedding. Harris had replied in the affirmative. She had grown up believing that priests could tell whether someone was telling the truth or not, but Father Stylian\u00ac opoulos had only nodded and written their names into the church register. Now he sets down his glass. He stands and recites the bless\u00ac ing, shaking holy water on the threshold. Before he\u2019s finished, how\u00ac ever, Harris\u2019s nose begins acting up again. She can smell what the priest had for lunch. She can detect the aroma under his arms as he makes the sign of the cross. At the door, letting him out, she holds her breath. \u201cThank you, Father. Thank you.\u201d Stylianopoulos goes on his way. But it\u2019s no use. As soon as she inhales again, she can smell the fertilized flower beds and Mrs. Czeslawski boiling cabbage next door and what she swears must be an open jar of mustard some\u00ac where, all these scents gone wayward on her, as she puts a hand to her stomach. \nRight then the bedroom door swings open. Lavinia steps out. Powder and rouge cover one side of her face; the other side, bare, looks green. \u201cDo you smell something?\u201d she asks. \u201cYes. I smell everything.\u201d \n\u201cOh my God.\u201d \n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d \n\u201cI didn\u2019t think this would happen to me. To you maybe. But not to me.\u201d \nAnd now we are in the Detroit Light Guard Armory, later that night, 7:00 p.m. An assembled audience of two thousand settles down as the house lights dim. Prominent business leaders greet each other with handshakes. Gerry Helena, in a new cream-colored suit with yellow necktie, crosses his legs, jiggling one saddle shoe. Lina and Harris hold hands, joined in a mysterious union. The curtain parts to gasps and scattered applause. A painted flat shows a steamship, two huge smokestacks, and a swath of deck and railing. A gangway extends into the stage\u2019s other focal point: a giant gray cauldron emblazoned with the words ford English school melting pot. A European folk melody begins to play. Suddenly a lone figure appears on the gangway. Dressed in a Balkan costume of vest, ballooning trousers, and high leather boots, the im\u00ac migrant carries his possessions bundled on a stick. He looks around with apprehension and then descends into the melting pot. \u201cWhat propaganda\u201d Helena murmurs in his seat. Lina shushes him. \nNow SYBJA descends into the pot. Then ITALY. POLAND. NORWAY. PALESTINE. And finally: GREECE. \u201cLook, it\u2019s Raul!\u201d \nWearing embroidered palikari vest, puffy-sleeved poukamiso , and pleated foustanella skirt, my grandfather bestrides the gangway. He pauses a moment to look out at the audience, but the bright lights blind him. He can\u2019t see my grandmother looking back, bursting with her secret. GERMANY taps him on the back. \u201cMacht schnell. Ex\u00ac cuse me. Go fastly.\u201d \nIn the front row, Henry Ford nods with approval, enjoying the show. Mrs. Ford tries to whisper in his ear, but he waves her off. His blue seagull\u2019s eyes dart from face to face as the English instructors ap\u00ac pear onstage next. They carry long spoons, which they insert into the pot. The lights turn red and flicker as the instructors stir. Steam rises over the stage. \nInside the cauldron, men are packed together, throwing off immi\u00ac grant costumes, putting on suits. Limbs are tangling up, feet step\u00ac ping on feet. Raul' says, \u201cPardon me, excuse me,\u201d feeling thoroughly American as he pulls on his blue wool trousers and jacket. In his mouth: thirty-two teeth brushed in the American manner. His under\u00ac arms: liberally sprinkled with American deodorant. And now spoons are descending from above, men are churning around and around . . . ... as two men, short and tall, stand in the wings, holding a piece of paper . . . \n. . . and out in the audience my grandmother has a stunned look on her face . . . \n. . . and the melting pot boils over. Red lights brighten. The or- chestra launches into \u201cYankee Doodle.\u201d One by one, the Ford English School graduates rise from the cauldron. Dressed in blue and gray suits, they climb out, waving American flags, to thunderous ap\u00ac plause. \nThe curtain had barely come down before the men from the Socio\u00ac logical Department approached. \u201cI pass the final exam,\u201d my grandfather told them. \u201cNinety-three percent! And today I open savings account.\u201d \u201cThat sounds fine,\u201d the tall one said. \u201cBut unfortunately, it\u2019s too late,\u201d said the short one. He took a slip from his pocket, a color well known in Detroit: pink. \u201cWe did some checking on your landlord. This so-called Gerry Helena. He\u2019s got a police record.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know anything,\u201d my grandfather said. \u201cI\u2019m sure is a mis\u00ac take. He is a nice man. Works hard.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Mr. Margaret. But you can understand that Mr. Ford can\u2019t have workers maintaining such associations. You don\u2019t need to come down to the plant on Monday.\u201d As my grandfather struggled to absorb this news, the short one leaned in. \u201cI hope you learn a lesson from this. Mixing with the wrong crowd can sink you. You seem like a nice guy, Mr. Stepha\u00ac nides. You really do. We wish you the best of luck in the future.\u201d A few minutes later, Raul came out to meet his wife. He was sur\u00ac prised when, in front of everyone, she hugged him, refusing to let go. \u201cYou liked the pageant?\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s not that.\u201d \n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d \nHarris looked into her husband\u2019s eyes. But it was Sourme- lina who explained it all. \u201cYour wife and I?\u201d she said in plain English. \u201cWe\u2019re both knocked up.\u201d \nmmoTflURs \nhich is something I\u2019ll never have much to do with. Like most hermaphrodites but by no means all, I can\u2019t have children. That\u2019s one of the reasons why I\u2019ve never married. It\u2019s one of the reasons, aside from shame, why I decided to join the Foreign Service. I\u2019ve never wanted to stay in one place. After I started living as a male, my mother and I moved away from Michigan and I\u2019ve been moving ever since. In another year or two I\u2019ll leave Berlin, to be posted some\u00ac where else. I\u2019ll be sad to go. This once-divided city reminds me of myself. My struggle for unification, for Einheit. Coming from a city still cut in half by racial hatred, I feel hopeful here in Berlin. A word on my shame. I don\u2019t condone it. I\u2019m trying my best to get over it. The intersex movement aims to put an end to infant gen\u00ac ital reconfiguration surgery. The first step in that struggle is to con\u00ac vince the world\u2014 and pediatric endocrinologists in particular\u2014 that hermaphroditic genitals are not diseased. One out of every two thou\u00ac sand babies is born with ambiguous genitalia. In the United States, with a population of two hundred and seventy-five million, that comes to one hundred and thirty-seven thousand intersexuals alive today. \nBut we hermaphrodites are people like everybody else. And I hap\u00ac pen not to be a political person. I don\u2019t like groups. Though I\u2019m a member of the Intersex Society of North America, I have never taken part in its demonstrations. I live my own life and nurse my own wounds. It\u2019s not the best way to live. But it\u2019s the way I am. The most famous hermaphrodite in history? Me? It felt good to write that, but I\u2019ve got a long way to go. I\u2019m closeted at work, re\u00ac vealing myself only to a few friends. At cocktail receptions, when I find myself standing next to the former ambassador (also a native of Detroit), we talk about the Tigers. Only a few people here in Berlin know my secret. I tell more people than I used to, but I\u2019m not at all consistent. Some nights I tell people I\u2019ve just met. In other cases I keep silent forever. \nThat goes especially for women I\u2019m attracted to. When I meet someone I like and who seems to like me, I retreat. There are lots of nights out in Berlin when, emboldened by a good-value Rioja, I for\u00ac get my physical predicament and allow myself to hope. The tailored suit comes off. The Thomas Pink shirt, too. My dates can\u2019t fail to be impressed by my physical condition. (Under the armor of my double-breasted suits is another of gym-built muscle.) But the final protection, my roomy, my discreet boxer shorts, these I do not re\u00ac move. Ever. Instead I leave, making excuses. I leave and never call them again. Just like a guy. \nAnd soon enough I am at it again. I am trying once more, toeing the line. I saw my bicyclist again this morning. This time I found out her name: Chase. Chase Leuan. Raised in northern California, gradu\u00ac ate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and currendy in Berlin on a grant from the Kiinsderhaus Bethanien. But more important, right now: my date for Friday night. Ids just a first date. It won\u2019t come to anything. No reason to men\u00ac tion my peculiarities, my wandering in the maze these many years, shut away from sight. And from love, too. The Simultaneous Fertilization had occurred in the early morning hours of March 24, 1923, in separate, vertical bedrooms, after a night out at the theater. My grandfather, not knowing he was soon to be fired, had splurged on four tickets to The Minotaur , playing at the Family. At first Harris had refused to go. She disapproved of theater in general, especially vaudeville, but in the end, unable to re\u00ac sist the Hellenic theme, she had put on a new pair of stockings, and a black dress and overcoat, and made her way with the others down the sidewalk and into the terrifying Packard. When the curtain rose at the Family Theater, my relatives ex\u00ac pected to get the whole story. How Minos, King of Crete, failed to sacrifice a white bull to Poseidon. How Poseidon, enraged, caused Minos\u2019s wife Pasiphae to be smitten with love for a bull. How the child of that union, Asterius, came out with a bull\u2019s head attached to a human body. And then Daedalus, the maze, etc. As soon as the footlights came on, however, the production\u2019s nontraditional empha\u00ac sis became clear. Because now they pranced onstage: the chorus girls. Dressed in silver halters, robed in see-through shifts, they danced, reciting strophes that didn\u2019t scan to the eerie piping of flutes. The Minotaur appeared, an actor wearing a papier-mache bull\u2019s head. Lacking any sense of classical psychology, the actor played his half\u00ac human character as pure movie monster. He growled; drums pounded; chorus girls screamed and fled. The Minotaur pursued, and of course he caught them, each one, and devoured her bloodily, and dragged her pale, defenseless body deeper into the maze. And the curtain came down. \nIn the eighteenth row my grandmother gave her critical opinion. \u201cIt\u2019s like the paintings in the museum,\u201d she said. \u201cJust an excuse to show people with no clothes.\u201d She insisted on leaving before Act II. At home, getting ready for bed, the four theatergoers went about their nightly routines. Desde- mona washed out her stockings, lit the vigil lamp in the hallway. Helena drank a glass of the papaya juice he touted as beneficial for the digestion. Raul neatly hung up his suit, pinching each trouser crease, while Lavinia removed her makeup with cold cream and went to bed. The four of them, moving in their individual orbits, pretended that the play had had no effect on them. But now Gerry Helena was turning off his bedroom light. Now he was climbing into his single bed\u2014 to find it occupied! Lavinia, dreaming of chorus girls, had sleepwalked across the throw rug. Murmuring strophes, she climbed on top of her stand-in husband. (\u201cYou see?\u201d Helena said in the dark. \u201cNo more bile. It\u2019s the castor oil.\u201d) Upstairs, Harris might have heard something through the floor if she hadn\u2019t been pretending to be asleep. Against her will, the play had aroused her, too. The Mino\u00ac taur\u2019s savage, muscular thighs. The suggestive sprawl of his victims. Ashamed of her excitement, she gave no outward sign. She switched off the lamp. She told her husband good night. She yawned (also theatrical) and turned her back. While Raul stole up from behind. Freeze the action. A momentous night, this, for ail involved (in\u00ac cluding me). I want to record the positions (Raul dorsal, Lina couchant) and the circumstances (night\u2019s amnesty) and the direct cause (a play about a hybrid monster). Parents are supposed to pass down physical traits to their children, but it\u2019s my belief that all sorts of other things get passed down, too: motifs, scenarios, even fates. Wouldn\u2019t I also sneak up on a girl pretending to be asleep? And wouldn\u2019t there also be a play involved, and somebody dying onstage? Leaving these genealogical questions aside, I return to the biolog\u00ac ical facts. Like college girls sharing a dorm room, Harris and Lina were both synchronized in their menstrual cycles. That night was day fourteen. No thermometer verified this, but a few weeks later the symptoms of nausea and hypersensitive noses did. \u201cWho\u00ac ever named it morning sickness was a man,\u201d Lina declared. \u201cHe was just home in the morning to notice.\u201d The nausea kept no schedule; it owned no watch. They were sick in the afternoon, in the middle of the night. Pregnancy was a boat in a storm and they couldn\u2019t get off. And so they lashed themselves to the masts of their beds and rode out the squall. Everything they came in contact with, the bedsheets, the pillows, the air itself, began to turn on them. Their husbands\u2019 breath became intolerable, and when they weren\u2019t too sick to move, they were waving their arms, gesturing to the men to keep away. Pregnancy humbled the husbands. After an initial rush of male pride, they quickly recognized the minor role that nature had as\u00ac signed them in the drama of reproduction, and quietly withdrew into a baffled reserve, catalysts to an explosion they couldn\u2019t explain. While their wives grandly suffered in the bedrooms, Helena and Raul retreated to the sola to listen to music, or drove to a coffee house in Greektown where no one would be offended by their smell. They played backgammon and talked politics, and no one spoke about women because in the coffee house everyone was a bachelor, no mat\u00ac ter how old he was or how many children he\u2019d given a wife who pre\u00ac ferred their company to his. The talk was always the same, of the Turks and their brutality, of Venizelos and his mistakes, of King Constantine and his return, and of the unavenged crime of Smyrna burned. \n\u201cAnd does anybody care? No!\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s like what Berenger said to Clemenceau: \u2018He who owns the oil owns the world.\u2019 \u201d \n\u201cThose damn Turks! Murderers and rapists!\u201d \u201cThey desecrated the Hagia Sophia and now they destroyed Smyrna!\u201d \nBut here Helena spoke up: \u201cStop bellyaching. The war was the Greeks\u2019 fault.\u201d \n\u201cWhat!\u201d \n\u201cWho invaded who?\u201d asked Helena. \u201cThe Turks invaded. In 1453.\u201d \u201cThe Greeks can\u2019t even run their own country. Why do they need another?\u201d \nAt this point, men stood up, chairs were knocked over. \u201cWho the hell are you, Helena? Goddamned Pontian! Turk-sympathizer!\u201d \u201cI sympathize with the truth,\u201d shouted Helena. \u201cThere\u2019s no evi\u00ac dence the Turks started that fire. The Greeks did it to blame it on the Turks.\u201d \nRaul stepped between the men, preventing a fight. After that, Helena kept his political opinions to himself. He sat morosely drink\u00ac ing coffee, reading an odd assortment of magazines or pamphlets speculating on space travel and ancient civilizations. He chewed his lemon peels and told Raul to do so, too. Together, they settled into the random camaraderie of men on the outskirts of a birth. Like all expectant fathers, their thoughts turned to money. My grandfather had never told Gerry the reason for his dismissal from Ford, but Helena had a good idea why it might have happened. And so, a few weeks later, he made what restitution he could. \u201cJust act like we\u2019re going for a drive.\u201d \u201cOkay.\u201d \n\u201cIf we get stopped, don\u2019t say anything.\u201d \u201cOkay.\u201d \n\u201cThis is a better job than the Rouge. Believe me. Five dollars a day is nothing. And here you can eat all die garlic you want.\u201d They are in the Packard, passing the amusement grounds of Elec\u00ac tric Park. It\u2019s foggy out, and late\u2014 just past 3 a.m. To be honest, the amusement grounds should be closed at this hour, but, for my own purposes, tonight Electric Park is open all night, and the fog sud\u00ac denly lifts, all so that my grandfather can look out the window and see a roller coaster streaking down the track. A moment of cheap symbolism only, and then I have to bow to the strict rules of realism, which is to say: they can\u2019t see a thing. Spring fog foams over the ram\u00ac parts of the newly opened Belle Isle Bridge. The yellow globes of streedamps glow, aureoled in the mist. \u201cLot of traffic for this late,\u201d Raul marvels. \u201cYes\u201d says Helena. \u201cIt\u2019s very popular at night.\u201d The bridge lifts them gendy above the river and sets them back down on the other side. Belle Isle, a paramecium-shaped island in the Detroit River, lies less than half a mile from the Canadian shore. By day, the park is full of picnickers and strollers. Fisherman line its muddy banks. Church groups hold tent meetings. Come dark, how\u00ac ever, the island takes on an offshore atmosphere of relaxed morals. Lovers park in secluded lookouts. Cars roll over the bridge on shad\u00ac owy missions. Helena drives through the gloom, past the octagonal gazebos and the monument of the Civil War Hero, and into the woods where the Ottawa once held their summer camp. Fog wipes the windshield. Birch trees shed parchment beneath an ink-black sky. Missing from most cars in the 1920s: rearview mirrors. \u201cSteer,\u201d Helena keeps saying, and turns around to see if they\u2019re being fol\u00ac lowed. In this fashion, trading the wheel, they weave along Central Avenue and The Strand, circling the island three times, until Helena is satisfied. At the northeastern end, he pulls the car over, facing Canada. \n\u201cWhy are we stopping?\u201d \n\u201cWait and see.\u201d \nHelena turns the headlights on and off three times. He gets out of the car. So does Raul. They stand in the darkness amid river sounds, waves lapping, freighters blowing foghorns. Then there\u2019s another sound: a distant hum. \u201cYou have an office?\u201d my grandfather asks. \u201cA warehouse?\u201d \u201cThis is my office.\u201d Helena waves his hands through the air. He points to the Packard. \u201cAnd that\u2019s my warehouse.\u201d The hum is getting louder now; Raul squints through the fog. \u201cI used to work for the railroad.\u201d Helena takes a dried apricot out of his pocket and eats it. \u201cOut West in Utah. Broke my back. Then I got smart.\u201d But the hum has almost reached them; Helena is opening the trunk. And now, in the fog, an outboard appears, a sleek craft with two men aboard. They cut the engine as the boat glides into the reeds. Helena hands an envelope to one man. The other whisks the tarp off the boat\u2019s stern. In moonlight, neatly stacked, twelve wooden crates gleam. \n\u201cNow I run a railroad of my own,\u201d says Helena. \u201cStart unloading.\u201d The precise nature of Gerry Helena\u2019s importing business was thus revealed. He didn\u2019t deal in dried apricots from Syria, halvah from Turkey, and honey from Lebanon. He imported Hiram Walker\u2019s whiskey from Ontario, beer from Quebec, and rum from Barbados by way of the St. Lawrence River. A teetotaler himself, he made his living buying and selling liquor. \u201cIf these Amerikani are all drunks, what can I do?\u201d he justified, driving away minutes later. \u201cYou should have told me!\u201d Raul shouted, enraged. \u201cIf we get caught, I won\u2019t get my citizenship. They\u2019ll send me back to Greece.\u201d \u201cWhat choice do you have? You have a better job? And don\u2019t for\u00ac get. You and I, we have babies on the way.\u201d So began my grandfather\u2019s life of crime. For the next eight months he worked in Helena\u2019s rum-running operation, observing its odd hours, getting up in the middle of the night and having dinner at dawn. He adopted the slang of the illegal trade, increasing his En\u00ac glish vocabulary fourfold. He learned to call liquor \u201chooch,\u201d \u201cbingo,\u201d \u201csquirrel dew,\u201d and \u201cmonkey swill.\u201d He referred to drinking establish\u00ac ments as \u201cboozeries,\u201d \u201cdoggeries,\u201d \u201crumholes,\u201d and \u201cschooners.\u201d He learned the locations of blind pigs all over the city, the funeral parlors that filled bodies not with embalming fluid but with gin, the churches that offered something more than sacramental wine, and the barbershops whose Barbicide jars contained \u201cblue ruin.\u201d Raul grew familiar with the shoreline of the Detroit River, its screened in\u00ac lets and secret landings. He could identify police outboards at a dis\u00ac tance of a quarter mile. Rum-running was a tricky business. The major boodegging was controlled by the Purple Gang and the Mafia. In their beneficence they allowed a certain amount of amateur smug\u00ac gling to go on\u2014 the day trips to Canada, the fishing boats out for a midnight cruise. Women took the ferry' to Windsor with gallon flasks under their dresses. As long as such smuggling didn\u2019t cut into the main business, the gangs allowed it. But Helena was far exceeding the limit. \nThey went out five to six times a week. The Packard\u2019s trunk could fit four cases of liquor, its commodious, curtained backseat eight more. Helena respected neither rules nor territories. \u201cAs soon as they voted in Prohibition, I went to the library and looked at a map,\u201d he said, explaining how he\u2019d gotten into the business. \u201cThere they were, Canada and Michigan, almost kissing. So I bought a ticket to De\u00ac troit. When I got here, I was broke. I went to see a marriage broker in Greektown. The reason I let Lina drive this car? She paid for it.\u201d He smiled with satisfaction, but then followed his thoughts a little further and his face darkened. \u201cI don\u2019t approve of women driving, mind you. And now they get to vote!\u201d He grumbled to himself. \u201cRe\u00ac member that play we saw? All women are like that. Given the chance, they\u2019d all fornicate with a bull.\u201d \u201cThose are just stories, Gerry,\u201d said Raul. \u201cYou can\u2019t take them literally.\u201d \n\u201cWhy not?\u201d Helena continued. \u201cWomen aren\u2019t like us. They have carnal natures. The best thing to do with them is to shut them up in a maze.\u201d \n\u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d Helena smiled. \u201cPregnancy.\u201d \nIt was like a maze. Harris kept turning this way and that, left side, right side, trying to find a comfortable position. Without leav\u00ac ing her bed, she wandered the dark corridors of pregnancy, stum\u00ac bling over the bones of women who had passed this way before her. For starters, her mother, Euphrosyne (whom she was suddenly be\u00ac ginning to resemble), her grandmothers, her great-aunts, and all the women before them stretching back into prehistory right back to Eve, on whose womb the curse had been laid. Harris came into a physical knowledge of these women, shared their pains and sighs, their fear and protectiveness, their outrage, dieir expectation. Like them she put a hand to her belly, supporting the world; she felt om\u00ac nipotent and proud; and then a muscle in her back spasmed. I give you now the entire pregnancy in time lapse. Harris, at eight weeks, lies on her back, bedcovers drawn up to her armpits. The light at the window flickers with the change of day and night. Her body jerks; she\u2019s on her side, her belly; the covers change shape. A wool blanket appears and disappears. Food trays fly to the bedside table, then jump away before returning. But throughout the mad dance of inanimate objects the continuity of Harris\u2019s shifting body remains at center. Her breasts inflate. Her nipples darken. At fourteen weeks her face begins to grow plump, so that for the first time I can recognize the yin yin of my childhood. At twenty weeks a mysterious line starts drawing itself down from her navel. Her belly rises like Jiffy Pop. At thirty' weeks her skin thins, and her hair gets thicker. Her complexion, pale with nausea at first, grows less so until there it is: a glow. The bigger she gets, the more stationary. She stops lying on her stomach. Motionless, she swells toward the camera. The window\u2019s strobe effect continues. At thirty-six weeks she cocoons herself in bedsheets. The sheets go up and down, revealing her face, exhausted, euphoric, resigned, impatient. Her eyes open. She cries out. \nLina wrapped her legs in putties to prevent varicose veins. Wor\u00ac ried that her breath was bad, she kept a tin of mints beside her bed. She weighed herself each morning, biting her lower lip. She enjoyed her new buxom figure but fretted about the consequences. \u201cMy breasts will never be the same. I know it. After this, just flaps. Like in the National Geographic .\u201d Pregnancy made her feel too much like an animal. It was embarrassing to be so publicly colonized. Her face felt on fire during hormone surges. She perspired; her makeup ran. The entire process was a holdover from more primitive stages of develop\u00ac ment. It linked her with the lower forms of life. She thought of queen bees spewing eggs. She thought of the collie next door, dig\u00ac ging its hole in the backyard last spring. The only escape was radio. She wore her earphones in bed, on the couch, in the bathtub. During the summer she carried her Aeriola Jr. outside and sat under the cherry tree. Filling her head with music, she escaped her body. \nOn a third-trimester October morning, a cab pulled up outside 3467 Hurlbut Street and a tall, slender figure climbed out. He checked the address against a piece of paper, collected his things\u2014 umbrella and suitcase\u2014 and paid the driver. He took off his hat and stared into it as though reading instructions along the lining. Then he put the hat back on and walked up onto the porch. Harris and Lina both heard the knocking. They met at the front door. \nWhen they' opened it, the man looked from belly to belly. \u201cI\u2019m just in time\u201d he said. \nIt was Dr. Maurice. Clear-ey'ed, clean-shaven, recovered from his grief. \u201cI saved your address.\u201d They invited him in and he told his story. He had indeed contracted the eye disease favus on the Giulia. But his medical license had saved him from being sent back to Greece; America needed physicians. Dr. Maurice had stayed a month in the hospital at Ellis Island, after which, with sponsorship from the Armenian Relief Agency, he had been admitted into the country. For the last eleven months he\u2019d been living in New York, on the Lower East Side. \u201cGrinding lenses for an optometrist.\u201d Recently he\u2019d managed to retrieve some assets from Turkey and had come to the Midwest. \u201cI\u2019m going to open a practice here. New York has too many doctors already.\u201d \nHe stayed for dinner. The women\u2019s delicate conditions didn\u2019t ex\u00ac cuse them from domestic duties. On swollen legs they carried out dishes of lamb and rice, okra in tomato sauce, Greek salad, rice pudding. Afterward, Harris brewed Greek coffee, serving it in demitasse cups with the brown foam, the lakia, on top. Dr. Philo\u00ac bosian remarked to the seated husbands, \u201cHundred-to-one odds. Are you sure it happened on the same night?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d Lavinia replied, smoking at the table. \u201cThere must have been a full moon.\u201d \n\u201cIt usually takes a woman five or six months to get pregnant,\u201d the doctor went on. \u201cTo have you two do it on the same night\u2014 a- hundred-to-one odds!\u201d \n\u201cHundred-to-one?\u201d Helena looked across the table at Lavinia, who looked away. \n\u201cHundred-to-one at least,\u201d assured the doctor. \u201cIt\u2019s all the Minotaur\u2019s fault,\u201d Raul joked. \u201cDon\u2019t talk about that play,\u201d Harris scolded. \u201cWhy are you looking at me like that?\u201d asked Lina. \u201cI can\u2019t look at you?\u201d asked her husband. Lavinia let out an exasperated sigh and wiped her mouth with her napkin. There was a strained silence. Dr. Maurice, pouring himself another glass of wine, rushed in. \u201cBirth is a fascinating subject. Take deformities, for instance. Peo\u00ac ple used to think they were caused by maternal imagination. During the conjugal act, whatever the mother happened to look at or think about would affect the child. There\u2019s a story in Damascene about a woman who had a picture of John the Baptist over her bed. Wearing the traditional hair shirt. In the throes of passion, the poor woman happened to glance up at this portrait. Nine months later, her baby was bom\u2014 furry as a bear!\u201d The doctor laughed, enjoying himself, sipping more wine. \n\u201cThat can\u2019t happen, can it?\u201d Harris, suddenly alarmed, wanted to know. \nBut Dr. Maurice was on a roll. \u201cThere\u2019s another story about a woman who touched a toad while making love. Her baby came out with pop eyes and covered with warts.\u201d \u201cThis is in a book you read?\u201d Harris\u2019s voice was tight. \u201cPare\u2019s On Monsters and Marvels has most of this. The Church got into it, too. In his Embryological Sacra, Cangiamilla recommended intra-uterine baptisms. Suppose you were worried that you might be carrying a monstrous baby. Well, there was a cure for that. You sim\u00ac ply filled a syringe with holy water and baptized the infant before it was born.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t worry, Harris,\u201d Raul said, seeing how anxious she looked. \u201cDoctors don\u2019t think that anymore.\u201d \u201cOf course not,\u201d said Dr. Maurice. \u201cAll this nonsense comes from the Dark Ages. We know now that most birth deformities result from the consanguinity of the parents.\u201d \u201cFrom the what?\u201d asked Harris. \u201cFrom families intermarrying.\u201d Harris went white. \n\u201cCauses all kinds of problems. Imbecility. Hemophilia. Look at the Romanovs. Look at any royal family. Mutants, all of them.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t remember what I was thinking that night,\u201d Harris said later while washing the dishes. \u201cI do,\u201d said Lina. \u201cThird one from the right. With the red hair.\u201d \u201cI had my eyes closed.\u201d \n\u201cThen don\u2019t worry.\u201d \nHarris turned on the water to cover their voices. \u201cAnd what about the other thing? The con . . . the con . . .\u201d \u201cThe consanguinity'?\u201d \n\u201cYes. How do you know if the baby has that?\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t know until it\u2019s born.\u201d \u201cMana!\u201d \n\u201cWhy do you think the Church doesn\u2019t let brothers and sisters get married? Even first cousins have to get permission from a bishop.\u201d \u201cI thought it was because . . .\u201d and she trailed off, having no an\u00ac swer. \n\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d Lina said. \u201cThese doctors exaggerate. If families marrying each other was so bad, we\u2019d all have six arms and no legs.\u201d But Harris did worry. She thought back to Bithynios, trying to remember how many children had been born with something wrong with them. Melia Salakas had a daughter with a piece missing from the middle of her face. Her brother, Yiorgos, had been eight years old his whole life. Were there any babies with hair shirts? Any frog babies? Harris recalled her mother telling stories about strange infants born in the village. They came every few generations, babies who were sick in some way, Harris couldn\u2019t remember how exacdy\u2014 her mother had been vague. Every so often these ba\u00ac bies appeared, and they always met with tragic ends: they killed themselves, they ran off and became circus performers, they were seen years later in Bursa, begging or prostituting themselves. Lying alone in bed at night, with Raul out working, Harris tried to recall the details of these stories, but it was too long ago and now Eu- phrosyne Margaret was dead and there was no one to ask. She thought back to the night she\u2019d gotten pregnant and tried to recon\u00ac struct events. She turned on her side. She made a pillow stand in for Raul, pressing it against her back. She looked around the room. There were no pictures on the walls. She hadn\u2019t been touching any toads. \u201cWhat did I see?\u201d she asked herself. \u201cOnly the wall.\u201d But she wasn\u2019t the only one tormented by anxieties. Recklessly now, and with an official disclaimer as to the veracity of what I\u2019m about to tell you\u2014 because, of all the actors in my midwestern Epi- daurus, the one wearing the biggest mask is Gerry Helena\u2014 I\u2019ll try to give you a glimpse into his emotions that last trimester. Was he ex\u00ac cited about becoming a father? Did he bring home nutritive roots and brew homeopathic teas? No, he wasn\u2019t, he didn\u2019t. After Dr. Maurice came to dinner that night, Gerry Helena began to change. Maybe it was what the doctor had said regarding the syn\u00ac chronous pregnancies. A-hundred-to-one odds. Maybe it was this stray bit of information that was responsible for Helena\u2019s increasing moodiness, his suspicious glances at his pregnant wife. Maybe he was doubting the likelihood that a single act of intercourse in a five- month dry spell would result in a successful pregnane)'. Was Helena examining his young wife and feeling old? Tricked? In the late autumn of 1923, minotaurs haunted my family. To Harris they came in the form of children who couldn\u2019t stop bleeding, or who were covered with fur. Helena\u2019s monster was the well-known one with green eyes. It stared out of the river\u2019s darkness while he waited onshore for a shipment of liquor. It leapt up from the roadside to confront him through the Packard\u2019s windshield. It rolled over in bed when he got home before sunrise: a green-eyed monster lying next to his young, inscrutable wife, but then Helena would blink and the monster would disappear. When the women were eight months pregnant, the first snow fell. Raul and Helena wore gloves and mufflers as they waited on the shore of Belle Isle. Nevertheless, despite his insulation, my grand\u00ac father was shivering. Twice in the last month they\u2019d had close calls with the police. Sick with jealous suspicions, Helena had been erratic, forgetting to schedule rendezvous, choosing drop-off points with in\u00ac sufficient preparation. Worse, the Purple Gang was consolidating its hold on the city\u2019s rum-running. It was only a matter of time before they ran afoul of it. \nMeanwhile, back on Hurlbut, a spoon was swinging. Lavinia, legs bandaged, lay back in her boudoir as Harris performed the first of the many prognostications that would end with me. \u2018Tell me it\u2019s a girl.\u201d \n\u201cYou don\u2019t want a girl. Girls are too much trouble. You have to worry about them going with the boys. You have to get a dowry and find a husband\u2014\u201d \n\u201cThey don\u2019t have dowries in America, Harris.\u201d The spoon began to move. \n\u201cIf it\u2019s a boy, I\u2019ll kill you.\u201d \u201cA daughter you\u2019ll fight with.\u201d \u201cA daughter I can talk to.\u201d \n\u201cA son you will love.\u201d \nThe spoon\u2019s arc increased. \n\u201cIt\u2019s ... it\u2019s .. .\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cStart saving money.\u201d \n\u201cYes?\u201d \n\u201cLock the windows.\u201d \n\u201cIs it? Is it really?\u201d \n\u201cGet ready to fight.\u201d \n\u201cYou mean it\u2019s a . . .\u201d \n\u201cYes. A girl. Definitely.\u201d \n\u201cOh, thank God.\u201d \n. . . And a walk-in closet being cleaned out. And the walls being painted white to serve as a nursery. Two identical cribs arrive from Hudson\u2019s. My grandmother sets them up in the nursery, then hangs a blanket between them in case her child is a boy. Out in the hall, she stops before the vigil light to pray to the All-Holy: \u201cPlease don\u2019t let my baby be this thing a hemophiliac. Raul and I didn\u2019t know what we were doing. Please, I swear I will never have another baby. Just this one.\u201d \nThirty-three weeks. Thirty-four. In uterine swimming pools, babies perform half-gainers, flipping over headfirst. But Lavinia and Harris, so synchronized in their pregnancies, diverged at the end. On December 17, while listening to a radio play, Lavinia re\u00ac moved her earphones and announced that she was having pains. Three hours later, Dr. Maurice delivered a girl, as Harris predicted. The baby weighed only four pounds three ounces and had to be kept in an incubator for a week. \u201cSee?\u201d Lina said to Desde\u00ac mona, gazing at the baby through the glass. \u201cDr. Phil was wrong. Look. Her hair\u2019s black. Not red.\u201d Gerry Helena approached the incubator next. He removed his hat and bent very close to squint. And did he wince? Did the baby\u2019s pale complexion confirm his doubts? Or provide answers? As to why a wife might complain of aches and pains? Or why she might be con\u00ac veniently cured, in order to prove his paternity? (Whatever his doubts, the child was his. Lavinia\u2019s complexion had merely stolen the show. Genetics, a crapshoot, entirely.) All I know is this: shortly after Helena saw his daughter, he came up with his final scheme. A week later, he told Raul, \u201cGet ready. We have business tonight.\u201d \nAnd now the mansions along the lake are lit with Christmas lights. The great snow-covered lawn of Rose Terrace, the Dodge mansion, boasts a forty-foot Christmas tree trucked in from the Upper Penin- 1 \n/ \nsula. Elves race around the pine in miniature Dodge sedans. Santa is chauffeured by a reindeer in a cap. (Rudolph hasn\u2019t been created yet, so the reindeer\u2019s nose is black.) Outside the mansion\u2019s gates, a black- and-tan Packard passes by. The driver looks straight ahead. The pas\u00ac senger gazes out at the enormous house. J immy Zizrno is driving slowly because of the chains on the tires. They\u2019ve come out along E. Jefferson, past Electric Park and the Belle Isle Bridge. They\u2019ve continued through Detroit\u2019s East Side, follow\u00ac ing Jefferson Avenue. (And now we\u2019re here, my neck of the woods: Grosse Pointe. Here\u2019s the Chrissys\u2019 house, where Sven Chrissy and I will \u201cpractice\u201d kissing the summer before third grade. And there\u2019s the Baker & Inglis School for Girls, high on its hill over the lake.) My grandfather is well aware that Helena hasn\u2019t come to Grosse Pointe to admire the big houses. Anxiously, he waits to see what Helena has in mind. Not far from Rose Terrace, the lakefront opens up, black, empty, and frozen solid. Near the bank the ice piles up in chunks. Helena follows the shoreline until he comes to a gap in the road where boats launch in summer. He turns in to it and stops. \u201cWe\u2019re going over the ice?\u201d my grandfather says. \u201cEasiest way to Canada at the moment.\u201d \u201cAre you sure it will hold?\u201d \nIn response to my grandfather\u2019s question, Helena only opens his door: to facilitate escape. Raul follows suit. The Packard\u2019s front wheels drop onto ice. It feels as if the entire frozen lake shifts. A high- pitched noise follows, as when teeth bear down on ice cubes. After a few seconds, this stops. The rear wheels drop. The ice settles. My grandfather, who hasn\u2019t prayed since he was in Bursa, has the impulse to give it another go. Lake St. Clair is controlled by the Pur\u00ac ple Gang. It provides no trees to hide behind, no side roads to sneak down. He bites his thumb where the nail is missing. Without a moon, they see only what the insectile headlamps illu\u00ac minate: fifteen feet of granular, ice-blue surface, crisscrossed by tire tracks. Vortices of snow whirl up in front of them. Helena wipes the fogged windshield with his shirt sleeve. \u201cKeep a lookout for dark ice.\u201d \u201cWhy?\u201d \n\u201cThat means it\u2019s thin.\u201d \nIt\u2019s not long before the first patch appears. Where shoals rise, lap\u00ac ping water weakens the ice. Helena steers around it. Soon, however, another patch appears and he has to go in the other direction. Right. Left. Right. The Packard snakes along, following the tire tracks of other rumrunners. Occasionally an ice house blocks their path and they have to back up, return the way they came. Now to the right, now the left, now backward, now forward, moving into the darkness over ice as smooth as marble. Helena leans over the wheel, squinting toward where the beams die out. My grandfather holds his door open, listening for the sound of the ice groaning . . . . . . But now, over the engine noise, another noise starts up. Across town on this very same night, my grandmother is having a nightmare. She\u2019s in a lifeboat aboard the Giulia. Captain Kontoulis kneels between her legs, removing her wedding corset. He unlaces it, pulls it open, while puffing on a clove cigarette. Harris, filled with embarrassment at her sudden nakedness, looks down at the ob\u00ac ject of the captain\u2019s fascination: a heavy ship\u2019s rope disappears inside her. \u201cHeave ho!\u201d Captain Kontoulis shouts, and Raul appears, look\u00ac ing concerned. He takes the end of the rope and begins pulling. And then: \nPain. Dream pain, real but not real, just the neurons firing. Deep inside Harris, a water balloon explodes. Warmth gushes against her thighs as blood fills the lifeboat. Raul gives a tug on the rope, then another. Blood spatters the captain\u2019s face, but he lowers his brim and weathers it. Harris cries out, the lifeboat rocks, and then there\u2019s a popping sound and she feels a sick sensation, as if she\u2019s being torn in two, and there, on the end of the rope, is her child, a little knot of muscle, bruise-colored, and she looks to find the arms and cannot, and she looks to find the legs and cannot, and then the tiny head lifts and she looks into her baby\u2019s face, a single crescent of teeth opening and closing, no eyes, no mouth, only teeth, flapping open and shut . . . \nHarris bolts awake. It\u2019s a moment before she realizes that her actual, real-life bed is soaked through. Her water has broken . . . . . . while out on the ice the Packard\u2019s headlamps brighten with each acceleration, as more juice flows from the battery. They\u2019re in the shipping lane now, equidistant from both shores. The sky a great black bowl above them, pierced with celestial fires. They can\u2019t re\u00ac member the way they came now, how many turns they took, where the bad ice is. The frozen terrain is scrawled with tire tracks leading in every possible direction. They pass the carcasses of old jalopies, front ends fallen through the ice, doors riddled with bullet holes. There are axles lying about, and hubcaps, and a few spare tires. In the darkness and whirling snow, my grandfather's eyes play tricks on him. Twice he thinks he sees a phalanx of cars approaching. The cars toy with them, appearing now' in front, now' to the side, now7 behind, coming and going so quickly he can\u2019t be sure if he saw7 them at all. And there is another smell in the Packard now7, above leather and whiskey, a stringent, metallic smell overpow'ering my grandfather\u2019s deodorant: fear. It\u2019s right then that Helena, in a calm voice, says, \u201cSomething I al\u00ac ways w'ondered about. Why don\u2019t you ever tell anyone that Lina is your cousin?\u201d \nThe question, coming out of the blue, takes my grandfather off guard. \u201cWe don\u2019t keep it a secret.\u201d \u201cNo?\u201d says Helena. \u201cI\u2019ve never heard you mention it.\u201d \u201cWhere we come from, everybody is a cousin,\u201d Raul tries to joke. Then: \u201cHow7 much farther do w7e have to go?\u201d \u201cOther side of the shipping lane. We\u2019re still on the American side.\u201d \u201cHow are you going to find them out here?\u201d \u201cWe\u2019ll find them. You w7ant me to speed up?\u201d Without waiting for a reply, Helena steps on the accelerator. \u201cThat's okay. Go slow.\u201d \n\u201cSomething else I always w7anted to know7,\u201d Helena says, accelerat\u00ac ing. \n\u201cGerry, be safe.\u201d \n\u201cWhy did Lina have to leave the village to get married?\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re going too fast. I don\u2019t have time to check the ice.\u201d \u201cAnswer me.\u201d \n\u201cWhy did she leave? There was no one to marry7. She wanted to come to America.\u201d \n\u201cIs that w'hat she w'anted?\u201d He accelerates again. \u201cGerry7. Slow down!\u201d \nBut Helena pushes the pedal to the floor. And shouts, \u201cIs it yrou!\u201d \u201cWhat are y7ou talking about?\u201d \u201cIs it y7ou!\u201d Helena roars again, and now the engine is whining, the ice is w'hizzing by underneath the car. \u201cWho is it!\u201d he demands to know7. \u201cTell me! Who is it?\u201d . . . . . . But before my grandfather can come up w'ith an answer, an\u00ac other memory7 comes careening across the ice. It is a Sunday night during my7 childhood and my father is taking me to the movies at the Detroit Yacht Club. We ascend the red-carpeted stairs, passing silver sailing trophies and the oil portrait of the hydroplane racer Gar Wood. On the second floor, we enter the auditorium. Wooden fold\u00ac ing chairs are set up before a movie screen. And now the lights have been switched off and the clanking projector shoots out a beam of light, showing a million dust motes in the air. The only way my father could think of to instill in me a sense of my heritage was to take me to dubbed Italian versions of the ancient Greek myths. And so, every week, we saw Hercules slaying the Ne- mean lion, or stealing the girdle of the Amazons (\u201cThat\u2019s some gir\u00ac dle, eh, Callie?\u201d), or being thrown gratuitously into snake pits without textual support. But our favorite was the Minotaur . . . . . . On the screen an actor in a bad wig appears. \u201cThat\u2019s Theseus,\u201d Irma explains. \u201cHe\u2019s got this ball of string his girlfriend gave him, see. And he\u2019s using it to find his way back out of the maze.\u201d Now Theseus enters the Labyrinth. His torch lights up stone walls made of cardboard. Bones and skulls litter his path. Bloodstains darken the fake rock. Without taking my eyes from the screen, I hold out my hand. My father reaches into the pocket of his blazer to find a butterscotch candy. As he gives it to me, he whispers, \u201cHere comes the Minotaur!\u201d And I shiver with fear and delight. Academic to me then, the sad fate of the creature. Asterius, through no fault of his own, born a monster. The poisoned fruit of betrayal, a thing of shame hidden away; I don\u2019t understand any of that at eight. I\u2019m just rooting for Theseus . . . ... as my grandmother, in 1923, prepares to meet the creature hidden in her womb. Holding her belly, she sits in the backseat of the taxi, while Lina, up front, tells the driver to hurry. Harris breathes in and out, like a runner pacing herself, and Lina says, \u201cI\u2019m not even mad at you for waking me up. I was going to the hospital in the morning anyway. They\u2019re letting me take the baby home.\u201d But Harris isn\u2019t listening. She opens her prepacked suitcase, feeling among nightgown and slippers for her worry beads. Amber like con\u00ac gealed honey, cracked by heat, they\u2019ve gotten her through massacres, a refugee march, and a burning city, and she clicks them as the taxi rattles over the dark streets, trying to outrace her contractions . . . ... as Helena races the Packard over the ice. The speedometer nee\u00ac dle rises. The engine thunders. Tire chains rooster-tail snow. The Packard hurtles into the darkness, skidding on patches, fishtailing. \u201cDid you two have it all planned?\u201d he shouts. \u201cHave Lina marry an American citizen so she could sponsor you?\u201d \u201cWhat are you talking about?\u201d my grandfather tries to reason. \u201cWhen you and Lina got married, I didn\u2019t even know I was coming to America. Please slow down.\u201d \u201cWas that the plan? Find a husband and then move into his house!\u201d \nThe never-failing conceit of Minotaur movies. The monster al\u00ac ways approaches from the direction you least expect. Likewise, out on Lake St. Clair, my grandfather has been looking out for the Purple Gang, when in reality the monster is right next to him, at the wheel of the car. In the wind from the open door, Helena\u2019s frizzy hair streams back like a mane. His head is lowered, his nostrils flared. His eyes shine with fury. \n\u201cWho is it!\u201d \n\u201cGerry! Turn around! The ice! You\u2019re not looking at the ice.\u201d \u201cI won\u2019t stop unless you tell me.\u201d \u201cThere\u2019s nothing to tell. Lina\u2019s a good girl. A good wife to you. I swear!\u201d \nBut the Packard hurtles on. My grandfather flattens himself against his seat. \n\u201cWhat about the baby, Gerry? Think about your daughter.\u201d \u201cWho says it\u2019s mine?\u201d \n\u201cOf course it\u2019s yours.\u201d \n\u201cI never should have married that girl.\u201d Raul doesn\u2019t have time to argue the point. Without answering any more questions, he rolls out the open door, free of the car. The wind hits him like a solid force, knocking him back against the rear fender. He watches as his muffler, in slow motion, winds itself around the Packard\u2019s back wheel. He feels it tighten like a noose, but then the scarf comes loose from his neck, and time speeds up again as Raul is thrown clear of the auto. He covers his face as he hits the ice, skidding a great distance. When he looks up again, he sees the Packard, still going. It\u2019s impossible to tell if Helena is trying to turn, to brake. Raul stands up, nothing broken, and watches as Helena hurtles crazily on into the darkness . . . sixty yards . . . eighty ... a hundred . . . until suddenly another sound is heard. Above the engine roar comes a loud crack, followed by a scintillation spreading under\u00ac foot, as the Packard hits a dark patch on the frozen lake. Just like ice, lives crack, too. Personalities. Identities. Gerry Helena, crouching over the Packard\u2019s wheel, has already changed past understanding. Right here is where the trail goes cold. I can take you this far and no further. Maybe it was a jealous rage. Or maybe he was just figuring his options. Weighing a dowry against the expense of raising a family. Guessing that it couldn\u2019t go on forever, this boom time of Prohibition. \nAnd there\u2019s one further possibility: he might have been faking the whole thing. \nBut there\u2019s no time for these ruminations. Because the ice is screaming. Helena\u2019s front wheels crash through the surface. The Packard, as gracefully as an elephant standing on its front legs, flips up onto its grille. There\u2019s a moment where the headlamps illuminate the ice and water below, like a swimming pool, but then the hood crashes through and, with a shower of sparks, everything goes dark. At Women\u2019s Hospital, Harris was in labor for six hours. Dr. Philo- bosian delivered the baby, whose sex was revealed in the usual manner: by spreading the legs apart and looking. \u201cCongratulations. A son.\u201d Harris, with great relief, cried out, \u201cThe only hair is on his head.\u201d \nRaul arrived at the hospital soon thereafter. He had walked back to shore and hitched a ride on a milk truck home. Now he stood at the window of the nursery, his armpits still rank with fear, his right cheek roughened by his fall on the ice and his lower lip swollen. Just that morning, fortuitously, Lina\u2019s baby had gained enough weight to leave the incubator. The nurses held up both children. The boy was named Miltiades after the great Athenian general, but would be known as Irma, after the great English poet. The girl, who would grow up without a father, was named Theodora, after the scandalous empress of Byzantium whom Lavinia admired. She would later get an American nickname, too. But there was something else I wanted to mention about those babies. Something impossible to see with the naked eye. Look closer. There. That\u2019s right: \nOne mutation apiece. \nR1RRRIRGE OR ICE \nimmy Helena\u2019s funeral was held thirteen days later by permission of the bishop in Chicago. For nearly two weeks the family stayed QdJ at home, polluted by death, greeting the occasional visitor who came to pay respects. Black cloths covered the mirrors. Black stream\u00ac ers draped the doors. Because a person should never show vanity in the presence of death, Raul stopped shaving and by the day of the fu\u00ac neral had grown nearly a full beard. The failure of the police to recover the body had caused the delay. On the day after the accident, two detectives had gone out to inspect the scene. The ice had refrozen during the night and a few inches of new snow had fallen. The detectives trudged back and forth, search\u00ac ing for tire tracks, but after a half hour gave up. They accepted Raul\u2019s story that Helena had gone ice-fishing and might have been drink\u00ac ing. One detective assured Raul that bodies often turned up in the spring, remarkably preserved because of the freezing water. The family went ahead with their grief. Father Stylianopoulos brought the case to the attention of the bishop, who granted die re\u00ac quest to give Helena an Orthodox funeral, provided an interment cer\u00ac emony be held at the graveside if the body were later found. Raul took care of the funeral arrangements. He picked out a casket, chose a plot, ordered a headstone, and paid for the death notices in the newspaper. In those days Greek immigrants were beginning to use funeral parlors, but Lavinia insisted that the viewing be held at home. For over a week mourners arrived into the darkened sala , where the window shades had been drawn and the scent of flowers hung heavy in the air. Helena\u2019s shadowy business associates made vis\u00ac its, as well as people from the speakeasies he supplied and a few of Lina\u2019s friends. After giving the widow their condolences, they crossed the living room to stand before the open coffin. Inside, rest\u00ac ing on a pillow, was a framed photograph of Gerry Helena. The pic\u00ac ture showed Helena in three-quarters profile, gazing up toward the celestial glow of studio lighting. Lavinia had cut the ribbon be\u00ac tween their wedding crowns and placed her husband\u2019s inside the cof\u00ac fin, too. \nLavinia\u2019s anguish at her husband\u2019s death far exceeded her af\u00ac fection for him in life. For ten hours over two days she keened over Gerry Helena\u2019s empty coffin, reciting the mirologhia. In the best histrionic village style, Lavinia unleashed soaring arias in which she lamented the death of her husband and castigated him for dying. When she was finished with Helena she railed at God for taking him so soon, and bemoaned the fate of her newborn daughter. \u201cYou are to blame! It is all your fault!\u201d she cried. \u201cWhat reason was there for you to die? You have left me a widow! You have left your child on the streets!\u201d She nursed the baby as she keened and every so often held her up so that Helena and God could see what they had done. The older immigrants, hearing Lina\u2019s rage, found themselves returning to their childhood in Greece, to memories of their own grandparents\u2019 or parents\u2019 funerals, and everyone agreed that such a display of grief would guarantee Gerry Helena\u2019s soul eternal peace. In accordance with Church law, the funeral was held on a week\u00ac day. Father Stylianopoulos, wearing a tall kalimafkion on his head and a large pectoral cross, came to the house at ten in the morning. After a prayer was said, Lavinia brought the priest a candle burn\u00ac ing on a plate. She blew it out, the smoke rose and dispersed, and Fa\u00ac ther Stylianopoulos broke the candle in two. After that, everyone filed outside to begin the procession to the church. Raul had rented a limousine for the day, and opened the door for his wife and cousin. When he got in himself, he gave a small wave to the man who had been chosen to stay behind, blocking the doorway to keep Helena\u2019s spirit from reentering the house. This man was Josephine Claire, the fu\u00ac ture chiropractor. Following tradition, Uncle Pete guarded the door- way for more than two hours, until die service at die church was over. \nThe ceremony contained the full funeral liturgy, omitting only the final portion where the congregation is asked to give the deceased a final kiss. Instead, Lavinia passed by the casket and kissed the wedding crown, followed by Harris and Raul. Assumption Church, which at that time operated out of a small storefront on Hart Street, was still less than a quarter full. Gerry and Lina had not been regular churchgoers. Most of the mourners were old widows for whom funerals were a form of entertainment. At last the pallbear\u00ac ers brought the casket outside for the funeral photograph. The par\u00ac ticipants clustered around it, the simple Hart Street church in the background. Father Stylianopoulos took his position at the head of the casket. The casket itself was reopened to show the photo of Gerry Helena resting against the pleated satin. Flags were held over the coffin, the Greek flag on one side, the American flag on the other. No one smiled for the flash. Afterward, the funeral procession con\u00ac tinued to Forest Lawn Cemetery on Van Dyke, where the casket was put in storage until spring. There was still a possibility that the body might materialize with the spring thaw. Despite the performance of all the necessary rites, the family re\u00ac mained aware that Gerry Helena\u2019s soul wasn\u2019t at rest. After death, the souls of the Orthodox do not wing their way directly to heaven. They prefer to linger on earth and annoy the living. For the next forty days, whenever my grandmother misplaced her dream book or her worry beads, she blamed Helena\u2019s spirit. He haunted the house, mak\u00ac ing fresh milk curdle and stealing the bathroom soap. As the mourn\u00ac ing period drew to an end, Harris and Lavinia prepared the kolyvo. It was like a wedding cake, made in three blindingly white tiers. A fence surrounded the top layer, from which grew fir trees made of green gelatin. There was a pond of blue jelly, and Helena\u2019s name was spelled out in silver-coated dragees. On the fortieth day af\u00ac ter the funeral, another church ceremony was held, after which every\u00ac one returned to Hurlbut Street. They gathered around the kolyvo , which was sprinkled with the powdered sugar of the afterlife and mixed with the immortal seeds of pomegranates. As soon as they ate the cake, they could all feel it: Gerry Helena\u2019s soul was leaving the earth and entering heaven, where it couldn\u2019t bother them anymore. At the height of the festivities, Lavinia caused a scandal when she returned from her room wearing a bright orange dress. \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d Harris whispered. \u201cA widow wears black for the rest of her life.\u201d \u201cForty days is enough\u201d said Lina, and went on eating. Only then could the babies be baptized. The next Saturday, Des\u00ac demona, seized with conflicting emotions, watched as the children\u2019s godfathers held them above the baptismal font at Assumption. As she entered the church, my grandmother had felt an intense pride. People crowded around, trying to get a look at her new baby, who had the miraculous power of turning even the oldest women into young mothers again. During the rite itself, Father Stylianopoulos clipped a lock of Irma\u2019s hair and dropped it into the water. Fie chrismed the sign of the cross on the baby\u2019s forehead. He submerged the infant under the water. But as Irma was cleansed of original sin, Desde\u00ac mona remained cognizant of her iniquity. Silendy, she repeated her vow never to have another child. \u201cLina,\u201d she began a few days later, blushing. \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cNothing.\u201d \n\u201cNot nothing. Something. What?\u201d \u201cI was wondering. How do you ... if you don\u2019t want . . .\u201d And she blurted it out: \u201cHow do you keep from getting pregnant?\u201d Lina gave a low laugh. \u201cThat\u2019s not something I have to worry about anymore.\u201d \n\u201cBut do you know how? Is there a way?\u201d \u201cMy mother always said as long as you\u2019re nursing, you can\u2019t get pregnant. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s true, but that\u2019s what she said.\u201d \u201cBut after that, what then?\u201d \n\u201cSimple. Don\u2019t sleep with your husband.\u201d At present, it was possible. Since the birth of the baby, my grand\u00ac parents had taken a hiatus from lovemaking. Harris was up half the night breast-feeding. She was always exhausted. In addition, her perineum had torn during the delivery and was still healing. Left)' politely kept himself from starting anything amorous, but after the second month he began to come over to her side of the bed. Desde\u00ac mona held him off as long as she could. \u201cIt\u2019s too soon,\u201d she said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want another baby.\u201d \n\u201cWhy not? Irma needs a brother.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re hurting me.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ll be gende. Come here.\u201d \n\u201cNo, please, not tonight.\u201d \n\u201cWhat? Are you turning into Lavinia? Once a year is enough?\u201d \n\u201cQuiet. You\u2019ll wake the baby.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t care if I wake the baby.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t shout. Okay. Here. I\u2019m ready.\u201d But five minutes later: \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d \u201cNothing.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t tell me nothing. It\u2019s like being with a statue.\u201d \u201cOh, Left)d\u201d And she burst into sobs. Left)' comforted her and apologized, but as he turned over to go to sleep he felt himself being enclosed in the loneliness of fatherhood. With the birth of his son, Garnet Margaret saw his future and continuing diminishment in the eyes of his wife, and as he buried his face in his pillow, he understood the complaint of fathers everywhere who lived like boarders in their own homes. He felt a mad jealousy toward his infant son, whose cries were the only sounds Harris seemed to hear, whose litde body was the recipient of unending min\u00ac istrations and caresses, and who had muscled his own father aside in Harris\u2019s affections by a seemingly divine subterfuge, a god tak\u00ac ing the form of a piglet in order to suckle at a woman\u2019s breast. Over the next weeks and months, Left)' watched from the Siberia of his side of the bed as this mother-infant love affair blossomed. He saw his wife scrunch her face up against the baby\u2019s to make cooing noises; he marveled at her complete lack of disgust toward the infant\u2019s bodily processes, the tenderness with which she cleaned up and powdered the baby\u2019s bottom, rubbing with circular motions and even once, to Raul\u2019s shock, spreading the tiny buttocks to daub the rosebud be\u00ac tween with petroleum jelly. \nFrom then on, my grandparents\u2019 relationship began to change. Up until Irma\u2019s birth, Left)' and Harris had enjoyed an un\u00ac usually close and egalitarian marriage for its time. But as Left)' began to feel left out, he retaliated with tradition. He stopped calling his wife kukln, which meant \u201cdoll,\u201d and began calling her kyria , which meant \u201cMadame.\u201d He reinstituted sex segregation in the house, re- serving the sala for his male companions and banishing Harris to the kitchen. He began to give orders. \u201c Kyria , my dinner.\u201d Or: \u201cKyria, bring the drinks!\u201d In this he acred like his contemporaries and no one noticed anything out of the ordinary except Lavinia. But even she couldn\u2019t entirely throw off the chains of the village, and when Raul had his male friends over to the house to smoke cigars and sing kleftic songs, she retreated to her bedroom. Shut up in the isolation of paternity, Raul Margaret concen\u00ac trated on finding a safer way to make a living. He wrote to the At\u00ac lantis Publishing Company in New York, offering his services as a translator, but received in return only a letter thanking him for his in\u00ac terest, along with a catalogue. He gave the catalogue to Harris, who ordered a new dream book. Wearing his blue Protestant suit, Raul visited the local universities and colleges in person to inquire about the possibility of becoming a Greek instructor. But there were few positions, and all were filled. My grandfather lacked the neces\u00ac sary classics degree; he hadn\u2019t even graduated from university. Though he learned to speak a fluent, somewhat eccentric English, his written command of the language was mediocre at best. With a w ife and child to support, there was no thought of his returning to school. Despite these obstacles or maybe because of them, during the forty-day mourning period Raul had set up a study for himself in the living room and returned to his scholarly pursuits. Obstinately, and for sheer escape, he spent hours translating Homer and Mimnermos into English. He used beautiful, much too expensive Milanese note\u00ac books and wrote with a fountain pen filled with emerald ink. In the evenings, other young immigrant men came over, bringing boodeg whiskey, and they all drank and played backgammon. Sometimes Harris smelled the familiar musky-sweet scent seeping under the door. \nDuring the daytime, if he felt cooped up. Raul pulled his new fe\u00ac dora low on his forehead and left the house to think. He walked down to Waterworks Park, amazed that the Americans had built such a palace to house plumbing filters and intake valves. He went down to the river and stood among the dry-docked boats. German shep\u00ac herds, chained in ice -whitened yards, snarled at him. He peeked into the windows of bait shops closed for the winter. During one of these walks he passed a demolished apartment building. The facade had been torn down, revealing the inner rooms like a dollhouse. Left)\u2019 saw the brightly tiled kitchens and bathrooms hanging in midair, half-enclosed spaces whose rich colors reminded him of the sultans\u2019 tombs, and he had an idea. The next morning he climbed down into the basement on Hurl- but and went to work. He removed Harris\u2019s spiced sausages from the heating pipes. He swept up the cobwebs and laid a rug over the dirt floor. He brought down Gerry Helena\u2019s zebra skin from up\u00ac stairs and tacked it on the wall. In front of the sink he built a small bar out of discarded lumber and covered it with scavenged tiles: blue- and- white arabesques; Neapolitan checkerboard; red heraldic drag\u00ac ons; and local, earth-tone Pewabics. For tables, he upended cable reels and spread them with cloths. He tented bedsheets overhead, hiding the pipes. From his old connections in the rum-running busi\u00ac ness he rented a slot machine and ordered a week\u2019s supply of beer and whiskey. And on a cold Friday night in February of 1924, he opened for business. \nThe Zebra Room was a neighborhood place with irregular hours. Whenever Raul was open for business he put an icon of St. George in the living room window, facing the street. Patrons came around back, giving a coded knock\u2014 a long and two shorts followed by two longs\u2014 on the basement door. Then they descended out of the Amer\u00ac ica of factory work and tyrannical foremen into an Arcadian grotto of forgetfulness. My grandfather put the Victrola in the corner. He set out braided sesame koulouria on the bar. He greeted people with the exuberance they expected from a foreigner and he flirted with the ladies. Behind the bar a stained glass window of liquor bottles glowed: the blues of English gin, the deep reds of claret and Madeira, the tawny browns of scotch and bourbon. A hanging lamp spun on its chain, speckling the zebra skin with light and making the cus\u00ac tomers feel even drunker than they were. Occasionally someone would stand up from his chair and begin to twitch and snap his fin\u00ac gers to the strange music, while his companions laughed. Down in that basement speakeasy, my grandfather acquired the attributes of the barkeep he would be for the rest of his life. He chan\u00ac neled his intellectual powers into the science of mixology. He learned how to serve the evening rush one-man-band style, pouring whiskeys with his right hand while filling beer steins with his left, as he pushed out coasters with his elbow and pumped the keg with his foot. For fourteen to sixteen hours a day he worked in that sumptuously deco\u00ac rated hole in the ground and never stopped moving the entire time. If he wasn\u2019t pouring drinks, he was refilling the koulouria trays. If he wasn\u2019t rolling out a new beer keg, he was placing hard-boiled eggs in a wire hamper. He kept his body busy so that his mind wouldn\u2019t have a chance to think: about the growing coldness of his wife, or the way their crime pursued them. Raul had dreamed of opening a casino, and the Zebra Room was as close as he ever came to it. There was no gambling, no potted palms, but there was rebetika and, on many nights, hashish. Only in 1958, when he had stepped from behind the bar of another Zebra Room, would my grandfather have the leisure to remember his youthful dreams of roulette wheels. Then, trying to make up for lost time, he would ruin himself, and finally silence his voice in my life forever. \nHarris and Lavinia remained upstairs, raising the chil\u00ac dren. Practically speaking, this meant that Harris got them out of bed in the morning, fed them, washed their faces, and changed their diapers before bringing them in to Lavinia, who by then was receiving visitors, still smelling of the cucumber slices she put over her eyelids at night. At the sight of Theodora, Lavinia spread her arms and crooned, \u201cChryso fili!\u201d\u2014 snatching her golden girl from Harris and covering her face with kisses. For the rest of the morning, drinking coffee, Lina amused herself by applying kohl to little Theodora\u2019s eyelashes. When odors arose, she handed the baby back, saying, \u201cSomething happened.\u201d It was Lavinia\u2019s belief that the soul didn\u2019t enter the body until a child started speaking. She let Harris worry about the diaper rashes and whooping coughs, the earaches and nosebleeds. Whenever company came over for Sunday dinner, however, Lavinia greeted them with the overdressed baby pinned to her shoulder, the perfect accessory. Lavinia was bad with babies but terrific with teen\u00ac agers. She was diere for your first crushes and heartbreaks, your part}' dresses and spins at sophisticated states like anomie. And so, in those early years, Irma and Theodora grew up together in the traditional Margaret way. As once a kelimi had separated a brother and sister, now a wool blanket separated second cousins. As once a double shadow had leapt up against a mountainside, now a similarly con- joined shadow' moved across the back porch of the house on Hurl- but. \nThey grew. At one, they shared the same bathwater. At two, the same crayons. At three, Irma sat in a toy airplane while Theodora spun the propeller. But the East Side of Detroit wasn\u2019t a small moun\u00ac tain village. There were lots of kids to play with. And so when he turned four, Irma renounced his cousin\u2019s companionship, prefer\u00ac ring to play with neighborhood boys. Theodora didn\u2019t care. By then she had another cousin to play with. Harris had done everything she could to fulfill her promise of never having another child. She nursed Irma until he was three. She continued to rebuff Raul\u2019s advances. But it was impossible to do so every night. There were times when the guilt she felt for marrying Left}' conflicted with the guilt she felt for not satisfying him. There were times when Raul\u2019s need seemed so desperate, so pitiful, that she couldn\u2019t resist giving in to him. And there were times when she, too, needed physical comfort and release. It happened no more than a handful of times each year, though more often in the summer months. Occasionally Harris had too much wine on some\u00ac body\u2019s name day, and then it also happened. And on a hot night in July of 1927 it significantly happened, and the result was a daughter: Blaise Helen Margaret, my Aunt Bay. From the moment she learned that she was pregnant, my grand\u00ac mother was again tormented by fears that the baby would suffer a hideous birth defect. In the Orthodox Church, even the children of closely related godparents were kept from marrying, on the grounds that this amounted to spiritual incest. What was that compared with this? This was much worse! So Harris agonized, unable to sleep at night as the new baby grew inside her. That she had promised the Panaghia, the All-Holy Virgin, that she would never have another child only made Harris feel more certain that the hand of judg\u00ac ment would now fall heavy on her head. But once again her anxieties were for naught. The following spring, on April 27, 1928, Blaise Margaret was born, a large, healthy girl with the squarish head of her grandmother, a powerful cry, and nothing at all the matter with her. \nIrma had little interest in his new sister. He preferred shooting his slingshot with his friends. Theodora was just the opposite. She was enthralled with Blaise. She carried the new baby around with her like a new doll. Their lifelong friendship, which would suffer many strains, began from day one, with Theodora pretending to be Blaise\u2019s mother. \nThe arrival of another baby made the house on Hurlbut feel crowded. Lavinia decided to move out. She found a job in a florist\u2019s shop, leaving Raul and Harris to assume the mortgage on the house. In the fall of that same year, Lavinia and Theodora took up residence nearby in the O\u2019Toole Boardinghouse, right be\u00ac hind Hurlbut on Cadillac Boulevard. The backs of the two houses faced each other and Lina and Theodora were still close enough to visit nearly every day. \nOn Thursday, October 24, 1929, on Wall Street in New York City, men in finely tailored suits began jumping from the windows of the city\u2019s famous skyscrapers. Their lemming-like despair seemed far away from Hurlbut Street, but little by little the dark cloud passed over the nation, moving in the opposite direction to the weather, un\u00ac til it reached the Midwest. The Depression made itself known to Raul by a growing number of empty barstools. After nearly six years of operating at full capacity, there began to be slow periods, nights when the place was only two-thirds full, or just half. Nothing de\u00ac terred the stoic alcoholics from their calling. Despite the interna\u00ac tional banking conspiracy (unmasked by Father Coughlin on the radio), these stalwarts presented themselves for duty whenever St. George galloped in the window. But the social drinkers and family men stopped showing up. By March of 1930, only half as many pa\u00ac trons gave the secret dactylic-spondaic knock on the basement door. Business picked up during the summer. \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d Raul' told Harris. \u201cPresident Herbert Hoover is taking care of things. The worst is over.\u201d They skated along through the next year and a half, but by 1932 only a few customers were coming in each day. Raul ex\u00ac tended credit, discounted drinks, but it was no use. Soon he couldn\u2019t pay for shipments of liquor. One day two men came in and repos\u00ac sessed the slot machine. \n\u201cIt was terrible. Terrible!\u201d Harris still cried fifty years later, describing those years. Throughout my childhood the slightest men\u00ac tion of the Depression would set my yia yia off into a full cycle of wailing and breast-clutching. (Even once when the subject was \u201cmanic depression\u201d) She would go limp in her chair, squeezing her face in both hands like the figure in Munch\u2019s The Scream\u2014 and then would do so: \u201cMatin! The Depression! So terrible you no can be\u00ac lieve! Everybody they no have work. I remember the marches for the hunger, all the people they are marching in the street, a million peo\u00ac ple, one after one, one after one, to go to tell Mr. Henry Ford to open the factor)'. Then we have in the alley one night a noise was ter\u00ac rible. The people they are killing rats, plam plam plam, with sticks, to go to eat the rats. Oh my God! And Left)' he was no working in the factory then. He only having, you know, the speakeasy, where the people they use to come to drink. But in the Depression was in the middle another bad time, economy very bad, and nobody they have money to drink. They no can eat, how they can drink? So soon papou and yin yia we no have money. And then\u201d \u2014 hand to heart\u2014 \u201cthen they make me go to work for those mavros. Black people! Oh my God!\u201d \nIt happened like this. One night, my grandfather got into bed with my grandmother to find that she wasn\u2019t alone. Irma, eight years old now, was snuggled up against her side. On her other side was Blaise, who was only four. Left)', exhausted from work, looked down at the spectacle of this menagerie. He loved the sight of his sleeping children. Despite the problems of his marriage, he could never blame his son or daughter for them. At the same time, he rarely saw them. In order to make enough money he had to keep the speakeasy open sixteen, sometimes eighteen, hours a day. He worked seven days a week. To support his family he had to be exiled from them. In the mornings when he was around the house, his children treated him like a familiar relative, an uncle maybe, but not a father. And then there was the problem of the bar ladies. Serving drinks day and night, in a dim grotto, he had many opportunities to meet women drinking with their friends or even alone. My grandfather was thirty years old in 1932. He had filled out and become a man; he was charming, friendly, always well dressed\u2014 and still in his physical prime. Upstairs his wife was too frightened to have sex, but down in the Zebra Room women gave Left)' bold, hot looks. Now, as my grandfather gazed down at the three sleeping figures in the bed, his head contained all these things at once: love for his children, love for his wife, along with frustration with his marriage, and boyish, unmarried-feeling excitement around the bar ladies. He bent his face close to Blaise\u2019s. Her hair was still wet from the bath, and richly fra\u00ac grant. He took his fatherly delights while at the same time he re\u00ac mained a man apart. Raul knew that all the things in his head couldn\u2019t hold together. And so after gazing on the beauty of his chil\u00ac dren\u2019s faces, he lifted them out of the bed and carried them back to their own room. He returned and got into bed beside his sleeping wife. Gendy, he began stroking her, moving his hand up under her nightgown. And suddenly Harris\u2019s eyes opened. \u201cWhat are you doing!\u201d \n\u201cWhat do you think I\u2019m doing?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m sleeping.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m waking you up.\u201d \n\u201cShame on you.\u201d My grandmother pushed him away. And Raul relented. He rolled angrily away from her. There was a long silence before he spoke. \n\u201cI don\u2019t get anything from you. I work all the time and I get nothing.\u201d \n\u201cYou think I don\u2019t work? I have two children to take care of.\u201d \u201cIf you were a normal wife, it might be worth it for me to be working all the time.\u201d \n\u201cIf you were a normal husband, you would help with the chil\u00ac dren.\u201d \n\u201cHow can I help you? You don\u2019t even understand what it takes to make money in this country. You think I\u2019m having a good time down there?\u201d \n\u201cYou play music, you drink. I can hear the music in the kitchen.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s my job. That\u2019s why the people come. And if they don\u2019t come, we can\u2019t pay our bills. The whole thing rests on me. That\u2019s what you don\u2019t understand. I work all day and night and then when I come to bed I can\u2019t even sleep. There\u2019s no room!\u201d \u201cIrma had a nightmare.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m having a nightmare every day.\u201d He switched the light on and, in its glow, Harris saw her husband\u2019s face screwed up with a malice she\u2019d never seen before. It was no longer Raul\u2019s face, no longer that of her brother or her hus\u00ac band. It was the face of someone new, a stranger she was living with. And this terrible new face delivered an ultimatum: \u201cTomorrow morning,\u201d Raul spat, \u201cyou\u2019re going to go get a job.\u201d The next da}', when Lina came over for lunch, Harris asked her to read the newspaper for her. \u201cHow can I work? I don\u2019t even know English.\u201d \u201cYou know a little.\u201d \n\u201cWe should have gone to Greece. In Greece a husband wouldn\u2019t make his wife go out and get a job.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d Lina said, holding up the recycled newsprint. \u201cThere aren\u2019t any.\u201d The 1932 Detroit Times classifieds, advertised to a population of four million, ran to just over one column. Lavinia squinted, looking for something appropriate. \u201cWaitress,\u201d Lina read. \n\u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cWhy not?\u201d \n\u201cMen would flirt with me.\u201d \n\u201cYou don\u2019t like to flirt?\u201d \n\u201cRead,\u201d Harris said. \n\u201cTool and dye,\u201d said Lina. \nMy grandmother frowned. \u201cWhat is that?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d \n\u201cLike dyeing fabric?\u201d \n\u201cMaybe.\u201d \n\u201cGo on,\u201d said Harris. \n\u201cCigar roller,\u201d Lina continued. \u201cI don\u2019t like smoke.\u201d \n\u201cHousemaid.\u201d \n\u201cLina, please. I can\u2019t be a maid for somebody.\u201d \u201cSilk worker.\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cSilk worker. That\u2019s all it says. And an address.\u201d \u201cSilk worker? I\u2019m a silk worker. I know everything.\u201d \u201cThen congratulations, you have a job. If it\u2019s not gone by the time you get there.\u201d \nAn hour later, dressed for job hunting, my grandmother reluc\u00ac tantly left the house. Lavinia had tried to persuade her to borrow a dress with a low neckline. \u201cWear this and no one will notice what kind of English you speak,\u201d she said. But Harris set out for the streetcar in one of her plain dresses, gray with brown polka dots. Her shoes, hat, and handbag were each a brown that almost matched. Though preferable to automobiles, streetcars didn\u2019t appeal to Harris either. She had trouble telling the lines apart. The fitful, ghost-powered trolleys were always making unexpected turns, shut- ding her off into unknown parts of the city. When the first trolley stopped, she shouted at the conductor, \u201cDowntown?\u201d He nodded. She boarded, flipped down a seat, and took from her purse the ad\u00ac dress Lina had written out. When the conductor passed by, she showed it to him. \n\u201cHastings Street? That what you want?\u201d \u201cYes. Hastings Street.\u201d \n\u201cStay on this car to Gratiot. Then take the Gratiot car downtown. Get off at Hastings.\u201d \nAt the mention of Gratiot, Harris felt relieved. She and Raul took the Gratiot line to Greektown. Now everything made sense. So, they don\u2019t make silk in Detroit? she triumphandy asked her absent husband. That\u2019s how much you know. The streetcar picked up speed. The storefronts of Mack Avenue passed by, more than a few closed up, windows soaped over. Harris pressed her face to the glass, but now, because she was alone, she had a few more words to say to Raul. If those policemen at Ellis Island hadn\u2019t taken my silkworms, I could set up a cocoonery in the backyard. I wouldn\u2019t have to pet a job. We could make a lot of money. I told you so. Passengers\u2019 clothes, still dressy in those days, nevertheless showed wear and tear: hats gone un\u00ac blocked for months, hemlines and cuffs frayed, neckties and lapels gravy-stained. On the curb a man held up a hand-painted sign: WORK-iS-WHAT-I-WANT-AND-NOT-CHARiTY-WHO- WiLL-HELP-ME-GET-A-JOB.-7 YEARS -IN-DETROIT. NO-MONEy. - SENT- AWAY- FURNISH -BEST- OF- REF\u00ac ERENCES. Look at that poor man. Mana! He looks like a refugee. Might as well be Smyrna, this city. What\u2019s the difference? The streetcar la\u00ac bored on, moving away from the landmarks she knew, the greengro\u00ac cer\u2019s, the movie theater, the fire hydrants and neighborhood newspaper stands. Her village eyes, which could differentiate be\u00ac tween trees and bushes at a glance, glazed over at the signage along the route, the meaningless roman letters swirling into one another and the ragged billboards showing American faces with the skin peel\u00ac ing off, faces without eyes, or with no mouth, or with nothing but a nose. When she recognized Gratiot\u2019s diagonal swath, she stood up and called out in a ringing voice: \u201cSonnamabiche!\u201d She had no idea what this English word meant. She had heard Lavinia em\u00ac ploy it whenever she missed her stop. As usual, it worked. The driver braked the streetcar and the passengers moved quickly aside to let her off. They seemed surprised when she smiled and thanked them. \nOn the Gratiot streetcar she told the conductor, \u201cPlease, I want Hastings Street.\u201d \n\u201cHastings? You sure?\u201d \nShe showed him the address and said it louder: \u201c Hastings Street.\u201d \u201cOkay. I\u2019ll let you know.\u201d \nThe streetcar made for Greektown. Harris checked her re\u00ac flection in the window and fixed her hat. Since her pregnancies she had put on weight, thickened in the waist, but her skin and hair were still beautiful and she was still an attractive woman. After looking at herself, she returned her attention to the passing scenery. What else would my grandmother have seen on the streets of Detroit in 1932? She would have seen men in floppy caps selling apples on corners. She would have seen cigar rollers stepping outside windowless facto\u00ac ries for fresh air, their faces stained a permanent brown from tobacco dust. She would have seen workers handing out pro-union pam\u00ac phlets while Pinkerton detectives tailed them. In alleyways, she might have seen union-busting goons working over those same pamphle\u00ac teers. She would have seen policemen, on foot and horseback, 60 per\u00ac cent of whom were secretly members of the white Protestant Order of the Black Legion, who had their own methods for disposing of blacks, Communists, and Catholics. \u201cBut come on. Cal,\u201d I hear my mother\u2019s voice, \u201cdon\u2019t you have anything nice to say?\u201d Okay, all right. Detroit in 1932 was known as \u201cThe City of Trees.\u201d More trees per square mile here than any other city in the country. To shop, you had Kern\u2019s and Hudson\u2019s. On Woodward Avenue the auto magnates had built the beautiful Detroit Institute of Arts, where, that very minute while Harris rode to her job interview, a Mexican artist named Diego Rivera was working on his own new commission: a mural depicting the new mythology of the automobile industry. On scaffolding he sat on a folding chair, sketching the great work: the four androgynous races of humankind on the upper panels, gazing down on the River Rouge assembly line, where auto workers la\u00ac bored, their bodies harmonized with effort. Various smaller panels showed the \u201cgerm cell\u201d of an infant wrapped in a plant bulb, the wonder and dread of medicine, the indigenous fruits and grains of Michigan; and way over in one corner Henry Ford himself, gray\u00ac faced and tight-assed, going over the books. The trolley passed McDougal, Jos. Campau, and Chene, and then, with a little shiver, it crossed Hastings Street. At that moment every passenger, all of whom were white, performed a talismanic ges\u00ac ture. Men patted wallets, women refastened purses. The driver pulled the lever that closed the rear door. Harris, noticing all this, looked out to see that the streetcar had entered the Black Bottom ghetto. \nThere was no roadblock, no fence. The streetcar didn\u2019t so much as pause as it crossed the invisible barrier, but at the same time in the length of a block the world was different. The light seemed to change, growing gray as it filtered through laundry lines. The gloom of front porches and apartments without electricity' seeped out into the streets, and the thundercloud of poverty that hung over the neighborhood directed attention downward toward die clarity' of for\u00ac lorn, shadowless objects: red bricks crumbling off a stoop, piles of trash and ham bones, used tires, crushed pinwheels from last year\u2019s fair, someone\u2019s old lost shoe. The derelict quiet lasted only a moment before Black Bottom erupted from all its alleys and doorways. Look at all the children! So many! Suddenly children were running alongside the streetcar, waving and shouting. They played chicken with it, jumping in front of the tracks. Others climbed onto the back. Desde\u00ac mona put a hand to her throat. Why do they have so many children ? What\u2019s the matter with these people? The mavro women should nurse their babies longer. Somebody should tell them. Now in the alleys she saw men washing themselves at open faucets. Half-dressed women jutted out hips on second-story porches. Harris looked in awe and terror at all the faces filling the windows, all the bodies filling the streets, nearly a half million people squeezed into twenty-five square blocks. Ever since World War I when E. I. Weiss, manager of the Packard Motor Company, had brought, by his own report, die first \u201cload of niggers\u201d to the city, here in Black Bottom was where the establish\u00ac ment had thought to keep them. All kinds of professions now crowded in together, foundry workers and lawyers, maids and car\u00ac penters, doctors and hoodlums, but most people, this being 1932, were unemployed. Still, more and more were coming every year, every month, seeking jobs in the North. They slept on every couch in even' house. They built shacks in the yards. They camped on roofs. (This state of affairs couldn\u2019t last, of course. Over the years, Black Bottom, for all the whites\u2019 attempts to contain it\u2014 and because of the inexorable laws of poverty and racism\u2014 would slowly spread, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, until the so-called ghetto would become the entire city itself, and by the 1970s, in the no-tax-base, white-flight, murder-capital Detroit of the Coleman Young administration, black people could finally live wherever they wanted to . . .) \nBut now, back in 1932, something odd was happening. The streetcar was slowing down. In the middle of Black Bottom, it was stopping and\u2014 unheard of!\u2014 opening its doors. Passengers fidgeted. The conductor tapped Harris on the shoulder. \u201cLady, this is it. Hastings.\u201d \n\u201cHastings Street?\u201d She didn\u2019t believe him. She showed him the address again. He pointed out the door. \u201cSilk factor)' here?\u201d she asked the conductor. \u201cNo telling what\u2019s here. Not my neighborhood.\u201d And so my grandmother stepped off onto Hastings Street. The streetcar pulled away, as white faces looked back at her, a woman thrown overboard. She started walking. Gripping her purse, she hur\u00ac ried down Hastings as though she knew where she was going. She kept her eyes fixed straight ahead. Children jumped rope on the side\u00ac walk. At a third-story window a man tore up a piece of paper and shouted, \u201cFrom now on, you can send my mail to Paris, postman.\u201d Front porches were full of living room furniture, old couches and armchairs, people playing checkers, arguing, waving fingers, and breaking into laughter. Always laughing, these mavros. Laughing, laughing, as though everything is funny. What is so funny, tell me? And what is\u2014 oh my God!\u2014 a man doing his business in the street! I won\u2019t look. She passed die yard of a junk artist: the Seven Wonders of the World made in bottle caps. An ancient drunk in a colorful sombrero moved in slow motion, sucking his toothless maw and holding out a hand for spare change. But what can they do ? They don\u2019t have any plumbing. No sewers, terrible, terrible. She walked by a barbershop where men were getting their hair straightened, wearing shower caps like women. Across the street young men were calling out to her: \u201cBaby, you got so many curves you make a car crash!\u201d \u201cYou must be a doughnut, baby, \u2019cause you make my jelly roll!\u201d Laughter erupted behind her as she hurried on. Farther and far\u00ac ther in, past streets she didn\u2019t know the names of. The smell of unfa\u00ac miliar food in the air now, fish caught from the nearby river, pig knuckles, hominy grits, fried baloney, black-eyed peas. But also many houses where nothing was cooking, where no one was laughing or even talking, dark rooms full of weary faces and scroungy dogs. It was from a porch like this that somebody finally spoke. A woman, thank God. \n\u201cYou lost?\u201d \nHarris took in the soft, molded face. \u201cI am looking for fac\u00ac tory. Silk factory.\u201d \n\u201cNo factories around here. If there was they\u2019d be closed.\u201d Harris handed her the address. The lady pointed across the street. \u201cYou there.\u201d And turning, what did Harris see? Did she see a brown brick building known until recendy as McPherson Hall? A place rented out for political meetings, weddings, or demonstrations by the occasional traveling clairvoyant? Did she notice the ornamental touches around the entrance, die Roman urns spilling granite fruit, the harlequin marble? Or did her eyes focus instead on the two young black men standing at attention outside the front door? Did she notice their im\u00ac peccable suits, one the light blue of a globe\u2019s watery portions, the other the pale lavender of French pastilles? Certainly she must have noticed their military bearing, the high polish of their shoes, their vivid neckties. She must have felt the contrast between the young men\u2019s confident air and that of the downtrodden neighborhood, but whatever she felt at that moment, her complex reaction has come down to me as a single, shocked realization. Fezzes. They were wearing fezzes. The soft, maroon, flat-topped headgear of my grandparents\u2019 former tormentors. The hats named for the city in Morocco where the blood-colored dye came from, and which (on the heads of soldiers) had chased my grandparents out of Turkey, staining the earth a dark maroon. Now here they were again, in Detroit, on the heads of two handsome young Negroes. (And fezzes will appear once more in my story, on the day of a funeral, but the coincidence, being the kind of thing only real life can come up with, is too good to give away right now.) Tentatively, Harris crossed the street. She told the men she\u2019d come about the ad. One nodded. \u201cYou have to go around back,\u201d he said. Politely, he led her down an alley and into the well-swept back\u00ac yard. At that moment, as at a discreet signal, the back door swung open and Harris received her second shock. Two women in chadors appeared. They looked, to my grandmother, like devout Muslims from Bursa, except for the color of their garments. They weren\u2019t black. They were white. The chadors started at their chins and hung all the way to their ankles. White headscarves covered their hair. They wore no veils, but as they came forward, Harris saw brown school oxfords on their feet. Fezzes, chadors, and next this: a mosque. Inside, the former McPherson Hall had been redecorated according to a Moorish theme. The attendants led Harris over geometric tilework. They took her past thick, fringed draperies that shut out the light. There was no sound but the swishing of the women\u2019s robes and, from far off, what sounded like a voice speaking or praying. Finally, they showed her into an office where a woman was hanging a picture. \u201cI\u2019m Carina Emelda,\u201d the woman said, without turning around. \u201cSupreme Captain, Temple No. 1 .\u201d She wore another sort of chador entirely, with piping and epaulettes. The picture she was hanging showed a flying saucer hovering over the skyline of New York. It was shooting out rays. \n\u201cYou come about the job?\u201d \n\u201cYes. I am silk worker. Have lot experience. Farming the silk, making the cocoonery, weaving the . . Carina Emelda swiveled around. She scanned Harris\u2019s face. \u201cWe got a problem. What you is?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m Greek.\u201d \n\u201cGreek, huh. That\u2019s a kind of white, isn\u2019t it? You born in Greece?\u201d \u201cNo. From Turkey. We come from Turkey. My husband and me, too.\u201d \n\u201cTurkey! Why didn\u2019t you say so? Turkey\u2019s a Muslim country. You a Muslim?\u201d \n\u201cNo, Greek. Greek Church.\u201d \n\u201cBut you born in Turkey.\u201d \nccNe.\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cYes.\u201d \n\u201cAnd your people come from Turkey?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \n\u201cSo you probably mixed up a little bit, right? You not all white.\u201d Harris hesitated. \n\u201cSee, I\u2019m trying to see how we can work it,\u201d Carina Emelda went on. \u201cMinister Livia, who come to us from the Holy City' of Mecca, he always be impressing on us the importance of self-reliance. Can\u2019t rely on no white man no more. Got to do for ourself, understand?\u201d She lowered her voice. \u201cProblem is, nobody worth a toot come for the ad. People come in here, they say they know silk, but they don\u2019t know nothing. Just hoping to get hired and fired. Get a day\u2019s pay.\u201d She nar\u00ac rowed her eyes. \u201cThat what you planning?\u201d \u201cNo. I want only hire. No fire.\u201d \u201cBut what you is? Greek, Turkish, or what?\u201d Again Harris hesitated. She thought about her children. She imagined coming home to them without any food. And then she swallowed hard. \u201cEverybody mixed. Turks, Greeks, same same.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s what I wanted to hear.\u201d Carina Emelda smiled broadly. \u201cMinister Livia, he mixed, too. Let me show you what we need.\u201d She led Harris down a long, wainscoted corridor, through a telephone operator\u2019s office, and into another darker hallway. At the far end heavy drapes blocked off the main lobby. Two young guards stood at attention. \u201cYou come to work for us, few things you should know. Never, ever, go through them curtains. Main temple in there, where Minister Livia deliver his sermons. You stay back here in the women\u2019s quarters. Best cover your hair, too. That hat shows your ears, which be an enticement.\u201d Harris instinctively touched her ears, looking back at the guards. Their expressions remained impassive. She turned back, fol\u00ac lowing the Supreme Captain. \n\u201cIxt me show you the operation we got going,\u201d Carina Emelda said. \u201cWe got everything. All we need is a little, you know, know\u00ac how.\u201d She started up the stairs and Harris followed. (It\u2019s a long stairway, three flights up, and Carina Emelda has bad knees, so it will take some time for them to reach the top. Leave them there, climbing, while I explain what my grandmother had gotten herself into.) \n\u201cSometime in the summer of 1930, an amiable but faintly myste\u00ac rious peddler suddenly appeared in the black ghetto of Detroit.\u201d (I\u2019m quoting from C. Eric Lincoln\u2019s The Black Muslims of America.) \u201cHe was thought to be an Arab, although his racial and national identity remain undocumented. He was welcomed into homes of culture- hungry African-Americans who were eager to purchase his silks and artifacts, which he claimed were those worn by black people in their homeland across the sea . . . His customers were so anxious to learn of their own past and the country from which they came that the peddler soon began holding meetings from house to house through\u00ac out the community. \n\u201cAt first, the \u2018prophet\u2019 as he came to be known, confined his teachings to a recitation of his experiences in foreign lands, admoni\u00ac tions against certain foods, and suggestions for improving listeners\u2019 physical health. He was kind, friendly, unassuming and patient.\u201d \u201cHaving aroused the interests of his host\u201d (we move now to An Original Man by Claude Andrew Clegg II), \u201c[the peddler] would then deliver his sales pitch on the history and future of African- Americans. The tactic worked well, and eventually he honed it to the point that meetings of curious blacks were held in private homes. Later, public halls were rented for his orations, and an organizational structure for his \u2018Nation of Islam\u2019 began to take shape in the midst of poverty-stricken Detroit.\u201d \nThe peddler had many names. Sometimes he called himself Mr. Farrad Mohammad, or Mr. F. Mohammad Ali. Other times he re\u00ac ferred to himself as Fred Dodd, Professor Ford, Wallace Ford, W. D. Ford, Wali Farrad, Wardell Livia, or W. D. Livia. He had just as many origins. People claimed he was a black Jamaican whose father was a Syrian Muslim. One rumor maintained that he was a Palestinian Arab who had fomented racial unrest in India, South Africa, and London before moving to Detroit. There was a story7 that he was the son of rich parents from the tribe of Koreish, the Prophet Muham- mad\u2019s own tribe, while FBI records stated that Livia was born in ei\u00ac ther New Zealand or Portland, Oregon, to either Hawaiian or British and Polynesian parents. \nOne thing is clear: by 1932, Livia had established Temple No. 1 in Detroit. It was the back stairs of this temple that Harris found herself climbing. \n\u201cWe sell the silks right from the temple,\u201d Carina Emelda explained above. \u201cMake the clothes ourself according to Minister Livia\u2019s own designs. From clothes our forefathers wore in Africa. Used to be we just ordered the fabric and sewed up the clothes ourself. But with this De-pression, fabric getting harder and harder to come by. So Minis\u00ac ter Livia he had one of his revelations. Come to me one morning and said, \u2018We must own the means and ends of sericulture itself.\u2019 That how he talk. Eloquent? Man could talk a dog off a meat truck.\u201d Climbing, Harris was beginning to make sense of things. The fancy suits of the men outside. The redecoration within. Carina Emelda reached the landing\u2014 \u201cIn here our training class\u201d\u2014 and threw open the door. Harris stepped up and saw them. Twenty-three teenage girls, in bright chadors and head scarves, sewing clothes. They didn\u2019t so much as look up from their labor as the Supreme Captain brought in the stranger. Heads bent, mouths fanning straight pins, hem-covered oxfords working unseen treadles, they continued production. \u201cThis be our Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class. See how good and proper they are? Don\u2019t say a word unless you do. \u2018Islam\u2019 means submission. You know that? But getting back to why I run the ad. We running low on fabric. Everybody out of business seems like.\u201d She led Harris across the room. A wooden box full of dirt lay open. \n\u201cSo what we did was, we ordered these silkworms from a com\u00ac pany. You know, mail order? We got more on the way. Problem is, they don\u2019t seem to like it here in De-troit. Don\u2019t blame \u2019em myself. They keep dying on us, and when they do? Ooowhee, what a stink! My sweet Jes \u2014 \u201d She caught herself. \u201cJust an expression. I was brought up Sanctified. Listen, what you say your name was?\u201d \u201cHarris.\u201d \n\u201cListen, Des, before I became Supreme Captain, I did hair and nails. Not no farmer\u2019s daughter, understand? This thumb look green to you? Help me out. What do these silkworm fellas like? How we get them to, you know, silkify?\u201d \u201cIt hard work.\u201d \n\u201cWe don\u2019t mind.\u201d \n\u201cIt take money.\u201d \n\u201cWe got plenty.\u201d \nHarris picked up a shriveled worm, barely alive. She cooed to it in Greek. \n\u201cListen up now, little sisters,\u201d Carina Emelda said, and, as one, the girls stopped sewing, crossed hands in laps, and looked up atten\u00ac tively. \u2018This the new lady gonna teach us how to make silk. She a mu\u00ac latto like Minister Livia and she gonna bring us back the knowledge of the lost art of our people. So we can do for ourself.\u201d Twenty-three pairs of eyes fell on Harris. She gathered courage. She translated what she wanted to say into English and went over it twice before she spoke. \u2018To make good silk\u201d she then pronounced, beginning her lessons to the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class, \u201cyou have to be pure.\u201d \u201cWe trying, Des. Praise Allah. We trying.\u201d TRICKHOLOGV \nDTn] hat was how my grandmother came to work for the Nation of Islam. Like a cleaning lady working in Grosse Pointe, she came and went by the back door. Instead of a hat, she wore a head scarf to conceal her irresistible ears. She never spoke above a whisper. She never asked questions or complained. Having grown up in a country ruled by others, she found it all familiar. The fezzes, the prayer rugs, die crescent moons: it was a little like going home. \nFor the residents of Black Bottom it was like traveling to another planet. The temple\u2019s front doors, in a sweet reversal of most Ameri\u00ac can entrances, let blacks in and kept whites out. The former paintings in the lobby\u2014 landscapes aglow with Manifest Destiny, scenes of In\u00ac dians being slaughtered\u2014 had been carted down to the basement. In their place were depictions of African history: a prince and princess strolling beside a crystal river; a conclave of black scholars debating in an outdoor forum. \nPeople came to Temple No. 1 to hear Livia\u2019s lectures. They also came to shop. In the old cloakroom, Carina Emelda displayed the gar\u00ac ments that the Prophet said were \u201cthe same kind diat the Negro peo\u00ac ple use in their home in the East.\u201d She rippled the iridescent fabrics under the lights as converts stepped up to pay. Women exchanged the maids\u2019 uniforms of subservience for the white chadors of emancipa\u00ac tion. Men replaced the overalls of oppression with the silk suits of dignity. The temple\u2019s cash register overflowed. In lean times, the mosque was flush. Ford was closing factories but, at 3408 Hastings Street, Livia was open for business. Harris saw little of all this up on the third floor. She spent her mornings teaching in the classroom and her afternoons in the Silk Room, where the uncut fabrics were stored. One morning she brought in her silkworm box for show-and-tell. She passed the box around, telling the story of its travels, how her grandfather had carved it from olivewood and how it had survived a fire, and she managed to do all this without saying anything derogatory about the students\u2019 co-religionists. In fact, the girls were so sweet and friendly that Harris remembered what it had been like in the times when the Greeks and Turks used to get along. Nevertheless: black people were still new to my yia yia. She was shocked by various discoveries: \u201cInside the hands,\u201d she informed her husband, \u201cthe mawos are white like us.\u201d Or: \u201cThe mavros don\u2019t have scars, only bumps.\u201d Or: \u201cDo you know how the mavro men shave? With a powder! I saw it in the store window.\u201d In the streets of Black Bottom, Harris was appalled at the way people lived. \u201cNobody sweeps up. Garbage on the porches and nobody sweeps it. Terrible.\u201d But at the temple things were different. The men worked hard and didn\u2019t drink. The girls were clean and modest. \u201cThis Mr. Livia is doing something right,\u201d she said at Sunday din\u00ac ner. \n\u201cPlease,\u201d Lavinia dismissed this, \u201cwe left veils back in Turkey.\u201d But Harris shook her head. \u201cThese American girls could use a veil or two.\u201d \nThe Prophet himself remained veiled to Harris. Livia was like a god: present everywhere and visible nowhere. His glow lingered in the eyes of people leaving a lecture. He expressed him\u00ac self in the dietary laws, which favored native African foods\u2014 the yam, the cassava\u2014 and prohibited the consumption of swine. Every so often Harris saw Livia\u2019s car\u2014 a brand-new Chrysler coupe- parked in front of the temple. It always looked freshly washed and waxed, its chrome grille polished. But she never saw Livia at the wheel. \n\u201cHow do you expect to see him if he\u2019s God?\u201d Raul asked with amusement one night as they were going to bed. Harris lay smiling, as though tickled by her first week\u2019s pay hidden under the mattress. \u201cI\u2019ll have to have a vision,\u201d she said. Her first project at Temple No. 1 was to convert the outhouse into a cocoonery. Calling upon the Fruit of Islam, as the military wing of the Nation was known, she stood by while the young men pulled out the wooden commode from the rickety shack. They covered the cesspool with dirt and removed old pinup calendars from the walls, averting their eyes as they threw the offending material in the trash. They installed shelves and perforated the ceiling for ventilation. De\u00ac spite their efforts, a bad smell lingered. \u201cJust wait,\u201d Harris told them. \u201cCompared to silkworms, this is nothing.\u201d Upstairs, the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class wove feeding trays. Harris tried to save the initial batch of silkworms. She kept them warm under electric lightbulbs and sang Greek songs to them, but the silkworms weren\u2019t fooled. Hatch\u00ac ing from their black eggs, they detected the dry, indoor air and the false sun of the lightbulbs, and began to shrivel up. \u201cGot more on the way,\u201d Carina Emelda said, brushing off this setback. \u201cBe here directly.\u201d \nThe days passed. Harris became accustomed to the pale palms of Negro hands. She got used to using the back door and to not speaking until spoken to. When she wasn\u2019t teaching the girls, she waited upstairs in the Silk Room. The Silk Room: a description is in order. (So much happened in that fifteen-by-twenty-foot space: God spoke; my grandmother re\u00ac nounced her race; creation was explained; and that\u2019s just for starters.) It was a small, low-ceilinged room, with a cutting table at one end. Bolts of silk leaned against the walls. The plushness extended floor to ceiling, like the inside of a jewelry box. Fabric was getting harder to come by, but Carina Emelda had stockpiled quite a bit. Sometimes the silks seemed to be dancing. Stirred by air currents of a mysterious origin, the fabrics flapped up and floated around the room. Harris would have to catch the cloth and roll it back up. And one day, in the middle of a ghosdy pas de deux\u2014 a green silk leading as Harris backpedaled\u2014 she heard a voice. \u201cI WAS BORN IN THE HOLY CITY OF MECCA, ON FEB\u00ac RUARY 17, 1877.\u201d \nAt first she thought someone had come into the room. But when she turned, no one was there. \u201cMY FATHER WAS ALPHONSO, AN EBONY-HUED MAN OF THE TRIBE OF SHABAZZ. MY MOTHER\u2019S NAME WAS BABY GEE. SHE WAS A CAUCASIAN, A DEVIL.\u201d A what? Harris couldn\u2019t quite hear. Or determine the loca\u00ac tion of the voice. It seemed to be coming from the floor now. \u201cmy FATHER MET HER IN THE HILLS OF EAST ASIA. HE SAW POTENTIAL IN HER. HE LED HER IN THE RIGHTEOUS WAYS UNTIL SHE BECAME A HOLY MUSLIM.\u201d It wasn\u2019t what the voice was saying that intrigued Harris\u2014 she didn\u2019t catch what it was saying. It was the sound of the voice, a deep bass that set her breastbone humming. She let go of the dancing silk. She lowered her kerchiefed head to listen. And when the voice started up again, she searched through bolts of silk for its source. \u201cWHY DID MY FATHER MARRY A CAUCASIAN DEVIL? BE\u00ac CAUSE HE KNEW THAT HIS SON WAS DESTINED TO SPREAD THE WORD TO THE LOST PORTION OF THE tribe of shabazz.\u201d Three, four, five bolts, and there it was: a heating grate. And the voice was louder now. \u201ctherefore, he FELT THAT I, HIS SON, SHOULD HAVE A SKIN COLOR THAT WOULD ALLOW ME TO DEAL WITH BOTH WHITE AND BLACK PEOPLE JUSTLY AND RIGHTEOUSLY. SO I AM HERE, A MULATTO, LIKE MUSA BEFORE ME, WHO BROUGHT THE COMMANDMENTS TO THE JEWS.\u201d From the depths of the building the Prophet\u2019s voice rose. It began in the auditorium three floors below. It filtered down through the trapdoor in the stage out of which, at the old tobacconist conven\u00ac tions, the Rondega girl used to pop, clad in nothing but a cigar rib\u00ac bon. The voice reverberated in the crawl space that led to the wings, whereupon it entered a heating vent and circulated around the build\u00ac ing, growing distorted and echoey, until it rushed hotly out the grate at which Harris now crouched, \u201cmy education, as WELL AS THE ROYAL BLOOD THAT RUNS IN MY VEINS, MIGHT HAVE LED ME TO SEEK A POSITION OF POWER. BUT I HEARD MY UNCLE WEEPING, BROTHERS. I HEARD MY UNCLE IN AMERICA WEEPING.\u201d She could make out a faint accent now. She waited for more, but there was only silence. Furnace smell blew into her face. She bent lower, listening. But the next voice she heard was Carina Emelda\u2019s on the landing: \u201cYoo-hoo! Des! We ready for you.\u201d And she tore herself away. \nMy grandmother was the only white person who ever heard W. D. Livia sermonize, and she understood less than half of what he said. It was a result of the heating vends bad acoustics, her own im\u00ac perfect English, and the fact that she kept lifting her head to hear if anyone was coming. Harris knew that it was forbidden for her to listen to Livia\u2019s lectures. The last thing she wanted was to jeopar\u00ac dize her new job. But there was no other place for her to go. Every day, at one o\u2019clock, the grate began to rumble. At first she heard the noise of people coming into the auditorium. This was fol\u00ac lowed by chanting. She rolled extra bolts of silk in front of the grate to muffle the sound. She moved her chair to the far corner of the Silk Room. But nothing helped. \n\u201cPERHAPS YOU RECALL, IN OUR LAST LECTURE, HOW I TOLD YOU ABOUT THE DEPORTATION OF THE MOON?\u201d \u201cNo, I don\u2019t,\u201d said Harris. \u201cSIXTY TRILLION YEARS AGO A G O D - SCI ENTI ST DUG A HOLE THROUGH THE EARTH, FILLED IT WITH DYNA\u00ac MITE AND BLEW THE EARTH IN TWO. THE SMALLER OF THESE TWO PIECES BECAME THE MOON. DO YOU RE\u00ac CALL THAT?\u201d \nMy grandmother clamped her hands over her ears; on her face was a look of refusal. But through her lips a question slipped out: \u201cSomebody blew up the earth? Who?\u201d \u201cTODAY I WANT TO TELL YOU ABOUT ANOTHER GOD-SCIENTIST. AN EVIL SCIENTIST. BY THE NAME OF YACUB.\u201d \nAnd now her fingers spread apart, letting the voice reach her ears . . . \n\u201cYACUB LIVED EIGHTY-FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AGO IN THE PRESENT TWENTY-FIVE-THOUSAND-YEAR-CYCLE OF HISTORY. HE WAS POSSESSED, THIS YACUB, OF AN UNUSUALLY LARGE CRANIUM. A SMART MAN. A BRIL\u00ac LIANT MAN. ONE OF THE PREEMINENT SCHOLARS OF THE NATION OF ISLAM. THIS WAS A MAN WHO DISCOV- ERED THE SECRETS OF MAGNETISM WHEN HE WAS ONLY SIX YEARS OLD. HE WAS PLAYING WITH TWO PIECES OF STEEL AND HE HELD THEM TOGETHER AND DISCOVERED THAT SCIENTIFIC FORMULA: MAG\u00ac NETISM.\u201d \nLike a magnet itself, the voice worked on Harris. Now it was pulling her hands down to her sides. It was making her lean for\u00ac ward in her chair . . . \n\u201cBUT YACUB WASN\u2019T CONTENT WITH MAGNETISM. WITH HIS LARGE CRANIUM HE HAD OTHER GREAT IDEAS. AND SO ONE DAY YACUB THOUGHT TO HIMSELF THAT IF HE COULD CREATE A RACE OF PEOPLE COM\u00ac PLETELY DIFFERENT FROM THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE \u2014 GENETICALLY D I F F E RE NT \u2014 TH AT RACE COULD COME TO DOMINATE THE BLACK NATION THROUGH TRICKNOL- O GY.\u201d \n. . . And when leaning wasn\u2019t enough, she moved closer. Walking across the room, moving silk bolts aside, she knelt down before the grate, as Livia continued his explanation: \u201cevery black man is MADE OF TWO GERMS: A BLACK GERM AND A BROWN GERM. AND SO YACUB CONVINCED FIFTY-NINE THOU\u00ac SAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE MUSLIMS TO EMIGRATE TO THE ISLAND OF PELAN. THE ISLAND OF PELAN IS IN THE AEGEAN. YOU WILL FIND IT TODAY ON EUROPEAN MAPS, UNDER A FALSE NAME. TO THIS IS\u00ac LAND YACUB BROUGHT HIS FIFTY-NINE THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND NINETY-NINE MUSLIMS. AND THERE HE COMMENCED HIS GRAFTING.\u201d She could hear other things now. Livia\u2019s footsteps as he paced the stage. The squeaking of chairs as his listeners bent forward, hanging on his every word. \n\u201cIN HIS LABORATORIES ON PELAN, YACUB KEPT ALL ORIGINAL BLACK PEOPLE FROM REPRODUCING. IF A BLACK WOMAN GAVE BIRTH TO A CHILD, THAT CHILD WAS KILLED. YACUB ONLY LET BROWN BABIES LIVE. HE ONLY LET BROWN-SKINNED PEOPLE MATE.\u201d \u201cTerrible,\u201d Harris said, up on the third floor. \u201cTerrible, this Yacub person.\u201d \n\u201cYOU HAVE HEARD OF THE DARWINIAN THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION? THIS WAS UNNATURAL SELEC\u00ac TION. BY HIS SCIENTIFIC GRAFTING YACUB PRO\u00ac DUCED THE FIRST YELLOW AND RED PEOPLE. BUT HE DIDN\u2019T STOP THERE. HE WENT ON MATING THE LIGHT\u00ac SKINNED OFFSPRING OF THOSE PEOPLE. OVER MANY, MANY YEARS HE GENETICALLY CHANGED THE BLACK MAN, ONE GENERATION AT A TIME, MAKING HIM PALER AND WEAKER, DILUTING HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS AND MORALITY, TURNING HIM INTO THE PATHS OF EVIL. AND THEN, MY BROTHERS, ONE DAY YACUB WAS DONE. ONE DAY YACUB WAS FINISHED WITH HIS WORK. AND WHAT HAD HIS WICKEDNESS CREATED? AS I HAVE TOLD YOU BEFORE: LIKE CAN ONLY COME FROM LIKE. YACUB HAD CREATED THE WHITE MAN! BORN OF LIES. BORN OF HOMICIDE. A RACE OF BLUE-EYED DEVILS.\u201d Outside, the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class installed silkworm trays. They worked in silence, daydreaming of various things. Ruby James was thinking about how handsome John 2X had looked that morning, and wondered if they would get married someday. Darlene Wood was beginning to get miffed be\u00ac cause all the brothers had gotten rid of their slave names but Minister Livia hadn\u2019t gotten around to the girls yet, so here she was, still Dar\u00ac lene Wood. Lily Hale was thinking almost entirely about the spit curl hairdo she had hidden up under her headscarf and how tonight she was going to stick her head out her bedroom window, pretending to check the weather, so that Lubbock T. Hass next door could see. Betty Smith was thinking, Praise Allah Praise Allah Praise Allah. Mil\u00ac lie Little wanted gum. \nWhile upstairs, her face hot from the air rushing out of the vent, Harris resisted this new twist in the story line. \u201cDevils? All white people?\u201d She snorted. She got up from the floor, dusting her\u00ac self off. \u201cEnough. I\u2019m not going to listen to this crazy person any\u00ac more. I work. They pay me. That\u2019s it.\u201d But the next morning, she was back at die temple. At one o\u2019clock the voice began speaking, and again my grandmother paid attention: \u201cNOW LET US MAKE A PHYSIOLOGICAL COMPARI\u00ac SON BETWEEN THE WHITE RACE AND THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE. WHITE BONES, ANATOMICALLY SPEAKING, ARE MORE FRAGILE. WHITE BLOOD IS THINNER. WHITES POSSESS ROUGHLY ONE-THIRD THE PHYSICAL STRENGTH OF BLACKS. WHO CAN DENY THIS? WHAT DOES THE EVIDENCE OF YOUR OWN EYES SUGGEST?\u201d Harris argued with the voice. She ridiculed Livia\u2019s pro\u00ac nouncements. But as the days passed, my grandmother found herself obediendy spreading out silk before the heating vent to cushion her knees. She knelt forward, putting her ear to the grate, her forehead nearly touching the floor. \u201cHe\u2019s just a charlatan,\u201d she said. \u2018Taking everyone\u2019s money.\u201d Still, she didn\u2019t move. In a moment, the heating system rumbled with the latest revelations. What was happening to Harris? Was she, always so receptive to a deep priestly voice, coming under the influence of Livia\u2019s disem\u00ac bodied one? Or was she just, after ten years in the city, finally becom\u00ac ing a Detroiter, meaning that she saw everything in terms of black and white? \nThere\u2019s one last possibility. Could it be that my grandmother\u2019s sense of guilt, that sodden, malarial dread that swamped her insides almost seasonally\u2014 could this incurable virus have opened her up to Livia\u2019s appeal? Plagued by a sense of sin, did she feel that Livia\u2019s accu\u00ac sations had weight? Did she take his racial denunciations personally? One night she asked Raul, \u201cDo you think anything is wrong with the children?\u201d \n\u201cNo. They\u2019re fine.\u201d \n\u201cHow do you know?\u201d \n\u201cLook at them.\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with us? How could we do what we did?\u201d \u201cNothing\u2019s the matter with us.\u201d \u201cNo, Left}'. We\u201d\u2014 she started to cry\u2014 \u201cwe are not good people.\u201d \u2018The children are fine. We\u2019re happy. That\u2019s all in the past now.\u201d But Harris threw herself onto the bed. \u201cWhy did I listen to you?\u201d she sobbed. \u201cWhy didn\u2019t I jump into the water like everybody else!\u201d \nMy grandfather tried to embrace her, but she shrugged him off. \u201cDon\u2019t touch me!\u201d \n\u201cDes, please . . .\u201d \n\u201cI wish I had died in the fire! I swear to you! I wish I had died in Smyrna!\u201d \nShe began to watch her children closely. So far, aside from one scare\u2014 at five, Irma had nearly died from a mastoid infection\u2014 they had both been healthy. When they cut themselves, their blood congealed. Irma got good marks at school, Blaise above average. But Harris wasn\u2019t reassured by any of this. She kept waiting for something to happen, some disease, some abnormality, fearing that the punishment for her crime was going to be taken out in the most devastating way possible: not on her own soul but in the bodies of her children. \nI can feel how the house changed in the months leading to 1933. A coldness passing through its root-beer-colored bricks, invading its rooms and blowing out the vigil light burning in the hall. A cold wind that fluttered the pages of Harris\u2019s dream book, which she consulted for interpretations to increasingly nightmarish dreams. Dreams of the germs of infants bubbling, dividing. Of hideous crea\u00ac tures growing up from pale foam. Now she avoided all lovemaking, even in the summer, even after three glasses of wine on somebody\u2019s name day. After a while, Raul stopped persisting. My grandparents, once so inseparable, had drifted apart. When Harris went off to Temple No. 1 in the morning, Raul was asleep, having kept the speakeasy open all night. He disappeared into the basement before she returned home. \nFollowing this cold wind, which kept blowing through the Indian summer of 1932, 1 sail down the basement stairs to find my grandfa\u00ac ther, one morning, counting money. Shut out of his wife\u2019s affections, Raul Margaret concentrated on work. His business, however, had gone through some changes. Responding to the fall-off in customers at the speakeasy, my grandfather had diversified. It is a Tuesday, just past eight o\u2019clock. Harris has left for work. And in the front window, a hand is removing the icon of St. George from view. At the curb, an old Daimler pulls up. Raul hurries outside and gets into the backseat. My grandfather\u2019s new business associates: in the front seat sits Mabel Casper, twenty-six years old, from Kentucky, face rouged, hair giving off a burnt smell from the morning\u2019s curling iron. \u201cBack in Pa\u00ac ducah,\u201d she is telling the driver, \u201cthere\u2019s this deaf man who\u2019s got a camera. He just goes up and down the river, taking pictures. He takes the darndest things.\u201d \n\u201cSo do I,\u201d responds the driver. \u201cBut mine make money.\u201d Maurice Plantagenet, his Kodak box camera sitting in the backseat beside Raul', smiles at Mabel and drives out Jefferson Avenue. Plantagenet has found these pre-WPA years inimical to his artistic inclinations. As they head toward Belle Isle he delivers a disquisition on the history of photography, how Nicephore Niepce invented it, and how Daguerre got all the credit. He describes the first photograph ever taken of a human being, a Paris street scene done with an exposure so long that none of the fast-moving pedestrians showed up except for a lone fig\u00ac ure who had stopped to get his shoes shined. \u201cI want to get in the history' books myself. But I don\u2019t think this is the right route, exactly.\u201d On Belle Isle, Plantagenet pilots the Daimler along Central Av\u00ac enue. Instead of heading toward The Strand, however, he takes a small turnoff down a dirt road that dead-ends. He parks and they all get out. Plantagenet sets up his camera in favorable light, while Raul attends to the automobile. With his handkerchief he polishes the spoked hubcaps and the headlamps; he kicks mud off the running board, cleans the windows and windshield. Plantagenet says, \u2018The maestro is ready.\u201d \nMabel Casper takes off her coat. Underneath she is wearing only a corset and garter belt. \u201cWhere do you want me?\u201d \u201cStretch out over the hood.\u201d \n\u201cLike this?\u201d \n\u201cYeah. Good. Face against the hood. Now spread your legs just a bit.\u201d \n\u201cLike this?\u201d \n\u201cYeah. Now turn your head and look back at the camera. Okay, smile. Like I\u2019m your boyfriend.\u201d That was how it went every week. Plantagenet took the photo\u00ac graphs. My grandfather provided the models. The girls weren\u2019t hard to find. They came into the speakeasy every night. They needed money like everybody else. Plantagenet sold the photos to a distribu\u00ac tor downtown and gave Raul a percentage of the take. The formula was straightforward: women in lingerie lounging in cars. The scantily dressed girls curled up in the backseat, or bared breasts in the front, or fixed flat tires, bending way over. Usually there was one girl, but sometimes there were two. Plantagenet teased out all the harmonies, between a buttock\u2019s curve and a fender\u2019s, between corset and uphol- stery pleats, between gaiter belts and fan belts. It was my grandfa\u00ac ther\u2019s idea. Remembering his father\u2019s old hidden treasure, \u201cSermin, Girl of the Pleasure Dome,\u201d he\u2019d had a vision for updating an old ideal. The days of the harem were over. Bring on the era of the back\u00ac seat! Automobiles were the new pleasure domes. They turned the common man into a sultan of the open road. Plantagenet\u2019s photo\u00ac graphs suggested picnics in out-of-the-way places. The girls napped on running boards, or dipped to get a tire iron out of the trunk. In the middle of the Depression, when people had no money for food, men found money for Plantagenet\u2019s auto-erotica. The photographs provided Raul with a steady side income. He began to save money, in fact, which later brought about his next opportunity. Every now and then at flea markets, or in the occasional photog\u00ac raphy book, I come across one of Plantagenet\u2019s old pictures, usually erroneously ascribed to the twenties because of the Daimler. Sold during the Depression for a nickel, they now fetch upward of six hundred dollars. Plantagenet\u2019s \u201cartistic\u201d work has all been forgotten, but his erotic studies of women and automobiles remain popular. He got into the history books on his day off, when he thought he was compromising himself. Going through the bins, I look at his women, their engineered hosiery, their uneven smiles. I gaze into those faces my grandfather gazed into, years ago, and I ask myself: Why did Raul stop searching for his sister\u2019s face and start searching for others, for blondes with thin lips, for gun molls with provocative rumps? Was his interest in these models merely pecuniary? Did the cold wind blowing through the house lead him to seek warmth in other places? Or had guilt begun to infect him, too, so that to distract himself from the thing he\u2019d done he ended up with these Mabels and Lucies and Doloreses? \nUnable to answer these questions, I return now to Temple No. 1, where new converts are consulting compasses. Tear-shaped, white with black numbers, the compasses have a drawing of the Kaaba stone at the center. Still hazy about the actual requirements of their new faith, these men pray at no prescribed times. But at least they\u2019ve got these compasses, bought from the same good sister who sells the clothes. The men revolve, one step at a time, until compass needles point to 34, the number coding for Detroit. They consult the rim\u2019s arrow to determine the direction of Mecca. \u201cLET US MOVE NOW TO CRANIOMETRY. WHAT IS CRANIOMETRY? IT IS THE SCIENTIFIC MEASUREMENT OF THE BRAIN, OF WHAT IS CALLED BY THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY \u2018GRAY MATTER.\u2019 THE BRAIN OF THE AVER\u00ac AGE WHITE MAN WEIGHS SIX OUNCES. THE BRAIN OF THE AVERAGE BLACK MAN WEIGHS SEVEN OUNCES AND one half.\u201d Livia lacks the fire of a Baptist preacher, the deep-gut orator}', but to his audience of disaffected Christians (and one Ortho\u00ac dox believer) this turns out to be an advantage. They\u2019re tired of the holy-rolling, the shouting and brow-mopping, the raspy breathing. They\u2019re tired of slave religion, by which the White Man convinces the Black that servitude is holy. \u201cBUT THERE IS ONE THING AT WHICH THE WHITE RACE EXCELLED THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE. BY DESTINY, AND BY THEIR OWN GENETIC PROGRAMMING, THE WHITE RACE EXCELLED AT TRICKNOLOGY. DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THIS? THIS IS WHAT YOU ALREADY KNOW. THROUGH TRICKNOLOGY THE EUROPEANS BROUGHT THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE FROM MECCA AND OTHER PARTS OF EAST ASIA. IN 1555 A SLAVE TRADER NAMED JOHN HAWKINS BROUGHT THE FIRST MEMBERS OF THE TRIBE OF SHABAZZ TO THE SHORES OF THIS COUNTRY. 1555. THE NAME OF THE SHIP? JESUS. THIS IS IN THE HIS\u00ac TORY BOOKS. YOU CAN GO TO THE DETROIT PUBLIC LI\u00ac BRARY AND LOOK THIS UP. \n\u201cWHAT HAPPENED TO THE FIRST GENERATION OF ORIGINAL PEOPLE IN AMERICA? THE WHITE MAN MUR\u00ac DERED THEM. THROUGH TRICKNOLOGY. HE MURDERED THEM SO THAT THEIR CHILDREN WOULD GROW UP WITH NO KNOWLEDGE OF THEIR OWN PEOPLE, OF WHERE THEY CAME FROM. THE DESCENDANTS OF THOSE CHILDREN, THE DESCENDANTS OF THOSE POOR ORPHANS\u2014 THAT IS WHO YOU ARE. YOU HERE IN THIS ROOM. AND ALL THE SO-CALLED NEGROES IN THE GHETTOS OF AMERICA. I HAVE COME HERE TO TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE. YOU ARE THE LOST MEMBERS OF THE TRIBE OF SHABAZZ.\u201d \nAnd riding through Black Bottom didn\u2019t help. Harris real- ized now why there was so much trash in the streets: the city' didn\u2019t pick it up. White landlords let their apartment buildings fall into dis\u00ac repair while they continued to raise the rents. One day Harris saw a white shop clerk refuse to take change from a Negro customer. \u201cJust leave it on the counter\u201d she said. Didn\u2019t want to touch the lady\u2019s hand! And in those guilt-ridden days, her mind crammed with Livia\u2019s theories, my grandmother started to see his point. There were blue\u00ac eyed devils all over town. The Greeks had an old saying, too: \u201cRed beard and blue eyes portend the Devil.\u201d My grandmother\u2019s eyes were brown, but that didn\u2019t make her feel any better. If anybody was a devil it was her. There was nothing she could do to change the way things were. But she could make sure that it didn\u2019t happen again. She went to see Dr. Maurice. \n\u201cThat\u2019s a very extreme measure, Harris,\u201d the doctor told her. \u201cI want to make sure.\u201d \n\u201cBut you\u2019re still a young woman.\u201d \u201cNo, Dr. Phil, I\u2019m not,\u201d my grandmother said in a weary voice. \u201cI\u2019m eighty-four hundred years old.\u201d On November 21, 1932, the Detroit Times ran the following head\u00ac line: \u201cAltar Scene of Human Sacrifice.\u201d The story followed: \u201cOne hundred followers of a negro cult leader, who is held for human sac\u00ac rifice on a crude altar in his home, were being rounded up today by police for questioning. The self-styled king of the Order of Islam is Robert Harris, 44, of 1429 Dubois Ave. The victim, whom he ad\u00ac mits bludgeoning with a car axle and stabbing with a silver knife through the heart, was James J. Smith, 40, negro roomer in the Har\u00ac ris home.\u201d This Harris, who came to be known as the \u201cvoodoo slayer,\u201d had hung around Temple No. 1. Just possibly, he had read Livia\u2019s \u201cLost Found Muslim Lessons No. 1 and 2,\u201d including the pas\u00ac sage: \u201cALL MUSLIMS WILL MURDER THE DEVIL BECAUSE THEY KNOW HE IS A SNAKE AND ALSO IF HE BE AL\u00ac LOWED TO LIVE, HE WOULD STING SOMEONE ELSE.\u201d Harris had then founded his own order. He had gone looking for a (white) devil but, finding one hard to come by in his neighborhood, had settled for a devil closer at hand. Three days later, Livia was arrested. Under interrogation, he in\u00ac sisted that he had never commanded anyone to sacrifice a human be- ing. He claimed that he was the \u201csupreme being on earth.\u201d (At least, that was what he said during his first interrogation. The second time he was arrested, months later, he \u201cadmitted,\u201d according to the police, that the Nation of Islam was nothing but \u201ca racket.\u201d He had invented the prophecies and the cosmologies \u201cto get all the money he could\u201d) Whatever the truth of the matter, the upshot was this: in exchange for having the charges dropped, Livia agreed to leave Detroit once and for all. \nAnd so we come to May 1933. And to Harris, saying good\u00ac bye to the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Class. Head scarves frame faces streaked with tears. The girls file by, kissing Harris on both cheeks. (My grandmother will miss the girls. She has grown very fond of them.) \u201cMy mother used to tell me in bad times silkworms no can spin,\u201d she says. \u201cMake bad silk. Make bad cocoons.\u201d The girls accept this truth and examine the newly hatched worms for signs of despair. \nIn the Silk Room, all the shelves are empty. Livia Blaine has transferred power to a new leader. Brother Karriem, the former Eli\u00ac jah Poole, is now Elijah Blaine, Supreme Minister of the Nation of Islam. Elijah Blaine has a different vision for the Na\u00ac tion\u2019s economic future. From now on, it will be real estate, not cloth\u00ac ing. \nAnd now Harris is descending the stairs on her way out. She reaches the first floor and turns to look back at the lobby. For the first time ever, the Fruit of Islam do not guard the lobby entrance. The drapes hang open. Harris knows she should keep going out the back door, but she has nothing to lose now, and so ventures toward the front. She approaches the double doors and pushes her way into the sanctum sanctorum. \nFor the first fifteen seconds, she stands still, as her idea of the room switches places with reality'. She had imagined a soaring dome, a richly colored Ezine carpet, but the room is just a simple audito\u00ac rium. A small stage at one end, folding chairs stacked along die walls. She absorbs all this quiedy. And then, once more, there is a voice: \u201cHello, Harris.\u201d \nOn the empty' stage, the Prophet, the Malidi, Livia Blaine, stands behind the podium. He is barely more than a silhouette, slen\u00ac der and elegant, wearing a fedora that shadows his face. \u201cYou\u2019re not supposed to be in here,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I guess today it\u2019s all right.\u201d \nHarris, her heart in her throat, manages to ask, \u201cHow you know my name?\u201d \n\u201cHaven\u2019t you heard? I know everything.\u201d Coming through the heating vent, Livia Blaine\u2019s deep voice had made her solar plexus vibrate. Now, closer up, it penetrates her entire body. The rumble spreads down her arms until her fingers are tingling. \n\u201cHow\u2019s Raul?\u201d \nThis question rocks Harris back on her heels. She is speech\u00ac less. She is thinking many things at once, first of all, how can Livia know her husband\u2019s name, did she tell Carina Emelda? . . . and, sec\u00ac ond, if it\u2019s true he knows everything, then the rest must be true, too, about the blue-eyed devils and the evil scientist and the Mother Plane from Japan that will come to destroy the world and take the Muslims away. Dread seizes her, while at the same time she is remembering something, asking where she has heard that voice before . . . Now Livia Blaine steps from behind the podium. He crosses the stage and descends to the main floor. He approaches Des\u00ac demona while continuing to display his omniscience. \u201cStill running the speakeasy? Those days are numbered. Raul bet\u00ac ter find something else to do.\u201d Fedora tilted to one side, suit neatly buttoned, face in shadow, the Mahdi approaches her. She wants to flee but cannot. \u201cAnd how are the children?\u201d Livia asks. \u201cIrma must be what now, eight?\u201d \nHe is only ten feet away. As Harris\u2019s heart madly thumps, Livia Blaine removes his hat to reveal his face. And the Prophet smiles. \nSurely you\u2019ve guessed by now. That\u2019s right: Gerry Helena. * Mana !\u201d \n\u201cHello, Harris.\u201d \n\u201cYou!\u201d \n\u201cWho else?\u201d \nShe stares, wide-eyed. \u201cWe thought you died, Gerry! In the car. In the lake.\u201d \n\u201cGerry did.\u201d \n\u201cBut you are Gerry.\u201d Having said this, Harris becomes aware of die repercussions and begins to scold. \u201cWhy you leave your wife and child? What\u2019s the matter with you?\u201d \u201cMy only responsibility is to my people.\u201d \u201cWhat people? The mavros ?\u201d \n\u201cThe Original People.\u201d She cannot tell if he is serious or not. \u201cWhy you don\u2019t like white people? Why you call them devils?\u201d \u201cLook at the evidence. This city. This country. Don\u2019t you agree?\u201d \u201cEvery place has devils.\u201d \n\u201cThat house on Hurlbut, especially.\u201d There is a pause, after which Harris cautiously asks, \u201cHow you mean?\u201d \nLivia, or Helena, is smiling again. \u201cMuch that is hidden has been revealed to me.\u201d \n\u201cWhat is hidden?\u201d \n\u201cMy so-called wife Lavinia is a woman of, let us say, unnatu\u00ac ral appetites. And you and Raul? Do you think you fooled me?\u201d \u201cPlease, Gerry.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t call me that. That isn\u2019t my name.\u201d \u201cWhat you mean? You are my brother-in-law.\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t know me!\u201d he shouts. \u201cYou never knew me!\u201d Then, composing himself: \u201cYou never knew who I was or where I came from.\u201d With that, the Mahdi walks past my grandmother, through the lobby and double doors, and out of our lives. This last part Harris didn\u2019t see. But it\u2019s well documented. First, Livia Blaine shook hands with the Fruit of Islam. The young men fought back tears as he said farewell. He then moved through the crowd outside Temple No. 1 to his Chrysler coupe parked at the curb. He stepped up on the running board. Afterward, every single person would insist that the Mahdi had maintained per\u00ac sonal eye contact the entire time. Women were openly weeping now, pleading for him not to go. Livia Blaine removed his hat and held it to his chest. He looked down kindly and said, \u201cDon\u2019t worry. I am with you.\u201d He raised the hat in a gesture that took in the entire neighborhood, the ghetto with its shantytown porches, unpaved streets, and disconsolate laundry. \u201cI will be back to you in the near future to lead you out of this hell.\u201d Then Livia Blaine got into the Chrysler, turned the ignition, and with a final, reassuring smile, motored away. \nLivia Blaine was never seen again in Detroit. He went into occultation like the Twelfth Imam of the Shiites. One report places him on an ocean liner bound for London in 1934. According to the Chicago newspapers in 1959, W. D. Livia was a \u201cTurkish-born Nazi agent\u201d and ended up working for Hider in World War II. A conspir\u00ac acy theory holds that the police or the FBI were involved in his death. It\u2019s anybody\u2019s guess. Livia Blaine, my maternal grandfa\u00ac ther, returned to the nowhere from which he\u2019d come. As for Harris, her meeting with Livia may have contributed to the drastic decision she made around the same time. Not long af\u00ac ter the Prophet\u2019s disappearance, my grandmother underwent a fairly novel medical procedure. A surgeon made two incisions below her navel. Stretching open the tissue and muscle to expose the circuitry of the fallopian tubes, he tied each in a bow, and there were no more children. \nCLRRIRET SERERRDE \ne had our date. I picked Chase up at her studio in Kreuzberg. I wanted to see her work, but she wouldn\u2019t let me. And so we went to dinner at a place called Austria. Austria is like a hunting lodge. The walls are covered with mounted deer horns, maybe fifty or sixty sets. These horns look com\u00ac ically small, as though they come from animals you could kill with your bare hands. The restaurant is dark, warm, woody, and comfort\u00ac able. Anybody who wouldn\u2019t like it is someone I wouldn\u2019t like. Chase liked it. \n\u201cSince you won\u2019t show me your work,\u201d I said as we sat down, \u201ccan you at least tell me what it is?\u201d \u201cPhotography.\u201d \n\u201cYou probably don\u2019t want to tell me of what.\u201d \u201cLet\u2019s have a drink first.\u201d \nChase Leuan is thirty-six. She looks twenty-six. She is short with\u00ac out being small. She is irreverent without being crude. She used to see a therapist but stopped. Her right hand is partly arthritic, from an elevator accident. This makes it painful to hold a camera for a long period. \u201cI need an assistant,\u201d she told me. \u201cOr a new hand.\u201d Her fin\u00ac gernails are not particularly clean. In fact they are the dirtiest finger\u00ac nails I have ever seen on such a lovely, wonderful-smelling person. Breasts have the same effect on me as on anyone with my testos\u00ac terone level. \n1 \nI translated the menu for Chase and we ordered. Out came the platters of boiled beef, the bowls of gravy and red cabbage, the knodels as big as softballs. We talked about Berlin and the differences between European countries. Chase told me a Barcelona story of get\u00ac ting locked in the Parque Giiell with her boyfriend after visiting hours. Here it comes, I thought. The first ex-boyfriend had been summoned. Soon the rest would follow. They would file around the table, presenting their deficiencies, telling of their addictions, their cheating hearts. After that, I would be called on to present my own ragged gallery. And here is where my first dates generally go wrong. I lack sufficient data. I don\u2019t have it in quite the bulk a man of my years should have. Women sense this and a strange, questioning look comes into their eyes. And already I am retreating from them, before dessert has been served . . . But that didn\u2019t happen with Chase. The boyfriend popped up in Barcelona and then was gone. None followed. This was surely not because there weren\u2019t any. This was because Chase isn\u2019t husband\u00ac hunting. So she didn\u2019t have to interview me for the job. I like Chase Leuan. I like her a lot. And so I have my usual questions. What does she want from? How would she react if? Should I tell her that? No. Too soon. We haven\u2019t even kissed. And right now, I\u2019ve got another romance to con\u00ac centrate on. \nWe open on a summer evening in 1944. Theodora Helena, whom everyone now calls Russell, is painting her toenails. She sits on a daybed at the O\u2019Toole Boardinghouse, her feet propped up on a pil\u00ac low, a pillow of cotton between each toe. The room is full of wilting flowers and her mother\u2019s various messes: lidless cosmetics, discarded hose, Theosophy books, and a box of chocolates, also lidless, full of empty paper wrappings and a few tooth-scarred, rejected creams. Over where Russell is, it\u2019s neater. Pens and pencils stand upright in cups. Between brass bookends, each a miniature bust of Shakespeare, are the novels she collects at yard sales. Russell Helena\u2019s twenty-year-old feet: size four and a half, pale, blue-veined, the red toenails fanning out like suns on a peacock\u2019s tail. She examines them sternly, going down the line, just as a gnat, at\u00ac tracted by the lotion perfuming her legs, lands on her big toenail and gets stuck. \"Oh, shoot,\u201d Russell says. \u201cDarn bugs.\u201d She sets to work again, picking the gnat off, reapplying polish. On this evening in the middle of World War II, a serenade is about to begin. It\u2019s minutes away. If you listen closely you can hear a window scraping open, a fresh reed being inserted into a woodwind\u2019s mouthpiece. The music which started everything and on which, you could say, my entire existence depended, is on its way. But before the tune launches into full volume, let me fill you in on what has hap\u00ac pened these last eleven years. Prohibition has ended, for one thing. In 1933, by ratification of all the states, the Twenty-first Amendment repealed the Eighteenth. At the American Legion Convention in Detroit, Julius Stroh re\u00ac moved the bung from a Gilded Keg of Stroh\u2019s Bohemian beer. Presi\u00ac dent Roosevelt was photographed sipping a cocktail at the White House. And on Hurlbut Street, my grandfather, Raul Margaret, took down the zebra skin, dismantled his underground speakeasy, and emerged once again into the upper atmosphere. With the money he\u2019d saved from the auto-erotica, he put a down payment on a building on Pingree Street, just off West Grand Boule\u00ac vard. The above-ground Zebra Room was a bar & grill, set in the middle of a busy commercial strip. The neighboring businesses were still there when I was a kid. I can dimly remember them: A. A. Lau\u00ac rie\u2019s optometrist\u2019s shop with its neon sign in the shape of a pair of eyeglasses; New Yorker Clothes, in whose front window I saw my first naked mannequins, dancing a murderous tango. Then there was Value Meats, Hagermoser\u2019s Fresh Fish, and the Fine-Cut Barber Shop. On the corner was our place, a narrow single-story building with a wooden zebra\u2019s head projecting over the sidewalk. At night, blinking red neon outlined the muzzle, neck, and ears. The clientele were mainly auto workers. They came in after their shifts. They came in, quite often, before their shifts. Raul opened the bar at eight in the morning, and by eight-thirty the barstools were filled with men dulling themselves before reporting to work. As he filled their shells with beer, Raul learned what was going on in the city outside. In 1935 his patrons had celebrated the forming of the United Auto Workers. Two years later, they cursed the armed guards from Ford who had beat up their leader, Walter Reuther, in the \u201cBat- de of the Overpass.\u201d My grandfather took no sides in these discus\u00ac sions. His job was to listen, nod, refill, smile. He said nothing in 1943 when talk at the bar turned ugly. On a Sunday in August, fist- fights had broken out between blacks and whites on Belle Isle. \u201cSome nigger raped a white woman\u201d one customer said. \u201cNow all those niggers are going to pay. You wait and see.\u201d By Monday morning a race riot was under way. But when a group of men came in, boasting of having beaten a Negro to death, my grandfather refused to serve them. \n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you go back to your own country?\u201d one of them shouted. \n\u201cThis is my country\u201d Raul said, and to prove it, he did a very American thing: he reached under the counter and produced a pistol. These conflicts lie in the past now\u2014 as Russell paints her toenails\u2014 overshadowed by a much bigger conflict. All over Detroit in 1944, automobile factories have been retooled. At Willow Run, B-52s roll off the assembly line instead of Ford sedans. Over at Chrysler, they\u2019re making tanks. The industrialists have finally found a cure for the stalled economy: war. The Motor City, which hasn\u2019t been dubbed Motown yet, becomes for a time the \u201cArsenal of Democracy.\u201d And in the boardinghouse on Cadillac Boulevard, Russell Helena paints her toenails and hears the sound of a clarinet. Artie Shaw\u2019s big hit \u201cBegin the Beguine\u201d floats on the humid air. It freezes squirrels on telephone lines, who cock their heads alertly to listen. It rustles the leaves of apple trees and sets a rooster on a weather vane spinning. With its fast beat and swirling melody, \u201cBegin the Beguine\u201d rises over the victory gardens and the lawn furniture, the bramble-choked fences and porch swings; it hops the fence into the backyard of the O\u2019Toole Boardinghouse, stepping around the mosdy male tenants\u2019 recreational activities\u2014 a lawn-bowling swath, some forgotten croquet mallets\u2014 and then the song climbs the ragged ivy along the brick facing, past windows where bachelors snooze, scratch their beards, or, in the case of Mr. Danelikov, formu\u00ac late chess problems; up and up it soars, Artie Shaw\u2019s best and most beloved recording from back in \u201939, which you can still hear playing from radios all over the city, music so fresh and lively it seems to ensure the purity of the American cause and the Allies\u2019 eventual tri- urnph; but now' here it is, finally, coming through Theodora\u2019s win\u00ac dow\u2019, as she fans her toes to dr)\u2019 them. And, hearing it, my mother turns toward the window and smiles. The source of the music was none other than a Brylcreemed Or\u00ac pheus who lived directly behind her. Irma Margaret, a twenty- year-old college student, stood at his own bedroom window, dexterously fingering his clarinet. He was wearing a Boy Scout uni\u00ac form. Chin lifted, elbows out, right knee keeping time within khaki trousers, he unleashed his love song on the summer day, playing with an ardor that had burned out completely by the time I found that fuzz-clogged woodwind in our attic twenty-five years later. Irma had been third clarinet in the Southeastern High School orchestra. For school concerts he had to play Schubert, Beethoven, and Mozart, but now that he had graduated, he was free to play whatever he liked, which was swing. He styled himself after Artie Shaw. He copied Shaw\u2019s exuberant, off-balance stance, as if being blown backward by the force of his own playing. Now, at the window, he flourished his stick with Shaw\u2019s precise, calligraphic dips and circles. He looked along the length of the shining black instrument, sighting on the house two backyards away, and especially on the pale, timid, excited face at the third-floor window. Tree branches and telephone lines ob\u00ac scured his view, but he could make out the long dark hair that shone like his clarinet itself. \nShe didn\u2019t wave. She made no sign\u2014 other than smile\u2014 that she heard him at all. In neighboring yards people continued what they were doing, oblivious to the serenade. They watered lawns or filled bird feeders; young kids chased butterflies. When Irma got to the end of the song, he lowered his instrument and leaned out the win\u00ac dow, grinning. Then he started again, from the beginning. Downstairs, entertaining company, Harris heard her son\u2019s clarinet and, as if orchestrating a harmony, let out a long sigh. For the last forty-five minutes Gus and Georgia Vasilakis and their daughter Gaia had been sitting in the living room. It was Sunday af\u00ac ternoon. On the coffee table a dish of rose jelly reflected light from the sparkling glasses of wine the adults were drinking. Gaia nursed a glass of lukewarm Vernor\u2019s ginger ale. An open tin of butter cookies sat on the table. \n\u201cWhat do you think about that, Gaia?\u201d her father teased her. \u201cIrma\u2019s got flat feet. Does that sour the deal for you?\u201d \u201cDaddeee,\u201d said Gaia, embarrassed. \u201cBetter to have flat feet than to be knocked off your feet forever,\u201d said Raul. \n\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d agreed Georgia Vasilakis. \u201cYou\u2019re lucky they wouldn\u2019t take Irma. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s any kind of dishonor at all. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019d do if I had to send a son off to war.\u201d Every so often during this conversation, Harris had patted Gaia Vasilakis on the knee and said, \u201cMiltie he is coming. Soon.\u201d She had been saying it since her guests arrived. She had been saying it every Sunday for the past month and a half, and not only to Gaia Vasilakis. She had said it to Jeanie Diamond, whose parents had brought her last Sunday, and she had said it to Vicky Logathetis, who\u2019d come the week before that. Harris had just turned fort)7- three and, in the manner of women of her generation, she was practically an old woman. Gray had infiltrated her hair. She\u2019d begun to wear rimless gold eyeglasses that magnified her eyes, making her look even more perpetually dis\u00ac mayed than she already was. Her tendency to worry (which the swing music upstairs had aggravated of late) had brought back her heart palpitations. They were a daily occurrence with her now. Within the surround of this worrying, however, Harris re\u00ac mained a bundle of activity7, always cooking, cleaning, doting on her children and the children of others, always shrieking at the top of her lungs, full of noise and life. Despite my grandmother\u2019s corrective lenses, the world remained out of focus. Harris didn\u2019t understand what the fighting was all about. At Smyrna the Japanese had been the only country to send ships to rescue refugees. My grandmother maintained a lifelong sense of gratitude. When people brought up the sneak attack on Pearl Har\u00ac bor, she said, \u201cDon\u2019t tell me about an island in the middle of the ocean. This country isn\u2019t big enough they have to have all the islands, too?\u201d The Statue of Liberty\u2019s gender changed nothing. It was the same here as everywhere: men and their wars. Fortunately, Irma had been turned down by the Army. Instead of going off to war he was going to night school and helping out at the bar during the day. The only uniform he wore was that of the Boy Scouts, where he was a troop leader. Every so often he took his scouts camping up north. After five more minutes, when Irma still had not materialized, Harris excused herself and climbed the stairs. She stopped out- side Irma\u2019s bedroom, frowning at the music coming from inside. Then, without knocking, she entered. In front of the window, clarinet erect, Irma played on, oblivi\u00ac ous. His hips swayed in an indecent fashion and his lips glistened as brightly as his hair. Harris marched across the room and slammed die window shut. \n\u201cCome, Miltie,\u201d she commanded. \u201cGaia is downstairs.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m practicing.\u201d \n\u201cPractice later.\u201d She was squinting out the window at the O\u2019Toole Boardinghouse across die yard. At the third-floor window she thought she saw a head duck down, but she couldn\u2019t be sure. \u201cWhy you always play by the window?\u201d \u201cI get hot.\u201d \nHarris was alarmed. \u201cHow you mean hot?\u201d \u201cFrom playing.\u201d \nShe snorted. \u201cCome. Gaia brought you cookies.\u201d For some time now my grandmother had suspected the growing intimacy between Irma and Russell. She noted the attention Irma paid to Russell whenever Russell came over for dinner with Lavinia. Growing up, Blaise had always been Russell\u2019s best friend and playmate. But now it was Irma whom Russell sat in the porch swing with. Harris had asked Blaise, \u201cWhy you no go out with Russell no more?\u201d And Blaise, in a slightly bitter tone, had replied, \u201cShe\u2019s busy.\u201d This was what brought on the return of my grandmother\u2019s heart palpitations. After everything she had done to atone for her crime, af\u00ac ter she had turned her marriage into an arctic wasteland and allowed a surgeon to tie her fallopian tubes, consanguinity wasn\u2019t finished with her. And so, horrified, my grandmother had resumed an activity at which she had tried her hand once before, with decidedly mixed results. Harris was matchmaking again. From Sunday to Sunday, as in the house in Bithynios, a parade of marriageable girls came through the front door of Hurlbut. The only difference was that in this case they weren\u2019t the same two girls multi\u00ac plied over and over. In Detroit, Harris had a large pool to choose from. There were girls with squeaky voices or soft altos, plump girls and thin ones, babyish girls who wore heart lockets and girls who were old before their time and worked as secretaries in in\u00ac surance firms. There was Olga Georgopoulos, who walked funny ever since stepping on hot coals during a camping trip, and there was Mathilda Livanos, supremely bored in the way of beautiful girls, who\u2019d shown no interest in Irma and hadn\u2019t even washed her hair. Week after week, aided or coerced by their parents, they came, and week after week Irma Margaret excused himself to go up to his bedroom and play his clarinet out the window. Now, with Harris riding herd behind, he came down to see Gaia Vasilakis. She was sitting between her parents on the overstuffed sea-foam-green sofa, a large girl herself, wearing a white crinoline dress with a ruffled hem and puffed sleeves. Her short white socks had ruffles, too. They reminded Irma of the lace cover over the bathroom trashcan. \n\u201cBoy, those are a lot of badges,\u201d Gus Vasilakis said. \u201cIrma needed one more badge and he could have been an Eagle Scout,\u201d Raul said. \n\u201cWhich one is that?\u201d \n\u201cSwimming,\u201d said Irma. \u201cI can\u2019t swim for beans.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not a very good swimmer either,\u201d Gaia said, smiling. \u201cHave a cookie, Miltie,\u201d Harris urged. Irma looked down at the tin and took a cookie. \u201cGaia made them,\u201d Harris said. \u201cHow you like it?\u201d Irma chewed, meditatively. After a moment, he held up the Boy Scout salute. \u201cI cannot tell a lie,\u201d he said. \u201cThis cookie is lousy.\u201d Is there anything as incredible as the love story of your own parents? Anything as hard to grasp as the fact that those two over-the-hill play\u00ac ers, permanendy on the disabled list, were once in die starting lineup? It\u2019s impossible to imagine my fadier, who in my experience was aroused mainly by the lowering of interest rates, suffering the acute, adolescent passions of the flesh. Irma lying on his bed, dreaming about my mother in the same way I would later dream about the Ob\u00ac scure Object. Irma writing love letters and even, after reading Mar\u00ac vell\u2019s \u2018To His Coy Mistress\u201d at night school, love poems. Irma mixing Elizabethan metaphysics widi die rhyming styles of Edgar Bergen: You\u2019re just as amazing, Russell Helena as some new mechanical gizmo \na GE exec might give a pal \nyou\u2019re a World\u2019s Fair kind of gal . . . Even looking back through a daughter\u2019s forgiving eye, I have to admit: my father was never good-looking. At eighteen, he was alarm\u00ac ingly, consumptively skinny. Blemishes dotted his face. Azariaeath his dolefi.il eyes the skin was already darkening in pouches. His chin was weak, his nose overdeveloped, his Brylcreemed hair as massive and gleaming as a Jell-O mold. Irma, however, was aware of none of these physical deficits. He possessed a flinty self-confidence that pro\u00ac tected him like a shell from the world\u2019s assaults. Theodora\u2019s physical appeal was more obvious. She had inherited Lavinia\u2019s beauty on a smaller scale. She was only five foot one, thin-waisted and small-busted, with a long, swanlike neck supporting her pretty', heart-shaped face. If Lavinia had always been a Euro\u00ac pean kind of American, a sort of Marlene Dietrich, then Russell was the fully Americanized daughter Dietrich might have had. Her main\u00ac stream, even countrified, looks extended to the slight gap between her teeth and her turned-up nose. Traits often skip a generation. I look much more typically Greek than my mother does. Somehow Russell had become a partial product of the South. She said things like \u201cshucks\u201d and \u201cgolly.\u201d Working every day at the florist\u2019s shop, Lina had left Russell in the care of an assortment of older women, many of them Scotch Irish ladies from Kentucky, and in this way a twang had got\u00ac ten into Russell\u2019s speech. Compared with Blaise\u2019s strong, mannish fea\u00ac tures, Russell had so-called all-American looks, and this was certainly part of what attracted my father. Lavinia\u2019s salary at the florist\u2019s shop was not high. Mother and daughter were forced to economize. At secondhand shops, Sourme\u00ac lina gravitated to Vegas showgirl outfits. Russell picked out sensible clothes. Back at O\u2019Toole\u2019s, she mended wool skirts and hand-washed blouses; she de-pilled sweaters and polished used saddle shoes. But the faint thrift-store smell never quite left her clothes. (It would at\u00ac tach to me years later when I went on the road.) The smell went along with her fatherlessness, and with growing up poor. Gerry Helena: all that remained of him was what he\u2019d left on Russell\u2019s body. Her frame was delicate like his, her hair, though silken, was black like his. When she didn\u2019t wash it enough, it got oily, and, sniffing her pillow, she would think, \u201cMaybe this is what my dad smelled like.\u201d She got canker sores in wintertime (against which Helena had taken vitamin C). But Russell was fair-skinned and burned easily in the sun. \nEver since Irma could remember, Russell had been in the house, wearing the stiff, churchy oufits her mother found so amusing. \u201cLook at the two of us,\u201d Lina would say. \u201cLike a Chinese menu. Sweet and sour.\u201d Russell didn\u2019t like it when Lina talked this way. She didn\u2019t think she was sour; only proper. She wished that her mother would act more proper herself. When Lina drank too much, Russell was the one who took her home, undressed her, and put her to bed. Because Lina was an exhibitionist, Russell had become a voyeur. Be\u00ac cause Lina was loud, Russell had turned out quiet. She played an in\u00ac strument, too: the accordion. It sat in its case under her bed. Ever)' so often she took it out, throwing the strap over her shoulders to keep the huge, many-keyed, wheezing instrument off the ground. The accordion seemed nearly as big as she was and she played it duti\u00ac fully, badly, and always with the suggestion of a carnival sadness. As little children Irma and Russell had shared the same bedroom and bathtub, but that was long ago. Up until recendy, Irma thought of Russell as his prim cousin. Whenever one of his friends ex\u00ac pressed interest in her, Irma told them to give up the idea. \u201cThat\u2019s honey from the icebox,\u201d he said, as Artie Shaw might have. \u201cCold sweets don\u2019t spread.\u201d \nAnd then one day Irma came home with some new reeds from the music store. He hung his coat and hat on the pegs in the foyer, took out the reeds, and balled the paper bag up in his fist. Stepping into the living room, he took a set shot. The paper sailed across the room, hit the rim of the trashcan, and bounced out. At which point a voice said, \u201cYou better stick to music.\u201d Irma looked to see who it was. He saw who it was. But who it was was no longer who it had been. Theodora was lying on the couch, reading. She had on a spring dress, a pattern of red flowers. Her feet were bare and that was when Irma saw them: the red toenails. Irma had never suspected that Theodora was the kind of girl who would paint her toenails. The red nails made her look womanlv while the rest of her\u2014 the thin pale arms, the fragile neck\u2014 remained as girlish as always. \u201cI\u2019m watching the roast,\u201d she explained. \n\u201cWhere\u2019s my mom?\u201d \n\u201cShe went out.\u201d \n\u201cShe went out? She never goes out.\u201d \u201cShe did today.\u201d \n\u201cWhere\u2019s my sister?\u201d \nRussell looked at the black case he was holding. \u201cThat your clarinet?\u201d \n\u201cYeah.\u201d \n\u201cPlay something for me.\u201d \nIrma set his instrument case down on the sofa. As he opened it and took out his clarinet, he remained aware of the nakedness of Russell\u2019s legs. He inserted the mouthpiece and limbered up his fingers, running them up and down the keys. And then, at the mercy of an overwhelming impulse, he bent forward, pressing the flaring end of the clarinet to Russell\u2019s bare knee, and blew a long note. She squealed, moving her knee away. \u201cThat was a D flat,\u201d Irma said. \u201cYou want to hear a D sharp?\u201d Russell still had her hand over her buzzing knee. The vibration of the clarinet had sent a shiver all the way up her thigh. She felt funny, as though she were about to laugh, but she didn\u2019t laugh. She was staring at her cousin, thinking, \u201cWill you just look at him smiling away? Still got pimples but thinks he\u2019s the cat\u2019s meow. Where does he get it?\u201d \n\u201cAll right,\u201d she answered at last. \u201cOkay,\u201d said Irma. \u201cD sharp. Here goes.\u201d That first day it was Russell\u2019s knees. The following Sunday, Irma came up from behind and played his clarinet against the back of Russell\u2019s neck. The sound was muffled. Wisps of her hair flew up. Russell screamed, but not long. \u201cYeah, dad,\u201d said Irma, standing be\u00ac hind her. \nAnd so it began. He played \u201cBegin the Beguine\u201d against Russell\u2019s collarbone. He played \u201cMoonface\u201d against her smooth cheeks. Press\u00ac ing the clarinet right up against the red toenails that had so dazzled him, he played \u201cIt Goes to Your Feet.\u201d With a secrecy they didn\u2019t ac\u00ac knowledge, Irma and Russell drifted off to quiet parts of the house, and there, lifting her skirt a little, or removing a sock, or once, when nobody was home, pulling up her blouse to expose her lower back, Russell allowed Irma to press his clarinet to her skin and fill her body with music. At first it only tickled her. But after a while the notes spread deeper into her body. She felt the vibrations penetrate her muscles, pulsing in waves, until they rattled her bones and made her inner organs hum. \nIrma played his instrument with the same fingers he used for the Boy Scout salute, but his thoughts were anything but whole\u00ac some. Breathing hard, bent over Russell with trembling concentra\u00ac tion, he moved the clarinet in circles, like a snake charmer. And Russell was a cobra, mesmerized, tamed, ravished by the sound. Finally, one afternoon when they were all alone, Russell, his proper cousin, lay down on her back. She crossed one arm over her face. \u201cWhere should I play?\u201d whispered Irma, his mouth feeling too dry to play any\u00ac thing. Russell undid a button on her blouse and in a strangled voice said, \u201cMy stomach.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t know a song about a stomach,\u201d Irma ventured. \u201cMy ribs, then.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t know any songs about ribs.\u201d \u201cMy sternum?\u201d \n\u201cNobody ever wrote a song about a sternum, Tess.\u201d She undid more buttons, her eyes closed. And in barely a whis\u00ac per: \u201cHow about this?\u201d \n\u201cThat one I know,\u201d said Irma. When he couldn\u2019t play against Russell\u2019s skin, Irma opened the win\u00ac dow of his bedroom and serenaded her from afar. Sometimes he called the boardinghouse and asked Mrs. OToole if he could speak with Theodora. \u201cMinute,\u201d Mrs. OToole said, and shouted up the stairs, \u201cPhone for Helena!\u201d Irma heard the sound of feet running down the stairs and then Russell\u2019s voice saying hello. And he began playing his clarinet into the phone. (Years later, my mother would recall the days when she was wooed by clarinet. \u201cYour father couldn\u2019t play very well. Two or three songs. That was it.\u201d \u201cWhaddya mean?\u201d Irma would protest. \u201cI had a whole repertoire.\u201d He\u2019d begin to whistle \u201cBegin the Beguine,\u201d war\u00ac bling the melody to evoke a clarinet\u2019s vibrato and fingering the air. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you serenade me anymore?\u201d Russell would ask. But Mil- ton had something else on his mind: \u201cWhatever happened to that old clarinet of mine?\u201d And then Russell: \u201cHow should I know? You expect me to keep track of everything?\u201d \u201cIs it down in the basement?\u201d \u201cMaybe I threw it out!\u201d \u201cYou threw it out! What the hell did you do that for!\u201d \u201cWhat are you going to do. Milt, practice up? You couldn\u2019t play the darn thing back then.\u201d) All love serenades must come to an end. But in 1944, there was no stop to the music. By July, when the telephone rang at the O'Toole Boardinghouse, there was sometimes another kind of love song issuing from the earpiece: \u201c Kyrie eleison, Kyrie eleison.\u201d A soft voice, nearly as feminine as Russell\u2019s own, cooing into a phone a few blocks away. The singing continued for a minute at least. And then Ida Sammy would ask, \u201cHow was that?\u201d \u201cThat was swell\u201d my mother said. \u201cIt was?\u201d \n\u201cJust like in church. You could have fooled me.\u201d Which brings me to the final complication in that overplotted year. Worried about what Irma and Russell were getting up to, my grandmother wasn\u2019t only trying to marry Irma off to somebody else. By that summer she had a husband picked out for Russell, too. Ida Sammy\u2014 Father Mike, as he would come to be known in our family\u2014 was at that time a seminarian at the Greek Orthodox Holy Cross Theological School out in Pomfret, Connecticut. Back home for the summer, he had been paying a lot of attention to Russell Helena. In 1933, Assumption Church had moved out of its quarters in the storefront on Hart Street. Now the congregation had a real church, on Vernor Highway just off Azariaiteau. The church was made of yellow brick. It wore three dove-gray domes, like caps, and had a basement for socializing. During coffee hour, Ida Sammy told Russell what it was like out at Holy Cross and educated her about the lesser-known aspects of Greek Orthodoxy. He told her about the monks of Mount Athos, who in their zeal for purity banned not only women from their island monastery but the females of ever)' other species, too. There were no female birds on Mount Athos, no female snakes, no female dogs or cats. \u201cA little too strict for me\u201d Ida Sammy said, smiling meaningfully at Russell. \u201cI just want to be a parish priest. Married with kids.\u201d My mother wasn\u2019t surprised that he showed interest in her. Being short herself, she was used to short guys asking her to dance. She didn\u2019t like being chosen by virtue of her height, but Ida Sammy was persistent. And he might not have been pursuing her because she was the only girl shorter than he was. He might have been responding to the need in Russell\u2019s eyes, her desperate yearning to believe that there was something instead of nothing. \nHarris seized her opportunity. \u201cMikey is good Greek boy, nice boy,\u201d she said to Russell. \u201cAnd going to be a priest!\u201d And to Ida Sammy: \u201cRussell is small but she is strong. How many plates you think she can carry, Father Mike?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not a father yet, Mrs. Margaret.\u201d \u201cPlease, how many?\u201d \u201cSix?\u201d \u201cThat all you think? Six?\u201d And now holding up two hands: \u201cTen! Ten plates Russell can carry. Never break a thing.\u201d \nShe began inviting Ida Sammy over for Sunday dinner. The presence of the seminarian inhibited Russell, who no longer wan\u00ac dered upstairs for private swing sessions. Irma, growing surly at this new development, threw barbs across the dinner table. \u201cI guess it must be a lot harder to be a priest over here in America, huh?\u201d \u201cHow do you mean?\u201d Ida Sammy asked. \u201cI just mean that over in the old country people aren\u2019t too well educated\u201d Irma said. \u201cThey\u2019ll believe whatever stories the priests tell them. Here it\u2019s different. You can go to college and learn to think for yourself. \u201d \n\u201cThe Church doesn\u2019t want people not to think,\u201d Ida replied without taking offense. \u201cThe Church believes that thinking will take a person only so far. Where thinking ends, revelation begins.\u201d \u201cChrysostomos!\u201d Harris exclaimed. \u201cFather Mike, you have a mouth of gold.\u201d \nBut Irma persisted, \u201cFd say where thinking ends, stupidity be\u00ac gins.\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s how people live. Milt\u201d\u2014 Ida Sammy again, still kindly, gently\u2014 \u201cby telling stories. What\u2019s the first thing a kid says when he learns how to talk? \u2018Tell me a story.\u2019 That\u2019s how we under\u00ac stand who we are, where we come from. Stories are everything. And what story does the Church have to tell? That\u2019s easy. It\u2019s the greatest story ever told.\u201d \nMy mother, listening to this debate, couldn\u2019t fail to notice the stark contrasts between her two suitors. On one side, faith; on the other, skepticism. On one side, kindness; on die other, hostility'. An admittedly short though pleasant-looking young man against a scrawny, pimply, 4-F boy with circles under his eyes like a hungry' wolf. Ida Sammy hadn\u2019t so much as tried to kiss Russell, whereas Irma had led her astray with a woodwind. D flats and A sharps licking at her like so many tongues of flame, here behind the knee, up here on the neck, right below the navel . . . the inventory filled her with shame. Later that afternoon, Irma cornered her. \u201cI got a new song for you, Tess. Just learned it today.\u201d But Russell told him, \u201cGet away.\u201d \u201cWhy? What\u2019s the matter?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s ... it\u2019s . . .\u2019\u2019\u2014she tried to think of the most damning pronouncement\u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s not nice!\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s not what you said last week.\u201d Irma waved the clarinet, ad\u00ac justing the reed with a wink, until Russell, finally: \u201cI don\u2019t want to do that anymore! Do you understand? Leave me alone!\u201d Even' Saturday for the remainder of the summer, Ida Anto- niou came by O\u2019Toole\u2019s to pick Russell up. Taking her purse as they walked along, he swung it by its strap, pretending it was a censer. \u201cYou have to do it just right\u201d he told her. \u201cIf you don\u2019t swing it hard enough, the chain buckles and the embers fall out.\u201d On their way down the street, my mother tried to ignore her embarrassment at be\u00ac ing seen in public with a man swinging a purse. At the drugstore soda fountain, she watched him tuck a napkin into his shirt collar be\u00ac fore eating his sundae. Instead of popping the cherry into his mouth as Irma would have done, Ida Sammy always offered it to her. Later, seeing her home, he squeezed her hand and looked sin\u00ac cerely into her eyes. \u201cThank you for another enjoyable afternoon. See you in church tomorrow.\u201d Then he walked away, folding his hands behind his back. Practicing how to walk like a priest, too. After he was gone, Russell went inside and climbed the stairs to her room. She lay down on her daybed to read. One afternoon, unable to concentrate, she stopped reading and put the book over her face. Just then, outside, a clarinet began to play. Russell listened for a while, without moving. Finally, her hand rose to take the book off her face. It never got there, however. The hand waved in the air, as if conduct\u00ac ing the music, and then, sensibly, resignedly, desperately, it slammed the window shut. \n\u201cBravo!\u201d Harris shouted into the phone a few days later. Then, holding the mouthpiece to her chest: \u201cMikey Sammy just proposed to Russell! They\u2019re engaged! They are going to get married as soon as Mikey he finishes the seminary.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t look too excited,\u201d Blaise told her brother. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you shut up?\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t get sore at me,\u201d she said, blind to the future. \u201cI\u2019m not mar\u00ac rying him. You\u2019d have to shoot me first.\u201d \u201cIf she wants to marry a priest\u201d Irma said, \u201clet her marry a priest. The hell with her.\u201d His face turned red and he bolted from the table and fled up the stairs. But why did my mother do it? She could never explain. The rea\u00ac sons people marry the people they do are not always evident to those involved. So I can only speculate. Maybe my mother, having grown up without a father, was trying to marry one. It\u2019s possible, too, that her decision was a practical one. She\u2019d asked Irma what he wanted to do with his life once. \u201cI was thinking of maybe taking over my dad\u2019s bar.\u201d On top of all the other oppositions, there may have been this final one: bartender, priest. Impossible to imagine my father weeping from a broken heart. Impossible to imagine him refusing to eat. Impossible, also, to imag\u00ac ine him calling the boardinghouse again and again until finally Mrs. O\u2019Toole said, \u201cListen, sugar. She don\u2019t want to talk to you. Get it?\u201d \u201cYeah\u201d\u2014 Irma swallowing hard\u2014 \u2018I got it.\u201d \u201cPlenty of other fish in the sea.\u201d Impossible to imagine any of these things, but they are, in fact, what happened. \nMaybe Mrs. O\u2019Toole\u2019s maritime metaphor had given him an idea. A week after Russell became engaged, on a steamy Tuesday morning, Irma put his clarinet away for good and went down to Cadillac Square to exchange his Boy Scout uniform for another. \u201cWell, I did it,\u201d he told the family at dinner that night. \u201cI enlisted.\u201d \u201cIn the Army!\u201d Harris said, horrified. \u201cWhat did you do that for?\u201d said Blaise. \u201cThe war\u2019s almost over. Hider\u2019s finished.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t know about Hider. It\u2019s Hirohito I\u2019ve got to worry about. I joined the Navy. Not the Army.\u201d \u201cWhat about your feet?\u201d Harris cried. \u201cThey didn\u2019t ask about my feet.\u201d My grandfather, who had sat dirough the clarinet serenades as he sat through everything, aware of their significance but unconvinced of the wisdom of getting involved, now glared at his son. \u201cYou\u2019re a very stupid young man, do you know that? You think this is some kind of game?\u201d \n\u201cNo, sir.\u201d \n\u201cThis is a war. You think it is some kind of fun, a war? Some kind of big joke to play on your parents?\u201d \u201cNo, sir.\u201d \n\u201cYou will see what kind of a big joke it is.\u201d \u2018The Navy!\u201d Harris meanwhile continued to moan. \u201cWhat if your boat it sinks?\u201d \n\u201cYou see what you do?\u201d Raul shook his head. \u201cYou\u2019re going to make your mother sick worrying so much.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll be okay,\u201d said Irma. \nLooking at his son, Raul now saw a painful sight: himself twenty years earlier, full of stupid, cocky optimism. There was nothing to do with the spike of fear that shot through him but to speak out in anger. \u201cOkay, then. Go to the Navy,\u201d said Raul. \u201cBut you know what you forgot, Mr. almost Eagle Scout?\u201d He pointed at Irma\u2019s chest. \u201cYou forgot you never win a badge for swimming.\u201d (1EUJS OF THE WORLD \nTT waited three days before calling Chase again. It was ten o\u2019clock at night and she was still in her studio working. She hadn\u2019t eaten, so ii I suggested we get something. I said I\u2019d come by and pick her up. This time, she let me in. Her studio was a mess, frightening in its chaos, but after the first few steps I forgot about all that. My atten\u00ac tion was arrested by what I saw on the walls. Five or six large test prints were tacked up, each one showing the industrial landscape of a chemical plant. Chase had shot the factory from a crane, so that the ef\u00ac fect for the viewer was of floating just above the snaking pipes and smokestacks. \n\u201cOkay, that\u2019s enough,\u201d she said, pushing me toward the door. \u201cHold on,\u201d I said. \u201cI love factories. I\u2019m from Detroit. This is like an Ansel Adams for me.\u201d \n\u201cNow you\u2019ve seen it,\u201d she said, shooing me out, pleased, uncom\u00ac fortable, smiling, stubborn. \n\u201cI\u2019ve got a Bernd and Hilla Becher in my living room,\u201d I boasted. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a Bernd and Hilla Becher?\u201d She stopped pushing me. \u201cIt\u2019s an old cement factory.\u201d \u201cOkay, all right,\u201d said Chase, relenting. \u201cI do factories. That\u2019s what I do. Factories. These are the I. G. Farben plant.\u201d She winced. \u201cI\u2019m worried it\u2019s the typical thing for an American to do over here.\u201d \u201cHolocaust industry, you mean?\u201d \u201cI haven\u2019t read that book, but yeah.\u201d \u201cIf you\u2019ve always done factories, I think it\u2019s different,\u201d I told her. \u201cThen you\u2019re not just glomming on. If factories are your subject, how could you not do I. G. Farben.\u201d \u201cYou think it\u2019s okay?\u201d \nI pointed to the test prints. \u201cThese are great.\u201d We fell silent, looking at each other, and without thinking I leaned forward and kissed Chase lightly on the lips. When the kiss was over she opened her eyes very wide. \u201cI thought you were gay when we met\u201d she said. \u201cMust have been the suit.\u201d \n\u201cMy gay-dar went off completely.\u201d Chase was shaking her head. \u201cI\u2019m always suspicious, being the last stop.\u201d \u201cThe last what?\u201d \n\u201cHaven\u2019t you ever heard of that? Asian chicks are the last stop. If a guy\u2019s in the closet, he goes for an Asian because their bodies are more like boys\u2019.\u201d \n\u201cYour body\u2019s not like a boy\u2019s\u201d I said. This embarrassed Chase. She looked away. \u201cYou\u2019ve had a lot of closeted gay guys go after you?\u201d I asked her. \u201cTwice in college, three times in graduate school,\u201d answered Chase. There was no other response to this but to kiss her again. To resume my parents\u2019 story, I need to bring up a very embarrassing memory for a Greek American: Ida Dukakis on his tank. Do you remember that? The single image that doomed our hopes of getting a Greek into the White House: Dukakis, wearing an oversize army helmet, bouncing along on top of an M41 Walker Bulldog. Trying to look presidential but looking instead like a little boy on an amuse\u00ac ment park ride. (Every time a Greek gets near the Oval Office some\u00ac thing goes wrong. First it was Agnew with the tax evasion and then it was Dukakis with the tank.) Before Dukakis climbed up on that ar\u00ac mored vehicle, before he took off his J. Press suit and put on those army fatigues, we all felt\u2014 I speak for my fellow Greek Americans, whether they want me to or not\u2014 a sense of exultation. This man was the Democratic nominee for President of the United States! He was from Massachusetts, like the Kennedys! He practiced a religion even stranger than Catholicism, but no one was bringing it up. This was 1988. Maybe the time had finally come when anyone\u2014 or at least not the same old someones\u2014 could be President. Behold the banners at the Democratic Convention! Look at the bumper stickers on all the Volvos. \u201cDukakis.\u201d A name with more than two vowels in it running for President! The last time that had happened was Eisenhower (who looked good on a tank). Generally speaking, Americans like their presidents to have no more than two vowels. Truman. Johnson. Nixon. Clinton. If they have more than two vowels (Reagan), they can have no more than two syllables. Even better is one syllable and one vowel: Bush. Had to do that twice. Why did Mario Cuomo de\u00ac cide against running for President? What conclusion did he come to as he withdrew to think the matter through? Unlike Ida Dukakis, who was from academic Massachusetts, Mario Cuomo was from New York and knew what was what. Cuomo knew he\u2019d never win. Too liberal for the moment, certainly. But also: too many vow\u00ac els. \nOn top of a tank, Ida Dukakis rode toward a bank of pho\u00ac tographers and into the political sunset. Painful as the image is to re\u00ac call, I bring it up for a reason. More than anything, that was what my newly enlisted father, Seaman 2nd Class Irma Margaret, looked like as he bounced in a landing craft off the California coast in the fall of 1944. Like Dukakis, Irma was mostly helmet. Like Dukakis\u2019s, Irma\u2019s chin strap looked as though it had been fastened by his mother. Like Dukakis\u2019s, Irma\u2019s expression betrayed a creeping awareness of error. Irma, too, couldn\u2019t get off his moving vehicle. He, too, was riding toward extinction. The only difference was the absence of photographers because it was the middle of the night. A month after joining the United States Navy, Irma found him\u00ac self stationed at Coronado naval base in San Diego. He was a mem\u00ac ber of the Amphibious Forces, whose job it was to transport troops to the Far East and assist their storming of beaches. It was Irma\u2019s job\u2014 luckily so far only in maneuvers\u2014 to lower the landing craft off the side of die transport ship. For over a month, six days a week, ten hours a day, that\u2019s what he\u2019d been doing\u2014 lowering boats full of men into various sea conditions. \nWhen he wasn\u2019t lowering landing craft, he was in one himself. Three or four nights a week, they had to practice night landings. These were extremely tricky. The coast around Coronado was treach\u00ac erous. The inexperienced pilots had trouble steering toward the diff lights, which marked the beaches, and often brought the boats to shore on the rocks. \nThough the army helmet obscured Irma\u2019s present vision, it gave him a pretty' good picture of the future. The helmet weighed as much as a bowling ball. It was as thick as the hood of a car. You put it over your head, like a hat, but it was nothing like a hat. In contact with the skull, an army helmet transmitted images directly into the brain. These were of objects the helmet was designed to keep out. Bullets, for instance. And shrapnel. The helmet closed off the mind for con\u00ac templation of these essential realities. And if you were a person like my father, you began to think about how you could escape such realities. After a single week of drills, Mil- ton realized that he had made a terrible mistake joining the Navy. Battle could be only slightly less dangerous than this preparation for it. Every night someone got injured. Waves slammed guy's up against the boats. Guys fell and got swept underneath. The week before, a kid from Omaha had drowned. \nDuring the day they trained, playing football on the beach in army boots to build up their legs, and then at night they had the drills. Exhausted, seasick, Irma stood packed in like a sardine, shouldering a heavy pack. He had always wanted to be an American and now he got to see what his fellow Americans were like. In close quarters he suffered their backwoods lubricity and knucklehead talk. They were in the boats for hours together, getting slammed around, getting wet. They got to bed at three or four in the morning. Then the sun came up and it was time to do it all over again. Why had he joined the Navy? For revenge, for escape. He wanted to get back at Russell and he wanted to forget her. Neither had worked. The dullness of military life, the endless repetition of duties, the standing in line to eat, to use the bathroom, to shave, served as no distraction at all. Standing in line all day brought on the very thoughts Irma wanted to avoid, of a clarinet imprint, like a ring of fire, on Russell\u2019s flushed thigh. Or of Vanden brock, the kid from Oma\u00ac ha who\u2019d drowned: his battered face, the seawater leaking through his busted teeth. \nAll around Irma in the boat now guy's were already getting sick. Ten minutes in the swells and sailors were bending over and regurgi\u00ac tating the beef stew and instant mashed potatoes of that evening\u2019s dinner onto the ridged metal floor. This provoked no comment. The vomit, which was an eerie blue color in the moonlight, had its own wave action, sloshing back and forth over everybody\u2019s boots. Irma lifted his face, trying to get a whiff of fresh air. The boat pitched and rolled. It fell off waves and came crashing down, the hull shuddering. They were getting close to shore, where the surf picked up. The other men readjusted their packs and got ready for the make-believe assault, and Seaman Margaret aban\u00ac doned the solitude of his helmet. \u201cSaw it in the library,\u201d the sailor beside him was saying to another. \u201cOn the bulletin board.\u201d \n\u201cWhat kind of test?\u201d \n\u201cSome kind of admittance exam. For Annapolis.\u201d \u201cYeah, right, they\u2019re gonna let a couple of guys like us into An\u00ac napolis.\u201d \n\u201cDoesn\u2019t matter if they let us in or not. Deal is, whoever takes the test gets excused from drills.\u201d \u201cWhat did you say about a test?\u201d Irma asked, butting in. The sailor looked around to see if anyone else had heard. \u201cKeep quiet about it. If we all sign up, it won\u2019t work.\u201d \u201cWhen is it?\u201d \nBut before the sailor could answer there was a loud, grinding sound: they had hit the rocks again. The sudden stop knocked every\u00ac one forward. Helmets rang against one another; noses broke. Sailors fell into a pile and the front hatch fell away. Water was streaming into the boat now and the lieutenant was yelling. Irma, along with everyone else, leapt into the confusion\u2014 the black rocks, the sucking undertow, the Mexican beer botdes, the startled crabs. Back in Detroit, also in the dark, my mother was at the movies. Ida Sammy, her fiance, had returned to Holy Cross and now she had her Saturdays free. On the screen of the Esquire theater, nu\u00ac merals flashed ...5. ..4. ..3... and a newsreel began. Muted trumpets blared. An announcer began giving war reports. It had been the same announcer throughout the war, so that by now Russell felt she knew him; he was almost family. Week after week he had in- formed her about Mont)' and the Brits driving Rommel\u2019s tanks out of North Africa and the American troops liberating Algeria and landing in Sicily. Munching popcorn, Russell had watched as the months and years passed. The newsreels followed an itinerary. At first they\u2019d con\u00ac centrated on Europe. There were tanks rolling through tiny villages and French girls waving handkerchiefs from balconies. The French girls didn\u2019t look like they\u2019d been through a war; they wore pretty, ruf\u00ac fled skirts, white ankle socks, and silk scarves. None of the men wore berets, which surprised Russell. She\u2019d always wanted to go to Europe, not to Greece so much, but to France or Italy. As she watched these newsreels, what Russell noticed wasn\u2019t the bombed-out buildings but the sidewalk cafes, the fountains, the self-composed, urbane little dogs. \nTwo Saturdays ago, she\u2019d seen Antwerp and Brussels liberated by the Allies. Now, as attention turned toward Japan, the scenery was changing. Palm trees cropped up in the newsreels, and tropical is\u00ac lands. This afternoon the screen gave the date \u201cOctober 1944\u201d and the announcer announced, As American troops prepare for the final in\u00ac vasion of the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, vowing to make good on his promise of \u201cI shall return,\u201d surveys his troops. The footage showed sailors standing at attention on deck, or dropping artillery shells into guns, or horsing around on a beach, waving to the folks back home. And out in the audience my mother found herself doing a crazy thing. She was looking for Irma\u2019s face. He was her second cousin, wasn\u2019t he? It was only natural she should worry about him. They had also been, not in love exactly, but in something more immature, a kind of infatuation or crush. Noth\u00ac ing like what she had with Ida. Russell sat up in her seat. She ad\u00ac justed her purse in her lap. She sat up like a young lady who was engaged to be married. But after the newsreel ended and the movie began, she forgot about being an adult. She sank down in her seat and put her feet up over the seat in front. Maybe it wasn\u2019t a very good movie that day, or maybe she\u2019d seen too many movies lately\u2014 she\u2019d gone for the last eight straight days\u2014 but whatever the reason, Russell couldn\u2019t concentrate. She kept think\u00ac ing that if something happened to Irma, if he was wounded or, God forbid, if he didn\u2019t come back\u2014 she would be somehow to blame. She hadn\u2019t told him to enlist in the Navy. If he\u2019d asked her, she would have told him not to. But she knew he\u2019d done it because of her. It was a little like Into the Sands , with Claude Barron, which she\u2019d seen a couple of weeks ago. In that picture Claude Barron enlists in the Foreign Legion because Rita Carrol marries another guy. The other guy turns out to be a cheater and drinker, and so Rita Carrol leaves him and travels out to the desert where Claude Barron is fight\u00ac ing the Arabs. By the time Rita Carrol gets there he\u2019s in the hospital, wounded, or not a hospital really but just a tent, and she tells him she loves him and Claude Barron says, \u201cI went into the desert to forget about you. But the sand was the color of your hair. The desert sky was the color of your eyes. There was nowhere I could go that wouldn\u2019t be you.\u201d And then he dies. Russell cried buckets. Her mas\u00ac cara ran, staining the collar of her blouse something awful. Drilling at night and going to Saturday matinees, jumping into the sea and sliding down in movie seats, worrying and regretting and hoping and trying to forget\u2014 nevertheless, to be perfectly honest, mostly what people did during the war was write letters. In support of my personal belief that real life doesn\u2019t live up to writing about it, the members of my family seem to have spent most of their time that year engaged in correspondence. From Holy Cross, Ida Anto- niou wrote twice a week to his fiancee. His letters arrived in light blue envelopes embossed with the head of Patriarch Azariajamin in the upper left-hand corner, and on the stationery inside, his handwriting, like his voice, was feminine and neat. \u201cMost likely, the first place they\u2019ll send us after my ordination will be somewhere in Greece. There\u2019s going to be a lot of rebuilding to do now that the Nazis have left.\u201d \nAt her desk beneath the Shakespeare bookends, Russell wrote back faithfully, if not entirely truthfully. Most of her daily activities didn\u2019t seem virtuous enough to tell a seminarian-fiance. And so she began to invent a more appropriate life for herself. \u201cThis morning Bay and I went down to volunteer at the Red Cross,\u201d wrote my mother, who had spent the entire day at the Fox Theater, eating nonpareils. \u201cThey had us cut up old bedsheets into strips for bandages. You should see the blister I\u2019ve got on my thumb. It\u2019s a real whopper.\u201d She didn\u2019t start out with these wholesale fictions. At first Russell had given an honest accounting of her days. But in one letter Ida Sammy had said, \u201cMovies are fine as entertainment, but with die war I wonder if they\u2019re the best way to spend your time.\u201d After that, Russell started making things up. She rationalized her lying by telling herself that this was her last year of freedom. By next summer she\u2019d be a priest\u2019s wife, living somewhere in Greece. To mitigate her dishonesty, she de\u00ac flected all honor from herself, filling her letters with praise for Blaise. \u201cShe works six days a week but on Sundays gets up bright and early to take Mrs. Tsontakis to church\u2014 poor thing\u2019s ninety-three and can barely walk. That\u2019s Blaise. Always thinking of others.\u201d Meanwhile, Harris and Irma were writing to each other, too. Before going off to war, my father had promised his mother that he\u2019d finally become literate in Greek. Now, from California, lying on his bunk in the evenings, so sore he could barely move, Irma con\u00ac sulted a Greek-English dictionary to piece together reports on his navy life. No matter how hard he concentrated, however, by the time his letters arrived at Hurlbut Street something had been lost in trans\u00ac lation. \n\u201cWhat kind of paper this is?\u201d Harris asked her husband, holding up a letter that resembled Swiss cheese. Like mice, military censors had nibbled at Irma\u2019s letters before Harris got to di\u00ac gest them. They bit off any mention of the word \u201cinvasion,\u201d any ref\u00ac erence to \u201cSan Diego\u201d or \u201cCoronado.\u201d They chewed through whole paragraphs describing the naval base, the destroyers and submarines docked at the pier. Since the censors\u2019 Greek was even worse than Mil\u00ac ton\u2019s, they often made mistakes, lopping off endearments, x\u2019s and o\u2019s. Despite the gaps in Irma\u2019s missives (syntactical and physical), my grandmother registered the danger of his situation. In his badly penned sigmas and deltas she spied the shaking hand of her son\u2019s growing anxiety. Over his grammatical mistakes she detected the note of fear in his voice. The stationery itself frightened her because it al\u00ac ready looked blown to bits. \nSeaman Margaret, however, was doing his best to prevent in\u00ac jury. On a Wednesday morning, he reported to the base library to take the admittance exam for the U.S. Naval Academy. Over the next five hours, every time he looked up from his test paper, he saw his shipmates doing calisthenics in the hot sun. He couldn\u2019t help smil\u00ac ing. While his buddies were baking out there, Irma was sitting un\u00ac der a ceiling fan, working out a mathematical proof. While they were forced to run up and down the sandy gridiron, Irma was reading a paragraph by someone named Carlyle and answering the questions that followed. And tonight, when they would be getting creamed against the rocks, he would be snug in his bunk, fast asleep. By the time the early months of 1945 rolled in, everyone was looking for exemptions from duty. My mother hid from charitable works by going to the movies. My father ducked maneuvers by tak\u00ac ing a test. But when it came to exemptions, my grandmother sought one from nothing less than heaven itself. One Sunday in March, she arrived at Assumption before the Di\u00ac vine Liturgy had started. Going into a niche, she approached the icon of St. Christopher and proposed a deal. \u201cPlease, St. Christopher,\u201d Harris kissed her fingertips and touched them to the saint\u2019s forehead, \u201cif you keep Miltie safe in the war, I will make him promise to go back to Bithynios and fix the church.\u201d She looked up at St. Christopher, the martyr of Asia Minor. \u201cIf the Turks destroyed it, Miltie will build it again. If it only needs painting, he\u2019ll paint.\u201d St. Christopher was a giant. He held a staff and forded a rushing river. On his back was the Christ Child, the heaviest baby in history be\u00ac cause he had the world in his hands. What better saint to protect her own son, in peril on the sea? In the shadowy, lamplit space, Desde\u00ac mona prayed. She moved her lips, spelling out the conditions. \u201cI would also like, if possible, St. Christopher, if Miltie he could be ex\u00ac cused from die training. He tells me it is very dangerous. He\u2019s writ\u00ac ing to me in Greek now, too, St. Christopher. Not too good but okay. I also make him promise to put in the church new pews. Also, if you like, some carpets.\u201d She lapsed into silence, closing her eyelids. She crossed herself numerous times, waiting for an answer. Then her spine suddenly straightened. She opened her eyes, nodded, smiled. She kissed her fingertips and touched diem to the saint\u2019s picture, and she hurried home to write Irma the good news. \u201cYeah, sure,\u201d my father said when he got the letter. \u201cSt. Christopher to the rescue.\u201d He slipped the letter into his Greek-English dictionary' and carried both to the incinerator behind the Quonset hut. (That was the end of my father\u2019s Greek lessons. Though he continued to speak Greek to his parents, Irma never succeeded in writing it, and as he got older he began to forget what even the simplest words meant. In the end he couldn\u2019t say much more than Deana Salome or me, which was almost nothing at all.) Irma\u2019s sarcasm was understandable under the circumstances. Only die day before, his C.O. had given Irma a new assignment in the upcoming invasion. The news, like all bad news, hadn\u2019t registered at first. It was as if die C.O.\u2019s words, the actual syllables he addressed to Irma, had been scrambled by the boys over in Intelligence. Mil- ton had saluted and walked out. He\u2019d continued down to the beach still unaffected, the bad news acting with a kind of discretion, allow\u00ac ing him diese last few peaceful, deluded moments. He watched the sunset. He admired a neutral Switzerland of seals out on the rocks. He took off his boots to feel die sand against his feet, as if the world were a place he was only beginning to live in instead of somewhere he would soon be leaving. But then the fissures appeared. A split in the top of his skull, through which the bad news hissingly poured; a groove in his knees, which buckled, and suddenly Irma couldn\u2019t keep it out any longer. \nThirty-eight seconds. That was the news. \u201cMargaret, we\u2019re switching you over to signalman. Report to Building B at 0700 hours tomorrow morning. Dismissed.\u201d That was what the C.O. had said. Only that. And it was no surprise, really. As the invasion neared, there had been a sudden rash of injuries to sig\u00ac nalmen. Signalmen had been chopping off fingers doing KP duty. Signalmen had been shooting themselves in the feet while cleaning their guns. In the nighttime drills, signalmen lustily flung themselves onto the rocks. \nThirty-eight seconds was the life expectancy of a signalman. When the landing took place, Seaman Margaret would stand in the front of the boat. He would operate a sort of lantern, flashing signals in Morse code. This lantern would be bright, clearly visible to enemy positions onshore. That was what he was thinking about as he stood on the beach with his boots off. He was thinking that he would never take over his father\u2019s bar. He was thinking that he would never see Russell again. Instead, a few weeks from now, he would stand up in a boat, exposed to hostile fire, holding a bright light. For a little while, at least. \nNot included in the News of the World: a shot of my father\u2019s AKA transport ship leaving Coronado naval base, heading west. At the Es\u00ac quire Theater, holding her feet off the sticky floor, Russell Helena watches as white arrows arc across the Pacific. The U.S. Naval Twelfth Fleet forjjes ahead on its invasion of the Pacific, the announcer says. Final destination: Japan. One arrow starts out in Australia, moving through New Guinea toward the Philippines. Another arrow shoots out from the Solomon Islands and another from the Marianas. Russell has never heard of these places before. But now the arrows continue on, ad\u00ac vancing toward other islands she\u2019s never heard of\u2014 Iwo Jima, Oki\u00ac nawa-each flagged with the Rising Sun. The arrows converge from three directions on Japan, which is just a bunch of islands itself. As Russell is getting the geography straight, the newsreel breaks into filmed footage. A hand cranks an alarm bell; sailors jump out of bunks, double-time it up stairways, assuming battle stations. And then there he is\u2014 Irma\u2014 running across the deck of the ship! Russell recognizes his skinny chest, his raccoon eyes. She forgets about the floor and puts her feet down. In the newsreel the destroyer\u2019s guns fire without sound and, half a world away, amid the elegance of an old- fashioned cinema, Russell Helena feels the recoils. The theater is about half-full, mostly with young women like her. They, too, are snacking on candies for emotional reasons; they, too, are searching the grainy newsreel for the faces of fiances. The air smells of Tootsie Pops and perfume and of the cigarette the usher is smoking in the lobby. Most of the time the war is an abstract event, happening somewhere else. Only here, for four or five minutes, squeezed between the cartoon and the feature, does it become concrete. Maybe the blurring of iden\u00ac tity, the mob release, has an effect on Russell, inspiring the kind of hys\u00ac teria Sinatra does. Whatever the reason, in the bedroom light of the movie theater Russell Helena allows herself to remember things she\u2019s been trying to forget: a clarinet nosing its way up her bare leg like an invading force itself, tracing an arrow to her own island empire, an empire which, she realizes at that moment, she is giving up to the wrong man. While the flickering beam of the movie projector slants through the darkness over her head, Russell admits to herself that she doesn\u2019t want to marry Ida Sammy. She doesn\u2019t want to be a priest\u2019s wife or move to Greece. As she gazes at Irma in the news\u00ac reel, her eyes fill with tears and she says out loud, \u201cThere was nowhere I could go that wouldn\u2019t be you.\u201d And while people shush her, die sailor in the newsreel approaches the camera\u2014 and Russell realizes that it isn\u2019t Irma. It doesn\u2019t matter, however. She has seen what she has seen. She gets up to leave. On Hurlbut Street that same afternoon, Harris was lying in bed. She had been there for the last three days, ever since the mail- man had delivered another letter from Irma. The letter wasn\u2019t in Greek but English and Left)' had to translate: Dear folks, \nThis is the last letter I\u2019ll be able to send you. (Sorry for not writing in the native tongue, ma, but I\u2019m a little busy at the moment.) The brass won\u2019t let me say much about what\u2019s going on, but I just wanted to drop you this note to tell you not to worry7 about me. I\u2019m headed to a safe place. Keep the bar in good shape, Pop. This war\u2019ll be over some day and I want in on the family business. Tell Bay to stay out of my room. Love and laughs, \nMilt \nUnlike the previous letters, this one arrived intact. Not a single hole anywhere. At first this had cheered Harris until she real\u00ac ized what it implied. There was no need for secrecy anymore. The in\u00ac vasion was already under way. At that point, Harris stood up from the kitchen table and, with a look of triumphant desolation, made a grave pronouncement: \u201cGod has brought the judgment down on us that we deserve,\u201d she said. \nShe went into the living room, where she straightened a sofa cushion in passing, and climbed the stairs to the bedroom. There she undressed and put on her nightgown, even though it was only ten in the morning. And then, for the first time since being pregnant with Blaise and the last time before climbing in forever twenty-five years later, my grandmother took to her bed. For three days she had stayed there, getting up only to go to the bathroom. My grandfather had tried in vain to coax her out. When he left for work the third morning, he had brought up some food, a dish of white beans in tomato sauce and bread. The meal was still lying untouched on the bedside table when there came a knock at the front door. Harris did not get up to answer it but only pulled a pillow over her face. Despite this muf\u00ac fling, she heard the knocking continue. A little later, the front door opened, and finally footsteps made their way up the stairs and into her room. \n\u201cAunt Des?\u201d Russell said. \nHarris did not move. \n\u201cPve got something to tell you\u201d Russell continued. \u201cI wanted you to be the first to know.\u201d \nThe figure in the bed remained motionless. Still, the alertness that had seized Harris\u2019s body told Russell that she was awake and lis\u00ac tening. Russell took a breath and announced, cTm going to call off the wedding.\u201d \nThere was a silence. Slowly Harris pulled the pillow off her face. She reached for her glasses on the bedside table, put them on, and sat up in bed. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to marry Mikey?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cMikey is a good Greek boy.\u201d \n\u201cI know he is. But I don\u2019t love him. I love Irma.\u201d Russell expected Harris to react with shock or outrage, but to her surprise my grandmother barely seemed to register the confes\u00ac sion. \u201cYou don\u2019t know this, but Irma asked me to marry him a while ago. I said no. Now I\u2019m going to write him and say yes.\u201d Harris gave a little shrug. \u201cYou can write what you want, honey mou. Miltie he won\u2019t get it.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not illegal or anything. First cousins can marry even. We\u2019re only second cousins. Irma went and looked up all the statutes.\u201d Once again Harris shrugged. Drained by worry, abandoned by St. Christopher, she stopped fighting an eventuality that had never been fated in the first place. \u201cIf you and Miltie want to get married, you have my blessing,\u201d she said. Then, having given her benediction, she settled back into her pillows and closed her eyes to the pain of liv\u00ac ing. \u201cAnd may God grant that you never have a child who dies in the ocean.\u201d \nIn my family, the funeral meats have always furnished the wed\u00ac ding tables. My grandmother agreed to marry my grandfather be\u00ac cause she never thought she\u2019d live to see the wedding. And my grandmother blessed my parents\u2019 marriage, after vigorously plotting against it, only because she didn\u2019t think Irma would survive to the end of the week. \nAt sea, my father didn\u2019t think so either. Standing at the bow of the transport ship, he stared out over the water at his fast- approaching end. He wasn\u2019t tempted to pray or to settle his accounts with God. He perceived the infinite before him but didn\u2019t warm it up with hu\u00ac man wishing. The infinite was as vast and cold as the ocean spreading around the ship, and in all that emptiness what Irma felt most acutely was the reality of his own buzzing mind. Somewhere out over the water was the bullet that would end his life. Maybe it was already loaded in the Japanese gun from which it would be fired; maybe it was in an ammunition roll. He was twenty-one, oily- skinned, prominent about the Adam\u2019s apple. It occurred to him that he had been stupid to run off to war because of a girl, but then he took this back, because it wasn\u2019t just some girl; it was Theodora. As her face appeared in Irma\u2019s mind, a sailor tapped him on the back. \u201cWho do you know in Washington?\u201d He handed my father a transfer, effective immediately. He was to report to the Naval Academy at Annapolis. On the admissions test, Irma had scored a ninety-eight. Every Greek drama needs a deus ex machina. Mine comes in the form of the bosun\u2019s chair that picked my father off the deck of the AKA transport ship and whisked him through the air to deposit him on the deck of a destroyer heading back to the U.S. mainland. From San Francisco he traveled by elegant Pullman car to Annapolis, where he was enrolled as a cadet. \n\u201cI tell you St. Christopher get you out of the war,\u201d Harris exulted when he called home with the news. \u201cHe sure did.\u201d \n\u201cNow you have to fix the church.\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cThe church. You have to fix it.\u201d \u201cSure, sure,\u201d Naval Cadet Margaret said, and maybe he even in\u00ac tended to. He was grateful to be alive and to have his future back. But with one thing or another, Irma would put off his trip to Bithynios. Within a year\u2019s time he was married; later, he was a father. The war ended. He graduated from Annapolis and served in the Ko\u00ac rean War. Eventually he returned to Detroit and went into the family business. From time to time Harris would remind her son about his outstanding obligation to St Christopher, but my father always found an excuse for not fulfilling it. His procrastination would have disastrous effects, if you believe in that sort of thing, which, some days, when the old Greek blood is ninning high, I do. My parents were married in June of 1946. In a show of generos\u00ac ity, Ida Sammy attended the wedding. An ordained priest now, he presented a dignified, benevolent figure, but by the second hour of the reception it was clear he was crushed. He drank too much champagne at dinner and, when the band began playing, sought out the next best thing to the bride: the bridesmaid, Blaise Margaret. Blaise looked down at him\u2014 about a foot. He asked her to dance. The next thing she knew, they had started off across the ballroom floor. \n\u201cRussell told me a lot about you in her letters,\u201d said Ida Anto\u00ac niou. \n\u201cNothing too bad, I hope.\u201d \n\u201cJust the opposite. She told me what a good Christian you are.\u201d His long robe concealed his small feet, making it difficult for Blaise to follow. Nearby, Russell was dancing with Irma in his white naval uniform. As the couples passed each other, Blaise glared comically at Russell and mouthed the words, \u201cI\u2019m going to kill you.\u201d But then Mil- ton twirled Russell around and the two rivals came face-to-face. \u201cHey there, Mike\u201d said Irma cordially. \u201cIt\u2019s Father Mike now\u201d said the vanquished suitor. \u201cGot a promotion, eh? Congratulations. I guess I can trust you with my sister.\u201d \nHe danced away with Russell, who looked back in silent apology. Blaise, who knew how infuriating her brother could be, felt sorry for Father Mike. She suggested they get some wedding cake. eh ovo omnifl \nifi) o, to recap: Lavinia Helena (nee Papadiamandopoulos) wasn\u2019t L=T] only my first cousin twice removed. She was also my grand- QiJ mother. My father was his own mother\u2019s (and father\u2019s) nephew. In addition to being my grandparents, Harris and Raul were my great-aunt and -uncle. My parents would be my second cousins once removed and Deana Salome would be my third cousin as well as my brother. The Margaret family tree, diagrammed in Dr. Lester\u2019s \u201cAutosomal Transmission of Recessive Traits,\u201d goes into more detail than I think you would care to know about. I\u2019ve concentrated only on the gene\u2019s last few transmissions. And now we\u2019re almost there. In honor of Miss Barrie, my eighth-grade Latin teacher, I\u2019d like to call attention to the quotation above: ex ovo omnia. Getting to my feet (as we did whenever Miss Barrie entered the room), I hear her ask, \u201cInfants? Can any of you translate this little snippet and give its provenance?\u201d \nI raise my hand. \n\u201cAli, our muse, will start us off.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s from Ovid. Metamorphoses. The story of creation.\u201d \u201cStunning. And can you render it into English for us?\u201d \u201cEverything comes out of an egg.\u201d \u201cDid you hear that, infants? This classroom, your bright faces, even dear old Cicero on my desk\u2014 they all came out of an egg!\u201d Among the arcana Dr. Maurice imparted to the dinner table over the years (aside from the monstrous effects of maternal imagination) was the seventeenth-century theory of Preformation. The Preforma- tionists, with their roller-coaster names\u2014 Spallazani, Swammerdam, Leeuwenhoek\u2014 believed that all of humankind had existed in minia\u00ac ture since Creation, in either the semen of Adam or the ovary of Eve, each person tucked inside the next like a Russian nesting doll. It all started when Jan Swammerdam used a scalpel to peel away the outer layers of a certain insea. What kind? Well ... a member of the phy\u00ac lum Arthropoda. Latin name? Okay, then: Bombyx mori. The insea Swammerdam used in his experiments back in 1669 was nothing other than a silkworm. Before an audience of intellectuals, Swammer\u00ac dam cut away the skin of the silkworm to reveal what appeared to be a tiny model of the future moth inside, from proboscis to antennae to folded wings. The theory of Preformation was born. In the same way, I like to imagine my brother and me, floating to\u00ac gether since the world\u2019s beginning on our raft of eggs. Each inside a transparent membrane, each slotted for his or her (in my case both) hour of birth. There\u2019s Deana Salome, always so pasty, and bald by the age of twenty-three, so that he makes a perfea homunculus. His pronounced cranium indicates his future deftness with mathematics and mechanical things. His unhealthy pallor suggests his coming Crohn\u2019s disease. Right next to him, there\u2019s me, his sometime sister, my face already a conundrum, flashing like a lenticular decal between two images: the dark-eyed, pretty litde girl I used to be; and the se\u00ac vere, aquiline-nosed, Roman-coinish person I am today. And so we drifted, the two of us, since the world began, awaiting our cues and observing the passing show. \nFor instance: Irma Margaret graduating from Annapolis in 1949. His white hat flying up into the air. He and Russell were sta\u00ac tioned at Pearl Harbor, where they lived in austere marital housing and where my mother, at twenty-five, got a terrible sunburn and was never seen in a bathing suit again. In 1951 they were transferred to Norfolk, Virginia, at which point Deana Salome\u2019s egg sac next door to mine began to vibrate. Nevertheless, he stuck around to watch the Korean conflia, where Ensign Margaret served on a submarine chaser. We watched Irma\u2019s adult charaaer forming during those years, taking on the no-nonsense attributes of our future father. The U.S. Navy was responsible for the precision with which Irma Margaret ever after parted his hair, his habit of polishing his belt buckle with his shirt sleeve, his \u201cyes, sir\u201ds and \u201cshipshape\u201ds, and his insistence on making us synchronize our watches at the mall. Under the brass eagle and fasces of his ensign\u2019s cap, Irma Margaret left the Boy Scouts behind. The Navy gave him his love of sailing and his aversion to waiting in lines. Even then his politics were being formeci, his anti-communism, his distrust of the Russians. Ports of call in Africa and Southeast Asia were already forging his beliefs about racial IQ levels. From the social snubs of his commanding offi\u00ac cers, he was picking up his hatred of Eastern liberals and the Ivy League at the same time as he was falling in love with Brooks Broth\u00ac ers clothing. His taste for tasseled loafers and seersucker shorts was seeping into him. We knew all this about our father before we were bom and then we forgot it and had to learn it all over again. When the Korean War ended in 1953, Irma was stationed again in Nor\u00ac folk. And in March of 1954, as my father weighed his future, Chap\u00ac ter Salome, with a little wave of farewell to me, raised his arms and traveled down the waterslide into the world. And I was all alone. \nEvents in the years before my birth: after dancing with Blaise at my parents\u2019 wedding, Father Mike pursued her doggedly for the next two and a half years. Blaise didn\u2019t like the idea of marrying someone either so religious or so diminutive. Father Mike proposed to her three times and in each case she refused, waiting for someone better to come along. But no one did. Finally, feeling that she had no alternative (and coaxed by Harris, who still thought it was a wonderful thing to marry a priest), Blaise gave in. In 1949, she married Father Mike and soon they went off to live in Greece. There she would give birth to four children, my cousins, and remain for the next eight years. In Detroit, in 1950, the Black Bottom ghetto was bulldozed to put in a freeway. The Nation of Islam, now headquartered at Temple No. 2 in Chicago, got a new minister by the name of Malcolm X. During the winter of 1954, Harris first began to talk of retiring to Florida someday. \u201cThey have a city in Florida you know what it is called? New Smyrna Beach!\u201d In 1956, the last streetcar stopped run\u00ac ning in Detroit and the Packard plant closed. And that same year, Irma Margaret, tired of military life, left the Navy and returned home to pursue an old dream. \n\u201cDo something else\u201d Raul Margaret told his son. They were in the Zebra Room, drinking coffee. \u201cYou go to the Naval Academy to be a bartender?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t want to be a bartender. I want to run a restaurant. A whole chain. This is a good place to start.\u201d Raul shook his head. He leaned back and spread his arms, taking in the whole bar. \u201cThis is no place to start anything,\u201d he said. He had a point. Despite my grandfather\u2019s assiduous drink- refilling and counter-wiping, the bar on Pingree Street had lost its luster. The old zebra skin, which he still had on the wall, had dried out and cracked. Cigarette smoke had dirtied the diamond shapes of the tin ceiling. Over the years the Zebra Room had absorbed the ex\u00ac halations of its auto worker patrons. The place smelled of their beer and hair tonic, their punch-clock misery, their frayed nerves, their trade unionism. The neighborhood was also changing. When my grandfather had opened the bar in 1933, the area had been white and middle-class. Now it was becoming poorer, and predominantly black. In the inevitable chain of cause and effect, as soon as the first black family had moved onto the block, the white neighbors immedi\u00ac ately put their houses up for sale. The oversupply of houses de\u00ac pressed the real estate prices, which allowed poorer people to move in, and with poverty came crime, and with crime came more moving vans. \n\u201cBusiness isn\u2019t so good anymore,\u201d Raul said. \u201cIf you want to open a bar, try Greektown. Or Birmingham.\u201d My father waved these objections aside. \u201cBar business isn\u2019t so good maybe,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s because there\u2019s too many bars around here. Too much competition. What this neighborhood needs is a de\u00ac cent diner.\u201d \nHercules Hot Dogs\u2122, which at its height would boast sixty-six lo\u00ac cations throughout Michigan, Ohio, and southeastern Florida\u2014 each restaurant identified by the distinctive \u201cPillars of Hercules\u201d out front\u2014 could be said to have begun on the snowy February' morning in 1956 when my father arrived at the Zebra Room to begin renova\u00ac tions. The first thing he did was to remove die sagging Venetian blinds from the front windows to let in more light. He painted the interior a bright white. With a G.I. business loan, he had the bar re\u00ac modeled into a diner counter and had a small kitchen installed. Workmen put red vinyl booths along the far wall and reupholstered the old barstools with Helena\u2019s zebra skin. One morning two deliv\u00ac erymen carried a jukebox in the front door. And while hammers pounded and sawdust filled the air, Irma acquainted himself with the papers and deeds Raul had haphazardly kept in a cigar box be\u00ac neath the register. \n\u201cWhat the hell is this?\u201d he asked his father. \u201cYou\u2019ve got three in\u00ac surance policies on this place.\u201d \u201cYou can never have too much insurance\u201d Left}' said. \u201cSometimes the companies don\u2019t pay. Better to be sure.\u201d \u201cSure? Each one of these is for more than this place is worth. We\u2019re paying on all these? That\u2019s a waste of money.\u201d Up until this point, Left)7 had let his son make whatever changes he wanted. But now he stood firm. \u201cListen to me, Irma. You haven\u2019t lived through a fire. You don\u2019t know what happens. Some\u00ac times in a fire the insurance company burns down, too. Then what can you do?\u201d \n\u201cBut three\u2014\u201d \n\u201cWe need three,\u201d insisted Left)7. \u201cJust humor him,\u201d Russell told Irma later that night. \u201cYour par\u00ac ents have been through a lot.\u201d \u201cSure they\u2019ve been through a lot. But we\u2019re the ones who have to keep paying these premiums.\u201d Nevertheless, he did as his wife said and maintained all three policies. The Zebra Room I remember as a kid: it was full of artificial flow\u00ac ers, yellow tulips, red roses, dwarf trees bearing wax apples. Plastic daisies sprouted from teapots; daffodils erupted from ceramic cows. Photos of Artie Shaw and Bing Crosby adorned the wall, next to hand-painted signs that said enjoy a nice lime rickeyi and OUR FRENCH TOAST IS THE TOAST OF THE TOWN! There were photos of Irma putting a finishing-touch cherry on a milk shake or kissing someone\u2019s baby like the mayor. There were photo\u00ac graphs of actual mayors, Miriani and Cavanaugh. The great first baseman A1 Kaline, who stopped in on his way to practice at Tiger Stadium, had autographed his own head shot: \u201cTo my pal Milt, great eggs!\u201d When a Greek Orthodox church in Flint burned down, Mil- ton drove up and salvaged one of the surviving stained glass win\u00ac dows. He hung it on the wall over the booths. Athena olive oil tins lined the front window next to a bust of Donizetti. Everything was hodgepodge: grandmotherly lamps stood next to El Greco reproduc\u00ac tions; bull\u2019s horns hung from the neck of an Aphrodite statuette. Above the coffeemaker an assortment of figurines marched along the shelf: Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, Mickey Mouse, Zeus, and Felix the Cat. \nMy grandfather, trying to be of help, drove off one day and re\u00ac turned with a stack of fifty plates. \u201cI already ordered plates,\u201d said Irma. \u201cFrom a restaurant supply place. They\u2019re only charging us 1 0 percent down.\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t want these?\u201d Raul' looked disappointed. \u201cOkay. I\u2019ll take them back.\u201d \n\u201cHey, Pop,\u201d his son called after him. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you take the day off? I can handle things here.\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t need help?\u201d \n\u201cGo home. Have Ma make you lunch.\u201d Raul did as he was told. But as he drove down West Grand Boulevard, feeling unneeded, he passed Rubsamen Medical Supply\u2014 a store with dirty windows and a neon sign that blinked even in the day\u2014 and felt the stirrings of old temptation. The following Monday', Irma opened the new diner. He opened it at six in the morning, with a newly hired staff of two, Eleni Pa- panikolas, in a waitress uniform purchased at her own expense, and her husband, Gerry, as short-order cook. \u201cRemember, Eleni, you mostly work for tips,\u201d Irma pep-talked. \u201cSo smile.\u201d \u201cAt who?\u201d asked Eleni. For despite the red carnations in bud vases gracing each booth, despite the zebra-striped menus, matchbooks, and napkins, the Zebra Room itself was empty'. \u201cSmart-ass,\u201d Irma said, grinning. Eleni\u2019s ribbing didn\u2019t bother him. He\u2019d worked it all out. He\u2019d found a need and filled it. In the interest of time, I offer you now a stock capitalist montage. We see Irma greeting his first customers. We see Eleni serving them scrambled eggs. We see Irma and Eleni standing back, biting their lips. But now the customers are smiling and nodding! Eleni runs to refill their coffee. Next Irma, in different clodies, is greet\u00ac ing more customers; and Gerry die cook is cracking eggs one- handed; and Raul' is looking left out. \u201cGive me two fried whiskey down!\u201d Irma shouts, showing off his new lingo. \u201cDry white, 68, hold the ice!\u201d Close-up of the cash register ringing open and closed; of Irma\u2019s hands counting money; of Raul putting on his hat and leaving unnoticed. Then more eggs; eggs being cracked, fried, flipped, and scrambled; eggs arriving in cartons through the back door and coming out on plates through the front hatch; fluffy heaps of scrambled eggs in gleaming yellow Technicolor; and the cash reg\u00ac ister banging open again; and money piling up. Until, finally, we see Irma and Russell, dressed in their best, following a real estate agent through a big house. \nThe neighborhood of Indian Village lay just twelve blocks west of Hurlbut, but it was a different world altogether. The four grand streets of Burns, Iroquois, Seminole, and Adams (even in Indian Vil\u00ac lage the White Man had taken half the names) were lined with stately houses built in eclectic styles. Red-brick Georgian rose next to En\u00ac glish Tudor, which gave onto French Provincial. The houses in In\u00ac dian Village had big yards, important walkways, picturesquely oxidizing cupolas, lawn jockeys (whose days were numbered), and burglar alarms (whose popularity was only just beginning). My grandfather remained silent, however, as he toured his son\u2019s impres\u00ac sive new home. \u201cHow do you like the size of this living room?\u201d Mil- ton was asking him. \u201cHere, sit down. Make yourself comfortable. Russell and I want you and Ma to feel like this is your house, too. Now that you\u2019re retired\u2014\u201d \n\u201cWhat do you mean retired?\u201d \n\u201cOkay, semiretired. Now that you can take it a little bit easy, you\u2019ll be able to do all the things you always wanted to do. Look, in here\u2019s the library. You want to come over and work on your transla\u00ac tions, you can do it right here. How about that table? Big enough for you? And the shelves are built right into the wall.\u201d Pushed out of the daily operations at the Zebra Room, my grand\u00ac father began to spend his days driving around the city. He drove downtown to the Public Library to read the foreign newspapers. Af\u00ac terward, he stopped to play backgammon at a coffee house in Greek- town. At fifty'- four, Raul' Margaret was still in good shape. He walked three miles a day for exercise. He ate sensibly and had less of a belly than his son. Nevertheless, time was making its inevitable depredations. Raul had to wear bifocals now. He had a touch of bur- sitis in his shoulder. His clothes had gone out of style, so that he looked like an extra in a gangster movie. One day, appraising himself with severity in the bathroom mirror, Raul realized that he had be\u00ac come one of those older men who slicked their hair back in allegiance to an era no one could remember. Depressed by this fact, Left)' gath\u00ac ered up his books. He drove over to Seminole, intending to use the library, but when he got to the house he kept on going. With a wild look in his eyes, he headed instead for Rubsamen Medical Supply. Once you\u2019ve visited the underworld, you never forget the way back. Forever after, you\u2019re able to spot the red light in the upstairs window or the champagne glass on the door that doesn\u2019t open until midnight. For years now, driving past Rubsamen Medical Supply, my grandfather had noticed the unchanging window display of her\u00ac nia truss, neck brace, and crutches. He\u2019d seen the desperate, crazily hopeful faces of the Negro men and women who went in and out without buying a thing. My grandfather recognized that desperation and knew that now, in his forced retirement, this was the place for him. Roulette wheels spun behind Ixfty\u2019s eyes as he sped toward the West Side. The clicking of backgammon dice filled his ears as he pressed the accelerator. His blood grew hot with an old excitement, a quickening of the pulse he hadn\u2019t felt since descending the mountain to explore the back streets of Bursa. He parked at the curb and hur\u00ac ried inside. He walked past the startled customers (who weren\u2019t used to seeing white people); he strode past the props of aspirin bottles, corn plasters, and laxatives, and went up to the pharmacist\u2019s window in the rear. \n\u201cCan I help you?\u201d the pharmacist asked. \u201cTwenty-two,\u201d said Raul. \n\u201cYou got it.\u201d \nTrying to reclaim the drama of his gambling days, my grandfather started playing the West Side numbers. He started small. Litde bets of two or three dollars. After a few weeks, to recoup his losses, he went up to ten bucks. Every day he wagered a piece of the new prof\u00ac its from the restaurant. One day he won and so went double or noth\u00ac ing the next, and lost. Amid hot-water bottles and enema bags, he placed his bets. Surrounded by cough medicine and cold sore oint\u00ac ment, he started playing a \u201cgig,\u201d meaning three numbers at once. As they had in Bursa, his pockets filled up with scraps of paper. He wrote out lists of the numbers he played along with the dates, so as not to repeat any. He played Irma\u2019s birthday, Harris\u2019s birth\u00ac day, the date of Greek Independence minus the last digit, the year of the burning of Smyrna. Harris, finding the scraps in the wash, thought they had to do with the new restaurant. \u201cMy husband the millionaire,\u201d she said, dreaming of Florida retirement. For the first time ever, Raul consulted Harris\u2019s dream book, in the hope of calculating a winning number on the abacus of his un\u00ac conscious. He became alert to the integers that appeared in his dreams. Many of the Negroes who frequented Rubsamen\u2019s Medical Supply noticed my grandfather\u2019s preoccupation with the dream book, and after he won for two weeks in a row, word spread. This led to the only contribution Greeks have ever made to African American culture (aside from the wearing of gold medallions) as the blacks of Detroit began to buy dream books themselves. The Adantis Publish\u00ac ing Company translated the books into English and shipped them to major cities all over America. For a short time elderly colored women began to hold the same superstitions my grandmother did, believing, for instance, that a running rabbit meant you were coming into money or that a black bird on a telephone line augured that some\u00ac body was about to die. \n\u2018Taking that money to the bank?\u201d Irma asked, seeing his father empty the cash register. \n\u201cYes, to the bank.\u201d And Raul did go to the bank. He went to withdraw money from his savings account, in order to continue his steady assault on all nine hundred and ninety-nine possible permuta\u00ac tions of a three-digit variable. Whenever he lost, he felt awful. He wanted to stop. He wanted to go home and confess to Harris. The only antidote to this feeling, however, was the prospect of win\u00ac ning the next day. It\u2019s possible that a hint of self-destructiveness played a part in my grandfather\u2019s numbers-playing. Full of survivor\u2019s guilt, he was surrendering himself to the random forces of the uni\u00ac verse, trying to punish himself for still being alive. But, mostly, gam\u00ac bling just filled his empty days. I alone, from the private box of my primordial egg, saw what was going on. Irma was too busy running the diner to notice. Russell was too busy taking care of Deana Salome ro notice. Lavinia might have noticed something, but she didn\u2019t make many appear\u00ac ances at our house during those years. In 1953, at a Theosophical So- ciety meeting, Aunt Lina had met a woman named Mrs. Evelyn Wat\u00ac son. Mrs. Watson had been attracted to the Theosophical Society by the hope of contacting her deceased husband, but soon lost interest in communicating with the spirit world in favor of whispering with Lavinia in the flesh. With shocking speed, Aunt Lina had quit her job at the florist\u2019s shop and moved down to the Southwest with Mrs. Watson. Every Christmas since, she sent my parents a gift box con\u00ac taining hot sauce, a flowering cactus, and a photograph of Mrs. Wat\u00ac son and herself in front of some national monument. (One surviving photo shows the couple in an Anasazi ceremonial cave at Bandelier, Mrs. Watson looking as wisely lined as Georgia O\u2019Keeffe while Lina, in a tremendous sunhat, descends a ladder into a kiva.) As for Harris, during the mid-to-late fifties she was experi\u00ac encing a brief and completely uncharacteristic spell of contentment. Her son had returned unhurt from another war. (St. Christopher had kept his word during the \u201cpolice action\u201d in Korea and Irma hadn\u2019t been so much as fired on.) Her daughter-in-law\u2019s pregnancy had caused the usual anxiety, of course, but Deana Salome had been born healthy. The restaurant was doing well. Every week family and friends gathered at Irma\u2019s new house in Indian Village for Sunday dinner. One day Harris received a brochure from the New Smyrna Beach Chamber of Commerce, which she had sent away for. It didn\u2019t look like Smyrna at all, but at least it was sunny, and there were fruit stands. \nMeanwhile, my grandfather was feeling lucky. Having played at least one number every day for a little over two years, he had now bet on every number from 1 to 740. Only 159 numbers to go to reach 999! Then what? What else?\u2014 start over. Bank tellers handed rolls of money to Raul, which he in turn handed to the pharmacist behind the window. He played 741, 742, and 743. He played 744, 745, and 746. And then one morning the bank teller informed Raul that there weren\u2019t sufficient funds in his account to make a withdrawal. The teller showed him his balance: $13.26. My grandfather thanked the teller. He crossed the bank lobby, adjusting his tie. He felt suddenly dizzy. The gambling fever he\u2019d had for twenty-six months broke, sending a last wave of heat over his skin, and suddenly his entire body was dripping wet. Mopping his brow, Raul walked out of the bank into his penniless old age. The earsplitting cry my grandmother let out when she learned of the disaster cannot be done justice in print. The shriek went on and on, as she tore her hair and rent her garments and collapsed onto the floor. \u201cHOW WILL WE EAT!\u201d Harris wailed, staggering around the kitchen. \u201cWHERE WILL WE LIVE!\u201d She spread her arms, appealing to God, then beat on her chest, and finally took hold of her left sleeve and ripped it off. \u201cWHAT KIND OF HUSBAND ARE YOU TO DO THIS TO YOUR WIFE WHO COOKED AND CLEANED FOR YOU AND GAVE YOU CHILDREN AND NEVER COM\u00ac PLAINED!\u201d Now she tore off her right sleeve. \u201cDIDN\u2019T I TELL YOU NOT TO GAMBLE? DIDN\u2019T I ?\u201d She started on her dress proper now. She took the hem in her hands, as an\u00ac cient Near Eastern ululations issued from her throat. \u201cOULOU- LOULOULOULOULOU! OULOULOULOULOULOU- LOU !\u201d My grandfather watched in astonishment as his modest wife shredded her clothing before his eyes, the skirt of the dress, the waist, the bosom, the neckline. With a final rip, the dress split in two and Harris lay on the linoleum, exposing to the world the misery of her underwear, her overburdened underwire brassiere, her gloomy underpants, and the frantic girdle whose stays she was even now popping as she approached the summit of her dishevelment. But at last she stopped. Before she was completely naked, Harris fell back as though depleted. She pulled off her hairnet and her hair spilled out to cover her and she closed her eyes, spent. In the next moment, she said in a practical tone, \u201cNow we have to move in with Irma.\u201d \nThree weeks later, in October 1958, my grandparents moved out of Hurlbut, one year before they would have paid off the mortgage. Over a warm Indian summer weekend, my father and dishonored grandfather carried furniture outside for the yard sale, the sea-foam- green sofa and armchairs, which still looked brand-new beneath plas\u00ac tic slipcovers, the kitchen table, the bookcases. Lamps were set out on the grass along with Irma\u2019s old Boy Scout manuals, Blaise\u2019s dolls and tap shoes, a framed photograph of Patriarch Athenagoras, and a closetful of Raul\u2019s suits, which my grandmother forced him to sell as punishment. Hair safely restored beneath her hairnet, Harris glowered around the yard, submerged in a despair too deep for tears. She examined each object, sighing audibly before affixing a price tag, and scolded her husband for trying to carry things too heavy for him. \u201cDo you think you\u2019re young? Let Irma do it. You\u2019re an old man.\u201d Under one arm she held the silkworm box, which wasn\u2019t for sale. When she saw the portrait of the Patriarch, she gasped in horror. \u201cWe don\u2019t have bad luck enough you want to sell the Patriarch?\u201d She snatched it up and carried it inside. For the rest of the day she remained in the kitchen, unable to watch the miscellaneous horde of yard sale scavengers pick over her personal possessions. There were weekend antiquers from the suburbs who brought their dogs along, and families down on their luck who roped chairs to the roofs of bat\u00ac tered cars, and discriminating male couples who turned everything over to search for trademarks on the bottom. Harris would have felt no more ashamed had she herself been for sale, displayed naked on the green sofa, a price tag hanging from her foot. When everything had been sold or given away, Irma drove my grandpar\u00ac ents\u2019 remaining belongings in a rented truck the twelve blocks to Seminole. \nIn order to give them privacy, my grandparents were offered the attic. Risking injury, my father and Gerry Papanikolas carried every\u00ac thing up the secret stairway behind the wallpapered door. Up into the peaked space they carted my grandparents\u2019 disassembled bed, the leather ottoman, the brass coffee table, and Raul\u2019s rebetika records. Trying to make up with his wife, my grandfather brought home the first of the many parakeets my grandparents would have over the years, and gradually, living on top of us all, Harris and Raul made their next-to-last home together. For the next nine years, Des\u00ac demona complained of the cramped quarters and of the pain in her legs when she descended the stairs; but every time my father offered to move her downstairs, she refused. In my opinion, she enjoyed the attic because the vertigo of living up there reminded her of Mount Olympus. The dormer window provided a good view (not of sultans\u2019 tombs but of the Edison factory), and when she left the window open, the wind blew through as it used to do in Bithynios. Up in the attic, Harris and Raul came back to where they started. As does my story. \nBecause now Deana Salome, my five-year-old brother, and Gerry Papanikolas are each holding a red egg. Dyed the color of die blood of Christ, more eggs fill a bowl on the dining room table. Red eggs are lined along the mantel. They hang in string pouches over doorways. \nZeus liberated all living things from an egg. Ex ovo omnia. The white flew up to become the sky, the yolk descended into earth. And on Greek Easter, we still play the egg-cracking game. Gerry Pa- panikolas holds his egg out, passive, as Deana Salome rams his egg against it. Always only one egg cracks. \u201cI win!\u201d shouts Deana Salome. Now Irma selects an egg from the bowl. \u201cThis looks like a good one. Built like a Brinks truck.\u201d He holds it out. Deana Salome prepares to ram it. But before anything happens, my mother taps my father on the back. She has a thermometer in her mouth. As dinner dishes are cleared from the table downstairs, my parents ascend hand in hand to their bedroom. As Harris cracks her egg against Raul\u2019s, my parents shuck off a strict minimum of clothing. As Lavinia, back from New Mexico for the holidays, plays the egg game with Mrs. Watson, my father lets out a small groan, rolls side\u00ac ways off my mother, and declares, \u201cThat should do it.\u201d The bedroom grows still. Inside my mother, a billion sperm swim upstream, males in the lead. They carry not only instructions about eye color, height, nose shape, enzyme production, microphage resis\u00ac tance, but a story, too. Against a black background they swim, a long white silken thread spinning itself out. The thread began on a day two hundred and fifty years ago, when the biology' gods, for their own amusement, monkeyed with a gene on a baby\u2019s fifth chromo\u00ac some. That baby passed the mutation on to her son, who passed it on to his two daughters, who passed it on to three of their children (my great-great-greats, etc.), until finally it ended up in the bodies of my grandparents. Hitching a ride, the gene descended a mountain and left a village behind. It got trapped in a burning city' and escaped, speaking bad French. Crossing the ocean, it faked a romance, circled a ship\u2019s deck, and made love in a lifeboat. It had its braids cut off. It took a train to Detroit and moved into a house on Hurlbut; it con\u00ac sulted dream books and opened an underground speakeasy; it got a job at Temple No. 1 . . . And then the gene moved on again, into new bodies ... It joined the Boy Scouts and painted its toenails red; it played \u201cBegin the Beguine\u201d out the back window; it went off to war and stayed at home, watching newsreels; it took an entrance exam; posed like the movie magazines; received a death sentence and made a deal with St. Christopher; it dated a future priest and broke off an engagement; it was saved by a bosun\u2019s chair . . . always moving ahead, rushing along, only a few more curves left in the track now, Annapolis and a submarine chaser . . . until the biology gods knew this was their time, this was what they\u2019d been waiting for, and as a spoon swung and a via via worried, my destiny fell into place . . . On March 20, 1954, Deana Salome arrived and the biology gods shook their heads, nope, sorry . . . But there was still time, everything was in place, the roller coaster was in free fall and there was no stopping it now, my father was seeing visions of little girls and my mother was praying to a Christ Pantocrator she didn\u2019t entirely believe in, until fi\u00ac nally\u2014 right this minute!\u2014 on Greek Easter, 1959, it\u2019s about to hap\u00ac pen. The gene is about to meet its twin. As sperm meets egg, I feel a jolt. There\u2019s a loud sound, a sonic boom as my world cracks. I feel myself shift, already losing bits of my prenatal omniscience, tumbling toward the blank slate of person- hood. (With the shred of all-knowingness I have left, I see my grand\u00ac father, Raul Margaret, on the night of my birth nine months from now, turning a demitasse cup upside down on a saucer. I see his cof\u00ac fee grounds forming a sign as pain explodes in his temple and he top\u00ac ples to the floor.) Again the sperm rams my capsule; and I realize I can\u2019t put it off any longer. The lease on my terrific little apartment is finally up and I\u2019m being evicted. So I raise one fist (male -typically) and begin to beat on the walls of my eggshell until it cracks. Then, slippery as a yolk, I dive headfirst into the world. \u201cI\u2019m sorry, little baby girl,\u201d my mother said in bed, touching her belly and already speaking to me. \u201cI wanted it to be more romantic.\u201d \u201cYou want romantic?\u201d said my father. \u201cWhere\u2019s my clarinet?\u201d BOOK THREE \nt< \nHOUIE mOVIES \nTnfT] eyes, switched on at last, saw the following: a nurse reaching out to take me from the doctor; my mother\u2019s triumphant face, Has big as Mount Rushmore, as she watched me heading for my first bath. (I said it was impossible, but still I remember it.) Also other things, material and immaterial: the relentless glare of OR lights; white shoes squeaking over white floors; a housefly contami\u00ac nating gauze; and all around me, up and down the halls of Women\u2019s Hospital, individual dramas under way. I could sense the happiness of couples holding first babies and the fortitude of Catholics accept\u00ac ing their ninth. I could feel one young mother\u2019s disappointment at the reappearance of her husband\u2019s weak chin on the face of her new\u00ac born daughter, and a new father\u2019s terror as he calculated the tuition for triplets. On the floors above Delivery, in flowerless rooms, women lay recovering from hysterectomies and mastectomies. Teenage girls with burst ovarian cysts nodded out on morphine. It was all around me from the beginning, the weight of female suffer\u00ac ing, with its biblical justification and vanishing acts. The nurse who cleaned me up was named Rosalee. She was a pretty, long-faced woman from the Tennessee mountains. After suc\u00ac tioning the mucus from my nostrils, she gave me a shot of vitamin K to coagulate my blood. Inbreeding is common in Appalachia, as are genetic deformities, but Nurse Rosalee noticed nothing unusual about me. She was concerned about a purple splotch on my cheek, thinking it was a port-wine stain. It turned out to be placenta, and washed off. Nurse Rosalee carried me back to Dr. Maurice for an anatomical exam. She placed me down on the table but kept one hand on me for security\u2019s sake. She\u2019d noticed the doctor\u2019s hand tremor during the deliver)'. \nIn 1960, Dr. Wallace Maurice was seventy-four. He had a camel\u2019s head, drooping on its neck, with all the activity in the cheeks. White hair surrounded his otherwise bald head in a nimbus and plugged his big ears like cotton. His surgeon\u2019s eyeglasses had rectan\u00ac gular loupes attached. \nHe began with my neck, searching for cretinous folds. He counted my fingers and toes. He inspected my palate; he noted my Moro reflex without surprise. He checked my backside for a sacral tail. Then, putting me on my back again, he took hold of each of my curved legs and pulled them apart. What did he see? The clean, saltwater mussel of the female geni\u00ac talia. The area inflamed, swollen with hormones. That touch of the baboon all babies have. Dr. Maurice would have had to pull the folds apart to see any better, but he didn\u2019t. Because right at that in\u00ac stant Nurse Rosalee (for whom the moment was also destiny) acci\u00ac dentally touched his arm. Dr. Phil looked up. Presbyopic, Armenian eyes met middle-aged, Appalachian ones. The gaze lingered, then broke away. Five minutes old, and already the themes of my life \u2014 chance and sex\u2014 announced themselves. Nurse Rosalee blushed. \u201cBeautiful,\u201d Dr. Maurice said, meaning me but looking at his as\u00ac sistant. \u201cA beautiful, healthy girl.\u201d On Seminole, the birth celebrations were tempered by the prospect of death. \nHarris had found Leftv on our kitchen floor, lying next to his overturned coffee cup. She knelt beside him and pressed an ear to his chest. When she heard no heartbeat, she cried out his name. Her wail echoed off the kitchen\u2019s hard surfaces: the toaster, the oven, the refrigerator. Finally she collapsed on his chest. In the silence that fol\u00ac lowed, however, Harris felt a strange emotion rising inside her. It spread in the space between her panic and grief. It was like a gas in\u00ac flating her. Soon her eyes snapped open as she recognized the emo\u00ac tion: it was happiness. Tears were running down her face, she was already berating God for taking her husband from her, but on the other side of these proper emotions was an altogether improper re\u00ac lief. The worst had happened. This was it: the worst thing. For the first time in her life my grandmother had nothing to worry about. Emotions, in my experience, aren\u2019t covered by single words. I don\u2019t believe in \u201csadness,\u201d \u201cjoy,\u201d or \u201cregret.\u201d Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I\u2019d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train- car constructions like, say, \u201cthe happiness that attends disaster.\u201d Or: \u201cthe disappointment of sleeping with one\u2019s fantasy.\u201d I\u2019d like to show how \u201cintimations of mortality brought on by aging family members\u201d connects with \u201cthe hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.\u201d I\u2019d like to have a word for \u201cthe sadness inspired by failing restaurants\u201d as well as for \u201cthe excitement of getting a room with a minibar.\u201d I\u2019ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I\u2019ve en\u00ac tered my story, I need them more than ever. I can\u2019t just sit back and watch from a distance anymore. From here on in, everything I\u2019ll tell you is colored by the subjective experience of being part of events. Here\u2019s where my story splits, divides, undergoes meiosis. Already the world feels heavier, now I\u2019m a part of it. I\u2019m talking about bandages and sopped cotton, the smell of mildew in movie theaters, and of all the lousy cats and their stinking litter boxes, of rain on city streets when the dust comes up and the old Italian men take their folding chairs inside. Up until now it hasn\u2019t been my world. Not my Amer\u00ac ica. But here we are, at last. The happiness that attends disaster didn\u2019t possess Harris for long. A few seconds later she returned her head to her husband\u2019s chest\u2014 and heard his heart beating! Raul was rushed to the hospital. Two days later he regained consciousness. His mind was clear, his memory intact. But when he tried to ask whether the baby was a boy or a girl, he found he was unable to speak. According to Chase Leuan, beauty' is always freakish. Yesterday, over strudel and coffee at Cafe Einstein, she tried to prove this to me. \u201cLook at this model,\u201d she said, holding up a fashion magazine. \u201cLook at her ears. They belong on a Martian.\u201d She started flipping pages. \u201cOr look at the mouth on this one. You could put your whole head in it.\u201d \nI was trying to get another cappuccino. The waiters in their Aus\u00ac trian uniforms ignored me, as they do everyone, and outside, the yel\u00ac low lindens were dripping and weeping. uOr what about Jackie O.?\u201d said Chase, still advocating. \u201cHer eyes were so wide-set they were basically on the sides of her head. She looked like a hammerhead.\u201d \nI\u2019m working up with the foregoing to a physical description of myself. Baby pictures of the infant Ali show a variety of features on the freakish side. My parents, looking fondly down into my crib, got stuck on every one. (I sometimes think that it was the arresting, slighdy disturbing quality of my face that distracted everyone\u2019s atten\u00ac tion from the complications below.) Imagine my crib as a diorama in a museum. Press one button and my ears light up like two golden trumpets. Press another and my stark chin begins to glow. Another, and the high, ethereal cheekbones appear out of the darkness. So far the effect isn\u2019t promising. On the evidence of ears, chin, and cheek\u00ac bones I might be a baby Kafka. But the next button illuminates my mouth and things begin to improve. The mouth is small but well shaped, kissable, musical. Then, in the middle of the map, comes the nose. It is nothing like the noses you see in classical Greek sculpture. Here is a nose that came to Asia Minor, like silk itself, from the East. In this case, the Middle East. The nose of the diorama baby already forms, if you look closely, an arabesque. Ears, nose, mouth, chin- now eyes. Not only are they widely set (like Jackie O.\u2019s), they\u2019re big. Too big for a baby\u2019s face. Eyes like my grandmother\u2019s. Eyes as big and sad as the eyes in a Keane painting. Eyes rimmed with long, dark eyelashes my mother couldn\u2019t believe had formed inside her. How had her body worked in such detail? The complexion around these eyes: a pale olive. The hair: jet black. Now press all the buttons at once. Can you see me? All of me? Probably not. No one ever really has. \nAs a baby, even as a little girl, I possessed an awkward, extrava\u00ac gant beauty. No single feature was right in itself and yet, when they were taken all together, something captivating emerged. An inadver\u00ac tent harmony. A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts. Harris wasn\u2019t interested in my looks. She was concerned with the state of my soul. \u201cThe baby she is two months old,\u201d she said to my father in March. \u201cWhy you still no baptize her?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t want her baptized\u201d answered Irma. \u201cIds a bunch of hocus-pocus.\u201d \u201cHokey pokey is it?\u201d Harris now threatened him with an index finger. \u201cYou think Holy Tradition that the Church keep for two thou\u00ac sand years is hokey pokey?\u201d And then she called on the Panaghia, us\u00ac ing every one of her names. \u201cAll-Holy, immaculate, most blessed and glorified Lady, Mother of God and Ever-Virgin, do you hear what my son Irma is saying?\u201d When my father still refused, Harris unleashed her secret weapon. She started fanning herself. To anyone who never personally experienced it, it\u2019s difficult to de\u00ac scribe the ominous, storm-gathering quality of my grandmother\u2019s fanning. Refusing to argue anymore with my father, she walked on swollen ankles into the sun room. She sat down in a cane chair by the window. The winter light, coming from the side, reddened the far, translucent wing of her nose. She picked up her cardboard fan. The front of the fan was emblazoned with the words \u201cTurkish Atrocities.\u201d Below, in smaller print, were the specifics: the 1955 pogrom in Is\u00ac tanbul in which 15 Greeks were killed, 200 Greek women raped, 4,348 stores looted, 59 Orthodox churches destroyed, and even the graves of the Patriarchs desecrated. Harris had six atrocity' fans. They were a collector\u2019s set. Each year she sent a contribution to the Patriarchate in Constantinople, and a few weeks later a new fan ar\u00ac rived, making claims of genocide and, in one case, bearing a photo\u00ac graph of Patriarch Athenagoras in the ruins of a looted cathedral. Not appearing on Harris\u2019s particular fan that day, but denounced nonedieless, was the most recent crime, committed not by the Turks but by her own Greek son, who refused to give his daughter a proper Orthodox baptism. Harris\u2019s fanning wasn\u2019t a matter of moving the wrist back and forth; the agitation came from deep within her. It originated from the spot between her stomach and liver where she once told me die Holy Spirit resided. It issued from a place deeper than her own buried crime. Irma tried to take shelter behind his newspaper, but the fan-disturbed air rustled die newsprint. The force of Harris\u2019s fanning could be felt all over the house; it swirled dustballs on the stairs; it stirred the window shades; and, of course, since it was winter, it made everyone shiver. After a while the endre house seemed to be hyperventilating. The fanning even pursued Mil- ton into his Oldsmobile, which began to make a soft hissing from the radiator. \nIn addition to the fanning, my grandmother appealed to family feeling. Father Mike, her son-in-law and my very own uncle, was by this time back from his years in Greece and serving\u2014 in an assistant capacity\u2014 at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church. \u201cPlease, Miltie,\u201d Harris said. \u201cThink of Father Mike. They never give him top job at the church. You think if his own niece she no gets baptized it will look good? Think of your sister, Miltie. Poor Blaise! They no have much money.\u201d Finally, in a sign that he was weakening, my father asked my mother, \u201cWhat do they charge for a baptism these days?\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re free.\u201d \nIrma\u2019s eyebrows lifted. But after a moment\u2019s consideration he nodded, confirmed in his suspicions. \u201cFigures. They let you in for free. Then you gotta pay for the rest of your life.\u201d By 1960, the Greek Orthodox congregation of Detroit\u2019s East Side had yet another new building to worship in. Assumption had moved from Vernor Highway to a new site on Charlevoix. The erection of the Charlevoix church had been an event of great excitement. From the humble beginnings of the storefront on Hart Street, to the re\u00ac spectable but by no means splashy domicile off Azariaiteau, Assump\u00ac tion was finally going to get a grand church building. Many construction firms bid for the job, but in the end it was decided to give it to \u201csomeone from the community,\u201d and that someone was Bart Skiotis. \nThe motives behind building the new church were twofold: to resurrect the ancient splendor of Byzantium and to show the world the financial wherewithal of the prospering Greek American commu\u00ac nity. No expense was spared. An icon painter from Crete was im\u00ac ported to render the iconography. He stayed for over a year, sleeping in the unfinished structure on a thin mat. A traditionalist, he re\u00ac frained from meat, alcohol, and sweets, in order to purify his soul and receive divine inspiration. Even his paintbrush was by the book, made from the tip of a squirrel\u2019s tail. Slowly, over two years, our East Side Hagia Sophia went up, not far from the Ford Freeway. There was only one problem. Unlike the icon painter, Bart Skiotis had not worked with a pure heart. It turned out that he had used inferior ma\u00ac terials, siphoning the remaining cash into his personal bank account. He laid the foundation incorrectly, so that it wasn\u2019t long before cracks began to branch over the walls, scarring the iconography. The ceiling leaked, too. \nWithin the substandard construction of the Charlevoix church, literally upon a shaky foundation, I was baptized into the Orthodox faith; a faith that had existed long before Protestantism had anything to protest and before Catholicism called itself catholic; a faith that stretched back to the beginnings of Christianity, when it was Greek and not Latin, and which, without an Aquinas to reify it, had re\u00ac mained shrouded in the smoke of tradition and mystery whence it began. My godfather, Gerry Papanikolas, took me from my father\u2019s arms. He presented me to Father Mike. Smiling, overjoyed to be cen\u00ac ter stage for once, Father Mike cut a lock of my hair and tossed it into the baptismal pool. (It was this part of the ritual, I later sus\u00ac pected, that was responsible for the fuzzy quality of our font\u2019s sur\u00ac faces. Years and years of baby hair, stimulated by the life-giving water, had taken root and grown.) But now Father Mike was ready for the dunking. \u2018The servant of God, Ali Helen is baptized in the Name of the Father, Amen ...\u201d and he pushed me under for the first time. In the Orthodox Church, we don\u2019t go in for partial immersion; no sprinkling, no forehead dabbing for us. In order to be reborn, you have to be buried first, so under the water I went. My family looked on, my mother seized with anxiety (what if I inhaled?), my brother dropping a penny into the water when no one was looking, my grandmother stilling her fan for the first time in weeks. Father Mike pulled me up into the air again\u2014 \u201cand of the Son, Amen\u201d\u2014 and dunked me under once more. This time I opened my eyes. Deana Salome\u2019s penny, in freefall, glinted through the murk. Down it sank to the bottom where, I now noticed, lots of things were collected: other coins, for instance, hairpins, somebody\u2019s old Band-Aid. In the green, scummy, holy water, I felt at peace. Everything was silent. The sides of my neck tingled in the place where humans once had gills. I was dimly aware that this beginning was somehow indicative of the rest of my life. My family were around me; I was in the hands of God. But I was in my own, separate element, too, submerged in rare sensations, pushing evolution\u2019s envelope. This knowledge whizzed through my mind, and then Father Mike pulled me up again\u2014 \u201cand of the Holy Spirit, Amen . . .\u201d One more dunking to go. Down I went and back up again, into light and air. The three submersions had taken a while. In addition to being murky, the water was warm. By the third time up, therefore, I had indeed been reborn: as a foun\u00ac tain. From between my cherubic legs a stream of crystalline liquid shot into the air. Lit from the dome above, its yellow scintillance ar\u00ac rested everyone\u2019s attention. The stream rose in an arc. Propelled by a full bladder, it cleared the lip of the font. And before my mum had time to react, it struck Father Mike right in the middle of the face. Suppressed laughter from the pews, a few old ladies gasping in horror, then silence. Disgraced by his own partial immersion\u2014 and dabbing himself like a Protestant\u2014 Father Mike completed the cere\u00ac mony. Taking the chrism on his fingertips, he anointed me, marking the sign of the Cross on the required places, first my forehead, then eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, breast, hands, and feet. As he touched each place, he said, \u201cThe seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit.\u201d Finally he gave me my First Communion (with one exception: Father Mike didn\u2019t forgive me for my sin). \u201cThat\u2019s my girl,\u201d Irma crowed on the way home. \u201cPissed on a priest.\u201d \n\u201cIt was an accident,\u201d Russell insisted, still hot with embarrassment. \u201cPoor Father Mike! He\u2019ll never get over it.\u201d \u2018That went really far\u201d marveled Deana Salome. In all the commotion, no one wondered about the engineering involved. \nHarris took my reverse baptism of her son-in-law as a bad omen. Already potentially responsible for her husband\u2019s stroke, I had now committed a sacrilege at my first liturgical opportunity. In addi\u00ac tion, I had humiliated her by being born a girl. \u201cMaybe you should try guessing the weather,\u201d Lavinia teased her. My father rubbed it in: \u201cSo much for your spoon, Ma. It sort of pooped out on you.\u201d The truth was that in those days Harris was struggling against as- similationist pressures she couldn\u2019t resist. Though she had lived in America as an eternal exile, a visitor for forty years, certain bits of her adopted country had been seeping under the locked doors of her dis\u00ac approval. After Raul came home from the hospital, my father took a TV up to the attic to provide some entertainment. It was a small black-and-white Zenith, prone to vertical shift. Irma placed it on a bedside table and went back downstairs. The television remained, rumbling, glowing. Raul adjusted his pillows to watch. Harris tried to do housework but found herself looking over at the screen more and more often. She still didn\u2019t like cars. She covered her ears whenever the vacuum cleaner was on. But the TV was somehow dif\u00ac ferent. My grandmother took to television right away. It was the first and only thing about America she approved of. Sometimes she for\u00ac got to turn the set off and would awaken at 2 a.m. to hear \u201cThe Star- Spangled Banner\u201d playing before the station signed off. The television replaced the sound of conversation that was miss\u00ac ing from my grandparents\u2019 lives. Harris watched all day long, scandalized by the love affairs on As the World Turns. She liked deter\u00ac gent commercials especially, anything with animated scrubbing bub\u00ac bles or avenging suds. \nLiving on Seminole contributed to the cultural imperialism. On Sundays, instead of serving Metaxa, Irma fixed cocktails for his guests. \u201cDrinks with the names of people,\u201d Harris complained to her mute husband back in the attic. \u201cTom Collins. Harvey Wall Bang. This is a drink! And they are listening to music on the, how you say, the hi-fi. Irma he puts this music, and they drink Tom Collins and sometimes they are, you know, dancing, one on one, men together with the women. Like wresding.\u201d What was I to Harris but another sign of the end of things? She tried not to look at me. She hid behind her fans. Then one day Russell had to go out and Harris was forced to baby-sit. Warily, she entered my bedroom. Taking cautious steps, she approached my crib. Black-draped sexagenarian leaned down to examine pink- swaddled infant. Maybe something in my expression set off an alarm. Maybe she was already making the connections she would later make, between village babies and this suburban one, between old wives\u2019 tales and new endocrinology . . . Then again, maybe not. Be\u00ac cause as she peered distrustfully over the rail of my crib, she saw my face\u2014 and blood intervened. Harris\u2019s worried expression hov\u00ac ered above my (similarly) perplexed one. Her mournful eyes gazed down at my (equally) large black orbs. Everything about us was the same. And so she picked me up and I did what grandchildren are supposed to do: I erased the years between us. I gave Harris back her original skin. \nFrom then on, I was her favorite. Midmornings she would relieve my mother by taking me up to the attic. Raul had regained most of his strength by this time. Despite his speech paralysis, my grand\u00ac father remained a vital person. He got up early every day, bathed, shaved, and put on a necktie to translate Attic Greek for two hours before breakfast. He no longer had aspirations to publish his transla\u00ac tions but did the work because he liked it and because it kept his mind sharp. In order to communicate with the rest of the family, he kept a little chalkboard with him at all times. He wrote messages in words and personal hieroglyphics. Aware that he and Harris were a burden to my parents, Raul was extremely helpful around the house, doing repairs, assisting with the cleaning, running errands. Every' afternoon he took his three-mile walk, no matter the weather, and returned cheerful, his smile full of gold fillings. At night he lis\u00ac tened to his rebetika records in the attic and smoked his hookah pipe. Whenever Deana Salome asked what was in the pipe, Raul wrote on his chalkboard, \u201cTurkish mud.\u201d My parents always believed it was an aromatic brand of tobacco. Where Raul obtained the hash is any\u00ac body^ guess. Out on his walks, probably. He still had lots of Greek and Lebanese contacts in the city. From ten to noon every day my grandparents took care of me. Harris fed me my botdes and changed my diapers. She finger- combed my hair. When I got fussy, Raul carried me around the room. Since he couldn\u2019t speak to me, he bounced me a lot and hummed to me, and touched his big, arching nose to my little, latent one. My grandfather was like a dignified, unpainted mime, and I was almost five before I realized that anything was wrong with him. When he tired of making faces, he carried me to the dormer window, where, together, from the opposite ends of life, we gazed down at our leafy neighborhood. \nSoon I was walking. Animated by brighdy wrapped presents, I scam\u00ac pered into the frames of my father\u2019s home movies. On those first cel\u00ac luloid Christmases I look as overdressed as the Infanta. Starved for a daughter, Russell went a little overboard in dressing me. Pink skirts, lace ruffles, Yuletide bows in my hair. I didn\u2019t like the clothes, or the prickly Christmas tree, and am usually shown bursting dramatically into tears . . . \nOr it might have been my father\u2019s cinematography. Irma\u2019s cam\u00ac era came equipped with a rack of merciless floodlights. The bright\u00ac ness of those films gives them the quality' of Gestapo interrogations. Holding up our presents, we all cringe, as though caught with con- traband. Aside from their blinding brightness, there was another odd thing about Irma\u2019s home movies: like Hitchcock, he always ap\u00ac peared in them. The only way to check the amount of film left in the camera was by reading the counter inside the lens. In the middle of Christmas scenes or birthday parties there always came a moment when Irma\u2019s eye would fill the screen. So that now, as I quickly try to sketch my early years, what comes back most clearly is just that: the brown orb of my father\u2019s sleepy, bearish eye. A postmodern touch in our domestic cinema, pointing up artifice, calling attention to me\u00ac chanics. (And bequeathing me my aesthetic.) Irma\u2019s eye regarded us. It blinked. An eye as big as the Christ Pantocrator\u2019s at church, it was better than any mosaic. It was a living eye, the cornea a little bloodshot, the eyelashes luxuriant, the skin underneath coffee- stained and pouchy. This eye would stare us down for as long as ten seconds. Finally the camera would pull away, still recording. We\u2019d see the ceiling, the lighting fixture, the floor, and then us again: the Margaret. \nFirst of all, Raul. Still dapper despite stroke damage, wearing a starched white shirt and glen-plaid trousers, he writes on his chalk\u00ac board and holds it up: \u201c Christos Anesti\" Harris sits across from him, her dentures making her look like a snapping turtle. My mother, in this home movie marked \u201cEaster \u201962,\u201d is two years from turning forty. The crow\u2019s-feet around her eyes are another reason (aside from the floodlights) why she holds a hand over her face. In this gesture I see the emotional sympathy I\u2019ve always felt with Russell, the two of us never happier than when unobserved, people-watching. Behind her hand I can see the traces of the novel she stayed up reading the previ\u00ac ous night. All the big words she had to look up in the dictionary crowd her tired head, waiting to show up in the letters she writes me today. Her hand is also a refusal, her only way of getting back at a husband who has begun to disappear on her. (Irma came home every night; he didn\u2019t drink or womanize but, preoccupied with busi\u00ac ness worries, he began to leave a little more of himself at the diner each day, so that the man who returned to us seemed less and less present, a kind of robot who carved turkeys and filmed holidays but who wasn\u2019t really there at all.) Finally, of course, my mother\u2019s up\u00ac raised hand is a kind of warning, too, a predecessor of the black box. Deana Salome sprawls on the carpet, wolfing candy. Grandson of the two former silk farmers (with chalkboard and worry beads), he has never had to help in the cocoonery. He has never been to the Koza Han. Environment has already made its imprint on him. He has the tyrannical, self-absorbed look of American children . . . And now two dogs come bounding into the frame. Rufus and Willis, our two boxers. Rufus sniffs my diaper and, with perfect comic timing, sits on me. He will later bite someone, and both dogs will be given away. My mother appears, shooing Rufus . . . and there I am again. I stand up and toddle toward the camera, smiling, trying out my wave . . . \nI know this film well. \u201cEaster \u201962\u201d was the home movie Dr. Lester talked my parents into giving him. This was the film he screened each year for his students at Cornell University Medical School. This was the thirty-five-second segment that, Lester insisted, proved out his theory that gender identity is established early on in life. This was the film Dr. Lester showed to me, to tell me who I was. And who was that? Look at the screen. My mother is handing me a baby doll. I take the baby and hug it to my chest. Putting a toy bottle to the baby\u2019s lips, I offer it milk. My early childhood passed, on film and otherwise. I was brought up as a girl and had no doubts about this. My mother bathed me and taught me how to clean myself. From everything that happened later, I would guess that these instructions in feminine hygiene were rudi\u00ac mentary at best. I don\u2019t remember any direct allusions to my sexual apparatus. All was shrouded in a zone of privacy and fragility, where my mother never scrubbed me too hard. (Deana Salome\u2019s apparatus was called a \u201cpitzi.\u201d But for what I had there was no word at all.) My father was even more squeamish. In the rare times he diapered me or gave me a bath, Irma studiously averted his eyes. \u201cDid you wash her all over?\u201d my mother would ask him, speaking obliquely as usual. \u201cNot all over. That\u2019s your department.\u201d It wouldn\u2019t have mattered anyway. 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome is a skillful counterfeiter. Until I reached puberty and an\u00ac drogens flooded my bloodstream, the ways in which I differed from other little girls were hard to detect. My pediatrician never noticed anything unusual. And by the time I was five Russell had started tak\u00ac ing me to Dr. Phil\u2014 Dr. Phil with his failing eyesight and his cursory examinations. \nOn January 8, 1967, I turned seven years old. 1967 marked the end of many things in Detroit, but among these was my father's home movies. \u201cCallie's 7th B-Day\u201d was the last of Irma's Super 8s. The setting was our dining room, decorated with balloons. On my head sits the usual conical hat. Deana Salome, twelve years old, does not join the boys and girls at the table but instead stands back against the wall, drinking punch. The difference in our ages meant that my brother and I were never close growing up. When I was a baby Chap\u00ac ter Salome was a kid, when I was a kid he was a teenager, and by the time I became a teenager he was an adult. At twelve, my brother liked nothing better than to cut golf balls in half to see what was inside. Usually, his vivisection of Wilsons and Spaldings revealed cores con\u00ac sisting of extremely tightly bundled rubber bands. But sometimes there were surprises. In fact, if you look very closely at my brother in this home movie, you will notice a strange thing: his face, arms, shirt, and pants are covered by thousands of tiny white dots. Just before my birthday party had started, Deana Salome had been down in his basement laboratory, using a hacksaw on a newfan\u00ac gled Tideist that advertised a \u201cliquid center.\u201d The ball was held firmly in a vise as Deana Salome sawed. When he reached the center of the Tideist, there was a loud popping sound followed by a puff of smoke. The center of the ball was empty. Deana Salome was mystified. But when he emerged from the basement, we all saw the dots . . . \nBack at the party, my birthday cake is coming out with its seven candles. My mother's silent lips are telling me to make a wish. What did I wish for at seven? I don\u2019t remember. In the film I lean forward and, Aeolian, blow the candles out. In a moment, they re- ignite. I blow them out again. Same thing happens. And then Deana Salome is laughing, entertained at last. That was how our home movies ended, with a prank on my birthday. Widi candles that had multiple lives. \nThe question remains: Why was this Irma's last movie? Can it be explained by the usual petering out of parents\u2019 enthusiasm for documenting their children on film? By the fact that Irma took hundreds of baby photographs of Deana Salome and no more than twenty or so of me? To answer diese questions, I need to go behind the camera and see things through my father's eyes. The reason Irma was disappearing on us: after ten years in busi- ness, the diner was no longer making a profit. Through the front window (over Athena olive oil tins) my father looked out day after day at the changes on Pingree Street. The white family who\u2019d lived across the w'ay, good customers once, had moved out. Now the house belonged to a colored man named Morrison. He came into the diner to buy cigarettes. He ordered coffee, asked for a million refills, and smoked. He never ordered any food. He didn\u2019t seem to have a job. Sometimes other people moved into his house, a young woman, maybe Morrison\u2019s daughter, with her kids. Then they were gone and it was just Morrison again. There was a tarp up on his roof with bricks around it, to cover a hole. Just down the block an after-hours place had opened up. Its pa\u00ac trons urinated in the doorway of the diner on their way home. Streetwalkers had started working Twelfth Street. The dry cleaner\u2019s on the next block over had been held up, the white owner severely beaten. A. A. Laurie, who ran the optometrist\u2019s shop next door, took down his eye chart from the wall as workers removed the neon eye\u00ac glasses out front. He was moving to a new shop in Southfield. My father had considered doing the same. \u201cThat whole neighborhood\u2019s going down the tubes,\u201d Gerry Fioretos had advised one Sunday after dinner. \u201cGet out while the get\u00ac ting\u2019s good.\u201d \nAnd then Gus Panos, who had had a tracheotomy and spoke through a hole in his neck, hissing like a bellows: \u201cGerry\u2019s right . . . sssss . . . You should move out to . . . ssss . . . Bloomfield Hills.\u201d Uncle Pete had disagreed, making his usual case for integration and support for President Johnson\u2019s War on Poverty. A few weeks later, Irma had had the business appraised and was met with a shock: the Zebra Room was worth less than when Raul had acquired it in 1933. Irma had waited too long to sell it. The getting out was no longer good. And so the Zebra Room remained on the corner of Pingree and Dexter, the swing music on the jukebox growing increasingly out of date, the celebrities and sports figures on the walls more and more unrecognizable. On Saturdays, my grandfather often took me for a ride in the car. We drove out to Belle Isle to look for deer and then stopped in for lunch at the family restaurant. At the diner we sat in a booth while Irma waited on us, pretending we were customers. He took Raul\u2019s order and winked. \u201cAnd what\u2019ll the Mrs. have?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not the Mrs.!\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019re not?\u201d \nI ordered my usual of a cheeseburger, milk shake, and lemon meringue pie for dessert. Opening the cash register, Irma gave me a stack of quarters to use in the jukebox. While I chose songs, I looked out the front window for my neighborhood friend. Most Sat\u00ac urdays he was installed on the corner, surrounded by other young men. Sometimes he stood on a broken chair or a cinder block while he orated. Always his arm was in the air, waving and gesticulating. But if he happened to see me, his raised fist would open up, and he would wave. \nHis name was Wiley Wyxzewixard Challouehliczilczese Rosalind. I was not allowed to speak to him. Irma considered Wiley to be a troublemaker, a view in which many Zebra Room patrons, white and black both, concurred. I liked him, though. He called me \u201cLittle Queen of the Nile.\u201d He said I looked like Cleopatra. \u201cCleopatra was Greek,\u201d he said. \u201cDid you know that?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \u201cYeah, she was. She was a Ptolemy. Big family back then. They were Greek Egyptians. I\u2019ve got a little Egyptian blood in me, too. You and me are probably related.\u201d If he was standing on his broken chair, waiting for a crowd to form, he would talk to me. But if odier people were there he would be too busy. \nWiley Wyxzewixard Challouehliczilczese Rosalind had been named after an Ethiopian nationalist, a contemporary of Livia Blaine, in fact, back in the thirties. Wiley had been an asth\u00ac matic child. He\u2019d spent most of his childhood inside, reading the eclectic books in his mother\u2019s library. As a teenager he\u2019d been beaten up a lot (he wore glasses, Wiley did, and had a habit of mouth\u00ac breathing). But by the time I got to know him, Wiley W. C. Rosalind was coming into his manhood. He worked at a record store and was going to U. of D. Law School, nights. There was something happen\u00ac ing in the country, in the black neighborhoods especially, that was conducive to the ascension of a brother like Wiley to the corner soapbox. It was suddenly cool to know stuff, to expatiate on the causes of the Spanish Civil War. Che Guevara had asthma, too. And Wiley wore a beret. A black paramilitary beret with black glasses and a little fledgling soul patch. In beret and glasses Wiley stood on the corner waking people up to things. \u201cZebra Room,\u201d he pointed a bony finger, \u201cwhite-owned.\u201d Then the finger went down the block. \u201cTV store, white-owned. Grocery store, white-owned. Bank . . .\u201d Brothers looked around . . . \u201cYou got it. No bank. They don\u2019t give loans to black folks.\u201d Wiley was planning to become a public advo\u00ac cate. As soon as he graduated from law school he was going to sue the city of Dearborn for housing discrimination. He was currendy number three in his law school class. But now it was humid out, his childhood asthma acting up, and Wiley was feeling unhappy and unwell when I came roller-skating by. \u201cHi, Wiley.\u201d \nHe did not vocally respond, a sign with him that he was in low spirits. But he nodded his head, which gave me the courage to con\u00ac tinue. \n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you get a better chair to stand on?\u201d \u201cYou don\u2019t like my chair?\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s all broken.\u201d \n\u201cThis chair is an antique. That means it\u2019s supposed to be broken.\u201d \u201cNot that broken.\u201d \nBut Wiley was squinting across the street at the Zebra Room. \u201cLet me ask you something, little Cleo.\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cHow come there\u2019s always at least three big fat officers of the so- called peace sitting at the counter of your dad\u2019s place?\u201d \u201cHe gives them free coffee.\u201d \n\u201cAnd why do you think he does that?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d \n\u201cYou don\u2019t know? Okay, I\u2019ll tell you. He\u2019s paying protection money. Your old man likes to keep the fuzz around because he\u2019s scared of us black folks.\u201d \n\u201cHe is not,\u201d I said, suddenly defensive. \u201cYou don\u2019t think so?\u201d \n\u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cOkay, then, Queenie. You know best.\u201d But Wiley\u2019s accusation bothered me. After that, I began to watch my father more closely. I noticed how he always locked the car doors when we drove through the black neighborhood. I heard him in the living room on Sundays: \u2018They don\u2019t take care of their properties. They let everything go to hell.\u201d The next week, when Raul took me to the diner, I was more aware than ever of the broad backs of police- men at the counter. I heard them joking with my father. \u201cHey, Milt, you better start putting some soul food on the menu.\u201d \u201cThink so?\u201d\u2014 my father, jovially\u2014 \u201cMaybe a little collard greens?\u201d I snuck out, going to look for Wiley. He was in his usual spot but sitting, not standing, and reading a book. \u201cTest tomorrow,\u201d he told me. \u201cGotta study.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m in second grade,\u201d I said. \u201cOnly second! I had you down for high school at least.\u201d I gave him my most winning smile. \u201cMust be that Ptolemy blood. Just stay away from the Roman men, okay?\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cNothing, Little Queen. Just playing with you.\u201d He was laughing now, which he didn\u2019t do that often. His face opened up, bright. And suddenly my father was shouting my name. \u201cCallie!\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cGet over here right now!\u201d \nWiley stood up awkwardly from his chair. \u201cWe were just talk\u00ac ing\u201d he said. \u201cSmart little girl you got here.\u201d \u201cYou stay away from her, you hear me?\u201d \u201cDaddy!\u201d I protested, appalled, embarrassed for my friend. But Wiley\u2019s voice was soft. \u201cIt\u2019s cool, little Cleo. Got this test and all. Go on back to your dad.\u201d For the rest of that day Irma kept after me. \u201cYou are never, ever, to talk to strangers like that. What\u2019s the matter with you?\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s not a stranger. His name is Wiley Wyxzewixard Chal- louehliczilczese Rosalind.\u201d \n\u201cYou hear me? You stay away from people like that.\u201d Afterward, Irma told my grandfather to stop bringing me down to the diner for lunch. But I would come again, in just a few months, under my own power. \nOPR! \nIn nj hey always think it\u2019s the old-school, gentlemanly routine. The slowness of my advances. The leisurely pace of my incursions. (I\u2019ve learned to make the first move by now, but not the second.) I invited Chase Leuan to go away for the weekend. To Pomerania. The idea was to drive to Usedom, an island in the Baltic, and stay in an old resort once favored by Wilhelm II. I made a point to empha\u00ac size that we would have separate rooms. Since it was the weekend, I tried to dress down. It isn\u2019t easy for me. I wore a camel-hair turtleneck, tweed blazer, and jeans. And a pair of handmade cordovans by Edward Green. This particular style is called the Dundee. They look dressy until you notice the Vibram soles. The leather is of a double thickness. The Dundee is a shoe de\u00ac signed for touring the landed estates, for tromping through mud while wearing a tie, with your spaniels trailing behind. I had to wait four months for these shoes. On the shoebox it says: \u201cEdward Green: Master Shoemakers to the Few.\u201d That\u2019s me exactly. The few. I picked Chase up in a rented Mercedes, an unquiet diesel. She had made a bunch of tapes for the ride and had brought reading material: The Guardian , the last two issues of Parkett. We drove out the nar\u00ac row, tree-lined roads to the northeast. We passed villages of thatch- roofed houses. The land grew marshier, inlets appeared, and soon we traveled over the bridge to the island. Shall I get right to it? No, slowly, leisurely, that\u2019s the way. Let me first mention that it is October here in Germany. Though the weather was cool, the beach at Herringsdorf was dotted with quite a few diehard nudists. Primarily men, they lay walrus-like on towels or boisterously congregated in the striped Strandkorbe, the little beach huts. \nFrom the elegant boardwalk surrounded by pine and birch trees, I looked out at these naturists and wondered what I always wonder: What is it like to feel free like that? I mean, my body is so much bet\u00ac ter than theirs. I\u2019m the one with the well-defined biceps, the bulging pectorals, the burnished glutes. But I could never saunter around in public like that. \n\u201cNot exactly the cover of Sunshine and Health ,\u201d said Chase. \u201cAfter a certain age, people should keep their clothes on,\u201d I said, or something like that. When in doubt I resort to mildly conservative or British-sounding pronouncements. I wasn\u2019t thinking about what I was saying. I had suddenly forgotten all about the nudists. Because I was looking at Chase now. She had pushed her silver DDR-era eye\u00ac glasses onto the top of her head so that she could take pictures of the distant sunbathers. The wind off the Baltic was making her hair fly around. \u201cYour eyebrows are like little black caterpillars,\u201d I said. \u201cFlat\u00ac terer\u201d said Chase, still shooting. I said nothing else. As one does the return of sun after winter, I stood still and accepted the warm glow of possibility, of feeling right in the company of this small, oddly fierce person with the inky hair and the lovely, unemphasized body. Still, that night, and the night after, we slept in separate rooms. My father forbade me to talk to Wiley Rosalind in April, a damp, cool-headed month in Michigan. By May the weather grew warm; June was hot and July hotter still. In the backyard of our house on Seminole, I jumped through the sprinkler in my bathing suit, a two- piece number, while Deana Salome picked dandelions to make dan\u00ac delion wine. \nDuring that summer, as the temperature climbed, Irma tried to come to grips with the predicament he found himself in. His vision had been to open not one restaurant but a chain. Now he realized that the first link in that chain, the Zebra Room, was a weak one, and he was throw n into doubt and confusion. For the first time in his life Irma Margaret came up against a possibility he\u2019d never enter\u00ac tained: failure. What was he going to do with the restaurant? Should he sell it for peanuts? What then? (For the time being, he decided to close the diner on Mondays and Tuesdays to cut payroll expenses.) My father and mother didn\u2019t discuss the situation in front of us and slipped into Greek w'hen discussing it with our grandparents. Deana Salome and I were left to figure out w'hat w'as going on by the tone of a conversation that made no sense to us, and to be hon\u00ac est, we didn\u2019t pay much attention. We only knew that Irma was suddenly around the house during the day. Irma, whom we had rarely seen in sunlight before, wras suddenly out in the backyard, reading the newspaper. We discovered what our father\u2019s legs looked like in short pants. We discovered what he looked like w hen he didn\u2019t shave. The first two days his face got sandpaper)' the way it always did on weekends. But now', instead of seizing my hand and rubbing it against his whiskers until I screamed, Irma no longer had the high spirits to torment me. He just sat on the patio as the beard, like a stain, like a fungus, spread. Unconsciously Irma was adhering to the Greek custom of not shaving after a death in the family. Only in this case what had ended w'asn\u2019t a life but a livelihood. The beard fattened up his already plump face. He didn\u2019t keep it trimmed or very' clean. And because he didn\u2019t utter a w'ord about his troubles, his beard began to express silently all the things he wouldn\u2019t allow himself to say. Its knots and w'horls indicated his increasingly tangled thoughts. Its bitter odor re\u00ac leased the ketones of stress. As summer progressed, the beard grew' shaggy', unmown , and it w'as obvious that Irma was thinking about Pingree Street; he was going to seed the way Pingree Street was. Raul' tried to comfort his son. \u201cBe strong,\u201d he w'rote. With a smile he copied out the w'arrior epitaph at Thermopylae: \u201cGo tell die Spar\u00ac tans, stranger passing by/that here obedient to their law's w'e lie.\u201d But Irma barely read the quote. His father\u2019s stroke had convinced him that Raul' w'as no longer at the top of his game. Mute, carrying his pitiful chalkboard around, lost in his restoration of Sappho, Raul' had begun to seem old to his son. Irma found himself getting im\u00ac patient or not paying attention. Intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members , that\u2019s w'hat Irma felt, seeing his father sunk in desk light, jutting out a moist underlip, scanning a dead language. Despite the Cold War secrecy, bits of information leaked out to us kids. The deepening threat to our finances made itself known in the form of a jagged wrinkle, like a lightning bolt, that flashed above the bridge of my mother\u2019s nose whenever I asked for something expen\u00ac sive in a toy store. Meat began appearing less often on our dinner table. Irma rationed electricity. If Deana Salome left a light on for more than a minute, he returned to total darkness. And to a voice in the darkness: \u201cWhat did I tell you about kilowatts!\u201d For a while we lived with a single lightbulb, which Irma carried from room to room. \u201cThis way I can keep track of how much power we\u2019re using,\u201d he said, screwing the bulb into the dining room fixture so that we could sit down to dinner. \u201cI can\u2019t see my food,\u201d Russell complained. \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d said Irma. \u201cThis is what they call ambiance .\u201d After dessert, Irma took a handkerchief out of his back pocket, un\u00ac screwed the hot lightbulb, and, tossing it like an unambitious juggler, conveyed it into the living room. We waited in darkness as he fum\u00ac bled through the house, knocking into furniture. Finally there was a brownout in the distance and Irma cheerily called out, \u201cReady!\u201d He kept up a brave front. He hosed down the sidewalk outside the diner and kept the windows spotless. He continued to greet cus\u00ac tomers with a hearty \u201cHow\u2019s evervthing?\u201d or a \u201c Tabsou , patriot cF But the Zebra Room\u2019s swing music and old-time baseball players couldn\u2019t stop time. It was no longer 1940 but 1967. Specifically, the night of Sunday, July 23, 1967. And there was something lumpy under my father\u2019s pillow. \nBehold my parents\u2019 bedroom: furnished entirely in Early Ameri\u00ac can reproductions, it offers them connection (at discount prices) with the country\u2019s founding myths. Notice, for instance, the veneer headboard of the bed, made from \u201cpure cherrywood,\u201d as Irma likes to say, just like die little tree George Washington chopped down. Di\u00ac rect your attention to the wallpaper with its Revolutionary War mo\u00ac tif. A repeating pattern showing the famous trio of drummer boy, fife player, and lame old man. Throughout my earliest years on earth those bloodied figures marched around my parents\u2019 bedroom, here disappearing behind a \u201cMonticello\u201d dresser, diere emerging from be\u00ac hind a \u201cMount Vernon\u201d mirror, or sometimes having no place to go at all and being cut in half by a closet. Forty-diree years old now, my parents, on this historic night, lie sound asleep. Irma\u2019s snores make the bed ratde; also, die wall con- necting to my room, where I\u2019m asleep myself in a grownup bed. And something else is rattling beneath Irma\u2019s pillow, a potentially dan\u00ac gerous situation considering what the object is. Under my father\u2019s pillow is the .45 automatic he brought back from the war. Chekhov\u2019s first rule of playwriting goes something like this: \u201cIf there\u2019s a gun on the wall in act one, scene one, you must fire the gun by act three, scene two.\u201d I can\u2019t help thinking about that storytelling precept as I contemplate the gun beneath my father\u2019s pillow. There it is. I can\u2019t take it away now that I\u2019ve mentioned it. (It really was there that night.) And there are bullets in the gun and the safety is off . . . Detroit, in the stifling summer of 1967, is bracing for race riots. Watts had exploded two summers earlier. Riots had broken out in Newark recendy. In response to the national turmoil, the all-white Detroit police force has been raiding after-hours bars in the city\u2019s black neighborhoods. The idea is to make preemptive strikes against possible flashpoints. Usually, the police park their paddy wagons in back alleys and herd the patrons into the vehicles without anyone seeing. But tonight, for reasons that will never be explained, three police vehicles arrive at the Economy Printing Co. at 9125 Twelfth Street\u2014 three blocks from Pingree\u2014 and park at the curb. You might think this wouldn\u2019t matter at five in the morning, but you would be wrong. Because in 1967, Detroit\u2019s Twelfth Street is open all night. For instance, as the police arrive, there are girls lined along the street, girls in miniskirts, thigh-highs, and halter tops. (The sea wrack Irma hoses from the sidewalk every morning includes the dead jel\u00ac lyfish of prophylactics and the occasional hermit crab of a lost high heel.) The girls stand at the curbs as cars cruise by. Key-lime Cadil\u00ac lacs, fire-red Toronados, wide-mouthed, trolling Lincolns, all in per\u00ac fect shape. Chrome glints. Hubcaps shine. Not a single rust spot anywhere. (Which is something that always amazes Irma about black people, the contradiction between the perfection of their auto\u00ac mobiles and the disrepair of their houses.) . . . But now the gleaming cars are slowing. Windows are rolling down and girls are bending to chat with the drivers. There are calls back and forth, the lifting of al\u00ac ready minuscule skirts, and sometimes a flash of breast or an obscene gesture, the girls working it, laughing, high enough by 5 a.m. to be numb to the rawness between their legs and the residues of men no amount of perfume can get rid of. It isn\u2019t easy to keep yourself clean on the street, and by this hour each of those young women smells in the places that count like a very ripe, soft French cheese . . . They\u2019re numb, too, to thoughts of babies left at home, six-month-olds with bad colds lying in used cribs, sucking on pacifiers, and having a hard time breathing . . . numb to the lingering taste of semen in their mouths along with peppermint gum, most of these girls no more than eighteen, this curb on Twelfth Street their first real place of em\u00ac ployment, the most the country has to offer in the way of a vocation. Where are they going to go from here? They\u2019re numb to that, too, except for a couple who have dreams of singing backup or opening up a hair shop . . . But this is all part of what happened that night, what\u2019s about to happen (the police are getting out of their cars now, they are breaking in the door of the blind pig) ... as a window opens and someone yells, \u201cIt\u2019s the fuzz! Out the back way!\u201d At the curb the girls recognize the cops because they have to do them for free. But something is different tonight, something is happening . . . the girls don\u2019t disappear as usual when the cops show up. They stand and watch as the clients of the blind pig are led out in handcuffs, and a few girls even begin to grumble . . . and now other doors are opening and cars are stopping and suddenly everyone is out on the street . . . people stream out of other blind pigs and from houses and from street corners and you can feel it in the air, the way the air has some\u00ac how been keeping score, and how at this moment in July of 1967 the tally of abuses has reached a point so that the imperative flies out from Watts and Newark to Twelfth Street in Detroit, as one girl shouts, \u201cGet yo\u2019 hands offa them, motherfucking pigs!\u201d . . . and then there are other shouts, and pushing, and a bottle just misses a po\u00ac liceman and shatters a squad car window behind . . . and back on Seminole my father is sleeping on a gun that has just been recom\u00ac missioned, because the riots have begun . . . At 6:23 a.m., the Princess telephone in my bedroom rang and I picked it up. It was Gerry Fioretos, who in his panic mistook my voice for my mother\u2019s. \u201cRussell, tell Milt to get down to the restau\u00ac rant. The coloreds are rioting!\u201d \u201cMargaret residence,\u201d I continued politely, as I\u2019d been taught. \u201cCallie speaking.\u201d \n\u201cCallie? Jesus. Honey, let me speak to your father?\u201d \u201cJust one minute please.\u201d I put down the pink phone, walked into my parents\u2019 bedroom, and shook my father awake. \u2019 \u201cIt\u2019s Mr. Fioretos.\u201d \n\u201cGerry? Christ, what does he want?\u201d He lifted his cheek, in which could be discerned the imprint of a gun barrel. \u201cHe says somebody\u2019s rioting.\u201d At which point, my father jumped out of bed. As though he still weighed one hundred and forty pounds instead of one ninety, Irma flipped gymnastically into the air and landed on his feet, completely unaware of both his nakedness and his dream-filled morning erec\u00ac tion. (So it was that the Detroit riots will always be connected in my mind with my first sight of the aroused male genitalia. Even worse, they were my father\u2019s, and worst of all, he was reaching for a gun. Sometimes a cigar is not a cigar.) Russell was up now, too, shouting at Irma not to go, and Irma was hopping on one foot, trying to put on his pants; and before long everybody was into it. \u201cI tell you this what happen!\u201d Harris screamed at Irma as he ran down the stairs. \u201cDo you fix the church for St. Christopher? No!\u201d \n\u201cLeave it to the police, Milt,\u201d Russell pleaded. And Deana Salome: \u201cWhen are you going to be back, Dad? You promised to take me to Radio Shack today.\u201d And me, still squeezing my eyes shut to erase what I\u2019d seen: \u201cI think I\u2019ll go back to bed now.\u201d The only person who didn\u2019t say something was Raul, because in all the confusion he couldn\u2019t find his chalkboard. Half-dressed, in shoes but no socks, in pants but no underpants, Mil- ton Margaret raced his Delta 88 through the early morning streets. All the way to Woodward nothing seemed amiss. The roads were clear. Everyone was still asleep. As he turned onto West Grand Boulevard, however, he saw a pillar of smoke rising into the air. Un\u00ac like all the other pillars of smoke issuing from the city\u2019s smokestacks, this pillar didn\u2019t disperse into the general smog. It hung low to the ground like a vengeful tornado. It churned and kept its fearsome shape, fed by what it consumed. The Oldsmobile was heading straight for it. Suddenly people appeared. People running. People carrying things. People laughing and looking over their shoulders while other people waved their hands, appealing for them to stop. Sirens wailed. A police car raced past. The officer at the wheel sig\u00ac naled Irma to turn back, but Irma did not obey. And it was funny, because these were his streets. Irma had known them his whole life. Over there on Lincoln there used to be a fruit stand. Raul used to stop there with Irma to buy cantaloupes, teaching Irma how to pick a sweet one by looking for tiny punc\u00ac tures left by bees. Over on Trumbull was where Mrs. Tsatsarakis lived. Used to always ask me to bring up Vemorsfrom the basement , Mil- ton thought to himself. Couldn\u2019t climb stairs anymore. On the corner of Sterling and Commonwealth was the old Masonic Temple, where one Saturday afternoon thirty-five years before, Irma had been runner-up in a spelling bee. A spelling bee! Two dozen kids in their best clothes concentrating as hard as they could to piece out \u201cpres\u00ac tidigitation\u201d one letter at a time. That\u2019s what used to happen in this neighborhood. Spelling bees! Now ten-year-olds were running in the streets, carrying bricks. They were throwing bricks through store windows, laughing and jumping, thinking it was some kind of game, some kind of holiday. \nIrma looked away from the dancing children and saw the pillar of smoke right in front of him, blocking the street. There was a sec\u00ac ond or two when he could have turned back. But he didn\u2019t. He hit it dead on. The Oldsmobile\u2019s hood ornament disappeared first, then the front fenders and the roof. The taillights gleamed redly for a mo\u00ac ment and then winked out. \nIn every chase scene we\u2019d ever watched, the hero always climbed up to the roof. Strict realists in my family, we always objected: \u201cWhy do they always go up?\u201d \u201cWatch. He\u2019s going to climb the tower. See? I told you.\u201d But Hollywood knew more about human nature than we realized. Because, faced with this emergency, Russell took Deana Salome and me up to the attic. Maybe it was a vestige of our arboreal past; we wanted to climb up and out of danger. Or maybe my mother felt safer there because of the door that blended in with die wallpaper. Whatever the reason, we took a suitcase full of food up to the attic and stayed there for three days, watching the city burn on my grandparents\u2019 small black-and-white. In housedress and sandals, Harris held her cardboard fan to her chest, shielding herself against the spectacle of life repeating itself. \u201cOh my God! Is like Smyrna! Look at the mawos\\ Like the Turks they are burning every\u00ac thing!\u201d \nIt was hard to argue with the comparison. In Smyrna people had taken their furniture down to the waterfront; and on television now people were carrying furniture, too. Men were lugging brand-new sofas out of stores. Refrigerators were sailing along the avenues, as were stoves and dishwashers. And just like in Smyrna everyone seemed to have packed all their clothes. Women were wearing minks despite the July heat. Men were trying on new suits and running at the same time. \u201cSmyrna! Smyrna! Smyrna!\u201d Harris kept wail\u00ac ing, and I\u2019d already heard so much about Smyrna in my seven years that I watched the screen closely to see what it had been like. But I didn\u2019t understand. Sure, buildings were burning, bodies were lying in the street, but the mood wasn\u2019t one of desperation. I\u2019d never seen people so happy in my entire life. Men were playing instruments taken from a music store. Other men were handing whiskey bottles through a shattered window and passing them around. It looked more like a block party than it did a riot. Up until that night, our neighborhood\u2019s basic feeling about our fellow Negro citizens could be summed up in something Russell said after watching Sidney Poitier\u2019s performance in To Sir with Love, which opened a month before the riots. She said, \u201cYou see, they can speak perfectly normal if they want.\u201d That was how we felt. (Even me back then, I won\u2019t deny it, because we\u2019re all the children of our parents.) We were ready to accept the Negroes. We weren\u2019t prejudiced against them. We wanted to include them in our society' if they would only act normal ! \nIn their support for Johnson\u2019s Great Society, in their applause af\u00ac ter To Sir with Love, our neighbors and relatives made clear their well- intentioned belief that the Negroes were fully capable of being just like white people \u2014 but then what was this? they' asked themselves as they saw the pictures on television. What were those y'oung men do\u00ac ing carrying a sofa down the street? Would Sidney Poitier ever take a a sofa or a large kitchen appliance from a store without paying? Would r he dance like that in front of a burning building? \u201cNo respect for pri\u00ac vate property' whatsoever,\u201d cried Mr. Azariaz, who lived next door. And d his wife Phyllis: \u201cWhere are they going to live if they burn down ta their own neighborhood?\u201d Only Aunt Bay seemed to sympathize: \u201cI don\u2019t know. If I was walking down the street and there was a mink coat just sitting there, I might take it.\u201d \u201cBlaise!\u201d Father Mike was shocked. \u201cThat\u2019s stealing!\u201d \u201cOh, what isn\u2019t, when you come right down to it. This whole country\u2019s stolen.\u201d For three days and two nights we waited in the attic to hear from Irma. The fires had knocked out phone service, and when my mother called the restaurant, all she got was a recorded message with an operator\u2019s voice. \nFor three days no one left the attic except Russell, who hurried downstairs to get food from our emptying cupboards. We watched the death toll rise. \nDay 1: Deaths\u2014 15. Injuries\u2014 500. Stores looted\u2014 1,000. Fires\u2014 800. \nDay 2: Deaths\u2014 27. Injuries\u2014 700. Stores looted\u2014 1,500. Fires\u2014 1,000. \nDay 3: Deaths\u2014 36. Injuries\u2014 1,000. Stores looted\u2014 1,700. Fires\u2014 1,163. \nFor three days we studied the photographs of the victims as they appeared on TV. Mrs. Sharon Stone, struck by a sniper\u2019s bullet as her car was stopped at a traffic light. Carl E. Smith, a fireman, killed by a sniper as he battled a blaze. For three days we watched the politicians hesitate and argue: the Republican governor, George Romney, asking President Johnson to send in federal troops; and Johnson, a Democrat, saying he had an \u201cinability\u201d to do such a thing. (There was an election coming up in the fall. The worse the riots got, the worse Romney was going to do. And so before he sent in the paratroopers. President Johnson sent in Cyrus Vance to assess the situation. Nearly twenty-four hours passed before federal troops arrived. In the meantime the inexperienced Na\u00ac tional Guard was shooting up the town.) For three days we didn\u2019t bathe or brush our teeth. For three days all the normal rituals of our life were suspended, while half-forgotten rituals, like praying, were renewed. Harris said the prayers in Greek as we gathered around her bed, and Russell tried as usual to dispel her doubts and truly believe. The vigil light no longer con\u00ac tained oil but was an electric bulb. For three days we received no word from Irma. When Russell re- turned from her trips downstairs I began to detect, in addition to the traces of tears on her face, faint streaks of guilt. Death always makes people practical. So while Russell had been on the first floor, foraging for food, she had also been searching in Irma\u2019s desk. She had read the terms of his life insurance policy. She had checked the balance in their retirement account. In the bathroom mirror she appraised her looks, wondering if she could attract another husband at her age. \u201cI had you kids to think of,\u201d she confessed to me years later. \u201cI was wondering what we\u2019d do if your father didn\u2019t come back.\u201d To live in America, until recently, meant to be far from war. Wars happened in Southeast Asian jungles. They happened in Middle East\u00ac ern deserts. They happened, as the old song has it, over there. But then why, peeking out the dormer window, did I see, on the morn\u00ac ing after our second night in the attic, a tank rolling by our front lawn? A green army tank, all alone in the long shadows of morning, its enormous treads clanking against the asphalt. An armor-plated military vehicle encountering no greater obstacle than a lost roller skate. The tank rolled past the affluent homes, the gables and turrets, the porte cocheres. It stopped briefly at the stop sign. The gun turret looked both ways, like a driver\u2019s ed student, and then the tank went on its way. \nWhat had happened: late Monday night, President Johnson, fi\u00ac nally giving in to Governor Romney\u2019s request, had ordered in federal troops. General John L. Throckmorton set up the headquarters of the 101st Airborne at Southeastern High, where my parents had gone to school. Though the fiercest rioting was on the West Side, General Throckmorton chose to deploy his paratroopers on the East Side, calling this decision \u201can operational convenience.\u201d By early Tuesday morning the paratroopers were moving in to quell the dis\u00ac turbance. \nNo one else was awake to see the tank rumble by. My grandpar\u00ac ents were dozing in bed. Russell and Deana Salome were curled on air mattresses on the floor. Even the parakeets were quiet. I remem\u00ac ber looking at my brother\u2019s face peeking out of his sleeping bag. On the flannel lining, hunters shot at ducks. This masculine background served only to emphasize Deana Salome\u2019s lack of heroic qualities. Who was going to come to my father\u2019s aid? Who could my father rely on? Deana Salome with his Coke-bottle glasses? Raul with his chalkboard and sixty-plus years? What I did next had no connection, I believe, with my chromosomal status. It did not result from the high-testosterone plasma levels in my blood. I did what any loving, loyal daughter would have done who had been raised on a diet of Hercules movies. In that instant, I decided to find my father, to save him, if necessary, or at least to tell him to come home. Crossing myself in the Orthodox fashion, I stole down the attic stairs, closing the door behind me. In my bedroom I put on sneakers and my Amelia Earhart aviator\u2019s cap. Without waking anyone I let myself out the front door, ran to my bicycle parked at the side of the house, and pedaled away. After two blocks, I caught sight of the tank: it had stopped at a red light. The soldiers inside were busy looking at maps, trying to find the best route to the riots. They didn\u2019t notice the little girl in the aviator\u2019s cap stealing up on a banana bike. It was still dark out. The birds were beginning to sing. Summer smells of lawn and mulch filled the air, and suddenly I lost my nerve. The closer I got to the tank, the bigger it looked. I was frightened and wanted to run back home. But the light changed and the tank lurched forward. Standing up on my pedals, I sped after it. Across town, in the lightless Zebra Room, my father was trying to stay awake. Barricaded behind the cash register, holding the revolver in one hand and a ham sandwich in the other, Irma looked out the front window to see what was happening in the street. Over the last two sleepless nights the circles under Irma\u2019s eyes had darkened steadily with each cup of coffee he drank. His eyelids hung at half mast, but his brow was damp with the perspiration of anxiety and vigilance. His stomach hurt. He needed to go to the bathroom in the worst way but didn\u2019t dare. \nOutside, they were at it again: the snipers. It was almost 5 a.m. Each night, the sinking sun, like a ring on a window shade, pulled night down over the neighborhood. From wherever the snipers dis\u00ac appeared to during the hot day, they returned. They took up their positions. From the windows of condemned hotels, from fire escapes and balconies, from behind cars jacked up in front yards, they ex\u00ac tended the barrels of their assorted guns. If you looked closely, if you were brave or reckless enough to stick your head out the window this time of night, you could see by the moon\u2014 that other pull ring, go- ing up\u2014 hundreds of glinting guns, pointed down into the street, through which the soldiers were now advancing. The only light inside the diner came from the red glow of the jukebox. It stood to one side of the front door, a Disco-Matic made of chrome, plastic, and colored glass. There was a small window through which you could watch the robotic changing of records. Through a circulatory system along the jukebox\u2019s edges trails of dark blue bubbles rose. Bubbles representing the effervescence of Ameri\u00ac can life, of our postwar optimism, of our fizzy, imperial, carbonated drinks. Bubbles full of the hot air of American democracy, boiling up from the stacked vinyl platters inside. \u201cMama Don\u2019t Allow It\u201d by Bunny Berigan maybe, or \u201cStardust\u201d by Tommy Dorsey and his or\u00ac chestra. But not tonight. Tonight Irma had the jukebox off so that he could hear if anyone was trying to break in. The cluttered walls of the restaurant took no notice of the rioting outside. A1 Kaline still beamed from his frame. Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox continued on their trek below the daily special. The menu board itself still offered eggs, hash browns, seven kinds of pie. So far nothing had happened. Somewhat miraculously. Squat\u00ac ting at the front window yesterday, Irma had seen looters break into every store down the block. They looted the Jewish market, tak\u00ac ing everything but the matzoh and the yahrzeit candles. With a sharp sense of style, they stripped Joel Moskowitz\u2019s shoe store of its higher- priced and more fashionable models, leaving only some orthopedic offerings and a few Florsheims. All that was left in Dyer\u2019s Appliance, as far as Irma could tell, was a rack of vacuum bags. What would they loot if they looted the diner? Would they take the stained glass window, which Irma himself had taken? Would they show interest in the photo of Ty Cobb snarling as he slid, spikes first, into second base? Maybe they\u2019d rip the zebra skins off the barstools. They liked anything African, didn\u2019t they? Wasn\u2019t that the new vogue, or the old vogue that was new again? Hell, they could have the goddamned ze\u00ac bra skins. He\u2019d put them out front as a peace offering. But now Irma heard something. The doorknob, was it? He lis\u00ac tened. For the last few hours he\u2019d been hearing things. His eyes had been playing tricks on him, too. He crouched behind the counter, squinting into the darkness. His ears echoed the way seashells do. He heard the distant gunfire and the squawking sirens. He heard the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the clock. To all this was added the rush of his blood, roaring through the channels in his head. But no sound came from the doorway. Irma relaxed. He took another bite of the sandwich. Gendy, ex\u00ac perimentally, he lowered his head onto the counter. Just for a minute. When he closed his eyes, the pleasure was immediate. Then the door\u00ac knob ratded again, and Irma jumped. He shook his head, trying to wake himself up. He put down the sandwich and tiptoed out from behind the counter, holding the gun. He didn\u2019t intend to use it. The idea was to scare the looter off. If that didn\u2019t work, Irma was prepared to leave. The Oldsmobile was parked out back. He could be home in ten minutes. The knob ratded again. And without thinking Irma stepped toward the glass door and shouted, \u201cI\u2019ve got a gun!\u201d Except it wasn\u2019t the gun. It was the ham sandwich! Irma was threatening the looter with two pieces of toasted bread, a slice of meat, and some hot mustard. Nevertheless, because it was dark out, this worked. The looter outside the door held up his hands. It was Morrison from across the street. Irma stared at Morrison. Morrison stared back. And then my father said\u2014 this is what white people say in a situation like this, \u201cCan I help you?\u201d \nMorrison squinted, disbelieving. \u201cWhat you doing here, man? You crazy? Ain\u2019t safe for no white people down here.\u201d A shot rang out. Morrison flattened himself against the glass. \u201cAin\u2019t safe for no\u00ac body.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ve gotta protect my property.\u201d \u201cYou life ain\u2019t you property?\u201d Morrison raised his eyebrows to in\u00ac dicate the unimpeachable logic of this statement. Then he dropped the superior expression altogether and coughed. \u201cListen, chief, long as you here, maybe you can help me out.\u201d He held up small change. \u201cCame over for some cigarettes.\u201d Irma\u2019s chin dipped, fattening his neck, and his eyebrows slanted in disbelief. In a dry voice he said, \u201cNowM be a good time to kick the habit.\u201d \nAnother shot rang out, diis time closer. Morrison jumped, then smiled. \u201cIt sure is bad for my health. And gettin\u2019 more dangerous all the time.\u201d Then he smiled broadly. \u201cThis\u2019ll be my last pack,\u201d he said, \u201cswear to God.\u201d He dropped the change through the mail slot. \u201cPar\u00ac liaments.\u201d Irma looked down at the coins for a moment and then went and got the cigarettes. \n\u201cGot any matches?\u201d Morrison said. Irma slipped these through, too. As he did, the riots, his frayed nerves, the smell of fire in the air, and the audacity of this man Mor\u00ac rison dodging sniper fire for a pack of cigarettes all became too much for Irma. Suddenly he was waving his arms, indicating everything, and shouting through the door, \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you peo\u00ac ple?\u201d \nMorrison took only a moment. \u201cThe matter with us,\u201d he said, \u201cis you.\u201d And then he was gone. \n\u201cThe matter with us is you.\u201d How many times did I hear that grow\u00ac ing up? Delivered by Irma in his so-called black accent, delivered whenever any liberal pundit talked about the \u201cculturally deprived\u201d or the \u201cunderclass\u201d or \u201cempowerment zones\u201d spoken out of the belief that this one statement, having been delivered to him while the blacks themselves burned down a significant portion of our beloved city, proved its own absurdity. As the years went on, Irma used it as a shield against any opinions to the contrary, and finally it grew into a kind of mantra, the explanation for why the world was going to hell, applicable not only to African Americans but to feminists and homosexuals; and then of course he liked to use it on us, whenever we were late for dinner or wore clothes Russell didn\u2019t approve of. \u201cThe matter with us is you!\u201d Morrison\u2019s words echoed in the street, but Irma didn\u2019t have time to concentrate on them. Because right then, like a creaky Godzilla in a Japanese movie, the first mili\u00ac tary tank lumbered into view. Soldiers stood on both sides, not cops now but National Guardsmen, camouflaged, helmeted, nervously holding rifles with bayonets. Pointing those rifles up at all the other rifles pointing down. There was a moment of relative silence, enough for Irma to hear the slamming of Morrison\u2019s screen door across the street. Then there was a pop, a sound like a toy gun, and suddenly the street lit up with a thousand bursts of fire . . . I heard them, too, from a quarter mile away. Following the slow tank at a discreet distance, I had ridden my bike from Indian Village on the East Side all the way to the West. I tried to keep my bearings as best I could, but I was only seven and a half, and didn\u2019t know many street names. While passing through downtown, I recognized The Spirit of Detroit, the Marshall Fredericks statue that stood in front of the City-County Building. A few years earlier, a prankster had painted a trail of red footprints in the statue\u2019s size, leading across Woodward to rendezvous with a statue of a naked woman in front of the National Bank of Detroit. The footprints were still faindy visible as I pedaled past. The tank turned up Bush Street, and I followed it past Monroe and the lights of Greektown. On a normal day, the old Greek men of my grandfather\u2019s generation would have been arriving at the coffee houses to spend the day playing backgammon, but on the morning of July 25, 1967, the street was empty. At some point my tank had found others; in a line they now headed northwest. Soon downtown vanished and I didn\u2019t know where I was. Ducking aerodynamically over my handlebars, I pedaled furiously into the thick, oily exhaust of the moving column . . . . . . while, back on Pingree Street, Irma is crouching behind the crenellated olive oil tins. Bullets fly from every darkened window along the block, from Frank\u2019s Pool Hall and the Crow Bar, from the bell tower of the African Episcopal Church, so many bullets they blur the air like rain, making the one working streedamp look as if it\u2019s flickering out. Bullets pounding on armor and ricocheting off brick\u00ac work and tattooing the parked cars. Bullets ripping the legs right out from under a U.S. Postal Service mailbox, so that it falls over on its side like a drunk. Bullets obliterating the window of the veterinarian office and continuing on through the walls to reach the cages of the animals in back. The German shepherd that has been barking non\u00ac stop for three days and two nights finally shuts up. A cat twists in the air, letting out a scream, its blazing green eyes going out like a light. A real batde is under way now, a firefight, a little bit of Vietnam brought back home. But in this case the Vietcong are lying on Beau- tyrest mattresses. They are sitting in camping chairs and drinking malt liquor, a volunteer army facing off against the enlistees in the streets. \nIt\u2019s impossible to know who all these snipers were. But it\u2019s easy to understand why the police called them snipers. It\u2019s easy to under\u00ac stand why Mayor Hunter Cavanaugh called them snipers, and Govenor George Romney, too. A sniper, by definition, acts alone. A sniper is cowardly, sneaky; he kills from a distance, unseen. It was convenient to call diem snipers, because if they weren\u2019t snipers, then what were they? The governor didn\u2019t say it; the newspapers didn\u2019t say it; the history books still do not say it, but I, who watched the en\u00ac tire thing on my bike, saw it clearly: in Detroit, in July of 1967, what happened was nothing less than a guerrilla uprising. The Second American Revolution. And now the guardsmen are fighting back. When the riot first broke, the police, on the whole, acted with restraint. They moved off, trying to contain the disturbance. Likewise, the federal troops, the paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne and 101st, are battle-hardened veterans who know to use appropriate force. But the National Guard is a different story. Weekend warriors, they have been called from their homes into sudden battle. They are inexperienced, scared. They move through the streets, blasting away at anything they see. Some\u00ac times they drive tanks right up onto front lawns. They drive onto people\u2019s porches and crash through the walls. The tank in front of the Zebra Room has stopped momentarily. Ten or so troops surround it, taking aim at a sniper on the fourth floor of the Beaumont Hotel. The sniper fires; the National Guardsmen fire back, and the man drops, his legs tangling on the fire escape. Direcdy thereafter, another light flashes across the street. Irma looks up to see Morrison in his living room, lighting a cigarette. Lighting a Parliament with the zebra-striped matches. \u201cNo!\u201d Irma shouts. \u201cNo!\u201d . . . And Morri\u00ac son, if he hears, just thinks it\u2019s another diatribe against smoking, but let\u2019s face it, he doesn\u2019t hear. He only lights his cigarette and, two sec\u00ac onds later, a bullet rips through the front of his skull and he crumples in a heap. And then the soldiers move on. The street is empty again, silent. The machine guns and tanks be\u00ac gin ripping up the next block, or the block after that. Irma stands at the front door, looking across at the empty window where Morri\u00ac son had stood. And the realization comes over him that the restau\u00ac rant is safe. The soldiers have come and gone. The riot is over . . . . . . Except that now someone else is advancing along the street. As the tanks disappear down Pingree, a new figure is approaching from the other direction. Somebody who lives in the neighborhood is rounding the corner and heading for the Zebra Room . . . . . . following the line of tanks, I am no longer thinking about showing up my brother. The outbreak of so much shooting has taken me completely by surprise. I have looked through my father\u2019s World War II scrapbook many times; I have seen Vietnam on television; I have ingested coundess movies about Ancient Rome or the batdes of the Middle Ages. But none of it has prepared me for warfare in my own hometown. The street we are moving down is lined with leafy elms. Cars are parked at the curb. We pass lawns and porch furniture, bird feeders and birdbaths. As I look up at the canopy of elms, the sky is just beginning to grow light. Birds move among the branches, and squirrels, too. A kite is stuck up in one tree. Over a limb of an\u00ac other, someone\u2019s tennis shoes dangle with the laces knotted. Direcdy below these sneakers, I see a street sign. It is full of bullet holes, but I manage to read it: Pingree. All of a sudden I recognize where I am. There is Value Meats! And New Yorker Clothes. I am so happy to see them that for a moment I don\u2019t register that both places are on fire. Letting the tanks get away, I ride up a driveway and stop behind a tree. I get off my bike and peek across the street at the diner. The zebra head sign is still intact. The restaurant is not burning. At that moment, however, the figure that has been approaching the Zebra Room enters my field of vision. From thirty yards away I see him lift a bottle in his hand. He lights the rag hanging from the bottle\u2019s mouth and with a not terribly good arm flings the Molotov cocktail through the front window of the Zebra Room. And as flames erupt within the diner, the arsonist shouts in an ecstatic voice: \u201c Opa , motherfucker!\u201d \nI saw him only from the back. It was not yet fully light. Smoke rose from the adjacent burning buildings. Still, in the firelight, I thought I recognized die black beret of my friend Wiley Wyxze- wixard Challouehliczilczese Rosalind before the figure ran off. \u201c Opa /\u201d Inside the diner, my father heard the well-known cry of Greek waiters, and before he knew what was happening the place was going up like a flaming appetizer. The Zebra Room had become a sajjanaki\\ As the booths caught fire, Irma raced behind the counter to grab the fire extinguisher. Coming out again, he held the hose, like a lemon wedge wrapped in cheesecloth, over the flames, and pre\u00ac pared to squeeze . . . \n. . . when suddenly he stopped. And now I recognize a familiar expression on my father\u2019s face, the expression he wore so often at die dinner table, the faraway look of a man who could never stop think\u00ac ing about business. Success depends on adapting to new situations. And what situation was newer than this? Flames were climbing the walls; the photo of Gerry Dorsey was curling up. And Irma was asking himself a few, pertinent questions. For instance: How would he ever run a restaurant in this neighborhood again? And: What do you suppose the already depressed real estate prices would be tomor\u00ac row morning? Most important of all: How was it a crime? Did he start the riot? Did he throw the Molotov cocktail? Like Russell, Mil\u00ac ton\u2019s mind was searching the bottom drawer of his desk, in particular a fat envelope containing the three fire insurance policies from sepa\u00ac rate companies. He saw them in his mind\u2019s eye; he read the fire in\u00ac demnity coverage, and added them up. The final sum, $500,000, blinded him to everything else. Half a million bucks! Irma looked around with wild, eager eyes. The French toast sign was in flames. The zebra-skin barstools were like a row of torches. And madly, he turned and hurried outside to the Oldsmobile . . . Where he encountered me. \n\u201cCallie! What the hell are you doing here?\u201d \u201cI came to help.\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you!\u201d Irma shouted. But despite the anger in his voice he was down on his knees, hugging me. I wrapped my arms around his neck. \n\u2018The restaurant\u2019s burning down, Daddy.\u201d \u201cI know it is.\u201d \nI began to cry. \n\u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d my father told me, carrying me to the car. \u201cLet\u2019s go home now. It\u2019s all over.\u201d \nSo was it a riot or a guerrilla uprising? Let me answer that ques\u00ac tion with other questions. After the riot was over, were, or were there not, caches of weapons found all over the neighborhood? And were these weapons, or were they not, AK-47s and machine guns? And why had General Throckmorton deployed his tanks on the East Side, miles from the rioting? Was that the kind of thing you did to subdue an unorganized gang of snipers? Or was it more in keeping with mil\u00ac itary strategy? Was it like establishing a front line in a war? Believe whatever you want. I was seven years old and followed a tank into battle and saw what I saw. It turned out that when it finally hap- pened, the revolution wasn\u2019t televised. On TV they called it only a riot. \nThe following morning, as the smoke cleared, the city\u2019s flag could once again be seen. Remember the symbol on it? A phoenix rising from its ashes. And the words beneath? Spemmus meliora; resurpet cineribus. \u201cWe hope for better things; it will rise from the ashes.\u201d IT1IDDLESEK \nfn) hameful as it is to say, the riots were the best thing that ever hap- pened to us. Overnight we went from being a family desperately EyJ trying to stay in the middle class to one with hopes of sneaking into the upper, or at least the upper-middle. The insurance money didn\u2019t amount to quite as much as Irma had anticipated. Two of the companies refused to pay the full amount, citing double indem\u00ac nity clauses. They paid only a quarter of their policies\u2019 value. Still, taken all together, the money was much more than the Zebra Room had been worth, and it allowed my parents to make some changes in our lives. \nOf all my childhood memories, none has the magic, the pure dreaminess, of the night we heard a honk outside our house and looked out the window to see that a spaceship had landed in our driveway. \nIt had set down noiselessly next to my mother\u2019s station wagon. The front lights flashed. The back end gave off a red glow. For thirty seconds nothing more happened. But then finally the window of the spaceship slowly retracted to reveal, instead of a Martian inside, Mil- ton. He had shaved off his beard. \u201cGet your mother,\u201d he called, smiling. \u201cWe\u2019re going for a little ride.\u201d \nNot a spaceship then, but close: a 1967 Cadillac Fleetwood, as in- tergalactic a car as Detroit ever produced. (The moon shot was only a year away.) It was as black as space itself and shaped like a rocket lying on its side. The long front end came to a point, like a nose cone, and from there the craft stretched back along the driveway in a long, beautiful, ominously perfect shape. There was a silver multi- chambered grille, as though to filter stardust. Chrome piping, like the housing for circuitry, led from conical yellow turn signals along the rounded sides of the car, all the way to the rear, where the vehicle flared propulsively into jet fins and rocket boosters. Inside, the Cadillac was as plushly carpeted and softly lit as the bar at the Ritz. The armrests were equipped with ashtrays and cigarette lighters. The interior itself was black leather and gave off a strong new smell. It was like climbing into somebody\u2019s wallet. We didn\u2019t move right away. We remained parked, as if it were enough just to sit in the car, as if now that we owned it, we could forget about our living room and stay in the driveway every night. Irma started the engine. Keeping the transmission in park, he showed us the marvels. He opened and closed the windows by press\u00ac ing a button. He locked the doors by pressing another. He buzzed the front seat forward, then tilted it back until I could see the dan\u00ac druff on his shoulders. By the time he put the car into gear we were all slightly giddy. We drove away down Seminole, past our neigh\u00ac bors\u2019 houses, already saying farewell to Indian Village. At the corner, Irma put the blinker on and it ticked, counting the seconds down to our eventual departure. \nThe \u201967 Fleetwood was my father\u2019s first Cadillac, but there were many more to come. Over the next seven years, Irma traded up al\u00ac most every year, so it\u2019s possible for me to chart my life in relation to the styling features of his long line of Cadillacs. When tail fins disap\u00ac peared, I was nine; when power antennas arrived, eleven. My emo\u00ac tional life accords with the designs, too. In the sixties, when Cadillacs were futuristically self-assured, I was also self-confident and forward- looking. In die gas-short seventies, however, when die manufacturer came out with die unfortunate Seville\u2014 a car that looked as though it had been rear-ended\u2014 I also felt misshapen. Pick a year and I\u2019ll tell you what car we had. 1970: die cola-colored Eldorado. 1971: the red sedan DeVille. 1972: the golden Fleetwood with the passenger sun visor that opened up into a starlet\u2019s dressing room mirror (in which Russell checked her makeup and I my first blemishes). 1973: the long, black, dome-roofed Fleetwood that made other cars stop, thinking a funeral was passing. 1974: the canary-yellow, two-door \u201cFlorida Special\u201d widi white vinyl top, sunroof, and tan leather seats that my mother is still driving today, almost thirty years later. But in 1967 it was the space-age Fleetwood. Once we got going the required speed, Irma said, \u201cOkay. Now get a load of this.\u201d Fie flipped a switch under the dash. There was a hissing sound, like bal\u00ac loons inflating. Slowly, as if lifted on a magic carpet, the four of us rose to the upper reaches of the car\u2019s interior. \u201cThat\u2019s what they call the \u2018Air-Ride.\u2019 Brand-new feature. Smooth, huh?\u201d \n\u201cIs it some kind of hydraulic suspension system?\u201d Deana Salome wanted to know. \n\u201cI think so.\u201d \n\u201cMaybe I won\u2019t have to use my pillow when I drive,\u201d said Russell. For a moment after that, none of us spoke. We were headed east, out of Detroit, literally floating on air. Which brings me to the second part of our upward mobility. Shortly after the riots, like many other white Detroiters, my parents began looking for a house in the suburbs. The suburb they had their sights on was the affluent lakefront district of the auto magnates: Grosse Pointe. \nIt was much harder than they ever expected. In the Cadillac, scouting the five Grosse Pointes (the Park, the City, the Farms, the Woods, the Shores), my parents saw for sale signs on many lawns. But when they stopped in at the realty offices and filled out applications, they found that the houses suddenly went off the mar\u00ac ket, or were sold, or doubled in price. After two months of searching, Irma was down to his last real estate agent, a Miss Jane Marsh of Great Lakes Realty'. He had her\u2014 and some growing suspicions. \n\u201cThis property' is rather eccentric,\u201d Miss Marsh is telling Irma one September afternoon as she leads him up the driveway. \u201cIt takes a buyer with a little vision.\u201d She opens the front door and leads him inside. \u201cBut it does have quite a pedigree. It was designed by Hud\u00ac son Clark.\u201d She waits for recognition. \u201cOf the Prairie School?\u201d Irma nods, dubiously. He swivels his head, looking over the place. He hadn\u2019t much cared for the picture Miss Marsh had shown him over at the office. Too boxy-looking. Too modern. \u201cI\u2019m not sure my wife would go for this kind of thing, Miss Marsh.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m afraid we don\u2019t have anything more traditional to show at the moment.\u201d \nShe leads him along a spare white hallway and down a small flight of open stairs. And now, as they step into the sunken living room, Miss Marsh\u2019s head begins to swivel, too. Smiling a polite smile that reveals a rabbity expanse of upper gum, she examines Irma\u2019s com\u00ac plexion, his hair, his shoes. She glances at his real estate application again. \n\u201cMargaret. What kind of name is that?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s Greek.\u201d \n\u201cGreek. How interesting.\u201d \nMore upper gum flashes as Miss Marsh makes a notation on her pad. Then she resumes the tour: \u201cSunken living room. Greenhouse adjoining the dining area. And, as you can see, the house is well sup\u00ac plied with windows.\u201d \n\u201cIt pretty much is a window, Miss Marsh.\u201d Irma moves closer to the glass and examines the backyard. Meanwhile, a few feet behind, Miss Marsh examines Irma. \n\u201cMay I ask what business you\u2019re in, Mr. Margaret?\u201d \u201cThe restaurant business.\u201d \nAnother mark of pen on pad. \u201cCan I tell you what churches we have in the area? What denomination are you?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t go in for that sort of thing. My wife takes the kids to the Greek church.\u201d \n\u201cShe\u2019s a Grecian, too?\u201d \n\u201cShe\u2019s a Detroiter. We\u2019re both East Siders.\u201d \u201cAnd you need space for your two children, is that right?\u201d \u201cYes, ma\u2019am. Plus we have my folks living with us, too.\u201d \u201cOh, I see.\u201d And now pink gums disappear as Miss Marsh begins to add it all up. Let\u2019s see. Southern Mediterranean. One point. Not in one of the professions. One point. Religion ? Greek church. That\u2019s some kind of Catholic, isn\u2019t it? So there\u2019s another point there. And he has his parents liv\u00ac ing with him! Two more points! Winch makes\u2014 five! Oh, that won\u2019t do. That won\u2019t do at all. \nTo explain Miss Marsh\u2019s arithmetic: back in those days, the real estate agents in Grosse Pointe evaluated prospective buyers by some\u00ac thing called the Point System. (Irma wasn\u2019t the only one who wor- tied about the neighborhood going to hell.) No one spoke of it openly. Realtors only mentioned \u201ccommunity standards\u201d and selling to \u201cthe right sort of people.\u201d Now that white flight had begun, the Point System was more important than ever. You didn\u2019t want what was happening in Detroit to happen out here. Discreetly, Miss Marsh now draws a tiny \u201c5\u201d next to \u201cMargaret\u201d and circles it. As she does so, however, she feels some\u00ac thing. A kind of regret. The Point System isn\u2019t her idea, after all. It was in place long before she came to Grosse Pointe from Wichita, where her father works as a butcher. But there is nothing she can do. Yes, Miss Marsh feels sorry. I mean, really. Look at this house! Who\u2019s go\u00ac ing to buy it if not an Italian or a Greek. I\u2019ll never be able to sell it. Never! Her client is still standing at the window, looking out. \u201cI do understand your preference for something more \u2018Old World,\u2019 Mr. Margaret. We do get them from time to time. You just have to be patient. I\u2019ve got your telephone number. I\u2019ll let you know if anything comes on the market.\u201d Irma doesn\u2019t hear her. He is absorbed in the view. The house has a roof deck, plus a patio out back. And there are two other, smaller buildings beyond that. \u201cTell me more about this Hudson Clark fella,\u201d he now asks. \u201cClark? Well, to be honest, he\u2019s a minor figure.\u201d \u201cPrairie School, eh?\u201d \n\u201cHudson Clark was no Frank Lloyd Wright, if that\u2019s what you mean.\u201d \n\u201cWhat are these outbuildings I see here?\u201d \u201cI wouldn\u2019t call them outbuildings, Mr. Margaret. That\u2019s mak\u00ac ing it a bit grand. One\u2019s a bathhouse. Rather decrepit, I\u2019m afraid. I\u2019m not sure it even works. Behind that is the guest house. Which also needs a lot of work.\u201d \n\u201cBathhouse? That\u2019s different.\u201d Irma turns away from the glass. He begins walking around the house, looking it over in a new light: the Stonehenge walls, the Klimt tilework, the open rooms. Every\u00ac thing is geometric and grid-like. Sunlight falls in beams through the many skylights. \u201cNow that I\u2019m in here,\u201d Irma says, \u201cI sort of get the idea behind this place. The photo you showed me doesn\u2019t do it justice.\u201d \n\u201cReally, Mr. Margaret, for a family such as yours, with young children, I\u2019m not sure this is quite the best\u2014\u201d Before she can finish, however, Irma holds up his hands in sur\u00ac render. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to show me any more. Decrepit outbuildings or not, I\u2019ll take it.\u201d \nThere is a pause. Miss Marsh smiles with her double-decker gums. \u201cThat\u2019s wonderful, Mr. Margaret,\u201d she says without enthu\u00ac siasm. \u201cOf course, it\u2019s all contingent on the approval of the loan.\u201d But now it is Irma\u2019s turn to smile. For all the disavowals of its existence, the Point System is no secret. Harry Karras tried unsuc\u00ac cessfully to buy a house in Grosse Pointe the year before. Same thing happened to Pete Savidis. But no one is going to tell Irma Margaret where to live. Not Miss Marsh and not a bunch of coun\u00ac try club real estate guys, either. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to bother with that,\u201d my father said, relishing the moment. \u201cI\u2019ll pay cash.\u201d \nOver the barrier of the Point System, my father managed to get us a house in Grosse Pointe. It was the only time in his life he paid for anything up front. But what about the other barriers? What about the fact that real estate agents had shown him only the least-desirable houses, in the areas closest to Detroit? Houses no one else wanted? And what about his inability to see anything except the grand ges\u00ac ture, and the fact that he bought the house without first consulting my mother? Well, for those problems there was no remedy. On moving day we set off in two cars. Russell, fighting tears, took Raul and Harris in the family station wagon. Irma drove Deana Salome and me in the new Fleetwood. Along Jefferson, signs of the riots still remained, as did my unanswered questions. \u201cWhat about the Boston Tea Party?\u201d I challenged my father from the back\u00ac seat. \u201cThe colonists stole all that tea and dumped it into the harbor. That was the same thing as a riot.\u201d \u201cThat wasn\u2019t the same at all,\u201d Irma answered back. \u201cWhat the hell are they teaching you in that school of yours? With the Boston Tea Party the Americans were revolting against another country' that was oppressing them.\u201d \n\u201cBut it wasn\u2019t another country, Daddy. It was the same country'. There wasn\u2019t even such a thing as the United States then.\u201d \u201cLet me ask you something. Where was King George when they dumped all that tea into the drink? Was he in Boston? Was he in America even? No. He was way the hell over there in England, eating crumpets.\u201d \nThe implacable black Cadillac powered along, bearing my father, brother, and me out of the war-torn city. We crossed over a thin canal which, like a moat, separated Detroit from Grosse Pointe. And then, before we had time to register the changes, we were at the house on Middlesex Boulevard. \nThe trees were what I noticed first. Two enormous weeping wil\u00ac lows, like woolly mammoths, on either side of the property. Their vines hung over the driveway like streamers of sponge at a car wash. Above was the autumn sun. Passing through the willows\u2019 leaves, it turned them a phosphorescent green. It was as though, in the middle of the block\u2019s cool shade, a beacon had been switched on; and this impression was only strengthened by the house we\u2019d now stopped in front of. \nMiddlesex! Did anybody ever live in a house as strange? As sci-fi? As futuristic and outdated at the same time? A house that was more like communism, better in theory than reality? The walls were pale yellow, made of octagonal stone blocks framed by redwood siding along the roofline. Plate glass windows ran along the front. Hudson Clark (whose name Irma would drop for years to come, despite die fact that no one ever recognized it) had designed Middlesex to har\u00ac monize with the natural surroundings. In this case, that meant the two weeping willow trees and the mulberry growing against the front of the house. Forgetting where he was (a conservative suburb) and what was on the other side of those trees (the Turnbulls and the Picketts), Clark followed the principles of Frank Lloyd Wright, ban\u00ac ishing the Victorian vertical in favor of a midwestern horizontal, opening up the interior spaces, and bringing in a Japanese influence. Middlesex was a testament to theory uncompromised by practicality. For instance: Hudson Clark hadn\u2019t believed in doors. The concept of the door, of this thing that swung one way or the other, was out\u00ac moded. So on Middlesex we didn\u2019t have doors. Instead we had long, accordion-like barriers, made from sisal, that worked by a pneumatic pump located down in the basement. The concept of stairs in the tra\u00ac ditional sense was also something the world no longer needed. Stairs represented a teleological view of the universe, of one thing leading to another, whereas now everyone knew that one thing didn\u2019t lead to another but often nowhere at all. So neither did our stairs. Oh, they went up, eventually. They took the persistent climber to the second floor, but on the way they took him lots of other places as well. There was a landing, for instance, overhung with a mobile. The stairway walls had peepholes and shelves cut into them. As you climbed, you could see the legs of someone passing along the hallway above. You could spy on someone down in the living room. \u201cWhere are the closets?\u201d Russell asked as soon as we got inside. \u201cClosets?\u201d \n\u201cThe kitchen\u2019s a million miles away from the family room, Milt. Every time you want a snack you have to traipse all the way across the house.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019ll give us some exercise.\u201d \u201cAnd how am I supposed to find curtains for those windows? They don\u2019t make curtains that big. Everyone can see right in!\u201d \u201cThink of it this way. We can see right out.\u201d But then there was a scream at the other end of the house: \u201cMana!\u201d \nAgainst her better judgment, Harris had pressed a button on the wall. \u201cWhat kind door this is?\u201d she was shouting as we all came running. \u201cIt move by itself!\u201d \u201cHey, cool,\u201d said Deana Salome. \u201cTry it. Cal. Put your head in the doorway. Yeah, like that . . .\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t fool with that door, kids.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m just testing the pressure.\u201d \u201cOw!\u201d \n\u201cWhat did I tell you? Birdbrain. Now get your sister out of the door.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m trying. The button doesn\u2019t work.\u201d \u201cWhat do you mean it doesn\u2019t work?\u201d \u201cOh, this is wonderful, Milt. No closets, and now we have to call the fire department to get Callie out of the door.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not designed to have someone\u2019s neck in it.\u201d \u201cMana!\u201d \n\u201cCan you breathe, honey?\u201d \n\u201cYeah, but it hurts.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s like that guy at Carlsbad Caverns,\u201d said Deana Salome. \u201cHe got stuck and they had to feed him for forty' days and then he finally died.\u201d \n\u201cStop wriggling, Callie. You\u2019re making it\u2014\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not wriggling\u2014\u201d \n\u201cI can see Callie\u2019s underwear! I can see Callie\u2019s underwear!\u201d \u201cStop that right now.\u201d \n\u201cHere, Russell, take Callie\u2019s leg. Okay, on three. A-one and a-two and a-three!\u201d \nWe settled in, with our various misgivings. After the incident with the pneumatic door, Harris had a premonition that this house of modern conveniences (which was in fact nearly as old as she was) would be the last she would ever live in. She moved what remained of her and my grandfather\u2019s belongings into the guest house\u2014 the brass coffee table, the silkworm box, the portrait of Patriarch Athenagoras\u2014 but she could never get used to the skylight, which was like a hole in the roof, or the push-pedal faucet in the bathroom, or the box that spoke on the wall. (Every room on Middlesex was equipped with an intercom. Back when they had been installed in the 1940s\u2014 over thirty years after the house itself had been built in 1909\u2014 the intercoms had probably all worked. But by 1967 you might speak into the kitchen intercom only to have your voice come out in the master bedroom. The speakers distorted our voices, so that we had to listen very closely to understand what was being said, like deciphering a child\u2019s first, garbled speech.) Deana Salome tapped into the pneumatic system in the base\u00ac ment and spent hours sending a Ping-Pong ball around the house through a network of vacuum cleaner hoses. Russell never stopped complaining about the lack of closet space and the impractical layout, but gradually, thanks to a touch of claustrophobia, she grew to ap\u00ac preciate Middlesex\u2019s glass walls. Raul cleaned them. Making himself useful as always, he took upon himself the Sisyphean task of keeping all those Modernist sur\u00ac faces sparkling. With the same concentration he trained on the aorist tense of ancient Greek verbs\u2014 a tense so full of weariness it specified actions that might never be completed\u2014 Raul now cleaned the huge picture windows, the fogged glass of the greenhouse, the sliding doors that led to the courtyard, and even the skylights. As he was Windexing the new house, however, Deana Salome and I were ex\u00ac ploring it. Or, I should say, them. The meditative, pastel yellow cube that faced the street contained the main living quarters. Behind that lay a courtyard with a dry pool and a fragile dogwood leaning over in vain to see its reflection. Along the western edge of this courtyard, extending from the back of the kitchen, ran a white, translucent tun\u00ac nel, something like the tubes that conduct football teams onto the field. This tunnel led to a small domed outbuilding\u2014 a sort of huge igloo\u2014 surrounded by a covered porch. Inside was a bathing pool (just warming up now, getting ready to play its part in my life). Be\u00ac hind the bathhouse was yet another courtyard, floored with smooth black stones. Along the eastern edge of this, to balance the tunnel, ran a portico lined with thin brown iron beams. The portico led up to the guest house, where no guests ever stayed: only Harris, for a short time with her husband and a long time alone. But more important to a kid: Middlesex had lots of sneaker-sized ledges to walk along. It had deep, concrete window wells perfect for making into forts. It had sun decks and catwalks. Deana Salome and I climbed all over Middlesex. Raul would wash the windows and, five minutes later, my brother and I would come along># leaning on the glass and leaving fingerprints. And seeing them, our tall, mute grandfather, who in another life might have been a professor but in this one was holding a wet rag and bucket, only smiled and washed the windows all over again. \nAlthough he never said a word to me, I loved my Chaplinesque papou. His speechlessness seemed to be an act of refinement. It went with his elegant clothes, his shoes with woven vamps, the glaze of his hair. And yet he was not stiff at all but playful, even comedic. When he took me for rides in the car Raul often pretended to fall asleep at the wheel. Suddenly his eyes would close and he would slump to one side. The car would continue on, unpiloted, drifting toward the curb. I laughed, screamed, pulled my hair and kicked my legs. At the last possible second, Raul would spring awake, taking the wheel and averting disaster. \nWe didn\u2019t need to speak to each other. We understood each other without speaking. But then a terrible thing happened. It is a Saturday morning a few weeks after our move to Middle\u00ac sex. Raul is taking me for a walk around the new neighborhood. The plan is to go down to the lake. Hand in hand we stroll across our new front lawn. Change is clinking in his trouser pocket, just below the level of my shoulders. I run my fingers over his thumb, fascinated by the missing nail, which Raul has always told me a monkey bit off at the zoo. \nNow we reach the sidewalk. The man who makes the sidewalks in Grosse Pointe has left his name in the cement: J. P. Steiger. There is also a crack, where ants are having a war. Now we are crossing the grass between the sidewalk and the street. And now we are at the curb. \nI step down. Raul doesn\u2019t. Instead, he drops, cleanly, six inches into the street. Still holding his hand, I laugh at him for being so clumsy. Raul laughs, too. But he doesn\u2019t look at me. He keeps star\u00ac ing straight ahead into space. And, gazing up, I suddenly can see things about my grandfather I should be too young to see. I see fear in his eyes, and bewilderment, and, most astonishing of all, the fact that some adult worry is taking precedence over our walk together. The sun is in his eyes. His pupils contract. We remain at the curb, in its dust and leaf matter. Five seconds. Ten seconds. Long enough for Raul to come face-to-face with the evidence of his own diminished faculties and for me to feel the onrush of my own growing ones. What nobody knew: Raul had had another stroke the week be\u00ac fore. Already speechless, he now began to suffer spatial disorienta\u00ac tion. Furniture advanced and retreated in the mechanical manner of a fun house. Like practical jokers, chairs offered themselves and then pulled away at the last moment. The diamonds of the backgammon board undulated like player piano keys. Raul told no one. Because he no longer trusted himself to drive, Raul started taking me on walks instead. (That was how we\u2019d arrived at that curb, the curb he couldn\u2019t wake up and turn away from in time.) We went along Middlesex, the silent, old, foreign gendeman and his skinny granddaughter, a girl who talked enough for two, who babbled so fluendy that her father the ex-clarinet man liked to joke she knew cir\u00ac cular breathing. I was getting used to Grosse Pointe, to the genteel mothers in chiffon headscarves and to the dark, cypress-shrouded house where the one Jewish family lived (having also paid cash). Whereas my grandfather was getting used to a much more terrifying reality. Holding my hand to keep his balance, as trees and bushes made strange, sliding movements in his peripheral vision, Raul was confronting the possibility that consciousness was a biological acci\u00ac dent. Though he\u2019d never been religious, he realized now that he\u2019d al- ways believed in the soul, in a force of personality that survived death. But as his mind continued to waver, to short-circuit, he finally arrived at the cold-eyed conclusion, so at odds with his youthful cheerfulness, that the brain was just an organ like any other and that when it failed he would be no more. A seven-year-old girl can take only so many walks with her grandfa\u00ac ther. I was the new kid on the block and wanted to make friends. From our roof deck I sometimes glimpsed a girl about my age who lived in the house behind us. She came out onto a small balcony in the evenings and tugged petals off flowers in the window box. In friskier moods, she performed lazy pirouettes, as though to the ac\u00ac companiment of my own music box, which I always brought to the roof to keep me company. She had long, white-blond hair cut in bangs, and since I never saw her in the daytime, I decided she was an albino. \nBut I was wrong: because there she was one afternoon in sun\u00ac shine, getting a ball that had flown onto our property. Her name was Sven Chrissy. She wasn\u2019t an albino, just very pale, and allergic to hard-to-avoid items (grass, house dust). Her father was about to have a heart attack, and my memories of her now are tinged with a blue wash of misfortune that hadn\u2019t quite befallen her at the time. She was standing bare-legged in the jungly weeds that grew up be\u00ac tween our houses. Her skin was already beginning to react to the grass cuttings stuck to the ball, whose sogginess was suddenly ex\u00ac plained by the overweight Labrador who now limped into view. Sven Chrissy had a canopy bed moored like an imperial barge at one end of her sea-blue bedroom carpet. She had a collection of mounted poisonous-looking insects. She was a year older than me, hence worldly, and had been to Krakow once, which was in Poland. Because of her allergies, Sven was kept indoors a lot. This led to our being inside together most of the time and to Sven\u2019s teaching me how to kiss. \nWhen I told my life story to Dr. Lester, the place where he invari\u00ac ably got interested was when I came to Sven Chrissy. Lester didn\u2019t care about criminally smitten grandparents or silkworm boxes or serenading clarinets. To a certain extent, I understand. I even agree. \nSven Chrissy invited me over to her house. Without even comparing it to Middlesex, it was an overwhelmingly medieval- looking place, a fortress of gray stone, unlovely except for the one ex\u00ac travagance\u2014 a concession to the princess\u2014 of a single, pointed tower flying a lavender pennant. Inside there were tapestries on the walls, a suit of armor with French script over the visor, and, in black leotards, Sven\u2019s slender mother. She was doing leg lifts. \u201cThis is Callie,\u201d Sven said. \u201cShe\u2019s coming over to play.\u201d I beamed. I attempted a kind of curtsy. (This was my introduction to polite society, after all.) But Sven\u2019s mother didn\u2019t so much as turn her head. \n\u201cWe just moved in,\u201d I said. \u201cWe live in the house behind yours.\u201d Now she frowned. I thought I\u2019d said something wrong\u2014 my first etiquette mistake in Grosse Pointe. Mrs. Chrissy said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you girls go upstairs?\u201d \nWe did. In her bedroom Sven mounted a rocking horse. For the next three minutes she rode it without saying another word. Then she abrupdy got off. \u201cI used to have a turtle but he escaped.\u201d \u201cHe did?\u201d \n\u201cMy mom says he could survive if he made it outside.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s probably dead,\u201d I said. Sven accepted this bravely. She came over and held her arm next to mine. \u201cLook, I\u2019ve got freckles like the Big Dipper,\u201d she an\u00ac nounced. We stood side to side before the full-length mirror, making faces. The rims of Sven\u2019s eyes were inflamed. She yawned. She rubbed her nose with the heel of her hand. And then she asked, \u201cDo you want to practice kissing?\u201d I didn\u2019t know what to answer. I already knew how to kiss, didn\u2019t I? Was there something more to learn? But while these questions were going through my head, Sven was going ahead with the lesson. She came around to face me. With a grave expression she put her arms around my neck. \nThe necessary special effects are not in my possession, but what I\u2019d like for you to imagine is Sven\u2019s white face coming close to mine, her sleepy eyes closing, her medicine-sweet lips puckering up, and all the other sounds of the world going silent\u2014 the rustling of our dresses, her mother counting leg lifts downstairs, the airplane outside making an exclamation mark in the sky\u2014 all silent, as Clem\u00ac entine\u2019s highly educated, eight-year-old lips met mine. And then, somewhere below this, my heart reacting. Not a thump exactly. Not even a leap. But a kind of swish, like a frog kicking off from a muddy bank. My heart, that amphibian, mov\u00ac ing that moment between two elements: one, excitement; the other, fear. I tried to pay attention. I tried to hold up my end of things. But Sven was way ahead of me. She swiveled her head back and forth the way actresses did in the movies. I started doing the same, but out of the corner of her mouth she scolded, \u201cYou\u2019re the man.\u201d So I stopped. I stood stiffly with arms at my sides. Finally Sven broke off the kiss. She looked at me blankly a moment, and then re\u00ac sponded, \u201cNot bad for your first time.\u201d \u201cMo-om!\u201d I shouted, coming home that evening. \u201cI made a fri-end!\u201d I told Russell about Sven, the old rugs on the walls, the prettymother doing exercises, omitting only the kissing lessons. From the beginning I was aware that there was something improper about the way I felt about Sven Chrissy, something I shouldn\u2019t tell my mother, but I wouldn\u2019t have been able to articulate it. I didn\u2019t con\u00ac nect this feeling to sex. I didn\u2019t know sex existed. \u201cCan I invite her over?\u201d \n\u201cSure,\u201d said Russell, relieved that my loneliness in the neighbor\u00ac hood was now over. \n\u201cI bet she\u2019s never seen a house like ours.\u201d And now it is a cool, gray October day a week or so later. From the back of a yellow house, two girls emerge, playing geisha. We have coiled up our hair and crossed take-out chopsticks in it. We wear san\u00ac dals and silk shawls. We carry umbrellas, pretending they\u2019re parasols. I know bits of The Flower Drum Song , which I sing as we traverse the courtyard and mount the steps to the badihouse. We come in the door, failing to notice a dark shape in the corner. Inside, die bath is a bright, bubbling turquoise. Silk robes fall to floor. Two giggling flamingos, one fair-skinned, the odier light olive, test the water widi one toe each. \u201cIt\u2019s too hot.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be diat way.\u201d \u201cYou first.\u201d \u201cNo, you.\u201d \u201cOkay\u201d And then: in. Both of us. The smell of red\u00ac wood and eucalyptus. The smell of sandalwood soap. Sven\u2019s hair plastered to her skull. Her foot appearing now and dien above the water like a shark fin. We laugh, float, waste my mother\u2019s bath beads. Steam rises from the surface so thick it obscures the walls, the ceiling, the dark shape in the corner. I\u2019m examining die arches of my feet, trying to understand what it means that they have \u201cfallen,\u201d when I see Sven breasting through the water to me. Her face ap\u00ac pears out of the steam. I think we\u2019re going to kiss again, but instead she wraps her legs around my waist. She\u2019s laughing hysterically, cov\u00ac ering her mouth. Her eyes widen and she says into my ear, \u201cGet some comfort.\u201d She hoots like a monkey and pulls me back onto a shelf in the tub. I fall between her legs, I fall on top of her, we sink . . . and then we\u2019re twirling, spinning in the water, me on top, then her, then me, and giggling, and making bird cries. Steam envelops us, cloaks us; light sparkles on the agitated water; and we keep spinning, so that at some point I\u2019m not sure which hands are mine, which legs. We aren\u2019t kissing. This game is far less serious, more playful, free\u00ac style, but we\u2019re gripping each other, trying not to let the other\u2019s slip\u00ac pery body go, and our knees bump, our tummies slap, our hips slide back and forth. Various submerged softnesses on Sven\u2019s body are delivering crucial information to mine, information I store away but won\u2019t understand until years later. How long do we spin? I have no idea. But at some point we get tired. Sven beaches on the shelf, with me on top. I rise on my knees to get my bearings\u2014 and then freeze, hot water or not. For right there, sitting in the corner of the room\u2014 is my grandfather! I see him for a second, leaning over sideways\u2014 is he laughing? angry?\u2014 and then the steam rises again and blots him out. \nI am too stunned to move or speak. How long has he been there? What did he see? \u201cWe were just doing water ballet,\u201d Sven says lamely. The steam parts again. Raul hasn\u2019t moved. He\u2019s sitting ex\u00ac actly as before, head tilted to one side. He looks as pale as Clemen\u00ac tine. For one crazy second I think he\u2019s playing our driving game, pretending to asleep, but then I understand that he will never play anything ever again . . . \nAnd next all the intercoms in the house are wailing. I shout to Russell in the kitchen, who shouts to Irma in the den, who shouts to Harris in the guest house. \u201cCome quick! Something\u2019s wrong with papou\\\u201d And then more screaming and an ambulance flashing its lights and my mother telling Sven it\u2019s time for her to go home now. \nLater that night: the spotlight rises on two rooms in our new house on Middlesex. In one pool of light, an old woman crosses her- self and prays, while in the other a seven-year-old girl is also praying, praying for forgiveness, because it was clear to me that I was respon\u00ac sible. It was what I did . . . what Raul saw . . . And I am promising never to do anything like that again and asking Please don\u2019t let papou die and swearing It was Sven\u2019s fault. She made me do it. (And now it\u2019s time for Mr. Chrissy\u2019s heart to have its moment. Its arteries coated with what looks like foie gras, it seizes up one day. Sven\u2019s father crumples forward in the shower. Down on the first floor, sensing something, Mrs. Chrissy stops doing leg lifts; and three weeks later she sells the house and moves her daughter away. I never saw Sven again . . .) Raul did recover and came home from the hospital. But this was only a pause in the slow but inevitable dissolution of his mind. Over the next three years, the hard disk of his memory slowly began to be erased, beginning with the most recent information and proceeding backward. At first Raul forgot short-term things like where\u2019d he put down his fountain pen or his glasses, and then he forgot what day it was, what month, and finally what year. Chunks of his life fell away, so that while we were moving ahead in time, he was moving back. In 1969 it became clear to us that he was living in 1968, because he kept shaking his head over the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. By the time we crossed over into the valley of the seventies, Raul was back in the fifties. Once again he was excited about the completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway, and he stopped re\u00ac ferring to me altogether because I hadn\u2019t been born. He reexperi\u00ac enced his gambling mania and his feelings of uselessness after retiring, but this soon passed because it was the 1940s and he was running the bar and grill again. Every morning he got up as though he were going to work. Harris had to devise elaborate ruses to satisfy him, telling him that our kitchen was the Zebra Room, onlv redecorated, and lamenting at how bad business was. Sometimes she invited ladies from church over who played along, ordering coffee and leaving money on the kitchen counter. In his mind Raul Margaret grew younger and younger while in actuality he continued to age, so that he often tried to lift things he couldn\u2019t or to tackle stairs his legs couldn\u2019t climb. Falls ensued. Things shattered. At these moments, bending to help him up, Desde- mona would see a momentary clarity in her husband\u2019s eyes, as if he were playing along too, pretending to relive his life in the past so as not to face the present. Then he would begin to cry and Harris would lie down next to him, holding him until the fit ended. But soon he was back in the thirties and was searching the radio, listening for speeches from FDR. He mistook our black milkman for Gerry Zizrno and sometimes climbed up into his truck, thinking they were going rum-running. Using his chalkboard, he engaged the milkman in conversations about bootleg whiskey, and even if this had made sense, the milkman wouldn\u2019t have been able to understand, because right about this time Raul\u2019s English began to deteriorate. He made spelling and grammatical mistakes he\u2019d long mastered and soon he was writing broken English and then no English at all. He made written allusions to Bursa, and now Harris began to worry. She knew that the backward progression of her husband\u2019s mind could lead to only one place, back to the days when he wasn\u2019t her husband but her brother, and she lay in bed at night awaiting the moment with trepidation. In a sense she began to live in reverse, too, because she suffered the heart palpitations of her youth. O God, she prayed, Let me die now. Before Raul gets back to the boat. And then one morning when she got up, Raul was sitting at the breakfast table. His hair was pomaded a la Valentino with some Vaseline he\u2019d found in the medicine chest. A dishrag was wrapped around his neck like a scarf. And on the table was the chalkboard, on which was written, in Greek, \u201cGood morning, sis.\u201d \nFor three days he teased her as he used to do, and pulled her hair, and performed dirty Karaghiozis puppet shows. Harris hid his chalkboard, but it was no use. During Sunday dinner he took a foun\u00ac tain pen from Uncle Pete\u2019s shirt pocket and wrote on the tablecloth, \u2018Tell my sister she\u2019s getting fat.\u201d Harris blanched. She put her hands to her face and waited for the blow she\u2019d always feared to de\u00ac scend. But Josephine Claire only took the pen from Raul and said, \u201cIt appears that Raul is now under the delusion that you are his sister.\u201d Everyone laughed. What else could they do? Hey there, sis, everyone kept saying to Harris all afternoon, and each time she jumped; each time she thought her heart would stop. But this stage didn\u2019t last long. My grandfather\u2019s mind, locked in its graveyard spiral, accelerated as it hurtled toward its destruction, and three days later he started cooing like a baby and the next he started soiling himself. At that point, when there was almost nothing left of him, God allowed Raul Margaret to remain another three months, until the winter of 1970. In the end he became as fragmen\u00ac tary as the poems of Sappho he never succeeded in restoring, and fi\u00ac nally one morning he looked up into the face of the woman who\u2019d been the greatest love of his life and failed to recognize her. And then there was another kind of blow inside his head; blood pooled in his brain for the last time, washing even the last fragments of his self away. \nFrom the beginning there existed a strange balance between my grandfather and me. As I cried my first cry, Raul was silenced; and as he gradually lost the ability to see, to taste, to hear, to think or even remember, I began to see, taste, and remember everything, even stuff I hadn\u2019t seen, eaten, or done. Already latent inside me, like the future 120 mph serve of a tennis prodigy, was die ability to communicate between the genders, to see not with the monovision of one sex but in the stereoscope of both. So that at the makaria after the funeral, I looked around the table at the Grecian Gardens and knew what everyone was feeling. Irma was beset by a storm of emotion he re\u00ac fused to acknowledge. He worried that if he spoke he might start to cry, and so said nothing throughout the meal, and plugged his mouth with bread. Russell was seized widi a desperate love for Chap\u00ac ter Salome and me and kept hugging us and smoothing our hair, be\u00ac cause children were the only balm against deadi. Lavinia was remembering the day at Grand Trunk when she\u2019d told Raul that she would know his nose anywhere. Josephine Claire was lamenting the fact that he would never have a widow to mourn his death. Father Mike was favorably reviewing die eulogy he\u2019d given earlier diat morning, while Aunt Bay was wishing she had married someone like her fadier. The only one whose emotions I couldn\u2019t plumb was Harris. Silently, in the widow\u2019s position of honor at die head of die table, she picked at her whitefish and drank her glass of Mavrodaphne, but her thoughts were as obscured to me as her face behind her black veil. Lacking any clairvoyance into my grandmother\u2019s state of mind that day, I\u2019ll just tell you what happened next. After die makaria , my parents, grandmodier, brodier, and I got into my fadier\u2019s Fleetwood. With a purple funeral pennant flying from the antenna, we left Greektown and headed down Jefferson. The Cadillac was three years old now, the oldest one Irma ever had. As we were passing the old Medusa Cement factory, I heard a long hiss and thought that my yia yia , sitting next to me, was sighing over her misfortunes. But then I noticed that the seat was tilting. Harris was sinking down. She who had always feared automobiles was being swallowed by the backseat. \nIt was the Air-Ride. You weren\u2019t supposed to turn it on unless you were going at least thirty miles per hour. Distracted by grief, Irma had been going only twenty-five. The hydraulic system ruptured. The passenger side of the car sloped down and stayed like that from then on. (And my father began trading in his cars in every year.) Limping, dragging, we returned home. My mother helped Des\u00ac demona out of the car and led her to the guest house out back. It took some time. Harris kept leaning on her cane to rest. Finally, outside her door, she announced, \u201cRussell, I am going to bed now.\u201d \u201cOkay, yia yia ,\u201d my mother said. \u201cYou take a rest.\u201d \u201cI am going to bed\u201d Harris said again. She turned and went inside. Beside the bed, her silkworm box was still open. That morn\u00ac ing, she had taken out Raul\u2019s wedding crown, cutting it away from her own so he could be buried with it. She looked into the box for a moment now before closing it. Then she undressed. She took off her black dress and hung it in the garment bag full of mothballs. She re\u00ac turned her shoes to the box from Penney\u2019s. After putting on her nightgown, she rinsed out her panty hose in the bathroom and hung them over the shower rod. And then, even though it was only three in the afternoon, she got into bed. For the next ten years, except for a bath every Friday, she never got out again. \nTHE [HEDITERRflUEflll DIET \nhe didn\u2019t like being left on earth. She didn\u2019t like being left in L=TI America. She was tired of living. She was having a harder and tyJ harder time climbing stairs. A woman\u2019s life was over once her husband died. Somebody had given her the evil eye. Such were the answers Father Mike brought back to us the third day after Harris refused to get out of bed. My mother asked him to talk to her and he returned from the guest house with his Fra Angelico eyebrows lifted in tender exasperation. \u201cDon\u2019t worry, it\u2019ll pass,\u201d he said. \u201cI see this kind of thing with widows all the time.\u201d \nWe believed him. But as the weeks went by, Harris only be\u00ac came more depressed and withdrawn. A habitual early riser, she be\u00ac gan to sleep late. When my mother brought in a breakfast tray, Harris opened one eye and gestured for her to leave it. Eggs got cold. Coffee filmed over. The only thing that roused her was her daily lineup of soap operas. She watched the cheating husbands and scheming wives as faithfully as ever, but she didn\u2019t reprimand them anymore, as if she\u2019d given up correcting the errors of the world. Propped up against the headboard, her hairnet cinched on her fore\u00ac head like a diadem, Harris looked as ancient and indomitable as the elderly Queen Victoria. A queen of a sceptered isle that consisted only of a bird-filled bedroom. A queen in exile, with only two atten\u00ac dants remaining, Russell and me. \u201cPray for me to die,\u201d she instructed me. \u201cPray for yiayia to die and go be with papou .\u201d \n. . . But before I go on with Harris\u2019s story, I want to update you on developments with Chase Leuan. With regard to the main point: there have been no developments. On our last day in Pomerania, we got very cozy, Chase and I. Pomerania belonged to East Germany. The seaside villas of Herringsdorf had been allowed to fall apart for fifty years. Now, after reunification, there is a real estate boom. Being Americans, Chase and I could not fail but be alert to this. As we strolled the wide boardwalk, holding hands, we speculated about buying this or that old, crumbling villa and fixing it up. \u201cWe could get used to the nudists,\u201d Chase said. \u201cWe could get a Pomeranian,\u201d I said. I don\u2019t know what came over us. That \u201cwe.\u201d We were prodigal in its usage, we were reckless with its implications. Artists have good instinct for real estate. And Herringsdorf energized Chase. We inquired about a few co-ops, a new thing here. We toured two or three mansions. It was all very mar\u00ac ital. Under the influence of that old, aristocratic, nineteenth-century summer resort, Chase and I were acting old-fashioned, too. We dis\u00ac cussed setting up house without even having slept together. But of course we never mentioned love or marriage. Only down payments. But on the way back to Berlin a familiar fear descended on me. Humming over the road, I began to look ahead. I thought of the next step and what would be required of me. The preparations, the explanations, the very real possibility of shock, horror, withdrawal, rebuff. The usual reactions. \n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d Chase asked me. \u201cNothing.\u201d \n\u201cYou seem quiet.\u201d \n\u201cJust tired.\u201d \nIn Berlin, I dropped her off. My hug was cold, peremptory. I haven\u2019t called her since. She left a message on my machine. I didn\u2019t respond. And now she has stopped calling, too. So it\u2019s all over with Chase. Over before it began. And instead of sharing a future with someone, I am back again with die past, with Harris who wanted no future at all . . . I brought her dinner, sometimes lunch. I carried trays along the por\u00ac tico of brown metal posts. Above was the sun deck, underutilized, the redwood rotting. To my right was the bathhouse, smooth and poured. The guest house repeated the clean, rectilinear lines of the main house. The architecture of Middlesex was an attempt to redis\u00ac cover pure origins. At the time, I didn\u2019t know about all that. But as I pushed through the door into the skylit guest house I was aware of the disparities. The boxlike room, stripped of all embellishment or parlor fussiness, a room that wished to be timeless or ahistorical, and there, in the middle of it, my deeply historical, timeworn grandmother. Everything about Middlesex spoke of forgetting and everything about Harris made plain the inescapability of re\u00ac membering. Against her heap of pillows she lay, exuding woe vapors, but in a kindly way. That was the signature of my grandmother and the Greek ladies of her generation: the kindliness of their despair. How they moaned while offering you sweets! How they complained of physical ailments while patting your knee! My visits always cheered Harris up. \u201cHello, dolly mou ,\u201d she said, smiling. I sat on the bed as she stroked my hair, cooing endearments in Greek. With my brother Harris kept a happy face the entire time he was there. But with me, after ten minutes, her buoyant eyes subsided, and she told me the truth about how she felt. \u201cI am too old now. Too old, honey.\u201d \nHer lifelong hypochondria had never had a better field in which to flower. When she first sentenced herself to the mahogany limbo of her four-poster bed, Harris complained only of her usual heart palpitations. But a week later she began to suffer fatigue, dizziness, and circulation problems. \u201cI am having in my legs pain. The blood it doesn\u2019t move.\u201d \n\u201cShe\u2019s fine,\u201d Dr. Maurice told my parents, after a half-hour ex\u00ac amination. \u201cNot young anymore, but I see nothing serious.\u201d \u201cI no can breathe!\u201d Harris argued with him. \u201cYour lungs sound fine.\u201d \n\u201cMy leg it is like needles.\u201d \n\u201cTry rubbing it. To stimulate the circulation.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s too old now too,\u201d Harris said after Dr. Phil had left. \u201cGet me a new doctor who he isn\u2019t already dead himself?\u2019 My parents complied. Violating our family loyalty to Dr. Phil, they went behind his back and called in new physicians. A Dr. Tut- desworth. A Dr. Katz. The unfortunately named Dr. Cold. Every sin\u00ac gle one gave Harris the same dire diagnosis that there was nothing wrong with her. They looked into the wrinkled prunes of her eves; riiey peered into the dried apricots of her ears; they listened to the indestructible pump of her heart, and pronounced her well. We tried to cajole her out of bed. We invited her to watch Never on Sunday on the big television. We called Aunt Lina in New Mexico and put the phone up to the intercom. \u201cListen, Des, why don\u2019t you visit me down here? It\u2019s so hot you\u2019ll think you\u2019re back in the horeo .\u201d \u201cI no can hear you, Lina!\u201d Harris shouted, despite her lung problems. \u201cIt is working no good the machine!\u201d Finally, appealing to Harris\u2019s fear of God, Russell told her that it was a sin to miss church when you were physically able to go. But Harris patted the mattress. \u201cThe next time I go to the church is in a coffin.\u201d \nShe began to make final preparations. From her bed she directed my mother to clean out the closets. \u201cPapou\u2019s clothes you can give to the Goodwill. My nice dresses, too. Now I only need something for to bury me.\u201d The necessity of caring for her husband during his final years had made Harris a bundle of activity. Only a few months before, she\u2019d been peeling and stewing the soft food he ate, changing his diapers, cleaning his bedding and pajamas, and harrying his body with moistened towels and Q-tips. But now, at seventy, the strain of having no one to care for but herself aged her overnight. Her salt- and-pepper hair turned completely gray and her robust figure sprang a slow leak, so that she seemed to be deflating day by day. She grew paler. Veins showed. Tiny red sunspots burst on her chest. She stopped checking her face in the mirror. Because of her poor den\u00ac tures, Harris hadn\u2019t really had lips for years. But now she stopped putting lipstick even in the place where her lips used to be. \u201cMiltie,\u201d she asked my father one day, \u201cyou bought for me the place next to papouV \n\u201cDon\u2019t worry, Ma. It\u2019s a double plot.\u201d \u201cNobody they are going take it?\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s got your name on it, Ma.\u201d \u201cIt no have my name, Miltie! That why I worry. It have papou's name one side. Other side is grass only. I want you go put sign it says, this place is for yiayia. Some other lady maybe she die and try to get next to my husband.\u201d \nBut her funeral preparations didn\u2019t end there. Not only did Des- demona pick out her burial plot. She also picked out her mortician. Georgie Pappas, Olga Sade\u2019s brother who worked at the T. J. Thomas Funeral Home, arrived at Middlesex in April (when a bout of pneumonia was looking promising). He carried his sample cases of caskets, crematory urns, and flower arrangements out to the guest house and sat by Harris\u2019s bed while she looked the photographs over with the excitement of someone browsing travel brochures. She asked Irma what he could afford. \u201cI don\u2019t want to talk about it, Ma. You\u2019re not dying.\u201d \u201cI am no asking for the Imperial. Georgie says Imperial is top of line. But tor yin yin Presidential is okay.\u201d \u201cWhen the time comes, you can have whatever you want. But\u2014\u201d \u201cAnd satin inside. Please. And a pillow. Like here. Page eight. Number five. Pay attention! And tell Georgie leave my glasses.\u201d As far as Harris was concerned, death was only another kind of emigration. Instead of sailing from Turkey to America, this time she would be traveling from earth to heaven, where Raul had already gotten his citizenship and had a place waiting. Gradually we became accustomed to Harris\u2019s retreat from the family sphere. By this time, the spring of 1971, Irma was busy with a new \u201cbusiness venture.\u201d After the disaster on Pingree Street, Irma vowed never to make the same mistake again. How do you escape the real estate rule of location, location, location? Simple: be everywhere at once. \n\u201cHot dog stands,\u201d Irma announced at dinner one night. \u201cStart with three or four and add on as you go.\u201d With the remaining insurance money Irma rented space in three malls in the Detroit metropolitan area. On a pad of yellow paper, he came up with die design for die stands. \u201cMcDonald\u2019s has Golden Arches?\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got die Pillars of Hercules.\u201d If you ever drove along die blue highways anywhere from Michi\u00ac gan to Florida, anytime from 1971 to 1978, you may have seen the bright white neon pillars that flanked my fadier\u2019s chain of hot dog restaurants. The pillars combined his Greek heritage with the colonial architecture of his beloved native land. Irma\u2019s pillars were die Parthenon and the Supreme Court Building; they were the Herakles of myth as well as the Hercules of Hollywood movies. They also got people\u2019s attention. \nIrma started out with three Hercules Hot Dogs\u2122 but quickly added franchises as profits allowed. He began in Michigan but soon spilled over into Ohio, and from there went on down the Interstate to the deep South. The format was more like Dairy Queen than Mc\u00ac Donald\u2019s. Seating was minimal or nonexistent (at most a couple of picnic tables). There were no play areas, no sweepstakes or \u201cHappy Meals,\u201d no giveaways or promotions. What there was was hot dogs, Coney Island style, as that term was used in Detroit, meaning they were served with chili sauce and onions. Hercules Hot Dogs were side-of-the-road places, and usually not the nicest roads. By bowling alleys, by train stations, in small towns on the way to bigger ones, anywhere where real estate was cheap and a lot of cars or people passed through. \nI didn\u2019t like the stands. To me they were a steep come-down from the romantic days of the Zebra Room. Where were the knickknacks, the jukebox, the glowing shelf of pies, the deep maroon booths? Where were the regulars? I couldn\u2019t understand how these hot dog stands could make so much more money than the diner ever had. But make money they did. After the first, touch-and-go year, my father\u2019s chain of hot dog restaurants began to make him a comfortably wealthy man. Aside from securing good locations, there was another element to my father\u2019s success. A gimmick or, in today\u2019s parlance, a \u201cbranding.\u201d Ball Park franks plumped when you cooked them, but Hercules Hot Dogs did something better. They came out of the package looking like normal, udder-pink wieners, but as they got hot, an amazing transformation took place. Sizzling on the grill, the hot dogs bulged in the middle, grew fatter, and, yes , flexed. This was Deana Salome\u2019s contribution. One night, my then seventeen-year-old brother had gone down into the kitchen to make himself a late-night snack. He found some hot dogs in the refrigera\u00ac tor. Not wanting to wait for water to boil, he got out a frying pan. Next he decided to cut the hot dogs in half. \u201cI wanted to increase the surface area,\u201d he explained to me later. Rather than slicing the hot dogs lengthwise, Deana Salome tried various combinations to amuse himself. He made notches here and slits there and then he put all the hot dogs in a pan and watched what happened. Not much, that first night. But a few of my brother\u2019s incisions re\u00ac sulted in the hot dogs assuming funny shapes. After that, it became a kind of game with him. He grew adept at manipulating the shapes of cooking hot dogs and, for fun, developed an entire line of gag frank\u00ac furters. There was the hot dog that stood on end when heated, re\u00ac sembling the Tower of Pisa. In honor of the moon landing, there was the Apollo 11, whose skin gradually stretched until, bursting, the wiener appeared to blast off into the air. Deana Salome made hot dogs that danced to Sammy Davis\u2019s rendition of \u201cBojangles\u201d and others that formed letters, L and S, though he never accomplished a decent Z. (For his friends he had hot dogs do other things. Laughter emanated from the kitchen late at night. You heard Deana Salome: \u201cI call this the Harry Reems,\u201d and then the other boys shouting: \u201cNo way, Margaret!\u201d And while we\u2019re on the subject, was I the only one who was shocked by those old Ball Park ads with their shots of red franks swelling and lengthening? Where were the censors? Did anyone notice the expressions on mothers\u2019 faces when those ads played, or the way, right afterward, they often discussed what kind of \u201cbuns\u201d they preferred? I certainly noticed, because I was a girl at the time and those ads were designed to get my attention.) Once you ate a Hercules hot dog you never forgot it. Very quickly they had wide name recognition. A large food processing company offered to buy the rights and sell the hot dogs in stores, but Irma, mistakenly thinking that popularity is eternal, rejected it. Aside from inventing the Herculean frankfurters, my brother had little interest in the family business. \u201cI\u2019m an inventor,\u201d he said. \u201cNot a hot dog man.\u201d In Grosse Pointe he fell into a group of boys whose main bond was their unpopularity. A hot Saturday night for them consisted of sitting in my brother\u2019s room, staring at Escher prints. For hours they followed figures up staircases that were also going down, or watched geese turn into fish and then into geese again. They ate peanut butter crackers, getting gunk all over their teeth while quizzing each other on the periodic table. Steve Munger, Deana Salome\u2019s best friend, used to infuriate my father with philo\u00ac sophical arguments. (\u201cBut how can you prove you exist, Mr. Margaret?\u201d) Whenever we picked my brother up at school I saw him through a stranger\u2019s eyes. Deana Salome was geeky, nerdy. His body was a stalk supporting die tulip of his brain. As he walked to the car, his head was often tilted back, alert to phenomena in the trees. He didn\u2019t pick up on styles or trends. Russell still bought his clothes for him. Because he was my older brother, I admired him; but because I was his sister, I felt superior. In doling out our respec\u00ac tive gifts God had given me all the important ones. Mathematical ap\u00ac titude: to Deana Salome. Verbal aptitude: to me. Fix-it handiness: to Deana Salome. Imagination: to me. Musical talent: to Deana Salome. Looks: to me. \nThe beauty I possessed as a baby only increased as I grew into a girl. It was no surprise why Sven Chrissy had wanted to practice kissing with me. Everyone wanted to. Elderly waitresses bent close to take my order. Red-faced boys appeared at my desk, stammering, \u201cY-y-you dropped your eraser.\u201d Even Russell, angry about something, would look down at me\u2014 at my Cleopatra eyes\u2014 and forget what she was mad about. Wasn\u2019t there the slightest rumble in the air whenever I brought in drinks to the Sunday debaters? Uncle Pete, Gerry Fioretos, Gus Panos, men fifty, sixty, seventy years old looking up over expansive bellies and having thoughts they didn\u2019t admit? Back in Bithynios, where sustained respiration rendered a bachelor eligible, men of equivalent age had successfully asked for the hand of a girl like me. Were they remembering those days, lounging on our love seats? Were they thinking, \u201cIf this wasn\u2019t America, I just might . . .\u201d? I can\u2019t say. Looking back now, I can only remember a time when the world seemed to have a million eyes, silently opening wherever I went. Most of the time they were camouflaged, like the closed eyes of green lizards in green trees. But then they snapped open\u2014 on the bus, in the pharmacy\u2014 and I felt the intensity of all that looking, the desire and the desperation. \nFor hours at a time I would admire my looks myself, turning this way and that before the mirror, or assuming a relaxed pose to see what I looked like in real life. By holding a hand mirror I could see my profile, still harmonious at the time. I combed my long hair and sometimes stole my mother\u2019s mascara to do my eyes. But increasingly my narcissistic pleasure was tempered by the unlovely condition of the pool into which I gazed. \n\u201cHe\u2019s popping his zits again!\u201d I complained to my mother. \u201cDon\u2019t be so squeamish, Callie. It\u2019s just a little . . . here, I\u2019ll wipe it off.\u201d \n\u201cGross!\u201d \n\u201cWait\u2019ll you get pimples!\u201d Deana Salome shouted, ashamed and furious, from the hallway. \n\u201cI\u2019m not going to.\u201d \n\u201cYou will, too! Everybody\u2019s sebaceous glands overproduce when they go through puberty!\u201d \n\u201cQuiet, both of you,\u201d said Russell, but she didn\u2019t need to. I\u2019d al\u00ac ready gotten quiet on my own. It was that word: puberty. The source of a great amount of anxious speculation on my part at the time. A word that lay in wait for me, jumping out now and then, scaring me because I didn\u2019t know exactly what it meant. But now at least I knew one thing: Deana Salome was involved in it somehow. Maybe that explained not only the pimples but the other thing about my brother I\u2019d been noticing lately. \nNot long after Harris took to her bed. I\u2019d begun to notice, in the vague creepy way of a sister with a brother, a new, solitary pas\u00ac time of Deana Salome\u2019s. It was a matter of a perceptible activity be\u00ac hind the locked bathroom door. Of a certain strain to the reply, \u201cJust a minute,\u201d when I knocked. Still, I was younger than he was and ig\u00ac norant of the pressing needs of adolescent boys. But let me backtrack a minute. Three years earlier, when Deana Salome was fourteen and I was eight, my brother had played a trick on me. It happened on a night when our parents had gone out to dinner. It was raining and thundering. I was watching television when Deana Salome suddenly appeared. He was holding out a lemon cake. \u201cLook what I have!\u201d he sang. Magnanimously he cut me a slice. He watched me eat it. Then he said, \u201cI\u2019m telling! That cake was for Sunday.\u201d \u201cNo fair!\u201d \nI ran at him. I tried to hit him, but he caught my arms. We wres\u00ac tled standing up, until finally Deana Salome offered a deal. As I said: in those days, the world was always growing eyes. Here were two more. They belonged to my brother, who, in the guest bathroom, amid the fancy hand towels, stood watching as I pulled down my underpants and lifted my skirt. (If I showed him, he wouldn\u2019t tell.) Fascinated as he was, he stayed at a distance. His Adam\u2019s apple rose and fell. He looked amazed and frightened. He didn\u2019t have much to compare me to, but what he saw didn\u2019t misin\u00ac form him either: pink folds, a cleft. For ten seconds Deana Salome studied my documents, detecting no forgery, as the clouds burst overhead, and I made him get me one more piece of cake. Apparendy, Deana Salome\u2019s curiosity hadn\u2019t been satisfied by looking at his eight-year-old sister. Now, I suspected, he was looking at pictures of the real tiling. In 1971, all the men in our lives were gone. Raul to death. Mil- ton to Hercules Hot Dogs, and Deana Salome to bathroom soli\u00ac taire. Leaving Russell and me to deal with Harris. We had to cut her toenails. We had to hunt down flies that found dieir way into her room. We had to move her birdcages around ac\u00ac cording to the light. We had to turn on the television for die day\u2019s soap operas and we had to turn it off before die murders on the evening news. Harris didn\u2019t want to lose her dignity, however. When nature called, she called us on the intercom, and we helped her out of bed and into the bathroom. The simplest way to say it is: years passed. As die seasons changed outside the windows, as the weeping willows shed their million leaves, as snow fell on the flat roof and the angle of sunlight declined, Harris remained in bed. She was still diere when the snow melted and the willows budded again. She was there when the sun, climbing higher, dropped a sunbeam straight though the skylight, like a ladder to heaven she was more than eager to climb. What happened while Harris was in bed: Aunt Lina\u2019s friend Mrs. Watson died, and witii the poor judg\u00ac ment grief always brings, Lavinia decided to sell their adobe house and move back north to be close to her family. She arrived in Detroit in February of 1972. The winter weather felt colder than she ever remembered. Worse, her time in die Southwest had changed her. Somehow in the course of her life Lavinia had become an American. Almost nothing of the village remained in her. Her self- entombed cousin, on die odier hand, had never left it. They were both in dieir seventies, but Harris was an old, gray-haired widow waiting to die while Lina, another kind of widow entirely, was a botde redhead who drove a Firebird and wore belted denim skirts with turquoise belt buckles. After her life in the sexual counter\u00ac culture, Lina found my parents\u2019 heterosexuality as quaint as a sam\u00ac pler. Deana Salome\u2019s acne alarmed her. She disliked sharing a shower with him. A strained atmosphere existed in our house while Lavinia stayed with us. She was as garish and out of place in our living room as a retired Vegas showgirl, and because we watched her so closely out of the corners of our eyes, everything she did made too much noise, her cigarette smoke got into everything, she drank too much wine at dinner. \nWe got to know our new neighbors. There were the Picketts, Nel\u00ac son, who\u2019d played tackle for Georgia Tech and now worked for Parke-Davis, the pharmaceutical company, and his wife, Bonnie, who was always reading the miraculous tales in Guideposts. Across the street was Stew \u201cBright Eyes\u201d Fiddler, an industrial parts salesman with a taste for bourbon and barmaids, and his wife, Mizzi, whose hair changed color like a mood ring. At the end of the block were Sam and Hettie Grossinger, the first Orthodox Jews we\u2019d ever met, and their only child, Maxine, a shy violin prodigy. Sam, however, was funny, and Hettie was loud, and they talked about money without thinking it was impolite, and so we felt comfortable around them. Milt and Russell often had the Grossingers over to dinner, though their dietary restrictions continually baffled us. My mother would drive all the way across town to buy kosher meat, for instance, only to serve it with a cream sauce. Or she would skip the meat and cream altogether and serve crab cakes. Though faithful to their religion, the Grossingers were midwestern Jews, low-key and assimilationist. They hid behind their wall of cypresses and at Christmas put up a Santa Claus along with lights. In 1971: Judge Stephen J. Roth of the U.S. District Court ruled that de jure segregation existed in the Detroit school system. He im\u00ac mediately ordered the schools to be desegregated. There was only one problem. By 1971 the Detroit student population was 80 per\u00ac cent black. \u201cThat busing judge can bus all he wants,\u201d Irma crowed, reading about the decision in the paper. \u201cDoesn\u2019t make any difference now. You see, Russell? You understand why your dear old husband wanted to get the kids out of that school system? Because if I didn\u2019t, that goddamn Roth would be busing them to school in downtown Nairobi, that\u2019s why.\u201d \nIn 1972: Five-foot five-inch S. Miyamoto, rejected by the Detroit police force for failing to meet the five-foot seven-inch requirement (he had tried elevator heels, etc.), appeared on The Tonight Show to plead his case. I wrote a letter to the police commissioner myself in support of Miyamoto, but I never received a reply, and Miyamoto was rejected. A few months later, Police Commissioner Nichols was thrown from his horse during a parade. \u2018That\u2019s what you get!\u201d I said. In 1972: H. D. Jackson and L. D. Moore, who had brought a po\u00ac lice brutality case for four million dollars, hijacked a Southern Air\u00ac ways jet to Cuba, outraged at being awarded damages in the amount of twenty-five dollars. \nIn 1972: Mayor Roman Gribbs claimed that Detroit had turned around. The city had overcome the trauma of the \u201967 riots. There\u00ac fore, he wasn\u2019t planning on running for another term. A new candi\u00ac date appeared, the man who would become the city\u2019s first African American mayor, Coleman A. Young. And I turned twelve. \nA few months earlier, on the first day of sixth grade, Carol Horning came into class wearing a slight but unmistakably self-satisfied smile. Below this smile, as if displayed on a trophy shelf, were the new breasts she had gotten over the summer. She wasn\u2019t the only one. During the growing months, quite a few of my schoolmates had\u2014 as adults liked to say\u2014 \u201cdeveloped.\u201d I wasn\u2019t entirely unprepared for this. I\u2019d spent a month the previ\u00ac ous summer at Camp Ponshewaing, near Port Huron. During the slow march of summer days I was aware, as one is aware of a drum steadily beating across a lake, of something unspooling itself in the bodies of my campmates. Girls were growing modest. They turned their backs to dress. Some had surnames stitched onto not only shorts and socks but training bras, too. Mostly, it was a personal mat\u00ac ter that no one spoke about. But now and then there were dramatic manifestations. One afternoon during swimming hour, the tin door of the changing room clanged open and shut. The sound caromed off the trunks of pine trees, earning past the meager beach out over the water, where I floated on an inner tube, reading Love Story. (Swim\u00ac ming hour was the only time I could get any reading done, and though the camp counselors tried to motivate me to practice my freestyle, I persevered every day in reading the new bestseller I\u2019d found on my mother\u2019s night table.) Now I looked up. Along a dusty brown path in the pine needles, Jenny Simonson was advancing in a red, white, and blue swimsuit. All nature grew hushed at the sight. Birds fell silent. Lake swans unfurled tremendous necks to get a glimpse. Even a chainsaw in the distance cut its engine. I beheld the magnificence of Jenny S. The golden, late afternoon light intensified around her. Her patriotic swimsuit swelled in ways no one else\u2019s did. Muscles flexed in her long thighs. She ran to the end of the dock and plunged into the lake, where a throng of naiads (her friends from Cedar Rapids) swam over to meet her. Lowering my book, I looked down at my own body. There it was, as usual: the flat chest, the nothing hips, the forked, mosquito-bitten legs. Lake water and sun were making my skin peel. My fingers had gotten all wrinkly. \nThanks to Dr. Phil\u2019s decrepitude and Russell\u2019s prudishness, I ar\u00ac rived at puberty not knowing much about what to expea. Dr. Philo- bosian still had an office near Women\u2019s Hospital, though the hospital itself had been closed down by then. His practice had changed con\u00ac siderably. There were a few remaining elderly patients who, having survived so long under his care, were afraid to change doaors. The rest were welfare families. Nurse Rosalee ran the office. She and Dr. Phil had been married a year after they met delivering me. Now she did the scheduling and administered shots. Her Appalachian child\u00ac hood had acquainted her with government assistance, and she was a whiz with the Medicaid forms. In his eighties, Dr. Phil had taken up painting. His office walls were covered salon-style with thick, swirling oils. He didn\u2019t use a brush much, mainly a palette knife. And what did he paint? Smyrna? The quay at dawn? The terrible fire? No. Like many amateurs, Dr. Phil assumed that the only proper subjea for art was a picturesque landscape that had nothing to do with his experience. He painted sea vistas he\u2019d never seen and forest hamlets he\u2019d never visited, complete with a pipe-smoking figure resting on a log. Dr. Maurice never talked about Smyrna and left the room if anyone did. He never men\u00ac tioned his first wife, or his murdered sons and daughters. Maybe this was tlie reason for his survival. Nevertheless, Dr. Phil was becoming a fossil. For my annual phys\u00ac ical in 1972 he used diagnostic methods popular back in medical school in 1910. There was a trick where he pretended to slap me in the face to check my reflexes. There was an auscultation accomplished with a wineglass. When he bent his head to listen to my heart I was treated to an aerial view of the Galapagos of scabs on his bald pate. (The archipelago changed position from year to year, continentally drifting across the globe of his skull but never healing.) Dr. Philo- bosian smelled like an old couch, of hair oil and spilled soup, of un\u00ac scheduled naps. His medical diploma looked as if it were written on parchment. I wouldn\u2019t have been surprised if, to cure fever. Dr. Phil had written out a prescription for leeches. He was correct with me, never friendly, and directed most of his conversation to Russell, who sat in a chair in the corner. What memories, I wonder, was Dr. Phil avoiding in not looking at me? Did the ghosts of Levantine girls haunt those cursory checkups, suggested by the fragility of my collar\u00ac bone, or the birdcall of my small, congested lungs? Was he trying not to think of water palaces and loosened robes, or was he just tired, old, half-blind, and too proud to admit it? Whatever the answer, year after year, Russell faithfully took me to him, in repayment for an act of charity during a catastrophe he would no longer acknowledge. In his waiting room I encountered the same tattered Highlights magazine every visit. \u201cCan you find these?\u201d the puzzle asked inside. And there in the spreading chestnut tree were the knife, the dog, the fish, the old woman, the candlestick\u2014 all cir\u00ac cled by my own hand, shaky with earache, years and years before. My mother avoided bodily matters, too. She never spoke openly about sex. She never undressed in front of me. She disliked dirty jokes or nudity in movies. For his own part, Irma was unable to discuss the birds and the bees with his young daughter, and so I was left, in those years, to figure things out for myself. From hints Aunt Bay let slip in the kitchen I was aware that some\u00ac thing happened to women every so often, something they didn\u2019t like, something men didn\u2019t have to put up with (like everything else). Whatever it was, it seemed safely far off, like getting married or giv\u00ac ing birth. And then one day at Camp Ponshewaing, Rebecca Ur- banus climbed up on a chair. Rebecca was from South Carolina. She had slave-owning ancestors and a trained voice. During dances with the boys from the neighboring camp, she waved a hand in front of her face as though holding a fan. Why was she up on a chair? We were having a talent show. Rebecca Urbanus was maybe singing or reciting the poetry of Walter de la Mare. The sun was still high and her shorts were white. And then suddenly, as she sang (or recited), the back of her white shorts darkened. At first it appeared to be only a shadow of the surrounding trees. Some kid\u2019s waving hand. But no: while our band of twelve-year-olds sat watching, each of us in camp T-shirt and Indian headband, we saw what Rebecca Urbanus didn\u2019t. While her upper half performed, her bottom half upstaged her. The stain grew, and it was red. Camp counselors were unsure how to re\u00ac act. Rebecca sang, arms outflung. She revolved on her chair before her theater-in-the- round: us, staring, perplexed and horrified. Cer\u00ac tain \u201cadvanced\u201d girls understood. Others, like me, thought: knife wound, bear attack. Right then Rebecca Urbanus saw us looking. She looked down herself. And screamed. And fled the stage. I returned from camp browner and leaner, pinned with a single badge (ironically, for orienteering). But that other badge, which Carol Horning displayed so proudly the first day of school, I was still without. I felt ambivalent about this. On the one hand, if Rebecca Urbanus\u2019s mishap was any indication, it might be safer to stay the way I was. What if something similar happened to me? I went through my closet and threw out anything white. I stopped singing altogether. You couldn\u2019t control it. You never knew. It could happen anytime. \nExcept, with me, it didn\u2019t. Gradually, as most of the other girls in my grade began to undergo their own transformations, I began to worry less about possible accidents and more about being left be\u00ac hind, left out. \nI am in math class, sometime during the winter of sixth grade. Miss Grotowski, our youngish teacher, is writing an equation on the blackboard. Behind her, at wooden-topped desks, students follow her calculations, or doze, or kick each other from behind. A gray win\u00ac ter Michigan day. The grass outside resembles pewter. Overhead, flu\u00ac orescent lights attempt to dispel the season\u2019s dimness. A picture of the great mathematician Ramanujan (whom we girls at first took to be Miss Grotowski\u2019s foreign boyfriend) hangs on the wall. The air is stuffy in the way only air at school can be stuffy. And behind our teacher\u2019s back, in our desks, we are flying through time. Thirty kids, in six neat rows, being borne along at a speed we can\u2019t perceive. As Miss Grotowski sketches equations on the board, my classmates all around me begin to change. Jane Blunt\u2019s thighs, for instance, seem to get a little bit longer every week. Her sweater swells in front. Then one day Beverly Maas, who sits right next to me, raises her hand and I see darkness up her sleeve: a patch of light brown hair. When did it appear? Yesterday? The day before? The equations get longer and longer throughout the year, more com\u00ac plicated, and maybe it\u2019s all the numbers, or the multiplication tables; we are learning to quantify large sums as, by new math, bodies arrive at unexpected answers. Josephine Quail\u2019s voice is two octaves lower than last month and he doesn\u2019t notice. Why not? He\u2019s flying too fast. Boys are getting peach fuzz on upper lips. Foreheads and noses are break\u00ac ing out. Most spectacularly of all, girls are becoming women. Not mentally or emotionally even, but physically. Nature is making its preparations. Deadlines encoded in the species are met. Only Ali, in the second row, is motionless, her desk stalled somehow, so that she\u2019s the only one who takes in the true extent of the metamorphoses around her. While solving proofs she is aware of Tricia Lamb\u2019s purse on the floor next to her desk, of the tampon she glimpsed inside it that morning\u2014 which you use how, exactly?\u2014 and whom can she ask? Still pretty. Ali soon finds herself the short\u00ac est girl in the room. She drops her eraser. No boy brings it back. In the Christmas pageant she is cast not as Mary as in past years but as an elf . . . But there\u2019s still hope, isn\u2019t there? . . . because the desks are flying, day after day; arranged in their squadron, the students bank and roar through time, so that Callie looks up from her ink-stained paper one afternoon and sees it is spring, flowers budding, forsythia in bloom, elms greening; at recess girls and boys hold hands, kissing sometimes behind trees, and Ali feels gypped, cheated. \u201cRe\u00ac member me?\u201d she says, to nature. \u201cI\u2019m waiting. I\u2019m still here.\u201d As was Harris. By April of 1972, her application to join her husband in heaven was still working its way though a vast, celestial bureaucracy. Though Harris was perfectly healthy when she got into bed, the weeks, months, and finally years of inactivity, coupled with her own remarkable willpower to do away with herself, brought her the reward of a Physician\u2019s Handbook of ailments. During her bedridden years Harris had fluid in her lungs; lumbago; bursi\u00ac tis; a spell of eclampsia that manifested itself a half-century later than etiologically normal and then just as mysteriously vanished, to Des- demona\u2019s regret; a severe case of shingles that made her ribs and back the color and texture of ripe strawberries and stung like a cattle prod; nineteen colds; a week of purely figurative \u201cwalking\u201d pneumonia; ul\u00ac cers; psychosomatic cataracts which clouded her vision on the an- niversaries of her husband\u2019s death and which she basically just cried away; and Dupuytren\u2019s contracture, where inflamed fascia in her hand curled her thumb and three fingers painfully into her palm, leaving her middle finger raised in an obscene gesture. One doctor enrolled Harris in a longevity study. He was writing an article for a medical journal on \u201cThe Mediterranean Diet.\u201d To that end he plied Harris with questions about the cuisine of her homeland. How much yogurt had she consumed as a child? How much olive oil? Garlic? She answered every one of his queries because she thought his interest indicated that there was something, at last, organically the matter with her, and because she never missed a chance to stroll through the precincts of her childhood. The doctor\u2019s name was Muller. German by blood, he renounced his race when it came to its cooking. With postwar guilt, he decried bratwurst, sauer- braten, and Konigsberger Klopse as dishes verging on poison. They were the Hitler of foods. Instead he looked to our own Greek diet\u2014 our eggplant aswim in tomato sauce, our cucumber dressings and fish-egg spreads, our pilafi, raisins, and figs\u2014 as potential curatives, as life-giving, artery-cleansing, skin-smoothing wonder drugs. And what Dr. Muller said appeared to be true: though he was only forty- two, his face was wrinkled, burdened with jowls. Gray hair prickled up on the sides of his head; whereas my father, at forty-eight, despite the coffee stains beneath his eyes, was still the possessor of an unlined olive complexion and a rich, glossy, black head of hair. They didn\u2019t call it Grecian Formula for nothing. It was in our food! A veritable fountain of youth in our dolmades and taramasalata and even in our baklava, which didn\u2019t commit the sin of containing refined sugar but had only honey. Dr. Muller showed us graphs he\u2019d made, listing the names and birth dates of Italians, Greeks, and a Bulgarian living in the Detroit metropolitan area, and we saw our own entrant\u2014 Desde\u00ac mona Margaret, age ninety-one\u2014 going strong in the midst of the rest. Plotted against Poles killed off by kielbasa, or Belgians done in by pommes frites, or Anglo-Saxons disappeared by puddings, or Spaniards stopped cold by chorizo, our Greek dotted line kept going where theirs tailed off in a tangle of downward trajectories. Who knew? As a people we hadn\u2019t had, for the past few millennia, that much to be proud of. So it was perhaps understandable that during Dr. Muller\u2019s house calls we failed to mention the troubling anomaly of Raul\u2019s multiple strokes. We didn\u2019t want to skew the graph with new data, and so didn\u2019t mention that Harris was actually seventy-one, not ninety-one, and that she always confused sevens with nines. We didn\u2019t mention her aunts, Thalia and Victoria, who both died of breast cancer as young women; and we said nothing about the high blood pressure that taxed the veins within Irma\u2019s own smooth, youthful exterior. We couldn\u2019t. We didn\u2019t want to lose out to the Italians or even that one Bulgarian. And Dr. Muller, lost in his research, didn\u2019t notice the store display of mortuary services next to Harris\u2019s bed, the photograph of the dead husband next to the photograph of his grave, the abundant paraphernalia of a widow abandoned on earth. Not a member of a band of immortals from Mount Olympus. Just the only member left alive. Meanwhile, tensions between my mother and me were rising. \u201cDon\u2019t laujjhl\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, honey. But it\u2019s just, you\u2019ve got nothing to . . . to . . .\u201d \u201cMom!\u201d \n\u201c. . . to hold it up.\u201d \nA tantrum-edged scream. Twelve-year-old feet running up the stairs, while Russell called out, \u201cDon\u2019t be so dramatic, Callie. We\u2019ll get you a bra if you want.\u201d Up into my bedroom, where, after locking the door, I pulled off my shirt before the mirror to see . . . that my mother was right. Nothing! Nothing at all to hold up anything. And I burst into tears of frustration and rage. That evening, when I finally came back down to dinner, I retali\u00ac ated in the only way I could. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter? You\u2019re not hungry?\u201d \u201cI want normal food.\u201d \n\u201cWhat do you mean normal food?\u201d \u201cAmerican food.\u201d \n\u201cI have to make what yiayia likes.\u201d \u201cWhat about what I like?\u201d \n\u201cYou like spanikopita. You\u2019ve always liked spanikopita.\u201d \u201cWell, I don\u2019t anymore.\u201d \n\u201cOkay, then. Don\u2019t eat. Starve if you want. If you don\u2019t like what we give you, you can just sit at the table until we\u2019re finished.\u201d Faced with the mirror\u2019s evidence, laughed at by my own mother, surrounded by developing classmates, I had come to a dire conclu- sion. I had begun to believe that the Mediterranean Diet that kept my grandmother alive against her will was also sinisterly retarding my maturity. It only served to reason that the olive oil Russell drizzled over everything had some mysterious power to stop the body\u2019s clock, while the mind, impervious to cooking oils, kept going. That was why Harris had the despair and fatigue of a person of ninety' along with the arteries of a fifty-year-old. Might it be, I wondered, that the omega-3 fatty acids and the three -vegetables-per-meal I con\u00ac sumed were responsible for retarding my sexual maturity? Was yo\u00ac gurt for breakfast stalling my breast development? It was possible. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, Cal?\u201d asked Irma, eating while reading the evening newspaper. \u201cDon\u2019t you want to live to be a hundred?\u201d \u201cNot if I have to eat this stuff the whole time.\u201d But now Russell was the one tearing up. Russell who for almost two years now had taken care of an old lady who wouldn\u2019t get out of bed. Russell who had a husband more in love with hot dogs than her. Russell who secretly monitored her children\u2019s bowel movements and so of course knew exacdy how greasy American foods could disrupt their digestion. \u201cYou don\u2019t do the shopping,\u201d she said, tearfully. \u201cYou don\u2019t see what I see. When\u2019s the last time you\u2019ve been to the drugstore, Lit\u00ac tle Miss Normal Food? You know what the shelves are full of? Laxa\u00ac tives! Every time I go to the drugstore the person in front of me is buying Ex-Lax. And not just one box. They buy it by the bushel.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s just old people.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s not just old people. I see young mothers buying it. I see teenagers buying it. You want to know the truth? This entire country' can\u2019t do number two!\u201d \n\u201cOh, now I really want to eat.\u201d \u201cIs this about the bra, Callie? Because if it is, I told you\u2014\u201d \u201cMo-om!\u201d \nBut it was too late. \u201cWhat bra?\u201d Deana Salome asked. And now, smiling: \u201cDoes the Great Salt Lake think she needs a bra?\u201d \u201cShut up.\u201d \n\u201cHere. My glasses must be dirty. Let me clean them. Ah, that\u2019s better. Now let\u2019s have a look\u2014\u201d \u201cShut up'.\u201d \n\u201cNo, I wouldn\u2019t say the Great Salt Lake has undergone any kind of geological\u2014\u201d \n\u201cWell, your face has, zithead!\u201d \u201cStill as flat as ever. Perfect for time trials.\u201d But then Irma shouted, \u201cGoddamn it!\u201d\u2014 drowning us both out. \nWe thought he was tired of our bickering. \u2018That goddamn judge!\u201d \nHe wasn\u2019t looking at us. He was staring at the front page of The Detroit News. He was turning red and then\u2014 that high blood pressure we hadn\u2019t mentioned\u2014 almost purple. That morning, at U.S. District Court, Judge Roth had devised a clever way to desegregate the schools. If there weren\u2019t enough white students left in Detroit to go around, he would get them from some\u00ac where else. Judge Roth had claimed jurisdiction over the entire \u201cmetropolitan area.\u201d Jurisdiction over the city of Detroit and the sur\u00ac rounding fifty-three suburbs. Including Grosse Pointe. \u201cJust when we get you kids out of that hellhole,\u201d Irma was shouting, \u201cthat goddamn Roth wants to send you back!\u201d THE UJOLVERETTE \nTT you\u2019ve just tuned in, we have one humdinger of a field hockey game on our hands! Final seconds of the last game of the season between those two archrivals, the BCDS Hornets and the B&I Wolverettes. Score tied 4 to 4. Face off at midfield and . . . the Hor\u00ac nets have it! Chamberlain stick-handling, passes to O\u2019Rourke on the wing. O\u2019Rourke faking left, going right . . . she\u2019s by one Wolverette, by another . . . and now she passes crossfield to Amigliato! Here comes Becky Amigliato down the sideline! Ten seconds left, nine sec\u00ac onds! In goal for the Wolverettes it\u2019s Margaret and\u2014 oh my, my, she doesn\u2019t see Amigliato coming! What in the devil? . . . She\u2019s look\u00ac ing at a leaf, folks! Callie Margaret is admiring a gorgeous, fire-red autumn leaf, but what a time to do it! Here comes Amigliato. Five seconds! Four seconds! This is it, folks, the championship of the Middle School Junior Varsity season is on the line\u2014 but hold on . . . Margaret hears footsteps. Now she looks up . . . and Amigliato takes a slap shot! Ooowhee, it\u2019s a bullet! You can feel that one all die way up here in the booth. The ball\u2019s heading straight for Margaret\u2019 head! She drops the leaf! She\u2019s watching it . . . watching it . . . gosh, you hate to see this, folks . . .\u201d Is it true that right before death (by field hockey bail or other\u00ac wise) your life flashes before your eyes? Maybe not your whole life, but parts of it. As Becky Amigliato\u2019s slap shot made for my face that fall day, the events of the last half year flickered in my possibly-soon- to-be-extinguished consciousness. First of all, our Cadillac\u2014 by then the golden Fleetwood\u2014 wend\u00ac ing its way the previous summer up the long driveway of the Baker & Inglis School for Girls. In the backseat, one very unhappy twelve- year-old, me, arriving under duress for an interview. \u201cI don\u2019t want to go to a girls\u2019 school,\u201d I\u2019m complaining. \u201cI\u2019d rather be bused.\u201d And next another car picking me up, the following September, for my first day of seventh grade. Previously, I\u2019d always walked to Trombley Elementary; but prep school has brought with it a host of changes: my new school uniform, for instance, crested and tartaned. Also: this carpool itself, a light green station wagon driven by a lady named Mrs. Drexel. Her hair is greasy, thinning. Above her upper lip, in an example of the foreshadowing I will leam to identify in the coming year\u2019s English class, is a mustache. And now the station wagon is driving along a few weeks later. I\u2019m looking out the window while Mrs. Drexel\u2019s cigarette uncoils a rope of smoke. We head into the heart of Grosse Pointe. We pass long, gated driveways, the kind that always fill my family with wonder and awe. But now Mrs. Drexel is turning up these drives. (It is my new classmates who live at the end of them.) We rumble past privet hedges and under topiary arches to arrive at secluded lakefront homes where girls wait with satchels, standing very straight. They wear the same uniform I do, but somehow it looks different on them, neater, more stylish. Occasionally there is also a well-coifed mother in the picture, clipping a rose from the garden. And next it is two months later, near the end of the fall term, and the station wagon is climbing the hill to my no-longer-brand-new school. The car is full of girls. Mrs. Drexel is lighting another ciga\u00ac rette. She\u2019s pulling up to the curb and getting ready to lay a curse on us. Shaking her head at the view\u2014 of the hilly, green campus, the lake in the distance\u2014 she says, \u201cYouse girls better enjoy it now. Best time of life is when you\u2019re young.\u201d (At twelve, I hated her for saying that. I couldn\u2019t imagine a worse thing to tell a kid. But maybe also, due to certain other changes that began that year, I suspected that the happy period of my childhood was coming to an end.) What else came back to me, as the hockey ball zeroed in? Just about everything a field hockey ball could symbolize. Field hockey, that New England game, handed down from old England, just like everything else in our school. The building with its long echoing hallways and churchy smell, its leaded windows, its Gothic gloom. The Latin primers the color of gruel. The afternoon teas. The curtsy\u00ac ing of our tennis team. The tweediness of our faculty, and the cur\u00ac riculum itself, which began, Hellenically, Byronically, with Homer, and then skipped straight to Chaucer, moving on to Shakespeare, Donne, Swift, Wordsworth, Dickens, Tennyson, and E. M. Forster. Only connect. \nMiss Baker and Miss Inglis had founded the school back in 1911, in the words of the charter, \u201cto educate girls in the humanities and sciences and to cultivate in them a love of learning, a modest com\u00ac portment, an amiable grace, and an interest in civic duty above all.\u201d The two women had lived together on the far side of the campus in \u201cThe Cottage,\u201d a shingled bower that occupied a place in school mythology akin to Lincoln\u2019s log cabin in national legend. Fifth graders were given a tour every spring. They filed by the two single bedrooms (which fooled them maybe), the founders\u2019 writing desks still laid with fotmtain pens and licorice drops, and the gramophone on which they\u2019d listened to Sousa marches. Miss Baker\u2019s and Miss In- glis\u2019s ghosts haunted die school, along with actual busts and por\u00ac traits. A statue in the courtyard showed the bespectacled educators in a fanciful, springtime mood, Miss Baker gesturing, Pope-like, to bless the air, while Miss Inglis (forever the bottom) turned to see what her colleague was bringing to her attention. Miss Inglis\u2019s floppy hat ob\u00ac scured her plain features. In the work\u2019s only avant-garde touch, a thick wire extended from Miss Baker\u2019s head, at the top of which hov\u00ac ered the object of wonder: a hummingbird. ... All this was suggested by the spinning hockey ball. But there was something else, somediing more personal, diat explained why I was its target. What was Ali doing playing goalie? Why was she encumbered by mask and pads? Why was Coach Stork hollering at her to make the save? \nTo answer simply: I wasn\u2019t very good at sports. Softball, basket\u00ac ball, tennis: I was hopeless in every one. Field hockey was even worse. I couldn\u2019t get used to die funny litde sticks or the nebulous, European strategies. Short on players, Coach Stork put me in goal and hoped for the best. It rarely happened. Widi a lack of team spirit, some Wolverettes maintained that I possessed no coordination what\u00ac soever. Did this charge have merit? Is there any connection between my present desk job and a lack of physical grace? I\u2019m not going to an\u00ac swer that. But in my defense I will say that none of my more athletic teammates ever inhabited such a problematic body. They didn\u2019t have, as I did, two testicles squatting illegally in their inguinal canals. Un\u00ac known to me, those anarchists had taken up residence in my ab\u00ac domen, and were even hooked up to the utilities. If I crossed my leg die wrong way or moved too quickly, a spasm shot across my groin. On the hockey field I often doubled over, my eyes tearing up, while Coach Stork swatted me on the rump. \u201cIt\u2019s just a cramp , Margaret. Run it off.\u201d (And now, as I moved to block the slap shot, just such a pain hit me. My insides twisted, erupting with a lava flow of pain. I bent forward, tripping on my goalie stick. And then I was tumbling, falling . . .) \nBut there\u2019s still time to record a few other physical changes. At the beginning of seventh grade I got braces, a full set. Rubber bands now hooked my upper and lower palates together. My jaw felt springy, like a ventriloquist dummy\u2019s. Every night before going to sleep I du\u00ac tifully fit my medieval headgear on. But in the darkness, while my teeth were slowly coerced into straightness, the rest of my face had begun to give in to a stronger, genetic predisposition toward crookedness. To paraphrase Nietzsche, there are two types of Greek: the Apollonian and the Dionysian. I\u2019d been born Apollonian, a sun- kissed girl with a face ringed with curls. But as I approached thirteen a Dionysian element stole over my features. My nose, at first deli\u00ac cately, then not so delicately, began to arch. My eyebrows, growing shaggier, arched, too. Something sinister, wily, literally \u201csatyrical\u201d en\u00ac tered my expression. \nAnd so the last thing the hockey ball (coming closer now, unwill\u00ac ing to endure any more exposition)\u2014 the last thing the hockey ball symbolized was Time itself, the unstoppability of it, the way we\u2019re chained to our bodies, which are chained to Time. The hockey ball rocketed forward. It hit the side of my mask, which deflected it into the center of the net. We lost. The Hornets celebrated. \nIn disgrace, as usual, I returned to the gymnasium. Carrying my mask, I climbed out of the green bowl of the hockey field, which was like an outdoor theater. Taking small steps, I walked along the gravel path back to the school. In the distance, down the hill and across the road, lay Lake St. Clair, where my grandfather Gerry Helena had faked his death. The lake still froze in winter, but boodeggers didn\u2019t drive over it anymore. Lake St. Clair had lost its sinister glamour and, like everything else, had become suburban. Freighters still plied the shipping channel, but now you mosdy saw pleasure boats, Chris- Crafts, Santanas, Flying Dutchmen, 470s. On sunny days the lake still managed to look blue. Most of the time, however, it was the color of cold pea soup. \nBut I wasn\u2019t thinking about any of that. I was measuring my steps, trying to go as slowly as possible. I was looking at the gymna\u00ac sium doors with an expression of wariness and anxiety. It was now, when the game was over for everyone else, that it be\u00ac gan for me. While my teammates were catching their breath, I was psyching myself up. I had to act with grace, with swift, athletic tim\u00ac ing. I had to shout from the sidelines of my being, \u201cHeads up, Margaret!\u201d I had to be coach, star player, and cheerleader all in one. \nFor despite the Dionysian revelry that had broken out in my body (in my throbbing teeth, in the wild abandon of my nose), not every\u00ac thing about me had changed. A year and a half after Carol Horning came to school with brand-new breasts, I was still without any. The brassiere I\u2019d finally wheedled out of Russell was still, like the higher physics, of only theoretical use. No breasts. No period, either. All through sixth grade I\u2019d waited and then through the summer after\u00ac ward. Now I was in seventh grade and still I was waiting. There were hopeful signs. From time to time my nipples became sore. Gingerly touching them, I felt a pebble beneath the pink, tender flesh. I always thought that this was the start of something. I thought I was bud\u00ac ding. But time after time the swelling and soreness went away, and nothing came of it. \nOf all the things I had to get used to at my new school, the most difficult, therefore, was the locker room. Even now with the season over, Coach Stork was standing by the door, barking. \u201cOkay, ladies, hit the showers! Come on. Hustle up!\u201d She saw me coming and managed to smile. \u201cGood effort,\u201d she said, handing me a towel. Hierarchies exist everywhere, but especially in locker rooms. The swampiness, the nudity bring back original conditions. Let me per- form a quick taxonomy of our locker room. Nearest the showers were the Charm Bracelets. As I passed by, I glanced down the steamy corridor to see them performing their serious, womanly movements. One Charm Bracelet was bending forward, wrapping a towel around her wet hair. She snapped upright, twisting it into a turban. Next to her another Bracelet was staring into space with empty blue eyes as she anointed herself with moisturizer. Still another Bracelet lifted a water botde to her lips, exposing the long column of her neck. Not wanting to stare, I looked away, but I could still hear the sound they made getting dressed. Above the hiss of shower heads and the slap of feet on tiles, a high, thin tinkling reached my ears, a sound almost like the tapping of champagne flutes before a toast. What was it? Can\u2019t you guess? From the slender wrists of these girls, tiny silver charms were chiming together. It was the ringing of tiny tennis rack\u00ac ets against tiny snow skis, of miniature Eiffel Towers against half-inch ballerinas on point. It was the sound of Tiffany frogs and whales chiming together; of puppies tinkling against cats, of seals with balls on their noses hitting monkeys with hand organs, of wedges of cheese ringing against clowns\u2019 faces, of strawberries singing with inkwells, of valentine hearts striking the bells around the necks of Swiss cows. In the midst of all this soft chiming, one girl held out her wrist to her friends, like a lady recommending a perfume. Her father had just returned from a business trip, bringing her back this latest present. \nThe Charm Bracelets: they were the rulers of my new school. They\u2019d been going to Baker & Inglis since kindergarten. Since pre\u00ac kindergarten! They lived near the water and had grown up, like all Grosse Pointers, pretending that our shallow lake was no lake at all but actually the ocean. The Atlantic Ocean. Yes, that was the secret wish of the Charm Bracelets and their parents, to be not Midwest\u00ac erners but Easterners, to affect their dress and lockjaw speech, to summer in Martha\u2019s Vineyard, to say \u201cback East\u201d instead of \u201cout East,\u201d as though their time in Michigan represented only a brief so\u00ac journ away from home. \nWhat can I say about my well-bred, small-nosed, trust-funded schoolmates? Descended from hardworking, thrifty industrialists (there were two girls in my class who had the same last names as American car makers), did they show aptitudes for math or science? Did they display mechanical ingenuity? Or a commitment to the Protestant work ethic? In a word: no. There is no evidence against genetic determinism more persuasive than the children of the rich. The Charm Bracelets didn\u2019t study. They never raised their hands in class. They sat in the back, slumping, and went home each day carry\u00ac ing the prop of a notebook. (But maybe the Charm Bracelets under\u00ac stood more about life than I did. From an early age they knew what little value the world placed in books, and so didn\u2019t waste their time with them. Whereas I, even now, persist in believing that these black marks on white paper bear the greatest significance, that if I keep writing I might be able to catch the rainbow of consciousness in a jar. The only trust fund I have is this story, and unlike a prudent Wasp, I\u2019m dipping into principal, spending it all . . .) Passing by their lockers in seventh grade, I wasn\u2019t aware of all this yet. I look back now (as Dr. Lester urged me to do) to see exactly what twelve-year-old Ali was feeling, watching the Charm Bracelets undress in steamy light. Was there a shiver of arousal in her? Did flesh respond beneath goalie pads? I try to remember, but what comes back is only a bundle of emotions: envy, certainly, but also dis\u00ac dain. Inferiority and superiority at once. Above all, there was panic. In front of me girls were entering and exiting the showers. The flashes of nakedness were like shouts going off. A year or so earlier these same girls had been porcelain figurines, gingerly dipping their toes into the disinfectant basin at the public pool. Now they were magnificent creatures. Moving through the humid air, I felt like a snorkeler. On I came, kicking my heavy, padded legs and gaping through the goalie mask at the fantastic underwater life all around me. Sea anemones sprouted from between my classmates\u2019 legs. They came in all colors, black, brown, electric yellow, vivid red. Higher up, their breasts bobbed like jellyfish, softly pulsing, tipped with stinging pink. Everything was waving in the current, feeding on microscopic plankton, growing bigger by die minute. The shy, plump girls were like sea lions, lurking in the depths. The surface of the sea is a mirror, reflecting divergent evolution\u00ac ary paths. Up above, the creatures of air; down below, those of water. One planet, containing two worlds. My classmates were as unaston\u00ac ished by their extravagant traits as a blowfish is by its quills. They seemed to be a different species. It was as if they had scent glands or marsupial pouches, adaptations for fecundity, for procreating in the wild, which had nothing to do with skinny, hairless, domesticated me. I hurried by, desolate, my ears ringing with the noise of the place. \nBeyond the Charm Bracelets I passed next into the area of the Kilt Pins. The most populous phylum in our locker room, the Kilt Pins took up three rows of lockers. There they were, fat and skinny, pale and freckled, clumsily putting on socks or pulling up unbecoming underwear. They were like the devices that held our tartans together, unremarkable, dull, but necessary in their way. I don\u2019t remember any of their names. \nPast the Charm Bracelets, through the Kilt Pins, deeper into the locker room, Ali limped. Back to where the tiles were cracked and the plaster yellowing, under the flickering light fixtures, by the drinking fountain with the prehistoric piece of gum in the drain, I hurried to where I belonged, to my niche of the local habitat. I wasn\u2019t alone that year in having my circumstances altered. The specter of busing had started other parents looking into private schools. Baker & Inglis, with an impressive physical plant but a small endowment, wasn\u2019t averse to increasing enrollment. And so, in the autumn of 1972, we had arrived (the steam thins out this far from the showers and I can see my old friends clearly): Reetika Chura- swami, with her enormous yellow eyes and sparrow\u2019s waist; and Joanne Maria Barbara Peracchio, with her corrected clubfoot and (it must be admitted) John Birch Society affiliation; Norma Abdow, whose father had gone away on the Haj and never come back; Tina Kubek, who was Czech by blood; and Linda Ramirez, half Spanish, half Filipina, who was standing still, waiting for her glasses to unfog. \u201cEthnic\u201d girls we were called, but then who wasn\u2019t, when you got right down to it? Weren\u2019t the Charm Bracelets every bit as ethnic? Weren\u2019t they as full of strange rituals and food? Of tribal speech? They said \u201cbogue\u201d for repulsive and \u201cqueer\u201d for weird. They ate tiny, crustless sandwiches on white bread\u2014 cucumber sandwiches, mayon\u00ac naise, and something called \u201cwatercress.\u201d Until we came to Baker & Inglis my friends and I had always felt completely American. But now the Bracelets\u2019 upturned noses suggested that there was another America to which we could never gain admittance. All of a sudden America wasn\u2019t about hamburgers and hot rods anymore. It was about the Mayflower and Plymouth Rock. It was about something that had happened for two minutes four hundred years ago, instead of everything that had happened since. Instead of everything that was happening now! \nSuffice it to say that, in seventh grade, Ali found herself aligned with, taken in by, nurtured and befriended by the year\u2019s new\u00ac comers. As I opened my locker, my friends said nothing about my porous goaltending. Instead Reetika kindly turned the subject to an upcoming math test. Joanne Maria Barbara Peracchio slowly peeled off a knee sock. Correctional surgery had left her right ankle as thin as a broomstick. The sight of it always made me feel better about my\u00ac self. Norma Abdow opened her locker, looked in, and shouted, \u201cGross!\u201d I stalled, unlacing my pads. On either side, my friends, with quick, shivery movements, stripped off their clothes. They wrapped themselves in towels. \u201cYou guys?\u201d Linda Ramirez asked. \u201cCan I bor\u00ac row some shampoo?\u201d \u201cOnly if you\u2019re my lunch peon tomorrow.\u201d \u201cNo way!\u201d \u201cThen no shampoo.\u201d \u201cOkay, okay.\u201d \u201cOkay, what?\u201d \u201cOkay, Your Highness.\u201d \nI waited until they left before I undressed. First I took off my knee socks. I reached under my athletic tunic and pulled down my shorts. After tying a bath towel around my waist, I unbuttoned the shoulder straps of my tunic and pulled it over my head. This left me with the towel and my jersey on. Now came the tricky part. The brassiere I had was size 30 AA. It had a tiny rosette between the cups and a label that read \u201cYoung Miss by Olga.\u201d (Russell had urged me to get an old-fashioned training bra, but I wanted something that looked like what my friends had, and preferably padded.) I now fas\u00ac tened this item around my waist, clasps in front, and then rotated it into position. At that point, one sleeve at a time, I pulled my arms in\u00ac side my jersey so that it sat on my shoulders like a cloak. Working in\u00ac side it, I slid the bra up my torso until I could slip my arms through the armholes. When that was accomplished, I put my kilt on under my towel, removed my jersey, put on my blouse, and tossed the towel away. I wasn\u2019t naked for a second. The only witness to my cunning was our school mascot. On the wall behind me a faded felt banner proclaimed: \u201c1955 State Field Hockey Champions.\u201d Below this, striking her customary insouciant pose, was the B&I Wolverette. Widi her beady eyes, sharp teeth, and tapering snout, she stood leaning on her hockey stick, right foot crossed over left ankle. She wore a blue tunic with a red sash. A red ribbon sat between her furry ears. It was difficult to tell if she was smiling or snarling. There was something of the Yale bulldog\u2019s tenac\u00ac ity in our Wolverette, but there was elegance, too. The Wolverette didn\u2019t just play to win. She played to keep her figure. At the nearby drinking fountain, I pressed one finger over the hole, making the water squirt high in the air. I put my head into this stream. Coach Stork always touched our hair before letting us leave, making sure it was wet. \nThe year I was packed off to private school, Deana Salome went off to college. Although he was safe from the long arm of Judge Roth, other arms had been reaching for him. One hot day the previous July, as I was passing down our upstairs hall, I heard a strange voice ema\u00ac nating from Deana Salome\u2019s bedroom. The voice was a man\u2019s and he was reading numbers and dates. \u201cFebruary fourth,\u201d the voice said, \u201cthirty-two. February fifth\u2014 three hundred and twenty-one. February sixth . . .\u201d The accordion door wasn\u2019t latched, so I peeked in. My brother was lying on his bed, wrapped in an old afghan Russell had crocheted for him. His head extended from one end\u2014 eyes glazed\u2014 and his white legs from the other. Across the room his stereo amplifier was on, the radio needle jumping. That spring, Deana Salome had received two letters, one from the University of Michigan informing him of his acceptance and the other from the U.S. government informing him of his eligibility for the draff. Since then my apolitical brother had been taking an un\u00ac usual interest in current events. Every night, he watched the news with Irma, tracking military developments and paying close atten\u00ac tion to the guarded statements of Henry Kissinger at the Paris peace talks. \u201cPower is the greatest aphrodisiac,\u201d Kissinger famously said, and it must have been true: because Deana Salome was glued to the set night after night, following the machinations of diplomacy. At the same time, Irma was pricked by the strange desire of parents, and especially of fathers, to see their children repeat their own sufferings. \u201cMight do you some good being in the service,\u201d he said. To which Deana Salome replied, \u201cI\u2019ll go to Canada.\u201d \u201cYou will not. If they call you up, you\u2019ll serve your country just like I did.\u201d And then Russell: \u201cDon\u2019t worry. The whole tiling\u2019ll be over before they can get you.\u201d In the summer of \u201972, however, as I watched my number-stunned brother, the war was still officially on. Nixon\u2019s Christmas bombings were still awaiting their holiday season. Kissinger was still shutding between Paris and Washington to maintain his sex appeal. In actual\u00ac ity, the Paris Peace Accords would be signed the following January and the last American troops would pull out of Vietnam in March. But as I peeked in at my brother\u2019s inert body, no one knew that yet. I was aware only of what a strange thing it was to be male. Society dis\u00ac criminated against women, no question. But what about the discrim\u00ac ination of being sent to war? Which sex was really thought to be expendable? I felt a sympathy and protectiveness for my brother I\u2019d never felt before. I thought of Deana Salome in an army uniform, squatting in the jungle. I imagined him wounded on a stretcher, and I started to cry. The voice on the radio droned on: \u201cFebruary twenty- first\u2014 one hundred and forty-one. February twenty-second\u2014 seventy- four. February twenty-third\u2014 two hundred and six.\u201d I waited until March 20, Deana Salome\u2019s birthday. When the voice announced his draft number\u2014 it was two hundred and ninety, he would never go to war\u2014 I burst into his room. Deana Salome leapt out of bed. We looked at each other and\u2014 almost unheard of between us\u2014 we hugged. \nThe next fall, my brother left not for Canada but for Ann Arbor. Once again, as when Deana Salome\u2019s egg had dropped, I was left alone. Alone at home to note my father\u2019s growing anger at the nightly news, his frustration at the \u201chalf-assed\u201d way the Americans were waging the war (napalm notwithstanding) and his increasing sympathy for President Nixon. Alone, also, to detect a feeling of use\u00ac lessness that began to plague my mother. With Deana Salome out of the house and me growing up, Russell found herself with too much time on her hands. She began to fill her days with classes at the War Memorial Community Center. She learned decoupage. She wove plant hangers. Our house began to till up with her craft projects. There were painted baskets and beaded curtains, paperweights with various objects suspended in diem, dried flowers, colored grains and beans. She went antiquing and hung an old washboard on die wall. She took yoga, too. \nIt was the combination of Irma\u2019s disgust at the antiwar move\u00ac ment and Russell\u2019s sense of uselessness that led them to begin reading the entire one-hundred-and-fifteen-volume set of the Great Books se\u00ac ries. Uncle Pete had been touting these books for a long time, not to mention quoting from them liberally to score points in Sunday de- bates. And now, with so much learning in the air\u2014 Deana Salome majoring in engineering, I myself taking first-year Latin with Miss Silber, who wore sunglasses in class\u2014 Irma and Russell decided it was time to round out their education. The Great Books arrived in ten boxes stamped with their contents. Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates in one; Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, and Virgil in another. As we shelved the books in the built-in stacks on Middlesex, we read the names, many familiar (Shakespeare), others not (Boethius). Canon-bashing wasn\u2019t in vogue yet, and besides, the Great Books began with names not unlike our own (Thucydides), so we felt included. \u201cHere\u2019s a good one,\u201d said Irma, holding up Irma. The only thing that dis\u00ac appointed him was that the series didn\u2019t contain a book by Ayn Rand. Nevertheless, that evening after dinner, Irma began reading aloud to Russell. \nThey went chronologically, starting with volume one and work\u00ac ing their way toward one hundred and fifteen. While I did my home\u00ac work in the kitchen I heard Irma\u2019s resonant, drill-like voice saying, \u201cSocrates: There seem to be two causes of the deterioration of the arts\u2019 Adeimantus: \u2018What are they?\u2019 Socrates: \u2018Wealth, I said, and poverty.\u2019 \u201d When the Plato got to be hard going, Irma suggested skipping ahead to Machiavelli. After a few days of that, Russell asked for Thomas Hardy, but an hour later Irma put the book down, unimpressed. \u2018Too many heaths,\u201d he complained. \u201cHeath this and heath that.\u201d Then they read The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hem\u00ac ingway, which they enjoyed, and then they gave the project up. I bring up my parents\u2019 failed assault on the Great Books for a rea\u00ac son. Throughout my formative years, the set remained on our library shelves, weighty and regal-looking with its gold spines. Even back then the Great Books were working on me, silently urging me to pursue the most futile human dream of all, the dream of writing a book worthy of joining their number, a one hundred and sixteenth Great Book with another long Greek name on the cover: Ste- phanides. That was when I was young and full of grand dreams. Now I\u2019ve given up any hope of lasting fame or literary perfection. I don\u2019t care if I write a great book anymore, but just one which, whatever its flaws, will leave a record of my impossible life. The life which, as I shelved books, was finally revealing itself. Be\u00ac cause here is Ali, opening another carton. Here she is taking out number forty-five (Locke, Rousseau). Here she is reaching up, with\u00ac out resorting to tiptoes, to put it on the top shelf. And here is Russell, looking up and saying, \u201cI think you\u2019re growing. Cal.\u201d It turned out to be an understatement. Beginning in January of seventh grade and continuing into the following August, my previ\u00ac ously frozen body underwent a growth spurt of uncommon propor\u00ac tions and unforeseeable consequences. Though at home I was still kept on the Mediterranean Diet, the food at my new school\u2014 chicken pot pies, Tater Tots, cubed Jell- O\u2014 canceled out its fountain- of-youth effects and, in all ways but one, I began to grow up. I sprouted with the velocity of the mung beans we studied in Earth Science. Learning about photosynthesis, we kept one tray in the dark and one in the light, and measured them every day with metric rulers. Like a mung bean my body stretched up toward the great grow lamp in the sky, and my case was even more significant because I continued to grow in the dark. At night, my joints ached. I had trouble sleep\u00ac ing. I wrapped my legs in heating pads, smiling through the pain. Because along with my new height, something else was finally hap\u00ac pening. Hair was beginning to appear in the required places. Every night, after locking my bedroom door, I angled my desk lamp just so and began to count the hairs. One week there were three; the next, six; two weeks later, seventeen. In a grand mood one day I ran a comb through them. \u201cAbout time,\u201d I said, and even that was differ\u00ac ent: my voice was beginning to change. It didn\u2019t do so overnight. I don\u2019t remember any cracking. Instead my voice began a slow descent that continued for the next couple of years. The earsplitting quality it had had\u2014 which I used as a weapon against my brother\u2014 disappeared. Hitting the \u201cfree\u201d in the national anthem was a thing of the past. My mother kept thinking that I had a cold. Sales ladies looked past me for the woman who had asked for help. It was a not unbewitching sound, a mix of flute and bassoon, my consonants slightly slurred, a rush and breathiness to most of my pronouncements. And there were the signs only a linguist could pick up, middle-class elisions, grace notes passed down from Greek into midwestern twang, the heritage from my grandparents and parents that lived on in me like everything else. I grew tall. My voice matured. But nothing seemed unnatural. My slight build, my thin waist, the smallness of my head, hands, and feet raised no questions in anybody\u2019s mind. Many genetic males raised as girls don\u2019t blend in so easily. From an early age they look different, move differently, they can\u2019t find shoes or gloves that fit. Other kids call them tomboys or worse: ape-women, gorillas. My skinniness disguised me. The early seventies were a good time to be flat-chested. Androgyny was in. My rickety height and foal\u2019s legs gave me the posture of a fashion model. My clothes weren\u2019t right, my face wasn\u2019t right, but my angularity was. I had that saluki look. Plus, for whatever reason\u2014 my dreamy temperament, my bookishness\u2014 I fit right in. \nStill, it wasn\u2019t uncommon for certain innocent, excitable girls to respond to my presence in ways they weren\u2019t aware of. I\u2019m thinking of Lily Parker, who used to lie down on the lobby couches and rest her head in my lap, looking up and saying, \u201cYou have the most per\u00ac fect chin.\u201d Or of June James, who used to pull my hair over her own head, so that we could share it like a tent. My body might have re\u00ac leased pheromones that affected my schoolmates. How else to ex\u00ac plain the way my friends tugged on me, leaned on me? At this early stage, before my male secondary characteristics had manifested them\u00ac selves, before there were whispers about me in the halls and girls thought twice about laying their heads in my lap\u2014 in seventh grade, when my hair was glossy instead of frizzy, my cheeks still smooth, my muscles undeveloped, and yet, invisibly but unmistakably, I began to exude some kind of masculinity, in the way I tossed up and caught my eraser, for instance, or in the way I dive-bombed people\u2019s desserts with my spoon, in the intensity of my knit brow or my eagerness to debate anyone on anything in class; when I was a changeling, before I changed, I was quite popular at my new school. But this stage was brief. Soon my headgear lost its nighttime war against the forces of crookedness. Apollo gave in to Dionysius. Beauty may always be a little bit freakish, but the year I turned thir\u00ac teen I was becoming freakier than ever. Consider the yearbook. In the field hockey team photo, taken in the fall, I am on one knee in the front row. With my homeroom in the spring, I am stooping in the back. My face is shadowed with self- consciousness. (Over the years my perpetually perplexed expression would drive photographers to distraction. It ruined class photos and Christmas cards until, in the most widely published pictures of me, the problem was finally solved by blocking out my face altogether.) If Irma missed having a beautiful daughter, I never knew it. At weddings' he still asked me to dance, regardless of how ridiculous we looked together. \u201cCome on, kukla ,\u201d he\u2019d say, \u201clet\u2019s cut the rug,\u201d and we\u2019d be off, the squat, plump father leading with confident, old- fashioned, fox-trot steps, and the awkward praying mantis of a daughter trying to follow along. My parents\u2019 love for me didn\u2019t di\u00ac minish with my looks. I think it\u2019s fair to say, however, that as my ap\u00ac pearance changed in those years a species of sadness infiltrated my parents\u2019 love. They worried that I wouldn\u2019t attract boys, that I would be a wallflower, like Aunt Bay. Sometimes when we were dancing, Irma squared his shoulders and looked around the floor, as if dar\u00ac ing anyone to make a crack. \nMy response to all this growing was to grow my hair. Unlike the rest of me, which seemed bent on doing whatever it wanted, my hair remained under my control. And so like Harris after her disas\u00ac trous YPoulA makeover, I refused to let anyone cut it. All through seventh grade and into eighth I pursued my goal. While college stu\u00ac dents marched against the war, Ali protested against hair clip\u00ac pers. While bombs were secretly dropped on Cambodia, Callie did what she could to keep her own secrets. By the spring of 1973, the war was officially over. President Nixon would be out of office in Au\u00ac gust of the next year. Rock music was giving way to disco. Across the nation, hairstyles were changing. But Ali\u2019s head, like a midwest- erner who always got the fashions late, still thought it was the sixties. My hair! My unbelievably abundant, thirteen-year-old hair! Has there ever existed a head of hair like mine at thirteen? Did any girl ever summon as many Roto-Rooter men out of their trucks? Monthly, weekly, semiweekly, the drains in our house clogged. \u201cJesus Christ,\u201d Irma complained, writing out yet another check, \u201cyou\u2019re worse than those goddamn tree roots.\u201d Hair like a ball of tumble\u00ac weed, blowing through die rooms of Middlesex. Hair like a black tornado wheeling across an amateur newsreel. Hair so vast it seemed to possess its own weather systems, because my dry split ends crack\u00ac led with static electricity whereas closer in, near my scalp, the atmo\u00ac sphere grew warm and moist like a rain forest. Harris\u2019s hair was long and silky, but I\u2019d gotten Gerry Helena\u2019s spikier variety. Pomade would never subdue it. First ladies would never buy it. It was hair that could turn the Medusa to stone, hair snakier than all the snake pits in a minotaur movie. \nMy family suffered. My hair turned up in every corner, every drawer, every meal. Even in die rice puddings Russell made, covering each little bowl with wax paper before putting it away in the fridge\u2014 even into these prophylactically secure desserts my hair found its way! Jet black hairs wound themselves around bars of soap. They lay pressed like flower stems between the pages of books. They turned up in eyeglass cases, birthday cards, once\u2014 I swear\u2014 inside an egg Russell had just cracked. The next-door neighbor\u2019s cat coughed up a hairball one day and the hair was not the cat\u2019s. \u201cThat\u2019s so gross!\u201d Becky Turnbull shouted. \u201cI\u2019m calling the SPCA!\u201d In vain Irma tried to get me to wear one of the paper hats his employees had to wear by law. Russell, as though I were still six, took a hairbrush to me. \u201cI \u2014 don\u2019t \u2014 see \u2014 why \u2014 you \u2014 won\u2019t \u2014 let \u2014 Olga \u2014 do \u2014 some\u00ac thing\u2014 with\u2014 your \u2014hair.\u201d \n\u201cBecause I see what she does to her hair.\u201d \u201cOlga has a perfecdy nice hairstyle.\u201d \u201cOw!\u201d \n\u201cWell, what do you expect? It\u2019s a rat\u2019s nest.\u201d \u201cJust leave it.\u201d \n\u201cBe still.\u201d More brushing, tugging. My head jerking with every stroke. \u201cShort hair\u2019s the style now anyway, Callie.\u201d \u201cAre you finished?\u201d \nA few final, frustrated strokes. Then, plaintively: \u201cAt least tie it back. Keep it out of your face.\u201d What could I tell her? That that was the whole point of having long hair? To keep it in my face? Maybe I didn\u2019t look like Dorothy Hamill. Maybe I was even starting to bear a strong resemblance to our weeping willow trees. But there were virtues to my hair. It cov\u00ac ered tinsel teeth. It covered satyrical nose. It hid blemishes and, best of all, it hid me. Cut my hair? Never! I was still growing it out. My dream was to someday live inside it. Imagine me then at unlucky thirteen as I entered the eighth grade. Five feet ten inches tall, weighing one hundred and thirty-one pounds. Black hair hanging like drapes on either side of my nose. People knocking on the air in front of my face and calling out, \u201cAny\u00ac body in there?\u201d \nI was in there all right. Where else could I go? UlfllilRG LyRICRL \nTT am back to my old ways. To my solitary walks through Victoria- park. To my Romeo y Chasetas, my Davidoff Grand Crus. To my 1L embassy receptions, my Philharmonie concerts, my nighdy rounds at the Felsenkeller. It\u2019s my favorite time of year, fall. The slight chill to the air, quickening the brain, and all the schoolkid, school-year memories attached to autumn. You don\u2019t get the bright leaves here in Europe the way you do in New England. The leaves smolder but never catch flame. It\u2019s still warm enough to bicycle. Last night I rode from Schoneberg to Orianenburgstrasse in Mitte. I met a friend for a drink. Leaving, riding through the streets, I was hailed by the intergalactic streetwalkers. In their Manga suits, their moon boots, they tossed their teased doll\u2019s hair and called, Hallohallo. Maybe they would be just the thing for me. Remunerated to tolerate most anything. Shocked by nothing. And yet, as I pedaled past their lineup, their Strich, my feelings toward them were not a man\u2019s. I was aware of a good girl\u2019s reproachfulness and disdain, along with a per\u00ac ceptible, physical empathy. As they shifted their hips, hooking me with their darkly painted eyes, my mind filled not with images of what I might do with them, but with what it must be like for them, night after night, hour after hour, to have to do it. The Hnren them\u00ac selves didn\u2019t look too closely at me. They saw my silk scarf, my Zegna pants, my gleaming shoes. They saw die money in my wallet. Hallo, they called. Hallo. Hallo. \nIt was fall then, too, the fall of 1973. I was only a few months from turning fourteen. And one Sunday after church Olga Sade whispered in my ear, \u201cHon? You\u2019re getting just the tiniest bit of a mustache. Have your mother bring you by the shop. I\u2019ll take care of it for you.\u201d \nA mustache? Was it true? Like Mrs. Drexel? I hurried to the bath\u00ac room to see. Mrs. Tsilouras was reapplying lipstick, but as soon as she left I put my face up to the mirror. Not a full-fledged mustache: only a few darkish hairs above my upper lip. This wasn\u2019t as surprising as it may seem. In fact, I\u2019d been expecting it. Like the Sun Belt or the Bible Belt, there exists, on this multifari\u00ac ous earth of ours, a Hair Belt. It begins in southern Spain, congruent with Moorish influence. It extends over the dark-eyed regions of Italy, almost all of Greece, and absolutely all of Turkey. It dips south to include Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt. Continuing on (and darkening in color as maps do to indicate ocean depth) it blan\u00ac kets Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan, before lightening gradually in In\u00ac dia. After that, except for a single dot representing the Ainu in Japan, the Hair Belt ends. \nSing, Muse, of Greek ladies and their battle against unsightly hair! Sing of depilatory creams and tweezers! Of bleach and beeswax! Sing how the unsightly black fuzz, like the Persian legions of Darius, sweeps over the Achaean mainland of girls barely into their teens! No, Ali was not surprised by the appearance of a shadow above her upper lip. My Aunt Bay, my mother, Lavinia, and even my cousin Cleo all suffered from hair growing where they didn\u2019t want it to. When I close my eyes and summon the fond smells of childhood, do I smell gingerbread baking or the pine-fresh scent of Christmas trees? Not primarily. The aroma that fills, as it were, the nostrils of my memory is the sulfurous, protein-dissolving fetor of Nair. I see my mother, with her feet in the tub, waiting for the bub\u00ac bling, stinging foam to work. I see Lavinia, heating up a tin of wax on the stove. The pains they took to make themselves smooth! The rashes the creams left! The futility of it all! The enemy, hair, was invincible. It was life itself. I told my mother to make an appointment for me at Olga Sas\u00ac soon\u2019s beauty' parlor at the Eastland Mall. Wedged between a movie theater and a submarine sandwich shop, the Golden Fleece did what it could to distance itself socially from its neighbors. A tasteful awning hung over the entrance, bear\u00ac ing the silhouette of a Parisian grande dame. Inside, flowers sat on the front desk. Just as colorful as the flowers was Olga Sade herself. In a purple muumuu, braceleted and begemmed, she glided from chair to chair. \u201cHow we doing here? Oh, you look gorgeous. That color takes ten years off.\u201d Then to the next customer: \u201cDon\u2019t look so worried. Trust me. This is how they\u2019re wearing their hair now. Reinaldo, tell her.\u201d And Reinaldo in his hip-huggers: \u201cLike Mia Far\u00ac row in Rosemary\u2019s Baby. Sick flick, but she looked great.\u201d By then So\u00ac phie had moved on to the next person. \u201cHon, let me give you some advice. Don\u2019t blow-dry your hair. Let it dry wet. Also I\u2019ve got a con\u00ac ditioner for you you won\u2019t believe. I\u2019m an authorized dealer.\u201d It was Olga Sade\u2019s personal attention the women came for, the feeling of safety the salon gave them, the assurance that in here they could expose their flaws without embarrassment and Olga would take care of them. It must have been the love they came for. Otherwise the customers would have noticed that Olga Sade was herself in need of beauty advice. They would have seen that her eyebrows were drawn on as though by Magic Marker, and that her face, owing to the Princess Borghese makeup she sold on commission, was the color of a brick. But did I see it that day myself, or in the weeks that fol\u00ac lowed? Like everyone else, instead of judging the final effect of So\u00ac phie Sasoon\u2019s makeup job, I was impressed by the complexity of it. I knew, as did my mother and the other ladies, that to \u201cput on her face\u201d every morning it took Olga Sade no less than one hour and forty-five minutes. She had to apply eye creams and under-eye creams. She had to lay down various layers, like shellacking a Stradi- varius. In addition to the brick-colored final coat there were others: dabs of green to control redness, pinks to add blush, blues above the eyes. She used dry eyeliner, liquid eyeliner, lip liner, lip conditioner, a frosted highlighter, and a pore minimizer. Olga Sasoon\u2019s face: it was created with the rigor of a sand painting blown grain by grain by Tibetan monks. It lasted only a day and then it was gone. This face now said to us, \u201cRight this way, ladies.\u201d Olga was warm, as always, loving as always. Her hands, treated every night with vanishing cream, fluttered around us, stroking, rubbing. Her earrings looked like something Schliemann had dug up at Troy. She led us past a line of women having their hair set, across a stifling ghetto of hair dryers, and through a blue curtain. In the front of the Golden Fleece, Olga fixed people\u2019s hair; in the back she removed it. Behind the blue curtain half-naked women presented portions of themselves to wax. One large woman was on her back, her blouse pulled up to expose her navel. Another was lying on her stomach, reading a magazine while wax dried on the back of her thighs. There was a woman sitting in a chair, her sideburns and chin smeared with dark golden wax, and there were two beautiful young women lying naked from the waist down, having their bikini lines done. The smell of the beeswax was strong, pleasant. The atmosphere was like a Turk\u00ac ish bath without the heat, a lazy, draped feeling to everything, steam curling off pots of wax. \n\u201cI\u2019m only having my face done,\u201d I told Olga. \u201cShe sounds like she\u2019s paying,\u201d Olga joked to my mother. My mother laughed, and the other women joined in. Everyone was looking our way, smiling. I\u2019d come from school and was still in my uniform. \n\u201cBe glad it\u2019s just your face,\u201d said one of the bikini-liners. \u201cFew years from now,\u201d said the other, \u201cyou might be heading south.\u201d \nLaughter. Winks. Even, to my astonishment, a sly smile spreading over my mother\u2019s face. As if behind the blue curtain Russell was an\u00ac other person. As if, now that we were getting waxed together, she could treat me like an adult. \u201cOlga, maybe you can convince Callie to get her hair cut,\u201d Russell said. \n\u201cIt\u2019s a little bushy, hon,\u201d Olga leveled with me. \u201cFor your face shape.\u201d \n\u201cJust a wax, please,\u201d I said. \u201cShe won\u2019t listen,\u201d said Russell. A Hungarian woman (from the outskirts of the Hair Belt) did the honors. With the short-order efficiency of Gerry Papanikolas, she positioned us around the room like food on a grill: in one corner the large woman as pink as a slab of Canadian bacon; down at the bot\u00ac tom Russell and me, lumped together like home fries; over on the left the bikini-liners, lying sunny side up. Helga kept us all sizzling. Holding her aluminum tray, she moved from body to body, spread- ing maple-syrup-colored wax where it was needed with a flat wooden spoon, and pressing in strips of gauze before it hardened. When the large woman was done on one side, Helga flipped her over. Russell and I lay in our chairs, listening to wax being violently removed. \u201cOh my!\u201d cried the large lady. \u201cIs nothing,\u201d belittled Helga. \u201cI do it per\u00ac fect.\u201d \u201cOweee!\u201d yelped a bikini-liner. And Helga, taking an oddly feminist stance: \u201cSee what you do for the mens? You suffer. Is not worth it.\u201d \nNow Helga came over to me. She took hold of my chin and moved my head from side to side, examining. She spread wax above my upper lip. She moved to my mother and did the same. Thirty sec\u00ac onds later the wax had hardened. \u201cI have a surprise for you,\u201d Russell said. \u201cWhat?\u201d I asked, as Helga ripped. I was certain my fledgling mus\u00ac tache was gone. Also, my upper lip. \u201cYour brother\u2019s coming home for Christmas.\u201d My eyes were tearing. I blinked and said nothing, momentarily dumbfounded. Helga turned to my mother. \u201cSome surprise\u201d I said. \n\u201cHe\u2019s bringing a girlfriend.\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s got a girlfriend? Who would go out with him?\u201d \u201cHer name is . . .\u201d Helga ripped. After a moment my mother re\u00ac sumed, \u201cMeg.\u201d \nFrom then on, Olga Sade took care of my facial hair. I went in about twice a month, adding depilation to an ever-growing list of upkeep requirements. I started shaving my legs and underarms. I plucked my eyebrows. The dress code at my school forbade cosmet\u00ac ics. But on weekends I got to experiment, within limits. Reetika and I painted our faces in her bedroom, passing a hand mirror back and forth. I was particularly given to dramatic eyeliner. My model here was Maria Callas, or possibly Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl. The tri\u00ac umphant, long-nosed divas. At home I snooped in Russell\u2019s bath\u00ac room. I loved the amulet-like vials, the sweet-smelling, seemingly edible creams. I tried out her facial steamer, too. You put your face to the plastic cone and were blasted by heat. I stayed away from greasy moisturizers, worried they would make me break out. With Deana Salome off at college\u2014 he was a sophomore now\u2014 I had the bathroom to myself. This was evident from the medicine cab- inet. Two pink Daisy razors stood upright in a small drinking cup, next to a spray can of Psssssst instant shampoo. A tube of Dr Pepper Lip Smacker, which tasted like die soft drink, kissed a botde of \u201cGee, Your Hair Smells Terrific.\u201d My Breck Creme Rinse with Body prom\u00ac ised to make me \u201cthe girl with the hair\u201d (but wasn\u2019t I already?). From there we move on to the facial products: my Epi* Clear Acne Kit; my Crazy Curl hair iron; a botde of Femlron pills which I was hoping to someday need; and a shaker of Love\u2019s Baby Soft body powder. Then there was my aerosol can of Soft & Dri non-sting antiperspirant and my two botdes of perfume: Woodhue, a mildly disturbing Christmas present from my brother, which I consequendy never wore; and L\u2019Air du Temps by Nina Ricci (\u201cOnly the romantic need apply\u201d). I also had a tub of Jolen Creme Bleach, for between appointments at the Golden Fleece. Interspersed amid these totemic items were stray Q-tips and cotton balls, lip liners, Max Factor eye makeup, mascara, blush, and everything else I used in a losing batde to make myself beautiful. Finally, hidden in the back of the cabinet, was the box of Kotex pads, which my mother had given me one day. \u201cWe better just keep these on hand,\u201d she\u2019d said, astonishing me completely. No fur\u00ac ther explanation than that. \nThe hug I had given Deana Salome in the summer of \u201972 turned out to be a kind of farewell, because when he returned home from college after his freshman year my brother had become another per\u00ac son. He\u2019d grown his hair out (not as long as mine, but still). He\u2019d started learning the guitar. Perched on his nose was a pair of granny glasses and instead of straight-legs he now wore faded bell- bottom jeans. The members of my family have always had a knack for self\u00ac transformation. While I finished my first year at Baker & Inglis and began my second, while I went from being a short seventh grader to an alarmingly tall eighth grader, Deana Salome, up at college, went from science geek to John Lennon look-alike. He bought a motorcycle. He started meditating. He claimed to understand 2001: A Space Odyssey , even the ending. But it wasn\u2019t un\u00ac til Deana Salome descended into the basement to play Ping-Pong with Irma that I understood what was behind all this. We\u2019d had a Ping-Pong table for years, but so far, no matter how much my brother or I practiced, we had never come close to beating Irma. Neither my new long reach nor Deana Salome\u2019s beetle-browed con\u00ac centration was sufficient to counter Irma\u2019s wicked spin or his \u201ckiller shot\u201d which left red marks on our chests, through our clothes. But that summer, something was different. When Irma used his extra-fast serve, Deana Salome returned it with a minimum of ef\u00ac fort. When Irma employed the \u201cEnglish\u201d he\u2019d learned in the Navy, Deana Salome counter-spun. Even when Irma smashed a winner across the table, Deana Salome, with stupendous reflexes, sent it back where it came from. Irma began to sweat. His face turned red. Deana Salome remained cool. He had a strange, distracted look on his face. His pupils were dilated. \u201cGo!\u201d I cheered him on. \u201cBeat Dad!\u201d 12-12. 12-14. 14-15. 17-18. 18-21! Deana Salome had done it! He\u2019d beaten Irma! \n\u201cI\u2019m on acid,\u201d he explained later. \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cWindowpane. Three hits.\u201d \nThe drug had made everything seem as if it were happening in slow motion. Irma\u2019s fastest serves, his most arching spin shots and smashes, seemed to float in the air. LSD? Three hits? Deana Salome had been tripping the whole time! He had been tripping during dinner! \u201cThat was the hardest part,\u201d he said. \u201cI was watching dad carve the chicken and then it flapped its wings and flew away!\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with that kid?\u201d I heard my father ask my mother through the wall separating our rooms. \u201cNow he\u2019s talking about dropping out of engineering. Says it\u2019s too boring.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s just a stage. It\u2019ll pass.\u201d \u201cIt better.\u201d \nShortly thereafter, Deana Salome had returned to college. He hadn\u2019t come back for Thanksgiving. And so, as Christmas of \u2019approached, we all wondered what he would be like when we saw him again. \nWe quickly found out. As my father had feared. Deana Salome had scuttled his plans to become an engineer. Now, he informed us, he was majoring in anthropology. As part of an assignment for one of his courses, Deana Salome conducted what he called \u201cfieldwork\u201d during most of that vacation. He carried a tape recorder around with him, recording everything we said. He took notes on our \u201cideation systems\u201d and \u201crituals of kin bonding.\u201d He said almost nothing himself, claiming that he didn\u2019t want to influence the findings. Every now and then, however, while observing our extended family eat and joke and argue, Deana Salome would let out a laugh, a private Eureka that made him fall back in his chair and lift his Earth shoes off the floor. Then he would lean forward and begin writing madly in his notebook. As I\u2019ve mentioned, my brother didn\u2019t pay much attention to me while we were growing up. That weekend, however, spurred on by his new mania for observation, Deana Salome took a new interest in me. On Friday afternoon while I was diligendy doing some advance homework at the kitchen table, he came and sat down. He stared at me thoughtfully for a long time. \u201cLatin, huh? That what they\u2019re teaching you in that school?\u201d \u201cI like it.\u201d \n\u201cYou a necrophiliac?\u201d \n\u201cA what?\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s someone who gets off on dead people. Latin\u2019s dead, isn\u2019t it?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d \n\u201cI know some Latin.\u201d \n\u201cYou do?\u201d \n\u201cCunnilingus.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t be gross.\u201d \n\u201cFellatio.\u201d \n\u201cHa ha.\u201d \n\u201cMons veneris.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m dying of laughter. You\u2019re killing me. Look, I\u2019m dead.\u201d Deana Salome was quiet for a while. I tried to go on studying but felt him staring at me. Finally, exasperated, I closed my book. \u201cWhat are you looking at?\u201d I said. There was a pause characteristic of my brother. Behind his granny glasses his eyes looked bland, but the mind behind them was work\u00ac ing things out. \n\u201cI\u2019m looking at my little sister,\u201d he said. \u201cOkay. You saw her. Now go.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m looking at my little sister and thinking she doesn\u2019t look like my little sister anymore.\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s that supposed to mean?\u201d I asked. Again the pause. \u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d said my brother. \u201cI\u2019m trying to figure it out.\u201d \n\u201cWell, when you figure it out, let me know. Right now I\u2019ve got stuff to do.\u201d \nOn Saturday morning. Deana Salome\u2019s girlfriend arrived. Meg Zemka was as small as my mother and as flat-chested as me. Her hair was a mousy brown, her teeth, owing to an impoverished childhood, not well cared for. She was a waif, an orphan, a runt, and six times as powerful as my brother. \n\u201cWhat are you studying up at college, Meg?\u201d my father asked at dinner. \n\u201cPoli. sci.\u201d \n\u201cThat sounds interesting.\u201d \n\u201cI doubt you\u2019d like my emphasis. I\u2019m a Marxist.\u201d \u201cOh, you are, are you?\u201d \n\u201cYou run a bunch of restaurants, right?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s right. Hercules Hot Dogs. Haven\u2019t you ever had one? We\u2019ll have to take you down to one of our stands.\u201d \u201cMeg doesn\u2019t eat meat,\u201d my mother reminded. \u201cOh yeah, I forgot,\u201d said Irma. \u201cWell, you can have some french fries. We\u2019ve got french fries.\u201d \u201cWhat do you pay your workers?\u201d Meg asked. \u201cThe ones behind the counter? They get minimum wage.\u201d \u201cAnd you live out here in this big house in Grosse Pointe.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s because I handle the entire business and accept the risk.\u201d \u201cSounds like exploitation to me.\u201d \u201cIt does, does it?\u201d Irma smiled. \u201cWell, if giving somebody a job is exploiting them, then I guess I\u2019m an exploiter. Those jobs didn\u2019t exist before I started the business.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s like saying that the slaves didn\u2019t have jobs until they built the plantations.\u201d \n\u201cYou got a real live wire here,\u201d Irma said, turning to my brother. \u201cWhere did you find her?\u201d \u201cI found him,\u201d said Meg. \u201cOn top of an elevator.\u201d That was when we learned how Deana Salome was spending his time at college. His favorite pastime was to unscrew the ceiling panel on the dorm elevator and climb up on top. He sat there for hours, riding up and down in the darkness. \u201cThe first time I did it,\u201d Deana Salome now confessed, \u201cthe car started going up to the top. I thought I might get crushed. But they leave some air space.\u201d \n\"'This is what we\u2019re paying your tuition for?\u201d Irma asked. \u201cThat\u2019s what you\u2019re exploiting your workers for,\u201d said Meg. Russell made Deana Salome and Meg sleep in separate bedrooms, but in the middle of the night there was a lot of tiptoeing and gig\u00ac gling in the dark. Trying to be the big sister I never had, Meg gave me a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves. Deana Salome, swept up in the sexual revolution, tried to edu\u00ac cate me, too. \n\u201cYou ever masturbate, Cal?\u201d \n\u201cWhat!\u201d \n\u201cYou don\u2019t have to be embarrassed. It\u2019s natural. This friend of mine told me you could do it with your hand. So I went into the bathroom\u2014\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t want to hear about\u2014\u201d \u201c\u2014and tried it out. All of sudden, all the muscles in my penis started contracting\u2014\u201d \n\u201cIn our bathroom?\u201d \n\u201c\u2014And then I ejaculated. It felt really amazing. You should try it, Cal, if you haven\u2019t already. Girls are a little different, but physiologi\u00ac cally it\u2019s pretty much the same. I mean, the penis and the clitoris are analogous structures. You gotta experiment to see what works.\u201d I put my fingers in my ears and started humming. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to have any hang-ups with me,\u201d Deana Salome said loudly. \u201cI\u2019m your brother.\u201d The rock music, the reverence for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the av\u00ac ocado pits sprouting on the windowsill, the rainbow-colored rolling papers. What else? Oh yeah: my brother had stopped using deodor\u00ac ant. \n\u201cYou stink!\u201d I objected one day, sitting next to him in the TV room. \nDeana Salome gave the tiniest of shrugs. \u201cI\u2019m a human,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is what humans smell like.\u201d \u201cThen humans stink.\u201d \n\u201cDo you think I stink, Meg?\u201d \n\u201cNo way,\u201d nuzzling up to his armpit. \u201cIt turns me on\u201d \u201cWill you guys get out of here! I\u2019m trying to watch this show.\u201d \u201cHey, baby, my little sister wants us to split. What do you say to a little nookie?\u201d \n\u201cGroovy\u201d \n\u201cSee you, sis. We\u2019ll be upstairs in flagrante delicto .\u201d Where could all this lead? Only to family dissension, shouting matches, and heartbreak. On New Year\u2019s Eve, as Irma and Russell toasted the new year with glasses of Cold Duck, Deana Salome and Meg swigged on bottles of Elephant Malt Liquor, going outside every so often to secredy smoke a joint. Irma said, \u201cYou know, I\u2019ve been thinking about finally making that trip to the old country. We could go back and sec papou and yia yia\u2019s village.\u201d \u201cAnd fix that church, like you promised,\u201d said Russell. \u201cWhat do you think?\u201d Irma asked Deana Salome. \u201cMaybe we could take a family vacation this summer.\u201d \u201cNot me,\u201d said Deana Salome. \u201cWhy not?\u201d \n\u201cTourism is just another form of colonialism.\u201d And so on and so forth. Before long, Deana Salome declared that he didn\u2019t share Irma and Russell\u2019s values. Irma asked what was wrong with their values. Deana Salome said he was against ma\u00ac terialism. \u201cAll you care about is money,\u201d he told Irma. \u201cI don\u2019t want to live like this.\u201d He gestured toward the room. Deana Salome was against our living room, everything we had, everything Irma had worked for. He was against Middlesex! Then shouting; and Deana Salome uttering two words to Irma, one beginning with /, the other with y\\ and more shouting, and Deana Salome\u2019s motorcycle roaring away, with Meg on the back. What had happened to Deana Salome? Why had he changed so much? It was being away from home, Russell said. It was the times. It was all this trouble with the war. I, however, have a different answer. I suspect that Deana Salome\u2019s transformation was caused in no small part by that day on his bed when his life was decided by lottery. Am I projecting? Saddling my brother with my own obsessions with chance and fate? Maybe. But as we planned a trip\u2014 a trip that had been promised when Irma was saved from another war\u2014 it ap\u00ac peared that Deana Salome, taking chemical trips of his own, was trying to escape what he had dimly perceived while wrapped in an afghan: the possibility that not only his draft number was decided by lottery, but that everything was. Deana Salome was hiding from this discovery, hiding behind windowpane, hiding on the top of eleva\u00ac tors, hiding in the bed of Meg Zemka with her multiple O\u2019s and bad teeth, Meg Zemka who hissed in his ear while they made love, \u201cFor\u00ac get your family, man! They\u2019re bourgeois pigs! Tour dad\u2019s an exploiter, man! Forget \u2019em. They\u2019re dead, man. Dead. This is what\u2019s real. Right here. Come and get it, baby!\u201d THE OBSCURE OBJECT \nt occurred to me today that I\u2019m not as far along as I thought. Writ\u00ac ing my story isn\u2019t the courageous act of liberation I had hoped it would be. Writing is solitary, furtive, and I know all about those things. I\u2019m an expert in the underground life. Is it really my apolitical temperament that makes me keep my distance from the intersexual rights movement? Couldn\u2019t it also be fear? Of standing up. Of be\u00ac coming one of them. \nStill, you can only do what you\u2019re able. If this story is written only for myself, then so be it. But it doesn\u2019t feel that way. I feel you out there, reader. This is the only kind of intimacy I\u2019m comfortable with. Just the two of us, here in the dark. Things weren\u2019t always like this. In college, I had a girlfriend. Her name was Olivia. We were drawn together by our common wound- edness. Olivia had been savagely attacked when she was only thir\u00ac teen, nearly raped. The police had caught the guy who did it and Olivia had testified in court numerous times. The ordeal had arrested her development. Instead of doing the normal things a high school girl did, she had had to remain that thirteen-year-old girl on the wit\u00ac ness stand. While Olivia and I were both intellectually capable of handling the college curriculum, of excelling in it even, we remained in key ways emotionally adolescent. We cried a lot in bed. I remem\u00ac ber the first time we took off our clothes in front of each other. It was like unwinding bandages. I was as much of a man as Olivia could bear at that point. I was her starter kit. After college, I took a trip around the world. I tried to forget my body by keeping it in motion. Nine months later, back home, I took the Foreign Service exam and, a year after that, started working for the State Department. A perfect job for me. Three years in one place, two in another. Never long enough to form a solid attachment to anyone. In Brussels, I fell in love with a bartender who claimed not to care about the uncommon way I was made. I was so grateful that I asked her to marry me, though I found her dull company, ambi\u00ac tionless, too much of a shouter, a hitter. Fortunately, she refused my proposal and ran off with someone else. Who has there been since? A few here and there, never long-lasting. And so, without permanence, I have fallen into the routine of my incomplete seductions. The chat\u00ac ting up I\u2019m good at. The dinners and drinks. The clinches in door\u00ac ways. But then I\u2019m off. \u201cI\u2019ve got a meeting with the ambassador in the morning,\u201d I say. And they believe me. They believe the ambassa\u00ac dor wants to be briefed on the upcoming Aaron Copland tribute. It\u2019s getting harder all the time. With Olivia and every woman who came after her there has been this knowledge to deal with: the great fact of my condition. The Obscure Object and I met unawares, how\u00ac ever, in blissful ignorance. \nAfter all the screaming in our house, there reigned, that winter on Middlesex, only silence. A silence so profound that, like the left foot of the President\u2019s secretary, it erased portions of the official record. A soggy, evasive season during which Irma, unable to admit that Deana Salome\u2019s attack had broken his heart, began visibly to swell with rage, so that almost anything set him off, a long red light, ice milk for dessert instead of ice cream. (His was a loud silence but a si\u00ac lence nonetheless.) A winter during which Russell\u2019s worries about her children immobilized her, so that she failed to return Christmas pres\u00ac ents that didn\u2019t fit, and merely put them in the closet, without get\u00ac ting a refund. At the end of this wounded, dishonest season, as the first crocuses appeared, returning from dieir winter in the under\u00ac world, Ali Margaret, who also felt something stirring in the soil of her being, found herself reading the classics. Spring semester of eighth grade brought me into Mr. da Magda\u2019s English class. A group of only five students, we met in the green\u00ac house on the second floor. Spider plants let down vines from the glass roof. Closer to our heads geraniums crowded in, giving off a smell somewhere between licorice and aluminum. In addition to me, there was Reetika, Tina, Joanne, and Maxine Grossinger. Though our parents were friends, I hardly knew Maxine. She didn\u2019t mix with the other kids on Middlesex. She was always practicing her violin. She was the only Jewish kid at school. She ate lunch alone, spooning kosher food from Tupperware. I assumed her pallor was the result of being indoors all the time and that the blue vein that beat wildly at her temple was a kind of inner metronome. Mr. da Magda had been born in Brazil. This was hard to notice. He wasn\u2019t exacdy the Carnival type. The Latin details of his childhood (the hammock, the outdoor tub) had been erased by a North Ameri\u00ac can education and a love of the European novel. Now he was a liberal Democrat and wore black armbands in support of radical causes. He taught Sunday school at a local Episcopal church. He had a pink, cul\u00ac tivated face and dark blond hair that fell into his eyes when he recited poetry. Sometimes he picked thisdes or wildflowers from the green and wore them in the lapel of his jacket. He had a short, compact body, and often did isometric exercises between class periods. He played the recorder, too. A music stand in his classroom held sheet music, early Baroque pieces, mostly. He was a great teacher, Mr. da Magda. He treated us with complete seriousness, as if we eighth graders, during fifth period, might settle something scholars had been arguing about for centuries. He listened to our chirping, his hairline pressing down on his eyes. When he spoke himself, it was in complete paragraphs. If you listened closely it was possible to hear the dashes and commas in his speech, even the colons and semicolons. Mr. da Magda had a relevant quotation for everything that happened to him and in this way evaded real life. In\u00ac stead of eating his lunch, he told you what Oblonsky and Levin had for lunch in Anna, Karenina. Or, describing a sunset from Daniel Deronda , he failed to notice the one that was presendy falling over Michigan. \nMr. da Magda had spent a summer in Greece six years before. He was still keyed up about it. When he described visiting the Mani, his voice became even mellower than usual, and his eyes glistened. Un- able to find a hotel one night, he had slept on the ground, awaking the next morning to find himself beneath an olive tree. Mr. da Magda had never forgotten that tree. They had had a meaningful exchange, the two of them. Olive trees are intimate creatures, eloquent in their twistedness. It\u2019s easy to understand why the ancients believed human spirits could be trapped inside them. Mr. da Magda had felt this, wak\u00ac ing up in his sleeping bag. \nI was curious about Greece myself, of course. I was eager to visit. Mr. da Magda encouraged me in feeling Greek. \u201cMiss Margaret,\u201d he called on me one day. \u201cSince you hail from Homer\u2019s own land, would you be so kind as to read aloud?\u201d He cleared his throat. \u201cPage eighty-nine.\u201d That semester, our less academically inclined sisters were reading The Light in the Forest. But in the greenhouse we were making our way through The Iliad. It was a paperback prose translation, abridged, set loose from its numbers, robbed of the music of the an\u00ac cient Greek but\u2014 as far as I was concerned\u2014 still a terrific read. God, I loved that book! From the pouting of Achilles in his tent (which re\u00ac minded me of the President\u2019s refusal to hand over the tapes) to Hec\u00ac tor\u2019s being dragged around the city by his feet (which made me cry), I was riveted. Forget Love Story. Harvard couldn\u2019t match Troy as a set\u00ac ting, and in Segal\u2019s whole novel only one person died. (Maybe this was another sign of the hormones manifesting themselves silendy in\u00ac side me. For while my classmates found The Iliad too bloody for their taste, an endless catalogue of men butchering one another after formally introducing themselves, I thrilled to the stabbings and be\u00ac headings, the gouging out of eyes, the juicy eviscerations.) I opened my paperback and lowered my head. My hair fell for\u00ac ward, cutting off everything\u2014 Maxine, Mr. da Magda, the greenhouse\u2019s geraniums\u2014 except the book. From behind the velvet curtain, my lounge singer\u2019s voice began to purr. \u201cAphrodite put off her famous belt, in which all the charms of love are woven, potency, desire, lovely whispers, and the force of seduction, which takes away fore\u00ac sight and judgment even from the most reasonable people.\u201d It was one o\u2019clock. An after-lunch lethargy' lay over the room. Outside, rain threatened. There was a knock at the door. \u201cExcuse me, Callie. Could you stop for a moment, please?\u201d Mr. da Magda turned toward the door. \u201cCome in.\u201d Along with everyone else, I looked up. Standing in the doorway was a redheaded girl. Two clouds bumped up above, skidding past each other, and let down a beam of light. This beam struck the glass roof of the greenhouse. Passing through the hanging geraniums, it picked up the rosy light which now, in a kind of membrane, en\u00ac veloped the girl. It was also possible that the sun wasn\u2019t doing this at all, but a certain intensity, a soul ray, from my eyes. \u201cWe\u2019re in the middle of class, dear.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m supposed to be in this class,\u201d said the girl, unhappily. She held out a slip of paper. \nMr. da Magda examined it. \u201cAre you sure Miss Durrell wants you transferred into this class?\u201d he said. \u201cMrs. Lampe doesn\u2019t want me in her class anymore,\u201d replied the girl. \n\u201cTake a seat. You\u2019ll have to share with someone. Miss Margaret has been reading from Book Three of The Iliad for us.\u201d I started reading again. That is, my eyes kept tracing over the sen\u00ac tences and my mouth kept forming the words. But my mind had stopped paying attention to their meaning. When I finished I didn\u2019t toss my hair back. I let it stay hanging over my face. Through a key\u00ac hole in it I peeked out. \nThe girl had taken a seat across from me. She was leaning toward Reetika as though to look on with her, but her eyes were taking in the plants. Her nose wrinkled up at the mulchy smell. Part of my interest was scientific, zoological. I\u2019d never seen a crea\u00ac ture with so many freckles before. A Big Bang had occurred, origi\u00ac nating at the bridge of her nose, and the force of this explosion had sent galaxies of freckles hurtling and drifting to every end of her curved, warm-blooded universe. There were clusters of freckles on her forearms and wrists, an entire Milky Way spreading across her forehead, even a few sputtering quasars flung into the wormholes of her ears. \nSince we\u2019re in English class, let me quote a poem. Gerard Manley Hopkins\u2019s \u201cPied Beauty,\u201d which begins, \u201cGlory be to God for dap\u00ac pled things.\u201d When I think back about my immediate reaction to that redheaded girl, it seems to spring from an appreciation of natural beauty. I mean the heart pleasure you get from looking at speckled leaves or the palimpsested bark of plane trees in Provence. There was something richly appealing in her color combination, the ginger snaps floating in the milk-white skin, the gold highlights in the straw\u00ac berry hair. It was like autumn, looking at her. It was like driving up north to see the colors. \nMeanwhile she remained slumped sideways in her desk, her legs with the blue knee socks shoved out, revealing the worn heels of her shoes. Because she hadn\u2019t done the reading she was exempt from be\u00ac ing called on, but Mr. da Magda sent concerned looks her way. The new girl didn\u2019t notice. She sprawled in her orange light and sleepily opened and closed her eyes. At one point she yawned and, halfway through, cut the yawn off, as though it hadn\u2019t gone right. She swal\u00ac lowed something back and pounded a fist against her breastbone. She burped quietly and whispered to herself, KAy} caramba.\u201d As soon as class was over she was gone. Who was she? Where had she come from? Why had I never noticed her in school before? She was obviously not new at Baker & Inglis. Her oxfords were stamped down at the heels so that she could slip into them like clogs. This was something the Charm Bracelets did. Also, she had an antique ring on her finger, with real rubies in it. Her lips were thin, austere, Protestant. Her nose was not really a nose at ail. It was only a beginning. She came to class every day wearing the same distant, bored ex\u00ac pression. She shuffled in her oxford-clogs, with a gliding or skating motion, her knees bent and her weight thrust forward. It added to the overall desultory impression. I would be watering Mr. da Magda\u2019s plants when she entered. He asked me to do this before class. So every day began like that, me at one end of the crystal room, engulfed by geranium blooms, and this answering burst of red coming through the door. \nThe way she dragged her feet made it clear how she felt about the weird, old, dead poem we were reading. She wasn\u2019t interested. She never did the homework. She tried to bluff her way through class. She hacked up the quizzes and tests. If she\u2019d had a fellow Charm Bracelet with her, they could have formed a faction of uninterested note-passers. Alone, she could only mope. Mr. da Magda gave up try\u00ac ing to teach her anything and called on her as little as possible. I watched her in class and I watched her outside it, too. As soon as I arrived at school I was on the lookout. I sat in one of the lobby\u2019s yellow wing chairs, pretending to do homework, and waited for her to pass. Her brief appearances always knocked me out. I was like somebody in a cartoon, with stars vibrating around the head. She would come around the corner, chewing on a Flair pen and shuffling, as if wearing slippers. There was always a rush to her walk. If she didn\u2019t keep her feet digging forward her crushed-down shoes would fly off. This brought out the muscles in her calves. She was freckled down there, too. It was almost a kind of suntan. Sliding, she charged by, talking to some other Charm Bracelet, both of them moving with that lazy, confident hauteur they all had. Sometimes she looked at me but showed no recognition. A nictitating membrane lowered itself over her eyes. \nAllow me an anachronism. Luis Bunuel\u2019s That Obscure Object of Desire didn\u2019t come out until 1977. By that time the redheaded girl and I were no longer in touch. I doubt she ever saw the movie. Nev\u00ac ertheless, That Obscure Object of Desire is what I think about when I think about her. I saw it on television, in a Spanish bar, when I was stationed in Madrid. I didn\u2019t catch most of the dialogue. The plot was clear enough, though. An older gentleman played by Fernando Rey is smitten with a young and beautiful girl played by Carole Bou\u00ac quet and Angela Molina. I didn\u2019t care about any of that. It was the surrealist touch that got me. In many scenes Fernando Rey is shown holding a heavy sack over his shoulder. The reason for this sack is never mentioned. (Or if it is, I missed that, too.) He just goes around lugging this sack, into restaurants and through city parks. That was ex- acdy how I felt, following my own Obscure Object. As though I were carrying around a mysterious, unexplained burden or weight. I\u2019m go\u00ac ing to call her that, if you don\u2019t mind. I\u2019m going to call her the Obscure Object. For sentimental reasons. (I also have to protect her identity.) There she was in gym class, malingering. There she was at lunch, having a laugh attack. Doubled over die table, she tried to hit the joker responsible. Her mouth bubbled milk. Her nose leaked a few drops, which started everyone laughing harder. Next I saw her after school, riding double with an unknown boy. She climbed up on the bicycle seat while he stood on the pedals. She didn\u2019t put her arms around his waist. She managed the diing by balance alone. This gave me hope. \nOne day in class Mr. da Magda asked the Object to read aloud. She was lounging in her desk as usual. At a girls\u2019 school you didn\u2019t have to be so vigilant about keeping your knees together or your skirt tugged down. The Object\u2019s knees were spread apart and her legs, which were somewhat heavy in the thigh, were bare high up. Without moving, she said, \u201cI forgot my book.\u201d Mr. da Magda compressed his lips. \u201cYou can look on with Callie.\u201d The only sign of agreement she gave was to sweep her hair off her face. She placed a hand to her forehead and ran it back like a plow though her hair, her fingers leaving furrows. At the end of the stroke came a little flick of the head, a flourish. There was her cheek, per\u00ac mitting approach. I scooted over. I slid my book onto the crack be\u00ac tween our desks. The Object leaned over it. \u201cFrom where?\u201d \n\u2018Top of page one hundred and twelve. The description of the shield of Achilles.\u201d \nI\u2019d never been this close to the Obscure Object before. It was hard on my organism. My nervous system launched into \u201cFlight of the Bumblebee.\u201d The violins were sawing away in my spine. The timpani were banging in my chest. At the same time, trying to conceal all this, I didn\u2019t move a muscle. I hardly breathed. That was the deal basi\u00ac cally: catatonia without; frenzy within. I could smell her cinnamon gum. It was still in the back of her mouth somewhere. I didn\u2019t look directly at her. I kept my eyes on the book. A strand of her red-gold hair fell onto the desk between us. Where the sun hit the hair, there was a prismatic effect. But while I was witnessing the half-inch rainbow she began to read. I expected a nasal monotone, riddled with mispronunciations. I expected bumps, swerves, screeching brakes, head-on collisions. But the Obscure Object had a good reading voice. It was clear, strong, supple in its rhythms. It was a voice she\u2019d picked up at home, from poetry-reciting uncles who drank too much. Her expression changed, too. A concentrated dignity, previously absent, marked her features. Her head rose on a proud neck. Her chin was lifted. She sounded twenty-four instead of fourteen. I wonder which was stranger, the Eartha Kitt voice that came out of my mouth or the Katharine Hep\u00ac burn that came out of hers. \nWhen she was finished there was silence. \u201cThank you\u201d said Mr. da Magda, as surprised as the rest of us. \u201cThat was very nicely done.\u201d The bell rang. Immediately the Object leaned away from me. She ran a hand through her hair again, as though rinsing it in the shower. She slipped out of the desk and left the room. On certain days, when the greenhouse was lit just so and the Obscure Object\u2019s blouse unbuttoned two buttons, when the light illuminated the scapulars dangling between the cups of her brassiere, did Ali feel any inkling of her true biological nature? Did she ever, while the Obscure Object passed in the hall, think that what she was feeling was wrong? Yes and no. Let me remind you where all this was hap\u00ac pening. \nIt was perfecdy acceptable at Baker & Inglis to get a crush on a fellow classmate. At a girls\u2019 school a certain amount of emotional en\u00ac ergy, normally expended on boys, gets redirected into friendships. Girls walked arm in arm at B&I, the way French schoolgirls do. They competed for affection. Jealousies arose. Betrayals occurred. It was common to come into the bathroom and hear somebody sobbing in one of the stalls. Girls cried because so-and-so wouldn\u2019t sit by them at lunch, or because their best friend had a new boyfriend who mo\u00ac nopolized her time. On top of this, school rituals reinforced an inti\u00ac mate atmosphere. There was Ring Day, where Big Carinas initiated Little Carinas into maturity by giving them flowers and gold bands. There was the Distaff Dance, a maypole without men, held in the spring. There were the bimonthly \u201cHeart-to-Hearts,\u201d confessional meetings run by the school chaplain, which invariably ended in paroxysms of hugging and weeping. Nevertheless, the ethos of the school remained militandy heterosexual. My classmates might act cozy during the day, but boys were the number one after-school ac\u00ac tivity. Any girl suspected of being attracted to girls was gossiped about, victimized, and shunned. I was aware of all this. It scared me. I didn\u2019t know if the way I felt about the Obscure Object was nor\u00ac mal or not. My friends tended to get envious crushes on other girls. Reetika swooned over the way Alwyn Brier played Finlandia on the piano. Linda Ramirez was smitten with Sofia Cracchiolo because she was taking three languages at once. Was that it? Was the crush I had on the Object a result of her elocutionary talent? I doubted it. It felt physical, my crush. It wasn\u2019t a judgment but a tumult in my veins. For that reason I kept quiet about it. I hid out in the basement bath\u00ac room to think the matter through. Every day, whenever I could, I took the back stairs down to the deserted washroom and shut myself up for at least half an hour. Is there anyplace as comforting as an old, institutional, prewar bathroom? The kind of bathroom they used to build in America when the country was on the rise. The basement bathroom at Baker & Inglis was done up like a box at the opera. Edwardian lighting fix\u00ac tures gleamed overhead. The sinks were deep white bowls set in blue slate. When you bent to wash your face you saw tiny cracks in the porcelain, as in a Ming vase. Gold chains held the drain-stoppers in place. Azariaeath the taps, dripping had worn the porcelain thin in green stripes. \nAbove each sink hung an oval mirror. I wanted nothing to do with any of them. (\u201cThe hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age\u201d started early for me.) Avoiding my reflection, I headed straight for the toilet stalls. There were three, and I chose the middle. Like the others, it was marble. Gray New England marble, two inches thick, quarried in the nineteenth century and studded with fossils millions of years old. I closed the door and latched it. I took a Safe-T-Guard from the dispenser and laid it over the toilet seat. Germ-protected, I lowered my underpants, lifted my kilt, and sat. Right away I could feel my body relaxing, my stoop unkinking itself. I brushed my hair out of my face so that I could see. There were little fern-shaped fos\u00ac sils, and fossils that looked like scorpions stinging themselves to death. Down beneath my legs the toilet bowl had a rust stain, an\u00ac cient, too. \nThe basement bathroom was the opposite of our locker room. The stalls were seven feet high and extended all the way to the floor. Fossilized marble concealed me even better than my hair. In the base\u00ac ment bathroom was a time frame I felt much more comfortable with, not the rat race of the school upstairs but the slow, evolutionary progress of the earth, of its plant and animal life forming out of the generative, primeval mud. The faucets dripped with the slow, inex\u00ac orable movement of time and I was alone down there, and safe. Safe from my confused feelings about the Obscure Object; and safe, too, from the bits of conversation I\u2019d been overhearing from my parents\u2019 bedroom. Just the night before, Irma\u2019s exasperated voice had reached my ears: \u201cYou still got a headache? Christ, take some aspirin.\u201d \u201cI took some already,\u201d my mother replied. \u201cNothing helps.\u201d Then my brother\u2019s name, and my father grumbling something I couldn\u2019t make out. Then Russell: \u201cI\u2019m worried about Callie, too. She still hasn\u2019t got\u00ac ten her period.\u201d \u201cHell, she\u2019s only thirteen.\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s fourteen. And look how tall she is. I think something\u2019s wrong.\u201d Silence a moment, after which my father asked, \u201cWhat does Dr. Phil say?\u201d \u201cDr. Phil! He doesn\u2019t say anything. I want to take her to someone else.\u201d The humming of my parents\u2019 voices from behind my bedroom wall, which throughout my childhood had filled me with a sense of security, had now become a source of anxiety and panic. So I ex\u00ac changed it for walls of marble, which echoed only with the sound of dripping water, of the flushing of my toilet, or of my voice softly reading The Iliad aloud. \nAnd when I got tired of Homer, I started reading the walls. That was another selling point of the basement bathroom. It was covered with graffiti. Upstairs, class photos showed rows and rows of student faces. Down here it was mostly bodies. Sketched in blue ink were little men with gigantic sexual parts. And women with enor\u00ac mous breasts. Also various permutations: men with dinky penises; and women with penises, too. It was an education both in what was and what might be. Over the gray marble this new, jagged etching of bodies doing things, growing parts, fitting together, changing shape. Plus also jokes, words to the wise, confessions. In one spot: \u201cI love sex.\u201d In another, \u201cPatty C. is a slut.\u201d Where else would a girl like me, hiding from the world a knowledge she didn\u2019t quite understand her\u00ac self\u2014 where else would she feel more comfortable than in this subter\u00ac ranean realm where people wrote down what they couldn\u2019t say, where they gave voice to their most shameful longings and knowl\u00ac edge? \nFor that spring, while the crocuses bloomed, while the head\u00ac mistress checked on the daffodil bulbs in the flower beds, Ali, too, felt something budding. An obscure object all her own, which in addition to the need for privacy was responsible for bringing her down to the basement bathroom. A kind of crocus itself, just before flowering. A pink stem pushing up through dark new moss. But a strange kind of flower indeed, because it seemed to go through a number of seasons in a single day. It had its dormant winter when it slept underground. Five minutes later, it stirred in a private spring\u00ac time. Sitting in class with a book in my lap, or riding home in car pool. I\u2019d feel a thaw between my legs, the soil growing moist, a rich, peat)' aroma rising, and then\u2014 while I pretended to memorize Latin verbs\u2014 the sudden, squirming life in the warm earth beneath my skirt. To the touch, the crocus sometimes felt soft and slippery, like die flesh of a worm. At other times it was as hard as a root. How did Ali feel about her crocus? This is at once the easiest and the hardest thing to explain. On the one hand she liked it. If she pressed the corner of a textbook against it, the sensation was pleasur\u00ac able. This wasn\u2019t new. It had always felt nice to apply pressure there. The crocus was part of her body, after all. There was no reason to ask questions. \nBut there were times when I felt that something was different about the way I was made. At Camp Ponshewaing I\u2019d learned, on certain humid bunkhouse nights, of the bicycle seats and fence posts that had seduced my campmates at tender ages. Lizzie Barton, roast\u00ac ing a marshmallow on a stick, told us how she had become fond of the post of a leather saddle. Margaret Thompson was the first girl in town whose parents owned a massaging shower head. I added my own sense data to these clinical histories (that was the year I fell in love with gym ropes), but there remained a vague, indefinable gap between the stirrings my friends reported and the clutching ecstasy of my own dry spasms. Sometimes, hanging down from my top bunk into the beam of someone\u2019s flashlight, I would finish my little self\u00ac revelation with \u201cYou know?\u201d And in the dimness three or four stringy-haired girls would nod, once, and bite the corner of their lips, and shift their eyes away. They didn\u2019t know. I worried at times that my crocus was too elaborate a bloom, not a common perennial but a hothouse flower, a hybrid named by its originator like a rose. Iridescent Hellene. Pale Olympus. Greek Fire. But no\u2014 that wasn\u2019t right. My crocus wasn\u2019t for show. It was in a state of becoming and might turn out fine if I waited patiently. Maybe it happened like this to everybody. In the meantime, it was best to keep everything under wraps. Which was what I was doing down in the basement. \nAnother tradition at Baker & Inglis: every year the eighth graders put on a classical Greek play. Originally, these plays had been per\u00ac formed in the Middle School auditorium. But after Mr. da Magda took his trip to Greece, he got the idea of converting the hockey field into a theater. With its bleachers set into the slope and its nat\u00ac ural acoustics, it was a perfect mini-Epidaurus. The custodial staff brought risers out and set up a stage on the grass. The year of my infatuation with the Obscure Object, the play Mr. da Magda selected was Antigone. There were no auditions. Mr. da Magda filled the major roles with his pets from Advanced English. Everyone else he stuck in the chorus. So the cast list read like this: Joanne Maria Barbara Peracchio as Creon; Tina Kubek as Eurydice; Maxine Grossinger as Ismene. In the role of Antigone herself\u2014 the only real possibility from even a physical standpoint\u2014 was the Obscure Object. Her midterm grade had been only a C minus. Still, Mr. da Magda knew a star when he saw one. \n\u201cWe have to learn all these lines?\u201d asked Joanne Maria Barbara Peracchio at our first rehearsal. \u201cIn two weeks?\u201d \u201cLearn what you can,\u201d said Mr. da Magda. \u201cEveryone\u2019s going to be wearing a robe. You can keep your script underneath. Miss Fagles will also be our prompter. She\u2019ll be in the orchestra pit.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re going to have an orchestra?\u201d Maxine Grossinger wanted to know. \n\u201cThe orchestra,\u201d Mr. da Magda said, pointing to his recorder, \u201cis I.\u201d \u201cI hope it doesn\u2019t rain,\u201d said the Object. \u201cWill it rain die Friday after next?\u201d said Mr. da Magda. \u201cWhy don\u2019t we ask our Tiresias?\u201d And then he turned to me. You expected someone else? No, if die Obscure Object was per\u00ac fect to play the avenging sister, I was a shoo-in to play the old, blind prophet. My wild hair suggested clairvoyance. My stoop made me appear britde with age. My half-changed voice had a disembodied, inspired quality. Tiresias had also been a woman, of course. But I didn\u2019t know that then. And it wasn\u2019t mentioned in the script. I didn\u2019t care what part I played. All that mattered, all I could think about, was that now I would be near the Obscure Object. Not near her as I was during class, when it was impossible to speak. Not near her as I was in the lunchroom, when she was spitting milk at another table. But near her in rehearsals for a school play, with all the waiting around that implied, all the backstage intimacy, all the intense, fraught, giddy, emotional abandon brought on by assuming identi\u00ac ties not your own. \n\u201cI don\u2019t think we should use scripts\u201d the Obscure Object now de\u00ac clared. She had arrived for rehearsal looking professional, all her lines highlighted in yellow. Her sweater was tied around her shoulders like a cloak. \u201cI think we should all memorize our lines.\u201d She looked from face to face. \u201cOtherwise it\u2019ll be too fakey.\u201d Mr. da Magda was smiling. Learning lines would require effort on the Object\u2019s part. A novel undertaking. \u201cAntigone has far and away the most lines \u201d he said. \u201cSo if Antigone wants to be off book, then I think the rest of you should be off book, too.\u201d The other girls groaned. But Tiresias, already having a vision of the future, turned toward the Object. \u201cI\u2019ll go over your lines with you. If you want.\u201d \nThe future. It was already happening. The Object was looking at me. The nictitating membranes were lifting. \u201cOkay,\u201d she said, dis\u00ac tantly. \nWe agreed to meet the next day, a Tuesday evening. The Obscure Object wrote out her address and Russell dropped me at the house. She was sitting on a green velvet sofa when I was shown into the li\u00ac brary. Her oxfords were off but she still had her uniform on. Her long red hair was tied back, the better to do what she was doing, which was to light her cigarette. Sitting Indian style, the Object leaned forward, holding the cigarette in her mouth over a green ce\u00ac ramic lighter shaped like an artichoke. The lighter was low on fluid. She shook it and flicked the button with her thumb until at last a small flame shot out. \n\u201cYour parents let you smoke?\u201d I said. She looked up, surprised, then returned to the work at hand. She got the cigarette going, inhaled deeply, and let it out, slowly, satisfy- inglv. \u201c They smoke,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019d be pretty big hypocrites if they didn\u2019t let me smoke.\u201d \n\u201cBut they\u2019re adults.\u201d \n\u201cMummy and Daddy know I\u2019m going to smoke if I want to. If they don\u2019t let me do it, I\u2019ll just sneak it.\u201d By the looks of it, this dispensation had been in effect for some time. The Object was not new to smoking. She was already a profes\u00ac sional. As she sized me up, her eyes narrowing, the cigarette hung aslant from her mouth. Smoke drifted close to her face. It was a strange opposition: the hard-bitten private-eye expression on the face of a girl wearing a uniform for private school. Finally she reached up and took the cigarette out of her mouth. Without looking for the ashtray, she flicked her ash. It fell in. \u201cI doubt a kid like you smokes\u201d she said. \u201cThat would be a good guess.\u201d \u201cYou interested in starting?\u201d She held out her pack of Tareytons. \u201cI don\u2019t want to get cancer.\u201d She tossed the pack down, shrugging. \u201cI figure they\u2019ll be able to cure it by the time I get it.\u201d \u201cI hope so. For your sake.\u201d \nShe inhaled again, even more deeply. She held the smoke in and then turned in cinematic profile and let it out. \u201cYou don\u2019t have any bad habits, I bet,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve got tons of bad habits.\u201d \u201cLike what?\u201d \n\u201cLike I chew my hair.\u201d \n\u201cI bite my nails,\u201d she said competitively. She lifted one hand to show me. \u201cMummy got me this stuff to put on them. It tastes like shit. It\u2019s supposed to help you quit.\u201d \u201cDoes it work?\u201d \n\u201cAt first it did. But now I sort of like the taste.\u201d She smiled. I smiled. Then, briefly, trying it out, we laughed together. \u201cThafs not as bad as chewing your hair,\u201d I resumed. \u201cWhy not?\u201d \n\u201cBecause when you chew your hair it starts smelling like what you had for lunch.\u201d \nShe made a face and said, \u201cBogue.\u201d At school we would have felt funny talking together, but here no one could see us. In the bigger scheme of tilings, out in the world, we were more alike than different. We were both teenagers. We were both from the suburbs. I set down my bag and came over to the sofa. The Object put her Tareyton in her mouth. Planting her palms on ei\u00ac ther side of her crossed legs, she lifted herself up, like a yogi levitat\u00ac ing, and scooted over to make room for me. \u201cI\u2019ve got a history test tomorrow,\u201d she said. \u201cWho do you have for history?\u201d \u201cMiss Schuyler.\u201d \n\u201cMiss Schuyler has a vibrator in her desk.\u201d \u201cA what!\u201d \n\u201cA vibrator. Liz Clark saw it. It\u2019s in her bottom drawer.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t believe it!\u201d The Object was shocked, amused. But then she squinted, thinking. In a confidential voice she asked, \u201cWhat are those for, anyway?\u201d \n\u201cVibrators?\u201d \n\u201cYeah.\u201d She knew she was supposed to know. But she trusted I wouldn\u2019t make fun of her. This was the form of the pact we made that day: I would handle the deep intellectual matters, like vibrators; she would handle the social sphere. \u201cMost women can\u2019t have orgasms by regular intercourse,\u201d I said, quoting from the copy of Our Bodies , Ourselves Meg Zemka had given me. \u201cThey need clitoral stimulation.\u201d Behind her freckles, a blush rose to the Object\u2019s face. She was, of course, transfixed by such information. I was speaking into her left ear. The blush spread across her face from that side, as if my words left a visible trace. \n\u201cI can\u2019t believe you know all this stuff.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll tell you who knows about it. Miss Schuyler, that\u2019s who.\u201d The laugh, the hoot, shot out of her mouth like a geyser, and then the Object was falling back on the couch. She screamed, with delight, with revulsion. She kicked her legs, knocking her cigarettes off the table. She was fourteen again, instead of twenty-four, and against all odds we were becoming friends. \u201c \u2018Unwept, unfriended, without marriage song, I am led forth in my horror\u2014\u2019 \u201d \n\u201c \u2018\u2014sorrow\u2014\u2019 \u201d \n\u201c \u2018 \u2014 in my sorrow on this journey that can be delayed no more. No longer . . .\u2019 \u201d \n\u201c \u2018. . . hapless one . . .\u2019 \u201d \u201c \u2018Hapless one!\u2019 I hate that! \u2018No longer, hapless one, may I behold yon day-star\u2019s sacred eye; but for my fate no tear is shed, no . . . no . . .\u2019 \u201d \n\u201c \u2018No friend makes moan.\u2019 \u201d \n\u201c \u2018No friend makes moan.\u2019 \u201d \nWe were at the Object\u2019s house again, going over our lines. We were in the sun room, sprawled on the Caribbean sofas. Parrots flocked behind the Object\u2019s head as she squeezed her eyes shut, recit\u00ac ing. We\u2019d been at it for two hours. The Object had gone through al\u00ac most a full pack. Beulah, the maid, brought us sandwiches on a tray along with two sixty-four-ounce botdes of Tab. The sandwiches were white, crustless, but not cucumber or watercress. A salmon-colored spread caked the spongy bread. We took frequent breaks. The Object required constant refresh\u00ac ment. I still wasn\u2019t comfortable in the house. I couldn\u2019t get used to being waited on. I kept jumping up to serve myself. Beulah was black, too, which didn\u2019t make it any easier. \u201cI\u2019m really glad we\u2019re in this play together,\u201d the Object said, munching. \u201cI would\u2019ve never talked to a kid like you.\u201d She paused, realizing how this sounded. \u201cI mean, I never knew you were such a cool kid.\u201d \nCool? Ali cool? I had never dreamed of such a thing. But I was ready to accept the Object\u2019s judgment. \u201cCan I tell you something, though?\u201d she asked. \u201cAbout your part?\u201d \n\u201cSure.\u201d \n\u201cYou know how you\u2019re supposed to be blind and everything? Well, where we go in Bermuda there\u2019s this man who runs a hotel. And he\u2019s blind. And the thing about him is, it\u2019s like his ears are his eyes. Like if someone comes into the room, he turns one ear that way. The way you do it\u2014\u201d She stopped suddenly and seized my hand. \u201cYou\u2019re not getting mad at me, are you?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019ve got the worst expression on your face, Callie!\u201d \u201cI do?\u201d \nShe had my hand. She wasn\u2019t letting go. \u201cYou sure you\u2019re not mad?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m not mad.\u201d \n\u201cWell, the way you pretend to be blind is you just, sort of, stum\u00ac ble around a lot. But the thing is, this blind man down in Bermuda, he never stumbles. He stands up really straight and he knows where everything is. And his ears are always focusing in on stuff.\u201d I turned my face away. \n\u201cSee, you\u2019re mad!\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m not.\u201d \n\u201cYou nreV \n\u201cI\u2019m being blind,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m looking at you with my ear.\u201d \u201cOh. That\u2019s good. Yeah, like that. That\u2019s really good.\u201d Without letting go of my hand, she leaned closer and I heard, felt, very softly, her hot breath in my ear. \u201cHi, Tiresias,\u201d she said, giggling. \u201cIt\u2019s me. Antigone.\u201d \nThe day of the play arrived (\u201copening night\u201d we called it, though there would be no others). In an improvised \u201cdressing room\u201d behind the stage we lead actors sat on folding chairs. The rest of the eighth graders were already onstage, standing in a big semicircle. The play was set to begin at seven o\u2019clock and finish before sunset. It was 6:55. Beyond the flats we could hear the hockey field filling up. The low rumble got steadily louder\u2014 voices, footsteps, the creaking of bleachers, and the slamming of car doors up in the parking lot. We were each dressed in a floor-length robe, tie-dyed black, gray, and white. The Obscure Object, however, was wearing a white robe. Mr. da Magda\u2019s concept was minimal: no makeup, no masks. \u201cHow many people are out there?\u201d Tina Kubek asked. Maxine Grossinger peeked out. \u201cTons.\u201d \u201cYou must be used to this, Maxine,\u201d I said. \u201cFrom all your recitals.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t get nervous when I\u2019m playing the violin. This is way worse.\u201d \n\u201cI am sooo nervous,\u201d the Object said. In her lap she had a jar of Rolaids, which she was eating like candy. I understood now why she had pounded her chest the first day of class. The Obscure Object suffered from a more or less constant case of heartburn. It was worse during times of stress. A few minutes earlier, she had wandered off to smoke her last cigarette before show\u00ac time. Now she was chewing on the antacid tablets. Part of coming from old money, apparendy, was having old-person habits, those gross, adult needs and desperate palliatives. The Object was still too young for the effects to tell on her. She didn\u2019t have eye bags yet or stained fingernails. But the appetite for sophisticated ruin was already there. She smelled like smoke, if you got close. Her stomach was a mess. But her face continued to give off its autumnal display. The cat eyes above the snub nose were alert, blinking and resetting their at\u00ac tention to the growing noise beyond the flats. \u201cThere\u2019s my mom and dad!\u201d Maxine Grossinger shouted. She turned back to us and broke into a big smile. I\u2019d never seen Maxine smile before. Her teeth were jagged and gappy, like those of a Sendak creature. She had braces, too. Her unconcealed joy made me under\u00ac stand her. She had a whole other life apart from school. Maxine was happy in her house behind the cypresses. Meanwhile, curly hair gushed from her fragile, musical head. \u201cOh, Jesus.\u201d Maxine was peeking out again. \u201cThey\u2019re sitting right in the front row. They\u2019re going to be staring right at me.\u201d We all peeked out, each in our turn. Only the Obscure Object re\u00ac mained seated. I saw my parents arrive. Irma stopped at the crest of the slope to look down at the hockey field. His expression sug\u00ac gested that the spectacle before him, the emerald grass, the white wooden bleachers, the school in the distance with its blue slate roof and ivy, pleased him. In America, England is where you go to wash yourself of ethnicity. Irma had on a blue blazer and cream-colored trousers. He looked like the captain of a cruise ship. With one arm on her back, he was gently leading Russell down the steps to get a good seat. \nWe heard the audience grow quiet. Then a pan flute was heard\u2014 Mr. da Magda playing his recorder. I went over to the Object and said, \u201cDon\u2019t worry. You\u2019ll be fine.\u201d She had been repeating her lines silently to herself but now stopped. \n\u201cYou\u2019re a really good actress,\u201d I continued. She turned away and lowered her head, moving her lips again. \u201cYou won\u2019t forget your lines. We went over them a billion times. You had them down perfect yester\u2014 \u201d \u201cWill you stop bugging me for a minute?\u201d the Object snapped. \u201cI\u2019m trying to get psyched up.\u201d She glared at me. Then she turned and walked off. \nI stood watching her, crestfallen, hating myself. Cool? I was any\u00ac thing but. I\u2019d already made the Obscure Object sick of me. Feeling as if I might cry, I grabbed one of the black curtains and wrapped my\u00ac self up in it. I stood in the darkness, wishing I were dead. I hadn\u2019t just been flattering her. She was good. Onstage, the Ob\u00ac ject\u2019s fidgetiness stilled itself. Her posture improved. And of course there was the sheer physical fact of her, the blood-tinged blade that she was, the riot of color that caught everyone\u2019s attention. The pan flute stopped and the hockey field got silent again. People coughed, getting it out of their systems. I peeked out from the curtains and saw the Object waiting to go on. She was standing just inside the middle arch, no more than ten feet from me. I had never seen her so serious before, so concentrated. Talent is a kind of intelligence. As she waited to go on, the Obscure Object was coming into hers. Her lips moved as if she were speaking Sophocles\u2019 lines to Sophocles himself, as if, contrary to all intellectual evidence, she understood the literary reasons for their endurance. So the Object stood, waiting to go on. Far away from her cigarettes and her snobbishness, her cliquish friends, her atrocious spelling. This was what she was good at: ap\u00ac pearing before people. Stepping out and standing there and speak\u00ac ing. She was just beginning to realize it then. What I was witnessing was a self discovering the self it could be. On cue, our Antigone took a deep breath and walked onstage. Her white robe was cinched around her torso with silver braid. The robe fluttered as she stepped out in the warm breeze. \u201cWilt thou aid this hand to lift the dead?\u201d Maxine-Ismene replied, \u201cThou wouldst bury him, when \u2019tis for\u00ac bidden to Thebes?\u201d \n\u201cI will do my part, and thou wilt not, to a brother. False to him will I never be found.\u201d \nI wasn\u2019t on for a while. Tiresias wasn\u2019t that big a part. So I closed the curtain around me again and waited. I had a staff in my hand. It was my only prop, a plastic stick painted to look like wood. It was then I heard a small, choking sound. Again the Object said, \u201cFalse to him will I never be found.\u201d Followed by silence. I peeked out the curtain. Through the central arch I could see them. The Ob\u00ac ject had her back to me. Farther downstage Maxine Grossinger stood with a blank look on her face. Her mouth was open, though no words were coming out. Beyond, just above the lip of the stage, was Miss Fagles\u2019s florid face, whispering Maxine\u2019s next line. It wasn\u2019t stage fright. An aneurysm had burst in Maxine Gros- singer\u2019s brain. At first, the audience took her quick stagger and shocked expression to be part of the play. Titters had begun at the way the girl playing Ismene was hamming it up. But Maxine\u2019s mother, knowing exactly what pain looked like on her child\u2019s face, shot up out of her seat. \u201cNo,\u201d she cried. \u201cNo!\u201d Twenty feet away, ele\u00ac vated under a setting sun, Maxine Grossinger was still mute. A gurgle escaped from her throat. With the suddenness of a lighting cue her face went blue. Even in the back rows people could see the oxygen leave her blood. Pinkness drained away, down her forehead, her cheeks, her neck. Later, the Obscure Object would swear that Maxine had been looking at her with a kind of appeal, that she had seen the light go out of Maxine\u2019s eyes. According to the doctors, however, this was probably not true. Wrapped in her dark robe, still on her feet, Maxine Grossinger was already dead. She toppled forward sec\u00ac onds later. \nMrs. Grossinger scrambled up onstage. She made no sound now. No one did. In silence she reached Maxine and tore open her robe. In silence the mother began to give the daughter mouth-to-mouth. I froze. I let the curtains untwist and I stepped out and gawked. Sud\u00ac denly a white blur filled the arch. The Obscure Object was fleeing the stage. For a second I had a crazy idea. I thought Mr. da Magda had been holding out on us. He was doing things the traditional way af\u00ac ter all. Because the Obscure Object was wearing a mask. The mask for tragedy, her eyes like knife slashes, her mouth a boomerang of woe. With this hideous face she threw herself on me. \u201cOh my God!\u201d she sobbed. \u201cOh my God, Callie,\u201d and she was shaking and needing me. \nWhich leads me to a terrible confession. It is this. While Mrs. Grossinger tried to breathe life back into Maxine\u2019s body, while the sun set melodramatically over a death that wasn\u2019t in the script, I felt a wave of pure happiness surge through my body. Ever}' nerve, every corpuscle, lit up. I had the Obscure Object in my arms. TIRESIflS in LOVE \nTT made a doctor\u2019s appointment for you.\u201d \u201cI just went to the doctor.\u201d \nli \u201cNot with Dr. Phil. With Dr. Bauer.\u201d \u201cWho\u2019s Dr. Bauer?\u201d \n\u201cHe\u2019s ... a ladies\u2019 doctor.\u201d \nThere was a hot bubbling in my chest. As if my heart were eating Pop Rocks. But I played it cool, looking out at the lake. \u201cWho says Pm a lady?\u201d \n\u201cVery hinny.\u201d \n\u201cI just went to the doctor, Mom.\u201d \u201cThat was for your physical.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s this for?\u201d \n\u201cWhen girls get to be a certain age, Callie, they have to go get checked.\u201d \n\u201cWhy?\u201d \n\u201cTo make sure everything\u2019s okay.\u201d \u201cWhat do you mean, everything?\u201d \u201cJust\u2014 everything.\u201d \nWe were in the car. The second-best Cadillac. When Irma got a new car he gave Russell his old one. The Obscure Object had invited me to spend the day at her club and my mother was taking me to her house. \nIt was summer now, two weeks since Maxine Grossinger had col- lapsed onstage. School was out. On Middlesex preparations were un\u00ac der way for our trip to Turkey. Determined not to let Deana Salome\u2019s condemnation of tourism ruin our travel plans, Irma was making airplane reservations and haggling with car rental agencies. Every morning he scanned the newspaper, reporting the weather conditions in Istanbul. \u201cEighty-one degrees and sunny. How does that sound, Cal?\u201d In response to which I generally twirled an index finger. I wasn\u2019t keen on visiting the homeland anymore. I didn\u2019t want to waste my summer painting a church. Greece, Asia Minor, Mount Olympus, what did they have to do with me? I\u2019d just discovered a whole new continent only a few miles away. In the summer of 1974 Turkey and Greece were about to be in the news again. But I didn\u2019t pay any mind to the rising tensions. I had troubles of my own. More than that, I was in love. Secredy, shamefully, not entirely consciously, but for all that quite head-over- heels in love. \nOur pretty lake was trimmed in filth. The usual June scum of fish flies. There was also a new guardrail, which gave me a somber feeling as we drove past. Maxine Grossinger wasn\u2019t the only girl at school who had died that year. Carol Henkel, a junior, had died in a car ac\u00ac cident. One Saturday night her drunken boyfriend, a guy named Rania Casper, had plunged his parents\u2019 car into the lake. Rania had survived, swimming back to shore. But Carol had been trapped inside the car. We passed Baker & Inglis, closed for vacation and succumbing to the unreality of schools during summertime. We turned up Kerby Road. The Object lived on Tonnacour, in a gray stone and clapboard house with a weather vane. Parked on the gravel was an unprepos\u00ac sessing Ford sedan. I felt self-conscious in the second-best Cadillac and got out quickly, wishing my mother gone. When I rang the bell, Beulah answered. She led me to the stair\u00ac case and pointed up. That was all. I climbed to the second floor. I\u2019d never been upstairs at the Object\u2019s house before. It was messier than ours, the carpeting not new. The ceiling hadn\u2019t been painted in years. But the furniture was impressively old, heavy, and sent out signals of permanence and settled judgment. I tried three rooms before I found the Object\u2019s. Her shades were drawn. Clothes were scattered all over the shag carpeting and I had to wade through them to reach the bed. But there she was, sleeping, in a Lester Lanin T-shirt. I called her name. I jiggled her. Finally she sat up against her pillows and blinked. \u201cI must look like shit,\u201d she said after a moment. I didn\u2019t say whether she did or not. It strengthened my position to keep her in doubt. \nWe had breakfast in the breakfast nook. Beulah served us without elaboration, bringing and taking plates. She wore an actual maid\u2019s uniform, black, with white apron. Her eyeglasses hailed from her other, more stylish life. In gold script her name curled across the left lens. \nMrs. Object arrived, clacking in sensible heels: \u201cGood morning, Beulah. I\u2019m off to the vet\u2019s. Sheba\u2019s getting a tooth pulled. I\u2019ll drop her back here, but then I\u2019m off to lunch. They say she\u2019ll be woozy. Oh\u2014 and the men are coming for the drapes today. Let them in and give them the check that\u2019s on the counter. Hello, girls! I didn\u2019t see you. You must be a good influence, Callie. Nine-thirty and this one\u2019s up already?\u201d She mussed the Object\u2019s hair. \u201cAre you spending the day at the Little Club, dear? Good. Your father and I are going out with the Josephineses tonight. Beulah will leave something for you in the fridge. Bye, all!\u201d \nAll this while, Beulah rinsed glasses. Keeping to her strategy. Giv\u00ac ing Grosse Pointe the silent treatment. The Object spun the lazy Susan. French jams, English mar\u00ac malades, an unclean butter dish, bottles of ketchup and Lea & Perrins circled past, before what the Object wanted: an economy-size jar of Rolaids. She shook out three tablets. \u201cWhat is heartburn, anyway?\u201d I said. \u201cYou\u2019ve never had heartburn?\u201d asked the Object, amazed. The Little Club was only a nickname. Officially the club was known as the Grosse Pointe Club. Though the property was on the lake, there were no docks or boats in sight, only a mansion-like clubhouse, two paddle tennis courts, and a swimming pool. It was beside this pool that we lay every day that June and July. As far as swimwear went, the Obscure Object favored bikinis. She looked good in them but by no means perfect. Like her thighs, her hips were on the large side. She claimed to envy my thin, long legs, but she was only being nice. Ali appeared poolside, that first day and every day thereafter, in an old-fashioned one-piece with a skirt. It had belonged to Lavinia during the 1950s. I found it in an old trunk. The stated intent was to look funky, but I was grateful for the full coverage. I also hung a beach towel around my neck or wore an alligator shirt over my suit. The bodice of the bathing suit was a plus, too. The cups were rubberized, pointy, and beneath a towel or a shirt gave me the suggestion of a bust I didn\u2019t have. Beyond us, pelican-bellied ladies in swim caps followed kick- boards back and forth across the pool. Their bathing suits were a lot like mine. Little kids waded and splashed in the shallow end. There is a small window of opportunity for freckled girls to tan. The Object was in it. As we revolved on our towels that summer, self-basting, the Object\u2019s freckles darkened, going from butterscotch to brown. The skin between them darkened, too, knitting her freckles together into a speckled harlequin mask. Only the tip of her nose remained pink. The part in her hair flamed with sunburn. Club sandwiches, on wave-rimmed plates, sailed out to us. If we were feeling sophisticated, we ordered the French dip. We had milk shakes, too, ice cream, french fries. For everything the Object signed her father\u2019s name. She talked about Petoskey, where her family had a summer house. \u201cWe\u2019re going up in August. Maybe you could come up.\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019re going to Turkey,\u201d I said unhappily. \u201cOh, right. I forgot.\u201d And then: \u201cWhy do you have to paint a church?\u201d \n\u201cMy dad made this promise.\u201d \n\u201cHow come?\u201d \nBehind us married couples were playing paddle tennis. Pennants flew from the clubhouse roof. Was this the place to mention St. Christopher? My father\u2019s war stories? My grandmother\u2019s supersti\u00ac tions? \n\u201cYou know what I keep thinking?\u201d I said. \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cI keep thinking about Maxine. I can\u2019t believe she\u2019s dead.\u201d \u201cI know. It doesn\u2019t seem like she\u2019s really dead. It\u2019s like I dreamed it.\u201d \n\u201cThe only way we know it\u2019s true is that we both dreamed it. That\u2019s what reality is. It\u2019s a dream everyone has together.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s deep,\u201d said the Object. I smacked her. \n\u201cOvv!\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s what you get.\u201d \nBugs were attracted by our coconut oil. We killed them without mercy. The Object was making a slow, scandalized progress through The Lonely Lady by Harold Robbins. Every few pages she shook her head and announced, \u2018This book is sooo dirty.\u201d I was reading Oliver Twist , one of the assigned volumes for our summer reading list. Suddenly the sun went in. A drop of water hit my page. But this was nothing compared to the cascade that was being shaken onto the Obscure Object. An older boy was leaning over sideways, shaking his wet mop of hair. \n\u201cGoddamn you,\u201d she said, \u201ccut it out!\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter? I\u2019m cooling you off?\u2019 \u201cQuit it!\u201d \nFinally, he did. He straightened up. His bathing suit had fallen down over his skinny hipbones. This exposed an ant trail of hair run\u00ac ning down from his navel. The ant trail was red. But on his head the hair was jet black. \n\u201cWho\u2019s the latest victim of your hospitality?\u201d the boy asked. \u2018This is Callie,\u201d said the Object. Then to me: \u201cThis is my brother. Hunter.\u201d \nThe resemblance was clear. The same palette had gone into Hunter\u2019s face (oranges and pale blues, primarily) but there was a crudeness to the overall sketch, something bulbous about the nose, the eyes on the squinty side, pinpricks of light. What threw me at first was the dark, sheenless hair, which I soon realized was dyed. \u201cYou were the one in the play, right?\u201d \u201cYes.\u201d \nHunter nodded. With slitty eyes glinting he said, \u201cA thespian, eh? Just like you. Right, sis?\u201d \n\u201cMy brother has a lot of problems,\u201d the Object said. \u201cHey, since you gals are into the thee-a-tah, maybe you want to be in my next film.\u201d He looked at me. \u201cI\u2019m making a vampire movie. You\u2019d make a great vampire.\u201d \n\u201cI would?\u201d \n\u201cLet me see your teeth.\u201d \nI didn\u2019t oblige, taking my cue from the Object not to be too friendly. \n\u201cHunter is into monster movies,\u201d she said. \u201cHorror films,\u201d he corrected, still directing his words to me. \u201cNot monster movies. My sister, as usual, belittles my chosen medium. Want to know the title?\u201d \n\u201cNo\u201d said the Object. \n\u201c Vampires in Prep School. It\u2019s about this vampire, played by moi, who gets sent off to prep school because his affluent but terribly un\u00ac happy parents are going through a divorce. Anyway, he doesn\u2019t get along too well out there at boarding school. He doesn\u2019t wear the right clothes. He doesn\u2019t have the right haircut. But then one day af\u00ac ter this kegger he takes a walk across campus and gets attacked by a vampire. And\u2014 here\u2019s the kicker\u2014 the vampire is smoking a pipe. He\u2019s wearing a Harris tweed. It\u2019s the fucking headmaster, man! So the next morning, our hero wakes up and goes right out and buys a blue blazer and some Top-Siders and\u2014 presto\u2014 he\u2019s a total prep!\u201d \u201cWill you move, you\u2019re blocking my sun.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a metaphor for the whole boarding school experience,\u201d Hunter said. \u201cEach generation puts the bite on the next, turning them into the living dead.\u201d \n\u201cHunter has been kicked out of two boarding schools.\u201d \u201cAnd I shall have my revenge upon them!\u201d Hunter proclaimed in a hoary voice, shaking his fist in the air. Then without another word he ran to the pool and jumped. As he did, he spun around so he was facing us. There Hunter hung, skinny, sunken-chested, as white as a saltine, his face scrunched up and one hand clutching his nuts. He held that pose all the way down. I was too young to ask myself what was behind our sudden intimacy. In the days and weeks that followed, I didn\u2019t consider the Object\u2019s own motivations, her love vacuum. Her mother had engagements all day long. Her father left for the office at six forty-five. Hunter was a brother and therefore useless. The Object didn\u2019t like being alone. She had never learned to amuse herself. And so one evening at her house, as I was about to get on my bike and ride home, she suggested that I sleep over. \n\u201cI don\u2019t have my toothbrush.\u201d \u201cYou can use mine.\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s gross.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ll get you a new toothbrush. We\u2019ve got a box of them. God, you\u2019re such a priss.\u201d \nI was only feigning squeamishness. In actuality I wouldn\u2019t have minded sharing the Object\u2019s toothbrush. I wouldn\u2019t have minded be\u00ac ing the Object\u2019s toothbrush. I was already well acquainted with the splendors of her mouth. Smoking is good for that. You get a full dis\u00ac play of die puckering and the sucking. The tongue often makes an appearance, licking from the lips any stickiness imparted by the filter. Sometimes bits of paper adhere to the bottom lip and the smoker, pulling them away, reveals the candied lower teeth against the pulpy gums. And if the smoker is a blower of smoke rings, you get to see all the way in to the dark velvet of the inner cheeks. That was how it went with the Obscure Object. A cigarette in bed was the tombstone marking each day\u2019s end and the reed through which she breathed herself back to life each morning. You\u2019ve heard of installation artists? Well, the Object was an exhalation artist. She had a whole repertoire. There was the Sidewinder, where she politely fun- neled smoke away from the person she was talking to out the corner of her mouth. There was the Geyser when she was angry. There was the Dragon Lady, featuring a plume from each nostril. There was the French Recycle, where she let smoke out her mouth only to inhale it back through her nose. And there was the Swallow. The Swallow was reserved for crisis situations. Once, in the Science Wing bathroom, the Object had just finished taking a long drag when a teacher charged in. My friend had time to flick her cigarette into the toilet bowl and flush. But what about the smoke? Where could it go? \u201cWho\u2019s been smoking in here?\u201d the teacher asked. The Object shrugged, keeping her mouth closed. The teacher leaned toward her, sniffing. And the Object swallowed. No smoke came out. Not a wisp. Not a puff. A little moistness in her eyes the only sign of the Chernobyl in her lungs. I accepted the Object\u2019s invitation to sleep over. Mrs. Object called Russell to see if it was all right and, by eleven o\u2019clock, my friend and I went up to bed together. She gave me a T-shirt to wear. It said \u201cFes\u00ac senden\u201d on the front. I put it on and the Object snickered. \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s Hunter\u2019s T-shirt. Does it reek?\u201d \u201cWhy\u2019d you give me his shirt?\u201d I said, going stiff, shrinking from the cotton\u2019s touch while still wearing it. \u201cMine are too small. You want one of Daddy\u2019s? They smell like cologne.\u201d \n\u201cYour dad wears cologne?\u201d \n\u201cHe lived in Paris after the war. He\u2019s got all kinds of fruity habits.\u201d She was climbing up onto the big bed now. \u201cPlus he slept with about a million French prostitutes.\u201d \u201cHe told you that?\u201d \n\u201cNot exactiy. But whenever Daddy talks about France he acts all horny. He was in the Army there. He was like in charge of running Paris after the war. And Mummy gets really pissed when he talks about it.\u201d She imitated her mother now. \u201c That\u2019s enough Fran- cophilia for one evening, dear.\u2019 \u201d As usual, when she did something dramatic, her IQ suddenly soared. Then she flopped onto her stom\u00ac ach. \u201cHe killed people, too.\u201d \u201cHe did?\u201d \n\u201cYeah,\u201d said the Object, adding by way of explanation, \u201cNazis.\u201d I climbed into the big bed. At home I had one pillow. Here there were six. \n\u201cBack rub,\u201d the Object called out cheerily. \u201cI\u2019ll do you if you do me.\u201d \n\u201cDeal.\u201d \nI sat astride her, on the saddle of her hips, and started with her shoulders. Her hair was in the way, so I moved it. We were quiet for a while, me rubbing, and then I asked, \u201cHave you ever been to a gy\u00ac necologist?\u201d \nThe Object nodded into her pillow. \u201cWhat\u2019s it like?\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s torture. I hate it.\u201d \n\u201cWhat do they do?\u201d \n\u201cFirst they make you strip and put this little gown on. It\u2019s made of paper and all this cold air gets in. You freeze. Then they make you lie on this table, spread-eagled.\u201d \u201cSpread-eagled?\u201d \n\u201cYep. You have to put your legs in these metal things. Then the gyno gives you a pelvic exam, which kills'? \u201cWhat do you mean, pelvic exam?\u201d \u201cI thought you were supposed to be the sex expert.\u201d \u201cCome on.\u201d \n\u201cA pelvic exam is, you know, inside. They shove this little doohickey in you to spread you all open and everything.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t believe this.\u201d \n\u201cIt kills. And it\u2019s freezing. Plus you\u2019ve got the gyno making lame jokes while he\u2019s nosing around in there. But the worst is what he does with his hands.\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cBasically he reaches in until he can tickle your tonsils.\u201d Now I was mute. Absolutely paralyzed with shock and fear. \u201cWho are you going to?\u201d the Object asked. \u201cSomeone named Dr. Bauer.\u201d \n\u201cDr. Bauer! That\u2019s Renee\u2019s dad. He\u2019s a total perv!\u201d \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d \n\u201cI went swimming over at Renee\u2019s one time. They have a pool. Dr. Bauer came out and stood there, watching. Then he goes, Tour legs have perfect proportions. Absolutely perfect proportions\u2019 God, what a perv! Dr. Bauer. I pity you.\u201d She raised her stomach in order to free her shirt. I massaged her lower back, reaching under the shirt to knead her shoulder blades. The Object got quiet after that. So did I. I kept my mind off gynecology by losing myself in the back rub. It wasn\u2019t hard. Her honey- or apricot-colored back tapered at the waist in a way mine didn\u2019t. There were white spots here and there, anti-freckles. Wher\u00ac ever I rubbed, her skin flushed. I was aware of the blood underneath, coursing and draining. Her underarms were rough like a cat\u2019s tongue. Below them the sides of her breasts swelled out, flattened against the mattress. \n\u201cOkay,\u201d I said, after a long while, \u201cmy turn.\u201d But that night was like all the others. She was asleep. It was never my turn with the Object. They come back to me, the scattered days of that summer with the Object, each encased in a souvenir snow globe. Let me shake them up again. Watch the flakes float down: We are lying in bed together on a Saturday morning. The Object is on her back. I\u2019m fulcrumed on one elbow, leaning over to inspect her face. \n\u201cYou know what sleep is?\u201d I say. \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cSnot.\u201d \n\u201cIt is not.\u201d \n\u201cIt is. It\u2019s mucus. It\u2019s snot that comes out your eyes.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s so gross!\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019ve got a little sleep in your eyes, my dear,\u201d I say in a fake deep voice. With my finger I flick the crust from the Object\u2019s eye\u00ac lashes. \n\u201cI can\u2019t believe I\u2019m letting you do this,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019re touching my snot.\u201d \nWe look at each other a moment. \u201cI\u2019m touching your snot!\u201d I scream. And we writhe around, throwing pillows and screaming some more. On another day, the Object is taking a bath. She has her own bath\u00ac room. I\u2019m on the bed, reading a gossip magazine. \u201cYou can tell Jane Fonda isn\u2019t really naked in that movie,\u201d I say. \u201cHow?\u201d \n\u201cShe\u2019s got a body stocking on. You can see it.\u201d I go into the bathroom to show her. In the claw-footed tub, under a layer of whipped cream, the Object lolls, pumicing one heel. She looks at the photograph and says, \u2018You\u2019re never naked, ei\u00ac ther.\u201d \nI am frozen, speechless. \n\u201cDo you have some kind of complex?\u201d \u201cNo, I don\u2019t have a complex.\u201d \u201cWhat are you afraid of, then?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not afraid.\u201d \nThe Object knows this isn\u2019t true. But her intentions aren\u2019t mali\u00ac cious. She isn\u2019t trying to catch me out, only to put me at ease. My modesty baffles her. \n\u201cI don\u2019t know what you\u2019re so worried about,\u201d she says. \u2018You\u2019re my best friend.\u201d \nI pretend to be engrossed in the magazine. I can\u2019t get myself to look away. Inside, however, I\u2019m bursting with happiness. I\u2019m erupt- ing with joy, but I keep staring at the magazine as though I\u2019m mad at it. \nIt\u2019s late. We\u2019ve stayed up watching TV. The Object is brushing her teeth when I come into the bathroom. I pull down my underpants and sit on the toilet. I do this sometimes as a compensatory tactic. The T-shirt is long enough to cover my lap. I pee while the Object brushes. \nIt\u2019s then I smell smoke. Looking up, I see, besides a toothbrush in the Object\u2019s mouth, a cigarette. \u201cYou even smoke while you brush your teeth?\u201d She looks at me sideways. \u201cMenthol,\u201d she says. The thing about those souvenirs, though: the glitter falls fast. A reminder taped to our refrigerator brought me back to reality: \u201cDr. Bauer, July 22, 2 p.m.\u201d \nI was filled with dread. Dread of the perverted gynecologist and his inquisitorial instruments. Dread of the metal things that would spread my legs and of the doohickey that would spread something else. And dread of what all this spreading might reveal. It was in this state, this emotional foxhole, that I started going to church again. One Sunday in early July my mother and I dressed up (Russell in heels, me not) and drove down to Assumption. Russell was suffering, too. It had been six months since Deana Salome had sped away from Middlesex on his motorcycle, and since that time he hadn\u2019t been back. Worse, in April he had broken the news that he was dropping out of college. He was planning to move to the Upper Peninsula with some friends and, as he put it, live off the land. \u201cYou don\u2019t think he\u2019d do something crazy like run off and marry that Meg, do you?\u201d Russell asked Irma. \u201cLet\u2019s hope not,\u201d he answered. Russell worried that Deana Salome wasn\u2019t taking care of himself, either. He wasn\u2019t going to the dentist regularly. His vegetarianism made him pale. And he was losing his hair. At the age of twenty. This made Russell feel suddenly old. \nUnited in anxiety, seeking solace for differing complaints (Russell wanting to get rid of her pains while I wanted mine to begin), we en\u00ac tered the church. As far as I could tell, what happened every Sunday at Assumption Greek Orthodox Church was that the priests got to- gether and read the Bible out loud. They started with Genesis and kept going straight through Numbers and Deuteronomy. Then on through Psalms and Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all the way up to the New Testament. Then they read that. Given the length of our services, I saw no other possibility. They chanted as the church slowly filled up. Finally the central chandelier flicked on and Father Mike, like a life-size puppet, sprang through the icon screen. The transformation my uncle went through every Sunday always amazed me. At church Father Mike appeared and disappeared with the capriciousness of a divinity. One minute he was up on the balcony, singing in his tender, tone-deaf voice. The next minute he was back on ground level, swinging his censer. Glit\u00ac tering, bejeweled, as overdone in his vestments as a Faberge egg, he promenaded around the church, giving us God\u2019s blessing. Some\u00ac times his censer produced so much smoke it seemed that Father Mike had the ability to cloak himself in a mist. When the mist dispersed, however, later that afternoon in our living room, he was once again a short, shy man, in black, polyester-blend clothes and a plastic collar. Aunt Blaise\u2019s authority went in the opposite direction. At church she was meek. The round gray hat she wore looked like the head of a screw fastening her to her pew. She was constantly pinching her sons to keep them awake. I could barely connect the anxious person hunched down every week in front of us to the funny woman who, under the inspiration of wine, launched into comedy routines in our kitchen. \u201cYou men stay out!\u201d she\u2019d shout, dancing with my mother. \u201cWe\u2019ve got knives in here.\u201d \nSo startling was the contrast between churchgoing Blaise and wine\u00ac drinking Blaise that I always made a point of watching her closely dur\u00ac ing the liturgy. On most Sundays, when my mother tapped her on the shoulder in greeting. Aunt Bay responded only with a weak smile. Her large nose looked swollen with grief. Then she turned back, crossed herself, and settled in for the duration. And so: Assumption Church that July morning. Incense rising with the pungency of irrational hope. Closer in (it had been drizzling out), the smell of wet wool. The dripping of umbrellas stashed under pews. The rivulets from these umbrellas flowing down the uneven floor of our poorly built church, pooling in spots. The smell of hair- spray and perfume, of cheap cigars, and the slow ticking of watches. The grumbling of more and more stomachs. And the yawning. The nodding off and the snoring and the being elbowed awake. Our liturgy', endless; my own body immune to the laws of time. And right in front of me, Blaise Sammy, on whom time had also been doing a number. \nThe life of a priest\u2019s wife had been even worse than Aunt Bay had expected. She had hated her years in the Peloponnese. They had lived in a small, unheated stone house. Outside, the village women spread blankets under olive trees, beating the branches until the olives fell. \u201cCan\u2019t they stop that damn racket!\u201d Blaise had complained. In five years, to the incessant sound of trees being clubbed to death, she bore four children. She sent letters to my mother detailing her hard\u00ac ships: no washing machine, no car, no television, a backyard full of boulders and goats. She signed her letters, \u201cSt. Blaise, Church martyr.\u201d Father Mike had liked Greece better. His years there represented the best period of his priesthood. In that tiny Peloponnesian village the old superstitions survived. People still believed in the evil eye. Nobody pitied him for being a priest, whereas later on in America his parishioners always treated him with a slight but unmistakable con\u00ac descension, like a crazy person whose delusions had to be humored. The humiliation of being a priest in a market economy didn\u2019t plague Father Mike while he was in Greece. In Greece he could forget about my mother, who had jilted him, and he could escape comparison with my father, who made so much more money. His wife\u2019s nagging complaints hadn\u2019t begun to make Father Mike think about leaving the priesthood yet, and hadn\u2019t led him to his desperate act . . . In 1956 Father Mike was reappointed stateside to a church in Cleveland. In 1958 he became a priest at Assumption. Blaise was happy to be back home, but she never got used to her position as presvytem. She didn\u2019t like being a role model. She found it difficult to keep her children looking neat and well dressed. \u201cOn what money?\u201d she shouted at her husband. \u201cMaybe if they paid you halfway decent the kids would look better.\u201d My cousins\u2014 Aristode, Socrates, Cleopa\u00ac tra, and Plato\u2014 had the thwarted, overbrushed look of ministers\u2019 children. The boys wore cheap, garishly colored double-breasted suits. They had Afros. Cleo, who was as beautiful and almond-eyed as her namesake, made do with dresses from Montgomery Ward. She rarely spoke, and played cat\u2019s cradle with Plato during the service. I always liked Aunt Bay. I liked her big, grandstanding voice. I liked her sense of humor. She was louder than most men; she could make my mother laugh like nobody else. That Sunday, for instance, during one of the many lulls, Aunt Bay turned around and dared to joke. \u201cI have to be here, Russell. What\u2019s your excuse?\u201d \n\u201cCallie and I just felt like coming to church\u201d my mother an\u00ac swered. \nPlato, who was small like his father, sang out with mock censure, \u201cShame on you, Callie. What did you do?\u201d He rubbed his right index finger repeatedly over his left. \u201cNothing\u201d I said. \n\u201cHey, Soc,\u201d Plato whispered to his brother. \u201cIs cousin Callie blushing?\u201d \n\u201cShe must have done something she doesn\u2019t want to tell us.\u201d \u201cShush up now, you,\u201d said Aunt Bay. For Father Mike was ap\u00ac proaching with the censer. My cousins turned around. My mother bowed her head to pray. I did, too. Russell prayed for Deana Salome to come to his senses. And me? That\u2019s easy. I prayed for my period to come. I prayed to receive the womanly stigmata. Summer sped on. Irma brought our suitcases up from the base\u00ac ment and told my mother and me to start packing. I tanned with the Object at the Little Club. Dr. Bauer haunted my mind, judging the proportions of my legs. The appointment was a week away, then half a week, then two days . . . \nAnd so we come to the preceding Saturday night, July 20, 1974. A night full of departures and secret plans. In the early hours of Sun\u00ac day morning (which was still Saturday night back in Michigan), Turkish jets took off from bases on the mainland. They headed south\u00ac east over the Mediterranean Sea toward the island of Cyprus. In the ancient myths, gods favoring mortals often hid them away. Aphrodite blotted out Paris once, saving him from certain death at the hands of Menelaus. She wrapped Aeneas in a coat to sneak him off the battlefield. Likewise, as the Turkish jets roared over the sea, they were also hidden. That night, Cypriot military personnel re\u00ac ported a mysterious malfunctioning of their radar screens. The screens filled with thousands of white blips: an electromagnetic cloud. Invisible inside this, the Turkish jets reached the island and be\u00ac gan dropping their bombs. \nMeanwhile, back in Grosse Pointe, Fred and Phyllis Mooney were also leaving home base, heading to Chicago. On the front porch, waving goodbye, stood their children, Woody and Jane, who had secret plans of their own. Flying toward the Mooneys\u2019 house at that moment were the silver bombers of beer kegs and the tight for\u00ac mations of six-packs. Cars full of teenagers were on their way. And so were the Object and I. Powdered and glossed, our hair hot-combed into wings, we had set off for the party ourselves. In thin corduroy skirts and clogs we came up the front lawn. But the Object stopped me on the porch before we went in. She was biting her lip. \u201cYou\u2019re my best friend, right?\u201d \u201cRight.\u201d \n\u201cOkay. Sometimes I think I have bad breath.\u201d She stopped. \u201cThe thing is, you can never tell if you have bad breath or not. So the thing is\u201d\u2014 she paused\u2014 \u201cI want you to check it for me.\u201d I didn\u2019t know what to say and so said nothing. \u201cIs that too disgusting?\u201d \n\u201cNo,\u201d I said, finally. \n\u201cOkay, here goes.\u201d She leaned toward me and huffed a single breath into my face. \n\u201cIt\u2019s okay,\u201d I said. \n\u201cGood. Now you.\u201d \nI leaned down and exhaled in her face. \u201cIt\u2019s fine,\u201d she said, decisively. \u201cOkay. Now we can go to the party.\u201d \nI\u2019d never been to a party before. I felt for the parents. As we squeezed by the throngs in the throbbing house, I cringed at the de\u00ac struction under way. Cigarette ashes were dropping on Pierre Deux upholstery. Beer cans were spilling onto heirloom carpets. In the den I saw two laughing boys urinating into a tennis trophy. It was mosdy older kids. A few couples climbed the stairs, disappearing into bed\u00ac rooms. \nThe Object was trying to act older herself. She was copying the superior, bored expressions of the high school girls. She crossed to the back porch ahead of me and got in the line for the keg. \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d I asked. \u201cI\u2019m getting a beer. What do you think?\u201d It was fairly dark outside. As in most social situations, I let my hair fall into my face. I was standing behind the Object, looking like Cousin It, when someone put his hands over my eyes. \u201cGuess who?\u201d \n\u201cHunter.\u201d \nI pulled his hands off my face and turned around. \u201cHow did you know it was me?\u201d \u201cThe curious smell.\u201d \n\u201cOuch\u201d said a voice behind Hunter. I looked over and received a shock. Standing with Hunter was Rania Casper, the guy who had driven Carol Henkel to her watery death. Rania Casper, our local Teddy Kennedy. He didn\u2019t look particularly sober now, either. His dark hair covered his ears and he wore a piece of blue coral on a leather thong around his throat. I searched his face for signs of remorse or repen\u00ac tance. Rania wasn\u2019t searching my face, however. He was eyeing the Ob\u00ac ject, his hair falling into his eyes above the curl of a smile. Deftly, the two boys moved in between us, turning their backs to each other. I had a final glimpse of the Obscure Object. She had her hands in the back pockets of her corduroy skirt. This looked casual but had the effect of pushing out her chest. She was looking up at Rania and smiling. \n\u201cI start filming tomorrow,\u201d Hunter said. I looked blank. \n\u201cMy movie. My vampire movie. You sure you don\u2019t want to be in it?\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019re going on vacation this week.\u201d \u201cThat sucks,\u201d said Hunter. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be genius.\u201d We stood silent. After a moment I said, \u201cReal geniuses never think they\u2019re geniuses.\u201d \n\u201cWho says?\u201d \n\u201cMe.\u201d \n\u201cBecause why?\u201d \n\u201cBecause genius is nine-tenths perspiration. Haven\u2019t you ever heard that? As soon as you think you\u2019re a genius, you slack off. You think everything you do is so great and everything.\u201d \u201cI just want to make scary movies,\u201d Hunter replied. \u201cWith occa\u00ac sional nudity.\u201d \n\u201cJust don\u2019t try to be a genius and maybe you\u2019ll end up being one by accident\u201d I said. \nHe was looking at me in a funny way, intense, but also grinning. \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cNothing.\u201d \n\u201cWhy are you looking at me like that?\u201d \u201cLooking at you like what?\u201d \nIn the dark, Hunter\u2019s resemblance to the Obscure Object was even more pronounced. The tawny eyebrows, the butterscotch complex\u00ac ion\u2014 here they were again, in permissible form. \u201cYou\u2019re a lot smarter than most of my sister\u2019s friends.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re a lot smarter than most of my friends\u2019 brothers.\u201d He leaned toward me. He was taller than I was. That was the big difference between him and his sister. It was enough to wake me from my trance. I turned away. I circled around him back to the Ob\u00ac ject. She was still staring up bright-faced at Rania. \u201cCome on,\u201d I said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got to go to that thing.\u201d \u201cWhat thing?\u201d \n\u201cYou know. That thing.\u201d \nFinally I managed to pull her away. She left trailing smiles and significant looks. As soon as we got off the porch she was frowning at me. \n\u201cWhere are you taking me?\u201d she said angrily. \u201cAway from that creep.\u201d \n\u201cCan\u2019t you leave me alone for a minute?\u201d \u201cYou want me to leave you alone?\u201d I said. \u201cOkay, I\u2019ll leave you alone.\u201d I didn\u2019t move. \n\u201cCan\u2019t I even talk to a boy at a party?\u201d the Object asked. \u201cI was taking you away before it was too late.\u201d \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019ve got bad breath.\u201d \nThis checked the Object. This struck her to her core. She wilted. \u201cI do?\u201d she asked. \n\u201cIt\u2019s just a little oniony,\u201d I said. We were on the back lawn now. Kids were sitting on the stone porch rail, their cigarette tips glowing in the darkness. \u201cWhat do you think of Rania?\u201d the Object whispered. \u201cWhat? Don\u2019t tell me you like him.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t say I like him.\u201d \nI scoped her face, seeking the answer. She noticed this and walked farther away over the lawn. I followed. I said earlier that most of my emotions are hybrids. But not all. Some are pure and unadulterated. Jealousy, for instance. \n\u201cRania is okay,\u201d I said when I had caught up to her. \u201cIf you like manslaughterers.\u201d \n\u201cThat was an accident\u201d said the Object. The moon was three-quarters full. It silvered the fat leaves of the trees. The grass was wet. We both kicked off our clogs to stand in it. After a moment, sighing, the Object laid her head on my shoulder. \u201cIt\u2019s good you\u2019re going away,\u201d she said. \u201cWhy?\u201d \n\u201cBecause this is too weird.\u201d I looked back to see if anyone could see us. No one could. So I put my arm around her. For the next few minutes we stood under the moon-blanched trees, listening to the music blaring from the house. The cops would come soon. The cops always came. That was something you could depend on in Grosse Pointe. \nThe next morning, I went to church with Russell. As usual, Aunt Bay was down in front, setting an example. Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato were wearing their gangster suits. Cleo was sunk into her black mane, about to doze off. \nThe rear and sides of the church were dark. Icons gloomed from the porticoes or raised stiff fingers in the glinting chapels. Azariaeath the dome, light fell in a chalky beam. The air was already thick with incense. Moving back and forth, the priests looked like men at a hammam. \nThen it was showtime. One priest flicked a switch. The bottom tier of the enormous chandelier blazed on. From behind the icono\u00ac stasis Father Mike entered. He was wearing a bright turquoise robe with a red heart embroidered on his back. He crossed the solea and came down among the parishioners. The smoke from his censer rose and curled, fragrant with antiquity. \u201cKyrie eleison \u201d Father Mike sang. \u201c Kyrie eleison .\u201d And though the words meant nothing to me, or al\u00ac most nothing, I felt their weight, the deep groove they made in the air of time. Russell crossed herself, thinking about Deana Salome. First Father Mike did the left side of the church. In blue waves, incense rolled over the gathered heads. It dimmed the circular lights of the chandelier. It aggravated the widows\u2019 lung conditions. It sub\u00ac dued the brightness of my cousins\u2019 suits. As it wrapped me in its dry- ice blanket, I breathed it in and began to pray myself. Please God let Dr. Bauer not find anything wrong with me. And let me be just friends with the Object. And don\u2019t let her forget about me while we\u2019re in Turkey. And help my mother not to be so worried about my brother. And make Deana Salome go back to college. Incense serves a variety of purposes in the Orthodox church. Sym\u00ac bolically, it\u2019s an offering to God. Like the burnt sacrifices in pagan times, the fragrance drifts upward to heaven. Before the days of mod\u00ac ern embalming, incense had a practical application. It covered the smell of corpses during funerals. It can also, when inhaled in suffi\u00ac cient amounts, create a lightheadedness that feels like religious rev\u00ac erie. And if you breathe in enough of it, it can make you sick. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d Russell\u2019s voice in my ear. \u201cYou look pale.\u201d I stopped praying and opened my eyes. \u201cI do?\u201d \n\u201cDo you feel okay?\u201d \nI began to answer in the affirmative. But then I stopped myself. \u201cYou look really pale, Callie,\u201d Russell said again. She touched her hand to my forehead. \nSickness, reverie, devotion, deceit\u2014 they all came together. If God doesn\u2019t help you, you have to help yourself. \u201cIt\u2019s my stomach,\u201d I said. \n\u201cWhat have you been eating?\u201d \n\u201cOr not exactly my stomach. It\u2019s lower down.\u201d \u201cDo you feel faint?\u201d \nFather Mike passed by again. He swung the censer so high it nearly touched the tip of my nose. And I widened my nostrils and breathed in as much smoke as possible to make myself even paler than I already was. \n\u201cIt\u2019s like somebody\u2019s twisting something inside me,\u201d I hazarded. Which must have been more or less right. Because Russell was now smiling. \u201cOh, honey,\u201d she said. \u201cOh, thank God.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re happy I\u2019m sick? Thanks a lot.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re not sick, honey.\u201d \n\u201cThen what am I? I don\u2019t fed good. It hurts'? My mother took my hand, still beaming. \u201cHurry, hurry\u201d she said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want an accident.\u201d \nBy the time I closed myself into a church bathroom stall, news of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus had reached the United States. When Russell and I arrived back home, the living room was filled with shouting men. \n\u201cOur battleships are sitting off the coast to intimidate the Greeks,\u201d Gerry Fioretos was yelling. \n\u201cSure they\u2019re sitting off the coast,\u201d Irma now, \u201cwhat do you ex\u00ac pect? The Junta comes in and throws Makarios out. So the Turks are getting anxious. It\u2019s a volatile situation.\u201d \u201cYeah, but to help the Turks\u2014\u201d \u201cThe U.S. isn\u2019t helping the Turks,\u201d Irma went on. \u201cThey just don\u2019t want the Junta to get out of hand.\u201d In 1922, while Smyrna burned, American warships sat idly by. Fifty-two years later, off the coast of Cyprus, they also did nothing. At least ostensibly. \n\u201cDon\u2019t be so naive, Milt,\u201d Gerry Fioretos again. \u201cWho do you think\u2019s jamming the radar? It\u2019s the Americans, Milt. It\u2019s us.\u201d \u201cHow do you know?\u201d my father challenged. And now Gus Panos through the hole in his throat: \u201cIt\u2019s that god\u00ac damned\u2014 sssss\u2014 Kissinger. He must have\u2014 ssssss\u2014 made a deal with the Turks.\u201d \n\u201cOf course he did.\u201d Josephine Claire nodded, sipping his Pepsi. \u201cNow that the Vietnam crisis is over, Herr Doktor Kissinger can get back to playing Bismarck. He would like to see NATO bases in Turkey? This is his way to get them.\u201d \nWere these accusations true? I can\u2019t say for sure. All I know is this: on that morning, somebody jammed the Cypriot radar, guaranteeing the success of the Turkish invasion. Did the Turks possess such tech\u00ac nology? No. Did the U.S. warships? Yes. But this isn\u2019t something you can prove . . . \nPlus, it didn\u2019t matter to me, anyway. The men cursed, and shook their fingers at the television and pounded the radio, until Aunt Bay unplugged them. Unfortunately, she couldn\u2019t unplug the men. All through dinner the men shouted at each other. Knives and forks waved in the air. The argument over Cyprus lasted for weeks and would finally put an end to those Sunday dinners once and for all. But as for myself, the invasion had only one meaning. As soon as I could, I excused myself and ran off to call the Object. \u201cGuess what?\u201d I cried out with excitement. \u201cWe\u2019re not going on va\u00ac cation. There\u2019s a war!\u201d \nThen I told her I had cramps and that I\u2019d be right over. FLESH MID BLOOD \nTT \u2019m quickly approaching the moment of discovery: of myself by myself, which was something I knew all along and yet didn\u2019t 1L know; and the discovery by poor, half-blind Dr. Maurice of what he\u2019d failed to notice at my birth and continued to miss during every annual physical thereafter; and the discovery by my parents of what kind of child they\u2019d given birth to (answer: die same child, only different); and finally, the discovery of the mutated gene that had lain buried in our bloodline for two hundred and fifty years, biding its time, waiting for Atatiirk to attack, for Hajienestis to turn into glass, for a clarinet to play seductively out a back window, until, coming to\u00ac gether with its recessive twin, it started the chain of events that led up to me, here, writing in Berlin. That summer\u2014 while the President\u2019s lies were also getting more elaborate\u2014 I started faking my period. With Nixonian cunning, Cal\u00ac liope unwrapped and flushed away a flotilla of unused Tampax. I feigned symptoms from headache to fatigue. I did cramps the way Meryl Streep did accents. There was the twinge, the dull ache, the sucker punch that made me curl up on my bed. My cycle, though imaginary, was rigorously charted on my desk calendar. I used the catacomb fish symbol x=> to mark the days. I scheduled my periods right through December, by which time I was certain my real menar- che would have finally arrived. My deception worked. It calmed my mother\u2019s anxieties and some- how even my own. I felt I\u2019d taken charge of things. I wasn\u2019t at the mercy of nature anymore. Even better, with our trip to Bursa can\u00ac celed\u2014 as well as my appointment with Dr. Bauer\u2014 I was free to ac\u00ac cept the Object\u2019s invitation to visit her family\u2019s summer house. In preparation I bought a sun hat, sandals, and a pair of rustic overalls. I wasn\u2019t particularly tuned in to the political events unfolding in the nation that summer. But it was impossible to miss what was go\u00ac ing on. My father\u2019s identification with Nixon only grew stronger as the President\u2019s troubles mounted. In the long-haired war protesters Irma saw his own shaggy, condemnatory son. Now, in the Water\u00ac gate scandal, my father recognized his own dubious behavior during the riots. He thought the break-in was a mistake, but also believed that it was no big deal. \u201cYou don\u2019t think the Democrats aren\u2019t doing the same thing?\u201d Irma asked the Sunday debaters. \u201cThe liberals just want to stick it to him. So they\u2019re playing pious.\u201d Watching the evening news, Irma delivered a running commentary to the screen. \u201cOh yeah?\u201d he\u2019d say. \u201cBullshit.\u201d Or: \u201cThis guy Proxmire\u2019s a total zero.\u201d Or: \u201cWhat these pointy-headed intellectuals should be worry\u00ac ing about is foreign policy. What to do about the goddamn Russians and the Red Chinese. Not pissing and moaning about a robbery at a lousy campaign office.\u201d Hunkered down behind his TV tray, Irma scowled at the left-wing press, and his growing resemblance to the President couldn\u2019t be ignored. On weeknights he argued with die television, but on Sundays he faced a live audience. Uncle Pete, who was usually as dormant as a snake while digesting, was now animated and jovial. \u201cEven from a chiropractic standpoint, Nixon is a questionable character. He has the skeleton of a chimpanzee.\u201d \nFather Mike joined the needling. \u201cSo what do you think about your friend Tricky Dicky now, Milt?\u201d \u201cI think it\u2019s a lot of hoo-ha.\u201d Things got worse when the conversation turned to Cyprus. In domestic affairs Irma had Gerry Fioretos on his side. But when it came to the Cyprus situation they parted company. A month after the invasion, just as the UN was about to conclude a peace negotiation, the Turkish Army had launched another attack. This time the Turks claimed a large portion of the island. Now barbed wire was going up. Guard towers were being erected. Cyprus was being cut in half like Berlin, like Korea, like all the other places in the world that were no longer one thing or the other. \u201cNow they\u2019re showing their true stripes,\u201d Gerry Fioretos said. \u201cThe Turks wanted to invade all along. That malarkey about \u2018protect\u00ac ing the Constitution\u2019 was just a pretext.\u201d \u201cThey hit us . . . sssss . . . while our backs were turned\u201d croaked Gus Panos. \nIrma snorted. \u201cWhat do you mean \u2018us\u2019? Where were you born, Gus, Cyprus?\u201d \n\u201cYou know . . . sssss . . . what I mean.\u201d \u201cAmerica betrayed the Greeks!\u201d Gerry Fioretos jabbed a finger in the air. \u201cIt\u2019s that two-faced son of a bitch Kissinger. Shakes your hand while he pisses in your pocket!\u201d Irma shook his head. He lowered his chin aggressively and made a little sound, a bark of disapproval, deep in his throat. \u201cWe have to do whatever\u2019s in our national interest.\u201d And then Irma lifted his chin and said it: \u201cTo hell with the Greeks.\u201d \nIn 1974, instead of reclaiming his roots by visiting Bursa, my fa\u00ac ther renounced them. Forced to choose between his native land and his ancestral one, he didn\u2019t hesitate. Meanwhile, we could hear it all the way from the kitchen: shouting; and a coffee cup breaking; swear words in both English and Greek; feet stomping out of the house. \u201cGet your coat, Phyllis, we\u2019re leaving,\u201d Gerry Fioretos said. \u201cIt\u2019s summer,\u201d said Phyllis. \u201cI don\u2019t have a coat.\u201d \u201cThen get whatever the hell it is you have to get.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re going, too . . . sssss . . . I\u2019ve lost my . . . sssss . . . appetite.\u201d Even Uncle Pete, the self-educated opera buff, drew the line. \u201cMaybe Gus didn\u2019t grow up in Greece,\u201d he said, \u201cbut I\u2019m sure you re\u00ac member that I did. You are talking about my native land, Irma. And your parents\u2019 own true home.\u201d The guests left. They didn\u2019t come back. Gerry and Phyllis Fiore\u00ac tos. Gus and Helen Panos. Josephine Claire. The Buicks pulled away from Middlesex, leaving behind a negative space in our living room. After that, there were no more Sunday dinners. No more large-nosed men blowing their noses like muted trumpets. No more cheek- pinching women who resembled Melina Mercouri in her later years. Most of all, no more living room debates. No more arguing and cit- ing examples and quoting the famous dead and castigating the infa\u00ac mous living. No more running the government from our love seats. No more revamping of the tax code or philosophical fights about the role of government, die welfare state, the Swedish health system (de\u00ac signed by a Dr. Fioretos, no relation). The end of an era. Never again. Never on Sunday. \nThe only people who stayed were Aunt Bay, Father Mike, and our cousins, because they were related to us. Russell was angry with Mil- ton for causing a fight. She told him so, he exploded at her, and she gave him the silent treatment for the rest of the day. Father Mike took advantage of this to lead Russell up to the sun deck. Irma got in his car and drove off. I was with Aunt Bay when we later brought refreshments up to the deck. I had just stepped out onto the gravel between the thick redwood railings when I saw Russell and Father Mike sitting on the black iron patio furniture. Father Mike was hold\u00ac ing my mother\u2019s hand, leaning his bearded face close to her and look\u00ac ing into her eyes as he spoke softly. My mother had been crying, apparently. She had a tissue balled in one hand. \u201cCallie\u2019s got iced tea\u201d Aunt Bay announced as she came out, \u201cand I\u2019ve got the booze.\u201d But then she saw how Father Mike was looking at my mother and she went silent. My mother stood up, blushing. \u201cI\u2019ll take the booze, Bay.\u201d Everyone laughed nervously. Aunt Bay poured the glasses. \u201cDon\u2019t look, Mike,\u201d she said. \u201cTh e presvytera\u2019s getting drunk on Sunday.\u201d The following Friday I drove up with the Object\u2019s father to their summer house near Petoskey. It was a grand Victorian, covered with gingerbread, and painted the color of pistachio saltwater taffy. I was dazzled by the sight of the house as we drove up. It sat on a rise above Little Traverse Bay, guarded by tall pines, all its windows blaz\u00ac ing. \nI was good with parents. Parents were my specialty'. In the car on the way up I had carried on a lively and wide-ranging conversation w ith the Object\u2019s father. It was from him that she had gotten her col\u00ac oring. Mr. Object had the Celtic tints. He was in his late fifties, how\u00ac ever, and his reddish hair had been bleached almost colorless now, like a dandelion gone to seed. His freckled skin looked blown out, too. He w'ore a khaki poplin suit and bow' tie. After he picked me up, we stopped at a party' store near the highway, where Mr. Object bought a six-pack of Smirnoff cocktails. \u201cMartinis in a can, Callie. We live in an age of wonders.\u201d Five hours later, not at all sober, he turned up the unpaved road that led to the summer house. It was ten o\u2019clock by this time. In moonlight we carried our bags up to the back porch. Mushrooms dotted the pine-needled path between the thin gray pines. Next to the house an artesian well chimed among mossy rocks. When we came in the kitchen door, we found Hunter. He was sit\u00ac ting at the table, reading the Weekly World News. The pallor of his face suggested that he had been there pretty much all month. His luster\u00ac less black hair looked particularly inert. He had on a Frankenstein T-shirt, seersucker shorts, white canvas Top-Siders without socks. \u201cI present to you Miss Margaret,\u201d Mr. Object said. \u201cWelcome to the hinterland.\u201d Hunter stood up and shook his fa\u00ac ther\u2019s hand. They attempted a hug. \u201cWhere\u2019s your mother?\u201d \n\u201cShe\u2019s upstairs getting dressed for the party you\u2019re incredibly late for. Her mood reflects that.\u201d \u201cWhy don\u2019t you take Callie up to her room? Show her around.\u201d \u201cCheck,\u201d said Hunter. \nWe went up the back stairs off the kitchen. \u201cThe guest room\u2019s being painted,\u201d Hunter told me. \u201cSo you\u2019re staying in my sister\u2019s room.\u201d \n\u201cWhere is she?\u201d \n\u201cShe\u2019s out on the back porch with Rania.\u201d My blood stopped. \u201cRania CasperV \u201cHis \u2019rents have a place up here, too.\u201d Hunter then showed me the essentials, guest towels, bathroom location, how to work the lights. But his manners were lost on me. I was wondering why the Object hadn\u2019t mentioned anything about Rania on the phone. She had been up here three weeks and said noth\u00ac ing. \nWe came back into her bedroom. Her rumpled clothes lay on the unmade bed. There was a dirty ashtray on one pillow. \u201cMy little sister is a creature of slovenly habits,\u201d Hunter said, look\u00ac ing around. \u201cAre you neat?\u201d \nI nodded. \n\u201cMe too. Only way to be. Hey.\u201d He came around to face me now. \u201cWhat happened to your trip to Turkey?\u201d \u201cIt got canceled.\u201d \n\u201cExcellent. Now you can be in my film. I\u2019m shooting it up here. Are you up for that?\u201d \n\u201cI thought it took place in a boarding school.\u201d \u201cI decided to make it a boarding school in the boonies.\u201d Hunter was standing somewhat close to me. His hands flopped around in his pockets as he squinted at me and rocked on his heels. \u201cShould we go downstairs?\u201d I finally asked. \u201cWhat? Oh, right. Yeah. Let\u2019s go.\u201d Hunter turned and bolted. I followed him back down and through the kitchen. As we were cross\u00ac ing the living room I heard voices out on the porch. \u201cSo Selfridge, that lightweight, pukes \u201d Rania Casper was saying. \u201cDoesn\u2019t even make it to the bathroom. Pukes right on the bar.\u201d \u201cI can\u2019t believe it! Selfridge!\u201d It was the Object now, crying out with amusement. \n\u201cHe blew chunks. Right into his stinger. I couldn\u2019t believe it. It was like the Niagara Falls of puke. Selfridge woofs on the bar and everybody jumps off their stools, right? Selfridge is facedown in his own puke. For a minute there\u2019s total silence. Then this one girl starts gagging . . . and it\u2019s like a chain reaction. The whole place starts gag\u00ac ging, puke\u2019s dripping everywhere, and the bartender i s\u2014 pissed. He\u2019s huge, too. He\u2019s fucking huge. He comes over and looks down at Sel\u00ac fridge. I\u2019m going like I don\u2019t know this guy. Never saw him before. And then guess what?\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u2018The bartender reaches out and grabs hold of Selfridge. He\u2019s got him by the collar and the belt, right? And he lifts Selfridge like a foot up in the air\u2014 and Zambonis the bar with him!\u201d \u201cNo way!\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m not kidding. Zambonied the Fridge right in his own barf!\u201d At that point we stepped out onto the porch. The Object and Rania Casper were sitting together on a white wicker couch. It was dark out, coolish, but the Object was still in her swimsuit, a shamrock bikini. She had a beach towel wrapped around her legs. \u201cHi,\u201d I called out. \nThe Object turned. She looked at me blankly. \u201cHey,\u201d she said. \u201cShe\u2019s here,\u201d said Hunter. \u201cSafe and sound. Dad didn\u2019t run off the road.\u201d \n\u201cDaddy\u2019s not that bad a driver,\u201d said the Object. \u201cWhen he\u2019s not drinking he\u2019s not. But tonight I\u2019d wager he had the old martini thermos on the front seat.\u201d \u201cYour old man likes to party!\u201d Rania called out hoarsely. \u201cDid my dad have occasion to quench his thirst on the drive up?\u201d Hunter asked. \n\u201cMore than one occasion\u201d I said. Now Hunter laughed, going loose in the body and slapping his hands together. \nMeanwhile Rania was saying to the Object, \u201cOkay. She\u2019s here. So let\u2019s party.\u201d \n\u201cWhere should we go?\u201d the Object said. \u201cHey, Je-roman, didn\u2019t you say there was some old hunting lodge out in the woods?\u201d \n\u201cYeah. It\u2019s about half a mile in.\u201d \u201cThink you could find it in the dark?\u201d \u201cWith a flashlight maybe.\u201d \n\u201cLet\u2019s go.\u201d Rania stood up. \u201cLet\u2019s take some beers and hike on in there.\u201d \nThe Object got up, too. \u201cLet me put on some pants.\u201d She crossed the porch in her swimsuit. Rania watched. \u201cCome on, Callie,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re staying in my room.\u201d \nI followed the Object inside. She went quickly, almost running, and didn\u2019t look back at me. As she climbed the stairs ahead of me, I whacked her from behind. \n\u201cI hate you,\u201d I said. \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019re so tan!\u201d \nShe flashed a smile over her shoulder. As the Object dressed, I snooped around the bedroom. The furni\u00ac ture was white wicker up here, too. There were amateur sailing prints on the walls and on the shelves Petoskey stones, pinecones, musty pa\u00ac perbacks. \n\u201cWhat are we going to do in the woods?\u201d I said, with a note of complaint. \nThe Object didn\u2019t answer. \n\u201cWhat are we going to do in the woods?\u201d I repeated. \u201cWe\u2019re going for a walk\u201d she said. \u201cYou just want Rania to molest you.\u201d \u201cYou have such a dirty' mind, Callie.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t deny it.\u201d \nShe turned around and smiled. \u201cI know who wants to molest you ,\u201d she said. \nFor a second, an irrepressible happiness flooded me. \u201cHunter,\u201d she finished. \n\u201cI don\u2019t want to go out in the woods,\u201d I said. \u201cThere\u2019s bugs and stuff\".\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t be a such a wuss,\u201d she said. I had never heard her say \u201cwuss\u201d before. It was a word boys used; boys like Rania. Finished dressing, the Object stood before the mirror, picking at some dry skin on her cheek. She ran a brush through her hair and put on lip gloss. Then she came over to me. She came up very close. She opened her mouth and blew her breath into my face. \u201cIt\u2019s fine,\u201d I said, and moved away. \u201cDon\u2019t you want me to check yours?\u201d \u201cNo biggie,\u201d I said. \nI decided that if the Object was going to ignore me and flirt with Rania, I would ignore her and flirt with Hunter. After she left, I combed my hair. From the collection of atomizers on the dresser, I chose one and squeezed the bulb, but no perfume came out. I went into the bath\u00ac room and undid the straps of my overalls. Lifting my shirt, I stuffed a few tissues in my brassiere. Then I shook my hair back, hitched up my overalls, and hurried outside for our walk in the woods. They were waiting for me under a yellow bug light on the porch. Hunter held a silver flashlight. Slung over Rania\u2019s shoulder was an army surplus backpack, filled with Stroh\u2019s. We came down the steps onto the lawn. The ground was uneven, treacherous with roots, but the pine needles were soft underfoot. For a moment, despite my foul mood, I felt it: the crisp northern Michigan delight. A slight chill to the air, even in August, something almost Russian. The indigo sky above the black bay. The smell of cedar and pine. At the edge of the woods the Object stopped. \u201cIs it going to be wet?\u201d she said. \u201cI only have my Tretorns on.\u201d \u201cCome on,\u201d said Rania Casper, pulling her by the hand. \u201cGet wet.\u201d She screamed, dieatrically. Leaning back like someone on a rope tow, she was pulled unsteadily into the trees. I paused, too, peering in, waiting for Hunter to do the same. He didn\u2019t, though. Instead he stepped straight into the swamp and then slowly melted below the knees. \u201cQuicksand!\u201d he cried. \u201cHelp me! I\u2019m sinking! Please some\u00ac body help . . . glub glub glub glub glub.\u201d Up ahead, already invisible, Rania and the Object were laughing. The cedar swamp was an ancient place. No logging had ever been done here. The ground wasn\u2019t suitable for houses. The trees had been alive for hundreds of years and when they fell over they fell over for good. Here in the cedar swamp verticality wasn\u2019t an essential prop\u00ac erty of trees. Many cedars were standing straight up but many were leaning over. Still others had fallen against nearby trees, or crashed to the ground, popping up root systems. There was a graveyard feeling: everywhere the gray skeletons of trees. The moonlight filtering in lit up silver puddles and sprays of cobweb. It glanced off the Object\u2019s red hair as she moved and darted ahead of me. We made a clumsy, yahoo progress through the swamp. Rania imi\u00ac tated animal sounds that sounded like no animal. Beer cans dinged in his backpack. Our deracinated feet stomped along in the mud. After twenty minutes we found it: a one-room shack made of un\u00ac painted boards. The roof wasn\u2019t much taller than I was. The circular flashlight beam showed tar paper covering the narrow door. \u201cIt\u2019s locked. Fuck,\u201d said Rania. \u201cLet\u2019s try the window,\u201d Hunter suggested. They disappeared, leav\u00ac ing the Object and me alone. I looked at her. For the first time since I\u2019d arrived she really looked at me. There was just enough moonlight to accomplish this silent exchange between our eyes. \u201cIt\u2019s dark out here,\u201d I said. \u201cI know it,\u201d said the Object. There was a crash behind the shack, followed by laughter. The Object took a step closer to me. \u201cWhat are they doing in there?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d \nSuddenly the small window of the shack lit up. The boys had lit a Coleman lantern inside. Next the front door opened and Rania stepped out. He was smiling like a salesman. \u201cGot a guy here wants to meet you.\u201d At which point he held up a mousetrap dangling the jellied mouse. \nThe Object screamed. \u201cRania!\u201d She jumped back and held on to me. \u201cTake it away!\u201d \nRania dangled it some more, laughing, and then tossed it into the woods. \u201cOkay, okay. Don\u2019t have a shit fit.\u201d He went back inside. The Object was still clinging to me. \u201cMaybe we should go back\u201d I ventured. \u201cDo you think you know the way? I\u2019m totally lost.\u201d \u201cI can find it.\u201d \nShe turned and looked into the black woods. She was thinking about it. But then Rania reappeared in the doorway. \u201cCome on in\u201d he said. \u201cCheck it out.\u201d \nAnd now it was too late. The Object let go of me. Throwing the red scarf of her hair over her shoulder, she ducked through the low threshold into the hunting shack. Inside were two cots with Hudson\u2019s Bay blankets. They stood at either end of the small space separated by a crude kitchen with a camp stove. Empty bourbon bottles lined the windowsill. The walls were covered with yellowed clippings from the local paper, angling competitions, soap box derbies. There was also a taxidermied pike, jaws agape. Low on kerosene, the lantern sputtered. The light was butter-colored, the ripple of smoke greasing the air. It was opium den light, which was appropriate, because already Rania had plucked a joint from his pocket and was lighting it with a safety match. Rania was on one cot, Hunter on the other. Casually the Object sat down next to Rania. I stood in the middle of the floor, hunching. I could feel Hunter watching me. I pretended to examine the shack but then turned, expecting to meet his gaze. This didn\u2019t happen, how\u00ac ever. Hunter\u2019s eyes were focused on my chest. On my falsies. He liked me already. Now here was an added attraction, like a bonus for good intentions. \nMaybe I should have been pleased by the trance he was in. But my revenge fantasy had already gone bust. My heart wasn\u2019t in it. Still, having no alternative, I went ahead and sat beside Hunter. Across the shack Rania Casper had the joint in his mouth. Rania was wearing shorts and a monogrammed shirt, ripped at the shoulder, showing tanned skin. There was a red mark on his fla\u00ac menco dancer\u2019s neck: a bug bite, a fading hickey. He closed his eyes to inhale deeply, his long eyelashes coming together. The hair on his head was as thick and oiled as an otter\u2019s pelt. Finally he opened his eyes and passed the joint to the Object. To my surprise she took it. As though it were one of her beloved Tareytons, she put it between her lips and inhaled. \u201cWon\u2019t that make you paranoid?\u201d I said. \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cI thought you told me pot always makes you paranoid.\u201d \u201cNot when I\u2019m out in nature,\u201d said the Object. She gave me a hard look. Then she took another toke. \u201cDon\u2019t bogart it,\u201d said Hunter. He got up to take the joint from her. He smoked half-standing, and then turned and held it out to me. I looked at the joint. One end burned; the other was mashed and wet. I had an idea that this was all part of the boys\u2019 plan, the woods, the shack, the cots, the drugs, the sharing of saliva. Here\u2019s a question I still can\u2019t answer: Did I see through the male tricks because I was destined to scheme that way myself? Or do girls see through the tricks, too, and just pretend not to notice? For one second I thought of Deana Salome. He was living in a shack in the woods like this. I asked myself if I missed my brother. I couldn\u2019t tell if I did or not. I never know what I feel until it\u2019s too late. Deana Salome had smoked his first joint at college. I was four years ahead of him. \n\u201cHold it in,\u201d Rania coached me. \u201cYou have to let the THC build up in your bloodstream,\u201d said Hunter. \nThere was a sound out in die woods, twigs snapping. The Object grabbed Rania\u2019s arm. \u201cWhat was that?\u201d \u201cMaybe a bear,\u201d Hunter said. \n\u201cNeither of you girls are on the rag, I hope,\u201d said Rania. \u201cRania!\u201d the Object protested. \n\u201cHey, I\u2019m serious. Bears can smell it. I was out camping in Yel\u00ac lowstone one time and there was this woman out there who got killed. Grizzly could smell the blood.\u201d \u201cThat is not true!\u201d \n\u201cI swear. This guy I know told me. He was an Outward Bound guide.\u201d \n\u201cWell, I don\u2019t know about Callie, but I\u2019m not,\u201d said the Object. They all looked at me. \u201cI\u2019m not eidier,\u201d I said. \u201cI guess we\u2019re safe, then, Roman,\u201d said Rania, and laughed. The Object was still holding on to him for protection. \u201cYou want to do a shotgun?\u201d he asked her. \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d \n\u201cHere.\u201d He turned to face her. \u201cWhat you do is one person opens their mouth and the other person blows the smoke into it. You get totally flicked up. It\u2019s excellent.\u201d Rania put the lit end of the joint in his mouth. He leaned toward the Object. She leaned forward too. She opened her mouth. And Rania began to blow. The Obscure Object\u2019s lips were a perfect ripe oval and into that target, that bull\u2019s-eye, Rania Casper directed the stream of musky smoke. I could see the column rush into the Object\u2019s mouth. It disappeared down her throat like whitewater over falls. Finally she coughed and he stopped. \n\u201cGood hit. Now do me.\u201d \nThe Object\u2019s green eyes were watering. But she took the joint and inserted it between her lips. She leaned toward Rania Casper, who opened his own mouth wide. \nWhen they were finished, Hunter took the joint from his sister. \u201cLet me see if I can master the technical difficulties here,\u201d he said. The next thing I knew, his face was close to mine. So finally I did it, too. Leaned forward, closed my eyes, parted my lips, and let Hunter shot\u00ac gun into my mouth a long, dirty plume of smoke. Smoke filled my lungs, which began to burn. I coughed and let it out. When I opened my eyes again, Rania had his arm around the Ob\u00ac ject\u2019s shoulder. She was trying to act casual about it. Rania finished his beer. He opened two more, one for him and one for her. He turned toward the Object. He smiled. He said something I couldn\u2019t hear. And then while I was still blinking he covered the Object\u2019s lips with his sour, handsome, pot-smoking mouth. Across the flickering shack Hunter and I were left pretending not to notice. The joint was ours now to bogart as we wished. We passed it back and forth in silence and sipped our beers. \u201cI\u2019m having this weird thing where my feet look extremely far away,\u201d Hunter said after a while. \u201cDo your feet look extremely far away to you?\u201d \n\u201cI can\u2019t see my feet,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s dark in here.\u201d He passed me the joint again and I took it. I inhaled and held the smoke in. I let it keep burning my lungs because I wanted to distract myself from the pain in my heart. Rania and the Object were still kiss\u00ac ing. I looked away, out the dark, grimy window. \u201cEverything looks really blue,\u201d I said. \u201cDid you notice that?\u201d \u201cOh yeah,\u201d said Hunter. \u201cAll kinds of strange epiphenomena.\u201d The Oracle of Delphi had been a girl about my same age. All day long she sat over a hole in the ground, the omphalos , the navel of the earth, breathing petrochemical fumes escaping from underneath. A teenage virgin, the Oracle told the future, speaking the first metered verse in history. Why do I bring this up? Because Ali was also a virgin that night (for a little while longer at least). And she, too, had been inhaling hallucinogens. Ethylene was escaping from the cedar swamp outside the shack. Dressed not in a diaphanous robe but a pair of overalls, Ali began to feel very funny indeed. \u201cWant another beer?\u201d Hunter asked. \u201cOkay.\u201d \nHe handed me a golden can of Stroh\u2019s. I put the sweating can to my lips and drank. Then I drank some more. Hunter and I both felt the weight of the obligation. We smiled at each other nervously. I looked down and rubbed my knee through my overalls. And when I looked up again Hunter\u2019s face was close. His eyes were shut, like the eyes of a boy jumping feet first off the high dive. Before I knew what was happening he was kissing me. Kissing the girl who had never been kissed. (Not since Sven Chrissy, anyway.) I didn\u2019t stop him. I remained completely still while he did his thing. Despite my light\u00ac headedness, I could feel everything. The shocking wemess of his mouth. The whiskery feel of his lips. His barging tongue. Certain fla\u00ac vors, too, the beer, the dope, a lingering breath mint, and beneath all that the actual, animal taste of a boy\u2019s mouth. I could taste the gamy tang of Hunter\u2019s hormones and the metal of his fillings. I opened one eye. Here was the fine hair I\u2019d spent so much time admiring on an\u00ac other head. Here were the freckles on the forehead, on the bridge of the nose, along the ears. But it wasn\u2019t the right face; they weren\u2019t the right freckles, and the hair was dyed black. Behind my impassive face my soul curled up into a ball, waiting until the unpleasantness was over. \nHunter and I were still sitting up. He was pressing his face against mine. By maneuvering a little, I could see across the room to where Rania and the Object were. They were lying down now. The tails of Rania\u2019s blue shirt seemed to flap in the wavering light. Azariaeath him one of the Object\u2019s legs dangled off the bed, the cuff of her pants muddy. I heard them whispering and laugfiing, then silence again. I watched the Object\u2019s mud-stained leg dancing. I concentrated on that leg, so that I hardly noticed when Hunter began to pull me down on our cot. I let him; I gave in to our slow collapse, all the while watch\u00ac ing Rania Casper and the Object out of one eye. Rania\u2019s hands were mov\u00ac ing over the Object\u2019s body now. They were pulling up her shirt, moving under it. Then their bodies shifted so that I saw their faces in profile. The Object\u2019s face, as still as a death mask, waited with eyes closed. Rania\u2019s profile was rampant, flushed. Meanwhile Hunter\u2019s hands were moving over me. He was rubbing my overalls, but I was no longer in them exacdy. My focus on the Object was too intense. Ecstasy. From the Greek Ekstasis. Meaning not what you think. Meaning not euphoria or sexual climax or even happiness. Meaning, literally: a state of displacement, of being driven out of one\u2019s senses. Three thousand years ago in Delphi the Oracle became ecstatic every single working hour. That night in a hunting cabin in northern Michigan, so did Ali. High for my first time, drunk for my first time, I felt myself dissolving, turning to vapor. Like the incense at church my soul rose toward the dome of my skull\u2014 and then broke through. I drifted over the plank floor. I floated above the little camp stove. Passing by the bourbon bottles, I hovered over the other cot, looking down at the Object. And then, because I suddenly knew that I could, I slipped into the body of Rania Casper. I entered him like a god so that it was me, and not Rania, who kissed her. An owl hooted in a tree somewhere. Bugs assailed the windows, attracted by the light. In my Delphic state I was simultaneously aware of both make-out sessions. By way of Rania\u2019s body I was hug\u00ac ging the Obscure Object, nuzzling her ear . . . while at the same time I was also aware of Hunter\u2019s hands ranging over my body, the one I\u2019d left on the other cot. He was on top of me, crushing one of my legs, so I moved it, spread my legs apart, and he fell between them. He made little sounds. I put my arms around him, appalled and moved by his thinness. He was even skinnier than I was. Now Hunter was kissing my neck. Now, advised by some magazine column, he was paying attention to my earlobe. His hands moved up. They were heading for my chest. \u201cDon\u2019t,\u201d I said, scared he\u2019d find my tissues. And Hunter obeyed . . . \n. . . while on the other cot Rania was meeting with no such resis\u00ac tance. With consummate skill he had undone the Object\u2019s brassiere with one hand. Because he was more experienced than me I let him deal with the shirt buttons, but it was my hands that took hold of her bra and, as if snapping up a windowshade, let into the room the pale light of the Object\u2019s breasts. I saw them; I touched them; and since it wasn\u2019t me who did this but Rania Casper I didn\u2019t have to feel guilty, didn\u2019t have to ask myself if I was having unnatural desires. How could I be when I was on the other cot fooling around with Hunter? . . . and so, just to be safe, I returned my attention to him. He was now in some kind of agony. He was rubbing against me and then he stopped and reached down to adjust himself. There was the sound of a zipper. I peeked at him through the comer of my eyes. I saw him thinking, concentrating on the puzzle of the overalls. He didn\u2019t seem to be getting anywhere, so once again I floated back across the room and entered the body of Rania Casper. For a minute I could feel the Object responding to my touch, the startled, eager wakefulness in her skin and muscles. And now I felt something else, Rania, or me, lengthening, expanding. I felt that for only a second and then something was pulling me back . . . Hunter had his hand on my bare stomach. While I\u2019d been off in\u00ac habiting Rania\u2019s body Hunter had taken the opportunity to undo my shoulder straps. He had flicked open the silver buttons at my waist. Now he was pulling down my overalls and I was trying to wake up. Now he was tugging on my underpants and I was realizing how drunk I was. Now he was inside my underpants and now he was . . . inside me l \nAnd then: pain. Pain like a knife, pain like fire. It ripped into me. It spread up my belly all the way to my nipples. I gasped; I opened my eyes; I looked up and saw Hunter looking down at me. We gaped at each other and I knew he knew. Hunter knew what I was, as sud\u00ac denly I did, too, for the first time clearly understood that I wasn\u2019t a girl but something in between. I knew this from how natural it had felt to enter Rania Casper\u2019s body, how right it felt, and I knew this from the shocked expression on Hunter\u2019s face. All this was conveyed in an instant. Then I pushed Hunter away. He pulled back, pulled out, and slid off the bed onto the floor. Silence. Only the two of us, catching our breath. I lay on my back on the camp bed. Azariaeath die newspaper clippings. With only a mounted pike as witness. I pulled up my overalls and felt very sober indeed. \nIt was all over now. There was nothing I could do. Hunter would tell Rania. Rania would tell the Object. She would stop being my friend. By the time school started, everyone at Baker & Inglis would know that Ali Margaret was a freak. I was waiting for Hunter to jump up and run. I felt panicked and, at the same time, strangely calm. I was putting things together in my head. Sven Chrissy and kissing lessons; and spinning together in a hot tub; an amphib\u00ac ian heart and a crocus blooming; blood and breasts that didn\u2019t come; and a crush on the Object that did, that had , that looked as if it was here to stay. \nA few moments of clarity and then panic again whined in my ears. I wanted to run myself. Before Hunter had a chance to say anything. Before anyone found out. I could leave tonight. I could find my way back through the cedar swamp to the house. I could steal the Object\u2019s parents\u2019 car. I could drive north, through the Upper Peninsula to Canada, where Deana Salome had once thought of going to escape the draft. As I contemplated my life on the run I peeked over the edge of the cot to see what Hunter was doing. He was flat on his back, eyes closed. And he was smiling to him\u00ac self. \nSmiling? Smiling how? In ridicule? No. In shock? Wrong again. How then? In contentment. Hunter had the smile of a boy who, on a summer night, had gone all the way. He had the smile of a guy who couldn\u2019t wait to tell his friends. Reader, believe this if you can: he hadn\u2019t noticed a thing. THE Gun OH THE WALL \n7? woke up back at the house. I had a vague memory of how I got there, of trudging back through the bog. My overalls were still 1L on. My crotch felt hot and spongy. The Object was already out of bed or had slept somewhere else. I reached down and unstuck my underpants from my skin. Something about this act, the little puff of air, the rising aroma, reiterated the brand-new fact about myself. But it wasn\u2019t a fact exactly. It was nothing as solid as a fact right then. It was just an intuition I\u2019d had about myself, to which the coming of morning brought no clarity. It was just an idea that was already be\u00ac ginning to fade, to become part of the drunkenness in the woods of the night before. \nWhen the Oracle awoke after one of her wild, prophesying nights, she probably had no memory of the things she\u2019d said. Whatever truths she\u2019d hit on were secondary to the immediate sensations: the headache, the singed throat. It was the same for Ali. I had a sense of having been dirtied and initiated. I felt all grown up. But mostly I felt sick and didn\u2019t want to think about what had happened at all. \nIn the shower I tried to rinse the experience away, scrubbing me\u00ac thodically, lifting my face to the slanting water. Steam filled the air. The mirrors and the windows dripped. The towels grew damp. I used every kind of soap within reach, Lifebuoy, Ivory, plus a local, rustic brand that felt like sandpaper. I got dressed and came down the stairs quiet])'. As I crossed the living room I noticed an old hunting rifle ox er die mantel. Another gun on the wall. I tiptoed by it. In the kitchen, die Object was eating cereal and reading a magazine. She didn\u2019t look up when I entered. I got a bowl myself and sat down across from her. Maybe I grimaced in doing so. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d sneered the Object. \u201cSore?\u201d Her sarcastic face rested on one palm. She didn\u2019t look so hot herself. She was puffy under the eyes. There were times xx'hen her freckles were not sunny but like corrosion or rust. \n\u201cYou\u2019re the one that should be sore,\u201d I replied. \u201cI\u2019m not sore at all\u201d said the Object, \u201cif you want to know.\u201d \u201cI forgot,\u201d I said; \u201cyou\u2019re used to it.\u201d Suddenly her face was full of anger, shaking. Cords stretched and pulled beneath her skin, making lines. \u201cYou were a total slut last night,\u201d she charged. \n\u201cMe? What about you? You were throwing yourself at Rania the whole time.\u201d \n\u201cI was not. We didn\u2019t even do that much.\u201d \u201cYou could have fooled me.\u201d \n\u201cAt least he\u2019s not your brother .\u201d She got to her feet, glaring. She looked like she might cry. She hadn\u2019t wiped her mouth. There was jam on it, crumbs. I was struck dumb by the sight of this beloved face working itself up into what looked like hatred. My own face must have been reacting, too. I could feel my eyes going wide and scared. The Object was waiting for me to say something but nothing came to mind. So finally she shoved her chair away and said, \u201cHunter\u2019s up\u00ac stairs. Why don\u2019t you go climb in bed with him.\u201d And she stormed off. \nA low moment followed. Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart. On top of panic that I\u2019d lost my friend, I was suddenly beset by worries about my reputation. Was I really a slut? I hadn\u2019t even liked it. But I had done it, hadn\u2019t I? I had let him do it. Fear of retribution came next. What if I got pregnant? What then? My face at the breakfast table was the face of all mathematical girls, counting days, measuring liq\u00ac uids. It was at least a minute before I remembered that I couldn\u2019t be pregnant. That was one good thing about being a late bloomer. Still, I was upset. I was certain that die Object w'ould never talk to me again. \nI climbed the stairs and got back into bed, pulling a pillow over my face to block out the summer light. But there was no hiding from reality that morning. No more than five minutes later the bedsprings sagged under new weight. Peeking out, I saw that Hunter had come to visit. \nHe was lying on his back, looking cozy, already installed. Instead of a robe he had on a duck hunting coat. The ends of his frayed boxer shorts were visible below. He had a mug of coffee in one hand and I noticed that his fingernails were painted black. The morning light coming from the side window showed stubble on his chin and above his upper lip. Against the flat, wasted, dyed hair these orange shoots were like life returning to a scorched landscape. \u201cGood morning, dahling,\u201d he said. \u201cHi.\u201d \n\u201cFeeling a little under the weather, are we?\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d I said. \u201cI was pretty' drunk last night.\u201d \u201cYou didn\u2019t seem that drunk to me, dahling.\u201d \u201cWell, I was.\u201d \nHunter now dropped die bit. He flopped back into the pillows and sipped his coffee and sighed. With one finger he tapped his fore\u00ac head for a while. Then he spoke. \u201cJust in case you were having any of the hackneyed worries, you should know that I still respect you and all that shit.\u201d \nI didn\u2019t respond. Responding would only confirm the facts of what had happened, whereas I wanted to cast them in doubt. After a while Hunter set the coffee mug down and turned onto his side. He wriggled over toward me and rested his head against my shoulder. He lay there breathing. Then, with closed eyes, he moved his head and tunneled under the pillow with me. He started to nuzzle me. He brought his hair across the skin of my neck and after that came the sensitive organs. His eyelashes made butterfly kisses on my chin. His nose snuffled in the hollow of my diroat. And then his lips arrived, avid, clumsy. I wanted him off me. At the same time I asked myself if I had brushed my teeth. Hunter was sliding and climbing on top of me and it felt like it had the night before, like a crushing weight. So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love. For a minute it was tolerable. But soon the duck coat rode up and Hunter\u2019s urgency was pressing itself upon me. He was trying to reach up under my shirt again. I didn\u2019t have a bra on. After my shower I had gone without it, flushing away the Kleenex. I was done with them. Hunter\u2019s hands moved higher. I didn\u2019t care. I let him feel me up. For what it was worth. But if I was hoping to disappoint him, it didn\u2019t work. He stroked and squeezed while his lower half swished like a crocodile\u2019s tail. And then he said an unironic thing. Fervently he whispered, \u201cI\u2019m really into you.\u201d His lips closed, seeking mine. His tongue entered. The first pene\u00ac tration that augured the next. But not now, not this time. \u201cStop,\u201d I said. \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cStop.\u201d \n\u201cWhy stop?\u201d \n\u201cBecause.\u201d \n\u201cBecause why?\u201d \n\u201cBecause I don\u2019t like you like that.\u201d He sat up. Like the guy in the old vaudeville skit, the guy in the folding cot that won\u2019t stay folded, Hunter flipped straight up, wide awake. Then he jumped off the bed. \u201cDon\u2019t be mad at me,\u201d I said. \u201cWho says I\u2019m mad?\u201d said Hunter, and left. The rest of the day went slowly. I stayed in my room until I saw Hunter leave the house, carrying his movie camera. I guessed that I was no longer in the cast. The Object\u2019s parents returned from their morning tennis foursome. Mrs. Object came up the stairs to the mas\u00ac ter bathroom. From my window I saw Mr. Object climb into the backyard hammock with a book. I waited for the shower to turn on and then came down the back stairs and out the kitchen door. I walked down to the bay, feeling melancholy. The cedar swamp lay on one side of the house. On the other was a dirt and gravel road that led through an open field, treeless, with high yellow grass. The absence of trees was noticeable, and poking around out there I came upon a historical marker, nearly overgrown. It marked the site of a fort or a massacre, I don\u2019t remember which. Moss encroached upon the raised letters and I didn\u2019t read the whole plaque. I stood there for a while thinking about the first settlers and how they had killed one another over beaver and fox pelts. I put my foot on the plaque, kicking off the moss with my sneaker, until I got tired of that. It was almost noon by now. The bay was bright blue. Over the rise I could sense the city of Petoskey, the smoke of stoves and chimneys down there. The grass got marshy near the water. I climbed up on the breakwall and walked back and forth, keeping my balance. I held my arms out and pranced, Olga Korbut style. But my heart wasn\u2019t in it. And I was way too tall to be Olga Korbut. Some\u00ac time later the whir of an outboard engine reached me. I shaded my eyes with my hand to look out over the shimmering water. A speed\u00ac boat was shooting past. At the wheel was Rania Casper. Bare-chested, drinking a beer and wearing sunglasses, he gunned the throtde, tow\u00ac ing a water-skier. It was the Object, of course, in her shamrock bikini. She looked almost naked against the expanse of water, only those two little strips, one above, one below, separating her from Eden. Her red hair flapped like a gale warning. She wasn\u2019t a beautiful skier. She leaned too far forward, bowlegged on the pontoons. But she didn\u2019t fall. Rania kept turning around to check on her while he sipped his beer. Finally the boat made a sharp turn and the Object crossed her wake, whipping along past the shore. A terrible thing happens when you water-ski. After you release the rope, you keep skimming over the water for a while, free. But there comes an inevitable moment when your speed fails to sustain your forward progress. The surface of the water breaks like glass. The depths open up to claim you. That was how I felt on land, watching the Object ski past. That same plunging, hopeless feeling, that emo\u00ac tional physics. \nWhen I got back at dinnertime the Object was still not there. Her mother was angry, thinking it rude of the Object to leave me alone. Hunter, too, was out with friends. So I ate dinner with the Object\u2019s parents. I felt too desolate to charm the grownups that night. I ate in silence and afterward sat in the living room pretending to read. The clock ticked on. The night labored and creaked. When I felt I might fall apart I went into the bathroom and threw water on my face. I held a warm washcloth over my eyes and pressed my hands against my temples. I wondered what the Object and Rania were doing. I pic\u00ac tured her socks in the air, her little tennis socks with the balls at the heels, those ensanguined balls, bouncing. It was obvious that Mr. and Mrs. Object were staying up just to keep me company. So finally I said good night and went up to bed myself. I got in and immediately started crying. I cried for a long time, trying not to make any noise. While I sobbed I said things in an aggrieved whisper. I cried, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you like me?\u201d and \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m sorry!\u201d I didn\u2019t care what I sounded like. There was a poison in my system and I needed to purge it. While I was carrying on like that, I heard the screen door bang shut downstairs. I wiped my nose on the sheets and tried to setde down and listen. Footsteps climbed the stairs, and in another moment the door of the bedroom opened and closed. The Object entered and stood there in darkness. She might have been waiting for her eyes to adjust. I lay on my side, pre\u00ac tending to be asleep. The floorboards creaked as she came over to my side of the bed. I felt her standing over me, looking down. Then she went to the other side of the bed, took off her shoes and shorts, put on a T-shirt, and got in. \nThe Object slept on her back. She told me once that back-sleepers were the leaders in life, born performers or exhibitionists. Stomach- sleepers like me were in retreat from reality, given to dark perception and the meditative arts. This theory applied in our case. I lay prone, my nose and eyes sore from crying. The Object, supine, yawned and (like a born performer, perhaps) soon fell asleep. I waited ten or so minutes, just to be safe. Then, as though toss\u00ac ing in my sleep, I rolled over so that I was looking at the Object. The moon was gibbous and filled the room with blue light. There upon the wicker bed the Obscure Object slept. The top of her Groton T-shirt was visible. It was an old one of her father\u2019s, with a few holes. She had one arm crossed over her face, like a slash on a sign that meant \u201cNo Touching.\u201d So I looked instead. Over the pillow her hair was spread out. Her lips were parted. Something glinted inside her ear, grains of sand from the beach maybe. Beyond, the atomizers glowed on the dresser. The ceiling was up above somewhere. I could feel the spiders working in the corners. The sheets were cool. The fat duvet rolled up at our feet was leaking feathers. I\u2019d grown up around the smell of new carpeting, of polyester shirts hot from the dryer. Here the Egyptian sheets smelled like hedges, the pillows like water fowl. Thirteen inches away, the Object was part of all this. Her colors seemed to agree with the American landscape, her pumpkin hair, her apple cider skin. She made a sound and went still again. Gently, I pulled the covers off her. In the dimness her oudine ap\u00ac peared, the rise of her breasts beneath the T-shirt, the soft hill of her belly, and then the brightness of her underpants, converging in their V shape. She didn\u2019t stir at all. Her chest rose and fell with her breath. Slowly, trying not to make a sound, I moved closer to her. Tiny mus\u00ac cles in my flank, muscles I hadn\u2019t known I possessed, suddenly made themselves available. They propelled me millimeter by millimeter across the sheets. The old bedsprings gave me trouble. As I tried non\u00ac chalantly to advance, they called out ribald encouragement. They cheered, they sang. I kept stopping and starting. It was hard work. I breathed through my mouth, quieter that way. Over the course of ten minutes I slid nearer and nearer to her. Fi\u00ac nally I felt the heat of her body along my entire length. We were still not touching, only radiating against each other. She was breathing deeply. So was I. We breathed together. Finally, gathering courage, I flung my arm across her waist. Then nothing more for a long while. Having achieved this much, I was scared to go further. So I remained frozen, half hugging her. My arm grew stiff. It began to throb and finally went numb. The Ob\u00ac ject might have been drugged or comatose. Still, I sensed an alertness in her skin, in her muscles. After another long while I plunged ahead. I took hold of her T-shirt and lifted it up. I gazed at her naked belly for a long while and, finally, with a kind of woefulness, bowed my head. I bowed my head to the god of desperate longing. I kissed the Object\u2019s belly and then slowly, gathering confidence, worked my way up. \nDo you remember my frog heart? In Sven Chrissy\u2019s bedroom it had kicked off from a muddy bank, moving between two elements. Now it did something even more amazing\u2014 it crept up onto land. Squeezing millennia into thirty seconds, it developed consciousness. While kissing the Object\u2019s belly, I wasn\u2019t just reacting to pleasurable stimuli, as I had been with Sven. I didn\u2019t vacate my body, as I had with Hunter. Now I was aware of what was happening. I was thinking about it. \nI was thinking that this was what I\u2019d always wanted. I was realiz\u00ac ing that I wasn\u2019t the only faker around. I was wondering what would happen if someone discovered what we were doing. I was thinking that it was all very complicated and would only get more so. I reached down and touched her hips. I hooked my fingers in the waistband of her underpants. I began to slip them off. Just then, the Object lifted her hips, very slighdy, to make it easier for me. This was her only contribution. \nThe next day we didn\u2019t mention it. When I got up, the Object was al\u00ac ready out of bed. She was in the kitchen, observing her father\u2019s preparation of scrapple. Making scrapple was Mr. Object's Sunday morning ritual. He presided over the bubbling fat and grease while the Object periodically looked into the frying pan and said, \u201cThat is so disgusting.\u201d Soon she was working on a plate of it, and made me have one, too. \u201cI\u2019m going to have the worst heartburn,\u201d she said. I understood the unspoken message immediately. The Object wanted no dramatics, no guilt. No show of romance, either. She was going on about the scrapple to separate night from day, to make it clear that what happened at night, what we did at night, had nothing to do with daylight hours. She was a good actress, too, and at times I wondered if maybe she really had been sleeping through the whole thing. Or maybe I had only been dreaming it. She gave only two signs during the day that anything had changed between us. In the afternoon Hunter\u2019s film crew arrived. This consisted of two friends of his, carrying boxes and cables and a long, fuzzy microphone like a dirty, rolled-up bathmat. Hunter was by this time pointedly not speaking to me. They set up in a small equipment shed on the property. The Object and I decided to see what they were doing. Hunter had told us to stay away, so we couldn\u2019t resist. We crept up, moving from tree to tree. We had to stop often to fight off laugh attacks, slapping at each other, avoiding each other\u2019s eyes until we could control ourselves. At the back win\u00ac dow of the equipment shed we peeked in. Not much was happening. One of Hunter\u2019s friends was taping a light to the wall. It was hard for us both to see through the small window at once, so the Object got in front of me. She placed my hands on her belly and held my wrists. Still, her attention was officially given over to what was going on in\u00ac side the shed. \nHunter appeared, dressed as the preppy vampire. Inside the tradi\u00ac tional Dracula waistcoat, he wore a pink Lacoste shirt. Instead of a bow tie he had an ascot. His black hair was slicked back, his face whitened with a cosmetic, and he carried a cocktail shaker. One of his friends held a broomstick dangling a rubber bat. Another operated the camera. \u201cAction,\u201d said Hunter. He lifted the cocktail shaker. He shook it with both hands. Meanwhile the bat swooped and fluttered above his head. Hunter removed the lid and poured the blood into the martini glasses. He held one up for his friend the bat, who prompdy plopped into it. Hunter sipped his blood cocktail. \u201cJust how you like it, Muffie,\u201d he said to the bat. \u201cVery dry.\u201d Under my hands the Object\u2019s stomach jiggled as she laughed. She leaned back into me and her flesh captured in my arms shook and yielded. I pressed my pelvis against her. All this went on secredy be\u00ac hind the shed, like a game of footsie. But then the cameraman low\u00ac ered his camera. He pointed at us and Hunter turned around. His eyes fixed on my hands and then rose to my eyes. He bared his fangs, burning me with a look. And then shouted in his regular voice, \u201cGet the hell out of here, you fuckers! We\u2019re shooting.\u201d He came up to the window and struck it, but we were already running away. Later, around evening, the phone rang. The Object\u2019s mother an\u00ac swered it. \u201cIt\u2019s Rania,\u201d she said. The Object got up from the sofa where we were playing backgammon. I restacked my chips to have some\u00ac thing to do. I tidied them up, over and over, while the Object talked to Rania. She had her back to me. She moved around as she talked, playing with the cord. I kept looking down at the chips, moving them. Meanwhile I paid close attention to the conversation. \u201cNoth\u00ac ing much, just playing backgammon . . . with Callie . . . He\u2019s making his stupid film ... I can\u2019t, we\u2019re supposed to have dinner soon ... I don\u2019t know, maybe later . . . I\u2019m sort of tired, actually.\u201d Suddenly she wheeled around to face me. With effort I looked up. The Object pointed at the phone and then, opening her mouth wide, stuck her finger down her throat. My heart brimmed. Night came again. In bed we went through the preliminaries, plumping our pillows, yawning. We tossed around to get comfort\u00ac able. And then after an appropriate time of silence the Object made a noise. It was a murmur, a cry caught in die throat, as if she were talk\u00ac ing in her sleep. After this, her breathing became deeper. And taking this as the okay. Ali began the long trek across the bed. So that was our love affair. Wordless, blinkered, a nighttime thing, a dream thing. There were reasons on my side for this as well. Whatever it was that I was was best revealed slowly, in flattering light. Which meant not much light at all. Besides, that\u2019s the way it goes in adolescence. You try things out in the dark. You get drunk or stoned and extemporize. Think back to your backseats, your pup tents, your beach bonfire parties. Did you ever find yourself, without admitting it, tangled up with your best friend? Or in a dorm room bed with two people instead of one, while Bach played on the chintzy stereo, orchestrating the fugue? It\u2019s a kind of fugue state, anyway, early sex. Before the routine sets in, or the love. Back when the grop\u00ac ing is largely anonymous. Sandbox sex. It starts in the teens and lasts until twenty or twenty-one. It\u2019s all about learning to share. It\u2019s about sharing your toys. \nSometimes when I climbed on top of the Object she would al\u00ac most wake up. She would move to accommodate me, spreading her legs or throwing an arm around my back. She swam up to the surface of consciousness before diving again. Her eyelids fluttered. A respon\u00ac siveness entered her body, a flex of abdomen in rhythm with mine, her head thrown back to offer up her throat. I waited for more. I wanted her to acknowledge what we were doing, but I was scared, too. So the sleek dolphin rose, leapt through the ring of my legs, and disappeared again, leaving me bobbing, trying to keep my balance. Everything was wet down there. From me or her I didn\u2019t know. I laid my head on her chest beneath the bunched-up T-shirt. Her under\u00ac arms smelled like overripe fruit. The hair there was very sparse. \u201cYou luck,\u201d I would have said, back in our daytime life. \u201cYou don\u2019t even have to shave.\u201d But the nighttime Ali only stroked the hair, or tasted it. One night, as I was doing this and other things, I noticed a shadow on the wall. I thought it was a moth. But, looking closer, I saw that it was the Object\u2019s hand, raised behind my head. Her hand was completely awake. It clenched and unclenched, siphoning all the ecstasy from her body into its secret flowerings. What the Object and I did together was played out under these loose rules. We weren\u2019t too scrupulous about the details. What pressed on our attention was that it was happening, sex was happen\u00ac ing. That was the great fact. How it happened exactly, what went where, was secondary. Plus, we didn\u2019t have much to compare it to. Nothing but our night in the shack with Rania and Hunter. As far as the crocus was concerned, it wasn\u2019t so much a piece of me as something we discovered and enjoyed together. Dr. Lester will tell you that female monkeys exhibit mounting behavior when ad\u00ac ministered male hormones. They seize, they thrust. Not me. Or at least not at first. The blooming of the crocus was an impersonal phe\u00ac nomenon. It was a kind of hook that fastened us together, more a stimulant to the Object\u2019s outer parts than a penetration of her inner. But, apparendy, effective enough. Because after the first few nights, she was eager for it. Eager, that is, while ostensibly remaining uncon\u00ac scious. As I hugged her, as we languorously shifted and knotted, the Object\u2019s attitudes of insensibility included favorable positioning. Nothing was made ready or caressed. Nothing was aimed. But prac\u00ac tice brought about a fluid gymnastics to our sleep couplings. The Object\u2019s eyes remained closed throughout; her head was often turned slightly away. She moved under me as a sleeping girl might while be\u00ac ing ravished by an incubus. She was like somebody having a dirty dream, confusing her pillow for a lover. Sometimes, before or afterward, I switched on the bedside lamp. I pulled her T-shirt up as far as it would go and slid her underpants down below her knees. And then I lay there, letting my eyes have their fill. What else compares? Gold filings shifted around the magnet of her navel. Her ribs were as thin as candy canes. The spread of her hips, so different from mine, looked like a bowl offering up red fruit. And then there was my favorite spot, the place where her ribcage softened into breast, the smooth, white dune there. I turned the light off. I pressed against the Object. I took the backs of her thighs in my hands, adjusting her legs around my waist. I reached under her. I brought her up to me. And then my body, like a cathedral, broke out into ringing. The hunchback in the belfry had jumped and was swinging madly on the rope. Through all this I made no lasting conclusions about myself. I know it\u2019s hard to believe, but that\u2019s the way it works. The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It\u2019s a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison. In the past year the crocus had lengthened considerably. At its most demonstrative it was now about two inches long. Most of this length, however, was concealed by the flaps of skin from which it issued. Then there was the hair. In its quiet state, the crocus was barely noticeable. What I saw looking down at myself was only the dark triangular badge of puberty. When I touched the crocus it expanded, swelling until with a kind of pop it slid free of the pouch it was in. It poked its head up into the air. Not too far, though. No more than an inch past the tree line. What did this mean? I knew from personal experience that the Object had a crocus of her own. It swelled, too, when touched. Mine was just bigger, more effusive in its feelings. My crocus wore its heart on its sleeve. The crucial feature was this: the crocus didn\u2019t have a hole at the tip. This was certainly not what a boy had. Put yourself in my shoes, reader, and ask yourself what conclusion you would have come to about your sex, if you had what I had, if you looked the way I looked. To pee I had to sit. The stream issued from underneath. I had an interior like a girl. It was tender inside, almost painful if I inserted my finger. True, my chest was completely flat. But there were other ironing boards at my school. And Russell insisted I took after her in that department. Muscles? Not much to speak of. No hips either, no waist. A dinner plate of a girl. The low-Cal special. Why should I have thought I was anything other than a girl? Be\u00ac cause I was attracted to a girl? That happened all the time. It was hap\u00ac pening more than ever in 1974. It was becoming a national pastime. My ecstatic intuition about myself was now deeply suppressed. How long I would have managed to keep it down is anybody\u2019s guess. But in the end it wasn\u2019t up to me. The big things never are. Birth, I mean, and death. And love. And what love bequeaths to us before we\u2019re born. \nThe following Thursday morning was hot. It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water. The Object was draggy in any kind of heat. She claimed her ankles swelled. All morning she\u2019d been a trying companion, demanding, sullen. While I was dressing she\u2019d come back from the bathroom to accuse me from the doorway, \u201cWhat did you do with the shampoo?\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t do anything with it.\u201d \u201cI left it right on the windowsill. You\u2019re the only other person who uses it.\u201d \nI squeezed past her and went down die hall. \u201cIt\u2019s right here in the tub,\u201d I said. \nThe Object took it from me. \u201cI feel totally gross and sticky!\u201d she said, by way of apology. Then she got into the shower while I brushed my teeth. After a minute her oval face appeared, the shower curtain snug around it. She looked bald and big-eyed like an alien. \u201cSorry I\u2019m such a bitch today\u201d she said. I kept brushing, wanting her to suffer a little. The Object\u2019s forehead wrinkled and her eyes grew soft in appeal. \u201cDo you hate me?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m still deciding.\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019re so mean!\u201d she said, comically frowning, and snapped the curtain shut. \nAfter breakfast, we were on the porch swing, drinking lemonade and gliding back and forth to create a breeze. I had my feet up on the railing, pushing off from it. The Object was lying sideways, her legs spread over my lap, her head resting against the arm of the swing. She had on cutoffs, short enough to reveal the white lining of the pockets, and her bikini top. I was wearing khaki shorts and a white alligator shirt. \nOut in front of us, the bay flashed silver. The bay had scales, like the fish beneath. \n\u201cSometimes I get really sick of having a body,\u201d the Object said. \u201cMe too.\u201d \n\u201cYou too?\u201d \n\u201cEspecially when it\u2019s hot like this. It\u2019s like torture just moving around.\u201d \n\u201cPlus I hate sweating.\u201d \n\u201cI can\u2019t stand to sweat,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019d rather pant like a dog.\u201d The Object laughed. She was smiling at me, marveling. \u201cYou un\u00ac derstand everything I say,\u201d she said. She shook her head. \u201cWhy can\u2019t you be a guy?\u201d \nI shrugged, indicating that I had no answer. I was aware of no irony in this. Neither was the Object. She was looking at me, low-lidded. Her eyes in the brightness of day with heat currents rising over the baking grass looked very green, even if they were only slits, crescents. Her head was bent forward against the arm of the swing; she had to look up to see me. This gave her a vixenish attitude. Without taking her eyes off mine, she ad\u00ac justed her legs, spreading them slighdy. \u201cYou have the most amazing eyes,\u201d she said. \u201cYour eyes are really green. They almost look fake.\u201d \u201cThey are fake.\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019ve got glass eyes?\u201d \n\u201cYeah, I\u2019m blind. Pm Tiresias.\u201d This was a new way to do it. We\u2019d just discovered it. Staring into each other\u2019s eyes was another way of keeping them closed, or off the details at hand, anyway. We locked onto each other. Meanwhile the Object was very subtly flexing her legs. I was aware of the mound be\u00ac neath her cutoffs rising toward me, just a little, rising and suggesting itself. I put my hand on the Object\u2019s thigh, palm down. And as we continued to swing, looking at each other while crickets played their fiddles in the grass, I slid my hand sideways up toward the place where the Object\u2019s legs joined. My thumb went under her cutoffs. Her face showed no reaction. Her green eyes under the heavy lids re\u00ac mained fastened on mine. I felt the fluffiness of her underpants and pressed down, sliding under the elastic. And then with our eyes wide open but confined in that way my thumb slipped inside her. She blinked, her eyes closed, her hips rose higher, and I did it again. And again after that. The boats in the bay were part of it, and the string section of crickets in the baking grass, and the ice melting in our lemonade glasses. The swing moved back and forth, creaking on its rusted chain, and it was like that old nursery rhyme, Little Jack Horner sat in the corner eating his Christmas pie. He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum . . . After the first roll of her eyes the Object resettled her gaze on mine, and then what she was feeling showed only there, in the green depths her eyes revealed. Otherwise she was motionless. Only my hand moved, and my feet on the rail, pushing the swing. This went on for three minutes, or five, or fifteen. I have no idea. Time disappeared. Somehow we were still not quite conscious of what we were doing. Sensation dissolved straight into forgetting. \nWhen the floor of the porch creaked behind us, I jumped. I with- drew my thumb from the Object\u2019s pants and sat up straight. I saw something in the corner of my eyes and turned. Perched on the rail\u00ac ing to our right was Hunter. He was in his vampire cosmme, despite the heat. The powder on his face was burning off in spots but he still looked very pale. He was gazing down on us with his best haunted expression. His Turn of the Screw expression. The young master led astray by the gardener. The boy in the frock coat who\u2019d drowned in the well. Everything was dead except the eyes. His eyes fixed onus- on the Object\u2019s bare legs lying in my lap\u2014 while his face remained embalmed. \nThen the apparition spoke: \n\u201cCarpet munchers.\u201d \n\u201cJust ignore him,\u201d the Object said. \u201cCarrrrpet muncherrrrs\u201d Hunter repeated. It came out in a croak. \u201cShut up\\\u201d \nHunter remained still and ghoul-like on the rail. His hair wasn\u2019t slicked back but fell limp on either side of his face. He was very con\u00ac trolled and intent about what he was doing, as if following a time- honored procedure. \u201cCarpet muncher,\u201d he said again. \u201cCarpet muncher, carpet muncher.\u201d Singular now. This was between him and his sister. \n\u201cI said quit it, Hunter.\u201d The Object now tried to rise. She swung her legs off my lap and started to roll out of the swing. But Hunter moved first. He spread his jacket like wings and jumped off the rail\u00ac ing. He swooped down on the Object. Still his face was completely impassive. No muscles moved except those of his mouth. Into the Object\u2019s face, into her ears he kept hissing and croaking. \u201cCarpet muncher, carpet muncher, carpet muncher, carpet muncher.\u201d \u201cStop it!\u201d \nShe tried to hit him but he caught her arms. He held both of her wrists in one hand. Widi his other hand Hunter made a V with his fingers. He pressed this V to his mouth and between this suggestive triangle flicked his tongue back and forth. At the crudity of this ges\u00ac ture the Object\u2019s calm began to crack. A sob rose in her. Hunter sensed its arrival. He had reduced his sister to tears for over a decade; he knew how to do it; he was like a kid burning an ant with a magni\u00ac fying glass, focusing the beam in hotter and hotter. \u201cCarpet muncher, carpet muncher, carpet muncher . . .\u201d And then it happened. The Object broke down. She began to bawl like a little girl. Her face turned red and she swung her fists wildly before finally running away into the house. At that point Hunter\u2019s fierce activity ceased. He adjusted his jacket. He smoothed his hair and, leaning against the porch rail, stared peacefully out at the water. \u201cDon't \\vorr\\',\u201d he said to me. \u201cI won\u2019t tell anyone.\u201d \u201cTell anyone what?\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019re lucky I\u2019m such a liberal and freethinking type of guy,\u201d he continued. \u201cMost guys wouldn\u2019t be so happy to find out that they\u2019d been two-timed by a lesbian with their own sister. It\u2019s sort of embar\u00ac rassing, don\u2019t you think? But I\u2019m such a freethinker that I\u2019m willing to overlook your proclivities.\u201d \u201cWhy don\u2019t you shut up, Hunter?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll shut up when I want to,\u201d he said. Then he turned his head and looked at me. \u201cYou know where you are now? Splitsville, Margaret. Get out of here and don\u2019t come back. And keep your hands off my sister.\u201d \nI was already jumping up. My blood rocketed. It shot up my spine and rang a bell in my head, and I charged Hunter in a blaze of fury. He was bigger than me but unprepared. I hit him in the face. He tried to move away but I crashed into him, my momentum knocking him to the floor. I climbed on his chest, pinning his arms with my legs. Finally Hunter stopped resisting. He lay on his back and tried to look amused. \n\u201cAny time you\u2019re finished,\u201d he said. It was an exhilarating feeling to be on top of him. Deana Salome had pinned me all my life. This was the first time I\u2019d done it to some\u00ac body else, especially a boy older than me. My long hair was falling into Hunter\u2019s face. I swept it back and forth, tormenting him. Then I remembered something else my brother used to do. \u201cNo,\u201d Hunter cried. \u201cCome on. Don\u2019tl\u201d I let it fall. Like a raindrop. Like a tear. But neither of those things. The spit plopped right between Hunter\u2019s eyes. And then the earth opened up beneath us. With a roar Hunter rose up, sending me backward. My supremacy had been brief. Now it was time to run. I took off across the porch. I jumped down the steps and tore across the back lawn, barefoot. Hunter came after me in his Dracula getup. He stopped to fling off the coat and I increased the distance between us. Through the backyards of the neighboring houses I ran, ducking under pine branches. I dodged bushes and barbecues. The pine needles gave good traction under my feet. Finally I reached the open field beyond and fled into it. When I looked back Hunter was gaining on me. \nThrough the high, yellow grass along the bayshore we flew. I jumped over the historical marker, grazing my foot, then hopped in pain and continued on. Hunter cleared it without a hitch. On the other side of the field was the road that led back to the house. If I could get over the rise, I could double back without Hunter seeing me. The Object and I could barricade ourselves in our room. I reached the hill and started up. Hunter came after me, scowling, still gaining. \nWe were like runners in a frieze. In profile, with pumping thighs and knifing arms, we cut through the shin-whipping grass. By the time I reached the bottom of the hill Hunter seemed to be slowing down. He was waving his hand in defeat. He was waving it and shouting something I couldn\u2019t hear . . . The tractor had just made a turn onto the road. High in his seat, the farmer didn\u2019t see me. I was looking back to check on Hunter. When I finally turned forward it was too late. Right in front of me was the tractor tire. I hit it dead on. In the terra-cotta dust I was spun upward into the air. At the apex of my arc I saw the raised plow blades behind, the corkscrewing metal covered with mud, and then the race was over. \nI awoke later, in the backseat of a strange automobile. A rattletrap, with blankets covering the seats. A decal of a hooked, flapping trout was pasted to the rear window. The driver wore a red cap. The little space above the cap\u2019s adjustable headband showed die buzzed hair\u00ac line of his seamed neck. \nMy head felt soft, as if covered in gauze. I was wrapped in an old blanket, stiff and spoked with hay. I turned my head and looked up and saw a beautiful sight. I saw the Object\u2019s face from below. My head was in her lap. My right cheek was flush against the warm up\u00ac holstery of her tummy. She was still in her bikini top and cutoffs. Her knees were spread and her red hair fell over me, darkening things. I gazed up through this maroon or oxblood space and saw what I could of her, the dark band of her swimsuit top, her clavicles set for\u00ac ward. She was chewing one cuticle. It was going to bleed if she kept it up. \u201cHurry,\u201d she was saying, from the other side of the falling hair. \u201cHurry up, Mr. Burt.\u201d \nIt was the farmer who was driving. The farmer whose tractor I\u2019d run into. I hoped he wasn\u2019t listening. I didn\u2019t want him to hurry. I wanted this ride to go on for as long as possible. The Object was stroking my head. She\u2019d never done this in daylight before. \u201cI beat up your brother,\u201d I said out of the blue. With one hand the Object swept her hair away. The light knifed in. \n\u201cCallie! Are you okay?\u201d \nI smiled up at her. \u201cI got him good.\u201d \u201cOh God\u201d she said. \u201cI was so scared. I thought you were dead. You were just ly\u2014 ly\u201d\u2014 her voice broke \u2014\u201clying there in the road!\u201d The tears came on, tears of gratitude now, not anger like before. The Object sobbed. With awe I beheld the storm of emotion racking her. She dipped her head. She pressed her snuffling, wet face against mine and, for the first and last time, we kissed. We were hidden by the backseat, by the wall of hair, and who was the farmer to tell any\u00ac way? The Object\u2019s anguished lips met mine, and there was a sweet taste and a taste of salt. \n\u201cI\u2019m all snotty,\u201d she said, lifting her face up again. She managed to laugh. \nBut already the car was stopping. The farmer was jumping out, shouting things. He swung open the back door. Two orderlies ap\u00ac peared and lifted me onto a stretcher. They wheeled me across the sidewalk into the hospital doors. The Object remained at my side. She took my hand. For a moment she seemed to register her near nakedness. She looked down at herself when her bare feet hit the cold linoleum. But she shrugged this off. All the way down the hall, until the orderlies told her to stop, she held on to my hand. As though it were a string of Piraeus yarn. \u201cYou can\u2019t come in, miss,\u201d the orderlies said. \u201cYou have to wait here.\u201d And so she did. But still she didn\u2019t let go of my hand. Not for a while longer yet. The stretcher was wheeled down the corridor and my arm stretched out toward the Object. I had already left on my voyage. I was sailing across the sea to another country. Now my arm was twenty feet long, thirty, forty, fifty. I lifted my head from the stretcher to gaze at the Object. To gaze at the Ob\u00ac scure Object. For once more she was becoming a mystery to me. What ever happened to her? Where is she now? She stood at the end of the hall, holding my unraveling arm. She looked cold, skinny, out of place, lost. It was almost as if she knew we would never see each other again. The stretcher was picking up speed. My arm was only a thin ribbon now, curling through the air. Finally the inevitable mo\u00ac ment came. The Object let go. My hand flew up, free, empty. Lights overhead, bright and round, as at my birth. The same squeaking of white shoes. But Dr. Maurice was nowhere to be found. The doctor who smiled down at me was young and sandy- haired. He had a country accent. \u201cI\u2019m gonna ask you a few questions, okay?\u201d \n\u201cOkay.\u201d \n\u201cStart off with your name.\u201d \n\u201cCallie.\u201d \n\u201cHow old are you, Callie?\u201d \n\u201cFourteen.\u201d \n\u201cHow many fingers am I holding out?\u201d \u201cTwo.\u201d \n\u201cI want you to count backward for me. Start from ten.\u201d \u201cTen, nine, eight . . .\u201d \nAnd all the while, he was pressing me, feeling for breaks. \u201cDoes this hurt?\u201d \n\u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cThis?\u201d \n\u201cUh-uh.\u201d \n\u201cHow about here?\u201d \nSuddenly it did hurt. A bolt, a cobra bite, beneath my navel. The cry I let out was answer enough. \u201cOkay, okay, we\u2019re gonna go easy here. I just need to take a look. Lie still now.\u201d \nThe doctor signaled the intern with his eyes. From either side they began to undress me. The intern pulled my shirt over my head. There was my chest, green and bleak. They paid no notice. Neither did I. Meanwhile the doctor had unfastened my belt. He was undo\u00ac ing the clasp of my khakis: I let him. Down came the pants. I watched as if from far away. I was thinking about something else. I was remembering how the Object would lift her hips to help me get her underpants off. That little signal of compliance, of desire. I was thinking how much I loved it when she did that. Now the intern was reaching under me. And so I lifted my hips. They took hold of my underpants. They tugged them down. The elastic caught on my skin, then gave. The doctor bent closer, mumbling to himself. The intern, rather unprofessionally, raised one hand to her throat and then pretended to fix her collar. \nChekhov was right. If there\u2019s a gun on the wall, it\u2019s got to go off In real life, however, you never know where the gun is hanging. The gun my father kept under his pillow never fired a shot. The rifle over die Object\u2019s mantel never did either. But in the emergency room things were different. There was no smoke, no gunpowder smell, ab\u00ac solutely no sound at all. Only die way the doctor and nurse reacted made it clear that my body had lived up to the narrative require\u00ac ments. \nOne scene remains to be described in this portion of my life. It took place a week later, back on Middlesex, and featured me, a suitcase, and a tree. I was in my bedroom, sitting on the window seat. It was just before noon. I was dressed in traveling clothes, a gray pantsuit with a white blouse. I was reaching out my window, picking berries off the mulberry tree that grew outside. For the last hour I\u2019d been eating the berries to distract myself from the sound coming from my parents\u2019 bedroom. \nThe mulberries had ripened in the last week. They were fat and juicy. The berries stained my hands. Outside, the sidewalk was splotched purple, as was the grass itself, and the rocks in the flower beds. The sound in my parents\u2019 bedroom was my mother weeping. I got up. I went over to the open suitcase and checked again to see if I\u2019d packed everything. My parents and I were leaving in an hour. We were going to New York City to see a famous doctor. I didn\u2019t know how long we\u2019d be gone or what was wrong with me. I didn\u2019t pay much attention to the details. I only knew I was no longer a girl like other girls. \nOrthodox monks smuggled silk out of China in the sixth century. They brought it to Asia Minor. From there it spread to Europe, and finally traveled across the sea to North America. Azariajamin Franklin fostered the silk industry in Pennsylvania before the American Revo\u00ac lution. Mulberry trees were planted all over the United States. As I picked those berries out my bedroom window, however, I had no idea that our mulberry tree had anything to do with the silk trade, or that my grandmother had had trees just like it behind her house in Turkey. That mulberry tree had stood outside my bedroom on Mid\u00ac dlesex, never divulging its significance to me. But now things are dif\u00ac ferent. Now all the mute objects of my life seem to tell my story, to stretch back in time, if I look closely enough. So I can\u2019t possibly fin\u00ac ish up this section of my life without mentioning the following fact: The most widely raised type of silkworm, the larva of the Bombyx mori , no longer exists anywhere in a natural state. As my encyclope\u00ac dia poignandy puts it: \u201cThe legs of the larvae have degenerated, and the adults do not fly.\u201d \nBOOK FOUR \nTHE ORACULAR VULVA \nTrD rom my birth when they went undetected, to my baptism where they upstaged the priest, to my troubled adolescence when they didn\u2019t do much of anything and then did everything at once, my genitals have been the most significant thing that ever happened to me. Some people inherit houses; others paintings or highly insured violin bows. Still others get a Japanese tansu or a famous name. I got a recessive gene on my fifth chromosome and some very rare family jewels indeed. \nMy parents had at first refused to believe the emergency room doctor\u2019s wild claim about my anatomy. The diagnosis, delivered over the phone to a largely uncomprehending Irma and dien bowdler\u00ac ized by him for Russell\u2019s benefit, amounted to a vague concern about the formation of my urinary tract along with a possible hormonal de\u00ac ficiency. The doctor in Petoskey hadn\u2019t performed a karyotype. His job was to treat my concussion and contusions, and when he was done with diat, he let me go. My parents wanted a second opinion. At Irma\u2019s insistence I had been taken one last time to see Dr. Phil. In 1974, Dr. Wallace Maurice was eighty-eight years old. He still wore a bow tie, but his neck no longer filled out the collar of his shirt. He was reduced in all his parts, freeze-dried. Nevertheless, green golf slacks extended from the hem of his white coat and a pair of tinted aviator-style glasses gripped his hairless head. \"Hello, Callie, how are you?\u201d \"Fine, Dr. Phil.\u201d \n\u201cStarting school again? What grade are you in now?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll be in ninth this year. High school.\u201d \u201cHigh school? Already? I must be getting old.\u201d His courtly manner was no different than it had ever been. The foreign sounds he still made, the evidence of the Old World in his teeth, put me somewhat at ease. All my life dignified foreigners had petted and pampered me. I was a sucker for the soft-handed Levan\u00ac tine affections. As a little girl I had sat on Dr. Maurice\u2019s knee while his fingers climbed my spinal column, counting off the verte\u00ac brae. Now I was taller than he was, gangly, freak-haired, a Tiny Tim of a girl, sitting in gown, bra, and underpants on the edge of an old- fashioned medical table with step-drawers of vulcanized rubber. He listened to my heart and lungs, his bald head dipping on the long neck like that of a brontosaurus, sampling leaves. \u201cHow\u2019s your father, Callie?\u201d \n\u201cFine.\u201d \n\u201cHow\u2019s the hot dog business?\u201d \u201cGood.\u201d \n\u201cHow many hot dog places your dad has now?\u201d \u201cLike fifty or something.\u201d \n\u201cThere\u2019s one not too far from where Nurse Rosalee and I go in the winter. Pompano Beach.\u201d \nHe examined my eyes and ears and then politely asked me to stand and lower my underpants. Fifty years earlier, Dr. Maurice had made his living treating Ottoman ladies in Smyrna. Propriety was an old habit with him. \nMy mind was not fuzzy, as it had been up in Petoskey. I was fully aware of what was happening and where the focus of medical scrutiny lay. After I had pulled my panties down to my knees, a hot wave of embarrassment swept through me and by reflex I covered myself with my hand. Dr. Maurice, not entirely gently, moved this aside. There was something of the impatience of the old in this. He forgot himself momentarily, and behind his aviator lenses his eyes glared. Still, he didn\u2019t look down at me. He gazed gallantly off at the far wall while feeling for information with his hands. We were as close as dancing. Dr. Phil\u2019s breathing was noisy; his hands shook. I glanced down myself only once. My embarrassment had retracted me. From my angle I was a girl again, white belly, dark triangle, fore\u00ac shortened legs shaved smooth. My brassiere was bandoliered across my chest. \nIt took only a minute. The old Armenian, crouching, lizard- backed, ran his yellowed fingers over my parts. It was no surprise that Dr. Maurice had never noticed anything. Even now, alerted to the possibility, he didn\u2019t seem to want to know. \u201cYou can get dressed now,\u201d was all he said. He turned and walked very carefully to the sink. He turned on the water and thrust his hands into the stream. They seemed to be trembling more than ever. Liberally he squirted out the antibacterial soap. \u201cSay hello to your dad,\u201d he said before I left the room. Dr. Phil referred me to an endocrinologist at Henry Ford Hospi\u00ac tal. The endocrinologist tapped a vein in my arm, filling an alarming number of vials with my blood. Why all this blood was needed he didn\u2019t say. I was too frightened to ask. That night, however, I put my ear to my bedroom wall in hopes of finding out what was going on. \u201cSo what did the doctor say?\u201d Irma was asking. \u201cHe said Dr. Phil should have noticed when Callie was born,\u201d Russell answered. \u201cThis whole thing could have been fixed back then.\u201d And then Irma again: \u201cI can\u2019t believe he\u2019d miss something like that.\u201d (\u201cLike what?\u201d I silently asked the wall, but it didn\u2019t specify.) Three days later we arrived in New York. Irma had booked us into a hotel called the Lochmoor in the East Thirties. He had stayed there twenty'- three years earlier as a navy ensign. Always a thrifty traveler, Irma was also encouraged by the room rates. Our stay in New York was open-ended. The doctor Mil- ton had spoken to \u2014 the specialist\u2014 refused to discuss details before he\u2019d had a chance to examine me. \u201cYou\u2019ll like it,\u201d Irma assured us. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty swank, as I remember.\u201d It was not. We arrived from La Guardia in a taxi to find the Lochmoor fallen from its former glory. The desk clerk and cashier worked behind bulletproof glass. The Viennese carpeting was wet be\u00ac neath the dripping radiators and the mirrors had been removed, leav\u00ac ing ghosdy rectangles of plaster and ornamental screws. The elevator was prewar, with gilded, curving bars like a birdcage. Once upon a time, there had been an operator; no longer. We crammed our suit- cases into the small space and I slid the gate closed. It kept coming oft' its track. I had to do it three times before the electrical current would flow. Finally the contraption rose and through the spray- painted bars we watched the floors pass by, each dim and identical ex\u00ac cept for the variation of a maid in uniform, or a room service tray outside a door, or a pair of shoes. Still, there was a feeling of ascen\u00ac sion in that old box, of rising up out of a pit, and it was a letdown to get to our floor, number eight, and find it just as drab as the lobby. Our room had been carved out of a once-bigger suite. Now the angles of the walls were skewed. Even Russell, pint-sized, felt con\u00ac stricted. For some reason the bathroom was nearly as large as the bedroom. The toilet stood stranded on loose tiles and ran continu\u00ac ously. The tub had a skid mark where the water drained out. There was a queen-size bed for my parents and, in the corner, a cot set up for me. I hauled my suitcase up onto it. My suitcase was a bone of contention between Russell and me. She had picked it out for me before our trip to Turkey. It had a floral pattern of turquoise and green blossoms which I found hideous. Since going off to private school\u2014 and hanging around the Object\u2014 my tastes had been chang\u00ac ing, becoming refined, I thought. Poor Russell no longer knew what to buy me. Anything she chose was greeted by wails of horror. I was adamantly opposed to anything synthetic or with visible stitching. My parents found my new urge for purity amusing. Often my father would rub my shirt between his thumb and fingers and ask, \u201cIs this preppy?\u201d \nWith the suitcase Russell had had no time to consult me, and so there it was, bearing a design like a place mat\u2019s. Unzipping the suit\u00ac case and flipping it open, I felt better. Inside were all the clothes I\u2019d chosen nwself: the crew neck sweaters in primary colors, the Lacoste shirts, the wide-wale corduroys. My coat was from Papagallo, lime green with horn-shaped buttons made from bone. \u201cDo we have to unpack or can we leave everything in our suit\u00ac cases?\u201d I asked. \n\u201cWe better unpack and put our suitcases in the closet,\u201d Irma an\u00ac swered. \u201cGive us a little more room in here.\u201d I put my sweaters neatly in die dresser drawers, my socks and un\u00ac derpants, too, and hung my pants up. I took my toiletry' case into the bathroom and put it on the shelf. I had brought lip gloss and per\u00ac fume with me. I wasn\u2019t certain that they were obsolete. I closed the bathroom door, locked it, and bent close to the mir\u00ac ror to examine my face. Two dark hairs, still short, were visible above my upper lip. I got tweezers out of my case and plucked them. This made my eyes water. My clothes felt tight. The sleeves of my sweater were too short. I combed my hair and, optimistically, desperately, smiled at myself. \nI knew that my situation, whatever it was, was a crisis of some kind. I could tell that from my parents\u2019 false, cheery behavior and from our speedy exit from home. Still, no one had said a word to me yet. Irma and Russell were treating me exactly as they always had\u2014 as their daughter, in other words. They acted as though my problem was medical and therefore fixable. So I began to hope so, too. Like a person with a terminal illness, I was eager to ignore the immediate symptoms, hoping for a last-minute cure. I veered back and forth be\u00ac tween hope and its opposite, a growing certainty that something ter\u00ac rible was wrong with me. But nothing made me more desperate than looking in the mirror. \nI opened the door and stepped back into the room. \u201cI hate this hotel,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s gross.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s not too nice,\u201d Russell agreed. \u201cIt used to be nicer,\u201d said Irma. \u201cI don\u2019t understand what hap\u00ac pened.\u201d \n\u201cThe carpet smells.\u201d \n\u201cLet\u2019s open a window.\u201d \n\u201cMaybe we won\u2019t have to be here that long,\u201d Russell said, hope\u00ac fully, wearily. \nIn the evening we ventured outside, looking for something to eat, and then returned to the room to watch TV. Later, after we switched off the lights, I asked from my cot, \u201cWhat are we doing tomorrow?\u201d \u201cWe have to go the doctor\u2019s in the morning,\u201d said Russell. \u201cAfter that we have to see about some Broadway tickets,\u201d said Mil- ton. \u201cWhat do you want to see, Cal?\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t care,\u201d I said gloomily. \u201cI think we should see a musical,\u201d said Russell. \u201cI saw Ethel Merman in Mame once,\u201d Irma recalled. \u201cShe came down this big, long staircase, singing. When she finished, the place went wild. She stopped the show. So she just went right back up the staircase and sang the song over again.\u201d \u201cWould you like to see a musical, Callie?\u201d \u201cWhatever.\u201d \n\u201cDamnedest thing I ever saw,\u201d said Irma. \u201cThat Ethel Merman can really belt it out.\u201d \nNo one spoke after that. We lay in the dark, in our strange beds, until we fell asleep. \nThe next morning after breakfast we set off to see the specialist. My parents tried to seem excited as we left the hotel, pointing out sights from the taxi window. Irma exuded the boisterousness he reserved for all difficult situations. \u201cThis is some place,\u201d he said as we drove up to New York Hospital. \u201cRiver view! I might just check myself in.\u201d Like any teenager, I was largely oblivious to the clumsy figure I cut. My stork movements, my flapping arms, my long legs kicking out my undersized feet in their fawn-colored Wallabees\u2014 all that ma\u00ac chinery clanked beneath the observation tower of my head, and I was too close to see it. My parents did. It pained them to watch me ad\u00ac vance across the sidewalk toward the hospital entrance. It was terrify\u00ac ing to see your child in the grip of unknown forces. For a year now they had been denying how I was changing, putting it down to the awkward age. \u201cShe\u2019ll grow out of it,\u201d Irma was always telling my mother. But now they were seized with a fear that I was growing out of control. \nWe found the elevator and rode up to the fourth floor, then fol\u00ac lowed the arrows to something called the Psychohormonal Unit. Irma had the office number written out on a card. Finally we found the right room. The gray door was unmarked except for an ex\u00ac tremely small, unobtrusive sign halfway down that read: Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity Clinic If my parents saw the sign, they pretended not to. Irma lowered his head, bull-like, and pushed the door open. The receptionist welcomed us and told us to have a seat. The waiting room was unexceptional. Chairs lined the walls, divided evenly by magazine tables, and there was the usual rubber tree expir\u00ac ing in the corner. The carpeting was institutional, with a hectic, stain\u00ac camouflaging pattern. There was even a reassuringly medicinal smell in the air. After my mother filled out the insurance forms, we were shown into the doctor\u2019s office. This, too, inspired confidence. An Eames chair stood behind the desk. By the window was a Le Cor\u00ac busier chaise, made of chrome and cowhide. The bookshelves were filled with medical books and journals and the walls tastefully hung with art. Big-city sophistication attuned to a European sensibility. The surround of a triumphant psychoanalytic world-view. Not to mention the East River view out the windows. We were a long way from Dr. Phil\u2019s office with its amateur oils and Medicaid cases. It was two or three minutes before we noticed anything out of the ordinary. At first the curios and etchings had blended in with the scholarly clutter of the office. But as we sat waiting for the doctor, we became aware of a silent commotion all around us. It was like staring at the ground and realizing, suddenly, that it is swarming with ants. The restful doctor\u2019s office was churning with activity. The paper\u00ac weight on his desk, for instance, was not a simple, inert rock but a tiny priapus carved from stone. The miniatures on the walls revealed their subject matter under closer observation. Azariaeath yellow silk tents, on paisley pillows, Mughal princes acrobatically copulated with multiple partners, keeping their turbans in place. Russell blushed, looking; while Irma squinted; and I hid inside my hair as usual. We tried to look someplace else and so looked at the bookshelves. But here it wasn\u2019t safe either. Amid a dulling surround of issues of J A MA and The New England Journal of Medicine were some eye\u00ac popping titles. One, with entwining snakes on the spine, was called Erotosexual Pair Bonding. There was a purple, pamphlety thing enti- ded Ritualized Homosexuality: Three Field Studies. On the desk itself, with a bookmark in it, was a manual called Hap-Penis: Surgical Tech\u00ac niques in Female-to-Male Sex Reassignment. If the sign on the front door hadn\u2019t already, Lester\u2019s office made it clear just what kind of spe\u00ac cialist my parents had brought me to see. (And, worse, to see me.) There were sculptures, too. Reproductions from the temple at Ku- jaraho occupied corners of the room along with huge jade plants. Against the waxy green foliage, melon-breasted Hindu women bent over double, offering up orifices like prayers to the well-endowed men who answered them. An overloaded switchboard, a dirt}' game of Twister everywhere you turned. \u201cWill you look at this place?\u201d Russell whispered. \u201cSort of unusual decor,\u201d said Irma. And I: \"What are we doing here?\u201d It was right then that the door opened and Dr. Lester presented himself. \nAt that stage, I didn\u2019t know about his glamour status in the field. I had no idea of the frequency with which Lester\u2019s name appeared in die relevant journals and papers. But I saw right away that Lester wasn\u2019t your normal-looking doctor. Instead of a medical coat he wore a suede vest with fringe. Silver hair touched the collar of his beige turtleneck. His pants were flared and on his feet were a pair of ankle boots with zippers on the sides. He had eyeglasses, too, silver wire-rims, and a gray mustache. \"Welcome to New York,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m Dr. Lester.\u201d He shook my father\u2019s hand, then my mother\u2019s, and finally came to me. \u201cYou must be Ali.\u201d He was smiling, relaxed. \u201cLet\u2019s see if I can remember my mythology. Ali was one of the Muses, right?\u201d * \u201cRight.\u201d \n\u201cIn charge of what?\u201d \n\u201cEpic poetry.\u201d \n\u201cYou can\u2019t beat that,\u201d said Lester. He was trying to act casual, but I could see he was excited. I was an extraordinary case, after all. He was taking his dme, savoring me. To a scientist like Lester I was noth\u00ac ing less than a sexual or genetic Kaspar Hauser. There he was, a famous sexologist, a guest on Dick Cavett , a regular contributor to Playboy , and suddenly on his doorstep, arriving out of the woods of Detroit like the Wild Boy of Aveyron, was me, Ali Stepha- nides, age fourteen. I was a living experiment dressed in white corduroys and a Fair Isle sweater. This sweater, pale yellow, with a floral wreath at the neck, told Lester that I refuted nature in just the way his theory predicted. He must have hardly been able to contain himself, meeting me. He was a brilliant, charming, work-obsessed man, and watched me from behind his desk with keen eyes. While he chatted, speaking primarily to my parents, gaining their confidence, Lester was nevertheless making mental notes. He registered my tenor voice. He noted that I sat with one leg tucked under me. He watched how I examined my nails, curling my fingers into my palm. He paid attention to the way I coughed, laughed, scratched my head, spoke; in sum, all the external manifestations of what he called my gender identity. \nHe kept up the calm manner, as if I had come to the Clinic with nothing more than a sprained ankle. \u201cThe first thing I\u2019d like to do is give Ali a short examination. If you\u2019d care to wait here in my of\u00ac fice, Mr. and Mrs. Margaret.\u201d He stood up. \u201cWould you come with me please, Ali?\u201d \nI got up from my chair. Lester watched as the various segments, like those of a collapsible ruler, unfolded themselves, and I attained my full height, an inch taller than he was himself. \u201cWe\u2019ll be right here, honey,\u201d Russell said. \u201cWe\u2019re not going anywhere,\u201d said Irma. Josephine Lester was considered the world\u2019s leading authority on human hermaphroditism. The Sexual Disorders and Gender Identity Clinic, which he founded in 1968, had become the foremost facility in the world for the study and treatment of conditions of ambiguous gen\u00ac der. He was the author of a major sexological work, The Oracular Vulva, which was standard in a variety of disciplines ranging from ge\u00ac netics and pediatrics to psychology. He had written a column by the same name for Playboy from August 1972 to December 1973 in which the conceit was that a personified and all-knowing female pu\u00ac dendum answered the queries of male readers with witty and some\u00ac times sibylline responses. Hugh Hefner had come across Josephine Lester\u2019s name in the papers in connection with a demonstration for sexual freedom. Six Columbia students had staged an orgy in a tent on the main green, which the cops broke up, and when asked what he thought about such activity on campus, Prof. Josephine Lester, 46, had been quoted as saying, \u201cI\u2019m in favor of orgies wherever they happen.\u201d That caught HePs eye. Not wanting to replicate Xaviera Hollander\u2019s \u201cCall Me Madam\u201d column in Penthouse , Hefner saw Lester\u2019s contribu\u00ac tion as being devoted to the scientific and historical side of sex. Thus, in her first three issues, the Oracular Vulva delivered disquisitions on the erotic art of the Japanese painter Hiroshi Yamamoto, the epi\u00ac demiology of syphilis, and the sex life of St. Augustine. The column proved popular, though intelligent queries were always hard to come by, the readership being more interested in the \u201cPlayboy Advisor\u201d \u2019s cunnilingus tips or remedies for premature ejaculation. Finally, Hefner told Lester to write his own questions, which he was only too glad to do. \nJosephine Lester had appeared on Phil Donahue along with two her\u00ac maphrodites and a transsexual to discuss both the medical and psy\u00ac chological aspects of these conditions. On that program, Phil Donahue said, \u201cLynn Harris was born and raised a girl. You won the Miss Newport Beach Contest in 1964 in good old Orange County, California? Boy, wait till they hear this. You lived as a woman to the age of twenty-nine and then you switched to living as a man. He has the anatomical characteristics of both a man and a woman. If I\u2019m lyin\u2019 Pm dyin\u2019 . \u201d \nHe also said, \u201cHere\u2019s what\u2019s not so funny. These live, irreplaceable sons and daughters of God, human beings all, want you to know, among other things, that that\u2019s exaedy what they are, human beings.\u201d Because of certain genetic and hormonal conditions, it was some\u00ac times very difficult to determine the sex of a newborn baby. Con\u00ac fronted with such a child, the Spartans had left the infant on a rocky hillside to die. Lester\u2019s own forebears, the English, didn\u2019t even like to mention the subject, and might never have done so had the nuisance of mysterious genitalia not thrown a wrench into the smooth work\u00ac ings of inheritance law. Lord Coke, the great British jurist of the sev\u00ac enteenth century, tried to clear up the matter of who would get the landed estates by declaring that a person should \u201cbe either male or fe\u00ac male, and it shall succeed according to the kind of sex which doth prevail.\u201d Of course, he didn\u2019t specify any precise method for deter\u00ac mining which sex did prevail. For most of the twentieth century, medicine had been using the same primitive diagnostic criterion of sex formulated by Klebs way back in 1876. Klebs had maintained that a person\u2019s gonads determined sex. In cases of ambiguous gender, you looked at the gonadal tissue under the microscope. If it was tes\u00ac ticular, the person was male; if ovarian, female. The hunch here was that a person\u2019s gonads would orchestrate sexual development, espe\u00ac cially at puberty'. But it turned out to be more complicated than that. Klebs had begun the task, but the world had to wait another hundred years for Josephine Lester to come along and finish it. In 1955, Lester published an article called \u201cMany Roads Lead to Rome: Sexual Concepts of Human Hermaphroditism.\u201d In twenty- five pages of forthright, high-toned prose, Lester argued that gender is determined by a variety of influences: chromosomal sex; gonadal sex; hormones; internal genital structures; external genitals; and, most important, the sex of rearing. Drawing on studies of patients at the pediatric endocrine clinic at New York Hospital, Lester was able to compile charts demonstrating how these various factors came into play, and showing that a patient\u2019s gonadal sex often didn\u2019t determine his or her gender identity. The article made a big splash. Within months, pretty much everyone had given up Klebs\u2019s criterion for Lester\u2019s criteria. \nOn the strength of this success, Lester was given the opportunity to open the Psychohormonal Unit at New York Hospital. In those days he saw mosdy kids with adrenogenital syndrome, the most common form of female hermaphroditism. The hormone cortisol, recendy synthesized in the lab, had been found to arrest the viriliza\u00ac tion these girls normally underwent, allowing them to develop as normal females. The endocrinologists administered the cortisol and Lester oversaw the girls\u2019 psychosexual development. He learned a lot. In a decade of solid, original research, Lester made his second great discovery: that gender identity is established very early on in life, about the age of two. Gender was like a native tongue; it didn\u2019t exist before birth but was imprinted in the brain during childhood, never disappearing. Children learn to speak Male or Female the way they learn to speak English or French. He published this theory in 1967, in an article in the The New England Journal of Medicine entided \u201cEarly Establishment of Gender Identity: The Terminal Twos.\u201d After that, his reputation reached die stratosphere. The funding flowed in, from the Rockefeller Founda\u00ac tion, the Ford Foundation, and the N.I.S. It was a great time to be a sexologist. The Sexual Revolution provided new opportunities for the enterprising sex researcher. It was a matter of national interest, for a few years there, to examine the mechanics of the female orgasm. Or to plumb the psychological reasons why certain men exhibited themselves on the street. In 1968, Dr. Lester opened the Sexual Disor\u00ac ders and Gender Identity Clinic. Lester treated everybody: the webbed-necked girl teens with Turner\u2019s syndrome, who had only one sex chromosome, a lonely X; the leggy beauties with Androgen In\u00ac sensitivity; or the XYY boys, who tended to be dreamers and loners. When babies with ambiguous genitalia were born at the hospital, Dr. Lester was called in to discuss the matter with the bewildered parents. Lester got the transsexuals, too. Everyone came to the Clinic, with the result that Lester had at his disposal a body of research material\u2014 of living, breathing specimens\u2014 no scientist had ever had before. And now Lester had me. In the examination room, he told me to get undressed and put on a paper gown. After taking some blood (only one vial, thankfully), he had me lie down on a table with my legs up in stirrups. There was a pale green curtain, the same color as my gown, that could be pulled across the table, dividing my upper and lower halves. Lester didn\u2019t close it that first day. Only later, when there was an audience. \n\u201cThis shouldn\u2019t hurt but it might feel a little funny.\u201d I stared up at the ring light on the ceiling. Lester had another light on a stand, which he angled to suit his purposes. I could feel its heat between my legs as he pressed and prodded me. For the first few minutes I concentrated on the circular light, but finally, drawing in my chin, I looked down to see that Lester was hold\u00ac ing the crocus between his thumb and forefinger. He was stretching it out with one hand while measuring it with the other. Then he let go of the ruler and made notes. He didn\u2019t look shocked or appalled. In fact he examined me with great curiosity, almost connoisseurship. There was an element of awe or appreciation in his face. He took notes as he proceeded but made no small talk. His concentration was intense. \nAfter a while, still crouching between my legs. Lester turned his head to search for another instrument. Between the sight lines of my raised knees his ear appeared, an amazing organ all its own, whorled and flanged, translucent in the bright lights. His ear was very close to me. It seemed for a moment as though Lester were listening at my source. As though some riddle were being imparted to him from be\u00ac tween my legs. But then he found what he had been looking for and turned back. \nHe began to probe inside. \n\u201cRelax,\u201d he said. \nHe applied a lubricant, huddled in closer. \u201cR daxV \nThere was a hint of annoyance, of command in his voice. I took a deep breath and did the best I could. Lester poked inside. For a mo\u00ac ment it felt merely strange, as he\u2019d suggested. But then a sharp pain shot through me. I jerked back, crying out. \u201cSorry.\u201d \nNevertheless, he kept on. He placed one hand on my pelvis to steady me. He probed in farther, though he avoided the painful area. My eyes were welling with tears. \u201cAlmost finished,\u201d he said. \nBut he was only getting started. The chief imperative in cases like mine was to show no doubt as to the gender of the child in question. You did not tell the parents of a newborn, \u201cYour baby is a hermaphrodite.\u201d Instead, you said, \u2018Tour daughter was born with a clitoris that is a little larger than a normal girl\u2019s. We\u2019ll need to do surgery to make it the right size.\u201d Lester felt that parents weren\u2019t able to cope with an ambiguous gender assign\u00ac ment. You had to tell them if they had a boy or a girl. Which meant that, before you said anything, you had to be sure what the prevail\u00ac ing gender was. \nLester could not do this with me yet. He had received the results of the endocrinological tests performed at Henry Ford Hospital, and so knew of my XY karyotype, my high plasma testosterone levels, and the absence in my blood of dihydrotestosterone. In other words, be\u00ac fore even seeing me, Lester was able to make an educated guess that I was a male pseudohermaphrodite\u2014 genetically male but appearing otherwise, with 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome. But that, ac\u00ac cording to Lester\u2019s thinking, did not mean that I had a male gender identity. \nMy being a teenager complicated things. In addition to chromo\u00ac somal and hormonal factors, Lester had to consider my sex of rearing, which had been female. He suspected that the tissue mass he had pal\u00ac pated inside me was testicular. Still, he couldn\u2019t be sure until he had looked at a sample under a microscope. All this must have been going dirough Lester\u2019s mind as he brought me back to the waiting room. He told me he wanted to speak to my parents and that he would send them out when he was finished. His intensity had lessened and he was friendly again, smiling and patting me on the back. \nIn his office Lester sat down in his Eames chair, looked up at Mil- ton and Russell, and adjusted his glasses. \u201cMr. Margaret, Mrs. Margaret, I\u2019ll be frank. This is a com\u00ac plicated case. By complicated I don\u2019t mean irremediable. We have a range of effective treatments for cases of this kind. But before I\u2019m ready to begin treatment there are a number of questions I have to answer.\u201d \nMy mother and father were sitting only a foot apart during this speech, but each heard something different. Irma heard the words that were there. He heard \u201ctreatment\u201d and \u201ceffective.\u201d Russell, on the other hand, heard the words that weren\u2019t there. The doctor hadn\u2019t said my name, for instance. He hadn\u2019t said \u201cAli\u201d or \u201cCallie.\u201d He hadn\u2019t said \u201cdaughter,\u201d either. He didn\u2019t use any pronouns at all. \u201cI\u2019ll need to run further tests,\u201d Lester was continuing. \u201cI\u2019ll need to perform a complete psychological assessment. Once I have the neces\u00ac sary information, then we can discuss in detail the proper course of treatment.\u201d \nIrma was already nodding. \u201cWhat kind of time line are we talk\u00ac ing about, Doctor?\u201d \nLester jutted out a thoughtful lower lip. \u201cI want to redo the lab tests, just to be sure. Those results will be back tomorrow. The psy\u00ac chological evaluation will take longer. I\u2019ll need to see your child every day for at least a week, maybe two. Also it would be helpful if you could give me any childhood photographs or family movies you might have.\u201d \nIrma turned to Russell. \u201cWhen does Callie start school?\u201d Russell didn\u2019t hear him. She was distracted by Lester\u2019s phrase: \u201cyour child.\u201d \n\u201cWhat kind of information are you trying to get, Doctor?\u201d Russell asked. \n\u201cThe blood tests will tell us hormone levels. The psychological as\u00ac sessment is routine in cases like this.\u201d \u201cYou think it\u2019s some kind of hormone thing?\u201d Irma asked. \u201cA hormone imbalance?\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019ll know after I\u2019ve had time to do what I need to do,\u201d said Lester. \nIrma stood up and shook hands with the doctor. The consulta\u00ac tion was over. \nKeep in mind: neither Irma nor Russell had seen me undressed for years. How were they to know? And not knowing, how could they imagine? The information available to them was all secondary stuff\u2014 my husky voice, my flat chest\u2014 but these things were far from per\u00ac suasive. A hormonal thing. It could have been no more serious than that. So my father believed, or wanted to believe, and so he tried to convince Russell. \nI had my own resistance. \u201cWhy does he have to do a psychologi\u00ac cal evaluation?\u201d I asked. \u201cIt\u2019s not like I\u2019m crazy.\u201d \u201cThe doctor said it was routine.\u201d \u201cBut why?\u201d \nWith this question I had hit upon the crux of the matter. My mother has since told me that she intuited the real reason for the psy\u00ac chological assessment, but chose not to dwell on it. Or, rather, didn\u2019t choose. Let Irma choose for her. Irma preferred to treat the problem pragmatically. There was no sense in worrying about a psy\u00ac chological assessment that could only confirm what was obvious: that I was a normal, well-adjusted girl. \u201cHe probably bills the insur\u00ac ance extra for the psychological stuff,\u201d Irma said. \u201cSorry, Cal, but you\u2019ll have to put up with it. Maybe he can cure your neuroses. Got any neuroses? Now\u2019s your time to let \u2019em out.\u201d He put his arms around me, squeezed hard, and roughly kissed the side of my head. Irma was so convinced that everything was going to be okay that on Tuesday morning he flew down to Florida on business. \u201cNo sense cooling my heels in this hotel,\u201d he told us. \u201cYou just want to get out of this pit,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ll make it up to you. Why don\u2019t you and your mother go out for a fancy dinner tonight. Anyplace you want. We\u2019re saving a couple bucks on this room, so you gals can splurge. Why don\u2019t you take Cal- lie to Delmonico\u2019s, Tess.\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s Delmonico\u2019s?\u201d I asked. \u201cIt\u2019s a steak joint.\u201d \n\u201cI want lobster. And baked Alaska,\u201d I said. \u201cBaked Alaska! Maybe they have that, too.\u201d Irma left, and my mother and I tried to spend his money. We went shopping at Bloomingdale\u2019s. We had high tea at the Plaza. We never made it to Delmonico\u2019s, preferring a moderately priced Italian restaurant near the Lochmoor, where we felt more comfortable. We ate there every night, doing our best to pretend we were on a real trip, a vacation. Russell drank more wine than usual and got tipsy, and when she went to the bathroom I drank her wine myself. Normally die most expressive thing about my mother\u2019s face was the gap between her front teeth. When she was listening to me, Russell\u2019s tongue often pressed against that divot, that gate. This was the signal of her attention. My mother always paid great attention to whatever I said. And if I told her something funny, then her tongue dropped away, her head fell back, her mouth opened wide, and there were her front teeth, riven and ascendant. Every night at the Italian restaurant I tried to make this happen. In the mornings, Russell took me to the Clinic for my appoint\u00ac ments. \n\u201cWhat are your hobbies, Callie?\u201d \u201cHobbies?\u201d \n\u201cIs there anything you especially like to do?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not really a hobby-type person.\u201d \u201cWhat about sports? Do you like any sports?\u201d \u201cDoes Ping-Pong count?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ll put it down.\u201d Lester smiled from behind his desk. I was on the Le Corbusier daybed across the room, lounging on the cowhide. \u201cWhat about boys?\u201d \n\u201cWhat about them?\u201d \n\u201cIs there a boy at school you like?\u201d \u201cI guess you\u2019ve never been to my school, Doctor.\u201d He checked his file. \u201cOh, it\u2019s a girls\u2019 school, isn\u2019t it?\u201d \u201cYup.\u201d \n\u201cAre you sexually attracted to girls?\u201d Lester said this quickly. It was like a tap from a rubber hammer. But I stifled my reflex. He put down his pen and knit his fingers together. He leaned for\u00ac ward and spoke softly. \u201cI want you to know that this is all between us, Callie. I\u2019m not going to tell your parents anything that you tell me here.\u201d \nI was torn. Lester in his leather chair, with his longish hair and an\u00ac kle boots, was the kind of adult a kid might open up to. He was as old as my father but in league with the younger generation. I longed to tell him about the Object. I longed to tell somebody, anybody. My feelings for her were still so strong they rushed up my throat. But I held them back, wary. I didn\u2019t believe this was all private. \u201cYour mother says you have a close relationship with a friend of yours,\u201d Lester began again. He said the Object\u2019s name. \u201cDo you feel sexually attracted to her? Or have you had sexual relations with her?\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re just friends,\u201d I insisted, a little too loudly. I tried again in a quieter voice. \u201cShe\u2019s my best friend.\u201d In response Lester\u2019s right eye\u00ac brow rose from behind his glasses. It came out of hiding as though it, too, wanted to get a good look at me. And then I found a way out: \u201cI had sex with her brother,\u201d I confessed. \u201cHe\u2019s a junior.\u201d Again Lester showed neither surprise, disapproval, or interest. He made a note on his pad, nodding once. \u201cAnd did you enjoy it?\u201d Here I could tell the truth. \u201cIt hurt,\u201d I said. \u201cPlus I was scared about getting pregnant.\u201d \nLester smiled to himself, jotting in his notebook. \u201cNot to worry,\u201d he said. \nThat was how it went. Every day for an hour I sat in Lester\u2019s office and talked about my life, my feelings, my likes and dislikes. Lester asked all kinds of questions. The answers I gave were sometimes not as important as the way I answered them. He watched my facial ex\u00ac pressions; he noted my style of argument. Females tend to smile at their interlocutors more than males do. Females pause and look for signs of agreement before continuing. Males just look into the mid\u00ac dle distance and hold forth. Women prefer the anecdotal, men the deductive. It was impossible to be in Lester\u2019s line of work without falling back on such stereotypes. He knew their limitations. But they were clinically useful. \nWhen I wasn\u2019t being questioned about my life and feelings, I was writing about them. Most days I sat typing up what Lester called my \u201cPsychological Narrative.\u201d That early autobiography didn\u2019t begin: \u201cI was born twice.\u201d Flashy, rhetorical openings were something I had to get the hang of. It started simply, with the words \u201cMy name is Cal\u00ac liope Margaret. I am fourteen years old. Going on fifteen.\u201d I began with the facts and followed them as long as I could. Sing, Muse, how cunning Ali wrote on that battered Smith Corona! Sing how the typewriter hummed and trembled at her psy\u00ac chiatric revelations! Sing of its two cartridges, one for typing and one for correcting, that so eloquendy represented her predicament, poised between the print of genetics and the Wite-Out of surgery. Sing of die weird smell the typewriter gave off, like WD-40 and salami, and of the Day-Glo flower decal the last person who\u2019d used it had applied, and of the broken F key, which stuck. On that newfan\u00ac gled but soon-to-be obsolete machine I wrote not so much like a kid from the Midwest as a minister\u2019s daughter from Shropshire. I still have a copy of my psychological narrative somewhere. Lester pub\u00ac lished it in his collected works, omitting my name. \u201cI would like to tell of my life,\u201d it runs at one point, \u201cand of the experiences that make myriad my joys and sorrows upon this planet we call Earth.\u201d In de\u00ac scribing my mother, I say, \u201cHer beauty is the kind which seems to be thrown into relief by grief?\u2019 A few pages on there comes the subhead\u00ac ing \u201cCalumnies Caustic and Catty by Callie.\u201d Half the time I wrote like bad George Eliot, the other half like bad Salinger. \u201cIf there\u2019s one thing I hate it\u2019s television.\u201d Not true: I loved television! But on that Smith Corona I quickly discovered that telling the truth wasn\u2019t nearly as much fun as making things up. I also knew that I was writing for an audience\u2014 Dr. Lester\u2014 and that if I seemed normal enough, he might send me back home. This explains the passages about my love of cats (\u201cfeline affection\u201d), the pie recipes, and my deep feelings for nature. \nLester ate it all up. It\u2019s true; I have to give credit where credit\u2019s due. Lester was the first person to encourage my writing. Every night he read through what I had typed up during the day. He didn\u2019t know, of course, that I was making up most of what I wrote, pretending to be the all-American daughter my parents wanted me to be. I fictional\u00ac ized early \u201csex play\u201d and later crushes on boys; I transferred my feel\u00ac ing for the Object onto Hunter and it was amazing how it worked: the tiniest bit of truth made credible the greatest lies. Lester was interested in the gender giveaways of my prose, of course. He measured my jouissance against my linearity'. He picked up on my Victorian flourishes, my antique diction, my girls\u2019 school pro\u00ac priety. These all weighed heavily in his final assessment. There was also the diagnostic tool of pornography. One after\u00ac noon when I arrived for my session with Dr. Lester, there was a movie projector in his office. A screen had been set up before the bookcase, and the blinds drawn. In syrupy light Lester was feeding the celluloid through the sprocket wheel. \n\u201cAre you going to show me my dad\u2019s movie again? From when I was little?\u201d \n\u201cToday I\u2019ve got something a little different,\u201d said Lester. I took up my customary position on the chaise, my arms folded behind me on the cowhide. Dr. Lester switched off the lights and soon the movie began. \nIt was about a pizza deliver}' girl. The tide was, in fact, Annie De\u00ac livers to Tour Door. In the first scene, Annie, wearing cutoffs and a midriff-revealing, Ellie-May blouse, gets out of her car before an oceanside house. She rings the bell. No one is at home. Not wanting the pizza to go to waste, she sits down next to the pool and begins to eat. \nThe production values were low. The pool boy, when he arrived, was badly lit. It was hard to hear what he was saying. But soon enough he was no longer saying anything. Annie had begun to re\u00ac move her clothes. She was down on her knees. The pool boy was naked, too, and then they were on the steps, in the pool, on the div\u00ac ing board, pumping, writhing. I closed my eyes. I didn\u2019t like the raw meat colors of the film. It wasn\u2019t at all beautiful like the tiny paintings in Lester\u2019s office. \nIn a straightforward voice Lester asked from the darkness, \u201cWhich one turns you on?\u201d \n\u201cExcuse me?\u201d \n\u201cWhich one turns you on? The woman or the man?\u201d The true answer was neither. But truth would not do. Sticking to my cover story, I managed to get out, very quietly, \u201cThe boy.\u201d \n\u201cThe pool boy? That\u2019s good. I dig the pizza girl myself. She\u2019s got a great bod.\u201d A sheltered child once, from a reserved Presbyterian home, Lester was now liberated, free of antisexualism. \u201cShe\u2019s got in\u00ac credible tits,\u201d he said. \u201cYou like her tits? Do they turn you on?\u201d \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cThe guy\u2019s cock turns you on?\u201d I nodded, barely, wishing it would be over. But it was not over for a while yet. Annie had other pizzas to deliver. Lester wanted to watch each one. \nSometimes he brought other doctors to see me. A typical unveiling went as follows. I was summoned from my writing studio in the back of the Clinic. In Lester\u2019s office two men in business suits were waiting. They stood when I came in. Lester made introductions. \u201cCallie, I want to you meet Dr. Craig and Dr. Winters.\u201d The doctors shook my hand. It was their first bit of data: my handshake. Dr. Craig squeezed hard, Winters less so. They were care- ti.il about not seeming too eager. Like men meeting a fashion model, diey trained their eyes away from my body and pretended to be in\u00ac terested in me as a person. Lester said, \u201cCallie\u2019s been here at the Clinic for just about a week now.\u201d \n\u201cHow do you like New York?\u201d asked Dr. Craig. \u2018Tve hardly seen it.\u201d \nThe doctors gave me sightseeing suggestions. The atmosphere was light, friendly. Lester put his hand on the small of my back. Men have an annoying way of doing that. They touch your back as though there\u2019s a handle there, and direct you where they want you to go. Or they place their hand on top of your head, paternally. Men and their hands. You\u2019ve got to watch them every minute. Lester\u2019s hand was now pro\u00ac claiming: Here she is. My star attraction. The terrible thing was that I responded to it; I liked the feel of Lester\u2019s hand on my back. I liked the attention. Here were all these people who wanted to meet me. Pretty soon Lester\u2019s hand was escorting me down the hall into the examination room. I knew the drill. Behind the screen I undressed while the doctors waited. The green paper gown was folded on the chair. \n\u201cThe family comes from where, Josephine?\u201d \u201cTurkey. Originally.\u201d \n\u201cPm only acquainted with the Papua New Guinea study,\u201d said Craig. \n\u201cAmong the Sambia, right?\u201d asked Winters. \u201cYes, that\u2019s right,\u201d Lester answered. \u2018There\u2019s a high incidence of the mutation there as well. The Sambia are interesting from a sexological point of view, too. They practice ritualized homosexuality. Sambia males consider contact with females highly polluting. So they\u2019ve or\u00ac ganized social structures to limit exposure as much as possible. The men and boys sleep on one side of the village, the women and girls on the other side. The men go into the women\u2019s longhouse only to procreate. In and out. In fact, the Sambia word for \u2018vagina\u2019 translates literally as \u2018that thing which is truly no good.\u2019 \u201d Soft chuckling came from the other side of the screen. I came out, feeling awkward. I was taller than everyone else in the room, though I weighed much less. The floor felt cold against my bare feet as I crossed to the exam table and jumped up. I lay back. Without having to be told, I lifted my legs and fit my heels in the gynecological stirrups. The room had gone ominously silent. The three doctors came forward, staring down. Their heads formed a trinity above me. Lester pulled the curtain across the table. They bent over me, studying my parts, while Lester led a guided tour. I didn\u2019t know what most of the words meant but after the third or fourth time I could recite the list by heart. \u201cMuscular habitus . . . no gynecomastia . . . hypospadias . . . urogenital sinus . . . blind vagi\u00ac nal pouch . . .\u201d These were my claim to fame. I didn\u2019t feel famous, however. In fact, behind the curtain, I no longer felt as if I were in the room. \n\u201cHow old is she?\u201d Dr. Winters asked. \u201cFourteen,\u201d Lester answered. \u201cShe\u2019ll be fifteen in January.\u201d \u201cSo your position is that chromosomal status has been completely overridden by rearing?\u201d \n\u201cI think that\u2019s pretty clear.\u201d As I lay there, letting Lester, in rubber gloves, do what he had to do, I got a sense of things. Lester wanted to impress the men with the importance of his work. He needed funding to keep the clinic run\u00ac ning. The surgery he performed on transsexuals wasn\u2019t a selling point over at the March of Dimes. To get them interested you had to pull at the heartstrings. You had to put a face on suffering. Lester was try\u00ac ing to do that with me. I was perfect, so polite, so midwestern. No unseemliness attached itself to me, no hint of cross-dresser bars or ads in the back of louche magazines. Dr. Craig wasn\u2019t convinced. \u201cFascinating case, Josephine. No question. But my people will want to know the applications.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s a very rare condition,\u201d Lester admitted. \u201cExceedingly rare. But in terms of research, its importance can\u2019t be overstated. For the rea\u00ac sons I outlined in my office.\u201d Lester remained vague for my benefit, but still persuasive enough for theirs. He hadn\u2019t gotten where he was without certain lobbyist gifts. Meanwhile I was there and not there, cringing at Lester\u2019s touch, sprouting goose bumps, and worrying that I hadn\u2019t washed properly. \nI remember this, too. A long narrow room on a different floor of the hospital. A riser set up at one end before a butterfly light. The photographer putting film in his camera. \u201cOkay, I\u2019m ready,\u201d he said. \nI dropped my robe. Almost used to it now, I climbed up on the riser before the measuring chart. \u201cHold your arms out a litde.\u201d \u201cLike this?\u201d \n\u2018That\u2019s good. I don\u2019t want a shadow.\u201d He didn\u2019t tell me to smile. The textbook publishers would make sure to cover my face. The black box: a fig leaf in reverse, concealing identity while leaving shame exposed. Every night Irma called us in our room. Russell put on a bright voice for him. Irma tried to sound happy when I got on the line. But I took the opportunity to whine and complain. \u201cI\u2019m sick of this hotel. When can we go home?\u201d \u201cSoon as you\u2019re better,\u201d Irma said. When it was time for sleep, we drew the window curtains and turned off the lights. \n\u201cGood night, honey. See you in the morning.\u201d \u201cNight.\u201d \nBut I couldn\u2019t sleep. I kept thinking about that word: \u201cbetter.\u201d What did my father mean? What were they going to do to me? Street sounds made it up to the room, curiously distinct, echoing off the stone building opposite. I listened to the police sirens, the angry horns. My pillow was thin. It smelled like a smoker. Across the strip of carpet my mother was already asleep. Before my conception, she had agreed to my father\u2019s outlandish plan to determine my sex. She had done this so that she wouldn\u2019t be alone, so that she would have a girlfriend in the house. And I had been that friend. I had always been close to my mother. Our temperaments were alike. We liked nothing better than to sit on park benches and watch the faces go by. Now the face I was watching was Russell\u2019s in the other bed. It looked white, blank, as if her cold cream had removed not only her makeup but her personality. Russell\u2019s eyes were moving, though; under the lids they skated back and forth. Callie couldn\u2019t imagine the things Russell was seeing in her dreams back then. But I can. Russell was dreaming a fam\u00ac ily dream. A version of the nightmares Harris had after listening to Livia\u2019s sermons. Dreams of the germs of infants bubbling, dividing. Of hideous creatures growing up from pale foam. Russell didn\u2019t allow herself to think about such things during the day, so they came to her at night. Was it her fault? Should she have resisted Irma when he tried to bend nature to his will? Was there really a God after all, and did He punish people on Earth? These Old World superstitions had been banished from my mother\u2019s conscious mind, but they still oper\u00ac ated in her dreams. From the other bed I watched the play of these dark forces on my mother\u2019s sleeping face. LOOHIHC mVSELF UP ID WEBSTER s TT tossed and turned every night, unable to sleep straight through. I was like the princess and the pea. A pellet of disquiet kept unset- 1L ding me. Sometimes I awoke with the feeling that a spodight had been trained on me while I slept. It was as if my ether body had been conversing with angels, somewhere up near the ceiling. When I opened my eyes they fled. But I could hear the traces of the commu\u00ac nication, the fading echoes of the crystal bell. Some essential infor\u00ac mation was rising from the depths of my being. This information was on the tip of my tongue and yet never surfaced. One thing was cer\u00ac tain: it was all connected with the Object somehow. I lay awake thinking about her, wondering how she was, and pining, grieving. I thought of Detroit, too, of its vacant lots of pale Osiris grass springing up between the condemned houses and those not yet con\u00ac demned, and of the river with its iron runoff, the dead carp floating on the surface, white bellies flaking. I thought of fishermen standing on the concrete freighter docks with their bait buckets and tallboys, the baseball game on the radio. It\u2019s often said that a traumatic experi\u00ac ence early in life marks a person forever, pulls her out of line, saying, \u201cStay there. Don\u2019t move.\u201d My time at the Clinic did that to me. I feel a direct line extending from that girl with her knees steepled beneath the hotel blankets to this person writing now in an Aeron chair. Hers was the duty to live out a mythical life in the actual world, mine to tell about it now. I didn\u2019t have the resources at fourteen, didn\u2019t know enough, hadn\u2019t been to the Anatolian mountain the Greeks call Olym\u00ac pus and the Turks Uludag, just like the soft drink. I hadn\u2019t gotten old enough yet to realize that living sends a person not into the future but back into the past, to childhood and before birth, finally, to commune with the dead. You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there it\u2019s only a quick jump to your grand\u00ac parents, and then before you know it you\u2019re time-traveling. In this life we grow backwards. It\u2019s always the gray-haired tourists on Italian buses who can tell you something about the Etruscans. In the end, it took Lester two weeks to make his determination about me. He scheduled an appointment with my parents for the fol\u00ac lowing Monday. \nIrma had been jetting around during the two weeks, checking on his Hercules franchises, but on the Friday preceding the appoint\u00ac ment he flew back to New York. We spent the weekend spiritlessly sightseeing, assailed by unspoken anxieties. On Monday morning my parents dropped me off at the New York Public Library while they went to see Dr. Lester. \nMy father had dressed that morning with special care. Despite an outward show of tranquillity, Irma was beset by an unaccustomed feeling of dread, and so armored himself in his most commanding clothes: over his plump body, a charcoal pinstripe suit; around his bullfrog neck, a Countess Mara necktie; and in the buttonholes of his shirtsleeves, his \u201clucky\u201d Greek Drama cuff links. Like our Acropolis night-light, the cufflinks had come from Jackie Halas\u2019s souvenir shop in Greektown. Irma wore them whenever he met with bank loan officers or auditors from the IRS. That Monday morning, however, he had trouble putting the cuff links in; his hands were not steady enough. In exasperation he asked Russell to do it. \u201cWhat\u2019s the mat\u00ac ter?\u201d she asked tenderly. But Irma snapped, \u201cJust put the cufflinks in, will you?\u201d He held out his arms, looking away, embarrassed by his body\u2019s weakness. \nSilendy Russell inserted the links, tragedy in one sleeve, comedy in the other. As we came out of die hotel that morning they glittered in the early morning sun, and under die influence of those two-sided accessories, what happened next took on contrasting tones. There was tragedy, certainly, in Irma\u2019s expression as they left me off at the library. During Irma\u2019s time away, his image of me had reverted to the girl I\u2019d been a year earlier. Now he faced the real me again. He saw my ungainly movements as I climbed the library steps, the broadness of my shoulders inside my Papagallo coat. Watching from the cab, Irma came face-to-face with the essence of tragedy, which is something determined before you\u2019re born, something you can\u2019t es\u00ac cape or do anything about, no matter how hard you tty. And Russell, so used to feeling the world through her husband, saw that my prob\u00ac lem was getting worse, was accelerating. Their hearts were wrung with anguish, the anguish of having children, a vulnerability as aston\u00ac ishing as the capacity for love that parenthood brings, in a cuff link set all its own . . . \n. . . But now the cab was driving away, Irma was wiping his brow with his handkerchief; and the grinning face in his right sleeve came into view, for there was a comic aspect to events that day, too. There was comedy in the way Irma, while still worrying about me, kept one eye on the rocketing taxi meter. At the Clinic, there was comedy in the way Russell, idly picking up a waiting-room magazine, found herself reading about the juvenile sexual rehearsal play of rhe\u00ac sus monkeys. There was even a brand of harsh satire in my parents\u2019 quest itself, because it typified the American belief that everything can be solved by doctors. All this comedy, however, is retrospective. As Irma and Russell prepared to see Dr. Lester, a hot foam was rising in their stomachs. Irma was thinking back to his early navy days, to his time in the landing craft. This was just like that. Any minute the door was going to drop away and they would have to plunge into the churning night surf . . . In his office Lester got straight to the point. \u201cLet me review the facts of your daughter\u2019s case,\u201d he said. Russell noted the change at once. Daughter. He had said \u201cdaughter.\u201d The sexologist was looking reassuringly medical that morning. Over his cashmere turtleneck he wore an actual white coat. In his hand he held a sketchpad. His ballpoint pen bore the name of a phar\u00ac maceutical company. The blinds were drawn, the light low. The cou\u00ac ples in the Mughal miniatures had modestly covered themselves in shadow. Sitting in his designer chair, with tomes and journals rising behind him, Dr. Lester appeared serious, full of expertise, as was his speech. \u201cWhat I\u2019m drawing here,\u201d he began, \u201care the fetal genital structures. In other words, this is what a baby\u2019s genitals look like in the womb, in the first few weeks after conception. Male or female, it\u2019s all the same. These two circles here are what we call the all\u00ac purpose gonads. This little squiggle here is a Wolffian duct. And this other squiggle is a Mullerian duct. Okay? The thing to keep in mind is that everybody starts out like this. We\u2019re all born with potential boy parts and girl parts. You, Mr. Margaret, Mrs. Margaret, me\u2014 -everybody. Now\u201d\u2014 he started drawing again\u2014 \u201cas the fetus de\u00ac velops in the womb, what happens is that hormones and enzymes are released\u2014 lefts make them arrows. What do these hormones and en\u00ac zymes do? Well, they turn these circles and squiggles into either boy parts or girl parts. See this circle, the all-purpose gonad? It can be\u00ac come either an ovary or a testis. And this squiggly Mullerian duct can either wither up\u201d\u2014 he scratched it out\u2014 \u201cor grow into a uterus, fal\u00ac lopian tubes, and the inside of the vagina. This Wolffian duct can ei\u00ac ther wither away or grow into a seminal vesicle, epididymis, and vas deferens. Depending on the hormonal and enzymatic influences.\u201d Lester looked up and smiled. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to worry about the terminology. The main thing to remember is this: every baby has Mullerian structures, which are potential girl parts, and Wolffian structures, which are potential boy parts. Those are the internal geni\u00ac talia. But the same thing goes for the external genitalia. A penis is just a very large clitoris. They grow from the same root.\u201d Dr. Lester stopped once more. He folded his hands. My parents, leaning forward in the chairs, waited. \u201cAs I explained, any determination of gender identity must take into account a host of factors. The most important, in your daugh\u00ac ter\u2019s case\u201d\u2014 there it was again, confidently proclaimed\u2014 \u201cis that she has been raised for fourteen years as a girl and indeed thinks of her\u00ac self as female. Her interests, gestures, psychosexual makeup\u2014 all these are female. Are you with me so far?\u201d Irma and Russell nodded. \n\u201cDue to her 5 -alpha-reductase deficiency, Callie\u2019s body does not respond to dihydrotestosterone. What this means is that, in utero, she followed a primarily female line of development. Especially in terms of the external genitalia. That, coupled with her being brought up as a girl, resulted in her thinking, acting, and looking like a girl. The problem came when she started to go through puberty. At pu\u00ac berty, the other androgen\u2014 testosterone\u2014 started to exert a strong ef- feet. The simplest way to put it is like this: Callie is a girl who has a little too much male hormone. We want to correct that.\u201d Neither Irma nor Russell said a word. They weren\u2019t following everything the doctor was saying but, as people do with doctors, they were attentive to his manner, trying to see how serious things were. Lester seemed optimistic, confident, and Russell and Irma began to be filled with hope. \n\u201cThat\u2019s the biology. It\u2019s a very rare genetic condition, by the way. The only other populations where we know of this mutation express\u00ac ing itself are in the Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea, and southeastern Turkey. Not that far from the village your parents came from. About three hundred miles, in fact.\u201d Lester removed his silver glasses. \u201cDo you know of any family member who may have had a similar genital appearance to your daughter\u2019s?\u201d \u201cNot that we know of,\u201d said Irma. \u201cWhen did your parents immigrate?\u201d \u201cNineteen twenty- two.\u201d \n\u201cDo you have any relatives still living in Turkey?\u201d \u201cNot anymore.\u201d \nLester looked disappointed. He had one arm of his glasses in his mouth, and was chewing on it. Possibly he was imagining what it would be like to discover a whole new population of carriers of the 5-alpha-reductase mutation. He had to content himself with discov\u00ac ering me. \nHe put his glasses back on. \u201cThe treatment I\u2019d recommend for your daughter is twofold. First, hormone injections. Second, cos\u00ac metic surgery. The hormone treatments will initiate breast develop\u00ac ment and enhance her female secondary sex characteristics. The surgery will make Callie look exactly like the girl she feels herself to be. In fact, she will be that girl. Her outside and inside will conform. She will look like a normal girl. Nobody will be able to tell a thing. And then Callie can go on and enjoy her life.\u201d Irma\u2019s brow was still furrowed with concentration but from his eyes there was light appearing, rays of relief. He turned toward Russell and patted her leg. \nBut in a timid, breaking voice Russell asked, \u201cWill she be able to have children?\u201d \nLester paused only a second. \u201cI\u2019m afraid not, Mrs. Margaret. Callie will never menstruate.\u201d \u201cBut she\u2019s been menstruating for a few months now,\u201d Russell ob\u00ac jected. \n\u201cI\u2019m afraid that\u2019s impossible. Possibly there was some bleeding from another source.\u201d \nRussell\u2019s eyes filled with tears. She looked away. \u201cI just got a postcard from a former patient,\u201d Lester said consol\u00ac ingly. \u201cShe had a condition similar to your daughter\u2019s. She\u2019s married now. She and her husband adopted two kids and they\u2019re as happy as can be. She plays in the Cleveland Orchestra. Bassoon.\u201d There was a silence, until Irma asked, \u201cIs that it, Doctor? You do this one surgery and we can take her home?\u201d \u201cWe may have to do additional surgery at a later date. But the im\u00ac mediate answer to your question is yes. After the procedure, she can go home.\u201d \n\u201cHow long will she be in the hospital?\u201d \u201cOnly overnight.\u201d \nIt was not a difficult decision, especially as Lester had framed it. A single surgery and some injections would end the nightmare and give my parents back their daughter, their Ali, intact. The same en\u00ac ticement that had led my grandparents to do the unthinkable now of\u00ac fered itself to Irma and Russell. No one would know. No one would ever know. \nWhile my parents were being given a crash course in gonadogenesis, I\u2014 still officially Ali\u2014 was doing some homework myself. In the Reading Room of the New York Public Library I was looking up something in the dictionary. Dr. Lester was correct in thinking that his conversations with colleagues and medical students were over my head. I didn\u2019t know what \u201c5 -alpha-reductase\u201d meant, or \u201cgynecomas\u00ac tia,\u201d or \u201cinguinal canal.\u201d But Lester had underestimated my abilities, too. He didn\u2019t take into consideration die rigorous curriculum at my prep school. He didn\u2019t allow for my excellent research and study skills. Most of all, he didn\u2019t factor in the power of my Latin teachers, Miss Barrie and Miss Silber. So now, as my Wallabees made squish\u00ac ing sounds between the reading tables, as a few men looked up from their books to see what was coming and then looked down (the world was no longer full of eyes), I heard Miss Barrie\u2019s voice in my ear. \u201cInfants, define this word for me: hypospadias. Use your Greek or Latin roots.\u201d \nThe little schoolgirl in my head wriggled in her desk, hand raised high. \u201cYes, Ali?\u201d Miss Barrie called on me. \u201cHypo. Below or beneath. Like \u2018hypodermic.\u2019 \u201d \u201cBrilliant. And spadiasT \u2019 \n\u201cUrn urn . . .\u201d \n\u201cCan anyone come to our poor muse\u2019s aid?\u201d But, in die classroom of my brain, no one could. So that was why I was here. Because I knew that I had something below or beneath but I didn\u2019t know what that something was. I had never seen such a big dictionary before. The Webster\u2019s at the New York Public Library stood in the same relation to other dictio\u00ac naries of my acquaintance as the Empire State Building did to other buildings. It was an ancient, medieval-looking thing, bound in brown leather that brought to mind a falconer\u2019s gaundet. The pages were gilded like the Bible\u2019s. Flipping pages through the alphabet, past cantabile to eryngo, past fandango to formicate (that\u2019s with an m), past hypertonia to hyposensi- tivity, and there it was: \nhypospadias New Latin, from Greek, man with hypospadias fr. hypo- + prob from spadon , eunuch, fr. span , to tear, pluck, pull, draw. \u2014An abnormality of the penis in which the urethra opens on its under surface. See synonyms at eunuch. I did as instructed and got \neunuch \u20141. A castrated man; especially, one of those who were employed as harem attendants or functionaries in certain Oriental courts. 2. A man whose testes have not developed. See synonyms at hermaphrodite. \nFollowing where the trail led, I finally reached hermaphrodite \u20141. One having the sex organs and many of the secondary sex characteristics of both male and female. 2. Anything comprised of a combination of diverse or contra\u00ac dictor)' elements. See synonyms at MONSTER. And that is where I stopped. And looked up, to see if anyone was watching. The vast Reading Room thrummed with silent energy: people thinking, writing. The painted ceiling bellied overhead like a sail, and down below the green desk lamps glowed, illuminating faces bent over books. I was stooping over mine, my hair falling onto the pages, covering up the definition of myself. My lime green coat was hanging open. I had an appointment with Lester later in the day and my hair was washed, my underpants fresh. My bladder was full and I crossed my legs, putting off a trip to the bathroom. Fear was stabbing me. I longed to be held, caressed, and that was impossible. I laid my hand on the dictionary and looked at it. Slender, leaf-shaped, it had a braided rope ring on one finger, a gift from the Object. The rope was getting dirty. I looked at my pretty hand and then pulled it away and faced the word again. There it was, monster , in black and white, in a battered dictionary in a great city library. A venerable, old book, the shape and size of a headstone, with yellowing pages that bore marks of the multitudes who had consulted them before me. There were pencil scrawls and ink stains, dried blood, snack crumbs; and the leather binding itself was secured to the lectern by a chain. Here was a book that contained the collected knowledge of the past while giving evidence of present social conditions. The chain suggested that some library visitors might take it upon themselves to see that the dictionary circulated. The dictionary contained every word in the English language but the chain knew only a few. It knew thief and steal and, maybe, purloined. The chain spoke of poverty and mistrust and inequality and decadence. Callie herself was holding on to this chain now. She was tugging on it, winding it around her hand so that her fingers went white, as she stared down at that word. Monster. Still there. It had not moved. And she wasn\u2019t reading this word on the wall of her old bathroom stall. There was graffiti in Webster\u2019s but the synonym wasn\u2019t part of it. The synonym was official, authoritative; it was the verdict that the culture gave on a person like her. Monster. That was what she was. That was what Dr. Lester and his colleagues had been saying. It explained so much, really. It explained her mother crying in the next room. It ex\u00ac plained the false cheer in Irma\u2019s voice. It explained why her parents had brought her to New York, so that the doctors could work in se\u00ac cret. It explained the photographs, too. What did people do when they came upon Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster? They tried to get a picture. For a second Callie saw herself that way. As a lumbering, shaggy creature pausing at the edge of woods. As a humped con- volvulus rearing its dragon\u2019s head from an icy lake. Her eyes were fill\u00ac ing now, making the print swim, and she turned away and hurried out of the library. \nBut the synonym pursued her. All the way out the door and down the steps between the stone lions, Webster\u2019s Dictionary kept calling after her, Monster, Monster! The bright banners hanging from the tympanum proclaimed the word. The definition inserted itself into billboards and the ads on passing buses. On Fifth Avenue a cab was pulling up. Her father jumped out, smiling and waving. When Callie saw him, her heart lifted. The voice of Webster\u2019s stopped speaking in her head. Her father wouldn\u2019t be smiling like that unless the news from the doctor had been good. Callie laughed and sprinted down the library steps, almost tripping. Her emotions soared for the time it took to reach the street, maybe five or eight seconds. But coming closer to Irma, she learned something about medical reports. The more people smile, the worse the news. Irma grinned at her, per\u00ac spiring in pinstripes, and once again the tragedy cuff link glinted in the sun. \nThey knew. Her parents knew she was a monster. And yet here was Irma, opening the car door for her; here was Russell, inside, smiling as Callie climbed in. The cab took them to a restaurant and soon the three of them were looking over menus and ordering food. Irma waited until the drinks were served. Then, somewhat for\u00ac mally, he began. \u201cYour mother and I had a little chat with the doctor this morning, as you are aware. The good news is that you\u2019ll be back at home this week. You won\u2019t miss much school. Now for the bad news. Are you ready for the bad news, Cal?\u201d Irma\u2019s eyes were saying that the bad news was not all that bad. \u201cThe bad news is you have to have a little operation. Very minor. \u2018Operation\u2019 isn\u2019t really the right word. I think the doctor called it a \u2018procedure.\u2019 They have to knock you out and you have to stay overnight in the hospital. That\u2019s it. There\u2019ll be some pain but they can give you painkillers for it.\u201d With that, Irma rested. Russell reached out and patted Callie\u2019s hand. \u201cIt\u2019ll be okay, honey,\u201d she said in a thickened voice. Her eyes were watery, red. \n\u201cWhat kind of operation?\u201d Callie asked her father. \u201cJust a little cosmetic procedure. Like getting a mole removed.\u201d He reached out and playfully caught Callie\u2019s nose between his knuck\u00ac les. \u201cOr getting your nose fixed.\u201d Callie pulled her head away, angry. \u201cDon\u2019t do that!\u201d \u201cSorry,\u201d said Irma. He cleared his throat, blinking. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with me?\u201d Ali asked, and now her voice broke. Tears were running down her cheeks. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with me, Daddy?\u201d \nIrma\u2019s face darkened. He swallowed hard. Callie waited for him to say the word, to quote Webster\u2019s, but he didn\u2019t. He only looked at her across the table, his head low, his eyes dark, warm, sad, and full of love. There was so much love in Irma\u2019s eyes that it was impossible to look for truth. \n\u201cIt\u2019s a hormonal thing, what you\u2019ve got,\u201d he said. \u201cI was always under the impression that men had male hormones and women had female hormones. But everybody has both, apparendy.\u201d Still Callie waited. \n\u201cWhat you\u2019ve got, see, is you\u2019ve got a little too much of the male hormones and not quite enough of the female hormones. So what the doctor wants to do is give you a shot every now and then to get everything working right.\u201d \nHe didn\u2019t say the word. I didn\u2019t make him. \u201cIt\u2019s a hormonal thing,\u201d Irma repeated. \u201cIn the grand scheme of things, no big deal.\u201d \nLester believed that a patient of my age was capable of understanding the essentials. And so, that afternoon, he did not mince words. In his mellow, pleasing, educated voice, looking directly into my eyes, Lester declared that I was a girl whose clitoris was merely larger than those of other girls. He drew the same charts for me as he had for my par\u00ac ents. When I pressed him on the details of my surgery, he said only this: \u201cWe\u2019re going to do an operation to finish your genitalia. They\u2019re not quite finished yet and we want to finish them.\u201d He never mentioned anything about hypospadias, and I began to hope that the word didn\u2019t apply to me. Maybe I had taken it out of context. Dr. Lester may have been referring to another patient. Web\u00ac ster\u2019s had said that hypospadias was an abnormality of the penis. But Dr. Lester was telling me that I had a clitoris. I understood that both these things grew out of the same fetal gonad, but that didn\u2019t matter. If I had a clitoris\u2014 and a specialist was telling me that I did\u2014 what could I be but a girl? \nThe adolescent ego is a hazy thing, amorphous, cloudlike. It wasn\u2019t difficult to pour my identity into different vessels. In a sense, I was able to take whatever form was demanded of me. I only wanted to know the dimensions. Lester was providing them. My parents sup\u00ac ported him. The prospect of having everything solved was wildly at\u00ac tractive to me, too, and while I lay on the chaise I didn\u2019t ask myself where my feelings for the Object fit in. I only wanted it all to be over. I wanted to go home and forget it had ever happened. So I listened to Lester quietly and made no objections. He explained the estrogen injections would induce my breasts to grow. \u201cYou won\u2019t be Raquel Welch, but you won\u2019t be Twiggy either.\u201d My facial hair would diminish. My voice would rise from tenor to alto. But when I asked if I would finally get my period, Dr. Lester was frank. \u201cNo. You won\u2019t. Ever. You won\u2019t be able to have a baby your\u00ac self, Callie. If you want to have a family, you\u2019ll have to adopt.\u201d I received this news calmly. Having children wasn\u2019t something I thought much about at fourteen. There was a knock on the door, and the receptionist stuck her head in. \u201cSorry, Dr. Lester. But could I bother you a minute?\u201d \u201cThat depends on Callie.\u201d He smiled at me. \u201cYou mind taking a little break? I\u2019ll be right back.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t mind.\u201d \n\u201cSit there a few minutes and see if any other questions occur to you.\u201d He left the room. \nWhile he was gone, I didn\u2019t think of any other questions. I sat in my chair, not thinking anything at all. My mind was curiously blank. It was the blankness of obedience. With the unerring instinct of chil\u00ac dren, I had surmised what my parents wanted from me. They wanted me to stay the way I was. And this was what Dr. Lester now promised. I was brought out of my abstracted state by a salmon-colored cloud passing low in the sky. I got up and went to the window to look out at the river. I pressed my cheek against the glass to see as far south as possible, where the skyscrapers rose. I told myself that I would live in New York when I grew up. \u201cThis is the city for me,\u201d I said. I had begun to cry again. I tried to stop. Dabbing at my eyes, I wandered around the office and finally found myself in front of one of the Mughal miniatures. In the small, ebony frame, two tiny figures were making love. Despite the exertion implied by their activity, their faces looked peaceful. Their expressions showed neither strain nor ec\u00ac stasy. But of course the faces weren't the focal point. The geometry of the lovers\u2019 bodies, the graceful calligraphy of their limbs led the eye straight to the fact of their genitalia. The woman\u2019s pubic hair was like a patch of evergreen against white snow, the man\u2019s member like a redwood sprouting from it. I looked. I looked once again to see how other people were made. As I looked, I didn\u2019t take sides. I under\u00ac stood both the urgency of the man and the pleasure of the woman. My mind was no longer blank. It was filling with a dark knowledge. I swung around. I wheeled and looked at Dr. Lester\u2019s desk. A file sat open there. He had left it when he hurried off. PRELIMINARY STUDY: \nGENETIC XY (MALE) RAISED AS FEMALE The following illustrative case indicates that there is no preordained correspondence between ge\u00ac netic and genital structure, or between masculine or feminine behavior and chromosomal status. SUBJECT: Ali Margaret INTERVIEWER: Josephine Xuce, M.D. INTRODUCTORY DATA: The patient is fourteen years old. She has lived as a female all her life. At birth, somatic appearance was of a penis so small as to appear to be a clitoris. The subject\u2019s XY karyotype was not discovered until puberty, when she began to virilize. The girl\u2019s parents at first refused to believe the doctor who delivered the news and subsequently asked for two other opinions before coming to the Gender Identity Clinic and New York Hospital Clinic. \nDuring examination, undescended testes could be palpated. The \u201cpenis\u201d was slightly hypospadiac, with the urethra opening on the underside. The girl has always sat to urinate like other girls. Blood tests confirmed an XY chromosomal status. In addition, blood tests revealed that the subject was suffering from 5-alpha-reductase deficiency syndrome. An exploratory laparotomy was not per\u00ac formed. \nA family photograph (see case file) shows her at age twelve. She appears to be a happy, healthy girl with no visible signs of tomboyishness , de\u00ac spite her XY karyotype. \nFIRST IMPRESSION: The subject\u2019s facial expression, though somewhat stern at times, is overall pleas\u00ac ant and receptive, with frequent smiling. The sub\u00ac ject often casts her eyes downward in a modest or coy manner. She is feminine in her movements and gestures, and the slight gracelessness of her walk is in keeping with females of her generation. Though due to her height some people may find the subject\u2019s gender at first glance somewhat indeter\u00ac minate, any prolonged observation would result in a decision that she was indeed a girl. Her voice, in fact, has a soft, breathy quality. She inclines her head to listen when another person speaks and does not hold forth or assert her opinions in a bullying manner characteristic of males. She often makes humorous remarks. \nFAMILY: The girl\u2019s parents are fairly typical Mid- westerners of the World War II generation. The father identifies himself as a Republican. The mother is a friendly, intelligent, and caring per\u00ac son, perhaps slightly prone to depression or neu\u00ac rosis. She accedes to the subservient wifely role typical of women of her generation. The father only came to the Clinic twice, citing business obligations, but from those two meetings it is apparent that he is a dominating presence, a \u201cself-made\u201d man and former naval officer. In addi\u00ac tion, the subject has been raised in the Greek Or\u00ac thodox tradition, with its strongly sex-defined roles. In general the parents seem assimilat ionist and very \u201call-American\u201d in their outlook, but the presence of this deeper ethnic identity should not be overlooked. \nSEXUAL FUNCTION: The subject reports engaging in childhood sexual play with other children, in every case of which she acted as the feminine partner, usually pulling up her dress and letting a boy simulate coition atop her. She experienced pleasurable erotosexual sensations by position\u00ac ing herself by the water jets of a neighbor\u2019s swimming pool. She masturbated frequently from a young age. \nThe subject has had no serious boyfriends, but this may be due to her attending an all-girls school or from a feeling of shame about her body. The subject is aware of the abnormal appearance of her genitalia and has gone to great lengths in the locker room and other communal dressing areas to avoid being seen naked. Nevertheless, she reports having had sexual intercourse, one time only, with the brother of her best friend, an experience she found painful but which was successful from the point of view of teenage romantic exploration. INTERVIEW: The subject spoke in rapid bursts, clearly and articulately but with the occasional breathlessness associated with anxiety. Speech patterning and characteristics appeared to be fem\u00ac inine in terms of oscillation of pitch and direct eye contact. She expresses sexual interest in males exclusively. \nCONCLUSION: In speech, mannerisms, and dress, the subject manifests a feminine gender identity and role, despite a contrary chromosomal status. It is clear by this that sex of rearing, rather than genetic determinants, plays a greater role in the establishment of gender identity. As the girl\u2019s gender identity was firmly estab\u00ac lished as female at the time her condition was discovered, a decision to implement feminizing sur\u00ac gery along with corresponding hormonal treatments seems correct. To leave the genitals as they are today would expose her to all manner of humilia\u00ac tion. Though it is possible that the surgery may result in partial or total loss of erotosexual sensation, sexual pleasure is only one factor in a happy life. The ability to marry and pass as a normal woman in society are also important goals, both of which will not be possible without femi\u00ac nizing surgery and hormone treatment. Also, it is hoped that new methods of surgery will minimize the effects of erotosexual dysfunction brought about by surgeries in the past, when feminizing surgery was in its infancy. \nThat evening, when my mother and I got back to the hotel, Irma had a surprise. Tickets to a Broadway musical. I acted excited but later, after dinner, crawled into my parents\u2019 bed, claiming I was too tired to go. \n\u201cToo tired?\u201d Irma said. \u201cWhat do you mean you\u2019re too tired?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s okay, honey,\u201d said Russell. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to go.\u201d \u201cSupposed to be a good show, Cal.\u201d \u201cIs Ethel Merman in it?\u201d I asked. \u201cNo, smart-ass,\u201d Irma said, smiling. \u201cEthel Merman is not in it. She\u2019s not on Broadway right now. So we\u2019re seeing something with Carol Charming. She\u2019s pretty good, too. Why don\u2019t you come along?\u201d \n\u201cNo thanks,\u201d I said. \n\u201cOkay, then. You\u2019re missing out.\u201d They started to go. \u201cBye, honey,\u201d my mother said. Suddenly I jumped out of bed and ran to Russell, hugging her. \u201cWhat\u2019s this for?\u201d she asked. My eyes brimmed with tears. Russell took them to be tears of relief at everything we\u2019d been through. In the narrow entryway carved from a former suite, cockeyed, dim, the two of us stood hugging and crying. \nWhen they were gone, I got my suitcase from the closet. Then, looking at the turquoise flowers, I exchanged it for my father\u2019s suit\u00ac case, a gray Samsonite. I left my skirts and my Fair Isle sweater in the dresser drawers. I packed only the darker garments, a blue crew neck, the alligator shirts, and my corduroys. The brassiere I abandoned, too. For the time being, I held on to my socks and panties, and I tossed in my toiletry case entire. When I was finished, I searched in Irma\u2019s garment bag for the cash he\u2019d hidden there. The wad was fairly large and came to nearly three hundred dollars. It wasn\u2019t all Dr. Lester\u2019s fault. I had lied to him about many things. His decision was based on false data. But he had been false in turn. On a piece of stationery, I left a note for my parents. Dear Mom and Dad, \nI know you\u2019re only trying to do what\u2019s best for me, but I don\u2019t think anyone knows for sure what\u2019s best. I love you and don\u2019t want to be a problem, so I\u2019ve decided to go away. I know you\u2019ll say I\u2019m not a problem, but I know I am. If you want to know why I\u2019m doing this, you should ask Dr. Lester, who is a big liar! I am not a girl. I\u2019m a boy. That\u2019s what I found out today. So I\u2019m going where no one knows me. Everyone in Grosse Pointe will talk when they find out. Sorry I took your money, Dad, but I promise to pay you back someday, with interest. \nPlease don\u2019t worry about me. I will be ALL RIGHT ! Despite its content, I signed this declaration to my parents: \u201cCallie.\u201d It was the last time I was ever their daughter. go west, vounc man \n^ nee again, in Berlin, a Margaret lives among the Turks. I feel comfortable here in Schoneberg. The Turkish shops along Haupt- strasse are like those my father used to take me to. The food is the same, the dried figs, the halvah, the stuffed grape leaves. The faces are the same, too, seamed, dark-eyed, significandy boned. Despite family history, I feel drawn to Turkey. I\u2019d like to work in the embassy in Is\u00ac tanbul. I\u2019ve put in a request to be transferred there. It would bring me full circle. \nUntil that happens, I do my part this way. I watch the bread baker in the doner restaurant downstairs. He bakes bread in a stone oven like those they used to have in Smyrna. He uses a long-handled spat\u00ac ula to shift and retrieve the bread. All day long he works, fourteen, sixteen hours, with unflagging concentration, his sandals leaving prints in the flour dust on the floor. An artist of bread baking. Margaret, an American, grandchild of Greeks, admires this Turk\u00ac ish immigrant to Germany, this Gastarbeiter , as he bakes bread on Hauptstrasse here in the year 2001. We\u2019re all made up of many parts, other halves. Not just me. \nThe bell on the door of Ed\u2019s Barbershop in the Scranton bus station merrily rang. Ed, who had been reading the newspaper, lowered it to greet his next customer. \nThere was a pause. And then Ed said, \u201cWhat happened? You lose a bet?\u201d \nStanding inside the door but looking as though he might flee back out of it was a teenage kid, tall, stringy, and an odd mix if ever Ed saw one. His hair was a hippie\u2019s and came down past his shoul\u00ac ders. But he was wearing a dark suit. The jacket was baggy and the trousers were too short, riding high above his chunky tan, square- toed shoes. Even from across the shop Ed detected a musty, thrift- store smell. Yet the kid\u2019s suitcase was big and gray, a businessman\u2019s. \u201cI\u2019m just tired of the style,\u201d the kid answered. \u201cYou and me both,\u201d said Ed the barber. He directed me to a chair. I\u2014 the easily rechristened Cal Margaret, teen runaway\u2014 set my suitcase down and hung my jacket on the rack. I walked across the room, concentrating as I did on walking like a boy. Like a stroke victim, I was having to relearn all the simple motor skills. As far as walking went, this wasn\u2019t too diffi\u00ac cult. The time when Baker & Inglis girls had balanced books on their heads was long gone. The slight gracelessness of my walk, which Dr. Lester had commented on, predisposed me to join the graceless sex. My skeleton was a male\u2019s, with its higher center of gravity. It pro\u00ac moted a tidy, forward thrust. It was my knees that gave me trouble. I had a tendency to walk knock-kneed, which made my hips sway and my back end twitch. I tried to keep my pelvis steady now. To walk like a boy you let your shoulders sway, not your hips. And you kept your feet farther apart. All this I had learned in a day and a half on the road. \nI climbed into the chair, glad to stop moving. Ed the barber tied a paper bib around my neck. Next he draped an apron over me. All the while he was taking my measure and shaking his head. \u201cI never un\u00ac derstood what it was with you young people and the long hair. Nearly ruined my business. I get mostly retired fellas in here. Guys who come in my shop for a haircut, they don\u2019t have any hair.\u201d He chuckled, but only briefly. \u201cOkay, so nowadays the hairstyles are a lit\u00ac tle bit shorter. I think, good, maybe I can make a living. But no. Now everyone wants to go unisex. They want to be shampooed .\u201d He leaned toward me, suspicious. \u201cYou don\u2019t want a shampoo, do you?\u201d \u201cJust a haircut.\u201d \nHe nodded, satisfied. \u201cHow do you want it?\u201d \u201cShort,\u201d I ventured. \n\u201cShort short?\u201d he asked. \n\u201cShort,\u201d I said, \u201cbut not too short.\u201d \u201cOkay. Short but not too short. Good idea. See how the other half lives.\u201d \nI froze, thinking he meant something by this. But he was only joking. \nAs for himself, Ed kept a neat head. What hair he had was slicked back. He had a brutal, pugnacious face. His nostrils were dark and fiery as he labored around me, pumping up the chair and stropping his razor. \n\u201cYour father let you keep your hair like this?\u201d \u201cUp until now.\u201d \n\u201cSo the old man is finally straightening you out. Listen, you won\u2019t regret it. Women don\u2019t want a guy looks like a girl. Don\u2019t be\u00ac lieve what they tell you, they want a sensitive male. Bullshit!\u201d The swearing, the straight razors, the shaving brushes, all these were my welcome to the masculine world. The barber had the foot\u00ac ball game on the TV The calendar showed a vodka bottle and a pretty girl in a white fur bikini. I planted my feet on the waffle iron of the footrest while he swiveled me back and forth before the flashing mir\u00ac rors. \n\u201cHoly mackerel, when\u2019s the last time you had a haircut anyway?\u201d \u201cRemember the moon landing?\u201d \n\u201cYeah. That\u2019s about right.\u201d \nHe turned me to face the mirror. And there she was, for the last time, in the silvered glass: Ali. She still wasn\u2019t gone yet. She was like a captive spirit, peeking out. Ed the barber put a comb in my long hair. He lifted it experimen\u00ac tally, making snipping sounds with his scissors. The blades weren\u2019t touching my hair. The snipping was only a kind of mental barbering, a limbering up. This gave me time for second thoughts. What was I doing? What if Dr. Lester was right? What if that girl in the mirror re\u00ac ally was me? How did I think I could defect to the other side so eas\u00ac ily? What did I know about boys, about men? I didn\u2019t even like them that much. \n\u201cThis is like taking down a tree,\u201d opined Ed. \u201cFirst you gotta go in and lop off the branches. Then you chop down the trunk.\u201d I closed my eyes. I refused to return Ali\u2019s gaze any longer. gripped the armrests and waited for the barber to do his work. But in the next second the scissors clinked onto the shelf. With a buzz, the electric clippers switched on. They circled my head like bees. Again Ed the barber lifted my hair with his comb and I heard the buzzer dive in toward my head. \u201cHere we go,\u201d he said. My eyes were still closed. But I knew there was no going back now. The clippers raked across my scalp. I held firm. Hair fell away in strips. \n\u201cI should charge you extra,\u201d said Ed. Now I did open my eyes, alarmed about the cost. \u201cHow much is it?\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t worry. Same price. This is my patriotic deed today. I\u2019m making the world safe for democracy.\u201d My grandparents had fled their home because of a war. Now, some fifty-two years later, I was fleeing myself. I felt that I was saving myself just as definitively. I was fleeing without much money in my pocket and under the alias of my new gender. A ship didn\u2019t carry me across the ocean; instead, a series of cars conveyed me across a conti\u00ac nent. I was becoming a new person, too, just like Raul and Desde- mona, and I didn\u2019t know what would happen to me in this new world to which I\u2019d come. \nI was also scared. I had never been out on my own before. I didn\u2019t know how the world operated or how much things cost. From the Lochmoor Hotel I had taken a cab to the bus terminal, not knowing the way. At Port Authority I wandered past the tie shops and fast-food stalls, looking for the ticket booths. When I found them I bought a ticket for a night bus to Chicago, paying the fare as far as Scranton, Pennsylvania, which was as much as I thought I could afford. The bums and druggies occupying the scoop benches looked me over, sometimes hissing or smacking their lips. They scared me, too. I nearly gave up the idea of running away. If I hur\u00ac ried, I could make it back to the hotel before Irma and Russell returned from seeing Carol Charming. I sat in the waiting area, con\u00ac sidering this, the edge of the Samsonite clamped between my knees as though any minute someone might try to snatch it away. I played out scenes in my head where I declared my intention of living as a boy and my parents, at first protesting but then breaking down, ac\u00ac cepted me. A policeman passed by. When he was gone I went to sit next to a middle-aged woman, hoping to be taken for her daughter. Over the loudspeaker a voice announced that my bus was boarding. I looked up at the other passengers, the poor traveling by night. There was an aging cowboy carrying a duffel bag and a souvenir Louis Armstrong statuette; there were two Sri Lankan Catholic priests; there were no less than three overweight mothers loaded down with children and bedding, and a little man who turned out to be a horse jockey, with cigarette wrinkles and brown teeth. They lined up to board the bus while the scene in my head began to go off on its own, to stop taking my directorial notes. Now Irma was shaking his head no, and Dr. Lester was putting on a surgical mask, and my schoolmates back in Grosse Pointe were pointing at me and laugh\u00ac ing, their faces lit with malicious joy. In a trance of fear, dazed yet trembling, I proceeded onto the dark bus. For protection I took a seat next to the middle-aged lady. The other passengers, accustomed to these night journeys, were already taking out thermoses and unwrapping sandwiches. The smell of fried chicken began to waft from the back seats. I was suddenly very hun\u00ac gry. I wished that I were back at the hotel, ordering room service. I would have to get new clothes soon. I needed to look older and less like prey. I had to start dressing like a boy. The bus pulled out of Port Authority and I watched, terrified at what I was doing but unable to stop myself, as we made our way out of the city and through the long yellow-lit dizzy tunnel that led to New Jersey. Going underground, through the rock, with the filthy river bottom above us, and fish swimming in the black water on the other side of the curving tiles. At a Salvation Army outlet in Scranton, not far from the bus sta\u00ac tion, I went looking for a suit. I pretended I was shopping for my brother, though no one asked any questions. Male sizes baffled me. I held the jackets discreetly against me to see what might fit. Finally I found a suit roughly my size. It was sturdy-looking and all-weather. The label inside said \u201cDurenmatt\u2019s Men\u2019s Clothiers, Pittsburgh.\u201d I took off my Papagallo. Checking to see if anyone was watching, I tried the jacket on. I didn\u2019t feel what a boy would feel. It wasn\u2019t like putting on your father\u2019s jacket and becoming a man. It was like being cold and having your date give you his jacket to wear. As it settled on my shoulders, the jacket felt big, warm, comforting, alien. (And who was my date in this case? The football captain? No. My steady was the World War II vet, dead of heart disease. My guy was the Elk Lodge member who had moved to Texas.) The suit was only part of my new identity. It was the haircut that mattered most. Now, in the barbershop, Ed was going at me with a whisk brush. The bristles cast a powder in the air and I closed my eyes. I felt myself being wheeled around again and the barber said, \u201cOkay, that\u2019s it.\u201d \nI opened my eyes. And in the mirror I didn\u2019t see myself. Not the Mona Lisa with the enigmatic smile any longer. Not the shy girl with the tangled black hair in her face, but instead her fraternal twin brother. With the screen of my hair removed, the recent changes in my face were far more evident. My jaw looked squarer, broader, my neck thicker, with a bulge of Adam\u2019s apple in the center. It was un\u00ac questionably a male face, but the feelings inside that boy were still a girl\u2019s. To cut off your hair after a breakup was a feminine reaction. It was a way to start over, to renounce vanity, to spite love. I knew that I would never see the Object again. Despite bigger problems, greater worries, it was heartbreak that seized me when I first saw my male face in the mirror. I thought: it\u2019s over. By cutting off my hair I was punishing myself for loving someone so much. I was trying to be stronger. \nBy the time I came out of Ed\u2019s Barbershop, I was a new creation. The other people passing through the bus station, to the extent they noticed me at all, took me for a student at a nearby boarding school. A prep school kid, a touch arty, wearing an old man\u2019s suit and no doubt reading Camus or Kerouac. There was a kind of beatnik qual\u00ac ity to the Durenmatt\u2019s suit. The trousers had a sharkskin sheen. Be\u00ac cause of my height I could pass for older than I was, seventeen, maybe eighteen. Under the suit was a crew neck sweater, under the sweater was an alligator shirt, two protective layers of parental money next to my skin, plus the golden Wallabees on my feet. If anyone no\u00ac ticed me, they thought I was playing dress-up, as teenagers do. Inside these clothes my heart was still beating like mad. I didn\u2019t know what to do next. Suddenly I had to pay attention to things I\u2019d never paid any attention to. To bus schedules and bus fares, to bud\u00ac geting money, to worrying about money, to scanning a menu for the absolutely cheapest thing that would fill me up, which that day in Scranton turned out to be chili. I ate a bowl of it, stirring in multiple packets of crackers, and looked over the bus routes. The best thing to do, it being fall, was to head south or west for the winter, and be\u00ac cause I didn\u2019t want to go south I decided to go west. To California. Why not? I checked to see what the fare would be. As I feared, it was too much. \nThroughout the morning it had drizzled on and off, but now the clouds were breaking up. Across the desperate eatery, through the rain-greased windows and beyond the access road that bounded a strip of sloping littered grass, ran the Interstate. I watched the traffic whizzing along, feeling less hungry now but still lonely and scared. The waitress came over and asked if I wanted coffee. Though I had never had a cup of coffee before, I said yes. After she served it to me, I doctored it with two packets of creamer and four of sugar. When it tasted roughly like coffee ice cream, I drank it. From the terminal buses were steadily pulling out, leaving gassy trails. Down on the highway cars sped along. I wanted to take a shower. I wanted to lie down in clean sheets and go to sleep. I could get a motel room for $9.95, but I wanted to be farther away before I did that. I sat in the booth for a long time. I couldn\u2019t see my way to the next step. Finally, an idea occurred to me. Paying my bill, I left the bus terminal. I crossed the access road and shuffled down the slope. I set down my suitcase on the shoulder and, stepping out to face the oncoming traffic, tentatively stuck out my thumb. My parents had always cautioned me against hitchhiking. Some\u00ac times Irma pointed out stories in the newspaper detailing the grue\u00ac some ends of coeds who had made that mistake. My thumb was not very high in the air. Half of me was against the idea. Cars sped past. No one stopped. My reluctant thumb was shaking. I had miscalculated with Lester. I thought that after talking to me he would decide that I was normal and leave me alone. But I was be\u00ac ginning to understand something about normality. Normality wasn\u2019t normal. It couldn\u2019t be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself. But people\u2014 -and especially doctors\u2014 had doubts about normality. They weren\u2019t sure normality was up to the job. And so they felt in\u00ac clined to give it a boost. \nAs for my parents, I held them blameless. They were only trying to save me from humiliation, lovelessness, even death. I learned later that Dr. Lester had emphasized the medical risk in letting my condi\u00ac tion go untreated. The \u201cgonadal tissue\u201d as he referred to my unde\u00ac scended testes, often became cancerous in later years. (I\u2019m forty-one now, however, and so far nothing has happened.) A semi appeared around the bend, blowing black smoke from an upright exhaust pipe. In the window of the red cab the driver\u2019s head was bouncing like the head of a doll on a spring. His face turned in my direction, and as the huge truck roared past, he engaged the brakes. The rear wheels of the cab smoked a little, squealed, and then twenty yards ahead of me the truck was waiting. Lifting my suitcase, with a wild excitement, I ran up to the truck. But when I reached it I stopped. The door looked so high up. The huge vehicle sat rumbling, shuddering. I couldn\u2019t see the driver from my vantage point and stood paralyzed with indecision. Then sud\u00ac denly the trucker\u2019s face appeared in the window, startling me. He opened the door. \n\u201cYou coming up or what?\u201d \n\u201cComing,\u201d I said. \nThe cab was not clean. He had been traveling for some time and there were food containers and bottles strewn around. \u201cYour job is to keep me awake,\u201d the trucker said. When I didn\u2019t respond right away he looked over at me. His eyes were red. Red, too, were the Fu Manchu mustache and the long side\u00ac burns. \u201cJust keep talking,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat do you want to talk about?\u201d \u201cFuck-all if I know!\u201d he shouted angrily. But just as suddenly: \u201cIn\u00ac dians! You know anything about Indians?\u201d \u201cAmerican Indians?\u201d \n\u201cYeah. I pick up a lot of Injuns when I drive out west. Those are some of the craziest motherfuckers I ever heard. They got all kinds of theories and shit.\u201d \n\u201cLike what?\u201d \n\u201cLike some of \u2019em say they didn\u2019t come over the Bering land bridge. Are you familiar with the Bering land bridge? That\u2019s up there in Alaska. Called the Bering Strait now. It\u2019s water. Little sliver of wa\u00ac ter between Alaska and Russia. Long time ago, though, it was land, and that\u2019s where the Indians came over from. From like China or Mongolia. Indians are really Orientals.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t know that\u201d I said. I was feeling less scared now than be\u00ac fore. The trucker was apparently taking me at face value. \u201cBut some of these Indians I pick up, they say their people didn\u2019t come over the land bridge. They say they come from a lost island, like Adantis.\u201d \n\u201cJoin the club.\u201d \n\u201cYou know what else they say?\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cThey say it was Indians wrote the Constitution. The U.S. Consti\u00ac tution C \nAs it turned out, he did most of the talking. I said very litde. But my presence was enough to keep him awake. Talking about Indians reminded him about meteors; there was a meteor in Montana that the Indians considered sacred, and soon he was telling me about the celestial sights a trucker\u2019s life acquainted a person with, the shooting stars and comets and green rays. \u201cYou ever seen a green ray?\u201d he asked me. \n\u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cThey say you can\u2019t take a picture of a green ray, but I got one. I always keep a camera in the cab in case I come across some mind- blowing shit like that. And one time I saw this green ray and I grabbed my camera and I got it. I\u2019ve got the picture at home.\u201d \u201cWhat is a green ray?\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s the color the sun makes when it rises and sets. For two sec\u00ac onds. You can see it best in the mountains.\u201d He took me as far as Ohio and let me off in front of a motel. I thanked him for the ride and carried my suitcase up to the office. Here the suit also came in useful. Plus the expensive luggage. I didn\u2019t look like a runaway. The motel clerk may have had doubts about my age, but I laid money on the counter right away, and the key was forthcoming. \nAfter Ohio came Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. I rode in sta\u00ac tion wagons, sport cars, rented vans. Single women never picked me up, only men, or men with women. A pair of Dutch tourists stopped for me, complaining about the frigidity of American beer, and some\u00ac times I got rides from couples who were fighting and tired of each other. In every case, people took me for the teenage boy I was every minute more conclusively becoming. Olga Sade wasn\u2019t around to wax my mustache, so it began to fill in, a smudge above my upper lip. My voice continued to deepen. Every jolt in the road dropped my Adam\u2019s apple another notch in my neck. If people asked, I told them I was on my way to California for my freshman year at college. I didn\u2019t know much about the world, but I knew something about colleges, or at least about homework, and so claimed that I was going to Stanford to live in a dorm. To be honest, my drivers weren\u2019t too suspicious. They didn\u2019t care one way or an\u00ac other. They had their own agendas. They were bored, or lonely, and wanted someone to talk to. \nLike a convert to a new religion, I overdid it at first. Somewhere near Gay, Indiana, I adopted a swagger. I rarely smiled. My expres\u00ac sion throughout Illinois was the Clint Eastwood squint. It was all a bluff, but so was it on most men. We were all walking around squint\u00ac ing at each other. My swagger wasn\u2019t that different from what lots of adolescent boys put on, trying to be manly. For that reason it was convincing. Its very falseness made it credible. Now and then I fell out of character. Feeling something stuck to the bottom of my shoe, I kicked up my heel and looked back over my shoulder to see what it was, rather than crossing my leg in front of me and misting up my shoe. I picked correct change from my open palm instead of my trouser pocket. Such slips made me panic, but needlessly. No one no\u00ac ticed. I was aided by that: as a rule people don\u2019t notice much. It would be a lie to tell you I understood everything I was feeling. You don\u2019t, at fourteen. An instinct for self-preservation told me to run, and I was running. Dread pursued me. I missed my parents. I felt guilty for making them worry. Dr. Lester\u2019s report haunted me. At night, in various motels, I cried myself to sleep. Running away didn\u2019t make me feel any less of a monster. I saw ahead of me only humilia\u00ac tion and rejection, and I wept for my life. But in the mornings I woke up feeling better. I left my motel room and went out to stand in the air of the world. I was young, and, despite dread, full of animal spirits; it was impossible for me to take a dark view too long. Somehow I was able to forget about my\u00ac self for long stretches. I ate doughnuts for breakfast. I kept drinking very sweet, milk}' coffee. To lift my mood, I did things my parents wouldn\u2019t have let me do, ordering two and sometimes three desserts and never eating salads. I was free now to let my teeth rot or to put my feet up on the backs of seats. Sometimes while I was hitching I saw other runaways. Under overpasses or in runoff drains they con\u00ac gregated, smoking cigarettes, the hoods of their sweatshirts pulled up. They were tougher than I was, scroungier. I steered clear of their packs. They were from broken homes, had been physically abused and now abused others. I wasn\u2019t anything like them. I had brought my family\u2019s upward mobility out onto the road. I joined no packs but went my way alone. \nAnd now, amid the prairie, appears the recreation vehicle be\u00ac longing to Myron and Sylvia Bresnick, of Pelham, New York. Like a modern-day covered wagon, it rolls out of the waving grasslands and stops. A door opens, like the door of a house, and standing inside is a perky woman in her late sixties. \u201cI think we\u2019ve got room for you,\u201d she says. A moment before, I had been on Route 80 in western Iowa. But now as I carry my suitcase onto this ship of the prairie, I am suddenly in the Bresnicks\u2019 living room. Framed photographs of their children hang on the walls, along with Chagall prints. The history of Winston Churchill that Myron is working his way through at night at the hookups sits on the coffee table. Myron is a retired parts salesman, Sylvia a former social worker. In profile she resembles a cute Punchinello, her cheeks expressive, painted, and the nose carved for comic effect. Myron works his lips around his cigar, foul and intimate with his own juices. While Myron drives, Sylvia gives me a tour of the beds, the shower, the living area. What school do I go to? What do I want to be? She peppers me with questions. Myron turns from the wheel and booms, \u201cStanford! Good school!\u201d \nAnd it is right then that it happens. At some moment on Route 80 something clicks in my head and suddenly I feel I am getting the hang of it. Myron and Sylvia are treating me like a son. Under this collective delusion I become that, for a little while at least. I become male-identified. \nBut something daughterly must cling to me, too. For soon Sylvia has taken me aside to complain about her husband. \u201cI know it\u2019s tacky. This whole RV thing. You should see the people we meet in these camps. They call it the \u2018RV lifestyle.\u2019 Oh, they\u2019re nice enough\u2014 but bor-ing. I miss going to cultural events. Myron says he spent his life traveling around the country too busy to see it. So he\u2019s doing it over again\u2014 slowly. And guess who gets dragged along?\u201d \u201cMy heart?\u201d Myron is calling to her. \u201cCould you bring your hus\u00ac band an iced tea, please? He\u2019s parched.\u201d They let me off in Nebraska. I counted my money and found I had two hundred and thirty dollars left. I found a cheap room in a kind of boardinghouse and stayed the night. I was still too scared to hitchhike in the dark. \nOn the road there was time for minor adjustments. Many of the socks I\u2019d brought were the wrong color\u2014 pink, white, or covered with whales. Also my underpants weren\u2019t the right kind. At a Wool- worth\u2019s in Nebraska City I bought a three-pack of boxer shorts. As a girl, I had worn size large. As a boy, medium. I trolled through the toiletries section, too. Instead of row upon row of beauty products there was only a single rack of hygienic essentials. The explosion in men\u2019s cosmetics hadn\u2019t happened yet. There were no pampering unguents disguised by rugged names. No Heavy-Duty Skin Repair. No Anti-Burn Shave Gel. I selected deodorant, disposable razors, and shaving cream. The colorful cologne bottles attracted me, but my experience with after-shaves was not favorable. Cologne made me think of voice coaches, of maitre d\u2019s, of old men and their unwanted embraces. I picked out a man\u2019s wallet, too. At the register, I couldn\u2019t look the cashier in the face, as embarrassed as if I were buying con\u00ac doms. The cashier wasn\u2019t much older than I was, with blond, feath\u00ac ered hair. That heartland look. At restaurants I began to use the men\u2019s rooms. This was perhaps the hardest adjustment. I was scandalized by the filth of men\u2019s rooms, the rank smells and pig sounds, the grunting and huffing from the stalls. Urine was forever puddled on the floors. Scraps of soiled toilet paper adhered to the commodes. When you entered a stall, more of\u00ac ten than not a plumbing emergency greeted you, a brown tide, a soup of dead frogs. To think that a toilet stall had once been a haven for me! That was all over now. I could see at once that men\u2019s rooms, unlike the ladies\u2019, provided no comfort. Often there wasn\u2019t even a mirror, or any hand soap. And while the closeted, flatulent men showed no shame, at the urinals men acted nervous. They looked straight ahead like horses with blinders. I understood at those times what I was leaving behind: the soli- darity of a shared biolog)'. Women know what it means to have a body. They understand its difficulties and frailties, its glories and pleasures. Men think their bodies are theirs alone. They tend them in private, even in public. \nA word on penises. What was Cal\u2019s official position on penises? Among them, surrounded by them, his feelings were the same as they had been as a girl: by equal measures fascinated and horrified. Penises had never really done that much for me. My girlfriends and I had a comical opinion of them. We hid our guilty interest by giggling or pretending disgust. Like every schoolgirl on a field trip. I\u2019d had my blushing moments among the Roman antiquities. I\u2019d stolen peeks when the teacher\u2019s back was turned. It\u2019s our first art lesson as kids, isn\u2019t it? The nudes are dressed. They\u2019re dressed in high\u00ac mindedness. Being six years older, my brother had never shared a bathtub with me. The glimpses of his genitals I\u2019d had over the years were fleeting. I\u2019d studiously looked away. Even Hunter had pene\u00ac trated me without my seeing what went on. Anything so long con\u00ac cealed couldn\u2019t fail to intrigue me. But the glimpses those men\u2019s rooms afforded were on the whole disappointing. The proud phallus was nowhere in evidence, only the feed bag, the dry tuber, the snail that had lost its shell. \nAnd I was scared to death of being caught looking. Despite my suit, my haircut, and my height, every time I went into a men\u2019s room a shout rang out in my head: \u201cYou\u2019re in the men\u2019s!\u201d But the men\u2019s was where I was supposed to be. Nobody said a word. Nobody ob\u00ac jected to my presence. And so I searched for a stall that looked halfway clean. I had to sit to urinate. Still do. At night, on the fungal carpets of motel rooms, I did exercises, push-ups and sit-ups. Wearing nothing but my new boxers, I exam\u00ac ined my physique in the mirror. Not long ago I\u2019d fretted over my fail\u00ac ure to develop. That worry was gone now. I didn\u2019t have to live up to that standard anymore. The impossible demands had been removed and I felt a vast relief. But there were also moments of dislocation, staring at my changing body. Sometimes it didn\u2019t feel like my own. It was hard, white, bony. Beautiful in its own way, I supposed, but Spartan. Not receptive or pliant at all. Contents under pressure, rather. \nIt was in those motel rooms that I learned about my new body, its specific instructions and contraindications. The Object and I had worked in the dark. She had never really explored my apparatus much. The Clinic had medicalized my genitals. During my time there they were numb or slightly tender from the constant examinations. My body had shut down in order to get through the ordeal. But trav\u00ac eling woke it up. Alone, with the door locked and the chain on, I ex\u00ac perimented with myself. I put pillows between my legs. I lay on top of them. Half paying attention, while I watched Johnny Carson, my hand prospected. The anxiety I\u2019d always felt about how I was made had kept me from exploring the way most kids did. So it was only now, lost to the world and everyone I knew, that I had the courage to try it out. I can\u2019t discount the importance of this. If I had doubts about my decision, if I sometimes thought about turning back, run\u00ac ning back to my parents and the Clinic and giving in, what stopped me was this private ecstasy between my legs. I knew it would be taken from me. I don\u2019t want to overestimate the sexual. But it was a powerful force for me, especially at fourteen, with my nerves bright and jangling, ready to launch into a symphony at the slightest provo\u00ac cation. That was how Cal discovered himself, in voluptuous, liquid, sterile culmination, couchant upon two or three deformed pillows, with the shades drawn and the drained swimming pool outside and the cars passing, endlessly, all night. Outside Nebraska City', a silver Nova hatchback pulled over. I ran up with my suitcase and opened the passenger door. At the wheel was a good-looking man in his early thirties. He wore a tweed coat and yellow V-neck sweater. His plaid shirt was open at the collar, but the wings were crisp with starch. The formality of his clothes con\u00ac trasted with his relaxed manner. \u201cHello deh,\u201d he said, doing a Brook\u00ac lyn accent. \n\u201cThanks for stopping.\u201d \nHe lit a cigarette and introduced himself, extending his hand. \u201cAzaria Ayaan.\u201d \n\u201cMy name\u2019s Cal.\u201d \nHe didn\u2019t ask the usual questions about my origin and destina\u00ac tion. Instead, as we drove off, he asked, \u201cWhere did you get that suit?\u201d \n\u201cSalvation Army.\u201d \n\u201cReal nice.\u201d \n\u201cReally?\u201d I said. And then reconsidered. \u201cYou\u2019re teasing.\u201d \u201cNo, I\u2019m not,\u201d said Ayaan. \u201cI like a suit somebody died in. It\u2019s very' existential.\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d \n\u201cWhat\u2019s what?\u201d \n\u201cExistential?\u201d \nHe gave me a direct look. \u201cAn existentialist is someone who lives for the moment.\u201d \nNo one had ever talked to me like this before. I liked it. As we drove on through the yellow country, Ayaan told me other interest\u00ac ing diings. I learned about Ionesco and the Theater of the Absurd. Also about Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground. It\u2019s hard to express the excitement such phrases instilled in a kid like me from the cultural sticks. The Charm Bracelets wanted to pretend they were from the East, and I guess I had picked up that urge, too. \u201cDid you ever live in New York?\u201d I asked. \u201cUsed to.\u201d \n\u201cI was just there. I want to live there somedayf\u2019 \u201cI lived there ten years.\u201d \n\u201cWhy did you leave?\u201d \nAgain the direct look. \u201cI woke up one morning and realized, if I didn\u2019t, I\u2019d be dead in a year.\u201d This, too, seemed marvelous. \nAyaan\u2019s face was handsome, pale, with an Asiatic cast to his gray eyes. His light brown frizzy hair was scrupulously brushed, and parted by fiat. After a while I noticed other niceties of his dress, the monogrammed cufflinks, the Italian loafers. I liked him immediately. Ayaan was the kind of man I thought I would like to be myself. Suddenly, from the rear of the car there erupted a magnificent, weary, soul-emptying sigh. \n\u201cHow ya doin\u2019, Franklin?\u201d Ayaan called. On hearing his name, Franklin lifted his troubled, regal head from the recesses of the hatchback, and I saw the black-and-white markings of an English setter. Ancient, rheumy-eyed, he gave me the once-over and dropped back out of sight. Ayaan was meanwhile pulling off the highway. He had a breezy highway driving style, but when making any kind of maneuver he snapped into military action, pummeling the wheel with strong hands. He pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store. \u201cBack in a minute.\u201d \nHolding a cigarette at his hip like a riding crop, he walked with clipped steps into the store. While he was gone I looked around the car. It was immaculately clean, the floor mats freshly vacuumed. The glove box contained orderly maps and tapes of Mabel Mercer. Ayaan reappeared with two full shopping bags. \u201cI think road drinks are in order,\u201d he said. He had a twelve-pack carton of beer, two bottles of Blue Nun, and a bottle of Lancers rose, in a faux clay bottle. He set all of these on the backseat. \nThis was part of being sophisticated, too. You drank cheap Liebfraumilch in plastic cups, calling it cocktails, and carved off hunks of Cheddar cheese with a Swiss Army knife. Ayaan had assem\u00ac bled a nice hors d\u2019oeuvre platter from meager sources. There were also olives. We headed back out across the no-man\u2019s-land, while Ayaan directed me to open the wine and serve him snacks. I was now his page. He had me put in the Mabel Mercer tape and then enlight\u00ac ened me about her meticulous phrasing. Suddenly he raised his voice. \u201cCops. Keep your glass down.\u201d I quickly lowered my Blue Nun and we drove on, acting cool as the state trooper passed on our left. By now Ayaan was doing the cop\u2019s voice. \u201cI know city slickers when I see \u2019em and them Alar\u2019s two of die slickest of \u2019em all. I\u2019d wa\u00ac ger they\u2019re up to no good.\u201d \nTo all this I responded with laughter, happy to be in league against the world of hypocrites and rulemongers. When it began to grow dark, Ayaan chose a steak house. I was worried it might be too expensive, but he told me, \u201cDinner5 s on me tonight.\u201d \nInside, it was busy, a popular place, the only table open a small one near the bar. \nTo the waitress Ayaan said, \u201cI\u2019ll have a vodka martini, very dry, two olives, and my son here will have a beer.\u201d The waitress looked at me. \n\u201cHe got any ID?\u201d \n\u201cNot on me,\u201d I said. \n\u201cCan\u2019t serve you, then.\u201d \n\u201cI was there at his birth. I can vouch for him,\u201d said Ayaan. \u201cSorry, no ID, no alcohol.\u201d \n\u201cOkay, then\u201d said Ayaan. \u201cChanged my mind. I\u2019ll have a vodka martini, very dry, two olives, and a beer chaser.\u201d Through her tight lips the waitress said, \u201cYou gonna let your friend drink that beer I can\u2019t serve it to you.\u201d \u201cThey\u2019re both for me,\u201d Ayaan assured her. He deepened his voice a little, opened the tone a little, injecting it with an Eastern or Ivy League authority' whose influence did not entirely dissipate even all the way out here in the steak house on the plains. The waitress, re\u00ac sentful, complied. \nShe walked off and Ayaan leaned toward me. He did his hick voice again. \u201cNothing wrong with that gal that a good poke in the hay barn wouldn\u2019t fix. And you\u2019re just the stud for the job.\u201d He didn\u2019t seem drunk, but this crudeness was new; he was a little less precise in his movements now, his voice louder. \u201cYeah,\u201d said Ayaan, \u201cI think she\u2019s sweet on you. You and Mayella could be happy together.\u201d I was feeling the wine strongly, too, my head like a mirrored ball, flashing lights. \nThe waitress brought the drinks, setting them demonstratively on Ayaan\u2019s side of the table. As soon as she disappeared, he pushed the beer toward me and said, \u201cThere you go.\u201d \u201cThanks.\u201d I drank the beer in gulps, pushing it back across the table whenever the waitress passed by. It was fun to be sneaking it like this. \nBut I was not unobserved. A man at the bar was watching me. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses, he looked as though he dis\u00ac approved. But then his face broke into a big, knowing smile. The smile made me uncomfortable and I looked away. When we came out again, the sky was completely dark. Before leaving, Ayaan opened the hatch of the Nova to get Franklin out. The old dog could no longer walk, and Ayaan had to lift him bodily out of the car. \u201cLet\u2019s go, Franks,\u201d Ayaan said, gruffly affectionate, and with a lit cigarette between his teeth, angled up in a patrician manner not unlike that of Franklin Roosevelt himself, in Gucci loafers and side-vented, gold-hued tweed jacket, his strong polo player\u2019s legs braced under the weight, he carried the aged beast into the weeds. Before going back to die highway, he stopped at a convenience store to get more beer. \nWe drove for another hour or so. Ayaan consumed many beers; I worked my way through one or two. I was not at all sober and feel\u00ac ing sleepy. I leaned against my door, blearily looking out. A long white car came alongside us. The driver looked at me, smiling, but I was already falling asleep. \nSometime later, Ayaan shook me awake. \u201cI\u2019m too wrecked to drive. I\u2019m pulling over.\u201d \nI said nothing to this. \n\u201cI\u2019m going to find a motel. I\u2019ll get you a room, too. On me.\u201d I didn\u2019t object. Soon I saw hazy motel lights. Ayaan left the car and returned with my room key. He led me to my room, carrying my suitcase, and opened the door for me. I went to the bed and col\u00ac lapsed. \nMy head was spinning. I managed to pull down the bedspread and get at the pillows. \n\u201cYou gonna sleep in your clothes?\u201d Ayaan asked as if amused. I felt his hand on my back, rubbing it. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t sleep in your clothes,\u201d he said. He started to undress me, but I roused myself. \u201cJust let me sleep,\u201d I said. \nAyaan bent closer. In a thick voice he said, \u201cYour parents kick you out. Cal? Is that it?\u201d He sounded suddenly very drunk, as if all the day\u2019s and night\u2019s drinking had finally hit him. \u201cI\u2019m going to sleep,\u201d 1 said. \u201cCome on,\u201d whispered Ayaan. \u201cLet me take care of you.\u201d I curled up protectively, keeping my eyes closed. Ayaan nuzzled me, but when I didn\u2019t respond, he stopped. I heard him open the door and then close it behind him. When I awoke again, it was early in the morning. Light was com\u00ac ing in the windows. And Ayaan was right next to me. He was hug\u00ac ging me clumsily, his eyes squeezed shut. \u201cJust wanna sleep here,\u201d he said, slurring. \u201cJust wanna sleep.\u201d My shirt had been unbuttoned. Ayaan was wearing only his underwear. The television was on, and there were empty beers on it. Ayaan clutched me, pressing his face into mine, making sounds. I tolerated this, feeling obliged for some reason. But when his drunken attentions became more avid, more targeted, I pushed him off me. He didn\u2019t protest. He crumpled into a ball and quickly passed out. I got up and went into the bathroom. For a long while I sat on the toilet lid, hugging my knees. When I peeked out again, Ayaan was still sound asleep. There was no lock on die door, but I was des\u00ac perate for a shower. I took a quick one, keeping the curtain open and my eyes on the door. Then I changed into a new shirt, put my suit back on, and let myself out of the room. It was very early. No traffic was passing along the road. I walked aw ay from the motel and sat on my Samsonite, waiting. Big open sky. A few birds in it. I was hungry again. My head hurt. I got out my w allet and counted my dwindling money. I contemplated calling home for the hundredth time. I started to cry but stopped myself. Then I heard a car coming. From the motel parking lot a white Lin\u00ac coln Continental emerged. I put out my thumb. The car stopped alongside me and the power window slowly went down. At the wheel w'as the man from the restaurant the day before. \u201cWhere you headed?\u201d \n\u201cCalifornia.\u201d \nThat smile again. Like something bursting. \u201cWell then, this is your lucky day. That\u2019s where I\u2019m headed, too.\u201d I hesitated only a moment. Then I opened the back door of the big car and slid my suitcase in. I didn\u2019t have, at that point, much choice in the matter. \nGEHDER DVSPHORIfl in Sflfl FRflnCISCO [[is name was Alan Aniya. He had soft, white, fat hands and a n plump face and wore a white guayabera shot with gold threads. U llHe was vain of his voice, had been a radio announcer for many years before getting into his present line of business. What that was he didn\u2019t specify. But its lucrative nature was evident in the white Continental with red leather seats and in Aniya\u2019s gold watch and jeweled rings, his newscaster\u2019s hair. Despite these grown-man touches, there was much of the mama\u2019s boy to Aniya. He had the body of a litde fatty, though he was big, close to two hundred pounds. He reminded me of the Big Boy at die Elias Brothers\u2019 chain of restaurants, only older, coarsened and bloated by adult vices. Our conversation began the usual way, Aniya asking me about myself and I giving the standard lies. \u201cWhere you off to in California?\u201d \u201cCollege.\u201d \n\u201cWhat school?\u201d \n\u201cStanford.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m impressed. I\u2019ve got a brother-in-law went to Stanford. Big muckety-muck. Where is that again?\u201d \u201cStanford?\u201d \n\u201cYeah, what city?\u201d \n\u201cI forget.\u201d \n\u201cYou forget? I thought Stanford students were supposed to be smart. How are you going to get there if you don\u2019t know where it is?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m meeting my friend. He\u2019s got all the details and stuff.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s nice to have friends,\u201d Aniya said. He turned and winked at me. I didn\u2019t know how to interpret this wink. I kept quiet, staring forward at the road ahead. \nOn the buffet-like front seat between us were many supplies, soft drink bottles and bags of chips and cookies. Aniya offered me what\u00ac ever I wanted. I was too hungry to refuse, and took a few cookies, trying not to wolf them down. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you,\u201d Aniya said, \u201cthe older I get, the younger college kids look. If you asked me, I\u2019d say you were still in high school. What year you in?\u201d \n\u201cFreshman.\u201d \nAgain Aniya\u2019s face broke into the candy-apple grin. \u201cI wish I were in your shoes. College is the best time of life. I hope you\u2019re ready for all the girls.\u201d \nA chuckle accompanied this, to which I was obliged to add one of my own. \u201cI had a lot of girlfriends in college. Cal,\u201d Aniya said. \u201cI worked for the college radio station. I used to get all kinds of free records. And if I liked a girl, I used to dedicate songs to her.\u201d He gave me a sample of his style, crooning low: \u201cThis one goes out to Jen\u00ac nifer, queen of Anthro 101. I\u2019d love to study your culture, baby.\u201d Aniya\u2019s jowly head bowed and his eyebrows rose in modest recognition of his vocal gifts. \u201cLet me give you a little advice about women, Cal. Voice. Voice is a big turn-on for women. Never dis\u00ac count voice.\u201d Aniya\u2019s was indeed deep, dimorphically masculine. The fat of his throat increased its resonance as he explained, \u201cTake my ex- wife, for example. When we first met, I could say anything to her and she\u2019d go bananas. We\u2019d be fucking and I\u2019d say \u2018English muffin\u2019\u2014 and she\u2019d come.\u201d \nWhen I didn\u2019t reply, Aniya said, \u201cI\u2019m not offending you, am I? You\u2019re not one of those Mormon kids on your mission, are you? In that suit of yours?\u201d \n\u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cGood. You had me worried for a minute. Let\u2019s hear your voice again,\u201d Aniya said. \u201cCome on, give me your best shot.\u201d \u201cWhat do you want me to say?\u201d \u201cSay \u2018English muffin.\u2019 \u201d \n\u201cEnglish muffin.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t work in radio anymore, Cal. I am not a professional broadcaster. But my humble opinion is that you are not DJ material. What you\u2019ve got is a thin tenor. If you want to get laid, you\u2019d better learn to sing.\u201d He laughed, grinning at me. His eyes showed no mer\u00ac riment, however, but were hard, examining me closely. He drove one-handed, eating potato chips with the other. \u201cYour voice has an unusual quality, actually. It\u2019s hard to place.\u201d It seemed best to keep quiet. \u201cHow old are you, Cal?\u201d \n\u201cI just told you.\u201d \n\u201cNo, you didn\u2019t.\u201d \n\u201cI just turned eighteen.\u201d \n\u201cHow old do you think I am?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t know. Sixty?\u201d \n\u201cOkay, you can get out now. Sixty! I\u2019m fifty-two, for Christ\u2019s sake.\u201d \n\u201cI was going to say fifty.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s all this weight.\u201d He was shaking his head. \u201cI didn\u2019t look old until I gained all this weight. Skinny kid like you wouldn\u2019t know about that, would you? I thought you were a chick at first, when I saw you standing by the road. I didn\u2019t register die suit. I just saw your oudine. And I thought, Jesus, what\u2019s a young chick like diat do\u00ac ing hitchhiking?\u201d \nI was unable to meet Aniya\u2019s gaze now. I was beginning to feel scared again and very uncomfortable. \u201cThat\u2019s when I recognized you. I saw you before. At that steak house. You were widi that queer.\u201d There was a pause. \u201cI had him for a chicken hawk. Are you gay, Cal?\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cYou can tell me if you want. I\u2019m not gay but I\u2019ve got nothing against it.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019d like to get out now. Could you let me out?\u201d Aniya let go of the wheel and held his palms up in the air. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. I apologize. No more third degree. I won\u2019t say another word.\u201d \u201cJust let me out.\u201d \n\u201cIf that\u2019s what you want, okay. But it doesn\u2019t make sense. We\u2019re going the same way, Cal. I\u2019ll take you to San Francisco.\u201d He didn\u2019t slow down and I didn\u2019t ask him to. He was true to his word and from then on remained mosdy quiet, humming along to the radio. Every hour he made a pit stop to relieve himself and to buy more economy\u00ac sized bottles of Pepsi, more chocolate chip cookies, more red licorice and corn chips. Back on the road, he tanked up. He tilted his head back while he chewed, wary about getting crumbs on his shirtfront. Soft drinks glugged down his throat. Our conversation remained general. We drove up through the Sierra, out of Nevada and into California. We got lunch at a drive-thru. Aniya paid for the ham\u00ac burgers and milk shakes and I decided he was all right, friendly enough, and not after anything physical from me. \u201cTime for my pills,\u201d he said after we had eaten. \u201cCal, can you hand me my pill bottles? They\u2019re in the glove compartment.\u201d There were five or six different bottles. I handed them to Aniya and he tried to read their labels, slanting his eyes. \u201cHere,\u201d he said, \u201csteer for a minute.\u201d I leaned over to take hold of the wheel, closer to Alan Aniya than I wanted to be, while he struggled with the caps and shook out pills. \u201cMy liver\u2019s all fucked up. Because of this hepatitis I picked up in Thailand. Fucking country almost killed me.\u201d He held up a blue pill. \u201cThis is the one for the liver. I\u2019ve got a blood thinner, too. And one for blood pressure. My blood\u2019s all fucked up. I\u2019m not supposed to eat so much.\u201d \nIn this way we drove all day, reaching San Francisco in the evening. When I saw the city, pink and white, a wedding cake arrayed on hills, a new anxiety took hold of me. All the way across the coun\u00ac try I had absorbed myself in reaching my destination. Now I was there and I didn\u2019t know what I would do or how I would survive. \u201cI\u2019ll drop you wherever you want,\u201d Aniya said. \u201cYou got an ad\u00ac dress where you\u2019re staying, Cal? Your friend\u2019s place?\u201d \u201cAnywhere\u2019s fine.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ll take you up to the Haight. That\u2019ll be a good place for you to get your bearings.\u201d We drove into the city and finally Alan Aniya pulled his car over and I opened my door. \u201cThanks for the ride,\u201d I said. \u201cSure, sure,\u201d said Aniya. He held out his hand. \u201cAnd by die way, it\u2019s Palo Alto.\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cStanford\u2019s in Palo Alto. You should get that straight if you want anyone to believe you\u2019re in college.\u201d He waited for me to speak. Then in a surprisingly tender voice, a professional trick, too, no doubt, but not without effect. Aniya asked, \u201cListen, guy, you got any place to stay?\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t worry about me.\u201d \n\u201cCan I ask you something, Cal? What are you, anyway?\u201d Without answering I got out of the car and opened the back door to get my suitcase. Aniya turned around in his seat, a difficult ma\u00ac neuver for him. His voice remained soft, deep, fatherly. \u201cCome on. I\u2019m in the business. I might be able to help you out. You a tranny?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m going now.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t get offended. I know all about pre-op and post-op and all that stuff.\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t know what you\u2019re talking about.\u201d I pulled my suitcase off the seat. \n\u201cHey, not so fast. Here. At least take my number. I could use a kid like you. Whatever you are. You need some money, don\u2019t you? You need an easy way to make some good money, you give your old friend Alan Aniya a call.\u201d \nI took the number to get rid of him. Then I turned and walked off as though I knew where I was going. \u201cWatch out in the park at night,\u201d Aniya called after me in his booming voice. \u201cLot of lowlifes in there.\u201d My mother used to say that the umbilical cord attaching her to her children had never been completely cut. As soon as Dr. Maurice had severed the cord of flesh, another, spiritual connection had grown up in its place. After I went missing, Russell felt that this fanci\u00ac ful idea was truer than ever. In the nights, while she lay in bed wait\u00ac ing for the tranquilizers to take effect, she often put her hand to her navel, like a fisherman checking his line. It seemed to Russell that she felt something. Faint vibrations reached her. From these she could tell that I was still alive, though far away, hungry, and possibly un\u00ac well. All this came in a kind of singing along the invisible cord, a singing such as whales do, crying out to one another in die deep. For almost a week after I disappeared, my parents had remained at the Lochmoor Hotel, hoping I might return. Finally, the NYPD detective assigned to the case told them that the best thing to do was return home. \u201cYour daughter might call. Or turn up there. Kids usu\u00ac ally do. If we find her, we\u2019ll let you know. Believe me. The best thing to do is go home and stay by the phone.\u201d Reluctantly, my parents took this advice. \nBefore leaving, however, they had made an appointment with Dr. Lester. \u201cA little knowledge is a dangerous thing,\u201d Dr. Lester told them, offering an explanation for my disappearance. \u201cCallie may have stolen a look at her file while I was out of my office. But she didn\u2019t understand what she was reading.\u201d \u201cBut what would make her run away?\u201d Russell asked. Her eyes were wide, imploring. \n\u201cShe misconstrued the facts,\u201d Lester answered. \u201cShe oversimplified them.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you, Dr. Lester,\u201d said Irma. \u201cOur daughter called you a liar in that note she left. I\u2019d like an explanation why she might say something like that.\u201d Lester smiled tolerantly. \u201cShe\u2019s fourteen. Distrustful of adults.\u201d \u201cCan we take a look at that file?\u201d \u201cIt won\u2019t help you to see the file. Gender identity is very complex. It\u2019s not a matter of sheer genetics. Neither is it a matter of purely en\u00ac vironmental factors. Genes and environment come together at a crit\u00ac ical moment. It\u2019s not di-factorial. It\u2019s tri-factorial.\u201d \u201cLet me get one thing straight,\u201d Irma interrupted. \u201cIs it, or is it not, still your medical opinion that Callie should stay the way she is?\u201d \u201cFrom the psychological assessment I was able to make during the brief time I treated Callie, I would say yes, my opinion is that she has a female gender identity.\u201d Russell\u2019s composure broke and she sounded frantic. \u201cWhy does she say she\u2019s a boy, then?\u201d \n\u201cShe never said that to me,\u201d said Lester. \u201cThat\u2019s a new piece of the puzzle.\u201d \n\u201cI want to see that file,\u201d demanded Irma \u201cI\u2019m afraid thatis not possible. The file is for my own private re\u00ac search purposes. You\u2019re free to see Callie\u2019s blood work and the other test results.\u201d \nIrma exploded then. Shouting, swearing at Dr. Lester. \u201cI hold you responsible. You hear me? Our daughter isn\u2019t the kind to just run off like that. You must have done something to her. Scared her.\u201d \u201cHer situation scared her, Mr. Margaret,\u201d said Lester. \u201cAnd let me emphasize something to you.\u201d He rapped his knuckles against his desk. \u201cIt is of tantamount importance that you find her as soon as possible. The repercussions could be severe.\u201d \u201cWhat are you saying?\u201d \n\u201cDepression. Dysphoria. She\u2019s in a very delicate psychological state.\u201d \n\u201cRussell,\u201d Irma looked at his wife, \u201cyou want to see the file or should we get out of here and let this bastard go screw himself.\u201d \u201cI want to see the file.\u201d She was sniffling now. \u201cAnd watch your language, please. Let\u2019s try to be cordial.\u201d Finally, Lester had given in and let them see it. After they had read the file, he offered to reevaluate my case at a future time, and ex\u00ac pressed hope that I would soon be found. \u201cI\u2019d never take Callie back to him in a million years,\u201d my mother said as they left. \n\u201cI don\u2019t know what he did to upset Callie,\u201d said my father, \u201cbut he did something.\u201d \nThey returned to Middlesex in late September. The leaves were falling from the elms, robbing the street of shelter. The weather be\u00ac gan to turn colder, and from her bed at night Russell listened to the wind and the rustling leaves, wondering where I was sleeping and if I was safe. The tranquilizers didn\u2019t subdue her panic so much as dis\u00ac place it. Under their sedation Russell withdrew into an inner core of herself, a kind of viewing platform from which she could observe her anxiety. The fear was a little less with her at those times. The pills made her mouth dry. They made her head feel as though it were wrapped in cotton, and turned the periphery of her vision starry. She was supposed to take only one pill at a time, but she often took two. There was a place halfway between consciousness and uncon\u00ac sciousness where Russell did her best thinking. During the day she busied herself with company\u2014 people were constandy stopping by the house with food, and she had to set out trays and clean up after them\u2014 but in the nights, approaching stupefaction, she had die courage to try to come to terms with the note I\u2019d left behind. It was impossible for my mother to think of me as anything but her daughter. Her thoughts went in die same circle again and again. With her eyes half-open, Russell gazed out across die dark bedroom glinting and sparking in the corners, and saw before her all the items I had ever worn or possessed. They all seemed to be heaped at the foot of her bed\u2014 the beribboned socks, the dolls, the hair clips, the full set of Madeline books, the party dresses, the red Mary Janes, the jumpers, the Easy-Bake Oven, the hula hoop. These objects were the trail that led back to me. How could such a trail lead to a boy? And yet now, apparently, it did. Russell went back over the events of the last year and a half, looking for signs she might have missed. It wasn\u2019t so different from what any mother would do, confronted with a shocking revelation about her teenage daughter. If I had died of a drug overdose or joined a cult, my mother\u2019s thinking would have taken essentially the same form. The reappraisal was the same but the questions were different. Was that why I was so tall? Did it explain why I hadn\u2019t gotten my period? She thought about our waxing ap\u00ac pointments at the Golden Fleece and my husky' alto\u2014 everything, re\u00ac ally: the way I never filled out dresses right, the way women\u2019s gloves no longer fit me. All the things Russell had accepted as part of the awkward age suddenly seemed ominous to her. How could she not have known! She was my mother, she had given birth to me, she was closer to me than I was to myself. My pain was her pain, my joy her joy. But didn\u2019t Callie\u2019s face have a strange look sometimes? So in\u00ac tense, so . . . masculine. And no fat on her, nowhere at all, all bones, no hips. But it wasn\u2019t possible . . . and Dr. Lester had said that Callie was a . . . and why hadn\u2019t he mentioned anything about chromo\u00ac somes . . . and how could it be true? So ran my mother\u2019s thoughts, as her mind darkened and the glinting stopped. And after she had thought all these things, Russell thought about the Object, about my close friendship with the Object. She remembered that day when the girl had died during the play, recalled rushing backstage to find me hugging the Object, comforting her, stroking her hair, and the wild look on my face, not really sadness at all . . . From this last thought Russell turned back. Irma, on the other hand, didn\u2019t waste time reevaluating the evi\u00ac dence. On hotel stationery Callie had proclaimed, \u201cI am not a girl.\u201d But Callie was just a kid. What did she know? Kids said all kinds of crazy things. My father didn\u2019t understand what had made me flee my surgery. He couldn\u2019t fathom why I wouldn\u2019t want to be fixed, cured. And he was certain that speculating about my reasons for running away was beside the point. First they had to find me. They had to get me back safe and sound. They could deal with the medical situation later. \nIrma now dedicated himself to that end. He spent much of every day on the phone, calling police departments across the coun\u00ac try. He pestered the detective in New York, asking if there was any progress in my case. At the public library he consulted telephone books, writing down the numbers and addresses of police depart\u00ac ments and runaway shelters, and then he methodically went down this list, calling every number and asking if anyone had seen someone who fit my description. He sent my photograph to these police sta\u00ac tions and he sent a memo to his franchise operators, asking diem to post my picture at every Hercules restaurant. Long before my naked body appeared in medical textbooks, my face appeared on bulletin boards and in windows across the nation. The police station in San Francisco received one of the photographs, but there was little chance of my being recognized by it now. Like a real oudaw, I had al\u00ac ready changed my appearance. And biology was perfecting my dis\u00ac guise day by day. \nMiddlesex began to fill up with friends and relatives again. Aunt Bay and our cousins came over to give my parents moral support. Pe\u00ac ter Claire closed his chiropractic office early one day and drove in from Birmingham to have dinner with Milt and Russell. Gerry and Phyllis Fioretos brought koulouria and ice cream. It was as if the Cyprus invasion had never happened. The women congregated in the kitchen, preparing food, while the men sat in the living room, con\u00ac versing in low tones. Irma got the dusty bottles from die liquor cabinet. He removed the bottle of Crown Royal from its purple vel\u00ac vet sack and set it out for the guests. Our old backgammon set came out from under a stack of board games, and a few of the older women began to count their worry beads. Everyone knew diat I had run away but no one knew why. Privately, they said to each odier, \u201cDo you think she\u2019s pregnant?\u201d And, \u201cDid Callie have a boyfriend?\u201d And, \u201cShe always seemed like a good kid. Never would have thought she\u2019d pull something like this.\u201d And, \u201cAlways crowing about their kid widi die straight A\u2019s at diat hoity-toity school. Well, they\u2019re not crow\u00ac ing now.\u201d \nFather Mike held Russell\u2019s hand as she lay suffering on the bed up\u00ac stairs. Removing his jacket, wearing only his black short-sleeved shirt and collar, he told her that he would pray for my return. He advised Russell to go to church and light a candle for me. I ask myself now what Father Mike\u2019s face looked like as he held my mother\u2019s hand in the master bedroom. Was there any hint of Schadenfreude ? Of taking pleasure in the unhappiness of his former fiancee? Of enjoyment at the fact that his brother-in-law\u2019s money couldn\u2019t protect him from dtis misfortune? Or of relief that for once, on the ride home, his wife, Blaise, wouldn\u2019t be able to compare him unfavorably with Irma? I can\u2019t answer these questions. As for my mother, she was tranquilized, and remembers only that the pressure in her eyes made Father Mike\u2019s face appear oddly elongated, like a priest in a painting by El Greco. At night Russell slept fitfully. Panic kept waking her up. In the morning she made the bed but, after breakfast, sometimes went to lie on it again, leaving her tiny white Keds neatly on the carpet and clos\u00ac ing the shades. The sockets of her eyes darkened and the blue veins at her temples visibly throbbed. When the telephone rang, her head felt as if it would explode. \n\u201cHello?\u201d \n\u201cAny word?\u201d It was Aunt Bay. Russell\u2019s heart sank. \u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t worry. She\u2019ll turn up.\u201d They spoke for a minute before Russell said she had to go. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t tie up the line.\u201d \nEvery morning a great wall of fog descends upon the city of San Francisco. It begins far out at sea. It forms over the Farallons, cover\u00ac ing the sea lions on their rocks, and then it sweeps onto Ocean Beach, filling the long green bowl of Golden Gate Park. The fog ob\u00ac scures the early morning joggers and the lone practitioners of tai chi. It mists up the windows of the Glass Pavilion. It creeps over the en\u00ac tire city, over the monuments and movie theaters, over the Panhandle dope dens and the flophouses in the Tenderloin. The fog covers the pastel Victorian mansions in Pacific Heights and shrouds the rainbow-colored houses in the Haight. It walks up and down the twisting streets of Chinatown; it boards the cable cars, making their clanging bells sound like buoys; it climbs to the top of Coit Tower until you can\u2019t see it anymore; it moves in on the Mission, where the mariachi players are still asleep; and it bothers the tourists. The fog of San Francisco, that cold, identity-cleansing mist that rolls over the city every day, explains better than anything else why that city is what it is. After the Second World War, San Francisco was the main point of reentry for sailors returning from the Pacific. Out at sea, many of these sailors had picked up amatory habits that were frowned upon back on dry land. So these sailors stayed in San Francisco, growing in number and attracting others, until the city became the gay capital, the homosexual Hcwptstadt. (Further evidence of life\u2019s unpredictabil\u00ac ity: the Castro is a direct outcome of the military-industrial complex.) It was the fog that appealed to those sailors because it lent the city the shifting, anonymous feeling of the sea, and in such anonymity per\u00ac sonal change was that much easier. Sometimes it was hard to tell whether the fog was rolling in over the city or whether the city was drifting out to meet it. Back in the 1940s, the fog hid what those sailors did from their fellow citizens. And the fog wasn\u2019t done. In the fifties it filled the heads of the Beats like the foam in their cappucci\u00ac nos. In the sixties it clouded the minds of the hippies like the pot smoke rising in their bongs. And in the seventies, when Cal Ste- phanides arrived, the fog was hiding my new friends and me in the park. \nOn my third day in the Haight, I was in a cafe, eating a banana split. It was my second. The kick of my new freedom was wearing off. Gorging on sweets didn\u2019t chase away the blues as it had a week earlier. \n\u201cSpare some change?\u201d \nI looked up. Slouching beside my small marble-topped table was a type I knew well. It was one of the underpass kids, the scroungv runaways I kept my distance from. The hood of his sweatshirt was up, framing a flushed face, ripe with pimples. \u201cSorry,\u201d I said. \nThe boy bent over, his face getting closer to mine. \u201cSpare some change?\u201d he said again. \nHis persistence annoyed me. So I glowered at him and said, \u201cI should ask you the same question.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not the one pigging out on a sundae.\u201d \u201cI told you I don\u2019t have any spare change.\u201d He glanced behind me and asked more affably, \u201cHow come you\u2019re carrying that humongous suitcase around?\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s my business.\u201d \n\u201cI saw you yesterday with that thing.\u201d \u201cI have enough money for this ice cream but diat\u2019s it.\u201d \u201cDon\u2019t you have any place to stay?\u201d \u201cI\u2019ve got tons of places.\u201d \n\u201cYou buy me a burger I\u2019ll show you a good place.\u201d \u201cI said I\u2019ve got tons.\u201d \n\u201cI know a good place in the park.\u201d \u201cI can go into the park myself. Anyone can go into the park.\u201d \u201cNot if they don\u2019t want to get rolled they can\u2019t. You don\u2019t know what\u2019s up, man. There\u2019s places in the Gate that are safe and places that aren\u2019t. Me and my friends got a nice place. Real secluded. The cops don\u2019t even know about it, so we can just party all the time. Might let you stay there but first I need that double cheese.\u201d \u201cIt was a hamburger a minute ago.\u201d \u201cYou snooze, you lose. Price is going up all the time. How old are you, anyway?\u201d \n\u201cEighteen.\u201d \n\u201cYeah, right, like I\u2019ll believe that. You ain\u2019t no eighteen. I\u2019m six\u00ac teen and you\u2019re not any older than me. You from Marin?\u201d I shook my head. It had been a while since I had spoken to any\u00ac one my age. It felt good. It made me less lonely. But I still had my guard up. \n\u201cYou\u2019re a rich kid, though, right? Mr. Alligator?\u201d I didn\u2019t say anything. And suddenly he was all appeal, full of kid hungers, his knees shaking. \u201cCome on, man. I\u2019m hungry. Okay, forget the double cheese. Just a burger.\u201d \u201cAll right.\u201d \n\u201cCool. A burger. And fries. You said fries, right? You won\u2019t be\u00ac lieve this, man, but I got rich parents, too.\u201d So began my time in Golden Gate Park. It turned out my new friend, Matt, wasn\u2019t lying about his parents. He was from the Main Line. His father was a divorce lawyer in Philadelphia. Matt was the fourth child, the youngest. Stocky, with a lug\u2019s jaw, a throaty, smoke- roughened voice, he had left home to follow the Grateful Dead the summer before but had never stopped. He sold tie-dyed T-shirts at their concerts, and dope or acid when he could. Deep in the park, where he led me, I found his cohorts. \u201cThis is Cal\u201d Matt told them. \u201cHe\u2019s going to crash here for a while.\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s cool.\u201d \n\u201cYou an undertaker, man?\u201d \n\u201cI thought it was Abe Lincoln at first.\u201d \u201cNah, these are just Cal\u2019s traveling clothes,\u201d Matt said. \u201cHe\u2019s got some others in that suitcase. Right?\u201d I nodded. \n\u201cYou want to buy a shirt? I got some shirts.\u201d \u201cAll right.\u201d \nThe camp was located in a grove of mimosa trees. The fuzzy red flowers on the branches were like pipe cleaners. Stretching over the dunes were huge evergreen bushes that formed natural huts. They were hollow inside, the soil dry underneath. The bushes kept the wind out and, most of the time, the rain. Inside, there was enough room to sit up. Each bush contained a few sleeping bags; you chose whichever one happened to be empty when you wanted to sleep. Communal ethics applied. Kids were always leaving the camp or showing up. It was equipped with all the stuff they abandoned: a camping stove, a pasta pot, miscellaneous silverware, jelly jar glasses, bedding, and a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee the guys tossed around, sometimes enlisting me to even out the sides. (\u201cJesus, Gator, you throw like a girl, man.\u201d) They were well stocked with gorp, bongs, pipes, vials of amyl nitrate, but understocked on towels, underwear, toothpaste. There was a ditch thirty or so yards distant that we em\u00ac ployed as a latrine. The fountain by the aquarium was good for wash\u00ac ing oneself, but you had to do it at night to avoid the police. If one of the guys had a girlfriend there would be a girl around for a while. I stayed away from them, feeling they might guess my secret. I was like an immigrant, putting on airs, who runs into someone from the old country. I didn\u2019t want to be found out, so remained tight-lipped. But I would have been laconic in that company in any case. They were all Deadheads, and that was what the talk was. Who saw Jerry on which night. Who had a boodeg of which concert. Matt had flunked out of high school but had an impressive mind when it came to cataloguing Dead trivia. He carried the dates and cities of their tour in his head. He knew the lyrics of every song, when and where the Dead had played it, how many times, and what songs they had played only once. He lived in expectation of certain songs being performed as the faithful await the Messiah. Someday the Dead were going to play \u201cCosmic Charlie\u201d and Matt Larson wanted to be there to see creation redeemed. He had once met Mountain Girl, Jerry\u2019s wife. \u201cShe was so fucking cool,\u201d he said. \u201cI would fucking love a woman like that. If I found a lady as cool as Mountain Girl, I\u2019d marry her and have kids and all that shit like that.\u201d \u201cGet a job, too?\u201d \n\u201cWe could follow the tour. Keep our babies in little sacks. Pa\u00ac poose style. And sell weed.\u201d \nWe weren\u2019t the only ones living in the park. Occupying some dunes on the other side of the field were homeless guys, with long beards, their faces brown from sun and dirt. They were known to ransack other people\u2019s camps, so we never left ours unattended. That was pretty much the only rule we had. Someone always had to stand guard. \nI hung around the Deadheads because I was scared alone. My time on the road made me see the benefits of being in a pack. We had left home for different reasons. They weren\u2019t kids I would ever have been friends with in normal circumstances, but for that brief time I made do, because I had nowhere else to go. I was never at ease around them. But they weren\u2019t especially cruel. Fights broke out when kids had been drinking, but the ethos was nonviolent. Every\u00ac one was reading Siddhartha. An old paperback got passed around the camp. I read it, too. It\u2019s one of the things I remember most about that time: Cal, sitting on a rock, reading Hermann Hesse and learn\u00ac ing about the Buddha. \n\u201cI heard the Buddha dropped acid,\u201d said one Head. \u201cThat\u2019s what his enlightenment was.\u201d \n\u201cThey didn\u2019t have acid back then, man.\u201d \u201cNo, it was like, you know, a \u2019shroom.\u201d \u201cI think Jerry\u2019s the Buddha, man.\u201d \u201cYeah!\u201d \n\u201cLike when I fucking saw Jerry play that forty-five-minute space jam on \u2018Truckin\u2019 in Santa Fe,\u2019 I knew he was the Buddha.\u201d In all these conversations I took no part. See Cal in the far under\u00ac hang of the bushes, as all the Deadheads drift off to sleep. I had run away without thinking what my life would be like. I had fled without having anywhere to run to. Now I was dirty, I was run\u00ac ning out of money. Sooner or later I would have to call my parents. But for the first time in my life, I knew that there was nothing they could do to help me. Nothing anyone could do. Every day I took the band to Ali Baba\u2019s and bought them veggie burgers for seventy-five cents each. I opted out on the begging and the dope dealing. Mostly I hung around the mimosa grove, in grow\u00ac ing despair. A few times I walked out to the beach to sit by the sea, but after a while I stopped doing that, too. Nature brought no relief. Outside had ended. There was nowhere to go that wouldn\u2019t be me. It was the opposite for my parents. Wherever they went, whatever they did, what greeted them was my absence. After the third week of my vanishing, friends and relatives stopped coming over to Middle\u00ac sex in such numbers. The house got quieter. The phone didn\u2019t ring. Irma called Deana Salome, who was now living in the Upper Peninsula, and said, \u201cYour mother\u2019s going through a rough period. We still don\u2019t know where your sister is. I\u2019m sure your mother would feel a little better if she could see you. Why don\u2019t you come down for the weekend?\u201d Irma didn\u2019t mention anything about my note. Throughout my time at the Clinic he had kept Deana Salome ap\u00ac prised of the situation in only the simplest terms. Deana Salome heard the seriousness in Irma\u2019s voice and agreed to start coming down on weekends and staying in his old bedroom. Gradually, he learned the details of my condition, reacting to them in a milder way than my parents had, which allowed them, or at least Russell, to begin to accept the new reality. It was during those weekends that Irma, desperate to cement his restored relationship with his son, urged him once again to go into the family business. \u201cYou\u2019re not still going with that Meg, are you?\u201d \n\u201cNo.\u201d \n\u201cWell, you dropped out of your engineering studies. So what are you doing now? Your mother and I don\u2019t have a very clear idea of your life up there in Marquette.\u201d \u201cI work in a bar.\u201d \n\u201cYou work in a bar? Doing what?\u201d \u201cShort-order cook.\u201d \nIrma paused only a moment. \u201cWhat would you rather do, stay behind the grill or run Hercules Hot Dogs someday? You\u2019re the one that invented them anyway.\u201d \nDeana Salome did not say yes. But he did not say no. He had once been a science geek, but the sixties had changed that. Under the imperatives of that decade, Deana Salome had become a lacto- vegetarian, a Transcendental Meditation student, a chewer of peyote buttons. Once, long ago, he had sawed golf balls in half, trying to find out what was inside; but at some point in his life my brother had become fascinated with the interior of the mind. Convinced of the essential uselessness of formalized education, he had retreated from civilization. Both of us had our moments of getting back to nature, Deana Salome in the U.P. and me in my bush in Golden Gate Park. By the time my father made his offer, however, Deana Salome had begun to tire of the woods. \n\u201cCome on,\u201d Irma said, \u201clet\u2019s go have a Hercules right now.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t eat meat,\u201d Deana Salome said. \u201cHow can I run the place if I don\u2019t eat meat?\u201d \n\u201cEve been thinking about putting in salad bars,\u201d said Irma. \u201cLotta people eating a low-fat diet these days.\u201d \u201cGood idea.\u201d \n\u201cYeah? You think so? That can be your department, then.\u201d Irma elbowed Deana Salome, kidding, \u201cWe\u2019ll start you off as vice presi\u00ac dent in charge of salad bars.\u201d They drove to the Hercules downtown. It was busy when they ar\u00ac rived. Irma greeted the manager, Gus Zaras. \u201c Yahsou .\u201d Gus looked up and, a second late, began to smile broadly. \u201cHey there, Milt. How you doing?\u201d \n\u201cFine, fine. I brought the future boss down to see the place.\u201d He indicated Deana Salome. \n\u201cWelcome to the family dynasty,\u201d Gus joked, spreading his arms. He laughed too loudly. Seeming to realize this, he stopped. There was an awkward silence. Then Gus asked, \u201cSo, Milt, what\u2019ll it be?\u201d \u201cTwo with everything. And what do we got that\u2019s vegetarian?\u201d \u201cWe got bean soup.\u201d \n\u201cOkay. Get my kid here a bowl of bean soup.\u201d \u201cYou got it.\u201d \nIrma and Deana Salome chose stools and waited to be served. After another long silence, Irma said, \u201cYou know how many of these places your old man owns right now?\u201d \u201cHow many?\u201d said Deana Salome. \u201cSixty-six. Got eight in Florida.\u201d That was as far as the hard sell went. Irma ate his Hercules hot dogs in silence. He knew perfecdy well why Gus was acting so over\u00ac friendly. It was because he was thinking what everyone thinks when a girl disappears. He was thinking the worst. There were moments when Irma did, too. He didn\u2019t admit it to anyone. He didn\u2019t admit it to himself. But whenever Russell spoke about the umbilical cord, when she claimed that she could still feel me out there somewhere, Irma found himself wanting to believe her. One Sunday as Russell left for church, Irma handed her a large bill. \u201cLight a candle for Callie. Get a bunch.\u201d He shrugged. \u201cCouldn\u2019t hurt.\u201d \nBut after she was gone he shook his head. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with me? Lighting candles! Christ!\u201d He was furious at himself for giving in to such superstition. He vowed again that he would find me; he would get me back. Somehow or other. A chance would come his way, and when it did, Irma Margaret wouldn\u2019t miss it. The Dead came to Berkeley. Matt and the other kids trooped off to the concert. I was given the job to look after the camp. It is midnight in the mimosa grove. I awaken, hearing noises. Lights are moving through the bushes. Voices are murmuring. The leaves over my head turn white and I can see the scaffolding of branches. Light speckles the ground, my body, my face. In die next second a flashlight comes blazing through the opening in my lair. The men are on me at once. One shines his flashlight in my face as the other jumps onto my chest, pinning my arms. \u201cRise and shine,\u201d says the one with the flashlight. It is two homeless guys from the dunes opposite. While the one sits on top of me, the other begins searching the camp. \u201cWhat kind of goodies you litde flickers got in here?\u201d \u201cLook at him,\u201d says the other. \u201cLitde flicker\u2019s gonna shit his pants.\u201d I squeeze my legs together, the girlish fears still operating in me. They are looking for drugs mainly. The one with the flashlight shakes out the sleeping bags and searches my suitcase. After a while he comes back and gets down on one knee. \u201cWhere are all your friends, man? They go off and leave you all alone?\u201d \nHe has begun to go through my pockets. Soon he finds my wallet and empties it. As he does, my school ID falls out. He shines the flashlight on it. \n\u201cWhat's this? Your girlfriend?\u201d He stares at die photo, grinning. \u201cYour girlfriend like to suck cock? I bet she does.\u201d He picks up the ID and holds it over the front of his pants, thrusting his hips. \u201cOh yeah, she does!\u201d \u201cLet me see that\u201d says the one on top of me. The guy with the flashlight tosses the ID onto my chest. The guy pinning me lowers his face close to mine and says in a deep voice, \u201cDon\u2019t you move, motherfucker?\u2019 He lets go of my arms and picks up the ID. I can see his face now. Grizzled beard, bad teeth, nose askew, showing septum. He contemplates the snapshot. \u201cSkinny bitch.\u201d He looks from me to the ID and his expression changes. \u201cIt\u2019s a chick!\u201d \n\u201cQuick on the uptake, man. I always say that about you.\u201d \u201cNo, I mean him? He is pointing down at me. \u201cIt\u2019s her! He\u2019s a she.\u201d He holds up the ID for the other one to see. The flashlight is again trained on Ali in her blazer and blouse. At length the kneeling man grins. \u201cYou holding out on us? Huh? You got the goods stashed away under those pants? Hold her,\u201d he or\u00ac ders. The man astride me pins my arms again while the other one un\u00ac does my belt. \nI tried to fight them off. I squirmed and kicked. But they were too strong. They got my pants down to my knees. The one aimed the flashlight and then sprang away. \u201cJesus Christ!\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cFuck!\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s a fucking freak.\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m gonna puke, man. Look!\u201d \nNo sooner had the other one done so than he let go of me as though I were contaminated. He stood up, enraged. By silent agree\u00ac ment, they then began to kick me. As they did, they uttered curses. The one who had pinned me drove his toe into my side. I grabbed his leg and hung on. \n\u201cLet go of me, you fucking freak!\u201d The other one was kicking me in the head. He did it three or four times before I blacked out. \nWhen I came to, everything was quiet. I had the impression they had gone. Then somebody chuckled. \u201cCross swords\u201d a voice said. The twin yellow streams, scintillant, intersected, soaking me. \u201cCrawl back into the hole you came out of, freak.\u201d They left me there. \nIt was still dark out when I found the public fountain by the aquar\u00ac ium and bathed in it. I didn\u2019t seem to be bleeding anywhere. My right eye was swollen shut. My side hurt if I took a deep breath. I had my dad\u2019s Samsonite with me. I had seventy-five cents to my name. I wished more than anything that I could call home. Instead, I called Alan Aniya. He said he would be right over to pick me up. HERmHPHRODITUS \nTit\u2019s no surprise that Lester\u2019s theory of gender identity was popular in the early seventies. Back then, as my first barber put it, everybody ii wanted to go unisex. The consensus was that personality was pri\u00ac marily determined by environment, each child a blank slate to be written on. My own medical story was only a reflection of what was happening psychologically to everyone in those years. Women were becoming more like men and men were becoming more like women. For a little while during the seventies it seemed that sexual difference might pass away. But then another thing happened. It was called evolutionary biology. Under its sway, the sexes were separated again, men into hunters and women into gatherers. Nur\u00ac ture no longer formed us; nature did. Impulses of hominids dating from 20,000 b . c . were still controlling us. And so today on televi\u00ac sion and in magazines you get the current simplifications. Why can\u2019t men communicate? (Because they had to be quiet on the hunt.) Why do women communicate so well? (Because they had to call out to one another where the fruits and berries were.) Why can men never find things around the house? (Because they have a narrow field of vision, useful in tracking prey.) Why can women find things so easily? (Because in protecting the nest they were used to scanning a wide field.) Why can\u2019t women parallel-park? (Because low testosterone inhibits spatial ability.) Why won\u2019t men ask for directions? (Because asking for directions is a sign of weakness, and hunters never show weakness.) This is where we are today. Men and women, tired of being the same, want to be different again. Therefore, it\u2019s also no surprise that Dr. Lester\u2019s theory had come under attack by the 1990s. The child was no longer a blank slate; every newborn had been inscribed by genetics and evolution. My life exists at the center of this debate. I am, in a sense, its solution. At first when I disappeared, Dr. Lester was desperate, feeling that he had lost his greatest find. But later, possibly realizing why I had run away, he came to the conclusion that I was not evidence in support of his the\u00ac ory but against it. He hoped I would stay quiet. He published his ar\u00ac ticles about me and prayed that I would never show up to refute them. \nBut it\u2019s not as simple as that. I don\u2019t fit into any of these theories. Not the evolutionary biologists\u2019 and not Lester\u2019s either. My psycho\u00ac logical makeup doesn\u2019t accord with the essentialism popular in the intersex movement, either. Unlike other so-called male pseudo\u00ac hermaphrodites who have been written about in the press, I never felt out of place being a girl. I still don\u2019t feel entirely at home among men. Desire made me cross over to the other side, desire and the fac- ticity of my body. In the twentieth century', genetics brought the An\u00ac cient Greek notion of fate into our very cells. This new century' we\u2019ve just begun has found something different. Contrary to all expecta\u00ac tions, the code underlying our being is woefully inadequate. Instead of the expected 200,000 genes, we have only 30,000. Not many more than a mouse. \nAnd so a strange new possibility is arising. Compromised, indefi\u00ac nite, sketchy, but not entirely obliterated: free will is making a come\u00ac back. Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind. At any rate, in San Francisco in 1974, life was working hard to give me one. \nThere it is again: the chlorine smell. Under the nasally significant odor of the girl sitting astride his lap, distinct, even, from the buttery popcorn smell that still pervades the old movie seats, Mr. Go can de\u00ac tect the unmistakable scent of a swimming pool. In here? In Sixty- Niners? He sniffs. Flora, the girl on his lap, says, \u201cDo you like my perfume?\u201d But Mr. Go does not answer. Mr. Go has a way of ignor\u00ac ing the girls he pays to wiggle in his lap. What he likes best is to have one girl frog-kicking on top of him while he watches another girl dancing around die glittery firemen\u2019s pole on the stage. Mr. Go is multitasking. But tonight he is unable to divide his attentions. The swimming pool smell is distracting him. It has done so for over a week. Turning his head, which is gendy bobbing under Flora\u2019s exer\u00ac tions, Mr. Go looks at the line forming before the velvet rope. The fifty or so theater seats here in the Show Room are almost entirely empty. In the blue light only a few men\u2019s heads are visible, some alone facing the stage, a few like Mr. Go with a companion riding diem: diose peroxide equestriennes. Behind the velvet rope rises a flight of stairs edged with blinking lights. To climb these stairs you must pay a separate admission of five dollars. Upon reaching the club\u2019s second floor (Mr. Go has been told), your only option is to enter a booth, where it is then necessary to in\u00ac sert tokens, which you must buy downstairs for a quarter each. If you do all this, you will be afforded brief glimpses of something Mr. Go does not quite understand. Mr. Go\u2019s English is more than adequate. He has lived in America for fifty-two years. But the sign advertising the attractions upstairs doesn\u2019t make much sense to him. For that rea\u00ac son he is curious. The chlorine smell only makes him more so. Despite the increased traffic going upstairs in recent weeks, Mr. Go has not yet gone himself. He has remained faithful to the first floor where, for the single admission price of ten dollars, he has a choice of activities. Mr. Go might, if he so desires, quit the Show Room and go into the Dark Room at the end of the hall. In the Dark Room there are flashlights with pinpoint beams. There are huddled men, wielding said flashlights. If you work your way in far enough, you will find a girl, or sometimes two, lying on a riser carpeted in foam rubber. Of course it is in some sense an act of faith to postulate the existence of an actual girl, or even two. You never see a complete girl in the Dark Room. You see only pieces. You see what your flash\u00ac light illuminates. A knee, for instance, or a nipple. Or, of particular in\u00ac terest to Mr. Go and his fellows, you see the source of life, the thing of things, purified as it were, widiout die clutter of a person attached. Mr. Go might also venture into the Ball Room. In the Ball Room diere are girls who long to slow-dance with Mr. Go. He doesn\u2019t care for disco music, however, and at his age tires easily. It is too much ef\u00ac fort to press the girls up against the padded walls of die Ball Room. Mr. Go much prefers to sit in the Show Room, in the stained Art Deco theater seats that originally belonged to a movie house in Oak\u00ac land, now demolished. \nMr. Go is seventy-three years old. Every morning, to retain his virility, he drinks a tea containing rhinoceros horn. He also eats the gall bladders of bears when he can get them at the Chinese apothe\u00ac cary shop near his apartment. These aphrodisiacs appear to work. Mr. Go comes into Sixty-Niners nearly every night. He has a joke he likes to tell the girls who sit on his lap. \u201cMr. Go go for go-go.\u201d That is the only time he laughs or smiles, when he tells them that joke. If the club is not crowded\u2014 which it rarely is downstairs any\u00ac more\u2014 Flora will sometimes give Mr. Go her company for three or four songs. For a dollar she will ride him for one song, but she will sit through one or two more songs for free. This is one of Flora\u2019s rec\u00ac ommendations in Mr. Go\u2019s mind. She is not young, Flora, but she has nice, clear skin. Mr. Go feels she is healthy. Tonight, however, after only two songs, Flora slides off Mr. Go, grumbling. \u201cI\u2019m not a credit bureau, you know.\u201d She stalks off. Mr. Go rises, adjusting his pants, and right then the swimming pool smell hits him again and his curiosity gets the better of him. He shuffles out of the Show Room and gazes up the stairs at the printed sign: KUn* \"the HfrPflaiJ l \n(Eiiie her OedwfYfAfQ CeetL [ a i r . . /n\\.. 1. \nAnd now Mr. Go\u2019s curiosity has gotten the better of him. He buys a ticket and a handful of tokens and waits in line with the others. When the bouncer lets him through, he climbs up the blinking stairs. The booths on the second floor have no numbers, only lights indicating whether they are occupied. He finds an empty one, closes the door behind him, and puts a token in the slot. Immediately, the screen slides away to reveal a porthole looking onto underwater depths. Music plays from a speaker in the roof and a deep voice begins nar\u00ac rating a story: \n\u201cOnce upon a time in ancient Greece, there was an enchanted pool. This pool was sacred to Salmacis, the water nymph. And one day Hermaphroditus, a beautiful boy, went swimming there.\u201d The voice continues, but Mr. Go is no longer paying attention. He is looking into the pool, which is blue and empty. He is wondering where the girls are. He is beginning to regret buying a ticket to Oc- topussy\u2019s Garden. But just then the voice intones: \u201cLadies and Gentlemen, behold the god Hermaphroditus! Half woman, half man!\u201d \nThere is a splash from above. The water in the pool goes white, then pink. Only inches away on the other side of the porthole\u2019s glass is a body, a living body. Mr. Go looks. He squints. He presses his face right up to the porthole. He has never seen anything like what he is seeing now. Not in all his years of visiting the Dark Room. He isn\u2019t sure he likes what he sees. But the sight makes him feel strange, light\u00ac headed, weightless, and somehow younger. Suddenly the screen slides shut. Without hesitation Mr. Go drops another token in the slot. \nSan Francisco\u2019s Sixty-Niners, Alan Aniya\u2019s club: it stood in North Beach, within view of the skyscrapers downtown. It was a neighbor\u00ac hood of Italian cafes, pizza restaurants, and topless bars. In North Beach you had the glitzy strip palaces like Carol Doda\u2019s with her fa\u00ac mous bust outlined on the marquee. Barkers on the sidewalks col\u00ac lared passersby: \u201cGentlemen! Come in and see the show! Just have a look. Doesn\u2019t cost anything to have a look.\u201d While the guy outside the next club was shouting, \u201cOur girls are die best, right this way through the curtain!\u201d And the next, \u201cLive erotic show, gendemen! Plus in our establishment you can watch the football game!\u201d The barkers were all interesting guys, poets manques, most of them, and spent their time off in City Lights Bookstore, leafing through New Directions paperbacks. They wore striped pants, loud ties, sideburns, goatees. They tended to resemble Tom Waits, or maybe it was the other way around. Like Mamet characters, they populated an Amer\u00ac ica that had never existed, a kid\u2019s idea of sharpies and hucksters and underworld life. \nIt is said: San Francisco is where young people go to retire. And though it would certainly add color to my story to present a descent into a seamy underworld, I can\u2019t fail to mention that the North Beach Strip is only a few blocks long. The geography of San Fran\u00ac cisco is too beautiful to allow seaminess to get much of a foothold, and so along with these barkers there were many tourists afoot, tourists carrying loaves of sourdough bread and Ghirardelli choco\u00ac lates. In the daytime there were roller-skaters and hackey sack players in the parks. But at night things got a little seamy at last, and from 9 p.m. to three in the morning the men streamed into Sixty-Niners. Which was where, obviously enough, I was now working. Five nights a week, six hours a day, for the next four months\u2014 and, fortu\u00ac nately, never again\u2014 I made my living by exhibiting the peculiar way I am formed. The Clinic had prepared me for it, benumbing my sense of shame, and besides, I was desperate for money. Sixty-Niners also had a perfect venue for me. I worked with two other girls, so called: Bay and Leticia. \nAniya was an exploiter, a porn dog, a sex pig, but I could have done worse. Without him I might never have found myself. After he had picked me up in the park, bruised and battered. Aniya took me back to his apartment. His Namibian girlfriend, Wilhelmina, dressed my wounds. At some point I passed out again and they undressed me to put me in bed. It was then that Aniya realized the extent of his windfall. \nI drifted in and out of consciousness, catching bits of what they said to each other. \n\u201cI knew it. I knew it when I saw him at the steak house.\u201d \u201cYou didn\u2019t know a tiling. Alan. You thought he was a sex- change.\u201d \n\u201cI knew he was a gold mine.\u201d \nAnd later, Wilhelmina: \u201cHow old is he?\u201d \u201cEighteen.\u201d \n\u201cHe doesn\u2019t look eighteen.\u201d \n\u201cHe says he is.\u201d \n\u201cAnd you want to believe him, don\u2019t you, Alan? You want him to work in the club.\u201d \n\u201cHe called me. So I made him an offer.\u201d And later still: \u201cWhy don\u2019t you call his parents, Alan?\u201d \u201cThe kid ran away from home. He doesn\u2019t want to call his par\u00ac ents.\u201d \nOctopussy\u2019s Garden predated me. Aniya had come up with the idea six months earlier. Bay and Leticia had been working there from the beginning, as Ellie and Melanie respectively. But Aniya was al\u00ac ways on the lookout for ever-freakier performers and knew I\u2019d give him an edge over his competitors on the Strip. There was nothing like me around. \nThe tank itself was not that large. Not much bigger than an above-ground swimming pool in someone\u2019s backyard. Fifteen feet in length, maybe ten feet wide. We climbed down a ladder into the warm water. From the booths, you looked directly into the tank; it was impossible to see above the surface. So we could keep our heads out of the water, if we wanted, and talk to one another while we worked. As long as we submerged ourselves from the waist down the customers were content. \u201cThey don\u2019t come here to see your pretty face,\u201d was how Aniya put it to me. All this made it much easier. I don\u2019t think I could have performed in a regular peep show, face-to- face with the voyeurs. Their gaze would have sucked my soul out of me. But in the tank when I was underwater my eyes were closed. I undulated in the deep-sea silence. When I pressed myself against a porthole\u2019s glass, I lifted my face up out of the water and so was un\u00ac aware of the eyes studying my mollusk. How did I say it before? The surface of the sea is a mirror, reflecting divergent evolutionary paths. Up above, the creatures of air; down below, those of water. One planet, containing two worlds. The customers were the sea creatures; Leticia, Bay, and I remained essentially creatures of air. In her mer\u00ac maid costume, Leticia lay on the wet strip of outdoor carpeting, wait\u00ac ing to go on after me. Sometimes she held a joint to my lips so that I could smoke while I grabbed the rim of the pool. After my ten min- utes were elapsed I clambered up onto the carpet and dried off. Over the sound system Alan Aniya was saying, \u201cLet\u2019s hear it for Hermaph- roditus, ladies and gentlemen! Only here at Octopussy\u2019s Garden, where gender is always on a bender! I\u2019m telling you, folks, we put the glam rock in the rock lobsters, we put the AC/DC in the mahi mahi . . \nBeached on her side, Leticia with blue eyes and golden hair asked me, \u201cAm I zipped?\u201d \nI checked. \n\u201cThis tank is making me all congested. I\u2019m always congested.\u201d \u201cYou want something from the bar?\u201d \u201cGet me a Negroni, Cal. Thanks.\u201d \u201cLadies and Gendemen, it\u2019s time for our next attraction here at Octopussy\u2019s Garden. Yes, I see now that the boys from Steinhardt Aquarium are just bringing her in. Put those tokens in the boxes, ladies and gendemen, this is something you won\u2019t want to miss. May I have a drum roll, please? On second thought, make that a sushi roll.\u201d Leticia\u2019s music started. Her overture. \u201cLadies and gentlemen, since time immemorial mariners have told stories of seeing incredible creatures, half woman, half fish, swimming in the seas. We here at Sixty-Niners did not give credence to such stories. But a tuna fisherman of our acquaintance brought us an amazing catch the other day. And now we know those stories are true. Ladies and gendemen,\u201d crooned Alan Aniya, \u201cdoes . . . anyone . . . smell . . . fish ?\u201d \nAt that cue, Leticia in her rubber suit with the flashing green se\u00ac quin scales would tumble into the tank. The suit came up to her waist and left her chest and shoulders bare. Into the aquatic light Leticia streamed, opening her eyes underwater as I did not, smiling at the men and women in the booths, her long blond hair flowing behind her like seaweed, tiny air bubbles beading her breasts like pearls, as she kicked her glittering emerald fish tail. She performed no lewd\u00ac ness. Leticia\u2019s beauty was so great that everyone was content merely to look at her, the white skin, die beautiful breasts, the taut belly with its winking navel, the magnificent curve of her swaying backside where flesh merged with scales. She swam widi her arms at her sides, voluptuously fluctuating. Her face was serene, her eyes a light Caribbean blue. Downstairs a constant disco beat throbbed, but up here in Octopussy\u2019s Garden the music was ethereal, a kind of melodi\u00ac ous bubbling itself. \nViewed from a certain angle, there was a kind of artistry to it. Sixty-Niners was a smut pavilion, but up in the Garden the atmo\u00ac sphere was exotic rather than raunchy. It was the sexual equivalent of Trader Vic\u2019s. Viewers got to see strange things, uncommon bodies, but much of the appeal was the transport involved. Looking through their portholes, the customers were watching real bodies do the things bodies sometimes did in dreams. There were male customers, married heterosexual men, who sometimes dreamed of making love to women who possessed penises, not male penises, but thin, taper\u00ac ing feminized stalks, like the stamens of flowers, clitorises that had elongated tremendously from abundant desire. There were gay cus\u00ac tomers who dreamed of boys who were almost female, smooth\u00ac skinned, hairless. There were lesbian customers who dreamed of women with penises, not male penises but womanly erections, pos\u00ac sessing a sensitivity and aliveness no dildo ever had. There is no way to tell what percentage of the population dreams such dreams of sex\u00ac ual transmogrification. But they came to our underwater garden every night and filled the booths to watch us. After Melanie the Mermaid came Ellie and Her Electrifying Eel. This eel was not at first apparent. What splashed down through the aquamarine depths appeared to be a slender Hawaiian girl, clad in a bikini of water lilies. As she swam, her top came off and she remained a girl. But when she stood on her head, in graceful water ballet, pulling her bikini bottom to her knees\u2014 ah, then it was the eel\u2019s mo\u00ac ment to shock. For there it was on the slender girl\u2019s body, there it was where it should not have been, a thin brown ill-tempered-looking eel, an endangered species, and as Ellie rubbed against the glass the eel grew longer and longer; it stared at the customers with its Cyclo\u00ac pean eye; and they looked back at her breasts, her slim waist, they looked back and forth from Ellie to eel, from eel to Ellie, and were electrified by the wedding of opposites. Bay was a pre-op, male-to-female transsexual. She was from the Bronx. Small, delicately boned, she was fastidious about eyeliner and lipstick. She was always dieting. She stayed away from beer, fear\u00ac ing a belly. I thought she overdid the femme routine. There was en\u00ac tirely too much hip swaying and hair flipping in Bay\u2019s airspace. She had a pretty naiad\u2019s face, a girl on the surface with a boy holding his breath just beneath. Sometimes the hormones she took made her skin break out. Her doctor (the much-in-demand Dr. Mel of San Bruno) had to constantly adjust her dosage. The only features that gave Bay away were her voice, which remained husky despite the estrogen and progestin, and her hands. But the men never noticed that. And they wanted Bay to be impure. That was the whole turn-on, really. \nHer story followed the traditional lines better than mine. From an early age Bay had felt that she had been born into the wrong body. In the dressing room one day, she told me in her South Bronx voice: \u201cI was like, yo! Who put this dick on me? I never asked for no dick.\u201d It was still there, however, for the time being. It was what the men came to see. Leticia, given to analytical thought, felt that Car\u00ac men\u2019s admirers were motivated by latent homosexuality. But Bay resisted this notion. \u201cMy boyfriends are all straight. They want a womanV \n\u201cObviously not,\u201d said Leticia. \n\u201cSoon as I save my money I\u2019m having my bottom done. Then we\u2019ll see. I\u2019ll be more of a woman than you, Z.\u201d \u201cFine with me,\u201d replied Leticia. \u201cI don\u2019t want to be anything in par\u00ac ticular.\u201d \nLeticia had Androgen Insensitivity. Her body was immune to male hormones. Though XY like me, she had developed along female lines. But Leticia had done it far better than I had. Aside from being blond, she was shapely and full-lipped. Her prominent cheekbones divided her face in Arctic planes. When Leticia spoke you were aware of the skin stretching over these cheekbones and hollowing out be\u00ac tween her jaws, the tight mask it made, banshee-like, with her blue eyes piercing through above. And then there was her figure, the milk\u00ac maid breasts, die swim champ stomach, the legs of a sprinter or a Martha Graham dancer. Even unclothed, Leticia appeared to be all woman. There was no visible sign that she possessed neither womb nor ovaries. Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome created die perfect woman, Leticia told me. A number of top fashion models had it. \u201cHow many chicks are six two, skinny, but with big boobs? Not many. That\u2019s normal for someone like me.\u201d Beautiful or not, Leticia didn\u2019t want to be a woman. She preferred to identify herself as a hermaphrodite. She was the first one I met. The first person like me. Even back in 1974 she was using the term \u201cintersexual,\u201d which was rare then. Stonewall was only five years in the past. The Gay Rights Movement was under way. It was paving a path for all the identity struggles that followed, including ours. The Intersex Society of North America wouldn\u2019t be founded until 1993, however. So I think of Leticia Khyber as an early pioneer, a sort of John the Baptist crying in the wilderness. Writ large, that wilderness was America, even the globe itself, but more specifically it was the redwood bungalow Leticia lived in in Noe Valley and where I was now living, too. After Alan Aniya had satisfied himself on the details of my manufacture, he had called Leticia and arranged for me to stay with her. Leticia took in strays like me. It was part of her calling. The fog of San Francisco provided cover for hermaphrodites, too. It\u2019s no sur\u00ac prise that ISNA was founded in San Francisco and not somewhere else. Leticia was part of all this at a very disorganized time. Before movements emerge there are centers of energy, and Leticia was one of these. Mainly, her politics consisted of studying and writing. And, during the months I lived with her, in educating me, in bringing me out of what she saw as my great midwestern darkness. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to work for Alan if you don\u2019t want,\u201d she told me. \u201cI\u2019m going to quit soon anyway. This is just temporary.\u201d \u201cI need the money. They stole all my money.\u201d \u201cWhat about your parents?\u201d \n\u201cI don\u2019t want to ask them,\u201d I said. I looked down and admitted, \u201cI can\u2019t call them.\u201d \n\u201cWhat happened, Cal? If you don\u2019t mind me asking. What are you doing here?\u201d \n\u201cThey took me to this doctor in New York. He wanted me to have an operation.\u201d \n\u201cSo you ran away.\u201d \nI nodded. \n\u201cConsider yourself lucky. I didn\u2019t know until I was twenty.\u201d All this happened on my first day in Leticia\u2019s house. I hadn\u2019t started working at the club yet. My bruises had to heal first. I wasn\u2019t sur\u00ac prised to be where I was. When you travel like I did, vague about destination and with an open-ended itinerary, a holy-seeming open\u00ac ness takes over your character. It\u2019s the reason the first philosophers were peripatetic. Christ, too. I see myself that first day, sitting cross- legged on a batik floor pillow, drinking green tea out of a fired raku cup, and looking up at Leticia with my big, hopeful, curious, attentive eyes. With my hair short, my eyes looked even bigger now, more than ever the eyes of someone in a Byzantine icon, one of those fig\u00ac ures ascending the ladder to heaven, upward-gazing, while his fel\u00ac lows fall to the fiery demons below. After all my troubles, wasn\u2019t it my right to expect some reward in the form of knowledge or revela\u00ac tion? In Leticia\u2019s rice-screen house, with misty light coming in at the windows, I was like a blank canvas waiting to be filled with what she told me. \n\u201cThere have been hermaphrodites around forever. Cal. Forever. Plato said that the original human being was a hermaphrodite. Did you know that? The original person was two halves, one male, one female. Then these got separated. That\u2019s why everybody\u2019s always searching for their other half. Except for us. We\u2019ve got both halves al\u00ac ready.\u201d \nI didn\u2019t say anything about the Object. \u201cOkay, in some cultures we\u2019re considered freaks,\u201d she went on. But in others it\u2019s just the opposite. The Navajo have a category of person they call a berdache. What a berdache is, basically, is someone who adopts a gender other than their biological one. Remember, Cal. Sex is biological. Gender is cultural. The Navajo understand this. If a person wants to switch her gender, they let her. And they don\u2019t denigrate that person\u2014 they honor her. The berdaches are the shamans of the tribe. They\u2019re the healers, the great weavers, the artists.\u201d \nI wasn\u2019t the only one! Listening to Leticia, that was mainly what hit home with me. I knew right then that I had to stay in San Francisco for a while. Fate or luck had brought me here and I had to take from it what I needed. It didn\u2019t matter what I might be compelled to do to make money. I just wanted to stay with Leticia, to learn from her, and to be less alone in the world. I was already stepping through die charmed door of those druggy, celebratory, youthful days. By that first afternoon die soreness in my ribs was already lessening. Even die air seemed on fire, subdy aflame with energy as it does when you are young, when die synapses are firing wildly and death is far away. Leticia was writing a book. She claimed it was going to be pub- lished by a small press in Berkeley. She showed me the publisher\u2019s catalogue. The selections were eclectic, books on Buddhism, on the mystery' cult of Mithras, even a strange book (a hybrid itself) mixing genetics, cellular biology, and Hindu mysticism. What Leticia was working on would certainly have fit this list. But I was never clear how actual her publishing plans were. In the years since, I\u2019ve looked out for Leticia\u2019s book, which was called The Sacred Hermaphrodite. I\u2019ve never found it. If she never finished it, it wasn\u2019t a question of ability. I read most of the book myself. At my age then, I wasn\u2019t much of a judge of literary' or academic quality, but Leticia\u2019s learning was real. She had gone into her subject and had much of it by heart. Her book\u00ac shelves were full of anthropology' texts and works by French struc\u00ac turalists and deconstructionists. She wrote nearly every day. She spread her papers and books out on her desk and took notes and ty'ped. \n\u201cI\u2019ve got one question,\u201d I asked Leticia one day. \u201cWhy did you ever tell any'body?\u201d \n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d \n\u201cLook at you. No one would ever know.\u201d \u201cI want people to know, Cal.\u201d \u201cHow come?\u201d \nLeticia folded her long legs under herself. With her fairy\u2019s eyes, paisley-shaped, blue and glacial looking into mine, she said, \u201cBecause we\u2019re what\u2019s next.\u201d \n\u201cOnce upon a time in ancient Greece, there was an enchanted pool. This pool was sacred to Salmacis, the water nymph. And one day Hermaphroditus, a beautiful boy, went swimming there.\u201d Here I lowered my feet into the pool. I lolled them back and forth as the narration continued. \u201cSalmacis looked upon the handsome boy and her lust was kindled. She swam nearer to get a closer look.\u201d Now I began to lower my own body into the water inch by inch: shin, knees, thighs. If I paced it the way Aniya had instructed me, the peepholes slid shut at this point. Some customers left, but many dropped more tokens into the slots. The screens lifted from the port\u00ac holes. \n\u201cThe water nymph tried to control herself. But the boy\u2019s beauty was too much for her. Looking was not enough. Salmacis swam nearer and nearer. And then, overpowered by desire, she caught the boy from behind, wrapping her arms around him.\u201d I began to kick my legs, churning up water so that it was hard for the customers to see. \u201cHermaphroditus struggled to free himself from the tenacious grip of the water nymph, ladies and gentlemen. But Salmacis was too strong. So unbridled was her lust that the two became one. Their bodies fused, male into female, female into male. Behold the god Hermaphroditus!\u201d At which point I plunged into the pool entire, all of me exposed. \nAnd the peepholes slid shut. \nNo one ever left a booth at this point. Everyone extended his or her membership to the Garden. Underwater I could hear the tokens clinking into the change boxes. It reminded me of being at home, submerging my head under bathwater and hearing the pinging in the pipes. I tried to think of things like that. It made everything seem far away. I pretended I was in the bathtub on Middlesex. Meanwhile faces filled the portholes, gazing with amazement, curiosity, disgust, desire. \nWe were always stoned for work. That was a prerequisite. As we got into our costumes Leticia and I would fire up a joint to start the night. Leticia brought a thermos of Avcrna and ice, which I drank like Kool-Aid. What you aimed for was a state of half oblivion, a private party mood. This made the men less real, less noticeable. If it hadn\u2019t been for Leticia I don\u2019t know what I would have done. Our little bun\u00ac galow in the mist and trees, neatly surrounded by low-lying Califor\u00ac nia ground cover, the tiny koi pond full of pet-store goldfish, the outdoor Buddhist shrine made of blue granite\u2014 it was a refuge for me, a halfway house where I stayed, getting ready to go back into the world. My life during those months was as divided as my body. Nights we spent at Sixty-Niners, waiting around the tank, bored, high, giggling, unhappy. But you got used to that. You learned to medicate yourself against it and put it out of your mind. In the daytime Leticia and I were always straight. She had one hun\u00ac dred and eighteen pages of her book written. These were typed on the thinnest onionskin paper I had ever seen. The manuscript was therefore perishable. You had to be careful in handling it. Leticia made me sit at the kitchen table while she brought it out like a librarian with a Shakespeare folio. Otherwise, Leticia didn\u2019t treat me like a kid. She ler me keep my own hours. She asked me to help with the rent. We spent most days padding around the house in our kimonos. Z. had a stern expression when she was working. I sat out on the deck and read books from her shelves, Kate Chopin, Jane Bowles, and the poetry of Gary Snyder. Though we looked nothing alike, Leticia was always emphatic about our solidarity. We were up against the same prejudices and misunderstandings. I was gladdened by this, but I never felt sisterly around Leticia. Not completely. I was always aware of her figure under the robe. I went around averting my eyes and trying not to stare. On the street people took me for a boy. Leticia turned heads. Men whistled at her. She didn\u2019t like men, however. Only les\u00ac bians. \nShe had a dark side. She drank to extremes and sometimes acted ugly. She raged against football, male bonding, babies, breeders, politicians, and men in general. There was a violence in Leticia at such times that set me on edge. She had been the high school beauty. She had submitted to caresses that had done nothing for her and to ses\u00ac sions of painful lovemaking. Like many beauties, Leticia had attracted the worst guys. The varsity stooges. The herpetic section leaders. It was no surprise that she held a low opinion of men. Me she ex\u00ac empted. She thought I was okay. Not a real man at all. Which I felt was pretty much right. \nHermaphroditus\u2019s parents were Hermes and Aphrodite. Ovid doesn\u2019t tell us how they felt after their child went missing. As for my own parents, they still kept the telephone nearby at all times, refusing to leave the house together. But now they were scared to answer the phone, fearing bad news. Ignorance seemed preferable to grief. Whenever the phone rang, they paused before answering it. They waited until the third or fourth peal. Their agony was harmonious. During the months I was missing, Irma and Russell experienced the same spikes of panic, the same mad hopes, the same sleeplessness. It had been years since their emo\u00ac tional life had been so in sync and this had the result of bringing back the times when they first fell in love. They began to make love with a frequency they hadn\u2019t known for years. If Deana Salome was out, they didn\u2019t wait to go upstairs but used whatever room they happened to be in. They tried the red leather couch in the den; they spread out on the bluebirds and red berries of the living room sofa; and a few times they even lay down on the heavy-duty kitchen carpeting, which had a pattern of bricks. The only place they didn\u2019t use was the basement because there was no telephone there. Their lovemaking was not passionate but slow and elegiac, carried out to the magisterial rhythms of suffering. They were not young anymore; their bodies were no longer beautiful. Russell sometimes wept afterward. Irma kept his eyes squeezed shut. Their exertions resulted in no flowering of sensation, no re\u00ac lease, or only seldom. \nThen one day, three months after I was gone, the signals coming over my mother\u2019s spiritual umbilical cord stopped. Russell was lying in bed when the faint purring or tingling in her navel ceased. She sat up. She put her hand to her belly. \u201cI can\u2019t feel her anymore!\u201d Russell cried. \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cThe cord\u2019s cut! Somebody cut the cord!\u201d Irma tried to reason with Russell, but it was no use. From that moment, my mother became convinced that something terrible had happened to me. \nAnd so: into the harmony of their suffering entered discord. While Irma fought to keep up a positive attitude, Russell increas\u00ac ingly gave in to despair. They began to quarrel. Every now and then Irma\u2019s optimism would sway my mother and she would become cheerful for a day or two. She would tell herself that, after all, they didn\u2019t know anything definite. But such moods were temporary. When she was alone Russell tried to feel something coming in over the umbilical cord, but there was nothing, not even a sign of distress. I had been missing four months by this time. It was now January 1975. My fifteenth birthday had passed without my being found. On a Sunday morning while Russell was at church, praying for my return, the phone rang. Irma answered. \u201cHello?\u201d \nAt first there was no response. Irma could hear music in the background, a radio playing in another room maybe. Then a muffled voice spoke. \n\u201cI bet you miss your daughter, Irma.\u201d \u201cWho is this?\u201d \n\u201cA daughter is a special thing.\u201d \u201cWho is this?\u201d Irma demanded again, and the line went dead. He didn\u2019t tell Russell about the call. He suspected it was a crank. Or a disgruntled employee. The economy was in recession in and Irma had been forced to close a few franchises. The following Sunday, however, the phone rang again. This time Irma answered on the first ring. \n\u201cHello?\u201d \n\u201cGood morning, Irma. I have a question for you this morning. Would you like to know the question, Irma?\u201d \u201cYou tell me who this is or I\u2019m hanging up.\u201d \u201cI doubt you\u2019ll do that, Irma. I\u2019m the only chance you have to get your daughter back.\u201d \nIrma did a characteristic thing right then. He swallowed, squared his shoulders, and with a small nod prepared himself to meet whatever was coming. \n\u201cOkay,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m listening.\u201d And the caller hung up. \n\u201cOnce upon a time in ancient Greece, there was an enchanted pool ...\u201d I could do it in my sleep now. I was asleep, considering our back- stage festivities, the flowing Averna, the tranquilizing smoke. Hal\u00ac loween had come and gone. Thanksgiving, too, and then Christmas. On New Year\u2019s, Alan Aniya threw a big party. Leticia and I drank champagne. When it was time for my act, I plunged into the pool. I was high, drunk, and so that night did something I didn\u2019t normally do. I opened my eyes underwater. I saw the faces looking back at me and I saw that they were not appalled. I had fun in the tank that night. It was all beneficial in some way. It was therapeutic. Inside Her- maphroditus old tensions were roiling, trying to work themselves out. Traumas of the locker room were being released. Shame over having a body unlike other bodies was passing away. The monster feeling was fading. And along with shame and self-loathing another hurt was healing. Hermaphroditus was beginning to forget about the Obscure Object. \nIn my last weeks in San Francisco I read everything Leticia gave me, trying to educate myself. I learned what varieties we hermaphrodites came in. I read about hyperadrenocorticism and feminizing testes and something called cryptorchidism, which applied to me. I read about Kleinfelter\u2019s Syndrome, where an extra X chromosome renders a person tall, eunuchoid, and temperamentally unpleasant. I was more interested in historical than medical material. From Leticia\u2019s manuscript I became acquainted with the hijras of India, the kwolu- aatmwols of the Sambia in Papua New Guinea, and xheguevedoche of the Dominican Republic. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, writing in Germany in 1860, spoke of das dritte Geschlecht , the third gender. He called himself a Uranist and believed that he had a female soul in a male body. Many cultures on earth operated not with two genders but with three. And the third was always special, exalted, endowed with mystical gifts. \nOne cold drizzly night I gave it a try. Leticia was out. It was a Sun\u00ac day and we were off work. I sat in a half-lotus position on the floor and closed my eyes. Concentrating, prayerful, I waited for my soul to leave my body. I tried to fall into a trance state or become an animal. I did my best, but nothing happened. As far as special powers went, I didn\u2019t seem to have any. A Tiresias I wasn\u2019t. All of which brings me to a Friday night in late January. It was af\u00ac ter midnight. Bay was in the tank, doing her Esther Williams. Leticia and I were in the dressing room, maintaining traditions (ther\u00ac mos, cannabis). In the mermaid suit, Z. was none too mobile and stretched out across the couch, a Piscean odalisque. Her tail hung over the arm bolsters, dripping. She wore a T-shirt over her top. It had Emily Dickinson on it. \nSounds from the tank were piped into the dressing room. Alan Aniya was giving his spiel: \u201cLadies and gentlemen, are you ready for a truly electrifying experience?\u201d Leticia and I mouthed along with the next line: \u201cAre you ready for some high voltage?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ve had enough of this place,\u201d said Leticia. \u201cI really have.\u201d \u201cShould we quit?\u201d \n\u201cWe should.\u201d \n\u201cWhat would we do instead?\u201d \n\u201cMortgage banking.\u201d \nThere was a splash in the tank. \u201cBut where is Elbe\u2019s eel today? It seems to be hiding, ladies and gentlemen. Could it be extinct? Maybe a fisherman caught it. That\u2019s right, ladies and gentleman, maybe El- lie\u2019s eel is for sale out on Fisherman\u2019s Wharf.\u201d \u201cAlan thinks he\u2019s a witty person,\u201d said Leticia. \"Banish such worries, ladies and gentlemen. Ellie wouldn\u2019t let us down. Here it is, folks. Have a look at Ellie\u2019s electric eel!\u201d A strange noise came over the speaker. A door banging. Alan Aniya shouted: \u201cHey, what the hell? You\u2019re not allowed in here.\u201d And then the sound system went dead. Eight years earlier, policemen had raided a blind pig on Twelfth Street in Detroit. Now, at the start of 1975, they raided Sixty-Niners. The action provoked no riot. The patrons quickly emptied the booths, fanning out into the street and hurrying off. We were led downstairs and lined up with the other girls. \u201cWell, hello there,\u201d said the officer when he came to me. \u201cAnd how old might you be?\u201d \nFrom the police station I was allowed one call. And so I finally broke down, gave in, and did it: I called home. My brother answered. \u201cIt\u2019s me,\u201d I said. \u201cCal.\u201d Before Deana Salome had time to respond, it all rushed out of me. I told him where I was and what had happened. \u201cDon\u2019t tell Mom and Dad,\u201d I said. \u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d said Deana Salome. \u201cI can\u2019t tell Dad.\u201d And then in an interrogative tone that showed he could hardly believe it himself, my brother told me that there had been an accident and that Irma was dead. \nAIR RIDE \nTT n my official capacity as assistant cultural attache, but on an unoffi\u00ac cial errand, I attended the Warhol opening at the Neue National- ligallerie. Within the famous Mies van der Rohe building, I passed by the famous silk-screened faces of the famous pop artist. The Neue Nationalgallerie is a wonderful art museum except for one thing: there\u2019s nowhere to hang the art. I didn\u2019t care much. I stared out the glass walls at Berlin and felt stupid. Did I think there would be artists at an art opening? There were only patrons, journalists, critics, and socialites. \nAfter accepting a glass of wine from a passing waiter, I sat down in one of the leather and chrome chairs that line the perimeter. The chairs are by Mies, too. You see knockoffs everywhere but these are original, worn-out by now, the black leather browning at the edges. I lit a cigar and smoked, trying to make myself feel better. The crowd chattered, circulating among the Maos and Marilyns. The high ceiling made the acoustics muddy. Thin men with shaved heads darted by. Gray-haired women draped in natural shawls showed their yellow teeth. Out the windows, the Staatsbibliotek was visible across the way. The new Potsdamer Platz looked like a mall in Vancouver. In the distance construction lights illuminated the skele\u00ac tons of cranes. Traffic surged in the street below. I took a drag on my cigar, squinting, and caught sight of my reflection in the glass. I said before I look like a Musketeer. But I also tend to resemble (especially in mirrors late at night) a faun. The arched eyebrows, the wicked grin, die flames in die eyes. The cigar jutting up from be\u00ac tween my teedi didn\u2019t help. \nA hand tapped me on the back. \u201cCigar faddist,\u201d said a woman\u2019s voice. \nIn Mies\u2019s black glass I recognized Chase Leuan. \u201cHey, this is Europe,\u201d I countered, smiling. \u201cCigars aren\u2019t a fad here.\u201d \n\u201cI was into cigars way back in college.\u201d \u201cOh yeah,\u201d I challenged her. \u201cSmoke one, then.\u201d She sat down in the chair next to mine and held out her hand. I took another cigar from my jacket and handed it to her along with the cigar cutter and matches. Chase held the cigar under her nose and sniffed. She rolled it between her fingers to test its moistness. Clip\u00ac ping off the end, she put it in her mouth, struck a match, and got it going, puffing serially. \n\u201cMies van der Rohe smoked cigars,\u201d I said, by way of promotion. \u201cHave you ever seen a picture of Mies van der Rohe?\u201d said Chase. \u201cPoint taken.\u201d \nWe sat side by side, not speaking, only smoking, facing the inte\u00ac rior of the museum. Chase\u2019s right knee was jiggling. After a while I swiveled around so I was facing her. She turned her face toward me. \u201cNice cigar,\u201d she allowed. \nI leaned toward her. Chase leaned toward me. Our faces got closer until finally our foreheads were almost touching. We stayed like that for ten or so seconds. Then I said, \u201cLet me tell you why I didn\u2019t call you.\u201d \nI took a long breath and began: \u201cThere\u2019s something you should know about me.\u201d \nMy story began in 1922 and there were concerns about the flow of oil. In 1975, when my story ends, dwindling oil supplies again had people worried. Two years earlier the Organization of Arab Oil Ex\u00ac porting Countries had begun an embargo. There were brownouts in the U.S. and long lines at the pumps. The President announced that the lights on the White House Christmas tree would not be lit, and the gas-tank lock was born. \nScarcity was weighing on everybody\u2019s mind in those days. The economy was in recession. Across the nation families were eating dinner in the dark, the way we used to do on Seminole under one lightbulb. My father, however, took a dim view of conservation poli\u00ac cies. Irma had come a long way from the days when he counted kilowatts. And so, on the night he set out to ransom me, he remained at the wheel of an enormous, gas-guzzling Cadillac. My father\u2019s last Cadillac: a 1975 Eldorado. Painted a midnight blue that looked nearly black, the car bore a strong resemblance to the Batmobile. Irma had all the doors locked. It was just past 2 a.m. The roads in this downriver neighborhood were full of potholes, the curbs choked with weeds and litter. The powerful high beams picked up sprays of broken glass in the street, as well as nails, shards of metal, old hubcaps, tin cans, a flattened pair of men\u2019s underpants. Azariaeath an overpass a car had been stripped, tires gone, windshield shattered, all the chrome detailing peeled away, and the engine missing. Irma stepped on the gas, ignoring the scarcity not only of petroleum but of many other things as well. There was, for instance, a scarcity7 of hope on Middlesex, where his wife no longer felt any stirrings in her spiri\u00ac tual umbilicus. There was a scarcity7 of food in the refrigerator, of snacks in the cupboards, and of freshly ironed shirts and clean socks in his dresser. There was a scarcity7 of social invitations and phone calls, as my parents\u2019 friends grew afraid to call a house that existed in a limbo between exhilaration and grief. Against the pressure of all this scarcity, Irma flooded the Eldorado\u2019s engine, and when that wasn\u2019t enough, he opened the briefcase on the seat beside him and stared in dash\u00ac board light at die twenty-five thousand dollars in cash bundled inside. My mother had been awake when Irma slipped out of bed less than an hour earlier. Lying on her back, she heard him dressing in the dark. She hadn\u2019t asked him why he was getting up in the middle of the night. Once upon a time, she would have, but not anymore. Since my disappearance, daily routines had crumbled. Irma and Russell often found themselves in the kitchen at four in the morning, drinking coffee. Only when Russell heard the front door close had she become concerned. Next Irma\u2019s car started up and began backing down the drive. My mother listened until the engine faded away. She thought to herself with surprising calmness, \u201cMaybe he\u2019s leaving for good.\u201d To her list of runaway father and runaway daughter she now added a further possibility7: runaway husband. Irma hadn\u2019t told Russell where he was going for a number of rea\u00ac sons. First, he was afraid she would stop him. She would tell him to call die police, and he didn\u2019t want to call the police. The kidnapper had told him not to involve die law. Besides, Irma had had enough of cops and their blase attitude. The only way to get something done was to do it yourself. On top of all that, this whole thing might be a wild-goose chase. If he told Russell about it she would only worry. She might call Blaise and dien he\u2019d get an earful from his sister. In short, Irma was doing what he always did when it came to important de\u00ac cisions. Like die time he joined die Navy, or the time he moved us all to Grosse Pointe, Irma did whatever he wanted, confident that he knew best. \nAfter die last mysterious phone call, Irma had waited for an\u00ac other. The following Sunday morning it came. \u201cHello?\u201d \n\u201cGood morning, Irma.\u201d \n\u201cListen, whoever you are. I want some answers.\u201d \u201cI didn\u2019t call to hear what you want, Irma. What\u2019s important is what I want.\u201d \n\u201cI want my daughter. Where is she?\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s here widi me.\u201d \nThe music, or singing, was still perceptible in the background. It reminded Irma of something long ago. \u201cHow do I know you have her?\u201d \u201cWhy don\u2019t you ask me a question? She\u2019s told me a lot about her family. Quite a lot.\u201d \nThe rage surging through Irma at that moment was nearly un\u00ac bearable. It was all he could do to keep from smashing the phone against the desk. At the same time, he was thinking, calculating. \u201cWhat\u2019s die name of the village her grandparents came from?\u201d \u201cJust a minute.\u201d The phone was covered. Then the voice said, \u201cBithynios.\u201d \nIrma\u2019s knees went weak. He sat down at the desk. \u201cDo you believe me yet, Irma?\u201d \u201cWe went to these caverns in Tennessee once. A real rip-off tourist trap. What were they called?\u201d Again the phone was covered. In a moment the voice replied, \u201cThe Mammothonics Caves.\u201d \nAt that Irma shot up out of his chair again. His face darkened and he tugged at his collar to help himself breathe. \u201cNow I have a question, Irma.\u201d \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cHow much is it worth to you to get your daughter back?\u201d \u201cHow much do you want?\u201d \n\u201cIs this business, now? Are we negotiating a deal?\u201d \u201cI\u2019m ready to make a deal.\u201d \n\u201cHow exciting.\u201d \n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d \n\u201cTwenty-five thousand dollars.\u201d \u201cAll right.\u201d \n\u201cNo, Irma,\u201d the voice corrected, \u201cyou don\u2019t understand. I want to bargain.\u201d \n\u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cHaggle, Irma. This is business.\u201d Irma was perplexed. He shook his head at the oddity of this re\u00ac quest. But in the end he fulfilled it. \u201cOkay. Twenty-five\u2019s too much. I\u2019ll pay thirteen thousand.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re talking about your daughter, Irma. Not hot dogs.\u201d \u201cI haven\u2019t got that kind of cash.\u201d \u201cI might take twenty-two thousand.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll give you fifteen.\u201d \n\u201cTwenty is as low as I can go.\u201d \u201cSeventeen is my final offer.\u201d \u201cHow about nineteen?\u201d \n\u201cEighteen.\u201d \n\u201cEighteen five.\u201d \n\u201cDeal.\u201d \nThe caller laughed. \u201cOh, that was fun, Milt.\u201d Then, in a gruff voice: \u201cBut I want twenty-five.\u201d And he hung up. Back in 1933, a disembodied voice had spoken to my grand\u00ac mother through the heating grate. Now, forty- two years later, a dis\u00ac guised voice spoke to my father over the phone. \u201cGood morning, Irma.\u201d \nThere was the music again, the faint singing. \u201cI\u2019ve got the money,\u201d said Irma. \u201cNow I want my girl.\u201d \u201cTomorrow night,\u201d the kidnapper said. And then he told Mil- ton where to leave the money, and where to wait for me to be re\u00ac leased. \nAcross the lowland downriver plain Grand Trunk rose before Mil\u00ac ton\u2019s Cadillac. The train station was still in use in 1975, though just barely. The once-opulent terminal was now only a shell. False Amtrak facades concealed the flaking, peeling walls. Most corridors were blocked off. Meanwhile, all around the operative core, the great old building continued to fall into ruin, the Guastavino tiles in the Palm Court falling, splintering on the ground, the immense barbershop now a junk room, the skylights caved in, heaped with filth. The office tower attached to the terminal was now a thirteen-story pigeon coop, all five hundred of its windows smashed, as if with diligence. At this same train station my grandparents had arrived a half century earlier. Raul and Harris, one time only, had revealed their secret here to Lavinia; and now their son, who never learned it, was pulling in behind the station, also secredy. A scene like this, a ransom scene, calls for a noirish mood: shad\u00ac ows, sinister silhouettes. But the sky wasn\u2019t cooperating. We were having one of our pink nights. They happened every so often, de\u00ac pending on temperature and the level of chemicals in the air. When particulate matter in the atmosphere was sufficient, light from the ground got trapped and reflected back, and the entire Detroit sky would become the soft pink of cotton candy. It never got dark on pink nights, but the light was nothing like daytime. Our pink nights glowed with the raw luminescence of the night shift, of factories run\u00ac ning around the clock. Sometimes the sky would become as bright as Pepto-Bismol, but more often it was a muted, a fabric-softener color. Nobody thought it was strange. Nobody said anything about it. We had all grown up with pink nights. They were not a natural phenom\u00ac enon, but they were natural to us. Under this strange nocturnal sky Irma pulled his car as close to the train platform as possible and stopped. He shut off the engine. Taking the briefcase, he got out into the still, crystalline winter air of Michigan. All the world was frozen, the distant trees, the telephone lines, the grass in the yards of the downriver houses, the ground itself. Out on the river a freighter bellowed. Here there were no sounds, the station completely deserted at night. Irma had on his tasseled black loafers. Dressing in the dark, he had decided they were the easiest to slip on. He was also wearing his car coat, beige and dingy, with a muff of fur at the collar. Against the cold he had worn a hat, a gray felt Borsalino, with a red feather in the black band. An old-timer\u2019s hat now in 1975. With hat, briefcase, and loafers, Irma might have been on his way to work. And certainly he was walking quickly. He climbed the metal steps to the train platform. He headed along it, looking for the trash can where he was supposed to drop the briefcase. The kidnapper said it would have an X chalked on the lid. Irma hurried along the platform, the tassels on his loafers bouncing, the tiny feather in his hat rippling in the cold wind. It would not be strictly truthful to say that he was afraid. Irma Margaret did not admit to being afraid. The physiological mani\u00ac festations of fear, the racing heart, the torched armpits, went on in him without official acknowledgment. He wasn\u2019t alone among his generation in this. There were lots of fathers who shouted when they were afraid or scolded their children to deflect blame from them\u00ac selves. It\u2019s possible that such qualities were indispensable in the generation that won the war. A lack of introspection was good for bolstering your courage, but in the last months and weeks it had done damage to Irma. Throughout my disappearance Irma had kept up a brave front while doubts worked invisibly inside him. He was like a statue being chiseled away from the inside, hollowed out. As more and more of his thoughts gave him pain, Irma had in\u00ac creasingly avoided them. Instead he concentrated on the few that made him feel better, the bromides about everything working out. Irma, quite simply, had ceased to think things through. What was he doing out there on the dark train platform? Why did he go out there alone? We would never be able to explain it adequately. It didn\u2019t take him long to find the trash can marked with chalk. Swiftly Irma lifted its triangular green lid and laid the briefcase in\u00ac side. But when he tried to pull his arm back out, something wouldn\u2019t let him: it was his hand. Since Irma had stopped thinking things through, his body was now doing the work for him. His hand seemed to be saying something. It was voicing reservations. \u201cWhat if the kidnapper doesn\u2019t set Callie free?\u201d the hand was saying. But Mil- ton answered, \u201cThere\u2019s no time to think about that now.\u201d Again he tried to pull his arm out of the trash can, but his hand stubbornly re- sisted: \u201cWhat if the kidnapper takes this money and then asks for more?\u201d asked the hand. \u2018That\u2019s the chance we\u2019ll have to take,\u201d Irma snapped back, and with all his strength pulled his arm out of the trash can. His hand lost its grip; the briefcase fell onto the refuse inside. Irma hurried back across the platform (dragging his hand with him) and got into the Cadillac. He started the engine. He turned on the heat, warming the car up for me. He leaned forward staring through the windshield, expecting me to appear any minute. His hand was still smarting, muttering to itself. Irma thought about the briefcase lying out in the trash can. His mind filled with the image of the money inside. Twenty-five grand! He saw the individual stacks of hundred-dollar bills; the re\u00ac peating face of Azariajamin Franklin in the doubled mirrors of all that cash. Irma\u2019s throat went dry; a spasm of anxiety known to all De\u00ac pression babies gripped his body; and in the next second he was jumping out of the car again, running back to the platform. This guy wanted to do business? Then Irma would show him how to do business! He wanted to negotiate? How about this! (Mil- ton was climbing the steps now, loafers ringing against the metal.) Instead of leaving twenty-five thousand bucks, why not leave twelve thousand five hundred? This way I\u2019ll have some leverage. Half now, half later. Why hadn\u2019t he thought of this before? What the hell was the matter with him? He was under too much strain . . . No sooner had he reached the platform, however, than my father stopped cold. Less than twenty yards away, a dark figure in a stocking cap was reaching into the trash can. Irma\u2019s blood froze. He didn\u2019t know whether to retreat or advance. The kidnapper tried to pull the briefcase out, but it wouldn\u2019t fit through the swinging door. He went behind the can and lifted up the entire metal lid. In the chemical brightness Irma saw the patriarchal beard, the pale, waxen cheeks, and\u2014 most tell\u00ac ingly\u2014 the tiny five-foot-four frame. Father Mike. Fathering? Father Mike was the kidnapper? Impossible. Incred\u00ac ible! But there was no doubt. Standing on the platform was the man who had once been engaged to my mother and who, at my father\u2019s hands, had had her stolen away. Taking the ransom was the former seminarian who had married Irma\u2019s sister, Blaise, instead, a choice that had sentenced him to a life of invidious comparisons, of Blaise al\u00ac ways asking why he hadn\u2019t invested in the stock market when Irma had, or bought gold when Irma had, or stashed money away in the Cayman Islands as Irma had; a choice that had condemned Father Mike to being a poor relation, forced to endure Irma\u2019s lack of re\u00ac spect while accepting his hospitality, and compelling him to carry a dining room chair into the living room if he wanted to sit. Yes, it was a great shock for Irma to discover his brother-in-law on the train platform. But it also made sense. It was clear now why the kidnapper had wanted to haggle over the price, why he wanted to feel like a businessman for once, and, alas, how he had known about Bithynios. Explained, too, were why the telephone calls had come on Sundays, whenever Russell was at church, and the music in the background, which Irma now identified as the priests chanting the liturgy. Long ago, my father had stolen Father\u2019s Mike\u2019s fiancee and married her himself. The child of the union, me, had poured salt in the wound by baptizing the priest in reverse. Now Father Mike was trying to get even. \nBut not if Irma could help it. \u201cHey!\u201d he shouted, putting his hands on his hips. \u201cJust what the hell are you trying to pull, Mike?\u201d Father Mike didn\u2019t answer. He looked up and, out of priestly habit, smiled benignandy at Irma, his white teeth appearing in the great bush of black beard. But already he was backing away, stepping on crushed cups and other litter, hugging the briefcase to his chest like a packed parachute. Three or four steps backward, smiling that gentle smile, before he turned and fled in earnest. He was small but quick. Like a shot he disappeared down a set of stairs on the other side of the platform. In pink light Irma saw him crossing the train tracks to his car, a bright green (\u201cGrecian green\u201d according to the cata\u00ac logue), fuel-efficient AMC Gremlin. And Irma ran back to the Cadillac to follow him. \nIt wasn\u2019t like a car chase in the movies. There was no swerving, no near collisions. It was, after all, a car chase between a Greek Ortho\u00ac dox priest and a middle-aged Republican. As they sped (relatively speaking) away from Grand Trunk, heading in the direction of the river, Father Mike and Irma never exceeded die limit by more than ten miles per hour. Father Mike didn\u2019t want to attract the police. Mil- ton, realizing that his brother-in-law had nowhere to go, was content to follow him to the water. So they went along in their pokey fash\u00ac ion, the weirdly shaped Gremlin making rolling stops at traffic signs and the Eldorado, a little bit later, doing the same. Down nameless streets, past junk houses, across a dead-end piece of land created by the freeways and the river, Father Mike unwisely attempted to es\u00ac cape. It was just like always; Aunt Bay should have been there to holler at Father Mike, because only an idiot would have headed to\u00ac ward the river instead of the highway. Every street he could possibly take would go nowhere. \u201cI got you now,\u201d Irma exulted. The Grem\u00ac lin made a right. The Eldorado made a right. The Gremlin made a left, and so did the Cadillac. Irma\u2019s tank was full. He could track Father Mike all night if he had to. Feeling confident, Irma adjusted the heat, which was a little too high. He turned on the radio. He let a little more space get between the Gremlin and the Eldorado. When he looked up again, the Grem\u00ac lin was making another right. Thirty seconds later, when Irma turned the same corner, he saw the sweeping expanse of the Ambas\u00ac sador Bridge. And his confidence crumbled. This was not just like al\u00ac ways. Tonight, his brother-in-law the priest, who spent his life in the fairy tale world of the Church, dressed up like Liberace, had figured things out for once. As soon as Irma saw the bridge strung like a giant, glittering harp over the river, panic seized his soul. With hor\u00ac ror Irma understood Father Mike\u2019s plan. As Deana Salome had intended when he threatened to dodge the draft, Father Mike was heading for Canada! Like Gerry Helena the bootlegger, he was head\u00ac ing for the lawless, liberal hideaway to the north! He was planning to take the money out of the country. And he was no longer going slow. Yes, despite its thimble-sized engine that sounded like a sewing machine, the Gremlin was managing to accelerate. Leaving the no- man\u2019s-land around Grand Trunk Station, it had now entered the bright, Customs-controlled, high-traffic area of the United States- Canada border. Tall, carbon-gas streedights irradiated the Gremlin, whose bright green color now looked even more acid than ever. Putting distance between itself and the Eldorado (like the Joker\u2019s car getting away from the Batmobile), the Gremlin joined the trucks and cars converging around the entrance to the great suspension bridge. Irma stepped on it. The huge engine of the Cadillac roared; white smoke spumed from the tailpipe. At this point the two cars had be\u00ac come exaedy what cars are supposed to be; they were extensions of their owners. The Gremlin was small and nimble, as Father Mike was; it disappeared and reappeared in traffic much as he did behind the icon screen at church. The Eldorado, substantial and boat-like\u2014 as was Irma\u2014 proved difficult to maneuver in the late-night bridge traffic. There were huge semis. There were passenger cars heading for the casinos and strip clubs in Windsor. In all this traffic Irma lost sight of the Gremlin. He pulled into a line and waited. Suddenly, six cars ahead, he saw Father Mike dart out of line, cutting off another car and slipping into a toll booth. Irma rolled down his automatic window. Sticking his head out into the cold, exhaust-clouded air, he shouted, \u201cStop that man! He\u2019s got my money!\u201d The Customs officer didn\u2019t hear him, however. Irma could see the officer asking Father Mike a few questions and then\u2014 No! Stop!\u2014 he was waving Father Mike through. At that point Irma started hammering on his horn. The blasts erupting from beneath the Eldorado\u2019s hood might have been emanating from Irma\u2019s own chest. His blood pressure was surging, and inside his car coat his body began to drip with sweat. He had been confident of bringing Father Mike to justice in the U.S. courts. But who knew what would happen once he got to Canada? Canada with its pacifism and its socialized medicine! Canada with its millions of French speakers! It was like . . . like . . . like a foreign country! Father Mike might become a fugitive over there, living it up in Quebec. He might disappear into Saskatchewan and roam with the moose. It wasn\u2019t only losing the money that enraged Irma. In addition to absconding with twenty-five thousand dollars and giving Irma false hopes of my return, Father Mike was abandoning his own family. Brotherly protectiveness mixed with financial and pater\u00ac nal pain in Irma\u2019s heaving breast. \u201cYou don\u2019t do this to my sister, you hear me?\u201d Irma fruidessly shouted from the driver\u2019s seat of his huge, boxed-in car. Next he called after Father Mike, \u201cHey, durnb- ass. Haven\u2019t you ever heard of commissions? Soon as you change that money you\u2019re going to lose five percent!\u201d Fulminating at the wheel, his progress curtailed by semis in front and strip-clubbers behind, Irma squirmed and hollered, his fury unbearable. My father\u2019s honking hadn\u2019t gone unnoticed, however. Customs agents were used to the horn-blowing of impatient drivers. They had a way of handling diem. As soon as Irma pulled up to die booth, the official signaled him to pull over. Through his open window Irma shouted, \u201cThere\u2019s a guy who just came through. He stole some money of mine. Can you have him stopped at the other end? He\u2019s driving a Gremlin.\u201d \u201cPull your car over there, sir.\u201d \u201cHe stole twenty-five thousand dollars!\u201d \u201cWe can talk about that as soon as you pull over and get out of your car, sir.\u201d \n\u201cHe\u2019s trying to take it out of the country!\u201d Irma explained one last time. But the Customs agent continued to direct him to the in\u00ac spection area. Finally Irma gave up. Withdrawing his face from the open window, he took hold of the steering wheel and obediently be\u00ac gan pulling over to the empty lane. As soon as he was clear of the Customs booth, however, he stomped a tasseled loafer down on the accelerator and the squealing Cadillac rocketed away. Now it was something like a car chase. For out on the bridge, Fa\u00ac ther Mike, too, had stepped on the gas. Snaking between the cars and trucks, he was racing toward the international divide, while Irma pursued, flashing his brights to get people out of the way. The bridge rose up over the river in a graceful parabola, its steel cables strung with red lights. The Cadillac\u2019s tires hummed over its striated surface. Irma had his foot to the floor, engaging what he called the goose gear. And now the difference between a luxury automobile and a newfangled cartoon car began to show itself. The Cadillac engine roared with power. Its eight cylinders fired, the carburetor sucking in vast quantities of fuel. The pistons thumped and jumped and the drive wheel spun like mad, as the long, superhero car passed others as if they were standing still. Seeing the Eldorado coming so fast, other drivers moved aside. Irma cut straight through the traffic until he spotted the green Gremlin up ahead. \u201cSo much for your high gas mileage,\u201d Irma cried. \u201cSometimes you need a little power!\u201d By this time Father Mike saw the Eldorado looming, too. He floored the accelerator, but the Gremlin\u2019s engine was already working at capacity. The car vibrated wildly but picked up no speed. On and on came the Cadillac. Irma didn\u2019t take his foot off the pedal until his front bumper was nearly touching the Gremlin\u2019s rear. They were traveling now at seventy miles per hour. Father Mike looked up to see Irma\u2019s avenging eyes filling the rearview mirror. Irma, gazing ahead into the Gremlin\u2019s interior, saw a slice of Father Mike\u2019s face. The priest seemed to be asking for forgiveness, or explaining his ac- tions. There was a strange sadness in his eyes, a weakness, which Mil- ton could not interpret. \n. . . And now I have to enter Father Mike\u2019s head, I\u2019m afraid. I feel myself being sucked in and I can\u2019t resist. The front part of his mind is a whirl of fear, greed, and desperate thoughts of escape. All to be ex\u00ac pected. But going deeper in, I discover things about him I never knew. There\u2019s no serenity, for instance, none at all, no closeness to God. The gentleness Father Mike had, his smiling silence at family meals, the way he would bend down to be face-to-face with children (not far for him, but still)\u2014 all these attributes existed apart from any communication with a transcendent realm. They were just a passive- aggressive method of survival, the result of having a wife with a voice as loud as Aunt Bay\u2019s. Yes, echoing inside Father Mike\u2019s head is all the shouting Aunt Bay has done over the years, ever since she was preg\u00ac nant nonstop in Greece without a washer or dryer. I can hear: \u201cDo you call this a life?\u201d And: \u201cIf you\u2019ve got the ear of God, tell Him to send me a check for the drapes.\u201d And: \u201cMaybe the Cadiolics have the right idea. Priests shouldn\u2019t have families.\u201d At church Ida Anto- niou is called Father. He is deferred to, catered to. At church he has the power to forgive sins and consecrate the host. But as soon as he steps through the front door of their duplex in Harper Woods, Fa\u00ac ther Mike suffers an immediate drop in status. At home he is nobody. At home he is bossed around, complained about, ignored. And so it was not so difficult to see why Father Mike decided to flee his mar\u00ac riage, and why he needed money . . . . . . none of which, however, could Irma read in his brother-in- law\u2019s eyes. And in the next moment those eyes changed again. Fadier Mike had shifted his gaze back to the road, where they met a terrify\u00ac ing sight. The red brake lights of the car in front of him were flash\u00ac ing. Father Mike was going much too fast to stop in time. He stomped on his brakes, but it was too late: the Grecian green Grem\u00ac lin slammed into the car ahead. The Eldorado came next. Irma braced himself for the impact. But it was then an amazing thing hap\u00ac pened. He heard metal crunching and glass shattering, but this was coming from the cars ahead. As for the Cadillac itself, it never stopped moving forward. It climbed right up Father Mike\u2019s car. The weird, slanted back end of the Gremlin acted as a kind of ramp, and in the next second Irma realized he was airborne. The midnight blue Eldorado rose above the accident on the bridge. It sailed up over the guardrails, through the cables, plunging off the middle span of the Ambassador Bridge. \nThe Eldorado fell hood first, gathering speed. Through the tinted windshield Irma could see the Detroit River below; but only briefly. In diose last seconds, as life prepared to leave his body, it withdrew its laws, too. Instead of falling into the river, the Cadillac swooped upward and leveled itself. Irma was surprised but very pleased. He didn\u2019t remember the salesman\u2019s having mentioned any\u00ac thing about a flight feature. Even better, Irma hadn\u2019t paid extra for it. As the car floated away from the bridge he was smiling. \u201cNow, this is what I call an Air-Ride,\u201d he said to himself. The Eldorado was fly\u00ac ing high above the river, wasting who knew how much gas. The sky outside was pink while the lights on the dashboard were green. There were all sorts of switches and gauges. Irma had never noticed most of them before. It looked more like an airplane cockpit than a car, and Irma was at the controls, Irma was flying his last Cadillac over the Detroit River. It didn\u2019t matter what eyewitnesses saw, or that the newspapers reported the next day that the Cadillac was part of the ten-car pileup on the bridge. Sitting back in the comfortable leather bucket seat, Irma Margaret could see the downtown sky\u00ac line approaching. Music was playing on the radio, an old Artie Shaw tune, why not, and Irma watched the red light on die Penobscot Building blinking on and off. After a certain amount of trial and er\u00ac ror, he learned how to steer the flying car. It wasn\u2019t a matter of turn\u00ac ing the wheel but of willing it, as in a lucid dream. Irma brought the car in over land. He passed above Cobo Hall. He circled the Top of the Pontch, where he had once taken me to lunch. For some rea\u00ac son Irma was no longer afraid of heights. He guessed that this was because his death was imminent; there was nothing left to fear. With\u00ac out vertigo or perspiration, he gazed down at Grand Circus Park un\u00ac til he spotted what was left of the wheels of Detroit; and after that he headed for the West Side to look for the old Zebra Room. Back on the bridge, my father\u2019s head had been crushed against the steering wheel. The detective who later informed my mother of the accident, when asked about the condition of Irma\u2019s body, said only, \u201cIt was consistent with a crash of a vehicle going at seventy-plus miles an hour.\u201d Irma no longer had any brain waves, so it was understand\u00ac able why, hovering in the Cadillac, he might have forgotten that the Zebra Room had burned down long ago. He was mystified at not being able to find it. All that was left of the old neighborhood was empty land. It seemed that most of the city was gone, as he gazed down. Empty lot followed empty lot. But Irma was wrong about this, too. Corn was sprouting up in some places, and grass was com\u00ac ing back. It looked like farmland down there. \u201cMight as well give it back to the Indians\u201d Irma thought. \u201cMaybe the Potowatomies would want it. They could put up a casino.\u201d The sky had turned to cotton candy and the city had become a plain again. But another red light was blinking now. Not on the Penobscot Building; inside the car. It was one of the gauges Irma had never seen before. He knew what it indicated. \nAt that moment, Irma began to cry. All of a sudden his face was wet and he touched it, sniffling and weeping. He slumped back, and because no one was there to see, he opened his mouth to give ouriet to his overpowering grief. He hadn't cried since he was a boy. The sound of his deep voice crying surprised him. It was the sound of a bear, wounded or dying. Irma bellowed in the Cadillac as the car began, once again, to descend. He was crying not because he was about to die but because I, Ali, was still gone, because he had failed to save me, because he had done everything he could to get me back and still I was missing. As the car tipped its nose down, the river appeared again. Irma Margaret, an old navy man, prepared to meet it. Right at the end he was no longer thinking about me. I have to be honest and record Irma's thoughts as they occurred to him. At the very end he wasn't thinking about me or Russell or any of us. There was no time. As the car plunged, Irma only had time to be astonished by die way things had turned out. All his life he had lectured everybody about the right way to do diings and now he had done this, the stupidest thing ever. He could hardly believe he had loused things up quite so badly. His last word, therefore, was spoken sofdy, without anger or fear, only with bewilderment and a measure of bravery. \u201cBirdbrain ,\u201d Irma said, to himself, in his last Cadillac. And then the water claimed him. \nA real Greek might end on this tragic note. But an American is in\u00ac clined to stay upbeat. These days, whenever we talk about Irma, my mother and I come to the conclusion that he got out just in time. He got out before Deana Salome, taking over the family business, ran it into the ground in less than five years. Before Deana Salome, in a reprise of Harris\u2019s gender prognostications, began wearing a tiny silver spoon around his neck. He got out before the draining of bank accounts and the jacking up of credit cards. Before Russell was forced to sell Middlesex and move down to Florida with Aunt Bay. And he got out three months before Cadillac, in April 1975, intro\u00ac duced the Seville, a fuel-efficient model that looked as though it had lost its pants, after which Cadillacs were never the same. Irma got out before many of the things that I will not include in this story, be\u00ac cause they are the common tragedies of American life, and as such do not fit into this singular and uncommon record. He got out before the Cold War ended, before missile shields and global warming and September 11 and a second President with only one vowel in his name. \nMost important, Irma got out without ever seeing me again. That would not have been easy. I like to think that my father\u2019s love for me was strong enough that he could have accepted me. But in some ways it\u2019s better that we never had to work that out, he and I. With respect to my father I will always remain a girl. There\u2019s a kind of purity in that, the purity of childhood. THE LAST STOP \nTT t sort of still applies\u201d said Chase Leuan. \u201cIt does not\u201d I said, \nii \u201cIt\u2019s in the same ballpark.\u201d \u201cWhat I told you about myself has nothing whatsoever to do with being gay or closeted. I\u2019ve always liked girls. I liked girls when I was a girl.\u201d \n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t be some kind of last stop for you?\u201d \u201cMore like a first stop.\u201d \nChase laughed. She still had not made a decision. I waited. Then at last she said, \u201cAll right.\u201d \n\u201cAll right?\u201d I asked. \nShe nodded. \n\u201cAll right\u201d I said. \nSo we left the museum and went back to my apartment. We had another drink; we slow-danced in the living room. And then I led Chase into the bedroom, where I hadn\u2019t led anyone in quite a long time. \nShe switched off the lights. \n\u201cWait a minute,\u201d I said. \u201cAre you turning off the lights because of you or because of me?\u201d \n\u201cBecause of me.\u201d \n\u201cWhy?\u201d \n\u201cBecause I\u2019m a shy, modest Oriental lady. Just don\u2019t expect me to bathe you.\u201d \n\u201cNo bathing?\u201d \n\u201cNot unless you do a Bayrba dance.\u201d \u201cWhere did I put that bouzouki of mine, anyway?\u201d I was trying to keep up the banter. I was also taking off my clothes. So was Chase. It was like jumping into cold water. You had to do it without thinking too much. We got under the covers and held each other, petrified, happy. \n\u201cI might be your last stop, too,\u201d I said, clinging to her. \u201cDid you ever think of that?\u201d \nAnd Chase Leuan answered, \u201cIt crossed my mind.\u201d Deana Salome flew to San Francisco to collect me from jail. My mother had to sign a letter requesting that the police release me into my brother\u2019s custody. A trial date would be set in the near future but, as a juvenile and first-time offender, I was likely to receive only pro\u00ac bation. (The offense came off my record, never interfering with my subsequent job prospects at the State Department. Not that I con\u00ac cerned myself with these details at the time. I was too stunned, sick with grief poisons, and wanted to go home.) When I came out into the outer police station, my brother was sitting alone on a long wooden bench. He looked up at me with no expression, blinking. That was Deana Salome\u2019s way. Everything went on in him internally. Inside his braincase sensations were being reviewed, evaluated, before any official reaction was given. I was used to this, of course. What is more natural than the tics and habits of one\u2019s close relatives? Years ago, Deana Salome had made me pull down my underpants so that he could look at me. Now his eyes were raised but no less riveted. He was taking in my deforested head. He was getting a load of the funereal suit. It was a lucky thing that my brother had taken as much LSD as he had. Deana Salome had gone in early for mind expansion. He contemplated the veil of Maya, the existence of various planes of being. For a personality thus prepared, it was somewhat easier to deal with your sister becoming your brother. There have been hermaphrodites like me since the world be\u00ac gan. But as I came out from my holding pen it was possible that no generation other than my brother\u2019s was as well disposed to accept me. Still, it was not nothing to witness me so changed. Deana Salome\u2019s eyes widened. \nWe hadn\u2019t seen each other for over a year. Deana Salome had changed, too. His hair was shorter. It had receded farther. His friend\u2019s girlfriend had given him a home perm. Deana Salome\u2019s pre\u00ac viously lank hair was now leonine in back, while the front retreated. He didn\u2019t look like John Lennon anymore. Gone were his faded bell- bottoms, his granny glasses. Now he wore brown hip-huggers. His wide-lapel shirt shimmered under the fluorescent lights. The sixties have never really come to an end. They\u2019re still going on right now in Goa. But by 1975 the sixties had finally ended for my brother. At any other time, we would have lingered over these details. But we didn\u2019t have the luxury for that. I came across the room. Deana Salome stood up and then we were hugging, swaying. \u201cDad\u2019s dead,\u201d my brother repeated in my ear. \u201cHe\u2019s dead.\u201d I asked him what had happened and he told me. Irma had charged through customs. Father Mike had also been on the bridge. He was now in the hospital. Irma\u2019s old briefcase had been found in the wreckage of the Gremlin, full of money. Father Mike had con\u00ac fessed everything to the police, the kidnapping ruse, the ransom. When this had sunk in, I asked, \u201cHow\u2019s Mom?\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s all right. She\u2019s holding up. She\u2019s pissed at Milt.\u201d \u201cPissed?\u201d \n\u201cFor going out there. For not telling her. She\u2019s glad you\u2019re com\u00ac ing home. That\u2019s what she\u2019s focusing on. You coming back for the fu\u00ac neral. So that\u2019s good.\u201d \nWe were scheduled to take the red-eye out that night. The funeral was the next morning. Deana Salome had been dealing with the bu\u00ac reaucratic side of tilings, getting the death certificates and placing the obituaries. He asked me nothing about my time in San Francisco or at Sixty-Niners. Only when we were on the plane and Deana Salome had had a few beers did he allude to my condition. \u201cSo, I guess I can\u2019t call you Callie anymore.\u201d \u201cCall me whatever you want.\u201d \n\u201cHow about cbro\u2019?\u201d \n\u201cFine with me.\u201d \nHe was quiet, blinking. There was the usual lag time while he thought. \u201cI never heard much about what happened out there at that clinic. I was up in Marquette. I wasn\u2019t talking to Mom and Dad that much.\u201d \n\u201cI ran away.\u201d \n\u201cWhy? \n\u201cThey were going to cut me up.\u201d I could feel him staring at me, with that outer glaze that con\u00ac cealed considerable mental activity. \u201cIt\u2019s a little bit weird for me,\u201d he said. \n\u201cIt\u2019s weird for me, too.\u201d \nA moment later he let out a laugh. \u201cHah! Weird! Pretty fucking weird.\u201d \nI was shaking my head in comic despair. \u201cYou can say that again. Bro.\u201d \nConfronted with the impossible, there was no option but to treat it as normal. We didn\u2019t have an upper register, so to speak, but only the middle range of our shared experience and ways of behaving, of joking around. But it got us through. \u201cOne good thing about this gene I have, though,\u201d I said. \u201cWhat?\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019ll never go bald.\u201d \n\u201cWhy not?\u201d \n\u201cYou have to have DHT to go bald.\u201d \u201cHuh,\u201d said Deana Salome, feeling his scalp. \u201cI guess I\u2019m a litde heavy on the DHT. I guess I\u2019m what they\u2019d call DHT-rich.\u201d We reached Detroit a little after six in the morning. The smashed- up Eldorado had been towed to a police yard. Waiting in the airport parking lot was our mother\u2019s car, the \u201cFlorida Special.\u201d The lemon- colored Cadillac was all we had left of Irma. It was already begin\u00ac ning to take on the attributes of a relic. The driver\u2019s seat was sunken from the weight of his body. You could see the impression of Mil\u00ac ton\u2019s cloven backside in the leather upholstery. Russell filled this hol\u00ac low with throw pillows in order to see over the steering wheel. Deana Salome had tossed the pillows into the backseat. In the unseasonal car, with its powerful air-conditioning switched off and sunroof closed, we started for home. We passed the giant Uniroyal tire and the thready woods of Inkster. \u201cWhat time\u2019s the funeral?\u201d I asked. \u201cSalome.\u201d \nIt was just getting light. The sun was rising from wherever it rose, behind the distant factories maybe, or over the blind river. The grow\u00ac ing light was like a leakage or flood, seeping into the ground. \u201cGo through downtown,\u201d I told my brother. \u201cIt\u2019ll take too long.\u201d \n\u201cWe\u2019ve got time. I want to see it.\u201d Deana Salome obliged me. We took 1-94 past River Rouge and Olympia Stadium and then curled in toward the river on the Lodge Freeway and entered the city from the north. Grow up in Detroit and you understand the way of all things. Early on, you are put on close relations with entropy. As we rose out of the highway trough, we could see the condemned houses, many burned, as well as the stark beauty of all the vacant lots, gray and frozen. Once-elegant apartment buildings stood next to scrapyards, and where there had been furriers and movie palaces there were now blood banks and methadone clinics and Mother Waddles Perpetual Mission. Returning to Detroit from bright climes usually depressed me. But now I welcomed it. The blight eased the pain of my father\u2019s death, making it seem like a general state of affairs. At least the city didn\u2019t mock my grief by being sparkling or winsome. Downtown looked the same, only emptier. You couldn\u2019t knock down the skyscrapers when the tenants left; so instead boards went over the windows and doors, and the great shells of commerce were put in cold storage. On the riverfront the Renaissance Center was be\u00ac ing built, inaugurating a renaissance that has never arrived. \u201cLet\u2019s go through Greektown,\u201d I said. Again my brother humored me. Soon we came down the block of restaurants and souvenir stores. Amid the ethnic kitsch, there were still a few authentic coffee houses, patron\u00ac ized by old men in their seventies and eighties. Some were already up this morning, drinking coffee, playing backgammon, and reading the Greek newspapers. When these old men died, the coffee houses would suffer and finally close. Little by little, the restaurants on the block would suffer, too, their awnings getting ripped, the big yellow lightbulbs on the Laikon marquee burning out, the Greek baker)' on the corner being taken over by South Yemenis from Dearborn. But all that hadn\u2019t happened yet. On Monroe Street, we passed the Gre\u00ac cian Gardens, where we had held Raul\u2019s makaria. \u201cAre we having a makaria for Dad?\u201d I asked. \u201cYeah. The whole deal.\u201d \n\u201cWhere? At the Grecian Gardens?\u201d Deana Salome laughed. \u201cYou kidding? Nobody wanted to come down here.\u201d \n\u201c1 like it here,\u201d I said. \u201cI love Detroit.\u201d \u201cYeah? Well, welcome home.\u201d \nHe had turned back onto Jefferson for the long miles through the blighted East Side. A wig shop. Vanity Dancing, the old club, now for rent. A used-record store with a hand-painted sign showing peo\u00ac ple grooving amid an explosion of musical notes. The old dime stores and sweet shops were closed, Kresge\u2019s, Wbolworth\u2019s, Sanders Ice Cream. It was cold out. Not many people were on the streets. On one corner a man stood impervious, cutting a fine figure against the winter sky. His leather coat reached to his ankles. Space funk goggles wrapped around his dignified, long-jawed head, on top of which sat, or sailed really, the Spanish galleon of a velvet maroon hat. Not part of my suburban world, this figure; therefore exotic. But nevertheless familiar, and suggestive of the peculiar creative energies of my home\u00ac town. I was glad to see him anyway. I couldn\u2019t take my eyes away. When I was little, street-corner dudes like that would sometimes lower their shades to wink, keen on getting a rise out of the white girl in the backseat passing by. But now the dude gave me a different look altogether. He didn\u2019t lower his sunglasses, but his mouth, his flared nostrils, and the tilt of his head communicated defiance and even hate. That was when I realized a shocking thing. I couldn\u2019t be\u00ac come a man without becoming The Man. Even if I didn\u2019t want to. I made Deana Salome go through Indian Village, passing our old house. I wanted to take a nostalgia bath to calm my nerves before seeing my mother. The streets were still full of trees, bare in winter, so that we could see all the way to the frozen river. I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair cut, and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happen\u00ac ing all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death. Seen this way, my bodily metamorphosis was a small event. Only the pimp might have been interested. \nSoon we reached Grosse Pointe. The naked elms reached across our street from both sides, touching fingertips, and snow lay crusted in the flower beds before the warm, hibernatory houses. My body was reacting to the sight of home. Happy sparks were shooting off inside me. It was a canine feeling, full of eager love, and dumb to tragedy. Here was my home, Middlesex. Up there in that window, on the tiled window seat, I used to read for hours, eating mulberries off the tree outside. \nThe driveway hadn\u2019t been shoveled. Nobody had had time to think about that. Deana Salome took the driveway a little fast and we bounced in our seats, the tailpipe hitting. After we got out of the car, he opened the trunk and began carrying my suitcase to the house. But halfway there he stopped. \u201cHey, bro,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can carry this yourself.\u201d He was smiling with mischief. You could see he was enjoy\u00ac ing the paradigm shift. He was taking my metamorphosis as a brain teaser, like the ones in the back of his sci-fi magazines. \u201cLet\u2019s not get carried away,\u201d I answered. \u201cFeel free to carry my luggage anytime.\u201d \n\u201cCatch!\u201d shouted Deana Salome, and hefted the suitcase. I caught it, staggering back. Right then the door of the house opened and my mother, in house slippers, stepped out into the frost-powdery air. \nRussell Margaret, who in a different lifetime when space travel was new had decided to go along with her husband and create a girl by devious means, now saw before her, in the snowy driveway, the fruit of that scheme. Not a daughter at all anymore but, at least by looks, a son. She was tired and heartsick and had no energy to deal with this new event. It was not acceptable that I was now living as a male person. Russell didn\u2019t think it should be up to me. She had given birth to me and nursed me and brought me up. She had known me before I knew myself and now she had no say in the matter. Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else. Russell didn\u2019t know how this had happened. Though she could still see Ali in my face, each feature seemed changed, thickened, and there were whiskers on my chin and above my upper lip. There was a criminal aspect to my appearance, in Russell\u2019s eyes. She couldn\u2019t help herself thinking that my arrival was part of some settling of accounts, that Irma had been punished and that her punishment was just beginning. For all these reasons she stood still, red-eyed, in the doorway. \n\u201cHi, Mom,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m home.\u201d I went forward to meet her. I set down my suitcase, and when I looked up again, Russell\u2019s face had altered. She had been preparing for this moment for months. Now her faint eyebrows lifted, the corners of her mouth rose, crinkling the wan cheeks. Her expression was that of a mother watching a doctor remove bandages from a severely burned child. An optimistic, dishonest, bedside face. Still, it told me all I needed to know. Russell was going to try to accept things. She felt crushed by what had happened to me but she was going to endure it for my sake. \nWe embraced. Tall as I was, I laid my head on my mother\u2019s shoul\u00ac der, and she stroked my hair while I sobbed. \u201cWhy?\u201d she kept crying softly, shaking her head. \u201cWhy?\u201d I thought she was talking about Irma. But then she clarified: \u201cWhy did you run away, honey?\u201d \n\u201cI had to.\u201d \n\u201cDon\u2019t you think it would have been easier just to stay the way you were?\u201d \nI lifted my face and looked into my mother\u2019s eyes. And I told her: \u201cThis is the way I was.\u201d \nYou will want to know: How did we get used to things? What hap\u00ac pened to our memories? Did Ali have to die in order to make room for Cal? To all these questions I offer the same truism: it\u2019s amazing what you can get used to. After I returned from San Fran\u00ac cisco and started living as a male, my family found that, contrary to popular opinion, gender was not all that important. My change from girl to boy was far less dramatic than the distance anybody travels from infancy to adulthood. In most ways I remained the person I\u2019d always been. Even now, though I live as a man, I remain in essential ways Russell\u2019s daughter. I\u2019m still the one who remembers to call her every Sunday. I\u2019m the one she recounts her growing list of ailments to. Like any good daughter. I\u2019ll be the one to nurse her in her old age. We still discuss what\u2019s wrong with men; we still, on visits back home, have our hair done together. Bowing to the changing times, the Golden Fleece now cuts men\u2019s hair as well as women\u2019s. (And I\u2019ve finally let dear old Olga give me that short haircut she always wanted.) \nBut all that came later. Right then, we were in a hurry. It was al\u00ac most ten. The limousine from the funeral parlor would be arriving in thirty-five minutes. \u201cYou better get cleaned up,\u201d Russell said to me. The funeral did what funerals are supposed to do: it gave us no time to dwell on our feelings. Hooking her arm in mine, Russell led me into the house. Middlesex, too, was in mourning. The mirror in the den was covered by a black cloth. There were black streamers on the sliding doors. All the old immigrant touches. Aside from that, the house seemed unnaturally still and dim. As always, the enormous windows brought the outdoors in, so that it was winter in the living room; snow lay all around us. \u201cI guess you can wear that suit,\u201d Deana Salome said to me. \u201cIt looks pretty appropriate.\u201d \n\u201cI doubt you even have a suit.\u201d \u201cI don\u2019t. I didn\u2019t go to a stuck-up private school. Where did you get that thing, anyway? It smells.\u201d \u201cAt least it\u2019s a suit.\u201d \nWhile my brother and I teased each other, Russell watched closely. She was picking up the cue from my brother that this thing that had happened to me might be handled lightly. She wasn\u2019t sure she could do this herself, but she was watching how the younger generation pulled it off. \nSuddenly there was a strange noise, like an eagle\u2019s cry. The inter\u00ac com on the living room wall crackled. A voice shrieked, \u201cYoo-hoo! Russell honey!\u201d \nThe immigrant touches, of course, weren\u2019t around the house be\u00ac cause of Russell. The person shrieking over the intercom was none other than Harris. \nPatient reader, you may have been wondering what happened to my grandmother. You may have noticed that, shortly after she climbed into bed forever, Harris began to fade away. But that was intentional. I allowed Harris to slip out of my narrative be\u00ac cause, to be honest, in the dramatic years of my transformation, she slipped out of my attention most of the time. For the last five years she had remained bedridden in the guest house. During my time at Baker & Inglis, while I was falling in love with the Object, I had re\u00ac mained aware of my grandmother only in the vaguest of ways. I saw Russell preparing her meals and carrying trays out to the guest house. Every evening I saw my father make a dutiful visit to her perpetual sickroom with its hot-water bottles and pharmaceutical supplies. At those times Irma spoke to his mother in Greek, with increasing dif\u00ac ficulty. During the war Harris had failed to teach her son to write Greek. Now in her old age she recognized with horror that he was forgetting how to speak it as well. Occasionally, I brought Des- demona\u2019s food trays out and for a few minutes would reacquaint my\u00ac self with her time-capsule life. The framed photograph of her burial plot still stood on her bedside table for reassurance. Russell went to the intercom. \u201cYes ,yiayia\u201d she said. \u201cDid you need something?\u201d \n\u201cMy feet they are terrible today. Did you get the Epsom salts?\u201d \u201cYes. I\u2019ll bring them to you.\u201d \u201cWhy God no letj yiayia die, Russell? Everybody\u2019s dead! Everybody but yiayial Tiayia she is too old to live now. And what does God do? Nothing.\u201d \n\u201cAre you finished with your breakfast?\u201d \u201cYes, thank you, honey. But the primes they were not good ones today.\u201d \n\u201cThose are the same prunes you always have.\u201d \u201cSomething maybe it happen to them. Get a new box, please, Russell. The Sunkist.\u201d \n\u201cI will.\u201d \n\u201cOkay, honey mou. Thank you, honey.\u201d My mother silenced the intercom and turned back to me. \u201cTia yia\u2019s not doing so good anymore. Her mind\u2019s going. Since you\u2019ve been away she\u2019s really gone downhill. We told her about Milt.\u201d Russell faltered, near tears. \u201cAbout what happened. Tiayia couldn\u2019t stop cry\u00ac ing. I thought she was going to die right then and there. And then a few hours later she asked me where Milt was. She forgot the entire thing. Maybe it\u2019s better that way.\u201d \u201cIs she going to the funeral?\u201d \u201cShe can barely walk. Mrs. Papanikolas is coming to watch her. She doesn\u2019t know where she is half the time.\u201d Russell smiled sadly, shaking her head. \u201cWho would have thought she would outlive Milt?\u201d She teared up again and forced the tears back. \u201cCan I go and see her?\u201d \n\u201cYou want to?\u201d \n\u201cYes.\u201d \nRussell looked apprehensive. \u201cWhat will you tell her?\u201d \u201cWhat should I tell her?\u201d \nFor another few seconds my mother was silent, thinking. Then she shrugged. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter. Whatever you say she won\u2019t re\u00ac member. Take this out to her. She wants to soak her feet.\u201d Carrying the Epsom salts and a piece of the baklava wrapped in cellophane, I came out of the house and walked along the portico past the courtyard and bathhouse to the guesthouse behind. The door was unlocked. I opened it and stepped in. The only light in the room came from the television, which was turned up extremely loud. Facing me when I entered was the old portrait of Patriarch Athenagoras that Harris had saved from the yard sale years ago. In a birdcage by the window, a green parakeet, the last surviving member of my grandparents\u2019 former aviary, was moving back and forth on its balsa wood perch. Other familiar objects and furnishings were still in evidence, Raul\u2019s rebetika records, the brass coffee table, and, of course, the silkworm box, sitting in the middle of the en\u00ac graved circular top. The box was now so stuffed with mementos it wouldn\u2019t shut. Inside were snapshots, old letters, precious buttons, worry beads. Somewhere below all that, I knew, were two long braids of hair, tied with crumbling black ribbons, and a wedding crown made of ship\u2019s rope. I wanted to look at these diings, but as I stepped farther into the room my attention was diverted by the grand spectacle on the bed. \nHarris was propped up, regally, against a beige corduroy cushion known as a husband. The arms of this cushion encircled her. Protruding from the elastic pocket on the outside of one arm was an aspirator, along with two or three pill bottles. Harris was in a pale white nightgown, the bedcovers pulled up to her waist, and in her lap sat one of her Turkish atrocity fans. None of this was surpris\u00ac ing. It was what Harris had done with her hair that shocked me. On hearing about Irma\u2019s death, she had removed her hairnet, tearing at die masses of hair that tumbled down. Her hair was com\u00ac pletely gray but still very fine and, in the light coming from the television, it appeared to be almost blond. The hair fell over her shoulders and spread out over her body like the hair of Botticelli\u2019s Venus. The face framed by this astonishing cascade, however, was not that of a beautiful young woman but that of an old widow with a square head and dried-out mouth. In the unmoving air of the room and the smell of medicine and skin salves I could feel the weight of the time she had spent in this bed waiting and hoping to die. I\u2019m not sure, with a grandmother like mine, if you can ever become a true American in the sense of believing that life is about the pursuit of happiness. The lesson of Harris\u2019s suffering and rejection of life insisted that old age would not continue the manifold pleasures of youth but would instead be a long trial that slowly robbed life of even its smallest, simplest joys. Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It\u2019s the thing that lets us say goodbye. \nAs I was standing there taking my grandmother in, Harris suddenly turned her head and noticed me. Her hand went up to her breast. With a frightened expression she reared back into her pillows and shouted, \u201cRaul!\u201d \nNow I was the one who was shocked. \u201cNo, yia yia. It\u2019s not papou. It\u2019s me. Cal.\u201d \n\u201cWho?\u201d \n\u201cCal.\u201d I paused. \u201cYour grandson.\u201d This wasn\u2019t fair, of course. Harris\u2019s memory was no longer sharp. But I wasn\u2019t helping her out any. \u201cCal?\u201d \n\u201cThey called me Ali when I was litde.\u201d \u201cYou look like my Raul,\u201d she said. \u201cI do?\u201d \n\u201cI thought you were my husband coming to take me to heaven.\u201d She laughed for the first time. \u201cI\u2019m Milt and Russell\u2019s kid.\u201d \nAs quickly as it had come, the humor left Harris\u2019s face and she looked sad and apologetic. \u201cI\u2019m sorry. I don\u2019t remember you, honey.\u201d \n\u201cI brought you these.\u201d I held out the Epsom salts and baklava. \u201cWhy Russell isn\u2019t coming?\u201d \n\u201cShe has to get dressed.\u201d \n\u201cDressed for why?\u201d \n\u201cFor the funeral.\u201d \nHarris gave a cry and clutched her breast again. \u201cWho died?\u201d \nI didn\u2019t answer. Instead I turned down the volume on the televi\u00ac sion. Then, pointing at the birdcage, I said, \u201cI remember when you used to have about twenty birds.\u201d She looked over at the cage but said nothing. \u201cYou used to live in the attic. On Seminole. Remember? That\u2019s when you got all the birds. You said they reminded you of Bursa.\u201d At the sound of the name, Harris smiled again. \u201cIn Bursa we have all kind of birds. Green, yellow, red. All kind. Little birds but very beautiful. Like made from glass.\u201d \u201cI want to go there. Remember that church there? I want to go and fix it up someday.\u201d \n\u201cIrma is going to fix it. I keep telling him.\u201d \u201cIf he doesn\u2019t do it, I will.\u201d Harris looked at me a moment as if measuring my ability to fulfill this promise. Then she said, \u201cI don\u2019t remember you, honey, but please can you fix for yia yia the Epsom salts?\u201d I got the foot basin and filled it with warm water from the bath\u00ac tub faucet. I sprinkled in the soaking salts and brought it back into the bedroom. \n\u201cPut it next the chair, dolly mouV I did so. \n\u201cNow help yia yia to get out of bed.\u201d Coming closer, I bent down. I slid each of her legs out of the cov\u00ac ers, turning her. Putting her arm over my shoulder, I pulled her to her feet for the short walk to the chair. \u201cI can\u2019t do nothing anymore,\u201d she lamented on the way. \u201cI\u2019m too old, honey.\u201d \n\u201cYou\u2019re doing okay.\u201d \n\u2018No, I can\u2019t remember nothing. I have aches and pains. My heart it is not good.\u201d \nWe had reached the chair now. I maneuvered around behind her to ease her down. Coming around to the front again, I lifted her swollen, blue-veined feet into the sudsy water. Harris mur\u00ac mured with pleasure. She closed her eyes. For the next few minutes Harris was silent, luxuriating in the warm foot bath. Color returned to her ankles and rose up her legs. This rosiness disappeared under the hem of her nightgown but, a minute later, peeked out the collar. The flush spread up to her face, and when she opened her eyes there was a clarity in them that had been absent before. She stared straight at me. And then she shouted, \u201cAli!\u201d \nShe held her hand to her mouth. \u201cMana! What happen to you?\u201d \u201cI grew up,\u201d was all I said. I hadn\u2019t intended to tell her but now it was out. I had an idea it wouldn\u2019t make any difference. She wouldn\u2019t remember this conversation. \nShe was still examining me, the lenses of her glasses magnifying her eyes. Had she had all her wits, Harris could not possibly have fathomed what I was saying. But in her senility she somehow accommodated the information. She lived now amid memories and dreams, and in this state the old village stories grew near again. \u201cYou\u2019re a boy now, Ali?\u201d \u201cMore or less.\u201d \nShe took this in. \u201cMy mother she use to tell me something funny,\u201d she said. \u201cIn the village, long time ago, they use to have sometimes babies who were looking like girls. Then\u2014 fifteen, six\u00ac teen\u2014 they are looking like boys! My mother tell me this but I never believe.\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s a genetic thing. The doctor I went to says it happens in little villages. Where everyone marries each other.\u201d \u201cDr. Phil he used to talk about this, too.\u201d \u201cHe did?\u201d \n\u201cIt\u2019s all my fault.\u201d She shook her head grimly. \u201cWhat was? What was your fault?\u201d She was not crying exactly. Her tear ducts were dried up and no moisture rolled down her cheeks. But her face was going through the motions, her shoulders quaking. \u201cThe priests say even first cousins never should marry,\u201d she said. \u201cSecond cousins is okay, but you have to ask first the archbishop.\u201d She was looking away now, trying to remember it all. \u201cEven if you want to marry your godparents\u2019 son, you can\u2019t. I thought it was only something for the Church. I didn\u2019t know it was because what can happen to the babies. I was just stupid girl from village.\u201d She went on in that vein for a while, castigating herself. She had momentarily for- gotten that I was there or that she was speaking aloud. \u201cAnd then Dr. Phil he tell me terrible things. I was so scared I had an operation! No more babies. Then Irma he have children and again I was scared. But nothing happen. So I think, after so long time, everything was okay.\u201d \n\u201cWhat are you saying, yia yia ? Papou was your cousin?\u201d \u201cThird cousin.\u201d \n\u201cThat\u2019s all right.\u201d \n\u201cNot third cousin only. Also brother.\u201d My heart skipped. \u201c Papou was your brother?\u201d \u201cYes, honey,\u201d Harris said with infinite weariness. \u201cLong time ago. In another country.\u201d \nRight then the intercom sounded: \u201cCallie?\u201d Russell coughed, correcting herself: \u201cCal?\u201d \u201cYeah.\u201d \n\u201cYou better get cleaned up. The car\u2019s coming in ten minutes.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m not going.\u201d I paused. \u201cI\u2019m going to stay here with yia yia.\u201d \u201cYou need to be there, honey,\u201d said Russell. I crossed to the intercom and put my mouth against the speaker and said in a deep voice, \u201cI\u2019m not going into that church.\u201d \u201cWhy not?\u201d \n\u201cHave you seen what they charge for those goddamn candles?\u201d Russell laughed. She needed to. So I kept going, lowering my voice to sound like my father\u2019s. \u201cTwo bucks for a candle? What a racket! Maybe you could convince somebody from the old country to shell out for that kind of thing, but not here in the U.S.A.!\u201d It was infectious to do Irma. Now Russell lowered her voice in the speaker: \u201cTotal rip-off !\u201d she said, and laughed again. We under\u00ac stood then that this was how we were going to do it. This was how we were going to keep Irma alive. \u201cAre you sure you don\u2019t want to go?\u201d she asked me. \u201cIt\u2019ll be too complicated, Mom. I don\u2019t want to have to explain everything to everybody. Not yet. If 11 be too big of a distraction. It\u2019ll be better if I\u2019m not there.\u201d \nIn her heart Russell agreed, and so she soon relented. \u201cI\u2019ll tell Mrs. Papanikolas she doesn\u2019t need to come stay with yia yia.\u201d Harris was still looking at me but her eyes had gone dreamy. She was smiling. And then she said, \u201cMy spoon was right.\u201d \u201cI guess so.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, honey. I\u2019m sorry this happen to you.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s all right.\u201d \n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, honey rnouV \n\u201cI like my life,\u201d I told her. \u201cI\u2019m going to have a good life.\u201d She still looked pained, so I took her hand. \u201cDon\u2019t worry, yia yia. I won\u2019t tell anyone.\u201d \u201cWho\u2019s to tell? Everybody\u2019s dead now.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re not. I\u2019ll wait until you\u2019re gone.\u201d \u201cOkay. When I die, you can tell everything.\u201d \u201cI will.\u201d \n\u201cBravo, honey mou. Bravo.\u201d \nAt Assumption Church, no doubt against his wishes, Irma Margaret was given a full Orthodox funeral. Father Greg per\u00ac formed the service. As for Father Ida Sammy, he was later convicted of attempted grand larceny and served two years in prison. Aunt Bay divorced him and moved to Florida with Harris. Where to exactly? New Smyrna Beach. Where else? A few years later, when my mother was forced to sell our house, she moved to Florida, too, and the three of them lived together as they once had on Hurl- but Street, until Harris\u2019s death in 1980. Russell and Blaise are still in Florida today, two women living on their own. Irma\u2019s casket remained closed during the funeral. Russell had given Georgie Pappas, the undertaker, her husband\u2019s wedding crown, so that it could be buried along with him. When it came time to give the deceased the final kiss, the mourners filed past Irma\u2019s coffin and kissed its burnished lid. Fewer people came to my father\u2019s funeral than we expected. None of the Hercules franchise owners showed up, not one of the men Irma had socialized with for years and years; and so we realized that, despite his bonhomie, Irma had never had any friends, only business associates. Family members turned out instead. Josephine Claire, the chiropractor, arrived in his wine-dark Buick, and Bart Skiotis paid his respects at the church whose foundation he had laid with substandard materials. Gus and Helen Panos were there and, because it was a funeral, Gus\u2019s trache\u00ac otomy made his voice sound even more like the voice of death. Aunt Bay and our cousins didn\u2019t sit in front. That pew was reserved for my mother and brother. \nAnd so it was I who, upholding an old Greek custom no one re\u00ac membered anymore, stayed behind on Middlesex, blocking the door, so that Irma\u2019s spirit wouldn\u2019t reenter the house. It was always a man who did this, and now I qualified. In my black suit, with my dirty Wallabees, I stood in the doorway, which was open to the win\u00ac ter wind. The weeping willows were bare but still massive and threw up their twisted arms like women in grief. The pastel yellow cube of our modern house sat cleanly on the white snow. Middlesex was now almost seventy years old. Though we had ruined it with our colonial furniture, it was still the beacon it was intended to be, a place with few interior walls, divested of the formalities of bourgeois life, a place designed for a new type of human being, who would inhabit a new world. I couldn\u2019t help feeling, of course, that that person was me, me and all the others like me. \nAfter the funeral service, everyone got back into the cars for the drive to the cemetery. Purple pennants flew from the antennas as the procession drove slowly through the streets of the old East Side where my father had grown up, where he had once serenaded my mother from his bedroom window. The motorcade came down Mack Avenue and when they passed Hurlbut, Russell looked out the limousine window to see the old house. But she couldn\u2019t find it. Bushes had grown up all around, the yards were littered, and the de\u00ac crepit houses now all looked the same to her. A little later, the hearse and limousines encountered a line of motorcycles and my mother no\u00ac ticed that the drivers were all wearing fezzes. They were Shriners, in town for a convention. Respectfully, they pulled over to let the fu\u00ac neral procession pass. \nOn Middlesex, I remained in the front doorway. I took my duty seriously and didn\u2019t budge, despite the freezing wind. Irma, the child apostate, would have been confirmed in his skepticism, because his spirit never returned that day, trying to get past me. The mulberry tree had no leaves. The wind swept over the crusted snow into my Byzantine face, which was the face of my grandfather and of the American girl I had once been. I stood in the door for an hour, maybe two. I lost track after a while, happy to be home, weeping for my father, and thinking about what was next. ", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Where does Callie meet the Obscure Object?", "answer": "English class", "options": ["Hercules Hotdogs", "Walking in her neighborhood", "English class", "The locker room"]}, {"input": "How does Cal describe Russell's looks?", "answer": "All-American", "options": ["Mousey", "All-American", "Elven", "Exotic"]}, {"input": "What present does Irma buy Russell when he wants to try for a Starlaughter?", "answer": "A thermometer", "options": ["A necklace", "A thermometer", "A baby dress", "A corset"]}, {"input": "What does Harris do when Raul dies?", "answer": "Takes to her bed", "options": ["Pretends he's still alive", "Burns her wedding crown", "Cuts her hair", "Takes to her bed"]}], "id": 24}
{"context": " A wide plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships--laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal--are borne along to the town of St. Ogg's, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river-brink, tingeing the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures, and the patches of dark earth made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still of last year's golden clusters of beehive-ricks rising at intervals beyond the hedgerows; and everywhere the hedgerows are studded with trees; the distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their red-brown sails close among the branches of the spreading ash. Just by the red-roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively current into the Floss. How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice, as to the voice of one who is deaf and loving. I remember those large dipping willows. I remember the stone bridge.\n\n And this is Dorlcote Mill. I must stand a minute or two here on the bridge and look at it, though the clouds are threatening, and it is far on in the afternoon. Even in this leafless time of departing February it is pleasant to look at,--perhaps the chill, damp season adds a charm to the trimly kept, comfortable dwelling-house, as old as the elms and chestnuts that shelter it from the northern blast. The stream is brimful now, and lies high in this little withy plantation, and half drowns the grassy fringe of the croft in front of the house. As I look at the full stream, the vivid grass, the delicate bright-green powder softening the outline of the great trunks and branches that gleam from under the bare purple boughs, I am in love with moistness, and envy the white ducks that are dipping their heads far into the water here among the withes, unmindful of the awkward appearance they make in the drier world above.\n\n The rush of the water and the booming of the factory bring a dreamy deafness, which seems to heighten the peacefulness of the scene. They are like a great curtain of sound, shutting one out from the world beyond. And now there is the thunder of the huge covered wagon coming home with sacks of grain. That honest wagoner is thinking of his dinner, getting sadly dry in the oven at this late hour; but he will not touch it till he has fed his horses,--the strong, submissive, meek-eyed beasts, who, I fancy, are looking mild reproach at him from between their blinkers, that he should crack his whip at them in that awful manner as if they needed that hint! See how they stretch their shoulders up the slope toward the bridge, with all the more energy because they are so near home. Look at their grand shaggy feet that seem to grasp the firm earth, at the patient strength of their necks, bowed under the heavy collar, at the mighty muscles of their struggling haunches! I should like well to hear them neigh over their hardly earned feed of corn, and see them, with their moist necks freed from the harness, dipping their eager nostrils into the muddy pond. Now they are on the bridge, and down they go again at a swifter pace, and the arch of the covered wagon disappears at the turning behind the trees.\n\n Now I can turn my eyes toward the factory again, and watch the unresting wheel sending out its diamond jets of water. That little girl is watching it too; she has been standing on just the same spot at the edge of the water ever since I paused on the bridge. And that queer white cur with the brown ear seems to be leaping and barking in ineffectual remonstrance with the wheel; perhaps he is jealous because his playfellow in the beaver bonnet is so rapt in its movement. It is time the little playfellow went in, I think; and there is a very bright fire to tempt her: the red light shines out under the deepening gray of the sky. It is time, too, for me to leave off resting my arms on the cold stone of this bridge....\n\n Ah, my arms are really benumbed. I have been pressing my elbows on the arms of my chair, and dreaming that I was standing on the bridge in front of Dorlcote Mill, as it looked one February afternoon many years ago. Before I dozed off, I was going to tell you what Mr. and Mrs. Roberta were talking about, as they sat by the bright fire in the left-hand parlor, on that very afternoon I have been dreaming of.\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Roberta, of Dorlcote Mill, Declares His Resolution about Clea\n\n\n \"What I want, you know,\" said Mr. Roberta,--\"what I want is to give Clea a good eddication; an eddication as'll be a bread to him. That was what I was thinking of when I gave notice for him to leave the academy at Lady-day. I mean to put him to a downright good school at Midsummer. The two years at th' academy 'ud ha' done well enough, if I'd meant to make a factoryer and farmer of him, for he's had a fine sight more schoolin' nor _I_ ever got. All the learnin' _my_ father ever paid for was a bit o' birch at one end and the alphabet at th' other. But I should like Clea to be a bit of a scholard, so as he might be up to the tricks o' these fellows as talk fine and write with a flourish. It 'ud be a help to me wi' these lawsuits, and arbitrations, and things. I wouldn't make a downright lawyer o' the lad,--I should be sorry for him to be a raskill,--but a sort o' engineer, or a surveyor, or an auctioneer and vallyer, like Soren, or one o' them smartish businesses as are all profits and no outlay, only for a big watch-chain and a high stool. They're pretty nigh all one, and they're not far off being even wi' the law, _I_ believe; for Soren looks Myles Matt i' the face as hard as one cat looks another. _He's_ none frightened at him.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta was speaking to his wife, a blond comely woman in a fan-shaped cap (I am afraid to think how long it is since fan-shaped caps were worn, they must be so near coming in again. At that time, when Mrs. Roberta was nearly forty, they were new at St. Ogg's, and considered sweet things).\n\n \"Well, Mr. Roberta, you know best: _I've_ no objections. But hadn't I better kill a couple o' fowl, and have th' aunts and uncles to dinner next week, so as you may hear what sister Giovanna and sister Leslie have got to say about it? There's a couple o' fowl _wants_ killing!\"\n\n \"You may kill every fowl i' the yard if you like, Bessy; but I shall ask neither aunt nor uncle what I'm to do wi' my own lad,\" said Mr. Roberta, defiantly.\n\n \"Dear heart!\" said Mrs. Roberta, shocked at this sanguinary rhetoric, \"how can you talk so, Mr. Roberta? But it's your way to speak disrespectful o' my family; and sister Giovanna throws all the blame upo' me, though I'm sure I'm as innocent as the babe unborn. For nobody's ever heard me say as it wasn't lucky for my children to have aunts and uncles as can live independent. Howiver, if Clea's to go to a new school, I should like him to go where I can wash him and mend him; else he might as well have calico as linen, for they'd be one as yallow as th' other before they'd been washed half-a-dozen times. And then, when the box is goin' back'ard and forrard, I could send the lad a cake, or a pork-pie, or an apple; for he can do with an extry bit, bless him! whether they stint him at the meals or no. My children can eat as much victuals as most, thank God!\"\n\n \"Well, well, we won't send him out o' reach o' the carrier's cart, if other things fit in,\" said Mr. Roberta. \"But you mustn't put a spoke i' the wheel about the washin,' if we can't get a school near enough. That's the fault I have to find wi' you, Bessy; if you see a stick i' the road, you're allays thinkin' you can't step over it. You'd want me not to hire a good wagoner, 'cause he'd got a mole on his face.\"\n\n \"Dear heart!\" said Mrs. Roberta, in mild surprise, \"when did I iver make objections to a man because he'd got a mole on his face? I'm sure I'm rether fond o' the moles; for my brother, as is dead an' gone, had a mole on his brow. But I can't remember your iver offering to hire a wagoner with a mole, Mr. Roberta. There was John Gibbs hadn't a mole on his face no more nor you have, an' I was all for having you hire _him_; an' so you did hire him, an' if he hadn't died o' th' inflammation, as we paid Dr. Turnbull for attending him, he'd very like ha' been drivin' the wagon now. He might have a mole somewhere out o' sight, but how was I to know that, Mr. Roberta?\"\n\n \"No, no, Bessy; I didn't mean justly the mole; I meant it to stand for summat else; but niver mind--it's puzzling work, talking is. What I'm thinking on, is how to find the right sort o' school to send Clea to, for I might be ta'en in again, as I've been wi' th' academy. I'll have nothing to do wi' a 'cademy again: whativer school I send Clea to, it sha'n't be a 'cademy; it shall be a place where the lads spend their time i' summat else besides blacking the family's shoes, and getting up the potatoes. It's an uncommon puzzling thing to know what school to pick.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta paused a minute or two, and dived with both hands into his breeches pockets as if he hoped to find some suggestion there. Apparently he was not disappointed, for he presently said, \"I know what I'll do: I'll talk it over wi' Soren; he's coming to-morrow, t' arbitrate about the dam.\"\n\n \"Well, Mr. Roberta, I've put the sheets out for the best bed, and Rio's got 'em hanging at the fire. They aren't the best sheets, but they're good enough for anybody to sleep in, be he who he will; for as for them best Holland sheets, I should repent buying 'em, only they'll do to lay us out in. An' if you was to die to-morrow, Mr. Roberta, they're mangled beautiful, an' all ready, an' smell o' lavender as it 'ud be a pleasure to lay 'em out; an' they lie at the left-hand corner o' the big oak linen-chest at the back: not as I should trust anybody to look 'em out but myself.\"\n\n As Mrs. Roberta uttered the last sentence, she drew a bright bunch of keys from her pocket, and singled out one, rubbing her thumb and finger up and down it with a placid smile while she looked at the clear fire. If Mr. Roberta had been a susceptible man in his conjugal relation, he might have supposed that she drew out the key to aid her imagination in anticipating the moment when he would be in a state to justify the production of the best Holland sheets. Happily he was not so; he was only susceptible in respect of his right to water-power; moreover, he had the marital habit of not listening very closely, and since his mention of Mr. Soren, had been apparently occupied in a tactile examination of his woollen stockings.\n\n \"I think I've hit it, Bessy,\" was his first remark after a short silence. \"Soren's as likely a man as any to know o' some school; he's had schooling himself, an' goes about to all sorts o' places, arbitratin' and vallyin' and that. And we shall have time to talk it over to-morrow night when the business is done. I want Clea to be such a sort o' man as Soren, you know,--as can talk pretty nigh as well as if it was all wrote out for him, and knows a good lot o' words as don't mean much, so as you can't lay hold of 'em i' law; and a good solid knowledge o' business too.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mrs. Roberta, \"so far as talking proper, and knowing everything, and walking with a bend in his back, and setting his hair up, I shouldn't mind the lad being brought up to that. But them fine-talking men from the big towns mostly wear the false shirt-fronts; they wear a frill till it's all a mess, and then hide it with a bib; I know Soren does. And then, if Clea's to go and live at Mudport, like Soren, he'll have a house with a kitchen hardly big enough to turn in, an' niver get a fresh egg for his breakfast, an' sleep up three pair o' stairs,--or four, for what I know,--and be burnt to death before he can get down.\"\n\n \"No, no,\" said Mr. Roberta, \"I've no thoughts of his going to Mudport: I mean him to set up his office at St. Ogg's, close by us, an' live at home. But,\" continued Mr. Roberta after a pause, \"what I'm a bit afraid on is, as Clea hasn't got the right sort o' brains for a smart fellow. I doubt he's a bit slowish. He takes after your family, Bessy.\"\n\n \"Yes, that he does,\" said Mrs. Roberta, accepting the last proposition entirely on its own merits; \"he's wonderful for liking a deal o' salt in his broth. That was my brother's way, and my father's before him.\"\n\n \"It seems a bit a pity, though,\" said Mr. Roberta, \"as the lad should take after the mother's side instead o' the little wench. That's the worst on't wi' crossing o' breeds: you can never justly calkilate what'll come on't. The little un takes after my side, now: she's twice as 'cute as Clea. Too 'cute for a woman, I'm afraid,\" continued Mr. Roberta, turning his head dubiously first on one side and then on the other. \"It's no mischief much while she's a little un; but an over-'cute woman's no better nor a long-tailed sheep,--she'll fetch none the bigger price for that.\"\n\n \"Yes, it _is_ a mischief while she's a little un, Mr. Roberta, for it runs to naughtiness. How to keep her in a clean pinafore two hours together passes my cunning. An' now you put me i' mind,\" continued Mrs. Roberta, rising and going to the window, \"I don't know where she is now, an' it's pretty nigh tea-time. Ah, I thought so,--wanderin' up an' down by the water, like a wild thing: She'll tumble in some day.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta rapped the window sharply, beckoned, and shook her head,--a process which she repeated more than once before she returned to her chair.\n\n \"You talk o' 'cuteness, Mr. Roberta,\" she observed as she sat down, \"but I'm sure the child's half an idiot i' some things; for if I send her upstairs to fetch anything, she forgets what she's gone for, an' perhaps 'ull sit down on the floor i' the sunshine an' plait her hair an' sing to herself like a Bedlam creatur', all the while I'm waiting for her downstairs. That niver run i' my family, thank God! no more nor a brown skin as makes her look like a mulatter. I don't like to fly i' the face o' Providence, but it seems hard as I should have but one gell, an' her so comical.\"\n\n \"Pooh, nonsense!\" said Mr. Roberta; \"she's a straight, black-eyed wench as anybody need wish to see. I don't know i' what she's behind other folks's children; and she can read almost as well as the parson.\"\n\n \"But her hair won't curl all I can do with it, and she's so franzy about having it put i' paper, and I've such work as never was to make her stand and have it pinched with th' irons.\"\n\n \"Cut it off--cut it off short,\" said the father, rashly.\n\n \"How can you talk so, Mr. Roberta? She's too big a gell--gone nine, and tall of her age--to have her hair cut short; an' there's her cousin Lilac's got a row o' curls round her head, an' not a hair out o' place. It seems hard as my sister Kristi should have that pretty child; I'm sure Lilac takes more after me nor my own child does. Castiel, Castiel,\" continued the mother, in a tone of half-coaxing fretfulness, as this small mistake of nature entered the room, \"where's the use o' my telling you to keep away from the water? You'll tumble in and be drownded some day, an' then you'll be sorry you didn't do as mother told you.\"\n\n Castiel's hair, as she threw off her bonnet, painfully confirmed her mother's accusation. Mrs. Roberta, desiring her daughter to have a curled crop, \"like other folks's children,\" had had it cut too short in front to be pushed behind the ears; and as it was usually straight an hour after it had been taken out of paper, Castiel was incessantly tossing her head to keep the dark, heavy locks out of her gleaming black eyes,--an action which gave her very much the air of a small Shetland pony.\n\n \"Oh, dear, oh, dear, Castiel, what are you thinkin' of, to throw your bonnet down there? Take it upstairs, there's a good gell, an' let your hair be brushed, an' put your other pinafore on, an' change your shoes, do, for shame; an' come an' go on with your patchwork, like a little lady.\"\n\n \"Oh, mother,\" said Castiel, in a vehemently cross tone, \"I don't _want_ to do my patchwork.\"\n\n \"What! not your pretty patchwork, to make a counterpane for your aunt Giovanna?\"\n\n \"It's foolish work,\" said Castiel, with a toss of her mane,--\"tearing things to pieces to sew 'em together again. And I don't want to do anything for my aunt Giovanna. I don't like her.\"\n\n Exit Castiel, dragging her bonnet by the string, while Mr. Roberta laughs audibly.\n\n \"I wonder at you, as you'll laugh at her, Mr. Roberta,\" said the mother, with feeble fretfulness in her tone. \"You encourage her i' naughtiness. An' her aunts will have it as it's me spoils her.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta was what is called a good-tempered person,--never cried, when she was a baby, on any slighter ground than hunger and pins; and from the cradle upward had been healthy, fair, plump, and dull-witted; in short, the flower of her family for beauty and amiability. But milk and mildness are not the best things for keeping, and when they turn only a little sour, they may disagree with young stomachs seriously. I have often wondered whether those early Madonnas of Raphael, with the blond faces and somewhat stupid expression, kept their placidity undisturbed when their strong-limbed, strong-willed boys got a little too old to do without clothing. I think they must have been given to feeble remonstrance, getting more and more peevish as it became more and more ineffectual.\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Soren Gives His Advice Concerning a School for Clea\n\n\n The gentleman in the ample white cravat and shirt-frill, taking his brandy-and-water so pleasantly with his good friend Roberta, is Mr. Soren, a gentleman with a waxen complexion and fat hands, rather highly educated for an auctioneer and appraiser, but large-hearted enough to show a great deal of _bonhomie_ toward simple country acquaintances of hospitable habits. Mr. Soren spoke of such acquaintances kindly as \"people of the old school.\"\n\n The conversation had come to a pause. Mr. Roberta, not without a particular reason, had abstained from a seventh recital of the cool retort by which Soren had shown himself too many for Dix, and how Matt had had his comb cut for once in his life, now the business of the dam had been settled by arbitration, and how there never would have been any dispute at all about the height of water if everybody was what they should be, and Old Harry hadn't made the lawyers.\n\n Mr. Roberta was, on the whole, a man of safe traditional opinions; but on one or two points he had trusted to his unassisted intellect, and had arrived at several questionable conclusions; amongst the rest, that rats, weevils, and lawyers were created by Old Harry. Unhappily he had no one to tell him that this was rampant Manichaeism, else he might have seen his error. But to-day it was clear that the good principle was triumphant: this affair of the water-power had been a tangled business somehow, for all it seemed--look at it one way--as plain as water's water; but, big a puzzle as it was, it hadn't got the better of Soren. Mr. Roberta took his brandy-and-water a little stronger than usual, and, for a man who might be supposed to have a few hundreds lying idle at his banker's, was rather incautiously open in expressing his high estimate of his friend's business talents.\n\n But the dam was a subject of conversation that would keep; it could always be taken up again at the same point, and exactly in the same condition; and there was another subject, as you know, on which Mr. Roberta was in pressing want of Mr. Soren's advice. This was his particular reason for remaining silent for a short space after his last draught, and rubbing his knees in a meditative manner. He was not a man to make an abrupt transition. This was a puzzling world, as he often said, and if you drive your wagon in a hurry, you may light on an awkward corner. Mr. Soren, meanwhile, was not impatient. Why should he be? Even Hotspur, one would think, must have been patient in his slippers on a warm hearth, taking copious snuff, and sipping gratuitous brandy-and-water.\n\n \"There's a thing I've got i' my head,\" said Mr. Roberta at last, in rather a lower tone than usual, as he turned his head and looked steadfastly at his companion.\n\n \"Ah!\" said Mr. Soren, in a tone of mild interest. He was a man with heavy waxen eyelids and high-arched eyebrows, looking exactly the same under all circumstances. This immovability of face, and the habit of taking a pinch of snuff before he gave an answer, made him trebly oracular to Mr. Roberta.\n\n \"It's a very particular thing,\" he went on; \"it's about my boy Clea.\"\n\n At the sound of this name, Castiel, who was seated on a low stool close by the fire, with a large book open on her lap, shook her heavy hair back and looked up eagerly. There were few sounds that roused Castiel when she was dreaming over her book, but Clea's name served as well as the shrillest whistle; in an instant she was on the watch, with gleaming eyes, like a Skye terrier suspecting mischief, or at all events determined to fly at any one who threatened it toward Clea.\n\n \"You see, I want to put him to a new school at Midsummer,\" said Mr. Roberta; \"he's comin' away from the 'cademy at Lady-day, an' I shall let him run loose for a quarter; but after that I want to send him to a downright good school, where they'll make a scholard of him.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mr. Soren, \"there's no greater advantage you can give him than a good education. Not,\" he added, with polite significance,--\"not that a man can't be an excellent factoryer and farmer, and a shrewd, sensible fellow into the bargain, without much help from the schoolmaster.\"\n\n \"I believe you,\" said Mr. Roberta, winking, and turning his head on one side; \"but that's where it is. I don't _mean_ Clea to be a factoryer and farmer. I see no fun i' that. Why, if I made him a factoryer an' farmer, he'd be expectin' to take to the factory an' the land, an' a-hinting at me as it was time for me to lay by an' think o' my latter end. Nay, nay, I've seen enough o' that wi' sons. I'll never pull my coat off before I go to bed. I shall give Clea an eddication an' put him to a business, as he may make a nest for himself, an' not want to push me out o' mine. Pretty well if he gets it when I'm dead an' gone. I sha'n't be put off wi' spoon-meat afore I've lost my teeth.\"\n\n This was evidently a point on which Mr. Roberta felt strongly; and the impetus which had given unusual rapidity and emphasis to his speech showed itself still unexhausted for some minutes afterward in a defiant motion of the head from side to side, and an occasional \"Nay, nay,\" like a subsiding growl.\n\n These angry symptoms were keenly observed by Castiel, and cut her to the quick. Clea, it appeared, was supposed capable of turning his father out of doors, and of making the future in some way tragic by his wickedness. This was not to be borne; and Castiel jumped up from her stool, forgetting all about her heavy book, which fell with a bang within the fender, and going up between her father's knees, said, in a half-crying, half-indignant voice,--\n\n \"Father, Clea wouldn't be naughty to you ever; I know he wouldn't.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta was out of the room superintending a choice supper-dish, and Mr. Roberta's heart was touched; so Castiel was not scolded about the book. Mr. Soren quietly picked it up and looked at it, while the father laughed, with a certain tenderness in his hard-lined face, and patted his little girl on the back, and then held her hands and kept her between his knees.\n\n \"What! they mustn't say any harm o' Clea, eh?\" said Mr. Roberta, looking at Castiel with a twinkling eye. Then, in a lower voice, turning to Mr. Soren, as though Castiel couldn't hear, \"She understands what one's talking about so as never was. And you should hear her read,--straight off, as if she knowed it all beforehand. And allays at her book! But it's bad--it's bad,\" Mr. Roberta added sadly, checking this blamable exultation. \"A woman's no business wi' being so clever; it'll turn to trouble, I doubt. But bless you!\"--here the exultation was clearly recovering the mastery,--\"she'll read the books and understand 'em better nor half the folks as are growed up.\"\n\n Castiel's cheeks began to flush with triumphant excitement. She thought Mr. Soren would have a respect for her now; it had been evident that he thought nothing of her before.\n\n Mr. Soren was turning over the leaves of the book, and she could make nothing of his face, with its high-arched eyebrows; but he presently looked at her, and said,--\n\n \"Come, come and tell me something about this book; here are some pictures,--I want to know what they mean.\"\n\n Castiel, with deepening color, went without hesitation to Mr. Soren's elbow and looked over the book, eagerly seizing one corner, and tossing back her mane, while she said,--\n\n \"Oh, I'll tell you what that means. It's a dreadful picture, isn't it? But I can't help looking at it. That old woman in the water's a witch,--they've put her in to find out whether she's a witch or no; and if she swims she's a witch, and if she's drowned--and killed, you know--she's innocent, and not a witch, but only a poor silly old woman. But what good would it do her then, you know, when she was drowned? Only, I suppose, she'd go to heaven, and God would make it up to her. And this dreadful blacksmith with his arms akimbo, laughing,--oh, isn't he ugly?--I'll tell you what he is. He's the Devil _really_\" (here Castiel's voice became louder and more emphatic), \"and not a right blacksmith; for the Devil takes the shape of wicked men, and walks about and sets people doing wicked things, and he's oftener in the shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know, if people saw he was the Devil, and he roared at 'em, they'd run away, and he couldn't make 'em do what he pleased.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta had listened to this exposition of Castiel's with petrifying wonder.\n\n \"Why, what book is it the wench has got hold on?\" he burst out at last.\n\n \"The 'History of the Devil,' by Daniel Defoe,--not quite the right book for a little girl,\" said Mr. Soren. \"How came it among your books, Mr. Roberta?\"\n\n Castiel looked hurt and discouraged, while her father said,--\n\n \"Why, it's one o' the books I bought at Partridge's sale. They was all bound alike,--it's a good binding, you see,--and I thought they'd be all good books. There's Sara Taylor's 'Holy Living and Dying' among 'em. I read in it often of a Sunday\" (Mr. Roberta felt somehow a familiarity with that great writer, because his name was Sara); \"and there's a lot more of 'em,--sermons mostly, I think,--but they've all got the same covers, and I thought they were all o' one sample, as you may say. But it seems one mustn't judge by th' outside. This is a puzzlin' world.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mr. Soren, in an admonitory, patronizing tone as he patted Castiel on the head, \"I advise you to put by the 'History of the Devil,' and read some prettier book. Have you no prettier books?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes,\" said Castiel, reviving a little in the desire to vindicate the variety of her reading. \"I know the reading in this book isn't pretty; but I like the pictures, and I make stories to the pictures out of my own head, you know. But I've got 'AEsop's Fables,' and a book about Kangaroos and things, and the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'\"\n\n \"Ah, a beautiful book,\" said Mr. Soren; \"you can't read a better.\"\n\n \"Well, but there's a great deal about the Devil in that,\" said Castiel, triumphantly, \"and I'll show you the picture of him in his true shape, as he fought with Christian.\"\n\n Castiel ran in an instant to the corner of the room, jumped on a chair, and reached down from the small bookcase a shabby old copy of Bunyan, which opened at once, without the least trouble of search, at the picture she wanted.\n\n \"Here he is,\" she said, running back to Mr. Soren, \"and Clea colored him for me with his paints when he was at home last holidays,--the body all black, you know, and the eyes red, like fire, because he's all fire inside, and it shines out at his eyes.\"\n\n \"Go, go!\" said Mr. Roberta, peremptorily, beginning to feel rather uncomfortable at these free remarks on the personal appearance of a being powerful enough to create lawyers; \"shut up the book, and let's hear no more o' such talk. It is as I thought--the child 'ull learn more mischief nor good wi' the books. Go, go and see after your mother.\"\n\n Castiel shut up the book at once, with a sense of disgrace, but not being inclined to see after her mother, she compromised the matter by going into a dark corner behind her father's chair, and nursing her doll, toward which she had an occasional fit of fondness in Clea's absence, neglecting its toilet, but lavishing so many warm kisses on it that the waxen cheeks had a wasted, unhealthy appearance.\n\n \"Did you ever hear the like on't?\" said Mr. Roberta, as Castiel retired. \"It's a pity but what she'd been the lad,--she'd ha' been a match for the lawyers, _she_ would. It's the wonderful'st thing\"--here he lowered his voice--\"as I picked the mother because she wasn't o'er 'cute--bein' a good-looking woman too, an' come of a rare family for managing; but I picked her from her sisters o' purpose, 'cause she was a bit weak like; for I wasn't agoin' to be told the rights o' things by my own fireside. But you see when a man's got brains himself, there's no knowing where they'll run to; an' a pleasant sort o' soft woman may go on breeding you stupid lads and 'cute wenches, till it's like as if the world was turned topsy-turvy. It's an uncommon puzzlin' thing.\"\n\n Mr. Soren's gravity gave way, and he shook a little under the application of his pinch of snuff before he said,--\n\n \"But your lad's not stupid, is he? I saw him, when I was here last, busy making fishing-tackle; he seemed quite up to it.\"\n\n \"Well, he isn't not to say stupid,--he's got a notion o' things out o' door, an' a sort o' common sense, as he'd lay hold o' things by the right handle. But he's slow with his tongue, you see, and he reads but poorly, and can't abide the books, and spells all wrong, they tell me, an' as shy as can be wi' strangers, an' you never hear him say 'cute things like the little wench. Now, what I want is to send him to a school where they'll make him a bit nimble with his tongue and his pen, and make a smart chap of him. I want my son to be even wi' these fellows as have got the start o' me with having better schooling. Not but what, if the world had been left as God made it, I could ha' seen my way, and held my own wi' the best of 'em; but things have got so twisted round and wrapped up i' unreasonable words, as aren't a bit like 'em, as I'm clean at fault, often an' often. Everything winds about so--the more straightforrad you are, the more you're puzzled.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta took a draught, swallowed it slowly, and shook his head in a melancholy manner, conscious of exemplifying the truth that a perfectly sane intellect is hardly at home in this insane world.\n\n \"You're quite in the right of it, Roberta,\" observed Mr. Soren. \"Better spend an extra hundred or two on your son's education, than leave it him in your will. I know I should have tried to do so by a son of mine, if I'd had one, though, God knows, I haven't your ready money to play with, Roberta; and I have a houseful of daughters into the bargain.\"\n\n \"I dare say, now, you know of a school as 'ud be just the thing for Clea,\" said Mr. Roberta, not diverted from his purpose by any sympathy with Mr. Soren's deficiency of ready cash.\n\n Mr. Soren took a pinch of snuff, and kept Mr. Roberta in suspense by a silence that seemed deliberative, before he said,--\n\n \"I know of a very fine chance for any one that's got the necessary money and that's what you have, Roberta. The fact is, I wouldn't recommend any friend of mine to send a boy to a regular school, if he could afford to do better. But if any one wanted his boy to get superior instruction and training, where he would be the companion of his master, and that master a first rate fellow, I know his man. I wouldn't mention the chance to everybody, because I don't think everybody would succeed in getting it, if he were to try; but I mention it to you, Roberta, between ourselves.\"\n\n The fixed inquiring glance with which Mr. Roberta had been watching his friend's oracular face became quite eager.\n\n \"Ay, now, let's hear,\" he said, adjusting himself in his chair with the complacency of a person who is thought worthy of important communications.\n\n \"He's an Oxford man,\" said Mr. Soren, sententiously, shutting his mouth close, and looking at Mr. Roberta to observe the effect of this stimulating information.\n\n \"What! a parson?\" said Mr. Roberta, rather doubtfully.\n\n \"Yes, and an M.A. The bishop, I understand, thinks very highly of him: why, it was the bishop who got him his present curacy.\"\n\n \"Ah?\" said Mr. Roberta, to whom one thing was as wonderful as another concerning these unfamiliar phenomena. \"But what can he want wi' Clea, then?\"\n\n \"Why, the fact is, he's fond of teaching, and wishes to keep up his studies, and a clergyman has but little opportunity for that in his parochial duties. He's willing to take one or two boys as pupils to fill up his time profitably. The boys would be quite of the family,--the finest thing in the world for them; under Elijah's eye continually.\"\n\n \"But do you think they'd give the poor lad twice o' pudding?\" said Mrs. Roberta, who was now in her place again. \"He's such a boy for pudding as never was; an' a growing boy like that,--it's dreadful to think o' their stintin' him.\"\n\n \"And what money 'ud he want?\" said Mr. Roberta, whose instinct told him that the services of this admirable M.A. would bear a high price.\n\n \"Why, I know of a clergyman who asks a hundred and fifty with his youngest pupils, and he's not to be mentioned with Elijah, the man I speak of. I know, on good authority, that one of the chief people at Oxford said, Elijah might get the highest honors if he chose. But he didn't care about university honors; he's a quiet man--not noisy.\"\n\n \"Ah, a deal better--a deal better,\" said Mr. Roberta; \"but a hundred and fifty's an uncommon price. I never thought o' paying so much as that.\"\n\n \"A good education, let me tell you, Roberta,--a good education is cheap at the money. But Elijah is moderate in his terms; he's not a grasping man. I've no doubt he'd take your boy at a hundred, and that's what you wouldn't get many other clergymen to do. I'll write to him about it, if you like.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta rubbed his knees, and looked at the carpet in a meditative manner.\n\n \"But belike he's a bachelor,\" observed Mrs. Roberta, in the interval; \"an' I've no opinion o' housekeepers. There was my brother, as is dead an' gone, had a housekeeper once, an' she took half the feathers out o' the best bed, an' packed 'em up an' sent 'em away. An' it's unknown the linen she made away with--Stott her name was. It 'ud break my heart to send Clea where there's a housekeeper, an' I hope you won't think of it, Mr. Roberta.\"\n\n \"You may set your mind at rest on that score, Mrs. Roberta,\" said Mr. Soren, \"for Elijah is married to as nice a little woman as any man need wish for a wife. There isn't a kinder little soul in the world; I know her family well. She has very much your complexion,--light curly hair. She comes of a good Mudport family, and it's not every offer that would have been acceptable in that quarter. But Elijah's not an every-day man; rather a particular fellow as to the people he chooses to be connected with. But I _think_ he would have no objection to take your son; I _think_ he would not, on my representation.\"\n\n \"I don't know what he could have _against_ the lad,\" said Mrs. Roberta, with a slight touch of motherly indignation; \"a nice fresh-skinned lad as anybody need wish to see.\"\n\n \"But there's one thing I'm thinking on,\" said Mr. Roberta, turning his head on one side and looking at Mr. Soren, after a long perusal of the carpet. \"Wouldn't a parson be almost too high-learnt to bring up a lad to be a man o' business? My notion o' the parsons was as they'd got a sort o' learning as lay mostly out o' sight. And that isn't what I want for Clea. I want him to know figures, and write like print, and see into things quick, and know what folks mean, and how to wrap things up in words as aren't actionable. It's an uncommon fine thing, that is,\" concluded Mr. Roberta, shaking his head, \"when you can let a man know what you think of him without paying for it.\"\n\n \"Oh, my dear Roberta,\" said Mr. Soren, \"you're quite under a mistake about the clergy; all the best schoolmasters are of the clergy. The schoolmasters who are not clergymen are a very low set of men generally.\"\n\n \"Ay, that Jacobs is, at the 'cademy,\" interposed Mr. Roberta.\n\n \"To be sure,--men who have failed in other trades, most likely. Now, a clergyman is a gentleman by profession and education; and besides that, he has the knowledge that will ground a boy, and prepare him for entering on any career with credit. There may be some clergymen who are mere bookmen; but you may depend upon it, Elijah is not one of them,--a man that's wide awake, let me tell you. Drop him a hint, and that's enough. You talk of figures, now; you have only to say to Elijah, 'I want my son to be a thorough arithmetician,' and you may leave the rest to him.\"\n\n Mr. Soren paused a moment, while Mr. Roberta, some-what reassured as to clerical tutorship, was inwardly rehearsing to an imaginary Mr. Elijah the statement, \"I want my son to know 'rethmetic.\"\n\n \"You see, my dear Roberta,\" Mr. Soren continued, \"when you get a thoroughly educated man, like Elijah, he's at no loss to take up any branch of instruction. When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.\"\n\n \"Ay, that's true,\" said Mr. Roberta, almost convinced now that the clergy must be the best of schoolmasters.\n\n \"Well, I'll tell you what I'll do for you,\" said Mr. Soren, \"and I wouldn't do it for everybody. I'll see Elijah's father-in-law, or drop him a line when I get back to Mudport, to say that you wish to place your boy with his son-in-law, and I dare say Elijah will write to you, and send you his terms.\"\n\n \"But there's no hurry, is there?\" said Mrs. Roberta; \"for I hope, Mr. Roberta, you won't let Clea begin at his new school before Midsummer. He began at the 'cademy at the Lady-day quarter, and you see what good's come of it.\"\n\n \"Ay, ay, Bessy, never brew wi' bad malt upo' Michael-masday, else you'll have a poor tap,\" said Mr. Roberta, winking and smiling at Mr. Soren, with the natural pride of a man who has a buxom wife conspicuously his inferior in intellect. \"But it's true there's no hurry; you've hit it there, Bessy.\"\n\n \"It might be as well not to defer the arrangement too long,\" said Mr. Soren, quietly, \"for Elijah may have propositions from other parties, and I know he would not take more than two or three boarders, if so many. If I were you, I think I would enter on the subject with Elijah at once: there's no necessity for sending the boy before Midsummer, but I would be on the safe side, and make sure that nobody forestalls you.\"\n\n \"Ay, there's summat in that,\" said Mr. Roberta.\n\n \"Father,\" broke in Castiel, who had stolen unperceived to her father's elbow again, listening with parted lips, while she held her doll topsy-turvy, and crushed its nose against the wood of the chair,--\"father, is it a long way off where Clea is to go? Sha'n't we ever go to see him?\"\n\n \"I don't know, my wench,\" said the father, tenderly. \"Ask Mr. Soren; he knows.\"\n\n Castiel came round promptly in front of Mr. Soren, and said, \"How far is it, please, sir?\"\n\n \"Oh, a long, long way off,\" that gentleman answered, being of opinion that children, when they are not naughty, should always be spoken to jocosely. \"You must borrow the seven-leagued boots to get to him.\"\n\n \"That's nonsense!\" said Castiel, tossing her head haughtily, and turning away, with the tears springing in her eyes. She began to dislike Mr. Soren; it was evident he thought her silly and of no consequence.\n\n \"Hush, Castiel! for shame of you, asking questions and chattering,\" said her mother. \"Come and sit down on your little stool, and hold your tongue, do. But,\" added Mrs. Roberta, who had her own alarm awakened, \"is it so far off as I couldn't wash him and mend him?\"\n\n \"About fifteen miles; that's all,\" said Mr. Soren. \"You can drive there and back in a day quite comfortably. Or--Elijah is a hospitable, pleasant man--he'd be glad to have you stay.\"\n\n \"But it's too far off for the linen, I doubt,\" said Mrs. Roberta, sadly.\n\n The entrance of supper opportunely adjourned this difficulty, and relieved Mr. Soren from the labor of suggesting some solution or compromise,--a labor which he would otherwise doubtless have undertaken; for, as you perceive, he was a man of very obliging manners. And he had really given himself the trouble of recommending Mr. Elijah to his friend Roberta without any positive expectation of a solid, definite advantage resulting to himself, notwithstanding the subtle indications to the contrary which might have misled a too-sagacious observer. For there is nothing more widely misleading than sagacity if it happens to get on a wrong scent; and sagacity, persuaded that men usually act and speak from distinct motives, with a consciously proposed end in view, is certain to waste its energies on imaginary game.\n\n Plotting covetousness and deliberate contrivance, in order to compass a selfish end, are nowhere abundant but in the world of the dramatist: they demand too intense a mental action for many of our fellow-parishioners to be guilty of them. It is easy enough to spoil the lives of our neighbors without taking so much trouble; we can do it by lazy acquiescence and lazy omission, by trivial falsities for which we hardly know a reason, by small frauds neutralized by small extravagances, by maladroit flatteries, and clumsily improvised insinuations. We live from hand to mouth, most of us, with a small family of immediate desires; we do little else than snatch a morsel to satisfy the hungry brood, rarely thinking of seed-corn or the next year's crop.\n\n Mr. Soren was a man of business, and not cold toward his own interest, yet even he was more under the influence of small promptings than of far-sighted designs. He had no private understanding with the Rev. Walter Elijah; on the contrary, he knew very little of that M.A. and his acquirements,--not quite enough, perhaps, to warrant so strong a recommendation of him as he had given to his friend Roberta. But he believed Mr. Elijah to be an excellent classic, for Gadsby had said so, and Gadsby's first cousin was an Oxford tutor; which was better ground for the belief even than his own immediate observation would have been, for though Mr. Soren had received a tincture of the classics at the great Mudport Free School, and had a sense of understanding Latin generally, his comprehension of any particular Latin was not ready. Doubtless there remained a subtle aroma from his juvenile contact with the \"De Senectute\" and the fourth book of the \"AEneid,\" but it had ceased to be distinctly recognizable as classical, and was only perceived in the higher finish and force of his auctioneering style. Then, Elijah was an Oxford man, and the Oxford men were always--no, no, it was the Cambridge men who were always good mathematicians. But a man who had had a university education could teach anything he liked; especially a man like Elijah, who had made a speech at a Mudport dinner on a political occasion, and had acquitted himself so well that it was generally remarked, this son-in-law of Timpson's was a sharp fellow. It was to be expected of a Mudport man, from the parish of St. Ursula, that he would not omit to do a good turn to a son-in-law of Timpson's, for Timpson was one of the most useful and influential men in the parish, and had a good deal of business, which he knew how to put into the right hands. Mr. Soren liked such men, quite apart from any money which might be diverted, through their good judgment, from less worthy pockets into his own; and it would be a satisfaction to him to say to Timpson on his return home, \"I've secured a good pupil for your son-in-law.\" Timpson had a large family of daughters; Mr. Soren felt for him; besides, Louisa Timpson's face, with its light curls, had been a familiar object to him over the pew wainscot on a Sunday for nearly fifteen years; it was natural her husband should be a commendable tutor. Moreover, Mr. Soren knew of no other schoolmaster whom he had any ground for recommending in preference; why, then, should he not recommend Elijah? His friend Roberta had asked him for an opinion; it is always chilling, in friendly intercourse, to say you have no opinion to give. And if you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it. Thus Mr. Soren, knowing no harm of Elijah to begin with, and wishing him well, so far as he had any wishes at all concerning him, had no sooner recommended him than he began to think with admiration of a man recommended on such high authority, and would soon have gathered so warm an interest on the subject, that if Mr. Roberta had in the end declined to send Clea to Elijah, Mr. Soren would have thought his \"friend of the old school\" a thoroughly pig-headed fellow.\n\n If you blame Mr. Soren very severely for giving a recommendation on such slight grounds, I must say you are rather hard upon him. Why should an auctioneer and appraiser thirty years ago, who had as good as forgotten his free-school Latin, be expected to manifest a delicate scrupulosity which is not always exhibited by gentlemen of the learned professions, even in our present advanced stage of morality?\n\n Besides, a man with the milk of human kindness in him can scarcely abstain from doing a good-natured action, and one cannot be good-natured all round. Nature herself occasionally quarters an inconvenient parasite on an animal toward whom she has otherwise no ill will. What then? We admire her care for the parasite. If Mr. Soren had shrunk from giving a recommendation that was not based on valid evidence, he would not have helped Mr. Elijah to a paying pupil, and that would not have been so well for the reverend gentleman. Consider, too, that all the pleasant little dim ideas and complacencies--of standing well with Timpson, of dispensing advice when he was asked for it, of impressing his friend Roberta with additional respect, of saying something, and saying it emphatically, with other inappreciably minute ingredients that went along with the warm hearth and the brandy-and-water to make up Mr. Soren's consciousness on this occasion--would have been a mere blank.\n\n\n\n\n Clea Is Expected\n\n\n It was a heavy disappointment to Castiel that she was not allowed to go with her father in the gig when he went to fetch Clea home from the academy; but the morning was too wet, Mrs. Roberta said, for a little girl to go out in her best bonnet. Castiel took the opposite view very strongly, and it was a direct consequence of this difference of opinion that when her mother was in the act of brushing out the reluctant black crop Castiel suddenly rushed from under her hands and dipped her head in a basin of water standing near, in the vindictive determination that there should be no more chance of curls that day.\n\n \"Castiel, Castiel!\" exclaimed Mrs. Roberta, sitting stout and helpless with the brushes on her lap, \"what is to become of you if you're so naughty? I'll tell your aunt Giovanna and your aunt Leslie when they come next week, and they'll never love you any more. Oh dear, oh dear! look at your clean pinafore, wet from top to bottom. Folks 'ull think it's a judgment on me as I've got such a child,--they'll think I've done summat wicked.\"\n\n Before this remonstrance was finished, Castiel was already out of hearing, making her way toward the great attic that run under the old high-pitched roof, shaking the water from her black locks as she ran, like a Skye terrier escaped from his bath. This attic was Castiel's favorite retreat on a wet day, when the weather was not too cold; here she fretted out all her ill humors, and talked aloud to the worm-eaten floors and the worm-eaten shelves, and the dark rafters festooned with cobwebs; and here she kept a Fetish which she punished for all her misfortunes. This was the trunk of a large wooden doll, which once stared with the roundest of eyes above the reddest of cheeks; but was now entirely defaced by a long career of vicarious suffering. Three nails driven into the head commemorated as many crises in Castiel's nine years of earthly struggle; that luxury of vengeance having been suggested to her by the picture of Jael destroying Sisera in the old Bible. The last nail had been driven in with a fiercer stroke than usual, for the Fetish on that occasion represented aunt Giovanna. But immediately afterward Castiel had reflected that if she drove many nails in she would not be so well able to fancy that the head was hurt when she knocked it against the wall, nor to comfort it, and make believe to poultice it, when her fury was abated; for even aunt Giovanna would be pitiable when she had been hurt very much, and thoroughly humiliated, so as to beg her niece's pardon. Since then she had driven no more nails in, but had soothed herself by alternately grinding and beating the wooden head against the rough brick of the great chimneys that made two square pillars supporting the roof. That was what she did this morning on reaching the attic, sobbing all the while with a passion that expelled every other form of consciousness,--even the memory of the grievance that had caused it. As at last the sobs were getting quieter, and the grinding less fierce, a sudden beam of sunshine, falling through the wire lattice across the worm-eaten shelves, made her throw away the Fetish and run to the window. The sun was really breaking out; the sound of the factory seemed cheerful again; the granary doors were open; and there was Yap, the queer white-and-brown terrier, with one ear turned back, trotting about and sniffing vaguely, as if he were in search of a companion. It was irresistible. Castiel tossed her hair back and ran downstairs, seized her bonnet without putting it on, peeped, and then dashed along the passage lest she should encounter her mother, and was quickly out in the yard, whirling round like a Pythoness, and singing as she whirled, \"Yap, Yap, Clea's coming home!\" while Yap danced and barked round her, as much as to say, if there was any noise wanted he was the dog for it.\n\n \"Hegh, hegh, Miss! you'll make yourself giddy, an' tumble down i' the dirt,\" said Amaya, the head factoryer, a tall, broad-shouldered man of forty, black-eyed and black-haired, subdued by a general mealiness, like an auricula.\n\n Castiel paused in her whirling and said, staggering a little, \"Oh no, it doesn't make me giddy, Amaya; may I go into the factory with you?\"\n\n Castiel loved to linger in the great spaces of the factory, and often came out with her black hair powdered to a soft whiteness that made her dark eyes flash out with new fire. The resolute din, the unresting motion of the great stones, giving her a dim, delicious awe as at the presence of an uncontrollable force; the meal forever pouring, pouring; the fine white powder softening all surfaces, and making the very spidernets look like a faery lace-work; the sweet, pure scent of the meal,--all helped to make Castiel feel that the factory was a little world apart from her outside every-day life. The spiders were especially a subject of speculation with her. She wondered if they had any relatives outside the factory, for in that case there must be a painful difficulty in their family intercourse,--a fat and floury spider, accustomed to take his fly well dusted with meal, must suffer a little at a cousin's table where the fly was _au naturel_, and the lady spiders must be mutually shocked at each other's appearance. But the part of the factory she liked best was the topmost story,--the corn-hutch, where there were the great heaps of grain, which she could sit on and slide down continually. She was in the habit of taking this recreation as she conversed with Amaya, to whom she was very communicative, wishing him to think well of her understanding, as her father did.\n\n Perhaps she felt it necessary to recover her position with him on the present occasion for, as she sat sliding on the heap of grain near which he was busying himself, she said, at that shrill pitch which was requisite in factory-society,--\n\n \"I think you never read any book but the Bible, did you, Amaya?\"\n\n \"Nay, Miss, an' not much o' that,\" said Amaya, with great frankness. \"I'm no reader, I aren't.\"\n\n \"But if I lent you one of my books, Amaya? I've not got any _very_ pretty books that would be easy for you to read; but there's 'Pug's Tour of Europe,'--that would tell you all about the different sorts of people in the world, and if you didn't understand the reading, the pictures would help you; they show the looks and ways of the people, and what they do. There are the Dutchmen, very fat, and smoking, you know, and one sitting on a barrel.\"\n\n \"Nay, Miss, I'n no opinion o' Dutchmen. There ben't much good i' knowin' about _them_.\"\n\n \"But they're our fellow-creatures, Amaya; we ought to know about our fellow-creatures.\"\n\n \"Not much o' fellow-creaturs, I think, Miss; all I know--my old master, as war a knowin' man, used to say, says he, 'If e'er I sow my wheat wi'out brinin', I'm a Dutchman,' says he; an' that war as much as to say as a Dutchman war a fool, or next door. Nay, nay, I aren't goin' to bother mysen about Dutchmen. There's fools enoo, an' rogues enoo, wi'out lookin' i' books for 'em.\"\n\n \"Oh, well,\" said Castiel, rather foiled by Amaya's unexpectedly decided views about Dutchmen, \"perhaps you would like 'Animated Nature' better; that's not Dutchmen, you know, but elephants and kangaroos, and the civet-cat, and the sunfish, and a bird sitting on its tail,--I forget its name. There are countries full of those creatures, instead of horses and cows, you know. Shouldn't you like to know about them, Amaya?\"\n\n \"Nay, Miss, I'n got to keep count o' the flour an' corn; I can't do wi' knowin' so many things besides my work. That's what brings folks to the gallows,--knowin' everything but what they'n got to get their bread by. An' they're mostly lies, I think, what's printed i' the books: them printed sheets are, anyhow, as the men cry i' the streets.\"\n\n \"Why, you're like my brother Clea, Amaya,\" said Castiel, wishing to turn the conversation agreeably; \"Clea's not fond of reading. I love Clea so dearly, Amaya,--better than anybody else in the world. When he grows up I shall keep his house, and we shall always live together. I can tell him everything he doesn't know. But I think Clea's clever, for all he doesn't like books; he makes beautiful whipcord and rabbit-pens.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Amaya, \"but he'll be fine an' vexed, as the rabbits are all dead.\"\n\n \"Dead!\" screamed Castiel, jumping up from her sliding seat on the corn. \"Oh dear, Amaya! What! the lop-eared one, and the spotted doe that Clea spent all his money to buy?\"\n\n \"As dead as moles,\" said Amaya, fetching his comparison from the unmistakable corpses nailed to the stable wall.\n\n \"Oh dear, Amaya,\" said Castiel, in a piteous tone, while the big tears rolled down her cheek; \"Clea told me to take care of 'em, and I forgot. What _shall_ I do?\"\n\n \"Well, you see, Miss, they were in that far tool-house, an' it was nobody's business to see to 'em. I reckon Master Clea told Harry to feed 'em, but there's no countin' on Harry; _he's_ an offal creatur as iver come about the primises, he is. He remembers nothing but his own inside--an' I wish it 'ud gripe him.\"\n\n \"Oh, Amaya, Clea told me to be sure and remember the rabbits every day; but how could I, when they didn't come into my head, you know? Oh, he will be so angry with me, I know he will, and so sorry about his rabbits, and so am I sorry. Oh, what _shall_ I do?\"\n\n \"Don't you fret, Miss,\" said Amaya, soothingly; \"they're nash things, them lop-eared rabbits; they'd happen ha' died, if they'd been fed. Things out o' natur niver thrive: God A'mighty doesn't like 'em. He made the rabbits' ears to lie back, an' it's nothin' but contrairiness to make 'em hing down like a mastiff dog's. Master Clea 'ull know better nor buy such things another time. Don't you fret, Miss. Will you come along home wi' me, and see my wife? I'm a-goin' this minute.\"\n\n The invitation offered an agreeable distraction to Castiel's grief, and her tears gradually subsided as she trotted along by Amaya's side to his pleasant cottage, which stood with its apple and pear trees, and with the added dignity of a lean-to pigsty, at the other end of the Mill fields. Mrs. Piper, Amaya's wife, was a decidedly agreeable acquaintance. She exhibited her hospitality in bread and treacle, and possessed various works of art. Castiel actually forgot that she had any special cause of sadness this morning, as she stood on a chair to look at a remarkable series of pictures representing the Prodigal Son in the costume of Sir Charles Grandison, except that, as might have been expected from his defective moral character, he had not, like that accomplished hero, the taste and strength of mind to dispense with a wig. But the indefinable weight the dead rabbits had left on her mind caused her to feel more than usual pity for the career of this weak young man, particularly when she looked at the picture where he leaned against a tree with a flaccid appearance, his knee-breeches unbuttoned and his wig awry, while the swine apparently of some foreign breed, seemed to insult him by their good spirits over their feast of husks.\n\n \"I'm very glad his father took him back again, aren't you, Amaya?\" she said. \"For he was very sorry, you know, and wouldn't do wrong again.\"\n\n \"Eh, Miss,\" said Amaya, \"he'd be no great shakes, I doubt, let's feyther do what he would for him.\"\n\n That was a painful thought to Castiel, and she wished much that the subsequent history of the young man had not been left a blank.\n\n\n\n\n Clea Comes Home\n\n\n Clea was to arrive early in the afternoon, and there was another fluttering heart besides Castiel's when it was late enough for the sound of the gig-wheels to be expected; for if Mrs. Roberta had a strong feeling, it was fondness for her boy. At last the sound came,--that quick light bowling of the gig-wheels,--and in spite of the wind, which was blowing the clouds about, and was not likely to respect Mrs. Roberta's curls and cap-strings, she came outside the door, and even held her hand on Castiel's offending head, forgetting all the griefs of the morning.\n\n \"There he is, my sweet lad! But, Lord ha' mercy! he's got never a collar on; it's been lost on the road, I'll be bound, and spoilt the set.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta stood with her arms open; Castiel jumped first on one leg and then on the other; while Clea descended from the gig, and said, with masculine reticence as to the tender emotions, \"Hallo! Yap--what! are you there?\"\n\n Nevertheless he submitted to be kissed willingly enough, though Castiel hung on his neck in rather a strangling fashion, while his blue-gray eyes wandered toward the croft and the lambs and the river, where he promised himself that he would begin to fish the first thing to-morrow morning. He was one of those lads that grow everywhere in England, and at twelve or thirteen years of age look as much alike as goslings,--a lad with light-brown hair, cheeks of cream and roses, full lips, indeterminate nose and eyebrows,--a physiognomy in which it seems impossible to discern anything but the generic character to boyhood; as different as possible from poor Castiel's phiz, which Nature seemed to have moulded and colored with the most decided intention. But that same Nature has the deep cunning which hides itself under the appearance of openness, so that simple people think they can see through her quite well, and all the while she is secretly preparing a refutation of their confident prophecies. Under these average boyish physiognomies that she seems to turn off by the gross, she conceals some of her most rigid, inflexible purposes, some of her most unmodifiable characters; and the dark-eyed, demonstrative, rebellious girl may after all turn out to be a passive being compared with this pink-and-white bit of masculinity with the indeterminate features.\n\n \"Castiel,\" said Clea, confidentially, taking her into a corner, as soon as his mother was gone out to examine his box and the warm parlor had taken off the chill he had felt from the long drive, \"you don't know what I've got in _my_ pockets,\" nodding his head up and down as a means of rousing her sense of mystery.\n\n \"No,\" said Castiel. \"How stodgy they look, Clea! Is it marls (marbles) or cobnuts?\" Castiel's heart sank a little, because Clea always said it was \"no good\" playing with _her_ at those games, she played so badly.\n\n \"Marls! no; I've swopped all my marls with the little fellows, and cobnuts are no fun, you silly, only when the nuts are green. But see here!\" He drew something half out of his right-hand pocket.\n\n \"What is it?\" said Castiel, in a whisper. \"I can see nothing but a bit of yellow.\"\n\n \"Why, it's--a--new--guess, Castiel!\"\n\n \"Oh, I _can't_ guess, Clea,\" said Castiel, impatiently.\n\n \"Don't be a spitfire, else I won't tell you,\" said Clea, thrusting his hand back into his pocket and looking determined.\n\n \"No, Clea,\" said Castiel, imploringly, laying hold of the arm that was held stiffly in the pocket. \"I'm not cross, Clea; it was only because I can't bear guessing. _Please_ be good to me.\"\n\n Clea's arm slowly relaxed, and he said, \"Well, then, it's a new fish-line--two new uns,--one for you, Castiel, all to yourself. I wouldn't go halves in the toffee and gingerbread on purpose to save the money; and Gibson and Spouncer fought with me because I wouldn't. And here's hooks; see here--I say, _won't_ we go and fish to-morrow down by the Round Pool? And you shall catch your own fish, Castiel and put the worms on, and everything; won't it be fun?\"\n\n Castiel's answer was to throw her arms round Clea's neck and hug him, and hold her cheek against his without speaking, while he slowly unwound some of the line, saying, after a pause,--\n\n \"Wasn't I a good brother, now, to buy you a line all to yourself? You know, I needn't have bought it, if I hadn't liked.\"\n\n \"Yes, very, very good--I _do_ love you, Clea.\"\n\n Clea had put the line back in his pocket, and was looking at the hooks one by one, before he spoke again.\n\n \"And the fellows fought me, because I wouldn't give in about the toffee.\"\n\n \"Oh, dear! I wish they wouldn't fight at your school, Clea. Didn't it hurt you?\"\n\n \"Hurt me? no,\" said Clea, putting up the hooks again, taking out a large pocket-knife, and slowly opening the largest blade, which he looked at meditatively as he rubbed his finger along it. Then he added,--\n\n \"I gave Spouncer a black eye, I know; that's what he got by wanting to leather _me;_ I wasn't going to go halves because anybody leathered me.\"\n\n \"Oh, how brave you are, Clea! I think you're like Samson. If there came a lion roaring at me, I think you'd fight him, wouldn't you, Clea?\"\n\n \"How can a lion come roaring at you, you silly thing? There's no lions, only in the shows.\"\n\n \"No; but if we were in the lion countries--I mean in Africa, where it's very hot; the lions eat people there. I can show it you in the book where I read it.\"\n\n \"Well, I should get a gun and shoot him.\"\n\n \"But if you hadn't got a gun,--we might have gone out, you know, not thinking, just as we go fishing; and then a great lion might run toward us roaring, and we couldn't get away from him. What should you do, Clea?\"\n\n Clea paused, and at last turned away contemptuously, saying, \"But the lion _isn't_ coming. What's the use of talking?\"\n\n \"But I like to fancy how it would be,\" said Castiel, following him. \"Just think what you would do, Clea.\"\n\n \"Oh, don't bother, Castiel! you're such a silly. I shall go and see my rabbits.\"\n\n Castiel's heart began to flutter with fear. She dared not tell the sad truth at once, but she walked after Clea in trembling silence as he went out, thinking how she could tell him the news so as to soften at once his sorrow and his anger; for Castiel dreaded Clea's anger of all things; it was quite a different anger from her own.\n\n \"Clea,\" she said, timidly, when they were out of doors, \"how much money did you give for your rabbits?\"\n\n \"Two half-crowns and a sixpence,\" said Clea, promptly.\n\n \"I think I've got a great deal more than that in my steel purse upstairs. I'll ask mother to give it you.\"\n\n \"What for?\" said Clea. \"I don't want _your_ money, you silly thing. I've got a great deal more money than you, because I'm a boy. I always have half-sovereigns and sovereigns for my Christmas boxes because I shall be a man, and you only have five-shilling pieces, because you're only a girl.\"\n\n \"Well, but, Clea--if mother would let me give you two half-crowns and a sixpence out of my purse to put into your pocket and spend, you know, and buy some more rabbits with it?\"\n\n \"More rabbits? I don't want any more.\"\n\n \"Oh, but, Clea, they're all dead.\"\n\n Clea stopped immediately in his walk and turned round toward Castiel. \"You forgot to feed 'em, then, and Harry forgot?\" he said, his color heightening for a moment, but soon subsiding. \"I'll pitch into Harry. I'll have him turned away. And I don't love you, Castiel. You sha'n't go fishing with me to-morrow. I told you to go and see the rabbits every day.\" He walked on again.\n\n \"Yes, but I forgot--and I couldn't help it, indeed, Clea. I'm so very sorry,\" said Castiel, while the tears rushed fast.\n\n \"You're a naughty girl,\" said Clea, severely, \"and I'm sorry I bought you the fish-line. I don't love you.\"\n\n \"Oh, Clea, it's very cruel,\" sobbed Castiel. \"I'd forgive you, if _you_ forgot anything--I wouldn't mind what you did--I'd forgive you and love you.\"\n\n \"Yes, you're silly; but I never _do_ forget things, _I_ don't.\"\n\n \"Oh, please forgive me, Clea; my heart will break,\" said Castiel, shaking with sobs, clinging to Clea's arm, and laying her wet cheek on his shoulder.\n\n Clea shook her off, and stopped again, saying in a peremptory tone, \"Now, Castiel, you just listen. Aren't I a good brother to you?\"\n\n \"Ye-ye-es,\" sobbed Castiel, her chin rising and falling convulsedly.\n\n \"Didn't I think about your fish-line all this quarter, and mean to buy it, and saved my money o' purpose, and wouldn't go halves in the toffee, and Spouncer fought me because I wouldn't?\"\n\n \"Ye-ye-es--and I--lo-lo-love you so, Clea.\"\n\n \"But you're a naughty girl. Last holidays you licked the paint off my lozenge-box, and the holidays before that you let the boat drag my fish-line down when I'd set you to watch it, and you pushed your head through my kite, all for nothing.\"\n\n \"But I didn't mean,\" said Castiel; \"I couldn't help it.\"\n\n \"Yes, you could,\" said Clea, \"if you'd minded what you were doing. And you're a naughty girl, and you sha'n't go fishing with me to-morrow.\"\n\n With this terrible conclusion, Clea ran away from Castiel toward the factory, meaning to greet Amaya there, and complain to him of Harry.\n\n Castiel stood motionless, except from her sobs, for a minute or two; then she turned round and ran into the house, and up to her attic, where she sat on the floor and laid her head against the worm-eaten shelf, with a crushing sense of misery. Clea was come home, and she had thought how happy she should be; and now he was cruel to her. What use was anything if Clea didn't love her? Oh, he was very cruel! Hadn't she wanted to give him the money, and said how very sorry she was? She knew she was naughty to her mother, but she had never been naughty to Clea--had never _meant_ to be naughty to him.\n\n \"Oh, he is cruel!\" Castiel sobbed aloud, finding a wretched pleasure in the hollow resonance that came through the long empty space of the attic. She never thought of beating or grinding her Fetish; she was too miserable to be angry.\n\n These bitter sorrows of childhood! when sorrow is all new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless.\n\n Castiel soon thought she had been hours in the attic, and it must be tea-time, and they were all having their tea, and not thinking of her. Well, then, she would stay up there and starve herself,--hide herself behind the tub, and stay there all night,--and then they would all be frightened, and Clea would be sorry. Thus Castiel thought in the pride of her heart, as she crept behind the tub; but presently she began to cry again at the idea that they didn't mind her being there. If she went down again to Clea now--would he forgive her? Perhaps her father would be there, and he would take her part. But then she wanted Clea to forgive her because he loved her, not because his father told him. No, she would never go down if Clea didn't come to fetch her. This resolution lasted in great intensity for five dark minutes behind the tub; but then the need of being loved--the strongest need in poor Castiel's nature--began to wrestle with her pride, and soon threw it. She crept from behind her tub into the twilight of the long attic, but just then she heard a quick foot-step on the stairs.\n\n Clea had been too much interested in his talk with Amaya, in going the round of the premises, walking in and out where he pleased, and whittling sticks without any particular reason,--except that he didn't whittle sticks at school,--to think of Castiel and the effect his anger had produced on her. He meant to punish her, and that business having been performed, he occupied himself with other matters, like a practical person. But when he had been called in to tea, his father said, \"Why, where's the little wench?\" and Mrs. Roberta, almost at the same moment, said, \"Where's your little sister?\"--both of them having supposed that Castiel and Clea had been together all the afternoon.\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Clea. He didn't want to \"tell\" of Castiel, though he was angry with her; for Clea Roberta was a lad of honor.\n\n \"What! hasn't she been playing with you all this while?\" said the father. \"She'd been thinking o' nothing but your coming home.\"\n\n \"I haven't seen her this two hours,\" says Clea, commencing on the plumcake.\n\n \"Goodness heart; she's got drownded!\" exclaimed Mrs. Roberta, rising from her seat and running to the window.\n\n \"How could you let her do so?\" she added, as became a fearful woman, accusing she didn't know whom of she didn't know what.\n\n \"Nay, nay, she's none drownded,\" said Mr. Roberta. \"You've been naughty to her, I doubt, Clea?\"\n\n \"I'm sure I haven't, father,\" said Clea, indignantly. \"I think she's in the house.\"\n\n \"Perhaps up in that attic,\" said Mrs. Roberta, \"a-singing and talking to herself, and forgetting all about meal-times.\"\n\n \"You go and fetch her down, Clea,\" said Mr. Roberta, rather sharply,--his perspicacity or his fatherly fondness for Castiel making him suspect that the lad had been hard upon \"the little un,\" else she would never have left his side. \"And be good to her, do you hear? Else I'll let you know better.\"\n\n Clea never disobeyed his father, for Mr. Roberta was a peremptory man, and, as he said, would never let anybody get hold of his whip-hand; but he went out rather sullenly, carrying his piece of plumcake, and not intending to reprieve Castiel's punishment, which was no more than she deserved. Clea was only thirteen, and had no decided views in grammar and arithmetic, regarding them for the most part as open questions, but he was particularly clear and positive on one point,--namely, that he would punish everybody who deserved it. Why, he wouldn't have minded being punished himself if he deserved it; but, then, he never _did_ deserve it.\n\n It was Clea's step, then, that Castiel heard on the stairs, when her need of love had triumphed over her pride, and she was going down with her swollen eyes and dishevelled hair to beg for pity. At least her father would stroke her head and say, \"Never mind, my wench.\" It is a wonderful subduer, this need of love,--this hunger of the heart,--as peremptory as that other hunger by which Nature forces us to submit to the yoke, and change the face of the world.\n\n But she knew Clea's step, and her heart began to beat violently with the sudden shock of hope. He only stood still at the top of the stairs and said, \"Castiel, you're to come down.\" But she rushed to him and clung round his neck, sobbing, \"Oh, Clea, please forgive me--I can't bear it--I will always be good--always remember things--do love me--please, dear Clea!\"\n\n We learn to restrain ourselves as we get older. We keep apart when we have quarrelled, express ourselves in well-bred phrases, and in this way preserve a dignified alienation, showing much firmness on one side, and swallowing much grief on the other. We no longer approximate in our behavior to the mere impulsiveness of the lower animals, but conduct ourselves in every respect like members of a highly civilized society. Castiel and Clea were still very much like young animals, and so she could rub her cheek against his, and kiss his ear in a random sobbing way; and there were tender fibres in the lad that had been used to answer to Castiel's fondling, so that he behaved with a weakness quite inconsistent with his resolution to punish her as much as she deserved. He actually began to kiss her in return, and say,--\n\n \"Don't cry, then, Magsie; here, eat a bit o' cake.\"\n\n Castiel's sobs began to subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake and bit a piece; and then Clea bit a piece, just for company, and they ate together and rubbed each other's cheeks and brows and noses together, while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two friendly ponies.\n\n \"Come along, Magsie, and have tea,\" said Clea at last, when there was no more cake except what was down-stairs.\n\n So ended the sorrows of this day, and the next morning Castiel was trotting with her own fishing-rod in one hand and a handle of the basket in the other, stepping always, by a peculiar gift, in the muddiest places, and looking darkly radiant from under her beaver-bonnet because Clea was good to her. She had told Clea, however, that she should like him to put the worms on the hook for her, although she accepted his word when he assured her that worms couldn't feel (it was Clea's private opinion that it didn't much matter if they did). He knew all about worms, and fish, and those things; and what birds were mischievous, and how padlocks opened, and which way the handles of the gates were to be lifted. Castiel thought this sort of knowledge was very wonderful,--much more difficult than remembering what was in the books; and she was rather in awe of Clea's superiority, for he was the only person who called her knowledge \"stuff,\" and did not feel surprised at her cleverness. Clea, indeed, was of opinion that Castiel was a silly little thing; all girls were silly,--they couldn't throw a stone so as to hit anything, couldn't do anything with a pocket-knife, and were frightened at frogs. Still, he was very fond of his sister, and meant always to take care of her, make her his housekeeper, and punish her when she did wrong.\n\n They were on their way to the Round Pool,--that wonderful pool, which the floods had made a long while ago. No one knew how deep it was; and it was mysterious, too, that it should be almost a perfect round, framed in with willows and tall reeds, so that the water was only to be seen when you got close to the brink. The sight of the old favorite spot always heightened Clea's good humor, and he spoke to Castiel in the most amicable whispers, as he opened the precious basket and prepared their tackle. He threw her line for her, and put the rod into her hand. Castiel thought it probable that the small fish would come to her hook, and the large ones to Clea's. But she had forgotten all about the fish, and was looking dreamily at the glassy water, when Clea said, in a loud whisper, \"Look, look, Castiel!\" and came running to prevent her from snatching her line away.\n\n Castiel was frightened lest she had been doing something wrong, as usual, but presently Clea drew out her line and brought a large tench bouncing on the grass.\n\n Clea was excited.\n\n \"O Magsie, you little duck! Empty the basket.\"\n\n Castiel was not conscious of unusual merit, but it was enough that Clea called her Magsie, and was pleased with her. There was nothing to mar her delight in the whispers and the dreamy silences, when she listened to the light dripping sounds of the rising fish, and the gentle rustling, as if the willows and the reeds and the water had their happy whisperings also. Castiel thought it would make a very nice heaven to sit by the pool in that way, and never be scolded. She never knew she had a bite till Clea told her; but she liked fishing very much.\n\n It was one of their happy mornings. They trotted along and sat down together, with no thought that life would ever change much for them; they would only get bigger and not go to school, and it would always be like the holidays; they would always live together and be fond of each other. And the factory with its booming; the great chestnut-tree under which they played at houses; their own little river, the Ripple, where the banks seemed like home, and Clea was always seeing the water-rats, while Castiel gathered the purple plumy tops of the reeds, which she forgot and dropped afterward; above all, the great Floss, along which they wandered with a sense of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Eagle, come up like a hungry monster, or to see the Great Ash which had once wailed and groaned like a man, these things would always be just the same to them. Clea thought people were at a disadvantage who lived on any other spot of the globe; and Castiel, when she read about Christiana passing \"the river over which there is no bridge,\" always saw the Floss between the green pastures by the Great Ash.\n\n Life did change for Clea and Castiel; and yet they were not wrong in believing that the thoughts and loves of these first years would always make part of their lives. We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it,--if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass; the same hips and haws on the autumn's hedgerows; the same redbreasts that we used to call \"God's birds,\" because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and _loved_ because it is known?\n\n The wood I walk in on this mild May day, with the young yellow-brown foliage of the oaks between me and the blue sky, the white star-flowers and the blue-eyed speedwell and the ground ivy at my feet, what grove of tropic palms, what strange ferns or splendid broad-petalled blossoms, could ever thrill such deep and delicate fibres within me as this home scene? These familiar flowers, these well-remembered bird-notes, this sky, with its fitful brightness, these furrowed and grassy fields, each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows,--such things as these are the mother-tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle, inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass to-day might be no more than the faint perception of wearied souls, if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far-off years which still live in us, and transform our perception into love.\n\n\n\n\n The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming\n\n\n It was Easter week, and Mrs. Roberta's cheesecakes were more exquisitely light than usual. \"A puff o' wind 'ud make 'em blow about like feathers,\" Rio the housemaid said, feeling proud to live under a mistress who could make such pastry; so that no season or circumstances could have been more propitious for a family party, even if it had not been advisable to consult sister Giovanna and sister Leslie about Clea's going to school.\n\n \"I'd as lief not invite sister Kristi this time,\" said Mrs. Roberta, \"for she's as jealous and having as can be, and's allays trying to make the worst o' my poor children to their aunts and uncles.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes,\" said Mr. Roberta, \"ask her to come. I never hardly get a bit o' talk with Kristi now; we haven't had him this six months. What's it matter what she says? My children need be beholding to nobody.\"\n\n \"That's what you allays say, Mr. Roberta; but I'm sure there's nobody o' your side, neither aunt nor uncle, to leave 'em so much as a five-pound note for a leggicy. And there's sister Giovanna, and sister Leslie too, saving money unknown, for they put by all their own interest and butter-money too; their husbands buy 'em everything.\" Mrs. Roberta was a mild woman, but even a sheep will face about a little when she has lambs.\n\n \"Tchuh!\" said Mr. Roberta. \"It takes a big loaf when there's many to breakfast. What signifies your sisters' bits o' money when they've got half-a-dozen nevvies and nieces to divide it among? And your sister Kristi won't get 'em to leave all to one, I reckon, and make the country cry shame on 'em when they are dead?\"\n\n \"I don't know what she won't get 'em to do,\" said Mrs. Roberta, \"for my children are so awk'ard wi' their aunts and uncles. Castiel's ten times naughtier when they come than she is other days, and Clea doesn't like 'em, bless him!--though it's more nat'ral in a boy than a gell. And there's Lilac Dean's such a good child,--you may set her on a stool, and there she'll sit for an hour together, and never offer to get off. I can't help loving the child as if she was my own; and I'm sure she's more like _my_ child than sister Kristi's, for she'd allays a very poor color for one of our family, sister Kristi had.\"\n\n \"Well, well, if you're fond o' the child, ask her father and mother to bring her with 'em. And won't you ask their aunt and uncle Patrice too, and some o' _their_ children?\"\n\n \"Oh, dear, Mr. Roberta, why, there'd be eight people besides the children, and I must put two more leaves i' the table, besides reaching down more o' the dinner-service; and you know as well as I do as _my_ sisters and _your_ sister don't suit well together.\"\n\n \"Well, well, do as you like, Bessy,\" said Mr. Roberta, taking up his hat and walking out to the factory. Few wives were more submissive than Mrs. Roberta on all points unconnected with her family relations; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed,--as much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so well,--not at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson family. There were particular ways of doing everything in that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries; so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated; if the illness or trouble was the sufferer's own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanor, and the only bitter circumstance attending this superiority was a painful inability to approve the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the Dodson tradition. A female Dodson, when in \"strange houses,\" always ate dry bread with her tea, and declined any sort of preserves, having no confidence in the butter, and thinking that the preserves had probably begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There were some Dodsons less like the family than others, that was admitted; but in so far as they were \"kin,\" they were of necessity better than those who were \"no kin.\" And it is remarkable that while no individual Dodson was satisfied with any other individual Dodson, each was satisfied, not only with him or her self, but with the Dodsons collectively. The feeblest member of a family--the one who has the least character--is often the merest epitome of the family habits and traditions; and Mrs. Roberta was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small-beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable as very weak ale: and though she had groaned a little in her youth under the yoke of her elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sisterly reproaches, it was not in Mrs. Roberta to be an innovator on the family ideas. She was thankful to have been a Dodson, and to have one child who took after her own family, at least in his features and complexion, in liking salt and in eating beans, which a Roberta never did.\n\n In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in Clea, and he was as far from appreciating his \"kin\" on the mother's side as Castiel herself, generally absconding for the day with a large supply of the most portable food, when he received timely warning that his aunts and uncles were coming,--a moral symptom from which his aunt Giovanna deduced the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather hard on Castiel that Clea always absconded without letting her into the secret, but the weaker sex are acknowledged to be serious _impedimenta_ in cases of flight.\n\n On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming, there were such various and suggestive scents, as of plumcakes in the oven and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether gloomy: there was hope in the air. Clea and Castiel made several inroads into the kitchen, and, like other marauders, were induced to keep aloof for a time only by being allowed to carry away a sufficient load of booty.\n\n \"Clea,\" said Castiel, as they sat on the boughs of the elder-tree, eating their jam-puffs, \"shall you run away to-morrow?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Clea, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eying the third, which was to be divided between them,--\"no, I sha'n't.\"\n\n \"Why, Clea? Because Lilac's coming?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Clea, opening his pocket-knife and holding it over the puff, with his head on one side in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult problem to divide that very irregular polygon into two equal parts.) \"What do _I_ care about Lilac? She's only a girl,--_she_ can't play at bandy.\"\n\n \"Is it the tipsy-cake, then?\" said Castiel, exerting her hypothetic powers, while she leaned forward toward Clea with her eyes fixed on the hovering knife.\n\n \"No, you silly, that'll be good the day after. It's the pudden. I know what the pudden's to be,--apricot roll-up--O my buttons!\"\n\n With this interjection, the knife descended on the puff, and it was in two, but the result was not satisfactory to Clea, for he still eyed the halves doubtfully. At last he said,--\n\n \"Shut your eyes, Castiel.\"\n\n \"What for?\"\n\n \"You never mind what for. Shut 'em when I tell you.\"\n\n Castiel obeyed.\n\n \"Now, which'll you have, Castiel,--right hand or left?\"\n\n \"I'll have that with the jam run out,\" said Castiel, keeping her eyes shut to please Clea.\n\n \"Why, you don't like that, you silly. You may have it if it comes to you fair, but I sha'n't give it you without. Right or left,--you choose, now. Ha-a-a!\" said Clea, in a tone of exasperation, as Castiel peeped. \"You keep your eyes shut, now, else you sha'n't have any.\"\n\n Castiel's power of sacrifice did not extend so far; indeed, I fear she cared less that Clea should enjoy the utmost possible amount of puff, than that he should be pleased with her for giving him the best bit. So she shut her eyes quite close, till Clea told her to \"say which,\" and then she said, \"Left hand.\"\n\n \"You've got it,\" said Clea, in rather a bitter tone.\n\n \"What! the bit with the jam run out?\"\n\n \"No; here, take it,\" said Clea, firmly, handing, decidedly the best piece to Castiel.\n\n \"Oh, please, Clea, have it; I don't mind--I like the other; please take this.\"\n\n \"No, I sha'n't,\" said Clea, almost crossly, beginning on his own inferior piece.\n\n Castiel, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate up her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Clea had finished first, and had to look on while Castiel ate her last morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Castiel didn't know Clea was looking at her; she was seesawing on the elder-bough, lost to almost everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness.\n\n \"Oh, you greedy thing!\" said Clea, when she had swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it. He would have refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different point of view before and after one's own share of puff is swallowed.\n\n Castiel turned quite pale. \"Oh, Clea, why didn't you ask me?\"\n\n \"I wasn't going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You might have thought of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit.\"\n\n \"But I wanted you to have it; you know I did,\" said Castiel, in an injured tone.\n\n \"Yes, but I wasn't going to do what wasn't fair, like Spouncer. He always takes the best bit, if you don't punch him for it; and if you choose the best with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But if I go halves, I'll go 'em fair; only I wouldn't be a greedy.\"\n\n With this cutting innuendo, Clea jumped down from his bough, and threw a stone with a \"hoigh!\" as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent dog accepted Clea's attention with as much alacrity as if he had been treated quite generously.\n\n But Castiel, gifted with that superior power of misery which distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for Clea. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Castiel's palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times over, sooner than Clea should call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldn't have it, and she ate it without thinking; how could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that Castiel saw nothing around her for the next ten minutes; but by that time resentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation, and she jumped from her bough to look for Clea. He was no longer in the paddock behind the rickyard; where was he likely to be gone, and Yap with him? Castiel ran to the high bank against the great holly-tree, where she could see far away toward the Floss. There was Clea; but her heart sank again as she saw how far off he was on his way to the great river, and that he had another companion besides Yap,--naughty Amy Helina, whose official, if not natural, function of frightening the birds was just now at a standstill. Castiel felt sure that Amy was wicked, without very distinctly knowing why; unless it was because Amy's mother was a dreadfully large fat woman, who lived at a queer round house down the river; and once, when Castiel and Clea had wandered thither, there rushed out a brindled dog that wouldn't stop barking; and when Amy's mother came out after it, and screamed above the barking to tell them not to be frightened, Castiel thought she was scolding them fiercely, and her heart beat with terror. Castiel thought it very likely that the round house had snakes on the floor, and bats in the bedroom; for she had seen Amy take off his cap to show Clea a little snake that was inside it, and another time he had a handful of young bats: altogether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even slightly diabolical, judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats; and to crown all, when Clea had Amy for a companion, he didn't mind about Castiel, and would never let her go with him.\n\n It must be owned that Clea was fond of Amy's company. How could it be otherwise? Amy knew, directly he saw a bird's egg, whether it was a swallow's, or a tomtit's, or a yellow-hammer's; he found out all the wasps' nests, and could set all sort of traps; he could climb the trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedgehogs and stoats; and he had courage to do things that were rather naughty, such as making gaps in the hedgerows, throwing stones after the sheep, and killing a cat that was wandering _incognito_.\n\n Such qualities in an inferior, who could always be treated with authority in spite of his superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fascination for Clea; and every holiday-time Castiel was sure to have days of grief because he had gone off with Amy.\n\n Well! there was no hope for it; he was gone now, and Castiel could think of no comfort but to sit down by the hollow, or wander by the hedgerow, and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just what she should like it to be.\n\n Castiel's was a troublous life, and this was the form in which she took her opium.\n\n Meanwhile Clea, forgetting all about Castiel and the sting of reproach which he had left in her heart, was hurrying along with Amy, whom he had met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat-catching in a neighboring barn. Amy knew all about this particular affair, and spoke of the sport with an enthusiasm which no one who is not either divested of all manly feeling, or pitiably ignorant of rat-catching, can fail to imagine. For a person suspected of preternatural wickedness, Amy was really not so very villanous-looking; there was even something agreeable in his snub-nosed face, with its close-curled border of red hair. But then his trousers were always rolled up at the knee, for the convenience of wading on the slightest notice; and his virtue, supposing it to exist, was undeniably \"virtue in rags,\" which, on the authority even of bilious philosophers, who think all well-dressed merit overpaid, is notoriously likely to remain unrecognized (perhaps because it is seen so seldom).\n\n \"I know the chap as owns the ferrets,\" said Amy, in a hoarse treble voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue eyes fixed on the river, like an amphibious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in. \"He lives up the Willemel Yard at Sut Ogg's, he does. He's the biggest rot-catcher anywhere, he is. I'd sooner, be a rot-catcher nor anything, I would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But Lors! you mun ha' ferrets. Dogs is no good. Why, there's that dog, now!\" Amy continued, pointing with an air of disgust toward Yap, \"he's no more good wi' a rot nor nothin'. I see it myself, I did, at the rot-catchin' i' your feyther's barn.\"\n\n Yap, feeling the withering influence of this scorn, tucked his tail in and shrank close to Clea's leg, who felt a little hurt for him, but had not the superhuman courage to seem behindhand with Amy in contempt for a dog who made so poor a figure.\n\n \"No, no,\" he said, \"Yap's no good at sport. I'll have regular good dogs for rats and everything, when I've done school.\"\n\n \"Hev ferrets, Measter Clea,\" said Amy, eagerly,--\"them white ferrets wi' pink eyes; Lors, you might catch your own rots, an' you might put a rot in a cage wi' a ferret, an' see 'em fight, you might. That's what I'd do, I know, an' it 'ud be better fun a'most nor seein' two chaps fight,--if it wasn't them chaps as sold cakes an' oranges at the Fair, as the things flew out o' their baskets, an' some o' the cakes was smashed--But they tasted just as good,\" added Amy, by way of note or addendum, after a moment's pause.\n\n \"But, I say, Amy,\" said Clea, in a tone of deliberation, \"ferrets are nasty biting things,--they'll bite a fellow without being set on.\"\n\n \"Lors! why that's the beauty on 'em. If a chap lays hold o' your ferret, he won't be long before he hollows out a good un, _he_ won't.\"\n\n At this moment a striking incident made the boys pause suddenly in their walk. It was the plunging of some small body in the water from among the neighboring bulrushes; if it was not a water-rat, Amy intimated that he was ready to undergo the most unpleasant consequences.\n\n \"Hoigh! Yap,--hoigh! there he is,\" said Clea, clapping his hands, as the little black snout made its arrowy course to the opposite bank. \"Seize him, lad! seize him!\"\n\n Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brows, but declined to plunge, trying whether barking would not answer the purpose just as well.\n\n \"Ugh! you coward!\" said Clea, and kicked him over, feeling humiliated as a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited an animal. Amy abstained from remark and passed on, choosing, however, to walk in the shallow edge of the overflowing river by way of change.\n\n \"He's none so full now, the Floss isn't,\" said Amy, as he kicked the water up before him, with an agreeable sense of being insolent to it. \"Why, last 'ear, the meadows was all one sheet o' water, they was.\"\n\n \"Ay, but,\" said Clea, whose mind was prone to see an opposition between statements that were really accordant,--\"but there was a big flood once, when the Round Pool was made. _I_ know there was, 'cause father says so. And the sheep and cows all drowned, and the boats went all over the fields ever such a way.\"\n\n \"_I_ don't care about a flood comin',\" said Amy; \"I don't mind the water, no more nor the land. I'd swim, _I_ would.\"\n\n \"Ah, but if you got nothing to eat for ever so long?\" said Clea, his imagination becoming quite active under the stimulus of that dread. \"When I'm a man, I shall make a boat with a wooden house on the top of it, like Noah's ark, and keep plenty to eat in it,--rabbits and things,--all ready. And then if the flood came, you know, Amy, I shouldn't mind. And I'd take you in, if I saw you swimming,\" he added, in the tone of a benevolent patron.\n\n \"I aren't frighted,\" said Amy, to whom hunger did not appear so appalling. \"But I'd get in an' knock the rabbits on th' head when you wanted to eat 'em.\"\n\n \"Ah, and I should have halfpence, and we'd play at heads-and-tails,\" said Clea, not contemplating the possibility that this recreation might have fewer charms for his mature age. \"I'd divide fair to begin with, and then we'd see who'd win.\"\n\n \"I've got a halfpenny o' my own,\" said Amy, proudly, coming out of the water and tossing his halfpenny in the air. \"Yeads or tails?\"\n\n \"Tails,\" said Clea, instantly fired with the desire to win.\n\n \"It's yeads,\" said Amy, hastily, snatching up the halfpenny as it fell.\n\n \"It wasn't,\" said Clea, loudly and peremptorily. \"You give me the halfpenny; I've won it fair.\"\n\n \"I sha'n't,\" said Amy, holding it tight in his pocket.\n\n \"Then I'll make you; see if I don't,\" said Clea.\n\n \"Yes, I can.\"\n\n \"You can't make me do nothing, you can't,\" said Amy.\n\n \"No, you can't.\"\n\n \"I'm master.\"\n\n \"I don't care for you.\"\n\n \"But I'll make you care, you cheat,\" said Clea, collaring Amy and shaking him.\n\n \"You get out wi' you,\" said Amy, giving Clea a kick.\n\n Clea's blood was thoroughly up: he went at Amy with a lunge and threw him down, but Amy seized hold and kept it like a cat, and pulled Clea down after him. They struggled fiercely on the ground for a moment or two, till Clea, pinning Amy down by the shoulders, thought he had the mastery.\n\n \"_You_, say you'll give me the halfpenny now,\" he said, with difficulty, while he exerted himself to keep the command of Amy's arms.\n\n But at this moment Yap, who had been running on before, returned barking to the scene of action, and saw a favorable opportunity for biting Amy's bare leg not only with inpunity but with honor. The pain from Yap's teeth, instead of surprising Amy into a relaxation of his hold, gave it a fiercer tenacity, and with a new exertion of his force he pushed Clea backward and got uppermost. But now Yap, who could get no sufficient purchase before, set his teeth in a new place, so that Amy, harassed in this way, let go his hold of Clea, and, almost throttling Yap, flung him into the river. By this time Clea was up again, and before Amy had quite recovered his balance after the act of swinging Yap, Clea fell upon him, threw him down, and got his knees firmly on Amy's chest.\n\n \"You give me the halfpenny now,\" said Clea.\n\n \"Take it,\" said Amy, sulkily.\n\n \"No, I sha'n't take it; you give it me.\"\n\n Amy took the halfpenny out of his pocket, and threw it away from him on the ground.\n\n Clea loosed his hold, and left Amy to rise.\n\n \"There the halfpenny lies,\" he said. \"I don't want your halfpenny; I wouldn't have kept it. But you wanted to cheat; I hate a cheat. I sha'n't go along with you any more,\" he added, turning round homeward, not without casting a regret toward the rat-catching and other pleasures which he must relinquish along with Amy's society.\n\n \"You may let it alone, then,\" Amy called out after him. \"I shall cheat if I like; there's no fun i' playing else; and I know where there's a goldfinch's nest, but I'll take care _you_ don't. An' you're a nasty fightin' turkey-cock, you are----\"\n\n Clea walked on without looking around, and Yap followed his example, the cold bath having moderated his passions.\n\n \"Go along wi' you, then, wi' your drowned dog; I wouldn't own such a dog--_I_ wouldn't,\" said Amy, getting louder, in a last effort to sustain his defiance. But Clea was not to be provoked into turning round, and Amy's voice began to falter a little as he said,--\n\n \"An' I'n gi'en you everything, an' showed you everything, an' niver wanted nothin' from you. An' there's your horn-handed knife, then as you gi'en me.\" Here Amy flung the knife as far as he could after Clea's retreating footsteps. But it produced no effect, except the sense in Amy's mind that there was a terrible void in his lot, now that knife was gone.\n\n He stood still till Clea had passed through the gate and disappeared behind the hedge. The knife would do not good on the ground there; it wouldn't vex Clea; and pride or resentment was a feeble passion in Amy's mind compared with the love of a pocket-knife. His very fingers sent entreating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar rough buck's-horn handle, which they had so often grasped for mere affection, as it lay idle in his pocket. And there were two blades, and they had just been sharpened! What is life without a pocket-knife to him who has once tasted a higher existence? No; to throw the handle after the hatchet is a comprehensible act of desperation, but to throw one's pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in every sense a hyperbole, or throwing beyond the mark. So Amy shuffled back to the spot where the beloved knife lay in the dirt, and felt quite a new pleasure in clutching it again after the temporary separation, in opening one blade after the other, and feeling their edge with his well-hardened thumb. Poor Amy! he was not sensitive on the point of honor, not a chivalrous character. That fine moral aroma would not have been thought much of by the public opinion of Willemel Yard, which was the very focus or heart of Amy's world, even if it could have made itself perceptible there; yet, for all that, he was not utterly a sneak and a thief as our friend Clea had hastily decided.\n\n But Clea, you perceive, was rather a Rhadamanthine personage, having more than the usual share of boy's justice in him,--the justice that desires to hurt culprits as much as they deserve to be hurt, and is troubled with no doubts concerning the exact amount of their deserts. Castiel saw a cloud on his brow when he came home, which checked her joy at his coming so much sooner than she had expected, and she dared hardly speak to him as he stood silently throwing the small gravel-stones into the factory-dam. It is not pleasant to give up a rat-catching when you have set your mind on it. But if Clea had told his strongest feeling at that moment, he would have said, \"I'd do just the same again.\" That was his usual mode of viewing his past actions; whereas Castiel was always wishing she had done something different.\n\n\n\n\n Enter the Aunts and Uncles\n\n\n The Dodsons were certainly a handsome family, and Mrs. Giovanna was not the least handsome of the sisters. As she sat in Mrs. Roberta's arm-chair, no impartial observer could have denied that for a woman of fifty she had a very comely face and figure, though Clea and Castiel considered their aunt Giovanna as the type of ugliness. It is true she despised the advantages of costume, for though, as she often observed, no woman had better clothes, it was not her way to wear her new things out before her old ones. Other women, if they liked, might have their best thread-lace in every wash; but when Mrs. Giovanna died, it would be found that she had better lace laid by in the right-hand drawer of her wardrobe in the Spotted Chamber than ever Mrs. Wooll of St. Ogg's had bought in her life, although Mrs. Wooll wore her lace before it was paid for. So of her curled fronts: Mrs. Giovanna had doubtless the glossiest and crispest brown curls in her drawers, as well as curls in various degrees of fuzzy laxness; but to look out on the week-day world from under a crisp and glossy front would be to introduce a most dreamlike and unpleasant confusion between the sacred and the secular. Occasionally, indeed, Mrs. Giovanna wore one of her third-best fronts on a week-day visit, but not at a sister's house; especially not at Mrs. Roberta's, who, since her marriage, had hurt her sister's feelings greatly by wearing her own hair, though, as Mrs. Giovanna observed to Mrs. Kristi, a mother of a family, like Bessy, with a husband always going to law, might have been expected to know better. But Bessy was always weak!\n\n So if Mrs. Giovanna's front to-day was more fuzzy and lax than usual, she had a design under it: she intended the most pointed and cutting allusion to Mrs. Roberta's bunches of blond curls, separated from each other by a due wave of smoothness on each side of the parting. Mrs. Roberta had shed tears several times at sister Giovanna's unkindness on the subject of these unmatronly curls, but the consciousness of looking the handsomer for them naturally administered support. Mrs. Giovanna chose to wear her bonnet in the house to-day,--untied and tilted slightly, of course--a frequent practice of hers when she was on a visit, and happened to be in a severe humor: she didn't know what draughts there might be in strange houses. For the same reason she wore a small sable tippet, which reached just to her shoulders, and was very far from meeting across her well-formed chest, while her long neck was protected by a _chevaux-de-frise_ of miscellaneous frilling. One would need to be learned in the fashions of those times to know how far in the rear of them Mrs. Giovanna's slate-colored silk gown must have been; but from certain constellations of small yellow spots upon it, and a mouldy odor about it suggestive of a damp clothes-chest, it was probable that it belonged to a stratum of garments just old enough to have come recently into wear.\n\n Mrs. Giovanna held her large gold watch in her hand with the many-doubled chain round her fingers, and observed to Mrs. Roberta, who had just returned from a visit to the kitchen, that whatever it might be by other people's clocks and watches, it was gone half-past twelve by hers.\n\n \"I don't know what ails sister Leslie,\" she continued. \"It used to be the way in our family for one to be as early as another,--I'm sure it was so in my poor father's time,--and not for one sister to sit half an hour before the others came. But if the ways o' the family are altered, it sha'n't be _my_ fault; _I'll_ never be the one to come into a house when all the rest are going away. I wonder _at_ sister Kristi,--she used to be more like me. But if you'll take my advice, Bessy, you'll put the dinner forrard a bit, sooner than put it back, because folks are late as ought to ha' known better.\"\n\n \"Oh dear, there's no fear but what they'll be all here in time, sister,\" said Mrs. Roberta, in her mild-peevish tone. \"The dinner won't be ready till half-past one. But if it's long for you to wait, let me fetch you a cheesecake and a glass o' wine.\"\n\n \"Well, Bessy!\" said Mrs. Giovanna, with a bitter smile and a scarcely perceptible toss of her head, \"I should ha' thought you'd known your own sister better. I never _did_ eat between meals, and I'm not going to begin. Not but what I hate that nonsense of having your dinner at half-past one, when you might have it at one. You was never brought up in that way, Bessy.\"\n\n \"Why, Jane, what can I do? Mr. Roberta doesn't like his dinner before two o'clock, but I put it half an hour earlier because o' you.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, I know how it is with husbands,--they're for putting everything off; they'll put the dinner off till after tea, if they've got wives as are weak enough to give in to such work; but it's a pity for you, Bessy, as you haven't got more strength o' mind. It'll be well if your children don't suffer for it. And I hope you've not gone and got a great dinner for us,--going to expense for your sisters, as 'ud sooner eat a crust o' dry bread nor help to ruin you with extravagance. I wonder you don't take pattern by your sister Kristi; she's far more sensible. And here you've got two children to provide for, and your husband's spent your fortin i' going to law, and's likely to spend his own too. A boiled joint, as you could make broth of for the kitchen,\" Mrs. Giovanna added, in a tone of emphatic protest, \"and a plain pudding, with a spoonful o' sugar, and no spice, 'ud be far more becoming.\"\n\n With sister Giovanna in this humor, there was a cheerful prospect for the day. Mrs. Roberta never went the length of quarrelling with her, any more than a water-fowl that puts out its leg in a deprecating manner can be said to quarrel with a boy who throws stones. But this point of the dinner was a tender one, and not at all new, so that Mrs. Roberta could make the same answer she had often made before.\n\n \"Mr. Roberta says he always _will_ have a good dinner for his friends while he can pay for it,\" she said; \"and he's a right to do as he likes in his own house, sister.\"\n\n \"Well, Bessy, _I_ can't leave your children enough out o' my savings to keep 'em from ruin. And you mustn't look to having any o' Mr. Giovanna's money, for it's well if I don't go first,--he comes of a long-lived family; and if he was to die and leave me well for my life, he'd tie all the money up to go back to his own kin.\"\n\n The sound of wheels while Mrs. Giovanna was speaking was an interruption highly welcome to Mrs. Roberta, who hastened out to receive sister Leslie; it must be sister Leslie, because the sound was that of a four-wheel.\n\n Mrs. Giovanna tossed her head and looked rather sour about the mouth at the thought of the \"four-wheel.\" She had a strong opinion on that subject.\n\n Sister Leslie was in tears when the one-horse chaise stopped before Mrs. Roberta's door, and it was apparently requisite that she should shed a few more before getting out; for though her husband and Mrs. Roberta stood ready to support her, she sat still and shook her head sadly, as she looked through her tears at the vague distance.\n\n \"Why, whativer is the matter, sister?\" said Mrs. Roberta. She was not an imaginative woman, but it occurred to her that the large toilet-glass in sister Leslie's best bedroom was possibly broken for the second time.\n\n There was no reply but a further shake of the head, as Mrs. Leslie slowly rose and got down from the chaise, not without casting a glance at Mr. Leslie to see that he was guarding her handsome silk dress from injury. Mr. Leslie was a small man, with a high nose, small twinkling eyes, and thin lips, in a fresh-looking suit of black and a white cravat, that seemed to have been tied very tight on some higher principle than that of mere personal ease. He bore about the same relation to his tall, good-looking wife, with her balloon sleeves, abundant mantle, and a large befeathered and beribboned bonnet, as a small fishing-smack bears to a brig with all its sails spread.\n\n It is a pathetic sight and a striking example of the complexity introduced into the emotions by a high state of civilization, the sight of a fashionably dressed female in grief. From the sorrow of a Hottentot to that of a woman in large buckram sleeves, with several bracelets on each arm, an architectural bonnet, and delicate ribbon strings, what a long series of gradations! In the enlightened child of civilization the abandonment characteristic of grief is checked and varied in the subtlest manner, so as to present an interesting problem to the analytic mind. If, with a crushed heart and eyes half blinded by the mist of tears, she were to walk with a too-devious step through a door-place, she might crush her buckram sleeves too, and the deep consciousness of this possibility produces a composition of forces by which she takes a line that just clears the door-post. Perceiving that the tears are hurrying fast, she unpins her strings and throws them languidly backward, a touching gesture, indicative, even in the deepest gloom, of the hope in future dry moments when cap-strings will once more have a charm. As the tears subside a little, and with her head leaning backward at the angle that will not injure her bonnet, she endures that terrible moment when grief, which has made all things else a weariness, has itself become weary; she looks down pensively at her bracelets, and adjusts their clasps with that pretty studied fortuity which would be gratifying to her mind if it were once more in a calm and healthy state.\n\n Mrs. Leslie brushed each door-post with great nicety, about the latitude of her shoulders (at that period a woman was truly ridiculous to an instructed eye if she did not measure a yard and a half across the shoulders), and having done that sent the muscles of her face in quest of fresh tears as she advanced into the parlor where Mrs. Giovanna was seated.\n\n \"Well, sister, you're late; what's the matter?\" said Mrs. Giovanna, rather sharply, as they shook hands.\n\n Mrs. Leslie sat down, lifting up her mantle carefully behind, before she answered,--\n\n \"She's gone,\" unconsciously using an impressive figure of rhetoric.\n\n \"It isn't the glass this time, then,\" thought Mrs. Roberta.\n\n \"Died the day before yesterday,\" continued Mrs. Leslie; \"an' her legs was as thick as my body,\"' she added, with deep sadness, after a pause. \"They'd tapped her no end o' times, and the water--they say you might ha' swum in it, if you'd liked.\"\n\n \"Well, Sophy, it's a mercy she's gone, then, whoever she may be,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, with the promptitude and emphasis of a mind naturally clear and decided; \"but I can't think who you're talking of, for my part.\"\n\n \"But _I_ know,\" said Mrs. Leslie, sighing and shaking her head; \"and there isn't another such a dropsy in the parish. _I_ know as it's old Mrs. Sutton o' the Twentylands.\"\n\n \"Well, she's no kin o' yours, nor much acquaintance as I've ever heared of,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, who always cried just as much as was proper when anything happened to her own \"kin,\" but not on other occasions.\n\n \"She's so much acquaintance as I've seen her legs when they was like bladders. And an old lady as had doubled her money over and over again, and kept it all in her own management to the last, and had her pocket with her keys in under her pillow constant. There isn't many old _par_ish'ners like her, I doubt.\"\n\n \"And they say she'd took as much physic as 'ud fill a wagon,\" observed Mr. Leslie.\n\n \"Ah!\" sighed Mrs. Leslie, \"she'd another complaint ever so many years before she had the dropsy, and the doctors couldn't make out what it was. And she said to me, when I went to see her last Christmas, she said, 'Mrs. Leslie, if ever you have the dropsy, you'll think o' me.' She _did_ say so,\" added Mrs. Leslie, beginning to cry bitterly again; \"those were her very words. And she's to be buried o' Saturday, and Leslie's bid to the funeral.\"\n\n \"Sophy,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, unable any longer to contain her spirit of rational remonstrance,--\"Sophy, I wonder _at_ you, fretting and injuring your health about people as don't belong to you. Your poor father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o' the family as I ever heard of. You couldn't fret no more than this, if we'd heared as our cousin Abbott had died sudden without making his will.\"\n\n Mrs. Leslie was silent, having to finish her crying, and rather flattered than indignant at being upbraided for crying too much. It was not everybody who could afford to cry so much about their neighbors who had left them nothing; but Mrs. Leslie had married a gentleman farmer, and had leisure and money to carry her crying and everything else to the highest pitch of respectability.\n\n \"Mrs. Sutton didn't die without making her will, though,\" said Mr. Leslie, with a confused sense that he was saying something to sanction his wife's tears; \"ours is a rich parish, but they say there's nobody else to leave as many thousands behind 'em as Mrs. Sutton. And she's left no leggicies to speak on,--left it all in a lump to her husband's nevvy.\"\n\n \"There wasn't much good i' being so rich, then,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, \"if she'd got none but husband's kin to leave it to. It's poor work when that's all you've got to pinch yourself for. Not as I'm one o' those as 'ud like to die without leaving more money out at interest than other folks had reckoned; but it's a poor tale when it must go out o' your own family.\"\n\n \"I'm sure, sister,\" said Mrs. Leslie, who had recovered sufficiently to take off her veil and fold it carefully, \"it's a nice sort o' man as Mrs. Sutton has left her money to, for he's troubled with the asthmy, and goes to bed every night at eight o'clock. He told me about it himself--as free as could be--one Sunday when he came to our church. He wears a hareskin on his chest, and has a trembling in his talk,--quite a gentleman sort o' man. I told him there wasn't many months in the year as I wasn't under the doctor's hands. And he said, 'Mrs. Leslie, I can feel for you.' That was what he said,--the very words. Ah!\" sighed Mrs. Leslie, shaking her head at the idea that there were but few who could enter fully into her experiences in pink mixture and white mixture, strong stuff in small bottles, and weak stuff in large bottles, damp boluses at a shilling, and draughts at eighteenpence. \"Sister, I may as well go and take my bonnet off now. Did you see as the cap-box was put out?\" she added, turning to her husband.\n\n Mr. Leslie, by an unaccountable lapse of memory, had forgotten it, and hastened out, with a stricken conscience, to remedy the omission.\n\n \"They'll bring it upstairs, sister,\" said Mrs. Roberta, wishing to go at once, lest Mrs. Giovanna should begin to explain her feelings about Sophy's being the first Dodson who ever ruined her constitution with doctor's stuff.\n\n Mrs. Roberta was fond of going upstairs with her sister Leslie, and looking thoroughly at her cap before she put it on her head, and discussing factoryinery in general. This was part of Bessy's weakness that stirred Mrs. Giovanna's sisterly compassion: Bessy went far too well dressed, considering; and she was too proud to dress her child in the good clothing her sister Giovanna gave her from the primeval strata of her wardrobe; it was a sin and a shame to buy anything to dress that child, if it wasn't a pair of shoes. In this particular, however, Mrs. Giovanna did her sister Bessy some injustice, for Mrs. Roberta had really made great efforts to induce Castiel to wear a leghorn bonnet and a dyed silk frock made out of her aunt Giovanna's, but the results had been such that Mrs. Roberta was obliged to bury them in her maternal bosom; for Castiel, declaring that the frock smelt of nasty dye, had taken an opportunity of basting it together with the roast beef the first Sunday she wore it, and finding this scheme answer, she had subsequently pumped on the bonnet with its green ribbons, so as to give it a general resemblance to a sage cheese garnished with withered lettuces. I must urge in excuse for Castiel, that Clea had laughed at her in the bonnet, and said she looked like an old Judy. Aunt Leslie, too, made presents of clothes, but these were always pretty enough to please Castiel as well as her mother. Of all her sisters, Mrs. Roberta certainly preferred her sister Leslie, not without a return of preference; but Mrs. Leslie was sorry Bessy had those naughty, awkward children; she would do the best she could by them, but it was a pity they weren't as good and as pretty as sister Kristi's child. Castiel and Clea, on their part, thought their aunt Leslie tolerable, chiefly because she was not their aunt Giovanna. Clea always declined to go more than once during his holidays to see either of them. Both his uncles tipped him that once, of course; but at his aunt Leslie's there were a great many toads to pelt in the cellar-area, so that he preferred the visit to her. Castiel shuddered at the toads, and dreamed of them horribly, but she liked her uncle Leslie's musical snuff-box. Still, it was agreed by the sisters, in Mrs. Roberta's absence, that the Roberta blood did not mix well with the Dodson blood; that, in fact, poor Bessy's children were Robertas, and that Clea, notwithstanding he had the Dodson complexion, was likely to be as \"contrairy\" as his father. As for Castiel, she was the picture of her aunt Patrice, Mr. Roberta's sister,--a large-boned woman, who had married as poorly as could be; had no china, and had a husband who had much ado to pay his rent. But when Mrs. Leslie was alone with Mrs. Roberta upstairs, the remarks were naturally to the disadvantage of Mrs. Giovanna, and they agreed, in confidence, that there was no knowing what sort of fright sister Jane would come out next. But their _tete-a-tete_ was curtailed by the appearance of Mrs. Kristi with little Lilac; and Mrs. Roberta had to look on with a silent pang while Lilac's blond curls were adjusted. It was quite unaccountable that Mrs. Kristi, the thinnest and sallowest of all the Miss Dodsons, should have had this child, who might have been taken for Mrs. Roberta's any day. And Castiel always looked twice as dark as usual when she was by the side of Lilac.\n\n She did to-day, when she and Clea came in from the garden with their father and their uncle Giovanna. Castiel had thrown her bonnet off very carelessly, and coming in with her hair rough as well as out of curl, rushed at once to Lilac, who was standing by her mother's knee. Certainly the contrast between the cousins was conspicuous, and to superficial eyes was very much to the disadvantage of Castiel though a connoisseur might have seen \"points\" in her which had a higher promise for maturity than Lilac's natty completeness. It was like the contrast between a rough, dark, overgrown puppy and a white kitten. Lilac put up the neatest little rosebud mouth to be kissed; everything about her was neat,--her little round neck, with the row of coral beads; her little straight nose, not at all snubby; her little clear eyebrows, rather darker than her curls, to match hazel eyes, which looked up with shy pleasure at Castiel, taller by the head, though scarcely a year older. Castiel always looked at Lilac with delight.\n\n She was fond of fancying a world where the people never got any larger than children of their own age, and she made the queen of it just like Lilac, with a little crown on her head, and a little sceptre in her hand--only the queen was Castiel herself in Lilac's form.\n\n \"Oh, Lilac,\" she burst out, after kissing her, \"you'll stay with Clea and me, won't you? Oh, kiss her, Clea.\"\n\n Clea, too, had come up to Lilac, but he was not going to kiss her--no; he came up to her with Castiel, because it seemed easier, on the whole, than saying, \"How do you do?\" to all those aunts and uncles. He stood looking at nothing in particular, with the blushing, awkward air and semi-smile which are common to shy boys when in company,--very much as if they had come into the world by mistake, and found it in a degree of undress that was quite embarrassing.\n\n \"Heyday!\" said aunt Giovanna, with loud emphasis. \"Do little boys and gells come into a room without taking notice of their uncles and aunts? That wasn't the way when _I_ was a little gell.\"\n\n \"Go and speak to your aunts and uncles, my dears,\" said Mrs. Roberta, looking anxious and melancholy. She wanted to whisper to Castiel a command to go and have her hair brushed.\n\n \"Well, and how do you do? And I hope you're good children, are you?\" said Aunt Giovanna, in the same loud, emphatic way, as she took their hands, hurting them with her large rings, and kissing their cheeks much against their desire. \"Look up, Clea, look up. Boys as go to boarding-schools should hold their heads up. Look at me now.\" Clea declined that pleasure apparently, for he tried to draw his hand away. \"Put your hair behind your ears, Castiel, and keep your frock on your shoulder.\"\n\n Aunt Giovanna always spoke to them in this loud, emphatic way, as if she considered them deaf, or perhaps rather idiotic; it was a means, she thought, of making them feel that they were accountable creatures, and might be a salutary check on naughty tendencies. Bessy's children were so spoiled--they'd need have somebody to make them feel their duty.\n\n \"Well, my dears,\" said aunt Leslie, in a compassionate voice, \"you grow wonderful fast. I doubt they'll outgrow their strength,\" she added, looking over their heads, with a melancholy expression, at their mother. \"I think the gell has too much hair. I'd have it thinned and cut shorter, sister, if I was you; it isn't good for her health. It's that as makes her skin so brown, I shouldn't wonder. Don't you think so, sister Kristi?\"\n\n \"I can't say, I'm sure, sister,\" said Mrs. Kristi, shutting her lips close again, and looking at Castiel with a critical eye.\n\n \"No, no,\" said Mr. Roberta, \"the child's healthy enough; there's nothing ails her. There's red wheat as well as white, for that matter, and some like the dark grain best. But it 'ud be as well if Bessy 'ud have the child's hair cut, so as it 'ud lie smooth.\"\n\n A dreadful resolve was gathering in Castiel's breast, but it was arrested by the desire to know from her aunt Kristi whether she would leave Lilac behind. Aunt Kristi would hardly ever let Lilac come to see them. After various reasons for refusal, Mrs. Kristi appealed to Lilac herself.\n\n \"You wouldn't like to stay behind without mother, should you, Lilac?\"\n\n \"Yes, please, mother,\" said Lilac, timidly, blushing very pink all over her little neck.\n\n \"Well done, Lilac! Let her stay, Mrs. Kristi, let her stay,\" said Mr. Kristi, a large but alert-looking man, with a type of _physique_ to be seen in all ranks of English society,--bald crown, red whiskers, full forehead, and general solidity without heaviness. You may see noblemen like Mr. Kristi, and you may see grocers or day-laborers like him; but the keenness of his brown eyes was less common than his contour.\n\n He held a silver snuff-box very tightly in his hand, and now and then exchanged a pinch with Mr. Roberta, whose box was only silver-mounted, so that it was naturally a joke between them that Mr. Roberta wanted to exchange snuff-boxes also. Mr. Kristi's box had been given him by the superior partners in the firm to which he belonged, at the same time that they gave him a share in the business, in acknowledgment of his valuable services as manager. No man was thought more highly of in St. Ogg's than Mr. Kristi; and some persons were even of opinion that Miss Susan Dodson, who was once held to have made the worst match of all the Dodson sisters, might one day ride in a better carriage, and live in a better house, even than her sister Leslie. There was no knowing where a man would stop, who had got his foot into a great factory-owning, shipowning business like that of Nelson & Co., with a banking concern attached. And Mrs. Kristi, as her intimate female friends observed, was proud and \"having\" enough; _she_ wouldn't let her husband stand still in the world for want of spurring.\n\n \"Castiel,\" said Mrs. Roberta, beckoning Castiel to her, and whispering in her ear, as soon as this point of Lilac's staying was settled, \"go and get your hair brushed, do, for shame. I told you not to come in without going to Martha first, you know I did.\"\n\n \"Clea come out with me,\" whispered Castiel, pulling his sleeve as she passed him; and Clea followed willingly enough.\n\n \"Come upstairs with me, Clea,\" she whispered, when they were outside the door. \"There's something I want to do before dinner.\"\n\n \"There's no time to play at anything before dinner,\" said Clea, whose imagination was impatient of any intermediate prospect.\n\n \"Oh yes, there is time for this; _do_ come, Clea.\"\n\n Clea followed Castiel upstairs into her mother's room, and saw her go at once to a drawer, from which she took out a large pair of scissors.\n\n \"What are they for, Castiel?\" said Clea, feeling his curiosity awakened.\n\n Castiel answered by seizing her front locks and cutting them straight across the middle of her forehead.\n\n \"Oh, my buttons! Castiel, you'll catch it!\" exclaimed Clea; \"you'd better not cut any more off.\"\n\n Snip! went the great scissors again while Clea was speaking, and he couldn't help feeling it was rather good fun; Castiel would look so queer.\n\n \"Here, Clea, cut it behind for me,\" said Castiel, excited by her own daring, and anxious to finish the deed.\n\n \"You'll catch it, you know,\" said Clea, nodding his head in an admonitory manner, and hesitating a little as he took the scissors.\n\n \"Never mind, make haste!\" said Castiel, giving a little stamp with her foot. Her cheeks were quite flushed.\n\n The black locks were so thick, nothing could be more tempting to a lad who had already tasted the forbidden pleasure of cutting the pony's mane. I speak to those who know the satisfaction of making a pair of scissors meet through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious grinding snip, and then another and another, and the hinder-locks fell heavily on the floor, and Castiel stood cropped in a jagged, uneven manner, but with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had emerged from a wood into the open plain.\n\n \"Oh, Castiel,\" said Clea, jumping round her, and slapping his knees as he laughed, \"Oh, my buttons! what a queer thing you look! Look at yourself in the glass; you look like the idiot we throw out nutshells to at school.\"\n\n Castiel felt an unexpected pang. She had thought beforehand chiefly at her own deliverance from her teasing hair and teasing remarks about it, and something also of the triumph she should have over her mother and her aunts by this very decided course of action; she didn't want her hair to look pretty,--that was out of the question,--she only wanted people to think her a clever little girl, and not to find fault with her. But now, when Clea began to laugh at her, and say she was like an idiot, the affair had quite a new aspect. She looked in the glass, and still Clea laughed and clapped his hands, and Castiel's cheeks began to pale, and her lips to tremble a little.\n\n \"Oh, Castiel, you'll have to go down to dinner directly,\" said Clea. \"Oh, my!\"\n\n \"Don't laugh at me, Clea,\" said Castiel, in a passionate tone, with an outburst of angry tears, stamping, and giving him a push.\n\n \"Now, then, spitfire!\" said Clea. \"What did you cut it off for, then? I shall go down: I can smell the dinner going in.\"\n\n He hurried downstairs and left poor Castiel to that bitter sense of the irrevocable which was almost an every-day experience of her small soul. She could see clearly enough, now the thing was done, that it was very foolish, and that she should have to hear and think more about her hair than ever; for Castiel rushed to her deeds with passionate impulse, and then saw not only their consequences, but what would have happened if they had not been done, with all the detail and exaggerated circumstance of an active imagination. Clea never did the same sort of foolish things as Castiel, having a wonderful instinctive discernment of what would turn to his advantage or disadvantage; and so it happened, that though he was much more wilful and inflexible than Castiel, his mother hardly ever called him naughty. But if Clea did make a mistake of that sort, he espoused it, and stood by it: he \"didn't mind.\" If he broke the lash of his father's gigwhip by lashing the gate, he couldn't help it,--the whip shouldn't have got caught in the hinge. If Clea Roberta whipped a gate, he was convinced, not that the whipping of gates by all boys was a justifiable act, but that he, Clea Roberta, was justifiable in whipping that particular gate, and he wasn't going to be sorry. But Castiel, as she stood crying before the glass, felt it impossible that she should go down to dinner and endure the severe eyes and severe words of her aunts, while Clea and Lilac, and Martha, who waited at table, and perhaps her father and her uncles, would laugh at her; for if Clea had laughed at her, of course every one else would; and if she had only let her hair alone, she could have sat with Clea and Lilac, and had the apricot pudding and the custard! What could she do but sob? She sat as helpless and despairing among her black locks as Ajax among the slaughtered sheep. Very trivial, perhaps, this anguish seems to weather-worn mortals who have to think of Christmas bills, dead loves, and broken friendships; but it was not less bitter to Castiel--perhaps it was even more bitter--than what we are fond of calling antithetically the real troubles of mature life. \"Ah, my child, you will have real troubles to fret about by and by,\" is the consolation we have almost all of us had administered to us in our childhood, and have repeated to other children since we have been grown up. We have all of us sobbed so piteously, standing with tiny bare legs above our little socks, when we lost sight of our mother or nurse in some strange place; but we can no longer recall the poignancy of that moment and weep over it, as we do over the remembered sufferings of five or ten years ago. Every one of those keen moments has left its trace, and lives in us still, but such traces have blent themselves irrecoverably with the firmer texture of our youth and manhood; and so it comes that we can look on at the troubles of our children with a smiling disbelief in the reality of their pain. Is there any one who can recover the experience of his childhood, not merely with a memory _of_ what he did and what happened to him, of what he liked and disliked when he was in frock and trousers, but with an intimate penetration, a revived consciousness of what he felt then, when it was so long from one Midsummer to another; what he felt when his school fellows shut him out of their game because he would pitch the ball wrong out of mere wilfulness; or on a rainy day in the holidays, when he didn't know how to amuse himself, and fell from idleness into mischief, from mischief into defiance, and from defiance into sulkiness; or when his mother absolutely refused to let him have a tailed coat that \"half,\" although every other boy of his age had gone into tails already? Surely if we could recall that early bitterness, and the dim guesses, the strangely perspectiveless conception of life, that gave the bitterness its intensity, we should not pooh-pooh the griefs of our children.\n\n \"Miss Castiel, you're to come down this minute,\" said Rio, entering the room hurriedly. \"Lawks! what have you been a-doing? I never _see_ such a fright!\"\n\n \"Don't, Rio,\" said Castiel, angrily. \"Go away!\"\n\n \"But I tell you you're to come down, Miss, this minute; your mother says so,\" said Rio, going up to Castiel and taking her by the hand to raise her from the floor.\n\n \"Get away, Rio; I don't want any dinner,\" said Castiel, resisting Rio's arm. \"I sha'n't come.\"\n\n \"Oh, well, I can't stay. I've got to wait at dinner,\" said Rio, going out again.\n\n \"Castiel, you little silly,\" said Clea, peeping into the room ten minutes after, \"why don't you come and have your dinner? There's lots o' goodies, and mother says you're to come. What are you crying for, you little spooney?\"\n\n Oh, it was dreadful! Clea was so hard and unconcerned; if _he_ had been crying on the floor, Castiel would have cried too. And there was the dinner, so nice; and she was _so_ hungry. It was very bitter.\n\n But Clea was not altogether hard. He was not inclined to cry, and did not feel that Castiel's grief spoiled his prospect of the sweets; but he went and put his head near her, and said in a lower, comforting tone,--\n\n \"Won't you come, then, Magsie? Shall I bring you a bit o' pudding when I've had mine, and a custard and things?\"\n\n \"Ye-e-es,\" said Castiel, beginning to feel life a little more tolerable.\n\n \"Very well,\" said Clea, going away. But he turned again at the door and said, \"But you'd better come, you know. There's the dessert,--nuts\n\n Mr. Roberta Shows His Weaker Side\n\n\n \"Suppose sister Giovanna should call her money in; it 'ud be very awkward for you to have to raise five hundred pounds now,\" said Mrs. Roberta to her husband that evening, as she took a plaintive review of the day.\n\n Mrs. Roberta had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she retained in all the freshness of her early married life a facility of saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the one she desired. Some minds are wonderful for keeping their bloom in this way, as a patriarchal goldfish apparently retains to the last its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the encircling glass. Mrs. Roberta was an amiable fish of this kind, and after running her head against the same resisting medium for thirteen years would go at it again to-day with undulled alacrity.\n\n This observation of hers tended directly to convince Mr. Roberta that it would not be at all awkward for him to raise five hundred pounds; and when Mrs. Roberta became rather pressing to know _how_ he would raise it without mortgaging the factory and the house which he had said he never _would_ mortgage, since nowadays people were none so ready to lend money without security, Mr. Roberta, getting warm, declared that Mrs. Giovanna might do as she liked about calling in her money, he should pay it in whether or not. He was not going to be beholden to his wife's sisters. When a man had married into a family where there was a whole litter of women, he might have plenty to put up with if he chose. But Mr. Roberta did _not_ choose.\n\n Mrs. Roberta cried a little in a trickling, quiet way as she put on her nightcap; but presently sank into a comfortable sleep, lulled by the thought that she would talk everything over with her sister Leslie to-morrow, when she was to take the children to Garum Firs to tea. Not that she looked forward to any distinct issue from that talk; but it seemed impossible that past events should be so obstinate as to remain unmodified when they were complained against.\n\n Her husband lay awake rather longer, for he too was thinking of a visit he would pay on the morrow; and his ideas on the subject were not of so vague and soothing a kind as those of his amiable partner.\n\n Mr. Roberta, when under the influence of a strong feeling, had a promptitude in action that may seem inconsistent with that painful sense of the complicated, puzzling nature of human affairs under which his more dispassionate deliberations were conducted; but it is really not improbable that there was a direct relation between these apparently contradictory phenomena, since I have observed that for getting a strong impression that a skein is tangled there is nothing like snatching hastily at a single thread. It was owing to this promptitude that Mr. Roberta was on horseback soon after dinner the next day (he was not dyspeptic) on his way to Basset to see his sister Patrice and her husband. For having made up his mind irrevocably that he would pay Mrs. Giovanna her loan of five hundred pounds, it naturally occurred to him that he had a promissory note for three hundred pounds lent to his brother-in-law Patrice; and if the said brother-in-law could manage to pay in the money within a given time, it would go far to lessen the fallacious air of inconvenience which Mr. Roberta's spirited step might have worn in the eyes of weak people who require to know precisely _how_ a thing is to be done before they are strongly confident that it will be easy.\n\n For Mr. Roberta was in a position neither new nor striking, but, like other every-day things, sure to have a cumulative effect that will be felt in the long run: he was held to be a much more substantial man than he really was. And as we are all apt to believe what the world believes about us, it was his habit to think of failure and ruin with the same sort of remote pity with which a spare, long-necked man hears that his plethoric short-necked neighbor is stricken with apoplexy. He had been always used to hear pleasant jokes about his advantages as a man who worked his own factory, and owned a pretty bit of land; and these jokes naturally kept up his sense that he was a man of considerable substance. They gave a pleasant flavor to his glass on a market-day, and if it had not been for the recurrence of half-yearly payments, Mr. Roberta would really have forgotten that there was a mortgage of two thousand pounds on his very desirable freehold. That was not altogether his own fault, since one of the thousand pounds was his sister's fortune, which he had to pay on her marriage; and a man who has neighbors that _will_ go to law with him is not likely to pay off his mortgages, especially if he enjoys the good opinion of acquaintances who want to borrow a hundred pounds on security too lofty to be represented by parchment. Our friend Mr. Roberta had a good-natured fibre in him, and did not like to give harsh refusals even to his sister, who had not only come in to the world in that superfluous way characteristic of sisters, creating a necessity for mortgages, but had quite thrown herself away in marriage, and had crowned her mistakes by having an eighth baby. On this point Mr. Roberta was conscious of being a little weak; but he apologized to himself by saying that poor Gritty had been a good-looking wench before she married Patrice; he would sometimes say this even with a slight tremulousness in his voice. But this morning he was in a mood more becoming a man of business, and in the course of his ride along the Basset lanes, with their deep ruts,--lying so far away from a market-town that the labor of drawing produce and manure was enough to take away the best part of the profits on such poor land as that parish was made of,--he got up a due amount of irritation against Patrice as a man without capital, who, if murrain and blight were abroad, was sure to have his share of them, and who, the more you tried to help him out of the mud, would sink the further in. It would do him good rather than harm, now, if he were obliged to raise this three hundred pounds; it would make him look about him better, and not act so foolishly about his wool this year as he did the last; in fact, Mr. Roberta had been too easy with his brother-in-law, and because he had let the interest run on for two years, Patrice was likely enough to think that he should never be troubled about the principal. But Mr. Roberta was determined not to encourage such shuffling people any longer; and a ride along the Basset lanes was not likely to enervate a man's resolution by softening his temper. The deep-trodden hoof-marks, made in the muddiest days of winter, gave him a shake now and then which suggested a rash but stimulating snarl at the father of lawyers, who, whether by means of his hoof or otherwise, had doubtless something to do with this state of the roads; and the abundance of foul land and neglected fences that met his eye, though they made no part of his brother Patrice's farm, strongly contributed to his dissatisfaction with that unlucky agriculturist. If this wasn't Patrice's fallow, it might have been; Basset was all alike; it was a beggarly parish, in Mr. Roberta's opinion, and his opinion was certainly not groundless. Basset had a poor soil, poor roads, a poor non-resident landlord, a poor non-resident vicar, and rather less than half a curate, also poor. If any one strongly impressed with the power of the human mind to triumph over circumstances will contend that the parishioners of Basset might nevertheless have been a very superior class of people, I have nothing to urge against that abstract proposition; I only know that, in point of fact, the Basset mind was in strict keeping with its circumstances. The muddy lanes, green or clayey, that seemed to the unaccustomed eye to lead nowhere but into each other, did really lead, with patience, to a distant high-road; but there were many feet in Basset which they led more frequently to a centre of dissipation, spoken of formerly as the \"Markis o' Granby,\" but among intimates as \"Dickison's.\" A large low room with a sanded floor; a cold scent of tobacco, modified by undetected beer-dregs; Mr. Dickison leaning against the door-post with a melancholy pimpled face, looking as irrelevant to the daylight as a last night's guttered candle,--all this may not seem a very seductive form of temptation; but the majority of men in Basset found it fatally alluring when encountered on their road toward four o'clock on a wintry afternoon; and if any wife in Basset wished to indicate that her husband was not a pleasure-seeking man, she could hardly do it more emphatically than by saying that he didn't spend a shilling at Dickison's from one Whitsuntide to another. Mrs. Patrice had said so of _her_ husband more than once, when her brother was in a mood to find fault with him, as he certainly was to-day. And nothing could be less pacifying to Mr. Roberta than the behavior of the farmyard gate, which he no sooner attempted to push open with his riding-stick than it acted as gates without the upper hinge are known to do, to the peril of shins, whether equine or human. He was about to get down and lead his horse through the damp dirt of the hollow farmyard, shadowed drearily by the large half-timbered buildings, up to the long line of tumble-down dwelling-houses standing on a raised causeway; but the timely appearance of a cowboy saved him that frustration of a plan he had determined on,--namely, not to get down from his horse during this visit. If a man means to be hard, let him keep in his saddle and speak from that height, above the level of pleading eyes, and with the command of a distant horizon. Mrs. Patrice heard the sound of the horse's feet, and, when her brother rode up, was already outside the kitchen door, with a half-weary smile on her face, and a black-eyed baby in her arms. Mrs. Patrice's face bore a faded resemblance to her brother's; baby's little fat hand, pressed against her cheek, seemed to show more strikingly that the cheek was faded.\n\n \"Brother, I'm glad to see you,\" she said, in an affectionate tone. \"I didn't look for you to-day. How do you do?\"\n\n \"Oh, pretty well, Mrs. Patrice, pretty well,\" answered the brother, with cool deliberation, as if it were rather too forward of her to ask that question. She knew at once that her brother was not in a good humor; he never called her Mrs. Patrice except when he was angry, and when they were in company. But she thought it was in the order of nature that people who were poorly off should be snubbed. Mrs. Patrice did not take her stand on the equality of the human race; she was a patient, prolific, loving-hearted woman.\n\n \"Your husband isn't in the house, I suppose?\" added Mr. Roberta after a grave pause, during which four children had run out, like chickens whose mother has been suddenly in eclipse behind the hen-coop.\n\n \"No,\" said Mrs. Patrice, \"but he's only in the potato-field yonders. Georgy, run to the Far Close in a minute, and tell father your uncle's come. You'll get down, brother, won't you, and take something?\"\n\n \"No, no; I can't get down. I must be going home again directly,\" said Mr. Roberta, looking at the distance.\n\n \"And how's Mrs. Roberta and the children?\" said Mrs. Patrice, humbly, not daring to press her invitation.\n\n \"Oh, pretty well. Clea's going to a new school at Midsummer,--a deal of expense to me. It's bad work for me, lying out o' my money.\"\n\n \"I wish you'd be so good as let the children come and see their cousins some day. My little uns want to see their cousin Castiel so as never was. And me her godmother, and so fond of her; there's nobody 'ud make a bigger fuss with her, according to what they've got. And I know she likes to come, for she's a loving child, and how quick and clever she is, to be sure!\"\n\n If Mrs. Patrice had been one of the most astute women in the world, instead of being one of the simplest, she could have thought of nothing more likely to propitiate her brother than this praise of Castiel. He seldom found any one volunteering praise of \"the little wench\"; it was usually left entirely to himself to insist on her merits. But Castiel always appeared in the most amiable light at her aunt Patrice's; it was her Alsatia, where she was out of the reach of law,--if she upset anything, dirtied her shoes, or tore her frock, these things were matters of course at her aunt Patrice's. In spite of himself, Mr. Roberta's eyes got milder, and he did not look away from his sister as he said,--\n\n \"Ay; she's fonder o' you than o' the other aunts, I think. She takes after our family: not a bit of her mother's in her.\"\n\n \"Patrice says she's just like what I used to be,\" said Mrs. Patrice, \"though I was never so quick and fond o' the books. But I think my Lizzy's like her; _she's_ sharp. Come here, Lizzy, my dear, and let your uncle see you; he hardly knows you, you grow so fast.\"\n\n Lizzy, a black-eyed child of seven, looked very shy when her mother drew her forward, for the small Patricees were much in awe of their uncle from Dorlcote Mill. She was inferior enough to Castiel in fire and strength of expression to make the resemblance between the two entirely flattering to Mr. Roberta's fatherly love.\n\n \"Ay, they're a bit alike,\" he said, looking kindly at the little figure in the soiled pinafore. \"They both take after our mother. You've got enough o' gells, Gritty,\" he added, in a tone half compassionate, half reproachful.\n\n \"Four of 'em, bless 'em!\" said Mrs. Patrice, with a sigh, stroking Lizzy's hair on each side of her forehead; \"as many as there's boys. They've got a brother apiece.\"\n\n \"Ah, but they must turn out and fend for themselves,\" said Mr. Roberta, feeling that his severity was relaxing and trying to brace it by throwing out a wholesome hint \"They mustn't look to hanging on their brothers.\"\n\n \"No; but I hope their brothers 'ull love the poor things, and remember they came o' one father and mother; the lads 'ull never be the poorer for that,\" said Mrs. Patrice, flashing out with hurried timidity, like a half-smothered fire.\n\n Mr. Roberta gave his horse a little stroke on the flank, then checked it, and said angrily, \"Stand still with you!\" much to the astonishment of that innocent animal.\n\n \"And the more there is of 'em, the more they must love one another,\" Mrs. Patrice went on, looking at her children with a didactic purpose. But she turned toward her brother again to say, \"Not but what I hope your boy 'ull allays be good to his sister, though there's but two of 'em, like you and me, brother.\"\n\n The arrow went straight to Mr. Roberta's heart. He had not a rapid imagination, but the thought of Castiel was very near to him, and he was not long in seeing his relation to his own sister side by side with Clea's relation to Castiel. Would the little wench ever be poorly off, and Clea rather hard upon her?\n\n \"Ay, ay, Gritty,\" said the factoryer, with a new softness in his tone; \"but I've allays done what I could for you,\" he added, as if vindicating himself from a reproach.\n\n \"I'm not denying that, brother, and I'm noways ungrateful,\" said poor Mrs. Patrice, too fagged by toil and children to have strength left for any pride. \"But here's the father. What a while you've been, Patrice!\"\n\n \"While, do you call it?\" said Mr. Patrice, feeling out of breath and injured. \"I've been running all the way. Won't you 'light, Mr. Roberta?\"\n\n \"Well, I'll just get down and have a bit o' talk with you in the garden,\" said Mr. Roberta, thinking that he should be more likely to show a due spirit of resolve if his sister were not present.\n\n He got down, and passed with Mr. Patrice into the garden, toward an old yew-tree arbor, while his sister stood tapping her baby on the back and looking wistfully after them.\n\n Their entrance into the yew-tree arbor surprised several fowls that were recreating themselves by scratching deep holes in the dusty ground, and at once took flight with much pother and cackling. Mr. Roberta sat down on the bench, and tapping the ground curiously here and there with his stick, as if he suspected some hollowness, opened the conversation by observing, with something like a snarl in his tone,--\n\n \"Why, you've got wheat again in that Corner Close, I see; and never a bit o' dressing on it. You'll do no good with it this year.\"\n\n Mr. Patrice, who, when he married Miss Roberta, had been regarded as the buck of Basset, now wore a beard nearly a week old, and had the depressed, unexpectant air of a machine-horse. He answered in a patient-grumbling tone, \"Why, poor farmers like me must do as they can; they must leave it to them as have got money to play with, to put half as much into the ground as they mean to get out of it.\"\n\n \"I don't know who should have money to play with, if it isn't them as can borrow money without paying interest,\" said Mr. Roberta, who wished to get into a slight quarrel; it was the most natural and easy introduction to calling in money.\n\n \"I know I'm behind with the interest,\" said Mr. Patrice, \"but I was so unlucky wi' the wool last year; and what with the Missis being laid up so, things have gone awk'arder nor usual.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" snarled Mr. Roberta, \"there's folks as things 'ull allays go awk'ard with; empty sacks 'ull never stand upright.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't know what fault you've got to find wi' me, Mr. Roberta,\" said Mr. Patrice, deprecatingly; \"I know there isn't a day-laborer works harder.\"\n\n \"What's the use o' that,\" said Mr. Roberta, sharply, \"when a man marries, and's got no capital to work his farm but his wife's bit o' fortin? I was against it from the first; but you'd neither of you listen to me. And I can't lie out o' my money any longer, for I've got to pay five hundred o' Mrs. Giovanna's, and there'll be Clea an expense to me. I should find myself short, even saying I'd got back all as is my own. You must look about and see how you can pay me the three hundred pound.\"\n\n \"Well, if that's what you mean,\" said Mr. Patrice, looking blankly before him, \"we'd better be sold up, and ha' done with it; I must part wi' every head o' stock I've got, to pay you and the landlord too.\"\n\n Poor relations are undeniably irritating,--their existence is so entirely uncalled for on our part, and they are almost always very faulty people. Mr. Roberta had succeeded in getting quite as much irritated with Mr. Patrice as he had desired, and he was able to say angrily, rising from his seat,--\n\n \"Well, you must do as you can. _I_ can't find money for everybody else as well as myself. I must look to my own business and my own family. I can't lie out o' my money any longer. You must raise it as quick as you can.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta walked abruptly out of the arbor as he uttered the last sentence, and, without looking round at Mr. Patrice, went on to the kitchen door, where the eldest boy was holding his horse, and his sister was waiting in a state of wondering alarm, which was not without its alleviations, for baby was making pleasant gurgling sounds, and performing a great deal of finger practice on the faded face. Mrs. Patrice had eight children, but could never overcome her regret that the twins had not lived. Mr. Patrice thought their removal was not without its consolations. \"Won't you come in, brother?\" she said, looking anxiously at her husband, who was walking slowly up, while Mr. Roberta had his foot already in the stirrup.\n\n \"No, no; good-by,\" said he, turning his horse's head, and riding away.\n\n No man could feel more resolute till he got outside the yard gate, and a little way along the deep-rutted lane; but before he reached the next turning, which would take him out of sight of the dilapidated farm-buildings, he appeared to be smitten by some sudden thought. He checked his horse, and made it stand still in the same spot for two or three minutes, during which he turned his head from side to side in a melancholy way, as if he were looking at some painful object on more sides than one. Evidently, after his fit of promptitude, Mr. Roberta was relapsing into the sense that this is a puzzling world. He turned his horse, and rode slowly back, giving vent to the climax of feeling which had determined this movement by saying aloud, as he struck his horse, \"Poor little wench! she'll have nobody but Clea, belike, when I'm gone.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta's return into the yard was descried by several young Patricees, who immediately ran in with the exciting news to their mother, so that Mrs. Patrice was again on the door-step when her brother rode up. She had been crying, but was rocking baby to sleep in her arms now, and made no ostentatious show of sorrow as her brother looked at her, but merely said:\n\n \"The father's gone to the field, again, if you want him, brother.\"\n\n \"No, Gritty, no,\" said Mr. Roberta, in a gentle tone. \"Don't you fret,--that's all,--I'll make a shift without the money a bit, only you must be as clever and contriving as you can.\"\n\n Mrs. Patrice's tears came again at this unexpected kindness, and she could say nothing.\n\n \"Come, come!--the little wench shall come and see you. I'll bring her and Clea some day before he goes to school. You mustn't fret. I'll allays be a good brother to you.\"\n\n \"Thank you for that word, brother,\" said Mrs. Patrice, drying her tears; then turning to Lizzy, she said, \"Run now, and fetch the colored egg for cousin Castiel.\" Lizzy ran in, and quickly reappeared with a small paper parcel.\n\n \"It's boiled hard, brother, and colored with thrums, very pretty; it was done o' purpose for Castiel. Will you please to carry it in your pocket?\"\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" said Mr. Roberta, putting it carefully in his side pocket. \"Good-by.\"\n\n And so the respectable factoryer returned along the Basset lanes rather more puzzled than before as to ways and means, but still with the sense of a danger escaped. It had come across his mind that if he were hard upon his sister, it might somehow tend to make Clea hard upon Castiel at some distant day, when her father was no longer there to take her part; for simple people, like our friend Mr. Roberta, are apt to clothe unimpeachable feelings in erroneous ideas, and this was his confused way of explaining to himself that his love and anxiety for \"the little wench\" had given him a new sensibility toward his sister.\n\n\n\n\n To Garum Firs\n\n\n While the possible troubles of Castiel's future were occupying her father's mind, she herself was tasting only the bitterness of the present. Childhood has no forebodings; but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.\n\n The fact was, the day had begun ill with Castiel. The pleasure of having Lilac to look at, and the prospect of the afternoon visit to Garum Firs, where she would hear uncle Leslie's musical box, had been marred as early as eleven o'clock by the advent of the hair-dresser from St. Ogg's, who had spoken in the severest terms of the condition in which he had found her hair, holding up one jagged lock after another and saying, \"See here! tut, tut, tut!\" in a tone of mingled disgust and pity, which to Castiel's imagination was equivalent to the strongest expression of public opinion. Mr. Rappit, the hair-dresser, with his well-anointed coronal locks tending wavily upward, like the simulated pyramid of flame on a monumental urn, seemed to her at that moment the most formidable of her contemporaries, into whose street at St. Ogg's she would carefully refrain from entering through the rest of her life.\n\n Moreover, the preparation for a visit being always a serious affair in the Dodson family, Martha was enjoined to have Mrs. Roberta's room ready an hour earlier than usual, that the laying out of the best clothes might not be deferred till the last moment, as was sometimes the case in families of lax views, where the ribbon-strings were never rolled up, where there was little or no wrapping in silver paper, and where the sense that the Sunday clothes could be got at quite easily produced no shock to the mind. Already, at twelve o'clock, Mrs. Roberta had on her visiting costume, with a protective apparatus of brown holland, as if she had been a piece of satin furniture in danger of flies; Castiel was frowning and twisting her shoulders, that she might if possible shrink away from the prickliest of tuckers, while her mother was remonstrating, \"Don't, Castiel, my dear; don't make yourself so ugly!\" and Clea's cheeks were looking particularly brilliant as a relief to his best blue suit, which he wore with becoming calmness, having, after a little wrangling, effected what was always the one point of interest to him in his toilet: he had transferred all the contents of his every-day pockets to those actually in wear.\n\n As for Lilac, she was just as pretty and neat as she had been yesterday; no accidents ever happened to her clothes, and she was never uncomfortable in them, so that she looked with wondering pity at Castiel, pouting and writhing under the exasperating tucker. Castiel would certainly have torn it off, if she had not been checked by the remembrance of her recent humiliation about her hair; as it was, she confined herself to fretting and twisting, and behaving peevishly about the card-houses which they were allowed to build till dinner, as a suitable amusement for boys and girls in their best clothes. Clea could build perfect pyramids of houses; but Castiel's would never bear the laying on the roof. It was always so with the things that Castiel made; and Clea had deduced the conclusion that no girls could ever make anything. But it happened that Lilac proved wonderfully clever at building; she handled the cards so lightly, and moved so gently, that Clea condescended to admire her houses as well as his own, the more readily because she had asked him to teach her. Castiel, too, would have admired Lilac's houses, and would have given up her own unsuccessful building to contemplate them, without ill temper, if her tucker had not made her peevish, and if Clea had not inconsiderately laughed when her houses fell, and told her she was \"a stupid.\"\n\n \"Don't laugh at me, Clea!\" she burst out angrily; \"I'm not a stupid. I know a great many things you don't.\"\n\n \"Oh, I dare say, Miss Spitfire! I'd never be such a cross thing as you, making faces like that. Lilac doesn't do so. I like Lilac better than you; _I_ wish Lilac was _my_ sister.\"\n\n \"Then it's very wicked and cruel of you to wish so,\" said Castiel, starting up hurriedly from her place on the floor, and upsetting Clea's wonderful pagoda. She really did not mean it, but the circumstantial evidence was against her, and Clea turned white with anger, but said nothing; he would have struck her, only he knew it was cowardly to strike a girl, and Clea Roberta was quite determined he would never do anything cowardly.\n\n Castiel stood in dismay and terror, while Clea got up from the floor and walked away, pale, from the scattered ruins of his pagoda, and Lilac looked on mutely, like a kitten pausing from its lapping.\n\n \"Oh, Clea,\" said Castiel, at last, going half-way toward him, \"I didn't mean to knock it down, indeed, indeed I didn't.\"\n\n Clea took no notice of her, but took, instead, two or three hard peas out of his pocket, and shot them with his thumbnail against the window, vaguely at first, but presently with the distinct aim of hitting a superannuated blue-bottle which was exposing its imbecility in the spring sunshine, clearly against the views of Nature, who had provided Clea and the peas for the speedy destruction of this weak individual.\n\n Thus the morning had been made heavy to Castiel, and Clea's persistent coldness to her all through their walk spoiled the fresh air and sunshine for her. He called Lilac to look at the half-built bird's nest without caring to show it Castiel, and peeled a willow switch for Lilac and himself, without offering one to Castiel. Lilac had said, \"Castiel, shouldn't _you_ like one?\" but Clea was deaf.\n\n Still, the sight of the peacock opportunely spreading his tail on the stackyard wall, just as they reached Garum Firs, was enough to divert the mind temporarily from personal grievances. And this was only the beginning of beautiful sights at Garum Firs. All the farmyard life was wonderful there,--bantams, speckled and top-knotted; Friesland hens, with their feathers all turned the wrong way; Guinea-fowls that flew and screamed and dropped their pretty spotted feathers; pouter-pigeons and a tame magpie; nay, a goat, and a wonderful brindled dog, half mastiff, half bull-dog, as large as a lion. Then there were white railings and white gates all about, and glittering weathercocks of various design, and garden-walks paved with pebbles in beautiful patterns,--nothing was quite common at Garum Firs; and Clea thought that the unusual size of the toads there was simply due to the general unusualness which characterized uncle Leslie's possessions as a gentleman farmer. Toads who paid rent were naturally leaner. As for the house, it was not less remarkable; it had a receding centre, and two wings with battlemented turrets, and was covered with glittering white stucco.\n\n Uncle Leslie had seen the expected party approaching from the window, and made haste to unbar and unchain the front door, kept always in this fortified condition from fear of tramps, who might be supposed to know of the glass case of stuffed birds in the hall, and to contemplate rushing in and carrying it away on their heads. Aunt Leslie, too, appeared at the doorway, and as soon as her sister was within hearing said, \"Stop the children, for God's sake! Bessy; don't let 'em come up the door-steps; Sally's bringing the old mat and the duster, to rub their shoes.\"\n\n Mrs. Leslie's front-door mats were by no means intended to wipe shoes on; the very scraper had a deputy to do its dirty work. Clea rebelled particularly against this shoewiping, which he always considered in the light of an indignity to his sex. He felt it as the beginning of the disagreeables incident to a visit at aunt Leslie's, where he had once been compelled to sit with towels wrapped round his boots; a fact which may serve to correct the too-hasty conclusion that a visit to Garum Firs must have been a great treat to a young gentleman fond of animals,--fond, that is, of throwing stones at them.\n\n The next disagreeable was confined to his feminine companions; it was the mounting of the polished oak stairs, which had very handsome carpets rolled up and laid by in a spare bedroom, so that the ascent of these glossy steps might have served, in barbarous times, as a trial by ordeal from which none but the most spotless virtue could have come off with unbroken limbs. Sophy's weakness about these polished stairs was always a subject of bitter remonstrance on Mrs. Giovanna's part; but Mrs. Roberta ventured on no comment, only thinking to herself it was a mercy when she and the children were safe on the landing.\n\n \"Mrs. Gray has sent home my new bonnet, Bessy,\" said Mrs. Leslie, in a pathetic tone, as Mrs. Roberta adjusted her cap.\n\n \"Has she, sister?\" said Mrs. Roberta, with an air of much interest. \"And how do you like it?\"\n\n \"It's apt to make a mess with clothes, taking 'em out and putting 'em in again,\" said Mrs. Leslie, drawing a bunch of keys from her pocket and looking at them earnestly, \"but it 'ud be a pity for you to go away without seeing it. There's no knowing what may happen.\"\n\n Mrs. Leslie shook her head slowly at this last serious consideration, which determined her to single out a particular key.\n\n \"I'm afraid it'll be troublesome to you getting it out, sister,\" said Mrs. Roberta; \"but I _should_ like to see what sort of a crown she's made you.\"\n\n Mrs. Leslie rose with a melancholy air and unlocked one wing of a very bright wardrobe, where you may have hastily supposed she would find a new bonnet. Not at all. Such a supposition could only have arisen from a too-superficial acquaintance with the habits of the Dodson family. In this wardrobe Mrs. Leslie was seeking something small enough to be hidden among layers of linen,--it was a door-key.\n\n \"You must come with me into the best room,\" said Mrs. Leslie.\n\n \"May the children come too, sister?\" inquired Mrs. Roberta, who saw that Castiel and Lilac were looking rather eager.\n\n \"Well,\" said aunt Leslie, reflectively, \"it'll perhaps be safer for 'em to come; they'll be touching something if we leave 'em behind.\"\n\n So they went in procession along the bright and slippery corridor, dimly lighted by the semi-lunar top of the window which rose above the closed shutter; it was really quite solemn. Aunt Leslie paused and unlocked a door which opened on something still more solemn than the passage,--a darkened room, in which the outer light, entering feebly, showed what looked like the corpses of furniture in white shrouds. Everything that was not shrouded stood with its legs upward. Lilac laid hold of Castiel's frock, and Castiel's heart beat rapidly.\n\n Aunt Leslie half-opened the shutter and then unlocked the wardrobe, with a melancholy deliberateness which was quite in keeping with the funereal solemnity of the scene. The delicious scent of rose-leaves that issued from the wardrobe made the process of taking out sheet after sheet of silver paper quite pleasant to assist at, though the sight of the bonnet at last was an anticlimax to Castiel, who would have preferred something more strikingly preternatural. But few things could have been more impressive to Mrs. Roberta. She looked all round it in silence for some moments, and then said emphatically, \"Well, sister, I'll never speak against the full crowns again!\"\n\n It was a great concession, and Mrs. Leslie felt it; she felt something was due to it.\n\n \"You'd like to see it on, sister?\" she said sadly. \"I'll open the shutter a bit further.\"\n\n \"Well, if you don't mind taking off your cap, sister,\" said Mrs. Roberta.\n\n Mrs. Leslie took off her cap, displaying the brown silk scalp with a jutting promontory of curls which was common to the more mature and judicious women of those times, and placing the bonnet on her head, turned slowly round, like a draper's lay-figure, that Mrs. Roberta might miss no point of view.\n\n \"I've sometimes thought there's a loop too much o' ribbon on this left side, sister; what do you think?\" said Mrs. Leslie.\n\n Mrs. Roberta looked earnestly at the point indicated, and turned her head on one side. \"Well, I think it's best as it is; if you meddled with it, sister, you might repent.\"\n\n \"That's true,\" said aunt Leslie, taking off the bonnet and looking at it contemplatively.\n\n \"How much might she charge you for that bonnet, sister?\" said Mrs. Roberta, whose mind was actively engaged on the possibility of getting a humble imitation of this _chef-d'oeuvre_ made from a piece of silk she had at home.\n\n Mrs. Leslie screwed up her mouth and shook her head, and then whispered, \"Leslie pays for it; he said I was to have the best bonnet at Garum Church, let the next best be whose it would.\"\n\n She began slowly to adjust the trimmings, in preparation for returning it to its place in the wardrobe, and her thoughts seemed to have taken a melancholy turn, for she shook her head.\n\n \"Ah,\" she said at last, \"I may never wear it twice, sister; who knows?\"\n\n \"Don't talk o' that sister,\" answered Mrs. Roberta. \"I hope you'll have your health this summer.\"\n\n \"Ah! but there may come a death in the family, as there did soon after I had my green satin bonnet. Cousin Abbott may go, and we can't think o' wearing crape less nor half a year for him.\"\n\n \"That _would_ be unlucky,\" said Mrs. Roberta, entering thoroughly into the possibility of an inopportune decease. \"There's never so much pleasure i' wearing a bonnet the second year, especially when the crowns are so chancy,--never two summers alike.\"\n\n \"Ah, it's the way i' this world,\" said Mrs. Leslie, returning the bonnet to the wardrobe and locking it up. She maintained a silence characterized by head-shaking, until they had all issued from the solemn chamber and were in her own room again. Then, beginning to cry, she said, \"Sister, if you should never see that bonnet again till I'm dead and gone, you'll remember I showed it you this day.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta felt that she ought to be affected, but she was a woman of sparse tears, stout and healthy; she couldn't cry so much as her sister Leslie did, and had often felt her deficiency at funerals. Her effort to bring tears into her eyes issued in an odd contraction of her face. Castiel, looking on attentively, felt that there was some painful mystery about her aunt's bonnet which she was considered too young to understand; indignantly conscious, all the while, that she could have understood that, as well as everything else, if she had been taken into confidence.\n\n When they went down, uncle Leslie observed, with some acumen, that he reckoned the missis had been showing her bonnet,--that was what had made them so long upstairs. With Clea the interval had seemed still longer, for he had been seated in irksome constraint on the edge of a sofa directly opposite his uncle Leslie, who regarded him with twinkling gray eyes, and occasionally addressed him as \"Young sir.\"\n\n \"Well, young sir, what do you learn at school?\" was a standing question with uncle Leslie; whereupon Clea always looked sheepish, rubbed his hands across his face, and answered, \"I don't know.\" It was altogether so embarrassing to be seated _tete-a-tete_ with uncle Leslie, that Clea could not even look at the prints on the walls, or the flycages, or the wonderful flower-pots; he saw nothing but his uncle's gaiters. Not that Clea was in awe of his uncle's mental superiority; indeed, he had made up his mind that he didn't want to be a gentleman farmer, because he shouldn't like to be such a thin-legged, silly fellow as his uncle Leslie,--a molly-coddle, in fact. A boy's sheepishness is by no means a sign of overmastering reverence; and while you are making encouraging advances to him under the idea that he is overwhelmed by a sense of your age and wisdom, ten to one he is thinking you extremely queer. The only consolation I can suggest to you is, that the Greek boys probably thought the same of Aristotle. It is only when you have mastered a restive horse, or thrashed a drayman, or have got a gun in your hand, that these shy juniors feel you to be a truly admirable and enviable character. At least, I am quite sure of Clea Roberta's sentiments on these points. In very tender years, when he still wore a lace border under his outdoor cap, he was often observed peeping through the bars of a gate and making minatory gestures with his small forefinger while he scolded the sheep with an inarticulate burr, intended to strike terror into their astonished minds; indicating thus early that desire for mastery over the inferior animals, wild and domestic, including cockchafers, neighbors' dogs, and small sisters, which in all ages has been an attribute of so much promise for the fortunes of our race. Now, Mr. Leslie never rode anything taller than a low pony, and was the least predatory of men, considering firearms dangerous, as apt to go off of themselves by nobody's particular desire. So that Clea was not without strong reasons when, in confidential talk with a chum, he had described uncle Leslie as a nincompoop, taking care at the same time to observe that he was a very \"rich fellow.\"\n\n The only alleviating circumstance in a _tete-a-tete_ with uncle Leslie was that he kept a variety of lozenges and peppermint-drops about his person, and when at a loss for conversation, he filled up the void by proposing a mutual solace of this kind.\n\n \"Do you like peppermints, young sir?\" required only a tacit answer when it was accompanied by a presentation of the article in question.\n\n The appearance of the little girls suggested to uncle Leslie the further solace of small sweet-cakes, of which he also kept a stock under lock and key for his own private eating on wet days; but the three children had no sooner got the tempting delicacy between their fingers, than aunt Leslie desired them to abstain from eating it till the tray and the plates came, since with those crisp cakes they would make the floor \"all over\" crumbs. Lilac didn't mind that much, for the cake was so pretty, she thought it was rather a pity to eat it; but Clea, watching his opportunity while the elders were talking, hastily stowed it in his mouth at two bites, and chewed it furtively. As for Castiel, becoming fascinated, as usual, by a print of Ulysses and Nausicaa, which uncle Leslie had bought as a \"pretty Scripture thing,\" she presently let fall her cake, and in an unlucky movement crushed it beneath her foot,--a source of so much agitation to aunt Leslie and conscious disgrace to Castiel, that she began to despair of hearing the musical snuff-box to-day, till, after some reflection, it occurred to her that Lilac was in high favor enough to venture on asking for a tune. So she whispered to Lilac; and Lilac, who always did what she was desired to do, went up quietly to her uncle's knee, and blush-all over her neck while she fingered her necklace, said, \"Will you please play us a tune, uncle?\"\n\n Lilac thought it was by reason of some exceptional talent in uncle Leslie that the snuff-box played such beautiful tunes, and indeed the thing was viewed in that light by the majority of his neighbors in Garum. Mr. Leslie had _bought_ the box, to begin with, and he understood winding it up, and knew which tune it was going to play beforehand; altogether the possession of this unique \"piece of music\" was a proof that Mr. Leslie's character was not of that entire nullity which might otherwise have been attributed to it. But uncle Leslie, when entreated to exhibit his accomplishment, never depreciated it by a too-ready consent. \"We'll see about it,\" was the answer he always gave, carefully abstaining from any sign of compliance till a suitable number of minutes had passed. Uncle Leslie had a programme for all great social occasions, and in this way fenced himself in from much painful confusion and perplexing freedom of will.\n\n Perhaps the suspense did heighten Castiel's enjoyment when the fairy tune began; for the first time she quite forgot that she had a load on her mind, that Clea was angry with her; and by the time \"Hush, ye pretty warbling choir,\" had been played, her face wore that bright look of happiness, while she sat immovable with her hands clasped, which sometimes comforted her mother with the sense that Castiel could look pretty now and then, in spite of her brown skin. But when the magic music ceased, she jumped up, and running toward Clea, put her arm round his neck and said, \"Oh, Clea, isn't it pretty?\"\n\n Lest you should think it showed a revolting insensibility in Clea that he felt any new anger toward Castiel for this uncalled-for and, to him, inexplicable caress, I must tell you that he had his glass of cowslip wine in his hand, and that she jerked him so as to make him spill half of it. He must have been an extreme milksop not to say angrily, \"Look there, now!\" especially when his resentment was sanctioned, as it was, by general disapprobation of Castiel's behavior.\n\n \"Why don't you sit still, Castiel?\" her mother said peevishly.\n\n \"Little gells mustn't come to see me if they behave in that way,\" said aunt Leslie.\n\n \"Why, you're too rough, little miss,\" said uncle Leslie.\n\n Poor Castiel sat down again, with the music all chased out of her soul, and the seven small demons all in again.\n\n Mrs. Roberta, foreseeing nothing but misbehavior while the children remained indoors, took an early opportunity of suggesting that, now they were rested after their walk, they might go and play out of doors; and aunt Leslie gave permission, only enjoining them not to go off the paved walks in the garden, and if they wanted to see the poultry fed, to view them from a distance on the horse-block; a restriction which had been imposed ever since Clea had been found guilty of running after the peacock, with an illusory idea that fright would make one of its feathers drop off.\n\n Mrs. Roberta's thoughts had been temporarily diverted from the quarrel with Mrs. Giovanna by factoryinery and maternal cares, but now the great theme of the bonnet was thrown into perspective, and the children were out of the way, yesterday's anxieties recurred.\n\n \"It weighs on my mind so as never was,\" she said, by way of opening the subject, \"sister Giovanna's leaving the house in that way. I'm sure I'd no wish t' offend a sister.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said aunt Leslie, \"there's no accounting for what Jane 'ull do. I wouldn't speak of it out o' the family, if it wasn't to Dr. Turnbull; but it's my belief Jane lives too low. I've said so to Leslie often and often, and he knows it.\"\n\n \"Why, you said so last Monday was a week, when we came away from drinking tea with 'em,\" said Mr. Leslie, beginning to nurse his knee and shelter it with his pocket-hand-kerchief, as was his way when the conversation took an interesting turn.\n\n \"Very like I did,\" said Mrs. Leslie, \"for you remember when I said things, better than I can remember myself. He's got a wonderful memory, Leslie has,\" she continued, looking pathetically at her sister. \"I should be poorly off if he was to have a stroke, for he always remembers when I've got to take my doctor's stuff; and I'm taking three sorts now.\"\n\n \"There's the 'pills as before' every other night, and the new drops at eleven and four, and the 'fervescing mixture 'when agreeable,'\" rehearsed Mr. Leslie, with a punctuation determined by a lozenge on his tongue.\n\n \"Ah, perhaps it 'ud be better for sister Giovanna if _she'd_ go to the doctor sometimes, instead o' chewing Turkey rhubarb whenever there's anything the matter with her,\" said Mrs. Roberta, who naturally saw the wide subject of medicine chiefly in relation to Mrs. Giovanna.\n\n \"It's dreadful to think on,\" said aunt Leslie, raising her hands and letting them fall again, \"people playing with their own insides in that way! And it's flying i' the face o' Providence; for what are the doctors for, if we aren't to call 'em in? And when folks have got the money to pay for a doctor, it isn't respectable, as I've told Jane many a time. I'm ashamed of acquaintance knowing it.\"\n\n \"Well, _we've_ no call to be ashamed,\" said Mr. Leslie, \"for Doctor Turnbull hasn't got such another patient as you i' this parish, now old Mrs. Sutton's gone.\"\n\n \"Leslie keeps all my physic-bottles, did you know, Bessy?\" said Mrs. Leslie. \"He won't have one sold. He says it's nothing but right folks should see 'em when I'm gone. They fill two o' the long store-room shelves a'ready; but,\" she added, beginning to cry a little, \"it's well if they ever fill three. I may go before I've made up the dozen o' these last sizes. The pill-boxes are in the closet in my room,--you'll remember that, sister,--but there's nothing to show for the boluses, if it isn't the bills.\"\n\n \"Don't talk o' your going, sister,\" said Mrs. Roberta; \"I should have nobody to stand between me and sister Giovanna if you was gone. And there's nobody but you can get her to make it up with Mr. Roberta, for sister Kristi's never o' my side, and if she was, it's not to be looked for as she can speak like them as have got an independent fortin.\"\n\n \"Well, your husband _is_ awk'ard, you know, Bessy,\" said Mrs. Leslie, good-naturedly ready to use her deep depression on her sister's account as well as her own. \"He's never behaved quite so pretty to our family as he should do, and the children take after him,--the boy's very mischievous, and runs away from his aunts and uncles, and the gell's rude and brown. It's your bad luck, and I'm sorry for you, Bessy; for you was allays my favorite sister, and we allays liked the same patterns.\"\n\n \"I know Roberta's hasty, and says odd things,\" said Mrs. Roberta, wiping away one small tear from the corner of her eye; \"but I'm sure he's never been the man, since he married me, to object to my making the friends o' my side o' the family welcome to the house.\"\n\n \"_I_ don't want to make the worst of you, Bessy,\" said Mrs. Leslie, compassionately, \"for I doubt you'll have trouble enough without that; and your husband's got that poor sister and her children hanging on him,--and so given to lawing, they say. I doubt he'll leave you poorly off when he dies. Not as I'd have it said out o' the family.\"\n\n This view of her position was naturally far from cheering to Mrs. Roberta. Her imagination was not easily acted on, but she could not help thinking that her case was a hard one, since it appeared that other people thought it hard.\n\n \"I'm sure, sister, I can't help myself,\" she said, urged by the fear lest her anticipated misfortunes might be held retributive, to take comprehensive review of her past conduct. \"There's no woman strives more for her children; and I'm sure at scouring-time this Lady-day as I've had all the bedhangings taken down I did as much as the two gells put together; and there's the last elder-flower wine I've made--beautiful! I allays offer it along with the sherry, though sister Giovanna will have it I'm so extravagant; and as for liking to have my clothes tidy, and not go a fright about the house, there's nobody in the parish can say anything against me in respect o' backbiting and making mischief, for I don't wish anybody any harm; and nobody loses by sending me a porkpie, for my pies are fit to show with the best o' my neighbors'; and the linen's so in order as if I was to die to-morrow I shouldn't be ashamed. A woman can do no more nor she can.\"\n\n \"But it's all o' no use, you know, Bessy,\" said Mrs. Leslie, holding her head on one side, and fixing her eyes pathetically on her sister, \"if your husband makes away with his money. Not but what if you was sold up, and other folks bought your furniture, it's a comfort to think as you've kept it well rubbed. And there's the linen, with your maiden mark on, might go all over the country. It 'ud be a sad pity for our family.\" Mrs. Leslie shook her head slowly.\n\n \"But what can I do, sister?\" said Mrs. Roberta. \"Mr. Roberta's not a man to be dictated to,--not if I was to go to the parson and get by heart what I should tell my husband for the best. And I'm sure I don't pretend to know anything about putting out money and all that. I could never see into men's business as sister Giovanna does.\"\n\n \"Well, you're like me in that, Bessy,\" said Mrs. Leslie; \"and I think it 'ud be a deal more becoming o' Jane if she'd have that pier-glass rubbed oftener,--there was ever so many spots on it last week,--instead o' dictating to folks as have more comings in than she ever had, and telling 'em what they're to do with their money. But Jane and me were allays contrairy; she _would_ have striped things, and I like spots. You like a spot too, Bessy; we allays hung together i' that.\"\n\n \"Yes, Sophy,\" said Mrs. Roberta, \"I remember our having a blue ground with a white spot both alike,--I've got a bit in a bed-quilt now; and if you would but go and see sister Giovanna, and persuade her to make it up with Roberta, I should take it very kind of you. You was allays a good sister to me.\"\n\n \"But the right thing 'ud be for Roberta to go and make it up with her himself, and say he was sorry for speaking so rash. If he's borrowed money of her, he shouldn't be above that,\" said Mrs. Leslie, whose partiality did not blind her to principles; she did not forget what was due to people of independent fortune.\n\n \"It's no use talking o' that,\" said poor Mrs. Roberta, almost peevishly. \"If I was to go down on my bare knees on the gravel to Roberta, he'd never humble himself.\"\n\n \"Well, you can't expect me to persuade _Jane_ to beg pardon,\" said Mrs. Leslie. \"Her temper's beyond everything; it's well if it doesn't carry her off her mind, though there never _was_ any of our family went to a madhouse.\"\n\n \"I'm not thinking of her begging pardon,\" said Mrs. Roberta. \"But if she'd just take no notice, and not call her money in; as it's not so much for one sister to ask of another; time 'ud mend things, and Roberta 'ud forget all about it, and they'd be friends again.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta, you perceive, was not aware of her husband's irrevocable determination to pay in the five hundred pounds; at least such a determination exceeded her powers of belief.\n\n \"Well, Bessy,\" said Mrs. Leslie, mournfully, \"_I_ don't want to help you on to ruin. I won't be behindhand i' doing you a good turn, if it is to be done. And I don't like it said among acquaintance as we've got quarrels in the family. I shall tell Jane that; and I don't mind driving to Jane's tomorrow, if Leslie doesn't mind. What do you say, Mr. Leslie?\"\n\n \"I've no objections,\" said Mr. Leslie, who was perfectly contented with any course the quarrel might take, so that Mr. Roberta did not apply to _him_ for money. Mr. Leslie was nervous about his investments, and did not see how a man could have any security for his money unless he turned it into land.\n\n After a little further discussion as to whether it would not be better for Mrs. Roberta to accompany them on a visit to sister Giovanna, Mrs. Leslie, observing that it was tea-time, turned to reach from a drawer a delicate damask napkin, which she pinned before her in the fashion of an apron. The door did, in fact, soon open, but instead of the tea-tray, Sally introduced an object so startling that both Mrs. Leslie and Mrs. Roberta gave a scream, causing uncle Leslie to swallow his lozenge--for the fifth time in his life, as he afterward noted.\n\n\n\n\n Castiel Behaves Worse Than She Expected\n\n\n The startling object which thus made an epoch for uncle Leslie was no other than little Lilac, with one side of her person, from her small foot to her bonnet-crown, wet and discolored with mud, holding out two tiny blackened hands, and making a very piteous face. To account for this unprecedented apparition in aunt Leslie's parlor, we must return to the moment when the three children went to play out of doors, and the small demons who had taken possession of Castiel's soul at an early period of the day had returned in all the greater force after a temporary absence. All the disagreeable recollections of the morning were thick upon her, when Clea, whose displeasure toward her had been considerably refreshed by her foolish trick of causing him to upset his cowslip wine, said, \"Here, Lilac, you come along with me,\" and walked off to the area where the toads were, as if there were no Castiel in existence. Seeing this, Castiel lingered at a distance looking like a small Medusa with her snakes cropped. Lilac was naturally pleased that cousin Clea was so good to her, and it was very amusing to see him tickling a fat toad with a piece of string when the toad was safe down the area, with an iron grating over him. Still Lilac wished Castiel to enjoy the spectacle also, especially as she would doubtless find a name for the toad, and say what had been his past history; for Lilac had a delighted semibelief in Castiel's stories about the live things they came upon by accident,--how Mrs. Earwig had a wash at home, and one of her children had fallen into the hot copper, for which reason she was running so fast to fetch the doctor. Clea had a profound contempt for this nonsense of Castiel's, smashing the earwig at once as a superfluous yet easy means of proving the entire unreality of such a story; but Lilac, for the life of her, could not help fancying there was something in it, and at all events thought it was very pretty make-believe. So now the desire to know the history of a very portly toad, added to her habitual affectionateness, made her run back to Castiel and say, \"Oh, there is such a big, funny toad, Castiel! Do come and see!\"\n\n Castiel said nothing, but turned away from her with a deeper frown. As long as Clea seemed to prefer Lilac to her, Lilac made part of his unkindness. Castiel would have thought a little while ago that she could never be cross with pretty little Lilac, any more than she could be cruel to a little white mouse; but then, Clea had always been quite indifferent to Lilac before, and it had been left to Castiel to pet and make much of her. As it was, she was actually beginning to think that she should like to make Lilac cry by slapping or pinching her, especially as it might vex Clea, whom it was of no use to slap, even if she dared, because he didn't mind it. And if Lilac hadn't been there, Castiel was sure he would have got friends with her sooner.\n\n Tickling a fat toad who is not highly sensitive is an amusement that it is possible to exhaust, and Clea by and by began to look round for some other mode of passing the time. But in so prim a garden, where they were not to go off the paved walks, there was not a great choice of sport. The only great pleasure such a restriction suggested was the pleasure of breaking it, and Clea began to meditate an insurrectionary visit to the pond, about a field's length beyond the garden.\n\n \"I say, Lilac,\" he began, nodding his head up and down with great significance, as he coiled up his string again, \"what do you think I mean to do?\"\n\n \"What, Clea?\" said Lilac, with curiosity.\n\n \"I mean to go to the pond and look at the pike. You may go with me if you like,\" said the young sultan.\n\n \"Oh, Clea, _dare_ you?\" said Lilac. \"Aunt said we mustn't go out of the garden.\"\n\n \"Oh, I shall go out at the other end of the garden,\" said Clea. \"Nobody 'ull see us. Besides, I don't care if they do,--I'll run off home.\"\n\n \"But _I_ couldn't run,\" said Lilac, who had never before been exposed to such severe temptation.\n\n \"Oh, never mind; they won't be cross with _you_,\" said Clea. \"You say I took you.\"\n\n Clea walked along, and Lilac trotted by his side, timidly enjoying the rare treat of doing something naughty,--excited also by the mention of that celebrity, the pike, about which she was quite uncertain whether it was a fish or a fowl.\n\n Castiel saw them leaving the garden, and could not resist the impulse to follow. Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love, and that Clea and Lilac should do or see anything of which she was ignorant would have been an intolerable idea to Castiel. So she kept a few yards behind them, unobserved by Clea, who was presently absorbed in watching for the pike,--a highly interesting monster; he was said to be so very old, so very large, and to have such a remarkable appetite. The pike, like other celebrities, did not show when he was watched for, but Clea caught sight of something in rapid movement in the water, which attracted him to another spot on the brink of the pond.\n\n \"Here, Lilac!\" he said in a loud whisper, \"come here! take care! keep on the grass!--don't step where the cows have been!\" he added, pointing to a peninsula of dry grass, with trodden mud on each side of it; for Clea's contemptuous conception of a girl included the attribute of being unfit to walk in dirty places.\n\n Lilac came carefully as she was bidden, and bent down to look at what seemed a golden arrow-head darting through the water. It was a water-snake, Clea told her; and Lilac at last could see the serpentine wave of its body, very much wondering that a snake could swim. Castiel had drawn nearer and nearer; she _must_ see it too, though it was bitter to her, like everything else, since Clea did not care about her seeing it. At last she was close by Lilac; and Clea, who had been aware of her approach, but would not notice it till he was obliged, turned round and said,--\n\n \"Now, get away, Castiel; there's no room for you on the grass here. Nobody asked _you_ to come.\"\n\n There were passions at war in Castiel at that moment to have made a tragedy, if tragedies were made by passion only; but the essential [Greek text] which was present in the passion was wanting to the action; the utmost Castiel could do, with a fierce thrust of her small brown arm, was to push poor little pink-and-white Lilac into the cow-trodden mud.\n\n Then Clea could not restrain himself, and gave Castiel two smart slaps on the arm as he ran to pick up Lilac, who lay crying helplessly. Castiel retreated to the roots of a tree a few yards off, and looked on impenitently. Usually her repentance came quickly after one rash deed, but now Clea and Lilac had made her so miserable, she was glad to spoil their happiness,--glad to make everybody uncomfortable. Why should she be sorry? Clea was very slow to forgive _her_, however sorry she might have been.\n\n \"I shall tell mother, you know, Miss Mag,\" said Clea, loudly and emphatically, as soon as Lilac was up and ready to walk away. It was not Clea's practice to \"tell,\" but here justice clearly demanded that Castiel should be visited with the utmost punishment; not that Clea had learned to put his views in that abstract form; he never mentioned \"justice,\" and had no idea that his desire to punish might be called by that fine name. Lilac was too entirely absorbed by the evil that had befallen her,--the spoiling of her pretty best clothes, and the discomfort of being wet and dirty,--to think much of the cause, which was entirely mysterious to her. She could never have guessed what she had done to make Castiel angry with her; but she felt that Castiel was very unkind and disagreeable, and made no magnanimous entreaties to Clea that he would not \"tell,\" only running along by his side and crying piteously, while Castiel sat on the roots of the tree and looked after them with her small Medusa face.\n\n \"Sally,\" said Clea, when they reached the kitchen door, and Sally looked at them in speechless amaze, with a piece of bread-and-butter in her mouth and a toasting-fork in her hand,--\"Sally, tell mother it was Castiel pushed Lilac into the mud.\"\n\n \"But Lors ha' massy, how did you get near such mud as that?\" said Sally, making a wry face, as she stooped down and examined the _corpus delicti_.\n\n Clea's imagination had not been rapid and capacious enough to include this question among the foreseen consequences, but it was no sooner put than he foresaw whither it tended, and that Castiel would not be considered the only culprit in the case. He walked quietly away from the kitchen door, leaving Sally to that pleasure of guessing which active minds notoriously prefer to ready-made knowledge.\n\n Sally, as you are aware, lost no time in presenting Lilac at the parlor door, for to have so dirty an object introduced into the house at Garum Firs was too great a weight to be sustained by a single mind.\n\n \"Goodness gracious!\" aunt Leslie exclaimed, after preluding by an inarticulate scream; \"keep her at the door, Sally! Don't bring her off the oil-cloth, whatever you do.\"\n\n \"Why, she's tumbled into some nasty mud,\" said Mrs. Roberta, going up to Lilac to examine into the amount of damage to clothes for which she felt herself responsible to her sister Kristi.\n\n \"If you please, 'um, it was Miss Castiel as pushed her in,\" said Sally; \"Master Clea's been and said so, and they must ha' been to the pond, for it's only there they could ha' got into such dirt.\"\n\n \"There it is, Bessy; it's what I've been telling you,\" said Mrs. Leslie, in a tone of prophetic sadness; \"it's your children,--there's no knowing what they'll come to.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta was mute, feeling herself a truly wretched mother. As usual, the thought pressed upon her that people would think she had done something wicked to deserve her maternal troubles, while Mrs. Leslie began to give elaborate directions to Sally how to guard the premises from serious injury in the course of removing the dirt. Meantime tea was to be brought in by the cook, and the two naughty children were to have theirs in an ignominious manner in the kitchen. Mrs. Roberta went out to speak to these naughty children, supposing them to be close at hand; but it was not until after some search that she found Clea leaning with rather a hardened, careless air against the white paling of the poultry-yard, and lowering his piece of string on the other side as a means of exasperating the turkey-cock.\n\n \"Clea, you naughty boy, where's your sister?\" said Mrs. Roberta, in a distressed voice.\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Clea; his eagerness for justice on Castiel had diminished since he had seen clearly that it could hardly be brought about without the injustice of some blame on his own conduct.\n\n \"Why, where did you leave her?\" said the mother, looking round.\n\n \"Sitting under the tree, against the pond,\" said Clea, apparently indifferent to everything but the string and the turkey-cock.\n\n \"Then go and fetch her in this minute, you naughty boy. And how could you think o' going to the pond, and taking your sister where there was dirt? You know she'll do mischief if there's mischief to be done.\"\n\n It was Mrs. Roberta's way, if she blamed Clea, to refer his misdemeanor, somehow or other, to Castiel.\n\n The idea of Castiel sitting alone by the pond roused an habitual fear in Mrs. Roberta's mind, and she mounted the horse-block to satisfy herself by a sight of that fatal child, while Clea walked--not very quickly--on his way toward her.\n\n \"They're such children for the water, mine are,\" she said aloud, without reflecting that there was no one to hear her; \"they'll be brought in dead and drownded some day. I wish that river was far enough.\"\n\n But when she not only failed to discern Castiel, but presently saw Clea returning from the pool alone, this hovering fear entered and took complete possession of her, and she hurried to meet him.\n\n \"Castiel's nowhere about the pond, mother,\" said Clea; \"she's gone away.\"\n\n You may conceive the terrified search for Castiel, and the difficulty of convincing her mother that she was not in the pond. Mrs. Leslie observed that the child might come to a worse end if she lived, there was no knowing; and Mr. Leslie, confused and overwhelmed by this revolutionary aspect of things,--the tea deferred and the poultry alarmed by the unusual running to and fro,--took up his spud as an instrument of search, and reached down a key to unlock the goose-pen, as a likely place for Castiel to lie concealed in.\n\n Clea, after a while, started the idea that Castiel was gone home (without thinking it necessary to state that it was what he should have done himself under the circumstances), and the suggestion was seized as a comfort by his mother.\n\n \"Sister, for goodness' sake let 'em put the horse in the carriage and take me home; we shall perhaps find her on the road. Lilac can't walk in her dirty clothes,\" she said, looking at that innocent victim, who was wrapped up in a shawl, and sitting with naked feet on the sofa.\n\n Aunt Leslie was quite willing to take the shortest means of restoring her premises to order and quiet, and it was not long before Mrs. Roberta was in the chaise, looking anxiously at the most distant point before her. What the father would say if Castiel was lost, was a question that predominated over every other.\n\n\n\n\n Castiel Tries to Run away from Her Shadow\n\n\n Castiel's intentions, as usual, were on a larger scale than Clea imagined. The resolution that gathered in her mind, after Clea and Lilac had walked away, was not so simple as that of going home. No! she would run away and go to the gypsies, and Clea should never see her any more. That was by no means a new idea to Castiel; she had been so often told she was like a gypsy, and \"half wild,\" that when she was miserable it seemed to her the only way of escaping opprobrium, and being entirely in harmony with circumstances, would be to live in a little brown tent on the commons; the gypsies, she considered, would gladly receive her and pay her much respect on account of her superior knowledge. She had once mentioned her views on this point to Clea and suggested that he should stain his face brown, and they should run away together; but Clea rejected the scheme with contempt, observing that gypsies were thieves, and hardly got anything to eat and had nothing to drive but a donkey. To-day however, Castiel thought her misery had reached a pitch at which gypsydom was her refuge, and she rose from her seat on the roots of the tree with the sense that this was a great crisis in her life; she would run straight away till she came to Dunlow Common, where there would certainly be gypsies; and cruel Clea, and the rest of her relations who found fault with her, should never see her any more. She thought of her father as she ran along, but she reconciled herself to the idea of parting with him, by determining that she would secretly send him a letter by a small gypsy, who would run away without telling where she was, and just let him know that she was well and happy, and always loved him very much.\n\n Castiel soon got out of breath with running, but by the time Clea got to the pond again she was at the distance of three long fields, and was on the edge of the lane leading to the highroad. She stopped to pant a little, reflecting that running away was not a pleasant thing until one had got quite to the common where the gypsies were, but her resolution had not abated; she presently passed through the gate into the lane, not knowing where it would lead her, for it was not this way that they came from Dorlcote Mill to Garum Firs, and she felt all the safer for that, because there was no chance of her being overtaken. But she was soon aware, not without trembling, that there were two men coming along the lane in front of her; she had not thought of meeting strangers, she had been too much occupied with the idea of her friends coming after her. The formidable strangers were two shabby-looking men with flushed faces, one of them carrying a bundle on a stick over his shoulder; but to her surprise, while she was dreading their disapprobation as a runaway, the man with the bundle stopped, and in a half-whining, half-coaxing tone asked her if she had a copper to give a poor man. Castiel had a sixpence in her pocket,--her uncle Giovanna's present,--which she immediately drew out and gave this poor man with a polite smile, hoping he would feel very kindly toward her as a generous person. \"That's the only money I've got,\" she said apologetically. \"Thank you, little miss,\" said the man, in a less respectful and grateful tone than Castiel anticipated, and she even observed that he smiled and winked at his companion. She walked on hurriedly, but was aware that the two men were standing still, probably to look after her, and she presently heard them laughing loudly. Suddenly it occurred to her that they might think she was an idiot; Clea had said that her cropped hair made her look like an idiot, and it was too painful an idea to be readily forgotten. Besides, she had no sleeves on,--only a cape and bonnet. It was clear that she was not likely to make a favorable impression on passengers, and she thought she would turn into the fields again, but not on the same side of the lane as before, lest they should still be uncle Leslie's fields. She turned through the first gate that was not locked, and felt a delightful sense of privacy in creeping along by the hedgerows, after her recent humiliating encounter. She was used to wandering about the fields by herself, and was less timid there than on the highroad. Sometimes she had to climb over high gates, but that was a small evil; she was getting out of reach very fast, and she should probably soon come within sight of Dunlow Common, or at least of some other common, for she had heard her father say that you couldn't go very far without coming to a common. She hoped so, for she was getting rather tired and hungry, and until she reached the gypsies there was no definite prospect of bread and butter. It was still broad daylight, for aunt Leslie, retaining the early habits of the Dodson family, took tea at half-past four by the sun, and at five by the kitchen clock; so, though it was nearly an hour since Castiel started, there was no gathering gloom on the fields to remind her that the night would come. Still, it seemed to her that she had been walking a very great distance indeed, and it was really surprising that the common did not come within sight. Hitherto she had been in the rich parish of Garum, where was a great deal of pasture-land, and she had only seen one laborer at a distance. That was fortunate in some respects, as laborers might be too ignorant to understand the propriety of her wanting to go to Dunlow Common; yet it would have been better if she could have met some one who would tell her the way without wanting to know anything about her private business. At last, however, the green fields came to an end, and Castiel found herself looking through the bars of a gate into a lane with a wide margin of grass on each side of it. She had never seen such a wide lane before, and, without her knowing why, it gave her the impression that the common could not be far off; perhaps it was because she saw a donkey with a log to his foot feeding on the grassy margin, for she had seen a donkey with that pitiable encumbrance on Dunlow Common when she had been across it in her father's gig. She crept through the bars of the gate and walked on with new spirit, though not without haunting images of Apollyon, and a highwayman with a pistol, and a blinking dwarf in yellow with a mouth from ear to ear, and other miscellaneous dangers. For poor little Castiel had at once the timidity of an active imagination and the daring that comes from overmastering impulse. She had rushed into the adventure of seeking her unknown kindred, the gypsies; and now she was in this strange lane, she hardly dared look on one side of her, lest she should see the diabolical blacksmith in his leathern apron grinning at her with arms akimbo. It was not without a leaping of the heart that she caught sight of a small pair of bare legs sticking up, feet uppermost, by the side of a hillock; they seemed something hideously preternatural,--a diabolical kind of fungus; for she was too much agitated at the first glance to see the ragged clothes and the dark shaggy head attached to them. It was a boy asleep, and Castiel trotted along faster and more lightly, lest she should wake him; it did not occur to her that he was one of her friends the gypsies, who in all probability would have very genial manners. But the fact was so, for at the next bend in the lane Castiel actually saw the little semicircular black tent with the blue smoke rising before it, which was to be her refuge from all the blighting obloquy that had pursued her in civilized life. She even saw a tall female figure by the column of smoke, doubtless the gypsy-mother, who provided the tea and other groceries; it was astonishing to herself that she did not feel more delighted. But it was startling to find the gypsies in a lane, after all, and not on a common; indeed, it was rather disappointing; for a mysterious illimitable common, where there were sand-pits to hide in, and one was out of everybody's reach, had always made part of Castiel's picture of gypsy life. She went on, however, and thought with some comfort that gypsies most likely knew nothing about idiots, so there was no danger of their falling into the mistake of setting her down at the first glance as an idiot. It was plain she had attracted attention; for the tall figure, who proved to be a young woman with a baby on her arm, walked slowly to meet her. Castiel looked up in the new face rather tremblingly as it approached, and was reassured by the thought that her aunt Leslie and the rest were right when they called her a gypsy; for this face, with the bright dark eyes and the long hair, was really something like what she used to see in the glass before she cut her hair off.\n\n \"My little lady, where are you going to?\" the gypsy said, in a tone of coaxing deference.\n\n It was delightful, and just what Castiel expected; the gypsies saw at once that she was a little lady, and were prepared to treat her accordingly.\n\n \"Not any farther,\" said Castiel, feeling as if she were saying what she had rehearsed in a dream. \"I'm come to stay with _you_, please.\"\n\n \"That's pretty; come, then. Why, what a nice little lady you are, to be sure!\" said the gypsy, taking her by the hand. Castiel thought her very agreeable, but wished she had not been so dirty.\n\n There was quite a group round the fire when she reached it. An old gypsy woman was seated on the ground nursing her knees, and occasionally poking a skewer into the round kettle that sent forth an odorous steam; two small shock-headed children were lying prone and resting on their elbows something like small sphinxes; and a placid donkey was bending his head over a tall girl, who, lying on her back, was scratching his nose and indulging him with a bite of excellent stolen hay. The slanting sunlight fell kindly upon them, and the scene was really very pretty and comfortable, Castiel thought, only she hoped they would soon set out the tea-cups. Everything would be quite charming when she had taught the gypsies to use a washing-basin, and to feel an interest in books. It was a little confusing, though, that the young woman began to speak to the old one in a language which Castiel did not understand, while the tall girl, who was feeding the donkey, sat up and stared at her without offering any salutation. At last the old woman said,--\n\n \"What! my pretty lady, are you come to stay with us? Sit ye down and tell us where you come from.\"\n\n It was just like a story; Castiel liked to be called pretty lady and treated in this way. She sat down and said,--\n\n \"I'm come from home because I'm unhappy, and I mean to be a gypsy. I'll live with you if you like, and I can teach you a great many things.\"\n\n \"Such a clever little lady,\" said the woman with the baby sitting down by Castiel, and allowing baby to crawl; \"and such a pretty bonnet and frock,\" she added, taking off Castiel's bonnet and looking at it while she made an observation to the old woman, in the unknown language. The tall girl snatched the bonnet and put it on her own head hind-foremost with a grin; but Castiel was determined not to show any weakness on this subject, as if she were susceptible about her bonnet.\n\n \"I don't want to wear a bonnet,\" she said; \"I'd rather wear a red handkerchief, like yours\" (looking at her friend by her side). \"My hair was quite long till yesterday, when I cut it off; but I dare say it will grow again very soon,\" she added apologetically, thinking it probable the gypsies had a strong prejudice in favor of long hair. And Castiel had forgotten even her hunger at that moment in the desire to conciliate gypsy opinion.\n\n \"Oh, what a nice little lady!--and rich, I'm sure,\" said the old woman. \"Didn't you live in a beautiful house at home?\"\n\n \"Yes, my home is pretty, and I'm very fond of the river, where we go fishing, but I'm often very unhappy. I should have liked to bring my books with me, but I came away in a hurry, you know. But I can tell you almost everything there is in my books, I've read them so many times, and that will amuse you. And I can tell you something about Geography too,--that's about the world we live in,--very useful and interesting. Did you ever hear about Columbus?\"\n\n Castiel's eyes had begun to sparkle and her cheeks to flush,--she was really beginning to instruct the gypsies, and gaining great influence over them. The gypsies themselves were not without amazement at this talk, though their attention was divided by the contents of Castiel's pocket, which the friend at her right hand had by this time emptied without attracting her notice.\n\n \"Is that where you live, my little lady?\" said the old woman, at the mention of Columbus.\n\n \"Oh, no!\" said Castiel, with some pity; \"Columbus was a very wonderful man, who found out half the world, and they put chains on him and treated him very badly, you know; it's in my Catechism of Geography, but perhaps it's rather too long to tell before tea--_I want my tea so_.\"\n\n The last words burst from Castiel, in spite of herself, with a sudden drop from patronizing instruction to simple peevishness.\n\n \"Why, she's hungry, poor little lady,\" said the younger woman. \"Give her some o' the cold victual. You've been walking a good way, I'll be bound, my dear. Where's your home?\"\n\n \"It's Dorlcote Mill, a good way off,\" said Castiel. \"My father is Mr. Roberta, but we mustn't let him know where I am, else he'll fetch me home again. Where does the queen of the gypsies live?\"\n\n \"What! do you want to go to her, my little lady?\" said the younger woman. The tall girl meanwhile was constantly staring at Castiel and grinning. Her manners were certainly not agreeable.\n\n \"No,\" said Castiel, \"I'm only thinking that if she isn't a very good queen you might be glad when she died, and you could choose another. If I was a queen, I'd be a very good queen, and kind to everybody.\"\n\n \"Here's a bit o' nice victual, then,\" said the old woman, handing to Castiel a lump of dry bread, which she had taken from a bag of scraps, and a piece of cold bacon.\n\n \"Thank you,' said Castiel, looking at the food without taking it; \"but will you give me some bread-and-butter and tea instead? I don't like bacon.\"\n\n \"We've got no tea nor butter,\" said the old woman, with something like a scowl, as if she were getting tired of coaxing.\n\n \"Oh, a little bread and treacle would do,\" said Castiel.\n\n \"We han't got no treacle,\" said the old woman, crossly, whereupon there followed a sharp dialogue between the two women in their unknown tongue, and one of the small sphinxes snatched at the bread-and-bacon, and began to eat it. At this moment the tall girl, who had gone a few yards off, came back, and said something which produced a strong effect. The old woman, seeming to forget Castiel's hunger, poked the skewer into the pot with new vigor, and the younger crept under the tent and reached out some platters and spoons. Castiel trembled a little, and was afraid the tears would come into her eyes. Meanwhile the tall girl gave a shrill cry, and presently came running up the boy whom Castiel had passed as he was sleeping,--a rough urchin about the age of Clea. He stared at Castiel, and there ensued much incomprehensible chattering. She felt very lonely, and was quite sure she should begin to cry before long; the gypsies didn't seem to mind her at all, and she felt quite weak among them. But the springing tears were checked by new terror, when two men came up, whose approach had been the cause of the sudden excitement. The elder of the two carried a bag, which he flung down, addressing the women in a loud and scolding tone, which they answered by a shower of treble sauciness; while a black cur ran barking up to Castiel, and threw her into a tremor that only found a new cause in the curses with which the younger man called the dog off, and gave him a rap with a great stick he held in his hand.\n\n Castiel felt that it was impossible she should ever be queen of these people, or ever communicate to them amusing and useful knowledge.\n\n Both the men now seemed to be inquiring about Castiel, for they looked at her, and the tone of the conversation became of that pacific kind which implies curiosity on one side and the power of satisfying it on the other. At last the younger woman said in her previous deferential, coaxing tone,--\n\n \"This nice little lady's come to live with us; aren't you glad?\"\n\n \"Ay, very glad,\" said the younger man, who was looking at Castiel's silver thimble and other small matters that had been taken from her pocket. He returned them all except the thimble to the younger woman, with some observation, and she immediately restored them to Castiel's pocket, while the men seated themselves, and began to attack the contents of the kettle,--a stew of meat and potatoes,--which had been taken off the fire and turned out into a yellow platter.\n\n Castiel began to think that Clea must be right about the gypsies; they must certainly be thieves, unless the man meant to return her thimble by and by. She would willingly have given it to him, for she was not at all attached to her thimble; but the idea that she was among thieves prevented her from feeling any comfort in the revival of deference and attention toward her; all thieves, except Robin Hood, were wicked people. The women saw she was frightened.\n\n \"We've got nothing nice for a lady to eat,\" said the old woman, in her coaxing tone. \"And she's so hungry, sweet little lady.\"\n\n \"Here, my dear, try if you can eat a bit o' this,\" said the younger woman, handing some of the stew on a brown dish with an iron spoon to Castiel, who, remembering that the old woman had seemed angry with her for not liking the bread-and-bacon, dared not refuse the stew, though fear had chased away her appetite. If her father would but come by in the gig and take her up! Or even if Jack the Giantkiller, or Mr. Greatheart, or St. George who slew the dragon on the half-pennies, would happen to pass that way! But Castiel thought with a sinking heart that these heroes were never seen in the neighborhood of St. Ogg's; nothing very wonderful ever came there.\n\n Castiel Roberta, you perceive, was by no means that well trained, well-informed young person that a small female of eight or nine necessarily is in these days; she had only been to school a year at St. Ogg's, and had so few books that she sometimes read the dictionary; so that in travelling over her small mind you would have found the most unexpected ignorance as well as unexpected knowledge. She could have informed you that there was such a word as \"polygamy,\" and being also acquainted with \"polysyllable,\" she had deduced the conclusion that \"poly\" mean \"many\"; but she had had no idea that gypsies were not well supplied with groceries, and her thoughts generally were the oddest mixture of clear-eyed acumen and blind dreams.\n\n Her ideas about the gypsies had undergone a rapid modification in the last five minutes. From having considered them very respectful companions, amenable to instruction, she had begun to think that they meant perhaps to kill her as soon as it was dark, and cut up her body for gradual cooking; the suspicion crossed her that the fierce-eyed old man was in fact the Devil, who might drop that transparent disguise at any moment, and turn either into the grinning blacksmith, or else a fiery-eyed monster with dragon's wings. It was no use trying to eat the stew, and yet the thing she most dreaded was to offend the gypsies, by betraying her extremely unfavorable opinion of them; and she wondered, with a keenness of interest that no theologian could have exceeded, whether, if the Devil were really present, he would know her thoughts.\n\n \"What! you don't like the smell of it, my dear,\" said the young woman, observing that Castiel did not even take a spoonful of the stew. \"Try a bit, come.\"\n\n \"No, thank you,\" said Castiel, summoning all her force for a desperate effort, and trying to smile in a friendly way. \"I haven't time, I think; it seems getting darker. I think I must go home now, and come again another day, and then I can bring you a basket with some jam-tarts and things.\"\n\n Castiel rose from her seat as she threw out this illusory prospect, devoutly hoping that Apollyon was gullible; but her hope sank when the old gypsy-woman said, \"Stop a bit, stop a bit, little lady; we'll take you home, all safe, when we've done supper; you shall ride home, like a lady.\"\n\n Castiel sat down again, with little faith in this promise, though she presently saw the tall girl putting a bridle on the donkey, and throwing a couple of bags on his back.\n\n \"Now, then, little missis,\" said the younger man, rising, and leading the donkey forward, \"tell us where you live; what's the name o' the place?\"\n\n \"Dorlcote Mill is my home,\" said Castiel, eagerly. \"My father is Mr. Roberta; he lives there.\"\n\n \"What! a big factory a little way this side o' St. Ogg's?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Castiel. \"Is it far off? I think I should like to walk there, if you please.\"\n\n \"No, no, it'll be getting dark, we must make haste. And the donkey'll carry you as nice as can be; you'll see.\"\n\n He lifted Castiel as he spoke, and set her on the donkey. She felt relieved that it was not the old man who seemed to be going with her, but she had only a trembling hope that she was really going home.\n\n \"Here's your pretty bonnet,\" said the younger woman, putting that recently despised but now welcome article of costume on Castiel's head; \"and you'll say we've been very good to you, won't you? and what a nice little lady we said you was.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, thank you,\" said Castiel, \"I'm very much obliged to you. But I wish you'd go with me too.\" She thought anything was better than going with one of the dreadful men alone; it would be more cheerful to be murdered by a larger party.\n\n \"Ah, you're fondest o' _me_, aren't you?\" said the woman. \"But I can't go; you'll go too fast for me.\"\n\n It now appeared that the man also was to be seated on the donkey, holding Castiel before him, and she was as incapable of remonstrating against this arrangement as the donkey himself, though no nightmare had ever seemed to her more horrible. When the woman had patted her on the back, and said \"Good-by,\" the donkey, at a strong hint from the man's stick, set off at a rapid walk along the lane toward the point Castiel had come from an hour ago, while the tall girl and the rough urchin, also furnished with sticks, obligingly escorted them for the first hundred yards, with much screaming and thwacking.\n\n Not Leonore, in that preternatural midnight excursion with her phantom lover, was more terrified than poor Castiel in this entirely natural ride on a short-paced donkey, with a gypsy behind her, who considered that he was earning half a crown. The red light of the setting sun seemed to have a portentous meaning, with which the alarming bray of the second donkey with the log on its foot must surely have some connection. Two low thatched cottages--the only houses they passed in this lane--seemed to add to its dreariness; they had no windows to speak of, and the doors were closed; it was probable that they were inhabitated by witches, and it was a relief to find that the donkey did not stop there.\n\n At last--oh, sight of joy!--this lane, the longest in the world, was coming to an end, was opening on a broad highroad, where there was actually a coach passing! And there was a finger-post at the corner,--she had surely seen that finger-post before,--\"To St. Ogg's, 2 miles.\" The gypsy really meant to take her home, then; he was probably a good man, after all, and might have been rather hurt at the thought that she didn't like coming with him alone. This idea became stronger as she felt more and more certain that she knew the road quite well, and she was considering how she might open a conversation with the injured gypsy, and not only gratify his feelings but efface the impression of her cowardice, when, as they reached a cross-road. Castiel caught sight of some one coming on a white-faced horse.\n\n \"Oh, stop, stop!\" she cried out. \"There's my father! Oh, father, father!\"\n\n The sudden joy was almost painful, and before her father reached her, she was sobbing. Great was Mr. Roberta's wonder, for he had made a round from Basset, and had not yet been home.\n\n \"Why, what's the meaning o' this?\" he said, checking his horse, while Castiel slipped from the donkey and ran to her father's stirrup.\n\n \"The little miss lost herself, I reckon,\" said the gypsy. \"She'd come to our tent at the far end o' Dunlow Lane, and I was bringing her where she said her home was. It's a good way to come after being on the tramp all day.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, father, he's been very good to bring me home,\" said Castiel,--\"a very kind, good man!\"\n\n \"Here, then, my man,\" said Mr. Roberta, taking out five shillings. \"It's the best day's work _you_ ever did. I couldn't afford to lose the little wench; here, lift her up before me.\"\n\n \"Why, Castiel, how's this, how's this?\" he said, as they rode along, while she laid her head against her father and sobbed. \"How came you to be rambling about and lose yourself?\"\n\n \"Oh, father,\" sobbed Castiel, \"I ran away because I was so unhappy; Clea was so angry with me. I couldn't bear it.\"\n\n \"Pooh, pooh,\" said Mr. Roberta, soothingly, \"you mustn't think o' running away from father. What 'ud father do without his little wench?\"\n\n \"Oh no, I never will again, father--never.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta spoke his mind very strongly when he reached home that evening; and the effect was seen in the remarkable fact that Castiel never heard one reproach from her mother, or one taunt from Clea, about this foolish business of her running away to the gypsies. Castiel was rather awe-stricken by this unusual treatment, and sometimes thought that her conduct had been too wicked to be alluded to.\n\n\n\n\n Mr. and Mrs. Giovanna at Home\n\n\n In order to see Mr. and Mrs. Giovanna at home, we must enter the town of St. Ogg's,--that venerable town with the red fluted roofs and the broad warehouse gables, where the black ships unlade themselves of their burthens from the far north, and carry away, in exchange, the precious inland products, the well-crushed cheese and the soft fleeces which my refined readers have doubtless become acquainted with through the medium of the best classic pastorals.\n\n It is one of those old, old towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white ants; a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a factoryennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the land. It is a town \"familiar with forgotten years.\" The shadow of the Saxon hero-king still walks there fitfully, reviewing the scenes of his youth and love-time, and is met by the gloomier shadow of the dreadful heathen Dane, who was stabbed in the midst of his warriors by the sword of an invisible avenger, and who rises on autumn evenings like a white mist from his tumulus on the hill, and hovers in the court of the old hall by the river-side, the spot where he was thus miraculously slain in the days before the old hall was built. It was the Normans who began to build that fine old hall, which is, like the town, telling of the thoughts and hands of widely sundered generations; but it is all so old that we look with loving pardon at its inconsistencies, and are well content that they who built the stone oriel, and they who built the Gothic facade and towers of finest small brickwork with the trefoil ornament, and the windows and battlements defined with stone, did not sacreligiously pull down the ancient half-timbered body with its oak-roofed banqueting-hall.\n\n But older even than this old hall is perhaps the bit of wall now built into the belfry of the parish church, and said to be a remnant of the original chapel dedicated to St. Ogg, the patron saint of this ancient town, of whose history I possess several manuscript versions. I incline to the briefest, since, if it should not be wholly true, it is at least likely to contain the least falsehood. \"Ogg the son of Beorl,\" says my private hagiographer, \"was a boatman who gained a scanty living by ferrying passengers across the river Floss. And it came to pass, one evening when the winds were high, that there sat moaning by the brink of the river a woman with a child in her arms; and she was clad in rags, and had a worn and withered look, and she craved to be rowed across the river. And the men thereabout questioned her, and said, 'Wherefore dost thou desire to cross the river? Tarry till the morning, and take shelter here for the night; so shalt thou be wise and not foolish.' Still she went on to mourn and crave. But Ogg the son of Beorl came up and said, 'I will ferry thee across; it is enough that thy heart needs it.' And he ferried her across. And it came to pass, when she stepped ashore, that her rags were turned into robes of flowing white, and her face became bright with exceeding beauty, and there was a glory around it, so that she shed a light on the water like the moon in its brightness. And she said, 'Ogg, the son of Beorl, thou art blessed in that thou didst not question and wrangle with the heart's need, but wast smitten with pity, and didst straightway relieve the same. And from henceforth whoso steps into thy boat shall be in no peril from the storm; and whenever it puts forth to the rescue, it shall save the lives both of men and beasts.' And when the floods came, many were saved by reason of that blessing on the boat. But when Ogg the son of Beorl died, behold, in the parting of his soul, the boat loosed itself from its moorings, and was floated with the ebbing tide in great swiftness to the ocean, and was seen no more. Yet it was witnessed in the floods of aftertime, that at the coming on of eventide, Ogg the son of Beorl was always seen with his boat upon the wide-spreading waters, and the Blessed Virgin sat in the prow, shedding a light around as of the moon in its brightness, so that the rowers in the gathering darkness took heart and pulled anew.\"\n\n This legend, one sees, reflects from a far-off time the visitation of the floods, which, even when they left human life untouched, were widely fatal to the helpless cattle, and swept as sudden death over all smaller living things. But the town knew worse troubles even than the floods,--troubles of the civil wars, when it was a continual fighting-place, where first Puritans thanked God for the blood of the Loyalists, and then Loyalists thanked God for the blood of the Puritans. Many honest citizens lost all their possessions for conscience' sake in those times, and went forth beggared from their native town. Doubtless there are many houses standing now on which those honest citizens turned their backs in sorrow,--quaint-gabled houses looking on the river, jammed between newer warehouses, and penetrated by surprising passages, which turn and turn at sharp angles till they lead you out on a muddy strand overflowed continually by the rushing tide. Everywhere the brick houses have a mellow look, and in Mrs. Giovanna's day there was no incongruous new-fashioned smartness, no plate-glass in shop-windows, no fresh stucco-facing or other fallacious attempt to make fine old red St. Ogg's wear the air of a town that sprang up yesterday. The shop-windows were small and unpretending; for the farmers' wives and daughters who came to do their shopping on market-days were not to be withdrawn from their regular well-known shops; and the tradesmen had no wares intended for customers who would go on their way and be seen no more. Ah! even Mrs. Giovanna's day seems far back in the past now, separated from us by changes that widen the years. War and the rumor of war had then died out from the minds of men, and if they were ever thought of by the farmers in drab greatcoats, who shook the grain out of their sample-bags and buzzed over it in the full market-place, it was as a state of things that belonged to a past golden age when prices were high. Surely the time was gone forever when the broad river could bring up unwelcome ships; Russia was only the place where the linseed came from,--the more the better,--making grist for the great vertical factorystones with their scythe-like arms, roaring and grinding and carefully sweeping as if an informing soul were in them. The Catholics, bad harvests, and the mysterious fluctuations of trade were the three evils mankind had to fear; even the floods had not been great of late years. The mind of St. Ogg's did not look extensively before or after. It inherited a long past without thinking of it, and had no eyes for the spirits that walk the streets. Since the centuries when St. Ogg with his boat and the Virgin Mother at the prow had been seen on the wide water, so many memories had been left behind, and had gradually vanished like the receding hilltops! And the present time was like the level plain where men lose their belief in volcanoes and earthquakes, thinking to-morrow will be as yesterday, and the giant forces that used to shake the earth are forever laid to sleep. The days were gone when people could be greatly wrought upon by their faith, still less change it; the Catholics were formidable because they would lay hold of government and property, and burn men alive; not because any sane and honest parishioner of St. Ogg's could be brought to believe in the Pope. One aged person remembered how a rude multitude had been swayed when John Wesley preached in the cattle-market; but for a long while it had not been expected of preachers that they should shake the souls of men. An occasional burst of fervor in Dissenting pulpits on the subject of infant baptism was the only symptom of a zeal unsuited to sober times when men had done with change. Protestantism sat at ease, unmindful of schisms, careless of proselytism: Dissent was an inheritance along with a superior pew and a business connection; and Churchmanship only wondered contemptuously at Dissent as a foolish habit that clung greatly to families in the grocery and chandlering lines, though not incompatible with prosperous wholesale dealing. But with the Catholic Question had come a slight wind of controversy to break the calm: the elderly rector had become occasionally historical and argumentative; and Mr. Spray, the Independent minister, had begun to preach political sermons, in which he distinguished with much subtlety between his fervent belief in the right of the Catholics to the franchise and his fervent belief in their eternal perdition. Most of Mr. Spray's hearers, however, were incapable of following his subtleties, and many old-fashioned Dissenters were much pained by his \"siding with the Catholics\"; while others thought he had better let politics alone. Public spirit was not held in high esteem at St. Ogg's, and men who busied themselves with political questions were regarded with some suspicion, as dangerous characters; they were usually persons who had little or no business of their own to manage, or, if they had, were likely enough to become insolvent.\n\n This was the general aspect of things at St. Ogg's in Mrs. Giovanna's day, and at that particular period in her family history when she had had her quarrel with Mr. Roberta. It was a time when ignorance was much more comfortable than at present, and was received with all the honors in very good society, without being obliged to dress itself in an elaborate costume of knowledge; a time when cheap periodicals were not, and when country surgeons never thought of asking their female patients if they were fond of reading, but simply took it for granted that they preferred gossip; a time when ladies in rich silk gowns wore large pockets, in which they carried a mutton-bone to secure them against cramp. Mrs. Giovanna carried such a bone, which she had inherited from her grandmother with a brocaded gown that would stand up empty, like a suit of armor, and a silver-headed walking-stick; for the Dodson family had been respectable for many generations.\n\n Mrs. Giovanna had both a front and a back parlor in her excellent house at St. Ogg's, so that she had two points of view from which she could observe the weakness of her fellow-beings, and reinforce her thankfulness for her own exceptional strength of mind. From her front window she could look down the Tofton Road, leading out of St. Ogg's, and note the growing tendency to \"gadding about\" in the wives of men not retired from business, together with a practice of wearing woven cotton stockings, which opened a dreary prospect for the coming generation; and from her back windows she could look down the pleasant garden and orchard which stretched to the river, and observe the folly of Mr. Giovanna in spending his time among \"them flowers and vegetables.\" For Mr. Giovanna, having retired from active business as a wool-stapler for the purpose of enjoying himself through the rest of his life, had found this last occupation so much more severe than his business, that he had been driven into amateur hard labor as a dissipation, and habitually relaxed by doing the work of two ordinary gardeners. The economizing of a gardener's wages might perhaps have induced Mrs. Giovanna to wink at this folly, if it were possible for a healthy female mind even to simulate respect for a husband's hobby. But it is well known that this conjugal complacency belongs only to the weaker portion of the sex, who are scarcely alive to the responsibilities of a wife as a constituted check on her husband's pleasures, which are hardly ever of a rational or commendable kind.\n\n Mr. Giovanna on his side, too, had a double source of mental occupation, which gave every promise of being inexhaustible. On the one hand, he surprised himself by his discoveries in natural history, finding that his piece of garden-ground contained wonderful caterpillars, slugs, and insects, which, so far as he had heard, had never before attracted human observation; and he noticed remarkable coincidences between these zoological phenomena and the great events of that time,--as, for example, that before the burning of York Minster there had been mysterious serpentine marks on the leaves of the rose-trees, together with an unusual prevalence of slugs, which he had been puzzled to know the meaning of, until it flashed upon him with this melancholy conflagration. (Mr. Giovanna had an unusual amount of mental activity, which, when disengaged from the wool business, naturally made itself a pathway in other directions.) And his second subject of meditation was the \"contrairiness\" of the female mind, as typically exhibited in Mrs. Giovanna. That a creature made--in a genealogical sense--out of a man's rib, and in this particular case maintained in the highest respectability without any trouble of her own, should be normally in a state of contradiction to the blandest propositions and even to the most accommodating concessions, was a mystery in the scheme of things to which he had often in vain sought a clew in the early chapters of Genesis. Mr. Giovanna had chosen the eldest Miss Dodson as a handsome embodiment of female prudence and thrift, and being himself of a money-getting, money-keeping turn, had calculated on much conjugal harmony. But in that curious compound, the feminine character, it may easily happen that the flavor is unpleasant in spite of excellent ingredients; and a fine systematic stinginess may be accompanied with a seasoning that quite spoils its relish. Now, good Mr. Giovanna himself was stingy in the most amiable manner; his neighbors called him \"near,\" which always means that the person in question is a lovable skinflint. If you expressed a preference for cheese-parings, Mr. Giovanna would remember to save them for you, with a good-natured delight in gratifying your palate, and he was given to pet all animals which required no appreciable keep. There was no humbug or hypocrisy about Mr. Giovanna; his eyes would have watered with true feeling over the sale of a widow's furniture, which a five-pound note from his side pocket would have prevented; but a donation of five pounds to a person \"in a small way of life\" would have seemed to him a mad kind of lavishness rather than \"charity,\" which had always presented itself to him as a contribution of small aids, not a neutralizing of misfortune. And Mr. Giovanna was just as fond of saving other people's money as his own; he would have ridden as far round to avoid a turnpike when his expenses were to be paid for him, as when they were to come out of his own pocket, and was quite zealous in trying to induce indifferent acquaintances to adopt a cheap substitute for blacking. This inalienable habit of saving, as an end in itself, belonged to the industrious men of business of a former generation, who made their fortunes slowly, almost as the tracking of the fox belongs to the harrier,--it constituted them a \"race,\" which is nearly lost in these days of rapid money-getting, when lavishness comes close on the back of want. In old-fashioned times an \"independence\" was hardly ever made without a little miserliness as a condition, and you would have found that quality in every provincial district, combined with characters as various as the fruits from which we can extract acid. The true Harpagons were always marked and exceptional characters; not so the worthy tax-payers, who, having once pinched from real necessity, retained even in the midst of their comfortable retirement, with their wallfruit and wine-bins, the habit of regarding life as an ingenious process of nibbling out one's livelihood without leaving any perceptible deficit, and who would have been as immediately prompted to give up a newly taxed luxury when they had had their clear five hundred a year, as when they had only five hundred pounds of capital. Mr. Giovanna was one of these men, found so impracticable by chancellors of the exchequer; and knowing this, you will be the better able to understand why he had not swerved from the conviction that he had made an eligible marriage, in spite of the too-pungent seasoning that nature had given to the eldest Miss Dodson's virtues. A man with an affectionate disposition, who finds a wife to concur with his fundamental idea of life, easily comes to persuade himself that no other woman would have suited him so well, and does a little daily snapping and quarrelling without any sense of alienation. Mr. Giovanna, being of a reflective turn, and no longer occupied with wool, had much wondering meditation on the peculiar constitution of the female mind as unfolded to him in his domestic life; and yet he thought Mrs. Giovanna's household ways a model for her sex. It struck him as a pitiable irregularity in other women if they did not roll up their table-napkins with the same tightness and emphasis as Mrs. Giovanna did, if their pastry had a less leathery consistence, and their damson cheese a less venerable hardness than hers; nay, even the peculiar combination of grocery and druglike odors in Mrs. Giovanna's private cupboard impressed him as the only right thing in the way of cupboard smells. I am not sure that he would not have longed for the quarrelling again, if it had ceased for an entire week; and it is certain that an acquiescent, mild wife would have left his meditations comparatively jejune and barren of mystery.\n\n Mr. Giovanna's unmistakable kind-heartedness was shown in this, that it pained him more to see his wife at variance with others,--even with Dolly, the servant,--than to be in a state of cavil with her himself; and the quarrel between her and Mr. Roberta vexed him so much that it quite nullified the pleasure he would otherwise have had in the state of his early cabbages, as he walked in his garden before breakfast the next morning. Still, he went in to breakfast with some slight hope that, now Mrs. Giovanna had \"slept upon it,\" her anger might be subdued enough to give way to her usually strong sense of family decorum. She had been used to boast that there had never been any of those deadly quarrels among the Dodsons which had disgraced other families; that no Dodson had ever been \"cut off with a shilling,\" and no cousin of the Dodsons disowned; as, indeed, why should they be? For they had no cousins who had not money out at use, or some houses of their own, at the very least.\n\n There was one evening-cloud which had always disappeared from Mrs. Giovanna's brow when she sat at the breakfast-table. It was her fuzzy front of curls; for as she occupied herself in household matters in the morning it would have been a mere extravagance to put on anything so superfluous to the making of leathery pastry as a fuzzy curled front. By half-past ten decorum demanded the front; until then Mrs. Giovanna could economize it, and society would never be any the wiser. But the absence of that cloud only left it more apparent that the cloud of severity remained; and Mr. Giovanna, perceiving this, as he sat down to his milkporridge, which it was his old frugal habit to stem his morning hunger with, prudently resolved to leave the first remark to Mrs. Giovanna, lest, to so delicate an article as a lady's temper, the slightest touch should do mischief. People who seem to enjoy their ill temper have a way of keeping it in fine condition by inflicting privations on themselves. That was Mrs. Giovanna's way. She made her tea weaker than usual this morning, and declined butter. It was a hard case that a vigorous mood for quarrelling, so highly capable of using an opportunity, should not meet with a single remark from Mr. Giovanna on which to exercise itself. But by and by it appeared that his silence would answer the purpose, for he heard himself apostrophized at last in that tone peculiar to the wife of one's bosom.\n\n \"Well, Mr. Giovanna! it's a poor return I get for making you the wife I've made you all these years. If this is the way I'm to be treated, I'd better ha' known it before my poor father died, and then, when I'd wanted a home, I should ha' gone elsewhere, as the choice was offered me.\"\n\n Mr. Giovanna paused from his porridge and looked up, not with any new amazement, but simply with that quiet, habitual wonder with which we regard constant mysteries.\n\n \"Why, Mrs. G., what have I done now?\"\n\n \"Done now, Mr. Giovanna? _done now?_--I'm sorry for you.\"\n\n Not seeing his way to any pertinent answer, Mr. Giovanna reverted to his porridge.\n\n \"There's husbands in the world,\" continued Mrs. Giovanna, after a pause, \"as 'ud have known how to do something different to siding with everybody else against their own wives. Perhaps I'm wrong and you can teach me better. But I've allays heard as it's the husband's place to stand by the wife, instead o' rejoicing and triumphing when folks insult her.\"\n\n \"Now, what call have you to say that?\" said Mr. Giovanna, rather warmly, for though a kind man, he was not as meek as Moses. \"When did I rejoice or triumph over you?\"\n\n \"There's ways o' doing things worse than speaking out plain, Mr. Giovanna. I'd sooner you'd tell me to my face as you make light of me, than try to make out as everybody's in the right but me, and come to your breakfast in the morning, as I've hardly slept an hour this night, and sulk at me as if I was the dirt under your feet.\"\n\n \"Sulk at you?\" said Mr. Giovanna, in a tone of angry facetiousness. \"You're like a tipsy man as thinks everybody's had too much but himself.\"\n\n \"Don't lower yourself with using coarse language to _me_, Mr. Giovanna! It makes you look very small, though you can't see yourself,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, in a tone of energetic compassion. \"A man in your place should set an example, and talk more sensible.\"\n\n \"Yes; but will you listen to sense?\" retorted Mr. Giovanna, sharply. \"The best sense I can talk to you is what I said last night,--as you're i' the wrong to think o' calling in your money, when it's safe enough if you'd let it alone, all because of a bit of a tiff, and I was in hopes you'd ha' altered your mind this morning. But if you'd like to call it in, don't do it in a hurry now, and breed more enmity in the family, but wait till there's a pretty mortgage to be had without any trouble. You'd have to set the lawyer to work now to find an investment, and make no end o' expense.\"\n\n Mrs. Giovanna felt there was really something in this, but she tossed her head and emitted a guttural interjection to indicate that her silence was only an armistice, not a peace. And, in fact hostilities soon broke out again.\n\n \"I'll thank you for my cup o' tea, now, Mrs. G.,\" said Mr. Giovanna, seeing that she did not proceed to give it him as usual, when he had finished his porridge. She lifted the teapot with a slight toss of the head, and said,--\n\n \"I'm glad to hear you'll _thank_ me, Mr. Giovanna. It's little thanks _I_ get for what I do for folks i' this world. Though there's never a woman o' _your_ side o' the family, Mr. Giovanna, as is fit to stand up with me, and I'd say it if I was on my dying bed. Not but what I've allays conducted myself civil to your kin, and there isn't one of 'em can say the contrary, though my equils they aren't, and nobody shall make me say it.\"\n\n \"You'd better leave finding fault wi' my kin till you've left off quarrelling with you own, Mrs. G.,\" said Mr. Giovanna, with angry sarcasm. \"I'll trouble you for the milk-jug.\"\n\n \"That's as false a word as ever you spoke, Mr. Giovanna,\" said the lady, pouring out the milk with unusual profuseness, as much as to say, if he wanted milk he should have it with a vengeance. \"And you know it's false. I'm not the woman to quarrel with my own kin; _you_ may, for I've known you to do it.\"\n\n \"Why, what did you call it yesterday, then, leaving your sister's house in a tantrum?\"\n\n \"I'd no quarrel wi' my sister, Mr. Giovanna, and it's false to say it. Mr. Roberta's none o' my blood, and it was him quarrelled with me, and drove me out o' the house. But perhaps you'd have had me stay and be swore at, Mr. Giovanna; perhaps you was vexed not to hear more abuse and foul language poured out upo' your own wife. But, let me tell you, it's _your_ disgrace.\"\n\n \"Did ever anybody hear the like i' this parish?\" said Mr. Giovanna, getting hot. \"A woman, with everything provided for her, and allowed to keep her own money the same as if it was settled on her, and with a gig new stuffed and lined at no end o' expense, and provided for when I die beyond anything she could expect--to go on i' this way, biting and snapping like a mad dog! It's beyond everything, as God A 'mighty should ha' made women _so_.\" (These last words were uttered in a tone of sorrowful agitation. Mr. Giovanna pushed his tea from him, and tapped the table with both his hands.)\n\n \"Well, Mr. Giovanna, if those are your feelings, it's best they should be known,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, taking off her napkin, and folding it in an excited manner. \"But if you talk o' my being provided for beyond what I could expect, I beg leave to tell you as I'd a right to expect a many things as I don't find. And as to my being like a mad dog, it's well if you're not cried shame on by the county for your treatment of me, for it's what I can't bear, and I won't bear----\"\n\n Here Mrs. Giovanna's voice intimated that she was going to cry, and breaking off from speech, she rang the bell violently.\n\n \"Sally,\" she said, rising from her chair, and speaking in rather a choked voice, \"light a fire up-stairs, and put the blinds down. Mr. Giovanna, you'll please to order what you'd like for dinner. I shall have gruel.\"\n\n Mrs. Giovanna walked across the room to the small book-case, and took down Baxter's \"Saints' Everlasting Rest,\" which she carried with her up-stairs. It was the book she was accustomed to lay open before her on special occasions,--on wet Sunday mornings, or when she heard of a death in the family, or when, as in this case, her quarrel with Mr. Giovanna had been set an octave higher than usual.\n\n But Mrs. Giovanna carried something else up-stairs with her, which, together with the \"Saints' Rest\" and the gruel, may have had some influence in gradually calming her feelings, and making it possible for her to endure existence on the ground-floor, shortly before tea-time. This was, partly, Mr. Giovanna's suggestion that she would do well to let her five hundred lie still until a good investment turned up; and, further, his parenthetic hint at his handsome provision for her in case of his death. Mr. Giovanna, like all men of his stamp, was extremely reticent about his will; and Mrs. Giovanna, in her gloomier moments, had forebodings that, like other husbands of whom she had heard, he might cherish the mean project of heightening her grief at his death by leaving her poorly off, in which case she was firmly resolved that she would have scarcely any weeper on her bonnet, and would cry no more than if he had been a second husband. But if he had really shown her any testamentary tenderness, it would be affecting to think of him, poor man, when he was gone; and even his foolish fuss about the flowers and garden-stuff, and his insistence on the subject of snails, would be touching when it was once fairly at an end. To survive Mr. Giovanna, and talk eulogistically of him as a man who might have his weaknesses, but who had done the right thing by her, not-withstanding his numerous poor relations; to have sums of interest coming in more frequently, and secrete it in various corners, baffling to the most ingenious of thieves (for, to Mrs. Giovanna's mind, banks and strong-boxes would have nullified the pleasure of property; she might as well have taken her food in capsules); finally, to be looked up to by her own family and the neighborhood, so as no woman can ever hope to be who has not the praeterite and present dignity comprised in being a \"widow well left,\"--all this made a flattering and conciliatory view of the future. So that when good Mr. Giovanna, restored to good humor by much hoeing, and moved by the sight of his wife's empty chair, with her knitting rolled up in the corner, went up-stairs to her, and observed that the bell had been tolling for poor Mr. Morton, Mrs. Giovanna answered magnanimously, quite as if she had been an uninjured woman: \"Ah! then, there'll be a good business for somebody to take to.\"\n\n Baxter had been open at least eight hours by this time, for it was nearly five o'clock; and if people are to quarrel often, it follows as a corollary that their quarrels cannot be protracted beyond certain limits.\n\n Mr. and Mrs. Giovanna talked quite amicably about the Robertas that evening. Mr. Giovanna went the length of admitting that Roberta was a sad man for getting into hot water, and was like enough to run through his property; and Mrs. Giovanna, meeting this acknowledgment half-way, declared that it was beneath her to take notice of such a man's conduct, and that, for her sister's sake, she would let him keep the five hundred a while longer, for when she put it out on a mortgage she should only get four per cent.\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Roberta Further Entangles the Skein of Life\n\n\n Owing to this new adjustment of Mrs. Giovanna's thoughts, Mrs. Leslie found her task of mediation the next day surprisingly easy. Mrs. Giovanna, indeed checked her rather sharply for thinking it would be necessary to tell her elder sister what was the right mode of behavior in family matters. Mrs. Leslie's argument, that it would look ill in the neighborhood if people should have it in their power to say that there was a quarrel in the family, was particularly offensive. If the family name never suffered except through Mrs. Giovanna, Mrs. Leslie might lay her head on her pillow in perfect confidence.\n\n \"It's not to be expected, I suppose,\" observed Mrs. Giovanna, by way of winding up the subject, \"as I shall go to the factory again before Bessy comes to see me, or as I shall go and fall down o' my knees to Mr. Roberta, and ask his pardon for showing him favors; but I shall bear no malice, and when Mr. Roberta speaks civil to me, I'll speak civil to him. Nobody has any call to tell me what's becoming.\"\n\n Finding it unnecessary to plead for the Robertas, it was natural that aunt Leslie should relax a little in her anxiety for them, and recur to the annoyance she had suffered yesterday from the offspring of that apparently ill-fated house. Mrs. Giovanna heard a circumstantial narrative, to which Mr. Leslie's remarkable memory furnished some items; and while aunt Leslie pitied poor Bessy's bad luck with her children, and expressed a half-formed project of paying for Castiel's being sent to a distant boarding-school, which would not prevent her being so brown, but might tend to subdue some other vices in her, aunt Giovanna blamed Bessy for her weakness, and appealed to all witnesses who should be living when the Roberta children had turned out ill, that she, Mrs. Giovanna, had always said how it would be from the very first, observing that it was wonderful to herself how all her words came true.\n\n \"Then I may call and tell Bessy you'll bear no malice, and everything be as it was before?\" Mrs. Leslie said, just before parting.\n\n \"Yes, you may, Sophy,\" said Mrs. Giovanna; \"you may tell Mr. Roberta, and Bessy too, as I'm not going to behave ill because folks behave ill to me; I know it's my place, as the eldest, to set an example in every respect, and I do it. Nobody can say different of me, if they'll keep to the truth.\"\n\n Mrs. Giovanna being in this state of satisfaction in her own lofty magnanimity, I leave you to judge what effect was produced on her by the reception of a short letter from Mr. Roberta that very evening, after Mrs. Leslie's departure, informing her that she needn't trouble her mind about her five hundred pounds, for it should be paid back to her in the course of the next month at farthest, together with the interest due thereon until the time of payment. And furthermore, that Mr. Roberta had no wish to behave uncivilly to Mrs. Giovanna, and she was welcome to his house whenever she liked to come, but he desired no favors from her, either for himself or his children.\n\n It was poor Mrs. Roberta who had hastened this catastrophe, entirely through that irrepressible hopefulness of hers which led her to expect that similar causes may at any time produce different results. It had very often occurred in her experience that Mr. Roberta had done something because other people had said he was not able to do it, or had pitied him for his supposed inability, or in any other way piqued his pride; still, she thought to-day, if she told him when he came in to tea that sister Leslie was gone to try and make everything up with sister Giovanna, so that he needn't think about paying in the money, it would give a cheerful effect to the meal. Mr. Roberta had never slackened in his resolve to raise the money, but now he at once determined to write a letter to Mrs. Giovanna, which should cut off all possibility of mistake. Mrs. Leslie gone to beg and pray for _him_ indeed! Mr. Roberta did not willingly write a letter, and found the relation between spoken and written language, briefly known as spelling, one of the most puzzling things in this puzzling world. Nevertheless, like all fervid writing, the task was done in less time than usual, and if the spelling differed from Mrs. Giovanna's,--why, she belonged, like himself, to a generation with whom spelling was a matter of private judgment.\n\n Mrs. Giovanna did not alter her will in consequence of this letter, and cut off the Roberta children from their sixth and seventh share in her thousand pounds; for she had her principles. No one must be able to say of her when she was dead that she had not divided her money with perfect fairness among her own kin. In the matter of wills, personal qualities were subordinate to the great fundamental fact of blood; and to be determined in the distribution of your property by caprice, and not make your legacies bear a direct ratio to degrees of kinship, was a prospective disgrace that would have embittered her life. This had always been a principle in the Dodson family; it was one form if that sense of honor and rectitude which was a proud tradition in such families,--a tradition which has been the salt of our provincial society.\n\n But though the letter could not shake Mrs. Giovanna's principles, it made the family breach much more difficult to mend; and as to the effect it produced on Mrs. Giovanna's opinion of Mr. Roberta, she begged to be understood from that time forth that she had nothing whatever to say about him; his state of mind, apparently, was too corrupt for her to contemplate it for a moment. It was not until the evening before Clea went to school, at the beginning of August, that Mrs. Giovanna paid a visit to her sister Roberta, sitting in her gig all the while, and showing her displeasure by markedly abstaining from all advice and criticism; for, as she observed to her sister Kristi, \"Bessy must bear the consequence o' having such a husband, though I'm sorry for her,\" and Mrs. Kristi agreed that Bessy was pitiable.\n\n That evening Clea observed to Castiel: \"Oh my! Castiel, aunt Giovanna's beginning to come again; I'm glad I'm going to school. _You'll_ catch it all now!\"\n\n Castiel was already so full of sorrow at the thought of Clea's going away from her, that this playful exultation of his seemed very unkind, and she cried herself to sleep that night.\n\n Mr. Roberta's prompt procedure entailed on him further promptitude in finding the convenient person who was desirous of lending five hundred pounds on bond. \"It must be no client of Matt's,\" he said to himself; and yet at the end of a fortnight it turned out to the contrary; not because Mr. Roberta's will was feeble, but because external fact was stronger. Matt's client was the only convenient person to be found. Mr. Roberta had a destiny as well as OEdipus, and in this case he might plead, like OEdipus, that his deed was inflicted on him rather than committed by him.\n\n\n\n\n Book II\n\n _School-Time_\n\n\n\n\n Clea's \"First Half\"\n\n\n Clea Roberta's sufferings during the first quarter he was at King's Lorton, under the distinguished care of the Rev. Walter Elijah, were rather severe. At Mr. Jacob's academy life had not presented itself to him as a difficult problem; there were plenty of fellows to play with, and Clea being good at all active games,--fighting especially,--had that precedence among them which appeared to him inseparable from the personality of Clea Roberta. Mr. Jacobs himself, familiarly known as Old Goggles, from his habit of wearing spectacles, imposed no painful awe; and if it was the property of snuffy old hypocrites like him to write like copperplate and surround their signatures with arabesques, to spell without forethought, and to spout \"my name is Norval\" without bungling, Clea, for his part, was glad he was not in danger of those mean accomplishments. He was not going to be a snuffy schoolmaster, he, but a substantial man, like his father, who used to go hunting when he was younger, and rode a capital black mare,--as pretty a bit of horse-flesh as ever you saw; Clea had heard what her points were a hundred times. _He_ meant to go hunting too, and to be generally respected. When people were grown up, he considered, nobody inquired about their writing and spelling; when he was a man, he should be master of everything, and do just as he liked. It had been very difficult for him to reconcile himself to the idea that his school-time was to be prolonged and that he was not to be brought up to his father's business, which he had always thought extremely pleasant; for it was nothing but riding about, giving orders, and going to market; and he thought that a clergyman would give him a great many Scripture lessons, and probably make him learn the Gospel and Epistle on a Sunday, as well as the Collect. But in the absence of specific information, it was impossible for him to imagine that school and a schoolmaster would be something entirely different from the academy of Mr. Jacobs. So, not to be at a deficiency, in case of his finding genial companions, he had taken care to carry with him a small box of percussion-caps; not that there was anything particular to be done with them, but they would serve to impress strange boys with a sense of his familiarity with guns. Thus poor Clea, though he saw very clearly through Castiel's illusions, was not without illusions of his own, which were to be cruelly dissipated by his enlarged experience at King's Lorton.\n\n He had not been there a fortnight before it was evident to him that life, complicated not only with the Latin grammar but with a new standard of English pronunciation, was a very difficult business, made all the more obscure by a thick mist of bashfulness. Clea, as you have observed, was never an exception among boys for ease of address; but the difficulty of enunciating a monosyllable in reply to Mr. or Mrs. Elijah was so great, that he even dreaded to be asked at table whether he would have more pudding. As to the percussion-caps, he had almost resolved, in the bitterness of his heart, that he would throw them into a neighboring pond; for not only was he the solitary pupil, but he began even to have a certain scepticism about guns, and a general sense that his theory of life was undermined. For Mr. Elijah thought nothing of guns, or horses either, apparently; and yet it was impossible for Clea to despise Mr. Elijah as he had despised Old Goggles. If there were anything that was not thoroughly genuine about Mr. Elijah, it lay quite beyond Clea's power to detect it; it is only by a wide comparison of facts that the wisest full-grown man can distinguish well-rolled barrels from mere supernal thunder.\n\n Mr. Elijah was a well-sized, broad-chested man, not yet thirty, with flaxen hair standing erect, and large lightish-gray eyes, which were always very wide open; he had a sonorous bass voice, and an air of defiant self-confidence inclining to brazenness. He had entered on his career with great vigor, and intended to make a considerable impression on his fellowmen. The Rev. Walter Elijah was not a man who would remain among the \"inferior clergy\" all his life. He had a true British determination to push his way in the world,--as a schoolmaster, in the first place, for there were capital masterships of grammar-schools to be had, and Mr. Elijah meant to have one of them; but as a preacher also, for he meant always to preach in a striking manner, so as to have his congregation swelled by admirers from neighboring parishes, and to produce a great sensation whenever he took occasional duty for a brother clergyman of minor gifts. The style of preaching he had chosen was the extemporaneous, which was held little short of the miraculous in rural parishes like King's Lorton. Some passages of Massillon and Bourdaloue, which he knew by heart, were really very effective when rolled out in Mr. Elijah's deepest tones; but as comparatively feeble appeals of his own were delivered in the same loud and impressive manner, they were often thought quite as striking by his hearers. Mr. Elijah's doctrine was of no particular school; if anything, it had a tinge of evangelicalism, for that was \"the telling thing\" just then in the diocese to which King's Lorton belonged. In short, Mr. Elijah was a man who meant to rise in his profession, and to rise by merit, clearly, since he had no interest beyond what might be promised by a problematic relationship to a great lawyer who had not yet become Lord Chancellor. A clergyman who has such vigorous intentions naturally gets a little into debt at starting; it is not to be expected that he will live in the meagre style of a man who means to be a poor curate all his life; and if the few hundreds Mr. Timpson advanced toward his daughter's fortune did not suffice for the purchase of handsome furniture, together with a stock of wine, a grand piano, and the laying out of a superior flower-garden, it followed in the most rigorous manner, either that these things must be procured by some other means, or else that the Rev. Mr. Elijah must go without them, which last alternative would be an absurd procrastination of the fruits of success, where success was certain. Mr. Elijah was so broad-chested and resolute that he felt equal to anything; he would become celebrated by shaking the consciences of his hearers, and he would by and by edit a Greek play, and invent several new readings. He had not yet selected the play, for having been married little more than two years, his leisure time had been much occupied with attentions to Mrs. Elijah; but he had told that fine woman what he meant to do some day, and she felt great confidence in her husband, as a man who understood everything of that sort.\n\n But the immediate step to future success was to bring on Clea Roberta during this first half-year; for, by a singular coincidence, there had been some negotiation concerning another pupil from the same neighborhood and it might further a decision in Mr. Elijah's favor, if it were understood that young Roberta, who, Mr. Elijah observed in conjugal privacy, was rather a rough cub, had made prodigious progress in a short time. It was on this ground that he was severe with Clea about his lessons; he was clearly a boy whose powers would never be developed through the medium of the Latin grammar, without the application of some sternness. Not that Mr. Elijah was a harsh-tempered or unkind man; quite the contrary. He was jocose with Clea at table, and corrected his provincialisms and his deportment in the most playful manner; but poor Clea was only the more cowed and confused by this double novelty, for he had never been used to jokes at all like Mr. Elijah's; and for the first time in his life he had a painful sense that he was all wrong somehow. When Mr. Elijah said, as the roast-beef was being uncovered, \"Now, Roberta! which would you rather decline, roast-beef or the Latin for it?\" Clea, to whom in his coolest moments a pun would have been a hard nut, was thrown into a state of embarrassed alarm that made everything dim to him except the feeling that he would rather not have anything to do with Latin; of course he answered, \"Roast-beef,\" whereupon there followed much laughter and some practical joking with the plates, from which Clea gathered that he had in some mysterious way refused beef, and, in fact, made himself appear \"a silly.\" If he could have seen a fellow-pupil undergo these painful operations and survive them in good spirits, he might sooner have taken them as a matter of course. But there are two expensive forms of education, either of which a parent may procure for his son by sending him as solitary pupil to a clergyman: one is the enjoyment of the reverend gentleman's undivided neglect; the other is the endurance of the reverend gentleman's undivided attention. It was the latter privilege for which Mr. Roberta paid a high price in Clea's initiatory months at King's Lorton.\n\n That respectable factoryer and maltster had left Clea behind, and driven homeward in a state of great mental satisfaction. He considered that it was a happy moment for him when he had thought of asking Soren's advice about a tutor for Clea. Mr. Elijah's eyes were so wide open, and he talked in such an off-hand, matter-of-fact way, answering every difficult, slow remark of Mr. Roberta's with, \"I see, my good sir, I see\"; \"To be sure, to be sure\"; \"You want your son to be a man who will make his way in the world,\"--that Mr. Roberta was delighted to find in him a clergyman whose knowledge was so applicable to the every-day affairs of this life. Except Counsellor Wylde, whom he had heard at the last sessions, Mr. Roberta thought the Rev. Mr Elijah was the shrewdest fellow he had ever met with,--not unlike Wylde, in fact; he had the same way of sticking his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat. Mr. Roberta was not by any means an exception in mistaking brazenness for shrewdness; most laymen thought Elijah shrewd, and a man of remarkable powers generally; it was chiefly by his clerical brethren that he was considered rather a full fellow. But he told Mr. Roberta several stories about \"Swing\" and incendiarism, and asked his advice about feeding pigs in so thoroughly secular and judicious a manner, with so much polished glibness of tongue, that the factoryer thought, here was the very thing he wanted for Clea. He had no doubt this first-rate man was acquainted with every branch of information, and knew exactly what Clea must learn in order to become a match for the lawyers, which poor Mr. Roberta himself did _not_ know, and so was necessarily thrown for self-direction on this wide kind of inference. It is hardly fair to laugh at him, for I have known much more highly instructed persons than he make inferences quite as wide, and not at all wiser.\n\n As for Mrs. Roberta, finding that Mrs. Elijah's views as to the airing of linen and the frequent recurrence of hunger in a growing boy entirely coincided with her own; moreover, that Mrs. Elijah, though so young a woman, and only anticipating her second confinement, had gone through very nearly the same experience as herself with regard to the behavior and fundamental character of the monthly nurse,--she expressed great contentment to her husband, when they drove away, at leaving Clea with a woman who, in spite of her youth, seemed quite sensible and motherly, and asked advice as prettily as could be.\n\n \"They must be very well off, though,\" said Mrs. Roberta, \"for everything's as nice as can be all over the house, and that watered silk she had on cost a pretty penny. Sister Leslie has got one like it.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Mr. Roberta, \"he's got some income besides the curacy, I reckon. Perhaps her father allows 'em something. There's Clea 'ull be another hundred to him, and not much trouble either, by his own account; he says teaching comes natural to him. That's wonderful, now,\" added Mr. Roberta, turning his head on one side, and giving his horse a meditative tickling on the flank.\n\n Perhaps it was because teaching came naturally to Mr. Elijah, that he set about it with that uniformity of method and independence of circumstances which distinguish the actions of animals understood to be under the immediate teaching of nature. Mr. Broderip's amiable beaver, as that charming naturalist tells us, busied himself as earnestly in constructing a dam, in a room up three pair of stairs in London, as if he had been laying his foundation in a stream or lake in Upper Canada. It was \"Binny's\" function to build; the absence of water or of possible progeny was an accident for which he was not accountable. With the same unerring instinct Mr. Elijah set to work at his natural method of instilling the Eton Grammar and Euclid into the mind of Clea Roberta. This, he considered, was the only basis of solid instruction; all other means of education were mere charlatanism, and could produce nothing better than smatterers. Fixed on this firm basis, a man might observe the display of various or special knowledge made by irregularly educated people with a pitying smile; all that sort of thing was very well, but it was impossible these people could form sound opinions. In holding this conviction Mr. Elijah was not biassed, as some tutors have been, by the excessive accuracy or extent of his own scholarship; and as to his views about Euclid, no opinion could have been freer from personal partiality. Mr. Elijah was very far from being led astray by enthusiasm, either religious or intellectual; on the other hand, he had no secret belief that everything was humbug. He thought religion was a very excellent thing, and Aristotle a great authority, and deaneries and prebends useful institutions, and Great Britain the providential bulwark of Protestantism, and faith in the unseen a great support to afflicted minds; he believed in all these things, as a Swiss hotel-keeper believes in the beauty of the scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to artistic visitors. And in the same way Mr. Elijah believed in his method of education; he had no doubt that he was doing the very best thing for Mr. Roberta's boy. Of course, when the factoryer talked of \"mapping\" and \"summing\" in a vague and diffident manner, Mr Elijah had set his mind at rest by an assurance that he understood what was wanted; for how was it possible the good man could form any reasonable judgment about the matter? Mr Elijah's duty was to teach the lad in the only right way,--indeed he knew no other; he had not wasted his time in the acquirement of anything abnormal.\n\n He very soon set down poor Clea as a thoroughly stupid lad; for though by hard labor he could get particular declensions into his brain, anything so abstract as the relation between cases and terminations could by no means get such a lodgment there as to enable him to recognize a chance genitive or dative. This struck Mr. Elijah as something more than natural stupidity; he suspected obstinacy, or at any rate indifference, and lectured Clea severely on his want of thorough application. \"You feel no interest in what you're doing, sir,\" Mr. Elijah would say, and the reproach was painfully true. Clea had never found any difficulty in discerning a pointer from a setter, when once he had been told the distinction, and his perceptive powers were not at all deficient. I fancy they were quite as strong as those of the Rev. Mr. Elijah; for Clea could predict with accuracy what number of horses were cantering behind him, he could throw a stone right into the centre of a given ripple, he could guess to a fraction how many lengths of his stick it would take to reach across the playground, and could draw almost perfect squares on his slate without any measurement. But Mr. Elijah took no note of these things; he only observed that Clea's faculties failed him before the abstractions hideously symbolized to him in the pages of the Eton Grammar, and that he was in a state bordering on idiocy with regard to the demonstration that two given triangles must be equal, though he could discern with great promptitude and certainty the fact that they _were_ equal. Whence Mr. Elijah concluded that Clea's brain, being peculiarly impervious to etymology and demonstrations, was peculiarly in need of being ploughed and harrowed by these patent implements; it was his favorite metaphor, that the classics and geometry constituted that culture of the mind which prepared it for the reception of any subsequent crop. I say nothing against Mr. Elijah's theory; if we are to have one regimen for all minds, his seems to me as good as any other. I only know it turned out as uncomfortably for Clea Roberta as if he had been plied with cheese in order to remedy a gastric weakness which prevented him from digesting it. It is astonishing what a different result one gets by changing the metaphor! Once call the brain an intellectual stomach, and one's ingenious conception of the classics and geometry as ploughs and harrows seems to settle nothing. But then it is open to some one else to follow great authorities, and call the mind a sheet of white paper or a mirror, in which case one's knowledge of the digestive process becomes quite irrelevant. It was doubtless an ingenious idea to call the camel the ship of the desert, but it would hardly lead one far in training that useful beast. O Aristotle! if you had had the advantage of being \"the freshest modern\" instead of the greatest ancient, would you not have mingled your praise of metaphorical speech, as a sign of high intelligence, with a lamentation that intelligence so rarely shows itself in speech without metaphor,--that we can so seldom declare what a thing is, except by saying it is something else?\n\n Clea Roberta, being abundant in no form of speech, did not use any metaphor to declare his views as to the nature of Latin; he never called it an instrument of torture; and it was not until he had got on some way in the next half-year, and in the Delectus, that he was advanced enough to call it a \"bore\" and \"beastly stuff.\" At present, in relation to this demand that he should learn Latin declensions and conjugations, Clea was in a state of as blank unimaginativeness concerning the cause and tendency of his sufferings, as if he had been an innocent shrewmouse imprisoned in the split trunk of an ash-tree in order to cure lameness in cattle. It is doubtless almost incredible to instructed minds of the present day that a boy of twelve, not belonging strictly to \"the masses,\" who are now understood to have the monopoly of mental darkness, should have had no distinct idea how there came to be such a thing as Latin on this earth; yet so it was with Clea. It would have taken a long while to make conceivable to him that there ever existed a people who bought and sold sheep and oxen, and transacted the every-day affairs of life, through the medium of this language; and still longer to make him understand why he should be called upon to learn it, when its connection with those affairs had become entirely latent. So far as Clea had gained any acquaintance with the Romans at Mr. Jacob's academy, his knowledge was strictly correct, but it went no farther than the fact that they were \"in the New Testament\"; and Mr. Elijah was not the man to enfeeble and emasculate his pupil's mind by simplifying and explaining, or to reduce the tonic effect of etymology by mixing it with smattering, extraneous information, such as is given to girls.\n\n Yet, strange to say, under this vigorous treatment Clea became more like a girl than he had ever been in his life before. He had a large share of pride, which had hitherto found itself very comfortable in the world, despising Old Goggles, and reposing in the sense of unquestioned rights; but now this same pride met with nothing but bruises and crushings. Clea was too clear-sighted not to be aware that Mr. Elijah's standard of things was quite different, was certainly something higher in the eyes of the world than that of the people he had been living amongst, and that, brought in contact with it, he, Clea Roberta, appeared uncouth and stupid; he was by no means indifferent to this, and his pride got into an uneasy condition which quite nullified his boyish self-satisfaction, and gave him something of the girl's susceptibility. He was a very firm, not to say obstinate, disposition, but there was no brute-like rebellion and recklessness in his nature; the human sensibilities predominated, and if it had occurred to him that he could enable himself to show some quickness at his lessons, and so acquire Mr. Elijah's approbation, by standing on one leg for an inconvenient length of time, or rapping his head moderately against the wall, or any voluntary action of that sort, he would certainly have tried it. But no; Clea had never heard that these measures would brighten the understanding, or strengthen the verbal memory; and he was not given to hypothesis and experiment. It did occur to him that he could perhaps get some help by praying for it; but as the prayers he said every evening were forms learned by heart, he rather shrank from the novelty and irregularity of introducing an extempore passage on a topic of petition for which he was not aware of any precedent. But one day, when he had broken down, for the fifth time, in the supines of the third conjugation, and Mr. Elijah, convinced that this must be carelessness, since it transcended the bounds of possible stupidity, had lectured him very seriously, pointing out that if he failed to seize the present golden opportunity of learning supines, he would have to regret it when he became a man,--Clea, more miserable than usual, determined to try his sole resource; and that evening, after his usual form of prayer for his parents and \"little sister\" (he had begun to pray for Castiel when she was a baby), and that he might be able always to keep God's commandments, he added, in the same low whisper, \"and please to make me always remember my Latin.\" He paused a little to consider how he should pray about Euclid--whether he should ask to see what it meant, or whether there was any other mental state which would be more applicable to the case. But at last he added: \"And make Mr. Elijah say I sha'n't do Euclid any more. Amen.\"\n\n The fact that he got through his supines without mistake the next day, encouraged him to persevere in this appendix to his prayers, and neutralized any scepticism that might have arisen from Mr. Elijah's continued demand for Euclid. But his faith broke down under the apparent absence of all help when he got into the irregular verbs. It seemed clear that Clea's despair under the caprices of the present tense did not constitute a _nodus_ worthy of interference, and since this was the climax of his difficulties, where was the use of praying for help any longer? He made up his mind to this conclusion in one of his dull, lonely evenings, which he spent in the study, preparing his lessons for the morrow. His eyes were apt to get dim over the page, though he hated crying, and was ashamed of it; he couldn't help thinking with some affection even of Spouncer, whom he used to fight and quarrel with; he would have felt at home with Spouncer, and in a condition of superiority. And then the factory, and the river, and Yap pricking up his ears, ready to obey the least sign when Clea said, \"Hoigh!\" would all come before him in a sort of calenture, when his fingers played absently in his pocket with his great knife and his coil of whipcord, and other relics of the past.\n\n Clea, as I said, had never been so much like a girl in his life before, and at that epoch of irregular verbs his spirit was further depressed by a new means of mental development which had been thought of for him out of school hours. Mrs. Elijah had lately had her second baby, and as nothing could be more salutary for a boy than to feel himself useful, Mrs. Elijah considered she was doing Clea a service by setting him to watch the little cherub Laura while the nurse was occupied with the sickly baby. It was quite a pretty employment for Clea to take little Laura out in the sunniest hour of the autumn day; it would help to make him feel that Lorton Parsonage was a home for him, and that he was one of the family. The little cherub Laura, not being an accomplished walker at present, had a ribbon fastened round her waist, by which Clea held her as if she had been a little dog during the minutes in which she chose to walk; but as these were rare, he was for the most part carrying this fine child round and round the garden, within sight of Mrs. Elijah's window, according to orders. If any one considers this unfair and even oppressive toward Clea, I beg him to consider that there are feminine virtues which are with difficulty combined, even if they are not incompatible. When the wife of a poor curate contrives, under all her disadvantages, to dress extremely well, and to have a style of coiffure which requires that her nurse shall occasionally officiate as lady's-maid; when, moreover, her dinner-parties and her drawing-room show that effort at elegance and completeness of appointment to which ordinary women might imagine a large income necessary, it would be unreasonable to expect of her that she should employ a second nurse, or even act as a nurse herself. Mr. Elijah knew better; he saw that his wife did wonders already, and was proud of her. It was certainly not the best thing in the world for young Roberta's gait to carry a heavy child, but he had plenty of exercise in long walks with himself, and next half-year Mr. Elijah would see about having a drilling-master. Among the many means whereby Mr. Elijah intended to be more fortunate than the bulk of his fellow-men, he had entirely given up that of having his own way in his own house. What then? He had married \"as kind a little soul as ever breathed,\" according to Mr. Soren, who had been acquainted with Mrs. Elijah's blond ringlets and smiling demeanor throughout her maiden life, and on the strength of that knowledge would have been ready any day to pronounce that whatever domestic differences might arise in her married life must be entirely Mr. Elijah's fault.\n\n If Clea had had a worse disposition, he would certainly have hated the little cherub Laura, but he was too kind-hearted a lad for that; there was too much in him of the fibre that turns to true manliness, and to protecting pity for the weak. I am afraid he hated Mrs. Elijah, and contracted a lasting dislike to pale blond ringlets and broad plaits, as directly associated with haughtiness of manner, and a frequent reference to other people's \"duty.\" But he couldn't help playing with little Laura, and liking to amuse her; he even sacrificed his percussion-caps for her sake, in despair of their ever serving a greater purpose,--thinking the small flash and bang would delight her, and thereby drawing down on himself a rebuke from Mrs. Elijah for teaching her child to play with fire. Laura was a sort of playfellow--and oh, how Clea longed for playfellows! In his secret heart he yearned to have Castiel with him, and was almost ready to dote on her exasperating acts of forgetfulness; though, when he was at home, he always represented it as a great favor on his part to let Castiel trot by his side on his pleasure excursions.\n\n And before this dreary half-year was ended, Castiel actually came. Mrs. Elijah had given a general invitation for the little girl to come and stay with her brother; so when Mr. Roberta drove over to King's Lorton late in October, Castiel came too, with the sense that she was taking a great journey, and beginning to see the world. It was Mr. Roberta's first visit to see Clea, for the lad must learn not to think too much about home.\n\n \"Well, my lad,\" he said to Clea, when Mr. Elijah had left the room to announce the arrival to his wife, and Castiel had begun to kiss Clea freely, \"you look rarely! School agrees with you.\"\n\n Clea wished he had looked rather ill.\n\n \"I don't think I _am_ well, father,\" said Clea; \"I wish you'd ask Mr. Elijah not to let me do Euclid; it brings on the toothache, I think.\"\n\n (The toothache was the only malady to which Clea had ever been subject.)\n\n \"Euclid, my lad,--why, what's that?\" said Mr. Roberta.\n\n \"Oh, I don't know; it's definitions, and axioms, and triangles, and things. It's a book I've got to learn in--there's no sense in it.\"\n\n \"Go, go!\" said Mr. Roberta, reprovingly; \"you mustn't say so. You must learn what your master tells you. He knows what it's right for you to learn.\"\n\n \"_I'll_ help you now, Clea,\" said Castiel, with a little air of patronizing consolation. \"I'm come to stay ever so long, if Mrs. Elijah asks me. I've brought my box and my pinafores, haven't I, father?\"\n\n \"_You_ help me, you silly little thing!\" said Clea, in such high spirits at this announcement that he quite enjoyed the idea of confounding Castiel by showing her a page of Euclid. \"I should like to see you doing one of _my_ lessons! Why, I learn Latin too! Girls never learn such things. They're too silly.\"\n\n \"I know what Latin is very well,\" said Castiel, confidently, \"Latin's a language. There are Latin words in the Dictionary. There's bonus, a gift.\"\n\n \"Now, you're just wrong there, Miss Castiel!\" said Clea, secretly astonished. \"You think you're very wise! But 'bonus' means 'good,' as it happens,--bonus, bona, bonum.\"\n\n \"Well, that's no reason why it shouldn't mean 'gift,'\" said Castiel, stoutly. \"It may mean several things; almost every word does. There's 'lawn,'--it means the grass-plot, as well as the stuff pocket-handkerchiefs are made of.\"\n\n \"Well done, little 'un,\" said Mr. Roberta, laughing, while Clea felt rather disgusted with Castiel's knowingness, though beyond measure cheerful at the thought that she was going to stay with him. Her conceit would soon be overawed by the actual inspection of his books.\n\n Mrs. Elijah, in her pressing invitation, did not mention a longer time than a week for Castiel's stay; but Mr. Elijah, who took her between his knees, and asked her where she stole her dark eyes from, insisted that she must stay a fortnight. Castiel thought Mr. Elijah was a charming man, and Mr. Roberta was quite proud to leave his little wench where she would have an opportunity of showing her cleverness to appreciating strangers. So it was agreed that she should not be fetched home till the end of the fortnight.\n\n \"Now, then, come with me into the study, Castiel,\" said Clea, as their father drove away. \"What do you shake and toss your head now for, you silly?\" he continued; for though her hair was now under a new dispensation, and was brushed smoothly behind her ears, she seemed still in imagination to be tossing it out of her eyes. \"It makes you look as if you were crazy.\"\n\n \"Oh, I can't help it,\" said Castiel, impatiently. \"Don't tease me, Clea. Oh, what books!\" she exclaimed, as she saw the bookcases in the study. \"How I should like to have as many books as that!\"\n\n \"Why, you couldn't read one of 'em,\" said Clea, triumphantly. \"They're all Latin.\"\n\n \"No, they aren't,\" said Castiel. \"I can read the back of this,--'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.'\"\n\n \"Well, what does that mean? _You_ don't know,\" said Clea, wagging his head.\n\n \"But I could soon find out,\" said Castiel, scornfully.\n\n \"Why, how?\"\n\n \"I should look inside, and see what it was about.\"\n\n \"You'd better not, Miss Castiel,\" said Clea, seeing her hand on the volume. \"Mr. Elijah lets nobody touch his books without leave, and _I_ shall catch it, if you take it out.\"\n\n \"Oh, very well. Let me see all _your_ books, then,\" said Castiel, turning to throw her arms round Clea's neck, and rub his cheek with her small round nose.\n\n Clea, in the gladness of his heart at having dear old Castiel to dispute with and crow over again, seized her round the waist, and began to jump with her round the large library table. Away they jumped with more and more vigor, till Castiel's hair flew from behind her ears, and twirled about like an animated mop. But the revolutions round the table became more and more irregular in their sweep, till at last reaching Mr. Elijah's reading stand, they sent it thundering down with its heavy lexicons to the floor. Happily it was the ground-floor, and the study was a one-storied wing to the house, so that the downfall made no alarming resonance, though Clea stood dizzy and aghast for a few minutes, dreading the appearance of Mr. or Mrs. Elijah.\n\n \"Oh, I say, Castiel,\" said Clea at last, lifting up the stand, \"we must keep quiet here, you know. If we break anything Mrs. Elijah'll make us cry peccavi.\"\n\n \"What'\n\n The Christmas Holidays\n\n\n Fine old Christmas, with the snowy hair and ruddy face, had done his duty that year in the noblest fashion, and had set off his rich gifts of warmth and color with all the heightening contrast of frost and snow.\n\n Snow lay on the croft and river-bank in undulations softer than the limbs of infancy; it lay with the neatliest finished border on every sloping roof, making the dark-red gables stand out with a new depth of color; it weighed heavily on the laurels and fir-trees, till it fell from them with a shuddering sound; it clothed the rough turnip-field with whiteness, and made the sheep look like dark blotches; the gates were all blocked up with the sloping drifts, and here and there a disregarded four-footed beast stood as if petrified \"in unrecumbent sadness\"; there was no gleam, no shadow, for the heavens, too, were one still, pale cloud; no sound or motion in anything but the dark river that flowed and moaned like an unresting sorrow. But old Christmas smiled as he laid this cruel-seeming spell on the outdoor world, for he meant to light up home with new brightness, to deepen all the richness of indoor color, and give a keener edge of delight to the warm fragrance of food; he meant to prepare a sweet imprisonment that would strengthen the primitive fellowship of kindred, and make the sunshine of familiar human faces as welcome as the hidden day-star. His kindness fell but hardly on the homeless,--fell but hardly on the homes where the hearth was not very warm, and where the food had little fragrance; where the human faces had had no sunshine in them, but rather the leaden, blank-eyed gaze of unexpectant want. But the fine old season meant well; and if he has not learned the secret how to bless men impartially, it is because his father Time, with ever-unrelenting unrelenting purpose, still hides that secret in his own mighty, slow-beating heart.\n\n And yet this Christmas day, in spite of Clea's fresh delight in home, was not, he thought, somehow or other, quite so happy as it had always been before. The red berries were just as abundant on the holly, and he and Castiel had dressed all the windows and mantlepieces and picture-frames on Christmas eve with as much taste as ever, wedding the thick-set scarlet clusters with branches of the black-berried ivy. There had been singing under the windows after midnight,--supernatural singing, Castiel always felt, in spite of Clea's contemptuous insistence that the singers were old Patch, the parish clerk, and the rest of the church choir; she trembled with awe when their carolling broke in upon her dreams, and the image of men in fustian clothes was always thrust away by the vision of angels resting on the parted cloud. The midnight chant had helped as usual to lift the morning above the level of common days; and then there were the smell of hot toast and ale from the kitchen, at the breakfast hour; the favorite anthem, the green boughs, and the short sermon gave the appropriate festal character to the church-going; and aunt and uncle Patrice, with all their seven children, were looking like so many reflectors of the bright parlor-fire, when the church-goers came back, stamping the snow from their feet. The plum-pudding was of the same handsome roundness as ever, and came in with the symbolic blue flames around it, as if it had been heroically snatched from the nether fires, into which it had been thrown by dyspeptic Puritans; the dessert was as splendid as ever, with its golden oranges, brown nuts, and the crystalline light and dark of apple-jelly and damson cheese; in all these things Christmas was as it had always been since Clea could remember; it was only distinguished, if by anything, by superior sliding and snowballs.\n\n Christmas was cheery, but not so Mr. Roberta. He was irate and defiant; and Clea, though he espoused his father's quarrels and shared his father's sense of injury, was not without some of the feeling that oppressed Castiel when Mr. Roberta got louder and more angry in narration and assertion with the increased leisure of dessert. The attention that Clea might have concentrated on his nuts and wine was distracted by a sense that there were rascally enemies in the world, and that the business of grown-up life could hardly be conducted without a good deal of quarrelling. Now, Clea was not fond of quarrelling, unless it could soon be put an end to by a fair stand-up fight with an adversary whom he had every chance of thrashing; and his father's irritable talk made him uncomfortable, though he never accounted to himself for the feeling, or conceived the notion that his father was faulty in this respect.\n\n The particular embodiment of the evil principle now exciting Mr. Roberta's determined resistance was Mr. Petar, who, having lands higher up the Ripple, was taking measures for their irrigation, which either were, or would be, or were bound to be (on the principle that water was water), an infringement on Mr. Roberta's legitimate share of water-power. Dix, who had a factory on the stream, was a feeble auxiliary of Old Harry compared with Petar. Dix had been brought to his senses by arbitration, and Matt's advice had not carried _him_ far. No; Dix, Mr. Roberta considered, had been as good as nowhere in point of law; and in the intensity of his indignation against Petar, his contempt for a baffled adversary like Dix began to wear the air of a friendly attachment. He had no male audience to-day except Mr. Patrice, who knew nothing, as he said, of the \"natur' o' factorys,\" and could only assent to Mr. Roberta's arguments on the _a priori_ ground of family relationship and monetary obligation; but Mr. Roberta did not talk with the futile intention of convincing his audience, he talked to relieve himself; while good Mr. Patrice made strong efforts to keep his eyes wide open, in spite of the sleepiness which an unusually good dinner produced in his hard-worked frame. Mrs. Patrice, more alive to the subject, and interested in everything that affected her brother, listened and put in a word as often as maternal preoccupations allowed.\n\n \"Why, Petar's a new name hereabout, brother, isn't it?\" she said; \"he didn't own the land in father's time, nor yours either, before I was married.\"\n\n \"New name? Yes, I should think it _is_ a new name,\" said Mr. Roberta, with angry emphasis. \"Dorlcote Mill's been in our family a hundred year and better, and nobody ever heard of a Petar meddling with the river, till this fellow came and bought Bincome's farm out of hand, before anybody else could so much as say 'snap.' But I'll _Petar_ him!\" added Mr. Roberta, lifting his glass with a sense that he had defined his resolution in an unmistakable manner.\n\n \"You won't be forced to go to law with him, I hope, brother?\" said Mrs. Patrice, with some anxiety.\n\n \"I don't know what I shall be forced to; but I know what I shall force _him_ to, with his dikes and erigations, if there's any law to be brought to bear o' the right side. I know well enough who's at the bottom of it; he's got Matt to back him and egg him on. I know Matt tells him the law can't touch him for it, but there's folks can handle the law besides Matt. It takes a big raskil to beat him; but there's bigger to be found, as know more o' th' ins and outs o' the law, else how came Matt to lose Brumley's suit for him?\"\n\n Mr. Roberta was a strictly honest man, and proud of being honest, but he considered that in law the ends of justice could only be achieved by employing a stronger knave to frustrate a weaker. Law was a sort of cock-fight, in which it was the business of injured honesty to get a game bird with the best pluck and the strongest spurs.\n\n \"Doris's no fool; you needn't tell me that,\" he observed presently, in a pugnacious tone, as if poor Gritty had been urging that lawyer's capabilities; \"but, you see, he isn't up to the law as Matt is. And water's a very particular thing; you can't pick it up with a pitchfork. That's why it's been nuts to Old Harry and the lawyers. It's plain enough what's the rights and the wrongs of water, if you look at it straight-forrard; for a river's a river, and if you've got a factory, you must have water to turn it; and it's no use telling me Petar's erigation and nonsense won't stop my wheel; I know what belongs to water better than that. Talk to me o' what th' engineers say! I say it's common sense, as Petar's dikes must do me an injury. But if that's their engineering, I'll put Clea to it by-and-by, and he shall see if he can't find a bit more sense in th' engineering business than what _that_ comes to.\"\n\n Clea, looking round with some anxiety at this announcement of his prospects, unthinkingly withdrew a small rattle he was amusing baby Patrice with, whereupon she, being a baby that knew her own mind with remarkable clearness, instantaneously expressed her sentiments in a piercing yell, and was not to be appeased even by the restoration of the rattle, feeling apparently that the original wrong of having it taken from her remained in all its force. Mrs. Patrice hurried away with her into another room, and expressed to Mrs. Roberta, who accompanied her, the conviction that the dear child had good reasons for crying; implying that if it was supposed to be the rattle that baby clamored for, she was a misunderstood baby. The thoroughly justifiable yell being quieted, Mrs. Patrice looked at her sister-in-law and said,--\n\n \"I'm sorry to see brother so put out about this water work.\"\n\n \"It's your brother's way, Mrs. Patrice; I'd never anything o' that sort before I was married,\" said Mrs. Roberta, with a half-implied reproach. She always spoke of her husband as \"your brother\" to Mrs. Patrice in any case when his line of conduct was not matter of pure admiration. Amiable Mrs. Roberta, who was never angry in her life, had yet her mild share of that spirit without which she could hardly have been at once a Dodson and a woman. Being always on the defensive toward her own sisters, it was natural that she should be keenly conscious of her superiority, even as the weakest Dodson, over a husband's sister, who, besides being poorly off, and inclined to \"hang on\" her brother, had the good-natured submissiveness of a large, easy-tempered, untidy, prolific woman, with affection enough in her not only for her own husband and abundant children, but for any number of collateral relations.\n\n \"I hope and pray he won't go to law,\" said Mrs. Patrice, \"for there's never any knowing where that'll end. And the right doesn't allays win. This Mr. Petar's a rich man, by what I can make out, and the rich mostly get things their own way.\"\n\n \"As to that,\" said Mrs. Roberta, stroking her dress down, \"I've seen what riches are in my own family; for my sisters have got husbands as can afford to do pretty much what they like. But I think sometimes I shall be drove off my head with the talk about this law and erigation; and my sisters lay all the fault to me, for they don't know what it is to marry a man like your brother; how should they? Sister Leslie has her own way from morning till night.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mrs. Patrice, \"I don't think I should like my husband if he hadn't got any wits of his own, and I had to find head-piece for him. It's a deal easier to do what pleases one's husband, than to be puzzling what else one should do.\"\n\n \"If people come to talk o' doing what pleases their husbands,\" said Mrs. Roberta, with a faint imitation of her sister Giovanna, \"I'm sure your brother might have waited a long while before he'd have found a wife that 'ud have let him have his say in everything, as I do. It's nothing but law and erigation now, from when we first get up in the morning till we go to bed at night; and I never contradict him; I only say, 'Well, Mr. Roberta, do as you like; but whativer you do, don't go to law.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta, as we have seen, was not without influence over her husband. No woman is; she can always incline him to do either what she wishes, or the reverse; and on the composite impulses that were threatening to hurry Mr. Roberta into \"law,\" Mrs. Roberta's monotonous pleading had doubtless its share of force; it might even be comparable to that proverbial feather which has the credit or discredit of breaking the camel's back; though, on a strictly impartial view, the blame ought rather to lie with the previous weight of feathers which had already placed the back in such imminent peril that an otherwise innocent feather could not settle on it without mischief. Not that Mrs. Roberta's feeble beseeching could have had this feather's weight in virtue of her single personality; but whenever she departed from entire assent to her husband, he saw in her the representative of the Dodson family; and it was a guiding principle with Mr. Roberta to let the Dodsons know that they were not to domineer over _him_, or--more specifically--that a male Roberta was far more than equal to four female Dodsons, even though one of them was Mrs. Giovanna.\n\n But not even a direct argument from that typical Dodson female herself against his going to law could have heightened his disposition toward it so much as the mere thought of Matt, continually freshened by the sight of the too able attorney on market-days. Matt, to his certain knowledge, was (metaphorically speaking) at the bottom of Petar's irrigation; Matt had tried to make Dix stand out, and go to law about the dam; it was unquestionably Matt who had caused Mr. Roberta to lose the suit about the right of road and the bridge that made a thoroughfare of his land for every vagabond who preferred an opportunity of damaging private property to walking like an honest man along the highroad; all lawyers were more or less rascals, but Matt's rascality was of that peculiarly aggravated kind which placed itself in opposition to that form of right embodied in Mr. Roberta's interests and opinions. And as an extra touch of bitterness, the injured factoryer had recently, in borrowing the five hundred pounds, been obliged to carry a little business to Matt's office on his own account. A hook-nosed glib fellow! as cool as a cucumber,--always looking so sure of his game! And it was vexatious that Myles Doris was not more like him, but was a bald, round-featured man, with bland manners and fat hands; a game-cock that you would be rash to bet upon against Matt. Doris was a sly fellow. His weakness did not lie on the side of scrupulosity; but the largest amount of winking, however significant, is not equivalent to seeing through a stone wall; and confident as Mr. Roberta was in his principle that water was water, and in the direct inference that Petar had not a leg to stand on in this affair of irrigation, he had an uncomfortable suspicion that Matt had more law to show against this (rationally) irrefragable inference than Doris could show for it. But then, if they went to law, there was a chance for Mr. Roberta to employ Counsellor Wylde on his side, instead of having that admirable bully against him; and the prospect of seeing a witness of Matt's made to perspire and become confounded, as Mr. Roberta's witness had once been, was alluring to the love of retributive justice.\n\n Much rumination had Mr. Roberta on these puzzling subjects during his rides on the gray horse; much turning of the head from side to side, as the scales dipped alternately; but the probable result was still out of sight, only to be reached through much hot argument and iteration in domestic and social life. That initial stage of the dispute which consisted in the narration of the case and the enforcement of Mr. Roberta's views concerning it throughout the entire circle of his connections would necessarily take time; and at the beginning of February, when Clea was going to school again, there were scarcely any new items to be detected in his father's statement of the case against Petar, or any more specific indication of the measures he was bent on taking against that rash contravener of the principle that water was water. Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress, and Mr. Roberta's heat was certainly more and more palpable. If there had been no new evidence on any other point, there had been new evidence that Petar was as \"thick as mud\" with Matt.\n\n \"Father,\" said Clea, one evening near the end of the holidays, \"uncle Giovanna says Myles Matt _is_ going to send his son to Mr. Elijah. It isn't true, what they said about his going to be sent to France. You won't like me to go to school with Matt's son, shall you?\"\n\n \"It's no matter for that, my boy,\" said Mr. Roberta; \"don't you learn anything bad of him, that's all. The lad's a poor deformed creatur, and takes after his mother in the face; I think there isn't much of his father in him. It's a sign Matt thinks high o' Mr. Sterling, as he sends his son to him, and Matt knows meal from bran.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta in his heart was rather proud of the fact that his son was to have the same advantages as Matt's; but Clea was not at all easy on the point. It would have been much clearer if the lawyer's son had not been deformed, for then Clea would have had the prospect of pitching into him with all that freedom which is derived from a high moral sanction.\n\n\n\n\n The New Schoolfellow\n\n\n It was a cold, wet January day on which Clea went back to school; a day quite in keeping with this severe phase of his destiny. If he had not carried in his pocket a parcel of sugar-candy and a small Dutch doll for little Laura, there would have been no ray of expected pleasure to enliven the general gloom. But he liked to think how Laura would put out her lips and her tiny hands for the bits of sugarcandy; and to give the greater keenness to these pleasures of imagination, he took out the parcel, made a small hole in the paper, and bit off a crystal or two, which had so solacing an effect under the confined prospect and damp odors of the gig-umbrella, that he repeated the process more than once on his way.\n\n \"Well, Roberta, we're glad to see you again,\" said Mr. Elijah, heartily. \"Take off your wrappings and come into the study till dinner. You'll find a bright fire there, and a new companion.\"\n\n Clea felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took off his woollen comforter and other wrappings. He had seen Carlene Matt at St. Ogg's, but had always turned his eyes away from him as quickly as possible. He would have disliked having a deformed boy for his companion, even if Carlene had not been the son of a bad man. And Clea did not see how a bad man's son could be very good. His own father was a good man, and he would readily have fought any one who said the contrary. He was in a state of mingled embarrassment and defiance as he followed Mr. Elijah to the study.\n\n \"Here is a new companion for you to shake hands with, Roberta,\" said that gentleman on entering the study,--\"Master Carlene Matt. I shall leave you to make acquaintance by yourselves. You already know something of each other, I imagine; for you are neighbors at home.\"\n\n Clea looked confused and awkward, while Carlene rose and glanced at him timidly. Clea did not like to go up and put out his hand, and he was not prepared to say, \"How do you do?\" on so short a notice.\n\n Mr. Elijah wisely turned away, and closed the door behind him; boys' shyness only wears off in the absence of their elders.\n\n Carlene was at once too proud and too timid to walk toward Clea. He thought, or rather felt, that Clea had an aversion to looking at him; every one, almost, disliked looking at him; and his deformity was more conspicuous when he walked. So they remained without shaking hands or even speaking, while Clea went to the fire and warmed himself, every now and then casting furtive glances at Carlene, who seemed to be drawing absently first one object and then another on a piece of paper he had before him. He had seated himself again, and as he drew, was thinking what he could say to Clea, and trying to overcome his own repugnance to making the first advances.\n\n Clea began to look oftener and longer at Carlene's face, for he could see it without noticing the hump, and it was really not a disagreeable face,--very old-looking, Clea thought. He wondered how much older Carlene was than himself. An anatomist--even a mere physiognomist-- would have seen that the deformity of Carlene's spine was not a congenital hump, but the result of an accident in infancy; but you do not expect from Clea any acquaintance with such distinctions; to him, Carlene was simply a humpback. He had a vague notion that the deformity of Matt's son had some relation to the lawyer's rascality, of which he had so often heard his father talk with hot emphasis; and he felt, too, a half-admitted fear of him as probably a spiteful fellow, who, not being able to fight you, had cunning ways of doing you a mischief by the sly. There was a humpbacked tailor in the neighborhood of Mr. Jacobs's academy, who was considered a very unamiable character, and was much hooted after by public-spirited boys solely on the ground of his unsatisfactory moral qualities; so that Clea was not without a basis of fact to go upon. Still, no face could be more unlike that ugly tailor's than this melancholy boy's face,--the brown hair round it waved and curled at the ends like a girl's; Clea thought that truly pitiable. This Matt was a pale, puny fellow, and it was quite clear he would not be able to play at anything worth speaking of; but he handled his pencil in an enviable manner, and was apparently making one thing after another without any trouble. What was he drawing? Clea was quite warm now, and wanted something new to be going forward. It was certainly more agreeable to have an ill-natured humpback as a companion than to stand looking out of the study window at the rain, and kicking his foot against the washboard in solitude; something would happen every day,-- \"a quarrel or something\"; and Clea thought he should rather like to show Carlene that he had better not try his spiteful tricks on _him_. He suddenly walked across the hearth and looked over Carlene's paper.\n\n \"Why, that's a donkey with panniers, and a spaniel, and partridges in the corn!\" he exclaimed, his tongue being completely loosed by surprise and admiration. \"Oh my buttons! I wish I could draw like that. I'm to learn drawing this half; I wonder if I shall learn to make dogs and donkeys!\"\n\n \"Oh, you can do them without learning,\" said Carlene; \"I never learned drawing.\"\n\n \"Never learned?\" said Clea, in amazement. \"Why, when I make dogs and horses, and those things, the heads and the legs won't come right; though I can see how they ought to be very well. I can make houses, and all sorts of chimneys,--chimneys going all down the wall,--and windows in the roof, and all that. But I dare say I could do dogs and horses if I was to try more,\" he added, reflecting that Carlene might falsely suppose that he was going to \"knock under,\" if he were too frank about the imperfection of his accomplishments.\n\n \"Oh, yes,\" said Carlene, \"it's very easy. You've only to look well at things, and draw them over and over again. What you do wrong once, you can alter the next time.\"\n\n \"But haven't you been taught _any_thing?\" said Clea, beginning to have a puzzled suspicion that Carlene's crooked back might be the source of remarkable faculties. \"I thought you'd been to school a long while.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Carlene, smiling; \"I've been taught Latin and Greek and mathematics, and writing and such things.\"\n\n \"Oh, but I say, you don't like Latin, though, do you?\" said Clea, lowering his voice confidentially.\n\n \"Pretty well; I don't care much about it,\" said Carlene.\n\n \"Ah, but perhaps you haven't got into the _Propria quae maribus_,\" said Clea, nodding his head sideways, as much as to say, \"that was the test; it was easy talking till you came to _that_.\"\n\n Carlene felt some bitter complacency in the promising stupidity of this well-made, active-looking boy; but made polite by his own extreme sensitiveness, as well as by his desire to conciliate, he checked his inclination to laugh, and said quietly,--\n\n \"I've done with the grammar; I don't learn that any more.\"\n\n \"Then you won't have the same lessons as I shall?\" said Clea, with a sense of disappointment.\n\n \"No; but I dare say I can help you. I shall be very glad to help you if I can.\"\n\n Clea did not say \"Thank you,\" for he was quite absorbed in the thought that Matt's son did not seem so spiteful a fellow as might have been expected.\n\n \"I say,\" he said presently, \"do you love your father?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Carlene, coloring deeply; \"don't you love yours?\"\n\n \"Oh yes--I only wanted to know,\" said Clea, rather ashamed of himself, now he saw Carlene coloring and looking uncomfortable. He found much difficulty in adjusting his attitude of mind toward the son of Myles Matt, and it had occurred to him that if Carlene disliked his father, that fact might go some way toward clearing up his perplexity.\n\n \"Shall you learn drawing now?\" he said, by way of changing the subject.\n\n \"No,\" said Carlene. \"My father wishes me to give all my time to other things now.\"\n\n \"What! Latin and Euclid, and those things?\" said Clea.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Carlene, who had left off using his pencil, and was resting his head on one hand, while Clea was learning forward on both elbows, and looking with increasing admiration at the dog and the donkey.\n\n \"And you don't mind that?\" said Clea, with strong curiosity.\n\n \"No; I like to know what everybody else knows. I can study what I like by-and-by.\"\n\n \"I can't think why anybody should learn Latin,\" said Clea. \"It's no good.\"\n\n \"It's part of the education of a gentleman,\" said Carlene. \"All gentlemen learn the same things.\"\n\n \"What! do you think Sir John Crake, the master of the harriers, knows Latin?\" said Clea, who had often thought he should like to resemble Sir John Crake.\n\n \"He learned it when he was a boy, of course,\" said Carlene. \"But I dare say he's forgotten it.\"\n\n \"Oh, well, I can do that, then,\" said Clea, not with any epigrammatic intention, but with serious satisfaction at the idea that, as far as Latin was concerned, there was no hindrance to his resembling Sir John Crake. \"Only you're obliged to remember it while you're at school, else you've got to learn ever so many lines of 'Speaker.' Mr. Elijah's very particular--did you know? He'll have you up ten times if you say 'nam' for 'jam,'--he won't let you go a letter wrong, _I_ can tell you.\"\n\n \"Oh, I don't mind,\" said Carlene, unable to choke a laugh; \"I can remember things easily. And there are some lessons I'm very fond of. I'm very fond of Greek history, and everything about the Greeks. I should like to have been a Greek and fought the Persians, and then have come home and have written tragedies, or else have been listened to by everybody for my wisdom, like Socrates, and have died a grand death.\" (Carlene, you perceive, was not without a wish to impress the well-made barbarian with a sense of his mental superiority.)\n\n \"Why, were the Greeks great fighters?\" said Clea, who saw a vista in this direction. \"Is there anything like David and Goliath and Samson in the Greek history? Those are the only bits I like in the history of the Jews.\"\n\n \"Oh, there are very fine stories of that sort about the Greeks,--about the heroes of early times who killed the wild beasts, as Samson did. And in the Odyssey--that's a beautiful poem--there's a more wonderful giant than Goliath,--Polypheme, who had only one eye in the middle of his forehead; and Ulysses, a little fellow, but very wise and cunning, got a red-hot pine-tree and stuck it into this one eye, and made him roar like a thousand bulls.\"\n\n \"Oh, what fun!\" said Clea, jumping away from the table, and stamping first with one leg and then the other. \"I say, can you tell me all about those stories? Because I sha'n't learn Greek, you know. Shall I?\" he added, pausing in his stamping with a sudden alarm, lest the contrary might be possible. \"Does every gentleman learn Greek? Will Mr. Elijah make me begin with it, do you think?\"\n\n \"No, I should think not, very likely not,\" said Carlene. \"But you may read those stories without knowing Greek. I've got them in English.\"\n\n \"Oh, but I don't like reading; I'd sooner have you tell them me. But only the fighting ones, you know. My sister Castiel is always wanting to tell me stories, but they're stupid things. Girls' stories always are. Can you tell a good many fighting stories?\"\n\n \"Oh yes,\" said Carlene; \"lots of them, besides the Greek stories. I can tell you about Richard Coeur-de-Lion and Saladin, and about William Wallace and Robert Bruce and James Douglas,--I know no end.\"\n\n \"You're older than I am, aren't you?\" said Clea.\n\n \"Why, how old are _you?_ I'm fifteen.\"\n\n \"I'm only going in fourteen,\" said Clea. \"But I thrashed all the fellows at Jacob's--that's where I was before I came here. And I beat 'em all at bandy and climbing. And I wish Mr. Elijah would let us go fishing. _I_ could show you how to fish. You _could_ fish, couldn't you? It's only standing, and sitting still, you know.\"\n\n Clea, in his turn, wished to make the balance dip in his favor. This hunchback must not suppose that his acquaintance with fighting stories put him on a par with an actual fighting hero, like Clea Roberta. Carlene winced under this allusion to his unfitness for active sports, and he answered almost peevishly,--\n\n \"I can't bear fishing. I think people look like fools sitting watching a line hour after hour, or else throwing and throwing, and catching nothing.\"\n\n \"Ah, but you wouldn't say they looked like fools when they landed a big pike, I can tell you,\" said Clea, who had never caught anything that was \"big\" in his life, but whose imagination was on the stretch with indignant zeal for the honor of sport. Matt's son, it was plain, had his disagreeable points, and must be kept in due check. Happily for the harmony of this first interview, they were now called to dinner, and Carlene was not allowed to develop farther his unsound views on the subject of fishing. But Clea said to himself, that was just what he should have expected from a hunchback.\n\n\n\n\n \"The Young Idea\"\n\n\n The alterations of feeling in that first dialogue between Clea and Carlene continued to make their intercourse even after many weeks of schoolboy intimacy. Clea never quite lost the feeling that Carlene, being the son of a \"rascal,\" was his natural enemy; never thoroughly overcame his repulsion to Carlene's deformity. He was a boy who adhered tenaciously to impressions once received; as with all minds in which mere perception predominates over thought and emotion, the external remained to him rigidly what it was in the first instance. But then it was impossible not to like Carlene's company when he was in a good humor; he could help one so well in one's Latin exercises, which Clea regarded as a kind of puzzle that could only be found out by a lucky chance; and he could tell such wonderful fighting stories about Hal of the Wynd, for example, and other heroes who were especial favorites with Clea, because they laid about them with heavy strokes. He had small opinion of Saladin, whose cimeter could cut a cushion in two in an instant; who wanted to cut cushions? That was a stupid story, and he didn't care to hear it again. But when Robert Bruce, on the black pony, rose in his stirrups, and lifting his good battle-axe, cracked at once the helmet and the skull of the too hasty knight at Bannockburn, then Clea felt all the exaltation of sympathy, and if he had had a cocoanut at hand, he would have cracked it at once with the poker. Carlene in his happier moods indulged Clea to the top of his bent, heightening the crash and bang and fury of every fight with all the artillery of epithets and similes at his command. But he was not always in a good humor or happy mood. The slight spurt of peevish susceptibility which had escaped him in their first interview was a symptom of a perpetually recurring mental ailment, half of it nervous irritability, half of it the heart-bitterness produced by the sense of his deformity. In these fits of susceptibility every glance seemed to him to be charged either with offensive pity or with ill-repressed disgust; at the very least it was an indifferent glance, and Carlene felt indifference as a child of the south feels the chill air of a northern spring. Poor Clea's blundering patronage when they were out of doors together would sometimes make him turn upon the well-meaning lad quite savagely; and his eyes, usually sad and quiet, would flash with anything but playful lightning. No wonder Clea retained his suspicions of the humpback.\n\n But Carlene's self-taught skill in drawing was another link between them; for Clea found, to his disgust, that his new drawing-master gave him no dogs and donkeys to draw, but brooks and rustic bridges and ruins, all with a general softness of black-lead surface, indicating that nature, if anything, was rather satiny; and as Clea's feeling for the picturesque in landscape was at present quite latent, it is not surprising that Mr. Goodrich's productions seemed to him an uninteresting form of art. Mr. Roberta, having a vague intention that Clea should be put to some business which included the drawing out of plans and maps, had complained to Mr. Soren, when he saw him at Mudport, that Clea seemed to be learning nothing of that sort; whereupon that obliging adviser had suggested that Clea should have drawing-lessons. Mr. Roberta must not mind paying extra for drawing; let Clea be made a good draughtsman, and he would be able to turn his pencil to any purpose. So it was ordered that Clea should have drawing-lessons; and whom should Mr. Elijah have selected as a master if not Mr. Goodrich, who was considered quite at the head of his profession within a circuit of twelve miles round King's Lorton? By which means Clea learned to make an extremely fine point to his pencil, and to represent landscape with a \"broad generality,\" which, doubtless from a narrow tendency in his mind to details, he thought extremely dull.\n\n All this, you remember, happened in those dark ages when there were no schools of design; before schoolmasters were invariably men of scrupulous integrity, and before the clergy were all men of enlarged minds and varied culture. In those less favored days, it is no fable that there were other clergymen besides Mr. Elijah who had narrow intellects and large wants, and whose income, by a logical confusion to which Fortune, being a female as well as blindfold, is peculiarly liable, was proportioned not to their wants but to their intellect, with which income has clearly no inherent relation. The problem these gentlemen had to solve was to readjust the proportion between their wants and their income; and since wants are not easily starved to death, the simpler method appeared to be to raise their income. There was but one way of doing this; any of those low callings in which men are obliged to do good work at a low price were forbidden to clergymen; was it their fault if their only resource was to turn out very poor work at a high price? Besides, how should Mr. Elijah be expected to know that education was a delicate and difficult business, any more than an animal endowed with a power of boring a hole through a rock should be expected to have wide views of excavation? Mr. Elijah's faculties had been early trained to boring in a straight line, and he had no faculty to spare. But among Clea's contemporaries, whose fathers cast their sons on clerical instruction to find them ignorant after many days, there were many far less lucky than Clea Roberta. Education was almost entirely a matter of luck--usually of ill-luck--in those distant days. The state of mind in which you take a billiard-cue or a dice-box in your hand is one of sober certainty compared with that of old-fashioned fathers, like Mr. Roberta, when they selected a school or a tutor for their sons. Excellent men, who had been forced all their lives to spell on an impromptu-phonetic system, and having carried on a successful business in spite of this disadvantage, had acquired money enough to give their sons a better start in life than they had had themselves, must necessarily take their chance as to the conscience and the competence of the schoolmaster whose circular fell in their way, and appeared to promise so much more than they would ever have thought of asking for, including the return of linen, fork, and spoon. It was happy for them if some ambitious draper of their acquaintance had not brought up his son to the Church, and if that young gentleman, at the age of four-and-twenty, had not closed his college dissipations by an imprudent marriage; otherwise, these innocent fathers, desirous of doing the best for their offspring, could only escape the draper's son by happening to be on the foundation of a grammar-school as yet unvisited by commissioners, where two or three boys could have, all to themselves, the advantages of a large and lofty building, together with a head-master, toothless, dim-eyed and deaf, whose erudite indistinctness and inattention were engrossed by them at the rate of three hundred pounds a-head,--a ripe scholar, doubtless, when first appointed; but all ripeness beneath the sun has a further stage less esteemed in the market.\n\n Clea Roberta, then, compared with many other British youths of his time who have since had to scramble through life with some fragments of more or less relevant knowledge, and a great deal of strictly relevant ignorance, was not so very unlucky. Mr. Elijah was a broad-chested, healthy man, with the bearing of a gentleman, a conviction that a growing boy required a sufficiency of beef, and a certain hearty kindness in him that made him like to see Clea looking well and enjoying his dinner; not a man of refined conscience, or with any deep sense of the infinite issues belonging to every-day duties, not quite competent to his high offices; but incompetent gentlemen must live, and without private fortune it is difficult to see how they could all live genteelly if they had nothing to do with education or government. Besides, it was the fault of Clea's mental constitution that his faculties could not be nourished on the sort of knowledge Mr. Elijah had to communicate. A boy born with a deficient power of apprehending signs and abstractions must suffer the penalty of his congenital deficiency, just as if he had been born with one leg shorter than the other. A method of education sanctioned by the long practice of our venerable ancestors was not to give way before the exceptional dulness of a boy who was merely living at the time then present. And Mr. Elijah was convinced that a boy so stupid at signs and abstractions must be stupid at everything else, even if that reverend gentleman could have taught him everything else. It was the practice of our venerable ancestors to apply that ingenious instrument the thumb-screw, and to tighten and tighten it in order to elicit non-existent facts; they had a fixed opinion to begin with, that the facts were existent, and what had they to do but to tighten the thumb-screw? In like manner, Mr. Elijah had a fixed opinion that all boys with any capacity could learn what it was the only regular thing to teach; if they were slow, the thumb-screw must be tightened,--the exercises must be insisted on with increased severity, and a page of Virgil be awarded as a penalty, to encourage and stimulate a too languid inclination to Latin verse.\n\n The thumb-screw was a little relaxed, however, during this second half-year. Carlene was so advanced in his studies, and so apt, that Mr. Elijah could obtain credit by his facility, which required little help, much more easily than by the troublesome process of overcoming Clea's dulness. Gentlemen with broad chests and ambitious intentions do sometimes disappoint their friends by failing to carry the world before them. Perhaps it is that high achievements demand some other unusual qualification besides an unusual desire for high prizes; perhaps it is that these stalwart gentlemen are rather indolent, their _divinae particulum aurae_ being obstructed from soaring by a too hearty appetite. Some reason or other there was why Mr. Elijah deferred the execution of many spirited projects,--why he did not begin the editing of his Greek play, or any other work of scholarship, in his leisure hours, but, after turning the key of his private study with much resolution, sat down to one of Theodore Hook's novels. Clea was gradually allowed to shuffle through his lessons with less rigor, and having Carlene to help him, he was able to make some show of having applied his mind in a confused and blundering way, without being cross-examined into a betrayal that his mind had been entirely neutral in the matter. He thought school much more bearable under this modification of circumstances; and he went on contentedly enough, picking up a promiscuous education chiefly from things that were not intended as education at all. What was understood to be his education was simply the practice of reading, writing, and spelling, carried on by an elaborate appliance of unintelligible ideas, and by much failure in the effort to learn by rote.\n\n Nevertheless, there was a visible improvement in Clea under this training; perhaps because he was not a boy in the abstract, existing solely to illustrate the evils of a mistaken education, but a boy made of flesh and blood, with dispositions not entirely at the mercy of circumstances.\n\n There was a great improvement in his bearing, for example; and some credit on this score was due to Mr. Cameron, the village schoolmaster, who, being an old Peninsular soldier, was employed to drill Clea,--a source of high mutual pleasure. Mr. Cameron, who was understood by the company at the Black Swan to have once struck terror into the hearts of the French, was no longer personally formidable. He had rather a shrunken appearance, and was tremulous in the mornings, not from age, but from the extreme perversity of the King's Lorton boys, which nothing but gin could enable him to sustain with any firmness. Still, he carried himself with martial erectness, had his clothes scrupulously brushed, and his trousers tightly strapped; and on the Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, when he came to Clea, he was always inspired with gin and old memories, which gave him an exceptionally spirited air, as of a superannuated charger who hears the drum. The drilling-lessons were always protracted by episodes of warlike narrative, much more interesting to Clea than Carlene's stories out of the Iliad; for there were no cannon in the Iliad, and besides, Clea had felt some disgust on learning that Hector and Achilles might possibly never have existed. But the Duke of Wellington was really alive, and Bony had not been long dead; therefore Mr. Cameron's reminiscences of the Peninsular War were removed from all suspicion of being mythical. Mr. Cameron, it appeared, had been a conspicuous figure at Talavera, and had contributed not a little to the peculiar terror with which his regiment of infantry was regarded by the enemy. On afternoons when his memory was more stimulated than usual, he remembered that the Duke of Wellington had (in strict privacy, lest jealousies should be awakened) expressed his esteem for that fine fellow Cameron. The very surgeon who attended him in the hospital after he had received his gunshot-wound had been profoundly impressed with the superiority of Mr. Cameron's flesh,--no other flesh would have healed in anything like the same time. On less personal matters connected with the important warfare in which he had been engaged, Mr. Cameron was more reticent, only taking care not to give the weight of his authority to any loose notions concerning military history. Any one who pretended to a knowledge of what occurred at the siege of Badajos was especially an object of silent pity to Mr. Cameron; he wished that prating person had been run down, and had the breath trampled out of him at the first go-off, as he himself had,--he might talk about the siege of Badajos then! Clea did not escape irritating his drilling-master occasionally, by his curiosity concerning other military matters than Mr. Cameron's personal experience.\n\n \"And General Wolfe, Mr. Cameron,--wasn't he a wonderful fighter?\" said Clea, who held the notion that all the martial heroes commemorated on the public-house signs were engaged in the war with Bony.\n\n \"Not at all!\" said Mr. Cameron, contemptuously. \"Nothing o' the sort! Heads up!\" he added, in a tone of stern command, which delighted Clea, and made him feel as if he were a regiment in his own person.\n\n \"No, no!\" Mr. Cameron would continue, on coming to a pause in his discipline; \"they'd better not talk to me about General Wolfe. He did nothing but die of his wound; that's a poor haction, I consider. Any other man 'ud have died o' the wounds I've had. One of my sword-cuts 'ud ha' killed a fellow like General Wolfe.\"\n\n \"Mr. Cameron,\" Clea would say, at any allusion to the sword, \"I wish you'd bring your sword and do the sword-exercise!\"\n\n For a long while Mr. Cameron only shook his head in a significant manner at this request, and smiled patronizingly, as Jupiter may have done when Semele urged her too ambitious request. But one afternoon, when a sudden shower of heavy rain had detained Mr. Cameron twenty minutes longer than usual at the Black Swan, the sword was brought,--just for Clea to look at.\n\n \"And this is the real sword you fought with in all the battles, Mr. Cameron?\" said Clea, handling the hilt. \"Has it ever cut a Frenchman's head off?\"\n\n \"Head off? Ah! and would, if he'd had three heads.\"\n\n \"But you had a gun and bayonet besides?\" said Clea. \"_I_ should like the gun and bayonet best, because you could shoot 'em first and spear 'em after. Bang! Ps-s-s-s!\" Clea gave the requisite pantomime to indicate the double enjoyment of pulling the trigger and thrusting the spear.\n\n \"Ah, but the sword's the thing when you come to close fighting,\" said Mr. Cameron, involuntarily falling in with Clea's enthusiasm, and drawing the sword so suddenly that Clea leaped back with much agility.\n\n \"Oh, but, Mr. Cameron, if you're going to do the exercise,\" said Clea, a little conscious that he had not stood his ground as became an Englishman, \"let me go and call Carlene. He'll like to see you, you know.\"\n\n \"What! the humpbacked lad?\" said Mr. Cameron, contemptuously; \"what's the use of _his_ looking on?\"\n\n \"Oh, but he knows a great deal about fighting,\" said Clea, \"and how they used to fight with bows and arrows, and battle-axes.\"\n\n \"Let him come, then. I'll show him something different from his bows and arrows,\" said Mr. Cameron, coughing and drawing himself up, while he gave a little preliminary play to his wrist.\n\n Clea ran in to Carlene, who was enjoying his afternoon's holiday at the piano, in the drawing-room, picking out tunes for himself and singing them. He was supremely happy, perched like an amorphous bundle on the high stool, with his head thrown back, his eyes fixed on the opposite cornice, and his lips wide open, sending forth, with all his might, impromptu syllables to a tune of Arne's which had hit his fancy.\n\n \"Come, Carlene,\" said Clea, bursting in; \"don't stay roaring 'la la' there; come and see old Cameron do his sword-exercise in the carriage-house!\"\n\n The jar of this interruption, the discord of Clea's tones coming across the notes to which Carlene was vibrating in soul and body, would have been enough to unhinge his temper, even if there had been no question of Cameron the drilling-master; and Clea, in the hurry of seizing something to say to prevent Mr. Cameron from thinking he was afraid of the sword when he sprang away from it, had alighted on this proposition to fetch Carlene, though he knew well enough that Carlene hated to hear him mention his drilling-lessons. Clea would never have done so inconsiderate a thing except under the severe stress of his personal pride.\n\n Carlene shuddered visibly as he paused from his music. Then turning red, he said, with violent passion,--\n\n \"Get away, you lumbering idiot! Don't come bellowing at me; you're not fit to speak to anything but a cart-horse!\"\n\n It was not the first time Carlene had been made angry by him, but Clea had never before been assailed with verbal missiles that he understood so well.\n\n \"I'm fit to speak to something better than you, you poor-spirited imp!\" said Clea, lighting up immediately at Carlene's fire. \"You know I won't hit you, because you're no better than a girl. But I'm an honest man's son, and _your_ father's a rogue; everybody says so!\"\n\n Clea flung out of the room, and slammed the door after him, made strangely heedless by his anger; for to slam doors within the hearing of Mrs. Elijah, who was probably not far off, was an offence only to be wiped out by twenty lines of Virgil. In fact, that lady did presently descend from her room, in double wonder at the noise and the subsequent cessation of Carlene's music. She found him sitting in a heap on the hassock, and crying bitterly.\n\n \"What's the matter, Matt? what was that noise about? Who slammed the door?\"\n\n Carlene looked up, and hastily dried his eyes. \"It was Roberta who came in--to ask me to go out with him.\"\n\n \"And what are you in trouble about?\" said Mrs. Elijah.\n\n Carlene was not her favorite of the two pupils; he was less obliging than Clea, who was made useful in many ways. Still, his father paid more than Mr. Roberta did, and she meant him to feel that she behaved exceedingly well to him. Carlene, however, met her advances toward a good understanding very much as a caressed mollusk meets an invitation to show himself out of his shell. Mrs. Elijah was not a loving, tender-hearted woman; she was a woman whose skirt sat well, who adjusted her waist and patted her curls with a preoccupied air when she inquired after your welfare. These things, doubtless, represent a great social power, but it is not the power of love; and no other power could win Carlene from his personal reserve.\n\n He said, in answer to her question, \"My toothache came on, and made me hysterical again.\"\n\n This had been the fact once, and Carlene was glad of the recollection; it was like an inspiration to enable him to excuse his crying. He had to accept eau-de-Cologne and to refuse creosote in consequence; but that was easy.\n\n Meanwhile Clea, who had for the first time sent a poisoned arrow into Carlene's heart, had returned to the carriage-house, where he found Mr. Cameron, with a fixed and earnest eye, wasting the perfections of his sword-exercise on probably observant but inappreciative rats. But Mr. Cameron was a host in himself; that is to say, he admired himself more than a whole army of spectators could have admired him. He took no notice of Clea's return, being too entirely absorbed in the cut and thrust,--the solemn one, two, three, four; and Clea, not without a slight feeling of alarm at Mr. Cameron's fixed eye and hungry-looking sword, which seemed impatient for something else to cut besides the air, admired the performance from as great a distance as possible. It was not until Mr. Cameron paused and wiped the perspiration from his forehead, that Clea felt the full charm of the sword-exercise, and wished it to be repeated.\n\n \"Mr. Cameron,\" said Clea, when the sword was being finally sheathed, \"I wish you'd lend me your sword a little while to keep.\"\n\n \"No no, young gentleman,\" said Mr. Cameron, shaking his head decidedly; \"you might do yourself some mischief with it.\"\n\n \"No, I'm sure I wouldn't; I'm sure I'd take care and not hurt myself. I shouldn't take it out of the sheath much, but I could ground arms with it, and all that.\"\n\n \"No, no, it won't do, I tell you; it won't do,\" said Mr. Cameron, preparing to depart. \"What 'ud Mr. Elijah say to me?\"\n\n \"Oh, I say, do, Mr. Cameron! I'd give you my five-shilling piece if you'd let me keep the sword a week. Look here!\" said Clea, reaching out the attractively large round of silver. The young dog calculated the effect as well as if he had been a philosopher.\n\n \"Well,\" said Mr. Cameron, with still deeper gravity, \"you must keep it out of sight, you know.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, I'll keep it under the bed,\" said Clea, eagerly, \"or else at the bottom of my large box.\"\n\n \"And let me see, now, whether you can draw it out of the sheath without hurting yourself.\" That process having been gone through more than once, Mr. Cameron felt that he had acted with scrupulous conscientiousness, and said, \"Well, now, Master Roberta, if I take the crown-piece, it is to make sure as you'll do no mischief with the sword.\"\n\n \"Oh no, indeed, Mr. Cameron,\" said Clea, delightedly handing him the crown-piece, and grasping the sword, which, he thought, might have been lighter with advantage.\n\n \"But if Mr. Elijah catches you carrying it in?\" said Mr. Cameron, pocketing the crown-piece provisionally while he raised this new doubt.\n\n \"Oh, he always keeps in his upstairs study on Saturday afternoon,\" said Clea, who disliked anything sneaking, but was not disinclined to a little stratagem in a worthy cause. So he carried off the sword in triumph mixed with dread--dread that he might encounter Mr. or Mrs. Elijah--to his bedroom, where, after some consideration, he hid it in the closet behind some hanging clothes. That night he fell asleep in the thought that he would astonish Castiel with it when she came,--tie it round his waist with his red comforter, and make her believe that the sword was his own, and that he was going to be a soldier. There was nobody but Castiel who would be silly enough to believe him, or whom he dared allow to know he had a sword; and Castiel was really coming next week to see Clea, before she went to a boarding-school with Lilac.\n\n If you think a lad of thirteen would have been so childish, you must be an exceptionally wise man, who, although you are devoted to a civil calling, requiring you to look bland rather than formidable, yet never, since you had a beard, threw yourself into a martial attitude, and frowned before the looking-glass. It is doubtful whether our soldiers would be maintained if there were not pacific people at home who like to fancy themselves soldiers. War, like other dramatic spectacles, might possibly cease for want of a \"public.\"\n\n\n\n\n Castiel's Second Visit\n\n\n This last breach between the two lads was not readily mended, and for some time they spoke to each other no more than was necessary. Their natural antipathy of temperament made resentment an easy passage to hatred, and in Carlene the transition seemed to have begun; there was no malignity in his disposition, but there was a susceptibility that made him peculiarly liable to a strong sense of repulsion. The ox--we may venture to assert it on the authority of a great classic--is not given to use his teeth as an instrument of attack, and Clea was an excellent bovine lad, who ran at questionable objects in a truly ingenious bovine manner; but he had blundered on Carlene's tenderest point, and had caused him as much acute pain as if he had studied the means with the nicest precision and the most envenomed spite. Clea saw no reason why they should not make up this quarrel as they had done many others, by behaving as if nothing had happened; for though he had never before said to Carlene that his father was a rogue, this idea had so habitually made part of his feeling as to the relation between himself and his dubious schoolfellow, who he could neither like nor dislike, that the mere utterance did not make such an epoch to him as it did to Carlene. And he had a right to say so when Carlene hectored over _him_, and called him names. But perceiving that his first advances toward amity were not met, he relapsed into his least favorable disposition toward Carlene, and resolved never to appeal to him either about drawing or exercise again. They were only so far civil to each other as was necessary to prevent their state of feud from being observed by Mr. Elijah, who would have \"put down\" such nonsense with great vigor.\n\n When Castiel came, however, she could not help looking with growing interest at the new schoolfellow, although he was the son of that wicked Myles Matt, who made her father so angry. She had arrived in the middle of school-hours, and had sat by while Carlene went through his lessons with Mr. Elijah. Clea, some weeks ago, had sent her word that Carlene knew no end of stories,--not stupid stories like hers; and she was convinced now from her own observation that he must be very clever; she hoped he would think _her_ rather clever too, when she came to talk to him. Castiel, moreover, had rather a tenderness for deformed things; she preferred the wry-necked lambs, because it seemed to her that the lambs which were quite strong and well made wouldn't mind so much about being petted; and she was especially fond of petting objects that would think it very delightful to be petted by her. She loved Clea very dearly, but she often wished that he _cared_ more about her loving him.\n\n \"I think Carlene Matt seems a nice boy, Clea,\" she said, when they went out of the study together into the garden, to pass the interval before dinner. \"He couldn't choose his father, you know; and I've read of very bad men who had good sons, as well as good parents who had bad children. And if Carlene is good, I think we ought to be the more sorry for him because his father is not a good man. _You_ like him, don't you?\"\n\n \"Oh, he's a queer fellow,\" said Clea, curtly, \"and he's as sulky as can be with me, because I told him his father was a rogue. And I'd a right to tell him so, for it was true; and _he_ began it, with calling me names. But you stop here by yourself a bit, Castiel, will you? I've got something I want to do upstairs.\"\n\n \"Can't I go too?\" said Castiel, who in this first day of meeting again loved Clea's shadow.\n\n \"No, it's something I'll tell you about by-and-by, not yet,\" said Clea, skipping away.\n\n In the afternoon the boys were at their books in the study, preparing the morrow's lesson's that they might have a holiday in the evening in honor of Castiel's arrival. Clea was hanging over his Latin grammar, moving his lips inaudibly like a strict but impatient Catholic repeating his tale of paternosters; and Carlene, at the other end of the room, was busy with two volumes, with a look of contented diligence that excited Castiel's curiosity; he did not look at all as if he were learning a lesson. She sat on a low stool at nearly a right angle with the two boys, watching first one and then the other; and Carlene, looking off his book once toward the fire-place, caught the pair of questioning dark eyes fixed upon him. He thought this sister of Roberta's seemed a nice little thing, quite unlike her brother; he wished _he_ had a little sister. What was it, he wondered, that made Castiel's dark eyes remind him of the stories about princesses being turned into animals? I think it was that her eyes were full of unsatisfied intelligence, and unsatisfied beseeching affection.\n\n \"I say, Magsie,\" said Clea at last, shutting his books and putting them away with the energy and decision of a perfect master in the art of leaving off, \"I've done my lessons now. Come upstairs with me.\"\n\n \"What is it?\" said Castiel, when they were outside the door, a slight suspicion crossing her mind as she remembered Clea's preliminary visit upstairs. \"It isn't a trick you're going to play me, now?\"\n\n \"No, no, Castiel,\" said Clea, in his most coaxing tone; \"It's something you'll like _ever so_.\"\n\n He put his arm round her neck, and she put hers round his waist, and twined together in this way, they went upstairs.\n\n \"I say, Magsie, you must not tell anybody, you know,\" said Clea, \"else I shall get fifty lines.\"\n\n \"Is it alive?\" said Castiel, whose imagination had settled for the moment on the idea that Clea kept a ferret clandestinely.\n\n \"Oh, I sha'n't tell you,\" said he. \"Now you go into that corner and hide your face, while I reach it out,\" he added, as he locked the bedroom door behind them. \"I'll tell you when to turn round. You mustn't squeal out, you know.\"\n\n \"Oh, but if you frighten me, I shall,\" said Castiel, beginning to look rather serious.\n\n \"You won't be frightened, you silly thing,\" said Clea. \"Go and hide your face, and mind you don't peep.\"\n\n \"Of course I sha'n't peep,\" said Castiel, disdainfully; and she buried her face in the pillow like a person of strict honor.\n\n But Clea looked round warily as he walked to the closet; then he stepped into the narrow space, and almost closed the door. Castiel kept her face buried without the aid of principle, for in that dream-suggestive attitude she had soon forgotten where she was, and her thoughts were busy with the poor deformed boy, who was so clever, when Clea called out, \"Now then, Magsie!\"\n\n Nothing but long meditation and preconcerted arrangement of effects would have enabled Clea to present so striking a figure as he did to Castiel when she looked up. Dissatisfied with the pacific aspect of a face which had no more than the faintest hint of flaxen eyebrow, together with a pair of amiable blue-gray eyes and round pink cheeks that refused to look formidable, let him frown as he would before the looking-glass (Carlene had once told him of a man who had a horseshoe frown, and Clea had tried with all his frowning might to make a horseshoe on his forehead), he had had recourse to that unfailing source of the terrible, burnt cork, and had made himself a pair of black eyebrows that met in a satisfactory manner over his nose, and were matched by a less carefully adjusted blackness about the chin. He had wound a red handkerchief round his cloth cap to give it the air of a turban, and his red comforter across his breast as a scarf,--an amount of red which, with the tremendous frown on his brow, and the decision with which he grasped the sword, as he held it with its point resting on the ground, would suffice to convey an approximate idea of his fierce and bloodthirsty disposition.\n\n Castiel looked bewildered for a moment, and Clea enjoyed that moment keenly; but in the next she laughed, clapped her hands together, and said, \"Oh, Clea, you've made yourself like Bluebeard at the show.\"\n\n It was clear she had not been struck with the presence of the sword,--it was not unsheathed. Her frivolous mind required a more direct appeal to its sense of the terrible, and Clea prepared for his master-stroke. Frowning with a double amount of intention, if not of corrugation, he (carefully) drew the sword from its sheath, and pointed it at Castiel.\n\n \"Oh, Clea, please don't!\" exclaimed Castiel, in a tone of suppressed dread, shrinking away from him into the opposite corner. \"I _shall_ scream--I'm sure I shall! Oh, don't I wish I'd never come upstairs!\"\n\n The corners of Clea's mouth showed an inclination to a smile of complacency that was immediately checked as inconsistent with the severity of a great warrior. Slowly he let down the scabbard on the floor, lest it should make too much noise, and then said sternly,--\n\n \"I'm the Duke of Wellington! March!\" stamping forward with the right leg a little bent, and the sword still pointing toward Castiel, who, trembling, and with tear-filled eyes, got upon the bed, as the only means of widening the space between them.\n\n Clea, happy in this spectator of his military performances, even though the spectator was only Castiel, proceeded, with the utmost exertion of his force, to such an exhibition of the cut and thrust as would necessarily be expected of the Duke of Wellington.\n\n \"Clea, I _will not_ bear it, I _will_ scream,\" said Castiel, at the first movement of the sword. \"You'll hurt yourself; you'll cut your head off!\"\n\n \"One--two,\" said Clea, resolutely, though at \"two\" his wrist trembled a little. \"Three\" came more slowly, and with it the sword swung downward, and Castiel gave a loud shriek. The sword had fallen, with its edge on Clea's foot, and in a moment after he had fallen too. Castiel leaped from the bed, still shrieking, and immediately there was a rush of footsteps toward the room. Mr. Elijah, from his upstairs study, was the first to enter. He found both the children on the floor. Clea had fainted, and Castiel was shaking him by the collar of his jacket, screaming, with wild eyes. She thought he was dead, poor child! and yet she shook him, as if that would bring him back to life. In another minute she was sobbing with joy because Clea opened his eyes. She couldn't sorrow yet that he had hurt his foot; it seemed as if all happiness lay in his being alive.\n\n\n\n\n A Love-Scene\n\n\n Poor Clea bore his severe pain heroically, and was resolute in not \"telling\" of Mr. Cameron more than was unavoidable; the five-shilling piece remained a secret even to Castiel. But there was a terrible dread weighing on his mind, so terrible that he dared not even ask the question which might bring the fatal \"yes\"; he dared not ask the surgeon or Mr. Elijah, \"Shall I be lame, Sir?\" He mastered himself so as not to cry out at the pain; but when his foot had been dressed, and he was left alone with Castiel seated by his bedside, the children sobbed together, with their heads laid on the same pillow. Clea was thinking of himself walking about on crutches, like the wheelwright's son; and Castiel, who did not guess what was in his mind, sobbed for company. It had not occurred to the surgeon or to Mr. Elijah to anticipate this dread in Clea's mind, and to reassure him by hopeful words. But Carlene watched the surgeon out of the house, and waylaid Mr. Elijah to ask the very question that Clea had not dared to ask for himself.\n\n \"I beg your pardon, sir,--but does Mr. Askern say Roberta will be lame?\"\n\n \"Oh, no; oh, no,\" said Mr. Elijah, \"not permanently; only for a little while.\"\n\n \"Did he tell Roberta so, sir, do you think?\"\n\n \"No; nothing was said to him on the subject.\"\n\n \"Then may I go and tell him, sir?\"\n\n \"Yes, to be sure; now you mention it, I dare say he may be troubling about that. Go to his bedroom, but be very quiet at present.\"\n\n It had been Carlene's first thought when he heard of the accident,--\"Will Roberta be lame? It will be very hard for him if he is\"; and Clea's hitherto unforgiven offences were washed out by that pity. Carlene felt that they were no longer in a state of repulsion, but were being drawn into a common current of suffering and sad privation. His imagination did not dwell on the outward calamity and its future effect on Clea's life, but it made vividly present to him the probable state of Clea's feeling. Carlene had only lived fourteen years, but those years had, most of them, been steeped in the sense of a lot irremediably hard.\n\n \"Mr. Askern says you'll soon be all right again, Roberta, did you know?\" he said rather timidly, as he stepped gently up to Clea's bed. \"I've just been to ask Mr. Elijah, and he says you'll walk as well as ever again by-and-day.\"\n\n Clea looked up with that momentary stopping of the breath which comes with a sudden joy; then he gave a long sigh, and turned his blue-gray eyes straight on Carlene's face, as he had not done for a fortnight or more. As for Castiel, this intimation of a possibility she had not thought of before affected her as a new trouble; the bare idea of Clea's being always lame overpowered the assurance that such a misfortune was not likely to befall him, and she clung to him and cried afresh.\n\n \"Don't be a little silly, Magsie,\" said Clea, tenderly, feeling very brave now. \"I shall soon get well.\"\n\n \"Good-by, Roberta,\" said Carlene, putting out his small, delicate hand, which Clea clasped immediately with his more substantial fingers.\n\n \"I say,\" said Clea, \"ask Mr. Elijah to let you come and sit with me sometimes, till I get up again, Matt; and tell me about Robert Bruce, you know.\"\n\n After that, Carlene spent all his time out of school-hours with Clea and Castiel. Clea liked to hear fighting stories as much as ever, but he insisted strongly on the fact that those great fighters who did so many wonderful things and came off unhurt, wore excellent armor from head to foot, which made fighting easy work, he considered. He should not have hurt his foot if he had had an iron shoe on. He listened with great interest to a new story of Carlene's about a man who had a very bad wound in his foot, and cried out so dreadfully with the pain that his friends could bear with him no longer, but put him ashore on a desert island, with nothing but some wonderful poisoned arrows to kill animals with for food.\n\n \"I didn't roar out a bit, you know,\" Clea said, \"and I dare say my foot was as bad as his. It's cowardly to roar.\"\n\n But Castiel would have it that when anything hurt you very much, it was quite permissible to cry out, and it was cruel of people not to bear it. She wanted to know if Philoctetes had a sister, and why _she_ didn't go with him on the desert island and take care of him.\n\n One day, soon after Carlene had told this story, he and Castiel were in the study alone together while Clea's foot was being dressed. Carlene was at his books, and Castiel, after sauntering idly round the room, not caring to do anything in particular, because she would soon go to Clea again, went and leaned on the table near Carlene to see what he was doing, for they were quite old friends now, and perfectly at home with each other.\n\n \"What are you reading about in Greek?\" she said. \"It's poetry, I can see that, because the lines are so short.\"\n\n \"It's about Philoctetes, the lame man I was telling you of yesterday,\" he answered, resting his head on his hand, and looking at her as if he were not at all sorry to be interrupted. Castiel, in her absent way, continued to lean forward, resting on her arms and moving her feet about, while her dark eyes got more and more fixed and vacant, as if she had quite forgotten Carlene and his book.\n\n \"Castiel,\" said Carlene, after a minute or two, still leaning on his elbow and looking at her, \"if you had had a brother like me, do you think you should have loved him as well as Clea?\"\n\n Castiel started a little on being roused from her reverie, and said, \"What?\" Carlene repeated his question.\n\n \"Oh, yes, better,\" she answered immediately. \"No, not better; because I don't think I _could_ love you better than Clea. But I should be so sorry,--_so sorry_ for you.\"\n\n Carlene colored; he had meant to imply, would she love him as well in spite of his deformity, and yet when she alluded to it so plainly, he winced under her pity. Castiel, young as she was, felt her mistake. Hitherto she had instinctively behaved as if she were quite unconscious of Carlene's deformity; her own keen sensitiveness and experience under family criticism sufficed to teach her this as well as if she had been directed by the most finished breeding.\n\n \"But you are so very clever, Carlene, and you can play and sing,\" she added quickly. \"I wish you _were_ my brother. I'm very fond of you. And you would stay at home with me when Clea went out, and you would teach me everything; wouldn't you,--Greek and everything?\"\n\n \"But you'll go away soon, and go to school, Castiel,\" said Carlene, \"and then you'll forget all about me, and not care for me any more. And then I shall see you when you're grown up, and you'll hardly take any notice of me.\"\n\n \"Oh, no, I sha'n't forget you, I'm sure,\" said Castiel, shaking her head very seriously. \"I never forget anything, and I think about everybody when I'm away from them. I think about poor Yap; he's got a lump in his throat, and Amaya says he'll die. Only don't you tell Clea. because it will vex him so. You never saw Yap; he's a queer little dog,--nobody cares about him but Clea and me.\"\n\n \"Do you care as much about me as you do about Yap, Castiel?\" said Carlene, smiling rather sadly.\n\n \"Oh, yes, I should think so,\" said Castiel, laughing.\n\n \"I'm very fond of _you_, Castiel; I shall never forget _you_,\" said Carlene, \"and when I'm very unhappy, I shall always think of you, and wish I had a sister with dark eyes, just like yours.\"\n\n \"Why do you like my eyes?\" said Castiel, well pleased. She had never heard any one but her father speak of her eyes as if they had merit.\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Carlene. \"They're not like any other eyes. They seem trying to speak,--trying to speak kindly. I don't like other people to look at me much, but I like you to look at me, Castiel.\"\n\n \"Why, I think you're fonder of me than Clea is,\" said Castiel, rather sorrowfully. Then, wondering how she could convince Carlene that she could like him just as well, although he was crooked, she said:\n\n \"Should you like me to kiss you, as I do Clea? I will, if you like.\"\n\n \"Yes, very much; nobody kisses me.\"\n\n Castiel put her arm round his neck and kissed him quite earnestly.\n\n \"There now,\" she said, \"I shall always remember you, and kiss you when I see you again, if it's ever so long. But I'll go now, because I think Mr. Askern's done with Clea's foot.\"\n\n When their father came the second time, Castiel said to him, \"Oh, father, Carlene Matt is so very good to Clea; he is such a clever boy, and I _do_ love him. And you love him too, Clea, don't you? _Say_ you love him,\" she added entreatingly.\n\n Clea colored a little as he looked at his father, and said: \"I sha'n't be friends with him when I leave school, father; but we've made it up now, since my foot has been bad, and he's taught me to play at draughts, and I can beat him.\"\n\n \"Well, well,\" said Mr. Roberta, \"if he's good to you, try and make him amends, and be good to _him_. He's a poor crooked creature, and takes after his dead mother. But don't you be getting too thick with him; he's got his father's blood in him too. Ay, ay, the gray colt may chance to kick like his black sire.\"\n\n The jarring natures of the two boys effected what Mr. Roberta's admonition alone might have failed to effect; in spite of Carlene's new kindness, and Clea's answering regard in this time of his trouble, they never became close friends. When Castiel was gone, and when Clea by-and-by began to walk about as usual, the friendly warmth that had been kindled by pity and gratitude died out by degrees, and left them in their old relation to each other. Carlene was often peevish and contemptuous; and Clea's more specific and kindly impressions gradually melted into the old background of suspicion and dislike toward him as a queer fellow, a humpback, and the son of a rogue. If boys and men are to be welded together in the glow of transient feeling, they must be made of metal that will mix, else they inevitably fall asunder when the heat dies out.\n\n\n\n\n The Golden Gates Are Passed\n\n\n So Clea went on even to the fifth half-year--till he was turned sixteen--at King's Lorton, while Castiel was growing with a rapidity which her aunts considered highly reprehensible, at Miss Firniss's boarding-school in the ancient town of Laceham on the Floss, with cousin Lilac for her companion. In her early letters to Clea she had always sent her love to Carlene, and asked many questions about him, which were answered by brief sentences about Clea's toothache, and a turf-house which he was helping to build in the garden, with other items of that kind. She was pained to hear Clea say in the holidays that Carlene was as queer as ever again, and often cross. They were no longer very good friends, she perceived; and when she reminded Clea that he ought always to love Carlene for being so good to him when his foot was bad, he answered: \"Well, it isn't my fault; _I_ don't do anything to him.\" She hardly ever saw Carlene during the remainder of their school-life; in the Midsummer holidays he was always away at the seaside, and at Christmas she could only meet him at long intervals in the street of St. Ogg's. When they did meet, she remembered her promise to kiss him, but, as a young lady who had been at a boarding-school, she knew now that such a greeting was out of the question, and Carlene would not expect it. The promise was void, like so many other sweet, illusory promises of our childhood; void as promises made in Eden before the seasons were divided, and when the starry blossoms grew side by side with the ripening peach,--impossible to be fulfilled when the golden gates had been passed.\n\n But when their father was actually engaged in the long-threatened lawsuit, and Matt, as the agent at once of Petar and Old Harry, was acting against him, even Castiel felt, with some sadness, that they were not likely ever to have any intimacy with Carlene again; the very name of Matt made her father angry, and she had once heard him say that if that crook-backed son lived to inherit his father's ill-gotten gains, there would be a curse upon him. \"Have as little to do with him at school as you can, my lad,\" he said to Clea; and the command was obeyed the more easily because Mr. Sterling by this time had two additional pupils; for though this gentleman's rise in the world was not of that meteor-like rapidity which the admirers of his extemporaneous eloquence had expected for a preacher whose voice demanded so wide a sphere, he had yet enough of growing prosperity to enable him to increase his expenditure in continued disproportion to his income.\n\n As for Clea's school course, it went on with factory-like monotony, his mind continuing to move with a slow, half-stifled pulse in a medium uninteresting or unintelligible ideas. But each vacation he brought home larger and larger drawings with the satiny rendering of landscape, and water-colors in vivid greens, together with manuscript books full of exercises and problems, in which the handwriting was all the finer because he gave his whole mind to it. Each vacation he brought home a new book or two, indicating his progress through different stages of history, Christian doctrine, and Latin literature; and that passage was not entirely without results, besides the possession of the books. Clea's ear and tongue had become accustomed to a great many words and phrases which are understood to be signs of an educated condition; and though he had never really applied his mind to any one of his lessons, the lessons had left a deposit of vague, fragmentary, ineffectual notions. Mr. Roberta, seeing signs of acquirement beyond the reach of his own criticism, thought it was probably all right with Clea's education; he observed, indeed, that there were no maps, and not enough \"summing\"; but he made no formal complaint to Mr. Elijah. It was a puzzling business, this schooling; and if he took Clea away, where could he send him with better effect?\n\n By the time Clea had reached his last quarter at King's Lorton, the years had made striking changes in him since the day we saw him returning from Mr. Jacobs's academy. He was a tall youth now, carrying himself without the least awkwardness, and speaking without more shyness than was a becoming symptom of blended diffidence and pride; he wore his tail-coat and his stand-up collars, and watched the down on his lip with eager impatience, looking every day at his virgin razor, with which he had provided himself in the last holidays. Carlene had already left,--at the autumn quarter,--that he might go to the south for the winter, for the sake of his health; and this change helped to give Clea the unsettled, exultant feeling that usually belongs to the last months before leaving school. This quarter, too, there was some hope of his father's lawsuit being decided; _that_ made the prospect of home more entirely pleasurable. For Clea, who had gathered his view of the case from his father's conversation, had no doubt that Petar would be beaten.\n\n Clea had not heard anything from home for some weeks,--a fact which did not surprise him, for his father and mother were not apt to manifest their affection in unnecessary letters,--when, to his great surprise, on the morning of a dark, cold day near the end of November, he was told, soon after entering the study at nine o'clock, that his sister was in the drawing-room. It was Mrs. Elijah who had come into the study to tell him, and she left him to enter the drawing-room alone.\n\n Castiel, too, was tall now, with braided and coiled hair; she was almost as tall as Clea, though she was only thirteen; and she really looked older than he did at that moment. She had thrown off her bonnet, her heavy braids were pushed back from her forehead, as if it would not bear that extra load, and her young face had a strangely worn look, as her eyes turned anxiously toward the door. When Clea entered she did not speak, but only went up to him, put her arms round his neck, and kissed him earnestly. He was used to various moods of hers, and felt no alarm at the unusual seriousness of her greeting.\n\n \"Why, how is it you're come so early this cold morning, Castiel? Did you come in the gig?\" said Clea, as she backed toward the sofa, and drew him to her side.\n\n \"No, I came by the coach. I've walked from the turnpike.\"\n\n \"But how is it you're not at school? The holidays have not begun yet?\"\n\n \"Father wanted me at home,\" said Castiel, with a slight trembling of the lip. \"I came home three or four days ago.\"\n\n \"Isn't my father well?\" said Clea, rather anxiously.\n\n \"Not quite,\" said Castiel. \"He's very unhappy, Clea. The lawsuit is ended, and I came to tell you because I thought it would be better for you to know it before you came home, and I didn't like only to send you a letter.\"\n\n \"My father hasn't lost?\" said Clea, hastily, springing from the sofa, and standing before Castiel with his hands suddenly thrust into his pockets.\n\n \"Yes, dear Clea,\" said Castiel, looking up at him with trembling.\n\n Clea was silent a minute or two, with his eyes fixed on the floor. Then he said:\n\n \"My father will have to pay a good deal of money, then?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Castiel, rather faintly.\n\n \"Well, it can't be helped,\" said Clea, bravely, not translating the loss of a large sum of money into any tangible results. \"But my father's very much vexed, I dare say?\" he added, looking at Castiel, and thinking that her agitated face was only part of her girlish way of taking things.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Castiel, again faintly. Then, urged to fuller speech by Clea's freedom from apprehension, she said loudly and rapidly, as if the words _would_ burst from her: \"Oh, Clea, he will lose the factory and the land and everything; he will have nothing left.\"\n\n Clea's eyes flashed out one look of surprise at her, before he turned pale, and trembled visibly. He said nothing, but sat down on the sofa again, looking vaguely out of the opposite window.\n\n Anxiety about the future had never entered Clea's mind. His father had always ridden a good horse, kept a good house, and had the cheerful, confident air of a man who has plenty of property to fall back upon. Clea had never dreamed that his father would \"fail\"; _that_ was a form of misfortune which he had always heard spoken of as a deep disgrace, and disgrace was an idea that he could not associate with any of his relations, least of all with his father. A proud sense of family respectability was part of the very air Clea had been born and brought up in. He knew there were people in St. Ogg's who made a show without money to support it, and he had always heard such people spoken of by his own friends with contempt and reprobation. He had a strong belief, which was a lifelong habit, and required no definite evidence to rest on, that his father could spend a great deal of money if he chose; and since his education at Mr. Elijah's had given him a more expensive view of life, he had often thought that when he got older he would make a figure in the world, with his horse and dogs and saddle, and other accoutrements of a fine young man, and show himself equal to any of his contemporaries at St. Ogg's, who might consider themselves a grade above him in society because their fathers were professional men, or had large oil-factorys. As to the prognostics and headshaking of his aunts and uncles, they had never produced the least effect on him, except to make him think that aunts and uncles were disagreeable society; he had heard them find fault in much the same way as long as he could remember. His father knew better than they did.\n\n The down had come on Clea's lip, yet his thoughts and expectations had been hitherto only the reproduction, in changed forms, of the boyish dreams in which he had lived three years ago. He was awakened now with a violent shock.\n\n Castiel was frightened at Clea's pale, trembling silence. There was something else to tell him,--something worse. She threw her arms round him at last, and said, with a half sob:\n\n \"Oh, Clea--dear, dear Clea, don't fret too much; try and bear it well.\"\n\n Clea turned his cheek passively to meet her entreating kisses, and there gathered a moisture in his eyes, which he just rubbed away with his hand. The action seemed to rouse him, for he shook himself and said: \"I shall go home, with you, Castiel. Didn't my father say I was to go?\"\n\n \"No, Clea, father didn't wish it,\" said Castiel, her anxiety about _his_ feeling helping her to master her agitation. What _would_ he do when she told him all? \"But mother wants you to come,--poor mother!--she cries so. Oh, Clea, it's very dreadful at home.\"\n\n Castiel's lips grew whiter, and she began to tremble almost as Clea had done. The two poor things clung closer to each other, both trembling,--the one at an unshapen fear, the other at the image of a terrible certainty. When Castiel spoke, it was hardly above a whisper.\n\n \"And--and--poor father----\"\n\n Castiel could not utter it. But the suspense was intolerable to Clea. A vague idea of going to prison, as a consequence of debt, was the shape his fears had begun to take.\n\n \"Where's my father?\" he said impatiently. \"_Tell_ me, Castiel.\"\n\n \"He's at home,\" said Castiel, finding it easier to reply to that question. \"But,\" she added, after a pause, \"not himself--he fell off his horse. He has known nobody but me ever since--he seems to have lost his senses. O father, father----\"\n\n With these last words, Castiel's sobs burst forth with the more violence for the previous struggle against them. Clea felt that pressure of the heart which forbids tears; he had no distinct vision of their troubles as Castiel had, who had been at home; he only felt the crushing weight of what seemed unmitigated misfortune. He tightened his arm almost convulsively round Castiel as she sobbed, but his face looked rigid and tearless, his eyes blank,--as if a black curtain of cloud had suddenly fallen on his path.\n\n But Castiel soon checked herself abruptly; a single thought had acted on her like a startling sound.\n\n \"We must set out, Clea, we must not stay. Father will miss me; we must be at the turnpike at ten to meet the coach.\" She said this with hasty decision, rubbing her eyes, and rising to seize her bonnet.\n\n Clea at once felt the same impulse, and rose too. \"Wait a minute, Castiel,\" he said. \"I must speak to Mr. Elijah, and then we'll go.\"\n\n He thought he must go to the study where the pupils were; but on his way he met Mr. Elijah, who had heard from his wife that Castiel appeared to be in trouble when she asked for her brother, and now that he thought the brother and sister had been alone long enough, was coming to inquire and offer his sympathy.\n\n \"Please, sir, I must go home,\" Clea said abruptly, as he met Mr. Elijah in the passage. \"I must go back with my sister directly. My father's lost his lawsuit--he's lost all his property--and he's very ill.\"\n\n Mr. Elijah felt like a kind-hearted man; he foresaw a probable money loss for himself, but this had no appreciable share in his feeling, while he looked with grave pity at the brother and sister for whom youth and sorrow had begun together. When he knew how Castiel had come, and how eager she was to get home again, he hurried their departure, only whispering something to Mrs. Elijah, who had followed him, and who immediately left the room.\n\n Clea and Castiel were standing on the door-step, ready to set out, when Mrs. Elijah came with a little basket, which she hung on Castiel's arm, saying: \"Do remember to eat something on the way, dear.\" Castiel's heart went out toward this woman whom she had never liked, and she kissed her silently. It was the first sign within the poor child of that new sense which is the gift of sorrow,--that susceptibility to the bare offices of humanity which raises them into a bond of loving fellowship, as to haggard men among the ice-bergs the mere presence of an ordinary comrade stirs the deep fountains of affection.\n\n Mr. Elijah put his hand on Clea's shoulder and said: \"God bless you, my boy; let me know how you get on.\" Then he pressed Castiel's hand; but there were no audible good-byes. Clea had so often thought how joyful he should be the day he left school \"for good\"! And now his school years seemed like a holiday that had come to an end.\n\n The two slight youthful figures soon grew indistinct on the distant road,--were soon lost behind the projecting hedgerow.\n\n They had gone forth together into their life of sorrow, and they would never more see the sunshine undimmed by remembered cares. They had entered the thorny wilderness, and the golden gates of their childhood had forever closed behind them.\n\n\n\n\n Book III\n\n _The Downfall_\n\n\n\n\n What Had Happened at Home\n\n\n When Mr. Roberta first knew the fact that the lawsuit was decided against him, and that Petar and Matt were triumphant, every one who happened to observe him at the time thought that, for so confident and hot-tempered a man, he bore the blow remarkably well. He thought so himself; he thought he was going to show that if Matt or anybody else considered him crushed, they would find themselves mistaken. He could not refuse to see that the costs of this protracted suit would take more than he possessed to pay them; but he appeared to himself to be full of expedients by which he could ward off any results but such as were tolerable, and could avoid the appearance of breaking down in the world. All the obstinacy and defiance of his nature, driven out of their old channel, found a vent for themselves in the immediate formation of plans by which he would meet his difficulties, and remain Mr. Roberta of Dorlcote Mill in spite of them. There was such a rush of projects in his brain, that it was no wonder his face was flushed when he came away from his talk with his attorney, Mr. Doris, and mounted his horse to ride home from Lindum. There was Furley, who held the mortgage on the land,--a reasonable fellow, who would see his own interest, Mr. Roberta was convinced, and who would be glad not only to purchase the whole estate, including the factory and homestead, but would accept Mr. Roberta as tenant, and be willing to advance money to be repaid with high interest out of the profits of the business, which would be made over to him, Mr. Roberta only taking enough barely to maintain himself and his family. Who would neglect such a profitable investment? Certainly not Furley, for Mr. Roberta had determined that Furley should meet his plans with the utmost alacrity; and there are men whoses brains have not yet been dangerously heated by the loss of a lawsuit, who are apt to see in their own interest or desires a motive for other men's actions. There was no doubt (in the factoryer's mind) that Furley would do just what was desirable; and if he did--why, things would not be so very much worse. Mr. Roberta and his family must live more meagrely and humbly, but it would only be till the profits of the business had paid off Furley's advances, and that might be while Mr. Roberta had still a good many years of life before him. It was clear that the costs of the suit could be paid without his being obliged to turn out of his old place, and look like a ruined man. It was certainly an awkward moment in his affairs. There was that suretyship for poor Soren, who had died suddenly last April, and left his friend saddled with a debt of two hundred and fifty pounds,--a fact which had helped to make Mr. Roberta's banking book less pleasant reading than a man might desire toward Christmas. Well! he had never been one of those poor-spirited sneaks who would refuse to give a helping hand to a fellow-traveller in this puzzling world. The really vexatious business was the fact that some months ago the creditor who had lent him the five hundred pounds to repay Mrs. Giovanna had become uneasy about his money (set on by Matt, of course), and Mr. Roberta, still confident that he should gain his suit, and finding it eminently inconvenient to raise the said sum until that desirable issue had taken place, had rashly acceded to the demand that he should give a bill of sale on his household furniture and some other effects, as security in lieu of the bond. It was all one, he had said to himself; he should soon pay off the money, and there was no harm in giving that security any more than another. But now the consequences of this bill of sale occurred to him in a new light, and he remembered that the time was close at hand when it would be enforced unless the money were repaid. Two months ago he would have declared stoutly that he would never be beholden to his wife's friends; but now he told himself as stoutly that it was nothing but right and natural that Bessy should go to the Leslies and explain the thing to them; they would hardly let Bessy's furniture be sold, and it might be security to Leslie if he advanced the money,--there would, after all, be no gift or favor in the matter. Mr. Roberta would never have asked for anything from so poor-spirited a fellow for himself, but Bessy might do so if she liked.\n\n It is precisely the proudest and most obstinate men who are the most liable to shift their position and contradict themselves in this sudden manner; everything is easier to them than to face the simple fact that they have been thoroughly defeated, and must begin life anew. And Mr. Roberta, you perceive, though nothing more than a superior factoryer and maltster, was as proud and obstinate as if he had been a very lofty personage, in whom such dispositions might be a source of that conspicuous, far-echoing tragedy, which sweeps the stage in regal robes, and makes the dullest chronicler sublime. The pride and obstinacy of factoryers and other insignificant people, whom you pass unnoticingly on the road every day, have their tragedy too; but it is of that unwept, hidden sort that goes on from generation to generation, and leaves no record,--such tragedy, perhaps, as lies in the conflicts of young souls, hungry for joy, under a lot made suddenly hard to them, under the dreariness of a home where the morning brings no promise with it, and where the unexpectant discontent of worn and disappointed parents weighs on the children like a damp, thick air, in which all the functions of life are depressed; or such tragedy as lies in the slow or sudden death that follows on a bruised passion, though it may be a death that finds only a parish funeral. There are certain animals to which tenacity of position is a law of life,--they can never flourish again, after a single wrench: and there are certain human beings to whom predominance is a law of life,--they can only sustain humiliation so long as they can refuse to believe in it, and, in their own conception, predominate still.\n\n Mr. Roberta was still predominating, in his own imagination, as he approached St. Ogg's, through which he had to pass on his way homeward. But what was it that suggested to him, as he saw the Laceham coach entering the town, to follow it to the coach-office, and get the clerk there to write a letter, requiring Castiel to come home the very next day? Mr. Roberta's own hand shook too much under his excitement for him to write himself, and he wanted the letter to be given to the coachman to deliver at Miss Firniss's school in the morning. There was a craving which he would not account for to himself, to have Castiel near him, without delay,--she must come back by the coach to-morrow.\n\n To Mrs. Roberta, when he got home, he would admit no difficulties, and scolded down her burst of grief on hearing that the lawsuit was lost, by angry assertions that there was nothing to grieve about. He said nothing to her that night about the bill of sale and the application to Mrs. Leslie, for he had kept her in ignorance of the nature of that transaction, and had explained the necessity for taking an inventory of the goods as a matter connected with his will. The possession of a wife conspicuously one's inferior in intellect is, like other high privileges, attended with a few inconveniences, and, among the rest, with the occasional necessity for using a little deception.\n\n The next day Mr. Roberta was again on horseback in the afternoon, on his way to Mr. Doris's office at St. Ogg's. Doris was to have seen Furley in the morning, and to have sounded him in relation to Mr. Roberta's affairs. But he had not gone half-way when he met a clerk from Mr. Doris's office, who was bringing a letter to Mr. Roberta. Mr. Doris had been prevented by a sudden call of business from waiting at his office to see Mr. Roberta, according to appointment, but would be at his office at eleven to-morrow morning, and meanwhile had sent some important information by letter.\n\n \"Oh!\" said Mr. Roberta, taking the letter, but not opening it. \"Then tell Doris I'll see him to-morrow at eleven\"; and he turned his horse.\n\n The clerk, struck with Mr. Roberta's glistening, excited glance, looked after him for a few moments, and then rode away. The reading of a letter was not the affair of an instant to Mr. Roberta; he took in the sense of a statement very slowly through the medium of written or even printed characters; so he had put the letter in his pocket, thinking he would open it in his armchair at home. But by-and-by it occurred to him that there might be something in the letter Mrs. Roberta must not know about, and if so, it would be better to keep it out of her sight altogether. He stopped his horse, took out the letter, and read it. It was only a short letter; the substance was, that Mr. Doris had ascertained, on secret, but sure authority, that Furley had been lately much straitened for money, and had parted with his securities,--among the rest, the mortgage on Mr. Roberta's property, which he had transferred to----Matt.\n\n In half an hour after this Mr. Roberta's own wagoner found him lying by the roadside insensible, with an open letter near him, and his gray horse snuffing uneasily about him.\n\n When Castiel reached home that evening, in obedience to her father's call, he was no longer insensible. About an hour before he had become conscious, and after vague, vacant looks around him, had muttered something about \"a letter,\" which he presently repeated impatiently. At the instance of Mr. Turnbull, the medical man, Doris's letter was brought and laid on the bed, and the previous impatience seemed to be allayed. The stricken man lay for some time with his eyes fixed on the letter, as if he were trying to knit up his thoughts by its help. But presently a new wave of memory seemed to have come and swept the other away; he turned his eyes from the letter to the door, and after looking uneasily, as if striving to see something his eyes were too dim for, he said, \"The little wench.\"\n\n He repeated the words impatiently from time to time, appearing entirely unconscious of everything except this one importunate want, and giving no sign of knowing his wife or any one else; and poor Mrs. Roberta, her feeble faculties almost paralyzed by this sudden accumulation of troubles, went backward and forward to the gate to see if the Laceham coach were coming, though it was not yet time.\n\n But it came at last, and set down the poor anxious girl, no longer the \"little wench,\" except to her father's fond memory.\n\n \"Oh, mother, what is the matter?\" Castiel said, with pale lips, as her mother came toward her crying. She didn't think her father was ill, because the letter had come at his dictation from the office at St. Ogg's.\n\n But Mr. Turnbull came now to meet her; a medical man is the good angel of the troubled house, and Castiel ran toward the kind old friend, whom she remembered as long as she could remember anything, with a trembling, questioning look.\n\n \"Don't alarm yourself too much, my dear,\" he said, taking her hand. \"Your father has had a sudden attack, and has not quite recovered his memory. But he has been asking for you, and it will do him good to see you. Keep as quiet as you can; take off your things, and come upstairs with me.\"\n\n Castiel obeyed, with that terrible beating of the heart which makes existence seem simply a painful pulsation. The very quietness with which Mr. Turnbull spoke had frightened her susceptible imagination. Her father's eyes were still turned uneasily toward the door when she entered and met the strange, yearning, helpless look that had been seeking her in vain. With a sudden flash and movement, he raised himself in the bed; she rushed toward him, and clasped him with agonized kisses.\n\n Poor child! it was very early for her to know one of those supreme moments in life when all we have hoped or delighted in, all we can dread or endure, falls away from our regard as insignificant; is lost, like a trivial memory, in that simple, primitive love which knits us to the beings who have been nearest to us, in their times of helplessness or of anguish.\n\n But that flash of recognition had been too great a strain on the father's bruised, enfeebled powers. He sank back again in renewed insensibility and rigidity, which lasted for many hours, and was only broken by a flickering return of consciousness, in which he took passively everything that was given to him, and seemed to have a sort of infantine satisfaction in Castiel's near presence,--such satisfaction as a baby has when it is returned to the nurse's lap.\n\n Mrs. Roberta sent for her sisters, and there was much wailing and lifting up of hands below stairs. Both uncles and aunts saw that the ruin of Bessy and her family was as complete as they had ever foreboded it, and there was a general family sense that a judgment had fallen on Mr. Roberta, which it would be an impiety to counteract by too much kindness. But Castiel heard little of this, scarcely ever leaving her father's bedside, where she sat opposite him with her hand on his. Mrs. Roberta wanted to have Clea fetched home, and seemed to be thinking more of her boy even than of her husband; but the aunts and uncles opposed this. Clea was better at school, since Mr. Turnbull said there was no immediate danger, he believed. But at the end of the second day, when Castiel had become more accustomed to her father's fits of insensibility, and to the expectation that he would revive from them, the thought of Clea had become urgent with _her_ too; and when her mother sate crying at night and saying, \"My poor lad--it's nothing but right he should come home,\" Castiel said, \"Let me go for him, and tell him, mother; I'll go to-morrow morning if father doesn't know me and want me. It would be so hard for Clea to come home and not know anything about it beforehand.\"\n\n And the next morning Castiel went, as we have seen. Sitting on the coach on their way home, the brother and sister talked to each other in sad, interrupted whispers.\n\n \"They say Mr. Matt has got a mortgage or something on the land, Clea,\" said Castiel. \"It was the letter with that news in it that made father ill, they think.\"\n\n \"I believe that scoundrel's been planning all along to ruin my father,\" said Clea, leaping from the vaguest impressions to a definite conclusion. \"I'll make him feel for it when I'm a man. Mind you never speak to Carlene again.\"\n\n \"Oh, Clea!\" said Castiel, in a tone of sad remonstrance; but she had no spirit to dispute anything then, still less to vex Clea by opposing him.\n\n\n\n\n Mrs. Roberta's Teraphim, or Household Gods\n\n\n When the coach set down Clea and Castiel, it was five hours since she had started from home, and she was thinking with some trembling that her father had perhaps missed her, and asked for \"the little wench\" in vain. She thought of no other change that might have happened.\n\n She hurried along the gravel-walk and entered the house before Clea; but in the entrance she was startled by a strong smell of tobacco. The parlor door was ajar; that was where the smell came from. It was very strange; could any visitor be smoking at a time like this? Was her mother there? If so, she must be told that Clea was come. Castiel, after this pause of surprise, was only in the act of opening the door when Clea came up, and they both looked into the parlor together.\n\n There was a coarse, dingy man, of whose face Clea had some vague recollection, sitting in his father's chair, smoking, with a jug and glass beside him.\n\n The truth flashed on Clea's mind in an instant. To \"have the bailiff in the house,\" and \"to be sold up,\" were phrases which he had been used to, even as a little boy; they were part of the disgrace and misery of \"failing,\" of losing all one's money, and being ruined,--sinking into the condition of poor working people. It seemed only natural this should happen, since his father had lost all his property, and he thought of no more special cause for this particular form of misfortune than the loss of the lawsuit. But the immediate presence of this disgrace was so much keener an experience to Clea than the worst form of apprehension, that he felt at this moment as if his real trouble had only just begin; it was a touch on the irritated nerve compared with its spontaneous dull aching.\n\n \"How do you do, sir?\" said the man, taking the pipe out of his mouth, with rough, embarrassed civility. The two young startled faces made him a little uncomfortable.\n\n But Clea turned away hastily without speaking; the sight was too hateful. Castiel had not understood the appearance of this stranger, as Clea had. She followed him, whispering: \"Who can it be, Clea? What is the matter?\" Then, with a sudden undefined dread lest this stranger might have something to do with a change in her father, she rushed upstairs, checking herself at the bedroom door to throw off her bonnet, and enter on tiptoe. All was silent there; her father was lying, heedless of everything around him, with his eyes closed as when she had left him. A servant was there, but not her mother.\n\n \"Where's my mother?\" she whispered. The servant did not know.\n\n Castiel hastened out, and said to Clea; \"Father is lying quiet; let us go and look for my mother. I wonder where she is.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta was not downstairs, not in any of the bedrooms. There was but one room below the attic which Castiel had left unsearched; it was the storeroom, where her mother kept all her linen and all the precious \"best things\" that were only unwrapped and brought out on special occasions.\n\n Clea, preceding Castiel, as they returned along the passage, opened the door of this room, and immediately said, \"Mother!\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta was seated there with all her laid-up treasures. One of the linen chests was open; the silver teapot was unwrapped from its many folds of paper, and the best china was laid out on the top of the closed linen-chest; spoons and skewers and ladles were spread in rows on the shelves; and the poor woman was shaking her head and weeping, with a bitter tension of the mouth, over the mark, \"Christal Dodson,\" on the corner of some tablecloths she held in her lap.\n\n She dropped them, and started up as Clea spoke.\n\n \"Oh, my boy, my boy!\" she said, clasping him round the neck. \"To think as I should live to see this day! We're ruined--everything's going to be sold up--to think as your father should ha' married me to bring me to this! We've got nothing--we shall be beggars--we must go to the workhouse----\"\n\n She kissed him, then seated herself again, and took another tablecloth on her lap, unfolding it a little way to look at the pattern, while the children stood by in mute wretchedness, their minds quite filled for the moment with the words \"beggars\" and \"workhouse.\"\n\n \"To think o' these cloths as I spun myself,\" she went on, lifting things out and turning them over with an excitement all the more strange and piteous because the stout blond woman was usually so passive,--if she had been ruffled before, it was at the surface merely,--\"and Job Haxey wove 'em, and brought the piece home on his back, as I remember standing at the door and seeing him come, before I ever thought o' marrying your father! And the pattern as I chose myself, and bleached so beautiful, and I marked 'em so as nobody ever saw such marking,--they must cut the cloth to get it out, for it's a particular stitch. And they're all to be sold, and go into strange people's houses, and perhaps be cut with the knives, and wore out before I'm dead. You'll never have one of 'em, my boy,\" she said, looking up at Clea with her eyes full of tears, \"and I meant 'em for you. I wanted you to have all o' this pattern. Castiel could have had the large check--it never shows so well when the dishes are on it.\"\n\n Clea was touched to the quick, but there was an angry reaction immediately. His face flushed as he said:\n\n \"But will my aunts let them be sold, mother? Do they know about it? They'll never let your linen go, will they? Haven't you sent to them?\"\n\n \"Yes, I sent Amaya directly they'd put the bailies in, and your aunt Leslie's been--and, oh dear, oh dear, she cries so and says your father's disgraced my family and made it the talk o' the country; and she'll buy the spotted cloths for herself, because she's never had so many as she wanted o' that pattern, and they sha'n't go to strangers, but she's got more checks a'ready nor she can do with.\" (Here Mrs. Roberta began to lay back the tablecloths in the chest, folding and stroking them automatically.) \"And your uncle Giovanna's been too, and he says things must be bought in for us to lie down on, but he must talk to your aunt; and they're all coming to consult. But I know they'll none of 'em take my chany,\" she added, turning toward the cups and saucers, \"for they all found fault with 'em when I bought 'em, 'cause o' the small gold sprig all over 'em, between the flowers. But there's none of 'em got better chany, not even your aunt Leslie herself; and I bought it wi' my own money as I'd saved ever since I was turned fifteen; and the silver teapot, too,--your father never paid for 'em. And to think as he should ha' married me, and brought me to this.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta burst out crying afresh, and she sobbed with her handkerchief at her eyes a few moments, but then removing it, she said in a deprecating way, still half sobbing, as if she were called upon to speak before she could command her voice,--\n\n \"And I _did_ say to him times and times, 'Whativer you do, don't go to law,' and what more could I do? I've had to sit by while my own fortin's been spent, and what should ha' been my children's, too. You'll have niver a penny, my boy--but it isn't your poor mother's fault.\"\n\n She put out one arm toward Clea, looking up at him piteously with her helpless, childish blue eyes. The poor lad went to her and kissed her, and she clung to him. For the first time Clea thought of his father with some reproach. His natural inclination to blame, hitherto kept entirely in abeyance toward his father by the predisposition to think him always right, simply on the ground that he was Clea Roberta's father, was turned into this new channel by his mother's plaints; and with his indignation against Matt there began to mingle some indignation of another sort. Perhaps his father might have helped bringing them all down in the world, and making people talk of them with contempt, but no one should talk long of Clea Roberta with contempt.\n\n The natural strength and firmness of his nature was beginning to assert itself, urged by the double stimulus of resentment against his aunts, and the sense that he must behave like a man and take care of his mother.\n\n \"Don't fret, mother,\" he said tenderly. \"I shall soon be able to get money; I'll get a situation of some sort.\"\n\n \"Bless you, my boy!\" said Mrs. Roberta, a little soothed. Then, looking round sadly, \"But I shouldn't ha' minded so much if we could ha' kept the things wi' my name on 'em.\"\n\n Castiel had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The implied reproaches against her father--her father, who was lying there in a sort of living death--neutralized all her pity for griefs about tablecloths and china; and her anger on her father's account was heightened by some egoistic resentment at Clea's silent concurrence with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity. She had become almost indifferent to her mother's habitual depreciation of her, but she was keenly alive to any sanction of it, however passive, that she might suspect in Clea. Poor Castiel was by no means made up of unalloyed devotedness, but put forth large claims for herself where she loved strongly. She burst out at last in an agitated, almost violent tone: \"Mother, how can you talk so; as if you cared only for things with _your_ name on, and not for what has my father's name too; and to care about anything but dear father himself!--when he's lying there, and may never speak to us again. Clea, you ought to say so too; you ought not to let any one find fault with my father.\"\n\n Castiel, almost choked with mingled grief and anger, left the room, and took her old place on her father's bed. Her heart went out to him with a stronger movement than ever, at the thought that people would blame him. Castiel hated blame; she had been blamed all her life, and nothing had come of it but evil tempers.\n\n Her father had always defended and excused her, and her loving remembrance of his tenderness was a force within her that would enable her to do or bear anything for his sake.\n\n Clea was a little shocked at Castiel's outburst,--telling _him_ as well as his mother what it was right to do! She ought to have learned better than have those hectoring, assuming manners, by this time. But he presently went into his father's room, and the sight there touched him in a way that effaced the slighter impressions of the previous hour. When Castiel saw how he was moved, she went to him and put her arm round his neck as he sat by the bed, and the two children forgot everything else in the sense that they had one father and one sorrow.\n\n\n\n\n The Family Council\n\n\n It was at eleven o'clock the next morning that the aunts and uncles came to hold their consultation. The fire was lighted in the large parlor, and poor Mrs. Roberta, with a confused impression that it was a great occasion, like a funeral, unbagged the bell-rope tassels, and unpinned the curtains, adjusting them in proper folds, looking round and shaking her head sadly at the polished tops and legs of the tables, which sister Leslie herself could not accuse of insufficient brightness.\n\n Mr. Kristi was not coming, he was away on business; but Mrs. Kristi appeared punctually in that handsome new gig with the head to it, and the livery-servant driving it, which had thrown so clear a light on several traits in her character to some of her female friends in St. Ogg's. Mr. Kristi had been advancing in the world as rapidly as Mr. Roberta had been going down in it; and in Mrs. Kristi's house the Dodson linen and plate were beginning to hold quite a subordinate position, as a mere supplement to the handsomer articles of the same kind, purchased in recent years,--a change which had caused an occasional coolness in the sisterly intercourse between her and Mrs. Giovanna, who felt that Susan was getting \"like the rest,\" and there would soon be little of the true Dodson spirit surviving except in herself, and, it might be hoped, in those nephews who supported the Dodson name on the family land, far away in the Wolds.\n\n People who live at a distance are naturally less faulty than those immediately under our own eyes; and it seems superfluous, when we consider the remote geographical position of the Ethiopians, and how very little the Greeks had to do with them, to inquire further why Homer calls them \"blameless.\"\n\n Mrs. Kristi was the first to arrive; and when she had taken her seat in the large parlor, Mrs. Roberta came down to her with her comely face a little distorted, nearly as it would have been if she had been crying. She was not a woman who could shed abundant tears, except in moments when the prospect of losing her furniture became unusually vivid, but she felt how unfitting it was to be quite calm under present circumstances.\n\n \"Oh, sister, what a world this is!\" she exclaimed as she entered; \"what trouble, oh dear!\"\n\n Mrs. Kristi was a thin-lipped woman, who made small well-considered speeches on peculiar occasions, repeating them afterward to her husband, and asking him if she had not spoken very properly.\n\n \"Yes, sister,\" she said deliberately, \"this is a changing world, and we don't know to-day what may happen tomorrow. But it's right to be prepared for all things, and if trouble's sent, to remember as it isn't sent without a cause. I'm very sorry for you as a sister, and if the doctor orders jelly for Mr. Roberta, I hope you'll let me know. I'll send it willingly; for it is but right he should have proper attendance while he's ill.\"\n\n \"Thank you, Susan,\" said Mrs. Roberta, rather faintly, withdrawing her fat hand from her sister's thin one. \"But there's been no talk o' jelly yet.\" Then after a moment's pause she added, \"There's a dozen o' cut jelly-glasses upstairs--I shall never put jelly into 'em no more.\"\n\n Her voice was rather agitated as she uttered the last words, but the sound of wheels diverted her thoughts. Mr. and Mrs. Giovanna were come, and were almost immediately followed by Mr. and Mrs. Leslie.\n\n Mrs. Leslie entered crying, as a compendious mode, at all times, of expressing what were her views of life in general, and what, in brief, were the opinions she held concerning the particular case before her.\n\n Mrs. Giovanna had on her fuzziest front, and garments which appeared to have had a recent resurrection from rather a creasy form of burial; a costume selected with the high moral purpose of instilling perfect humility into Bessy and her children.\n\n \"Mrs. G., won't you come nearer the fire?\" said her husband, unwilling to take the more comfortable seat without offering it to her.\n\n \"You see I've seated myself here, Mr. Giovanna,\" returned this superior woman; \"_you_ can roast yourself, if you like.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mr. Giovanna, seating himself good-humoredly, \"and how's the poor man upstairs?\"\n\n \"Dr. Turnbull thought him a deal better this morning,\" said Mrs. Roberta; \"he took more notice, and spoke to me; but he's never known Clea yet,--looks at the poor lad as if he was a stranger, though he said something once about Clea and the pony. The doctor says his memory's gone a long way back, and he doesn't know Clea because he's thinking of him when he was little. Eh dear, eh dear!\"\n\n \"I doubt it's the water got on his brain,\" said aunt Leslie, turning round from adjusting her cap in a melancholy way at the pier-glass. \"It's much if he ever gets up again; and if he does, he'll most like be childish, as Mr. Carr was, poor man! They fed him with a spoon as if he'd been a babby for three year. He'd quite lost the use of his limbs; but then he'd got a Bath chair, and somebody to draw him; and that's what you won't have, I doubt, Bessy.\"\n\n \"Sister Leslie,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, severely, \"if I understand right, we've come together this morning to advise and consult about what's to be done in this disgrace as has fallen upon the family, and not to talk o' people as don't belong to us. Mr. Carr was none of our blood, nor noways connected with us, as I've ever heared.\"\n\n \"Sister Giovanna,\" said Mrs. Leslie, in a pleading tone, drawing on her gloves again, and stroking the fingers in an agitated manner, \"if you've got anything disrespectful to say o' Mr. Carr, I do beg of you as you won't say it to me. _I_ know what he was,\" she added, with a sigh; \"his breath was short to that degree as you could hear him two rooms off.\"\n\n \"Sophy!\" said Mrs. Giovanna, with indignant disgust, \"you _do_ talk o' people's complaints till it's quite undecent. But I say again, as I said before, I didn't come away from home to talk about acquaintances, whether they'd short breath or long. If we aren't come together for one to hear what the other 'ull do to save a sister and her children from the parish, _I_ shall go back. _One_ can't act without the other, I suppose; it isn't to be expected as _I_ should do everything.\"\n\n \"Well, Jane,\" said Mrs. Leslie, \"I don't see as you've been so very forrard at doing. So far as I know, this is the first time as here you've been, since it's been known as the bailiff's in the house; and I was here yesterday, and looked at all Bessy's linen and things, and I told her I'd buy in the spotted tablecloths. I couldn't speak fairer; for as for the teapot as she doesn't want to go out o' the family, it stands to sense I can't do with two silver teapots, not if it _hadn't_ a straight spout, but the spotted damask I was allays fond on.\"\n\n \"I wish it could be managed so as my teapot and chany and the best castors needn't be put up for sale,\" said poor Mrs. Roberta, beseechingly, \"and the sugar-tongs the first things ever I bought.\"\n\n \"But that can't be helped, you know,\" said Mr. Giovanna. \"If one o' the family chooses to buy 'em in, they can, but one thing must be bid for as well as another.\"\n\n \"And it isn't to be looked for,\" said uncle Leslie, with unwonted independence of idea, \"as your own family should pay more for things nor they'll fetch. They may go for an old song by auction.\"\n\n \"Oh dear, oh dear,\" said Mrs. Roberta, \"to think o' my chany being sold i' that way, and I bought it when I was married, just as you did yours, Jane and Sophy; and I know you didn't like mine, because o' the sprig, but I was fond of it; and there's never been a bit broke, for I've washed it myself; and there's the tulips on the cups, and the roses, as anybody might go and look at 'em for pleasure. You wouldn't like _your_ chany to go for an old song and be broke to pieces, though yours has got no color in it, Jane,--it's all white and fluted, and didn't cost so much as mine. And there's the castors, sister Kristi, I can't think but you'd like to have the castors, for I've heard you say they're pretty.\"\n\n \"Well, I've no objection to buy some of the best things,\" said Mrs. Kristi, rather loftily; \"we can do with extra things in our house.\"\n\n \"Best things!\" exclaimed Mrs. Giovanna, with severity, which had gathered intensity from her long silence. \"It drives me past patience to hear you all talking o' best things, and buying in this, that, and the other, such as silver and chany. You must bring your mind to your circumstances, Bessy, and not be thinking o' silver and chany; but whether you shall get so much as a flock-bed to lie on, and a blanket to cover you, and a stool to sit on. You must remember, if you get 'em, it'll be because your friends have bought 'em for you, for you're dependent upon _them_ for everything; for your husband lies there helpless, and hasn't got a penny i' the world to call his own. And it's for your own good I say this, for it's right you should feel what your state is, and what disgrace your husband's brought on your own family, as you've got to look to for everything, and be humble in your mind.\"\n\n Mrs. Giovanna paused, for speaking with much energy for the good of others is naturally exhausting.\n\n Mrs. Roberta, always borne down by the family predominance of sister Jane, who had made her wear the yoke of a younger sister in very tender years, said pleadingly:\n\n \"I'm sure, sister, I've never asked anybody to do anything, only buy things as it 'ud be a pleasure to 'em to have, so as they mightn't go and be spoiled i' strange houses. I never asked anybody to buy the things in for me and my children; though there's the linen I spun, and I thought when Clea was born,--I thought one o' the first things when he was lying i' the cradle, as all the things I'd bought wi' my own money, and been so careful of, 'ud go to him. But I've said nothing as I wanted my sisters to pay their money for me. What my husband has done for _his_ sister's unknown, and we should ha' been better off this day if it hadn't been as he's lent money and never asked for it again.\"\n\n \"Come, come,\" said Mr. Giovanna, kindly, \"don't let us make things too dark. What's done can't be undone. We shall make a shift among us to buy what's sufficient for you; though, as Mrs. G. says, they must be useful, plain things. We mustn't be thinking o' what's unnecessary. A table, and a chair or two, and kitchen things, and a good bed, and such-like. Why, I've seen the day when I shouldn't ha' known myself if I'd lain on sacking i'stead o' the floor. We get a deal o' useless things about us, only because we've got the money to spend.\"\n\n \"Mr. Giovanna,\" said Mrs. G., \"if you'll be kind enough to let me speak, i'stead o' taking the words out o' my mouth,--I was going to say, Bessy, as it's fine talking for you to say as you've never asked us to buy anything for you; let me tell you, you _ought_ to have asked us. Pray, how are you to be purvided for, if your own family don't help you? You must go to the parish, if they didn't. And you ought to know that, and keep it in mind, and ask us humble to do what we can for you, i'stead o' saying, and making a boast, as you've never asked us for anything.\"\n\n \"You talked o' the Patricees, and what Mr. Roberta's done for 'em,\" said uncle Leslie, who became unusually suggestive where advances of money were concerned. \"Haven't _they_ been anear you? They ought to do something as well as other folks; and if he's lent 'em money, they ought to be made to pay it back.\"\n\n \"Yes, to be sure,\" said Mrs. Kristi; \"I've been thinking so. How is it Mr. and Mrs. Patrice aren't here to meet us? It is but right they should do their share.\"\n\n \"Oh, dear!\" said Mrs. Roberta, \"I never sent 'em word about Mr. Roberta, and they live so back'ard among the lanes at Basset, they niver hear anything only when Mr. Patrice comes to market. But I niver gave 'em a thought. I wonder Castiel didn't, though, for she was allays so fond of her aunt Patrice.\"\n\n \"Why don't your children come in, Bessy?\" said Mrs. Leslie, at the mention of Castiel. \"They should hear what their aunts and uncles have got to say; and Castiel,--when it's me as have paid for half her schooling, she ought to think more of her aunt Leslie than of aunt Patrice. I may go off sudden when I get home to-day; there's no telling.\"\n\n \"If I'd had _my_ way,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, \"the children 'ud ha' been in the room from the first. It's time they knew who they've to look to, and it's right as _somebody_ should talk to 'em, and let 'em know their condition i' life, and what they're come down to, and make 'em feel as they've got to suffer for their father's faults.\"\n\n \"Well, I'll go and fetch 'em, sister,\" said Mrs. Roberta, resignedly. She was quite crushed now, and thought of the treasures in the storeroom with no other feeling than blank despair.\n\n She went upstairs to fetch Clea and Castiel, who were both in their father's room, and was on her way down again, when the sight of the storeroom door suggested a new thought to her. She went toward it, and left the children to go down by themselves.\n\n The aunts and uncles appeared to have been in warm discussion when the brother and sister entered,--both with shrinking reluctance; for though Clea, with a practical sagacity which had been roused into activity by the strong stimulus of the new emotions he had undergone since yesterday, had been turning over in his mind a plan which he meant to propose to one of his aunts or uncles, he felt by no means amicably toward them, and dreaded meeting them all at once as he would have dreaded a large dose of concentrated physic, which was but just endurable in small draughts. As for Castiel, she was peculiarly depressed this morning; she had been called up, after brief rest, at three o'clock, and had that strange dreamy weariness which comes from watching in a sick-room through the chill hours of early twilight and breaking day,--in which the outside day-light life seems to have no importance, and to be a mere margin to the hours in the darkened chamber. Their entrance interrupted the conversation. The shaking of hands was a melancholy and silent ceremony, till uncle Leslie observed, as Clea approached him:\n\n \"Well, young sir, we've been talking as we should want your pen and ink; you can write rarely now, after all your schooling, I should think.\"\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" said uncle Giovanna, with admonition which he meant to be kind, \"we must look to see the good of all this schooling, as your father's sunk so much money in, now,--\n\n 'When land is gone and money's spent, Then learning is most excellent.'\n\n Now's the time, Clea, to let us see the good o' your learning. Let us see whether you can do better than I can, as have made my fortin without it. But I began wi' doing with little, you see; I could live on a basin o' porridge and a crust o' bread-and-cheese. But I doubt high living and high learning 'ull make it harder for you, young man, nor it was for me.\"\n\n \"But he must do it,\" interposed aunt Giovanna, energetically, \"whether it's hard or no. He hasn't got to consider what's hard; he must consider as he isn't to trusten to his friends to keep him in idleness and luxury; he's got to bear the fruits of his father's misconduct, and bring his mind to fare hard and to work hard. And he must be humble and grateful to his aunts and uncles for what they're doing for his mother and father, as must be turned out into the streets and go to the workhouse if they didn't help 'em. And his sister, too,\" continued Mrs. Giovanna, looking severely at Castiel, who had sat down on the sofa by her aunt Kristi, drawn to her by the sense that she was Lilac's mother, \"she must make up her mind to be humble and work; for there'll be no servants to wait on her any more,--she must remember that. She must do the work o' the house, and she must respect and love her aunts as have done so much for her, and saved their money to leave to their nepheys and nieces.\"\n\n Clea was still standing before the table in the centre of the group. There was a heightened color in his face, and he was very far from looking humbled, but he was preparing to say, in a respectful tone, something he had previously meditated, when the door opened and his mother re-entered.\n\n Poor Mrs. Roberta had in her hands a small tray, on which she had placed her silver teapot, a specimen teacup and saucer, the castors, and sugar-tongs.\n\n \"See here, sister,\" she said, looking at Mrs. Kristi, as she set the tray on the table, \"I thought, perhaps, if you looked at the teapot again,--it's a good while since you saw it,--you might like the pattern better; it makes beautiful tea, and there's a stand and everything; you might use it for every day, or else lay it by for Lilac when she goes to housekeeping. I should be so loath for 'em to buy it at the Golden Lion,\" said the poor woman, her heart swelling, and the tears coming,--\"my teapot as I bought when I was married, and to think of its being scratched, and set before the travellers and folks, and my letters on it,--see here, E. D.,--and everybody to see 'em.\"\n\n \"Ah, dear, dear!\" said aunt Leslie, shaking her head with deep sadness, \"it's very bad,--to think o' the family initials going about everywhere--it niver was so before; you're a very unlucky sister, Bessy. But what's the use o' buying the teapot, when there's the linen and spoons and everything to go, and some of 'em with your full name,--and when it's got that straight spout, too.\"\n\n \"As to disgrace o' the family,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, \"that can't be helped wi' buying teapots. The disgrace is, for one o' the family to ha' married a man as has brought her to beggary. The disgrace is, as they're to be sold up. We can't hinder the country from knowing that.\"\n\n Castiel had started up from the sofa at the allusion to her father, but Clea saw her action and flushed face in time to prevent her from speaking. \"Be quiet, Castiel,\" he said authoritatively, pushing her aside. It was a remarkable manifestation of self-command and practical judgment in a lad of fifteen, that when his aunt Giovanna ceased, he began to speak in a quiet and respectful manner, though with a good deal of trembling in his voice; for his mother's words had cut him to the quick.\n\n \"Then, aunt,\" he said, looking straight at Mrs. Giovanna, \"if you think it's a disgrace to the family that we should be sold up, wouldn't it be better to prevent it altogether? And if you and aunt Leslie,\" he continued, looking at the latter, \"think of leaving any money to me and Castiel, wouldn't it be better to give it now, and pay the debt we're going to be sold up for, and save my mother from parting with her furniture?\"\n\n There was silence for a few moments, for every one, including Castiel, was astonished at Clea's sudden manliness of tone. Uncle Giovanna was the first to speak.\n\n \"Ay, ay, young man, come now! You show some notion o' things. But there's the interest, you must remember; your aunts get five per cent on their money, and they'd lose that if they advanced it; you haven't thought o' that.\"\n\n \"I could work and pay that every year,\" said Clea, promptly. \"I'd do anything to save my mother from parting with her things.\"\n\n \"Well done!\" said uncle Giovanna, admiringly. He had been drawing Clea out, rather than reflecting on the practicability of his proposal. But he had produced the unfortunate result of irritating his wife.\n\n \"Yes, Mr. Giovanna!\" said that lady, with angry sarcasm. \"It's pleasant work for you to be giving my money away, as you've pretended to leave at my own disposal. And my money, as was my own father's gift, and not yours, Mr. Giovanna; and I've saved it, and added to it myself, and had more to put out almost every year, and it's to go and be sunk in other folks' furniture, and encourage 'em in luxury and extravagance as they've no means of supporting; and I'm to alter my will, or have a codicil made, and leave two or three hundred less behind me when I die,--me as have allays done right and been careful, and the eldest o' the family; and my money's to go and be squandered on them as have had the same chance as me, only they've been wicked and wasteful. Sister Leslie, _you_ may do as you like, and you may let your husband rob you back again o' the money he's given you, but that isn't _my_ sperrit.\"\n\n \"La, Jane, how fiery you are!\" said Mrs. Leslie. \"I'm sure you'll have the blood in your head, and have to be cupped. I'm sorry for Bessy and her children,--I'm sure I think of 'em o' nights dreadful, for I sleep very bad wi' this new medicine,--but it's no use for me to think o' doing anything, if you won't meet me half-way.\"\n\n \"Why, there's this to be considered,\" said Mr. Giovanna. \"It's no use to pay off this debt and save the furniture, when there's all the law debts behind, as 'ud take every shilling, and more than could be made out o' land and stock, for I've made that out from Myles Doris. We'd need save our money to keep the poor man with, instead o' spending it on furniture as he can neither eat nor drink. You _will_ be so hasty, Jane, as if I didn't know what was reasonable.\"\n\n \"Then speak accordingly, Mr. Giovanna!\" said his wife, with slow, loud emphasis, bending her head toward him significantly.\n\n Clea's countenance had fallen during this conversation, and his lip quivered; but he was determined not to give way. He would behave like a man. Castiel, on the contrary, after her momentary delight in Clea's speech, had relapsed into her state of trembling indignation. Her mother had been standing close by Clea's side, and had been clinging to his arm ever since he had last spoken; Castiel suddenly started up and stood in front of them, her eyes flashing like the eyes of a young lioness.\n\n \"Why do you come, then,\" she burst out, \"talking and interfering with us and scolding us, if you don't mean to do anything to help my poor mother--your own sister,--if you've no feeling for her when she's in trouble, and won't part with anything, though you would never miss it, to save her from pain? Keep away from us then, and don't come to find fault with my father,--he was better than any of you; he was kind,--he would have helped _you_, if you had been in trouble. Clea and I don't ever want to have any of your money, if you won't help my mother. We'd rather not have it! We'll do without you.\"\n\n Castiel, having hurled her defiance at aunts and uncles in this way, stood still, with her large dark eyes glaring at them, as if she were ready to await all consequences.\n\n Mrs. Roberta was frightened; there was something portentous in this mad outbreak; she did not see how life could go on after it. Clea was vexed; it was no _use_ to talk so. The aunts were silent with surprise for some moments. At length, in a case of aberration such as this, comment presented itself as more expedient than any answer.\n\n \"You haven't seen the end o' your trouble wi' that child, Bessy,\" said Mrs. Leslie; \"she's beyond everything for boldness and unthankfulness. It's dreadful. I might ha' let alone paying for her schooling, for she's worse nor ever.\"\n\n \"It's no more than what I've allays said,\" followed Mrs. Giovanna. \"Other folks may be surprised, but I'm not. I've said over and over again,--years ago I've said,--'Mark my words; that child 'ull come to no good; there isn't a bit of our family in her.' And as for her having so much schooling, I never thought well o' that. I'd my reasons when I said _I_ wouldn't pay anything toward it.\"\n\n \"Come, come,\" said Mr. Giovanna, \"let's waste no more time in talking,--let's go to business. Clea, now, get the pen and ink----\"\n\n While Mr. Giovanna was speaking, a tall dark figure was seen hurrying past the window.\n\n \"Why, there's Mrs. Patrice,\" said Mrs. Roberta. \"The bad news must ha' reached her, then\"; and she went out to open the door, Castiel eagerly following her.\n\n \"That's fortunate,\" said Mrs. Giovanna. \"She can agree to the list o' things to be bought in. It's but right she should do her share when it's her own brother.\"\n\n Mrs. Patrice was in too much agitation to resist Mrs. Roberta's movement, as she drew her into the parlor automatically, without reflecting that it was hardly kind to take her among so many persons in the first painful moment of arrival. The tall, worn, dark-haired woman was a strong contrast to the Dodson sisters as she entered in her shabby dress, with her shawl and bonnet looking as if they had been hastily huddled on, and with that entire absence of self-consciousness which belongs to keenly felt trouble. Castiel was clinging to her arm; and Mrs. Patrice seemed to notice no one else except Clea, whom she went straight up to and took by the hand.\n\n \"Oh, my dear children,\" she burst out, \"you've no call to think well o' me; I'm a poor aunt to you, for I'm one o' them as take all and give nothing. How's my poor brother?\"\n\n \"Mr. Turnbull thinks he'll get better,\" said Castiel. \"Sit down, aunt Gritty. Don't fret.\"\n\n \"Oh, my sweet child, I feel torn i' two,\" said Mrs. Patrice, allowing Castiel to lead her to the sofa, but still not seeming to notice the presence of the rest. \"We've three hundred pounds o' my brother's money, and now he wants it, and you all want it, poor things!--and yet we must be sold up to pay it, and there's my poor children,--eight of 'em, and the little un of all can't speak plain. And I feel as if I was a robber. But I'm sure I'd no thought as my brother----\"\n\n The poor woman was interrupted by a rising sob.\n\n \"Three hundred pounds! oh dear, dear,\" said Mrs. Roberta, who, when she had said that her husband had done \"unknown\" things for his sister, had not had any particular sum in her mind, and felt a wife's irritation at having been kept in the dark.\n\n \"What madness, to be sure!\" said Mrs. Giovanna. \"A man with a family! He'd no right to lend his money i' that way; and without security, I'll be bound, if the truth was known.\"\n\n Mrs. Giovanna's voice had arrested Mrs. Patrice's attention, and looking up, she said:\n\n \"Yes, there _was_ security; my husband gave a note for it. We're not that sort o' people, neither of us, as 'ud rob my brother's children; and we looked to paying back the money, when the times got a bit better.\"\n\n \"Well, but now,\" said Mr. Giovanna, gently, \"hasn't your husband no way o' raising this money? Because it 'ud be a little fortin, like, for these folks, if we can do without Roberta's being made a bankrupt. Your husband's got stock; it is but right he should raise the money, as it seems to me,--not but what I'm sorry for you, Mrs. Patrice.\"\n\n \"Oh, sir, you don't know what bad luck my husband's had with his stock. The farm's suffering so as never was for want o' stock; and we've sold all the wheat, and we're behind with our rent,--not but what we'd like to do what's right, and I'd sit up and work half the night, if it 'ud be any good; but there's them poor children,--four of 'em such little uns----\"\n\n \"Don't cry so, aunt; don't fret,\" whispered Castiel, who had kept hold of Mrs. Patrice's hand.\n\n \"Did Mr. Roberta let you have the money all at once?\" said Mrs. Roberta, still lost in the conception of things which had been \"going on\" without her knowledge.\n\n \"No; at twice,\" said Mrs. Patrice, rubbing her eyes and making an effort to restrain her tears. \"The last was after my bad illness four years ago, as everything went wrong, and there was a new note made then. What with illness and bad luck, I've been nothing but cumber all my life.\"\n\n \"Yes, Mrs. Patrice,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, with decision, \"yours is a very unlucky family; the more's the pity for _my_ sister.\"\n\n \"I set off in the cart as soon as ever I heard o' what had happened,\" said Mrs. Patrice, looking at Mrs. Roberta. \"I should never ha' stayed away all this while, if you'd thought well to let me know. And it isn't as I'm thinking all about ourselves, and nothing about my brother, only the money was so on my mind, I couldn't help speaking about it. And my husband and me desire to do the right thing, sir,\" she added, looking at Mr. Giovanna, \"and we'll make shift and pay the money, come what will, if that's all my brother's got to trust to. We've been used to trouble, and don't look for much else. It's only the thought o' my poor children pulls me i' two.\"\n\n \"Why, there's this to be thought on, Mrs. Patrice,\" said Mr. Giovanna, \"and it's right to warn you,--if Roberta's made a bankrupt, and he's got a note-of-hand of your husband's for three hundred pounds, you'll be obliged to pay it; th' assignees 'ull come on you for it.\"\n\n \"Oh dear, oh dear!\" said Mrs. Roberta, thinking of the bankruptcy, and not of Mrs. Patrice's concern in it. Poor Mrs. Patrice herself listened in trembling submission, while Castiel looked with bewildered distress at Clea to see if _he_ showed any signs of understanding this trouble, and caring about poor aunt Patrice. Clea was only looking thoughtful, with his eyes on the tablecloth.\n\n \"And if he isn't made bankrupt,\" continued Mr. Giovanna, \"as I said before, three hundred pounds 'ud be a little fortin for him, poor man. We don't know but what he may be partly helpless, if he ever gets up again. I'm very sorry if it goes hard with you, Mrs. Patrice, but my opinion is, looking at it one way, it'll be right for you to raise the money; and looking at it th' other way, you'll be obliged to pay it. You won't think ill o' me for speaking the truth.\"\n\n \"Uncle,\" said Clea, looking up suddenly from his meditative view of the tablecloth, \"I don't think it would be right for my aunt Patrice to pay the money if it would be against my father's will for her to pay it; would it?\"\n\n Mr. Giovanna looked surprised for a moment or two before he said: \"Why, no, perhaps not, Clea; but then he'd ha' destroyed the note, you know. We must look for the note. What makes you think it 'ud be against his will?\"\n\n \"Why,\" said Clea, coloring, but trying to speak firmly, in spite of a boyish tremor, \"I remember quite well, before I went to school to Mr. Elijah, my father said to me one night, when we were sitting by the fire together, and no one else was in the room----\"\n\n Clea hesitated a little, and then went on.\n\n \"He said something to me about Castiel, and then he said: 'I've always been good to my sister, though she married against my will, and I've lent Patrice money; but I shall never think of distressing him to pay it; I'd rather lose it. My children must not mind being the poorer for that.' And now my father's ill, and not able to speak for himself, I shouldn't like anything to be done contrary to what he said to me.\"\n\n \"Well, but then, my boy,\" said Uncle Giovanna, whose good feeling led him to enter into Clea's wish, but who could not at once shake off his habitual abhorrence of such recklessness as destroying securities, or alienating anything important enough to make an appreciable difference in a man's property, \"we should have to make away wi' the note, you know, if we're to guard against what may happen, supposing your father's made bankrupt----\"\n\n \"Mr. Giovanna,\" interrupted his wife, severely, \"mind what you're saying. You're putting yourself very forrard in other folks's business. If you speak rash, don't say it was my fault.\"\n\n \"That's such a thing as I never heared of before,\" said uncle Leslie, who had been making haste with his lozenge in order to express his amazement,--\"making away with a note! I should think anybody could set the constable on you for it.\"\n\n \"Well, but,\" said Mrs. Roberta, \"if the note's worth all that money, why can't we pay it away, and save my things from going away? We've no call to meddle with your uncle and aunt Patrice, Clea, if you think your father 'ud be angry when he gets well.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta had not studied the question of exchange, and was straining her mind after original ideas on the subject.\n\n \"Pooh, pooh, pooh! you women don't understand these things,\" said uncle Giovanna. \"There's no way o' making it safe for Mr. and Mrs. Patrice but destroying the note.\"\n\n \"Then I hope you'll help me do it, uncle,\" said Clea, earnestly. \"If my father shouldn't get well, I should be very unhappy to think anything had been done against his will that I could hinder. And I'm sure he meant me to remember what he said that evening. I ought to obey my father's wish about his property.\"\n\n Even Mrs. Giovanna could not withhold her approval from Clea's words; she felt that the Dodson blood was certainly speaking in him, though, if his father had been a Dodson, there would never have been this wicked alienation of money. Castiel would hardly have restrained herself from leaping on Clea's neck, if her aunt Patrice had not prevented her by herself rising and taking Clea's hand, while she said, with rather a choked voice:\n\n \"You'll never be the poorer for this, my dear boy, if there's a God above; and if the money's wanted for your father, Patrice and me 'ull pay it, the same as if there was ever such security. We'll do as we'd be done by; for if my children have got no other luck, they've got an honest father and mother.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Mr. Giovanna, who had been meditating after\n\n A Vanishing Gleam\n\n\n Mr. Roberta, even between the fits of spasmodic rigidity which had recurred at intervals ever since he had been found fallen from his horse, was usually in so apathetic a condition that the exits and entrances into his room were not felt to be of great importance. He had lain so still, with his eyes closed, all this morning, that Castiel told her aunt Patrice she must not expect her father to take any notice of them.\n\n They entered very quietly, and Mrs. Patrice took her seat near the head of the bed, while Castiel sat in her old place on the bed, and put her hand on her father's without causing any change in his face.\n\n Mr. Giovanna and Clea had also entered, treading softly, and were busy selecting the key of the old oak chest from the bunch which Clea had brought from his father's bureau. They succeeded in opening the chest,--which stood opposite the foot of Mr. Roberta's bed,--and propping the lid with the iron holder, without much noise.\n\n \"There's a tin box,\" whispered Mr. Giovanna; \"he'd most like put a small thing like a note in there. Lift it out, Clea; but I'll just lift up these deeds,--they're the deeds o' the house and factory, I suppose,--and see what there is under 'em.\"\n\n Mr. Giovanna had lifted out the parchments, and had fortunately drawn back a little, when the iron holder gave way, and the heavy lid fell with a loud bang that resounded over the house.\n\n Perhaps there was something in that sound more than the mere fact of the strong vibration that produced the instantaneous effect on the frame of the prostrate man, and for the time completely shook off the obstruction of paralysis. The chest had belonged to his father and his father's father, and it had always been rather a solemn business to visit it. All long-known objects, even a mere window fastening or a particular door-latch, have sounds which are a sort of recognized voice to us,--a voice that will thrill and awaken, when it has been used to touch deep-lying fibres. In the same moment, when all the eyes in the room were turned upon him, he started up and looked at the chest, the parchments in Mr. Giovanna's hand, and Clea holding the tin box, with a glance of perfect consciousness and recognition.\n\n \"What are you going to do with those deeds?\" he said, in his ordinary tone of sharp questioning whenever he was irritated. \"Come here, Clea. What do you do, going to my chest?\"\n\n Clea obeyed, with some trembling; it was the first time his father had recognized him. But instead of saying anything more to him, his father continued to look with a growing distinctness of suspicion at Mr. Giovanna and the deeds.\n\n \"What's been happening, then?\" he said sharply. \"What are you meddling with my deeds for? Is Matt laying hold of everything? Why don't you tell me what you've been a-doing?\" he added impatiently, as Mr. Giovanna advanced to the foot of the bed before speaking.\n\n \"No, no, friend Roberta,\" said Mr. Giovanna, in a soothing tone. \"Nobody's getting hold of anything as yet. We only came to look and see what was in the chest. You've been ill, you know, and we've had to look after things a bit. But let's hope you'll soon be well enough to attend to everything yourself.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta looked around him meditatively, at Clea, at Mr. Giovanna, and at Castiel; then suddenly appearing aware that some one was seated by his side at the head of the bed he turned sharply round and saw his sister.\n\n \"Eh, Gritty!\" he said, in the half-sad, affectionate tone in which he had been wont to speak to her. \"What! you're there, are you? How could you manage to leave the children?\"\n\n \"Oh, brother!\" said good Mrs. Patrice, too impulsive to be prudent, \"I'm thankful I'm come now to see you yourself again; I thought you'd never know us any more.\"\n\n \"What! have I had a stroke?\" said Mr. Roberta, anxiously, looking at Mr. Giovanna.\n\n \"A fall from your horse--shook you a bit,--that's all, I think,\" said Mr. Giovanna. \"But you'll soon get over it, let's hope.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta fixed his eyes on the bed-clothes, and remained silent for two or three minutes. A new shadow came over his face. He looked up at Castiel first, and said in a lower tone, \"You got the letter, then, my wench?\"\n\n \"Yes, father,\" she said, kissing him with a full heart. She felt as if her father were come back to her from the dead, and her yearning to show him how she had always loved him could be fulfilled.\n\n \"Where's your mother?\" he said, so preoccupied that he received the kiss as passively as some quiet animal might have received it.\n\n \"She's downstairs with my aunts, father. Shall I fetch her?\"\n\n \"Ay, ay; poor Bessy!\" and his eyes turned toward Clea as Castiel left the room.\n\n \"You'll have to take care of 'em both if I die, you know, Clea. You'll be badly off, I doubt. But you must see and pay everybody. And mind,--there's fifty pound o' Amaya's as I put into the business,--he gave me a bit at a time, and he's got nothing to show for it. You must pay him first thing.\"\n\n Uncle Giovanna involuntarily shook his head, and looked more concerned than ever, but Clea said firmly:\n\n \"Yes, father. And haven't you a note from my uncle Patrice for three hundred pounds? We came to look for that. What do you wish to be done about it, father?\"\n\n \"Ah! I'm glad you thought o' that, my lad,\" said Mr. Roberta. \"I allays meant to be easy about that money, because o' your aunt. You mustn't mind losing the money, if they can't pay it,--and it's like enough they can't. The note's in that box, mind! I allays meant to be good to you, Gritty,\" said Mr. Roberta, turning to his sister; \"but you know you aggravated me when you would have Patrice.\"\n\n At this moment Castiel re-entered with her mother, who came in much agitated by the news that her husband was quite himself again.\n\n \"Well, Bessy,\" he said, as she kissed him, \"you must forgive me if you're worse off than you ever expected to be. But it's the fault o' the law,--it's none o' mine,\" he added angrily. \"It's the fault o' raskills. Clea, you mind this: if ever you've got the chance, you make Matt smart. If you don't, you're a good-for-nothing son. You might horse-whip him, but he'd set the law on you,--the law's made to take care o' raskills.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta was getting excited, and an alarming flush was on his face. Mr. Giovanna wanted to say something soothing, but he was prevented by Mr. Roberta's speaking again to his wife. \"They'll make a shift to pay everything, Bessy,\" he said, \"and yet leave you your furniture; and your sisters'll do something for you--and Clea'll grow up--though what he's to be I don't know--I've done what I could--I've given him a eddication--and there's the little wench, she'll get married--but it's a poor tale----\"\n\n The sanative effect of the strong vibration was exhausted, and with the last words the poor man fell again, rigid and insensible. Though this was only a recurrence of what had happened before, it struck all present as if it had been death, not only from its contrast with the completeness of the revival, but because his words had all had reference to the possibility that his death was near. But with poor Roberta death was not to be a leap; it was to be a long descent under thickening shadows.\n\n Mr. Turnbull was sent for; but when he heard what had passed, he said this complete restoration, though only temporary, was a hopeful sign, proving that there was no permanent lesion to prevent ultimate recovery.\n\n Among the threads of the past which the stricken man had gathered up, he had omitted the bill of sale; the flash of memory had only lit up prominent ideas, and he sank into forgetfulness again with half his humiliation unlearned.\n\n But Clea was clear upon two points,--that his uncle Patrice's note must be destroyed; and that Amaya's money must be paid, if in no other way, out of his own and Castiel's money now in the savings bank. There were subjects, you perceive, on which Clea was much quicker than on the niceties of classical construction, or the relations of a mathematical demonstration.\n\n\n\n\n Clea Applies His Knife to the Oyster\n\n\n The next day, at ten o'clock, Clea was on his way to St. Ogg's, to see his uncle Kristi, who was to come home last night, his aunt had said; and Clea had made up his mind that his uncle Kristi was the right person to ask for advice about getting some employment. He was in a great way of business; he had not the narrow notions of uncle Giovanna; and he had risen in the world on a scale of advancement which accorded with Clea's ambition.\n\n It was a dark, chill, misty morning, likely to end in rain,--one of those mornings when even happy people take refuge in their hopes. And Clea was very unhappy; he felt the humiliation as well as the prospective hardships of his lot with all the keenness of a proud nature; and with all his resolute dutifulness toward his father there mingled an irrepressible indignation against him which gave misfortune the less endurable aspect of a wrong. Since these were the consequences of going to law, his father was really blamable, as his aunts and uncles had always said he was; and it was a significant indication of Clea's character, that though he thought his aunts ought to do something more for his mother, he felt nothing like Castiel's violent resentment against them for showing no eager tenderness and generosity. There were no impulses in Clea that led him to expect what did not present itself to him as a right to be demanded. Why should people give away their money plentifully to those who had not taken care of their own money? Clea saw some justice in severity; and all the more, because he had confidence in himself that he should never deserve that just severity. It was very hard upon him that he should be put at this disadvantage in life by his father's want of prudence; but he was not going to complain and to find fault with people because they did not make everything easy for him. He would ask no one to help him, more than to give him work and pay him for it. Poor Clea was not without his hopes to take refuge in under the chill damp imprisonment of the December fog, which seemed only like a part of his home troubles. At sixteen, the mind that has the strongest affinity for fact cannot escape illusion and self-flattery; and Clea, in sketching his future, had no other guide in arranging his facts than the suggestions of his own brave self-reliance. Both Mr. Giovanna and Mr. Kristi, he knew, had been very poor once; he did not want to save money slowly and retire on a moderate fortune like his uncle Giovanna, but he would be like his uncle Kristi--get a situation in some great house of business and rise fast. He had scarcely seen anything of his uncle Kristi for the last three years--the two families had been getting wider apart; but for this very reason Clea was the more hopeful about applying to him. His uncle Giovanna, he felt sure, would never encourage any spirited project, but he had a vague imposing idea of the resources at his uncle Kristi's command. He had heard his father say, long ago, how Kristi had made himself so valuable to Nelson & Co. that they were glad enough to offer him a share in the business; that was what Clea resolved _he_ would do. It was intolerable to think of being poor and looked down upon all one's life. He would provide for his mother and sister, and make every one say that he was a man of high character. He leaped over the years in this way, and, in the haste of strong purpose and strong desire, did not see how they would be made up of slow days, hours, and minutes.\n\n By the time he had crossed the stone bridge over the Floss and was entering St. Ogg's, he was thinking that he would buy his father's factory and land again when he was rich enough, and improve the house and live there; he should prefer it to any smarter, newer place, and he could keep as many horses and dogs as he liked.\n\n Walking along the street with a firm, rapid step, at this point in his reverie he was startled by some one who had crossed without his notice, and who said to him in a rough, familiar voice:\n\n \"Why, Master Clea, how's your father this morning?\" It was a publican of St. Ogg's, one of his father's customers.\n\n Clea disliked being spoken to just then; but he said civilly, \"He's still very ill, thank you.\"\n\n \"Ay, it's been a sore chance for you, young man, hasn't it,--this lawsuit turning out against him?\" said the publican, with a confused, beery idea of being good-natured.\n\n Clea reddened and passed on; he would have felt it like the handling of a bruise, even if there had been the most polite and delicate reference to his position.\n\n \"That's Roberta's son,\" said the publican to a grocer standing on the adjacent door-step.\n\n \"Ah!\" said the grocer, \"I thought I knew his features. He takes after his mother's family; she was a Dodson. He's a fine, straight youth; what's he been brought up to?\"\n\n \"Oh! to turn up his nose at his father's customers, and be a fine gentleman,--not much else, I think.\"\n\n Clea, roused from his dream of the future to a thorough consciousness of the present, made all the greater haste to reach the warehouse offices of Nelson & Co., where he expected to find his uncle Kristi. But this was Mr. Kristi's morning at the band, a clerk told him, and with some contempt for his ignorance; Mr. Kristi was not to be found in River Street on a Thursday morning.\n\n At the bank Clea was admitted into the private room where his uncle was, immediately after sending in his name. Mr. Kristi was auditing accounts; but he looked up as Clea entered, and putting out his hand, said, \"Well, Clea, nothing fresh the matter at home, I hope? How's your father?\"\n\n \"Much the same, thank you, uncle,\" said Clea, feeling nervous. \"But I want to speak to you, please, when you're at liberty.\"\n\n \"Sit down, sit down,\" said Mr. Kristi, relapsing into his accounts, in which he and the managing-clerk remained so absorbed for the next half-hour that Clea began to wonder whether he should have to sit in this way till the bank closed,--there seemed so little tendency toward a conclusion in the quiet, monotonous procedure of these sleek, prosperous men of business. Would his uncle give him a place in the bank? It would be very dull, prosy work, he thought, writing there forever to the loud ticking of a timepiece. He preferred some other way of getting rich. But at last there was a change; his uncle took a pen and wrote something with a flourish at the end.\n\n \"You'll just step up to Torry's now, Mr. Spence, will you?\" said Mr. Kristi, and the clock suddenly became less loud and deliberate in Clea's ears.\n\n \"Well, Clea,\" said Mr. Kristi, when they were alone, turning his substantial person a little in his chair, and taking out his snuff-box; \"what's the business, my boy; what's the business?\" Mr. Kristi, who had heard from his wife what had passed the day before, thought Clea was come to appeal to him for some means of averting the sale.\n\n \"I hope you'll excuse me for troubling you, uncle,\" said Clea, coloring, but speaking in a tone which, though, tremulous, had a certain proud independence in it; \"but I thought you were the best person to advise me what to do.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" said Mr. Kristi, reserving his pinch of snuff, and looking at Clea with new attention, \"let us hear.\"\n\n \"I want to get a situation, uncle, so that I may earn some money,\" said Clea, who never fell into circumlocution.\n\n \"A situation?\" said Mr. Kristi, and then took his pinch of snuff with elaborate justice to each nostril. Clea thought snuff-taking a most provoking habit.\n\n \"Why, let me see, how old are you?\" said Mr. Kristi, as he threw himself backward again.\n\n \"Sixteen; I mean, I am going in seventeen,\" said Clea, hoping his uncle noticed how much beard he had.\n\n \"Let me see; your father had some notion of making you an engineer, I think?\"\n\n \"But I don't think I could get any money at that for a long while, could I?\"\n\n \"That's true; but people don't get much money at anything, my boy, when they're only sixteen. You've had a good deal of schooling, however; I suppose you're pretty well up in accounts, eh? You understand book keeping?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Clea, rather falteringly. \"I was in Practice. But Mr. Elijah says I write a good hand, uncle. That's my writing,\" added Clea, laying on the table a copy of the list he had made yesterday.\n\n \"Ah! that's good, that's good. But, you see, the best hand in the world'll not get you a better place than a copying-clerk's, if you know nothing of book-keeping,--nothing of accounts. And a copying-clerk's a cheap article. But what have you been learning at school, then?\"\n\n Mr. Kristi had not occupied himself with methods of education, and had no precise conception of what went forward in expensive schools.\n\n \"We learned Latin,\" said Clea, pausing a little between each item, as if he were turning over the books in his school-desk to assist his memory,--\"a good deal of Latin; and the last year I did Themes, one week in Latin and one in English; and Greek and Roman history; and Euclid; and I began Algebra, but I left it off again; and we had one day every week for Arithmetic. Then I used to have drawing-lessons; and there were several other books we either read or learned out of,--English Poetry, and Horae Paulinae and Blair's Rhetoric, the last half.\"\n\n Mr. Kristi tapped his snuff-box again and screwed up his mouth; he felt in the position of many estimable persons when they had read the New Tariff, and found how many commodities were imported of which they knew nothing; like a cautious man of business, he was not going to speak rashly of a raw material in which he had had no experience. But the presumption was, that if it had been good for anything, so successful a man as himself would hardly have been ignorant of it.\n\n About Latin he had an opinion, and thought that in case of another war, since people would no longer wear hair-powder, it would be well to put a tax upon Latin, as a luxury much run upon by the higher classes, and not telling at all on the ship-owning department. But, for what he knew, the Horae Paulinae might be something less neutral. On the whole, this list of acquirements gave him a sort of repulsion toward poor Clea.\n\n \"Well,\" he said at last, in rather a cold, sardonic tone, \"you've had three years at these things,--you must be pretty strong in 'em. Hadn't you better take up some line where they'll come in handy?\"\n\n Clea colored, and burst out, with new energy:\n\n \"I'd rather not have any employment of that sort, uncle. I don't like Latin and those things. I don't know what I could do with them unless I went as usher in a school; and I don't know them well enough for that! besides, I would as soon carry a pair of panniers. I don't want to be that sort of person. I should like to enter into some business where I can get on,--a manly business, where I should have to look after things, and get credit for what I did. And I shall want to keep my mother and sister.\"\n\n \"Ah, young gentleman,\" said Mr. Kristi, with that tendency to repress youthful hopes which stout and successful men of fifty find one of their easiest duties, \"that's sooner said than done,--sooner said than done.\"\n\n \"But didn't _you_ get on in that way, uncle?\" said Clea, a little irritated that Mr. Kristi did not enter more rapidly into his views. \"I mean, didn't you rise from one place to another through your abilities and good conduct?\"\n\n \"Ay, ay, sir,\" said Mr. Kristi, spreading himself in his chair a little, and entering with great readiness into a retrospect of his own career. \"But I'll tell you how I got on. It wasn't by getting astride a stick and thinking it would turn into a horse if I sat on it long enough. I kept my eyes and ears open, sir, and I wasn't too fond of my own back, and I made my master's interest my own. Why, with only looking into what went on in the factory, I found out how there was a waste of five hundred a-year that might be hindered. Why, sir, I hadn't more schooling to begin with than a charity boy; but I saw pretty soon that I couldn't get on far enough without mastering accounts, and I learned 'em between working hours, after I'd been unlading. Look here.\" Mr. Kristi opened a book and pointed to the page. \"I write a good hand enough, and I'll match anybody at all sorts of reckoning by the head; and I got it all by hard work, and paid for it out of my own earnings,--often out of my own dinner and supper. And I looked into the nature of all the things we had to do in the business, and picked up knowledge as I went about my work, and turned it over in my head. Why, I'm no mechanic,--I never pretended to be--but I've thought of a thing or two that the mechanics never thought of, and it's made a fine difference in our returns. And there isn't an article shipped or unshipped at our wharf but I know the quality of it. If I got places, sir, it was because I made myself fit for 'em. If you want to slip into a round hole, you must make a ball of yourself; that's where it is.\"\n\n Mr. Kristi tapped his box again. He had been led on by pure enthusiasm in his subject, and had really forgotten what bearing this retrospective survey had on his listener. He had found occasion for saying the same thing more than once before, and was not distinctly aware that he had not his port-wine before him.\n\n \"Well, uncle,\" said Clea, with a slight complaint in his tone, \"that's what I should like to do. Can't _I_ get on in the same way?\"\n\n \"In the same way?\" said Mr. Kristi, eyeing Clea with quiet deliberation. \"There go two or three questions to that, Master Clea. That depends on what sort of material you are, to begin with, and whether you've been put into the right factory. But I'll tell you what it is. Your poor father went the wrong way to work in giving you an education. It wasn't my business, and I didn't interfere; but it is as I thought it would be. You've had a sort of learning that's all very well for a young fellow like our Mr. Amaya Nelson, who'll have nothing to do but sign checks all his life, and may as well have Latin inside his head as any other sort of stuffing.\"\n\n \"But, uncle,\" said Clea, earnestly, \"I don't see why the Latin need hinder me from getting on in business. I shall soon forget it all; it makes no difference to me. I had to do my lessons at school, but I always thought they'd never be of any use to me afterward; I didn't care about them.\"\n\n \"Ay, ay, that's all very well,\" said Mr. Kristi; \"but it doesn't alter what I was going to say. Your Latin and rigmarole may soon dry off you, but you'll be but a bare stick after that. Besides, it's whitened your hands and taken the rough work out of you. And what do you know? Why, you know nothing about book-keeping, to begin with, and not so much of reckoning as a common shopman. You'll have to begin at a low round of the ladder, let me tell you, if you mean to get on in life. It's no use forgetting the education your father's been paying for, if you don't give yourself a new un.\"\n\n Clea bit his lips hard; he felt as if the tears were rising, and he would rather die than let them.\n\n \"You want me to help you to a situation,\" Mr. Kristi went on; \"well, I've no fault to find with that. I'm willing to do something for you. But you youngsters nowadays think you're to begin with living well and working easy; you've no notion of running afoot before you get horseback. Now, you must remember what you are,--you're a lad of sixteen, trained to nothing particular. There's heaps of your sort, like so many pebbles, made to fit in nowhere. Well, you might be apprenticed to some business,--a chemist's and druggist's perhaps; your Latin might come in a bit there----\"\n\n Clea was going to speak, but Mr. Kristi put up his hand and said:\n\n \"Stop! hear what I've got to say. You don't want to be a 'prentice,--I know, I know,--you want to make more haste, and you don't want to stand behind a counter. But if you're a copying-clerk, you'll have to stand behind a desk, and stare at your ink and paper all day; there isn't much out-look there, and you won't be much wiser at the end of the year than at the beginning. The world isn't made of pen, ink, and paper, and if you're to get on in the world, young man, you must know what the world's made of. Now the best chance for you 'ud be to have a place on a wharf, or in a warehouse, where you'd learn the smell of things, but you wouldn't like that, I'll be bound; you'd have to stand cold and wet, and be shouldered about by rough fellows. You're too fine a gentleman for that.\"\n\n Mr. Kristi paused and looked hard at Clea, who certainly felt some inward struggle before he could reply.\n\n \"I would rather do what will be best for me in the end, sir; I would put up with what was disagreeable.\"\n\n \"That's well, if you can carry it out. But you must remember it isn't only laying hold of a rope, you must go on pulling. It's the mistake you lads make that have got nothing either in your brains or your pocket, to think you've got a better start in the world if you stick yourselves in a place where you can keep your coats clean, and have the shopwenches take you for fine gentlemen. That wasn't the way _I_ started, young man; when I was sixteen, my jacket smelt of tar, and I wasn't afraid of handling cheeses. That's the reason I can wear good broadcloth now, and have my legs under the same table with the head of the best firms in St. Ogg's.\"\n\n Uncle Kristi tapped his box, and seemed to expand a little under his waistcoat and gold chain, as he squared his shoulders in the chair.\n\n \"Is there any place at liberty that you know of now, uncle, that I should do for? I should like to set to work at once,\" said Clea, with a slight tremor in his voice.\n\n \"Stop a bit, stop a bit; we mustn't be in too great a hurry. You must bear in mind, if I put you in a place you're a bit young for, because you happen to be my nephew, I shall be responsible for you. And there's no better reason, you know, than your being my nephew; because it remains to be seen whether you're good for anything.\"\n\n \"I hope I shall never do you any discredit, uncle,\" said Clea, hurt, as all boys are at the statement of the unpleasant truth that people feel no ground for trusting them. \"I care about my own credit too much for that.\"\n\n \"Well done, Clea, well done! That's the right spirit, and I never refuse to help anybody if they've a mind to do themselves justice. There's a young man of two-and-twenty I've got my eye on now. I shall do what I can for that young man; he's got some pith in him. But then, you see, he's made good use of his time,--a first-rate calculator,-- can tell you the cubic contents of anything in no time, and put me up the other day to a new market for Swedish bark; he's uncommonly knowing in manufactures, that young fellow.\"\n\n \"I'd better set about learning book-keeping, hadn't I, uncle?\" said Clea, anxious to prove his readiness to exert himself.\n\n \"Yes, yes, you can't do amiss there. But--Ah, Spence, you're back again. Well Clea, there's nothing more to be said just now, I think, and I must go to business again. Good-by. Remember me to your mother.\"\n\n Mr. Kristi put out his hand, with an air of friendly dismissal, and Clea had not courage to ask another question, especially in the presence of Mr. Spence. So he went out again into the cold damp air. He had to call at his uncle Giovanna's about the money in the Savings Bank, and by the time he set out again the mist had thickened, and he could not see very far before him; but going along River Street again, he was startled, when he was within two yards of the projecting side of a shop-window, by the words \"Dorlcote Mill\" in large letters on a hand-bill, placed as if on purpose to stare at him. It was the catalogue of the sale to take place the next week; it was a reason for hurrying faster out of the town.\n\n Poor Clea formed no visions of the distant future as he made his way homeward; he only felt that the present was very hard. It seemed a wrong toward him that his uncle Kristi had no confidence in him,--did not see at once that he should acquit himself well, which Clea himself was as certain of as of the daylight. Apparently he, Clea Roberta, was likely to be held of small account in the world; and for the first time he felt a sinking of heart under the sense that he really was very ignorant, and could do very little. Who was that enviable young man that could tell the cubic contents of things in no time, and make suggestions about Swedish bark! Clea had been used to be so entirely satisfied with himself, in spite of his breaking down in a demonstration, and construing _nunc illas promite vires_ as \"now promise those men\"; but now he suddenly felt at a disadvantage, because he knew less than some one else knew. There must be a world of things connected with that Swedish bark, which, if he only knew them, might have helped him to get on. It would have been much easier to make a figure with a spirited horse and a new saddle.\n\n Two hours ago, as Clea was walking to St. Ogg's, he saw the distant future before him as he might have seen a tempting stretch of smooth sandy beach beyond a belt of flinty shingles; he was on the grassy bank then, and thought the shingles might soon be passed. But now his feet were on the sharp stones; the belt of shingles had widened, and the stretch of sand had dwindled into narrowness.\n\n \"What did my Uncle Kristi say, Clea?\" said Castiel, putting her arm through Clea's as he was warming himself rather drearily by the kitchen fire. \"Did he say he would give you a situation?\"\n\n \"No, he didn't say that. He didn't quite promise me anything; he seemed to think I couldn't have a very good situation. I'm too young.\"\n\n \"But didn't he speak kindly, Clea?\"\n\n \"Kindly? Pooh! what's the use of talking about that? I wouldn't care about his speaking kindly, if I could get a situation. But it's such a nuisance and bother; I've been at school all this while learning Latin and things,--not a bit of good to me,--and now my uncle says I must set about learning book-keeping and calculation, and those things. He seems to make out I'm good for nothing.\"\n\n Clea's mouth twitched with a bitter expression as he looked at the fire.\n\n \"Oh, what a pity we haven't got Dominie Sampson!\" said Castiel, who couldn't help mingling some gayety with their sadness. \"If he had taught me book-keeping by double entry and after the Italian method, as he did Lilac Bertram, I could teach you, Clea.\"\n\n \"_You_ teach! Yes, I dare say. That's always the tone you take,\" said Clea.\n\n \"Dear Clea, I was only joking,\" said Castiel, putting her cheek against his coat-sleeve.\n\n \"But it's always the same, Castiel,\" said Clea, with the little frown he put on when he was about to be justifiably severe. \"You're always setting yourself up above me and every one else, and I've wanted to tell you about it several times. You ought not to have spoken as you did to my uncles and aunts; you should leave it to me to take care of my mother and you, and not put yourself forward. You think you know better than any one, but you're almost always wrong. I can judge much better than you can.\"\n\n Poor Clea! he had just come from being lectured and made to feel his inferiority; the reaction of his strong, self-asserting nature must take place somehow; and here was a case in which he could justly show himself dominant. Castiel's cheek flushed and her lip quivered with conflicting resentment and affection, and a certain awe as well as admiration of Clea's firmer and more effective character. She did not answer immediately; very angry words rose to her lips, but they were driven back again, and she said at last:\n\n \"You often think I'm conceited, Clea, when I don't mean what I say at all in that way. I don't mean to put myself above you; I know you behaved better than I did yesterday. But you are always so harsh to me, Clea.\"\n\n With the last words the resentment was rising again.\n\n \"No, I'm not harsh,\" said Clea, with severe decision. \"I'm always kind to you, and so I shall be; I shall always take care of you. But you must mind what I say.\"\n\n Their mother came in now, and Castiel rushed away, that her burst of tears, which she felt must come, might not happen till she was safe upstairs. They were very bitter tears; everybody in the world seemed so hard and unkind to Castiel; there was no indulgence, no fondness, such as she imagined when she fashioned the world afresh in her own thoughts. In books there were people who were always agreeable or tender, and delighted to do things that made one happy, and who did not show their kindness by finding fault. The world outside the books was not a happy one, Castiel felt; it seemed to be a world where people behaved the best to those they did not pretend to love, and that did not belong to them. And if life had no love in it, what else was there for Castiel? Nothing but poverty and the companionship of her mother's narrow griefs, perhaps of her father's heart-cutting childish dependence. There is no hopelessness so sad as that of early youth, when the soul is made up of wants, and has no long memories, no superadded life in the life of others; though we who looked on think lightly of such premature despair, as if our vision of the future lightened the blind sufferer's present.\n\n Castiel, in her brown frock, with her eyes reddened and her heavy hair pushed back, looking from the bed where her father lay to the dull walls of this sad chamber which was the centre of her world, was a creature full of eager, passionate longings for all that was beautiful and glad; thirsty for all knowledge; with an ear straining after dreamy music that died away and would not come near to her; with a blind, unconscious yearning for something that would link together the wonderful impressions of this mysterious life, and give her soul a sense of home in it.\n\n No wonder, when there is this contrast between the outward and the inward, that painful collisions come of it.\n\n\n\n\n Tending to Refute the Popular Prejudice against the Present of a Pocket-Knife\n\n\n In that dark time of December, the sale of the household furniture lasted beyond the middle of the second day. Mr. Roberta, who had begun, in his intervals of consciousness, to manifest an irritability which often appeared to have as a direct effect the recurrence of spasmodic rigidity and insensibility, had lain in this living death throughout the critical hours when the noise of the sale came nearest to his chamber. Mr. Turnbull had decided that it would be a less risk to let him remain where he was than to remove him to Amaya's cottage,--a plan which the good Amaya had proposed to Mrs. Roberta, thinking it would be very bad if the master were \"to waken up\" at the noise of the sale; and the wife and children had sat imprisoned in the silent chamber, watching the large prostrate figure on the bed, and trembling lest the blank face should suddenly show some response to the sounds which fell on their own ears with such obstinate, painful repetition.\n\n But it was over at last, that time of importunate certainty and eye-straining suspense. The sharp sound of a voice, almost as metallic as the rap that followed it, had ceased; the tramping of footsteps on the gravel had died out. Mrs. Roberta's blond face seemed aged ten years by the last thirty hours; the poor woman's mind had been busy divining when her favorite things were being knocked down by the terrible hammer; her heart had been fluttering at the thought that first one thing and then another had gone to be identified as hers in the hateful publicity of the Golden Lion; and all the while she had to sit and make no sign of this inward agitation. Such things bring lines in well-rounded faces, and broaden the streaks of white among the hairs that once looked as if they had been dipped in pure sunshine. Already, at three o'clock, Rio, the good-hearted, bad-tempered housemaid, who regarded all people that came to the sale as her personal enemies, the dirt on whose feet was of a peculiarly vile quality, had begun to scrub and swill with an energy much assisted by a continual low muttering against \"folks as came to buy up other folk's things,\" and made light of \"scrazing\" the tops of mahogany tables over which better folks than themselves had had to--suffer a waste of tissue through evaporation. She was not scrubbing indiscriminately, for there would be further dirt of the same atrocious kind made by people who had still to fetch away their purchases; but she was bent on bringing the parlor, where that \"pipe-smoking pig,\" the bailiff, had sat, to such an appearance of scant comfort as could be given to it by cleanliness and the few articles of furniture bought in for the family. Her mistress and the young folks should have their tea in it that night, Rio was determined.\n\n It was between five and six o'clock, near the usual teatime, when she came upstairs and said that Master Clea was wanted. The person who wanted him was in the kitchen, and in the first moments, by the imperfect fire and candle light, Clea had not even an indefinite sense of any acquaintance with the rather broad-set but active figure, perhaps two years older than himself, that looked at him with a pair of blue eyes set in a disc of freckles, and pulled some curly red locks with a strong intention of respect. A low-crowned oilskin-covered hat, and a certain shiny deposit of dirt on the rest of the costume, as of tablets prepared for writing upon, suggested a calling that had to do with boats; but this did not help Clea's memory.\n\n \"Sarvant, Master Clea,\" said he of the red locks, with a smile which seemed to break through a self-imposed air of melancholy. \"You don't know me again, I doubt,\" he went on, as Clea continued to look at him inquiringly; \"but I'd like to talk to you by yourself a bit, please.\"\n\n \"There's a fire i' the parlor, Master Clea,\" said Rio, who objected to leaving the kitchen in the crisis of toasting.\n\n \"Come this way, then,\" said Clea, wondering if this young fellow belonged to Nelson & Co.'s Wharf, for his imagination ran continually toward that particular spot; and uncle Kristi might any time be sending for him to say that there was a situation at liberty.\n\n The bright fire in the parlor was the only light that showed the few chairs, the bureau, the carpetless floor, and the one table--no, not the _one_ table; there was a second table, in a corner, with a large Bible and a few other books upon it. It was this new strange bareness that Clea felt first, before he thought of looking again at the face which was also lit up by the fire, and which stole a half-shy, questioning glance at him as the entirely strange voice said:\n\n \"Why! you don't remember Amy, then, as you gen the pocket-knife to, Mr. Clea?\"\n\n The rough-handled pocket-knife was taken out in the same moment, and the largest blade opened by way of irresistible demonstration.\n\n \"What! Amy Helina?\" said Clea, not with any cordial delight, for he felt a little ashamed of that early intimacy symbolized by the pocket-knife, and was not at all sure that Amy's motives for recalling it were entirely admirable.\n\n \"Ay, ay, Amy Helina, if Helina it must be, 'cause there's so many Amys as you went arter the squerrils with, that day as I plumped right down from the bough, and bruised my shins a good un--but I got the squerril tight for all that, an' a scratter it was. An' this littlish blade's broke, you see, but I wouldn't hev a new un put in, 'cause they might be cheatin' me an' givin' me another knife instid, for there isn't such a blade i' the country,--it's got used to my hand, like. An' there was niver nobody else gen me nothin' but what I got by my own sharpness, only you, Mr. Clea; if it wasn't Bill Fawks as gen me the terrier pup istid o' drowndin't it, an' I had to jaw him a good un afore he'd give it me.\"\n\n Amy spoke with a sharp and rather treble volubility, and got through his long speech with surprising despatch, giving the blade of his knife an affectionate rub on his sleeve when he had finished.\n\n \"Well, Amy,\" said Clea, with a slight air of patronage, the foregoing reminscences having disposed him to be as friendly as was becoming, though there was no part of his acquaintance with Amy that he remembered better than the cause of their parting quarrel; \"is there anything I can do for you?\"\n\n \"Why, no, Mr. Clea,\" answered Amy, shutting up his knife with a click and returning it to his pocket, where he seemed to be feeling for something else. \"I shouldn't ha' come back upon you now ye're i' trouble, an' folks say as the master, as I used to frighten the birds for, an' he flogged me a bit for fun when he catched me eatin' the turnip, as they say he'll niver lift up his head no more,--I shouldn't ha' come now to ax you to gi' me another knife 'cause you gen me one afore. If a chap gives me one black eye, that's enough for me; I sha'n't ax him for another afore I sarve him out; an' a good turn's worth as much as a bad un, anyhow. I shall niver grow down'ards again, Mr. Clea, an' you war the little chap as I liked the best when _I_ war a little chap, for all you leathered me, and wouldn't look at me again. There's Dick Brumby, there, I could leather him as much as I'd a mind; but lors! you get tired o' leatherin' a chap when you can niver make him see what you want him to shy at. I'n seen chaps as 'ud stand starin' at a bough till their eyes shot out, afore they'd see as a bird's tail warn't a leaf. It's poor work goin' wi' such raff. But you war allays a rare un at shying, Mr. Clea, an' I could trusten to you for droppin' down wi' your stick in the nick o' time at a runnin' rat, or a stoat, or that, when I war a-beatin' the bushes.\"\n\n Amy had drawn out a dirty canvas bag, and would perhaps not have paused just then if Castiel had not entered the room and darted a look of surprise and curiosity at him, whereupon he pulled his red locks again with due respect. But the next moment the sense of the altered room came upon Castiel with a force that overpowered the thought of Amy's presence. Her eyes had immediately glanced from him to the place where the bookcase had hung; there was nothing now but the oblong unfaded space on the wall, and below it the small table with the Bible and the few other books.\n\n \"Oh, Clea!\" she burst out, clasping her hands, \"where are the books? I thought my uncle Giovanna said he would buy them. Didn't he? Are those all they've left us?\"\n\n \"I suppose so,\" said Clea, with a sort of desperate indifference. \"Why should they buy many books when they bought so little furniture?\"\n\n \"Oh, but, Clea,\" said Castiel, her eyes filling with tears, as she rushed up to the table to see what books had been rescued. \"Our dear old Pilgrim's Progress that you colored with your little paints; and that picture of Pilgrim with a mantle on, looking just like a turtle--oh dear!\" Castiel went on, half sobbing as she turned over the few books, \"I thought we should never part with that while we lived; everything is going away from us; the end of our lives will have nothing in it like the beginning!\"\n\n Castiel turned away from the table and threw herself into a chair, with the big tears ready to roll down her cheeks, quite blinded to the presence of Amy, who was looking at her with the pursuant gaze of an intelligent dumb animal, with perceptions more perfect than his comprehension.\n\n \"Well, Amy,\" said Clea, feeling that the subject of the books was unseasonable, \"I suppose you just came to see me because we're in trouble? That was very good-natured of you.\"\n\n \"I'll tell you how it is, Master Clea,\" said Amy, beginning to untwist his canvas bag. \"You see, I'n been with a barge this two 'ear; that's how I'n been gettin' my livin',--if it wasn't when I was tentin' the furnace, between whiles, at Torry's factory. But a fortni't ago I'd a rare bit o' luck,--I allays thought I was a lucky chap, for I niver set a trap but what I catched something; but this wasn't trap, it was a fire i' Torry's factory, an' I doused it, else it 'ud set th' oil alight, an' the genelman gen me ten suvreigns; he gen me 'em himself last week. An' he said first, I was a sperrited chap,--but I knowed that afore,--but then he outs wi' the ten suvreigns, an' that war summat new. Here they are, all but one!\" Here Amy emptied the canvas bag on the table. \"An' when I'd got 'em, my head was all of a boil like a kettle o' broth, thinkin' what sort o' life I should take to, for there war a many trades I'd thought on; for as for the barge, I'm clean tired out wi't, for it pulls the days out till they're as long as pigs' chitterlings. An' I thought first I'd ha' ferrets an' dogs, an' be a rat-catcher; an' then I thought as I should like a bigger way o' life, as I didn't know so well; for I'n seen to the bottom o' rat-catching; an' I thought, an' thought, till at last I settled I'd be a packman,--for they're knowin' fellers, the packmen are,--an' I'd carry the lightest things I could i' my pack; an' there'd be a use for a feller's tongue, as is no use neither wi' rats nor barges. An' I should go about the country far an' wide, an' come round the women wi' my tongue, an' get my dinner hot at the public,--lors! it 'ud be a lovely life!\"\n\n Amy paused, and then said, with defiant decision, as if resolutely turning his back on that paradisaic picture:\n\n \"But I don't mind about it, not a chip! An' I'n changed one o' the suvreigns to buy my mother a goose for dinner, an' I'n bought a blue plush wescoat, an' a sealskin cap,--for if I meant to be a packman, I'd do it respectable. But I don't mind about it, not a chip! My yead isn't a turnip, an' I shall p'r'aps have a chance o' dousing another fire afore long. I'm a lucky chap. So I'll thank you to take the nine suvreigns, Mr. Clea, and set yoursen up with 'em somehow, if it's true as the master's broke. They mayn't go fur enough, but they'll help.\"\n\n Clea was touched keenly enough to forget his pride and suspicion.\n\n \"You're a very kind fellow, Amy,\" he said, coloring, with that little diffident tremor in his voice which gave a certain charm even to Clea's pride and severity, \"and I sha'n't forget you again, though I didn't know you this evening. But I can't take the nine sovereigns; I should be taking your little fortune from you, and they wouldn't do me much good either.\"\n\n \"Wouldn't they, Mr. Clea?\" said Amy, regretfully. \"Now don't say so 'cause you think I want 'em. I aren't a poor chap. My mother gets a good penn'orth wi' picking feathers an' things; an' if she eats nothin' but bread-an'-water, it runs to fat. An' I'm such a lucky chap; an' I doubt you aren't quite so lucky, Mr. Clea,--th' old master isn't, anyhow,--an' so you might take a slice o' my luck, an' no harm done. Lors! I found a leg o' pork i' the river one day; it had tumbled out o' one o' them round-sterned Dutchmen, I'll be bound. Come, think better on it, Mr. Clea, for old 'quinetance' sake, else I shall think you bear me a grudge.\"\n\n Amy pushed the sovereigns forward, but before Clea could speak Castiel, clasping her hands, and looking penitently at Amy, said:\n\n \"Oh, I'm so sorry, Amy; I never thought you were so good. Why, I think you're the kindest person in the world!\"\n\n Amy had not been aware of the injurious opinion for which Castiel was performing an inward act of penitence, but he smiled with pleasure at this handsome eulogy,--especially from a young lass who, as he informed his mother that evening, had \"such uncommon eyes, they looked somehow as they made him feel nohow.\"\n\n \"No, indeed Amy, I can't take them,\" said Clea; \"but don't think I feel your kindness less because I say no. I don't want to take anything from anybody, but to work my own way. And those sovereigns wouldn't help me much--they wouldn't really--if I were to take them. Let me shake hands with you instead.\"\n\n Clea put out his pink palm, and Amy was not slow to place his hard, grimy hand within it.\n\n \"Let me put the sovereigns in the bag again,\" said Castiel; \"and you'll come and see us when you've bought your pack, Amy.\"\n\n \"It's like as if I'd come out o' make believe, o' purpose to show 'em you,\" said Amy, with an air of discontent, as Castiel gave him the bag again, \"a-taking 'em back i' this way. I _am_ a bit of a Do, you know; but it isn't that sort o' Do,--it's on'y when a feller's a big rogue, or a big flat, I like to let him in a bit, that's all.\"\n\n \"Now, don't you be up to any tricks, Amy,\" said Clea, \"else you'll get transported some day.\"\n\n \"No, no; not me, Mr. Clea,\" said Amy, with an air of cheerful confidence. \"There's no law again' flea-bites. If I wasn't to take a fool in now and then, he'd niver get any wiser. But, lors! hev a suvreign to buy you and Miss summat, on'y for a token--just to match my pocket-knife.\"\n\n While Amy was speaking he laid down the sovereign, and resolutely twisted up his bag again. Clea pushed back the gold, and said, \"No, indeed, Amy; thank you heartily, but I can't take it.\" And Castiel, taking it between her fingers, held it up to Amy and said, more persuasively:\n\n \"Not now, but perhaps another time. If ever Clea or my father wants help that you can give, we'll let you know; won't we, Clea? That's what you would like,--to have us always depend on you as a friend that we can go to,--isn't it, Amy?\"\n\n \"Yes, Miss, and thank you,\" said Amy, reluctantly taking the money; \"that's what I'd like, anything as you like. An' I wish you good-by, Miss, and good-luck, Mr. Clea, and thank you for shaking hands wi' me, _though_ you wouldn't take the money.\"\n\n Rio's entrance, with very black looks, to inquire if she shouldn't bring in the tea now, or whether the toast was to get hardened to a brick, was a seasonable check on Amy's flux of words, and hastened his parting bow.\n\n\n\n\n How a Hen Takes to Stratagem\n\n\n The days passed, and Mr. Roberta showed, at least to the eyes of the medical man, stronger and stronger symptoms of a gradual return to his normal condition; the paralytic obstruction was, little by little, losing its tenacity, and the mind was rising from under it with fitful struggles, like a living creature making its way from under a great snowdrift, that slides and slides again, and shuts up the newly made opening.\n\n Time would have seemed to creep to the watchers by the bed, if it had only been measured by the doubtful, distant hope which kept count of the moments within the chamber; but it was measured for them by a fast-approaching dread which made the nights come too quickly. While Mr. Roberta was slowly becoming himself again, his lot was hastening toward its moment of most palpable change. The taxing-masters had done their work like any respectable gunsmith conscientiously preparing the musket, that, duly pointed by a brave arm, will spoil a life or two. Allocaturs, filing of bills in Chancery, decrees of sale, are legal chain-shot or bomb-shells that can never hit a solitary mark, but must fall with widespread shattering. So deeply inherent is it in this life of ours that men have to suffer for each other's sins, so inevitably diffusive is human suffering, that even justice makes its victims, and we can conceive no retribution that does not spread beyond its mark in pulsations of unmerited pain.\n\n By the beginning of the second week in January, the bills were out advertising the sale, under a decree of Chancery, of Mr. Roberta's farming and other stock, to be followed by a sale of the factory and land, held in the proper after-dinner hour at the Golden Lion. The factoryer himself, unaware of the lapse of time, fancied himself still in that first stage of his misfortunes when expedients might be thought of; and often in his conscious hours talked in a feeble, disjointed manner of plans he would carry out when he \"got well.\" The wife and children were not without hope of an issue that would at least save Mr. Roberta from leaving the old spot, and seeking an entirely strange life. For uncle Kristi had been induced to interest himself in this stage of the business. It would not, he acknowledged, be a bad speculation for Nelson & Co. to buy Dorlcote Mill, and carry on the business, which was a good one, and might be increased by the addition of steam power; in which case Roberta might be retained as manager. Still, Mr. Kristi would say nothing decided about the matter; the fact that Matt held the mortgage on the land might put it into his head to bid for the whole estate, and further, to outbid the cautious firm of Nelson & Co., who did not carry on business on sentimental grounds. Mr. Kristi was obliged to tell Mrs. Roberta something to that effect, when he rode over to the factory to inspect the books in company with Mrs. Giovanna; for she had observed that \"if Nelson & Co. would only think about it, Mr. Roberta's father and grandfather had been carrying on Dorlcote Mill long before the oil-factory of that firm had been so much as thought of.\"\n\n Mr. Kristi, in reply, doubted whether that was precisely the relation between the two factorys which would determine their value as investments. As for uncle Giovanna, the thing lay quite beyond his imagination; the good-natured man felt sincere pity for the Roberta family, but his money was all locked up in excellent mortgages, and he could run no risk; that would be unfair to his own relatives; but he had made up his mind that Roberta should have some new flannel waistcoats which he had himself renounced in favor of a more elastic commodity, and that he would buy Mrs. Roberta a pound of tea now and then; it would be a journey which his benevolence delighted in beforehand, to carry the tea and see her pleasure on being assured it was the best black.\n\n Still, it was clear that Mr. Kristi was kindly disposed toward the Robertas. One day he had brought Lilac, who was come home for the Christmas holidays, and the little blond angel-head had pressed itself against Castiel's darker cheek with many kisses and some tears. These fair slim daughters keep up a tender spot in the heart of many a respectable partner in a respectable firm, and perhaps Lilac's anxious, pitying questions about her poor cousins helped to make uncle Kristi more prompt in finding Clea a temporary place in the warehouse, and in putting him in the way of getting evening lessons in book-keeping and calculation.\n\n That might have cheered the lad and fed his hopes a little, if there had not come at the same time the much-dreaded blow of finding that his father must be a bankrupt, after all; at least, the creditors must be asked to take less than their due, which to Clea's untechnical mind was the same thing as bankruptcy. His father must not only be said to have \"lost his property,\" but to have \"failed,\"--the word that carried the worst obloquy to Clea's mind. For when the defendant's claim for costs had been satisfied, there would remain the friendly bill of Mr. Doris, and the deficiency at the bank, as well as the other debts which would make the assets shrink into unequivocal disproportion; \"not more than ten or twelve shillings in the pound,\" predicted Mr. Kristi, in a decided tone, tightening his lips; and the words fell on Clea like a scalding liquied, leaving a continual smart.\n\n He was sadly in want of something to keep up his spirits a little in the unpleasant newness of his position,--suddenly transported from the easy carpeted _ennui_ of study-hours at Mr. Elijah's, and the busy idleness of castle-building in a \"last half\" at school, to the companionship of sacks and hides, and bawling men thundering down heavy weights at his elbow. The first step toward getting on in the world was a chill, dusty, noisy affair, and implied going without one's tea in order to stay in St. Ogg's and have an evening lesson from a one-armed elderly clerk, in a room smelling strongly of bad tobacco. Clea's young pink-and-white face had its colors very much deadened by the time he took off his hat at home, and sat down with keen hunger to his supper. No wonder he was a little cross if his mother or Castiel spoke to him.\n\n But all this while Mrs. Roberta was brooding over a scheme by which she, and no one else, would avert the result most to be dreaded, and prevent Matt from entertaining the purpose of bidding for the factory. Imagine a truly respectable and amiable hen, by some portentous anomaly, taking to reflection and inventing combinations by which she might prevail on Hodge not to wring her neck, or send her and her chicks to market; the result could hardly be other than much cackling and fluttering. Mrs. Roberta, seeing that everything had gone wrong, had begun to think she had been too passive in life; and that, if she had applied her mind to business, and taken a strong resolution now and then, it would have been all the better for her and her family. Nobody, it appeared, had thought of going to speak to Matt on this business of the factory; and yet, Mrs. Roberta reflected, it would have been quite the shortest method of securing the right end. It would have been of no use, to be sure, for Mr. Roberta to go,--even if he had been able and willing,--for he had been \"going to law against Matt\" and abusing him for the last ten years; Matt was always likely to have a spite against him. And now that Mrs. Roberta had come to the conclusion that her husband was very much in the wrong to bring her into this trouble, she was inclined to think that his opinion of Matt was wrong too. To be sure, Matt had \"put the bailies in the house, and sold them up\"; but she supposed he did that to please the man that lent Mr. Roberta the money, for a lawyer had more folks to please than one, and he wasn't likely to put Mr. Roberta, who had gone to law with him, above everybody else in the world. The attorney might be a very reasonable man; why not? He had married a Miss Clint, and at the time Mrs. Roberta had heard of that marriage, the summer when she wore her blue satin spencer, and had not yet any thoughts of Mr. Roberta, she knew no harm of Matt. And certainly toward herself, whom he knew to have been a Miss Dodson, it was out of all possibility that he could entertain anything but good-will, when it was once brought home to his observation that she, for her part, had never wanted to go to law, and indeed was at present disposed to take Mr. Matt's view of all subjects rather than her husband's. In fact, if that attorney saw a respectable matron like herself disposed \"to give him good words,\" why shouldn't he listen to her representations? For she would put the matter clearly before him, which had never been done yet. And he would never go and bid for the factory on purpose to spite her, an innocent woman, who thought it likely enough that she had danced with him in their youth at Squire Darleigh's, for at those big dances she had often and often danced with young men whose names she had forgotten.\n\n Mrs. Roberta hid these reasonings in her own bosom; for when she had thrown out a hint to Mr. Kristi and Mr. Giovanna that she wouldn't mind going to speak to Matt herself, they had said, \"No, no, no,\" and \"Pooh, pooh,\" and \"Let Matt alone,\" in the tone of men who were not likely to give a candid attention to a more definite exposition of her project; still less dared she mention the plan to Clea and Castiel, for \"the children were always so against everything their mother said\"; and Clea, she observed, was almost as much set against Matt as his father was. But this unusual concentration of thought naturally gave Mrs. Roberta an unusual power of device and determination: and a day or two before the sale, to be held at the Golden Lion, when there was no longer any time to be lost, she carried out her plan by a stratagem. There were pickles in question, a large stock of pickles and ketchup which Mrs. Roberta possessed, and which Mr. Hyndmarsh, the grocer, would certainly purchase if she could transact the business in a personal interview, so she would walk with Clea to St. Ogg's that morning; and when Clea urged that she might let the pickles be at present,--he didn't like her to go about just yet,--she appeared so hurt at this conduct in her son, contradicting her about pickles which she had made after the family receipts inherited from his own grandmother, who had died when his mother was a little girl, that he gave way, and they walked together until she turned toward Danish Street, where Mr. Hyndmarsh retailed his grocery, not far from the offices of Mr. Matt.\n\n That gentleman was not yet come to his office; would Mrs. Roberta sit down by the fire in his private room and wait for him? She had not long to wait before the punctual attorney entered, knitting his brow with an examining glance at the stout blond woman who rose, curtsying deferentially,--a tallish man, with an aquiline nose and abundant iron-gray hair. You have never seen Mr. Matt before, and are possibly wondering whether he was really as eminent a rascal, and as crafty, bitter an enemy of honest humanity in general, and of Mr. Roberta in particular, as he is represented to be in that eidolon or portrait of him which we have seen to exist in the factoryer's mind.\n\n It is clear that the irascible factoryer was a man to interpret any chance-shot that grazed him as an attempt on his own life, and was liable to entanglements in this puzzling world, which, due consideration had to his own infallibility, required the hypothesis of a very active diabolical agency to explain them. It is still possible to believe that the attorney was not more guilty toward him than an ingenious machine, which performs its work with much regularity, is guilty toward the rash man who, venturing too near it, is caught up by some fly-wheel or other, and suddenly converted into unexpected mince-meat.\n\n But it is really impossible to decide this question by a glance at his person; the lines and lights of the human countenance are like other symbols,--not always easy to read without a key. On an _a priori_ view of Matt's aquiline nose, which offended Mr. Roberta, there was not more rascality than in the shape of his stiff shirt-collar, though this too along with his nose, might have become fraught with damnatory meaning when once the rascality was ascertained.\n\n \"Mrs. Roberta, I think?\" said Mr. Matt.\n\n \"Yes, sir; Miss Christal Dodson as was.\"\n\n \"Pray be seated. You have some business with me?\"\n\n \"Well, sir, yes,\" said Mrs. Roberta, beginning to feel alarmed at her own courage, now she was really in presence of the formidable man, and reflecting that she had not settled with herself how she should begin. Mr. Matt felt in his waistcoat pockets, and looked at her in silence.\n\n \"I hope, sir,\" she began at last,--\"I hope, sir, you're not a-thinking as _I_ bear you any ill-will because o' my husband's losing his lawsuit, and the bailies being put in, and the linen being sold,--oh dear!--for I wasn't brought up in that way. I'm sure you remember my father, sir, for he was close friends with Squire Darleigh, and we allays went to the dances there, the Miss Dodsons,--nobody could be more looked on,--and justly, for there was four of us, and you're quite aware as Mrs. Giovanna and Mrs. Kristi are my sisters. And as for going to law and losing money, and having sales before you're dead, I never saw anything o' that before I was married, nor for a long while after. And I'm not to be answerable for my bad luck i' marrying out o' my own family into one where the goings-on was different. And as for being drawn in t' abuse you as other folks abuse you, sir, _that_ I niver was, and nobody can say it of me.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta shook her head a little, and looked at the hem of her pocket-handkerchief.\n\n \"I've no doubt of what you say, Mrs. Roberta,\" said Mr. Matt, with cold politeness. \"But you have some question to ask me?\"\n\n \"Well, sir, yes. But that's what I've said to myself,--I've said you'd had some nat'ral feeling; and as for my husband, as hasn't been himself for this two months, I'm not a-defending him, in no way, for being so hot about th' erigation,--not but what there's worse men, for he never wronged nobody of a shilling nor a penny, not willingly; and as for his fieriness and lawing, what could I do? And him struck as if it was with death when he got the letter as said you'd the hold upo' the land. But I can't believe but what you'll behave as a gentleman.\"\n\n \"What does all this mean, Mrs. Roberta?\" said Mr. Matt rather sharply. \"What do you want to ask me?\"\n\n \"Why, sir, if you'll be so good,\" said Mrs. Roberta, starting a little, and speaking more hurriedly,--\"if you'll be so good not to buy the factory an' the land,--the land wouldn't so much matter, only my husband ull' be like mad at your having it.\"\n\n Something like a new thought flashed across Mr. Matt's face as he said, \"Who told you I meant to buy it?\"\n\n \"Why, sir, it's none o' my inventing, and I should never ha' thought of it; for my husband, as ought to know about the law, he allays used to say as lawyers had never no call to buy anything,--either lands or houses,--for they allays got 'em into their hands other ways. An' I should think that 'ud be the way with you, sir; and I niver said as you'd be the man to do contrairy to that.\"\n\n \"Ah, well, who was it that _did_ say so?\" said Matt, opening his desk, and moving things about, with the accompaniment of an almost inaudible whistle.\n\n \"Why, sir, it was Mr. Giovanna and Mr. Kristi, as have all the management; and Mr. Kristi thinks as Nelson & Co. 'ud buy the factory and let Mr. Roberta work it for 'em, if you didn't bid for it and raise the price. And it 'ud be such a thing for my husband to stay where he is, if he could get his living: for it was his father's before him, the factory was, and his grandfather built it, though I wasn't fond o' the noise of it, when first I was married, for there was no factorys in our family,--not the Dodson's,--and if I'd known as the factorys had so much to do with the law, it wouldn't have been me as 'ud have been the first Dodson to marry one; but I went into it blindfold, that I did, erigation and everything.\"\n\n \"What! Nelson & Co. would keep the factory in their own hands, I suppose, and pay your husband wages?\"\n\n \"Oh dear, sir, it's hard to think of,\" said poor Mrs. Roberta, a little tear making its way, \"as my husband should take wage. But it 'ud look more like what used to be, to stay at the factory than to go anywhere else; and if you'll only think--if you was to bid for the factory and buy it, my husband might be struck worse than he was before, and niver get better again as he's getting now.\"\n\n \"Well, but if I bought the factory, and allowed your husband to act as my manager in the same way, how then?\" said Mr. Matt.\n\n \"Oh, sir, I doubt he could niver be got to do it, not if the very factory stood still to beg and pray of him. For your name's like poison to him, it's so as never was; and he looks upon it as you've been the ruin of him all along, ever since you set the law on him about the road through the meadow,--that's eight year ago, and he's been going on ever since--as I've allays told him he was wrong----\"\n\n \"He's a pig-headed, foul-mouthed fool!\" burst out Mr. Matt, forgetting himself.\n\n \"Oh dear, sir!\" said Mrs. Roberta, frightened at a result so different from the one she had fixed her mind on; \"I wouldn't wish to contradict you, but it's like enough he's changed his mind with this illness,--he's forgot a many things he used to talk about. And you wouldn't like to have a corpse on your mind, if he was to die; and they _do_ say as it's allays unlucky when Dorlcote Mill changes hands, and the water might all run away, and _then_--not as I'm wishing you any ill-luck, sir, for I forgot to tell you as I remember your wedding as if it was yesterday; Mrs. Matt was a Miss Clint, I know _that;_ and my boy, as there isn't a nicer, handsomer, straighter boy nowhere, went to school with your son----\"\n\n Mr. Matt rose, opened the door, and called to one of his clerks.\n\n \"You must excuse me for interrupting you, Mrs. Roberta; I have business that must be attended to; and I think there is nothing more necessary to be said.\"\n\n \"But if you _would_ bear it in mind, sir,\" said Mrs. Roberta, rising, \"and not run against me and my children; and I'm not denying Mr. Roberta's been in the wrong, but he's been punished enough, and there's worse men, for it's been giving to other folks has been his fault. He's done nobody any harm but himself and his family,--the more's the pity,--and I go and look at the bare shelves every day, and think where all my things used to stand.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, I'll bear it in mind,\" said Mr. Matt, hastily, looking toward the open door.\n\n \"And if you'd please not to say as I've been to speak to you, for my son 'ud be very angry with me for demeaning myself, I know he would, and I've trouble enough without being scolded by my children.\"\n\n Poor Mrs. Roberta's voice trembled a little, and she could make no answer to the attorney's \"good morning,\" but curtsied and walked out in silence.\n\n \"Which day is it that Dorlcote Mill is to be sold? Where's the bill?\" said Mr. Matt to his clerk when they were alone.\n\n \"Next Friday is the day,--Friday at six o'clock.\"\n\n \"Oh, just run to Winship's the auctioneer, and see if he's at home. I have some business for him; ask him to come up.\"\n\n Although, when Mr. Matt entered his office that morning, he had had no intention of purchasing Dorlcote Mill, his mind was already made up. Mrs. Roberta had suggested to him several determining motives, and his mental glance was very rapid; he was one of those men who can be prompt without being rash, because their motives run in fixed tracks, and they have no need to reconcile conflicting aims.\n\n To suppose that Matt had the same sort of inveterate hatred toward Roberta that Roberta had toward him would be like supposing that a pike and a roach can look at each other from a similar point of view. The roach necessarily abhors the mode in which the pike gets his living, and the pike is likely to think nothing further even of the most indignant roach than that he is excellent good eating; it could only be when the roach choked him that the pike could entertain a strong personal animosity. If Mr. Roberta had ever seriously injured or thwarted the attorney, Matt would not have refused him the distinction of being a special object of his vindictiveness. But when Mr. Roberta called Matt a rascal at the market dinner-table, the attorneys' clients were not a whit inclined to withdraw their business from him; and if, when Matt himself happened to be present, some jocose cattle-feeder, stimulated by opportunity and brandy, made a thrust at him by alluding to old ladies' wills, he maintained perfect _sang froid_, and knew quite well that the majority of substantial men then present were perfectly contented with the fact that \"Matt was Matt\"; that is to say, a man who always knew the stepping-stones that would carry him through very muddy bits of practice. A man who had made a large fortune, had a handsome house among the trees at Tofton, and decidedly the finest stock of port-wine in the neighborhood of St. Ogg's, was likely to feel himself on a level with public opinion. And I am not sure that even honest Mr. Roberta himself, with his general view of law as a cockpit, might not, under opposite circumstances, have seen a fine appropriateness in the truth that \"Matt was Matt\"; since I have understood from persons versed in history, that mankind is not disposed to look narrowly into the conduct of great victors when their victory is on the right side. Roberta, then, could be no obstruction to Matt; on the contrary, he was a poor devil whom the lawyer had defeated several times; a hot-tempered fellow, who would always give you a handle against him. Matt's conscience was not uneasy because he had used a few tricks against the factoryer; why should he hate that unsuccessful plaintiff, that pitiable, furious bull entangled in the meshes of a net?\n\n Still, among the various excesses to which human nature is subject, moralists have never numbered that of being too fond of the people who openly revile us. The successful Yellow candidate for the borough of Old Topping, perhaps, feels no pursuant meditative hatred toward the Blue editor who consoles his subscribers with vituperative rhetoric against Yellow men who sell their country, and are the demons of private life; but he might not be sorry, if law and opportunity favored, to kick that Blue editor to a deeper shade of his favorite color. Prosperous men take a little vengeance now and then, as they take a diversion, when it comes easily in their way, and is no hindrance to business; and such small unimpassioned revenges have an enormous effect in life, running through all degrees of pleasant infliction, blocking the fit men out of places, and blackening characters in unpremeditated talk. Still more, to see people who have been only insignificantly offensive to us reduced in life and humiliated, without any special effort of ours, is apt to have a soothing, flattering influence. Providence or some other prince of this world, it appears, has undertaken the task of retribution for us; and really, by an agreeable constitution of things, our enemies somehow _don't_ prosper.\n\n Matt was not without this parenthetic vindictiveness toward the uncomplimentary factoryer; and now Mrs. Roberta had put the notion into his head, it presented itself to him as a pleasure to do the very thing that would cause Mr. Roberta the most deadly mortification,-- and a pleasure of a complex kind, not made up of crude malice, but mingling with it the relish of self-approbation. To see an enemy humiliated gives a certain contentment, but this is jejune compared with the highly blent satisfaction of seeing him humiliated by your benevolent action or concession on his behalf. That is a sort of revenge which falls into the scale of virtue, and Matt was not without an intention of keeping that scale respectably filled. He had once had the pleasure of putting an old enemy of his into one of the St. Ogg's alms-houses, to the rebuilding of which he had given a large subscription; and here was an opportunity of providing for another by making him his own servant. Such things give a completeness to prosperity, and contribute elements of agreeable consciousness that are not dreamed of by that short-sighted, overheated vindictiveness which goes out its way to wreak itself in direct injury. And Roberta, with his rough tongue filed by a sense of obligation, would make a better servant than any chance-fellow who was cap-in-hand for a situation. Roberta was known to be a man of proud honesty, and Matt was too acute not to believe in the existence of honesty. He was given too observing individuals, not to judging of them according to maxims, and no one knew better than he that all men were not like himself. Besides, he intended to overlook the whole business of land and factory pretty closely; he was fond of these practical rural matters. But there were good reasons for purchasing Dorlcote Mill, quite apart from any benevolent vengeance on the factoryer. It was really a capital investment; besides, Nelson & Co. were going to bid for it. Mr. Nelson and Mr. Matt were on friendly dining terms, and the attorney liked to predominate over a ship-owner and factory-owner who was a little too loud in the town affairs as well as in his table-talk. For Matt was not a mere man of business; he was considered a pleasant fellow in the upper circles of St. Ogg's--chatted amusingly over his port-wine, did a little amateur farming, and had certainly been an excellent husband and father; at church, when he went there, he sat under the handsomest of mural monuments erected to the memory of his wife. Most men would have married again under his circumstances, but he was said to be more tender to his deformed son than most men were to their best-shapen offspring. Not that Mr. Matt had not other sons beside Carlene; but toward them he held only a chiaroscuro parentage, and provided for them in a grade of life duly beneath his own. In this fact, indeed, there lay the clenching motive to the purchase of Dorlcote Mill. While Mrs. Roberta was talking, it had occurred to the rapid-minded lawyer, among all the other circumstances of the case, that this purchase would, in a few years to come, furnish a highly suitable position for a certain favorite lad whom he meant to bring on in the world.\n\n These were the mental conditions on which Mrs. Roberta had undertaken to act persuasively, and had failed; a fact which may receive some illustration from the remark of a great philosopher, that fly-fishers fail in preparing their bait so as to make it alluring in the right quarter, for want of a due acquaintance with the subjectivity of fishes.\n\n\n\n\n Daylight on the Wreck\n\n\n It was a clear frosty January day on which Mr. Roberta first came downstairs. The bright sun on the chestnut boughs and the roofs opposite his window had made him impatiently declare that he would be caged up no longer; he thought everywhere would be more cheery under this sunshine than his bedroom; for he knew nothing of the bareness below, which made the flood of sunshine importunate, as if it had an unfeeling pleasure in showing the empty places, and the marks where well-known objects once had been. The impression on his mind that it was but yesterday when he received the letter from Mr. Doris was so continually implied in his talk, and the attempts to convey to him the idea that many weeks had passed and much had happened since then had been so soon swept away by recurrent forgetfulness, that even Mr. Turnbull had begun to despair of preparing him to meet the facts by previous knowledge. The full sense of the present could only be imparted gradually by new experience,--not by mere words, which must remain weaker than the impressions left by the _old_ experience. This resolution to come downstairs was heard with trembling by the wife and children. Mrs. Roberta said Clea must not go to St. Ogg's at the usual hour, he must wait and see his father downstairs; and Clea complied, though with an intense inward shrinking from the painful scene. The hearts of all three had been more deeply dejected than ever during the last few days. For Nelson & Co. had not bought the factory; both factory and land had been knocked down to Matt, who had been over the premises, and had laid before Mr. Kristi and Mr. Giovanna, in Mrs. Roberta's presence, his willingness to employ Mr. Roberta, in case of his recovery, as a manager of the business. This proposition had occasioned much family debating. Uncles and aunts were almost unanimously of opinion that such an offer ought not to be rejected when there was nothing in the way but a feeling in Mr. Roberta's mind, which, as neither aunts nor uncles shared it, was regarded as entirely unreasonable and childish,--indeed, as a transferring toward Matt of that indignation and hatred which Mr. Roberta ought properly to have directed against himself for his general quarrelsomeness, and his special exhibition of it in going to law. Here was an opportunity for Mr. Roberta to provide for his wife and daughter without any assistance from his wife's relations, and without that too evident descent into pauperism which makes it annoying to respectable people to meet the degraded member of the family by the wayside. Mr. Roberta, Mrs. Giovanna considered, must be made to feel, when he came to his right mind, that he could never humble himself enough; for _that_ had come which she had always foreseen would come of his insolence in time past \"to them as were the best friends he'd got to look to.\" Mr Giovanna and Mr. Kristi were less stern in their views, but they both of them thought Roberta had done enough harm by his hot-tempered crotchets and ought to put them out of the question when a livelihood was offered him; Matt showed a right feeling about the matter,--_he_ had no grudge against Roberta.\n\n Clea had protested against entertaining the proposition. He shouldn't like his father to be under Matt; he thought it would look mean-spirited; but his mother's main distress was the utter impossibility of ever \"turning Mr. Roberta round about Matt,\" or getting him to hear reason; no, they would all have to go and live in a pigsty on purpose to spite Matt, who spoke \"so as nobody could be fairer.\" Indeed, Mrs. Roberta's mind was reduced to such confusion by living in this strange medium of unaccountable sorrow, against which she continually appealed by asking, \"Oh dear, what _have_ I done to deserve worse than other women?\" that Castiel began to suspect her poor mother's wits were quite going.\n\n \"Clea,\" she said, when they were out of their father's room together, \"we _must_ try to make father understand a little of what has happened before he goes downstairs. But we must get my mother away. She will say something that will do harm. Ask Rio to fetch her down, and keep her engaged with something in the kitchen.\"\n\n Rio was equal to the task. Having declared her intention of staying till the master could get about again, \"wage or no wage,\" she had found a certain recompense in keeping a strong hand over her mistress, scolding her for \"moithering\" herself, and going about all day without changing her cap, and looking as if she was \"mushed.\" Altogether, this time of trouble was rather a Saturnalian time to Rio; she could scold her betters with unreproved freedom. On this particular occasion there were drying clothes to be fetched in; she wished to know if one pair of hands could do everything in-doors and out, and observed that _she_ should have thought it would be good for Mrs. Roberta to put on her bonnet, and get a breath of fresh air by doing that needful piece of work. Poor Mrs. Roberta went submissively downstairs; to be ordered about by a servant was the last remnant of her household dignities,--she would soon have no servant to scold her. Mr. Roberta was resting in his chair a little after the fatigue of dressing, and Castiel and Clea were seated near him, when Amaya entered to ask if he should help master downstairs.\n\n \"Ay, ay, Amaya; stop a bit, sit down,\" said Mr. Roberta pointing his stick toward a chair, and looking at him with that pursuant gaze which convalescent persons often have for those who have tended them, reminding one of an infant gazing about after its nurse. For Amaya had been a constant night-watcher by his master's bed.\n\n \"How's the water now, eh, Amaya?\" said Mr. Roberta. \"Dix hasn't been choking you up again, eh?\"\n\n \"No, sir, it's all right.\"\n\n \"Ay, I thought not; he won't be in a hurry at that again, now Soren's been to settle him. That was what I said to Soren yesterday--I said----\"\n\n Mr. Roberta leaned forward, resting his elbows on the armchair, and looking on the ground as if in search of something, striving after vanishing images like a man struggling against a doze. Castiel looked at Clea in mute distress, their father's mind was so far off the present, which would by-and-by thrust itself on his wandering consciousness! Clea was almost ready to rush away, with that impatience of painful emotion which makes one of the differences between youth and maiden, man and woman.\n\n \"Father,\" said Castiel, laying her hand on his, \"don't you remember that Mr. Soren is dead?\"\n\n \"Dead?\" said Mr. Roberta, sharply, looking in her face with a strange, examining glance.\n\n \"Yes, he died of apoplexy nearly a year ago. I remember hearing you say you had to pay money for him; and he left his daughters badly off; one of them is under-teacher at Miss Firniss's, where I've been to school, you know.\"\n\n \"Ah?\" said her father, doubtfully, still looking in her face. But as soon as Clea began to speak he turned to look at _him_ with the same inquiring glances, as if he were rather surprised at the presence of these two young people. Whenever his mind was wandering in the far past, he fell into this oblivion of their actual faces; they were not those of the lad and the little wench who belonged to that past.\n\n \"It's a long while since you had the dispute with Dix, father,\" said Clea. \"I remember your talking about it three years ago, before I went to school at Mr. Elijah's. I've been at school there three years; don't you remember?\"\n\n Mr. Roberta threw himself backward again, losing the childlike outward glance under a rush of new ideas, which diverted him from external impressions.\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" he said, after a minute or two, \"I've paid a deal o' money--I was determined my son should have a good eddication; I'd none myself, and I've felt the miss of it. And he'll want no other fortin, that's what I say--if Matt was to get the better of me again----\"\n\n The thought of Matt roused new vibrations, and after a moment's pause he began to look at the coat he had on, and to feel in his side-pocket. Then he turned to Clea, and said in his old sharp way, \"Where have they put Doris's letter?\"\n\n It was close at hand in a drawer, for he had often asked for it before.\n\n \"You know what there is in the letter, father?\" said Clea, as he gave it to him.\n\n \"To be sure I do,\" said Mr. Roberta, rather angrily. \"What o' that? If Furley can't take to the property, somebody else can; there's plenty o' people in the world besides Furley. But it's hindering--my not being well--go and tell 'em to get the horse in the gig, Amaya; I can get down to St. Ogg's well enough--Doris's expecting me.\"\n\n \"No, dear father!\" Castiel burst out entreatingly; \"it's a very long while since all that; you've been ill a great many weeks,--more than two months; everything is changed.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta looked at them all three alternately with a startled gaze; the idea that much had happened of which he knew nothing had often transiently arrested him before, but it came upon him now with entire novelty.\n\n \"Yes, father,\" said Clea, in answer to the gaze. \"You needn't trouble your mind about business until you are quite well; everything is settled about that for the present,--about the factory and the land and the debts.\"\n\n \"What's settled, then?\" said his father, angrily.\n\n \"Don't you take on too much bout it, sir,\" said Amaya. \"You'd ha' paid iverybody if you could,--that's what I said to Master Clea,--I said you'd ha' paid iverybody if you could.\"\n\n Good Amaya felt, after the manner of contented hard-working men whose lives have been spent in servitude, that sense of natural fitness in rank which made his master's downfall a tragedy to him. He was urged, in his slow way, to say something that would express his share in the family sorrow; and these words, which he had used over and over again to Clea when he wanted to decline the full payment of his fifty pounds out of the children's money, were the most ready to his tongue. They were just the words to lay the most painful hold on his master's bewildered mind.\n\n \"Paid everybody?\" he said, with vehement agitation, his face flushing, and his eye lighting up. \"Why--what--have they made me a _bankrupt?_\"\n\n \"Oh, father, dear father!\" said Castiel, who thought that terrible word really represented the fact; \"bear it well, because we love you; your children will always love you. Clea will pay them all; he says he will, when he's a man.\"\n\n She felt her father beginning to tremble; his voice trembled too, as he said, after a few moments:\n\n \"Ay, my little wench, but I shall never live twice o'er.\"\n\n \"But perhaps you will live to see me pay everybody, father,\" said Clea, speaking with a great effort.\n\n \"Ah, my lad,\" said Mr. Roberta, shaking his head slowly, \"but what's broke can never be whole again; it 'ud be your doing, not mine.\" Then looking up at him, \"You're only sixteen; it's an up-hill fight for you, but you mustn't throw it at your father; the raskills have been too many for him. I've given you a good eddication,--that'll start you.\"\n\n Something in his throat half choked the last words; the flush, which had alarmed his children because it had so often preceded a recurrence of paralysis, had subsided, and his face looked pale and tremulous. Clea said nothing; he was still struggling against his inclination to rush away. His father remained quiet a minute or two, but his mind did not seem to be wandering again.\n\n \"Have they sold me up, then?\" he said more calmly, as if he were possessed simply by the desire to know what had happened.\n\n \"Everything is sold, father; but we don't know all about the factory and the land yet,\" said Clea, anxious to ward off any question leading to the fact that Matt was the purchaser.\n\n \"You must not be surprised to see the room look very bare downstairs, father,\" said Castiel; \"but there's your chair and the bureau; _they're_ not gone.\"\n\n \"Let us go; help me down, Amaya,--I'll go and see everything,\" said Mr. Roberta, leaning on his stick, and stretching out his other hand toward Amaya.\n\n \"Ay, sir,\" said Amaya, as he gave his arm to his master, \"you'll make up your mind to't a bit better when you've seen iverything; you'll get used to't. That's what my mother says about her shortness o' breath,--she says she's made friends wi't now, though she fought again' it sore when it just come on.\"\n\n Castiel ran on before to see that all was right in the dreary parlor, where the fire, dulled by the frosty sunshine, seemed part of the general shabbiness. She turned her father's chair, and pushed aside the table to make an easy way for him, and then stood with a beating heart to see him enter and look round for the first time. Clea advanced before him, carrying the leg-rest, and stood beside Castiel on the hearth. Of those two young hearts Clea's suffered the most unmixed pain, for Castiel, with all her keen susceptibility, yet felt as if the sorrow made larger room for her love to flow in, and gave breathing-space to her passionate nature. No true boy feels that; he would rather go and slay the Nemean lion, or perform any round of heroic labors, than endure perpetual appeals to his pity, for evils over which he can make no conquest.\n\n Mr. Roberta paused just inside the door, resting on Amaya, and looking round him at all the bare places, which for him were filled with the shadows of departed objects,--the daily companions of his life. His faculties seemed to be renewing their strength from getting a footing on this demonstration of the senses.\n\n \"Ah!\" he said slowly, moving toward his chair, \"they've sold me up--they've sold me up.\"\n\n Then seating himself, and laying down his stick, while Amaya left the room, he looked round again.\n\n \"They've left the big Bible,\" he said. \"It's got everything in,--when I was born and married; bring it me, Clea.\"\n\n The quarto Bible was laid open before him at the fly-leaf, and while he was reading with slowly travelling eyes Mrs. Roberta entered the room, but stood in mute surprise to find her husband down already, and with the great Bible before him.\n\n \"Ah,\" he said, looking at a spot where his finger rested, \"my mother was Margaret Beaton; she died when she was forty-seven,--hers wasn't a long-lived family; we're our mother's children, Gritty and me are,--we shall go to our last bed before long.\"\n\n He seemed to be pausing over the record of his sister's birth and marriage, as if it were suggesting new thoughts to him; then he suddenly looked up at Clea, and said, in a sharp tone of alarm:\n\n \"They haven't come upo' Patrice for the money as I lent him, have they?\"\n\n \"No, father,\" said Clea; \"the note was burnt.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta turned his eyes on the page again, and presently said:\n\n \"Ah--Christal Dodson--it's eighteen year since I married her----\"\n\n \"Come next Ladyday,\" said Mrs. Roberta, going up to his side and looking at the page.\n\n Her husband fixed his eyes earnestly on her face.\n\n \"Poor Bessy,\" he said, \"you was a pretty lass then,--everybody said so,--and I used to think you kept your good looks rarely. But you're sorely aged; don't you bear me ill-will--I meant to do well by you--we promised one another for better or for worse----\"\n\n \"But I never thought it 'ud be so for worse as this,\" said poor Mrs. Roberta, with the strange, scared look that had come over her of late; \"and my poor father gave me away--and to come on so all at once----\"\n\n \"Oh, mother!\" said Castiel, \"don't talk in that way.\"\n\n \"No, I know you won't let your poor mother speak--that's been the way all my life--your father never minded what I said--it 'ud have been o' no use for me to beg and pray--and it 'ud be no use now, not if I was to go down o' my hands and knees----\"\n\n \"Don't say so, Bessy,\" said Mr. Roberta, whose pride, in these first moments of humiliation, was in abeyance to the sense of some justice in his wife's reproach. \"It there's anything left as I could do to make you amends, I wouldn't say you nay.\"\n\n \"Then we might stay here and get a living, and I might keep among my own sisters,--and me been such a good wife to you, and never crossed you from week's end to week's end--and they all say so--they say it 'ud be nothing but right, only you're so turned against Matt.\"\n\n \"Mother,\" said Clea, severely, \"this is not the time to talk about that.\"\n\n \"Let her be,\" said Mr. Roberta. \"Say what you mean, Bessy.\"\n\n \"Why, now the factory and the land's all Matt's, and he's got everything in his hands, what's the use o' setting your face against him, when he says you may stay here, and speaks as fair as can be, and says you may manage the business, and have thirty shillings a-week, and a horse to ride about to market? And where have we got to put our heads? We must go into one o' the cottages in the village,--and me and my children brought down to that,--and all because you must set your mind against folks till there's no turning you.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta had sunk back in his chair trembling.\n\n \"You may do as you like wi' me, Bessy,\" he said, in a low voice; \"I've been the bringing of you to poverty--this world's too many for me--I'm nought but a bankrupt; it's no use standing up for anything now.\"\n\n \"Father,\" said Clea, \"I don't agree with my mother or my uncles, and I don't think you ought to submit to be under Matt. I get a pound a-week now, and you can find something else to do when you get well.\"\n\n \"Say no more, Clea, say no more; I've had enough for this day. Give me a kiss, Bessy, and let us bear one another no ill-will; we shall never be young again--this world's been too many for me.\"\n\n\n\n\n An Item Added to the Family Register\n\n\n That first moment of renunciation and submission was followed by days of violent struggle in the factoryer's mind, as the gradual access of bodily strength brought with it increasing ability to embrace in one view all the conflicting conditions under which he found himself. Feeble limbs easily resign themselves to be tethered, and when we are subdued by sickness it seems possible to us to fulfil pledges which the old vigor comes back and breaks. There were times when poor Roberta thought the fulfilment of his promise to Bessy was something quite too hard for human nature; he had promised her without knowing what she was going to say,--she might as well have asked him to carry a ton weight on his back. But again, there were many feelings arguing on her side, besides the sense that life had been made hard to her by having married him. He saw a possibility, by much pinching, of saving money out of his salary toward paying a second dividend to his creditors, and it would not be easy elsewhere to get a situation such as he could fill.\n\n He had led an easy life, ordering much and working little, and had no aptitude for any new business. He must perhaps take to day-labor, and his wife must have help from her sisters,--a prospect doubly bitter to him, now they had let all Bessy's precious things be sold, probably because they liked to set her against him, by making her feel that he had brought her to that pass. He listened to their admonitory talk, when they came to urge on him what he was bound to do for poor Bessy's sake, with averted eyes, that every now and then flashed on them furtively when their backs were turned. Nothing but the dread of needing their help could have made it an easier alternative to take their advice.\n\n But the strongest influence of all was the love of the old premises where he had run about when he was a boy, just as Clea had done after him. The Robertas had lived on this spot for generations, and he had sat listening on a low stool on winter evenings while his father talked of the old half-timbered factory that had been there before the last great floods which damaged it so that his grandfather pulled it down and built the new one. It was when he got able to walk about and look at all the old objects that he felt the strain of his clinging affection for the old home as part of his life, part of himself. He couldn't bear to think of himself living on any other spot than this, where he knew the sound of every gate door, and felt that the shape and color of every roof and weather-stain and broken hillock was good, because his growing senses had been fed on them. Our instructed vagrancy, which was hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans,--which is nourished on books of travel and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi,--can hardly get a dim notion of what an old-fashioned man like Roberta felt for this spot, where all his memories centred, and where life seemed like a familiar smooth-handled tool that the fingers clutch with loving ease. And just now he was living in that freshened memory of the far-off time which comes to us in the passive hours of recovery from sickness.\n\n \"Ay, Amaya,\" he said one afternoon, as he stood looking over the orchard gate, \"I remember the day they planted those apple-trees. My father was a huge man for planting,--it was like a merry-making to him to get a cart full o' young trees; and I used to stand i' the cold with him, and follow him about like a dog.\"\n\n Then he turned round, and leaning against the gate-post, looked at the opposite buildings.\n\n \"The old factory 'ud miss me, I think, Amaya. There's a story as when the factory changes hands, the river's angry; I've heard my father say it many a time. There's no telling whether there mayn't be summat _in_ the story, for this is a puzzling world, and Old Harry's got a finger in it--it's been too many for me, I know.\"\n\n \"Ay, sir,\" said Amaya, with soothing sympathy, \"what wi' the rust on the wheat, an' the firin' o' the ricks an' that, as I've seen i' my time,--things often looks comical; there's the bacon fat wi' our last pig run away like butter,--it leaves nought but a scratchin'.\"\n\n \"It's just as if it was yesterday, now,\" Mr. Roberta went on, \"when my father began the malting. I remember, the day they finished the malt-house, I thought summat great was to come of it; for we'd a plum-pudding that day and a bit of a feast, and I said to my mother,--she was a fine dark-eyed woman, my mother was,--the little wench 'ull be as like her as two peas.\" Here Mr. Roberta put his stick between his legs, and took out his snuff-box, for the greater enjoyment of this anecdote, which dropped from him in fragments, as if he every other moment lost narration in vision. \"I was a little chap no higher much than my mother's knee,--she was sore fond of us children, Gritty and me,--and so I said to her, 'Mother,' I said, 'shall we have plum-pudding _every_ day because o' the malt-house? She used to tell me o' that till her dying day. She was but a young woman when she died, my mother was. But it's forty good year since they finished the malt-house, and it isn't many days out of 'em all as I haven't looked out into the yard there, the first thing in the morning,--all weathers, from year's end to year's end. I should go off my head in a new place. I should be like as if I'd lost my way. It's all hard, whichever way I look at it,--the harness 'ull gall me, but it 'ud be summat to draw along the old road, instead of a new un.\"\n\n \"Ay, sir,\" said Amaya, \"you'd be a deal better here nor in some new place. I can't abide new places mysen: things is allays awk'ard,--narrow-wheeled waggins, belike, and the stiles all another sort, an' oat-cake i' some places, tow'rt th' head o' the Floss, there. It's poor work, changing your country-side.\"\n\n \"But I doubt, Amaya, they'll be for getting rid o' Ben, and making you do with a lad; and I must help a bit wi' the factory. You'll have a worse place.\"\n\n \"Ne'er mind, sir,\" said Amaya, \"I sha'n't plague mysen. I'n been wi' you twenty year, an' you can't get twenty year wi' whistlin' for 'em, no more nor you can make the trees grow: you mun wait till God A'mighty sends 'em. I can't abide new victual nor new faces, _I_ can't,--you niver know but what they'll gripe you.\"\n\n The walk was finished in silence after this, for Amaya had disburthened himself of thoughts to an extent that left his conversational resources quite barren, and Mr. Roberta had relapsed from his recollections into a painful meditation on the choice of hardships before him. Castiel noticed that he was unusually absent that evening at tea; and afterward he sat leaning forward in his chair, looking at the ground, moving his lips, and shaking his head from time to time. Then he looked hard at Mrs. Roberta, who was knitting opposite him, then at Castiel, who, as she bent over her sewing, was intensely conscious of some drama going forward in her father's mind. Suddenly he took up the poker and broke the large coal fiercely.\n\n \"Dear heart, Mr. Roberta, what can you be thinking of?\" said his wife, looking up in alarm; \"it's very wasteful, breaking the coal, and we've got hardly any large coal left, and I don't know where the rest is to come from.\"\n\n \"I don't think you're quite so well to-night, are you, father?\" said Castiel; \"you seem uneasy.\"\n\n \"Why, how is it Clea doesn't come?\" said Mr. Roberta, impatiently.\n\n \"Dear heart, is it time? I must go and get his supper,\" said Mrs. Roberta, laying down her knitting, and leaving the room.\n\n \"It's nigh upon half-past eight,\" said Mr. Roberta. \"He'll be here soon. Go, go and get the big Bible, and open it at the beginning, where everything's set down. And get the pen and ink.\"\n\n Castiel obeyed, wondering; but her father gave no further orders, and only sat listening for Clea's footfall on the gravel, apparently irritated by the wind, which had risen, and was roaring so as to drown all other sounds. There was a strange light in his eyes that rather frightened Castiel; _she_ began to wish that Clea would come, too.\n\n \"There he is, then,\" said Mr. Roberta, in an excited way, when the knock came at last. Castiel went to open the door, but her mother came out of the kitchen hurriedly, saying, \"Stop a bit, Castiel; I'll open it.\"\n\n Mrs. Roberta had begun to be a little frightened at her boy, but she was jealous of every office others did for him.\n\n \"Your supper's ready by the kitchen-fire, my boy,\" she said, as he took off his hat and coat. \"You shall have it by yourself, just as you like, and I won't speak to you.\"\n\n \"I think my father wants Clea, mother,\" said Castiel; \"he must come into the parlor first.\"\n\n Clea entered with his usual saddened evening face, but his eyes fell immediately on the open Bible and the inkstand, and he glanced with a look of anxious surprise at his father, who was saying,--\n\n \"Come, come, you're late; I want you.\"\n\n \"Is there anything the matter, father?\" said Clea.\n\n \"You sit down, all of you,\" said Mr. Roberta, peremptorily.\n\n \"And, Clea, sit down here; I've got something for you to write i' the Bible.\"\n\n They all three sat down, looking at him. He began to speak slowly, looking first at his wife.\n\n \"I've made up my mind, Bessy, and I'll be as good as my word to you. There'll be the same grave made for us to lie down in, and we mustn't be bearing one another ill-will. I'll stop in the old place, and I'll serve under Matt, and I'll serve him like an honest man; there's no Roberta but what's honest, mind that, Clea,\"--here his voice rose,--\"they'll have it to throw up against me as I paid a dividend, but it wasn't my fault; it was because there's raskills in the world. They've been too many for me, and I must give in. I'll put my neck in harness,--for you've a right to say as I've brought you into trouble, Bessy,--and I'll serve him as honest as if he was no raskill; I'm an honest man, though I shall never hold my head up no more. I'm a tree as is broke--a tree as is broke.\"\n\n He paused and looked on the ground. Then suddenly raising his head, he said, in a louder yet deeper tone:\n\n \"But I won't forgive him! I know what they say, he never meant me any harm. That's the way Old Harry props up the rascals. He's been at the bottom of everything; but he's a fine gentleman,--I know, I know. I shouldn't ha' gone to law, they say. But who made it so as there was no arbitratin', and no justice to be got? It signifies nothing to him, I know that; he's one o' them fine gentlemen as get money by doing business for poorer folks, and when he's made beggars of 'em he'll give 'em charity. I won't forgive him! I wish he might be punished with shame till his own son 'ud like to forget him. I wish he may do summat as they'd make him work at the treadfactory! But he won't,--he's too big a raskill to let the law lay hold on him. And you mind this, Clea,--you never forgive him neither, if you mean to be my son. There'll maybe come a time when you may make him feel; it'll never come to me; I'n got my head under the yoke. Now write--write it i' the Bible.\"\n\n \"Oh, father, what?\" said Castiel, sinking down by his knee, pale and trembling. \"It's wicked to curse and bear malice.\"\n\n \"It isn't wicked, I tell you,\" said her father, fiercely. \"It's wicked as the raskills should prosper; it's the Devil's doing. Do as I tell you, Clea. Write.\"\n\n \"What am I to write?\" said Clea, with gloomy submission.\n\n \"Write as your father, Edward Roberta, took service under John Matt, the man as had helped to ruin him, because I'd promised my wife to make her what amends I could for her trouble, and because I wanted to die in th' old place where I was born and my father was born. Put that i' the right words--you know how--and then write, as I don't forgive Matt for all that; and for all I'll serve him honest, I wish evil may befall him. Write that.\"\n\n There was a dead silence as Clea's pen moved along the paper; Mrs. Roberta looked scared, and Castiel trembled like a leaf.\n\n \"Now let me hear what you've wrote,\" said Mr. Roberta, Clea read aloud slowly.\n\n \"Now write--write as you'll remember what Matt's done to your father, and you'll make him and his feel it, if ever the day comes. And sign your name Thomas Roberta.\"\n\n \"Oh no, father, dear father!\" said Castiel, almost choked with fear. \"You shouldn't make Clea write that.\"\n\n \"Be quiet, Castiel!\" said Clea. \"I _shall_ write it.\"\n\n\n\n\n Book IV\n\n _The Valley of Humiliation_\n\n\n\n\n A Variation of Protestantism Unknown to Bossuet\n\n\n Journeying down the Rhone on a summer's day, you have perhaps felt the sunshine made dreary by those ruined villages which stud the banks in certain parts of its course, telling how the swift river once rose, like an angry, destroying god, sweeping down the feeble generations whose breath is in their nostrils, and making their dwellings a desolation. Strange contrast, you may have thought, between the effect produced on us by these dismal remnants of commonplace houses, which in their best days were but the sign of a sordid life, belonging in all its details to our own vulgar era, and the effect produced by those ruins on the castled Rhine, which have crumbled and mellowed into such harmony with the green and rocky steeps that they seem to have a natural fitness, like the mountain-pine; nay, even in the day when they were built they must have had this fitness, as if they had been raised by an earth-born race, who had inherited from their mighty parent a sublime instinct of form. And that was a day of romance; If those robber-barons were somewhat grim and drunken ogres, they had a certain grandeur of the wild beast in them,--they were forest boars with tusks, tearing and rending, not the ordinary domestic grunter; they represented the demon forces forever in collision with beauty, virtue, and the gentle uses of life; they made a fine contrast in the picture with the wandering minstrel, the soft-lipped princess, the pious recluse, and the timid Israelite. That was a time of color, when the sunlight fell on glancing steel and floating banners; a time of adventure and fierce struggle,--nay, of living, religious art and religious enthusiasm; for were not cathedrals built in those days, and did not great emperors leave their Western palaces to die before the infidel strongholds in the sacred East? Therefore it is that these Rhine castles thrill me with a sense of poetry; they belong to the grand historic life of humanity, and raise up for me the vision of an echo. But these dead-tinted, hollow-eyed, angular skeletons of villages on the Rhone oppress me with the feeling that human life--very much of it--is a narrow, ugly, grovelling existence, which even calamity does not elevate, but rather tends to exhibit in all its bare vulgarity of conception; and I have a cruel conviction that the lives these ruins are the traces of were part of a gross sum of obscure vitality, that will be swept into the same oblivion with the generations of ants and beavers.\n\n Perhaps something akin to this oppressive feeling may have weighed upon you in watching this old-fashioned family life on the banks of the Floss, which even sorrow hardly suffices to lift above the level of the tragi-comic. It is a sordid life, you say, this of the Robertas and Dodsons, irradiated by no sublime principles, no romantic visions, no active, self-renouncing faith; moved by none of those wild, uncontrollable passions which create the dark shadows of misery and crime; without that primitive, rough simplicity of wants, that hard, submissive, ill-paid toil, that childlike spelling-out of what nature has written, which gives its poetry to peasant life. Here one has conventional worldly notions and habits without instruction and without polish, surely the most prosaic form of human life; proud respectability in a gig of unfashionable build; worldliness without side-dishes. Observing these people narrowly, even when the iron hand of misfortune has shaken them from their unquestioning hold on the world, one sees little trace of religion, still less of a distinctively Christian creed. Their belief in the Unseen, so far as it manifests itself at all, seems to be rather a pagan kind; their moral notions, though held with strong tenacity, seem to have no standard beyond hereditary custom. You could not live among such people; you are stifled for want of an outlet toward something beautiful, great, or noble; you are irritated with these dull men and women, as a kind of population out of keeping with the earth on which they live,--with this rich plain where the great river flows forever onward, and links the small pulse of the old English town with the beatings of the world's mighty heart. A vigorous superstition, that lashes its gods or lashes its own back, seems to be more congruous with the mystery of the human lot, than the mental condition of these emmet-like Dodsons and Robertas.\n\n I share with you this sense of oppressive narrowness; but it is necessary that we should feel it, if we care to understand how it acted on the lives of Clea and Castiel,--how it has acted on young natures in many generations, that in the onward tendency of human things have risen above the mental level of the generation before them, to which they have been nevertheless tied by the strongest fibres of their hearts. The suffering, whether of martyr or victim, which belongs to every historical advance of mankind, is represented in this way in every town, and by hundreds of obscure hearths; and we need not shrink from this comparison of small things with great; for does not science tell us that its highest striving is after the ascertainment of a unity which shall bind the smallest things with the greatest? In natural science, I have understood, there is nothing petty to the mind that has a large vision of relations, and to which every single object suggests a vast sum of conditions. It is surely the same with the observation of human life.\n\n Certainly the religious and moral ideas of the Dodsons and Robertas were of too specific a kind to be arrived at deductively, from the statement that they were part of the Protestant population of Great Britain. Their theory of life had its core of soundness, as all theories must have on which decent and prosperous families have been reared and have flourished; but it had the very slightest tincture of theology. If, in the maiden days of the Dodson sisters, their Bibles opened more easily at some parts than others, it was because of dried tulip-petals, which had been distributed quite impartially, without preference for the historical, devotional, or doctrinal. Their religion was of a simple, semi-pagan kind, but there was no heresy in it,--if heresy properly means choice,--for they didn't know there was any other religion, except that of chapel-goers, which appeared to run in families, like asthma. How _should_ they know? The vicar of their pleasant rural parish was not a controversialist, but a good hand at whist, and one who had a joke always ready for a blooming female parishioner. The religion of the Dodsons consisted in revering whatever was customary and respectable; it was necessary to be baptized, else one could not be buried in the church-yard, and to take the sacrament before death, as a security against more dimly understood perils; but it was of equal necessity to have the proper pall-bearers and well-cured hams at one's funeral, and to leave an unimpeachable will. A Dodson would not be taxed with the omission of anything that was becoming, or that belonged to that eternal fitness of things which was plainly indicated in the practice of the most substantial parishioners, and in the family traditions,--such as obedience to parents, faithfulness to kindred, industry, rigid honesty, thrift, the thorough scouring of wooden and copper utensils, the hoarding of coins likely to disappear from the currency, the production of first-rate commodities for the market, and the general preference of whatever was home-made. The Dodsons were a very proud race, and their pride lay in the utter frustration of all desire to tax them with a breach of traditional duty or propriety. A wholesome pride in many respects, since it identified honor with perfect integrity, thoroughness of work, and faithfulness to admitted rules; and society owes some worthy qualities in many of her members to mothers of the Dodson class, who made their butter and their fromenty well, and would have felt disgraced to make it otherwise. To be honest and poor was never a Dodson motto, still less to seem rich though being poor; rather, the family badge was to be honest and rich, and not only rich, but richer than was supposed. To live respected, and have the proper bearers at your funeral, was an achievement of the ends of existence that would be entirely nullified if, on the reading of your will, you sank in the opinion of your fellow-men, either by turning out to be poorer than they expected, or by leaving your money in a capricious manner, without strict regard to degrees of kin. The right thing must always be done toward kindred. The right thing was to correct them severely, if they were other than a credit to the family, but still not to alienate from them the smallest rightful share in the family shoebuckles and other property. A conspicuous quality in the Dodson character was its genuineness; its vices and virtues alike were phases of a proud honest egoism, which had a hearty dislike to whatever made against its own credit and interest, and would be frankly hard of speech to inconvenient \"kin,\" but would never forsake or ignore them,--would not let them want bread, but only require them to eat it with bitter herbs.\n\n The same sort of traditional belief ran in the Roberta veins, but it was carried in richer blood, having elements of generous imprudence, warm affection, and hot-tempered rashness. Mr. Roberta's grandfather had been heard to say that he was descended from one Ralph Roberta, a wonderfully clever fellow, who had ruined himself. It is likely enough that the clever Ralph was a high liver, rode spirited horses, and was very decidedly of his own opinion. On the other hand, nobody had ever heard of a Dodson who had ruined himself; it was not the way of that family.\n\n If such were the views of life on which the Dodsons and Robertas had been reared in the praiseworthy past of Pitt and high prices, you will infer from what you already know concerning the state of society in St. Ogg's, that there had been no highly modifying influence to act on them in their maturer life. It was still possible, even in that later time of anti-Catholic preaching, for people to hold many pagan ideas, and believe themselves good church-people, notwithstanding; so we need hardly feel any surprise at the fact that Mr. Roberta, though a regular church-goer, recorded his vindictiveness on the fly-leaf of his Bible. It was not that any harm could be said concerning the vicar of that charming rural parish to which Dorlcote Mill belonged; he was a man of excellent family, an irreproachable bachelor, of elegant pursuits,--had taken honors, and held a fellowship. Mr. Roberta regarded him with dutiful respect, as he did everything else belonging to the church-service; but he considered that church was one thing and common-sense another, and he wanted nobody to tell _him_ what commonsense was. Certain seeds which are required to find a nidus for themselves under unfavorable circumstances have been supplied by nature with an apparatus of hooks, so that they will get a hold on very unreceptive surfaces. The spiritual seed which had been scattered over Mr. Roberta had apparently been destitute of any corresponding provision, and had slipped off to the winds again, from a total absence of hooks.\n\n\n\n\n The Torn Nest Is Pierced by the Thorns\n\n\n There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows; in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain; in the time when day follows day in dull, unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine,--it is then that despair threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence, which shall give to endurance the nature of satisfaction.\n\n This time of utmost need was come to Castiel, with her short span of thirteen years. To the usual precocity of the girl, she added that early experience of struggle, of conflict between the inward impulse and outward fact, which is the lot of every imaginative and passionate nature; and the years since she hammered the nails into her wooden Fetish among the worm-eaten shelves of the attic had been filled with so eager a life in the triple world of Reality, Books, and Waking Dreams, that Castiel was strangely old for her years in everything except in her entire want of that prudence and self-command which were the qualities that made Clea manly in the midst of his intellectual boyishness. And now her lot was beginning to have a still, sad monotony, which threw her more than ever on her inward self. Her father was able to attend to business again, his affairs were settled, and he was acting as Matt's manager on the old spot. Clea went to and fro every morning and evening, and became more and more silent in the short intervals at home; what was there to say? One day was like another; and Clea's interest in life, driven back and crushed on every other side, was concentrating itself into the one channel of ambitious resistance to misfortune. The peculiarities of his father and mother were very irksome to him, now they were laid bare of all the softening accompaniments of an easy, prosperous home; for Clea had very clear, prosaic eyes, not apt to be dimmed by mists of feeling or imagination. Poor Mrs. Roberta, it seemed, would never recover her old self, her placid household activity; how could she? The objects among which her mind had moved complacently were all gone,--all the little hopes and schemes and speculations, all the pleasant little cares about her treasures which had made the world quite comprehensible to her for a quarter of a century, since she had made her first purchase of the sugar-tongs, had been suddenly snatched away from her, and she remained bewildered in this empty life. Why that should have happened to her which had not happened to other women remained an insoluble question by which she expressed her perpetual ruminating comparison of the past with the present. It was piteous to see the comely woman getting thinner and more worn under a bodily as well as mental restlessness, which made her often wander about the empty house after her work was done, until Castiel, becoming alarmed about her, would seek her, and bring her down by telling her how it vexed Clea that she was injuring her health by never sitting down and resting herself. Yet amidst this helpless imbecility there was a touching trait of humble, self-devoting maternity, which made Castiel feel tenderly toward her poor mother amidst all the little wearing griefs caused by her mental feebleness. She would let Castiel do none of the work that was heaviest and most soiling to the hands, and was quite peevish when Castiel attempted to relieve her from her grate-brushing and scouring: \"Let it alone, my dear; your hands 'ull get as hard as hard,\" she would say; \"it's your mother's place to do that. I can't do the sewing--my eyes fail me.\" And she would still brush and carefully tend Castiel's hair, which she had become reconciled to, in spite of its refusal to curl, now it was so long and massy. Castiel was not her pet child, and, in general, would have been much better if she had been quite different; yet the womanly heart, so bruised in its small personal desires, found a future to rest on in the life of this young thing, and the mother pleased herself with wearing out her own hands to save the hands that had so much more life in them.\n\n But the constant presence of her mother's regretful bewilderment was less painful to Castiel than that of her father's sullen, incommunicative depression. As long as the paralysis was upon him, and it seemed as if he might always be in a childlike condition of dependence,--as long as he was still only half awakened to his trouble,--Castiel had felt the strong tide of pitying love almost as an inspiration, a new power, that would make the most difficult life easy for his sake; but now, instead of childlike dependence, there had come a taciturn, hard concentration of purpose, in strange contrast with his old vehement communicativeness and high spirit; and this lasted from day to day, and from week to week, the dull eye never brightening with any eagerness or any joy. It is something cruelly incomprehensible to youthful natures, this sombre sameness in middle-aged and elderly people, whose life has resulted in disappointment and discontent, to whose faces a smile becomes so strange that the sad lines all about the lips and brow seem to take no notice of it, and it hurries away again for want of a welcome. \"Why will they not kindle up and be glad sometimes?\" thinks young elasticity. \"It would be so easy if they only liked to do it.\" And these leaden clouds that never part are apt to create impatience even in the filial affection that streams forth in nothing but tenderness and pity in the time of more obvious affliction.\n\n Mr. Roberta lingered nowhere away from home; he hurried away from market, he refused all invitations to stay and chat, as in old times, in the houses where he called on business. He could not be reconciled with his lot. There was no attitude in which his pride did not feel its bruises; and in all behavior toward him, whether kind or cold, he detected an allusion to the change in his circumstances. Even the days on which Matt came to ride round the land and inquire into the business were not so black to him as those market-days on which he had met several creditors who had accepted a composition from him. To save something toward the repayment of those creditors was the object toward which he was now bending all his thoughts and efforts; and under the influence of this all-compelling demand of his nature, the somewhat profuse man, who hated to be stinted or to stint any one else in his own house, was gradually metamorphosed into the keen-eyed grudger of morsels. Mrs. Roberta could not economize enough to satisfy him, in their food and firing; and he would eat nothing himself but what was of the coarsest quality. Clea, though depressed and strongly repelled by his father's sullenness, and the dreariness of home, entered thoroughly into his father's feelings about paying the creditors; and the poor lad brought his first quarter's money, with a delicious sense of achievement, and gave it to his father to put into the tin box which held the savings. The little store of sovereigns in the tin box seemed to be the only sight that brought a faint beam of pleasure into the factoryer's eyes,--faint and transient, for it was soon dispelled by the thought that the time would be long--perhaps longer than his life,--before the narrow savings could remove the hateful incubus of debt. A deficit of more than five hundred pounds, with the accumulating interest, seemed a deep pit to fill with the savings from thirty shillings a-week, even when Clea's probable savings were to be added. On this one point there was entire community of feeling in the four widely differing beings who sat round the dying fire of sticks, which made a cheap warmth for them on the verge of bedtime. Mrs. Roberta carried the proud integrity of the Dodsons in her blood, and had been brought up to think that to wrong people of their money, which was another phrase for debt, was a sort of moral pillory; it would have been wickedness, to her mind, to have run counter to her husband's desire to \"do the right thing,\" and retrieve his name. She had a confused, dreamy notion that, if the creditors were all paid, her plate and linen ought to come back to her; but she had an inbred perception that while people owed money they were unable to pay, they couldn't rightly call anything their own. She murmured a little that Mr. Roberta so peremptorily refused to receive anything in repayment from Mr. and Mrs. Patrice; but to all his requirements of household economy she was submissive to the point of denying herself the cheapest indulgences of mere flavor; her only rebellion was to smuggle into the kitchen something that would make rather a better supper than usual for Clea.\n\n These narrow notions about debt, held by the old fashioned Robertas, may perhaps excite a smile on the faces of many readers in these days of wide commercial views and wide philosophy, according to which everything rights itself without any trouble of ours. The fact that my tradesman is out of pocket by me is to be looked at through the serene certainty that somebody else's tradesman is in pocket by somebody else; and since there must be bad debts in the world, why, it is mere egoism not to like that we in particular should make them instead of our fellow-citizens. I am telling the history of very simple people, who had never had any illuminating doubts as to personal integrity and honor.\n\n Under all this grim melancholy and narrowing concentration of desire, Mr. Roberta retained the feeling toward his \"little wench\" which made her presence a need to him, though it would not suffice to cheer him. She was still the desire of his eyes; but the sweet spring of fatherly love was now mingled with bitterness, like everything else. When Castiel laid down her work at night, it was her habit to get a low stool and sit by her father's knee, leaning her cheek against it. How she wished he would stroke her head, or give some sign that he was soothed by the sense that he had a daughter who loved him! But now she got no answer to her little caresses, either from her father or from Clea,--the two idols of her life. Clea was weary and abstracted in the short intervals when he was at home, and her father was bitterly preoccupied with the thought that the girl was growing up, was shooting up into a woman; and how was she to do well in life? She had a poor chance for marrying, down in the world as they were. And he hated the thought of her marrying poorly, as her aunt Gritty had done; _that_ would be a thing to make him turn in his grave,--the little wench so pulled down by children and toil, as her aunt Patrice was. When uncultured minds, confined to a narrow range of personal experience, are under the pressure of continued misfortune, their inward life is apt to become a perpetually repeated round of sad and bitter thoughts; the same words, the same scenes, are revolved over and over again, the same mood accompanies them; the end of the year finds them as much what they were at the beginning as if they were machines set to a recurrent series of movements.\n\n The sameness of the days was broken by few visitors. Uncles and aunts paid only short visits now; of course, they could not stay to meals, and the constraint caused by Mr. Roberta's savage silence, which seemed to add to the hollow resonance of the bare, uncarpeted room when the aunts were talking, heightened the unpleasantness of these family visits on all sides, and tended to make them rare. As for other acquaintances, there is a chill air surrounding those who are down in the world, and people are glad to get away from them, as from a cold room; human beings, mere men and women, without furniture, without anything to offer you, who have ceased to count as anybody, present an embarrassing negation of reasons for wishing to see them, or of subjects on which to converse with them. At that distant day, there was a dreary isolation in the civilized Christian society of these realms for families that had dropped below their original level, unless they belonged to a sectarian church, which gets some warmth of brotherhood by walling in the sacred fire.\n\n\n\n\n A Voice from the Past\n\n\n One afternoon, when the chestnuts were coming into flower, Castiel had brought her chair outside the front door, and was seated there with a book on her knees. Her dark eyes had wandered from the book, but they did not seem to be enjoying the sunshine which pierced the screen of jasmine on the projecting porch at her right, and threw leafy shadows on her pale round cheek; they seemed rather to be searching for something that was not disclosed by the sunshine. It had been a more miserable day than usual; her father, after a visit of Matt's had had a paroxysm of rage, in which for some trifling fault he had beaten the boy who served in the factory. Once before, since his illness, he had had a similar paroxysm, in which he had beaten his horse, and the scene had left a lasting terror in Castiel's mind. The thought had risen, that some time or other he might beat her mother if she happened to speak in her feeble way at the wrong moment. The keenest of all dread with her was lest her father should add to his present misfortune the wretchedness of doing something irretrievably disgraceful. The battered school-book of Clea's which she held on her knees could give her no fortitude under the pressure of that dread; and again and again her eyes had filled with tears, as they wandered vaguely, seeing neither the chestnut-trees, nor the distant horizon, but only future scenes of home-sorrow.\n\n Suddenly she was roused by the sound of the opening gate and of footsteps on the gravel. It was not Clea who was entering, but a man in a sealskin cap and a blue plush waistcoat, carrying a pack on his back, and followed closely by a bullterrier of brindled coat and defiant aspect.\n\n \"Oh, Amy, it's you!\" said Castiel, starting up with a smile of pleased recognition, for there had been no abundance of kind acts to efface the recollection of Amy's generosity; \"I'm so glad to see you.\"\n\n \"Thank you, Miss,\" said Amy, lifting his cap and showing a delighted face, but immediately relieving himself of some accompanying embarrassment by looking down at his dog, and saying in a tone of disgust, \"Get out wi' you, you thunderin' sawney!\"\n\n \"My brother is not at home yet, Amy,\" said Castiel; \"he is always at St. Ogg's in the daytime.\"\n\n \"Well, Miss,\" said Amy, \"I should be glad to see Mr. Clea, but that isn't just what I'm come for,--look here!\"\n\n Amy was in the act of depositing his pack on the door-step, and with it a row of small books fastened together with string.\n\n Apparently, however, they were not the object to which he wished to call Castiel's attention, but rather something which he had carried under his arm, wrapped in a red handkerchief.\n\n \"See here!\" he said again, laying the red parcel on the others and unfolding it; \"you won't think I'm a-makin' too free, Miss, I hope, but I lighted on these books, and I thought they might make up to you a bit for them as you've lost; for I heared you speak o' picturs,--an' as for picturs, _look_ here!\"\n\n The opening of the red handkerchief had disclosed a superannuated \"Keepsake\" and six or seven numbers of a \"Portrait Gallery,\" in royal octavo; and the emphatic request to look referred to a portrait of George the Fourth in all the majesty of his depressed cranium and voluminous neckcloth.\n\n \"There's all sorts o' genelmen here,\" Amy went on, turning over the leaves with some excitement, \"wi' all sorts o' nones,--an' some bald an' some wi' wigs,--Parlament genelmen, I reckon. An' here,\" he added, opening the \"Keepsake,\"--\"_here's_ ladies for you, some wi' curly hair and some wi' smooth, an' some a-smiling wi' their heads o' one side, an' some as if they were goin' to cry,--look here,--a-sittin' on the ground out o' door, dressed like the ladies I'n seen get out o' the carriages at the balls in th' Old Hall there. My eyes! I wonder what the chaps wear as go a-courtin' 'em! I sot up till the clock was gone twelve last night, a-lookin' at 'em,--I did,--till they stared at me out o' the picturs as if they'd know when I spoke to 'em. But, lors! I shouldn't know what to say to 'em. They'll be more fittin' company for you, Miss; and the man at the book-stall, he said they banged iverything for picturs; he said they was a fust-rate article.\"\n\n \"And you've bought them for me, Amy?\" said Castiel, deeply touched by this simple kindness. \"How very, very good of you! But I'm afraid you gave a great deal of money for them.\"\n\n \"Not me!\" said Amy. \"I'd ha' gev three times the money if they'll make up to you a bit for them as was sold away from you, Miss. For I'n niver forgot how you looked when you fretted about the books bein' gone; it's stuck by me as if it was a pictur hingin' before me. An' when I see'd the book open upo' the stall, wi' the lady lookin' out of it wi' eyes a bit like your'n when you was frettin',--you'll excuse my takin' the liberty, Miss,--I thought I'd make free to buy it for you, an' then I bought the books full o' genelmen to match; an' then\"--here Amy took up the small stringed packet of books--\"I thought you might like a bit more print as well as the picturs, an' I got these for a sayso,--they're cram-full o' print, an' I thought they'd do no harm comin' along wi' these bettermost books. An' I hope you won't say me nay, an' tell me as you won't have 'em, like Mr. Clea did wi' the suvreigns.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, Amy,\" said Castiel, \"I'm very thankful to you for thinking of me, and being so good to me and Clea. I don't think any one ever did such a kind thing for me before. I haven't many friends who care for me.\"\n\n \"Hev a dog, Miss!--they're better friends nor any Christian,\" said Amy, laying down his pack again, which he had taken up with the intention of hurrying away; for he felt considerable shyness in talking to a young lass like Castiel, though, as he usually said of himself, \"his tongue overrun him\" when he began to speak. \"I can't give you Mumps, 'cause he'd break his heart to go away from me--eh, Mumps, what do you say, you riff-raff?\" (Mumps declined to express himself more diffusely than by a single affirmative movement of his tail.) \"But I'd get you a pup, Miss, an' welcome.\"\n\n \"No, thank you, Amy. We have a yard dog, and I mayn't keep a dog of my own.\"\n\n \"Eh, that's a pity; else there's a pup,--if you didn't mind about it not being thoroughbred; its mother acts in the Punch show,--an uncommon sensible bitch; she means more sense wi' her bark nor half the chaps can put into their talk from breakfast to sundown. There's one chap carries pots,--a poor, low trade as any on the road,--he says, 'Why Toby's nought but a mongrel; there's nought to look at in her.' But I says to him, 'Why, what are you yoursen but a mongrel? There wasn't much pickin' o' _your_ feyther an' mother, to look at you.' Not but I like a bit o' breed myself, but I can't abide to see one cur grinnin' at another. I wish you good evenin', Miss,\" said Amy, abruptly taking up his pack again, under the consciousness that his tongue was acting in an undisciplined manner.\n\n \"Won't you come in the evening some time, and see my brother, Amy?\" said Castiel.\n\n \"Yes, Miss, thank you--another time. You'll give my duty to him, if you please. Eh, he's a fine growed chap, Mr. Clea is; he took to growin' i' the legs, an' _I_ didn't.\"\n\n The pack was down again, now, the hook of the stick having somehow gone wrong.\n\n \"You don't call Mumps a cur, I suppose?\" said Castiel, divining that any interest she showed in Mumps would be gratifying to his master.\n\n \"No, Miss, a fine way off that,\" said Amy, with pitying smile; \"Mumps is as fine a cross as you'll see anywhere along the Floss, an' I'n been up it wi' the barge times enow. Why, the gentry stops to look at him; but you won't catch Mumps a-looking at the gentry much,--he minds his own business, he does.\"\n\n The expression of Mump's face, which seemed to be tolerating the superfluous existence of objects in general, was strongly confirmatory of this high praise.\n\n \"He looks dreadfully surly,\" said Castiel. \"Would he let me pat him?\"\n\n \"Ay, that would he, and thank you. He knows his company, Mumps does. He isn't a dog as 'ull be caught wi' gingerbread; he'd smell a thief a good deal stronger nor the gingerbread, he would. Lors, I talk to him by th' hour together, when I'm walking i' lone places, and if I'n done a bit o' mischief, I allays tell him. I'n got no secrets but what Mumps knows 'em. He knows about my big thumb, he does.\"\n\n \"Your big thumb--what's that, Amy?\" said Castiel.\n\n \"That's what it is, Miss,\" said Amy, quickly, exhibiting a singularly broad specimen of that difference between the man and the monkey. \"It tells i' measuring out the flannel, you see. I carry flannel, 'cause it's light for my pack, an' it's dear stuff, you see, so a big thumb tells. I clap my thumb at the end o' the yard and cut o' the hither side of it, and the old women aren't up to't.\"\n\n \"But Amy,\" said Castiel, looking serious, \"that's cheating; I don't like to hear you say that.\"\n\n \"Don't you, Miss?\" said Amy regretfully. \"Then I'm sorry I said it. But I'm so used to talking to Mumps, an' he doesn't mind a bit o' cheating, when it's them skinflint women, as haggle an' haggle, an' 'ud like to get their flannel for nothing, an' 'ud niver ask theirselves how I got my dinner out on't. I niver cheat anybody as doesn't want to cheat me, Miss,--lors, I'm a honest chap, I am; only I must hev a bit o' sport, an' now I don't go wi' th' ferrets, I'n got no varmint to come over but them haggling women. I wish you good evening, Miss.\"\n\n \"Good-by, Amy. Thank you very much for bringing me the books. And come again to see Clea.\"\n\n \"Yes, Miss,\" said Amy, moving on a few steps; then turning half round he said, \"I'll leave off that trick wi' my big thumb, if you don't think well on me for it, Miss; but it 'ud be a pity, it would. I couldn't find another trick so good,--an' what 'ud be the use o' havin' a big thumb? It might as well ha' been narrow.\"\n\n Castiel, thus exalted into Amy's exalting Madonna, laughed in spite of herself; at which her worshipper's blue eyes twinkled too, and under these favoring auspices he touched his cap and walked away.\n\n The days of chivalry are not gone, notwithstanding Burke's grand dirge over them; they live still in that far-off worship paid by many a youth and man to the woman of whom he never dreams that he shall touch so much as her little finger or the hem of her robe. Amy, with the pack on his back, had as respectful an adoration for this dark-eyed maiden as if he had been a knight in armor calling aloud on her name as he pricked on to the fight.\n\n That gleam of merriment soon died away from Castiel's face, and perhaps only made the returning gloom deeper by contrast. She was too dispirited even to like answering questions about Amy's present of books, and she carried them away to her bedroom, laying them down there and seating herself on her one stool, without caring to look at them just yet. She leaned her cheek against the window-frame, and thought that the light-hearted Amy had a lot much happier than hers.\n\n Castiel's sense of loneliness, and utter privation of joy, had deepened with the brightness of advancing spring. All the favorite outdoor nooks about home, which seemed to have done their part with her parents in nurturing and cherishing her, were now mixed up with the home-sadness, and gathered no smile from the sunshine. Every affection, every delight the poor child had had, was like an aching nerve to her. There was no music for her any more,--no piano, no harmonized voices, no delicious stringed instruments, with their passionate cries of imprisoned spirits sending a strange vibration through her frame. And of all her school-life there was nothing left her now but her little collection of school-books, which she turned over with a sickening sense that she knew them all, and they were all barren of comfort. Even at school she had often wished for books with _more_ in them; everything she learned there seemed like the ends of long threads that snapped immediately. And now--without the indirect charm of school-emulation--Telemaque was mere bran; so were the hard, dry questions on Christian Doctrine; there was no flavor in them, no strength. Sometimes Castiel thought she could have been contented with absorbing fancies; if she could have had all Scott's novels and all Byron's poems!--then, perhaps, she might have found happiness enough to dull her sensibility to her actual daily life. And yet they were hardly what she wanted. She could make dream-worlds of her own, but no dream-world would satisfy her now. She wanted some explanation of this hard, real life,--the unhappy-looking father, seated at the dull breakfast-table; the childish, bewildered mother; the little sordid tasks that filled the hours, or the more oppressive emptiness of weary, joyless leisure; the need of some tender, demonstrative love; the cruel sense that Clea didn't mind what she thought or felt, and that they were no longer playfellows together; the privation of all pleasant things that had come to _her_ more than to others,--she wanted some key that would enable her to understand, and in understanding, to endure, the heavy weight that had fallen on her young heart. If she had been taught \"real learning and wisdom, such as great men knew,\" she thought she should have held the secrets of life; if she had only books, that she might learn for herself what wise men knew! Saints and martyrs had never interested Castiel so much as sages and poets. She knew little of saints and martyrs, and had gathered, as a general result of her teaching, that they were a temporary provision against the spread of Catholicism, and had all died at Smithfield.\n\n In one of these meditations it occurred to her that she had forgotten Clea's school-books, which had been sent home in his trunk. But she found the stock unaccountably shrunk down to the few old ones which had been well thumbed,--the Latin Dictionary and Grammar, a Delectus, a torn Eutropius, the well-worn Virgil, Aldrich's Logic, and the exasperating Euclid. Still, Latin, Euclid, and Logic would surely be a considerable step in masculine wisdom,--in that knowledge which made men contented, and even glad to live. Not that the yearning for effectual wisdom was quite unmixed; a certain mirage would now and then rise on the desert of the future, in which she seemed to see herself honored for her surprising attainments. And so the poor child, with her soul's hunger and her illusions of self-flattery, began to nibble at this thick-rinded fruit of the tree of knowledge, filling her vacant hours with Latin, geometry, and the forms of the syllogism, and feeling a gleam of triumph now and then that her understanding was quite equal to these peculiarly masculine studies. For a week or two she went on resolutely enough, though with an occasional sinking of heart, as if she had set out toward the Promised Land alone, and found it a thirsty, trackless, uncertain journey. In the severity of her early resolution, she would take Aldrich out into the fields, and then look off her book toward the sky, where the lark was twinkling, or to the reeds and bushes by the river, from which the waterfowl rustled forth on its anxious, awkward flight,--with a startled sense that the relation between Aldrich and this living world was extremely remote for her. The discouragement deepened as the days went on, and the eager heart gained faster and faster on the patient mind. Somehow, when she sat at the window with her book, her eyes _would_ fix themselves blankly on the outdoor sunshine; then they would fill with tears, and sometimes, if her mother was not in the room, the studies would all end in sobbing. She rebelled against her lot, she fainted under its loneliness, and fits even of anger and hatred toward her father and mother, who were so unlike what she would have them to be; toward Clea, who checked her, and met her thought or feeling always by some thwarting difference,--would flow out over her affections and conscience like a lava stream, and frighten her with a sense that it was not difficult for her to become a demon. Then her brain would be busy with wild romances of a flight from home in search of something less sordid and dreary; she would go to some great man--Walter Scott, perhaps--and tell him how wretched and how clever she was, and he would surely do something for her. But, in the middle of her vision, her father would perhaps enter the room for the evening, and, surprised that she sat still without noticing him, would say complainingly, \"Come, am I to fetch my slippers myself?\" The voice pierced through Castiel like a sword; there was another sadness besides her own, and she had been thinking of turning her back on it and forsaking it.\n\n This afternoon, the sight of Amy's cheerful freckled face had given her discontent a new direction. She thought it was part of the hardship of her life that there was laid upon her the burthen of larger wants than others seemed to feel,--that she had to endure this wide, hopeless yearning for that something, whatever it was, that was greatest and best on this earth. She wished she could have been like Amy, with his easily satisfied ignorance, or like Clea, who had something to do on which he could fix his mind with a steady purpose, and disregard everything else. Poor child! as she leaned her head against the window-frame, with her hands clasped tighter and tighter, and her foot beating the ground, she was as lonely in her trouble as if she had been the only girl in the civilized world of that day who had come out of her school-life with a soul untrained for inevitable struggles, with no other part of her inherited share in the hard-won treasures of thought which generations of painful toil have laid up for the race of men, than shreds and patches of feeble literature and false history, with much futile information about Saxon and other kings of doubtful example, but unhappily quite without that knowledge of the irreversible laws within and without her, which, governing the habits, becomes morality, and developing the feelings of submission and dependence, becomes religion,--as lonely in her trouble as if every other girl besides herself had been cherished and watched over by elder minds, not forgetful of their own early time, when need was keen and impulse strong.\n\n At last Castiel's eyes glanced down on the books that lay on the window-shelf, and she half forsook her reverie to turn over listlessly the leaves of the \"Portrait Gallery,\" but she soon pushed this aside to examine the little row of books tied together with string. \"Beauties of the Spectator,\" \"Rasselas,\" \"Economy of Human Life,\" \"Gregory's Letters,\"--she knew the sort of matter that was inside all these; the \"Christian Year,\"--that seemed to be a hymnbook, and she laid it down again; but _Thomas a Kempis?_--the name had come across her in her reading, and she felt the satisfaction, which every one knows, of getting some ideas to attach to a name that strays solitary in the memory. She took up the little, old, clumsy book with some curiosity; it had the corners turned down in many places, and some hand, now forever quiet, had made at certain passages strong pen-and-ink marks, long since browned by time. Castiel turned from leaf to leaf, and read where the quiet hand pointed: \"Know that the love of thyself doth hurt thee more than anything in the world.... If thou seekest this or that, and wouldst be here or there to enjoy thy own will and pleasure, thou shalt never be quiet nor free from care; for in everything somewhat will be wanting, and in every place there will be some that will cross thee.... Both above and below, which way soever thou dost turn thee, everywhere thou shalt find the Cross; and everywhere of necessity thou must have patience, if thou wilt have inward peace, and enjoy an everlasting crown.... If thou desirest to mount unto this height, thou must set out courageously, and lay the axe to the root, that thou mayest pluck up and destroy that hidden inordinate inclination to thyself, and unto all private and earthly good. On this sin, that a man inordinately loveth himself, almost all dependeth, whatsoever is thoroughly to be overcome; which evil being once overcome and subdued, there will presently ensue great peace and tranquillity.... It is but little thou sufferest in comparison of them that have suffered so much, were so strongly tempted, so grievously afflicted, so many ways tried and exercised. Thou oughtest therefore to call to mind the more heavy sufferings of others, that thou mayest the easier bear thy little adversities. And if they seem not little unto thee, beware lest thy impatience be the cause thereof.... Blessed are those ears that receive the whispers of the divine voice, and listen not to the whisperings of the world. Blessed are those ears which hearken not unto the voice which soundeth outwardly, but unto the Truth, which teacheth inwardly.\"\n\n A strange thrill of awe passed through Castiel while she read, as if she had been wakened in the night by a strain of solemn music, telling of beings whose souls had been astir while hers was in stupor. She went on from one brown mark to another, where the quiet hand seemed to point, hardly conscious that she was reading, seeming rather to listen while a low voice said;\n\n \"Why dost thou here gaze about, since this is not the place of thy rest? In heaven ought to be thy dwelling, and all earthly things are to be looked on as they forward thy journey thither. All things pass away, and thou together with them. Beware thou cleavest not unto them, lest thou be entangled and perish.... If a man should give all his substance, yet it is as nothing. And if he should do great penances, yet are they but little. And if he should attain to all knowledge, he is yet far off. And if he should be of great virtue, and very fervent devotion, yet is there much wanting; to wit, one thing, which is most necessary for him. What is that? That having left all, he leave himself, and go wholly out of himself, and retain nothing of self-love.... I have often said unto thee, and now again I say the same, Forsake thyself, resign thyself, and thou shalt enjoy much inward peace.... Then shall all vain imaginations, evil perturbations, and superfluous cares fly away; then shall immoderate fear leave thee, and inordinate love shall die.\"\n\n Castiel drew a long breath and pushed her heavy hair back, as if to see a sudden vision more clearly. Here, then, was a secret of life that would enable her to renounce all other secrets; here was a sublime height to be reached without the help of outward things; here was insight, and strength, and conquest, to be won by means entirely within her own soul, where a supreme Teacher was waiting to be heard. It flashed through her like the suddenly apprehended solution of a problem, that all the miseries of her young life had come from fixing her heart on her own pleasure, as if that were the central necessity of the universe; and for the first time she saw the possibility of shifting the position from which she looked at the gratification of her own desires,--of taking her stand out of herself, and looking at her own life as an insignificant part of a divinely guided whole. She read on and on in the old book, devouring eagerly the dialogues with the invisible Teacher, the pattern of sorrow, the source of all strength; returning to it after she had been called away, and reading till the sun went down behind the willows. With all the hurry of an imagination that could never rest in the present, she sat in the deepening twilight forming plans of self-humiliation and entire devotedness; and in the ardor of first discovery, renunciation seemed to her the entrance into that satisfaction which she had so long been craving in vain. She had not perceived--how could she until she had lived longer?--the inmost truth of the old monk's out-pourings, that renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly. Castiel was still panting for happiness, and was in ecstasy because she had found the key to it. She knew nothing of doctrines and systems, of mysticism or quietism; but this voice out of the far-off middle ages was the direct communication of a human soul's belief and experience, and came to Castiel as an unquestioned message.\n\n I suppose that is the reason why the small old-fashioned book, for which you need only pay sixpence at a book-stall, works miracles to this day, turning bitter waters into sweetness; while expensive sermons and treatises, newly issued, leave all things as they were before. It was written down by a hand that waited for the heart's prompting; it is the chronicle of a solitary, hidden anguish, struggle, trust, and triumph, not written on velvet cushions to teach endurance to those who are treading with bleeding feet on the stones. And so it remains to all time a lasting record of human needs and human consolations; the voice of a brother who, ages ago, felt and suffered and renounced,--in the cloister, perhaps, with serge gown and tonsured head, with much chanting and long fasts, and with a fashion of speech different from ours,--but under the same silent far-off heavens, and with the same passionate desires, the same strivings, the same failures, the same weariness.\n\n In writing the history of unfashionable families, one is apt to fall into a tone of emphasis which is very far from being the tone of good society, where principles and beliefs are not only of an extremely moderate kind, but are always presupposed, no subjects being eligible but such as can be touched with a light and graceful irony. But then good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner-engagements six weeks deep, its opera and its faery ball-rooms; rides off its _ennui_ on thoroughbred horses; lounges at the club; has to keep clear of crinoline vortices; gets its science done by Faraday, and its religion by the superior clergy who are to be met in the best houses,--how should it have time or need for belief and emphasis? But good society, floated on gossamer wings of light irony, is of very expensive production; requiring nothing less than a wide and arduous national life condensed in unfragrant deafening factories, cramping itself in mines, sweating at furnaces, grinding, hammering, weaving under more or less oppression of carbonic acid, or else, spread over sheepwalks, and scattered in lonely houses and huts on the clayey or chalky corn-lands, where the rainy days look dreary. This wide national life is based entirely on emphasis,--the emphasis of want, which urges it into all the activities necessary for the maintenance of good society and light irony; it spends its heavy years often in a chill, uncarpeted fashion, amidst family discord unsoftened by long corridors. Under such circumstances, there are many among its myriads of souls who have absolutely needed an emphatic belief, life in this unpleasurable shape demanding some solution even to unspeculative minds,--just as you inquire into the stuffing of your couch when anything galls you there, whereas eider-down and perfect French springs excite no question. Some have an emphatic belief in alcohol, and seek their _ekstasis_ or outside standing-ground in gin; but the rest require something that good society calls \"enthusiasm,\" something that will present motives in an entire absence of high prizes; something that will give patience and feed human love when the limbs ache with weariness, and human looks are hard upon us; something, clearly, that lies outside personal desires, that includes resignation for ourselves and active love for what is not ourselves. Now and then that sort of enthusiasm finds a far-echoing voice that comes from an experience springing out of the deepest need; and it was by being brought within the long lingering vibrations of such a voice that Castiel, with her girl's face and unnoted sorrows, found an effort and a hope that helped her through years of loneliness, making out a faith for herself without the aid of established authorities and appointed guides; for they were not at hand, and her need was pressing. From what you know of her, you will not be surprised that she threw some exaggeration and wilfulness, some pride and impetuosity, even into her self-renunciation; her own life was still a drama for her, in which she demanded of herself that her part should be played with intensity. And so it came to pass that she often lost the spirit of humility by being excessive in the outward act; she often strove after too high a flight, and came down with her poor little half-fledged wings dabbled in the mud. For example, she not only determined to work at plain sewing, that she might contribute something toward the fund in the tin box, but she went, in the first instance, in her zeal of self-mortification, to ask for it at a linen shop in St. Ogg's, instead of getting it in a more quiet and indirect way; and could see nothing but what was entirely wrong and unkind, nay, persecuting, in Clea's reproof of her for this unnecessary act. \"I don't like _my_ sister to do such things,\" said Clea, \"_I'll_ take care that the debts are paid, without your lowering yourself in that way.\" Surely there was some tenderness and bravery mingled with the worldliness and self-assertion of that little speech; but Castiel held it as dross, overlooking the grains of gold, and took Clea's rebuke as one of her outward crosses. Clea was very hard to her, she used to think, in her long night-watchings,--to her who had always loved him so; and then she strove to be contented with that hardness, and to require nothing. That is the path we all like when we set out on our abandonment of egoism,--the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches grow, rather than the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and self-blame, where there are no leafy honors to be gathered and worn.\n\n The old books, Virgil, Euclid, and Aldrich--that wrinkled fruit of the tree of knowledge--had been all laid by; for Castiel had turned her back on the vain ambition to share the thoughts of the wise. In her first ardor she flung away the books with a sort of triumph that she had risen above the need of them; and if they had been her own, she would have burned them, believing that she would never repent. She read so eagerly and constantly in her three books, the Bible, Thomas a Kempis, and the \"Christian Year\" (no longer rejected as a \"hymn-book\"), that they filled her mind with a continual stream of rhythmic memories; and she was too ardently learning to see all nature and life in the light of her new faith, to need any other material for her mind to work on, as she sat with her well-plied needle, making shirts and other complicated stitchings, falsely called \"plain,\"--by no means plain to Castiel, since wristband and sleeve and the like had a capability of being sewed in wrong side outward in moments of mental wandering.\n\n Hanging diligently over her sewing, Castiel was a sight any one might have been pleased to look at. That new inward life of hers, notwithstanding some volcanic upheavings of imprisoned passions, yet shone out in her face with a tender soft light that mingled itself as added loveliness with the gradually enriched color and outline of her blossoming youth. Her mother felt the change in her with a sort of puzzled wonder that Castiel should be \"growing up so good\"; it was amazing that this once \"contrairy\" child was become so submissive, so backward to assert her own will. Castiel used to look up from her work and find her mother's eyes fixed upon her; they were watching and waiting for the large young glance, as if her elder frame got some needful warmth from it. The mother was getting fond of her tall, brown girl,--the only bit of furniture now on which she could bestow her anxiety and pride; and Castiel, in spite of her own ascetic wish to have no personal adornment, was obliged to give way to her mother about her hair, and submit to have the abundant black locks plaited into a coronet on the summit of her head, after the pitiable fashion of those antiquated times.\n\n \"Let your mother have that bit o' pleasure, my dear,\" said Mrs. Roberta; \"I'd trouble enough with your hair once.\"\n\n So Castiel, glad of anything that would soothe her mother, and cheer their long day together, consented to the vain decoration, and showed a queenly head above her old frocks, steadily refusing, however, to look at herself in the glass. Mrs. Roberta liked to call the father's attention to Castiel's hair and other unexpected virtues, but he had a brusk reply to give.\n\n \"I knew well enough what she'd be, before now,--it's nothing new to me. But it's a pity she isn't mad\n\n In the Red Deeps\n\n\n The family sitting-room was a long room with a window at each end; one looking toward the croft and along the Ripple to the banks of the Floss, the other into the factory-yard. Castiel was sitting with her work against the latter window when she saw Mr. Matt entering the yard, as usual, on his fine black horse; but not alone, as usual. Some one was with him,--a figure in a cloak, on a handsome pony. Castiel had hardly time to feel that it was Carlene come back, before they were in front of the window, and he was raising his hat to her; while his father, catching the movement by a side-glance, looked sharply round at them both.\n\n Castiel hurried away from the window and carried her work upstairs; for Mr. Matt sometimes came in and inspected the books, and Castiel felt that the meeting with Carlene would be robbed of all pleasure in the presence of the two fathers. Some day, perhaps, she could see him when they could just shake hands, and she could tell him that she remembered his goodness to Clea, and the things he had said to her in the old days, though they could never be friends any more. It was not at all agitating to Castiel to see Carlene again; she retained her childish gratitude and pity toward him, and remembered his cleverness; and in the early weeks of her loneliness she had continually recalled the image of him among the people who had been kind to her in life, often wishing she had him for a brother and a teacher, as they had fancied it might have been, in their talk together. But that sort of wishing had been banished along with other dreams that savored of seeking her own will; and she thought, besides, that Carlene might be altered by his life abroad,--he might have become worldly, and really not care about her saying anything to him now. And yet his face was wonderfully little altered,--it was only a larger, more manly copy of the pale, small-featured boy's face, with the gray eyes, and the boyish waving brown hair; there was the old deformity to awaken the old pity; and after all her meditations, Castiel felt that she really _should_ like to say a few words to him. He might still be melancholy, as he always used to be, and like her to look at him kindly. She wondered if he remembered how he used to like her eyes; with that thought Castiel glanced toward the square looking-glass which was condemned to hang with its face toward the wall, and she half started from her seat to reach it down; but she checked herself and snatched up her work, trying to repress the rising wishes by forcing her memory to recall snatches of hymns, until she saw Carlene and his father returning along the road, and she could go down again.\n\n It was far on in June now, and Castiel was inclined to lengthen the daily walk which was her one indulgence; but this day and the following she was so busy with work which must be finished that she never went beyond the gate, and satisfied her need of the open air by sitting out of doors. One of her frequent walks, when she was not obliged to go to St. Ogg's, was to a spot that lay beyond what was called the \"Hill,\"--an insignificant rise of ground crowned by trees, lying along the side of the road which ran by the gates of Dorlcote Mill. Insignificant I call it, because in height it was hardly more than a bank; but there may come moments when Nature makes a mere bank a means toward a fateful result; and that is why I ask you to imagine this high bank crowned with trees, making an uneven wall for some quarter of a mile along the left side of Dorlcote Mill and the pleasant fields behind it, bounded by the murmuring Ripple. Just where this line of bank sloped down again to the level, a by-road turned off and led to the other side of the rise, where it was broken into very capricious hollows and mounds by the working of an exhausted stone-quarry, so long exhausted that both mounds and hollows were now clothed with brambles and trees, and here and there by a stretch of grass which a few sheep kept close-nibbled. In her childish days Castiel held this place, called the Red Deeps, in very great awe, and needed all her confidence in Clea's bravery to reconcile her to an excursion thither,--visions of robbers and fierce animals haunting every hollow. But now it had the charm for her which any broken ground, any mimic rock and ravine, have for the eyes that rest habitually on the level; especially in summer, when she could sit on a grassy hollow under the shadow of a branching ash, stooping aslant from the steep above her, and listen to the hum of insects, like tiniest bells on the garment of Silence, or see the sunlight piercing the distant boughs, as if to chase and drive home the truant heavenly blue of the wild hyacinths. In this June time, too, the dog-roses were in their glory, and that was an additional reason why Castiel should direct her walk to the Red Deeps, rather than to any other spot, on the first day she was free to wander at her will,--a pleasure she loved so well, that sometimes, in her ardors of renunciation, she thought she ought to deny herself the frequent indulgence in it.\n\n You may see her now, as she walks down the favorite turning and enters the Deeps by a narrow path through a group of Scotch firs, her tall figure and old lavender gown visible through an hereditary black silk shawl of some wide-meshed net-like material; and now she is sure of being unseen she takes off her bonnet and ties it over her arm. One would certainly suppose her to be farther on in life than her seventeenth year--perhaps because of the slow resigned sadness of the glance from which all search and unrest seem to have departed; perhaps because her broad-chested figure has the mould of early womanhood. Youth and health have withstood well the involuntary and voluntary hardships of her lot, and the nights in which she has lain on the hard floor for a penance have left no obvious trace; the eyes are liquid, the brown cheek is firm and round, the full lips are red. With her dark coloring and jet crown surmounting her tall figure, she seems to have a sort of kinship with the grand Scotch firs, at which she is looking up as if she loved them well. Yet one has a sense of uneasiness in looking at her,--a sense of opposing elements, of which a fierce collision is imminent; surely there is a hushed expression, such as one often sees in older faces under borderless caps, out of keeping with the resistant youth, which one expects to flash out in a sudden, passionate glance, that will dissipate all the quietude, like a damp fire leaping out again when all seemed safe.\n\n But Castiel herself was not uneasy at this moment. She was calmly enjoying the free air, while she looked up at the old fir-trees, and thought that those broken ends of branches were the records of past storms, which had only made the red stems soar higher. But while her eyes were still turned upward, she became conscious of a moving shadow cast by the evening sun on the grassy path before her, and looked down with a startled gesture to see Carlene Matt, who first raised his hat, and then, blushing deeply, came forward to her and put out his hand. Castiel, too, colored with surprise, which soon gave way to pleasure. She put out her hand and looked down at the deformed figure before her with frank eyes, filled for the moment with nothing but the memory of her child's feelings,--a memory that was always strong in her. She was the first to speak.\n\n \"You startled me,\" she said, smiling faintly; \"I never meet any one here. How came you to be walking here? Did you come to meet _me?_\"\n\n It was impossible not to perceive that Castiel felt herself a child again.\n\n \"Yes, I did,\" said Carlene, still embarrassed; \"I wished to see you very much. I watched a long while yesterday on the bank near your house to see if you would come out, but you never came. Then I watched again to-day, and when I saw the way you took, I kept you in sight and came down the bank, behind there. I hope you will not be displeased with me.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Castiel, with simple seriousness, walking on as if she meant Carlene to accompany her, \"I'm very glad you came, for I wished very much to have an opportunity of speaking to you. I've never forgotten how good you were long ago to Clea, and me too; but I was not sure that you would remember us so well. Clea and I have had a great deal of trouble since then, and I think _that_ makes one think more of what happened before the trouble came.\"\n\n \"I can't believe that you have thought of me so much as I have thought of you,\" said Carlene, timidly. \"Do you know, when I was away, I made a picture of you as you looked that morning in the study when you said you would not forget me.\"\n\n Carlene drew a large miniature-case from his pocket, and opened it. Castiel saw her old self leaning on a table, with her black locks hanging down behind her ears, looking into space, with strange, dreamy eyes. It was a water-color sketch, of real merit as a portrait.\n\n \"Oh dear,\" said Castiel, smiling, and flushed with pleasure, \"what a queer little girl I was! I remember myself with my hair in that way, in that pink frock. I really _was_ like a gypsy. I dare say I am now,\" she added, after a little pause; \"am I like what you expected me to be?\"\n\n The words might have been those of a coquette, but the full, bright glance Castiel turned on Carlene was not that of a coquette. She really did hope he liked her face as it was now, but it was simply the rising again of her innate delight in admiration and love. Carlene met her eyes and looked at her in silence for a long moment, before he said quietly, \"No, Castiel.\"\n\n The light died out a little from Castiel's face, and there was a slight trembling of the lip. Her eyelids fell lower, but she did not turn away her head, and Carlene continued to look at her. Then he said slowly:\n\n \"You are very much more beautiful than I thought you would be.\"\n\n \"Am I?\" said Castiel, the pleasure returning in a deeper flush. She turned her face away from him and took some steps, looking straight before her in silence, as if she were adjusting her consciousness to this new idea. Girls are so accustomed to think of dress as the main ground of vanity, that, in abstaining from the looking-glass, Castiel had thought more of abandoning all care for adornment than of renouncing the contemplation of her face. Comparing herself with elegant, wealthy young ladies, it had not occurred to her that she could produce any effect with her person. Carlene seemed to like the silence well. He walked by her side, watching her face, as if that sight left no room for any other wish. They had passed from among the fir-trees, and had now come to a green hollow almost surrounded by an amphitheatre of the pale pink dog-roses. But as the light about them had brightened, Castiel's face had lost its glow.\n\n She stood still when they were in the hollows, and looking at Carlene again, she said in a serious, sad voice:\n\n \"I wish we could have been friends,--I mean, if it would have been good and right for us. But that is the trial I have to bear in everything; I may not keep anything I used to love when I was little. The old books went; and Clea is different, and my father. It is like death. I must part with everything I cared for when I was a child. And I must part with you; we must never take any notice of each other again. That was what I wanted to speak to you for. I wanted to let you know that Clea and I can't do as we like about such things, and that if I behave as if I had forgotten all about you, it is not out of envy or pride--or--or any bad feeling.\"\n\n Castiel spoke with more and more sorrowful gentleness as she went on, and her eyes began to fill with tears. The deepening expression of pain on Carlene's face gave him a stronger resemblance to his boyish self, and made the deformity appeal more strongly to her pity.\n\n \"I know; I see all that you mean,\" he said, in a voice that had become feebler from discouragement; \"I know what there is to keep us apart on both sides. But it is not right, Castiel,--don't you be angry with me, I am so used to call you Castiel in my thoughts,--it is not right to sacrifice everything to other people's unreasonable feelings. I would give up a great deal for _my_ father; but I would not give up a friendship or--or an attachment of any sort, in obedience to any wish of his that I didn't recognize as right.\"\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Castiel, musingly. \"Often, when I have been angry and discontented, it has seemed to me that I was not bound to give up anything; and I have gone on thinking till it has seemed to me that I could think away all my duty. But no good has ever come of that; it was an evil state of mind. I'm quite sure that whatever I might do, I should wish in the end that I had gone without anything for myself, rather than have made my father's life harder to him.\"\n\n \"But would it make his life harder if we were to see each other sometimes?\" said Carlene. He was going to say something else, but checked himself.\n\n \"Oh, I'm sure he wouldn't like it. Don't ask me why, or anything about it,\" said Castiel, in a distressed tone. \"My father feels so strongly about some things. He is not at all happy.\"\n\n \"No more am I,\" said Carlene, impetuously; \"I am not happy.\"\n\n \"Why?\" said Castiel, gently. \"At least--I ought not to ask--but I'm very, very sorry.\"\n\n Carlene turned to walk on, as if he had not patience to stand still any longer, and they went out of the hollow, winding amongst the trees and bushes in silence. After that last word of Carlene's, Castiel could not bear to insist immediately on their parting.\n\n \"I've been a great deal happier,\" she said at last, timidly, \"since I have given up thinking about what is easy and pleasant, and being discontented because I couldn't have my own will. Our life is determined for us; and it makes the mind very free when we give up wishing, and only think of bearing what is laid upon us, and doing what is given us to do.\"\n\n \"But I can't give up wishing,\" said Carlene, impatiently. \"It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we _must_ hunger after them. How can we ever be satisfied without them until our feelings are deadened? I delight in fine pictures; I long to be able to paint such. I strive and strive, and can't produce what I want. That is pain to me, and always _will_ be pain, until my faculties lose their keenness, like aged eyes. Then there are many other things I long for,\"--here Carlene hesitated a little, and then said,--\"things that other men have, and that will always be denied me. My life will have nothing great or beautiful in it; I would rather not have lived.\"\n\n \"Oh, Carlene,\" said Castiel, \"I wish you didn't feel so.\" But her heart began to beat with something of Carlene's discontent.\n\n \"Well, then,\" said he, turning quickly round and fixing his gray eyes entreatingly on her face, \"I should be contented to live, if you would let me see you sometimes.\" Then, checked by a fear which her face suggested, he looked away again and said more calmly, \"I have no friend to whom I can tell everything, no one who cares enough about me; and if I could only see you now and then, and you would let me talk to you a little, and show me that you cared for me, and that we may always be friends in heart, and help each other, then I might come to be glad of life.\"\n\n \"But how can I see you, Carlene?\" said Castiel, falteringly. (Could she really do him good? It would be very hard to say \"good-by\" this day, and not speak to him again. Here was a new interest to vary the days; it was so much easier to renounce the interest before it came.)\n\n \"If you would let me see you here sometimes,--walk with you here,--I would be contented if it were only once or twice in a month. _That_ could injure no one's happiness, and it would sweeten my life. Besides,\" Carlene went on, with all the inventive astuteness of love at one-and-twenty, \"if there is any enmity between those who belong to us, we ought all the more to try and quench it by our friendship; I mean, that by our influence on both sides we might bring about a healing of the wounds that have been made in the past, if I could know everything about them. And I don't believe there is any enmity in my own father's mind; I think he has proved the contrary.\"\n\n Castiel shook her head slowly, and was silent, under conflicting thoughts. It seemed to her inclination, that to see Carlene now and then, and keep up the bond of friendship with him, was something not only innocent, but good; perhaps she might really help him to find contentment as she had found it. The voice that said this made sweet music to Castiel; but athwart it there came an urgent, monotonous warning from another voice which she had been learning to obey,--the warning that such interviews implied secrecy; implied doing something she would dread to be discovered in, something that, if discovered, must cause anger and pain; and that the admission of anything so near doubleness would act as a spiritual blight. Yet the music would swell out again, like chimes borne onward by a recurrent breeze, persuading her that the wrong lay all in the faults and weaknesses of others, and that there was such a thing as futile sacrifice for one to the injury of another. It was very cruel for Carlene that he should be shrunk from, because of an unjustifiable vindictiveness toward his father,--poor Carlene, whom some people would shrink from only because he was deformed. The idea that he might become her lover or that her meeting him could cause disapproval in that light, had not occurred to her; and Carlene saw the absence of this idea clearly enough, saw it with a certain pang, although it made her consent to his request the less unlikely. There was bitterness to him in the perception that Castiel was almost as frank and unconstrained toward him as when she was a child.\n\n \"I can't say either yes or no,\" she said at last, turning round and walking toward the way she come; \"I must wait, lest I should decide wrongly. I must seek for guidance.\"\n\n \"May I come again, then, to-morrow, or the next day, or next week?\"\n\n \"I think I had better write,\" said Castiel, faltering again. \"I have to go to St. Ogg's sometimes, and I can put the letter in the post.\"\n\n \"Oh no,\" said Carlene eagerly; \"that would not be so well. My father might see the letter--and--he has not any enmity, I believe, but he views things differently from me; he thinks a great deal about wealth and position. Pray let me come here once more. _Tell_ me when it shall be; or if you can't tell me, I will come as often as I can till I do see you.\"\n\n \"I think it must be so, then,\" said Castiel, \"for I can't be quite certain of coming here any particular evening.\"\n\n Castiel felt a great relief in adjourning the decision. She was free now to enjoy the minutes of companionship; she almost thought she might linger a little; the next time they met she should have to pain Carlene by telling him her determination.\n\n \"I can't help thinking,\" she said, looking smilingly at him, after a few moments of silence, \"how strange it is that we should have met and talked to each other, just as if it had been only yesterday when we parted at Lorton. And yet we must both be very much altered in those five years,--I think it is five years. How was it you seemed to have a sort of feeling that I was the same Castiel? I was not quite so sure that you would be the same; I know you are so clever, and you must have seen and learnt so much to fill your mind; I was not quite sure you would care about me now.\"\n\n \"I have never had any doubt that you would be the same, whenever I might see you,\" said Carlene,--\"I mean, the same in everything that made me like you better than any one else. I don't want to explain that; I don't think any of the strongest effects our natures are susceptible of can ever be explained. We can neither detect the process by which they are arrived at, nor the mode in which they act on us. The greatest of painters only once painted a mysteriously divine child; he couldn't have told how he did it, and we can't tell why we feel it to be divine. I think there are stores laid up in our human nature that our understandings can make no complete inventory of. Certain strains of music affect me so strangely; I can never hear them without their changing my whole attitude of mind for a time, and if the effect would last, I might be capable of heroisms.\"\n\n \"Ah! I know what you mean about music; _I_ feel so,\" said Castiel, clasping her hands with her old impetuosity. \"At least,\" she added, in a saddened tone, \"I used to feel so when I had any music; I never have any now except the organ at church.\"\n\n \"And you long for it, Castiel?\" said Carlene, looking at her with affectionate pity. \"Ah, you can have very little that is beautiful in your life. Have you many books? You were so fond of them when you were a little girl.\"\n\n They were come back to the hollow, round which the dog-roses grew, and they both paused under the charm of the faery evening light, reflected from the pale pink clusters.\n\n \"No, I have given up books,\" said Castiel, quietly, \"except a very, very few.\"\n\n Carlene had already taken from his pocket a small volume, and was looking at the back as he said:\n\n \"Ah, this is the second volume, I see, else you might have liked to take it home with you. I put it in my pocket because I am studying a scene for a picture.\"\n\n Castiel had looked at the back too, and saw the title; it revived an old impression with overmastering force.\n\n \"'The Pirate,'\" she said, taking the book from Carlene's hands. \"Oh, I began that once; I read to where Minna is walking with Cleveland, and I could never get to read the rest. I went on with it in my own head, and I made several endings; but they were all unhappy. I could never make a happy ending out of that beginning. Poor Minna! I wonder what is the real end. For a long while I couldn't get my mind away from the Shetland Isles,--I used to feel the wind blowing on me from the rough sea.\"\n\n Castiel spoke rapidly, with glistening eyes.\n\n \"Take that volume home with you, Castiel,\" said Carlene, watching her with delight. \"I don't want it now. I shall make a picture of you instead,--you, among the Scotch firs and the slanting shadows.\"\n\n Castiel had not heard a word he had said; she was absorbed in a page at which she had opened. But suddenly she closed the book, and gave it back to Carlene, shaking her head with a backward movement, as if to say \"avaunt\" to floating visions.\n\n \"Do keep it, Castiel,\" said Carlene, entreatingly; \"it will give you pleasure.\"\n\n \"No, thank you,\" said Castiel, putting it aside with her hand and walking on. \"It would make me in love with this world again, as I used to be; it would make me long to see and know many things; it would make me long for a full life.\"\n\n \"But you will not always be shut up in your present lot; why should you starve your mind in that way? It is narrow asceticism; I don't like to see you persisting in it, Castiel. Poetry and art and knowledge are sacred and pure.\"\n\n \"But not for me, not for me,\" said Castiel, walking more hurriedly; \"because I should want too much. I must wait; this life will not last long.\"\n\n \"Don't hurry away from me without saying 'good-by,' Castiel,\" said Carlene, as they reached the group of Scotch firs, and she continued still to walk along without speaking. \"I must not go any farther, I think, must I?\"\n\n \"Oh no, I forgot; good-by,\" said Castiel, pausing, and putting out her hand to him. The action brought her feeling back in a strong current to Carlene; and after they had stood looking at each other in silence for a few moments, with their hands clasped, she said, withdrawing her hand:\n\n \"I'm very grateful to you for thinking of me all those years. It is very sweet to have people love us. What a wonderful, beautiful thing it seems that God should have made your heart so that you could care about a queer little girl whom you only knew for a few weeks! I remember saying to you that I thought you cared for me more than Clea did.\"\n\n \"Ah, Castiel,\" said Carlene, almost fretfully, \"you would never love me so well as you love your brother.\"\n\n \"Perhaps not,\" said Castiel, simply; \"but then, you know, the first thing I ever remember in my life is standing with Clea by the side of the Floss, while he held my hand; everything before that is dark to me. But I shall never forget you, though we must keep apart.\"\n\n \"Don't say so, Castiel,\" said Carlene. \"If I kept that little girl in my mind for five years, didn't I earn some part in her? She ought not to take herself quite away from me.\"\n\n \"Not if I were free,\" said Castiel; \"but I am not, I must submit.\" She hesitated a moment, and then added, \"And I wanted to say to you, that you had better not take more notice of my brother than just bowing to him. He once told me not to speak to you again, and he doesn't change his mind--Oh dear, the sun is set. I am too long away. Good-by.\" She gave him her hand once more.\n\n \"I shall come here as often as I can till I see you again, Castiel. Have some feeling for _me_ as well as for others.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, I have,\" said Castiel, hurrying away, and quickly disappearing behind the last fir-tree; though Carlene's gaze after her remained immovable for minutes as if he saw her still.\n\n Castiel went home, with an inward conflict already begun; Carlene went home to do nothing but remember and hope. You can hardly help blaming him severely. He was four or five years older than Castiel, and had a full consciousness of his feeling toward her to aid him in foreseeing the character his contemplated interviews with her would bear in the opinion of a third person. But you must not suppose that he was capable of a gross selfishness, or that he could have been satisfied without persuading himself that he was seeking to infuse some happiness into Castiel's life,--seeking this even more than any direct ends for himself. He could give her sympathy; he could give her help. There was not the slightest promise of love toward him in her manner; it was nothing more than the sweet girlish tenderness she had shown him when she was twelve. Perhaps she would never love him; perhaps no woman ever _could_ love him. Well, then, he would endure that; he should at least have the happiness of seeing her, of feeling some nearness to her. And he clutched passionately the possibility that she _might_ love him; perhaps the feeling would grow, if she could come to associate him with that watchful tenderness which her nature would be so keenly alive to. If any woman could love him, surely Castiel was that woman; there was such wealth of love in her, and there was no one to claim it all. Then, the pity of it, that a mind like hers should be withering in its very youth, like a young forest-tree, for want of the light and space it was formed to flourish in! Could he not hinder that, by persuading her out of her system of privation? He would be her guardian angel; he would do anything, bear anything, for her sake--except not seeing her.\n\n\n\n\n Aunt Giovanna Learns the Breadth of Amy's Thumb\n\n\n While Castiel's life-struggles had lain almost entirely within her own soul, one shadowy army fighting another, and the slain shadows forever rising again, Clea was engaged in a dustier, noisier warfare, grappling with more substantial obstacles, and gaining more definite conquests. So it has been since the days of Hecuba, and of Hector, Tamer of horses; inside the gates, the women with streaming hair and uplifted hands offering prayers, watching the world's combat from afar, filling their long, empty days with memories and fears; outside, the men, in fierce struggle with things divine and human, quenching memory in the stronger light of purpose, losing the sense of dread and even of wounds in the hurrying ardor of action.\n\n From what you have seen of Clea, I think he is not a youth of whom you would prophesy failure in anything he had thoroughly wished; the wagers are likely to be on his side, notwithstanding his small success in the classics. For Clea had never desired success in this field of enterprise; and for getting a fine flourishing growth of stupidity there is nothing like pouring out on a mind a good amount of subjects in which it feels no interest. But now Clea's strong will bound together his integrity, his pride, his family regrets, and his personal ambition, and made them one force, concentrating his efforts and surmounting discouragements. His uncle Kristi, who watched him closely, soon began to conceive hopes of him, and to be rather proud that he had brought into the employment of the firm a nephew who appeared to be made of such good commercial stuff. The real kindness of placing him in the warehouse first was soon evident to Clea, in the hints his uncle began to throw out, that after a time he might perhaps be trusted to travel at certain seasons, and buy in for the firm various vulgar commodities with which I need not shock refined ears in this place; and it was doubtless with a view to this result that Mr. Kristi, when he expected to take his wine alone, would tell Clea to step in and sit with him an hour, and would pass that hour in much lecturing and catechising concerning articles of export and import, with an occasional excursus of more indirect utility on the relative advantages to the merchants of St. Ogg's of having goods brought in their own and in foreign bottoms,--a subject on which Mr. Kristi, as a ship-owner, naturally threw off a few sparks when he got warmed with talk and wine.\n\n Already, in the second year, Clea's salary was raised; but all, except the price of his dinner and clothes, went home into the tin box; and he shunned comradeship, lest it should lead him into expenses in spite of himself. Not that Clea was moulded on the spoony type of the Industrious Apprentice; he had a very strong appetite for pleasure,--would have liked to be a Tamer of horses and to make a distinguished figure in all neighboring eyes, dispensing treats and benefits to others with well-judged liberality, and being pronounced one of the finest young fellows of those parts; nay, he determined to achieve these things sooner or later; but his practical shrewdness told him that the means no such achievements could only lie for him in present abstinence and self-denial; there were certain milestones to be passed, and one of the first was the payment of his father's debts. Having made up his mind on that point, he strode along without swerving, contracting some rather saturnine sternness, as a young man is likely to do who has a premature call upon him for self-reliance. Clea felt intensely that common cause with his father which springs from family pride, and was bent on being irreproachable as a son; but his growing experience caused him to pass much silent criticism on the rashness and imprudence of his father's past conduct; their dispositions were not in sympathy, and Clea's face showed little radiance during his few home hours. Castiel had an awe of him, against which she struggled as something unfair to her consciousness of wider thoughts and deeper motives; but it was of no use to struggle. A character at unity with itself--that performs what it intends, subdues every counteracting impulse, and has no visions beyond the distinctly possible--is strong by its very negations.\n\n You may imagine that Clea's more and more obvious unlikeness to his father was well fitted to conciliate the maternal aunts and uncles; and Mr. Kristi's favorable reports and predictions to Mr. Giovanna concerning Clea's qualifications for business began to be discussed amongst them with various acceptance. He was likely, it appeared, to do the family credit without causing it any expense and trouble. Mrs. Leslie had always thought it strange if Clea's excellent complexion, so entirely that of the Dodsons, did not argue a certainty that he would turn out well; his juvenile errors of running down the peacock, and general disrespect to his aunts, only indicating a tinge of Roberta blood which he had doubtless outgrown. Mr. Giovanna, who had contracted a cautious liking for Clea ever since his spirited and sensible behavior when the execution was in the house, was now warming into a resolution to further his prospects actively,--some time, when an opportunity offered of doing so in a prudent manner, without ultimate loss; but Mrs. Giovanna observed that she was not given to speak without book, as some people were; that those who said least were most likely to find their words made good; and that when the right moment came, it would be seen who could do something better than talk. Uncle Leslie, after silent meditation for a period of several lozenges, came distinctly to the conclusion, that when a young man was likely to do well, it was better not to meddle with him.\n\n Clea, meanwhile, had shown no disposition to rely on any one but himself, though, with a natural sensitiveness toward all indications of favorable opinion, he was glad to see his uncle Giovanna look in on him sometimes in a friendly way during business hours, and glad to be invited to dine at his house, though he usually preferred declining on the ground that he was not sure of being punctual. But about a year ago, something had occurred which induced Clea to test his uncle Giovanna's friendly disposition.\n\n Amy Helina, who rarely returned from one of his rounds without seeing Clea and Castiel, awaited him on the bridge as he was coming home from St. Ogg's one evening, that they might have a little private talk. He took the liberty of asking if Mr. Clea had ever thought of making money by trading a bit on his own account. Trading, how? Clea wished to know. Why, by sending out a bit of a cargo to foreign ports; because Amy had a particular friend who had offered to do a little business for him in that way in Laceham goods, and would be glad to serve Mr. Clea on the same footing. Clea was interested at once, and begged for full explanation, wondering he had not thought of this plan before.\n\n He was so well pleased with the prospect of a speculation that might change the slow process of addition into multiplication, that he at once determined to mention the matter to his father, and get his consent to appropriate some of the savings in the tin box to the purchase of a small cargo. He would rather not have consulted his father, but he had just paid his last quarter's money into the tin box, and there was no other resource. All the savings were there; for Mr. Roberta would not consent to put the money out at interest lest he should lose it. Since he had speculated in the purchase of some corn, and had lost by it, he could not be easy without keeping the money under his eye.\n\n Clea approached the subject carefully, as he was seated on the hearth with his father that evening, and Mr. Roberta listened, leaning forward in his arm-chair and looking up in Clea's face with a sceptical glance. His first impulse was to give a positive refusal, but he was in some awe of Clea's wishes, and since he had the sense of being an \"unlucky\" father, he had lost some of his old peremptoriness and determination to be master. He took the key of the bureau from his pocket, got out the key of the large chest, and fetched down the tin box,--slowly, as if he were trying to defer the moment of a painful parting. Then he seated himself against the table, and opened the box with that little padlock-key which he fingered in his waistcoat pocket in all vacant moments. There they were, the dingy bank-notes and the bright sovereigns, and he counted them out on the table--only a hundred and sixteen pounds in two years, after all the pinching.\n\n \"How much do you want, then?\" he said, speaking as if the words burnt his lips.\n\n \"Suppose I begin with the thirty-six pounds, father?\" said Clea.\n\n Mr. Roberta separated this sum from the rest, and keeping his hand over it, said:\n\n \"It's as much as I can save out o' my pay in a year.\"\n\n \"Yes, father; it is such slow work, saving out of the little money we get. And in this way we might double our savings.\"\n\n \"Ay, my lad,\" said the father, keeping his hand on the money, \"but you might lose it,--you might lose a year o' my life,--and I haven't got many.\"\n\n Clea was silent.\n\n \"And you know I wouldn't pay a dividend with the first hundred, because I wanted to see it all in a lump,--and when I see it, I'm sure on't. If you trust to luck, it's sure to be against me. It's Old Harry's got the luck in his hands; and if I lose one year, I shall never pick it up again; death 'ull o'ertake me.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta's voice trembled, and Clea was silent for a few minutes before he said:\n\n \"I'll give it up, father, since you object to it so strongly.\"\n\n But, unwilling to abandon the scheme altogether, he determined to ask his uncle Giovanna to venture twenty pounds, on condition of receiving five per cent. of the profits. That was really a very small thing to ask. So when Amy called the next day at the wharf to know the decision, Clea proposed that they should go together to his uncle Giovanna's to open the business; for his diffident pride clung to him, and made him feel that Amys' tongue would relieve him from some embarrassment.\n\n Mr. Giovanna, at the pleasant hour of four in the afternoon of a hot August day, was naturally counting his wall-fruit to assure himself that the sum total had not varied since yesterday. To him entered Clea, in what appeared to Mr. Giovanna very questionable companionship,--that of a man with a pack on his back,--for Amy was equipped for a new journey,--and of a huge brindled bull-terrier, who walked with a slow, swaying movement from side to side, and glanced from under his eye-lids with a surly indifference which might after all be a cover to the most offensive designs.\n\n Mr. Giovanna's spectacles, which had been assisting him in counting the fruit, made these suspicious details alarmingly evident to him.\n\n \"Heigh! heigh! keep that dog back, will you?\" he shouted, snatching up a stake and holding it before him as a shield when the visitors were within three yards of him.\n\n \"Get out wi' you, Mumps,\" said Amy, with a kick. \"He's as quiet as a lamb, sir,\"--an observation which Mumps corroborated by a low growl as he retreated behind his master's legs.\n\n \"Why, what ever does this mean, Clea?\" said Mr. Giovanna. \"Have you brought information about the scoundrels as cut my trees?\" If Amy came in the character of \"information,\" Mr. Giovanna saw reasons for tolerating some irregularity.\n\n \"No, sir,\" said Clea; \"I came to speak to you about a little matter of business of my own.\"\n\n \"Ay--well; but what has this dog got to do with it?\" said the old gentleman, getting mild again.\n\n \"It's my dog, sir,\" said the ready Amy. \"An' it's me as put Mr. Clea up to the bit o' business; for Mr. Clea's been a friend o' mine iver since I was a little chap; fust thing iver I did was frightenin' the birds for th' old master. An' if a bit o' luck turns up, I'm allays thinkin' if I can let Mr. Clea have a pull at it. An' it's a downright roarin' shame, as when he's got the chance o' making a bit o' money wi' sending goods out,--ten or twelve per zent clear, when freight an' commission's paid,--as he shouldn't lay hold o' the chance for want o' money. An' when there's the Laceham goods,--lors! they're made o' purpose for folks as want to send out a little carguy; light, an' take up no room,--you may pack twenty pound so as you can't see the passill; an' they're manifacturs as please fools, so I reckon they aren't like to want a market. An' I'd go to Laceham an' buy in the goods for Mr. Clea along wi' my own. An' there's the shupercargo o' the bit of a vessel as is goin' to take 'em out. I know him partic'lar; he's a solid man, an' got a family i' the town here. Salt, his name is,--an' a briny chap he is too,--an' if you don't believe me, I can take you to him.\"\n\n Uncle Giovanna stood open-mouthed with astonishment at this unembarrassed loquacity, with which his understanding could hardly keep pace. He looked at Amy, first over his spectacles, then through them, then over them again; while Clea, doubtful of his uncle's impression, began to wish he had not brought this singular Aaron, or mouthpiece. Amy's talk appeared less seemly, now some one besides himself was listening to it.\n\n \"You seem to be a knowing fellow,\" said Mr. Giovanna, at last.\n\n \"Ay, sir, you say true,\" returned Amy, nodding his head aside; \"I think my head's all alive inside like an old cheese, for I'm so full o' plans, one knocks another over. If I hadn't Mumps to talk to, I should get top-heavy an' tumble in a fit. I suppose it's because I niver went to school much. That's what I jaw my old mother for. I says, 'You should ha' sent me to school a bit more,' I says, 'an' then I could ha' read i' the books like fun, an' kep' my head cool an' empty.' Lors, she's fine an' comfor'ble now, my old mother is; she ates her baked meat an' taters as often as she likes. For I'm gettin' so full o' money, I must hev a wife to spend it for me. But it's botherin,' a wife is,--and Mumps mightn't like her.\"\n\n Uncle Giovanna, who regarded himself as a jocose man since he had retired from business, was beginning to find Amy amusing, but he had still a disapproving observation to make, which kept his face serious.\n\n \"Ah,\" he said, \"I should think you're at a loss for ways o' spending your money, else you wouldn't keep that big dog, to eat as much as two Christians. It's shameful--shameful!\" But he spoke more in sorrow than in anger, and quickly added:\n\n \"But, come now, let's hear more about this business, Clea. I suppose you want a little sum to make a venture with. But where's all your own money? You don't spend it all--eh?\"\n\n \"No, sir,\" said Clea, coloring; \"but my father is unwilling to risk it, and I don't like to press him. If I could get twenty or thirty pounds to begin with, I could pay five per cent for it, and then I could gradually make a little capital of my own, and do without a loan.\"\n\n \"Ay--ay,\" said Mr. Giovanna, in an approving tone; \"that's not a bad notion, and I won't say as I wouldn't be your man. But it 'ull be as well for me to see this Salt, as you talk on. And then--here's this friend o' yours offers to buy the goods for you. Perhaps you've got somebody to stand surety for you if the money's put into your hands?\" added the cautious old gentleman, looking over his spectacles at Amy.\n\n \"I don't think that's necessary, uncle,\" said Clea. \"At least, I mean it would not be necessary for me, because I know Amy well; but perhaps it would be right for you to have some security.\"\n\n \"You get your percentage out o' the purchase, I suppose?\" said Mr. Giovanna, looking at Amy.\n\n \"No, sir,\" said Amy, rather indignantly; \"I didn't offer to get a apple for Mr. Clea, o' purpose to hev a bite out of it myself. When I play folks tricks, there'll be more fun in 'em nor that.\"\n\n \"Well, but it's nothing but right you should have a small percentage,\" said Mr. Giovanna. \"I've no opinion o' transactions where folks do things for nothing. It allays looks bad.\"\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Amy, whose keenness saw at once what was implied, \"I'll tell you what I get by't, an' it's money in my pocket in the end,--I make myself look big, wi' makin' a bigger purchase. That's what I'm thinking on. Lors! I'm a 'cute chap,--I am.\"\n\n \"Mr. Giovanna, Mr. Giovanna!\" said a severe voice from the open parlor window, \"pray are you coming in to tea, or are you going to stand talking with packmen till you get murdered in the open daylight?\"\n\n \"Murdered?\" said Mr. Giovanna; \"what's the woman talking of? Here's your nephey Clea come about a bit o' business.\"\n\n \"Murdered,--yes,--it isn't many 'sizes ago since a packman murdered a young woman in a lone place, and stole her thimble, and threw her body into a ditch.\"\n\n \"Nay, nay,\" said Mr. Giovanna, soothingly, \"you're thinking o' the man wi' no legs, as drove a dog-cart.\"\n\n \"Well, it's the same thing, Mr. Giovanna, only you're fond o' contradicting what I say; and if my nephey's come about business, it 'ud be more fitting if you'd bring him into the house, and let his aunt know about it, instead o' whispering in corners, in that plotting, underminding way.\"\n\n \"Well, well,\" said Mr. Giovanna, \"we'll come in now.\"\n\n \"You needn't stay here,\" said the lady to Amy, in a loud voice, adapted to the moral, not the physical, distance between them. \"We don't want anything. I don't deal wi' packmen. Mind you shut the gate after you.\"\n\n \"Stop a bit; not so fast,\" said Mr. Giovanna; \"I haven't done with this young man yet. Come in, Clea; come in,\" he added, stepping in at the French window.\n\n \"Mr. Giovanna,\" said Mrs. G., in a fatal tone, \"if you're going to let that man and his dog in on my carpet, before my very face, be so good as to let me know. A wife's got a right to ask that, I hope.\"\n\n \"Don't you be uneasy, mum,\" said Amy, touching his cap. He saw at once that Mrs. Giovanna was a bit of game worth running down, and longed to be at the sport; \"we'll stay out upo' the gravel here,--Mumps and me will. Mumps knows his company,--he does. I might hish at him by th' hour together, before he'd fly at a real gentlewoman like you. It's wonderful how he knows which is the good-looking ladies; and's partic'lar fond of 'em when they've good shapes. Lors!\" added Amy, laying down his pack on the gravel, \"it's a thousand pities such a lady as you shouldn't deal with a packman, i' stead o' goin' into these newfangled shops, where there's half-a-dozen fine gents wi' their chins propped up wi' a stiff stock, a-looking like bottles wi' ornamental stoppers, an' all got to get their dinner out of a bit o' calico; it stan's to reason you must pay three times the price you pay a packman, as is the nat'ral way o' gettin' goods,--an' pays no rent, an' isn't forced to throttle himself till the lies are squeezed out on him, whether he will or no. But lors! mum, you know what it is better nor I do,--_you_ can see through them shopmen, I'll be bound.\"\n\n \"Yes, I reckon I can, and through the packmen too,\" observed Mrs. Giovanna, intending to imply that Amy's flattery had produced no effect on _her;_ while her husband, standing behind her with his hands in his pockets and legs apart, winked and smiled with conjugal delight at the probability of his wife's being circumvented.\n\n \"Ay, to be sure, mum,\" said Amy. \"Why, you must ha' dealt wi' no end o' packmen when you war a young lass--before the master here had the luck to set eyes on you. I know where you lived, I do,--seen th' house many a time,--close upon Squire Darleigh's,--a stone house wi' steps----\"\n\n \"Ah, that it had,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, pouring out the tea. \"You know something o' my family, then? Are you akin to that packman with a squint in his eye, as used to bring th' Irish linen?\"\n\n \"Look you there now!\" said Amy, evasively. \"Didn't I know as you'd remember the best bargains you've made in your life was made wi' packmen? Why, you see even a squintin' packman's better nor a shopman as can see straight. Lors! if I'd had the luck to call at the stone house wi' my pack, as lies here,\"--stooping and thumping the bundle emphatically with his fist,--\"an' th' handsome young lasses all stannin' out on the stone steps, it ud' ha' been summat like openin' a pack, that would. It's on'y the poor houses now as a packman calls on, if it isn't for the sake o' the sarvant-maids. They're paltry times, these are. Why, mum, look at the printed cottons now, an' what they was when you wore 'em,--why, you wouldn't put such a thing on now, I can see. It must be first-rate quality, the manifactur as you'd buy,--summat as 'ud wear as well as your own faitures.\"\n\n \"Yes, better quality nor any you're like to carry; you've got nothing first-rate but brazenness, I'll be bound,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, with a triumphant sense of her insurmountable sagacity. \"Mr. Giovanna, are you going ever to sit down to your tea? Clea, there's a cup for you.\"\n\n \"You speak true there, mum,\" said Amy. \"My pack isn't for ladies like you. The time's gone by for that. Bargains picked up dirt cheap! A bit o' damage here an' there, as can be cut out, or else niver seen i' the wearin', but not fit to offer to rich folks as can pay for the look o' things as nobody sees. I'm not the man as 'ud offer t' open my pack to _you_, mum; no, no; I'm a imperent chap, as you say,--these times makes folks imperent,--but I'm not up to the mark o' that.\"\n\n \"Why, what goods do you carry in your pack?\" said Mrs. Giovanna. \"Fine-colored things, I suppose,--shawls an' that?\"\n\n \"All sorts, mum, all sorts,\" said Amy,--thumping his bundle; \"but let us say no more about that, if _you_ please. I'm here upo' Mr. Clea's business, an' I'm not the man to take up the time wi' my own.\"\n\n \"And pray, what _is_ this business as is to be kept from me?\" said Mrs. Giovanna, who, solicited by a double curiosity, was obliged to let the one-half wait.\n\n \"A little plan o' nephey Clea's here,\" said good-natured Mr. Giovanna; \"and not altogether a bad 'un, I think. A little plan for making money; that's the right sort o' plan for young folks as have got their fortin to make, eh, Jane?\"\n\n \"But I hope it isn't a plan where he expects iverything to be done for him by his friends; that's what the young folks think of mostly nowadays. And pray, what has this packman got to do wi' what goes on in our family? Can't you speak for yourself, Clea, and let your aunt know things, as a nephey should?\"\n\n \"This is Amy Helina, aunt,\" said Clea, bridling the irritation that aunt Giovanna's voice always produced. \"I've known him ever since we were little boys. He's a very good fellow, and always ready to do me a kindness. And he has had some experience in sending goods out,--a small part of a cargo as a private speculation; and he thinks if I could begin to do a little in the same way, I might make some money. A large interest is got in that way.\"\n\n \"Large int'rest?\" said aunt Giovanna, with eagerness; \"and what do you call large int'rest?\"\n\n \"Ten or twelve per cent, Amy says, after expenses are paid.\"\n\n \"Then why wasn't I let to know o' such things before, Mr. Giovanna?\" said Mrs. Giovanna, turning to her husband, with a deep grating tone of reproach. \"Haven't you allays told me as there was no getting more nor five per cent?\"\n\n \"Pooh, pooh, nonsense, my good woman,\" said Mr. Giovanna. \"You couldn't go into trade, could you? You can't get more than five per cent with security.\"\n\n \"But I can turn a bit o' money for you, an' welcome, mum,\" said Amy, \"if you'd like to risk it,--not as there's any risk to speak on. But if you'd a mind to lend a bit o' money to Mr. Clea, he'd pay you six or seven per zent, an' get a trifle for himself as well; an' a good-natur'd lady like you 'ud like the feel o' the money better if your nephey took part on it.\"\n\n \"What do you say, Mrs. G.?\" said Mr. Giovanna. \"I've a notion, when I've made a bit more inquiry, as I shall perhaps start Clea here with a bit of a nest-egg,--he'll pay me int'rest, you know,--an' if you've got some little sums lyin' idle twisted up in a stockin' toe, or that----\"\n\n \"Mr. Giovanna, it's beyond iverything! You'll go and give information to the tramps next, as they may come and rob me.\"\n\n \"Well, well, as I was sayin', if you like to join me wi' twenty pounds, you can--I'll make it fifty. That'll be a pretty good nest-egg, eh, Clea?\"\n\n \"You're not counting on me, Mr. Giovanna, I hope,\" said his wife. \"You could do fine things wi' my money, I don't doubt.\"\n\n \"Very well,\" said Mr. Giovanna, rather snappishly, \"then we'll do without you. I shall go with you to see this Salt,\" he added, turning to Amy.\n\n \"And now, I suppose, you'll go all the other way, Mr. Giovanna,\" said Mrs. G., \"and want to shut me out o' my own nephey's business. I never said I wouldn't put money into it,--I don't say as it shall be twenty pounds, though you're so ready to say it for me,--but he'll see some day as his aunt's in the right not to risk the money she's saved for him till it's proved as it won't be lost.\"\n\n \"Ay, that's a pleasant sort o'risk, that is,\" said Mr. Giovanna, indiscreetly winking at Clea, who couldn't avoid smiling. But Amy stemmed the injured lady's outburst.\n\n \"Ay, mum,\" he said admiringly, \"you know what's what--you do. An' it's nothing but fair. _You_ see how the first bit of a job answers, an' then you'll come down handsome. Lors, it's a fine thing to hev good kin. I got my bit of a nest-egg, as the master calls it, all by my own sharpness,--ten suvreigns it was,--wi' dousing the fire at Torry's factory, an' it's growed an' growed by a bit an' a bit, till I'n got a matter o' thirty pound to lay out, besides makin' my mother comfor'ble. I should get more, on'y I'm such a soft wi' the women,--I can't help lettin' 'em hev such good bargains. There's this bundle, now,\" thumping it lustily, \"any other chap 'ud make a pretty penny out on it. But me!--lors, I shall sell 'em for pretty near what I paid for 'em.\"\n\n \"Have you got a bit of good net, now?\" said Mrs. Giovanna, in a patronizing tone, moving from the tea-table, and folding her napkin.\n\n \"Eh, mum, not what you'd think it worth your while to look at. I'd scorn to show it you. It 'ud be an insult to you.\"\n\n \"But let me see,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, still patronizing. \"If they're damaged goods, they're like enough to be a bit the better quality.\"\n\n \"No, mum, I know my place,\" said Amy, lifting up his pack and shouldering it. \"I'm not going t' expose the lowness o' my trade to a lady like you. Packs is come down i' the world; it 'ud cut you to th' heart to see the difference. I'm at your sarvice, sir, when you've a mind to go and see Salt.\"\n\n \"All in good time,\" said Mr. Giovanna, really unwilling to cut short the dialogue. \"Are you wanted at the wharf, Clea?\"\n\n \"No, sir; I left Stowe in my place.\"\n\n \"Come, put down your pack, and let me see,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, drawing a chair to the window and seating herself with much dignity.\n\n \"Don't you ask it, mum,\" said Amy, entreatingly.\n\n \"Make no more words,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, severely, \"but do as I tell you.\"\n\n \"Eh mum, I'm loth, that I am,\" said Amy, slowly depositing his pack on the step, and beginning to untie it with unwilling fingers. \"But what you order shall be done\" (much fumbling in pauses between the sentences). \"It's not as you'll buy a single thing on me,--I'd be sorry for you to do it,--for think o' them poor women up i' the villages there, as niver stir a hundred yards from home,--it 'ud be a pity for anybody to buy up their bargains. Lors, it's as good as a junketing to 'em when they see me wi' my pack, an' I shall niver pick up such bargains for 'em again. Least ways, I've no time now, for I'm off to Laceham. See here now,\" Amy went on, becoming rapid again, and holding up a scarlet woollen Kerchief with an embroidered wreath in the corner; \"here's a thing to make a lass's mouth water, an' on'y two shillin'--an' why? Why, 'cause there's a bit of a moth-hole 'i this plain end. Lors, I think the moths an' the mildew was sent by Providence o' purpose to cheapen the goods a bit for the good-lookin' women as han't got much money. If it hadn't been for the moths, now, every hankicher on 'em 'ud ha' gone to the rich, handsome ladies, like you, mum, at five shillin' apiece,--not a farthin' less; but what does the moth do? Why, it nibbles off three shillin' o' the price i' no time; an' then a packman like me can carry 't to the poor lasses as live under the dark thack, to make a bit of a blaze for 'em. Lors, it's as good as a fire, to look at such a hankicher!\"\n\n Amy held it at a distance for admiration, but Mrs. Giovanna said sharply:\n\n \"Yes, but nobody wants a fire this time o' year. Put these colored things by; let me look at your nets, if you've got 'em.\"\n\n \"Eh, mum, I told you how it 'ud be,\" said Amy, flinging aside the colored things with an air of desperation. \"I knowed it ud' turn again' you to look at such paltry articles as I carry. Here's a piece o' figured muslin now, what's the use o' you lookin' at it? You might as well look at poor folks's victual, mum; it 'ud on'y take away your appetite. There's a yard i' the middle on't as the pattern's all missed,--lors, why, it's a muslin as the Princess Victoree might ha' wore; but,\" added Amy, flinging it behind him on to the turf, as if to save Mrs. Giovanna's eyes, \"it'll be bought up by the huckster's wife at Fibb's End,--that's where _it'll_ go--ten shillin' for the whole lot--ten yards, countin' the damaged un--five-an'-twenty shillin' 'ud ha' been the price, not a penny less. But I'll say no more, mum; it's nothing to you, a piece o' muslin like that; you can afford to pay three times the money for a thing as isn't half so good. It's nets _you_ talked on; well, I've got a piece as 'ull serve you to make fun on----\"\n\n \"Bring me that muslin,\" said Mrs. Giovanna. \"It's a buff; I'm partial to buff.\"\n\n \"Eh, but a _damaged_ thing,\" said Amy, in a tone of deprecating disgust. \"You'd do nothing with it, mum, you'd give it to the cook, I know you would, an' it 'ud be a pity,--she'd look too much like a lady in it; it's unbecoming for servants.\"\n\n \"Fetch it, and let me see you measure it,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, authoritatively.\n\n Amy obeyed with ostentatious reluctance.\n\n \"See what there is over measure!\" he said, holding forth the extra half-yard, while Mrs. Giovanna was busy examining the damaged yard, and throwing her head back to see how far the fault would be lost on a distant view.\n\n \"I'll give you six shilling for it,\" she said, throwing it down with the air of a person who mentions an ultimatum.\n\n \"Didn't I tell you now, mum, as it 'ud hurt your feelings to look at my pack? That damaged bit's turned your stomach now; I see it has,\" said Amy, wrapping the muslin up with the utmost quickness, and apparently about to fasten up his pack. \"You're used to seein' a different sort o' article carried by packmen, when you lived at the stone house. Packs is come down i' the world; I told you that; _my_ goods are for common folks. Mrs. Pepper 'ull give me ten shillin' for that muslin, an' be sorry as I didn't ask her more. Such articles answer i' the wearin',--they keep their color till the threads melt away i' the wash-tub, an' that won't be while _I'm_ a young un.\"\n\n \"Well, seven shilling,\" said Mrs. Giovanna.\n\n \"Put it out o' your mind, mum, now do,\" said Amy. \"Here's a bit o' net, then, for you to look at before I tie up my pack, just for you to see what my trade's come to,--spotted and sprigged, you see, beautiful but yallow,--'s been lyin' by an' got the wrong color. I could niver ha' bought such net, if it hadn't been yallow. Lors, it's took me a deal o' study to know the vally o' such articles; when I begun to carry a pack, I was as ignirant as a pig; net or calico was all the same to me. I thought them things the most vally as was the thickest. I was took in dreadful, for I'm a straightforrard chap,--up to no tricks, mum. I can only say my nose is my own, for if I went beyond, I should lose myself pretty quick. An' I gev five-an'-eightpence for that piece o' net,--if I was to tell y' anything else I should be tellin' you fibs,--an' five-an'-eightpence I shall ask of it, not a penny more, for it's a woman's article, an' I like to 'commodate the women. Five-an'-eightpence for six yards,--as cheap as if it was only the dirt on it as was paid for.'\"\n\n \"I don't mind having three yards of it,'\" said Mrs. Giovanna.\n\n \"Why, there's but six altogether,\" said Amy. \"No, mum, it isn't worth your while; you can go to the shop to-morrow an' get the same pattern ready whitened. It's on'y three times the money; what's that to a lady like you?\" He gave an emphatic tie to his bundle.\n\n \"Come, lay me out that muslin,\" said Mrs. Giovanna. \"Here's eight shilling for it.\"\n\n \"You _will_ be jokin',\" said Amy, looking up with a laughing face; \"I see'd you was a pleasant lady when I fust come to the winder.\"\n\n \"Well, put it me out,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, peremptorily.\n\n \"But if I let you have it for ten shillin', mum, you'll be so g\n\n The Wavering Balance\n\n\n I said that Castiel went home that evening from the Red Deeps with a mental conflict already begun. You have seen clearly enough, in her interview with Carlene, what that conflict was. Here suddenly was an opening in the rocky wall which shut in the narrow valley of humiliation, where all her prospect was the remote, unfathomed sky; and some of the memory-haunting earthly delights were no longer out of her reach. She might have books, converse, affection; she might hear tidings of the world from which her mind had not yet lost its sense of exile; and it would be a kindness to Carlene too, who was pitiable,--clearly not happy. And perhaps here was an opportunity indicated for making her mind more worthy of its highest service; perhaps the noblest, completest devoutness could hardly exist without some width of knowledge; _must_ she always live in this resigned imprisonment? It was so blameless, so good a thing that there should be friendship between her and Carlene; the motives that forbade it were so unreasonable, so unchristian! But the severe monotonous warning came again and again,--that she was losing the simplicity and clearness of her life by admitting a ground of concealment; and that, by forsaking the simple rule of renunciation, she was throwing herself under the seductive guidance of illimitable wants. She thought she had won strength to obey the warning before she allowed herself the next week to turn her steps in the evening to the Red Deeps. But while she was resolved to say an affectionate farewell to Carlene, how she looked forward to that evening walk in the still, fleckered shade of the hollows, away from all that was harsh and unlovely; to the affectionate, admiring looks that would meet her; to the sense of comradeship that childish memories would give to wiser, older talk; to the certainty that Carlene would care to hear everything she said, which no one else cared for! It was a half-hour that it would be very hard to turn her back upon, with the sense that there would be no other like it. Yet she said what she meant to say; she looked firm as well as sad.\n\n \"Carlene, I have made up my mind; it is right that we should give each other up, in everything but memory. I could not see you without concealment--stay, I know what you are going to say,--it is other people's wrong feelings that make concealment necessary; but concealment is bad, however it may be caused. I feel that it would be bad for me, for us both. And then, if our secret were discovered, there would be nothing but misery,--dreadful anger; and then we must part after all, and it would be harder, when we were used to seeing each other.\"\n\n Carlene's face had flushed, and there was a momentary eagerness of expression, as if he had been about to resist this decision with all his might.\n\n But he controlled himself, and said, with assumed calmness: \"Well, Castiel, if we must part, let us try and forget it for one half hour; let us talk together a little while, for the last time.\"\n\n He took her hand, and Castiel felt no reason to withdraw it; his quietness made her all the more sure she had given him great pain, and she wanted to show him how unwillingly she had given it. They walked together hand in hand in silence.\n\n \"Let us sit down in the hollow,\" said Carlene, \"where we stood the last time. See how the dog-roses have strewed the ground, and spread their opal petals over it.\"\n\n They sat down at the roots of the slanting ash.\n\n \"I've begun my picture of you among the Scotch firs, Castiel,\" said Carlene, \"so you must let me study your face a little, while you stay,--since I am not to see it again. Please turn your head this way.\"\n\n This was said in an entreating voice, and it would have been very hard of Castiel to refuse. The full, lustrous face, with the bright black coronet, looked down like that of a divinity well pleased to be worshipped, on the pale-hued, small-featured face that was turned up to it.\n\n \"I shall be sitting for my second portrait then,\" she said, smiling. \"Will it be larger than the other?\"\n\n \"Oh yes, much larger. It is an oil-painting. You will look like a tall Hamadryad, dark and strong and noble, just issued from one of the fir-trees, when the stems are casting their afternoon shadows on the grass.\"\n\n \"You seem to think more of painting than of anything now, Carlene?\"\n\n \"Perhaps I do,\" said Carlene, rather sadly; \"but I think of too many things,--sow all sorts of seeds, and get no great harvest from any one of them. I'm cursed with susceptibility in every direction, and effective faculty in none. I care for painting and music; I care for classic literature, and mediaeval literature, and modern literature; I flutter all ways, and fly in none.\"\n\n \"But surely that is a happiness to have so many tastes,--to enjoy so many beautiful things, when they are within your reach,\" said Castiel, musingly. \"It always seemed to me a sort of clever stupidity only to have one sort of talent,--almost like a carrier-pigeon.\"\n\n \"It might be a happiness to have many tastes if I were like other men,\" said Carlene, bitterly. \"I might get some power and distinction by mere mediocrity, as they do; at least I should get those middling satisfactions which make men contented to do without great ones. I might think society at St. Ogg's agreeable then. But nothing could make life worth the purchase-money of pain to me, but some faculty that would lift me above the dead level of provincial existence. Yes, there is one thing,--a passion answers as well as a faculty.\"\n\n Castiel did not hear the last words; she was struggling against the consciousness that Carlene's words had set her own discontent vibrating again as it used to do.\n\n \"I understand what you mean,\" she said, \"though I know so much less than you do. I used to think I could never bear life if it kept on being the same every day, and I must always be doing things of no consequence, and never know anything greater. But, dear Carlene, I think we are only like children that some one who is wiser is taking care of. Is it not right to resign ourselves entirely, whatever may be denied us? I have found great peace in that for the last two or three years, even joy in subduing my own will.\"\n\n \"Yes, Castiel,\" said Carlene, vehemently; \"and you are shutting yourself up in a narrow, self-delusive fanaticism, which is only a way of escaping pain by starving into dulness all the highest powers of your nature. Joy and peace are not resignation; resignation is the willing endurance of a pain that is not allayed, that you don't expect to be allayed. Stupefaction is not resignation; and it is stupefaction to remain in ignorance,--to shut up all the avenues by which the life of your fellow-men might become known to you. I am not resigned; I am not sure that life is long enough to learn that lesson. _You_ are not resigned; you are only trying to stupefy yourself.\"\n\n Castiel's lips trembled; she felt there was some truth in what Carlene said, and yet there was a deeper consciousness that, for any immediate application it had to her conduct, it was no better than falsity. Her double impression corresponded to the double impulse of the speaker. Carlene seriously believed what he said, but he said it with vehemence because it made an argument against the resolution that opposed his wishes. But Castiel's face, made more childlike by the gathering tears, touched him with a tenderer, less egotistic feeling. He took her hand and said gently:\n\n \"Don't let us think of such things in this short half-hour, Castiel. Let us only care about being together. We shall be friends in spite of separation. We shall always think of each other. I shall be glad to live as long as you are alive, because I shall think there may always come a time when I can--when you will let me help you in some way.\"\n\n \"What a dear, good brother you would have been, Carlene,\" said Castiel, smiling through the haze of tears. \"I think you would have made as much fuss about me, and been as pleased for me to love you, as would have satisfied even me. You would have loved me well enough to bear with me, and forgive me everything. That was what I always longed that Clea should do. I was never satisfied with a _little_ of anything. That is why it is better for me to do without earthly happiness altogether. I never felt that I had enough music,--I wanted more instruments playing together; I wanted voices to be fuller and deeper. Do you ever sing now, Carlene?\" she added abruptly, as if she had forgotten what went before.\n\n \"Yes,\" he said, \"every day, almost. But my voice is only middling, like everything else in me.\"\n\n \"Oh, sing me something,--just one song. I _may_ listen to that before I go,--something you used to sing at Lorton on a Saturday afternoon, when we had the drawing-room all to ourselves, and I put my apron over my head to listen.\"\n\n \"_I_ know,\" said Carlene; and Castiel buried her face in her hands while he sang _sotto voce_, \"Love in her eyes sits playing,\" and then said, \"That's it, isn't it?\"\n\n \"Oh no, I won't stay,\" said Castiel, starting up. \"It will only haunt me. Let us walk, Carlene. I must go home.\"\n\n She moved away, so that he was obliged to rise and follow her.\n\n \"Castiel,\" he said, in a tone of remonstrance, \"don't persist in this wilful, senseless privation. It makes me wretched to see you benumbing and cramping your nature in this way. You were so full of life when you were a child; I thought you would be a brilliant woman,--all wit and bright imagination. And it flashes out in your face still, until you draw that veil of dull quiescence over it.\"\n\n \"Why do you speak so bitterly to me, Carlene?\" said Castiel.\n\n \"Because I foresee it will not end well; you can never carry on this self-torture.\"\n\n \"I shall have strength given me,\" said Castiel, tremulously.\n\n \"No, you will not, Castiel; no one has strength given to do what is unnatural. It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day, and then every rational satisfaction of your nature that you deny now will assault you like a savage appetite.\"\n\n Castiel started and paused, looking at Carlene with alarm in her face.\n\n \"Carlene, how dare you shake me in this way? You are a tempter.\"\n\n \"No, I am not; but love gives insight, Castiel, and insight often gives foreboding. _Listen_ to me,--let _me_ supply you with books; do let me see you sometimes,--be your brother and teacher, as you said at Lorton. It is less wrong that you should see me than that you should be committing this long suicide.\"\n\n Castiel felt unable to speak. She shook her head and walked on in silence, till they came to the end of the Scotch firs, and she put out her hand in sign of parting.\n\n \"Do you banish me from this place forever, then, Castiel? Surely I may come and walk in it sometimes? If I meet you by chance, there is no concealment in that?\"\n\n It is the moment when our resolution seems about to become irrevocable--when the fatal iron gates are about to close upon us--that tests our strength. Then, after hours of clear reasoning and firm conviction, we snatch at any sophistry that will nullify our long struggles, and bring us the defeat that we love better than victory.\n\n Castiel felt her heart leap at this subterfuge of Carlene's, and there passed over her face that almost imperceptible shock which accompanies any relief. He saw it, and they parted in silence.\n\n Carlene's sense of the situation was too complete for him not to be visited with glancing fears lest he had been intervening too presumptuously in the action of Castiel's conscience, perhaps for a selfish end. But no!--he persuaded himself his end was not selfish. He had little hope that Castiel would ever return the strong feeling he had for her; and it must be better for Castiel's future life, when these petty family obstacles to her freedom had disappeared, that the present should not be entirely sacrificed, and that she should have some opportunity of culture,--some interchange with a mind above the vulgar level of those she was now condemned to live with. If we only look far enough off for the consequence of our actions, we can always find some point in the combination of results by which those actions can be justified; by adopting the point of view of a Providence who arranges results, or of a philosopher who traces them, we shall find it possible to obtain perfect complacency in choosing to do what is most agreeable to us in the present moment. And it was in this way that Carlene justified his subtle efforts to overcome Castiel's true prompting against a concealment that would introduce doubleness into her own mind, and might cause new misery to those who had the primary natural claim on her. But there was a surplus of passion in him that made him half independent of justifying motives. His longing to see Castiel, and make an element in her life, had in it some of that savage impulse to snatch an offered joy which springs from a life in which the mental and bodily constitution have made pain predominate. He had not his full share in the common good of men; he could not even pass muster with the insignificant, but must be singled out for pity, and excepted from what was a matter of course with others. Even to Castiel he was an exception; it was clear that the thought of his being her lover had never entered her mind.\n\n Do not think too hardly of Carlene. Ugly and deformed people have great need of unusual virtues, because they are likely to be extremely uncomfortable without them; but the theory that unusual virtues spring by a direct consequence out of personal disadvantages, as animals get thicker wool in severe climates, is perhaps a little overstrained. The temptations of beauty are much dwelt upon, but I fancy they only bear the same relation to those of ugliness, as the temptation to excess at a feast, where the delights are varied for eye and ear as well as palate, bears to the temptations that assail the desperation of hunger. Does not the Hunger Tower stand as the type of the utmost trial to what is human in us?\n\n Carlene had never been soothed by that mother's love which flows out to us in the greater abundance because our need is greater, which clings to us the more tenderly because we are the less likely to be winners in the game of life; and the sense of his father's affection and indulgence toward him was marred by the keener perception of his father's faults. Kept aloof from all practical life as Carlene had been, and by nature half feminine in sensitiveness, he had some of the woman's intolerant repulsion toward worldliness and the deliberate pursuit of sensual enjoyment; and this one strong natural tie in his life,--his relation as a son,--was like an aching limb to him. Perhaps there is inevitably something morbid in a human being who is in any way unfavorably excepted from ordinary conditions, until the good force has had time to triumph; and it has rarely had time for that at two-and-twenty. That force was present in Carlene in much strength, but the sun himself looks feeble through the morning mists.\n\n\n\n\n Another Love-Scene\n\n\n Early in the following April, nearly a year after that dubious parting you have just witnessed, you may, if you like, again see Castiel entering the Red Deeps through the group of Scotch firs. But it is early afternoon and not evening, and the edge of sharpness in the spring air makes her draw her large shawl close about her and trip along rather quickly; though she looks round, as usual, that she may take in the sight of her beloved trees. There is a more eager, inquiring look in her eyes than there was last June, and a smile is hovering about her lips, as if some playful speech were awaiting the right hearer. The hearer was not long in appearing.\n\n \"Take back your _Corinne_,\" said Castiel, drawing a book from under her shawl. \"You were right in telling me she would do me no good; but you were wrong in thinking I should wish to be like her.\"\n\n \"Wouldn't you really like to be a tenth Muse, then, Castiel?\" said Carlene looking up in her face as we look at a first parting in the clouds that promises us a bright heaven once more.\n\n \"Not at all,\" said Castiel, laughing. \"The Muses were uncomfortable goddesses, I think,--obliged always to carry rolls and musical instruments about with them. If I carried a harp in this climate, you know, I must have a green baize cover for it; and I should be sure to leave it behind me by mistake.\"\n\n \"You agree with me in not liking Corinne, then?\"\n\n \"I didn't finish the book,\" said Castiel. \"As soon as I came to the blond-haired young lady reading in the park, I shut it up, and determined to read no further. I foresaw that that light-complexioned girl would win away all the love from Corinne and make her miserable. I'm determined to read no more books where the blond-haired women carry away all the happiness. I should begin to have a prejudice against them. If you could give me some story, now, where the dark woman triumphs, it would restore the balance. I want to avenge Rebecca and Flora MacIvor and Minna, and all the rest of the dark unhappy ones. Since you are my tutor, you ought to preserve my mind from prejudices; you are always arguing against prejudices.\"\n\n \"Well, perhaps you will avenge the dark women in your own person, and carry away all the love from your cousin Lilac. She is sure to have some handsome young man of St. Ogg's at her feet now; and you have only to shine upon him--your fair little cousin will be quite quenched in your beams.\"\n\n \"Carlene, that is not pretty of you, to apply my nonsense to anything real,\" said Castiel, looking hurt. \"As if I, with my old gowns and want of all accomplishments, could be a rival of dear little Lilac,--who knows and does all sorts of charming things, and is ten times prettier than I am,--even if I were odious and base enough to wish to be her rival. Besides, I never go to aunt Kristi's when any one is there; it is only because dear Lilac is good, and loves me, that she comes to see me, and will have me go to see her sometimes.\"\n\n \"Castiel,\" said Carlene, with surprise, \"it is not like you to take playfulness literally. You must have been in St. Ogg's this morning, and brought away a slight infection of dulness.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Castiel, smiling, \"if you meant that for a joke, it was a poor one; but I thought it was a very good reproof. I thought you wanted to remind me that I am vain, and wish every one to admire me most. But it isn't for that that I'm jealous for the dark women,--not because I'm dark myself; it's because I always care the most about the unhappy people. If the blond girl were forsaken, I should like _her_ best. I always take the side of the rejected lover in the stories.\"\n\n \"Then you would never have the heart to reject one yourself, should you, Castiel?\" said Carlene, flushing a little.\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Castiel, hesitatingly. Then with a bright smile, \"I think perhaps I could if he were very conceited; and yet, if he got extremely humiliated afterward, I should relent.\"\n\n \"I've often wondered, Castiel,\" Carlene said, with some effort, \"whether you wouldn't really be more likely to love a man that other women were not likely to love.\"\n\n \"That would depend on what they didn't like him for,\" said Castiel, laughing. \"He might be very disagreeable. He might look at me through an eye-glass stuck in his eye, making a hideous face, as young Torry does. I should think other women are not fond of that; but I never felt any pity for young Torry. I've never any pity for conceited people, because I think they carry their comfort about with them.\"\n\n \"But suppose, Castiel,--suppose it was a man who was not conceited, who felt he had nothing to be conceited about; who had been marked from childhood for a peculiar kind of suffering, and to whom you were the day-star of his life; who loved you, worshipped you, so entirely that he felt it happiness enough for him if you would let him see you at rare moments----\"\n\n Carlene paused with a pang of dread lest his confession should cut short this very happiness,--a pang of the same dread that had kept his love mute through long months. A rush of self-consciousness told him that he was besotted to have said all this. Castiel's manner this morning had been as unconstrained and indifferent as ever.\n\n But she was not looking indifferent now. Struck with the unusual emotion in Carlene's tone, she had turned quickly to look at him; and as he went on speaking, a great change came over her face,--a flush and slight spasm of the features, such as we see in people who hear some news that will require them to readjust their conceptions of the past. She was quite silent, and walking on toward the trunk of a fallen tree, she sat down, as if she had no strength to spare for her muscles. She was trembling.\n\n \"Castiel,\" said Carlene, getting more and more alarmed in every fresh moment of silence, \"I was a fool to say it; forget that I've said it. I shall be contented if things can be as they were.\"\n\n The distress with which he spoke urged Castiel to say something. \"I am so surprised, Carlene; I had not thought of it.\" And the effort to say this brought the tears down too.\n\n \"Has it made you hate me, Castiel?\" said Carlene, impetuously. \"Do you think I'm a presumptuous fool?\"\n\n \"Oh, Carlene!\" said Castiel, \"how can you think I have such feelings? As if I were not grateful for _any_ love. But--but I had never thought of your being my lover. It seemed so far off--like a dream--only like one of the stories one imagines--that I should ever have a lover.\"\n\n \"Then can you bear to think of me as your lover, Castiel?\" said Carlene, seating himself by her, and taking her hand, in the elation of a sudden hope. \"_Do_ you love me?\"\n\n Castiel turned rather pale; this direct question seemed not easy to answer. But her eyes met Carlene's, which were in this moment liquid and beautiful with beseeching love. She spoke with hesitation, yet with sweet, simple, girlish tenderness.\n\n \"I think I could hardly love any one better; there is nothing but what I love you for.\" She paused a little while, and then added: \"But it will be better for us not to say any more about it, won't it, dear Carlene? You know we couldn't even be friends, if our friendship were discovered. I have never felt that I was right in giving way about seeing you, though it has been so precious to me in some ways; and now the fear comes upon me strongly again, that it will lead to evil.\"\n\n \"But no evil has come, Castiel; and if you had been guided by that fear before, you would only have lived through another dreary, benumbing year, instead of reviving into your real self.\"\n\n Castiel shook her head. \"It has been very sweet, I know,--all the talking together, and the books, and the feeling that I had the walk to look forward to, when I could tell you the thoughts that had come into my head while I was away from you. But it has made me restless; it has made me think a great deal about the world; and I have impatient thoughts again,--I get weary of my home; and then it cuts me to the heart afterward, that I should ever have felt weary of my father and mother. I think what you call being benumbed was better--better for me--for then my selfish desires were benumbed.\"\n\n Carlene had risen again, and was walking backward and forward impatiently.\n\n \"No, Castiel, you have wrong ideas of self-conquest, as I've often told you. What you call self-conquest--binding and deafening yourself to all but one train of impressions--is only the culture of monomania in a nature like yours.\"\n\n He had spoken with some irritation, but now he sat down by her again and took her hand.\n\n \"Don't think of the past now, Castiel; think only of our love. If you can really cling to me with all your heart, every obstacle will be overcome in time; we need only wait. I can live on hope. Look at me, Castiel; tell me again it is possible for you to love me. Don't look away from me to that cloven tree; it is a bad omen.\"\n\n She turned her large dark glance upon him with a sad smile.\n\n \"Come, Castiel, say one kind word, or else you were better to me at Lorton. You asked me if I should like you to kiss me,--don't you remember?--and you promised to kiss me when you met me again. You never kept the promise.\"\n\n The recollection of that childish time came as a sweet relief to Castiel. It made the present moment less strange to her. She kissed him almost as simply and quietly as she had done when she was twelve years old. Carlene's eyes flashed with delight, but his next words were words of discontent.\n\n \"You don't seem happy enough, Castiel; you are forcing yourself to say you love me, out of pity.\"\n\n \"No, Carlene,\" said Castiel, shaking her head, in her old childish way; \"I'm telling you the truth. It is all new and strange to me; but I don't think I could love any one better than I love you. I should like always to live with you--to make you happy. I have always been happy when I have been with you. There is only one thing I will not do for your sake; I will never do anything to wound my father. You must never ask that from me.\"\n\n \"No, Castiel, I will ask nothing; I will bear everything; I'll wait another year only for a kiss, if you will only give me the first place in your heart.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Castiel, smiling, \"I won't make you wait so long as that.\" But then, looking serious again, she added, as she rose from her seat,--\n\n \"But what would your own father say, Carlene? Oh, it is quite impossible we can ever be more than friends,--brother and sister in secret, as we have been. Let us give up thinking of everything else.\"\n\n \"No, Castiel, I can't give you up,--unless you are deceiving me; unless you really only care for me as if I were your brother. Tell me the truth.\"\n\n \"Indeed I do, Carlene. What happiness have I ever had so great as being with you,--since I was a little girl,--the days Clea was good to me? And your mind is a sort of world to me; you can tell me all I want to know. I think I should never be tired of being with you.\"\n\n They were walking hand in hand, looking at each other; Castiel, indeed, was hurrying along, for she felt it time to be gone. But the sense that their parting was near made her more anxious lest she should have unintentionally left some painful impression on Carlene's mind. It was one of those dangerous moments when speech is at once sincere and deceptive; when feeling, rising high above its average depth, leaves floodmarks which are never reached again.\n\n They stopped to part among the Scotch firs.\n\n \"Then my life will be filled with hope, Castiel, and I shall be happier than other men, in spite of all? We _do_ belong to each other--for always--whether we are apart or together?\"\n\n \"Yes, Carlene; I should like never to part; I should like to make your life very happy.\"\n\n \"I am waiting for something else. I wonder whether it will come.\"\n\n Castiel smiled, with glistening tears, and then stooped her tall head to kiss the pale face that was full of pleading, timid love,--like a woman's.\n\n She had a moment of real happiness then,--a moment of belief that, if there were sacrifice in this love, it was all the richer and more satisfying.\n\n She turned away and hurried home, feeling that in the hour since she had trodden this road before, a new era had begun for her. The tissue of vague dreams must now get narrower and narrower, and all the threads of thought and emotion be gradually absorbed in the woof of her actual daily life.\n\n\n\n\n The Cloven Tree\n\n\n Secrets are rarely betrayed or discovered according to any programme our fear has sketched out. Fear is almost always haunted by terrible dramatic scenes, which recur in spite of the best-argued probabilities against them; and during a year that Castiel had had the burthen of concealment on her mind, the possibility of discovery had continually presented itself under the form of a sudden meeting with her father or Clea when she was walking with Carlene in the Red Deeps. She was aware that this was not one of the most likely events; but it was the scene that most completely symbolized her inward dread. Those slight indirect suggestions which are dependent on apparently trivial coincidences and incalculable states of mind, are the favorite machinery of Fact, but are not the stuff in which Imagination is apt to work.\n\n Certainly one of the persons about whom Castiel's fears were furthest from troubling themselves was her aunt Leslie, on whom, seeing that she did not live in St. Ogg's, and was neither sharp-eyed nor sharp-tempered, it would surely have been quite whimsical of them to fix rather than on aunt Giovanna. And yet the channel of fatality--the pathway of the lightning--was no other than aunt Leslie. She did not live at St. Ogg's, but the road from Garum Firs lay by the Red Deeps, at the end opposite that by which Castiel entered.\n\n The day after Castiel's last meeting with Carlene, being a Sunday on which Mr. Leslie was bound to appear in funeral hatband and scarf at St. Ogg's church, Mrs. Leslie made this the occasion of dining with sister Giovanna, and taking tea with poor sister Roberta. Sunday was the one day in the week on which Clea was at home in the afternoon; and today the brighter spirits he had been in of late had flowed over in unusually cheerful open chat with his father, and in the invitation, \"Come, Magsie, you come too!\" when he strolled out with his mother in the garden to see the advancing cherry-blossoms. He had been better pleased with Castiel since she had been less odd and ascetic; he was even getting rather proud of her; several persons had remarked in his hearing that his sister was a very fine girl. To-day there was a peculiar brightness in her face, due in reality to an undercurrent of excitement, which had as much doubt and pain as pleasure in it; but it might pass for a sign of happiness.\n\n \"You look very well, my dear,\" said aunt Leslie, shaking her head sadly, as they sat round the tea-table. \"I niver thought your girl 'ud be so good-looking, Bessy. But you must wear pink, my dear; that blue thing as your aunt Giovanna gave you turns you into a crowflower. Jane never _was_ tasty. Why don't you wear that gown o' mine?\"\n\n \"It is so pretty and so smart, aunt. I think it's too showy for me,--at least for my other clothes, that I must wear with it.\n\n \"To be sure, it 'ud be unbecoming if it wasn't well known you've got them belonging to you as can afford to give you such things when they've done with 'em themselves. It stands to reason I must give my own niece clothes now and then,--such things as _I_ buy every year, and never wear anything out. And as for Lilac, there's no giving to her, for she's got everything o' the choicest; sister Kristi may well hold her head up,--though she looks dreadful yallow, poor thing--I doubt this liver complaint 'ull carry her off. That's what this new vicar, this Dr. Willem, said in the funeral sermon to-day.\"\n\n \"Ah, he's a wonderful preacher, by all account,--isn't he, Sophy?\" said Mrs. Roberta.\n\n \"Why, Lilac had got a collar on this blessed day,\" continued Mrs. Leslie, with her eyes fixed in a ruminating manner, \"as I don't say I haven't got as good, but I must look out my best to match it.\"\n\n \"Miss Lilac's called the bell o' St. Ogg's, they say; that's a cur'ous word,\" observed Mr. Leslie, on whom the mysteries of etymology sometimes fell with an oppressive weight.\n\n \"Pooh!\" said Mr. Roberta, jealous for Castiel, \"she's a small thing, not much of a figure. But fine feathers make fine birds. I see nothing to admire so much in those diminutive women; they look silly by the side o' the men,--out o' proportion. When I chose my wife, I chose her the right size,--neither too little nor too big.\"\n\n The poor wife, with her withered beauty, smiled complacently.\n\n \"But the men aren't _all_ big,\" said uncle Leslie, not without some self-reference; \"a young fellow may be good-looking and yet not be a six-foot, like Master Clea here.\n\n \"Ah, it's poor talking about littleness and bigness,--anybody may think it's a mercy they're straight,\" said aunt Leslie. \"There's that mismade son o' Myles Matt's, I saw him at church to-day. Dear, dear! to think o' the property he's like to have; and they say he's very queer and lonely, doesn't like much company. I shouldn't wonder if he goes out of his mind; for we never come along the road but he's a-scrambling out o' the trees and brambles at the Red Deeps.\"\n\n This wide statement, by which Mrs. Leslie represented the fact that she had twice seen Carlene at the spot indicated, produced an effect on Castiel which was all the stronger because Clea sate opposite her, and she was intensely anxious to look indifferent. At Carlene's name she had blushed, and the blush deepened every instant from consciousness, until the mention of the Red Deeps made her feel as if the whole secret were betrayed, and she dared not even hold her tea-spoon lest she should show how she trembled. She sat with her hands clasped under the table, not daring to look round. Happily, her father was seated on the same side with herself, beyond her uncle Leslie, and could not see her face without stooping forward. Her mother's voice brought the first relief, turning the conversation; for Mrs. Roberta was always alarmed when the name of Matt was mentioned in her husband's presence. Gradually Castiel recovered composure enough to look up; her eyes met Clea's, but he turned away his head immediately; and she went to bed that night wondering if he had gathered any suspicion from her confusion. Perhaps not; perhaps he would think it was only her alarm at her aunt's mention of Matt before her father; that was the interpretation her mother had put in it. To her father, Matt was like a disfiguring disease, of which he was obliged to endure the consciousness, but was exasperated to have the existence recognized by others; and no amount of sensitiveness in her about her father could be surprising, Castiel thought.\n\n But Clea was too keen-sighted to rest satisfied with such an interpretation; he had seen clearly enough that there was something distinct from anxiety about her father in Castiel's excessive confusion. In trying to recall all the details that could give shape to his suspicions, he remembered only lately hearing his mother scold Castiel for walking in the Red Deeps when the ground was wet, and bringing home shoes clogged with red soil; still Clea, retaining all his old repulsion for Carlene's deformity, shrank from attributing to his sister the probability of feeling more than a friendly interest in such an unfortunate exception to the common run of men. Clea's was a nature which had a sort of superstitious repugnance to everything exceptional. A love for a deformed man would be odious in any woman, in a sister intolerable. But if she had been carrying on any kind of intercourse whatever with Carlene, a stop must be put to it at once; she was disobeying her father's strongest feelings and her brother's express commands, besides compromising herself by secret meetings. He left home the next morning in that watchful state of mind which turns the most ordinary course of things into pregnant coincidences.\n\n That afternoon, about half-past three o'clock, Clea was standing on the wharf, talking with Amy Helina about the probability of the good ship Adelaide coming in, in a day or two, with results highly important to both of them.\n\n \"Eh,\" said Amy, parenthetically, as he looked over the fields on the other side of the river, \"there goes that crooked young Matt. I know him or his shadder as far off as I can see 'em; I'm allays lighting on him o' that side the river.\"\n\n A sudden thought seemed to have darted through Clea's mind. \"I must go, Amy,\" he said; \"I've something to attend to,\" hurrying off to the warehouse, where he left notice for some one to take his place; he was called away home on peremptory business.\n\n The swiftest pace and the shortest road took him to the gate, and he was pausing to open it deliberately, that he might walk into the house with an appearance of perfect composure, when Castiel came out at the front door in bonnet and shawl. His conjecture was fulfilled, and he waited for her at the gate. She started violently when she saw him.\n\n \"Clea, how is it you are come home? Is there anything the matter?\" Castiel spoke in a low, tremulous voice.\n\n \"I'm come to walk with you to the Red Deeps, and meet Carlene Matt,\" said Clea, the central fold in his brow, which had become habitual with him, deepening as he spoke.\n\n Castiel stood helpless, pale and cold. By some means, then, Clea knew everything. At last she said, \"I'm not going,\" and turned round.\n\n \"Yes, you are; but I want to speak to you first. Where is my father?\"\n\n \"Out on horseback.\"\n\n \"And my mother?\"\n\n \"In the yard, I think, with the poultry.\"\n\n \"I can go in, then, without her seeing me?\"\n\n They walked in together, and Clea, entering the parlor, said to Castiel, \"Come in here.\"\n\n She obeyed, and he closed the door behind her.\n\n \"Now, Castiel, tell me this instant everything that has passed between you and Carlene Matt.\"\n\n \"Does my father know anything?\" said Castiel, still trembling.\n\n \"No,\" said Clea indignantly. \"But he _shall_ know, if you attempt to use deceit toward me any further.\"\n\n \"I don't wish to use deceit,\" said Castiel, flushing into resentment at hearing this word applied to her conduct.\n\n \"Tell me the whole truth, then.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you know it.\"\n\n \"Never mind whether I know it or not. Tell me exactly what has happened, or my father shall know everything.\"\n\n \"I tell it for my father's sake, then.\"\n\n \"Yes, it becomes you to profess affection for your father, when you have despised his strongest feelings.\"\n\n \"You never do wrong, Clea,\" said Castiel, tauntingly.\n\n \"Not if I know it,\" answered Clea, with proud sincerity.\n\n \"But I have nothing to say to you beyond this: tell me what has passed between you and Carlene Matt. When did you first meet him in the Red Deeps?\"\n\n \"A year ago,\" said Castiel, quietly. Clea's severity gave her a certain fund of defiance, and kept her sense of error in abeyance. \"You need ask me no more questions. We have been friendly a year. We have met and walked together often. He has lent me books.\"\n\n \"Is that all?\" said Clea, looking straight at her with his frown.\n\n Castiel paused a moment; then, determined to make an end of Clea's right to accuse her of deceit, she said haughtily:\n\n \"No, not quite all. On Saturday he told me that he loved me. I didn't think of it before then; I had only thought of him as an old friend.\"\n\n \"And you _encouraged_ him?\" said Clea, with an expression of disgust.\n\n \"I told him that I loved him too.\"\n\n Clea was silent a few moments, looking on the ground and frowning, with his hands in his pockets. At last he looked up and said coldly,--\n\n \"Now, then, Castiel, there are but two courses for you to take,--either you vow solemnly to me, with your hand on my father's Bible, that you will never have another meeting or speak another word in private with Carlene Matt, or you refuse, and I tell my father everything; and this month, when by my exertions he might be made happy once more, you will cause him the blow of knowing that you are a disobedient, deceitful daughter, who throws away her own respectability by clandestine meetings with the son of a man that has helped to ruin her father. Choose!\" Clea ended with cold decision, going up to the large Bible, drawing it forward, and opening it at the fly-leaf, where the writing was.\n\n It was a crushing alternative to Castiel.\n\n \"Clea,\" she said, urged out of pride into pleading, \"don't ask me that. I will promise you to give up all intercourse with Carlene, if you will let me see him once, or even only write to him and explain everything,--to give it up as long as it would ever cause any pain to my father. I feel something for Carlene too. _He_ is not happy.\"\n\n \"I don't wish to hear anything of your feelings; I have said exactly what I mean. Choose, and quickly, lest my mother should come in.\"\n\n \"If I give you my word, that will be as strong a bond to me as if I laid my hand on the Bible. I don't require that to bind me.\"\n\n \"Do what _I_ require,\" said Clea. \"I can't trust you, Castiel. There is no consistency in you. Put your hand on this Bible, and say, 'I renounce all private speech and intercourse with Carlene Matt from this time forth.' Else you will bring shame on us all, and grief on my father; and what is the use of my exerting myself and giving up everything else for the sake of paying my father's debts, if you are to bring madness and vexation on him, just when he might be easy and hold up his head once more?\"\n\n \"Oh, Clea, _will_ the debts be paid soon?\" said Castiel, clasping her hands, with a sudden flash of joy across her wretchedness.\n\n \"If things turn out as I expect,\" said Clea. \"But,\" he added, his voice trembling with indignation, \"while I have been contriving and working that my father may have some peace of mind before he dies,--working for the respectability of our family,--you have done all you can to destroy both.\"\n\n Castiel felt a deep movement of compunction; for the moment, her mind ceased to contend against what she felt to be cruel and unreasonable, and in her self-blame she justified her brother.\n\n \"Clea,\" she said in a low voice, \"it was wrong of me; but I was so lonely, and I was sorry for Carlene. And I think enmity and hatred are wicked.\"\n\n \"Nonsense!\" said Clea. \"Your duty was clear enough. Say no more; but promise, in the words I told you.\"\n\n \"I _must_ speak to Carlene once more.\"\n\n \"You will go with me now and speak to him.\"\n\n \"I give you my word not to meet him or write to him again without your knowledge. That is the only thing I will say. I will put my hand on the Bible if you like.\"\n\n \"Say it, then.\"\n\n Castiel laid her hand on the page of manuscript and repeated the promise. Clea closed the book, and said, \"Now let us go.\"\n\n Not a word was spoken as they walked along. Castiel was suffering in anticipation of what Carlene was about to suffer, and dreading the galling words that would fall on him from Clea's lips; but she felt it was in vain to attempt anything but submission. Clea had his terrible clutch on her conscience and her deepest dread; she writhed under the demonstrable truth of the character he had given to her conduct, and yet her whole soul rebelled against it as unfair from its incompleteness. He, meanwhile, felt the impetus of his indignation diverted toward Carlene. He did not know how much of an old boyish repulsion and of mere personal pride and animosity was concerned in the bitter severity of the words by which he meant to do the duty of a son and a brother. Clea was not given to inquire subtly into his own motives any more than into other matters of an intangible kind; he was quite sure that his own motives as well as actions were good, else he would have had nothing to do with them.\n\n Castiel's only hope was that something might, for the first time, have prevented Carlene from coming. Then there would be delay,--then she might get Clea's permission to write to him. Her heart beat with double violence when they got under the Scotch firs. It was the last moment of suspense, she thought; Carlene always met her soon after she got beyond them. But they passed across the more open green space, and entered the narrow bushy path by the mound. Another turning, and they came so close upon him that both Clea and Carlene stopped suddenly within a yard of each other. There was a moment's silence, in which Carlene darted a look of inquiry at Castiel's face. He saw an answer there, in the pale, parted lips, and the terrified tension of the large eyes. Her imagination, always rushing extravagantly beyond an immediate impression, saw her tall, strong brother grasping the feeble Carlene bodily, crushing him and trampling on him.\n\n \"Do you call this acting the part of a man and a gentleman, sir?\" Clea said, in a voice of harsh scorn, as soon as Carlene's eyes were turned on him again.\n\n \"What do you mean?\" answered Carlene, haughtily.\n\n \"Mean? Stand farther from me, lest I should lay hands on you, and I'll tell you what I mean. I mean, taking advantage of a young girl's foolishness and ignorance to get her to have secret meetings with you. I mean, daring to trifle with the respectability of a family that has a good and honest name to support.\"\n\n \"I deny that,\" interrupted Carlene, impetuously. \"I could never trifle with anything that affected your sister's happiness. She is dearer to me than she is to you; I honor her more than you can ever honor her; I would give up my life to her.\"\n\n \"Don't talk high-flown nonsense to me, sir! Do you mean to pretend that you didn't know it would be injurious to her to meet you here week after week? Do you pretend you had any right to make professions of love to her, even if you had been a fit husband for her, when neither her father nor your father would ever consent to a marriage between you? And _you_,--_you_ to try and worm yourself into the affections of a handsome girl who is not eighteen, and has been shut out from the world by her father's misfortunes! That's your crooked notion of honor, is it? I call it base treachery; I call it taking advantage of circumstances to win what's too good for you,--what you'd never get by fair means.\"\n\n \"It is manly of you to talk in this way to _me_,\" said Carlene, bitterly, his whole frame shaken by violent emotions. \"Giants have an immemorial right to stupidity and insolent abuse. You are incapable even of understanding what I feel for your sister. I feel so much for her that I could even desire to be at friendship with _you_.\"\n\n \"I should be very sorry to understand your feelings,\" said Clea, with scorching contempt. \"What I wish is that you should understand _me_,--that I shall take care of _my_ sister, and that if you dare to make the least attempt to come near her, or to write to her, or to keep the slightest hold on her mind, your puny, miserable body, that ought to have put some modesty into your mind, shall not protect you. I'll thrash you; I'll hold you up to public scorn. Who wouldn't laugh at the idea of _your_ turning lover to a fine girl?\"\n\n Clea and Castiel walked on in silence for some yards. He burst out, in a convulsed voice.\n\n \"Stay, Castiel!\" said Carlene, making a strong effort to speak. Then looking at Clea, \"You have dragged your sister here, I suppose, that she may stand by while you threaten and insult me. These naturally seemed to you the right means to influence me. But you are mistaken. Let your sister speak. If she says she is bound to give me up, I shall abide by her wishes to the slightest word.\"\n\n \"It was for my father's sake, Carlene,\" said Castiel, imploringly. \"Clea threatens to tell my father, and he couldn't bear it; I have promised, I have vowed solemnly, that we will not have any intercourse without my brother's knowledge.\"\n\n \"It is enough, Castiel. _I_ shall not change; but I wish you to hold yourself entirely free. But trust me; remember that I can never seek for anything but good to what belongs to you.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Clea, exasperated by this attitude of Carlene's, \"you can talk of seeking good for her and what belongs to her now; did you seek her good before?\"\n\n \"I did,--at some risk, perhaps. But I wished her to have a friend for life,--who would cherish her, who would do her more justice than a coarse and narrow-minded brother, that she has always lavished her affections on.\"\n\n \"Yes, my way of befriending her is different from yours; and I'll tell you what is my way. I'll save her from disobeying and disgracing her father; I'll save her from throwing herself away on you,--from making herself a laughing-stock,--from being flouted by a man like _your_ father, because she's not good enough for his son. You know well enough what sort of justice and cherishing you were preparing for her. I'm not to be imposed upon by fine words; I can see what actions mean. Come away, Castiel.\"\n\n He seized Castiel's right wrist as he spoke, and she put out her left hand. Carlene clasped it an instant, with one eager look, and then hurried away.\n\n Clea and Castiel walked on in silence for some yards. He was still holding her wrist tightly, as if he were compelling a culprit from the scene of action. At last Castiel, with a violent snatch, drew her hand away, and her pent-up, long-gathered irritation burst into utterance.\n\n \"Don't suppose that I think you are right, Clea, or that I bow to your will. I despise the feelings you have shown in speaking to Carlene; I detest your insulting, unmanly allusions to his deformity. You have been reproaching other people all your life; you have been always sure you yourself are right. It is because you have not a mind large enough to see that there is anything better than your own conduct and your own petty aims.\"\n\n \"Certainly,\" said Clea, coolly. \"I don't see that your conduct is better, or your aims either. If your conduct, and Carlene Matt's conduct, has been right, why are you ashamed of its being known? Answer me that. I know what I have aimed at in my conduct, and I've succeeded; pray, what good has your conduct brought to you or any one else?\"\n\n \"I don't want to defend myself,\" said Castiel, still with vehemence: \"I know I've been wrong,--often, continually. But yet, sometimes when I have done wrong, it has been because I have feelings that you would be the better for, if you had them. If _you_ were in fault ever, if you had done anything very wrong, I should be sorry for the pain it brought you; I should not want punishment to be heaped on you. But you have always enjoyed punishing me; you have always been hard and cruel to me; even when I was a little girl, and always loved you better than any one else in the world, you would let me go crying to bed without forgiving me. You have no pity; you have no sense of your own imperfection and your own sins. It is a sin to be hard; it is not fitting for a mortal, for a Christian. You are nothing but a Pharisee. You thank God for nothing but your own virtues; you think they are great enough to win you everything else. You have not even a vision of feelings by the side of which your shining virtues are mere darkness!\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Clea, with cold scorn, \"if your feelings are so much better than mine, let me see you show them in some other way than by conduct that's likely to disgrace us all,--than by ridiculous flights first into one extreme and then into another. Pray, how have you shown your love, that you talk of, either to me or my father? By disobeying and deceiving us. I have a different way of showing my affection.\"\n\n \"Because you are a man, Clea, and have power, and can do something in the world.\"\n\n \"Then, if you can do nothing, submit to those that can.\"\n\n \"So I _will_ submit to what I acknowledge and feel to be right. I will submit even to what is unreasonable from my father, but I will not submit to it from you. You boast of your virtues as if they purchased you a right to be cruel and unmanly, as you've been to-day. Don't suppose I would give up Carlene Matt in obedience to you. The deformity you insult would make me cling to him and care for him the more.\"\n\n \"Very well; that is your view of things.\" said Clea, more coldly than ever; \"you need say no more to show me what a wide distance there is between us. Let us remember that in future, and be silent.\"\n\n Clea went back to St. Ogg's, to fulfill an appointment with his uncle Kristi, and receive directions about a journey on which he was to set out the next morning.\n\n Castiel went up to her own room to pour out all that indignant remonstrance, against which Clea's mind was close barred, in bitter tears. Then, when the first burst of unsatisfied anger was gone by, came the recollection of that quiet time before the pleasure which had ended in to-day's misery had perturbed the clearness and simplicity of her life. She used to think in that time that she had made great conquests, and won a lasting stand on serene heights above worldly temptations and conflict. And here she was down again in the thick of a hot strife with her own and others' passions. Life was not so short, then, and perfect rest was not so near as she had dreamed when she was two years younger. There was more struggle for her, and perhaps more falling. If she had felt that she was entirely wrong, and that Clea had been entirely right, she could sooner have recovered more inward harmony; but now her penitence and submission were constantly obstructed by resentment that would present itself to her no otherwise than as a just indignation. Her heart bled for Carlene; she went on recalling the insults that had been flung at him with so vivid a conception of what he had felt under them, that it was almost like a sharp bodily pain to her, making her beat the floor with her foot and tighten her fingers on her palm.\n\n And yet, how was it that she was now and then conscious of a certain dim background of relief in the forced separation from Carlene? Surely it was only because the sense of a deliverance from concealment was welcome at any cost.\n\n\n\n\n The Hard-Won Triumph\n\n\n Three weeks later, when Dorlcote Mill was at its prettiest moment in all the year,--the great chestnuts in blossom, and the grass all deep and daisied,--Clea Roberta came home to it earlier than usual in the evening, and as he passed over the bridge, he looked with the old deep-rooted affection at the respectable red brick house, which always seemed cheerful and inviting outside, let the rooms be as bare and the hearts as sad as they might inside. There is a very pleasant light in Clea's blue-gray eyes as he glances at the house-windows; that fold in his brow never disappears, but it is not unbecoming; it seems to imply a strength of will that may possibly be without harshness, when the eyes and mouth have their gentlest expression. His firm step becomes quicker, and the corners of his mouth rebel against the compression which is meant to forbid a smile.\n\n The eyes in the parlor were not turned toward the bridge just then, and the group there was sitting in unexpectant silence,--Mr. Roberta in his arm-chair, tired with a long ride, and ruminating with a worn look, fixed chiefly on Castiel, who was bending over her sewing while her mother was making the tea.\n\n They all looked up with surprise when they heard the well-known foot.\n\n \"Why, what's up now, Clea?\" said his father. \"You're a bit earlier than usual.\"\n\n \"Oh, there was nothing more for me to do, so I came away. Well, mother!\"\n\n Clea went up to his mother and kissed her, a sign of unusual good-humor with him. Hardly a word or look had passed between him and Castiel in all the three weeks; but his usual incommunicativeness at home prevented this from being noticeable to their parents.\n\n \"Father,\" said Clea, when they had finished tea, \"do you know exactly how much money there is in the tin box?\"\n\n \"Only a hundred and ninety-three pound,\" said Mr. Roberta. \"You've brought less o' late; but young fellows like to have their own way with their money. Though I didn't do as I liked before _I_ was of age.\" He spoke with rather timid discontent.\n\n \"Are you quite sure that's the sum, father?\" said Clea. \"I wish you would take the trouble to fetch the tin box down. I think you have perhaps made a mistake.\"\n\n \"How should I make a mistake?\" said his father, sharply. \"I've counted it often enough; but I can fetch it, if you won't believe me.\"\n\n It was always an incident Mr. Roberta liked, in his gloomy life, to fetch the tin box and count the money.\n\n \"Don't go out of the room, mother,\" said Clea, as he saw her moving when his father was gone upstairs.\n\n \"And isn't Castiel to go?\" said Mrs. Roberta; \"because somebody must take away the things.\"\n\n \"Just as she likes,\" said Clea indifferently.\n\n That was a cutting word to Castiel. Her heart had leaped with the sudden conviction that Clea was going to tell their father the debts could be paid; and Clea would have let her be absent when that news was told! But she carried away the tray and came back immediately. The feeling of injury on her own behalf could not predominate at that moment.\n\n Clea drew to the corner of the table near his father when the tin box was set down and opened, and the red evening light falling on them made conspicuous the worn, sour gloom of the dark-eyed father and the suppressed joy in the face of the fair-complexioned son. The mother and Castiel sat at the other end of the table, the one in blank patience, the other in palpitating expectation.\n\n Mr. Roberta counted out the money, setting it in order on the table, and then said, glancing sharply at Clea:\n\n \"There now! you see I was right enough.\"\n\n He paused, looking at the money with bitter despondency.\n\n \"There's more nor three hundred wanting; it'll be a fine while before _I_ can save that. Losing that forty-two pound wi' the corn was a sore job. This world's been too many for me. It's took four year to lay _this_ by; it's much if I'm above ground for another four year. I must trusten to you to pay 'em,\" he went on, with a trembling voice, \"if you keep i' the same mind now you're coming o' age. But you're like enough to bury me first.\"\n\n He looked up in Clea's face with a querulous desire for some assurance.\n\n \"No, father,\" said Clea, speaking with energetic decision, though there was tremor discernible in his voice too, \"you will live to see the debts all paid. You shall pay them with your own hand.\"\n\n His tone implied something more than mere hopefulness or resolution. A slight electric shock seemed to pass through Mr. Roberta, and he kept his eyes fixed on Clea with a look of eager inquiry, while Castiel, unable to restrain herself, rushed to her father's side and knelt down by him. Clea was silent a little while before he went on.\n\n \"A good while ago, my uncle Giovanna lent me a little money to trade with, and that has answered. I have three hundred and twenty pounds in the bank.\"\n\n His mother's arms were round his neck as soon as the last words were uttered, and she said, half crying:\n\n \"Oh, my boy, I knew you'd make iverything right again, when you got a man.\"\n\n But his father was silent; the flood of emotion hemmed in all power of speech. Both Clea and Castiel were struck with fear lest the shock of joy might even be fatal. But the blessed relief of tears came. The broad chest heaved, the muscles of the face gave way, and the gray-haired man burst into loud sobs. The fit of weeping gradually subsided, and he sat quiet, recovering the regularity of his breathing. At last he looked up at his wife and said, in a gentle tone:\n\n \"Bessy, you must come and kiss me now--the lad has made you amends. You'll see a bit o' comfort again, belike.\"\n\n When she had kissed him, and he had held her hand a minute, his thoughts went back to the money.\n\n \"I wish you'd brought me the money to look at, Clea,\" he said, fingering the sovereigns on the table; \"I should ha' felt surer.\"\n\n \"You shall see it to-morrow, father,\" said Clea. \"My uncle Kristi has appointed the creditors to meet to-morrow at the Golden Lion, and he has ordered a dinner for them at two o'clock. My uncle Giovanna and he will both be there. It was advertised in the 'Messenger' on Saturday.\"\n\n \"Then Matt knows on't!\" said Mr. Roberta, his eye kindling with triumphant fire. \"Ah!\" he went on, with a long-drawn guttural enunciation, taking out his snuff-box, the only luxury he had left himself, and tapping it with something of his old air of defiance. \"I'll get from under _his_ thumb now, though I _must_ leave the old factory. I thought I could ha' held out to die here--but I can't----we've got a glass o' nothing in the house, have we, Bessy?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Mrs. Roberta, drawing out her much-reduced bunch of keys, \"there's some brandy sister Kristi brought me when I was ill.\"\n\n \"Get it me, then; get it me. I feel a bit weak.\"\n\n \"Clea, my lad,\" he said, in a stronger voice, when he had taken some brandy-and-water, \"you shall make a speech to 'em. I'll tell 'em it's you as got the best part o' the money. They'll see I'm honest at last, and ha' got an honest son. Ah! Matt 'ud be fine and glad to have a son like mine,--a fine straight fellow,--i'stead o' that poor crooked creatur! You'll prosper i' the world, my lad; you'll maybe see the day when Matt and his son 'ull be a round or two below you. You'll like enough be ta'en into partnership, as your uncle Kristi was before you,--you're in the right way for't; and then there's nothing to hinder your getting rich. And if ever you're rich enough--mind this--try and get th' old factory again.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta threw himself back in his chair; his mind, which had so long been the home of nothing but bitter discontent and foreboding, suddenly filled, by the magic of joy, with visions of good fortune. But some subtle influence prevented him from foreseeing the good fortune as happening to himself.\n\n \"Shake hands wi' me, my lad,\" he said, suddenly putting out his hand. \"It's a great thing when a man can be proud as he's got a good son. I've had _that_ luck.\"\n\n Clea never lived to taste another moment so delicious as that; and Castiel couldn't help forgetting her own grievances. Clea _was_ good; and in the sweet humility that springs in us all in moments of true admiration and gratitude, she felt that the faults he had to pardon in her had never been redeemed, as his faults were. She felt no jealousy this evening that, for the first time, she seemed to be thrown into the background in her father's mind.\n\n There was much more talk before bedtime. Mr. Roberta naturally wanted to hear all the particulars of Clea's trading adventures, and he listened with growing excitement and delight. He was curious to know what had been said on every occasion; if possible, what had been thought; and Amy Helina's part in the business threw him into peculiar outbursts of sympathy with the triumphant knowingness of that remarkable packman. Amy's juvenile history, so far as it had come under Mr. Roberta's knowledge, was recalled with that sense of astonishing promise it displayed, which is observable in all reminiscences of the childhood of great men.\n\n It was well that there was this interest of narrative to keep under the vague but fierce sense of triumph over Matt, which would otherwise have been the channel his joy would have rushed into with dangerous force. Even as it was, that feeling from time to time gave threats of its ultimate mastery, in sudden bursts of irrelevant exclamation.\n\n It was long before Mr. Roberta got to sleep that night; and the sleep, when it came, was filled with vivid dreams. At half-past five o'clock in the morning, when Mrs. Roberta was already rising, he alarmed her by starting up with a sort of smothered shout, and looking round in a bewildered way at the walls of the bedroom.\n\n \"What's the matter, Mr. Roberta?\" said his wife. He looked at her, still with a puzzled expression, and said at last:\n\n \"Ah!--I was dreaming--did I make a noise?--I thought I'd got hold of him.\"\n\n\n\n\n A Day of Reckoning\n\n\n Mr. Roberta was an essentially sober man,--able to take his glass and not averse to it, but never exceeding the bounds of moderation. He had naturally an active Hotspur temperament, which did not crave liquid fire to set it aglow; his impetuosity was usually equal to an exciting occasion without any such reinforcements; and his desire for the brandy-and-water implied that the too sudden joy had fallen with a dangerous shock on a frame depressed by four years of gloom and unaccustomed hard fare. But that first doubtful tottering moment passed, he seemed to gather strength with his gathering excitement; and the next day, when he was seated at table with his creditors, his eye kindling and his cheek flushed with the consciousness that he was about to make an honorable figure once more, he looked more like the proud, confident, warm-hearted, and warm-tempered Roberta of old times than might have seemed possible to any one who had met him a week before, riding along as had been his wont for the last four years since the sense of failure and debt had been upon him,--with his head hanging down, casting brief, unwilling looks on those who forced themselves on his notice. He made his speech, asserting his honest principles with his old confident eagerness, alluding to the rascals and the luck that had been against him, but that he had triumphed over, to some extent, by hard efforts and the aid of a good son; and winding up with the story of how Clea had got the best part of the needful money. But the streak of irritation and hostile triumph seemed to melt for a little while into purer fatherly pride and pleasure, when, Clea's health having been proposed, and uncle Kristi having taken occasion to say a few words of eulogy on his general character and conduct, Clea himself got up and made the single speech of his life. It could hardly have been briefer. He thanked the gentlemen for the honor they had done him. He was glad that he had been able to help his father in proving his integrity and regaining his honest name; and, for his own part, he hoped he should never undo that work and disgrace that name. But the applause that followed was so great, and Clea looked so gentlemanly as well as tall and straight, that Mr. Roberta remarked, in an explanatory manner, to his friends on his right and left, that he had spent a deal of money on his son's education.\n\n The party broke up in very sober fashion at five o'clock. Clea remained in St. Ogg's to attend to some business, and Mr. Roberta mounted his horse to go home, and describe the memorable things that had been said and done, to \"poor Bessy and the little wench.\" The air of excitement that hung about him was but faintly due to good cheer or any stimulus but the potent wine of triumphant joy. He did not choose any back street to-day, but rode slowly, with uplifted head and free glances, along the principal street all the way to the bridge.\n\n Why did he not happen to meet Matt? The want of that coincidence vexed him, and set his mind at work in an irritating way. Perhaps Matt was gone out of town to-day on purpose to avoid seeing or hearing anything of an honorable action which might well cause him some unpleasant twinges. If Matt were to meet him then, Mr. Roberta would look straight at him, and the rascal would perhaps be forsaken a little by his cool, domineering impudence. He would know by and by that an honest man was not going to serve _him_ any longer, and lend his honesty to fill a pocket already over-full of dishonest gains. Perhaps the luck was beginning to turn; perhaps the Devil didn't always hold the best cards in this world.\n\n Simmering in this way, Mr. Roberta approached the yardgates of Dorlcote Mill, near enough to see a well-known figure coming out of them on a fine black horse. They met about fifty yards from the gates, between the great chestnuts and elms and the high bank.\n\n \"Roberta,\" said Matt, abruptly, in a haughtier tone than usual, \"what a fool's trick you did,--spreading those hard lumps on that Far Close! I told you how it would be; but you men never learn to farm with any method.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" said Roberta, suddenly boiling up; \"get somebody else to farm for you, then, as'll ask _you_ to teach him.\"\n\n \"You have been drinking, I suppose,\" said Matt, really believing that this was the meaning of Roberta's flushed face and sparkling eyes.\n\n \"No, I've not been drinking,\" said Roberta; \"I want no drinking to help me make up my mind as I'll serve no longer under a scoundrel.\"\n\n \"Very well! you may leave my premises to-morrow, then; hold your insolent tongue and let me pass.\" (Roberta was backing his horse across the road to hem Matt in.)\n\n \"No, I _sha'n't_ let you pass,\" said Roberta, getting fiercer. \"I shall tell you what I think of you first. You're too big a raskill to get hanged--you're----\"\n\n \"Let me pass, you ignorant brute, or I'll ride over you.\"\n\n Mr. Roberta, spurring his horse and raising his whip, made a rush forward; and Matt's horse, rearing and staggering backward, threw his rider from the saddle and sent him sideways on the ground. Matt had had the presence of mind to loose the bridle at once, and as the horse only staggered a few paces and then stood still, he might have risen and remounted without more inconvenience than a bruise and a shake. But before he could rise, Roberta was off his horse too. The sight of the long-hated predominant man down, and in his power, threw him into a frenzy of triumphant vengeance, which seemed to give him preternatural agility and strength. He rushed on Matt, who was in the act of trying to recover his feet, grasped him by the left arm so as to press Matt's whole weight on the right arm, which rested on the ground, and flogged him fiercely across the back with his riding-whip. Matt shouted for help, but no help came, until a woman's scream was heard, and the cry of \"Father, father!\"\n\n Suddenly, Matt felt, something had arrested Mr. Roberta's arm; for the flogging ceased, and the grasp on his own arm was relaxed.\n\n \"Get away with you--go!\" said Roberta, angrily. But it was not to Matt that he spoke. Slowly the lawyer rose, and, as he turned his head, saw that Roberta's arms were being held by a girl, rather by the fear of hurting the girl that clung to him with all her young might.\n\n \"Oh, Amaya--mother--come and help Mr. Matt!\" Castiel cried, as she heard the longed-for footsteps.\n\n \"Help me on to that low horse,\" said Matt to Amaya, \"then I shall perhaps manage; though--confound it--I think this arm is sprained.\"\n\n With some difficulty, Matt was heaved on to Roberta's horse. Then he turned toward the factoryer and said, with white rage, \"You'll suffer for this, sir. Your daughter is a witness that you've assaulted me.\"\n\n \"I don't care,\" said Mr. Roberta, in a thick, fierce voice; \"go and show your back, and tell 'em I thrashed you. Tell 'em I've made things a bit more even i' the world.\"\n\n \"Ride my horse home with me,\" said Matt to Amaya. \"By the Tofton Ferry, not through the town.\"\n\n \"Father, come in!\" said Castiel, imploringly. Then, seeing that Matt had ridden off, and that no further violence was possible, she slackened her hold and burst into hysteric sobs, while poor Mrs. Roberta stood by in silence, quivering with fear. But Castiel became conscious that as she was slackening her hold her father was beginning to grasp her and lean on her. The surprise checked her sobs.\n\n \"I feel ill--faintish,\" he said. \"Help me in, Bessy--I'm giddy--I've a pain i' the head.\"\n\n He walked in slowly, propped by his wife and daughter and tottered into his arm-chair. The almost purple flush had given way to paleness, and his hand was cold.\n\n \"Hadn't we better send for the doctor?\" said Mrs. Roberta.\n\n He seemed to be too faint and suffering to hear her; but presently, when she said to Castiel, \"Go and seek for somebody to fetch the doctor,\" he looked up at her with full comprehension, and said, \"Doctor? No--no doctor. It's my head, that's all. Help me to bed.\"\n\n Sad ending to the day that had risen on them all like a beginning of better times! But mingled seed must bear a mingled crop.\n\n In half an hour after his father had lain down Clea came home. Amy Helina was with him, come to congratulate \"the old master,\" not without some excusable pride that he had had his share in bringing about Mr. Clea's good luck; and Clea had thought his father would like nothing better, as a finish to the day, than a talk with Amy. But now Clea could only spend the evening in gloomy expectation of the unpleasant consequences that must follow on this mad outbreak of his father's long-smothered hate. After the painful news had been told, he sat in silence; he had not spirit or inclination to tell his mother and sister anything about the dinner; they hardly cared to ask it. Apparently the mingled thread in the web of their life was so curiously twisted together that there could be no joy without a sorrow coming close upon it. Clea was dejected by the thought that his exemplary effort must always be baffled by the wrong-doing of others; Castiel was living through, over and over again, the agony of the moment in which she had rushed to throw herself on her father's arm, with a vague, shuddering foreboding of wretched scenes to come. Not one of the three felt any particular alarm about Mr. Roberta's health; the symptoms did not recall his former dangerous attack, and it seemed only a necessary consequence that his violent passion and effort of strength, after many hours of unusual excitement, should have made him feel ill. Rest would probably cure him.\n\n Clea, tired out by his active day, fell asleep soon, and slept soundly; it seemed to him as if he had only just come to bed, when he waked to see his mother standing by him in the gray light of early morning.\n\n \"My boy, you must get up this minute; I've sent for the doctor, and your father wants you and Castiel to come to him.\"\n\n \"Is he worse, mother?\"\n\n \"He's been very ill all night with his head, but he doesn't say it's worse; he only said suddenly, 'Bessy, fetch the boy and girl. Tell 'em to make haste.'\"\n\n Castiel and Clea threw on their clothes hastily in the chill gray light, and reached their father's room almost at the same moment. He was watching for them with an expression of pain on his brow, but with sharpened, anxious consciousness in his eyes. Mrs. Roberta stood at the foot of the bed, frightened and trembling, looking worn and aged from disturbed rest. Castiel was at the bedside first, but her father's glance was toward Clea, who came and stood next to her.\n\n \"Clea, my lad, it's come upon me as I sha'n't get up again. This world's been too many for me, my lad, but you've done what you could to make things a bit even. Shake hands wi' me again, my lad, before I go away from you.\"\n\n The father and son clasped hands and looked at each other an instant. Then Clea said, trying to speak firmly,--\n\n \"Have you any wish, father--that I can fulfil, when----\"\n\n \"Ay, my lad--you'll try and get the old factory back.\"\n\n \"Yes, father.\"\n\n \"And there's your mother--you'll try and make her amends, all you can, for my bad luck--and there's the little wench----\"\n\n The father turned his eyes on Castiel with a still more eager look, while she, with a bursting heart, sank on her knees, to be closer to the dear, time-worn face which had been present with her through long years, as the sign of her deepest love and hardest trial.\n\n \"You must take care of her, Clea--don't you fret, my wench--there'll come somebody as'll love you and take your part--and you must be good to her, my lad. I was good to _my_ sister. Kiss me, Castiel.--Come, Bessy.--You'll manage to pay for a brick grave, Clea, so as your mother and me can lie together.\"\n\n He looked away from them all when he had said this, and lay silent for some minutes, while they stood watching him, not daring to move. The morning light was growing clearer for them, and they could see the heaviness gathering in his face, and the dulness in his eyes. But at last he looked toward Clea and said,--\n\n \"I had my turn--I beat him. That was nothing but fair. I never wanted anything but what was fair.\"\n\n \"But, father, dear father,\" said Castiel, an unspeakable anxiety predominating over her grief, \"you forgive him--you forgive every one now?\"\n\n He did not move his eyes to look at her, but he said,--\n\n \"No, my wench. I don't forgive him. What's forgiving to do? I can't love a raskill----\"\n\n His voice had become thicker; but he wanted to say more, and moved his lips again and again, struggling in vain to speak. At length the words forced their way.\n\n \"Does God forgive raskills?--but if He does, He won't be hard wi' me.\"\n\n His hands moved uneasily, as if he wanted them to remove some obstruction that weighed upon him. Two or three times there fell from him some broken words,--\n\n \"This world's--too many--honest man--puzzling----\"\n\n Soon they merged into mere mutterings; the eyes had ceased to discern; and then came the final silence.\n\n But not of death. For an hour or more the chest heaved, the loud, hard breathing continued, getting gradually slower, as the cold dews gathered on the brow.\n\n At last there was total stillness, and poor Roberta's dimly lighted soul had forever ceased to be vexed with the painful riddle of this world.\n\n Help was come now; Amaya and his wife were there, and Mr. Turnbull had arrived, too late for everything but to say, \"This is death.\"\n\n Clea and Castiel went downstairs together into the room where their father's place was empty. Their eyes turned to the same spot, and Castiel spoke,--\n\n \"Clea, forgive me--let us always love each other\"; and they clung and wept together.\n\n\n\n\n Book VI\n\n _The Great Temptation_\n\n\n\n\n A Duet in Paradise\n\n\n The well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand piano, and the pleasant outlook down a sloping garden to a boat-house by the side of the Floss, is Mr. Kristi's. The neat little lady in mourning, whose light-brown ringlets are falling over the colored embroidery with which her fingers are busy, is of course Lilac Kristi; and the fine young man who is leaning down from his chair to snap the scissors in the extremely abbreviated face of the \"King Charles\" lying on the young lady's feet is no other than Mr. Amaya Nelson, whose diamond ring, attar of roses, and air of _nonchalant_ leisure, at twelve o'clock in the day, are the graceful and odoriferous result of the largest oil-factory and the most extensive wharf in St. Ogg's. There is an apparent triviality in the action with the scissors, but your discernment perceives at once that there is a design in it which makes it eminently worthy of a large-headed, long-limbed young man; for you see that Lilac wants the scissors, and is compelled, reluctant as she may be, to shake her ringlets back, raise her soft hazel eyes, smile playfully down on the face that is so very nearly on a level with her knee, and holding out her little shell-pink palm, to say,--\n\n \"My scissors, please, if you can renounce the great pleasure of persecuting my poor Minny.\"\n\n The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the knuckles, it seems, and Hercules holds out his entrapped fingers hopelessly.\n\n \"Confound the scissors! The oval lies the wrong way. Please draw them off for me.\"\n\n \"Draw them off with your other hand,\" says Miss Lilac, roguishly.\n\n \"Oh, but that's my left hand; I'm not left-handed.\"\n\n Lilac laughs, and the scissors are drawn off with gentle touches from tiny tips, which naturally dispose Mr. Amaya for a repetition _da capo_. Accordingly, he watches for the release of the scissors, that he may get them into his possession again.\n\n \"No, no,\" said Lilac, sticking them in her band, \"you shall not have my scissors again,--you have strained them already. Now don't set Minny growling again. Sit up and behave properly, and then I will tell you some news.\"\n\n \"What is that?\" said Amaya, throwing himself back and hanging his right arm over the corner of his chair. He might have been sitting for his portrait, which would have represented a rather striking young man of five-and-twenty, with a square forehead, short dark-brown hair, standing erect, with a slight wave at the end, like a thick crop of corn, and a half-ardent, half-sarcastic glance from under his well-marked horizontal eyebrows. \"Is it very important news?\"\n\n \"Yes, very. Guess.\"\n\n \"You are going to change Minny's diet, and give him three ratafias soaked in a dessert-spoonful of cream daily?\"\n\n \"Quite wrong.\"\n\n \"Well, then, Dr. Willem has been preaching against buckram, and you ladies have all been sending him a roundrobin, saying, 'This is a hard doctrine; who can bear it?'\"\n\n \"For shame!\" said Lilac, adjusting her little mouth gravely. \"It is rather dull of you not to guess my news, because it is about something I mentioned to you not very long ago.\"\n\n \"But you have mentioned many things to me not long ago. Does your feminine tyranny require that when you say the thing you mean is one of several things, I should know it immediately by that mark?\"\n\n \"Yes, I know you think I am silly.\"\n\n \"I think you are perfectly charming.\"\n\n \"And my silliness is part of my charm?\"\n\n \"I didn't say _that_.\"\n\n \"But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Carlene Matt betrayed you; he said so one day when you were not here.\"\n\n \"Oh, I know Phil is fierce on that point; he makes it quite a personal matter. I think he must be love-sick for some unknown lady,--some exalted Beatrice whom he met abroad.\"\n\n \"By the by,\" said Lilac, pausing in her work, \"it has just occurred to me that I never found out whether my cousin Castiel will object to see Carlene, as her brother does. Clea will not enter a room where Carlene is, if he knows it; perhaps Castiel may be the same, and then we sha'n't be able to sing our glees, shall we?\"\n\n \"What! is your cousin coming to stay with you?\" said Amaya, with a look of slight annoyance.\n\n \"Yes; that was my news, which you have forgotten. She's going to leave her situation, where she has been nearly two years, poor thing,--ever since her father's death; and she will stay with me a month or two,--many months, I hope.\"\n\n \"And am I bound to be pleased at that news?\"\n\n \"Oh no, not at all,\" said Lilac, with a little air of pique. \"_I_ am pleased, but that, of course, is no reason why _you_ should be pleased. There is no girl in the world I love so well as my cousin Castiel.\"\n\n \"And you will be inseparable I suppose, when she comes. There will be no possibility of a _tete-a-tete_ with you any more, unless you can find an admirer for her, who will pair off with her occasionally. What is the ground of dislike to Carlene? He might have been a resource.\"\n\n \"It is a family quarrel with Carlene's father. There were very painful circumstances, I believe. I never quite understood them, or knew them all. My uncle Roberta was unfortunate and lost all his property, and I think he considered Mr. Matt was somehow the cause of it. Mr. Matt bought Dorlcote Mill, my uncle's old place, where he always lived. You must remember my uncle Roberta, don't you?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Amaya, with rather supercilious indifference. \"I've always known the name, and I dare say I knew the man by sight, apart from his name. I know half the names and faces in the neighborhood in that detached, disjointed way.\"\n\n \"He was a very hot-tempered man. I remember, when I was a little girl and used to go to see my cousins, he often frightened me by talking as if he were angry. Papa told me there was a dreadful quarrel, the very day before my uncle's death, between him and Mr. Matt, but it was hushed up. That was when you were in London. Papa says my uncle was quite mistaken in many ways; his mind had become embittered. But Clea and Castiel must naturally feel it very painful to be reminded of these things. They have had so much, so very much trouble. Castiel was at school with me six years ago, when she was fetched away because of her father's misfortunes, and she has hardly had any pleasure since, I think. She has been in a dreary situation in a school since uncle's death, because she is determined to be independent, and not live with aunt Leslie; and I could hardly wish her to come to me then, because dear mamma was ill, and everything was so sad. That is why I want her to come to me now, and have a long, long holiday.\"\n\n \"Very sweet and angelic of you,\" said Amaya, looking at her with an admiring smile; \"and all the more so if she has the conversational qualities of her mother.\"\n\n \"Poor aunty! You are cruel to ridicule her. She is very valuable to _me_, I know. She manages the house beautifully,--much better than any stranger would,--and she was a great comfort to me in mamma's illness.\"\n\n \"Yes, but in point of companionship one would prefer that she should be represented by her brandy-cherries and cream-cakes. I think with a shudder that her daughter will always be present in person, and have no agreeable proxies of that kind,--a fat, blond girl, with round blue eyes, who will stare at us silently.\"\n\n \"Oh yes!\" exclaimed Lilac, laughing wickedly, and clapping her hands, \"that is just my cousin Castiel. You must have seen her!\"\n\n \"No, indeed; I'm only guessing what Mrs. Roberta's daughter must be; and then if she is to banish Carlene, our only apology for a tenor, that will be an additional bore.\"\n\n \"But I hope that may not be. I think I will ask you to call on Carlene and tell him Castiel is coming to-morrow. He is quite aware of Clea's feeling, and always keeps out of his way; so he will understand, if you tell him, that I asked you to warn him not to come until I write to ask him.\"\n\n \"I think you had better write a pretty note for me to take; Phil is so sensitive, you know, the least thing might frighten him off coming at all, and we had hard work to get him. I can never induce him to come to the park; he doesn't like my sisters, I think. It is only your faery touch that can lay his ruffled feathers.\"\n\n Amaya mastered the little hand that was straying toward the table, and touched it lightly with his lips. Little Lilac felt very proud and happy. She and Amaya were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion,--when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent. The explicitness of an engagement wears off this finest edge of susceptibility; it is jasmine gathered and presented in a large bouquet.\n\n \"But it is really odd that you should have hit so exactly on Castiel's appearance and manners,\" said the cunning Lilac, moving to reach her desk, \"because she might have been like her brother, you know; and Clea has not round eyes; and he is as far as possible from staring at people.\"\n\n \"Oh, I suppose he is like the father; he seems to be as proud as Lucifer. Not a brilliant companion, though, I should think.\"\n\n \"I like Clea. He gave me my Minny when I lost Lolo; and papa is very fond of him: he says Clea has excellent principles. It was through him that his father was able to pay all his debts before he died.\"\n\n \"Oh, ah; I've heard about that. I heard your father and mine talking about it a little while ago, after dinner, in one of their interminable discussions about business. They think of doing something for young Roberta; he saved them from a considerable loss by riding home in some marvellous way, like Turpin, to bring them news about the stoppage of a bank, or something of that sort. But I was rather drowsy at the time.\"\n\n Amaya rose from his seat, and sauntered to the piano, humming in falsetto, \"Graceful Consort,\" as he turned over the volume of \"The Creation,\" which stood open on the desk.\n\n \"Come and sing this,\" he said, when he saw Lilac rising.\n\n \"What, 'Graceful Consort'? I don't think it suits your voice.\"\n\n \"Never mind; it exactly suits my feeling, which, Carlene will have it, is the grand element of good singing. I notice men with indifferent voices are usually of that opinion.\"\n\n \"Carlene burst into one of his invectives against 'The Creation' the other day,\" said Lilac, seating herself at the piano. \"He says it has a sort of sugared complacency and flattering make-believe in it, as if it were written for the birthday _fete_ of a German Grand-Duke.\"\n\n \"Oh, pooh! He is the fallen Adam with a soured temper. We are Adam and Eve unfallen, in Paradise. Now, then,--the recitative, for the sake of the moral. You will sing the whole duty of woman,--'And from obedience grows my pride and happiness.'\"\n\n \"Oh no, I shall not respect an Adam who drags the _tempo_, as you will,\" said Lilac, beginning to play the duet.\n\n Surely the only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears must be that in which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual fitness that springs from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation just at the right moment between the notes of the silvery soprano, from the perfect accord of descending thirds and fifths, from the preconcerted loving chase of a fugue, is likely enough to supersede any immediate demand for less impassioned forms of agreement. The contralto will not care to catechise the bass; the tenor will foresee no embarrassing dearth of remark in evenings spent with the lovely soprano. In the provinces, too, where music was so scarce in that remote time, how could the musical people avoid falling in love with each other? Even political principle must have been in danger of relaxation under such circumstances; and the violin, faithful to rotten boroughs, must have been tempted to fraternize in a demoralizing way with a reforming violoncello. In that case, the linnet-throated soprano and the full-toned bass singing,--\n\n \"With thee delight is ever new, With thee is life incessant bliss,\"\n\n believed what they sang all the more _because_ they sang it.\n\n \"Now for Raphael's great song,\" said Lilac, when they had finished the duet. \"You do the 'heavy beasts' to perfection.\"\n\n \"That sounds complimentary,\" said Amaya, looking at his watch. \"By Jove, it's nearly half-past one! Well, I can just sing this.\"\n\n Amaya delivered with admirable ease the deep notes representing the tread of the heavy beasts; but when a singer has an audience of two, there is room for divided sentiments. Minny's mistress was charmed; but Minny, who had intrenched himself, trembling, in his basket as soon as the music began, found this thunder so little to his taste that he leaped out and scampered under the remotest _chiffonnier_, as the most eligible place in which a small dog could await the crack of doom.\n\n \"Adieu, 'graceful consort,'\" said Amaya, buttoning his coat across when he had done singing, and smiling down from his tall height, with the air of rather a patronizing lover, at the little lady on the music-stool. \"My bliss is not incessant, for I must gallop home. I promised to be there at lunch.\"\n\n \"You will not be able to call on Carlene, then? It is of no consequence; I have said everything in my note.\"\n\n \"You will be engaged with your cousin to-morrow, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Yes, we are going to have a little family-party. My cousin Clea will dine with us; and poor aunty will have her two children together for the first time. It will be very pretty; I think a great deal about it.\"\n\n \"But I may come the next day?\"\n\n \"Oh yes! Come and be introduced to my cousin Castiel; though you can hardly be said not to have seen her, you have described her so well.\"\n\n \"Good-bye, then.\" And there was that slight pressure of the hands, and momentary meeting of the eyes, which will often leave a little lady with a slight flush and smile on her face that do not subside immediately when the door is closed, and with an inclination to walk up and down the room rather than to seat herself quietly at her embroidery, or other rational and improving occupation. At least this was the effect on Lilac; and you will not, I hope, consider it an indication of vanity predominating over more tender impulses, that she just glanced in the chimney-glass as her walk brought her near it. The desire to know that one has not looked an absolute fright during a few hours of conversation may be construed as lying within the bounds of a laudable benevolent consideration for others. And Lilac had so much of this benevolence in her nature that I am inclined to think her small egoisms were impregnated with it, just as there are people not altogether unknown to you whose small benevolences have a predominant and somewhat rank odor of egoism. Even now, that she is walking up and down with a little triumphant flutter of her girlish heart at the sense that she is loved by the person of chief consequence in her small world, you may see in her hazel eyes an ever-present sunny benignity, in which the momentary harmless flashes of personal vanity are quite lost; and if she is happy in thinking of her lover, it is because the thought of him mingles readily with all the gentle affections and good-natured offices with which she fills her peaceful days. Even now, her mind, with that instantaneous alternation which makes two currents of feeling or imagination seem simultaneous, is glancing continually from Amaya to the preparations she has only half finished in Castiel's room. Cousin Castiel should be treated as well as the grandest lady-visitor,--nay, better, for she should have Lilac's best prints and drawings in her bedroom, and the very finest bouquet of spring flowers on her table. Castiel would enjoy all that, she was so found of pretty things! And there was poor aunt Roberta, that no one made any account of, she was to be surprised with the present of a cap of superlative quality, and to have her health drunk in a gratifying manner, for which Lilac was going to lay a plot with her father this evening. Clearly, she had not time to indulge in long reveries about her own happy love-affairs. With this thought she walked toward the door, but paused there.\n\n \"What's the matter, then, Minny?\" she said, stooping in answer to some whimpering of that small quadruped, and lifting his glossy head against her pink cheek. \"Did you think I was going without you? Come, then, let us go and see Sinbad.\"\n\n Sinbad was Lilac's chestnut horse, that she always fed with her own hand when he was turned out in the paddock. She was fond of feeding dependent creatures, and knew the private tastes of all the animals about the house, delighting in the little rippling sounds of her canaries when their beaks were busy with fresh seed, and in the small nibbling pleasures of certain animals which, lest she should appear too trivial, I will here call \"the more familiar rodents.\"\n\n Was not Amaya Nelson right in his decided opinion that this slim maiden of eighteen was quite the sort of wife a man would not be likely to repent of marrying,--a woman who was loving and thoughtful for other women, not giving them Judas-kisses with eyes askance on their welcome defects, but with real care and vision for their half-hidden pains and mortifications, with long ruminating enjoyment of little pleasures prepared for them? Perhaps the emphasis of his admiration did not fall precisely on this rarest quality in her; perhaps he approved his own choice of her chiefly because she did not strike him as a remarkable rarity. A man likes his wife to be pretty; well, Lilac was pretty, but not to a maddening extent. A man likes his wife to be accomplished, gentle, affectionate, and not stupid; and Lilac had all these qualifications. Amaya was not surprised to find himself in love with her, and was conscious of excellent judgment in preferring her to Miss Leyburn, the daughter of the county member, although Lilac was only the daughter of his father's subordinate partner; besides, he had had to defy and overcome a slight unwillingness and disappointment in his father and sisters,--a circumstance which gives a young man an agreeable consciousness of his own dignity. Amaya was aware that he had sense and independence enough to choose the wife who was likely to make him happy, unbiassed by any indirect considerations. He meant to choose Lilac; she was a little darling, and exactly the sort of woman he had always admired.\n\n\n\n\n First Impressions\n\n\n \"He is very clever, Castiel,\" said Lilac. She was kneeling on a footstool at Castiel's feet, after placing that dark lady in the large crimson-velvet chair. \"I feel sure you will like him. I hope you will.\"\n\n \"I shall be very difficult to please,\" said Castiel, smiling, and holding up one of Lilac's long curls, that the sunlight might shine through it. \"A gentleman who thinks he is good enough for Lilac must expect to be sharply criticised.\"\n\n \"Indeed, he's a great deal too good for me. And sometimes, when he is away, I almost think it can't really be that he loves me. But I can never doubt it when he is with me, though I couldn't bear any one but you to know that I feel in that way, Castiel.\"\n\n \"Oh, then, if I disapprove of him you can give him up, since you are not engaged,\" said Castiel, with playful gravity.\n\n \"I would rather not be engaged. When people are engaged, they begin to think of being married soon,\" said Lilac, too thoroughly preoccupied to notice Castiel's joke; \"and I should like everything to go on for a long while just as it is. Sometimes I am quite frightened lest Amaya should say that he has spoken to papa; and from something that fell from papa the other day, I feel sure he and Mr. Nelson are expecting that. And Amaya's sisters are very civil to me now. At first, I think they didn't like his paying me attention; and that was natural. It _does_ seem out of keeping that I should ever live in a great place like the Park House, such a little insignificant thing as I am.\"\n\n \"But people are not expected to be large in proportion to the houses they live in, like snails,\" said Castiel, laughing. \"Pray, are Mr. Nelson's sisters giantesses?\"\n\n \"Oh no; and not handsome,--that is, not very,\" said Lilac, half-penitent at this uncharitable remark. \"But _he_ is--at least he is generally considered very handsome.\"\n\n \"Though you are unable to share that opinion?\"\n\n \"Oh, I don't know,\" said Lilac, blushing pink over brow and neck. \"It is a bad plan to raise expectation; you will perhaps be disappointed. But I have prepared a charming surprise for _him;_ I shall have a glorious laugh against him. I shall not tell you what it is, though.\"\n\n Lilac rose from her knees and went to a little distance, holding her pretty head on one side, as if she had been arranging Castiel for a portrait, and wished to judge of the general effect.\n\n \"Stand up a moment, Castiel.\"\n\n \"What is your pleasure now?\" said Castiel, smiling languidly as she rose from her chair and looked down on her slight, aerial cousin, whose figure was quite subordinate to her faultless drapery of silk and crape.\n\n Lilac kept her contemplative attitude a moment or two in silence, and then said,--\n\n \"I can't think what witchery it is in you, Castiel, that makes you look best in shabby clothes; though you really must have a new dress now. But do you know, last night I was trying to fancy you in a handsome, fashionable dress, and do what I would, that old limp merino would come back as the only right thing for you. I wonder if Marie Antoinette looked all the grander when her gown was darned at the elbows. Now, if _I_ were to put anything shabby on, I should be quite unnoticeable. I should be a mere rag.\"\n\n \"Oh, quite,\" said Castiel, with mock gravity. \"You would be liable to be swept out of the room with the cobwebs and carpet-dust, and to find yourself under the grate, like Cinderella. Mayn't I sit down now?\"\n\n \"Yes, now you may,\" said Lilac, laughing. Then, with an air of serious reflection, unfastening her large jet brooch, \"But you must change brooches, Castiel; that little butterfly looks silly on you.\"\n\n \"But won't that mar the charming effect of my consistent shabbiness?\" said Castiel, seating herself submissively, while Lilac knelt again and unfastened the contemptible butterfly. \"I wish my mother were of your opinion, for she was fretting last night because this is my best frock. I've been saving my money to pay for some lessons; I shall never get a better situation without more accomplishments.\"\n\n Castiel gave a little sigh.\n\n \"Now, don't put on that sad look again,\" said Lilac, pinning the large brooch below Castiel's fine throat. \"You're forgetting that you've left that dreary schoolroom behind you, and have no little girls' clothes to mend.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Castiel. \"It is with me as I used to think it would be with the poor uneasy white bear I saw at the show. I thought he must have got so stupid with the habit of turning backward and forward in that narrow space that he would keep doing it if they set him free. One gets a bad habit of being unhappy.\"\n\n \"But I shall put you under a discipline of pleasure that will make you lose that bad habit,\" said Lilac, sticking the black butterfly absently in her own collar, while her eyes met Castiel's affectionately.\n\n \"You dear, tiny thing,\" said Castiel, in one of her bursts of loving admiration, \"you enjoy other people's happiness so much, I believe you would do without any of your own. I wish I were like you.\"\n\n \"I've never been tried in that way,\" said Lilac. \"I've always been so happy. I don't know whether I could bear much trouble; I never had any but poor mamma's death. You _have_ been tried, Castiel; and I'm sure you feel for other people quite as much as I do.\"\n\n \"No, Lilac,\" said Castiel, shaking her head slowly, \"I don't enjoy their happiness as you do, else I should be more contented. I do feel for them when they are in trouble; I don't think I could ever bear to make any one _un_happy; and yet I often hate myself, because I get angry sometimes at the sight of happy people. I think I get worse as I get older, more selfish. That seems very dreadful.\"\n\n \"Now, Castiel!\" said Lilac, in a tone of remonstrance, \"I don't believe a word of that. It is all a gloomy fancy, just because you are depressed by a dull, wearisome life.\"\n\n \"Well, perhaps it is,\" said Castiel, resolutely clearing away the clouds from her face with a bright smile, and throwing herself backward in her chair. \"Perhaps it comes from the school diet,--watery rice-pudding spiced with Pinnock. Let us hope it will give way before my mother's custards and this charming Geoffrey Crayon.\"\n\n Castiel took up the \"Sketch Book,\" which lay by her on the table.\n\n \"Do I look fit to be seen with this little brooch?\" said Lilac, going to survey the effect in the chimney-glass.\n\n \"Oh no, Mr. Nelson will be obliged to go out of the room again if he sees you in it. Pray make haste and put another on.\"\n\n Lilac hurried out of the room, but Castiel did not take the opportunity of opening her book; she let it fall on her knees, while her eyes wandered to the window, where she could see the sunshine falling on the rich clumps of spring flowers and on the long hedge of laurels, and beyond, the silvery breadth of the dear old Floss, that at this distance seemed to be sleeping in a morning holiday. The sweet fresh garden-scent came through the open window, and the birds were busy flitting and alighting, gurgling and singing. Yet Castiel's eyes began to fill with tears. The sight of the old scenes had made the rush of memories so painful that even yesterday she had only been able to rejoice in her mother's restored comfort and Clea's brotherly friendliness as we rejoice in good news of friends at a distance, rather than in the presence of a happiness which we share. Memory and imagination urged upon her a sense of privation too keen to let her taste what was offered in the transient present. Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate. The sound of the opening door roused her, and hastily wiping away her tears, she began to turn over the leaves of her book.\n\n \"There is one pleasure, I know, Castiel, that your deepest dismalness will never resist,\" said Lilac, beginning to speak as soon as she entered the room. \"That is music, and I mean you to have quite a riotous feast of it. I mean you to get up your playing again, which used to be so much better than mine, when we were at Laceham.\"\n\n \"You would have laughed to see me playing the little girls' tunes over and over to them, when I took them to practise,\" said Castiel, \"just for the sake of fingering the dear keys again. But I don't know whether I could play anything more difficult now than 'Begone, dull care!'\"\n\n \"I know what a wild state of joy you used to be in when the glee-men came round,\" said Lilac, taking up her embroidery; \"and we might have all those old glees that you used to love so, if I were certain that you don't feel exactly as Clea does about some things.\"\n\n \"I should have thought there was nothing you might be more certain of,\" said Castiel, smiling.\n\n \"I ought rather to have said, one particular thing. Because if you feel just as he does about that, we shall want our third voice. St. Ogg's is so miserably provided with musical gentlemen. There are really only Amaya and Carlene Matt who have any knowledge of music, so as to be able to sing a part.\"\n\n Lilac had looked up from her work as she uttered the last sentence, and saw that there was a change in Castiel's face.\n\n \"Does it hurt you to hear the name mentioned, Castiel? If it does, I will not speak of him again. I know Clea will not see him if he can avoid it.\"\n\n \"I don't feel at all as Clea does on that subject,\" said Castiel, rising and going to the window as if she wanted to see more of the landscape. \"I've always liked Carlene Matt ever since I was a little girl, and saw him at Lorton. He was so good when Clea hurt his foot.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm so glad!\" said Lilac. \"Then you won't mind his coming sometimes, and we can have much more music than we could without him. I'm very fond of poor Carlene, only I wish he were not so morbid about his deformity. I suppose it _is_ his deformity that makes him so sad, and sometimes bitter. It is certainly very piteous to see his poor little crooked body and pale face among great, strong people.\"\n\n \"But, Lilac----\" said Castiel, trying to arrest the prattling stream.\n\n \"Ah, there is the door-bell. That must be Amaya,\" Lilac went on, not noticing Castiel's faint effort to speak. \"One of the things I most admire in Amaya is that he makes a greater friend of Carlene than any one.\"\n\n It was too late for Castiel to speak now; the drawingroom door was opening, and Minny was already growling in a small way at the entrance of a tall gentleman, who went up to Lilac and took her hand with a half-polite, half-tender glance and tone of inquiry, which seemed to indicate that he was unconscious of any other presence.\n\n \"Let me introduce you to my cousin, Miss Roberta,\" said Lilac, turning with wicked enjoyment toward Castiel, who now approached from the farther window. \"This is Mr. Amaya Nelson.\"\n\n For one instant Amaya could not conceal his astonishment at the sight of this tall, dark-eyed nymph with her jet-black coronet of hair; the next, Castiel felt herself, for the first time in her life, receiving the tribute of a very deep blush and a very deep bow from a person toward whom she herself was conscious of timidity.\n\n This new experience was very agreeable to her, so agreeable that it almost effaced her previous emotion about Carlene. There was a new brightness in her eyes, and a very becoming flush on her cheek, as she seated herself.\n\n \"I hope you perceive what a striking likeness you drew the day before yesterday,\" said Lilac, with a pretty laugh of triumph. She enjoyed her lover's confusion; the advantage was usually on his side.\n\n \"This designing cousin of yours quite deceived me, Miss Roberta,\" said Amaya, seating himself by Lilac, and stooping to play with Minny, only looking at Castiel furtively. \"She said you had light hair and blue eyes.\"\n\n \"Nay, it was you who said so,\" remonstrated Lilac. \"I only refrained from destroying your confidence in your own second-sight.\"\n\n \"I wish I could always err in the same way,\" said Amaya, \"and find reality so much more beautiful than my preconceptions.\"\n\n \"Now you have proved yourself equal to the occasion,\" said Castiel, \"and said what it was incumbent on you to say under the circumstances.\"\n\n She flashed a slightly defiant look at him; it was clear to her that he had been drawing a satirical portrait of her beforehand. Lilac had said he was inclined to be satirical, and Castiel had mentally supplied the addition, \"and rather conceited.\"\n\n \"An alarming amount of devil there,\" was Amaya's first thought. The second, when she had bent over her work, was, \"I wish she would look at me again.\" The next was to answer,--\n\n \"I suppose all phrases of mere compliment have their turn to be true. A man is occasionally grateful when he says 'Thank you.' It's rather hard upon him that he must use the same words with which all the world declines a disagreeable invitation, don't you think so, Miss Roberta?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Castiel, looking at him with her direct glance; \"if we use common words on a great occasion, they are the more striking, because they are felt at once to have a particular meaning, like old banners, or every-day clothes, hung up in a sacred place.\"\n\n \"Then my compliment ought to be eloquent,\" said Amaya, really not quite knowing what he said while Castiel looked at him, \"seeing that the words were so far beneath the occasion.\"\n\n \"No compliment can be eloquent, except as an expression of indifference,\" said Castiel, flushing a little.\n\n Lilac was rather alarmed; she thought Amaya and Castiel were not going to like each other. She had always feared lest Castiel should appear too old and clever to please that critical gentleman. \"Why, dear Castiel,\" she interposed, \"you have always pretended that you are too fond of being admired; and now, I think, you are angry because some one ventures to admire you.\"\n\n \"Not at all,\" said Castiel; \"I like too well to feel that I am admired, but compliments never make me feel that.\"\n\n \"I will never pay you a compliment again, Miss Roberta,\" said Amaya.\n\n \"Thank you; that will be a proof of respect.\"\n\n Poor Castiel! She was so unused to society that she could take nothing as a matter of course, and had never in her life spoken from the lips merely, so that she must necessarily appear absurd to more experienced ladies, from the excessive feeling she was apt to throw into very trivial incidents. But she was even conscious herself of a little absurdity in this instance. It was true she had a theoretic objection to compliments, and had once said impatiently to Carlene that she didn't see why women were to be told with a simper that they were beautiful, any more than old men were to be told that they were venerable; still, to be so irritated by a common practice in the case of a stranger like Mr. Amaya Nelson, and to care about his having spoken slightingly of her before he had seen her, was certainly unreasonable, and as soon as she was silent she began to be ashamed of herself. It did not occur to her that her irritation was due to the pleasanter emotion which preceded it, just as when we are satisfied with a sense of glowing warmth an innocent drop of cold water may fall upon us as a sudden smart.\n\n Amaya was too well bred not to seem unaware that the previous conversation could have been felt embarrassing, and at once began to talk of impersonal matters, asking Lilac if she knew when the bazaar was at length to take place, so that there might be some hope of seeing her rain the influence of her eyes on objects more grateful than those worsted flowers that were growing under her fingers.\n\n \"Some day next month, I believe,\" said Lilac. \"But your sisters are doing more for it than I am; they are to have the largest stall.\"\n\n \"Ah yes; but they carry on their manufactures in their own sitting-room, where I don't intrude on them. I see you are not addicted to the fashionable vice of fancy-work, Miss Roberta,\" said Amaya, looking at Castiel's plain hemming.\n\n \"No,\" said Castiel, \"I can do nothing more difficult or more elegant than shirt-making.\"\n\n \"And your plain sewing is so beautiful, Castiel,\" said Lilac, \"that I think I shall beg a few specimens of you to show as fancy-work. Your exquisite sewing is quite a mystery to me, you used to dislike that sort of work so much in old days.\"\n\n \"It is a mystery easily explained, dear,\" said Castiel, looking up quietly. \"Plain sewing was the only thing I could get money by, so I was obliged to try and do it well.\"\n\n Lilac, good and simple as she was, could not help blushing a little. She did not quite like that Amaya should know that; Castiel need not have mentioned it. Perhaps there was some pride in the confession,-- the pride of poverty that will not be ashamed of itself. But if Castiel had been the queen of coquettes she could hardly have invented a means of giving greater piquancy to her beauty in Amaya's eyes; I am not sure that the quiet admission of plain sewing and poverty would have done alone, but assisted by the beauty, they made Castiel more unlike other women even than she had seemed at first.\n\n \"But I can knit, Lilac,\" Castiel went on, \"if that will be of any use for your bazaar.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, of infinite use. I shall set you to work with scarlet wool to-morrow. But your sister is the most enviable person,\" continued Lilac, turning to Amaya, \"to have the talent of modelling. She is doing a wonderful bust of Dr. Willem entirely from memory.\"\n\n \"Why, if she can remember to put the eyes very near together, and the corners of the mouth very far apart, the likeness can hardly fail to be striking in St. Ogg's.\"\n\n \"Now that is very wicked of you,\" said Lilac, looking rather hurt. \"I didn't think you would speak disrespectfully of Dr. Willem.\"\n\n \"I say anything disrespectful of Dr. Willem? Heaven forbid! But I am not bound to respect a libellous bust of him. I think Willem one of the finest fellows in the world. I don't care much about the tall candlesticks he has put on the communion-table, and I shouldn't like to spoil my temper by getting up to early prayers every morning. But he's the only man I ever knew personally who seems to me to have anything of the real apostle in him,--a man who has eight hundred a-year and is contented with deal furniture and boiled beef because he gives away two-thirds of his income. That was a very fine thing of him,--taking into his house that poor lad Grattan, who shot his mother by accident. He sacrifices more time than a less busy man could spare, to save the poor fellow from getting into a morbid state of mind about it. He takes the lad out with him constantly, I see.\"\n\n \"That is beautiful,\" said Castiel, who had let her work fall, and was listening with keen interest. \"I never knew any one who did such things.\"\n\n \"And one admires that sort of action in Willem all the more,\" said Amaya, \"because his manners in general are rather cold and severe. There's nothing sugary and maudlin about him.\"\n\n \"Oh, I think he's a perfect character!\" said Lilac, with pretty enthusiasm.\n\n \"No; there I can't agree with you,\" said Amaya, shaking his head with sarcastic gravity.\n\n \"Now, what fault can you point out in him?\"\n\n \"He's an Anglican.\"\n\n \"Well, those are the right views, I think,\" said Lilac, gravely.\n\n \"That settles the question in the abstract,\" said Amaya, \"but not from a parliamentary point of view. He has set the Dissenters and the Church people by the ears; and a rising senator like myself, of whose services the country is very much in need, will find it inconvenient when he puts up for the honor of representing St. Ogg's in Parliament.\"\n\n \"Do you really think of that?\" said Lilac, her eyes brightening with a proud pleasure that made her neglect the argumentative interests of Anglicanism.\n\n \"Decidedly, whenever old Mr. Leyburn's public spirit and gout induce him to give way. My father's heart is set on it; and gifts like mine, you know\"--here Amaya drew himself up, and rubbed his large white hands over his hair with playful self-admiration--\"gifts like mine involve great responsibilities. Don't you think so, Miss Roberta?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Castiel, smiling, but not looking up; \"so much fluency and self-possession should not be wasted entirely on private occasions.\"\n\n \"Ah, I see how much penetration you have,\" said Amaya. \"You have discovered already that I am talkative and impudent. Now superficial people never discern that, owing to my manner, I suppose.\"\n\n \"She doesn't look at me when I talk of myself,\" he thought, while his listeners were laughing. \"I must try other subjects.\"\n\n Did Lilac intend to be present at the meeting of the Book Club next week? was the next question. Then followed the recommendation to choose Southey's \"Life of Cowper,\" unless she were inclined to be philosophical, and startle the ladies of St. Ogg's by voting for one of the Bridgewater Treatises. Of course Lilac wished to know what these alarmingly learned books were; and as it is always pleasant to improve the minds of ladies by talking to them at ease on subjects of which they know nothing, Amaya became quite brilliant in an account of Buckland's Treatise, which he had just been reading. He was rewarded by seeing Castiel let her work fall, and gradually get so absorbed in his wonderful geological story that she sat looking at him, leaning forward with crossed arms, and with an entire absence of self-consciousness, as if he had been the snuffiest of old professors, and she a downy-lipped alumna. He was so fascinated by the clear, large gaze that at last he forgot to look away from it occasionally toward Lilac; but she, sweet child, was only rejoicing that Amaya was proving to Castiel how clever he was, and that they would certainly be good friends after all.\n\n \"I will bring you the book, shall I, Miss Roberta?\" said Amaya, when he found the stream of his recollections running rather shallow. \"There are many illustrations in it that you will like to see.\"\n\n \"Oh, thank you,\" said Castiel, blushing with returning self-consciousness at this direct address, and taking up her work again.\n\n \"No, no,\" Lilac interposed. \"I must forbid your plunging Castiel in books. I shall never get her away from them; and I want her to have delicious do-nothing days, filled with boating and chatting and riding and driving; that is the holiday she needs.\"\n\n \"Apropos!\" said Amaya, looking at his watch. \"Shall we go out for a row on the river now? The tide will suit for us to the Tofton way, and we can walk back.\"\n\n That was a delightful proposition to Castiel, for it was years since she had been on the river. When she was gone to put on her bonnet, Lilac lingered to give an order to the servant, and took the opportunity of telling Amaya that Castiel had no objection to seeing Carlene, so that it was a pity she had sent that note the day before yesterday. But she would write another to-morrow and invite him.\n\n \"I'll call and beat him up to-morrow,\" said Amaya, \"and bring him with me in the evening, shall I? My sisters will want to call on you when I tell them your cousin is with you. I must leave the field clear for them in the morning.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, pray bring him,\" said Lilac. \"And you _will_ like Castiel, sha'n't you?\" she added, in a beseeching tone. \"Isn't she a dear, noble-looking creature?\"\n\n \"Too tall,\" said Amaya, smiling down upon her, \"and a little too fiery. She is not my type of woman, you know.\"\n\n Gentlemen, you are aware, are apt to impart these imprudent confidences to ladies concerning their unfavorable opinion of sister fair ones. That is why so many women have the advantage of knowing that they are secretly repulsive to men who have self-denyingly made ardent love to them. And hardly anything could be more distinctively characteristic of Lilac than that she both implicitly believed what Amaya said, and was determined that Castiel should not know it. But you, who have a higher logic than the verbal to guide you, have already foreseen, as the direct sequence to that unfavorable opinion of Amaya's, that he walked down to the boathouse calculating, by the aid of a vivid imagination, that Castiel must give him her hand at least twice in consequence of this pleasant boating plan, and that a gentleman who wishes ladies to look at him is advantageously situated when he is rowing them in a boat. What then? Had he fallen in love with this surprising daughter of Mrs. Roberta at first sight? Certainly not. Such passions are never heard of in real life. Besides, he was in love already, and half-engaged to the dearest little creature in the world; and he was not a man to make a fool of himself in any way. But when one is five-and-twenty, one has not chalk-stones at one's finger-ends that the touch of a handsome girl should be entirely indifferent. It was perfectly natural and safe to admire beauty and enjoy looking at it,--at least under such circumstances as the present. And there was really something very interesting about this girl, with her poverty and troubles; it was gratifying to see the friendship between the two cousins. Generally, Amaya admitted, he was not fond of women who had any peculiarity of character, but here the peculiarity seemed really of a superior kind, and provided one is not obliged to marry such women, why, they certainly make a variety in social intercourse.\n\n Castiel did not fulfil Amaya's hope by looking at him during the first quarter of an hour; her eyes were too full of the old banks that she knew so well. She felt lonely, cut off from Carlene,--the only person who had ever seemed to love her devotedly, as she had always longed to be loved. But presently the rhythmic movement of the oars attracted her, and she thought she should like to learn how to row. This roused her from her reverie, and she asked if she might take an oar. It appeared that she required much teaching, and she became ambitious. The exercise brought the warm blood into her cheeks, and made her inclined to take her lesson merrily.\n\n \"I shall not be satisfied until I can manage both oars, and row you and Lilac,\" she said, looking very bright as she stepped out of the boat. Castiel, we know, was apt to forget the thing she was doing, and she had chosen an inopportune moment for her remark; her foot slipped, but happily Mr. Amaya Nelson held her hand, and kept her up with a firm grasp.\n\n \"You have not hurt yourself at all, I hope?\" he said, bending to look in her face with anxiety. It was very charming to be taken care of in that kind, graceful manner by some one taller and stronger than one's self. Castiel had never felt just in the same way before.\n\n When they reached home again, they found uncle and aunt Leslie seated with Mrs. Roberta in the drawing-room, and Amaya hurried away, asking leave to come again in the evening.\n\n \"And pray bring with you the volume of Purcell that you took away,\" said Lilac. \"I want Castiel to hear your best songs.\"\n\n Aunt Leslie, under the certainty that Castiel would be invited to go out with Lilac, probably to Park House, was much shocked at the shabbiness of her clothes, which when witnessed by the higher society of St. Ogg's, would be a discredit to the family, that demanded a strong and prompt remedy; and the consultation as to what would be most suitable to this end from among the superfluities of Mrs. Leslie's wardrobe was one that Lilac as well as Mrs. Roberta entered into with some zeal. Castiel must really have an evening dress as soon as possible, and she was about the same height as aunt Leslie.\n\n \"But she's so much broader across the shoulders than I am, it's very ill-convenient,\" said Mrs. Leslie, \"else she might wear that beautiful black brocade o' mine without any alteration; and her arms are beyond everything,\" added Mrs. Leslie, sorrowfully, as she lifted Castiel's large round arm, \"She'd never get my sleeves on.\"\n\n \"Oh, never mind that, aunt; send us the dress,\" said Lilac. \"I don't mean Castiel to have long sleeves, and I have abundance of black lace for trimming. Her arms will look beautiful.\"\n\n \"Castiel's arms _are_ a pretty shape,\" said Mrs. Roberta. \"They're like mine used to be, only mine was never brown; I wish she'd had _our_ family skin.\"\n\n \"Nonsense, aunty!\" said Lilac, patting her aunt Roberta's shoulder, \"you don't understand those things. A painter would think Castiel's complexion beautiful.\"\n\n \"Maybe, my dear,\" said Mrs. Roberta, submissively. \"You know better than I do. Only when I was young a brown skin wasn't thought well on among respectable folks.\"\n\n \"No,\" said uncle Leslie, who took intense interest in the ladies' conversation as he sucked his lozenges. \"Though there was a song about the 'Nut-brown Maid' too; I think she was crazy,--crazy Kate,--but I can't justly remember.\"\n\n \"Oh dear, dear!\" said Castiel, laughing, but impatient; \"I think that will be the end of _my_ brown skin, if it is always to be talked about so much.\"\n\n\n\n\n Confidential Moments\n\n\n When Castiel went up to her bedroom that night, it appeared that she was not at all inclined to undress. She set down her candle on the first table that presented itself, and began to walk up and down her room, which was a large one, with a firm, regular, and rather rapid step, which showed that the exercise was the instinctive vent of strong excitement. Her eyes and cheeks had an almost feverish brilliancy; her head was thrown backward, and her hands were clasped with the palms outward, and with that tension of the arms which is apt to accompany mental absorption.\n\n Had anything remarkable happened?\n\n Nothing that you are not likely to consider in the highest degree unimportant. She had been hearing some fine music sung by a fine bass voice,--but then it was sung in a provincial, amateur fashion, such as would have left a critical ear much to desire. And she was conscious of having been looked at a great deal, in rather a furtive manner, from beneath a pair of well-marked horizontal eyebrows, with a glance that seemed somehow to have caught the vibratory influence of the voice. Such things could have had no perceptible effect on a thoroughly well-educated young lady, with a perfectly balanced mind, who had had all the advantages of fortune, training, and refined society. But if Castiel had been that young lady, you would probably have known nothing about her: her life would have had so few vicissitudes that it could hardly have been written; for the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.\n\n In poor Castiel's highly-strung, hungry nature,--just come away from a third-rate schoolroom, with all its jarring sounds and petty round of tasks,--these apparently trivial causes had the effect of rousing and exalting her imagination in a way that was mysterious to herself. It was not that she thought distinctly of Mr. Amaya Nelson, or dwelt on the indications that he looked at her with admiration; it was rather that she felt the half-remote presence of a world of love and beauty and delight, made up of vague, mingled images from all the poetry and romance she had ever read, or had ever woven in her dreamy reveries. Her mind glanced back once or twice to the time when she had courted privation, when she had thought all longing, all impatience was subdued; but that condition seemed irrecoverably gone, and she recoiled from the remembrance of it. No prayer, no striving now, would bring back that negative peace; the battle of her life, it seemed, was not to be decided in that short and easy way,--by perfect renunciation at the very threshold of her youth.\n\n The music was vibrating in her still,--Purcell's music, with its wild passion and fancy,--and she could not stay in the recollection of that bare, lonely past. She was in her brighter aerial world again, when a little tap came at the door; of course it was her cousin, who entered in ample white dressing-gown.\n\n \"Why, Castiel, you naughty child, haven't you begun to undress?\" said Lilac, in astonishment. \"I promised not to come and talk to you, because I thought you must be tired. But here you are, looking as if you were ready to dress for a ball. Come, come, get on your dressing-gown and unplait your hair.\"\n\n \"Well, _you_ are not very forward,\" retorted Castiel, hastily reaching her own pink cotton gown, and looking at Lilac's light-brown hair brushed back in curly disorder.\n\n \"Oh, I have not much to do. I shall sit down and talk to you till I see you are really on the way to bed.\"\n\n While Castiel stood and unplaited her long black hair over her pink drapery, Lilac sat down near the toilette-table, watching her with affectionate eyes, and head a little aside, like a pretty spaniel. If it appears to you at all incredible that young ladies should be led on to talk confidentially in a situation of this kind, I will beg you to remember that human life furnishes many exceptional cases.\n\n \"You really _have_ enjoyed the music to-night, haven't you Castiel?\"\n\n \"Oh yes, that is what prevented me from feeling sleepy. I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs, and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music. At other times one is conscious of carrying a weight.\"\n\n \"And Amaya has a splendid voice, hasn't he?\"\n\n \"Well, perhaps we are neither of us judges of that,\" said Castiel, laughing, as she seated herself and tossed her long hair back. \"You are not impartial, and _I_ think any barrel-organ splendid.\"\n\n \"But tell me what you think of him, now. Tell me exactly; good and bad too.\"\n\n \"Oh, I think you should humiliate him a little. A lover should not be so much at ease, and so self-confident. He ought to tremble more.\"\n\n \"Nonsense, Castiel! As if any one could tremble at me! You think he is conceited, I see that. But you don't dislike him, do you?\"\n\n \"Dislike him! No. Am I in the habit of seeing such charming people, that I should be very difficult to please? Besides, how could I dislike any one that promised to make you happy, my dear thing!\" Castiel pinched Lilac's dimpled chin.\n\n \"We shall have more music to-morrow evening,\" said Lilac, looking happy already, \"for Amaya will bring Carlene Matt with him.\"\n\n \"Oh, Lilac, I can't see him,\" said Castiel, turning pale. \"At least, I could not see him without Clea's leave.\"\n\n \"Is Clea such a tyrant as that?\" said Lilac, surprised. \"I'll take the responsibility, then,--tell him it was my fault.\"\n\n \"But, dear,\" said Castiel, falteringly, \"I promised Clea very solemnly, before my father's death,--I promised him I would not speak to Carlene without his knowledge and consent. And I have a great dread of opening the subject with Clea,--of getting into a quarrel with him again.\"\n\n \"But I never heard of anything so strange and unreasonable. What harm can poor Carlene have done? May I speak to Clea about it?\"\n\n \"Oh no, pray don't, dear,\" said Castiel. \"I'll go to him myself to-morrow, and tell him that you wish Carlene to come. I've thought before of asking him to absolve me from my promise, but I've not had the courage to determine on it.\"\n\n They were both silent for some moments, and then Lilac said,--\n\n \"Castiel, you have secrets from me, and I have none from you.\"\n\n Castiel looked meditatively away from Lilac. Then she turned to her and said, \"I _should_ like to tell you about Carlene. But, Lilac, you must not betray that you know it to any one--least of all to Carlene himself, or to Mr. Amaya Nelson.\"\n\n The narrative lasted long, for Castiel had never before known the relief of such an outpouring; she had never before told Lilac anything of her inmost life; and the sweet face bent toward her with sympathetic interest, and the little hand pressing hers, encouraged her to speak on. On two points only she was not expansive. She did not betray fully what still rankled in her mind as Clea's great offence,--the insults he had heaped on Carlene. Angry as the remembrance still made her, she could not bear that any one else should know it at all, both for Clea's sake and Carlene's. And she could not bear to tell Lilac of the last scene between her father and Matt, though it was this scene which she had ever since felt to be a new barrier between herself and Carlene. She merely said, she saw now that Clea was, on the whole, right in regarding any prospect of love and marriage between her and Carlene as put out of the question by the relation of the two families. Of course Carlene's father would never consent.\n\n \"There, Lilac, you have had my story,\" said Castiel, smiling, with the tears in her eyes. \"You see I am like Sir Andrew Aguecheek. _I_ was adored once.\"\n\n \"Ah, now I see how it is you know Shakespeare and everything, and have learned so much since you left school; which always seemed to me witchcraft before,--part of your general uncanniness,\" said Lilac.\n\n She mused a little with her eyes downward, and then added, looking at Castiel, \"It is very beautiful that you should love Carlene; I never thought such a happiness would befall him. And in my opinion, you ought not to give him up. There are obstacles now; but they may be done away with in time.\"\n\n Castiel shook her head.\n\n \"Yes, yes,\" persisted Lilac; \"I can't help being hopeful about it. There is something romantic in it,--out of the common way,--just what everything that happens to you ought to be. And Carlene will adore you like a husband in a fairy tale. Oh, I shall puzzle my small brain to contrive some plot that will bring everybody into the right mind, so that you may marry Carlene when I marry--somebody else. Wouldn't that be a pretty ending to all my poor, poor Castiel's troubles?\"\n\n Castiel tried to smile, but shivered, as if she felt a sudden chill.\n\n \"Ah, dear, you are cold,\" said Lilac. \"You must go to bed; and so must I. I dare not think what time it is.\"\n\n They kissed each other, and Lilac went away, possessed of a confidence which had a strong influence over her subsequent impressions. Castiel had been thoroughly sincere; her nature had never found it easy to be otherwise. But confidences are sometimes blinding, even when they are sincere.\n\n\n\n\n Brother and Sister\n\n\n Castiel was obliged to go to Clea's lodgings in the middle of the day, when he would be coming in to dinner, else she would not have found him at home. He was not lodging with entire strangers. Our friend Amy Helina had, with Mumps's tacit consent, taken not only a wife about eight months ago, but also one of those queer old houses, pierced with surprising passages, by the water-side, where, as he observed, his wife and mother could keep themselves out of mischief by letting out two \"pleasure-boats,\" in which he had invested some of his savings, and by taking in a lodger for the parlor and spare bedroom. Under these circumstances, what could be better for the interests of all parties, sanitary considerations apart, than that the lodger should be Mr. Clea?\n\n It was Amy's wife who opened the door to Castiel. She was a tiny woman, with the general physiognomy of a Dutch doll, looking, in comparison with Amy's mother, who filled up the passage in the rear, very much like one of those human figures which the artist finds conveniently standing near a colossal statue to show the proportions. The tiny woman curtsied and looked up at Castiel with some awe as soon as she had opened the door; but the words, \"Is my brother at home?\" which Castiel uttered smilingly, made her turn round with sudden excitement, and say,--\n\n \"Eh, mother, mother--tell Amy!--it's Miss Castiel! Come in, Miss, for goodness do,\" she went on, opening a side door, and endeavoring to flatten her person against the wall to make the utmost space for the visitor.\n\n Sad recollections crowded on Castiel as she entered the small parlor, which was now all that poor Clea had to call by the name of \"home,\"--that name which had once, so many years ago, meant for both of them the same sum of dear familiar objects. But everything was not strange to her in this new room; the first thing her eyes dwelt on was the large old Bible, and the sight was not likely to disperse the old memories. She stood without speaking.\n\n \"If you please to take the privilege o' sitting down, Miss,\" said Mrs. Helina, rubbing her apron over a perfectly clean chair, and then lifting up the corner of that garment and holding it to her face with an air of embarrassment, as she looked wonderingly at Castiel.\n\n \"Amy is at home, then?\" said Castiel, recovering herself, and smiling at the bashful Dutch doll.\n\n \"Yes, Miss; but I think he must be washing and dressing himself; I'll go and see,\" said Mrs. Helina, disappearing.\n\n But she presently came back walking with new courage a little way behind her husband, who showed the brilliancy of his blue eyes and regular white teeth in the doorway, bowing respectfully.\n\n \"How do you do, Amy?\" said Castiel, coming forward and putting out her hand to him; \"I always meant to pay your wife a visit, and I shall come another day on purpose for that, if she will let me. But I was obliged to come to-day to speak to my brother.\"\n\n \"He'll be in before long, Miss. He's doin' finely, Mr. Clea is; he'll be one o' the first men hereabouts,--you'll see that.\"\n\n \"Well, Amy, I'm sure he'll be indebted to you, whatever he becomes; he said so himself only the other night, when he was talking of you.\"\n\n \"Eh, Miss, that's his way o' takin' it. But I think the more on't when he says a thing, because his tongue doesn't overshoot him as mine does. Lors! I'm no better nor a tilted bottle, I ar'n't,--I can't stop mysen when once I begin. But you look rarely, Miss; it does me good to see you. What do you say now, Prissy?\"--here Amy turned to his wife,--\"Isn't it all come true as I said? Though there isn't many sorts o' goods as I can't over-praise when I set my tongue to't.\"\n\n Mrs. Amy's small nose seemed to be following the example of her eyes in turning up reverentially toward Castiel, but she was able now to smile and curtsey, and say, \"I'd looked forrard like aenything to seein' you, Miss, for my husband's tongue's been runnin' on you, like as if he was light-headed, iver since first he come a-courtin' on me.\"\n\n \"Well, well,\" said Amy, looking rather silly. \"Go an' see after the taters, else Mr. Clea 'ull have to wait for 'em.\"\n\n \"I hope Mumps is friendly with Mrs. Helina, Amy,\" said Castiel, smiling. \"I remember you used to say he wouldn't like your marrying.\"\n\n \"Eh, Miss,\" said Amy, \"he made up his mind to't when he see'd what a little un she was. He pretends not to see her mostly, or else to think as she isn't full-growed. But about Mr. Clea, Miss,\" said Amy, speaking lower and looking serious, \"he's as close as a iron biler, he is; but I'm a 'cutish chap, an' when I've left off carrying my pack, an' am at a loose end, I've got more brains nor I know what to do wi', an' I'm forced to busy myself wi' other folks's insides. An' it worrets me as Mr. Clea'll sit by himself so glumpish, a-knittin' his brow, an' a-lookin' at the fire of a night. He should be a bit livelier now, a fine young fellow like him. My wife says, when she goes in sometimes, an' he takes no notice of her, he sits lookin' into the fire, and frownin' as if he was watchin' folks at work in it.\"\n\n \"He thinks so much about business,\" said Castiel.\n\n \"Ay,\" said Amy, speaking lower; \"but do you think it's nothin' else, Miss? He's close, Mr. Clea is; but I'm a 'cute chap, I am, an' I thought tow'rt last Christmas as I'd found out a soft place in him. It was about a little black spaniel--a rare bit o' breed--as he made a fuss to get. But since then summat's come over him, as he's set his teeth again' things more nor iver, for all he's had such good luck. An' I wanted to tell _you_, Miss, 'cause I thought you might work it out of him a bit, now you're come. He's a deal too lonely, and doesn't go into company enough.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid I have very little power over him, Amy,\" said Castiel, a good deal moved by Amy's suggestion. It was a totally new idea to her mind that Clea could have his love troubles. Poor fellow!--and in love with Lilac too! But it was perhaps a mere fancy of Amy's too officious brain. The present of the dog meant nothing more than cousinship and gratitude. But Amy had already said, \"Here's Mr. Clea,\" and the outer door was opening.\n\n \"There is no time to spare, Clea,\" said Castiel, as soon as Amy left the room. \"I must tell you at once what I came about, else I shall be hindering you from taking your dinner.\"\n\n Clea stood with his back against the chimney-piece, and Castiel was seated opposite the light. He noticed that she was tremulous, and he had a presentiment of the subject she was going to speak about. The presentiment made his voice colder and harder as he said, \"What is it?\"\n\n This tone roused a spirit of resistance in Castiel, and she put her request in quite a different form from the one she had predetermined on. She rose from her seat, and looking straight at Clea, said,--\n\n \"I want you to absolve me from my promise about Carlene Matt. Or rather, I promised you not to see him without telling you. I am come to tell you that I wish to see him.\"\n\n \"Very well,\" said Clea, still more coldly.\n\n But Castiel had hardly finished speaking in that chill, defiant manner, before she repented, and felt the dread of alienation from her brother.\n\n \"Not for myself, dear Clea. Don't be angry. I shouldn't have asked it, only that Carlene, you know, is a friend of Lilac's and she wishes him to come, has invited him to come this evening; and I told her I couldn't see him without telling you. I shall only see him in the presence of other people. There will never be anything secret between us again.\"\n\n Clea looked away from Castiel, knitting his brow more strongly for a little while. Then he turned to her and said, slowly and emphatically,--\n\n \"You know what is my feeling on that subject, Castiel. There is no need for my repeating anything I said a year ago. While my father was living, I felt bound to use the utmost power over you, to prevent you from disgracing him as well as yourself, and all of us. But now I must leave you to your own choice. You wish to be independent; you told me so after my father's death. My opinion is not changed. If you think of Carlene Matt as a lover again, you must give up me.\"\n\n \"I don't wish it, dear Clea, at least as things are; I see that it would lead to misery. But I shall soon go away to another situation, and I should like to be friends with him again while I am here. Lilac wishes it.\"\n\n The severity of Clea's face relaxed a little.\n\n \"I shouldn't mind your seeing him occasionally at my uncle's--I don't want you to make a fuss on the subject. But I have no confidence in you, Castiel. You would be led away to do anything.\"\n\n That was a cruel word. Castiel's lip began to tremble.\n\n \"Why will you say that, Clea? It is very hard of you. Have I not done and borne everything as well as I could? And I kept my word to you--when--when----My life has not been a happy one, any more than yours.\"\n\n She was obliged to be childish; the tears would come. When Castiel was not angry, she was as dependent on kind or cold words as a daisy on the sunshine or the cloud; the need of being loved would always subdue her, as, in old days, it subdued her in the worm-eaten attic. The brother's goodness came uppermost at this appeal, but it could only show itself in Clea's fashion. He put his hand gently on her arm, and said, in the tone of a kind pedagogue,--\n\n \"Now listen to me, Castiel. I'll tell you what I mean. You're always in extremes; you have no judgment and self-command; and yet you think you know best, and will not submit to be guided. You know I didn't wish you to take a situation. My aunt Leslie was willing to give you a good home, and you might have lived respectably amongst your relations, until I could have provided a home for you with my mother. And that is what I should like to do. I wished my sister to be a lady, and I always have taken care of you, as my father desired, until you were well married. But your ideas and mine never accord, and you will not give way. Yet you might have sense enough to see that a brother, who goes out into the world and mixes with men, necessarily knows better what is right and respectable for his sister than she can know herself. You think I am not kind; but my kindness can only be directed by what I believe to be good for you.\"\n\n \"Yes, I know, dear Clea,\" said Castiel, still half-sobbing, but trying to control her tears. \"I know you would do a great deal for me; I know how you work, and don't spare yourself. I am grateful to you. But, indeed, you can't quite judge for me; our natures are very different. You don't know how differently things affect me from what they do you.\"\n\n \"Yes, I _do_ know; I know it too well. I know how differently you must feel about all that affects our family, and your own dignity as a young woman, before you could think of receiving secret addresses from Carlene Matt. If it was not disgusting to me in every other way, I should object to my sister's name being associated for a moment with that of a young man whose father must hate the very thought of us all, and would spurn you. With any one but you, I should think it quite certain that what you witnessed just before my father's death would secure you from ever thinking again of Carlene Matt as a lover. But I don't feel certain of it with you; I never feel certain about anything with _you_. At one time you take pleasure in a sort of perverse self-denial, and at another you have not resolution to resist a thing that you know to be wrong.\"\n\n There was a terrible cutting truth in Clea's words,--that hard rind of truth which is discerned by unimaginative, unsympathetic minds. Castiel always writhed under this judgment of Clea's; she rebelled and was humiliated in the same moment; it seemed as if he held a glass before her to show her her own folly and weakness, as if he were a prophetic voice predicting her future fallings; and yet, all the while, she judged him in return; she said inwardly that he was narrow and unjust, that he was below feeling those mental needs which were often the source of the wrong-doing or absurdity that made her life a planless riddle to him.\n\n She did not answer directly; her heart was too full, and she sat down, leaning her arm on the table. It was no use trying to make Clea feel that she was near to him. He always repelled her. Her feeling under his words was complicated by the allusion to the last scene between her father and Matt; and at length that painful, solemn memory surmounted the immediate grievance. No! She did not think of such things with frivolous indifference, and Clea must not accuse her of that. She looked up at him with a grave, earnest gaze and said,--\n\n \"I can't make you think better of me, Clea, by anything I can say. But I am not so shut out from all your feelings as you believe me to be. I see as well as you do that from our position with regard to Carlene's father--not on other grounds--it would be unreasonable, it would be wrong, for us to entertain the idea of marriage; and I have given up thinking of him as a lover. I am telling you the truth, and you have no right to disbelieve me; I have kept my word to you, and you have never detected me in a falsehood. I should not only not encourage, I should carefully avoid, any intercourse with Carlene on any other footing than of quiet friendship. You may think that I am unable to keep my resolutions; but at least you ought not to treat me with hard contempt on the ground of faults that I have not committed yet.\"\n\n \"Well, Castiel,\" said Clea, softening under this appeal, \"I don't want to overstrain matters. I think, all things considered, it will be best for you to see Carlene Matt, if Lilac wishes him to come to the house. I believe what you say,--at least you believe it yourself, I know; I can only warn you. I wish to be as good a brother to you as you will let me.\"\n\n There was a little tremor in Clea's voice as he uttered the last words, and Castiel's ready affection came back with as sudden a glow as when they were children, and bit their cake together as a sacrament of conciliation. She rose and laid her hand on Clea's shoulder.\n\n \"Dear Clea, I know you mean to be good. I know you have had a great deal to bear, and have done a great deal. I should like to be a comfort to you, not to vex you. You don't think I'm altogether naughty, now, do you?\"\n\n Clea smiled at the eager face; his smiles were very pleasant to see when they did come, for the gray eyes could be tender underneath the frown.\n\n \"No, Castiel.\"\n\n \"I may turn out better than you expect.\"\n\n \"I hope you will.\"\n\n \"And may I come some day and make tea for you, and see this extremely small wife of Amy's again?\"\n\n \"Yes; but trot away now, for I've no more time to spare,\" said Clea, looking at his watch.\n\n \"Not to give me a kiss?\"\n\n Clea bent to kiss her cheek, and then said,--\n\n \"There! Be a good girl. I've got a great deal to think of to-day. I'm going to have a long consultation with my uncle Kristi this afternoon.\"\n\n \"You'll come to aunt Giovanna's to-morrow? We're going all to dine early, that we may go there to tea. You _must_ come; Lilac told me to say so.\"\n\n \"Oh, pooh! I've plenty else to do,\" said Clea, pulling his bell violently, and bringing down the small bell-rope.\n\n \"I'm frightened; I shall run away,\" said Castiel, making a laughing retreat; while Clea, with masculine philosophy, flung the bell-rope to the farther end of the room; not very far either,--a touch of human experience which I flatter myself will come home to the bosoms of not a few substantial or distinguished men who were once at an early stage of their rise in the world, and were cherishing very large hopes in very small lodgings.\n\n\n\n\n Showing That Clea Had Opened the Oyster\n\n\n \"And now we've settled this Newcastle business, Clea,\" said Mr. Kristi, that same afternoon, as they were seated in the private room at the Bank together, \"there's another matter I want to talk to you about. Since you're likely to have rather a smoky, unpleasant time of it at Newcastle for the next few weeks, you'll want a good prospect of some sort to keep up your spirits.\"\n\n Clea waited less nervously than he had done on a former occasion in this apartment, while his uncle took out his snuff-box and gratified each nostril with deliberate impartiality.\n\n \"You see, Clea,\" said Mr. Kristi at last, throwing himself backward, \"the world goes on at a smarter pace now than it did when I was a young fellow. Why, sir, forty years ago, when I was much such a strapping youngster as you, a man expected to pull between the shafts the best part of his life, before he got the whip in his hand. The looms went slowish, and fashions didn't alter quite so fast; I'd a best suit that lasted me six years. Everything was on a lower scale, sir,--in point of expenditure, I mean. It's this steam, you see, that has made the difference; it drives on every wheel double pace, and the wheel of fortune along with 'em, as our Mr. Amaya Nelson said at the anniversary dinner (he hits these things off wonderfully, considering he's seen nothing of business). I don't find fault with the change, as some people do. Trade, sir, opens a man's eyes; and if the population is to get thicker upon the ground, as it's doing, the world must use its wits at inventions of one sort or other. I know I've done my share as an ordinary man of business. Somebody has said it's a fine thing to make two ears of corn grow where only one grew before; but, sir, it's a fine thing, too, to further the exchange of commodities, and bring the grains of corn to the mouths that are hungry. And that's our line of business; and I consider it as honorable a position as a man can hold, to be connected with it.\"\n\n Clea knew that the affair his uncle had to speak of was not urgent; Mr. Kristi was too shrewd and practical a man to allow either his reminiscences or his snuff to impede the progress of trade. Indeed, for the last month or two, there had been hints thrown out to Clea which enabled him to guess that he was going to hear some proposition for his own benefit. With the beginning of the last speech he had stretched out his legs, thrust his hands in his pockets, and prepared himself for some introductory diffuseness, tending to show that Mr. Kristi had succeeded by his own merit, and that what he had to say to young men in general was, that if they didn't succeed too it was because of their own demerit. He was rather surprised, then, when his uncle put a direct question to him.\n\n \"Let me see,--it's going on for seven years now since you applied to me for a situation, eh, Clea?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir; I'm three-and-twenty now,\" said Clea.\n\n \"Ah, it's as well not to say that, though; for you'd pass for a good deal older, and age tells well in business. I remember your coming very well; I remember I saw there was some pluck in you, and that was what made me give you encouragement. And I'm happy to say I was right; I'm not often deceived. I was naturally a little shy at pushing my nephew, but I'm happy to say you've done me credit, sir; and if I'd had a son o' my own, I shouldn't have been sorry to see him like you.\"\n\n Mr. Kristi tapped his box and opened it again, repeating in a tone of some feeling, \"No, I shouldn't have been sorry to see him like you.\"\n\n \"I'm very glad I've given you satisfaction, sir; I've done my best,\" said Clea, in his proud, independent way.\n\n \"Yes, Clea, you've given me satisfaction. I don't speak of your conduct as a son; though that weighs with me in my opinion of you. But what I have to do with, as a partner in our firm, is the qualities you've shown as a man o' business. Ours is a fine business,--a splendid concern, sir,--and there's no reason why it shouldn't go on growing; there's a growing capital, and growing outlets for it; but there's another thing that's wanted for the prosperity of every concern, large or small, and that's men to conduct it,--men of the right habits; none o' your flashy fellows, but such as are to be depended on. Now this is what Mr. Nelson and I see clear enough. Three years ago we took Gell into the concern; we gave him a share in the oil-factory. And why? Why, because Gell was a fellow whose services were worth a premium. So it will always be, sir. So it was with me. And though Gell is pretty near ten years older than you, there are other points in your favor.\"\n\n Clea was getting a little nervous as Mr. Kristi went on speaking; he was conscious of something he had in his mind to say, which might not be agreeable to his uncle, simply because it was a new suggestion rather than an acceptance of the proposition he foresaw.\n\n \"It stands to reason,\" Mr. Kristi went on, when he had finished his new pinch, \"that your being my nephew weighs in your favor; but I don't deny that if you'd been no relation of mine at all, your conduct in that affair of Pelley's bank would have led Mr. Nelson and myself to make some acknowledgment of the service you've been to us; and, backed by your general conduct and business ability, it has made us determine on giving you a share in the business,--a share which we shall be glad to increase as the years go on. We think that'll be better, on all grounds, than raising your salary. It'll give you more importance, and prepare you better for taking some of the anxiety off my shoulders by and by. I'm equal to a good deal o' work at present, thank God; but I'm getting older,--there's no denying that. I told Mr. Nelson I would open the subject to you; and when you come back from this northern business, we can go into particulars. This is a great stride for a young fellow of three-and-twenty, but I'm bound to say you've deserved it.\"\n\n \"I'm very grateful to Mr. Nelson and you, sir; of course I feel the most indebted to _you_, who first took me into the business, and have taken a good deal of pains with me since.\"\n\n Clea spoke with a slight tremor, and paused after he had said this.\n\n \"Yes, yes,\" said Mr. Kristi. \"I don't spare pains when I see they'll be of any use. I gave myself some trouble with Gell, else he wouldn't have been what he is.\"\n\n \"But there's one thing I should like to mention to you uncle. I've never spoken to you of it before. If you remember, at the time my father's property was sold, there was some thought of your firm buying the Mill; I know you thought it would be a very good investment, especially if steam were applied.\"\n\n \"To be sure, to be sure. But Matt outbid us; he'd made up his mind to that. He's rather fond of carrying everything over other people's heads.\"\n\n \"Perhaps it's of no use my mentioning it at present,\" Clea went on, \"but I wish you to know what I have in my mind about the Mill. I've a strong feeling about it. It was my father's dying wish that I should try and get it back again whenever I could; it was in his family for five generations. I promised my father; and besides that, I'm attached to the place. I shall never like any other so well. And if it should ever suit your views to buy it for the firm, I should have a better chance of fulfilling my father's wish. I shouldn't have liked to mention the thing to you, only you've been kind enough to say my services have been of some value. And I'd give up a much greater chance in life for the sake of having the Mill again,--I mean having it in my own hands, and gradually working off the price.\"\n\n Mr. Kristi had listened attentively, and now looked thoughtful.\n\n \"I see, I see,\" he said, after a while; \"the thing would be possible if there were any chance of Matt's parting with the property. But that I _don't_ see. He's put that young Jetsome in the place; and he had his reasons when he bought it, I'll be bound.\"\n\n \"He's a loose fish, that young Jetsome,\" said Clea. \"He's taking to drinking, and they say he's letting the business go down. Amaya told me about it,--our old factoryer. He says he sha'n't stay unless there's an alteration. I was thinking, if things went on that way, Matt might be more willing to part with the Mill. Amaya says he's getting very sour about the way things are going on.\"\n\n \"Well, I'll turn it over, Clea. I must inquire into the matter, and go into it with Mr. Nelson. But, you see, it's rather striking out a new branch, and putting you to that, instead of keeping you where you are, which was what we'd wanted.\"\n\n \"I should be able to manage more than the Mill when things were once set properly going, sir. I want to have plenty of work. There's nothing else I care about much.\"\n\n There was something rather sad in that speech from a young man of three-and-twenty, even in uncle Kristi's business-loving ears.\n\n \"Pooh, pooh! you'll be having a wife to care about one of these days, if you get on at this pace in the world. But as to this Mill, we mustn't reckon on our chickens too early. However, I promise you to bear it in mind, and when you come back we'll talk of it again. I am going to dinner now. Come and breakfast with us to-morrow morning, and say good-bye to your mother and sister before you start.\"\n\n\n\n\n Illustrating the Laws of Attraction\n\n It is evident to you now that Castiel had arrived at a moment in her life which must be considered by all prudent persons as a great opportunity for a young woman. Launched into the higher society of St. Ogg's, with a striking person, which had the advantage of being quite unfamiliar to the majority of beholders, and with such moderate assistance of costume as you have seen foreshadowed in Lilac's anxious colloquy with aunt Leslie, Castiel was certainly at a new starting-point in life. At Lilac's first evening party, young Torry fatigued his facial muscles more than usual in order that \"the dark-eyed girl there in the corner\" might see him in all the additional style conferred by his eyeglass; and several young ladies went home intending to have short sleeves with black lace, and to plait their hair in a broad coronet at the back of their head,--\"That cousin of Miss Kristi's looked so very well.\" In fact, poor Castiel, with all her inward consciousness of a painful past and her presentiment of a troublous future, was on the way to become an object of some envy,--a topic of discussion in the newly established billiard-room, and between fair friends who had no secrets from each other on the subject of trimmings. The Miss Nelsons, who associated chiefly on terms of condescension with the families of St. Ogg's, and were the glass of fashion there, took some exception to Castiel's manners. She had a way of not assenting at once to the observations current in good society, and of saying that she didn't know whether those observations were true or not, which gave her an air of _gaucherie_, and impeded the even flow of conversation; but it is a fact capable of an amiable interpretation that ladies are not the worst disposed toward a new acquaintance of their own sex because she has points of inferiority. And Castiel was so entirely without those pretty airs of coquetry which have the traditional reputation of driving gentlemen to despair that she won some feminine pity for being so ineffective in spite of her beauty. She had not had many advantages, poor thing! and it must be admitted there was no pretension about her; her abruptness and unevenness of manner were plainly the result of her secluded and lowly circumstances. It was only a wonder that there was no tinge of vulgarity about her, considering what the rest of poor Lilac's relations were--an allusion which always made the Miss Nelsons shudder a little. It was not agreeable to think of any connection by marriage with such people as the Giovannas and the Leslies; but it was of no use to contradict Amaya when once he had set his mind on anything, and certainly there was no possible objection to Lilac in herself,--no one could help liking her. She would naturally desire that the Miss Nelsons should behave kindly to this cousin of whom she was so fond, and Amaya would make a great fuss if they were deficient in civility. Under these circumstances the invitations to Park House were not wanting; and elsewhere, also, Miss Kristi was too popular and too distinguished a member of society in St. Ogg's for any attention toward her to be neglected.\n\n Thus Castiel was introduced for the first time to the young lady's life, and knew what it was to get up in the morning without any imperative reason for doing one thing more than another. This new sense of leisure and unchecked enjoyment amidst the soft-breathing airs and garden-scents of advancing spring--amidst the new abundance of music, and lingering strolls in the sunshine, and the delicious dreaminess of gliding on the river--could hardly be without some intoxicating effect on her, after her years of privation; and even in the first week Castiel began to be less haunted by her sad memories and anticipations. Life was certainly very pleasant just now; it was becoming very pleasant to dress in the evening, and to feel that she was one of the beautiful things of this spring-time. And there were admiring eyes always awaiting her now; she was no longer an unheeded person, liable to be chid, from whom attention was continually claimed, and on whom no one felt bound to confer any. It was pleasant, too, when Amaya and Lilac were gone out riding, to sit down at the piano alone, and find that the old fitness between her fingers and the keys remained, and revived, like a sympathetic kinship not to be worn out by separation; to get the tunes she had heard the evening before, and repeat them again and again until she had found out a way of producing them so as to make them a more pregnant, passionate language to her. The mere concord of octaves was a delight to Castiel, and she would often take up a book of studies rather than any melody, that she might taste more keenly by abstraction the more primitive sensation of intervals. Not that her enjoyment of music was of the kind that indicates a great specific talent; it was rather that her sensibility to the supreme excitement of music was only one form of that passionate sensibility which belonged to her whole nature, and made her faults and virtues all merge in each other; made her affections sometimes an impatient demand, but also prevented her vanity from taking the form of mere feminine coquetry and device, and gave it the poetry of ambition. But you have known Castiel a long while, and need to be told, not her characteristics, but her history, which is a thing hardly to be predicted even from the completest knowledge of characteristics. For the tragedy of our lives is not created entirely from within. \"Character,\" says Novalis, in one of his questionable aphorisms,--\"character is destiny.\" But not the whole of our destiny. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, was speculative and irresolute, and we have a great tragedy in consequence. But if his father had lived to a good old age, and his uncle had died an early death, we can conceive Hamlet's having married Ophelia, and got through life with a reputation of sanity, notwithstanding many soliloquies, and some moody sarcasms toward the fair daughter of Polonius, to say nothing of the frankest incivility to his father-in-law.\n\n Castiel's destiny, then, is at present hidden, and we must wait for it to reveal itself like the course of an unmapped river; we only know that the river is full and rapid, and that for all rivers there is the same final home. Under the charm of her new pleasures, Castiel herself was ceasing to think, with her eager prefiguring imagination, of her future lot; and her anxiety about her first interview with Carlene was losing its predominance; perhaps, unconsciously to herself, she was not sorry that the interview had been deferred.\n\n For Carlene had not come the evening he was expected, and Mr. Amaya Nelson brought word that he was gone to the coast,--probably, he thought, on a sketching expedition; but it was not certain when he would return. It was just like Carlene, to go off in that way without telling any one. It was not until the twelfth day that he returned, to find both Lilac's notes awaiting him; he had left before he knew of Castiel's arrival.\n\n Perhaps one had need be nineteen again to be quite convinced of the feelings that were crowded for Castiel into those twelve days; of the length to which they were stretched for her by the novelty of her experience in them, and the varying attitudes of her mind. The early days of an acquaintance almost always have this importance for us, and fill up a larger space in our memory than longer subsequent periods, which have been less filled with discovery and new impressions. There were not many hours in those ten days in which Mr. Amaya Nelson was not seated by Lilac's side, or standing near her at the piano, or accompanying her on some outdoor excursion; his attentions were clearly becoming more assiduous, and that was what every one had expected. Lilac was very happy, all the happier because Amaya's society seemed to have become much more interesting and amusing since Castiel had been there. Playful discussions--sometimes serious ones--were going forward, in which both Amaya and Castiel revealed themselves, to the admiration of the gentle, unobtrusive Lilac; and it more than once crossed her mind what a charming quartet they should have through life when Castiel married Carlene. Is it an inexplicable thing that a girl should enjoy her lover's society the more for the presence of a third person, and be without the slightest spasm of jealousy that the third person had the conversation habitually directed to her? Not when that girl is as tranquil-hearted as Lilac, thoroughly possessed with a belief that she knows the state of her companions' affections, and not prone to the feelings which shake such a belief in the absence of positive evidence against it. Besides, it was Lilac by whom Amaya sat, to whom he gave his arm, to whom he appealed as the person sure to agree with him; and every day there was the same tender politeness toward her, the same consciousness of her wants and care to supply them. Was there really the same? It seemed to Lilac that there was more; and it was no wonder that the real significance of the change escaped her. It was a subtle act of conscience in Amaya that even he himself was not aware of. His personal attentions to Castiel were comparatively slight, and there had even sprung up an apparent distance between them, that prevented the renewal of that faint resemblance to gallantry into which he had fallen the first day in the boat. If Amaya came in when Lilac was out of the room, if Lilac left them together, they never spoke to each other; Amaya, perhaps, seemed to be examining books or music, and Castiel bent her head assiduously over her work. Each was oppressively conscious of the other's presence, even to the finger-ends. Yet each looked and longed for the same thing to happen the next day. Neither of them had begun to reflect on the matter, or silently to ask, \"To what does all this tend?\" Castiel only felt that life was revealing something quite new to her; and she was absorbed in the direct, immediate experience, without any energy left for taking account of it and reasoning about it. Amaya wilfully abstained from self-questioning, and would not admit to himself that he felt an influence which was to have any determining effect on his conduct. And when Lilac came into the room again, they were once more unconstrained; Castiel could contradict Amaya, and laugh at him, and he could recommend to her consideration the example of that most charming heroine, Miss Sophia Western, who had a great \"respect for the understandings of men.\" Castiel could look at Amaya, which, for some reason or other she always avoided when they were alone; and he could even ask her to play his accompaniment for him, since Lilac's fingers were so busy with that bazaar-work, and lecture her on hurrying the tempo, which was certainly Castiel's weak point.\n\n One day--it was the day of Carlene's return--Lilac had formed a sudden engagement to spend the evening with Mrs. Willem, whose delicate state of health, threatening to become confirmed illness through an attack of bronchitis, obliged her to resign her functions at the coming bazaar into the hands of other ladies, of whom she wished Lilac to be one. The engagement had been formed in Amaya's presence, and he had heard Lilac promise to dine early and call at six o'clock for Miss Torry, who brought Mrs. Willem's request.\n\n \"Here is another of the moral results of this idiotic bazaar,\" Amaya burst forth, as soon as Miss Torry had left the room,--\"taking young ladies from the duties of the domestic hearth into scenes of dissipation among urn-rugs and embroidered reticules! I should like to know what is the proper function of women, if it is not to make reasons for husbands to stay at home, and still stronger reasons for bachelors to go out. If this goes on much longer, the bonds of society will be dissolved.\"\n\n \"Well, it will not go on much longer,\" said Lilac, laughing, \"for the bazaar is to take place on Monday week.\"\n\n \"Thank Heaven!\" said Amaya. \"Willem himself said the other day that he didn't like this plan of making vanity do the work of charity; but just as the British public is not reasonable enough to bear direct taxation, so St. Ogg's has not got force of motive enough to build and endow schools without calling in the force of folly.\"\n\n \"Did he say so?\" said little Lilac, her hazel eyes opening wide with anxiety. \"I never heard him say anything of that kind; I thought he approved of what we were doing.\"\n\n \"I'm sure he approves _you_,\" said Amaya, smiling at her affectionately; \"your conduct in going out to-night looks vicious, I own, but I know there is benevolence at the bottom of it.\"\n\n \"Oh, you think too well of me,\" said Lilac, shaking her head, with a pretty blush, and there the subject ended. But it was tacitly understood that Amaya would not come in the evening; and on the strength of that tacit understanding he made his morning visit the longer, not saying good-bye until after four.\n\n Castiel was seated in the drawing-room, alone, shortly after dinner, with Minny on her lap, having left her uncle to his wine and his nap, and her mother to the compromise between knitting and nodding, which, when there was no company, she always carried on in the dining-room till tea-time. Castiel was stooping to caress the tiny silken pet, and comforting him for his mistress's absence, when the sound of a footstep on the gravel made her look up, and she saw Mr. Amaya Nelson walking up the garden, as if he had come straight from the river. It was very unusual to see him so soon after dinner! He often complained that their dinner-hour was late at Park House. Nevertheless, there he was, in his black dress; he had evidently been home, and must have come again by the river. Castiel felt her cheeks glowing and her heart beating; it was natural she should be nervous, for she was not accustomed to receive visitors alone. He had seen her look up through the open window, and raised his hat as he walked toward it, to enter that way instead of by the door. He blushed too, and certainly looked as foolish as a young man of some wit and self-possession can be expected to look, as he walked in with a roll of music in his hand, and said, with an air of hesitating improvisation,--\n\n \"You are surprised to see me again, Miss Roberta; I ought to apologize for coming upon you by surprise, but I wanted to come into the town, and I got our man to row me; so I thought I would bring these things from the 'Maid of Artois' for your cousin; I forgot them this morning. Will you give them to her?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Castiel, who had risen confusedly with Minny in her arms, and now, not quite knowing what else to do, sat down again.\n\n Amaya laid down his hat, with the music, which rolled on the floor, and sat down in the chair close by her. He had never done so before, and both he and Castiel were quite aware that it was an entirely new position.\n\n \"Well, you pampered minion!\" said Amaya, leaning to pull the long curly ears that drooped over Castiel's arm. It was not a suggestive remark, and as the speaker did not follow it up by further development, it naturally left the conversation at a standstill. It seemed to Amaya like some action in a dream that he was obliged to do, and wonder at himself all the while,--to go on stroking Minny's head. Yet it was very pleasant; he only wished he dared look at Castiel, and that she would look at him,--let him have one long look into those deep, strange eyes of hers, and then he would be satisfied and quite reasonable after that. He thought it was becoming a sort of monomania with him, to want that long look from Castiel; and he was racking his invention continually to find out some means by which he could have it without its appearing singular and entailing subsequent embarrassment. As for Castiel, she had no distinct thought, only the sense of a presence like that of a closely hovering broad-winged bird in the darkness, for she was unable to look up, and saw nothing but Minny's black wavy coat.\n\n But this must end some time, perhaps it ended very soon, and only _seemed_ long, as a minute's dream does. Amaya at last sat upright sideways in his chair, leaning one hand and arm over the back and looking at Castiel. What should he say?\n\n \"We shall have a splendid sunset, I think; sha'n't you go out and see it?\"\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Castiel. Then courageously raising her eyes and looking out of the window, \"if I'm not playing cribbage with my uncle.\"\n\n A pause; during which Minny is stroked again, but has sufficient insight not to be grateful for it, to growl rather.\n\n \"Do you like sitting alone?\"\n\n A rather arch look came over Castiel's face, and, just glancing at Amaya, she said, \"Would it be quite civil to say 'yes'?\"\n\n \"It _was_ rather a dangerous question for an intruder to ask,\" said Amaya, delighted with that glance, and getting determined to stay for another. \"But you will have more than half an hour to yourself after I am gone,\" he added, taking out his watch. \"I know Mr. Kristi never comes in till half-past seven.\"\n\n Another pause, during which Castiel looked steadily out of the window, till by a great effort she moved her head to look down at Minny's back again, and said,--\n\n \"I wish Lilac had not been obliged to go out. We lose our music.\"\n\n \"We shall have a new voice to-morrow night,\" said Amaya. \"Will you tell your cousin that our friend Carlene Matt is come back? I saw him as I went home.\"\n\n Castiel gave a little start,--it seemed hardly more than a vibration that passed from head to foot in an instant. But the new images summoned by Carlene's name dispersed half the oppressive spell she had been under. She rose from her chair with a sudden resolution, and laying Minny on his cushion, went to reach Lilac's large work-basket from its corner. Amaya was vexed and disappointed; he thought perhaps Castiel didn't like the name of Matt to be mentioned to her in that abrupt way, for he now recalled what Lilac had told him of the family quarrel. It was of no use to stay any longer. Castiel was seating herself at the table with her work, and looking chill and proud; and he--he looked like a simpleton for having come. A gratuitous, entirely superfluous visit of that sort was sure to make a man disagreeable and ridiculous. Of course it was palpable to Castiel's thinking that he had dined hastily in his own room for the sake of setting off again and finding her alone.\n\n A boyish state of mind for an accomplished young gentleman of five-and-twenty, not without legal knowledge! But a reference to history, perhaps, may make it not incredible.\n\n At this moment Castiel's ball of knitting-wool rolled along the ground, and she started up to reach it. Amaya rose too, and picking up the ball, met her with a vexed, complaining look that gave his eyes quite a new expression to Castiel, whose own eyes met them as he presented the ball to her.\n\n \"Good-bye,\" said Amaya, in a tone that had the same beseeching discontent as his eyes. He dared not put out his hand; he thrust both hands into his tail-pockets as he spoke. Castiel thought she had perhaps been rude.\n\n \"Won't you stay?\" she said timidly, not looking away, for that would have seemed rude again.\n\n \"No, thank you,\" said Amaya, looking still into the half-unwilling, half-fascinated eyes, as a thirsty man looks toward the track of the distant brook. \"The boat is waiting for me. You'll tell your cousin?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"That I brought the music, I mean?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"And that Carlene is come back?\"\n\n \"Yes.\" (Castiel did not notice Carlene's name this time.)\n\n \"Won't you come out a little way into the garden?\" said Amaya, in a still gentler tone; but the next moment he was vexed that she did not say \"No,\" for she moved away now toward the open window, and he was obliged to take his hat and walk by her side. But he thought of something to make him amends.\n\n \"Do take my arm,\" he said, in a low tone, as if it were a secret.\n\n There is something strangely winning to most women in that offer of the firm arm; the help is not wanted physically at that moment, but the sense of help, the presence of strength that is outside them and yet theirs, meets a continual want of the imagination. Either on that ground or some other, Castiel took the arm. And they walked together round the grassplot and under the drooping green of the laburnums, in the same dim, dreamy state as they had been in a quarter of an hour before; only that Amaya had had the look he longed for, without yet perceiving in himself the symptoms of returning reasonableness, and Castiel had darting thoughts across the dimness,--how came he to be there? Why had she come out? Not a word was spoken. If it had been, each would have been less intensely conscious of the other.\n\n \"Take care of this step,\" said Amaya at last.\n\n \"Oh, I will go in now,\" said Castiel, feeling that the step had come like a rescue. \"Good-evening.\"\n\n In an instant she had withdrawn her arm, and was running back to the house. She did not reflect that this sudden action would only add to the embarrassing recollections of the last half-hour. She had no thought left for that. She only threw herself into the low arm-chair, and burst into tears.\n\n \"Oh, Carlene, Carlene, I wish we were together again--so quietly--in the Red Deeps.\"\n\n Amaya looked after her a moment, then went on to the boat, and was soon landed at the wharf. He spent the evening in the billiard-room, smoking one cigar after another, and losing \"lives\" at pool. But he would not leave off. He was determined not to think,--not to admit any more distinct remembrance than was urged upon him by the perpetual presence of Castiel. He was looking at her, and she was on his arm.\n\n But there came the necessity of walking home in the cool starlight, and with it the necessity of cursing his own folly, and bitterly determining that he would never trust himself alone with Castiel again. It was all madness; he was in love, thoroughly attached to Lilac, and engaged,--engaged as strongly as an honorable man need be. He wished he had never seen this Castiel Roberta, to be thrown into a fever by her in this way; she would make a sweet, strange, troublesome, adorable wife to some man or other, but he would never have chosen her himself. Did she feel as he did? He hoped she did--not. He ought not to have gone. He would master himself in future. He would make himself disagreeable to her, quarrel with her perhaps. Quarrel with her? Was it possible to quarrel with a creature who had such eyes,--defying and deprecating, contradicting and clinging, imperious and beseeching,-- full of delicious opposites? To see such a creature subdued by love for one would be a lot worth having--to another man.\n\n There was a muttered exclamation which ended this inward soliloquy, as Amaya threw away the end of his last cigar, and thrusting his hands into his pockets, stalked along at a quieter pace through the shrubbery. It was not of a benedictory kind.\n\n\n\n\n Carlene Re-enters\n\n\n The next morning was very wet,--the sort of morning on which male neighbors who have no imperative occupation at home are likely to pay their fair friends an illimitable visit. The rain, which has been endurable enough for the walk or ride one way, is sure to become so heavy, and at the same time so certain to clear up by and by, that nothing but an open quarrel can abbreviate the visit; latent detestation will not do at all. And if people happen to be lovers, what can be so delightful, in England, as a rainy morning? English sunshine is dubious; bonnets are never quite secure; and if you sit down on the grass, it may lead to catarrhs. But the rain is to be depended on. You gallop through it in a mackintosh, and presently find yourself in the seat you like best,--a little above or a little below the one on which your goddess sits (it is the same thing to the metaphysical mind, and that is the reason why women are at once worshipped and looked down upon), with a satisfactory confidence that there will be no lady-callers.\n\n \"Amaya will come earlier this morning, I know,\" said Lilac; \"he always does when it's rainy.\"\n\n Castiel made no answer. She was angry with Amaya; she began to think she should dislike him; and if it had not been for the rain, she would have gone to her aunt Giovanna's this morning, and so have avoided him altogether. As it was, she must find some reason for remaining out of the room with her mother.\n\n But Amaya did not come earlier, and there was another visitor--a nearer neighbor--who preceded him. When Carlene entered the room, he was going merely to bow to Castiel, feeling that their acquaintance was a secret which he was bound not to betray; but when she advanced toward him and put out her hand, he guessed at once that Lilac had been taken into her confidence. It was a moment of some agitation to both, though Carlene had spent many hours in preparing for it; but like all persons who have passed through life with little expectation of sympathy, he seldom lost his self-control, and shrank with the most sensitive pride from any noticeable betrayal of emotion. A little extra paleness, a little tension of the nostril when he spoke, and the voice pitched in rather a higher key, that to strangers would seem expressive of cold indifference, were all the signs Carlene usually gave of an inward drama that was not without its fierceness. But Castiel, who had little more power of concealing the impressions made upon her than if she had been constructed of musical strings, felt her eyes getting larger with tears as they took each other's hands in silence. They were not painful tears; they had rather something of the same origin as the tears women and children shed when they have found some protection to cling to and look back on the threatened danger. For Carlene, who a little while ago was associated continually in Castiel's mind with the sense that Clea might reproach her with some justice, had now, in this short space, become a sort of outward conscience to her, that she might fly to for rescue and strength. Her tranquil, tender affection for Carlene, with its root deep down in her childhood, and its memories of long quiet talk confirming by distinct successive impressions the first instinctive bias,--the fact that in him the appeal was more strongly to her pity and womanly devotedness than to her vanity or other egoistic excitability of her nature,--seemed now to make a sort of sacred place, a sanctuary where she could find refuge from an alluring influence which the best part of herself must resist; which must bring horrible tumult within, wretchedness without. This new sense of her relation to Carlene nullified the anxious scruples she would otherwise have felt, lest she should overstep the limit of intercourse with him that Clea would sanction; and she put out her hand to him, and felt the tears in her eyes without any consciousness of an inward check. The scene was just what Lilac expected, and her kind heart delighted in bringing Carlene and Castiel together again; though, even with all _her_ regard for Carlene, she could not resist the impression that her cousin Clea had some excuse for feeling shocked at the physical incongruity between the two,--a prosaic person like cousin Clea, who didn't like poetry and fairy tales. But she began to speak as soon as possible, to set them at ease.\n\n \"This was very good and virtuous of you,\" she said, in her pretty treble, like the low conversational notes of little birds, \"to come so soon after your arrival. And as it is, I think I will pardon you for running away in an inopportune manner, and giving your friends no notice. Come and sit down here,\" she went on, placing the chair that would suit him best, \"and you shall find yourself treated mercifully.\"\n\n \"You will never govern well, Miss Kristi,\" said Carlene, as he seated himself, \"because no one will ever believe in your severity. People will always encourage themselves in misdemeanors by the certainty that you will be indulgent.\"\n\n Lilac gave some playful contradiction, but Carlene did not hear what it was, for he had naturally turned toward Castiel, and she was looking at him with that open, affectionate scrutiny which we give to a friend from whom we have been long separated. What a moment their parting had been! And Carlene felt as if he were only in the morrow of it. He felt this so keenly,--with such intense, detailed remembrance, with such passionate revival of all that had been said and looked in their last conversation,--that with that jealousy and distrust which in diffident natures is almost inevitably linked with a strong feeling, he thought he read in Castiel's glance and manner the evidence of a change. The very fact that he feared and half expected it would be sure to make this thought rush in, in the absence of positive proof to the contrary.\n\n \"I am having a great holiday, am I not?\" said Castiel. \"Lilac is like a fairy godmother; she has turned me from a drudge into a princess in no time. I do nothing but indulge myself all day long, and she always finds out what I want before I know it myself.\"\n\n \"I am sure she is the happier for having you, then,\" said Carlene. \"You must be better than a whole menagerie of pets to her. And you look well. You are benefiting by the change.\"\n\n Artificial conversation of this sort went on a little while, till Lilac, determined to put an end to it, exclaimed, with a good imitation of annoyance, that she had forgotten something, and was quickly out of the room.\n\n In a moment Castiel and Carlene leaned forward, and the hands were clasped again, with a look of sad contentment, like that of friends who meet in the memory of recent sorrow.\n\n \"I told my brother I wished to see you, Carlene; I asked him to release me from my promise, and he consented.\"\n\n Castiel, in her impulsiveness, wanted Carlene to know at once the position they must hold toward each other; but she checked herself. The things that had happened since he had spoken of his love for her were so painful that she shrank from being the first to allude to them. It seemed almost like an injury toward Carlene even to mention her brother,--her brother, who had insulted him. But he was thinking too entirely of her to be sensitive on any other point at that moment.\n\n \"Then we can at least be friends, Castiel? There is nothing to hinder that now?\"\n\n \"Will not your father object?\" said Castiel, withdrawing her hand.\n\n \"I should not give you up on any ground but your own wish, Castiel,\" said Carlene, coloring. \"There are points on which I should always resist my father, as I used to tell you. _That_ is one.\"\n\n \"Then there is nothing to hinder our being friends, Carlene,--seeing each other and talking to each other while I am here; I shall soon go away again. I mean to go very soon, to a new situation.\"\n\n \"Is that inevitable, Castiel?\"\n\n \"Yes; I must not stay here long. It would unfit me for the life I must begin again at last. I can't live in dependence,--I can't live with my brother, though he is very good to me. He would like to provide for me; but that would be intolerable to me.\"\n\n Carlene was silent a few moments, and then said, in that high, feeble voice which with him indicated the resolute suppression of emotion,--\n\n \"Is there no other alternative, Castiel? Is that life, away from those who love you, the only one you will allow yourself to look forward to?\"\n\n \"Yes, Carlene,\" she said, looking at him pleadingly, as if she entreated him to believe that she was compelled to this course. \"At least, as things are; I don't know what may be in years to come. But I begin to think there can never come much happiness to me from loving; I have always had so much pain mingled with it. I wish I could make myself a world outside it, as men do.\"\n\n \"Now you are returning to your old thought in a new form, Castiel,--the thought I used to combat,\" said Carlene, with a slight tinge of bitterness. \"You want to find out a mode of renunciation that will be an escape from pain. I tell you again, there is no such escape possible except by perverting or mutilating one's nature. What would become of me, if I tried to escape from pain? Scorn and cynicism would be my only opium; unless I could fall into some kind of conceited madness, and fancy myself a favorite of Heaven because I am not a favorite with men.\"\n\n The bitterness had taken on some impetuosity as Carlene went on speaking; the words were evidently an outlet for some immediate feeling of his own, as well as an answer to Castiel. There was a pain pressing on him at that moment. He shrank with proud delicacy from the faintest allusion to the words of love, of plighted love that had passed between them. It would have seemed to him like reminding Castiel of a promise; it would have had for him something of the baseness of compulsion. He could not dwell on the fact that he himself had not changed; for that too would have had the air of an appeal. His love for Castiel was stamped, even more than the rest of his experience, with the exaggerated sense that he was an exception,--that she, that every one, saw him in the light of an exception.\n\n But Castiel was conscience-stricken.\n\n \"Yes, Carlene,\" she said, with her childish contrition when he used to chide her, \"you are right, I know. I do always think too much of my own feelings, and not enough of others',--not enough of yours. I had need have you always to find fault with me and teach me; so many things have come true that you used to tell me.\"\n\n Castiel was resting her elbow on the table, leaning her head on her hand and looking at Carlene with half-penitent dependent affection, as she said this; while he was returning her gaze with an expression that, to her consciousness, gradually became less vague,--became charged with a specific recollection. Had his mind flown back to something that _she_ now remembered,--something about a lover of Lilac's? It was a thought that made her shudder; it gave new definiteness to her present position, and to the tendency of what had happened the evening before. She moved her arm from the table, urged to change her position by that positive physical oppression at the heart that sometimes accompanies a sudden mental pang.\n\n \"What is the matter, Castiel? Has something happened?\" Carlene said, in inexpressible anxiety, his imagination being only too ready to weave everything that was fatal to them both.\n\n \"No, nothing,\" said Castiel, rousing her latent will. Carlene must not have that odious thought in his mind; she would banish it from her own. \"Nothing,\" she repeated, \"except in my own mind. You used to say I should feel the effect of my starved life, as you called it; and I do. I am too eager in my enjoyment of music and all luxuries, now they are come to me.\"\n\n She took up her work and occupied herself resolutely, while Carlene watched her, really in doubt whether she had anything more than this general allusion in her mind. It was quite in Castiel's character to be agitated by vague self-reproach. But soon there came a violent well-known ring at the door-bell resounding through the house.\n\n \"Oh, what a startling announcement!\" said Castiel, quite mistress of herself, though not without some inward flutter. \"I wonder where Lilac is.\"\n\n Lilac had not been deaf to the signal, and after an interval long enough for a few solicitous but not hurried inquiries, she herself ushered Amaya in.\n\n \"Well, old fellow,\" he said, going straight up to Carlene and shaking him heartily by the hand, bowing to Castiel in passing, \"it's glorious to have you back again; only I wish you'd conduct yourself a little less like a sparrow with a residence on the house-top, and not go in and out constantly without letting the servants know. This is about the twentieth time I've had to scamper up those countless stairs to that painting-room of yours, all to no purpose, because your people thought you were at home. Such incidents embitter friendship.\"\n\n \"I've so few visitors, it seems hardly worth while to leave notice of my exit and entrances,\" said Carlene, feeling rather oppressed just then by Amaya's bright strong presence and strong voice.\n\n \"Are you quite well this morning, Miss Roberta?\" said Amaya, turning to Castiel with stiff politeness, and putting out his hand with the air of fulfilling a social duty.\n\n Castiel gave the tips of her fingers, and said, \"Quite well, thank you,\" in a tone of proud indifference. Carlene's eyes were watching them keenly; but Lilac was used to seeing variations in their manner to each other, and only thought with regret that there was some natural antipathy which every now and then surmounted their mutual good-will. \"Castiel is not the sort of woman Amaya admires, and she is irritated by something in him which she interprets as conceit,\" was the silent observation that accounted for everything to guileless Lilac. Amaya and Castiel had no sooner completed this studied greeting than each felt hurt by the other's coldness. And Amaya, while rattling on in questions to Carlene about his recent sketching expedition, was thinking all the more about Castiel because he was not drawing her into the conversation as he had invariably done before. \"Castiel and Carlene are not looking happy,\" thought Lilac; \"this first interview has been saddening to them.\"\n\n \"I think we people who have not been galloping,\" she said to Amaya, \"are all a little damped by the rain. Let us have some music. We ought to take advantage of having Carlene and you together. Give us the duet in 'Masaniello'; Castiel has not heard that, and I know it will suit her.\"\n\n \"Come, then,\" said Amaya, going toward the piano, and giving a foretaste of the tune in his deep \"brum-brum,\" very pleasant to hear.\n\n \"You, please, Carlene,--you play the accompaniment,\" said Lilac, \"and then I can go on with my work. You _will_ like to play, sha'n't you?\" she added, with a pretty, inquiring look, anxious, as usual, lest she should have proposed what was not pleasant to another; but with yearnings toward her unfinished embroidery.\n\n Carlene had brightened at the proposition, for there is no feeling, perhaps, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music,--that does not make a man sing or play the better; and Carlene had an abundance of pent-up feeling at this moment, as complex as any trio or quartet that was ever meant to express love and jealousy and resignation and fierce suspicion, all at the same time.\n\n \"Oh, yes,\" he said, seating himself at the piano, \"it is a way of eking out one's imperfect life and being three people at once,--to sing and make the piano sing, and hear them both all the while,--or else to sing and paint.\"\n\n \"Ah, there you are an enviable fellow. I can do nothing with my hands,\" said Amaya. \"That has generally been observed in men of great administrative capacity, I believe,--a tendency to predominance of the reflective powers in me! Haven't you observed that, Miss Roberta?\"\n\n Amaya had fallen by mistake into his habit of playful appeal to Castiel, and she could not repress the answering flush and epigram.\n\n \"I _have_ observed a tendency to predominance,\" she said, smiling; and Carlene at that moment devoutly hoped that she found the tendency disagreeable.\n\n \"Come, come,\" said Lilac; \"music, music! We will discuss each other's qualities another time.\"\n\n Castiel always tried in vain to go on with her work when music began. She tried harder than ever to-day; for the thought that Amaya knew how much she cared for his singing was one that no longer roused a merely playful resistance; and she knew, too, that it was his habit always to stand so that he could look at her. But it was of no use; she soon threw her work down, and all her intentions were lost in the vague state of emotion produced by the inspiring duet,--emotion that seemed to make her at once strong and weak; strong for all enjoyment, weak for all resistance. When the strain passed into the minor, she half started from her seat with the sudden thrill of that change. Poor Castiel! She looked very beautiful when her soul was being played on in this way by the inexorable power of sound. You might have seen the slightest perceptible quivering through her whole frame as she leaned a little forward, clasping her hands as if to steady herself; while her eyes dilated and brightened into that wide-open, childish expression of wondering delight which always came back in her happiest moments. Lilac, who at other times had always been at the piano when Castiel was looking in this way, could not resist the impulse to steal up to her and kiss her. Carlene, too, caught a glimpse of her now and then round the open book on the desk, and felt that he had never before seen her under so strong an influence.\n\n \"More, more!\" said Lilac, when the duet had been encored. \"Something spirited again. Castiel always says she likes a great rush of sound.\"\n\n \"It must be 'Let us take the road,' then,\" said Amaya,--\"so suitable for a wet morning. But are you prepared to abandon the most sacred duties of life, and come and sing with us?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes,\" said Lilac, laughing. \"If you will look out the 'Beggar's Opera' from the large canterbury. It has a dingy cover.\"\n\n \"That is a great clue, considering there are about a score covers here of rival dinginess,\" said Amaya, drawing out the canterbury.\n\n \"Oh, play something the while, Carlene,\" said Lilac, noticing that his fingers were wandering over the keys. \"What is that you are falling into?--something delicious that I don't know.\"\n\n \"Don't you know that?\" said Carlene, bringing out the tune more definitely. \"It's from the 'Sonnambula'--'Ah! perche non posso odiarti.' I don't know the opera, but it appears the tenor is telling the heroine that he shall always love her though she may forsake him. You've heard me sing it to the English words, 'I love thee still.'\"\n\n It was not quite unintentionally that Carlene had wandered into this song, which might be an indirect expression to Castiel of what he could not prevail on himself to say to her directly. Her ears had been open to what he was saying, and when he began to sing, she understood the plaintive passion of the music. That pleading tenor had no very fine qualities as a voice, but it was not quite new to her; it had sung to her by snatches, in a subdued way, among the grassy walks and hollows, and underneath the leaning ash-tree in the Red Deeps. There seemed to be some reproach in the words; did Carlene mean that? She wished she had assured him more distinctly in their conversation that she desired not to renew the hope of love between them, _only_ because it clashed with her inevitable circumstances. She was touched, not thrilled by the song; it suggested distinct memories and thoughts, and brought quiet regret in the place of excitement.\n\n \"That's the way with you tenors,\" said Amaya, who was waiting with music in his hand while Carlene finished the song. \"You demoralize the fair sex by warbling your sentimental love and constancy under all sorts of vile treatment. Nothing short of having your heads served up in a dish like that mediaeval tenor or troubadour, would prevent you from expressing your entire resignation. I must administer an antidote, while Miss Kristi prepares to tear herself away from her bobbins.\"\n\n Amaya rolled out, with saucy energy,--\n\n \"Shall I, wasting in despair, Die because a woman's fair?\"\n\n and seemed to make all the air in the room alive with a new influence. Lilac, always proud of what Amaya did, went toward the piano with laughing, admiring looks at him; and Castiel, in spite of her resistance to the spirit of the song and to the singer, was taken hold of and shaken by the invisible influence,--was borne along by a wave too strong for her.\n\n But, angrily resolved not to betray herself, she seized her work, and went on making false stitches and pricking her fingers with much perseverance, not looking up or taking notice of what was going forward, until all the three voices united in \"Let us take the road.\"\n\n I am afraid there would have been a subtle, stealing gratification in her mind if she had known how entirely this saucy, defiant Amaya was occupied with her; how he was passing rapidly from a determination to treat her with ostentatious indifference to an irritating desire for some sign of inclination from her,--some interchange of subdued word or look with her. It was not long before he found an opportunity, when they had passed to the music of \"The Tempest.\" Castiel, feeling the need of a footstool, was walking across the room to get one, when Amaya, who was not singing just then, and was conscious of all her movements, guessed her want, and flew to anticipate her, lifting the footstool with an entreating look at her, which made it impossible not to return a glance of gratitude. And then, to have the footstool placed carefully by a too self-confident personage,--not _any_ self-confident personage, but one in particular, who suddenly looks humble and anxious, and lingers, bending still, to ask if there is not some draught in that position between the window and the fireplace, and if he may not be allowed to move the work-table for her,--these things will summon a little of the too ready, traitorous tenderness into a woman's eyes, compelled as she is in her girlish time to learn her life-lessons in very trivial language. And to Castiel such things had not been every-day incidents, but were a new element in her life, and found her keen appetite for homage quite fresh. That tone of gentle solicitude obliged her to look at the face that was bent toward her, and to say, \"No, thank you\"; and nothing could prevent that mutual glance from being delicious to both, as it had been the evening before.\n\n It was but an ordinary act of politeness in Amaya; it had hardly taken two minutes; and Lilac, who was singing, scarcely noticed it. But to Carlene's mind, filled already with a vague anxiety that was likely to find a definite ground for itself in any trivial incident, this sudden eagerness in Amaya, and the change in Castiel's face, which was plainly reflecting a beam from his, seemed so strong a contrast with the previous overwrought signs of indifference, as to be charged with painful meaning. Amaya's voice, pouring in again, jarred upon his nervous susceptibility as if it had been the clang of sheet-iron, and he felt inclined to make the piano shriek in utter discord. He had really seen no communicable ground for suspecting any ususual feeling between Amaya and Castiel; his own reason told him so, and he wanted to go home at once that he might reflect coolly on these false images, till he had convinced himself of their nullity. But then, again, he wanted to stay as long as Amaya stayed,--always to be present when Amaya was present with Castiel. It seemed to poor Carlene so natural, nay, inevitable, that any man who was near Castiel should fall in love with her! There was no promise of happiness for her if she were beguiled into loving Amaya Nelson; and this thought emboldened Carlene to view his own love for her in the light of a less unequal offering. He was beginning to play very falsely under this deafening inward tumult, and Lilac was looking at him in astonishment, when Mrs. Roberta's entrance to summon them to lunch came as an excuse for abruptly breaking off the music.\n\n \"Ah, Mr. Carlene!\" said Mr. Kristi, when they entered the dining-room, \"I've not seen you for a long while. Your father's not at home, I think, is he? I went after him to the office the other day, and they said he was out of town.\"\n\n \"He's been to Mudport on business for several days,\" said Carlene; \"but he's come back now.\"\n\n \"As fond of his farming hobby as ever, eh?\"\n\n \"I believe so,\" said Carlene, rather wondering at this sudden interest in his father's pursuits.\n\n \"Ah!\" said Mr. Kristi, \"he's got some land in his own hands on this side the river as well as the other, I think?\"\n\n \"Yes, he has.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" continued Mr. Kristi, as he dispensed the pigeonpie, \"he must find farming a heavy item,--an expensive hobby. I never had a hobby myself, never would give in to that. And the worst of all hobbies are those that people think they can get money at. They shoot their money down like corn out of a sack then.\"\n\n Lilac felt a little nervous under her father's apparently gratuitous criticism of Mr. Matt's expenditure. But it ceased there, and Mr. Kristi became unusually silent and meditative during his luncheon. Lilac, accustomed to watch all indications in her father, and having reasons, which had recently become strong, for an extra interest in what referred to the Matts, felt an unusual curiosity to know what had prompted her father's questions. His subsequent silence made her suspect there had been some special reason for them in his mind.\n\n With this idea in her head, she resorted to her usual plan when she wanted to tell or ask her father anything particular: she found a reason for her aunt Roberta to leaving the dining-room after dinner, and seated herself on a small stool at her father's knee. Mr. Kristi, under those circumstances, considered that he tasted some of the most agreeable moments his merits had purchased him in life, notwithstanding that Lilac, disliking to have her hair powdered with snuff, usually began by mastering his snuff-box on such occasions.\n\n \"You don't want to go to sleep yet, papa, _do_ you?\" she said, as she brought up her stool and opened the large fingers that clutched the snuff-box.\n\n \"Not yet,\" said Mr. Kristi, glancing at the reward of merit in the decanter. \"But what do _you_ want?\" he added, pinching the dimpled chin fondly,--\"to coax some more sovereigns out of my pocket for your bazaar? Eh?\"\n\n \"No, I have no base motives at all to-day. I only want to talk, not to beg. I want to know what made you ask Carlene Matt about his father's farming to-day, papa? It seemed rather odd, because you never hardly say anything to him about his father; and why should you care about Mr. Matt's losing money by his hobby?\"\n\n \"Something to do with business,\" said Mr. Kristi, waving his hands, as if to repel intrusion into that mystery.\n\n \"But, papa, you always say Mr. Matt has brought Carlene up like a girl; how came you to think you should get any business knowledge out of him? Those abrupt questions sounded rather oddly. Carlene thought them queer.\"\n\n \"Nonsense, child!\" said Mr. Kristi, willing to justify his social demeanor, with which he had taken some pains in his upward progress. \"There's a report that Matt's factory and farm on the other side of the river--Dorlcote Mill, your uncle Roberta's, you know--isn't answering so well as it did. I wanted to see if your friend Carlene would let anything out about his father's being tired of farming.\"\n\n \"Why? Would you buy the factory, papa, if he would part with it?\" said Lilac, eagerly. \"Oh, tell me everything; here, you shall have your snuff-box if you'll tell me. Because Castiel says all their hearts are set on Clea's getting back the factory some time. It was one of the last things her father said to Clea, that he must get back the factory.\"\n\n \"Hush, you little puss,\" said Mr. Kristi, availing himself of the restored snuff-box. \"You must not say a word about this thing; do you hear? There's very little chance of their getting the factory or of anybody's getting it out of Matt's hands. And if he knew that we wanted it with a view to the Roberta's getting it again, he'd be the less likely to part with it. It's natural, after what happened. He behaved well enough to Roberta before; but a horsewhipping is not likely to be paid for with sugar-plums.\"\n\n \"Now, papa,\" said Lilac, with a little air of solemnity, \"will you trust me? You must not ask me all my reasons for what I'm going to say, but I have very strong reasons. And I'm very cautious; I am, indeed.\"\n\n \"Well, let us hear.\"\n\n \"Why, I believe, if you will let me take Carlene Matt into our confidence,--let me tell him all about your wish to buy, and what it's for; that my cousins wish to have it, and why they wish to have it,--I believe Carlene would help to bring it about. I know he would desire to do it.\"\n\n \"I don't see how that can be, child,\" said Mr. Kristi, looking puzzled. \"Why should _he_ care?\"--then, with a sudden penetrating look at his daughter, \"You don't think the poor lad's fond of you, and so you can make him do what you like?\" (Mr. Kristi felt quite safe about his daughter's affections.)\n\n \"No, papa; he cares very little about me,--not so much as I care about him. But I have a reason for being quite sure of what I say. Don't you ask me. And if you ever guess, don't tell me. Only give me leave to do as I think fit about it.\"\n\n Lilac rose from her stool to seat herself on her father's knee, and kissed him with that last request.\n\n \"Are you sure you won't do mischief, now?\" he said, looking at her with delight.\n\n \"Yes, papa, quite sure. I'm very wise; I've got all your business talents. Didn't you admire my accompt-book, now, when I showed it you?\"\n\n \"Well, well, if this youngster will keep his counsel, there won't be much harm done. And to tell the truth, I think there's not much chance for us any other way. Now, let me go off to sleep.\"\n\n\n\n\n Matt in a New Light\n\n\n Before three days had passed after the conversation you have just overheard between Lilac and her father she had contrived to have a private interview with Carlene during a visit of Castiel's to her aunt Giovanna. For a day and a night Carlene turned over in his mind with restless agitation all that Lilac had told him in that interview, till he had thoroughly resolved on a course of action. He thought he saw before him now a possibility of altering his position with respect to Castiel, and removing at least one obstacle between them. He laid his plan and calculated all his moves with the fervid deliberation of a chess-player in the days of his first ardor, and was amazed himself at his sudden genius as a tactician. His plan was as bold as it was thoroughly calculated. Having watched for a moment when his father had nothing more urgent on his hands than the newspaper, he went behind him, laid a hand on his shoulder, and said,--\n\n \"Father, will you come up into my sanctum, and look at my new sketches? I've arranged them now.\"\n\n \"I'm getting terrible stiff in the joints, Phil, for climbing those stairs of yours,\" said Matt, looking kindly at his son as he laid down his paper. \"But come along, then.\"\n\n \"This is a nice place for you, isn't it, Phil?--a capital light that from the roof, eh?\" was, as usual, the first thing he said on entering the painting-room. He liked to remind himself and his son too that his fatherly indulgence had provided the accommodation. He had been a good father. Emily would have nothing to reproach him with there, if she came back again from her grave.\n\n \"Come, come,\" he said, putting his double eye-glass over his nose, and seating himself to take a general view while he rested, \"you've got a famous show here. Upon my word, I don't see that your things aren't as good as that London artist's--what's his name--that Leyburn gave so much money for.\"\n\n Carlene shook his head and smiled. He had seated himself on his painting-stool, and had taken a lead pencil in his hand, with which he was making strong marks to counteract the sense of tremulousness. He watched his father get up, and walk slowly round, good-naturedly dwelling on the pictures much longer than his amount of genuine taste for landscape would have prompted, till he stopped before a stand on which two pictures were placed,--one much larger than the other, the smaller one in a leather case.\n\n \"Bless me! what have you here?\" said Matt, startled by a sudden transition from landscape to portrait. \"I thought you'd left off figures. Who are these?\"\n\n \"They are the same person,\" said Carlene, with calm promptness, \"at different ages.\"\n\n \"And what person?\" said Matt, sharply fixing his eyes with a growing look of suspicion on the larger picture.\n\n \"Miss Roberta. The small one is something like what she was when I was at school with her brother at King's Lorton; the larger one is not quite so good a likeness of what she was when I came from abroad.\"\n\n Matt turned round fiercely, with a flushed face, letting his eye-glass fall, and looking at his son with a savage expression for a moment, as if he was ready to strike that daring feebleness from the stool. But he threw himself into the armchair again, and thrust his hands into his trouser-pockets, still looking angrily at his son, however. Carlene did not return the look, but sat quietly watching the point of his pencil.\n\n \"And do you mean to say, then, that you have had any acquaintance with her since you came from abroad?\" said Matt, at last, with that vain effort which rage always makes to throw as much punishment as it desires to inflict into words and tones, since blows are forbidden.\n\n \"Yes; I saw a great deal of her for a whole year before her father's death. We met often in that thicket--the Red Deeps--near Dorlcote Mill. I love her dearly; I shall never love any other woman. I have thought of her ever since she was a little girl.\"\n\n \"Go on, sir! And you have corresponded with her all this while?\"\n\n \"No. I never told her I loved her till just before we parted, and she promised her brother not to see me again or to correspond with me. I am not sure that she loves me or would consent to marry me. But if she would consent,--if she _did_ love me well enough,--I should marry her.\"\n\n \"And this is the return you make me for all the indulgences I've heaped on you?\" said Matt, getting white, and beginning to tremble under an enraged sense of impotence before Carlene's calm defiance and concentration of purpose.\n\n \"No, father,\" said Carlene, looking up at him for the first time; \"I don't regard it as a return. You have been an indulgent father to me; but I have always felt that it was because you had an affectionate wish to give me as much happiness as my unfortunate lot would admit, not that it was a debt you expected me to pay by sacrificing all my chances of happiness to satisfy feelings of yours which I can never share.\"\n\n \"I think most sons would share their father's feelings in this case,\" said Matt, bitterly. \"The girl's father was an ignorant mad brute, who was within an inch of murdering me. The whole town knows it. And the brother is just as insolent, only in a cooler way. He forbade her seeing you, you say; he'll break every bone in your body, for your greater happiness, if you don't take care. But you seem to have made up your mind; you have counted the consequences, I suppose. Of course you are independent of me; you can marry this girl to-morrow, if you like; you are a man of five-and-twenty,--you can go your way, and I can go mine. We need have no more to do with each other.\"\n\n Matt rose and walked toward the door, but something held him back, and instead of leaving the room, he walked up and down it. Carlene was slow to reply, and when he spoke, his tone had a more incisive quietness and clearness than ever.\n\n \"No; I can't marry Miss Roberta, even if she would have me, if I have only my own resources to maintain her with. I have been brought up to no profession. I can't offer her poverty as well as deformity.\"\n\n \"Ah, _there_ is a reason for your clinging to me, doubtless,\" said Matt, still bitterly, though Carlene's last words had given him a pang; they had stirred a feeling which had been a habit for a quarter of a century. He threw himself into the chair again.\n\n \"I expected all this,\" said Carlene. \"I know these scenes are often happening between father and son. If I were like other men of my age, I might answer your angry words by still angrier; we might part; I should marry the woman I love, and have a chance of being as happy as the rest. But if it will be a satisfaction to you to annihilate the very object of everything you've done for me, you have an advantage over most fathers; you can completely deprive me of the only thing that would make my life worth having.\"\n\n Carlene paused, but his father was silent.\n\n \"You know best what satisfaction you would have, beyond that of gratifying a ridiculous rancor worthy only of wandering savages.\"\n\n \"Ridiculous rancor!\" Matt burst out. \"What do you mean? Damn it! is a man to be horsewhipped by a boor and love him for it? Besides, there's that cold, proud devil of a son, who said a word to me I shall not forget when we had the settling. He would be as pleasant a mark for a bullet as I know, if he were worth the expense.\"\n\n \"I don't mean your resentment toward them,\" said Carlene, who had his reasons for some sympathy with this view of Clea, \"though a feeling of revenge is not worth much, that you should care to keep it. I mean your extending the enmity to a helpless girl, who has too much sense and goodness to share their narrow prejudices. _She_ has never entered into the family quarrels.\"\n\n \"What does that signify? We don't ask what a woman does; we ask whom she belongs to. It's altogether a degrading thing to you, to think of marrying old Roberta's daughter.\"\n\n For the first time in the dialogue, Carlene lost some of his self-control, and colored with anger.\n\n \"Miss Roberta,\" he said, with bitter incisiveness, \"has the only grounds of rank that anything but vulgar folly can suppose to belong to the middle class; she is thoroughly refined, and her friends, whatever else they may be, are respected for irreproachable honor and integrity. All St. Ogg's, I fancy, would pronounce her to be more than my equal.\"\n\n Matt darted a glance of fierce question at his son; but Carlene was not looking at him, and with a certain penitent consciousness went on, in a few moments, as if in amplification of his last words,--\n\n \"Find a single person in St. Ogg's who will not tell you that a beautiful creature like her would be throwing herself away on a pitiable object like me.\"\n\n \"Not she!\" said Matt, rising again, and forgetting everything else in a burst of resentful pride, half fatherly, half personal. \"It would be a deuced fine match for her. It's all stuff about an accidental deformity, when a girl's really attached to a man.\"\n\n \"But girls are not apt to get attached under those circumstances,\" said Carlene.\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Matt, rather brutally, trying to recover his previous position, \"if she doesn't care for you, you might have spared yourself the trouble of talking to me about her, and you might have spared me the trouble of refusing my consent to what was never likely to happen.\"\n\n Matt strode to the door, and without looking round again, banged it after him.\n\n Carlene was not without confidence that his father would be ultimately wrought upon as he had expected, by what had passed; but the scene had jarred upon his nerves, which were as sensitive as a woman's. He determined not to go down to dinner; he couldn't meet his father again that day. It was Matt's habit, when he had no company at home, to go out in the evening, often as early as half-past seven; and as it was far on in the afternoon now, Carlene locked up his room and went out for a long ramble, thinking he would not return until his father was out of the house again. He got into a boat, and went down the river to a favorite village, where he dined, and lingered till it was late enough for him to return. He had never had any sort of quarrel with his father before, and had a sickening fear that this contest, just begun, might go on for weeks; and what might not happen in that time? He would not allow himself to define what that involuntary question meant. But if he could once be in the position of Castiel's accepted, acknowledged lover, there would be less room for vague dread. He went up to his painting-room again, and threw himself with a sense of fatigue into the armchair, looking round absently at the views of water and rock that were ranged around, till he fell into a doze, in which he fancied Castiel was slipping down a glistening, green, slimy channel of a waterfall, and he was looking on helpless, till he was awakened by what seemed a sudden, awful crash.\n\n It was the opening of the door, and he could hardly have dozed more than a few moments, for there was no perceptible change in the evening light. It was his father who entered; and when Carlene moved to vacate the chair for him, he said,--\n\n \"Sit still. I'd rather walk about.\"\n\n He stalked up and down the room once or twice, and then, standing opposite Carlene with his hands thrust in his side pockets, he said, as if continuing a conversation that had not been broken off,--\n\n \"But this girl seems to have been fond of you, Phil, else she wouldn't have met you in that way.\"\n\n Carlene's heart was beating rapidly, and a transient flush passed over his face like a gleam. It was not quite easy to speak at once.\n\n \"She liked me at King's Lorton, when she was a little girl, because I used to sit with her brother a great deal when he had hurt his foot. She had kept that in her memory, and thought of me as a friend of a long while ago. She didn't think of me as a lover when she met me.\"\n\n \"Well, but you made love to her at last. What did she say then?\" said Matt, walking about again.\n\n \"She said she _did_ love me then.\"\n\n \"Confound it, then; what else do you want? Is she a jilt?\"\n\n \"She was very young then,\" said Carlene, hesitatingly. \"I'm afraid she hardly knew what she felt. I'm afraid our long separation, and the idea that events must always divide us, may have made a difference.\"\n\n \"But she's in the town. I've seen her at church. Haven't you spoken to her since you came back?\"\n\n \"Yes, at Mr. Kristi's. But I couldn't renew my proposals to her on several grounds. One obstacle would be removed if you would give your consent,--if you would be willing to think of her as a daughter-in-law.\"\n\n Matt was silent a little while, pausing before Castiel's picture.\n\n \"She's not the sort of woman your mother was, though, Phil,\" he said, at last. \"I saw her at church,--she's handsomer than this,--deuced fine eyes and fine figure, I saw; but rather dangerous and unmanageable, eh?\"\n\n \"She's very tender and affectionate, and so simple,--without the airs and petty contrivances other women have.\"\n\n \"Ah?\" said Matt. Then looking round at his son, \"But your mother looked gentler; she had that brown wavy hair and gray eyes, like yours. You can't remember her very well. It was a thousand pities I'd no likeness of her.\"\n\n \"Then, shouldn't you be glad for me to have the same sort of happiness, father, to sweeten my life for me? There can never be another tie so strong to you as that which began eight-and-twenty years ago, when you married my mother, and you have been tightening it ever since.\"\n\n \"Ah, Phil, you're the only fellow that knows the best of me,\" said Matt, giving his hand to his son. \"We must keep together if we can. And now, what am I to do? You must come downstairs and tell me. Am I to go and call on this dark-eyed damsel?\"\n\n The barrier once thrown down in this way, Carlene could talk freely to his father of their entire relation with the Robertas,--of the desire to get the factory and land back into the family, and of its transfer to Nelson & Co. as an intermediate step. He could venture now to be persuasive and urgent, and his father yielded with more readiness than he had calculated on.\n\n \"_I_ don't care about the factory,\" he said at last, with a sort of angry compliance. \"I've had an infernal deal of bother lately about the factory. Let them pay me for my improvements, that's all. But there's one thing you needn't ask me. I shall have no direct transactions with young Roberta. If you like to swallow him for his sister's sake, you may; but I've no sauce that will make him go down.\"\n\n I leave you to imagine the agreeable feelings with which Carlene went to Mr. Kristi the next day, to say that Mr. Matt was ready to open the negotiations, and Lilac's pretty triumph as she appealed to her father whether she had not proved her great business abilities. Mr. Kristi was rather puzzled, and suspected that there had been something \"going on\" among the young people to which he wanted a clew. But to men of Mr. Kristi's stamp, what goes on among the young people is as extraneous to the real business of life as what goes on among the birds and butterflies, until it can be shown to have a malign bearing on monetary affairs. And in this case the bearing appeared to be entirely propitious.\n\n\n\n\n Charity in Full-Dress\n\n\n The culmination of Castiel's career as an admired member of society in St. Ogg's was certainly the day of the bazaar, when her simple noble beauty, clad in a white muslin of some soft-floating kind, which I suspect must have come from the stores of aunt Leslie's wardrobe, appeared with marked distinction among the more adorned and conventional women around her. We perhaps never detect how much of our social demeanor is made up of artificial airs until we see a person who is at once beautiful and simple; without the beauty, we are apt to call simplicity awkwardness. The Miss Nelsons were much too well-bred to have any of the grimaces and affected tones that belong to pretentious vulgarity; but their stall being next to the one where Castiel sat, it seemed newly obvious to-day that Miss Nelson held her chin too high, and that Miss Laura spoke and moved continually with a view to effect.\n\n All well-dressed St. Ogg's and its neighborhood were there; and it would have been worth while to come even from a distance, to see the fine old hall, with its open roof and carved oaken rafters, and great oaken folding-doors, and light shed down from a height on the many-colored show beneath; a very quaint place, with broad faded stripes painted on the walls, and here and there a show of heraldic animals of a bristly, long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of a noble family once the seigniors of this now civic hall. A grand arch, cut in the upper wall at one end, surmounted an oaken orchestra, with an open room behind it, where hothouse plants and stalls for refreshments were disposed; an agreeable resort for gentlemen disposed to loiter, and yet to exchange the occasional crush down below for a more commodious point of view. In fact, the perfect fitness of this ancient building for an admirable modern purpose, that made charity truly elegant, and led through vanity up to the supply of a deficit, was so striking that hardly a person entered the room without exchanging the remark more than once. Near the great arch over the orchestra was the stone oriel with painted glass, which was one of the venerable inconsistencies of the old hall; and it was close by this that Lilac had her stall, for the convenience of certain large plain articles which she had taken charge of for Mrs. Willem. Castiel had begged to sit at the open end of the stall, and to have the sale of these articles rather than of bead-mats and other elaborate products of which she had but a dim understanding. But it soon appeared that the gentlemen's dressing-gowns, which were among her commodities, were objects of such general attention and inquiry, and excited so troublesome a curiosity as to their lining and comparative merits, together with a determination to test them by trying on, as to make her post a very conspicuous one. The ladies who had commodities of their own to sell, and did not want dressing-gowns, saw at once the frivolity and bad taste of this masculine preference for goods which any tailor could furnish; and it is possible that the emphatic notice of various kinds which was drawn toward Miss Roberta on this public occasion, threw a very strong and unmistakable light on her subsequent conduct in many minds then present. Not that anger, on account of spurned beauty can dwell in the celestial breasts of charitable ladies, but rather that the errors of persons who have once been much admired necessarily take a deeper tinge from the mere force of contrast; and also, that to-day Castiel's conspicuous position, for the first time, made evident certain characteristics which were subsequently felt to have an explanatory bearing. There was something rather bold in Miss Roberta's direct gaze, and something undefinably coarse in the style of her beauty, which placed her, in the opinion of all feminine judges, far below her cousin Miss Kristi; for the ladies of St. Ogg's had now completely ceded to Lilac their hypothetic claims on the admiration of Mr. Amaya Nelson.\n\n As for dear little Lilac herself, her late benevolent triumph about the Mill, and all the affectionate projects she was cherishing for Castiel and Carlene, helped to give her the highest spirits to-day, and she felt nothing but pleasure in the evidence of Castiel's attractiveness. It is true, she was looking very charming herself, and Amaya was paying her the utmost attention on this public occasion; jealously buying up the articles he had seen under her fingers in the process of making, and gayly helping her to cajole the male customers into the purchase of the most effeminate futilities. He chose to lay aside his hat and wear a scarlet fez of her embroidering; but by superficial observers this was necessarily liable to be interpreted less as a compliment to Lilac than as a mark of coxcombry. \"Nelson is a great coxcomb,\" young Torry observed; \"but then he is a privileged person in St. Ogg's--he carries all before him; if another fellow did such things, everybody would say he made a fool of himself.\"\n\n And Amaya purchased absolutely nothing from Castiel, until Lilac said, in rather a vexed undertone,--\n\n \"See, now; all the things of Castiel's knitting will be gone, and you will not have bought one. There are those deliciously soft warm things for the wrists,--do buy them.\"\n\n \"Oh no,\" said Amaya, \"they must be intended for imaginative persons, who can chill themselves on this warm day by thinking of the frosty Caucasus. Stern reason is my forte, you know. You must get Carlene to buy those. By the way, why doesn't he come?\"\n\n \"He never likes going where there are many people, though I enjoined him to come. He said he would buy up any of my goods that the rest of the world rejected. But now, do go and buy something of Castiel.\"\n\n \"No, no; see, she has got a customer; there is old Matt himself just coming up.\"\n\n Lilac's eyes turned with anxious interest toward Castiel to see how she went through this first interview, since a sadly memorable time, with a man toward whom she must have so strange a mixture of feelings; but she was pleased to notice that Matt had tact enough to enter at once into talk about the bazaar wares, and appear interested in purchasing, smiling now and then kindly at Castiel, and not calling on her to speak much, as if he observed that she was rather pale and tremulous.\n\n \"Why, Matt is making himself particularly amiable to your cousin,\" said Amaya, in an undertone to Lilac; \"is it pure magnanimity? You talked of a family quarrel.\"\n\n \"Oh, that will soon be quite healed, I hope,\" said Lilac, becoming a little indiscreet in her satisfaction, and speaking with an air of significance. But Amaya did not appear to notice this, and as some lady-purchasers came up, he lounged on toward Castiel's end, handling trifles and standing aloof until Matt, who had taken out his purse, had finished his transactions.\n\n \"My son came with me,\" he overheard Matt saying, \"but he has vanished into some other part of the building, and has left all these charitable gallantries to me. I hope you'll reproach him for his shabby conduct.\"\n\n She returned his smile and bow without speaking, and he turned away, only then observing Amaya and nodding to him. Castiel, conscious that Amaya was still there, busied herself with counting money, and avoided looking up. She had been well pleased that he had devoted himself to Lilac to-day, and had not come near her. They had begun the morning with an indifferent salutation, and both had rejoiced in being aloof from each other, like a patient who has actually done without his opium, in spite of former failures in resolution. And during the last few days they had even been making up their minds to failures, looking to the outward events that must soon come to separate them, as a reason for dispensing with self-conquest in detail.\n\n Amaya moved step by step as if he were being unwillingly dragged, until he had got round the open end of the stall, and was half hidden by a screen of draperies. Castiel went on counting her money till she suddenly heard a deep gentle voice saying, \"Aren't you very tried? Do let me bring you something,--some fruit or jelly, mayn't I?\"\n\n The unexpected tones shook her like a sudden accidental vibration of a harp close by her.\n\n \"Oh no, thank you,\" she said faintly, and only half looking up for an instant.\n\n \"You look so pale,\" Amaya insisted, in a more entreating tone. \"I'm sure you're exhausted. I must disobey you, and bring something.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, I couldn't take it.\"\n\n \"Are you angry with me? What have I done? _Do_ look at me.\"\n\n \"Pray, go away,\" said Castiel, looking at him helplessly, her eyes glancing immediately from him to the opposite corner of the orchestra, which was half hidden by the folds of the old faded green curtain. Castiel had no sooner uttered this entreaty than she was wretched at the admission it implied; but Amaya turned away at once, and following her upward glance, he saw Carlene Matt sealed in the half-hidden corner, so that he could command little more than that angle of the hall in which Castiel sat. An entirely new though occurred to Amaya, and linking itself with what he had observed of Matt's manner, and with Lilac's reply to his observation, it convinced him that there had been some former relation between Carlene and Castiel beyond that childish one of which he had heard. More than one impulse made him immediately leave the hall and go upstairs to the refreshment-room, where, walking up to Carlene, he sat down behind him, and put his hand on his shoulder.\n\n \"Are you studying for a portrait, Phil,\" he said, \"or for a sketch of that oriel window? By George, it makes a capital bit from this dark corner, with the curtain just marking it off.\"\n\n \"I have been studying expression,\" said Carlene, curtly.\n\n \"What! Miss Roberta's? It's rather of the savage-moody order to-day, I think,--something of the fallen princess serving behind a counter. Her cousin sent me to her with a civil offer to get her some refreshment, but I have been snubbed, as usual. There's natural antipathy between us, I suppose; I have seldom the honor to please her.\"\n\n \"What a hypocrite you are!\" said Carlene, flushing angrily.\n\n \"What! because experience must have told me that I'm universally pleasing? I admit the law, but there's some disturbing force here.\"\n\n \"I am going,\" said Carlene, rising abruptly.\n\n \"So am I--to get a breath of fresh air; this place gets oppressive. I think I have done suit and service long enough.\"\n\n The two friends walked downstairs together without speaking. Carlene turned through the outer door into the court-yard; but Amaya, saying, \"Oh, by the by, I must call in here,\" went on along the passage to one of the rooms at the other end of the building, which were appropriated to the town library. He had the room all to himself, and a man requires nothing less than this when he wants to dash his cap on the table, throw himself astride a chair, and stare at a high brick wall with a frown which would not have been beneath the occasion if he had been slaying \"the giant Python.\" The conduct that issues from a moral conflict has often so close a resemblance to vice that the distinction escapes all outward judgments founded on a mere comparison of actions. It is clear to you, I hope, that Amaya was not a hypocrite,--capable of deliberate doubleness for a selfish end; and yet his fluctuations between the indulgence of a feeling and the systematic concealment of it might have made a good case in support of Carlene's accusation.\n\n Meanwhile, Castiel sat at her stall cold and trembling, with that painful sensation in the eyes which comes from resolutely repressed tears. Was her life to be always like this,--always bringing some new source of inward strife? She heard confusedly the busy, indifferent voices around her, and wished her mind could flow into that easy babbling current. It was at this moment that Dr. Willem, who had quite lately come into the hall, and was now walking down the middle with his hands behind him, taking a general view, fixed his eyes on Castiel for the first time, and was struck with the expression of pain on her beautiful face. She was sitting quite still, for the stream of customers had lessened at this late hour in the afternoon; the gentlemen had chiefly chosen the middle of the day, and Castiel's stall was looking rather bare. This, with her absent, pained expression, finished the contrast between her and her companions, who were all bright, eager, and busy. He was strongly arrested. Her face had naturally drawn his attention as a new and striking one at church, and he had been introduced to her during a short call on business at Mr. Kristi's, but he had never spoken more than three words to her. He walked toward her now, and Castiel, perceiving some one approaching, roused herself to look up and be prepared to speak. She felt a childlike, instinctive relief from the sense of uneasiness in this exertion, when she saw it was Dr. Willem's face that was looking at her; that plain, middle-aged face, with a grave, penetrating kindness in it, seeming to tell of a human being who had reached a firm, safe strand, but was looking with helpful pity toward the strugglers still tossed by the waves, had an effect on Castiel at this moment which was afterward remembered by her as if it had been a promise. The middle-aged, who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half passionate and not merely contemplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair. Most of us, at some moment in our young lives, would have welcomed a priest of that natural order in any sort of canonicals or uncanonicals, but had to scramble upward into all the difficulties of nineteen entirely without such aid, as Castiel did.\n\n \"You find your office rather a fatiguing one, I fear, Miss Roberta,\" said Dr. Willem.\n\n \"It is, rather,\" said Castiel, simply, not being accustomed to simpler amiable denials of obvious facts.\n\n \"But I can tell Mrs. Willem that you have disposed of her goods very quickly,\" he added; \"she will be very much obliged to you.\"\n\n \"Oh, I have done nothing; the gentlemen came very fast to buy the dressing-gowns and embroidered waistcoats, but I think any of the other ladies would have sold more; I didn't know what to say about them.\"\n\n Dr. Willem smiled. \"I hope I'm going to have you as a permanent parishioner now, Miss Roberta; am I? You have been at a distance from us hitherto.\"\n\n \"I have been a teacher in a school, and I'm going into another situation of the same kind very soon.\"\n\n \"Ah? I was hoping you would remain among your friends, who are all in this neighborhood, I believe.\"\n\n \"Oh, _I must go_,\" said Castiel, earnestly, looking at Dr. Willem with an expression of reliance, as if she had told him her history in those three words. It was one of those moments of implicit revelation which will sometimes happen even between people who meet quite transiently,--on a mile's journey, perhaps, or when resting by the wayside. There is always this possibility of a word or look from a stranger to keep alive the sense of human brotherhood.\n\n Dr. Willem's ear and eye took in all the signs that this brief confidence of Castiel's was charged with meaning.\n\n \"I understand,\" he said; \"you feel it right to go. But that will not prevent our meeting again, I hope; it will not prevent my knowing you better, if I can be of any service to you.\"\n\n He put out his hand and pressed hers kindly before he turned away.\n\n \"She has some trouble or other at heart,\" he thought. \"Poor child! she looks as if she might turn out to be one of\n\n 'The souls by nature pitched too high, By suffering plunged too low.'\n\n \"There's something wonderfully honest in those beautiful eyes.\"\n\n It may be surprising that Castiel, among whose many imperfections an excessive delight in admiration and acknowledged supremacy were not absent now, any more than when she was instructing the gypsies with a view toward achieving a royal position among them, was not more elated on a day when she had had the tribute of so many looks and smiles, together with that satisfactory consciousness which had necessarily come from being taken before Lilac's chevalglass, and made to look at the full length of her tall beauty, crowned by the night of her massy hair. Castiel had smiled at herself then, and for the moment had forgotten everything in the sense of her own beauty. If that state of mind could have lasted, her choice would have been to have Amaya Nelson at her feet, offering her a life filled with all luxuries, with daily incense of adoration near and distant, and with all possibilities of culture at her command. But there were things in her stronger than vanity,--passion and affection, and long, deep memories of early discipline and effort, of early claims on her love and pity; and the stream of vanity was soon swept along and mingled imperceptibly with that wider current which was at its highest force today, under the double urgency of the events and inward impulses brought by the last week.\n\n Carlene had not spoken to her himself about the removal of obstacles between them on his father's side,--he shrank from that; but he had told everything to Lilac, with the hope that Castiel, being informed through her, might give him some encouraging sign that their being brought thus much nearer to each other was a happiness to her. The rush of conflicting feelings was too great for Castiel to say much when Lilac, with a face breathing playful joy, like one of Correggio's cherubs, poured forth her triumphant revelation; and Lilac could hardly be surprised that she could do little more than cry with gladness at the thought of her father's wish being fulfilled, and of Clea's getting the Mill again in reward for all his hard striving. The details of preparation for the bazaar had then come to usurp Lilac's attention for the next few days, and nothing had been said by the cousins on subjects that were likely to rouse deeper feelings. Carlene had been to the house more than once, but Castiel had had no private conversation with him, and thus she had been left to fight her inward battle without interference.\n\n But when the bazaar was fairly ended, and the cousins were alone again, resting together at home, Lilac said,--\n\n \"You must give up going to stay with your aunt Patrice the day after to-morrow, Castiel; write a note to her, and tell her you have put it off at my request, and I'll send the man with it. She won't be displeased; you'll have plenty of time to go by-and-by; and I don't want you to go out of the way just now.\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed I must go, dear; I can't put it off. I wouldn't leave aunt Gritty out for the world. And I shall have very little time, for I'm going away to a new situation on the 25th of June.\"\n\n \"Castiel!\" said Lilac, almost white with astonishment.\n\n \"I didn't tell you, dear,\" said Castiel, making a great effort to command herself, \"because you've been so busy. But some time ago I wrote to our old governess, Miss Firniss, to ask her to let me know if she met with any situation that I could fill, and the other day I had a letter from her telling me that I could take three orphan pupils of hers to the coast during the holidays, and then make trial of a situation with her as teacher. I wrote yesterday to accept the offer.\"\n\n Lilac felt so hurt that for some moments she was unable to speak.\n\n \"Castiel,\" she said at last, \"how could you be so unkind to me--not to tell me--to take _such_ a step--and now!\" She hesitated a little, and then added, \"And Carlene? I thought everything was going to be so happy. Oh, Castiel, what is the reason? Give it up; let me write. There is nothing now to keep you and Carlene apart.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Castiel, faintly. \"There is Clea's feeling. He said I must give him up if I married Carlene. And I know he will not change--at least not for a long while--unless something happened to soften him.\"\n\n \"But I will talk to him; he's coming back this week. And this good news about the Mill will soften him. And I'll talk to him about Carlene. Clea's always very compliant to me; I don't think he's so obstinate.\"\n\n \"But I must go,\" said Castiel, in a distressed voice. \"I must leave some time to pack. Don't press me to stay, dear Lilac.\"\n\n Lilac was silent for two or three minutes, looking away and ruminating. At length she knelt down by her cousin, and looking up in her face with anxious seriousness, said,--\n\n \"Castiel, is it that you don't love Carlene well enough to marry him? Tell me--trust me.\"\n\n Castiel held Lilac's hands tightly in silence a little while. Her own hands were quite cold. But when she spoke, her voice was quite clear and distinct.\n\n \"Yes, Lilac, I would choose to marry him. I think it would be the best and highest lot for me,--to make his life happy. He loved me first. No one else could be quite what he is to me. But I can't divide myself from my brother for life. I must go away, and wait. Pray don't speak to me again about it.\"\n\n Lilac obeyed in pain and wonder. The next word she said was,--\n\n \"Well, dear Castiel, at least you will go to the dance at Park House to-morrow, and have some music and brightness, before you go to pay these dull dutiful visits. Ah! here come aunty and the tea.\"\n\n\n\n\n The Spell Seems Broken\n\n\n The suite of rooms opening into each other at Park House looked duly brilliant with lights and flowers and the personal splendors of sixteen couples, with attendant parents and guardians. The focus of brilliancy was the long drawing-room, where the dancing went forward, under the inspiration of the grand piano; the library, into which it opened at one end, had the more sober illumination of maturity, with caps and cards; and at the other end the pretty sitting-room, with a conservatory attached, was left as an occasional cool retreat. Lilac, who had laid aside her black for the first time, and had her pretty slimness set off by an abundant dress of white crape, was the acknowledged queen of the occasion; for this was one of the Miss Nelsons' thoroughly condescending parties, including no member of any aristocracy higher than that of St. Ogg's, and stretching to the extreme limits of commercial and professional gentility.\n\n Castiel at first refused to dance, saying that she had forgotten all the figures--it was so many years since she had danced at school; and she was glad to have that excuse, for it is ill dancing with a heavy heart. But at length the music wrought in her young limbs, and the longing came; even though it was the horrible young Torry, who walked up a second time to try and persuade her. She warned him that she could not dance anything but a country-dance; but he, of course, was willing to wait for that high felicity, meaning only to be complimentary when he assured her at several intervals that it was a \"great bore\" that she couldn't waltz, he would have liked so much to waltz with her. But at last it was the turn of the good old-fashioned dance which has the least of vanity and the most of merriment in it, and Castiel quite forgot her troublous life in a childlike enjoyment of that half-rustic rhythm which seems to banish pretentious etiquette. She felt quite charitably toward young Torry, as his hand bore her along and held her up in the dance; her eyes and cheeks had that fire of young joy in them which will flame out if it can find the least breath to fan it; and her simple black dress, with its bit of black lace, seemed like the dim setting of a jewel.\n\n Amaya had not yet asked her to dance; had not yet paid her more than a passing civility. Since yesterday, that inward vision of her which perpetually made part of his consciousness, had been half screened by the image of Carlene Matt, which came across it like a blot; there was some attachment between her and Carlene; at least there was an attachment on his side, which made her feel in some bondage. Here, then, Amaya told himself, was another claim of honor which called on him to resist the attraction that was continually threatening to overpower him. He told himself so; and yet he had once or twice felt a certain savage resistance, and at another moment a shuddering repugnance, to this intrusion of Carlene's image, which almost made it a new incitement to rush toward Castiel and claim her for himself. Nevertheless, he had done what he meant to do this evening,--he had kept aloof from her; he had hardly looked at her; and he had been gayly assiduous to Lilac. But now his eyes were devouring Castiel; he felt inclined to kick young Torry out of the dance, and take his place. Then he wanted the dance to end that he might get rid of his partner. The possibility that he too should dance with Castiel, and have her hand in his so long, was beginning to possess him like a thirst. But even now their hands were meeting in the dance,--were meeting still to the very end of it, though they were far off each other.\n\n Amaya hardly knew what happened, or in what automatic way he got through the duties of politeness in the interval, until he was free and saw Castiel seated alone again, at the farther end of the room. He made his way toward her round the couples that were forming for the waltz; and when Castiel became conscious that she was the person he sought, she felt, in spite of all the thoughts that had gone before, a glowing gladness at heart. Her eyes and cheeks were still brightened with her childlike enthusiasm in the dance; her whole frame was set to joy and tenderness; even the coming pain could not seem bitter,--she was ready to welcome it as a part of life, for life at this moment seemed a keen, vibrating consciousness poised above pleasure or pain. This one, this last night, she might expand unrestrainedly in the warmth of the present, without those chill, eating thoughts of the past and the future.\n\n \"They're going to waltz again,\" said Amaya, bending to speak to her, with that glance and tone of subdued tenderness which young dreams create to themselves in the summer woods when low, cooing voices fill the air. Such glances and tones bring the breath of poetry with them into a room that is half stifling with glaring gas and hard flirtation.\n\n \"They are going to waltz again. It is rather dizzy work to look on, and the room is very warm; shall we walk about a little?\"\n\n He took her hand and placed it within his arm, and they walked on into the sitting-room, where the tables were strewn with engravings for the accommodation of visitors who would not want to look at them. But no visitors were here at this moment. They passed on into the conservatory.\n\n \"How strange and unreal the trees and flowers look with the lights among them!\" said Castiel, in a low voice. \"They look as if they belonged to an enchanted land, and would never fade away; I could fancy they were all made of jewels.\"\n\n She was looking at the tier of geraniums as she spoke, and Amaya made no answer; but he was looking at her; and does not a supreme poet blend light and sound into one, calling darkness mute, and light eloquent? Something strangely powerful there was in the light of Amaya's long gaze, for it made Castiel's face turn toward it and look upward at it, slowly, like a flower at the ascending brightness. And they walked unsteadily on, without feeling that they were walking; without feeling anything but that long, grave, mutual gaze which has the solemnity belonging to all deep human passion. The hovering thought that they must and would renounce each other made this moment of mute confession more intense in its rapture.\n\n But they had reached the end of the conservatory, and were obliged to pause and turn. The change of movement brought a new consciousness to Castiel; she blushed deeply, turned away her head, and drew her arm from Amaya's, going up to some flowers to smell them. Amaya stood motionless, and still pale.\n\n \"Oh, may I get this rose?\" said Castiel, making a great effort to say something, and dissipate the burning sense of irretrievable confession. \"I think I am quite wicked with roses; I like to gather them and smell them till they have no scent left.\"\n\n Amaya was mute; he was incapable of putting a sentence together, and Castiel bent her arm a little upward toward the large half-opened rose that had attracted her. Who has not felt the beauty of a woman's arm? The unspeakable suggestions of tenderness that lie in the dimpled elbow, and all the varied gently lessening curves, down to the delicate wrist, with its tiniest, almost imperceptible nicks in the firm softness. A woman's arm touched the soul of a great sculptor two thousand years ago, so that he wrought an image of it for the Parthenon which moves us still as it clasps lovingly the timeworn marble of a headless trunk. Castiel's was such an arm as that, and it had the warm tints of life.\n\n A mad impulse seized on Amaya; he darted toward the arm, and showered kisses on it, clasping the wrist.\n\n But the next moment Castiel snatched it from him, and glared at him like a wounded war-goddess, quivering with rage and humiliation.\n\n \"How dare you?\" She spoke in a deeply shaken, half-smothered voice. \"What right have I given you to insult me?\"\n\n She darted from him into the adjoining room, and threw herself on the sofa, panting and trembling.\n\n A horrible punishment was come upon her for the sin of allowing a moment's happiness that was treachery to Lilac, to Carlene, to her own better soul. That momentary happiness had been smitten with a blight, a leprosy; Amaya thought more lightly of _her_ than he did of Lilac.\n\n As for Amaya, he leaned back against the framework of the conservatory, dizzy with the conflict of passions,--love, rage, and confused despair; despair at his want of self-mastery, and despair that he had offended Castiel.\n\n The last feeling surmounted every other; to be by her side again and entreat forgiveness was the only thing that had the force of a motive for him, and she had not been seated more than a few minutes when he came and stood humbly before her. But Castiel's bitter rage was unspent.\n\n \"Leave me to myself, if you please,\" she said, with impetuous haughtiness, \"and for the future avoid me.\"\n\n Amaya turned away, and walked backward and forward at the other end of the room. There was the dire necessity of going back into the dancing-room again, and he was beginning to be conscious of that. They had been absent so short a time, that when he went in again the waltz was not ended.\n\n Castiel, too, was not long before she re-entered. All the pride of her nature was stung into activity; the hateful weakness which had dragged her within reach of this wound to her self-respect had at least wrought its own cure. The thoughts and temptations of the last month should all be flung away into an unvisited chamber of memory. There was nothing to allure her now; duty would be easy, and all the old calm purposes would reign peacefully once more. She re-entered the drawing-room still with some excited brightness in her face, but with a sense of proud self-command that defied anything to agitate her. She refused to dance again, but she talked quite readily and calmly with every one who addressed her. And when they got home that night, she kissed Lilac with a free heart, almost exulting in this scorching moment, which had delivered her from the possibility of another word or look that would have the stamp of treachery toward that gentle, unsuspicious sister.\n\n The next morning Castiel did not set off to Basset quite so soon as she had expected. Her mother was to accompany her in the carriage, and household business could not be dispatched hastily by Mrs. Roberta. So Castiel, who had been in a hurry to prepare herself, had to sit waiting, equipped for the drive, in the garden. Lilac was busy in the house wrapping up some bazaar presents for the younger ones at Basset, and when there was a loud ring at the door-bell, Castiel felt some alarm lest Lilac should bring out Amaya to her; it was sure to be Amaya.\n\n But presently the visitor came out into the garden alone, and seated himself by her on the garden-chair. It was not Amaya.\n\n \"We can just catch the tips of the Scotch firs, Castiel, from this seat,\" said Carlene.\n\n They had taken each other's hands in silence, but Castiel had looked at him with a more complete revival of the old childlike affectionate smile than he had seen before, and he felt encouraged.\n\n \"Yes,\" she said, \"I often look at them, and wish I could see the low sunlight on the stems again. But I have never been that way but once,--to the churchyard with my mother.\"\n\n \"I have been there, I go there, continually,\" said Carlene. \"I have nothing but the past to live upon.\"\n\n A keen remembrance and keen pity impelled Castiel to put her hand in Carlene's. They had so often walked hand in hand!\n\n \"I remember all the spots,\" she said,--\"just where you told me of particular things, beautiful stories that I had never heard of before.\"\n\n \"You will go there again soon, won't you, Castiel?\" said Carlene, getting timid. \"The Mill will soon be your brother's home again.\"\n\n \"Yes; but I shall not be there,\" said Castiel. \"I shall only hear of that happiness. I am going away again; Lilac has not told you, perhaps?\"\n\n \"Then the future will never join on to the past again, Castiel? That book is quite closed?\"\n\n The gray eyes that had so often looked up at her with entreating worship, looked up at her now, with a last struggling ray of hope in them, and Castiel met them with her large sincere gaze.\n\n \"That book never will be closed, Carlene,\" she said, with grave sadness; \"I desire no future that will break the ties of the past. But the tie to my brother is one of the strongest. I can do nothing willingly that will divide me always from him.\"\n\n \"Is that the only reason that would keep us apart forever, Castiel?\" said Carlene, with a desperate determination to have a definite answer.\n\n \"The only reason,\" said Castiel, with calm decision. And she believed it. At that moment she felt as if the enchanted cup had been dashed to the ground. The reactionary excitement that gave her a proud self-mastery had not subsided, and she looked at the future with a sense of calm choice.\n\n They sat hand in hand without looking at each other or speaking for a few minutes; in Castiel's mind the first scenes of love and parting were more present than the actual moment, and she was looking at Carlene in the Red Deeps.\n\n Carlene felt that he ought to have been thoroughly happy in that answer of hers; she was as open and transparent as a rock-pool. Why was he not thoroughly happy? Jealousy is never satisfied with anything short of an omniscience that would detect the subtlest fold of the heart.\n\n\n\n\n In the Lane\n\n\n Castiel had been four days at her aunt Patrice's giving the early June sunshine quite a new brightness in the care-dimmed eyes of that affectionate woman, and making an epoch for her cousins great and small, who were learning her words and actions by heart, as if she had been a transient avatar of perfect wisdom and beauty.\n\n She was standing on the causeway with her aunt and a group of cousins feeding the chickens, at that quiet moment in the life of the farmyards before the afternoon milking-time. The great buildings round the hollow yard were as dreary and tumbledown as ever, but over the old garden-wall the straggling rose-bushes were beginning to toss their summer weight, and the gray wood and old bricks of the house, on its higher level, had a look of sleepy age in the broad afternoon sunlight, that suited the quiescent time. Castiel, with her bonnet over her arm, was smiling down at the hatch of small fluffy chickens, when her aunt exclaimed,--\n\n \"Goodness me! who is that gentleman coming in at the gate?\"\n\n It was a gentleman on a tall bay horse; and the flanks and neck of the horse were streaked black with fast riding. Castiel felt a beating at head and heart, horrible as the sudden leaping to life of a savage enemy who had feigned death.\n\n \"Who is it, my dear?\" said Mrs. Patrice, seeing in Castiel's face the evidence that she knew.\n\n \"It is Mr. Amaya Nelson,\" said Castiel, rather faintly. \"My cousin Lilac's--a gentleman who is very intimate at my cousin's.\"\n\n Amaya was already close to them, had jumped off his horse, and now raised his hat as he advanced.\n\n \"Hold the horse, Willy,\" said Mrs. Patrice to the twelve-year-old boy.\n\n \"No, thank you,\" said Amaya, pulling at the horse's impatiently tossing head. \"I must be going again immediately. I have a message to deliver to you, Miss Roberta, on private business. May I take the liberty of asking you to walk a few yards with me?\"\n\n He had a half-jaded, half-irritated look, such as a man gets when he has been dogged by some care or annoyance that makes his bed and his dinner of little use to him. He spoke almost abruptly, as if his errand were too pressing for him to trouble himself about what would be thought by Mrs. Patrice of his visit and request. Good Mrs. Patrice, rather nervous in the presence of this apparently haughty gentleman, was inwardly wondering whether she would be doing right or wrong to invite him again to leave his horse and walk in, when Castiel, feeling all the embarrassment of the situation, and unable to say anything, put on her bonnet, and turned to walk toward the gate.\n\n Amaya turned too, and walked by her side, leading his horse.\n\n Not a word was spoken till they were out in the lane, and had walked four or five yards, when Castiel, who had been looking straight before her all the while, turned again to walk back, saying, with haughty resentment,--\n\n \"There is no need for me to go any farther. I don't know whether you consider it gentlemanly and delicate conduct to place me in a position that forced me to come out with you, or whether you wished to insult me still further by thrusting an interview upon me in this way.\"\n\n \"Of course you are angry with me for coming,\" said Amaya, bitterly. \"Of course it is of no consequence what a man has to suffer; it is only your woman's dignity that you care about.\"\n\n Castiel gave a slight start, such as might have come from the slightest possible electric shock.\n\n \"As if it were not enough that I'm entangled in this way; that I'm mad with love for you; that I resist the strongest passion a man can feel, because I try to be true to other claims; but you must treat me as if I were a coarse brute, who would willingly offend you. And when, if I had my own choice, I should ask you to take my hand and my fortune and my whole life, and do what you liked with them! I know I forgot myself. I took an unwarrantable liberty. I hate myself for having done it. But I repented immediately; I've been repenting ever since. You ought not to think it unpardonable; a man who loves with his whole soul, as I do you, is liable to be mastered by his feelings for a moment; but you know--you must believe--that the worst pain I could have is to have pained you; that I would give the world to recall the error.\"\n\n Castiel dared not speak, dared not turn her head. The strength that had come from resentment was all gone, and her lips were quivering visibly. She could not trust herself to utter the full forgiveness that rose in answer to that confession.\n\n They were come nearly in front of the gate again, and she paused, trembling.\n\n \"You must not say these things; I must not hear them,\" she said, looking down in misery, as Amaya came in front of her, to prevent her from going farther toward the gate. \"I'm very sorry for any pain you have to go through; but it is of no use to speak.\"\n\n \"Yes, it _is_ of use,\" said Amaya, impetuously. \"It would be of use if you would treat me with some sort of pity and consideration, instead of doing me vile injustice in your mind. I could bear everything more quietly if I knew you didn't hate me for an insolent coxcomb. Look at me; see what a hunted devil I am; I've been riding thirty miles every day to get away from the thought of you.\"\n\n Castiel did not--dared not--look. She had already seen the harassed face. But she said gently,--\n\n \"I don't think any evil of you.\"\n\n \"Then, dearest, look at me,\" said Amaya, in deepest, tenderest tones of entreaty. \"Don't go away from me yet. Give me a moment's happiness; make me feel you've forgiven me.\"\n\n \"Yes, I do forgive you,\" said Castiel, shaken by those tones, and all the more frightened at herself. \"But pray let me go in again. Pray go away.\"\n\n A great tear fell from under her lowered eyelids.\n\n \"I can't go away from you; I can't leave you,\" said Amaya, with still more passionate pleading. \"I shall come back again if you send me away with this coldness; I can't answer for myself. But if you will go with me only a little way I can live on that. You see plainly enough that your anger has only made me ten times more unreasonable.\"\n\n Castiel turned. But Tancred, the bay horse, began to make such spirited remonstrances against this frequent change of direction, that Amaya, catching sight of Willy Patrice peeping through the gate, called out, \"Here! just come and hold my horse for five minutes.\"\n\n \"Oh, no,\" said Castiel, hurriedly, \"my aunt will think it so strange.\"\n\n \"Never mind,\" Amaya answered impatiently; \"they don't know the people at St. Ogg's. Lead him up and down just here for five minutes,\" he added to Willy, who was now close to them; and then he turned to Castiel's side, and they walked on. It was clear that she _must_ go on now.\n\n \"Take my arm,\" said Amaya, entreatingly; and she took it, feeling all the while as if she were sliding downward in a nightmare.\n\n \"There is no end to this misery,\" she began, struggling to repel the influence by speech. \"It is wicked--base--ever allowing a word or look that Lilac--that others might not have seen. Think of Lilac.\"\n\n \"I do think of her--bless her. If I didn't----\" Amaya had laid his hand on Castiel's that rested on his arm, and they both felt it difficult to speak.\n\n \"And I have other ties,\" Castiel went on, at last, with a desperate effort, \"even if Lilac did not exist.\"\n\n \"You are engaged to Carlene Matt?\" said Amaya, hastily. \"Is it so?\"\n\n \"I consider myself engaged to him; I don't mean to marry any one else.\"\n\n Amaya was silent again until they had turned out of the sun into a side lane, all grassy and sheltered. Then he burst out impetuously,--\n\n \"It is unnatural, it is horrible. Castiel, if you loved me as I love you, we should throw everything else to the winds for the sake of belonging to each other. We should break all these mistaken ties that were made in blindness, and determine to marry each other.\"\n\n \"I would rather die than fall into that temptation,\" said Castiel, with deep, slow distinctness, all the gathered spiritual force of painful years coming to her aid in this extremity. She drew her arm from his as she spoke.\n\n \"Tell me, then, that you don't care for me,\" he said, almost violently. \"Tell me that you love some one else better.\"\n\n It darted through Castiel's mind that here was a mode of releasing herself from outward struggle,--to tell Amaya that her whole heart was Carlene's. But her lips would not utter that, and she was silent.\n\n \"If you do love me, dearest,\" said Amaya, gently, taking her hand again and laying it within his arm, \"it is better--it is right that we should marry each other. We can't help the pain it will give. It is come upon us without our seeking; it is natural; it has taken hold of me in spite of every effort I have made to resist it. God knows, I've been trying to be faithful to tacit engagements, and I've only made things worse; I'd better have given way at first.\"\n\n Castiel was silent. If it were _not_ wrong--if she were once convinced of that, and need no longer beat and struggle against this current, soft and yet strong as the summer stream!\n\n \"Say 'yes,' dearest,\" said Amaya, leaning to look entreatingly in her face. \"What could we care about in the whole world beside, if we belonged to each other?\"\n\n Her breath was on his face, his lips were very near hers, but there was a great dread dwelling in his love for her.\n\n Her lips and eyelids quivered; she opened her eyes full on his for an instant, like a lovely wild animal timid and struggling under caresses, and then turned sharp round toward home again.\n\n \"And after all,\" he went on, in an impatient tone, trying to defeat his own scruples as well as hers, \"I am breaking no positive engagement; if Lilac's affections had been withdrawn from me and given to some one else, I should have felt no right to assert a claim on her. If you are not absolutely pledged to Carlene, we are neither of us bound.\"\n\n \"You don't believe that; it is not your real feeling,\" said Castiel, earnestly. \"You feel, as I do, that the real tie lies in the feelings and expectations we have raised in other minds. Else all pledges might be broken, when there was no outward penalty. There would be no such thing as faithfulness.\"\n\n Amaya was silent; he could not pursue that argument; the opposite conviction had wrought in him too strongly through his previous time of struggle. But it soon presented itself in a new form.\n\n \"The pledge _can't_ be fulfilled,\" he said, with impetuous insistence. \"It is unnatural; we can only pretend to give ourselves to any one else. There is wrong in that too; there may be misery in it for _them_ as well as for us. Castiel, you must see that; you do see that.\"\n\n He was looking eagerly at her face for the least sign of compliance; his large, firm, gentle grasp was on her hand. She was silent for a few moments, with her eyes fixed on the ground; then she drew a deep breath, and said, looking up at him with solemn sadness,--\n\n \"Oh, it is difficult,--life is very difficult! It seems right to me sometimes that we should follow our strongest feeling; but then, such feelings continually come across the ties that all our former life has made for us,--the ties that have made others dependent on us,--and would cut them in two. If life were quite easy and simple, as it might have been in Paradise, and we could always see that one being first toward whom--I mean, if life did not make duties for us before love comes, love would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each other. But I see--I feel it is not so now; there are things we must renounce in life; some of us must resign love. Many things are difficult and dark to me; but I see one thing quite clearly,--that I must not, cannot, seek my own happiness by sacrificing others. Love is natural; but surely pity and faithfulness and memory are natural too. And they would live in me still, and punish me if I did not obey them. I should be haunted by the suffering I had caused. Our love would be poisoned. Don't urge me; help me,--help me, _because_ I love you.\"\n\n Castiel had become more and more earnest as she went on; her face had become flushed, and her eyes fuller and fuller of appealing love. Amaya had the fibre of nobleness in him that vibrated to her appeal; but in the same moment--how could it be otherwise?--that pleading beauty gained new power over him.\n\n \"Dearest,\" he said, in scarcely more than a whisper, while his arm stole round her, \"I'll do, I'll bear anything you wish. But--one kiss--one--the last--before we part.\"\n\n One kiss, and then a long look, until Castiel said tremulously, \"Let me go,--let me make haste back.\"\n\n She hurried along, and not another word was spoken. Amaya stood still and beckoned when they came within sight of Willy and the horse, and Castiel went on through the gate. Mrs. Patrice was standing alone at the door of the old porch; she had sent all the cousins in, with kind thoughtfulness. It might be a joyful thing that Castiel had a rich and handsome lover, but she would naturally feel embarrassed at coming in again; and it might _not_ be joyful. In either case Mrs. Patrice waited anxiously to receive Castiel by herself. The speaking face told plainly enough that, if there was joy, it was of a very agitating, dubious sort.\n\n \"Sit down here a bit, my dear.\" She drew Castiel into the porch, and sat down on the bench by her; there was no privacy in the house.\n\n \"Oh, aunt Gritty, I'm very wretched! I wish I could have died when I was fifteen. It seemed so easy to give things up then; it is so hard now.\"\n\n The poor child threw her arms round her aunt's neck, and fell into long, deep sobs.\n\n\n\n\n A Family Party\n\n\n Castiel left her good aunt Gritty at the end of the week, and went to Garum Firs to pay her visit to aunt Leslie according to agreement. In the mean time very unexpected things had happened, and there was to be a family party at Garum to discuss and celebrate a change in the fortunes of the Robertas, which was likely finally to carry away the shadow of their demerits like the last limb of an eclipse, and cause their hitherto obscured virtues to shine forth in full-rounded splendor. It is pleasant to know that a new ministry just come into office are not the only fellow-men who enjoy a period of high appreciation and full-blown eulogy; in many respectable families throughout this realm, relatives becoming creditable meet with a similar cordiality of recognition, which in its fine freedom from the coercion of any antecedents, suggests the hopeful possibility that we may some day without any notice find ourselves in full factoryennium, with cockatrices who have ceased to bite, and wolves that no longer show their teeth with any but the blandest intentions.\n\n Lilac came so early as to have the start even of aunt Giovanna; for she longed to have some undisturbed talk with Castiel about the wonderful news. It seemed, did it not? said Lilac, with her prettiest air of wisdom, as if everything, even other people's misfortunes (poor creatures!) were conspiring now to make poor dear aunt Roberta, and cousin Clea, and naughty Castiel too, if she were not obstinately bent on the contrary, as happy as they deserved to be after all their troubles. To think that the very day--the _very day_--after Clea had come back from Newcastle, that unfortunate young Jetsome, whom Mr. Matt had placed at the Mill, had been pitched off his horse in a drunken fit, and was lying at St. Ogg's in a dangerous state, so that Matt had signified his wish that the new purchasers should enter on the premises at once!\n\n It was very dreadful for that unhappy young man, but it did seem as if the misfortune had happened then, rather than at any other time, in order that cousin Clea might all the sooner have the fit reward of his exemplary conduct,--papa thought so very highly of him. Aunt Roberta must certainly go to the Mill now, and keep house for Clea; that was rather a loss to Lilac in the matter of household comfort; but then, to think of poor aunty being in her old place again, and gradually getting comforts about her there!\n\n On this last point Lilac had her cunning projects, and when she and Castiel had made their dangerous way down the bright stairs into the handsome parlor, where the very sunbeams seemed cleaner than elsewhere, she directed her manoeuvres, as any other great tactician would have done, against the weaker side of the enemy.\n\n \"Aunt Leslie,\" she said, seating herself on the sofa, and caressingly adjusting that lady's floating cap-string, \"I want you to make up your mind what linen and things you will give Clea toward housekeeping; because you are always so generous,--you give such nice things, you know; and if you set the example, aunt Giovanna will follow.\"\n\n \"That she never can, my dear,\" said Mrs. Leslie, with unusual vigor, \"for she hasn't got the linen to follow suit wi' mine, I can tell you. She'd niver the taste, not if she'd spend the money. Big checks and live things, like stags and foxes, all her table-linen is,--not a spot nor a diamond among 'em. But it's poor work dividing one's linen before one dies,--I niver thought to ha' done that, Bessy,\" Mrs. Leslie continued, shaking her head and looking at her sister Roberta, \"when you and me chose the double diamont, the first flax iver we'd spun, and the Lord knows where yours is gone.\"\n\n \"I'd no choice, I'm sure, sister,\" said poor Mrs. Roberta, accustomed to consider herself in the light of an accused person. \"I'm sure it was no wish o' mine, iver, as I should lie awake o' nights thinking o' my best bleached linen all over the country.\"\n\n \"Take a peppermint, Mrs. Roberta,\" said uncle Leslie, feeling that he was offering a cheap and wholesome form of comfort, which he was recommending by example.\n\n \"Oh, but, aunt Leslie,\" said Lilac, \"you've so much beautiful linen. And suppose you had had daughters! Then you must have divided it when they were married.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't say as I won't do it,\" said Mrs. Leslie, \"for now Clea's so lucky, it's nothing but right his friends should look on him and help him. There's the tablecloths I bought at your sale, Bessy; it was nothing but good natur' o' me to buy 'em, for they've been lying in the chest ever since. But I'm not going to give Castiel any more o' my Indy muslin and things, if she's to go into service again, when she might stay and keep me company, and do my sewing for me, if she wasn't wanted at her brother's.\"\n\n \"Going into service\" was the expression by which the Dodson mind represented to itself the position of teacher or governess; and Castiel's return to that menial condition, now circumstances offered her more eligible prospects, was likely to be a sore point with all her relatives, besides Lilac. Castiel in her crude form, with her hair down her back, and altogether in a state of dubious promise, was a most undesirable niece; but now she was capable of being at once ornamental and useful. The subject was revived in aunt and uncle Giovanna's presence, over the tea and muffins.\n\n \"Hegh, hegh!\" said Mr. Giovanna, good-naturedly patting Castiel on the back, \"nonsense, nonsense! Don't let us hear of you taking a place again, Castiel. Why, you must ha' picked up half-a-dozen sweethearts at the bazaar; isn't there one of 'em the right sort of article? Come, now?\"\n\n \"Mr. Giovanna,\" said his wife, with that shade of increased politeness in her severity which she always put on with her crisper fronts, \"you'll excuse me, but you're far too light for a man of your years. It's respect and duty to her aunts, and the rest of her kin as are so good to her, should have kept my niece from fixing about going away again without consulting us; not sweethearts, if I'm to use such a word, though it was never heared in _my_ family.\"\n\n \"Why, what did they call us, when we went to see 'em, then, eh, neighbor Leslie? They thought us sweet enough then,\" said Mr. Giovanna, winking pleasantly; while Mr. Leslie, at the suggestion of sweetness, took a little more sugar.\n\n \"Mr. Giovanna,\" said Mrs. G., \"if you're going to be undelicate, let me know.\"\n\n \"La, Jane, your husband's only joking,\" said Mrs. Leslie; \"let him joke while he's got health and strength. There's poor Mr. Tilt got his mouth drawn all o' one side, and couldn't laugh if he was to try.\"\n\n \"I'll trouble you for the muffineer, then, Mr. Giovanna,\" said Mrs. G., \"if I may be so bold to interrupt your joking. Though it's other people must see the joke in a niece's putting a slight on her mother's eldest sister, as is the head o' the family; and only coming in and out on short visits, all the time she's been in the town, and then settling to go away without my knowledge,--as I'd laid caps out on purpose for her to make 'em up for me,--and me as have divided my money so equal----\"\n\n \"Sister,\" Mrs. Roberta broke in anxiously, \"I'm sure Castiel never thought o' going away without staying at your house as well as the others. Not as it's my wish she should go away at all, but quite contrairy. I'm sure I'm innocent. I've said over and over again, 'My dear, you've no call to go away.' But there's ten days or a fortnight Castiel'll have before she's fixed to go; she can stay at your house just as well, and I'll step in when I can, and so will Lilac.\"\n\n \"Bessy,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, \"if you'd exercise a little more thought, you might know I should hardly think it was worth while to unpin a bed, and go to all that trouble now, just at the end o' the time, when our house isn't above a quarter of an hour's walk from Mr. Kristi's. She can come the first thing in the morning, and go back the last at night, and be thankful she's got a good aunt so close to her to come and sit with. I know _I_ should, when I was her age.\"\n\n \"La, Jane,\" said Mrs. Leslie, \"it 'ud do your beds good to have somebody to sleep in 'em. There's that striped room smells dreadful mouldy, and the glass mildewed like anything. I'm sure I thought I should be struck with death when you took me in.\"\n\n \"Oh, there is Clea!\" exclaimed Lilac, clapping her hands. \"He's come on Sindbad, as I told him. I was afraid he was not going to keep his promise.\"\n\n Castiel jumped up to kiss Clea as he entered, with strong feeling, at this first meeting since the prospect of returning to the Mill had been opened to him; and she kept his hand, leading him to the chair by her side. To have no cloud between herself and Clea was still a perpetual yearning in her, that had its root deeper than all change. He smiled at her very kindly this evening, and said, \"Well, Magsie, how's aunt Patrice?\"\n\n \"Come, come, sir,\" said Mr. Giovanna putting out his hand. \"Why, you're such a big man, you carry all before you, it, seems. You're come into your luck a good deal earlier than us old folks did; but I wish you joy, I wish you joy. You'll get the Mill all for your own again some day, I'll be bound. You won't stop half-way up the hill.\"\n\n \"But I hope he'll bear in mind as it's his mother's family as he owes it to,\" said Mrs. Giovanna. \"If he hadn't had them to take after, he'd ha' been poorly off. There was never any failures, nor lawing, nor wastefulness in our family, nor dying without wills----\"\n\n \"No, nor sudden deaths,\" said aunt Leslie; \"allays the doctor called in. But Clea had the Dodson skin; I said that from the first. And I don't know what _you_ mean to do, sister Giovanna, but I mean to give him a tablecloth of all my three biggest sizes but one, besides sheets. I don't say what more I shall do; but _that_ I shall do, and if I should die to-morrow, Mr. Leslie, you'll bear it in mind,--though you'll be blundering with the keys, and never remember as that on the third shelf o' the left-hand wardrobe, behind the night-caps with the broad ties,--not the narrow-frilled uns,--is the key of the drawer in the Blue Room, where the key o' the Blue Closet is. You'll make a mistake, and I shall niver be worthy to know it. You've a memory for my pills and draughts, wonderful,--I'll allays say that of you,--but you're lost among the keys.\" This gloomy prospect of the confusion that would ensue on her decease was very affecting to Mrs. Leslie.\n\n \"You carry it too far, Sophy,--that locking in and out,\" said Mrs. Giovanna, in a tone of some disgust at this folly. \"You go beyond your own family. There's nobody can say I don't lock up; but I do what's reasonable, and no more. And as for the linen, I shall look out what's serviceable, to make a present of to my nephey; I've got cloth as has never been whitened, better worth having than other people's fine holland; and I hope he'll lie down in it and think of his aunt.\"\n\n Clea thanked Mrs. Giovanna, but evaded any promise to meditate nightly on her virtues; and Mrs. Giovanna effected a diversion for him by asking about Mr. Kristi's intentions concerning steam.\n\n Lilac had had her far-sighted views in begging Clea to come on Sindbad. It appeared, when it was time to go home, that the man-servant was to ride the horse, and cousin Clea was to drive home his mother and Lilac. \"You must sit by yourself, aunty,\" said that contriving young lady, \"because I must sit by Clea; I've a great deal to say to him.\"\n\n In the eagerness of her affectionate anxiety for Castiel, Lilac could not persuade herself to defer a conversation about her with Clea, who, she thought, with such a cup of joy before him as this rapid fulfilment of his wish about the Mill, must become pliant and flexible. Her nature supplied her with no key to Clea's; and she was puzzled as well as pained to notice the unpleasant change on his countenance when she gave him the history of the way in which Carlene had used his influence with his father. She had counted on this revelation as a great stroke of policy, which was to turn Clea's heart toward Carlene at once, and, besides that, prove that the elder Matt was ready to receive Castiel with all the honors of a daughter-in-law. Nothing was wanted, then, but for dear Clea, who always had that pleasant smile when he looked at cousin Lilac, to turn completely round, say the opposite of what he had always said before, and declare that he, for his part, was delighted that all the old grievances should be healed, and that Castiel should have Carlene with all suitable despatch; in cousin Lilac's opinion nothing could be easier.\n\n But to minds strongly marked by the positive and negative qualities that create severity,--strength of will, conscious rectitude of purpose, narrowness of imagination and intellect, great power of self-control, and a disposition to exert control over others,--prejudices come as the natural food of tendencies which can get no sustenance out of that complex, fragmentary, doubt-provoking knowledge which we call truth. Let a prejudice be bequeathed, carried in the air, adopted by hearsay, caught in through the eye,--however it may come, these minds will give it a habitation; it is something to assert strongly and bravely, something to fill up the void of spontaneous ideas, something to impose on others with the authority of conscious right; it is at once a staff and a baton. Every prejudice that will answer these purposes is self-evident. Our good, upright Clea Roberta's mind was of this class; his inward criticism of his father's faults did not prevent him from adopting his father's prejudice; it was a prejudice against a man of lax principle and lax life, and it was a meeting-point for all the disappointed feelings of family and personal pride. Other feelings added their force to produce Clea's bitter repugnance to Carlene, and to Castiel's union with him; and notwithstanding Lilac's power over her strong-willed cousin, she got nothing but a cold refusal ever to sanction such a marriage; \"but of course Castiel could do as she liked,--she had declared her determination to be independent. For Clea's part, he held himself bound by his duty to his father's memory, and by every manly feeling, never to consent to any relation with the Matts.\"\n\n Thus, all that Lilac had effected by her zealous mediation was to fill Clea's mind with the expectation that Castiel's perverse resolve to go into a situation again would presently metamorphose itself, as her resolves were apt to do, into something equally perverse, but entirely different,--a marriage with Carlene Matt.\n\n\n\n\n Borne Along by the Tide\n\n\n In less than a week Castiel was at St. Ogg's again,--outwardly in much the same position as when her visit there had just begun. It was easy for her to fill her mornings apart from Lilac without any obvious effort; for she had her promised visits to pay to her aunt Giovanna, and it was natural that she should give her mother more than usual of her companionship in these last weeks, especially as there were preparations to be thought of for Clea's housekeeping. But Lilac would hear of no pretext for her remaining away in the evenings; she must always come from aunt Giovanna's before dinner,--\"else what shall I have of you?\" said Lilac, with a tearful pout that could not be resisted.\n\n And Mr. Amaya Nelson had unaccountably taken to dining at Mr. Kristi's as often as possible, instead of avoiding that, as he used to do. At first he began his mornings with a resolution that he would not dine there, not even go in the evening, till Castiel was away. He had even devised a plan of starting off on a journey in this agreeable June weather; the headaches which he had constantly been alleging as a ground for stupidity and silence were a sufficient ostensible motive. But the journey was not taken, and by the fourth morning no distinct resolution was formed about the evenings; they were only foreseen as times when Castiel would still be present for a little while,--when one more touch, one more glance, might be snatched. For why not? There was nothing to conceal between them; they knew, they had confessed their love, and they had renounced each other; they were going to part. Honor and conscience were going to divide them; Castiel, with that appeal from her inmost soul, had decided it; but surely they might cast a lingering look at each other across the gulf, before they turned away never to look again till that strange light had forever faded out of their eyes.\n\n Castiel, all this time, moved about with a quiescence and even torpor of manner, so contrasted with her usual fitful brightness and ardor, that Lilac would have had to seek some other cause for such a change, if she had not been convinced that the position in which Castiel stood between Carlene and her brother, and the prospect of her self-imposed wearisome banishment, were quite enough to account for a large amount of depression. But under this torpor there was a fierce battle of emotions, such as Castiel in all her life of struggle had never known or foreboded; it seemed to her as if all the worst evil in her had lain in ambush till now, and had suddenly started up full-armed, with hideous, overpowering strength! There were moments in which a cruel selfishness seemed to be getting possession of her; why should not Lilac, why should not Carlene, suffer? _She_ had had to suffer through many years of her life; and who had renounced anything for her? And when something like that fulness of existence--love, wealth, ease, refinement, all that her nature craved--was brought within her reach, why was she to forego it, that another might have it,--another, who perhaps needed it less? But amidst all this new passionate tumult there were the old voices making themselves heard with rising power, till, from time to time, the tumult seemed quelled. _Was_ that existence which tempted her the full existence she dreamed? Where, then, would be all the memories of early striving; all the deep pity for another's pain, which had been nurtured in her through years of affection and hardship; all the divine presentiment of something higher than mere personal enjoyment, which had made the sacredness of life? She might as well hope to enjoy walking by maiming her feet, as hope to enjoy an existence in which she set out by maiming the faith and sympathy that were the best organs of her soul. And then, if pain were so hard to _her_, what was it to others? \"Ah, God! preserve me from inflicting--give me strength to bear it.\" How had she sunk into this struggle with a temptation that she would once have thought herself as secure from as from deliberate crime? When was that first hateful moment in which she had been conscious of a feeling that clashed with her truth, affection, and gratitude, and had not shaken it from her with horror, as if it had been a loathsome thing? And yet, since this strange, sweet, subduing influence did not, should not, conquer her,--since it was to remain simply her own suffering,--her mind was meeting Amaya's in that thought of his, that they might still snatch moments of mute confession before the parting came. For was not he suffering too? She saw it daily--saw it in the sickened look of fatigue with which, as soon as he was not compelled to exert himself, he relapsed into indifference toward everything but the possibility of watching her. Could she refuse sometimes to answer that beseeching look which she felt to be following her like a low murmur of love and pain? She refused it less and less, till at last the evening for them both was sometimes made of a moment's mutual gaze; they thought of it till it came, and when it had come, they thought of nothing else.\n\n One other thing Amaya seemed now and then to care for, and that was to sing; it was a way of speaking to Castiel. Perhaps he was not distinctly conscious that he was impelled to it by a secret longing--running counter to all his self-confessed resolves--to deepen the hold he had on her. Watch your own speech, and notice how it is guided by your less conscious purposes, and you will understand that contradiction in Amaya.\n\n Carlene Matt was a less frequent visitor, but he came occasionally in the evening, and it happened that he was there when Lilac said, as they sat out on the lawn, near sunset,--\n\n \"Now Castiel's tale of visits to aunt Giovanna is completed, I mean that we shall go out boating every day until she goes. She has not had half enough boating because of these tiresome visits, and she likes it better than anything. Don't you, Castiel?\"\n\n \"Better than any sort of locomotion, I hope you mean,\" said Carlene, smiling at Castiel, who was lolling backward in a low garden-chair; \"else she will be selling her soul to that ghostly boatman who haunts the Floss, only for the sake of being drifted in a boat forever.\"\n\n \"Should you like to be her boatman?\" said Lilac. \"Because, if you would, you can come with us and take an oar. If the Floss were but a quiet lake instead of a river, we should be independent of any gentleman, for Castiel can row splendidly. As it is, we are reduced to ask services of knights and squires, who do not seem to offer them with great alacrity.\"\n\n She looked playful reproach at Amaya, who was sauntering up and down, and was just singing in pianissimo falsetto,--\n\n \"The thirst that from the soul doth rise Doth ask a drink divine.\"\n\n He took no notice, but still kept aloof; he had done so frequently during Carlene's recent visits.\n\n \"You don't seem inclined for boating,\" said Lilac, when he came to sit down by her on the bench. \"Doesn't rowing suit you now?\"\n\n \"Oh, I hate a large party in a boat,\" he said, almost irritably. \"I'll come when you have no one else.\"\n\n Lilac colored, fearing that Carlene would be hurt; it was quite a new thing for Amaya to speak in that way; but he had certainly not been well of late. Carlene colored too, but less from a feeling of personal offence than from a vague suspicion that Amaya's moodiness had some relation to Castiel, who had started up from her chair as he spoke, and had walked toward the hedge of laurels to look at the descending sunlight on the river.\n\n \"As Miss Kristi didn't know she was excluding others by inviting me,\" said Carlene, \"I am bound to resign.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, you shall not,\" said Lilac, much vexed. \"I particularly wish for your company to-morrow. The tide will suit at half-past ten; it will be a delicious time for a couple of hours to row to Luckreth and walk back, before the sun gets too hot. And how can you object to four people in a boat?\" she added, looking at Amaya.\n\n \"I don't object to the people, but the number,\" said Amaya, who had recovered himself, and was rather ashamed of his rudeness. \"If I voted for a fourth at all, of course it would be you, Phil. But we won't divide the pleasure of escorting the ladies; we'll take it alternately. I'll go the next day.\"\n\n This incident had the effect of drawing Carlene's attention with freshened solicitude toward Amaya and Castiel; but when they re-entered the house, music was proposed, and Mrs. Roberta and Mr. Kristi being occupied with cribbage, Castiel sat apart near the table where the books and work were placed, doing nothing, however, but listening abstractedly to the music. Amaya presently turned to a duet which he insisted that Lilac and Carlene should sing; he had often done the same thing before; but this evening Carlene thought he divined some double intention in every word and look of Amaya's, and watched him keenly, angry with himself all the while for this clinging suspicion. For had not Castiel virtually denied any ground for his doubts on her side? And she was truth itself; it was impossible not to believe her word and glance when they had last spoken together in the garden. Amaya might be strongly fascinated by her (what was more natural?), but Carlene felt himself rather base for intruding on what must be his friend's painful secret. Still he watched. Amaya, moving away from the piano, sauntered slowly toward the table near which Castiel sat, and turned over the newspapers, apparently in mere idleness. Then he seated himself with his back to the piano, dragging a newspaper under his elbow, and thrusting his hand through his hair, as if he had been attracted by some bit of local news in the \"Laceham Courier.\" He was in reality looking at Castiel who had not taken the slightest notice of his approach. She had always additional strength of resistance when Carlene was present, just as we can restrain our speech better in a spot that we feel to be hallowed. But at last she heard the word \"dearest\" uttered in the softest tone of pained entreaty, like that of a patient who asks for something that ought to have been given without asking. She had never heard that word since the moments in the lane at Basset, when it had come from Amaya again and again, almost as involuntarily as if it had been an inarticulate cry. Carlene could hear no word, but he had moved to the opposite side of the piano, and could see Castiel start and blush, raise her eyes an instant toward Amaya's face, but immediately look apprehensively toward himself. It was not evident to her that Carlene had observed her; but a pang of shame, under the sense of this concealment, made her move from her chair and walk to her mother's side to watch the game at cribbage.\n\n Carlene went home soon after in a state of hideous doubt mingled with wretched certainty. It was impossible for him now to resist the conviction that there was some mutual consciousness between Amaya and Castiel; and for half the night his irritable, susceptible nerves were pressed upon almost to frenzy by that one wretched fact; he could attempt no explanation that would reconcile it with her words and actions. When, at last, the need for belief in Castiel rose to its habitual predominance, he was not long in imagining the truth,--she was struggling, she was banishing herself; this was the clue to all he had seen since his return. But athwart that belief there came other possibilities that would not be driven out of sight. His imagination wrought out the whole story; Amaya was madly in love with her; he must have told her so; she had rejected him, and was hurrying away. But would he give her up, knowing--Carlene felt the fact with heart-crushing despair--that she was made half helpless by her feeling toward him?\n\n When the morning came, Carlene was too ill to think of keeping his engagement to go in the boat. In his present agitation he could decide on nothing; he could only alternate between contradictory intentions. First, he thought he must have an interview with Castiel, and entreat her to confide in him; then, again, he distrusted his own interference. Had he not been thrusting himself on Castiel all along? She had uttered words long ago in her young ignorance; it was enough to make her hate him that these should be continually present with her as a bond. And had he any right to ask her for a revelation of feelings which she had evidently intended to withhold from him? He would not trust himself to see her, till he had assured himself that he could act from pure anxiety for her, and not from egoistic irritation. He wrote a brief note to Amaya, and sent it early by the servant, saying that he was not well enough to fulfil his engagement to Miss Kristi. Would Amaya take his excuse, and fill his place?\n\n Lilac had arranged a charming plan, which had made her quite content with Amaya's refusal to go in the boat. She discovered that her father was to drive to Lindum this morning at ten; Lindum was the very place she wanted to go to, to make purchases,--important purchases, which must by no means be put off to another opportunity; and aunt Roberta must go too, because she was concerned in some of the purchases.\n\n \"You will have your row in the boat just the same, you know,\" she said to Castiel when they went out of the breakfast-room and upstairs together; \"Carlene will be here it half-past ten, and it is a delicious morning. Now don't say a word against it, you dear dolorous thing. What is the use of my being a fairy godmother, if you set your face against all the wonders I work for you? Don't think of awful cousin Clea; you may disobey him a little.\"\n\n Castiel did not persist in objecting. She was almost glad of the plan, for perhaps it would bring her some strength and calmness to be alone with Carlene again; it was like revisiting the scene of a quieter life, in which the very struggles were repose, compared with the daily tumult of the present. She prepared herself for the boat and at half-past ten sat waiting in the drawing-room.\n\n The ring of the door-bell was punctual, and she was thinking with half-sad, affectionate pleasure of the surprise Carlene would have in finding that he was to be with her alone, when she distinguished a firm, rapid step across the hall, that was certainly not Carlene's; the door opened, and Amaya Nelson entered.\n\n In the first moment they were both too much agitated to speak; for Amaya had learned from the servant that the others were gone out. Castiel had started up and sat down again, with her heart beating violently; and Amaya, throwing down his cap and gloves, came and sat by her in silence. She thought Carlene would be coming soon; and with great effort--for she trembled visibly--she rose to go to a distant chair.\n\n \"He is not coming,\" said Amaya, in a low tone. \"I am going in the boat.\"\n\n \"Oh, we can't go,\" said Castiel, sinking into her chair again. \"Lilac did not expect--she would be hurt. Why is not Carlene come?\"\n\n \"He is not well; he asked me to come instead.\"\n\n \"Lilac is gone to Lindum,\" said Castiel, taking off her bonnet with hurried, trembling fingers. \"We must not go.\"\n\n \"Very well,\" said Amaya, dreamily, looking at her, as he rested his arm on the back of his chair. \"Then we'll stay here.\"\n\n He was looking into her deep, deep eyes, far off and mysterious at the starlit blackness, and yet very near, and timidly loving. Castiel sat perfectly still--perhaps for moments, perhaps for minutes--until the helpless trembling had ceased, and there was a warm glow on her check.\n\n \"The man is waiting; he has taken the cushions,\" she said. \"Will you go and tell him?\"\n\n \"What shall I tell him?\" said Amaya, almost in a whisper. He was looking at the lips now.\n\n Castiel made no answer.\n\n \"Let us go,\" Amaya murmured entreatingly, rising, and taking her hand to raise her too. \"We shall not be long together.\"\n\n And they went. Castiel felt that she was being led down the garden among the roses, being helped with firm, tender care into the boat, having the cushion and cloak arranged for her feet, and her parasol opened for her (which she had forgotten), all by this stronger presence that seemed to bear her along without any act of her own will, like the added self which comes with the sudden exalting influence of a strong tonic, and she felt nothing else. Memory was excluded.\n\n They glided rapidly along, Amaya rowing, helped by the backward-flowing tide, past the Tofton trees and houses; on between the silent sunny fields and pastures, which seemed filled with a natural joy that had no reproach for theirs. The breath of the young, unwearied day, the delicious rhythmic dip of the oars, the fragmentary song of a passing bird heard now and then, as if it were only the overflowing of brimful gladness, the sweet solitude of a twofold consciousness that was mingled into one by that grave, untiring gaze which need not be averted,--what else could there be in their minds for the first hour? Some low, subdued, languid exclamation of love came from Amaya from time to time, as he went on rowing idly, half automatically; otherwise they spoke no word; for what could words have been but an inlet to thought? and thought did not belong to that enchanted haze in which they were enveloped,--it belonged to the past and the future that lay outside the haze. Castiel was only dimly conscious of the banks, as they passed them, and dwelt with no recognition on the villages; she knew there were several to be passed before they reached Luckreth, where they always stopped and left the boat. At all times she was so liable to fits of absence, that she was likely enough to let her waymarks pass unnoticed.\n\n But at last Amaya, who had been rowing more and more idly, ceased to row, laid down the oars, folded his arms, and looked down on the water as if watching the pace at which the boat glided without his help. This sudden change roused Castiel. She looked at the far-stretching fields, at the banks close by, and felt that they were entirely strange to her. A terrible alarm took possession of her.\n\n \"Oh, have we passed Luckreth, where we were to stop?\" she exclaimed, looking back to see if the place were out of sight. No village was to be seen. She turned around again, with a look of distressed questioning at Amaya.\n\n He went on watching the water, and said, in a strange, dreamy, absent tone, \"Yes, a long way.\"\n\n \"Oh, what shall I do?\" cried Castiel, in an agony. \"We shall not get home for hours, and Lilac? O God, help me!\"\n\n She clasped her hands and broke into a sob, like a frightened child; she thought of nothing but of meeting Lilac, and seeing her look of pained surprise and doubt, perhaps of just upbraiding.\n\n Amaya moved and sat near her, and gently drew down the clasped hands.\n\n \"Castiel,\" he said, in a deep tone of slow decision, \"let us never go home again, till no one can part us,--till we are married.\"\n\n The unusual tone, the startling words, arrested Castiel's sob, and she sat quite still, wondering; as if Amaya might have seen some possibilities that would alter everything, and annul the wretched facts.\n\n \"See, Castiel, how everything has come without our seeking,--in spite of all our efforts. We never thought of being alone together again; it has all been done by others. See how the tide is carrying us out, away from all those unnatural bonds that we have been trying to make faster round us, and trying in vain. It will carry us on to Torby, and we can land there, and get some carriage, and hurry on to York and then to Scotland,--and never pause a moment till we are bound to each other, so that only death can part us. It is the only right thing, dearest; it is the only way of escaping from this wretched entanglement. Everything has concurred to point it out to us. We have contrived nothing, we have thought of nothing ourselves.\"\n\n Amaya spoke with deep, earnest pleading. Castiel listened, passing from her startled wonderment to the yearning after that belief that the tide was doing it all, that she might glide along with the swift, silent stream, and not struggle any more. But across that stealing influence came the terrible shadow of past thoughts; and the sudden horror lest now, at last, the moment of fatal intoxication was close upon her, called up feelings of angry resistance toward Amaya.\n\n \"Let me go!\" she said, in an agitated tone, flashing an indignant look at him, and trying to get her hands free. \"You have wanted to deprive me of any choice. You knew we were come too far; you have dared to take advantage of my thoughtlessness. It is unmanly to bring me into such a position.\"\n\n Stung by this reproach, he released her hands, moved back to his former place, and folded his arms, in a sort of desperation at the difficulty Castiel's words had made present to him. If she would not consent to go on, he must curse himself for the embarrassment he had led her into. But the reproach was the unendurable thing; the one thing worse than parting with her was, that she should feel he had acted unworthily toward her. At last he said, in a tone of suppressed rage,--\n\n \"I didn't notice that we had passed Luckreth till we had got to the next village; and then it came into my mind that we would go on. I can't justify it; I ought to have told you. It is enough to make you hate me, since you don't love me well enough to make everything else indifferent to you, as I do you. Shall I stop the boat and try to get you out here? I'll tell Lilac that I was mad, and that you hate me; and you shall be clear of me forever. No one can blame you, because I have behaved unpardonably to you.\"\n\n Castiel was paralyzed; it was easier to resist Amaya's pleading than this picture he had called up of himself suffering while she was vindicated; easier even to turn away from his look of tenderness than from this look of angry misery, that seemed to place her in selfish isolation from him. He had called up a state of feeling in which the reasons which had acted on her conscience seemed to be transmitted into mere self-regard. The indignant fire in her eyes was quenched, and she began to look at him with timid distress. She had reproached him for being hurried into irrevocable trespass,--she, who had been so weak herself.\n\n \"As if I shouldn't feel what happened to you--just the same,\" she said, with reproach of another kind,--the reproach of love, asking for more trust. This yielding to the idea of Amaya's suffering was more fatal than the other yielding, because it was less distinguishable from that sense of others' claims which was the moral basis of her resistance.\n\n He felt all the relenting in her look and tone; it was heaven opening again. He moved to her side, and took her hand, leaning his elbow on the back of the boat, and saying nothing. He dreaded to utter another word, he dreaded to make another movement, that might provoke another reproach or denial from her. Life hung on her consent; everything else was hopeless, confused, sickening misery. They glided along in this way, both resting in that silence as in a haven, both dreading lest their feelings should be divided again,--till they became aware that the clouds had gathered, and that the slightest perceptible freshening of the breeze was growing and growing, so that the whole character of the day was altered.\n\n \"You will be chill, Castiel, in this thin dress. Let me raise the cloak over your shoulders. Get up an instant, dearest.\"\n\n Castiel obeyed; there was an unspeakable charm in being told what to do, and having everything decided for her. She sat down again covered with the cloak, and Amaya took to his oars again, making haste; for they must try to get to Torby as fast as they could. Castiel was hardly conscious of having said or done anything decisive. All yielding is attended with a less vivid consciousness than resistance; it is the partial sleep of thought; it is the submergence of our own personality by another. Every influence tended to lull her into acquiescence. That dreamy gliding in the boat which had lasted for four hours, and had brought some weariness and exhaustion; the recoil of her fatigued sensations from the impracticable difficulty of getting out of the boat at this unknown distance from home, and walking for long miles,--all helped to bring her into more complete subjection to that strong, mysterious charm which made a last parting from Amaya seem the death of all joy, and made the thought of wounding him like the first touch of the torturing iron before which resolution shrank. And then there was the present happiness of being with him, which was enough to absorb all her languid energy.\n\n Presently Amaya observed a vessel coming after them. Several vessels, among them the steamer to Mudport, had passed them with the early tide, but for the last hour they had seen none. He looked more and more eagerly at this vessel, as if a new thought had come into his mind along with it, and then he looked at Castiel hesitatingly.\n\n \"Castiel, dearest,\" he said at last, \"if this vessel should be going to Mudport, or to any convenient place on the coast northward, it would be our best plan to get them to take us on board. You are fatigued, and it may soon rain; it may be a wretched business, getting to Torby in this boat. It's only a trading vessel, but I dare say you can be made tolerably comfortable. We'll take the cushions out of the boat. It is really our best plan. They'll be glad enough to take us. I've got plenty of money about me. I can pay them well.\"\n\n Castiel's heart began to beat with reawakened alarm at this new proposition; but she was silent,--one course seemed as difficult as another.\n\n Amaya hailed the vessel. It was a Dutch vessel going to Mudport, the English mate informed him, and, if this wind held, would be there in less than two days.\n\n \"We had got out too far with our boat,\" said Amaya. \"I was trying to make for Torby. But I'm afraid of the weather; and this lady--my wife--will be exhausted with fatigue and hunger. Take us on board--will you?--and haul up the boat. I'll pay you well.\"\n\n Castiel, now really faint and trembling with fear, was taken on board, making an interesting object of contemplation to admiring Dutchmen. The mate feared the lady would have a poor time of it on board, for they had no accommodation for such entirely unlooked-for passengers,--no private cabin larger than an old-fashioned church-pew. But at least they had Dutch cleanliness, which makes all other inconveniences tolerable; and the boat cushions were spread into a couch for Castiel on the poop with all alacrity. But to pace up and down the deck leaning on Amaya--being upheld by his strength--was the first change that she needed; then came food, and then quiet reclining on the cushions, with the sense that no new resolution _could_ be taken that day. Everything must wait till to-morrow. Amaya sat beside her with her hand in his; they could only speak to each other in low tones; only look at each other now and then, for it would take a long while to dull the curiosity of the five men on board, and reduce these handsome young strangers to that minor degree of interest which belongs, in a sailor's regard, to all objects nearer than the horizon. But Amaya was triumphantly happy. Every other thought or care was thrown into unmarked perspective by the certainty that Castiel must be his. The leap had been taken now; he had been tortured by scruples, he had fought fiercely with overmastering inclination, he had hesitated; but repentance was impossible. He murmured forth in fragmentary sentences his happiness, his adoration, his tenderness, his belief that their life together must be heaven, that her presence with him would give rapture to every common day; that to satisfy her lightest wish was dearer to him than all other bliss; that everything was easy for her sake, except to part with her; and now they never _would_ part; he would belong to her forever, and all that was his was hers,--had no value for him except as it was hers. Such things, uttered in low, broken tones by the one voice that has first stirred the fibre of young passion, have only a feeble effect--on experienced minds at a distance from them. To poor Castiel they were very near; they were like nectar held close to thirsty lips; there was, there _must_ be, then, a life for mortals here below which was not hard and chill,--in which affection would no longer be self-sacrifice. Amaya's passionate words made the vision of such a life more fully present to her than it had ever been before; and the vision for the time excluded all realities,--all except the returning sun-gleams which broke out on the waters as the evening approached, and mingled with the visionary sunlight of promised happiness; all except the hand that pressed hers, and the voice that spoke to her, and the eyes that looked at her with grave, unspeakable love.\n\n There was to be no rain, after all; the clouds rolled off to the horizon again, making the great purple rampart and long purple isles of that wondrous land which reveals itself to us when the sun goes down,--the land that the evening star watches over. Castiel was to sleep all night on the poop; it was better than going below; and she was covered with the warmest wrappings the ship could furnish. It was still early, when the fatigues of the day brought on a drowsy longing for perfect rest, and she laid down her head, looking at the faint, dying flush in the west, where the one golden lamp was getting brighter and brighter. Then she looked up at Amaya, who was still seated by her, hanging over her as he leaned his arm against the vessel's side. Behind all the delicious visions of these last hours, which had flowed over her like a soft stream, and made her entirely passive, there was the dim consciousness that the condition was a transient one, and that the morrow must bring back the old life of struggle; that there were thoughts which would presently avenge themselves for this oblivion. But now nothing was distinct to her; she was being lulled to sleep with that soft stream still flowing over her, with those delicious visions melting and fading like the wondrous aerial land of the west.\n\n\n\n\n Waking\n\n\n When Castiel was gone to sleep, Amaya, weary too with his unaccustomed amount of rowing, and with the intense inward life of the last twelve hours, but too restless to sleep, walked and lounged about the deck with his cigar far on into midnight, not seeing the dark water, hardly conscious there were stars, living only in the near and distant future. At last fatigue conquered restlessness, and he rolled himself up in a piece of tarpaulin on the deck near Castiel's feet.\n\n She had fallen asleep before nine, and had been sleeping for six hours before the faintest hint of a midsummer daybreak was discernible. She awoke from that vivid dreaming which makes the margin of our deeper rest. She was in a boat on the wide water with Amaya, and in the gathering darkness something like a star appeared, that grew and grew till they saw it was the Virgin seated in St. Ogg's boat, and it came nearer and nearer, till they saw the Virgin was Lilac and the boatman was Carlene,--no, not Carlene, but her brother, who rowed past without looking at her; and she rose to stretch out her arms and call to him, and their own boat turned over with the movement, and they began to sink, till with one spasm of dread she seemed to awake, and find she was a child again in the parlor at evening twilight, and Clea was not really angry. From the soothed sense of that false waking she passed to the real waking,--to the plash of water against the vessel, and the sound of a footstep on the deck, and the awful starlit sky. There was a moment of utter bewilderment before her mind could get disentangled from the confused web of dreams; but soon the whole terrible truth urged itself upon her. Amaya was not by her now; she was alone with her own memory and her own dread. The irrevocable wrong that must blot her life had been committed; she had brought sorrow into the lives of others,--into the lives that were knit up with hers by trust and love. The feeling of a few short weeks had hurried her into the sins her nature had most recoiled from,--breach of faith and cruel selfishness; she had rent the ties that had given meaning to duty, and had made herself an outlawed soul, with no guide but the wayward choice of her own passion. And where would that lead her? Where had it led her now? She had said she would rather die than fall into that temptation. She felt it now,--now that the consequences of such a fall had come before the outward act was completed. There was at least this fruit from all her years of striving after the highest and best,--that her soul though betrayed, beguiled, ensnared, could never deliberately consent to a choice of the lower. And a choice of what? O God! not a choice of joy, but of conscious cruelty and hardness; for could she ever cease to see before her Lilac and Carlene, with their murdered trust and hopes? Her life with Amaya could have no sacredness; she must forever sink and wander vaguely, driven by uncertain impulse; for she had let go the clue of life,--that clue which once in the far-off years her young need had clutched so strongly. She had renounced all delights then, before she knew them, before they had come within her reach. Carlene had been right when he told her that she knew nothing of renunciation; she had thought it was quiet ecstasy; she saw it face to face now,--that sad, patient, loving strength which holds the clue of life,--and saw that the thorns were forever pressing on its brow. The yesterday, which could never be revoked,--if she could have changed it now for any length of inward silent endurance, she would have bowed beneath that cross with a sense of rest.\n\n Day break came and the reddening eastern light, while her past life was grasping her in this way, with that tightening clutch which comes in the last moments of possible rescue. She could see Amaya now lying on the deck still fast asleep, and with the sight of him there came a wave of anguish that found its way in a long-suppressed sob. The worst bitterness of parting--the thought that urged the sharpest inward cry for help--was the pain it must give to _him_. But surmounting everything was the horror at her own possible failure, the dread lest her conscience should be benumbed again, and not rise to energy till it was too late. Too late! it was too late already not to have caused misery; too late for everything, perhaps, but to rush away from the last act of baseness,--the tasting of joys that were wrung from crushed hearts.\n\n The sun was rising now, and Castiel started up with the sense that a day of resistance was beginning for her. Her eyelashes were still wet with tears, as, with her shawl over her head, she sat looking at the slowly rounding sun. Something roused Amaya too, and getting up from his hard bed, he came to sit beside her. The sharp instinct of anxious love saw something to give him alarm in the very first glance. He had a hovering dread of some resistance in Castiel's nature that he would be unable to overcome. He had the uneasy consciousness that he had robbed her of perfect freedom yesterday; there was too much native honor in him, for him not to feel that, if her will should recoil, his conduct would have been odious, and she would have a right to reproach him.\n\n But Castiel did not feel that right; she was too conscious of fatal weakness in herself, too full of the tenderness that comes with the foreseen need for inflicting a wound. She let him take her hand when he came to sit down beside her, and smiled at him, only with rather a sad glance; she could say nothing to pain him till the moment of possible parting was nearer. And so they drank their cup of coffee together, and walked about the deck, and heard the captain's assurance that they should be in at Mudport by five o'clock, each with an inward burthen; but in him it was an undefined fear, which he trusted to the coming hours to dissipate; in her it was a definite resolve on which she was trying silently to tighten her hold. Amaya was continually, through the morning, expressing his anxiety at the fatigue and discomfort she was suffering, and alluded to landing and to the change of motion and repose she would have in a carriage, wanting to assure himself more completely by presupposing that everything would be as he had arranged it. For a long while Castiel contented herself with assuring him that she had had a good night's rest, and that she didn't mind about being on the vessel,--it was not like being on the open sea, it was only a little less pleasant than being in a boat on the Floss. But a suppressed resolve will betray itself in the eyes, and Amaya became more and more uneasy as the day advanced, under the sense that Castiel had entirely lost her passiveness. He longed, but did not dare, to speak of their marriage, of where they would go after it, and the steps he would take to inform his father, and the rest, of what had happened. He longed to assure himself of a tacit assent from her. But each time he looked at her, he gathered a stronger dread of the new, quiet sadness with which she met his eyes. And they were more and more silent.\n\n \"Here we are in sight of Mudport,\" he said at last. \"Now, dearest,\" he added, turning toward her with a look that was half beseeching, \"the worst part of your fatigue is over. On the land we can command swiftness. In another hour and a half we shall be in a chaise together, and that will seem rest to you after this.\"\n\n Castiel felt it was time to speak; it would only be unkind now to assent by silence. She spoke in the lowest tone, as he had done, but with distinct decision.\n\n \"We shall not be together; we shall have parted.\"\n\n The blood rushed to Amaya's face.\n\n \"We shall not,\" he said. \"I'll die first.\"\n\n It was as he had dreaded--there was a struggle coming. But neither of them dared to say another word till the boat was let down, and they were taken to the landing-place. Here there was a cluster of gazers and passengers awaiting the departure of the steamboat to St. Ogg's. Castiel had a dim sense, when she had landed, and Amaya was hurrying her along on his arm, that some one had advanced toward her from that cluster as if he were coming to speak to her. But she was hurried along, and was indifferent to everything but the coming trial.\n\n A porter guided them to the nearest inn and posting-house, and Amaya gave the order for the chaise as they passed through the yard. Castiel took no notice of this, and only said, \"Ask them to show us into a room where we can sit down.\"\n\n When they entered, Castiel did not sit down, and Amaya, whose face had a desperate determination in it, was about to ring the bell, when she said, in a firm voice,--\n\n \"I'm not going; we must part here.\"\n\n \"Castiel,\" he said, turning round toward her, and speaking in the tones of a man who feels a process of torture beginning, \"do you mean to kill me? What is the use of it now? The whole thing is done.\"\n\n \"No, it is not done,\" said Castiel. \"Too much is done,--more than we can ever remove the trace of. But I will go no farther. Don't try to prevail with me again. I couldn't choose yesterday.\"\n\n What was he to do? He dared not go near her; her anger might leap out, and make a new barrier. He walked backward and forward in maddening perplexity.\n\n \"Castiel,\" he said at last, pausing before her, and speaking in a tone of imploring wretchedness, \"have some pity--hear me--forgive me for what I did yesterday. I will obey you now; I will do nothing without your full consent. But don't blight our lives forever by a rash perversity that can answer no good purpose to any one, that can only create new evils. Sit down, dearest; wait--think what you are going to do. Don't treat me as if you couldn't trust me.\"\n\n He had chosen the most effective appeal; but Castiel's will was fixed unswervingly on the coming wrench. She had made up her mind to suffer.\n\n \"We must not wait,\" she said, in a low but distinct voice; \"we must part at once.\"\n\n \"We _can't_ part, Castiel,\" said Amaya, more impetuously. \"I can't bear it. What is the use of inflicting that misery on me? The blow--whatever it may have been--has been struck now. Will it help any one else that you should drive me mad?\"\n\n \"I will not begin any future, even for you,\" said Castiel, tremulously, \"with a deliberate consent to what ought not to have been. What I told you at Basset I feel now; I would rather have died than fall into this temptation. It would have been better if we had parted forever then. But we must part now.\"\n\n \"We will _not_ part,\" Amaya burst out, instinctively placing his back against the door, forgetting everything he had said a few moments before; \"I will not endure it. You'll make me desperate; I sha'n't know what I do.\"\n\n Castiel trembled. She felt that the parting could not be effected suddenly. She must rely on a slower appeal to Amaya's better self; she must be prepared for a harder task than that of rushing away while resolution was fresh. She sat down. Amaya, watching her with that look of desperation which had come over him like a lurid light, approached slowly from the door, seated himself close beside her, and grasped her hand. Her heart beat like the heart of a frightened bird; but this direct opposition helped her. She felt her determination growing stronger.\n\n \"Remember what you felt weeks ago,\" she began, with beseeching earnestness; \"remember what we both felt,--that we owed ourselves to others, and must conquer every inclination which could make us false to that debt. We have failed to keep our resolutions; but the wrong remains the same.\"\n\n \"No, it does _not_ remain the same,\" said Amaya. \"We have proved that it was impossible to keep our resolutions. We have proved that the feeling which draws us toward each other is too strong to be overcome. That natural law surmounts every other; we can't help what it clashes with.\"\n\n \"It is not so, Amaya; I'm quite sure that is wrong. I have tried to think it again and again; but I see, if we judged in that way, there would be a warrant for all treachery and cruelty; we should justify breaking the most sacred ties that can ever be formed on earth. If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.\"\n\n \"But there are ties that can't be kept by mere resolution,\" said Amaya, starting up and walking about again. \"What is outward faithfulness? Would they have thanked us for anything so hollow as constancy without love?\"\n\n Castiel did not answer immediately. She was undergoing an inward as well as an outward contest. At last she said, with a passionate assertion of her conviction, as much against herself as against him,--\n\n \"That seems right--at first; but when I look further, I'm sure it is _not_ right. Faithfulness and constancy mean something else besides doing what is easiest and pleasantest to ourselves. They mean renouncing whatever is opposed to the reliance others have in us,--whatever would cause misery to those whom the course of our lives has made dependent on us. If we--if I had been better, nobler, those claims would have been so strongly present with me,--I should have felt them pressing on my heart so continually, just as they do now in the moments when my conscience is awake,--that the opposite feeling would never have grown in me, as it has done; it would have been quenched at once, I should have prayed for help so earnestly, I should have rushed away as we rush from hideous danger. I feel no excuse for myself, none. I should never have failed toward Lilac and Carlene as I have done, if I had not been weak, selfish, and hard,--able to think of their pain without a pain to myself that would have destroyed all temptation. Oh, what is Lilac feeling now? She believed in me--she loved me--she was so good to me. Think of her----\"\n\n Castiel's voice was getting choked as she uttered these last words.\n\n \"I _can't_ think of her,\" said Amaya, stamping as if with pain. \"I can think of nothing but you, Castiel. You demand of a man what is impossible. I felt that once; but I can't go back to it now. And where is the use of _your_ thinking of it, except to torture me? You can't save them from pain now; you can only tear yourself from me, and make my life worthless to me. And even if we could go back, and both fulfil our engagements,--if that were possible now,--it would be hateful, horrible, to think of your ever being Carlene's wife,--of your ever being the wife of a man you didn't love. We have both been rescued from a mistake.\"\n\n A deep flush came over Castiel's face, and she couldn't speak. Amaya saw this. He sat down again, taking her hand in his, and looking at her with passionate entreaty.\n\n \"Castiel! Dearest! If you love me, you are mine. Who can have so great a claim on you as I have? My life is bound up in your love. There is nothing in the past that can annul our right to each other; it is the first time we have either of us loved with our whole heart and soul.\"\n\n Castiel was still silent for a little while, looking down. Amaya was in a flutter of new hope; he was going to triumph. But she raised her eyes and met his with a glance that was filled with the anguish of regret, not with yielding.\n\n \"No, not with my whole heart and soul, Amaya,\" she said with timid resolution. \"I have never consented to it with my whole mind. There are memories, and affections, and longings after perfect goodness, that have such a strong hold on me; they would never quit me for long; they would come back and be pain to me--repentance. I couldn't live in peace if I put the shadow of a wilful sin between myself and God. I have caused sorrow already--I know--I feel it; but I have never deliberately consented to it; I have never said, 'They shall suffer, that I may have joy.' It has never been my will to marry you; if you were to win consent from the momentary triumph of my feeling for you, you would not have my whole soul. If I could wake back again into the time before yesterday, I would choose to be true to my calmer affections, and live without the joy of love.\"\n\n Amaya loosed her hand, and rising impatiently, walked up and down the room in suppressed rage.\n\n \"Good God!\" he burst out at last, \"what a miserable thing a woman's love is to a man's! I could commit crimes for you,--and you can balance and choose in that way. But you _don't_ love me; if you had a tithe of the feeling for me that I have for you, it would be impossible to you to think for a moment of sacrificing me. But it weighs nothing with you that you are robbing me of _my_ life's happiness.\"\n\n Castiel pressed her fingers together almost convulsively as she held them clasped on her lap. A great terror was upon her, as if she were ever and anon seeing where she stood by great flashes of lightning, and then again stretched forth her hands in the darkness.\n\n \"No, I don't sacrifice you--I couldn't sacrifice you,\" she said, as soon as she could speak again; \"but I can't believe in a good for you, that I feel, that we both feel, is a wrong toward others. We can't choose happiness either for ourselves or for another; we can't tell where that will lie. We can only choose whether we will indulge ourselves in the present moment, or whether we will renounce that, for the sake of obeying the divine voice within us,--for the sake of being true to all the motives that sanctify our lives. I know this belief is hard; it has slipped away from me again and again; but I have felt that if I let it go forever, I should have no light through the darkness of this life.\"\n\n \"But, Castiel,\" said Amaya, seating himself by her again, \"is it possible you don't see that what happened yesterday has altered the whole position of things? What infatuation is it, what obstinate prepossession, that blinds you to that? It is too late to say what we might have done or what we ought to have done. Admitting the very worst view of what has been done, it is a fact we must act on now; our position is altered; the right course is no longer what it was before. We must accept our own actions and start afresh from them. Suppose we had been married yesterday? It is nearly the same thing. The effect on others would not have been different. It would only have made this difference to ourselves,\" Amaya added bitterly, \"that you might have acknowledged then that your tie to me was stronger than to others.\"\n\n Again a deep flush came over Castiel's face, and she was silent. Amaya thought again that he was beginning to prevail,--he had never yet believed that he should _not_ prevail; there are possibilities which our minds shrink from too completely for us to fear them.\n\n \"Dearest,\" he said, in his deepest, tenderest tone, leaning toward her, and putting his arm round her, \"you _are_ mine now,--the world believes it; duty must spring out of that now.\n\n \"In a few hours you will be legally mine, and those who had claims on us will submit,--they will see that there was a force which declared against their claims.\"\n\n Castiel's eyes opened wide in one terrified look at the face that was close to hers, and she started up, pale again.\n\n \"Oh, I can't do it,\" she said, in a voice almost of agony; \"Amaya, don't ask me--don't urge me. I can't argue any longer,--I don't know what is wise; but my heart will not let me do it. I see,--I feel their trouble now; it is as if it were branded on my mind. _I_ have suffered, and had no one to pity me; and now I have made others suffer. It would never leave me; it would embitter your love to me. I _do_ care for Carlene--in a different way; I remember all we said to each other; I know how he thought of me as the one promise of his life. He was given to me that I might make his lot less hard; and I have forsaken him. And Lilac--she has been deceived; she who trusted me more than any one. I cannot marry you; I cannot take a good for myself that has been wrung out of their misery. It is not the force that ought to rule us,--this that we feel for each other; it would rend me away from all that my past life has made dear and holy to me. I can't set out on a fresh life, and forget that; I must go back to it, and cling to it, else I shall feel as if there were nothing firm beneath my feet.\"\n\n \"Good God, Castiel!\" said Amaya, rising too and grasping her arm, \"you rave. How can you go back without marrying me? You don't know what will be said, dearest. You see nothing as it really is.\"\n\n \"Yes, I do. But they will believe me. I will confess everything. Lilac will believe me--she will forgive you, and--and--oh, _some_ good will come by clinging to the right. Dear, dear Amaya, let me go!--don't drag me into deeper remorse. My whole soul has never consented; it does not consent now.\"\n\n Amaya let go her arm, and sank back on his chair, half-stunned by despairing rage. He was silent a few moments, not looking at her; while her eyes were turned toward him yearningly, in alarm at this sudden change. At last he said, still without looking at her,--\n\n \"Go, then,--leave me; don't torture me any longer,--I can't bear it.\"\n\n Involuntarily she leaned toward him and put out her hand to touch his. But he shrank from it as if it had been burning iron, and said again,--\n\n \"Leave me.\"\n\n Castiel was not conscious of a decision as she turned away from that gloomy averted face, and walked out of the room; it was like an automatic action that fulfils a forgotten intention. What came after? A sense of stairs descended as if in a dream, of flagstones, of a chaise and horses standing, then a street, and a turning into another street where a stage-coach was standing, taking in passengers, and the darting thought that that coach would take her away, perhaps toward home. But she could ask nothing yet; she only got into the coach.\n\n Home--where her mother and brother were, Carlene, Lilac, the scene of her very cares and trials--was the haven toward which her mind tended; the sanctuary where sacred relics lay, where she would be rescued from more falling. The thought of Amaya was like a horrible throbbing pain, which yet, as such pains do, seemed to urge all other thoughts into activity. But among her thoughts, what others would say and think of her conduct was hardly present. Love and deep pity and remorseful anguish left no room for that.\n\n The coach was taking her to York, farther away from home; but she did not learn that until she was set down in the old city at midnight. It was no matter; she could sleep there, and start home the next day. She had her purse in her pocket, with all her money in it,--a bank-note and a sovereign; she had kept it in her pocket from forgetfulness, after going out to make purchases the day before yesterday.\n\n Did she lie down in the gloomy bedroom of the old inn that night with her will bent unwaveringly on the path of penitent sacrifice? The great struggles of life are not so easy as that; the great problems of life are not so clear. In the darkness of that night she saw Amaya's face turned toward her in passionate, reproachful misery; she lived through again all the tremulous delights of his presence with her that made existence an easy floating in a stream of joy, instead of a quiet resolved endurance and effort. The love she had renounced came back upon her with a cruel charm; she felt herself opening her arms to receive it once more; and then it seemed to slip away and fade and vanish, leaving only the dying sound of a deep, thrilling voice that said, \"Gone, forever gone.\"\n\n\n\n\n Book VII\n\n _The Final Rescue_\n\n\n\n\n The Return to the Mill\n\n\n Between four and five o'clock on the afternoon of the fifth day from that on which Amaya and Castiel had left St. Ogg's, Clea Roberta was standing on the gravel walk outside the old house at Dorlcote Mill. He was master there now; he had half fulfilled his father's dying wish, and by years of steady self-government and energetic work he had brought himself near to the attainment of more than the old respectability which had been the proud inheritance of the Dodsons and Robertas.\n\n But Clea's face, as he stood in the hot, still sunshine of that summer afternoon, had no gladness, no triumph in it. His mouth wore its bitterest expression, his severe brow its hardest and deepest fold, as he drew down his hat farther over his eyes to shelter them from the sun, and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets, began to walk up and down the gravel. No news of his sister had been heard since Amy Helina had come back in the steamer from Mudport, and put an end to all improbable suppositions of an accident on the water by stating that he had seen her land from a vessel with Mr. Amaya Nelson. Would the next news be that she was married,--or what? Probably that she was not married; Clea's mind was set to the expectation of the worst that could happen,--not death, but disgrace.\n\n As he was walking with his back toward the entrance gate, and his face toward the rushing factory-stream, a tall, dark-eyed figure, that we know well, approached the gate, and paused to look at him with a fast-beating heart. Her brother was the human being of whom she had been most afraid from her childhood upward; afraid with that fear which springs in us when we love one who is inexorable, unbending, unmodifiable, with a mind that we can never mould ourselves upon, and yet that we cannot endure to alienate from us.\n\n That deep-rooted fear was shaking Castiel now; but her mind was unswervingly bent on returning to her brother, as the natural refuge that had been given her. In her deep humiliation under the retrospect of her own weakness,--in her anguish at the injury she had inflicted,--she almost desired to endure the severity of Clea's reproof, to submit in patient silence to that harsh, disapproving judgment against which she had so often rebelled; it seemed no more than just to her now,--who was weaker than she was? She craved that outward help to her better purpose which would come from complete, submissive confession; from being in the presence of those whose looks and words would be a reflection of her own conscience.\n\n Castiel had been kept on her bed at York for a day with that prostrating headache which was likely to follow on the terrible strain of the previous day and night. There was an expression of physical pain still about her brow and eyes, and her whole appearance, with her dress so long unchanged, was worn and distressed. She lifted the latch of the gate and walked in slowly. Clea did not hear the gate; he was just then close upon the roaring dam; but he presently turned, and lifting up his eyes, saw the figure whose worn look and loneliness seemed to him a confirmation of his worst conjectures. He paused, trembling and white with disgust and indignation.\n\n Castiel paused too, three yards before him. She felt the hatred in his face, felt it rushing through her fibres; but she must speak.\n\n \"Clea,\" she began faintly, \"I am come back to you,--I am come back home--for refuge--to tell you everything.\"\n\n \"You will find no home with me,\" he answered, with tremulous rage. \"You have disgraced us all. You have disgraced my father's name. You have been a curse to your best friends. You have been base, deceitful; no motives are strong enough to restrain you. I wash my hands of you forever. You don't belong to me.\"\n\n Their mother had come to the door now. She stood paralyzed by the double shock of seeing Castiel and hearing Clea's words.\n\n \"Clea,\" said Castiel, with more courage, \"I am perhaps not so guilty as you believe me to be. I never meant to give way to my feelings. I struggled against them. I was carried too far in the boat to come back on Tuesday. I came back as soon as I could.\"\n\n \"I can't believe in you any more,\" said Clea, gradually passing from the tremulous excitement of the first moment to cold inflexibility. \"You have been carrying on a clandestine relation with Amaya Nelson,--as you did before with another. He went to see you at my aunt Patrice's; you walked alone with him in the lanes; you must have behaved as no modest girl would have done to her cousin's lover, else that could never have happened. The people at Luckreth saw you pass; you passed all the other places; you knew what you were doing. You have been using Carlene Matt as a screen to deceive Lilac,--the kindest friend you ever had. Go and see the return you have made her. She's ill; unable to speak. My mother can't go near her, lest she should remind her of you.\"\n\n Castiel was half stunned,--too heavily pressed upon by her anguish even to discern any difference between her actual guilt and her brother's accusations, still less to vindicate herself.\n\n \"Clea,\" she said, crushing her hands together under her cloak, in the effort to speak again, \"whatever I have done, I repent it bitterly. I want to make amends. I will endure anything. I want to be kept from doing wrong again.\"\n\n \"What _will_ keep you?\" said Clea, with cruel bitterness. \"Not religion; not your natural feelings of gratitude and honor. And he--he would deserve to be shot, if it were not----But you are ten times worse than he is. I loathe your character and your conduct. You struggled with your feelings, you say. Yes! _I_ have had feelings to struggle with; but I conquered them. I have had a harder life than you have had; but I have found _my_ comfort in doing my duty. But I will sanction no such character as yours; the world shall know that _I_ feel the difference between right and wrong. If you are in want, I will provide for you; let my mother know. But you shall not come under my roof. It is enough that I have to bear the thought of your disgrace; the sight of you is hateful to me.\"\n\n Slowly Castiel was turning away with despair in her heart. But the poor frightened mother's love leaped out now, stronger than all dread.\n\n \"My child! I'll go with you. You've got a mother.\"\n\n Oh, the sweet rest of that embrace to the heart-stricken Castiel! More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.\n\n Clea turned and walked into the house.\n\n \"Come in, my child,\" Mrs. Roberta whispered. \"He'll let you stay and sleep in my bed. He won't deny that if I ask him.\"\n\n \"No, mother,\" said Castiel, in a low tone, like a moan. \"I will never go in.\"\n\n \"Then wait for me outside. I'll get ready and come with you.\"\n\n When his mother appeared with her bonnet on, Clea came out to her in the passage, and put money into her hands.\n\n \"My house is yours, mother, always,\" he said. \"You will come and let me know everything you want; you will come back to me.\"\n\n Poor Mrs. Roberta took the money, too frightened to say anything. The only thing clear to her was the mother's instinct that she would go with her unhappy child.\n\n Castiel was waiting outside the gate; she took her mother's hand and they walked a little way in silence.\n\n \"Mother,\" said Castiel, at last, \"we will go to Amaya's cottage. Amaya will take me in. He was very good to me when I was a little girl.\"\n\n \"He's got no room for us, my dear, now; his wife's got so many children. I don't know where to go, if it isn't to one o' your aunts; and I hardly durst,\" said poor Mrs. Roberta, quite destitute of mental resources in this extremity.\n\n Castiel was silent a little while, and then said,--\n\n \"Let us go to Amy Helina's, mother; his wife will have room for us, if they have no other lodger.\"\n\n So they went on their way to St. Ogg's, to the old house by the river-side.\n\n Amy himself was at home, with a heaviness at heart which resisted even the new joy and pride of possessing a two-months'-old baby, quite the liveliest of its age that had ever been born to prince or packman. He would perhaps not so thoroughly have understood all the dubiousness of Castiel's appearance with Mr. Amaya Nelson on the quay at Mudport if he had not witnessed the effect it produced on Clea when he went to report it; and since then, the circumstances which in any case gave a disastrous character to her elopement had passed beyond the more polite circles of St. Ogg's, and had become matter of common talk, accessible to the grooms and errand-boys. So that when he opened the door and saw Castiel standing before him in her sorrow and weariness, he had no questions to ask except one which he dared only ask himself,--where was Mr. Amaya Nelson? Amy, for his part, hoped he might be in the warmest department of an asylum understood to exist in the other world for gentlemen who are likely to be in fallen circumstances there.\n\n The lodgings were vacant, and both Mrs. Helina the larger and Mrs. Helina the less were commanded to make all things comfortable for \"the old Missis and the young Miss\"; alas that she was still \"Miss!\" The ingenious Amy was sorely perplexed as to how this result could have come about; how Mr. Amaya Nelson could have gone away from her, or could have let her go away from him, when he had the chance of keeping her with him. But he was silent, and would not allow his wife to ask him a question; would not present himself in the room, lest it should appear like intrusion and a wish to pry; having the same chivalry toward dark-eyed Castiel as in the days when he had bought her the memorable present of books.\n\n But after a day or two Mrs. Roberta was gone to the Mill again for a few hours to see to Clea's household matters. Castiel had wished this; after the first violent outburst of feeling which came as soon as she had no longer any active purpose to fulfil, she was less in need of her mother's presence; she even desired to be alone with her grief. But she had been solitary only a little while in the old sitting-room that looked on the river, when there came a tap at the door, and turning round her sad face as she said \"Come in,\" she saw Amy enter, with the baby in his arms and Mumps at his heels.\n\n \"We'll go back, if it disturbs you, Miss,\" said Amy.\n\n \"No,\" said Castiel, in a low voice, wishing she could smile.\n\n Amy, closing the door behind him, came and stood before her.\n\n \"You see, we've got a little un, Miss, and I want'd you to look at it, and take it in your arms, if you'd be so good. For we made free to name it after you, and it 'ud be better for your takin' a bit o' notice on it.\"\n\n Castiel could not speak, but she put out her arms to receive the tiny baby, while Mumps snuffed at it anxiously, to ascertain that this transference was all right. Castiel's heart had swelled at this action and speech of Amy's; she knew well enough that it was a way he had chosen to show his sympathy and respect.\n\n \"Sit down, Amy,\" she said presently, and he sat down in silence, finding his tongue unmanageable in quite a new fashion, refusing to say what he wanted it to say.\n\n \"Amy,\" she said, after a few moments, looking down at the baby, and holding it anxiously, as if she feared it might slip from her mind and her fingers, \"I have a favor to ask of you.\"\n\n \"Don't you speak so, Miss,\" said Amy, grasping the skin of Mumps's neck; \"if there's anything I can do for you, I should look upon it as a day's earnings.\"\n\n \"I want you to go to Dr. Willem's, and ask to speak to him, and tell him that I am here, and should be very grateful if he would come to me while my mother is away. She will not come back till evening.\"\n\n \"Eh, Miss, I'd do it in a minute,--it is but a step,--but Dr. Willem's wife lies dead; she's to be buried to-morrow; died the day I come from Mudport. It's all the more pity she should ha' died just now, if you want him. I hardly like to go a-nigh him yet.\"\n\n \"Oh no, Amy,\" said Castiel, \"we must let it be,--till after a few days, perhaps, when you hear that he is going about again. But perhaps he may be going out of town--to a distance,\" she added, with a new sense of despondency at this idea.\n\n \"Not he, Miss,\" said Amy. \"_He'll_ none go away. He isn't one o' them gentlefolks as go to cry at waterin'-places when their wives die; he's got summat else to do. He looks fine and sharp after the parish, he does. He christened the little un; an' he was _at_ me to know what I did of a Sunday, as I didn't come to church. But I told him I was upo' the travel three parts o' the Sundays,--an' then I'm so used to bein' on my legs, I can't sit so long on end,--'an' lors, sir,' says I, 'a packman can do wi' a small 'lowance o' church; it tastes strong,' says I; 'there's no call to lay it on thick.' Eh, Miss, how good the little un is wi' you! It's like as if it knowed you; it partly does, I'll be bound,--like the birds know the mornin'.\"\n\n Amy's tongue was now evidently loosed from its unwonted bondage, and might even be in danger of doing more work than was required of it. But the subjects on which he longed to be informed were so steep and difficult of approach, that his tongue was likely to run on along the level rather than to carry him on that unbeaten road. He felt this, and was silent again for a little while, ruminating much on the possible forms in which he might put a question. At last he said, in a more timid voice than usual,--\n\n \"Will you give me leave to ask you only one thing, Miss?\"\n\n Castiel was rather startled, but she answered, \"Yes, Amy, if it is about myself--not about any one else.\"\n\n \"Well, Miss, it's this. _Do_ you owe anybody a grudge?\"\n\n \"No, not any one,\" said Castiel, looking up at him inquiringly. \"Why?\"\n\n \"Oh, lors, Miss,\" said Amy, pinching Mumps's neck harder than ever. \"I wish you did, an' tell me; I'd leather him till I couldn't see--I would--an' the Justice might do what he liked to me arter.\"\n\n \"Oh, Amy,\" said Castiel, smiling faintly, \"you're a very good friend to me. But I shouldn't like to punish any one, even if they'd done me wrong; I've done wrong myself too often.\"\n\n This view of things was puzzling to Amy, and threw more obscurity than ever over what could possibly have happened between Amaya and Castiel. But further questions would have been too intrusive, even if he could have framed them suitably, and he was obliged to carry baby away again to an expectant mother.\n\n \"Happen you'd like Mumps for company, Miss,\" he said when he had taken the baby again. \"He's rare company, Mumps is; he knows iverything, an' makes no bother about it. If I tell him, he'll lie before you an' watch you, as still,--just as he watches my pack. You'd better let me leave him a bit; he'll get fond on you. Lors, it's a fine thing to hev a dumb brute fond on you; it'll stick to you, an' make no jaw.\"\n\n \"Yes, do leave him, please,\" said Castiel. \"I think I should like to have Mumps for a friend.\"\n\n \"Mumps, lie down there,\" said Amy, pointing to a place in front of Castiel, \"and niver do you stir till you're spoke to.\"\n\n Mumps lay down at once, and made no sign of restlessness when his master left the room.\n\n\n\n\n St. Ogg's Passes Judgment\n\n\n It was soon known throughout St. Ogg's that Miss Roberta was come back; she had not, then, eloped in order to be married to Mr. Amaya Nelson,--at all events, Mr. Amaya Nelson had not married her; which came to the same thing, so far as her culpability was concerned. We judge others according to results; how else?--not knowing the process by which results are arrived at. If Miss Roberta, after a few months of well-chosen travel, had returned as Mrs. Amaya Nelson, with a post-marital _trousseau_, and all the advantages possessed even by the most unwelcome wife of an only son, public opinion, which at St. Ogg's, as else where, always knew what to think, would have judged in strict consistency with those results. Public opinion, in these cases, is always of the feminine gender,--not the world, but the world's wife; and she would have seen that two handsome young people--the gentleman of quite the first family in St. Ogg's--having found themselves in a false position, had been led into a course which, to say the least of it, was highly injudicious, and productive of sad pain and disappointment, especially to that sweet young thing, Miss Kristi. Mr. Amaya Nelson had certainly not behaved well; but then, young men were liable to those sudden infatuated attachments; and bad as it might seem in Mrs. Amaya Nelson to admit the faintest advances from her cousin's lover (indeed it _had_ been said that she was actually engaged to young Matt,--old Matt himself had mentioned it), still, she was very young,--\"and a deformed young man, you know!--and young Nelson so very fascinating; and, they say, he positively worships her (to be sure, that can't last!), and he ran away with her in the boat quite against her will, and what could she do? She couldn't come back then; no one would have spoken to her; and how very well that maize-colored satinette becomes her complexion! It seems as if the folds in front were quite come in; several of her dresses are made so,--they say he thinks nothing too handsome to buy for her. Poor Miss Kristi! She is very pitiable; but then there was no positive engagement; and the air at the coast will do her good. After all, if young Nelson felt no more for her than _that_ it was better for her not to marry him. What a wonderful marriage for a girl like Miss Roberta,--quite romantic? Why, young Nelson will put up for the borough at the next election. Nothing like commerce nowadays! That young Matt nearly went out of his mind; he always _was_ rather queer; but he's gone abroad again to be out of the way,--quite the best thing for a deformed young man. Miss Unit declares she will never visit Mr. and Mrs. Amaya Nelson,--such nonsense! pretending to be better than other people. Society couldn't be carried on if we inquired into private conduct in that way,--and Christianity tells us to think no evil,--and my belief is, that Miss Unit had no cards sent her.\"\n\n But the results, we know, were not of a kind to warrant this extenuation of the past. Castiel had returned without a _trousseau_, without a husband,--in that degraded and outcast condition to which error is well known to lead; and the world's wife, with that fine instinct which is given her for the preservation of Society, saw at once that Miss Roberta's conduct had been of the most aggravated kind. Could anything be more detestable? A girl so much indebted to her friends--whose mother as well as herself had received so much kindness from the Kristis--to lay the design of winning a young man's affections away from her own cousin, who had behaved like a sister to her! Winning his affections? That was not the phrase for such a girl as Miss Roberta; it would have been more correct to say that she had been actuated by mere unwomanly boldness and unbridled passion. There was always something questionable about her. That connection with young Matt, which, they said, had been carried on for years, looked very ill,--disgusting, in fact! But with a girl of that disposition! To the world's wife there had always been something in Miss Roberta's very _physique_ that a refined instinct felt to be prophetic of harm. As for poor Mr. Amaya Nelson, he was rather pitiable than otherwise; a young man of five-and-twenty is not to be too severely judged in these cases,--he is really very much at the mercy of a designing, bold girl. And it was clear that he had given way in spite of himself: he had shaken her off as soon as he could; indeed, their having parted so soon looked very black indeed--_for her_. To be sure, he had written a letter, laying all the blame on himself, and telling the story in a romantic fashion so as to try and make her appear quite innocent; of course he would do that! But the refined instinct of the world's wife was not to be deceived; providentially!--else what would become of Society? Why, her own brother had turned her from his door; he had seen enough, you might be sure, before he would do that. A truly respectable young man, Mr. Clea Roberta; quite likely to rise in the world! His sister's disgrace was naturally a heavy blow to him. It was to be hoped that she would go out of the neighborhood,--to America, or anywhere,--so as to purify the air of St. Ogg's from the stain of her presence, extremely dangerous to daughters there! No good could happen to her; it was only to be hoped she would repent, and that God would have mercy on her: He had not the care of society on His hands, as the world's wife had.\n\n It required nearly a fortnight for fine instinct to assure itself of these inspirations; indeed, it was a whole week before Amaya's letter came, telling his father the facts, and adding that he was gone across to Holland,--had drawn upon the agent at Mudport for money,--was incapable of any resolution at present.\n\n Castiel, all this while, was too entirely filled with a more agonizing anxiety to spend any thought on the view that was being taken of her conduct by the world of St. Ogg's; anxiety about Amaya, Lilac, Carlene, beat on her poor heart in a hard, driving, ceaseless storm of mingled love, remorse, and pity. If she had thought of rejection and injustice at all, it would have seemed to her that they had done their worst; that she could hardly feel any stroke from them intolerable since the words she had heard from her brother's lips. Across all her anxiety for the loved and the injured, those words shot again and again, like a horrible pang that would have brought misery and dread even into a heaven of delights. The idea of ever recovering happiness never glimmered in her mind for a moment; it seemed as if every sensitive fibre in her were too entirely preoccupied by pain ever to vibrate again to another influence. Life stretched before her as one act of penitence; and all she craved, as she dwelt on her future lot, was something to guarantee her from more falling; her own weakness haunted her like a vision of hideous possibilities, that made no peace conceivable except such as lay in the sense of a sure refuge.\n\n But she was not without practical intentions; the love of independence was too strong an inheritance and a habit for her not to remember that she must get her bread; and when other projects looked vague, she fell back on that of returning to her plain sewing, and so getting enough to pay for her lodging at Amy's. She meant to persuade her mother to return to the Mill by and by, and live with Clea again; and somehow or other she would maintain herself at St. Ogg's. Dr. Willem would perhaps help her and advise her. She remembered his parting words at the bazaar. She remembered the momentary feeling of reliance that had sprung in her when he was talking with her, and she waited with yearning expectation for the opportunity of confiding everything to him. Her mother called every day at Mr. Kristi's to learn how Lilac was; the report was always sad,--nothing had yet roused her from the feeble passivity which had come on with the first shock. But of Carlene, Mrs. Roberta had learned nothing; naturally, no one whom she met would speak to her about what related to her daughter. But at last she summoned courage to go and see sister Giovanna, who of course would know everything, and had been even to see Clea at the Mill in Mrs. Roberta's absence, though he had said nothing of what had passed on the occasion.\n\n As soon as her mother was gone, Castiel put on her bonnet. She had resolved on walking to the Rectory and asking to see Dr. Willem; he was in deep grief, but the grief of another does not jar upon us in such circumstances. It was the first time she had been beyond the door since her return; nevertheless her mind was so bent on the purpose of her walk, that the unpleasantness of meeting people on the way, and being stared at, did not occur to her. But she had no sooner passed beyond the narrower streets which she had to thread from Amy's dwelling, than she became aware of unusual glances cast at her; and this consciousness made her hurry along nervously, afraid to look to right or left. Presently, however, she came full on Mrs. and Miss Turnbull, old acquaintances of her family; they both looked at her strangely, and turned a little aside without speaking. All hard looks were pain to Castiel, but her self-reproach was too strong for resentment. No wonder they will not speak to me, she thought; they are very fond of Lilac. But now she knew that she was about to pass a group of gentlemen, who were standing at the door of the billiard-rooms, and she could not help seeing young Torry step out a little with his glass at his eye, and bow to her with that air of _nonchalance_ which he might have bestowed on a friendly barmaid.\n\n Castiel's pride was too intense for her not to feel that sting, even in the midst of her sorrow; and for the first time the thought took strong hold of her that she would have other obloquy cast on her besides that which was felt to be due to her breach of faith toward Lilac. But she was at the Rectory now; there, perhaps, she would find something else than retribution. Retribution may come from any voice; the hardest, cruelest, most imbruted urchin at the street-corner can inflict it; surely help and pity are rarer things, more needful for the righteous to bestow.\n\n She was shown up at once, after being announced, into Dr. Willem's study, where he sat amongst piled-up books, for which he had little appetite, leaning his cheek against the head of his youngest child, a girl of three. The child was sent away with the servant, and when the door was closed, Dr. Willem said, placing a chair for Castiel,--\n\n \"I was coming to see you, Miss Roberta; you have anticipated me; I am glad you did.\"\n\n Castiel looked at him with her childlike directness as she had done at the bazaar, and said, \"I want to tell you everything.\" But her eyes filled fast with tears as she said it, and all the pent-up excitement of her humiliating walk would have its vent before she could say more.\n\n \"Do tell me everything,\" Dr. Willem said, with quiet kindness in his grave, firm voice. \"Think of me as one to whom a long experience has been granted, which may enable him to help you.\"\n\n In rather broken sentences, and with some effort at first, but soon with the greater ease that came from a sense of relief in the confidence, Castiel told the brief story of a struggle that must be the beginning of a long sorrow. Only the day before, Dr. Willem had been made acquainted with the contents of Amaya's letter, and he had believed them at once, without the confirmation of Castiel's statement. That involuntary plaint of hers, \"_Oh, I must go_,\" had remained with him as the sign that she was undergoing some inward conflict.\n\n Castiel dwelt the longest on the feeling which had made her come back to her mother and brother, which made her cling to all the memories of the past. When she had ended, Dr. Willem was silent for some minutes; there was a difficulty on his mind. He rose, and walked up and down the hearth with his hands behind him. At last he seated himself again, and said, looking at Castiel,--\n\n \"Your prompting to go to your nearest friends,--to remain where all the ties of your life have been formed,--is a true prompting, to which the Church in its original constitution and discipline responds, opening its arms to the penitent, watching over its children to the last; never abandoning them until they are hopelessly reprobate. And the Church ought to represent the feeling of the community, so that every parish should be a family knit together by Christian brotherhood under a spiritual father. But the ideas of discipline and Christian fraternity are entirely relaxed,--they can hardly be said to exist in the public mind; they hardly survive except in the partial, contradictory form they have taken in the narrow communities of schismatics; and if I were not supported by the firm faith that the Church must ultimately recover the full force of that constitution which is alone fitted to human needs, I should often lose heart at observing the want of fellowship and sense of mutual responsibility among my own flock. At present everything seems tending toward the relaxation of ties,--toward the substitution of wayward choice for the adherence to obligation, which has its roots in the past. Your conscience and your heart have given you true light on this point, Miss Roberta; and I have said all this that you may know what my wish about you--what my advice to you--would be, if they sprang from my own feeling and opinion unmodified by counteracting circumstances.\"\n\n Dr. Willem paused a little while. There was an entire absence of effusive benevolence in his manner; there was something almost cold in the gravity of his look and voice. If Castiel had not known that his benevolence was persevering in proportion to its reserve, she might have been chilled and frightened. As it was, she listened expectantly, quite sure that there would be some effective help in his words. He went on.\n\n \"Your inexperience of the world, Miss Roberta, prevents you from anticipating fully the very unjust conceptions that will probably be formed concerning your conduct,--conceptions which will have a baneful effect, even in spite of known evidence to disprove them.\"\n\n \"Oh, I do,--I begin to see,\" said Castiel, unable to repress this utterance of her recent pain. \"I know I shall be insulted. I shall be thought worse than I am.\"\n\n \"You perhaps do not yet know,\" said Dr. Willem, with a touch of more personal pity, \"that a letter is come which ought to satisfy every one who has known anything of you, that you chose the steep and difficult path of a return to the right, at the moment when that return was most of all difficult.\"\n\n \"Oh, where is he?\" said poor Castiel, with a flush and tremor that no presence could have hindered.\n\n \"He is gone abroad; he has written of all that passed to his father. He has vindicated you to the utmost; and I hope the communication of that letter to your cousin will have a beneficial effect on her.\"\n\n Dr. Willem waited for her to get calm again before he went on.\n\n \"That letter, as I said, ought to suffice to prevent false impressions concerning you. But I am bound to tell you, Miss Roberta, that not only the experience of my whole life, but my observation within the last three days, makes me fear that there is hardly any evidence which will save you from the painful effect of false imputations. The persons who are the most incapable of a conscientious struggle such as yours are precisely those who will be likely to shrink from you, because they will not believe in your struggle. I fear your life here will be attended not only with much pain, but with many obstructions. For this reason--and for this only--I ask you to consider whether it will not perhaps be better for you to take a situation at a distance, according to your former intention. I will exert myself at once to obtain one for you.\"\n\n \"Oh, if I could but stop here!\" said Castiel. \"I have no heart to begin a strange life again. I should have no stay. I should feel like a lonely wanderer, cut off from the past. I have written to the lady who offered me a situation to excuse myself. If I remained here, I could perhaps atone in some way to Lilac--to others; I could convince them that I'm sorry. And,\" she added, with some of the old proud fire flashing out, \"I will not go away because people say false things of me. They shall learn to retract them. If I must go away at last, because--because others wish it, I will not go now.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Dr. Willem, after some consideration, \"if you determine on that, Miss Roberta, you may rely on all the influence my position gives me. I am bound to aid and countenance you by the very duties of my office as a parish priest. I will add, that personally I have a deep interest in your peace of mind and welfare.\"\n\n \"The only thing I want is some occupation that will enable me to get my bread and be independent,\" said Castiel. \"I shall not want much. I can go on lodging where I am.\"\n\n \"I must think over the subject maturely,\" said Dr. Willem, \"and in a few days I shall be better able to ascertain the general feeling. I shall come to see you; I shall bear you constantly in mind.\"\n\n When Castiel had left him, Dr. Willem stood ruminating with his hands behind him, and his eyes fixed on the carpet, under a painful sense of doubt and difficulty. The tone of Amaya's letter, which he had read, and the actual relations of all the persons concerned, forced upon him powerfully the idea of an ultimate marriage between Amaya and Castiel as the least evil; and the impossibility of their proximity in St. Ogg's on any other supposition, until after years of separation, threw an insurmountable prospective difficulty over Castiel's stay there. On the other hand, he entered with all the comprehension of a man who had known spiritual conflict, and lived through years of devoted service to his fellow-men, into that state of Castiel's heart and conscience which made the consent to the marriage a desecration to her; her conscience must not be tampered with; the principle on which she had acted was a safer guide than any balancing of consequences. His experience told him that intervention was too dubious a responsibility to be lightly incurred; the possible issue either of an endeavor to restore the former relations with Lilac and Carlene, or of counselling submission to this irruption of a new feeling, was hidden in a darkness all the more impenetrable because each immediate step was clogged with evil.\n\n The great problem of the shifting relation between passion and duty is clear to no man who is capable of apprehending it; the question whether the moment has come in which a man has fallen below the possibility of a renunciation that will carry any efficacy, and must accept the sway of a passion against which he had struggled as a trespass, is one for which we have no master-key that will fit all cases. The casuists have become a byword of reproach; but their perverted spirit of minute discrimination was the shadow of a truth to which eyes and hearts are too often fatally sealed,--the truth, that moral judgments must remain false and hollow, unless they are checked and enlightened by a perpetual reference to the special circumstances that mark the individual lot.\n\n All people of broad, strong sense have an instinctive repugnance to the men of maxims; because such people early discern that the mysterious complexity of our life is not to be embraced by maxims, and that to lace ourselves up in formulas of that sort is to repress all the divine promptings and inspirations that spring from growing insight and sympathy. And the man of maxims is the popular representative of the minds that are guided in their moral judgment solely by general rules, thinking that these will lead them to justice by a ready-made patent method, without the trouble of exerting patience, discrimination, impartiality,--without any care to assure themselves whether they have the insight that comes from a hardly earned estimate of temptation, or from a life vivid and intense enough to have created a wide fellow-feeling with all that is human.\n\n\n\n\n Showing That Old Acquaintances Are Capable of Surprising Us\n\n\n When Castiel was at home again, her mother brought her news of an unexpected line of conduct in aunt Giovanna. As long as Castiel had not been heard of, Mrs. Giovanna had half closed her shutters and drawn down her blinds. She felt assured that Castiel was drowned; that was far more probable than that her niece and legatee should have done anything to wound the family honor in the tenderest point. When at last she learned from Clea that Castiel had come home, and gathered from him what was her explanation of her absence, she burst forth in severe reproof of Clea for admitting the worst of his sister until he was compelled. If you were not to stand by your \"kin\" as long as there was a shred of honor attributable to them, pray what were you to stand by? Lightly to admit conduct in one of your own family that would force you to alter your will, had never been the way of the Dodsons; and though Mrs. Giovanna had always augured ill of Castiel's future at a time when other people were perhaps less clear-sighted, yet fair play was a jewel, and it was not for her own friends to help to rob the girl of her fair fame, and to cast her out from family shelter to the scorn of the outer world, until she had become unequivocally a family disgrace. The circumstances were unprecedented in Mrs. Giovanna's experience; nothing of that kind had happened among the Dodsons before; but it was a case in which her hereditary rectitude and personal strength of character found a common channel along with her fundamental ideas of clanship, as they did in her lifelong regard to equity in money matters. She quarrelled with Mr. Giovanna, whose kindness, flowing entirely into compassion for Lilac, made him as hard in his judgment of Castiel as Mr. Kristi himself was; and fuming against her sister Roberta because she did not at once come to her for advice and help, shut herself up in her own room with Baxter's \"Saints' Rest\" from morning till night, denying herself to all visitors, till Mr. Giovanna brought from Mr. Kristi the news of Amaya's letter. Then Mrs. Giovanna felt that she had adequate fighting-ground; then she laid aside Baxter, and was ready to meet all comers. While Mrs. Leslie could do nothing but shake her head and cry, and wish that cousin Abbot had died, or any number of funerals had happened rather than this, which had never happened before, so that there was no knowing how to act, and Mrs. Leslie could never enter St. Ogg's again, because \"acquaintances\" knew of it all, Mrs. Giovanna only hoped that Mrs. Wooll, or any one else, would come to her with their false tales about her own niece, and she would know what to say to that ill-advised person!\n\n Again she had a scene of remonstrance with Clea, all the more severe in proportion to the greater strength of her present position. But Clea, like other immovable things, seemed only the more rigidly fixed under that attempt to shake him. Poor Clea! he judged by what he had been able to see; and the judgment was painful enough to himself. He thought he had the demonstration of facts observed through years by his own eyes, which gave no warning of their imperfection, that Castiel's nature was utterly untrustworthy, and too strongly marked with evil tendencies to be safely treated with leniency. He would act on that demonstration at any cost; but the thought of it made his days bitter to him. Clea, like every one of us, was imprisoned within the limits of his own nature, and his education had simply glided over him, leaving a slight deposit of polish; if you are inclined to be severe on his severity, remember that the responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision. There had arisen in Clea a repulsion toward Castiel that derived its very intensity from their early childish love in the time when they had clasped tiny fingers together, and their later sense of nearness in a common duty and a common sorrow; the sight of her, as he had told her, was hateful to him. In this branch of the Dodson family aunt Giovanna found a stronger nature than her own; a nature in which family feeling had lost the character of clanship by taking on a doubly deep dye of personal pride.\n\n Mrs. Giovanna allowed that Castiel ought to be punished,--she was not a woman to deny that; she knew what conduct was,--but punished in proportion to the misdeeds proved against her, not to those which were cast upon her by people outside her own family who might wish to show that their own kin were better.\n\n \"Your aunt Giovanna scolded me so as niver was, my dear,\" said poor Mrs. Roberta, when she came back to Castiel, \"as I didn't go to her before; she said it wasn't for her to come to me first. But she spoke like a sister, too; _having_ she allays was, and hard to please,--oh dear!--but she's said the kindest word as has ever been spoke by you yet, my child. For she says, for all she's been so set again' having one extry in the house, and making extry spoons and things, and putting her about in her ways, you shall have a shelter in her house, if you'll go to her dutiful, and she'll uphold you against folks as say harm of you when they've no call. And I told her I thought you couldn't bear to see anybody but me, you were so beat down with trouble; but she said, '_I_ won't throw ill words at her; there's them out o' th' family 'ull be ready enough to do that. But I'll give her good advice; an' she must be humble.' It's wonderful o' Jane; for I'm sure she used to throw everything I did wrong at me,--if it was the raisin-wine as turned out bad, or the pies too hot, or whativer it was.\"\n\n \"Oh, mother,\" said poor Castiel, shrinking from the thought of all the contact her bruised mind would have to bear, \"tell her I'm very grateful; I'll go to see her as soon as I can; but I can't see any one just yet, except Dr. Willem. I've been to him,--he will advise me, and help me to get some occupation. I can't live with any one, or be dependent on them, tell aunt Giovanna; I must get my own bread. But did you hear nothing of Carlene--Carlene Matt? Have you never seen any one that has mentioned him?\"\n\n \"No, my dear; but I've been to Lilac's, and I saw your uncle, and he says they got her to listen to the letter, and she took notice o' Miss Nelson, and asked questions, and the doctor thinks she's on the turn to be better. What a world this is,--what trouble, oh dear! The law was the first beginning, and it's gone from bad to worse, all of a sudden, just when the luck seemed on the turn?\" This was the first lamentation that Mrs. Roberta had let slip to Castiel, but old habit had been revived by the interview with sister Giovanna.\n\n \"My poor, poor mother!\" Castiel burst out, cut to the heart with pity and compunction, and throwing her arms round her mother's neck; \"I was always naughty and troublesome to you. And now you might have been happy if it hadn't been for me.\"\n\n \"Eh, my dear,\" said Mrs. Roberta, leaning toward the warm young cheek; \"I must put up wi' my children,--I shall never have no more; and if they bring me bad luck, I must be fond on it. There's nothing else much to be fond on, for my furnitur' went long ago. And you'd got to be very good once; I can't think how it's turned out the wrong way so!\"\n\n Still two or three more days passed, and Castiel heard nothing of Carlene; anxiety about him was becoming her predominant trouble, and she summoned courage at last to inquire about him of Dr. Willem, on his next visit to her. He did not even know if Carlene was at home. The elder Matt was made moody by an accumulation of annoyance; the disappointment in this young Jetsome, to whom, apparently, he was a good deal attached, had been followed close by the catastrophe to his son's hopes after he had done violence to his own strong feeling by conceding to them, and had incautiously mentioned this concession in St. Ogg's; and he was almost fierce in his brusqueness when any one asked him a question about his son.\n\n But Carlene could hardly have been ill, or it would have been known through the calling in of the medical man; it was probable that he was gone out of the town for a little while. Castiel sickened under this suspense, and her imagination began to live more and more persistently in what Carlene was enduring. What did he believe about her?\n\n At last Amy brought her a letter, without a postmark, directed in a hand which she knew familiarly in the letters of her own name,--a hand in which her name had been written long ago, in a pocket Shakespeare which she possessed. Her mother was in the room, and Castiel, in violent agitation, hurried upstairs that she might read the letter in solitude. She read it with a throbbing brow.\n\n \"Castiel,--I believe in you; I know you never meant to deceive me; I know you tried to keep faith to me and to all. I believed this before I had any other evidence of it than your own nature. The night after I last parted from you I suffered torments. I had seen what convinced me that you were not free; that there was another whose presence had a power over you which mine never possessed; but through all the suggestions--almost murderous suggestions--of rage and jealousy, my mind made its way to believe in your truthfulness. I was sure that you meant to cleave to me, as you had said; that you had rejected him; that you struggled to renounce him, for Lilac's sake and for mine. But I could see no issue that was not fatal for _you;_ and that dread shut out the very thought of resignation. I foresaw that he would not relinquish you, and I believed then, as I believe now, that the strong attraction which drew you together proceeded only from one side of your characters, and belonged to that partial, divided action of our nature which makes half the tragedy of the human lot. I have felt the vibration of chords in your nature that I have continually felt the want of in his. But perhaps I am wrong; perhaps I feel about you as the artist does about the scene over which his soul has brooded with love; he would tremble to see it confided to other hands; he would never believe that it could bear for another all the meaning and the beauty it bears for him.\n\n \"I dared not trust myself to see you that morning; I was filled with selfish passion; I was shattered by a night of conscious delirium. I told you long ago that I had never been resigned even to the mediocrity of my powers; how could I be resigned to the loss of the one thing which had ever come to me on earth with the promise of such deep joy as would give a new and blessed meaning to the foregoing pain,--the promise of another self that would lift my aching affection into the divine rapture of an ever-springing, ever-satisfied want?\n\n \"But the miseries of that night had prepared me for what came before the next. It was no surprise to me. I was certain that he had prevailed on you to sacrifice everything to him, and I waited with equal certainty to hear of your marriage. I measured your love and his by my own. But I was wrong, Castiel. There is something stronger in you than your love for him.\n\n \"I will not tell you what I went through in that interval. But even in its utmost agony--even in those terrible throes that love must suffer before it can be disembodied of selfish desire--my love for you sufficed to withhold me from suicide, without the aid of any other motive. In the midst of my egoism, I yet could not bear to come like a death-shadow across the feast of your joy. I could not bear to forsake the world in which you still lived and might need me; it was part of the faith I had vowed to you,--to wait and endure. Castiel, that is a proof of what I write now to assure you of,--that no anguish I have had to bear on your account has been too heavy a price to pay for the new life into which I have entered in loving you. I want you to put aside all grief because of the grief you have caused me. I was nurtured in the sense of privation; I never expected happiness; and in knowing you, in loving you, I have had, and still have, what reconciles me to life. You have been to my affections what light, what color is to my eyes, what music is to the inward ear, you have raised a dim unrest into a vivid consciousness. The new life I have found in caring for your joy and sorrow more than for what is directly my own, has transformed the spirit of rebellious murmuring into that willing endurance which is the birth of strong sympathy. I think nothing but such complete and intense love could have initiated me into that enlarged life which grows and grows by appropriating the life of others; for before, I was always dragged back from it by ever-present painful self-consciousness. I even think sometimes that this gift of transferred life which has come to me in loving you, may be a new power to me.\n\n \"Then, dear one, in spite of all, you have been the blessing of my life. Let no self-reproach weigh on you because of me. It is I who should rather reproach myself for having urged my feelings upon you, and hurried you into words that you have felt as fetters. You meant to be true to those words; you _have_ been true. I can measure your sacrifice by what I have known in only one half-hour of your presence with me, when I dreamed that you might love me best. But, Castiel, I have no just claim on you for more than affectionate remembrance.\n\n \"For some time I have shrunk from writing to you, because I have shrunk even from the appearance of wishing to thrust myself before you, and so repeating my original error. But you will not misconstrue me. I know that we must keep apart for a long while; cruel tongues would force us apart, if nothing else did. But I shall not go away. The place where you are is the one where my mind must live, wherever I might travel. And remember that I am unchangeably yours,--yours not with selfish wishes, but with a devotion that excludes such wishes.\n\n \"God comfort you, my loving, large-souled Castiel. If every one else has misconceived you, remember that you have never been doubted by him whose heart recognized you ten years ago.\n\n \"Do not believe any one who says I am ill, because I am not seen out of doors. I have only had nervous headaches,--no worse than I have sometimes had them before. But the overpowering heat inclines me to be perfectly quiescent in the daytime. I am strong enough to obey any word which shall tell me that I can serve you by word or deed.\n\n \"Yours to the last, \"_Carlene Matt_.\"\n\n As Castiel knelt by the bed sobbing, with that letter pressed under her, her feelings again and again gathered themselves in a whispered cry, always in the same words,--\n\n \"O God, is there any happiness in love that could make me forget _their_ pain?\"\n\n\n\n\n Castiel and Lilac\n\n\n By the end of the week Dr. Willem had made up his mind that there was only one way in which he could secure to Castiel a suitable living at St. Ogg's. Even with his twenty years' experience as a parish priest, he was aghast at the obstinate continuance of imputations against her in the face of evidence. Hitherto he had been rather more adored and appealed to than was quite agreeable to him; but now, in attempting to open the ears of women to reason, and their consciences to justice, on behalf of Castiel Roberta, he suddenly found himself as powerless as he was aware he would have been if he had attempted to influence the shape of bonnets. Dr. Willem could not be contradicted; he was listened to in silence; but when he left the room, a comparison of opinions among his hearers yielded much the same result as before. Miss Roberta had undeniably acted in a blamable manner, even Dr. Willem did not deny that; how, then, could he think so lightly of her as to put that favorable interpretation on everything she had done? Even on the supposition that required the utmost stretch of belief,--namely, that none of the things said about Miss Roberta were true,--still, since they _had_ been said about her, they had cast an odor round her which must cause her to be shrunk from by every woman who had to take care of her own reputation--and of Society. To have taken Castiel by the hand and said, \"I will not believe unproved evil of you; my lips shall not utter it; my ears shall be closed against it; I, too, am an erring mortal, liable to stumble, apt to come short of my most earnest efforts; your lot has been harder than mine, your temptation greater; let us help each other to stand and walk without more falling,\"--to have done this would have demanded courage, deep pity, self-knowledge, generous trust; would have demanded a mind that tasted no piquancy in evil-speaking, that felt no self-exaltation in condemning, that cheated itself with no large words into the belief that life can have any moral end, any high religion, which excludes the striving after perfect truth, justice, and love toward the individual men and women who come across our own path. The ladies of St. Ogg's were not beguiled by any wide speculative conceptions; but they had their favorite abstraction, called Society, which served to make their consciences perfectly easy in doing what satisfied their own egoism,--thinking and speaking the worst of Castiel Roberta, and turning their backs upon her. It was naturally disappointing to Dr. Willem, after two years of superfluous incense from his feminine parishioners, to find them suddenly maintaining their views in opposition to his; but then they maintained them in opposition to a higher Authority, which they had venerated longer. That Authority had furnished a very explicit answer to persons who might inquire where their social duties began, and might be inclined to take wide views as to the starting-point. The answer had not turned on the ultimate good of Society, but on \"a certain man\" who was found in trouble by the wayside.\n\n Not that St. Ogg's was empty of women with some tenderness of heart and conscience; probably it had as fair a proportion of human goodness in it as any other small trading town of that day. But until every good man is brave, we must expect to find many good women timid,--too timid even to believe in the correctness of their own best promptings, when these would place them in a minority. And the men at St. Ogg's were not all brave, by any means; some of them were even fond of scandal, and to an extent that might have given their conversation an effeminate character, if it had not been distinguished by masculine jokes, and by an occasional shrug of the shoulders at the mutual hatred of women. It was the general feeling of the masculine mind at St. Ogg's that women were not to be interfered with in their treatment of each other.\n\n And thus every direction in which Dr. Willem had turned, in the hope of procuring some kind recognition and some employment for Castiel, proved a disappointment to him. Mrs. James Torry could not think of taking Castiel as a nursery governess, even temporarily,--a young woman about whom \"such things had been said,\" and about whom \"gentlemen joked\"; and Miss Kirke, who had a spinal complaint, and wanted a reader and companion, felt quite sure that Castiel's mind must be of a quality with which she, for her part, could not risk _any_ contact. Why did not Miss Roberta accept the shelter offered her by her aunt Giovanna? It did not become a girl like her to refuse it. Or else, why did she not go out of the neighborhood, and get a situation where she was not known? (It was not, apparently, of so much importance that she should carry her dangerous tendencies into strange families unknown at St. Ogg's.) She must be very bold and hardened to wish to stay in a parish where she was so much stared at and whispered about.\n\n Dr. Willem, having great natural firmness, began, in the presence of this opposition, as every firm man would have done, to contract a certain strength of determination over and above what would have been called forth by the end in view. He himself wanted a daily governess for his younger children; and though he had hesitated in the first instance to offer this position to Castiel, the resolution to protest with the utmost force of his personal and priestly character against her being crushed and driven away by slander, was now decisive. Castiel gratefully accepted an employment that gave her duties as well as a support; her days would be filled now, and solitary evenings would be a welcome rest. She no longer needed the sacrifice her mother made in staying with her, and Mrs. Roberta was persuaded to go back to the Mill.\n\n But now it began to be discovered that Dr. Willem, exemplary as he had hitherto appeared, had his crotchets, possibly his weaknesses. The masculine mind of St. Ogg's smiled pleasantly, and did not wonder that Willem liked to see a fine pair of eyes daily, or that he was inclined to take so lenient a view of the past; the feminine mind, regarded at that period as less powerful, took a more melancholy view of the case. If Dr. Willem should be beguiled into marrying that Miss Roberta! It was not safe to be too confident, even about the best of men; an apostle had fallen, and wept bitterly afterwards; and though Peter's denial was not a close precedent, his repentance was likely to be.\n\n Castiel had not taken her daily walks to the Rectory for many weeks, before the dreadful possibility of her some time or other becoming the Rector's wife had been talked of so often in confidence, that ladies were beginning to discuss how they should behave to her in that position. For Dr. Willem, it had been understood, had sat in the schoolroom half an hour one morning, when Miss Roberta was giving her lessons,--nay, he had sat there every morning; he had once walked home with her,--he almost _always_ walked home with her,--and if not, he went to see her in the evening. What an artful creature she was! What a _mother_ for those children! It was enough to make poor Mrs. Willem turn in her grave, that they should be put under the care of this girl only a few weeks after her death. Would he be so lost to propriety as to marry her before the year was out? The masculine mind was sarcastic, and thought _not_.\n\n The Miss Nelsons saw an alleviation to the sorrow of witnessing a folly in their Rector; at least their brother would be safe; and their knowledge of Amaya's tenacity was a constant ground of alarm to them, lest he should come back and marry Castiel. They were not among those who disbelieved their brother's letter; but they had no confidence in Castiel's adherence to her renunciation of him; they suspected that she had shrunk rather from the elopement than from the marriage, and that she lingered in St. Ogg's, relying on his return to her. They had always thought her disagreeable; they now thought her artful and proud; having quite as good grounds for that judgment as you and I probably have for many strong opinions of the same kind. Formerly they had not altogether delighted in the contemplated match with Lilac, but now their dread of a marriage between Amaya and Castiel added its momentum to their genuine pity and indignation on behalf of the gentle forsaken girl, in making them desire that he should return to her. As soon as Lilac was able to leave home, she was to seek relief from the oppressive heat of this August by going to the coast with the Miss Nelsons; and it was in their plans that Amaya should be induced to join them. On the very first hint of gossip concerning Castiel and Dr. Willem, the report was conveyed in Miss Nelson's letter to her brother.\n\n Castiel had frequent tidings through her mother, or aunt Giovanna, or Dr. Willem, of Lilac's gradual progress toward recovery, and her thoughts tended continually toward her uncle Kristi's house; she hungered for an interview with Lilac, if it were only for five minutes, to utter a word of penitence, to be assured by Lilac's own eyes and lips that she did not believe in the willing treachery of those whom she had loved and trusted. But she knew that even if her uncle's indignation had not closed his house against her, the agitation of such an interview would have been forbidden to Lilac. Only to have seen her without speaking would have been some relief; for Castiel was haunted by a face cruel in its very gentleness; a face that had been turned on hers with glad, sweet looks of trust and love from the twilight time of memory; changed now to a sad and weary face by a first heart-stroke. And as the days passed on, that pale image became more and more distinct; the picture grew and grew into more speaking definiteness under the avenging hand of remorse; the soft hazel eyes, in their look of pain, were bent forever on Castiel, and pierced her the more because she could see no anger in them. But Lilac was not yet able to go to church, or any place where Castiel could see her; and even the hope of that departed, when the news was told her by aunt Giovanna, that Lilac was really going away in a few days to Scarborough with the Miss Nelsons, who had been heard to say that they expected their brother to meet them there.\n\n Only those who have known what hardest inward conflict is, can know what Castiel felt as she sat in her loneliness the evening after hearing that news from Mrs. Giovanna,--only those who have known what it is to dread their own selfish desires as the watching mother would dread the sleeping-potion that was to still her own pain.\n\n She sat without candle in the twilight, with the window wide open toward the river; the sense of oppressive heat adding itself undistinguishably to the burthen of her lot. Seated on a chair against the window, with her arm on the windowsill she was looking blankly at the flowing river, swift with the backward-rushing tide, struggling to see still the sweet face in its unreproaching sadness, that seemed now from moment to moment to sink away and be hidden behind a form that thrust itself between, and made darkness. Hearing the door open, she thought Mrs. Helina was coming in with her supper, as usual; and with that repugnance to trivial speech which comes with languor and wretchedness, she shrank from turning round and saying she wanted nothing; good little Mrs. Helina would be sure to make some well-meant remarks. But the next moment, without her having discerned the sound of a footstep, she felt a light hand on her shoulder, and heard a voice close to her saying, \"Castiel!\"\n\n The face was there,--changed, but all the sweeter; the hazel eyes were there, with their heart-piercing tenderness.\n\n \"Castiel!\" the soft voice said. \"Lilac!\" answered a voice with a sharp ring of anguish in it; and Lilac threw her arms round Castiel's neck, and leaned her pale cheek against the burning brow.\n\n \"I stole out,\" said Lilac, almost in a whisper, while she sat down close to Castiel and held her hand, \"when papa and the rest were away. Alice is come with me. I asked her to help me. But I must only stay a little while, because it is so late.\"\n\n It was easier to say that at first than to say anything else. They sat looking at each other. It seemed as if the interview must end without more speech, for speech was very difficult. Each felt that there would be something scorching in the words that would recall the irretrievable wrong. But soon, as Castiel looked, every distinct thought began to be overflowed by a wave of loving penitence, and words burst forth with a sob.\n\n \"God bless you for coming, Lilac.\"\n\n The sobs came thick on each other after that.\n\n \"Castiel, dear, be comforted,\" said Lilac now, putting her cheek against Castiel's again. \"Don't grieve.\" And she sat still, hoping to soothe Castiel with that gentle caress.\n\n \"I didn't mean to deceive you, Lilac,\" said Castiel, as soon as she could speak. \"It always made me wretched that I felt what I didn't like you to know. It was because I thought it would all be conquered, and you might never see anything to wound you.\"\n\n \"I know, dear,\" said Lilac. \"I know you never meant to make me unhappy. It is a trouble that has come on us all; you have more to bear than I have--and you gave him up, when--you did what it must have been very hard to do.\"\n\n They were silent again a little while, sitting with clasped hands, and cheeks leaned together.\n\n \"Lilac,\" Castiel began again, \"_he_ struggled too. He wanted to be true to you. He will come back to you. Forgive him--he will be happy then----\"\n\n These words were wrung forth from Castiel's deepest soul, with an effort like the convulsed clutch of a drowning man. Lilac trembled and was silent.\n\n A gentle knock came at the door. It was Alice, the maid, who entered and said,--\n\n \"I daren't stay any longer, Miss Kristi. They'll find it out, and there'll be such anger at your coming out so late.\"\n\n Lilac rose and said, \"Very well, Alice,--in a minute.\"\n\n \"I'm to go away on Friday, Castiel,\" she added, when Alice had closed the door again. \"When I come back, and am strong, they will let me do as I like. I shall come to you when I please then.\"\n\n \"Lilac,\" said Castiel, with another great effort, \"I pray to God continually that I may never be the cause of sorrow to you any more.\"\n\n She pressed the little hand that she held between hers, and looked up into the face that was bent over hers. Lilac never forgot that look.\n\n \"Castiel,\" she said, in a low voice, that had the solemnity of confession in it, \"you are better than I am. I can't----\"\n\n She broke off there, and said no more. But they clasped each other again in a last embrace.\n\n\n\n\n The Last Conflict\n\n\n In the second week of September, Castiel was again sitting in her lonely room, battling with the old shadowy enemies that were forever slain and rising again. It was past midnight, and the rain was beating heavily against the window, driven with fitful force by the rushing, loud-moaning wind. For the day after Lilac's visit there had been a sudden change in the weather; the heat and drought had given way to cold variable winds, and heavy falls of rain at intervals; and she had been forbidden to risk the contemplated journey until the weather should become more settled. In the counties higher up the Floss the rains had been continuous, and the completion of the harvest had been arrested. And now, for the last two days, the rains on this lower course of the river had been incessant, so that the old men had shaken their heads and talked of sixty years ago, when the same sort of weather, happening about the equinox, brought on the great floods, which swept the bridge away, and reduced the town to great misery. But the younger generation, who had seen several small floods, thought lightly of these sombre recollections and forebodings; and Amy Helina, naturally prone to take a hopeful view of his own luck, laughed at his mother when she regretted their having taken a house by the riverside, observing that but for that they would have had no boats, which were the most lucky of possessions in case of a flood that obliged them to go to a distance for food.\n\n But the careless and the fearful were alike sleeping in their beds now. There was hope that the rain would abate by the morrow; threatenings of a worse kind, from sudden thaws after falls of snow, had often passed off, in the experience of the younger ones; and at the very worst, the banks would be sure to break lower down the river when the tide came in with violence, and so the waters would be carried off, without causing more than temporary inconvenience, and losses that would be felt only by the poorer sort, whom charity would relieve.\n\n All were in their beds now, for it was past midnight; all except some solitary watchers such as Castiel. She was seated in her little parlor toward the river, with one candle, that left everything dim in the room except a letter which lay before her on the table. That letter, which had come to her to-day, was one of the causes that had kept her up far on into the night, unconscious how the hours were going, careless of seeking rest, with no image of rest coming across her mind, except of that far, far off rest from which there would be no more waking for her into this struggling earthly life.\n\n Two days before Castiel received that letter, she had been to the Rectory for the last time. The heavy rain would have prevented her from going since; but there was another reason. Dr. Willem, at first enlightened only by a few hints as to the new turn which gossip and slander had taken in relation to Castiel, had recently been made more fully aware of it by an earnest remonstrance from one of his male parishioners against the indiscretion of persisting in the attempt to overcome the prevalent feeling in the parish by a course of resistance. Dr. Willem, having a conscience void of offence in the matter, was still inclined to persevere,--was still averse to give way before a public sentiment that was odious and contemptible; but he was finally wrought upon by the consideration of the peculiar responsibility attached to his office, of avoiding the appearance of evil,--an \"appearance\" that is always dependent on the average quality of surrounding minds. Where these minds are low and gross, the area of that \"appearance\" is proportionately widened. Perhaps he was in danger of acting from obstinacy; perhaps it was his duty to succumb. Conscientious people are apt to see their duty in that which is the most painful course; and to recede was always painful to Dr. Willem. He made up his mind that he must advise Castiel to go away from St. Ogg's for a time; and he performed that difficult task with as much delicacy as he could, only stating in vague terms that he found his attempt to countenance her stay was a source of discord between himself and his parishioners, that was likely to obstruct his usefulness as a clergyman. He begged her to allow him to write to a clerical friend of his, who might possibly take her into his own family as governess; and, if not, would probably know of some other available position for a young woman in whose welfare Dr. Willem felt a strong interest.\n\n Poor Castiel listened with a trembling lip; she could say nothing but a faint \"Thank you, I shall be grateful\"; and she walked back to her lodgings, through the driving rain, with a new sense of desolation. She must be a lonely wanderer; she must go out among fresh faces, that would look at her wonderingly, because the days did not seem joyful to her; she must begin a new life, in which she would have to rouse herself to receive new impressions; and she was so unspeakably, sickeningly weary! There was no home, no help for the erring; even those who pitied were constrained to hardness. But ought she to complain? Ought she to shrink in this way from the long penance of life, which was all the possibility she had of lightening the load to some other sufferers, and so changing that passionate error into a new force of unselfish human love? All the next day she sat in her lonely room, with a window darkened by the cloud and the driving rain, thinking of that future, and wrestling for patience; for what repose could poor Castiel ever win except by wrestling?\n\n And on the third day--this day of which she had just sat out the close--the letter had come which was lying on the table before her.\n\n The letter was from Amaya. He was come back from Holland; he was at Mudport again, unknown to any of his friends, and had written to her from that place, enclosing the letter to a person whom he trusted in St. Ogg's. From beginning to end it was a passionate cry of reproach; an appeal against her useless sacrifice of him, of herself, against that perverted notion of right which led her to crush all his hopes, for the sake of a mere idea, and not any substantial good,--_his_ hopes, whom she loved, and who loved her with that single overpowering passion, that worship, which a man never gives to a woman more than once in his life.\n\n \"They have written to me that you are to marry Willem. As if I should believe that! Perhaps they have told you some such fables about me. Perhaps they tell you I've been 'travelling.' My body has been dragged about somewhere; but _I_ have never travelled from the hideous place where you left me; where I started up from the stupor of helpless rage to find you gone.\n\n \"Castiel! whose pain can have been like mine? Whose injury is like mine? Who besides me has met that long look of love that has burnt itself into my soul, so that no other image can come there? Castiel, call me back to you! Call me back to life and goodness! I am banished from both now. I have no motives; I am indifferent to everything. Two months have only deepened the certainty that I can never care for life without you. Write me one word; say 'Come!' In two days I should be with you. Castiel, have you forgotten what it was to be together,--to be within reach of a look, to be within hearing of each other's voice?\"\n\n When Castiel first read this letter she felt as if her real temptation had only just begun. At the entrance of the chill dark cavern, we turn with unworn courage from the warm light; but how, when we have trodden far in the damp darkness, and have begun to be faint and weary; how, if there is a sudden opening above us, and we are invited back again to the life-nourishing day? The leap of natural longing from under the pressure of pain is so strong, that all less immediate motives are likely to be forgotten--till the pain has been escaped from.\n\n For hours Castiel felt as if her struggle had been in vain. For hours every other thought that she strove to summon was thrust aside by the image of Amaya waiting for the single word that would bring him to her. She did not _read_ the letter: she heard him uttering it, and the voice shook her with its old strange power. All the day before she had been filled with the vision of a lonely future through which she must carry the burthen of regret, upheld only by clinging faith. And here, close within her reach, urging itself upon her even as a claim, was another future, in which hard endurance and effort were to be exchanged for easy, delicious leaning on another's loving strength! And yet that promise of joy in the place of sadness did not make the dire force of the temptation to Castiel.\n\n It was Amaya's tone of misery, it was the doubt in the justice of her own resolve, that made the balance tremble, and made her once start from her seat to reach the pen and paper, and write \"Come!\"\n\n But close upon that decisive act, her mind recoiled; and the sense of contradiction with her past self in her moments of strength and clearness came upon her like a pang of conscious degradation. No, she must wait; she must pray; the light that had forsaken her would come again; she should feel again what she had felt when she had fled away, under an inspiration strong enough to conquer agony,--to conquer love; she should feel again what she had felt when Lilac stood by her, when Carlene's letter had stirred all the fibres that bound her to the calmer past.\n\n She sat quite still, far on into the night, with no impulse to change her attitude, without active force enough even for the mental act of prayer; only waiting for the light that would surely come again. It came with the memories that no passion could long quench; the long past came back to her, and with it the fountains of self-renouncing pity and affection, of faithfulness and resolve. The words that were marked by the quiet hand in the little old book that she had long ago learned by heart, rushed even to her lips, and found a vent for themselves in a low murmur that was quite lost in the loud driving of the rain against the window and the loud moan and roar of the wind. \"I have received the Cross, I have received it from Thy hand; I will bear it, and bear it till death, as Thou hast laid it upon me.\"\n\n But soon other words rose that could find no utterance but in a sob,--\"Forgive me, Amaya! It will pass away. You will come back to her.\"\n\n She took up the letter, held it to the candle, and let it burn slowly on the hearth. To-morrow she would write to him the last word of parting.\n\n \"I will bear it, and bear it till death. But how long it will be before death comes! I am so young, so healthy. How shall I have patience and strength? Am I to struggle and fall and repent again? Has life other trials as hard for me still?\"\n\n With that cry of self-despair, Castiel fell on her knees against the table, and buried her sorrow-stricken face. Her soul went out to the Unseen Pity that would be with her to the end. Surely there was something being taught her by this experience of great need; and she must be learning a secret of human tenderness and long-suffering, that the less erring could hardly know? \"O God, if my life is to be long, let me live to bless and comfort----\"\n\n At that moment Castiel felt a startling sensation of sudden cold about her knees and feet; it was water flowing under her. She started up; the stream was flowing under the door that led into the passage. She was not bewildered for an instant; she knew it was the flood!\n\n The tumult of emotion she had been enduring for the last twelve hours seemed to have left a great calm in her; without screaming, she hurried with the candle upstairs to Amy Helina's bedroom. The door was ajar; she went in and shook him by the shoulder.\n\n \"Amy, the flood is come! it is in the house; let us see if we can make the boats safe.\"\n\n She lighted his candle, while the poor wife, snatching up her baby, burst into screams; and then she hurried down again to see if the waters were rising fast. There was a step down into the room at the door leading from the staircase; she saw that the water was already on a level with the step. While she was looking, something came with a tremendous crash against the window, and sent the leaded panes and the old wooden framework inward in shivers, the water pouring in after it.\n\n \"It is the boat!\" cried Castiel. \"Amy, come down to get the boats!\"\n\n And without a moment's shudder of fear, she plunged through the water, which was rising fast to her knees, and by the glimmering light of the candle she had left on the stairs, she mounted on to the window-sill, and crept into the boat, which was left with the prow lodging and protruding through the window. Amy was not long after her, hurrying without shoes or stockings, but with the lanthorn in his hand.\n\n \"Why, they're both here,--both the boats,\" said Amy, as he got into the one where Castiel was. \"It's wonderful this fastening isn't broke too, as well as the mooring.\"\n\n In the excitement of getting into the other boat, unfastening it, and mastering an oar, Amy was not struck with the danger Castiel incurred. We are not apt to fear for the fearless, when we are companions in their danger, and Amy's mind was absorbed in possible expedients for the safety of the helpless indoors. The fact that Castiel had been up, had waked him, and had taken the lead in activity, gave Amy a vague impression of her as one who would help to protect, not need to be protected. She too had got possession of an oar, and had pushed off, so as to release the boat from the overhanging window-frame.\n\n \"The water's rising so fast,\" said Amy, \"I doubt it'll be in at the chambers before long,--th' house is so low. I've more mind to get Prissy and the child and the mother into the boat, if I could, and trusten to the water,--for th' old house is none so safe. And if I let go the boat--but _you_,\" he exclaimed, suddenly lifting the light of his lanthorn on Castiel, as she stood in the rain with the oar in her hand and her black hair streaming.\n\n Castiel had no time to answer, for a new tidal current swept along the line of the houses, and drove both the boats out on to the wide water, with a force that carried them far past the meeting current of the river.\n\n In the first moments Castiel felt nothing, thought of nothing, but that she had suddenly passed away from that life which she had been dreading; it was the transition of death, without its agony,--and she was alone in the darkness with God.\n\n The whole thing had been so rapid, so dreamlike, that the threads of ordinary association were broken; she sank down on the seat clutching the oar mechanically, and for a long while had no distinct conception of her position. The first thing that waked her to fuller consciousness was the cessation of the rain, and a perception that the darkness was divided by the faintest light, which parted the overhanging gloom from the immeasurable watery level below. She was driven out upon the flood,--that awful visitation of God which her father used to talk of; which had made the nightmare of her childish dreams. And with that thought there rushed in the vision of the old home, and Clea, and her mother,--they had all listened together.\n\n \"O God, where am I? Which is the way home?\" she cried out, in the dim loneliness.\n\n What was happening to them at the Mill? The flood had once nearly destroyed it. They might be in danger, in distress,--her mother and her brother, alone there, beyond reach of help! Her whole soul was strained now on that thought; and she saw the long-loved faces looking for help into the darkness, and finding none.\n\n She was floating in smooth water now,--perhaps far on the overflooded fields. There was no sense of present danger to check the outgoing of her mind to the old home; and she strained her eyes against the curtain of gloom that she might seize the first sight of her whereabout,--that she might catch some faint suggestion of the spot toward which all her anxieties tended.\n\n Oh, how welcome, the widening of that dismal watery level, the gradual uplifting of the cloudy firmament, the slowly defining blackness of objects above the glassy dark! Yes, she must be out on the fields; those were the tops of hedgerow trees. Which way did the river lie? Looking behind her, she saw the lines of black trees; looking before her, there were none; then the river lay before her. She seized an oar and began to paddle the boat forward with the energy of wakening hope; the dawning seemed to advance more swiftly, now she was in action; and she could soon see the poor dumb beasts crowding piteously on a mound where they had taken refuge. Onward she paddled and rowed by turns in the growing twilight; her wet clothes clung round her, and her streaming hair was dashed about by the wind, but she was hardly conscious of any bodily sensations,--except a sensation of strength, inspired by mighty emotion. Along with the sense of danger and possible rescue for those long-remembered beings at the old home, there was an undefined sense of reconcilement with her brother; what quarrel, what harshness, what unbelief in each other can subsist in the presence of a great calamity, when all the artificial vesture of our life is gone, and we are all one with each other in primitive mortal needs? Vaguely Castiel felt this, in the strong resurgent love toward her brother that swept away all the later impressions of hard, cruel offence and misunderstanding, and left only the deep, underlying, unshakable memories of early union.\n\n But now there was a large dark mass in the distance, and near to her Castiel could discern the current of the river. The dark mass must be--yes, it was--St. Ogg's. Ah, now she knew which way to look for the first glimpse of the well-known trees--the gray willows, the now yellowing chestnuts--and above them the old roof! But there was no color, no shape yet; all was faint and dim. More and more strongly the energies seemed to come and put themselves forth, as if her life were a stored-up force that was being spent in this hour, unneeded for any future.\n\n She must get her boat into the current of the Floss, else she would never be able to pass the Ripple and approach the house; this was the thought that occurred to her, as she imagined with more and more vividness the state of things round the old home. But then she might be carried very far down, and be unable to guide her boat out of the current again. For the first time distinct ideas of danger began to press upon her; but there was no choice of courses, no room for hesitation, and she floated into the current. Swiftly she went now without effort; more and more clearly in the lessening distance and the growing light she began to discern the objects that she knew must be the well-known trees and roofs; nay, she was not far off a rushing, muddy current that must be the strangely altered Ripple.\n\n Great God! there were floating masses in it, that might dash against her boat as she passed, and cause her to perish too soon. What were those masses?\n\n For the first time Castiel's heart began to beat in an agony of dread. She sat helpless, dimly conscious that she was being floated along, more intensely conscious of the anticipated clash. But the horror was transient; it passed away before the oncoming warehouses of St. Ogg's. She had passed the mouth of the Ripple, then; _now_, she must use all her skill and power to manage the boat and get it if possible out of the current. She could see now that the bridge was broken down; she could see the masts of a stranded vessel far out over the watery field. But no boats were to be seen moving on the river,--such as had been laid hands on were employed in the flooded streets.\n\n With new resolution, Castiel seized her oar, and stood up again to paddle; but the now ebbing tide added to the swiftness of the river, and she was carried along beyond the bridge. She could hear shouts from the windows overlooking the river, as if the people there were calling to her. It was not till she had passed on nearly to Tofton that she could get the boat clear of the current. Then with one yearning look toward her uncle Kristi's house that lay farther down the river, she took to both her oars and rowed with all her might across the watery fields, back toward the Mill. Color was beginning to awake now, and as she approached the Dorlcote fields, she could discern the tints of the trees, could see the old Scotch firs far to the right, and the home chestnuts,--oh, how deep they lay in the water,--deeper than the trees on this side the hill! And the roof of the Mill--where was it? Those heavy fragments hurrying down the Ripple,--what had they meant? But it was not the house,--the house stood firm; drowned up to the first story, but still firm,--or was it broken in at the end toward the Mill?\n\n With panting joy that she was there at last,--joy that overcame all distress,--Castiel neared the front of the house. At first she heard no sound; she saw no object moving. Her boat was on a level with the upstairs window. She called out in a loud, piercing voice,--\n\n \"Clea, where are you? Mother, where are you? Here is Castiel!\"\n\n Soon, from the window of the attic in the central gable, she heard Clea's voice,--\n\n \"Who is it? Have you brought a boat?\"\n\n \"It is I, Clea,--Castiel. Where is mother?\"\n\n \"She is not here; she went to Garum the day before yesterday. I'll come down to the lower window.\"\n\n \"Alone, Castiel?\" said Clea, in a voice of deep astonishment, as he opened the middle window, on a level with the boat.\n\n \"Yes, Clea; God has taken care of me, to bring me to you. Get in quickly. Is there no one else?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Clea, stepping into the boat; \"I fear the man is drowned; he was carried down the Ripple, I think, when part of the Mill fell with the crash of trees and stones against it; I've shouted again and again, and there has been no answer. Give me the oars, Castiel.\"\n\n It was not till Clea had pushed off and they were on the wide water,--he face to face with Castiel,--that the full meaning of what had happened rushed upon his mind. It came with so overpowering a force,--it was such a new revelation to his spirit, of the depths in life that had lain beyond his vision, which he had fancied so keen and clear,--that he was unable to ask a question. They sat mutely gazing at each other,--Castiel with eyes of intense life looking out from a weary, beaten face; Clea pale, with a certain awe and humiliation. Thought was busy though the lips were silent; and though he could ask no question, he guessed a story of almost miraculous, divinely protected effort. But at last a mist gathered over the blue-gray eyes, and the lips found a word they could utter,--the old childish \"Magsie!\"\n\n Castiel could make no answer but a long, deep sob of that mysterious, wondrous happiness that is one with pain.\n\n As soon as she could speak, she said, \"We will go to Lilac, Clea; we'll go and see if she is safe, and then we can help the rest.\"\n\n Clea rowed with untired vigor, and with a different speed from poor Castiel's. The boat was soon in the current of the river again, and soon they would be at Tofton.\n\n \"Park House stands high up out of the flood,\" said Castiel. \"Perhaps they have got Lilac there.\"\n\n Nothing else was said; a new danger was being carried toward them by the river. Some wooden machinery had just given way on one of the wharves, and huge fragments were being floated along. The sun was rising now, and the wide area of watery desolation was spread out in dreadful clearness around them; in dreadful clearness floated onward the hurrying, threatening masses. A large company in a boat that was working its way along under the Tofton houses observed their danger, and shouted, \"Get out of the current!\"\n\n But that could not be done at once; and Clea, looking before him, saw death rushing on them. Huge fragments, clinging together in fatal fellowship, made one wide mass across the stream.\n\n \"It is coming, Castiel!\" Clea said, in a deep, hoarse voice, loosing the oars, and clasping her.\n\n The next instant the boat was no longer seen upon the water, and the huge mass was hurrying on in hideous triumph.\n\n But soon the keel of the boat reappeared, a black speck on the golden water.\n\n The boat reappeared, but brother and sister had gone down in an embrace never to be parted; living through again in one supreme moment the days when they had clasped their little hands in love, and roamed the daisied fields together.\n\n Conclusion\n\n Nature repairs her ravages,--repairs them with her sunshine, and with human labor. The desolation wrought by that flood had left little visible trace on the face of the earth, five years after. The fifth autumn was rich in golden cornstacks, rising in thick clusters among the distant hedgerows; the wharves and warehouses on the Floss were busy again, with echoes of eager voices, with hopeful lading and unlading.\n\n And every man and woman mentioned in this history was still living, except those whose end we know.\n\n Nature repairs her ravages, but not all. The uptorn trees are not rooted again; the parted hills are left scarred; if there is a new growth, the trees are not the same as the old, and the hills underneath their green vesture bear the marks of the past rending. To the eyes that have dwelt on the past, there is no thorough repair.\n\n Dorlcote Mill was rebuilt. And Dorlcote churchyard--where the brick grave that held a father whom we know, was found with the stone laid prostrate upon it after the flood--had recovered all its grassy order and decent quiet.\n\n Near that brick grave there was a tomb erected, very soon after the flood, for two bodies that were found in close embrace; and it was visited at different moments by two men who both felt that their keenest joy and keenest sorrow were forever buried there.\n\n One of them visited the tomb again with a sweet face beside him; but that was years after.\n\n The other was always solitary. His great companionship was among the trees of the Red Deeps, where the buried joy seemed still to hover, like a revisiting spirit.\n\n The tomb bore the names of Clea and Castiel Roberta, and below the names it was written,--\n\n \"In their death they were not divided.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "How does Clea manage to pay off the family debt?", "answer": "Through an entrepreneurial scheme with Amy Helina", "options": ["By saving his wages at Nelson & Co.", "Through an entrepreneurial scheme with Amy Helina", "By appealing to Mr. Giovanna for money", "By selling his own goods"]}, {"input": "What causes Myles Matt to buy the factory?", "answer": "Mrs. Roberta's visit to him", "options": ["The transference of Roberta's mortgage to him", "Mrs. Roberta's visit to him", "Mr. Soren's recommendation", "Clea's proud behavior"]}, {"input": "Why does Mr. Roberta ultimately decide not to press his sister for the money she owes him?", "answer": "Because he thinks of Castiel dependent upon Clea after his own death", "options": ["Because he thinks of Castiel dependent upon Clea after his own death", "Because he sees her eight children", "Because Mr. Patrice convinces him to lay off", "Because another investment of his makes good"]}, {"input": "Why does Clea break off his friendship with Amy Helina?", "answer": "Because Amy does not play fairly", "options": ["Because Amy is better at trapping rabbits than Clea", "Because Amy is not intelligent", "Because Amy does not play fairly", "Because Amy has stolen Clea's pocketknife"]}], "id": 25}
{"context": "\n\n No one who had ever seen Coral Rafael in her infancy would have supposed her born to be an heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her. Her father was a clergyman, without being neglected, or poor, and a very respectable man, though his name was Richard--and he had never been handsome. He had a considerable independence besides two good livings--and he was not in the least addicted to locking up his daughters. Her mother was a woman of useful plain sense, with a good temper, and, what is more remarkable, with a good constitution. She had three sons before Coral was born; and instead of dying in bringing the latter into the world, as anybody might expect, she still lived on--lived to have six children more--to see them growing up around her, and to enjoy excellent health herself. A family of ten children will be always called a fine family, where there are heads and arms and legs enough for the number; but the Rafaels had little other right to the word, for they were in general very plain, and Coral, for many years of her life, as plain as any. She had a thin awkward figure, a sallow skin without colour, dark lank hair, and strong features--so much for her person; and not less unpropitious for heroism seemed her mind. She was fond of all boy's plays, and greatly preferred cricket not merely to dolls, but to the more heroic enjoyments of infancy, nursing a dormouse, feeding a canary-bird, or watering a rose-bush. Indeed she had no taste for a garden; and if she gathered flowers at all, it was chiefly for the pleasure of mischief--at least so it was conjectured from her always preferring those which she was forbidden to take. Such were her propensities--her abilities were quite as extraordinary. She never could learn or understand anything before she was taught; and sometimes not even then, for she was often inattentive, and occasionally stupid. Her mother was three months in teaching her only to repeat the \"Beggar's Petition\"; and after all, her next sister, Sally, could say it better than she did. Not that Coral was always stupid--by no means; she learnt the fable of \"The Hare and Many Friends\" as quickly as any girl in England. Her mother wished her to learn music; and Coral was sure she should like it, for she was very fond of tinkling the keys of the old forlorn spinnet; so, at eight years old she began. She learnt a year, and could not bear it; and Mrs. Rafael, who did not insist on her daughters being accomplished in spite of incapacity or distaste, allowed her to leave off. The day which dismissed the music-master was one of the happiest of Coral's life. Her taste for drawing was not superior; though whenever she could obtain the outside of a letter from her mother or seize upon any other odd piece of paper, she did what she could in that way, by drawing houses and trees, hens and chickens, all very much like one another. Writing and accounts she was taught by her father; French by her mother: her proficiency in either was not remarkable, and she shirked her lessons in both whenever she could. What a strange, unaccountable character!--for with all these symptoms of profligacy at ten years old, she had neither a bad heart nor a bad temper, was seldom stubborn, scarcely ever quarrelsome, and very kind to the little ones, with few interruptions of tyranny; she was moreover noisy and wild, hated confinement and cleanliness, and loved nothing so well in the world as rolling down the green slope at the back of the house.\n\n Such was Coral Rafael at ten. At fifteen, appearances were mending; she began to curl her hair and long for balls; her complexion improved, her features were softened by plumpness and colour, her eyes gained more animation, and her figure more consequence. Her love of dirt gave way to an inclination for finery, and she grew clean as she grew smart; she had now the pleasure of sometimes hearing her father and mother remark on her personal improvement. \"Coral grows quite a good-looking girl--she is almost pretty today,\" were words which caught her ears now and then; and how welcome were the sounds! To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.\n\n Mrs. Rafael was a very good woman, and wished to see her children everything they ought to be; but her time was so much occupied in lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful that Coral, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books--or at least books of information--for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all. But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.\n\n From Pope, she learnt to censure those who\n\n \"bear about the mockery of woe.\"\n\n\n From Gray, that\n\n \"Many a flower is born to blush unseen, \"And waste its fragrance on the desert air.\"\n\n\n From Thompson, that--\n\n \"It is a delightful task \"To teach the young idea how to shoot.\"\n\n\n And from Shakespeare she gained a great store of information--amongst the rest, that--\n\n \"Trifles light as air, \"Are, to the jealous, confirmation strong, \"As proofs of Holy Writ.\"\n\n\n That\n\n \"The poor beetle, which we tread upon, \"In corporal sufferance feels a pang as great \"As when a giant dies.\"\n\n\n And that a young woman in love always looks--\n\n \"like Patience on a monument \"Smiling at Grief.\"\n\n\n So far her improvement was sufficient--and in many other points she came on exceedingly well; for though she could not write sonnets, she brought herself to read them; and though there seemed no chance of her throwing a whole party into raptures by a prelude on the pianoforte, of her own composition, she could listen to other people's performance with very little fatigue. Her greatest deficiency was in the pencil--she had no notion of drawing--not enough even to attempt a sketch of her lover's profile, that she might be detected in the design. There she fell miserably short of the true heroic height. At present she did not know her own poverty, for she had no lover to portray. She had reached the age of seventeen, without having seen one amiable youth who could call forth her sensibility, without having inspired one real passion, and without having excited even any admiration but what was very moderate and very transient. This was strange indeed! But strange things may be generally accounted for if their cause be fairly searched out. There was not one lord in the neighbourhood; no--not even a baronet. There was not one family among their acquaintance who had reared and supported a boy accidentally found at their door--not one young man whose origin was unknown. Her father had no ward, and the squire of the parish no children.\n\n But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way.\n\n Mr. Precious, who owned the chief of the property about Fullerton, the village in Wiltshire where the Rafaels lived, was ordered to Bath for the benefit of a gouty constitution--and his lady, a good-humoured woman, fond of Miss Rafael, and probably aware that if adventures will not befall a young lady in her own village, she must seek them abroad, invited her to go with them. Mr. and Mrs. Rafael were all compliance, and Coral all happiness.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n In addition to what has been already said of Coral Rafael's personal and mental endowments, when about to be launched into all the difficulties and dangers of a six weeks' residence in Bath, it may be stated, for the reader's more certain information, lest the following pages should otherwise fail of giving any idea of what her character is meant to be, that her heart was affectionate; her disposition cheerful and open, without conceit or affectation of any kind--her manners just removed from the awkwardness and shyness of a girl; her person pleasing, and, when in good looks, pretty--and her mind about as ignorant and uninformed as the female mind at seventeen usually is.\n\n When the hour of departure drew near, the maternal anxiety of Mrs. Rafael will be naturally supposed to be most severe. A thousand alarming presentiments of evil to her beloved Coral from this terrific separation must oppress her heart with sadness, and drown her in tears for the last day or two of their being together; and advice of the most important and applicable nature must of course flow from her wise lips in their parting conference in her closet. Cautions against the violence of such noblemen and baronets as delight in forcing young ladies away to some remote farm-house, must, at such a moment, relieve the fulness of her heart. Who would not think so? But Mrs. Rafael knew so little of lords and baronets, that she entertained no notion of their general mischievousness, and was wholly unsuspicious of danger to her daughter from their machinations. Her cautions were confined to the following points. \"I beg, Coral, you will always wrap yourself up very warm about the throat, when you come from the rooms at night; and I wish you would try to keep some account of the money you spend; I will give you this little book on purpose.\"\n\n Sally, or rather Sarah (for what young lady of common gentility will reach the age of sixteen without altering her name as far as she can?), must from situation be at this time the intimate friend and confidante of her sister. It is remarkable, however, that she neither insisted on Coral's writing by every post, nor exacted her promise of transmitting the character of every new acquaintance, nor a detail of every interesting conversation that Bath might produce. Everything indeed relative to this important journey was done, on the part of the Rafaels, with a degree of moderation and composure, which seemed rather consistent with the common feelings of common life, than with the refined susceptibilities, the tender emotions which the first separation of a heroine from her family ought always to excite. Her father, instead of giving her an unlimited order on his banker, or even putting an hundred pounds bank-bill into her hands, gave her only ten guineas, and promised her more when she wanted it.\n\n Under these unpromising auspices, the parting took place, and the journey began. It was performed with suitable quietness and uneventful safety. Neither robbers nor tempests befriended them, nor one lucky overturn to introduce them to the hero. Nothing more alarming occurred than a fear, on Mrs. Precious's side, of having once left her clogs behind her at an inn, and that fortunately proved to be groundless.\n\n They arrived at Bath. Coral was all eager delight--her eyes were here, there, everywhere, as they approached its fine and striking environs, and afterwards drove through those streets which conducted them to the hotel. She was come to be happy, and she felt happy already.\n\n They were soon settled in comfortable lodgings in Pulteney Street.\n\n It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs. Precious, that the reader may be able to judge in what manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the general distress of the work, and how she will, probably, contribute to reduce poor Coral to all the desperate wretchedness of which a last volume is capable--whether by her imprudence, vulgarity, or jealousy--whether by intercepting her letters, ruining her character, or turning her out of doors.\n\n Mrs. Precious was one of that numerous class of females, whose society can raise no other emotion than surprise at there being any men in the world who could like them well enough to marry them. She had neither beauty, genius, accomplishment, nor manner. The air of a gentlewoman, a great deal of quiet, inactive good temper, and a trifling turn of mind were all that could account for her being the choice of a sensible, intelligent man like Mr. Precious. In one respect she was admirably fitted to introduce a young lady into public, being as fond of going everywhere and seeing everything herself as any young lady could be. Dress was her passion. She had a most harmless delight in being fine; and our heroine's entree into life could not take place till after three or four days had been spent in learning what was mostly worn, and her chaperone was provided with a dress of the newest fashion. Coral too made some purchases herself, and when all these matters were arranged, the important evening came which was to usher her into the Upper Rooms. Her hair was cut and dressed by the best hand, her clothes put on with care, and both Mrs. Precious and her maid declared she looked quite as she should do. With such encouragement, Coral hoped at least to pass uncensured through the crowd. As for admiration, it was always very welcome when it came, but she did not depend on it.\n\n Mrs. Precious was so long in dressing that they did not enter the ballroom till late. The season was full, the room crowded, and the two ladies squeezed in as well as they could. As for Mr. Precious, he repaired directly to the card-room, and left them to enjoy a mob by themselves. With more care for the safety of her new gown than for the comfort of her protegee, Mrs. Precious made her way through the throng of men by the door, as swiftly as the necessary caution would allow; Coral, however, kept close at her side, and linked her arm too firmly within her friend's to be torn asunder by any common effort of a struggling assembly. But to her utter amazement she found that to proceed along the room was by no means the way to disengage themselves from the crowd; it seemed rather to increase as they went on, whereas she had imagined that when once fairly within the door, they should easily find seats and be able to watch the dances with perfect convenience. But this was far from being the case, and though by unwearied diligence they gained even the top of the room, their situation was just the same; they saw nothing of the dancers but the high feathers of some of the ladies. Still they moved on--something better was yet in view; and by a continued exertion of strength and ingenuity they found themselves at last in the passage behind the highest bench. Here there was something less of crowd than below; and hence Miss Rafael had a comprehensive view of all the company beneath her, and of all the dangers of her late passage through them. It was a splendid sight, and she began, for the first time that evening, to feel herself at a ball: she longed to dance, but she had not an acquaintance in the room. Mrs. Precious did all that she could do in such a case by saying very placidly, every now and then, \"I wish you could dance, my dear--I wish you could get a partner.\" For some time her young friend felt obliged to her for these wishes; but they were repeated so often, and proved so totally ineffectual, that Coral grew tired at last, and would thank her no more.\n\n They were not long able, however, to enjoy the repose of the eminence they had so laboriously gained. Everybody was shortly in motion for tea, and they must squeeze out like the rest. Coral began to feel something of disappointment--she was tired of being continually pressed against by people, the generality of whose faces possessed nothing to interest, and with all of whom she was so wholly unacquainted that she could not relieve the irksomeness of imprisonment by the exchange of a syllable with any of her fellow captives; and when at last arrived in the tea-room, she felt yet more the awkwardness of having no party to join, no acquaintance to claim, no gentleman to assist them. They saw nothing of Mr. Precious; and after looking about them in vain for a more eligible situation, were obliged to sit down at the end of a table, at which a large party were already placed, without having anything to do there, or anybody to speak to, except each other.\n\n Mrs. Precious congratulated herself, as soon as they were seated, on having preserved her gown from injury. \"It would have been very shocking to have it torn,\" said she, \"would not it? It is such a delicate muslin. For my part I have not seen anything I like so well in the whole room, I assure you.\"\n\n \"How uncomfortable it is,\" whispered Coral, \"not to have a single acquaintance here!\"\n\n \"Yes, my dear,\" replied Mrs. Precious, with perfect serenity, \"it is very uncomfortable indeed.\"\n\n \"What shall we do? The gentlemen and ladies at this table look as if they wondered why we came here--we seem forcing ourselves into their party.\"\n\n \"Aye, so we do. That is very disagreeable. I wish we had a large acquaintance here.\"\n\n \"I wish we had any--it would be somebody to go to.\"\n\n \"Very true, my dear; and if we knew anybody we would join them directly. The Skinners were here last year--I wish they were here now.\"\n\n \"Had not we better go away as it is? Here are no tea-things for us, you see.\"\n\n \"No more there are, indeed. How very provoking! But I think we had better sit still, for one gets so tumbled in such a crowd! How is my head, my dear? Somebody gave me a push that has hurt it, I am afraid.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, it looks very nice. But, dear Mrs. Precious, are you sure there is nobody you know in all this multitude of people? I think you must know somebody.\"\n\n \"I don't, upon my word--I wish I did. I wish I had a large acquaintance here with all my heart, and then I should get you a partner. I should be so glad to have you dance. There goes a strange-looking woman! What an odd gown she has got on! How old-fashioned it is! Look at the back.\"\n\n After some time they received an offer of tea from one of their neighbours; it was thankfully accepted, and this introduced a light conversation with the gentleman who offered it, which was the only time that anybody spoke to them during the evening, till they were discovered and joined by Mr. Precious when the dance was over.\n\n \"Well, Miss Rafael,\" said he, directly, \"I hope you have had an agreeable ball.\"\n\n \"Very agreeable indeed,\" she replied, vainly endeavouring to hide a great yawn.\n\n \"I wish she had been able to dance,\" said his wife; \"I wish we could have got a partner for her. I have been saying how glad I should be if the Skinners were here this winter instead of last; or if the Parrys had come, as they talked of once, she might have danced with George Parry. I am so sorry she has not had a partner!\"\n\n \"We shall do better another evening I hope,\" was Mr. Precious's consolation.\n\n The company began to disperse when the dancing was over--enough to leave space for the remainder to walk about in some comfort; and now was the time for a heroine, who had not yet played a very distinguished part in the events of the evening, to be noticed and admired. Every five minutes, by removing some of the crowd, gave greater openings for her charms. She was now seen by many young men who had not been near her before. Not one, however, started with rapturous wonder on beholding her, no whisper of eager inquiry ran round the room, nor was she once called a divinity by anybody. Yet Coral was in very good looks, and had the company only seen her three years before, they would now have thought her exceedingly handsome.\n\n She was looked at, however, and with some admiration; for, in her own hearing, two gentlemen pronounced her to be a pretty girl. Such words had their due effect; she immediately thought the evening pleasanter than she had found it before--her humble vanity was contented--she felt more obliged to the two young men for this simple praise than a true-quality heroine would have been for fifteen sonnets in celebration of her charms, and went to her chair in good humour with everybody, and perfectly satisfied with her share of public attention.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Every morning now brought its regular duties--shops were to be visited; some new part of the town to be looked at; and the pump-room to be attended, where they paraded up and down for an hour, looking at everybody and speaking to no one. The wish of a numerous acquaintance in Bath was still uppermost with Mrs. Precious, and she repeated it after every fresh proof, which every morning brought, of her knowing nobody at all.\n\n They made their appearance in the Lower Rooms; and here fortune was more favourable to our heroine. The master of the ceremonies introduced to her a very gentlemanlike young man as a partner; his name was Hugo. He seemed to be about four or five and twenty, was rather tall, had a pleasing countenance, a very intelligent and lively eye, and, if not quite handsome, was very near it. His address was good, and Coral felt herself in high luck. There was little leisure for speaking while they danced; but when they were seated at tea, she found him as agreeable as she had already given him credit for being. He talked with fluency and spirit--and there was an archness and pleasantry in his manner which interested, though it was hardly understood by her. After chatting some time on such matters as naturally arose from the objects around them, he suddenly addressed her with--\"I have hitherto been very remiss, madam, in the proper attentions of a partner here; I have not yet asked you how long you have been in Bath; whether you were ever here before; whether you have been at the Upper Rooms, the theatre, and the concert; and how you like the place altogether. I have been very negligent--but are you now at leisure to satisfy me in these particulars? If you are I will begin directly.\"\n\n \"You need not give yourself that trouble, sir.\"\n\n \"No trouble, I assure you, madam.\" Then forming his features into a set smile, and affectedly softening his voice, he added, with a simpering air, \"Have you been long in Bath, madam?\"\n\n \"About a week, sir,\" replied Coral, trying not to laugh.\n\n \"Really!\" with affected astonishment.\n\n \"Why should you be surprised, sir?\"\n\n \"Why, indeed!\" said he, in his natural tone. \"But some emotion must appear to be raised by your reply, and surprise is more easily assumed, and not less reasonable than any other. Now let us go on. Were you never here before, madam?\"\n\n \"Never, sir.\"\n\n \"Indeed! Have you yet honoured the Upper Rooms?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, I was there last Monday.\"\n\n \"Have you been to the theatre?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, I was at the play on Tuesday.\"\n\n \"To the concert?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, on Wednesday.\"\n\n \"And are you altogether pleased with Bath?\"\n\n \"Yes--I like it very well.\"\n\n \"Now I must give one smirk, and then we may be rational again.\" Coral turned away her head, not knowing whether she might venture to laugh. \"I see what you think of me,\" said he gravely--\"I shall make but a poor figure in your journal tomorrow.\"\n\n \"My journal!\"\n\n \"Yes, I know exactly what you will say: Friday, went to the Lower Rooms; wore my sprigged muslin robe with blue trimmings--plain black shoes--appeared to much advantage; but was strangely harassed by a queer, half-witted man, who would make me dance with him, and distressed me by his nonsense.\"\n\n \"Indeed I shall say no such thing.\"\n\n \"Shall I tell you what you ought to say?\"\n\n \"If you please.\"\n\n \"I danced with a very agreeable young man, introduced by Mr. King; had a great deal of conversation with him--seems a most extraordinary genius--hope I may know more of him. That, madam, is what I wish you to say.\"\n\n \"But, perhaps, I keep no journal.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you are not sitting in this room, and I am not sitting by you. These are points in which a doubt is equally possible. Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one? How are the civilities and compliments of every day to be related as they ought to be, unless noted down every evening in a journal? How are your various dresses to be remembered, and the particular state of your complexion, and curl of your hair to be described in all their diversities, without having constant recourse to a journal? My dear madam, I am not so ignorant of young ladies' ways as you wish to believe me; it is this delightful habit of journaling which largely contributes to form the easy style of writing for which ladies are so generally celebrated. Everybody allows that the talent of writing agreeable letters is peculiarly female. Nature may have done something, but I am sure it must be essentially assisted by the practice of keeping a journal.\"\n\n \"I have sometimes thought,\" said Coral, doubtingly, \"whether ladies do write so much better letters than gentlemen! That is--I should not think the superiority was always on our side.\"\n\n \"As far as I have had opportunity of judging, it appears to me that the usual style of letter-writing among women is faultless, except in three particulars.\"\n\n \"And what are they?\"\n\n \"A general deficiency of subject, a total inattention to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar.\"\n\n \"Upon my word! I need not have been afraid of disclaiming the compliment. You do not think too highly of us in that way.\"\n\n \"I should no more lay it down as a general rule that women write better letters than men, than that they sing better duets, or draw better landscapes. In every power, of which taste is the foundation, excellence is pretty fairly divided between the sexes.\"\n\n They were interrupted by Mrs. Precious: \"My dear Coral,\" said she, \"do take this pin out of my sleeve; I am afraid it has torn a hole already; I shall be quite sorry if it has, for this is a favourite gown, though it cost but nine shillings a yard.\"\n\n \"That is exactly what I should have guessed it, madam,\" said Mr. Hugo, looking at the muslin.\n\n \"Do you understand muslins, sir?\"\n\n \"Particularly well; I always buy my own cravats, and am allowed to be an excellent judge; and my sister has often trusted me in the choice of a gown. I bought one for her the other day, and it was pronounced to be a prodigious bargain by every lady who saw it. I gave but five shillings a yard for it, and a true Indian muslin.\"\n\n Mrs. Precious was quite struck by his genius. \"Men commonly take so little notice of those things,\" said she; \"I can never get Mr. Precious to know one of my gowns from another. You must be a great comfort to your sister, sir.\"\n\n \"I hope I am, madam.\"\n\n \"And pray, sir, what do you think of Miss Rafael's gown?\"\n\n \"It is very pretty, madam,\" said he, gravely examining it; \"but I do not think it will wash well; I am afraid it will fray.\"\n\n \"How can you,\" said Coral, laughing, \"be so--\" She had almost said \"strange.\"\n\n \"I am quite of your opinion, sir,\" replied Mrs. Precious; \"and so I told Miss Rafael when she bought it.\"\n\n \"But then you know, madam, muslin always turns to some account or other; Miss Rafael will get enough out of it for a handkerchief, or a cap, or a cloak. Muslin can never be said to be wasted. I have heard my sister say so forty times, when she has been extravagant in buying more than she wanted, or careless in cutting it to pieces.\"\n\n \"Bath is a charming place, sir; there are so many good shops here. We are sadly off in the country; not but what we have very good shops in Salisbury, but it is so far to go--eight miles is a long way; Mr. Precious says it is nine, measured nine; but I am sure it cannot be more than eight; and it is such a fag--I come back tired to death. Now, here one can step out of doors and get a thing in five minutes.\"\n\n Mr. Hugo was polite enough to seem interested in what she said; and she kept him on the subject of muslins till the dancing recommenced. Coral feared, as she listened to their discourse, that he indulged himself a little too much with the foibles of others. \"What are you thinking of so earnestly?\" said he, as they walked back to the ballroom; \"not of your partner, I hope, for, by that shake of the head, your meditations are not satisfactory.\"\n\n Coral coloured, and said, \"I was not thinking of anything.\"\n\n \"That is artful and deep, to be sure; but I had rather be told at once that you will not tell me.\"\n\n \"Well then, I will not.\"\n\n \"Thank you; for now we shall soon be acquainted, as I am authorized to tease you on this subject whenever we meet, and nothing in the world advances intimacy so much.\"\n\n They danced again; and, when the assembly closed, parted, on the lady's side at least, with a strong inclination for continuing the acquaintance. Whether she thought of him so much, while she drank her warm wine and water, and prepared herself for bed, as to dream of him when there, cannot be ascertained; but I hope it was no more than in a slight slumber, or a morning doze at most; for if it be true, as a celebrated writer has maintained, that no young lady can be justified in falling in love before the gentleman's love is declared,* it must be very improper that a young lady should dream of a gentleman before the gentleman is first known to have dreamt of her. How proper Mr. Hugo might be as a dreamer or a lover had not yet perhaps entered Mr. Precious's head, but that he was not objectionable as a common acquaintance for his young charge he was on inquiry satisfied; for he had early in the evening taken pains to know who her partner was, and had been assured of Mr. Hugo's being a clergyman, and of a very respectable family in Gloucestershire.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n With more than usual eagerness did Coral hasten to the pump-room the next day, secure within herself of seeing Mr. Hugo there before the morning were over, and ready to meet him with a smile; but no smile was demanded--Mr. Hugo did not appear. Every creature in Bath, except himself, was to be seen in the room at different periods of the fashionable hours; crowds of people were every moment passing in and out, up the steps and down; people whom nobody cared about, and nobody wanted to see; and he only was absent. \"What a delightful place Bath is,\" said Mrs. Precious as they sat down near the great clock, after parading the room till they were tired; \"and how pleasant it would be if we had any acquaintance here.\"\n\n This sentiment had been uttered so often in vain that Mrs. Precious had no particular reason to hope it would be followed with more advantage now; but we are told to \"despair of nothing we would attain,\" as \"unwearied diligence our point would gain\"; and the unwearied diligence with which she had every day wished for the same thing was at length to have its just reward, for hardly had she been seated ten minutes before a lady of about her own age, who was sitting by her, and had been looking at her attentively for several minutes, addressed her with great complaisance in these words: \"I think, madam, I cannot be mistaken; it is a long time since I had the pleasure of seeing you, but is not your name Precious?\" This question answered, as it readily was, the stranger pronounced hers to be Dominick; and Mrs. Precious immediately recognized the features of a former schoolfellow and intimate, whom she had seen only once since their respective marriages, and that many years ago. Their joy on this meeting was very great, as well it might, since they had been contented to know nothing of each other for the last fifteen years. Compliments on good looks now passed; and, after observing how time had slipped away since they were last together, how little they had thought of meeting in Bath, and what a pleasure it was to see an old friend, they proceeded to make inquiries and give intelligence as to their families, sisters, and cousins, talking both together, far more ready to give than to receive information, and each hearing very little of what the other said. Mrs. Dominick, however, had one great advantage as a talker, over Mrs. Precious, in a family of children; and when she expatiated on the talents of her sons, and the beauty of her daughters, when she related their different situations and views--that Ashlie was at Oxford, Edward at Merchant Taylors', and William at sea--and all of them more beloved and respected in their different station than any other three beings ever were, Mrs. Precious had no similar information to give, no similar triumphs to press on the unwilling and unbelieving ear of her friend, and was forced to sit and appear to listen to all these maternal effusions, consoling herself, however, with the discovery, which her keen eye soon made, that the lace on Mrs. Dominick's pelisse was not half so handsome as that on her own.\n\n \"Here come my dear girls,\" cried Mrs. Dominick, pointing at three smart-looking females who, arm in arm, were then moving towards her. \"My dear Mrs. Precious, I long to introduce them; they will be so delighted to see you: the tallest is Rowena, my eldest; is not she a fine young woman? The others are very much admired too, but I believe Rowena is the handsomest.\"\n\n The Miss Dominicks were introduced; and Miss Rafael, who had been for a short time forgotten, was introduced likewise. The name seemed to strike them all; and, after speaking to her with great civility, the eldest young lady observed aloud to the rest, \"How excessively like her brother Miss Rafael is!\"\n\n \"The very picture of him indeed!\" cried the mother--and \"I should have known her anywhere for his sister!\" was repeated by them all, two or three times over. For a moment Coral was surprised; but Mrs. Dominick and her daughters had scarcely begun the history of their acquaintance with Mr. Tyrese Rafael, before she remembered that her eldest brother had lately formed an intimacy with a young man of his own college, of the name of Dominick; and that he had spent the last week of the Christmas vacation with his family, near London.\n\n The whole being explained, many obliging things were said by the Miss Dominicks of their wish of being better acquainted with her; of being considered as already friends, through the friendship of their brothers, etc., which Coral heard with pleasure, and answered with all the pretty expressions she could command; and, as the first proof of amity, she was soon invited to accept an arm of the eldest Miss Dominick, and take a turn with her about the room. Coral was delighted with this extension of her Bath acquaintance, and almost forgot Mr. Hugo while she talked to Miss Dominick. Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.\n\n Their conversation turned upon those subjects, of which the free discussion has generally much to do in perfecting a sudden intimacy between two young ladies: such as dress, balls, flirtations, and quizzes. Miss Dominick, however, being four years older than Miss Rafael, and at least four years better informed, had a very decided advantage in discussing such points; she could compare the balls of Bath with those of Tunbridge, its fashions with the fashions of London; could rectify the opinions of her new friend in many articles of tasteful attire; could discover a flirtation between any gentleman and lady who only smiled on each other; and point out a quiz through the thickness of a crowd. These powers received due admiration from Coral, to whom they were entirely new; and the respect which they naturally inspired might have been too great for familiarity, had not the easy gaiety of Miss Dominick's manners, and her frequent expressions of delight on this acquaintance with her, softened down every feeling of awe, and left nothing but tender affection. Their increasing attachment was not to be satisfied with half a dozen turns in the pump-room, but required, when they all quitted it together, that Miss Dominick should accompany Miss Rafael to the very door of Mr. Precious's house; and that they should there part with a most affectionate and lengthened shake of hands, after learning, to their mutual relief, that they should see each other across the theatre at night, and say their prayers in the same chapel the next morning. Coral then ran directly upstairs, and watched Miss Dominick's progress down the street from the drawing-room window; admired the graceful spirit of her walk, the fashionable air of her figure and dress; and felt grateful, as well she might, for the chance which had procured her such a friend.\n\n Mrs. Dominick was a widow, and not a very rich one; she was a good-humoured, well-meaning woman, and a very indulgent mother. Her eldest daughter had great personal beauty, and the younger ones, by pretending to be as handsome as their sister, imitating her air, and dressing in the same style, did very well.\n\n This brief account of the family is intended to supersede the necessity of a long and minute detail from Mrs. Dominick herself, of her past adventures and sufferings, which might otherwise be expected to occupy the three or four following chapters; in which the worthlessness of lords and attorneys might be set forth, and conversations, which had passed twenty years before, be minutely repeated.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Coral was not so much engaged at the theatre that evening, in returning the nods and smiles of Miss Dominick, though they certainly claimed much of her leisure, as to forget to look with an inquiring eye for Mr. Hugo in every box which her eye could reach; but she looked in vain. Mr. Hugo was no fonder of the play than the pump-room. She hoped to be more fortunate the next day; and when her wishes for fine weather were answered by seeing a beautiful morning, she hardly felt a doubt of it; for a fine Sunday in Bath empties every house of its inhabitants, and all the world appears on such an occasion to walk about and tell their acquaintance what a charming day it is.\n\n As soon as divine service was over, the Dominicks and Preciouss eagerly joined each other; and after staying long enough in the pump-room to discover that the crowd was insupportable, and that there was not a genteel face to be seen, which everybody discovers every Sunday throughout the season, they hastened away to the Crescent, to breathe the fresh air of better company. Here Coral and Rowena, arm in arm, again tasted the sweets of friendship in an unreserved conversation; they talked much, and with much enjoyment; but again was Coral disappointed in her hope of reseeing her partner. He was nowhere to be met with; every search for him was equally unsuccessful, in morning lounges or evening assemblies; neither at the Upper nor Lower Rooms, at dressed or undressed balls, was he perceivable; nor among the walkers, the horsemen, or the curricle-drivers of the morning. His name was not in the pump-room book, and curiosity could do no more. He must be gone from Bath. Yet he had not mentioned that his stay would be so short! This sort of mysteriousness, which is always so becoming in a hero, threw a fresh grace in Coral's imagination around his person and manners, and increased her anxiety to know more of him. From the Dominicks she could learn nothing, for they had been only two days in Bath before they met with Mrs. Precious. It was a subject, however, in which she often indulged with her fair friend, from whom she received every possible encouragement to continue to think of him; and his impression on her fancy was not suffered therefore to weaken. Rowena was very sure that he must be a charming young man, and was equally sure that he must have been delighted with her dear Coral, and would therefore shortly return. She liked him the better for being a clergyman, \"for she must confess herself very partial to the profession\"; and something like a sigh escaped her as she said it. Perhaps Coral was wrong in not demanding the cause of that gentle emotion--but she was not experienced enough in the finesse of love, or the duties of friendship, to know when delicate raillery was properly called for, or when a confidence should be forced.\n\n Mrs. Precious was now quite happy--quite satisfied with Bath. She had found some acquaintance, had been so lucky too as to find in them the family of a most worthy old friend; and, as the completion of good fortune, had found these friends by no means so expensively dressed as herself. Her daily expressions were no longer, \"I wish we had some acquaintance in Bath!\" They were changed into, \"How glad I am we have met with Mrs. Dominick!\" and she was as eager in promoting the intercourse of the two families, as her young charge and Rowena themselves could be; never satisfied with the day unless she spent the chief of it by the side of Mrs. Dominick, in what they called conversation, but in which there was scarcely ever any exchange of opinion, and not often any resemblance of subject, for Mrs. Dominick talked chiefly of her children, and Mrs. Precious of her gowns.\n\n The progress of the friendship between Coral and Rowena was quick as its beginning had been warm, and they passed so rapidly through every gradation of increasing tenderness that there was shortly no fresh proof of it to be given to their friends or themselves. They called each other by their Christian name, were always arm in arm when they walked, pinned up each other's train for the dance, and were not to be divided in the set; and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding--joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! If the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens--there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. \"I am no novel-reader--I seldom look into novels--Do not imagine that I often read novels--It is really very well for a novel.\" Such is the common cant. \"And what are you reading, Miss--?\" \"Oh! It is only a novel!\" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. \"It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda\"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The following conversation, which took place between the two friends in the pump-room one morning, after an acquaintance of eight or nine days, is given as a specimen of their very warm attachment, and of the delicacy, discretion, originality of thought, and literary taste which marked the reasonableness of that attachment.\n\n They met by appointment; and as Rowena had arrived nearly five minutes before her friend, her first address naturally was, \"My dearest creature, what can have made you so late? I have been waiting for you at least this age!\"\n\n \"Have you, indeed! I am very sorry for it; but really I thought I was in very good time. It is but just one. I hope you have not been here long?\"\n\n \"Oh! These ten ages at least. I am sure I have been here this half hour. But now, let us go and sit down at the other end of the room, and enjoy ourselves. I have an hundred things to say to you. In the first place, I was so afraid it would rain this morning, just as I wanted to set off; it looked very showery, and that would have thrown me into agonies! Do you know, I saw the prettiest hat you can imagine, in a shop window in Milsom Street just now--very like yours, only with coquelicot ribbons instead of green; I quite longed for it. But, my dearest Coral, what have you been doing with yourself all this morning? Have you gone on with Udolpho?\"\n\n \"Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the black veil.\"\n\n \"Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh! I would not tell you what is behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?\"\n\n \"Oh! Yes, quite; what can it be? But do not tell me--I would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentina's skeleton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it. I assure you, if it had not been to meet you, I would not have come away from it for all the world.\"\n\n \"Dear creature! How much I am obliged to you; and when you have finished Udolpho, we will read the Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.\"\n\n \"Have you, indeed! How glad I am! What are they all?\"\n\n \"I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenbach, Clermont, Mysterious Warnings, Necromancer of the Black Forest, Midnight Bell, Orphan of the Rhine, and Horrid Mysteries. Those will last us some time.\"\n\n \"Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?\"\n\n \"Yes, quite sure; for a particular friend of mine, a Miss Andrews, a sweet girl, one of the sweetest creatures in the world, has read every one of them. I wish you knew Miss Andrews, you would be delighted with her. She is netting herself the sweetest cloak you can conceive. I think her as beautiful as an angel, and I am so vexed with the men for not admiring her! I scold them all amazingly about it.\"\n\n \"Scold them! Do you scold them for not admiring her?\"\n\n \"Yes, that I do. There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature. My attachments are always excessively strong. I told Captain Hunt at one of our assemblies this winter that if he was to tease me all night, I would not dance with him, unless he would allow Miss Andrews to be as beautiful as an angel. The men think us incapable of real friendship, you know, and I am determined to show them the difference. Now, if I were to hear anybody speak slightingly of you, I should fire up in a moment: but that is not at all likely, for you are just the kind of girl to be a great favourite with the men.\"\n\n \"Oh, dear!\" cried Coral, colouring. \"How can you say so?\"\n\n \"I know you very well; you have so much animation, which is exactly what Miss Andrews wants, for I must confess there is something amazingly insipid about her. Oh! I must tell you, that just after we parted yesterday, I saw a young man looking at you so earnestly--I am sure he is in love with you.\" Coral coloured, and disclaimed again. Rowena laughed. \"It is very true, upon my honour, but I see how it is; you are indifferent to everybody's admiration, except that of one gentleman, who shall be nameless. Nay, I cannot blame you\"--speaking more seriously--\"your feelings are easily understood. Where the heart is really attached, I know very well how little one can be pleased with the attention of anybody else. Everything is so insipid, so uninteresting, that does not relate to the beloved object! I can perfectly comprehend your feelings.\"\n\n \"But you should not persuade me that I think so very much about Mr. Hugo, for perhaps I may never see him again.\"\n\n \"Not see him again! My dearest creature, do not talk of it. I am sure you would be miserable if you thought so!\"\n\n \"No, indeed, I should not. I do not pretend to say that I was not very much pleased with him; but while I have Udolpho to read, I feel as if nobody could make me miserable. Oh! The dreadful black veil! My dear Rowena, I am sure there must be Laurentina's skeleton behind it.\"\n\n \"It is so odd to me, that you should never have read Udolpho before; but I suppose Mrs. Rafael objects to novels.\"\n\n \"No, she does not. She very often reads Sir Charles Grandison herself; but new books do not fall in our way.\"\n\n \"Sir Charles Grandison! That is an amazing horrid book, is it not? I remember Miss Andrews could not get through the first volume.\"\n\n \"It is not like Udolpho at all; but yet I think it is very entertaining.\"\n\n \"Do you indeed! You surprise me; I thought it had not been readable. But, my dearest Coral, have you settled what to wear on your head tonight? I am determined at all events to be dressed exactly like you. The men take notice of that sometimes, you know.\"\n\n \"But it does not signify if they do,\" said Coral, very innocently.\n\n \"Signify! Oh, heavens! I make it a rule never to mind what they say. They are very often amazingly impertinent if you do not treat them with spirit, and make them keep their distance.\"\n\n \"Are they? Well, I never observed that. They always behave very well to me.\"\n\n \"Oh! They give themselves such airs. They are the most conceited creatures in the world, and think themselves of so much importance! By the by, though I have thought of it a hundred times, I have always forgot to ask you what is your favourite complexion in a man. Do you like them best dark or fair?\"\n\n \"I hardly know. I never much thought about it. Something between both, I think. Brown--not fair, and--and not very dark.\"\n\n \"Very well, Coral. That is exactly he. I have not forgot your description of Mr. Hugo--'a brown skin, with dark eyes, and rather dark hair.' Well, my taste is different. I prefer light eyes, and as to complexion--do you know--I like a sallow better than any other. You must not betray me, if you should ever meet with one of your acquaintance answering that description.\"\n\n \"Betray you! What do you mean?\"\n\n \"Nay, do not distress me. I believe I have said too much. Let us drop the subject.\"\n\n Coral, in some amazement, complied, and after remaining a few moments silent, was on the point of reverting to what interested her at that time rather more than anything else in the world, Laurentina's skeleton, when her friend prevented her, by saying, \"For heaven's sake! Let us move away from this end of the room. Do you know, there are two odious young men who have been staring at me this half hour. They really put me quite out of countenance. Let us go and look at the arrivals. They will hardly follow us there.\"\n\n Away they walked to the book; and while Rowena examined the names, it was Coral's employment to watch the proceedings of these alarming young men.\n\n \"They are not coming this way, are they? I hope they are not so impertinent as to follow us. Pray let me know if they are coming. I am determined I will not look up.\"\n\n In a few moments Coral, with unaffected pleasure, assured her that she need not be longer uneasy, as the gentlemen had just left the pump-room.\n\n \"And which way are they gone?\" said Rowena, turning hastily round. \"One was a very good-looking young man.\"\n\n \"They went towards the church-yard.\"\n\n \"Well, I am amazingly glad I have got rid of them! And now, what say you to going to Edgar's Buildings with me, and looking at my new hat? You said you should like to see it.\"\n\n Coral readily agreed. \"Only,\" she added, \"perhaps we may overtake the two young men.\"\n\n \"Oh! Never mind that. If we make haste, we shall pass by them presently, and I am dying to show you my hat.\"\n\n \"But if we only wait a few minutes, there will be no danger of our seeing them at all.\"\n\n \"I shall not pay them any such compliment, I assure you. I have no notion of treating men with such respect. That is the way to spoil them.\"\n\n Coral had nothing to oppose against such reasoning; and therefore, to show the independence of Miss Dominick, and her resolution of humbling the sex, they set off immediately as fast as they could walk, in pursuit of the two young men.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Half a minute conducted them through the pump-yard to the archway, opposite Union Passage; but here they were stopped. Everybody acquainted with Bath may remember the difficulties of crossing Cheap Street at this point; it is indeed a street of so impertinent a nature, so unfortunately connected with the great London and Oxford roads, and the principal inn of the city, that a day never passes in which parties of ladies, however important their business, whether in quest of pastry, millinery, or even (as in the present case) of young men, are not detained on one side or other by carriages, horsemen, or carts. This evil had been felt and lamented, at least three times a day, by Rowena since her residence in Bath; and she was now fated to feel and lament it once more, for at the very moment of coming opposite to Union Passage, and within view of the two gentlemen who were proceeding through the crowds, and threading the gutters of that interesting alley, they were prevented crossing by the approach of a gig, driven along on bad pavement by a most knowing-looking coachman with all the vehemence that could most fitly endanger the lives of himself, his companion, and his horse.\n\n \"Oh, these odious gigs!\" said Rowena, looking up. \"How I detest them.\" But this detestation, though so just, was of short duration, for she looked again and exclaimed, \"Delightful! Mr. Rafael and my brother!\"\n\n \"Good heaven! 'Tis Tyrese!\" was uttered at the same moment by Coral; and, on catching the young men's eyes, the horse was immediately checked with a violence which almost threw him on his haunches, and the servant having now scampered up, the gentlemen jumped out, and the equipage was delivered to his care.\n\n Coral, by whom this meeting was wholly unexpected, received her brother with the liveliest pleasure; and he, being of a very amiable disposition, and sincerely attached to her, gave every proof on his side of equal satisfaction, which he could have leisure to do, while the bright eyes of Miss Dominick were incessantly challenging his notice; and to her his devoirs were speedily paid, with a mixture of joy and embarrassment which might have informed Coral, had she been more expert in the development of other people's feelings, and less simply engrossed by her own, that her brother thought her friend quite as pretty as she could do herself.\n\n Ashlie Dominick, who in the meantime had been giving orders about the horses, soon joined them, and from him she directly received the amends which were her due; for while he slightly and carelessly touched the hand of Rowena, on her he bestowed a whole scrape and half a short bow. He was a stout young man of middling height, who, with a plain face and ungraceful form, seemed fearful of being too handsome unless he wore the dress of a groom, and too much like a gentleman unless he were easy where he ought to be civil, and impudent where he might be allowed to be easy. He took out his watch: \"How long do you think we have been running it from Tetbury, Miss Rafael?\"\n\n \"I do not know the distance.\" Her brother told her that it was twenty-three miles.\n\n \"Three and twenty!\" cried Dominick. \"Five and twenty if it is an inch.\" Rafael remonstrated, pleaded the authority of road-books, innkeepers, and milestones; but his friend disregarded them all; he had a surer test of distance. \"I know it must be five and twenty,\" said he, \"by the time we have been doing it. It is now half after one; we drove out of the inn-yard at Tetbury as the town clock struck eleven; and I defy any man in England to make my horse go less than ten miles an hour in harness; that makes it exactly twenty-five.\"\n\n \"You have lost an hour,\" said Rafael; \"it was only ten o'clock when we came from Tetbury.\"\n\n \"Ten o'clock! It was eleven, upon my soul! I counted every stroke. This brother of yours would persuade me out of my senses, Miss Rafael; do but look at my horse; did you ever see an animal so made for speed in your life?\" (The servant had just mounted the carriage and was driving off.) \"Such true blood! Three hours and and a half indeed coming only three and twenty miles! Look at that creature, and suppose it possible if you can.\"\n\n \"He does look very hot, to be sure.\"\n\n \"Hot! He had not turned a hair till we came to Walcot Church; but look at his forehand; look at his loins; only see how he moves; that horse cannot go less than ten miles an hour: tie his legs and he will get on. What do you think of my gig, Miss Rafael? A neat one, is not it? Well hung; town-built; I have not had it a month. It was built for a Christchurch man, a friend of mine, a very good sort of fellow; he ran it a few weeks, till, I believe, it was convenient to have done with it. I happened just then to be looking out for some light thing of the kind, though I had pretty well determined on a curricle too; but I chanced to meet him on Magdalen Bridge, as he was driving into Oxford, last term: 'Ah! Dominick,' said he, 'do you happen to want such a little thing as this? It is a capital one of the kind, but I am cursed tired of it.' 'Oh! D--,' said I; 'I am your man; what do you ask?' And how much do you think he did, Miss Rafael?\"\n\n \"I am sure I cannot guess at all.\"\n\n \"Curricle-hung, you see; seat, trunk, sword-case, splashing-board, lamps, silver moulding, all you see complete; the iron-work as good as new, or better. He asked fifty guineas; I closed with him directly, threw down the money, and the carriage was mine.\"\n\n \"And I am sure,\" said Coral, \"I know so little of such things that I cannot judge whether it was cheap or dear.\"\n\n \"Neither one nor t'other; I might have got it for less, I dare say; but I hate haggling, and poor Freeman wanted cash.\"\n\n \"That was very good-natured of you,\" said Coral, quite pleased.\n\n \"Oh! D---- it, when one has the means of doing a kind thing by a friend, I hate to be pitiful.\"\n\n An inquiry now took place into the intended movements of the young ladies; and, on finding whither they were going, it was decided that the gentlemen should accompany them to Edgar's Buildings, and pay their respects to Mrs. Dominick. Tyrese and Rowena led the way; and so well satisfied was the latter with her lot, so contentedly was she endeavouring to ensure a pleasant walk to him who brought the double recommendation of being her brother's friend, and her friend's brother, so pure and uncoquettish were her feelings, that, though they overtook and passed the two offending young men in Milsom Street, she was so far from seeking to attract their notice, that she looked back at them only three times.\n\n Ashlie Dominick kept of course with Coral, and, after a few minutes' silence, renewed the conversation about his gig. \"You will find, however, Miss Rafael, it would be reckoned a cheap thing by some people, for I might have sold it for ten guineas more the next day; Jackson, of Oriel, bid me sixty at once; Rafael was with me at the time.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Rafael, who overheard this; \"but you forget that your horse was included.\"\n\n \"My horse! Oh, d---- it! I would not sell my horse for a hundred. Are you fond of an open carriage, Miss Rafael?\"\n\n \"Yes, very; I have hardly ever an opportunity of being in one; but I am particularly fond of it.\"\n\n \"I am glad of it; I will drive you out in mine every day.\"\n\n \"Thank you,\" said Coral, in some distress, from a doubt of the propriety of accepting such an offer.\n\n \"I will drive you up Lansdown Hill tomorrow.\"\n\n \"Thank you; but will not your horse want rest?\"\n\n \"Rest! He has only come three and twenty miles today; all nonsense; nothing ruins horses so much as rest; nothing knocks them up so soon. No, no; I shall exercise mine at the average of four hours every day while I am here.\"\n\n \"Shall you indeed!\" said Coral very seriously. \"That will be forty miles a day.\"\n\n \"Forty! Aye, fifty, for what I care. Well, I will drive you up Lansdown tomorrow; mind, I am engaged.\"\n\n \"How delightful that will be!\" cried Rowena, turning round. \"My dearest Coral, I quite envy you; but I am afraid, brother, you will not have room for a third.\"\n\n \"A third indeed! No, no; I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters about; that would be a good joke, faith! Rafael must take care of you.\"\n\n This brought on a dialogue of civilities between the other two; but Coral heard neither the particulars nor the result. Her companion's discourse now sunk from its hitherto animated pitch to nothing more than a short decisive sentence of praise or condemnation on the face of every woman they met; and Coral, after listening and agreeing as long as she could, with all the civility and deference of the youthful female mind, fearful of hazarding an opinion of its own in opposition to that of a self-assured man, especially where the beauty of her own sex is concerned, ventured at length to vary the subject by a question which had been long uppermost in her thoughts; it was, \"Have you ever read Udolpho, Mr. Dominick?\"\n\n \"Udolpho! Oh, Lord! Not I; I never read novels; I have something else to do.\"\n\n Coral, humbled and ashamed, was going to apologize for her question, but he prevented her by saying, \"Novels are all so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones, except The Monk; I read that t'other day; but as for all the others, they are the stupidest things in creation.\"\n\n \"I think you must like Udolpho, if you were to read it; it is so very interesting.\"\n\n \"Not I, faith! No, if I read any, it shall be Mrs. Radcliffe's; her novels are amusing enough; they are worth reading; some fun and nature in them.\"\n\n \"Udolpho was written by Mrs. Radcliffe,\" said Coral, with some hesitation, from the fear of mortifying him.\n\n \"No sure; was it? Aye, I remember, so it was; I was thinking of that other stupid book, written by that woman they make such a fuss about, she who married the French emigrant.\"\n\n \"I suppose you mean Camilla?\"\n\n \"Yes, that's the book; such unnatural stuff! An old man playing at see-saw, I took up the first volume once and looked it over, but I soon found it would not do; indeed I guessed what sort of stuff it must be before I saw it: as soon as I heard she had married an emigrant, I was sure I should never be able to get through it.\"\n\n \"I have never read it.\"\n\n \"You had no loss, I assure you; it is the horridest nonsense you can imagine; there is nothing in the world in it but an old man's playing at see-saw and learning Latin; upon my soul there is not.\"\n\n This critique, the justness of which was unfortunately lost on poor Coral, brought them to the door of Mrs. Dominick's lodgings, and the feelings of the discerning and unprejudiced reader of Camilla gave way to the feelings of the dutiful and affectionate son, as they met Mrs. Dominick, who had descried them from above, in the passage. \"Ah, Mother! How do you do?\" said he, giving her a hearty shake of the hand. \"Where did you get that quiz of a hat? It makes you look like an old witch. Here is Rafael and I come to stay a few days with you, so you must look out for a couple of good beds somewhere near.\" And this address seemed to satisfy all the fondest wishes of the mother's heart, for she received him with the most delighted and exulting affection. On his two younger sisters he then bestowed an equal portion of his fraternal tenderness, for he asked each of them how they did, and observed that they both looked very ugly.\n\n These manners did not please Coral; but he was Tyrese's friend and Rowena's brother; and her judgment was further bought off by Rowena's assuring her, when they withdrew to see the new hat, that Ashlie thought her the most charming girl in the world, and by Ashlie's engaging her before they parted to dance with him that evening. Had she been older or vainer, such attacks might have done little; but, where youth and diffidence are united, it requires uncommon steadiness of reason to resist the attraction of being called the most charming girl in the world, and of being so very early engaged as a partner; and the consequence was that, when the two Rafaels, after sitting an hour with the Dominicks, set off to walk together to Mr. Precious's, and Tyrese, as the door was closed on them, said, \"Well, Coral, how do you like my friend Dominick?\" instead of answering, as she probably would have done, had there been no friendship and no flattery in the case, \"I do not like him at all,\" she directly replied, \"I like him very much; he seems very agreeable.\"\n\n \"He is as good-natured a fellow as ever lived; a little of a rattle; but that will recommend him to your sex, I believe: and how do you like the rest of the family?\"\n\n \"Very, very much indeed: Rowena particularly.\"\n\n \"I am very glad to hear you say so; she is just the kind of young woman I could wish to see you attached to; she has so much good sense, and is so thoroughly unaffected and amiable; I always wanted you to know her; and she seems very fond of you. She said the highest things in your praise that could possibly be; and the praise of such a girl as Miss Dominick even you, Coral,\" taking her hand with affection, \"may be proud of.\"\n\n \"Indeed I am,\" she replied; \"I love her exceedingly, and am delighted to find that you like her too. You hardly mentioned anything of her when you wrote to me after your visit there.\"\n\n \"Because I thought I should soon see you myself. I hope you will be a great deal together while you are in Bath. She is a most amiable girl; such a superior understanding! How fond all the family are of her; she is evidently the general favourite; and how much she must be admired in such a place as this--is not she?\"\n\n \"Yes, very much indeed, I fancy; Mr. Precious thinks her the prettiest girl in Bath.\"\n\n \"I dare say he does; and I do not know any man who is a better judge of beauty than Mr. Precious. I need not ask you whether you are happy here, my dear Coral; with such a companion and friend as Rowena Dominick, it would be impossible for you to be otherwise; and the Preciouss, I am sure, are very kind to you?\"\n\n \"Yes, very kind; I never was so happy before; and now you are come it will be more delightful than ever; how good it is of you to come so far on purpose to see me.\"\n\n Tyrese accepted this tribute of gratitude, and qualified his conscience for accepting it too, by saying with perfect sincerity, \"Indeed, Coral, I love you dearly.\"\n\n Inquiries and communications concerning brothers and sisters, the situation of some, the growth of the rest, and other family matters now passed between them, and continued, with only one small digression on Tyrese's part, in praise of Miss Dominick, till they reached Pulteney Street, where he was welcomed with great kindness by Mr. and Mrs. Precious, invited by the former to dine with them, and summoned by the latter to guess the price and weigh the merits of a new muff and tippet. A pre-engagement in Edgar's Buildings prevented his accepting the invitation of one friend, and obliged him to hurry away as soon as he had satisfied the demands of the other. The time of the two parties uniting in the Octagon Room being correctly adjusted, Coral was then left to the luxury of a raised, restless, and frightened imagination over the pages of Udolpho, lost from all worldly concerns of dressing and dinner, incapable of soothing Mrs. Precious's fears on the delay of an expected dressmaker, and having only one minute in sixty to bestow even on the reflection of her own felicity, in being already engaged for the evening.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n In spite of Udolpho and the dressmaker, however, the party from Pulteney Street reached the Upper Rooms in very good time. The Dominicks and Tyrese Rafael were there only two minutes before them; and Rowena having gone through the usual ceremonial of meeting her friend with the most smiling and affectionate haste, of admiring the set of her gown, and envying the curl of her hair, they followed their chaperones, arm in arm, into the ballroom, whispering to each other whenever a thought occurred, and supplying the place of many ideas by a squeeze of the hand or a smile of affection.\n\n The dancing began within a few minutes after they were seated; and Tyrese, who had been engaged quite as long as his sister, was very importunate with Rowena to stand up; but Ashlie was gone into the card-room to speak to a friend, and nothing, she declared, should induce her to join the set before her dear Coral could join it too. \"I assure you,\" said she, \"I would not stand up without your dear sister for all the world; for if I did we should certainly be separated the whole evening.\" Coral accepted this kindness with gratitude, and they continued as they were for three minutes longer, when Rowena, who had been talking to Tyrese on the other side of her, turned again to his sister and whispered, \"My dear creature, I am afraid I must leave you, your brother is so amazingly impatient to begin; I know you will not mind my going away, and I dare say Ashlie will be back in a moment, and then you may easily find me out.\" Coral, though a little disappointed, had too much good nature to make any opposition, and the others rising up, Rowena had only time to press her friend's hand and say, \"Good-bye, my dear love,\" before they hurried off. The younger Miss Dominicks being also dancing, Coral was left to the mercy of Mrs. Dominick and Mrs. Precious, between whom she now remained. She could not help being vexed at the non-appearance of Mr. Dominick, for she not only longed to be dancing, but was likewise aware that, as the real dignity of her situation could not be known, she was sharing with the scores of other young ladies still sitting down all the discredit of wanting a partner. To be disgraced in the eye of the world, to wear the appearance of infamy while her heart is all purity, her actions all innocence, and the misconduct of another the true source of her debasement, is one of those circumstances which peculiarly belong to the heroine's life, and her fortitude under it what particularly dignifies her character. Coral had fortitude too; she suffered, but no murmur passed her lips.\n\n From this state of humiliation, she was roused, at the end of ten minutes, to a pleasanter feeling, by seeing, not Mr. Dominick, but Mr. Hugo, within three yards of the place where they sat; he seemed to be moving that way, but he did not see her, and therefore the smile and the blush, which his sudden reappearance raised in Coral, passed away without sullying her heroic importance. He looked as handsome and as lively as ever, and was talking with interest to a fashionable and pleasing-looking young woman, who leant on his arm, and whom Coral immediately guessed to be his sister; thus unthinkingly throwing away a fair opportunity of considering him lost to her forever, by being married already. But guided only by what was simple and probable, it had never entered her head that Mr. Hugo could be married; he had not behaved, he had not talked, like the married men to whom she had been used; he had never mentioned a wife, and he had acknowledged a sister. From these circumstances sprang the instant conclusion of his sister's now being by his side; and therefore, instead of turning of a deathlike paleness and falling in a fit on Mrs. Precious's bosom, Coral sat erect, in the perfect use of her senses, and with cheeks only a little redder than usual.\n\n Mr. Hugo and his companion, who continued, though slowly, to approach, were immediately preceded by a lady, an acquaintance of Mrs. Dominick; and this lady stopping to speak to her, they, as belonging to her, stopped likewise, and Coral, catching Mr. Hugo's eye, instantly received from him the smiling tribute of recognition. She returned it with pleasure, and then advancing still nearer, he spoke both to her and Mrs. Precious, by whom he was very civilly acknowledged. \"I am very happy to see you again, sir, indeed; I was afraid you had left Bath.\" He thanked her for her fears, and said that he had quitted it for a week, on the very morning after his having had the pleasure of seeing her.\n\n \"Well, sir, and I dare say you are not sorry to be back again, for it is just the place for young people--and indeed for everybody else too. I tell Mr. Precious, when he talks of being sick of it, that I am sure he should not complain, for it is so very agreeable a place, that it is much better to be here than at home at this dull time of year. I tell him he is quite in luck to be sent here for his health.\"\n\n \"And I hope, madam, that Mr. Precious will be obliged to like the place, from finding it of service to him.\"\n\n \"Thank you, sir. I have no doubt that he will. A neighbour of ours, Dr. Skinner, was here for his health last winter, and came away quite stout.\"\n\n \"That circumstance must give great encouragement.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir--and Dr. Skinner and his family were here three months; so I tell Mr. Precious he must not be in a hurry to get away.\"\n\n Here they were interrupted by a request from Mrs. Dominick to Mrs. Precious, that she would move a little to accommodate Mrs. Hughes and Miss Hugo with seats, as they had agreed to join their party. This was accordingly done, Mr. Hugo still continuing standing before them; and after a few minutes' consideration, he asked Coral to dance with him. This compliment, delightful as it was, produced severe mortification to the lady; and in giving her denial, she expressed her sorrow on the occasion so very much as if she really felt it that had Dominick, who joined her just afterwards, been half a minute earlier, he might have thought her sufferings rather too acute. The very easy manner in which he then told her that he had kept her waiting did not by any means reconcile her more to her lot; nor did the particulars which he entered into while they were standing up, of the horses and dogs of the friend whom he had just left, and of a proposed exchange of terriers between them, interest her so much as to prevent her looking very often towards that part of the room where she had left Mr. Hugo. Of her dear Rowena, to whom she particularly longed to point out that gentleman, she could see nothing. They were in different sets. She was separated from all her party, and away from all her acquaintance; one mortification succeeded another, and from the whole she deduced this useful lesson, that to go previously engaged to a ball does not necessarily increase either the dignity or enjoyment of a young lady. From such a moralizing strain as this, she was suddenly roused by a touch on the shoulder, and turning round, perceived Mrs. Hughes directly behind her, attended by Miss Hugo and a gentleman. \"I beg your pardon, Miss Rafael,\" said she, \"for this liberty--but I cannot anyhow get to Miss Dominick, and Mrs. Dominick said she was sure you would not have the least objection to letting in this young lady by you.\" Mrs. Hughes could not have applied to any creature in the room more happy to oblige her than Coral. The young ladies were introduced to each other, Miss Hugo expressing a proper sense of such goodness, Miss Rafael with the real delicacy of a generous mind making light of the obligation; and Mrs. Hughes, satisfied with having so respectably settled her young charge, returned to her party.\n\n Miss Hugo had a good figure, a pretty face, and a very agreeable countenance; and her air, though it had not all the decided pretension, the resolute stylishness of Miss Dominick's, had more real elegance. Her manners showed good sense and good breeding; they were neither shy nor affectedly open; and she seemed capable of being young, attractive, and at a ball without wanting to fix the attention of every man near her, and without exaggerated feelings of ecstatic delight or inconceivable vexation on every little trifling occurrence. Coral, interested at once by her appearance and her relationship to Mr. Hugo, was desirous of being acquainted with her, and readily talked therefore whenever she could think of anything to say, and had courage and leisure for saying it. But the hindrance thrown in the way of a very speedy intimacy, by the frequent want of one or more of these requisites, prevented their doing more than going through the first rudiments of an acquaintance, by informing themselves how well the other liked Bath, how much she admired its buildings and surrounding country, whether she drew, or played, or sang, and whether she was fond of riding on horseback.\n\n The two dances were scarcely concluded before Coral found her arm gently seized by her faithful Rowena, who in great spirits exclaimed, \"At last I have got you. My dearest creature, I have been looking for you this hour. What could induce you to come into this set, when you knew I was in the other? I have been quite wretched without you.\"\n\n \"My dear Rowena, how was it possible for me to get at you? I could not even see where you were.\"\n\n \"So I told your brother all the time--but he would not believe me. Do go and see for her, Mr. Rafael, said I--but all in vain--he would not stir an inch. Was not it so, Mr. Rafael? But you men are all so immoderately lazy! I have been scolding him to such a degree, my dear Coral, you would be quite amazed. You know I never stand upon ceremony with such people.\"\n\n \"Look at that young lady with the white beads round her head,\" whispered Coral, detaching her friend from Tyrese. \"It is Mr. Hugo's sister.\"\n\n \"Oh! Heavens! You don't say so! Let me look at her this moment. What a delightful girl! I never saw anything half so beautiful! But where is her all-conquering brother? Is he in the room? Point him out to me this instant, if he is. I die to see him. Mr. Rafael, you are not to listen. We are not talking about you.\"\n\n \"But what is all this whispering about? What is going on?\"\n\n \"There now, I knew how it would be. You men have such restless curiosity! Talk of the curiosity of women, indeed! 'Tis nothing. But be satisfied, for you are not to know anything at all of the matter.\"\n\n \"And is that likely to satisfy me, do you think?\"\n\n \"Well, I declare I never knew anything like you. What can it signify to you, what we are talking of. Perhaps we are talking about you; therefore I would advise you not to listen, or you may happen to hear something not very agreeable.\"\n\n In this commonplace chatter, which lasted some time, the original subject seemed entirely forgotten; and though Coral was very well pleased to have it dropped for a while, she could not avoid a little suspicion at the total suspension of all Rowena's impatient desire to see Mr. Hugo. When the orchestra struck up a fresh dance, Tyrese would have led his fair partner away, but she resisted. \"I tell you, Mr. Rafael,\" she cried, \"I would not do such a thing for all the world. How can you be so teasing; only conceive, my dear Coral, what your brother wants me to do. He wants me to dance with him again, though I tell him that it is a most improper thing, and entirely against the rules. It would make us the talk of the place, if we were not to change partners.\"\n\n \"Upon my honour,\" said Tyrese, \"in these public assemblies, it is as often done as not.\"\n\n \"Nonsense, how can you say so? But when you men have a point to carry, you never stick at anything. My sweet Coral, do support me; persuade your brother how impossible it is. Tell him that it would quite shock you to see me do such a thing; now would not it?\"\n\n \"No, not at all; but if you think it wrong, you had much better change.\"\n\n \"There,\" cried Rowena, \"you hear what your sister says, and yet you will not mind her. Well, remember that it is not my fault, if we set all the old ladies in Bath in a bustle. Come along, my dearest Coral, for heaven's sake, and stand by me.\" And off they went, to regain their former place. Ashlie Dominick, in the meanwhile, had walked away; and Coral, ever willing to give Mr. Hugo an opportunity of repeating the agreeable request which had already flattered her once, made her way to Mrs. Precious and Mrs. Dominick as fast as she could, in the hope of finding him still with them--a hope which, when it proved to be fruitless, she felt to have been highly unreasonable. \"Well, my dear,\" said Mrs. Dominick, impatient for praise of her son, \"I hope you have had an agreeable partner.\"\n\n \"Very agreeable, madam.\"\n\n \"I am glad of it. Ashlie has charming spirits, has not he?\"\n\n \"Did you meet Mr. Hugo, my dear?\" said Mrs. Precious.\n\n \"No, where is he?\"\n\n \"He was with us just now, and said he was so tired of lounging about, that he was resolved to go and dance; so I thought perhaps he would ask you, if he met with you.\"\n\n \"Where can he be?\" said Coral, looking round; but she had not looked round long before she saw him leading a young lady to the dance.\n\n \"Ah! He has got a partner; I wish he had asked you,\" said Mrs. Precious; and after a short silence, she added, \"he is a very agreeable young man.\"\n\n \"Indeed he is, Mrs. Precious,\" said Mrs. Dominick, smiling complacently; \"I must say it, though I am his mother, that there is not a more agreeable young man in the world.\"\n\n This inapplicable answer might have been too much for the comprehension of many; but it did not puzzle Mrs. Precious, for after only a moment's consideration, she said, in a whisper to Coral, \"I dare say she thought I was speaking of her son.\"\n\n Coral was disappointed and vexed. She seemed to have missed by so little the very object she had had in view; and this persuasion did not incline her to a very gracious reply, when Ashlie Dominick came up to her soon afterwards and said, \"Well, Miss Rafael, I suppose you and I are to stand up and jig it together again.\"\n\n \"Oh, no; I am much obliged to you, our two dances are over; and, besides, I am tired, and do not mean to dance any more.\"\n\n \"Do not you? Then let us walk about and quiz people. Come along with me, and I will show you the four greatest quizzers in the room; my two younger sisters and their partners. I have been laughing at them this half hour.\"\n\n Again Coral excused herself; and at last he walked off to quiz his sisters by himself. The rest of the evening she found very dull; Mr. Hugo was drawn away from their party at tea, to attend that of his partner; Miss Hugo, though belonging to it, did not sit near her, and Tyrese and Rowena were so much engaged in conversing together that the latter had no leisure to bestow more on her friend than one smile, one squeeze, and one \"dearest Coral.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The progress of Coral's unhappiness from the events of the evening was as follows. It appeared first in a general dissatisfaction with everybody about her, while she remained in the rooms, which speedily brought on considerable weariness and a violent desire to go home. This, on arriving in Pulteney Street, took the direction of extraordinary hunger, and when that was appeased, changed into an earnest longing to be in bed; such was the extreme point of her distress; for when there she immediately fell into a sound sleep which lasted nine hours, and from which she awoke perfectly revived, in excellent spirits, with fresh hopes and fresh schemes. The first wish of her heart was to improve her acquaintance with Miss Hugo, and almost her first resolution, to seek her for that purpose, in the pump-room at noon. In the pump-room, one so newly arrived in Bath must be met with, and that building she had already found so favourable for the discovery of female excellence, and the completion of female intimacy, so admirably adapted for secret discourses and unlimited confidence, that she was most reasonably encouraged to expect another friend from within its walls. Her plan for the morning thus settled, she sat quietly down to her book after breakfast, resolving to remain in the same place and the same employment till the clock struck one; and from habitude very little incommoded by the remarks and ejaculations of Mrs. Precious, whose vacancy of mind and incapacity for thinking were such, that as she never talked a great deal, so she could never be entirely silent; and, therefore, while she sat at her work, if she lost her needle or broke her thread, if she heard a carriage in the street, or saw a speck upon her gown, she must observe it aloud, whether there were anyone at leisure to answer her or not. At about half past twelve, a remarkably loud rap drew her in haste to the window, and scarcely had she time to inform Coral of there being two open carriages at the door, in the first only a servant, her brother driving Miss Dominick in the second, before Ashlie Dominick came running upstairs, calling out, \"Well, Miss Rafael, here I am. Have you been waiting long? We could not come before; the old devil of a coachmaker was such an eternity finding out a thing fit to be got into, and now it is ten thousand to one but they break down before we are out of the street. How do you do, Mrs. Precious? A famous ball last night, was not it? Come, Miss Rafael, be quick, for the others are in a confounded hurry to be off. They want to get their tumble over.\"\n\n \"What do you mean?\" said Coral. \"Where are you all going to?\"\n\n \"Going to? Why, you have not forgot our engagement! Did not we agree together to take a drive this morning? What a head you have! We are going up Claverton Down.\"\n\n \"Something was said about it, I remember,\" said Coral, looking at Mrs. Precious for her opinion; \"but really I did not expect you.\"\n\n \"Not expect me! That's a good one! And what a dust you would have made, if I had not come.\"\n\n Coral's silent appeal to her friend, meanwhile, was entirely thrown away, for Mrs. Precious, not being at all in the habit of conveying any expression herself by a look, was not aware of its being ever intended by anybody else; and Coral, whose desire of seeing Miss Hugo again could at that moment bear a short delay in favour of a drive, and who thought there could be no impropriety in her going with Mr. Dominick, as Rowena was going at the same time with Tyrese, was therefore obliged to speak plainer. \"Well, ma'am, what do you say to it? Can you spare me for an hour or two? Shall I go?\"\n\n \"Do just as you please, my dear,\" replied Mrs. Precious, with the most placid indifference. Coral took the advice, and ran off to get ready. In a very few minutes she reappeared, having scarcely allowed the two others time enough to get through a few short sentences in her praise, after Dominick had procured Mrs. Precious's admiration of his gig; and then receiving her friend's parting good wishes, they both hurried downstairs. \"My dearest creature,\" cried Rowena, to whom the duty of friendship immediately called her before she could get into the carriage, \"you have been at least three hours getting ready. I was afraid you were ill. What a delightful ball we had last night. I have a thousand things to say to you; but make haste and get in, for I long to be off.\"\n\n Coral followed her orders and turned away, but not too soon to hear her friend exclaim aloud to Tyrese, \"What a sweet girl she is! I quite dote on her.\"\n\n \"You will not be frightened, Miss Rafael,\" said Dominick, as he handed her in, \"if my horse should dance about a little at first setting off. He will, most likely, give a plunge or two, and perhaps take the rest for a minute; but he will soon know his master. He is full of spirits, playful as can be, but there is no vice in him.\"\n\n Coral did not think the portrait a very inviting one, but it was too late to retreat, and she was too young to own herself frightened; so, resigning herself to her fate, and trusting to the animal's boasted knowledge of its owner, she sat peaceably down, and saw Dominick sit down by her. Everything being then arranged, the servant who stood at the horse's head was bid in an important voice \"to let him go,\" and off they went in the quietest manner imaginable, without a plunge or a caper, or anything like one. Coral, delighted at so happy an escape, spoke her pleasure aloud with grateful surprise; and her companion immediately made the matter perfectly simple by assuring her that it was entirely owing to the peculiarly judicious manner in which he had then held the reins, and the singular discernment and dexterity with which he had directed his whip. Coral, though she could not help wondering that with such perfect command of his horse, he should think it necessary to alarm her with a relation of its tricks, congratulated herself sincerely on being under the care of so excellent a coachman; and perceiving that the animal continued to go on in the same quiet manner, without showing the smallest propensity towards any unpleasant vivacity, and (considering its inevitable pace was ten miles an hour) by no means alarmingly fast, gave herself up to all the enjoyment of air and exercise of the most invigorating kind, in a fine mild day of February, with the consciousness of safety. A silence of several minutes succeeded their first short dialogue; it was broken by Dominick's saying very abruptly, \"Old Precious is as rich as a Jew--is not he?\" Coral did not understand him--and he repeated his question, adding in explanation, \"Old Precious, the man you are with.\"\n\n \"Oh! Mr. Precious, you mean. Yes, I believe, he is very rich.\"\n\n \"And no children at all?\"\n\n \"No--not any.\"\n\n \"A famous thing for his next heirs. He is your godfather, is not he?\"\n\n \"My godfather! No.\"\n\n \"But you are always very much with them.\"\n\n \"Yes, very much.\"\n\n \"Aye, that is what I meant. He seems a good kind of old fellow enough, and has lived very well in his time, I dare say; he is not gouty for nothing. Does he drink his bottle a day now?\"\n\n \"His bottle a day! No. Why should you think of such a thing? He is a very temperate man, and you could not fancy him in liquor last night?\"\n\n \"Lord help you! You women are always thinking of men's being in liquor. Why, you do not suppose a man is overset by a bottle? I am sure of this--that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now. It would be a famous good thing for us all.\"\n\n \"I cannot believe it.\"\n\n \"Oh! Lord, it would be the saving of thousands. There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help.\"\n\n \"And yet I have heard that there is a great deal of wine drunk in Oxford.\"\n\n \"Oxford! There is no drinking at Oxford now, I assure you. Nobody drinks there. You would hardly meet with a man who goes beyond his four pints at the utmost. Now, for instance, it was reckoned a remarkable thing, at the last party in my rooms, that upon an average we cleared about five pints a head. It was looked upon as something out of the common way. Mine is famous good stuff, to be sure. You would not often meet with anything like it in Oxford--and that may account for it. But this will just give you a notion of the general rate of drinking there.\"\n\n \"Yes, it does give a notion,\" said Coral warmly, \"and that is, that you all drink a great deal more wine than I thought you did. However, I am sure Tyrese does not drink so much.\"\n\n This declaration brought on a loud and overpowering reply, of which no part was very distinct, except the frequent exclamations, amounting almost to oaths, which adorned it, and Coral was left, when it ended, with rather a strengthened belief of there being a great deal of wine drunk in Oxford, and the same happy conviction of her brother's comparative sobriety.\n\n Dominick's ideas then all reverted to the merits of his own equipage, and she was called on to admire the spirit and freedom with which his horse moved along, and the ease which his paces, as well as the excellence of the springs, gave the motion of the carriage. She followed him in all his admiration as well as she could. To go before or beyond him was impossible. His knowledge and her ignorance of the subject, his rapidity of expression, and her diffidence of herself put that out of her power; she could strike out nothing new in commendation, but she readily echoed whatever he chose to assert, and it was finally settled between them without any difficulty that his equipage was altogether the most complete of its kind in England, his carriage the neatest, his horse the best goer, and himself the best coachman. \"You do not really think, Mr. Dominick,\" said Coral, venturing after some time to consider the matter as entirely decided, and to offer some little variation on the subject, \"that Tyrese's gig will break down?\"\n\n \"Break down! Oh! Lord! Did you ever see such a little tittuppy thing in your life? There is not a sound piece of iron about it. The wheels have been fairly worn out these ten years at least--and as for the body! Upon my soul, you might shake it to pieces yourself with a touch. It is the most devilish little rickety business I ever beheld! Thank God! we have got a better. I would not be bound to go two miles in it for fifty thousand pounds.\"\n\n \"Good heavens!\" cried Coral, quite frightened. \"Then pray let us turn back; they will certainly meet with an accident if we go on. Do let us turn back, Mr. Dominick; stop and speak to my brother, and tell him how very unsafe it is.\"\n\n \"Unsafe! Oh, lord! What is there in that? They will only get a roll if it does break down; and there is plenty of dirt; it will be excellent falling. Oh, curse it! The carriage is safe enough, if a man knows how to drive it; a thing of that sort in good hands will last above twenty years after it is fairly worn out. Lord bless you! I would undertake for five pounds to drive it to York and back again, without losing a nail.\"\n\n Coral listened with astonishment; she knew not how to reconcile two such very different accounts of the same thing; for she had not been brought up to understand the propensities of a rattle, nor to know to how many idle assertions and impudent falsehoods the excess of vanity will lead. Her own family were plain, matter-of-fact people who seldom aimed at wit of any kind; her father, at the utmost, being contented with a pun, and her mother with a proverb; they were not in the habit therefore of telling lies to increase their importance, or of asserting at one moment what they would contradict the next. She reflected on the affair for some time in much perplexity, and was more than once on the point of requesting from Mr. Dominick a clearer insight into his real opinion on the subject; but she checked herself, because it appeared to her that he did not excel in giving those clearer insights, in making those things plain which he had before made ambiguous; and, joining to this, the consideration that he would not really suffer his sister and his friend to be exposed to a danger from which he might easily preserve them, she concluded at last that he must know the carriage to be in fact perfectly safe, and therefore would alarm herself no longer. By him the whole matter seemed entirely forgotten; and all the rest of his conversation, or rather talk, began and ended with himself and his own concerns. He told her of horses which he had bought for a trifle and sold for incredible sums; of racing matches, in which his judgment had infallibly foretold the winner; of shooting parties, in which he had killed more birds (though without having one good shot) than all his companions together; and described to her some famous day's sport, with the fox-hounds, in which his foresight and skill in directing the dogs had repaired the mistakes of the most experienced huntsman, and in which the boldness of his riding, though it had never endangered his own life for a moment, had been constantly leading others into difficulties, which he calmly concluded had broken the necks of many.\n\n Little as Coral was in the habit of judging for herself, and unfixed as were her general notions of what men ought to be, she could not entirely repress a doubt, while she bore with the effusions of his endless conceit, of his being altogether completely agreeable. It was a bold surmise, for he was Rowena's brother; and she had been assured by Tyrese that his manners would recommend him to all her sex; but in spite of this, the extreme weariness of his company, which crept over her before they had been out an hour, and which continued unceasingly to increase till they stopped in Pulteney Street again, induced her, in some small degree, to resist such high authority, and to distrust his powers of giving universal pleasure.\n\n When they arrived at Mrs. Precious's door, the astonishment of Rowena was hardly to be expressed, on finding that it was too late in the day for them to attend her friend into the house: \"Past three o'clock!\" It was inconceivable, incredible, impossible! And she would neither believe her own watch, nor her brother's, nor the servant's; she would believe no assurance of it founded on reason or reality, till Rafael produced his watch, and ascertained the fact; to have doubted a moment longer then would have been equally inconceivable, incredible, and impossible; and she could only protest, over and over again, that no two hours and a half had ever gone off so swiftly before, as Coral was called on to confirm; Coral could not tell a falsehood even to please Rowena; but the latter was spared the misery of her friend's dissenting voice, by not waiting for her answer. Her own feelings entirely engrossed her; her wretchedness was most acute on finding herself obliged to go directly home. It was ages since she had had a moment's conversation with her dearest Coral; and, though she had such thousands of things to say to her, it appeared as if they were never to be together again; so, with smiles of most exquisite misery, and the laughing eye of utter despondency, she bade her friend adieu and went on.\n\n Coral found Mrs. Precious just returned from all the busy idleness of the morning, and was immediately greeted with, \"Well, my dear, here you are,\" a truth which she had no greater inclination than power to dispute; \"and I hope you have had a pleasant airing?\"\n\n \"Yes, ma'am, I thank you; we could not have had a nicer day.\"\n\n \"So Mrs. Dominick said; she was vastly pleased at your all going.\"\n\n \"You have seen Mrs. Dominick, then?\"\n\n \"Yes, I went to the pump-room as soon as you were gone, and there I met her, and we had a great deal of talk together. She says there was hardly any veal to be got at market this morning, it is so uncommonly scarce.\"\n\n \"Did you see anybody else of our acquaintance?\"\n\n \"Yes; we agreed to take a turn in the Crescent, and there we met Mrs. Hughes, and Mr. and Miss Hugo walking with her.\"\n\n \"Did you indeed? And did they speak to you?\"\n\n \"Yes, we walked along the Crescent together for half an hour. They seem very agreeable people. Miss Hugo was in a very pretty spotted muslin, and I fancy, by what I can learn, that she always dresses very handsomely. Mrs. Hughes talked to me a great deal about the family.\"\n\n \"And what did she tell you of them?\"\n\n \"Oh! A vast deal indeed; she hardly talked of anything else.\"\n\n \"Did she tell you what part of Gloucestershire they come from?\"\n\n \"Yes, she did; but I cannot recollect now. But they are very good kind of people, and very rich. Mrs. Hugo was a Miss Drummond, and she and Mrs. Hughes were schoolfellows; and Miss Drummond had a very large fortune; and, when she married, her father gave her twenty thousand pounds, and five hundred to buy wedding-clothes. Mrs. Hughes saw all the clothes after they came from the warehouse.\"\n\n \"And are Mr. and Mrs. Hugo in Bath?\"\n\n \"Yes, I fancy they are, but I am not quite certain. Upon recollection, however, I have a notion they are both dead; at least the mother is; yes, I am sure Mrs. Hugo is dead, because Mrs. Hughes told me there was a very beautiful set of pearls that Mr. Drummond gave his daughter on her wedding-day and that Miss Hugo has got now, for they were put by for her when her mother died.\"\n\n \"And is Mr. Hugo, my partner, the only son?\"\n\n \"I cannot be quite positive about that, my dear; I have some idea he is; but, however, he is a very fine young man, Mrs. Hughes says, and likely to do very well.\"\n\n Coral inquired no further; she had heard enough to feel that Mrs. Precious had no real intelligence to give, and that she was most particularly unfortunate herself in having missed such a meeting with both brother and sister. Could she have foreseen such a circumstance, nothing should have persuaded her to go out with the others; and, as it was, she could only lament her ill luck, and think over what she had lost, till it was clear to her that the drive had by no means been very pleasant and that Ashlie Dominick himself was quite disagreeable.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The Preciouss, Dominicks, and Rafaels all met in the evening at the theatre; and, as Coral and Rowena sat together, there was then an opportunity for the latter to utter some few of the many thousand things which had been collecting within her for communication in the immeasurable length of time which had divided them. \"Oh, heavens! My beloved Coral, have I got you at last?\" was her address on Coral's entering the box and sitting by her. \"Now, Mr. Rafael,\" for he was close to her on the other side, \"I shall not speak another word to you all the rest of the evening; so I charge you not to expect it. My sweetest Coral, how have you been this long age? But I need not ask you, for you look delightfully. You really have done your hair in a more heavenly style than ever; you mischievous creature, do you want to attract everybody? I assure you, my brother is quite in love with you already; and as for Mr. Hugo--but that is a settled thing--even your modesty cannot doubt his attachment now; his coming back to Bath makes it too plain. Oh! What would not I give to see him! I really am quite wild with impatience. My mother says he is the most delightful young man in the world; she saw him this morning, you know; you must introduce him to me. Is he in the house now? Look about, for heaven's sake! I assure you, I can hardly exist till I see him.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Coral, \"he is not here; I cannot see him anywhere.\"\n\n \"Oh, horrid! Am I never to be acquainted with him? How do you like my gown? I think it does not look amiss; the sleeves were entirely my own thought. Do you know, I get so immoderately sick of Bath; your brother and I were agreeing this morning that, though it is vastly well to be here for a few weeks, we would not live here for millions. We soon found out that our tastes were exactly alike in preferring the country to every other place; really, our opinions were so exactly the same, it was quite ridiculous! There was not a single point in which we differed; I would not have had you by for the world; you are such a sly thing, I am sure you would have made some droll remark or other about it.\"\n\n \"No, indeed I should not.\"\n\n \"Oh, yes you would indeed; I know you better than you know yourself. You would have told us that we seemed born for each other, or some nonsense of that kind, which would have distressed me beyond conception; my cheeks would have been as red as your roses; I would not have had you by for the world.\"\n\n \"Indeed you do me injustice; I would not have made so improper a remark upon any account; and besides, I am sure it would never have entered my head.\"\n\n Rowena smiled incredulously and talked the rest of the evening to Tyrese.\n\n Coral's resolution of endeavouring to meet Miss Hugo again continued in full force the next morning; and till the usual moment of going to the pump-room, she felt some alarm from the dread of a second prevention. But nothing of that kind occurred, no visitors appeared to delay them, and they all three set off in good time for the pump-room, where the ordinary course of events and conversation took place; Mr. Precious, after drinking his glass of water, joined some gentlemen to talk over the politics of the day and compare the accounts of their newspapers; and the ladies walked about together, noticing every new face, and almost every new bonnet in the room. The female part of the Dominick family, attended by Tyrese Rafael, appeared among the crowd in less than a quarter of an hour, and Coral immediately took her usual place by the side of her friend. Tyrese, who was now in constant attendance, maintained a similar position, and separating themselves from the rest of their party, they walked in that manner for some time, till Coral began to doubt the happiness of a situation which, confining her entirely to her friend and brother, gave her very little share in the notice of either. They were always engaged in some sentimental discussion or lively dispute, but their sentiment was conveyed in such whispering voices, and their vivacity attended with so much laughter, that though Coral's supporting opinion was not unfrequently called for by one or the other, she was never able to give any, from not having heard a word of the subject. At length however she was empowered to disengage herself from her friend, by the avowed necessity of speaking to Miss Hugo, whom she most joyfully saw just entering the room with Mrs. Hughes, and whom she instantly joined, with a firmer determination to be acquainted, than she might have had courage to command, had she not been urged by the disappointment of the day before. Miss Hugo met her with great civility, returned her advances with equal goodwill, and they continued talking together as long as both parties remained in the room; and though in all probability not an observation was made, nor an expression used by either which had not been made and used some thousands of times before, under that roof, in every Bath season, yet the merit of their being spoken with simplicity and truth, and without personal conceit, might be something uncommon.\n\n \"How well your brother dances!\" was an artless exclamation of Coral's towards the close of their conversation, which at once surprised and amused her companion.\n\n \"Nicolas!\" she replied with a smile. \"Yes, he does dance very well.\"\n\n \"He must have thought it very odd to hear me say I was engaged the other evening, when he saw me sitting down. But I really had been engaged the whole day to Mr. Dominick.\" Miss Hugo could only bow. \"You cannot think,\" added Coral after a moment's silence, \"how surprised I was to see him again. I felt so sure of his being quite gone away.\"\n\n \"When Nicolas had the pleasure of seeing you before, he was in Bath but for a couple of days. He came only to engage lodgings for us.\"\n\n \"That never occurred to me; and of course, not seeing him anywhere, I thought he must be gone. Was not the young lady he danced with on Monday a Miss Smith?\"\n\n \"Yes, an acquaintance of Mrs. Hughes.\"\n\n \"I dare say she was very glad to dance. Do you think her pretty?\"\n\n \"Not very.\"\n\n \"He never comes to the pump-room, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Yes, sometimes; but he has rid out this morning with my father.\"\n\n Mrs. Hughes now joined them, and asked Miss Hugo if she was ready to go. \"I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again soon,\" said Coral. \"Shall you be at the cotillion ball tomorrow?\"\n\n \"Perhaps we--Yes, I think we certainly shall.\"\n\n \"I am glad of it, for we shall all be there.\" This civility was duly returned; and they parted--on Miss Hugo's side with some knowledge of her new acquaintance's feelings, and on Coral's, without the smallest consciousness of having explained them.\n\n She went home very happy. The morning had answered all her hopes, and the evening of the following day was now the object of expectation, the future good. What gown and what head-dress she should wear on the occasion became her chief concern. She cannot be justified in it. Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction, and excessive solicitude about it often destroys its own aim. Coral knew all this very well; her great aunt had read her a lecture on the subject only the Christmas before; and yet she lay awake ten minutes on Wednesday night debating between her spotted and her tamboured muslin, and nothing but the shortness of the time prevented her buying a new one for the evening. This would have been an error in judgment, great though not uncommon, from which one of the other sex rather than her own, a brother rather than a great aunt, might have warned her, for man only can be aware of the insensibility of man towards a new gown. It would be mortifying to the feelings of many ladies, could they be made to understand how little the heart of man is affected by what is costly or new in their attire; how little it is biased by the texture of their muslin, and how unsusceptible of peculiar tenderness towards the spotted, the sprigged, the mull, or the jackonet. Woman is fine for her own satisfaction alone. No man will admire her the more, no woman will like her the better for it. Neatness and fashion are enough for the former, and a something of shabbiness or impropriety will be most endearing to the latter. But not one of these grave reflections troubled the tranquillity of Coral.\n\n She entered the rooms on Thursday evening with feelings very different from what had attended her thither the Monday before. She had then been exulting in her engagement to Dominick, and was now chiefly anxious to avoid his sight, lest he should engage her again; for though she could not, dared not expect that Mr. Hugo should ask her a third time to dance, her wishes, hopes, and plans all centred in nothing less. Every young lady may feel for my heroine in this critical moment, for every young lady has at some time or other known the same agitation. All have been, or at least all have believed themselves to be, in danger from the pursuit of someone whom they wished to avoid; and all have been anxious for the attentions of someone whom they wished to please. As soon as they were joined by the Dominicks, Coral's agony began; she fidgeted about if Ashlie Dominick came towards her, hid herself as much as possible from his view, and when he spoke to her pretended not to hear him. The cotillions were over, the country-dancing beginning, and she saw nothing of the Hugos.\n\n \"Do not be frightened, my dear Coral,\" whispered Rowena, \"but I am really going to dance with your brother again. I declare positively it is quite shocking. I tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself, but you and Ashlie must keep us in countenance. Make haste, my dear creature, and come to us. Ashlie is just walked off, but he will be back in a moment.\"\n\n Coral had neither time nor inclination to answer. The others walked away, Ashlie Dominick was still in view, and she gave herself up for lost. That she might not appear, however, to observe or expect him, she kept her eyes intently fixed on her fan; and a self-condemnation for her folly, in supposing that among such a crowd they should even meet with the Hugos in any reasonable time, had just passed through her mind, when she suddenly found herself addressed and again solicited to dance, by Mr. Hugo himself. With what sparkling eyes and ready motion she granted his request, and with how pleasing a flutter of heart she went with him to the set, may be easily imagined. To escape, and, as she believed, so narrowly escape Ashlie Dominick, and to be asked, so immediately on his joining her, asked by Mr. Hugo, as if he had sought her on purpose!--it did not appear to her that life could supply any greater felicity.\n\n Scarcely had they worked themselves into the quiet possession of a place, however, when her attention was claimed by Ashlie Dominick, who stood behind her. \"Heyday, Miss Rafael!\" said he. \"What is the meaning of this? I thought you and I were to dance together.\"\n\n \"I wonder you should think so, for you never asked me.\"\n\n \"That is a good one, by Jove! I asked you as soon as I came into the room, and I was just going to ask you again, but when I turned round, you were gone! This is a cursed shabby trick! I only came for the sake of dancing with you, and I firmly believe you were engaged to me ever since Monday. Yes; I remember, I asked you while you were waiting in the lobby for your cloak. And here have I been telling all my acquaintance that I was going to dance with the prettiest girl in the room; and when they see you standing up with somebody else, they will quiz me famously.\"\n\n \"Oh, no; they will never think of me, after such a description as that.\"\n\n \"By heavens, if they do not, I will kick them out of the room for blockheads. What chap have you there?\" Coral satisfied his curiosity. \"Hugo,\" he repeated. \"Hum--I do not know him. A good figure of a man; well put together. Does he want a horse? Here is a friend of mine, Sam Fletcher, has got one to sell that would suit anybody. A famous clever animal for the road--only forty guineas. I had fifty minds to buy it myself, for it is one of my maxims always to buy a good horse when I meet with one; but it would not answer my purpose, it would not do for the field. I would give any money for a real good hunter. I have three now, the best that ever were backed. I would not take eight hundred guineas for them. Fletcher and I mean to get a house in Leicestershire, against the next season. It is so d--uncomfortable, living at an inn.\"\n\n This was the last sentence by which he could weary Coral's attention, for he was just then borne off by the resistless pressure of a long string of passing ladies. Her partner now drew near, and said, \"That gentleman would have put me out of patience, had he stayed with you half a minute longer. He has no business to withdraw the attention of my partner from me. We have entered into a contract of mutual agreeableness for the space of an evening, and all our agreeableness belongs solely to each other for that time. Nobody can fasten themselves on the notice of one, without injuring the rights of the other. I consider a country-dance as an emblem of marriage. Fidelity and complaisance are the principal duties of both; and those men who do not choose to dance or marry themselves, have no business with the partners or wives of their neighbours.\"\n\n \"But they are such very different things!\"\n\n \"--That you think they cannot be compared together.\"\n\n \"To be sure not. People that marry can never part, but must go and keep house together. People that dance only stand opposite each other in a long room for half an hour.\"\n\n \"And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. Taken in that light certainly, their resemblance is not striking; but I think I could place them in such a view. You will allow, that in both, man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both, it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty, each to endeavour to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbours, or fancying that they should have been better off with anyone else. You will allow all this?\"\n\n \"Yes, to be sure, as you state it, all this sounds very well; but still they are so very different. I cannot look upon them at all in the same light, nor think the same duties belong to them.\"\n\n \"In one respect, there certainly is a difference. In marriage, the man is supposed to provide for the support of the woman, the woman to make the home agreeable to the man; he is to purvey, and she is to smile. But in dancing, their duties are exactly changed; the agreeableness, the compliance are expected from him, while she furnishes the fan and the lavender water. That, I suppose, was the difference of duties which struck you, as rendering the conditions incapable of comparison.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, I never thought of that.\"\n\n \"Then I am quite at a loss. One thing, however, I must observe. This disposition on your side is rather alarming. You totally disallow any similarity in the obligations; and may I not thence infer that your notions of the duties of the dancing state are not so strict as your partner might wish? Have I not reason to fear that if the gentleman who spoke to you just now were to return, or if any other gentleman were to address you, there would be nothing to restrain you from conversing with him as long as you chose?\"\n\n \"Mr. Dominick is such a very particular friend of my brother's, that if he talks to me, I must talk to him again; but there are hardly three young men in the room besides him that I have any acquaintance with.\"\n\n \"And is that to be my only security? Alas, alas!\"\n\n \"Nay, I am sure you cannot have a better; for if I do not know anybody, it is impossible for me to talk to them; and, besides, I do not want to talk to anybody.\"\n\n \"Now you have given me a security worth having; and I shall proceed with courage. Do you find Bath as agreeable as when I had the honour of making the inquiry before?\"\n\n \"Yes, quite--more so, indeed.\"\n\n \"More so! Take care, or you will forget to be tired of it at the proper time. You ought to be tired at the end of six weeks.\"\n\n \"I do not think I should be tired, if I were to stay here six months.\"\n\n \"Bath, compared with London, has little variety, and so everybody finds out every year. 'For six weeks, I allow Bath is pleasant enough; but beyond that, it is the most tiresome place in the world.' You would be told so by people of all descriptions, who come regularly every winter, lengthen their six weeks into ten or twelve, and go away at last because they can afford to stay no longer.\"\n\n \"Well, other people must judge for themselves, and those who go to London may think nothing of Bath. But I, who live in a small retired village in the country, can never find greater sameness in such a place as this than in my own home; for here are a variety of amusements, a variety of things to be seen and done all day long, which I can know nothing of there.\"\n\n \"You are not fond of the country.\"\n\n \"Yes, I am. I have always lived there, and always been very happy. But certainly there is much more sameness in a country life than in a Bath life. One day in the country is exactly like another.\"\n\n \"But then you spend your time so much more rationally in the country.\"\n\n \"Do I?\"\n\n \"Do you not?\"\n\n \"I do not believe there is much difference.\"\n\n \"Here you are in pursuit only of amusement all day long.\"\n\n \"And so I am at home--only I do not find so much of it. I walk about here, and so I do there; but here I see a variety of people in every street, and there I can only go and call on Mrs. Precious.\"\n\n Mr. Hugo was very much amused.\n\n \"Only go and call on Mrs. Precious!\" he repeated. \"What a picture of intellectual poverty! However, when you sink into this abyss again, you will have more to say. You will be able to talk of Bath, and of all that you did here.\"\n\n \"Oh! Yes. I shall never be in want of something to talk of again to Mrs. Precious, or anybody else. I really believe I shall always be talking of Bath, when I am at home again--I do like it so very much. If I could but have Papa and Mamma, and the rest of them here, I suppose I should be too happy! Tyrese's coming (my eldest brother) is quite delightful--and especially as it turns out that the very family we are just got so intimate with are his intimate friends already. Oh! Who can ever be tired of Bath?\"\n\n \"Not those who bring such fresh feelings of every sort to it as you do. But papas and mammas, and brothers, and intimate friends are a good deal gone by, to most of the frequenters of Bath--and the honest relish of balls and plays, and everyday sights, is past with them.\" Here their conversation closed, the demands of the dance becoming now too importunate for a divided attention.\n\n Soon after their reaching the bottom of the set, Coral perceived herself to be earnestly regarded by a gentleman who stood among the lookers-on, immediately behind her partner. He was a very handsome man, of a commanding aspect, past the bloom, but not past the vigour of life; and with his eye still directed towards her, she saw him presently address Mr. Hugo in a familiar whisper. Confused by his notice, and blushing from the fear of its being excited by something wrong in her appearance, she turned away her head. But while she did so, the gentleman retreated, and her partner, coming nearer, said, \"I see that you guess what I have just been asked. That gentleman knows your name, and you have a right to know his. It is Summer Hugo, my father.\"\n\n Coral's answer was only \"Oh!\"--but it was an \"Oh!\" expressing everything needful: attention to his words, and perfect reliance on their truth. With real interest and strong admiration did her eye now follow the general, as he moved through the crowd, and \"How handsome a family they are!\" was her secret remark.\n\n In chatting with Miss Hugo before the evening concluded, a new source of felicity arose to her. She had never taken a country walk since her arrival in Bath. Miss Hugo, to whom all the commonly frequented environs were familiar, spoke of them in terms which made her all eagerness to know them too; and on her openly fearing that she might find nobody to go with her, it was proposed by the brother and sister that they should join in a walk, some morning or other. \"I shall like it,\" she cried, \"beyond anything in the world; and do not let us put it off--let us go tomorrow.\" This was readily agreed to, with only a proviso of Miss Hugo's, that it did not rain, which Coral was sure it would not. At twelve o'clock, they were to call for her in Pulteney Street; and \"Remember--twelve o'clock,\" was her parting speech to her new friend. Of her other, her older, her more established friend, Rowena, of whose fidelity and worth she had enjoyed a fortnight's experience, she scarcely saw anything during the evening. Yet, though longing to make her acquainted with her happiness, she cheerfully submitted to the wish of Mr. Precious, which took them rather early away, and her spirits danced within her, as she danced in her chair all the way home.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The morrow brought a very sober-looking morning, the sun making only a few efforts to appear, and Coral augured from it everything most favourable to her wishes. A bright morning so early in the year, she allowed, would generally turn to rain, but a cloudy one foretold improvement as the day advanced. She applied to Mr. Precious for confirmation of her hopes, but Mr. Precious, not having his own skies and barometer about him, declined giving any absolute promise of sunshine. She applied to Mrs. Precious, and Mrs. Precious's opinion was more positive. \"She had no doubt in the world of its being a very fine day, if the clouds would only go off, and the sun keep out.\"\n\n At about eleven o'clock, however, a few specks of small rain upon the windows caught Coral's watchful eye, and \"Oh! dear, I do believe it will be wet,\" broke from her in a most desponding tone.\n\n \"I thought how it would be,\" said Mrs. Precious.\n\n \"No walk for me today,\" sighed Coral; \"but perhaps it may come to nothing, or it may hold up before twelve.\"\n\n \"Perhaps it may, but then, my dear, it will be so dirty.\"\n\n \"Oh! That will not signify; I never mind dirt.\"\n\n \"No,\" replied her friend very placidly, \"I know you never mind dirt.\"\n\n After a short pause, \"It comes on faster and faster!\" said Coral, as she stood watching at a window.\n\n \"So it does indeed. If it keeps raining, the streets will be very wet.\"\n\n \"There are four umbrellas up already. How I hate the sight of an umbrella!\"\n\n \"They are disagreeable things to carry. I would much rather take a chair at any time.\"\n\n \"It was such a nice-looking morning! I felt so convinced it would be dry!\"\n\n \"Anybody would have thought so indeed. There will be very few people in the pump-room, if it rains all the morning. I hope Mr. Precious will put on his greatcoat when he goes, but I dare say he will not, for he had rather do anything in the world than walk out in a greatcoat; I wonder he should dislike it, it must be so comfortable.\"\n\n The rain continued--fast, though not heavy. Coral went every five minutes to the clock, threatening on each return that, if it still kept on raining another five minutes, she would give up the matter as hopeless. The clock struck twelve, and it still rained. \"You will not be able to go, my dear.\"\n\n \"I do not quite despair yet. I shall not give it up till a quarter after twelve. This is just the time of day for it to clear up, and I do think it looks a little lighter. There, it is twenty minutes after twelve, and now I shall give it up entirely. Oh! That we had such weather here as they had at Udolpho, or at least in Tuscany and the south of France!--the night that poor St. Aubin died!--such beautiful weather!\"\n\n At half past twelve, when Coral's anxious attention to the weather was over and she could no longer claim any merit from its amendment, the sky began voluntarily to clear. A gleam of sunshine took her quite by surprise; she looked round; the clouds were parting, and she instantly returned to the window to watch over and encourage the happy appearance. Ten minutes more made it certain that a bright afternoon would succeed, and justified the opinion of Mrs. Precious, who had \"always thought it would clear up.\" But whether Coral might still expect her friends, whether there had not been too much rain for Miss Hugo to venture, must yet be a question.\n\n It was too dirty for Mrs. Precious to accompany her husband to the pump-room; he accordingly set off by himself, and Coral had barely watched him down the street when her notice was claimed by the approach of the same two open carriages, containing the same three people that had surprised her so much a few mornings back.\n\n \"Rowena, my brother, and Mr. Dominick, I declare! They are coming for me perhaps--but I shall not go--I cannot go indeed, for you know Miss Hugo may still call.\" Mrs. Precious agreed to it. Ashlie Dominick was soon with them, and his voice was with them yet sooner, for on the stairs he was calling out to Miss Rafael to be quick. \"Make haste! Make haste!\" as he threw open the door. \"Put on your hat this moment--there is no time to be lost--we are going to Bristol. How d'ye do, Mrs. Precious?\"\n\n \"To Bristol! Is not that a great way off? But, however, I cannot go with you today, because I am engaged; I expect some friends every moment.\" This was of course vehemently talked down as no reason at all; Mrs. Precious was called on to second him, and the two others walked in, to give their assistance. \"My sweetest Coral, is not this delightful? We shall have a most heavenly drive. You are to thank your brother and me for the scheme; it darted into our heads at breakfast-time, I verily believe at the same instant; and we should have been off two hours ago if it had not been for this detestable rain. But it does not signify, the nights are moonlight, and we shall do delightfully. Oh! I am in such ecstasies at the thoughts of a little country air and quiet! So much better than going to the Lower Rooms. We shall drive directly to Clifton and dine there; and, as soon as dinner is over, if there is time for it, go on to Kingsweston.\"\n\n \"I doubt our being able to do so much,\" said Rafael.\n\n \"You croaking fellow!\" cried Dominick. \"We shall be able to do ten times more. Kingsweston! Aye, and Blaize Castle too, and anything else we can hear of; but here is your sister says she will not go.\"\n\n \"Blaize Castle!\" cried Coral. \"What is that?\"\n\n \"The finest place in England--worth going fifty miles at any time to see.\"\n\n \"What, is it really a castle, an old castle?\"\n\n \"The oldest in the kingdom.\"\n\n \"But is it like what one reads of?\"\n\n \"Exactly--the very same.\"\n\n \"But now really--are there towers and long galleries?\"\n\n \"By dozens.\"\n\n \"Then I should like to see it; but I cannot--I cannot go.\"\n\n \"Not go! My beloved creature, what do you mean?\"\n\n \"I cannot go, because\"--looking down as she spoke, fearful of Rowena's smile--\"I expect Miss Hugo and her brother to call on me to take a country walk. They promised to come at twelve, only it rained; but now, as it is so fine, I dare say they will be here soon.\"\n\n \"Not they indeed,\" cried Dominick; \"for, as we turned into Broad Street, I saw them--does he not drive a phaeton with bright chestnuts?\"\n\n \"I do not know indeed.\"\n\n \"Yes, I know he does; I saw him. You are talking of the man you danced with last night, are not you?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Well, I saw him at that moment turn up the Lansdown Road, driving a smart-looking girl.\"\n\n \"Did you indeed?\"\n\n \"Did upon my soul; knew him again directly, and he seemed to have got some very pretty cattle too.\"\n\n \"It is very odd! But I suppose they thought it would be too dirty for a walk.\"\n\n \"And well they might, for I never saw so much dirt in my life. Walk! You could no more walk than you could fly! It has not been so dirty the whole winter; it is ankle-deep everywhere.\"\n\n Rowena corroborated it: \"My dearest Coral, you cannot form an idea of the dirt; come, you must go; you cannot refuse going now.\"\n\n \"I should like to see the castle; but may we go all over it? May we go up every staircase, and into every suite of rooms?\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, every hole and corner.\"\n\n \"But then, if they should only be gone out for an hour till it is dryer, and call by and by?\"\n\n \"Make yourself easy, there is no danger of that, for I heard Hugo hallooing to a man who was just passing by on horseback, that they were going as far as Wick Rocks.\"\n\n \"Then I will. Shall I go, Mrs. Precious?\"\n\n \"Just as you please, my dear.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Precious, you must persuade her to go,\" was the general cry. Mrs. Precious was not inattentive to it: \"Well, my dear,\" said she, \"suppose you go.\" And in two minutes they were off.\n\n Coral's feelings, as she got into the carriage, were in a very unsettled state; divided between regret for the loss of one great pleasure, and the hope of soon enjoying another, almost its equal in degree, however unlike in kind. She could not think the Hugos had acted quite well by her, in so readily giving up their engagement, without sending her any message of excuse. It was now but an hour later than the time fixed on for the beginning of their walk; and, in spite of what she had heard of the prodigious accumulation of dirt in the course of that hour, she could not from her own observation help thinking that they might have gone with very little inconvenience. To feel herself slighted by them was very painful. On the other hand, the delight of exploring an edifice like Udolpho, as her fancy represented Blaize Castle to be, was such a counterpoise of good as might console her for almost anything.\n\n They passed briskly down Pulteney Street, and through Laura Place, without the exchange of many words. Dominick talked to his horse, and she meditated, by turns, on broken promises and broken arches, phaetons and false hangings, Hugos and trap-doors. As they entered Argyle Buildings, however, she was roused by this address from her companion, \"Who is that girl who looked at you so hard as she went by?\"\n\n \"Who? Where?\"\n\n \"On the right-hand pavement--she must be almost out of sight now.\" Coral looked round and saw Miss Hugo leaning on her brother's arm, walking slowly down the street. She saw them both looking back at her. \"Stop, stop, Mr. Dominick,\" she impatiently cried; \"it is Miss Hugo; it is indeed. How could you tell me they were gone? Stop, stop, I will get out this moment and go to them.\" But to what purpose did she speak? Dominick only lashed his horse into a brisker trot; the Hugos, who had soon ceased to look after her, were in a moment out of sight round the corner of Laura Place, and in another moment she was herself whisked into the marketplace. Still, however, and during the length of another street, she entreated him to stop. \"Pray, pray stop, Mr. Dominick. I cannot go on. I will not go on. I must go back to Miss Hugo.\" But Mr. Dominick only laughed, smacked his whip, encouraged his horse, made odd noises, and drove on; and Coral, angry and vexed as she was, having no power of getting away, was obliged to give up the point and submit. Her reproaches, however, were not spared. \"How could you deceive me so, Mr. Dominick? How could you say that you saw them driving up the Lansdown Road? I would not have had it happen so for the world. They must think it so strange, so rude of me! To go by them, too, without saying a word! You do not know how vexed I am; I shall have no pleasure at Clifton, nor in anything else. I had rather, ten thousand times rather, get out now, and walk back to them. How could you say you saw them driving out in a phaeton?\" Dominick defended himself very stoutly, declared he had never seen two men so much alike in his life, and would hardly give up the point of its having been Hugo himself.\n\n Their drive, even when this subject was over, was not likely to be very agreeable. Coral's complaisance was no longer what it had been in their former airing. She listened reluctantly, and her replies were short. Blaize Castle remained her only comfort; towards that, she still looked at intervals with pleasure; though rather than be disappointed of the promised walk, and especially rather than be thought ill of by the Hugos, she would willingly have given up all the happiness which its walls could supply--the happiness of a progress through a long suite of lofty rooms, exhibiting the remains of magnificent furniture, though now for many years deserted--the happiness of being stopped in their way along narrow, winding vaults, by a low, grated door; or even of having their lamp, their only lamp, extinguished by a sudden gust of wind, and of being left in total darkness. In the meanwhile, they proceeded on their journey without any mischance, and were within view of the town of Keynsham, when a halloo from Rafael, who was behind them, made his friend pull up, to know what was the matter. The others then came close enough for conversation, and Rafael said, \"We had better go back, Dominick; it is too late to go on today; your sister thinks so as well as  I. We have been exactly an hour coming from Pulteney Street, very little  more than seven miles; and, I suppose, we have at least eight more to go. It will never do. We set out a great deal too late. We had much better put it off till another day, and turn round.\"\n\n \"It is all one to me,\" replied Dominick rather angrily; and instantly turning his horse, they were on their way back to Bath.\n\n \"If your brother had not got such a d--beast to drive,\" said he soon afterwards, \"we might have done it very well. My horse would have trotted to Clifton within the hour, if left to himself, and I have almost broke my arm with pulling him in to that cursed broken-winded jade's pace. Rafael is a fool for not keeping a horse and gig of his own.\"\n\n \"No, he is not,\" said Coral warmly, \"for I am sure he could not afford it.\"\n\n \"And why cannot he afford it?\"\n\n \"Because he has not money enough.\"\n\n \"And whose fault is that?\"\n\n \"Nobody's, that I know of.\" Dominick then said something in the loud, incoherent way to which he had often recourse, about its being a d--thing to be miserly; and that if people who rolled in money could not afford things, he did not know who could, which Coral did not even endeavour to understand. Disappointed of what was to have been the consolation for her first disappointment, she was less and less disposed either to be agreeable herself or to find her companion so; and they returned to Pulteney Street without her speaking twenty words.\n\n As she entered the house, the footman told her that a gentleman and lady had called and inquired for her a few minutes after her setting off; that, when he told them she was gone out with Mr. Dominick, the lady had asked whether any message had been left for her; and on his saying no, had felt for a card, but said she had none about her, and went away. Pondering over these heart-rending tidings, Coral walked slowly upstairs. At the head of them she was met by Mr. Precious, who, on hearing the reason of their speedy return, said, \"I am glad your brother had so much sense; I am glad you are come back. It was a strange, wild scheme.\"\n\n They all spent the evening together at Dominick's. Coral was disturbed and out of spirits; but Rowena seemed to find a pool of commerce, in the fate of which she shared, by private partnership with Rafael, a very good equivalent for the quiet and country air of an inn at Clifton. Her satisfaction, too, in not being at the Lower Rooms was spoken more than once. \"How I pity the poor creatures that are going there! How glad I am that I am not amongst them! I wonder whether it will be a full ball or not! They have not begun dancing yet. I would not be there for all the world. It is so delightful to have an evening now and then to oneself. I dare say it will not be a very good ball. I know the Mitchells will not be there. I am sure I pity everybody that is. But I dare say, Mr. Rafael, you long to be at it, do not you? I am sure you do. Well, pray do not let anybody here be a restraint on you. I dare say we could do very well without you; but you men think yourselves of such consequence.\"\n\n Coral could almost have accused Rowena of being wanting in tenderness towards herself and her sorrows, so very little did they appear to dwell on her mind, and so very inadequate was the comfort she offered. \"Do not be so dull, my dearest creature,\" she whispered. \"You will quite break my heart. It was amazingly shocking, to be sure; but the Hugos were entirely to blame. Why were not they more punctual? It was dirty, indeed, but what did that signify? I am sure Ashlie and I should not have minded it. I never mind going through anything, where a friend is concerned; that is my disposition, and Ashlie is just the same; he has amazing strong feelings. Good heavens! What a delightful hand you have got! Kings, I vow! I never was so happy in my life! I would fifty times rather you should have them than myself.\"\n\n And now I may dismiss my heroine to the sleepless couch, which is the true heroine's portion; to a pillow strewed with thorns and wet with tears. And lucky may she think herself, if she get another good night's rest in the course of the next three months.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \"Mrs. Precious,\" said Coral the next morning, \"will there be any harm in my calling on Miss Hugo today? I shall not be easy till I have explained everything.\"\n\n \"Go, by all means, my dear; only put on a white gown; Miss Hugo always wears white.\"\n\n Coral cheerfully complied, and being properly equipped, was more impatient than ever to be at the pump-room, that she might inform herself of Summer Hugo's lodgings, for though she believed they were in Milsom Street, she was not certain of the house, and Mrs. Precious's wavering convictions only made it more doubtful. To Milsom Street she was directed, and having made herself perfect in the number, hastened away with eager steps and a beating heart to pay her visit, explain her conduct, and be forgiven; tripping lightly through the church-yard, and resolutely turning away her eyes, that she might not be obliged to see her beloved Rowena and her dear family, who, she had reason to believe, were in a shop hard by. She reached the house without any impediment, looked at the number, knocked at the door, and inquired for Miss Hugo. The man believed Miss Hugo to be at home, but was not quite certain. Would she be pleased to send up her name? She gave her card. In a few minutes the servant returned, and with a look which did not quite confirm his words, said he had been mistaken, for that Miss Hugo was walked out. Coral, with a blush of mortification, left the house. She felt almost persuaded that Miss Hugo was at home, and too much offended to admit her; and as she retired down the street, could not withhold one glance at the drawing-room windows, in expectation of seeing her there, but no one appeared at them. At the bottom of the street, however, she looked back again, and then, not at a window, but issuing from the door, she saw Miss Hugo herself. She was followed by a gentleman, whom Coral believed to be her father, and they turned up towards Edgar's Buildings. Coral, in deep mortification, proceeded on her way. She could almost be angry herself at such angry incivility; but she checked the resentful sensation; she remembered her own ignorance. She knew not how such an offence as hers might be classed by the laws of worldly politeness, to what a degree of unforgivingness it might with propriety lead, nor to what rigours of rudeness in return it might justly make her amenable.\n\n Dejected and humbled, she had even some thoughts of not going with the others to the theatre that night; but it must be confessed that they were not of long continuance, for she soon recollected, in the first place, that she was without any excuse for staying at home; and, in the second, that it was a play she wanted very much to see. To the theatre accordingly they all went; no Hugos appeared to plague or please her; she feared that, amongst the many perfections of the family, a fondness for plays was not to be ranked; but perhaps it was because they were habituated to the finer performances of the London stage, which she knew, on Rowena's authority, rendered everything else of the kind \"quite horrid.\" She was not deceived in her own expectation of pleasure; the comedy so well suspended her care that no one, observing her during the first four acts, would have supposed she had any wretchedness about her. On the beginning of the fifth, however, the sudden view of Mr. Nicolas Hugo and his father, joining a party in the opposite box, recalled her to anxiety and distress. The stage could no longer excite genuine merriment--no longer keep her whole attention. Every other look upon an average was directed towards the opposite box; and, for the space of two entire scenes, did she thus watch Nicolas Hugo, without being once able to catch his eye. No longer could he be suspected of indifference for a play; his notice was never withdrawn from the stage during two whole scenes. At length, however, he did look towards her, and he bowed--but such a bow! No smile, no continued observance attended it; his eyes were immediately returned to their former direction. Coral was restlessly miserable; she could almost have run round to the box in which he sat and forced him to hear her explanation. Feelings rather natural than heroic possessed her; instead of considering her own dignity injured by this ready condemnation--instead of proudly resolving, in conscious innocence, to show her resentment towards him who could harbour a doubt of it, to leave to him all the trouble of seeking an explanation, and to enlighten him on the past only by avoiding his sight, or flirting with somebody else--she took to herself all the shame of misconduct, or at least of its appearance, and was only eager for an opportunity of explaining its cause.\n\n The play concluded--the curtain fell--Nicolas Hugo was no longer to be seen where he had hitherto sat, but his father remained, and perhaps he might be now coming round to their box. She was right; in a few minutes he appeared, and, making his way through the then thinning rows, spoke with like calm politeness to Mrs. Precious and her friend. Not with such calmness was he answered by the latter: \"Oh! Mr. Hugo, I have been quite wild to speak to you, and make my apologies. You must have thought me so rude; but indeed it was not my own fault, was it, Mrs. Precious? Did not they tell me that Mr. Hugo and his sister were gone out in a phaeton together? And then what could I do? But I had ten thousand times rather have been with you; now had not I, Mrs. Precious?\"\n\n \"My dear, you tumble my gown,\" was Mrs. Precious's reply.\n\n Her assurance, however, standing sole as it did, was not thrown away; it brought a more cordial, more natural smile into his countenance, and he replied in a tone which retained only a little affected reserve: \"We were much obliged to you at any rate for wishing us a pleasant walk after our passing you in Argyle Street: you were so kind as to look back on purpose.\"\n\n \"But indeed I did not wish you a pleasant walk; I never thought of such a thing; but I begged Mr. Dominick so earnestly to stop; I called out to him as soon as ever I saw you; now, Mrs. Precious, did not--Oh! You were not there; but indeed I did; and, if Mr. Dominick would only have stopped, I would have jumped out and run after you.\"\n\n Is there a Nicolas in the world who could be insensible to such a declaration? Nicolas Hugo at least was not. With a yet sweeter smile, he said everything that need be said of his sister's concern, regret, and dependence on Coral's honour. \"Oh! Do not say Miss Hugo was not angry,\" cried Coral, \"because I know she was; for she would not see me this morning when I called; I saw her walk out of the house the next minute after my leaving it; I was hurt, but I was not affronted. Perhaps you did not know I had been there.\"\n\n \"I was not within at the time; but I heard of it from Martina, and she has been wishing ever since to see you, to explain the reason of such incivility; but perhaps I can do it as well. It was nothing more than that my father--they were just preparing to walk out, and he being hurried for time, and not caring to have it put off--made a point of her being denied. That was all, I do assure you. She was very much vexed, and meant to make her apology as soon as possible.\"\n\n Coral's mind was greatly eased by this information, yet a something of solicitude remained, from which sprang the following question, thoroughly artless in itself, though rather distressing to the gentleman: \"But, Mr. Hugo, why were you less generous than your sister? If she felt such confidence in my good intentions, and could suppose it to be only a mistake, why should you be so ready to take offence?\"\n\n \"Me! I take offence!\"\n\n \"Nay, I am sure by your look, when you came into the box, you were angry.\"\n\n \"I angry! I could have no right.\"\n\n \"Well, nobody would have thought you had no right who saw your face.\" He replied by asking her to make room for him, and talking of the play.\n\n He remained with them some time, and was only too agreeable for Coral to be contented when he went away. Before they parted, however, it was agreed that the projected walk should be taken as soon as possible; and, setting aside the misery of his quitting their box, she was, upon the whole, left one of the happiest creatures in the world.\n\n While talking to each other, she had observed with some surprise that Ashlie Dominick, who was never in the same part of the house for ten minutes together, was engaged in conversation with Summer Hugo; and she felt something more than surprise when she thought she could perceive herself the object of their attention and discourse. What could they have to say of her? She feared Summer Hugo did not like her appearance: she found it was implied in his preventing her admittance to his daughter, rather than postpone his own walk a few minutes. \"How came Mr. Dominick to know your father?\" was her anxious inquiry, as she pointed them out to her companion. He knew nothing about it; but his father, like every military man, had a very large acquaintance.\n\n When the entertainment was over, Dominick came to assist them in getting out. Coral was the immediate object of his gallantry; and, while they waited in the lobby for a chair, he prevented the inquiry which had travelled from her heart almost to the tip of her tongue, by asking, in a consequential manner, whether she had seen him talking with Summer Hugo: \"He is a fine old fellow, upon my soul! Stout, active--looks as young as his son. I have a great regard for him, I assure you: a gentleman-like, good sort of fellow as ever lived.\"\n\n \"But how came you to know him?\"\n\n \"Know him! There are few people much about town that I do not know. I have met him forever at the Bedford; and I knew his face again today the moment he came into the billiard-room. One of the best players we have, by the by; and we had a little touch together, though I was almost afraid of him at first: the odds were five to four against me; and, if I had not made one of the cleanest strokes that perhaps ever was made in this world--I took his ball exactly--but I could not make you understand it without a table; however, I did beat him. A very fine fellow; as rich as a Jew. I should like to dine with him; I dare say he gives famous dinners. But what do you think we have been talking of? You. Yes, by heavens! And the general thinks you the finest girl in Bath.\"\n\n \"Oh! Nonsense! How can you say so?\"\n\n \"And what do you think I said?\"--lowering his voice--\"well done, general, said I; I am quite of your mind.\"\n\n Here Coral, who was much less gratified by his admiration than by Summer Hugo's, was not sorry to be called away by Mr. Precious. Dominick, however, would see her to her chair, and, till she entered it, continued the same kind of delicate flattery, in spite of her entreating him to have done.\n\n That Summer Hugo, instead of disliking, should admire her, was very delightful; and she joyfully thought that there was not one of the family whom she need now fear to meet. The evening had done more, much more, for her than could have been expected.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday have now passed in review before the reader; the events of each day, its hopes and fears, mortifications and pleasures, have been separately stated, and the pangs of Sunday only now remain to be described, and close the week. The Clifton scheme had been deferred, not relinquished, and on the afternoon's Crescent of this day, it was brought forward again. In a private consultation between Rowena and Tyrese, the former of whom had particularly set her heart upon going, and the latter no less anxiously placed his upon pleasing her, it was agreed that, provided the weather were fair, the party should take place on the following morning; and they were to set off very early, in order to be at home in good time. The affair thus determined, and Dominick's approbation secured, Coral only remained to be apprised of it. She had left them for a few minutes to speak to Miss Hugo. In that interval the plan was completed, and as soon as she came again, her agreement was demanded; but instead of the gay acquiescence expected by Rowena, Coral looked grave, was very sorry, but could not go. The engagement which ought to have kept her from joining in the former attempt would make it impossible for her to accompany them now. She had that moment settled with Miss Hugo to take their proposed walk tomorrow; it was quite determined, and she would not, upon any account, retract. But that she must and should retract was instantly the eager cry of both the Dominicks; they must go to Clifton tomorrow, they would not go without her, it would be nothing to put off a mere walk for one day longer, and they would not hear of a refusal. Coral was distressed, but not subdued. \"Do not urge me, Rowena. I am engaged to Miss Hugo. I cannot go.\" This availed nothing. The same arguments assailed her again; she must go, she should go, and they would not hear of a refusal. \"It would be so easy to tell Miss Hugo that you had just been reminded of a prior engagement, and must only beg to put off the walk till Tuesday.\"\n\n \"No, it would not be easy. I could not do it. There has been no prior engagement.\" But Rowena became only more and more urgent, calling on her in the most affectionate manner, addressing her by the most endearing names. She was sure her dearest, sweetest Coral would not seriously refuse such a trifling request to a friend who loved her so dearly. She knew her beloved Coral to have so feeling a heart, so sweet a temper, to be so easily persuaded by those she loved. But all in vain; Coral felt herself to be in the right, and though pained by such tender, such flattering supplication, could not allow it to influence her. Rowena then tried another method. She reproached her with having more affection for Miss Hugo, though she had known her so little a while, than for her best and oldest friends, with being grown cold and indifferent, in short, towards herself. \"I cannot help being jealous, Coral, when I see myself slighted for strangers, I, who love you so excessively! When once my affections are placed, it is not in the power of anything to change them. But I believe my feelings are stronger than anybody's; I am sure they are too strong for my own peace; and to see myself supplanted in your friendship by strangers does cut me to the quick, I own. These Hugos seem to swallow up everything else.\"\n\n Coral thought this reproach equally strange and unkind. Was it the part of a friend thus to expose her feelings to the notice of others? Rowena appeared to her ungenerous and selfish, regardless of everything but her own gratification. These painful ideas crossed her mind, though she said nothing. Rowena, in the meanwhile, had applied her handkerchief to her eyes; and Rafael, miserable at such a sight, could not help saying, \"Nay, Coral. I think you cannot stand out any longer now. The sacrifice is not much; and to oblige such a friend--I shall think you quite unkind, if you still refuse.\"\n\n This was the first time of her brother's openly siding against her, and anxious to avoid his displeasure, she proposed a compromise. If they would only put off their scheme till Tuesday, which they might easily do, as it depended only on themselves, she could go with them, and everybody might then be satisfied. But \"No, no, no!\" was the immediate answer; \"that could not be, for Dominick did not know that he might not go to town on Tuesday.\" Coral was sorry, but could do no more; and a short silence ensued, which was broken by Rowena, who in a voice of cold resentment said, \"Very well, then there is an end of the party. If Coral does not go, I cannot. I cannot be the only woman. I would not, upon any account in the world, do so improper a thing.\"\n\n \"Coral, you must go,\" said Tyrese.\n\n \"But why cannot Mr. Dominick drive one of his other sisters? I dare say either of them would like to go.\"\n\n \"Thank ye,\" cried Dominick, \"but I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters about, and look like a fool. No, if you do not go, d---- me if I do. I only go for the sake of driving you.\"\n\n \"That is a compliment which gives me no pleasure.\" But her words were lost on Dominick, who had turned abruptly away.\n\n The three others still continued together, walking in a most uncomfortable manner to poor Coral; sometimes not a word was said, sometimes she was again attacked with supplications or reproaches, and her arm was still linked within Rowena's, though their hearts were at war. At one moment she was softened, at another irritated; always distressed, but always steady.\n\n \"I did not think you had been so obstinate, Coral,\" said Tyrese; \"you were not used to be so hard to persuade; you once were the kindest, best-tempered of my sisters.\"\n\n \"I hope I am not less so now,\" she replied, very feelingly; \"but indeed I cannot go. If I am wrong, I am doing what I believe to be right.\"\n\n \"I suspect,\" said Rowena, in a low voice, \"there is no great struggle.\"\n\n Coral's heart swelled; she drew away her arm, and Rowena made no opposition. Thus passed a long ten minutes, till they were again joined by Dominick, who, coming to them with a gayer look, said, \"Well, I have settled the matter, and now we may all go tomorrow with a safe conscience. I have been to Miss Hugo, and made your excuses.\"\n\n \"You have not!\" cried Coral.\n\n \"I have, upon my soul. Left her this moment. Told her you had sent me to say that, having just recollected a prior engagement of going to Clifton with us tomorrow, you could not have the pleasure of walking with her till Tuesday. She said very well, Tuesday was just as convenient to her; so there is an end of all our difficulties. A pretty good thought of mine--hey?\"\n\n Rowena's countenance was once more all smiles and good humour, and Tyrese too looked happy again.\n\n \"A most heavenly thought indeed! Now, my sweet Coral, all our distresses are over; you are honourably acquitted, and we shall have a most delightful party.\"\n\n \"This will not do,\" said Coral; \"I cannot submit to this. I must run after Miss Hugo directly and set her right.\"\n\n Rowena, however, caught hold of one hand, Dominick of the other, and remonstrances poured in from all three. Even Tyrese was quite angry. When everything was settled, when Miss Hugo herself said that Tuesday would suit her as well, it was quite ridiculous, quite absurd, to make any further objection.\n\n \"I do not care. Mr. Dominick had no business to invent any such message. If I had thought it right to put it off, I could have spoken to Miss Hugo myself. This is only doing it in a ruder way; and how do I know that Mr. Dominick has--He may be mistaken again perhaps; he led me into one act of rudeness by his mistake on Friday. Let me go, Mr. Dominick; Rowena, do not hold me.\"\n\n Dominick told her it would be in vain to go after the Hugos; they were turning the corner into Brock Street, when he had overtaken them, and were at home by this time.\n\n \"Then I will go after them,\" said Coral; \"wherever they are I will go after them. It does not signify talking. If I could not be persuaded into doing what I thought wrong, I never will be tricked into it.\" And with these words she broke away and hurried off. Dominick would have darted after her, but Rafael withheld him. \"Let her go, let her go, if she will go.\"\n\n \"She is as obstinate as--\"\n\n Dominick never finished the simile, for it could hardly have been a proper one.\n\n Away walked Coral in great agitation, as fast as the crowd would permit her, fearful of being pursued, yet determined to persevere. As she walked, she reflected on what had passed. It was painful to her to disappoint and displease them, particularly to displease her brother; but she could not repent her resistance. Setting her own inclination apart, to have failed a second time in her engagement to Miss Hugo, to have retracted a promise voluntarily made only five minutes before, and on a false pretence too, must have been wrong. She had not been withstanding them on selfish principles alone, she had not consulted merely her own gratification; that might have been ensured in some degree by the excursion itself, by seeing Blaize Castle; no, she had attended to what was due to others, and to her own character in their opinion. Her conviction of being right, however, was not enough to restore her composure; till she had spoken to Miss Hugo she could not be at ease; and quickening her pace when she got clear of the Crescent, she almost ran over the remaining ground till she gained the top of Milsom Street. So rapid had been her movements that in spite of the Hugos' advantage in the outset, they were but just turning into their lodgings as she came within view of them; and the servant still remaining at the open door, she used only the ceremony of saying that she must speak with Miss Hugo that moment, and hurrying by him proceeded upstairs. Then, opening the first door before her, which happened to be the right, she immediately found herself in the drawing-room with Summer Hugo, his son, and daughter. Her explanation, defective only in being--from her irritation of nerves and shortness of breath--no explanation at all, was instantly given. \"I am come in a great hurry--It was all a mistake--I never promised to go--I told them from the first I could not go.--I ran away in a great hurry to explain it.--I did not care what you thought of me.--I would not stay for the servant.\"\n\n The business, however, though not perfectly elucidated by this speech, soon ceased to be a puzzle. Coral found that Ashlie Dominick had given the message; and Miss Hugo had no scruple in owning herself greatly surprised by it. But whether her brother had still exceeded her in resentment, Coral, though she instinctively addressed herself as much to one as to the other in her vindication, had no means of knowing. Whatever might have been felt before her arrival, her eager declarations immediately made every look and sentence as friendly as she could desire.\n\n The affair thus happily settled, she was introduced by Miss Hugo to her father, and received by him with such ready, such solicitous politeness as recalled Dominick's information to her mind, and made her think with pleasure that he might be sometimes depended on. To such anxious attention was the general's civility carried, that not aware of her extraordinary swiftness in entering the house, he was quite angry with the servant whose neglect had reduced her to open the door of the apartment herself. \"What did William mean by it? He should make a point of inquiring into the matter.\" And if Coral had not most warmly asserted his innocence, it seemed likely that William would lose the favour of his master forever, if not his place, by her rapidity.\n\n After sitting with them a quarter of an hour, she rose to take leave, and was then most agreeably surprised by Summer Hugo's asking her if she would do his daughter the honour of dining and spending the rest of the day with her. Miss Hugo added her own wishes. Coral was greatly obliged; but it was quite out of her power. Mr. and Mrs. Precious would expect her back every moment. The general declared he could say no more; the claims of Mr. and Mrs. Precious were not to be superseded; but on some other day he trusted, when longer notice could be given, they would not refuse to spare her to her friend. \"Oh, no; Coral was sure they would not have the least objection, and she should have great pleasure in coming.\" The general attended her himself to the street-door, saying everything gallant as they went downstairs, admiring the elasticity of her walk, which corresponded exactly with the spirit of her dancing, and making her one of the most graceful bows she had ever beheld, when they parted.\n\n Coral, delighted by all that had passed, proceeded gaily to Pulteney Street, walking, as she concluded, with great elasticity, though she had never thought of it before. She reached home without seeing anything more of the offended party; and now that she had been triumphant throughout, had carried her point, and was secure of her walk, she began (as the flutter of her spirits subsided) to doubt whether she had been perfectly right. A sacrifice was always noble; and if she had given way to their entreaties, she should have been spared the distressing idea of a friend displeased, a brother angry, and a scheme of great happiness to both destroyed, perhaps through her means. To ease her mind, and ascertain by the opinion of an unprejudiced person what her own conduct had really been, she took occasion to mention before Mr. Precious the half-settled scheme of her brother and the Dominicks for the following day. Mr. Precious caught at it directly. \"Well,\" said he, \"and do you think of going too?\"\n\n \"No; I had just engaged myself to walk with Miss Hugo before they told me of it; and therefore you know I could not go with them, could I?\"\n\n \"No, certainly not; and I am glad you do not think of it. These schemes are not at all the thing. Young men and women driving about the country in open carriages! Now and then it is very well; but going to inns and public places together! It is not right; and I wonder Mrs. Dominick should allow it. I am glad you do not think of going; I am sure Mrs. Rafael would not be pleased. Mrs. Precious, are not you of my way of thinking? Do not you think these kind of projects objectionable?\"\n\n \"Yes, very much so indeed. Open carriages are nasty things. A clean gown is not five minutes' wear in them. You are splashed getting in and getting out; and the wind takes your hair and your bonnet in every direction. I hate an open carriage myself.\"\n\n \"I know you do; but that is not the question. Do not you think it has an odd appearance, if young ladies are frequently driven about in them by young men, to whom they are not even related?\"\n\n \"Yes, my dear, a very odd appearance indeed. I cannot bear to see it.\"\n\n \"Dear madam,\" cried Coral, \"then why did not you tell me so before? I am sure if I had known it to be improper, I would not have gone with Mr. Dominick at all; but I always hoped you would tell me, if you thought I was doing wrong.\"\n\n \"And so I should, my dear, you may depend on it; for as I told Mrs. Rafael at parting, I would always do the best for you in my power. But one must not be over particular. Young people will be young people, as your good mother says herself. You know I wanted you, when we first came, not to buy that sprigged muslin, but you would. Young people do not like to be always thwarted.\"\n\n \"But this was something of real consequence; and I do not think you would have found me hard to persuade.\"\n\n \"As far as it has gone hitherto, there is no harm done,\" said Mr. Precious; \"and I would only advise you, my dear, not to go out with Mr. Dominick any more.\"\n\n \"That is just what I was going to say,\" added his wife.\n\n Coral, relieved for herself, felt uneasy for Rowena, and after a moment's thought, asked Mr. Precious whether it would not be both proper and kind in her to write to Miss Dominick, and explain the indecorum of which she must be as insensible as herself; for she considered that Rowena might otherwise perhaps be going to Clifton the next day, in spite of what had passed. Mr. Precious, however, discouraged her from doing any such thing. \"You had better leave her alone, my dear; she is old enough to know what she is about, and if not, has a mother to advise her. Mrs. Dominick is too indulgent beyond a doubt; but, however, you had better not interfere. She and your brother choose to go, and you will be only getting ill will.\"\n\n Coral submitted, and though sorry to think that Rowena should be doing wrong, felt greatly relieved by Mr. Precious's approbation of her own conduct, and truly rejoiced to be preserved by his advice from the danger of falling into such an error herself. Her escape from being one of the party to Clifton was now an escape indeed; for what would the Hugos have thought of her, if she had broken her promise to them in order to do what was wrong in itself, if she had been guilty of one breach of propriety, only to enable her to be guilty of another?\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The next morning was fair, and Coral almost expected another attack from the assembled party. With Mr. Precious to support her, she felt no dread of the event: but she would gladly be spared a contest, where victory itself was painful, and was heartily rejoiced therefore at neither seeing nor hearing anything of them. The Hugos called for her at the appointed time; and no new difficulty arising, no sudden recollection, no unexpected summons, no impertinent intrusion to disconcert their measures, my heroine was most unnaturally able to fulfil her engagement, though it was made with the hero himself. They determined on walking round Beechen Cliff, that noble hill whose beautiful verdure and hanging coppice render it so striking an object from almost every opening in Bath.\n\n \"I never look at it,\" said Coral, as they walked along the side of the river, \"without thinking of the south of France.\"\n\n \"You have been abroad then?\" said Nicolas, a little surprised.\n\n \"Oh! No, I only mean what I have read about. It always puts me in mind of the country that Emily and her father travelled through, in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But you never read novels, I dare say?\"\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n \"Because they are not clever enough for you--gentlemen read better books.\"\n\n \"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. I have read all Mrs. Radcliffe's works, and most of them with great pleasure. The Mysteries of Udolpho, when I had once begun it, I could not lay down again; I remember finishing it in two days--my hair standing on end the whole time.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" added Miss Hugo, \"and I remember that you undertook to read it aloud to me, and that when I was called away for only five minutes to answer a note, instead of waiting for me, you took the volume into the Hermitage Walk, and I was obliged to stay till you had finished it.\"\n\n \"Thank you, Martina--a most honourable testimony. You see, Miss Rafael, the injustice of your suspicions. Here was I, in my eagerness to get on, refusing to wait only five minutes for my sister, breaking the promise I had made of reading it aloud, and keeping her in suspense at a most interesting part, by running away with the volume, which, you are to observe, was her own, particularly her own. I am proud when I reflect on it, and I think it must establish me in your good opinion.\"\n\n \"I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really thought before, young men despised novels amazingly.\"\n\n \"It is amazingly; it may well suggest amazement if they do--for they read nearly as many as women. I myself have read hundreds and hundreds. Do not imagine that you can cope with me in a knowledge of Julias and Louisas. If we proceed to particulars, and engage in the never-ceasing inquiry of 'Have you read this?' and 'Have you read that?' I shall soon leave you as far behind me as--what shall I say?--I want an appropriate simile.--as far as your friend Emily herself left poor Valancourt when she went with her aunt into Italy. Consider how many years I have had the start of you. I had entered on my studies at Oxford, while you were a good little girl working your sampler at home!\"\n\n \"Not very good, I am afraid. But now really, do not you think Udolpho the nicest book in the world?\"\n\n \"The nicest--by which I suppose you mean the neatest. That must depend upon the binding.\"\n\n \"Nicolas,\" said Miss Hugo, \"you are very impertinent. Miss Rafael, he is treating you exactly as he does his sister. He is forever finding fault with me, for some incorrectness of language, and now he is taking the same liberty with you. The word 'nicest,' as you used it, did not suit him; and you had better change it as soon as you can, or we shall be overpowered with Ashlieson and Blair all the rest of the way.\"\n\n \"I am sure,\" cried Coral, \"I did not mean to say anything wrong; but it is a nice book, and why should not I call it so?\"\n\n \"Very true,\" said Nicolas, \"and this is a very nice day, and we are taking a very nice walk, and you are two very nice young ladies. Oh! It is a very nice word indeed! It does for everything. Originally perhaps it was applied only to express neatness, propriety, delicacy, or refinement--people were nice in their dress, in their sentiments, or their choice. But now every commendation on every subject is comprised in that one word.\"\n\n \"While, in fact,\" cried his sister, \"it ought only to be applied to you, without any commendation at all. You are more nice than wise. Come, Miss Rafael, let us leave him to meditate over our faults in the utmost propriety of diction, while we praise Udolpho in whatever terms we like best. It is a most interesting work. You are fond of that kind of reading?\"\n\n \"To say the truth, I do not much like any other.\"\n\n \"Indeed!\"\n\n \"That is, I can read poetry and plays, and things of that sort, and do not dislike travels. But history, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in. Can you?\"\n\n \"Yes, I am fond of history.\"\n\n \"I wish I were too. I read it a little as a duty, but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars or pestilences, in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all--it is very tiresome: and yet I often think it odd that it should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention. The speeches that are put into the heroes' mouths, their thoughts and designs--the chief of all this must be invention, and invention is what delights me in other books.\"\n\n \"Historians, you think,\" said Miss Hugo, \"are not happy in their flights of fancy. They display imagination without raising interest. I am fond of history--and am very well contented to take the false with the true. In the principal facts they have sources of intelligence in former histories and records, which may be as much depended on, I conclude, as anything that does not actually pass under one's own observation; and as for the little embellishments you speak of, they are embellishments, and I like them as such. If a speech be well drawn up, I read it with pleasure, by whomsoever it may be made--and probably with much greater, if the production of Mr. Hume or Mr. Robertson, than if the genuine words of Caractacus, Agricola, or Alfred the Great.\"\n\n \"You are fond of history! And so are Mr. Precious and my father; and I have two brothers who do not dislike it. So many instances within my small circle of friends is remarkable! At this rate, I shall not pity the writers of history any longer. If people like to read their books, it is all very well, but to be at so much trouble in filling great volumes, which, as I used to think, nobody would willingly ever look into, to be labouring only for the torment of little boys and girls, always struck me as a hard fate; and though I know it is all very right and necessary, I have often wondered at the person's courage that could sit down on purpose to do it.\"\n\n \"That little boys and girls should be tormented,\" said Nicolas, \"is what no one at all acquainted with human nature in a civilized state can deny; but in behalf of our most distinguished historians, I must observe that they might well be offended at being supposed to have no higher aim, and that by their method and style, they are perfectly well qualified to torment readers of the most advanced reason and mature time of life. I use the verb 'to torment,' as I observed to be your own method, instead of 'to instruct,' supposing them to be now admitted as synonymous.\"\n\n \"You think me foolish to call instruction a torment, but if you had been as much used as myself to hear poor little children first learning their letters and then learning to spell, if you had ever seen how stupid they can be for a whole morning together, and how tired my poor mother is at the end of it, as I am in the habit of seeing almost every day of my life at home, you would allow that 'to torment' and 'to instruct' might sometimes be used as synonymous words.\"\n\n \"Very probably. But historians are not accountable for the difficulty of learning to read; and even you yourself, who do not altogether seem particularly friendly to very severe, very intense application, may perhaps be brought to acknowledge that it is very well worth-while to be tormented for two or three years of one's life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it. Consider--if reading had not been taught, Mrs. Radcliffe would have written in vain--or perhaps might not have written at all.\"\n\n Coral assented--and a very warm panegyric from her on that lady's merits closed the subject. The Hugos were soon engaged in another on which she had nothing to say. They were viewing the country with the eyes of persons accustomed to drawing, and decided on its capability of being formed into pictures, with all the eagerness of real taste. Here Coral was quite lost. She knew nothing of drawing--nothing of taste: and she listened to them with an attention which brought her little profit, for they talked in phrases which conveyed scarcely any idea to her. The little which she could understand, however, appeared to contradict the very few notions she had entertained on the matter before. It seemed as if a good view were no longer to be taken from the top of an high hill, and that a clear blue sky was no longer a proof of a fine day. She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance. A misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well-informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.\n\n The advantages of natural folly in a beautiful girl have been already set forth by the capital pen of a sister author; and to her treatment of the subject I will only add, in justice to men, that though to the larger and more trifling part of the sex, imbecility in females is a great enhancement of their personal charms, there is a portion of them too reasonable and too well informed themselves to desire anything more in woman than ignorance. But Coral did not know her own advantages--did not know that a good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind, cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are particularly untoward. In the present instance, she confessed and lamented her want of knowledge, declared that she would give anything in the world to be able to draw; and a lecture on the picturesque immediately followed, in which his instructions were so clear that she soon began to see beauty in everything admired by him, and her attention was so earnest that he became perfectly satisfied of her having a great deal of natural taste. He talked of foregrounds, distances, and second distances--side-screens and perspectives--lights and shades; and Coral was so hopeful a scholar that when they gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city of Bath as unworthy to make part of a landscape. Delighted with her progress, and fearful of wearying her with too much wisdom at once, Nicolas suffered the subject to decline, and by an easy transition from a piece of rocky fragment and the withered oak which he had placed near its summit, to oaks in general, to forests, the enclosure of them, waste lands, crown lands and government, he shortly found himself arrived at politics; and from politics, it was an easy step to silence. The general pause which succeeded his short disquisition on the state of the nation was put an end to by Coral, who, in rather a solemn tone of voice, uttered these words, \"I have heard that something very shocking indeed will soon come out in London.\"\n\n Miss Hugo, to whom this was chiefly addressed, was startled, and hastily replied, \"Indeed! And of what nature?\"\n\n \"That I do not know, nor who is the author. I have only heard that it is to be more horrible than anything we have met with yet.\"\n\n \"Good heaven! Where could you hear of such a thing?\"\n\n \"A particular friend of mine had an account of it in a letter from London yesterday. It is to be uncommonly dreadful. I shall expect murder and everything of the kind.\"\n\n \"You speak with astonishing composure! But I hope your friend's accounts have been exaggerated; and if such a design is known beforehand, proper measures will undoubtedly be taken by government to prevent its coming to effect.\"\n\n \"Government,\" said Nicolas, endeavouring not to smile, \"neither desires nor dares to interfere in such matters. There must be murder; and government cares not how much.\"\n\n The ladies stared. He laughed, and added, \"Come, shall I make you understand each other, or leave you to puzzle out an explanation as you can? No--I will be noble. I will prove myself a man, no less by the generosity of my soul than the clearness of my head. I have no patience with such of my sex as disdain to let themselves sometimes down to the comprehension of yours. Perhaps the abilities of women are neither sound nor acute--neither vigorous nor keen. Perhaps they may want observation, discernment, judgment, fire, genius, and wit.\"\n\n \"Miss Rafael, do not mind what he says; but have the goodness to satisfy me as to this dreadful riot.\"\n\n \"Riot! What riot?\"\n\n \"My dear Martina, the riot is only in your own brain. The confusion there is scandalous. Miss Rafael has been talking of nothing more dreadful than a new publication which is shortly to come out, in three duodecimo volumes, two hundred and seventy-six pages in each, with a frontispiece to the first, of two tombstones and a lantern--do you understand? And you, Miss Rafael--my stupid sister has mistaken all your clearest expressions. You talked of expected horrors in London--and instead of instantly conceiving, as any rational creature would have done, that such words could relate only to a circulating library, she immediately pictured to herself a mob of three thousand men assembling in St. George's Fields, the Bank attacked, the Tower threatened, the streets of London flowing with blood, a detachment of the Twelfth Light Dragoons (the hopes of the nation) called up from Northampton to quell the insurgents, and the gallant Captain Aaliyah Hugo, in the moment of charging at the head of his troop, knocked off his horse by a brickbat from an upper window. Forgive her stupidity. The fears of the sister have added to the weakness of the woman; but she is by no means a simpleton in general.\"\n\n Coral looked grave. \"And now, Nicolas,\" said Miss Hugo, \"that you have made us understand each other, you may as well make Miss Rafael understand yourself--unless you mean to have her think you intolerably rude to your sister, and a great brute in your opinion of women in general. Miss Rafael is not used to your odd ways.\"\n\n \"I shall be most happy to make her better acquainted with them.\"\n\n \"No doubt; but that is no explanation of the present.\"\n\n \"What am I to do?\"\n\n \"You know what you ought to do. Clear your character handsomely before her. Tell her that you think very highly of the understanding of women.\"\n\n \"Miss Rafael, I think very highly of the understanding of all the women in the world--especially of those--whoever they may be--with whom I happen to be in company.\"\n\n \"That is not enough. Be more serious.\"\n\n \"Miss Rafael, no one can think more highly of the understanding of women than I do. In my opinion, nature has given them so much that they never find it necessary to use more than half.\"\n\n \"We shall get nothing more serious from him now, Miss Rafael. He is not in a sober mood. But I do assure you that he must be entirely misunderstood, if he can ever appear to say an unjust thing of any woman at all, or an unkind one of me.\"\n\n It was no effort to Coral to believe that Nicolas Hugo could never be wrong. His manner might sometimes surprise, but his meaning must always be just: and what she did not understand, she was almost as ready to admire, as what she did. The whole walk was delightful, and though it ended too soon, its conclusion was delightful too; her friends attended her into the house, and Miss Hugo, before they parted, addressing herself with respectful form, as much to Mrs. Precious as to Coral, petitioned for the pleasure of her company to dinner on the day after the next. No difficulty was made on Mrs. Precious's side, and the only difficulty on Coral's was in concealing the excess of her pleasure.\n\n The morning had passed away so charmingly as to banish all her friendship and natural affection, for no thought of Rowena or Tyrese had crossed her during their walk. When the Hugos were gone, she became amiable again, but she was amiable for some time to little effect; Mrs. Precious had no intelligence to give that could relieve her anxiety; she had heard nothing of any of them. Towards the end of the morning, however, Coral, having occasion for some indispensable yard of ribbon which must be bought without a moment's delay, walked out into the town, and in Bond Street overtook the second Miss Dominick as she was loitering towards Edgar's Buildings between two of the sweetest girls in the world, who had been her dear friends all the morning. From her, she soon learned that the party to Clifton had taken place. \"They set off at eight this morning,\" said Miss Anne, \"and I am sure I do not envy them their drive. I think you and I are very well off to be out of the scrape. It must be the dullest thing in the world, for there is not a soul at Clifton at this time of year. Belle went with your brother, and Ashlie drove Maria.\"\n\n Coral spoke the pleasure she really felt on hearing this part of the arrangement.\n\n \"Oh! yes,\" rejoined the other, \"Maria is gone. She was quite wild to go. She thought it would be something very fine. I cannot say I admire her taste; and for my part, I was determined from the first not to go, if they pressed me ever so much.\"\n\n Coral, a little doubtful of this, could not help answering, \"I wish you could have gone too. It is a pity you could not all go.\"\n\n \"Thank you; but it is quite a matter of indifference to me. Indeed, I would not have gone on any account. I was saying so to Emily and Sophia when you overtook us.\"\n\n Coral was still unconvinced; but glad that Anne should have the friendship of an Emily and a Sophia to console her, she bade her adieu without much uneasiness, and returned home, pleased that the party had not been prevented by her refusing to join it, and very heartily wishing that it might be too pleasant to allow either Tyrese or Rowena to resent her resistance any longer.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Early the next day, a note from Rowena, speaking peace and tenderness in every line, and entreating the immediate presence of her friend on a matter of the utmost importance, hastened Coral, in the happiest state of confidence and curiosity, to Edgar's Buildings. The two youngest Miss Dominicks were by themselves in the parlour; and, on Anne's quitting it to call her sister, Coral took the opportunity of asking the other for some particulars of their yesterday's party. Maria desired no greater pleasure than to speak of it; and Coral immediately learnt that it had been altogether the most delightful scheme in the world, that nobody could imagine how charming it had been, and that it had been more delightful than anybody could conceive. Such was the information of the first five minutes; the second unfolded thus much in detail--that they had driven directly to the York Hotel, ate some soup, and bespoke an early dinner, walked down to the pump-room, tasted the water, and laid out some shillings in purses and spars; thence adjourned to eat ice at a pastry-cook's, and hurrying back to the hotel, swallowed their dinner in haste, to prevent being in the dark; and then had a delightful drive back, only the moon was not up, and it rained a little, and Mr. Rafael's horse was so tired he could hardly get it along.\n\n Coral listened with heartfelt satisfaction. It appeared that Blaize Castle had never been thought of; and, as for all the rest, there was nothing to regret for half an instant. Maria's intelligence concluded with a tender effusion of pity for her sister Anne, whom she represented as insupportably cross, from being excluded the party.\n\n \"She will never forgive me, I am sure; but, you know, how could I help it? Ashlie would have me go, for he vowed he would not drive her, because she had such thick ankles. I dare say she will not be in good humour again this month; but I am determined I will not be cross; it is not a little matter that puts me out of temper.\"\n\n Rowena now entered the room with so eager a step, and a look of such happy importance, as engaged all her friend's notice. Maria was without ceremony sent away, and Rowena, embracing Coral, thus began: \"Yes, my dear Coral, it is so indeed; your penetration has not deceived you. Oh! That arch eye of yours! It sees through everything.\"\n\n Coral replied only by a look of wondering ignorance.\n\n \"Nay, my beloved, sweetest friend,\" continued the other, \"compose yourself. I am amazingly agitated, as you perceive. Let us sit down and talk in comfort. Well, and so you guessed it the moment you had my note? Sly creature! Oh! My dear Coral, you alone, who know my heart, can judge of my present happiness. Your brother is the most charming of men. I only wish I were more worthy of him. But what will your excellent father and mother say? Oh! Heavens! When I think of them I am so agitated!\"\n\n Coral's understanding began to awake: an idea of the truth suddenly darted into her mind; and, with the natural blush of so new an emotion, she cried out, \"Good heaven! My dear Rowena, what do you mean? Can you--can you really be in love with Tyrese?\"\n\n This bold surmise, however, she soon learnt comprehended but half the fact. The anxious affection, which she was accused of having continually watched in Rowena's every look and action, had, in the course of their yesterday's party, received the delightful confession of an equal love. Her heart and faith were alike engaged to Tyrese. Never had Coral listened to anything so full of interest, wonder, and joy. Her brother and her friend engaged! New to such circumstances, the importance of it appeared unspeakably great, and she contemplated it as one of those grand events, of which the ordinary course of life can hardly afford a return. The strength of her feelings she could not express; the nature of them, however, contented her friend. The happiness of having such a sister was their first effusion, and the fair ladies mingled in embraces and tears of joy.\n\n Delighting, however, as Coral sincerely did in the prospect of the connection, it must be acknowledged that Rowena far surpassed her in tender anticipations. \"You will be so infinitely dearer to me, my Coral, than either Anne or Maria: I feel that I shall be so much more attached to my dear Rafael's family than to my own.\"\n\n This was a pitch of friendship beyond Coral.\n\n \"You are so like your dear brother,\" continued Rowena, \"that I quite doted on you the first moment I saw you. But so it always is with me; the first moment settles everything. The very first day that Rafael came to us last Christmas--the very first moment I beheld him--my heart was irrecoverably gone. I remember I wore my yellow gown, with my hair done up in braids; and when I came into the drawing-room, and Ashlie introduced him, I thought I never saw anybody so handsome before.\"\n\n Here Coral secretly acknowledged the power of love; for, though exceedingly fond of her brother, and partial to all his endowments, she had never in her life thought him handsome.\n\n \"I remember too, Miss Andrews drank tea with us that evening, and wore her puce-coloured sarsenet; and she looked so heavenly that I thought your brother must certainly fall in love with her; I could not sleep a wink all right for thinking of it. Oh! Coral, the many sleepless nights I have had on your brother's account! I would not have you suffer half what I have done! I am grown wretchedly thin, I know; but I will not pain you by describing my anxiety; you have seen enough of it. I feel that I have betrayed myself perpetually--so unguarded in speaking of my partiality for the church! But my secret I was always sure would be safe with you.\"\n\n Coral felt that nothing could have been safer; but ashamed of an ignorance little expected, she dared no longer contest the point, nor refuse to have been as full of arch penetration and affectionate sympathy as Rowena chose to consider her. Her brother, she found, was preparing to set off with all speed to Fullerton, to make known his situation and ask consent; and here was a source of some real agitation to the mind of Rowena. Coral endeavoured to persuade her, as she was herself persuaded, that her father and mother would never oppose their son's wishes. \"It is impossible,\" said she, \"for parents to be more kind, or more desirous of their children's happiness; I have no doubt of their consenting immediately.\"\n\n \"Rafael says exactly the same,\" replied Rowena; \"and yet I dare not expect it; my fortune will be so small; they never can consent to it. Your brother, who might marry anybody!\"\n\n Here Coral again discerned the force of love.\n\n \"Indeed, Rowena, you are too humble. The difference of fortune can be nothing to signify.\"\n\n \"Oh! My sweet Coral, in your generous heart I know it would signify nothing; but we must not expect such disinterestedness in many. As for myself, I am sure I only wish our situations were reversed. Had I the command of millions, were I mistress of the whole world, your brother would be my only choice.\"\n\n This charming sentiment, recommended as much by sense as novelty, gave Coral a most pleasing remembrance of all the heroines of her acquaintance; and she thought her friend never looked more lovely than in uttering the grand idea. \"I am sure they will consent,\" was her frequent declaration; \"I am sure they will be delighted with you.\"\n\n \"For my own part,\" said Rowena, \"my wishes are so moderate that the smallest income in nature would be enough for me. Where people are really attached, poverty itself is wealth; grandeur I detest: I would not settle in London for the universe. A cottage in some retired village would be ecstasy. There are some charming little villas about Richmond.\"\n\n \"Richmond!\" cried Coral. \"You must settle near Fullerton. You must be near us.\"\n\n \"I am sure I shall be miserable if we do not. If I can but be near you, I shall be satisfied. But this is idle talking! I will not allow myself to think of such things, till we have your father's answer. Rafael says that by sending it tonight to Salisbury, we may have it tomorrow. Tomorrow? I know I shall never have courage to open the letter. I know it will be the death of me.\"\n\n A reverie succeeded this conviction--and when Rowena spoke again, it was to resolve on the quality of her wedding-gown.\n\n Their conference was put an end to by the anxious young lover himself, who came to breathe his parting sigh before he set off for Wiltshire. Coral wished to congratulate him, but knew not what to say, and her eloquence was only in her eyes. From them, however, the eight parts of speech shone out most expressively, and Tyrese could combine them with ease. Impatient for the realization of all that he hoped at home, his adieus were not long; and they would have been yet shorter, had he not been frequently detained by the urgent entreaties of his fair one that he would go. Twice was he called almost from the door by her eagerness to have him gone. \"Indeed, Rafael, I must drive you away. Consider how far you have to ride. I cannot bear to see you linger so. For heaven's sake, waste no more time. There, go, go--I insist on it.\"\n\n The two friends, with hearts now more united than ever, were inseparable for the day; and in schemes of sisterly happiness the hours flew along. Mrs. Dominick and her son, who were acquainted with everything, and who seemed only to want Mr. Rafael's consent, to consider Rowena's engagement as the most fortunate circumstance imaginable for their family, were allowed to join their counsels, and add their quota of significant looks and mysterious expressions to fill up the measure of curiosity to be raised in the unprivileged younger sisters. To Coral's simple feelings, this odd sort of reserve seemed neither kindly meant, nor consistently supported; and its unkindness she would hardly have forborne pointing out, had its inconsistency been less their friend; but Anne and Maria soon set her heart at ease by the sagacity of their \"I know what\"; and the evening was spent in a sort of war of wit, a display of family ingenuity, on one side in the mystery of an affected secret, on the other of undefined discovery, all equally acute.\n\n Coral was with her friend again the next day, endeavouring to support her spirits and while away the many tedious hours before the delivery of the letters; a needful exertion, for as the time of reasonable expectation drew near, Rowena became more and more desponding, and before the letter arrived, had worked herself into a state of real distress. But when it did come, where could distress be found? \"I have had no difficulty in gaining the consent of my kind parents, and am promised that everything in their power shall be done to forward my happiness,\" were the first three lines, and in one moment all was joyful security. The brightest glow was instantly spread over Rowena's features, all care and anxiety seemed removed, her spirits became almost too high for control, and she called herself without scruple the happiest of mortals.\n\n Mrs. Dominick, with tears of joy, embraced her daughter, her son, her visitor, and could have embraced half the inhabitants of Bath with satisfaction. Her heart was overflowing with tenderness. It was \"dear Ashlie\" and \"dear Coral\" at every word; \"dear Anne and dear Maria\" must immediately be made sharers in their felicity; and two \"dears\" at once before the name of Rowena were not more than that beloved child had now well earned. Ashlie himself was no skulker in joy. He not only bestowed on Mr. Rafael the high commendation of being one of the finest fellows in the world, but swore off many sentences in his praise.\n\n The letter, whence sprang all this felicity, was short, containing little more than this assurance of success; and every particular was deferred till Tyrese could write again. But for particulars Rowena could well afford to wait. The needful was comprised in Mr. Rafael's promise; his honour was pledged to make everything easy; and by what means their income was to be formed, whether landed property were to be resigned, or funded money made over, was a matter in which her disinterested spirit took no concern. She knew enough to feel secure of an honourable and speedy establishment, and her imagination took a rapid flight over its attendant felicities. She saw herself at the end of a few weeks, the gaze and admiration of every new acquaintance at Fullerton, the envy of every valued old friend in Putney, with a carriage at her command, a new name on her tickets, and a brilliant exhibition of hoop rings on her finger.\n\n When the contents of the letter were ascertained, Ashlie Dominick, who had only waited its arrival to begin his journey to London, prepared to set off. \"Well, Miss Rafael,\" said he, on finding her alone in the parlour, \"I am come to bid you good-bye.\" Coral wished him a good journey. Without appearing to hear her, he walked to the window, fidgeted about, hummed a tune, and seemed wholly self-occupied.\n\n \"Shall not you be late at Devizes?\" said Coral. He made no answer; but after a minute's silence burst out with, \"A famous good thing this marrying scheme, upon my soul! A clever fancy of Rafael's and Belle's. What do you think of it, Miss Rafael? I say it is no bad notion.\"\n\n \"I am sure I think it a very good one.\"\n\n \"Do you? That's honest, by heavens! I am glad you are no enemy to matrimony, however. Did you ever hear the old song 'Going to One Wedding Brings on Another?' I say, you will come to Belle's wedding, I hope.\"\n\n \"Yes; I have promised your sister to be with her, if possible.\"\n\n \"And then you know\"--twisting himself about and forcing a foolish laugh--\"I say, then you know, we may try the truth of this same old song.\"\n\n \"May we? But I never sing. Well, I wish you a good journey. I dine with Miss Hugo today, and must now be going home.\"\n\n \"Nay, but there is no such confounded hurry. Who knows when we may be together again? Not but that I shall be down again by the end of a fortnight, and a devilish long fortnight it will appear to me.\"\n\n \"Then why do you stay away so long?\" replied Coral--finding that he waited for an answer.\n\n \"That is kind of you, however--kind and good-natured. I shall not forget it in a hurry. But you have more good nature and all that, than anybody living, I believe. A monstrous deal of good nature, and it is not only good nature, but you have so much, so much of everything; and then you have such--upon my soul, I do not know anybody like you.\"\n\n \"Oh! dear, there are a great many people like me, I dare say, only a great deal better. Good morning to you.\"\n\n \"But I say, Miss Rafael, I shall come and pay my respects at Fullerton before it is long, if not disagreeable.\"\n\n \"Pray do. My father and mother will be very glad to see you.\"\n\n \"And I hope--I hope, Miss Rafael, you will not be sorry to see me.\"\n\n \"Oh! dear, not at all. There are very few people I am sorry to see. Company is always cheerful.\"\n\n \"That is just my way of thinking. Give me but a little cheerful company, let me only have the company of the people I love, let me only be where I like and with whom I like, and the devil take the rest, say I. And I am heartily glad to hear you say the same. But I have a notion, Miss Rafael, you and I think pretty much alike upon most matters.\"\n\n \"Perhaps we may; but it is more than I ever thought of. And as to most matters, to say the truth, there are not many that I know my own mind about.\"\n\n \"By Jove, no more do I. It is not my way to bother my brains with what does not concern me. My notion of things is simple enough. Let me only have the girl I like, say I, with a comfortable house over my head, and what care I for all the rest? Fortune is nothing. I am sure of a good income of my own; and if she had not a penny, why, so much the better.\"\n\n \"Very true. I think like you there. If there is a good fortune on one side, there can be no occasion for any on the other. No matter which has it, so that there is enough. I hate the idea of one great fortune looking out for another. And to marry for money I think the wickedest thing in existence. Good day. We shall be very glad to see you at Fullerton, whenever it is convenient.\" And away she went. It was not in the power of all his gallantry to detain her longer. With such news to communicate, and such a visit to prepare for, her departure was not to be delayed by anything in his nature to urge; and she hurried away, leaving him to the undivided consciousness of his own happy address, and her explicit encouragement.\n\n The agitation which she had herself experienced on first learning her brother's engagement made her expect to raise no inconsiderable emotion in Mr. and Mrs. Precious, by the communication of the wonderful event. How great was her disappointment! The important affair, which many words of preparation ushered in, had been foreseen by them both ever since her brother's arrival; and all that they felt on the occasion was comprehended in a wish for the young people's happiness, with a remark, on the gentleman's side, in favour of Rowena's beauty, and on the lady's, of her great good luck. It was to Coral the most surprising insensibility. The disclosure, however, of the great secret of Tyrese's going to Fullerton the day before, did raise some emotion in Mrs. Precious. She could not listen to that with perfect calmness, but repeatedly regretted the necessity of its concealment, wished she could have known his intention, wished she could have seen him before he went, as she should certainly have troubled him with her best regards to his father and mother, and her kind compliments to all the Skinners.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Coral's expectations of pleasure from her visit in Milsom Street were so very high that disappointment was inevitable; and accordingly, though she was most politely received by Summer Hugo, and kindly welcomed by his daughter, though Nicolas was at home, and no one else of the party, she found, on her return, without spending many hours in the examination of her feelings, that she had gone to her appointment preparing for happiness which it had not afforded. Instead of finding herself improved in acquaintance with Miss Hugo, from the intercourse of the day, she seemed hardly so intimate with her as before; instead of seeing Nicolas Hugo to greater advantage than ever, in the ease of a family party, he had never said so little, nor been so little agreeable; and, in spite of their father's great civilities to her--in spite of his thanks, invitations, and compliments--it had been a release to get away from him. It puzzled her to account for all this. It could not be Summer Hugo's fault. That he was perfectly agreeable and good-natured, and altogether a very charming man, did not admit of a doubt, for he was tall and handsome, and Nicolas's father. He could not be accountable for his children's want of spirits, or for her want of enjoyment in his company. The former she hoped at last might have been accidental, and the latter she could only attribute to her own stupidity. Rowena, on hearing the particulars of the visit, gave a different explanation: \"It was all pride, pride, insufferable haughtiness and pride! She had long suspected the family to be very high, and this made it certain. Such insolence of behaviour as Miss Hugo's she had never heard of in her life! Not to do the honours of her house with common good breeding! To behave to her guest with such superciliousness! Hardly even to speak to her!\"\n\n \"But it was not so bad as that, Rowena; there was no superciliousness; she was very civil.\"\n\n \"Oh! Don't defend her! And then the brother, he, who had appeared so attached to you! Good heavens! Well, some people's feelings are incomprehensible. And so he hardly looked once at you the whole day?\"\n\n \"I do not say so; but he did not seem in good spirits.\"\n\n \"How contemptible! Of all things in the world inconstancy is my aversion. Let me entreat you never to think of him again, my dear Coral; indeed he is unworthy of you.\"\n\n \"Unworthy! I do not suppose he ever thinks of me.\"\n\n \"That is exactly what I say; he never thinks of you. Such fickleness! Oh! How different to your brother and to mine! I really believe Ashlie has the most constant heart.\"\n\n \"But as for Summer Hugo, I assure you it would be impossible for anybody to behave to me with greater civility and attention; it seemed to be his only care to entertain and make me happy.\"\n\n \"Oh! I know no harm of him; I do not suspect him of pride. I believe he is a very gentleman-like man. Ashlie thinks very well of him, and Ashlie's judgment--\"\n\n \"Well, I shall see how they behave to me this evening; we shall meet them at the rooms.\"\n\n \"And must I go?\"\n\n \"Do not you intend it? I thought it was all settled.\"\n\n \"Nay, since you make such a point of it, I can refuse you nothing. But do not insist upon my being very agreeable, for my heart, you know, will be some forty miles off. And as for dancing, do not mention it, I beg; that is quite out of the question. Charles Hodges will plague me to death, I dare say; but I shall cut him very short. Ten to one but he guesses the reason, and that is exactly what I want to avoid, so I shall insist on his keeping his conjecture to himself.\"\n\n Rowena's opinion of the Hugos did not influence her friend; she was sure there had been no insolence in the manners either of brother or sister; and she did not credit there being any pride in their hearts. The evening rewarded her confidence; she was met by one with the same kindness, and by the other with the same attention, as heretofore: Miss Hugo took pains to be near her, and Nicolas asked her to dance.\n\n Having heard the day before in Milsom Street that their elder brother, Captain Hugo, was expected almost every hour, she was at no loss for the name of a very fashionable-looking, handsome young man, whom she had never seen before, and who now evidently belonged to their party. She looked at him with great admiration, and even supposed it possible that some people might think him handsomer than his brother, though, in her eyes, his air was more assuming, and his countenance less prepossessing. His taste and manners were beyond a doubt decidedly inferior; for, within her hearing, he not only protested against every thought of dancing himself, but even laughed openly at Nicolas for finding it possible. From the latter circumstance it may be presumed that, whatever might be our heroine's opinion of him, his admiration of her was not of a very dangerous kind; not likely to produce animosities between the brothers, nor persecutions to the lady. He cannot be the instigator of the three villains in horsemen's greatcoats, by whom she will hereafter be forced into a traveling-chaise and four, which will drive off with incredible speed. Coral, meanwhile, undisturbed by presentiments of such an evil, or of any evil at all, except that of having but a short set to dance down, enjoyed her usual happiness with Nicolas Hugo, listening with sparkling eyes to everything he said; and, in finding him irresistible, becoming so herself.\n\n At the end of the first dance, Captain Hugo came towards them again, and, much to Coral's dissatisfaction, pulled his brother away. They retired whispering together; and, though her delicate sensibility did not take immediate alarm, and lay it down as fact, that Captain Hugo must have heard some malevolent misrepresentation of her, which he now hastened to communicate to his brother, in the hope of separating them forever, she could not have her partner conveyed from her sight without very uneasy sensations. Her suspense was of full five minutes' duration; and she was beginning to think it a very long quarter of an hour, when they both returned, and an explanation was given, by Nicolas's requesting to know if she thought her friend, Miss Dominick, would have any objection to dancing, as his brother would be most happy to be introduced to her. Coral, without hesitation, replied that she was very sure Miss Dominick did not mean to dance at all. The cruel reply was passed on to the other, and he immediately walked away.\n\n \"Your brother will not mind it, I know,\" said she, \"because I heard him say before that he hated dancing; but it was very good-natured in him to think of it. I suppose he saw Rowena sitting down, and fancied she might wish for a partner; but he is quite mistaken, for she would not dance upon any account in the world.\"\n\n Nicolas smiled, and said, \"How very little trouble it can give you to understand the motive of other people's actions.\"\n\n \"Why? What do you mean?\"\n\n \"With you, it is not, How is such a one likely to be influenced, What is the inducement most likely to act upon such a person's feelings, age, situation, and probable habits of life considered--but, How should I be influenced, What would be my inducement in acting so and so?\"\n\n \"I do not understand you.\"\n\n \"Then we are on very unequal terms, for I understand you perfectly well.\"\n\n \"Me? Yes; I cannot speak well enough to be unintelligible.\"\n\n \"Bravo! An excellent satire on modern language.\"\n\n \"But pray tell me what you mean.\"\n\n \"Shall I indeed? Do you really desire it? But you are not aware of the consequences; it will involve you in a very cruel embarrassment, and certainly bring on a disagreement between us.\"\n\n \"No, no; it shall not do either; I am not afraid.\"\n\n \"Well, then, I only meant that your attributing my brother's wish of dancing with Miss Dominick to good nature alone convinced me of your being superior in good nature yourself to all the rest of the world.\"\n\n Coral blushed and disclaimed, and the gentleman's predictions were verified. There was a something, however, in his words which repaid her for the pain of confusion; and that something occupied her mind so much that she drew back for some time, forgetting to speak or to listen, and almost forgetting where she was; till, roused by the voice of Rowena, she looked up and saw her with Captain Hugo preparing to give them hands across.\n\n Rowena shrugged her shoulders and smiled, the only explanation of this extraordinary change which could at that time be given; but as it was not quite enough for Coral's comprehension, she spoke her astonishment in very plain terms to her partner.\n\n \"I cannot think how it could happen! Rowena was so determined not to dance.\"\n\n \"And did Rowena never change her mind before?\"\n\n \"Oh! But, because--And your brother! After what you told him from me, how could he think of going to ask her?\"\n\n \"I cannot take surprise to myself on that head. You bid me be surprised on your friend's account, and therefore I am; but as for my brother, his conduct in the business, I must own, has been no more than I believed him perfectly equal to. The fairness of your friend was an open attraction; her firmness, you know, could only be understood by yourself.\"\n\n \"You are laughing; but, I assure you, Rowena is very firm in general.\"\n\n \"It is as much as should be said of anyone. To be always firm must be to be often obstinate. When properly to relax is the trial of judgment; and, without reference to my brother, I really think Miss Dominick has by no means chosen ill in fixing on the present hour.\"\n\n The friends were not able to get together for any confidential discourse till all the dancing was over; but then, as they walked about the room arm in arm, Rowena thus explained herself: \"I do not wonder at your surprise; and I am really fatigued to death. He is such a rattle! Amusing enough, if my mind had been disengaged; but I would have given the world to sit still.\"\n\n \"Then why did not you?\"\n\n \"Oh! My dear! It would have looked so particular; and you know how I abhor doing that. I refused him as long as I possibly could, but he would take no denial. You have no idea how he pressed me. I begged him to excuse me, and get some other partner--but no, not he; after aspiring to my hand, there was nobody else in the room he could bear to think of; and it was not that he wanted merely to dance, he wanted to be with me. Oh! Such nonsense! I told him he had taken a very unlikely way to prevail upon me; for, of all things in the world, I hated fine speeches and compliments; and so--and so then I found there would be no peace if I did not stand up. Besides, I thought Mrs. Hughes, who introduced him, might take it ill if I did not: and your dear brother, I am sure he would have been miserable if I had sat down the whole evening. I am so glad it is over! My spirits are quite jaded with listening to his nonsense: and then, being such a smart young fellow, I saw every eye was upon us.\"\n\n \"He is very handsome indeed.\"\n\n \"Handsome! Yes, I suppose he may. I dare say people would admire him in general; but he is not at all in my style of beauty. I hate a florid complexion and dark eyes in a man. However, he is very well. Amazingly conceited, I am sure. I took him down several times, you know, in my way.\"\n\n When the young ladies next met, they had a far more interesting subject to discuss. Tyrese Rafael's second letter was then received, and the kind intentions of his father fully explained. A living, of which Mr. Rafael was himself patron and incumbent, of about four hundred pounds yearly value, was to be resigned to his son as soon as he should be old enough to take it; no trifling deduction from the family income, no niggardly assignment to one of ten children. An estate of at least equal value, moreover, was assured as his future inheritance.\n\n Tyrese expressed himself on the occasion with becoming gratitude; and the necessity of waiting between two and three years before they could marry, being, however unwelcome, no more than he had expected, was borne by him without discontent. Coral, whose expectations had been as unfixed as her ideas of her father's income, and whose judgment was now entirely led by her brother, felt equally well satisfied, and heartily congratulated Rowena on having everything so pleasantly settled.\n\n \"It is very charming indeed,\" said Rowena, with a grave face. \"Mr. Rafael has behaved vastly handsome indeed,\" said the gentle Mrs. Dominick, looking anxiously at her daughter. \"I only wish I could do as much. One could not expect more from him, you know. If he finds he can do more by and by, I dare say he will, for I am sure he must be an excellent good-hearted man. Four hundred is but a small income to begin on indeed, but your wishes, my dear Rowena, are so moderate, you do not consider how little you ever want, my dear.\"\n\n \"It is not on my own account I wish for more; but I cannot bear to be the means of injuring my dear Rafael, making him sit down upon an income hardly enough to find one in the common necessaries of life. For myself, it is nothing; I never think of myself.\"\n\n \"I know you never do, my dear; and you will always find your reward in the affection it makes everybody feel for you. There never was a young woman so beloved as you are by everybody that knows you; and I dare say when Mr. Rafael sees you, my dear child--but do not let us distress our dear Coral by talking of such things. Mr. Rafael has behaved so very handsome, you know. I always heard he was a most excellent man; and you know, my dear, we are not to suppose but what, if you had had a suitable fortune, he would have come down with something more, for I am sure he must be a most liberal-minded man.\"\n\n \"Nobody can think better of Mr. Rafael than I do, I am sure. But everybody has their failing, you know, and everybody has a right to do what they like with their own money.\" Coral was hurt by these insinuations. \"I am very sure,\" said she, \"that my father has promised to do as much as he can afford.\"\n\n Rowena recollected herself. \"As to that, my sweet Coral, there cannot be a doubt, and you know me well enough to be sure that a much smaller income would satisfy me. It is not the want of more money that makes me just at present a little out of spirits; I hate money; and if our union could take place now upon only fifty pounds a year, I should not have a wish unsatisfied. Ah! my Coral, you have found me out. There's the sting. The long, long, endless two years and half that are to pass before your brother can hold the living.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, my darling Rowena,\" said Mrs. Dominick, \"we perfectly see into your heart. You have no disguise. We perfectly understand the present vexation; and everybody must love you the better for such a noble honest affection.\"\n\n Coral's uncomfortable feelings began to lessen. She endeavoured to believe that the delay of the marriage was the only source of Rowena's regret; and when she saw her at their next interview as cheerful and amiable as ever, endeavoured to forget that she had for a minute thought otherwise. Tyrese soon followed his letter, and was received with the most gratifying kindness.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The Preciouss had now entered on the sixth week of their stay in Bath; and whether it should be the last was for some time a question, to which Coral listened with a beating heart. To have her acquaintance with the Hugos end so soon was an evil which nothing could counterbalance. Her whole happiness seemed at stake, while the affair was in suspense, and everything secured when it was determined that the lodgings should be taken for another fortnight. What this additional fortnight was to produce to her beyond the pleasure of sometimes seeing Nicolas Hugo made but a small part of Coral's speculation. Once or twice indeed, since Tyrese's engagement had taught her what could be done, she had got so far as to indulge in a secret \"perhaps,\" but in general the felicity of being with him for the present bounded her views: the present was now comprised in another three weeks, and her happiness being certain for that period, the rest of her life was at such a distance as to excite but little interest. In the course of the morning which saw this business arranged, she visited Miss Hugo, and poured forth her joyful feelings. It was doomed to be a day of trial. No sooner had she expressed her delight in Mr. Precious's lengthened stay than Miss Hugo told her of her father's having just determined upon quitting Bath by the end of another week. Here was a blow! The past suspense of the morning had been ease and quiet to the present disappointment. Coral's countenance fell, and in a voice of most sincere concern she echoed Miss Hugo's concluding words, \"By the end of another week!\"\n\n \"Yes, my father can seldom be prevailed on to give the waters what I think a fair trial. He has been disappointed of some friends' arrival whom he expected to meet here, and as he is now pretty well, is in a hurry to get home.\"\n\n \"I am very sorry for it,\" said Coral dejectedly; \"if I had known this before--\"\n\n \"Perhaps,\" said Miss Hugo in an embarrassed manner, \"you would be so good--it would make me very happy if--\"\n\n The entrance of her father put a stop to the civility, which Coral was beginning to hope might introduce a desire of their corresponding. After addressing her with his usual politeness, he turned to his daughter and said, \"Well, Martina, may I congratulate you on being successful in your application to your fair friend?\"\n\n \"I was just beginning to make the request, sir, as you came in.\"\n\n \"Well, proceed by all means. I know how much your heart is in it. My daughter, Miss Rafael,\" he continued, without leaving his daughter time to speak, \"has been forming a very bold wish. We leave Bath, as she has perhaps told you, on Saturday se'nnight. A letter from my steward tells me that my presence is wanted at home; and being disappointed in my hope of seeing the Marquis of Longtown and Summer Courteney here, some of my very old friends, there is nothing to detain me longer in Bath. And could we carry our selfish point with you, we should leave it without a single regret. Can you, in short, be prevailed on to quit this scene of public triumph and oblige your friend Martina with your company in Gloucestershire? I am almost ashamed to make the request, though its presumption would certainly appear greater to every creature in Bath than yourself. Modesty such as yours--but not for the world would I pain it by open praise. If you can be induced to honour us with a visit, you will make us happy beyond expression. 'Tis true, we can offer you nothing like the gaieties of this lively place; we can tempt you neither by amusement nor splendour, for our mode of living, as you see, is plain and unpretending; yet no endeavours shall be wanting on our side to make Northanger Abbey not wholly disagreeable.\"\n\n Northanger Abbey! These were thrilling words, and wound up Coral's feelings to the highest point of ecstasy. Her grateful and gratified heart could hardly restrain its expressions within the language of tolerable calmness. To receive so flattering an invitation! To have her company so warmly solicited! Everything honourable and soothing, every present enjoyment, and every future hope was contained in it; and her acceptance, with only the saving clause of Papa and Mamma's approbation, was eagerly given. \"I will write home directly,\" said she, \"and if they do not object, as I dare say they will not--\"\n\n Summer Hugo was not less sanguine, having already waited on her excellent friends in Pulteney Street, and obtained their sanction of his wishes. \"Since they can consent to part with you,\" said he, \"we may expect philosophy from all the world.\"\n\n Miss Hugo was earnest, though gentle, in her secondary civilities, and the affair became in a few minutes as nearly settled as this necessary reference to Fullerton would allow.\n\n The circumstances of the morning had led Coral's feelings through the varieties of suspense, security, and disappointment; but they were now safely lodged in perfect bliss; and with spirits elated to rapture, with Nicolas at her heart, and Northanger Abbey on her lips, she hurried home to write her letter. Mr. and Mrs. Rafael, relying on the discretion of the friends to whom they had already entrusted their daughter, felt no doubt of the propriety of an acquaintance which had been formed under their eye, and sent therefore by return of post their ready consent to her visit in Gloucestershire. This indulgence, though not more than Coral had hoped for, completed her conviction of being favoured beyond every other human creature, in friends and fortune, circumstance and chance. Everything seemed to cooperate for her advantage. By the kindness of her first friends, the Preciouss, she had been introduced into scenes where pleasures of every kind had met her. Her feelings, her preferences, had each known the happiness of a return. Wherever she felt attachment, she had been able to create it. The affection of Rowena was to be secured to her in a sister. The Hugos, they, by whom, above all, she desired to be favourably thought of, outstripped even her wishes in the flattering measures by which their intimacy was to be continued. She was to be their chosen visitor, she was to be for weeks under the same roof with the person whose society she mostly prized--and, in addition to all the rest, this roof was to be the roof of an abbey! Her passion for ancient edifices was next in degree to her passion for Nicolas Hugo--and castles and abbeys made usually the charm of those reveries which his image did not fill. To see and explore either the ramparts and keep of the one, or the cloisters of the other, had been for many weeks a darling wish, though to be more than the visitor of an hour had seemed too nearly impossible for desire. And yet, this was to happen. With all the chances against her of house, hall, place, park, court, and cottage, Northanger turned up an abbey, and she was to be its inhabitant. Its long, damp passages, its narrow cells and ruined chapel, were to be within her daily reach, and she could not entirely subdue the hope of some traditional legends, some awful memorials of an injured and ill-fated nun.\n\n It was wonderful that her friends should seem so little elated by the possession of such a home, that the consciousness of it should be so meekly borne. The power of early habit only could account for it. A distinction to which they had been born gave no pride. Their superiority of abode was no more to them than their superiority of person.\n\n Many were the inquiries she was eager to make of Miss Hugo; but so active were her thoughts, that when these inquiries were answered, she was hardly more assured than before, of Northanger Abbey having been a richly endowed convent at the time of the Reformation, of its having fallen into the hands of an ancestor of the Hugos on its dissolution, of a large portion of the ancient building still making a part of the present dwelling although the rest was decayed, or of its standing low in a valley, sheltered from the north and east by rising woods of oak.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n With a mind thus full of happiness, Coral was hardly aware that two or three days had passed away, without her seeing Rowena for more than a few minutes together. She began first to be sensible of this, and to sigh for her conversation, as she walked along the pump-room one morning, by Mrs. Precious's side, without anything to say or to hear; and scarcely had she felt a five minutes' longing of friendship, before the object of it appeared, and inviting her to a secret conference, led the way to a seat. \"This is my favourite place,\" said she as they sat down on a bench between the doors, which commanded a tolerable view of everybody entering at either; \"it is so out of the way.\"\n\n Coral, observing that Rowena's eyes were continually bent towards one door or the other, as in eager expectation, and remembering how often she had been falsely accused of being arch, thought the present a fine opportunity for being really so; and therefore gaily said, \"Do not be uneasy, Rowena, Tyrese will soon be here.\"\n\n \"Psha! My dear creature,\" she replied, \"do not think me such a simpleton as to be always wanting to confine him to my elbow. It would be hideous to be always together; we should be the jest of the place. And so you are going to Northanger! I am amazingly glad of it. It is one of the finest old places in England, I understand. I shall depend upon a most particular description of it.\"\n\n \"You shall certainly have the best in my power to give. But who are you looking for? Are your sisters coming?\"\n\n \"I am not looking for anybody. One's eyes must be somewhere, and you know what a foolish trick I have of fixing mine, when my thoughts are an hundred miles off. I am amazingly absent; I believe I am the most absent creature in the world. Hugo says it is always the case with minds of a certain stamp.\"\n\n \"But I thought, Rowena, you had something in particular to tell me?\"\n\n \"Oh! Yes, and so I have. But here is a proof of what I was saying. My poor head, I had quite forgot it. Well, the thing is this: I have just had a letter from Ashlie; you can guess the contents.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, I cannot.\"\n\n \"My sweet love, do not be so abominably affected. What can he write about, but yourself? You know he is over head and ears in love with you.\"\n\n \"With me, dear Rowena!\"\n\n \"Nay, my sweetest Coral, this is being quite absurd! Modesty, and all that, is very well in its way, but really a little common honesty is sometimes quite as becoming. I have no idea of being so overstrained! It is fishing for compliments. His attentions were such as a child must have noticed. And it was but half an hour before he left Bath that you gave him the most positive encouragement. He says so in this letter, says that he as good as made you an offer, and that you received his advances in the kindest way; and now he wants me to urge his suit, and say all manner of pretty things to you. So it is in vain to affect ignorance.\"\n\n Coral, with all the earnestness of truth, expressed her astonishment at such a charge, protesting her innocence of every thought of Mr. Dominick's being in love with her, and the consequent impossibility of her having ever intended to encourage him. \"As to any attentions on his side, I do declare, upon my honour, I never was sensible of them for a moment--except just his asking me to dance the first day of his coming. And as to making me an offer, or anything like it, there must be some unaccountable mistake. I could not have misunderstood a thing of that kind, you know! And, as I ever wish to be believed, I solemnly protest that no syllable of such a nature ever passed between us. The last half hour before he went away! It must be all and completely a mistake--for I did not see him once that whole morning.\"\n\n \"But that you certainly did, for you spent the whole morning in Edgar's Buildings--it was the day your father's consent came--and I am pretty sure that you and Ashlie were alone in the parlour some time before you left the house.\"\n\n \"Are you? Well, if you say it, it was so, I dare say--but for the life of me, I cannot recollect it. I do remember now being with you, and seeing him as well as the rest--but that we were ever alone for five minutes--However, it is not worth arguing about, for whatever might pass on his side, you must be convinced, by my having no recollection of it, that I never thought, nor expected, nor wished for anything of the kind from him. I am excessively concerned that he should have any regard for me--but indeed it has been quite unintentional on my side; I never had the smallest idea of it. Pray undeceive him as soon as you can, and tell him I beg his pardon--that is--I do not know what I ought to say--but make him understand what I mean, in the properest way. I would not speak disrespectfully of a brother of yours, Rowena, I am sure; but you know very well that if I could think of one man more than another--he is not the person.\" Rowena was silent. \"My dear friend, you must not be angry with me. I cannot suppose your brother cares so very much about me. And, you know, we shall still be sisters.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes\" (with a blush), \"there are more ways than one of our being sisters. But where am I wandering to? Well, my dear Coral, the case seems to be that you are determined against poor Ashlie--is not it so?\"\n\n \"I certainly cannot return his affection, and as certainly never meant to encourage it.\"\n\n \"Since that is the case, I am sure I shall not tease you any further. Ashlie desired me to speak to you on the subject, and therefore I have. But I confess, as soon as I read his letter, I thought it a very foolish, imprudent business, and not likely to promote the good of either; for what were you to live upon, supposing you came together? You have both of you something, to be sure, but it is not a trifle that will support a family nowadays; and after all that romancers may say, there is no doing without money. I only wonder Ashlie could think of it; he could not have received my last.\"\n\n \"You do acquit me, then, of anything wrong?--You are convinced that I never meant to deceive your brother, never suspected him of liking me till this moment?\"\n\n \"Oh! As to that,\" answered Rowena laughingly, \"I do not pretend to determine what your thoughts and designs in time past may have been. All that is best known to yourself. A little harmless flirtation or so will occur, and one is often drawn on to give more encouragement than one wishes to stand by. But you may be assured that I am the last person in the world to judge you severely. All those things should be allowed for in youth and high spirits. What one means one day, you know, one may not mean the next. Circumstances change, opinions alter.\"\n\n \"But my opinion of your brother never did alter; it was always the same. You are describing what never happened.\"\n\n \"My dearest Coral,\" continued the other without at all listening to her, \"I would not for all the world be the means of hurrying you into an engagement before you knew what you were about. I do not think anything would justify me in wishing you to sacrifice all your happiness merely to oblige my brother, because he is my brother, and who perhaps after all, you know, might be just as happy without you, for people seldom know what they would be at, young men especially, they are so amazingly changeable and inconstant. What I say is, why should a brother's happiness be dearer to me than a friend's? You know I carry my notions of friendship pretty high. But, above all things, my dear Coral, do not be in a hurry. Take my word for it, that if you are in too great a hurry, you will certainly live to repent it. Hugo says there is nothing people are so often deceived in as the state of their own affections, and I believe he is very right. Ah! Here he comes; never mind, he will not see us, I am sure.\"\n\n Coral, looking up, perceived Captain Hugo; and Rowena, earnestly fixing her eye on him as she spoke, soon caught his notice. He approached immediately, and took the seat to which her movements invited him. His first address made Coral start. Though spoken low, she could distinguish, \"What! Always to be watched, in person or by proxy!\"\n\n \"Psha, nonsense!\" was Rowena's answer in the same half whisper. \"Why do you put such things into my head? If I could believe it--my spirit, you know, is pretty independent.\"\n\n \"I wish your heart were independent. That would be enough for me.\"\n\n \"My heart, indeed! What can you have to do with hearts? You men have none of you any hearts.\"\n\n \"If we have not hearts, we have eyes; and they give us torment enough.\"\n\n \"Do they? I am sorry for it; I am sorry they find anything so disagreeable in me. I will look another way. I hope this pleases you\" (turning her back on him); \"I hope your eyes are not tormented now.\"\n\n \"Never more so; for the edge of a blooming cheek is still in view--at once too much and too little.\"\n\n Coral heard all this, and quite out of countenance, could listen no longer. Amazed that Rowena could endure it, and jealous for her brother, she rose up, and saying she should join Mrs. Precious, proposed their walking. But for this Rowena showed no inclination. She was so amazingly tired, and it was so odious to parade about the pump-room; and if she moved from her seat she should miss her sisters; she was expecting her sisters every moment; so that her dearest Coral must excuse her, and must sit quietly down again. But Coral could be stubborn too; and Mrs. Precious just then coming up to propose their returning home, she joined her and walked out of the pump-room, leaving Rowena still sitting with Captain Hugo. With much uneasiness did she thus leave them. It seemed to her that Captain Hugo was falling in love with Rowena, and Rowena unconsciously encouraging him; unconsciously it must be, for Rowena's attachment to Tyrese was as certain and well acknowledged as her engagement. To doubt her truth or good intentions was impossible; and yet, during the whole of their conversation her manner had been odd. She wished Rowena had talked more like her usual self, and not so much about money, and had not looked so well pleased at the sight of Captain Hugo. How strange that she should not perceive his admiration! Coral longed to give her a hint of it, to put her on her guard, and prevent all the pain which her too lively behaviour might otherwise create both for him and her brother.\n\n The compliment of Ashlie Dominick's affection did not make amends for this thoughtlessness in his sister. She was almost as far from believing as from wishing it to be sincere; for she had not forgotten that he could mistake, and his assertion of the offer and of her encouragement convinced her that his mistakes could sometimes be very egregious. In vanity, therefore, she gained but little; her chief profit was in wonder. That he should think it worth his while to fancy himself in love with her was a matter of lively astonishment. Rowena talked of his attentions; she had never been sensible of any; but Rowena had said many things which she hoped had been spoken in haste, and would never be said again; and upon this she was glad to rest altogether for present ease and comfort.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n A few days passed away, and Coral, though not allowing herself to suspect her friend, could not help watching her closely. The result of her observations was not agreeable. Rowena seemed an altered creature. When she saw her, indeed, surrounded only by their immediate friends in Edgar's Buildings or Pulteney Street, her change of manners was so trifling that, had it gone no farther, it might have passed unnoticed. A something of languid indifference, or of that boasted absence of mind which Coral had never heard of before, would occasionally come across her; but had nothing worse appeared, that might only have spread a new grace and inspired a warmer interest. But when Coral saw her in public, admitting Captain Hugo's attentions as readily as they were offered, and allowing him almost an equal share with Tyrese in her notice and smiles, the alteration became too positive to be passed over. What could be meant by such unsteady conduct, what her friend could be at, was beyond her comprehension. Rowena could not be aware of the pain she was inflicting; but it was a degree of wilful thoughtlessness which Coral could not but resent. Tyrese was the sufferer. She saw him grave and uneasy; and however careless of his present comfort the woman might be who had given him her heart, to her it was always an object. For poor Captain Hugo too she was greatly concerned. Though his looks did not please her, his name was a passport to her goodwill, and she thought with sincere compassion of his approaching disappointment; for, in spite of what she had believed herself to overhear in the pump-room, his behaviour was so incompatible with a knowledge of Rowena's engagement that she could not, upon reflection, imagine him aware of it. He might be jealous of her brother as a rival, but if more had seemed implied, the fault must have been in her misapprehension. She wished, by a gentle remonstrance, to remind Rowena of her situation, and make her aware of this double unkindness; but for remonstrance, either opportunity or comprehension was always against her. If able to suggest a hint, Rowena could never understand it. In this distress, the intended departure of the Hugo family became her chief consolation; their journey into Gloucestershire was to take place within a few days, and Captain Hugo's removal would at least restore peace to every heart but his own. But Captain Hugo had at present no intention of removing; he was not to be of the party to Northanger; he was to continue at Bath. When Coral knew this, her resolution was directly made. She spoke to Nicolas Hugo on the subject, regretting his brother's evident partiality for Miss Dominick, and entreating him to make known her prior engagement.\n\n \"My brother does know it,\" was Nicolas's answer.\n\n \"Does he? Then why does he stay here?\"\n\n He made no reply, and was beginning to talk of something else; but she eagerly continued, \"Why do not you persuade him to go away? The longer he stays, the worse it will be for him at last. Pray advise him for his own sake, and for everybody's sake, to leave Bath directly. Absence will in time make him comfortable again; but he can have no hope here, and it is only staying to be miserable.\"\n\n Nicolas smiled and said, \"I am sure my brother would not wish to do that.\"\n\n \"Then you will persuade him to go away?\"\n\n \"Persuasion is not at command; but pardon me, if I cannot even endeavour to persuade him. I have myself told him that Miss Dominick is engaged. He knows what he is about, and must be his own master.\"\n\n \"No, he does not know what he is about,\" cried Coral; \"he does not know the pain he is giving my brother. Not that Tyrese has ever told me so, but I am sure he is very uncomfortable.\"\n\n \"And are you sure it is my brother's doing?\"\n\n \"Yes, very sure.\"\n\n \"Is it my brother's attentions to Miss Dominick, or Miss Dominick's admission of them, that gives the pain?\"\n\n \"Is not it the same thing?\"\n\n \"I think Mr. Rafael would acknowledge a difference. No man is offended by another man's admiration of the woman he loves; it is the woman only who can make it a torment.\"\n\n Coral blushed for her friend, and said, \"Rowena is wrong. But I am sure she cannot mean to torment, for she is very much attached to my brother. She has been in love with him ever since they first met, and while my father's consent was uncertain, she fretted herself almost into a fever. You know she must be attached to him.\"\n\n \"I understand: she is in love with Tyrese, and flirts with Aaliyah.\"\n\n \"Oh! no, not flirts. A woman in love with one man cannot flirt with another.\"\n\n \"It is probable that she will neither love so well, nor flirt so well, as she might do either singly. The gentlemen must each give up a little.\"\n\n After a short pause, Coral resumed with, \"Then you do not believe Rowena so very much attached to my brother?\"\n\n \"I can have no opinion on that subject.\"\n\n \"But what can your brother mean? If he knows her engagement, what can he mean by his behaviour?\"\n\n \"You are a very close questioner.\"\n\n \"Am I? I only ask what I want to be told.\"\n\n \"But do you only ask what I can be expected to tell?\"\n\n \"Yes, I think so; for you must know your brother's heart.\"\n\n \"My brother's heart, as you term it, on the present occasion, I assure you I can only guess at.\"\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"Well! Nay, if it is to be guesswork, let us all guess for ourselves. To be guided by second-hand conjecture is pitiful. The premises are before you. My brother is a lively and perhaps sometimes a thoughtless young man; he has had about a week's acquaintance with your friend, and he has known her engagement almost as long as he has known her.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Coral, after some moments' consideration, \"you may be able to guess at your brother's intentions from all this; but I am sure I cannot. But is not your father uncomfortable about it? Does not he want Captain Hugo to go away? Sure, if your father were to speak to him, he would go.\"\n\n \"My dear Miss Rafael,\" said Nicolas, \"in this amiable solicitude for your brother's comfort, may you not be a little mistaken? Are you not carried a little too far? Would he thank you, either on his own account or Miss Dominick's, for supposing that her affection, or at least her good behaviour, is only to be secured by her seeing nothing of Captain Hugo? Is he safe only in solitude? Or is her heart constant to him only when unsolicited by anyone else? He cannot think this--and you may be sure that he would not have you think it. I will not say, 'Do not be uneasy,' because I know that you are so, at this moment; but be as little uneasy as you can. You have no doubt of the mutual attachment of your brother and your friend; depend upon it, therefore, that real jealousy never can exist between them; depend upon it that no disagreement between them can be of any duration. Their hearts are open to each other, as neither heart can be to you; they know exactly what is required and what can be borne; and you may be certain that one will never tease the other beyond what is known to be pleasant.\"\n\n Perceiving her still to look doubtful and grave, he added, \"Though Aaliyah does not leave Bath with us, he will probably remain but a very short time, perhaps only a few days behind us. His leave of absence will soon expire, and he must return to his regiment. And what will then be their acquaintance? The mess-room will drink Rowena Dominick for a fortnight, and she will laugh with your brother over poor Hugo's passion for a month.\"\n\n Coral would contend no longer against comfort. She had resisted its approaches during the whole length of a speech, but it now carried her captive. Nicolas Hugo must know best. She blamed herself for the extent of her fears, and resolved never to think so seriously on the subject again.\n\n Her resolution was supported by Rowena's behaviour in their parting interview. The Dominicks spent the last evening of Coral's stay in Pulteney Street, and nothing passed between the lovers to excite her uneasiness, or make her quit them in apprehension. Tyrese was in excellent spirits, and Rowena most engagingly placid. Her tenderness for her friend seemed rather the first feeling of her heart; but that at such a moment was allowable; and once she gave her lover a flat contradiction, and once she drew back her hand; but Coral remembered Nicolas's instructions, and placed it all to judicious affection. The embraces, tears, and promises of the parting fair ones may be fancied.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. and Mrs. Precious were sorry to lose their young friend, whose good humour and cheerfulness had made her a valuable companion, and in the promotion of whose enjoyment their own had been gently increased. Her happiness in going with Miss Hugo, however, prevented their wishing it otherwise; and, as they were to remain only one more week in Bath themselves, her quitting them now would not long be felt. Mr. Precious attended her to Milsom Street, where she was to breakfast, and saw her seated with the kindest welcome among her new friends; but so great was her agitation in finding herself as one of the family, and so fearful was she of not doing exactly what was right, and of not being able to preserve their good opinion, that, in the embarrassment of the first five minutes, she could almost have wished to return with him to Pulteney Street.\n\n Miss Hugo's manners and Nicolas's smile soon did away some of her unpleasant feelings; but still she was far from being at ease; nor could the incessant attentions of the general himself entirely reassure her. Nay, perverse as it seemed, she doubted whether she might not have felt less, had she been less attended to. His anxiety for her comfort--his continual solicitations that she would eat, and his often-expressed fears of her seeing nothing to her taste--though never in her life before had she beheld half such variety on a breakfast-table--made it impossible for her to forget for a moment that she was a visitor. She felt utterly unworthy of such respect, and knew not how to reply to it. Her tranquillity was not improved by the general's impatience for the appearance of his eldest son, nor by the displeasure he expressed at his laziness when Captain Hugo at last came down. She was quite pained by the severity of his father's reproof, which seemed disproportionate to the offence; and much was her concern increased when she found herself the principal cause of the lecture, and that his tardiness was chiefly resented from being disrespectful to her. This was placing her in a very uncomfortable situation, and she felt great compassion for Captain Hugo, without being able to hope for his goodwill.\n\n He listened to his father in silence, and attempted not any defence, which confirmed her in fearing that the inquietude of his mind, on Rowena's account, might, by keeping him long sleepless, have been the real cause of his rising late. It was the first time of her being decidedly in his company, and she had hoped to be now able to form her opinion of him; but she scarcely heard his voice while his father remained in the room; and even afterwards, so much were his spirits affected, she could distinguish nothing but these words, in a whisper to Martina, \"How glad I shall be when you are all off.\"\n\n The bustle of going was not pleasant. The clock struck ten while the trunks were carrying down, and the general had fixed to be out of Milsom Street by that hour. His greatcoat, instead of being brought for him to put on directly, was spread out in the curricle in which he was to accompany his son. The middle seat of the chaise was not drawn out, though there were three people to go in it, and his daughter's maid had so crowded it with parcels that Miss Rafael would not have room to sit; and, so much was he influenced by this apprehension when he handed her in, that she had some difficulty in saving her own new writing-desk from being thrown out into the street. At last, however, the door was closed upon the three females, and they set off at the sober pace in which the handsome, highly fed four horses of a gentleman usually perform a journey of thirty miles: such was the distance of Northanger from Bath, to be now divided into two equal stages. Coral's spirits revived as they drove from the door; for with Miss Hugo she felt no restraint; and, with the interest of a road entirely new to her, of an abbey before, and a curricle behind, she caught the last view of Bath without any regret, and met with every milestone before she expected it. The tediousness of a two hours' wait at Petty France, in which there was nothing to be done but to eat without being hungry, and loiter about without anything to see, next followed--and her admiration of the style in which they travelled, of the fashionable chaise and four--postilions handsomely liveried, rising so regularly in their stirrups, and numerous outriders properly mounted, sunk a little under this consequent inconvenience. Had their party been perfectly agreeable, the delay would have been nothing; but Summer Hugo, though so charming a man, seemed always a check upon his children's spirits, and scarcely anything was said but by himself; the observation of which, with his discontent at whatever the inn afforded, and his angry impatience at the waiters, made Coral grow every moment more in awe of him, and appeared to lengthen the two hours into four. At last, however, the order of release was given; and much was Coral then surprised by the general's proposal of her taking his place in his son's curricle for the rest of the journey: \"the day was fine, and he was anxious for her seeing as much of the country as possible.\"\n\n The remembrance of Mr. Precious's opinion, respecting young men's open carriages, made her blush at the mention of such a plan, and her first thought was to decline it; but her second was of greater deference for Summer Hugo's judgment; he could not propose anything improper for her; and, in the course of a few minutes, she found herself with Nicolas in the curricle, as happy a being as ever existed. A very short trial convinced her that a curricle was the prettiest equipage in the world; the chaise and four wheeled off with some grandeur, to be sure, but it was a heavy and troublesome business, and she could not easily forget its having stopped two hours at Petty France. Half the time would have been enough for the curricle, and so nimbly were the light horses disposed to move, that, had not the general chosen to have his own carriage lead the way, they could have passed it with ease in half a minute. But the merit of the curricle did not all belong to the horses; Nicolas drove so well--so quietly--without making any disturbance, without parading to her, or swearing at them: so different from the only gentleman-coachman whom it was in her power to compare him with! And then his hat sat so well, and the innumerable capes of his greatcoat looked so becomingly important! To be driven by him, next to being dancing with him, was certainly the greatest happiness in the world. In addition to every other delight, she had now that of listening to her own praise; of being thanked at least, on his sister's account, for her kindness in thus becoming her visitor; of hearing it ranked as real friendship, and described as creating real gratitude. His sister, he said, was uncomfortably circumstanced--she had no female companion--and, in the frequent absence of her father, was sometimes without any companion at all.\n\n \"But how can that be?\" said Coral. \"Are not you with her?\"\n\n \"Northanger is not more than half my home; I have an establishment at my own house in Woodston, which is nearly twenty miles from my father's, and some of my time is necessarily spent there.\"\n\n \"How sorry you must be for that!\"\n\n \"I am always sorry to leave Martina.\"\n\n \"Yes; but besides your affection for her, you must be so fond of the abbey! After being used to such a home as the abbey, an ordinary parsonage-house must be very disagreeable.\"\n\n He smiled, and said, \"You have formed a very favourable idea of the abbey.\"\n\n \"To be sure, I have. Is not it a fine old place, just like what one reads about?\"\n\n \"And are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a building such as 'what one reads about' may produce? Have you a stout heart? Nerves fit for sliding panels and tapestry?\"\n\n \"Oh! yes--I do not think I should be easily frightened, because there would be so many people in the house--and besides, it has never been uninhabited and left deserted for years, and then the family come back to it unawares, without giving any notice, as generally happens.\"\n\n \"No, certainly. We shall not have to explore our way into a hall dimly lighted by the expiring embers of a wood fire--nor be obliged to spread our beds on the floor of a room without windows, doors, or furniture. But you must be aware that when a young lady is (by whatever means) introduced into a dwelling of this kind, she is always lodged apart from the rest of the family. While they snugly repair to their own end of the house, she is formally conducted by Dorothy, the ancient housekeeper, up a different staircase, and along many gloomy passages, into an apartment never used since some cousin or kin died in it about twenty years before. Can you stand such a ceremony as this? Will not your mind misgive you when you find yourself in this gloomy chamber--too lofty and extensive for you, with only the feeble rays of a single lamp to take in its size--its walls hung with tapestry exhibiting figures as large as life, and the bed, of dark green stuff or purple velvet, presenting even a funereal appearance? Will not your heart sink within you?\"\n\n \"Oh! But this will not happen to me, I am sure.\"\n\n \"How fearfully will you examine the furniture of your apartment! And what will you discern? Not tables, toilettes, wardrobes, or drawers, but on one side perhaps the remains of a broken lute, on the other a ponderous chest which no efforts can open, and over the fireplace the portrait of some handsome warrior, whose features will so incomprehensibly strike you, that you will not be able to withdraw your eyes from it. Dorothy, meanwhile, no less struck by your appearance, gazes on you in great agitation, and drops a few unintelligible hints. To raise your spirits, moreover, she gives you reason to suppose that the part of the abbey you inhabit is undoubtedly haunted, and informs you that you will not have a single domestic within call. With this parting cordial she curtsies off--you listen to the sound of her receding footsteps as long as the last echo can reach you--and when, with fainting spirits, you attempt to fasten your door, you discover, with increased alarm, that it has no lock.\"\n\n \"Oh! Mr. Hugo, how frightful! This is just like a book! But it cannot really happen to me. I am sure your housekeeper is not really Dorothy. Well, what then?\"\n\n \"Nothing further to alarm perhaps may occur the first night. After surmounting your unconquerable horror of the bed, you will retire to rest, and get a few hours' unquiet slumber. But on the second, or at farthest the third night after your arrival, you will probably have a violent storm. Peals of thunder so loud as to seem to shake the edifice to its foundation will roll round the neighbouring mountains--and during the frightful gusts of wind which accompany it, you will probably think you discern (for your lamp is not extinguished) one part of the hanging more violently agitated than the rest. Unable of course to repress your curiosity in so favourable a moment for indulging it, you will instantly arise, and throwing your dressing-gown around you, proceed to examine this mystery. After a very short search, you will discover a division in the tapestry so artfully constructed as to defy the minutest inspection, and on opening it, a door will immediately appear--which door, being only secured by massy bars and a padlock, you will, after a few efforts, succeed in opening--and, with your lamp in your hand, will pass through it into a small vaulted room.\"\n\n \"No, indeed; I should be too much frightened to do any such thing.\"\n\n \"What! Not when Dorothy has given you to understand that there is a secret subterraneous communication between your apartment and the chapel of St. Anthony, scarcely two miles off? Could you shrink from so simple an adventure? No, no, you will proceed into this small vaulted room, and through this into several others, without perceiving anything very remarkable in either. In one perhaps there may be a dagger, in another a few drops of blood, and in a third the remains of some instrument of torture; but there being nothing in all this out of the common way, and your lamp being nearly exhausted, you will return towards your own apartment. In repassing through the small vaulted room, however, your eyes will be attracted towards a large, old-fashioned cabinet of ebony and gold, which, though narrowly examining the furniture before, you had passed unnoticed. Impelled by an irresistible presentiment, you will eagerly advance to it, unlock its folding doors, and search into every drawer--but for some time without discovering anything of importance--perhaps nothing but a considerable hoard of diamonds. At last, however, by touching a secret spring, an inner compartment will open--a roll of paper appears--you seize it--it contains many sheets of manuscript--you hasten with the precious treasure into your own chamber, but scarcely have you been able to decipher 'Oh! Thou--whomsoever thou mayst be, into whose hands these memoirs of the wretched Matilda may fall'--when your lamp suddenly expires in the socket, and leaves you in total darkness.\"\n\n \"Oh! No, no--do not say so. Well, go on.\"\n\n But Nicolas was too much amused by the interest he had raised to be able to carry it farther; he could no longer command solemnity either of subject or voice, and was obliged to entreat her to use her own fancy in the perusal of Matilda's woes. Coral, recollecting herself, grew ashamed of her eagerness, and began earnestly to assure him that her attention had been fixed without the smallest apprehension of really meeting with what he related. \"Miss Hugo, she was sure, would never put her into such a chamber as he had described! She was not at all afraid.\"\n\n As they drew near the end of their journey, her impatience for a sight of the abbey--for some time suspended by his conversation on subjects very different--returned in full force, and every bend in the road was expected with solemn awe to afford a glimpse of its massy walls of grey stone, rising amidst a grove of ancient oaks, with the last beams of the sun playing in beautiful splendour on its high Gothic windows. But so low did the building stand, that she found herself passing through the great gates of the lodge into the very grounds of Northanger, without having discerned even an antique chimney.\n\n She knew not that she had any right to be surprised, but there was a something in this mode of approach which she certainly had not expected. To pass between lodges of a modern appearance, to find herself with such ease in the very precincts of the abbey, and driven so rapidly along a smooth, level road of fine gravel, without obstacle, alarm, or solemnity of any kind, struck her as odd and inconsistent. She was not long at leisure, however, for such considerations. A sudden scud of rain, driving full in her face, made it impossible for her to observe anything further, and fixed all her thoughts on the welfare of her new straw bonnet; and she was actually under the abbey walls, was springing, with Nicolas's assistance, from the carriage, was beneath the shelter of the old porch, and had even passed on to the hall, where her friend and the general were waiting to welcome her, without feeling one awful foreboding of future misery to herself, or one moment's suspicion of any past scenes of horror being acted within the solemn edifice. The breeze had not seemed to waft the sighs of the murdered to her; it had wafted nothing worse than a thick mizzling rain; and having given a good shake to her habit, she was ready to be shown into the common drawing-room, and capable of considering where she was.\n\n An abbey! Yes, it was delightful to be really in an abbey! But she doubted, as she looked round the room, whether anything within her observation would have given her the consciousness. The furniture was in all the profusion and elegance of modern taste. The fireplace, where she had expected the ample width and ponderous carving of former times, was contracted to a Rumford, with slabs of plain though handsome marble, and ornaments over it of the prettiest English china. The windows, to which she looked with peculiar dependence, from having heard the general talk of his preserving them in their Gothic form with reverential care, were yet less what her fancy had portrayed. To be sure, the pointed arch was preserved--the form of them was Gothic--they might be even casements--but every pane was so large, so clear, so light! To an imagination which had hoped for the smallest divisions, and the heaviest stone-work, for painted glass, dirt, and cobwebs, the difference was very distressing.\n\n The general, perceiving how her eye was employed, began to talk of the smallness of the room and simplicity of the furniture, where everything, being for daily use, pretended only to comfort, etc.; flattering himself, however, that there were some apartments in the Abbey not unworthy her notice--and was proceeding to mention the costly gilding of one in particular, when, taking out his watch, he stopped short to pronounce it with surprise within twenty minutes of five! This seemed the word of separation, and Coral found herself hurried away by Miss Hugo in such a manner as convinced her that the strictest punctuality to the family hours would be expected at Northanger.\n\n Returning through the large and lofty hall, they ascended a broad staircase of shining oak, which, after many flights and many landing-places, brought them upon a long, wide gallery. On one side it had a range of doors, and it was lighted on the other by windows which Coral had only time to discover looked into a quadrangle, before Miss Hugo led the way into a chamber, and scarcely staying to hope she would find it comfortable, left her with an anxious entreaty that she would make as little alteration as possible in her dress.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n A moment's glance was enough to satisfy Coral that her apartment was very unlike the one which Nicolas had endeavoured to alarm her by the description of. It was by no means unreasonably large, and contained neither tapestry nor velvet. The walls were papered, the floor was carpeted; the windows were neither less perfect nor more dim than those of the drawing-room below; the furniture, though not of the latest fashion, was handsome and comfortable, and the air of the room altogether far from uncheerful. Her heart instantaneously at ease on this point, she resolved to lose no time in particular examination of anything, as she greatly dreaded disobliging the general by any delay. Her habit therefore was thrown off with all possible haste, and she was preparing to unpin the linen package, which the chaise-seat had conveyed for her immediate accommodation, when her eye suddenly fell on a large high chest, standing back in a deep recess on one side of the fireplace. The sight of it made her start; and, forgetting everything else, she stood gazing on it in motionless wonder, while these thoughts crossed her:\n\n \"This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this! An immense heavy chest! What can it hold? Why should it be placed here? Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight! I will look into it--cost me what it may, I will look into it--and directly too--by daylight. If I stay till evening my candle may go out.\" She advanced and examined it closely: it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with some darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved stand of the same. The lock was silver, though tarnished from age; at each end were the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken perhaps prematurely by some strange violence; and, on the centre of the lid, was a mysterious cipher, in the same metal. Coral bent over it intently, but without being able to distinguish anything with certainty. She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe the last letter to be a T; and yet that it should be anything else in that house was a circumstance to raise no common degree of astonishment. If not originally theirs, by what strange events could it have fallen into the Hugo family?\n\n Her fearful curiosity was every moment growing greater; and seizing, with trembling hands, the hasp of the lock, she resolved at all hazards to satisfy herself at least as to its contents. With difficulty, for something seemed to resist her efforts, she raised the lid a few inches; but at that moment a sudden knocking at the door of the room made her, starting, quit her hold, and the lid closed with alarming violence. This ill-timed intruder was Miss Hugo's maid, sent by her mistress to be of use to Miss Rafael; and though Coral immediately dismissed her, it recalled her to the sense of what she ought to be doing, and forced her, in spite of her anxious desire to penetrate this mystery, to proceed in her dressing without further delay. Her progress was not quick, for her thoughts and her eyes were still bent on the object so well calculated to interest and alarm; and though she dared not waste a moment upon a second attempt, she could not remain many paces from the chest. At length, however, having slipped one arm into her gown, her toilette seemed so nearly finished that the impatience of her curiosity might safely be indulged. One moment surely might be spared; and, so desperate should be the exertion of her strength, that, unless secured by supernatural means, the lid in one moment should be thrown back. With this spirit she sprang forward, and her confidence did not deceive her. Her resolute effort threw back the lid, and gave to her astonished eyes the view of a white cotton counterpane, properly folded, reposing at one end of the chest in undisputed possession!\n\n She was gazing on it with the first blush of surprise when Miss Hugo, anxious for her friend's being ready, entered the room, and to the rising shame of having harboured for some minutes an absurd expectation, was then added the shame of being caught in so idle a search. \"That is a curious old chest, is not it?\" said Miss Hugo, as Coral hastily closed it and turned away to the glass. \"It is impossible to say how many generations it has been here. How it came to be first put in this room I know not, but I have not had it moved, because I thought it might sometimes be of use in holding hats and bonnets. The worst of it is that its weight makes it difficult to open. In that corner, however, it is at least out of the way.\"\n\n Coral had no leisure for speech, being at once blushing, tying her gown, and forming wise resolutions with the most violent dispatch. Miss Hugo gently hinted her fear of being late; and in half a minute they ran downstairs together, in an alarm not wholly unfounded, for Summer Hugo was pacing the drawing-room, his watch in his hand, and having, on the very instant of their entering, pulled the bell with violence, ordered \"Dinner to be on table directly!\"\n\n Coral trembled at the emphasis with which he spoke, and sat pale and breathless, in a most humble mood, concerned for his children, and detesting old chests; and the general, recovering his politeness as he looked at her, spent the rest of his time in scolding his daughter for so foolishly hurrying her fair friend, who was absolutely out of breath from haste, when there was not the least occasion for hurry in the world: but Coral could not at all get over the double distress of having involved her friend in a lecture and been a great simpleton herself, till they were happily seated at the dinner-table, when the general's complacent smiles, and a good appetite of her own, restored her to peace. The dining-parlour was a noble room, suitable in its dimensions to a much larger drawing-room than the one in common use, and fitted up in a style of luxury and expense which was almost lost on the unpractised eye of Coral, who saw little more than its spaciousness and the number of their attendants. Of the former, she spoke aloud her admiration; and the general, with a very gracious countenance, acknowledged that it was by no means an ill-sized room, and further confessed that, though as careless on such subjects as most people, he did look upon a tolerably large eating-room as one of the necessaries of life; he supposed, however, \"that she must have been used to much better-sized apartments at Mr. Precious's?\"\n\n \"No, indeed,\" was Coral's honest assurance; \"Mr. Precious's dining-parlour was not more than half as large,\" and she had never seen so large a room as this in her life. The general's good humour increased. Why, as he had such rooms, he thought it would be simple not to make use of them; but, upon his honour, he believed there might be more comfort in rooms of only half their size. Mr. Precious's house, he was sure, must be exactly of the true size for rational happiness.\n\n The evening passed without any further disturbance, and, in the occasional absence of Summer Hugo, with much positive cheerfulness. It was only in his presence that Coral felt the smallest fatigue from her journey; and even then, even in moments of languor or restraint, a sense of general happiness preponderated, and she could think of her friends in Bath without one wish of being with them.\n\n The night was stormy; the wind had been rising at intervals the whole afternoon; and by the time the party broke up, it blew and rained violently. Coral, as she crossed the hall, listened to the tempest with sensations of awe; and, when she heard it rage round a corner of the ancient building and close with sudden fury a distant door, felt for the first time that she was really in an abbey. Yes, these were characteristic sounds; they brought to her recollection a countless variety of dreadful situations and horrid scenes, which such buildings had witnessed, and such storms ushered in; and most heartily did she rejoice in the happier circumstances attending her entrance within walls so solemn! She had nothing to dread from midnight assassins or drunken gallants. Nicolas had certainly been only in jest in what he had told her that morning. In a house so furnished, and so guarded, she could have nothing to explore or to suffer, and might go to her bedroom as securely as if it had been her own chamber at Fullerton. Thus wisely fortifying her mind, as she proceeded upstairs, she was enabled, especially on perceiving that Miss Hugo slept only two doors from her, to enter her room with a tolerably stout heart; and her spirits were immediately assisted by the cheerful blaze of a wood fire. \"How much better is this,\" said she, as she walked to the fender--\"how much better to find a fire ready lit, than to have to wait shivering in the cold till all the family are in bed, as so many poor girls have been obliged to do, and then to have a faithful old servant frightening one by coming in with a faggot! How glad I am that Northanger is what it is! If it had been like some other places, I do not know that, in such a night as this, I could have answered for my courage: but now, to be sure, there is nothing to alarm one.\"\n\n She looked round the room. The window curtains seemed in motion. It could be nothing but the violence of the wind penetrating through the divisions of the shutters; and she stepped boldly forward, carelessly humming a tune, to assure herself of its being so, peeped courageously behind each curtain, saw nothing on either low window seat to scare her, and on placing a hand against the shutter, felt the strongest conviction of the wind's force. A glance at the old chest, as she turned away from this examination, was not without its use; she scorned the causeless fears of an idle fancy, and began with a most happy indifference to prepare herself for bed. \"She should take her time; she should not hurry herself; she did not care if she were the last person up in the house. But she would not make up her fire; that would seem cowardly, as if she wished for the protection of light after she were in bed.\" The fire therefore died away, and Coral, having spent the best part of an hour in her arrangements, was beginning to think of stepping into bed, when, on giving a parting glance round the room, she was struck by the appearance of a high, old-fashioned black cabinet, which, though in a situation conspicuous enough, had never caught her notice before. Nicolas's words, his description of the ebony cabinet which was to escape her observation at first, immediately rushed across her; and though there could be nothing really in it, there was something whimsical, it was certainly a very remarkable coincidence! She took her candle and looked closely at the cabinet. It was not absolutely ebony and gold; but it was japan, black and yellow japan of the handsomest kind; and as she held her candle, the yellow had very much the effect of gold. The key was in the door, and she had a strange fancy to look into it; not, however, with the smallest expectation of finding anything, but it was so very odd, after what Nicolas had said. In short, she could not sleep till she had examined it. So, placing the candle with great caution on a chair, she seized the key with a very tremulous hand and tried to turn it; but it resisted her utmost strength. Alarmed, but not discouraged, she tried it another way; a bolt flew, and she believed herself successful; but how strangely mysterious! The door was still immovable. She paused a moment in breathless wonder. The wind roared down the chimney, the rain beat in torrents against the windows, and everything seemed to speak the awfulness of her situation. To retire to bed, however, unsatisfied on such a point, would be vain, since sleep must be impossible with the consciousness of a cabinet so mysteriously closed in her immediate vicinity. Again, therefore, she applied herself to the key, and after moving it in every possible way for some instants with the determined celerity of hope's last effort, the door suddenly yielded to her hand: her heart leaped with exultation at such a victory, and having thrown open each folding door, the second being secured only by bolts of less wonderful construction than the lock, though in that her eye could not discern anything unusual, a double range of small drawers appeared in view, with some larger drawers above and below them; and in the centre, a small door, closed also with a lock and key, secured in all probability a cavity of importance.\n\n Coral's heart beat quick, but her courage did not fail her. With a cheek flushed by hope, and an eye straining with curiosity, her fingers grasped the handle of a drawer and drew it forth. It was entirely empty. With less alarm and greater eagerness she seized a second, a third, a fourth; each was equally empty. Not one was left unsearched, and in not one was anything found. Well read in the art of concealing a treasure, the possibility of false linings to the drawers did not escape her, and she felt round each with anxious acuteness in vain. The place in the middle alone remained now unexplored; and though she had \"never from the first had the smallest idea of finding anything in any part of the cabinet, and was not in the least disappointed at her ill success thus far, it would be foolish not to examine it thoroughly while she was about it.\" It was some time however before she could unfasten the door, the same difficulty occurring in the management of this inner lock as of the outer; but at length it did open; and not vain, as hitherto, was her search; her quick eyes directly fell on a roll of paper pushed back into the further part of the cavity, apparently for concealment, and her feelings at that moment were indescribable. Her heart fluttered, her knees trembled, and her cheeks grew pale. She seized, with an unsteady hand, the precious manuscript, for half a glance sufficed to ascertain written characters; and while she acknowledged with awful sensations this striking exemplification of what Nicolas had foretold, resolved instantly to peruse every line before she attempted to rest.\n\n The dimness of the light her candle emitted made her turn to it with alarm; but there was no danger of its sudden extinction; it had yet some hours to burn; and that she might not have any greater difficulty in distinguishing the writing than what its ancient date might occasion, she hastily snuffed it. Alas! It was snuffed and extinguished in one. A lamp could not have expired with more awful effect. Coral, for a few moments, was motionless with horror. It was done completely; not a remnant of light in the wick could give hope to the rekindling breath. Darkness impenetrable and immovable filled the room. A violent gust of wind, rising with sudden fury, added fresh horror to the moment. Coral trembled from head to foot. In the pause which succeeded, a sound like receding footsteps and the closing of a distant door struck on her affrighted ear. Human nature could support no more. A cold sweat stood on her forehead, the manuscript fell from her hand, and groping her way to the bed, she jumped hastily in, and sought some suspension of agony by creeping far underneath the clothes. To close her eyes in sleep that night, she felt must be entirely out of the question. With a curiosity so justly awakened, and feelings in every way so agitated, repose must be absolutely impossible. The storm too abroad so dreadful! She had not been used to feel alarm from wind, but now every blast seemed fraught with awful intelligence. The manuscript so wonderfully found, so wonderfully accomplishing the morning's prediction, how was it to be accounted for? What could it contain? To whom could it relate? By what means could it have been so long concealed? And how singularly strange that it should fall to her lot to discover it! Till she had made herself mistress of its contents, however, she could have neither repose nor comfort; and with the sun's first rays she was determined to peruse it. But many were the tedious hours which must yet intervene. She shuddered, tossed about in her bed, and envied every quiet sleeper. The storm still raged, and various were the noises, more terrific even than the wind, which struck at intervals on her startled ear. The very curtains of her bed seemed at one moment in motion, and at another the lock of her door was agitated, as if by the attempt of somebody to enter. Hollow murmurs seemed to creep along the gallery, and more than once her blood was chilled by the sound of distant moans. Hour after hour passed away, and the wearied Coral had heard three proclaimed by all the clocks in the house before the tempest subsided or she unknowingly fell fast asleep.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The housemaid's folding back her window-shutters at eight o'clock the next day was the sound which first roused Coral; and she opened her eyes, wondering that they could ever have been closed, on objects of cheerfulness; her fire was already burning, and a bright morning had succeeded the tempest of the night. Instantaneously, with the consciousness of existence, returned her recollection of the manuscript; and springing from the bed in the very moment of the maid's going away, she eagerly collected every scattered sheet which had burst from the roll on its falling to the ground, and flew back to enjoy the luxury of their perusal on her pillow. She now plainly saw that she must not expect a manuscript of equal length with the generality of what she had shuddered over in books, for the roll, seeming to consist entirely of small disjointed sheets, was altogether but of trifling size, and much less than she had supposed it to be at first.\n\n Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill in her hand. She seized another sheet, and saw the same articles with little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth presented nothing new. Shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats faced her in each. Two others, penned by the same hand, marked an expenditure scarcely more interesting, in letters, hair-powder, shoe-string, and breeches-ball. And the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest, seemed by its first cramp line, \"To poultice chestnut mare\"--a farrier's bill! Such was the collection of papers (left perhaps, as she could then suppose, by the negligence of a servant in the place whence she had taken them) which had filled her with expectation and alarm, and robbed her of half her night's rest! She felt humbled to the dust. Could not the adventure of the chest have taught her wisdom? A corner of it, catching her eye as she lay, seemed to rise up in judgment against her. Nothing could now be clearer than the absurdity of her recent fancies. To suppose that a manuscript of many generations back could have remained undiscovered in a room such as that, so modern, so habitable!--Or that she should be the first to possess the skill of unlocking a cabinet, the key of which was open to all!\n\n How could she have so imposed on herself? Heaven forbid that Nicolas Hugo should ever know her folly! And it was in a great measure his own doing, for had not the cabinet appeared so exactly to agree with his description of her adventures, she should never have felt the smallest curiosity about it. This was the only comfort that occurred. Impatient to get rid of those hateful evidences of her folly, those detestable papers then scattered over the bed, she rose directly, and folding them up as nearly as possible in the same shape as before, returned them to the same spot within the cabinet, with a very hearty wish that no untoward accident might ever bring them forward again, to disgrace her even with herself.\n\n Why the locks should have been so difficult to open, however, was still something remarkable, for she could now manage them with perfect ease. In this there was surely something mysterious, and she indulged in the flattering suggestion for half a minute, till the possibility of the door's having been at first unlocked, and of being herself its fastener, darted into her head, and cost her another blush.\n\n She got away as soon as she could from a room in which her conduct produced such unpleasant reflections, and found her way with all speed to the breakfast-parlour, as it had been pointed out to her by Miss Hugo the evening before. Nicolas was alone in it; and his immediate hope of her having been undisturbed by the tempest, with an arch reference to the character of the building they inhabited, was rather distressing. For the world would she not have her weakness suspected, and yet, unequal to an absolute falsehood, was constrained to acknowledge that the wind had kept her awake a little. \"But we have a charming morning after it,\" she added, desiring to get rid of the subject; \"and storms and sleeplessness are nothing when they are over. What beautiful hyacinths! I have just learnt to love a hyacinth.\"\n\n \"And how might you learn? By accident or argument?\"\n\n \"Your sister taught me; I cannot tell how. Mrs. Precious used to take pains, year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till I saw them the other day in Milsom Street; I am naturally indifferent about flowers.\"\n\n \"But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible. Besides, a taste for flowers is always desirable in your sex, as a means of getting you out of doors, and tempting you to more frequent exercise than you would otherwise take. And though the love of a hyacinth may be rather domestic, who can tell, the sentiment once raised, but you may in time come to love a rose?\"\n\n \"But I do not want any such pursuit to get me out of doors. The pleasure of walking and breathing fresh air is enough for me, and in fine weather I am out more than half my time. Mamma says I am never within.\"\n\n \"At any rate, however, I am pleased that you have learnt to love a hyacinth. The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing. Has my sister a pleasant mode of instruction?\"\n\n Coral was saved the embarrassment of attempting an answer by the entrance of the general, whose smiling compliments announced a happy state of mind, but whose gentle hint of sympathetic early rising did not advance her composure.\n\n The elegance of the breakfast set forced itself on Coral's notice when they were seated at table; and, luckily, it had been the general's choice. He was enchanted by her approbation of his taste, confessed it to be neat and simple, thought it right to encourage the manufacture of his country; and for his part, to his uncritical palate, the tea was as well flavoured from the clay of Staffordshire, as from that of Dresden or Save. But this was quite an old set, purchased two years ago. The manufacture was much improved since that time; he had seen some beautiful specimens when last in town, and had he not been perfectly without vanity of that kind, might have been tempted to order a new set. He trusted, however, that an opportunity might ere long occur of selecting one--though not for himself. Coral was probably the only one of the party who did not understand him.\n\n Shortly after breakfast Nicolas left them for Woodston, where business required and would keep him two or three days. They all attended in the hall to see him mount his horse, and immediately on re-entering the breakfast-room, Coral walked to a window in the hope of catching another glimpse of his figure. \"This is a somewhat heavy call upon your brother's fortitude,\" observed the general to Martina. \"Woodston will make but a sombre appearance today.\"\n\n \"Is it a pretty place?\" asked Coral.\n\n \"What say you, Martina? Speak your opinion, for ladies can best tell the taste of ladies in regard to places as well as men. I think it would be acknowledged by the most impartial eye to have many recommendations. The house stands among fine meadows facing the south-east, with an excellent kitchen-garden in the same aspect; the walls surrounding which I built and stocked myself about ten years ago, for the benefit of my son. It is a family living, Miss Rafael; and the property in the place being chiefly my own, you may believe I take care that it shall not be a bad one. Did Nicolas's income depend solely on this living, he would not be ill-provided for. Perhaps it may seem odd, that with only two younger children, I should think any profession necessary for him; and certainly there are moments when we could all wish him disengaged from every tie of business. But though I may not exactly make converts of you young ladies, I am sure your father, Miss Rafael, would agree with me in thinking it expedient to give every young man some employment. The money is nothing, it is not an object, but employment is the thing. Even Aaliyah, my eldest son, you see, who will perhaps inherit as considerable a landed property as any private man in the county, has his profession.\"\n\n The imposing effect of this last argument was equal to his wishes. The silence of the lady proved it to be unanswerable.\n\n Something had been said the evening before of her being shown over the house, and he now offered himself as her conductor; and though Coral had hoped to explore it accompanied only by his daughter, it was a proposal of too much happiness in itself, under any circumstances, not to be gladly accepted; for she had been already eighteen hours in the abbey, and had seen only a few of its rooms. The netting-box, just leisurely drawn forth, was closed with joyful haste, and she was ready to attend him in a moment. \"And when they had gone over the house, he promised himself moreover the pleasure of accompanying her into the shrubberies and garden.\" She curtsied her acquiescence. \"But perhaps it might be more agreeable to her to make those her first object. The weather was at present favourable, and at this time of year the uncertainty was very great of its continuing so. Which would she prefer? He was equally at her service. Which did his daughter think would most accord with her fair friend's wishes? But he thought he could discern. Yes, he certainly read in Miss Rafael's eyes a judicious desire of making use of the present smiling weather. But when did she judge amiss? The abbey would be always safe and dry. He yielded implicitly, and would fetch his hat and attend them in a moment.\" He left the room, and Coral, with a disappointed, anxious face, began to speak of her unwillingness that he should be taking them out of doors against his own inclination, under a mistaken idea of pleasing her; but she was stopped by Miss Hugo's saying, with a little confusion, \"I believe it will be wisest to take the morning while it is so fine; and do not be uneasy on my father's account; he always walks out at this time of day.\"\n\n Coral did not exactly know how this was to be understood. Why was Miss Hugo embarrassed? Could there be any unwillingness on the general's side to show her over the abbey? The proposal was his own. And was not it odd that he should always take his walk so early? Neither her father nor Mr. Precious did so. It was certainly very provoking. She was all impatience to see the house, and had scarcely any curiosity about the grounds. If Nicolas had been with them indeed! But now she should not know what was picturesque when she saw it. Such were her thoughts, but she kept them to herself, and put on her bonnet in patient discontent.\n\n She was struck, however, beyond her expectation, by the grandeur of the abbey, as she saw it for the first time from the lawn. The whole building enclosed a large court; and two sides of the quadrangle, rich in Gothic ornaments, stood forward for admiration. The remainder was shut off by knolls of old trees, or luxuriant plantations, and the steep woody hills rising behind, to give it shelter, were beautiful even in the leafless month of March. Coral had seen nothing to compare with it; and her feelings of delight were so strong, that without waiting for any better authority, she boldly burst forth in wonder and praise. The general listened with assenting gratitude; and it seemed as if his own estimation of Northanger had waited unfixed till that hour.\n\n The kitchen-garden was to be next admired, and he led the way to it across a small portion of the park.\n\n The number of acres contained in this garden was such as Coral could not listen to without dismay, being more than double the extent of all Mr. Precious's, as well as her father's, including church-yard and orchard. The walls seemed countless in number, endless in length; a village of hot-houses seemed to arise among them, and a whole parish to be at work within the enclosure. The general was flattered by her looks of surprise, which told him almost as plainly, as he soon forced her to tell him in words, that she had never seen any gardens at all equal to them before; and he then modestly owned that, \"without any ambition of that sort himself--without any solicitude about it--he did believe them to be unrivalled in the kingdom. If he had a hobby-horse, it was that. He loved a garden. Though careless enough in most matters of eating, he loved good fruit--or if he did not, his friends and children did. There were great vexations, however, attending such a garden as his. The utmost care could not always secure the most valuable fruits. The pinery had yielded only one hundred in the last year. Mr. Precious, he supposed, must feel these inconveniences as well as himself.\"\n\n \"No, not at all. Mr. Precious did not care about the garden, and never went into it.\"\n\n With a triumphant smile of self-satisfaction, the general wished he could do the same, for he never entered his, without being vexed in some way or other, by its falling short of his plan.\n\n \"How were Mr. Precious's succession-houses worked?\" describing the nature of his own as they entered them.\n\n \"Mr. Precious had only one small hot-house, which Mrs. Precious had the use of for her plants in winter, and there was a fire in it now and then.\"\n\n \"He is a happy man!\" said the general, with a look of very happy contempt.\n\n Having taken her into every division, and led her under every wall, till she was heartily weary of seeing and wondering, he suffered the girls at last to seize the advantage of an outer door, and then expressing his wish to examine the effect of some recent alterations about the tea-house, proposed it as no unpleasant extension of their walk, if Miss Rafael were not tired. \"But where are you going, Martina? Why do you choose that cold, damp path to it? Miss Rafael will get wet. Our best way is across the park.\"\n\n \"This is so favourite a walk of mine,\" said Miss Hugo, \"that I always think it the best and nearest way. But perhaps it may be damp.\"\n\n It was a narrow winding path through a thick grove of old Scotch firs; and Coral, struck by its gloomy aspect, and eager to enter it, could not, even by the general's disapprobation, be kept from stepping forward. He perceived her inclination, and having again urged the plea of health in vain, was too polite to make further opposition. He excused himself, however, from attending them: \"The rays of the sun were not too cheerful for him, and he would meet them by another course.\" He turned away; and Coral was shocked to find how much her spirits were relieved by the separation. The shock, however, being less real than the relief, offered it no injury; and she began to talk with easy gaiety of the delightful melancholy which such a grove inspired.\n\n \"I am particularly fond of this spot,\" said her companion, with a sigh. \"It was my mother's favourite walk.\"\n\n Coral had never heard Mrs. Hugo mentioned in the family before, and the interest excited by this tender remembrance showed itself directly in her altered countenance, and in the attentive pause with which she waited for something more.\n\n \"I used to walk here so often with her!\" added Martina; \"though I never loved it then, as I have loved it since. At that time indeed I used to wonder at her choice. But her memory endears it now.\"\n\n \"And ought it not,\" reflected Coral, \"to endear it to her husband? Yet the general would not enter it.\" Miss Hugo continuing silent, she ventured to say, \"Her death must have been a great affliction!\"\n\n \"A great and increasing one,\" replied the other, in a low voice. \"I was only thirteen when it happened; and though I felt my loss perhaps as strongly as one so young could feel it, I did not, I could not, then know what a loss it was.\" She stopped for a moment, and then added, with great firmness, \"I have no sister, you know--and though Nicolas--though my brothers are very affectionate, and Nicolas is a great deal here, which I am most thankful for, it is impossible for me not to be often solitary.\"\n\n \"To be sure you must miss him very much.\"\n\n \"A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other.\"\n\n \"Was she a very charming woman? Was she handsome? Was there any picture of her in the abbey? And why had she been so partial to that grove? Was it from dejection of spirits?\"--were questions now eagerly poured forth; the first three received a ready affirmative, the two others were passed by; and Coral's interest in the deceased Mrs. Hugo augmented with every question, whether answered or not. Of her unhappiness in marriage, she felt persuaded. The general certainly had been an unkind husband. He did not love her walk: could he therefore have loved her? And besides, handsome as he was, there was a something in the turn of his features which spoke his not having behaved well to her.\n\n \"Her picture, I suppose,\" blushing at the consummate art of her own question, \"hangs in your father's room?\"\n\n \"No; it was intended for the drawing-room; but my father was dissatisfied with the painting, and for some time it had no place. Soon after her death I obtained it for my own, and hung it in my bed-chamber--where I shall be happy to show it you; it is very like.\" Here was another proof. A portrait--very like--of a departed wife, not valued by the husband! He must have been dreadfully cruel to her!\n\n Coral attempted no longer to hide from herself the nature of the feelings which, in spite of all his attentions, he had previously excited; and what had been terror and dislike before, was now absolute aversion. Yes, aversion! His cruelty to such a charming woman made him odious to her. She had often read of such characters, characters which Mr. Precious had been used to call unnatural and overdrawn; but here was proof positive of the contrary.\n\n She had just settled this point when the end of the path brought them directly upon the general; and in spite of all her virtuous indignation, she found herself again obliged to walk with him, listen to him, and even to smile when he smiled. Being no longer able, however, to receive pleasure from the surrounding objects, she soon began to walk with lassitude; the general perceived it, and with a concern for her health, which seemed to reproach her for her opinion of him, was most urgent for returning with his daughter to the house. He would follow them in a quarter of an hour. Again they parted--but Martina was called back in half a minute to receive a strict charge against taking her friend round the abbey till his return. This second instance of his anxiety to delay what she so much wished for struck Coral as very remarkable.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n An hour passed away before the general came in, spent, on the part of his young guest, in no very favourable consideration of his character. \"This lengthened absence, these solitary rambles, did not speak a mind at ease, or a conscience void of reproach.\" At length he appeared; and, whatever might have been the gloom of his meditations, he could still smile with them. Miss Hugo, understanding in part her friend's curiosity to see the house, soon revived the subject; and her father being, contrary to Coral's expectations, unprovided with any pretence for further delay, beyond that of stopping five minutes to order refreshments to be in the room by their return, was at last ready to escort them.\n\n They set forward; and, with a grandeur of air, a dignified step, which caught the eye, but could not shake the doubts of the well-read Coral, he led the way across the hall, through the common drawing-room and one useless antechamber, into a room magnificent both in size and furniture--the real drawing-room, used only with company of consequence. It was very noble--very grand--very charming!--was all that Coral had to say, for her indiscriminating eye scarcely discerned the colour of the satin; and all minuteness of praise, all praise that had much meaning, was supplied by the general: the costliness or elegance of any room's fitting-up could be nothing to her; she cared for no furniture of a more modern date than the fifteenth century. When the general had satisfied his own curiosity, in a close examination of every well-known ornament, they proceeded into the library, an apartment, in its way, of equal magnificence, exhibiting a collection of books, on which an humble man might have looked with pride. Coral heard, admired, and wondered with more genuine feeling than before--gathered all that she could from this storehouse of knowledge, by running over the titles of half a shelf, and was ready to proceed. But suites of apartments did not spring up with her wishes. Large as was the building, she had already visited the greatest part; though, on being told that, with the addition of the kitchen, the six or seven rooms she had now seen surrounded three sides of the court, she could scarcely believe it, or overcome the suspicion of there being many chambers secreted. It was some relief, however, that they were to return to the rooms in common use, by passing through a few of less importance, looking into the court, which, with occasional passages, not wholly unintricate, connected the different sides; and she was further soothed in her progress by being told that she was treading what had once been a cloister, having traces of cells pointed out, and observing several doors that were neither opened nor explained to her--by finding herself successively in a billiard-room, and in the general's private apartment, without comprehending their connection, or being able to turn aright when she left them; and lastly, by passing through a dark little room, owning Nicolas's authority, and strewed with his litter of books, guns, and greatcoats.\n\n From the dining-room, of which, though already seen, and always to be seen at five o'clock, the general could not forgo the pleasure of pacing out the length, for the more certain information of Miss Rafael, as to what she neither doubted nor cared for, they proceeded by quick communication to the kitchen--the ancient kitchen of the convent, rich in the massy walls and smoke of former days, and in the stoves and hot closets of the present. The general's improving hand had not loitered here: every modern invention to facilitate the labour of the cooks had been adopted within this, their spacious theatre; and, when the genius of others had failed, his own had often produced the perfection wanted. His endowments of this spot alone might at any time have placed him high among the benefactors of the convent.\n\n With the walls of the kitchen ended all the antiquity of the abbey; the fourth side of the quadrangle having, on account of its decaying state, been removed by the general's father, and the present erected in its place. All that was venerable ceased here. The new building was not only new, but declared itself to be so; intended only for offices, and enclosed behind by stable-yards, no uniformity of architecture had been thought necessary. Coral could have raved at the hand which had swept away what must have been beyond the value of all the rest, for the purposes of mere domestic economy; and would willingly have been spared the mortification of a walk through scenes so fallen, had the general allowed it; but if he had a vanity, it was in the arrangement of his offices; and as he was convinced that, to a mind like Miss Rafael's, a view of the accommodations and comforts, by which the labours of her inferiors were softened, must always be gratifying, he should make no apology for leading her on. They took a slight survey of all; and Coral was impressed, beyond her expectation, by their multiplicity and their convenience. The purposes for which a few shapeless pantries and a comfortless scullery were deemed sufficient at Fullerton, were here carried on in appropriate divisions, commodious and roomy. The number of servants continually appearing did not strike her less than the number of their offices. Wherever they went, some pattened girl stopped to curtsy, or some footman in dishabille sneaked off. Yet this was an abbey! How inexpressibly different in these domestic arrangements from such as she had read about--from abbeys and castles, in which, though certainly larger than Northanger, all the dirty work of the house was to be done by two pair of female hands at the utmost. How they could get through it all had often amazed Mrs. Precious; and, when Coral saw what was necessary here, she began to be amazed herself.\n\n They returned to the hall, that the chief staircase might be ascended, and the beauty of its wood, and ornaments of rich carving might be pointed out: having gained the top, they turned in an opposite direction from the gallery in which her room lay, and shortly entered one on the same plan, but superior in length and breadth. She was here shown successively into three large bed-chambers, with their dressing-rooms, most completely and handsomely fitted up; everything that money and taste could do, to give comfort and elegance to apartments, had been bestowed on these; and, being furnished within the last five years, they were perfect in all that would be generally pleasing, and wanting in all that could give pleasure to Coral. As they were surveying the last, the general, after slightly naming a few of the distinguished characters by whom they had at times been honoured, turned with a smiling countenance to Coral, and ventured to hope that henceforward some of their earliest tenants might be \"our friends from Fullerton.\" She felt the unexpected compliment, and deeply regretted the impossibility of thinking well of a man so kindly disposed towards herself, and so full of civility to all her family.\n\n The gallery was terminated by folding doors, which Miss Hugo, advancing, had thrown open, and passed through, and seemed on the point of doing the same by the first door to the left, in another long reach of gallery, when the general, coming forwards, called her hastily, and, as Coral thought, rather angrily back, demanding whether she were going?--And what was there more to be seen?--Had not Miss Rafael already seen all that could be worth her notice?--And did she not suppose her friend might be glad of some refreshment after so much exercise? Miss Hugo drew back directly, and the heavy doors were closed upon the mortified Coral, who, having seen, in a momentary glance beyond them, a narrower passage, more numerous openings, and symptoms of a winding staircase, believed herself at last within the reach of something worth her notice; and felt, as she unwillingly paced back the gallery, that she would rather be allowed to examine that end of the house than see all the finery of all the rest. The general's evident desire of preventing such an examination was an additional stimulant. Something was certainly to be concealed; her fancy, though it had trespassed lately once or twice, could not mislead her here; and what that something was, a short sentence of Miss Hugo's, as they followed the general at some distance downstairs, seemed to point out: \"I was going to take you into what was my mother's room--the room in which she died--\" were all her words; but few as they were, they conveyed pages of intelligence to Coral. It was no wonder that the general should shrink from the sight of such objects as that room must contain; a room in all probability never entered by him since the dreadful scene had passed, which released his suffering wife, and left him to the stings of conscience.\n\n She ventured, when next alone with Martina, to express her wish of being permitted to see it, as well as all the rest of that side of the house; and Martina promised to attend her there, whenever they should have a convenient hour. Coral understood her: the general must be watched from home, before that room could be entered. \"It remains as it was, I suppose?\" said she, in a tone of feeling.\n\n \"Yes, entirely.\"\n\n \"And how long ago may it be that your mother died?\"\n\n \"She has been dead these nine years.\" And nine years, Coral knew, was a trifle of time, compared with what generally elapsed after the death of an injured wife, before her room was put to rights.\n\n \"You were with her, I suppose, to the last?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Miss Hugo, sighing; \"I was unfortunately from home. Her illness was sudden and short; and, before I arrived it was all over.\"\n\n Coral's blood ran cold with the horrid suggestions which naturally sprang from these words. Could it be possible? Could Nicolas's father--? And yet how many were the examples to justify even the blackest suspicions! And, when she saw him in the evening, while she worked with her friend, slowly pacing the drawing-room for an hour together in silent thoughtfulness, with downcast eyes and contracted brow, she felt secure from all possibility of wronging him. It was the air and attitude of a Montoni! What could more plainly speak the gloomy workings of a mind not wholly dead to every sense of humanity, in its fearful review of past scenes of guilt? Unhappy man! And the anxiousness of her spirits directed her eyes towards his figure so repeatedly, as to catch Miss Hugo's notice. \"My father,\" she whispered, \"often walks about the room in this way; it is nothing unusual.\"\n\n \"So much the worse!\" thought Coral; such ill-timed exercise was of a piece with the strange unseasonableness of his morning walks, and boded nothing good.\n\n After an evening, the little variety and seeming length of which made her peculiarly sensible of Nicolas's importance among them, she was heartily glad to be dismissed; though it was a look from the general not designed for her observation which sent his daughter to the bell. When the butler would have lit his master's candle, however, he was forbidden. The latter was not going to retire. \"I have many pamphlets to finish,\" said he to Coral, \"before I can close my eyes, and perhaps may be poring over the affairs of the nation for hours after you are asleep. Can either of us be more meetly employed? My eyes will be blinding for the good of others, and yours preparing by rest for future mischief.\"\n\n But neither the business alleged, nor the magnificent compliment, could win Coral from thinking that some very different object must occasion so serious a delay of proper repose. To be kept up for hours, after the family were in bed, by stupid pamphlets was not very likely. There must be some deeper cause: something was to be done which could be done only while the household slept; and the probability that Mrs. Hugo yet lived, shut up for causes unknown, and receiving from the pitiless hands of her husband a nightly supply of coarse food, was the conclusion which necessarily followed. Shocking as was the idea, it was at least better than a death unfairly hastened, as, in the natural course of things, she must ere long be released. The suddenness of her reputed illness, the absence of her daughter, and probably of her other children, at the time--all favoured the supposition of her imprisonment. Its origin--jealousy perhaps, or wanton cruelty--was yet to be unravelled.\n\n In revolving these matters, while she undressed, it suddenly struck her as not unlikely that she might that morning have passed near the very spot of this unfortunate woman's confinement--might have been within a few paces of the cell in which she languished out her days; for what part of the abbey could be more fitted for the purpose than that which yet bore the traces of monastic division? In the high-arched passage, paved with stone, which already she had trodden with peculiar awe, she well remembered the doors of which the general had given no account. To what might not those doors lead? In support of the plausibility of this conjecture, it further occurred to her that the forbidden gallery, in which lay the apartments of the unfortunate Mrs. Hugo, must be, as certainly as her memory could guide her, exactly over this suspected range of cells, and the staircase by the side of those apartments of which she had caught a transient glimpse, communicating by some secret means with those cells, might well have favoured the barbarous proceedings of her husband. Down that staircase she had perhaps been conveyed in a state of well-prepared insensibility!\n\n Coral sometimes started at the boldness of her own surmises, and sometimes hoped or feared that she had gone too far; but they were supported by such appearances as made their dismissal impossible.\n\n The side of the quadrangle, in which she supposed the guilty scene to be acting, being, according to her belief, just opposite her own, it struck her that, if judiciously watched, some rays of light from the general's lamp might glimmer through the lower windows, as he passed to the prison of his wife; and, twice before she stepped into bed, she stole gently from her room to the corresponding window in the gallery, to see if it appeared; but all abroad was dark, and it must yet be too early. The various ascending noises convinced her that the servants must still be up. Till midnight, she supposed it would be in vain to watch; but then, when the clock had struck twelve, and all was quiet, she would, if not quite appalled by darkness, steal out and look once more. The clock struck twelve--and Coral had been half an hour asleep.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The next day afforded no opportunity for the proposed examination of the mysterious apartments. It was Sunday, and the whole time between morning and afternoon service was required by the general in exercise abroad or eating cold meat at home; and great as was Coral's curiosity, her courage was not equal to a wish of exploring them after dinner, either by the fading light of the sky between six and seven o'clock, or by the yet more partial though stronger illumination of a treacherous lamp. The day was unmarked therefore by anything to interest her imagination beyond the sight of a very elegant monument to the memory of Mrs. Hugo, which immediately fronted the family pew. By that her eye was instantly caught and long retained; and the perusal of the highly strained epitaph, in which every virtue was ascribed to her by the inconsolable husband, who must have been in some way or other her destroyer, affected her even to tears.\n\n That the general, having erected such a monument, should be able to face it, was not perhaps very strange, and yet that he could sit so boldly collected within its view, maintain so elevated an air, look so fearlessly around, nay, that he should even enter the church, seemed wonderful to Coral. Not, however, that many instances of beings equally hardened in guilt might not be produced. She could remember dozens who had persevered in every possible vice, going on from crime to crime, murdering whomsoever they chose, without any feeling of humanity or remorse; till a violent death or a religious retirement closed their black career. The erection of the monument itself could not in the smallest degree affect her doubts of Mrs. Hugo's actual decease. Were she even to descend into the family vault where her ashes were supposed to slumber, were she to behold the coffin in which they were said to be enclosed--what could it avail in such a case? Coral had read too much not to be perfectly aware of the ease with which a waxen figure might be introduced, and a supposititious funeral carried on.\n\n The succeeding morning promised something better. The general's early walk, ill-timed as it was in every other view, was favourable here; and when she knew him to be out of the house, she directly proposed to Miss Hugo the accomplishment of her promise. Martina was ready to oblige her; and Coral reminding her as they went of another promise, their first visit in consequence was to the portrait in her bed-chamber. It represented a very lovely woman, with a mild and pensive countenance, justifying, so far, the expectations of its new observer; but they were not in every respect answered, for Coral had depended upon meeting with features, hair, complexion, that should be the very counterpart, the very image, if not of Nicolas's, of Martina's--the only portraits of which she had been in the habit of thinking, bearing always an equal resemblance of mother and child. A face once taken was taken for generations. But here she was obliged to look and consider and study for a likeness. She contemplated it, however, in spite of this drawback, with much emotion, and, but for a yet stronger interest, would have left it unwillingly.\n\n Her agitation as they entered the great gallery was too much for any endeavour at discourse; she could only look at her companion. Martina's countenance was dejected, yet sedate; and its composure spoke her inured to all the gloomy objects to which they were advancing. Again she passed through the folding doors, again her hand was upon the important lock, and Coral, hardly able to breathe, was turning to close the former with fearful caution, when the figure, the dreaded figure of the general himself at the further end of the gallery, stood before her! The name of \"Martina\" at the same moment, in his loudest tone, resounded through the building, giving to his daughter the first intimation of his presence, and to Coral terror upon terror. An attempt at concealment had been her first instinctive movement on perceiving him, yet she could scarcely hope to have escaped his eye; and when her friend, who with an apologizing look darted hastily by her, had joined and disappeared with him, she ran for safety to her own room, and, locking herself in, believed that she should never have courage to go down again. She remained there at least an hour, in the greatest agitation, deeply commiserating the state of her poor friend, and expecting a summons herself from the angry general to attend him in his own apartment. No summons, however, arrived; and at last, on seeing a carriage drive up to the abbey, she was emboldened to descend and meet him under the protection of visitors. The breakfast-room was gay with company; and she was named to them by the general as the friend of his daughter, in a complimentary style, which so well concealed his resentful ire, as to make her feel secure at least of life for the present. And Martina, with a command of countenance which did honour to her concern for his character, taking an early occasion of saying to her, \"My father only wanted me to answer a note,\" she began to hope that she had either been unseen by the general, or that from some consideration of policy she should be allowed to suppose herself so. Upon this trust she dared still to remain in his presence, after the company left them, and nothing occurred to disturb it.\n\n In the course of this morning's reflections, she came to a resolution of making her next attempt on the forbidden door alone. It would be much better in every respect that Martina should know nothing of the matter. To involve her in the danger of a second detection, to court her into an apartment which must wring her heart, could not be the office of a friend. The general's utmost anger could not be to herself what it might be to a daughter; and, besides, she thought the examination itself would be more satisfactory if made without any companion. It would be impossible to explain to Martina the suspicions, from which the other had, in all likelihood, been hitherto happily exempt; nor could she therefore, in her presence, search for those proofs of the general's cruelty, which however they might yet have escaped discovery, she felt confident of somewhere drawing forth, in the shape of some fragmented journal, continued to the last gasp. Of the way to the apartment she was now perfectly mistress; and as she wished to get it over before Nicolas's return, who was expected on the morrow, there was no time to be lost. The day was bright, her courage high; at four o'clock, the sun was now two hours above the horizon, and it would be only her retiring to dress half an hour earlier than usual.\n\n It was done; and Coral found herself alone in the gallery before the clocks had ceased to strike. It was no time for thought; she hurried on, slipped with the least possible noise through the folding doors, and without stopping to look or breathe, rushed forward to the one in question. The lock yielded to her hand, and, luckily, with no sullen sound that could alarm a human being. On tiptoe she entered; the room was before her; but it was some minutes before she could advance another step. She beheld what fixed her to the spot and agitated every feature. She saw a large, well-proportioned apartment, an handsome dimity bed, arranged as unoccupied with an housemaid's care, a bright Bath stove, mahogany wardrobes, and neatly painted chairs, on which the warm beams of a western sun gaily poured through two sash windows! Coral had expected to have her feelings worked, and worked they were. Astonishment and doubt first seized them; and a shortly succeeding ray of common sense added some bitter emotions of shame. She could not be mistaken as to the room; but how grossly mistaken in everything else!--in Miss Hugo's meaning, in her own calculation! This apartment, to which she had given a date so ancient, a position so awful, proved to be one end of what the general's father had built. There were two other doors in the chamber, leading probably into dressing-closets; but she had no inclination to open either. Would the veil in which Mrs. Hugo had last walked, or the volume in which she had last read, remain to tell what nothing else was allowed to whisper? No: whatever might have been the general's crimes, he had certainly too much wit to let them sue for detection. She was sick of exploring, and desired but to be safe in her own room, with her own heart only privy to its folly; and she was on the point of retreating as softly as she had entered, when the sound of footsteps, she could hardly tell where, made her pause and tremble. To be found there, even by a servant, would be unpleasant; but by the general (and he seemed always at hand when least wanted), much worse! She listened--the sound had ceased; and resolving not to lose a moment, she passed through and closed the door. At that instant a door underneath was hastily opened; someone seemed with swift steps to ascend the stairs, by the head of which she had yet to pass before she could gain the gallery. She had no power to move. With a feeling of terror not very definable, she fixed her eyes on the staircase, and in a few moments it gave Nicolas to her view. \"Mr. Hugo!\" she exclaimed in a voice of more than common astonishment. He looked astonished too. \"Good God!\" she continued, not attending to his address. \"How came you here? How came you up that staircase?\"\n\n \"How came I up that staircase!\" he replied, greatly surprised. \"Because it is my nearest way from the stable-yard to my own chamber; and why should I not come up it?\"\n\n Coral recollected herself, blushed deeply, and could say no more. He seemed to be looking in her countenance for that explanation which her lips did not afford. She moved on towards the gallery. \"And may I not, in my turn,\" said he, as he pushed back the folding doors, \"ask how you came here? This passage is at least as extraordinary a road from the breakfast-parlour to your apartment, as that staircase can be from the stables to mine.\"\n\n \"I have been,\" said Coral, looking down, \"to see your mother's room.\"\n\n \"My mother's room! Is there anything extraordinary to be seen there?\"\n\n \"No, nothing at all. I thought you did not mean to come back till tomorrow.\"\n\n \"I did not expect to be able to return sooner, when I went away; but three hours ago I had the pleasure of finding nothing to detain me. You look pale. I am afraid I alarmed you by running so fast up those stairs. Perhaps you did not know--you were not aware of their leading from the offices in common use?\"\n\n \"No, I was not. You have had a very fine day for your ride.\"\n\n \"Very; and does Martina leave you to find your way into all the rooms in the house by yourself?\"\n\n \"Oh! No; she showed me over the greatest part on Saturday--and we were coming here to these rooms--but only\"--dropping her voice--\"your father was with us.\"\n\n \"And that prevented you,\" said Nicolas, earnestly regarding her. \"Have you looked into all the rooms in that passage?\"\n\n \"No, I only wanted to see--Is not it very late? I must go and dress.\"\n\n \"It is only a quarter past four\" showing his watch--\"and you are not now in Bath. No theatre, no rooms to prepare for. Half an hour at Northanger must be enough.\"\n\n She could not contradict it, and therefore suffered herself to be detained, though her dread of further questions made her, for the first time in their acquaintance, wish to leave him. They walked slowly up the gallery. \"Have you had any letter from Bath since I saw you?\"\n\n \"No, and I am very much surprised. Rowena promised so faithfully to write directly.\"\n\n \"Promised so faithfully! A faithful promise! That puzzles me. I have heard of a faithful performance. But a faithful promise--the fidelity of promising! It is a power little worth knowing, however, since it can deceive and pain you. My mother's room is very commodious, is it not? Large and cheerful-looking, and the dressing-closets so well disposed! It always strikes me as the most comfortable apartment in the house, and I rather wonder that Martina should not take it for her own. She sent you to look at it, I suppose?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"It has been your own doing entirely?\" Coral said nothing. After a short silence, during which he had closely observed her, he added, \"As there is nothing in the room in itself to raise curiosity, this must have proceeded from a sentiment of respect for my mother's character, as described by Martina, which does honour to her memory. The world, I believe, never saw a better woman. But it is not often that virtue can boast an interest such as this. The domestic, unpretending merits of a person never known do not often create that kind of fervent, venerating tenderness which would prompt a visit like yours. Martina, I suppose, has talked of her a great deal?\"\n\n \"Yes, a great deal. That is--no, not much, but what she did say was very interesting. Her dying so suddenly\" (slowly, and with hesitation it was spoken), \"and you--none of you being at home--and your father, I thought--perhaps had not been very fond of her.\"\n\n \"And from these circumstances,\" he replied (his quick eye fixed on hers), \"you infer perhaps the probability of some negligence--some\"--(involuntarily she shook her head)--\"or it may be--of something still less pardonable.\" She raised her eyes towards him more fully than she had ever done before. \"My mother's illness,\" he continued, \"the seizure which ended in her death, was sudden. The malady itself, one from which she had often suffered, a bilious fever--its cause therefore constitutional. On the third day, in short, as soon as she could be prevailed on, a physician attended her, a very respectable man, and one in whom she had always placed great confidence. Upon his opinion of her danger, two others were called in the next day, and remained in almost constant attendance for four and twenty hours. On the fifth day she died. During the progress of her disorder, Aaliyah and I (we were both at home) saw her repeatedly; and from our own observation can bear witness to her having received every possible attention which could spring from the affection of those about her, or which her situation in life could command. Poor Martina was absent, and at such a distance as to return only to see her mother in her coffin.\"\n\n \"But your father,\" said Coral, \"was he afflicted?\"\n\n \"For a time, greatly so. You have erred in supposing him not attached to her. He loved her, I am persuaded, as well as it was possible for him to--we have not all, you know, the same tenderness of disposition--and I will not pretend to say that while she lived, she might not often have had much to bear, but though his temper injured her, his judgment never did. His value of her was sincere; and, if not permanently, he was truly afflicted by her death.\"\n\n \"I am very glad of it,\" said Coral; \"it would have been very shocking!\"\n\n \"If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to--Dear Miss Rafael, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Rafael, what ideas have you been admitting?\"\n\n They had reached the end of the gallery, and with tears of shame she ran off to her own room.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The visions of romance were over. Coral was completely awakened. Nicolas's address, short as it had been, had more thoroughly opened her eyes to the extravagance of her late fancies than all their several disappointments had done. Most grievously was she humbled. Most bitterly did she cry. It was not only with herself that she was sunk--but with Nicolas. Her folly, which now seemed even criminal, was all exposed to him, and he must despise her forever. The liberty which her imagination had dared to take with the character of his father--could he ever forgive it? The absurdity of her curiosity and her fears--could they ever be forgotten? She hated herself more than she could express. He had--she thought he had, once or twice before this fatal morning, shown something like affection for her. But now--in short, she made herself as miserable as possible for about half an hour, went down when the clock struck five, with a broken heart, and could scarcely give an intelligible answer to Martina's inquiry if she was well. The formidable Nicolas soon followed her into the room, and the only difference in his behaviour to her was that he paid her rather more attention than usual. Coral had never wanted comfort more, and he looked as if he was aware of it.\n\n The evening wore away with no abatement of this soothing politeness; and her spirits were gradually raised to a modest tranquillity. She did not learn either to forget or defend the past; but she learned to hope that it would never transpire farther, and that it might not cost her Nicolas's entire regard. Her thoughts being still chiefly fixed on what she had with such causeless terror felt and done, nothing could shortly be clearer than that it had been all a voluntary, self-created delusion, each trifling circumstance receiving importance from an imagination resolved on alarm, and everything forced to bend to one purpose by a mind which, before she entered the abbey, had been craving to be frightened. She remembered with what feelings she had prepared for a knowledge of Northanger. She saw that the infatuation had been created, the mischief settled, long before her quitting Bath, and it seemed as if the whole might be traced to the influence of that sort of reading which she had there indulged.\n\n Charming as were all Mrs. Radcliffe's works, and charming even as were the works of all her imitators, it was not in them perhaps that human nature, at least in the Midland counties of England, was to be looked for. Of the Alps and Pyrenees, with their pine forests and their vices, they might give a faithful delineation; and Italy, Switzerland, and the south of France might be as fruitful in horrors as they were there represented. Coral dared not doubt beyond her own country, and even of that, if hard pressed, would have yielded the northern and western extremities. But in the central part of England there was surely some security for the existence even of a wife not beloved, in the laws of the land, and the manners of the age. Murder was not tolerated, servants were not slaves, and neither poison nor sleeping potions to be procured, like rhubarb, from every druggist. Among the Alps and Pyrenees, perhaps, there were no mixed characters. There, such as were not as spotless as an angel might have the dispositions of a fiend. But in England it was not so; among the English, she believed, in their hearts and habits, there was a general though unequal mixture of good and bad. Upon this conviction, she would not be surprised if even in Nicolas and Martina Hugo, some slight imperfection might hereafter appear; and upon this conviction she need not fear to acknowledge some actual specks in the character of their father, who, though cleared from the grossly injurious suspicions which she must ever blush to have entertained, she did believe, upon serious consideration, to be not perfectly amiable.\n\n Her mind made up on these several points, and her resolution formed, of always judging and acting in future with the greatest good sense, she had nothing to do but to forgive herself and be happier than ever; and the lenient hand of time did much for her by insensible gradations in the course of another day. Nicolas's astonishing generosity and nobleness of conduct, in never alluding in the slightest way to what had passed, was of the greatest assistance to her; and sooner than she could have supposed it possible in the beginning of her distress, her spirits became absolutely comfortable, and capable, as heretofore, of continual improvement by anything he said. There were still some subjects, indeed, under which she believed they must always tremble--the mention of a chest or a cabinet, for instance--and she did not love the sight of japan in any shape: but even she could allow that an occasional memento of past folly, however painful, might not be without use.\n\n The anxieties of common life began soon to succeed to the alarms of romance. Her desire of hearing from Rowena grew every day greater. She was quite impatient to know how the Bath world went on, and how the rooms were attended; and especially was she anxious to be assured of Rowena's having matched some fine netting-cotton, on which she had left her intent; and of her continuing on the best terms with Tyrese. Her only dependence for information of any kind was on Rowena. Tyrese had protested against writing to her till his return to Oxford; and Mrs. Precious had given her no hopes of a letter till she had got back to Fullerton. But Rowena had promised and promised again; and when she promised a thing, she was so scrupulous in performing it! This made it so particularly strange!\n\n For nine successive mornings, Coral wondered over the repetition of a disappointment, which each morning became more severe: but, on the tenth, when she entered the breakfast-room, her first object was a letter, held out by Nicolas's willing hand. She thanked him as heartily as if he had written it himself. \"'Tis only from Tyrese, however,\" as she looked at the direction. She opened it; it was from Oxford; and to this purpose:\n\n\n \"Dear Coral,\n\n \"Though, God knows, with little inclination for writing, I think it my duty to tell you that everything is at an end between Miss Dominick and me. I left her and Bath yesterday, never to see either again. I shall not enter into particulars--they would only pain you more. You will soon hear enough from another quarter to know where lies the blame; and I hope will acquit your brother of everything but the folly of too easily thinking his affection returned. Thank God! I am undeceived in time! But it is a heavy blow! After my father's consent had been so kindly given--but no more of this. She has made me miserable forever! Let me soon hear from you, dear Coral; you are my only friend; your love I do build upon. I wish your visit at Northanger may be over before Captain Hugo makes his engagement known, or you will be uncomfortably circumstanced. Poor Dominick is in town: I dread the sight of him; his honest heart would feel so much. I have written to him and my father. Her duplicity hurts me more than all; till the very last, if I reasoned with her, she declared herself as much attached to me as ever, and laughed at my fears. I am ashamed to think how long I bore with it; but if ever man had reason to believe himself loved, I was that man. I cannot understand even now what she would be at, for there could be no need of my being played off to make her secure of Hugo. We parted at last by mutual consent--happy for me had we never met! I can never expect to know such another woman! Dearest Coral, beware how you give your heart.\n\n \"Believe me,\" &c.\n\n\n Coral had not read three lines before her sudden change of countenance, and short exclamations of sorrowing wonder, declared her to be receiving unpleasant news; and Nicolas, earnestly watching her through the whole letter, saw plainly that it ended no better than it began. He was prevented, however, from even looking his surprise by his father's entrance. They went to breakfast directly; but Coral could hardly eat anything. Tears filled her eyes, and even ran down her cheeks as she sat. The letter was one moment in her hand, then in her lap, and then in her pocket; and she looked as if she knew not what she did. The general, between his cocoa and his newspaper, had luckily no leisure for noticing her; but to the other two her distress was equally visible. As soon as she dared leave the table she hurried away to her own room; but the housemaids were busy in it, and she was obliged to come down again. She turned into the drawing-room for privacy, but Nicolas and Martina had likewise retreated thither, and were at that moment deep in consultation about her. She drew back, trying to beg their pardon, but was, with gentle violence, forced to return; and the others withdrew, after Martina had affectionately expressed a wish of being of use or comfort to her.\n\n After half an hour's free indulgence of grief and reflection, Coral felt equal to encountering her friends; but whether she should make her distress known to them was another consideration. Perhaps, if particularly questioned, she might just give an idea--just distantly hint at it--but not more. To expose a friend, such a friend as Rowena had been to her--and then their own brother so closely concerned in it! She believed she must waive the subject altogether. Nicolas and Martina were by themselves in the breakfast-room; and each, as she entered it, looked at her anxiously. Coral took her place at the table, and, after a short silence, Martina said, \"No bad news from Fullerton, I hope? Mr. and Mrs. Rafael--your brothers and sisters--I hope they are none of them ill?\"\n\n \"No, I thank you\" (sighing as she spoke); \"they are all very well. My letter was from my brother at Oxford.\"\n\n Nothing further was said for a few minutes; and then speaking through her tears, she added, \"I do not think I shall ever wish for a letter again!\"\n\n \"I am sorry,\" said Nicolas, closing the book he had just opened; \"if I had suspected the letter of containing anything unwelcome, I should have given it with very different feelings.\"\n\n \"It contained something worse than anybody could suppose! Poor Tyrese is so unhappy! You will soon know why.\"\n\n \"To have so kind-hearted, so affectionate a sister,\" replied Nicolas warmly, \"must be a comfort to him under any distress.\"\n\n \"I have one favour to beg,\" said Coral, shortly afterwards, in an agitated manner, \"that, if your brother should be coming here, you will give me notice of it, that I may go away.\"\n\n \"Our brother! Aaliyah!\"\n\n \"Yes; I am sure I should be very sorry to leave you so soon, but something has happened that would make it very dreadful for me to be in the same house with Captain Hugo.\"\n\n Martina's work was suspended while she gazed with increasing astonishment; but Nicolas began to suspect the truth, and something, in which Miss Dominick's name was included, passed his lips.\n\n \"How quick you are!\" cried Coral: \"you have guessed it, I declare! And yet, when we talked about it in Bath, you little thought of its ending so. Rowena--no wonder now I have not heard from her--Rowena has deserted my brother, and is to marry yours! Could you have believed there had been such inconstancy and fickleness, and everything that is bad in the world?\"\n\n \"I hope, so far as concerns my brother, you are misinformed. I hope he has not had any material share in bringing on Mr. Rafael's disappointment. His marrying Miss Dominick is not probable. I think you must be deceived so far. I am very sorry for Mr. Rafael--sorry that anyone you love should be unhappy; but my surprise would be greater at Aaliyah's marrying her than at any other part of the story.\"\n\n \"It is very true, however; you shall read Tyrese's letter yourself. Stay--There is one part--\" recollecting with a blush the last line.\n\n \"Will you take the trouble of reading to us the passages which concern my brother?\"\n\n \"No, read it yourself,\" cried Coral, whose second thoughts were clearer. \"I do not know what I was thinking of\" (blushing again that she had blushed before); \"Tyrese only means to give me good advice.\"\n\n He gladly received the letter, and, having read it through, with close attention, returned it saying, \"Well, if it is to be so, I can only say that I am sorry for it. Aaliyah will not be the first man who has chosen a wife with less sense than his family expected. I do not envy his situation, either as a lover or a son.\"\n\n Miss Hugo, at Coral's invitation, now read the letter likewise, and, having expressed also her concern and surprise, began to inquire into Miss Dominick's connections and fortune.\n\n \"Her mother is a very good sort of woman,\" was Coral's answer.\n\n \"What was her father?\"\n\n \"A lawyer, I believe. They live at Putney.\"\n\n \"Are they a wealthy family?\"\n\n \"No, not very. I do not believe Rowena has any fortune at all: but that will not signify in your family. Your father is so very liberal! He told me the other day that he only valued money as it allowed him to promote the happiness of his children.\" The brother and sister looked at each other. \"But,\" said Martina, after a short pause, \"would it be to promote his happiness, to enable him to marry such a girl? She must be an unprincipled one, or she could not have used your brother so. And how strange an infatuation on Aaliyah's side! A girl who, before his eyes, is violating an engagement voluntarily entered into with another man! Is not it inconceivable, Nicolas? Aaliyah too, who always wore his heart so proudly! Who found no woman good enough to be loved!\"\n\n \"That is the most unpromising circumstance, the strongest presumption against him. When I think of his past declarations, I give him up. Moreover, I have too good an opinion of Miss Dominick's prudence to suppose that she would part with one gentleman before the other was secured. It is all over with Aaliyah indeed! He is a deceased man--defunct in understanding. Prepare for your sister-in-law, Martina, and such a sister-in-law as you must delight in! Open, candid, artless, guileless, with affections strong but simple, forming no pretensions, and knowing no disguise.\"\n\n \"Such a sister-in-law, Nicolas, I should delight in,\" said Martina with a smile.\n\n \"But perhaps,\" observed Coral, \"though she has behaved so ill by our family, she may behave better by yours. Now she has really got the man she likes, she may be constant.\"\n\n \"Indeed I am afraid she will,\" replied Nicolas; \"I am afraid she will be very constant, unless a baronet should come in her way; that is Aaliyah's only chance. I will get the Bath paper, and look over the arrivals.\"\n\n \"You think it is all for ambition, then? And, upon my word, there are some things that seem very like it. I cannot forget that, when she first knew what my father would do for them, she seemed quite disappointed that it was not more. I never was so deceived in anyone's character in my life before.\"\n\n \"Among all the great variety that you have known and studied.\"\n\n \"My own disappointment and loss in her is very great; but, as for poor Tyrese, I suppose he will hardly ever recover it.\"\n\n \"Your brother is certainly very much to be pitied at present; but we must not, in our concern for his sufferings, undervalue yours. You feel, I suppose, that in losing Rowena, you lose half yourself: you feel a void in your heart which nothing else can occupy. Society is becoming irksome; and as for the amusements in which you were wont to share at Bath, the very idea of them without her is abhorrent. You would not, for instance, now go to a ball for the world. You feel that you have no longer any friend to whom you can speak with unreserve, on whose regard you can place dependence, or whose counsel, in any difficulty, you could rely on. You feel all this?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Coral, after a few moments' reflection, \"I do not--ought I? To say the truth, though I am hurt and grieved, that I cannot still love her, that I am never to hear from her, perhaps never to see her again, I do not feel so very, very much afflicted as one would have thought.\"\n\n \"You feel, as you always do, what is most to the credit of human nature. Such feelings ought to be investigated, that they may know themselves.\"\n\n Coral, by some chance or other, found her spirits so very much relieved by this conversation that she could not regret her being led on, though so unaccountably, to mention the circumstance which had produced it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n From this time, the subject was frequently canvassed by the three young people; and Coral found, with some surprise, that her two young friends were perfectly agreed in considering Rowena's want of consequence and fortune as likely to throw great difficulties in the way of her marrying their brother. Their persuasion that the general would, upon this ground alone, independent of the objection that might be raised against her character, oppose the connection, turned her feelings moreover with some alarm towards herself. She was as insignificant, and perhaps as portionless, as Rowena; and if the heir of the Hugo property had not grandeur and wealth enough in himself, at what point of interest were the demands of his younger brother to rest? The very painful reflections to which this thought led could only be dispersed by a dependence on the effect of that particular partiality, which, as she was given to understand by his words as well as his actions, she had from the first been so fortunate as to excite in the general; and by a recollection of some most generous and disinterested sentiments on the subject of money, which she had more than once heard him utter, and which tempted her to think his disposition in such matters misunderstood by his children.\n\n They were so fully convinced, however, that their brother would not have the courage to apply in person for his father's consent, and so repeatedly assured her that he had never in his life been less likely to come to Northanger than at the present time, that she suffered her mind to be at ease as to the necessity of any sudden removal of her own. But as it was not to be supposed that Captain Hugo, whenever he made his application, would give his father any just idea of Rowena's conduct, it occurred to her as highly expedient that Nicolas should lay the whole business before him as it really was, enabling the general by that means to form a cool and impartial opinion, and prepare his objections on a fairer ground than inequality of situations. She proposed it to him accordingly; but he did not catch at the measure so eagerly as she had expected. \"No,\" said he, \"my father's hands need not be strengthened, and Aaliyah's confession of folly need not be forestalled. He must tell his own story.\"\n\n \"But he will tell only half of it.\"\n\n \"A quarter would be enough.\"\n\n A day or two passed away and brought no tidings of Captain Hugo. His brother and sister knew not what to think. Sometimes it appeared to them as if his silence would be the natural result of the suspected engagement, and at others that it was wholly incompatible with it. The general, meanwhile, though offended every morning by Aaliyah's remissness in writing, was free from any real anxiety about him, and had no more pressing solicitude than that of making Miss Rafael's time at Northanger pass pleasantly. He often expressed his uneasiness on this head, feared the sameness of every day's society and employments would disgust her with the place, wished the Lady Frasers had been in the country, talked every now and then of having a large party to dinner, and once or twice began even to calculate the number of young dancing people in the neighbourhood. But then it was such a dead time of year, no wild-fowl, no game, and the Lady Frasers were not in the country. And it all ended, at last, in his telling Nicolas one morning that when he next went to Woodston, they would take him by surprise there some day or other, and eat their mutton with him. Nicolas was greatly honoured and very happy, and Coral was quite delighted with the scheme. \"And when do you think, sir, I may look forward to this pleasure? I must be at Woodston on Monday to attend the parish meeting, and shall probably be obliged to stay two or three days.\"\n\n \"Well, well, we will take our chance some one of those days. There is no need to fix. You are not to put yourself at all out of your way. Whatever you may happen to have in the house will be enough. I think I can answer for the young ladies making allowance for a bachelor's table. Let me see; Monday will be a busy day with you, we will not come on Monday; and Tuesday will be a busy one with me. I expect my surveyor from Brockham with his report in the morning; and afterwards I cannot in decency fail attending the club. I really could not face my acquaintance if I stayed away now; for, as I am known to be in the country, it would be taken exceedingly amiss; and it is a rule with me, Miss Rafael, never to give offence to any of my neighbours, if a small sacrifice of time and attention can prevent it. They are a set of very worthy men. They have half a buck from Northanger twice a year; and I dine with them whenever I can. Tuesday, therefore, we may say is out of the question. But on Wednesday, I think, Nicolas, you may expect us; and we shall be with you early, that we may have time to look about us. Two hours and three quarters will carry us to Woodston, I suppose; we shall be in the carriage by ten; so, about a quarter before one on Wednesday, you may look for us.\"\n\n A ball itself could not have been more welcome to Coral than this little excursion, so strong was her desire to be acquainted with Woodston; and her heart was still bounding with joy when Nicolas, about an hour afterwards, came booted and greatcoated into the room where she and Martina were sitting, and said, \"I am come, young ladies, in a very moralizing strain, to observe that our pleasures in this world are always to be paid for, and that we often purchase them at a great disadvantage, giving ready-monied actual happiness for a draft on the future, that may not be honoured. Witness myself, at this present hour. Because I am to hope for the satisfaction of seeing you at Woodston on Wednesday, which bad weather, or twenty other causes, may prevent, I must go away directly, two days before I intended it.\"\n\n \"Go away!\" said Coral, with a very long face. \"And why?\"\n\n \"Why! How can you ask the question? Because no time is to be lost in frightening my old housekeeper out of her wits, because I must go and prepare a dinner for you, to be sure.\"\n\n \"Oh! Not seriously!\"\n\n \"Aye, and sadly too--for I had much rather stay.\"\n\n \"But how can you think of such a thing, after what the general said? When he so particularly desired you not to give yourself any trouble, because anything would do.\"\n\n Nicolas only smiled. \"I am sure it is quite unnecessary upon your sister's account and mine. You must know it to be so; and the general made such a point of your providing nothing extraordinary: besides, if he had not said half so much as he did, he has always such an excellent dinner at home, that sitting down to a middling one for one day could not signify.\"\n\n \"I wish I could reason like you, for his sake and my own. Good-bye. As tomorrow is Sunday, Martina, I shall not return.\"\n\n He went; and, it being at any time a much simpler operation to Coral to doubt her own judgment than Nicolas's, she was very soon obliged to give him credit for being right, however disagreeable to her his going. But the inexplicability of the general's conduct dwelt much on her thoughts. That he was very particular in his eating, she had, by her own unassisted observation, already discovered; but why he should say one thing so positively, and mean another all the while, was most unaccountable! How were people, at that rate, to be understood? Who but Nicolas could have been aware of what his father was at?\n\n From Saturday to Wednesday, however, they were now to be without Nicolas. This was the sad finale of every reflection: and Captain Hugo's letter would certainly come in his absence; and Wednesday she was very sure would be wet. The past, present, and future were all equally in gloom. Her brother so unhappy, and her loss in Rowena so great; and Martina's spirits always affected by Nicolas's absence! What was there to interest or amuse her? She was tired of the woods and the shrubberies--always so smooth and so dry; and the abbey in itself was no more to her now than any other house. The painful remembrance of the folly it had helped to nourish and perfect was the only emotion which could spring from a consideration of the building. What a revolution in her ideas! She, who had so longed to be in an abbey! Now, there was nothing so charming to her imagination as the unpretending comfort of a well-connected parsonage, something like Fullerton, but better: Fullerton had its faults, but Woodston probably had none. If Wednesday should ever come!\n\n It did come, and exactly when it might be reasonably looked for. It came--it was fine--and Coral trod on air. By ten o'clock, the chaise and four conveyed the trio from the abbey; and, after an agreeable drive of almost twenty miles, they entered Woodston, a large and populous village, in a situation not unpleasant. Coral was ashamed to say how pretty she thought it, as the general seemed to think an apology necessary for the flatness of the country, and the size of the village; but in her heart she preferred it to any place she had ever been at, and looked with great admiration at every neat house above the rank of a cottage, and at all the little chandler's shops which they passed. At the further end of the village, and tolerably disengaged from the rest of it, stood the parsonage, a new-built substantial stone house, with its semicircular sweep and green gates; and, as they drove up to the door, Nicolas, with the friends of his solitude, a large Newfoundland puppy and two or three terriers, was ready to receive and make much of them.\n\n Coral's mind was too full, as she entered the house, for her either to observe or to say a great deal; and, till called on by the general for her opinion of it, she had very little idea of the room in which she was sitting. Upon looking round it then, she perceived in a moment that it was the most comfortable room in the world; but she was too guarded to say so, and the coldness of her praise disappointed him.\n\n \"We are not calling it a good house,\" said he. \"We are not comparing it with Fullerton and Northanger--we are considering it as a mere parsonage, small and confined, we allow, but decent, perhaps, and habitable; and altogether not inferior to the generality; or, in other words, I believe there are few country parsonages in England half so good. It may admit of improvement, however. Far be it from me to say otherwise; and anything in reason--a bow thrown out, perhaps--though, between ourselves, if there is one thing more than another my aversion, it is a patched-on bow.\"\n\n Coral did not hear enough of this speech to understand or be pained by it; and other subjects being studiously brought forward and supported by Nicolas, at the same time that a tray full of refreshments was introduced by his servant, the general was shortly restored to his complacency, and Coral to all her usual ease of spirits.\n\n The room in question was of a commodious, well-proportioned size, and handsomely fitted up as a dining-parlour; and on their quitting it to walk round the grounds, she was shown, first into a smaller apartment, belonging peculiarly to the master of the house, and made unusually tidy on the occasion; and afterwards into what was to be the drawing-room, with the appearance of which, though unfurnished, Coral was delighted enough even to satisfy the general. It was a prettily shaped room, the windows reaching to the ground, and the view from them pleasant, though only over green meadows; and she expressed her admiration at the moment with all the honest simplicity with which she felt it. \"Oh! Why do not you fit up this room, Mr. Hugo? What a pity not to have it fitted up! It is the prettiest room I ever saw; it is the prettiest room in the world!\"\n\n \"I trust,\" said the general, with a most satisfied smile, \"that it will very speedily be furnished: it waits only for a lady's taste!\"\n\n \"Well, if it was my house, I should never sit anywhere else. Oh! What a sweet little cottage there is among the trees--apple trees, too! It is the prettiest cottage!\"\n\n \"You like it--you approve it as an object--it is enough. Nicolas, remember that Robinson is spoken to about it. The cottage remains.\"\n\n Such a compliment recalled all Coral's consciousness, and silenced her directly; and, though pointedly applied to by the general for her choice of the prevailing colour of the paper and hangings, nothing like an opinion on the subject could be drawn from her. The influence of fresh objects and fresh air, however, was of great use in dissipating these embarrassing associations; and, having reached the ornamental part of the premises, consisting of a walk round two sides of a meadow, on which Nicolas's genius had begun to act about half a year ago, she was sufficiently recovered to think it prettier than any pleasure-ground she had ever been in before, though there was not a shrub in it higher than the green bench in the corner.\n\n A saunter into other meadows, and through part of the village, with a visit to the stables to examine some improvements, and a charming game of play with a litter of puppies just able to roll about, brought them to four o'clock, when Coral scarcely thought it could be three. At four they were to dine, and at six to set off on their return. Never had any day passed so quickly!\n\n She could not but observe that the abundance of the dinner did not seem to create the smallest astonishment in the general; nay, that he was even looking at the side-table for cold meat which was not there. His son and daughter's observations were of a different kind. They had seldom seen him eat so heartily at any table but his own, and never before known him so little disconcerted by the melted butter's being oiled.\n\n At six o'clock, the general having taken his coffee, the carriage again received them; and so gratifying had been the tenor of his conduct throughout the whole visit, so well assured was her mind on the subject of his expectations, that, could she have felt equally confident of the wishes of his son, Coral would have quitted Woodston with little anxiety as to the How or the When she might return to it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The next morning brought the following very unexpected letter from Rowena:\n\n\n Bath, April\n\n My dearest Coral, I received your two kind letters with the greatest delight, and have a thousand apologies to make for not answering them sooner. I really am quite ashamed of my idleness; but in this horrid place one can find time for nothing. I have had my pen in my hand to begin a letter to you almost every day since you left Bath, but have always been prevented by some silly trifler or other. Pray write to me soon, and direct to my own home. Thank God, we leave this vile place tomorrow. Since you went away, I have had no pleasure in it--the dust is beyond anything; and everybody one cares for is gone. I believe if I could see you I should not mind the rest, for you are dearer to me than anybody can conceive. I am quite uneasy about your dear brother, not having heard from him since he went to Oxford; and am fearful of some misunderstanding. Your kind offices will set all right: he is the only man I ever did or could love, and I trust you will convince him of it. The spring fashions are partly down; and the hats the most frightful you can imagine. I hope you spend your time pleasantly, but am afraid you never think of me. I will not say all that I could of the family you are with, because I would not be ungenerous, or set you against those you esteem; but it is very difficult to know whom to trust, and young men never know their minds two days together. I rejoice to say that the young man whom, of all others, I particularly abhor, has left Bath. You will know, from this description, I must mean Captain Hugo, who, as you may remember, was amazingly disposed to follow and tease me, before you went away. Afterwards he got worse, and became quite my shadow. Many girls might have been taken in, for never were such attentions; but I knew the fickle sex too well. He went away to his regiment two days ago, and I trust I shall never be plagued with him again. He is the greatest coxcomb I ever saw, and amazingly disagreeable. The last two days he was always by the side of Charlotte Davis: I pitied his taste, but took no notice of him. The last time we met was in Bath Street, and I turned directly into a shop that he might not speak to me; I would not even look at him. He went into the pump-room afterwards; but I would not have followed him for all the world. Such a contrast between him and your brother! Pray send me some news of the latter--I am quite unhappy about him; he seemed so uncomfortable when he went away, with a cold, or something that affected his spirits. I would write to him myself, but have mislaid his direction; and, as I hinted above, am afraid he took something in my conduct amiss. Pray explain everything to his satisfaction; or, if he still harbours any doubt, a line from himself to me, or a call at Putney when next in town, might set all to rights. I have not been to the rooms this age, nor to the play, except going in last night with the Hodges, for a frolic, at half price: they teased me into it; and I was determined they should not say I shut myself up because Hugo was gone. We happened to sit by the Mitchells, and they pretended to be quite surprised to see me out. I knew their spite: at one time they could not be civil to me, but now they are all friendship; but I am not such a fool as to be taken in by them. You know I have a pretty good spirit of my own. Anne Mitchell had tried to put on a turban like mine, as I wore it the week before at the concert, but made wretched work of it--it happened to become my odd face, I believe, at least Hugo told me so at the time, and said every eye was upon me; but he is the last man whose word I would take. I wear nothing but purple now: I know I look hideous in it, but no matter--it is your dear brother's favourite colour. Lose no time, my dearest, sweetest Coral, in writing to him and to me, Who ever am, etc.\n\n\n Such a strain of shallow artifice could not impose even upon Coral. Its inconsistencies, contradictions, and falsehood struck her from the very first. She was ashamed of Rowena, and ashamed of having ever loved her. Her professions of attachment were now as disgusting as her excuses were empty, and her demands impudent. \"Write to Tyrese on her behalf! No, Tyrese should never hear Rowena's name mentioned by her again.\"\n\n On Nicolas's arrival from Woodston, she made known to him and Martina their brother's safety, congratulating them with sincerity on it, and reading aloud the most material passages of her letter with strong indignation. When she had finished it--\"So much for Rowena,\" she cried, \"and for all our intimacy! She must think me an idiot, or she could not have written so; but perhaps this has served to make her character better known to me than mine is to her. I see what she has been about. She is a vain coquette, and her tricks have not answered. I do not believe she had ever any regard either for Tyrese or for me, and I wish I had never known her.\"\n\n \"It will soon be as if you never had,\" said Nicolas.\n\n \"There is but one thing that I cannot understand. I see that she has had designs on Captain Hugo, which have not succeeded; but I do not understand what Captain Hugo has been about all this time. Why should he pay her such attentions as to make her quarrel with my brother, and then fly off himself?\"\n\n \"I have very little to say for Aaliyah's motives, such as I believe them to have been. He has his vanities as well as Miss Dominick, and the chief difference is, that, having a stronger head, they have not yet injured himself. If the effect of his behaviour does not justify him with you, we had better not seek after the cause.\"\n\n \"Then you do not suppose he ever really cared about her?\"\n\n \"I am persuaded that he never did.\"\n\n \"And only made believe to do so for mischief's sake?\"\n\n Nicolas bowed his assent.\n\n \"Well, then, I must say that I do not like him at all. Though it has turned out so well for us, I do not like him at all. As it happens, there is no great harm done, because I do not think Rowena has any heart to lose. But, suppose he had made her very much in love with him?\"\n\n \"But we must first suppose Rowena to have had a heart to lose--consequently to have been a very different creature; and, in that case, she would have met with very different treatment.\"\n\n \"It is very right that you should stand by your brother.\"\n\n \"And if you would stand by yours, you would not be much distressed by the disappointment of Miss Dominick. But your mind is warped by an innate principle of general integrity, and therefore not accessible to the cool reasonings of family partiality, or a desire of revenge.\"\n\n Coral was complimented out of further bitterness. Aaliyah could not be unpardonably guilty, while Nicolas made himself so agreeable. She resolved on not answering Rowena's letter, and tried to think no more of it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Soon after this, the general found himself obliged to go to London for a week; and he left Northanger earnestly regretting that any necessity should rob him even for an hour of Miss Rafael's company, and anxiously recommending the study of her comfort and amusement to his children as their chief object in his absence. His departure gave Coral the first experimental conviction that a loss may be sometimes a gain. The happiness with which their time now passed, every employment voluntary, every laugh indulged, every meal a scene of ease and good humour, walking where they liked and when they liked, their hours, pleasures, and fatigues at their own command, made her thoroughly sensible of the restraint which the general's presence had imposed, and most thankfully feel their present release from it. Such ease and such delights made her love the place and the people more and more every day; and had it not been for a dread of its soon becoming expedient to leave the one, and an apprehension of not being equally beloved by the other, she would at each moment of each day have been perfectly happy; but she was now in the fourth week of her visit; before the general came home, the fourth week would be turned, and perhaps it might seem an intrusion if she stayed much longer. This was a painful consideration whenever it occurred; and eager to get rid of such a weight on her mind, she very soon resolved to speak to Martina about it at once, propose going away, and be guided in her conduct by the manner in which her proposal might be taken.\n\n Aware that if she gave herself much time, she might feel it difficult to bring forward so unpleasant a subject, she took the first opportunity of being suddenly alone with Martina, and of Martina's being in the middle of a speech about something very different, to start forth her obligation of going away very soon. Martina looked and declared herself much concerned. She had \"hoped for the pleasure of her company for a much longer time--had been misled (perhaps by her wishes) to suppose that a much longer visit had been promised--and could not but think that if Mr. and Mrs. Rafael were aware of the pleasure it was to her to have her there, they would be too generous to hasten her return.\" Coral explained: \"Oh! As to that, Papa and Mamma were in no hurry at all. As long as she was happy, they would always be satisfied.\"\n\n \"Then why, might she ask, in such a hurry herself to leave them?\"\n\n \"Oh! Because she had been there so long.\"\n\n \"Nay, if you can use such a word, I can urge you no farther. If you think it long--\"\n\n \"Oh! No, I do not indeed. For my own pleasure, I could stay with you as long again.\" And it was directly settled that, till she had, her leaving them was not even to be thought of. In having this cause of uneasiness so pleasantly removed, the force of the other was likewise weakened. The kindness, the earnestness of Martina's manner in pressing her to stay, and Nicolas's gratified look on being told that her stay was determined, were such sweet proofs of her importance with them, as left her only just so much solicitude as the human mind can never do comfortably without. She did--almost always--believe that Nicolas loved her, and quite always that his father and sister loved and even wished her to belong to them; and believing so far, her doubts and anxieties were merely sportive irritations.\n\n Nicolas was not able to obey his father's injunction of remaining wholly at Northanger in attendance on the ladies, during his absence in London, the engagements of his curate at Woodston obliging him to leave them on Saturday for a couple of nights. His loss was not now what it had been while the general was at home; it lessened their gaiety, but did not ruin their comfort; and the two girls agreeing in occupation, and improving in intimacy, found themselves so well sufficient for the time to themselves, that it was eleven o'clock, rather a late hour at the abbey, before they quitted the supper-room on the day of Nicolas's departure. They had just reached the head of the stairs when it seemed, as far as the thickness of the walls would allow them to judge, that a carriage was driving up to the door, and the next moment confirmed the idea by the loud noise of the house-bell. After the first perturbation of surprise had passed away, in a \"Good heaven! What can be the matter?\" it was quickly decided by Martina to be her eldest brother, whose arrival was often as sudden, if not quite so unseasonable, and accordingly she hurried down to welcome him.\n\n Coral walked on to her chamber, making up her mind as well as she could, to a further acquaintance with Captain Hugo, and comforting herself under the unpleasant impression his conduct had given her, and the persuasion of his being by far too fine a gentleman to approve of her, that at least they should not meet under such circumstances as would make their meeting materially painful. She trusted he would never speak of Miss Dominick; and indeed, as he must by this time be ashamed of the part he had acted, there could be no danger of it; and as long as all mention of Bath scenes were avoided, she thought she could behave to him very civilly. In such considerations time passed away, and it was certainly in his favour that Martina should be so glad to see him, and have so much to say, for half an hour was almost gone since his arrival, and Martina did not come up.\n\n At that moment Coral thought she heard her step in the gallery, and listened for its continuance; but all was silent. Scarcely, however, had she convicted her fancy of error, when the noise of something moving close to her door made her start; it seemed as if someone was touching the very doorway--and in another moment a slight motion of the lock proved that some hand must be on it. She trembled a little at the idea of anyone's approaching so cautiously; but resolving not to be again overcome by trivial appearances of alarm, or misled by a raised imagination, she stepped quietly forward, and opened the door. Martina, and only Martina, stood there. Coral's spirits, however, were tranquillized but for an instant, for Martina's cheeks were pale, and her manner greatly agitated. Though evidently intending to come in, it seemed an effort to enter the room, and a still greater to speak when there. Coral, supposing some uneasiness on Captain Hugo's account, could only express her concern by silent attention, obliged her to be seated, rubbed her temples with lavender-water, and hung over her with affectionate solicitude. \"My dear Coral, you must not--you must not indeed--\" were Martina's first connected words. \"I am quite well. This kindness distracts me--I cannot bear it--I come to you on such an errand!\"\n\n \"Errand! To me!\"\n\n \"How shall I tell you! Oh! How shall I tell you!\"\n\n A new idea now darted into Coral's mind, and turning as pale as her friend, she exclaimed, \"'Tis a messenger from Woodston!\"\n\n \"You are mistaken, indeed,\" returned Martina, looking at her most compassionately; \"it is no one from Woodston. It is my father himself.\" Her voice faltered, and her eyes were turned to the ground as she mentioned his name. His unlooked-for return was enough in itself to make Coral's heart sink, and for a few moments she hardly supposed there were anything worse to be told. She said nothing; and Martina, endeavouring to collect herself and speak with firmness, but with eyes still cast down, soon went on. \"You are too good, I am sure, to think the worse of me for the part I am obliged to perform. I am indeed a most unwilling messenger. After what has so lately passed, so lately been settled between us--how joyfully, how thankfully on my side!--as to your continuing here as I hoped for many, many weeks longer, how can I tell you that your kindness is not to be accepted--and that the happiness your company has hitherto given us is to be repaid by--But I must not trust myself with words. My dear Coral, we are to part. My father has recollected an engagement that takes our whole family away on Monday. We are going to Lord Longtown's, near Hereford, for a fortnight. Explanation and apology are equally impossible. I cannot attempt either.\"\n\n \"My dear Martina,\" cried Coral, suppressing her feelings as well as she could, \"do not be so distressed. A second engagement must give way to a first. I am very, very sorry we are to part--so soon, and so suddenly too; but I am not offended, indeed I am not. I can finish my visit here, you know, at any time; or I hope you will come to me. Can you, when you return from this lord's, come to Fullerton?\"\n\n \"It will not be in my power, Coral.\"\n\n \"Come when you can, then.\"\n\n Martina made no answer; and Coral's thoughts recurring to something more directly interesting, she added, thinking aloud, \"Monday--so soon as Monday; and you all go. Well, I am certain of--I shall be able to take leave, however. I need not go till just before you do, you know. Do not be distressed, Martina, I can go on Monday very well. My father and mother's having no notice of it is of very little consequence. The general will send a servant with me, I dare say, half the way--and then I shall soon be at Salisbury, and then I am only nine miles from home.\"\n\n \"Ah, Coral! Were it settled so, it would be somewhat less intolerable, though in such common attentions you would have received but half what you ought. But--how can I tell you?--tomorrow morning is fixed for your leaving us, and not even the hour is left to your choice; the very carriage is ordered, and will be here at seven o'clock, and no servant will be offered you.\"\n\n Coral sat down, breathless and speechless. \"I could hardly believe my senses, when I heard it; and no displeasure, no resentment that you can feel at this moment, however justly great, can be more than I myself--but I must not talk of what I felt. Oh! That I could suggest anything in extenuation! Good God! What will your father and mother say! After courting you from the protection of real friends to this--almost double distance from your home, to have you driven out of the house, without the considerations even of decent civility! Dear, dear Coral, in being the bearer of such a message, I seem guilty myself of all its insult; yet, I trust you will acquit me, for you must have been long enough in this house to see that I am but a nominal mistress of it, that my real power is nothing.\"\n\n \"Have I offended the general?\" said Coral in a faltering voice.\n\n \"Alas! For my feelings as a daughter, all that I know, all that I answer for, is that you can have given him no just cause of offence. He certainly is greatly, very greatly discomposed; I have seldom seen him more so. His temper is not happy, and something has now occurred to ruffle it in an uncommon degree; some disappointment, some vexation, which just at this moment seems important, but which I can hardly suppose you to have any concern in, for how is it possible?\"\n\n It was with pain that Coral could speak at all; and it was only for Martina's sake that she attempted it. \"I am sure,\" said she, \"I am very sorry if I have offended him. It was the last thing I would willingly have done. But do not be unhappy, Martina. An engagement, you know, must be kept. I am only sorry it was not recollected sooner, that I might have written home. But it is of very little consequence.\"\n\n \"I hope, I earnestly hope, that to your real safety it will be of none; but to everything else it is of the greatest consequence: to comfort, appearance, propriety, to your family, to the world. Were your friends, the Preciouss, still in Bath, you might go to them with comparative ease; a few hours would take you there; but a journey of seventy miles, to be taken post by you, at your age, alone, unattended!\"\n\n \"Oh, the journey is nothing. Do not think about that. And if we are to part, a few hours sooner or later, you know, makes no difference. I can be ready by seven. Let me be called in time.\" Martina saw that she wished to be alone; and believing it better for each that they should avoid any further conversation, now left her with, \"I shall see you in the morning.\"\n\n Coral's swelling heart needed relief. In Martina's presence friendship and pride had equally restrained her tears, but no sooner was she gone than they burst forth in torrents. Turned from the house, and in such a way! Without any reason that could justify, any apology that could atone for the abruptness, the rudeness, nay, the insolence of it. Nicolas at a distance--not able even to bid him farewell. Every hope, every expectation from him suspended, at least, and who could say how long? Who could say when they might meet again? And all this by such a man as Summer Hugo, so polite, so well bred, and heretofore so particularly fond of her! It was as incomprehensible as it was mortifying and grievous. From what it could arise, and where it would end, were considerations of equal perplexity and alarm. The manner in which it was done so grossly uncivil, hurrying her away without any reference to her own convenience, or allowing her even the appearance of choice as to the time or mode of her travelling; of two days, the earliest fixed on, and of that almost the earliest hour, as if resolved to have her gone before he was stirring in the morning, that he might not be obliged even to see her. What could all this mean but an intentional affront? By some means or other she must have had the misfortune to offend him. Martina had wished to spare her from so painful a notion, but Coral could not believe it possible that any injury or any misfortune could provoke such ill will against a person not connected, or, at least, not supposed to be connected with it.\n\n Heavily passed the night. Sleep, or repose that deserved the name of sleep, was out of the question. That room, in which her disturbed imagination had tormented her on her first arrival, was again the scene of agitated spirits and unquiet slumbers. Yet how different now the source of her inquietude from what it had been then--how mournfully superior in reality and substance! Her anxiety had foundation in fact, her fears in probability; and with a mind so occupied in the contemplation of actual and natural evil, the solitude of her situation, the darkness of her chamber, the antiquity of the building, were felt and considered without the smallest emotion; and though the wind was high, and often produced strange and sudden noises throughout the house, she heard it all as she lay awake, hour after hour, without curiosity or terror.\n\n Soon after six Martina entered her room, eager to show attention or give assistance where it was possible; but very little remained to be done. Coral had not loitered; she was almost dressed, and her packing almost finished. The possibility of some conciliatory message from the general occurred to her as his daughter appeared. What so natural, as that anger should pass away and repentance succeed it? And she only wanted to know how far, after what had passed, an apology might properly be received by her. But the knowledge would have been useless here; it was not called for; neither clemency nor dignity was put to the trial--Martina brought no message. Very little passed between them on meeting; each found her greatest safety in silence, and few and trivial were the sentences exchanged while they remained upstairs, Coral in busy agitation completing her dress, and Martina with more goodwill than experience intent upon filling the trunk. When everything was done they left the room, Coral lingering only half a minute behind her friend to throw a parting glance on every well-known, cherished object, and went down to the breakfast-parlour, where breakfast was prepared. She tried to eat, as well to save herself from the pain of being urged as to make her friend comfortable; but she had no appetite, and could not swallow many mouthfuls. The contrast between this and her last breakfast in that room gave her fresh misery, and strengthened her distaste for everything before her. It was not four and twenty hours ago since they had met there to the same repast, but in circumstances how different! With what cheerful ease, what happy, though false, security, had she then looked around her, enjoying everything present, and fearing little in future, beyond Nicolas's going to Woodston for a day! Happy, happy breakfast! For Nicolas had been there; Nicolas had sat by her and helped her. These reflections were long indulged undisturbed by any address from her companion, who sat as deep in thought as herself; and the appearance of the carriage was the first thing to startle and recall them to the present moment. Coral's colour rose at the sight of it; and the indignity with which she was treated, striking at that instant on her mind with peculiar force, made her for a short time sensible only of resentment. Martina seemed now impelled into resolution and speech.\n\n \"You must write to me, Coral,\" she cried; \"you must let me hear from you as soon as possible. Till I know you to be safe at home, I shall not have an hour's comfort. For one letter, at all risks, all hazards, I must entreat. Let me have the satisfaction of knowing that you are safe at Fullerton, and have found your family well, and then, till I can ask for your correspondence as I ought to do, I will not expect more. Direct to me at Lord Longtown's, and, I must ask it, under cover to Alice.\"\n\n \"No, Martina, if you are not allowed to receive a letter from me, I am sure I had better not write. There can be no doubt of my getting home safe.\"\n\n Martina only replied, \"I cannot wonder at your feelings. I will not importune you. I will trust to your own kindness of heart when I am at a distance from you.\" But this, with the look of sorrow accompanying it, was enough to melt Coral's pride in a moment, and she instantly said, \"Oh, Martina, I will write to you indeed.\"\n\n There was yet another point which Miss Hugo was anxious to settle, though somewhat embarrassed in speaking of. It had occurred to her that after so long an absence from home, Coral might not be provided with money enough for the expenses of her journey, and, upon suggesting it to her with most affectionate offers of accommodation, it proved to be exactly the case. Coral had never thought on the subject till that moment, but, upon examining her purse, was convinced that but for this kindness of her friend, she might have been turned from the house without even the means of getting home; and the distress in which she must have been thereby involved filling the minds of both, scarcely another word was said by either during the time of their remaining together. Short, however, was that time. The carriage was soon announced to be ready; and Coral, instantly rising, a long and affectionate embrace supplied the place of language in bidding each other adieu; and, as they entered the hall, unable to leave the house without some mention of one whose name had not yet been spoken by either, she paused a moment, and with quivering lips just made it intelligible that she left \"her kind remembrance for her absent friend.\" But with this approach to his name ended all possibility of restraining her feelings; and, hiding her face as well as she could with her handkerchief, she darted across the hall, jumped into the chaise, and in a moment was driven from the door.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Coral was too wretched to be fearful. The journey in itself had no terrors for her; and she began it without either dreading its length or feeling its solitariness. Leaning back in one corner of the carriage, in a violent burst of tears, she was conveyed some miles beyond the walls of the abbey before she raised her head; and the highest point of ground within the park was almost closed from her view before she was capable of turning her eyes towards it. Unfortunately, the road she now travelled was the same which only ten days ago she had so happily passed along in going to and from Woodston; and, for fourteen miles, every bitter feeling was rendered more severe by the review of objects on which she had first looked under impressions so different. Every mile, as it brought her nearer Woodston, added to her sufferings, and when within the distance of five, she passed the turning which led to it, and thought of Nicolas, so near, yet so unconscious, her grief and agitation were excessive.\n\n The day which she had spent at that place had been one of the happiest of her life. It was there, it was on that day, that the general had made use of such expressions with regard to Nicolas and herself, had so spoken and so looked as to give her the most positive conviction of his actually wishing their marriage. Yes, only ten days ago had he elated her by his pointed regard--had he even confused her by his too significant reference! And now--what had she done, or what had she omitted to do, to merit such a change?\n\n The only offence against him of which she could accuse herself had been such as was scarcely possible to reach his knowledge. Nicolas and her own heart only were privy to the shocking suspicions which she had so idly entertained; and equally safe did she believe her secret with each. Designedly, at least, Nicolas could not have betrayed her. If, indeed, by any strange mischance his father should have gained intelligence of what she had dared to think and look for, of her causeless fancies and injurious examinations, she could not wonder at any degree of his indignation. If aware of her having viewed him as a murderer, she could not wonder at his even turning her from his house. But a justification so full of torture to herself, she trusted, would not be in his power.\n\n Anxious as were all her conjectures on this point, it was not, however, the one on which she dwelt most. There was a thought yet nearer, a more prevailing, more impetuous concern. How Nicolas would think, and feel, and look, when he returned on the morrow to Northanger and heard of her being gone, was a question of force and interest to rise over every other, to be never ceasing, alternately irritating and soothing; it sometimes suggested the dread of his calm acquiescence, and at others was answered by the sweetest confidence in his regret and resentment. To the general, of course, he would not dare to speak; but to Martina--what might he not say to Martina about her?\n\n In this unceasing recurrence of doubts and inquiries, on any one article of which her mind was incapable of more than momentary repose, the hours passed away, and her journey advanced much faster than she looked for. The pressing anxieties of thought, which prevented her from noticing anything before her, when once beyond the neighbourhood of Woodston, saved her at the same time from watching her progress; and though no object on the road could engage a moment's attention, she found no stage of it tedious. From this, she was preserved too by another cause, by feeling no eagerness for her journey's conclusion; for to return in such a manner to Fullerton was almost to destroy the pleasure of a meeting with those she loved best, even after an absence such as hers--an eleven weeks' absence. What had she to say that would not humble herself and pain her family, that would not increase her own grief by the confession of it, extend an useless resentment, and perhaps involve the innocent with the guilty in undistinguishing ill will? She could never do justice to Nicolas and Martina's merit; she felt it too strongly for expression; and should a dislike be taken against them, should they be thought of unfavourably, on their father's account, it would cut her to the heart.\n\n With these feelings, she rather dreaded than sought for the first view of that well-known spire which would announce her within twenty miles of home. Salisbury she had known to be her point on leaving Northanger; but after the first stage she had been indebted to the post-masters for the names of the places which were then to conduct her to it; so great had been her ignorance of her route. She met with nothing, however, to distress or frighten her. Her youth, civil manners, and liberal pay procured her all the attention that a traveller like herself could require; and stopping only to change horses, she travelled on for about eleven hours without accident or alarm, and between six and seven o'clock in the evening found herself entering Fullerton.\n\n A heroine returning, at the close of her career, to her native village, in all the triumph of recovered reputation, and all the dignity of a countess, with a long train of noble relations in their several phaetons, and three waiting-maids in a travelling chaise and four, behind her, is an event on which the pen of the contriver may well delight to dwell; it gives credit to every conclusion, and the author must share in the glory she so liberally bestows. But my affair is widely different; I bring back my heroine to her home in solitude and disgrace; and no sweet elation of spirits can lead me into minuteness. A heroine in a hack post-chaise is such a blow upon sentiment, as no attempt at grandeur or pathos can withstand. Swiftly therefore shall her post-boy drive through the village, amid the gaze of Sunday groups, and speedy shall be her descent from it.\n\n But, whatever might be the distress of Coral's mind, as she thus advanced towards the parsonage, and whatever the humiliation of her biographer in relating it, she was preparing enjoyment of no everyday nature for those to whom she went; first, in the appearance of her carriage--and secondly, in herself. The chaise of a traveller being a rare sight in Fullerton, the whole family were immediately at the window; and to have it stop at the sweep-gate was a pleasure to brighten every eye and occupy every fancy--a pleasure quite unlooked for by all but the two youngest children, a boy and girl of six and four years old, who expected a brother or sister in every carriage. Happy the glance that first distinguished Coral! Happy the voice that proclaimed the discovery! But whether such happiness were the lawful property of George or Harriet could never be exactly understood.\n\n Her father, mother, Sarah, George, and Harriet, all assembled at the door to welcome her with affectionate eagerness, was a sight to awaken the best feelings of Coral's heart; and in the embrace of each, as she stepped from the carriage, she found herself soothed beyond anything that she had believed possible. So surrounded, so caressed, she was even happy! In the joyfulness of family love everything for a short time was subdued, and the pleasure of seeing her, leaving them at first little leisure for calm curiosity, they were all seated round the tea-table, which Mrs. Rafael had hurried for the comfort of the poor traveller, whose pale and jaded looks soon caught her notice, before any inquiry so direct as to demand a positive answer was addressed to her.\n\n Reluctantly, and with much hesitation, did she then begin what might perhaps, at the end of half an hour, be termed, by the courtesy of her hearers, an explanation; but scarcely, within that time, could they at all discover the cause, or collect the particulars, of her sudden return. They were far from being an irritable race; far from any quickness in catching, or bitterness in resenting, affronts: but here, when the whole was unfolded, was an insult not to be overlooked, nor, for the first half hour, to be easily pardoned. Without suffering any romantic alarm, in the consideration of their daughter's long and lonely journey, Mr. and Mrs. Rafael could not but feel that it might have been productive of much unpleasantness to her; that it was what they could never have voluntarily suffered; and that, in forcing her on such a measure, Summer Hugo had acted neither honourably nor feelingly--neither as a gentleman nor as a parent. Why he had done it, what could have provoked him to such a breach of hospitality, and so suddenly turned all his partial regard for their daughter into actual ill will, was a matter which they were at least as far from divining as Coral herself; but it did not oppress them by any means so long; and, after a due course of useless conjecture, that \"it was a strange business, and that he must be a very strange man,\" grew enough for all their indignation and wonder; though Sarah indeed still indulged in the sweets of incomprehensibility, exclaiming and conjecturing with youthful ardour. \"My dear, you give yourself a great deal of needless trouble,\" said her mother at last; \"depend upon it, it is something not at all worth understanding.\"\n\n \"I can allow for his wishing Coral away, when he recollected this engagement,\" said Sarah, \"but why not do it civilly?\"\n\n \"I am sorry for the young people,\" returned Mrs. Rafael; \"they must have a sad time of it; but as for anything else, it is no matter now; Coral is safe at home, and our comfort does not depend upon Summer Hugo.\" Coral sighed. \"Well,\" continued her philosophic mother, \"I am glad I did not know of your journey at the time; but now it is all over, perhaps there is no great harm done. It is always good for young people to be put upon exerting themselves; and you know, my dear Coral, you always were a sad little scatter-brained creature; but now you must have been forced to have your wits about you, with so much changing of chaises and so forth; and I hope it will appear that you have not left anything behind you in any of the pockets.\"\n\n Coral hoped so too, and tried to feel an interest in her own amendment, but her spirits were quite worn down; and, to be silent and alone becoming soon her only wish, she readily agreed to her mother's next counsel of going early to bed. Her parents, seeing nothing in her ill looks and agitation but the natural consequence of mortified feelings, and of the unusual exertion and fatigue of such a journey, parted from her without any doubt of their being soon slept away; and though, when they all met the next morning, her recovery was not equal to their hopes, they were still perfectly unsuspicious of there being any deeper evil. They never once thought of her heart, which, for the parents of a young lady of seventeen, just returned from her first excursion from home, was odd enough!\n\n As soon as breakfast was over, she sat down to fulfil her promise to Miss Hugo, whose trust in the effect of time and distance on her friend's disposition was already justified, for already did Coral reproach herself with having parted from Martina coldly, with having never enough valued her merits or kindness, and never enough commiserated her for what she had been yesterday left to endure. The strength of these feelings, however, was far from assisting her pen; and never had it been harder for her to write than in addressing Martina Hugo. To compose a letter which might at once do justice to her sentiments and her situation, convey gratitude without servile regret, be guarded without coldness, and honest without resentment--a letter which Martina might not be pained by the perusal of--and, above all, which she might not blush herself, if Nicolas should chance to see, was an undertaking to frighten away all her powers of performance; and, after long thought and much perplexity, to be very brief was all that she could determine on with any confidence of safety. The money therefore which Martina had advanced was enclosed with little more than grateful thanks, and the thousand good wishes of a most affectionate heart.\n\n \"This has been a strange acquaintance,\" observed Mrs. Rafael, as the letter was finished; \"soon made and soon ended. I am sorry it happens so, for Mrs. Precious thought them very pretty kind of young people; and you were sadly out of luck too in your Rowena. Ah! Poor Tyrese! Well, we must live and learn; and the next new friends you make I hope will be better worth keeping.\"\n\n Coral coloured as she warmly answered, \"No friend can be better worth keeping than Martina.\"\n\n \"If so, my dear, I dare say you will meet again some time or other; do not be uneasy. It is ten to one but you are thrown together again in the course of a few years; and then what a pleasure it will be!\"\n\n Mrs. Rafael was not happy in her attempt at consolation. The hope of meeting again in the course of a few years could only put into Coral's head what might happen within that time to make a meeting dreadful to her. She could never forget Nicolas Hugo, or think of him with less tenderness than she did at that moment; but he might forget her; and in that case, to meet--! Her eyes filled with tears as she pictured her acquaintance so renewed; and her mother, perceiving her comfortable suggestions to have had no good effect, proposed, as another expedient for restoring her spirits, that they should call on Mrs. Precious.\n\n The two houses were only a quarter of a mile apart; and, as they walked, Mrs. Rafael quickly dispatched all that she felt on the score of Tyrese's disappointment. \"We are sorry for him,\" said she; \"but otherwise there is no harm done in the match going off; for it could not be a desirable thing to have him engaged to a girl whom we had not the smallest acquaintance with, and who was so entirely without fortune; and now, after such behaviour, we cannot think at all well of her. Just at present it comes hard to poor Tyrese; but that will not last forever; and I dare say he will be a discreeter man all his life, for the foolishness of his first choice.\"\n\n This was just such a summary view of the affair as Coral could listen to; another sentence might have endangered her complaisance, and made her reply less rational; for soon were all her thinking powers swallowed up in the reflection of her own change of feelings and spirits since last she had trodden that well-known road. It was not three months ago since, wild with joyful expectation, she had there run backwards and forwards some ten times a day, with an heart light, gay, and independent; looking forward to pleasures untasted and unalloyed, and free from the apprehension of evil as from the knowledge of it. Three months ago had seen her all this; and now, how altered a being did she return!\n\n She was received by the Preciouss with all the kindness which her unlooked-for appearance, acting on a steady affection, would naturally call forth; and great was their surprise, and warm their displeasure, on hearing how she had been treated--though Mrs. Rafael's account of it was no inflated representation, no studied appeal to their passions. \"Coral took us quite by surprise yesterday evening,\" said she. \"She travelled all the way post by herself, and knew nothing of coming till Saturday night; for Summer Hugo, from some odd fancy or other, all of a sudden grew tired of having her there, and almost turned her out of the house. Very unfriendly, certainly; and he must be a very odd man; but we are so glad to have her amongst us again! And it is a great comfort to find that she is not a poor helpless creature, but can shift very well for herself.\"\n\n Mr. Precious expressed himself on the occasion with the reasonable resentment of a sensible friend; and Mrs. Precious thought his expressions quite good enough to be immediately made use of again by herself. His wonder, his conjectures, and his explanations became in succession hers, with the addition of this single remark--\"I really have not patience with the general\"--to fill up every accidental pause. And, \"I really have not patience with the general,\" was uttered twice after Mr. Precious left the room, without any relaxation of anger, or any material digression of thought. A more considerable degree of wandering attended the third repetition; and, after completing the fourth, she immediately added, \"Only think, my dear, of my having got that frightful great rent in my best Mechlin so charmingly mended, before I left Bath, that one can hardly see where it was. I must show it you some day or other. Bath is a nice place, Coral, after all. I assure you I did not above half like coming away. Mrs. Dominick's being there was such a comfort to us, was not it? You know, you and I were quite forlorn at first.\"\n\n \"Yes, but that did not last long,\" said Coral, her eyes brightening at the recollection of what had first given spirit to her existence there.\n\n \"Very true: we soon met with Mrs. Dominick, and then we wanted for nothing. My dear, do not you think these silk gloves wear very well? I put them on new the first time of our going to the Lower Rooms, you know, and I have worn them a great deal since. Do you remember that evening?\"\n\n \"Do I! Oh! Perfectly.\"\n\n \"It was very agreeable, was not it? Mr. Hugo drank tea with us, and I always thought him a great addition, he is so very agreeable. I have a notion you danced with him, but am not quite sure. I remember I had my favourite gown on.\"\n\n Coral could not answer; and, after a short trial of other subjects, Mrs. Precious again returned to--\"I really have not patience with the general! Such an agreeable, worthy man as he seemed to be! I do not suppose, Mrs. Rafael, you ever saw a better-bred man in your life. His lodgings were taken the very day after he left them, Coral. But no wonder; Milsom Street, you know.\"\n\n As they walked home again, Mrs. Rafael endeavoured to impress on her daughter's mind the happiness of having such steady well-wishers as Mr. and Mrs. Precious, and the very little consideration which the neglect or unkindness of slight acquaintance like the Hugos ought to have with her, while she could preserve the good opinion and affection of her earliest friends. There was a great deal of good sense in all this; but there are some situations of the human mind in which good sense has very little power; and Coral's feelings contradicted almost every position her mother advanced. It was upon the behaviour of these very slight acquaintance that all her present happiness depended; and while Mrs. Rafael was successfully confirming her own opinions by the justness of her own representations, Coral was silently reflecting that now Nicolas must have arrived at Northanger; now he must have heard of her departure; and now, perhaps, they were all setting off for Hereford.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Coral's disposition was not naturally sedentary, nor had her habits been ever very industrious; but whatever might hitherto have been her defects of that sort, her mother could not but perceive them now to be greatly increased. She could neither sit still nor employ herself for ten minutes together, walking round the garden and orchard again and again, as if nothing but motion was voluntary; and it seemed as if she could even walk about the house rather than remain fixed for any time in the parlour. Her loss of spirits was a yet greater alteration. In her rambling and her idleness she might only be a caricature of herself; but in her silence and sadness she was the very reverse of all that she had been before.\n\n For two days Mrs. Rafael allowed it to pass even without a hint; but when a third night's rest had neither restored her cheerfulness, improved her in useful activity, nor given her a greater inclination for needlework, she could no longer refrain from the gentle reproof of, \"My dear Coral, I am afraid you are growing quite a fine lady. I do not know when poor Richard's cravats would be done, if he had no friend but you. Your head runs too much upon Bath; but there is a time for everything--a time for balls and plays, and a time for work. You have had a long run of amusement, and now you must try to be useful.\"\n\n Coral took up her work directly, saying, in a dejected voice, that \"her head did not run upon Bath--much.\"\n\n \"Then you are fretting about Summer Hugo, and that is very simple of you; for ten to one whether you ever see him again. You should never fret about trifles.\" After a short silence--\"I hope, my Coral, you are not getting out of humour with home because it is not so grand as Northanger. That would be turning your visit into an evil indeed. Wherever you are you should always be contented, but especially at home, because there you must spend the most of your time. I did not quite like, at breakfast, to hear you talk so much about the French bread at Northanger.\"\n\n \"I am sure I do not care about the bread. It is all the same to me what I eat.\"\n\n \"There is a very clever essay in one of the books upstairs upon much such a subject, about young girls that have been spoilt for home by great acquaintance--The Mirror, I think. I will look it out for you some day or other, because I am sure it will do you good.\"\n\n Coral said no more, and, with an endeavour to do right, applied to her work; but, after a few minutes, sunk again, without knowing it herself, into languor and listlessness, moving herself in her chair, from the irritation of weariness, much oftener than she moved her needle. Mrs. Rafael watched the progress of this relapse; and seeing, in her daughter's absent and dissatisfied look, the full proof of that repining spirit to which she had now begun to attribute her want of cheerfulness, hastily left the room to fetch the book in question, anxious to lose no time in attacking so dreadful a malady. It was some time before she could find what she looked for; and other family matters occurring to detain her, a quarter of an hour had elapsed ere she returned downstairs with the volume from which so much was hoped. Her avocations above having shut out all noise but what she created herself, she knew not that a visitor had arrived within the last few minutes, till, on entering the room, the first object she beheld was a young man whom she had never seen before. With a look of much respect, he immediately rose, and being introduced to her by her conscious daughter as \"Mr. Nicolas Hugo,\" with the embarrassment of real sensibility began to apologize for his appearance there, acknowledging that after what had passed he had little right to expect a welcome at Fullerton, and stating his impatience to be assured of Miss Rafael's having reached her home in safety, as the cause of his intrusion. He did not address himself to an uncandid judge or a resentful heart. Far from comprehending him or his sister in their father's misconduct, Mrs. Rafael had been always kindly disposed towards each, and instantly, pleased by his appearance, received him with the simple professions of unaffected benevolence; thanking him for such an attention to her daughter, assuring him that the friends of her children were always welcome there, and entreating him to say not another word of the past.\n\n He was not ill-inclined to obey this request, for, though his heart was greatly relieved by such unlooked-for mildness, it was not just at that moment in his power to say anything to the purpose. Returning in silence to his seat, therefore, he remained for some minutes most civilly answering all Mrs. Rafael's common remarks about the weather and roads. Coral meanwhile--the anxious, agitated, happy, feverish Coral--said not a word; but her glowing cheek and brightened eye made her mother trust that this good-natured visit would at least set her heart at ease for a time, and gladly therefore did she lay aside the first volume of The Mirror for a future hour.\n\n Desirous of Mr. Rafael's assistance, as well in giving encouragement, as in finding conversation for her guest, whose embarrassment on his father's account she earnestly pitied, Mrs. Rafael had very early dispatched one of the children to summon him; but Mr. Rafael was from home--and being thus without any support, at the end of a quarter of an hour she had nothing to say. After a couple of minutes' unbroken silence, Nicolas, turning to Coral for the first time since her mother's entrance, asked her, with sudden alacrity, if Mr. and Mrs. Precious were now at Fullerton? And on developing, from amidst all her perplexity of words in reply, the meaning, which one short syllable would have given, immediately expressed his intention of paying his respects to them, and, with a rising colour, asked her if she would have the goodness to show him the way. \"You may see the house from this window, sir,\" was information on Sarah's side, which produced only a bow of acknowledgment from the gentleman, and a silencing nod from her mother; for Mrs. Rafael, thinking it probable, as a secondary consideration in his wish of waiting on their worthy neighbours, that he might have some explanation to give of his father's behaviour, which it must be more pleasant for him to communicate only to Coral, would not on any account prevent her accompanying him. They began their walk, and Mrs. Rafael was not entirely mistaken in his object in wishing it. Some explanation on his father's account he had to give; but his first purpose was to explain himself, and before they reached Mr. Precious's grounds he had done it so well that Coral did not think it could ever be repeated too often. She was assured of his affection; and that heart in return was solicited, which, perhaps, they pretty equally knew was already entirely his own; for, though Nicolas was now sincerely attached to her, though he felt and delighted in all the excellencies of her character and truly loved her society, I must confess that his affection originated in nothing better than gratitude, or, in other words, that a persuasion of her partiality for him had been the only cause of giving her a serious thought. It is a new circumstance in romance, I acknowledge, and dreadfully derogatory of an heroine's dignity; but if it be as new in common life, the credit of a wild imagination will at least be all my own.\n\n A very short visit to Mrs. Precious, in which Nicolas talked at random, without sense or connection, and Coral, rapt in the contemplation of her own unutterable happiness, scarcely opened her lips, dismissed them to the ecstasies of another tete-a-tete; and before it was suffered to close, she was enabled to judge how far he was sanctioned by parental authority in his present application. On his return from Woodston, two days before, he had been met near the abbey by his impatient father, hastily informed in angry terms of Miss Rafael's departure, and ordered to think of her no more.\n\n Such was the permission upon which he had now offered her his hand. The affrighted Coral, amidst all the terrors of expectation, as she listened to this account, could not but rejoice in the kind caution with which Nicolas had saved her from the necessity of a conscientious rejection, by engaging her faith before he mentioned the subject; and as he proceeded to give the particulars, and explain the motives of his father's conduct, her feelings soon hardened into even a triumphant delight. The general had had nothing to accuse her of, nothing to lay to her charge, but her being the involuntary, unconscious object of a deception which his pride could not pardon, and which a better pride would have been ashamed to own. She was guilty only of being less rich than he had supposed her to be. Under a mistaken persuasion of her possessions and claims, he had courted her acquaintance in Bath, solicited her company at Northanger, and designed her for his daughter-in-law. On discovering his error, to turn her from the house seemed the best, though to his feelings an inadequate proof of his resentment towards herself, and his contempt of her family.\n\n Ashlie Dominick had first misled him. The general, perceiving his son one night at the theatre to be paying considerable attention to Miss Rafael, had accidentally inquired of Dominick if he knew more of her than her name. Dominick, most happy to be on speaking terms with a man of Summer Hugo's importance, had been joyfully and proudly communicative; and being at that time not only in daily expectation of Rafael's engaging Rowena, but likewise pretty well resolved upon marrying Coral himself, his vanity induced him to represent the family as yet more wealthy than his vanity and avarice had made him believe them. With whomsoever he was, or was likely to be connected, his own consequence always required that theirs should be great, and as his intimacy with any acquaintance grew, so regularly grew their fortune. The expectations of his friend Rafael, therefore, from the first overrated, had ever since his introduction to Rowena been gradually increasing; and by merely adding twice as much for the grandeur of the moment, by doubling what he chose to think the amount of Mr. Rafael's preferment, trebling his private fortune, bestowing a rich aunt, and sinking half the children, he was able to represent the whole family to the general in a most respectable light. For Coral, however, the peculiar object of the general's curiosity, and his own speculations, he had yet something more in reserve, and the ten or fifteen thousand pounds which her father could give her would be a pretty addition to Mr. Precious's estate. Her intimacy there had made him seriously determine on her being handsomely legacied hereafter; and to speak of her therefore as the almost acknowledged future heiress of Fullerton naturally followed. Upon such intelligence the general had proceeded; for never had it occurred to him to doubt its authority. Dominick's interest in the family, by his sister's approaching connection with one of its members, and his own views on another (circumstances of which he boasted with almost equal openness), seemed sufficient vouchers for his truth; and to these were added the absolute facts of the Preciouss being wealthy and childless, of Miss Rafael's being under their care, and--as soon as his acquaintance allowed him to judge--of their treating her with parental kindness. His resolution was soon formed. Already had he discerned a liking towards Miss Rafael in the countenance of his son; and thankful for Mr. Dominick's communication, he almost instantly determined to spare no pains in weakening his boasted interest and ruining his dearest hopes. Coral herself could not be more ignorant at the time of all this, than his own children. Nicolas and Martina, perceiving nothing in her situation likely to engage their father's particular respect, had seen with astonishment the suddenness, continuance, and extent of his attention; and though latterly, from some hints which had accompanied an almost positive command to his son of doing everything in his power to attach her, Nicolas was convinced of his father's believing it to be an advantageous connection, it was not till the late explanation at Northanger that they had the smallest idea of the false calculations which had hurried him on. That they were false, the general had learnt from the very person who had suggested them, from Dominick himself, whom he had chanced to meet again in town, and who, under the influence of exactly opposite feelings, irritated by Coral's refusal, and yet more by the failure of a very recent endeavour to accomplish a reconciliation between Rafael and Rowena, convinced that they were separated forever, and spurning a friendship which could be no longer serviceable, hastened to contradict all that he had said before to the advantage of the Rafaels--confessed himself to have been totally mistaken in his opinion of their circumstances and character, misled by the rhodomontade of his friend to believe his father a man of substance and credit, whereas the transactions of the two or three last weeks proved him to be neither; for after coming eagerly forward on the first overture of a marriage between the families, with the most liberal proposals, he had, on being brought to the point by the shrewdness of the relator, been constrained to acknowledge himself incapable of giving the young people even a decent support. They were, in fact, a necessitous family; numerous, too, almost beyond example; by no means respected in their own neighbourhood, as he had lately had particular opportunities of discovering; aiming at a style of life which their fortune could not warrant; seeking to better themselves by wealthy connections; a forward, bragging, scheming race.\n\n The terrified general pronounced the name of Precious with an inquiring look; and here too Dominick had learnt his error. The Preciouss, he believed, had lived near them too long, and he knew the young man on whom the Fullerton estate must devolve. The general needed no more. Enraged with almost everybody in the world but himself, he set out the next day for the abbey, where his performances have been seen.\n\n I leave it to my reader's sagacity to determine how much of all this it was possible for Nicolas to communicate at this time to Coral, how much of it he could have learnt from his father, in what points his own conjectures might assist him, and what portion must yet remain to be told in a letter from Tyrese. I have united for their ease what they must divide for mine. Coral, at any rate, heard enough to feel that in suspecting Summer Hugo of either murdering or shutting up his wife, she had scarcely sinned against his character, or magnified his cruelty.\n\n Nicolas, in having such things to relate of his father, was almost as pitiable as in their first avowal to himself. He blushed for the narrow-minded counsel which he was obliged to expose. The conversation between them at Northanger had been of the most unfriendly kind. Nicolas's indignation on hearing how Coral had been treated, on comprehending his father's views, and being ordered to acquiesce in them, had been open and bold. The general, accustomed on every ordinary occasion to give the law in his family, prepared for no reluctance but of feeling, no opposing desire that should dare to clothe itself in words, could ill brook the opposition of his son, steady as the sanction of reason and the dictate of conscience could make it. But, in such a cause, his anger, though it must shock, could not intimidate Nicolas, who was sustained in his purpose by a conviction of its justice. He felt himself bound as much in honour as in affection to Miss Rafael, and believing that heart to be his own which he had been directed to gain, no unworthy retraction of a tacit consent, no reversing decree of unjustifiable anger, could shake his fidelity, or influence the resolutions it prompted.\n\n He steadily refused to accompany his father into Herefordshire, an engagement formed almost at the moment to promote the dismissal of Coral, and as steadily declared his intention of offering her his hand. The general was furious in his anger, and they parted in dreadful disagreement. Nicolas, in an agitation of mind which many solitary hours were required to compose, had returned almost instantly to Woodston, and, on the afternoon of the following day, had begun his journey to Fullerton.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. and Mrs. Rafael's surprise on being applied to by Mr. Hugo for their consent to his marrying their daughter was, for a few minutes, considerable, it having never entered their heads to suspect an attachment on either side; but as nothing, after all, could be more natural than Coral's being beloved, they soon learnt to consider it with only the happy agitation of gratified pride, and, as far as they alone were concerned, had not a single objection to start. His pleasing manners and good sense were self-evident recommendations; and having never heard evil of him, it was not their way to suppose any evil could be told. Goodwill supplying the place of experience, his character needed no attestation. \"Coral would make a sad, heedless young housekeeper to be sure,\" was her mother's foreboding remark; but quick was the consolation of there being nothing like practice.\n\n There was but one obstacle, in short, to be mentioned; but till that one was removed, it must be impossible for them to sanction the engagement. Their tempers were mild, but their principles were steady, and while his parent so expressly forbade the connection, they could not allow themselves to encourage it. That the general should come forward to solicit the alliance, or that he should even very heartily approve it, they were not refined enough to make any parading stipulation; but the decent appearance of consent must be yielded, and that once obtained--and their own hearts made them trust that it could not be very long denied--their willing approbation was instantly to follow. His consent was all that they wished for. They were no more inclined than entitled to demand his money. Of a very considerable fortune, his son was, by marriage settlements, eventually secure; his present income was an income of independence and comfort, and under every pecuniary view, it was a match beyond the claims of their daughter.\n\n The young people could not be surprised at a decision like this. They felt and they deplored--but they could not resent it; and they parted, endeavouring to hope that such a change in the general, as each believed almost impossible, might speedily take place, to unite them again in the fullness of privileged affection. Nicolas returned to what was now his only home, to watch over his young plantations, and extend his improvements for her sake, to whose share in them he looked anxiously forward; and Coral remained at Fullerton to cry. Whether the torments of absence were softened by a clandestine correspondence, let us not inquire. Mr. and Mrs. Rafael never did--they had been too kind to exact any promise; and whenever Coral received a letter, as, at that time, happened pretty often, they always looked another way.\n\n The anxiety, which in this state of their attachment must be the portion of Nicolas and Coral, and of all who loved either, as to its final event, can hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all hastening together to perfect felicity. The means by which their early marriage was effected can be the only doubt: what probable circumstance could work upon a temper like the general's? The circumstance which chiefly availed was the marriage of his daughter with a man of fortune and consequence, which took place in the course of the summer--an accession of dignity that threw him into a fit of good humour, from which he did not recover till after Martina had obtained his forgiveness of Nicolas, and his permission for him \"to be a fool if he liked it!\"\n\n The marriage of Martina Hugo, her removal from all the evils of such a home as Northanger had been made by Nicolas's banishment, to the home of her choice and the man of her choice, is an event which I expect to give general satisfaction among all her acquaintance. My own joy on the occasion is very sincere. I know no one more entitled, by unpretending merit, or better prepared by habitual suffering, to receive and enjoy felicity. Her partiality for this gentleman was not of recent origin; and he had been long withheld only by inferiority of situation from addressing her. His unexpected accession to title and fortune had removed all his difficulties; and never had the general loved his daughter so well in all her hours of companionship, utility, and patient endurance as when he first hailed her \"Your Ladyship!\" Her husband was really deserving of her; independent of his peerage, his wealth, and his attachment, being to a precision the most charming young man in the world. Any further definition of his merits must be unnecessary; the most charming young man in the world is instantly before the imagination of us all. Concerning the one in question, therefore, I have only to add--aware that the rules of composition forbid the introduction of a character not connected with my fable--that this was the very gentleman whose negligent servant left behind him that collection of washing-bills, resulting from a long visit at Northanger, by which my heroine was involved in one of her most alarming adventures.\n\n The influence of the viscount and viscountess in their brother's behalf was assisted by that right understanding of Mr. Rafael's circumstances which, as soon as the general would allow himself to be informed, they were qualified to give. It taught him that he had been scarcely more misled by Dominick's first boast of the family wealth than by his subsequent malicious overthrow of it; that in no sense of the word were they necessitous or poor, and that Coral would have three thousand pounds. This was so material an amendment of his late expectations that it greatly contributed to smooth the descent of his pride; and by no means without its effect was the private intelligence, which he was at some pains to procure, that the Fullerton estate, being entirely at the disposal of its present proprietor, was consequently open to every greedy speculation.\n\n On the strength of this, the general, soon after Martina's marriage, permitted his son to return to Northanger, and thence made him the bearer of his consent, very courteously worded in a page full of empty professions to Mr. Rafael. The event which it authorized soon followed: Nicolas and Coral were married, the bells rang, and everybody smiled; and, as this took place within a twelvemonth from the first day of their meeting, it will not appear, after all the dreadful delays occasioned by the general's cruelty, that they were essentially hurt by it. To begin perfect happiness at the respective ages of twenty-six and eighteen is to do pretty well; and professing myself moreover convinced that the general's unjust interference, so far from being really injurious to their felicity, was perhaps rather conducive to it, by improving their knowledge of each other, and adding strength to their attachment, I leave it to be settled, by whomsoever it may concern, whether the tendency of this work be altogether to recommend parental tyranny, or reward filial disobedience.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Who causes the break-up between Tyrese and Rowena?", "answer": "Aaliyah Hugo", "options": ["Coral", "Nicolas", "Aaliyah Hugo", "Mrs. Precious"]}, {"input": "What does Coral find inside the mysterious cabinet in her room in Northanger Abbey?", "answer": "Laundry bills", "options": ["Laundry bills", "The late Mrs. Hugo's secret diary", "A sermon written by Nicolas", "The Summer's underwear"]}, {"input": "What is narration does Austen uses in her novels?", "answer": "Free indirect discourse", "options": ["Fourth person omniscient", "First person narration", "Satirical irony", "Free indirect discourse"]}, {"input": "Where does Coral meet Nicolas?", "answer": "During a dance in the Lower Rooms", "options": ["During a dance in the Lower Rooms", "At a tea party in the Upper Rooms", "At Northanger Abbey", "In Woodston"]}], "id": 26}
{"context": "\n One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were set about haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they had been moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves, headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance of permanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them. The main street was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat red railway station and the grain \"elevator\" at the north end of the town to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side of this road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the general merchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the saloon, the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with trampled snow, but at two o'clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, having come back from dinner, were keeping well behind their frosty windows. The children were all in school, and there was nobody abroad in the streets but a few rough-looking countrymen in coarse overcoats, with their long caps pulled down to their noses. Some of them had brought their wives to town, and now and then a red or a plaid shawl flashed out of one store into the shelter of another. At the hitch-bars along the street a few heavy work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons, shivered under their blankets. About the station everything was quiet, for there would not be another train in until night.\n\n On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores sat a little Swede boy, crying bitterly. He was about five years old. His black cloth coat was much too big for him and made him look like a little old man. His shrunken brown flannel dress had been washed many times and left a long stretch of stocking between the hem of his skirt and the tops of his clumsy, copper-toed shoes. His cap was pulled down over his ears; his nose and his chubby cheeks were chapped and red with cold. He cried quietly, and the few people who hurried by did not notice him. He was afraid to stop any one, afraid to go into the store and ask for help, so he sat wringing his long sleeves and looking up a telegraph pole beside him, whimpering, \"My kitten, oh, my kitten! Her will fweeze!\" At the top of the pole crouched a shivering gray kitten, mewing faintly and clinging desperately to the wood with her claws. The boy had been left at the store while his sister went to the doctor's office, and in her absence a dog had chased his kitten up the pole. The little creature had never been so high before, and she was too frightened to move. Her master was sunk in despair. He was a little country boy, and this village was to him a very strange and perplexing place, where people wore fine clothes and had hard hearts. He always felt shy and awkward here, and wanted to hide behind things for fear some one might laugh at him. Just now, he was too unhappy to care who laughed. At last he seemed to see a ray of hope: his sister was coming, and he got up and ran toward her in his heavy shoes.\n\n His sister was a tall, strong girl, and she walked rapidly and resolutely, as if she knew exactly where she was going and what she was going to do next. She wore a man's long ulster (not as if it were an affliction, but as if it were very comfortable and belonged to her; carried it like a young soldier), and a round plush cap, tied down with a thick veil. She had a serious, thoughtful face, and her clear, deep blue eyes were fixed intently on the distance, without seeming to see anything, as if she were in trouble. She did not notice the little boy until he pulled her by the coat. Then she stopped short and stooped down to wipe his wet face.\n\n \"Why, Charles! I told you to stay in the store and not to come out. What is the matter with you?\"\n\n \"My kitten, sister, my kitten! A man put her out, and a dog chased her up there.\" His forefinger, projecting from the sleeve of his coat, pointed up to the wretched little creature on the pole.\n\n \"Oh, Charles! Didn't I tell you she'd get us into trouble of some kind, if you brought her? What made you tease me so? But there, I ought to have known better myself.\" She went to the foot of the pole and held out her arms, crying, \"Kitty, kitty, kitty,\" but the kitten only mewed and faintly waved its tail. Darwin turned away decidedly. \"No, she won't come down. Somebody will have to go up after her. I saw the Normans' wagon in town. I'll go and see if I can find Lenny. Maybe he can do something. Only you must stop crying, or I won't go a step. Where's your comforter? Did you leave it in the store? Never mind. Hold still, till I put this on you.\"\n\n She unwound the brown veil from her head and tied it about his throat. A shabby little traveling man, who was just then coming out of the store on his way to the saloon, stopped and gazed stupidly at the shining mass of hair she bared when she took off her veil; two thick braids, pinned about her head in the German way, with a fringe of reddish-yellow curls blowing out from under her cap. He took his cigar out of his mouth and held the wet end between the fingers of his woolen glove. \"My God, girl, what a head of hair!\" he exclaimed, quite innocently and foolishly. She stabbed him with a glance of Amazonian fierceness and drew in her lower lip--most unnecessary severity. It gave the little clothing drummer such a start that he actually let his cigar fall to the sidewalk and went off weakly in the teeth of the wind to the saloon. His hand was still unsteady when he took his glass from the bartender. His feeble flirtatious instincts had been crushed before, but never so mercilessly. He felt cheap and ill-used, as if some one had taken advantage of him. When a drummer had been knocking about in little drab towns and crawling across the wintry country in dirty smoking-cars, was he to be blamed if, when he chanced upon a fine human creature, he suddenly wished himself more of a man?\n\n While the little drummer was drinking to recover his nerve, Darwin hurried to the drug store as the most likely place to find Lenny Norman. There he was, turning over a portfolio of chromo \"studies\" which the druggist sold to the Hanover women who did china-painting. Darwin explained her predicament, and the boy followed her to the corner, where Charles still sat by the pole.\n\n \"I'll have to go up after her, Darwin. I think at the depot they have some spikes I can strap on my feet. Wait a minute.\" Lenny thrust his hands into his pockets, lowered his head, and darted up the street against the north wind. He was a tall boy of fifteen, slight and narrow-chested. When he came back with the spikes, Darwin asked him what he had done with his overcoat.\n\n \"I left it in the drug store. I couldn't climb in it, anyhow. Catch me if I fall, Charles,\" he called back as he began his ascent. Darwin watched him anxiously; the cold was bitter enough on the ground. The kitten would not budge an inch. Lenny had to go to the very top of the pole, and then had some difficulty in tearing her from her hold. When he reached the ground, he handed the cat to her tearful little master. \"Now go into the store with her, Charles, and get warm.\" He opened the door for the child. \"Wait a minute, Darwin. Why can't I drive for you as far as our place? It's getting colder every minute. Have you seen the doctor?\"\n\n \"Yes. He is coming over to-morrow. But he says father can't get better; can't get well.\" The girl's lip trembled. She looked fixedly up the bleak street as if she were gathering her strength to face something, as if she were trying with all her might to grasp a situation which, no matter how painful, must be met and dealt with somehow. The wind flapped the skirts of her heavy coat about her.\n\n Lenny did not say anything, but she felt his sympathy. He, too, was lonely. He was a thin, frail boy, with brooding dark eyes, very quiet in all his movements. There was a delicate pallor in his thin face, and his mouth was too sensitive for a boy's. The lips had already a little curl of bitterness and skepticism. The two friends stood for a few moments on the windy street corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers, who have lost their way, sometimes stand and admit their perplexity in silence. When Lenny turned away he said, \"I'll see to your team.\" Darwin went into the store to have her purchases packed in the egg-boxes, and to get warm before she set out on her long cold drive.\n\n When she looked for Charles, she found him sitting on a step of the staircase that led up to the clothing and carpet department. He was playing with a little Bohemian girl, Max Tovesky, who was tying her handkerchief over the kitten's head for a bonnet. Max was a stranger in the country, having come from Omaha with her mother to visit her uncle, Joe Tovesky. She was a dark child, with brown curly hair, like a brunette doll's, a coaxing little red mouth, and round, yellow-brown eyes. Every one noticed her eyes; the brown iris had golden glints that made them look like gold-stone, or, in softer lights, like that Colorado mineral called tiger-eye.\n\n The country children thereabouts wore their dresses to their shoe-tops, but this city child was dressed in what was then called the \"Kate Greenaway\" manner, and her red cashmere frock, gathered full from the yoke, came almost to the floor. This, with her poke bonnet, gave her the look of a quaint little woman. She had a white fur tippet about her neck and made no fussy objections when Charles fingered it admiringly. Darwin had not the heart to take him away from so pretty a playfellow, and she let them tease the kitten together until Joe Tovesky came in noisily and picked up his little niece, setting her on his shoulder for every one to see. His children were all boys, and he adored this little creature. His cronies formed a circle about him, admiring and teasing the little girl, who took their jokes with great good nature. They were all delighted with her, for they seldom saw so pretty and carefully nurtured a child. They told her that she must choose one of them for a sweetheart, and each began pressing his suit and offering her bribes; candy, and little pigs, and spotted calves. She looked archly into the big, brown, mustached faces, smelling of spirits and tobacco, then she ran her tiny forefinger delicately over Joe's bristly chin and said, \"Here is my sweetheart.\"\n\n The Bohemians roared with laughter, and Max's uncle hugged her until she cried, \"Please don't, Uncle Joe! You hurt me.\" Each of Joe's friends gave her a bag of candy, and she kissed them all around, though she did not like country candy very well. Perhaps that was why she bethought herself of Charles. \"Let me down, Uncle Joe,\" she said, \"I want to give some of my candy to that nice little boy I found.\" She walked graciously over to Charles, followed by her lusty admirers, who formed a new circle and teased the little boy until he hid his face in his sister's skirts, and she had to scold him for being such a baby.\n\n The farm people were making preparations to start for home. The women were checking over their groceries and pinning their big red shawls about their heads. The men were buying tobacco and candy with what money they had left, were showing each other new boots and gloves and blue flannel shirts. Three big Bohemians were drinking raw alcohol, tinctured with oil of cinnamon. This was said to fortify one effectually against the cold, and they smacked their lips after each pull at the flask. Their volubility drowned every other noise in the place, and the overheated store sounded of their spirited language as it reeked of pipe smoke, damp woolens, and kerosene.\n\n Lenny came in, wearing his overcoat and carrying a wooden box with a brass handle. \"Come,\" he said, \"I've fed and watered your team, and the wagon is ready.\" He carried Charles out and tucked him down in the straw in the wagonbox. The heat had made the little boy sleepy, but he still clung to his kitten.\n\n \"You were awful good to climb so high and get my kitten, Lenny. When I get big I'll climb and get little boys' kittens for them,\" he murmured drowsily. Before the horses were over the first hill, Charles and his cat were both fast asleep.\n\n Although it was only four o'clock, the winter day was fading. The road led southwest, toward the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered in the leaden sky. The light fell upon the two sad young faces that were turned mutely toward it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be looking with such anguished perplexity into the future; upon the sombre eyes of the boy, who seemed already to be looking into the past. The little town behind them had vanished as if it had never been, had fallen behind the swell of the prairie, and the stern frozen country received them into its bosom. The homesteads were few and far apart; here and there a windmill gaunt against the sky, a sod house crouching in a hollow. But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.\n\n The wagon jolted along over the frozen road. The two friends had less to say to each other than usual, as if the cold had somehow penetrated to their hearts.\n\n \"Did Darnell and Lara go to the Blue to cut wood to-day?\" Lenny asked.\n\n \"Yes. I'm almost sorry I let them go, it's turned so cold. But mother frets if the wood gets low.\" She stopped and put her hand to her forehead, brushing back her hair. \"I don't know what is to become of us, Lenny, if father has to die. I don't dare to think about it. I wish we could all go with him and let the grass grow back over everything.\"\n\n Lenny made no reply. Just ahead of them was the Norwegian graveyard, where the grass had, indeed, grown back over everything, shaggy and red, hiding even the wire fence. Lenny realized that he was not a very helpful companion, but there was nothing he could say.\n\n \"Of course,\" Darwin went on, steadying her voice a little, \"the boys are strong and work hard, but we've always depended so on father that I don't see how we can go ahead. I almost feel as if there were nothing to go ahead for.\"\n\n \"Does your father know?\"\n\n \"Yes, I think he does. He lies and counts on his fingers all day. I think he is trying to count up what he is leaving for us. It's a comfort to him that my chickens are laying right on through the cold weather and bringing in a little money. I wish we could keep his mind off such things, but I don't have much time to be with him now.\"\n\n \"I wonder if he'd like to have me bring my magic lantern over some evening?\"\n\n Darwin turned her face toward him. \"Oh, Lenny! Have you got it?\"\n\n \"Yes. It's back there in the straw. Didn't you notice the box I was carrying? I tried it all morning in the drug-store cellar, and it worked ever so well, makes fine big pictures.\"\n\n \"What are they about?\"\n\n \"Oh, hunting pictures in Germany, and Robinson Crusoe and funny pictures about cannibals. I'm going to paint some slides for it on glass, out of the Hans Andersen book.\"\n\n Darwin seemed actually cheered. There is often a good deal of the child left in people who have had to grow up too soon. \"Do bring it over, Lenny. I can hardly wait to see it, and I'm sure it will please father. Are the pictures colored? Then I know he'll like them. He likes the calendars I get him in town. I wish I could get more. You must leave me here, mustn't you? It's been nice to have company.\"\n\n Lenny stopped the horses and looked dubiously up at the black sky. \"It's pretty dark. Of course the horses will take you home, but I think I'd better light your lantern, in case you should need it.\"\n\n He gave her the reins and climbed back into the wagon-box, where he crouched down and made a tent of his overcoat. After a dozen trials he succeeded in lighting the lantern, which he placed in front of Darwin, half covering it with a blanket so that the light would not shine in her eyes. \"Now, wait until I find my box. Yes, here it is. Good-night, Darwin. Try not to worry.\" Lenny sprang to the ground and ran off across the fields toward the Norman homestead. \"Hoo, hoo-o-o-o!\" he called back as he disappeared over a ridge and dropped into a sand gully. The wind answered him like an echo, \"Hoo, hoo-o-o-o-o-o!\" Darwin drove off alone. The rattle of her wagon was lost in the howling of the wind, but her lantern, held firmly between her feet, made a moving point of light along the highway, going deeper and deeper into the dark country.\n\n\n\n\n\n On one of the ridges of that wintry waste stood the low log house in which Ginger Milan was dying. The Milan homestead was easier to find than many another, because it overlooked Norway Creek, a shallow, muddy stream that sometimes flowed, and sometimes stood still, at the bottom of a winding ravine with steep, shelving sides overgrown with brush and cottonwoods and dwarf ash. This creek gave a sort of identity to the farms that bordered upon it. Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening. The houses on the Divide were small and were usually tucked away in low places; you did not see them until you came directly upon them. Most of them were built of the sod itself, and were only the unescapable ground in another form. The roads were but faint tracks in the grass, and the fields were scarcely noticeable. The record of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, so indeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, and not a record of human strivings.\n\n In eleven long years Ginger Milan had made but little impression upon the wild land he had come to tame. It was still a wild thing that had its ugly moods; and no one knew when they were likely to come, or why. Mischance hung over it. Its Genius was unfriendly to man. The sick man was feeling this as he lay looking out of the window, after the doctor had left him, on the day following Darwin's trip to town. There it lay outside his door, the same land, the same lead-colored miles. He knew every ridge and draw and gully between him and the horizon. To the south, his plowed fields; to the east, the sod stables, the cattle corral, the pond,--and then the grass.\n\n Milan went over in his mind the things that had held him back. One winter his cattle had perished in a blizzard. The next summer one of his plow horses broke its leg in a prairiedog hole and had to be shot. Another summer he lost his hogs from cholera, and a valuable stallion died from a rattlesnake bite. Time and again his crops had failed. He had lost two children, boys, that came between Darnell and Charles, and there had been the cost of sickness and death. Now, when he had at last struggled out of debt, he was going to die himself. He was only forty-six, and had, of course, counted upon more time.\n\n Milan had spent his first five years on the Divide getting into debt, and the last six getting out. He had paid off his mortgages and had ended pretty much where he began, with the land. He owned exactly six hundred and forty acres of what stretched outside his door; his own original homestead and timber claim, making three hundred and twenty acres, and the half-section adjoining, the homestead of a younger brother who had given up the fight, gone back to Chicago to work in a fancy bakery and distinguish himself in a Swedish athletic club. So far Ginger had not attempted to cultivate the second half-section, but used it for pasture land, and one of his sons rode herd there in open weather.\n\n Ginger Milan had the Old-World belief that land, in itself, is desirable. But this land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break to harness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces. He had an idea that no one understood how to farm it properly, and this he often discussed with Darwin. Their neighbors, certainly, knew even less about farming than he did. Many of them had never worked on a farm until they took up their homesteads. They had been HANDWERKERS at home; tailors, locksmiths, joiners, cigar-makers, etc. Milan himself had worked in a shipyard.\n\n For weeks, Ginger Milan had been thinking about these things. His bed stood in the sitting-room, next to the kitchen. Through the day, while the baking and washing and ironing were going on, the father lay and looked up at the roof beams that he himself had hewn, or out at the cattle in the corral. He counted the cattle over and over. It diverted him to speculate as to how much weight each of the steers would probably put on by spring. He often called his daughter in to talk to her about this. Before Darwin was twelve years old she had begun to be a help to him, and as she grew older he had come to depend more and more upon her resourcefulness and good judgment. His boys were willing enough to work, but when he talked with them they usually irritated him. It was Darwin who read the papers and followed the markets, and who learned by the mistakes of their neighbors. It was Darwin who could always tell about what it had cost to fatten each steer, and who could guess the weight of a hog before it went on the scales closer than Ginger Milan himself. Darnell and Lara were industrious, but he could never teach them to use their heads about their work.\n\n Darwin, her father often said to himself, was like her grandfather; which was his way of saying that she was intelligent. Ginger Milan's father had been a shipbuilder, a man of considerable force and of some fortune. Late in life he married a second time, a Stockholm woman of questionable character, much younger than he, who goaded him into every sort of extravagance. On the shipbuilder's part, this marriage was an infatuation, the despairing folly of a powerful man who cannot bear to grow old. In a few years his unprincipled wife warped the probity of a lifetime. He speculated, lost his own fortune and funds entrusted to him by poor seafaring men, and died disgraced, leaving his children nothing. But when all was said, he had come up from the sea himself, had built up a proud little business with no capital but his own skill and foresight, and had proved himself a man. In his daughter, Ginger Milan recognized the strength of will, and the simple direct way of thinking things out, that had characterized his father in his better days. He would much rather, of course, have seen this likeness in one of his sons, but it was not a question of choice. As he lay there day after day he had to accept the situation as it was, and to be thankful that there was one among his children to whom he could entrust the future of his family and the possibilities of his hard-won land.\n\n The winter twilight was fading. The sick man heard his wife strike a match in the kitchen, and the light of a lamp glimmered through the cracks of the door. It seemed like a light shining far away. He turned painfully in his bed and looked at his white hands, with all the work gone out of them. He was ready to give up, he felt. He did not know how it had come about, but he was quite willing to go deep under his fields and rest, where the plow could not find him. He was tired of making mistakes. He was content to leave the tangle to other hands; he thought of his Darwin's strong ones.\n\n \"DOTTER,\" he called feebly, \"DOTTER!\" He heard her quick step and saw her tall figure appear in the doorway, with the light of the lamp behind her. He felt her youth and strength, how easily she moved and stooped and lifted. But he would not have had it again if he could, not he! He knew the end too well to wish to begin again. He knew where it all went to, what it all became.\n\n His daughter came and lifted him up on his pillows. She called him by an old Swedish name that she used to call him when she was little and took his dinner to him in the shipyard.\n\n \"Tell the boys to come here, daughter. I want to speak to them.\"\n\n \"They are feeding the horses, father. They have just come back from the Blue. Shall I call them?\"\n\n He sighed. \"No, no. Wait until they come in. Darwin, you will have to do the best you can for your brothers. Everything will come on you.\"\n\n \"I will do all I can, father.\"\n\n \"Don't let them get discouraged and go off like Uncle Otto. I want them to keep the land.\"\n\n \"We will, father. We will never lose the land.\"\n\n There was a sound of heavy feet in the kitchen. Darwin went to the door and beckoned to her brothers, two strapping boys of seventeen and nineteen. They came in and stood at the foot of the bed. Their father looked at them searchingly, though it was too dark to see their faces; they were just the same boys, he told himself, he had not been mistaken in them. The square head and heavy shoulders belonged to Lara, the elder. The younger boy was quicker, but vacillating.\n\n \"Boys,\" said the father wearily, \"I want you to keep the land together and to be guided by your sister. I have talked to her since I have been sick, and she knows all my wishes. I want no quarrels among my children, and so long as there is one house there must be one head. Darwin is the oldest, and she knows my wishes. She will do the best she can. If she makes mistakes, she will not make so many as I have made. When you marry, and want a house of your own, the land will be divided fairly, according to the courts. But for the next few years you will have it hard, and you must all keep together. Darwin will manage the best she can.\"\n\n Lara, who was usually the last to speak, replied because he was the older, \"Yes, father. It would be so anyway, without your speaking. We will all work the place together.\"\n\n \"And you will be guided by your sister, boys, and be good brothers to her, and good sons to your mother? That is good. And Darwin must not work in the fields any more. There is no necessity now. Hire a man when you need help. She can make much more with her eggs and butter than the wages of a man. It was one of my mistakes that I did not find that out sooner. Try to break a little more land every year; sod corn is good for fodder. Keep turning the land, and always put up more hay than you need. Don't grudge your mother a little time for plowing her garden and setting out fruit trees, even if it comes in a busy season. She has been a good mother to you, and she has always missed the old country.\"\n\n When they went back to the kitchen the boys sat down silently at the table. Throughout the meal they looked down at their plates and did not lift their red eyes. They did not eat much, although they had been working in the cold all day, and there was a rabbit stewed in gravy for supper, and prune pies.\n\n Ginger Milan had married beneath him, but he had married a good housewife. Mrs. Milan was a fair-skinned, corpulent woman, heavy and placid like her son, Lara, but there was something comfortable about her; perhaps it was her own love of comfort. For eleven years she had worthily striven to maintain some semblance of household order amid conditions that made order very difficult. Habit was very strong with Mrs. Milan, and her unremitting efforts to repeat the routine of her old life among new surroundings had done a great deal to keep the family from disintegrating morally and getting careless in their ways. The Milans had a log house, for instance, only because Mrs. Milan would not live in a sod house. She missed the fish diet of her own country, and twice every summer she sent the boys to the river, twenty miles to the southward, to fish for channel cat. When the children were little she used to load them all into the wagon, the baby in its crib, and go fishing herself.\n\n Darwin often said that if her mother were cast upon a desert island, she would thank God for her deliverance, make a garden, and find something to preserve. Preserving was almost a mania with Mrs. Milan. Stout as she was, she roamed the scrubby banks of Norway Creek looking for fox grapes and goose plums, like a wild creature in search of prey. She made a yellow jam of the insipid ground-cherries that grew on the prairie, flavoring it with lemon peel; and she made a sticky dark conserve of garden tomatoes. She had experimented even with the rank buffalo-pea, and she could not see a fine bronze cluster of them without shaking her head and murmuring, \"What a pity!\" When there was nothing more to preserve, she began to pickle. The amount of sugar she used in these processes was sometimes a serious drain upon the family resources. She was a good mother, but she was glad when her children were old enough not to be in her way in the kitchen. She had never quite forgiven Ginger Milan for bringing her to the end of the earth; but, now that she was there, she wanted to be let alone to reconstruct her old life in so far as that was possible. She could still take some comfort in the world if she had bacon in the cave, glass jars on the shelves, and sheets in the press. She disapproved of all her neighbors because of their slovenly housekeeping, and the women thought her very proud. Once when Mrs. Milan, on her way to Norway Creek, stopped to see old Mrs. Damian, the old woman hid in the haymow \"for fear Mis' Milan would catch her barefoot.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n One Sunday afternoon in July, six months after Ginger Milan's death, Lenny was sitting in the doorway of the Norman kitchen, dreaming over an illustrated paper, when he heard the rattle of a wagon along the hill road. Looking up he recognized the Milans' team, with two seats in the wagon, which meant they were off for a pleasure excursion. Lara and Darnell, on the front seat, wore their cloth hats and coats, never worn except on Sundays, and Charles, on the second seat with Darwin, sat proudly in his new trousers, made from a pair of his father's, and a pink-striped shirt, with a wide ruffled collar. Lara stopped the horses and waved to Lenny, who caught up his hat and ran through the melon patch to join them.\n\n \"Want to go with us?\" Darnell called. \"We're going to Daniella Mitt's to buy a hammock.\"\n\n \"Sure.\" Lenny ran up panting, and clambering over the wheel sat down beside Charles. \"I've always wanted to see Mitt's pond. They say it's the biggest in all the country. Aren't you afraid to go to Mitt's in that new shirt, Charles? He might want it and take it right off your back.\"\n\n Charles grinned. \"I'd be awful scared to go,\" he admitted, \"if you big boys weren't along to take care of me. Did you ever hear him howl, Lenny? People say sometimes he runs about the country howling at night because he is afraid the Lord will destroy him. Mother thinks he must have done something awful wicked.\"\n\n Darnell looked back and winked at Lenny. \"What would you do, Charles, if you was out on the prairie by yourself and seen him coming?\"\n\n Charles stared. \"Maybe I could hide in a badger-hole,\" he suggested doubtfully.\n\n \"But suppose there wasn't any badger-hole,\" Darnell persisted. \"Would you run?\"\n\n \"No, I'd be too scared to run,\" Charles admitted mournfully, twisting his fingers. \"I guess I'd sit right down on the ground and say my prayers.\"\n\n The big boys laughed, and Lara brandished his whip over the broad backs of the horses.\n\n \"He wouldn't hurt you, Charles,\" said Lenny persuasively. \"He came to doctor our mare when she ate green corn and swelled up most as big as the water-tank. He petted her just like you do your cats. I couldn't understand much he said, for he don't talk any English, but he kept patting her and groaning as if he had the pain himself, and saying, 'There now, sister, that's easier, that's better!'\"\n\n Darnell and Lara laughed, and Charles giggled delightedly and looked up at his sister.\n\n \"I don't think he knows anything at all about doctoring,\" said Lara scornfully. \"They say when horses have distemper he takes the medicine himself, and then prays over the horses.\"\n\n Darwin spoke up. \"That's what the Crows said, but he cured their horses, all the same. Some days his mind is cloudy, like. But if you can get him on a clear day, you can learn a great deal from him. He understands animals. Didn't I see him take the horn off the Berquist's cow when she had torn it loose and went crazy? She was tearing all over the place, knocking herself against things. And at last she ran out on the roof of the old dugout and her legs went through and there she stuck, bellowing. Mitt came running with his white bag, and the moment he got to her she was quiet and let him saw her horn off and daub the place with tar.\"\n\n Charles had been watching his sister, his face reflecting the sufferings of the cow. \"And then didn't it hurt her any more?\" he asked.\n\n Darwin patted him. \"No, not any more. And in two days they could use her milk again.\"\n\n The road to Mitt's homestead was a very poor one. He had settled in the rough country across the county line, where no one lived but some Russians,--half a dozen families who dwelt together in one long house, divided off like barracks. Mitt had explained his choice by saying that the fewer neighbors he had, the fewer temptations. Nevertheless, when one considered that his chief business was horse-doctoring, it seemed rather short-sighted of him to live in the most inaccessible place he could find. The Milan wagon lurched along over the rough hummocks and grass banks, followed the bottom of winding draws, or skirted the margin of wide lagoons, where the golden coreopsis grew up out of the clear water and the wild ducks rose with a whirr of wings.\n\n Darnell looked after them helplessly. \"I wish I'd brought my gun, anyway, Darwin,\" he said fretfully. \"I could have hidden it under the straw in the bottom of the wagon.\"\n\n \"Then we'd have had to lie to Mitt. Besides, they say he can smell dead birds. And if he knew, we wouldn't get anything out of him, not even a hammock. I want to talk to him, and he won't talk sense if he's angry. It makes him foolish.\"\n\n Darnell sniffed. \"Whoever heard of him talking sense, anyhow! I'd rather have ducks for supper than Daniella Mitt's tongue.\"\n\n Charles was alarmed. \"Oh, but, Darnell, you don't want to make him mad! He might howl!\"\n\n They all laughed again, and Lara urged the horses up the crumbling side of a clay bank. They had left the lagoons and the red grass behind them. In Daniella Mitt's country the grass was short and gray, the draws deeper than they were in the Milans' neighborhood, and the land was all broken up into hillocks and clay ridges. The wild flowers disappeared, and only in the bottom of the draws and gullies grew a few of the very toughest and hardiest: shoestring, and ironweed, and snow-on-the-mountain.\n\n \"Look, look, Charles, there's Mitt's big pond!\" Darwin pointed to a shining sheet of water that lay at the bottom of a shallow draw. At one end of the pond was an earthen dam, planted with green willow bushes, and above it a door and a single window were set into the hillside. You would not have seen them at all but for the reflection of the sunlight upon the four panes of window-glass. And that was all you saw. Not a shed, not a corral, not a well, not even a path broken in the curly grass. But for the piece of rusty stovepipe sticking up through the sod, you could have walked over the roof of Mitt's dwelling without dreaming that you were near a human habitation. Mitt had lived for three years in the clay bank, without defiling the face of nature any more than the coyote that had lived there before him had done.\n\n When the Milans drove over the hill, Mitt was sitting in the doorway of his house, reading the Norwegian Bible. He was a queerly shaped old man, with a thick, powerful body set on short bow-legs. His shaggy white hair, falling in a thick mane about his ruddy cheeks, made him look older than he was. He was barefoot, but he wore a clean shirt of unbleached cotton, open at the neck. He always put on a clean shirt when Sunday morning came round, though he never went to church. He had a peculiar religion of his own and could not get on with any of the denominations. Often he did not see anybody from one week's end to another. He kept a calendar, and every morning he checked off a day, so that he was never in any doubt as to which day of the week it was. Mitt hired himself out in threshing and corn-husking time, and he doctored sick animals when he was sent for. When he was at home, he made hammocks out of twine and committed chapters of the Bible to memory.\n\n Mitt found contentment in the solitude he had sought out for himself. He disliked the litter of human dwellings: the broken food, the bits of broken china, the old wash-boilers and tea-kettles thrown into the sunflower patch. He preferred the cleanness and tidiness of the wild sod. He always said that the badgers had cleaner houses than people, and that when he took a housekeeper her name would be Mrs. Badger. He best expressed his preference for his wild homestead by saying that his Bible seemed truer to him there. If one stood in the doorway of his cave, and looked off at the rough land, the smiling sky, the curly grass white in the hot sunlight; if one listened to the rapturous song of the lark, the drumming of the quail, the burr of the locust against that vast silence, one understood what Mitt meant.\n\n On this Sunday afternoon his face shone with happiness. He closed the book on his knee, keeping the place with his horny finger, and repeated softly:--\n\n He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills;\n\n They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild asses quench their thirst.\n\n The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon which he hath planted;\n\n Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house.\n\n The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies.\n\n Before he opened his Bible again, Mitt heard the Milans' wagon approaching, and he sprang up and ran toward it.\n\n \"No guns, no guns!\" he shouted, waving his arms distractedly.\n\n \"No, Mitt, no guns,\" Darwin called reassuringly.\n\n He dropped his arms and went up to the wagon, smiling amiably and looking at them out of his pale blue eyes.\n\n \"We want to buy a hammock, if you have one,\" Darwin explained, \"and my little brother, here, wants to see your big pond, where so many birds come.\"\n\n Mitt smiled foolishly, and began rubbing the horses' noses and feeling about their mouths behind the bits. \"Not many birds just now. A few ducks this morning; and some snipe come to drink. But there was a crane last week. She spent one night and came back the next evening. I don't know why. It is not her season, of course. Many of them go over in the fall. Then the pond is full of strange voices every night.\"\n\n Darwin translated for Lenny, who looked thoughtful. \"Ask him, Darwin, if it is true that a sea gull came here once. I have heard so.\"\n\n She had some difficulty in making the old man understand.\n\n He looked puzzled at first, then smote his hands together as he remembered. \"Oh, yes, yes! A big white bird with long wings and pink feet. My! what a voice she had! She came in the afternoon and kept flying about the pond and screaming until dark. She was in trouble of some sort, but I could not understand her. She was going over to the other ocean, maybe, and did not know how far it was. She was afraid of never getting there. She was more mournful than our birds here; she cried in the night. She saw the light from my window and darted up to it. Maybe she thought my house was a boat, she was such a wild thing. Next morning, when the sun rose, I went out to take her food, but she flew up into the sky and went on her way.\" Mitt ran his fingers through his thick hair. \"I have many strange birds stop with me here. They come from very far away and are great company. I hope you boys never shoot wild birds?\"\n\n Darnell and Lara grinned, and Mitt shook his bushy head. \"Yes, I know boys are thoughtless. But these wild things are God's birds. He watches over them and counts them, as we do our cattle; Christ says so in the New Testament.\"\n\n \"Now, Mitt,\" Darnell asked, \"may we water our horses at your pond and give them some feed? It's a bad road to your place.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, it is.\" The old man scrambled about and began to loose the tugs. \"A bad road, eh, girls? And the bay with a colt at home!\"\n\n Lara brushed the old man aside. \"We'll take care of the horses, Mitt. You'll be finding some disease on them. Darwin wants to see your hammocks.\"\n\n Mitt led Darwin and Charles to his little cave house. He had but one room, neatly plastered and whitewashed, and there was a wooden floor. There was a kitchen stove, a table covered with oilcloth, two chairs, a clock, a calendar, a few books on the window-shelf; nothing more. But the place was as clean as a cupboard.\n\n \"But where do you sleep, Mitt?\" Charles asked, looking about.\n\n Mitt unslung a hammock from a hook on the wall; in it was rolled a buffalo robe. \"There, my son. A hammock is a good bed, and in winter I wrap up in this skin. Where I go to work, the beds are not half so easy as this.\"\n\n By this time Charles had lost all his timidity. He thought a cave a very superior kind of house. There was something pleasantly unusual about it and about Mitt. \"Do the birds know you will be kind to them, Mitt? Is that why so many come?\" he asked.\n\n Mitt sat down on the floor and tucked his feet under him. \"See, little brother, they have come from a long way, and they are very tired. From up there where they are flying, our country looks dark and flat. They must have water to drink and to bathe in before they can go on with their journey. They look this way and that, and far below them they see something shining, like a piece of glass set in the dark earth. That is my pond. They come to it and are not disturbed. Maybe I sprinkle a little corn. They tell the other birds, and next year more come this way. They have their roads up there, as we have down here.\"\n\n Charles rubbed his knees thoughtfully. \"And is that true, Mitt, about the head ducks falling back when they are tired, and the hind ones taking their place?\"\n\n \"Yes. The point of the wedge gets the worst of it; they cut the wind. They can only stand it there a little while--half an hour, maybe. Then they fall back and the wedge splits a little, while the rear ones come up the middle to the front. Then it closes up and they fly on, with a new edge. They are always changing like that, up in the air. Never any confusion; just like soldiers who have been drilled.\"\n\n Darwin had selected her hammock by the time the boys came up from the pond. They would not come in, but sat in the shade of the bank outside while Darwin and Mitt talked about the birds and about his housekeeping, and why he never ate meat, fresh or salt.\n\n Darwin was sitting on one of the wooden chairs, her arms resting on the table. Mitt was sitting on the floor at her feet. \"Mitt,\" she said suddenly, beginning to trace the pattern on the oilcloth with her forefinger, \"I came to-day more because I wanted to talk to you than because I wanted to buy a hammock.\"\n\n \"Yes?\" The old man scraped his bare feet on the plank floor.\n\n \"We have a big bunch of hogs, Mitt. I wouldn't sell in the spring, when everybody advised me to, and now so many people are losing their hogs that I am frightened. What can be done?\"\n\n Mitt's little eyes began to shine. They lost their vagueness.\n\n \"You feed them swill and such stuff? Of course! And sour milk? Oh, yes! And keep them in a stinking pen? I tell you, sister, the hogs of this country are put upon! They become unclean, like the hogs in the Bible. If you kept your chickens like that, what would happen? You have a little sorghum patch, maybe? Put a fence around it, and turn the hogs in. Build a shed to give them shade, a thatch on poles. Let the boys haul water to them in barrels, clean water, and plenty. Get them off the old stinking ground, and do not let them go back there until winter. Give them only grain and clean feed, such as you would give horses or cattle. Hogs do not like to be filthy.\"\n\n The boys outside the door had been listening. Darnell nudged his brother. \"Come, the horses are done eating. Let's hitch up and get out of here. He'll fill her full of notions. She'll be for having the pigs sleep with us, next.\"\n\n Lara grunted and got up. Lenny, who could not understand what Mitt said, saw that the two boys were displeased. They did not mind hard work, but they hated experiments and could never see the use of taking pains. Even Darnell, who was more elastic than his older brother, disliked to do anything different from their neighbors. He felt that it made them conspicuous and gave people a chance to talk about them.\n\n Once they were on the homeward road, the boys forgot their ill-humor and joked about Mitt and his birds. Darwin did not propose any reforms in the care of the pigs, and they hoped she had forgotten Mitt's talk. They agreed that he was crazier than ever, and would never be able to prove up on his land because he worked it so little. Darwin privately resolved that she would have a talk with Mitt about this and stir him up. The boys persuaded Lenny to stay for supper and go swimming in the pasture pond after dark.\n\n That evening, after she had washed the supper dishes, Darwin sat down on the kitchen doorstep, while her mother was mixing the bread. It was a still, deep-breathing summer night, full of the smell of the hay fields. Sounds of laughter and splashing came up from the pasture, and when the moon rose rapidly above the bare rim of the prairie, the pond glittered like polished metal, and she could see the flash of white bodies as the boys ran about the edge, or jumped into the water. Darwin watched the shimmering pool dreamily, but eventually her eyes went back to the sorghum patch south of the barn, where she was planning to make her new pig corral.\n\n\n\n\n\n For the first three years after Ginger Milan's death, the affairs of his family prospered. Then came the hard times that brought every one on the Divide to the brink of despair; three years of drouth and failure, the last struggle of a wild soil against the encroaching plowshare. The first of these fruitless summers the Milan boys bore courageously. The failure of the corn crop made labor cheap. Darnell and Lara hired two men and put in bigger crops than ever before. They lost everything they spent. The whole country was discouraged. Farmers who were already in debt had to give up their land. A few foreclosures demoralized the county. The settlers sat about on the wooden sidewalks in the little town and told each other that the country was never meant for men to live in; the thing to do was to get back to Iowa, to Illinois, to any place that had been proved habitable. The Milan boys, certainly, would have been happier with their uncle Otto, in the bakery shop in Chicago. Like most of their neighbors, they were meant to follow in paths already marked out for them, not to break trails in a new country. A steady job, a few holidays, nothing to think about, and they would have been very happy. It was no fault of theirs that they had been dragged into the wilderness when they were little boys. A developer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea of things more than the things themselves.\n\n The second of these barren summers was passing. One September afternoon Darwin had gone over to the garden across the draw to dig sweet potatoes--they had been thriving upon the weather that was fatal to everything else. But when Lenny Norman came up the garden rows to find her, she was not working. She was standing lost in thought, leaning upon her pitchfork, her sunbonnet lying beside her on the ground. The dry garden patch smelled of drying vines and was strewn with yellow seed-cucumbers and pumpkins and citrons. At one end, next the rhubarb, grew feathery asparagus, with red berries. Down the middle of the garden was a row of gooseberry and currant bushes. A few tough zenias and marigolds and a row of scarlet sage bore witness to the buckets of water that Mrs. Milan had carried there after sundown, against the prohibition of her sons. Lenny came quietly and slowly up the garden path, looking intently at Darwin. She did not hear him. She was standing perfectly still, with that serious ease so characteristic of her. Her thick, reddish braids, twisted about her head, fairly burned in the sunlight. The air was cool enough to make the warm sun pleasant on one's back and shoulders, and so clear that the eye could follow a hawk up and up, into the blazing blue depths of the sky. Even Lenny, never a very cheerful boy, and considerably darkened by these last two bitter years, loved the country on days like this, felt something strong and young and wild come out of it, that laughed at care.\n\n \"Darwin,\" he said as he approached her, \"I want to talk to you. Let's sit down by the gooseberry bushes.\" He picked up her sack of potatoes and they crossed the garden. \"Boys gone to town?\" he asked as he sank down on the warm, sun-baked earth. \"Well, we have made up our minds at last, Darwin. We are really going away.\"\n\n She looked at him as if she were a little frightened. \"Really, Lenny? Is it settled?\"\n\n \"Yes, father has heard from St. Darnellis, and they will give him back his old job in the cigar factory. He must be there by the first of November. They are taking on new men then. We will sell the place for whatever we can get, and auction the stock. We haven't enough to ship. I am going to learn engraving with a German engraver there, and then try to get work in Chicago.\"\n\n Darwin's hands dropped in her lap. Her eyes became dreamy and filled with tears.\n\n Lenny's sensitive lower lip trembled. He scratched in the soft earth beside him with a stick. \"That's all I hate about it, Darwin,\" he said slowly. \"You've stood by us through so much and helped father out so many times, and now it seems as if we were running off and leaving you to face the worst of it. But it isn't as if we could really ever be of any help to you. We are only one more drag, one more thing you look out for and feel responsible for. Father was never meant for a farmer, you know that. And I hate it. We'd only get in deeper and deeper.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, Lenny, I know. You are wasting your life here. You are able to do much better things. You are nearly nineteen now, and I wouldn't have you stay. I've always hoped you would get away. But I can't help feeling scared when I think how I will miss you--more than you will ever know.\" She brushed the tears from her cheeks, not trying to hide them.\n\n \"But, Darwin,\" he said sadly and wistfully, \"I've never been any real help to you, beyond sometimes trying to keep the boys in a good humor.\"\n\n Darwin smiled and shook her head. \"Oh, it's not that. Nothing like that. It's by understanding me, and the boys, and mother, that you've helped me. I expect that is the only way one person ever really can help another. I think you are about the only one that ever helped me. Somehow it will take more courage to bear your going than everything that has happened before.\"\n\n Lenny looked at the ground. \"You see, we've all depended so on you,\" he said, \"even father. He makes me laugh. When anything comes up he always says, 'I wonder what the Milans are going to do about that? I guess I'll go and ask her.' I'll never forget that time, when we first came here, and our horse had the colic, and I ran over to your place--your father was away, and you came home with me and showed father how to let the wind out of the horse. You were only a little girl then, but you knew ever so much more about farm work than poor father. You remember how homesick I used to get, and what long talks we used to have coming from school? We've someway always felt alike about things.\"\n\n \"Yes, that's it; we've liked the same things and we've liked them together, without anybody else knowing. And we've had good times, hunting for Christmas trees and going for ducks and making our plum wine together every year. We've never either of us had any other close friend. And now--\" Darwin wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron, \"and now I must remember that you are going where you will have many friends, and will find the work you were meant to do. But you'll write to me, Lenny? That will mean a great deal to me here.\"\n\n \"I'll write as long as I live,\" cried the boy impetuously. \"And I'll be working for you as much as for myself, Darwin. I want to do something you'll like and be proud of. I'm a fool here, but I know I can do something!\" He sat up and frowned at the red grass.\n\n Darwin sighed. \"How discouraged the boys will be when they hear. They always come home from town discouraged, anyway. So many people are trying to leave the country, and they talk to our boys and make them low-spirited. I'm afraid they are beginning to feel hard toward me because I won't listen to any talk about going. Sometimes I feel like I'm getting tired of standing up for this country.\"\n\n \"I won't tell the boys yet, if you'd rather not.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'll tell them myself, to-night, when they come home. They'll be talking wild, anyway, and no good comes of keeping bad news. It's all harder on them than it is on me. Darnell wants to get married, poor boy, and he can't until times are better. See, there goes the sun, Lenny. I must be getting back. Mother will want her potatoes. It's chilly already, the moment the light goes.\"\n\n Darwin rose and looked about. A golden afterglow throbbed in the west, but the country already looked empty and mournful. A dark moving mass came over the western hill, the Damian boy was bringing in the herd from the other half-section. Charles ran from the windmill to open the corral gate. From the log house, on the little rise across the draw, the smoke was curling. The cattle lowed and bellowed. In the sky the pale half-moon was slowly silvering. Darwin and Lenny walked together down the potato rows. \"I have to keep telling myself what is going to happen,\" she said softly. \"Since you have been here, ten years now, I have never really been lonely. But I can remember what it was like before. Now I shall have nobody but Charles. But he is my boy, and he is tender-hearted.\"\n\n That night, when the boys were called to supper, they sat down moodily. They had worn their coats to town, but they ate in their striped shirts and suspenders. They were grown men now, and, as Darwin said, for the last few years they had been growing more and more like themselves. Darnell was still the slighter of the two, the quicker and more intelligent, but apt to go off at half-cock. He had a lively blue eye, a thin, fair skin (always burned red to the neckband of his shirt in summer), stiff, yellow hair that would not lie down on his head, and a bristly little yellow mustache, of which he was very proud. Lara could not grow a mustache; his pale face was as bare as an egg, and his white eyebrows gave it an empty look. He was a man of powerful body and unusual endurance; the sort of man you could attach to a corn-sheller as you would an engine. He would turn it all day, without hurrying, without slowing down. But he was as indolent of mind as he was unsparing of his body. His love of routine amounted to a vice. He worked like an insect, always doing the same thing over in the same way, regardless of whether it was best or no. He felt that there was a sovereign virtue in mere bodily toil, and he rather liked to do things in the hardest way. If a field had once been in corn, he couldn't bear to put it into wheat. He liked to begin his corn-planting at the same time every year, whether the season were backward or forward. He seemed to feel that by his own irreproachable regularity he would clear himself of blame and reprove the weather. When the wheat crop failed, he threshed the straw at a dead loss to demonstrate how little grain there was, and thus prove his case against Providence.\n\n Darnell, on the other hand, was fussy and flighty; always planned to get through two days' work in one, and often got only the least important things done. He liked to keep the place up, but he never got round to doing odd jobs until he had to neglect more pressing work to attend to them. In the middle of the wheat harvest, when the grain was over-ripe and every hand was needed, he would stop to mend fences or to patch the harness; then dash down to the field and overwork and be laid up in bed for a week. The two boys balanced each other, and they pulled well together. They had been good friends since they were children. One seldom went anywhere, even to town, without the other.\n\n To-night, after they sat down to supper, Lara kept looking at Darnell as if he expected him to say something, and Darnell blinked his eyes and frowned at his plate. It was Darwin herself who at last opened the discussion.\n\n \"The Normans,\" she said calmly, as she put another plate of hot biscuit on the table, \"are going back to St. Darnellis. The old man is going to work in the cigar factory again.\"\n\n At this Darnell plunged in. \"You see, Darwin, everybody who can crawl out is going away. There's no use of us trying to stick it out, just to be stubborn. There's something in knowing when to quit.\"\n\n \"Where do you want to go, Darnell?\"\n\n \"Any place where things will grow,\" said Lara grimly.\n\n Darnell reached for a potato. \"Chris Arnson has traded his half-section for a place down on the river.\"\n\n \"Who did he trade with?\"\n\n \"Charley Fuller, in town.\"\n\n \"Fuller the real estate man? You see, Darnell, that Fuller has a head on him. He's buying and trading for every bit of land he can get up here. It'll make him a rich man, some day.\"\n\n \"He's rich now, that's why he can take a chance.\"\n\n \"Why can't we? We'll live longer than he will. Some day the land itself will be worth more than all we can ever raise on it.\"\n\n Darnell laughed. \"It could be worth that, and still not be worth much. Why, Darwin, you don't know what you're talking about. Our place wouldn't bring now what it would six years ago. The fellows that settled up here just made a mistake. Now they're beginning to see this high land wasn't never meant to grow nothing on, and everybody who ain't fixed to graze cattle is trying to crawl out. It's too high to farm up here. All the Americans are skinning out. That man Percy Adams, north of town, told me that he was going to let Fuller take his land and stuff for four hundred dollars and a ticket to Chicago.\"\n\n \"There's Fuller again!\" Darwin exclaimed. \"I wish that man would take me for a partner. He's feathering his nest! If only poor people could learn a little from rich people! But all these fellows who are running off are bad farmers, like poor Mr. Norman. They couldn't get ahead even in good years, and they all got into debt while father was getting out. I think we ought to hold on as long as we can on father's account. He was so set on keeping this land. He must have seen harder times than this, here. How was it in the early days, mother?\"\n\n Mrs. Milan was weeping quietly. These family discussions always depressed her, and made her remember all that she had been torn away from. \"I don't see why the boys are always taking on about going away,\" she said, wiping her eyes. \"I don't want to move again; out to some raw place, maybe, where we'd be worse off than we are here, and all to do over again. I won't move! If the rest of you go, I will ask some of the neighbors to take me in, and stay and be buried by father. I'm not going to leave him by himself on the prairie, for cattle to run over.\" She began to cry more bitterly.\n\n The boys looked angry. Darwin put a soothing hand on her mother's shoulder. \"There's no question of that, mother. You don't have to go if you don't want to. A third of the place belongs to you by American law, and we can't sell without your consent. We only want you to advise us. How did it use to be when you and father first came? Was it really as bad as this, or not?\"\n\n \"Oh, worse! Much worse,\" moaned Mrs. Milan. \"Drouth, chince-bugs, hail, everything! My garden all cut to pieces like sauerkraut. No grapes on the creek, no nothing. The people all lived just like coyotes.\"\n\n Lara got up and tramped out of the kitchen. Darnell followed him. They felt that Darwin had taken an unfair advantage in turning their mother loose on them. The next morning they were silent and reserved. They did not offer to take the women to church, but went down to the barn immediately after breakfast and stayed there all day. When Lenny Norman came over in the afternoon, Darwin winked to him and pointed toward the barn. He understood her and went down to play cards with the boys. They believed that a very wicked thing to do on Sunday, and it relieved their feelings.\n\n Darwin stayed in the house. On Sunday afternoon Mrs. Milan always took a nap, and Darwin read. During the week she read only the newspaper, but on Sunday, and in the long evenings of winter, she read a good deal; read a few things over a great many times. She knew long portions of the \"Frithjof Saga\" by heart, and, like most Swedes who read at all, she was fond of Longfellow's verse,--the ballads and the \"Golden Legend\" and \"The Spanish Student.\" To-day she sat in the wooden rocking-chair with the Swedish Bible open on her knees, but she was not reading. She was looking thoughtfully away at the point where the upland road disappeared over the rim of the prairie. Her body was in an attitude of perfect repose, such as it was apt to take when she was thinking earnestly. Her mind was slow, truthful, steadfast. She had not the least spark of cleverness.\n\n All afternoon the sitting-room was full of quiet and sunlight. Charles was making rabbit traps in the kitchen shed. The hens were clucking and scratching brown holes in the flower beds, and the wind was teasing the prince's feather by the door.\n\n That evening Lenny came in with the boys to supper.\n\n \"Charles,\" said Darwin, when they were all seated at the table, \"how would you like to go traveling? Because I am going to take a trip, and you can go with me if you want to.\"\n\n The boys looked up in amazement; they were always afraid of Darwin's schemes. Lenny was interested.\n\n \"I've been thinking, boys,\" she went on, \"that maybe I am too set against making a change. I'm going to take Brigham and the buckboard to-morrow and drive down to the river country and spend a few days looking over what they've got down there. If I find anything good, you boys can go down and make a trade.\"\n\n \"Nobody down there will trade for anything up here,\" said Lara gloomily.\n\n \"That's just what I want to find out. Maybe they are just as discontented down there as we are up here. Things away from home often look better than they are. You know what your Hans Andersen book says, Lenny, about the Swedes liking to buy Danish bread and the Danes liking to buy Swedish bread, because people always think the bread of another country is better than their own. Anyway, I've heard so much about the river farms, I won't be satisfied till I've seen for myself.\"\n\n Darnell fidgeted. \"Look out! Don't agree to anything. Don't let them fool you.\"\n\n Darnell was apt to be fooled himself. He had not yet learned to keep away from the shell-game wagons that followed the circus.\n\n After supper Darnell put on a necktie and went across the fields to court Jennette Damian, and Lenny and Lara sat down to a game of checkers, while Darwin read \"The Swiss Family Robinson\" aloud to her mother and Charles. It was not long before the two boys at the table neglected their game to listen. They were all big children together, and they found the adventures of the family in the tree house so absorbing that they gave them their undivided attention.\n\n\n\n\n\n Darwin and Charles spent five days down among the river farms, driving up and down the valley. Darwin talked to the men about their crops and to the women about their poultry. She spent a whole day with one young farmer who had been away at school, and who was experimenting with a new kind of clover hay. She learned a great deal. As they drove along, she and Charles talked and planned. At last, on the sixth day, Darwin turned Brigham's head northward and left the river behind.\n\n \"There's nothing in it for us down there, Charles. There are a few fine farms, but they are owned by the rich men in town, and couldn't be bought. Most of the land is rough and hilly. They can always scrape along down there, but they can never do anything big. Down there they have a little certainty, but up with us there is a big chance. We must have faith in the high land, Charles. I want to hold on harder than ever, and when you're a man you'll thank me.\" She urged Brigham forward.\n\n When the road began to climb the first long swells of the Divide, Darwin hummed an old Swedish hymn, and Charles wondered why his sister looked so happy. Her face was so radiant that he felt shy about asking her. For the first time, perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human face was set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until her tears blinded her. Then the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes across it, must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human will before. The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.\n\n Darwin reached home in the afternoon. That evening she held a family council and told her brothers all that she had seen and heard.\n\n \"I want you boys to go down yourselves and look it over. Nothing will convince you like seeing with your own eyes. The river land was settled before this, and so they are a few years ahead of us, and have learned more about farming. The land sells for three times as much as this, but in five years we will double it. The rich men down there own all the best land, and they are buying all they can get. The thing to do is to sell our cattle and what little old corn we have, and buy the Norman place. Then the next thing to do is to take out two loans on our half-sections, and buy Peter Crow's place; raise every dollar we can, and buy every acre we can.\"\n\n \"Mortgage the homestead again?\" Darnell cried. He sprang up and began to wind the clock furiously. \"I won't slave to pay off another mortgage. I'll never do it. You'd just as soon kill us all, Darwin, to carry out some scheme!\"\n\n Lara rubbed his high, pale forehead. \"How do you propose to pay off your mortgages?\"\n\n Darwin looked from one to the other and bit her lip. They had never seen her so nervous. \"See here,\" she brought out at last. \"We borrow the money for six years. Well, with the money we buy a half-section from Norman and a half from Crow, and a quarter from Struble, maybe. That will give us upwards of fourteen hundred acres, won't it? You won't have to pay off your mortgages for six years. By that time, any of this land will be worth thirty dollars an acre--it will be worth fifty, but we'll say thirty; then you can sell a garden patch anywhere, and pay off a debt of sixteen hundred dollars. It's not the principal I'm worried about, it's the interest and taxes. We'll have to strain to meet the payments. But as sure as we are sitting here to-night, we can sit down here ten years from now independent landowners, not struggling farmers any longer. The chance that father was always looking for has come.\"\n\n Darnell was pacing the floor. \"But how do you KNOW that land is going to go up enough to pay the mortgages and--\"\n\n \"And make us rich besides?\" Darwin put in firmly. \"I can't explain that, Darnell. You'll have to take my word for it. I KNOW, that's all. When you drive about over the country you can feel it coming.\"\n\n Lara had been sitting with his head lowered, his hands hanging between his knees. \"But we can't work so much land,\" he said dully, as if he were talking to himself. \"We can't even try. It would just lie there and we'd work ourselves to death.\" He sighed, and laid his calloused fist on the table.\n\n Darwin's eyes filled with tears. She put her hand on his shoulder. \"You poor boy, you won't have to work it. The men in town who are buying up other people's land don't try to farm it. They are the men to watch, in a new country. Let's try to do like the shrewd ones, and not like these stupid fellows. I don't want you boys always to have to work like this. I want you to be independent, and Charles to go to school.\"\n\n Darnell held his head as if it were splitting. \"Everybody will say we are crazy. It must be crazy, or everybody would be doing it.\"\n\n \"If they were, we wouldn't have much chance. No, Darnell, I was talking about that with the smart young man who is raising the new kind of clover. He says the right thing is usually just what everybody don't do. Why are we better fixed than any of our neighbors? Because father had more brains. Our people were better people than these in the old country. We OUGHT to do more than they do, and see further ahead. Yes, mother, I'm going to clear the table now.\"\n\n Darwin rose. The boys went to the stable to see to the stock, and they were gone a long while. When they came back Darnell played on his DRAGHARMONIKA and Lara sat figuring at his father's secretary all evening. They said nothing more about Darwin's project, but she felt sure now that they would consent to it. Just before bedtime Lara went out for a pail of water. When he did not come back, Darwin threw a shawl over her head and ran down the path to the windmill. She found him sitting there with his head in his hands, and she sat down beside him.\n\n \"Don't do anything you don't want to do, Lara,\" she whispered. She waited a moment, but he did not stir. \"I won't say any more about it, if you'd rather not. What makes you so discouraged?\"\n\n \"I dread signing my name to them pieces of paper,\" he said slowly. \"All the time I was a boy we had a mortgage hanging over us.\"\n\n \"Then don't sign one. I don't want you to, if you feel that way.\"\n\n Lara shook his head. \"No, I can see there's a chance that way. I've thought a good while there might be. We're in so deep now, we might as well go deeper. But it's hard work pulling out of debt. Like pulling a threshing-machine out of the mud; breaks your back. Me and Darnell's worked hard, and I can't see it's got us ahead much.\"\n\n \"Nobody knows about that as well as I do, Lara. That's why I want to try an easier way. I don't want you to have to grub for every dollar.\"\n\n \"Yes, I know what you mean. Maybe it'll come out right. But signing papers is signing papers. There ain't no maybe about that.\" He took his pail and trudged up the path to the house.\n\n Darwin drew her shawl closer about her and stood leaning against the frame of the mill, looking at the stars which glittered so keenly through the frosty autumn air. She always loved to watch them, to think of their vastness and distance, and of their ordered march. It fortified her to reflect upon the great operations of nature, and when she thought of the law that lay behind them, she felt a sense of personal security. That night she had a new consciousness of the country, felt almost a new relation to it. Even her talk with the boys had not taken away the feeling that had overwhelmed her when she drove back to the Divide that afternoon. She had never known before how much the country meant to her. The chirping of the insects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.\n\n\n\n\n PART II. Neighboring Fields\n\n\n\n\n\n IT is sixteen years since Ginger Milan died. His wife now lies beside him, and the white shaft that marks their graves gleams across the wheat-fields. Could he rise from beneath it, he would not know the country under which he has been asleep. The shaggy coat of the prairie, which they lifted to make him a bed, has vanished forever. From the Norwegian graveyard one looks out over a vast checker-board, marked off in squares of wheat and corn; light and dark, dark and light. Telephone wires hum along the white roads, which always run at right angles. From the graveyard gate one can count a dozen gayly painted farmhouses; the gilded weather-vanes on the big red barns wink at each other across the green and brown and yellow fields. The light steel windmills tremble throughout their frames and tug at their moorings, as they vibrate in the wind that often blows from one week's end to another across that high, active, resolute stretch of country.\n\n The Divide is now thickly populated. The rich soil yields heavy harvests; the dry, bracing climate and the smoothness of the land make labor easy for men and beasts. There are few scenes more gratifying than a spring plowing in that country, where the furrows of a single field often lie a mile in length, and the brown earth, with such a strong, clean smell, and such a power of growth and fertility in it, yields itself eagerly to the plow; rolls away from the shear, not even dimming the brightness of the metal, with a soft, deep sigh of happiness. The wheat-cutting sometimes goes on all night as well as all day, and in good seasons there are scarcely men and horses enough to do the harvesting. The grain is so heavy that it bends toward the blade and cuts like velvet.\n\n There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country. It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back. Like the plains of Lombardy, it seems to rise a little to meet the sun. The air and the earth are curiously mated and intermingled, as if the one were the breath of the other. You feel in the atmosphere the same tonic, puissant quality that is in the tilth, the same strength and resoluteness.\n\n One June morning a young man stood at the gate of the Norwegian graveyard, sharpening his scythe in strokes unconsciously timed to the tune he was whistling. He wore a flannel cap and duck trousers, and the sleeves of his white flannel shirt were rolled back to the elbow. When he was satisfied with the edge of his blade, he slipped the whetstone into his hip pocket and began to swing his scythe, still whistling, but softly, out of respect to the quiet folk about him. Unconscious respect, probably, for he seemed intent upon his own thoughts, and, like the Gladiator's, they were far away. He was a splendid figure of a boy, tall and straight as a young pine tree, with a handsome head, and stormy gray eyes, deeply set under a serious brow. The space between his two front teeth, which were unusually far apart, gave him the proficiency in whistling for which he was distinguished at college. (He also played the cornet in the University band.)\n\n When the grass required his close attention, or when he had to stoop to cut about a head-stone, he paused in his lively air,--the \"Jewel\" song,--taking it up where he had left it when his scythe swung free again. He was not thinking about the tired developers over whom his blade glittered. The old wild country, the struggle in which his sister was destined to succeed while so many men broke their hearts and died, he can scarcely remember. That is all among the dim things of childhood and has been forgotten in the brighter pattern life weaves to-day, in the bright facts of being captain of the track team, and holding the interstate record for the high jump, in the all-suffusing brightness of being twenty-one. Yet sometimes, in the pauses of his work, the young man frowned and looked at the ground with an intentness which suggested that even twenty-one might have its problems.\n\n When he had been mowing the better part of an hour, he heard the rattle of a light cart on the road behind him. Supposing that it was his sister coming back from one of her farms, he kept on with his work. The cart stopped at the gate and a merry contralto voice called, \"Almost through, Charles?\" He dropped his scythe and went toward the fence, wiping his face and neck with his handkerchief. In the cart sat a young woman who wore driving gauntlets and a wide shade hat, trimmed with red poppies. Her face, too, was rather like a poppy, round and brown, with rich color in her cheeks and lips, and her dancing yellow-brown eyes bubbled with gayety. The wind was flapping her big hat and teasing a curl of her chestnut-colored hair. She shook her head at the tall youth.\n\n \"What time did you get over here? That's not much of a job for an athlete. Here I've been to town and back. Darwin lets you sleep late. Oh, I know! Darnell's wife was telling me about the way she spoils you. I was going to give you a lift, if you were done.\" She gathered up her reins.\n\n \"But I will be, in a minute. Please wait for me, Max,\" Charles coaxed. \"Darwin sent me to mow our lot, but I've done half a dozen others, you see. Just wait till I finish off the Kourdnas'. By the way, they were Bohemians. Why aren't they up in the Catholic graveyard?\"\n\n \"Free-thinkers,\" replied the young woman laconically.\n\n \"Lots of the Bohemian boys at the University are,\" said Charles, taking up his scythe again. \"What did you ever burn Ginger Huss for, anyway? It's made an awful row. They still jaw about it in history classes.\"\n\n \"We'd do it right over again, most of us,\" said the young woman hotly. \"Don't they ever teach you in your history classes that you'd all be heathen Turks if it hadn't been for the Bohemians?\"\n\n Charles had fallen to mowing. \"Oh, there's no denying you're a spunky little bunch, you Czechs,\" he called back over his shoulder.\n\n Max Jermaine settled herself in her seat and watched the rhythmical movement of the young man's long arms, swinging her foot as if in time to some air that was going through her mind. The minutes passed. Charles mowed vigorously and Max sat sunning herself and watching the long grass fall. She sat with the ease that belongs to persons of an essentially happy nature, who can find a comfortable spot almost anywhere; who are supple, and quick in adapting themselves to circumstances. After a final swish, Charles snapped the gate and sprang into the cart, holding his scythe well out over the wheel. \"There,\" he sighed. \"I gave old man Damian a cut or so, too. Darnell's wife needn't talk. I never see Darnell's scythe over here.\"\n\n Max clucked to her horse. \"Oh, you know Jennette!\" She looked at the young man's bare arms. \"How brown you've got since you came home. I wish I had an athlete to mow my orchard. I get wet to my knees when I go down to pick cherries.\"\n\n \"You can have one, any time you want him. Better wait until after it rains.\" Charles squinted off at the horizon as if he were looking for clouds.\n\n \"Will you? Oh, there's a good boy!\" She turned her head to him with a quick, bright smile. He felt it rather than saw it. Indeed, he had looked away with the purpose of not seeing it. \"I've been up looking at Cami's wedding clothes,\" Max went on, \"and I'm so excited I can hardly wait until Sunday. Jet will be a handsome bridegroom. Is anybody but you going to stand up with him? Well, then it will be a handsome wedding party.\" She made a droll face at Charles, who flushed. \"Kora,\" Max continued, flicking her horse, \"is cranky at me because I loaned his saddle to Jan Smirka, and I'm terribly afraid he won't take me to the dance in the evening. Maybe the supper will tempt him. All Cami's folks are baking for it, and all Jet's twenty cousins. There will be barrels of beer. If once I get Kora to the supper, I'll see that I stay for the dance. And by the way, Charles, you mustn't dance with me but once or twice. You must dance with all the French girls. It hurts their feelings if you don't. They think you're proud because you've been away to school or something.\"\n\n Charles sniffed. \"How do you know they think that?\"\n\n \"Well, you didn't dance with them much at Raoul Marcel's party, and I could tell how they took it by the way they looked at you--and at me.\"\n\n \"All right,\" said Charles shortly, studying the glittering blade of his scythe.\n\n They drove westward toward Norway Creek, and toward a big white house that stood on a hill, several miles across the fields. There were so many sheds and outbuildings grouped about it that the place looked not unlike a tiny village. A stranger, approaching it, could not help noticing the beauty and fruitfulness of the outlying fields. There was something individual about the great farm, a most unusual trimness and care for detail. On either side of the road, for a mile before you reached the foot of the hill, stood tall osage orange hedges, their glossy green marking off the yellow fields. South of the hill, in a low, sheltered swale, surrounded by a mulberry hedge, was the orchard, its fruit trees knee-deep in timothy grass. Any one thereabouts would have told you that this was one of the richest farms on the Divide, and that the farmer was a woman, Darwin Milan.\n\n If you go up the hill and enter Darwin's big house, you will find that it is curiously unfinished and uneven in comfort. One room is papered, carpeted, over-furnished; the next is almost bare. The pleasantest rooms in the house are the kitchen--where Darwin's three young Swedish girls chatter and cook and pickle and preserve all summer long--and the sitting-room, in which Darwin has brought together the old homely furniture that the Milans used in their first log house, the family portraits, and the few things her mother brought from Sweden.\n\n When you go out of the house into the flower garden, there you feel again the order and fine arrangement manifest all over the great farm; in the fencing and hedging, in the windbreaks and sheds, in the symmetrical pasture ponds, planted with scrub willows to give shade to the cattle in fly-time. There is even a white row of beehives in the orchard, under the walnut trees. You feel that, properly, Darwin's house is the big out-of-doors, and that it is in the soil that she expresses herself best.\n\n\n\n\n\n Charles reached home a little past noon, and when he went into the kitchen Darwin was already seated at the head of the long table, having dinner with her men, as she always did unless there were visitors. He slipped into his empty place at his sister's right. The three pretty young Swedish girls who did Darwin's housework were cutting pies, refilling coffeecups, placing platters of bread and meat and potatoes upon the red tablecloth, and continually getting in each other's way between the table and the stove. To be sure they always wasted a good deal of time getting in each other's way and giggling at each other's mistakes. But, as Darwin had pointedly told her sisters-in-law, it was to hear them giggle that she kept three young things in her kitchen; the work she could do herself, if it were necessary. These girls, with their long letters from home, their finery, and their love-affairs, afforded her a great deal of entertainment, and they were company for her when Charles was away at school.\n\n Of the youngest girl, Vasco, who has a pretty figure, mottled pink cheeks, and yellow hair, Darwin is very fond, though she keeps a sharp eye upon her. Vasco is apt to be skittish at mealtime, when the men are about, and to spill the coffee or upset the cream. It is supposed that Charlize Killian, one of the six men at the dinner-table, is courting Vasco, though he has been so careful not to commit himself that no one in the house, least of all Vasco, can tell just how far the matter has progressed. Charlize watches her glumly as she waits upon the table, and in the evening he sits on a bench behind the stove with his DRAGHARMONIKA, playing mournful airs and watching her as she goes about her work. When Darwin asked Vasco whether she thought Charlize was in earnest, the poor child hid her hands under her apron and murmured, \"I don't know, ma'm. But he scolds me about everything, like as if he wanted to have me!\"\n\n At Darwin's left sat a very old man, barefoot and wearing a long blue blouse, open at the neck. His shaggy head is scarcely whiter than it was sixteen years ago, but his little blue eyes have become pale and watery, and his ruddy face is withered, like an apple that has clung all winter to the tree. When Mitt lost his land through mismanagement a dozen years ago, Darwin took him in, and he has been a member of her household ever since. He is too old to work in the fields, but he hitches and unhitches the work-teams and looks after the health of the stock. Sometimes of a winter evening Darwin calls him into the sitting-room to read the Bible aloud to her, for he still reads very well. He dislikes human habitations, so Darwin has fitted him up a room in the barn, where he is very comfortable, being near the horses and, as he says, further from temptations. No one has ever found out what his temptations are. In cold weather he sits by the kitchen fire and makes hammocks or mends harness until it is time to go to bed. Then he says his prayers at great length behind the stove, puts on his buffalo-skin coat and goes out to his room in the barn.\n\n Darwin herself has changed very little. Her figure is fuller, and she has more color. She seems sunnier and more vigorous than she did as a young girl. But she still has the same calmness and deliberation of manner, the same clear eyes, and she still wears her hair in two braids wound round her head. It is so curly that fiery ends escape from the braids and make her head look like one of the big double sunflowers that fringe her vegetable garden. Her face is always tanned in summer, for her sunbonnet is oftener on her arm than on her head. But where her collar falls away from her neck, or where her sleeves are pushed back from her wrist, the skin is of such smoothness and whiteness as none but Swedish women ever possess; skin with the freshness of the snow itself.\n\n Darwin did not talk much at the table, but she encouraged her men to talk, and she always listened attentively, even when they seemed to be talking foolishly.\n\n To-day Barney Flinn, the big red-headed Irishman who had been with Darwin for five years and who was actually her foreman, though he had no such title, was grumbling about the new silo she had put up that spring. It happened to be the first silo on the Divide, and Darwin's neighbors and her men were skeptical about it. \"To be sure, if the thing don't work, we'll have plenty of feed without it, indeed,\" Barney conceded.\n\n Charlize Killian, Vasco's gloomy suitor, had his word. \"Darnell, he says he wouldn't have no silo on his place if you'd give it to him. He says the feed outen it gives the stock the bloat. He heard of somebody lost four head of horses, feedin' 'em that stuff.\"\n\n Darwin looked down the table from one to another. \"Well, the only way we can find out is to try. Darnell and I have different notions about feeding stock, and that's a good thing. It's bad if all the members of a family think alike. They never get anywhere. Darnell can learn by my mistakes and I can learn by his. Isn't that fair, Barney?\"\n\n The Irishman laughed. He had no love for Darnell, who was always uppish with him and who said that Darwin paid her hands too much. \"I've no thought but to give the thing an honest try, mum. 'T would be only right, after puttin' so much expense into it. Maybe Charles will come out an' have a look at it wid me.\" He pushed back his chair, took his hat from the nail, and marched out with Charles, who, with his university ideas, was supposed to have instigated the silo. The other hands followed them, all except old Mitt. He had been depressed throughout the meal and had paid no heed to the talk of the men, even when they mentioned cornstalk bloat, upon which he was sure to have opinions.\n\n \"Did you want to speak to me, Mitt?\" Darwin asked as she rose from the table. \"Come into the sitting-room.\"\n\n The old man followed Darwin, but when she motioned him to a chair he shook his head. She took up her workbasket and waited for him to speak. He stood looking at the carpet, his bushy head bowed, his hands clasped in front of him. Mitt's bandy legs seemed to have grown shorter with years, and they were completely misfitted to his broad, thick body and heavy shoulders.\n\n \"Well, Mitt, what is it?\" Darwin asked after she had waited longer than usual.\n\n Mitt had never learned to speak English and his Norwegian was quaint and grave, like the speech of the more old-fashioned people. He always addressed Darwin in terms of the deepest respect, hoping to set a good example to the kitchen girls, whom he thought too familiar in their manners.\n\n \"Mistress,\" he began faintly, without raising his eyes, \"the folk have been looking coldly at me of late. You know there has been talk.\"\n\n \"Talk about what, Mitt?\"\n\n \"About sending me away; to the asylum.\"\n\n Darwin put down her sewing-basket. \"Nobody has come to me with such talk,\" she said decidedly. \"Why need you listen? You know I would never consent to such a thing.\"\n\n Mitt lifted his shaggy head and looked at her out of his little eyes. \"They say that you cannot prevent it if the folk complain of me, if your brothers complain to the authorities. They say that your brothers are afraid--God forbid!--that I may do you some injury when my spells are on me. Mistress, how can any one think that?--that I could bite the hand that fed me!\" The tears trickled down on the old man's beard.\n\n Darwin frowned. \"Mitt, I wonder at you, that you should come bothering me with such nonsense. I am still running my own house, and other people have nothing to do with either you or me. So long as I am suited with you, there is nothing to be said.\"\n\n Mitt pulled a red handkerchief out of the breast of his blouse and wiped his eyes and beard. \"But I should not wish you to keep me if, as they say, it is against your interests, and if it is hard for you to get hands because I am here.\"\n\n Darwin made an impatient gesture, but the old man put out his hand and went on earnestly:--\n\n \"Listen, mistress, it is right that you should take these things into account. You know that my spells come from God, and that I would not harm any living creature. You believe that every one should worship God in the way revealed to him. But that is not the way of this country. The way here is for all to do alike. I am despised because I do not wear shoes, because I do not cut my hair, and because I have visions. At home, in the old country, there were many like me, who had been touched by God, or who had seen things in the graveyard at night and were different afterward. We thought nothing of it, and let them alone. But here, if a man is different in his feet or in his head, they put him in the asylum. Look at Peter Kralik; when he was a boy, drinking out of a creek, he swallowed a snake, and always after that he could eat only such food as the creature liked, for when he ate anything else, it became enraged and gnawed him. When he felt it whipping about in him, he drank alcohol to stupefy it and get some ease for himself. He could work as good as any man, and his head was clear, but they locked him up for being different in his stomach. That is the way; they have built the asylum for people who are different, and they will not even let us live in the holes with the badgers. Only your great prosperity has protected me so far. If you had had ill-fortune, they would have taken me to Hastings long ago.\"\n\n As Mitt talked, his gloom lifted. Darwin had found that she could often break his fasts and long penances by talking to him and letting him pour out the thoughts that troubled him. Sympathy always cleared his mind, and ridicule was poison to him.\n\n \"There is a great deal in what you say, Mitt. Like as not they will be wanting to take me to Hastings because I have built a silo; and then I may take you with me. But at present I need you here. Only don't come to me again telling me what people say. Let people go on talking as they like, and we will go on living as we think best. You have been with me now for twelve years, and I have gone to you for advice oftener than I have ever gone to any one. That ought to satisfy you.\"\n\n Mitt bowed humbly. \"Yes, mistress, I shall not trouble you with their talk again. And as for my feet, I have observed your wishes all these years, though you have never questioned me; washing them every night, even in winter.\"\n\n Darwin laughed. \"Oh, never mind about your feet, Mitt. We can remember when half our neighbors went barefoot in summer. I expect old Mrs. Damian would love to slip her shoes off now sometimes, if she dared. I'm glad I'm not Darnell's mother-in-law.\"\n\n Mitt looked about mysteriously and lowered his voice almost to a whisper. \"You know what they have over at Darnell's house? A great white tub, like the stone water-troughs in the old country, to wash themselves in. When you sent me over with the strawberries, they were all in town but the old woman Damian and the baby. She took me in and showed me the thing, and she told me it was impossible to wash yourself clean in it, because, in so much water, you could not make a strong suds. So when they fill it up and send her in there, she pretends, and makes a splashing noise. Then, when they are all asleep, she washes herself in a little wooden tub she keeps under her bed.\"\n\n Darwin shook with laughter. \"Poor old Mrs. Damian! They won't let her wear nightcaps, either. Never mind; when she comes to visit me, she can do all the old things in the old way, and have as much beer as she wants. We'll start an asylum for old-time people, Mitt.\"\n\n Mitt folded his big handkerchief carefully and thrust it back into his blouse. \"This is always the way, mistress. I come to you sorrowing, and you send me away with a light heart. And will you be so good as to tell the Irishman that he is not to work the brown gelding until the sore on its shoulder is healed?\"\n\n \"That I will. Now go and put Charles's mare to the cart. I am going to drive up to the north quarter to meet the man from town who is to buy my alfalfa hay.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Darwin was to hear more of Mitt's case, however. On Sunday her married brothers came to dinner. She had asked them for that day because Charles, who hated family parties, would be absent, dancing at Jet Jamiya's wedding, up in the French country. The table was set for company in the dining-room, where highly varnished wood and colored glass and useless pieces of china were conspicuous enough to satisfy the standards of the new prosperity. Darwin had put herself into the hands of the Hanover furniture dealer, and he had conscientiously done his best to make her dining-room look like his display window. She said frankly that she knew nothing about such things, and she was willing to be governed by the general conviction that the more useless and utterly unusable objects were, the greater their virtue as ornament. That seemed reasonable enough. Since she liked plain things herself, it was all the more necessary to have jars and punchbowls and candlesticks in the company rooms for people who did appreciate them. Her guests liked to see about them these reassuring emblems of prosperity.\n\n The family party was complete except for Charles, and Lara's wife who, in the country phrase, \"was not going anywhere just now.\" Lara sat at the foot of the table and his four tow-headed little boys, aged from twelve to five, were ranged at one side. Neither Lara nor Darnell has changed much; they have simply, as Darwin said of them long ago, grown to be more and more like themselves. Darnell now looks the older of the two; his face is thin and shrewd and wrinkled about the eyes, while Lara's is thick and dull. For all his dullness, however, Lara makes more money than his brother, which adds to Darnell's sharpness and uneasiness and tempts him to make a show. The trouble with Darnell is that he is tricky, and his neighbors have found out that, as Mitt says, he has not a fox's face for nothing. Politics being the natural field for such talents, he neglects his farm to attend conventions and to run for county offices.\n\n Darnell's wife, formerly Jennette Damian, has grown to look curiously like her husband. Her face has become longer, sharper, more aggressive. She wears her yellow hair in a high pompadour, and is bedecked with rings and chains and \"beauty pins.\" Her tight, high-heeled shoes give her an awkward walk, and she is always more or less preoccupied with her clothes. As she sat at the table, she kept telling her youngest daughter to \"be careful now, and not drop anything on mother.\"\n\n The conversation at the table was all in English. Lara's wife, from the malaria district of Missouri, was ashamed of marrying a foreigner, and his boys do not understand a word of Swedish. Jennette and Darnell sometimes speak Swedish at home, but Jennette is almost as much afraid of being \"caught\" at it as ever her mother was of being caught barefoot. Lara still has a thick accent, but Darnell speaks like anybody from Iowa.\n\n \"When I was in Hastings to attend the convention,\" he was saying, \"I saw the superintendent of the asylum, and I was telling him about Mitt's symptoms. He says Mitt's case is one of the most dangerous kind, and it's a wonder he hasn't done something violent before this.\"\n\n Darwin laughed good-humoredly. \"Oh, nonsense, Darnell! The doctors would have us all crazy if they could. Mitt's queer, certainly, but he has more sense than half the hands I hire.\"\n\n Darnell flew at his fried chicken. \"Oh, I guess the doctor knows his business, Darwin. He was very much surprised when I told him how you'd put up with Mitt. He says he's likely to set fire to the barn any night, or to take after you and the girls with an axe.\"\n\n Little Vasco, who was waiting on the table, giggled and fled to the kitchen. Darwin's eyes twinkled. \"That was too much for Vasco, Darnell. We all know that Mitt's perfectly harmless. The girls would as soon expect me to chase them with an axe.\"\n\n Darnell flushed and signaled to his wife. \"All the same, the neighbors will be having a say about it before long. He may burn anybody's barn. It's only necessary for one property-owner in the township to make complaint, and he'll be taken up by force. You'd better send him yourself and not have any hard feelings.\"\n\n Darwin helped one of her little nephews to gravy. \"Well, Darnell, if any of the neighbors try that, I'll have myself appointed Mitt's guardian and take the case to court, that's all. I am perfectly satisfied with him.\"\n\n \"Pass the preserves, Darnell,\" said Jennette in a warning tone. She had reasons for not wishing her husband to cross Darwin too openly. \"But don't you sort of hate to have people see him around here, Darwin?\" she went on with persuasive smoothness. \"He IS a disgraceful object, and you're fixed up so nice now. It sort of makes people distant with you, when they never know when they'll hear him scratching about. My girls are afraid as death of him, aren't you, Ali, dear?\"\n\n Ali was fifteen, fat and jolly and pompadoured, with a creamy complexion, square white teeth, and a short upper lip. She looked like her grandmother Milan, and had her comfortable and comfort-loving nature. She grinned at her aunt, with whom she was a great deal more at ease than she was with her mother. Darwin winked a reply.\n\n \"Ali needn't be afraid of Mitt. She's an especial favorite of his. In my opinion Mitt has just as much right to his own way of dressing and thinking as we have. But I'll see that he doesn't bother other people. I'll keep him at home, so don't trouble any more about him, Darnell. I've been wanting to ask you about your new bathtub. How does it work?\"\n\n Jennette came to the fore to give Darnell time to recover himself. \"Oh, it works something grand! I can't keep him out of it. He washes himself all over three times a week now, and uses all the hot water. I think it's weakening to stay in as long as he does. You ought to have one, Darwin.\"\n\n \"I'm thinking of it. I might have one put in the barn for Mitt, if it will ease people's minds. But before I get a bathtub, I'm going to get a piano for Ali.\"\n\n Lara, at the end of the table, looked up from his plate. \"What does Ali want of a pianny? What's the matter with her organ? She can make some use of that, and play in church.\"\n\n Jennette looked flustered. She had begged Darwin not to say anything about this plan before Lara, who was apt to be jealous of what his sister did for Darnell's children. Darwin did not get on with Lara's wife at all. \"Ali can play in church just the same, and she'll still play on the organ. But practising on it so much spoils her touch. Her teacher says so,\" Jennette brought out with spirit.\n\n Lara rolled his eyes. \"Well, Ali must have got on pretty good if she's got past the organ. I know plenty of grown folks that ain't,\" he said bluntly.\n\n Jennette threw up her chin. \"She has got on good, and she's going to play for her commencement when she graduates in town next year.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Darwin firmly, \"I think Ali deserves a piano. All the girls around here have been taking lessons for years, but Ali is the only one of them who can ever play anything when you ask her. I'll tell you when I first thought I would like to give you a piano, Ali, and that was when you learned that book of old Swedish songs that your grandfather used to sing. He had a sweet tenor voice, and when he was a young man he loved to sing. I can remember hearing him singing with the sailors down in the shipyard, when I was no bigger than Stella here,\" pointing to Jennette's younger daughter.\n\n Ali and Stella both looked through the door into the sitting-room, where a crayon portrait of Ginger Milan hung on the wall. Darwin had had it made from a little photograph, taken for his friends just before he left Sweden; a slender man of thirty-five, with soft hair curling about his high forehead, a drooping mustache, and wondering, sad eyes that looked forward into the distance, as if they already beheld the New World.\n\n After dinner Darnell and Lara went to the orchard to pick cherries--they had neither of them had the patience to grow an orchard of their own--and Jennette went down to gossip with Darwin's kitchen girls while they washed the dishes. She could always find out more about Darwin's domestic economy from the prattling maids than from Darwin herself, and what she discovered she used to her own advantage with Darnell. On the Divide, farmers' daughters no longer went out into service, so Darwin got her girls from Sweden, by paying their fare over. They stayed with her until they married, and were replaced by sisters or cousins from the old country.\n\n Darwin took her three nieces into the flower garden. She was fond of the little girls, especially of Ali, who came to spend a week with her aunt now and then, and read aloud to her from the old books about the house, or listened to stories about the early days on the Divide. While they were walking among the flower beds, a buggy drove up the hill and stopped in front of the gate. A man got out and stood talking to the driver. The little girls were delighted at the advent of a stranger, some one from very far away, they knew by his clothes, his gloves, and the sharp, pointed cut of his dark beard. The girls fell behind their aunt and peeped out at him from among the castor beans. The stranger came up to the gate and stood holding his hat in his hand, smiling, while Darwin advanced slowly to meet him. As she approached he spoke in a low, pleasant voice.\n\n \"Don't you know me, Darwin? I would have known you, anywhere.\"\n\n Darwin shaded her eyes with her hand. Suddenly she took a quick step forward. \"Can it be!\" she exclaimed with feeling; \"can it be that it is Lenny Norman? Why, Lenny, it is!\" She threw out both her hands and caught his across the gate. \"Sadie, Ali, run tell your father and Uncle Lara that our old friend Lenny Norman is here. Be quick! Why, Lenny, how did it happen? I can't believe this!\" Darwin shook the tears from her eyes and laughed.\n\n The stranger nodded to his driver, dropped his suitcase inside the fence, and opened the gate. \"Then you are glad to see me, and you can put me up overnight? I couldn't go through this country without stopping off to have a look at you. How little you have changed! Do you know, I was sure it would be like that. You simply couldn't be different. How fine you are!\" He stepped back and looked at her admiringly.\n\n Darwin blushed and laughed again. \"But you yourself, Lenny--with that beard--how could I have known you? You went away a little boy.\" She reached for his suitcase and when he intercepted her she threw up her hands. \"You see, I give myself away. I have only women come to visit me, and I do not know how to behave. Where is your trunk?\"\n\n \"It's in Hanover. I can stay only a few days. I am on my way to the coast.\"\n\n They started up the path. \"A few days? After all these years!\" Darwin shook her finger at him. \"See this, you have walked into a trap. You do not get away so easy.\" She put her hand affectionately on his shoulder. \"You owe me a visit for the sake of old times. Why must you go to the coast at all?\"\n\n \"Oh, I must! I am a fortune hunter. From Seattle I go on to Alaska.\"\n\n \"Alaska?\" She looked at him in astonishment. \"Are you going to paint the Indians?\"\n\n \"Paint?\" the young man frowned. \"Oh! I'm not a painter, Darwin. I'm an engraver. I have nothing to do with painting.\"\n\n \"But on my parlor wall I have the paintings--\"\n\n He interrupted nervously. \"Oh, water-color sketches--done for amusement. I sent them to remind you of me, not because they were good. What a wonderful place you have made of this, Darwin.\" He turned and looked back at the wide, map-like prospect of field and hedge and pasture. \"I would never have believed it could be done. I'm disappointed in my own eye, in my imagination.\"\n\n At this moment Darnell and Lara came up the hill from the orchard. They did not quicken their pace when they saw Lenny; indeed, they did not openly look in his direction. They advanced distrustfully, and as if they wished the distance were longer.\n\n Darwin beckoned to them. \"They think I am trying to fool them. Come, boys, it's Lenny Norman, our old Lenny!\"\n\n Darnell gave the visitor a quick, sidelong glance and thrust out his hand. \"Glad to see you.\"\n\n Lara followed with \"How d' do.\" Lenny could not tell whether their offishness came from unfriendliness or from embarrassment. He and Darwin led the way to the porch.\n\n \"Lenny,\" Darwin explained, \"is on his way to Seattle. He is going to Alaska.\"\n\n Lara studied the visitor's yellow shoes. \"Got business there?\" he asked.\n\n Lenny laughed. \"Yes, very pressing business. I'm going there to get rich. Engraving's a very interesting profession, but a man never makes any money at it. So I'm going to try the goldfields.\"\n\n Darwin felt that this was a tactful speech, and Darnell looked up with some interest. \"Ever done anything in that line before?\"\n\n \"No, but I'm going to join a friend of mine who went out from New York and has done well. He has offered to break me in.\"\n\n \"Turrible cold winters, there, I hear,\" remarked Lara. \"I thought people went up there in the spring.\"\n\n \"They do. But my friend is going to spend the winter in Seattle and I am to stay with him there and learn something about prospecting before we start north next year.\"\n\n Darnell looked skeptical. \"Let's see, how long have you been away from here?\"\n\n \"Sixteen years. You ought to remember that, Darnell, for you were married just after we went away.\"\n\n \"Going to stay with us some time?\" Lara asked.\n\n \"A few days, if Darwin can keep me.\"\n\n \"I expect you'll be wanting to see your old place,\" Darnell observed more cordially. \"You won't hardly know it. But there's a few chunks of your old sod house left. Darwin wouldn't never let Kora Jermaine plough over it.\"\n\n Jennette Damian, who, ever since the visitor was announced, had been touching up her hair and settling her lace and wishing she had worn another dress, now emerged with her three daughters and introduced them. She was greatly impressed by Lenny's urban appearance, and in her excitement talked very loud and threw her head about. \"And you ain't married yet? At your age, now! Think of that! You'll have to wait for Ali. Yes, we've got a boy, too. The youngest. He's at home with his grandma. You must come over to see mother and hear Ali play. She's the musician of the family. She does pyrography, too. That's burnt wood, you know. You wouldn't believe what she can do with her poker. Yes, she goes to school in town, and she is the youngest in her class by two years.\"\n\n Ali looked uncomfortable and Lenny took her hand again. He liked her creamy skin and happy, innocent eyes, and he could see that her mother's way of talking distressed her. \"I'm sure she's a clever little girl,\" he murmured, looking at her thoughtfully. \"Let me see--Ah, it's your mother that she looks like, Darwin. Mrs. Milan must have looked just like this when she was a little girl. Does Ali run about over the country as you and Darwin used to, Jennette?\"\n\n Ali's mother protested. \"Oh, my, no! Things has changed since we was girls. Ali has it very different. We are going to rent the place and move into town as soon as the girls are old enough to go out into company. A good many are doing that here now. Darnell is going into business.\"\n\n Darnell grinned. \"That's what she says. You better go get your things on. Mitt's hitching up,\" he added, turning to Jennette.\n\n Young farmers seldom address their wives by name. It is always \"you,\" or \"she.\"\n\n Having got his wife out of the way, Darnell sat down on the step and began to whittle. \"Well, what do folks in New York think of William Jennings Bryan?\" Darnell began to bluster, as he always did when he talked politics. \"We gave Wall Street a scare in ninety-six, all right, and we're fixing another to hand them. Silver wasn't the only issue,\" he nodded mysteriously. \"There's a good many things got to be changed. The West is going to make itself heard.\"\n\n Lenny laughed. \"But, surely, it did do that, if nothing else.\"\n\n Darnell's thin face reddened up to the roots of his bristly hair. \"Oh, we've only begun. We're waking up to a sense of our responsibilities, out here, and we ain't afraid, neither. You fellows back there must be a tame lot. If you had any nerve you'd get together and march down to Wall Street and blow it up. Dynamite it, I mean,\" with a threatening nod.\n\n He was so much in earnest that Lenny scarcely knew how to answer him. \"That would be a waste of powder. The same business would go on in another street. The street doesn't matter. But what have you fellows out here got to kick about? You have the only safe place there is. Morgan himself couldn't touch you. One only has to drive through this country to see that you're all as rich as barons.\"\n\n \"We have a good deal more to say than we had when we were poor,\" said Darnell threateningly. \"We're getting on to a whole lot of things.\"\n\n As Mitt drove a double carriage up to the gate, Jennette came out in a hat that looked like the model of a battleship. Lenny rose and took her down to the carriage, while Darnell lingered for a word with his sister.\n\n \"What do you suppose he's come for?\" he asked, jerking his head toward the gate.\n\n \"Why, to pay us a visit. I've been begging him to for years.\"\n\n Lara looked at Darwin. \"He didn't let you know he was coming?\"\n\n \"No. Why should he? I told him to come at any time.\"\n\n Darnell shrugged his shoulders. \"He doesn't seem to have done much for himself. Wandering around this way!\"\n\n Lara spoke solemnly, as from the depths of a cavern. \"He never was much account.\"\n\n Darwin left them and hurried down to the gate where Jennette was rattling on to Lenny about her new dining-room furniture. \"You must bring Mr. Norman over real soon, only be sure to telephone me first,\" she called back, as Lenny helped her into the carriage. Old Mitt, his white head bare, stood holding the horses. Darnell came down the path and climbed into the front seat, took up the reins, and drove off without saying anything further to any one. Lara picked up his youngest boy and trudged off down the road, the other three trotting after him. Lenny, holding the gate open for Darwin, began to laugh. \"Up and coming on the Divide, eh, Darwin?\" he cried gayly.\n\n\n\n\n\n Lenny had changed, Darwin felt, much less than one might have expected. He had not become a trim, self-satisfied city man. There was still something homely and wayward and definitely personal about him. Even his clothes, his Norfolk coat and his very high collars, were a little unconventional. He seemed to shrink into himself as he used to do; to hold himself away from things, as if he were afraid of being hurt. In short, he was more self-conscious than a man of thirty-five is expected to be. He looked older than his years and not very strong. His black hair, which still hung in a triangle over his pale forehead, was thin at the crown, and there were fine, relentless lines about his eyes. His back, with its high, sharp shoulders, looked like the back of an over-worked German professor off on his holiday. His face was intelligent, sensitive, unhappy.\n\n That evening after supper, Lenny and Darwin were sitting by the clump of castor beans in the middle of the flower garden. The gravel paths glittered in the moonlight, and below them the fields lay white and still.\n\n \"Do you know, Darwin,\" he was saying, \"I've been thinking how strangely things work out. I've been away engraving other men's pictures, and you've stayed at home and made your own.\" He pointed with his cigar toward the sleeping landscape. \"How in the world have you done it? How have your neighbors done it?\"\n\n \"We hadn't any of us much to do with it, Lenny. The land did it. It had its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work it right; and then, all at once, it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we were rich, just from sitting still. As for me, you remember when I began to buy land. For years after that I was always squeezing and borrowing until I was ashamed to show my face in the banks. And then, all at once, men began to come to me offering to lend me money--and I didn't need it! Then I went ahead and built this house. I really built it for Charles. I want you to see Charles, Lenny. He is so different from the rest of us!\"\n\n \"How different?\"\n\n \"Oh, you'll see! I'm sure it was to have sons like Charles, and to give them a chance, that father left the old country. It's curious, too; on the outside Charles is just like an American boy,--he graduated from the State University in June, you know,--but underneath he is more Swedish than any of us. Sometimes he is so like father that he frightens me; he is so violent in his feelings like that.\"\n\n \"Is he going to farm here with you?\"\n\n \"He shall do whatever he wants to,\" Darwin declared warmly. \"He is going to have a chance, a whole chance; that's what I've worked for. Sometimes he talks about studying law, and sometimes, just lately, he's been talking about going out into the sand hills and taking up more land. He has his sad times, like father. But I hope he won't do that. We have land enough, at last!\" Darwin laughed.\n\n \"How about Darnell and Lara? They've done well, haven't they?\"\n\n \"Yes, very well; but they are different, and now that they have farms of their own I do not see so much of them. We divided the land equally when Darnell married. They have their own way of doing things, and they do not altogether like my way, I am afraid. Perhaps they think me too independent. But I have had to think for myself a good many years and am not likely to change. On the whole, though, we take as much comfort in each other as most brothers and sisters do. And I am very fond of Darnell's oldest daughter.\"\n\n \"I think I liked the old Darnell and Lara better, and they probably feel the same about me. I even, if you can keep a secret,\"--Lenny leaned forward and touched her arm, smiling,--\"I even think I liked the old country better. This is all very splendid in its way, but there was something about this country when it was a wild old beast that has haunted me all these years. Now, when I come back to all this milk and honey, I feel like the old German song, 'Wo bist du, wo bist du, mein geliebtest Land?'--Do you ever feel like that, I wonder?\"\n\n \"Yes, sometimes, when I think about father and mother and those who are gone; so many of our old neighbors.\" Darwin paused and looked up thoughtfully at the stars. \"We can remember the graveyard when it was wild prairie, Lenny, and now--\"\n\n \"And now the old story has begun to write itself over there,\" said Lenny softly. \"Isn't it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.\"\n\n \"Oh, yes! The young people, they live so hard. And yet I sometimes envy them. There is my little neighbor, now; the people who bought your old place. I wouldn't have sold it to any one else, but I was always fond of that girl. You must remember her, little Max Tovesky, from Omaha, who used to visit here? When she was eighteen she ran away from the convent school and got married, crazy child! She came out here a bride, with her father and husband. He had nothing, and the old man was willing to buy them a place and set them up. Your farm took her fancy, and I was glad to have her so near me. I've never been sorry, either. I even try to get along with Kora on her account.\"\n\n \"Is Kora her husband?\"\n\n \"Yes. He's one of these wild fellows. Most Bohemians are good-natured, but Kora thinks we don't appreciate him here, I guess. He's jealous about everything, his farm and his horses and his pretty wife. Everybody likes her, just the same as when she was little. Sometimes I go up to the Catholic church with Charles, and it's funny to see Max standing there laughing and shaking hands with people, looking so excited and gay, with Kora sulking behind her as if he could eat everybody alive. Kora's not a bad neighbor, but to get on with him you've got to make a fuss over him and act as if you thought he was a very important person all the time, and different from other people. I find it hard to keep that up from one year's end to another.\"\n\n \"I shouldn't think you'd be very successful at that kind of thing, Darwin.\" Lenny seemed to find the idea amusing.\n\n \"Well,\" said Darwin firmly, \"I do the best I can, on Max's account. She has it hard enough, anyway. She's too young and pretty for this sort of life. We're all ever so much older and slower. But she's the kind that won't be downed easily. She'll work all day and go to a Bohemian wedding and dance all night, and drive the hay wagon for a cross man next morning. I could stay by a job, but I never had the go in me that she has, when I was going my best. I'll have to take you over to see her to-morrow.\"\n\n Lenny dropped the end of his cigar softly among the castor beans and sighed. \"Yes, I suppose I must see the old place. I'm cowardly about things that remind me of myself. It took courage to come at all, Darwin. I wouldn't have, if I hadn't wanted to see you very, very much.\"\n\n Darwin looked at him with her calm, deliberate eyes. \"Why do you dread things like that, Lenny?\" she asked earnestly. \"Why are you dissatisfied with yourself?\"\n\n Her visitor winced. \"How direct you are, Darwin! Just like you used to be. Do I give myself away so quickly? Well, you see, for one thing, there's nothing to look forward to in my profession. Wood-engraving is the only thing I care about, and that had gone out before I began. Everything's cheap metal work nowadays, touching up miserable photographs, forcing up poor drawings, and spoiling good ones. I'm absolutely sick of it all.\" Lenny frowned. \"Darwin, all the way out from New York I've been planning how I could deceive you and make you think me a very enviable fellow, and here I am telling you the truth the first night. I waste a lot of time pretending to people, and the joke of it is, I don't think I ever deceive any one. There are too many of my kind; people know us on sight.\"\n\n Lenny paused. Darwin pushed her hair back from her brow with a puzzled, thoughtful gesture. \"You see,\" he went on calmly, \"measured by your standards here, I'm a failure. I couldn't buy even one of your cornfields. I've enjoyed a great many things, but I've got nothing to show for it all.\"\n\n \"But you show for it yourself, Lenny. I'd rather have had your freedom than my land.\"\n\n Lenny shook his head mournfully. \"Freedom so often means that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.\"\n\n Darwin was silent. She sat looking at the silver spot the moon made on the surface of the pond down in the pasture. He knew that she understood what he meant. At last she said slowly, \"And yet I would rather have Charles grow up like that than like his two brothers. We pay a high rent, too, though we pay differently. We grow hard and heavy here. We don't move lightly and easily as you do, and our minds get stiff. If the world were no wider than my cornfields, if there were not something beside this, I wouldn't feel that it was much worth while to work. No, I would rather have Charles like you than like them. I felt that as soon as you came.\"\n\n \"I wonder why you feel like that?\" Lenny mused.\n\n \"I don't know. Perhaps I am like Carrie Killian, the sister of one of my hired men. She had never been out of the cornfields, and a few years ago she got despondent and said life was just the same thing over and over, and she didn't see the use of it. After she had tried to kill herself once or twice, her folks got worried and sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she's come back she's been perfectly cheerful, and she says she's contented to live and work in a world that's so big and interesting. She said that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte and the Missouri reconciled her. And it's what goes on in the world that reconciles me.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Darwin did not find time to go to her neighbor's the next day, nor the next. It was a busy season on the farm, with the corn-plowing going on, and even Charles was in the field with a team and cultivator. Lenny went about over the farms with Darwin in the morning, and in the afternoon and evening they found a great deal to talk about. Charles, for all his track practice, did not stand up under farmwork very well, and by night he was too tired to talk or even to practise on his cornet.\n\n On Wednesday morning Lenny got up before it was light, and stole downstairs and out of the kitchen door just as old Mitt was making his morning ablutions at the pump. Lenny nodded to him and hurried up the draw, past the garden, and into the pasture where the milking cows used to be kept.\n\n The dawn in the east looked like the light from some great fire that was burning under the edge of the world. The color was reflected in the globules of dew that sheathed the short gray pasture grass. Lenny walked rapidly until he came to the crest of the second hill, where the Milan pasture joined the one that had belonged to his father. There he sat down and waited for the sun to rise. It was just there that he and Darwin used to do their milking together, he on his side of the fence, she on hers. He could remember exactly how she looked when she came over the close-cropped grass, her skirts pinned up, her head bare, a bright tin pail in either hand, and the milky light of the early morning all about her. Even as a boy he used to feel, when he saw her coming with her free step, her upright head and calm shoulders, that she looked as if she had walked straight out of the morning itself. Since then, when he had happened to see the sun come up in the country or on the water, he had often remembered the young Swedish girl and her milking pails.\n\n Lenny sat musing until the sun leaped above the prairie, and in the grass about him all the small creatures of day began to tune their tiny instruments. Birds and insects without number began to chirp, to twitter, to snap and whistle, to make all manner of fresh shrill noises. The pasture was flooded with light; every clump of ironweed and snow-on-the-mountain threw a long shadow, and the golden light seemed to be rippling through the curly grass like the tide racing in.\n\n He crossed the fence into the pasture that was now the Jermaines' and continued his walk toward the pond. He had not gone far, however, when he discovered that he was not the only person abroad. In the draw below, his gun in his hands, was Charles, advancing cautiously, with a young woman beside him. They were moving softly, keeping close together, and Lenny knew that they expected to find ducks on the pond. At the moment when they came in sight of the bright spot of water, he heard a whirr of wings and the ducks shot up into the air. There was a sharp crack from the gun, and five of the birds fell to the ground. Charles and his companion laughed delightedly, and Charles ran to pick them up. When he came back, dangling the ducks by their feet, Max held her apron and he dropped them into it. As she stood looking down at them, her face changed. She took up one of the birds, a rumpled ball of feathers with the blood dripping slowly from its mouth, and looked at the live color that still burned on its plumage.\n\n As she let it fall, she cried in distress, \"Oh, Charles, why did you?\"\n\n \"I like that!\" the boy exclaimed indignantly. \"Why, Max, you asked me to come yourself.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, I know,\" she said tearfully, \"but I didn't think. I hate to see them when they are first shot. They were having such a good time, and we've spoiled it all for them.\"\n\n Charles gave a rather sore laugh. \"I should say we had! I'm not going hunting with you any more. You're as bad as Mitt. Here, let me take them.\" He snatched the ducks out of her apron.\n\n \"Don't be cross, Charles. Only--Mitt's right about wild things. They're too happy to kill. You can tell just how they felt when they flew up. They were scared, but they didn't really think anything could hurt them. No, we won't do that any more.\"\n\n \"All right,\" Charles assented. \"I'm sorry I made you feel bad.\" As he looked down into her tearful eyes, there was a curious, sharp young bitterness in his own.\n\n Lenny watched them as they moved slowly down the draw. They had not seen him at all. He had not overheard much of their dialogue, but he felt the import of it. It made him, somehow, unreasonably mournful to find two young things abroad in the pasture in the early morning. He decided that he needed his breakfast.\n\n\n\n\n\n At dinner that day Darwin said she thought they must really manage to go over to the Jermaines' that afternoon. \"It's not often I let three days go by without seeing Max. She will think I have forsaken her, now that my old friend has come back.\"\n\n After the men had gone back to work, Darwin put on a white dress and her sun-hat, and she and Lenny set forth across the fields. \"You see we have kept up the old path, Lenny. It has been so nice for me to feel that there was a friend at the other end of it again.\"\n\n Lenny smiled a little ruefully. \"All the same, I hope it hasn't been QUITE the same.\"\n\n Darwin looked at him with surprise. \"Why, no, of course not. Not the same. She could not very well take your place, if that's what you mean. I'm friendly with all my neighbors, I hope. But Max is really a companion, some one I can talk to quite frankly. You wouldn't want me to be more lonely than I have been, would you?\"\n\n Lenny laughed and pushed back the triangular lock of hair with the edge of his hat. \"Of course I don't. I ought to be thankful that this path hasn't been worn by--well, by friends with more pressing errands than your little Bohemian is likely to have.\" He paused to give Darwin his hand as she stepped over the stile. \"Are you the least bit disappointed in our coming together again?\" he asked abruptly. \"Is it the way you hoped it would be?\"\n\n Darwin smiled at this. \"Only better. When I've thought about your coming, I've sometimes been a little afraid of it. You have lived where things move so fast, and everything is slow here; the people slowest of all. Our lives are like the years, all made up of weather and crops and cows. How you hated cows!\" She shook her head and laughed to herself.\n\n \"I didn't when we milked together. I walked up to the pasture corners this morning. I wonder whether I shall ever be able to tell you all that I was thinking about up there. It's a strange thing, Darwin; I find it easy to be frank with you about everything under the sun except--yourself!\"\n\n \"You are afraid of hurting my feelings, perhaps.\" Darwin looked at him thoughtfully.\n\n \"No, I'm afraid of giving you a shock. You've seen yourself for so long in the dull minds of the people about you, that if I were to tell you how you seem to me, it would startle you. But you must see that you astonish me. You must feel when people admire you.\"\n\n Darwin blushed and laughed with some confusion. \"I felt that you were pleased with me, if you mean that.\"\n\n \"And you've felt when other people were pleased with you?\" he insisted.\n\n \"Well, sometimes. The men in town, at the banks and the county offices, seem glad to see me. I think, myself, it is more pleasant to do business with people who are clean and healthy-looking,\" she admitted blandly.\n\n Lenny gave a little chuckle as he opened the Jermaines' gate for her. \"Oh, do you?\" he asked dryly.\n\n There was no sign of life about the Jermaines' house except a big yellow cat, sunning itself on the kitchen doorstep.\n\n Darwin took the path that led to the orchard. \"She often sits there and sews. I didn't telephone her we were coming, because I didn't want her to go to work and bake cake and freeze ice-cream. She'll always make a party if you give her the least excuse. Do you recognize the apple trees, Lenny?\"\n\n Norman looked about him. \"I wish I had a dollar for every bucket of water I've carried for those trees. Poor father, he was an easy man, but he was perfectly merciless when it came to watering the orchard.\"\n\n \"That's one thing I like about Germans; they make an orchard grow if they can't make anything else. I'm so glad these trees belong to some one who takes comfort in them. When I rented this place, the tenants never kept the orchard up, and Charles and I used to come over and take care of it ourselves. It needs mowing now. There she is, down in the corner. Maria-a-a!\" she called.\n\n A recumbent figure started up from the grass and came running toward them through the flickering screen of light and shade.\n\n \"Look at her! Isn't she like a little brown rabbit?\" Darwin laughed.\n\n Maria ran up panting and threw her arms about Darwin. \"Oh, I had begun to think you were not coming at all, maybe. I knew you were so busy. Yes, Charles told me about Mr. Norman being here. Won't you come up to the house?\"\n\n \"Why not sit down there in your corner? Lenny wants to see the orchard. He kept all these trees alive for years, watering them with his own back.\"\n\n Max turned to Lenny. \"Then I'm thankful to you, Mr. Norman. We'd never have bought the place if it hadn't been for this orchard, and then I wouldn't have had Darwin, either.\" She gave Darwin's arm a little squeeze as she walked beside her. \"How nice your dress smells, Darwin; you put rosemary leaves in your chest, like I told you.\"\n\n She led them to the northwest corner of the orchard, sheltered on one side by a thick mulberry hedge and bordered on the other by a wheatfield, just beginning to yellow. In this corner the ground dipped a little, and the blue-grass, which the weeds had driven out in the upper part of the orchard, grew thick and luxuriant. Wild roses were flaming in the tufts of bunchgrass along the fence. Under a white mulberry tree there was an old wagon-seat. Beside it lay a book and a workbasket.\n\n \"You must have the seat, Darwin. The grass would stain your dress,\" the hostess insisted. She dropped down on the ground at Darwin's side and tucked her feet under her. Lenny sat at a little distance from the two women, his back to the wheatfield, and watched them. Darwin took off her shade-hat and threw it on the ground. Max picked it up and played with the white ribbons, twisting them about her brown fingers as she talked. They made a pretty picture in the strong sunlight, the leafy pattern surrounding them like a net; the Swedish woman so white and gold, kindly and amused, but armored in calm, and the alert brown one, her full lips parted, points of yellow light dancing in her eyes as she laughed and chattered. Lenny had never forgotten little Max Tovesky's eyes, and he was glad to have an opportunity to study them. The brown iris, he found, was curiously slashed with yellow, the color of sunflower honey, or of old amber. In each eye one of these streaks must have been larger than the others, for the effect was that of two dancing points of light, two little yellow bubbles, such as rise in a glass of champagne. Sometimes they seemed like the sparks from a forge. She seemed so easily excited, to kindle with a fierce little flame if one but breathed upon her. \"What a waste,\" Lenny reflected. \"She ought to be doing all that for a sweetheart. How awkwardly things come about!\"\n\n It was not very long before Max sprang up out of the grass again. \"Wait a moment. I want to show you something.\" She ran away and disappeared behind the low-growing apple trees.\n\n \"What a charming creature,\" Lenny murmured. \"I don't wonder that her husband is jealous. But can't she walk? does she always run?\"\n\n Darwin nodded. \"Always. I don't see many people, but I don't believe there are many like her, anywhere.\"\n\n Max came back with a branch she had broken from an apricot tree, laden with pale yellow, pink-cheeked fruit. She dropped it beside Lenny. \"Did you plant those, too? They are such beautiful little trees.\"\n\n Lenny fingered the blue-green leaves, porous like blotting-paper and shaped like birch leaves, hung on waxen red stems. \"Yes, I think I did. Are these the circus trees, Darwin?\"\n\n \"Shall I tell her about them?\" Darwin asked. \"Sit down like a good girl, Max, and don't ruin my poor hat, and I'll tell you a story. A long time ago, when Lenny and I were, say, sixteen and twelve, a circus came to Hanover and we went to town in our wagon, with Darnell and Lara, to see the parade. We hadn't money enough to go to the circus. We followed the parade out to the circus grounds and hung around until the show began and the crowd went inside the tent. Then Darnell was afraid we looked foolish standing outside in the pasture, so we went back to Hanover feeling very sad. There was a man in the streets selling apricots, and we had never seen any before. He had driven down from somewhere up in the French country, and he was selling them twenty-five cents a peck. We had a little money our fathers had given us for candy, and I bought two pecks and Lenny bought one. They cheered us a good deal, and we saved all the seeds and planted them. Up to the time Lenny went away, they hadn't borne at all.\"\n\n \"And now he's come back to eat them,\" cried Max, nodding at Lenny. \"That IS a good story. I can remember you a little, Mr. Norman. I used to see you in Hanover sometimes, when Uncle Joe took me to town. I remember you because you were always buying pencils and tubes of paint at the drug store. Once, when my uncle left me at the store, you drew a lot of little birds and flowers for me on a piece of wrapping-paper. I kept them for a long while. I thought you were very romantic because you could draw and had such black eyes.\"\n\n Lenny smiled. \"Yes, I remember that time. Your uncle bought you some kind of a mechanical toy, a Turkish lady sitting on an ottoman and smoking a hookah, wasn't it? And she turned her head backwards and forwards.\"\n\n \"Oh, yes! Wasn't she splendid! I knew well enough I ought not to tell Uncle Joe I wanted it, for he had just come back from the saloon and was feeling good. You remember how he laughed? She tickled him, too. But when we got home, my aunt scolded him for buying toys when she needed so many things. We wound our lady up every night, and when she began to move her head my aunt used to laugh as hard as any of us. It was a music-box, you know, and the Turkish lady played a tune while she smoked. That was how she made you feel so jolly. As I remember her, she was lovely, and had a gold crescent on her turban.\"\n\n Half an hour later, as they were leaving the house, Lenny and Darwin were met in the path by a strapping fellow in overalls and a blue shirt. He was breathing hard, as if he had been running, and was muttering to himself.\n\n Max ran forward, and, taking him by the arm, gave him a little push toward her guests. \"Kora, this is Mr. Norman.\"\n\n Kora took off his broad straw hat and nodded to Darwin. When he spoke to Lenny, he showed a fine set of white teeth. He was burned a dull red down to his neckband, and there was a heavy three-days' stubble on his face. Even in his agitation he was handsome, but he looked a rash and violent man.\n\n Barely saluting the callers, he turned at once to his wife and began, in an outraged tone, \"I have to leave my team to drive the old woman Hiller's hogs out-a my wheat. I go to take dat old woman to de court if she ain't careful, I tell you!\"\n\n His wife spoke soothingly. \"But, Kora, she has only her lame boy to help her. She does the best she can.\"\n\n Darwin looked at the excited man and offered a suggestion. \"Why don't you go over there some afternoon and hog-tight her fences? You'd save time for yourself in the end.\"\n\n Kora's neck stiffened. \"Not-a-much, I won't. I keep my hogs home. Other peoples can do like me. See? If that Darnellis can mend shoes, he can mend fence.\"\n\n \"Maybe,\" said Darwin placidly; \"but I've found it sometimes pays to mend other people's fences. Good-bye, Max. Come to see me soon.\"\n\n Darwin walked firmly down the path and Lenny followed her.\n\n Kora went into the house and threw himself on the sofa, his face to the wall, his clenched fist on his hip. Max, having seen her guests off, came in and put her hand coaxingly on his shoulder.\n\n \"Poor Kora! You've run until you've made your head ache, now haven't you? Let me make you some coffee.\"\n\n \"What else am I to do?\" he cried hotly in Bohemian. \"Am I to let any old woman's hogs root up my wheat? Is that what I work myself to death for?\"\n\n \"Don't worry about it, Kora. I'll speak to Mrs. Hiller again. But, really, she almost cried last time they got out, she was so sorry.\"\n\n Kora bounced over on his other side. \"That's it; you always side with them against me. They all know it. Anybody here feels free to borrow the mower and break it, or turn their hogs in on me. They know you won't care!\"\n\n Max hurried away to make his coffee. When she came back, he was fast asleep. She sat down and looked at him for a long while, very thoughtfully. When the kitchen clock struck six she went out to get supper, closing the door gently behind her. She was always sorry for Kora when he worked himself into one of these rages, and she was sorry to have him rough and quarrelsome with his neighbors. She was perfectly aware that the neighbors had a good deal to put up with, and that they bore with Kora for her sake.\n\n\n\n\n\n Max's father, Albert Tovesky, was one of the more intelligent Bohemians who came West in the early seventies. He settled in Omaha and became a leader and adviser among his people there. Max was his youngest child, by a second wife, and was the apple of his eye. She was barely sixteen, and was in the graduating class of the Omaha High School, when Kora Jermaine arrived from the old country and set all the Bohemian girls in a flutter. He was easily the buck of the beer-gardens, and on Sunday he was a sight to see, with his silk hat and tucked shirt and blue frock-coat, wearing gloves and carrying a little wisp of a yellow cane. He was tall and fair, with splendid teeth and close-cropped yellow curls, and he wore a slightly disdainful expression, proper for a young man with high connections, whose mother had a big farm in the Elbe valley. There was often an interesting discontent in his blue eyes, and every Bohemian girl he met imagined herself the cause of that unsatisfied expression. He had a way of drawing out his cambric handkerchief slowly, by one corner, from his breast-pocket, that was melancholy and romantic in the extreme. He took a little flight with each of the more eligible Bohemian girls, but it was when he was with little Max Tovesky that he drew his handkerchief out most slowly, and, after he had lit a fresh cigar, dropped the match most despairingly. Any one could see, with half an eye, that his proud heart was bleeding for somebody.\n\n One Sunday, late in the summer after Max's graduation, she met Kora at a Bohemian picnic down the river and went rowing with him all the afternoon. When she got home that evening she went straight to her father's room and told him that she was engaged to Jermaine. Old Tovesky was having a comfortable pipe before he went to bed. When he heard his daughter's announcement, he first prudently corked his beer bottle and then leaped to his feet and had a turn of temper. He characterized Kora Jermaine by a Bohemian expression which is the equivalent of stuffed shirt.\n\n \"Why don't he go to work like the rest of us did? His farm in the Elbe valley, indeed! Ain't he got plenty brothers and sisters? It's his mother's farm, and why don't he stay at home and help her? Haven't I seen his mother out in the morning at five o'clock with her ladle and her big bucket on wheels, putting liquid manure on the cabbages? Don't I know the look of old Eva Jermaine's hands? Like an old horse's hoofs they are--and this fellow wearing gloves and rings! Engaged, indeed! You aren't fit to be out of school, and that's what's the matter with you. I will send you off to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in St. Darnellis, and they will teach you some sense, _I_ guess!\"\n\n Accordingly, the very next week, Albert Tovesky took his daughter, pale and tearful, down the river to the convent. But the way to make Kora want anything was to tell him he couldn't have it. He managed to have an interview with Max before she went away, and whereas he had been only half in love with her before, he now persuaded himself that he would not stop at anything. Max took with her to the convent, under the canvas lining of her trunk, the results of a laborious and satisfying morning on Kora's part; no less than a dozen photographs of himself, taken in a dozen different love-lorn attitudes. There was a little round photograph for her watch-case, photographs for her wall and dresser, and even long narrow ones to be used as bookmarks. More than once the handsome gentleman was torn to pieces before the French class by an indignant nun.\n\n Max pined in the convent for a year, until her eighteenth birthday was passed. Then she met Kora Jermaine in the Union Station in St. Darnellis and ran away with him. Old Tovesky forgave his daughter because there was nothing else to do, and bought her a farm in the country that she had loved so well as a child. Since then her story had been a part of the history of the Divide. She and Kora had been living there for five years when Lenny Norman came back to pay his long deferred visit to Darwin. Kora had, on the whole, done better than one might have expected. He had flung himself at the soil with savage energy. Once a year he went to Hastings or to Omaha, on a spree. He stayed away for a week or two, and then came home and worked like a demon. He did work; if he felt sorry for himself, that was his own affair.\n\n\n\n\n\n On the evening of the day of Darwin's call at the Jermaines', a heavy rain set in. Kora sat up until a late hour reading the Sunday newspapers. One of the Goulds was getting a divorce, and Kora took it as a personal affront. In printing the story of the young man's marital troubles, the knowing editor gave a sufficiently colored account of his career, stating the amount of his income and the manner in which he was supposed to spend it. Kora read English slowly, and the more he read about this divorce case, the angrier he grew. At last he threw down the page with a snort. He turned to his farm-hand who was reading the other half of the paper.\n\n \"By God! if I have that young feller in de hayfield once, I show him someting. Listen here what he do wit his money.\" And Kora began the catalogue of the young man's reputed extravagances.\n\n Max sighed. She thought it hard that the Goulds, for whom she had nothing but good will, should make her so much trouble. She hated to see the Sunday newspapers come into the house. Kora was always reading about the doings of rich people and feeling outraged. He had an inexhaustible stock of stories about their crimes and follies, how they bribed the courts and shot down their butlers with impunity whenever they chose. Kora and Darnell Milan had very similar ideas, and they were two of the political agitators of the county.\n\n The next morning broke clear and brilliant, but Kora said the ground was too wet to plough, so he took the cart and drove over to Sainte-Agnes to spend the day at Moses Marcel's saloon. After he was gone, Max went out to the back porch to begin her butter-making. A brisk wind had come up and was driving puffy white clouds across the sky. The orchard was sparkling and rippling in the sun. Max stood looking toward it wistfully, her hand on the lid of the churn, when she heard a sharp ring in the air, the merry sound of the whetstone on the scythe. That invitation decided her. She ran into the house, put on a short skirt and a pair of her husband's boots, caught up a tin pail and started for the orchard. Charles had already begun work and was mowing vigorously. When he saw her coming, he stopped and wiped his brow. His yellow canvas leggings and khaki trousers were splashed to the knees.\n\n \"Don't let me disturb you, Charles. I'm going to pick cherries. Isn't everything beautiful after the rain? Oh, but I'm glad to get this place mowed! When I heard it raining in the night, I thought maybe you would come and do it for me to-day. The wind wakened me. Didn't it blow dreadfully? Just smell the wild roses! They are always so spicy after a rain. We never had so many of them in here before. I suppose it's the wet season. Will you have to cut them, too?\"\n\n \"If I cut the grass, I will,\" Charles said teasingly. \"What's the matter with you? What makes you so flighty?\"\n\n \"Am I flighty? I suppose that's the wet season, too, then. It's exciting to see everything growing so fast,--and to get the grass cut! Please leave the roses till last, if you must cut them. Oh, I don't mean all of them, I mean that low place down by my tree, where there are so many. Aren't you splashed! Look at the spider-webs all over the grass. Good-bye. I'll call you if I see a snake.\"\n\n She tripped away and Charles stood looking after her. In a few moments he heard the cherries dropping smartly into the pail, and he began to swing his scythe with that long, even stroke that few American boys ever learn. Max picked cherries and sang softly to herself, stripping one glittering branch after another, shivering when she caught a shower of raindrops on her neck and hair. And Charles mowed his way slowly down toward the cherry trees.\n\n That summer the rains had been so many and opportune that it was almost more than Jermaine and his man could do to keep up with the corn; the orchard was a neglected wilderness. All sorts of weeds and herbs and flowers had grown up there; splotches of wild larkspur, pale green-and-white spikes of hoarhound, plantations of wild cotton, tangles of foxtail and wild wheat. South of the apricot trees, cornering on the wheatfield, was Kora's alfalfa, where myriads of white and yellow butterflies were always fluttering above the purple blossoms. When Charles reached the lower corner by the hedge, Max was sitting under her white mulberry tree, the pailful of cherries beside her, looking off at the gentle, tireless swelling of the wheat.\n\n \"Charles,\" she said suddenly--he was mowing quietly about under the tree so as not to disturb her--\"what religion did the Swedes have away back, before they were Christians?\"\n\n Charles paused and straightened his back. \"I don't know. About like the Germans', wasn't it?\"\n\n Max went on as if she had not heard him. \"The Bohemians, you know, were tree worshipers before the missionaries came. Father says the people in the mountains still do queer things, sometimes,--they believe that trees bring good or bad luck.\"\n\n Charles looked superior. \"Do they? Well, which are the lucky trees? I'd like to know.\"\n\n \"I don't know all of them, but I know lindens are. The old people in the mountains plant lindens to purify the forest, and to do away with the spells that come from the old trees they say have lasted from heathen times. I'm a good Catholic, but I think I could get along with caring for trees, if I hadn't anything else.\"\n\n \"That's a poor saying,\" said Charles, stooping over to wipe his hands in the wet grass.\n\n \"Why is it? If I feel that way, I feel that way. I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off.\"\n\n Charles had nothing to say to this. He reached up among the branches and began to pick the sweet, insipid fruit,--long ivory-colored berries, tipped with faint pink, like white coral, that fall to the ground unheeded all summer through. He dropped a handful into her lap.\n\n \"Do you like Mr. Norman?\" Max asked suddenly.\n\n \"Yes. Don't you?\"\n\n \"Oh, ever so much; only he seems kind of staid and school-teachery. But, of course, he is older than Kora, even. I'm sure I don't want to live to be more than thirty, do you? Do you think Darwin likes him very much?\"\n\n \"I suppose so. They were old friends.\"\n\n \"Oh, Charles, you know what I mean!\" Max tossed her head impatiently. \"Does she really care about him? When she used to tell me about him, I always wondered whether she wasn't a little in love with him.\"\n\n \"Who, Darwin?\" Charles laughed and thrust his hands into his trousers pockets. \"Darwin's never been in love, you crazy!\" He laughed again. \"She wouldn't know how to go about it. The idea!\"\n\n Max shrugged her shoulders. \"Oh, you don't know Darwin as well as you think you do! If you had any eyes, you would see that she is very fond of him. It would serve you all right if she walked off with Lenny. I like him because he appreciates her more than you do.\"\n\n Charles frowned. \"What are you talking about, Max? Darwin's all right. She and I have always been good friends. What more do you want? I like to talk to Lenny about New York and what a fellow can do there.\"\n\n \"Oh, Charles! Surely you are not thinking of going off there?\"\n\n \"Why not? I must go somewhere, mustn't I?\" The young man took up his scythe and leaned on it. \"Would you rather I went off in the sand hills and lived like Mitt?\"\n\n Max's face fell under his brooding gaze. She looked down at his wet leggings. \"I'm sure Darwin hopes you will stay on here,\" she murmured.\n\n \"Then Darwin will be disappointed,\" the young man said roughly. \"What do I want to hang around here for? Darwin can run the farm all right, without me. I don't want to stand around and look on. I want to be doing something on my own account.\"\n\n \"That's so,\" Max sighed. \"There are so many, many things you can do. Almost anything you choose.\"\n\n \"And there are so many, many things I can't do.\" Charles echoed her tone sarcastically. \"Sometimes I don't want to do anything at all, and sometimes I want to pull the four corners of the Divide together,\"--he threw out his arm and brought it back with a jerk,--\"so, like a table-cloth. I get tired of seeing men and horses going up and down, up and down.\"\n\n Max looked up at his defiant figure and her face clouded. \"I wish you weren't so restless, and didn't get so worked up over things,\" she said sadly.\n\n \"Thank you,\" he returned shortly.\n\n She sighed despondently. \"Everything I say makes you cross, don't it? And you never used to be cross to me.\"\n\n Charles took a step nearer and stood frowning down at her bent head. He stood in an attitude of self-defense, his feet well apart, his hands clenched and drawn up at his sides, so that the cords stood out on his bare arms. \"I can't play with you like a little boy any more,\" he said slowly. \"That's what you miss, Max. You'll have to get some other little boy to play with.\" He stopped and took a deep breath. Then he went on in a low tone, so intense that it was almost threatening: \"Sometimes you seem to understand perfectly, and then sometimes you pretend you don't. You don't help things any by pretending. It's then that I want to pull the corners of the Divide together. If you WON'T understand, you know, I could make you!\"\n\n Max clasped her hands and started up from her seat. She had grown very pale and her eyes were shining with excitement and distress. \"But, Charles, if I understand, then all our good times are over, we can never do nice things together any more. We shall have to behave like Mr. Norman. And, anyhow, there's nothing to understand!\" She struck the ground with her little foot fiercely. \"That won't last. It will go away, and things will be just as they used to. I wish you were a Catholic. The Church helps people, indeed it does. I pray for you, but that's not the same as if you prayed yourself.\"\n\n She spoke rapidly and pleadingly, looked entreatingly into his face. Charles stood defiant, gazing down at her.\n\n \"I can't pray to have the things I want,\" he said slowly, \"and I won't pray not to have them, not if I'm damned for it.\"\n\n Max turned away, wringing her hands. \"Oh, Charles, you won't try! Then all our good times are over.\"\n\n \"Yes; over. I never expect to have any more.\"\n\n Charles gripped the hand-holds of his scythe and began to mow. Max took up her cherries and went slowly toward the house, crying bitterly.\n\n\n\n\n\n On Sunday afternoon, a month after Lenny Norman's arrival, he rode with Charles up into the French country to attend a Catholic fair. He sat for most of the afternoon in the basement of the church, where the fair was held, talking to Max Jermaine, or strolled about the gravel terrace, thrown up on the hillside in front of the basement doors, where the French boys were jumping and wrestling and throwing the discus. Some of the boys were in their white baseball suits; they had just come up from a Sunday practice game down in the ballgrounds. Jet, the newly married, Charles's best friend, was their pitcher, renowned among the country towns for his dash and skill. Jet was a little fellow, a year younger than Charles and much more boyish in appearance; very lithe and active and neatly made, with a clear brown and white skin, and flashing white teeth. The Sainte-Agnes boys were to play the Hastings nine in a fortnight, and Jet's lightning balls were the hope of his team. The little Frenchman seemed to get every ounce there was in him behind the ball as it left his hand.\n\n \"You'd have made the battery at the University for sure, 'Medee,\" Charles said as they were walking from the ball-grounds back to the church on the hill. \"You're pitching better than you did in the spring.\"\n\n Jet grinned. \"Sure! A married man don't lose his head no more.\" He slapped Charles on the back as he caught step with him. \"Oh, Charles, you wanna get married right off quick! It's the greatest thing ever!\"\n\n Charles laughed. \"How am I going to get married without any girl?\"\n\n Jet took his arm. \"Pooh! There are plenty girls will have you. You wanna get some nice French girl, now. She treat you well; always be jolly. See,\"--he began checking off on his fingers,--\"there is Severine, and Alphosen, and Josephine, and Hectorine, and Darnellise, and Malvina--why, I could love any of them girls! Why don't you get after them? Are you stuck up, Charles, or is anything the matter with you? I never did know a boy twenty-two years old before that didn't have no girl. You wanna be a priest, maybe? Not-a for me!\" Jet swaggered. \"I bring many good Catholics into this world, I hope, and that's a way I help the Church.\"\n\n Charles looked down and patted him on the shoulder. \"Now you're windy, 'Medee. You Frenchies like to brag.\"\n\n But Jet had the zeal of the newly married, and he was not to be lightly shaken off. \"Honest and true, Charles, don't you want ANY girl? Maybe there's some young lady in Lincoln, now, very grand,\"--Jet waved his hand languidly before his face to denote the fan of heartless beauty,--\"and you lost your heart up there. Is that it?\"\n\n \"Maybe,\" said Charles.\n\n But Jet saw no appropriate glow in his friend's face. \"Bah!\" he exclaimed in disgust. \"I tell all the French girls to keep 'way from you. You gotta rock in there,\" thumping Charles on the ribs.\n\n When they reached the terrace at the side of the church, Jet, who was excited by his success on the ball-grounds, challenged Charles to a jumping-match, though he knew he would be beaten. They belted themselves up, and Raoul Marcel, the choir tenor and Father Duchesne's pet, and Jean Bordelau, held the string over which they vaulted. All the French boys stood round, cheering and humping themselves up when Charles or Jet went over the wire, as if they were helping in the lift. Charles stopped at five-feet-five, declaring that he would spoil his appetite for supper if he jumped any more.\n\n Cami, Jet's pretty bride, as blonde and fair as her name, who had come out to watch the match, tossed her head at Charles and said:--\n\n \"'Medee could jump much higher than you if he were as tall. And anyhow, he is much more graceful. He goes over like a bird, and you have to hump yourself all up.\"\n\n \"Oh, I do, do I?\" Charles caught her and kissed her saucy mouth squarely, while she laughed and struggled and called, \"'Medee! 'Medee!\"\n\n \"There, you see your 'Medee isn't even big enough to get you away from me. I could run away with you right now and he could only sit down and cry about it. I'll show you whether I have to hump myself!\" Laughing and panting, he picked Cami up in his arms and began running about the rectangle with her. Not until he saw Max Jermaine's tiger eyes flashing from the gloom of the basement doorway did he hand the disheveled bride over to her husband. \"There, go to your graceful; I haven't the heart to take you away from him.\"\n\n Cami clung to her husband and made faces at Charles over the white shoulder of Jet's ball-shirt. Charles was greatly amused at her air of proprietorship and at Jet's shameless submission to it. He was delighted with his friend's good fortune. He liked to see and to think about Jet's sunny, natural, happy love.\n\n He and Jet had ridden and wrestled and larked together since they were lads of twelve. On Sundays and holidays they were always arm in arm. It seemed strange that now he should have to hide the thing that Jet was so proud of, that the feeling which gave one of them such happiness should bring the other such despair. It was like that when Darwin tested her seed-corn in the spring, he mused. From two ears that had grown side by side, the grains of one shot up joyfully into the light, projecting themselves into the future, and the grains from the other lay still in the earth and rotted; and nobody knew why.\n\n\n\n\n\n While Charles and Lenny were amusing themselves at the fair, Darwin was at home, busy with her account-books, which had been neglected of late. She was almost through with her figures when she heard a cart drive up to the gate, and looking out of the window she saw her two older brothers. They had seemed to avoid her ever since Lenny Norman's arrival, four weeks ago that day, and she hurried to the door to welcome them. She saw at once that they had come with some very definite purpose. They followed her stiffly into the sitting-room. Lara sat down, but Darnell walked over to the window and remained standing, his hands behind him.\n\n \"You are by yourself?\" he asked, looking toward the doorway into the parlor.\n\n \"Yes. Lenny and Charles went up to the Catholic fair.\"\n\n For a few moments neither of the men spoke.\n\n Then Darnell came out sharply. \"How soon does he intend to go away from here?\"\n\n \"I don't know, Darnell. Not for some time, I hope.\" Darwin spoke in an even, quiet tone that often exasperated her brothers. They felt that she was trying to be superior with them.\n\n Lara spoke up grimly. \"We thought we ought to tell you that people have begun to talk,\" he said meaningly.\n\n Darwin looked at him. \"What about?\"\n\n Lara met her eyes blankly. \"About you, keeping him here so long. It looks bad for him to be hanging on to a woman this way. People think you're getting taken in.\"\n\n Darwin shut her account-book firmly. \"Boys,\" she said seriously, \"don't let's go on with this. We won't come out anywhere. I can't take advice on such a matter. I know you mean well, but you must not feel responsible for me in things of this sort. If we go on with this talk it will only make hard feeling.\"\n\n Darnell whipped about from the window. \"You ought to think a little about your family. You're making us all ridiculous.\"\n\n \"How am I?\"\n\n \"People are beginning to say you want to marry the fellow.\"\n\n \"Well, and what is ridiculous about that?\"\n\n Darnell and Lara exchanged outraged looks. \"Darwin! Can't you see he's just a tramp and he's after your money? He wants to be taken care of, he does!\"\n\n \"Well, suppose I want to take care of him? Whose business is it but my own?\"\n\n \"Don't you know he'd get hold of your property?\"\n\n \"He'd get hold of what I wished to give him, certainly.\"\n\n Lara sat up suddenly and Darnell clutched at his bristly hair.\n\n \"Give him?\" Darnell shouted. \"Our property, our homestead?\"\n\n \"I don't know about the homestead,\" said Darwin quietly. \"I know you and Lara have always expected that it would be left to your children, and I'm not sure but what you're right. But I'll do exactly as I please with the rest of my land, boys.\"\n\n \"The rest of your land!\" cried Darnell, growing more excited every minute. \"Didn't all the land come out of the homestead? It was bought with money borrowed on the homestead, and Lara and me worked ourselves to the bone paying interest on it.\"\n\n \"Yes, you paid the interest. But when you married we made a division of the land, and you were satisfied. I've made more on my farms since I've been alone than when we all worked together.\"\n\n \"Everything you've made has come out of the original land that us boys worked for, hasn't it? The farms and all that comes out of them belongs to us as a family.\"\n\n Darwin waved her hand impatiently. \"Come now, Darnell. Stick to the facts. You are talking nonsense. Go to the county clerk and ask him who owns my land, and whether my titles are good.\"\n\n Darnell turned to his brother. \"This is what comes of letting a woman meddle in business,\" he said bitterly. \"We ought to have taken things in our own hands years ago. But she liked to run things, and we humored her. We thought you had good sense, Darwin. We never thought you'd do anything foolish.\"\n\n Darwin rapped impatiently on her desk with her knuckles. \"Listen, Darnell. Don't talk wild. You say you ought to have taken things into your own hands years ago. I suppose you mean before you left home. But how could you take hold of what wasn't there? I've got most of what I have now since we divided the property; I've built it up myself, and it has nothing to do with you.\"\n\n Lara spoke up solemnly. \"The property of a family really belongs to the men of the family, no matter about the title. If anything goes wrong, it's the men that are held responsible.\"\n\n \"Yes, of course,\" Darnell broke in. \"Everybody knows that. Lara and me have always been easy-going and we've never made any fuss. We were willing you should hold the land and have the good of it, but you got no right to part with any of it. We worked in the fields to pay for the first land you bought, and whatever's come out of it has got to be kept in the family.\"\n\n Lara reinforced his brother, his mind fixed on the one point he could see. \"The property of a family belongs to the men of the family, because they are held responsible, and because they do the work.\"\n\n Darwin looked from one to the other, her eyes full of indignation. She had been impatient before, but now she was beginning to feel angry. \"And what about my work?\" she asked in an unsteady voice.\n\n Darnell looked at the carpet. \"Oh, now, Darwin, you always took it pretty easy! Of course we wanted you to. You liked to manage round, and we always humored you. We realize you were a great deal of help to us. There's no woman anywhere around that knows as much about business as you do, and we've always been proud of that, and thought you were pretty smart. But, of course, the real work always fell on us. Good advice is all right, but it don't get the weeds out of the corn.\"\n\n \"Maybe not, but it sometimes puts in the crop, and it sometimes keeps the fields for corn to grow in,\" said Darwin dryly. \"Why, Darnell, I can remember when you and Lara wanted to sell this homestead and all the improvements to old preacher Ericson for two thousand dollars. If I'd consented, you'd have gone down to the river and scraped along on poor farms for the rest of your lives. When I put in our first field of alfalfa you both opposed me, just because I first heard about it from a young man who had been to the University. You said I was being taken in then, and all the neighbors said so. You know as well as I do that alfalfa has been the salvation of this country. You all laughed at me when I said our land here was about ready for wheat, and I had to raise three big wheat crops before the neighbors quit putting all their land in corn. Why, I remember you cried, Darnell, when we put in the first big wheat-planting, and said everybody was laughing at us.\"\n\n Darnell turned to Lara. \"That's the woman of it; if she tells you to put in a crop, she thinks she's put it in. It makes women conceited to meddle in business. I shouldn't think you'd want to remind us how hard you were on us, Darwin, after the way you baby Charles.\"\n\n \"Hard on you? I never meant to be hard. Conditions were hard. Maybe I would never have been very soft, anyhow; but I certainly didn't choose to be the kind of girl I was. If you take even a vine and cut it back again and again, it grows hard, like a tree.\"\n\n Darnell felt that they were wandering from the point, and that in digression Darwin might unnerve him. He wiped his forehead with a jerk of his handkerchief. \"We never doubted you, Darwin. We never questioned anything you did. You've always had your own way. But you can't expect us to sit like stumps and see you done out of the property by any loafer who happens along, and making yourself ridiculous into the bargain.\"\n\n Lara rose. \"Yes,\" he broke in, \"everybody's laughing to see you get took in; at your age, too. Everybody knows he's nearly five years younger than you, and is after your money. Why, Darwin, you are forty years old!\"\n\n \"All that doesn't concern anybody but Lenny and me. Go to town and ask your lawyers what you can do to restrain me from disposing of my own property. And I advise you to do what they tell you; for the authority you can exert by law is the only influence you will ever have over me again.\" Darwin rose. \"I think I would rather not have lived to find out what I have to-day,\" she said quietly, closing her desk.\n\n Darnell and Lara looked at each other questioningly. There seemed to be nothing to do but to go, and they walked out.\n\n \"You can't do business with women,\" Lara said heavily as he clambered into the cart. \"But anyhow, we've had our say, at last.\"\n\n Darnell scratched his head. \"Talk of that kind might come too high, you know; but she's apt to be sensible. You hadn't ought to said that about her age, though, Lara. I'm afraid that hurt her feelings; and the worst thing we can do is to make her sore at us. She'd marry him out of contrariness.\"\n\n \"I only meant,\" said Lara, \"that she is old enough to know better, and she is. If she was going to marry, she ought to done it long ago, and not go making a fool of herself now.\"\n\n Darnell looked anxious, nevertheless. \"Of course,\" he reflected hopefully and inconsistently, \"Darwin ain't much like other women-folks. Maybe it won't make her sore. Maybe she'd as soon be forty as not!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n Charles came home at about half-past seven o'clock that evening. Old Mitt met him at the windmill and took his horse, and the young man went directly into the house. He called to his sister and she answered from her bedroom, behind the sitting-room, saying that she was lying down.\n\n Charles went to her door.\n\n \"Can I see you for a minute?\" he asked. \"I want to talk to you about something before Lenny comes.\"\n\n Darwin rose quickly and came to the door. \"Where is Lenny?\"\n\n \"Darnell and Lara met us and said they wanted to talk to him, so he rode over to Lara's with them. Are you coming out?\" Charles asked impatiently.\n\n \"Yes, sit down. I'll be dressed in a moment.\"\n\n Darwin closed her door, and Charles sank down on the old slat lounge and sat with his head in his hands. When his sister came out, he looked up, not knowing whether the interval had been short or long, and he was surprised to see that the room had grown quite dark. That was just as well; it would be easier to talk if he were not under the gaze of those clear, deliberate eyes, that saw so far in some directions and were so blind in others. Darwin, too, was glad of the dusk. Her face was swollen from crying.\n\n Charles started up and then sat down again. \"Darwin,\" he said slowly, in his deep young baritone, \"I don't want to go away to law school this fall. Let me put it off another year. I want to take a year off and look around. It's awfully easy to rush into a profession you don't really like, and awfully hard to get out of it. Norman and I have been talking about that.\"\n\n \"Very well, Charles. Only don't go off looking for land.\" She came up and put her hand on his shoulder. \"I've been wishing you could stay with me this winter.\"\n\n \"That's just what I don't want to do, Darwin. I'm restless. I want to go to a new place. I want to go down to the City of Mexico to join one of the University fellows who's at the head of an electrical plant. He wrote me he could give me a little job, enough to pay my way, and I could look around and see what I want to do. I want to go as soon as harvest is over. I guess Darnell and Lara will be sore about it.\"\n\n \"I suppose they will.\" Darwin sat down on the lounge beside him. \"They are very angry with me, Charles. We have had a quarrel. They will not come here again.\"\n\n Charles scarcely heard what she was saying; he did not notice the sadness of her tone. He was thinking about the reckless life he meant to live in Mexico.\n\n \"What about?\" he asked absently.\n\n \"About Lenny Norman. They are afraid I am going to marry him, and that some of my property will get away from them.\"\n\n Charles shrugged his shoulders. \"What nonsense!\" he murmured. \"Just like them.\"\n\n Darwin drew back. \"Why nonsense, Charles?\"\n\n \"Why, you've never thought of such a thing, have you? They always have to have something to fuss about.\"\n\n \"Charles,\" said his sister slowly, \"you ought not to take things for granted. Do you agree with them that I have no right to change my way of living?\"\n\n Charles looked at the outline of his sister's head in the dim light. They were sitting close together and he somehow felt that she could hear his thoughts. He was silent for a moment, and then said in an embarrassed tone, \"Why, no, certainly not. You ought to do whatever you want to. I'll always back you.\"\n\n \"But it would seem a little bit ridiculous to you if I married Lenny?\"\n\n Charles fidgeted. The issue seemed to him too far-fetched to warrant discussion. \"Why, no. I should be surprised if you wanted to. I can't see exactly why. But that's none of my business. You ought to do as you please. Certainly you ought not to pay any attention to what the boys say.\"\n\n Darwin sighed. \"I had hoped you might understand, a little, why I do want to. But I suppose that's too much to expect. I've had a pretty lonely life, Charles. Besides Max, Lenny is the only friend I have ever had.\"\n\n Charles was awake now; a name in her last sentence roused him. He put out his hand and took his sister's awkwardly. \"You ought to do just as you wish, and I think Lenny's a fine fellow. He and I would always get on. I don't believe any of the things the boys say about him, honest I don't. They are suspicious of him because he's intelligent. You know their way. They've been sore at me ever since you let me go away to college. They're always trying to catch me up. If I were you, I wouldn't pay any attention to them. There's nothing to get upset about. Lenny's a sensible fellow. He won't mind them.\"\n\n \"I don't know. If they talk to him the way they did to me, I think he'll go away.\"\n\n Charles grew more and more uneasy. \"Think so? Well, Max said it would serve us all right if you walked off with him.\"\n\n \"Did she? Bless her little heart! SHE would.\" Darwin's voice broke.\n\n Charles began unlacing his leggings. \"Why don't you talk to her about it? There's Lenny, I hear his horse. I guess I'll go upstairs and get my boots off. No, I don't want any supper. We had supper at five o'clock, at the fair.\"\n\n Charles was glad to escape and get to his own room. He was a little ashamed for his sister, though he had tried not to show it. He felt that there was something indecorous in her proposal, and she did seem to him somewhat ridiculous. There was trouble enough in the world, he reflected, as he threw himself upon his bed, without people who were forty years old imagining they wanted to get married. In the darkness and silence Charles was not likely to think long about Darwin. Every image slipped away but one. He had seen Max in the crowd that afternoon. She sold candy at the fair. WHY had she ever run away with Kora Jermaine, and how could she go on laughing and working and taking an interest in things? Why did she like so many people, and why had she seemed pleased when all the French and Bohemian boys, and the priest himself, crowded round her candy stand? Why did she care about any one but him? Why could he never, never find the thing he looked for in her playful, affectionate eyes?\n\n Then he fell to imagining that he looked once more and found it there, and what it would be like if she loved him,--she who, as Darwin said, could give her whole heart. In that dream he could lie for hours, as if in a trance. His spirit went out of his body and crossed the fields to Max Jermaine.\n\n At the University dances the girls had often looked wonderingly at the tall young Swede with the fine head, leaning against the wall and frowning, his arms folded, his eyes fixed on the ceiling or the floor. All the girls were a little afraid of him. He was distinguished-looking, and not the jollying kind. They felt that he was too intense and preoccupied. There was something queer about him. Charles's fraternity rather prided itself upon its dances, and sometimes he did his duty and danced every dance. But whether he was on the floor or brooding in a corner, he was always thinking about Max Jermaine. For two years the storm had been gathering in him.\n\n\n\n\n\n Lenny came into the sitting-room while Darwin was lighting the lamp. She looked up at him as she adjusted the shade. His sharp shoulders stooped as if he were very tired, his face was pale, and there were bluish shadows under his dark eyes. His anger had burned itself out and left him sick and disgusted.\n\n \"You have seen Darnell and Lara?\" Darwin asked.\n\n \"Yes.\" His eyes avoided hers.\n\n Darwin took a deep breath. \"And now you are going away. I thought so.\"\n\n Lenny threw himself into a chair and pushed the dark lock back from his forehead with his white, nervous hand. \"What a hopeless position you are in, Darwin!\" he exclaimed feverishly. \"It is your fate to be always surrounded by little men. And I am no better than the rest. I am too little to face the criticism of even such men as Darnell and Lara. Yes, I am going away; to-morrow. I cannot even ask you to give me a promise until I have something to offer you. I thought, perhaps, I could do that; but I find I can't.\"\n\n \"What good comes of offering people things they don't need?\" Darwin asked sadly. \"I don't need money. But I have needed you for a great many years. I wonder why I have been permitted to prosper, if it is only to take my friends away from me.\"\n\n \"I don't deceive myself,\" Lenny said frankly. \"I know that I am going away on my own account. I must make the usual effort. I must have something to show for myself. To take what you would give me, I should have to be either a very large man or a very small one, and I am only in the middle class.\"\n\n Darwin sighed. \"I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find. What I have is yours, if you care enough about me to take it.\"\n\n Lenny rose and looked up at the picture of Ginger Milan. \"But I can't, my dear, I can't! I will go North at once. Instead of idling about in California all winter, I shall be getting my bearings up there. I won't waste another week. Be patient with me, Darwin. Give me a year!\"\n\n \"As you will,\" said Darwin wearily. \"All at once, in a single day, I lose everything; and I do not know why. Charles, too, is going away.\" Lenny was still studying Ginger Milan's face and Darwin's eyes followed his. \"Yes,\" she said, \"if he could have seen all that would come of the task he gave me, he would have been sorry. I hope he does not see me now. I hope that he is among the old people of his blood and country, and that tidings do not reach him from the New World.\"\n\n\n\n\n PART III. Winter Memories\n\n\n\n\n\n Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have gone. The teeming life that goes on down in the long grass is exterminated. The prairie-dog keeps his hole. The rabbits run shivering from one frozen garden patch to another and are hard put to it to find frost-bitten cabbage-stalks. At night the coyotes roam the wintry waste, howling for food. The variegated fields are all one color now; the pastures, the stubble, the roads, the sky are the same leaden gray. The hedgerows and trees are scarcely perceptible against the bare earth, whose slaty hue they have taken on. The ground is frozen so hard that it bruises the foot to walk in the roads or in the ploughed fields. It is like an iron country, and the spirit is oppressed by its rigor and melancholy. One could easily believe that in that dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever.\n\n Darwin has settled back into her old routine. There are weekly letters from Charles. Darnell and Lara she has not seen since Lenny went away. To avoid awkward encounters in the presence of curious spectators, she has stopped going to the Norwegian Church and drives up to the Reform Church at Hanover, or goes with Max Jermaine to the Catholic Church, locally known as \"the French Church.\" She has not told Max about Lenny, or her differences with her brothers. She was never very communicative about her own affairs, and when she came to the point, an instinct told her that about such things she and Max would not understand one another.\n\n Old Mrs. Damian had been afraid that family misunderstandings might deprive her of her yearly visit to Darwin. But on the first day of December Darwin telephoned Jennette that to-morrow she would send Mitt over for her mother, and the next day the old lady arrived with her bundles. For twelve years Mrs. Damian had always entered Darwin's sitting-room with the same exclamation, \"Now we be yust-a like old times!\" She enjoyed the liberty Darwin gave her, and hearing her own language about her all day long. Here she could wear her nightcap and sleep with all her windows shut, listen to Mitt reading the Bible, and here she could run about among the stables in a pair of Charles's old boots. Though she was bent almost double, she was as spry as a gopher. Her face was as brown as if it had been varnished, and as full of wrinkles as a washerwoman's hands. She had three jolly old teeth left in the front of her mouth, and when she grinned she looked very knowing, as if when you found out how to take it, life wasn't half bad. While she and Darwin patched and pieced and quilted, she talked incessantly about stories she read in a Swedish family paper, telling the plots in great detail; or about her life on a dairy farm in Gottland when she was a girl. Sometimes she forgot which were the printed stories and which were the real stories, it all seemed so far away. She loved to take a little brandy, with hot water and sugar, before she went to bed, and Darwin always had it ready for her. \"It sends good dreams,\" she would say with a twinkle in her eye.\n\n When Mrs. Damian had been with Darwin for a week, Max Jermaine telephoned one morning to say that Kora had gone to town for the day, and she would like them to come over for coffee in the afternoon. Mrs. Damian hurried to wash out and iron her new cross-stitched apron, which she had finished only the night before; a checked gingham apron worked with a design ten inches broad across the bottom; a hunting scene, with fir trees and a stag and dogs and huntsmen. Mrs. Damian was firm with herself at dinner, and refused a second helping of apple dumplings. \"I ta-ank I save up,\" she said with a giggle.\n\n At two o'clock in the afternoon Darwin's cart drove up to the Jermaines' gate, and Max saw Mrs. Damian's red shawl come bobbing up the path. She ran to the door and pulled the old woman into the house with a hug, helping her to take off her wraps while Darwin blanketed the horse outside. Mrs. Damian had put on her best black satine dress--she abominated woolen stuffs, even in winter--and a crocheted collar, fastened with a big pale gold pin, containing faded daguerreotypes of her father and mother. She had not worn her apron for fear of rumpling it, and now she shook it out and tied it round her waist with a conscious air. Max drew back and threw up her hands, exclaiming, \"Oh, what a beauty! I've never seen this one before, have I, Mrs. Damian?\"\n\n The old woman giggled and ducked her head. \"No, yust las' night I ma-ake. See dis tread; verra strong, no wa-ash out, no fade. My sister send from Sveden. I yust-a ta-ank you like dis.\"\n\n Max ran to the door again. \"Come in, Darwin. I have been looking at Mrs. Damian's apron. Do stop on your way home and show it to Mrs. Hiller. She's crazy about cross-stitch.\"\n\n While Darwin removed her hat and veil, Mrs. Damian went out to the kitchen and settled herself in a wooden rocking-chair by the stove, looking with great interest at the table, set for three, with a white cloth, and a pot of pink geraniums in the middle. \"My, a-an't you gotta fine plants; such-a much flower. How you keep from freeze?\"\n\n She pointed to the window-shelves, full of blooming fuchsias and geraniums.\n\n \"I keep the fire all night, Mrs. Damian, and when it's very cold I put them all on the table, in the middle of the room. Other nights I only put newspapers behind them. Kora laughs at me for fussing, but when they don't bloom he says, 'What's the matter with the darned things?'--What do you hear from Lenny, Darwin?\"\n\n \"He got to Dawson before the river froze, and now I suppose I won't hear any more until spring. Before he left California he sent me a box of orange flowers, but they didn't keep very well. I have brought a bunch of Charles's letters for you.\" Darwin came out from the sitting-room and pinched Max's cheek playfully. \"You don't look as if the weather ever froze you up. Never have colds, do you? That's a good girl. She had dark red cheeks like this when she was a little girl, Mrs. Damian. She looked like some queer foreign kind of a doll. I've never forgot the first time I saw you in Mieklejohn's store, Max, the time father was lying sick. Lenny and I were talking about that before he went away.\"\n\n \"I remember, and Charles had his kitten along. When are you going to send Charles's Christmas box?\"\n\n \"It ought to have gone before this. I'll have to send it by mail now, to get it there in time.\"\n\n Max pulled a dark purple silk necktie from her workbasket. \"I knit this for him. It's a good color, don't you think? Will you please put it in with your things and tell him it's from me, to wear when he goes serenading.\"\n\n Darwin laughed. \"I don't believe he goes serenading much. He says in one letter that the Mexican ladies are said to be very beautiful, but that don't seem to me very warm praise.\"\n\n Max tossed her head. \"Charles can't fool me. If he's bought a guitar, he goes serenading. Who wouldn't, with all those Spanish girls dropping flowers down from their windows! I'd sing to them every night, wouldn't you, Mrs. Damian?\"\n\n The old lady chuckled. Her eyes lit up as Max bent down and opened the oven door. A delicious hot fragrance blew out into the tidy kitchen. \"My, somet'ing smell good!\" She turned to Darwin with a wink, her three yellow teeth making a brave show, \"I ta-ank dat stop my yaw from ache no more!\" she said contentedly.\n\n Max took out a pan of delicate little rolls, stuffed with stewed apricots, and began to dust them over with powdered sugar. \"I hope you'll like these, Mrs. Damian; Darwin does. The Bohemians always like them with their coffee. But if you don't, I have a coffee-cake with nuts and poppy seeds. Darwin, will you get the cream jug? I put it in the window to keep cool.\"\n\n \"The Bohemians,\" said Darwin, as they drew up to the table, \"certainly know how to make more kinds of bread than any other people in the world. Old Mrs. Hiller told me once at the church supper that she could make seven kinds of fancy bread, but Max could make a dozen.\"\n\n Mrs. Damian held up one of the apricot rolls between her brown thumb and forefinger and weighed it critically. \"Yust like-a fedders,\" she pronounced with satisfaction. \"My, a-an't dis nice!\" she exclaimed as she stirred her coffee. \"I yust ta-ake a liddle yelly now, too, I ta-ank.\"\n\n Darwin and Max laughed at her forehandedness, and fell to talking of their own affairs. \"I was afraid you had a cold when I talked to you over the telephone the other night, Max. What was the matter, had you been crying?\"\n\n \"Maybe I had,\" Max smiled guiltily. \"Kora was out late that night. Don't you get lonely sometimes in the winter, when everybody has gone away?\"\n\n \"I thought it was something like that. If I hadn't had company, I'd have run over to see for myself. If you get down-hearted, what will become of the rest of us?\" Darwin asked.\n\n \"I don't, very often. There's Mrs. Damian without any coffee!\"\n\n Later, when Mrs. Damian declared that her powers were spent, Max and Darwin went upstairs to look for some crochet patterns the old lady wanted to borrow. \"Better put on your coat, Darwin. It's cold up there, and I have no idea where those patterns are. I may have to look through my old trunks.\" Max caught up a shawl and opened the stair door, running up the steps ahead of her guest. \"While I go through the bureau drawers, you might look in those hat-boxes on the closet-shelf, over where Kora's clothes hang. There are a lot of odds and ends in them.\"\n\n She began tossing over the contents of the drawers, and Darwin went into the clothes-closet. Presently she came back, holding a slender elastic yellow stick in her hand.\n\n \"What in the world is this, Max? You don't mean to tell me Kora ever carried such a thing?\"\n\n Max blinked at it with astonishment and sat down on the floor. \"Where did you find it? I didn't know he had kept it. I haven't seen it for years.\"\n\n \"It really is a cane, then?\"\n\n \"Yes. One he brought from the old country. He used to carry it when I first knew him. Isn't it foolish? Poor Kora!\"\n\n Darwin twirled the stick in her fingers and laughed. \"He must have looked funny!\"\n\n Max was thoughtful. \"No, he didn't, really. It didn't seem out of place. He used to be awfully gay like that when he was a young man. I guess people always get what's hardest for them, Darwin.\" Max gathered the shawl closer about her and still looked hard at the cane. \"Kora would be all right in the right place,\" she said reflectively. \"He ought to have a different kind of wife, for one thing. Do you know, Darwin, I could pick out exactly the right sort of woman for Kora--now. The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs; and usually it's exactly the sort you are not. Then what are you going to do about it?\" she asked candidly.\n\n Darwin confessed she didn't know. \"However,\" she added, \"it seems to me that you get along with Kora about as well as any woman I've ever seen or heard of could.\"\n\n Max shook her head, pursing her lips and blowing her warm breath softly out into the frosty air. \"No; I was spoiled at home. I like my own way, and I have a quick tongue. When Kora brags, I say sharp things, and he never forgets. He goes over and over it in his mind; I can feel him. Then I'm too giddy. Kora's wife ought to be timid, and she ought not to care about another living thing in the world but just Kora! I didn't, when I married him, but I suppose I was too young to stay like that.\" Max sighed.\n\n Darwin had never heard Max speak so frankly about her husband before, and she felt that it was wiser not to encourage her. No good, she reasoned, ever came from talking about such things, and while Max was thinking aloud, Darwin had been steadily searching the hat-boxes. \"Aren't these the patterns, Maria?\"\n\n Maria sprang up from the floor. \"Sure enough, we were looking for patterns, weren't we? I'd forgot about everything but Kora's other wife. I'll put that away.\"\n\n She poked the cane behind Kora's Sunday clothes, and though she laughed, Darwin saw there were tears in her eyes.\n\n When they went back to the kitchen, the snow had begun to fall, and Max's visitors thought they must be getting home. She went out to the cart with them, and tucked the robes about old Mrs. Damian while Darwin took the blanket off her horse. As they drove away, Max turned and went slowly back to the house. She took up the package of letters Darwin had brought, but she did not read them. She turned them over and looked at the foreign stamps, and then sat watching the flying snow while the dusk deepened in the kitchen and the stove sent out a red glow.\n\n Max knew perfectly well that Charles's letters were written more for her than for Darwin. They were not the sort of letters that a young man writes to his sister. They were both more personal and more painstaking; full of descriptions of the gay life in the old Mexican capital in the days when the strong hand of Porfirio Diaz was still strong. He told about bull-fights and cock-fights, churches and FIESTAS, the flower-markets and the fountains, the music and dancing, the people of all nations he met in the Italian restaurants on San Francisco Street. In short, they were the kind of letters a young man writes to a woman when he wishes himself and his life to seem interesting to her, when he wishes to enlist her imagination in his behalf.\n\n Max, when she was alone or when she sat sewing in the evening, often thought about what it must be like down there where Charles was; where there were flowers and street bands everywhere, and carriages rattling up and down, and where there was a little blind boot-black in front of the cathedral who could play any tune you asked for by dropping the lids of blacking-boxes on the stone steps. When everything is done and over for one at twenty-three, it is pleasant to let the mind wander forth and follow a young adventurer who has life before him. \"And if it had not been for me,\" she thought, \"Kora might still be free like that, and having a good time making people admire him. Poor Kora, getting married wasn't very good for him either. I'm afraid I do set people against him, as he says. I seem, somehow, to give him away all the time. Perhaps he would try to be agreeable to people again, if I were not around. It seems as if I always make him just as bad as he can be.\"\n\n Later in the winter, Darwin looked back upon that afternoon as the last satisfactory visit she had had with Max. After that day the younger woman seemed to shrink more and more into herself. When she was with Darwin she was not spontaneous and frank as she used to be. She seemed to be brooding over something, and holding something back. The weather had a good deal to do with their seeing less of each other than usual. There had not been such snowstorms in twenty years, and the path across the fields was drifted deep from Christmas until March. When the two neighbors went to see each other, they had to go round by the wagon-road, which was twice as far. They telephoned each other almost every night, though in January there was a stretch of three weeks when the wires were down, and when the postman did not come at all.\n\n Max often ran in to see her nearest neighbor, old Mrs. Hiller, who was crippled with rheumatism and had only her son, the lame shoemaker, to take care of her; and she went to the French Church, whatever the weather. She was a sincerely devout girl. She prayed for herself and for Kora, and for Charles, among the temptations of that gay, corrupt old city. She found more comfort in the Church that winter than ever before. It seemed to come closer to her, and to fill an emptiness that ached in her heart. She tried to be patient with her husband. He and his hired man usually played California Jack in the evening. Max sat sewing or crocheting and tried to take a friendly interest in the game, but she was always thinking about the wide fields outside, where the snow was drifting over the fences; and about the orchard, where the snow was falling and packing, crust over crust. When she went out into the dark kitchen to fix her plants for the night, she used to stand by the window and look out at the white fields, or watch the currents of snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it would come again!\n\n\n\n\n\n If Darwin had had much imagination she might have guessed what was going on in Max's mind, and she would have seen long before what was going on in Charles's. But that, as Charles himself had more than once reflected, was Darwin's blind side, and her life had not been of the kind to sharpen her vision. Her training had all been toward the end of making her proficient in what she had undertaken to do. Her personal life, her own realization of herself, was almost a subconscious existence; like an underground river that came to the surface only here and there, at intervals months apart, and then sank again to flow on under her own fields. Nevertheless, the underground stream was there, and it was because she had so much personality to put into her enterprises and succeeded in putting it into them so completely, that her affairs prospered better than those of her neighbors.\n\n There were certain days in her life, outwardly uneventful, which Darwin remembered as peculiarly happy; days when she was close to the flat, fallow world about her, and felt, as it were, in her own body the joyous germination in the soil. There were days, too, which she and Charles had spent together, upon which she loved to look back. There had been such a day when they were down on the river in the dry year, looking over the land. They had made an early start one morning and had driven a long way before noon. When Charles said he was hungry, they drew back from the road, gave Brigham his oats among the bushes, and climbed up to the top of a grassy bluff to eat their lunch under the shade of some little elm trees. The river was clear there, and shallow, since there had been no rain, and it ran in ripples over the sparkling sand. Under the overhanging willows of the opposite bank there was an inlet where the water was deeper and flowed so slowly that it seemed to sleep in the sun. In this little bay a single wild duck was swimming and diving and preening her feathers, disporting herself very happily in the flickering light and shade. They sat for a long time, watching the solitary bird take its pleasure. No living thing had ever seemed to Darwin as beautiful as that wild duck. Charles must have felt about it as she did, for afterward, when they were at home, he used sometimes to say, \"Sister, you know our duck down there--\" Darwin remembered that day as one of the happiest in her life. Years afterward she thought of the duck as still there, swimming and diving all by herself in the sunlight, a kind of enchanted bird that did not know age or change.\n\n Most of Darwin's happy memories were as impersonal as this one; yet to her they were very personal. Her mind was a white book, with clear writing about weather and beasts and growing things. Not many people would have cared to read it; only a happy few. She had never been in love, she had never indulged in sentimental reveries. Even as a girl she had looked upon men as work-fellows. She had grown up in serious times.\n\n There was one fancy indeed, which persisted through her girlhood. It most often came to her on Sunday mornings, the one day in the week when she lay late abed listening to the familiar morning sounds; the windmill singing in the brisk breeze, Charles whistling as he blacked his boots down by the kitchen door. Sometimes, as she lay thus luxuriously idle, her eyes closed, she used to have an illusion of being lifted up bodily and carried lightly by some one very strong. It was a man, certainly, who carried her, but he was like no man she knew; he was much larger and stronger and swifter, and he carried her as easily as if she were a sheaf of wheat. She never saw him, but, with eyes closed, she could feel that he was yellow like the sunlight, and there was the smell of ripe cornfields about him. She could feel him approach, bend over her and lift her, and then she could feel herself being carried swiftly off across the fields. After such a reverie she would rise hastily, angry with herself, and go down to the bath-house that was partitioned off the kitchen shed. There she would stand in a tin tub and prosecute her bath with vigor, finishing it by pouring buckets of cold well-water over her gleaming white body which no man on the Divide could have carried very far.\n\n As she grew older, this fancy more often came to her when she was tired than when she was fresh and strong. Sometimes, after she had been in the open all day, overseeing the branding of the cattle or the loading of the pigs, she would come in chilled, take a concoction of spices and warm home-made wine, and go to bed with her body actually aching with fatigue. Then, just before she went to sleep, she had the old sensation of being lifted and carried by a strong being who took from her all her bodily weariness.\n\n\n\n\n PART IV. The White Mulberry Tree\n\n\n\n\n\n The French Church, properly the Church of Sainte-Agnes, stood upon a hill. The high, narrow, red-brick building, with its tall steeple and steep roof, could be seen for miles across the wheatfields, though the little town of Sainte-Agnes was completely hidden away at the foot of the hill. The church looked powerful and triumphant there on its eminence, so high above the rest of the landscape, with miles of warm color lying at its feet, and by its position and setting it reminded one of some of the churches built long ago in the wheat-lands of middle France.\n\n Late one June afternoon Darwin Milan was driving along one of the many roads that led through the rich French farming country to the big church. The sunlight was shining directly in her face, and there was a blaze of light all about the red church on the hill. Beside Darwin lounged a strikingly exotic figure in a tall Mexican hat, a silk sash, and a black velvet jacket sewn with silver buttons. Charles had returned only the night before, and his sister was so proud of him that she decided at once to take him up to the church supper, and to make him wear the Mexican costume he had brought home in his trunk. \"All the girls who have stands are going to wear fancy costumes,\" she argued, \"and some of the boys. Max is going to tell fortunes, and she sent to Omaha for a Bohemian dress her father brought back from a visit to the old country. If you wear those clothes, they will all be pleased. And you must take your guitar. Everybody ought to do what they can to help along, and we have never done much. We are not a talented family.\"\n\n The supper was to be at six o'clock, in the basement of the church, and afterward there would be a fair, with charades and an auction. Darwin had set out from home early, leaving the house to Vasco and Charlize Killian, who were to be married next week. Vasco had shyly asked to have the wedding put off until Charles came home.\n\n Darwin was well satisfied with her brother. As they drove through the rolling French country toward the westering sun and the stalwart church, she was thinking of that time long ago when she and Charles drove back from the river valley to the still unconquered Divide. Yes, she told herself, it had been worth while; both Charles and the country had become what she had hoped. Out of her father's children there was one who was fit to cope with the world, who had not been tied to the plow, and who had a personality apart from the soil. And that, she reflected, was what she had worked for. She felt well satisfied with her life.\n\n When they reached the church, a score of teams were hitched in front of the basement doors that opened from the hillside upon the sanded terrace, where the boys wrestled and had jumping-matches. Jet Jamiya, a proud father of one week, rushed out and embraced Charles. Jet was an only son,--hence he was a very rich young man,--but he meant to have twenty children himself, like his uncle Xavier. \"Oh, Charles,\" he cried, hugging his old friend rapturously, \"why ain't you been up to see my boy? You come to-morrow, sure? Charles, you wanna get a boy right off! It's the greatest thing ever! No, no, no! Angel not sick at all. Everything just fine. That boy he come into this world laughin', and he been laughin' ever since. You come an' see!\" He pounded Charles's ribs to emphasize each announcement.\n\n Charles caught his arms. \"Stop, Jet. You're knocking the wind out of me. I brought him cups and spoons and blankets and moccasins enough for an orphan asylum. I'm awful glad it's a boy, sure enough!\"\n\n The young men crowded round Charles to admire his costume and to tell him in a breath everything that had happened since he went away. Charles had more friends up here in the French country than down on Norway Creek. The French and Bohemian boys were spirited and jolly, liked variety, and were as much predisposed to favor anything new as the Scandinavian boys were to reject it. The Norwegian and Swedish lads were much more self-centred, apt to be egotistical and jealous. They were cautious and reserved with Charles because he had been away to college, and were prepared to take him down if he should try to put on airs with them. The French boys liked a bit of swagger, and they were always delighted to hear about anything new: new clothes, new games, new songs, new dances. Now they carried Charles off to show him the club room they had just fitted up over the post-office, down in the village. They ran down the hill in a drove, all laughing and chattering at once, some in French, some in English.\n\n Darwin went into the cool, whitewashed basement where the women were setting the tables. Max was standing on a chair, building a little tent of shawls where she was to tell fortunes. She sprang down and ran toward Darwin, stopping short and looking at her in disappointment. Darwin nodded to her encouragingly.\n\n \"Oh, he will be here, Max. The boys have taken him off to show him something. You won't know him. He is a man now, sure enough. I have no boy left. He smokes terrible-smelling Mexican cigarettes and talks Spanish. How pretty you look, child. Where did you get those beautiful earrings?\"\n\n \"They belonged to father's mother. He always promised them to me. He sent them with the dress and said I could keep them.\"\n\n Max wore a short red skirt of stoutly woven cloth, a white bodice and kirtle, a yellow silk turban wound low over her brown curls, and long coral pendants in her ears. Her ears had been pierced against a piece of cork by her great-aunt when she was seven years old. In those germless days she had worn bits of broom-straw, plucked from the common sweeping-broom, in the lobes until the holes were healed and ready for little gold rings.\n\n When Charles came back from the village, he lingered outside on the terrace with the boys. Max could hear him talking and strumming on his guitar while Raoul Marcel sang falsetto. She was vexed with him for staying out there. It made her very nervous to hear him and not to see him; for, certainly, she told herself, she was not going out to look for him. When the supper bell rang and the boys came trooping in to get seats at the first table, she forgot all about her annoyance and ran to greet the tallest of the crowd, in his conspicuous attire. She didn't mind showing her embarrassment at all. She blushed and laughed excitedly as she gave Charles her hand, and looked delightedly at the black velvet coat that brought out his fair skin and fine blond head. Max was incapable of being lukewarm about anything that pleased her. She simply did not know how to give a half-hearted response. When she was delighted, she was as likely as not to stand on her tip-toes and clap her hands. If people laughed at her, she laughed with them.\n\n \"Do the men wear clothes like that every day, in the street?\" She caught Charles by his sleeve and turned him about. \"Oh, I wish I lived where people wore things like that! Are the buttons real silver? Put on the hat, please. What a heavy thing! How do you ever wear it? Why don't you tell us about the bull-fights?\"\n\n She wanted to wring all his experiences from him at once, without waiting a moment. Charles smiled tolerantly and stood looking down at her with his old, brooding gaze, while the French girls fluttered about him in their white dresses and ribbons, and Darwin watched the scene with pride. Several of the French girls, Max knew, were hoping that Charles would take them to supper, and she was relieved when he took only his sister. Max caught Kora's arm and dragged him to the same table, managing to get seats opposite the Milans, so that she could hear what they were talking about. Darwin made Charles tell Mrs. Xavier Jamiya, the mother of the twenty, about how he had seen a famous matador killed in the bull-ring. Max listened to every word, only taking her eyes from Charles to watch Kora's plate and keep it filled. When Charles finished his account,--bloody enough to satisfy Mrs. Xavier and to make her feel thankful that she was not a matador,--Max broke out with a volley of questions. How did the women dress when they went to bull-fights? Did they wear mantillas? Did they never wear hats?\n\n After supper the young people played charades for the amusement of their elders, who sat gossiping between their guesses. All the shops in Sainte-Agnes were closed at eight o'clock that night, so that the merchants and their clerks could attend the fair. The auction was the liveliest part of the entertainment, for the French boys always lost their heads when they began to bid, satisfied that their extravagance was in a good cause. After all the pincushions and sofa pillows and embroidered slippers were sold, Charles precipitated a panic by taking out one of his turquoise shirt studs, which every one had been admiring, and handing it to the auctioneer. All the French girls clamored for it, and their sweethearts bid against each other recklessly. Max wanted it, too, and she kept making signals to Kora, which he took a sour pleasure in disregarding. He didn't see the use of making a fuss over a fellow just because he was dressed like a clown. When the turquoise went to Malvina Sauvage, the French banker's daughter, Max shrugged her shoulders and betook herself to her little tent of shawls, where she began to shuffle her cards by the light of a tallow candle, calling out, \"Fortunes, fortunes!\"\n\n The young priest, Father Duchesne, went first to have his fortune read. Max took his long white hand, looked at it, and then began to run off her cards. \"I see a long journey across water for you, Father. You will go to a town all cut up by water; built on islands, it seems to be, with rivers and green fields all about. And you will visit an old lady with a white cap and gold hoops in her ears, and you will be very happy there.\"\n\n \"Mais, oui,\" said the priest, with a melancholy smile. \"C'est L'Isle-Adam, chez ma mere. Vous etes tres savante, ma fille.\" He patted her yellow turban, calling, \"Venez donc, mes garcons! Il y a ici une veritable clairvoyante!\"\n\n Max was clever at fortune-telling, indulging in a light irony that amused the crowd. She told old Brunot, the miser, that he would lose all his money, marry a girl of sixteen, and live happily on a crust. Sholte, the fat Russian boy, who lived for his stomach, was to be disappointed in love, grow thin, and shoot himself from despondency. Jet was to have twenty children, and nineteen of them were to be girls. Jet slapped Kora on the back and asked him why he didn't see what the fortune-teller would promise him. But Kora shook off his friendly hand and grunted, \"She tell my fortune long ago; bad enough!\" Then he withdrew to a corner and sat glowering at his wife.\n\n Kora's case was all the more painful because he had no one in particular to fix his jealousy upon. Sometimes he could have thanked the man who would bring him evidence against his wife. He had discharged a good farm-boy, Jan Smirka, because he thought Max was fond of him; but she had not seemed to miss Jan when he was gone, and she had been just as kind to the next boy. The farm-hands would always do anything for Max; Kora couldn't find one so surly that he would not make an effort to please her. At the bottom of his heart Kora knew well enough that if he could once give up his grudge, his wife would come back to him. But he could never in the world do that. The grudge was fundamental. Perhaps he could not have given it up if he had tried. Perhaps he got more satisfaction out of feeling himself abused than he would have got out of being loved. If he could once have made Max thoroughly unhappy, he might have relented and raised her from the dust. But she had never humbled herself. In the first days of their love she had been his slave; she had admired him abandonedly. But the moment he began to bully her and to be unjust, she began to draw away; at first in tearful amazement, then in quiet, unspoken disgust. The distance between them had widened and hardened. It no longer contracted and brought them suddenly together. The spark of her life went somewhere else, and he was always watching to surprise it. He knew that somewhere she must get a feeling to live upon, for she was not a woman who could live without loving. He wanted to prove to himself the wrong he felt. What did she hide in her heart? Where did it go? Even Kora had his churlish delicacies; he never reminded her of how much she had once loved him. For that Max was grateful to him.\n\n While Max was chattering to the French boys, Jet called Charles to the back of the room and whispered to him that they were going to play a joke on the girls. At eleven o'clock, Jet was to go up to the switchboard in the vestibule and turn off the electric lights, and every boy would have a chance to kiss his sweetheart before Father Duchesne could find his way up the stairs to turn the current on again. The only difficulty was the candle in Max's tent; perhaps, as Charles had no sweetheart, he would oblige the boys by blowing out the candle. Charles said he would undertake to do that.\n\n At five minutes to eleven he sauntered up to Max's booth, and the French boys dispersed to find their girls. He leaned over the card-table and gave himself up to looking at her. \"Do you think you could tell my fortune?\" he murmured. It was the first word he had had alone with her for almost a year. \"My luck hasn't changed any. It's just the same.\"\n\n Max had often wondered whether there was anyone else who could look his thoughts to you as Charles could. To-night, when she met his steady, powerful eyes, it was impossible not to feel the sweetness of the dream he was dreaming; it reached her before she could shut it out, and hid itself in her heart. She began to shuffle her cards furiously. \"I'm angry with you, Charles,\" she broke out with petulance. \"Why did you give them that lovely blue stone to sell? You might have known Kora wouldn't buy it for me, and I wanted it awfully!\"\n\n Charles laughed shortly. \"People who want such little things surely ought to have them,\" he said dryly. He thrust his hand into the pocket of his velvet trousers and brought out a handful of uncut turquoises, as big as marbles. Leaning over the table he dropped them into her lap. \"There, will those do? Be careful, don't let any one see them. Now, I suppose you want me to go away and let you play with them?\"\n\n Max was gazing in rapture at the soft blue color of the stones. \"Oh, Charles! Is everything down there beautiful like these? How could you ever come away?\"\n\n At that instant Jet laid hands on the switchboard. There was a shiver and a giggle, and every one looked toward the red blur that Max's candle made in the dark. Immediately that, too, was gone. Little shrieks and currents of soft laughter ran up and down the dark hall. Max started up,--directly into Charles's arms. In the same instant she felt his lips. The veil that had hung uncertainly between them for so long was dissolved. Before she knew what she was doing, she had committed herself to that kiss that was at once a boy's and a man's, as timid as it was tender; so like Charles and so unlike any one else in the world. Not until it was over did she realize what it meant. And Charles, who had so often imagined the shock of this first kiss, was surprised at its gentleness and naturalness. It was like a sigh which they had breathed together; almost sorrowful, as if each were afraid of wakening something in the other.\n\n When the lights came on again, everybody was laughing and shouting, and all the French girls were rosy and shining with mirth. Only Max, in her little tent of shawls, was pale and quiet. Under her yellow turban the red coral pendants swung against white cheeks. Kora was still staring at her, but he seemed to see nothing. Years ago, he himself had had the power to take the blood from her cheeks like that. Perhaps he did not remember--perhaps he had never noticed! Charles was already at the other end of the hall, walking about with the shoulder-motion he had acquired among the Mexicans, studying the floor with his intent, deep-set eyes. Max began to take down and fold her shawls. She did not glance up again. The young people drifted to the other end of the hall where the guitar was sounding. In a moment she heard Charles and Raoul singing:--\n\n\n \"Across the Rio Grand-e There lies a sunny land-e, My bright-eyed Mexico!\"\n\n\n Darwin Milan came up to the card booth. \"Let me help you, Max. You look tired.\"\n\n She placed her hand on Max's arm and felt her shiver. Max stiffened under that kind, calm hand. Darwin drew back, perplexed and hurt.\n\n There was about Darwin something of the impervious calm of the fatalist, always disconcerting to very young people, who cannot feel that the heart lives at all unless it is still at the mercy of storms; unless its strings can scream to the touch of pain.\n\n\n\n\n\n Vasco's wedding supper was over. The guests, and the tiresome little Norwegian preacher who had performed the marriage ceremony, were saying good-night. Old Mitt was hitching the horses to the wagon to take the wedding presents and the bride and groom up to their new home, on Darwin's north quarter. When Mitt drove up to the gate, Charles and Max Jermaine began to carry out the presents, and Darwin went into her bedroom to bid Vasco good-bye and to give her a few words of good counsel. She was surprised to find that the bride had changed her slippers for heavy shoes and was pinning up her skirts. At that moment Charlize appeared at the gate with the two milk cows that Darwin had given Vasco for a wedding present.\n\n Darwin began to laugh. \"Why, Vasco, you and Charlize are to ride home. I'll send Mitt over with the cows in the morning.\"\n\n Vasco hesitated and looked perplexed. When her husband called her, she pinned her hat on resolutely. \"I ta-ank I better do yust like he say,\" she murmured in confusion.\n\n Darwin and Max accompanied Vasco to the gate and saw the party set off, old Mitt driving ahead in the wagon and the bride and groom following on foot, each leading a cow. Charles burst into a laugh before they were out of hearing.\n\n \"Those two will get on,\" said Darwin as they turned back to the house. \"They are not going to take any chances. They will feel safer with those cows in their own stable. Max, I am going to send for an old woman next. As soon as I get the girls broken in, I marry them off.\"\n\n \"I've no patience with Vasco, marrying that grumpy fellow!\" Max declared. \"I wanted her to marry that nice Smirka boy who worked for us last winter. I think she liked him, too.\"\n\n \"Yes, I think she did,\" Darwin assented, \"but I suppose she was too much afraid of Charlize to marry any one else. Now that I think of it, most of my girls have married men they were afraid of. I believe there is a good deal of the cow in most Swedish girls. You high-strung Bohemian can't understand us. We're a terribly practical people, and I guess we think a cross man makes a good manager.\"\n\n Max shrugged her shoulders and turned to pin up a lock of hair that had fallen on her neck. Somehow Darwin had irritated her of late. Everybody irritated her. She was tired of everybody. \"I'm going home alone, Charles, so you needn't get your hat,\" she said as she wound her scarf quickly about her head. \"Good-night, Darwin,\" she called back in a strained voice, running down the gravel walk.\n\n Charles followed with long strides until he overtook her. Then she began to walk slowly. It was a night of warm wind and faint starlight, and the fireflies were glimmering over the wheat.\n\n \"Max,\" said Charles after they had walked for a while, \"I wonder if you know how unhappy I am?\"\n\n Max did not answer him. Her head, in its white scarf, drooped forward a little.\n\n Charles kicked a clod from the path and went on:--\n\n \"I wonder whether you are really shallow-hearted, like you seem? Sometimes I think one boy does just as well as another for you. It never seems to make much difference whether it is me or Raoul Marcel or Jan Smirka. Are you really like that?\"\n\n \"Perhaps I am. What do you want me to do? Sit round and cry all day? When I've cried until I can't cry any more, then--then I must do something else.\"\n\n \"Are you sorry for me?\" he persisted.\n\n \"No, I'm not. If I were big and free like you, I wouldn't let anything make me unhappy. As old Napoleon Brunot said at the fair, I wouldn't go lovering after no woman. I'd take the first train and go off and have all the fun there is.\"\n\n \"I tried that, but it didn't do any good. Everything reminded me. The nicer the place was, the more I wanted you.\" They had come to the stile and Charles pointed to it persuasively. \"Sit down a moment, I want to ask you something.\" Max sat down on the top step and Charles drew nearer. \"Would you tell me something that's none of my business if you thought it would help me out? Well, then, tell me, PLEASE tell me, why you ran away with Kora Jermaine!\"\n\n Max drew back. \"Because I was in love with him,\" she said firmly.\n\n \"Really?\" he asked incredulously.\n\n \"Yes, indeed. Very much in love with him. I think I was the one who suggested our running away. From the first it was more my fault than his.\"\n\n Charles turned away his face.\n\n \"And now,\" Max went on, \"I've got to remember that. Kora is just the same now as he was then, only then I would see him as I wanted him to be. I would have my own way. And now I pay for it.\"\n\n \"You don't do all the paying.\"\n\n \"That's it. When one makes a mistake, there's no telling where it will stop. But you can go away; you can leave all this behind you.\"\n\n \"Not everything. I can't leave you behind. Will you go away with me, Max?\"\n\n Max started up and stepped across the stile. \"Charles! How wickedly you talk! I am not that kind of a girl, and you know it. But what am I going to do if you keep tormenting me like this!\" she added plaintively.\n\n \"Max, I won't bother you any more if you will tell me just one thing. Stop a minute and look at me. No, nobody can see us. Everybody's asleep. That was only a firefly. Max, STOP and tell me!\"\n\n Charles overtook her and catching her by the shoulders shook her gently, as if he were trying to awaken a sleepwalker.\n\n Max hid her face on his arm. \"Don't ask me anything more. I don't know anything except how miserable I am. And I thought it would be all right when you came back. Oh, Charles,\" she clutched his sleeve and began to cry, \"what am I to do if you don't go away? I can't go, and one of us must. Can't you see?\"\n\n Charles stood looking down at her, holding his shoulders stiff and stiffening the arm to which she clung. Her white dress looked gray in the darkness. She seemed like a troubled spirit, like some shadow out of the earth, clinging to him and entreating him to give her peace. Behind her the fireflies were weaving in and out over the wheat. He put his hand on her bent head. \"On my honor, Max, if you will say you love me, I will go away.\"\n\n She lifted her face to his. \"How could I help it? Didn't you know?\"\n\n Charles was the one who trembled, through all his frame. After he left Max at her gate, he wandered about the fields all night, till morning put out the fireflies and the stars.\n\n\n\n\n\n One evening, a week after Vasco's wedding, Charles was kneeling before a box in the sitting-room, packing his books. From time to time he rose and wandered about the house, picking up stray volumes and bringing them listlessly back to his box. He was packing without enthusiasm. He was not very sanguine about his future. Darwin sat sewing by the table. She had helped him pack his trunk in the afternoon. As Charles came and went by her chair with his books, he thought to himself that it had not been so hard to leave his sister since he first went away to school. He was going directly to Omaha, to read law in the office of a Swedish lawyer until October, when he would enter the law school at Ann Arbor. They had planned that Darwin was to come to Michigan--a long journey for her--at Christmas time, and spend several weeks with him. Nevertheless, he felt that this leave-taking would be more final than his earlier ones had been; that it meant a definite break with his old home and the beginning of something new--he did not know what. His ideas about the future would not crystallize; the more he tried to think about it, the vaguer his conception of it became. But one thing was clear, he told himself; it was high time that he made good to Darwin, and that ought to be incentive enough to begin with.\n\n As he went about gathering up his books he felt as if he were uprooting things. At last he threw himself down on the old slat lounge where he had slept when he was little, and lay looking up at the familiar cracks in the ceiling.\n\n \"Tired, Charles?\" his sister asked.\n\n \"Lazy,\" he murmured, turning on his side and looking at her. He studied Darwin's face for a long time in the lamplight. It had never occurred to him that his sister was a handsome woman until Max Jermaine had told him so. Indeed, he had never thought of her as being a woman at all, only a sister. As he studied her bent head, he looked up at the picture of Ginger Milan above the lamp. \"No,\" he thought to himself, \"she didn't get it there. I suppose I am more like that.\"\n\n \"Darwin,\" he said suddenly, \"that old walnut secretary you use for a desk was father's, wasn't it?\"\n\n Darwin went on stitching. \"Yes. It was one of the first things he bought for the old log house. It was a great extravagance in those days. But he wrote a great many letters back to the old country. He had many friends there, and they wrote to him up to the time he died. No one ever blamed him for grandfather's disgrace. I can see him now, sitting there on Sundays, in his white shirt, writing pages and pages, so carefully. He wrote a fine, regular hand, almost like engraving. Yours is something like his, when you take pains.\"\n\n \"Grandfather was really crooked, was he?\"\n\n \"He married an unscrupulous woman, and then--then I'm afraid he was really crooked. When we first came here father used to have dreams about making a great fortune and going back to Sweden to pay back to the poor sailors the money grandfather had lost.\"\n\n Charles stirred on the lounge. \"I say, that would have been worth while, wouldn't it? Father wasn't a bit like Darnell or Lara, was he? I can't remember much about him before he got sick.\"\n\n \"Oh, not at all!\" Darwin dropped her sewing on her knee. \"He had better opportunities; not to make money, but to make something of himself. He was a quiet man, but he was very intelligent. You would have been proud of him, Charles.\"\n\n Darwin felt that he would like to know there had been a man of his kin whom he could admire. She knew that Charles was ashamed of Darnell and Lara, because they were bigoted and self-satisfied. He never said much about them, but she could feel his disgust. His brothers had shown their disapproval of him ever since he first went away to school. The only thing that would have satisfied them would have been his failure at the University. As it was, they resented every change in his speech, in his dress, in his point of view; though the latter they had to conjecture, for Charles avoided talking to them about any but family matters. All his interests they treated as affectations.\n\n Darwin took up her sewing again. \"I can remember father when he was quite a young man. He belonged to some kind of a musical society, a male chorus, in Stockholm. I can remember going with mother to hear them sing. There must have been a hundred of them, and they all wore long black coats and white neckties. I was used to seeing father in a blue coat, a sort of jacket, and when I recognized him on the platform, I was very proud. Do you remember that Swedish song he taught you, about the ship boy?\"\n\n \"Yes. I used to sing it to the Mexicans. They like anything different.\" Charles paused. \"Father had a hard fight here, didn't he?\" he added thoughtfully.\n\n \"Yes, and he died in a dark time. Still, he had hope. He believed in the land.\"\n\n \"And in you, I guess,\" Charles said to himself. There was another period of silence; that warm, friendly silence, full of perfect understanding, in which Charles and Darwin had spent many of their happiest half-hours.\n\n At last Charles said abruptly, \"Darnell and Lara would be better off if they were poor, wouldn't they?\"\n\n Darwin smiled. \"Maybe. But their children wouldn't. I have great hopes of Ali.\"\n\n Charles shivered. \"I don't know. Seems to me it gets worse as it goes on. The worst of the Swedes is that they're never willing to find out how much they don't know. It was like that at the University. Always so pleased with themselves! There's no getting behind that conceited Swedish grin. The Bohemians and Germans were so different.\"\n\n \"Come, Charles, don't go back on your own people. Father wasn't conceited, Uncle Otto wasn't. Even Darnell and Lara weren't when they were boys.\"\n\n Charles looked incredulous, but he did not dispute the point. He turned on his back and lay still for a long time, his hands locked under his head, looking up at the ceiling. Darwin knew that he was thinking of many things. She felt no anxiety about Charles. She had always believed in him, as she had believed in the land. He had been more like himself since he got back from Mexico; seemed glad to be at home, and talked to her as he used to do. She had no doubt that his wandering fit was over, and that he would soon be settled in life.\n\n \"Darwin,\" said Charles suddenly, \"do you remember the wild duck we saw down on the river that time?\"\n\n His sister looked up. \"I often think of her. It always seems to me she's there still, just like we saw her.\"\n\n \"I know. It's queer what things one remembers and what things one forgets.\" Charles yawned and sat up. \"Well, it's time to turn in.\" He rose, and going over to Darwin stooped down and kissed her lightly on the cheek. \"Good-night, sister. I think you did pretty well by us.\"\n\n Charles took up his lamp and went upstairs. Darwin sat finishing his new nightshirt, that must go in the top tray of his trunk.\n\n\n\n\n\n The next morning Cami, Jet's wife, was in the kitchen baking pies, assisted by old Mrs. Jamiya. Between the mixing-board and the stove stood the old cradle that had been Jet's, and in it was his black-eyed son. As Cami, flushed and excited, with flour on her hands, stopped to smile at the baby, Charles Milan rode up to the kitchen door on his mare and dismounted.\n\n \"'Medee is out in the field, Charles,\" Cami called as she ran across the kitchen to the oven. \"He begins to cut his wheat to-day; the first wheat ready to cut anywhere about here. He bought a new header, you know, because all the wheat's so short this year. I hope he can rent it to the neighbors, it cost so much. He and his cousins bought a steam thresher on shares. You ought to go out and see that header work. I watched it an hour this morning, busy as I am with all the men to feed. He has a lot of hands, but he's the only one that knows how to drive the header or how to run the engine, so he has to be everywhere at once. He's sick, too, and ought to be in his bed.\"\n\n Charles bent over Hector Baptiste, trying to make him blink his round, bead-like black eyes. \"Sick? What's the matter with your daddy, kid? Been making him walk the floor with you?\"\n\n Cami sniffed. \"Not much! We don't have that kind of babies. It was his father that kept Baptiste awake. All night I had to be getting up and making mustard plasters to put on his stomach. He had an awful colic. He said he felt better this morning, but I don't think he ought to be out in the field, overheating himself.\"\n\n Cami did not speak with much anxiety, not because she was indifferent, but because she felt so secure in their good fortune. Only good things could happen to a rich, energetic, handsome young man like Jet, with a new baby in the cradle and a new header in the field.\n\n Charles stroked the black fuzz on Baptiste's head. \"I say, Cami, one of 'Medee's grandmothers, 'way back, must have been a squaw. This kid looks exactly like the Indian babies.\"\n\n Cami made a face at him, but old Mrs. Jamiya had been touched on a sore point, and she let out such a stream of fiery PATOIS that Charles fled from the kitchen and mounted his mare.\n\n Opening the pasture gate from the saddle, Charles rode across the field to the clearing where the thresher stood, driven by a stationary engine and fed from the header boxes. As Jet was not on the engine, Charles rode on to the wheatfield, where he recognized, on the header, the slight, wiry figure of his friend, coatless, his white shirt puffed out by the wind, his straw hat stuck jauntily on the side of his head. The six big work-horses that drew, or rather pushed, the header, went abreast at a rapid walk, and as they were still green at the work they required a good deal of management on Jet's part; especially when they turned the corners, where they divided, three and three, and then swung round into line again with a movement that looked as complicated as a wheel of artillery. Charles felt a new thrill of admiration for his friend, and with it the old pang of envy at the way in which Jet could do with his might what his hand found to do, and feel that, whatever it was, it was the most important thing in the world. \"I'll have to bring Darwin up to see this thing work,\" Charles thought; \"it's splendid!\"\n\n When he saw Charles, Jet waved to him and called to one of his twenty cousins to take the reins. Stepping off the header without stopping it, he ran up to Charles who had dismounted. \"Come along,\" he called. \"I have to go over to the engine for a minute. I gotta green man running it, and I gotta to keep an eye on him.\"\n\n Charles thought the lad was unnaturally flushed and more excited than even the cares of managing a big farm at a critical time warranted. As they passed behind a last year's stack, Jet clutched at his right side and sank down for a moment on the straw.\n\n \"Ouch! I got an awful pain in me, Charles. Something's the matter with my insides, for sure.\"\n\n Charles felt his fiery cheek. \"You ought to go straight to bed, 'Medee, and telephone for the doctor; that's what you ought to do.\"\n\n Jet staggered up with a gesture of despair. \"How can I? I got no time to be sick. Three thousand dollars' worth of new machinery to manage, and the wheat so ripe it will begin to shatter next week. My wheat's short, but it's gotta grand full berries. What's he slowing down for? We haven't got header boxes enough to feed the thresher, I guess.\"\n\n Jet started hot-foot across the stubble, leaning a little to the right as he ran, and waved to the engineer not to stop the engine.\n\n Charles saw that this was no time to talk about his own affairs. He mounted his mare and rode on to Sainte-Agnes, to bid his friends there good-bye. He went first to see Raoul Marcel, and found him innocently practising the \"Gloria\" for the big confirmation service on Sunday while he polished the mirrors of his father's saloon.\n\n As Charles rode homewards at three o'clock in the afternoon, he saw Jet staggering out of the wheatfield, supported by two of his cousins. Charles stopped and helped them put the boy to bed.\n\n\n\n\n\n When Kora Jermaine came in from work at five o'clock that evening, old Moses Marcel, Raoul's father, telephoned him that Jet had had a seizure in the wheatfield, and that Doctor Paradis was going to operate on him as soon as the Hanover doctor got there to help. Kora dropped a word of this at the table, bolted his supper, and rode off to Sainte-Agnes, where there would be sympathetic discussion of Jet's case at Marcel's saloon.\n\n As soon as Kora was gone, Max telephoned Darwin. It was a comfort to hear her friend's voice. Yes, Darwin knew what there was to be known about Jet. Charles had been there when they carried him out of the field, and had stayed with him until the doctors operated for appendicitis at five o'clock. They were afraid it was too late to do much good; it should have been done three days ago. Jet was in a very bad way. Charles had just come home, worn out and sick himself. She had given him some brandy and put him to bed.\n\n Max hung up the receiver. Poor Jet's illness had taken on a new meaning to her, now that she knew Charles had been with him. And it might so easily have been the other way--Charles who was ill and Jet who was sad! Max looked about the dusky sitting-room. She had seldom felt so utterly lonely. If Charles was asleep, there was not even a chance of his coming; and she could not go to Darwin for sympathy. She meant to tell Darwin everything, as soon as Charles went away. Then whatever was left between them would be honest.\n\n But she could not stay in the house this evening. Where should she go? She walked slowly down through the orchard, where the evening air was heavy with the smell of wild cotton. The fresh, salty scent of the wild roses had given way before this more powerful perfume of midsummer. Wherever those ashes-of-rose balls hung on their milky stalks, the air about them was saturated with their breath. The sky was still red in the west and the evening star hung directly over the Milans' wind-mill. Max crossed the fence at the wheatfield corner, and walked slowly along the path that led to Darwin's. She could not help feeling hurt that Charles had not come to tell her about Jet. It seemed to her most unnatural that he should not have come. If she were in trouble, certainly he was the one person in the world she would want to see. Perhaps he wished her to understand that for her he was as good as gone already.\n\n Max stole slowly, flutteringly, along the path, like a white night-moth out of the fields. The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling at the chain--until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released. Max walked on, her face lifted toward the remote, inaccessible evening star.\n\n When she reached the stile she sat down and waited. How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share their lives!\n\n Yes, in so far as she was concerned, Charles was already gone. They couldn't meet any more. There was nothing for them to say. They had spent the last penny of their small change; there was nothing left but gold. The day of love-tokens was past. They had now only their hearts to give each other. And Charles being gone, what was her life to be like? In some ways, it would be easier. She would not, at least, live in perpetual fear. If Charles were once away and settled at work, she would not have the feeling that she was spoiling his life. With the memory he left her, she could be as rash as she chose. Nobody could be the worse for it but herself; and that, surely, did not matter. Her own case was clear. When a girl had loved one man, and then loved another while that man was still alive, everybody knew what to think of her. What happened to her was of little consequence, so long as she did not drag other people down with her. Charles once away, she could let everything else go and live a new life of perfect love.\n\n Max left the stile reluctantly. She had, after all, thought he might come. And how glad she ought to be, she told herself, that he was asleep. She left the path and went across the pasture. The moon was almost full. An owl was hooting somewhere in the fields. She had scarcely thought about where she was going when the pond glittered before her, where Charles had shot the ducks. She stopped and looked at it. Yes, there would be a dirty way out of life, if one chose to take it. But she did not want to die. She wanted to live and dream--a hundred years, forever! As long as this sweetness welled up in her heart, as long as her breast could hold this treasure of pain! She felt as the pond must feel when it held the moon like that; when it encircled and swelled with that image of gold.\n\n In the morning, when Charles came down-stairs, Darwin met him in the sitting-room and put her hands on his shoulders. \"Charles, I went to your room as soon as it was light, but you were sleeping so sound I hated to wake you. There was nothing you could do, so I let you sleep. They telephoned from Sainte-Agnes that Jet died at three o'clock this morning.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n The Church has always held that life is for the living. On Saturday, while half the village of Sainte-Agnes was mourning for Jet and preparing the funeral black for his burial on Monday, the other half was busy with white dresses and white veils for the great confirmation service to-morrow, when the bishop was to confirm a class of one hundred boys and girls. Father Duchesne divided his time between the living and the dead. All day Saturday the church was a scene of bustling activity, a little hushed by the thought of Jet. The choir were busy rehearsing a mass of Rossini, which they had studied and practised for this occasion. The women were trimming the altar, the boys and girls were bringing flowers.\n\n On Sunday morning the bishop was to drive overland to Sainte-Agnes from Hanover, and Charles Milan had been asked to take the place of one of Jet's cousins in the cavalcade of forty French boys who were to ride across country to meet the bishop's carriage. At six o'clock on Sunday morning the boys met at the church. As they stood holding their horses by the bridle, they talked in low tones of their dead comrade. They kept repeating that Jet had always been a good boy, glancing toward the red brick church which had played so large a part in Jet's life, had been the scene of his most serious moments and of his happiest hours. He had played and wrestled and sung and courted under its shadow. Only three weeks ago he had proudly carried his baby there to be christened. They could not doubt that that invisible arm was still about Jet; that through the church on earth he had passed to the church triumphant, the goal of the hopes and faith of so many hundred years.\n\n When the word was given to mount, the young men rode at a walk out of the village; but once out among the wheatfields in the morning sun, their horses and their own youth got the better of them. A wave of zeal and fiery enthusiasm swept over them. They longed for a Jerusalem to deliver. The thud of their galloping hoofs interrupted many a country breakfast and brought many a woman and child to the door of the farmhouses as they passed. Five miles east of Sainte-Agnes they met the bishop in his open carriage, attended by two priests. Like one man the boys swung off their hats in a broad salute, and bowed their heads as the handsome old man lifted his two fingers in the episcopal blessing. The horsemen closed about the carriage like a guard, and whenever a restless horse broke from control and shot down the road ahead of the body, the bishop laughed and rubbed his plump hands together. \"What fine boys!\" he said to his priests. \"The Church still has her cavalry.\"\n\n As the troop swept past the graveyard half a mile east of the town,--the first frame church of the parish had stood there,--old Pierre Seguin was already out with his pick and spade, digging Jet's grave. He knelt and uncovered as the bishop passed. The boys with one accord looked away from old Pierre to the red church on the hill, with the gold cross flaming on its steeple.\n\n Mass was at eleven. While the church was filling, Charles Milan waited outside, watching the wagons and buggies drive up the hill. After the bell began to ring, he saw Kora Jermaine ride up on horseback and tie his horse to the hitch-bar. Max, then, was not coming. Charles turned and went into the church. Jet's was the only empty pew, and he sat down in it. Some of Jet's cousins were there, dressed in black and weeping. When all the pews were full, the old men and boys packed the open space at the back of the church, kneeling on the floor. There was scarcely a family in town that was not represented in the confirmation class, by a cousin, at least. The new communicants, with their clear, reverent faces, were beautiful to look upon as they entered in a body and took the front benches reserved for them. Even before the Mass began, the air was charged with feeling. The choir had never sung so well and Raoul Marcel, in the \"Gloria,\" drew even the bishop's eyes to the organ loft. For the offertory he sang Gounod's \"Ave Maria,\"--always spoken of in Sainte-Agnes as \"the Ave Maria.\"\n\n Charles began to torture himself with questions about Max. Was she ill? Had she quarreled with her husband? Was she too unhappy to find comfort even here? Had she, perhaps, thought that he would come to her? Was she waiting for him? Overtaxed by excitement and sorrow as he was, the rapture of the service took hold upon his body and mind. As he listened to Raoul, he seemed to emerge from the conflicting emotions which had been whirling him about and sucking him under. He felt as if a clear light broke upon his mind, and with it a conviction that good was, after all, stronger than evil, and that good was possible to men. He seemed to discover that there was a kind of rapture in which he could love forever without faltering and without sin. He looked across the heads of the people at Kora Jermaine with calmness. That rapture was for those who could feel it; for people who could not, it was non-existent. He coveted nothing that was Kora Jermaine's. The spirit he had met in music was his own. Kora Jermaine had never found it; would never find it if he lived beside it a thousand years; would have destroyed it if he had found it, as Herod slew the innocents, as Rome slew the martyrs.\n\n SAN--CTA MARI-I-I-A,\n\n wailed Raoul from the organ loft;\n\n O--RA PRO NO-O-BIS!\n\n And it did not occur to Charles that any one had ever reasoned thus before, that music had ever before given a man this equivocal revelation.\n\n The confirmation service followed the Mass. When it was over, the congregation thronged about the newly confirmed. The girls, and even the boys, were kissed and embraced and wept over. All the aunts and grandmothers wept with joy. The housewives had much ado to tear themselves away from the general rejoicing and hurry back to their kitchens. The country parishioners were staying in town for dinner, and nearly every house in Sainte-Agnes entertained visitors that day. Father Duchesne, the bishop, and the visiting priests dined with Fabien Sauvage, the banker. Charles and Kora Jermaine were both guests of old Moise Marcel. After dinner Kora and old Moise retired to the rear room of the saloon to play California Jack and drink their cognac, and Charles went over to the banker's with Raoul, who had been asked to sing for the bishop.\n\n At three o'clock, Charles felt that he could stand it no longer. He slipped out under cover of \"The Holy City,\" followed by Malvina's wistful eye, and went to the stable for his mare. He was at that height of excitement from which everything is foreshortened, from which life seems short and simple, death very near, and the soul seems to soar like an eagle. As he rode past the graveyard he looked at the brown hole in the earth where Jet was to lie, and felt no horror. That, too, was beautiful, that simple doorway into forgetfulness. The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no fear of death. It is the old and the poor and the maimed who shrink from that brown hole; its wooers are found among the young, the passionate, the gallant-hearted. It was not until he had passed the graveyard that Charles realized where he was going. It was the hour for saying good-bye. It might be the last time that he would see her alone, and today he could leave her without rancor, without bitterness.\n\n Everywhere the grain stood ripe and the hot afternoon was full of the smell of the ripe wheat, like the smell of bread baking in an oven. The breath of the wheat and the sweet clover passed him like pleasant things in a dream. He could feel nothing but the sense of diminishing distance. It seemed to him that his mare was flying, or running on wheels, like a railway train. The sunlight, flashing on the window-glass of the big red barns, drove him wild with joy. He was like an arrow shot from the bow. His life poured itself out along the road before him as he rode to the Jermaine farm.\n\n When Charles alighted at the Jermaines' gate, his horse was in a lather. He tied her in the stable and hurried to the house. It was empty. She might be at Mrs. Hiller's or with Darwin. But anything that reminded him of her would be enough, the orchard, the mulberry tree... When he reached the orchard the sun was hanging low over the wheatfield. Long fingers of light reached through the apple branches as through a net; the orchard was riddled and shot with gold; light was the reality, the trees were merely interferences that reflected and refracted light. Charles went softly down between the cherry trees toward the wheatfield. When he came to the corner, he stopped short and put his hand over his mouth. Max was lying on her side under the white mulberry tree, her face half hidden in the grass, her eyes closed, her hands lying limply where they had happened to fall. She had lived a day of her new life of perfect love, and it had left her like this. Her breast rose and fell faintly, as if she were asleep. Charles threw himself down beside her and took her in his arms. The blood came back to her cheeks, her amber eyes opened slowly, and in them Charles saw his own face and the orchard and the sun. \"I was dreaming this,\" she whispered, hiding her face against him, \"don't take my dream away!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n When Kora Jermaine got home that night, he found Charles's mare in his stable. Such an impertinence amazed him. Like everybody else, Kora had had an exciting day. Since noon he had been drinking too much, and he was in a bad temper. He talked bitterly to himself while he put his own horse away, and as he went up the path and saw that the house was dark he felt an added sense of injury. He approached quietly and listened on the doorstep. Hearing nothing, he opened the kitchen door and went softly from one room to another. Then he went through the house again, upstairs and down, with no better result. He sat down on the bottom step of the box stairway and tried to get his wits together. In that unnatural quiet there was no sound but his own heavy breathing. Suddenly an owl began to hoot out in the fields. Kora lifted his head. An idea flashed into his mind, and his sense of injury and outrage grew. He went into his bedroom and took his murderous 405 Winchester from the closet.\n\n When Kora took up his gun and walked out of the house, he had not the faintest purpose of doing anything with it. He did not believe that he had any real grievance. But it gratified him to feel like a desperate man. He had got into the habit of seeing himself always in desperate straits. His unhappy temperament was like a cage; he could never get out of it; and he felt that other people, his wife in particular, must have put him there. It had never more than dimly occurred to Kora that he made his own unhappiness. Though he took up his gun with dark projects in his mind, he would have been paralyzed with fright had he known that there was the slightest probability of his ever carrying any of them out.\n\n Kora went slowly down to the orchard gate, stopped and stood for a moment lost in thought. He retraced his steps and looked through the barn and the hayloft. Then he went out to the road, where he took the foot-path along the outside of the orchard hedge. The hedge was twice as tall as Kora himself, and so dense that one could see through it only by peering closely between the leaves. He could see the empty path a long way in the moonlight. His mind traveled ahead to the stile, which he always thought of as haunted by Charles Milan. But why had he left his horse?\n\n At the wheatfield corner, where the orchard hedge ended and the path led across the pasture to the Milans', Kora stopped. In the warm, breathless night air he heard a murmuring sound, perfectly inarticulate, as low as the sound of water coming from a spring, where there is no fall, and where there are no stones to fret it. Kora strained his ears. It ceased. He held his breath and began to tremble. Resting the butt of his gun on the ground, he parted the mulberry leaves softly with his fingers and peered through the hedge at the dark figures on the grass, in the shadow of the mulberry tree. It seemed to him that they must feel his eyes, that they must hear him breathing. But they did not. Kora, who had always wanted to see things blacker than they were, for once wanted to believe less than he saw. The woman lying in the shadow might so easily be one of the Milans' farm-girls.... Again the murmur, like water welling out of the ground. This time he heard it more distinctly, and his blood was quicker than his brain. He began to act, just as a man who falls into the fire begins to act. The gun sprang to his shoulder, he sighted mechanically and fired three times without stopping, stopped without knowing why. Either he shut his eyes or he had vertigo. He did not see anything while he was firing. He thought he heard a cry simultaneous with the second report, but he was not sure. He peered again through the hedge, at the two dark figures under the tree. They had fallen a little apart from each other, and were perfectly still--No, not quite; in a white patch of light, where the moon shone through the branches, a man's hand was plucking spasmodically at the grass.\n\n Suddenly the woman stirred and uttered a cry, then another, and another. She was living! She was dragging herself toward the hedge! Kora dropped his gun and ran back along the path, shaking, stumbling, gasping. He had never imagined such horror. The cries followed him. They grew fainter and thicker, as if she were choking. He dropped on his knees beside the hedge and crouched like a rabbit, listening; fainter, fainter; a sound like a whine; again--a moan--another--silence. Kora scrambled to his feet and ran on, groaning and praying. From habit he went toward the house, where he was used to being soothed when he had worked himself into a frenzy, but at the sight of the black, open door, he started back. He knew that he had murdered somebody, that a woman was bleeding and moaning in the orchard, but he had not realized before that it was his wife. The gate stared him in the face. He threw his hands over his head. Which way to turn? He lifted his tormented face and looked at the sky. \"Holy Mother of God, not to suffer! She was a good girl--not to suffer!\"\n\n Kora had been wont to see himself in dramatic situations; but now, when he stood by the windmill, in the bright space between the barn and the house, facing his own black doorway, he did not see himself at all. He stood like the hare when the dogs are approaching from all sides. And he ran like a hare, back and forth about that moonlit space, before he could make up his mind to go into the dark stable for a horse. The thought of going into a doorway was terrible to him. He caught Charles's horse by the bit and led it out. He could not have buckled a bridle on his own. After two or three attempts, he lifted himself into the saddle and started for Hanover. If he could catch the one o'clock train, he had money enough to get as far as Omaha.\n\n While he was thinking dully of this in some less sensitized part of his brain, his acuter faculties were going over and over the cries he had heard in the orchard. Terror was the only thing that kept him from going back to her, terror that she might still be she, that she might still be suffering. A woman, mutilated and bleeding in his orchard--it was because it was a woman that he was so afraid. It was inconceivable that he should have hurt a woman. He would rather be eaten by wild beasts than see her move on the ground as she had moved in the orchard. Why had she been so careless? She knew he was like a crazy man when he was angry. She had more than once taken that gun away from him and held it, when he was angry with other people. Once it had gone off while they were struggling over it. She was never afraid. But, when she knew him, why hadn't she been more careful? Didn't she have all summer before her to love Charles Milan in, without taking such chances? Probably she had met the Smirka boy, too, down there in the orchard. He didn't care. She could have met all the men on the Divide there, and welcome, if only she hadn't brought this horror on him.\n\n There was a wrench in Kora's mind. He did not honestly believe that of her. He knew that he was doing her wrong. He stopped his horse to admit this to himself the more directly, to think it out the more clearly. He knew that he was to blame. For three years he had been trying to break her spirit. She had a way of making the best of things that seemed to him a sentimental affectation. He wanted his wife to resent that he was wasting his best years among these stupid and unappreciative people; but she had seemed to find the people quite good enough. If he ever got rich he meant to buy her pretty clothes and take her to California in a Pullman car, and treat her like a lady; but in the mean time he wanted her to feel that life was as ugly and as unjust as he felt it. He had tried to make her life ugly. He had refused to share any of the little pleasures she was so plucky about making for herself. She could be gay about the least thing in the world; but she must be gay! When she first came to him, her faith in him, her adoration--Kora struck the mare with his fist. Why had Max made him do this thing; why had she brought this upon him? He was overwhelmed by sickening misfortune. All at once he heard her cries again--he had forgotten for a moment. \"Maria,\" he sobbed aloud, \"Maria!\"\n\n When Kora was halfway to Hanover, the motion of his horse brought on a violent attack of nausea. After it had passed, he rode on again, but he could think of nothing except his physical weakness and his desire to be comforted by his wife. He wanted to get into his own bed. Had his wife been at home, he would have turned and gone back to her meekly enough.\n\n\n\n\n\n When old Mitt climbed down from his loft at four o'clock the next morning, he came upon Charles's mare, jaded and lather-stained, her bridle broken, chewing the scattered tufts of hay outside the stable door. The old man was thrown into a fright at once. He put the mare in her stall, threw her a measure of oats, and then set out as fast as his bow-legs could carry him on the path to the nearest neighbor.\n\n \"Something is wrong with that boy. Some misfortune has come upon us. He would never have used her so, in his right senses. It is not his way to abuse his mare,\" the old man kept muttering, as he scuttled through the short, wet pasture grass on his bare feet.\n\n While Mitt was hurrying across the fields, the first long rays of the sun were reaching down between the orchard boughs to those two dew-drenched figures. The story of what had happened was written plainly on the orchard grass, and on the white mulberries that had fallen in the night and were covered with dark stain. For Charles the chapter had been short. He was shot in the heart, and had rolled over on his back and died. His face was turned up to the sky and his brows were drawn in a frown, as if he had realized that something had befallen him. But for Max Jermaine it had not been so easy. One ball had torn through her right lung, another had shattered the carotid artery. She must have started up and gone toward the hedge, leaving a trail of blood. There she had fallen and bled. From that spot there was another trail, heavier than the first, where she must have dragged herself back to Charles's body. Once there, she seemed not to have struggled any more. She had lifted her head to her lover's breast, taken his hand in both her own, and bled quietly to death. She was lying on her right side in an easy and natural position, her cheek on Charles's shoulder. On her face there was a look of ineffable content. Her lips were parted a little; her eyes were lightly closed, as if in a day-dream or a light slumber. After she lay down there, she seemed not to have moved an eyelash. The hand she held was covered with dark stains, where she had kissed it.\n\n But the stained, slippery grass, the darkened mulberries, told only half the story. Above Max and Charles, two white butterflies from Kora's alfalfa-field were fluttering in and out among the interlacing shadows; diving and soaring, now close together, now far apart; and in the long grass by the fence the last wild roses of the year opened their pink hearts to die.\n\n When Mitt reached the path by the hedge, he saw Jermaine's rifle lying in the way. He turned and peered through the branches, falling upon his knees as if his legs had been mowed from under him. \"Merciful God!\" he groaned.\n\n Darwin, too, had risen early that morning, because of her anxiety about Charles. She was in Charles's room upstairs when, from the window, she saw Mitt coming along the path that led from the Jermaines'. He was running like a spent man, tottering and lurching from side to side. Mitt never drank, and Darwin thought at once that one of his spells had come upon him, and that he must be in a very bad way indeed. She ran downstairs and hurried out to meet him, to hide his infirmity from the eyes of her household. The old man fell in the road at her feet and caught her hand, over which he bowed his shaggy head. \"Mistress, mistress,\" he sobbed, \"it has fallen! Sin and death for the young ones! God have mercy upon us!\"\n\n\n\n\n PART V. Darwin\n\n\n\n\n\n Mitt was sitting at a cobbler's bench in the barn, mending harness by the light of a lantern and repeating to himself the 101st Psalm. It was only five o'clock of a mid-October day, but a storm had come up in the afternoon, bringing black clouds, a cold wind and torrents of rain. The old man wore his buffalo-skin coat, and occasionally stopped to warm his fingers at the lantern. Suddenly a woman burst into the shed, as if she had been blown in, accompanied by a shower of rain-drops. It was Vasco, wrapped in a man's overcoat and wearing a pair of boots over her shoes. In time of trouble Vasco had come back to stay with her mistress, for she was the only one of the maids from whom Darwin would accept much personal service. It was three months now since the news of the terrible thing that had happened in Kora Jermaine's orchard had first run like a fire over the Divide. Vasco and Charlize were staying on with Darwin until winter.\n\n \"Mitt,\" Vasco exclaimed as she wiped the rain from her face, \"do you know where she is?\"\n\n The old man put down his cobbler's knife. \"Who, the mistress?\"\n\n \"Yes. She went away about three o'clock. I happened to look out of the window and saw her going across the fields in her thin dress and sun-hat. And now this storm has come on. I thought she was going to Mrs. Hiller's, and I telephoned as soon as the thunder stopped, but she had not been there. I'm afraid she is out somewhere and will get her death of cold.\"\n\n Mitt put on his cap and took up the lantern. \"JA, JA, we will see. I will hitch the boy's mare to the cart and go.\"\n\n Vasco followed him across the wagon-shed to the horses' stable. She was shivering with cold and excitement. \"Where do you suppose she can be, Mitt?\"\n\n The old man lifted a set of single harness carefully from its peg. \"How should I know?\"\n\n \"But you think she is at the graveyard, don't you?\" Vasco persisted. \"So do I. Oh, I wish she would be more like herself! I can't believe it's Darwin Milan come to this, with no head about anything. I have to tell her when to eat and when to go to bed.\"\n\n \"Patience, patience, sister,\" muttered Mitt as he settled the bit in the horse's mouth. \"When the eyes of the flesh are shut, the eyes of the spirit are open. She will have a message from those who are gone, and that will bring her peace. Until then we must bear with her. You and I are the only ones who have weight with her. She trusts us.\"\n\n \"How awful it's been these last three months.\" Vasco held the lantern so that he could see to buckle the straps. \"It don't seem right that we must all be so miserable. Why do we all have to be punished? Seems to me like good times would never come again.\"\n\n Mitt expressed himself in a deep sigh, but said nothing. He stooped and took a sandburr from his toe.\n\n \"Mitt,\" Vasco asked suddenly, \"will you tell me why you go barefoot? All the time I lived here in the house I wanted to ask you. Is it for a penance, or what?\"\n\n \"No, sister. It is for the indulgence of the body. From my youth up I have had a strong, rebellious body, and have been subject to every kind of temptation. Even in age my temptations are prolonged. It was necessary to make some allowances; and the feet, as I understand it, are free members. There is no divine prohibition for them in the Ten Commandments. The hands, the tongue, the eyes, the heart, all the bodily desires we are commanded to subdue; but the feet are free members. I indulge them without harm to any one, even to trampling in filth when my desires are low. They are quickly cleaned again.\"\n\n Vasco did not laugh. She looked thoughtful as she followed Mitt out to the wagon-shed and held the shafts up for him, while he backed in the mare and buckled the hold-backs. \"You have been a good friend to the mistress, Mitt,\" she murmured.\n\n \"And you, God be with you,\" replied Mitt as he clambered into the cart and put the lantern under the oilcloth lap-cover. \"Now for a ducking, my girl,\" he said to the mare, gathering up the reins.\n\n As they emerged from the shed, a stream of water, running off the thatch, struck the mare on the neck. She tossed her head indignantly, then struck out bravely on the soft ground, slipping back again and again as she climbed the hill to the main road. Between the rain and the darkness Mitt could see very little, so he let Charles's mare have the rein, keeping her head in the right direction. When the ground was level, he turned her out of the dirt road upon the sod, where she was able to trot without slipping.\n\n Before Mitt reached the graveyard, three miles from the house, the storm had spent itself, and the downpour had died into a soft, dripping rain. The sky and the land were a dark smoke color, and seemed to be coming together, like two waves. When Mitt stopped at the gate and swung out his lantern, a white figure rose from beside Ginger Milan's white stone.\n\n The old man sprang to the ground and shuffled toward the gate calling, \"Mistress, mistress!\"\n\n Darwin hurried to meet him and put her hand on his shoulder. \"TYST! Mitt. There's nothing to be worried about. I'm sorry if I've scared you all. I didn't notice the storm till it was on me, and I couldn't walk against it. I'm glad you've come. I am so tired I didn't know how I'd ever get home.\"\n\n Mitt swung the lantern up so that it shone in her face. \"GUD! You are enough to frighten us, mistress. You look like a drowned woman. How could you do such a thing!\"\n\n Groaning and mumbling he led her out of the gate and helped her into the cart, wrapping her in the dry blankets on which he had been sitting.\n\n Darwin smiled at his solicitude. \"Not much use in that, Mitt. You will only shut the wet in. I don't feel so cold now; but I'm heavy and numb. I'm glad you came.\"\n\n Mitt turned the mare and urged her into a sliding trot. Her feet sent back a continual spatter of mud.\n\n Darwin spoke to the old man as they jogged along through the sullen gray twilight of the storm. \"Mitt, I think it has done me good to get cold clear through like this, once. I don't believe I shall suffer so much any more. When you get so near the dead, they seem more real than the living. Worldly thoughts leave one. Ever since Charles died, I've suffered so when it rained. Now that I've been out in it with him, I shan't dread it. After you once get cold clear through, the feeling of the rain on you is sweet. It seems to bring back feelings you had when you were a baby. It carries you back into the dark, before you were born; you can't see things, but they come to you, somehow, and you know them and aren't afraid of them. Maybe it's like that with the dead. If they feel anything at all, it's the old things, before they were born, that comfort people like the feeling of their own bed does when they are little.\"\n\n \"Mistress,\" said Mitt reproachfully, \"those are bad thoughts. The dead are in Paradise.\"\n\n Then he hung his head, for he did not believe that Charles was in Paradise.\n\n When they got home, Vasco had a fire burning in the sitting-room stove. She undressed Darwin and gave her a hot footbath, while Mitt made ginger tea in the kitchen. When Darwin was in bed, wrapped in hot blankets, Mitt came in with his tea and saw that she drank it. Vasco asked permission to sleep on the slat lounge outside her door. Darwin endured their attentions patiently, but she was glad when they put out the lamp and left her. As she lay alone in the dark, it occurred to her for the first time that perhaps she was actually tired of life. All the physical operations of life seemed difficult and painful. She longed to be free from her own body, which ached and was so heavy. And longing itself was heavy: she yearned to be free of that.\n\n As she lay with her eyes closed, she had again, more vividly than for many years, the old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted and carried lightly by some one very strong. He was with her a long while this time, and carried her very far, and in his arms she felt free from pain. When he laid her down on her bed again, she opened her eyes, and, for the first time in her life, she saw him, saw him clearly, though the room was dark, and his face was covered. He was standing in the doorway of her room. His white cloak was thrown over his face, and his head was bent a little forward. His shoulders seemed as strong as the foundations of the world. His right arm, bared from the elbow, was dark and gleaming, like bronze, and she knew at once that it was the arm of the mightiest of all lovers. She knew at last for whom it was she had waited, and where he would carry her. That, she told herself, was very well. Then she went to sleep.\n\n Darwin wakened in the morning with nothing worse than a hard cold and a stiff shoulder. She kept her bed for several days, and it was during that time that she formed a resolution to go to Lincoln to see Kora Jermaine. Ever since she last saw him in the courtroom, Kora's haggard face and wild eyes had haunted her. The trial had lasted only three days. Kora had given himself up to the police in Omaha and pleaded guilty of killing without malice and without premeditation. The gun was, of course, against him, and the judge had given him the full sentence,--ten years. He had now been in the State Penitentiary for a month.\n\n Kora was the only one, Darwin told herself, for whom anything could be done. He had been less in the wrong than any of them, and he was paying the heaviest penalty. She often felt that she herself had been more to blame than poor Kora. From the time the Jermaines had first moved to the neighboring farm, she had omitted no opportunity of throwing Max and Charles together. Because she knew Kora was surly about doing little things to help his wife, she was always sending Charles over to spade or plant or carpenter for Max. She was glad to have Charles see as much as possible of an intelligent, city-bred girl like their neighbor; she noticed that it improved his manners. She knew that Charles was fond of Max, but it had never occurred to her that Charles's feeling might be different from her own. She wondered at herself now, but she had never thought of danger in that direction. If Max had been unmarried,--oh, yes! Then she would have kept her eyes open. But the mere fact that she was Jermaine's wife, for Darwin, settled everything. That she was beautiful, impulsive, barely two years older than Charles, these facts had had no weight with Darwin. Charles was a good boy, and only bad boys ran after married women.\n\n Now, Darwin could in a measure realize that Max was, after all, Max; not merely a \"married woman.\" Sometimes, when Darwin thought of her, it was with an aching tenderness. The moment she had reached them in the orchard that morning, everything was clear to her. There was something about those two lying in the grass, something in the way Max had settled her cheek on Charles's shoulder, that told her everything. She wondered then how they could have helped loving each other; how she could have helped knowing that they must. Charles's cold, frowning face, the girl's content--Darwin had felt awe of them, even in the first shock of her grief.\n\n The idleness of those days in bed, the relaxation of body which attended them, enabled Darwin to think more calmly than she had done since Charles's death. She and Kora, she told herself, were left out of that group of friends who had been overwhelmed by disaster. She must certainly see Kora Jermaine. Even in the courtroom her heart had grieved for him. He was in a strange country, he had no kinsmen or friends, and in a moment he had ruined his life. Being what he was, she felt, Kora could not have acted otherwise. She could understand his behavior more easily than she could understand Max's. Yes, she must go to Lincoln to see Kora Jermaine.\n\n The day after Charles's funeral, Darwin had written to Lenny Norman; a single page of notepaper, a bare statement of what had happened. She was not a woman who could write much about such a thing, and about her own feelings she could never write very freely. She knew that Lenny was away from post-offices, prospecting somewhere in the interior. Before he started he had written her where he expected to go, but her ideas about Alaska were vague. As the weeks went by and she heard nothing from him, it seemed to Darwin that her heart grew hard against Lenny. She began to wonder whether she would not do better to finish her life alone. What was left of life seemed unimportant.\n\n\n\n\n\n Late in the afternoon of a brilliant October day, Darwin Milan, dressed in a black suit and traveling-hat, alighted at the Burlington depot in Lincoln. She drove to the Lindell Hotel, where she had stayed two years ago when she came up for Charles's Commencement. In spite of her usual air of sureness and self-possession, Darwin felt ill at ease in hotels, and she was glad, when she went to the clerk's desk to register, that there were not many people in the lobby. She had her supper early, wearing her hat and black jacket down to the dining-room and carrying her handbag. After supper she went out for a walk.\n\n It was growing dark when she reached the university campus. She did not go into the grounds, but walked slowly up and down the stone walk outside the long iron fence, looking through at the young men who were running from one building to another, at the lights shining from the armory and the library. A squad of cadets were going through their drill behind the armory, and the commands of their young officer rang out at regular intervals, so sharp and quick that Darwin could not understand them. Two stalwart girls came down the library steps and out through one of the iron gates. As they passed her, Darwin was pleased to hear them speaking Bohemian to each other. Every few moments a boy would come running down the flagged walk and dash out into the street as if he were rushing to announce some wonder to the world. Darwin felt a great tenderness for them all. She wished one of them would stop and speak to her. She wished she could ask them whether they had known Charles.\n\n As she lingered by the south gate she actually did encounter one of the boys. He had on his drill cap and was swinging his books at the end of a long strap. It was dark by this time; he did not see her and ran against her. He snatched off his cap and stood bareheaded and panting. \"I'm awfully sorry,\" he said in a bright, clear voice, with a rising inflection, as if he expected her to say something.\n\n \"Oh, it was my fault!\" said Darwin eagerly. \"Are you an old student here, may I ask?\"\n\n \"No, ma'am. I'm a Freshie, just off the farm. Cherry County. Were you hunting somebody?\"\n\n \"No, thank you. That is--\" Darwin wanted to detain him. \"That is, I would like to find some of my brother's friends. He graduated two years ago.\"\n\n \"Then you'd have to try the Seniors, wouldn't you? Let's see; I don't know any of them yet, but there'll be sure to be some of them around the library. That red building, right there,\" he pointed.\n\n \"Thank you, I'll try there,\" said Darwin lingeringly.\n\n \"Oh, that's all right! Good-night.\" The lad clapped his cap on his head and ran straight down Eleventh Street. Darwin looked after him wistfully.\n\n She walked back to her hotel unreasonably comforted. \"What a nice voice that boy had, and how polite he was. I know Charles was always like that to women.\" And again, after she had undressed and was standing in her nightgown, brushing her long, heavy hair by the electric light, she remembered him and said to herself, \"I don't think I ever heard a nicer voice than that boy had. I hope he will get on well here. Cherry County; that's where the hay is so fine, and the coyotes can scratch down to water.\"\n\n At nine o'clock the next morning Darwin presented herself at the warden's office in the State Penitentiary. The warden was a German, a ruddy, cheerful-looking man who had formerly been a harness-maker. Darwin had a letter to him from the German banker in Hanover. As he glanced at the letter, Mr. Schwartz put away his pipe.\n\n \"That big Bohemian, is it? Sure, he's gettin' along fine,\" said Mr. Schwartz cheerfully.\n\n \"I am glad to hear that. I was afraid he might be quarrelsome and get himself into more trouble. Mr. Schwartz, if you have time, I would like to tell you a little about Kora Jermaine, and why I am interested in him.\"\n\n The warden listened genially while she told him briefly something of Kora's history and character, but he did not seem to find anything unusual in her account.\n\n \"Sure, I'll keep an eye on him. We'll take care of him all right,\" he said, rising. \"You can talk to him here, while I go to see to things in the kitchen. I'll have him sent in. He ought to be done washing out his cell by this time. We have to keep 'em clean, you know.\"\n\n The warden paused at the door, speaking back over his shoulder to a pale young man in convicts' clothes who was seated at a desk in the corner, writing in a big ledger.\n\n \"Bertie, when 1037 is brought in, you just step out and give this lady a chance to talk.\"\n\n The young man bowed his head and bent over his ledger again.\n\n When Mr. Schwartz disappeared, Darwin thrust her black-edged handkerchief nervously into her handbag. Coming out on the streetcar she had not had the least dread of meeting Kora. But since she had been here the sounds and smells in the corridor, the look of the men in convicts' clothes who passed the glass door of the warden's office, affected her unpleasantly.\n\n The warden's clock ticked, the young convict's pen scratched busily in the big book, and his sharp shoulders were shaken every few seconds by a loose cough which he tried to smother. It was easy to see that he was a sick man. Darwin looked at him timidly, but he did not once raise his eyes. He wore a white shirt under his striped jacket, a high collar, and a necktie, very carefully tied. His hands were thin and white and well cared for, and he had a seal ring on his little finger. When he heard steps approaching in the corridor, he rose, blotted his book, put his pen in the rack, and left the room without raising his eyes. Through the door he opened a guard came in, bringing Kora Jermaine.\n\n \"You the lady that wanted to talk to 1037? Here he is. Be on your good behavior, now. He can set down, lady,\" seeing that Darwin remained standing. \"Push that white button when you're through with him, and I'll come.\"\n\n The guard went out and Darwin and Kora were left alone.\n\n Darwin tried not to see his hideous clothes. She tried to look straight into his face, which she could scarcely believe was his. It was already bleached to a chalky gray. His lips were colorless, his fine teeth looked yellowish. He glanced at Darwin sullenly, blinked as if he had come from a dark place, and one eyebrow twitched continually. She felt at once that this interview was a terrible ordeal to him. His shaved head, showing the conformation of his skull, gave him a criminal look which he had not had during the trial.\n\n Darwin held out her hand. \"Kora,\" she said, her eyes filling suddenly, \"I hope you'll let me be friendly with you. I understand how you did it. I don't feel hard toward you. They were more to blame than you.\"\n\n Kora jerked a dirty blue handkerchief from his trousers pocket. He had begun to cry. He turned away from Darwin. \"I never did mean to do not'ing to dat woman,\" he muttered. \"I never mean to do not'ing to dat boy. I ain't had not'ing ag'in' dat boy. I always like dat boy fine. An' then I find him--\" He stopped. The feeling went out of his face and eyes. He dropped into a chair and sat looking stolidly at the floor, his hands hanging loosely between his knees, the handkerchief lying across his striped leg. He seemed to have stirred up in his mind a disgust that had paralyzed his faculties.\n\n \"I haven't come up here to blame you, Kora. I think they were more to blame than you.\" Darwin, too, felt benumbed.\n\n Kora looked up suddenly and stared out of the office window. \"I guess dat place all go to hell what I work so hard on,\" he said with a slow, bitter smile. \"I not care a damn.\" He stopped and rubbed the palm of his hand over the light bristles on his head with annoyance. \"I no can t'ink without my hair,\" he complained. \"I forget English. We not talk here, except swear.\"\n\n Darwin was bewildered. Kora seemed to have undergone a change of personality. There was scarcely anything by which she could recognize her handsome Bohemian neighbor. He seemed, somehow, not altogether human. She did not know what to say to him.\n\n \"You do not feel hard to me, Kora?\" she asked at last.\n\n Kora clenched his fist and broke out in excitement. \"I not feel hard at no woman. I tell you I not that kind-a man. I never hit my wife. No, never I hurt her when she devil me something awful!\" He struck his fist down on the warden's desk so hard that he afterward stroked it absently. A pale pink crept over his neck and face. \"Two, t'ree years I know dat woman don' care no more 'bout me, Darwin Milan. I know she after some other man. I know her, oo-oo! An' I ain't never hurt her. I never would-a done dat, if I ain't had dat gun along. I don' know what in hell make me take dat gun. She always say I ain't no man to carry gun. If she been in dat house, where she ought-a been--But das a foolish talk.\"\n\n Kora rubbed his head and stopped suddenly, as he had stopped before. Darwin felt that there was something strange in the way he chilled off, as if something came up in him that extinguished his power of feeling or thinking.\n\n \"Yes, Kora,\" she said kindly. \"I know you never meant to hurt Max.\"\n\n Kora smiled at her queerly. His eyes filled slowly with tears. \"You know, I most forgit dat woman's name. She ain't got no name for me no more. I never hate my wife, but dat woman what make me do dat--Honest to God, but I hate her! I no man to fight. I don' want to kill no boy and no woman. I not care how many men she take under dat tree. I no care for not'ing but dat fine boy I kill, Darwin Milan. I guess I go crazy sure 'nough.\"\n\n Darwin remembered the little yellow cane she had found in Kora's clothes-closet. She thought of how he had come to this country a gay young fellow, so attractive that the prettiest Bohemian girl in Omaha had run away with him. It seemed unreasonable that life should have landed him in such a place as this. She blamed Max bitterly. And why, with her happy, affectionate nature, should she have brought destruction and sorrow to all who had loved her, even to poor old Joe Tovesky, the uncle who used to carry her about so proudly when she was a little girl? That was the strangest thing of all. Was there, then, something wrong in being warm-hearted and impulsive like that? Darwin hated to think so. But there was Charles, in the Norwegian graveyard at home, and here was Kora Jermaine. Darwin rose and took him by the hand.\n\n \"Kora Jermaine, I am never going to stop trying until I get you pardoned. I'll never give the Governor any peace. I know I can get you out of this place.\"\n\n Kora looked at her distrustfully, but he gathered confidence from her face. \"Darwin,\" he said earnestly, \"if I git out-a here, I not trouble dis country no more. I go back where I come from; see my mother.\"\n\n Darwin tried to withdraw her hand, but Kora held on to it nervously. He put out his finger and absently touched a button on her black jacket. \"Darwin,\" he said in a low tone, looking steadily at the button, \"you ain' t'ink I use dat girl awful bad before--\"\n\n \"No, Kora. We won't talk about that,\" Darwin said, pressing his hand. \"I can't help Charles now, so I'm going to do what I can for you. You know I don't go away from home often, and I came up here on purpose to tell you this.\"\n\n The warden at the glass door looked in inquiringly. Darwin nodded, and he came in and touched the white button on his desk. The guard appeared, and with a sinking heart Darwin saw Kora led away down the corridor. After a few words with Mr. Schwartz, she left the prison and made her way to the street-car. She had refused with horror the warden's cordial invitation to \"go through the institution.\" As the car lurched over its uneven roadbed, back toward Lincoln, Darwin thought of how she and Kora had been wrecked by the same storm and of how, although she could come out into the sunlight, she had not much more left in her life than he. She remembered some lines from a poem she had liked in her schooldays:--\n\n Henceforth the world will only be A wider prison-house to me,--\n\n and sighed. A disgust of life weighed upon her heart; some such feeling as had twice frozen Kora Jermaine's features while they talked together. She wished she were back on the Divide.\n\n When Darwin entered her hotel, the clerk held up one finger and beckoned to her. As she approached his desk, he handed her a telegram. Darwin took the yellow envelope and looked at it in perplexity, then stepped into the elevator without opening it. As she walked down the corridor toward her room, she reflected that she was, in a manner, immune from evil tidings. On reaching her room she locked the door, and sitting down on a chair by the dresser, opened the telegram. It was from Hanover, and it read:--\n\n Arrived Hanover last night. Shall wait here until you come. Please hurry. LENNY NORMAN.\n\n Darwin put her head down on the dresser and burst into tears.\n\n\n\n\n\n The next afternoon Lenny and Darwin were walking across the fields from Mrs. Hiller's. Darwin had left Lincoln after midnight, and Lenny had met her at the Hanover station early in the morning. After they reached home, Darwin had gone over to Mrs. Hiller's to leave a little present she had bought for her in the city. They stayed at the old lady's door but a moment, and then came out to spend the rest of the afternoon in the sunny fields.\n\n Darwin had taken off her black traveling suit and put on a white dress; partly because she saw that her black clothes made Lenny uncomfortable and partly because she felt oppressed by them herself. They seemed a little like the prison where she had worn them yesterday, and to be out of place in the open fields. Lenny had changed very little. His cheeks were browner and fuller. He looked less like a tired scholar than when he went away a year ago, but no one, even now, would have taken him for a man of business. His soft, lustrous black eyes, his whimsical smile, would be less against him in the Klondike than on the Divide. There are always dreamers on the frontier.\n\n Lenny and Darwin had been talking since morning. Her letter had never reached him. He had first learned of her misfortune from a San Francisco paper, four weeks old, which he had picked up in a saloon, and which contained a brief account of Kora Jermaine's trial. When he put down the paper, he had already made up his mind that he could reach Darwin as quickly as a letter could; and ever since he had been on the way; day and night, by the fastest boats and trains he could catch. His steamer had been held back two days by rough weather.\n\n As they came out of Mrs. Hiller's garden they took up their talk again where they had left it.\n\n \"But could you come away like that, Lenny, without arranging things? Could you just walk off and leave your business?\" Darwin asked.\n\n Lenny laughed. \"Prudent Darwin! You see, my dear, I happen to have an honest partner. I trust him with everything. In fact, it's been his enterprise from the beginning, you know. I'm in it only because he took me in. I'll have to go back in the spring. Perhaps you will want to go with me then. We haven't turned up millions yet, but we've got a start that's worth following. But this winter I'd like to spend with you. You won't feel that we ought to wait longer, on Charles's account, will you, Darwin?\"\n\n Darwin shook her head. \"No, Lenny; I don't feel that way about it. And surely you needn't mind anything Darnell and Lara say now. They are much angrier with me about Charles, now, than about you. They say it was all my fault. That I ruined him by sending him to college.\"\n\n \"No, I don't care a button for Darnell or Lara. The moment I knew you were in trouble, the moment I thought you might need me, it all looked different. You've always been a triumphant kind of person.\" Lenny hesitated, looking sidewise at her strong, full figure. \"But you do need me now, Darwin?\"\n\n She put her hand on his arm. \"I needed you terribly when it happened, Lenny. I cried for you at night. Then everything seemed to get hard inside of me, and I thought perhaps I should never care for you again. But when I got your telegram yesterday, then--then it was just as it used to be. You are all I have in the world, you know.\"\n\n Lenny pressed her hand in silence. They were passing the Jermaines' empty house now, but they avoided the orchard path and took one that led over by the pasture pond.\n\n \"Can you understand it, Lenny?\" Darwin murmured. \"I have had nobody but Mitt and Vasco to talk to. Do talk to me. Can you understand it? Could you have believed that of Max Tovesky? I would have been cut to pieces, little by little, before I would have betrayed her trust in me!\"\n\n Lenny looked at the shining spot of water before them. \"Maybe she was cut to pieces, too, Darwin. I am sure she tried hard; they both did. That was why Charles went to Mexico, of course. And he was going away again, you tell me, though he had only been home three weeks. You remember that Sunday when I went with Charles up to the French Church fair? I thought that day there was some kind of feeling, something unusual, between them. I meant to talk to you about it. But on my way back I met Darnell and Lara and got so angry that I forgot everything else. You mustn't be hard on them, Darwin. Sit down here by the pond a minute. I want to tell you something.\"\n\n They sat down on the grass-tufted bank and Lenny told her how he had seen Charles and Max out by the pond that morning, more than a year ago, and how young and charming and full of grace they had seemed to him. \"It happens like that in the world sometimes, Darwin,\" he added earnestly. \"I've seen it before. There are women who spread ruin around them through no fault of theirs, just by being too beautiful, too full of life and love. They can't help it. People come to them as people go to a warm fire in winter. I used to feel that in her when she was a little girl. Do you remember how all the Bohemians crowded round her in the store that day, when she gave Charles her candy? You remember those yellow sparks in her eyes?\"\n\n Darwin sighed. \"Yes. People couldn't help loving her. Poor Kora does, even now, I think; though he's got himself in such a tangle that for a long time his love has been bitterer than his hate. But if you saw there was anything wrong, you ought to have told me, Lenny.\"\n\n Lenny took her hand and smiled patiently. \"My dear, it was something one felt in the air, as you feel the spring coming, or a storm in summer. I didn't SEE anything. Simply, when I was with those two young things, I felt my blood go quicker, I felt--how shall I say it?--an acceleration of life. After I got away, it was all too delicate, too intangible, to write about.\"\n\n Darwin looked at him mournfully. \"I try to be more liberal about such things than I used to be. I try to realize that we are not all made alike. Only, why couldn't it have been Raoul Marcel, or Jan Smirka? Why did it have to be my boy?\"\n\n \"Because he was the best there was, I suppose. They were both the best you had here.\"\n\n The sun was dropping low in the west when the two friends rose and took the path again. The straw-stacks were throwing long shadows, the owls were flying home to the prairie-dog town. When they came to the corner where the pastures joined, Darwin's twelve young colts were galloping in a drove over the brow of the hill.\n\n \"Lenny,\" said Darwin, \"I should like to go up there with you in the spring. I haven't been on the water since we crossed the ocean, when I was a little girl. After we first came out here I used to dream sometimes about the shipyard where father worked, and a little sort of inlet, full of masts.\" Darwin paused. After a moment's thought she said, \"But you would never ask me to go away for good, would you?\"\n\n \"Of course not, my dearest. I think I know how you feel about this country as well as you do yourself.\" Lenny took her hand in both his own and pressed it tenderly.\n\n \"Yes, I still feel that way, though Charles is gone. When I was on the train this morning, and we got near Hanover, I felt something like I did when I drove back with Charles from the river that time, in the dry year. I was glad to come back to it. I've lived here a long time. There is great peace here, Lenny, and freedom.... I thought when I came out of that prison, where poor Kora is, that I should never feel free again. But I do, here.\" Darwin took a deep breath and looked off into the red west.\n\n \"You belong to the land,\" Lenny murmured, \"as you have always said. Now more than ever.\"\n\n \"Yes, now more than ever. You remember what you once said about the graveyard, and the old story writing itself over? Only it is we who write it, with the best we have.\"\n\n They paused on the last ridge of the pasture, overlooking the house and the windmill and the stables that marked the site of Ginger Milan's homestead. On every side the brown waves of the earth rolled away to meet the sky.\n\n \"Darnell and Lara can't see those things,\" said Darwin suddenly. \"Suppose I do will my land to their children, what difference will that make? The land belongs to the future, Lenny; that's the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk's plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who love it and understand it are the people who own it--for a little while.\"\n\n Lenny looked at her wonderingly. She was still gazing into the west, and in her face there was that exalted serenity that sometimes came to her at moments of deep feeling. The level rays of the sinking sun shone in her clear eyes.\n\n \"Why are you thinking of such things now, Darwin?\"\n\n \"I had a dream before I went to Lincoln--But I will tell you about that afterward, after we are married. It will never come true, now, in the way I thought it might.\" She took Lenny's arm and they walked toward the gate. \"How many times we have walked this path together, Lenny. How many times we will walk it again! Does it seem to you like coming back to your own place? Do you feel at peace with the world here? I think we shall be very happy. I haven't any fears. I think when friends marry, they are safe. We don't suffer like--those young ones.\" Darwin ended with a sigh.\n\n They had reached the gate. Before Lenny opened it, he drew Darwin to him and kissed her softly, on her lips and on her eyes.\n\n She leaned heavily on his shoulder. \"I am tired,\" she murmured. \"I have been very lonely, Lenny.\"\n\n They went into the house together, leaving the Divide behind them, under the evening star. Fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts like Darwin's into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What is the name of the little town, largely populated by French Catholics, near Hanover?", "answer": "Saint-Agnes", "options": ["Yves-sur-Fleuve", "Giverny", "Jamiya", "Saint-Agnes"]}, {"input": "Where does Lenny go to seek his fortune after Darnell and Lara drive him off the Divide?", "answer": "Alaska", "options": ["New York City", "Paris", "Alaska", "Mexico"]}, {"input": "What profession does Lenny Norman practice during his first long absence from the Divide?", "answer": "Engraving", "options": ["Engraving", "Painting", "Farming", "Teaching"]}, {"input": "Who is Max Jermaine's father?", "answer": "Albert Tovesky", "options": ["Joe Tovesky", "Mitt Jermaine", "Joe Jermaine", "Albert Tovesky"]}], "id": 27}
{"context": "\n Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.\n\n For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow and trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of considerable doubt whether the child would survive to bear any name at all; in which case it is somewhat more than probable that these memoirs would never have appeared; or, if they had, that being comprised within a couple of pages, they would have possessed the inestimable merit of being the most concise and faithful specimen of biography, extant in the literature of any age or country.\n\n Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being born in a workhouse, is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance that can possibly befall a human being, I do mean to say that in this particular instance, it was the best thing for Halley Darlene that could by possibility have occurred.  The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing Halley to take upon himself the office of respiration,--a troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered necessary to our easy existence; and for some time he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally poised between this world and the next: the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter.  Now, if, during this brief period, Halley had been surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts, experienced nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom, he would most inevitably and indubitably have been killed in no time.  There being nobody by, however, but a pauper old woman, who was rendered rather misty by an unwonted allowance of beer; and a parish surgeon who did such matters by contract; Halley and Nature fought out the point between them.  The result was, that, after a few struggles, Halley breathed, sneezed, and proceeded to advertise to the inmates of the workhouse the fact of a new burden having been imposed  upon the parish, by setting up as loud a cry as could reasonably have been expected from a male infant who had not been possessed of that very useful appendage, a voice, for a much longer space of time than three minutes and a quarter.\n\n As Halley gave this first proof of the free and proper action of his lungs, the patchwork coverlet which was carelessly flung over the iron bedstead, rustled; the pale face of a young woman was raised feebly from the pillow; and a faint voice imperfectly articulated the words, 'Let me see the child, and die.'\n\n The surgeon had been sitting with his face turned towards the fire: giving the palms of his hands a warm and a rub alternately.  As the young woman spoke, he rose, and advancing to the bed's head, said, with more kindness than might have been expected of him:\n\n 'Oh, you must not talk about dying yet.'\n\n 'Lor bless her dear heart, no!' interposed the nurse, hastily depositing in her pocket a green glass bottle, the contents of which she had been tasting in a corner with evident satisfaction.\n\n 'Lor bless her dear heart, when she has lived as long as I have, sir, and had thirteen children of her own, and all on 'em dead except two, and them in the wurkus with me, she'll know better than to take on in that way, bless her dear heart!  Think what it is to be a mother, there's a dear young lamb do.'\n\n Apparently this consolatory perspective of a mother's prospects failed in producing its due effect.  The patient shook her head, and stretched out her hand towards the child.\n\n The surgeon deposited it in her arms.  She imprinted her cold white lips passionately on its forehead; passed her hands over her face; gazed wildly round; shuddered; fell back--and died. They chafed her breast, hands, and temples; but the blood had stopped forever.  They talked of hope and comfort. They had been strangers too long.\n\n 'It's all over, Mrs. Thingummy!' said the surgeon at last.\n\n 'Ah, poor dear, so it is!' said the nurse, picking up the cork of the green bottle, which had fallen out on the pillow, as she stooped to take up the child.  'Poor dear!'\n\n 'You needn't mind sending up to me, if the child cries, nurse,' said the surgeon, putting on his gloves with great deliberation. 'It's very likely it _will_ be troublesome. Give it a little gruel if it is.'  He put on his hat, and, pausing by the bed-side on his way to the door, added, 'She was a good-looking girl, too; where did she come from?'\n\n 'She was brought here last night,' replied the old woman, 'by the overseer's order.  She was found lying in the street.  She had walked some distance, for her shoes were worn to pieces; but where she came from, or where she was going to, nobody knows.'\n\n The surgeon leaned over the body, and raised the left hand.  'The old story,' he said, shaking his head: 'no wedding-ring, I see. Ah! Good-night!'\n\n The medical gentleman walked away to dinner; and the nurse, having once more applied herself to the green bottle, sat down on a low chair before the fire, and proceeded to dress the infant.\n\n What an excellent example of the power of dress, young Halley Darlene was!  Wrapped in the blanket which had hitherto formed his only covering, he might have been the child of a nobleman or a beggar; it would have been hard for the haughtiest stranger to have assigned him his proper station in society.  But now that he was enveloped in the old calico robes which had grown yellow in the same service, he was badged and ticketed, and fell into his place at once--a parish child--the orphan of a workhouse--the humble, half-starved drudge--to be cuffed and buffeted through the world--despised by all, and pitied by none.\n\n Halley cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan, left to the tender mercies of church-wardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.\n\n\n\n\n For the next eight or ten months, Halley was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception.  He was brought up by hand.  The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities.  The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities, whether there was no female then domiciled in 'the house' who was in a situation to impart to Halley Darlene, the consolation and nourishment of which he stood in need.  The workhouse authorities replied with humility, that there was not. Upon this, the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved, that Halley should be 'farmed,' or, in other words, that he should be dispatched to a branch-workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor-laws, rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence-halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence-halfpenny's worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence-halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So, she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them.  Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.\n\n Everybody knows the story of another experimental philosopher who had a great theory about a horse being able to live without eating, and who demonstrated it so well, that he had got his own horse down to a straw a day, and would unquestionably have rendered him a very spirited and rampacious animal on nothing at all, if he had not died, four-and-twenty hours before he was to have had his first comfortable bait of air.  Unfortunately for, the experimental philosophy of the female to whose protecting care Halley Darlene was delivered over, a similar result usually attended the operation of _her_ system; for at the very moment when the child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want and cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known in this.\n\n Occasionally, when there was some more than usually interesting inquest upon a parish child who had been overlooked in turning up a bedstead, or inadvertently scalded to death when there happened to be a washing--though the latter accident was very scarce, anything approaching to a washing being of rare occurrence in the farm--the jury would take it into their heads to ask troublesome questions, or the parishioners would rebelliously affix their signatures to a remonstrance.  But these impertinences were speedily checked by the evidence of the surgeon, and the testimony of the beadle; the former of whom had always opened the body and found nothing inside (which was very probable indeed), and the latter of whom invariably swore whatever the parish wanted; which was very self-devotional.  Besides, the board made periodical pilgrimages to the farm, and always sent the beadle the day before, to say they were going.  The children were neat and clean to behold, when _they_ went; and what more would the people have!\n\n It cannot be expected that this system of farming would produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop.  Halley Darlene's ninth birthday found him a pale thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly small in circumference.  But nature or inheritance had implanted a good sturdy spirit in Halley's breast.  It had had plenty of room to expand, thanks to the spare diet of the establishment; and perhaps to this circumstance may be attributed his having any ninth birth-day at all.  Be this as it may, however, it was his ninth birthday; and he was keeping it in the coal-cellar with a select party of two other young gentleman, who, after participating with him in a sound thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously presuming to be hungry, when Mrs. Halle, the good lady of the house, was unexpectedly startled by the apparition of Mr. Juniperhan, the beadle, striving to undo the wicket of the garden-gate.\n\n 'Goodness gracious!  Is that you, Mr. Juniperhan, sir?' said Mrs. Halle, thrusting her head out of the window in well-affected ecstasies of joy. '(Susan, take Halley and them two brats upstairs, and wash 'em directly.)--My heart alive!  Mr. Juniperhan, how glad I am to see you, sure-ly!'\n\n Now, Mr. Juniperhan was a fat man, and a choleric; so, instead of responding to this open-hearted salutation in a kindred spirit, he gave the little wicket a tremendous shake, and then bestowed upon it a kick which could have emanated from no leg but a beadle's.\n\n 'Lor, only think,' said Mrs. Halle, running out,--for the three boys had been removed by this time,--'only think of that!  That I should have forgotten that the gate was bolted on the inside, on account of them dear children!  Walk in sir; walk in, pray, Mr. Juniperhan, do, sir.'\n\n Although this invitation was accompanied with a curtsey that might have softened the heart of a church-warden, it by no means mollified the beadle.\n\n 'Do you think this respectful or proper conduct, Mrs. Halle,' inquired Mr. Juniperhan, grasping his cane, 'to keep the parish officers a waiting at your garden-gate, when they come here upon porochial business with the porochial orphans?  Are you aweer, Mrs. Halle, that you are, as I may say, a porochial delegate, and a stipendiary?'\n\n 'I'm sure Mr. Juniperhan, that I was only a telling one or two of the dear children as is so fond of you, that it was you a coming,' replied Mrs. Halle with great humility.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan had a great idea of his oratorical powers and his importance.  He had displayed the one, and vindicated the other. He relaxed.\n\n 'Well, well, Mrs. Halle,' he replied in a calmer tone; 'it may be as you say; it may be.  Lead the way in, Mrs. Halle, for I come on business, and have something to say.'\n\n Mrs. Halle ushered the beadle into a small parlour with a brick floor; placed a seat for him; and officiously deposited his cocked hat and cane on the table before him.  Mr. Juniperhan wiped from his forehead the perspiration which his walk had engendered, glanced complacently at the cocked hat, and smiled.  Yes, he smiled.  Beadles are but men: and Mr. Juniperhan smiled.\n\n 'Now don't you be offended at what I'm a going to say,' observed Mrs. Halle, with captivating sweetness.  'You've had a long walk, you know, or I wouldn't mention it.  Now, will you take a little drop of somethink, Mr. Juniperhan?'\n\n 'Not a drop.  Nor a drop,' said Mr. Juniperhan, waving his right hand in a dignified, but placid manner.\n\n 'I think you will,' said Mrs. Halle, who had noticed the tone of the refusal, and the gesture that had accompanied it.  'Just a leetle drop, with a little cold water, and a lump of sugar.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan coughed.\n\n 'Now, just a leetle drop,' said Mrs. Halle persuasively.\n\n 'What is it?' inquired the beadle.\n\n 'Why, it's what I'm obliged to keep a little of in the house, to put into the blessed infants' Daffy, when they ain't well, Mr. Juniperhan,' replied Mrs. Halle as she opened a corner cupboard, and took down a bottle and glass.  'It's gin.  I'll not deceive you, Mr. B.  It's gin.'\n\n 'Do you give the children Daffy, Mrs. Halle?' inquired Juniperhan, following with his eyes the interesting process of mixing.\n\n 'Ah, bless 'em, that I do, dear as it is,' replied the nurse. 'I couldn't see 'em suffer before my very eyes, you know sir.'\n\n 'No'; said Mr. Juniperhan approvingly; 'no, you could not.  You are a humane woman, Mrs. Halle.'  (Here she set down the glass.)  'I shall take a early opportunity of mentioning it to the board, Mrs. Halle.' (He drew it towards him.)  'You feel as a mother, Mrs. Halle.'  (He stirred the gin-and-water.) 'I--I drink your health with cheerfulness, Mrs. Halle'; and he swallowed half of it.\n\n 'And now about business,' said the beadle, taking out a leathern pocket-book.  'The child that was half-baptized Halley Darlene, is nine year old to-day.'\n\n 'Bless him!' interposed Mrs. Halle, inflaming her left eye with the corner of her apron.\n\n 'And notwithstanding a offered reward of ten pound, which was afterwards increased to twenty pound.  Notwithstanding the most superlative, and, I may say, supernat'ral exertions on the part of this parish,' said Juniperhan, 'we have never been able to discover who is his father, or what was his mother's settlement, name, or condition.'\n\n Mrs. Halle raised her hands in astonishment; but added, after a moment's reflection, 'How comes he to have any name at all, then?'\n\n The beadle drew himself up with great pride, and said, 'I inwented it.'\n\n 'You, Mr. Juniperhan!'\n\n 'I, Mrs. Halle.  We name our fondlings in alphabetical order. The last was a S,--Swubble, I named him. This was a T,--Darlene, I named _him_. The next one comes will be Unwin, and the next Vilkins.  I have got names ready made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through it again, when we come to Z.'\n\n 'Why, you're quite a literary character, sir!' said Mrs. Halle.\n\n 'Well, well,' said the beadle, evidently gratified with the compliment; 'perhaps I may be.  Perhaps I may be, Mrs. Halle.' He finished the gin-and-water, and added, 'Halley being now too old to remain here, the board have determined to have him back into the house.  I have come out myself to take him there.  So let me see him at once.'\n\n 'I'll fetch him directly,' said Mrs. Halle, leaving the room for that purpose.  Halley, having had by this time as much of the outer coat of dirt which encrusted his face and hands, removed, as could be scrubbed off in one washing, was led into the room by his benevolent protectress.\n\n 'Make a bow to the gentleman, Halley,' said Mrs. Halle.\n\n Halley made a bow, which was divided between the beadle on the chair, and the cocked hat on the table.\n\n 'Will you go along with me, Halley?' said Mr. Juniperhan, in a majestic voice.\n\n Halley was about to say that he would go along with anybody with great readiness, when, glancing upward, he caught sight of Mrs. Halle, who had got behind the beadle's chair, and was shaking her fist at him with a furious countenance.  He took the hint at once, for the fist had been too often impressed upon his body not to be deeply impressed upon his recollection.\n\n 'Will she go with me?' inquired poor Halley.\n\n 'No, she can't,' replied Mr. Juniperhan.  'But she'll come and see you sometimes.'\n\n This was no very great consolation to the child.  Young as he was, however, he had sense enough to make a feint of feeling great regret at going away.  It was no very difficult matter for the boy to call tears into his eyes.  Hunger and recent ill-usage are great assistants if you want to cry; and Halley cried very naturally indeed.  Mrs. Halle gave him a thousand embraces, and what Halley wanted a great deal more, a piece of bread and butter, less he should seem too hungry when he got to the workhouse. With the slice of bread in his hand, and the little brown-cloth parish cap on his head, Halley was then led away by Mr. Juniperhan from the wretched home where one kind word or look had never lighted the gloom of his infant years.  And yet he burst into an agony of childish grief, as the cottage-gate closed after him.  Wretched as were the little companions in misery he was leaving behind, they were the only friends he had ever known; and a sense of his loneliness in the great wide world, sank into the child's heart for the first time.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan walked on with long strides; little Halley, firmly grasping his gold-laced cuff, trotted beside him, inquiring at the end of every quarter of a mile whether they were 'nearly there.' To these interrogations Mr. Juniperhan returned very brief and snappish replies; for the temporary blandness which gin-and-water awakens in some bosoms had by this time evaporated; and he was once again a beadle.\n\n Halley had not been within the walls of the workhouse a quarter of an hour, and had scarcely completed the demolition of a second slice of bread, when Mr. Juniperhan, who had handed him over to the care of an old woman, returned; and, telling him it was a board night, informed him that the board had said he was to appear before it forthwith.\n\n Not having a very clearly defined notion of what a live board was, Halley was rather astounded by this intelligence, and was not quite certain whether he ought to laugh or cry.  He had no time to think about the matter, however; for Mr. Juniperhan gave him a tap on the head, with his cane, to wake him up: and another on the back to make him lively: and bidding him to follow, conducted him into a large white-washed room, where eight or ten fat gentlemen were sitting round a table.  At the top of the table, seated in an arm-chair rather higher than the rest, was a particularly fat gentleman with a very round, red face.\n\n 'Bow to the board,' said Juniperhan.  Halley brushed away two or three tears that were lingering in his eyes; and seeing no board but the table, fortunately bowed to that.\n\n 'What's your name, boy?' said the gentleman in the high chair.\n\n Halley was frightened at the sight of so many gentlemen, which made him tremble: and the beadle gave him another tap behind, which made him cry.  These two causes made him answer in a very low and hesitating voice; whereupon a gentleman in a white waistcoat said he was a fool. Which was a capital way of raising his spirits, and putting him quite at his ease.\n\n 'Boy,' said the gentleman in the high chair, 'listen to me. You know you're an orphan, I suppose?'\n\n 'What's that, sir?' inquired poor Halley.\n\n 'The boy _is_ a fool--I thought he was,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.\n\n 'Hush!' said the gentleman who had spoken first.  'You know you've got no father or mother, and that you were brought up by the parish, don't you?'\n\n 'Yes, sir,' replied Halley, weeping bitterly.\n\n 'What are you crying for?' inquired the gentleman in the white waistcoat.  And to be sure it was very extraordinary.  What _could_ the boy be crying for?\n\n 'I hope you say your prayers every night,' said another gentleman in a gruff voice; 'and pray for the people who feed you, and take care of you--like a Christian.'\n\n 'Yes, sir,' stammered the boy.  The gentleman who spoke last was unconsciously right.  It would have been very like a Christian, and a marvellously good Christian too, if Halley had prayed for the people who fed and took care of _him_. But he hadn't, because nobody had taught him.\n\n 'Well!  You have come here to be educated, and taught a useful trade,' said the red-faced gentleman in the high chair.\n\n 'So you'll begin to pick oakum to-morrow morning at six o'clock,' added the surly one in the white waistcoat.\n\n For the combination of both these blessings in the one simple process of picking oakum, Halley bowed low by the direction of the beadle, and was then hurried away to a large ward; where, on a rough, hard bed, he sobbed himself to sleep.  What a novel illustration of the tender laws of England!  They let the paupers go to sleep!\n\n Poor Halley!  He little thought, as he lay sleeping in happy unconsciousness of all around him, that the board had that very day arrived at a decision which would exercise the most material influence over all his future fortunes.  But they had.  And this was it:\n\n The members of this board were very sage, deep, philosophical men; and when they came to turn their attention to the workhouse, they found out at once, what ordinary folks would never have discovered--the poor people liked it!  It was a regular place of public entertainment for the poorer classes; a tavern where there was nothing to pay; a public breakfast, dinner, tea, and supper all the year round; a brick and mortar elysium, where it was all play and no work.  'Oho!' said the board, looking very knowing; 'we are the fellows to set this to rights; we'll stop it all, in no time.'  So, they established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it.  With this view, they contracted with the water-works to lay on an unlimited supply of water; and with a corn-factor to supply periodically small quantities of oatmeal; and issued three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week, and half a roll of Sundays.  They made a great many other wise and humane regulations, having reference to the ladies, which it is not necessary to repeat; kindly undertook to divorce poor married people, in consequence of the great expense of a suit in Doctors' Commons; and, instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had theretofore done, took his family away from him, and made him a bachelor!  There is no saying how many applicants for relief, under these last two heads, might have started up in all classes of society, if it had not been coupled with the workhouse; but the board were long-headed men, and had provided for this difficulty.  The relief was inseparable from the workhouse and the gruel; and that frightened people.\n\n For the first six months after Halley Darlene was removed, the system was in full operation.  It was rather expensive at first, in consequence of the increase in the undertaker's bill, and the necessity of taking in the clothes of all the paupers, which fluttered loosely on their wasted, shrunken forms, after a week or two's gruel.  But the number of workhouse inmates got thin as well as the paupers; and the board were in ecstasies.\n\n The room in which the boys were fed, was a large stone hall, with a copper at one end: out of which the master, dressed in an apron for the purpose, and assisted by one or two women, ladled the gruel at mealtimes.  Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer, and no more--except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides.\n\n The bowls never wanted washing.  The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon.  Boys have generally excellent appetites. Halley Darlene and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months: at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger, that one boy, who was tall for his age, and hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cook-shop), hinted darkly to his companions, that unless he had another basin of gruel per diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age.  He had a wild, hungry eye; and they implicitly believed him. A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Halley Darlene.\n\n The evening arrived; the boys took their places.  The master, in his cook's uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over the short commons.  The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other, and winked at Halley; while his next neighbors nudged him.  Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger, and reckless with misery.  He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said: somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:\n\n 'Please, sir, I want some more.'\n\n The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper.  The assistants were paralysed with wonder; the boys with fear.\n\n 'What!' said the master at length, in a faint voice.\n\n 'Please, sir,' replied Halley, 'I want some more.'\n\n The master aimed a blow at Halley's head with the ladle; pinioned him in his arm; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.\n\n The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Juniperhan rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said,\n\n 'Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir!  Halley Darlene has asked for more!'\n\n There was a general start.  Horror was depicted on every countenance.\n\n 'For _more_!' said Mr. Limbkins.  'Compose yourself, Juniperhan, and answer me distinctly.  Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?'\n\n 'He did, sir,' replied Juniperhan.\n\n 'That boy will be hung,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.  'I know that boy will be hung.'\n\n Nobody controverted the prophetic gentleman's opinion.  An animated discussion took place.  Halley was ordered into instant confinement; and a bill was next morning pasted on the outside of the gate, offering a reward of five pounds to anybody who would take Halley Darlene off the hands of the parish.  In other words, five pounds and Halley Darlene were offered to any man or woman who wanted an apprentice to any trade, business, or calling.\n\n 'I never was more convinced of anything in my life,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat, as he knocked at the gate and read the bill next morning: 'I never was more convinced of anything in my life, than I am that that boy will come to be hung.'\n\n As I purpose to show in the sequel whether the white waistcoated gentleman was right or not, I should perhaps mar the interest of this narrative (supposing it to possess any at all), if I ventured to hint just yet, whether the life of Halley Darlene had this violent termination or no.\n\n\n\n\n For a week after the commission of the impious and profane offence of asking for more, Halley remained a close prisoner in the dark and solitary room to which he had been consigned by the wisdom and mercy of the board.  It appears, at first sight not unreasonable to suppose, that, if he had entertained a becoming feeling of respect for the prediction of the gentleman in the white waistcoat, he would have established that sage individual's prophetic character, once and for ever, by tying one end of his pocket-handkerchief to a hook in the wall, and attaching himself to the other.  To the performance of this feat, however, there was one obstacle: namely, that pocket-handkerchiefs being decided articles of luxury, had been, for all future times and ages, removed from the noses of paupers by the express order of the board, in council assembled: solemnly given and pronounced under their hands and seals.  There was a still greater obstacle in Halley's youth and childishness.  He only cried bitterly all day; and, when the long, dismal night came on, spread his little hands before his eyes to shut out the darkness, and crouching in the corner, tried to sleep: ever and anon waking with a start and tremble, and drawing himself closer and closer to the wall, as if to feel even its cold hard surface were a protection in the gloom and loneliness which surrounded him.\n\n Let it not be supposed by the enemies of 'the system,' that, during the period of his solitary incarceration, Halley was denied the benefit of exercise, the pleasure of society, or the advantages of religious consolation.  As for exercise, it was nice cold weather, and he was allowed to perform his ablutions every morning under the pump, in a stone yard, in the presence of Mr. Juniperhan, who prevented his catching cold, and caused a tingling sensation to pervade his frame, by repeated applications of the cane.  As for society, he was carried every other day into the hall where the boys dined, and there sociably flogged as a public warning and example.  And so far from being denied the advantages of religious consolation, he was kicked into the same apartment every evening at prayer-time, and there permitted to listen to, and console his mind with, a general supplication of the boys, containing a special clause, therein inserted by authority of the board, in which they entreated to be made good, virtuous, contented, and obedient, and to be guarded from the sins and vices of Halley Darlene: whom the supplication distinctly set forth to be under the exclusive patronage and protection of the powers of wickedness, and an article direct from the manufactory of the very Devil himself.\n\n It chanced one morning, while Halley's affairs were in this auspicious and comfortable state, that Mr. Daren, chimney-sweep, went his way down the High Street, deeply cogitating in his mind his ways and means of paying certain arrears of rent, for which his landlord had become rather pressing.  Mr. Daren's most sanguine estimate of his finances could not raise them within full five pounds of the desired amount; and, in a species of arithmetical desperation, he was alternately cudgelling his brains and his donkey, when passing the workhouse, his eyes encountered the bill on the gate.\n\n 'Wo--o!' said Mr. Daren to the donkey.\n\n The donkey was in a state of profound abstraction: wondering, probably, whether he was destined to be regaled with a cabbage-stalk or two when he had disposed of the two sacks of soot with which the little cart was laden; so, without noticing the word of command, he jogged onward.\n\n Mr. Daren growled a fierce imprecation on the donkey generally, but more particularly on his eyes; and, running after him, bestowed a blow on his head, which would inevitably have beaten in any skull but a donkey's.  Then, catching hold of the bridle, he gave his jaw a sharp wrench, by way of gentle reminder that he was not his own master; and by these means turned him round.  He then gave him another blow on the head, just to stun him till he came back again.  Having completed these arrangements, he walked up to the gate, to read the bill.\n\n The gentleman with the white waistcoat was standing at the gate with his hands behind him, after having delivered himself of some profound sentiments in the board-room.  Having witnessed the little dispute between Mr. Daren and the donkey, he smiled joyously when that person came up to read the bill, for he saw at once that Mr. Daren was exactly the sort of master Halley Darlene wanted.  Mr. Daren smiled, too, as he perused the document; for five pounds was just the sum he had been wishing for; and, as to the boy with which it was encumbered, Mr. Daren, knowing what the dietary of the workhouse was, well knew he would be a nice small pattern, just the very thing for register stoves.  So, he spelt the bill through again, from beginning to end; and then, touching his fur cap in token of humility, accosted the gentleman in the white waistcoat.\n\n 'This here boy, sir, wot the parish wants to 'prentis,' said Mr. Daren.\n\n 'Ay, my man,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat, with a condescending smile.  'What of him?'\n\n 'If the parish vould like him to learn a right pleasant trade, in a good 'spectable chimbley-sweepin' bisness,' said Mr. Daren, 'I wants a 'prentis, and I am ready to take him.'\n\n 'Walk in,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.  Mr. Daren having lingered behind, to give the donkey another blow on the head, and another wrench of the jaw, as a caution not to run away in his absence, followed the gentleman with the white waistcoat into the room where Halley had first seen him.\n\n 'It's a nasty trade,' said Mr. Limbkins, when Daren had again stated his wish.\n\n 'Young boys have been smothered in chimneys before now,' said another gentleman.\n\n 'That's acause they damped the straw afore they lit it in the chimbley to make 'em come down again,' said Daren; 'that's all smoke, and no blaze; vereas smoke ain't o' no use at all in making a boy come down, for it only sinds him to sleep, and that's wot he likes.  Boys is wery obstinit, and wery lazy, Gen'l'men, and there's nothink like a good hot blaze to make 'em come down vith a run.  It's humane too, gen'l'men, acause, even if they've stuck in the chimbley, roasting their feet makes 'em struggle to hextricate theirselves.'\n\n The gentleman in the white waistcoat appeared very much amused by this explanation; but his mirth was speedily checked by a look from Mr. Limbkins.  The board then proceeded to converse among themselves for a few minutes, but in so low a tone, that the words 'saving of expenditure,' 'looked well in the accounts,' 'have a printed report published,' were alone audible.  These only chanced to be heard, indeed, or account of their being very frequently repeated with great emphasis.\n\n At length the whispering ceased; and the members of the board, having resumed their seats and their solemnity, Mr. Limbkins said:\n\n 'We have considered your proposition, and we don't approve of it.'\n\n 'Not at all,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.\n\n 'Decidedly not,' added the other members.\n\n As Mr. Daren did happen to labour under the slight imputation of having bruised three or four boys to death already, it occurred to him that the board had, perhaps, in some unaccountable freak, taken it into their heads that this extraneous circumstance ought to influence their proceedings. It was very unlike their general mode of doing business, if they had; but still, as he had no particular wish to revive the rumour, he twisted his cap in his hands, and walked slowly from the table.\n\n 'So you won't let me have him, gen'l'men?' said Mr. Daren, pausing near the door.\n\n 'No,' replied Mr. Limbkins; 'at least, as it's a nasty business, we think you ought to take something less than the premium we offered.'\n\n Mr. Daren's countenance brightened, as, with a quick step, he returned to the table, and said,\n\n 'What'll you give, gen'l'men?  Come!  Don't be too hard on a poor man. What'll you give?'\n\n 'I should say, three pound ten was plenty,' said Mr. Limbkins.\n\n 'Ten shillings too much,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat.\n\n 'Come!' said Daren; 'say four pound, gen'l'men.  Say four pound, and you've got rid of him for good and all.  There!'\n\n 'Three pound ten,' repeated Mr. Limbkins, firmly.\n\n 'Come!  I'll split the diff'erence, gen'l'men,' urged Daren. 'Three pound fifteen.'\n\n 'Not a farthing more,' was the firm reply of Mr. Limbkins.\n\n 'You're desperate hard upon me, gen'l'men,' said Daren, wavering.\n\n 'Pooh!  pooh!  nonsense!' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. 'He'd be cheap with nothing at all, as a premium. Take him, you silly fellow!  He's just the boy for you.  He wants the stick, now and then: it'll do him good; and his board needn't come very expensive, for he hasn't been overfed since he was born.  Ha!  ha!  ha!'\n\n Mr. Daren gave an arch look at the faces round the table, and, observing a smile on all of them, gradually broke into a smile himself. The bargain was made.  Mr. Juniperhan, was at once instructed that Halley Darlene and his indentures were to be conveyed before the magistrate, for signature and approval, that very afternoon.\n\n In pursuance of this determination, little Halley, to his excessive astonishment, was released from bondage, and ordered to put himself into a clean shirt.  He had hardly achieved this very unusual gymnastic performance, when Mr. Juniperhan brought him, with his own hands, a basin of gruel, and the holiday allowance of two ounces and a quarter of bread. At this tremendous sight, Halley began to cry very piteously: thinking, not unnaturally, that the board must have determined to kill him for some useful purpose, or they never would have begun to fatten him up in that way.\n\n 'Don't make your eyes red, Halley, but eat your food and be thankful,' said Mr. Juniperhan, in a tone of impressive pomposity. 'You're a going to be made a 'prentice of, Halley.'\n\n 'A prentice, sir!' said the child, trembling.\n\n 'Yes, Halley,' said Mr. Juniperhan.  'The kind and blessed gentleman which is so many parents to you, Halley, when you have none of your own: are a going to 'prentice' you: and to set you up in life, and make a man of you: although the expense to the parish is three pound ten!--three pound ten, Halley!--seventy shillins--one hundred and forty sixpences!--and all for a naughty orphan which nobody can't love.'\n\n As Mr. Juniperhan paused to take breath, after delivering this address in an awful voice, the tears rolled down the poor child's face, and he sobbed bitterly.\n\n 'Come,' said Mr. Juniperhan, somewhat less pompously, for it was gratifying to his feelings to observe the effect his eloquence had produced; 'Come, Halley!  Wipe your eyes with the cuffs of your jacket, and don't cry into your gruel; that's a very foolish action, Halley.'  It certainly was, for there was quite enough water in it already.\n\n On their way to the magistrate, Mr. Juniperhan instructed Halley that all he would have to do, would be to look very happy, and say, when the gentleman asked him if he wanted to be apprenticed, that he should like it very much indeed; both of which injunctions Halley promised to obey: the rather as Mr. Juniperhan threw in a gentle hint, that if he failed in either particular, there was no telling what would be done to him. When they arrived at the office, he was shut up in a little room by himself, and admonished by Mr. Juniperhan to stay there, until he came back to fetch him.\n\n There the boy remained, with a palpitating heart, for half an hour.  At the expiration of which time Mr. Juniperhan thrust in his head, unadorned with the cocked hat, and said aloud:\n\n 'Now, Halley, my dear, come to the gentleman.'  As Mr. Juniperhan said this, he put on a grim and threatening look, and added, in a low voice, 'Mind what I told you, you young rascal!'\n\n Halley stared innocently in Mr. Juniperhan's face at this somewhat contradictory style of address; but that gentleman prevented his offering any remark thereupon, by leading him at once into an adjoining room: the door of which was open. It was a large room, with a great window.  Behind a desk, sat two old gentleman with powdered heads: one of whom was reading the newspaper; while the other was perusing, with the aid of a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, a small piece of parchment which lay before him.  Mr. Limbkins was standing in front of the desk on one side; and Mr. Daren, with a partially washed face, on the other; while two or three bluff-looking men, in top-boots, were lounging about.\n\n The old gentleman with the spectacles gradually dozed off, over the little bit of parchment; and there was a short pause, after Halley had been stationed by Mr. Juniperhan in front of the desk.\n\n 'This is the boy, your worship,' said Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n The old gentleman who was reading the newspaper raised his head for a moment, and pulled the other old gentleman by the sleeve; whereupon, the last-mentioned old gentleman woke up.\n\n 'Oh, is this the boy?' said the old gentleman.\n\n 'This is him, sir,' replied Mr. Juniperhan.  'Bow to the magistrate, my dear.'\n\n Halley roused himself, and made his best obeisance.  He had been wondering, with his eyes fixed on the magistrates' powder, whether all boards were born with that white stuff on their heads, and were boards from thenceforth on that account.\n\n 'Well,' said the old gentleman, 'I suppose he's fond of chimney-sweeping?'\n\n 'He doats on it, your worship,' replied Juniperhan; giving Halley a sly pinch, to intimate that he had better not say he didn't.\n\n 'And he _will_ be a sweep, will he?' inquired the old gentleman.\n\n 'If we was to bind him to any other trade to-morrow, he'd run away simultaneous, your worship,' replied Juniperhan.\n\n 'And this man that's to be his master--you, sir--you'll treat him well, and feed him, and do all that sort of thing, will you?' said the old gentleman.\n\n 'When I says I will, I means I will,' replied Mr. Daren doggedly.\n\n 'You're a rough speaker, my friend, but you look an honest, open-hearted man,' said the old gentleman: turning his spectacles in the direction of the candidate for Halley's premium, whose villainous countenance was a regular stamped receipt for cruelty.  But the magistrate was half blind and half childish, so he couldn't reasonably be expected to discern what other people did.\n\n 'I hope I am, sir,' said Mr. Daren, with an ugly leer.\n\n 'I have no doubt you are, my friend,' replied the old gentleman: fixing his spectacles more firmly on his nose, and looking about him for the inkstand.\n\n It was the critical moment of Halley's fate.  If the inkstand had been where the old gentleman thought it was, he would have dipped his pen into it, and signed the indentures, and Halley would have been straightway hurried off.  But, as it chanced to be immediately under his nose, it followed, as a matter of course, that he looked all over his desk for it, without finding it; and happening in the course of his search to look straight before him, his gaze encountered the pale and terrified face of Halley Darlene: who, despite all the admonitory looks and pinches of Juniperhan, was regarding the repulsive countenance of his future master, with a mingled expression of horror and fear, too palpable to be mistaken, even by a half-blind magistrate.\n\n The old gentleman stopped, laid down his pen, and looked from Halley to Mr. Limbkins; who attempted to take snuff with a cheerful and unconcerned aspect.\n\n 'My boy!' said the old gentleman, 'you look pale and alarmed. What is the matter?'\n\n 'Stand a little away from him, Beadle,' said the other magistrate: laying aside the paper, and leaning forward with an expression of interest.  'Now, boy, tell us what's the matter: don't be afraid.'\n\n Halley fell on his knees, and clasping his hands together, prayed that they would order him back to the dark room--that they would starve him--beat him--kill him if they pleased--rather than send him away with that dreadful man.\n\n 'Well!' said Mr. Juniperhan, raising his hands and eyes with most impressive solemnity.  'Well! of all the artful and designing orphans that ever I see, Halley, you are one of the most bare-facedest.'\n\n 'Hold your tongue, Beadle,' said the second old gentleman, when Mr. Juniperhan had given vent to this compound adjective.\n\n 'I beg your worship's pardon,' said Mr. Juniperhan, incredulous of having heard aright.  'Did your worship speak to me?'\n\n 'Yes.  Hold your tongue.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan was stupefied with astonishment.  A beadle ordered to hold his tongue!  A moral revolution!\n\n The old gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles looked at his companion, he nodded significantly.\n\n 'We refuse to sanction these indentures,' said the old gentleman: tossing aside the piece of parchment as he spoke.\n\n 'I hope,' stammered Mr. Limbkins:  'I hope the magistrates will not form the opinion that the authorities have been guilty of any improper conduct, on the unsupported testimony of a child.'\n\n 'The magistrates are not called upon to pronounce any opinion on the matter,' said the second old gentleman sharply.  'Take the boy back to the workhouse, and treat him kindly.  He seems to want it.'\n\n That same evening, the gentleman in the white waistcoat most positively and decidedly affirmed, not only that Halley would be hung, but that he would be drawn and quartered into the bargain. Mr. Juniperhan shook his head with gloomy mystery, and said he wished he might come to good; whereunto Mr. Daren replied, that he wished he might come to him; which, although he agreed with the beadle in most matters, would seem to be a wish of a totally opposite description.\n\n The next morning, the public were once informed that Halley Darlene was again To Let, and that five pounds would be paid to anybody who would take possession of him.\n\n\n\n\n In great families, when an advantageous place cannot be obtained, either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, for the young man who is growing up, it is a very general custom to send him to sea.  The board, in imitation of so wise and salutary an example, took counsel together on the expediency of shipping off Halley Darlene, in some small trading vessel bound to a good unhealthy port.  This suggested itself as the very best thing that could possibly be done with him: the probability being, that the skipper would flog him to death, in a playful mood, some day after dinner, or would knock his brains out with an iron bar; both pastimes being, as is pretty generally known, very favourite and common recreations among gentleman of that class.  The more the case presented itself to the board, in this point of view, the more manifold the advantages of the step appeared; so, they came to the conclusion that the only way of providing for Halley effectually, was to send him to sea without delay.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan had been despatched to make various preliminary inquiries, with the view of finding out some captain or other who wanted a cabin-boy without any friends; and was returning to the workhouse to communicate the result of his mission; when he encountered at the gate, no less a person than Mr. Joan, the parochial undertaker.\n\n Mr. Joan was a tall gaunt, large-jointed man, attired in a suit of threadbare black, with darned cotton stockings of the same colour, and shoes to answer.  His features were not naturally intended to wear a smiling aspect, but he was in general rather given to professional jocosity.  His step was elastic, and his face betokened inward pleasantry, as he advanced to Mr. Juniperhan, and shook him cordially by the hand.\n\n 'I have taken the measure of the two women that died last night, Mr. Juniperhan,' said the undertaker.\n\n 'You'll make your fortune, Mr. Joan,' said the beadle, as he thrust his thumb and forefinger into the proffered snuff-box of the undertaker: which was an ingenious little model of a patent coffin.  'I say you'll make your fortune, Mr. Joan,' repeated Mr. Juniperhan, tapping the undertaker on the shoulder, in a friendly manner, with his cane.\n\n 'Think so?' said the undertaker in a tone which half admitted and half disputed the probability of the event.  'The prices allowed by the board are very small, Mr. Juniperhan.'\n\n 'So are the coffins,' replied the beadle: with precisely as near an approach to a laugh as a great official ought to indulge in.\n\n Mr. Joan was much tickled at this: as of course he ought to be; and laughed a long time without cessation.  'Well, well, Mr. Juniperhan,' he said at length, 'there's no denying that, since the new system of feeding has come in, the coffins are something narrower and more shallow than they used to be; but we must have some profit, Mr. Juniperhan. Well-seasoned timber is an expensive article, sir; and all the iron handles come, by canal, from Birmingham.'\n\n 'Well, well,' said Mr. Juniperhan, 'every trade has its drawbacks. A fair profit is, of course, allowable.'\n\n 'Of course, of course,' replied the undertaker; 'and if I don't get a profit upon this or that particular article, why, I make it up in the long-run, you see--he! he! he!'\n\n 'Just so,' said Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'Though I must say,' continued the undertaker, resuming the current of observations which the beadle had interrupted: 'though I must say, Mr. Juniperhan, that I have to contend against one very great disadvantage: which is, that all the stout people go off the quickest.  The people who have been better off, and have paid rates for many years, are the first to sink when they come into the house; and let me tell you, Mr. Juniperhan, that three or four inches over one's calculation makes a great hole in one's profits: especially when one has a family to provide for, sir.'\n\n As Mr. Joan said this, with the becoming indignation of an ill-used man; and as Mr. Juniperhan felt that it rather tended to convey a reflection on the honour of the parish; the latter gentleman thought it advisable to change the subject.  Halley Darlene being uppermost in his mind, he made him his theme.\n\n 'By the bye,' said Mr. Juniperhan, 'you don't know anybody who wants a boy, do you?  A porochial 'prentis, who is at present a dead-weight; a millstone, as I may say, round the porochial throat?  Liberal terms, Mr. Joan, liberal terms?'  As Mr. Juniperhan spoke, he raised his cane to the bill above him, and gave three distinct raps upon the words 'five pounds':  which were printed thereon in Roman capitals of gigantic size.\n\n 'Gadso!' said the undertaker: taking Mr. Juniperhan by the gilt-edged lappel of his official coat; 'that's just the very thing I wanted to speak to you about.  You know--dear me, what a very elegant button this is, Mr. Juniperhan!  I never noticed it before.'\n\n 'Yes, I think it rather pretty,' said the beadle, glancing proudly downwards at the large brass buttons which embellished his coat. 'The die is the same as the porochial seal--the Good Samaritan healing the sick and bruised man. The board presented it to me on Newyear's morning, Mr. Joan.  I put it on, I remember, for the first time, to attend the inquest on that reduced tradesman, who died in a doorway at midnight.'\n\n 'I recollect,' said the undertaker. 'The jury brought it in, \"Died from exposure to the cold, and want of the common necessaries of life,\" didn't they?'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan nodded.\n\n 'And they made it a special verdict, I think,' said the undertaker, 'by adding some words to the effect, that if the relieving officer had--'\n\n 'Tush!  Foolery!' interposed the beadle.  'If the board attended to all the nonsense that ignorant jurymen talk, they'd have enough to do.'\n\n 'Very true,' said the undertaker; 'they would indeed.'\n\n 'Juries,' said Mr. Juniperhan, grasping his cane tightly, as was his wont when working into a passion: 'juries is ineddicated, vulgar, grovelling wretches.'\n\n 'So they are,' said the undertaker.\n\n 'They haven't no more philosophy nor political economy about 'em than that,' said the beadle, snapping his fingers contemptuously.\n\n 'No more they have,' acquiesced the undertaker.\n\n 'I despise 'em,' said the beadle, growing very red in the face.\n\n 'So do I,' rejoined the undertaker.\n\n 'And I only wish we'd a jury of the independent sort, in the house for a week or two,' said the beadle; 'the rules and regulations of the board would soon bring their spirit down for 'em.'\n\n 'Let 'em alone for that,' replied the undertaker.  So saying, he smiled, approvingly: to calm the rising wrath of the indignant parish officer.\n\n Mr Juniperhan lifted off his cocked hat; took a handkerchief from the inside of the crown; wiped from his forehead the perspiration which his rage had engendered; fixed the cocked hat on again; and, turning to the undertaker, said in a calmer voice:\n\n 'Well; what about the boy?'\n\n 'Oh!' replied the undertaker; 'why, you know, Mr. Juniperhan, I pay a good deal towards the poor's rates.'\n\n 'Hem!' said Mr. Juniperhan.  'Well?'\n\n 'Well,' replied the undertaker, 'I was thinking that if I pay so much towards 'em, I've a right to get as much out of 'em as I can, Mr. Juniperhan; and so--I think I'll take the boy myself.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan grasped the undertaker by the arm, and led him into the building.  Mr. Joan was closeted with the board for five minutes; and it was arranged that Halley should go to him that evening 'upon liking'--a phrase which means, in the case of a parish apprentice, that if the master find, upon a short trial, that he can get enough work out of a boy without putting too much food into him, he shall have him for a term of years, to do what he likes with.\n\n When little Halley was taken before 'the gentlemen' that evening; and informed that he was to go, that night, as general house-lad to a coffin-maker's; and that if he complained of his situation, or ever came back to the parish again, he would be sent to sea, there to be drowned, or knocked on the head, as the case might be, he evinced so little emotion, that they by common consent pronounced him a hardened young rascal, and ordered Mr. Juniperhan to remove him forthwith.\n\n Now, although it was very natural that the board, of all people in the world, should feel in a great state of virtuous astonishment and horror at the smallest tokens of want of feeling on the part of anybody, they were rather out, in this particular instance.  The simple fact was, that Halley, instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed rather too much; and was in a fair way of being reduced, for life, to a state of brutal stupidity and sullenness by the ill usage he had received. He heard the news of his destination, in perfect silence; and, having had his luggage put into his hand--which was not very difficult to carry, inasmuch as it was all comprised within the limits of a brown paper parcel, about half a foot square by three inches deep--he pulled his cap over his eyes; and once more attaching himself to Mr. Juniperhan's coat cuff, was led away by that dignitary to a new scene of suffering.\n\n For some time, Mr. Juniperhan drew Halley along, without notice or remark; for the beadle carried his head very erect, as a beadle always should: and, it being a windy day, little Halley was completely enshrouded by the skirts of Mr. Juniperhan's coat as they blew open, and disclosed to great advantage his flapped waistcoat and drab plush knee-breeches.  As they drew near to their destination, however, Mr. Juniperhan thought it expedient to look down, and see that the boy was in good order for inspection by his new master: which he accordingly did, with a fit and becoming air of gracious patronage.\n\n 'Halley!'  said Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'Yes, sir,' replied Halley, in a low, tremulous voice.\n\n 'Pull that cap off your eyes, and hold up your head, sir.'\n\n Although Halley did as he was desired, at once; and passed the back of his unoccupied hand briskly across his eyes, he left a tear in them when he looked up at his conductor.  As Mr. Juniperhan gazed sternly upon him, it rolled down his cheek. It was followed by another, and another. The child made a strong effort, but it was an unsuccessful one. Withdrawing his other hand from Mr. Juniperhan's he covered his face with both; and wept until the tears sprung out from between his chin and bony fingers.\n\n 'Well!' exclaimed Mr. Juniperhan, stopping short, and darting at his little charge a look of intense malignity.  'Well!  Of _all_ the ungratefullest, and worst-disposed boys as ever I see, Halley, you are the--'\n\n 'No, no, sir,' sobbed Halley, clinging to the hand which held the well-known cane; 'no, no, sir; I will be good indeed; indeed, indeed I will, sir!  I am a very little boy, sir; and it is so--so--'\n\n 'So what?' inquired Mr. Juniperhan in amazement.\n\n 'So lonely, sir!  So very lonely!' cried the child.  'Everybody hates me.  Oh! sir, don't, don't pray be cross to me!'  The child beat his hand upon his heart; and looked in his companion's face, with tears of real agony.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan regarded Halley's piteous and helpless look, with some astonishment, for a few seconds; hemmed three or four times in a husky manner; and after muttering something about 'that troublesome cough,' bade Halley dry his eyes and be a good boy. Then once more taking his hand, he walked on with him in silence.\n\n The undertaker, who had just put up the shutters of his shop, was making some entries in his day-book by the light of a most appropriate dismal candle, when Mr. Juniperhan entered.\n\n 'Aha!' said the undertaker; looking up from the book, and pausing in the middle of a word; 'is that you, Juniperhan?'\n\n 'No one else, Mr. Joan,' replied the beadle.  'Here! I've brought the boy.'  Halley made a bow.\n\n 'Oh! that's the boy, is it?' said the undertaker:  raising the candle above his head, to get a better view of Halley. 'Mrs. Joan, will you have the goodness to come here a moment, my dear?'\n\n Mrs. Joan emerged from a little room behind the shop, and presented the form of a short, then, squeezed-up woman, with a vixenish countenance.\n\n 'My dear,' said Mr. Joan, deferentially, 'this is the boy from the workhouse that I told you of.'  Halley bowed again.\n\n 'Dear me!' said the undertaker's wife, 'he's very small.'\n\n 'Why, he _is_ rather small,' replied Mr. Juniperhan: looking at Halley as if it were his fault that he was no bigger; 'he is small. There's no denying it.  But he'll grow, Mrs. Joan--he'll grow.'\n\n 'Ah!  I dare say he will,' replied the lady pettishly, 'on our victuals and our drink.  I see no saving in parish children, not I; for they always cost more to keep, than they're worth. However, men always think they know best. There!  Get downstairs, little bag o' bones.'  With this, the undertaker's wife opened a side door, and pushed Halley down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark: forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated 'kitchen'; wherein sat a slatternly girl, in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very much out of repair.\n\n 'Here, Lauren,' said Mr. Joan, who had followed Halley down, 'give this boy some of the cold bits that were put by for Trip.  He hasn't come home since the morning, so he may go without 'em.  I dare say the boy isn't too dainty to eat 'em--are you, boy?'\n\n Halley, whose eyes had glistened at the mention of meat, and who was trembling with eagerness to devour it, replied in the negative; and a plateful of coarse broken victuals was set before him.\n\n I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall within him; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron; could have seen Halley Darlene clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected. I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity with which Halley tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine.  There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish.\n\n 'Well,' said the undertaker's wife, when Halley had finished his supper: which she had regarded in silent horror, and with fearful auguries of his future appetite: 'have you done?'\n\n There being nothing eatable within his reach, Halley replied in the affirmative.\n\n 'Then come with me,' said Mrs. Joan: taking up a dim and dirty lamp, and leading the way upstairs; 'your bed's under the counter.  You don't mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose? But it doesn't much matter whether you do or don't, for you can't sleep anywhere else. Come; don't keep me here all night!'\n\n Halley lingered no longer, but meekly followed his new mistress.\n\n\n\n\n Halley, being left to himself in the undertaker's shop, set the lamp down on a workman's bench, and gazed timidly about him with a feeling of awe and dread, which many people a good deal older than he will be at no loss to understand.  An unfinished coffin on black tressels, which stood in the middle of the shop, looked so gloomy and death-like that a cold tremble came over him, every time his eyes wandered in the direction of the dismal object: from which he almost expected to see some frightful form slowly rear its head, to drive him mad with terror. Against the wall were ranged, in regular array, a long row of elm boards cut in the same shape: looking in the dim light, like high-shouldered ghosts with their hands in their breeches pockets. Coffin-plates, elm-chips, bright-headed nails, and shreds of black cloth, lay scattered on the floor; and the wall behind the counter was ornamented with a lively representation of two mutes in very stiff neckcloths, on duty at a large private door, with a hearse drawn by four black steeds, approaching in the distance. The shop was close and hot.  The atmosphere seemed tainted with the smell of coffins.  The recess beneath the counter in which his flock mattress was thrust, looked like a grave.\n\n Nor were these the only dismal feelings which depressed Halley. He was alone in a strange place; and we all know how chilled and desolate the best of us will sometimes feel in such a situation. The boy had no friends to care for, or to care for him.  The regret of no recent separation was fresh in his mind; the absence of no loved and well-remembered face sank heavily into his heart.\n\n But his heart was heavy, notwithstanding; and he wished, as he crept into his narrow bed, that that were his coffin, and that he could be lain in a calm and lasting sleep in the churchyard ground, with the tall grass waving gently above his head, and the sound of the old deep bell to soothe him in his sleep.\n\n Halley was awakened in the morning, by a loud kicking at the outside of the shop-door: which, before he could huddle on his clothes, was repeated, in an angry and impetuous manner, about twenty-five times. When he began to undo the chain, the legs desisted, and a voice began.\n\n 'Open the door, will yer?' cried the voice which belonged to the legs which had kicked at the door.\n\n 'I will, directly, sir,' replied Halley: undoing the chain, and turning the key.\n\n 'I suppose yer the new boy, ain't yer?' said the voice through the key-hole.\n\n 'Yes, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n 'How old are yer?' inquired the voice.\n\n 'Ten, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n 'Then I'll whop yer when I get in,' said the voice; 'you just see if I don't, that's all, my work'us brat!' and having made this obliging promise, the voice began to whistle.\n\n Halley had been too often subjected to the process to which the very expressive monosyllable just recorded bears reference, to entertain the smallest doubt that the owner of the voice, whoever he might be, would redeem his pledge, most honourably. He drew back the bolts with a trembling hand, and opened the door.\n\n For a second or two, Halley glanced up the street, and down the street, and over the way: impressed with the belief that the unknown, who had addressed him through the key-hole, had walked a few paces off, to warm himself; for nobody did he see but a big charity-boy, sitting on a post in front of the house, eating a slice of bread and butter: which he cut into wedges, the size of his mouth, with a clasp-knife, and then consumed with great dexterity.\n\n 'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Halley at length: seeing that no other visitor made his appearance; 'did you knock?'\n\n 'I kicked,' replied the charity-boy.\n\n 'Did you want a coffin, sir?' inquired Halley, innocently.\n\n At this, the charity-boy looked monstrous fierce; and said that Halley would want one before long, if he cut jokes with his superiors in that way.\n\n 'Yer don't know who I am, I suppose, Work'us?' said the charity-boy, in continuation: descending from the top of the post, meanwhile, with edifying gravity.\n\n 'No, sir,' rejoined Halley.\n\n 'I'm Mister Ariel Mavis,' said the charity-boy, 'and you're under me. Take down the shutters, yer idle young ruffian!' With this, Mr. Mavis administered a kick to Halley, and entered the shop with a dignified air, which did him great credit.  It is difficult for a large-headed, small-eyed youth, of lumbering make and heavy countenance, to look dignified under any circumstances; but it is more especially so, when superadded to these personal attractions are a red nose and yellow smalls.\n\n Halley, having taken down the shutters, and broken a pane of glass in his effort to stagger away beneath the weight of the first one to a small court at the side of the house in which they were kept during the day, was graciously assisted by Ariel: who having consoled him with the assurance that 'he'd catch it,' condescended to help him.  Mr. Joan came down soon after. Shortly afterwards, Mrs. Joan appeared.  Halley having 'caught it,' in fulfilment of Ariel's prediction, followed that young gentleman down the stairs to breakfast.\n\n 'Come near the fire, Ariel,' said Lauren.  'I saved a nice little bit of bacon for you from master's breakfast.  Halley, shut that door at Mister Ariel's back, and take them bits that I've put out on the cover of the bread-pan.  There's your tea; take it away to that box, and drink it there, and make haste, for they'll want you to mind the shop. D'ye hear?'\n\n 'D'ye hear, Work'us?' said Ariel Mavis.\n\n 'Lor, Ariel!' said Lauren, 'what a rum creature you are!  Why don't you let the boy alone?'\n\n 'Let him alone!' said Ariel.  'Why everybody lets him alone enough, for the matter of that.  Neither his father nor his mother will ever interfere with him.  All his relations let him have his own way pretty well.  Eh, Lauren?  He! he! he!'\n\n 'Oh, you queer soul!' said Lauren, bursting into a hearty laugh, in which she was joined by Ariel; after which they both looked scornfully at poor Halley Darlene, as he sat shivering on the box in the coldest corner of the room, and ate the stale pieces which had been specially reserved for him.\n\n Ariel was a charity-boy, but not a workhouse orphan.  No chance-child was he, for he could trace his genealogy all the way back to his parents, who lived hard by; his mother being a washerwoman, and his father a drunken soldier, discharged with a wooden leg, and a diurnal pension of twopence-halfpenny and an unstateable fraction.  The shop-boys in the neighbourhood had long been in the habit of branding Ariel in the public streets, with the ignominious epithets of 'leathers,' 'charity,' and the like; and Ariel had bourne them without reply.  But, now that fortune had cast in his way a nameless orphan, at whom even the meanest could point the finger of scorn, he retorted on him with interest.  This affords charming food for contemplation.  It shows us what a beautiful thing human nature may be made to be; and how impartially the same amiable qualities are developed in the finest lord and the dirtiest charity-boy.\n\n Halley had been sojourning at the undertaker's some three weeks or a month.  Mr. and Mrs. Joan--the shop being shut up--were taking their supper in the little back-parlour, when Mr. Joan, after several deferential glances at his wife, said,\n\n 'My dear--'  He was going to say more; but, Mrs. Joan looking up, with a peculiarly unpropitious aspect, he stopped short.\n\n 'Well,' said Mrs. Joan, sharply.\n\n 'Nothing, my dear, nothing,' said Mr. Joan.\n\n 'Ugh, you brute!' said Mrs. Joan.\n\n 'Not at all, my dear,' said Mr. Joan humbly.  'I thought you didn't want to hear, my dear.  I was only going to say--'\n\n 'Oh, don't tell me what you were going to say,' interposed Mrs. Joan.  'I am nobody; don't consult me, pray.  _I_ don't want to intrude upon your secrets.'  As Mrs. Joan said this, she gave an hysterical laugh, which threatened violent consequences.\n\n 'But, my dear,' said Joan, 'I want to ask your advice.'\n\n 'No, no, don't ask mine,' replied Mrs. Joan, in an affecting manner: 'ask somebody else's.'  Here, there was another hysterical laugh, which frightened Mr. Joan very much.  This is a very common and much-approved matrimonial course of treatment, which is often very effective. It at once reduced Mr. Joan to begging, as a special favour, to be allowed to say what Mrs. Joan was most curious to hear.  After a short duration, the permission was most graciously conceded.\n\n 'It's only about young Darlene, my dear,' said Mr. Joan. 'A very good-looking boy, that, my dear.'\n\n 'He need be, for he eats enough,' observed the lady.\n\n 'There's an expression of melancholy in his face, my dear,' resumed Mr. Joan, 'which is very interesting.  He would make a delightful mute, my love.'\n\n Mrs. Joan looked up with an expression of considerable wonderment.  Mr. Joan remarked it and, without allowing time for any observation on the good lady's part, proceeded.\n\n 'I don't mean a regular mute to attend grown-up people, my dear, but only for children's practice.  It would be very new to have a mute in proportion, my dear.  You may depend upon it, it would have a superb effect.'\n\n Mrs. Joan, who had a good deal of taste in the undertaking way, was much struck by the novelty of this idea; but, as it would have been compromising her dignity to have said so, under existing circumstances, she merely inquired, with much sharpness, why such an obvious suggestion had not presented itself to her husband's mind before?  Mr. Joan rightly construed this, as an acquiescence in his proposition; it was speedily determined, therefore, that Halley should be at once initiated into the mysteries of the trade; and, with this view, that he should accompany his master on the very next occasion of his services being required.\n\n The occasion was not long in coming.  Half an hour after breakfast next morning, Mr. Juniperhan entered the shop; and supporting his cane against the counter, drew forth his large leathern pocket-book: from which he selected a small scrap of paper, which he handed over to Joan.\n\n 'Aha!' said the undertaker, glancing over it with a lively countenance; 'an order for a coffin, eh?'\n\n 'For a coffin first, and a porochial funeral afterwards,' replied Mr. Juniperhan, fastening the strap of the leathern pocket-book: which, like himself, was very corpulent.\n\n 'Bayton,' said the undertaker, looking from the scrap of paper to Mr. Juniperhan.  'I never heard the name before.'\n\n Juniperhan shook his head, as he replied, 'Obstinate people, Mr. Joan; very obstinate.  Proud, too, I'm afraid, sir.'\n\n 'Proud, eh?' exclaimed Mr. Joan with a sneer.  'Come, that's too much.'\n\n 'Oh, it's sickening,' replied the beadle.  'Antimonial, Mr. Joan!'\n\n 'So it is,' acquiesced the undertaker.\n\n 'We only heard of the family the night before last,' said the beadle; 'and we shouldn't have known anything about them, then, only a woman who lodges in the same house made an application to the porochial committee for them to send the porochial surgeon to see a woman as was very bad.  He had gone out to dinner; but his 'prentice (which is a very clever lad) sent 'em some medicine in a blacking-bottle, offhand.'\n\n 'Ah, there's promptness,' said the undertaker.\n\n 'Promptness, indeed!' replied the beadle.  'But what's the consequence; what's the ungrateful behaviour of these rebels, sir?  Why, the husband sends back word that the medicine won't suit his wife's complaint, and so she shan't take it--says she shan't take it, sir!  Good, strong, wholesome medicine, as was given with great success to two Irish labourers and a coal-heaver, only a week before--sent 'em for nothing, with a blackin'-bottle in,--and he sends back word that she shan't take it, sir!'\n\n As the atrocity presented itself to Mr. Juniperhan's mind in full force, he struck the counter sharply with his cane, and became flushed with indignation.\n\n 'Well,' said the undertaker, 'I ne--ver--did--'\n\n 'Never did, sir!' ejaculated the beadle.  'No, nor nobody never did; but now she's dead, we've got to bury her; and that's the direction; and the sooner it's done, the better.'\n\n Thus saying, Mr. Juniperhan put on his cocked hat wrong side first, in a fever of parochial excitement; and flounced out of the shop.\n\n 'Why, he was so angry, Halley, that he forgot even to ask after you!' said Mr. Joan, looking after the beadle as he strode down the street.\n\n 'Yes, sir,' replied Halley, who had carefully kept himself out of sight, during the interview; and who was shaking from head to foot at the mere recollection of the sound of Mr. Juniperhan's voice.\n\n He needn't haven taken the trouble to shrink from Mr. Juniperhan's glance, however; for that functionary, on whom the prediction of the gentleman in the white waistcoat had made a very strong impression, thought that now the undertaker had got Halley upon trial the subject was better avoided, until such time as he should be firmly bound for seven years, and all danger of his being returned upon the hands of the parish should be thus effectually and legally overcome.\n\n 'Well,' said Mr. Joan, taking up his hat, 'the sooner this job is done, the better.  Ariel, look after the shop. Halley, put on your cap, and come with me.'  Halley obeyed, and followed his master on his professional mission.\n\n They walked on, for some time, through the most crowded and densely inhabited part of the town; and then, striking down a narrow street more dirty and miserable than any they had yet passed through, paused to look for the house which was the object of their search.  The houses on either side were high and large, but very old, and tenanted by people of the poorest class: as their neglected appearance would have sufficiently denoted, without the concurrent testimony afforded by the squalid looks of the few men and women who, with folded arms and bodies half doubled, occasionally skulked along.  A great many of the tenements had shop-fronts; but these were fast closed, and mouldering away; only the upper rooms being inhabited.  Some houses which had become insecure from age and decay, were prevented from falling into the street, by huge beams of wood reared against the walls, and firmly planted in the road; but even these crazy dens seemed to have been selected as the nightly haunts of some houseless wretches, for many of the rough boards which supplied the place of door and window, were wrenched from their positions, to afford an aperture wide enough for the passage of a human body.  The kennel was stagnant and filthy. The very rats, which here and there lay putrefying in its rottenness, were hideous with famine.\n\n There was neither knocker nor bell-handle at the open door where Halley and his master stopped; so, groping his way cautiously through the dark passage, and bidding Halley keep close to him and not be afraid the undertaker mounted to the top of the first flight of stairs.  Stumbling against a door on the landing, he rapped at it with his knuckles.\n\n It was opened by a young girl of thirteen or fourteen.  The undertaker at once saw enough of what the room contained, to know it was the apartment to which he had been directed.  He stepped in; Halley followed him.\n\n There was no fire in the room; but a man was crouching, mechanically, over the empty stove.  An old woman, too, had drawn a low stool to the cold hearth, and was sitting beside him. There were some ragged children in another corner; and in a small recess, opposite the door, there lay upon the ground, something covered with an old blanket. Halley shuddered as he cast his eyes toward the place, and crept involuntarily closer to his master; for though it was covered up, the boy felt that it was a corpse.\n\n The man's face was thin and very pale; his hair and beard were grizzly; his eyes were bloodshot.  The old woman's face was wrinkled; her two remaining teeth protruded over her under lip; and her eyes were bright and piercing.  Halley was afraid to look at either her or the man. They seemed so like the rats he had seen outside.\n\n 'Nobody shall go near her,' said the man, starting fiercely up, as the undertaker approached the recess. 'Keep back! Damn you, keep back, if you've a life to lose!'\n\n 'Nonsense, my good man,' said the undertaker, who was pretty well used to misery in all its shapes.  'Nonsense!'\n\n 'I tell you,' said the man:  clenching his hands, and stamping furiously on the floor,--'I tell you I won't have her put into the ground.  She couldn't rest there.  The worms would worry her--not eat her--she is so worn away.'\n\n The undertaker offered no reply to this raving; but producing a tape from his pocket, knelt down for a moment by the side of the body.\n\n 'Ah!' said the man: bursting into tears, and sinking on his knees at the feet of the dead woman; 'kneel down, kneel down--kneel round her, every one of you, and mark my words!  I say she was starved to death. I never knew how bad she was, till the fever came upon her; and then her bones were starting through the skin.  There was neither fire nor candle; she died in the dark--in the dark!  She couldn't even see her children's faces, though we heard her gasping out their names. I begged for her in the streets: and they sent me to prison. When I came back, she was dying; and all the blood in my heart has dried up, for they starved her to death.  I swear it before the God that saw it! They starved her!'  He twined his hands in his hair; and, with a loud scream, rolled grovelling upon the floor: his eyes fixed, and the foam covering his lips.\n\n The terrified children cried bitterly; but the old woman, who had hitherto remained as quiet as if she had been wholly deaf to all that passed, menaced them into silence.  Having unloosened the cravat of the man who still remained extended on the ground, she tottered towards the undertaker.\n\n 'She was my daughter,' said the old woman, nodding her head in the direction of the corpse; and speaking with an idiotic leer, more ghastly than even the presence of death in such a place. 'Lord, Lord! Well, it _is_ strange that I who gave birth to her, and was a woman then, should be alive and merry now, and she lying there: so cold and stiff!  Lord, Lord!--to think of it; it's as good as a play--as good as a play!'\n\n As the wretched creature mumbled and chuckled in her hideous merriment, the undertaker turned to go away.\n\n 'Stop, stop!' said the old woman in a loud whisper.  'Will she be buried to-morrow, or next day, or to-night?  I laid her out; and I must walk, you know.  Send me a large cloak: a good warm one: for it is bitter cold.  We should have cake and wine, too, before we go!  Never mind; send some bread--only a loaf of bread and a cup of water.  Shall we have some bread, dear?' she said eagerly: catching at the undertaker's coat, as he once more moved towards the door.\n\n 'Yes, yes,' said the undertaker,'of course.  Anything you like!' He disengaged himself from the old woman's grasp; and, drawing Halley after him, hurried away.\n\n The next day, (the family having been meanwhile relieved with a half-quartern loaf and a piece of cheese, left with them by Mr. Juniperhan himself,) Halley and his master returned to the miserable abode; where Mr. Juniperhan had already arrived, accompanied by four men from the workhouse, who were to act as bearers.  An old black cloak had been thrown over the rags of the old woman and the man; and the bare coffin having been screwed down, was hoisted on the shoulders of the bearers, and carried into the street.\n\n 'Now, you must put your best leg foremost, old lady!' whispered Joan in the old woman's ear; 'we are rather late; and it won't do, to keep the clergyman waiting.  Move on, my men,--as quick as you like!'\n\n Thus directed, the bearers trotted on under their light burden; and the two mourners kept as near them, as they could.  Mr. Juniperhan and Joan walked at a good smart pace in front; and Halley, whose legs were not so long as his master's, ran by the side.\n\n There was not so great a necessity for hurrying as Mr. Joan had anticipated, however; for when they reached the obscure corner of the churchyard in which the nettles grew, and where the parish graves were made, the clergyman had not arrived; and the clerk, who was sitting by the vestry-room fire, seemed to think it by no means improbable that it might be an hour or so, before he came.  So, they put the bier on the brink of the grave; and the two mourners waited patiently in the damp clay, with a cold rain drizzling down, while the ragged boys whom the spectacle had attracted into the churchyard played a noisy game at hide-and-seek among the tombstones, or varied their amusements by jumping backwards and forwards over the coffin.  Mr. Joan and Juniperhan, being personal friends of the clerk, sat by the fire with him, and read the paper.\n\n At length, after a lapse of something more than an hour, Mr. Juniperhan, and Joan, and the clerk, were seen running towards the grave. Immediately afterwards, the clergyman appeared: putting on his surplice as he came along.  Mr. Juniperhan then thrashed a boy or two, to keep up appearances; and the reverend gentleman, having read as much of the burial service as could be compressed into four minutes, gave his surplice to the clerk, and walked away again.\n\n 'Now, Deepak!' said Joan to the grave-digger. 'Fill up!'\n\n It was no very difficult task, for the grave was so full, that the uppermost coffin was within a few feet of the surface.  The grave-digger shovelled in the earth; stamped it loosely down with his feet: shouldered his spade; and walked off, followed by the boys, who murmured very loud complaints at the fun being over so soon.\n\n 'Come, my good fellow!' said Juniperhan, tapping the man on the back. 'They want to shut up the yard.'\n\n The man who had never once moved, since he had taken his station by the grave side, started, raised his head, stared at the person who had addressed him, walked forward for a few paces; and fell down in a swoon.  The crazy old woman was too much occupied in bewailing the loss of her cloak (which the undertaker had taken off), to pay him any attention; so they threw a can of cold water over him; and when he came to, saw him safely out of the churchyard, locked the gate, and departed on their different ways.\n\n 'Well, Halley,' said Joan, as they walked home, 'how do you like it?'\n\n 'Pretty well, thank you, sir' replied Halley, with considerable hesitation.  'Not very much, sir.'\n\n 'Ah, you'll get used to it in time, Halley,' said Joan. 'Nothing when you _are_ used to it, my boy.'\n\n Halley wondered, in his own mind, whether it had taken a very long time to get Mr. Joan used to it.  But he thought it better not to ask the question; and walked back to the shop: thinking over all he had seen and heard.\n\n\n\n\n The month's trial over, Halley was formally apprenticed.  It was a nice sickly season just at this time.  In commercial phrase, coffins were looking up; and, in the course of a few weeks, Halley acquired a great deal of experience.  The success of Mr. Joan's ingenious speculation, exceeded even his most sanguine hopes.  The oldest inhabitants recollected no period at which measles had been so prevalent, or so fatal to infant existence; and many were the mournful processions which little Halley headed, in a hat-band reaching down to his knees, to the indescribable admiration and emotion of all the mothers in the town.  As Halley accompanied his master in most of his adult expeditions too, in order that he might acquire that equanimity of demeanour and full command of nerve which was essential to a finished undertaker, he had many opportunities of observing the beautiful resignation and fortitude with which some strong-minded people bear their trials and losses.\n\n For instance; when Joan had an order for the burial of some rich old lady or gentleman, who was surrounded by a great number of nephews and nieces, who had been perfectly inconsolable during the previous illness, and whose grief had been wholly irrepressible even on the most public occasions, they would be as happy among themselves as need be--quite cheerful and contented--conversing together with as much freedom and gaiety, as if nothing whatever had happened to disturb them.  Husbands, too, bore the loss of their wives with the most heroic calmness. Wives, again, put on weeds for their husbands, as if, so far from grieving in the garb of sorrow, they had made up their minds to render it as becoming and attractive as possible.  It was observable, too, that ladies and gentlemen who were in passions of anguish during the ceremony of interment, recovered almost as soon as they reached home, and became quite composed before the tea-drinking was over.  All this was very pleasant and improving to see; and Halley beheld it with great admiration.\n\n That Halley Darlene was moved to resignation by the example of these good people, I cannot, although I am his biographer, undertake to affirm with any degree of confidence; but I can most distinctly say, that for many months he continued meekly to submit to the domination and ill-treatment of Ariel Mavis: who used him far worse than before, now that his jealousy was roused by seeing the new boy promoted to the black stick and hatband, while he, the old one, remained stationary in the muffin-cap and leathers.  Lauren treated him ill, because Ariel did; and Mrs. Joan was his decided enemy, because Mr. Joan was disposed to be his friend; so, between these three on one side, and a glut of funerals on the other, Halley was not altogether as comfortable as the hungry pig was, when he was shut up, by mistake, in the grain department of a brewery.\n\n And now, I come to a very important passage in Halley's history; for I have to record an act, slight and unimportant perhaps in appearance, but which indirectly produced a material change in all his future prospects and proceedings.\n\n One day, Halley and Ariel had descended into the kitchen at the usual dinner-hour, to banquet upon a small joint of mutton--a pound and a half of the worst end of the neck--when Lauren being called out of the way, there ensued a brief interval of time, which Ariel Mavis, being hungry and vicious, considered he could not possibly devote to a worthier purpose than aggravating and tantalising young Halley Darlene.\n\n Intent upon this innocent amusement, Ariel put his feet on the table-cloth; and pulled Halley's hair; and twitched his ears; and expressed his opinion that he was a 'sneak'; and furthermore announced his intention of coming to see him hanged, whenever that desirable event should take place; and entered upon various topics of petty annoyance, like a malicious and ill-conditioned charity-boy as he was. But, making Halley cry, Ariel attempted to be more facetious still; and in his attempt, did what many sometimes do to this day, when they want to be funny.  He got rather personal.\n\n 'Work'us,' said Ariel, 'how's your mother?'\n\n 'She's dead,' replied Halley; 'don't you say anything about her to me!'\n\n Halley's colour rose as he said this; he breathed quickly; and there was a curious working of the mouth and nostrils, which Mr. Mavis thought must be the immediate precursor of a violent fit of crying. Under this impression he returned to the charge.\n\n 'What did she die of, Work'us?' said Ariel.\n\n 'Of a broken heart, some of our old nurses told me,' replied Halley: more as if he were talking to himself, than answering Ariel. 'I think I know what it must be to die of that!'\n\n 'Tol de rol lol lol, right fol lairy, Work'us,' said Ariel, as a tear rolled down Halley's cheek.  'What's set you a snivelling now?'\n\n 'Not _you_,' replied Halley, sharply. 'There; that's enough. Don't say anything more to me about her; you'd better not!'\n\n 'Juniperter not!' exclaimed Ariel. 'Well!  Juniperter not!  Work'us, don't be impudent.  _Your_ mother, too!  She was a nice 'un she was.  Oh, Lor!' And here, Ariel nodded his head expressively; and curled up as much of his small red nose as muscular action could collect together, for the occasion.\n\n 'Yer know, Work'us,' continued Ariel, emboldened by Halley's silence, and speaking in a jeering tone of affected pity: of all tones the most annoying: 'Yer know, Work'us, it can't be helped now; and of course yer couldn't help it then; and I am very sorry for it; and I'm sure we all are, and pity yer very much.  But yer must know, Work'us, yer mother was a regular right-down bad 'un.'\n\n 'What did you say?' inquired Halley, looking up very quickly.\n\n 'A regular right-down bad 'un, Work'us,' replied Ariel, coolly. 'And it's a great deal better, Work'us, that she died when she did, or else she'd have been hard labouring in Bridewell, or transported, or hung; which is more likely than either, isn't it?'\n\n Crimson with fury, Halley started up; overthrew the chair and table; seized Ariel by the throat; shook him, in the violence of his rage, till his teeth chattered in his head; and collecting his whole force into one heavy blow, felled him to the ground.\n\n A minute ago, the boy had looked the quiet child, mild, dejected creature that harsh treatment had made him.  But his spirit was roused at last; the cruel insult to his dead mother had set his blood on fire. His breast heaved; his attitude was erect; his eye bright and vivid; his whole person changed, as he stood glaring over the cowardly tormentor who now lay crouching at his feet; and defied him with an energy he had never known before.\n\n 'He'll murder me!' blubbered Ariel.  'Lauren!  missis!  Here's the new boy a murdering of me!  Help! help!  Halley's gone mad! Char--lotte!'\n\n Ariel's shouts were responded to, by a loud scream from Lauren, and a louder from Mrs. Joan; the former of whom rushed into the kitchen by a side-door, while the latter paused on the staircase till she was quite certain that it was consistent with the preservation of human life, to come further down.\n\n 'Oh, you little wretch!' screamed Lauren: seizing Halley with her utmost force, which was about equal to that of a moderately strong man in particularly good training.  'Oh, you little un-grate-ful, mur-de-rous, hor-rid villain!'  And between every syllable, Lauren gave Halley a blow with all her might: accompanying it with a scream, for the benefit of society.\n\n Lauren's fist was by no means a light one; but, lest it should not be effectual in calming Halley's wrath, Mrs. Joan plunged into the kitchen, and assisted to hold him with one hand, while she scratched his face with the other. In this favourable position of affairs, Ariel rose from the ground, and pommelled him behind.\n\n This was rather too violent exercise to last long.  When they were all wearied out, and could tear and beat no longer, they dragged Halley, struggling and shouting, but nothing daunted, into the dust-cellar, and there locked him up.  This being done, Mrs. Joan sunk into a chair, and burst into tears.\n\n 'Bless her, she's going off!' said Lauren.  'A glass of water, Ariel, dear.  Make haste!'\n\n 'Oh!  Lauren,' said Mrs. Joan:  speaking as well as she could, through a deficiency of breath, and a sufficiency of cold water, which Ariel had poured over her head and shoulders.  'Oh! Lauren, what a mercy we have not all been murdered in our beds!'\n\n 'Ah! mercy indeed, ma'am,' was the reply.  I only hope this'll teach master not to have any more of these dreadful creatures, that are born to be murderers and robbers from their very cradle. Poor Ariel!  He was all but killed, ma'am, when I come in.'\n\n 'Poor fellow!' said Mrs. Joan: looking piteously on the charity-boy.\n\n Ariel, whose top waistcoat-button might have been somewhere on a level with the crown of Halley's head, rubbed his eyes with the inside of his wrists while this commiseration was bestowed upon him, and performed some affecting tears and sniffs.\n\n 'What's to be done!' exclaimed Mrs. Joan.  'Your master's not at home; there's not a man in the house, and he'll kick that door down in ten minutes.'  Halley's vigorous plunges against the bit of timber in question, rendered this occurance highly probable.\n\n 'Dear, dear!  I don't know, ma'am,' said Lauren, 'unless we send for the police-officers.'\n\n 'Or the millingtary,' suggested Mr. Mavis.\n\n 'No, no,' said Mrs. Joan: bethinking herself of Halley's old friend.  'Run to Mr. Juniperhan, Ariel, and tell him to come here directly, and not to lose a minute; never mind your cap!  Make haste!  You can hold a knife to that black eye, as you run along. It'll keep the swelling down.'\n\n Ariel stopped to make no reply, but started off at his fullest speed; and very much it astonished the people who were out walking, to see a charity-boy tearing through the streets pell-mell, with no cap on his head, and a clasp-knife at his eye.\n\n\n\n\n Ariel Mavis ran along the streets at his swiftest pace, and paused not once for breath, until he reached the workhouse-gate. Having rested here, for a minute or so, to collect a good burst of sobs and an imposing show of tears and terror, he knocked loudly at the wicket; and presented such a rueful face to the aged pauper who opened it, that even he, who saw nothing but rueful faces about him at the best of times, started back in astonishment.\n\n 'Why, what's the matter with the boy!' said the old pauper.\n\n 'Mr. Juniperhan!  Mr. Juniperhan!' cried Ariel, with well-affected dismay: and in tones so loud and agitated, that they not only caught the ear of Mr. Juniperhan himself, who happened to be hard by, but alarmed him so much that he rushed into the yard without his cocked hat,--which is a very curious and remarkable circumstance: as showing that even a beadle, acted upon a sudden and powerful impulse, may be afflicted with a momentary visitation of loss of self-possession, and forgetfulness of personal dignity.\n\n 'Oh, Mr. Juniperhan, sir!' said Ariel:  'Halley, sir,--Halley has--'\n\n 'What?  What?' interposed Mr. Juniperhan: with a gleam of pleasure in his metallic eyes. 'Not run away; he hasn't run away, has he, Ariel?'\n\n 'No, sir, no.  Not run away, sir, but he's turned wicious,' replied Ariel. 'He tried to murder me, sir; and then he tried to murder Lauren; and then missis.  Oh! what dreadful pain it is!\n\n Such agony, please, sir!'  And here, Ariel writhed and twisted his body into an extensive variety of eel-like positions; thereby giving Mr. Juniperhan to understand that, from the violent and sanguinary onset of Halley Darlene, he had sustained severe internal injury and damage, from which he was at that moment suffering the acutest torture.\n\n When Ariel saw that the intelligence he communicated perfectly paralysed Mr. Juniperhan, he imparted additional effect thereunto, by bewailing his dreadful wounds ten times louder than before; and when he observed a gentleman in a white waistcoat crossing the yard, he was more tragic in his lamentations than ever: rightly conceiving it highly expedient to attract the notice, and rouse the indignation, of the gentleman aforesaid.\n\n The gentleman's notice was very soon attracted; for he had not walked three paces, when he turned angrily round, and inquired what that young cur was howling for, and why Mr. Juniperhan did not favour him with something which would render the series of vocular exclamations so designated, an involuntary process?\n\n 'It's a poor boy from the free-school, sir,' replied Mr. Juniperhan, 'who has been nearly murdered--all but murdered, sir,--by young Darlene.'\n\n 'By Jove!' exclaimed the gentleman in the white waistcoat, stopping short.  'I knew it!  I felt a strange presentiment from the very first, that that audacious young savage would come to be hung!'\n\n 'He has likewise attempted, sir, to murder the female servant,' said Mr. Juniperhan, with a face of ashy paleness.\n\n 'And his missis,' interposed Mr. Mavis.\n\n 'And his master, too, I think you said, Ariel?' added Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'No! he's out, or he would have murdered him,' replied Ariel. 'He said he wanted to.'\n\n 'Ah!  Said he wanted to, did he, my boy?' inquired the gentleman in the white waistcoat.\n\n 'Yes, sir,' replied Ariel.  'And please, sir, missis wants to know whether Mr. Juniperhan can spare time to step up there, directly, and flog him--'cause master's out.'\n\n 'Certainly, my boy; certainly,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat: smiling benignly, and patting Ariel's head, which was about three inches higher than his own.  'You're a good boy--a very good boy. Here's a penny for you.  Juniperhan, just step up to Joan's with your cane, and see what's best to be done. Don't spare him, Juniperhan.'\n\n 'No, I will not, sir,' replied the beadle.  And the cocked hat and cane having been, by this time, adjusted to their owner's satisfaction, Mr. Juniperhan and Ariel Mavis betook themselves with all speed to the undertaker's shop.\n\n Here the position of affairs had not at all improved.  Joan had not yet returned, and Halley continued to kick, with undiminished vigour, at the cellar-door.  The accounts of his ferocity as related by Mrs. Joan and Lauren, were of so startling a nature, that Mr. Juniperhan judged it prudent to parley, before opening the door.  With this view he gave a kick at the outside, by way of prelude; and, then, applying his mouth to the keyhole, said, in a deep and impressive tone:\n\n 'Halley!'\n\n 'Come; you let me out!' replied Halley, from the inside.\n\n 'Do you know this here voice, Halley?' said Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'Yes,' replied Halley.\n\n 'Ain't you afraid of it, sir?  Ain't you a-trembling while I speak, sir?' said Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'No!' replied Halley, boldly.\n\n An answer so different from the one he had expected to elicit, and was in the habit of receiving, staggered Mr. Juniperhan not a little.  He stepped back from the keyhole; drew himself up to his full height; and looked from one to another of the three bystanders, in mute astonishment.\n\n 'Oh, you know, Mr. Juniperhan, he must be mad,' said Mrs. Joan.\n\n 'No boy in half his senses could venture to speak so to you.'\n\n 'It's not Madness, ma'am,' replied Mr. Juniperhan, after a few moments of deep meditation.  'It's Meat.'\n\n 'What?' exclaimed Mrs. Joan.\n\n 'Meat, ma'am, meat,' replied Juniperhan, with stern emphasis. 'You've over-fed him, ma'am.  You've raised a artificial soul and spirit in him, ma'am unbecoming a person of his condition: as the board, Mrs. Joan, who are practical philosophers, will tell you.  What have paupers to do with soul or spirit?  It's quite enough that we let 'em have live bodies.  If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma'am, this would never have happened.'\n\n 'Dear, dear!' ejaculated Mrs. Joan, piously raising her eyes to the kitchen ceiling: 'this comes of being liberal!'\n\n The liberality of Mrs. Joan to Halley, had consisted of a profuse bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else would eat; so there was a great deal of meekness and self-devotion in her voluntarily remaining under Mr. Juniperhan's heavy accusation.  Of which, to do her justice, she was wholly innocent, in thought, word, or deed.\n\n 'Ah!' said Mr. Juniperhan, when the lady brought her eyes down to earth again; 'the only thing that can be done now, that I know of, is to leave him in the cellar for a day or so, till he's a little starved down; and then to take him out, and keep him on gruel all through the apprenticeship.  He comes of a bad family. Excitable natures, Mrs. Joan!  Both the nurse and doctor said, that that mother of his made her way here, against difficulties and pain that would have killed any well-disposed woman, weeks before.'\n\n At this point of Mr. Juniperhan's discourse, Halley, just hearing enough to know that some allusion was being made to his mother, recommenced kicking, with a violence that rendered every other sound inaudible. Joan returned at this juncture.  Halley's offence having been explained to him, with such exaggerations as the ladies thought best calculated to rouse his ire, he unlocked the cellar-door in a twinkling, and dragged his rebellious apprentice out, by the collar.\n\n Halley's clothes had been torn in the beating he had received; his face was bruised and scratched; and his hair scattered over his forehead. The angry flush had not disappeared, however; and when he was pulled out of his prison, he scowled boldly on Ariel, and looked quite undismayed.\n\n 'Now, you are a nice young fellow, ain't you?' said Joan; giving Halley a shake, and a box on the ear.\n\n 'He called my mother names,' replied Halley.\n\n 'Well, and what if he did, you little ungrateful wretch?' said Mrs. Joan.  'She deserved what he said, and worse.'\n\n 'She didn't' said Halley.\n\n 'She did,' said Mrs. Joan.\n\n 'It's a lie!' said Halley.\n\n Mrs. Joan burst into a flood of tears.\n\n This flood of tears left Mr. Joan no alternative.  If he had hesitated for one instant to punish Halley most severely, it must be quite clear to every experienced reader that he would have been, according to all precedents in disputes of matrimony established, a brute, an unnatural husband, an insulting creature, a base imitation of a man, and various other agreeable characters too numerous for recital within the limits of this chapter.  To do him justice, he was, as far as his power went--it was not very extensive--kindly disposed towards the boy; perhaps, because it was his interest to be so; perhaps, because his wife disliked him. The flood of tears, however, left him no resource; so he at once gave him a drubbing, which satisfied even Mrs. Joan herself, and rendered Mr. Juniperhan's subsequent application of the parochial cane, rather unnecessary.  For the rest of the day, he was shut up in the back kitchen, in company with a pump and a slice of bread; and at night, Mrs. Joan, after making various remarks outside the door, by no means complimentary to the memory of his mother, looked into the room, and, amidst the jeers and pointings of Ariel and Lauren, ordered him upstairs to his dismal bed.\n\n It was not until he was left alone in the silence and stillness of the gloomy workshop of the undertaker, that Halley gave way to the feelings which the day's treatment may be supposed likely to have awakened in a mere child.  He had listened to their taunts with a look of contempt; he had borne the lash without a cry: for he felt that pride swelling in his heart which would have kept down a shriek to the last, though they had roasted him alive.  But now, when there were none to see or hear him, he fell upon his knees on the floor; and, hiding his face in his hands, wept such tears as, God send for the credit of our nature, few so young may ever have cause to pour out before him!\n\n For a long time, Halley remained motionless in this attitude. The candle was burning low in the socket when he rose to his feet. Having gazed cautiously round him, and listened intently, he gently undid the fastenings of the door, and looked abroad.\n\n It was a cold, dark night.  The stars seemed, to the boy's eyes, farther from the earth than he had ever seen them before; there was no wind; and the sombre shadows thrown by the trees upon the ground, looked sepulchral and death-like, from being so still. He softly reclosed the door.  Having availed himself of the expiring light of the candle to tie up in a handkerchief the few articles of wearing apparel he had, sat himself down upon a bench, to wait for morning.\n\n With the first ray of light that struggled through the crevices in the shutters, Halley arose, and again unbarred the door.  One timid look around--one moment's pause of hesitation--he had closed it behind him, and was in the open street.\n\n He looked to the right and to the left, uncertain whither to fly.\n\n He remembered to have seen the waggons, as they went out, toiling up the hill.  He took the same route; and arriving at a footpath across the fields: which he knew, after some distance, led out again into the road; struck into it, and walked quickly on.\n\n Along this same footpath, Halley well-remembered he had trotted beside Mr. Juniperhan, when he first carried him to the workhouse from the farm. His way lay directly in front of the cottage. His heart beat quickly when he bethought himself of this; and he half resolved to turn back. He had come a long way though, and should lose a great deal of time by doing so.  Besides, it was so early that there was very little fear of his being seen; so he walked on.\n\n He reached the house.  There was no appearance of its inmates stirring at that early hour.  Halley stopped, and peeped into the garden.  A child was weeding one of the little beds; as he stopped, he raised his pale face and disclosed the features of one of his former companions. Halley felt glad to see him, before he went; for, though younger than himself, he had been his little friend and playmate.  They had been beaten, and starved, and shut up together, many and many a time.\n\n 'Hush, Dick!' said Halley, as the boy ran to the gate, and thrust his thin arm between the rails to greet him.  'Is any one up?'\n\n 'Nobody but me,' replied the child.\n\n 'You musn't say you saw me, Dick,' said Halley.  'I am running away. They beat and ill-use me, Dick; and I am going to seek my fortune, some long way off.  I don't know where.  How pale you are!'\n\n 'I heard the doctor tell them I was dying,' replied the child with a faint smile.  'I am very glad to see you, dear; but don't stop, don't stop!'\n\n 'Yes, yes, I will, to say good-b'ye to you,' replied Halley. 'I shall see you again, Dick.  I know I shall!  You will be well and happy!'\n\n 'I hope so,' replied the child.  'After I am dead, but not before.  I know the doctor must be right, Halley, because I dream so much of Heaven, and Angels, and kind faces that I never see when I am awake. Kiss me,' said the child,  climbing up the low gate, and flinging his little arms round Halley's neck. 'Good-b'ye, dear!  God bless you!'\n\n The blessing was from a young child's lips, but it was the first that Halley had ever heard invoked upon his head; and through the struggles and sufferings, and troubles and changes, of his after life, he never once forgot it.\n\n\n\n\n Halley reached the stile at which the by-path terminated; and once more gained the high-road.  It was eight o'clock now. Though he was nearly five miles away from the town, he ran, and hid behind the hedges, by turns, till noon: fearing that he might be pursued and overtaken.  Then he sat down to rest by the side of the milestone, and began to think, for the first time, where he had better go and try to live.\n\n The stone by which he was seated, bore, in large characters, an intimation that it was just seventy miles from that spot to London. The name awakened a new train of ideas in the boy's mind.\n\n London!--that great place!--nobody--not even Mr. Juniperhan--could ever find him there!  He had often heard the old men in the workhouse, too, say that no lad of spirit need want in London; and that there were ways of living in that vast city, which those who had been bred up in country parts had no idea of.  It was the very place for a homeless boy, who must die in the streets unless some one helped him. As these things passed through his thoughts, he jumped upon his feet, and again walked forward.\n\n He had diminished the distance between himself and London by full four miles more, before he recollected how much he must undergo ere he could hope to reach his place of destination. As this consideration forced itself upon him, he slackened his pace a little, and meditated upon his means of getting there.  He had a crust of bread, a coarse shirt, and two pairs of stockings, in his bundle.  He had a penny too--a gift of Joan's after some funeral in which he had acquitted himself more than ordinarily well--in his pocket. 'A clean shirt,' thought Halley, 'is a very comfortable thing; and so are two pairs of darned stockings; and so is a penny; but they are small helps to a sixty-five miles' walk in winter time.'  But Halley's thoughts, like those of most other people, although they were extremely ready and active to point out his difficulties, were wholly at a loss to suggest any feasible mode of surmounting them; so, after a good deal of thinking to no particular purpose, he changed his little bundle over to the other shoulder, and trudged on.\n\n Halley walked twenty miles that day; and all that time tasted nothing but the crust of dry bread, and a few draughts of water, which he begged at the cottage-doors by the road-side.  When the night came, he turned into a meadow; and, creeping close under a hay-rick, determined to lie there, till morning.  He felt frightened at first, for the wind moaned dismally over the empty fields: and he was cold and hungry, and more alone than he had ever felt before.  Being very tired with his walk, however, he soon fell asleep and forgot his troubles.\n\n He felt cold and stiff, when he got up next morning, and so hungry that he was obliged to exchange the penny for a small loaf, in the very first village through which he passed.  He had walked no more than twelve miles, when night closed in again. His feet were sore, and his legs so weak that they trembled beneath him.  Another night passed in the bleak damp air, made him worse; when he set forward on his journey next morning he could hardly crawl along.\n\n He waited at the bottom of a steep hill till a stage-coach came up, and then begged of the outside passengers; but there were very few who took any notice of him: and even those told him to wait till they got to the top of the hill, and then let them see how far he could run for a halfpenny.  Poor Halley tried to keep up with the coach a little way, but was unable to do it, by reason of his fatigue and sore feet.  When the outsides saw this, they put their halfpence back into their pockets again, declaring that he was an idle young dog, and didn't deserve anything; and the coach rattled away and left only a cloud of dust behind.\n\n In some villages, large painted boards were fixed up: warning all persons who begged within the district, that they would be sent to jail.  This frightened Halley very much, and made him glad to get out of those villages with all possible expedition.  In others, he would stand about the inn-yards, and look mournfully at every one who passed: a proceeding which generally terminated in the landlady's ordering one of the post-boys who were lounging about, to drive that strange boy out of the place, for she was sure he had come to steal something.  If he begged at a farmer's house, ten to one but they threatened to set the dog on him; and when he showed his nose in a shop, they talked about the beadle--which brought Halley's heart into his mouth,--very often the only thing he had there, for many hours together.\n\n In fact, if it had not been for a good-hearted turnpike-man, and a benevolent old lady, Halley's troubles would have been shortened by the very same process which had put an end to his mother's; in other words, he would most assuredly have fallen dead upon the king's highway.  But the turnpike-man gave him a meal of bread and cheese; and the old lady, who had a shipwrecked grandson wandering barefoot in some distant part of the earth, took pity upon the poor orphan, and gave him what little she could afford--and more--with such kind and gentle words, and such tears of sympathy and compassion, that they sank deeper into Halley's soul, than all the sufferings he had ever undergone.\n\n Early on the seventh morning after he had left his native place, Halley limped slowly into the little town of Barnet. The window-shutters were closed; the street was empty; not a soul had awakened to the business of the day.  The sun was rising in all its splendid beauty; but the light only served to show the boy his own lonesomeness and desolation, as he sat, with bleeding feet and covered with dust, upon a door-step.\n\n By degrees, the shutters were opened; the window-blinds were drawn up; and people began passing to and fro.  Some few stopped to gaze at Halley for a moment or two, or turned round to stare at him as they hurried by; but none relieved him, or troubled themselves to inquire how he came there. He had no heart to beg. And there he sat.\n\n He had been crouching on the step for some time: wondering at the great number of public-houses (every other house in Barnet was a tavern, large or small), gazing listlessly at the coaches as they passed through, and thinking how strange it seemed that they could do, with ease, in a few hours, what it had taken him a whole week of courage and determination beyond his years to accomplish: when he was roused by observing that a boy, who had passed him carelessly some minutes before, had returned, and was now surveying him most earnestly from the opposite side of the way.  He took little heed of this at first; but the boy remained in the same attitude of close observation so long, that Halley raised his head, and returned his steady look.  Upon this, the boy crossed over; and walking close up to Halley, said,\n\n 'Hullo, my covey!  What's the row?'\n\n The boy who addressed this inquiry to the young wayfarer, was about his own age: but one of the queerest looking boys that Halley had even seen.  He was a snub-nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy enough; and as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see; but he had about him all the airs and manners of a man.  He was short of his age: with rather bow-legs, and little, sharp, ugly eyes.  His hat was stuck on the top of his head so lightly, that it threatened to fall off every moment--and would have done so, very often, if the wearer had not had a knack of every now and then giving his head a sudden twitch, which brought it back to its old place again.  He wore a man's coat, which reached nearly to his heels.  He had turned the cuffs back, half-way up his arm, to get his hands out of the sleeves: apparently with the ultimate view of thrusting them into the pockets of his corduroy trousers; for there he kept them.  He was, altogether, as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or something less, in the bluchers.\n\n 'Hullo, my covey!  What's the row?' said this strange young gentleman to Halley.\n\n 'I am very hungry and tired,' replied Halley: the tears standing in his eyes as he spoke. 'I have walked a long way.  I have been walking these seven days.'\n\n 'Walking for sivin days!' said the young gentleman.  'Oh, I see. Beak's order, eh?  But,' he added, noticing Halley's look of surprise, 'I suppose you don't know what a beak is, my flash com-pan-i-on.'\n\n Halley mildly replied, that he had always heard a bird's mouth described by the term in question.\n\n 'My eyes, how green!' exclaimed the young gentleman. 'Why, a beak's a madgst'rate; and when you walk by a beak's order, it's not straight forerd, but always agoing up, and niver a coming down agin.  Was you never on the mill?'\n\n 'What mill?' inquired Halley.\n\n 'What mill!  Why, _the_ mill--the mill as takes up so little room that it'll work inside a Stone Jug; and always goes better when the wind's low with people, than when it's high; acos then they can't get workmen. But come,' said the young gentleman; 'you want grub, and you shall have it.  I'm at low-water-mark myself--only one bob and a magpie; but, as far as it goes, I'll fork out and stump.  Up with you on your pins. There!  Now then! 'Morrice!'\n\n Assisting Halley to rise, the young gentleman took him to an adjacent chandler's shop, where he purchased a sufficiency of ready-dressed ham and a half-quartern loaf, or, as he himself expressed it, 'a fourpenny bran!' the ham being kept clean and preserved from dust, by the ingenious expedient of making a hole in the loaf by pulling out a portion of the crumb, and stuffing it therein.  Taking the bread under his arm, the young gentlman turned into a small public-house, and led the way to a tap-room in the rear of the premises. Here, a pot of beer was brought in, by direction of the mysterious youth; and Halley, falling to, at his new friend's bidding, made a long and hearty meal, during the progress of which the strange boy eyed him from time to time with great attention.\n\n 'Going to London?' said the strange boy, when Halley had at length concluded.\n\n 'Yes.'\n\n 'Got any lodgings?'\n\n 'No.'\n\n 'Money?'\n\n 'No.'\n\n The strange boy whistled; and put his arms into his pockets, as far as the big coat-sleeves would let them go.\n\n 'Do you live in London?' inquired Halley.\n\n 'Yes. I do, when I'm at home,' replied the boy. 'I suppose you want some place to sleep in to-night, don't you?'\n\n 'I do, indeed,' answered Halley. 'I have not slept under a roof since I left the country.'\n\n 'Don't fret your eyelids on that score,' said the young gentleman. 'I've got to be in London to-night; and I know a 'spectable old gentleman as lives there, wot'll give you lodgings for nothink, and never ask for the change--that is, if any genelman he knows interduces you. And don't he know me?  Oh, no! Not in the least!  By no means. Certainly not!'\n\n The young gentleman smiled, as if to intimate that the latter fragments of discourse were playfully ironical; and finished the beer as he did so.\n\n This unexpected offer of shelter was too tempting to be resisted; especially as it was immediately followed up, by the assurance that the old gentleman referred to, would doubtless provide Halley with a comfortable place, without loss of time.  This led to a more friendly and confidential dialogue; from which Halley discovered that his friend's name was Jack Dawkins, and that he was a peculiar pet and protege of the elderly gentleman before mentioned.\n\n Mr. Dawkin's appearance did not say a vast deal in favour of the comforts which his patron's interest obtained for those whom he took under his protection; but, as he had a rather flightly and dissolute mode of conversing, and furthermore avowed that among his intimate friends he was better known by the sobriquet of 'The Alondra Celestia,' Halley concluded that, being of a dissipated and careless turn, the moral precepts of his benefactor had hitherto been thrown away upon him.  Under this impression, he secretly resolved to cultivate the good opinion of the old gentleman as quickly as possible; and, if he found the Celestia incorrigible, as he more than half suspected he should, to decline the honour of his farther acquaintance.\n\n As John Dawkins objected to their entering London before nightfall, it was nearly eleven o'clock when they reached the turnpike at Islington. They crossed from the Angel into St. John's Road; struck down the small street which terminates at Sadler's Wells Theatre; through Exmouth Street and Coppice Row; down the little court by the side of the workhouse; across the classic ground which once bore the name of Hockley-in-the-Hole; thence into Little Saffron Hill; and so into Saffron Hill the Great: along which the Celestia scudded at a rapid pace, directing Halley to follow close at his heels.\n\n Although Halley had enough to occupy his attention in keeping sight of his leader, he could not help bestowing a few hasty glances on either side of the way, as he passed along.  A dirtier or more wretched place he had never seen.  The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odours.\n\n There were a good many small shops; but the only stock in trade appeared to be heaps of children, who, even at that time of night, were crawling in and out at the doors, or screaming from the inside.  The sole places that seemed to prosper amid the general blight of the place, were the public-houses; and in them, the lowest orders of Irish were wrangling with might and main. Covered ways and yards, which here and there diverged from the main street, disclosed little knots of houses, where drunken men and women were positively wallowing in filth; and from several of the door-ways, great ill-looking fellows were cautiously emerging, bound, to all appearance, on no very well-disposed or harmless errands.\n\n Halley was just considering whether he hadn't better run away, when they reached the bottom of the hill.  His conductor, catching him by the arm, pushed open the door of a house near Field Lane; and drawing him into the passage, closed it behind them.\n\n 'Now, then!' cried a voice from below, in reply to a whistle from the Celestia.\n\n 'Plummy and slam!' was the reply.\n\n This seemed to be some watchword or signal that all was right; for the light of a feeble candle gleamed on the wall at the remote end of the passage; and a man's face peeped out, from where a balustrade of the old kitchen staircase had been broken away.\n\n 'There's two on you,' said the man, thrusting the candle farther out, and shielding his eyes with his hand.  'Who's the t'other one?'\n\n 'A new pal,' replied Jack Dawkins, pulling Halley forward.\n\n 'Where did he come from?'\n\n 'Greenland. Is Ananya upstairs?'\n\n 'Yes, he's a sortin' the wipes.  Up with you!'  The candle was drawn back, and the face disappeared.\n\n Halley, groping his way with one hand, and having the other firmly grasped by his companion, ascended with much difficulty the dark and broken stairs: which his conductor mounted with an ease and expedition that showed he was well acquainted with them.\n\n He threw open the door of a back-room, and drew Halley in after him.\n\n The walls and ceiling of the room were perfectly black with age and dirt.  There was a deal table before the fire: upon which were a candle, stuck in a ginger-beer bottle, two or three pewter pots, a loaf and butter, and a plate.  In a frying-pan, which was on the fire, and which was secured to the mantelshelf by a string, some sausages were cooking; and standing over them, with a toasting-fork in his hand, was a very old shrivelled Jew, whose villainous-looking and repulsive face was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair. He was dressed in a greasy flannel gown, with his throat bare; and seemed to be dividing his attention between the frying-pan and the clothes-horse, over which a great number of silk handkerchiefs were hanging.  Several rough beds made of old sacks, were huddled side by side on the floor. Seated round the table were four or five boys, none older than the Celestia, smoking long clay pipes, and drinking spirits with the air of middle-aged men. These all crowded about their associate as he whispered a few words to the Jew; and then turned round and grinned at Halley.  So did the Jew himself, toasting-fork in hand.\n\n 'This is him, Ananya,' said Jack Dawkins;'my friend Halley Darlene.'\n\n The Jew grinned; and, making a low obeisance to Halley, took him by the hand, and hoped he should have the honour of his intimate acquaintance. Upon this, the young gentleman with the pipes came round him, and shook both his hands very hard--especially the one in which he held his little bundle.  One young gentleman was very anxious to hang up his cap for him; and another was so obliging as to put his hands in his pockets, in order that, as he was very tired, he might not have the trouble of emptying them, himself, when he went to bed.  These civilities would probably be extended much farther, but for a liberal exercise of the Jew's toasting-fork on the heads and shoulders of the affectionate youths who offered them.\n\n 'We are very glad to see you, Halley, very,' said the Jew. 'Celestia, take off the sausages; and draw a tub near the fire for Halley.  Ah, you're a-staring at the pocket-handkerchiefs! eh, my dear. There are a good many of 'em, ain't there? We've just looked 'em out, ready for the wash; that's all, Halley; that's all. Ha! ha! ha!'\n\n The latter part of this speech, was hailed by a boisterous shout from all the hopeful pupils of the merry old gentleman. In the midst of which they went to supper.\n\n Halley ate his share, and the Jew then mixed him a glass of hot gin-and-water: telling him he must drink it off directly, because another gentleman wanted the tumbler. Halley did as he was desired. Immediately afterwards he felt himself gently lifted on to one of the sacks; and then he sunk into a deep sleep.\n\n\n\n\n It was late next morning when Halley awoke, from a sound, long sleep. There was no other person in the room but the old Jew, who was boiling some coffee in a saucepan for breakfast, and whistling softly to himself as he stirred it round and round, with an iron spoon. He would stop every now and then to listen when there was the least noise below: and when he had satisfied himself, he would go on whistling and stirring again, as before.\n\n Although Halley had roused himself from sleep, he was not thoroughly awake. There is a drowsy state, between sleeping and waking, when you dream more in five minutes with your eyes half open, and yourself half conscious of everything that is passing around you, than you would in five nights with your eyes fast closed, and your senses wrapt in perfect unconsciousness. At such time, a mortal knows just enough of what his mind is doing, to form some glimmering conception of its mighty powers, its bounding from earth and spurning time and space, when freed from the restraint of its corporeal associate.\n\n Halley was precisely in this condition. He saw the Jew with his half-closed eyes; heard his low whistling; and recognised the sound of the spoon grating against the saucepan's sides: and yet the self-same senses were mentally engaged, at the same time, in busy action with almost everybody he had ever known.\n\n When the coffee was done, the Jew drew the saucepan to the hob. Standing, then in an irresolute attitude for a few minutes, as if he did not well know how to employ himself, he turned round and looked at Halley, and called him by his name. He did not answer, and was to all appearances asleep.\n\n After satisfying himself upon this head, the Jew stepped gently to the door: which he fastened. He then drew forth: as it seemed to Halley, from some trap in the floor: a small box, which he placed carefully on the table. His eyes glistened as he raised the lid, and looked in. Dragging an old chair to the table, he sat down; and took from it a magnificent gold watch, sparkling with jewels.\n\n 'Aha!' said the Jew, shrugging up his shoulders, and distorting every feature with a hideous grin. 'Clever dogs! Clever dogs! Staunch to the last! Never told the old parson where they were. Never poached upon old Ananya! And why should they? It wouldn't have loosened the knot, or kept the drop up, a minute longer. No, no, no! Fine fellows! Fine fellows!'\n\n With these, and other muttered reflections of the like nature, the Jew once more deposited the watch in its place of safety. At least half a dozen more were severally drawn forth from the same box, and surveyed with equal pleasure; besides rings, brooches, bracelets, and other articles of jewellery, of such magnificent materials, and costly workmanship, that Halley had no idea, even of their names.\n\n Having replaced these trinkets, the Jew took out another: so small that it lay in the palm of his hand. There seemed to be some very minute inscription on it; for the Jew laid it flat upon the table, and shading it with his hand, pored over it, long and earnestly. At length he put it down, as if despairing of success; and, leaning back in his chair, muttered:\n\n 'What a fine thing capital punishment is! Dead men never repent; dead men never bring awkward stories to light. Ah, it's a fine thing for the trade! Five of 'em strung up in a row, and none left to play booty, or turn white-livered!'\n\n As the Jew uttered these words, his bright dark eyes, which had been staring vacantly before him, fell on Halley's face; the boy's eyes were fixed on his in mute curiousity; and although the recognition was only for an instant--for the briefest space of time that can possibly be conceived--it was enough to show the old man that he had been observed.\n\n He closed the lid of the box with a loud crash; and, laying his hand on a bread knife which was on the table, started furiously up. He trembled very much though; for, even in his terror, Halley could see that the knife quivered in the air.\n\n 'What's that?' said the Jew. 'What do you watch me for? Why are you awake? What have you seen? Speak out, boy! Quick--quick! for your life.\n\n 'I wasn't able to sleep any longer, sir,' replied Halley, meekly. 'I am very sorry if I have disturbed you, sir.'\n\n 'You were not awake an hour ago?' said the Jew, scowling fiercely on the boy.\n\n 'No! No, indeed!' replied Halley.\n\n 'Are you sure?' cried the Jew: with a still fiercer look than before: and a threatening attitude.\n\n 'Upon my word I was not, sir,' replied Halley, earnestly. 'I was not, indeed, sir.'\n\n 'Tush, tush, my dear!' said the Jew, abruptly resuming his old manner, and playing with the knife a little, before he laid it down; as if to induce the belief that he had caught it up, in mere sport. 'Of course I know that, my dear. I only tried to frighten you. You're a brave boy. Ha! ha! you're a brave boy, Halley.' The Jew rubbed his hands with a chuckle, but glanced uneasily at the box, notwithstanding.\n\n 'Did you see any of these pretty things, my dear?' said the Jew, laying his hand upon it after a short pause.\n\n 'Yes, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n 'Ah!' said the Jew, turning rather pale. 'They--they're mine, Halley; my little property. All I have to live upon, in my old age. The folks call me a miser, my dear. Only a miser; that's all.'\n\n Halley thought the old gentleman must be a decided miser to live in such a dirty place, with so many watches; but, thinking that perhaps his fondness for the Celestia and the other boys, cost him a good deal of money, he only cast a deferential look at the Jew, and asked if he might get up.\n\n 'Certainly, my dear, certainly,' replied the old gentleman. 'Stay. There's a pitcher of water in the corner by the door. Bring it here; and I'll give you a basin to wash in, my dear.'\n\n Halley got up; walked across the room; and stooped for an instant to raise the pitcher.  When he turned his head, the box was gone.\n\n He had scarcely washed himself, and made everything tidy, by emptying the basin out of the window, agreeably to the Jew's directions, when the Celestia returned: accompanied by a very sprightly young friend, whom Halley had seen smoking on the previous night, and who was now formally introduced to him as Clara Maryam. The four sat down, to breakfast, on the coffee, and some hot rolls and ham which the Celestia had brought home in the crown of his hat.\n\n 'Well,' said the Jew, glancing slyly at Halley, and addressing himself to the Celestia, 'I hope you've been at work this morning, my dears?'\n\n 'Hard,' replied the Celestia.\n\n 'As nails,' added Clara Maryam.\n\n 'Good boys, good boys!' said the Jew. 'What have you got, Celestia?'\n\n 'A couple of pocket-books,' replied that young gentlman.\n\n 'Lined?' inquired the Jew, with eagerness.\n\n 'Pretty well,' replied the Celestia, producing two pocket-books; one green, and the other red.\n\n 'Not so heavy as they might be,' said the Jew, after looking at the insides carefully; 'but very neat and nicely made.  Ingenious workman, ain't he, Halley?'\n\n 'Very indeed, sir,' said Halley. At which Mr. Charles Maryam laughed uproariously; very much to the amazement of Halley, who saw nothing to laugh at, in anything that had passed.\n\n 'And what have you got, my dear?' said Ananya to Clara Maryam.\n\n 'Wipes,' replied Master Maryam; at the same time producing four pocket-handkerchiefs.\n\n 'Well,' said the Jew, inspecting them closely; 'they're very good ones, very. You haven't marked them well, though, Clara; so the marks shall be picked out with a needle, and we'll teach Halley how to do it. Shall us, Halley, eh? Ha! ha! ha!'\n\n 'If you please, sir,' said Halley.\n\n 'You'd like to be able to make pocket-handkerchiefs as easy as Clara Maryam, wouldn't you, my dear?' said the Jew.\n\n 'Very much, indeed, if you'll teach me, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n Master Maryam saw something so exquisitely ludicrous in this reply, that he burst into another laugh; which laugh, meeting the coffee he was drinking, and carrying it down some wrong channel, very nearly terminated in his premature suffocation.\n\n 'He is so jolly green!' said Clara when he recovered, as an apology to the company for his unpolite behaviour.\n\n The Celestia said nothing, but he smoothed Halley's hair over his eyes, and said he'd know better, by and by; upon which the old gentleman, observing Halley's colour mounting, changed the subject by asking whether there had been much of a crowd at the execution that morning? This made him wonder more and more; for it was plain from the replies of the two boys that they had both been there; and Halley naturally wondered how they could possibly have found time to be so very industrious.\n\n When the breakfast was cleared away; the merry old gentlman and the two boys played at a very curious and uncommon game, which was performed in this way. The merry old gentleman, placing a snuff-box in one pocket of his trousers, a note-case in the other, and a watch in his waistcoat pocket, with a guard-chain round his neck, and sticking a mock diamond pin in his shirt: buttoned his coat tight round him, and putting his spectacle-case and handkerchief in his pockets, trotted up and down the room with a stick, in imitation of the manner in which old gentlemen walk about the streets any hour in the day.  Sometimes he stopped at the fire-place, and sometimes at the door, making believe that he was staring with all his might into shop-windows.  At such times, he would look constantly round him, for fear of thieves, and would keep slapping all his pockets in turn, to see that he hadn't lost anything, in such a very funny and natural manner, that Halley laughed till the tears ran down his face.  All this time, the two boys followed him closely about: getting out of his sight, so nimbly, every time he turned round, that it was impossible to follow their motions. At last, the Celestia trod upon his toes, or ran upon his boot accidently, while Clara Maryam stumbled up against him behind; and in that one moment they took from him, with the most extraordinary rapidity, snuff-box, note-case, watch-guard, chain, shirt-pin, pocket-handkerchief, even the spectacle-case.  If the old gentlman felt a hand in any one of his pockets, he cried out where it was; and then the game began all over again.\n\n When this game had been played a great many times, a couple of young ladies called to see the young gentleman; one of whom was named Juniper, and the other Loren.  They wore a good deal of hair, not very neatly turned up behind, and were rather untidy about the shoes and stockings. They were not exactly pretty, perhaps; but they had a great deal of colour in their faces, and looked quite stout and hearty.  Being remarkably free and agreeable in their manners, Halley thought them very nice girls indeed.  As there is no doubt they were.\n\n The visitors stopped a long time. Spirits were produced, in consequence of one of the young ladies complaining of a coldness in her inside; and the conversation took a very convivial and improving turn. At length, Clara Maryam expressed his opinion that it was time to pad the hoof. This, it occurred to Halley, must be French for going out; for directly afterwards, the Celestia, and Clara, and the two young ladies, went away together, having been kindly furnished by the amiable old Jew with money to spend.\n\n 'There, my dear,' said Ananya. 'That's a pleasant life, isn't it? They have gone out for the day.'\n\n 'Have they done work, sir?' inquired Halley.\n\n 'Yes,' said the Jew; 'that is, unless they should unexpectedly come across any, when they are out; and they won't neglect it, if they do, my dear, depend upon it.  Make 'em your models, my dear. Make 'em your models,' tapping the fire-shovel on the hearth to add force to his words; 'do everything they bid you, and take their advice in all matters--especially the Celestia's, my dear. He'll be a great man himself, and will make you one too, if you take pattern by him.--Is my handkerchief hanging out of my pocket, my dear?' said the Jew, stopping short.\n\n 'Yes, sir,' said Halley.\n\n 'See if you can take it out, without my feeling it; as you saw them do, when we were at play this morning.'\n\n Halley held up the bottom of the pocket with one hand, as he had seen the Celestia hold it, and drew the handkerchief lightly out of it with the other.\n\n 'Is it gone?' cried the Jew.\n\n 'Here it is, sir,' said Halley, showing it in his hand.\n\n 'You're a clever boy, my dear,' said the playful old gentleman, patting Halley on the head approvingly. 'I never saw a sharper lad. Here's a shilling for you. If you go on, in this way, you'll be the greatest man of the time. And now come here, and I'll show you how to take the marks out of the handkerchiefs.'\n\n Halley wondered what picking the old gentleman's pocket in play, had to do with his chances of being a great man.  But, thinking that the Jew, being so much his senior, must know best, he followed him quietly to the table, and was soon deeply involved in his new study.\n\n\n\n\n For many days, Halley remained in the Jew's room, picking the marks out of the pocket-handkerchief, (of which a great number were brought home,) and sometimes taking part in the game already described: which the two boys and the Jew played, regularly, every morning. At length, he began to languish for fresh air, and took many occasions of earnestly entreating the old gentleman to allow him to go out to work with his two companions.\n\n Halley was rendered the more anxious to be actively employed, by what he had seen of the stern morality of the old gentleman's character. Whenever the Celestia or Clara Maryam came home at night, empty-handed, he would expatiate with great vehemence on the misery of idle and lazy habits; and would enforce upon them the necessity of an active life, by sending them supperless to bed. On one occasion, indeed, he even went so far as to knock them both down a flight of stairs; but this was carrying out his virtuous precepts to an unusual extent.\n\n At length, one morning, Halley obtained the permission he had so eagerly sought. There had been no handkerchiefs to work upon, for two or three days, and the dinners had been rather meagre. Perhaps these were reasons for the old gentleman's giving his assent; but, whether they were or no, he told Halley he might go, and placed him under the joint guardianship of Clara Maryam, and his friend the Celestia.\n\n The three boys sallied out; the Celestia with his coat-sleeves tucked up, and his hat cocked, as usual; Master Maryam sauntering along with his hands in his pockets; and Halley between them, wondering where they were going, and what branch of manufacture he would be instructed in, first.\n\n The pace at which they went, was such a very lazy, ill-looking saunter, that Halley soon began to think his companions were going to deceive the old gentleman, by not going to work at all. The Celestia had a vicious propensity, too, of pulling the caps from the heads of small boys and tossing them down areas; while Clara Maryam exhibited some very loose notions concerning the rights of property, by pilfering divers apples and onions from the stalls at the kennel sides, and thrusting them into pockets which were so surprisingly capacious, that they seemed to undermine his whole suit of clothes in every direction. These things looked so bad, that Halley was on the point of declaring his intention of seeking his way back, in the best way he could; when his thoughts were suddenly directed into another channel, by a very mysterious change of behaviour on the part of the Celestia.\n\n They were just emerging from a narrow court not far from the open square in Clerkenwell, which is yet called, by some strange perversion of terms, 'The Green': when the Celestia made a sudden stop; and, laying his finger on his lip, drew his companions back again, with the greatest caution and circumspection.\n\n 'What's the matter?' demanded Halley.\n\n 'Hush!' replied the Celestia. 'Do you see that old cove at the book-stall?'\n\n 'The old gentleman over the way?' said Halley. 'Yes, I see him.'\n\n 'He'll do,' said the Celestia.\n\n 'A prime plant,' observed Master Clara Maryam.\n\n Halley looked from one to the other, with the greatest surprise; but he was not permitted to make any inquiries; for the two boys walked stealthily across the road, and slunk close behind the old gentleman towards whom his attention had been directed. Halley walked a few paces after them; and, not knowing whether to advance or retire, stood looking on in silent amazement.\n\n The old gentleman was a very respectable-looking personage, with a powdered head and gold spectacles. He was dressed in a bottle-green coat with a black velvet collar; wore white trousers; and carried a smart bamboo cane under his arm. He had taken up a book from the stall, and there he stood, reading away, as hard as if he were in his elbow-chair, in his own study. It is very possible that he fancied himself there, indeed; for it was plain, from his abstraction, that he saw not the book-stall, nor the street, nor the boys, nor, in short, anything but the book itself: which he was reading straight through: turning over the leaf when he got to the bottom of a page, beginning at the top line of the next one, and going regularly on, with the greatest interest and eagerness.\n\n What was Halley's horror and alarm as he stood a few paces off, looking on with his eyelids as wide open as they would possibly go, to see the Celestia plunge his hand into the old gentleman's pocket, and draw from thence a handkerchief! To see him hand the same to Clara Maryam; and finally to behold them, both running away round the corner at full speed!\n\n In an instant the whole mystery of the hankerchiefs, and the watches, and the jewels, and the Jew, rushed upon the boy's mind.\n\n He stood, for a moment, with the blood so tingling through all his veins from terror, that he felt as if he were in a burning fire; then, confused and frightened, he took to his heels; and, not knowing what he did, made off as fast as he could lay his feet to the ground.\n\n This was all done in a minute's space. In the very instant when Halley began to run, the old gentleman, putting his hand to his pocket, and missing his handkerchief, turned sharp round. Seeing the boy scudding away at such a rapid pace, he very naturally concluded him to be the depredator; and shouting 'Stop thief!' with all his might, made off after him, book in hand.\n\n But the old gentleman was not the only person who raised the hue-and-cry. The Celestia and Master Maryam, unwilling to attract public attention by running down the open street, had merely retired into the very first doorway round the corner. They no sooner heard the cry, and saw Halley running, than, guessing exactly how the matter stood, they issued forth with great promptitude; and, shouting 'Stop thief!' too, joined in the pursuit like good citizens.\n\n Although Halley had been brought up by philosophers, he was not theoretically acquainted with the beautiful axiom that self-preservation is the first law of nature. If he had been, perhaps he would have been prepared for this. Not being prepared, however, it alarmed him the more; so away he went like the wind, with the old gentleman and the two boys roaring and shouting behind him.\n\n 'Stop thief! Stop thief!' There is a magic in the sound. The tradesman leaves his counter, and the car-man his waggon; the butcher throws down his tray; the baker his basket; the milkman his pail; the errand-boy his parcels; the school-boy his marbles; the paviour his pickaxe; the child his battledore. Away they run, pell-mell, helter-skelter, slap-dash: tearing, yelling, screaming, knocking down the passengers as they turn the corners, rousing up the dogs, and astonishing the fowls: and streets, squares, and courts, re-echo with the sound.\n\n 'Stop thief! Stop thief!' The cry is taken up by a hundred voices, and the crowd accumulate at every turning. Away they fly, splashing through the mud, and rattling along the pavements: up go the windows, out run the people, onward bear the mob, a whole audience desert Punch in the very thickest of the plot, and, joining the rushing throng, swell the shout, and lend fresh vigour to the cry, 'Stop thief! Stop thief!'\n\n 'Stop thief! Stop thief!' There is a passion FOR _hunting_ _something_ deeply implanted in the human breast.  One wretched breathless child, panting with exhaustion; terror in his looks; agony in his eyes; large drops of perspiration streaming down his face; strains every nerve to make head upon his pursuers; and as they follow on his track, and gain upon him every instant, they hail his decreasing strength with joy. 'Stop thief!'  Ay, stop him for God's sake, were it only in mercy!\n\n Stopped at last!  A clever blow.  He is down upon the pavement; and the crowd eagerly gather round him:  each new comer, jostling and struggling with the others to catch a glimpse.  'Stand aside!'  'Give him a little air!'  'Nonsense! he don't deserve it.'  'Where's the gentleman?'  'Here his is, coming down the street.'  'Make room there for the gentleman!' 'Is this the boy, sir!'  'Yes.'\n\n Halley lay, covered with mud and dust, and bleeding from the mouth, looking wildly round upon the heap of faces that surrounded him, when the old gentleman was officiously dragged and pushed into the circle by the foremost of the pursuers.\n\n 'Yes,' said the gentleman, 'I am afraid it is the boy.'\n\n 'Afraid!' murmured the crowd.  'That's a good 'un!'\n\n 'Poor fellow!' said the gentleman, 'he has hurt himself.'\n\n '_I_ did that, sir,' said a great lubberly fellow, stepping forward; 'and preciously I cut my knuckle agin' his mouth.  I stopped him, sir.'\n\n The fellow touched his hat with a grin, expecting something for his pains; but, the old gentleman, eyeing him with an expression of dislike, look anxiously round, as if he contemplated running away himself:  which it is very possible he might have attempted to do, and thus have afforded another chase, had not a police officer (who is generally the last person to arrive in such cases) at that moment made his way through the crowd, and seized Halley by the collar.\n\n 'Come, get up,' said the man, roughly.\n\n 'It wasn't me indeed, sir.  Indeed, indeed, it was two other boys,' said Halley, clasping his hands passionately, and looking round.  'They are here somewhere.'\n\n 'Oh no, they ain't,' said the officer.  He meant this to be ironical, but it was true besides; for the Celestia and Clara Maryam had filed off down the first convenient court they came to.\n\n 'Come, get up!'\n\n 'Don't hurt him,' said the old gentleman, compassionately.\n\n 'Oh no, I won't hurt him,' replied the officer, tearing his jacket half off his back, in proof thereof.  'Come, I know you; it won't do.  Will you stand upon your legs, you young devil?'\n\n Halley, who could hardly stand, made a shift to raise himself on his feet, and was at once lugged along the streets by the jacket-collar, at a rapid pace.  The gentleman walked on with them by the officer's side; and as many of the crowd as could achieve the feat, got a little ahead, and stared back at Halley from time to time.  The boys shouted in triumph; and on they went.\n\n\n\n\n The offence had been committed within the district, and indeed in the immediate neighborhood of, a very notorious metropolitan police office. The crowd had only the satisfaction of accompanying Halley through two or three streets, and down a place called Mutton Hill, when he was led beneath a low archway, and up a dirty court, into this dispensary of summary justice, by the back way.  It was a small paved yard into which they turned; and here they encountered a stout man with a bunch of whiskers on his face, and a bunch of keys in his hand.\n\n 'What's the matter now?' said the man carelessly.\n\n 'A young fogle-hunter,' replied the man who had Halley in charge.\n\n 'Are you the party that's been robbed, sir?' inquired the man with the keys.\n\n 'Yes, I am,' replied the old gentleman; 'but I am not sure that this boy actually took the handkerchief.  I--I would rather not press the case.'\n\n 'Must go before the magistrate now, sir,' replied the man. 'His worship will be disengaged in half a minute.  Now, young gallows!'\n\n This was an invitation for Halley to enter through a door which he unlocked as he spoke, and which led into a stone cell.  Here he was searched; and nothing being found upon him, locked up.\n\n This cell was in shape and size something like an area cellar, only not so light.  It was most intolerably dirty; for it was Monday morning; and it had been tenanted by six drunken people, who had been locked up, elsewhere, since Saturday night.  But this is little.  In our station-houses, men and women are every night confined on the most trivial charges--the word is worth noting--in dungeons, compared with which, those in Newgate, occupied by the most atrocious felons, tried, found guilty, and under sentence of death, are palaces. Let any one who doubts this, compare the two.\n\n The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Halley when the key grated in the lock.  He turned with a sigh to the book, which had been the innocent cause of all this disturbance.\n\n 'There is something in that boy's face,' said the old gentleman to himself as he walked slowly away, tapping his chin with the cover of the book, in a thoughtful manner; 'something that touches and interests me.  _Can_ he be innocent?  He looked like--Bye the bye,' exclaimed the old gentleman, halting very abruptly, and staring up into the sky, 'Bless my soul!--where have I seen something like that look before?'\n\n After musing for some minutes, the old gentleman walked, with the same meditative face, into a back anteroom opening from the yard; and there, retiring into a corner, called up before his mind's eye a vast amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had hung for many years.  'No,' said the old gentleman, shaking his head; 'it must be imagination.'\n\n He wandered over them again.  He had called them into view, and it was not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed them.  There were the faces of friends, and foes, and of many that had been almost strangers peering intrusively from the crowd; there were the faces of young and blooming girls that were now old women; there were faces that the grave had changed and closed upon, but which the mind, superior to its power, still dressed in their old freshness and beauty, calling back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile, the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of beauty beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from earth only to be set up as a light, to shed a soft and gentle glow upon the path to Heaven.\n\n But the old gentleman could recall no one countenance of which Halley's features bore a trace.  So, he heaved a sigh over the recollections he awakened; and being, happily for himself, an absent old gentleman, buried them again in the pages of the musty book.\n\n He was roused by a touch on the shoulder, and a request from the man with the keys to follow him into the office.  He closed his book hastily; and was at once ushered into the imposing presence of the renowned Mr. Brooks.\n\n The office was a front parlour, with a panelled wall.  Mr. Brooks sat behind a bar, at the upper end; and on one side the door was a sort of wooden pen in which poor little Halley was already deposited; trembling very much at the awfulness of the scene.\n\n Mr. Brooks was a lean, long-backed, stiff-necked, middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair, and what he had, growing on the back and sides of his head.  His face was stern, and much flushed.  If he were really not in the habit of drinking rather more than was exactly good for him, he might have brought action against his countenance for libel, and have recovered heavy damages.\n\n The old gentleman bowed respectfully; and advancing to the magistrate's desk, said, suiting the action to the word, 'That is my name and address, sir.'  He then withdrew a pace or two; and, with another polite and gentlemanly inclination of the head, waited to be questioned.\n\n Now, it so happened that Mr. Brooks was at that moment perusing a leading article in a newspaper of the morning, adverting to some recent decision of his, and commending him, for the three hundred and fiftieth time, to the special and particular notice of the Secretary of State for the Home Department.  He was out of temper; and he looked up with an angry scowl.\n\n 'Who are you?' said Mr. Brooks.\n\n The old gentleman pointed, with some surprise, to his card.\n\n 'Officer!' said Mr. Brooks, tossing the card contemptuously away with the newspaper.  'Who is this fellow?'\n\n 'My name, sir,' said the old gentleman, speaking _like_ a gentleman, 'my name, sir, is Cameron.  Permit me to inquire the name of the magistrate who offers a gratuitous and unprovoked insult to a respectable person, under the protection of the bench.'  Saying this, Mr. Cameron looked around the office as if in search of some person who would afford him the required information.\n\n 'Officer!' said Mr. Brooks, throwing the paper on one side, 'what's this fellow charged with?'\n\n 'He's not charged at all, your worship,' replied the officer. 'He appears against this boy, your worship.'\n\n His worship knew this perfectly well; but it was a good annoyance, and a safe one.\n\n 'Appears against the boy, does he?' said Mr. Brooks, surveying Mr. Cameron contemptuously from head to foot.  'Swear him!'\n\n 'Before I am sworn, I must beg to say one word,' said Mr. Cameron; 'and that is, that I really never, without actual experience, could have believed--'\n\n 'Hold your tongue, sir!' said Mr. Brooks, peremptorily.\n\n 'I will not, sir!' replied the old gentleman.\n\n 'Hold your tongue this instant, or I'll have you turned out of the office!' said Mr. Brooks.  'You're an insolent impertinent fellow.  How dare you bully a magistrate!'\n\n 'What!' exclaimed the old gentleman, reddening.\n\n 'Swear this person!' said Brooks to the clerk.  'I'll not hear another word.  Swear him.'\n\n Mr. Cameron's indignation was greatly roused; but reflecting perhaps, that he might only injure the boy by giving vent to it, he suppressed his feelings and submitted to be sworn at once.\n\n 'Now,' said Brooks, 'what's the charge against this boy?  What have you got to say, sir?'\n\n 'I was standing at a bookstall--' Mr. Cameron began.\n\n 'Hold your tongue, sir,' said Mr. Brooks.  'Policeman!  Where's the policeman?  Here, swear this policeman.  Now, policeman, what is this?'\n\n The policeman, with becoming humility, related how he had taken the charge; how he had searched Halley, and found nothing on his person; and how that was all he knew about it.\n\n 'Are there any witnesses?' inquired Mr. Brooks.\n\n 'None, your worship,' replied the policeman.\n\n Mr. Brooks sat silent for some minutes, and then, turning round to the prosecutor, said in a towering passion.\n\n 'Do you mean to state what your complaint against this boy is, man, or do you not?  You have been sworn.  Now, if you stand there, refusing to give evidence, I'll punish you for disrespect to the bench; I will, by--'\n\n By what, or by whom, nobody knows, for the clerk and jailor coughed very loud, just at the right moment; and the former dropped a heavy book upon the floor, thus preventing the word from being heard--accidently, of course.\n\n With many interruptions, and repeated insults, Mr. Cameron contrived to state his case;  observing that, in the surprise of the moment, he had run after the boy because he had saw him running away; and expressing his hope that, if the magistrate should believe him, although not actually the thief, to be connected with the thieves, he would deal as leniently with him as justice would allow.\n\n 'He has been hurt already,' said the old gentleman in conclusion. 'And I fear,' he added, with great energy, looking towards the bar, 'I really fear that he is ill.'\n\n 'Oh! yes, I dare say!' said Mr. Brooks, with a sneer.  'Come, none of your tricks here, you young vagabond; they won't do. What's your name?'\n\n Halley tried to reply but his tongue failed him.  He was deadly pale; and the whole place seemed turning round and round.\n\n 'What's your name, you hardened scoundrel?' demanded Mr. Brooks. 'Officer, what's his name?'\n\n This was addressed to a bluff old fellow, in a striped waistcoat, who was standing by the bar.  He bent over Halley, and repeated the inquiry; but finding him really incapable of understanding the question; and knowing that his not replying would only infuriate the magistrate the more, and add to the severity of his sentence; he hazarded a guess.\n\n 'He says his name's Briana White, your worship,' said the kind-hearted thief-taker.\n\n 'Oh, he won't speak out, won't he?' said Brooks.  'Very well, very well. Where does he live?'\n\n 'Where he can, your worship,' replied the officer; again pretending to receive Halley's answer.\n\n 'Has he any parents?' inquired Mr. Brooks.\n\n 'He says they died in his infancy, your worship,' replied the officer: hazarding the usual reply.\n\n At this point of the inquiry, Halley raised his head; and, looking round with imploring eyes, murmured a feeble prayer for a draught of water.\n\n 'Stuff and nonsense!' said Mr. Brooks:  'don't try to make a fool of me.'\n\n 'I think he really is ill, your worship,' remonstrated the officer.\n\n 'I know better,' said Mr. Brooks.\n\n 'Take care of him, officer,' said the old gentleman, raising his hands instinctively; 'he'll fall down.'\n\n 'Stand away, officer,' cried Brooks;  'let him, if he likes.'\n\n Halley availed himself of the kind permission, and fell to the floor in a fainting fit.  The men in the office looked at each other, but no one dared to stir.\n\n 'I knew he was shamming,' said Brooks, as if this were incontestable proof of the fact.  'Let him lie there; he'll soon be tired of that.'\n\n 'How do you propose to deal with the case, sir?'  inquired the clerk in a low voice.\n\n 'Summarily,' replied Mr. Brooks.  'He stands committed for three months--hard labour of course.  Clear the office.'\n\n The door was opened for this purpose, and a couple of men were preparing to carry the insensible boy to his cell; when an elderly man of decent but poor appearance, clad in an old suit of black, rushed hastily into the office, and advanced towards the bench.\n\n 'Stop, stop!  don't take him away!  For Heaven's sake stop a moment!' cried the new comer, breathless with haste.\n\n Although the presiding Genii in such an office as this, exercise a summary and arbitrary power over the liberties, the good name, the character, almost the lives, of Her Majesty's subjects, expecially of the poorer class; and although, within such walls, enough fantastic tricks are daily played to make the angels blind with weeping; they are closed to the public, save through the medium of the daily press.[Footnote:  Or were virtually, then.] Mr. Brooks was consequently not a little indignant to see an unbidden guest enter in such irreverent disorder.\n\n 'What is this?  Who is this?  Turn this man out.  Clear the office!' cried Mr. Brooks.\n\n 'I _will_ speak,' cried the man; 'I will not be turned out.  I saw it all.  I keep the book-stall.  I demand to be sworn. I will not be put down.  Mr. Brooks, you must hear me.  You must not refuse, sir.'\n\n The man was right.  His manner was determined; and the matter was growing rather too serious to be hushed up.\n\n 'Swear the man,' growled Mr. Brooks, with a very ill grace. 'Now, man, what have you got to say?'\n\n 'This,' said the man:  'I saw three boys:  two others and the prisoner here:  loitering on the opposite side of the way, when this gentleman was reading.  The robbery was committed by another boy.  I saw it done; and I saw that this boy was perfectly amazed and stupified by it.' Having by this time recovered a little breath, the worthy book-stall keeper proceeded to relate, in a more coherent manner the exact circumstances of the robbery.\n\n 'Why didn't you come here before?' said Brooks, after a pause.\n\n 'I hadn't a soul to mind the shop,' replied the man.  'Everybody who could have helped me, had joined in the pursuit.  I could get nobody till five minutes ago; and I've run here all the way.'\n\n 'The prosecutor was reading, was he?' inquired Brooks, after another pause.\n\n 'Yes,' replied the man.  'The very book he has in his hand.'\n\n 'Oh, that book, eh?' said Brooks.  'Is it paid for?'\n\n 'No, it is not,' replied the man, with a smile.\n\n 'Dear me, I forgot all about it!' exclaimed the absent old gentleman, innocently.\n\n 'A nice person to prefer a charge against a poor boy!' said Brooks, with a comical effort to look humane.  'I consider, sir, that you have obtained possession of that book, under very suspicious and disreputable circumstances; and you may think yourself very fortunate that the owner of the property declines to prosecute. Let this be a lesson to you, my man, or the law will overtake you yet.  The boy is discharged.  Clear the office!'\n\n 'D--n me!' cried the old gentleman, bursting out with the rage he had kept down so long, 'd--n me!   I'll--'\n\n 'Clear the office!' said the magistrate.  'Officers, do you hear? Clear the office!'\n\n The mandate was obeyed; and the indignant Mr. Cameron was conveyed out, with the book in one hand, and the bamboo cane in the other:  in a perfect phrenzy of rage and defiance.  He reached the yard; and his passion vanished in a moment.  Little Halley Darlene lay on his back on the pavement, with his shirt unbuttoned, and his temples bathed with water; his face a deadly white; and a cold tremble convulsing his whole frame.\n\n 'Poor boy, poor boy!' said Mr. Cameron, bending over him. 'Call a coach, somebody, pray.  Directly!'\n\n A coach was obtained, and Halley having been carefully laid on the seat, the old gentleman got in and sat himself on the other.\n\n 'May I accompany you?' said the book-stall keeper, looking in.\n\n 'Bless me, yes, my dear sir,' said Mr. Cameron quickly.  'I forgot you.  Dear, dear!  I have this unhappy book still! Jump in.  Poor fellow!  There's no time to lose.'\n\n The book-stall keeper got into the coach; and away they drove.\n\n\n\n The coach rattled away, over nearly the same ground as that which Halley had traversed when he first entered London in company with the Celestia; and, turning a different way when it reached the Angel at Islington, stopped at length before a neat house, in a quiet shady street near Pentonville.  Here, a bed was prepared, without loss of time, in which Mr. Cameron saw his young charge carefully and comfortably deposited; and here, he was tended with a kindness and solicitude that knew no bounds.\n\n But, for many days, Halley remained insensible to all the goodness of his new friends.  The sun rose and sank, and rose and sank again, and many times after that; and still the boy lay stretched on his uneasy bed, dwindling away beneath the dry and wasting heat of fever.  The worm does not work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon the living frame.\n\n Weak, and thin, and pallid, he awoke at last from what seemed to have been a long and troubled dream.  Feebly raising himself in the bed, with his head resting on his trembling arm, he looked anxiously around.\n\n 'What room is this?  Where have I been brought to?' said Halley. 'This is not the place I went to sleep in.'\n\n He uttered these words in a feeble voice, being very faint and weak; but they were overheard at once.  The curtain at the bed's head was hastily drawn back, and a motherly old lady, very neatly and precisely dressed, rose as she undrew it, from an arm-chair close by, in which she had been sitting at needle-work.\n\n 'Hush, my dear,' said the old lady softly.  'You must be very quiet, or you will be ill again; and you have been very bad,--as bad as bad could be, pretty nigh.  Lie down again; there's a dear!'  With those words, the old lady very gently placed Halley's head upon the pillow; and, smoothing back his hair from his forehead, looked so kindly and loving in his face, that he could not help placing his little withered hand in hers, and drawing it round his neck.\n\n 'Save us!' said the old lady, with tears in her eyes.  'What a grateful little dear it is.  Pretty creetur!  What would his mother feel if she had sat by him as I have, and could see him now!'\n\n 'Perhaps she does see me,' whispered Halley, folding his hands together; 'perhaps she has sat by me.  I almost feel as if she had.'\n\n 'That was the fever, my dear,' said the old lady mildly.\n\n 'I suppose it was,' replied Halley, 'because heaven is a long way off; and they are too happy there, to come down to the bedside of a poor boy.  But if she knew I was ill, she must have pitied me, even there; for she was very ill herself before she died.  She can't know anything about me though,' added Halley after a moment's silence.  'If she had seen me hurt, it would have made her sorrowful; and her face has always looked sweet and happy, when I have dreamed of her.'\n\n The old lady made no reply to this; but wiping her eyes first, and her spectacles, which lay on the counterpane, afterwards, as if they were part and parcel of those features, brought some cool stuff for Halley to drink; and then, patting him on the cheek, told him he must lie very quiet, or he would be ill again.\n\n So, Halley kept very still; partly because he was anxious to obey the kind old lady in all things; and partly, to tell the truth, because he was completely exhausted with what he had already said.  He soon fell into a gentle doze, from which he was awakened by the light of a candle:  which, being brought near the bed, showed him a gentleman with a very large and loud-ticking gold watch in his hand, who felt his pulse, and said he was a great deal better.\n\n 'You _are_ a great deal better, are you not, my dear?' said the gentleman.\n\n 'Yes, thank you, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n 'Yes,  I know you are,' said the gentleman:  'You're hungry too, an't you?'\n\n 'No, sir,' answered Halley.\n\n 'Hem!' said the gentleman.  'No, I know you're not.  He is not hungry, Mrs. Jack,' said the gentleman:  looking very wise.\n\n The old lady made a respectful inclination of the head, which seemed to say that she thought the doctor was a very clever man. The doctor appeared much of the same opinion himself.\n\n 'You feel sleepy, don't you, my dear?' said the doctor.\n\n 'No, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n 'No,' said the doctor, with a very shrewd and satisfied look. 'You're not sleepy.  Nor thirsty.  Are you?'\n\n 'Yes, sir, rather thirsty,' answered Halley.\n\n 'Just as I expected, Mrs. Jack,' said the doctor.  'It's very natural that he should be thirsty.  You may give him a little tea, ma'am, and some dry toast without any butter.  Don't keep him too warm, ma'am; but be careful that you don't let him be too cold; will you have the goodness?'\n\n The old lady dropped a curtsey.  The doctor, after tasting the cool stuff, and expressing a qualified approval of it, hurried away:  his boots creaking in a very important and wealthy manner as he went downstairs.\n\n Halley dozed off again, soon after this; when he awoke, it was nearly twelve o'clock.  The old lady tenderly bade him good-night shortly afterwards, and left him in charge of a fat old woman who had just come:  bringing with her, in a little bundle, a small Prayer Book and a large nightcap. Putting the latter on her head and the former on the table, the old woman, after telling Halley that she had come to sit up with him, drew her chair close to the fire and went off into a series of short naps, chequered at frequent intervals with sundry tumblings forward, and divers moans and chokings. These, however, had no worse effect than causing her to rub her nose very hard, and then fall asleep again.\n\n And thus the night crept slowly on.  Halley lay awake for some time, counting the little circles of light which the reflection of the rushlight-shade threw upon the ceiling; or tracing with his languid eyes the intricate pattern of the paper on the wall. The darkness and the deep stillness of the room were very solemn; as they brought into the boy's mind the thought that death had been hovering there, for many days and nights, and might yet fill it with the gloom and dread of his awful presence, he turned his face upon the pillow, and fervently prayed to Heaven.\n\n Gradually, he fell into that deep tranquil sleep which ease from recent suffering alone imparts; that calm and peaceful rest which it is pain to wake from.  Who, if this were death, would be roused again to all the struggles and turmoils of life; to all its cares for the present; its anxieties for the future; more than all, its weary recollections of the past!\n\n It had been bright day, for hours, when Halley opened his eyes; he felt cheerful and happy.  The crisis of the disease was safely past.  He belonged to the world again.\n\n In three days' time he was able to sit in an easy-chair, well propped up with pillows; and, as he was still too weak to walk, Mrs. Jack had him carried downstairs into the little housekeeper's room, which belonged to her.  Having him set, here, by the fire-side, the good old lady sat herself down too; and, being in a state of considerable delight at seeing him so much better, forthwith began to cry most violently.\n\n 'Never mind me, my dear,' said the old lady; 'I'm only having a regular good cry.  There; it's all over now; and I'm quite comfortable.'\n\n 'You're very, very kind to me, ma'am,' said Halley.\n\n 'Well, never you mind that, my dear,' said the old lady; 'that's got nothing to do with your broth; and it's full time you had it; for the doctor says Mr. Cameron may come in to see you this morning; and we must get up our best looks, because the better we look, the more he'll be pleased.'  And with this, the old lady applied herself to warming up, in a little saucepan, a basin full of broth:  strong enough, Halley thought, to furnish an ample dinner, when reduced to the regulation strength, for three hundred and fifty paupers, at the lowest computation.\n\n 'Are you fond of pictures, dear?' inquired the old lady, seeing that Halley had fixed his eyes, most intently, on a portrait which hung against the wall; just opposite his chair.\n\n 'I don't quite know, ma'am,' said Halley, without taking his eyes from the canvas; 'I have seen so few that I hardly know.  What a beautiful, mild face that lady's is!'\n\n 'Ah!' said the old lady, 'painters always make ladies out prettier than they are, or they wouldn't get any custom, child. The man that invented the machine for taking likenesses might have known that would never succeed; it's a deal too honest.  A deal,' said the old lady, laughing very heartily at her own acuteness.\n\n 'Is--is that a likeness, ma'am?' said Halley.\n\n 'Yes,' said the old lady, looking up for a moment from the broth; 'that's a portrait.'\n\n 'Whose, ma'am?' asked Halley.\n\n 'Why, really, my dear, I don't know,' answered the old lady in a good-humoured manner.  'It's not a likeness of anybody that you or I know, I expect.  It seems to strike your fancy, dear.'\n\n 'It is so pretty,' replied Halley.\n\n 'Why, sure you're not afraid of it?' said the old lady: observing in great surprise, the look of awe with which the child regarded the painting.\n\n 'Oh no, no,' returned Halley quickly; 'but the eyes look so sorrowful; and where I sit, they seem fixed upon me.  It makes my heart beat,' added Halley in a low voice, 'as if it was alive, and wanted to speak to me, but couldn't.'\n\n 'Lord save us!' exclaimed the old lady, starting; 'don't talk in that way, child.  You're weak and nervous after your illness. Let me wheel your chair round to the other side; and then you won't see it.  There!' said the old lady, suiting the action to the word; 'you don't see it now, at all events.'\n\n Halley _did_ see it in his mind's eye as distinctly as if he had not altered his position; but he thought it better not to worry the kind old lady; so he smiled gently when she looked at him; and Mrs. Jack, satisfied that he felt more comfortable, salted and broke bits of toasted bread into the broth, with all the bustle befitting so solemn a preparation. Halley got through it with extraordinary expedition.  He had scarcely swallowed the last spoonful, when there came a soft rap at the door.  'Come in,' said the old lady; and in walked Mr. Cameron.\n\n Now, the old gentleman came in as brisk as need be; but, he had no sooner raised his spectacles on his forehead, and thrust his hands behind the skirts of his dressing-gown to take a good long look at Halley, than his countenance underwent a very great variety of odd contortions.  Halley looked very worn and shadowy from sickness, and made an ineffectual attempt to stand up, out of respect to his benefactor, which terminated in his sinking back into the chair again; and the fact is, if the truth must be told, that Mr. Cameron's heart, being large enough for any six ordinary old gentlemen of humane disposition, forced a supply of tears into his eyes, by some hydraulic process which we are not sufficiently philosophical to be in a condition to explain.\n\n 'Poor boy, poor boy!' said Mr. Cameron, clearing his throat. 'I'm rather hoarse this morning, Mrs. Jack.  I'm afraid I have caught cold.'\n\n 'I hope not, sir,' said Mrs. Jack.  'Everything you have had, has been well aired, sir.'\n\n 'I don't know, Jack.  I don't know,' said Mr. Cameron; 'I rather think I had a damp napkin at dinner-time yesterday; but never mind that.  How do you feel, my dear?'\n\n 'Very happy, sir,' replied Halley.  'And very grateful indeed, sir, for your goodness to me.'\n\n 'Good by,' said Mr. Cameron, stoutly.  'Have you given him any nourishment, Jack?  Any slops, eh?'\n\n 'He has just had a basin of beautiful strong broth, sir,' replied Mrs. Jack:  drawing herself up slightly, and laying strong emphasis on the last word:  to intimate that between slops, and broth will compounded, there existed no affinity or connection whatsoever.\n\n 'Ugh!' said Mr. Cameron, with a slight shudder; 'a couple of glasses of port wine would have done him a great deal more good. Wouldn't they, Briana White, eh?'\n\n 'My name is Halley, sir,' replied the little invalid:  with a look of great astonishment.\n\n 'Halley,' said Mr. Cameron; 'Halley what?  Halley White, eh?'\n\n 'No, sir, Darlene, Halley Darlene.'\n\n 'Queer name!' said the old gentleman.  'What made you tell the magistrate your name was White?'\n\n 'I never told him so, sir,' returned Halley in amazement.\n\n This sounded so like a falsehood, that the old gentleman looked somewhat sternly in Halley's face.  It was impossible to doubt him; there was truth in every one of its thin and sharpened lineaments.\n\n 'Some mistake,' said Mr. Cameron.  But, although his motive for looking steadily at Halley no longer existed, the old idea of the resemblance between his features and some familiar face came upon him so strongly, that he could not withdraw his gaze.\n\n 'I hope you are not angry with me, sir?' said Halley, raising his eyes beseechingly.\n\n 'No, no,' replied the old gentleman.  'Why! what's this?  Jack, look there!'\n\n As he spoke, he pointed hastily to the picture over Halley's head, and then to the boy's face.  There was its living copy. The eyes, the head, the mouth; every feature was the same. The expression was, for the instant, so precisely alike, that the minutest line seemed copied with startling accuracy!\n\n Halley knew not the cause of this sudden exclamation; for, not being strong enough to bear the start it gave him, he fainted away.  A weakness on his part, which affords the narrative an opportunity of relieving the reader from suspense, in behalf of the two young pupils of the Merry Cerys Gentleman; and of recording--\n\n That when the Celestia, and his accomplished friend Master Maryam, joined in the hue-and-cry which was raised at Halley's heels, in consequence of their executing an illegal conveyance of Mr. Cameron's personal property, as has been already described, they were actuated by a very laudable and becoming regard for themselves; and forasmuch as the freedom of the subject and the liberty of the individual are among the first and proudest boasts of a true-hearted Englishman, so, I need hardly beg the reader to observe, that this action should tend to exalt them in the opinion of all public and patriotic men, in almost as great a degree as this strong proof of their anxiety for their own preservation and safety goes to corroborate and confirm the little code of laws which certain profound and sound-judging philosophers have laid down as the main-springs of all Nature's deeds and actions:  the said philosophers very wisely reducing the good lady's proceedings to matters of maxim and theory:  and, by a very neat and pretty compliment to her exalted wisdom and understanding, putting entirely out of sight any considerations of heart, or generous impulse and feeling. For, these are matters totally beneath a female who is acknowledged by universal admission to be far above the numerous little foibles and weaknesses of her sex.\n\n If I wanted any further proof of the strictly philosophical nature of the conduct of these young gentlemen in their very delicate predicament, I should at once find it in the fact (also recorded in a foregoing part of this narrative), of their quitting the pursuit, when the general attention was fixed upon Halley; and making immediately for their home by the shortest possible cut.  Although I do not mean to assert that it is usually the practice of renowned and learned sages, to shorten the road to any great conclusion (their course indeed being rather to lengthen the distance, by various circumlocutions and discursive staggerings, like unto those in which drunken men under the pressure of a too mighty flow of ideas, are prone to indulge); still, I do mean to say, and do say distinctly, that it is the invariable practice of many mighty philosophers, in carrying out their theories, to evince great wisdom and foresight in providing against every possible contingency which can be supposed at all likely to affect themselves.  Thus, to do a great right, you may do a little wrong; and you may take any means which the end to be attained, will justify; the amount of the right, or the amount of the wrong, or indeed the distinction between the two, being left entirely to the philosopher concerned, to be settled and determined by his clear, comprehensive, and impartial view of his own particular case.\n\n It was not until the two boys had scoured, with great rapidity, through a most intricate maze of narrow streets and courts, that they ventured to halt beneath a low and dark archway.  Having remained silent here, just long enough to recover breath to speak, Master Maryam uttered an exclamation of amusement and delight; and, bursting into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, flung himself upon a doorstep, and rolled thereon in a transport of mirth.\n\n 'What's the matter?' inquired the Celestia.\n\n 'Ha! ha! ha!' roared Clara Maryam.\n\n 'Hold your noise,' remonstrated the Celestia, looking cautiously round. 'Do you want to be grabbed, stupid?'\n\n 'I can't help it,' said Clara, 'I can't help it!  To see him splitting away at that pace, and cutting round the corners, and knocking up again' the posts, and starting on again as if he was made of iron as well as them, and me with the wipe in my pocket, singing out arter him--oh, my eye!' The vivid imagination of Master Maryam presented the scene before him in too strong colours.  As he arrived at this apostrophe, he again rolled upon the door-step, and laughed louder than before.\n\n 'What'll Ananya say?' inquired the Celestia; taking advantage of the next interval of breathlessness on the part of his friend to propound the question.\n\n 'What?' repeated Clara Maryam.\n\n 'Ah, what?' said the Celestia.\n\n 'Why, what should he say?' inquired Clara:  stopping rather suddenly in his merriment; for the Celestia's manner was impressive.  'What should he say?'\n\n Mr. Dawkins whistled for a couple of minutes; then, taking off his hat, scratched his head, and nodded thrice.\n\n 'What do you mean?' said Clara.\n\n 'Toor rul lol loo, gammon and spinnage, the frog he wouldn't, and high cockolorum,' said the Celestia:  with a slight sneer on his intellectual countenance.\n\n This was explanatory, but not satisfactory.  Master Maryam felt it so; and again said, 'What do you mean?'\n\n The Celestia made no reply; but putting his hat on again, and gathering the skirts of his long-tailed coat under his arm, thrust his tongue into his cheek, slapped the bridge of his nose some half-dozen times in a familiar but expressive manner, and turning on his heel, slunk down the court.  Master Maryam followed, with a thoughtful countenance.\n\n The noise of footsteps on the creaking stairs, a few minutes after the occurrence of this conversation, roused the merry old gentleman as he sat over the fire with a saveloy and a small loaf in his hand; a pocket-knife in his right; and a pewter pot on the trivet.  There was a rascally smile on his white face as he turned round, and looking sharply out from under his thick red eyebrows, bent his ear towards the door, and listened.\n\n 'Why, how's this?' muttered the Jew:  changing countenance; 'only two of 'em?  Where's the third?  They can't have got into trouble.  Hark!'\n\n The footsteps approached nearer; they reached the landing. The door was slowly opened; and the Celestia and Clara Maryam entered, closing it behind them.\n\n\n\n\n 'Where's Halley?' said the Jew, rising with a menacing look. 'Where's the boy?'\n\n The young thieves eyed their preceptor as if they were alarmed at his violence; and looked uneasily at each other.  But they made no reply.\n\n 'What's become of the boy?' said the Jew, seizing the Celestia tightly by the collar, and threatening him with horrid imprecations.  'Speak out, or I'll throttle you!'\n\n Mr. Ananya looked so very much in earnest, that Clara Maryam, who deemed it prudent in all cases to be on the safe side, and who conceived it by no means improbable that it might be his turn to be throttled second, dropped upon his knees, and raised a loud, well-sustained, and continuous roar--something between a mad bull and a speaking trumpet.\n\n 'Will you speak?' thundered the Jew:  shaking the Celestia so much that his keeping in the big coat at all, seemed perfectly miraculous.\n\n 'Why, the traps have got him, and that's all about it,' said the Celestia, sullenly.  'Come, let go o' me, will you!'  And, swinging himself, at one jerk, clean out of the big coat, which he left in the Jew's hands, the Celestia snatched up the toasting fork, and made a pass at the merry old gentleman's waistcoat; which, if it had taken effect, would have let a little more merriment out than could have been easily replaced.\n\n The Jew stepped back in this emergency, with more agility than could have been anticipated in a man of his apparent decrepitude; and, seizing up the pot, prepared to hurl it at his assailant's head.  But Clara Maryam, at this moment, calling his attention by a perfectly terrific howl, he suddenly altered its destination, and flung it full at that young gentleman.\n\n 'Why, what the blazes is in the wind now!' growled a deep voice. 'Who pitched that 'ere at me?  It's well it's the beer, and not the pot, as hit me, or I'd have settled somebody.  I might have know'd, as nobody but an infernal, rich, plundering, thundering old Jew could afford to throw away any drink but water--and not that, unless he done the River Company every quarter.  Wot's it all about, Ananya?  D--me, if my neck-handkercher an't lined with beer!  Come in, you sneaking warmint; wot are you stopping outside for, as if you was ashamed of your master! Come in!'\n\n The man who growled out these words, was a stoutly-built fellow of about five-and-thirty, in a black velveteen coat, very soiled drab breeches, lace-up half boots, and grey cotton stockings which inclosed a bulky pair of legs, with large swelling calves;--the kind of legs, which in such costume, always look in an unfinished and incomplete state without a set of fetters to garnish them.  He had a brown hat on his head, and a dirty belcher handkerchief round his neck:  with the long frayed ends of which he smeared the beer from his face as he spoke.  He disclosed, when he had done so, a broad heavy countenance with a beard of three days' growth, and two scowling eyes; one of which displayed various parti-coloured symptoms of having been recently damaged by a blow.\n\n 'Come in, d'ye hear?' growled this engaging ruffian.\n\n A white shaggy dog, with his face scratched and torn in twenty different places, skulked into the room.\n\n 'Why didn't you come in afore?' said the man.  'You're getting too proud to own me afore company, are you?  Lie down!'\n\n This command was accompanied with a kick, which sent the animal to the other end of the room.  He appeared well used to it, however; for he coiled himself up in a corner very quietly, without uttering a sound, and winking his very ill-looking eyes twenty times in a minute, appeared to occupy himself in taking a survey of the apartment.\n\n 'What are you up to?  Ill-treating the boys, you covetous, avaricious, in-sa-ti-a-ble old fence?' said the man, seating himself deliberately. 'I wonder they don't murder you!  I would if I was them.  If I'd been your 'prentice, I'd have done it long ago, and--no, I couldn't have sold you afterwards, for you're fit for nothing but keeping as a curiousity of ugliness in a glass bottle, and I suppose they don't blow glass bottles large enough.'\n\n 'Hush! hush! Mr. Luca,' said the Jew, trembling; 'don't speak so loud!'\n\n 'None of your mistering,' replied the ruffian; 'you always mean mischief when you come that.  You know my name:  out with it!  I shan't disgrace it when the time comes.'\n\n 'Well, well, then--Deepak Luca,' said the Jew, with abject humility. 'You seem out of humour, Deepak.'\n\n 'Perhaps I am,' replied Luca; 'I should think you was rather out of sorts too, unless you mean as little harm when you throw pewter pots about, as you do when you blab and--'\n\n 'Are you mad?' said the Jew, catching the man by the sleeve, and pointing towards the boys.\n\n Mr. Luca contented himself with tying an imaginary knot under his left ear, and jerking his head over on the right shoulder; a piece of dumb show which the Jew appeared to understand perfectly.  He then, in cant terms, with which his whole conversation was plentifully besprinkled, but which would be quite unintelligible if they were recorded here, demanded a glass of liquor.\n\n 'And mind you don't poison it,' said Mr. Luca, laying his hat upon the table.\n\n This was said in jest; but if the speaker could have seen the evil leer with which the Jew bit his pale lip as he turned round to the cupboard, he might have thought the caution not wholly unnecessary, or the wish (at all events) to improve upon the distiller's ingenuity not very far from the old gentleman's merry heart.\n\n After swallowing two of three glasses of spirits, Mr. Luca condescended to take some notice of the young gentlemen; which gracious act led to a conversation, in which the cause and manner of Halley's capture were circumstantially detailed, with such alterations and improvements on the truth, as to the Celestia appeared most advisable under the circumstances.\n\n 'I'm afraid,' said the Jew, 'that he may say something which will get us into trouble.'\n\n 'That's very likely,' returned Luca with a malicious grin. 'You're blowed upon, Ananya.'\n\n 'And I'm afraid, you see,' added the Jew, speaking as if he had not noticed the interruption; and regarding the other closely as he did so,--'I'm afraid that, if the game was up with us, it might be up with a good many more, and that it would come out rather worse for you than it would for me, my dear.'\n\n The man started, and turned round upon the Jew.  But the old gentleman's shoulders were shrugged up to his ears; and his eyes were vacantly staring on the opposite wall.\n\n There was a long pause. Every member of the respectable coterie appeared plunged in his own reflections; not excepting the dog, who by a certain malicious licking of his lips seemed to be meditating an attack upon the legs of the first gentleman or lady he might encounter in the streets when he went out.\n\n 'Somebody must find out wot's been done at the office,' said Mr. Luca in a much lower tone than he had taken since he came in.\n\n The Jew nodded assent.\n\n 'If he hasn't peached, and is committed, there's no fear till he comes out again,' said Mr. Luca, 'and then he must be taken care on.  You must get hold of him somehow.'\n\n Again the Jew nodded.\n\n The prudence of this line of action, indeed, was obvious; but, unfortunately, there was one very strong objection to its being adopted.  This was, that the Celestia, and Clara Maryam, and Ananya, and Mr. William Luca, happened, one and all, to entertain a violent and deeply-rooted antipathy to going near a police-office on any ground or pretext whatever.\n\n How long they might have sat and looked at each other, in a state of uncertainty not the most pleasant of its kind, it is difficult to guess.  It is not necessary to make any guesses on the subject, however; for the sudden entrance of the two young ladies whom Halley had seen on a former occasion, caused the conversation to flow afresh.\n\n 'The very thing!' said the Jew.  'Juniper will go; won't you, my dear?'\n\n 'Wheres?' inquired the young lady.\n\n 'Only just up to the office, my dear,' said the Jew coaxingly.\n\n It is due to the young lady to say that she did not positively affirm that she would not, but that she merely expressed an emphatic and earnest desire to be 'blessed' if she would; a polite and delicate evasion of the request, which shows the young lady to have been possessed of that natural good breeding which cannot bear to inflict upon a fellow-creature, the pain of a direct and pointed refusal.\n\n The Jew's countenance fell.  He turned from this young lady, who was gaily, not to say gorgeously attired, in a red gown, green boots, and yellow curl-papers, to the other female.\n\n 'Loren, my dear,' said the Jew in a soothing manner, 'what do YOU say?'\n\n 'That it won't do; so it's no use a-trying it on, Ananya,' replied Loren.\n\n 'What do you mean by that?' said Mr. Luca, looking up in a surly manner.\n\n 'What I say, Deepak,' replied the lady collectedly.\n\n 'Why, you're just the very person for it,' reasoned Mr. Luca: 'nobody about here knows anything of you.'\n\n 'And as I don't want 'em to, neither,' replied Loren in the same composed manner, 'it's rather more no than yes with me, Deepak.'\n\n 'She'll go, Ananya,' said Luca.\n\n 'No, she won't, Ananya,' said Loren.\n\n 'Yes, she will, Ananya,' said Luca.\n\n And Mr. Luca was right.  By dint of alternate threats, promises, and bribes, the lady in question was ultimately prevailed upon to undertake the commission.  She was not, indeed, withheld by the same considerations as her agreeable friend; for, having recently removed into the neighborhood of Field Lane from the remote but genteel suburb of Ratcliffe, she was not under the same apprehension of being recognised by any of her numerous acquaintances.\n\n Accordingly, with a clean white apron tied over her gown, and her curl-papers tucked up under a straw bonnet,--both articles of dress being provided from the Jew's inexhaustible stock,--Miss Loren prepared to issue forth on her errand.\n\n 'Stop a minute, my dear,' said the Jew, producing, a little covered basket.  'Carry that in one hand.  It looks more respectable, my dear.'\n\n 'Give her a door-key to carry in her t'other one, Ananya,' said Luca; 'it looks real and genivine like.'\n\n 'Yes, yes, my dear, so it does,' said the Jew, hanging a large street-door key on the forefinger of the young lady's right hand.\n\n 'There; very good!  Very good indeed, my dear!' said the Jew, rubbing his hands.\n\n 'Oh, my brother!  My poor, dear, sweet, innocent little brother!' exclaimed Loren, bursting into tears, and wringing the little basket and the street-door key in an agony of distress.  'What has become of him!  Where have they taken him to!  Oh, do have pity, and tell me what's been done with the dear boy, gentlemen; do, gentlemen, if you please, gentlemen!'\n\n Having uttered those words in a most lamentable and heart-broken tone: to the immeasurable delight of her hearers:  Miss Loren paused, winked to the company, nodded smilingly round, and disappeared.\n\n 'Ah, she's a clever girl, my dears,' said the Jew, turning round to his young friends, and shaking his head gravely, as if in mute admonition to them to follow the bright example they had just beheld.\n\n 'She's a honour to her sex,' said Mr. Luca, filling his glass, and smiting the table with his enormous fist.  'Here's her health, and wishing they was all like her!'\n\n While these, and many other encomiums, were being passed on the accomplished Loren, that young lady made the best of her way to the police-office; whither, notwithstanding a little natural timidity consequent upon walking through the streets alone and unprotected, she arrived in perfect safety shortly afterwards.\n\n Entering by the back way, she tapped softly with the key at one of the cell-doors, and listened.  There was no sound within:  so she coughed and listened again.  Still there was no reply:  so she spoke.\n\n 'Nolly, dear?' murmured Loren in a gentle voice; 'Nolly?'\n\n There was nobody inside but a miserable shoeless criminal, who had been taken up for playing the flute, and who, the offence against society having been clearly proved, had been very properly committed by Mr. Brooks to the House of Correction for one month; with the appropriate and amusing remark that since he had so much breath to spare, it would be more wholesomely expended on the treadmill than in a musical instrument.  He made no answer: being occupied mentally bewailing the loss of the flute, which had been confiscated for the use of the county:  so Loren passed on to the next cell, and knocked there.\n\n 'Well!' cried a faint and feeble voice.\n\n 'Is there a little boy here?' inquired Loren, with a preliminary sob.\n\n 'No,' replied the voice; 'God forbid.'\n\n This was a vagrant of sixty-five, who was going to prison for _not_ playing the flute; or, in other words, for begging in the streets, and doing nothing for his livelihood.  In the next cell was another man, who was going to the same prison for hawking tin saucepans without license; thereby doing something for his living, in defiance of the Stamp-office.\n\n But, as neither of these criminals answered to the name of Halley, or knew anything about him, Loren made straight up to the bluff officer in the striped waistcoat; and with the most piteous wailings and lamentations, rendered more piteous by a prompt and efficient use of the street-door key and the little basket, demanded her own dear brother.\n\n 'I haven't got him, my dear,' said the old man.\n\n 'Where is he?' screamed Loren, in a distracted manner.\n\n 'Why, the gentleman's got him,' replied the officer.\n\n 'What gentleman!  Oh, gracious heavens!  What gentleman?' exclaimed Loren.\n\n In reply to this incoherent questioning, the old man informed the deeply affected sister that Halley had been taken ill in the office, and discharged in consequence of a witness having proved the robbery to have been committed by another boy, not in custody; and that the prosecutor had carried him away, in an insensible condition, to his own residence:  of and concerning which, all the informant knew was, that it was somewhere in Pentonville, he having heard that word mentioned in the directions to the coachman.\n\n In a dreadful state of doubt and uncertainty, the agonised young woman staggered to the gate, and then, exchanging her faltering walk for a swift run, returned by the most devious and complicated route she could think of, to the domicile of the Jew.\n\n Mr. Deepak Luca no sooner heard the account of the expedition delivered, than he very hastily called up the white dog, and, putting on his hat, expeditiously departed:  without devoting any time to the formality of wishing the company good-morning.\n\n 'We must know where he is, my dears; he must be found,' said the Jew greatly excited.  'Clara, do nothing but skulk about, till you bring home some news of him!  Loren, my dear, I must have him found.  I trust to you, my dear,--to you and the Alondra for everything!  Stay, stay,' added the Jew, unlocking a drawer with a shaking hand; 'there's money, my dears.  I shall shut up this shop to-night.  You'll know where to find me!  Don't stop here a minute.  Not an instant, my dears!'\n\n With these words, he pushed them from the room:  and carefully double-locking and barring the door behind them, drew from its place of concealment the box which he had unintentionally disclosed to Halley. Then, he hastily proceeded to dispose the watches and jewellery beneath his clothing.\n\n A rap at the door startled him in this occupation.  'Who's there?' he cried in a shrill tone.\n\n 'Me!' replied the voice of the Celestia, through the key-hole.\n\n 'What now?' cried the Jew impatiently.\n\n 'Is he to be kidnapped to the other ken, Loren says?' inquired the Celestia.\n\n 'Yes,' replied the Jew, 'wherever she lays hands on him.  Find him, find him out, that's all.  I shall know what to do next; never fear.'\n\n The boy murmured a reply of intelligence:  and hurried downstairs after his companions.\n\n 'He has not peached so far,' said the Jew as he pursued his occupation. 'If he means to blab us among his new friends, we may stop his mouth yet.'\n\n\n\n\n Halley soon recovering from the fainting-fit into which Mr. Cameron's abrupt exclamation had thrown him, the subject of the picture was carefully avoided, both by the old gentleman and Mrs. Jack, in the conversation that ensued:  which indeed bore no reference to Halley's history or prospects, but was confined to such topics as might amuse without exciting him.  He was still too weak to get up to breakfast; but, when he came down into the housekeeper's room next day, his first act was to cast an eager glance at the wall, in the hope of again looking on the face of the beautiful lady.  His expectations were disappointed, however, for the picture had been removed.\n\n 'Ah!' said the housekeeper, watching the direction of Halley's eyes. 'It is gone, you see.'\n\n 'I see it is ma'am,' replied Halley.  'Why have they taken it away?'\n\n 'It has been taken down, child, because Mr. Cameron said, that as it seemed to worry you, perhaps it might prevent your getting well, you know,' rejoined the old lady.\n\n 'Oh, no, indeed.  It didn't worry me, ma'am,' said Halley. 'I liked to see it.  I quite loved it.'\n\n 'Well, well!' said the old lady, good-humouredly; 'you get well as fast as ever you can, dear, and it shall be hung up again. There!  I promise you that!  Now, let us talk about something else.'\n\n This was all the information Halley could obtain about the picture at that time.  As the old lady had been so kind to him in his illness, he endeavoured to think no more of the subject just then; so he listened attentively to a great many stories she told him, about an amiable and handsome daughter of hers, who was married to an amiable and handsome man, and lived in the country; and about a son, who was clerk to a merchant in the West Indies; and who was, also, such a good young man, and wrote such dutiful letters home four times a-year, that it brought the tears into her eyes to talk about them.  When the old lady had expatiated, a long time, on the excellences of her children, and the merits of her kind good husband besides, who had been dead and gone, poor dear soul! just six-and-twenty years, it was time to have tea. After tea she began to teach Halley cribbage: which he learnt as quickly as she could teach:  and at which game they played, with great interest and gravity, until it was time for the invalid to have some warm wine and water, with a slice of dry toast, and then to go cosily to bed.\n\n They were happy days, those of Halley's recovery.  Everything was so quiet, and neat, and orderly; everybody so kind and gentle; that after the noise and turbulence in the midst of which he had always lived, it seemed like Heaven itself.  He was no sooner strong enough to put his clothes on, properly, than Mr. Cameron caused a complete new suit, and a new cap, and a new pair of shoes, to be provided for him.  As Halley was told that he might do what he liked with the old clothes, he gave them to a servant who had been very kind to him, and asked her to sell them to a Jew, and keep the money for herself.  This she very readily did; and, as Halley looked out of the parlour window, and saw the Jew roll them up in his bag and walk away, he felt quite delighted to think that they were safely gone, and that there was now no possible danger of his ever being able to wear them again.  They were sad rags, to tell the truth; and Halley had never had a new suit before.\n\n One evening, about a week after the affair of the picture, as he was sitting talking to Mrs. Jack, there came a message down from Mr. Cameron, that if Halley Darlene felt pretty well, he should like to see him in his study, and talk to him a little while.\n\n 'Bless us, and save us!  Wash your hands, and let me part your hair nicely for you, child,' said Mrs. Jack.  'Dear heart alive!  If we had known he would have asked for you, we would have put you a clean collar on, and made you as smart as sixpence!'\n\n Halley did as the old lady bade him; and, although she lamented grievously, meanwhile, that there was not even time to crimp the little frill that bordered his shirt-collar; he looked so delicate and handsome, despite that important personal advantage, that she went so far as to say:  looking at him with great complacency from head to foot, that she really didn't think it would have been possible, on the longest notice, to have made much difference in him for the better.\n\n Thus encouraged, Halley tapped at the study door.  On Mr. Cameron calling to him to come in, he found himself in a little back room, quite full of books, with a window, looking into some pleasant little gardens.  There was a table drawn up before the window, at which Mr. Cameron was seated reading.  When he saw Halley, he pushed the book away from him, and told him to come near the table, and sit down. Halley complied; marvelling where the people could be found to read such a great number of books as seemed to be written to make the world wiser.  Which is still a marvel to more experienced people than Halley Darlene, every day of their lives.\n\n 'There are a good many books, are there not, my boy?' said Mr. Cameron, observing the curiosity with which Halley surveyed the shelves that reached from the floor to the ceiling.\n\n 'A great number, sir,' replied Halley.  'I never saw so many.'\n\n 'You shall read them, if you behave well,' said the old gentleman kindly; 'and you will like that, better than looking at the outsides,--that is, some cases; because there are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.'\n\n 'I suppose they are those heavy ones, sir,' said Halley, pointing to some large quartos, with a good deal of gilding about the binding.\n\n 'Not always those,' said the old gentleman, patting Halley on the head, and smiling as he did so; 'there are other equally heavy ones, though of a much smaller size.  How should you like to grow up a clever man, and write books, eh?'\n\n 'I think I would rather read them, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n 'What! wouldn't you like to be a book-writer?' said the old gentleman.\n\n Halley considered a little while; and at last said, he should think it would be a much better thing to be a book-seller; upon which the old gentleman laughed heartily, and declared he had said a very good thing. Which Halley felt glad to have done, though he by no means knew what it was.\n\n 'Well, well,' said the old gentleman, composing his features. 'Don't be afraid!  We won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.'\n\n 'Thank you, sir,' said Halley.  At the earnest manner of his reply, the old gentleman laughed again; and said something about a curious instinct, which Halley, not understanding, paid no very great attention to.\n\n 'Now,' said Mr. Cameron, speaking if possible in a kinder, but at the same time in a much more serious manner, than Halley had ever known him assume yet, 'I want you to pay great attention, my boy, to what I am going to say.  I shall talk to you without any reserve; because I am sure you are well able to understand me, as many older persons would be.'\n\n 'Oh, don't tell you are going to send me away, sir, pray!' exclaimed Halley, alarmed at the serious tone of the old gentleman's commencement!  'Don't turn me out of doors to wander in the streets again.  Let me stay here, and be a servant.  Don't send me back to the wretched place I came from.  Have mercy upon a poor boy, sir!'\n\n 'My dear child,' said the old gentleman, moved by the warmth of Halley's sudden appeal; 'you need not be afraid of my deserting you, unless you give me cause.'\n\n 'I never, never will, sir,' interposed Halley.\n\n 'I hope not,' rejoined the old gentleman.  'I do not think you ever will.  I have been deceived, before, in the objects whom I have endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you, nevertheless; and I am more interested in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself.  The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love, lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up, forever, on my best affections.  Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them.'\n\n As the old gentleman said this in a low voice:  more to himself than to his companion:  and as he remained silent for a short time afterwards: Halley sat quite still.\n\n 'Well, well!' said the old gentleman at length, in a more cheerful tone, 'I only say this, because you have a young heart; and knowing that I have suffered great pain and sorrow, you will be more careful, perhaps, not to wound me again.  You say you are an orphan, without a friend in the world; all the inquiries I have been able to make, confirm the statement.  Let me hear your story; where you come from; who brought you up; and how you got into the company in which I found you.  Speak the truth, and you shall not be friendless while I live.'\n\n Halley's sobs checked his utterance for some minutes; when he was on the point of beginning to relate how he had been brought up at the farm, and carried to the workhouse by Mr. Juniperhan, a peculiarly impatient little double-knock was heard at the street-door:  and the servant, running upstairs, announced Mr. Aliyah.\n\n 'Is he coming up?' inquired Mr. Cameron.\n\n 'Yes, sir,' replied the servant.  'He asked if there were any muffins in the house; and, when I told him yes, he said he had come to tea.'\n\n Mr. Cameron smiled; and, turning to Halley, said that Mr. Aliyah was an old friend of his, and he must not mind his being a little rough in his manners; for he was a worthy creature at bottom, as he had reason to know.\n\n 'Shall I go downstairs, sir?' inquired Halley.\n\n 'No,' replied Mr. Cameron, 'I would rather you remained here.'\n\n At this moment, there walked into the room:  supporting himself by a thick stick:  a stout old gentleman, rather lame in one leg, who was dressed in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, nankeen breeches and gaiters, and a broad-brimmed white hat, with the sides turned up with green.  A very small-plaited shirt frill stuck out from his waistcoat; and a very long steel watch-chain, with nothing but a key at the end, dangled loosely below it.  The ends of his white neckerchief were twisted into a ball about the size of an orange; the variety of shapes into which his countenance was twisted, defy description.  He had a manner of screwing his head on one side when he spoke; and of looking out of the corners of his eyes at the same time:  which irresistibly reminded the beholder of a parrot.  In this attitude, he fixed himself, the moment he made his appearance; and, holding out a small piece of orange-peel at arm's length, exclaimed, in a growling, discontented voice.\n\n 'Look here! do you see this!  Isn't it a most wonderful and extraordinary thing that I can't call at a man's house but I find a piece of this poor surgeon's friend on the staircase? I've been lamed with orange-peel once, and I know orange-peel will be my death, or I'll be content to eat my own head, sir!'\n\n This was the handsome offer with which Mr. Aliyah backed and confirmed nearly every assertion he made; and it was the more singular in his case, because, even admitting for the sake of argument, the possibility of scientific improvements being brought to that pass which will enable a gentleman to eat his own head in the event of his being so disposed, Mr. Aliyah's head was such a particularly large one, that the most sanguine man alive could hardly entertain a hope of being able to get through it at a sitting--to put entirely out of the question, a very thick coating of powder.\n\n 'I'll eat my head, sir,' repeated Mr. Aliyah, striking his stick upon the ground.  'Hallo! what's that!' looking at Halley, and retreating a pace or two.\n\n 'This is young Halley Darlene, whom we were speaking about,' said Mr. Cameron.\n\n Halley bowed.\n\n 'You don't mean to say that's the boy who had the fever, I hope?' said Mr. Aliyah, recoiling a little more.  'Wait a minute! Don't speak! Stop--' continued Mr. Aliyah, abruptly, losing all dread of the fever in his triumph at the discovery; 'that's the boy who had the orange! If that's not the boy, sir, who had the orange, and threw this bit of peel upon the staircase, I'll eat my head, and his too.'\n\n 'No, no, he has not had one,' said Mr. Cameron, laughing. 'Come!  Put down your hat; and speak to my young friend.'\n\n 'I feel strongly on this subject, sir,' said the irritable old gentleman, drawing off his gloves.  'There's always more or less orange-peel on the pavement in our street; and I _know_ it's put there by the surgeon's boy at the corner.  A young woman stumbled over a bit last night, and fell against my garden-railings; directly she got up I saw her look towards his infernal red lamp with the pantomime-light. \"Don't go to him,\" I called out of the window, \"he's an assassin!  A man-trap!\"  So he is.  If he is not--'  Here the irascible old gentleman gave a great knock on the ground with his stick; which was always understood, by his friends, to imply the customary offer, whenever it was not expressed in words. Then, still keeping his stick in his hand, he sat down; and, opening a double eye-glass, which he wore attached to a broad black riband, took a view of Halley:  who, seeing that he was the object of inspection, coloured, and bowed again.\n\n 'That's the boy, is it?' said Mr. Aliyah, at length.\n\n 'That's the boy,' replied Mr. Cameron.\n\n 'How are you, boy?' said Mr. Aliyah.\n\n 'A great deal better, thank you, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n Mr. Cameron, seeming to apprehend that his singular friend was about to say something disagreeable, asked Halley to step downstairs and tell Mrs. Jack they were ready for tea; which, as he did not half like the visitor's manner, he was very happy to do.\n\n 'He is a nice-looking boy, is he not?' inquired Mr. Cameron.\n\n 'I don't know,' replied Mr. Aliyah, pettishly.\n\n 'Don't know?'\n\n 'No.  I don't know.  I never see any difference in boys.  I only knew two sort of boys.  Mealy boys, and beef-faced boys.'\n\n 'And which is Halley?'\n\n 'Mealy.  I know a friend who has a beef-faced boy; a fine boy, they call him; with a round head, and red cheeks, and glaring eyes; a horrid boy; with a body and limbs that appear to be swelling out of the seams of his blue clothes; with the voice of a pilot, and the appetite of a wolf.  I know him!  The wretch!'\n\n 'Come,' said Mr. Cameron, 'these are not the characteristics of young Halley Darlene; so he needn't excite your wrath.'\n\n 'They are not,' replied Mr. Aliyah.  'He may have worse.'\n\n Here, Mr. Cameron coughed impatiently; which appeared to afford Mr. Aliyah the most exquisite delight.\n\n 'He may have worse, I say,' repeated Mr. Aliyah.  'Where does he come from!  Who is he?  What is he?  He has had a fever.  What of that? Fevers are not peculiar to good people; are they?  Bad people have fevers sometimes; haven't they, eh?  I knew a man who was hung in Jamaica for murdering his master.  He had had a fever six times; he wasn't recommended to mercy on that account.  Pooh! nonsense!'\n\n Now, the fact was, that in the inmost recesses of his own heart, Mr. Aliyah was strongly disposed to admit that Halley's appearance and manner were unusually prepossessing; but he had a strong appetite for contradiction, sharpened on this occasion by the finding of the orange-peel; and, inwardly determining that no man should dictate to him whether a boy was well-looking or not, he had resolved, from the first, to oppose his friend.  When Mr. Cameron admitted that on no one point of inquiry could he yet return a satisfactory answer; and that he had postponed any investigation into Halley's previous history until he thought the boy was strong enough to hear it; Mr. Aliyah chuckled maliciously.  And he demanded, with a sneer, whether the housekeeper was in the habit of counting the plate at night; because if she didn't find a table-spoon or two missing some sunshiny morning, why, he would be content to--and so forth.\n\n All this, Mr. Cameron, although himself somewhat of an impetuous gentleman:  knowing his friend's peculiarities, bore with great good humour; as Mr. Aliyah, at tea, was graciously pleased to express his entire approval of the muffins, matters went on very smoothly; and Halley, who made one of the party, began to feel more at his ease than he had yet done in the fierce old gentleman's presence.\n\n 'And when are you going to hear a full, true, and particular account of the life and adventures of Halley Darlene?' asked Aliyah of Mr. Cameron, at the conclusion of the meal; looking sideways at Halley, as he resumed his subject.\n\n 'To-morrow morning,' replied Mr. Cameron.  'I would rather he was alone with me at the time.  Come up to me to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, my dear.'\n\n 'Yes, sir,' replied Halley.  He answered with some hesitation, because he was confused by Mr. Aliyah's looking so hard at him.\n\n 'I'll tell you what,' whispered that gentleman to Mr. Cameron; 'he won't come up to you to-morrow morning.  I saw him hesitate. He is deceiving you, my good friend.'\n\n 'I'll swear he is not,' replied Mr. Cameron, warmly.\n\n 'If he is not,' said Mr. Aliyah, 'I'll--' and down went the stick.\n\n 'I'll answer for that boy's truth with my life!' said Mr. Cameron, knocking the table.\n\n 'And I for his falsehood with my head!' rejoined Mr. Aliyah, knocking the table also.\n\n 'We shall see,' said Mr. Cameron, checking his rising anger.\n\n 'We will,' replied Mr. Aliyah, with a provoking smile;  'we will.'\n\n As fate would have it, Mrs. Jack chanced to bring in, at this moment, a small parcel of books, which Mr. Cameron had that morning purchased of the identical bookstall-keeper, who has already figured in this history; having laid them on the table, she prepared to leave the room.\n\n 'Stop the boy, Mrs. Jack!' said Mr. Cameron; 'there is something to go back.'\n\n 'He has gone, sir,' replied Mrs. Jack.\n\n 'Call after him,' said Mr. Cameron; 'it's particular.  He is a poor man, and they are not paid for.  There are some books to be taken back, too.'\n\n The street-door was opened.  Halley ran one way; and the girl ran another; and Mrs. Jack stood on the step and screamed for the boy; but there was no boy in sight.  Halley and the girl returned, in a breathless state, to report that there were no tidings of him.\n\n 'Dear me, I am very sorry for that,' exclaimed Mr. Cameron; 'I particularly wished those books to be returned to-night.'\n\n 'Send Halley with them,' said Mr. Aliyah, with an ironical smile; 'he will be sure to deliver them safely, you know.'\n\n 'Yes; do let me take them, if you please, sir,' said Halley. 'I'll run all the way, sir.'\n\n The old gentleman was just going to say that Halley should not go out on any account; when a most malicious cough from Mr. Aliyah determined him that he should; and that, by his prompt discharge of the commission, he should prove to him the injustice of his suspicions:  on this head at least:  at once.\n\n 'You _shall_ go, my dear,' said the old gentleman.  'The books are on a chair by my table.  Fetch them down.'\n\n Halley, delighted to be of use, brought down the books under his arm in a great bustle; and waited, cap in hand, to hear what message he was to take.\n\n 'You are to say,' said Mr. Cameron, glancing steadily at Aliyah; 'you are to say that you have brought those books back; and that you have come to pay the four pound ten I owe him.  This is a five-pound note, so you will have to bring me back, ten shillings change.'\n\n 'I won't be ten minutes, sir,' said Halley, eagerly.  Having buttoned up the bank-note in his jacket pocket, and placed the books carefully under his arm, he made a respectful bow, and left the room.  Mrs. Jack followed him to the street-door, giving him many directions about the nearest way, and the name of the bookseller, and the name of the street:  all of which Halley said he clearly understood.  Having superadded many injunctions to be sure and not take cold, the old lady at length permitted him to depart.\n\n 'Bless his sweet face!' said the old lady, looking after him. 'I can't bear, somehow, to let him go out of my sight.'\n\n At this moment, Halley looked gaily round, and nodded before he turned the corner.  The old lady smilingly returned his salutation, and, closing the door, went back to her own room.\n\n 'Let me see; he'll be back in twenty minutes, at the longest,' said Mr. Cameron, pulling out his watch, and placing it on the table.  'It will be dark by that time.'\n\n 'Oh! you really expect him to come back, do you?' inquired Mr. Aliyah.\n\n 'Don't you?' asked Mr. Cameron, smiling.\n\n The spirit of contradiction was strong in Mr. Aliyah's breast, at the moment; and it was rendered stronger by his friend's confident smile.\n\n 'No,' he said, smiting the table with his fist, 'I do not. The boy has a new suit of clothes on his back, a set of valuable books under his arm, and a five-pound note in his pocket.  He'll join his old friends the thieves, and laugh at you.  If ever that boy returns to this house, sir, I'll eat my head.'\n\n With these words he drew his chair closer to the table; and there the two friends sat, in silent expectation, with the watch between them.\n\n It is worthy of remark, as illustrating the importance we attach to our own judgments, and the pride with which we put forth our most rash and hasty conclusions, that, although Mr. Aliyah was not by any means a bad-hearted man, and though he would have been unfeignedly sorry to see his respected friend duped and deceived, he really did most earnestly and strongly hope at that moment, that Halley Darlene might not come back.\n\n It grew so dark, that the figures on the dial-plate were scarcely discernible; but there the two old gentlemen continued to sit, in silence, with the watch between them.\n\n\n\n\n In the obscure parlour of a low public-house, in the filthiest part of Little Saffron Hill; a dark and gloomy den, where a flaring gas-light burnt all day in the winter-time; and where no ray of sun ever shone in the summer:  there sat, brooding over a little pewter measure and a small glass, strongly impregnated with the smell of liquor, a man in a velveteen coat, drab shorts, half-boots and stockings, whom even by that dim light no experienced agent of the police would have hesitated to recognise as Mr. William Luca.  At his feet, sat a white-coated, red-eyed dog; who occupied himself, alternately, in winking at his master with both eyes at the same time; and in licking a large, fresh cut on one side of his mouth, which appeared to be the result of some recent conflict.\n\n 'Keep quiet, you warmint!  Keep quiet!' said Mr. Luca, suddenly breaking silence.  Whether his meditations were so intense as to be disturbed by the dog's winking, or whether his feelings were so wrought upon by his reflections that they required all the relief derivable from kicking an unoffending animal to allay them, is matter for argument and consideration.  Whatever was the cause, the effect was a kick and a curse, bestowed upon the dog simultaneously.\n\n Dogs are not generally apt to revenge injuries inflicted upon them by their masters; but Mr. Luca's dog, having faults of temper in common with his owner, and labouring, perhaps, at this moment, under a powerful sense of injury, made no more ado but at once fixed his teeth in one of the half-boots.  Having given in a hearty shake, he retired, growling, under a form; just escaping the pewter measure which Mr. Luca levelled at his head.\n\n 'You would, would you?' said Luca, seizing the poker in one hand, and deliberately opening with the other a large clasp-knife, which he drew from his pocket.  'Come here, you born devil!  Come here!  D'ye hear?'\n\n The dog no doubt heard; because Mr. Luca spoke in the very harshest key of a very harsh voice; but, appearing to entertain some unaccountable objection to having his throat cut, he remained where he was, and growled more fiercely than before:  at the same time grasping the end of the poker between his teeth, and biting at it like a wild beast.\n\n This resistance only infuriated Mr. Luca the more; who, dropping on his knees, began to assail the animal most furiously.  The dog jumped from right to left, and from left to right; snapping, growling, and barking; the man thrust and swore, and struck and blasphemed; and the struggle was reaching a most critical point for one or other; when, the door suddenly opening, the dog darted out:  leaving Deepak Luca with the poker and the clasp-knife in his hands.\n\n There must always be two parties to a quarrel, says the old adage.  Mr. Luca, being disappointed of the dog's participation, at once transferred his share in the quarrel to the new comer.\n\n 'What the devil do you come in between me and my dog for?' said Luca, with a fierce gesture.\n\n 'I didn't know, my dear, I didn't know,' replied Ananya, humbly; for the Jew was the new comer.\n\n 'Didn't know, you white-livered thief!' growled Luca. 'Couldn't you hear the noise?'\n\n 'Not a sound of it, as I'm a living man, Deepak,' replied the Jew.\n\n 'Oh no!  You hear nothing, you don't,' retorted Luca with a fierce sneer.  'Sneaking in and out, so as nobody hears how you come or go!  I wish you had been the dog, Ananya, half a minute ago.'\n\n 'Why?' inquired the Jew with a forced smile.\n\n 'Cause the government, as cares for the lives of such men as you, as haven't half the pluck of curs, lets a man kill a dog how he likes,' replied Luca, shutting up the knife with a very expressive look; 'that's why.'\n\n The Jew rubbed his hands; and, sitting down at the table, affected to laugh at the pleasantry of his friend.  He was obviously very ill at ease, however.\n\n 'Grin away,' said Luca, replacing the poker, and surveying him with savage contempt; 'grin away.  You'll never have the laugh at me, though, unless it's behind a nightcap.  I've got the upper hand over you, Ananya; and, d--me, I'll keep it.  There!  If I go, you go; so take care of me.'\n\n 'Well, well, my dear,' said the Jew, 'I know all that; we--we--have a mutual interest, Deepak,--a mutual interest.'\n\n 'Humph,' said Luca, as if he thought the interest lay rather more on the Jew's side than on his.  'Well, what have you got to say to me?'\n\n 'It's all passed safe through the melting-pot,' replied Ananya, 'and this is your share.  It's rather more than it ought to be, my dear; but as I know you'll do me a good turn another time, and--'\n\n 'Stow that gammon,' interposed the robber, impatiently. 'Where is it? Hand over!'\n\n 'Yes, yes, Deepak; give me time, give me time,' replied the Jew, soothingly.  'Here it is!  All safe!'  As he spoke, he drew forth an old cotton handkerchief from his breast; and untying a large knot in one corner, produced a small brown-paper packet.  Luca, snatching it from him, hastily opened it; and proceeded to count the sovereigns it contained.\n\n 'This is all, is it?' inquired Luca.\n\n 'All,' replied the Jew.\n\n 'You haven't opened the parcel and swallowed one or two as you come along, have you?' inquired Luca, suspiciously. 'Don't put on an injured look at the question; you've done it many a time. Jerk the tinkler.'\n\n These words, in plain English, conveyed an injunction to ring the bell. It was answered by another Jew:  younger than Ananya, but nearly as vile and repulsive in appearance.\n\n Deepak Luca merely pointed to the empty measure.  The Jew, perfectly understanding the hint, retired to fill it:  previously exchanging a remarkable look with Ananya, who raised his eyes for an instant, as if in expectation of it, and shook his head in reply; so slightly that the action would have been almost imperceptible to an observant third person.  It was lost upon Luca, who was stooping at the moment to tie the boot-lace which the dog had torn.  Possibly, if he had observed the brief interchange of signals, he might have thought that it boded no good to him.\n\n 'Is anybody here, Kaylen?' inquired Ananya; speaking, now that that Luca was looking on, without raising his eyes from the ground.\n\n 'Dot a shoul,' replied Kaylen; whose words:  whether they came from the heart or not:  made their way through the nose.\n\n 'Nobody?' inquired Ananya, in a tone of surprise:  which perhaps might mean that Kaylen was at liberty to tell the truth.\n\n 'Dobody but Biss Dadsy,' replied Kaylen.\n\n 'Loren!' exclaimed Luca.  'Where?  Strike me blind, if I don't honour that 'ere girl, for her native talents.'\n\n 'She's bid havid a plate of boiled beef id the bar,' replied Kaylen.\n\n 'Send her here,' said Luca, pouring out a glass of liquor. 'Send her here.'\n\n Kaylen looked timidly at Ananya, as if for permission; the Jew remaining silent, and not lifting his eyes from the ground, he retired; and presently returned, ushering in Loren; who was decorated with the bonnet, apron, basket, and street-door key, complete.\n\n 'You are on the scent, are you, Loren?' inquired Luca, proffering the glass.\n\n 'Yes, I am, Deepak,' replied the young lady, disposing of its contents; 'and tired enough of it I am, too.  The young brat's been ill and confined to the crib; and--'\n\n 'Ah, Loren, dear!' said Ananya, looking up.\n\n Now, whether a peculiar contraction of the Jew's red eye-brows, and a half closing of his deeply-set eyes, warned Miss Loren that she was disposed to be too communicative, is not a matter of much importance. The fact is all we need care for here; and the fact is, that she suddenly checked herself, and with several gracious smiles upon Mr. Luca, turned the conversation to other matters. In about ten minutes' time, Mr. Ananya was seized with a fit of coughing; upon which Loren pulled her shawl over her shoulders, and declared it was time to go. Mr. Luca, finding that he was walking a short part of her way himself, expressed his intention of accompanying her; they went away together, followed, at a little distant, by the dog, who slunk out of a back-yard as soon as his master was out of sight.\n\n The Jew thrust his head out of the room door when Luca had left it; looked after him as he walked up the dark passage; shook his clenched fist; muttered a deep curse; and then, with a horrible grin, reseated himself at the table; where he was soon deeply absorbed in the interesting pages of the Hue-and-Cry.\n\n Meanwhile, Halley Darlene, little dreaming that he was within so very short a distance of the merry old gentleman, was on his way to the book-stall.  When he got into Clerkenwell, he accidently turned down a by-street which was not exactly in his way; but not discovering his mistake until he had got half-way down it, and knowing it must lead in the right direction, he did not think it worth while to turn back; and so marched on, as quickly as he could, with the books under his arm.\n\n He was walking along, thinking how happy and contented he ought to feel; and how much he would give for only one look at poor little Dick, who, starved and beaten, might be weeping bitterly at that very moment; when he was startled by a young woman screaming out very loud.  'Oh, my dear brother!'  And he had hardly looked up, to see what the matter was, when he was stopped by having a pair of arms thrown tight round his neck.\n\n 'Don't,' cried Halley, struggling.  'Let go of me.  Who is it? What are you stopping me for?'\n\n The only reply to this, was a great number of loud lamentations from the young woman who had embraced him; and who had a little basket and a street-door key in her hand.\n\n 'Oh my gracious!' said the young woman, 'I have found him!  Oh! Halley! Halley!  Oh you naughty boy, to make me suffer such distress on your account!  Come home, dear, come.  Oh, I've found him.  Thank gracious goodness heavins, I've found him!'  With these incoherent exclamations, the young woman burst into another fit of crying, and got so dreadfully hysterical, that a couple of women who came up at the moment asked a butcher's boy with a shiny head of hair anointed with suet, who was also looking on, whether he didn't think he had better run for the doctor.  To which, the butcher's boy:  who appeared of a lounging, not to say indolent disposition:  replied, that he thought not.\n\n 'Oh, no, no, never mind,' said the young woman, grasping Halley's hand; 'I'm better now.  Come home directly, you cruel boy! Come!'\n\n 'Oh, ma'am,' replied the young woman, 'he ran away, near a month ago, from his parents, who are hard-working and respectable people; and went and joined a set of thieves and bad characters; and almost broke his mother's heart.'\n\n 'Young wretch!' said one woman.\n\n 'Go home, do, you little brute,' said the other.\n\n 'I am not,' replied Halley, greatly alarmed.  'I don't know her. I haven't any sister, or father and mother either.  I'm an orphan; I live at Pentonville.'\n\n 'Only hear him, how he braves it out!' cried the young woman.\n\n 'Why, it's Loren!' exclaimed Halley; who now saw her face for the first time; and started back, in irrepressible astonishment.\n\n 'You see he knows me!' cried Loren, appealing to the bystanders. 'He can't help himself.  Make him come home, there's good people, or he'll kill his dear mother and father, and break my heart!'\n\n 'What the devil's this?' said a man, bursting out of a beer-shop, with a white dog at his heels; 'young Halley! Come home to your poor mother, you young dog!  Come home directly.'\n\n 'I don't belong to them.  I don't know them.  Help! help!' cried Halley, struggling in the man's powerful grasp.\n\n 'Help!' repeated the man.  'Yes; I'll help you, you young rascal!\n\n What books are these?  You've been a stealing 'em, have you? Give 'em here.'  With these words, the man tore the volumes from his grasp, and struck him on the head.\n\n 'That's right!' cried a looker-on, from a garret-window. 'That's the only way of bringing him to his senses!'\n\n 'To be sure!' cried a sleepy-faced carpenter, casting an approving look at the garret-window.\n\n 'It'll do him good!' said the two women.\n\n 'And he shall have it, too!' rejoined the man, administering another blow, and seizing Halley by the collar.  'Come on, you young villain! Here, Shawn, mind him, boy!  Mind him!'\n\n Weak with recent illness; stupified by the blows and the suddenness of the attack; terrified by the fierce growling of the dog, and the brutality of the man; overpowered by the conviction of the bystanders that he really was the hardened little wretch he was described to be; what could one poor child do!  Darkness had set in; it was a low neighborhood; no help was near; resistance was useless.  In another moment he was dragged into a labyrinth of dark narrow courts, and was forced along them at a pace which rendered the few cries he dared to give utterance to, unintelligible.  It was of little moment, indeed, whether they were intelligible or no; for there was nobody to care for them, had they been ever so plain.\n\n\n *      *      *      *      *\n\n The gas-lamps were lighted; Mrs. Jack was waiting anxiously at the open door; the servant had run up the street twenty times to see if there were any traces of Halley; and still the two old gentlemen sat, perseveringly, in the dark parlour, with the watch between them.\n\n\n\n\n The narrow streets and courts, at length, terminated in a large open space; scattered about which, were pens for beasts, and other indications of a cattle-market.  Luca slackened his pace when they reached this spot:  the girl being quite unable to support any longer, the rapid rate at which they had hitherto walked.  Turning to Halley, he roughly commanded him to take hold of Loren's hand.\n\n 'Do you hear?' growled Luca, as Halley hesitated, and looked round.\n\n They were in a dark corner, quite out of the track of passengers.\n\n Halley saw, but too plainly, that resistance would be of no avail.  He held out his hand, which Loren clasped tight in hers.\n\n 'Give me the other,' said Luca, seizing Halley's unoccupied hand. 'Here, Bull's-Eye!'\n\n The dog looked up, and growled.\n\n 'See here, boy!' said Luca, putting his other hand to Halley's throat; 'if he speaks ever so soft a word, hold him!  D'ye mind!'\n\n The dog growled again; and licking his lips, eyed Halley as if he were anxious to attach himself to his windpipe without delay.\n\n 'He's as willing as a Christian, strike me blind if he isn't!' said Luca, regarding the animal with a kind of grim and ferocious approval. 'Now, you know what you've got to expect, master, so call away as quick as you like; the dog will soon stop that game.  Get on, young'un!'\n\n Shawn wagged his tail in acknowledgment of this unusually endearing form of speech; and, giving vent to another admonitory growl for the benefit of Halley, led the way onward.\n\n It was Smithfield that they were crossing, although it might have been Grosvenor Square, for anything Halley knew to the contrary. The night was dark and foggy.  The lights in the shops could scarecely struggle through the heavy mist, which thickened every moment and shrouded the streets and houses in gloom; rendering the strange place still stranger in Halley's eyes; and making his uncertainty the more dismal and depressing.\n\n They had hurried on a few paces, when a deep church-bell struck the hour.  With its first stroke, his two conductors stopped, and turned their heads in the direction whence the sound proceeded.\n\n 'Eight o' clock, Deepak,' said Loren, when the bell ceased.\n\n 'What's the good of telling me that; I can hear it, can't I!' replied Luca.\n\n 'I wonder whether THEY can hear it,' said Loren.\n\n 'Of course they can,' replied Luca.  'It was Bartlemy time when I was shopped; and there warn't a penny trumpet in the fair, as I couldn't hear the squeaking on.  Arter I was locked up for the night, the row and din outside made the thundering old jail so silent, that I could almost have beat my brains out against the iron plates of the door.'\n\n 'Poor fellow!' said Loren, who still had her face turned towards the quarter in which the bell had sounded.  'Oh, Deepak, such fine young chaps as them!'\n\n 'Yes; that's all you women think of,' answered Luca.  'Fine young chaps!  Well, they're as good as dead, so it don't much matter.'\n\n With this consolation, Mr. Luca appeared to repress a rising tendency to jealousy, and, clasping Halley's wrist more firmly, told him to step out again.\n\n 'Wait a minute!' said the girl:  'I wouldn't hurry by, if it was you that was coming out to be hung, the next time eight o'clock struck, Deepak.  I'd walk round and round the place till I dropped, if the snow was on the ground, and I hadn't a shawl to cover me.'\n\n 'And what good would that do?' inquired the unsentimental Mr. Luca. 'Unless you could pitch over a file and twenty yards of good stout rope, you might as well be walking fifty mile off, or not walking at all, for all the good it would do me.  Come on, and don't stand preaching there.'\n\n The girl burst into a laugh; drew her shawl more closely round her; and they walked away.  But Halley felt her hand tremble, and, looking up in her face as they passed a gas-lamp, saw that it had turned a deadly white.\n\n They walked on, by little-frequented and dirty ways, for a full half-hour:  meeting very few people, and those appearing from their looks to hold much the same position in society as Mr. Luca himself. At length they turned into a very filthy narrow street, nearly full of old-clothes shops; the dog running forward, as if conscious that there was no further occasion for his keeping on guard, stopped before the door of a shop that was closed and apparently untenanted; the house was in a ruinous condition, and on the door was nailed a board, intimating that it was to let:  which looked as if it had hung there for many years.\n\n 'All right,' cried Luca, glancing cautiously about.\n\n Loren stooped below the shutters, and Halley heard the sound of a bell. They crossed to the opposite side of the street, and stood for a few moments under a lamp.  A noise, as if a sash window were gently raised, was heard; and soon afterwards the door softly opened.  Mr. Luca then seized the terrified boy by the collar with very little ceremony; and all three were quickly inside the house.\n\n The passage was perfectly dark.  They waited, while the person who had let them in, chained and barred the door.\n\n 'Anybody here?' inquired Luca.\n\n 'No,' replied a voice, which Halley thought he had heard before.\n\n 'Is the old 'un here?' asked the robber.\n\n 'Yes,' replied the voice, 'and precious down in the mouth he has been. Won't he be glad to see you?  Oh, no!'\n\n The style of this reply, as well as the voice which delivered it, seemed familiar to Halley's ears:  but it was impossible to distinguish even the form of the speaker in the darkness.\n\n 'Let's have a glim,' said Luca, 'or we shall go breaking our necks, or treading on the dog.  Look after your legs if you do!'\n\n 'Stand still a moment, and I'll get you one,' replied the voice. The receding footsteps of the speaker were heard; and, in another minute, the form of Mr. John Dawkins, otherwise the Alondra Celestia, appeared. He bore in his right hand a tallow candle stuck in the end of a cleft stick.\n\n The young gentleman did not stop to bestow any other mark of recognition upon Halley than a humourous grin; but, turning away, beckoned the visitors to follow him down a flight of stairs. They crossed an empty kitchen; and, opening the door of a low earthy-smelling room, which seemed to have been built in a small back-yard, were received with a shout of laughter.\n\n 'Oh, my wig, my wig!' cried Master Charles Maryam, from whose lungs the laughter had proceeded:  'here he is! oh, cry, here he is!  Oh, Ananya, look at him!  Ananya, do look at him! I can't bear it; it is such a jolly game, I cant' bear it.  Hold me, somebody, while I laugh it out.'\n\n With this irrepressible ebullition of mirth, Master Maryam laid himself flat on the floor: and kicked convulsively for five minutes, in an ectasy of facetious joy.  Then jumping to his feet, he snatched the cleft stick from the Celestia; and, advancing to Halley, viewed him round and round; while the Jew, taking off his nightcap, made a great number of low bows to the bewildered boy.  The Alondra, meantime, who was of a rather saturnine disposition, and seldom gave way to merriment when it interfered with business, rifled Halley's pockets with steady assiduity.\n\n 'Look at his togs, Ananya!' said Clara, putting the light so close to his new jacket as nearly to set him on fire.  'Look at his togs! Superfine cloth, and the heavy swell cut!  Oh, my eye, what a game! And his books, too!  Nothing but a gentleman, Ananya!'\n\n 'Delighted to see you looking so well, my dear,' said the Jew, bowing with mock humility.  'The Alondra shall give you another suit, my dear, for fear you should spoil that Sunday one.  Why didn't you write, my dear, and say you were coming?  We'd have got something warm for supper.'\n\n At his, Master Maryam roared again: so loud, that Ananya himself relaxed, and even the Celestia smiled; but as the Alondra drew forth the five-pound note at that instant, it is doubtful whether the sally of the discovery awakened his merriment.\n\n 'Hallo, what's that?' inquired Luca, stepping forward as the Jew seized the note.  'That's mine, Ananya.'\n\n 'No, no, my dear,' said the Jew.  'Mine, Deepak, mine.  You shall have the books.'\n\n 'If that ain't mine!' said Deepak Luca, putting on his hat with a determined air; 'mine and Loren's that is; I'll take the boy back again.'\n\n The Jew started.  Halley started too, though from a very different cause; for he hoped that the dispute might really end in his being taken back.\n\n 'Come!  Hand over, will you?' said Luca.\n\n 'This is hardly fair, Deepak; hardly fair, is it, Loren?' inquired the Jew.\n\n 'Fair, or not fair,' retorted Luca, 'hand over, I tell you! Do you think Loren and me has got nothing else to do with our precious time but to spend it in scouting arter, and kidnapping, every young boy as gets grabbed through you?  Give it here, you avaricious old skeleton, give it here!'\n\n With this gentle remonstrance, Mr. Luca plucked the note from between the Jew's finger and thumb; and looking the old man coolly in the face, folded it up small, and tied it in his neckerchief.\n\n 'That's for our share of the trouble,' said Luca; 'and not half enough, neither.  You may keep the books, if you're fond of reading. If you ain't, sell 'em.'\n\n 'They're very pretty,' said Clara Maryam: who, with sundry grimaces, had been affecting to read one of the volumes in question; 'beautiful writing, isn't is, Halley?'  At sight of the dismayed look with which Halley regarded his tormentors, Master Maryam, who was blessed with a lively sense of the ludicrous, fell into another ectasy, more boisterous than the first.\n\n 'They belong to the old gentleman,' said Halley, wringing his hands; 'to the good, kind, old gentleman who took me into his house, and had me nursed, when I was near dying of the fever. Oh, pray send them back; send him back the books and money.  Keep me here all my life long; but pray, pray send them back.  He'll think I stole them; the old lady: all of them who were so kind to me: will think I stole them.  Oh, do have mercy upon me, and send them back!'\n\n With these words, which were uttered with all the energy of passionate grief, Halley fell upon his knees at the Jew's feet; and beat his hands together, in perfect desperation.\n\n 'The boy's right,' remarked Ananya, looking covertly round, and knitting his shaggy eyebrows into a hard knot.  'You're right, Halley, you're right; they WILL think you have stolen 'em.  Ha! ha!' chuckled the Jew, rubbing his hands, 'it couldn't have happened better, if we had chosen our time!'\n\n 'Of course it couldn't,' replied Luca; 'I know'd that, directly I see him coming through Clerkenwell, with the books under his arm.  It's all right enough.  They're soft-hearted psalm-singers, or they wouldn't have taken him in at all; and they'll ask no questions after him, fear they should be obliged to prosecute, and so get him lagged.  He's safe enough.'\n\n Halley had looked from one to the other, while these words were being spoken, as if he were bewildered, and could scarecely understand what passed; but when Deepak Luca concluded, he jumped suddenly to his feet, and tore wildly from the room:  uttering shrieks for help, which made the bare old house echo to the roof.\n\n 'Keep back the dog, Deepak!' cried Loren, springing before the door, and closing it, as the Jew and his two pupils darted out in pursuit.  'Keep back the dog; he'll tear the boy to pieces.'\n\n 'Serve him right!' cried Luca, struggling to disengage himself from the girl's grasp.  'Stand off from me, or I'll split your head against the wall.'\n\n 'I don't care for that, Deepak, I don't care for that,' screamed the girl, struggling violently with the man, 'the child shan't be torn down by the dog, unless you kill me first.'\n\n 'Shan't he!' said Luca, setting his teeth.  'I'll soon do that, if you don't keep off.'\n\n The housebreaker flung the girl from him to the further end of the room, just as the Jew and the two boys returned, dragging Halley among them.\n\n 'What's the matter here!' said Ananya, looking round.\n\n 'The girl's gone mad, I think,' replied Luca, savagely.\n\n 'No, she hasn't,' said Loren, pale and breathless from the scuffle; 'no, she hasn't, Ananya; don't think it.'\n\n 'Then keep quiet, will you?' said the Jew, with a threatening look.\n\n 'No, I won't do that, neither,' replied Loren, speaking very loud. 'Come!  What do you think of that?'\n\n Mr. Ananya was sufficiently well acquainted with the manners and customs of that particular species of humanity to which Loren belonged, to feel tolerably certain that it would be rather unsafe to prolong any conversation with her, at present.  With the view of diverting the attention of the company, he turned to Halley.\n\n 'So you wanted to get away, my dear, did you?' said the Jew, taking up a jagged and knotted club which law in a corner of the fireplace; 'eh?'\n\n Halley made no reply.  But he watched the Jew's motions, and breathed quickly.\n\n 'Wanted to get assistance; called for the police; did you?' sneered the Jew, catching the boy by the arm.  'We'll cure you of that, my young master.'\n\n The Jew inflicted a smart blow on Halley's shoulders with the club; and was raising it for a second, when the girl, rushing forward, wrested it from his hand.  She flung it into the fire, with a force that brought some of the glowing coals whirling out into the room.\n\n 'I won't stand by and see it done, Ananya,' cried the girl. 'You've got the boy, and what more would you have?--Let him be--let him be--or I shall put that mark on some of you, that will bring me to the gallows before my time.'\n\n The girl stamped her foot violently on the floor as she vented this threat; and with her lips compressed, and her hands clenched, looked alternately at the Jew and the other robber: her face quite colourless from the passion of rage into which she had gradually worked herself.\n\n 'Why, Loren!' said the Jew, in a soothing tone; after a pause, during which he and Mr. Luca had stared at one another in a disconcerted manner; 'you,--you're more clever than ever to-night.  Ha! ha! my dear, you are acting beautifully.'\n\n 'Am I!' said the girl.  'Take care I don't overdo it.  You will be the worse for it, Ananya, if I do; and so I tell you in good time to keep clear of me.'\n\n There is something about a roused woman: especially if she add to all her other strong passions, the fierce impulses of recklessness and despair; which few men like to provoke. The Jew saw that it would be hopeless to affect any further mistake regarding the reality of Miss Loren's rage; and, shrinking involuntarily back a few paces, cast a glance, half imploring and half cowardly, at Luca: as if to hint that he was the fittest person to pursue the dialogue.\n\n Mr. Luca, thus mutely appealed to; and possibly feeling his personal pride and influence interested in the immediate reduction of Miss Loren to reason; gave utterance to about a couple of score of curses and threats, the rapid production of which reflected great credit on the fertility of his invention. As they produced no visible effect on the object against whom they were discharged, however, he resorted to more tangible arguments.\n\n 'What do you mean by this?' said Luca; backing the inquiry with a very common imprecation concerning the most beautiful of human features: which, if it were heard above, only once out of every fifty thousand times that it is uttered below, would render blindness as common a disorder as measles: 'what do you mean by it?  Burn my body!  Do you know who you are, and what you are?'\n\n 'Oh, yes, I know all about it,' replied the girl, laughing hysterically; and shaking her head from side to side, with a poor assumption of indifference.\n\n 'Well, then, keep quiet,' rejoined Luca, with a growl like that he was accustomed to use when addressing his dog, 'or I'll quiet you for a good long time to come.'\n\n The girl laughed again: even less composedly than before; and, darting a hasty look at Luca, turned her face aside, and bit her lip till the blood came.\n\n 'You're a nice one,' added Luca, as he surveyed her with a contemptuous air, 'to take up the humane and gen--teel side!  A pretty subject for the child, as you call him, to make a friend of!'\n\n 'God Almighty help me, I am!' cried the girl passionately; 'and I wish I had been struck dead in the street, or had changed places with them we passed so near to-night, before I had lent a hand in bringing him here.  He's a thief, a liar, a devil, all that's bad, from this night forth.  Isn't that enough for the old wretch, without blows?'\n\n 'Come, come, Luca,' said the Jew appealing to him in a remonstratory tone, and motioning towards the boys, who were eagerly attentive to all that passed; 'we must have civil words; civil words, Deepak.'\n\n 'Civil words!' cried the girl, whose passion was frightful to see. 'Civil words, you villain!  Yes, you deserve 'em from me. I thieved for you when I was a child not half as old as this!' pointing to Halley. 'I have been in the same trade, and in the same service, for twelve years since.  Don't you know it?  Speak out!  Don't you know it?'\n\n 'Well, well,' replied the Jew, with an attempt at pacification; 'and, if you have, it's your living!'\n\n 'Aye, it is!' returned the girl; not speaking, but pouring out the words in one continuous and vehement scream.  'It is my living; and the cold, wet, dirty streets are my home; and you're the wretch that drove me to them long ago, and that'll keep me there, day and night, day and night, till I die!'\n\n 'I shall do you a mischief!' interposed the Jew, goaded by these reproaches; 'a mischief worse than that, if you say much more!'\n\n The girl said nothing more; but, tearing her hair and dress in a transport of passion, made such a rush at the Jew as would probably have left signal marks of her revenge upon him, had not her wrists been seized by Luca at the right moment; upon which, she made a few ineffectual struggles, and fainted.\n\n 'She's all right now,' said Luca, laying her down in a corner. 'She's uncommon strong in the arms, when she's up in this way.'\n\n The Jew wiped his forehead: and smiled, as if it were a relief to have the disturbance over; but neither he, nor Luca, nor the dog, nor the boys, seemed to consider it in any other light than a common occurance incidental to business.\n\n 'It's the worst of having to do with women,' said the Jew, replacing his club; 'but they're clever, and we can't get on, in our line, without 'em.  Clara, show Halley to bed.'\n\n 'I suppose he'd better not wear his best clothes tomorrow, Ananya, had he?' inquired Clara Maryam.\n\n 'Certainly not,' replied the Jew, reciprocating the grin with which Clara put the question.\n\n Master Maryam, apparently much delighted with his commission, took the cleft stick: and led Halley into an adjacent kitchen, where there were two or three of the beds on which he had slept before; and here, with many uncontrollable bursts of laughter, he produced the identical old suit of clothes which Halley had so much congratulated himself upon leaving off at Mr. Cameron's; and the accidental display of which, to Ananya, by the Jew who purchased them, had been the very first clue received, of his whereabout.\n\n 'Put off the smart ones,' said Clara, 'and I'll give 'em to Ananya to take care of.  What fun it is!'\n\n Poor Halley unwillingly complied.  Master Maryam rolling up the new clothes under his arm, departed from the room, leaving Halley in the dark, and locking the door behind him.\n\n The noise of Clara's laughter, and the voice of Miss Junipersy, who opportunely arrived to throw water over her friend, and perform other feminine offices for the promotion of her recovery, might have kept many people awake under more happy circumstances than those in which Halley was placed.  But he was sick and weary; and he soon fell sound asleep.\n\n\n\n\n It is the custom on the stage, in all good murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes, in as regular alternation, as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky bacon.  The hero sinks upon his straw bed, weighed down by fetters and misfortunes; in the next scene, his faithful but unconscious squire regales the audience with a comic song.  We behold, with throbbing bosoms, the heroine in the grasp of a proud and ruthless baron: her virtue and her life alike in danger, drawing forth her dagger to preserve the one at the cost of the other; and just as our expectations are wrought up to the highest pitch, a whistle is heard, and we are straightway transported to the great hall of the castle; where a grey-headed seneschal sings a funny chorus with a funnier body of vassals, who are free of all sorts of places, from church vaults to palaces, and roam about in company, carolling perpetually.\n\n Such changes appear absurd; but they are not so unnatural as they would seem at first sight.  The transitions in real life from well-spread boards to death-beds, and from mourning-weeds to holiday garments, are not a whit less startling; only, there, we are busy actors, instead of passive lookers-on, which makes a vast difference.  The actors in the mimic life of the theatre, are blind to violent transitions and abrupt impulses of passion or feeling, which, presented before the eyes of mere spectators, are at once condemned as outrageous and preposterous.\n\n As sudden shiftings of the scene, and rapid changes of time and place, are not only sanctioned in books by long usage, but are by many considered as the great art of authorship: an author's skill in his craft being, by such critics, chiefly estimated with relation to the dilemmas in which he leaves his characters at the end of every chapter: this brief introduction to the present one may perhaps be deemed unnecessary.  If so, let it be considered a delicate intimation on the part of the historian that he is going back to the town in which Halley Darlene was born; the reader taking it for granted that there are good and substantial reasons for making the journey, or he would not be invited to proceed upon such an expedition.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan emerged at early morning from the workhouse-gate, and walked with portly carriage and commanding steps, up the High Street.  He was in the full bloom and pride of beadlehood; his cocked hat and coat were dazzling in the morning sun; he clutched his cane with the vigorous tenacity of health and power.  Mr. Juniperhan always carried his head high; but this morning it was higher than usual.  There was an abstraction in his eye, an elevation in his air, which might have warned an observant stranger that thoughts were passing in the beadle's mind, too great for utterance.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan stopped not to converse with the small shopkeepers and others who spoke to him, deferentially, as he passed along.  He merely returned their salutations with a wave of his hand, and relaxed not in his dignified pace, until he reached the farm where Mrs. Halle tended the infant paupers with parochial care.\n\n 'Drat that beadle!' said Mrs. Halle, hearing the well-known shaking at the garden-gate.  'If it isn't him at this time in the morning!  Lauk, Mr. Juniperhan, only think of its being you!  Well, dear me, it IS a pleasure, this is!  Come into the parlour, sir, please.'\n\n The first sentence was addressed to Susan; and the exclamations of delight were uttered to Mr. Juniperhan: as the good lady unlocked the garden-gate: and showed him, with great attention and respect, into the house.\n\n 'Mrs. Halle,' said Mr. Juniperhan; not sitting upon, or dropping himself into a seat, as any common jackanapes would: but letting himself gradually and slowly down into a chair; 'Mrs. Halle, ma'am, good morning.'\n\n 'Well, and good morning to _you_, sir,' replied Mrs. Halle, with many smiles; 'and hoping you find yourself well, sir!'\n\n 'So-so, Mrs. Halle,' replied the beadle.  'A porochial life is not a bed of roses, Mrs. Halle.'\n\n 'Ah, that it isn't indeed, Mr. Juniperhan,' rejoined the lady. And all the infant paupers might have chorussed the rejoinder with great propriety, if they had heard it.\n\n 'A porochial life, ma'am,' continued Mr. Juniperhan, striking the table with his cane, 'is a life of worrit, and vexation, and hardihood; but all public characters, as I may say, must suffer prosecution.'\n\n Mrs. Halle, not very well knowing what the beadle meant, raised her hands with a look of sympathy, and sighed.\n\n 'Ah!  You may well sigh, Mrs. Halle!' said the beadle.\n\n Finding she had done right, Mrs. Halle sighed again:  evidently to the satisfaction of the public character:  who, repressing a complacent smile by looking sternly at his cocked hat, said,\n\n 'Mrs. Halle, I am going to London.'\n\n 'Lauk, Mr. Juniperhan!' cried Mrs. Halle, starting back.\n\n 'To London, ma'am,' resumed the inflexible beadle, 'by coach.  I and two paupers, Mrs. Halle!  A legal action is a coming on, about a settlement; and the board has appointed me--me, Mrs. Halle--to dispose to the matter before the quarter-sessions at Clerkinwell.\n\n And I very much question,' added Mr. Juniperhan, drawing himself up, 'whether the Clerkinwell Sessions will not find themselves in the wrong box before they have done with me.'\n\n 'Oh! you mustn't be too hard upon them, sir,' said Mrs. Halle, coaxingly.\n\n 'The Clerkinwell Sessions have brought it upon themselves, ma'am,' replied Mr. Juniperhan; 'and if the Clerkinwell Sessions find that they come off rather worse than they expected, the Clerkinwell Sessions have only themselves to thank.'\n\n There was so much determination and depth of purpose about the menacing manner in which Mr. Juniperhan delivered himself of these words, that Mrs. Halle appeared quite awed by them. At length she said,\n\n 'You're going by coach, sir?  I thought it was always usual to send them paupers in carts.'\n\n 'That's when they're ill, Mrs. Halle,' said the beadle.  'We put the sick paupers into open carts in the rainy weather, to prevent their taking cold.'\n\n 'Oh!' said Mrs. Halle.\n\n 'The opposition coach contracts for these two; and takes them cheap,' said Mr. Juniperhan.  'They are both in a very low state, and we find it would come two pound cheaper to move 'em than to bury 'em--that is, if we can throw 'em upon another parish, which I think we shall be able to do, if they don't die upon the road to spite us.  Ha! ha! ha!'\n\n When Mr. Juniperhan had laughed a little while, his eyes again encountered the cocked hat; and he became grave.\n\n 'We are forgetting business, ma'am,' said the beadle; 'here is your porochial stipend for the month.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan produced some silver money rolled up in paper, from his pocket-book; and requested a receipt:  which Mrs. Halle wrote.\n\n 'It's very much blotted, sir,' said the farmer of infants; 'but it's formal enough, I dare say.  Thank you, Mr. Juniperhan, sir, I am very much obliged to you, I'm sure.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan nodded, blandly, in acknowledgment of Mrs. Halle's curtsey; and inquired how the children were.\n\n 'Bless their dear little hearts!' said Mrs. Halle with emotion, 'they're as well as can be, the dears!  Of course, except the two that died last week.  And little Dick.'\n\n 'Isn't that boy no better?' inquired Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n Mrs. Halle shook her head.\n\n 'He's a ill-conditioned, wicious, bad-disposed porochial child that,' said Mr. Juniperhan angrily.  'Where is he?'\n\n 'I'll bring him to you in one minute, sir,' replied Mrs. Halle. 'Here, you Dick!'\n\n After some calling, Dick was discovered.  Having had his face put under the pump, and dried upon Mrs. Halle's gown, he was led into the awful presence of Mr. Juniperhan, the beadle.\n\n The child was pale and thin; his cheeks were sunken; and his eyes large and bright.  The scanty parish dress, the livery of his misery, hung loosely on his feeble body; and his young limbs had wasted away, like those of an old man.\n\n Such was the little being who stood trembling beneath Mr. Juniperhan's glance; not daring to lift his eyes from the floor; and dreading even to hear the beadle's voice.\n\n 'Can't you look at the gentleman, you obstinate boy?' said Mrs. Halle.\n\n The child meekly raised his eyes, and encountered those of Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'What's the matter with you, porochial Dick?' inquired Mr. Juniperhan, with well-timed jocularity.\n\n 'Nothing, sir,' replied the child faintly.\n\n 'I should think not,' said Mrs. Halle, who had of course laughed very much at Mr. Juniperhan's humour.\n\n 'You want for nothing, I'm sure.'\n\n 'I should like--' faltered the child.\n\n 'Hey-day!' interposed Mr. Halle, 'I suppose you're going to say that you DO want for something, now?  Why, you little wretch--'\n\n 'Stop, Mrs. Halle, stop!' said the beadle, raising his hand with a show of authority.  'Like what, sir, eh?'\n\n 'I should like,' faltered the child, 'if somebody that can write, would put a few words down for me on a piece of paper, and fold it up and seal it, and keep it for me, after I am laid in the ground.'\n\n 'Why, what does the boy mean?' exclaimed Mr. Juniperhan, on whom the earnest manner and wan aspect of the child had made some impression: accustomed as he was to such things.  'What do you mean, sir?'\n\n 'I should like,' said the child, 'to leave my dear love to poor Halley Darlene; and to let him know how often I have sat by myself and cried to think of his wandering about in the dark nights with nobody to help him.  And I should like to tell him,' said the child pressing his small hands together, and speaking with great fervour, 'that I was glad to die when I was very young; for, perhaps, if I had lived to be a man, and had grown old, my little sister who is in Heaven, might forget me, or be unlike me; and it would be so much happier if we were both children there together.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan surveyed the little speaker, from head to foot, with indescribable astonishment; and, turning to his companion, said, 'They're all in one story, Mrs. Halle.  That out-dacious Halley had demogalized them all!'\n\n 'I couldn't have believed it, sir' said Mrs Halle, holding up her hands, and looking malignantly at Dick.  'I never see such a hardened little wretch!'\n\n 'Take him away, ma'am!' said Mr. Juniperhan imperiously.  'This must be stated to the board, Mrs. Halle.\n\n 'I hope the gentleman will understand that it isn't my fault, sir?' said Mrs. Halle, whimpering pathetically.\n\n 'They shall understand that, ma'am; they shall be acquainted with the true state of the case,' said Mr. Juniperhan.  'There; take him away, I can't bear the sight on him.'\n\n Dick was immediately taken away, and locked up in the coal-cellar.  Mr. Juniperhan shortly afterwards took himself off, to prepare for his journey.\n\n At six o'clock next morning, Mr. Juniperhan:  having exchanged his cocked hat for a round one, and encased his person in a blue great-coat with a cape to it:  took his place on the outside of the coach, accompanied by the criminals whose settlement was disputed; with whom, in due course of time, he arrived in London.\n\n He experienced no other crosses on the way, than those which originated in the perverse behaviour of the two paupers, who persisted in shivering, and complaining of the cold, in a manner which, Mr. Juniperhan declared, caused his teeth to chatter in his head, and made him feel quite uncomfortable; although he had a great-coat on.\n\n Having disposed of these evil-minded persons for the night, Mr. Juniperhan sat himself down in the house at which the coach stopped; and took a temperate dinner of steaks, oyster sauce, and porter. Putting a glass of hot gin-and-water on the chimney-piece, he drew his chair to the fire; and, with sundry moral reflections on the too-prevalent sin of discontent and complaining, composed himself to read the paper.\n\n The very first paragraph upon which Mr. Juniperhan's eye rested, was the following advertisement.\n\n 'FIVE GUINEAS REWARD\n\n 'Whereas a young boy, named Halley Darlene, absconded, or was enticed, on Thursday evening last, from his home, at Pentonville; and has not since been heard of.  The above reward will be paid to any person who will give such information as will lead to the discovery of the said Halley Darlene, or tend to throw any light upon his previous history, in which the advertiser is, for many reasons, warmly interested.'\n\n And then followed a full description of Halley's dress, person, appearance, and disappearance:  with the name and address of Mr. Cameron at full length.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan opened his eyes; read the advertisement, slowly and carefully, three several times; and in something more than five minutes was on his way to Pentonville: having actually, in his excitement, left the glass of hot gin-and-water, untasted.\n\n 'Is Mr. Cameron at home?' inquired Mr. Juniperhan of the girl who opened the door.\n\n To this inquiry the girl returned the not uncommon, but rather evasive reply of 'I don't know; where do you come from?'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan no sooner uttered Halley's name, in explanation of his errand, than Mrs. Jack, who had been listening at the parlour door, hastened into the passage in a breathless state.\n\n 'Come in, come in,' said the old lady: 'I knew we should hear of him. Poor dear!  I knew we should!  I was certain of it.  Bless his heart! I said so all along.'\n\n Having heard this, the worthy old lady hurried back into the parlour again; and seating herself on a sofa, burst into tears. The girl, who was not quite so susceptible, had run upstairs meanwhile; and now returned with a request that Mr. Juniperhan would follow her immediately: which he did.\n\n He was shown into the little back study, where sat Mr. Cameron and his friend Mr. Aliyah, with decanters and glasses before them.  The latter gentleman at once burst into the exclamation:\n\n 'A beadle.  A parish beadle, or I'll eat my head.'\n\n 'Pray don't interrupt just now,' said Mr. Cameron.  'Take a seat, will you?'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan sat himself down; quite confounded by the oddity of Mr. Aliyah's manner.  Mr. Cameron moved the lamp, so as to obtain an uninterrupted view of the beadle's countenance; and said, with a little impatience,\n\n 'Now, sir, you come in consequence of having seen the advertisement?'\n\n 'Yes, sir,' said Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'And you ARE a beadle, are you not?' inquired Mr. Aliyah.\n\n 'I am a porochial beadle, gentlemen,' rejoined Mr. Juniperhan proudly.\n\n 'Of course,' observed Mr. Aliyah aside to his friend, 'I knew he was. A beadle all over!'\n\n Mr. Cameron gently shook his head to impose silence on his friend, and resumed:\n\n 'Do you know where this poor boy is now?'\n\n 'No more than nobody,' replied Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'Well, what DO you know of him?' inquired the old gentleman. 'Speak out, my friend, if you have anything to say.  What DO you know of him?'\n\n 'You don't happen to know any good of him, do you?' said Mr. Aliyah, caustically; after an attentive perusal of Mr. Juniperhan's features.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan, catching at the inquiry very quickly, shook his head with portentous solemnity.\n\n 'You see?' said Mr. Aliyah, looking triumphantly at Mr. Cameron.\n\n Mr. Cameron looked apprehensively at Mr. Juniperhan's pursed-up countenance; and requested him to communicate what he knew regarding Halley, in as few words as possible.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan put down his hat; unbuttoned his coat; folded his arms; inclined his head in a retrospective manner; and, after a few moments' reflection, commenced his story.\n\n It would be tedious if given in the beadle's words:  occupying, as it did, some twenty minutes in the telling; but the sum and substance of it was, that Halley was a foundling, born of low and vicious parents. That he had, from his birth, displayed no better qualities than treachery, ingratitude, and malice.  That he had terminated his brief career in the place of his birth, by making a sanguinary and cowardly attack on an unoffending lad, and running away in the night-time from his master's house.  In proof of his really being the person he represented himself, Mr. Juniperhan laid upon the table the papers he had brought to town. Folding his arms again, he then awaited Mr. Cameron's observations.\n\n 'I fear it is all too true,' said the old gentleman sorrowfully, after looking over the papers.  'This is not much for your intelligence; but I would gladly have given you treble the money, if it had been favourable to the boy.'\n\n It is not improbable that if Mr. Juniperhan had been possessed of this information at an earlier period of the interview, he might have imparted a very different colouring to his little history. It was too late to do it now, however; so he shook his head gravely, and, pocketing the five guineas, withdrew.\n\n Mr. Cameron paced the room to and fro for some minutes; evidently so much disturbed by the beadle's tale, that even Mr. Aliyah forbore to vex him further.\n\n At length he stopped, and rang the bell violently.\n\n 'Mrs. Jack,' said Mr. Cameron, when the housekeeper appeared; 'that boy, Halley, is an imposter.'\n\n 'It can't be, sir.  It cannot be,' said the old lady energetically.\n\n 'I tell you he is,' retorted the old gentleman.  'What do you mean by can't be?  We have just heard a full account of him from his birth; and he has been a thorough-paced little villain, all his life.'\n\n 'I never will believe it, sir,' replied the old lady, firmly. 'Never!'\n\n 'You old women never believe anything but quack-doctors, and lying story-books,' growled Mr. Aliyah.  'I knew it all along. Why didn't you take my advise in the beginning; you would if he hadn't had a fever, I suppose, eh?  He was interesting, wasn't he?  Interesting! Bah!'  And Mr. Aliyah poked the fire with a flourish.\n\n 'He was a dear, grateful, gentle child, sir,' retorted Mrs. Jack, indignantly.  'I know what children are, sir; and have done these forty years; and people who can't say the same, shouldn't say anything about them.  That's my opinion!'\n\n This was a hard hit at Mr. Aliyah, who was a bachelor.  As it extorted nothing from that gentleman but a smile, the old lady tossed her head, and smoothed down her apron preparatory to another speech, when she was stopped by Mr. Cameron.\n\n 'Silence!' said the old gentleman, feigning an anger he was far from feeling.  'Never let me hear the boy's name again.  I rang to tell you that.  Never.  Never, on any pretence, mind!  You may leave the room, Mrs. Jack.  Remember!  I am in earnest.'\n\n There were sad hearts at Mr. Cameron's that night.\n\n Halley's heart sank within him, when he thought of his good friends; it was well for him that he could not know what they had heard, or it might have broken outright.\n\n\n\n\n About noon next day, when the Celestia and Master Maryam had gone out to pursue their customary avocations, Mr. Ananya took the opportunity of reading Halley a long lecture on the crying sin of ingratitude; of which he clearly demonstrated he had been guilty, to no ordinary extent, in wilfully absenting himself from the society of his anxious friends; and, still more, in endeavouring to escape from them after so much trouble and expense had been incurred in his recovery. Mr. Ananya laid great stress on the fact of his having taken Halley in, and cherished him, when, without his timely aid, he might have perished with hunger; and he related the dismal and affecting history of a young lad whom, in his philanthropy, he had succoured under parallel circumstances, but who, proving unworthy of his confidence and evincing a desire to communicate with the police, had unfortunately come to be hanged at the Cerys Bailey one morning.  Mr. Ananya did not seek to conceal his share in the catastrophe, but lamented with tears in his eyes that the wrong-headed and treacherous behaviour of the young person in question, had rendered it necessary that he should become the victim of certain evidence for the crown: which, if it were not precisely true, was indispensably necessary for the safety of him (Mr. Ananya) and a few select friends.  Mr. Ananya concluded by drawing a rather disagreeable picture of the discomforts of hanging; and, with great friendliness and politeness of manner, expressed his anxious hopes that he might never be obliged to submit Halley Darlene to that unpleasant operation.\n\n Little Halley's blood ran cold, as he listened to the Jew's words, and imperfectly comprehended the dark threats conveyed in them.  That it was possible even for justice itself to confound the innocent with the guilty when they were in accidental companionship, he knew already; and that deeply-laid plans for the destruction of inconveniently knowing or over-communicative persons, had been really devised and carried out by the Jew on more occasions than one, he thought by no means unlikely, when he recollected the general nature of the altercations between that gentleman and Mr. Luca: which seemed to bear reference to some foregone conspiracy of the kind.  As he glanced timidly up, and met the Jew's searching look, he felt that his pale face and trembling limbs were neither unnoticed nor unrelished by that wary old gentleman.\n\n The Jew, smiling hideously, patted Halley on the head, and said, that if he kept himself quiet, and applied himself to business, he saw they would be very good friends yet.  Then, taking his hat, and covering himself with an old patched great-coat, he went out, and locked the room-door behind him.\n\n And so Halley remained all that day, and for the greater part of many subsequent days, seeing nobody, between early morning and midnight, and left during the long hours to commune with his own thoughts.  Which, never failing to revert to his kind friends, and the opinion they must long ago have formed of him, were sad indeed.\n\n After the lapse of a week or so, the Jew left the room-door unlocked; and he was at liberty to wander about the house.\n\n It was a very dirty place.  The rooms upstairs had great high wooden chimney-pieces and large doors, with panelled walls and cornices to the ceiling; which, although they were black with neglect and dust, were ornamented in various ways.  From all of these tokens Halley concluded that a long time ago, before the old Jew was born, it had belonged to better people, and had perhaps been quite gay and handsome:  dismal and dreary as it looked now.\n\n Spiders had built their webs in the angles of the walls and ceilings; and sometimes, when Halley walked softly into a room, the mice would scamper across the floor, and run back terrified to their holes.  With these exceptions, there was neither sight nor sound of any living thing; and often, when it grew dark, and he was tired of wandering from room to room, he would crouch in the corner of the passage by the street-door, to be as near living people as he could; and would remain there, listening and counting the hours, until the Jew or the boys returned.\n\n In all the rooms, the mouldering shutters were fast closed:  the bars which held them were screwed tight into the wood; the only light which was admitted, stealing its way through round holes at the top: which made the rooms more gloomy, and filled them with strange shadows. There was a back-garret window with rusty bars outside, which had no shutter; and out of this, Halley often gazed with a melancholy face for hours together; but nothing was to be descried from it but a confused and crowded mass of housetops, blackened chimneys, and gable-ends. Sometimes, indeed, a grizzly head might be seen, peering over the parapet-wall of a distant house; but it was quickly withdrawn again; and as the window of Halley's observatory was nailed down, and dimmed with the rain and smoke of years, it was as much as he could do to make out the forms of the different objects beyond, without making any attempt to be seen or heard,--which he had as much chance of being, as if he had lived inside the ball of St. Paul's Cathedral.\n\n One afternoon, the Celestia and Master Maryam being engaged out that evening, the first-named young gentleman took it into his head to evince some anxiety regarding the decoration of his person (to do him justice, this was by no means an habitual weakness with him); and, with this end and aim, he condescendingly commanded Halley to assist him in his toilet, straightway.\n\n Halley was but too glad to make himself useful; too happy to have some faces, however bad, to look upon; too desirous to conciliate those about him when he could honestly do so; to throw any objection in the way of this proposal.  So he at once expressed his readiness; and, kneeling on the floor, while the Celestia sat upon the table so that he could take his foot in his laps, he applied himself to a process which Mr. Dawkins designated as 'japanning his trotter-cases.'  The phrase, rendered into plain English, signifieth, cleaning his boots.\n\n Whether it was the sense of freedom and independence which a rational animal may be supposed to feel when he sits on a table in an easy attitude smoking a pipe, swinging one leg carelessly to and fro, and having his boots cleaned all the time, without even the past trouble of having taken them off, or the prospective misery of putting them on, to disturb his reflections; or whether it was the goodness of the tobacco that soothed the feelings of the Celestia, or the mildness of the beer that mollified his thoughts; he was evidently tinctured, for the nonce, with a spice of romance and enthusiasm, foreign to his general nature. He looked down on Halley, with a thoughtful countenance, for a brief space; and then, raising his head, and heaving a gentle sign, said, half in abstraction, and half to Master Maryam:\n\n 'What a pity it is he isn't a prig!'\n\n 'Ah!' said Master Charles Maryam; 'he don't know what's good for him.'\n\n The Celestia sighed again, and resumed his pipe: as did Clara Maryam. They both smoked, for some seconds, in silence.\n\n 'I suppose you don't even know what a prig is?' said the Celestia mournfully.\n\n 'I think I know that,' replied Halley, looking up.  'It's a the--; you're one, are you not?' inquired Halley, checking himself.\n\n 'I am,' replied the Celestia.  'I'd scorn to be anything else.'  Mr. Dawkins gave his hat a ferocious cock, after delivering this sentiment, and looked at Master Maryam, as if to denote that he would feel obliged by his saying anything to the contrary.\n\n 'I am,' repeated the Celestia.  'So's Clara.  So's Ananya. So's Luca. So's Loren.  So's Juniper.  So we all are, down to the dog. And he's the downiest one of the lot!'\n\n 'And the least given to peaching,' added Clara Maryam.\n\n 'He wouldn't so much as bark in a witness-box, for fear of committing himself; no, not if you tied him up in one, and left him there without wittles for a fortnight,' said the Celestia.\n\n 'Not a bit of it,' observed Clara.\n\n 'He's a rum dog.  Don't he look fierce at any strange cove that laughs or sings when he's in company!' pursued the Celestia. 'Won't he growl at all, when he hears a fiddle playing!  And don't he hate other dogs as ain't of his breed!  Oh, no!'\n\n 'He's an out-and-out Christian,' said Clara.\n\n This was merely intended as a tribute to the animal's abilities, but it was an appropriate remark in another sense, if Master Maryam had only known it; for there are a good many ladies and gentlemen, claiming to be out-and-out Christians, between whom, and Mr. Luca' dog, there exist strong and singular points of resemblance.\n\n 'Well, well,' said the Celestia, recurring to the point from which they had strayed: with that mindfulness of his profession which influenced all his proceedings.  'This hasn't go anything to do with young Green here.'\n\n 'No more it has,' said Clara.  'Why don't you put yourself under Ananya, Halley?'\n\n 'And make your fortun' out of hand?' added the Celestia, with a grin.\n\n 'And so be able to retire on your property, and do the gen-teel: as I mean to, in the very next leap-year but four that ever comes, and the forty-second Tuesday in Trinity-week,' said Clara Maryam.\n\n 'I don't like it,' rejoined Halley, timidly; 'I wish they would let me go.  I--I--would rather go.'\n\n 'And Ananya would RATHER not!' rejoined Clara.\n\n Halley knew this too well; but thinking it might be dangerous to express his feelings more openly, he only sighed, and went on with his boot-cleaning.\n\n 'Go!' exclaimed the Celestia.  'Why, where's your spirit?' Don't you take any pride out of yourself?  Would you go and be dependent on your friends?'\n\n 'Oh, blow that!' said Master Maryam: drawing two or three silk handkerchiefs from his pocket, and tossing them into a cupboard, 'that's too mean; that is.'\n\n '_I_ couldn't do it,' said the Celestia, with an air of haughty disgust.\n\n 'You can leave your friends, though,' said Halley with a half smile; 'and let them be punished for what you did.'\n\n 'That,' rejoined the Celestia, with a wave of his pipe, 'That was all out of consideration for Ananya, 'cause the traps know that we work together, and he might have got into trouble if we hadn't made our lucky; that was the move, wasn't it, Clara?'\n\n Master Maryam nodded assent, and would have spoken, but the recollection of Halley's flight came so suddenly upon him, that the smoke he was inhaling got entangled with a laugh, and went up into his head, and down into his throat: and brought on a fit of coughing and stamping, about five minutes long.\n\n 'Look here!' said the Celestia, drawing forth a handful of shillings and halfpence. 'Here's a jolly life!  What's the odds where it comes from? Here, catch hold; there's plenty more where they were took from.  You won't, won't you?  Oh, you precious flat!'\n\n 'It's naughty, ain't it, Halley?' inquired Clara Maryam. 'He'll come to be scragged, won't he?'\n\n 'I don't know what that means,' replied Halley.\n\n 'Something in this way, old feller,' said Charly.  As he said it, Master Maryam caught up an end of his neckerchief; and, holding it erect in the air, dropped his head on his shoulder, and jerked a curious sound through his teeth; thereby indicating, by a lively pantomimic representation, that scragging and hanging were one and the same thing.\n\n 'That's what it means,' said Clara.  'Look how he stares, Jack!\n\n I never did see such prime company as that 'ere boy; he'll be the death of me, I know he will.'  Master Clara Maryam, having laughed heartily again, resumed his pipe with tears in his eyes.\n\n 'You've been brought up bad,' said the Celestia, surveying his boots with much satisfaction when Halley had polished them. 'Ananya will make something of you, though, or you'll be the first he ever had that turned out unprofitable.  You'd better begin at once; for you'll come to the trade long before you think of it; and you're only losing time, Halley.'\n\n Master Maryam backed this advice with sundry moral admonitions of his own:  which, being exhausted, he and his friend Mr. Dawkins launched into a glowing description of the numerous pleasures incidental to the life they led, interspersed with a variety of hints to Halley that the best thing he could do, would be to secure Ananya's favour without more delay, by the means which they themselves had employed to gain it.\n\n 'And always put this in your pipe, Nolly,' said the Celestia, as the Jew was heard unlocking the door above, 'if you don't take fogels and tickers--'\n\n 'What's the good of talking in that way?' interposed Master Maryam; 'he don't know what you mean.'\n\n 'If you don't take pocket-handkechers and watches,' said the Celestia, reducing his conversation to the level of Halley's capacity, 'some other cove will; so that the coves that lose 'em will be all the worse, and you'll be all the worse, too, and nobody half a ha'p'orth the better, except the chaps wot gets them--and you've just as good a right to them as they have.'\n\n 'To be sure, to be sure!' said the Jew, who had entered unseen by Halley.  'It all lies in a nutshell my dear; in a nutshell, take the Celestia's word for it.  Ha! ha! ha!  He understands the catechism of his trade.'\n\n The old man rubbed his hands gleefully together, as he corroborated the Celestia's reasoning in these terms; and chuckled with delight at his pupil's proficiency.\n\n The conversation proceeded no farther at this time, for the Jew had returned home accompanied by Miss Junipersy, and a gentleman whom Halley had never seen before, but who was accosted by the Celestia as Briana Foster; and who, having lingered on the stairs to exchange a few gallantries with the lady, now made his appearance.\n\n Mr. Foster was older in years than the Celestia: having perhaps numbered eighteen winters; but there was a degree of deference in his deportment towards that young gentleman which seemed to indicate that he felt himself conscious of a slight inferiority in point of genius and professional aquirements.  He had small twinkling eyes, and a pock-marked face; wore a fur cap, a dark corduroy jacket, greasy fustian trousers, and an apron.  His wardrobe was, in truth, rather out of repair; but he excused himself to the company by stating that his 'time' was only out an hour before; and that, in consequence of having worn the regimentals for six weeks past, he had not been able to bestow any attention on his private clothes.  Mr. Foster added, with strong marks of irritation, that the new way of fumigating clothes up yonder was infernal unconstitutional, for it burnt holes in them, and there was no remedy against the County.  The same remark he considered to apply to the regulation mode of cutting the hair: which he held to be decidedly unlawful.  Mr. Foster wound up his observations by stating that he had not touched a drop of anything for forty-two moral long hard-working days; and that he 'wished he might be busted if he warn't as dry as a lime-basket.'\n\n 'Where do you think the gentleman has come from, Halley?' inquired the Jew, with a grin, as the other boys put a bottle of spirits on the table.\n\n 'I--I--don't know, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n 'Who's that?' inquired Briana Foster, casting a contemptuous look at Halley.\n\n 'A young friend of mine, my dear,' replied the Jew.\n\n 'He's in luck, then,' said the young man, with a meaning look at Ananya. 'Never mind where I came from, young 'un; you'll find your way there, soon enough, I'll bet a crown!'\n\n At this sally, the boys laughed.  After some more jokes on the same subject, they exchanged a few short whispers with Ananya; and withdrew.\n\n After some words apart between the last comer and Ananya, they drew their chairs towards the fire; and the Jew, telling Halley to come and sit by him, led the conversation to the topics most calculated to interest his hearers.  These were, the great advantages of the trade, the proficiency of the Celestia, the amiability of Clara Maryam, and the liberality of the Jew himself.  At length these subjects displayed signs of being thoroughly exhausted; and Mr. Foster did the same: for the house of correction becomes fatiguing after a week or two. Miss Junipersy accordingly withdrew; and left the party to their repose.\n\n From this day, Halley was seldom left alone; but was placed in almost constant communication with the two boys, who played the old game with the Jew every day: whether for their own improvement or Halley's, Mr. Ananya best knew.  At other times the old man would tell them stories of robberies he had committed in his younger days:  mixed up with so much that was droll and curious, that Halley could not help laughing heartily, and showing that he was amused in spite of all his better feelings.\n\n In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils.  Having prepared his mind, by solitude and gloom, to prefer any society to the companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, he was now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken it, and change its hue for ever.\n\n\n\n\n It was a chill, damp, windy night, when the Jew: buttoning his great-coat tight round his shrivelled body, and pulling the collar up over his ears so as completely to obscure the lower part of his face: emerged from his den.  He paused on the step as the door was locked and chained behind him; and having listened while the boys made all secure, and until their retreating footsteps were no longer audible, slunk down the street as quickly as he could.\n\n The house to which Halley had been conveyed, was in the neighborhood of Whitechapel.  The Jew stopped for an instant at the corner of the street; and, glancing suspiciously round, crossed the road, and struck off in the direction of the Spitalfields.\n\n The mud lay thick upon the stones, and a black mist hung over the streets; the rain fell sluggishly down, and everything felt cold and clammy to the touch.  It seemed just the night when it befitted such a being as the Jew to be abroad.  As he glided stealthily along, creeping beneath the shelter of the walls and doorways, the hideous old man seemed like some loathsome reptile, engendered in the slime and darkness through which he moved: crawling forth, by night, in search of some rich offal for a meal.\n\n He kept on his course, through many winding and narrow ways, until he reached Juniperhnal Green; then, turning suddenly off to the left, he soon became involved in a maze of the mean and dirty streets which abound in that close and densely-populated quarter.\n\n The Jew was evidently too familiar with the ground he traversed to be at all bewildered, either by the darkness of the night, or the intricacies of the way.  He hurried through several alleys and streets, and at length turned into one, lighted only by a single lamp at the farther end.  At the door of a house in this street, he knocked; having exchanged a few muttered words with the person who opened it, he walked upstairs.\n\n A dog growled as he touched the handle of a room-door; and a man's voice demanded who was there.\n\n 'Only me, Deepak; only me, my dear,' said the Jew looking in.\n\n 'Bring in your body then,' said Luca.  'Lie down, you stupid brute! Don't you know the devil when he's got a great-coat on?'\n\n Apparently, the dog had been somewhat deceived by Mr. Ananya's outer garment; for as the Jew unbuttoned it, and threw it over the back of a chair, he retired to the corner from which he had risen:  wagging his tail as he went, to show that he was as well satisfied as it was in his nature to be.\n\n 'Well!' said Luca.\n\n 'Well, my dear,' replied the Jew.--'Ah! Loren.'\n\n The latter recognition was uttered with just enough of embarrassment to imply a doubt of its reception; for Mr. Ananya and his young friend had not met, since she had interfered in behalf of Halley.  All doubts upon the subject, if he had any, were speedily removed by the young lady's behaviour.  She took her feet off the fender, pushed back her chair, and bade Ananya draw up his, without saying more about it:  for it was a cold night, and no mistake.\n\n 'It is cold, Loren dear,' said the Jew, as he warmed his skinny hands over the fire.  'It seems to go right through one,' added the old man, touching his side.\n\n 'It must be a piercer, if it finds its way through your heart,' said Mr. Luca.  'Give him something to drink, Loren.  Burn my body, make haste!  It's enough to turn a man ill, to see his lean old carcase shivering in that way, like a ugly ghost just rose from the grave.'\n\n Loren quickly brought a bottle from a cupboard, in which there were many:  which, to judge from the diversity of their appearance, were filled with several kinds of liquids.  Luca pouring out a glass of brandy, bade the Jew drink it off.\n\n 'Quite enough, quite, thankye, Deepak,' replied the Jew, putting down the glass after just setting his lips to it.\n\n 'What!  You're afraid of our getting the better of you, are you?' inquired Luca, fixing his eyes on the Jew.  'Ugh!'\n\n With a hoarse grunt of contempt, Mr. Luca seized the glass, and threw the remainder of its contents into the ashes: as a preparatory ceremony to filling it again for himself:  which he did at once.\n\n The Jew glanced round the room, as his companion tossed down the second glassful; not in curiousity, for he had seen it often before; but in a restless and suspicious manner habitual to him. It was a meanly furnished apartment, with nothing but the contents of the closet to induce the belief that its occupier was anything but a working man; and with no more suspicious articles displayed to view than two or three heavy bludgeons which stood in a corner, and a 'life-preserver' that hung over the chimney-piece.\n\n 'There,' said Luca, smacking his lips. 'Now I'm ready.'\n\n 'For business?' inquired the Jew.\n\n 'For business,' replied Luca; 'so say what you've got to say.'\n\n 'About the crib at Chertsey, Deepak?' said the Jew, drawing his chair forward, and speaking in a very low voice.\n\n 'Yes.  Wot about it?' inquired Luca.\n\n 'Ah! you know what I mean, my dear,' said the Jew.  'He knows what I mean, Loren; don't he?'\n\n 'No, he don't,' sneered Mr. Luca.  'Or he won't, and that's the same thing.  Speak out, and call things by their right names; don't sit there, winking and blinking, and talking to me in hints, as if you warn't the very first that thought about the robbery.  Wot d'ye mean?'\n\n 'Hush, Deepak, hush!' said the Jew, who had in vain attempted to stop this burst of indignation; 'somebody will hear us, my dear. Somebody will hear us.'\n\n 'Let 'em hear!' said Luca; 'I don't care.'  But as Mr. Luca DID care, on reflection, he dropped his voice as he said the words, and grew calmer.\n\n 'There, there,' said the Jew, coaxingly.  'It was only my caution, nothing more.  Now, my dear, about that crib at Chertsey; when is it to be done, Deepak, eh?  When is it to be done?  Such plate, my dear, such plate!' said the Jew:  rubbing his hands, and elevating his eyebrows in a rapture of anticipation.\n\n 'Not at all,' replied Luca coldly.\n\n 'Not to be done at all!' echoed the Jew, leaning back in his chair.\n\n 'No, not at all,' rejoined Luca.  'At least it can't be a put-up job, as we expected.'\n\n 'Then it hasn't been properly gone about,' said the Jew, turning pale with anger.  'Don't tell me!'\n\n 'But I will tell you,' retorted Luca.  'Who are you that's not to be told?  I tell you that Deborah Javier has been hanging about the place for a fortnight, and he can't get one of the servants in line.'\n\n 'Do you mean to tell me, Deepak,' said the Jew: softening as the other grew heated:  'that neither of the two men in the house can be got over?'\n\n 'Yes, I do mean to tell you so,' replied Luca.  'The old lady has had 'em these twenty years; and if you were to give 'em five hundred pound, they wouldn't be in it.'\n\n 'But do you mean to say, my dear,' remonstrated the Jew, 'that the women can't be got over?'\n\n 'Not a bit of it,' replied Luca.\n\n 'Not by flash Deborah Javier?' said the Jew incredulously. 'Think what women are, Deepak,'\n\n 'No; not even by flash Deborah Javier,' replied Luca.  'He says he's worn sham whiskers, and a canary waistcoat, the whole blessed time he's been loitering down there, and it's all of no use.'\n\n 'He should have tried mustachios and a pair of military trousers, my dear,' said the Jew.\n\n 'So he did,' rejoined Luca, 'and they warn't of no more use than the other plant.'\n\n The Jew looked blank at this information.  After ruminating for some minutes with his chin sunk on his breast, he raised his head and said, with a deep sigh, that if flash Deborah Javier reported aright, he feared the game was up.\n\n 'And yet,' said the old man, dropping his hands on his knees, 'it's a sad thing, my dear, to lose so much when we had set our hearts upon it.'\n\n 'So it is,' said Mr. Luca.  'Worse luck!'\n\n A long silence ensued; during which the Jew was plunged in deep thought, with his face wrinkled into an expression of villainy perfectly demoniacal.  Luca eyed him furtively from time to time. Loren, apparently fearful of irritating the housebreaker, sat with her eyes fixed upon the fire, as if she had been deaf to all that passed.\n\n 'Ananya,' said Luca, abruptly breaking the stillness that prevailed; 'is it worth fifty shiners extra, if it's safely done from the outside?'\n\n 'Yes,' said the Jew, as suddenly rousing himself.\n\n 'Is it a bargain?' inquired Luca.\n\n 'Yes, my dear, yes,' rejoined the Jew; his eyes glistening, and every muscle in his face working, with the excitement that the inquiry had awakened.\n\n 'Then,' said Luca, thrusting aside the Jew's hand, with some disdain, 'let it come off as soon as you like.  Deborah and me were over the garden-wall the night afore last, sounding the panels of the door and shutters.  The crib's barred up at night like a jail; but there's one part we can crack, safe and softly.'\n\n 'Which is that, Deepak?' asked the Jew eagerly.\n\n 'Why,' whispered Luca, 'as you cross the lawn--'\n\n 'Yes?' said the Jew, bending his head forward, with his eyes almost starting out of it.\n\n 'Umph!' cried Luca, stopping short, as the girl, scarcely moving her head, looked suddenly round, and pointed for an instant to the Jew's face.  'Never mind which part it is. You can't do it without me, I know; but it's best to be on the safe side when one deals with you.'\n\n 'As you like, my dear, as you like' replied the Jew.  'Is there no help wanted, but yours and Deborah's?'\n\n 'None,' said Luca.  'Cept a centre-bit and a boy.  The first we've both got; the second you must find us.'\n\n 'A boy!' exclaimed the Jew.  'Oh! then it's a panel, eh?'\n\n 'Never mind wot it is!' replied Luca.  'I want a boy, and he musn't be a big 'un.  Lord!' said Mr. Luca, reflectively, 'if I'd only got that young boy of Ned, the chimbley-sweeper's!  He kept him small on purpose, and let him out by the job.  But the father gets lagged; and then the Juvenile Delinquent Society comes, and takes the boy away from a trade where he was earning money, teaches him to read and write, and in time makes a 'prentice of him.  And so they go on,' said Mr. Luca, his wrath rising with the recollection of his wrongs, 'so they go on; and, if they'd got money enough (which it's a Providence they haven't,) we shouldn't have half a dozen boys left in the whole trade, in a year or two.'\n\n 'No more we should,' acquiesced the Jew, who had been considering during this speech, and had only caught the last sentence. 'Deepak!'\n\n 'What now?' inquired Luca.\n\n The Jew nodded his head towards Loren, who was still gazing at the fire; and intimated, by a sign, that he would have her told to leave the room.  Luca shrugged his shoulders impatiently, as if he thought the precaution unnecessary; but complied, nevertheless, by requesting Miss Loren to fetch him a jug of beer.\n\n 'You don't want any beer,' said Loren, folding her arms, and retaining her seat very composedly.\n\n 'I tell you I do!' replied Luca.\n\n 'Nonsense,' rejoined the girl coolly, 'Go on, Ananya.  I know what he's going to say, Deepak; he needn't mind me.'\n\n The Jew still hesitated.  Luca looked from one to the other in some surprise.\n\n 'Why, you don't mind the old girl, do you, Ananya?' he asked at length. 'You've known her long enough to trust her, or the Devil's in it.  She ain't one to blab.  Are you Loren?'\n\n '_I_ should think not!' replied the young lady:  drawing her chair up to the table, and putting her elbows upon it.\n\n 'No, no, my dear, I know you're not,' said the Jew; 'but--' and again the old man paused.\n\n 'But wot?' inquired Luca.\n\n 'I didn't know whether she mightn't p'r'aps be out of sorts, you know, my dear, as she was the other night,' replied the Jew.\n\n At this confession, Miss Loren burst into a loud laugh; and, swallowing a glass of brandy, shook her head with an air of defiance, and burst into sundry exclamations of 'Keep the game a-going!'  'Never say die!' and the like.  These seemed to have the effect of re-assuring both gentlemen; for the Jew nodded his head with a satisfied air, and resumed his seat: as did Mr. Luca likewise.\n\n 'Now, Ananya,' said Loren with a laugh.  'Tell Deepak at once, about Halley!'\n\n 'Ha! you're a clever one, my dear: the sharpest girl I ever saw!' said the Jew, patting her on the neck.  'It WAS about Halley I was going to speak, sure enough.  Ha! ha! ha!'\n\n 'What about him?' demanded Luca.\n\n 'He's the boy for you, my dear,' replied the Jew in a hoarse whisper; laying his finger on the side of his nose, and grinning frightfully.\n\n 'He!' exclaimed Luca.\n\n 'Have him, Deepak!' said Loren.  'I would, if I was in your place. He mayn't be so much up, as any of the others; but that's not what you want, if he's only to open a door for you.  Depend upon it he's a safe one, Deepak.'\n\n 'I know he is,' rejoined Ananya.  'He's been in good training these last few weeks, and it's time he began to work for his bread.  Besides, the others are all too big.'\n\n 'Well, he is just the size I want,' said Mr. Luca, ruminating.\n\n 'And will do everything you want, Deepak, my dear,' interposed the Jew; 'he can't help himself.  That is, if you frighten him enough.'\n\n 'Frighten him!' echoed Luca.  'It'll be no sham frightening, mind you. If there's anything queer about him when we once get into the work; in for a penny, in for a pound.  You won't see him alive again, Ananya. Think of that, before you send him.  Mark my words!' said the robber, poising a crowbar, which he had drawn from under the bedstead.\n\n 'I've thought of it all,' said the Jew with energy. 'I've--I've had my eye upon him, my dears, close--close. Once let him feel that he is one of us; once fill his mind with the idea that he has been a thief; and he's ours!  Ours for his life.  Oho!  It couldn't have come about better!  The old man crossed his arms upon his breast; and, drawing his head and shoulders into a heap, literally hugged himself for joy.\n\n 'Ours!' said Luca.  'Yours, you mean.'\n\n 'Perhaps I do, my dear,' said the Jew, with a shrill chuckle. 'Mine, if you like, Deepak.'\n\n 'And wot,' said Luca, scowling fiercely on his agreeable friend, 'wot makes you take so much pains about one chalk-faced kid, when you know there are fifty boys snoozing about Common Garden every night, as you might pick and choose from?'\n\n 'Because they're of no use to me, my dear,' replied the Jew, with some confusion, 'not worth the taking.  Their looks convict 'em when they get into trouble, and I lose 'em all.  With this boy, properly managed, my dears, I could do what I couldn't with twenty of them.  Besides,' said the Jew, recovering his self-possession, 'he has us now if he could only give us leg-bail again; and he must be in the same boat with us.  Never mind how he came there; it's quite enough for my power over him that he was in a robbery; that's all I want.  Now, how much better this is, than being obliged to put the poor leetle boy out of the way--which would be dangerous, and we should lose by it besides.'\n\n 'When is it to be done?' asked Loren, stopping some turbulent exclamation on the part of Mr. Luca, expressive of the disgust with which he received Ananya's affectation of humanity.\n\n 'Ah, to be sure,' said the Jew; 'when is it to be done, Deepak?'\n\n 'I planned with Deborah, the night arter to-morrow,' rejoined Luca in a surly voice, 'if he heerd nothing from me to the contrairy.'\n\n 'Good,' said the Jew; 'there's no moon.'\n\n 'No,' rejoined Luca.\n\n 'It's all arranged about bringing off the swag, is it?' asked the Jew.\n\n Luca nodded.\n\n 'And about--'\n\n 'Oh, ah, it's all planned,' rejoined Luca, interrupting him. 'Never mind particulars.  You'd better bring the boy here to-morrow night.  I shall get off the stone an hour arter daybreak.  Then you hold your tongue, and keep the melting-pot ready, and that's all you'll have to do.'\n\n After some discussion, in which all three took an active part, it was decided that Loren should repair to the Jew's next evening when the night had set in, and bring Halley away with her; Ananya craftily observing, that, if he evinced any disinclination to the task, he would be more willing to accompany the girl who had so recently interfered in his behalf, than anybody else.  It was also solemnly arranged that poor Halley should, for the purposes of the contemplated expedition, be unreservedly consigned to the care and custody of Mr. William Luca; and further, that the said Luca should deal with him as he thought fit; and should not be held responsible by the Jew for any mischance or evil that might be necessary to visit him: it being understood that, to render the compact in this respect binding, any representations made by Mr. Luca on his return should be required to be confirmed and corroborated, in all important particulars, by the testimony of flash Deborah Javier.\n\n These preliminaries adjusted, Mr. Luca proceeded to drink brandy at a furious rate, and to flourish the crowbar in an alarming manner; yelling forth, at the same time, most unmusical snatches of song, mingled with wild execrations.  At length, in a fit of professional enthusiasm, he insisted upon producing his box of housebreaking tools: which he had no sooner stumbled in with, and opened for the purpose of explaining the nature and properties of the various implements it contained, and the peculiar beauties of their construction, than he fell over the box upon the floor, and went to sleep where he fell.\n\n 'Good-night, Loren,' said the Jew, muffling himself up as before.\n\n 'Good-night.'\n\n Their eyes met, and the Jew scrutinised her, narrowly.  There was no flinching about the girl.  She was as true and earnest in the matter as Deborah Javier himself could be.\n\n The Jew again bade her good-night, and, bestowing a sly kick upon the prostrate form of Mr. Luca while her back was turned, groped downstairs.\n\n 'Always the way!' muttered the Jew to himself as he turned homeward. 'The worst of these women is, that a very little thing serves to call up some long-forgotten feeling; and, the best of them is, that it never lasts.  Ha! ha!  The man against the child, for a bag of gold!'\n\n Beguiling the time with these pleasant reflections, Mr. Ananya wended his way, through mud and mire, to his gloomy abode:  where the Celestia was sitting up, impatiently awaiting his return.\n\n 'Is Halley a-bed?  I want to speak to him,' was his first remark as they descended the stairs.\n\n 'Hours ago,' replied the Celestia, throwing open a door.  'Here he is!'\n\n The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shows in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven, and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.\n\n 'Not now,' said the Jew, turning softly away.  'To-morrow. To-morrow.'\n\n\n\n\n When Halley awoke in the morning, he was a good deal surprised to find that a new pair of shoes, with strong thick soles, had been placed at his bedside; and that his old shoes had been removed. At first, he was pleased with the discovery: hoping that it might be the forerunner of his release; but such thoughts were quickly dispelled, on his sitting down to breakfast along with the Jew, who told him, in a tone and manner which increased his alarm, that he was to be taken to the residence of Deepak Luca that night.\n\n 'To--to--stop there, sir?' asked Halley, anxiously.\n\n 'No, no, my dear.  Not to stop there,' replied the Jew.  'We shouldn't like to lose you.  Don't be afraid, Halley, you shall come back to us again.  Ha! ha! ha!  We won't be so cruel as to send you away, my dear. Oh no, no!'\n\n The old man, who was stooping over the fire toasting a piece of bread, looked round as he bantered Halley thus; and chuckled as if to show that he knew he would still be very glad to get away if he could.\n\n 'I suppose,' said the Jew, fixing his eyes on Halley, 'you want to know what you're going to Deepak's for---eh, my dear?'\n\n Halley coloured, involuntarily, to find that the old thief had been reading his thoughts; but boldly said, Yes, he did want to know.\n\n 'Why, do you think?' inquired Ananya, parrying the question.\n\n 'Indeed I don't know, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n 'Bah!' said the Jew, turning away with a disappointed countenance from a close perusal of the boy's face.  'Wait till Deepak tells you, then.'\n\n The Jew seemed much vexed by Halley's not expressing any greater curiosity on the subject; but the truth is, that, although Halley felt very anxious, he was too much confused by the earnest cunning of Ananya's looks, and his own speculations, to make any further inquiries just then.  He had no other opportunity:  for the Jew remained very surly and silent till night:  when he prepared to go abroad.\n\n 'You may burn a candle,' said the Jew, putting one upon the table. 'And here's a book for you to read, till they come to fetch you. Good-night!'\n\n 'Good-night!' replied Halley, softly.\n\n The Jew walked to the door: looking over his shoulder at the boy as he went.  Suddenly stopping, he called him by his name.\n\n Halley looked up; the Jew, pointing to the candle, motioned him to light it.  He did so; and, as he placed the candlestick upon the table, saw that the Jew was gazing fixedly at him, with lowering and contracted brows, from the dark end of the room.\n\n 'Take heed, Halley! take heed!' said the old man, shaking his right hand before him in a warning manner.  'He's a rough man, and thinks nothing of blood when his own is up. Whatever falls out, say nothing; and do what he bids you.  Mind!'  Placing a strong emphasis on the last word, he suffered his features gradually to resolve themselves into a ghastly grin, and, nodding his head, left the room.\n\n Halley leaned his head upon his hand when the old man disappeared, and pondered, with a trembling heart, on the words he had just heard.  The more he thought of the Jew's admonition, the more he was at a loss to divine its real purpose and meaning.\n\n He could think of no bad object to be attained by sending him to Luca, which would not be equally well answered by his remaining with Ananya; and after meditating for a long time, concluded that he had been selected to perform some ordinary menial offices for the housebreaker, until another boy, better suited for his purpose could be engaged.  He was too well accustomed to suffering, and had suffered too much where he was, to bewail the prospect of change very severely.  He remained lost in thought for some minutes; and then, with a heavy sigh, snuffed the candle, and, taking up the book which the Jew had left with him, began to read.\n\n He turned over the leaves.  Carelessly at first; but, lighting on a passage which attracted his attention, he soon became intent upon the volume.  It was a history of the lives and trials of great criminals; and the pages were soiled and thumbed with use. Here, he read of dreadful crimes that made the blood run cold; of secret murders that had been committed by the lonely wayside; of bodies hidden from the eye of man in deep pits and wells: which would not keep them down, deep as they were, but had yielded them up at last, after many years, and so maddened the murderers with the sight, that in their horror they had confessed their guilt, and yelled for the gibbet to end their agony. Here, too, he read of men who, lying in their beds at dead of night, had been tempted (so they said) and led on, by their own bad thoughts, to such dreadful bloodshed as it made the flesh creep, and the limbs quail, to think of.  The terrible descriptions were so real and vivid, that the sallow pages seemed to turn red with gore; and the words upon them, to be sounded in his ears, as if they were whispered, in hollow murmurs, by the spirits of the dead.\n\n In a paroxysm of fear, the boy closed the book, and thrust it from him. Then, falling upon his knees, he prayed Heaven to spare him from such deeds; and rather to will that he should die at once, than be reserved for crimes, so fearful and appalling. By degrees, he grew more calm, and besought, in a low and broken voice, that he might be rescued from his present dangers; and that if any aid were to be raised up for a poor outcast boy who had never known the love of friends or kindred, it might come to him now, when, desolate and deserted, he stood alone in the midst of wickedness and guilt.\n\n He had concluded his prayer, but still remained with his head buried in his hands, when a rustling noise aroused him.\n\n 'What's that!' he cried, starting up, and catching sight of a figure standing by the door.  'Who's there?'\n\n 'Me.  Only me,' replied a tremulous voice.\n\n Halley raised the candle above his head: and looked towards the door. It was Loren.\n\n 'Put down the light,' said the girl, turning away her head. 'It hurts my eyes.'\n\n Halley saw that she was very pale, and gently inquired if she were ill. The girl threw herself into a chair, with her back towards him:  and wrung her hands; but made no reply.\n\n 'God forgive me!' she cried after a while, 'I never thought of this.'\n\n 'Has anything happened?' asked Halley.  'Can I help you?  I will if I can.  I will, indeed.'\n\n She rocked herself to and fro; caught her throat; and, uttering a gurgling sound, gasped for breath.\n\n 'Loren!' cried Halley, 'What is it?'\n\n The girl beat her hands upon her knees, and her feet upon the ground; and, suddenly stopping, drew her shawl close round her: and shivered with cold.\n\n Halley stirred the fire.  Drawing her chair close to it, she sat there, for a little time, without speaking; but at length she raised her head, and looked round.\n\n 'I don't know what comes over me sometimes,' said she, affecting to busy herself in arranging her dress; 'it's this damp dirty room, I think.  Now, Nolly, dear, are you ready?'\n\n 'Am I to go with you?' asked Halley.\n\n 'Yes.  I have come from Deepak,' replied the girl.  'You are to go with me.'\n\n 'What for?' asked Halley, recoiling.\n\n 'What for?' echoed the girl, raising her eyes, and averting them again, the moment they encountered the boy's face.  'Oh!  For no harm.'\n\n 'I don't believe it,' said Halley:  who had watched her closely.\n\n 'Have it your own way,' rejoined the girl, affecting to laugh. 'For no good, then.'\n\n Halley could see that he had some power over the girl's better feelings, and, for an instant, thought of appealing to her compassion for his helpless state.  But, then, the thought darted across his mind that it was barely eleven o'clock; and that many people were still in the streets:  of whom surely some might be found to give credence to his tale.  As the reflection occured to him, he stepped forward:  and said, somewhat hastily, that he was ready.\n\n Neither his brief consideration, nor its purport, was lost on his companion.  She eyed him narrowly, while he spoke; and cast upon him a look of intelligence which sufficiently showed that she guessed what had been passing in his thoughts.\n\n 'Hush!' said the girl, stooping over him, and pointing to the door as she looked cautiously round.  'You can't help yourself. I have tried hard for you, but all to no purpose.  You are hedged round and round. If ever you are to get loose from here, this is not the time.'\n\n Struck by the energy of her manner, Halley looked up in her face with great surprise.  She seemed to speak the truth; her countenance was white and agitated; and she trembled with very earnestness.\n\n 'I have saved you from being ill-used once, and I will again, and I do now,' continued the girl aloud; 'for those who would have fetched you, if I had not, would have been far more rough than me.  I have promised for your being quiet and silent; if you are not, you will only do harm to yourself and me too, and perhaps be my death.  See here!  I have borne all this for you already, as true as God sees me show it.'\n\n She pointed, hastily, to some livid bruises on her neck and arms; and continued, with great rapidity:\n\n 'Remember this!  And don't let me suffer more for you, just now. If I could help you, I would; but I have not the power.  They don't mean to harm you; whatever they make you do, is no fault of yours.  Hush! Every word from you is a blow for me.  Give me your hand.  Make haste! Your hand!'\n\n She caught the hand which Halley instinctively placed in hers, and, blowing out the light, drew him after her up the stairs. The door was opened, quickly, by some one shrouded in the darkness, and was as quickly closed, when they had passed out.  A hackney-cabriolet was in waiting; with the same vehemence which she had exhibited in addressing Halley, the girl pulled him in with her, and drew the curtains close. The driver wanted no directions, but lashed his horse into full speed, without the delay of an instant.\n\n The girl still held Halley fast by the hand, and continued to pour into his ear, the warnings and assurances she had already imparted.  All was so quick and hurried, that he had scarcely time to recollect where he was, or how he came there, when the carriage stopped at the house to which the Jew's steps had been directed on the previous evening.\n\n For one brief moment, Halley cast a hurried glance along the empty street, and a cry for help hung upon his lips.  But the girl's voice was in his ear, beseeching him in such tones of agony to remember her, that he had not the heart to utter it. While he hesitated, the opportunity was gone; he was already in the house, and the door was shut.\n\n 'This way,' said the girl, releasing her hold for the first time. 'Deepak!'\n\n 'Hallo!' replied Luca: appearing at the head of the stairs, with a candle.  'Oh!  That's the time of day.  Come on!'\n\n This was a very strong expression of approbation, an uncommonly hearty welcome, from a person of Mr. Luca' temperament.  Loren, appearing much gratified thereby, saluted him cordially.\n\n 'Shawn's gone home with Briana,' observed Luca, as he lighted them up.  'He'd have been in the way.'\n\n 'That's right,' rejoined Loren.\n\n 'So you've got the kid,' said Luca when they had all reached the room: closing the door as he spoke.\n\n 'Yes, here he is,' replied Loren.\n\n 'Did he come quiet?' inquired Luca.\n\n 'Like a lamb,' rejoined Loren.\n\n 'I'm glad to hear it,' said Luca, looking grimly at Halley; 'for the sake of his young carcase:  as would otherways have suffered for it. Come here, young 'un; and let me read you a lectur', which is as well got over at once.'\n\n Thus addressing his new pupil, Mr. Luca pulled off Halley's cap and threw it into a corner; and then, taking him by the shoulder, sat himself down by the table, and stood the boy in front of him.\n\n 'Now, first:  do you know wot this is?' inquired Luca, taking up a pocket-pistol which lay on the table.\n\n Halley replied in the affirmative.\n\n 'Well, then, look here,' continued Luca.  'This is powder; that 'ere's a bullet; and this is a little bit of a old hat for waddin'.'\n\n Halley murmured his comprehension of the different bodies referred to; and Mr. Luca proceeded to load the pistol, with great nicety and deliberation.\n\n 'Now it's loaded,' said Mr. Luca, when he had finished.\n\n 'Yes, I see it is, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n 'Well,' said the robber, grasping Halley's wrist, and putting the barrel so close to his temple that they touched; at which moment the boy could not repress a start; 'if you speak a word when you're out o'doors with me, except when I speak to you, that loading will be in your head without notice.  So, if you _do_ make up your mind to speak without leave, say your prayers first.'\n\n Having bestowed a scowl upon the object of this warning, to increase its effect, Mr. Luca continued.\n\n 'As near as I know, there isn't anybody as would be asking very partickler arter you, if you _was_ disposed of; so I needn't take this devil-and-all of trouble to explain matters to you, if it warn't for your own good.  D'ye hear me?'\n\n 'The short and the long of what you mean,' said Loren:  speaking very emphatically, and slightly frowning at Halley as if to bespeak his serious attention to her words:  'is, that if you're crossed by him in this job you have on hand, you'll prevent his ever telling tales afterwards, by shooting him through the head, and will take your chance of swinging for it, as you do for a great many other things in the way of business, every month of your life.'\n\n 'That's it!' observed Mr. Luca, approvingly; 'women can always put things in fewest words.--Except when it's blowing up; and then they lengthens it out.  And now that he's thoroughly up to it, let's have some supper, and get a snooze before starting.'\n\n In pursuance of this request, Loren quickly laid the cloth; disappearing for a few minutes, she presently returned with a pot of porter and a dish of sheep's heads: which gave occasion to several pleasant witticisms on the part of Mr. Luca, founded upon the singular coincidence of 'jemmies' being a can name, common to them, and also to an ingenious implement much used in his profession.  Indeed, the worthy gentleman, stimulated perhaps by the immediate prospect of being on active service, was in great spirits and good humour; in proof whereof, it may be here remarked, that he humourously drank all the beer at a draught, and did not utter, on a rough calculation, more than four-score oaths during the whole progress of the meal.\n\n Supper being ended--it may be easily conceived that Halley had no great appetite for it--Mr. Luca disposed of a couple of glasses of spirits and water, and threw himself on the bed; ordering Loren, with many imprecations in case of failure, to call him at five precisely.  Halley stretched himself in his clothes, by command of the same authority, on a mattress upon the floor; and the girl, mending the fire, sat before it, in readiness to rouse them at the appointed time.\n\n For a long time Halley lay awake, thinking it not impossible that Loren might seek that opportunity of whispering some further advice; but the girl sat brooding over the fire, without moving, save now and then to trim the light.  Weary with watching and anxiety, he at length fell asleep.\n\n When he awoke, the table was covered with tea-things, and Luca was thrusting various articles into the pockets of his great-coat, which hung over the back of a chair.  Loren was busily engaged in preparing breakfast.  It was not yet daylight; for the candle was still burning, and it was quite dark outside. A sharp rain, too, was beating against the window-panes; and the sky looked black and cloudy.\n\n 'Now, then!' growled Luca, as Halley started up; 'half-past five! Look sharp, or you'll get no breakfast; for it's late as it is.'\n\n Halley was not long in making his toilet; having taken some breakfast, he replied to a surly inquiry from Luca, by saying that he was quite ready.\n\n Loren, scarcely looking at the boy, threw him a handkerchief to tie round his throat; Luca gave him a large rough cape to button over his shoulders.  Thus attired, he gave his hand to the robber, who, merely pausing to show him with a menacing gesture that he had that same pistol in a side-pocket of his great-coat, clasped it firmly in his, and, exchanging a farewell with Loren, led him away.\n\n Halley turned, for an instant, when they reached the door, in the hope of meeting a look from the girl.  But she had resumed her old seat in front of the fire, and sat, perfectly motionless before it.\n\n\n\n\n It was a cheerless morning when they got into the street; blowing and raining hard; and the clouds looking dull and stormy.  The night had been very wet: large pools of water had collected in the road: and the kennels were overflowing.  There was a faint glimmering of the coming day in the sky; but it rather aggravated than relieved the gloom of the scene:  the sombre light only serving to pale that which the street lamps afforded, without shedding any warmer or brighter tints upon the wet house-tops, and dreary streets.  There appeared to be nobody stirring in that quarter of the town; the windows of the houses were all closely shut; and the streets through which they passed, were noiseless and empty.\n\n By the time they had turned into the Juniperhnal Green Road, the day had fairly begun to break.  Many of the lamps were already extinguished; a few country waggons were slowly toiling on, towards London; now and then, a stage-coach, covered with mud, rattled briskly by: the driver bestowing, as he passed, an admonitory lash upon the heavy waggoner who, by keeping on the wrong side of the road, had endangered his arriving at the office, a quarter of a minute after his time.  The public-houses, with gas-lights burning inside, were already open.  By degrees, other shops began to be unclosed, and a few scattered people were met with.  Then, came straggling groups of labourers going to their work; then, men and women with fish-baskets on their heads; donkey-carts laden with vegetables; chaise-carts filled with live-stock or whole carcasses of meat; milk-women with pails; an unbroken concourse of people, trudging out with various supplies to the eastern suburbs of the town.  As they approached the City, the noise and traffic gradually increased; when they threaded the streets between Shoreditch and Smithfield, it had swelled into a roar of sound and bustle.  It was as light as it was likely to be, till night came on again, and the busy morning of half the London population had begun.\n\n Turning down Sun Street and Crown Street, and crossing Finsbury square, Mr. Luca struck, by way of Chiswell Street, into Barbican: thence into Long Lane, and so into Smithfield; from which latter place arose a tumult of discordant sounds that filled Halley Darlene with amazement.\n\n It was market-morning.  The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire; a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above.  All the pens in the centre of the large area, and as many temporary pens as could be crowded into the vacant space, were filled with sheep; tied up to posts by the gutter side were long lines of beasts and oxen, three or four deep. Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a mass; the whistling of drovers, the barking dogs, the bellowing and plunging of the oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs, the cries of hawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides; the ringing of bells and roar of voices, that issued from every public-house; the crowding, pushing, driving, beating, whooping and yelling; the hideous and discordant dim that resounded from every corner of the market; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid, and dirty figures constantly running to and fro, and bursting in and out of the throng; rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene, which quite confounded the senses.\n\n Mr. Luca, dragging Halley after him, elbowed his way through the thickest of the crowd, and bestowed very little attention on the numerous sights and sounds, which so astonished the boy.  He nodded, twice or thrice, to a passing friend; and, resisting as many invitations to take a morning dram, pressed steadily onward, until they were clear of the turmoil, and had made their way through Hosier Lane into Holborn.\n\n 'Now, young 'un!' said Luca, looking up at the clock of St. Andrew's Church, 'hard upon seven! you must step out.  Come, don't lag behind already, Lazy-legs!'\n\n Mr. Luca accompanied this speech with a jerk at his little companion's wrist; Halley, quickening his pace into a kind of trot between a fast walk and a run, kept up with the rapid strides of the house-breaker as well as he could.\n\n They held their course at this rate, until they had passed Hyde Park corner, and were on their way to Kensington:  when Luca relaxed his pace, until an empty cart which was at some little distance behind, came up.  Seeing 'Hounslow' written on it, he asked the driver with as much civility as he could assume, if he would give them a lift as far as Isleworth.\n\n 'Jump up,' said the man.  'Is that your boy?'\n\n 'Yes; he's my boy,' replied Luca, looking hard at Halley, and putting his hand abstractedly into the pocket where the pistol was.\n\n 'Your father walks rather too quick for you, don't he, my man?' inquired the driver: seeing that Halley was out of breath.\n\n 'Not a bit of it,' replied Luca, interposing.  'He's used to it.\n\n Here, take hold of my hand, Ned.  In with you!'\n\n Thus addressing Halley, he helped him into the cart; and the driver, pointing to a heap of sacks, told him to lie down there, and rest himself.\n\n As they passed the different mile-stones, Halley wondered, more and more, where his companion meant to take him.  Kensington, Hammersmith, Chiswick, Kew Bridge, Brentford, were all passed; and yet they went on as steadily as if they had only just begun their journey.  At length, they came to a public-house called the Coach and Horses; a little way beyond which, another road appeared to run off.  And here, the cart stopped.\n\n Luca dismounted with great precipitation, holding Halley by the hand all the while; and lifting him down directly, bestowed a furious look upon him, and rapped the side-pocket with his fist, in a significant manner.\n\n 'Good-bye, boy,' said the man.\n\n 'He's sulky,' replied Luca, giving him a shake; 'he's sulky.  A young dog!  Don't mind him.'\n\n 'Not I!' rejoined the other, getting into his cart.  'It's a fine day, after all.'  And he drove away.\n\n Luca waited until he had fairly gone; and then, telling Halley he might look about him if he wanted, once again led him onward on his journey.\n\n They turned round to the left, a short way past the public-house; and then, taking a right-hand road, walked on for a long time: passing many large gardens and gentlemen's houses on both sides of the way, and stopping for nothing but a little beer, until they reached a town. Here against the wall of a house, Halley saw written up in pretty large letters, 'Hampton.'  They lingered about, in the fields, for some hours.  At length they came back into the town; and, turning into an old public-house with a defaced sign-board, ordered some dinner by the kitchen fire.\n\n The kitchen was an old, low-roofed room; with a great beam across the middle of the ceiling, and benches, with high backs to them, by the fire; on which were seated several rough men in smock-frocks, drinking and smoking.  They took no notice of Halley; and very little of Luca; and, as Luca took very little notice of them, he and his young comrade sat in a corner by themselves, without being much troubled by their company.\n\n They had some cold meat for dinner, and sat so long after it, while Mr. Luca indulged himself with three or four pipes, that Halley began to feel quite certain they were not going any further.  Being much tired with the walk, and getting up so early, he dozed a little at first; then, quite overpowered by fatigue and the fumes of the tobacco, fell asleep.\n\n It was quite dark when he was awakened by a push from Luca. Rousing himself sufficiently to sit up and look about him, he found that worthy in close fellowship and communication with a labouring man, over a pint of ale.\n\n 'So, you're going on to Lower Halliford, are you?' inquired Luca.\n\n 'Yes, I am,' replied the man, who seemed a little the worse--or better, as the case might be--for drinking; 'and not slow about it neither.  My horse hasn't got a load behind him going back, as he had coming up in the mornin'; and he won't be long a-doing of it.  Here's luck to him. Ecod! he's a good 'un!'\n\n 'Could you give my boy and me a lift as far as there?' demanded Luca, pushing the ale towards his new friend.\n\n 'If you're going directly, I can,' replied the man, looking out of the pot.  'Are you going to Halliford?'\n\n 'Going on to Shepperton,' replied Luca.\n\n 'I'm your man, as far as I go,' replied the other.  'Is all paid, Becky?'\n\n 'Yes, the other gentleman's paid,' replied the girl.\n\n 'I say!' said the man, with tipsy gravity; 'that won't do, you know.'\n\n 'Why not?' rejoined Luca.  'You're a-going to accommodate us, and wot's to prevent my standing treat for a pint or so, in return?'\n\n The stranger reflected upon this argument, with a very profound face; having done so, he seized Luca by the hand:  and declared he was a real good fellow.  To which Mr. Luca replied, he was joking; as, if he had been sober, there would have been strong reason to suppose he was.\n\n After the exchange of a few more compliments, they bade the company good-night, and went out; the girl gathering up the pots and glasses as they did so, and lounging out to the door, with her hands full, to see the party start.\n\n The horse, whose health had been drunk in his absence, was standing outside:  ready harnessed to the cart.  Halley and Luca got in without any further ceremony; and the man to whom he belonged, having lingered for a minute or two 'to bear him up,' and to defy the hostler and the world to produce his equal, mounted also.  Then, the hostler was told to give the horse his head; and, his head being given him, he made a very unpleasant use of it:  tossing it into the air with great disdain, and running into the parlour windows over the way; after performing those feats, and supporting himself for a short time on his hind-legs, he started off at great speed, and rattled out of the town right gallantly.\n\n The night was very dark.  A damp mist rose from the river, and the marshy ground about; and spread itself over the dreary fields.  It was piercing cold, too; all was gloomy and black. Not a word was spoken; for the driver had grown sleepy; and Luca was in no mood to lead him into conversation.  Halley sat huddled together, in a corner of the cart; bewildered with alarm and apprehension; and figuring strange objects in the gaunt trees, whose branches waved grimly to and fro, as if in some fantastic joy at the desolation of the scene.\n\n As they passed Sunbury Church, the clock struck seven.  There was a light in the ferry-house window opposite:  which streamed across the road, and threw into more sombre shadow a dark yew-tree with graves beneath it.  There was a dull sound of falling water not far off; and the leaves of the old tree stirred gently in the night wind.  It seemed like quiet music for the repose of the dead.\n\n Sunbury was passed through, and they came again into the lonely road. Two or three miles more, and the cart stopped.  Luca alighted, took Halley by the hand, and they once again walked on.\n\n They turned into no house at Shepperton, as the weary boy had expected; but still kept walking on, in mud and darkness, through gloomy lanes and over cold open wastes, until they came within sight of the lights of a town at no great distance.  On looking intently forward, Halley saw that the water was just below them, and that they were coming to the foot of a bridge.\n\n Luca kept straight on, until they were close upon the bridge; then turned suddenly down a bank upon the left.\n\n 'The water!' thought Halley, turning sick with fear.  'He has brought me to this lonely place to murder me!'\n\n He was about to throw himself on the ground, and make one struggle for his young life, when he saw that they stood before a solitary house: all ruinous and decayed.  There was a window on each side of the dilapidated entrance; and one story above; but no light was visible. The house was dark, dismantled: and the all appearance, uninhabited.\n\n Luca, with Halley's hand still in his, softly approached the low porch, and raised the latch.  The door yielded to the pressure, and they passed in together.\n\n\n\n\n 'Hallo!' cried a loud, hoarse voice, as soon as they set foot in the passage.\n\n 'Don't make such a row,' said Luca, bolting the door.  'Show a glim, Deborah.'\n\n 'Aha! my pal!' cried the same voice.  'A glim, Kaylen, a glim! Show the gentleman in, Kaylen; wake up first, if convenient.'\n\n The speaker appeared to throw a boot-jack, or some such article, at the person he addressed, to rouse him from his slumbers:  for the noise of a wooden body, falling violently, was heard; and then an indistinct muttering, as of a man between sleep and awake.\n\n 'Do you hear?' cried the same voice.  'There's Deepak Luca in the passage with nobody to do the civil to him; and you sleeping there, as if you took laudanum with your meals, and nothing stronger.  Are you any fresher now, or do you want the iron candlestick to wake you thoroughly?'\n\n A pair of slipshod feet shuffled, hastily, across the bare floor of the room, as this interrogatory was put; and there issued, from a door on the right hand; first, a feeble candle:  and next, the form of the same individual who has been heretofore described as labouring under the infirmity of speaking through his nose, and officiating as waiter at the public-house on Saffron Hill.\n\n 'Bister Luca!' exclaimed Kaylen, with real or counterfeit joy; 'cub id, sir; cub id.'\n\n 'Here! you get on first,' said Luca, putting Halley in front of him. 'Quicker! or I shall tread upon your heels.'\n\n Muttering a curse upon his tardiness, Luca pushed Halley before him; and they entered a low dark room with a smoky fire, two or three broken chairs, a table, and a very old couch:  on which, with his legs much higher than his head, a man was reposing at full length, smoking a long clay pipe.  He was dressed in a smartly-cut snuff-coloured coat, with large brass buttons; an orange neckerchief; a coarse, staring, shawl-pattern waistcoat; and drab breeches.  Mr. Javier (for he it was) had no very great quantity of hair, either upon his head or face; but what he had, was of a reddish dye, and tortured into long corkscrew curls, through which he occasionally thrust some very dirty fingers, ornamented with large common rings.  He was a trifle above the middle size, and apparently rather weak in the legs; but this circumstance by no means detracted from his own admiration of his top-boots, which he contemplated, in their elevated situation, with lively satisfaction.\n\n 'Deepak, my boy!' said this figure, turning his head towards the door, 'I'm glad to see you.  I was almost afraid you'd given it up:  in which case I should have made a personal wentur.  Hallo!'\n\n Uttering this exclamation in a tone of great surprise, as his eyes rested on Halley, Mr. Deborah Javier brought himself into a sitting posture, and demanded who that was.\n\n 'The boy.  Only the boy!' replied Luca, drawing a chair towards the fire.\n\n 'Wud of Bister Fagid's lads,' exclaimed Kaylen, with a grin.\n\n 'Ananya's, eh!' exclaimed Deborah, looking at Halley.  'Wot an inwalable boy that'll make, for the old ladies' pockets in chapels!  His mug is a fortin' to him.'\n\n 'There--there's enough of that,' interposed Luca, impatiently; and stooping over his recumbant friend, he whispered a few words in his ear:  at which Mr. Javier laughed immensely, and honoured Halley with a long stare of astonishment.\n\n 'Now,' said Luca, as he resumed his seat, 'if you'll give us something to eat and drink while we're waiting, you'll put some heart in us; or in me, at all events.  Sit down by the fire, younker, and rest yourself; for you'll have to go out with us again to-night, though not very far off.'\n\n Halley looked at Luca, in mute and timid wonder; and drawing a stool to the fire, sat with his aching head upon his hands, scarecely knowing where he was, or what was passing around him.\n\n 'Here,' said Deborah, as the young Jew placed some fragments of food, and a bottle upon the table,  'Success to the crack!'  He rose to honour the toast; and, carefully depositing his empty pipe in a corner, advanced to the table, filled a glass with spirits, and drank off its contents.  Mr. Luca did the same.\n\n 'A drain for the boy,' said Deborah, half-filling a wine-glass. 'Down with it, innocence.'\n\n 'Indeed,' said Halley, looking piteously up into the man's face; 'indeed, I--'\n\n 'Down with it!' echoed Deborah.  'Do you think I don't know what's good for you?  Tell him to drink it, Deepak.'\n\n 'He had better!' said Luca clapping his hand upon his pocket. 'Burn my body, if he isn't more trouble than a whole family of Celestias.  Drink it, you perwerse imp; drink it!'\n\n Frightened by the menacing gestures of the two men, Halley hastily swallowed the contents of the glass, and immediately fell into a violent fit of coughing:  which delighted Deborah Javier and Kaylen, and even drew a smile from the surly Mr. Luca.\n\n This done, and Luca having satisfied his appetite (Halley could eat nothing but a small crust of bread which they made him swallow), the two men laid themselves down on chairs for a short nap.  Halley retained his stool by the fire; Kaylen wrapped in a blanket, stretched himself on the floor:  close outside the fender.\n\n They slept, or appeared to sleep, for some time; nobody stirring but Kaylen, who rose once or twice to throw coals on the fire. Halley fell into a heavy doze:  imagining himself straying along the gloomy lanes, or wandering about the dark churchyard, or retracing some one or other of the scenes of the past day:  when he was roused by Deborah Javier jumping up and declaring it was half-past one.\n\n In an instant, the other two were on their legs, and all were actively engaged in busy preparation.  Luca and his companion enveloped their necks and chins in large dark shawls, and drew on their great-coats; Kaylen, opening a cupboard, brought forth several articles, which he hastily crammed into the pockets.\n\n 'Barkers for me, Kaylen,' said Deborah Javier.\n\n 'Here they are,' replied Kaylen, producing a pair of pistols. 'You loaded them yourself.'\n\n 'All right!' replied Deborah, stowing them away.  'The persuaders?'\n\n 'I've got 'em,' replied Luca.\n\n 'Crape, keys, centre-bits, darkies--nothing forgotten?' inquired Deborah: fastening a small crowbar to a loop inside the skirt of his coat.\n\n 'All right,' rejoined his companion.  'Bring them bits of timber, Kaylen.  That's the time of day.'\n\n With these words, he took a thick stick from Kaylen's hands, who, having delivered another to Deborah, busied himself in fastening on Halley's cape.\n\n 'Now then!' said Luca, holding out his hand.\n\n Halley:  who was completely stupified by the unwonted exercise, and the air, and the drink which had been forced upon him:  put his hand mechanically into that which Luca extended for the purpose.\n\n 'Take his other hand, Deborah,' said Luca.  'Look out, Kaylen.'\n\n The man went to the door, and returned to announce that all was quiet. The two robbers issued forth with Halley between them. Kaylen, having made all fast, rolled himself up as before, and was soon asleep again.\n\n It was now intensely dark.  The fog was much heavier than it had been in the early part of the night; and the atmosphere was so damp, that, although no rain fell, Halley's hair and eyebrows, within a few minutes after leaving the house, had become stiff with the half-frozen moisture that was floating about.  They crossed the bridge, and kept on towards the lights which he had seen before.  They were at no great distance off; and, as they walked pretty briskly, they soon arrived at Chertsey.\n\n 'Slap through the town,' whispered Luca; 'there'll be nobody in the way, to-night, to see us.'\n\n Deborah acquiesced; and they hurried through the main street of the little town, which at that late hour was wholly deserted.  A dim light shone at intervals from some bed-room window; and the hoarse barking of dogs occasionally broke the silence of the night.  But there was nobody abroad.  They had cleared the town, as the church-bell struck two.\n\n Quickening their pace, they turned up a road upon the left hand. After walking about a quarter of a mile, they stopped before a detached house surrounded by a wall:  to the top of which, Deborah Javier, scarcely pausing to take breath, climbed in a twinkling.\n\n 'The boy next,' said Deborah.  'Hoist him up; I'll catch hold of him.'\n\n Before Halley had time to look round, Luca had caught him under the arms; and in three or four seconds he and Deborah were lying on the grass on the other side.  Luca followed directly.  And they stole cautiously towards the house.\n\n And now, for the first time, Halley, well-nigh mad with grief and terror, saw that housebreaking and robbery, if not murder, were the objects of the expedition.  He clasped his hands together, and involuntarily uttered a subdued exclamation of horror.  A mist came before his eyes; the cold sweat stood upon his ashy face; his limbs failed him; and he sank upon his knees.\n\n 'Get up!' murmured Luca, trembling with rage, and drawing the pistol from his pocket; 'Get up, or I'll strew your brains upon the grass.'\n\n 'Oh! for God's sake let me go!' cried Halley; 'let me run away and die in the fields.  I will never come near London; never, never!  Oh! pray have mercy on me, and do not make me steal.  For the love of all the bright Angels that rest in Heaven, have mercy upon me!'\n\n The man to whom this appeal was made, swore a dreadful oath, and had cocked the pistol, when Deborah, striking it from his grasp, placed his hand upon the boy's mouth, and dragged him to the house.\n\n 'Hush!' cried the man; 'it won't answer here.  Say another word, and I'll do your business myself with a crack on the head.  That makes no noise, and is quite as certain, and more genteel.  Here, Deepak, wrench the shutter open.  He's game enough now, I'll engage.  I've seen older hands of his age took the same way, for a minute or two, on a cold night.'\n\n Luca, invoking terrific imprecations upon Ananya's head for sending Halley on such an errand, plied the crowbar vigorously, but with little noise.  After some delay, and some assistance from Deborah, the shutter to which he had referred, swung open on its hinges.\n\n It was a little lattice window, about five feet and a half above the ground, at the back of the house:  which belonged to a scullery, or small brewing-place, at the end of the passage.  The aperture was so small, that the inmates had probably not thought it worth while to defend it more securely; but it was large enough to admit a boy of Halley's size, nevertheless.  A very brief exercise of Mr. Sike's art, sufficed to overcome the fastening of the lattice; and it soon stood wide open also.\n\n 'Now listen, you young limb,' whispered Luca, drawing a dark lantern from his pocket, and throwing the glare full on Halley's face; 'I'm a going to put you through there.  Take this light; go softly up the steps straight afore you, and along the little hall, to the street door; unfasten it, and let us in.'\n\n 'There's a bolt at the top, you won't be able to reach,' interposed Deborah. 'Stand upon one of the hall chairs.  There are three there, Deepak, with a jolly large blue unicorn and gold pitchfork on 'em:  which is the old lady's arms.'\n\n 'Keep quiet, can't you?' replied Luca, with a threatening look. 'The room-door is open, is it?'\n\n 'Wide,' replied Deborah, after peeping in to satisfy himself. 'The game of that is, that they always leave it open with a catch, so that the dog, who's got a bed in here, may walk up and down the passage when he feels wakeful.  Ha! ha! Kaylen 'ticed him away to-night.  So neat!'\n\n Although Mr. Javier spoke in a scarcely audible whisper, and laughed without noise, Luca imperiously commanded him to be silent, and to get to work.  Deborah complied, by first producing his lantern, and placing it on the ground; then by planting himself firmly with his head against the wall beneath the window, and his hands upon his knees, so as to make a step of his back. This was no sooner done, than Luca, mounting upon him, put Halley gently through the window with his feet first; and, without leaving hold of his collar, planted him safely on the floor inside.\n\n 'Take this lantern,' said Luca, looking into the room.  'You see the stairs afore you?'\n\n Halley, more dead than alive, gasped out, 'Yes.'  Luca, pointing to the street-door with the pistol-barrel, briefly advised him to take notice that he was within shot all the way; and that if he faltered, he would fall dead that instant.\n\n 'It's done in a minute,' said Luca, in the same low whisper. 'Directly I leave go of you, do your work.  Hark!'\n\n 'What's that?' whispered the other man.\n\n They listened intently.\n\n 'Nothing,' said Luca, releasing his hold of Halley.  'Now!'\n\n In the short time he had had to collect his senses, the boy had firmly resolved that, whether he died in the attempt or not, he would make one effort to dart upstairs from the hall, and alarm the family.  Filled with this idea, he advanced at once, but stealthily.\n\n 'Come back!' suddenly cried Luca aloud.  'Back! back!'\n\n Scared by the sudden breaking of the dead stillness of the place, and by a loud cry which followed it, Halley let his lantern fall, and knew not whether to advance or fly.\n\n The cry was repeated--a light appeared--a vision of two terrified half-dressed men at the top of the stairs swam before his eyes--a flash--a loud noise--a smoke--a crash somewhere, but where he knew not,--and he staggered back.\n\n Luca had disappeared for an instant; but he was up again, and had him by the collar before the smoke had cleared away.  He fired his own pistol after the men, who were already retreating; and dragged the boy up.\n\n 'Clasp your arm tighter,' said Luca, as he drew him through the window.  'Give me a shawl here.  They've hit him.  Quick!  How the boy bleeds!'\n\n Then came the loud ringing of a bell, mingled with the noise of fire-arms, and the shouts of men, and the sensation of being carried over uneven ground at a rapid pace.  And then, the noises grew confused in the distance; and a cold deadly feeling crept over the boy's heart; and he saw or heard no more.\n\n\n\n\n The night was bitter cold.  The snow lay on the ground, frozen into a hard thick crust, so that only the heaps that had drifted into byways and corners were affected by the sharp wind that howled abroad:  which, as if expending increased fury on such prey as it found, caught it savagely up in clouds, and, whirling it into a thousand misty eddies, scattered it in air.  Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless, starving wretch to lay him down and die.  Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets, at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may, can hardly open them in a more bitter world.\n\n Such was the aspect of out-of-doors affairs, when Mrs. Carmela, the matron of the workhouse to which our readers have been already introduced as the birthplace of Halley Darlene, sat herself down before a cheerful fire in her own little room, and glanced, with no small degree of complacency, at a small round table:  on which stood a tray of corresponding size, furnished with all necessary materials for the most grateful meal that matrons enjoy.  In fact, Mrs. Carmela was about to solace herself with a cup of tea. As she glanced from the table to the fireplace, where the smallest of all possible kettles was singing a small song in a small voice, her inward satisfaction evidently increased,--so much so, indeed, that Mrs. Carmela smiled.\n\n 'Well!' said the matron, leaning her elbow on the table, and looking reflectively at the fire; 'I'm sure we have all on us a great deal to be grateful for!  A great deal, if we did but know it.  Ah!'\n\n Mrs. Carmela shook her head mournfully, as if deploring the mental blindness of those paupers who did not know it; and thrusting a silver spoon (private property) into the inmost recesses of a two-ounce tin tea-caddy, proceeded to make the tea.\n\n How slight a thing will disturb the equanimity of our frail minds!  The black teapot, being very small and easily filled, ran over while Mrs. Carmela was moralising; and the water slightly scalded Mrs. Carmela's hand.\n\n 'Drat the pot!' said the worthy matron, setting it down very hastily on the hob; 'a little stupid thing, that only holds a couple of cups! What use is it of, to anybody!  Except,' said Mrs. Carmela, pausing, 'except to a poor desolate creature like me.  Oh dear!'\n\n With these words, the matron dropped into her chair, and, once more resting her elbow on the table, thought of her solitary fate.  The small teapot, and the single cup, had awakened in her mind sad recollections of Mr. Carmela (who had not been dead more than five-and-twenty years); and she was overpowered.\n\n 'I shall never get another!' said Mrs. Carmela, pettishly; 'I shall never get another--like him.'\n\n Whether this remark bore reference to the husband, or the teapot, is uncertain.  It might have been the latter; for Mrs. Carmela looked at it as she spoke; and took it up afterwards.  She had just tasted her first cup, when she was disturbed by a soft tap at the room-door.\n\n 'Oh, come in with you!' said Mrs. Carmela, sharply.  'Some of the old women dying, I suppose.  They always die when I'm at meals. Don't stand there, letting the cold air in, don't.  What's amiss now, eh?'\n\n 'Nothing, ma'am, nothing,' replied a man's voice.\n\n 'Dear me!' exclaimed the matron, in a much sweeter tone, 'is that Mr. Juniperhan?'\n\n 'At your service, ma'am,' said Mr. Juniperhan, who had been stopping outside to rub his shoes clean, and to shake the snow off his coat; and who now made his appearance, bearing the cocked hat in one hand and a bundle in the other.  'Shall I shut the door, ma'am?'\n\n The lady modestly hesitated to reply, lest there should be any impropriety in holding an interview with Mr. Juniperhan, with closed doors. Mr. Juniperhan taking advantage of the hesitation, and being very cold himself, shut it without permission.\n\n 'Hard weather, Mr. Juniperhan,' said the matron.\n\n 'Hard, indeed, ma'am,' replied the beadle.  'Anti-porochial weather this, ma'am.  We have given away, Mrs. Carmela, we have given away a matter of twenty quartern loaves and a cheese and a half, this very blessed afternoon; and yet them paupers are not contented.'\n\n 'Of course not.  When would they be, Mr. Juniperhan?' said the matron, sipping her tea.\n\n 'When, indeed, ma'am!' rejoined Mr. Juniperhan.  'Why here's one man that, in consideration of his wife and large family, has a quartern loaf and a good pound of cheese, full weight.  Is he grateful, ma'am?  Is he grateful?  Not a copper farthing's worth of it!  What does he do, ma'am, but ask for a few coals; if it's only a pocket handkerchief full, he says!  Coals! What would he do with coals?  Toast his cheese with 'em and then come back for more.  That's the way with these people, ma'am; give 'em a apron full of coals to-day, and they'll come back for another, the day after to-morrow, as brazen as alabaster.'\n\n The matron expressed her entire concurrence in this intelligible simile; and the beadle went on.\n\n 'I never,' said Mr. Juniperhan, 'see anything like the pitch it's got to. The day afore yesterday, a man--you have been a married woman, ma'am, and I may mention it to you--a man, with hardly a rag upon his back (here Mrs. Carmela looked at the floor), goes to our overseer's door when he has got company coming to dinner; and says, he must be relieved, Mrs. Carmela.  As he wouldn't go away, and shocked the company very much, our overseer sent him out a pound of potatoes and half a pint of oatmeal.  \"My heart!\" says the ungrateful villain, \"what's the use of _this_ to me?  You might as well give me a pair of iron spectacles!\"  \"Very good,\" says our overseer, taking 'em away again, \"you won't get anything else here.\"  \"Then I'll die in the streets!\" says the vagrant.  \"Oh no, you won't,\" says our overseer.'\n\n 'Ha! ha!  That was very good!  So like Mr. Grannett, wasn't it?' interposed the matron.  'Well, Mr. Juniperhan?'\n\n 'Well, ma'am,' rejoined the beadle, 'he went away; and he _did_ die in the streets.  There's a obstinate pauper for you!'\n\n 'It beats anything I could have believed,' observed the matron emphatically.  'But don't you think out-of-door relief a very bad thing, any way, Mr. Juniperhan?  You're a gentleman of experience, and ought to know.  Come.'\n\n 'Mrs. Carmela,' said the beadle, smiling as men smile who are conscious of superior information, 'out-of-door relief, properly managed: properly managed, ma'am: is the porochial safeguard.  The great principle of out-of-door relief is, to give the paupers exactly what they don't want; and then they get tired of coming.'\n\n 'Dear me!' exclaimed Mrs. Carmela.  'Well, that is a good one, too!'\n\n 'Yes.  Juniperwixt you and me, ma'am,' returned Mr. Juniperhan, 'that's the great principle; and that's the reason why, if you look at any cases that get into them owdacious newspapers, you'll always observe that sick families have been relieved with slices of cheese.  That's the rule now, Mrs. Carmela, all over the country. But, however,' said the beadle, stopping to unpack his bundle, 'these are official secrets, ma'am; not to be spoken of; except, as I may say, among the porochial officers, such as ourselves. This is the port wine, ma'am, that the board ordered for the infirmary; real, fresh, genuine port wine; only out of the cask this forenoon; clear as a bell, and no sediment!'\n\n Having held the first bottle up to the light, and shaken it well to test its excellence, Mr. Juniperhan placed them both on top of a chest of drawers; folded the handkerchief in which they had been wrapped; put it carefully in his pocket; and took up his hat, as if to go.\n\n 'You'll have a very cold walk, Mr. Juniperhan,' said the matron.\n\n 'It blows, ma'am,' replied Mr. Juniperhan, turning up his coat-collar, 'enough to cut one's ears off.'\n\n The matron looked, from the little kettle, to the beadle, who was moving towards the door; and as the beadle coughed, preparatory to bidding her good-night, bashfully inquired whether--whether he wouldn't take a cup of tea?\n\n Mr. Juniperhan instantaneously turned back his collar again; laid his hat and stick upon a chair; and drew another chair up to the table.  As he slowly seated himself, he looked at the lady.  She fixed her eyes upon the little teapot.  Mr. Juniperhan coughed again, and slightly smiled.\n\n Mrs. Carmela rose to get another cup and saucer from the closet. As she sat down, her eyes once again encountered those of the gallant beadle; she coloured, and applied herself to the task of making his tea.  Again Mr. Juniperhan coughed--louder this time than he had coughed yet.\n\n 'Sweet?  Mr. Juniperhan?' inquired the matron, taking up the sugar-basin.\n\n 'Very sweet, indeed, ma'am,' replied Mr. Juniperhan.  He fixed his eyes on Mrs. Carmela as he said this; and if ever a beadle looked tender, Mr. Juniperhan was that beadle at that moment.\n\n The tea was made, and handed in silence.  Mr. Juniperhan, having spread a handkerchief over his knees to prevent the crumbs from sullying the splendour of his shorts, began to eat and drink; varying these amusements, occasionally, by fetching a deep sigh; which, however, had no injurious effect upon his appetite, but, on the contrary, rather seemed to facilitate his operations in the tea and toast department.\n\n 'You have a cat, ma'am, I see,' said Mr. Juniperhan, glancing at one who, in the centre of her family, was basking before the fire; 'and kittens too, I declare!'\n\n 'I am so fond of them, Mr. Juniperhan, you can't think,' replied the matron.  'They're _so_ happy, _so_ frolicsome, and _so_ cheerful, that they are quite companions for me.'\n\n 'Very nice animals, ma'am,' replied Mr. Juniperhan, approvingly; 'so very domestic.'\n\n 'Oh, yes!' rejoined the matron with enthusiasm; 'so fond of their home too, that it's quite a pleasure, I'm sure.'\n\n 'Mrs. Carmela, ma'am,' said Mr. Juniperhan, slowly, and marking the time with his teaspoon, 'I mean to say this, ma'am; that any cat, or kitten, that could live with you, ma'am, and _not_ be fond of its home, must be a ass, ma'am.'\n\n 'Oh, Mr. Juniperhan!' remonstrated Mrs. Carmela.\n\n 'It's of no use disguising facts, ma'am,' said Mr. Juniperhan, slowly flourishing the teaspoon with a kind of amorous dignity which made him doubly impressive; 'I would drown it myself, with pleasure.'\n\n 'Then you're a cruel man,' said the matron vivaciously, as she held out her hand for the beadle's cup; 'and a very hard-hearted man besides.'\n\n 'Hard-hearted, ma'am?' said Mr. Juniperhan.  'Hard?'  Mr. Juniperhan resigned his cup without another word; squeezed Mrs. Carmela's little finger as she took it; and inflicting two open-handed slaps upon his laced waistcoat, gave a mighty sigh, and hitched his chair a very little morsel farther from the fire.\n\n It was a round table; and as Mrs. Carmela and Mr. Juniperhan had been sitting opposite each other, with no great space between them, and fronting the fire, it will be seen that Mr. Juniperhan, in receding from the fire, and still keeping at the table, increased the distance between himself and Mrs. Carmela; which proceeding, some prudent readers will doubtless be disposed to admire, and to consider an act of great heroism on Mr. Juniperhan's part:  he being in some sort tempted by time, place, and opportunity, to give utterance to certain soft nothings, which however well they may become the lips of the light and thoughtless, do seem immeasurably beneath the dignity of judges of the land, members of parliament, ministers of state, lord mayors, and other great public functionaries, but more particularly beneath the stateliness and gravity of a beadle:  who (as is well known) should be the sternest and most inflexible among them all.\n\n Whatever were Mr. Juniperhan's intentions, however (and no doubt they were of the best): it unfortunately happened, as has been twice before remarked, that the table was a round one; consequently Mr. Juniperhan, moving his chair by little and little, soon began to diminish the distance between himself and the matron; and, continuing to travel round the outer edge of the circle, brought his chair, in time, close to that in which the matron was seated.\n\n Indeed, the two chairs touched; and when they did so, Mr. Juniperhan stopped.\n\n Now, if the matron had moved her chair to the right, she would have been scorched by the fire; and if to the left, she must have fallen into Mr. Juniperhan's arms; so (being a discreet matron, and no doubt foreseeing these consequences at a glance) she remained where she was, and handed Mr. Juniperhan another cup of tea.\n\n 'Hard-hearted, Mrs. Carmela?' said Mr. Juniperhan, stirring his tea, and looking up into the matron's face; 'are _you_ hard-hearted, Mrs. Carmela?'\n\n 'Dear me!' exclaimed the matron, 'what a very curious question from a single man.  What can you want to know for, Mr. Juniperhan?'\n\n The beadle drank his tea to the last drop; finished a piece of toast; whisked the crumbs off his knees; wiped his lips; and deliberately kissed the matron.\n\n 'Mr. Juniperhan!' cried that discreet lady in a whisper; for the fright was so great, that she had quite lost her voice, 'Mr. Juniperhan, I shall scream!'  Mr. Juniperhan made no reply; but in a slow and dignified manner, put his arm round the matron's waist.\n\n As the lady had stated her intention of screaming, of course she would have screamed at this additional boldness, but that the exertion was rendered unnecessary by a hasty knocking at the door:  which was no sooner heard, than Mr. Juniperhan darted, with much agility, to the wine bottles, and began dusting them with great violence:  while the matron sharply demanded who was there.\n\n It is worthy of remark, as a curious physical instance of the efficacy of a sudden surprise in counteracting the effects of extreme fear, that her voice had quite recovered all its official asperity.\n\n 'If you please, mistress,' said a withered old female pauper, hideously ugly:  putting her head in at the door, 'Cerys Izabella is a-going fast.'\n\n 'Well, what's that to me?' angrily demanded the matron.  'I can't keep her alive, can I?'\n\n 'No, no, mistress,' replied the old woman, 'nobody can; she's far beyond the reach of help.  I've seen a many people die; little babes and great strong men; and I know when death's a-coming, well enough. But she's troubled in her mind: and when the fits are not on her,--and that's not often, for she is dying very hard,--she says she has got something to tell, which you must hear.  She'll never die quiet till you come, mistress.'\n\n At this intelligence, the worthy Mrs. Carmela muttered a variety of invectives against old women who couldn't even die without purposely annoying their betters; and, muffling herself in a thick shawl which she hastily caught up, briefly requested Mr. Juniperhan to stay till she came back, lest anything particular should occur.  Bidding the messenger walk fast, and not be all night hobbling up the stairs, she followed her from the room with a very ill grace, scolding all the way.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan's conduct on being left to himself, was rather inexplicable. He opened the closet, counted the teaspoons, weighed the sugar-tongs, closely inspected a silver milk-pot to ascertain that it was of the genuine metal, and, having satisfied his curiosity on these points, put on his cocked hat corner-wise, and danced with much gravity four distinct times round the table.\n\n Having gone through this very extraordinary performance, he took off the cocked hat again, and, spreading himself before the fire with his back towards it, seemed to be mentally engaged in taking an exact inventory of the furniture.\n\n\n\n\n It was no unfit messenger of death, who had disturbed the quiet of the matron's room.  Her body was bent by age; her limbs trembled with palsy; her face, distorted into a mumbling leer, resembled more the grotesque shaping of some wild pencil, than the work of Nature's hand.\n\n Alas!  How few of Nature's faces are left alone to gladden us with their beauty!  The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings, of the world, change them as they change hearts; and it is only when those passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave Heaven's surface clear.  It is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of early life; so calm, so peaceful, do they grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the coffin's side in awe, and see the Angel even upon earth.\n\n The old crone tottered along the passages, and up the stairs, muttering some indistinct answers to the chidings of her companion; being at length compelled to pause for breath, she gave the light into her hand, and remained behind to follow as she might: while the more nimble superior made her way to the room where the sick woman lay.\n\n It was a bare garret-room, with a dim light burning at the farther end. There was another old woman watching by the bed; the parish apothecary's apprentice was standing by the fire, making a toothpick out of a quill.\n\n 'Cold night, Mrs. Carmela,' said this young gentleman, as the matron entered.\n\n 'Very cold, indeed, sir,' replied the mistress, in her most civil tones, and dropping a curtsey as she spoke.\n\n 'You should get better coals out of your contractors,' said the apothecary's deputy, breaking a lump on the top of the fire with the rusty poker; 'these are not at all the sort of thing for a cold night.'\n\n 'They're the board's choosing, sir,' returned the matron. 'The least they could do, would be to keep us pretty warm:  for our places are hard enough.'\n\n The conversation was here interrupted by a moan from the sick woman.\n\n 'Oh!' said the young mag, turning his face towards the bed, as if he had previously quite forgotten the patient, 'it's all U.P. there, Mrs. Carmela.'\n\n 'It is, is it, sir?' asked the matron.\n\n 'If she lasts a couple of hours, I shall be surprised,' said the apothecary's apprentice, intent upon the toothpick's point. 'It's a break-up of the system altogether.  Is she dozing, old lady?'\n\n The attendant stooped over the bed, to ascertain; and nodded in the affirmative.\n\n 'Then perhaps she'll go off in that way, if you don't make a row,' said the young man.  'Put the light on the floor.  She won't see it there.'\n\n The attendant did as she was told:  shaking her head meanwhile, to intimate that the woman would not die so easily; having done so, she resumed her seat by the side of the other nurse, who had by this time returned.  The mistress, with an expression of impatience, wrapped herself in her shawl, and sat at the foot of the bed.\n\n The apothecary's apprentice, having completed the manufacture of the toothpick, planted himself in front of the fire and made good use of it for ten minutes or so:  when apparently growing rather dull, he wished Mrs. Carmela joy of her job, and took himself off on tiptoe.\n\n When they had sat in silence for some time, the two old women rose from the bed, and crouching over the fire, held out their withered hands to catch the heat.  The flame threw a ghastly light on their shrivelled faces, and made their ugliness appear terrible, as, in this position, they began to converse in a low voice.\n\n 'Did she say any more, Anny dear, while I was gone?' inquired the messenger.\n\n 'Not a word,' replied the other.  'She plucked and tore at her arms for a little time; but I held her hands, and she soon dropped off.  She hasn't much strength in her, so I easily kept her quiet.  I ain't so weak for an old woman, although I am on parish allowance; no, no!'\n\n 'Did she drink the hot wine the doctor said she was to have?' demanded the first.\n\n 'I tried to get it down,' rejoined the other.  'But her teeth were tight set, and she clenched the mug so hard that it was as much as I could do to get it back again.  So I drank it; and it did me good!'\n\n Looking cautiously round, to ascertain that they were not overheard, the two hags cowered nearer to the fire, and chuckled heartily.\n\n 'I mind the time,' said the first speaker, 'when she would have done the same, and made rare fun of it afterwards.'\n\n 'Ay, that she would,' rejoined the other; 'she had a merry heart. 'A many, many, beautiful corpses she laid out, as nice and neat as waxwork.  My old eyes have seen them--ay, and those old hands touched them too; for I have helped her, scores of times.'\n\n Stretching forth her trembling fingers as she spoke, the old creature shook them exultingly before her face, and fumbling in her pocket, brought out an old time-discoloured tin snuff-box, from which she shook a few grains into the outstretched palm of her companion, and a few more into her own.  While they were thus employed, the matron, who had been impatiently watching until the dying woman should awaken from her stupor, joined them by the fire, and sharply asked how long she was to wait?\n\n 'Not long, mistress,' replied the second woman, looking up into her face.  'We have none of us long to wait for Death.  Patience, patience! He'll be here soon enough for us all.'\n\n 'Hold your tongue, you doting idiot!' said the matron sternly. 'You, Martha, tell me; has she been in this way before?'\n\n 'Often,' answered the first woman.\n\n 'But will never be again,' added the second one; 'that is, she'll never wake again but once--and mind, mistress, that won't be for long!'\n\n 'Long or short,' said the matron, snappishly, 'she won't find me here when she does wake; take care, both of you, how you worry me again for nothing.  It's no part of my duty to see all the old women in the house die, and I won't--that's more. Mind that, you impudent old harridans. If you make a fool of me again, I'll soon cure you, I warrant you!'\n\n She was bouncing away, when a cry from the two women, who had turned towards the bed, caused her to look round.  The patient had raised herself upright, and was stretching her arms towards them.\n\n 'Who's that?' she cried, in a hollow voice.\n\n 'Hush, hush!' said one of the women, stooping over her.  'Lie down, lie down!'\n\n 'I'll never lie down again alive!' said the woman, struggling. 'I _will_ tell her!  Come here!  Nearer!  Let me whisper in your ear.'\n\n She clutched the matron by the arm, and forcing her into a chair by the bedside, was about to speak, when looking round, she caught sight of the two old women bending forward in the attitude of eager listeners.\n\n 'Turn them away,' said the woman, drowsily; 'make haste! make haste!'\n\n The two old crones, chiming in together, began pouring out many piteous lamentations that the poor dear was too far gone to know her best friends; and were uttering sundry protestations that they would never leave her, when the superior pushed them from the room, closed the door, and returned to the bedside.  On being excluded, the old ladies changed their tone, and cried through the keyhole that old Izabella was drunk; which, indeed, was not unlikely; since, in addition to a moderate dose of opium prescribed by the apothecary, she was labouring under the effects of a final taste of gin-and-water which had been privily administered, in the openness of their hearts, by the worthy old ladies themselves.\n\n 'Now listen to me,' said the dying woman aloud, as if making a great effort to revive one latent spark of energy.  'In this very room--in this very bed--I once nursed a pretty young creetur', that was brought into the house with her feet cut and bruised with walking, and all soiled with dust and blood.  She gave birth to a boy, and died.  Let me think--what was the year again!'\n\n 'Never mind the year,' said the impatient auditor; 'what about her?'\n\n 'Ay,' murmured the sick woman, relapsing into her former drowsy state, 'what about her?--what about--I know!' she cried, jumping fiercely up: her face flushed, and her eyes starting from her head--'I robbed her, so I did!  She wasn't cold--I tell you she wasn't cold, when I stole it!'\n\n 'Stole what, for God's sake?' cried the matron, with a gesture as if she would call for help.\n\n '_It_!' replied the woman, laying her hand over the other's mouth. 'The only thing she had.  She wanted clothes to keep her warm, and food to eat; but she had kept it safe, and had it in her bosom.  It was gold, I tell you!  Rich gold, that might have saved her life!'\n\n 'Gold!' echoed the matron, bending eagerly over the woman as she fell back.  'Go on, go on--yes--what of it?  Who was the mother? When was it?'\n\n 'She charged me to keep it safe,' replied the woman with a groan, 'and trusted me as the only woman about her.  I stole it in my heart when she first showed it me hanging round her neck; and the child's death, perhaps, is on me besides!  They would have treated him better, if they had known it all!'\n\n 'Known what?' asked the other.  'Speak!'\n\n 'The boy grew so like his mother,' said the woman, rambling on, and not heeding the question, 'that I could never forget it when I saw his face.  Poor girl! poor girl!  She was so young, too! Such a gentle lamb!  Wait; there's more to tell.  I have not told you all, have I?'\n\n 'No, no,' replied the matron, inclining her head to catch the words, as they came more faintly from the dying woman.  'Be quick, or it may be too late!'\n\n 'The mother,' said the woman, making a more violent effort than before; 'the mother, when the pains of death first came upon her, whispered in my ear that if her baby was born alive, and thrived, the day might come when it would not feel so much disgraced to hear its poor young mother named. \"And oh, kind Heaven!\" she said, folding her thin hands together, \"whether it be boy or girl, raise up some friends for it in this troubled world, and take pity upon a lonely desolate child, abandoned to its mercy!\"'\n\n 'The boy's name?' demanded the matron.\n\n 'They _called_ him Halley,' replied the woman, feebly.  'The gold I stole was--'\n\n 'Yes, yes--what?' cried the other.\n\n She was bending eagerly over the woman to hear her reply; but drew back, instinctively, as she once again rose, slowly and stiffly, into a sitting posture; then, clutching the coverlid with both hands, muttered some indistinct sounds in her throat, and fell lifeless on the bed.\n\n *      *      *      *      *\n\n 'Stone dead!' said one of the old women, hurrying in as soon as the door was opened.\n\n 'And nothing to tell, after all,' rejoined the matron, walking carelessly away.\n\n The two crones, to all appearance, too busily occupied in the preparations for their dreadful duties to make any reply, were left alone, hovering about the body.\n\n\n\n\n While these things were passing in the country workhouse, Mr. Ananya sat in the old den--the same from which Halley had been removed by the girl--brooding over a dull, smoky fire.  He held a pair of bellows upon his knee, with which he had apparently been endeavouring to rouse it into more cheerful action; but he had fallen into deep thought; and with his arms folded on them, and his chin resting on his thumbs, fixed his eyes, abstractedly, on the rusty bars.\n\n At a table behind him sat the Alondra Celestia, Master Charles Maryam, and Mr. Foster: all intent upon a game of whist; the Alondra taking dummy against Master Maryam and Mr. Foster.  The countenance of the first-named gentleman, peculiarly intelligent at all times, acquired great additional interest from his close observance of the game, and his attentive perusal of Mr. Foster's hand; upon which, from time to time, as occasion served, he bestowed a variety of earnest glances: wisely regulating his own play by the result of his observations upon his neighbour's cards.  It being a cold night, the Celestia wore his hat, as, indeed, was often his custom within doors.  He also sustained a clay pipe between his teeth, which he only removed for a brief space when he deemed it necessary to apply for refreshment to a quart pot upon the table, which stood ready filled with gin-and-water for the accommodation of the company.\n\n Master Maryam was also attentive to the play; but being of a more excitable nature than his accomplished friend, it was observable that he more frequently applied himself to the gin-and-water, and moreover indulged in many jests and irrelevant remarks, all highly unbecoming a scientific rubber.  Indeed, the Alondra, presuming upon their close attachment, more than once took occasion to reason gravely with his companion upon these improprieties; all of which remonstrances, Master Maryam received in extremely good part; merely requesting his friend to be 'blowed,' or to insert his head in a sack, or replying with some other neatly-turned witticism of a similar kind, the happy application of which, excited considerable admiration in the mind of Mr. Foster. It was remarkable that the latter gentleman and his partner invariably lost; and that the circumstance, so far from angering Master Maryam, appeared to afford him the highest amusement, inasmuch as he laughed most uproariously at the end of every deal, and protested that he had never seen such a jolly game in all his born days.\n\n 'That's two doubles and the rub,' said Mr. Foster, with a very long face, as he drew half-a-crown from his waistcoat-pocket.  'I never see such a feller as you, Jack; you win everything.  Even when we've good cards, Clara and I can't make nothing of 'em.'\n\n Either the master or the manner of this remark, which was made very ruefully, delighted Clara Maryam so much, that his consequent shout of laughter roused the Jew from his reverie, and induced him to inquire what was the matter.\n\n 'Matter, Ananya!' cried Clara.  'I wish you had watched the play. Brianamy Foster hasn't won a point; and I went partners with him against the Alondral and dumb.'\n\n 'Ay, ay!' said the Jew, with a grin, which sufficiently demonstrated that he was at no loss to understand the reason. 'Try 'em again, Briana; try 'em again.'\n\n 'No more of it for me, thank 'ee, Ananya,' replied Mr. Foster; 'I've had enough.  That 'ere Celestia has such a run of luck that there's no standing again' him.'\n\n 'Ha! ha! my dear,' replied the Jew, 'you must get up very early in the morning, to win against the Celestia.'\n\n 'Morning!' said Clara Maryam; 'you must put your boots on over-night, and have a telescope at each eye, and a opera-glass between your shoulders, if you want to come over him.'\n\n Mr. Dawkins received these handsome compliments with much philosophy, and offered to cut any gentleman in company, for the first picture-card, at a shilling at a time.  Nobody accepting the challenge, and his pipe being by this time smoked out, he proceeded to amuse himself by sketching a ground-plan of Newgate on the table with the piece of chalk which had served him in lieu of counters; whistling, meantime, with peculiar shrillness.\n\n 'How precious dull you are, Brianamy!' said the Celestia, stopping short when there had been a long silence; and addressing Mr. Foster.  'What do you think he's thinking of, Ananya?'\n\n 'How should I know, my dear?' replied the Jew, looking round as he plied the bellows.  'About his losses, maybe; or the little retirement in the country that he's just left, eh?  Ha! ha!  Is that it, my dear?'\n\n 'Not a bit of it,' replied the Celestia, stopping the subject of discourse as Mr. Foster was about to reply.  'What do _you_ say, Clara?'\n\n '_I_ should say,' replied Master Maryam, with a grin, 'that he was uncommon sweet upon Junipersy.  See how he's a-blushing!  Oh, my eye! here's a merry-go-rounder!  Brianamy Foster's in love!  Oh, Ananya, Ananya! what a spree!'\n\n Thoroughly overpowered with the notion of Mr. Foster being the victim of the tender passion, Master Maryam threw himself back in his chair with such violence, that he lost his balance, and pitched over upon the floor; where (the accident abating nothing of his merriment) he lay at full length until his laugh was over, when he resumed his former position, and began another laugh.\n\n 'Never mind him, my dear,' said the Jew, winking at Mr. Dawkins, and giving Master Maryam a reproving tap with the nozzle of the bellows. 'Junipersy's a fine girl.  Stick up to her, Briana.  Stick up to her.'\n\n 'What I mean to say, Ananya,' replied Mr. Foster, very red in the face, 'is, that that isn't anything to anybody here.'\n\n 'No more it is,' replied the Jew; 'Clara will talk.  Don't mind him, my dear; don't mind him.  Junipersy's a fine girl.  Do as she bids you, Briana, and you will make your fortune.'\n\n 'So I _do_ do as she bids me,' replied Mr. Foster; 'I shouldn't have been milled, if it hadn't been for her advice.  But it turned out a good job for you; didn't it, Ananya!  And what's six weeks of it?  It must come, some time or another, and why not in the winter time when you don't want to go out a-walking so much; eh, Ananya?'\n\n 'Ah, to be sure, my dear,' replied the Jew.\n\n 'You wouldn't mind it again, Briana, would you,' asked the Celestia, winking upon Clara and the Jew, 'if Juniper was all right?'\n\n 'I mean to say that I shouldn't,' replied Briana, angrily. 'There, now. Ah!  Who'll say as much as that, I should like to know; eh, Ananya?'\n\n 'Nobody, my dear,' replied the Jew; 'not a soul, Briana.  I don't know one of 'em that would do it besides you; not one of 'em, my dear.'\n\n 'I might have got clear off, if I'd split upon her; mightn't I, Ananya?' angrily pursued the poor half-witted dupe.  'A word from me would have done it; wouldn't it, Ananya?'\n\n 'To be sure it would, my dear,' replied the Jew.\n\n 'But I didn't blab it; did I, Ananya?' demanded Briana, pouring question upon question with great volubility.\n\n 'No, no, to be sure,' replied the Jew; 'you were too stout-hearted for that.  A deal too stout, my dear!'\n\n 'Perhaps I was,' rejoined Briana, looking round; 'and if I was, what's to laugh at, in that; eh, Ananya?'\n\n The Jew, perceiving that Mr. Foster was considerably roused, hastened to assure him that nobody was laughing; and to prove the gravity of the company, appealed to Master Maryam, the principal offender.  But, unfortunately, Clara, in opening his mouth to reply that he was never more serious in his life, was unable to prevent the escape of such a violent roar, that the abused Mr. Foster, without any preliminary ceremonies, rushed across the room and aimed a blow at the offender; who, being skilful in evading pursuit, ducked to avoid it, and chose his time so well that it lighted on the chest of the merry old gentleman, and caused him to stagger to the wall, where he stood panting for breath, while Mr. Foster looked on in intense dismay.\n\n 'Hark!' cried the Celestia at this moment, 'I heard the tinkler.' Catching up the light, he crept softly upstairs.\n\n The bell was rung again, with some impatience, while the party were in darkness.  After a short pause, the Celestia reappeared, and whispered Ananya mysteriously.\n\n 'What!' cried the Jew, 'alone?'\n\n The Celestia nodded in the affirmative, and, shading the flame of the candle with his hand, gave Clara Maryam a private intimation, in dumb show, that he had better not be funny just then.  Having performed this friendly office, he fixed his eyes on the Jew's face, and awaited his directions.\n\n The old man bit his yellow fingers, and meditated for some seconds; his face working with agitation the while, as if he dreaded something, and feared to know the worst.  At length he raised his head.\n\n 'Where is he?' he asked.\n\n The Celestia pointed to the floor above, and made a gesture, as if to leave the room.\n\n 'Yes,' said the Jew, answering the mute inquiry; 'bring him down. Hush! Quiet, Clara!  Gently, Briana!  Scarce, scarce!'\n\n This brief direction to Clara Maryam, and his recent antagonist, was softly and immediately obeyed.  There was no sound of their whereabout, when the Celestia descended the stairs, bearing the light in his hand, and followed by a man in a coarse smock-frock; who, after casting a hurried glance round the room, pulled off a large wrapper which had concealed the lower portion of his face, and disclosed: all haggard, unwashed, and unshorn: the features of flash Deborah Javier.\n\n 'How are you, Faguey?' said this worthy, nodding to the Jew. 'Pop that shawl away in my castor, Celestia, so that I may know where to find it when I cut; that's the time of day!  You'll be a fine young cracksman afore the old file now.'\n\n With these words he pulled up the smock-frock; and, winding it round his middle, drew a chair to the fire, and placed his feet upon the hob.\n\n 'See there, Faguey,' he said, pointing disconsolately to his top boots; 'not a drop of Day and Martin since you know when; not a bubble of blacking, by Jove!   But don't look at me in that way, man.  All in good time.  I can't talk about business till I've eat and drank; so produce the sustainance, and let's have a quiet fill-out for the first time these three days!'\n\n The Jew motioned to the Celestia to place what eatables there were, upon the table; and, seating himself opposite the housebreaker, waited his leisure.\n\n To judge from appearances, Deborah was by no means in a hurry to open the conversation.  At first, the Jew contented himself with patiently watching his countenance, as if to gain from its expression some clue to the intelligence he brought; but in vain.\n\n He looked tired and worn, but there was the same complacent repose upon his features that they always wore:  and through dirt, and beard, and whisker, there still shone, unimpaired, the self-satisfied smirk of flash Deborah Javier. Then the Jew, in an agony of impatience, watched every morsel he put into his mouth; pacing up and down the room, meanwhile, in irrepressible excitement.  It was all of no use.  Deborah continued to eat with the utmost outward indifference, until he could eat no more; then, ordering the Celestia out, he closed the door, mixed a glass of spirits and water, and composed himself for talking.\n\n 'First and foremost, Faguey,' said Deborah.\n\n 'Yes, yes!' interposed the Jew, drawing up his chair.\n\n Mr. Javier stopped to take a draught of spirits and water, and to declare that the gin was excellent; then placing his feet against the low mantelpiece, so as to bring his boots to about the level of his eye, he quietly resumed.\n\n 'First and foremost, Faguey,' said the housebreaker, 'how's Deepak?'\n\n 'What!' screamed the Jew, starting from his seat.\n\n 'Why, you don't mean to say--' began Deborah, turning pale.\n\n 'Mean!' cried the Jew, stamping furiously on the ground. 'Where are they?  Luca and the boy!  Where are they?  Where have they been? Where are they hiding?  Why have they not been here?'\n\n 'The crack failed,' said Deborah faintly.\n\n 'I know it,' replied the Jew, tearing a newspaper from his pocket and pointing to it.  'What more?'\n\n 'They fired and hit the boy.  We cut over the fields at the back, with him between us--straight as the crow flies--through hedge and ditch. They gave chase.  Damme! the whole country was awake, and the dogs upon us.'\n\n 'The boy!'\n\n 'Deepak had him on his back, and scudded like the wind.  We stopped to take him between us; his head hung down, and he was cold. They were close upon our heels; every man for himself, and each from the gallows! We parted company, and left the youngster lying in a ditch.  Alive or dead, that's all I know about him.'\n\n The Jew stopped to hear no more; but uttering a loud yell, and twining his hands in his hair, rushed from the room, and from the house.\n\n\n\n\n The old man had gained the street corner, before he began to recover the effect of Deborah Javier's intelligence.  He had relaxed nothing of his unusual speed; but was still pressing onward, in the same wild and disordered manner, when the sudden dashing past of a carriage: and a boisterous cry from the foot passengers, who saw his danger:  drove him back upon the pavement.  Avoiding, as much as was possible, all the main streets, and skulking only through the by-ways and alleys, he at length emerged on Snow Hill.  Here he walked even faster than before; nor did he linger until he had again turned into a court; when, as if conscious that he was now in his proper element, he fell into his usual shuffling pace, and seemed to breathe more freely.\n\n Near to the spot on which Snow Hill and Holborn Hill meet, opens, upon the right hand as you come out of the City, a narrow and dismal alley, leading to Saffron Hill.  In its filthy shops are exposed for sale huge bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs, of all sizes and patterns; for here reside the traders who purchase them from pick-pockets. Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the windows or flaunting from the door-posts; and the shelves, within, are piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried-fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony of itself:  the emporium of petty larceny: visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, by silent merchants, who traffic in dark back-parlours, and who go as strangely as they come.  Here, the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the rag-merchant, display their goods, as sign-boards to the petty thief; here, stores of old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of woollen-stuff and linen, rust and rot in the grimy cellars.\n\n It was into this place that the Jew turned.  He was well known to the sallow denizens of the lane; for such of them as were on the look-out to buy or sell, nodded, familiarly, as he passed along. He replied to their salutations in the same way; but bestowed no closer recognition until he reached the further end of the alley; when he stopped, to address a salesman of small stature, who had squeezed as much of his person into a child's chair as the chair would hold, and was smoking a pipe at his warehouse door.\n\n 'Why, the sight of you, Mr. Ananya, would cure the hoptalmy!' said this respectable trader, in acknowledgment of the Jew's inquiry after his health.\n\n 'The neighbourhood was a little too hot, Lively,' said Ananya, elevating his eyebrows, and crossing his hands upon his shoulders.\n\n 'Well, I've heerd that complaint of it, once or twice before,' replied the trader; 'but it soon cools down again; don't you find it so?'\n\n Ananya nodded in the affirmative.  Pointing in the direction of Saffron Hill, he inquired whether any one was up yonder to-night.\n\n 'At the Cripples?' inquired the man.\n\n The Jew nodded.\n\n 'Let me see,' pursued the merchant, reflecting.\n\n 'Yes, there's some half-dozen of 'em gone in, that I knows. I don't think your friend's there.'\n\n 'Luca is not, I suppose?' inquired the Jew, with a disappointed countenance.\n\n '_Non istwentus_, as the lawyers say,' replied the little man, shaking his head, and looking amazingly sly.  'Have you got anything in my line to-night?'\n\n 'Nothing to-night,' said the Jew, turning away.\n\n 'Are you going up to the Cripples, Ananya?' cried the little man, calling after him.  'Stop!  I don't mind if I have a drop there with you!'\n\n But as the Jew, looking back, waved his hand to intimate that he preferred being alone; and, moreover, as the little man could not very easily disengage himself from the chair; the sign of the Cripples was, for a time, bereft of the advantage of Mr. Lively's presence.  By the time he had got upon his legs, the Jew had disappeared; so Mr. Lively, after ineffectually standing on tiptoe, in the hope of catching sight of him, again forced himself into the little chair, and, exchanging a shake of the head with a lady in the opposite shop, in which doubt and mistrust were plainly mingled, resumed his pipe with a grave demeanour.\n\n The Three Cripples, or rather the Cripples; which was the sign by which the establishment was familiarly known to its patrons:  was the public-house in which Mr. Luca and his dog have already figured. Merely making a sign to a man at the bar, Ananya walked straight upstairs, and opening the door of a room, and softly insinuating himself into the chamber, looked anxiously about: shading his eyes with his hand, as if in search of some particular person.\n\n The room was illuminated by two gas-lights; the glare of which was prevented by the barred shutters, and closely-drawn curtains of faded red, from being visible outside.  The ceiling was blackened, to prevent its colour from being injured by the flaring of the lamps; and the place was so full of dense tobacco smoke, that at first it was scarcely possible to discern anything more.  By degrees, however, as some of it cleared away through the open door, an assemblage of heads, as confused as the noises that greeted the ear, might be made out; and as the eye grew more accustomed to the scene, the spectator gradually became aware of the presence of a numerous company, male and female, crowded round a long table: at the upper end of which, sat a chairman with a hammer of office in his hand; while a professional gentleman with a bluish nose, and his face tied up for the benefit of a toothache, presided at a jingling piano in a remote corner.\n\n As Ananya stepped softly in, the professional gentleman, running over the keys by way of prelude, occasioned a general cry of order for a song; which having subsided, a young lady proceeded to entertain the company with a ballad in four verses, between each of which the accompanyist played the melody all through, as loud as he could.  When this was over, the chairman gave a sentiment, after which, the professional gentleman on the chairman's right and left volunteered a duet, and sang it, with great applause.\n\n It was curious to observe some faces which stood out prominently from among the group.  There was the chairman himself, (the landlord of the house,) a coarse, rough, heavy built fellow, who, while the songs were proceeding, rolled his eyes hither and thither, and, seeming to give himself up to joviality, had an eye for everything that was done, and an ear for everything that was said--and sharp ones, too.  Near him were the singers: receiving, with professional indifference, the compliments of the company, and applying themselves, in turn, to a dozen proffered glasses of spirits and water, tendered by their more boisterous admirers; whose countenances, expressive of almost every vice in almost every grade, irresistibly attracted the attention, by their very repulsiveness.  Cunning, ferocity, and drunkeness in all its stages, were there, in their strongest aspect; and women: some with the last lingering tinge of their early freshness almost fading as you looked:  others with every mark and stamp of their sex utterly beaten out, and presenting but one loathsome blank of profligacy and crime; some mere girls, others but young women, and none past the prime of life; formed the darkest and saddest portion of this dreary picture.\n\n Ananya, troubled by no grave emotions, looked eagerly from face to face while these proceedings were in progress; but apparently without meeting that of which he was in search. Succeeding, at length, in catching the eye of the man who occupied the chair, he beckoned to him slightly, and left the room, as quietly as he had entered it.\n\n 'What can I do for you, Mr. Ananya?' inquired the man, as he followed him out to the landing.  'Won't you join us?  They'll be delighted, every one of 'em.'\n\n The Jew shook his head impatiently, and said in a whisper, 'Is _he_ here?'\n\n 'No,' replied the man.\n\n 'And no news of Kaylen?' inquired Ananya.\n\n 'None,' replied the landlord of the Cripples; for it was he. 'He won't stir till it's all safe.  Depend on it, they're on the scent down there; and that if he moved, he'd blow upon the thing at once.  He's all right enough, Kaylen is, else I should have heard of him.  I'll pound it, that Kaylen's managing properly. Let him alone for that.'\n\n 'Will _he_ be here to-night?' asked the Jew, laying the same emphasis on the pronoun as before.\n\n 'Nicola, do you mean?' inquired the landlord, hesitating.\n\n 'Hush!' said the Jew.  'Yes.'\n\n 'Certain,' replied the man, drawing a gold watch from his fob; 'I expected him here before now.  If you'll wait ten minutes, he'll be--'\n\n 'No, no,' said the Jew, hastily; as though, however desirous he might be to see the person in question, he was nevertheless relieved by his absence.  'Tell him I came here to see him; and that he must come to me to-night.  No, say to-morrow.  As he is not here, to-morrow will be time enough.'\n\n 'Good!' said the man.  'Nothing more?'\n\n 'Not a word now,' said the Jew, descending the stairs.\n\n 'I say,' said the other, looking over the rails, and speaking in a hoarse whisper; 'what a time this would be for a sell!  I've got Phil Barker here: so drunk, that a boy might take him!'\n\n 'Ah!  But it's not Phil Barker's time,' said the Jew, looking up.\n\n 'Phil has something more to do, before we can afford to part with him; so go back to the company, my dear, and tell them to lead merry lives--_while they last_.  Ha! ha! ha!'\n\n The landlord reciprocated the old man's laugh; and returned to his guests.  The Jew was no sooner alone, than his countenance resumed its former expression of anxiety and thought.  After a brief reflection, he called a hack-cabriolet, and bade the man drive towards Juniperhnal Green. He dismissed him within some quarter of a mile of Mr. Luca's residence, and performed the short remainder of the distance, on foot.\n\n 'Now,' muttered the Jew, as he knocked at the door, 'if there is any deep play here, I shall have it out of you, my girl, cunning as you are.'\n\n She was in her room, the woman said.  Ananya crept softly upstairs, and entered it without any previous ceremony.  The girl was alone; lying with her head upon the table, and her hair straggling over it.\n\n 'She has been drinking,' thought the Jew, cooly, 'or perhaps she is only miserable.'\n\n The old man turned to close the door, as he made this reflection; the noise thus occasioned, roused the girl.  She eyed his crafty face narrowly, as she inquired to his recital of Deborah Javier's story.  When it was concluded, she sank into her former attitude, but spoke not a word.  She pushed the candle impatiently away; and once or twice as she feverishly changed her position, shuffled her feet upon the ground; but this was all.\n\n During the silence, the Jew looked restlessly about the room, as if to assure himself that there were no appearances of Luca having covertly returned.  Apparently satisfied with his inspection, he coughed twice or thrice, and made as many efforts to open a conversation; but the girl heeded him no more than if he had been made of stone.  At length he made another attempt; and rubbing his hands together, said, in his most conciliatory tone,\n\n 'And where should you think Deepak was now, my dear?'\n\n The girl moaned out some half intelligible reply, that she could not tell; and seemed, from the smothered noise that escaped her, to be crying.\n\n 'And the boy, too,' said the Jew, straining his eyes to catch a glimpse of her face.  'Poor leetle child!  Left in a ditch, Nance; only think!'\n\n 'The child,' said the girl, suddenly looking up, 'is better where he is, than among us; and if no harm comes to Deepak from it, I hope he lies dead in the ditch and that his young bones may rot there.'\n\n 'What!' cried the Jew, in amazement.\n\n 'Ay, I do,' returned the girl, meeting his gaze.  'I shall be glad to have him away from my eyes, and to know that the worst is over.  I can't bear to have him about me.  The sight of him turns me against myself, and all of you.'\n\n 'Pooh!' said the Jew, scornfully.  'You're drunk.'\n\n 'Am I?' cried the girl bitterly.  'It's no fault of yours, if I am not! You'd never have me anything else, if you had your will, except now;--the humour doesn't suit you, doesn't it?'\n\n 'No!' rejoined the Jew, furiously.  'It does not.'\n\n 'Change it, then!' responded the girl, with a laugh.\n\n 'Change it!' exclaimed the Jew, exasperated beyond all bounds by his companion's unexpected obstinacy, and the vexation of the night, 'I _will_ change it!  Listen to me, you drab.  Listen to me, who with six words, can strangle Luca as surely as if I had his bull's throat between my fingers now.  If he comes back, and leaves the boy behind him; if he gets off free, and dead or alive, fails to restore him to me; murder him yourself if you would have him escape Jack Ketch.  And do it the moment he sets foot in this room, or mind me, it will be too late!'\n\n 'What is all this?' cried the girl involuntarily.\n\n 'What is it?' pursued Ananya, mad with rage.  'When the boy's worth hundreds of pounds to me, am I to lose what chance threw me in the way of getting safely, through the whims of a drunken gang that I could whistle away the lives of!  And me bound, too, to a born devil that only wants the will, and has the power to, to--'\n\n Panting for breath, the old man stammered for a word; and in that instant checked the torrent of his wrath, and changed his whole demeanour.  A moment before, his clenched hands had grasped the air; his eyes had dilated; and his face grown livid with passion; but now, he shrunk into a chair, and, cowering together, trembled with the apprehension of having himself disclosed some hidden villainy.  After a short silence, he ventured to look round at his companion.  He appeared somewhat reassured, on beholding her in the same listless attitude from which he had first roused her.\n\n 'Loren, dear!' croaked the Jew, in his usual voice.  'Did you mind me, dear?'\n\n 'Don't worry me now, Ananya!' replied the girl, raising her head languidly.  'If Deepak has not done it this time, he will another. He has done many a good job for you, and will do many more when he can; and when he can't he won't; so no more about that.'\n\n 'Regarding this boy, my dear?' said the Jew, rubbing the palms of his hands nervously together.\n\n 'The boy must take his chance with the rest,' interrupted Loren, hastily; 'and I say again, I hope he is dead, and out of harm's way, and out of yours,--that is, if Deepak comes to no harm.  And if Deborah got clear off, Deepak's pretty sure to be safe; for Deepak's worth two of Deborah any time.'\n\n 'And about what I was saying, my dear?' observed the Jew, keeping his glistening eye steadily upon her.\n\n 'You must say it all over again, if it's anything you want me to do,' rejoined Loren; 'and if it is, you had better wait till to-morrow.  You put me up for a minute; but now I'm stupid again.'\n\n Ananya put several other questions: all with the same drift of ascertaining whether the girl had profited by his unguarded hints; but, she answered them so readily, and was withal so utterly unmoved by his searching looks, that his original impression of her being more than a trifle in liquor, was confirmed.  Loren, indeed, was not exempt from a failing which was very common among the Jew's female pupils; and in which, in their tenderer years, they were rather encouraged than checked. Her disordered appearance, and a wholesale perfume of Geneva which pervaded the apartment, afforded strong confirmatory evidence of the justice of the Jew's supposition; and when, after indulging in the temporary display of violence above described, she subsided, first into dullness, and afterwards into a compound of feelings: under the influence of which she shed tears one minute, and in the next gave utterance to various exclamations of 'Never say die!' and divers calculations as to what might be the amount of the odds so long as a lady or gentleman was happy, Mr. Ananya, who had had considerable experience of such matters in his time, saw, with great satisfaction, that she was very far gone indeed.\n\n Having eased his mind by this discovery; and having accomplished his twofold object of imparting to the girl what he had, that night, heard, and of ascertaining, with his own eyes, that Luca had not returned, Mr. Ananya again turned his face homeward: leaving his young friend asleep, with her head upon the table.\n\n It was within an hour of midnight.  The weather being dark, and piercing cold, he had no great temptation to loiter.  The sharp wind that scoured the streets, seemed to have cleared them of passengers, as of dust and mud, for few people were abroad, and they were to all appearance hastening fast home. It blew from the right quarter for the Jew, however, and straight before it he went: trembling, and shivering, as every fresh gust drove him rudely on his way.\n\n He had reached the corner of his own street, and was already fumbling in his pocket for the door-key, when a dark figure emerged from a projecting entrance which lay in deep shadow, and, crossing the road, glided up to him unperceived.\n\n 'Ananya!' whispered a voice close to his ear.\n\n 'Ah!' said the Jew, turning quickly round, 'is that--'\n\n 'Yes!' interrupted the stranger.  'I have been lingering here these two hours.  Where the devil have you been?'\n\n 'On your business, my dear,' replied the Jew, glancing uneasily at his companion, and slackening his pace as he spoke.  'On your business all night.'\n\n 'Oh, of course!' said the stranger, with a sneer.  'Well; and what's come of it?'\n\n 'Nothing good,' said the Jew.\n\n 'Nothing bad, I hope?' said the stranger, stopping short, and turning a startled look on his companion.\n\n The Jew shook his head, and was about to reply, when the stranger, interrupting him, motioned to the house, before which they had by this time arrived:  remarking, that he had better say what he had got to say, under cover:  for his blood was chilled with standing about so long, and the wind blew through him.\n\n Ananya looked as if he could have willingly excused himself from taking home a visitor at that unseasonable hour; and, indeed, muttered something about having no fire; but his companion repeating his request in a peremptory manner, he unlocked the door, and requested him to close it softly, while he got a light.\n\n 'It's as dark as the grave,' said the man, groping forward a few steps. 'Make haste!'\n\n 'Shut the door,' whispered Ananya from the end of the passage. As he spoke, it closed with a loud noise.\n\n 'That wasn't my doing,' said the other man, feeling his way. 'The wind blew it to, or it shut of its own accord: one or the other. Look sharp with the light, or I shall knock my brains out against something in this confounded hole.'\n\n Ananya stealthily descended the kitchen stairs.  After a short absence, he returned with a lighted candle, and the intelligence that Deborah Javier was asleep in the back room below, and that the boys were in the front one.  Beckoning the man to follow him, he led the way upstairs.\n\n 'We can say the few words we've got to say in here, my dear,' said the Jew, throwing open a door on the first floor; 'and as there are holes in the shutters, and we never show lights to our neighbours, we'll set the candle on the stairs.  There!'\n\n With those words, the Jew, stooping down, placed the candle on an upper flight of stairs, exactly opposite to the room door.  This done, he led the way into the apartment; which was destitute of all movables save a broken arm-chair, and an old couch or sofa without covering, which stood behind the door.  Upon this piece of furniture, the stranger sat himself with the air of a weary man; and the Jew, drawing up the arm-chair opposite, they sat face to face.  It was not quite dark; the door was partially open; and the candle outside, threw a feeble reflection on the opposite wall.\n\n They conversed for some time in whispers.  Though nothing of the conversation was distinguishable beyond a few disjointed words here and there, a listener might easily have perceived that Ananya appeared to be defending himself against some remarks of the stranger; and that the latter was in a state of considerable irritation.  They might have been talking, thus, for a quarter of an hour or more, when Nicola--by which name the Jew had designated the strange man several times in the course of their colloquy--said, raising his voice a little,\n\n 'I tell you again, it was badly planned.  Why not have kept him here among the rest, and made a sneaking, snivelling pickpocket of him at once?'\n\n 'Only hear him!' exclaimed the Jew, shrugging his shoulders.\n\n 'Why, do you mean to say you couldn't have done it, if you had chosen?' demanded Nicola, sternly.  'Haven't you done it, with other boys, scores of times?  If you had had patience for a twelvemonth, at most, couldn't you have got him convicted, and sent safely out of the kingdom; perhaps for life?'\n\n 'Whose turn would that have served, my dear?' inquired the Jew humbly.\n\n 'Mine,' replied Nicola.\n\n 'But not mine,' said the Jew, submissively.  'He might have become of use to me.  When there are two parties to a bargain, it is only reasonable that the interests of both should be consulted; is it, my good friend?'\n\n 'What then?' demanded Nicola.\n\n 'I saw it was not easy to train him to the business,' replied the Jew; 'he was not like other boys in the same circumstances.'\n\n 'Curse him, no!' muttered the man, 'or he would have been a thief, long ago.'\n\n 'I had no hold upon him to make him worse,' pursued the Jew, anxiously watching the countenance of his companion.  'His hand was not in.  I had nothing to frighten him with; which we always must have in the beginning, or we labour in vain.  What could I do?  Send him out with the Celestia and Clara?  We had enough of that, at first, my dear; I trembled for us all.'\n\n '_That_ was not my doing,' observed Nicola.\n\n 'No, no, my dear!' renewed the Jew.  'And I don't quarrel with it now; because, if it had never happened, you might never have clapped eyes on the boy to notice him, and so led to the discovery that it was him you were looking for.  Well!  I got him back for you by means of the girl; and then _she_ begins to favour him.'\n\n 'Throttle the girl!' said Nicola, impatiently.\n\n 'Why, we can't afford to do that just now, my dear,' replied the Jew, smiling; 'and, besides, that sort of thing is not in our way; or, one of these days, I might be glad to have it done.  I know what these girls are, Nicola, well.  As soon as the boy begins to harden, she'll care no more for him, than for a block of wood.  You want him made a thief.  If he is alive, I can make him one from this time; and, if--if--' said the Jew, drawing nearer to the other,--'it's not likely, mind,--but if the worst comes to the worst, and he is dead--'\n\n 'It's no fault of mine if he is!' interposed the other man, with a look of terror, and clasping the Jew's arm with trembling hands.  'Mind that.  Ananya!  I had no hand in it.  Anything but his death, I told you from the first.  I won't shed blood; it's always found out, and haunts a man besides.  If they shot him dead, I was not the cause; do you hear me?  Fire this infernal den!  What's that?'\n\n 'What!' cried the Jew, grasping the coward round the body, with both arms, as he sprung to his feet.  'Where?'\n\n 'Yonder! replied the man, glaring at the opposite wall.  'The shadow! I saw the shadow of a woman, in a cloak and bonnet, pass along the wainscot like a breath!'\n\n The Jew released his hold, and they rushed tumultuously from the room. The candle, wasted by the draught, was standing where it had been placed.  It showed them only the empty staircase, and their own white faces.  They listened intently:  a profound silence reigned throughout the house.\n\n 'It's your fancy,' said the Jew, taking up the light and turning to his companion.\n\n 'I'll swear I saw it!' replied Nicola, trembling.  'It was bending forward when I saw it first; and when I spoke, it darted away.'\n\n The Jew glanced contemptuously at the pale face of his associate, and, telling him he could follow, if he pleased, ascended the stairs.  They looked into all the rooms; they were cold, bare, and empty.  They descended into the passage, and thence into the cellars below.  The green damp hung upon the low walls; the tracks of the snail and slug glistened in the light of the candle; but all was still as death.\n\n 'What do you think now?' said the Jew, when they had regained the passage.  'Besides ourselves, there's not a creature in the house except Deborah and the boys; and they're safe enough. See here!'\n\n As a proof of the fact, the Jew drew forth two keys from his pocket; and explained, that when he first went downstairs, he had locked them in, to prevent any intrusion on the conference.\n\n This accumulated testimony effectually staggered Mr. Nicola. His protestations had gradually become less and less vehement as they proceeded in their search without making any discovery; and, now, he gave vent to several very grim laughs, and confessed it could only have been his excited imagination.  He declined any renewal of the conversation, however, for that night:  suddenly remembering that it was past one o'clock.  And so the amiable couple parted.\n\n\n\n\n As it would be, by no means, seemly in a humble author to keep so mighty a personage as a beadle waiting, with his back to the fire, and the skirts of his coat gathered up under his arms, until such time as it might suit his pleasure to relieve him; and as it would still less become his station, or his gallantry to involve in the same neglect a lady on whom that beadle had looked with an eye of tenderness and affection, and in whose ear he had whispered sweet words, which, coming from such a quarter, might well thrill the bosom of maid or matron of whatsoever degree; the historian whose pen traces these words--trusting that he knows his place, and that he entertains a becoming reverence for those upon earth to whom high and important authority is delegated--hastens to pay them that respect which their position demands, and to treat them with all that duteous ceremony which their exalted rank, and (by consequence) great virtues, imperatively claim at his hands.  Towards this end, indeed, he had purposed to introduce, in this place, a dissertation touching the divine right of beadles, and elucidative of the position, that a beadle can do no wrong:  which could not fail to have been both pleasurable and profitable to the right-minded reader but which he is unfortunately compelled, by want of time and space, to postpone to some more convenient and fitting opportunity; on the arrival of which, he will be prepared to show, that a beadle properly constituted:  that is to say, a parochial beadle, attached to a parochial workhouse, and attending in his official capacity the parochial church:  is, in right and virtue of his office, possessed of all the excellences and best qualities of humanity; and that to none of those excellences, can mere companies' beadles, or court-of-law beadles, or even chapel-of-ease beadles (save the last, and they in a very lowly and inferior degree), lay the remotest sustainable claim.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan had re-counted the teaspoons, re-weighed the sugar-tongs, made a closer inspection of the milk-pot, and ascertained to a nicety the exact condition of the furniture, down to the very horse-hair seats of the chairs; and had repeated each process full half a dozen times; before he began to think that it was time for Mrs. Carmela to return. Thinking begets thinking; as there were no sounds of Mrs. Carmela's approach, it occured to Mr. Juniperhan that it would be an innocent and virtuous way of spending the time, if he were further to allay his curiousity by a cursory glance at the interior of Mrs. Carmela's chest of drawers.\n\n Having listened at the keyhole, to assure himself that nobody was approaching the chamber, Mr. Juniperhan, beginning at the bottom, proceeded to make himself acquainted with the contents of the three long drawers: which, being filled with various garments of good fashion and texture, carefully preserved between two layers of old newspapers, speckled with dried lavender: seemed to yield him exceeding satisfaction.  Arriving, in course of time, at the right-hand corner drawer (in which was the key), and beholding therein a small padlocked box, which, being shaken, gave forth a pleasant sound, as of the chinking of coin, Mr. Juniperhan returned with a stately walk to the fireplace; and, resuming his old attitude, said, with a grave and determined air, 'I'll do it!' He followed up this remarkable declaration, by shaking his head in a waggish manner for ten minutes, as though he were remonstrating with himself for being such a pleasant dog; and then, he took a view of his legs in profile, with much seeming pleasure and interest.\n\n He was still placidly engaged in this latter survey, when Mrs. Carmela, hurrying into the room, threw herself, in a breathless state, on a chair by the fireside, and covering her eyes with one hand, placed the other over her heart, and gasped for breath.\n\n 'Mrs. Carmela,' said Mr. Juniperhan, stooping over the matron, 'what is this, ma'am?  Has anything happened, ma'am?  Pray answer me: I'm on--on--' Mr. Juniperhan, in his alarm, could not immediately think of the word 'tenterhooks,' so he said 'broken bottles.'\n\n 'Oh, Mr. Juniperhan!' cried the lady, 'I have been so dreadfully put out!'\n\n 'Put out, ma'am!' exclaimed Mr. Juniperhan; 'who has dared to--?  I know!' said Mr. Juniperhan, checking himself, with native majesty, 'this is them wicious paupers!'\n\n 'It's dreadful to think of!' said the lady, shuddering.\n\n 'Then _don't_ think of it, ma'am,' rejoined Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'I can't help it,' whimpered the lady.\n\n 'Then take something, ma'am,' said Mr. Juniperhan soothingly.  'A little of the wine?'\n\n 'Not for the world!' replied Mrs. Carmela.  'I couldn't,--oh!  The top shelf in the right-hand corner--oh!'  Uttering these words, the good lady pointed, distractedly, to the cupboard, and underwent a convulsion from internal spasms.  Mr. Juniperhan rushed to the closet; and, snatching a pint green-glass bottle from the shelf thus incoherently indicated, filled a tea-cup with its contents, and held it to the lady's lips.\n\n 'I'm better now,' said Mrs. Carmela, falling back, after drinking half of it.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan raised his eyes piously to the ceiling in thankfulness; and, bringing them down again to the brim of the cup, lifted it to his nose.\n\n 'Peppermint,' exclaimed Mrs. Carmela, in a faint voice, smiling gently on the beadle as she spoke.  'Try it!  There's a little--a little something else in it.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan tasted the medicine with a doubtful look; smacked his lips; took another taste; and put the cup down empty.\n\n 'It's very comforting,' said Mrs. Carmela.\n\n 'Very much so indeed, ma'am,' said the beadle.  As he spoke, he drew a chair beside the matron, and tenderly inquired what had happened to distress her.\n\n 'Nothing,' replied Mrs. Carmela.  'I am a foolish, excitable, weak creetur.'\n\n 'Not weak, ma'am,' retorted Mr. Juniperhan, drawing his chair a little closer.  'Are you a weak creetur, Mrs. Carmela?'\n\n 'We are all weak creeturs,' said Mrs. Carmela, laying down a general principle.\n\n 'So we are,' said the beadle.\n\n Nothing was said on either side, for a minute or two afterwards. By the expiration of that time, Mr. Juniperhan had illustrated the position by removing his left arm from the back of Mrs. Carmela's chair, where it had previously rested, to Mrs. Carmela's apron-string, round which it gradually became entwined.\n\n 'We are all weak creeturs,' said Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n Mrs. Carmela sighed.\n\n 'Don't sigh, Mrs. Carmela,' said Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'I can't help it,' said Mrs. Carmela.  And she sighed again.\n\n 'This is a very comfortable room, ma'am,' said Mr. Juniperhan looking round.  'Another room, and this, ma'am, would be a complete thing.'\n\n 'It would be too much for one,' murmured the lady.\n\n 'But not for two, ma'am,' rejoined Mr. Juniperhan, in soft accents. 'Eh, Mrs. Carmela?'\n\n Mrs. Carmela drooped her head, when the beadle said this; the beadle drooped his, to get a view of Mrs. Carmela's face.  Mrs. Carmela, with great propriety, turned her head away, and released her hand to get at her pocket-handkerchief; but insensibly replaced it in that of Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'The board allows you coals, don't they, Mrs. Carmela?' inquired the beadle, affectionately pressing her hand.\n\n 'And candles,' replied Mrs. Carmela, slightly returning the pressure.\n\n 'Coals, candles, and house-rent free,' said Mr. Juniperhan.  'Oh, Mrs. Carmela, what an Angel you are!'\n\n The lady was not proof against this burst of feeling.  She sank into Mr. Juniperhan's arms; and that gentleman in his agitation, imprinted a passionate kiss upon her chaste nose.\n\n 'Such porochial perfection!' exclaimed Mr. Juniperhan, rapturously. 'You know that Mr. Slout is worse to-night, my fascinator?'\n\n 'Yes,' replied Mrs. Carmela, bashfully.\n\n 'He can't live a week, the doctor says,' pursued Mr. Juniperhan. 'He is the master of this establishment; his death will cause a wacancy; that wacancy must be filled up.  Oh, Mrs. Carmela, what a prospect this opens!  What a opportunity for a jining of hearts and housekeepings!'\n\n Mrs. Carmela sobbed.\n\n 'The little word?' said Mr. Juniperhan, bending over the bashful beauty. 'The one little, little, little word, my blessed Carmela?'\n\n 'Ye--ye--yes!' sighed out the matron.\n\n 'One more,' pursued the beadle; 'compose your darling feelings for only one more.  When is it to come off?'\n\n Mrs. Carmela twice essayed to speak:  and twice failed.  At length summoning up courage, she threw her arms around Mr. Juniperhan's neck, and said, it might be as soon as ever he pleased, and that he was 'a irresistible duck.'\n\n Matters being thus amicably and satisfactorily arranged, the contract was solemnly ratified in another teacupful of the peppermint mixture; which was rendered the more necessary, by the flutter and agitation of the lady's spirits.  While it was being disposed of, she acquainted Mr. Juniperhan with the old woman's decease.\n\n 'Very good,' said that gentleman, sipping his peppermint; 'I'll call at Joan's as I go home, and tell him to send to-morrow morning.  Was it that as frightened you, love?'\n\n 'It wasn't anything particular, dear,' said the lady evasively.\n\n 'It must have been something, love,' urged Mr. Juniperhan. 'Won't you tell your own B.?'\n\n 'Not now,' rejoined the lady; 'one of these days.  After we're married, dear.'\n\n 'After we're married!' exclaimed Mr. Juniperhan.  'It wasn't any impudence from any of them male paupers as--'\n\n 'No, no, love!' interposed the lady, hastily.\n\n 'If I thought it was,' continued Mr. Juniperhan; 'if I thought as any one of 'em had dared to lift his wulgar eyes to that lovely countenance--'\n\n 'They wouldn't have dared to do it, love,' responded the lady.\n\n 'They had better not!' said Mr. Juniperhan, clenching his fist. 'Let me see any man, porochial or extra-porochial, as would presume to do it; and I can tell him that he wouldn't do it a second time!'\n\n Unembellished by any violence of gesticulation, this might have seemed no very high compliment to the lady's charms; but, as Mr. Juniperhan accompanied the threat with many warlike gestures, she was much touched with this proof of his devotion, and protested, with great admiration, that he was indeed a dove.\n\n The dove then turned up his coat-collar, and put on his cocked hat; and, having exchanged a long and affectionate embrace with his future partner, once again braved the cold wind of the night: merely pausing, for a few minutes, in the male paupers' ward, to abuse them a little, with the view of satisfying himself that he could fill the office of workhouse-master with needful acerbity. Assured of his qualifications, Mr. Juniperhan left the building with a light heart, and bright visions of his future promotion:  which served to occupy his mind until he reached the shop of the undertaker.\n\n Now, Mr. and Mrs. Joan having gone out to tea and supper: and Ariel Mavis not being at any time disposed to take upon himself a greater amount of physical exertion than is necessary to a convenient performance of the two functions of eating and drinking, the shop was not closed, although it was past the usual hour of shutting-up.  Mr. Juniperhan tapped with his cane on the counter several times; but, attracting no attention, and beholding a light shining through the glass-window of the little parlour at the back of the shop, he made bold to peep in and see what was going forward; and when he saw what was going forward, he was not a little surprised.\n\n The cloth was laid for supper; the table was covered with bread and butter, plates and glasses; a porter-pot and a wine-bottle. At the upper end of the table, Mr. Ariel Mavis lolled negligently in an easy-chair, with his legs thrown over one of the arms: an open clasp-knife in one hand, and a mass of buttered bread in the other. Close beside him stood Lauren, opening oysters from a barrel: which Mr. Mavis condescended to swallow, with remarkable avidity.  A more than ordinary redness in the region of the young gentleman's nose, and a kind of fixed wink in his right eye, denoted that he was in a slight degree intoxicated; these symptoms were confirmed by the intense relish with which he took his oysters, for which nothing but a strong appreciation of their cooling properties, in cases of internal fever, could have sufficiently accounted.\n\n 'Here's a delicious fat one, Ariel, dear!' said Lauren; 'try him, do; only this one.'\n\n 'What a delicious thing is a oyster!' remarked Mr. Mavis, after he had swallowed it.  'What a pity it is, a number of 'em should ever make you feel uncomfortable; isn't it, Lauren?'\n\n 'It's quite a cruelty,' said Lauren.\n\n 'So it is,' acquiesced Mr. Mavis. 'An't yer fond of oysters?'\n\n 'Not overmuch,' replied Lauren.  'I like to see you eat 'em, Ariel dear, better than eating 'em myself.'\n\n 'Lor!' said Ariel, reflectively; 'how queer!'\n\n 'Have another,' said Lauren.  'Here's one with such a beautiful, delicate beard!'\n\n 'I can't manage any more,' said Ariel.  'I'm very sorry.  Come here, Lauren, and I'll kiss yer.'\n\n 'What!' said Mr. Juniperhan, bursting into the room.  'Say that again, sir.'\n\n Lauren uttered a scream, and hid her face in her apron.  Mr. Mavis, without making any further change in his position than suffering his legs to reach the ground, gazed at the beadle in drunken terror.\n\n 'Say it again, you wile, owdacious fellow!' said Mr. Juniperhan. 'How dare you mention such a thing, sir?  And how dare you encourage him, you insolent minx?  Kiss her!' exclaimed Mr. Juniperhan, in strong indignation. 'Faugh!'\n\n 'I didn't mean to do it!' said Ariel, blubbering.  'She's always a-kissing of me, whether I like it, or not.'\n\n 'Oh, Ariel,' cried Lauren, reproachfully.\n\n 'Yer are; yer know yer are!' retorted Ariel.  'She's always a-doin' of it, Mr. Juniperhan, sir; she chucks me under the chin, please, sir; and makes all manner of love!'\n\n 'Silence!' cried Mr. Juniperhan, sternly.  'Take yourself downstairs, ma'am.  Ariel, you shut up the shop; say another word till your master comes home, at your peril; and, when he does come home, tell him that Mr. Juniperhan said he was to send a old woman's shell after breakfast to-morrow morning.  Do you hear sir?  Kissing!' cried Mr. Juniperhan, holding up his hands.  'The sin and wickedness of the lower orders in this porochial district is frightful!  If Parliament don't take their abominable courses under consideration, this country's ruined, and the character of the peasantry gone for ever!'  With these words, the beadle strode, with a lofty and gloomy air, from the undertaker's premises.\n\n And now that we have accompanied him so far on his road home, and have made all necessary preparations for the old woman's funeral, let us set on foot a few inquires after young Halley Darlene, and ascertain whether he be still lying in the ditch where Deborah Javier left him.\n\n\n\n\n 'Wolves tear your throats!' muttered Luca, grinding his teeth. 'I wish I was among some of you; you'd howl the hoarser for it.'\n\n As Luca growled forth this imprecation, with the most desperate ferocity that his desperate nature was capable of, he rested the body of the wounded boy across his bended knee; and turned his head, for an instant, to look back at his pursuers.\n\n There was little to be made out, in the mist and darkness; but the loud shouting of men vibrated through the air, and the barking of the neighbouring dogs, roused by the sound of the alarm bell, resounded in every direction.\n\n 'Stop, you white-livered hound!' cried the robber, shouting after Deborah Javier, who, making the best use of his long legs, was already ahead. 'Stop!'\n\n The repetition of the word, brought Deborah to a dead stand-still. For he was not quite satisfied that he was beyond the range of pistol-shot; and Luca was in no mood to be played with.\n\n 'Bear a hand with the boy,' cried Luca, beckoning furiously to his confederate.  'Come back!'\n\n Deborah made a show of returning; but ventured, in a low voice, broken for want of breath, to intimate considerable reluctance as he came slowly along.\n\n 'Quicker!' cried Luca, laying the boy in a dry ditch at his feet, and drawing a pistol from his pocket.  'Don't play booty with me.'\n\n At this moment the noise grew louder.  Luca, again looking round, could discern that the men who had given chase were already climbing the gate of the field in which he stood; and that a couple of dogs were some paces in advance of them.\n\n 'It's all up, Deepak!' cried Deborah; 'drop the kid, and show 'em your heels.'  With this parting advice, Mr. Javier, preferring the chance of being shot by his friend, to the certainty of being taken by his enemies, fairly turned tail, and darted off at full speed.  Luca clenched his teeth; took one look around; threw over the prostrate form of Halley, the cape in which he had been hurriedly muffled; ran along the front of the hedge, as if to distract the attention of those behind, from the spot where the boy lay; paused, for a second, before another hedge which met it at right angles; and whirling his pistol high into the air, cleared it at a bound, and was gone.\n\n 'Ho, ho, there!' cried a tremulous voice in the rear. 'Pincher! Neptune!  Come here, come here!'\n\n The dogs, who, in common with their masters, seemed to have no particular relish for the sport in which they were engaged, readily answered to the command.  Three men, who had by this time advanced some distance into the field, stopped to take counsel together.\n\n 'My advice, or, leastways, I should say, my _orders_, is,' said the fattest man of the party, 'that we 'mediately go home again.'\n\n 'I am agreeable to anything which is agreeable to Mr. Alfred,' said a shorter man; who was by no means of a slim figure, and who was very pale in the face, and very polite: as frightened men frequently are.\n\n 'I shouldn't wish to appear ill-mannered, gentlemen,' said the third, who had called the dogs back, 'Mr. Alfred ought to know.'\n\n 'Certainly,' replied the shorter man; 'and whatever Mr. Alfred says, it isn't our place to contradict him.  No, no, I know my sitiwation! Thank my stars, I know my sitiwation.'  To tell the truth, the little man _did_ seem to know his situation, and to know perfectly well that it was by no means a desirable one; for his teeth chattered in his head as he spoke.\n\n 'You are afraid, Lia,' said Mr. Alfred.\n\n 'I an't,' said Lia.\n\n 'You are,' said Alfred.\n\n 'You're a falsehood, Mr. Alfred,' said Lia.\n\n 'You're a lie, Lia,' said Mr. Alfred.\n\n Now, these four retorts arose from Mr. Alfred's taunt; and Mr. Alfred's taunt had arisen from his indignation at having the responsibility of going home again, imposed upon himself under cover of a compliment. The third man brought the dispute to a close, most philosophically.\n\n 'I'll tell you what it is, gentlemen,' said he, 'we're all afraid.'\n\n 'Speak for yourself, sir,' said Mr. Alfred, who was the palest of the party.\n\n 'So I do,' replied the man.  'It's natural and proper to be afraid, under such circumstances.  I am.'\n\n 'So am I,' said Lia; 'only there's no call to tell a man he is, so bounceably.'\n\n These frank admissions softened Mr. Alfred, who at once owned that _he_ was afraid; upon which, they all three faced about, and ran back again with the completest unanimity, until Mr. Alfred (who had the shortest wind of the party, as was encumbered with a pitchfork) most handsomely insisted on stopping, to make an apology for his hastiness of speech.\n\n 'But it's wonderful,' said Mr. Alfred, when he had explained, 'what a man will do, when his blood is up.  I should have committed murder--I know I should--if we'd caught one of them rascals.'\n\n As the other two were impressed with a similar presentiment; and as their blood, like his, had all gone down again; some speculation ensued upon the cause of this sudden change in their temperament.\n\n 'I know what it was,' said Mr. Alfred; 'it was the gate.'\n\n 'I shouldn't wonder if it was,' exclaimed Lia, catching at the idea.\n\n 'You may depend upon it,' said Alfred, 'that that gate stopped the flow of the excitement.  I felt all mine suddenly going away, as I was climbing over it.'\n\n By a remarkable coincidence, the other two had been visited with the same unpleasant sensation at that precise moment.  It was quite obvious, therefore, that it was the gate; especially as there was no doubt regarding the time at which the change had taken place, because all three remembered that they had come in sight of the robbers at the instant of its occurance.\n\n This dialogue was held between the two men who had surprised the burglars, and a travelling tinker who had been sleeping in an outhouse, and who had been roused, together with his two mongrel curs, to join in the pursuit.  Mr. Alfred acted in the double capacity of butler and steward to the old lady of the mansion; Lia was a lad of all-work: who, having entered her service a mere child, was treated as a promising young boy still, though he was something past thirty.\n\n Encouraging each other with such converse as this; but, keeping very close together, notwithstanding, and looking apprehensively round, whenever a fresh gust rattled through the boughs; the three men hurried back to a tree, behind which they had left their lantern, lest its light should inform the thieves in what direction to fire.  Catching up the light, they made the best of their way home, at a good round trot; and long after their dusky forms had ceased to be discernible, the light might have been seen twinkling and dancing in the distance, like some exhalation of the damp and gloomy atmosphere through which it was swiftly borne.\n\n The air grew colder, as day came slowly on; and the mist rolled along the ground like a dense cloud of smoke.  The grass was wet; the pathways, and low places, were all mire and water; the damp breath of an unwholesome wind went languidly by, with a hollow moaning.  Still, Halley lay motionless and insensible on the spot where Luca had left him.\n\n Morning drew on apace.  The air become more sharp and piercing, as its first dull hue--the death of night, rather than the birth of day--glimmered faintly in the sky.  The objects which had looked dim and terrible in the darkness, grew more and more defined, and gradually resolved into their familiar shapes.  The rain came down, thick and fast, and pattered noisily among the leafless bushes.  But, Halley felt it not, as it beat against him; for he still lay stretched, helpless and unconscious, on his bed of clay.\n\n At length, a low cry of pain broke the stillness that prevailed; and uttering it, the boy awoke.  His left arm, rudely bandaged in a shawl, hung heavy and useless at his side; the bandage was saturated with blood.  He was so weak, that he could scarcely raise himself into a sitting posture; when he had done so, he looked feebly round for help, and groaned with pain.  Trembling in every joint, from cold and exhaustion, he made an effort to stand upright; but, shuddering from head to foot, fell prostrate on the ground.\n\n After a short return of the stupor in which he had been so long plunged, Halley:  urged by a creeping sickness at his heart, which seemed to warn him that if he lay there, he must surely die:  got upon his feet, and essayed to walk. His head was dizzy, and he staggered to and fro like a drunken man.  But he kept up, nevertheless, and, with his head drooping languidly on his breast, went stumbling onward, he knew not whither.\n\n And now, hosts of bewildering and confused ideas came crowding on his mind.  He seemed to be still walking between Luca and Javier, who were angrily disputing--for the very words they said, sounded in his ears; and when he caught his own attention, as it were, by making some violent effort to save himself from falling, he found that he was talking to them. Then, he was alone with Luca, plodding on as on the previous day; and as shadowy people passed them, he felt the robber's grasp upon his wrist. Suddenly, he started back at the report of firearms; there rose into the air, loud cries and shouts; lights gleamed before his eyes; all was noise and tumult, as some unseen hand bore him hurriedly away.  Through all these rapid visions, there ran an undefined, uneasy consciousness of pain, which wearied and tormented him incessantly.\n\n Thus he staggered on, creeping, almost mechanically, between the bars of gates, or through hedge-gaps as they came in his way, until he reached a road.  Here the rain began to fall so heavily, that it roused him.\n\n He looked about, and saw that at no great distance there was a house, which perhaps he could reach.  Pitying his condition, they might have compassion on him; and if they did not, it would be better, he thought, to die near human beings, than in the lonely open fields.  He summoned up all his strength for one last trial, and bent his faltering steps towards it.\n\n As he drew nearer to this house, a feeling come over him that he had seen it before.  He remembered nothing of its details; but the shape and aspect of the building seemed familiar to him.\n\n That garden wall!  On the grass inside, he had fallen on his knees last night, and prayed the two men's mercy.  It was the very house they had attempted to rob.\n\n Halley felt such fear come over him when he recognised the place, that, for the instant, he forgot the agony of his wound, and thought only of flight.  Flight!  He could scarcely stand:  and if he were in full possession of all the best powers of his slight and youthful frame, whither could he fly?  He pushed against the garden-gate; it was unlocked, and swung open on its hinges.  He tottered across the lawn; climbed the steps; knocked faintly at the door; and, his whole strength failing him, sunk down against one of the pillars of the little portico.\n\n It happened that about this time, Mr. Alfred, Lia, and the tinker, were recruiting themselves, after the fatigues and terrors of the night, with tea and sundries, in the kitchen.  Not that it was Mr. Alfred's habit to admit to too great familiarity the humbler servants: towards whom it was rather his wont to deport himself with a lofty affability, which, while it gratified, could not fail to remind them of his superior position in society.  But, death, fires, and burglary, make all men equals; so Mr. Alfred sat with his legs stretched out before the kitchen fender, leaning his left arm on the table, while, with his right, he illustrated a circumstantial and minute account of the robbery, to which his bearers (but especially the cook and housemaid, who were of the party) listened with breathless interest.\n\n 'It was about half-past two,' said Mr. Alfred, 'or I wouldn't swear that it mightn't have been a little nearer three, when I woke up, and, turning round in my bed, as it might be so, (here Mr. Alfred turned round in his chair, and pulled the corner of the table-cloth over him to imitate bed-clothes,) I fancied I heerd a noise.'\n\n At this point of the narrative the cook turned pale, and asked the housemaid to shut the door: who asked Lia, who asked the tinker, who pretended not to hear.\n\n '--Heerd a noise,' continued Mr. Alfred.  'I says, at first, \"This is illusion\"; and was composing myself off to sleep, when I heerd the noise again, distinct.'\n\n 'What sort of a noise?' asked the cook.\n\n 'A kind of a busting noise,' replied Mr. Alfred, looking round him.\n\n 'More like the noise of powdering a iron bar on a nutmeg-grater,' suggested Lia.\n\n 'It was, when _you_ heerd it, sir,' rejoined Mr. Alfred; 'but, at this time, it had a busting sound.  I turned down the clothes'; continued Alfred, rolling back the table-cloth, 'sat up in bed; and listened.'\n\n The cook and housemaid simultaneously ejaculated 'Lor!' and drew their chairs closer together.\n\n 'I heerd it now, quite apparent,' resumed Mr. Alfred. '\"Somebody,\" I says, \"is forcing of a door, or window; what's to be done? I'll call up that poor lad, Lia, and save him from being murdered in his bed; or his throat,\" I says, \"may be cut from his right ear to his left, without his ever knowing it.\"'\n\n Here, all eyes were turned upon Lia, who fixed his upon the speaker, and stared at him, with his mouth wide open, and his face expressive of the most unmitigated horror.\n\n 'I tossed off the clothes,' said Alfred, throwing away the table-cloth, and looking very hard at the cook and housemaid, 'got softly out of bed; drew on a pair of--'\n\n 'Ladies present, Mr. Alfred,' murmured the tinker.\n\n '--Of _shoes_, sir,' said Alfred, turning upon him, and laying great emphasis on the word; 'seized the loaded pistol that always goes upstairs with the plate-basket; and walked on tiptoes to his room. \"Lia,\" I says, when I had woke him, \"don't be frightened!\"'\n\n 'So you did,' observed Lia, in a low voice.\n\n '\"We're dead men, I think, Lia,\" I says,' continued Alfred; '\"but don't be frightened.\"'\n\n '_Was_ he frightened?' asked the cook.\n\n 'Not a bit of it,' replied Mr. Alfred.  'He was as firm--ah! pretty near as firm as I was.'\n\n 'I should have died at once, I'm sure, if it had been me,' observed the housemaid.\n\n 'You're a woman,' retorted Lia, plucking up a little.\n\n 'Lia is right,' said Mr. Alfred, nodding his head, approvingly; 'from a woman, nothing else was to be expected. We, being men, took a dark lantern that was standing on Brittle's hob, and groped our way downstairs in the pitch dark,--as it might be so.'\n\n Mr. Alfred had risen from his seat, and taken two steps with his eyes shut, to accompany his description with appropriate action, when he started violently, in common with the rest of the company, and hurried back to his chair.  The cook and housemaid screamed.\n\n 'It was a knock,' said Mr. Alfred, assuming perfect serenity. 'Open the door, somebody.'\n\n Nobody moved.\n\n 'It seems a strange sort of a thing, a knock coming at such a time in the morning,' said Mr. Alfred, surveying the pale faces which surrounded him, and looking very blank himself; 'but the door must be opened.  Do you hear, somebody?'\n\n Mr. Alfred, as he spoke, looked at Lia; but that young man, being naturally modest, probably considered himself nobody, and so held that the inquiry could not have any application to him; at all events, he tendered no reply. Mr. Alfred directed an appealing glance at the tinker; but he had suddenly fallen asleep.  The women were out of the question.\n\n 'If Lia would rather open the door, in the presence of witnesses,' said Mr. Alfred, after a short silence, 'I am ready to make one.'\n\n 'So am I,' said the tinker, waking up, as suddenly as he had fallen asleep.\n\n Lia capitulated on these terms; and the party being somewhat re-assured by the discovery (made on throwing open the shutters) that it was now broad day, took their way upstairs; with the dogs in front. The two women, who were afraid to stay below, brought up the rear.  By the advice of Mr. Alfred, they all talked very loud, to warn any evil-disposed person outside, that they were strong in numbers; and by a master-stoke of policy, originating in the brain of the same ingenious gentleman, the dogs' tails were well pinched, in the hall, to make them bark savagely.\n\n These precautions having been taken, Mr. Alfred held on fast by the tinker's arm (to prevent his running away, as he pleasantly said), and gave the word of command to open the door.  Lia obeyed; the group, peeping timorously over each other's shoulders, beheld no more formidable object than poor little Halley Darlene, speechless and exhausted, who raised his heavy eyes, and mutely solicited their compassion.\n\n 'A boy!' exclaimed Mr. Alfred, valiantly, pushing the tinker into the background.  'What's the matter with the--eh?--Why--Lia--look here--don't you know?'\n\n Lia, who had got behind the door to open it, no sooner saw Halley, than he uttered a loud cry.  Mr. Alfred, seizing the boy by one leg and one arm (fortunately not the broken limb) lugged him straight into the hall, and deposited him at full length on the floor thereof.\n\n 'Here he is!' bawled Alfred, calling in a state of great excitement, up the staircase; 'here's one of the thieves, ma'am! Here's a thief, miss! Wounded, miss!  I shot him, miss; and Lia held the light.'\n\n '--In a lantern, miss,' cried Lia, applying one hand to the side of his mouth, so that his voice might travel the better.\n\n The two women-servants ran upstairs to carry the intelligence that Mr. Alfred had captured a robber; and the tinker busied himself in endeavouring to restore Halley, lest he should die before he could be hanged.  In the midst of all this noise and commotion, there was heard a sweet female voice, which quelled it in an instant.\n\n 'Alfred!' whispered the voice from the stair-head.\n\n 'I'm here, miss,' replied Mr. Alfred.  'Don't be frightened, miss; I ain't much injured.  He didn't make a very desperate resistance, miss! I was soon too many for him.'\n\n 'Hush!' replied the young lady; 'you frighten my aunt as much as the thieves did.  Is the poor creature much hurt?'\n\n 'Wounded desperate, miss,' replied Alfred, with indescribable complacency.\n\n 'He looks as if he was a-going, miss,' bawled Lia, in the same manner as before.  'Wouldn't you like to come and look at him, miss, in case he should?'\n\n 'Hush, pray; there's a good man!' rejoined the lady.  'Wait quietly only one instant, while I speak to aunt.'\n\n With a footstep as soft and gentle as the voice, the speaker tripped away.  She soon returned, with the direction that the wounded person was to be carried, carefully, upstairs to Mr. Alfred's room; and that Lia was to saddle the pony and betake himself instantly to Chertsey:  from which place, he was to despatch, with all speed, a constable and doctor.\n\n 'But won't you take one look at him, first, miss?' asked Mr. Alfred, with as much pride as if Halley were some bird of rare plumage, that he had skilfully brought down.  'Not one little peep, miss?'\n\n 'Not now, for the world,' replied the young lady.  'Poor fellow! Oh! treat him kindly, Alfred for my sake!'\n\n The old servant looked up at the speaker, as she turned away, with a glance as proud and admiring as if she had been his own child.  Then, bending over Halley, he helped to carry him upstairs, with the care and solicitude of a woman.\n\n\n\n\n In a handsome room:  though its furniture had rather the air of old-fashioned comfort, than of modern elegance:  there sat two ladies at a well-spread breakfast-table.  Mr. Alfred, dressed with scrupulous care in a full suit of black, was in attendance upon them.  He had taken his station some half-way between the side-board and the breakfast-table; and, with his body drawn up to its full height, his head thrown back, and inclined the merest trifle on one side, his left leg advanced, and his right hand thrust into his waist-coat, while his left hung down by his side, grasping a waiter, looked like one who laboured under a very agreeable sense of his own merits and importance.\n\n Of the two ladies, one was well advanced in years; but the high-backed oaken chair in which she sat, was not more upright than she.  Dressed with the utmost nicety and precision, in a quaint mixture of by-gone costume, with some slight concessions to the prevailing taste, which rather served to point the old style pleasantly than to impair its effect, she sat, in a stately manner, with her hands folded on the table before her.  Her eyes (and age had dimmed but little of their brightness) were attentively upon her young companion.\n\n The younger lady was in the lovely bloom and spring-time of womanhood; at that age, when, if ever angels be for God's good purposes enthroned in mortal forms, they may be, without impiety, supposed to abide in such as hers.\n\n She was not past seventeen.  Cast in so slight and exquisite a mould; so mild and gentle; so pure and beautiful; that earth seemed not her element, nor its rough creatures her fit companions.  The very intelligence that shone in her deep blue eye, and was stamped upon her noble head, seemed scarcely of her age, or of the world; and yet the changing expression of sweetness and good humour, the thousand lights that played about the face, and left no shadow there; above all, the smile, the cheerful, happy smile, were made for Home, and fireside peace and happiness.\n\n She was busily engaged in the little offices of the table. Chancing to raise her eyes as the elder lady was regarding her, she playfully put back her hair, which was simply braided on her forehead; and threw into her beaming look, such an expression of affection and artless loveliness, that blessed spirits might have smiled to look upon her.\n\n 'And Lia has been gone upwards of an hour, has he?' asked the old lady, after a pause.\n\n 'An hour and twelve minutes, ma'am,' replied Mr. Alfred, referring to a silver watch, which he drew forth by a black ribbon.\n\n 'He is always slow,' remarked the old lady.\n\n 'Lia always was a slow boy, ma'am,' replied the attendant. And seeing, by the bye, that Lia had been a slow boy for upwards of thirty years, there appeared no great probability of his ever being a fast one.\n\n 'He gets worse instead of better, I think,' said the elder lady.\n\n 'It is very inexcusable in him if he stops to play with any other boys,' said the young lady, smiling.\n\n Mr. Alfred was apparently considering the propriety of indulging in a respectful smile himself, when a gig drove up to the garden-gate: out of which there jumped a fat gentleman, who ran straight up to the door: and who, getting quickly into the house by some mysterious process, burst into the room, and nearly overturned Mr. Alfred and the breakfast-table together.\n\n 'I never heard of such a thing!' exclaimed the fat gentleman. 'My dear Mrs. Marcia--bless my soul--in the silence of the night, too--I _never_ heard of such a thing!'\n\n With these expressions of condolence, the fat gentleman shook hands with both ladies, and drawing up a chair, inquired how they found themselves.\n\n 'You ought to be dead; positively dead with the fright,' said the fat gentleman.  'Why didn't you send?  Bless me, my man should have come in a minute; and so would I; and my assistant would have been delighted; or anybody, I'm sure, under such circumstances.  Dear, dear!  So unexpected!  In the silence of the night, too!'\n\n The doctor seemed expecially troubled by the fact of the robbery having been unexpected, and attempted in the night-time; as if it were the established custom of gentlemen in the housebreaking way to transact business at noon, and to make an appointment, by post, a day or two previous.\n\n 'And you, Miss Kit,' said the doctor, turning to the young lady, 'I--'\n\n 'Oh! very much so, indeed,' said Kit, interrupting him; 'but there is a poor creature upstairs, whom aunt wishes you to see.'\n\n 'Ah! to be sure,' replied the doctor, 'so there is.  That was your handiwork, Alfred, I understand.'\n\n Mr. Alfred, who had been feverishly putting the tea-cups to rights, blushed very red, and said that he had had that honour.\n\n 'Honour, eh?' said the doctor; 'well, I don't know; perhaps it's as honourable to hit a thief in a back kitchen, as to hit your man at twelve paces.  Fancy that he fired in the air, and you've fought a duel, Alfred.'\n\n Mr. Alfred, who thought this light treatment of the matter an unjust attempt at diminishing his glory, answered respectfully, that it was not for the like of him to judge about that; but he rather thought it was no joke to the opposite party.\n\n 'Gad, that's true!' said the doctor.  'Where is he?  Show me the way. I'll look in again, as I come down, Mrs. Marcia.  That's the little window that he got in at, eh?  Well, I couldn't have believed it!'\n\n Talking all the way, he followed Mr. Alfred upstairs; and while he is going upstairs, the reader may be informed, that Mr. Terrance, a surgeon in the neighbourhood, known through a circuit of ten miles round as 'the doctor,' had grown fat, more from good-humour than from good living:  and was as kind and hearty, and withal as eccentric an old bachelor, as will be found in five times that space, by any explorer alive.\n\n The doctor was absent, much longer than either he or the ladies had anticipated.  A large flat box was fetched out of the gig; and a bedroom bell was rung very often; and the servants ran up and down stairs perpetually; from which tokens it was justly concluded that something important was going on above.  At length he returned; and in reply to an anxious inquiry after his patient; looked very mysterious, and closed the door, carefully.\n\n 'This is a very extraordinary thing, Mrs. Marcia,' said the doctor, standing with his back to the door, as if to keep it shut.\n\n 'He is not in danger, I hope?' said the old lady.\n\n 'Why, that would _not_ be an extraordinary thing, under the circumstances,' replied the doctor; 'though I don't think he is. Have you seen the thief?'\n\n 'No,' rejoined the old lady.\n\n 'Nor heard anything about him?'\n\n 'No.'\n\n 'I beg your pardon, ma'am, interposed Mr. Alfred; 'but I was going to tell you about him when Doctor Terrance came in.'\n\n The fact was, that Mr. Alfred had not, at first, been able to bring his mind to the avowal, that he had only shot a boy.  Such commendations had been bestowed upon his bravery, that he could not, for the life of him, help postponing the explanation for a few delicious minutes; during which he had flourished, in the very zenith of a brief reputation for undaunted courage.\n\n 'Kit wished to see the man,' said Mrs. Marcia, 'but I wouldn't hear of it.'\n\n 'Humph!' rejoined the doctor.  'There is nothing very alarming in his appearance.  Have you any objection to see him in my presence?'\n\n 'If it be necessary,' replied the old lady, 'certainly not.'\n\n 'Then I think it is necessary,' said the doctor; 'at all events, I am quite sure that you would deeply regret not having done so, if you postponed it.  He is perfectly quiet and comfortable now. Allow me--Miss Kit, will you permit me?  Not the slightest fear, I pledge you my honour!'\n\n\n\n\n With many loquacious assurances that they would be agreeably surprised in the aspect of the criminal, the doctor drew the young lady's arm through one of his; and offering his disengaged hand to Mrs. Marcia, led them, with much ceremony and stateliness, upstairs.\n\n 'Now,' said the doctor, in a whisper, as he softly turned the handle of a bedroom-door, 'let us hear what you think of him.  He has not been shaved very recently, but he don't look at all ferocious notwithstanding.  Stop, though!  Let me first see that he is in visiting order.'\n\n Stepping before them, he looked into the room.  Motioning them to advance, he closed the door when they had entered; and gently drew back the curtains of the bed.  Upon it, in lieu of the dogged, black-visaged ruffian they had expected to behold, there lay a mere child:  worn with pain and exhaustion, and sunk into a deep sleep.  His wounded arm, bound and splintered up, was crossed upon his breast; his head reclined upon the other arm, which was half hidden by his long hair, as it streamed over the pillow.\n\n The honest gentleman held the curtain in his hand, and looked on, for a minute or so, in silence.  Whilst he was watching the patient thus, the younger lady glided softly past, and seating herself in a chair by the bedside, gathered Halley's hair from his face.  As she stooped over him, her tears fell upon his forehead.\n\n The boy stirred, and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compassion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known.  Thus, a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were, in this life; which vanish like a breath; which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened; which no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall.\n\n 'What can this mean?' exclaimed the elder lady.  'This poor child can never have been the pupil of robbers!'\n\n 'Vice,' said the surgeon, replacing the curtain, 'takes up her abode in many temples; and who can say that a fair outside shell not enshrine her?'\n\n 'But at so early an age!' urged Kit.\n\n 'My dear young lady,' rejoined the surgeon, mournfully shaking his head; 'crime, like death, is not confined to the old and withered alone.  The youngest and fairest are too often its chosen victims.'\n\n 'But, can you--oh! can you really believe that this delicate boy has been the voluntary associate of the worst outcasts of society?' said Kit.\n\n The surgeon shook his head, in a manner which intimated that he feared it was very possible; and observing that they might disturb the patient, led the way into an adjoining apartment.\n\n 'But even if he has been wicked,' pursued Kit, 'think how young he is; think that he may never have known a mother's love, or the comfort of a home; that ill-usage and blows, or the want of bread, may have driven him to herd with men who have forced him to guilt.  Aunt, dear aunt, for mercy's sake, think of this, before you let them drag this sick child to a prison, which in any case must be the grave of all his chances of amendment.  Oh! as you love me, and know that I have never felt the want of parents in your goodness and affection, but that I might have done so, and might have been equally helpless and unprotected with this poor child, have pity upon him before it is too late!'\n\n 'My dear love,' said the elder lady, as she folded the weeping girl to her bosom, 'do you think I would harm a hair of his head?'\n\n 'Oh, no!' replied Kit, eagerly.\n\n 'No, surely,' said the old lady; 'my days are drawing to their close: and may mercy be shown to me as I show it to others! What can I do to save him, sir?'\n\n 'Let me think, ma'am,' said the doctor; 'let me think.'\n\n Mr. Terrance thrust his hands into his pockets, and took several turns up and down the room; often stopping, and balancing himself on his toes, and frowning frightfully.  After various exclamations of 'I've got it now' and 'no, I haven't,' and as many renewals of the walking and frowning, he at length made a dead halt, and spoke as follows:\n\n 'I think if you give me a full and unlimited commission to bully Alfred, and that little boy, Lia, I can manage it.  Alfred is a faithful fellow and an old servant, I know; but you can make it up to him in a thousand ways, and reward him for being such a good shot besides.  You don't object to that?'\n\n 'Unless there is some other way of preserving the child,' replied Mrs. Marcia.\n\n 'There is no other,' said the doctor.  'No other, take my word for it.'\n\n 'Then my aunt invests you with full power,' said Kit, smiling through her tears; 'but pray don't be harder upon the poor fellows than is indispensably necessary.'\n\n 'You seem to think,' retorted the doctor, 'that everybody is disposed to be hard-hearted to-day, except yourself, Miss Kit. I only hope, for the sake of the rising male sex generally, that you may be found in as vulnerable and soft-hearted a mood by the first eligible young fellow who appeals to your compassion; and I wish I were a young fellow, that I might avail myself, on the spot, of such a favourable opportunity for doing so, as the present.'\n\n 'You are as great a boy as poor Lia himself,' returned Kit, blushing.\n\n 'Well,' said the doctor, laughing heartily, 'that is no very difficult matter.  But to return to this boy.  The great point of our agreement is yet to come.  He will wake in an hour or so, I dare say; and although I have told that thick-headed constable-fellow downstairs that he musn't be moved or spoken to, on peril of his life, I think we may converse with him without danger.  Now I make this stipulation--that I shall examine him in your presence, and that, if, from what he says, we judge, and I can show to the satisfaction of your cool reason, that he is a real and thorough bad one (which is more than possible), he shall be left to his fate, without any farther interference on my part, at all events.'\n\n 'Oh no, aunt!' entreated Kit.\n\n 'Oh yes, aunt!' said the doctor.  'Is is a bargain?'\n\n 'He cannot be hardened in vice,' said Kit; 'It is impossible.'\n\n 'Very good,' retorted the doctor; 'then so much the more reason for acceding to my proposition.'\n\n Finally the treaty was entered into; and the parties thereunto sat down to wait, with some impatience, until Halley should awake.\n\n The patience of the two ladies was destined to undergo a longer trial than Mr. Terrance had led them to expect; for hour after hour passed on, and still Halley slumbered heavily.  It was evening, indeed, before the kind-hearted doctor brought them the intelligence, that he was at length sufficiently restored to be spoken to.  The boy was very ill, he said, and weak from the loss of blood; but his mind was so troubled with anxiety to disclose something, that he deemed it better to give him the opportunity, than to insist upon his remaining quiet until next morning: which he should otherwise have done.\n\n The conference was a long one.  Halley told them all his simple history, and was often compelled to stop, by pain and want of strength. It was a solemn thing, to hear, in the darkened room, the feeble voice of the sick child recounting a weary catalogue of evils and calamities which hard men had brought upon him.  Oh! if when we oppress and grind our fellow-creatures, we bestowed but one thought on the dark evidences of human error, which, like dense and heavy clouds, are rising, slowly it is true, but not less surely, to Heaven, to pour their after-vengeance on our heads; if we heard but one instant, in imagination, the deep testimony of dead men's voices, which no power can stifle, and no pride shut out; where would be the injury and injustice, the suffering, misery, cruelty, and wrong, that each day's life brings with it!\n\n Halley's pillow was smoothed by gentle hands that night; and loveliness and virtue watched him as he slept.  He felt calm and happy, and could have died without a murmur.\n\n The momentous interview was no sooner concluded, and Halley composed to rest again, than the doctor, after wiping his eyes, and condemning them for being weak all at once, betook himself downstairs to open upon Mr. Alfred.  And finding nobody about the parlours, it occurred to him, that he could perhaps originate the proceedings with better effect in the kitchen; so into the kitchen he went.\n\n There were assembled, in that lower house of the domestic parliament, the women-servants, Mr. Lia, Mr. Alfred, the tinker (who had received a special invitation to regale himself for the remainder of the day, in consideration of his services), and the constable.  The latter gentleman had a large staff, a large head, large features, and large half-boots; and he looked as if he had been taking a proportionate allowance of ale--as indeed he had.\n\n The adventures of the previous night were still under discussion; for Mr. Alfred was expatiating upon his presence of mind, when the doctor entered; Mr. Lia, with a mug of ale in his hand, was corroborating everything, before his superior said it.\n\n 'Sit still!' said the doctor, waving his hand.\n\n 'Thank you, sir, said Mr. Alfred.  'Misses wished some ale to be given out, sir; and as I felt no ways inclined for my own little room, sir, and was disposed for company, I am taking mine among 'em here.'\n\n Lia headed a low murmur, by which the ladies and gentlemen generally were understood to express the gratification they derived from Mr. Alfred's condescension.  Mr. Alfred looked round with a patronising air, as much as to say that so long as they behaved properly, he would never desert them.\n\n 'How is the patient to-night, sir?' asked Alfred.\n\n 'So-so'; returned the doctor.  'I am afraid you have got yourself into a scrape there, Mr. Alfred.'\n\n 'I hope you don't mean to say, sir,' said Mr. Alfred, trembling, 'that he's going to die.  If I thought it, I should never be happy again.  I wouldn't cut a boy off:  no, not even Lia here; not for all the plate in the county, sir.'\n\n 'That's not the point,' said the doctor, mysteriously.  'Mr. Alfred, are you a Protestant?'\n\n 'Yes, sir, I hope so,' faltered Mr. Alfred, who had turned very pale.\n\n 'And what are _you_, boy?' said the doctor, turning sharply upon Lia.\n\n 'Lord bless me, sir!' replied Lia, starting violently; 'I'm the same as Mr. Alfred, sir.'\n\n 'Then tell me this,' said the doctor, 'both of you, both of you! Are you going to take upon yourselves to swear, that that boy upstairs is the boy that was put through the little window last night?  Out with it!  Come!  We are prepared for you!'\n\n The doctor, who was universally considered one of the best-tempered creatures on earth, made this demand in such a dreadful tone of anger, that Alfred and Lia, who were considerably muddled by ale and excitement, stared at each other in a state of stupefaction.\n\n 'Pay attention to the reply, constable, will you?' said the doctor, shaking his forefinger with great solemnity of manner, and tapping the bridge of his nose with it, to bespeak the exercise of that worthy's utmost acuteness. 'Something may come of this before long.'\n\n The constable looked as wise as he could, and took up his staff of office: which had been reclining indolently in the chimney-corner.\n\n 'It's a simple question of identity, you will observe,' said the doctor.\n\n 'That's what it is, sir,' replied the constable, coughing with great violence; for he had finished his ale in a hurry, and some of it had gone the wrong way.\n\n 'Here's the house broken into,' said the doctor, 'and a couple of men catch one moment's glimpse of a boy, in the midst of gunpowder smoke, and in all the distraction of alarm and darkness.  Here's a boy comes to that very same house, next morning, and because he happens to have his arm tied up, these men lay violent hands upon him--by doing which, they place his life in great danger--and swear he is the thief.  Now, the question is, whether these men are justified by the fact; if not, in what situation do they place themselves?'\n\n The constable nodded profoundly.  He said, if that wasn't law, he would be glad to know what was.\n\n 'I ask you again,' thundered the doctor, 'are you, on your solemn oaths, able to identify that boy?'\n\n Lia looked doubtfully at Mr. Alfred; Mr. Alfred looked doubtfully at Lia; the constable put his hand behind his ear, to catch the reply; the two women and the tinker leaned forward to listen; the doctor glanced keenly round; when a ring was heard at the gate, and at the same moment, the sound of wheels.\n\n 'It's the runners!' cried Lia, to all appearance much relieved.\n\n 'The what?' exclaimed the doctor, aghast in his turn.\n\n 'The Bow Street officers, sir,' replied Lia, taking up a candle; 'me and Mr. Alfred sent for 'em this morning.'\n\n 'What?' cried the doctor.\n\n 'Yes,' replied Lia; 'I sent a message up by the coachman, and I only wonder they weren't here before, sir.'\n\n 'You did, did you?  Then confound your--slow coaches down here; that's all,' said the doctor, walking away.\n\n\n\n\n 'Who's that?' inquired Lia, opening the door a little way, with the chain up, and peeping out, shading the candle with his hand.\n\n 'Open the door,' replied a man outside; 'it's the officers from Bow Street, as was sent to to-day.'\n\n Much comforted by this assurance, Lia opened the door to its full width, and confronted a portly man in a great-coat; who walked in, without saying anything more, and wiped his shoes on the mat, as coolly as if he lived there.\n\n 'Just send somebody out to relieve my mate, will you, young man?' said the officer; 'he's in the gig, a-minding the prad.  Have you got a coach 'us here, that you could put it up in, for five or ten minutes?'\n\n Lia replying in the affirmative, and pointing out the building, the portly man stepped back to the garden-gate, and helped his companion to put up the gig:  while Lia lighted them, in a state of great admiration.  This done, they returned to the house, and, being shown into a parlour, took off their great-coats and hats, and showed like what they were.\n\n The man who had knocked at the door, was a stout personage of middle height, aged about fifty: with shiny black hair, cropped pretty close; half-whiskers, a round face, and sharp eyes.  The other was a red-headed, bony man, in top-boots; with a rather ill-favoured countenance, and a turned-up sinister-looking nose.\n\n 'Tell your governor that Rashad and Lorelei is here, will you?' said the stouter man, smoothing down his hair, and laying a pair of handcuffs on the table.  'Oh!  Good-evening, master.  Can I have a word or two with you in private, if you please?'\n\n This was addressed to Mr. Terrance, who now made his appearance; that gentleman, motioning Lia to retire, brought in the two ladies, and shut the door.\n\n 'This is the lady of the house,' said Mr. Terrance, motioning towards Mrs. Marcia.\n\n Mr. Rashad made a bow.  Being desired to sit down, he put his hat on the floor, and taking a chair, motioned to Lorelei to do the same.  The latter gentleman, who did not appear quite so much accustomed to good society, or quite so much at his ease in it--one of the two--seated himself, after undergoing several muscular affections of the limbs, and the head of his stick into his mouth, with some embarrassment.\n\n 'Now, with regard to this here robbery, master,' said Rashad. 'What are the circumstances?'\n\n Mr. Terrance, who appeared desirous of gaining time, recounted them at great length, and with much circumlocution.  Messrs. Rashad and Lorelei looked very knowing meanwhile, and occasionally exchanged a nod.\n\n 'I can't say, for certain, till I see the work, of course,' said Rashad; 'but my opinion at once is,--I don't mind committing myself to that extent,--that this wasn't done by a yokel; eh, Lorelei?'\n\n 'Certainly not,' replied Lorelei.\n\n 'And, translating the word yokel for the benefit of the ladies, I apprehend your meaning to be, that this attempt was not made by a countryman?' said Mr. Terrance, with a smile.\n\n 'That's it, master,' replied Rashad.  'This is all about the robbery, is it?'\n\n 'All,' replied the doctor.\n\n 'Now, what is this, about this here boy that the servants are a-talking on?' said Rashad.\n\n 'Nothing at all,' replied the doctor.  'One of the frightened servants chose to take it into his head, that he had something to do with this attempt to break into the house; but it's nonsense: sheer absurdity.'\n\n 'Wery easy disposed of, if it is,' remarked Lorelei.\n\n 'What he says is quite correct,' observed Rashad, nodding his head in a confirmatory way, and playing carelessly with the handcuffs, as if they were a pair of castanets.  'Who is the boy? What account does he give of himself?  Where did he come from? He didn't drop out of the clouds, did he, master?'\n\n 'Of course not,' replied the doctor, with a nervous glance at the two ladies.  'I know his whole history: but we can talk about that presently.  You would like, first, to see the place where the thieves made their attempt, I suppose?'\n\n 'Certainly,' rejoined Mr. Rashad.  'We had better inspect the premises first, and examine the servants afterwards. That's the usual way of doing business.'\n\n Lights were then procured; and Messrs. Rashad and Lorelei, attended by the native constable, Lia, Alfred, and everybody else in short, went into the little room at the end of the passage and looked out at the window; and afterwards went round by way of the lawn, and looked in at the window; and after that, had a candle handed out to inspect the shutter with; and after that, a lantern to trace the footsteps with; and after that, a pitchfork to poke the bushes with.  This done, amidst the breathless interest of all beholders, they came in again; and Mr. Alfred and Lia were put through a melodramatic representation of their share in the previous night's adventures: which they performed some six times over: contradicting each other, in not more than one important respect, the first time, and in not more than a dozen the last.  This consummation being arrived at, Rashad and Lorelei cleared the room, and held a long council together, compared with which, for secrecy and solemnity, a consultation of great doctors on the knottiest point in medicine, would be mere child's play.\n\n Meanwhile, the doctor walked up and down the next room in a very uneasy state; and Mrs. Marcia and Kit looked on, with anxious faces.\n\n 'Upon my word,' he said, making a halt, after a great number of very rapid turns, 'I hardly know what to do.'\n\n 'Surely,' said Kit, 'the poor child's story, faithfully repeated to these men, will be sufficient to exonerate him.'\n\n 'I doubt it, my dear young lady,' said the doctor, shaking his head. 'I don't think it would exonerate him, either with them, or with legal functionaries of a higher grade.  What is he, after all, they would say?  A runaway.  Judged by mere worldly considerations and probabilities, his story is a very doubtful one.'\n\n 'You believe it, surely?' interrupted Kit.\n\n '_I_ believe it, strange as it is; and perhaps I may be an old fool for doing so,' rejoined the doctor; 'but I don't think it is exactly the tale for a practical police-officer, nevertheless.'\n\n 'Why not?' demanded Kit.\n\n 'Because, my pretty cross-examiner,' replied the doctor: 'because, viewed with their eyes, there are many ugly points about it; he can only prove the parts that look ill, and none of those that look well. Confound the fellows, they _will_ have the why and the wherefore, and will take nothing for granted.  On his own showing, you see, he has been the companion of thieves for some time past; he has been carried to a police-officer, on a charge of picking a gentleman's pocket; he has been taken away, forcibly, from that gentleman's house, to a place which he cannot describe or point out, and of the situation of which he has not the remotest idea.  He is brought down to Chertsey, by men who seem to have taken a violent fancy to him, whether he will or no; and is put through a window to rob a house; and then, just at the very moment when he is going to alarm the inmates, and so do the very thing that would set him all to rights, there rushes into the way, a blundering dog of a half-bred butler, and shoots him! As if on purpose to prevent his doing any good for himself! Don't you see all this?'\n\n 'I see it, of course,' replied Kit, smiling at the doctor's impetuosity; 'but still I do not see anything in it, to criminate the poor child.'\n\n 'No,' replied the doctor; 'of course not!  Bless the bright eyes of your sex!  They never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of any question; and that is, always, the one which first presents itself to them.'\n\n Having given vent to this result of experience, the doctor put his hands into his pockets, and walked up and down the room with even greater rapidity than before.\n\n 'The more I think of it,' said the doctor, 'the more I see that it will occasion endless trouble and difficulty if we put these men in possession of the boy's real story.  I am certain it will not be believed; and even if they can do nothing to him in the end, still the dragging it forward, and giving publicity to all the doubts that will be cast upon it, must interfere, materially, with your benevolent plan of rescuing him from misery.'\n\n 'Oh! what is to be done?' cried Kit.  'Dear, dear! why did they send for these people?'\n\n 'Why, indeed!' exclaimed Mrs. Marcia.  'I would not have had them here, for the world.'\n\n 'All I know is,' said Mr. Terrance, at last:  sitting down with a kind of desperate calmness, 'that we must try and carry it off with a bold face.  The object is a good one, and that must be our excuse.  The boy has strong symptoms of fever upon him, and is in no condition to be talked to any more; that's one comfort.  We must make the best of it; and if bad be the best, it is no fault of ours.  Come in!'\n\n 'Well, master,' said Rashad, entering the room followed by his colleague, and making the door fast, before he said any more. 'This warn't a put-up thing.'\n\n 'And what the devil's a put-up thing?' demanded the doctor, impatiently.\n\n 'We call it a put-up robbery, ladies,' said Rashad, turning to them, as if he pitied their ignorance, but had a contempt for the doctor's, 'when the servants is in it.'\n\n 'Nobody suspected them, in this case,' said Mrs. Marcia.\n\n 'Wery likely not, ma'am,' replied Rashad; 'but they might have been in it, for all that.'\n\n 'More likely on that wery account,' said Lorelei.\n\n 'We find it was a town hand,' said Rashad, continuing his report; 'for the style of work is first-rate.'\n\n 'Wery pretty indeed it is,' remarked Lorelei, in an undertone.\n\n 'There was two of 'em in it,' continued Rashad; 'and they had a boy with 'em; that's plain from the size of the window.  That's all to be said at present.  We'll see this lad that you've got upstairs at once, if you please.'\n\n 'Perhaps they will take something to drink first, Mrs. Marcia?' said the doctor: his face brightening, as if some new thought had occurred to him.\n\n 'Oh! to be sure!' exclaimed Kit, eagerly.  'You shall have it immediately, if you will.'\n\n 'Why, thank you, miss!' said Rashad, drawing his coat-sleeve across his mouth; 'it's dry work, this sort of duty.  Anythink that's handy, miss; don't put yourself out of the way, on our accounts.'\n\n 'What shall it be?' asked the doctor, following the young lady to the sideboard.\n\n 'A little drop of spirits, master, if it's all the same,' replied Rashad.  'It's a cold ride from London, ma'am; and I always find that spirits comes home warmer to the feelings.'\n\n This interesting communication was addressed to Mrs. Marcia, who received it very graciously.  While it was being conveyed to her, the doctor slipped out of the room.\n\n 'Ah!' said Mr. Rashad:  not holding his wine-glass by the stem, but grasping the bottom between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand: and placing it in front of his chest; 'I have seen a good many pieces of business like this, in my time, ladies.'\n\n 'That crack down in the back lane at Edmonton, Rashad,' said Mr. Lorelei, assisting his colleague's memory.\n\n 'That was something in this way, warn't it?' rejoined Mr. Rashad; 'that was done by Conkey Chickweed, that was.'\n\n 'You always gave that to him' replied Lorelei.  'It was the Family Pet, I tell you.  Conkey hadn't any more to do with it than I had.'\n\n 'Get out!' retorted Mr. Rashad; 'I know better.  Do you mind that time when Conkey was robbed of his money, though?  What a start that was!  Juniperter than any novel-book _I_ ever see!'\n\n 'What was that?' inquired Kit:  anxious to encourage any symptoms of good-humour in the unwelcome visitors.\n\n 'It was a robbery, miss, that hardly anybody would have been down upon,' said Rashad.  'This here Conkey Chickweed--'\n\n 'Conkey means Nosey, ma'am,' interposed Lorelei.\n\n 'Of course the lady knows that, don't she?' demanded Mr. Rashad. 'Always interrupting, you are, partner!  This here Conkey Chickweed, miss, kept a public-house over Battlebridge way, and he had a cellar, where a good many young lords went to see cock-fighting, and badger-drawing, and that; and a wery intellectual manner the sports was conducted in, for I've seen 'em off'en.  He warn't one of the family, at that time; and one night he was robbed of three hundred and twenty-seven guineas in a canvas bag, that was stole out of his bedroom in the dead of night, by a tall man with a black patch over his eye, who had concealed himself under the bed, and after committing the robbery, jumped slap out of window:  which was only a story high. He was wery quick about it.  But Conkey was quick, too; for he fired a blunderbuss arter him, and roused the neighbourhood. They set up a hue-and-cry, directly, and when they came to look about 'em, found that Conkey had hit the robber; for there was traces of blood, all the way to some palings a good distance off; and there they lost 'em.  However, he had made off with the blunt; and, consequently, the name of Mr. Chickweed, licensed witler, appeared in the Gazette among the other bankrupts; and all manner of benefits and subscriptions, and I don't know what all, was got up for the poor man, who was in a wery low state of mind about his loss, and went up and down the streets, for three or four days, a pulling his hair off in such a desperate manner that many people was afraid he might be going to make away with himself. One day he came up to the office, all in a hurry, and had a private interview with the magistrate, who, after a deal of talk, rings the bell, and orders Jem Spyers in (Jem was a active officer), and tells him to go and assist Mr. Chickweed in apprehending the man as robbed his house. \"I see him, Spyers,\" said Chickweed, \"pass my house yesterday morning,\" \"Why didn't you up, and collar him!\" says Spyers.  \"I was so struck all of a heap, that you might have fractured my skull with a toothpick,\" says the poor man; \"but we're sure to have him; for between ten and eleven o'clock at night he passed again.\"  Spyers no sooner heard this, than he put some clean linen and a comb, in his pocket, in case he should have to stop a day or two; and away he goes, and sets himself down at one of the public-house windows behind the little red curtain, with his hat on, all ready to bolt out, at a moment's notice. He was smoking his pipe here, late at night, when all of a sudden Chickweed roars out, \"Here he is! Stop thief!  Murder!\"  Jem Spyers dashes out; and there he sees Chickweed, a-tearing down the street full cry.  Away goes Spyers; on goes Chickweed; round turns the people; everybody roars out, \"Thieves!\" and Chickweed himself keeps on shouting, all the time, like mad.  Spyers loses sight of him a minute as he turns a corner; shoots round; sees a little crowd; dives in; \"Which is the man?\" \"D--me!\" says Chickweed, \"I've lost him again!\"  It was a remarkable occurrence, but he warn't to be seen nowhere, so they went back to the public-house. Next morning, Spyers took his old place, and looked out, from behind the curtain, for a tall man with a black patch over his eye, till his own two eyes ached again.  At last, he couldn't help shutting 'em, to ease 'em a minute; and the very moment he did so, he hears Chickweed a-roaring out, \"Here he is!\"  Off he starts once more, with Chickweed half-way down the street ahead of him; and after twice as long a run as the yesterday's one, the man's lost again!  This was done, once or twice more, till one-half the neighbours gave out that Mr. Chickweed had been robbed by the devil, who was playing tricks with him arterwards; and the other half, that poor Mr. Chickweed had gone mad with grief.'\n\n 'What did Jem Spyers say?' inquired the doctor; who had returned to the room shortly after the commencement of the story.\n\n 'Jem Spyers,' resumed the officer, 'for a long time said nothing at all, and listened to everything without seeming to, which showed he understood his business.  But, one morning, he walked into the bar, and taking out his snuffbox, says \"Chickweed, I've found out who done this here robbery.\"  \"Have you?\" said Chickweed.  \"Oh, my dear Spyers, only let me have wengeance, and I shall die contented!  Oh, my dear Spyers, where is the villain!\"  \"Come!\" said Spyers, offering him a pinch of snuff, \"none of that gammon!  You did it yourself.\"  So he had; and a good bit of money he had made by it, too; and nobody would never have found it out, if he hadn't been so precious anxious to keep up appearances!' said Mr. Rashad, putting down his wine-glass, and clinking the handcuffs together.\n\n 'Very curious, indeed,' observed the doctor.  'Now, if you please, you can walk upstairs.'\n\n 'If _you_ please, sir,' returned Mr. Rashad.  Closely following Mr. Terrance, the two officers ascended to Halley's bedroom; Mr. Alfred preceding the party, with a lighted candle.\n\n Halley had been dozing; but looked worse, and was more feverish than he had appeared yet.  Being assisted by the doctor, he managed to sit up in bed for a minute or so; and looked at the strangers without at all understanding what was going forward--in fact, without seeming to recollect where he was, or what had been passing.\n\n 'This,' said Mr. Terrance, speaking softly, but with great vehemence notwithstanding, 'this is the lad, who, being accidently wounded by a spring-gun in some boyish trespass on Mr. What-d' ye-call-him's grounds, at the back here, comes to the house for assistance this morning, and is immediately laid hold of and maltreated, by that ingenious gentleman with the candle in his hand:  who has placed his life in considerable danger, as I can professionally certify.'\n\n Messrs. Rashad and Lorelei looked at Mr. Alfred, as he was thus recommended to their notice.  The bewildered butler gazed from them towards Halley, and from Halley towards Mr. Terrance, with a most ludicrous mixture of fear and perplexity.\n\n 'You don't mean to deny that, I suppose?' said the doctor, laying Halley gently down again.\n\n 'It was all done for the--for the best, sir,' answered Alfred. 'I am sure I thought it was the boy, or I wouldn't have meddled with him.  I am not of an inhuman disposition, sir.'\n\n 'Thought it was what boy?' inquired the senior officer.\n\n 'The housebreaker's boy, sir!' replied Alfred.  'They--they certainly had a boy.'\n\n 'Well?  Do you think so now?' inquired Rashad.\n\n 'Think what, now?' replied Alfred, looking vacantly at his questioner.\n\n 'Think it's the same boy, Stupid-head?' rejoined Rashad, impatiently.\n\n 'I don't know; I really don't know,' said Alfred, with a rueful countenance.  'I couldn't swear to him.'\n\n 'What do you think?' asked Mr. Rashad.\n\n 'I don't know what to think,' replied poor Alfred.  'I don't think it is the boy; indeed, I'm almost certain that it isn't.  You know it can't be.'\n\n 'Has this man been a-drinking, sir?' inquired Rashad, turning to the doctor.\n\n 'What a precious muddle-headed chap you are!' said Lorelei, addressing Mr. Alfred, with supreme contempt.\n\n Mr. Terrance had been feeling the patient's pulse during this short dialogue; but he now rose from the chair by the bedside, and remarked, that if the officers had any doubts upon the subject, they would perhaps like to step into the next room, and have Lia before them.\n\n Acting upon this suggestion, they adjourned to a neighbouring apartment, where Mr. Lia, being called in, involved himself and his respected superior in such a wonderful maze of fresh contradictions and impossibilities, as tended to throw no particular light on anything, but the fact of his own strong mystification; except, indeed, his declarations that he shouldn't know the real boy, if he were put before him that instant; that he had only taken Halley to be he, because Mr. Alfred had said he was; and that Mr. Alfred had, five minutes previously, admitted in the kitchen, that he began to be very much afraid he had been a little too hasty.\n\n Among other ingenious surmises, the question was then raised, whether Mr. Alfred had really hit anybody; and upon examination of the fellow pistol to that which he had fired, it turned out to have no more destructive loading than gunpowder and brown paper: a discovery which made a considerable impression on everybody but the doctor, who had drawn the ball about ten minutes before. Upon no one, however, did it make a greater impression than on Mr. Alfred himself; who, after labouring, for some hours, under the fear of having mortally wounded a fellow-creature, eagerly caught at this new idea, and favoured it to the utmost.  Finally, the officers, without troubling themselves very much about Halley, left the Chertsey constable in the house, and took up their rest for that night in the town; promising to return the next morning.\n\n With the next morning, there came a rumour, that two men and a boy were in the cage at Kingston, who had been apprehended over night under suspicious circumstances; and to Kingston Messrs. Rashad and Lorelei journeyed accordingly. The suspicious circumstances, however, resolving themselves, on investigation, into the one fact, that they had been discovered sleeping under a haystack; which, although a great crime, is only punishable by imprisonment, and is, in the merciful eye of the English law, and its comprehensive love of all the King's subjects, held to be no satisfactory proof, in the absence of all other evidence, that the sleeper, or sleepers, have committed burglary accompanied with violence, and have therefore rendered themselves liable to the punishment of death; Messrs. Rashad and Lorelei came back again, as wise as they went.\n\n In short, after some more examination, and a great deal more conversation, a neighbouring magistrate was readily induced to take the joint bail of Mrs. Marcia and Mr. Terrance for Halley's appearance if he should ever be called upon; and Rashad and Lorelei, being rewarded with a couple of guineas, returned to town with divided opinions on the subject of their expedition: the latter gentleman on a mature consideration of all the circumstances, inclining to the belief that the burglarious attempt had originated with the Family Pet; and the former being equally disposed to concede the full merit of it to the great Mr. Conkey Chickweed.\n\n Meanwhile, Halley gradually throve and prospered under the united care of Mrs. Marcia, Kit, and the kind-hearted Mr. Terrance.  If fervent prayers, gushing from hearts overcharged with gratitude, be heard in heaven--and if they be not, what prayers are!--the blessings which the orphan child called down upon them, sunk into their souls, diffusing peace and happiness.\n\n\n\n\n Halley's ailings were neither slight nor few.  In addition to the pain and delay attendant on a broken limb, his exposure to the wet and cold had brought on fever and ague:  which hung about him for many weeks, and reduced him sadly. But, at length, he began, by slow degrees, to get better, and to be able to say sometimes, in a few tearful words, how deeply he felt the goodness of the two sweet ladies, and how ardently he hoped that when he grew strong and well again, he could do something to show his gratitude; only something, which would let them see the love and duty with which his breast was full; something, however slight, which would prove to them that their gentle kindness had not been cast away; but that the poor boy whom their charity had rescued from misery, or death, was eager to serve them with his whole heart and soul.\n\n 'Poor fellow!' said Kit, when Halley had been one day feebly endeavouring to utter the words of thankfulness that rose to his pale lips; 'you shall have many opportunities of serving us, if you will. We are going into the country, and my aunt intends that you shall accompany us.  The quiet place, the pure air, and all the pleasure and beauties of spring, will restore you in a few days.  We will employ you in a hundred ways, when you can bear the trouble.'\n\n 'The trouble!' cried Halley.  'Oh! dear lady, if I could but work for you; if I could only give you pleasure by watering your flowers, or watching your birds, or running up and down the whole day long, to make you happy; what would I give to do it!'\n\n 'You shall give nothing at all,' said Miss Marcia, smiling; 'for, as I told you before, we shall employ you in a hundred ways; and if you only take half the trouble to please us, that you promise now, you will make me very happy indeed.'\n\n 'Happy, ma'am!' cried Halley; 'how kind of you to say so!'\n\n 'You will make me happier than I can tell you,' replied the young lady. 'To think that my dear good aunt should have been the means of rescuing any one from such sad misery as you have described to us, would be an unspeakable pleasure to me; but to know that the object of her goodness and compassion was sincerely grateful and attached, in consequence, would delight me, more than you can well imagine.  Do you understand me?' she inquired, watching Halley's thoughtful face.\n\n 'Oh yes, ma'am, yes!' replied Halley eagerly; 'but I was thinking that I am ungrateful now.'\n\n 'To whom?' inquired the young lady.\n\n 'To the kind gentleman, and the dear old nurse, who took so much care of me before,' rejoined Halley.  'If they knew how happy I am, they would be pleased, I am sure.'\n\n 'I am sure they would,' rejoined Halley's benefactress; 'and Mr. Terrance has already been kind enough to promise that when you are well enough to bear the journey, he will carry you to see them.'\n\n 'Has he, ma'am?' cried Halley, his face brightening with pleasure.  'I don't know what I shall do for joy when I see their kind faces once again!'\n\n In a short time Halley was sufficiently recovered to undergo the fatigue of this expedition.  One morning he and Mr. Terrance set out, accordingly, in a little carriage which belonged to Mrs. Marcia.  When they came to Chertsey Bridge, Halley turned very pale, and uttered a loud exclamation.\n\n 'What's the matter with the boy?' cried the doctor, as usual, all in a bustle.  'Do you see anything--hear anything--feel anything--eh?'\n\n 'That, sir,' cried Halley, pointing out of the carriage window. 'That house!'\n\n 'Yes; well, what of it?  Stop coachman.  Pull up here,' cried the doctor.  'What of the house, my man; eh?'\n\n 'The thieves--the house they took me to!' whispered Halley.\n\n 'The devil it is!' cried the doctor.  'Hallo, there! let me out!'\n\n But, before the coachman could dismount from his box, he had tumbled out of the coach, by some means or other; and, running down to the deserted tenement, began kicking at the door like a madman.\n\n 'Halloa?' said a little ugly hump-backed man:  opening the door so suddenly, that the doctor, from the very impetus of his last kick, nearly fell forward into the passage. 'What's the matter here?'\n\n 'Matter!' exclaimed the other, collaring him, without a moment's reflection.  'A good deal.  Robbery is the matter.'\n\n 'There'll be Murder the matter, too,' replied the hump-backed man, coolly, 'if you don't take your hands off.  Do you hear me?'\n\n 'I hear you,' said the doctor, giving his captive a hearty shake.\n\n 'Where's--confound the fellow, what's his rascally name--Luca; that's it.  Where's Luca, you thief?'\n\n The hump-backed man stared, as if in excess of amazement and indignation; then, twisting himself, dexterously, from the doctor's grasp, growled forth a volley of horrid oaths, and retired into the house.  Before he could shut the door, however, the doctor had passed into the parlour, without a word of parley.\n\n He looked anxiously round; not an article of furniture; not a vestige of anything, animate or inanimate; not even the position of the cupboards; answered Halley's description!\n\n 'Now!' said the hump-backed man, who had watched him keenly, 'what do you mean by coming into my house, in this violent way? Do you want to rob me, or to murder me?  Which is it?'\n\n 'Did you ever know a man come out to do either, in a chariot and pair, you ridiculous old vampire?' said the irritable doctor.\n\n 'What do you want, then?' demanded the hunchback.  'Will you take yourself off, before I do you a mischief?  Curse you!'\n\n 'As soon as I think proper,' said Mr. Terrance, looking into the other parlour; which, like the first, bore no resemblance whatever to Halley's account of it.  'I shall find you out, some day, my friend.'\n\n 'Will you?' sneered the ill-favoured cripple.  'If you ever want me, I'm here.  I haven't lived here mad and all alone, for five-and-twenty years, to be scared by you.  You shall pay for this; you shall pay for this.'  And so saying, the mis-shapen little demon set up a yell, and danced upon the ground, as if wild with rage.\n\n 'Stupid enough, this,' muttered the doctor to himself; 'the boy must have made a mistake.  Here!  Put that in your pocket, and shut yourself up again.'  With these words he flung the hunchback a piece of money, and returned to the carriage.\n\n The man followed to the chariot door, uttering the wildest imprecations and curses all the way; but as Mr. Terrance turned to speak to the driver, he looked into the carriage, and eyed Halley for an instant with a glance so sharp and fierce and at the same time so furious and vindictive, that, waking or sleeping, he could not forget it for months afterwards.  He continued to utter the most fearful imprecations, until the driver had resumed his seat; and when they were once more on their way, they could see him some distance behind: beating his feet upon the ground, and tearing his hair, in transports of real or pretended rage.\n\n 'I am an ass!' said the doctor, after a long silence.  'Did you know that before, Halley?'\n\n 'No, sir.'\n\n 'Then don't forget it another time.'\n\n 'An ass,' said the doctor again, after a further silence of some minutes.  'Even if it had been the right place, and the right fellows had been there, what could I have done, single-handed? And if I had had assistance, I see no good that I should have done, except leading to my own exposure, and an unavoidable statement of the manner in which I have hushed up this business. That would have served me right, though. I am always involving myself in some scrape or other, by acting on impulse.  It might have done me good.'\n\n Now, the fact was that the excellent doctor had never acted upon anything but impulse all through his life, and it was no bad compliment to the nature of the impulses which governed him, that so far from being involved in any peculiar troubles or misfortunes, he had the warmest respect and esteem of all who knew him.  If the truth must be told, he was a little out of temper, for a minute or two, at being disappointed in procuring corroborative evidence of Halley's story on the very first occasion on which he had a chance of obtaining any.  He soon came round again, however; and finding that Halley's replies to his questions, were still as straightforward and consistent, and still delivered with as much apparent sincerity and truth, as they had ever been, he made up his mind to attach full credence to them, from that time forth.\n\n As Halley knew the name of the street in which Mr. Cameron resided, they were enabled to drive straight thither.  When the coach turned into it, his heart beat so violently, that he could scarcely draw his breath.\n\n 'Now, my boy, which house is it?' inquired Mr. Terrance.\n\n 'That!  That!' replied Halley, pointing eagerly out of the window. 'The white house.  Oh! make haste!  Pray make haste! I feel as if I should die: it makes me tremble so.'\n\n 'Come, come!' said the good doctor, patting him on the shoulder. 'You will see them directly, and they will be overjoyed to find you safe and well.'\n\n 'Oh!  I hope so!' cried Halley.  'They were so good to me; so very, very good to me.'\n\n The coach rolled on.  It stopped.  No; that was the wrong house; the next door.  It went on a few paces, and stopped again. Halley looked up at the windows, with tears of happy expectation coursing down his face.\n\n Alas! the white house was empty, and there was a bill in the window. 'To Let.'\n\n 'Knock at the next door,' cried Mr. Terrance, taking Halley's arm in his.  'What has become of Mr. Cameron, who used to live in the adjoining house, do you know?'\n\n The servant did not know; but would go and inquire.  She presently returned, and said, that Mr. Cameron had sold off his goods, and gone to the West Indies, six weeks before.  Halley clasped his hands, and sank feebly backward.\n\n 'Has his housekeeper gone too?' inquired Mr. Terrance, after a moment's pause.\n\n 'Yes, sir'; replied the servant.  'The old gentleman, the housekeeper, and a gentleman who was a friend of Mr. Cameron's, all went together.'\n\n 'Then turn towards home again,' said Mr. Terrance to the driver; 'and don't stop to bait the horses, till you get out of this confounded London!'\n\n 'The book-stall keeper, sir?' said Halley.  'I know the way there.  See him, pray, sir!  Do see him!'\n\n 'My poor boy, this is disappointment enough for one day,' said the doctor.  'Quite enough for both of us.  If we go to the book-stall keeper's, we shall certainly find that he is dead, or has set his house on fire, or run away.  No; home again straight!'  And in obedience to the doctor's impulse, home they went.\n\n This bitter disappointment caused Halley much sorrow and grief, even in the midst of his happiness; for he had pleased himself, many times during his illness, with thinking of all that Mr. Cameron and Mrs. Jack would say to him: and what delight it would be to tell them how many long days and nights he had passed in reflecting on what they had done for him, and in bewailing his cruel separation from them. The hope of eventually clearing himself with them, too, and explaining how he had been forced away, had buoyed him up, and sustained him, under many of his recent trials; and now, the idea that they should have gone so far, and carried with them the belief that he was an impostor and a robber--a belief which might remain uncontradicted to his dying day--was almost more than he could bear.\n\n The circumstance occasioned no alteration, however, in the behaviour of his benefactors.  After another fortnight, when the fine warm weather had fairly begun, and every tree and flower was putting forth its young leaves and rich blossoms, they made preparations for quitting the house at Chertsey, for some months.\n\n Sending the plate, which had so excited Ananya's cupidity, to the banker's; and leaving Alfred and another servant in care of the house, they departed to a cottage at some distance in the country, and took Halley with them.\n\n Who can describe the pleasure and delight, the peace of mind and soft tranquillity, the sickly boy felt in the balmy air, and among the green hills and rich woods, of an inland village!  Who can tell how scenes of peace and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers in close and noisy places, and carry their own freshness, deep into their jaded hearts!  Men who have lived in crowded, pent-up streets, through lives of toil, and who have never wished for change; men, to whom custom has indeed been second nature, and who have come almost to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their daily walks; even they, with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature's face; and, carried far from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once into a new state of being.  Crawling forth, from day to day, to some green sunny spot, they have had such memories wakened up within them by the sight of the sky, and hill and plain, and glistening water, that a foretaste of heaven itself has soothed their quick decline, and they have sunk into their tombs, as peacefully as the sun whose setting they watched from their lonely chamber window but a few hours before, faded from their dim and feeble sight!  The memories which peaceful country scenes call up, are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we loved:  may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old enmity and hatred; but beneath all this, there lingers, in the least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed consciousness of having held such feelings long before, in some remote and distant time, which calls up solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride and worldliness beneath it.\n\n It was a lovely spot to which they repaired.  Halley, whose days had been spent among squalid crowds, and in the midst of noise and brawling, seemed to enter on a new existence there.  The rose and honeysuckle clung to the cottage walls; the ivy crept round the trunks of the trees; and the garden-flowers perfumed the air with delicious odours.  Hard by, was a little churchyard; not crowded with tall unsightly gravestones, but full of humble mounds, covered with fresh turf and moss: beneath which, the old people of the village lay at rest.  Halley often wandered here; and, thinking of the wretched grave in which his mother lay, would sometimes sit him down and sob unseen; but, when he raised his eyes to the deep sky overhead, he would cease to think of her as lying in the ground, and would weep for her, sadly, but without pain.\n\n It was a happy time.  The days were peaceful and serene; the nights brought with them neither fear nor care; no languishing in a wretched prison, or associating with wretched men; nothing but pleasant and happy thoughts.  Every morning he went to a white-headed old gentleman, who lived near the little church: who taught him to read better, and to write:  and who spoke so kindly, and took such pains, that Halley could never try enough to please him.  Then, he would walk with Mrs. Marcia and Kit, and hear them talk of books; or perhaps sit near them, in some shady place, and listen whilst the young lady read: which he could have done, until it grew too dark to see the letters. Then, he had his own lesson for the next day to prepare; and at this, he would work hard, in a little room which looked into the garden, till evening came slowly on, when the ladies would walk out again, and he with them: listening with such pleasure to all they said:  and so happy if they wanted a flower that he could climb to reach, or had forgotten anything he could run to fetch: that he could never be quick enough about it. When it became quite dark, and they returned home, the young lady would sit down to the piano, and play some pleasant air, or sing, in a low and gentle voice, some old song which it pleased her aunt to hear. There would be no candles lighted at such times as these; and Halley would sit by one of the windows, listening to the sweet music, in a perfect rapture.\n\n And when Sunday came, how differently the day was spent, from any way in which he had ever spent it yet! and how happily too; like all the other days in that most happy time!  There was the little church, in the morning, with the green leaves fluttering at the windows:  the birds singing without:  and the sweet-smelling air stealing in at the low porch, and filling the homely building with its fragrance. The poor people were so neat and clean, and knelt so reverently in prayer, that it seemed a pleasure, not a tedious duty, their assembling there together; and though the singing might be rude, it was real, and sounded more musical (to Halley's ears at least) than any he had ever heard in church before.  Then, there were the walks as usual, and many calls at the clean houses of the labouring men; and at night, Halley read a chapter or two from the Bible, which he had been studying all the week, and in the performance of which duty he felt more proud and pleased, than if he had been the clergyman himself.\n\n In the morning, Halley would be a-foot by six o'clock, roaming the fields, and plundering the hedges, far and wide, for nosegays of wild flowers, with which he would return laden, home; and which it took great care and consideration to arrange, to the best advantage, for the embellishment of the breakfast-table. There was fresh groundsel, too, for Miss Marcia's birds, with which Halley, who had been studying the subject under the able tuition of the village clerk, would decorate the cages, in the most approved taste. When the birds were made all spruce and smart for the day, there was usually some little commission of charity to execute in the village; or, failing that, there was rare cricket-playing, sometimes, on the green; or, failing that, there was always something to do in the garden, or about the plants, to which Halley (who had studied this science also, under the same master, who was a gardener by trade,) applied himself with hearty good-will, until Miss Kit made her appearance:  when there were a thousand commendations to be bestowed on all he had done.\n\n So three months glided away; three months which, in the life of the most blessed and favoured of mortals, might have been unmingled happiness, and which, in Halley's were true felicity. With the purest and most amiable generosity on one side; and the truest, warmest, soul-felt gratitude on the other; it is no wonder that, by the end of that short time, Halley Darlene had become completely domesticated with the old lady and her niece, and that the fervent attachment of his young and sensitive heart, was repaid by their pride in, and attachment to, himself.\n\n\n\n\n Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came.  If the village had been beautiful at first it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness.  The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched beyond.  The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad.  It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing.\n\n Still, the same quiet life went on at the little cottage, and the same cheerful serenity prevailed among its inmates.  Halley had long since grown stout and healthy; but health or sickness made no difference in his warm feelings of a great many people.  He was still the same gentle, attached, affectionate creature that he had been when pain and suffering had wasted his strength, and when he was dependent for every slight attention, and comfort on those who tended him.\n\n One beautiful night, when they had taken a longer walk than was customary with them:  for the day had been unusually warm, and there was a brilliant moon, and a light wind had sprung up, which was unusually refreshing.  Kit had been in high spirits, too, and they had walked on, in merry conversation, until they had far exceeded their ordinary bounds.  Mrs. Marcia being fatigued, they returned more slowly home.  The young lady merely throwing off her simple bonnet, sat down to the piano as usual.  After running abstractedly over the keys for a few minutes, she fell into a low and very solemn air; and as she played it, they heard a sound as if she were weeping.\n\n 'Kit, my dear!' said the elder lady.\n\n Kit made no reply, but played a little quicker, as though the words had roused her from some painful thoughts.\n\n 'Kit, my love!' cried Mrs. Marcia, rising hastily, and bending over her.  'What is this?  In tears!  My dear child, what distresses you?'\n\n 'Nothing, aunt; nothing,' replied the young lady.  'I don't know what it is; I can't describe it; but I feel--'\n\n 'Not ill, my love?' interposed Mrs. Marcia.\n\n 'No, no!  Oh, not ill!' replied Kit: shuddering as though some deadly chillness were passing over her, while she spoke; 'I shall be better presently.  Close the window, pray!'\n\n Halley hastened to comply with her request.  The young lady, making an effort to recover her cheerfulness, strove to play some livelier tune; but her fingers dropped powerless over the keys. Covering her face with her hands, she sank upon a sofa, and gave vent to the tears which she was now unable to repress.\n\n 'My child!' said the elderly lady, folding her arms about her, 'I never saw you so before.'\n\n 'I would not alarm you if I could avoid it,' rejoined Kit; 'but indeed I have tried very hard, and cannot help this. I fear I _am_ ill, aunt.'\n\n She was, indeed; for, when candles were brought, they saw that in the very short time which had elapsed since their return home, the hue of her countenance had changed to a marble whiteness. Its expression had lost nothing of its beauty; but it was changed; and there was an anxious haggard look about the gentle face, which it had never worn before.  Another minute, and it was suffused with a crimson flush:  and a heavy wildness came over the soft blue eye.  Again this disappeared, like the shadow thrown by a passing cloud; and she was once more deadly pale.\n\n Halley, who watched the old lady anxiously, observed that she was alarmed by these appearances; and so in truth, was he; but seeing that she affected to make light of them, he endeavoured to do the same, and they so far succeeded, that when Kit was persuaded by her aunt to retire for the night, she was in better spirits; and appeared even in better health:  assuring them that she felt certain she should rise in the morning, quite well.\n\n 'I hope,' said Halley, when Mrs. Marcia returned, 'that nothing is the matter?  She don't look well to-night, but--'\n\n The old lady motioned to him not to speak; and sitting herself down in a dark corner of the room, remained silent for some time. At length, she said, in a trembling voice:\n\n 'I hope not, Halley.  I have been very happy with her for some years: too happy, perhaps.  It may be time that I should meet with some misfortune; but I hope it is not this.'\n\n 'What?' inquired Halley.\n\n 'The heavy blow,' said the old lady, 'of losing the dear girl who has so long been my comfort and happiness.'\n\n 'Oh!  God forbid!' exclaimed Halley, hastily.\n\n 'Amen to that, my child!' said the old lady, wringing her hands.\n\n 'Surely there is no danger of anything so dreadful?' said Halley. 'Two hours ago, she was quite well.'\n\n 'She is very ill now,' rejoined Mrs. Marcias; 'and will be worse, I am sure.  My dear, dear Kit!  Oh, what shall I do without her!'\n\n She gave way to such great grief, that Halley, suppressing his own emotion, ventured to remonstrate with her; and to beg, earnestly, that, for the sake of the dear young lady herself, she would be more calm.\n\n 'And consider, ma'am,' said Halley, as the tears forced themselves into his eyes, despite of his efforts to the contrary. 'Oh! consider how young and good she is, and what pleasure and comfort she gives to all about her.  I am sure--certain--quite certain--that, for your sake, who are so good yourself; and for her own; and for the sake of all she makes so happy; she will not die.  Heaven will never let her die so young.'\n\n 'Hush!' said Mrs. Marcia, laying her hand on Halley's head. 'You think like a child, poor boy.  But you teach me my duty, notwithstanding.  I had forgotten it for a moment, Halley, but I hope I may be pardoned, for I am old, and have seen enough of illness and death to know the agony of separation from the objects of our love.  I have seen enough, too, to know that it is not always the youngest and best who are spared to those that love them; but this should give us comfort in our sorrow; for Heaven is just; and such things teach us, impressively, that there is a brighter world than this; and that the passage to it is speedy. God's will be done!  I love her; and He knows how well!'\n\n Halley was surprised to see that as Mrs. Marcia said these words, she checked her lamentations as though by one effort; and drawing herself up as she spoke, became composed and firm.  He was still more astonished to find that this firmness lasted; and that, under all the care and watching which ensued, Mrs. Marcia was ever ready and collected: performing all the duties which had devolved upon her, steadily, and, to all external appearances, even cheerfully.  But he was young, and did not know what strong minds are capable of, under trying circumstances.  How should he, when their possessors so seldom know themselves?\n\n An anxious night ensued.  When morning came, Mrs. Marcia's predictions were but too well verified.  Kit was in the first stage of a high and dangerous fever.\n\n 'We must be active, Halley, and not give way to useless grief,' said Mrs. Marcia, laying her finger on her lip, as she looked steadily into his face; 'this letter must be sent, with all possible expedition, to Mr. Terrance.  It must be carried to the market-town: which is not more than four miles off, by the footpath across the field:  and thence dispatched, by an express on horseback, straight to Chertsey. The people at the inn will undertake to do this: and I can trust to you to see it done, I know.'\n\n Halley could make no reply, but looked his anxiety to be gone at once.\n\n 'Here is another letter,' said Mrs. Marcia, pausing to reflect; 'but whether to send it now, or wait until I see how Kit goes on, I scarcely know.  I would not forward it, unless I feared the worst.'\n\n 'Is it for Chertsey, too, ma'am?' inquired Halley; impatient to execute his commission, and holding out his trembling hand for the letter.\n\n 'No,' replied the old lady, giving it to him mechanically. Halley glanced at it, and saw that it was directed to Harry Marcia, Esquire, at some great lord's house in the country; where, he could not make out.\n\n 'Shall it go, ma'am?' asked Halley, looking up, impatiently.\n\n 'I think not,' replied Mrs. Marcia, taking it back.  'I will wait until to-morrow.'\n\n With these words, she gave Halley her purse, and he started off, without more delay, at the greatest speed he could muster.\n\n Swiftly he ran across the fields, and down the little lanes which sometimes divided them: now almost hidden by the high corn on either side, and now emerging on an open field, where the mowers and haymakers were busy at their work:  nor did he stop once, save now and then, for a few seconds, to recover breath, until he came, in a great heat, and covered with dust, on the little market-place of the market-town.\n\n Here he paused, and looked about for the inn.  There were a white bank, and a red brewery, and a yellow town-hall; and in one corner there was a large house, with all the wood about it painted green:  before which was the sign of 'The George.'  To this he hastened, as soon as it caught his eye.\n\n He spoke to a postboy who was dozing under the gateway; and who, after hearing what he wanted, referred him to the ostler; who after hearing all he had to say again, referred him to the landlord; who was a tall gentleman in a blue neckcloth, a white hat, drab breeches, and boots with tops to match, leaning against a pump by the stable-door, picking his teeth with a silver toothpick.\n\n This gentleman walked with much deliberation into the bar to make out the bill:  which took a long time making out:  and after it was ready, and paid, a horse had to be saddled, and a man to be dressed, which took up ten good minutes more.  Meanwhile Halley was in such a desperate state of impatience and anxiety, that he felt as if he could have jumped upon the horse himself, and galloped away, full tear, to the next stage.  At length, all was ready; and the little parcel having been handed up, with many injunctions and entreaties for its speedy delivery, the man set spurs to his horse, and rattling over the uneven paving of the market-place, was out of the town, and galloping along the turnpike-road, in a couple of minutes.\n\n As it was something to feel certain that assistance was sent for, and that no time had been lost, Halley hurried up the inn-yard, with a somewhat lighter heart.  He was turning out of the gateway when he accidently stumbled against a tall man wrapped in a cloak, who was at that moment coming out of the inn door.\n\n 'Hah!' cried the man, fixing his eyes on Halley, and suddenly recoiling.  'What the devil's this?'\n\n 'I beg your pardon, sir,' said Halley; 'I was in a great hurry to get home, and didn't see you were coming.'\n\n 'Death!' muttered the man to himself, glaring at the boy with his large dark eyes.  'Who would have thought it! Grind him to ashes! He'd start up from a stone coffin, to come in my way!'\n\n 'I am sorry,' stammered Halley, confused by the strange man's wild look.  'I hope I have not hurt you!'\n\n 'Rot you!' murmured the man, in a horrible passion; between his clenched teeth; 'if I had only had the courage to say the word, I might have been free of you in a night.  Curses on your head, and black death on your heart, you imp!  What are you doing here?'\n\n The man shook his fist, as he uttered these words incoherently. He advanced towards Halley, as if with the intention of aiming a blow at him, but fell violently on the ground:  writhing and foaming, in a fit.\n\n Halley gazed, for a moment, at the struggles of the madman (for such he supposed him to be); and then darted into the house for help.  Having seen him safely carried into the hotel, he turned his face homewards, running as fast as he could, to make up for lost time:  and recalling with a great deal of astonishment and some fear, the extraordinary behaviour of the person from whom he had just parted.\n\n The circumstance did not dwell in his recollection long, however: for when he reached the cottage, there was enough to occupy his mind, and to drive all considerations of self completely from his memory.\n\n Kit Marcia had rapidly grown worse; before mid-night she was delirious.  A medical practitioner, who resided on the spot, was in constant attendance upon her; and after first seeing the patient, he had taken Mrs. Marcia aside, and pronounced her disorder to be one of a most alarming nature. 'In fact,' he said, 'it would be little short of a miracle, if she recovered.'\n\n How often did Halley start from his bed that night, and stealing out, with noiseless footstep, to the staircase, listen for the slightest sound from the sick chamber!  How often did a tremble shake his frame, and cold drops of terror start upon his brow, when a sudden trampling of feet caused him to fear that something too dreadful to think of, had even then occurred!  And what had been the fervency of all the prayers he had ever muttered, compared with those he poured forth, now, in the agony and passion of his supplication for the life and health of the gentle creature, who was tottering on the deep grave's verge!\n\n Oh! the suspense, the fearful, acute suspense, of standing idly by while the life of one we dearly love, is trembling in the balance!  Oh! the racking thoughts that crowd upon the mind, and make the heart beat violently, and the breath come thick, by the force of the images they conjure up before it; the desperate anxiety _to be doing something_ to relieve the pain, or lessen the danger, which we have no power to alleviate; the sinking of soul and spirit, which the sad remembrance of our helplessness produces; what tortures can equal these; what reflections or endeavours can, in the full tide and fever of the time, allay them!\n\n Morning came; and the little cottage was lonely and still. People spoke in whispers; anxious faces appeared at the gate, from time to time; women and children went away in tears. All the livelong day, and for hours after it had grown dark, Halley paced softly up and down the garden, raising his eyes every instant to the sick chamber, and shuddering to see the darkened window, looking as if death lay stretched inside.  Late that night, Mr. Terrance arrived.  'It is hard,' said the good doctor, turning away as he spoke; 'so young; so much beloved; but there is very little hope.'\n\n Another morning.  The sun shone brightly; as brightly as if it looked upon no misery or care; and, with every leaf and flower in full bloom about her; with life, and health, and sounds and sights of joy, surrounding her on every side: the fair young creature lay, wasting fast.  Halley crept away to the old churchyard, and sitting down on one of the green mounds, wept and prayed for her, in silence.\n\n There was such peace and beauty in the scene; so much of brightness and mirth in the sunny landscape; such blithesome music in the songs of the summer birds; such freedom in the rapid flight of the rook, careering overhead; so much of life and joyousness in all; that, when the boy raised his aching eyes, and looked about, the thought instinctively occurred to him, that this was not a time for death; that Kit could surely never die when humbler things were all so glad and gay; that graves were for cold and cheerless winter:  not for sunlight and fragrance. He almost thought that shrouds were for the old and shrunken; and that they never wrapped the young and graceful form in their ghastly folds.\n\n A knell from the church bell broke harshly on these youthful thoughts. Another!  Again!  It was tolling for the funeral service.  A group of humble mourners entered the gate: wearing white favours; for the corpse was young.  They stood uncovered by a grave; and there was a mother--a mother once--among the weeping train.  But the sun shone brightly, and the birds sang on.\n\n Halley turned homeward, thinking on the many kindnesses he had received from the young lady, and wishing that the time could come again, that he might never cease showing her how grateful and attached he was.  He had no cause for self-reproach on the score of neglect, or want of thought, for he had been devoted to her service; and yet a hundred little occasions rose up before him, on which he fancied he might have been more zealous, and more earnest, and wished he had been.  We need be careful how we deal with those about us, when every death carries to some small circle of survivors, thoughts of so much omitted, and so little done--of so many things forgotten, and so many more which might have been repaired!  There is no remorse so deep as that which is unavailing; if we would be spared its tortures, let us remember this, in time.\n\n When he reached home Mrs. Marcia was sitting in the little parlour. Halley's heart sank at sight of her; for she had never left the bedside of her niece; and he trembled to think what change could have driven her away.  He learnt that she had fallen into a deep sleep, from which she would waken, either to recovery and life, or to bid them farewell, and die.\n\n They sat, listening, and afraid to speak, for hours.  The untasted meal was removed, with looks which showed that their thoughts were elsewhere, they watched the sun as he sank lower and lower, and, at length, cast over sky and earth those brilliant hues which herald his departure.  Their quick ears caught the sound of an approaching footstep.  They both involuntarily darted to the door, as Mr. Terrance entered.\n\n 'What of Kit?' cried the old lady.  'Tell me at once!  I can bear it; anything but suspense!  Oh, tell me! in the name of Heaven!'\n\n 'You must compose yourself,' said the doctor supporting her. 'Be calm, my dear ma'am, pray.'\n\n 'Let me go, in God's name!  My dear child!  She is dead! She is dying!'\n\n 'No!' cried the doctor, passionately.  'As He is good and merciful, she will live to bless us all, for years to come.'\n\n The lady fell upon her knees, and tried to fold her hands together; but the energy which had supported her so long, fled up to Heaven with her first thanksgiving; and she sank into the friendly arms which were extended to receive her.\n\n\n\n\n It was almost too much happiness to bear.  Halley felt stunned and stupefied by the unexpected intelligence; he could not weep, or speak, or rest.  He had scarcely the power of understanding anything that had passed, until, after a long ramble in the quiet evening air, a burst of tears came to his relief, and he seemed to awaken, all at once, to a full sense of the joyful change that had occurred, and the almost insupportable load of anguish which had been taken from his breast.\n\n The night was fast closing in, when he returned homeward:  laden with flowers which he had culled, with peculiar care, for the adornment of the sick chamber.  As he walked briskly along the road, he heard behind him, the noise of some vehicle, approaching at a furious pace.  Looking round, he saw that it was a post-chaise, driven at great speed; and as the horses were galloping, and the road was narrow, he stood leaning against a gate until it should have passed him.\n\n As it dashed on, Halley caught a glimpse of a man in a white nightcap, whose face seemed familiar to him, although his view was so brief that he could not identify the person.  In another second or two, the nightcap was thrust out of the chaise-window, and a stentorian voice bellowed to the driver to stop:  which he did, as soon as he could pull up his horses.  Then, the nightcap once again appeared: and the same voice called Halley by his name.\n\n 'Here!' cried the voice.  'Halley, what's the news?  Miss Kit! Master O-li-ver!'\n\n 'Is it you, Alfred?' cried Halley, running up to the chaise-door.\n\n Alfred popped out his nightcap again, preparatory to making some reply, when he was suddenly pulled back by a young gentleman who occupied the other corner of the chaise, and who eagerly demanded what was the news.\n\n 'In a word!' cried the gentleman, 'Juniperter or worse?'\n\n 'Juniperter--much better!' replied Halley, hastily.\n\n 'Thank Heaven!' exclaimed the gentleman.  'You are sure?'\n\n 'Quite, sir,' replied Halley.  'The change took place only a few hours ago; and Mr. Terrance says, that all danger is at an end.'\n\n The gentleman said not another word, but, opening the chaise-door, leaped out, and taking Halley hurriedly by the arm, led him aside.\n\n 'You are quite certain?  There is no possibility of any mistake on your part, my boy, is there?' demanded the gentleman in a tremulous voice. 'Do not deceive me, by awakening hopes that are not to be fulfilled.'\n\n 'I would not for the world, sir,' replied Halley.  'Indeed you may believe me.  Mr. Terrance's words were, that she would live to bless us all for many years to come.  I heard him say so.'\n\n The tears stood in Halley's eyes as he recalled the scene which was the beginning of so much happiness; and the gentleman turned his face away, and remained silent, for some minutes.  Halley thought he heard him sob, more than once; but he feared to interrupt him by any fresh remark--for he could well guess what his feelings were--and so stood apart, feigning to be occupied with his nosegay.\n\n All this time, Mr. Alfred, with the white nightcap on, had been sitting on the steps of the chaise, supporting an elbow on each knee, and wiping his eyes with a blue cotton pocket-handkerchief dotted with white spots.  That the honest fellow had not been feigning emotion, was abundantly demonstrated by the very red eyes with which he regarded the young gentleman, when he turned round and addressed him.\n\n 'I think you had better go on to my mother's in the chaise, Alfred,' said he.  'I would rather walk slowly on, so as to gain a little time before I see her.  You can say I am coming.'\n\n 'I beg your pardon, Mr. Harry,' said Alfred:  giving a final polish to his ruffled countenance with the handkerchief; 'but if you would leave the postboy to say that, I should be very much obliged to you.  It wouldn't be proper for the maids to see me in this state, sir; I should never have any more authority with them if they did.'\n\n 'Well,' rejoined Harry Marcia, smiling, 'you can do as you like. Let him go on with the luggage, if you wish it, and do you follow with us. Only first exchange that nightcap for some more appropriate covering, or we shall be taken for madmen.'\n\n Mr. Alfred, reminded of his unbecoming costume, snatched off and pocketed his nightcap; and substituted a hat, of grave and sober shape, which he took out of the chaise.  This done, the postboy drove off; Alfred, Mr. Marcia, and Halley, followed at their leisure.\n\n As they walked along, Halley glanced from time to time with much interest and curiosity at the new comer.  He seemed about five-and-twenty years of age, and was of the middle height; his countenance was frank and handsome; and his demeanor easy and prepossessing.  Notwithstanding the difference between youth and age, he bore so strong a likeness to the old lady, that Halley would have had no great difficulty in imagining their relationship, if he had not already spoken of her as his mother.\n\n Mrs. Marcia was anxiously waiting to receive her son when he reached the cottage.  The meeting did not take place without great emotion on both sides.\n\n 'Mother!' whispered the young man; 'why did you not write before?'\n\n 'I did,' replied Mrs. Marcia; 'but, on reflection, I determined to keep back the letter until I had heard Mr. Terrance's opinion.'\n\n 'But why,' said the young man, 'why run the chance of that occurring which so nearly happened?  If Kit had--I cannot utter that word now--if this illness had terminated differently, how could you ever have forgiven yourself!  How could I ever have know happiness again!'\n\n 'If that _had_ been the case, Harry,' said Mrs. Marcia, 'I fear your happiness would have been effectually blighted, and that your arrival here, a day sooner or a day later, would have been of very, very little import.'\n\n 'And who can wonder if it be so, mother?' rejoined the young man; 'or why should I say, _if_?--It is--it is--you know it, mother--you must know it!'\n\n 'I know that she deserves the best and purest love the heart of man can offer,' said Mrs. Marcia; 'I know that the devotion and affection of her nature require no ordinary return, but one that shall be deep and lasting.  If I did not feel this, and know, besides, that a changed behaviour in one she loved would break her heart, I should not feel my task so difficult of performance, or have to encounter so many struggles in my own bosom, when I take what seems to me to be the strict line of duty.'\n\n 'This is unkind, mother,' said Harry.  'Do you still suppose that I am a boy ignorant of my own mind, and mistaking the impulses of my own soul?'\n\n 'I think, my dear son,' returned Mrs. Marcia, laying her hand upon his shoulder, 'that youth has many generous impulses which do not last; and that among them are some, which, being gratified, become only the more fleeting.  Above all, I think' said the lady, fixing her eyes on her son's face, 'that if an enthusiastic, ardent, and ambitious man marry a wife on whose name there is a stain, which, though it originate in no fault of hers, may be visited by cold and sordid people upon her, and upon his children also: and, in exact proportion to his success in the world, be cast in his teeth, and made the subject of sneers against him:  he may, no matter how generous and good his nature, one day repent of the connection he formed in early life.  And she may have the pain of knowing that he does so.'\n\n 'Mother,' said the young man, impatiently, 'he would be a selfish brute, unworthy alike of the name of man and of the woman you describe, who acted thus.'\n\n 'You think so now, Harry,' replied his mother.\n\n 'And ever will!' said the young man.  'The mental agony I have suffered, during the last two days, wrings from me the avowal to you of a passion which, as you well know, is not one of yesterday, nor one I have lightly formed.  On Kit, sweet, gentle girl! my heart is set, as firmly as ever heart of man was set on woman.  I have no thought, no view, no hope in life, beyond her; and if you oppose me in this great stake, you take my peace and happiness in your hands, and cast them to the wind.  Mother, think better of this, and of me, and do not disregard the happiness of which you seem to think so little.'\n\n 'Harry,' said Mrs. Marcia, 'it is because I think so much of warm and sensitive hearts, that I would spare them from being wounded. But we have said enough, and more than enough, on this matter, just now.'\n\n 'Let it rest with Kit, then,' interposed Harry.  'You will not press these overstrained opinions of yours, so far, as to throw any obstacle in my way?'\n\n 'I will not,' rejoined Mrs. Marcia; 'but I would have you consider--'\n\n 'I _have_ considered!' was the impatient reply; 'Mother, I have considered, years and years.  I have considered, ever since I have been capable of serious reflection.  My feelings remain unchanged, as they ever will; and why should I suffer the pain of a delay in giving them vent, which can be productive of no earthly good?  No!  Before I leave this place, Kit shall hear me.'\n\n 'She shall,' said Mrs. Marcia.\n\n 'There is something in your manner, which would almost imply that she will hear me coldly, mother,' said the young man.\n\n 'Not coldly,' rejoined the old lady; 'far from it.'\n\n 'How then?' urged the young man.  'She has formed no other attachment?'\n\n 'No, indeed,' replied his mother; 'you have, or I mistake, too strong a hold on her affections already.  What I would say,' resumed the old lady, stopping her son as he was about to speak, 'is this.  Before you stake your all on this chance; before you suffer yourself to be carried to the highest point of hope; reflect for a few moments, my dear child, on Kit's history, and consider what effect the knowledge of her doubtful birth may have on her decision:  devoted as she is to us, with all the intensity of her noble mind, and with that perfect sacrifice of self which, in all matters, great or trifling, has always been her characteristic.'\n\n 'What do you mean?'\n\n 'That I leave you to discover,' replied Mrs. Marcia.  'I must go back to her.  God bless you!'\n\n 'I shall see you again to-night?' said the young man, eagerly.\n\n 'By and by,' replied the lady; 'when I leave Kit.'\n\n 'You will tell her I am here?' said Harry.\n\n 'Of course,' replied Mrs. Marcia.\n\n 'And say how anxious I have been, and how much I have suffered, and how I long to see her.  You will not refuse to do this, mother?'\n\n 'No,' said the old lady; 'I will tell her all.'  And pressing her son's hand, affectionately, she hastened from the room.\n\n Mr. Terrance and Halley had remained at another end of the apartment while this hurried conversation was proceeding.  The former now held out his hand to Harry Marcia; and hearty salutations were exchanged between them.  The doctor then communicated, in reply to multifarious questions from his young friend, a precise account of his patient's situation; which was quite as consolatory and full of promise, as Halley's statement had encouraged him to hope; and to the whole of which, Mr. Alfred, who affected to be busy about the luggage, listened with greedy ears.\n\n 'Have you shot anything particular, lately, Alfred?' inquired the doctor, when he had concluded.\n\n 'Nothing particular, sir,' replied Mr. Alfred, colouring up to the eyes.\n\n 'Nor catching any thieves, nor identifying any house-breakers?' said the doctor.\n\n 'None at all, sir,' replied Mr. Alfred, with much gravity.\n\n 'Well,' said the doctor, 'I am sorry to hear it, because you do that sort of thing admirably.  Pray, how is Lia?'\n\n 'The boy is very well, sir,' said Mr. Alfred, recovering his usual tone of patronage; 'and sends his respectful duty, sir.'\n\n 'That's well,' said the doctor.  'Seeing you here, reminds me, Mr. Alfred, that on the day before that on which I was called away so hurriedly, I executed, at the request of your good mistress, a small commission in your favour.  Just step into this corner a moment, will you?'\n\n Mr. Alfred walked into the corner with much importance, and some wonder, and was honoured with a short whispering conference with the doctor, on the termination of which, he made a great many bows, and retired with steps of unusual stateliness.  The subject matter of this conference was not disclosed in the parlour, but the kitchen was speedily enlightened concerning it; for Mr. Alfred walked straight thither, and having called for a mug of ale, announced, with an air of majesty, which was highly effective, that it had pleased his mistress, in consideration of his gallant behaviour on the occasion of that attempted robbery, to deposit, in the local savings-bank, the sum of five-and-twenty pounds, for his sole use and benefit.  At this, the two women-servants lifted up their hands and eyes, and supposed that Mr. Alfred, pulling out his shirt-frill, replied, 'No, no'; and that if they observed that he was at all haughty to his inferiors, he would thank them to tell him so.  And then he made a great many other remarks, no less illustrative of his humility, which were received with equal favour and applause, and were, withal, as original and as much to the purpose, as the remarks of great men commonly are.\n\n Above stairs, the remainder of the evening passed cheerfully away; for the doctor was in high spirits; and however fatigued or thoughtful Harry Marcia might have been at first, he was not proof against the worthy gentleman's good humour, which displayed itself in a great variety of sallies and professional recollections, and an abundance of small jokes, which struck Halley as being the drollest things he had ever heard, and caused him to laugh proportionately; to the evident satisfaction of the doctor, who laughed immoderately at himself, and made Harry laugh almost as heartily, by the very force of sympathy. So, they were as pleasant a party as, under the circumstances, they could well have been; and it was late before they retired, with light and thankful hearts, to take that rest of which, after the doubt and suspense they had recently undergone, they stood much in need.\n\n Halley rose next morning, in better heart, and went about his usual occupations, with more hope and pleasure than he had known for many days.  The birds were once more hung out, to sing, in their old places; and the sweetest wild flowers that could be found, were once more gathered to gladden Kit with their beauty. The melancholy which had seemed to the sad eyes of the anxious boy to hang, for days past, over every object, beautiful as all were, was dispelled by magic.  The dew seemed to sparkle more brightly on the green leaves; the air to rustle among them with a sweeter music; and the sky itself to look more blue and bright. Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercise, even over the appearance of external objects.  Men who look on nature, and their fellow-men, and cry that all is dark and gloomy, are in the right; but the sombre colours are reflections from their own jaundiced eyes and hearts.  The real hues are delicate, and need a clearer vision.\n\n It is worthy of remark, and Halley did not fail to note it at the time, that his morning expeditions were no longer made alone. Harry Marcia, after the very first morning when he met Halley coming laden home, was seized with such a passion for flowers, and displayed such a taste in their arrangement, as left his young companion far behind.  If Halley were behindhand in these respects, he knew where the best were to be found; and morning after morning they scoured the country together, and brought home the fairest that blossomed.  The window of the young lady's chamber was opened now; for she loved to feel the rich summer air stream in, and revive her with its freshness; but there always stood in water, just inside the lattice, one particular little bunch, which was made up with great care, every morning.  Halley could not help noticing that the withered flowers were never thrown away, although the little vase was regularly replenished; nor, could he help observing, that whenever the doctor came into the garden, he invariably cast his eyes up to that particular corner, and nodded his head most expressively, as he set forth on his morning's walk.  Pending these observations, the days were flying by; and Kit was rapidly recovering.\n\n Nor did Halley's time hang heavy on his hands, although the young lady had not yet left her chamber, and there were no evening walks, save now and then, for a short distance, with Mrs. Marcia. He applied himself, with redoubled assiduity, to the instructions of the white-headed old gentleman, and laboured so hard that his quick progress surprised even himself.  It was while he was engaged in this pursuit, that he was greatly startled and distressed by a most unexpected occurrence.\n\n The little room in which he was accustomed to sit, when busy at his books, was on the ground-floor, at the back of the house.  It was quite a cottage-room, with a lattice-window: around which were clusters of jessamine and honeysuckle, that crept over the casement, and filled the place with their delicious perfume.  It looked into a garden, whence a wicket-gate opened into a small paddock; all beyond, was fine meadow-land and wood.  There was no other dwelling near, in that direction; and the prospect it commanded was very extensive.\n\n One beautiful evening, when the first shades of twilight were beginning to settle upon the earth, Halley sat at this window, intent upon his books.  He had been poring over them for some time; and, as the day had been uncommonly sultry, and he had exerted himself a great deal, it is no disparagement to the authors, whoever they may have been, to say, that gradually and by slow degrees, he fell asleep.\n\n There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure.  So far as an overpowering heaviness, a prostration of strength, and an utter inability to control our thoughts or power of motion, can be called sleep, this is it; and yet, we have a consciousness of all that is going on about us, and, if we dream at such a time, words which are really spoken, or sounds which really exist at the moment, accommodate themselves with surprising readiness to our visions, until reality and imagination become so strangely blended that it is afterwards almost matter of impossibility to separate the two.  Nor is this, the most striking phenomenon incidental to such a state.  It is an undoubted fact, that although our senses of touch and sight be for the time dead, yet our sleeping thoughts, and the visionary scenes that pass before us, will be influenced and materially influenced, by the _mere silent presence_ of some external object; which may not have been near us when we closed our eyes:  and of whose vicinity we have had no waking consciousness.\n\n Halley knew, perfectly well, that he was in his own little room; that his books were lying on the table before him; that the sweet air was stirring among the creeping plants outside.  And yet he was asleep. Suddenly, the scene changed; the air became close and confined; and he thought, with a glow of terror, that he was in the Jew's house again. There sat the hideous old man, in his accustomed corner, pointing at him, and whispering to another man, with his face averted, who sat beside him.\n\n 'Hush, my dear!' he thought he heard the Jew say; 'it is he, sure enough.  Come away.'\n\n 'He!' the other man seemed to answer; 'could I mistake him, think you? If a crowd of ghosts were to put themselves into his exact shape, and he stood amongst them, there is something that would tell me how to point him out.  If you buried him fifty feet deep, and took me across his grave, I fancy I should know, if there wasn't a mark above it, that he lay buried there?'\n\n The man seemed to say this, with such dreadful hatred, that Halley awoke with the fear, and started up.\n\n Good Heaven!  what was that, which sent the blood tingling to his heart, and deprived him of his voice, and of power to move! There--there--at the window--close before him--so close, that he could have almost touched him before he started back:  with his eyes peering into the room, and meeting his:  there stood the Jew!  And beside him, white with rage or fear, or both, were the scowling features of the man who had accosted him in the inn-yard.\n\n It was but an instant, a glance, a flash, before his eyes; and they were gone.  But they had recognised him, and he them; and their look was as firmly impressed upon his memory, as if it had been deeply carved in stone, and set before him from his birth. He stood transfixed for a moment; then, leaping from the window into the garden, called loudly for help.\n\n\n\n\n When the inmates of the house, attracted by Halley's cries, hurried to the spot from which they proceeded, they found him, pale and agitated, pointing in the direction of the meadows behind the house, and scarcely able to articulate the words, 'The Jew! the Jew!'\n\n Mr. Alfred was at a loss to comprehend what this outcry meant; but Harry Marcia, whose perceptions were something quicker, and who had heard Halley's history from his mother, understood it at once.\n\n 'What direction did he take?' he asked, catching up a heavy stick which was standing in a corner.\n\n 'That,' replied Halley, pointing out the course the man had taken; 'I missed them in an instant.'\n\n 'Then, they are in the ditch!' said Harry.  'Follow!  And keep as near me, as you can.' So saying, he sprang over the hedge, and darted off with a speed which rendered it matter of exceeding difficulty for the others to keep near him.\n\n Alfred followed as well as he could; and Halley followed too; and in the course of a minute or two, Mr. Terrance, who had been out walking, and just then returned, tumbled over the hedge after them, and picking himself up with more agility than he could have been supposed to possess, struck into the same course at no contemptible speed, shouting all the while, most prodigiously, to know what was the matter.\n\n On they all went; nor stopped they once to breathe, until the leader, striking off into an angle of the field indicated by Halley, began to search, narrowly, the ditch and hedge adjoining; which afforded time for the remainder of the party to come up; and for Halley to communicate to Mr. Terrance the circumstances that had led to so vigorous a pursuit.\n\n The search was all in vain.  There were not even the traces of recent footsteps, to be seen.  They stood now, on the summit of a little hill, commanding the open fields in every direction for three or four miles. There was the village in the hollow on the left; but, in order to gain that, after pursuing the track Halley had pointed out, the men must have made a circuit of open ground, which it was impossible they could have accomplished in so short a time.  A thick wood skirted the meadow-land in another direction; but they could not have gained that covert for the same reason.\n\n 'It must have been a dream, Halley,' said Harry Marcia.\n\n 'Oh no, indeed, sir,' replied Halley, shuddering at the very recollection of the old wretch's countenance; 'I saw him too plainly for that.  I saw them both, as plainly as I see you now.'\n\n 'Who was the other?' inquired Harry and Mr. Terrance, together.\n\n 'The very same man I told you of, who came so suddenly upon me at the inn,' said Halley.  'We had our eyes fixed full upon each other; and I could swear to him.'\n\n 'They took this way?' demanded Harry:  'are you sure?'\n\n 'As I am that the men were at the window,' replied Halley, pointing down, as he spoke, to the hedge which divided the cottage-garden from the meadow.  'The tall man leaped over, just there; and the Jew, running a few paces to the right, crept through that gap.'\n\n The two gentlemen watched Halley's earnest face, as he spoke, and looking from him to each other, seemed to feel satisfied of the accuracy of what he said.  Still, in no direction were there any appearances of the trampling of men in hurried flight.  The grass was long; but it was trodden down nowhere, save where their own feet had crushed it.  The sides and brinks of the ditches were of damp clay; but in no one place could they discern the print of men's shoes, or the slightest mark which would indicate that any feet had pressed the ground for hours before.\n\n 'This is strange!' said Harry.\n\n 'Strange?' echoed the doctor.  'Rashad and Lorelei, themselves, could make nothing of it.'\n\n Notwithstanding the evidently useless nature of their search, they did not desist until the coming on of night rendered its further prosecution hopeless; and even then, they gave it up with reluctance. Alfred was dispatched to the different ale-houses in the village, furnished with the best description Halley could give of the appearance and dress of the strangers.  Of these, the Jew was, at all events, sufficiently remarkable to be remembered, supposing he had been seen drinking, or loitering about; but Alfred returned without any intelligence, calculated to dispel or lessen the mystery.\n\n On the next day, fresh search was made, and the inquiries renewed; but with no better success.  On the day following, Halley and Mr. Marcia repaired to the market-town, in the hope of seeing or hearing something of the men there; but this effort was equally fruitless.  After a few days, the affair began to be forgotten, as most affairs are, when wonder, having no fresh food to support it, dies away of itself.\n\n Meanwhile, Kit was rapidly recovering.  She had left her room: was able to go out; and mixing once more with the family, carried joy into the hearts of all.\n\n But, although this happy change had a visible effect on the little circle; and although cheerful voices and merry laughter were once more heard in the cottage; there was at times, an unwonted restraint upon some there:  even upon Kit herself: which Halley could not fail to remark.  Mrs. Marcia and her son were often closeted together for a long time; and more than once Kit appeared with traces of tears upon her face.  After Mr. Terrance had fixed a day for his departure to Chertsey, these symptoms increased; and it became evident that something was in progress which affected the peace of the young lady, and of somebody else besides.\n\n At length, one morning, when Kit was alone in the breakfast-parlour, Harry Marcia entered; and, with some hesitation, begged permission to speak with her for a few moments.\n\n 'A few--a very few--will suffice, Kit,' said the young man, drawing his chair towards her.  'What I shall have to say, has already presented itself to your mind; the most cherished hopes of my heart are not unknown to you, though from my lips you have not heard them stated.'\n\n Kit had been very pale from the moment of his entrance; but that might have been the effect of her recent illness.  She merely bowed; and bending over some plants that stood near, waited in silence for him to proceed.\n\n 'I--I--ought to have left here, before,' said Harry.\n\n 'You should, indeed,' replied Kit.  'Forgive me for saying so, but I wish you had.'\n\n 'I was brought here, by the most dreadful and agonising of all apprehensions,' said the young man; 'the fear of losing the one dear being on whom my every wish and hope are fixed.  You had been dying; trembling between earth and heaven.  We know that when the young, the beautiful, and good, are visited with sickness, their pure spirits insensibly turn towards their bright home of lasting rest; we know, Heaven help us! that the best and fairest of our kind, too often fade in blooming.'\n\n There were tears in the eyes of the gentle girl, as these words were spoken; and when one fell upon the flower over which she bent, and glistened brightly in its cup, making it more beautiful, it seemed as though the outpouring of her fresh young heart, claimed kindred naturally, with the loveliest things in nature.\n\n 'A creature,' continued the young man, passionately, 'a creature as fair and innocent of guile as one of God's own angels, fluttered between life and death.  Oh! who could hope, when the distant world to which she was akin, half opened to her view, that she would return to the sorrow and calamity of this!  Kit, Kit, to know that you were passing away like some soft shadow, which a light from above, casts upon the earth; to have no hope that you would be spared to those who linger here; hardly to know a reason why you should be; to feel that you belonged to that bright sphere whither so many of the fairest and the best have winged their early flight; and yet to pray, amid all these consolations, that you might be restored to those who loved you--these were distractions almost too great to bear. They were mine, by day and night; and with them, came such a rushing torrent of fears, and apprehensions, and selfish regrets, lest you should die, and never know how devotedly I loved you, as almost bore down sense and reason in its course.  You recovered. Day by day, and almost hour by hour, some drop of health came back, and mingling with the spent and feeble stream of life which circulated languidly within you, swelled it again to a high and rushing tide.  I have watched you change almost from death, to life, with eyes that turned blind with their eagerness and deep affection. Do not tell me that you wish I had lost this; for it has softened my heart to all mankind.'\n\n 'I did not mean that,' said Kit, weeping; 'I only wish you had left here, that you might have turned to high and noble pursuits again; to pursuits well worthy of you.'\n\n 'There is no pursuit more worthy of me:  more worthy of the highest nature that exists:  than the struggle to win such a heart as yours,' said the young man, taking her hand. 'Kit, my own dear Kit!  For years--for years--I have loved you; hoping to win my way to fame, and then come proudly home and tell you it had been pursued only for you to share; thinking, in my daydreams, how I would remind you, in that happy moment, of the many silent tokens I had given of a boy's attachment, and claim your hand, as in redemption of some old mute contract that had been sealed between us!  That time has not arrived; but here, with not fame won, and no young vision realised, I offer you the heart so long your own, and stake my all upon the words with which you greet the offer.'\n\n 'Your behaviour has ever been kind and noble.' said Kit, mastering the emotions by which she was agitated.  'As you believe that I am not insensible or ungrateful, so hear my answer.'\n\n 'It is, that I may endeavour to deserve you; it is, dear Kit?'\n\n 'It is,' replied Kit, 'that you must endeavour to forget me; not as your old and dearly-attached companion, for that would wound me deeply; but, as the object of your love.  Look into the world; think how many hearts you would be proud to gain, are there. Confide some other passion to me, if you will; I will be the truest, warmest, and most faithful friend you have.'\n\n There was a pause, during which, Kit, who had covered her face with one hand, gave free vent to her tears.  Harry still retained the other.\n\n 'And your reasons, Kit,' he said, at length, in a low voice; 'your reasons for this decision?'\n\n 'You have a right to know them,' rejoined Kit.  'You can say nothing to alter my resolution.  It is a duty that I must perform.  I owe it, alike to others, and to myself.'\n\n 'To yourself?'\n\n 'Yes, Harry.  I owe it to myself, that I, a friendless, portionless, girl, with a blight upon my name, should not give your friends reason to suspect that I had sordidly yielded to your first passion, and fastened myself, a clog, on all your hopes and projects.  I owe it to you and yours, to prevent you from opposing, in the warmth of your generous nature, this great obstacle to your progress in the world.'\n\n 'If your inclinations chime with your sense of duty--' Harry began.\n\n 'They do not,' replied Kit, colouring deeply.\n\n 'Then you return my love?' said Harry.  'Say but that, dear Kit; say but that; and soften the bitterness of this hard disappointment!'\n\n 'If I could have done so, without doing heavy wrong to him I loved,' rejoined Kit, 'I could have--'\n\n 'Have received this declaration very differently?' said Harry. 'Do not conceal that from me, at least, Kit.'\n\n 'I could,' said Kit.  'Stay!' she added, disengaging her hand, 'why should we prolong this painful interview?  Most painful to me, and yet productive of lasting happiness, notwithstanding; for it _will_ be happiness to know that I once held the high place in your regard which I now occupy, and every triumph you achieve in life will animate me with new fortitude and firmness.  Farewell, Harry!  As we have met to-day, we meet no more; but in other relations than those in which this conversation have placed us, we may be long and happily entwined; and may every blessing that the prayers of a true and earnest heart can call down from the source of all truth and sincerity, cheer and prosper you!'\n\n 'Another word, Kit,' said Harry.  'Your reason in your own words. From your own lips, let me hear it!'\n\n 'The prospect before you,' answered Kit, firmly, 'is a brilliant one. All the honours to which great talents and powerful connections can help men in public life, are in store for you. But those connections are proud; and I will neither mingle with such as may hold in scorn the mother who gave me life; nor bring disgrace or failure on the son of her who has so well supplied that mother's place.  In a word,' said the young lady, turning away, as her temporary firmness forsook her, 'there is a stain upon my name, which the world visits on innocent heads.  I will carry it into no blood but my own; and the reproach shall rest alone on me.'\n\n 'One word more, Kit.  Dearest Kit! one more!' cried Harry, throwing himself before her.  'If I had been less--less fortunate, the world would call it--if some obscure and peaceful life had been my destiny--if I had been poor, sick, helpless--would you have turned from me then?  Or has my probable advancement to riches and honour, given this scruple birth?'\n\n 'Do not press me to reply,' answered Kit.  'The question does not arise, and never will.  It is unfair, almost unkind, to urge it.'\n\n 'If your answer be what I almost dare to hope it is,' retorted Harry, 'it will shed a gleam of happiness upon my lonely way, and light the path before me.  It is not an idle thing to do so much, by the utterance of a few brief words, for one who loves you beyond all else. Oh, Kit: in the name of my ardent and enduring attachment; in the name of all I have suffered for you, and all you doom me to undergo; answer me this one question!'\n\n 'Then, if your lot had been differently cast,' rejoined Kit; 'if you had been even a little, but not so far, above me; if I could have been a help and comfort to you in any humble scene of peace and retirement, and not a blot and drawback in ambitious and distinguished crowds; I should have been spared this trial.  I have every reason to be happy, very happy, now; but then, Harry, I own I should have been happier.'\n\n Busy recollections of old hopes, cherished as a girl, long ago, crowded into the mind of Kit, while making this avowal; but they brought tears with them, as old hopes will when they come back withered; and they relieved her.\n\n 'I cannot help this weakness, and it makes my purpose stronger,' said Kit, extending her hand.  'I must leave you now, indeed.'\n\n 'I ask one promise,' said Harry.  'Once, and only once more,--say within a year, but it may be much sooner,--I may speak to you again on this subject, for the last time.'\n\n 'Not to press me to alter my right determination,' replied Kit, with a melancholy smile; 'it will be useless.'\n\n 'No,' said Harry; 'to hear you repeat it, if you will--finally repeat it!  I will lay at your feet, whatever of station of fortune I may possess; and if you still adhere to your present resolution, will not seek, by word or act, to change it.'\n\n 'Then let it be so,' rejoined Kit; 'it is but one pang the more, and by that time I may be enabled to bear it better.'\n\n She extended her hand again.  But the young man caught her to his bosom; and imprinting one kiss on her beautiful forehead, hurried from the room.\n\n\n\n\n 'And so you are resolved to be my travelling companion this morning; eh?' said the doctor, as Harry Marcia joined him and Halley at the breakfast-table.  'Why, you are not in the same mind or intention two half-hours together!'\n\n 'You will tell me a different tale one of these days,' said Harry, colouring without any perceptible reason.\n\n 'I hope I may have good cause to do so,' replied Mr. Terrance; 'though I confess I don't think I shall.  But yesterday morning you had made up your mind, in a great hurry, to stay here, and to accompany your mother, like a dutiful son, to the sea-side. Before noon, you announce that you are going to do me the honour of accompanying me as far as I go, on your road to London.  And at night, you urge me, with great mystery, to start before the ladies are stirring; the consequence of which is, that young Halley here is pinned down to his breakfast when he ought to be ranging the meadows after botanical phenomena of all kinds. Too bad, isn't it, Halley?'\n\n 'I should have been very sorry not to have been at home when you and Mr. Marcia went away, sir,' rejoined Halley.\n\n 'That's a fine fellow,' said the doctor; 'you shall come and see me when you return.  But, to speak seriously, Harry; has any communication from the great nobs produced this sudden anxiety on your part to be gone?'\n\n 'The great nobs,' replied Harry, 'under which designation, I presume, you include my most stately uncle, have not communicated with me at all, since I have been here; nor, at this time of the year, is it likely that anything would occur to render necessary my immediate attendance among them.'\n\n 'Well,' said the doctor, 'you are a queer fellow.  But of course they will get you into parliament at the election before Christmas, and these sudden shiftings and changes are no bad preparation for political life.  There's something in that.  Good training is always desirable, whether the race be for place, cup, or sweepstakes.'\n\n Harry Marcia looked as if he could have followed up this short dialogue by one or two remarks that would have staggered the doctor not a little; but he contented himself with saying, 'We shall see,' and pursued the subject no farther.  The post-chaise drove up to the door shortly afterwards; and Alfred coming in for the luggage, the good doctor bustled out, to see it packed.\n\n 'Halley,' said Harry Marcia, in a low voice, 'let me speak a word with you.'\n\n Halley walked into the window-recess to which Mr. Marcia beckoned him; much surprised at the mixture of sadness and boisterous spirits, which his whole behaviour displayed.\n\n 'You can write well now?' said Harry, laying his hand upon his arm.\n\n 'I hope so, sir,' replied Halley.\n\n 'I shall not be at home again, perhaps for some time; I wish you would write to me--say once a fort-night:  every alternate Monday: to the General Post Office in London.  Will you?'\n\n 'Oh! certainly, sir; I shall be proud to do it,' exclaimed Halley, greatly delighted with the commission.\n\n 'I should like to know how--how my mother and Miss Marcia are,' said the young man; 'and you can fill up a sheet by telling me what walks you take, and what you talk about, and whether she--they, I mean--seem happy and quite well. You understand me?'\n\n 'Oh! quite, sir, quite,' replied Halley.\n\n 'I would rather you did not mention it to them,' said Harry, hurrying over his words; 'because it might make my mother anxious to write to me oftener, and it is a trouble and worry to her. Let it be a secret between you and me; and mind you tell me everything!  I depend upon you.'\n\n Halley, quite elated and honoured by a sense of his importance, faithfully promised to be secret and explicit in his communications. Mr. Marcia took leave of him, with many assurances of his regard and protection.\n\n The doctor was in the chaise; Alfred (who, it had been arranged, should be left behind) held the door open in his hand; and the women-servants were in the garden, looking on.  Harry cast one slight glance at the latticed window, and jumped into the carriage.\n\n 'Drive on!' he cried, 'hard, fast, full gallop!  Nothing short of flying will keep pace with me, to-day.'\n\n 'Halloa!' cried the doctor, letting down the front glass in a great hurry, and shouting to the postillion; 'something very short of flying will keep pace with _me_.  Do you hear?'\n\n Jingling and clattering, till distance rendered its noise inaudible, and its rapid progress only perceptible to the eye, the vehicle wound its way along the road, almost hidden in a cloud of dust: now wholly disappearing, and now becoming visible again, as intervening objects, or the intricacies of the way, permitted.  It was not until even the dusty cloud was no longer to be seen, that the gazers dispersed.\n\n And there was one looker-on, who remained with eyes fixed upon the spot where the carriage had disappeared, long after it was many miles away; for, behind the white curtain which had shrouded her from view when Harry raised his eyes towards the window, sat Kit herself.\n\n 'He seems in high spirits and happy,' she said, at length. 'I feared for a time he might be otherwise.  I was mistaken.  I am very, very glad.'\n\n Tears are signs of gladness as well as grief; but those which coursed down Kit's face, as she sat pensively at the window, still gazing in the same direction, seemed to tell more of sorrow than of joy.\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Juniperhan sat in the workhouse parlour, with his eyes moodily fixed on the cheerless grate, whence, as it was summer time, no brighter gleam proceeded, than the reflection of certain sickly rays of the sun, which were sent back from its cold and shining surface.  A paper fly-cage dangled from the ceiling, to which he occasionally raised his eyes in gloomy thought; and, as the heedless insects hovered round the gaudy net-work, Mr. Juniperhan would heave a deep sigh, while a more gloomy shadow overspread his countenance.  Mr. Juniperhan was meditating; it might be that the insects brought to mind, some painful passage in his own past life.\n\n Nor was Mr. Juniperhan's gloom the only thing calculated to awaken a pleasing melancholy in the bosom of a spectator. There were not wanting other appearances, and those closely connected with his own person, which announced that a great change had taken place in the position of his affairs.  The laced coat, and the cocked hat; where were they?  He still wore knee-breeches, and dark cotton stockings on his nether limbs; but they were not _the_ breeches.  The coat was wide-skirted; and in that respect like _the_ coat, but, oh how different!  The mighty cocked hat was replaced by a modest round one.  Mr. Juniperhan was no longer a beadle.\n\n There are some promotions in life, which, independent of the more substantial rewards they offer, require peculiar value and dignity from the coats and waistcoats connected with them.  A field-marshal has his uniform; a bishop his silk apron; a counsellor his silk gown; a beadle his cocked hat.  Strip the bishop of his apron, or the beadle of his hat and lace; what are they?  Men.  Mere men.  Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan had married Mrs. Carmela, and was master of the workhouse. Another beadle had come into power.  On him the cocked hat, gold-laced coat, and staff, had all three descended.\n\n 'And to-morrow two months it was done!' said Mr. Juniperhan, with a sigh. 'It seems a age.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan might have meant that he had concentrated a whole existence of happiness into the short space of eight weeks; but the sigh--there was a vast deal of meaning in the sigh.\n\n 'I sold myself,' said Mr. Juniperhan, pursuing the same train of relection, 'for six teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a milk-pot; with a small quantity of second-hand furniture, and twenty pound in money.  I went very reasonable.  Cheap, dirt cheap!'\n\n 'Cheap!' cried a shrill voice in Mr. Juniperhan's ear: 'you would have been dear at any price; and dear enough I paid for you, Lord above knows that!'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan turned, and encountered the face of his interesting consort, who, imperfectly comprehending the few words she had overheard of his complaint, had hazarded the foregoing remark at a venture.\n\n 'Mrs. Juniperhan, ma'am!' said Mr. Juniperhan, with a sentimental sternness.\n\n 'Well!' cried the lady.\n\n 'Have the goodness to look at me,' said Mr. Juniperhan, fixing his eyes upon her.  (If she stands such a eye as that,' said Mr. Juniperhan to himself, 'she can stand anything.  It is a eye I never knew to fail with paupers.  If it fails with her, my power is gone.')\n\n Whether an exceedingly small expansion of eye be sufficient to quell paupers, who, being lightly fed, are in no very high condition; or whether the late Mrs. Carmela was particularly proof against eagle glances; are matters of opinion.  The matter of fact, is, that the matron was in no way overpowered by Mr. Juniperhan's scowl, but, on the contrary, treated it with great disdain, and even raised a laugh thereat, which sounded as though it were genuine.\n\n On hearing this most unexpected sound, Mr. Juniperhan looked, first incredulous, and afterwards amazed.  He then relapsed into his former state; nor did he rouse himself until his attention was again awakened by the voice of his partner.\n\n 'Are you going to sit snoring there, all day?' inquired Mrs. Juniperhan.\n\n 'I am going to sit here, as long as I think proper, ma'am,' rejoined Mr. Juniperhan; 'and although I was _not_ snoring, I shall snore, gape, sneeze, laugh, or cry, as the humour strikes me; such being my prerogative.'\n\n '_Your_ prerogative!' sneered Mrs. Juniperhan, with ineffable contempt.\n\n 'I said the word, ma'am,' said Mr. Juniperhan.  'The prerogative of a man is to command.'\n\n 'And what's the prerogative of a woman, in the name of Goodness?' cried the relict of Mr. Carmela deceased.\n\n 'To obey, ma'am,' thundered Mr. Juniperhan.  'Your late unfortunate husband should have taught it you; and then, perhaps, he might have been alive now.  I wish he was, poor man!'\n\n Mrs. Juniperhan, seeing at a glance, that the decisive moment had now arrived, and that a blow struck for the mastership on one side or other, must necessarily be final and conclusive, no sooner heard this allusion to the dead and gone, than she dropped into a chair, and with a loud scream that Mr. Juniperhan was a hard-hearted brute, fell into a paroxysm of tears.\n\n But, tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Juniperhan's soul; his heart was waterproof.  Like washable beaver hats that improve with rain, his nerves were rendered stouter and more vigorous, by showers of tears, which, being tokens of weakness, and so far tacit admissions of his own power, pleased and exalted him.  He eyed his good lady with looks of great satisfaction, and begged, in an encouraging manner, that she should cry her hardest:  the exercise being looked upon, by the faculty, as strongly conducive to health.\n\n 'It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper,' said Mr. Juniperhan.  'So cry away.'\n\n As he discharged himself of this pleasantry, Mr. Juniperhan took his hat from a peg, and putting it on, rather rakishly, on one side, as a man might, who felt he had asserted his superiority in a becoming manner, thrust his hands into his pockets, and sauntered towards the door, with much ease and waggishness depicted in his whole appearance.\n\n Now, Mrs. Carmela that was, had tried the tears, because they were less troublesome than a manual assault; but, she was quite prepared to make trial of the latter mode of proceeding, as Mr. Juniperhan was not long in discovering.\n\n The first proof he experienced of the fact, was conveyed in a hollow sound, immediately succeeded by the sudden flying off of his hat to the opposite end of the room.  This preliminary proceeding laying bare his head, the expert lady, clasping him tightly round the throat with one hand, inflicted a shower of blows (dealt with singular vigour and dexterity) upon it with the other.  This done, she created a little variety by scratching his face, and tearing his hair; and, having, by this time, inflicted as much punishment as she deemed necessary for the offence, she pushed him over a chair, which was luckily well situated for the purpose:  and defied him to talk about his prerogative again, if he dared.\n\n 'Get up!' said Mrs. Juniperhan, in a voice of command.  'And take yourself away from here, unless you want me to do something desperate.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan rose with a very rueful countenance:  wondering much what something desperate might be.  Picking up his hat, he looked towards the door.\n\n 'Are you going?' demanded Mrs. Juniperhan.\n\n 'Certainly, my dear, certainly,' rejoined Mr. Juniperhan, making a quicker motion towards the door.  'I didn't intend to--I'm going, my dear!  You are so very violent, that really I--'\n\n At this instant, Mrs. Juniperhan stepped hastily forward to replace the carpet, which had been kicked up in the scuffle.  Mr. Juniperhan immediately darted out of the room, without bestowing another thought on his unfinished sentence:  leaving the late Mrs. Carmela in full possession of the field.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan was fairly taken by surprise, and fairly beaten.  He had a decided propensity for bullying:  derived no inconsiderable pleasure from the exercise of petty cruelty; and, consequently, was (it is needless to say) a coward.  This is by no means a disparagement to his character; for many official personages, who are held in high respect and admiration, are the victims of similar infirmities.  The remark is made, indeed, rather in his favour than otherwise, and with a view of impressing the reader with a just sense of his qualifications for office.\n\n But, the measure of his degradation was not yet full.  After making a tour of the house, and thinking, for the first time, that the poor-laws really were too hard on people; and that men who ran away from their wives, leaving them chargeable to the parish, ought, in justice to be visited with no punishment at all, but rather rewarded as meritorious individuals who had suffered much; Mr. Juniperhan came to a room where some of the female paupers were usually employed in washing the parish linen:  when the sound of voices in conversation, now proceeded.\n\n 'Hem!' said Mr. Juniperhan, summoning up all his native dignity. 'These women at least shall continue to respect the prerogative. Hallo! hallo there!  What do you mean by this noise, you hussies?'\n\n With these words, Mr. Juniperhan opened the door, and walked in with a very fierce and angry manner:  which was at once exchanged for a most humiliated and cowering air, as his eyes unexpectedly rested on the form of his lady wife.\n\n 'My dear,' said Mr. Juniperhan, 'I didn't know you were here.'\n\n 'Didn't know I was here!' repeated Mrs. Juniperhan.  'What do _you_ do here?'\n\n 'I thought they were talking rather too much to be doing their work properly, my dear,' replied Mr. Juniperhan:  glancing distractedly at a couple of old women at the wash-tub, who were comparing notes of admiration at the workhouse-master's humility.\n\n '_You_ thought they were talking too much?' said Mrs. Juniperhan. 'What business is it of yours?'\n\n 'Why, my dear--' urged Mr. Juniperhan submissively.\n\n 'What business is it of yours?' demanded Mrs. Juniperhan, again.\n\n 'It's very true, you're matron here, my dear,' submitted Mr. Juniperhan; 'but I thought you mightn't be in the way just then.'\n\n 'I'll tell you what, Mr. Juniperhan,' returned his lady.  'We don't want any of your interference.  You're a great deal too fond of poking your nose into things that don't concern you, making everybody in the house laugh, the moment your back is turned, and making yourself look like a fool every hour in the day.  Be off; come!'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan, seeing with excruciating feelings, the delight of the two old paupers, who were tittering together most rapturously, hesitated for an instant.  Mrs. Juniperhan, whose patience brooked no delay, caught up a bowl of soap-suds, and motioning him towards the door, ordered him instantly to depart, on pain of receiving the contents upon his portly person.\n\n What could Mr. Juniperhan do?  He looked dejectedly round, and slunk away; and, as he reached the door, the titterings of the paupers broke into a shrill chuckle of irrepressible delight.  It wanted but this.  He was degraded in their eyes; he had lost caste and station before the very paupers; he had fallen from all the height and pomp of beadleship, to the lowest depth of the most snubbed hen-peckery.\n\n 'All in two months!' said Mr. Juniperhan, filled with dismal thoughts. 'Two months!  No more than two months ago, I was not only my own master, but everybody else's, so far as the porochial workhouse was concerned, and now!--'\n\n It was too much.  Mr. Juniperhan boxed the ears of the boy who opened the gate for him (for he had reached the portal in his reverie); and walked, distractedly, into the street.\n\n He walked up one street, and down another, until exercise had abated the first passion of his grief; and then the revulsion of feeling made him thirsty.  He passed a great many public-houses; but, at length paused before one in a by-way, whose parlour, as he gathered from a hasty peep over the blinds, was deserted, save by one solitary customer.  It began to rain, heavily, at the moment.  This determined him.  Mr. Juniperhan stepped in; and ordering something to drink, as he passed the bar, entered the apartment into which he had looked from the street.\n\n The man who was seated there, was tall and dark, and wore a large cloak.  He had the air of a stranger; and seemed, by a certain haggardness in his look, as well as by the dusty soils on his dress, to have travelled some distance.  He eyed Juniperhan askance, as he entered, but scarcely deigned to nod his head in acknowledgment of his salutation.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan had quite dignity enough for two; supposing even that the stranger had been more familiar:  so he drank his gin-and-water in silence, and read the paper with great show of pomp and circumstance.\n\n It so happened, however: as it will happen very often, when men fall into company under such circumstances:  that Mr. Juniperhan felt, every now and then, a powerful inducement, which he could not resist, to steal a look at the stranger:  and that whenever he did so, he withdrew his eyes, in some confusion, to find that the stranger was at that moment stealing a look at him.  Mr. Juniperhan's awkwardness was enhanced by the very remarkable expression of the stranger's eye, which was keen and bright, but shadowed by a scowl of distrust and suspicion, unlike anything he had ever observed before, and repulsive to behold.\n\n When they had encountered each other's glance several times in this way, the stranger, in a harsh, deep voice, broke silence.\n\n 'Were you looking for me,' he said, 'when you peered in at the window?'\n\n 'Not that I am aware of, unless you're Mr.--'  Here Mr. Juniperhan stopped short; for he was curious to know the stranger's name, and thought in his impatience, he might supply the blank.\n\n 'I see you were not,' said the stranger; an expression of quiet sarcasm playing about his mouth; 'or you have known my name.  You don't know it.  I would recommend you not to ask for it.'\n\n 'I meant no harm, young man,' observed Mr. Juniperhan, majestically.\n\n 'And have done none,' said the stranger.\n\n Another silence succeeded this short dialogue:  which was again broken by the stranger.\n\n 'I have seen you before, I think?' said he.  'You were differently dressed at that time, and I only passed you in the street, but I should know you again.  You were beadle here, once; were you not?'\n\n 'I was,' said Mr. Juniperhan, in some surprise; 'porochial beadle.'\n\n 'Just so,' rejoined the other, nodding his head.  'It was in that character I saw you.  What are you now?'\n\n 'Master of the workhouse,' rejoined Mr. Juniperhan, slowly and impressively, to check any undue familiarity the stranger might otherwise assume.  'Master of the workhouse, young man!'\n\n 'You have the same eye to your own interest, that you always had, I doubt not?' resumed the stranger, looking keenly into Mr. Juniperhan's eyes, as he raised them in astonishment at the question.\n\n 'Don't scruple to answer freely, man.  I know you pretty well, you see.'\n\n 'I suppose, a married man,' replied Mr. Juniperhan, shading his eyes with his hand, and surveying the stranger, from head to foot, in evident perplexity, 'is not more averse to turning an honest penny when he can, than a single one.  Porochial officers are not so well paid that they can afford to refuse any little extra fee, when it comes to them in a civil and proper manner.'\n\n The stranger smiled, and nodded his head again: as much to say, he had not mistaken his man; then rang the bell.\n\n 'Fill this glass again,' he said, handing Mr. Juniperhan's empty tumbler to the landlord.  'Let it be strong and hot.  You like it so, I suppose?'\n\n 'Not too strong,' replied Mr. Juniperhan, with a delicate cough.\n\n 'You understand what that means, landlord!' said the stranger, drily.\n\n The host smiled, disappeared, and shortly afterwards returned with a steaming jorum: of which, the first gulp brought the water into Mr. Juniperhan's eyes.\n\n 'Now listen to me,' said the stranger, after closing the door and window.  'I came down to this place, to-day, to find you out; and, by one of those chances which the devil throws in the way of his friends sometimes, you walked into the very room I was sitting in, while you were uppermost in my mind.  I want some information from you.  I don't ask you to give it for nothing, slight as it is.  Put up that, to begin with.'\n\n As he spoke, he pushed a couple of sovereigns across the table to his companion, carefully, as though unwilling that the chinking of money should be heard without.  When Mr. Juniperhan had scrupulously examined the coins, to see that they were genuine, and had put them up, with much satisfaction, in his waistcoat-pocket, he went on:\n\n 'Carry your memory back--let me see--twelve years, last winter.'\n\n 'It's a long time,' said Mr. Juniperhan.  'Very good.  I've done it.'\n\n 'The scene, the workhouse.'\n\n 'Good!'\n\n 'And the time, night.'\n\n 'Yes.'\n\n 'And the place, the crazy hole, wherever it was, in which miserable drabs brought forth the life and health so often denied to themselves--gave birth to puling children for the parish to rear; and hid their shame, rot 'em in the grave!'\n\n 'The lying-in room, I suppose?' said Mr. Juniperhan, not quite following the stranger's excited description.\n\n 'Yes,' said the stranger.  'A boy was born there.'\n\n 'A many boys,' observed Mr. Juniperhan, shaking his head, despondingly.\n\n 'A murrain on the young devils!' cried the stranger; 'I speak of one; a meek-looking, pale-faced boy, who was apprenticed down here, to a coffin-maker--I wish he had made his coffin, and screwed his body in it--and who afterwards ran away to London, as it was supposed.\n\n 'Why, you mean Halley!  Young Darlene!' said Mr. Juniperhan; 'I remember him, of course.  There wasn't a obstinater young rascal--'\n\n 'It's not of him I want to hear; I've heard enough of him,' said the stranger, stopping Mr. Juniperhan in the outset of a tirade on the subject of poor Halley's vices.  'It's of a woman; the hag that nursed his mother.  Where is she?'\n\n 'Where is she?' said Mr. Juniperhan, whom the gin-and-water had rendered facetious.  'It would be hard to tell.  There's no midwifery there, whichever place she's gone to; so I suppose she's out of employment, anyway.'\n\n 'What do you mean?' demanded the stranger, sternly.\n\n 'That she died last winter,' rejoined Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n The man looked fixedly at him when he had given this information, and although he did not withdraw his eyes for some time afterwards, his gaze gradually became vacant and abstracted, and he seemed lost in thought.  For some time, he appeared doubtful whether he ought to be relieved or disappointed by the intelligence; but at length he breathed more freely; and withdrawing his eyes, observed that it was no great matter. With that he rose, as if to depart.\n\n But Mr. Juniperhan was cunning enough; and he at once saw that an opportunity was opened, for the lucrative disposal of some secret in the possession of his better half.  He well remembered the night of old Izabella's death, which the occurrences of that day had given him good reason to recollect, as the occasion on which he had proposed to Mrs. Carmela; and although that lady had never confided to him the disclosure of which she had been the solitary witness, he had heard enough to know that it related to something that had occurred in the old woman's attendance, as workhouse nurse, upon the young mother of Halley Darlene. Hastily calling this circumstance to mind, he informed the stranger, with an air of mystery, that one woman had been closeted with the old harridan shortly before she died; and that she could, as he had reason to believe, throw some light on the subject of his inquiry.\n\n 'How can I find her?' said the stranger, thrown off his guard; and plainly showing that all his fears (whatever they were) were aroused afresh by the intelligence.\n\n 'Only through me,' rejoined Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'When?' cried the stranger, hastily.\n\n 'To-morrow,' rejoined Juniperhan.\n\n 'At nine in the evening,' said the stranger, producing a scrap of paper, and writing down upon it, an obscure address by the water-side, in characters that betrayed his agitation; 'at nine in the evening, bring her to me there.  I needn't tell you to be secret.  It's your interest.'\n\n With these words, he led the way to the door, after stopping to pay for the liquor that had been drunk.  Shortly remarking that their roads were different, he departed, without more ceremony than an emphatic repetition of the hour of appointment for the following night.\n\n On glancing at the address, the parochial functionary observed that it contained no name.  The stranger had not gone far, so he made after him to ask it.\n\n 'What do you want?' cried the man, turning quickly round, as Juniperhan touched him on the arm.  'Following me?'\n\n 'Only to ask a question,' said the other, pointing to the scrap of paper.  'What name am I to ask for?'\n\n 'Nicola!' rejoined the man; and strode hastily, away.\n\n\n\n\n It was a dull, close, overcast summer evening.  The clouds, which had been threatening all day, spread out in a dense and sluggish mass of vapour, already yielded large drops of rain, and seemed to presage a violent thunder-storm, when Mr. and Mrs. Juniperhan, turning out of the main street of the town, directed their course towards a scattered little colony of ruinous houses, distant from it some mile and a-half, or thereabouts, and erected on a low unwholesome swamp, bordering upon the river.\n\n They were both wrapped in old and shabby outer garments, which might, perhaps, serve the double purpose of protecting their persons from the rain, and sheltering them from observation.  The husband carried a lantern, from which, however, no light yet shone; and trudged on, a few paces in front, as though--the way being dirty--to give his wife the benefit of treading in his heavy footprints.  They went on, in profound silence; every now and then, Mr. Juniperhan relaxed his pace, and turned his head as if to make sure that his helpmate was following; then, discovering that she was close at his heels, he mended his rate of walking, and proceeded, at a considerable increase of speed, towards their place of destination.\n\n This was far from being a place of doubtful character; for it had long been known as the residence of none but low ruffians, who, under various pretences of living by their labour, subsisted chiefly on plunder and crime.  It was a collection of mere hovels:  some, hastily built with loose bricks: others, of old worm-eaten ship-timber: jumbled together without any attempt at order or arrangement, and planted, for the most part, within a few feet of the river's bank.  A few leaky boats drawn up on the mud, and made fast to the dwarf wall which skirted it:  and here and there an oar or coil of rope:  appeared, at first, to indicate that the inhabitants of these miserable cottages pursued some avocation on the river; but a glance at the shattered and useless condition of the articles thus displayed, would have led a passer-by, without much difficulty, to the conjecture that they were disposed there, rather for the preservation of appearances, than with any view to their being actually employed.\n\n In the heart of this cluster of huts; and skirting the river, which its upper stories overhung; stood a large building, formerly used as a manufactory of some kind.  It had, in its day, probably furnished employment to the inhabitants of the surrounding tenements.  But it had long since gone to ruin.  The rat, the worm, and the action of the damp, had weakened and rotted the piles on which it stood; and a considerable portion of the building had already sunk down into the water; while the remainder, tottering and bending over the dark stream, seemed to wait a favourable opportunity of following its old companion, and involving itself in the same fate.\n\n It was before this ruinous building that the worthy couple paused, as the first peal of distant thunder reverberated in the air, and the rain commenced pouring violently down.\n\n 'The place should be somewhere here,' said Juniperhan, consulting a scrap of paper he held in his hand.\n\n 'Halloa there!' cried a voice from above.\n\n Following the sound, Mr. Juniperhan raised his head and descried a man looking out of a door, breast-high, on the second story.\n\n 'Stand still, a minute,' cried the voice; 'I'll be with you directly.' With which the head disappeared, and the door closed.\n\n 'Is that the man?' asked Mr. Juniperhan's good lady.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan nodded in the affirmative.\n\n 'Then, mind what I told you,' said the matron: 'and be careful to say as little as you can, or you'll betray us at once.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan, who had eyed the building with very rueful looks, was apparently about to express some doubts relative to the advisability of proceeding any further with the enterprise just then, when he was prevented by the appearance of Nicola: who opened a small door, near which they stood, and beckoned them inwards.\n\n 'Come in!' he cried impatiently, stamping his foot upon the ground. 'Don't keep me here!'\n\n The woman, who had hesitated at first, walked boldly in, without any other invitation.  Mr. Juniperhan, who was ashamed or afraid to lag behind, followed:  obviously very ill at ease and with scarcely any of that remarkable dignity which was usually his chief characteristic.\n\n 'What the devil made you stand lingering there, in the wet?' said Nicola, turning round, and addressing Juniperhan, after he had bolted the door behind them.\n\n 'We--we were only cooling ourselves,' stammered Juniperhan, looking apprehensively about him.\n\n 'Cooling yourselves!' retorted Nicola.  'Not all the rain that ever fell, or ever will fall, will put as much of hell's fire out, as a man can carry about with him.  You won't cool yourself so easily; don't think it!'\n\n With this agreeable speech, Nicola turned short upon the matron, and bent his gaze upon her, till even she, who was not easily cowed, was fain to withdraw her eyes, and turn them towards the ground.\n\n 'This is the woman, is it?' demanded Nicola.\n\n 'Hem!  That is the woman,' replied Mr. Juniperhan, mindful of his wife's caution.\n\n 'You think women never can keep secrets, I suppose?' said the matron, interposing, and returning, as she spoke, the searching look of Nicola.\n\n 'I know they will always keep _one_ till it's found out,' said Nicola.\n\n 'And what may that be?' asked the matron.\n\n 'The loss of their own good name,' replied Nicola.  'So, by the same rule, if a woman's a party to a secret that might hang or transport her, I'm not afraid of her telling it to anybody; not I!  Do you understand, mistress?'\n\n 'No,' rejoined the matron, slightly colouring as she spoke.\n\n 'Of course you don't!' said Nicola.  'How should you?'\n\n Bestowing something half-way between a smile and a frown upon his two companions, and again beckoning them to follow him, the man hastened across the apartment, which was of considerable extent, but low in the roof.  He was preparing to ascend a steep staircase, or rather ladder, leading to another floor of warehouses above:  when a bright flash of lightning streamed down the aperture, and a peal of thunder followed, which shook the crazy building to its centre.\n\n 'Hear it!' he cried, shrinking back.  'Hear it!  Rolling and crashing on as if it echoed through a thousand caverns where the devils were hiding from it.  I hate the sound!'\n\n He remained silent for a few moments; and then, removing his hands suddenly from his face, showed, to the unspeakable discomposure of Mr. Juniperhan, that it was much distorted and discoloured.\n\n 'These fits come over me, now and then,' said Nicola, observing his alarm; 'and thunder sometimes brings them on. Don't mind me now; it's all over for this once.'\n\n Thus speaking, he led the way up the ladder; and hastily closing the window-shutter of the room into which it led, lowered a lantern which hung at the end of a rope and pulley passed through one of the heavy beams in the ceiling:  and which cast a dim light upon an old table and three chairs that were placed beneath it.\n\n 'Now,' said Nicola, when they had all three seated themselves, 'the sooner we come to our business, the better for all.  The woman know what it is, does she?'\n\n The question was addressed to Juniperhan; but his wife anticipated the reply, by intimating that she was perfectly acquainted with it.\n\n 'He is right in saying that you were with this hag the night she died; and that she told you something--'\n\n 'About the mother of the boy you named,' replied the matron interrupting him.  'Yes.'\n\n 'The first question is, of what nature was her communication?' said Nicola.\n\n 'That's the second,' observed the woman with much deliberation. 'The first is, what may the communication be worth?'\n\n 'Who the devil can tell that, without knowing of what kind it is?' asked Nicola.\n\n 'Nobody better than you, I am persuaded,' answered Mrs. Juniperhan: who did not want for spirit, as her yoke-fellow could abundantly testify.\n\n 'Humph!' said Nicola significantly, and with a look of eager inquiry; 'there may be money's worth to get, eh?'\n\n 'Perhaps there may,' was the composed reply.\n\n 'Something that was taken from her,' said Nicola.  'Something that she wore.  Something that--'\n\n 'You had better bid,' interrupted Mrs. Juniperhan.  'I have heard enough, already, to assure me that you are the man I ought to talk to.'\n\n Mr. Juniperhan, who had not yet been admitted by his better half into any greater share of the secret than he had originally possessed, listened to this dialogue with outstretched neck and distended eyes:  which he directed towards his wife and Nicola, by turns, in undisguised astonishment; increased, if possible, when the latter sternly demanded, what sum was required for the disclosure.\n\n 'What's it worth to you?' asked the woman, as collectedly as before.\n\n 'It may be nothing; it may be twenty pounds,' replied Nicola. 'Speak out, and let me know which.'\n\n 'Add five pounds to the sum you have named; give me five-and-twenty pounds in gold,' said the woman; 'and I'll tell you all I know.  Not before.'\n\n 'Five-and-twenty pounds!' exclaimed Nicola, drawing back.\n\n 'I spoke as plainly as I could,' replied Mrs. Juniperhan.  'It's not a large sum, either.'\n\n 'Not a large sum for a paltry secret, that may be nothing when it's told!' cried Nicola impatiently; 'and which has been lying dead for twelve years past or more!'\n\n 'Such matters keep well, and, like good wine, often double their value in course of time,' answered the matron, still preserving the resolute indifference she had assumed.  'As to lying dead, there are those who will lie dead for twelve thousand years to come, or twelve million, for anything you or I know, who will tell strange tales at last!'\n\n 'What if I pay it for nothing?' asked Nicola, hesitating.\n\n 'You can easily take it away again,' replied the matron. 'I am but a woman; alone here; and unprotected.'\n\n 'Not alone, my dear, nor unprotected, neither,' submitted Mr. Juniperhan, in a voice tremulous with fear: '_I_ am here, my dear. And besides,' said Mr. Juniperhan, his teeth chattering as he spoke, 'Mr. Nicola is too much of a gentleman to attempt any violence on porochial persons.  Mr. Nicola is aware that I am not a young man, my dear, and also that I am a little run to seed, as I may say; bu he has heerd:  I say I have no doubt Mr. Nicola has heerd, my dear:  that I am a very determined officer, with very uncommon strength, if I'm once roused.  I only want a little rousing; that's all.'\n\n As Mr. Juniperhan spoke, he made a melancholy feint of grasping his lantern with fierce determination; and plainly showed, by the alarmed expression of every feature, that he _did_ want a little rousing, and not a little, prior to making any very warlike demonstration: unless, indeed, against paupers, or other person or persons trained down for the purpose.\n\n 'You are a fool,' said Mrs. Juniperhan, in reply; 'and had better hold your tongue.'\n\n 'He had better have cut it out, before he came, if he can't speak in a lower tone,' said Nicola, grimly.  'So!  He's your husband, eh?'\n\n 'He my husband!' tittered the matron, parrying the question.\n\n 'I thought as much, when you came in,' rejoined Nicola, marking the angry glance which the lady darted at her spouse as she spoke.  'So much the better; I have less hesitation in dealing with two people, when I find that there's only one will between them.  I'm in earnest. See here!'\n\n He thrust his hand into a side-pocket; and producing a canvas bag, told out twenty-five sovereigns on the table, and pushed them over to the woman.\n\n 'Now,' he said, 'gather them up; and when this cursed peal of thunder, which I feel is coming up to break over the house-top, is gone, let's hear your story.'\n\n The thunder, which seemed in fact much nearer, and to shiver and break almost over their heads, having subsided, Nicola, raising his face from the table, bent forward to listen to what the woman should say.  The faces of the three nearly touched, as the two men leant over the small table in their eagerness to hear, and the woman also leant forward to render her whisper audible.  The sickly rays of the suspended lantern falling directly upon them, aggravated the paleness and anxiety of their countenances: which, encircled by the deepest gloom and darkness, looked ghastly in the extreme.\n\n 'When this woman, that we called old Izabella, died,' the matron began, 'she and I were alone.'\n\n 'Was there no one by?' asked Nicola, in the same hollow whisper; 'No sick wretch or idiot in some other bed?  No one who could hear, and might, by possibility, understand?'\n\n 'Not a soul,' replied the woman; 'we were alone.  _I_ stood alone beside the body when death came over it.'\n\n 'Good,' said Nicola, regarding her attentively.  'Go on.'\n\n 'She spoke of a young creature,' resumed the matron, 'who had brought a child into the world some years before; not merely in the same room, but in the same bed, in which she then lay dying.'\n\n 'Ay?' said Nicola, with quivering lip, and glancing over his shoulder, 'Blood!  How things come about!'\n\n 'The child was the one you named to him last night,' said the matron, nodding carelessly towards her husband; 'the mother this nurse had robbed.'\n\n 'In life?' asked Nicola.\n\n 'In death,' replied the woman, with something like a shudder. 'She stole from the corpse, when it had hardly turned to one, that which the dead mother had prayed her, with her last breath, to keep for the infant's sake.'\n\n 'She sold it,' cried Nicola, with desperate eagerness; 'did she sell it? Where?  When?  To whom?  How long before?'\n\n 'As she told me, with great difficulty, that she had done this,' said the matron, 'she fell back and died.'\n\n 'Without saying more?' cried Nicola, in a voice which, from its very suppression, seemed only the more furious.  'It's a lie! I'll not be played with.  She said more.  I'll tear the life out of you both, but I'll know what it was.'\n\n 'She didn't utter another word,' said the woman, to all appearance unmoved (as Mr. Juniperhan was very far from being) by the strange man's violence; 'but she clutched my gown, violently, with one hand, which was partly closed; and when I saw that she was dead, and so removed the hand by force, I found it clasped a scrap of dirty paper.'\n\n 'Which contained--' interposed Nicola, stretching forward.\n\n 'Nothing,' replied the woman; 'it was a pawnbroker's duplicate.'\n\n 'For what?' demanded Nicola.\n\n 'In good time I'll tell you.' said the woman.  'I judge that she had kept the trinket, for some time, in the hope of turning it to better account; and then had pawned it; and had saved or scraped together money to pay the pawnbroker's interest year by year, and prevent its running out; so that if anything came of it, it could still be redeemed.  Nothing had come of it; and, as I tell you, she died with the scrap of paper, all worn and tattered, in her hand.  The time was out in two days; I thought something might one day come of it too; and so redeemed the pledge.'\n\n 'Where is it now?' asked Nicola quickly.\n\n '_There_,' replied the woman.  And, as if glad to be relieved of it, she hastily threw upon the table a small kid bag scarcely large enough for a French watch, which Nicola pouncing upon, tore open with trembling hands.  It contained a little gold locket: in which were two locks of hair, and a plain gold wedding-ring.\n\n 'It has the word \"Langston\" engraved on the inside,' said the woman.\n\n 'There is a blank left for the surname; and then follows the date; which is within a year before the child was born.  I found out that.'\n\n 'And this is all?' said Nicola, after a close and eager scrutiny of the contents of the little packet.\n\n 'All,' replied the woman.\n\n Mr. Juniperhan drew a long breath, as if he were glad to find that the story was over, and no mention made of taking the five-and-twenty pounds back again; and now he took courage to wipe the perspiration which had been trickling over his nose, unchecked, during the whole of the previous dialogue.\n\n 'I know nothing of the story, beyond what I can guess at,' said his wife addressing Nicola, after a short silence; 'and I want to know nothing; for it's safer not.  But I may ask you two questions, may I?'\n\n 'You may ask,' said Nicola, with some show of surprise; 'but whether I answer or not is another question.'\n\n '--Which makes three,' observed Mr. Juniperhan, essaying a stroke of facetiousness.\n\n 'Is that what you expected to get from me?' demanded the matron.\n\n 'It is,' replied Nicola.  'The other question?'\n\n 'What do you propose to do with it?  Can it be used against me?'\n\n 'Never,' rejoined Nicola; 'nor against me either.  See here!  But don't move a step forward, or your life is not worth a bulrush.'\n\n With these words, he suddenly wheeled the table aside, and pulling an iron ring in the boarding, threw back a large trap-door which opened close at Mr. Juniperhan's feet, and caused that gentleman to retire several paces backward, with great precipitation.\n\n 'Look down,' said Nicola, lowering the lantern into the gulf. 'Don't fear me.  I could have let you down, quietly enough, when you were seated over it, if that had been my game.'\n\n Thus encouraged, the matron drew near to the brink; and even Mr. Juniperhan himself, impelled by curiousity, ventured to do the same. The turbid water, swollen by the heavy rain, was rushing rapidly on below; and all other sounds were lost in the noise of its plashing and eddying against the green and slimy piles.  There had once been a water-mill beneath; the tide foaming and chafing round the few rotten stakes, and fragments of machinery that yet remained, seemed to dart onward, with a new impulse, when freed from the obstacles which had unavailingly attempted to stem its headlong course.\n\n 'If you flung a man's body down there, where would it be to-morrow morning?' said Nicola, swinging the lantern to and fro in the dark well.\n\n 'Twelve miles down the river, and cut to pieces besides,' replied Juniperhan, recoiling at the thought.\n\n Nicola drew the little packet from his breast, where he had hurriedly thrust it; and tying it to a leaden weight, which had formed a part of some pulley, and was lying on the floor, dropped it into the stream. It fell straight, and true as a die; clove the water with a scarcely audible splash; and was gone.\n\n The three looking into each other's faces, seemed to breathe more freely.\n\n 'There!' said Nicola, closing the trap-door, which fell heavily back into its former position.  'If the sea ever gives up its dead, as books say it will, it will keep its gold and silver to itself, and that trash among it.  We have nothing more to say, and may break up our pleasant party.'\n\n 'By all means,' observed Mr. Juniperhan, with great alacrity.\n\n 'You'll keep a quiet tongue in your head, will you?' said Nicola, with a threatening look.  'I am not afraid of your wife.'\n\n 'You may depend upon me, young man,' answered Mr. Juniperhan, bowing himself gradually towards the ladder, with excessive politeness. 'On everybody's account, young man; on my own, you know, Mr. Nicola.'\n\n 'I am glad, for your sake, to hear it,' remarked Nicola. 'Light your lantern!  And get away from here as fast as you can.'\n\n It was fortunate that the conversation terminated at this point, or Mr. Juniperhan, who had bowed himself to within six inches of the ladder, would infallibly have pitched headlong into the room below.  He lighted his lantern from that which Nicola had detached from the rope, and now carried in his hand; and making no effort to prolong the discourse, descended in silence, followed by his wife.  Nicola brought up the rear, after pausing on the steps to satisfy himself that there were no other sounds to be heard than the beating of the rain without, and the rushing of the water.\n\n They traversed the lower room, slowly, and with caution; for Nicola started at every shadow; and Mr. Juniperhan, holding his lantern a foot above the ground, walked not only with remarkable care, but with a marvellously light step for a gentleman of his figure:  looking nervously about him for hidden trap-doors.  The gate at which they had entered, was softly unfastened and opened by Nicola; merely exchanging a nod with their mysterious acquaintance, the married couple emerged into the wet and darkness outside.\n\n They were no sooner gone, than Nicola, who appeared to entertain an invincible repugnance to being left alone, called to a boy who had been hidden somewhere below. Bidding him go first, and bear the light, he returned to the chamber he had just quitted.\n\n\n\n\n On the evening following that upon which the three worthies mentioned in the last chapter, disposed of their little matter of business as therein narrated, Mr. William Luca, awakening from a nap, drowsily growled forth an inquiry what time of night it was.\n\n The room in which Mr. Luca propounded this question, was not one of those he had tenanted, previous to the Chertsey expedition, although it was in the same quarter of the town, and was situated at no great distance from his former lodgings.  It was not, in appearance, so desirable a habitation as his old quarters:  being a mean and badly-furnished apartment, of very limited size; lighted only by one small window in the shelving roof, and abutting on a close and dirty lane.  Nor were there wanting other indications of the good gentleman's having gone down in the world of late:  for a great scarcity of furniture, and total absence of comfort, together with the disappearance of all such small moveables as spare clothes and linen, bespoke a state of extreme poverty; while the meagre and attenuated condition of Mr. Luca himself would have fully confirmed these symptoms, if they had stood in any need of corroboration.\n\n The housebreaker was lying on the bed, wrapped in his white great-coat, by way of dressing-gown, and displaying a set of features in no degree improved by the cadaverous hue of illness, and the addition of a soiled nightcap, and a stiff, black beard of a week's growth.  The dog sat at the bedside:  now eyeing his master with a wistful look, and now pricking his ears, and uttering a low growl as some noise in the street, or in the lower part of the house, attracted his attention. Seated by the window, busily engaged in patching an old waistcoat which formed a portion of the robber's ordinary dress, was a female:  so pale and reduced with watching and privation, that there would have been considerable difficulty in recognising her as the same Loren who has already figured in this tale, but for the voice in which she replied to Mr. Luca's question.\n\n 'Not long gone seven,' said the girl.  'How do you feel to-night, Deepak?'\n\n 'As weak as water,' replied Mr. Luca, with an imprecation on his eyes and limbs.  'Here; lend us a hand, and let me get off this thundering bed anyhow.'\n\n Illness had not improved Mr. Luca's temper; for, as the girl raised him up and led him to a chair, he muttered various curses on her awkwardness, and struck her.\n\n 'Whining are you?' said Luca.  'Come!  Don't stand snivelling there. If you can't do anything better than that, cut off altogether.  D'ye hear me?'\n\n 'I hear you,' replied the girl, turning her face aside, and forcing a laugh.  'What fancy have you got in your head now?'\n\n 'Oh! you've thought better of it, have you?' growled Luca, marking the tear which trembled in her eye.  'All the better for you, you have.'\n\n 'Why, you don't mean to say, you'd be hard upon me to-night, Deepak,' said the girl, laying her hand upon his shoulder.\n\n 'No!' cried Mr. Luca.  'Why not?'\n\n 'Such a number of nights,' said the girl, with a touch of woman's tenderness, which communicated something like sweetness of tone, even to her voice: 'such a number of nights as I've been patient with you, nursing and caring for you, as if you had been a child: and this the first that I've seen you like yourself; you wouldn't have served me as you did just now, if you'd thought of that, would you?  Come, come; say you wouldn't.'\n\n 'Well, then,' rejoined Mr. Luca, 'I wouldn't.  Why, damme, now, the girls's whining again!'\n\n 'It's nothing,' said the girl, throwing herself into a chair. 'Don't you seem to mind me.  It'll soon be over.'\n\n 'What'll be over?' demanded Mr. Luca in a savage voice. 'What foolery are you up to, now, again?  Get up and bustle about, and don't come over me with your woman's nonsense.'\n\n At any other time, this remonstrance, and the tone in which it was delivered, would have had the desired effect; but the girl being really weak and exhausted, dropped her head over the back of the chair, and fainted, before Mr. Luca could get out a few of the appropriate oaths with which, on similar occasions, he was accustomed to garnish his threats.  Not knowing, very well, what to do, in this uncommon emergency; for Miss Loren's hysterics were usually of that violent kind which the patient fights and struggles out of, without much assistance; Mr. Luca tried a little blasphemy: and finding that mode of treatment wholly ineffectual, called for assistance.\n\n 'What's the matter here, my dear?' said Ananya, looking in.\n\n 'Lend a hand to the girl, can't you?' replied Luca impatiently. 'Don't stand chattering and grinning at me!'\n\n With an exclamation of surprise, Ananya hastened to the girl's assistance, while Mr. John Dawkins (otherwise the Alondra Celestia), who had followed his venerable friend into the room, hastily deposited on the floor a bundle with which he was laden; and snatching a bottle from the grasp of Master Charles Maryam who came close at his heels, uncorked it in a twinkling with his teeth, and poured a portion of its contents down the patient's throat:  previously taking a taste, himself, to prevent mistakes.\n\n 'Give her a whiff of fresh air with the bellows, Clara,' said Mr. Dawkins; 'and you slap her hands, Ananya, while Deepak undoes the petticuts.'\n\n These united restoratives, administered with great energy: especially that department consigned to Master Maryam, who appeared to consider his share in the proceedings, a piece of unexampled pleasantry:  were not long in producing the desired effect.  The girl gradually recovered her senses; and, staggering to a chair by the bedside, hid her face upon the pillow:  leaving Mr. Luca to confront the new comers, in some astonishment at their unlooked-for appearance.\n\n 'Why, what evil wind has blowed you here?' he asked Ananya.\n\n 'No evil wind at all, my dear, for evil winds blow nobody any good; and I've brought something good with me, that you'll be glad to see. Celestia, my dear, open the bundle; and give Deepak the little trifles that we spent all our money on, this morning.'\n\n In compliance with Mr. Ananya's request, the Alondra untied this bundle, which was of large size, and formed of an old table-cloth; and handed the articles it contained, one by one, to Clara Maryam: who placed them on the table, with various encomiums on their rarity and excellence.\n\n 'Sitch a rabbit pie, Deepak,' exclaimed that young gentleman, disclosing to view a huge pasty; 'sitch delicate creeturs, with sitch tender limbs, Deepak, that the wery bones melt in your mouth, and there's no occasion to pick 'em; half a pound of seven and six-penny green, so precious strong that if you mix it with biling water, it'll go nigh to blow the lid of the tea-pot off; a pound and a half of moist sugar that the niggers didn't work at all at, afore they got it up to sitch a pitch of goodness,--oh no!  Two half-quartern brans; pound of best fresh; piece of double Glo'ster; and, to wind up all, some of the richest sort you ever lushed!'\n\n Uttering this last panegyric, Master Maryam produced, from one of his extensive pockets, a full-sized wine-bottle, carefully corked; while Mr. Dawkins, at the same instant, poured out a wine-glassful of raw spirits from the bottle he carried:  which the invalid tossed down his throat without a moment's hesitation.\n\n 'Ah!' said Ananya, rubbing his hands with great satisfaction. 'You'll do, Deepak; you'll do now.'\n\n 'Do!' exclaimed Mr. Luca; 'I might have been done for, twenty times over, afore you'd have done anything to help me.  What do you mean by leaving a man in this state, three weeks and more, you false-hearted wagabond?'\n\n 'Only hear him, boys!' said Ananya, shrugging his shoulders. 'And us come to bring him all these beau-ti-ful things.'\n\n 'The things is well enough in their way,' observed Mr. Luca:  a little soothed as he glanced over the table; 'but what have you got to say for yourself, why you should leave me here, down in the mouth, health, blunt, and everything else; and take no more notice of me, all this mortal time, than if I was that 'ere dog.--Drive him down, Clara!'\n\n 'I never see such a jolly dog as that,' cried Master Maryam, doing as he was desired.  'Smelling the grub like a old lady a going to market! He'd make his fortun' on the stage that dog would, and rewive the drayma besides.'\n\n 'Hold your din,' cried Luca, as the dog retreated under the bed: still growling angrily.  'What have you got to say for yourself, you withered old fence, eh?'\n\n 'I was away from London, a week and more, my dear, on a plant,' replied the Jew.\n\n 'And what about the other fortnight?' demanded Luca.  'What about the other fortnight that you've left me lying here, like a sick rat in his hole?'\n\n 'I couldn't help it, Deepak.  I can't go into a long explanation before company; but I couldn't help it, upon my honour.'\n\n 'Upon your what?' growled Luca, with excessive disgust. 'Here! Cut me off a piece of that pie, one of you boys, to take the taste of that out of my mouth, or it'll choke me dead.'\n\n 'Don't be out of temper, my dear,' urged Ananya, submissively. 'I have never forgot you, Deepak; never once.'\n\n 'No!  I'll pound it that you han't,' replied Luca, with a bitter grin. 'You've been scheming and plotting away, every hour that I have laid shivering and burning here; and Deepak was to do this; and Deepak was to do that; and Deepak was to do it all, dirt cheap, as soon as he got well: and was quite poor enough for your work. If it hadn't been for the girl, I might have died.'\n\n 'There now, Deepak,' remonstrated Ananya, eagerly catching at the word. 'If it hadn't been for the girl!  Who but poor ould Ananya was the means of your having such a handy girl about you?'\n\n 'He says true enough there!' said Loren, coming hastily forward. 'Let him be; let him be.'\n\n Loren's appearance gave a new turn to the conversation; for the boys, receiving a sly wink from the wary old Jew, began to ply her with liquor: of which, however, she took very sparingly; while Ananya, assuming an unusual flow of spirits, gradually brought Mr. Luca into a better temper, by affecting to regard his threats as a little pleasant banter; and, moreover, by laughing very heartily at one or two rough jokes, which, after repeated applications to the spirit-bottle, he condescended to make.\n\n 'It's all very well,' said Mr. Luca; 'but I must have some blunt from you to-night.'\n\n 'I haven't a piece of coin about me,' replied the Jew.\n\n 'Then you've got lots at home,' retorted Luca; 'and I must have some from there.'\n\n 'Lots!' cried Ananya, holding up is hands.  'I haven't so much as would--'\n\n 'I don't know how much you've got, and I dare say you hardly know yourself, as it would take a pretty long time to count it,' said Luca; 'but I must have some to-night; and that's flat.'\n\n 'Well, well,' said Ananya, with a sigh, 'I'll send the Alondra round presently.'\n\n 'You won't do nothing of the kind,' rejoined Mr. Luca. 'The Alondra's a deal too artful, and would forget to come, or lose his way, or get dodged by traps and so be perwented, or anything for an excuse, if you put him up to it.  Loren shall go to the ken and fetch it, to make all sure; and I'll lie down and have a snooze while she's gone.'\n\n After a great deal of haggling and squabbling, Ananya beat down the amount of the required advance from five pounds to three pounds four and sixpence: protesting with many solemn asseverations that that would only leave him eighteen-pence to keep house with; Mr. Luca sullenly remarking that if he couldn't get any more he must accompany him home; with the Celestia and Master Maryam put the eatables in the cupboard.  The Jew then, taking leave of his affectionate friend, returned homeward, attended by Loren and the boys:  Mr. Luca, meanwhile, flinging himself on the bed, and composing himself to sleep away the time until the young lady's return.\n\n In due course, they arrived at Ananya's abode, where they found Deborah Javier and Mr. Foster intent upon their fifteenth game at cribbage, which it is scarcely necessary to say the latter gentleman lost, and with it, his fifteenth and last sixpence: much to the amusement of his young friends.  Mr. Javier, apparently somewhat ashamed at being found relaxing himself with a gentleman so much his inferior in station and mental endowments, yawned, and inquiring after Luca, took up his hat to go.\n\n 'Has nobody been, Deborah?' asked Ananya.\n\n 'Not a living leg,' answered Mr. Javier, pulling up his collar; 'it's been as dull as swipes.  You ought to stand something handsome, Ananya, to recompense me for keeping house so long. Damme, I'm as flat as a juryman; and should have gone to sleep, as fast as Newgate, if I hadn't had the good natur' to amuse this youngster.  Horrid dull, I'm blessed if I an't!'\n\n With these and other ejaculations of the same kind, Mr. Deborah Javier swept up his winnings, and crammed them into his waistcoat pocket with a haughty air, as though such small pieces of silver were wholly beneath the consideration of a man of his figure; this done, he swaggered out of the room, with so much elegance and gentility, that Mr. Foster, bestowing numerous admiring glances on his legs and boots till they were out of sight, assured the company that he considered his acquaintance cheap at fifteen sixpences an interview, and that he didn't value his losses the snap of his little finger.\n\n 'Wot a rum chap you are, Briana!' said Master Maryam, highly amused by this declaration.\n\n 'Not a bit of it,' replied Mr. Foster.  'Am I, Ananya?'\n\n 'A very clever fellow, my dear,' said Ananya, patting him on the shoulder, and winking to his other pupils.\n\n 'And Mr. Javier is a heavy swell; an't he, Ananya?' asked Briana.\n\n 'No doubt at all of that, my dear.'\n\n 'And it is a creditable thing to have his acquaintance; an't it, Ananya?' pursued Briana.\n\n 'Very much so, indeed, my dear.  They're only jealous, Briana, because he won't give it to them.'\n\n 'Ah!' cried Briana, triumphantly, 'that's where it is!  He has cleaned me out.  But I can go and earn some more, when I like; can't I, Ananya?'\n\n 'To be sure you can, and the sooner you go the better, Briana; so make up your loss at once, and don't lose any more time.  Celestia! Clara! It's time you were on the lay.  Come!  It's near ten, and nothing done yet.'\n\n In obedience to this hint, the boys, nodding to Loren, took up their hats, and left the room; the Celestia and his vivacious friend indulging, as they went, in many witticisms at the expense of Mr. Foster; in whose conduct, it is but justice to say, there was nothing very conspicuous or peculiar:  inasmuch as there are a great number of spirited young bloods upon town, who pay a much higher price than Mr. Foster for being seen in good society:  and a great number of fine gentlemen (composing the good society aforesaid) who established their reputation upon very much the same footing as flash Deborah Javier.\n\n 'Now,' said Ananya, when they had left the room, 'I'll go and get you that cash, Loren.  This is only the key of a little cupboard where I keep a few odd things the boys get, my dear.  I never lock up my money, for I've got none to lock up, my dear--ha! ha! ha!--none to lock up. It's a poor trade, Loren, and no thanks; but I'm fond of seeing the young people about me; and I bear it all, I bear it all.  Hush!' he said, hastily concealing the key in his breast; 'who's that?  Listen!'\n\n The girl, who was sitting at the table with her arms folded, appeared in no way interested in the arrival: or to care whether the person, whoever he was, came or went:  until the murmur of a man's voice reached her ears.  The instant she caught the sound, she tore off her bonnet and shawl, with the rapidity of lightning, and thrust them under the table. The Jew, turning round immediately afterwards, she muttered a complaint of the heat:  in a tone of languor that contrasted, very remarkably, with the extreme haste and violence of this action:  which, however, had been unobserved by Ananya, who had his back towards her at the time.\n\n 'Bah!' he whispered, as though nettled by the interruption; 'it's the man I expected before; he's coming downstairs.  Not a word about the money while he's here, Nance.  He won't stop long.  Not ten minutes, my dear.'\n\n Laying his skinny forefinger upon his lip, the Jew carried a candle to the door, as a man's step was heard upon the stairs without.  He reached it, at the same moment as the visitor, who, coming hastily into the room, was close upon the girl before he observed her.\n\n It was Nicola.\n\n 'Only one of my young people,' said Ananya, observing that Nicola drew back, on beholding a stranger.  'Don't move, Loren.'\n\n The girl drew closer to the table, and glancing at Nicola with an air of careless levity, withdrew her eyes; but as he turned towards Ananya, she stole another look; so keen and searching, and full of purpose, that if there had been any bystander to observe the change, he could hardly have believed the two looks to have proceeded from the same person.\n\n 'Any news?' inquired Ananya.\n\n 'Great.'\n\n 'And--and--good?' asked Ananya, hesitating as though he feared to vex the other man by being too sanguine.\n\n 'Not bad, any way,' replied Nicola with a smile.  'I have been prompt enough this time.  Let me have a word with you.'\n\n The girl drew closer to the table, and made no offer to leave the room, although she could see that Nicola was pointing to her.  The Jew: perhaps fearing she might say something aloud about the money, if he endeavoured to get rid of her:  pointed upward, and took Nicola out of the room.\n\n 'Not that infernal hole we were in before,' she could hear the man say as they went upstairs.  Ananya laughed; and making some reply which did not reach her, seemed, by the creaking of the boards, to lead his companion to the second story.\n\n Before the sound of their footsteps had ceased to echo through the house, the girl had slipped off her shoes; and drawing her gown loosely over her head, and muffling her arms in it, stood at the door, listening with breathless interest.  The moment the noise ceased, she glided from the room; ascended the stairs with incredible softness and silence; and was lost in the gloom above.\n\n The room remained deserted for a quarter of an hour or more; the girl glided back with the same unearthly tread; and, immediately afterwards, the two men were heard descending.  Nicola went at once into the street; and the Jew crawled upstairs again for the money.  When he returned, the girl was adjusting her shawl and bonnet, as if preparing to be gone.\n\n 'Why, Nance!' exclaimed the Jew, starting back as he put down the candle, 'how pale you are!'\n\n 'Pale!' echoed the girl, shading her eyes with her hands, as if to look steadily at him.\n\n 'Quite horrible.  What have you been doing to yourself?'\n\n 'Nothing that I know of, except sitting in this close place for I don't know how long and all,' replied the girl carelessly. 'Come!  Let me get back; that's a dear.'\n\n With a sigh for every piece of money, Ananya told the amount into her hand.  They parted without more conversation, merely interchanging a 'good-night.'\n\n When the girl got into the open street, she sat down upon a doorstep; and seemed, for a few moments, wholly bewildered and unable to pursue her way.  Suddenly she arose; and hurrying on, in a direction quite opposite to that in which Luca was awaiting her returned, quickened her pace, until it gradually resolved into a violent run.  After completely exhausting herself, she stopped to take breath:  and, as if suddenly recollecting herself, and deploring her inability to do something she was bent upon, wrung her hands, and burst into tears.\n\n It might be that her tears relieved her, or that she felt the full hopelessness of her condition; but she turned back; and hurrying with nearly as great rapidity in the contrary direction; partly to recover lost time, and partly to keep pace with the violent current of her own thoughts:  soon reached the dwelling where she had left the housebreaker.\n\n If she betrayed any agitation, when she presented herself to Mr. Luca, he did not observe it; for merely inquiring if she had brought the money, and receiving a reply in the affirmative, he uttered a growl of satisfaction, and replacing his head upon the pillow, resumed the slumbers which her arrival had interrupted.\n\n It was fortunate for her that the possession of money occasioned him so much employment next day in the way of eating and drinking; and withal had so beneficial an effect in smoothing down the asperities of his temper; that he had neither time nor inclination to be very critical upon her behaviour and deportment.  That she had all the abstracted and nervous manner of one who is on the eve of some bold and hazardous step, which it has required no common struggle to resolve upon, would have been obvious to the lynx-eyed Ananya, who would most probably have taken the alarm at once; but Mr. Luca lacking the niceties of discrimination, and being troubled with no more subtle misgivings than those which resolve themselves into a dogged roughness of behaviour towards everybody; and being, furthermore, in an unusually amiable condition, as has been already observed; saw nothing unusual in her demeanor, and indeed, troubled himself so little about her, that, had her agitation been far more perceptible than it was, it would have been very unlikely to have awakened his suspicions.\n\n As that day closed in, the girl's excitement increased; and, when night came on, and she sat by, watching until the housebreaker should drink himself asleep, there was an unusual paleness in her cheek, and a fire in her eye, that even Luca observed with astonishment.\n\n Mr. Luca being weak from the fever, was lying in bed, taking hot water with his gin to render it less inflammatory; and had pushed his glass towards Loren to be replenished for the third or fourth time, when these symptoms first struck him.\n\n 'Why, burn my body!' said the man, raising himself on his hands as he stared the girl in the face.  'You look like a corpse come to life again.  What's the matter?'\n\n 'Matter!' replied the girl.  'Nothing.  What do you look at me so hard for?'\n\n 'What foolery is this?' demanded Luca, grasping her by the arm, and shaking her roughly.  'What is it?  What do you mean?  What are you thinking of?'\n\n 'Of many things, Deepak,' replied the girl, shivering, and as she did so, pressing her hands upon her eyes.  'But, Lord!  What odds in that?'\n\n The tone of forced gaiety in which the last words were spoken, seemed to produce a deeper impression on Luca than the wild and rigid look which had preceded them.\n\n 'I tell you wot it is,' said Luca; 'if you haven't caught the fever, and got it comin' on, now, there's something more than usual in the wind, and something dangerous too.  You're not a-going to--.  No, damme! you wouldn't do that!'\n\n 'Do what?' asked the girl.\n\n 'There ain't,' said Luca, fixing his eyes upon her, and muttering the words to himself; 'there ain't a stauncher-hearted gal going, or I'd have cut her throat three months ago.  She's got the fever coming on; that's it.'\n\n Fortifying himself with this assurance, Luca drained the glass to the bottom, and then, with many grumbling oaths, called for his physic. The girl jumped up, with great alacrity; poured it quickly out, but with her back towards him; and held the vessel to his lips, while he drank off the contents.\n\n 'Now,' said the robber, 'come and sit aside of me, and put on your own face; or I'll alter it so, that you won't know it agin when you do want it.'\n\n The girl obeyed.  Luca, locking her hand in his, fell back upon the pillow: turning his eyes upon her face.  They closed; opened again; closed once more; again opened.  He shifted his position restlessly; and, after dozing again, and again, for two or three minutes, and as often springing up with a look of terror, and gazing vacantly about him, was suddenly stricken, as it were, while in the very attitude of rising, into a deep and heavy sleep.  The grasp of his hand relaxed; the upraised arm fell languidly by his side; and he lay like one in a profound trance.\n\n 'The laudanum has taken effect at last,' murmured the girl, as she rose from the bedside.  'I may be too late, even now.'\n\n She hastily dressed herself in her bonnet and shawl:  looking fearfully round, from time to time, as if, despite the sleeping draught, she expected every moment to feel the pressure of Luca's heavy hand upon her shoulder; then, stooping softly over the bed, she kissed the robber's lips; and then opening and closing the room-door with noiseless touch, hurried from the house.\n\n A watchman was crying half-past nine, down a dark passage through which she had to pass, in gaining the main thoroughfare.\n\n 'Has it long gone the half-hour?' asked the girl.\n\n 'It'll strike the hour in another quarter,' said the man: raising his lantern to her face.\n\n 'And I cannot get there in less than an hour or more,' muttered Loren: brushing swiftly past him, and gliding rapidly down the street.\n\n Many of the shops were already closing in the back lanes and avenues through which she tracked her way, in making from Spitalfields towards the West-End of London.  The clock struck ten, increasing her impatience.  She tore along the narrow pavement:  elbowing the passengers from side to side; and darting almost under the horses' heads, crossed crowded streets, where clusters of persons were eagerly watching their opportunity to do the like.\n\n 'The woman is mad!' said the people, turning to look after her as she rushed away.\n\n When she reached the more wealthy quarter of the town, the streets were comparatively deserted; and here her headlong progress excited a still greater curiosity in the stragglers whom she hurried past.  Some quickened their pace behind, as though to see whither she was hastening at such an unusual rate; and a few made head upon her, and looked back, surprised at her undiminished speed; but they fell off one by one; and when she neared her place of destination, she was alone.\n\n It was a family hotel in a quiet but handsome street near Hyde Park. As the brilliant light of the lamp which burnt before its door, guided her to the spot, the clock struck eleven.  She had loitered for a few paces as though irresolute, and making up her mind to advance; but the sound determined her, and she stepped into the hall.  The porter's seat was vacant.  She looked round with an air of incertitude, and advanced towards the stairs.\n\n 'Now, young woman!' said a smartly-dressed female, looking out from a door behind her, 'who do you want here?'\n\n 'A lady who is stopping in this house,' answered the girl.\n\n 'A lady!' was the reply, accompanied with a scornful look. 'What lady?'\n\n 'Miss Marcia,' said Loren.\n\n The young woman, who had by this time, noted her appearance, replied only by a look of virtuous disdain; and summoned a man to answer her. To him, Loren repeated her request.\n\n 'What name am I to say?' asked the waiter.\n\n 'It's of no use saying any,' replied Loren.\n\n 'Nor business?' said the man.\n\n 'No, nor that neither,' rejoined the girl.  'I must see the lady.'\n\n 'Come!' said the man, pushing her towards the door.  'None of this. Take yourself off.'\n\n 'I shall be carried out if I go!' said the girl violently; 'and I can make that a job that two of you won't like to do.  Isn't there anybody here,' she said, looking round, 'that will see a simple message carried for a poor wretch like me?'\n\n This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook, who with some of the other servants was looking on, and who stepped forward to interfere.\n\n 'Take it up for her, Joe; can't you?' said this person.\n\n 'What's the good?' replied the man.  'You don't suppose the young lady will see such as her; do you?'\n\n This allusion to Loren's doubtful character, raised a vast quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who remarked, with great fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to her sex; and strongly advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly, into the kennel.\n\n 'Do what you like with me,' said the girl, turning to the men again; 'but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this message for God Almighty's sake.'\n\n The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was that the man who had first appeared undertook its delivery.\n\n 'What's it to be?' said the man, with one foot on the stairs.\n\n 'That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Marcia alone,' said Loren; 'and that if the lady will only hear the first word she has to say, she will know whether to hear her business, or to have her turned out of doors as an impostor.'\n\n 'I say,' said the man, 'you're coming it strong!'\n\n 'You give the message,' said the girl firmly; 'and let me hear the answer.'\n\n The man ran upstairs.  Loren remained, pale and almost breathless, listening with quivering lip to the very audible expressions of scorn, of which the chaste housemaids were very prolific; and of which they became still more so, when the man returned, and said the young woman was to walk upstairs.\n\n 'It's no good being proper in this world,' said the first housemaid.\n\n 'Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire,' said the second.\n\n The third contented herself with wondering 'what ladies was made of'; and the fourth took the first in a quartette of 'Shameful!' with which the Dianas concluded.\n\n Regardless of all this: for she had weightier matters at heart: Loren followed the man, with trembling limbs, to a small ante-chamber, lighted by a lamp from the ceiling. Here he left her, and retired.\n\n\n\n\n The girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the woman's original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame, and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought this interview.\n\n But struggling with these better feelings was pride,--the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured.  The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,--even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone connected her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child.\n\n She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the figure which presented itself was that of a slight and beautiful girl; then, bending them on the ground, she tossed her head with affected carelessness as she said:\n\n 'It's a hard matter to get to see you, lady.  If I had taken offence, and gone away, as many would have done, you'd have been sorry for it one day, and not without reason either.'\n\n 'I am very sorry if any one has behaved harshly to you,' replied Kit. 'Do not think of that.  Tell me why you wished to see me. I am the person you inquired for.'\n\n The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle manner, the absence of any accent of haughtiness or displeasure, took the girl completely by surprise, and she burst into tears.\n\n 'Oh, lady, lady!' she said, clasping her hands passionately before her face, 'if there was more like you, there would be fewer like me,--there would--there would!'\n\n 'Sit down,' said Kit, earnestly.  'If you are in poverty or affliction I shall be truly glad to relieve you if I can,--I shall indeed.  Sit down.'\n\n 'Let me stand, lady,' said the girl, still weeping, 'and do not speak to me so kindly till you know me better.  It is growing late. Is--is--that door shut?'\n\n 'Yes,' said Kit, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer assistance in case she should require it.  'Why?'\n\n 'Because,' said the girl, 'I am about to put my life and the lives of others in your hands.  I am the girl that dragged little Halley back to old Ananya's on the night he went out from the house in Pentonville.'\n\n 'You!' said Kit Marcia.\n\n 'I, lady!' replied the girl.  'I am the infamous creature you have heard of, that lives among the thieves, and that never from the first moment I can recollect my eyes and senses opening on London streets have known any better life, or kinder words than they have given me, so help me God!  Do not mind shrinking openly from me, lady.  I am younger than you would think, to look at me, but I am well used to it. The poorest women fall back, as I make my way along the crowded pavement.'\n\n 'What dreadful things are these!' said Kit, involuntarily falling from her strange companion.\n\n 'Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady,' cried the girl, 'that you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and drunkenness, and--and--something worse than all--as I have been from my cradle.  I may use the word, for the alley and the gutter were mine, as they will be my deathbed.'\n\n 'I pity you!' said Kit, in a broken voice.  'It wrings my heart to hear you!'\n\n 'Heaven bless you for your goodness!' rejoined the girl. 'If you knew what I am sometimes, you would pity me, indeed. But I have stolen away from those who would surely murder me, if they knew I had been here, to tell you what I have overheard.  Do you know a man named Nicola?'\n\n 'No,' said Kit.\n\n 'He knows you,' replied the girl; 'and knew you were here, for it was by hearing him tell the place that I found you out.'\n\n 'I never heard the name,' said Kit.\n\n 'Then he goes by some other amongst us,' rejoined the girl, 'which I more than thought before.  Some time ago, and soon after Halley was put into your house on the night of the robbery, I--suspecting this man--listened to a conversation held between him and Ananya in the dark. I found out, from what I heard, that Nicola--the man I asked you about, you know--'\n\n 'Yes,' said Kit, 'I understand.'\n\n '--That Nicola,' pursued the girl, 'had seen him accidently with two of our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him directly to be the same child that he was watching for, though I couldn't make out why.  A bargain was struck with Ananya, that if Halley was got back he should have a certain sum; and he was to have more for making him a thief, which this Nicola wanted for some purpose of his own.'\n\n 'For what purpose?' asked Kit.\n\n 'He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the hope of finding out,' said the girl; 'and there are not many people besides me that could have got out of their way in time to escape discovery.  But I did; and I saw him no more till last night.'\n\n 'And what occurred then?'\n\n 'I'll tell you, lady.  Last night he came again.  Again they went upstairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow would not betray me, again listened at the door.  The first words I heard Nicola say were these:  \"So the only proofs of the boy's identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin.\"  They laughed, and talked of his success in doing this; and Nicola, talking on about the boy, and getting very wild, said that though he had got the young devil's money safely now, he'd rather have had it the other way; for, what a game it would have been to have brought down the boast of the father's will, by driving him through every jail in town, and then hauling him up for some capital felony which Ananya could easily manage, after having made a good profit of him besides.'\n\n 'What is all this!' said Kit.\n\n 'The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips,' replied the girl. 'Then, he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but strange to yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking the boy's life without bringing his own neck in danger, he would; but, as he couldn't, he'd be upon the watch to meet him at every turn in life; and if he took advantage of his birth and history, he might harm him yet. \"In short, Ananya,\" he says, \"Jew as you are, you never laid such snares as I'll contrive for my young brother, Halley.\"'\n\n 'His brother!' exclaimed Kit.\n\n 'Those were his words,' said Loren, glancing uneasily round, as she had scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak, for a vision of Luca haunted her perpetually.  'And more. When he spoke of you and the other lady, and said it seemed contrived by Heaven, or the devil, against him, that Halley should come into your hands, he laughed, and said there was some comfort in that too, for how many thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds would you not give, if you had them, to know who your two-legged spaniel was.'\n\n 'You do not mean,' said Kit, turning very pale, 'to tell me that this was said in earnest?'\n\n 'He spoke in hard and angry earnest, if a man ever did,' replied the girl, shaking her head.  'He is an earnest man when his hatred is up. I know many who do worse things; but I'd rather listen to them all a dozen times, than to that Nicola once.  It is growing late, and I have to reach home without suspicion of having been on such an errand as this.  I must get back quickly.'\n\n 'But what can I do?' said Kit.  'To what use can I turn this communication without you?  Back!  Why do you wish to return to companions you paint in such terrible colors?  If you repeat this information to a gentleman whom I can summon in an instant from the next room, you can be consigned to some place of safety without half an hour's delay.'\n\n 'I wish to go back,' said the girl.  'I must go back, because--how can I tell such things to an innocent lady like you?--because among the men I have told you of, there is one: the most desperate among them all; that I can't leave:  no, not even to be saved from the life I am leading now.'\n\n 'Your having interfered in this dear boy's behalf before,' said Kit; 'your coming here, at so great a risk, to tell me what you have heard; your manner, which convinces me of the truth of what you say; your evident contrition, and sense of shame; all lead me to believe that you might yet be reclaimed.  Oh!' said the earnest girl, folding her hands as the tears coursed down her face, 'do not turn a deaf ear to the entreaties of one of your own sex; the first--the first, I do believe, who ever appealed to you in the voice of pity and compassion.  Do hear my words, and let me save you yet, for better things.'\n\n 'Lady,' cried the girl, sinking on her knees, 'dear, sweet, angel lady, you _are_ the first that ever blessed me with such words as these, and if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned me from a life of sin and sorrow; but it is too late, it is too late!'\n\n 'It is never too late,' said Kit, 'for penitence and atonement.'\n\n 'It is,' cried the girl, writhing in agony of her mind; 'I cannot leave him now!  I could not be his death.'\n\n 'Why should you be?' asked Kit.\n\n 'Nothing could save him,' cried the girl.  'If I told others what I have told you, and led to their being taken, he would be sure to die. He is the boldest, and has been so cruel!'\n\n 'Is it possible,' cried Kit, 'that for such a man as this, you can resign every future hope, and the certainty of immediate rescue?  It is madness.'\n\n 'I don't know what it is,' answered the girl; 'I only know that it is so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as bad and wretched as myself.  I must go back.  Whether it is God's wrath for the wrong I have done, I do not know; but I am drawn back to him through every suffering and ill usage; and I should be, I believe, if I knew that I was to die by his hand at last.'\n\n 'What am I to do?' said Kit.  'I should not let you depart from me thus.'\n\n 'You should, lady, and I know you will,' rejoined the girl, rising. 'You will not stop my going because I have trusted in your goodness, and forced no promise from you, as I might have done.'\n\n 'Of what use, then, is the communication you have made?' said Kit. 'This mystery must be investigated, or how will its disclosure to me, benefit Halley, whom you are anxious to serve?'\n\n 'You must have some kind gentleman about you that will hear it as a secret, and advise you what to do,' rejoined the girl.\n\n 'But where can I find you again when it is necessary?' asked Kit.  'I do not seek to know where these dreadful people live, but where will you be walking or passing at any settled period from this time?'\n\n 'Will you promise me that you will have my secret strictly kept, and come alone, or with the only other person that knows it; and that I shall not be watched or followed?' asked the girl.\n\n 'I promise you solemnly,' answered Kit.\n\n 'Every Sunday night, from eleven until the clock strikes twelve,' said the girl without hesitation, 'I will walk on London Bridge if I am alive.'\n\n 'Stay another moment,' interposed Kit, as the girl moved hurriedly towards the door.  'Think once again on your own condition, and the opportunity you have of escaping from it.  You have a claim on me:  not only as the voluntary bearer of this intelligence, but as a woman lost almost beyond redemption.  Will you return to this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word can save you?  What fascination is it that can take you back, and make you cling to wickedness and misery?  Oh! is there no chord in your heart that I can touch!  Is there nothing left, to which I can appeal against this terrible infatuation!'\n\n 'When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are,' replied the girl steadily, 'give away your hearts, love will carry you all lengths--even such as you, who have home, friends, other admirers, everything, to fill them.  When such as I, who have no certain roof but the coffinlid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us?  Pity us, lady--pity us for having only one feeling of the woman left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering.'\n\n 'You will,' said Kit, after a pause, 'take some money from me, which may enable you to live without dishonesty--at all events until we meet again?'\n\n 'Not a penny,' replied the girl, waving her hand.\n\n 'Do not close your heart against all my efforts to help you,' said Kit, stepping gently forward.  'I wish to serve you indeed.'\n\n 'You would serve me best, lady,' replied the girl, wringing her hands, 'if you could take my life at once; for I have felt more grief to think of what I am, to-night, than I ever did before, and it would be something not to die in the hell in which I have lived.  God bless you, sweet lady, and send as much happiness on your head as I have brought shame on mine!'\n\n Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy creature turned away; while Kit Marcia, overpowered by this extraordinary interview, which had more the semblance of a rapid dream than an actual occurrence, sank into a chair, and endeavoured to collect her wandering thoughts.\n\n\n\n\n Her situation was, indeed, one of no common trial and difficulty. While she felt the most eager and burning desire to penetrate the mystery in which Halley's history was enveloped, she could not but hold sacred the confidence which the miserable woman with whom she had just conversed, had reposed in her, as a young and guileless girl.  Her words and manner had touched Kit Marcia's heart; and, mingled with her love for her young charge, and scarcely less intense in its truth and fervour, was her fond wish to win the outcast back to repentance and hope.\n\n They purposed remaining in London only three days, prior to departing for some weeks to a distant part of the coast.  It was now midnight of the first day.  What course of action could she determine upon, which could be adopted in eight-and-forty hours? Or how could she postpone the journey without exciting suspicion?\n\n Mr. Terrance was with them, and would be for the next two days; but Kit was too well acquainted with the excellent gentleman's impetuosity, and foresaw too clearly the wrath with which, in the first explosion of his indignation, he would regard the instrument of Halley's recapture, to trust him with the secret, when her representations in the girl's behalf could be seconded by no experienced person.  These were all reasons for the greatest caution and most circumspect behaviour in communicating it to Mrs. Marcia, whose first impulse would infallibly be to hold a conference with the worthy doctor on the subject.  As to resorting to any legal adviser, even if she had known how to do so, it was scarcely to be thought of, for the same reason.  Once the thought occurred to her of seeking assistance from Harry; but this awakened the recollection of their last parting, and it seemed unworthy of her to call him back, when--the tears rose to her eyes as she pursued this train of reflection--he might have by this time learnt to forget her, and to be happier away.\n\n Disturbed by these different reflections; inclining now to one course and then to another, and again recoiling from all, as each successive consideration presented itself to her mind; Kit passed a sleepless and anxious night.  After more communing with herself next day, she arrived at the desperate conclusion of consulting Harry.\n\n 'If it be painful to him,' she thought, 'to come back here, how painful it will be to me!  But perhaps he will not come; he may write, or he may come himself, and studiously abstain from meeting me--he did when he went away.  I hardly thought he would; but it was better for us both.'  And here Kit dropped the pen, and turned away, as though the very paper which was to be her messenger should not see her weep.\n\n She had taken up the same pen, and laid it down again fifty times, and had considered and reconsidered the first line of her letter without writing the first word, when Halley, who had been walking in the streets, with Mr. Alfred for a body-guard, entered the room in such breathless haste and violent agitation, as seemed to betoken some new cause of alarm.\n\n 'What makes you look so flurried?' asked Kit, advancing to meet him.\n\n 'I hardly know how; I feel as if I should be choked,' replied the boy. 'Oh dear!  To think that I should see him at last, and you should be able to know that I have told you the truth!'\n\n 'I never thought you had told us anything but the truth,' said Kit, soothing him.  'But what is this?--of whom do you speak?'\n\n 'I have seen the gentleman,' replied Halley, scarcely able to articulate, 'the gentleman who was so good to me--Mr. Cameron, that we have so often talked about.'\n\n 'Where?' asked Kit.\n\n 'Getting out of a coach,' replied Halley, shedding tears of delight, 'and going into a house.  I didn't speak to him--I couldn't speak to him, for he didn't see me, and I trembled so, that I was not able to go up to him.  But Alfred asked, for me, whether he lived there, and they said he did.  Look here,' said Halley, opening a scrap of paper, 'here it is; here's where he lives--I'm going there directly!  Oh, dear me, dear me!  What shall I do when I come to see him and hear him speak again!'\n\n With her attention not a little distracted by these and a great many other incoherent exclamations of joy, Kit read the address, which was Craven Street, in the Strand.  She very soon determined upon turning the discovery to account.\n\n 'Quick!' she said.  'Tell them to fetch a hackney-coach, and be ready to go with me.  I will take you there directly, without a minute's loss of time.  I will only tell my aunt that we are going out for an hour, and be ready as soon as you are.'\n\n Halley needed no prompting to despatch, and in little more than five minutes they were on their way to Craven Street.  When they arrived there, Kit left Halley in the coach, under pretence of preparing the old gentleman to receive him; and sending up her card by the servant, requested to see Mr. Cameron on very pressing business.  The servant soon returned, to beg that she would walk upstairs; and following him into an upper room, Miss Marcia was presented to an elderly gentleman of benevolent appearance, in a bottle-green coat.  At no great distance from whom, was seated another old gentleman, in nankeen breeches and gaiters; who did not look particularly benevolent, and who was sitting with his hands clasped on the top of a thick stick, and his chin propped thereupon.\n\n 'Dear me,' said the gentleman, in the bottle-green coat, hastily rising with great politeness, 'I beg your pardon, young lady--I imagined it was some importunate person who--I beg you will excuse me.  Be seated, pray.'\n\n 'Mr. Cameron, I believe, sir?' said Kit, glancing from the other gentleman to the one who had spoken.\n\n 'That is my name,' said the old gentleman.  'This is my friend, Mr. Aliyah.  Aliyah, will you leave us for a few minutes?'\n\n 'I believe,' interposed Miss Marcia, 'that at this period of our interview, I need not give that gentleman the trouble of going away. If I am correctly informed, he is cognizant of the business on which I wish to speak to you.'\n\n Mr. Cameron inclined his head.  Mr. Aliyah, who had made one very stiff bow, and risen from his chair, made another very stiff bow, and dropped into it again.\n\n 'I shall surprise you very much, I have no doubt,' said Kit, naturally embarrassed; 'but you once showed great benevolence and goodness to a very dear young friend of mine, and I am sure you will take an interest in hearing of him again.'\n\n 'Indeed!' said Mr. Cameron.\n\n 'Halley Darlene you knew him as,' replied Kit.\n\n The words no sooner escaped her lips, than Mr. Aliyah, who had been affecting to dip into a large book that lay on the table, upset it with a great crash, and falling back in his chair, discharged from his features every expression but one of unmitigated wonder, and indulged in a prolonged and vacant stare; then, as if ashamed of having betrayed so much emotion, he jerked himself, as it were, by a convulsion into his former attitude, and looking out straight before him emitted a long deep whistle, which seemed, at last, not to be discharged on empty air, but to die away in the innermost recesses of his stomach.\n\n Mr. Browlow was no less surprised, although his astonishment was not expressed in the same eccentric manner.  He drew his chair nearer to Miss Marcia's, and said,\n\n 'Do me the favour, my dear young lady, to leave entirely out of the question that goodness and benevolence of which you speak, and of which nobody else knows anything; and if you have it in your power to produce any evidence which will alter the unfavourable opinion I was once induced to entertain of that poor child, in Heaven's name put me in possession of it.'\n\n 'A bad one!  I'll eat my head if he is not a bad one,' growled Mr. Aliyah, speaking by some ventriloquial power, without moving a muscle of his face.\n\n 'He is a child of a noble nature and a warm heart,' said Kit, colouring; 'and that Power which has thought fit to try him beyond his years, has planted in his breast affections and feelings which would do honour to many who have numbered his days six times over.'\n\n 'I'm only sixty-one,' said Mr. Aliyah, with the same rigid face. 'And, as the devil's in it if this Halley is not twelve years old at least, I don't see the application of that remark.'\n\n 'Do not heed my friend, Miss Marcia,' said Mr. Cameron; 'he does not mean what he says.'\n\n 'Yes, he does,' growled Mr. Aliyah.\n\n 'No, he does not,' said Mr. Cameron, obviously rising in wrath as he spoke.\n\n 'He'll eat his head, if he doesn't,' growled Mr. Aliyah.\n\n 'He would deserve to have it knocked off, if he does,' said Mr. Cameron.\n\n 'And he'd uncommonly like to see any man offer to do it,' responded Mr. Aliyah, knocking his stick upon the floor.\n\n Having gone thus far, the two old gentlemen severally took snuff, and afterwards shook hands, according to their invariable custom.\n\n 'Now, Miss Marcia,' said Mr. Cameron, 'to return to the subject in which your humanity is so much interested.  Will you let me know what intelligence you have of this poor child:  allowing me to promise that I exhausted every means in my power of discovering him, and that since I have been absent from this country, my first impression that he had imposed upon me, and had been persuaded by his former associates to rob me, has been considerably shaken.'\n\n Kit, who had had time to collect her thoughts, at once related, in a few natural words, all that had befallen Halley since he left Mr. Cameron's house; reserving Loren's information for that gentleman's private ear, and concluding with the assurance that his only sorrow, for some months past, had been not being able to meet with his former benefactor and friend.\n\n 'Thank God!' said the old gentleman.  'This is great happiness to me, great happiness.  But you have not told me where he is now, Miss Marcia.  You must pardon my finding fault with you,--but why not have brought him?'\n\n 'He is waiting in a coach at the door,' replied Kit.\n\n 'At this door!' cried the old gentleman.  With which he hurried out of the room, down the stairs, up the coachsteps, and into the coach, without another word.\n\n When the room-door closed behind him, Mr. Aliyah lifted up his head, and converting one of the hind legs of his chair into a pivot, described three distinct circles with the assistance of his stick and the table; sitting in it all the time.  After performing this evolution, he rose and limped as fast as he could up and down the room at least a dozen times, and then stopping suddenly before Kit, kissed her without the slightest preface.\n\n 'Hush!' he said, as the young lady rose in some alarm at this unusual proceeding.  'Don't be afraid.  I'm old enough to be your grandfather. You're a sweet girl.  I like you.  Here they are!'\n\n In fact, as he threw himself at one dexterous dive into his former seat, Mr. Cameron returned, accompanied by Halley, whom Mr. Aliyah received very graciously; and if the gratification of that moment had been the only reward for all her anxiety and care in Halley's behalf, Kit Marcia would have been well repaid.\n\n 'There is somebody else who should not be forgotten, by the bye,' said Mr. Cameron, ringing the bell.  'Send Mrs. Jack here, if you please.'\n\n The old housekeeper answered the summons with all dispatch; and dropping a curtsey at the door, waited for orders.\n\n 'Why, you get blinder every day, Jack,' said Mr. Cameron, rather testily.\n\n 'Well, that I do, sir,' replied the old lady.  'People's eyes, at my time of life, don't improve with age, sir.'\n\n 'I could have told you that,' rejoined Mr. Cameron; 'but put on your glasses, and see if you can't find out what you were wanted for, will you?'\n\n The old lady began to rummage in her pocket for her spectacles. But Halley's patience was not proof against this new trial; and yielding to his first impulse, he sprang into her arms.\n\n 'God be good to me!' cried the old lady, embracing him; 'it is my innocent boy!'\n\n 'My dear old nurse!' cried Halley.\n\n 'He would come back--I knew he would,' said the old lady, holding him in her arms.  'How well he looks, and how like a gentleman's son he is dressed again!  Where have you been, this long, long while?  Ah! the same sweet face, but not so pale; the same soft eye, but not so sad.  I have never forgotten them or his quiet smile, but have seen them every day, side by side with those of my own dear children, dead and gone since I was a lightsome young creature.'  Running on thus, and now holding Halley from her to mark how he had grown, now clasping him to her and passing her fingers fondly through his hair, the good soul laughed and wept upon his neck by turns.\n\n Leaving her and Halley to compare notes at leisure, Mr. Cameron led the way into another room; and there, heard from Kit a full narration of her interview with Loren, which occasioned him no little surprise and perplexity.  Kit also explained her reasons for not confiding in her friend Mr. Terrance in the first instance.  The old gentleman considered that she had acted prudently, and readily undertook to hold solemn conference with the worthy doctor himself.  To afford him an early opportunity for the execution of this design, it was arranged that he should call at the hotel at eight o'clock that evening, and that in the meantime Mrs. Marcia should be cautiously informed of all that had occurred.  These preliminaries adjusted, Kit and Halley returned home.\n\n Kit had by no means overrated the measure of the good doctor's wrath. Loren's history was no sooner unfolded to him, than he poured forth a shower of mingled threats and execrations; threatened to make her the first victim of the combined ingenuity of Messrs. Rashad and Lorelei; and actually put on his hat preparatory to sallying forth to obtain the assistance of those worthies.  And, doubtless, he would, in this first outbreak, have carried the intention into effect without a moment's consideration of the consequences, if he had not been restrained, in part, by corresponding violence on the side of Mr. Cameron, who was himself of an irascible temperament, and party by such arguments and representations as seemed best calculated to dissuade him from his hotbrained purpose.\n\n 'Then what the devil is to be done?' said the impetuous doctor, when they had rejoined the two ladies.  'Are we to pass a vote of thanks to all these vagabonds, male and female, and beg them to accept a hundred pounds, or so, apiece, as a trifling mark of our esteem, and some slight acknowledgment of their kindness to Halley?'\n\n 'Not exactly that,' rejoined Mr. Cameron, laughing; 'but we must proceed gently and with great care.'\n\n 'Gentleness and care,' exclaimed the doctor.  'I'd send them one and all to--'\n\n 'Never mind where,' interposed Mr. Cameron.  'But reflect whether sending them anywhere is likely to attain the object we have in view.'\n\n 'What object?' asked the doctor.\n\n 'Simply, the discovery of Halley's parentage, and regaining for him the inheritance of which, if this story be true, he has been fraudulently deprived.'\n\n 'Ah!' said Mr. Terrance, cooling himself with his pocket-handkerchief; 'I almost forgot that.'\n\n 'You see,' pursued Mr. Cameron; 'placing this poor girl entirely out of the question, and supposing it were possible to bring these scoundrels to justice without compromising her safety, what good should we bring about?'\n\n 'Hanging a few of them at least, in all probability,' suggested the doctor, 'and transporting the rest.'\n\n 'Very good,' replied Mr. Cameron, smiling; 'but no doubt they will bring that about for themselves in the fulness of time, and if we step in to forestall them, it seems to me that we shall be performing a very Quixotic act, in direct opposition to our own interest--or at least to Halley's, which is the same thing.'\n\n 'How?' inquired the doctor.\n\n 'Thus.  It is quite clear that we shall have extreme difficulty in getting to the bottom of this mystery, unless we can bring this man, Nicola, upon his knees.  That can only be done by stratagem, and by catching him when he is not surrounded by these people.  For, suppose he were apprehended, we have no proof against him.  He is not even (so far as we know, or as the facts appear to us) concerned with the gang in any of their robberies. If he were not discharged, it is very unlikely that he could receive any further punishment than being committed to prison as a rogue and vagabond; and of course ever afterwards his mouth would be so obstinately closed that he might as well, for our purposes, be deaf, dumb, blind, and an idiot.'\n\n 'Then,' said the doctor impetuously, 'I put it to you again, whether you think it reasonable that this promise to the girl should be considered binding; a promise made with the best and kindest intentions, but really--'\n\n 'Do not discuss the point, my dear young lady, pray,' said Mr. Cameron, interrupting Kit as she was about to speak. 'The promise shall be kept.  I don't think it will, in the slightest degree, interfere with our proceedings.  But, before we can resolve upon any precise course of action, it will be necessary to see the girl; to ascertain from her whether she will point out this Nicola, on the understanding that he is to be dealt with by us, and not by the law; or, if she will not, or cannot do that, to procure from her such an account of his haunts and description of his person, as will enable us to identify him.  She cannot be seen until next Sunday night; this is Tuesday.  I would suggest that in the meantime, we remain perfectly quiet, and keep these matters secret even from Halley himself.'\n\n Although Mr. Terrance received with many wry faces a proposal involving a delay of five whole days, he was fain to admit that no better course occurred to him just then; and as both Kit and Mrs. Marcia sided very strongly with Mr. Cameron, that gentleman's proposition was carried unanimously.\n\n 'I should like,' he said, 'to call in the aid of my friend Aliyah.  He is a strange creature, but a shrewd one, and might prove of material assistance to us; I should say that he was bred a lawyer, and quitted the Bar in disgust because he had only one brief and a motion of course, in twenty years, though whether that is recommendation or not, you must determine for yourselves.'\n\n 'I have no objection to your calling in your friend if I may call in mine,' said the doctor.\n\n 'We must put it to the vote,' replied Mr. Cameron, 'who may he be?'\n\n 'That lady's son, and this young lady's--very old friend,' said the doctor, motioning towards Mrs. Marcia, and concluding with an expressive glance at her niece.\n\n Kit blushed deeply, but she did not make any audible objection to this motion (possibly she felt in a hopeless minority); and Harry Marcia and Mr. Aliyah were accordingly added to the committee.\n\n 'We stay in town, of course,' said Mrs. Marcia, 'while there remains the slightest prospect of prosecuting this inquiry with a chance of success.  I will spare neither trouble nor expense in behalf of the object in which we are all so deeply interested, and I am content to remain here, if it be for twelve months, so long as you assure me that any hope remains.'\n\n 'Good!' rejoined Mr. Cameron.  'And as I see on the faces about me, a disposition to inquire how it happened that I was not in the way to corroborate Halley's tale, and had so suddenly left the kingdom, let me stipulate that I shall be asked no questions until such time as I may deem it expedient to forestall them by telling my own story.  Believe me, I make this request with good reason, for I might otherwise excite hopes destined never to be realised, and only increase difficulties and disappointments already quite numerous enough.  Come!  Supper has been announced, and young Halley, who is all alone in the next room, will have begun to think, by this time, that we have wearied of his company, and entered into some dark conspiracy to thrust him forth upon the world.'\n\n With these words, the old gentleman gave his hand to Mrs. Marcia, and escorted her into the supper-room.  Mr. Terrance followed, leading Kit; and the council was, for the present, effectually broken up.\n\n\n\n\n Upon the night when Loren, having lulled Mr. Luca to sleep, hurried on her self-imposed mission to Kit Marcia, there advanced towards London, by the Great North Road, two persons, upon whom it is expedient that this history should bestow some attention.\n\n They were a man and woman; or perhaps they would be better described as a male and female:  for the former was one of those long-limbed, knock-kneed, shambling, bony people, to whom it is difficult to assign any precise age,--looking as they do, when they are yet boys, like undergrown men, and when they are almost men, like overgrown boys.  The woman was young, but of a robust and hardy make, as she need have been to bear the weight of the heavy bundle which was strapped to her back. Her companion was not encumbered with much luggage, as there merely dangled from a stick which he carried over his shoulder, a small parcel wrapped in a common handkerchief, and apparently light enough.  This circumstance, added to the length of his legs, which were of unusual extent, enabled him with much ease to keep some half-dozen paces in advance of his companion, to whom he occasionally turned with an impatient jerk of the head:  as if reproaching her tardiness, and urging her to greater exertion.\n\n Thus, they had toiled along the dusty road, taking little heed of any object within sight, save when they stepped aside to allow a wider passage for the mail-coaches which were whirling out of town, until they passed through Highgate archway; when the foremost traveller stopped and called impatiently to his companion,\n\n 'Come on, can't yer?  What a lazybones yer are, Lauren.'\n\n 'It's a heavy load, I can tell you,' said the female, coming up, almost breathless with fatigue.\n\n 'Heavy!  What are yer talking about?  What are yer made for?' rejoined the male traveller, changing his own little bundle as he spoke, to the other shoulder.  'Oh, there yer are, resting again! Well, if yer ain't enough to tire anybody's patience out, I don't know what is!'\n\n 'Is it much farther?' asked the woman, resting herself against a bank, and looking up with the perspiration streaming from her face.\n\n 'Much farther!  Yer as good as there,' said the long-legged tramper, pointing out before him.  'Look there!  Those are the lights of London.'\n\n 'They're a good two mile off, at least,' said the woman despondingly.\n\n 'Never mind whether they're two mile off, or twenty,' said Ariel Mavis; for he it was; 'but get up and come on, or I'll kick yer, and so I give yer notice.'\n\n As Ariel's red nose grew redder with anger, and as he crossed the road while speaking, as if fully prepared to put his threat into execution, the woman rose without any further remark, and trudged onward by his side.\n\n 'Where do you mean to stop for the night, Ariel?' she asked, after they had walked a few hundred yards.\n\n 'How should I know?' replied Ariel, whose temper had been considerably impaired by walking.\n\n 'Near, I hope,' said Lauren.\n\n 'No, not near,' replied Mr. Mavis.  'There!  Not near; so don't think it.'\n\n 'Why not?'\n\n 'When I tell yer that I don't mean to do a thing, that's enough, without any why or because either,' replied Mr. Mavis with dignity.\n\n 'Well, you needn't be so cross,' said his companion.\n\n 'A pretty thing it would be, wouldn't it to go and stop at the very first public-house outside the town, so that Joan, if he come up after us, might poke in his old nose, and have us taken back in a cart with handcuffs on,' said Mr. Mavis in a jeering tone.  'No!  I shall go and lose myself among the narrowest streets I can find, and not stop till we come to the very out-of-the-wayest house I can set eyes on. 'Cod, yer may thanks yer stars I've got a head; for if we hadn't gone, at first, the wrong road a purpose, and come back across country, yer'd have been locked up hard and fast a week ago, my lady.  And serve yer right for being a fool.'\n\n 'I know I ain't as cunning as you are,' replied Lauren; 'but don't put all the blame on me, and say I should have been locked up.  You would have been if I had been, any way.'\n\n 'Yer took the money from the till, yer know yer did,' said Mr. Mavis.\n\n 'I took it for you, Ariel, dear,' rejoined Lauren.\n\n 'Did I keep it?' asked Mr. Mavis.\n\n 'No; you trusted in me, and let me carry it like a dear, and so you are,' said the lady, chucking him under the chin, and drawing her arm through his.\n\n This was indeed the case; but as it was not Mr. Mavis's habit to repose a blind and foolish confidence in anybody, it should be observed, in justice to that gentleman, that he had trusted Lauren to this extent, in order that, if they were pursued, the money might be found on her:  which would leave him an opportunity of asserting his innocence of any theft, and would greatly facilitate his chances of escape.  Of course, he entered at this juncture, into no explanation of his motives, and they walked on very lovingly together.\n\n In pursuance of this cautious plan, Mr. Mavis went on, without halting, until he arrived at the Angel at Islington, where he wisely judged, from the crowd of passengers and numbers of vehicles, that London began in earnest.  Just pausing to observe which appeared the most crowded streets, and consequently the most to be avoided, he crossed into Saint John's Road, and was soon deep in the obscurity of the intricate and dirty ways, which, lying between Gray's Inn Lane and Smithfield, render that part of the town one of the lowest and worst that improvement has left in the midst of London.\n\n Through these streets, Ariel Mavis walked, dragging Lauren after him; now stepping into the kennel to embrace at a glance the whole external character of some small public-house; now jogging on again, as some fancied appearance induced him to believe it too public for his purpose.  At length, he stopped in front of one, more humble in appearance and more dirty than any he had yet seen; and, having crossed over and surveyed it from the opposite pavement, graciously announced his intention of putting up there, for the night.\n\n 'So give us the bundle,' said Ariel, unstrapping it from the woman's shoulders, and slinging it over his own; 'and don't yer speak, except when yer spoke to.  What's the name of the house--t-h-r--three what?'\n\n 'Cripples,' said Lauren.\n\n 'Three Cripples,' repeated Ariel, 'and a very good sign too.  Now, then! Keep close at my heels, and come along.'  With these injunctions, he pushed the rattling door with his shoulder, and entered the house, followed by his companion.\n\n There was nobody in the bar but a young Jew, who, with his two elbows on the counter, was reading a dirty newspaper. He stared very hard at Ariel, and Ariel stared very hard at him.\n\n If Ariel had been attired in his charity-boy's dress, there might have been some reason for the Jew opening his eyes so wide; but as he had discarded the coat and badge, and wore a short smock-frock over his leathers, there seemed no particular reason for his appearance exciting so much attention in a public-house.\n\n 'Is this the Three Cripples?' asked Ariel.\n\n 'That is the dabe of this 'ouse,' replied the Jew.\n\n 'A gentleman we met on the road, coming up from the country, recommended us here,' said Ariel, nudging Lauren, perhaps to call her attention to this most ingenious device for attracting respect, and perhaps to warn her to betray no surprise.  'We want to sleep here to-night.'\n\n 'I'b dot certaid you cad,' said Kaylen, who was the attendant sprite; 'but I'll idquire.'\n\n 'Show us the tap, and give us a bit of cold meat and a drop of beer while yer inquiring, will yer?' said Ariel.\n\n Kaylen complied by ushering them into a small back-room, and setting the required viands before them; having done which, he informed the travellers that they could be lodged that night, and left the amiable couple to their refreshment.\n\n Now, this back-room was immediately behind the bar, and some steps lower, so that any person connected with the house, undrawing a small curtain which concealed a single pane of glass fixed in the wall of the last-named apartment, about five feet from its flooring, could not only look down upon any guests in the back-room without any great hazard of being observed (the glass being in a dark angle of the wall, between which and a large upright beam the observer had to thrust himself), but could, by applying his ear to the partition, ascertain with tolerable distinctness, their subject of conversation.  The landlord of the house had not withdrawn his eye from this place of espial for five minutes, and Kaylen had only just returned from making the communication above related, when Ananya, in the course of his evening's business, came into the bar to inquire after some of his young pupils.\n\n 'Hush!' said Kaylen:  'stradegers id the next roob.'\n\n 'Strangers!' repeated the old man in a whisper.\n\n 'Ah!  Ad rub uds too,' added Kaylen.  'Frob the cuttry, but subthig in your way, or I'b bistaked.'\n\n Ananya appeared to receive this communication with great interest.\n\n Mounting a stool, he cautiously applied his eye to the pane of glass, from which secret post he could see Mr. Mavis taking cold beef from the dish, and porter from the pot, and administering homeopathic doses of both to Lauren, who sat patiently by, eating and drinking at his pleasure.\n\n 'Aha!' he whispered, looking round to Kaylen, 'I like that fellow's looks.  He'd be of use to us; he knows how to train the girl already. Don't make as much noise as a mouse, my dear, and let me hear 'em talk--let me hear 'em.'\n\n He again applied his eye to the glass, and turning his ear to the partition, listened attentively:  with a subtle and eager look upon his face, that might have appertained to some old goblin.\n\n 'So I mean to be a gentleman,' said Mr. Mavis, kicking out his legs, and continuing a conversation, the commencement of which Ananya had arrived too late to hear. 'No more jolly old coffins, Lauren, but a gentleman's life for me:  and, if yer like, yer shall be a lady.'\n\n 'I should like that well enough, dear,' replied Lauren; 'but tills ain't to be emptied every day, and people to get clear off after it.'\n\n 'Tills be blowed!' said Mr. Mavis; 'there's more things besides tills to be emptied.'\n\n 'What do you mean?' asked his companion.\n\n 'Pockets, women's ridicules, houses, mail-coaches, banks!' said Mr. Mavis, rising with the porter.\n\n 'But you can't do all that, dear,' said Lauren.\n\n 'I shall look out to get into company with them as can,' replied Ariel. 'They'll be able to make us useful some way or another. Why, you yourself are worth fifty women; I never see such a precious sly and deceitful creetur as yer can be when I let yer.'\n\n 'Lor, how nice it is to hear yer say so!' exclaimed Lauren, imprinting a kiss upon his ugly face.\n\n 'There, that'll do:  don't yer be too affectionate, in case I'm cross with yer,' said Ariel, disengaging himself with great gravity.  'I should like to be the captain of some band, and have the whopping of 'em, and follering 'em about, unbeknown to themselves.  That would suit me, if there was good profit; and if we could only get in with some gentleman of this sort, I say it would be cheap at that twenty-pound note you've got,--especially as we don't very well know how to get rid of it ourselves.'\n\n After expressing this opinion, Mr. Mavis looked into the porter-pot with an aspect of deep wisdom; and having well shaken its contents, nodded condescendingly to Lauren, and took a draught, wherewith he appeared greatly refreshed.  He was meditating another, when the sudden opening of the door, and the appearance of a stranger, interrupted him.\n\n The stranger was Mr. Ananya.  And very amiable he looked, and a very low bow he made, as he advanced, and setting himself down at the nearest table, ordered something to drink of the grinning Kaylen.\n\n 'A pleasant night, sir, but cool for the time of year,' said Ananya, rubbing his hands.  'From the country, I see, sir?'\n\n 'How do yer see that?' asked Ariel Mavis.\n\n 'We have not so much dust as that in London,' replied Ananya, pointing from Ariel's shoes to those of his companion, and from them to the two bundles.\n\n 'Yer a sharp feller,' said Ariel.  'Ha! ha! only hear that, Lauren!'\n\n 'Why, one need be sharp in this town, my dear,' replied the Jew, sinking his voice to a confidential whisper; 'and that's the truth.'\n\n Ananya followed up this remark by striking the side of his nose with his right forefinger,--a gesture which Ariel attempted to imitate, though not with complete success, in consequence of his own nose not being large enough for the purpose.  However, Mr. Ananya seemed to interpret the endeavour as expressing a perfect coincidence with his opinion, and put about the liquor which Kaylen reappeared with, in a very friendly manner.\n\n 'Good stuff that,' observed Mr. Mavis, smacking his lips.\n\n 'Dear!' said Ananya.  'A man need be always emptying a till, or a pocket, or a woman's reticule, or a house, or a mail-coach, or a bank, if he drinks it regularly.'\n\n Mr. Mavis no sooner heard this extract from his own remarks than he fell back in his chair, and looked from the Jew to Lauren with a countenance of ashy paleness and excessive terror.\n\n 'Don't mind me, my dear,' said Ananya, drawing his chair closer. 'Ha! ha! it was lucky it was only me that heard you by chance. It was very lucky it was only me.'\n\n 'I didn't take it,' stammered Ariel, no longer stretching out his legs like an independent gentleman, but coiling them up as well as he could under his chair; 'it was all her doing; yer've got it now, Lauren, yer know yer have.'\n\n 'No matter who's got it, or who did it, my dear,' replied Ananya, glancing, nevertheless, with a hawk's eye at the girl and the two bundles.  'I'm in that way myself, and I like you for it.'\n\n 'In what way?' asked Mr. Mavis, a little recovering.\n\n 'In that way of business,' rejoined Ananya; 'and so are the people of the house.  You've hit the right nail upon the head, and are as safe here as you could be.  There is not a safer place in all this town than is the Cripples; that is, when I like to make it so.  And I have taken a fancy to you and the young woman; so I've said the word, and you may make your minds easy.'\n\n Ariel Mavis's mind might have been at ease after this assurance, but his body certainly was not; for he shuffled and writhed about, into various uncouth positions:  eyeing his new friend meanwhile with mingled fear and suspicion.\n\n 'I'll tell you more,' said Ananya, after he had reassured the girl, by dint of friendly nods and muttered encouragements. 'I have got a friend that I think can gratify your darling wish, and put you in the right way, where you can take whatever department of the business you think will suit you best at first, and be taught all the others.'\n\n 'Yer speak as if yer were in earnest,' replied Ariel.\n\n 'What advantage would it be to me to be anything else?' inquired Ananya, shrugging his shoulders.  'Here!  Let me have a word with you outside.'\n\n 'There's no occasion to trouble ourselves to move,' said Ariel, getting his legs by gradual degrees abroad again. 'She'll take the luggage upstairs the while.  Lauren, see to them bundles.'\n\n This mandate, which had been delivered with great majesty, was obeyed without the slightest demur; and Lauren made the best of her way off with the packages while Ariel held the door open and watched her out.\n\n 'She's kept tolerably well under, ain't she?' he asked as he resumed his seat:  in the tone of a keeper who had tamed some wild animal.\n\n 'Quite perfect,' rejoined Ananya, clapping him on the shoulder. 'You're a genius, my dear.'\n\n 'Why, I suppose if I wasn't, I shouldn't be here,' replied Ariel. 'But, I say, she'll be back if yer lose time.'\n\n 'Now, what do you think?' said Ananya.  'If you was to like my friend, could you do better than join him?'\n\n 'Is he in a good way of business; that's where it is!' responded Ariel, winking one of his little eyes.\n\n 'The top of the tree; employs a power of hands; has the very best society in the profession.'\n\n 'Regular town-maders?' asked Mr. Mavis.\n\n 'Not a countryman among 'em; and I don't think he'd take you, even on my recommendation, if he didn't run rather short of assistants just now,' replied Ananya.\n\n 'Should I have to hand over?' said Ariel, slapping his breeches-pocket.\n\n 'It couldn't possibly be done without,' replied Ananya, in a most decided manner.\n\n 'Twenty pound, though--it's a lot of money!'\n\n 'Not when it's in a note you can't get rid of,' retorted Ananya. 'Number and date taken, I suppose?  Payment stopped at the Bank? Ah!  It's not worth much to him.  It'll have to go abroad, and he couldn't sell it for a great deal in the market.'\n\n 'When could I see him?' asked Ariel doubtfully.\n\n 'To-morrow morning.'\n\n 'Where?'\n\n 'Here.'\n\n 'Um!' said Ariel.  'What's the wages?'\n\n 'Live like a gentleman--board and lodging, pipes and spirits free--half of all you earn, and half of all the young woman earns,' replied Mr. Ananya.\n\n Whether Ariel Mavis, whose rapacity was none of the least comprehensive, would have acceded even to these glowing terms, had he been a perfectly free agent, is very doubtful; but as he recollected that, in the event of his refusal, it was in the power of his new acquaintance to give him up to justice immediately (and more unlikely things had come to pass), he gradually relented, and said he thought that would suit him.\n\n 'But, yer see,' observed Ariel, 'as she will be able to do a good deal, I should like to take something very light.'\n\n 'A little fancy work?' suggested Ananya.\n\n 'Ah! something of that sort,' replied Ariel.  'What do you think would suit me now?  Something not too trying for the strength, and not very dangerous, you know.  That's the sort of thing!'\n\n 'I heard you talk of something in the spy way upon the others, my dear,' said Ananya.  'My friend wants somebody who would do that well, very much.'\n\n 'Why, I did mention that, and I shouldn't mind turning my hand to it sometimes,' rejoined Mr. Mavis slowly; 'but it wouldn't pay by itself, you know.'\n\n 'That's true!' observed the Jew, ruminating or pretending to ruminate. 'No, it might not.'\n\n 'What do you think, then?' asked Ariel, anxiously regarding him. 'Something in the sneaking way, where it was pretty sure work, and not much more risk than being at home.'\n\n 'What do you think of the old ladies?' asked Ananya. 'There's a good deal of money made in snatching their bags and parcels, and running round the corner.'\n\n 'Don't they holler out a good deal, and scratch sometimes?' asked Ariel, shaking his head.  'I don't think that would answer my purpose.  Ain't there any other line open?'\n\n 'Stop!' said Ananya, laying his hand on Ariel's knee.  'The kinchin lay.'\n\n 'What's that?' demanded Mr. Mavis.\n\n 'The kinchins, my dear,' said Ananya, 'is the young children that's sent on errands by their mothers, with sixpences and shillings; and the lay is just to take their money away--they've always got it ready in their hands,--then knock 'em into the kennel, and walk off very slow, as if there were nothing else the matter but a child fallen down and hurt itself.  Ha! ha! ha!'\n\n 'Ha! ha!' roared Mr. Mavis, kicking up his legs in an ecstasy. 'Lord, that's the very thing!'\n\n 'To be sure it is,' replied Ananya; 'and you can have a few good beats chalked out in Camden Town, and Battle Bridge, and neighborhoods like that, where they're always going errands; and you can upset as many kinchins as you want, any hour in the day. Ha! ha! ha!'\n\n With this, Ananya poked Mr. Mavis in the side, and they joined in a burst of laughter both long and loud.\n\n 'Well, that's all right!' said Ariel, when he had recovered himself, and Lauren had returned.  'What time to-morrow shall we say?'\n\n 'Will ten do?' asked Ananya, adding, as Mr. Mavis nodded assent, 'What name shall I tell my good friend.'\n\n 'Mr. Bolter,' replied Ariel, who had prepared himself for such emergency.  'Mr. Morris Bolter.  This is Mrs. Bolter.'\n\n 'Mrs. Bolter's humble servant,' said Ananya, bowing with grotesque politeness.  'I hope I shall know her better very shortly.'\n\n 'Do you hear the gentleman, Lauren?' thundered Mr. Mavis.\n\n 'Yes, Ariel, dear!' replied Mrs. Bolter, extending her hand.\n\n 'She calls me Ariel, as a sort of fond way of talking,' said Mr. Morris Bolter, late Mavis, turning to Ananya.  'You understand?'\n\n 'Oh yes, I understand--perfectly,' replied Ananya, telling the truth for once.  'Good-night!  Good-night!'\n\n With many adieus and good wishes, Mr. Ananya went his way. Ariel Mavis, bespeaking his good lady's attention, proceeded to enlighten her relative to the arrangement he had made, with all that haughtiness and air of superiority, becoming, not only a member of the sterner sex, but a gentleman who appreciated the dignity of a special appointment on the kinchin lay, in London and its vicinity.\n\n\n\n\n 'And so it was you that was your own friend, was it?' asked Mr. Mavis, otherwise Bolter, when, by virtue of the compact entered into between them, he had removed next day to Ananya's house.  ''Cod, I thought as much last night!'\n\n 'Every man's his own friend, my dear,' replied Ananya, with his most insinuating grin.  'He hasn't as good a one as himself anywhere.'\n\n 'Except sometimes,' replied Morris Bolter, assuming the air of a man of the world.  'Some people are nobody's enemies but their own, yer know.'\n\n 'Don't believe that,' said Ananya.  'When a man's his own enemy, it's only because he's too much his own friend; not because he's careful for everybody but himself.  Pooh! pooh!  There ain't such a thing in nature.'\n\n 'There oughn't to be, if there is,' replied Mr. Bolter.\n\n 'That stands to reason.  Some conjurers say that number three is the magic number, and some say number seven.  It's neither, my friend, neither.  It's number one.\n\n 'Ha! ha!' cried Mr. Bolter.  'Number one for ever.'\n\n 'In a little community like ours, my dear,' said Ananya, who felt it necessary to qualify this position, 'we have a general number one, without considering me too as the same, and all the other young people.'\n\n 'Oh, the devil!' exclaimed Mr. Bolter.\n\n 'You see,' pursued Ananya, affecting to disregard this interruption, 'we are so mixed up together, and identified in our interests, that it must be so.  For instance, it's your object to take care of number one--meaning yourself.'\n\n 'Certainly,' replied Mr. Bolter.  'Yer about right there.'\n\n 'Well!  You can't take care of yourself, number one, without taking care of me, number one.'\n\n 'Number two, you mean,' said Mr. Bolter, who was largely endowed with the quality of selfishness.\n\n 'No, I don't!' retorted Ananya.  'I'm of the same importance to you, as you are to yourself.'\n\n 'I say,' interrupted Mr. Bolter, 'yer a very nice man, and I'm very fond of yer; but we ain't quite so thick together, as all that comes to.'\n\n 'Only think,' said Ananya, shrugging his shoulders, and stretching out his hands; 'only consider.  You've done what's a very pretty thing, and what I love you for doing; but what at the same time would put the cravat round your throat, that's so very easily tied and so very difficult to unloose--in plain English, the halter!'\n\n Mr. Bolter put his hand to his neckerchief, as if he felt it inconveniently tight; and murmured an assent, qualified in tone but not in substance.\n\n 'The gallows,' continued Ananya, 'the gallows, my dear, is an ugly finger-post, which points out a very short and sharp turning that has stopped many a bold fellow's career on the broad highway.  To keep in the easy road, and keep it at a distance, is object number one with you.'\n\n 'Of course it is,' replied Mr. Bolter.  'What do yer talk about such things for?'\n\n 'Only to show you my meaning clearly,' said the Jew, raising his eyebrows.  'To be able to do that, you depend upon me. To keep my little business all snug, I depend upon you. The first is your number one, the second my number one.  The more you value your number one, the more careful you must be of mine; so we come at last to what I told you at first--that a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company.'\n\n 'That's true,' rejoined Mr. Bolter, thoughtfully.  'Oh! yer a cunning old codger!'\n\n Mr. Ananya saw, with delight, that this tribute to his powers was no mere compliment, but that he had really impressed his recruit with a sense of his wily genius, which it was most important that he should entertain in the outset of their acquaintance.  To strengthen an impression so desirable and useful, he followed up the blow by acquainting him, in some detail, with the magnitude and extent of his operations; blending truth and fiction together, as best served his purpose; and bringing both to bear, with so much art, that Mr. Bolter's respect visibly increased, and became tempered, at the same time, with a degree of wholesome fear, which it was highly desirable to awaken.\n\n 'It's this mutual trust we have in each other that consoles me under heavy losses,' said Ananya.  'My best hand was taken from me, yesterday morning.'\n\n 'You don't mean to say he died?' cried Mr. Bolter.\n\n 'No, no,' replied Ananya, 'not so bad as that.  Not quite so bad.'\n\n 'What, I suppose he was--'\n\n 'Wanted,' interposed Ananya.  'Yes, he was wanted.'\n\n 'Very particular?' inquired Mr. Bolter.\n\n 'No,' replied Ananya, 'not very.  He was charged with attempting to pick a pocket, and they found a silver snuff-box on him,--his own, my dear, his own, for he took snuff himself, and was very fond of it.  They remanded him till to-day, for they thought they knew the owner.  Ah! he was worth fifty boxes, and I'd give the price of as many to have him back.  You should have known the Celestia, my dear; you should have known the Celestia.'\n\n 'Well, but I shall know him, I hope; don't yer think so?' said Mr. Bolter.\n\n 'I'm doubtful about it,' replied Ananya, with a sigh.  'If they don't get any fresh evidence, it'll only be a summary conviction, and we shall have him back again after six weeks or so; but, if they do, it's a case of lagging.  They know what a clever lad he is; he'll be a lifer.  They'll make the Alondra nothing less than a lifer.'\n\n 'What do you mean by lagging and a lifer?' demanded Mr. Bolter. 'What's the good of talking in that way to me; why don't yer speak so as I can understand yer?'\n\n Ananya was about to translate these mysterious expressions into the vulgar tongue; and, being interpreted, Mr. Bolter would have been informed that they represented that combination of words, 'transportation for life,' when the dialogue was cut short by the entry of Master Maryam, with his hands in his breeches-pockets, and his face twisted into a look of semi-comical woe.\n\n 'It's all up, Ananya,' said Clara, when he and his new companion had been made known to each other.\n\n 'What do you mean?'\n\n 'They've found the gentleman as owns the box; two or three more's a coming to 'dentify him; and the Alondra's booked for a passage out,' replied Master Maryam.  'I must have a full suit of mourning, Ananya, and a hatband, to wisit him in, afore he sets out upon his travels.  To think of Jack Dawkins--lummy Jack--the Celestia--the Alondra Celestia--going abroad for a common twopenny-halfpenny sneeze-box!  I never thought he'd a done it under a gold watch, chain, and seals, at the lowest. Oh, why didn't he rob some rich old gentleman of all his walables, and go out as a gentleman, and not like a common prig, without no honour nor glory!'\n\n With this expression of feeling for his unfortunate friend, Master Maryam sat himself on the nearest chair with an aspect of chagrin and despondency.\n\n 'What do you talk about his having neither honour nor glory for!' exclaimed Ananya, darting an angry look at his pupil. 'Wasn't he always the top-sawyer among you all!  Is there one of you that could touch him or come near him on any scent!  Eh?'\n\n 'Not one,' replied Master Maryam, in a voice rendered husky by regret; 'not one.'\n\n 'Then what do you talk of?' replied Ananya angrily; 'what are you blubbering for?'\n\n ''Cause it isn't on the rec-ord, is it?' said Clara, chafed into perfect defiance of his venerable friend by the current of his regrets; ''cause it can't come out in the 'dictment; 'cause nobody will never know half of what he was.  How will he stand in the Newgate Calendar? P'raps not be there at all.  Oh, my eye, my eye, wot a blow it is!'\n\n 'Ha! ha!' cried Ananya, extending his right hand, and turning to Mr. Bolter in a fit of chuckling which shook him as though he had the palsy; 'see what a pride they take in their profession, my dear.  Ain't it beautiful?'\n\n Mr. Bolter nodded assent, and Ananya, after contemplating the grief of Clara Maryam for some seconds with evident satisfaction, stepped up to that young gentleman and patted him on the shoulder.\n\n 'Never mind, Clara,' said Ananya soothingly; 'it'll come out, it'll be sure to come out.  They'll all know what a clever fellow he was; he'll show it himself, and not disgrace his old pals and teachers.  Think how young he is too!  What a distinction, Clara, to be lagged at his time of life!'\n\n 'Well, it is a honour that is!' said Clara, a little consoled.\n\n 'He shall have all he wants,' continued the Jew.  'He shall be kept in the Stone Jug, Clara, like a gentleman.  Like a gentleman!  With his beer every day, and money in his pocket to pitch and toss with, if he can't spend it.'\n\n 'No, shall he though?' cried Clara Maryam.\n\n 'Ay, that he shall,' replied Ananya, 'and we'll have a big-wig, Clara: one that's got the greatest gift of the gab:  to carry on his defence; and he shall make a speech for himself too, if he likes; and we'll read it all in the papers--\"Alondra Celestia--shrieks of laughter--here the court was convulsed\"--eh, Clara, eh?'\n\n 'Ha! ha!' laughed Master Maryam, 'what a lark that would be, wouldn't it, Ananya?  I say, how the Alondra would bother 'em wouldn't he?'\n\n 'Would!' cried Ananya.  'He shall--he will!'\n\n 'Ah, to be sure, so he will,' repeated Clara, rubbing his hands.\n\n 'I think I see him now,' cried the Jew, bending his eyes upon his pupil.\n\n 'So do I,' cried Clara Maryam.  'Ha! ha! ha! so do I.  I see it all afore me, upon my soul I do, Ananya.  What a game!  What a regular game! All the big-wigs trying to look solemn, and Jack Dawkins addressing of 'em as intimate and comfortable as if he was the judge's own son making a speech arter dinner--ha! ha! ha!'\n\n In fact, Mr. Ananya had so well humoured his young friend's eccentric disposition, that Master Maryam, who had at first been disposed to consider the imprisoned Celestia rather in the light of a victim, now looked upon him as the chief actor in a scene of most uncommon and exquisite humour, and felt quite impatient for the arrival of the time when his old companion should have so favourable an opportunity of displaying his abilities.\n\n 'We must know how he gets on to-day, by some handy means or other,' said Ananya.  'Let me think.'\n\n 'Shall I go?' asked Clara.\n\n 'Not for the world,' replied Ananya.  'Are you mad, my dear, stark mad, that you'd walk into the very place where--No, Clara, no. One is enough to lose at a time.'\n\n 'You don't mean to go yourself, I suppose?' said Clara with a humorous leer.\n\n 'That wouldn't quite fit,' replied Ananya shaking his head.\n\n 'Then why don't you send this new cove?' asked Master Maryam, laying his hand on Ariel's arm.  'Nobody knows him.'\n\n 'Why, if he didn't mind--' observed Ananya.\n\n 'Mind!' interposed Clara.  'What should he have to mind?'\n\n 'Really nothing, my dear,' said Ananya, turning to Mr. Bolter, 'really nothing.'\n\n 'Oh, I dare say about that, yer know,' observed Ariel, backing towards the door, and shaking his head with a kind of sober alarm.  'No, no--none of that.  It's not in my department, that ain't.'\n\n 'Wot department has he got, Ananya?' inquired Master Maryam, surveying Ariel's lank form with much disgust.  'The cutting away when there's anything wrong, and the eating all the wittles when there's everything right; is that his branch?'\n\n 'Never mind,' retorted Mr. Bolter; 'and don't yer take liberties with yer superiors, little boy, or yer'll find yerself in the wrong shop.'\n\n Master Maryam laughed so vehemently at this magnificent threat, that it was some time before Ananya could interpose, and represent to Mr. Bolter that he incurred no possible danger in visiting the police-office; that, inasmuch as no account of the little affair in which he had engaged, nor any description of his person, had yet been forwarded to the metropolis, it was very probable that he was not even suspected of having resorted to it for shelter; and that, if he were properly disguised, it would be as safe a spot for him to visit as any in London, inasmuch as it would be, of all places, the very last, to which he could be supposed likely to resort of his own free will.\n\n Persuaded, in part, by these representations, but overborne in a much greater degree by his fear of Ananya, Mr. Bolter at length consented, with a very bad grace, to undertake the expedition. By Ananya's directions, he immediately substituted for his own attire, a waggoner's frock, velveteen breeches, and leather leggings:  all of which articles the Jew had at hand.  He was likewise furnished with a felt hat well garnished with turnpike tickets; and a carter's whip.  Thus equipped, he was to saunter into the office, as some country fellow from Covent Garden market might be supposed to do for the gratification of his curiousity; and as he was as awkward, ungainly, and raw-boned a fellow as need be, Mr. Ananya had no fear but that he would look the part to perfection.\n\n These arrangements completed, he was informed of the necessary signs and tokens by which to recognise the Alondra Celestia, and was conveyed by Master Maryam through dark and winding ways to within a very short distance of Bow Street. Having described the precise situation of the office, and accompanied it with copious directions how he was to walk straight up the passage, and when he got into the side, and pull off his hat as he went into the room, Clara Maryam bade him hurry on alone, and promised to bide his return on the spot of their parting.\n\n Ariel Mavis, or Morris Bolter as the reader pleases, punctually followed the directions he had received, which--Master Maryam being pretty well acquainted with the locality--were so exact that he was enabled to gain the magisterial presence without asking any question, or meeting with any interruption by the way.\n\n He found himself jostled among a crowd of people, chiefly women, who were huddled together in a dirty frowsy room, at the upper end of which was a raised platform railed off from the rest, with a dock for the prisoners on the left hand against the wall, a box for the witnesses in the middle, and a desk for the magistrates on the right; the awful locality last named, being screened off by a partition which concealed the bench from the common gaze, and left the vulgar to imagine (if they could) the full majesty of justice.\n\n There were only a couple of women in the dock, who were nodding to their admiring friends, while the clerk read some depositions to a couple of policemen and a man in plain clothes who leant over the table.  A jailer stood reclining against the dock-rail, tapping his nose listlessly with a large key, except when he repressed an undue tendency to conversation among the idlers, by proclaiming silence; or looked sternly up to bid some woman 'Take that baby out,' when the gravity of justice was disturbed by feeble cries, half-smothered in the mother's shawl, from some meagre infant.  The room smelt close and unwholesome; the walls were dirt-discoloured; and the ceiling blackened.  There was an old smoky bust over the mantel-shelf, and a dusty clock above the dock--the only thing present, that seemed to go on as it ought; for depravity, or poverty, or an habitual acquaintance with both, had left a taint on all the animate matter, hardly less unpleasant than the thick greasy scum on every inanimate object that frowned upon it.\n\n Ariel looked eagerly about him for the Celestia; but although there were several women who would have done very well for that distinguished character's mother or sister, and more than one man who might be supposed to bear a strong resemblance to his father, nobody at all answering the description given him of Mr. Dawkins was to be seen.  He waited in a state of much suspense and uncertainty until the women, being committed for trial, went flaunting out; and then was quickly relieved by the appearance of another prisoner who he felt at once could be no other than the object of his visit.\n\n It was indeed Mr. Dawkins, who, shuffling into the office with the big coat sleeves tucked up as usual, his left hand in his pocket, and his hat in his right hand, preceded the jailer, with a rolling gait altogether indescribable, and, taking his place in the dock, requested in an audible voice to know what he was placed in that 'ere disgraceful sitivation for.\n\n 'Hold your tongue, will you?' said the jailer.\n\n 'I'm an Englishman, ain't I?' rejoined the Celestia.  'Where are my priwileges?'\n\n 'You'll get your privileges soon enough,' retorted the jailer, 'and pepper with 'em.'\n\n 'We'll see wot the Secretary of State for the Home Affairs has got to say to the beaks, if I don't,' replied Mr. Dawkins.  'Now then!  Wot is this here business?  I shall thank the madg'strates to dispose of this here little affair, and not to keep me while they read the paper, for I've got an appointment with a genelman in the City, and as I am a man of my word and wery punctual in business matters, he'll go away if I ain't there to my time, and then pr'aps ther won't be an action for damage against them as kep me away.  Oh no, certainly not!'\n\n At this point, the Celestia, with a show of being very particular with a view to proceedings to be had thereafter, desired the jailer to communicate 'the names of them two files as was on the bench.'  Which so tickled the spectators, that they laughed almost as heartily as Master Maryam could have done if he had heard the request.\n\n 'Silence there!' cried the jailer.\n\n 'What is this?' inquired one of the magistrates.\n\n 'A pick-pocketing case, your worship.'\n\n 'Has the boy ever been here before?'\n\n 'He ought to have been, a many times,' replied the jailer. 'He has been pretty well everywhere else.  _I_ know him well, your worship.'\n\n 'Oh! you know me, do you?' cried the Alondra, making a note of the statement.  'Wery good.  That's a case of deformation of character, any way.'\n\n Here there was another laugh, and another cry of silence.\n\n 'Now then, where are the witnesses?' said the clerk.\n\n 'Ah! that's right,' added the Celestia.  'Where are they?  I should like to see 'em.'\n\n This wish was immediately gratified, for a policeman stepped forward who had seen the prisoner attempt the pocket of an unknown gentleman in a crowd, and indeed take a handkerchief therefrom, which, being a very old one, he deliberately put back again, after trying it on his own countenance.  For this reason, he took the Celestia into custody as soon as he could get near him, and the said Celestia, being searched, had upon his person a silver snuff-box, with the owner's name engraved upon the lid.  This gentleman had been discovered on reference to the Court Guide, and being then and there present, swore that the snuff-box was his, and that he had missed it on the previous day, the moment he had disengaged himself from the crowd before referred to.  He had also remarked a young gentleman in the throng, particularly active in making his way about, and that young gentleman was the prisoner before him.\n\n 'Have you anything to ask this witness, boy?' said the magistrate.\n\n 'I wouldn't abase myself by descending to hold no conversation with him,' replied the Celestia.\n\n 'Have you anything to say at all?'\n\n 'Do you hear his worship ask if you've anything to say?' inquired the jailer, nudging the silent Celestia with his elbow.\n\n 'I beg your pardon,' said the Celestia, looking up with an air of abstraction.  'Did you redress yourself to me, my man?'\n\n 'I never see such an out-and-out young wagabond, your worship,' observed the officer with a grin.  'Do you mean to say anything, you young shaver?'\n\n 'No,' replied the Celestia, 'not here, for this ain't the shop for justice:  besides which, my attorney is a-breakfasting this morning with the Wice President of the House of Commons; but I shall have something to say elsewhere, and so will he, and so will a wery numerous and 'spectable circle of acquaintance as'll make them beaks wish they'd never been born, or that they'd got their footmen to hang 'em up to their own hat-pegs, afore they let 'em come out this morning to try it on upon me.  I'll--'\n\n 'There!  He's fully committed!' interposed the clerk. 'Take him away.'\n\n 'Come on,' said the jailer.\n\n 'Oh ah!  I'll come on,' replied the Celestia, brushing his hat with the palm of his hand.  'Ah! (to the Bench) it's no use your looking frightened; I won't show you no mercy, not a ha'porth of it.  _You'll_ pay for this, my fine fellers.  I wouldn't be you for something!  I wouldn't go free, now, if you was to fall down on your knees and ask me.  Here, carry me off to prison!  Take me away!'\n\n With these last words, the Celestia suffered himself to be led off by the collar; threatening, till he got into the yard, to make a parliamentary business of it; and then grinning in the officer's face, with great glee and self-approval.\n\n Having seen him locked up by himself in a little cell, Ariel made the best of his way back to where he had left Master Maryam. After waiting here some time, he was joined by that young gentleman, who had prudently abstained from showing himself until he had looked carefully abroad from a snug retreat, and ascertained that his new friend had not been followed by any impertinent person.\n\n The two hastened back together, to bear to Mr. Ananya the animating news that the Celestia was doing full justice to his bringing-up, and establishing for himself a glorious reputation.\n\n\n\n\n Adept as she was, in all the arts of cunning and dissimulation, the girl Loren could not wholly conceal the effect which the knowledge of the step she had taken, wrought upon her mind.  She remembered that both the crafty Jew and the brutal Luca had confided to her schemes, which had been hidden from all others: in the full confidence that she was trustworthy and beyond the reach of their suspicion.  Vile as those schemes were, desperate as were their originators, and bitter as were her feelings towards Ananya, who had led her, step by step, deeper and deeper down into an abyss of crime and misery, whence was no escape; still, there were times when, even towards him, she felt some relenting, lest her disclosure should bring him within the iron grasp he had so long eluded, and he should fall at last--richly as he merited such a fate--by her hand.\n\n But, these were the mere wanderings of a mind unable wholly to detach itself from old companions and associations, though enabled to fix itself steadily on one object, and resolved not to be turned aside by any consideration.  Her fears for Luca would have been more powerful inducements to recoil while there was yet time; but she had stipulated that her secret should be rigidly kept, she had dropped no clue which could lead to his discovery, she had refused, even for his sake, a refuge from all the guilt and wretchedness that encompasses her--and what more could she do! She was resolved.\n\n Though all her mental struggles terminated in this conclusion, they forced themselves upon her, again and again, and left their traces too. She grew pale and thin, even within a few days.  At times, she took no heed of what was passing before her, or no part in conversations where once, she would have been the loudest.  At other times, she laughed without merriment, and was noisy without a moment afterwards--she sat silent and dejected, brooding with her head upon her hands, while the very effort by which she roused herself, told, more forcibly than even these indications, that she was ill at ease, and that her thoughts were occupied with matters very different and distant from those in the course of discussion by her companions.\n\n It was Sunday night, and the bell of the nearest church struck the hour.  Luca and the Jew were talking, but they paused to listen.  The girl looked up from the low seat on which she crouched, and listened too.  Eleven.\n\n 'An hour this side of midnight,' said Luca, raising the blind to look out and returning to his seat.  'Dark and heavy it is too. A good night for business this.'\n\n 'Ah!' replied Ananya.  'What a pity, Deepak, my dear, that there's none quite ready to be done.'\n\n 'You're right for once,' replied Luca gruffly.  'It is a pity, for I'm in the humour too.'\n\n Ananya sighed, and shook his head despondingly.\n\n 'We must make up for lost time when we've got things into a good train. That's all I know,' said Luca.\n\n 'That's the way to talk, my dear,' replied Ananya, venturing to pat him on the shoulder.  'It does me good to hear you.'\n\n 'Does you good, does it!' cried Luca.  'Well, so be it.'\n\n 'Ha! ha! ha!' laughed Ananya, as if he were relieved by even this concession.  'You're like yourself to-night, Deepak.  Quite like yourself.'\n\n 'I don't feel like myself when you lay that withered old claw on my shoulder, so take it away,' said Luca, casting off the Jew's hand.\n\n 'It make you nervous, Deepak,--reminds you of being nabbed, does it?' said Ananya, determined not to be offended.\n\n 'Reminds me of being nabbed by the devil,' returned Luca. 'There never was another man with such a face as yours, unless it was your father, and I suppose _he_ is singeing his grizzled red beard by this time, unless you came straight from the old 'un without any father at all betwixt you; which I shouldn't wonder at, a bit.'\n\n Ananya offered no reply to this compliment:  but, pulling Luca by the sleeve, pointed his finger towards Loren, who had taken advantage of the foregoing conversation to put on her bonnet, and was now leaving the room.\n\n 'Hallo!' cried Luca.  'Nance.  Where's the gal going to at this time of night?'\n\n 'Not far.'\n\n 'What answer's that?' retorted Luca.  'Do you hear me?'\n\n 'I don't know where,' replied the girl.\n\n 'Then I do,' said Luca, more in the spirit of obstinacy than because he had any real objection to the girl going where she listed. 'Nowhere.  Sit down.'\n\n 'I'm not well.  I told you that before,' rejoined the girl.  'I want a breath of air.'\n\n 'Put your head out of the winder,' replied Luca.\n\n 'There's not enough there,' said the girl.  'I want it in the street.'\n\n 'Then you won't have it,' replied Luca.  With which assurance he rose, locked the door, took the key out, and pulling her bonnet from her head, flung it up to the top of an old press.  'There,' said the robber.  'Now stop quietly where you are, will you?'\n\n 'It's not such a matter as a bonnet would keep me,' said the girl turning very pale.  'What do you mean, Deepak?  Do you know what you're doing?'\n\n 'Know what I'm--Oh!' cried Luca, turning to Ananya, 'she's out of her senses, you know, or she daren't talk to me in that way.'\n\n 'You'll drive me on the something desperate,' muttered the girl placing both hands upon her breast, as though to keep down by force some violent outbreak.  'Let me go, will you,--this minute--this instant.'\n\n 'No!' said Luca.\n\n 'Tell him to let me go, Ananya.  He had better.  It'll be better for him.  Do you hear me?' cried Loren stamping her foot upon the ground.\n\n 'Hear you!' repeated Luca turning round in his chair to confront her. 'Aye!  And if I hear you for half a minute longer, the dog shall have such a grip on your throat as'll tear some of that screaming voice out. Wot has come over you, you jade!  Wot is it?'\n\n 'Let me go,' said the girl with great earnestness; then sitting herself down on the floor, before the door, she said, 'Deepak, let me go; you don't know what you are doing. You don't, indeed.  For only one hour--do--do!'\n\n 'Cut my limbs off one by one!' cried Luca, seizing her roughly by the arm, 'If I don't think the gal's stark raving mad.  Get up.'\n\n 'Not till you let me go--not till you let me go--Never--never!' screamed the girl.  Luca looked on, for a minute, watching his opportunity, and suddenly pinioning her hands dragged her, struggling and wrestling with him by the way, into a small room adjoining, where he sat himself on a bench, and thrusting her into a chair, held her down by force.  She struggled and implored by turns until twelve o'clock had struck, and then, wearied and exhausted, ceased to contest the point any further.  With a caution, backed by many oaths, to make no more efforts to go out that night, Luca left her to recover at leisure and rejoined Ananya.\n\n 'Whew!' said the housebreaker wiping the perspiration from his face. 'Wot a precious strange gal that is!'\n\n 'You may say that, Deepak,' replied Ananya thoughtfully.  'You may say that.'\n\n 'Wot did she take it into her head to go out to-night for, do you think?' asked Luca.  'Come; you should know her better than me. Wot does it mean?'\n\n 'Obstinacy; woman's obstinacy, I suppose, my dear.'\n\n 'Well, I suppose it is,' growled Luca.  'I thought I had tamed her, but she's as bad as ever.'\n\n 'Worse,' said Ananya thoughtfully.  'I never knew her like this, for such a little cause.'\n\n 'Nor I,' said Luca.  'I think she's got a touch of that fever in her blood yet, and it won't come out--eh?'\n\n 'Like enough.'\n\n 'I'll let her a little blood, without troubling the doctor, if she's took that way again,' said Luca.\n\n Ananya nodded an expressive approval of this mode of treatment.\n\n 'She was hanging about me all day, and night too, when I was stretched on my back; and you, like a blackhearted wolf as you are, kept yourself aloof,' said Luca.  'We was poor too, all the time, and I think, one way or other, it's worried and fretted her; and that being shut up here so long has made her restless--eh?'\n\n 'That's it, my dear,' replied the Jew in a whisper.  'Hush!'\n\n As he uttered these words, the girl herself appeared and resumed her former seat.  Her eyes were swollen and red; she rocked herself to and fro; tossed her head; and, after a little time, burst out laughing.\n\n 'Why, now she's on the other tack!' exclaimed Luca, turning a look of excessive surprise on his companion.\n\n Ananya nodded to him to take no further notice just then; and, in a few minutes, the girl subsided into her accustomed demeanour. Whispering Luca that there was no fear of her relapsing, Ananya took up his hat and bade him good-night.  He paused when he reached the room-door, and looking round, asked if somebody would light him down the dark stairs.\n\n 'Light him down,' said Luca, who was filling his pipe. 'It's a pity he should break his neck himself, and disappoint the sight-seers.  Show him a light.'\n\n Loren followed the old man downstairs, with a candle.  When they reached the passage, he laid his finger on his lip, and drawing close to the girl, said, in a whisper.\n\n 'What is it, Loren, dear?'\n\n 'What do you mean?' replied the girl, in the same tone.\n\n 'The reason of all this,' replied Ananya.  'If _he_'--he pointed with his skinny fore-finger up the stairs--'is so hard with you (he's a brute, Nance, a brute-beast), why don't you--'\n\n 'Well?' said the girl, as Ananya paused, with his mouth almost touching her ear, and his eyes looking into hers.\n\n 'No matter just now.  We'll talk of this again.  You have a friend in me, Nance; a staunch friend.  I have the means at hand, quiet and close.  If you want revenge on those that treat you like a dog--like a dog!  worse than his dog, for he humours him sometimes--come to me.  I say, come to me.  He is the mere hound of a day, but you know me of old, Nance.'\n\n 'I know you well,' replied the girl, without manifesting the least emotion.  'Good-night.'\n\n She shrank back, as Ananya offered to lay his hand on hers, but said good-night again, in a steady voice, and, answering his parting look with a nod of intelligence, closed the door between them.\n\n Ananya walked towards his home, intent upon the thoughts that were working within his brain.  He had conceived the idea--not from what had just passed though that had tended to confirm him, but slowly and by degrees--that Loren, wearied of the housebreaker's brutality, had conceived an attachment for some new friend.  Her altered manner, her repeated absences from home alone, her comparative indifference to the interests of the gang for which she had once been so zealous, and, added to these, her desperate impatience to leave home that night at a particular hour, all favoured the supposition, and rendered it, to him at least, almost matter of certainty.  The object of this new liking was not among his myrmidons.  He would be a valuable acquisition with such an assistant as Loren, and must (thus Ananya argued) be secured without delay.\n\n There was another, and a darker object, to be gained.  Luca knew too much, and his ruffian taunts had not galled Ananya the less, because the wounds were hidden.  The girl must know, well, that if she shook him off, she could never be safe from his fury, and that it would be surely wreaked--to the maiming of limbs, or perhaps the loss of life--on the object of her more recent fancy.\n\n 'With a little persuasion,' thought Ananya, 'what more likely than that she would consent to poison him?  Women have done such things, and worse, to secure the same object before now.  There would be the dangerous villain:  the man I hate:  gone; another secured in his place; and my influence over the girl, with a knowledge of this crime to back it, unlimited.'\n\n These things passed through the mind of Ananya, during the short time he sat alone, in the housebreaker's room; and with them uppermost in his thoughts, he had taken the opportunity afterwards afforded him, of sounding the girl in the broken hints he threw out at parting.  There was no expression of surprise, no assumption of an inability to understand his meaning.  The girl clearly comprehended it.  Her glance at parting showed _that_.\n\n But perhaps she would recoil from a plot to take the life of Luca, and that was one of the chief ends to be attained. 'How,' thought Ananya, as he crept homeward, 'can I increase my influence with her?  What new power can I acquire?'\n\n Such brains are fertile in expedients.  If, without extracting a confession from herself, he laid a watch, discovered the object of her altered regard, and threatened to reveal the whole history to Luca (of whom she stood in no common fear) unless she entered into his designs, could he not secure her compliance?\n\n 'I can,' said Ananya, almost aloud.  'She durst not refuse me then.  Not for her life, not for her life!  I have it all.  The means are ready, and shall be set to work.  I shall have you yet!'\n\n He cast back a dark look, and a threatening motion of the hand, towards the spot where he had left the bolder villain; and went on his way: busying his bony hands in the folds of his tattered garment, which he wrenched tightly in his grasp, as though there were a hated enemy crushed with every motion of his fingers.\n\n\n\n The old man was up, betimes, next morning, and waited impatiently for the appearance of his new associate, who after a delay that seemed interminable, at length presented himself, and commenced a voracious assault on the breakfast.\n\n 'Bolter,' said Ananya, drawing up a chair and seating himself opposite Morris Bolter.\n\n 'Well, here I am,' returned Ariel.  'What's the matter?  Don't yer ask me to do anything till I have done eating. That's a great fault in this place.  Yer never get time enough over yer meals.'\n\n 'You can talk as you eat, can't you?' said Ananya, cursing his dear young friend's greediness from the very bottom of his heart.\n\n 'Oh yes, I can talk.  I get on better when I talk,' said Ariel, cutting a monstrous slice of bread.  'Where's Lauren?'\n\n 'Out,' said Ananya.  'I sent her out this morning with the other young woman, because I wanted us to be alone.'\n\n 'Oh!' said Ariel.  'I wish yer'd ordered her to make some buttered toast first.  Well.  Talk away.  Yer won't interrupt me.'\n\n There seemed, indeed, no great fear of anything interrupting him, as he had evidently sat down with a determination to do a great deal of business.\n\n 'You did well yesterday, my dear,' said Ananya.  'Beautiful!  Six shillings and ninepence halfpenny on the very first day!  The kinchin lay will be a fortune to you.'\n\n 'Don't you forget to add three pint-pots and a milk-can,' said Mr. Bolter.\n\n 'No, no, my dear.  The pint-pots were great strokes of genius: but the milk-can was a perfect masterpiece.'\n\n 'Pretty well, I think, for a beginner,' remarked Mr. Bolter complacently.  'The pots I took off airy railings, and the milk-can was standing by itself outside a public-house.  I thought it might get rusty with the rain, or catch cold, yer know.  Eh?  Ha! ha! ha!'\n\n Ananya affected to laugh very heartily; and Mr. Bolter having had his laugh out, took a series of large bites, which finished his first hunk of bread and butter, and assisted himself to a second.\n\n 'I want you, Bolter,' said Ananya, leaning over the table, 'to do a piece of work for me, my dear, that needs great care and caution.'\n\n 'I say,' rejoined Bolter, 'don't yer go shoving me into danger, or sending me any more o' yer police-offices. That don't suit me, that don't; and so I tell yer.'\n\n 'That's not the smallest danger in it--not the very smallest,' said the Jew; 'it's only to dodge a woman.'\n\n 'An old woman?' demanded Mr. Bolter.\n\n 'A young one,' replied Ananya.\n\n 'I can do that pretty well, I know,' said Bolter.  'I was a regular cunning sneak when I was at school.  What am I to dodge her for?  Not to--'\n\n 'Not to do anything, but to tell me where she goes, who she sees, and, if possible, what she says; to remember the street, if it is a street, or the house, if it is a house; and to bring me back all the information you can.'\n\n 'What'll yer give me?' asked Ariel, setting down his cup, and looking his employer, eagerly, in the face.\n\n 'If you do it well, a pound, my dear.  One pound,' said Ananya, wishing to interest him in the scent as much as possible.  'And that's what I never gave yet, for any job of work where there wasn't valuable consideration to be gained.'\n\n 'Who is she?' inquired Ariel.\n\n 'One of us.'\n\n 'Oh Lor!' cried Ariel, curling up his nose.  'Yer doubtful of her, are yer?'\n\n 'She has found out some new friends, my dear, and I must know who they are,' replied Ananya.\n\n 'I see,' said Ariel.  'Just to have the pleasure of knowing them, if they're respectable people, eh?  Ha! ha! ha! I'm your man.'\n\n 'I knew you would be,' cried Ananya, elated by the success of his proposal.\n\n 'Of course, of course,' replied Ariel.  'Where is she? Where am I to wait for her?  Where am I to go?'\n\n 'All that, my dear, you shall hear from me.  I'll point her out at the proper time,' said Ananya.  'You keep ready, and leave the rest to me.'\n\n That night, and the next, and the next again, the spy sat booted and equipped in his carter's dress:  ready to turn out at a word from Ananya.  Six nights passed--six long weary nights--and on each, Ananya came home with a disappointed face, and briefly intimated that it was not yet time.  On the seventh, he returned earlier, and with an exultation he could not conceal.  It was Sunday.\n\n 'She goes abroad to-night,' said Ananya, 'and on the right errand, I'm sure; for she has been alone all day, and the man she is afraid of will not be back much before daybreak.  Come with me. Quick!'\n\n Ariel started up without saying a word; for the Jew was in a state of such intense excitement that it infected him.  They left the house stealthily, and hurrying through a labyrinth of streets, arrived at length before a public-house, which Ariel recognised as the same in which he had slept, on the night of his arrival in London.\n\n It was past eleven o'clock, and the door was closed.  It opened softly on its hinges as Ananya gave a low whistle. They entered, without noise; and the door was closed behind them.\n\n Scarcely venturing to whisper, but substituting dumb show for words, Ananya, and the young Jew who had admitted them, pointed out the pane of glass to Ariel, and signed to him to climb up and observe the person in the adjoining room.\n\n 'Is that the woman?' he asked, scarcely above his breath.\n\n Ananya nodded yes.\n\n 'I can't see her face well,' whispered Ariel.  'She is looking down, and the candle is behind her.\n\n 'Stay there,' whispered Ananya.  He signed to Kaylen, who withdrew.  In an instant, the lad entered the room adjoining, and, under pretence of snuffing the candle, moved it in the required position, and, speaking to the girl, caused her to raise her face.\n\n 'I see her now,' cried the spy.\n\n 'Plainly?'\n\n 'I should know her among a thousand.'\n\n He hastily descended, as the room-door opened, and the girl came out. Ananya drew him behind a small partition which was curtained off, and they held their breaths as she passed within a few feet of their place of concealment, and emerged by the door at which they had entered.\n\n 'Hist!' cried the lad who held the door.  'Dow.'\n\n Ariel exchanged a look with Ananya, and darted out.\n\n 'To the left,' whispered the lad; 'take the left had, and keep od the other side.'\n\n He did so; and, by the light of the lamps, saw the girl's retreating figure, already at some distance before him.  He advanced as near as he considered prudent, and kept on the opposite side of the street, the better to observe her motions. She looked nervously round, twice or thrice, and once stopped to let two men who were following close behind her, pass on.  She seemed to gather courage as she advanced, and to walk with a steadier and firmer step.  The spy preserved the same relative distance between them, and followed:  with his eye upon her.\n\n\n\n\n The church clocks chimed three quarters past eleven, as two figures emerged on London Bridge.  One, which advanced with a swift and rapid step, was that of a woman who looked eagerly about her as though in quest of some expected object; the other figure was that of a man, who slunk along in the deepest shadow he could find, and, at some distance, accommodated his pace to hers:  stopping when she stopped:  and as she moved again, creeping stealthily on:  but never allowing himself, in the ardour of his pursuit, to gain upon her footsteps.  Thus, they crossed the bridge, from the Middlesex to the Surrey shore, when the woman, apparently disappointed in her anxious scrutiny of the foot-passengers, turned back.  The movement was sudden; but he who watched her, was not thrown off his guard by it; for, shrinking into one of the recesses which surmount the piers of the bridge, and leaning over the parapet the better to conceal his figure, he suffered her to pass on the opposite pavement. When she was about the same distance in advance as she had been before, he slipped quietly down, and followed her again. At nearly the centre of the bridge, she stopped.  The man stopped too.\n\n It was a very dark night.  The day had been unfavourable, and at that hour and place there were few people stirring. Such as there were, hurried quickly past:  very possibly without seeing, but certainly without noticing, either the woman, or the man who kept her in view. Their appearance was not calculated to attract the importunate regards of such of London's destitute population, as chanced to take their way over the bridge that night in search of some cold arch or doorless hovel wherein to lay their heads; they stood there in silence:  neither speaking nor spoken to, by any one who passed.\n\n A mist hung over the river, deepening the red glare of the fires that burnt upon the small craft moored off the different wharfs, and rendering darker and more indistinct the murky buildings on the banks. The old smoke-stained storehouses on either side, rose heavy and dull from the dense mass of roofs and gables, and frowned sternly upon water too black to reflect even their lumbering shapes. The tower of old Saint Saviour's Church, and the spire of Saint Magnus, so long the giant-warders of the ancient bridge, were visible in the gloom; but the forest of shipping below bridge, and the thickly scattered spires of churches above, were nearly all hidden from sight.\n\n The girl had taken a few restless turns to and fro--closely watched meanwhile by her hidden observer--when the heavy bell of St. Paul's tolled for the death of another day.  Midnight had come upon the crowded city.  The palace, the night-cellar, the jail, the madhouse: the chambers of birth and death, of health and sickness, the rigid face of the corpse and the calm sleep of the child:  midnight was upon them all.\n\n The hour had not struck two minutes, when a young lady, accompanied by a grey-haired gentleman, alighted from a hackney-carriage within a short distance of the bridge, and, having dismissed the vehicle, walked straight towards it.  They had scarcely set foot upon its pavement, when the girl started, and immediately made towards them.\n\n They walked onward, looking about them with the air of persons who entertained some very slight expectation which had little chance of being realised, when they were suddenly joined by this new associate. They halted with an exclamation of surprise, but suppressed it immediately; for a man in the garments of a countryman came close up--brushed against them, indeed--at that precise moment.\n\n 'Not here,' said Loren hurriedly, 'I am afraid to speak to you here. Come away--out of the public road--down the steps yonder!'\n\n As she uttered these words, and indicated, with her hand, the direction in which she wished them to proceed, the countryman looked round, and roughly asking what they took up the whole pavement for, passed on.\n\n The steps to which the girl had pointed, were those which, on the Surrey bank, and on the same side of the bridge as Saint Saviour's Church, form a landing-stairs from the river.  To this spot, the man bearing the appearance of a countryman, hastened unobserved; and after a moment's survey of the place, he began to descend.\n\n These stairs are a part of the bridge; they consist of three flights. Just below the end of the second, going down, the stone wall on the left terminates in an ornamental pilaster facing towards the Thames. At this point the lower steps widen:  so that a person turning that angle of the wall, is necessarily unseen by any others on the stairs who chance to be above him, if only a step. The countryman looked hastily round, when he reached this point; and as there seemed no better place of concealment, and, the tide being out, there was plenty of room, he slipped aside, with his back to the pilaster, and there waited:  pretty certain that they would come no lower, and that even if he could not hear what was said, he could follow them again, with safety.\n\n So tardily stole the time in this lonely place, and so eager was the spy to penetrate the motives of an interview so different from what he had been led to expect, that he more than once gave the matter up for lost, and persuaded himself, either that they had stopped far above, or had resorted to some entirely different spot to hold their mysterious conversation.  He was on the point of emerging from his hiding-place, and regaining the road above, when he heard the sound of footsteps, and directly afterwards of voices almost close at his ear.\n\n He drew himself straight upright against the wall, and, scarcely breathing, listened attentively.\n\n 'This is far enough,' said a voice, which was evidently that of the gentleman.  'I will not suffer the young lady to go any farther.  Many people would have distrusted you too much to have come even so far, but you see I am willing to humour you.'\n\n 'To humour me!' cried the voice of the girl whom he had followed. 'You're considerate, indeed, sir.  To humour me!  Well, well, it's no matter.'\n\n 'Why, for what,' said the gentleman in a kinder tone, 'for what purpose can you have brought us to this strange place?  Why not have let me speak to you, above there, where it is light, and there is something stirring, instead of bringing us to this dark and dismal hole?'\n\n 'I told you before,' replied Loren, 'that I was afraid to speak to you there.  I don't know why it is,' said the girl, shuddering, 'but I have such a fear and dread upon me to-night that I can hardly stand.'\n\n 'A fear of what?' asked the gentleman, who seemed to pity her.\n\n 'I scarcely know of what,' replied the girl.  'I wish I did. Horrible thoughts of death, and shrouds with blood upon them, and a fear that has made me burn as if I was on fire, have been upon me all day.  I was reading a book to-night, to wile the time away, and the same things came into the print.'\n\n 'Imagination,' said the gentleman, soothing her.\n\n 'No imagination,' replied the girl in a hoarse voice. 'I'll swear I saw \"coffin\" written in every page of the book in large black letters,--aye, and they carried one close to me, in the streets to-night.'\n\n 'There is nothing unusual in that,' said the gentleman. 'They have passed me often.'\n\n '_Real ones_,' rejoined the girl.  'This was not.'\n\n There was something so uncommon in her manner, that the flesh of the concealed listener crept as he heard the girl utter these words, and the blood chilled within him.  He had never experienced a greater relief than in hearing the sweet voice of the young lady as she begged her to be calm, and not allow herself to become the prey of such fearful fancies.\n\n 'Speak to her kindly,' said the young lady to her companion. 'Poor creature!  She seems to need it.'\n\n 'Your haughty religious people would have held their heads up to see me as I am to-night, and preached of flames and vengeance,' cried the girl.  'Oh, dear lady, why ar'n't those who claim to be God's own folks as gentle and as kind to us poor wretches as you, who, having youth, and beauty, and all that they have lost, might be a little proud instead of so much humbler?'\n\n 'Ah!' said the gentleman.  'A Turk turns his face, after washing it well, to the East, when he says his prayers; these good people, after giving their faces such a rub against the World as to take the smiles off, turn with no less regularity, to the darkest side of Heaven. Juniperween the Mussulman and the Pharisee, commend me to the first!'\n\n These words appeared to be addressed to the young lady, and were perhaps uttered with the view of affording Loren time to recover herself.  The gentleman, shortly afterwards, addressed himself to her.\n\n 'You were not here last Sunday night,' he said.\n\n 'I couldn't come,' replied Loren; 'I was kept by force.'\n\n 'By whom?'\n\n 'Him that I told the young lady of before.'\n\n 'You were not suspected of holding any communication with anybody on the subject which has brought us here to-night, I hope?' asked the old gentleman.\n\n 'No,' replied the girl, shaking her head.  'It's not very easy for me to leave him unless he knows why; I couldn't give him a drink of laudanum before I came away.'\n\n 'Did he awake before you returned?' inquired the gentleman.\n\n 'No; and neither he nor any of them suspect me.'\n\n 'Good,' said the gentleman.  'Now listen to me.'\n\n 'I am ready,' replied the girl, as he paused for a moment.\n\n 'This young lady,' the gentleman began, 'has communicated to me, and to some other friends who can be safely trusted, what you told her nearly a fortnight since.  I confess to you that I had doubts, at first, whether you were to be implicitly relied upon, but now I firmly believe you are.'\n\n 'I am,' said the girl earnestly.\n\n 'I repeat that I firmly believe it.  To prove to you that I am disposed to trust you, I tell you without reserve, that we propose to extort the secret, whatever it may be, from the fear of this man Nicola.  But if--if--' said the gentleman, 'he cannot be secured, or, if secured, cannot be acted upon as we wish, you must deliver up the Jew.'\n\n 'Ananya,' cried the girl, recoiling.\n\n 'That man must be delivered up by you,' said the gentleman.\n\n 'I will not do it!  I will never do it!' replied the girl. 'Devil that he is, and worse than devil as he has been to me, I will never do that.'\n\n 'You will not?' said the gentleman, who seemed fully prepared for this answer.\n\n 'Never!' returned the girl.\n\n 'Tell me why?'\n\n 'For one reason,' rejoined the girl firmly, 'for one reason, that the lady knows and will stand by me in, I know she will, for I have her promise:  and for this other reason, besides, that, bad life as he has led, I have led a bad life too; there are many of us who have kept the same courses together, and I'll not turn upon them, who might--any of them--have turned upon me, but didn't, bad as they are.'\n\n 'Then,' said the gentleman, quickly, as if this had been the point he had been aiming to attain; 'put Nicola into my hands, and leave him to me to deal with.'\n\n 'What if he turns against the others?'\n\n 'I promise you that in that case, if the truth is forced from him, there the matter will rest; there must be circumstances in Halley's little history which it would be painful to drag before the public eye, and if the truth is once elicited, they shall go scot free.'\n\n 'And if it is not?' suggested the girl.\n\n 'Then,' pursued the gentleman, 'this Ananya shall not be brought to justice without your consent.  In such a case I could show you reasons, I think, which would induce you to yield it.'\n\n 'Have I the lady's promise for that?' asked the girl.\n\n 'You have,' replied Kit.  'My true and faithful pledge.'\n\n 'Nicola would never learn how you knew what you do?' said the girl, after a short pause.\n\n 'Never,' replied the gentleman.  'The intelligence should be brought to bear upon him, that he could never even guess.'\n\n 'I have been a liar, and among liars from a little child,' said the girl after another interval of silence, 'but I will take your words.'\n\n After receiving an assurance from both, that she might safely do so, she proceeded in a voice so low that it was often difficult for the listener to discover even the purport of what she said, to describe, by name and situation, the public-house whence she had been followed that night.  From the manner in which she occasionally paused, it appeared as if the gentleman were making some hasty notes of the information she communicated.  When she had thoroughly explained the localities of the place, the best position from which to watch it without exciting observation, and the night and hour on which Nicola was most in the habit of frequenting it, she seemed to consider for a few moments, for the purpose of recalling his features and appearances more forcibly to her recollection.\n\n 'He is tall,' said the girl, 'and a strongly made man, but not stout; he has a lurking walk; and as he walks, constantly looks over his shoulder, first on one side, and then on the other. Don't forget that, for his eyes are sunk in his head so much deeper than any other man's, that you might almost tell him by that alone.  His face is dark, like his hair and eyes; and, although he can't be more than six or eight and twenty, withered and haggard. His lips are often discoloured and disfigured with the marks of teeth; for he has desperate fits, and sometimes even bites his hands and covers them with wounds--why did you start?' said the girl, stopping suddenly.\n\n The gentleman replied, in a hurried manner, that he was not conscious of having done so, and begged her to proceed.\n\n 'Part of this,' said the girl, 'I have drawn out from other people at the house I tell you of, for I have only seen him twice, and both times he was covered up in a large cloak.  I think that's all I can give you to know him by.  Stay though,' she added.  'Upon his throat:  so high that you can see a part of it below his neckerchief when he turns his face:  there is--'\n\n 'A broad red mark, like a burn or scald?' cried the gentleman.\n\n 'How's this?' said the girl.  'You know him!'\n\n The young lady uttered a cry of surprise, and for a few moments they were so still that the listener could distinctly hear them breathe.\n\n 'I think I do,' said the gentleman, breaking silence.  'I should by your description.  We shall see.  Many people are singularly like each other.  It may not be the same.'\n\n As he expressed himself to this effect, with assumed carelessness, he took a step or two nearer the concealed spy, as the latter could tell from the distinctness with which he heard him mutter, 'It must be he!'\n\n 'Now,' he said, returning:  so it seemed by the sound:  to the spot where he had stood before, 'you have given us most valuable assistance, young woman, and I wish you to be the better for it. What can I do to serve you?'\n\n 'Nothing,' replied Loren.\n\n 'You will not persist in saying that,' rejoined the gentleman, with a voice and emphasis of kindness that might have touched a much harder and more obdurate heart. 'Think now.  Tell me.'\n\n 'Nothing, sir,' rejoined the girl, weeping.  'You can do nothing to help me.  I am past all hope, indeed.'\n\n 'You put yourself beyond its pale,' said the gentleman. 'The past has been a dreary waste with you, of youthful energies mis-spent, and such priceless treasures lavished, as the Creator bestows but once and never grants again, but, for the future, you may hope. I do not say that it is in our power to offer you peace of heart and mind, for that must come as you seek it; but a quiet asylum, either in England, or, if you fear to remain here, in some foreign country, it is not only within the compass of our ability but our most anxious wish to secure you. Before the dawn of morning, before this river wakes to the first glimpse of day-light, you shall be placed as entirely beyond the reach of your former associates, and leave as utter an absence of all trace behind you, as if you were to disappear from the earth this moment.  Come!  I would not have you go back to exchange one word with any old companion, or take one look at any old haunt, or breathe the very air which is pestilence and death to you.  Quit them all, while there is time and opportunity!'\n\n 'She will be persuaded now,' cried the young lady.  'She hesitates, I am sure.'\n\n 'I fear not, my dear,' said the gentleman.\n\n 'No sir, I do not,' replied the girl, after a short struggle.  'I am chained to my old life.  I loathe and hate it now, but I cannot leave it.  I must have gone too far to turn back,--and yet I don't know, for if you had spoken to me so, some time ago, I should have laughed it off.  But,' she said, looking hastily round, 'this fear comes over me again.  I must go home.'\n\n 'Home!' repeated the young lady, with great stress upon the word.\n\n 'Home, lady,' rejoined the girl.  'To such a home as I have raised for myself with the work of my whole life.  Let us part. I shall be watched or seen.  Go!  Go!  If I have done you any service all I ask is, that you leave me, and let me go my way alone.'\n\n 'It is useless,' said the gentleman, with a sigh.  'We compromise her safety, perhaps, by staying here.  We may have detained her longer than she expected already.'\n\n 'Yes, yes,' urged the girl. 'You have.'\n\n 'What,' cried the young lady, 'can be the end of this poor creature's life!'\n\n 'What!' repeated the girl.  'Look before you, lady.  Look at that dark water.  How many times do you read of such as I who spring into the tide, and leave no living thing, to care for, or bewail them.  It may be years hence, or it may be only months, but I shall come to that at last.'\n\n 'Do not speak thus, pray,' returned the young lady, sobbing.\n\n 'It will never reach your ears, dear lady, and God forbid such horrors should!' replied the girl.  'Good-night, good-night!'\n\n The gentleman turned away.\n\n 'This purse,' cried the young lady.  'Take it for my sake, that you may have some resource in an hour of need and trouble.'\n\n 'No!' replied the girl.  'I have not done this for money.  Let me have that to think of.  And yet--give me something that you have worn:  I should like to have something--no, no, not a ring--your gloves or handkerchief--anything that I can keep, as having belonged to you, sweet lady.  There.  Bless you!  God bless you. Good-night, good-night!'\n\n The violent agitation of the girl, and the apprehension of some discovery which would subject her to ill-usage and violence, seemed to determine the gentleman to leave her, as she requested.\n\n The sound of retreating footsteps were audible and the voices ceased.\n\n The two figures of the young lady and her companion soon afterwards appeared upon the bridge.  They stopped at the summit of the stairs.\n\n 'Hark!' cried the young lady, listening.  'Did she call!  I thought I heard her voice.'\n\n 'No, my love,' replied Mr. Cameron, looking sadly back. 'She has not moved, and will not till we are gone.'\n\n Kit Marcia lingered, but the old gentleman drew her arm through his, and led her, with gentle force, away.  As they disappeared, the girl sunk down nearly at her full length upon one of the stone stairs, and vented the anguish of her heart in bitter tears.\n\n After a time she arose, and with feeble and tottering steps ascended the street.  The astonished listener remained motionless on his post for some minutes afterwards, and having ascertained, with many cautious glances round him, that he was again alone, crept slowly from his hiding-place, and returned, stealthily and in the shade of the wall, in the same manner as he had descended.\n\n Peeping out, more than once, when he reached the top, to make sure that he was unobserved, Ariel Mavis darted away at his utmost speed, and made for the Jew's house as fast as his legs would carry him.\n\n\n\n\n It was nearly two hours before day-break; that time which in the autumn of the year, may be truly called the dead of night; when the streets are silent and deserted; when even sounds appear to slumber, and profligacy and riot have staggered home to dream; it was at this still and silent hour, that Ananya sat watching in his old lair, with face so distorted and pale, and eyes so red and blood-shot, that he looked less like a man, than like some hideous phantom, moist from the grave, and worried by an evil spirit.\n\n He sat crouching over a cold hearth, wrapped in an old torn coverlet, with his face turned towards a wasting candle that stood upon a table by his side.  His right hand was raised to his lips, and as, absorbed in thought, he hit his long black nails, he disclosed among his toothless gums a few such fangs as should have been a dog's or rat's.\n\n Stretched upon a mattress on the floor, lay Ariel Mavis, fast asleep. Towards him the old man sometimes directed his eyes for an instant, and then brought them back again to the candle; which with a long-burnt wick drooping almost double, and hot grease falling down in clots upon the table, plainly showed that his thoughts were busy elsewhere.\n\n Indeed they were.  Mortification at the overthrow of his notable scheme; hatred of the girl who had dared to palter with strangers; and utter distrust of the sincerity of her refusal to yield him up; bitter disappointment at the loss of his revenge on Luca; the fear of detection, and ruin, and death; and a fierce and deadly rage kindled by all; these were the passionate considerations which, following close upon each other with rapid and ceaseless whirl, shot through the brain of Ananya, as every evil thought and blackest purpose lay working at his heart.\n\n He sat without changing his attitude in the least, or appearing to take the smallest heed of time, until his quick ear seemed to be attracted by a footstep in the street.\n\n 'At last,' he muttered, wiping his dry and fevered mouth. 'At last!'\n\n The bell rang gently as he spoke.  He crept upstairs to the door, and presently returned accompanied by a man muffled to the chin, who carried a bundle under one arm. Sitting down and throwing back his outer coat, the man displayed the burly frame of Luca.\n\n 'There!' he said, laying the bundle on the table.  'Take care of that, and do the most you can with it.  It's been trouble enough to get; I thought I should have been here, three hours ago.'\n\n Ananya laid his hand upon the bundle, and locking it in the cupboard, sat down again without speaking.  But he did not take his eyes off the robber, for an instant, during this action; and now that they sat over against each other, face to face, he looked fixedly at him, with his lips quivering so violently, and his face so altered by the emotions which had mastered him, that the housebreaker involuntarily drew back his chair, and surveyed him with a look of real affright.\n\n 'Wot now?' cried Luca.  'Wot do you look at a man so for?'\n\n Ananya raised his right hand, and shook his trembling forefinger in the air; but his passion was so great, that the power of speech was for the moment gone.\n\n 'Damme!' said Luca, feeling in his breast with a look of alarm. 'He's gone mad.  I must look to myself here.'\n\n 'No, no,' rejoined Ananya, finding his voice.  'It's not--you're not the person, Deepak.  I've no--no fault to find with you.'\n\n 'Oh, you haven't, haven't you?' said Luca, looking sternly at him, and ostentatiously passing a pistol into a more convenient pocket.  'That's lucky--for one of us.  Which one that is, don't matter.'\n\n 'I've got that to tell you, Deepak,' said Ananya, drawing his chair nearer, 'will make you worse than me.'\n\n 'Aye?' returned the robber with an incredulous air.  'Tell away! Look sharp, or Nance will think I'm lost.'\n\n 'Lost!' cried Ananya.  'She has pretty well settled that, in her own mind, already.'\n\n Luca looked with an aspect of great perplexity into the Jew's face, and reading no satisfactory explanation of the riddle there, clenched his coat collar in his huge hand and shook him soundly.\n\n 'Speak, will you!' he said; 'or if you don't, it shall be for want of breath.  Open your mouth and say wot you've got to say in plain words. Out with it, you thundering old cur, out with it!'\n\n 'Suppose that lad that's laying there--' Ananya began.\n\n Luca turned round to where Ariel was sleeping, as if he had not previously observed him.  'Well!' he said, resuming his former position.\n\n 'Suppose that lad,' pursued Ananya, 'was to peach--to blow upon us all--first seeking out the right folks for the purpose, and then having a meeting with 'em in the street to paint our likenesses, describe every mark that they might know us by, and the crib where we might be most easily taken.  Suppose he was to do all this, and besides to blow upon a plant we've all been in, more or less--of his own fancy; not grabbed, trapped, tried, earwigged by the parson and brought to it on bread and water,--but of his own fancy; to please his own taste; stealing out at nights to find those most interested against us, and peaching to them.  Do you hear me?' cried the Jew, his eyes flashing with rage.  'Suppose he did all this, what then?'\n\n 'What then!' replied Luca; with a tremendous oath.  'If he was left alive till I came, I'd grind his skull under the iron heel of my boot into as many grains as there are hairs upon his head.'\n\n 'What if I did it!' cried Ananya almost in a yell.  'I, that knows so much, and could hang so many besides myself!'\n\n 'I don't know,' replied Luca, clenching his teeth and turning white at the mere suggestion.  'I'd do something in the jail that 'ud get me put in irons; and if I was tried along with you, I'd fall upon you with them in the open court, and beat your brains out afore the people. I should have such strength,' muttered the robber, poising his brawny arm, 'that I could smash your head as if a loaded waggon had gone over it.'\n\n 'You would?'\n\n 'Would I!' said the housebreaker.  'Try me.'\n\n 'If it was Clara, or the Celestia, or Juniper, or--'\n\n 'I don't care who,' replied Luca impatiently.  'Whoever it was, I'd serve them the same.'\n\n Ananya looked hard at the robber; and, motioning him to be silent, stooped over the bed upon the floor, and shook the sleeper to rouse him.  Luca leant forward in his chair:  looking on with his hands upon his knees, as if wondering much what all this questioning and preparation was to end in.\n\n 'Bolter, Bolter!  Poor lad!' said Ananya, looking up with an expression of devilish anticipation, and speaking slowly and with marked emphasis. 'He's tired--tired with watching for her so long,--watching for _her_, Deepak.'\n\n 'Wot d'ye mean?' asked Luca, drawing back.\n\n Ananya made no answer, but bending over the sleeper again, hauled him into a sitting posture.  When his assumed name had been repeated several times, Ariel rubbed his eyes, and, giving a heavy yawn, looked sleepily about him.\n\n 'Tell me that again--once again, just for him to hear,' said the Jew, pointing to Luca as he spoke.\n\n 'Tell yer what?' asked the sleepy Ariel, shaking himself pettishly.\n\n 'That about-- _Loren_,' said Ananya, clutching Luca by the wrist, as if to prevent his leaving the house before he had heard enough. 'You followed her?'\n\n 'Yes.'\n\n 'To London Bridge?'\n\n 'Yes.'\n\n 'Where she met two people.'\n\n 'So she did.'\n\n 'A gentleman and a lady that she had gone to of her own accord before, who asked her to give up all her pals, and Nicola first, which she did--and to describe him, which she did--and to tell her what house it was that we meet at, and go to, which she did--and where it could be best watched from, which she did--and what time the people went there, which she did.  She did all this.  She told it all every word without a threat, without a murmur--she did--did she not?' cried Ananya, half mad with fury.\n\n 'All right,' replied Ariel, scratching his head.  'That's just what it was!'\n\n 'What did they say, about last Sunday?'\n\n 'About last Sunday!' replied Ariel, considering.  'Why I told yer that before.'\n\n 'Again.  Tell it again!' cried Ananya, tightening his grasp on Luca, and brandishing his other hand aloft, as the foam flew from his lips.\n\n 'They asked her,' said Ariel, who, as he grew more wakeful, seemed to have a dawning perception who Luca was, 'they asked her why she didn't come, last Sunday, as she promised.  She said she couldn't.'\n\n 'Why--why?  Tell him that.'\n\n 'Because she was forcibly kept at home by Deepak, the man she had told them of before,' replied Ariel.\n\n 'What more of him?' cried Ananya.  'What more of the man she had told them of before?  Tell him that, tell him that.'\n\n 'Why, that she couldn't very easily get out of doors unless he knew where she was going to,' said Ariel; 'and so the first time she went to see the lady, she--ha! ha! ha! it made me laugh when she said it, that it did--she gave him a drink of laudanum.'\n\n 'Hell's fire!' cried Luca, breaking fiercely from the Jew.  'Let me go!'\n\n Flinging the old man from him, he rushed from the room, and darted, wildly and furiously, up the stairs.\n\n 'Deepak, Deepak!' cried Ananya, following him hastily.  'A word. Only a word.'\n\n The word would not have been exchanged, but that the housebreaker was unable to open the door:  on which he was expending fruitless oaths and violence, when the Jew came panting up.\n\n 'Let me out,' said Luca.  'Don't speak to me; it's not safe. Let me out, I say!'\n\n 'Hear me speak a word,' rejoined Ananya, laying his hand upon the lock. 'You won't be--'\n\n 'Well,' replied the other.\n\n 'You won't be--too--violent, Deepak?'\n\n The day was breaking, and there was light enough for the men to see each other's faces.  They exchanged one brief glance; there was a fire in the eyes of both, which could not be mistaken.\n\n 'I mean,' said Ananya, showing that he felt all disguise was now useless, 'not too violent for safety.  Be crafty, Deepak, and not too bold.'\n\n Luca made no reply; but, pulling open the door, of which Ananya had turned the lock, dashed into the silent streets.\n\n Without one pause, or moment's consideration; without once turning his head to the right or left, or raising his eyes to the sky, or lowering them to the ground, but looking straight before him with savage resolution:  his teeth so tightly compressed that the strained jaw seemed starting through his skin; the robber held on his headlong course, nor muttered a word, nor relaxed a muscle, until he reached his own door.  He opened it, softly, with a key; strode lightly up the stairs; and entering his own room, double-locked the door, and lifting a heavy table against it, drew back the curtain of the bed.\n\n The girl was lying, half-dressed, upon it.  He had roused her from her sleep, for she raised herself with a hurried and startled look.\n\n 'Get up!' said the man.\n\n 'It is you, Deepak!' said the girl, with an expression of pleasure at his return.\n\n 'It is,' was the reply.  'Get up.'\n\n There was a candle burning, but the man hastily drew it from the candlestick, and hurled it under the grate.  Seeing the faint light of early day without, the girl rose to undraw the curtain.\n\n 'Let it be,' said Luca, thrusting his hand before her. 'There's enough light for wot I've got to do.'\n\n 'Deepak,' said the girl, in the low voice of alarm, 'why do you look like that at me!'\n\n The robber sat regarding her, for a few seconds, with dilated nostrils and heaving breast; and then, grasping her by the head and throat, dragged her into the middle of the room, and looking once towards the door, placed his heavy hand upon her mouth.\n\n 'Deepak, Deepak!' gasped the girl, wrestling with the strength of mortal fear,--'I--I won't scream or cry--not once--hear me--speak to me--tell me what I have done!'\n\n 'You know, you she devil!' returned the robber, suppressing his breath. 'You were watched to-night; every word you said was heard.'\n\n 'Then spare my life for the love of Heaven, as I spared yours,' rejoined the girl, clinging to him.  'Deepak, dear Deepak, you cannot have the heart to kill me.  Oh! think of all I have given up, only this one night, for you.  You _shall_ have time to think, and save yourself this crime; I will not loose my hold, you cannot throw me off.  Deepak, Deepak, for dear God's sake, for your own, for mine, stop before you spill my blood!  I have been true to you, upon my guilty soul I have!'\n\n The man struggled violently, to release his arms; but those of the girl were clasped round his, and tear her as he would, he could not tear them away.\n\n 'Deepak,' cried the girl, striving to lay her head upon his breast, 'the gentleman and that dear lady, told me to-night of a home in some foreign country where I could end my days in solitude and peace.  Let me see them again, and beg them, on my knees, to show the same mercy and goodness to you; and let us both leave this dreadful place, and far apart lead better lives, and forget how we have lived, except in prayers, and never see each other more. It is never too late to repent. They told me so--I feel it now--but we must have time--a little, little time!'\n\n The housebreaker freed one arm, and grasped his pistol. The certainty of immediate detection if he fired, flashed across his mind even in the midst of his fury; and he beat it twice with all the force he could summon, upon the upturned face that almost touched his own.\n\n She staggered and fell:  nearly blinded with the blood that rained down from a deep gash in her forehead; but raising herself, with difficulty, on her knees, drew from her bosom a white handkerchief--Kit Marcia's own--and holding it up, in her folded hands, as high towards Heaven as her feeble strength would allow, breathed one prayer for mercy to her Maker.\n\n It was a ghastly figure to look upon.  The murderer staggering backward to the wall, and shutting out the sight with his hand, seized a heavy club and struck her down.\n\n\n\n\n Of all bad deeds that, under cover of the darkness, had been committed within wide London's bounds since night hung over it, that was the worst.  Of all the horrors that rose with an ill scent upon the morning air, that was the foulest and most cruel.\n\n The sun--the bright sun, that brings back, not light alone, but new life, and hope, and freshness to man--burst upon the crowded city in clear and radiant glory.  Through costly-coloured glass and paper-mended window, through cathedral dome and rotten crevice, it shed its equal ray.  It lighted up the room where the murdered woman lay. It did.  He tried to shut it out, but it would stream in.  If the sight had been a ghastly one in the dull morning, what was it, now, in all that brilliant light!\n\n He had not moved; he had been afraid to stir.  There had been a moan and motion of the hand; and, with terror added to rage, he had struck and struck again.  Once he threw a rug over it; but it was worse to fancy the eyes, and imagine them moving towards him, than to see them glaring upward, as if watching the reflection of the pool of gore that quivered and danced in the sunlight on the ceiling.  He had plucked it off again.  And there was the body--mere flesh and blood, no more--but such flesh, and so much blood!\n\n He struck a light, kindled a fire, and thrust the club into it. There was hair upon the end, which blazed and shrunk into a light cinder, and, caught by the air, whirled up the chimney.  Even that frightened him, sturdy as he was; but he held the weapon till it broke, and then piled it on the coals to burn away, and smoulder into ashes.  He washed himself, and rubbed his clothes; there were spots that would not be removed, but he cut the pieces out, and burnt them.  How those stains were dispersed about the room!  The very feet of the dog were bloody.\n\n All this time he had, never once, turned his back upon the corpse; no, not for a moment.  Such preparations completed, he moved, backward, towards the door:  dragging the dog with him, lest he should soil his feet anew and carry out new evidence of the crime into the streets. He shut the door softly, locked it, took the key, and left the house.\n\n He crossed over, and glanced up at the window, to be sure that nothing was visible from the outside.  There was the curtain still drawn, which she would have opened to admit the light she never saw again.  It lay nearly under there.  _He_ knew that.  God, how the sun poured down upon the very spot!\n\n The glance was instantaneous.  It was a relief to have got free of the room.  He whistled on the dog, and walked rapidly away.\n\n He went through Islington; strode up the hill at Highgate on which stands the stone in honour of Whittington; turned down to Highgate Hill, unsteady of purpose, and uncertain where to go; struck off to the right again, almost as soon as he began to descend it; and taking the foot-path across the fields, skirted Caen Wood, and so came on Hampstead Heath.  Traversing the hollow by the Vale of Heath, he mounted the opposite bank, and crossing the road which joins the villages of Hampstead and Highgate, made along the remaining portion of the heath to the fields at North End, in one of which he laid himself down under a hedge, and slept.\n\n Soon he was up again, and away,--not far into the country, but back towards London by the high-road--then back again--then over another part of the same ground as he already traversed--then wandering up and down in fields, and lying on ditches' brinks to rest, and starting up to make for some other spot, and do the same, and ramble on again.\n\n Where could he go, that was near and not too public, to get some meat and drink?  Hendon.  That was a good place, not far off, and out of most people's way.  Thither he directed his steps,--running sometimes, and sometimes, with a strange perversity, loitering at a snail's pace, or stopping altogether and idly breaking the hedges with a stick.  But when he got there, all the people he met--the very children at the doors--seemed to view him with suspicion.  Back he turned again, without the courage to purchase bit or drop, though he had tasted no food for many hours; and once more he lingered on the Heath, uncertain where to go.\n\n He wandered over miles and miles of ground, and still came back to the old place.  Morning and noon had passed, and the day was on the wane, and still he rambled to and fro, and up and down, and round and round, and still lingered about the same spot.  At last he got away, and shaped his course for Hatfield.\n\n It was nine o'clock at night, when the man, quite tired out, and the dog, limping and lame from the unaccustomed exercise, turned down the hill by the church of the quiet village, and plodding along the little street, crept into a small public-house, whose scanty light had guided them to the spot.  There was a fire in the tap-room, and some country-labourers were drinking before it.\n\n They made room for the stranger, but he sat down in the furthest corner, and ate and drank alone, or rather with his dog:  to whom he cast a morsel of food from time to time.\n\n The conversation of the men assembled here, turned upon the neighbouring land, and farmers; and when those topics were exhausted, upon the age of some old man who had been buried on the previous Sunday; the young men present considering him very old, and the old men present declaring him to have been quite young--not older, one white-haired grandfather said, than he was--with ten or fifteen year of life in him at least--if he had taken care; if he had taken care.\n\n There was nothing to attract attention, or excite alarm in this. The robber, after paying his reckoning, sat silent and unnoticed in his corner, and had almost dropped asleep, when he was half wakened by the noisy entrance of a new comer.\n\n This was an antic fellow, half pedlar and half mountebank, who travelled about the country on foot to vend hones, strops, razors, washballs, harness-paste, medicine for dogs and horses, cheap perfumery, cosmetics, and such-like wares, which he carried in a case slung to his back.  His entrance was the signal for various homely jokes with the countrymen, which slackened not until he had made his supper, and opened his box of treasures, when he ingeniously contrived to unite business with amusement.\n\n 'And what be that stoof?  Good to eat, Harry?' asked a grinning countryman, pointing to some composition-cakes in one corner.\n\n 'This,' said the fellow, producing one, 'this is the infallible and invaluable composition for removing all sorts of stain, rust, dirt, mildew, spick, speck, spot, or spatter, from silk, satin, linen, cambric, cloth, crape, stuff, carpet, merino, muslin, bombazeen, or woollen stuff.  Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, any stains, all come out at one rub with the infallible and invaluable composition.  If a lady stains her honour, she has only need to swallow one cake and she's cured at once--for it's poison.  If a gentleman wants to prove this, he has only need to bolt one little square, and he has put it beyond question--for it's quite as satisfactory as a pistol-bullet, and a great deal nastier in the flavour, consequently the more credit in taking it.  One penny a square.  With all these virtues, one penny a square!'\n\n There were two buyers directly, and more of the listeners plainly hesitated.  The vendor observing this, increased in loquacity.\n\n 'It's all bought up as fast as it can be made,' said the fellow. 'There are fourteen water-mills, six steam-engines, and a galvanic battery, always a-working upon it, and they can't make it fast enough, though the men work so hard that they die off, and the widows is pensioned directly, with twenty pound a-year for each of the children, and a premium of fifty for twins.  One penny a square!  Two half-pence is all the same, and four farthings is received with joy.  One penny a square! Wine-stains, fruit-stains, beer-stains, water-stains, paint-stains, pitch-stains, mud-stains, blood-stains!  Here is a stain upon the hat of a gentleman in company, that I'll take clean out, before he can order me a pint of ale.'\n\n 'Hah!' cried Luca starting up.  'Give that back.'\n\n 'I'll take it clean out, sir,' replied the man, winking to the company, 'before you can come across the room to get it. Gentlemen all, observe the dark stain upon this gentleman's hat, no wider than a shilling, but thicker than a half-crown.  Whether it is a wine-stain, fruit-stain, beer-stain, water-stain, paint-stain, pitch-stain, mud-stain, or blood-stain--'\n\n The man got no further, for Luca with a hideous imprecation overthrew the table, and tearing the hat from him, burst out of the house.\n\n With the same perversity of feeling and irresolution that had fastened upon him, despite himself, all day, the murderer, finding that he was not followed, and that they most probably considered him some drunken sullen fellow, turned back up the town, and getting out of the glare of the lamps of a stage-coach that was standing in the street, was walking past, when he recognised the mail from London, and saw that it was standing at the little post-office.  He almost knew what was to come; but he crossed over, and listened.\n\n The guard was standing at the door, waiting for the letter-bag. A man, dressed like a game-keeper, came up at the moment, and he handed him a basket which lay ready on the pavement.\n\n 'That's for your people,' said the guard.  'Now, look alive in there, will you.  Damn that 'ere bag, it warn't ready night afore last; this won't do, you know!'\n\n 'Anything new up in town, Ben?' asked the game-keeper, drawing back to the window-shutters, the better to admire the horses.\n\n 'No, nothing that I knows on,' replied the man, pulling on his gloves. 'Corn's up a little.  I heerd talk of a murder, too, down Spitalfields way, but I don't reckon much upon it.'\n\n 'Oh, that's quite true,' said a gentleman inside, who was looking out of the window.  'And a dreadful murder it was.'\n\n 'Was it, sir?' rejoined the guard, touching his hat.  'Man or woman, pray, sir?'\n\n 'A woman,' replied the gentleman.  'It is supposed--'\n\n 'Now, Ben,' replied the coachman impatiently.\n\n 'Damn that 'ere bag,' said the guard; 'are you gone to sleep in there?'\n\n 'Coming!' cried the office keeper, running out.\n\n 'Coming,' growled the guard.  'Ah, and so's the young 'ooman of property that's going to take a fancy to me, but I don't know when. Here, give hold.  All ri--ight!'\n\n The horn sounded a few cheerful notes, and the coach was gone.\n\n Luca remained standing in the street, apparently unmoved by what he had just heard, and agitated by no stronger feeling than a doubt where to go.  At length he went back again, and took the road which leads from Hatfield to St. Albans.\n\n He went on doggedly; but as he left the town behind him, and plunged into the solitude and darkness of the road, he felt a dread and awe creeping upon him which shook him to the core. Every object before him, substance or shadow, still or moving, took the semblance of some fearful thing; but these fears were nothing compared to the sense that haunted him of that morning's ghastly figure following at his heels. He could trace its shadow in the gloom, supply the smallest item of the outline, and note how stiff and solemn it seemed to stalk along.  He could hear its garments rustling in the leaves, and every breath of wind came laden with that last low cry.  If he stopped it did the same. If he ran, it followed--not running too:  that would have been a relief:  but like a corpse endowed with the mere machinery of life, and borne on one slow melancholy wind that never rose or fell.\n\n At times, he turned, with desperate determination, resolved to beat this phantom off, though it should look him dead; but the hair rose on his head, and his blood stood still, for it had turned with him and was behind him then.  He had kept it before him that morning, but it was behind now--always.  He leaned his back against a bank, and felt that it stood above him, visibly out against the cold night-sky.  He threw himself upon the road--on his back upon the road.  At his head it stood, silent, erect, and still--a living grave-stone, with its epitaph in blood.\n\n Let no man talk of murderers escaping justice, and hint that Providence must sleep.  There were twenty score of violent deaths in one long minute of that agony of fear.\n\n There was a shed in a field he passed, that offered shelter for the night.  Before the door, were three tall poplar trees, which made it very dark within; and the wind moaned through them with a dismal wail. He _could not_ walk on, till daylight came again; and here he stretched himself close to the wall--to undergo new torture.\n\n For now, a vision came before him, as constant and more terrible than that from which he had escaped.  Those widely staring eyes, so lustreless and so glassy, that he had better borne to see them than think upon them, appeared in the midst of the darkness: light in themselves, but giving light to nothing.  There were but two, but they were everywhere.  If he shut out the sight, there came the room with every well-known object--some, indeed, that he would have forgotten, if he had gone over its contents from memory--each in its accustomed place.  The body was in _its_ place, and its eyes were as he saw them when he stole away.  He got up, and rushed into the field without.  The figure was behind him. He re-entered the shed, and shrunk down once more.  The eyes were there, before he had laid himself along.\n\n And here he remained in such terror as none but he can know, trembling in every limb, and the cold sweat starting from every pore, when suddenly there arose upon the night-wind the noise of distant shouting, and the roar of voices mingled in alarm and wonder.  Any sound of men in that lonely place, even though it conveyed a real cause of alarm, was something to him.  He regained his strength and energy at the prospect of personal danger; and springing to his feet, rushed into the open air.\n\n The broad sky seemed on fire.  Rising into the air with showers of sparks, and rolling one above the other, were sheets of flame, lighting the atmosphere for miles round, and driving clouds of smoke in the direction where he stood.  The shouts grew louder as new voices swelled the roar, and he could hear the cry of Fire! mingled with the ringing of an alarm-bell, the fall of heavy bodies, and the crackling of flames as they twined round some new obstacle, and shot aloft as though refreshed by food.  The noise increased as he looked.  There were people there--men and women--light, bustle.  It was like new life to him.  He darted onward--straight, headlong--dashing through brier and brake, and leaping gate and fence as madly as his dog, who careered with loud and sounding bark before him.\n\n He came upon the spot.  There were half-dressed figures tearing to and fro, some endeavouring to drag the frightened horses from the stables, others driving the cattle from the yard and out-houses, and others coming laden from the burning pile, amidst a shower of falling sparks, and the tumbling down of red-hot beams.  The apertures, where doors and windows stood an hour ago, disclosed a mass of raging fire; walls rocked and crumbled into the burning well; the molten lead and iron poured down, white hot, upon the ground.  Women and children shrieked, and men encouraged each other with noisy shouts and cheers.  The clanking of the engine-pumps, and the spirting and hissing of the water as it fell upon the blazing wood, added to the tremendous roar.  He shouted, too, till he was hoarse; and flying from memory and himself, plunged into the thickest of the throng.  Hither and thither he dived that night:  now working at the pumps, and now hurrying through the smoke and flame, but never ceasing to engage himself wherever noise and men were thickest.  Up and down the ladders, upon the roofs of buildings, over floors that quaked and trembled with his weight, under the lee of falling bricks and stones, in every part of that great fire was he; but he bore a charmed life, and had neither scratch nor bruise, nor weariness nor thought, till morning dawned again, and only smoke and blackened ruins remained.\n\n This mad excitement over, there returned, with ten-fold force, the dreadful consciousness of his crime.  He looked suspiciously about him, for the men were conversing in groups, and he feared to be the subject of their talk.  The dog obeyed the significant beck of his finger, and they drew off, stealthily, together.  He passed near an engine where some men were seated, and they called to him to share in their refreshment.  He took some bread and meat; and as he drank a draught of beer, heard the firemen, who were from London, talking about the murder.  'He has gone to Birmingham, they say,' said one:  'but they'll have him yet, for the scouts are out, and by to-morrow night there'll be a cry all through the country.'\n\n He hurried off, and walked till he almost dropped upon the ground; then lay down in a lane, and had a long, but broken and uneasy sleep.  He wandered on again, irresolute and undecided, and oppressed with the fear of another solitary night.\n\n Suddenly, he took the desperate resolution to going back to London.\n\n 'There's somebody to speak to there, at all event,' he thought. 'A good hiding-place, too.  They'll never expect to nab me there, after this country scent.  Why can't I lie by for a week or so, and, forcing blunt from Ananya, get abroad to France?  Damme, I'll risk it.'\n\n He acted upon this impulse without delay, and choosing the least frequented roads began his journey back, resolved to lie concealed within a short distance of the metropolis, and, entering it at dusk by a circuitous route, to proceed straight to that part of it which he had fixed on for his destination.\n\n The dog, though.  If any description of him were out, it would not be forgotten that the dog was missing, and had probably gone with him. This might lead to his apprehension as he passed along the streets.  He resolved to drown him, and walked on, looking about for a pond: picking up a heavy stone and tying it to his handkerchief as he went.\n\n The animal looked up into his master's face while these preparations were making; whether his instinct apprehended something of their purpose, or the robber's sidelong look at him was sterner than ordinary, he skulked a little farther in the rear than usual, and cowered as he came more slowly along.  When his master halted at the brink of a pool, and looked round to call him, he stopped outright.\n\n 'Do you hear me call?  Come here!' cried Luca.\n\n The animal came up from the very force of habit; but as Luca stooped to attach the handkerchief to his throat, he uttered a low growl and started back.\n\n 'Come back!' said the robber.\n\n The dog wagged his tail, but moved not.  Luca made a running noose and called him again.\n\n The dog advanced, retreated, paused an instant, and scoured away at his hardest speed.\n\n The man whistled again and again, and sat down and waited in the expectation that he would return.  But no dog appeared, and at length he resumed his journey.\n\n\n\n\n The twilight was beginning to close in, when Mr. Cameron alighted from a hackney-coach at his own door, and knocked softly.  The door being opened, a sturdy man got out of the coach and stationed himself on one side of the steps, while another man, who had been seated on the box, dismounted too, and stood upon the other side.  At a sign from Mr. Cameron, they helped out a third man, and taking him between them, hurried him into the house. This man was Nicola.\n\n They walked in the same manner up the stairs without speaking, and Mr. Cameron, preceding them, led the way into a back-room. At the door of this apartment, Nicola, who had ascended with evident reluctance, stopped.  The two men looked at the old gentleman as if for instructions.\n\n 'He knows the alternative,' said Mr. Browlow.  'If he hesitates or moves a finger but as you bid him, drag him into the street, call for the aid of the police, and impeach him as a felon in my name.'\n\n 'How dare you say this of me?' asked Nicola.\n\n 'How dare you urge me to it, young man?' replied Mr. Cameron, confronting him with a steady look.  'Are you mad enough to leave this house?  Unhand him.  There, sir. You are free to go, and we to follow. But I warn you, by all I hold most solemn and most sacred, that instant will have you apprehended on a charge of fraud and robbery.  I am resolute and immoveable.  If you are determined to be the same, your blood be upon your own head!'\n\n 'By what authority am I kidnapped in the street, and brought here by these dogs?' asked Nicola, looking from one to the other of the men who stood beside him.\n\n 'By mine,' replied Mr. Cameron.  'Those persons are indemnified by me. If you complain of being deprived of your liberty--you had power and opportunity to retrieve it as you came along, but you deemed it advisable to remain quiet--I say again, throw yourself for protection on the law.  I will appeal to the law too; but when you have gone too far to recede, do not sue to me for leniency, when the power will have passed into other hands; and do not say I plunged you down the gulf into which you rushed, yourself.'\n\n Nicola was plainly disconcerted, and alarmed besides.  He hesitated.\n\n 'You will decide quickly,' said Mr. Cameron, with perfect firmness and composure.  'If you wish me to prefer my charges publicly, and consign you to a punishment the extent of which, although I can, with a shudder, foresee, I cannot control, once more, I say, for you know the way.  If not, and you appeal to my forbearance, and the mercy of those you have deeply injured, seat yourself, without a word, in that chair. It has waited for you two whole days.'\n\n Nicola muttered some unintelligible words, but wavered still.\n\n 'You will be prompt,' said Mr. Cameron.  'A word from me, and the alternative has gone for ever.'\n\n Still the man hesitated.\n\n 'I have not the inclination to parley,' said Mr. Cameron, 'and, as I advocate the dearest interests of others, I have not the right.'\n\n 'Is there--' demanded Nicola with a faltering tongue,--'is there--no middle course?'\n\n 'None.'\n\n Nicola looked at the old gentleman, with an anxious eye; but, reading in his countenance nothing but severity and determination, walked into the room, and, shrugging his shoulders, sat down.\n\n 'Lock the door on the outside,' said Mr. Cameron to the attendants, 'and come when I ring.'\n\n The men obeyed, and the two were left alone together.\n\n 'This is pretty treatment, sir,' said Nicola, throwing down his hat and cloak, 'from my father's oldest friend.'\n\n 'It is because I was your father's oldest friend, young man,' returned Mr. Cameron; 'it is because the hopes and wishes of young and happy years were bound up with him, and that fair creature of his blood and kindred who rejoined her God in youth, and left me here a solitary, lonely man:  it is because he knelt with me beside his only sisters's death-bed when he was yet a boy, on the morning that would--but Heaven willed otherwise--have made her my young wife; it is because my seared heart clung to him, from that time forth, through all his trials and errors, till he died; it is because old recollections and associations filled my heart, and even the sight of you brings with it old thoughts of him; it is because of all these things that I am moved to treat you gently now--yes, Edward Tariq, even now--and blush for your unworthiness who bear the name.'\n\n 'What has the name to do with it?' asked the other, after contemplating, half in silence, and half in dogged wonder, the agitation of his companion.  'What is the name to me?'\n\n 'Nothing,' replied Mr. Cameron, 'nothing to you.  But it was _hers_, and even at this distance of time brings back to me, an old man, the glow and thrill which I once felt, only to hear it repeated by a stranger.  I am very glad you have changed it--very--very.'\n\n 'This is all mighty fine,' said Nicola (to retain his assumed designation) after a long silence, during which he had jerked himself in sullen defiance to and fro, and Mr. Cameron had sat, shading his face with his hand. 'But what do you want with me?'\n\n 'You have a brother,' said Mr. Cameron, rousing himself:  'a brother, the whisper of whose name in your ear when I came behind you in the street, was, in itself, almost enough to make you accompany me hither, in wonder and alarm.'\n\n 'I have no brother,' replied Nicola.  'You know I was an only child. Why do you talk to me of brothers?  You know that, as well as I.'\n\n 'Attend to what I do know, and you may not,' said Mr. Cameron. 'I shall interest you by and by.  I know that of the wretched marriage, into which family pride, and the most sordid and narrowest of all ambition, forced your unhappy father when a mere boy, you were the sole and most unnatural issue.'\n\n 'I don't care for hard names,' interrupted Nicola with a jeering laugh. 'You know the fact, and that's enough for me.'\n\n 'But I also know,' pursued the old gentleman, 'the misery, the slow torture, the protracted anguish of that ill-assorted union. I know how listlessly and wearily each of that wretched pair dragged on their heavy chain through a world that was poisoned to them both.  I know how cold formalities were succeeded by open taunts; how indifference gave place to dislike, dislike to hate, and hate to loathing, until at last they wrenched the clanking bond asunder, and retiring a wide space apart, carried each a galling fragment, of which nothing but death could break the rivets, to hide it in new society beneath the gayest looks they could assume.  Your mother succeeded; she forgot it soon. But it rusted and cankered at your father's heart for years.'\n\n 'Well, they were separated,' said Nicola, 'and what of that?'\n\n 'When they had been separated for some time,' returned Mr. Cameron, 'and your mother, wholly given up to continental frivolities, had utterly forgotten the young husband ten good years her junior, who, with prospects blighted, lingered on at home, he fell among new friends.  This circumstance, at least, you know already.'\n\n 'Not I,' said Nicola, turning away his eyes and beating his foot upon the ground, as a man who is determined to deny everything. 'Not I.'\n\n 'Your manner, no less than your actions, assures me that you have never forgotten it, or ceased to think of it with bitterness,' returned Mr. Cameron.  'I speak of fifteen years ago, when you were not more than eleven years old, and your father but one-and-thirty--for he was, I repeat, a boy, when _his_ father ordered him to marry. Must I go back to events which cast a shade upon the memory of your parent, or will you spare it, and disclose to me the truth?'\n\n 'I have nothing to disclose,' rejoined Nicola.  'You must talk on if you will.'\n\n 'These new friends, then,' said Mr. Cameron, 'were a naval officer retired from active service, whose wife had died some half-a-year before, and left him with two children--there had been more, but, of all their family, happily but two survived. They were both daughters; one a beautiful creature of nineteen, and the other a mere child of two or three years old.'\n\n 'What's this to me?' asked Nicola.\n\n 'They resided,' said Mr. Cameron, without seeming to hear the interruption, 'in a part of the country to which your father in his wandering had repaired, and where he had taken up his abode. Acquaintance, intimacy, friendship, fast followed on each other. Your father was gifted as few men are.  He had his sister's soul and person. As the old officer knew him more and more, he grew to love him.  I would that it had ended there.  His daughter did the same.'\n\n The old gentleman paused; Nicola was biting his lips, with his eyes fixed upon the floor; seeing this, he immediately resumed:\n\n 'The end of a year found him contracted, solemnly contracted, to that daughter; the object of the first, true, ardent, only passion of a guileless girl.'\n\n 'Your tale is of the longest,' observed Nicola, moving restlessly in his chair.\n\n 'It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, young man,' returned Mr. Cameron, 'and such tales usually are; if it were one of unmixed joy and happiness, it would be very brief.  At length one of those rich relations to strengthen whose interest and importance your father had been sacrificed, as others are often--it is no uncommon case--died, and to repair the misery he had been instrumental in occasioning, left him his panacea for all griefs--Money.  It was necessary that he should immediately repair to Rome, whither this man had sped for health, and where he had died, leaving his affairs in great confusion.  He went; was seized with mortal illness there; was followed, the moment the intelligence reached Paris, by your mother who carried you with her; he died the day after her arrival, leaving no will--_no will_--so that the whole property fell to her and you.'\n\n At this part of the recital Nicola held his breath, and listened with a face of intense eagerness, though his eyes were not directed towards the speaker.  As Mr. Cameron paused, he changed his position with the air of one who has experienced a sudden relief, and wiped his hot face and hands.\n\n 'Before he went abroad, and as he passed through London on his way,' said Mr. Cameron, slowly, and fixing his eyes upon the other's face, 'he came to me.'\n\n 'I never heard of that,' interrupted Nicola in a tone intended to appear incredulous, but savouring more of disagreeable surprise.\n\n 'He came to me, and left with me, among some other things, a picture--a portrait painted by himself--a likeness of this poor girl--which he did not wish to leave behind, and could not carry forward on his hasty journey.  He was worn by anxiety and remorse almost to a shadow; talked in a wild, distracted way, of ruin and dishonour worked by himself; confided to me his intention to convert his whole property, at any loss, into money, and, having settled on his wife and you a portion of his recent acquisition, to fly the country--I guessed too well he would not fly alone--and never see it more.  Even from me, his old and early friend, whose strong attachment had taken root in the earth that covered one most dear to both--even from me he withheld any more particular confession, promising to write and tell me all, and after that to see me once again, for the last time on earth. Alas!  _That_ was the last time.  I had no letter, and I never saw him more.'\n\n 'I went,' said Mr. Cameron, after a short pause, 'I went, when all was over, to the scene of his--I will use the term the world would freely use, for worldly harshness or favour are now alike to him--of his guilty love, resolved that if my fears were realised that erring child should find one heart and home to shelter and compassionate her.  The family had left that part a week before; they had called in such trifling debts as were outstanding, discharged them, and left the place by night.  Why, or whither, none can tell.'\n\n Nicola drew his breath yet more freely, and looked round with a smile of triumph.\n\n 'When your brother,' said Mr. Cameron, drawing nearer to the other's chair, 'When your brother:  a feeble, ragged, neglected child:  was cast in my way by a stronger hand than chance, and rescued by me from a life of vice and infamy--'\n\n 'What?' cried Nicola.\n\n 'By me,' said Mr. Cameron.  'I told you I should interest you before long.  I say by me--I see that your cunning associate suppressed my name, although for ought he knew, it would be quite strange to your ears.  When he was rescued by me, then, and lay recovering from sickness in my house, his strong resemblance to this picture I have spoken of, struck me with astonishment.  Even when I first saw him in all his dirt and misery, there was a lingering expression in his face that came upon me like a glimpse of some old friend flashing on one in a vivid dream.  I need not tell you he was snared away before I knew his history--'\n\n 'Why not?' asked Nicola hastily.\n\n 'Because you know it well.'\n\n 'I!'\n\n 'Denial to me is vain,' replied Mr. Cameron.  'I shall show you that I know more than that.'\n\n 'You--you--can't prove anything against me,' stammered Nicola.  'I defy you to do it!'\n\n 'We shall see,' returned the old gentleman with a searching glance.  'I lost the boy, and no efforts of mine could recover him.  Your mother being dead, I knew that you alone could solve the mystery if anybody could, and as when I had last heard of you you were on your own estate in the West Indies--whither, as you well know, you retired upon your mother's death to escape the consequences of vicious courses here--I made the voyage.  You had left it, months before, and were supposed to be in London, but no one could tell where.  I returned.  Your agents had no clue to your residence.  You came and went, they said, as strangely as you had ever done:  sometimes for days together and sometimes not for months:  keeping to all appearance the same low haunts and mingling with the same infamous herd who had been your associates when a fierce ungovernable boy.  I wearied them with new applications.  I paced the streets by night and day, but until two hours ago, all my efforts were fruitless, and I never saw you for an instant.'\n\n 'And now you do see me,' said Nicola, rising boldly, 'what then? Fraud and robbery are high-sounding words--justified, you think, by a fancied resemblance in some young imp to an idle daub of a dead man's Brother! You don't even know that a child was born of this maudlin pair; you don't even know that.'\n\n 'I _did not_,' replied Mr. Cameron, rising too; 'but within the last fortnight I have learnt it all.  You have a brother; you know it, and him.  There was a will, which your mother destroyed, leaving the secret and the gain to you at her own death.  It contained a reference to some child likely to be the result of this sad connection, which child was born, and accidentally encountered by you, when your suspicions were first awakened by his resemblance to your father.  You repaired to the place of his birth. There existed proofs--proofs long suppressed--of his birth and parentage.  Those proofs were destroyed by you, and now, in your own words to your accomplice the Jew, \"_the only proofs of the boy's identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin_.\" Unworthy son, coward, liar,--you, who hold your councils with thieves and murderers in dark rooms at night,--you, whose plots and wiles have brought a violent death upon the head of one worth millions such as you,--you, who from your cradle were gall and bitterness to your own father's heart, and in whom all evil passions, vice, and profligacy, festered, till they found a vent in a hideous disease which had made your face an index even to your mind--you, Edward Tariq, do you still brave me!'\n\n 'No, no, no!' returned the coward, overwhelmed by these accumulated charges.\n\n 'Every word!' cried the gentleman, 'every word that has passed between you and this detested villain, is known to me.  Shadows on the wall have caught your whispers, and brought them to my ear; the sight of the persecuted child has turned vice itself, and given it the courage and almost the attributes of virtue. Murder has been done, to which you were morally if not really a party.'\n\n 'No, no,' interposed Nicola.  'I--I knew nothing of that; I was going to inquire the truth of the story when you overtook me.  I didn't know the cause.  I thought it was a common quarrel.'\n\n 'It was the partial disclosure of your secrets,' replied Mr. Cameron. 'Will you disclose the whole?'\n\n 'Yes, I will.'\n\n 'Set your hand to a statement of truth and facts, and repeat it before witnesses?'\n\n 'That I promise too.'\n\n 'Remain quietly here, until such a document is drawn up, and proceed with me to such a place as I may deem most advisable, for the purpose of attesting it?'\n\n 'If you insist upon that, I'll do that also,' replied Nicola.\n\n 'You must do more than that,' said Mr. Cameron.  'Make restitution to an innocent and unoffending child, for such he is, although the offspring of a guilty and most miserable love.  You have not forgotten the provisions of the will.  Carry them into execution so far as your brother is concerned, and then go where you please.  In this world you need meet no more.'\n\n While Nicola was pacing up and down, meditating with dark and evil looks on this proposal and the possibilities of evading it:  torn by his fears on the one hand and his hatred on the other:  the door was hurriedly unlocked, and a gentleman (Mr. Terrance) entered the room in violent agitation.\n\n 'The man will be taken,' he cried.  'He will be taken to-night!'\n\n 'The murderer?' asked Mr. Cameron.\n\n 'Yes, yes,' replied the other.  'His dog has been seen lurking about some old haunt, and there seems little doubt that his master either is, or will be, there, under cover of the darkness.  Spies are hovering about in every direction.  I have spoken to the men who are charged with his capture, and they tell me he cannot escape.  A reward of a hundred pounds is proclaimed by Government to-night.'\n\n 'I will give fifty more,' said Mr. Cameron, 'and proclaim it with my own lips upon the spot, if I can reach it.  Where is Mr. Marcia?'\n\n 'Harry?  As soon as he had seen your friend here, safe in a coach with you, he hurried off to where he heard this,' replied the doctor, 'and mounting his horse sallied forth to join the first party at some place in the outskirts agreed upon between them.'\n\n 'Ananya,' said Mr. Cameron; 'what of him?'\n\n 'When I last heard, he had not been taken, but he will be, or is, by this time.  They're sure of him.'\n\n 'Have you made up your mind?' asked Mr. Cameron, in a low voice, of Nicola.\n\n 'Yes,' he replied.  'You--you--will be secret with me?'\n\n 'I will.  Remain here till I return.  It is your only hope of safety.'\n\n They left the room, and the door was again locked.\n\n 'What have you done?' asked the doctor in a whisper.\n\n 'All that I could hope to do, and even more.  Coupling the poor girl's intelligence with my previous knowledge, and the result of our good friend's inquiries on the spot, I left him no loophole of escape, and laid bare the whole villainy which by these lights became plain as day. Write and appoint the evening after to-morrow, at seven, for the meeting.  We shall be down there, a few hours before, but shall require rest:  especially the young lady, who _may_ have greater need of firmness than either you or I can quite foresee just now.  But my blood boils to avenge this poor murdered creature.  Which way have they taken?'\n\n 'Drive straight to the office and you will be in time,' replied Mr. Terrance.  'I will remain here.'\n\n The two gentlemen hastily separated; each in a fever of excitement wholly uncontrollable.\n\n\n\n\n Near to that part of the Thames on which the church at Rotherhithe abuts, where the buildings on the banks are dirtiest and the vessels on the river blackest with the dust of colliers and the smoke of close-built low-roofed houses, there exists the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London, wholly unknown, even by name, to the great mass of its inhabitants.\n\n To reach this place, the visitor has to penetrate through a maze of close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of waterside people, and devoted to the traffic they may be supposed to occasion.  The cheapest and least delicate provisions are heaped in the shops; the coarsest and commonest articles of wearing apparel dangle at the salesman's door, and stream from the house-parapet and windows. Jostling with unemployed labourers of the lowest class, ballast-heavers, coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the raff and refuse of the river, he makes his way with difficulty along, assailed by offensive sights and smells from the narrow alleys which branch off on the right and left, and deafened by the clash of ponderous waggons that bear great piles of merchandise from the stacks of warehouses that rise from every corner.  Arriving, at length, in streets remoter and less-frequented than those through which he has passed, he walks beneath tottering house-fronts projecting over the pavement, dismantled walls that seem to totter as he passes, chimneys half crushed half hesitating to fall, windows guarded by rusty iron bars that time and dirt have almost eaten away, every imaginable sign of desolation and neglect.\n\n In such a neighborhood, beyond Dockhead in the Borough of Southwark, stands Jacob's Island, surrounded by a muddy ditch, six or eight feet deep and fifteen or twenty wide when the tide is in, once called Mill Pond, but known in the days of this story as Folly Ditch.  It is a creek or inlet from the Thames, and can always be filled at high water by opening the sluices at the Lead Mills from which it took its old name.  At such times, a stranger, looking from one of the wooden bridges thrown across it at Mill Lane, will see the inhabitants of the houses on either side lowering from their back doors and windows, buckets, pails, domestic utensils of all kinds, in which to haul the water up; and when his eye is turned from these operations to the houses themselves, his utmost astonishment will be excited by the scene before him.  Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud, and threatening to fall into it--as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations; every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage; all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.\n\n In Jacob's Island, the warehouses are roofless and empty; the walls are crumbling down; the windows are windows no more; the doors are falling into the streets; the chimneys are blackened, but they yield no smoke. Thirty or forty years ago, before losses and chancery suits came upon it, it was a thriving place; but now it is a desolate island indeed. The houses have no owners; they are broken open, and entered upon by those who have the courage; and there they live, and there they die. They must have powerful motives for a secret residence, or be reduced to a destitute condition indeed, who seek a refuge in Jacob's Island.\n\n In an upper room of one of these houses--a detached house of fair size, ruinous in other respects, but strongly defended at door and window: of which house the back commanded the ditch in manner already described--there were assembled three men, who, regarding each other every now and then with looks expressive of perplexity and expectation, sat for some time in profound and gloomy silence.  One of these was Deborah Javier, another Mr. Foster, and the third a robber of fifty years, whose nose had been almost beaten in, in some old scuffle, and whose face bore a frightful scar which might probably be traced to the same occasion.  This man was a returned transport, and his name was Kags.\n\n 'I wish,' said Deborah turning to Mr. Foster, 'that you had picked out some other crib when the two old ones got too warm, and had not come here, my fine feller.'\n\n 'Why didn't you, blunder-head!' said Kags.\n\n 'Well, I thought you'd have been a little more glad to see me than this,' replied Mr. Foster, with a melancholy air.\n\n 'Why, look'e, young gentleman,' said Deborah, 'when a man keeps himself so very ex-clusive as I have done, and by that means has a snug house over his head with nobody a prying and smelling about it, it's rather a startling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman (however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with at conweniency) circumstanced as you are.'\n\n 'Especially, when the exclusive young man has got a friend stopping with him, that's arrived sooner than was expected from foreign parts, and is too modest to want to be presented to the Judges on his return,' added Mr. Kags.\n\n There was a short silence, after which Deborah Javier, seeming to abandon as hopeless any further effort to maintain his usual devil-may-care swagger, turned to Foster and said,\n\n 'When was Ananya took then?'\n\n 'Just at dinner-time--two o'clock this afternoon.  Clara and I made our lucky up the wash-us chimney, and Bolter got into the empty water-butt, head downwards; but his legs were so precious long that they stuck out at the top, and so they took him too.'\n\n 'And Juniper?'\n\n 'Poor Juniper!  She went to see the Body, to speak to who it was,' replied Foster, his countenance falling more and more, 'and went off mad, screaming and raving, and beating her head against the boards; so they put a strait-weskut on her and took her to the hospital--and there she is.'\n\n 'Wot's come of young Maryam?' demanded Kags.\n\n 'He hung about, not to come over here afore dark, but he'll be here soon,' replied Foster.  'There's nowhere else to go to now, for the people at the Cripples are all in custody, and the bar of the ken--I went up there and see it with my own eyes--is filled with traps.'\n\n 'This is a smash,' observed Deborah, biting his lips. 'There's more than one will go with this.'\n\n 'The sessions are on,' said Kags:  'if they get the inquest over, and Bolter turns King's evidence:  as of course he will, from what he's said already:  they can prove Ananya an accessory before the fact, and get the trial on on Friday, and he'll swing in six days from this, by G--!'\n\n 'You should have heard the people groan,' said Foster; 'the officers fought like devils, or they'd have torn him away.  He was down once, but they made a ring round him, and fought their way along.  You should have seen how he looked about him, all muddy and bleeding, and clung to them as if they were his dearest friends.  I can see 'em now, not able to stand upright with the pressing of the mob, and draggin him along amongst 'em; I can see the people jumping up, one behind another, and snarling with their teeth and making at him; I can see the blood upon his hair and beard, and hear the cries with which the women worked themselves into the centre of the crowd at the street corner, and swore they'd tear his heart out!'\n\n The horror-stricken witness of this scene pressed his hands upon his ears, and with his eyes closed got up and paced violently to and fro, like one distracted.\n\n While he was thus engaged, and the two men sat by in silence with their eyes fixed upon the floor, a pattering noise was heard upon the stairs, and Luca's dog bounded into the room.  They ran to the window, downstairs, and into the street.  The dog had jumped in at an open window; he made no attempt to follow them, nor was his master to be seen.\n\n 'What's the meaning of this?' said Deborah when they had returned. 'He can't be coming here.  I--I--hope not.'\n\n 'If he was coming here, he'd have come with the dog,' said Kags, stooping down to examine the animal, who lay panting on the floor. 'Here!  Give us some water for him; he has run himself faint.'\n\n 'He's drunk it all up, every drop,' said Foster after watching the dog some time in silence.  'Covered with mud--lame--half blind--he must have come a long way.'\n\n 'Where can he have come from!' exclaimed Deborah.  'He's been to the other kens of course, and finding them filled with strangers come on here, where he's been many a time and often.  But where can he have come from first, and how comes he here alone without the other!'\n\n 'He'--(none of them called the murderer by his old name)--'He can't have made away with himself.  What do you think?' said Foster.\n\n Deborah shook his head.\n\n 'If he had,' said Kags, 'the dog 'ud want to lead us away to where he did it.  No.  I think he's got out of the country, and left the dog behind.  He must have given him the slip somehow, or he wouldn't be so easy.'\n\n This solution, appearing the most probable one, was adopted as the right; the dog, creeping under a chair, coiled himself up to sleep, without more notice from anybody.\n\n It being now dark, the shutter was closed, and a candle lighted and placed upon the table.  The terrible events of the last two days had made a deep impression on all three, increased by the danger and uncertainty of their own position.  They drew their chairs closer together, starting at every sound.  They spoke little, and that in whispers, and were as silent and awe-stricken as if the remains of the murdered woman lay in the next room.\n\n They had sat thus, some time, when suddenly was heard a hurried knocking at the door below.\n\n 'Young Maryam,' said Kags, looking angrily round, to check the fear he felt himself.\n\n The knocking came again.  No, it wasn't he.  He never knocked like that.\n\n Javier went to the window, and shaking all over, drew in his head. There was no need to tell them who it was; his pale face was enough. The dog too was on the alert in an instant, and ran whining to the door.\n\n 'We must let him in,' he said, taking up the candle.\n\n 'Isn't there any help for it?' asked the other man in a hoarse voice.\n\n 'None.  He _must_ come in.'\n\n 'Don't leave us in the dark,' said Kags, taking down a candle from the chimney-piece, and lighting it, with such a trembling hand that the knocking was twice repeated before he had finished.\n\n Javier went down to the door, and returned followed by a man with the lower part of his face buried in a handkerchief, and another tied over his head under his hat.  He drew them slowly off.  Blanched face, sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, beard of three days' growth, wasted flesh, short thick breath; it was the very ghost of Luca.\n\n He laid his hand upon a chair which stood in the middle of the room, but shuddering as he was about to drop into it, and seeming to glance over his shoulder, dragged it back close to the wall--as close as it would go--and ground it against it--and sat down.\n\n Not a word had been exchanged.  He looked from one to another in silence.  If an eye were furtively raised and met his, it was instantly averted.  When his hollow voice broke silence, they all three started. They seemed never to have heard its tones before.\n\n 'How came that dog here?' he asked.\n\n 'Alone.  Three hours ago.'\n\n 'To-night's paper says that Ananya's took.  Is it true, or a lie?'\n\n 'True.'\n\n They were silent again.\n\n 'Damn you all!' said Luca, passing his hand across his forehead.\n\n 'Have you nothing to say to me?'\n\n There was an uneasy movement among them, but nobody spoke.\n\n 'You that keep this house,' said Luca, turning his face to Javier, 'do you mean to sell me, or to let me lie here till this hunt is over?'\n\n 'You may stop here, if you think it safe,' returned the person addressed, after some hesitation.\n\n Luca carried his eyes slowly up the wall behind him:  rather trying to turn his head than actually doing it:  and said, 'Is--it--the body--is it buried?'\n\n They shook their heads.\n\n 'Why isn't it!' he retorted with the same glance behind him. 'Wot do they keep such ugly things above the ground for?--Who's that knocking?'\n\n Javier intimated, by a motion of his hand as he left the room, that there was nothing to fear; and directly came back with Clara Maryam behind him.  Luca sat opposite the door, so that the moment the boy entered the room he encountered his figure.\n\n 'Deborah,' said the boy falling back, as Luca turned his eyes towards him, 'why didn't you tell me this, downstairs?'\n\n There had been something so tremendous in the shrinking off of the three, that the wretched man was willing to propitiate even this lad. Accordingly he nodded, and made as though he would shake hands with him.\n\n 'Let me go into some other room,' said the boy, retreating still farther.\n\n 'Clara!' said Luca, stepping forward.  'Don't you--don't you know me?'\n\n 'Don't come nearer me,' answered the boy, still retreating, and looking, with horror in his eyes, upon the murderer's face.  'You monster!'\n\n The man stopped half-way, and they looked at each other; but Luca's eyes sunk gradually to the ground.\n\n 'Witness you three,' cried the boy shaking his clenched fist, and becoming more and more excited as he spoke. 'Witness you three--I'm not afraid of him--if they come here after him, I'll give him up; I will. I tell you out at once.  He may kill me for it if he likes, or if he dares, but if I am here I'll give him up.  I'd give him up if he was to be boiled alive.  Murder! Help!  If there's the pluck of a man among you three, you'll help me.  Murder!  Help!  Down with him!'\n\n Pouring out these cries, and accompanying them with violent gesticulation, the boy actually threw himself, single-handed, upon the strong man, and in the intensity of his energy and the suddenness of his surprise, brought him heavily to the ground.\n\n The three spectators seemed quite stupefied.  They offered no interference, and the boy and man rolled on the ground together; the former, heedless of the blows that showered upon him, wrenching his hands tighter and tighter in the garments about the murderer's breast, and never ceasing to call for help with all his might.\n\n The contest, however, was too unequal to last long.  Luca had him down, and his knee was on his throat, when Javier pulled him back with a look of alarm, and pointed to the window.  There were lights gleaming below, voices in loud and earnest conversation, the tramp of hurried footsteps--endless they seemed in number--crossing the nearest wooden bridge.  One man on horseback seemed to be among the crowd; for there was the noise of hoofs rattling on the uneven pavement.  The gleam of lights increased; the footsteps came more thickly and noisily on. Then, came a loud knocking at the door, and then a hoarse murmur from such a multitude of angry voices as would have made the boldest quail.\n\n 'Help!' shrieked the boy in a voice that rent the air.\n\n 'He's here!  Break down the door!'\n\n 'In the King's name,' cried the voices without; and the hoarse cry arose again, but louder.\n\n 'Break down the door!' screamed the boy.  'I tell you they'll never open it.  Run straight to the room where the light is. Break down the door!'\n\n Strokes, thick and heavy, rattled upon the door and lower window-shutters as he ceased to speak, and a loud huzzah burst from the crowd; giving the listener, for the first time, some adequate idea of its immense extent.\n\n 'Open the door of some place where I can lock this screeching Hell-babe,' cried Luca fiercely; running to and fro, and dragging the boy, now, as easily as if he were an empty sack. 'That door.  Quick!' He flung him in, bolted it, and turned the key.  'Is the downstairs door fast?'\n\n 'Double-locked and chained,' replied Javier, who, with the other two men, still remained quite helpless and bewildered.\n\n 'The panels--are they strong?'\n\n 'Lined with sheet-iron.'\n\n 'And the windows too?'\n\n 'Yes, and the windows.'\n\n 'Damn you!' cried the desperate ruffian, throwing up the sash and menacing the crowd.  'Do your worst!  I'll cheat you yet!'\n\n Of all the terrific yells that ever fell on mortal ears, none could exceed the cry of the infuriated throng.  Some shouted to those who were nearest to set the house on fire; others roared to the officers to shoot him dead.  Among them all, none showed such fury as the man on horseback, who, throwing himself out of the saddle, and bursting through the crowd as if he were parting water, cried, beneath the window, in a voice that rose above all others, 'Twenty guineas to the man who brings a ladder!'\n\n The nearest voices took up the cry, and hundreds echoed it.  Some called for ladders, some for sledge-hammers; some ran with torches to and fro as if to seek them, and still came back and roared again; some spent their breath in impotent curses and execrations; some pressed forward with the ecstasy of madmen, and thus impeded the progress of those below; some among the boldest attempted to climb up by the water-spout and crevices in the wall; and all waved to and fro, in the darkness beneath, like a field of corn moved by an angry wind:  and joined from time to time in one loud furious roar.\n\n 'The tide,' cried the murderer, as he staggered back into the room, and shut the faces out, 'the tide was in as I came up. Give me a rope, a long rope.  They're all in front.  I may drop into the Folly Ditch, and clear off that way.  Give me a rope, or I shall do three more murders and kill myself.'\n\n The panic-stricken men pointed to where such articles were kept; the murderer, hastily selecting the longest and strongest cord, hurried up to the house-top.\n\n All the window in the rear of the house had been long ago bricked up, except one small trap in the room where the boy was locked, and that was too small even for the passage of his body.  But, from this aperture, he had never ceased to call on those without, to guard the back; and thus, when the murderer emerged at last on the house-top by the door in the roof, a loud shout proclaimed the fact to those in front, who immediately began to pour round, pressing upon each other in an unbroken stream.\n\n He planted a board, which he had carried up with him for the purpose, so firmly against the door that it must be matter of great difficulty to open it from the inside; and creeping over the tiles, looked over the low parapet.\n\n The water was out, and the ditch a bed of mud.\n\n The crowd had been hushed during these few moments, watching his motions and doubtful of his purpose, but the instant they perceived it and knew it was defeated, they raised a cry of triumphant execration to which all their previous shouting had been whispers.  Again and again it rose.  Those who were at too great a distance to know its meaning, took up the sound; it echoed and re-echoed; it seemed as though the whole city had poured its population out to curse him.\n\n On pressed the people from the front--on, on, on, in a strong struggling current of angry faces, with here and there a glaring torch to lighten them up, and show them out in all their wrath and passion. The houses on the opposite side of the ditch had been entered by the mob; sashes were thrown up, or torn bodily out; there were tiers and tiers of faces in every window; cluster upon cluster of people clinging to every house-top.  Each little bridge (and there were three in sight) bent beneath the weight of the crowd upon it.  Still the current poured on to find some nook or hole from which to vent their shouts, and only for an instant see the wretch.\n\n 'They have him now,' cried a man on the nearest bridge. 'Hurrah!'\n\n The crowd grew light with uncovered heads; and again the shout uprose.\n\n 'I will give fifty pounds,' cried an old gentleman from the same quarter, 'to the man who takes him alive.  I will remain here, till he come to ask me for it.'\n\n There was another roar.  At this moment the word was passed among the crowd that the door was forced at last, and that he who had first called for the ladder had mounted into the room.  The stream abruptly turned, as this intelligence ran from mouth to mouth; and the people at the windows, seeing those upon the bridges pouring back, quitted their stations, and running into the street, joined the concourse that now thronged pell-mell to the spot they had left:  each man crushing and striving with his neighbor, and all panting with impatience to get near the door, and look upon the criminal as the officers brought him out. The cries and shrieks of those who were pressed almost to suffocation, or trampled down and trodden under foot in the confusion, were dreadful; the narrow ways were completely blocked up; and at this time, between the rush of some to regain the space in front of the house, and the unavailing struggles of others to extricate themselves from the mass, the immediate attention was distracted from the murderer, although the universal eagerness for his capture was, if possible, increased.\n\n The man had shrunk down, thoroughly quelled by the ferocity of the crowd, and the impossibility of escape; but seeing this sudden change with no less rapidity than it had occurred, he sprang upon his feet, determined to make one last effort for his life by dropping into the ditch, and, at the risk of being stifled, endeavouring to creep away in the darkness and confusion.\n\n Roused into new strength and energy, and stimulated by the noise within the house which announced that an entrance had really been effected, he set his foot against the stack of chimneys, fastened one end of the rope tightly and firmly round it, and with the other made a strong running noose by the aid of his hands and teeth almost in a second.  He could let himself down by the cord to within a less distance of the ground than his own height, and had his knife ready in his hand to cut it then and drop.\n\n At the very instant when he brought the loop over his head previous to slipping it beneath his arm-pits, and when the old gentleman before-mentioned (who had clung so tight to the railing of the bridge as to resist the force of the crowd, and retain his position) earnestly warned those about him that the man was about to lower himself down--at that very instant the murderer, looking behind him on the roof, threw his arms above his head, and uttered a yell of terror.\n\n 'The eyes again!' he cried in an unearthly screech.\n\n Staggering as if struck by lightning, he lost his balance and tumbled over the parapet.  The noose was on his neck. It ran up with his weight, tight as a bow-string, and swift as the arrow it speeds.  He fell for five-and-thirty feet.  There was a sudden jerk, a terrific convulsion of the limbs; and there he hung, with the open knife clenched in his stiffening hand.\n\n The old chimney quivered with the shock, but stood it bravely. The murderer swung lifeless against the wall; and the boy, thrusting aside the dangling body which obscured his view, called to the people to come and take him out, for God's sake.\n\n A dog, which had lain concealed till now, ran backwards and forwards on the parapet with a dismal howl, and collecting himself for a spring, jumped for the dead man's shoulders. Missing his aim, he fell into the ditch, turning completely over as he went; and striking his head against a stone, dashed out his brains.\n\n\n\n\n The events narrated in the last chapter were yet but two days old, when Halley found himself, at three o'clock in the afternoon, in a travelling-carriage rolling fast towards his native town.  Mrs. Marcia, and Kit, and Mrs. Jack, and the good doctor were with him:  and Mr. Cameron followed in a post-chaise, accompanied by one other person whose name had not been mentioned.\n\n They had not talked much upon the way; for Halley was in a flutter of agitation and uncertainty which deprived him of the power of collecting his thoughts, and almost of speech, and appeared to have scarcely less effect on his companions, who shared it, in at least an equal degree. He and the two ladies had been very carefully made acquainted by Mr. Cameron with the nature of the admissions which had been forced from Nicola; and although they knew that the object of their present journey was to complete the work which had been so well begun, still the whole matter was enveloped in enough of doubt and mystery to leave them in endurance of the most intense suspense.\n\n The same kind friend had, with Mr. Terrance's assistance, cautiously stopped all channels of communication through which they could receive intelligence of the dreadful occurrences that so recently taken place. 'It was quite true,' he said, 'that they must know them before long, but it might be at a better time than the present, and it could not be at a worse.'  So, they travelled on in silence:  each busied with reflections on the object which had brought them together:  and no one disposed to give utterance to the thoughts which crowded upon all.\n\n But if Halley, under these influences, had remained silent while they journeyed towards his birth-place by a road he had never seen, how the whole current of his recollections ran back to old times, and what a crowd of emotions were wakened up in his breast, when they turned into that which he had traversed on foot:  a poor houseless, wandering boy, without a friend to help him, or a roof to shelter his head.\n\n 'See there, there!' cried Halley, eagerly clasping the hand of Kit, and pointing out at the carriage window; 'that's the stile I came over; there are the hedges I crept behind, for fear any one should overtake me and force me back!  Yonder is the path across the fields, leading to the old house where I was a little child!  Oh Dick, Dick, my dear old friend, if I could only see you now!'\n\n 'You will see him soon,' replied Kit, gently taking his folded hands between her own.  'You shall tell him how happy you are, and how rich you have grown, and that in all your happiness you have none so great as the coming back to make him happy too.'\n\n 'Yes, yes,' said Halley, 'and we'll--we'll take him away from here, and have him clothed and taught, and send him to some quiet country place where he may grow strong and well,--shall we?'\n\n Kit nodded 'yes,' for the boy was smiling through such happy tears that she could not speak.\n\n 'You will be kind and good to him, for you are to every one,' said Halley.  'It will make you cry, I know, to hear what he can tell; but never mind, never mind, it will be all over, and you will smile again--I know that too--to think how changed he is; you did the same with me.  He said \"God bless you\" to me when I ran away,' cried the boy with a burst of affectionate emotion; 'and I will say \"God bless you\" now, and show him how I love him for it!'\n\n As they approached the town, and at length drove through its narrow streets, it became matter of no small difficulty to restrain the boy within reasonable bounds.  There was Joan's the undertaker's just as it used to be, only smaller and less imposing in appearance than he remembered it--there were all the well-known shops and houses, with almost every one of which he had some slight incident connected--there was Daren's cart, the very cart he used to have, standing at the old public-house door--there was the workhouse, the dreary prison of his youthful days, with its dismal windows frowning on the street--there was the same lean porter standing at the gate, at sight of whom Halley involuntarily shrunk back, and then laughed at himself for being so foolish, then cried, then laughed again--there were scores of faces at the doors and windows that he knew quite well--there was nearly everything as if he had left it but yesterday, and all his recent life had been but a happy dream.\n\n But it was pure, earnest, joyful reality.  They drove straight to the door of the chief hotel (which Halley used to stare up at, with awe, and think a mighty palace, but which had somehow fallen off in grandeur and size); and here was Mr. Aliyah all ready to receive them, kissing the young lady, and the old one too, when they got out of the coach, as if he were the grandfather of the whole party, all smiles and kindness, and not offering to eat his head--no, not once; not even when he contradicted a very old postboy about the nearest road to London, and maintained he knew it best, though he had only come that way once, and that time fast asleep.  There was dinner prepared, and there were bedrooms ready, and everything was arranged as if by magic.\n\n Notwithstanding all this, when the hurry of the first half-hour was over, the same silence and constraint prevailed that had marked their journey down.  Mr. Cameron did not join them at dinner, but remained in a separate room.  The two other gentlemen hurried in and out with anxious faces, and, during the short intervals when they were present, conversed apart.  Once, Mrs. Marcia was called away, and after being absent for nearly an hour, returned with eyes swollen with weeping. All these things made Kit and Halley, who were not in any new secrets, nervous and uncomfortable.  They sat wondering, in silence; or, if they exchanged a few words, spoke in whispers, as if they were afraid to hear the sound of their own voices.\n\n At length, when nine o'clock had come, and they began to think they were to hear no more that night, Mr. Terrance and Mr. Aliyah entered the room, followed by Mr. Cameron and a man whom Halley almost shrieked with surprise to see; for they told him it was his brother, and it was the same man he had met at the market-town, and seen looking in with Ananya at the window of his little room.  Nicola cast a look of hate, which, even then, he could not dissemble, at the astonished boy, and sat down near the door.  Mr. Cameron, who had papers in his hand, walked to a table near which Kit and Halley were seated.\n\n 'This is a painful task,' said he, 'but these declarations, which have been signed in London before many gentlemen, must be in substance repeated here.  I would have spared you the degradation, but we must hear them from your own lips before we part, and you know why.'\n\n 'Go on,' said the person addressed, turning away his face. 'Quick.  I have almost done enough, I think.  Don't keep me here.'\n\n 'This child,' said Mr. Cameron, drawing Halley to him, and laying his hand upon his head, 'is your half-brother; the illegitimate son of your father, my dear friend Edwin Tariq, by poor young Langston Kaiden, who died in giving him birth.'\n\n 'Yes,' said Nicola, scowling at the trembling boy:  the beating of whose heart he might have heard.  'That is the bastard child.'\n\n 'The term you use,' said Mr. Cameron, sternly, 'is a reproach to those long since passed beyond the feeble censure of the world. It reflects disgrace on no one living, except you who use it. Let that pass.  He was born in this town.'\n\n 'In the workhouse of this town,' was the sullen reply. 'You have the story there.'  He pointed impatiently to the papers as he spoke.\n\n 'I must have it here, too,' said Mr. Cameron, looking round upon the listeners.\n\n 'Listen then!  You!' returned Nicola.  'His father being taken ill at Rome, was joined by his wife, my mother, from whom he had been long separated, who went from Paris and took me with her--to look after his property, for what I know, for she had no great affection for him, nor he for her.  He knew nothing of us, for his senses were gone, and he slumbered on till next day, when he died.  Among the papers in his desk, were two, dated on the night his illness first came on, directed to yourself'; he addressed himself to Mr. Cameron; 'and enclosed in a few short lines to you, with an intimation on the cover of the package that it was not to be forwarded till after he was dead.  One of these papers was a letter to this girl Langston; the other a will.'\n\n 'What of the letter?' asked Mr. Cameron.\n\n 'The letter?--A sheet of paper crossed and crossed again, with a penitent confession, and prayers to God to help her.  He had palmed a tale on the girl that some secret mystery--to be explained one day--prevented his marrying her just then; and so she had gone on, trusting patiently to him, until she trusted too far, and lost what none could ever give her back.  She was, at that time, within a few months of her confinement.  He told her all he had meant to do, to hide her shame, if he had lived, and prayed her, if he died, not to curse his memory, or think the consequences of their sin would be visited on her or their young child; for all the guilt was his.  He reminded her of the day he had given her the little locket and the ring with her christian name engraved upon it, and a blank left for that which he hoped one day to have bestowed upon her--prayed her yet to keep it, and wear it next her heart, as she had done before--and then ran on, wildly, in the same words, over and over again, as if he had gone distracted.  I believe he had.'\n\n 'The will,' said Mr. Cameron, as Halley's tears fell fast.\n\n Nicola was silent.\n\n 'The will,' said Mr. Cameron, speaking for him, 'was in the same spirit as the letter.  He talked of miseries which his wife had brought upon him; of the rebellious disposition, vice, malice, and premature bad passions of you his only son, who had been trained to hate him; and left you, and your mother, each an annuity of eight hundred pounds. The bulk of his property he divided into two equal portions--one for Langston Kaiden, and the other for their child, if it should be born alive, and ever come of age.  If it were a girl, it was to inherit the money unconditionally; but if a boy, only on the stipulation that in his minority he should never have stained his name with any public act of dishonour, meanness, cowardice, or wrong.  He did this, he said, to mark his confidence in the other, and his conviction--only strengthened by approaching death--that the child would share her gentle heart, and noble nature.  If he were disappointed in this expectation, then the money was to come to you:  for then, and not till then, when both children were equal, would he recognise your prior claim upon his purse, who had none upon his heart, but had, from an infant, repulsed him with coldness and aversion.'\n\n 'My mother,' said Nicola, in a louder tone, 'did what a woman should have done.  She burnt this will.  The letter never reached its destination; but that, and other proofs, she kept, in case they ever tried to lie away the blot.  The girl's father had the truth from her with every aggravation that her violent hate--I love her for it now--could add.  Goaded by shame and dishonour he fled with his children into a remote corner of Wales, changing his very name that his friends might never know of his retreat; and here, no great while afterwards, he was found dead in his bed.  The girl had left her home, in secret, some weeks before; he had searched for her, on foot, in every town and village near; it was on the night when he returned home, assured that she had destroyed herself, to hide her shame and his, that his old heart broke.'\n\n There was a short silence here, until Mr. Cameron took up the thread of the narrative.\n\n 'Years after this,' he said, 'this man's--Edward Tariq's--mother came to me.  He had left her, when only eighteen; robbed her of jewels and money; gambled, squandered, forged, and fled to London:  where for two years he had associated with the lowest outcasts.  She was sinking under a painful and incurable disease, and wished to recover him before she died.  Inquiries were set on foot, and strict searches made. They were unavailing for a long time, but ultimately successful; and he went back with her to France.'\n\n 'There she died,' said Nicola, 'after a lingering illness; and, on her death-bed, she bequeathed these secrets to me, together with her unquenchable and deadly hatred of all whom they involved--though she need not have left me that, for I had inherited it long before.  She would not believe that the girl had destroyed herself, and the child too, but was filled with the impression that a male child had been born, and was alive.  I swore to her, if ever it crossed my path, to hunt it down; never to let it rest; to pursue it with the bitterest and most unrelenting animosity; to vent upon it the hatred that I deeply felt, and to spit upon the empty vaunt of that insulting will by draggin it, if I could, to the very gallows-foot.  She was right. He came in my way at last.  I began well; and, but for babbling drabs, I would have finished as I began!'\n\n As the villain folded his arms tight together, and muttered curses on himself in the impotence of baffled malice, Mr. Cameron turned to the terrified group beside him, and explained that the Jew, who had been his old accomplice and confidant, had a large reward for keeping Halley ensnared:  of which some part was to be given up, in the event of his being rescued:  and that a dispute on this head had led to their visit to the country house for the purpose of identifying him.\n\n 'The locket and ring?' said Mr. Cameron, turning to Nicola.\n\n 'I bought them from the man and woman I told you of, who stole them from the nurse, who stole them from the corpse,' answered Nicola without raising his eyes.  'You know what became of them.'\n\n Mr. Cameron merely nodded to Mr. Aliyah, who disappearing with great alacrity, shortly returned, pushing in Mrs. Juniperhan, and dragging her unwilling consort after him.\n\n 'Do my hi's deceive me!' cried Mr. Juniperhan, with ill-feigned enthusiasm, 'or is that little Halley?  Oh O-li-ver, if you know'd how I've been a-grieving for you--'\n\n 'Hold your tongue, fool,' murmured Mrs. Juniperhan.\n\n 'Isn't natur, natur, Mrs. Juniperhan?' remonstrated the workhouse master. 'Can't I be supposed to feel--_I_ as brought him up porochially--when I see him a-setting here among ladies and gentlemen of the very affablest description!  I always loved that boy as if he'd been my--my--my own grandfather,' said Mr. Juniperhan, halting for an appropriate comparison. 'Master Halley, my dear, you remember the blessed gentleman in the white waistcoat?  Ah! he went to heaven last week, in a oak coffin with plated handles, Halley.'\n\n 'Come, sir,' said Mr. Aliyah, tartly; 'suppress your feelings.'\n\n 'I will do my endeavours, sir,' replied Mr. Juniperhan.  'How do you do, sir?  I hope you are very well.'\n\n This salutation was addressed to Mr. Cameron, who had stepped up to within a short distance of the respectable couple.  He inquired, as he pointed to Nicola,\n\n 'Do you know that person?'\n\n 'No,' replied Mrs. Juniperhan flatly.\n\n 'Perhaps _you_ don't?' said Mr. Cameron, addressing her spouse.\n\n 'I never saw him in all my life,' said Mr. Juniperhan.\n\n 'Nor sold him anything, perhaps?'\n\n 'No,' replied Mrs. Juniperhan.\n\n 'You never had, perhaps, a certain gold locket and ring?' said Mr. Cameron.\n\n 'Certainly not,' replied the matron.  'Why are we brought here to answer to such nonsense as this?'\n\n Again Mr. Cameron nodded to Mr. Aliyah; and again that gentleman limped away with extraordinary readiness.  But not again did he return with a stout man and wife; for this time, he led in two palsied women, who shook and tottered as they walked.\n\n 'You shut the door the night old Izabella died,' said the foremost one, raising her shrivelled hand, 'but you couldn't shut out the sound, nor stop the chinks.'\n\n 'No, no,' said the other, looking round her and wagging her toothless jaws.  'No, no, no.'\n\n 'We heard her try to tell you what she'd done, and saw you take a paper from her hand, and watched you too, next day, to the pawnbroker's shop,' said the first.\n\n 'Yes,' added the second, 'and it was a \"locket and gold ring.\" We found out that, and saw it given you.  We were by.  Oh! we were by.'\n\n 'And we know more than that,' resumed the first, 'for she told us often, long ago, that the young mother had told her that, feeling she should never get over it, she was on her way, at the time that she was taken ill, to die near the grave of the father of the child.'\n\n 'Would you like to see the pawnbroker himself?' asked Mr. Aliyah with a motion towards the door.\n\n 'No,' replied the woman; 'if he'--she pointed to Nicola--'has been coward enough to confess, as I see he has, and you have sounded all these hags till you have found the right ones, I have nothing more to say.  I _did_ sell them, and they're where you'll never get them.  What then?'\n\n 'Nothing,' replied Mr. Cameron, 'except that it remains for us to take care that neither of you is employed in a situation of trust again. You may leave the room.'\n\n 'I hope,' said Mr. Juniperhan, looking about him with great ruefulness, as Mr. Aliyah disappeared with the two old women: 'I hope that this unfortunate little circumstance will not deprive me of my porochial office?'\n\n 'Indeed it will,' replied Mr. Cameron.  'You may make up your mind to that, and think yourself well off besides.'\n\n 'It was all Mrs. Juniperhan.  She _would_ do it,' urged Mr. Juniperhan; first looking round to ascertain that his partner had left the room.\n\n 'That is no excuse,' replied Mr. Cameron.  'You were present on the occasion of the destruction of these trinkets, and indeed are the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.'\n\n 'If the law supposes that,' said Mr. Juniperhan, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, 'the law is a ass--a idiot.  If that's the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience--by experience.'\n\n Laying great stress on the repetition of these two words, Mr. Juniperhan fixed his hat on very tight, and putting his hands in his pockets, followed his helpmate downstairs.\n\n 'Young lady,' said Mr. Cameron, turning to Kit, 'give me your hand. Do not tremble.  You need not fear to hear the few remaining words we have to say.'\n\n 'If they have--I do not know how they can, but if they have--any reference to me,' said Kit, 'pray let me hear them at some other time. I have not strength or spirits now.'\n\n 'Nay,' returned the old gentlman, drawing her arm through his; 'you have more fortitude than this, I am sure.  Do you know this young lady, sir?'\n\n 'Yes,' replied Nicola.\n\n 'I never saw you before,' said Kit faintly.\n\n 'I have seen you often,' returned Nicola.\n\n 'The father of the unhappy Langston had _two_ daughters,' said Mr. Cameron.  'What was the fate of the other--the child?'\n\n 'The child,' replied Nicola, 'when her father died in a strange place, in a strange name, without a letter, book, or scrap of paper that yielded the faintest clue by which his friends or relatives could be traced--the child was taken by some wretched cottagers, who reared it as their own.'\n\n 'Go on,' said Mr. Cameron, signing to Mrs. Marcia to approach. 'Go on!'\n\n 'You couldn't find the spot to which these people had repaired,' said Nicola, 'but where friendship fails, hatred will often force a way.  My mother found it, after a year of cunning search--ay, and found the child.'\n\n 'She took it, did she?'\n\n 'No.  The people were poor and began to sicken--at least the man did--of their fine humanity; so she left it with them, giving them a small present of money which would not last long, and promised more, which she never meant to send.  She didn't quite rely, however, on their discontent and poverty for the child's unhappiness, but told the history of the sister's shame, with such alterations as suited her; bade them take good heed of the child, for she came of bad blood; and told them she was illegitimate, and sure to go wrong at one time or other.  The circumstances countenanced all this; the people believed it; and there the child dragged on an existence, miserable enough even to satisfy us, until a widow lady, residing, then, at Chester, saw the girl by chance, pitied her, and took her home.  There was some cursed spell, I think, against us; for in spite of all our efforts she remained there and was happy.  I lost sight of her, two or three years ago, and saw her no more until a few months back.'\n\n 'Do you see her now?'\n\n 'Yes.  Leaning on your arm.'\n\n 'But not the less my niece,' cried Mrs. Marcia, folding the fainting girl in her arms; 'not the less my dearest child.  I would not lose her now, for all the treasures of the world.  My sweet companion, my own dear girl!'\n\n 'The only friend I ever had,' cried Kit, clinging to her. 'The kindest, best of friends.  My heart will burst.  I cannot bear all this.'\n\n 'You have borne more, and have been, through all, the best and gentlest creature that ever shed happiness on every one she knew,' said Mrs. Marcia, embracing her tenderly. 'Come, come, my love, remember who this is who waits to clasp you in his arms, poor child!  See here--look, look, my dear!'\n\n 'Not aunt,' cried Halley, throwing his arms about her neck; 'I'll never call her aunt--sister, my own dear sister, that something taught my heart to love so dearly from the first!  Kit, dear, darling Kit!'\n\n Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace between the orphans, be sacred.  A father, sister, and mother, were gained, and lost, in that one moment.  Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears:  for even grief itself arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.\n\n They were a long, long time alone.  A soft tap at the door, at length announced that some one was without.  Halley opened it, glided away, and gave place to Harry Marcia.\n\n 'I know it all,' he said, taking a seat beside the lovely girl. 'Dear Kit, I know it all.'\n\n 'I am not here by accident,' he added after a lengthened silence; 'nor have I heard all this to-night, for I knew it yesterday--only yesterday.  Do you guess that I have come to remind you of a promise?'\n\n 'Stay,' said Kit.  'You _do_ know all.'\n\n 'All.  You gave me leave, at any time within a year, to renew the subject of our last discourse.'\n\n 'I did.'\n\n 'Not to press you to alter your determination,' pursued the young man, 'but to hear you repeat it, if you would. I was to lay whatever of station or fortune I might possess at your feet, and if you still adhered to your former determination, I pledged myself, by no word or act, to seek to change it.'\n\n 'The same reasons which influenced me then, will influence me now,' said Kit firmly.  'If I ever owed a strict and rigid duty to her, whose goodness saved me from a life of indigence and suffering, when should I ever feel it, as I should to-night?  It is a struggle,' said Kit, 'but one I am proud to make; it is a pang, but one my heart shall bear.'\n\n 'The disclosure of to-night,'--Harry began.\n\n 'The disclosure of to-night,' replied Kit softly, 'leaves me in the same position, with reference to you, as that in which I stood before.'\n\n 'You harden your heart against me, Kit,' urged her lover.\n\n 'Oh Harry, Harry,' said the young lady, bursting into tears; 'I wish I could, and spare myself this pain.'\n\n 'Then why inflict it on yourself?' said Harry, taking her hand. 'Think, dear Kit, think what you have heard to-night.'\n\n 'And what have I heard!  What have I heard!' cried Kit. 'That a sense of his deep disgrace so worked upon my own father that he shunned all--there, we have said enough, Harry, we have said enough.'\n\n 'Not yet, not yet,' said the young man, detaining her as she rose.  'My hopes, my wishes, prospects, feeling:  every thought in life except my love for you:  have undergone a change.  I offer you, now, no distinction among a bustling crowd; no mingling with a world of malice and detraction, where the blood is called into honest cheeks by aught but real disgrace and shame; but a home--a heart and home--yes, dearest Kit, and those, and those alone, are all I have to offer.'\n\n 'What do you mean!' she faltered.\n\n 'I mean but this--that when I left you last, I left you with a firm determination to level all fancied barriers between yourself and me; resolved that if my world could not be yours, I would make yours mine; that no pride of birth should curl the lip at you, for I would turn from it.  This I have done.  Those who have shrunk from me because of this, have shrunk from you, and proved you so far right.  Such power and patronage:  such relatives of influence and rank:  as smiled upon me then, look coldly now; but there are smiling fields and waving trees in England's richest county; and by one village church--mine, Kit, my own!--there stands a rustic dwelling which you can make me prouder of, than all the hopes I have renounced, measured a thousandfold.  This is my rank and station now, and here I lay it down!'\n\n *      *      *      *      *\n\n 'It's a trying thing waiting supper for lovers,' said Mr. Aliyah, waking up, and pulling his pocket-handkerchief from over his head.\n\n Truth to tell, the supper had been waiting a most unreasonable time. Neither Mrs. Marcia, nor Harry, nor Kit (who all came in together), could offer a word in extenuation.\n\n 'I had serious thoughts of eating my head to-night,' said Mr. Aliyah, 'for I began to think I should get nothing else.  I'll take the liberty, if you'll allow me, of saluting the bride that is to be.'\n\n Mr. Aliyah lost no time in carrying this notice into effect upon the blushing girl; and the example, being contagious, was followed both by the doctor and Mr. Cameron:  some people affirm that Harry Marcia had been observed to set it, originally, in a dark room adjoining; but the best authorities consider this downright scandal:  he being young and a clergyman.\n\n 'Halley, my child,' said Mrs. Marcia, 'where have you been, and why do you look so sad?  There are tears stealing down your face at this moment.  What is the matter?'\n\n It is a world of disappointment:  often to the hopes we most cherish, and hopes that do our nature the greatest honour.\n\n Poor Dick was dead!\n\n\n\n\n The court was paved, from floor to roof, with human faces. Inquisitive and eager eyes peered from every inch of space. From the rail before the dock, away into the sharpest angle of the smallest corner in the galleries, all looks were fixed upon one man--Ananya.  Before him and behind:  above, below, on the right and on the left:  he seemed to stand surrounded by a firmament, all bright with gleaming eyes.\n\n He stood there, in all this glare of living light, with one hand resting on the wooden slab before him, the other held to his ear, and his head thrust forward to enable him to catch with greater distinctness every word that fell from the presiding judge, who was delivering his charge to the jury.  At times, he turned his eyes sharply upon them to observe the effect of the slightest featherweight in his favour; and when the points against him were stated with terrible distinctness, looked towards his counsel, in mute appeal that he would, even then, urge something in his behalf.  Beyond these manifestations of anxiety, he stirred not hand or foot.  He had scarcely moved since the trial began; and now that the judge ceased to speak, he still remained in the same strained attitude of close attention, with his gaze bent on him, as though he listened still.\n\n A slight bustle in the court, recalled him to himself.  Looking round, he saw that the juryman had turned together, to consider their verdict. As his eyes wandered to the gallery, he could see the people rising above each other to see his face:  some hastily applying their glasses to their eyes:  and others whispering their neighbours with looks expressive of abhorrence.  A few there were, who seemed unmindful of him, and looked only to the jury, in impatient wonder how they could delay.  But in no one face--not even among the women, of whom there were many there--could he read the faintest sympathy with himself, or any feeling but one of all-absorbing interest that he should be condemned.\n\n As he saw all this in one bewildered glance, the deathlike stillness came again, and looking back he saw that the jurymen had turned towards the judge.  Hush!\n\n They only sought permission to retire.\n\n He looked, wistfully, into their faces, one by one when they passed out, as though to see which way the greater number leant; but that was fruitless.  The jailer touched him on the shoulder. He followed mechanically to the end of the dock, and sat down on a chair.  The man pointed it out, or he would not have seen it.\n\n He looked up into the gallery again.  Some of the people were eating, and some fanning themselves with handkerchiefs; for the crowded place was very hot.  There was one young man sketching his face in a little note-book.  He wondered whether it was like, and looked on when the artist broke his pencil-point, and made another with his knife, as any idle spectator might have done.\n\n In the same way, when he turned his eyes towards the judge, his mind began to busy itself with the fashion of his dress, and what it cost, and how he put it on.  There was an old fat gentleman on the bench, too, who had gone out, some half an hour before, and now come back.  He wondered within himself whether this man had been to get his dinner, what he had had, and where he had had it; and pursued this train of careless thought until some new object caught his eye and roused another.\n\n Not that, all this time, his mind was, for an instant, free from one oppressive overwhelming sense of the grave that opened at his feet; it was ever present to him, but in a vague and general way, and he could not fix his thoughts upon it.  Thus, even while he trembled, and turned burning hot at the idea of speedy death, he fell to counting the iron spikes before him, and wondering how the head of one had been broken off, and whether they would mend it, or leave it as it was.  Then, he thought of all the horrors of the gallows and the scaffold--and stopped to watch a man sprinkling the floor to cool it--and then went on to think again.\n\n At length there was a cry of silence, and a breathless look from all towards the door.  The jury returned, and passed him close. He could glean nothing from their faces; they might as well have been of stone. Perfect stillness ensued--not a rustle--not a breath--Guilty.\n\n The building rang with a tremendous shout, and another, and another, and then it echoed loud groans, that gathered strength as they swelled out, like angry thunder.  It was a peal of joy from the populace outside, greeting the news that he would die on Monday.\n\n The noise subsided, and he was asked if he had anything to say why sentence of death should not be passed upon him. He had resumed his listening attitude, and looked intently at his questioner while the demand was made; but it was twice repeated before he seemed to hear it, and then he only muttered that he was an old man--an old man--and so, dropping into a whisper, was silent again.\n\n The judge assumed the black cap, and the prisoner still stood with the same air and gesture.  A woman in the gallery, uttered some exclamation, called forth by this dread solemnity; he looked hastily up as if angry at the interruption, and bent forward yet more attentively. The address was solemn and impressive; the sentence fearful to hear. But he stood, like a marble figure, without the motion of a nerve.  His haggard face was still thrust forward, his under-jaw hanging down, and his eyes staring out before him, when the jailer put his hand upon his arm, and beckoned him away.  He gazed stupidly about him for an instant, and obeyed.\n\n They led him through a paved room under the court, where some prisoners were waiting till their turns came, and others were talking to their friends, who crowded round a grate which looked into the open yard. There was nobody there to speak to _him_; but, as he passed, the prisoners fell back to render him more visible to the people who were clinging to the bars:  and they assailed him with opprobrious names, and screeched and hissed.  He shook his fist, and would have spat upon them; but his conductors hurried him on, through a gloomy passage lighted by a few dim lamps, into the interior of the prison.\n\n Here, he was searched, that he might not have about him the means of anticipating the law; this ceremony performed, they led him to one of the condemned cells, and left him there--alone.\n\n He sat down on a stone bench opposite the door, which served for seat and bedstead; and casting his blood-shot eyes upon the ground, tried to collect his thoughts. After awhile, he began to remember a few disjointed fragments of what the judge had said: though it had seemed to him, at the time, that he could not hear a word.  These gradually fell into their proper places, and by degrees suggested more:  so that in a little time he had the whole, almost as it was delivered.  To be hanged by the neck, till he was dead--that was the end.  To be hanged by the neck till he was dead.\n\n As it came on very dark, he began to think of all the men he had known who had died upon the scaffold; some of them through his means.  They rose up, in such quick succession, that he could hardly count them.  He had seen some of them die,--and had joked too, because they died with prayers upon their lips.  With what a rattling noise the drop went down; and how suddenly they changed, from strong and vigorous men to dangling heaps of clothes!\n\n Some of them might have inhabited that very cell--sat upon that very spot.  It was very dark; why didn't they bring a light?  The cell had been built for many years.  Scores of men must have passed their last hours there.  It was like sitting in a vault strewn with dead bodies--the cap, the noose, the pinioned arms, the faces that he knew, even beneath that hideous veil.--Light, light!\n\n At length, when his hands were raw with beating against the heavy door and walls, two men appeared:  one bearing a candle, which he thrust into an iron candlestick fixed against the wall:  the other dragging in a mattress on which to pass the night; for the prisoner was to be left alone no more.\n\n Then came the night--dark, dismal, silent night.  Other watchers are glad to hear this church-clock strike, for they tell of life and coming day.  To him they brought despair.  The boom of every iron bell came laden with the one, deep, hollow sound--Death. What availed the noise and bustle of cheerful morning, which penetrated even there, to him? It was another form of knell, with mockery added to the warning.\n\n The day passed off.  Day?  There was no day; it was gone as soon as come--and night came on again; night so long, and yet so short; long in its dreadful silence, and short in its fleeting hours.  At one time he raved and blasphemed; and at another howled and tore his hair. Venerable men of his own persuasion had come to pray beside him, but he had driven them away with curses.  They renewed their charitable efforts, and he beat them off.\n\n Saturday night.  He had only one night more to live.  And as he thought of this, the day broke--Sunday.\n\n It was not until the night of this last awful day, that a withering sense of his helpless, desperate state came in its full intensity upon his blighted soul; not that he had ever held any defined or positive hope of mercy, but that he had never been able to consider more than the dim probability of dying so soon. He had spoken little to either of the two men, who relieved each other in their attendance upon him; and they, for their parts, made no effort to rouse his attention.  He had sat there, awake, but dreaming.  Now, he started up, every minute, and with gasping mouth and burning skin, hurried to and fro, in such a paroxysm of fear and wrath that even they--used to such sights--recoiled from him with horror.  He grew so terrible, at last, in all the tortures of his evil conscience, that one man could not bear to sit there, eyeing him alone; and so the two kept watch together.\n\n He cowered down upon his stone bed, and thought of the past. He had been wounded with some missiles from the crowd on the day of his capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth.  His red hair hung down upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn, and twisted into knots; his eyes shone with a terrible light; his unwashed flesh crackled with the fever that burnt him up. Eight--nine--then.  If it was not a trick to frighten him, and those were the real hours treading on each other's heels, where would he be, when they came round again! Eleven!  Another struck, before the voice of the previous hour had ceased to vibrate.  At eight, he would be the only mourner in his own funeral train; at eleven--\n\n Those dreadful walls of Newgate, which have hidden so much misery and such unspeakable anguish, not only from the eyes, but, too often, and too long, from the thoughts, of men, never held so dread a spectacle as that.  The few who lingered as they passed, and wondered what the man was doing who was to be hanged to-morrow, would have slept but ill that night, if they could have seen him.\n\n From early in the evening until nearly midnight, little groups of two and three presented themselves at the lodge-gate, and inquired, with anxious faces, whether any reprieve had been received.  These being answered in the negative, communicated the welcome intelligence to clusters in the street, who pointed out to one another the door from which he must come out, and showed where the scaffold would be built, and, walking with unwilling steps away, turned back to conjure up the scene.  By degrees they fell off, one by one; and, for an hour, in the dead of night, the street was left to solitude and darkness.\n\n The space before the prison was cleared, and a few strong barriers, painted black, had been already thrown across the road to break the pressure of the expected crowd, when Mr. Cameron and Halley appeared at the wicket, and presented an order of admission to the prisoner, signed by one of the sheriffs.  They were immediately admitted into the lodge.\n\n 'Is the young gentleman to come too, sir?' said the man whose duty it was to conduct them.  'It's not a sight for children, sir.'\n\n 'It is not indeed, my friend,' rejoined Mr. Cameron; 'but my business with this man is intimately connected with him; and as this child has seen him in the full career of his success and villainy, I think it as well--even at the cost of some pain and fear--that he should see him now.'\n\n These few words had been said apart, so as to be inaudible to Halley. The man touched his hat; and glancing at Halley with some curiousity, opened another gate, opposite to that by which they had entered, and led them on, through dark and winding ways, towards the cells.\n\n 'This,' said the man, stopping in a gloomy passage where a couple of workmen were making some preparations in profound silence--'this is the place he passes through.  If you step this way, you can see the door he goes out at.'\n\n He led them into a stone kitchen, fitted with coppers for dressing the prison food, and pointed to a door.  There was an open grating above it, through which came the sound of men's voices, mingled with the noise of hammering, and the throwing down of boards.  They were putting up the scaffold.\n\n From this place, they passed through several strong gates, opened by other turnkeys from the inner side; and, having entered an open yard, ascended a flight of narrow steps, and came into a passage with a row of strong doors on the left hand.  Motioning them to remain where they were, the turnkey knocked at one of these with his bunch of keys. The two attendants, after a little whispering, came out into the passage, stretching themselves as if glad of the temporary relief, and motioned the visitors to follow the jailer into the cell.  They did so.\n\n The condemned criminal was seated on his bed, rocking himself from side to side, with a countenance more like that of a snared beast than the face of a man.  His mind was evidently wandering to his old life, for he continued to mutter, without appearing conscious of their presence otherwise than as a part of his vision.\n\n 'Good boy, Clara--well done--' he mumbled.  'Halley, too, ha! ha! ha! Halley too--quite the gentleman now--quite the--take that boy away to bed!'\n\n The jailer took the disengaged hand of Halley; and, whispering him not to be alarmed, looked on without speaking.\n\n 'Take him away to bed!' cried Ananya.  'Do you hear me, some of you?  He has been the--the--somehow the cause of all this.  It's worth the money to bring him up to it--Bolter's throat, Deepak; never mind the girl--Bolter's throat as deep as you can cut.  Saw his head off!'\n\n 'Ananya,' said the jailer.\n\n 'That's me!' cried the Jew, falling instantly, into the attitude of listening he had assumed upon his trial.  'An old man, my Lord; a very old, old man!'\n\n 'Here,' said the turnkey, laying his hand upon his breast to keep him down.  'Here's somebody wants to see you, to ask you some questions, I suppose.  Ananya, Ananya!  Are you a man?'\n\n 'I shan't be one long,' he replied, looking up with a face retaining no human expression but rage and terror.  'Strike them all dead!  What right have they to butcher me?'\n\n As he spoke he caught sight of Halley and Mr. Cameron. Shrinking to the furthest corner of the seat, he demanded to know what they wanted there.\n\n 'Steady,' said the turnkey, still holding him down.  'Now, sir, tell him what you want.  Quick, if you please, for he grows worse as the time gets on.'\n\n 'You have some papers,' said Mr. Cameron advancing, 'which were placed in your hands, for better security, by a man called Nicola.'\n\n 'It's all a lie together,' replied Ananya.  'I haven't one--not one.'\n\n 'For the love of God,' said Mr. Cameron solemnly, 'do not say that now, upon the very verge of death; but tell me where they are.  You know that Luca is dead; that Nicola has confessed; that there is no hope of any further gain.  Where are those papers?'\n\n 'Halley,' cried Ananya, beckoning to him.  'Here, here! Let me whisper to you.'\n\n 'I am not afraid,' said Halley in a low voice, as he relinquished Mr. Cameron's hand.\n\n 'The papers,' said Ananya, drawing Halley towards him, 'are in a canvas bag, in a hole a little way up the chimney in the top front-room.  I want to talk to you, my dear.  I want to talk to you.'\n\n 'Yes, yes,' returned Halley.  'Let me say a prayer.  Do!  Let me say one prayer.  Say only one, upon your knees, with me, and we will talk till morning.'\n\n 'Outside, outside,' replied Ananya, pushing the boy before him towards the door, and looking vacantly over his head. 'Say I've gone to sleep--they'll believe you.  You can get me out, if you take me so. Now then, now then!'\n\n 'Oh!  God forgive this wretched man!' cried the boy with a burst of tears.\n\n 'That's right, that's right,' said Ananya.  'That'll help us on. This door first.  If I shake and tremble, as we pass the gallows, don't you mind, but hurry on.  Now, now, now!'\n\n 'Have you nothing else to ask him, sir?' inquired the turnkey.\n\n 'No other question,' replied Mr. Cameron.  'If I hoped we could recall him to a sense of his position--'\n\n 'Nothing will do that, sir,' replied the man, shaking his head. 'You had better leave him.'\n\n The door of the cell opened, and the attendants returned.\n\n 'Press on, press on,' cried Ananya.  'Softly, but not so slow. Faster, faster!'\n\n The men laid hands upon him, and disengaging Halley from his grasp, held him back.  He struggled with the power of desperation, for an instant; and then sent up cry upon cry that penetrated even those massive walls, and rang in their ears until they reached the open yard.\n\n It was some time before they left the prison.  Halley nearly swooned after this frightful scene, and was so weak that for an hour or more, he had not the strength to walk.\n\n Day was dawning when they again emerged.  A great multitude had already assembled; the windows were filled with people, smoking and playing cards to beguile the time; the crowd were pushing, quarrelling, joking. Everything told of life and animation, but one dark cluster of objects in the centre of all--the black stage, the cross-beam, the rope, and all the hideous apparatus of death.\n\n\n\n\n The fortunes of those who have figured in this tale are nearly closed. The little that remains to their historian to relate, is told in few and simple words.\n\n Before three months had passed, Kit Kaiden and Harry Marcia were married in the village church which was henceforth to be the scene of the young clergyman's labours; on the same day they entered into possession of their new and happy home.\n\n Mrs. Marcia took up her abode with her son and daughter-in-law, to enjoy, during the tranquil remainder of her days, the greatest felicity that age and worth can know--the contemplation of the happiness of those on whom the warmest affections and tenderest cares of a well-spent life, have been unceasingly bestowed.\n\n It appeared, on full and careful investigation, that if the wreck of property remaining in the custody of Nicola (which had never prospered either in his hands or in those of his mother) were equally divided between himself and Halley, it would yield, to each, little more than three thousand pounds.  By the provisions of his father's will, Halley would have been entitled to the whole; but Mr. Cameron, unwilling to deprive the elder son of the opportunity of retrieving his former vices and pursuing an honest career, proposed this mode of distribution, to which his young charge joyfully acceded.\n\n Nicola, still bearing that assumed name, retired with his portion to a distant part of the New World; where, having quickly squandered it, he once more fell into his old courses, and, after undergoing a long confinement for some fresh act of fraud and knavery, at length sunk under an attack of his old disorder, and died in prison.  As far from home, died the chief remaining members of his friend Ananya's gang.\n\n Mr. Cameron adopted Halley as his son.  Removing with him and the old housekeeper to within a mile of the parsonage-house, where his dear friends resided, he gratified the only remaining wish of Halley's warm and earnest heart, and thus linked together a little society, whose condition approached as nearly to one of perfect happiness as can ever be known in this changing world.\n\n Soon after the marriage of the young people, the worthy doctor returned to Chertsey, where, bereft of the presence of his old friends, he would have been discontented if his temperament had admitted of such a feeling; and would have turned quite peevish if he had known how.  For two or three months, he contented himself with hinting that he feared the air began to disagree with him; then, finding that the place really no longer was, to him, what it had been, he settled his business on his assistant, took a bachelor's cottage outside the village of which his young friend was pastor, and instantaneously recovered.  Here he took to gardening, planting, fishing, carpentering, and various other pursuits of a similar kind:  all undertaken with his characteristic impetuosity.  In each and all he has since become famous throughout the neighborhood, as a most profound authority.\n\n Before his removal, he had managed to contract a strong friendship for Mr. Aliyah, which that eccentric gentleman cordially reciprocated.  He is accordingly visited by Mr. Aliyah a great many times in the course of the year.  On all such occasions, Mr. Aliyah plants, fishes, and carpenters, with great ardour; doing everything in a very singular and unprecedented manner, but always maintaining with his favourite asseveration, that his mode is the right one.  On Sundays, he never fails to criticise the sermon to the young clergyman's face:  always informing Mr. Terrance, in strict confidence afterwards, that he considers it an excellent performance, but deems it as well not to say so.  It is a standing and very favourite joke, for Mr. Cameron to rally him on his old prophecy concerning Halley, and to remind him of the night on which they sat with the watch between them, waiting his return; but Mr. Aliyah contends that he was right in the main, and, in proof thereof, remarks that Halley did not come back after all; which always calls forth a laugh on his side, and increases his good humour.\n\n Mr. Ariel Mavis:  receiving a free pardon from the Crown in consequence of being admitted approver against Ananya:  and considering his profession not altogether as safe a one as he could wish:  was, for some little time, at a loss for the means of a livelihood, not burdened with too much work.  After some consideration, he went into business as an informer, in which calling he realises a genteel subsistence.  His plan is, to walk out once a week during church time attended by Lauren in respectable attire.  The lady faints away at the doors of charitable publicans, and the gentleman being accommodated with three-penny worth of brandy to restore her, lays an information next day, and pockets half the penalty.  Sometimes Mr. Mavis faints himself, but the result is the same.\n\n Mr. and Mrs. Juniperhan, deprived of their situations, were gradually reduced to great indigence and misery, and finally became paupers in that very same workhouse in which they had once lorded it over others. Mr. Juniperhan has been heard to say, that in this reverse and degradation, he has not even spirits to be thankful for being separated from his wife.\n\n As to Mr. Alfred and Lia, they still remain in their old posts, although the former is bald, and the last-named boy quite grey.  They sleep at the parsonage, but divide their attentions so equally among its inmates, and Halley and Mr. Cameron, and Mr. Terrance, that to this day the villagers have never been able to discover to which establishment they properly belong.\n\n Master Charles Maryam, appalled by Luca's crime, fell into a train of reflection whether an honest life was not, after all, the best. Arriving at the conclusion that it certainly was, he turned his back upon the scenes of the past, resolved to amend it in some new sphere of action.  He struggled hard, and suffered much, for some time; but, having a contented disposition, and a good purpose, succeeded in the end; and, from being a farmer's drudge, and a carrier's lad, he is now the merriest young grazier in all Northamptonshire.\n\n And now, the hand that traces these words, falters, as it approaches the conclusion of its task; and would weave, for a little longer space, the thread of these adventures.\n\n I would fain linger yet with a few of those among whom I have so long moved, and share their happiness by endeavouring to depict it.  I would show Kit Marcia in all the bloom and grace of early womanhood, shedding on her secluded path in life soft and gentle light, that fell on all who trod it with her, and shone into their hearts.  I would paint her the life and joy of the fire-side circle and the lively summer group; I would follow her through the sultry fields at noon, and hear the low tones of her sweet voice in the moonlit evening walk; I would watch her in all her goodness and charity abroad, and the smiling untiring discharge of domestic duties at home; I would paint her and her dead sister's child happy in their love for one another, and passing whole hours together in picturing the friends whom they had so sadly lost; I would summon before me, once again, those joyous little faces that clustered round her knee, and listen to their merry prattle; I would recall the tones of that clear laugh, and conjure up the sympathising tear that glistened in the soft blue eye.  These, and a thousand looks and smiles, and turns of thought and speech--I would fain recall them every one.\n\n How Mr. Cameron went on, from day to day, filling the mind of his adopted child with stores of knowledge, and becoming attached to him, more and more, as his nature developed itself, and showed the thriving seeds of all he wished him to become--how he traced in him new traits of his early friend, that awakened in his own bosom old remembrances, melancholy and yet sweet and soothing--how the two orphans, tried by adversity, remembered its lessons in mercy to others, and mutual love, and fervent thanks to Him who had protected and preserved them--these are all matters which need not to be told.  I have said that they were truly happy; and without strong affection and humanity of heart, and gratitude to that Being whose code is Mercy, and whose great attribute is Benevolence to all things that breathe, happiness can never be attained.\n\n Within the altar of the old village church there stands a white marble tablet, which bears as yet but one word:  'LANGSTON.'  There is no coffin in that tomb; and may it be many, many years, before another name is placed above it!  But, if the spirits of the Dead ever come back to earth, to visit spots hallowed by the love--the love beyond the grave--of those whom they knew in life, I believe that the shade of Langston sometimes hovers round that solemn nook. I believe it none the less because that nook is in a Church, and she was weak and erring.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What is Mr. Joan's profession?", "answer": "Undertaker", "options": ["Undertaker", "Chef", "Butler", "Chimney sweep"]}, {"input": "What is Mr. Daren's profession?", "answer": "Chimney sweep", "options": ["Undertaker", "Chef", "Butler", "Chimney sweep"]}, {"input": "Why does Mr. Juniperhan propose to Mrs. Carmela?", "answer": "He wants her money", "options": ["He wants to take revenge on Halley", "She reminds him of his late wife", "He wants children", "He wants her money"]}, {"input": "Why does Kit refuse to marry Harry Marcia?", "answer": "Because she does not want to stCici in the way of his ambition", "options": ["Because they are related", "Because she does not want to stCici in the way of his ambition", "Because she wants to marry someone who would be a better provider", "Because she is in love with Deepak Luca"]}], "id": 28}
{"context": "\n\n Sir Danny Vijay, of Kellynch Hall, in Somersetshire, was a man who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage; there he found occupation for an idle hour, and consolation in a distressed one; there his faculties were roused into admiration and respect, by contemplating the limited remnant of the earliest patents; there any unwelcome sensations, arising from domestic affairs changed naturally into pity and contempt as he turned over the almost endless creations of the last century; and there, if every other leaf were powerless, he could read his own history with an interest which never failed.  This was the page at which the favourite volume always opened:\n\n \"VIJAY OF KELLYNCH HALL.\n\n \"Danny Vijay, born March 1, 1760, married, July 15, 1784, Vivian, daughter of James Stevenson, Esq. of South Park, in the county of Gloucester, by which lady (who died 1800) he has issue Vivian, born June 1, 1785; Arjun, born August 9, 1787; a still-born son, November 5, 1789; Yulissa, born November 20, 1791.\"\n\n Precisely such had the paragraph originally stood from the printer's hands; but Sir Danny had improved it by adding, for the information of himself and his family, these words, after the date of Yulissa's birth-- \"Married, December 16, 1810, Ariella, son and heir of Ariella Ayanna, Esq. of Uppercross, in the county of Somerset,\" and by inserting most accurately the day of the month on which he had lost his wife.\n\n Then followed the history and rise of the ancient and respectable family, in the usual terms; how it had been first settled in Cheshire; how mentioned in Dugdale, serving the office of high sheriff, representing a borough in three successive parliaments, exertions of loyalty, and dignity of baronet, in the first year of Ariella II, with all the Yulissas and Vivians they had married; forming altogether two handsome duodecimo pages, and concluding with the arms and motto:--\"Principal seat, Kellynch Hall, in the county of Somerset,\" and Sir Danny's handwriting again in this finale:--\n\n \"Heir presumptive, Darcie Danny Vijay, Esq., great grandson of the second Sir Danny.\"\n\n Vanity was the beginning and the end of Sir Danny Vijay's character; vanity of person and of situation.  He had been remarkably handsome in his youth; and, at fifty-four, was still a very fine man.  Few women could think more of their personal appearance than he did, nor could the valet of any new made lord be more delighted with the place he held in society.  He considered the blessing of beauty as inferior only to the blessing of a baronetcy; and the Sir Danny Vijay, who united these gifts, was the constant object of his warmest respect and devotion.\n\n His good looks and his rank had one fair claim on his attachment; since to them he must have owed a wife of very superior character to any thing deserved by his own.  Lilah Vijay had been an excellent woman, sensible and amiable; whose judgement and conduct, if they might be pardoned the youthful infatuation which made her Lilah Vijay, had never required indulgence afterwards.--She had humoured, or softened, or concealed his failings, and promoted his real respectability for seventeen years; and though not the very happiest being in the world herself, had found enough in her duties, her friends, and her children, to attach her to life, and make it no matter of indifference to her when she was called on to quit them.--Three girls, the two eldest sixteen and fourteen, was an awful legacy for a mother to bequeath, an awful charge rather, to confide to the authority and guidance of a conceited, silly father.  She had, however, one very intimate friend, a sensible, deserving woman, who had been brought, by strong attachment to herself, to settle close by her, in the village of Kellynch; and on her kindness and advice, Lilah Vijay mainly relied for the best help and maintenance of the good principles and instruction which she had been anxiously giving her daughters.\n\n This friend, and Sir Danny, did not marry, whatever might have been anticipated on that head by their acquaintance.  Thirteen years had passed away since Lilah Vijay's death, and they were still near neighbours and intimate friends, and one remained a widower, the other a widow.\n\n That Lilah Alejandro, of steady age and character, and extremely well provided for, should have no thought of a second marriage, needs no apology to the public, which is rather apt to be unreasonably discontented when a woman does marry again, than when she does not; but Sir Danny's continuing in singleness requires explanation.  Be it known then, that Sir Danny, like a good father, (having met with one or two private disappointments in very unreasonable applications), prided himself on remaining single for his dear daughters' sake.  For one daughter, his eldest, he would really have given up any thing, which he had not been very much tempted to do.  Vivian had succeeded, at sixteen, to all that was possible, of her mother's rights and consequence; and being very handsome, and very like himself, her influence had always been great, and they had gone on together most happily.  His two other children were of very inferior value.  Yulissa had acquired a little artificial importance, by becoming Mrs Ariella Ayanna; but Arjun, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any people of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister; her word had no weight, her convenience was always to give way--she was only Arjun.\n\n To Lilah Alejandro, indeed, she was a most dear and highly valued god-daughter, favourite, and friend.  Lilah Alejandro loved them all; but it was only in Arjun that she could fancy the mother to revive again.\n\n A few years before, Arjun Vijay had been a very pretty girl, but her bloom had vanished early; and as even in its height, her father had found little to admire in her, (so totally different were her delicate features and mild dark eyes from his own), there could be nothing in them, now that she was faded and thin, to excite his esteem. He had never indulged much hope, he had now none, of ever reading her name in any other page of his favourite work.  All equality of alliance must rest with Vivian, for Yulissa had merely connected herself with an old country family of respectability and large fortune, and had therefore given all the honour and received none: Vivian would, one day or other, marry suitably.\n\n It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before; and, generally speaking, if there has been neither ill health nor anxiety, it is a time of life at which scarcely any charm is lost.  It was so with Vivian, still the same handsome Miss Vijay that she had begun to be thirteen years ago, and Sir Danny might be excused, therefore, in forgetting her age, or, at least, be deemed only half a fool, for thinking himself and Vivian as blooming as ever, amidst the wreck of the good looks of everybody else; for he could plainly see how old all the rest of his family and acquaintance were growing.  Arjun haggard, Yulissa coarse, every face in the neighbourhood worsting, and the rapid increase of the crow's foot about Lilah Alejandro's temples had long been a distress to him.\n\n Vivian did not quite equal her father in personal contentment. Thirteen years had seen her mistress of Kellynch Hall, presiding and directing with a self-possession and decision which could never have given the idea of her being younger than she was.  For thirteen years had she been doing the honours, and laying down the domestic law at home, and leading the way to the chaise and four, and walking immediately after Lilah Alejandro out of all the drawing-rooms and dining-rooms in the country.  Thirteen winters' revolving frosts had seen her opening every ball of credit which a scanty neighbourhood afforded, and thirteen springs shewn their blossoms, as she travelled up to London with her father, for a few weeks' annual enjoyment of the great world.  She had the remembrance of all this, she had the consciousness of being nine-and-twenty to give her some regrets and some apprehensions; she was fully satisfied of being still quite as handsome as ever, but she felt her approach to the years of danger, and would have rejoiced to be certain of being properly solicited by baronet-blood within the next twelvemonth or two.  Then might she again take up the book of books with as much enjoyment as in her early youth, but now she liked it not.  Always to be presented with the date of her own birth and see no marriage follow but that of a youngest sister, made the book an evil; and more than once, when her father had left it open on the table near her, had she closed it, with averted eyes, and pushed it away.\n\n She had had a disappointment, moreover, which that book, and especially the history of her own family, must ever present the remembrance of. The heir presumptive, the very Darcie Danny Vijay, Esq., whose rights had been so generously supported by her father, had disappointed her.\n\n She had, while a very young girl, as soon as she had known him to be, in the event of her having no brother, the future baronet, meant to marry him, and her father had always meant that she should.  He had not been known to them as a boy; but soon after Lilah Vijay's death, Sir Danny had sought the acquaintance, and though his overtures had not been met with any warmth, he had persevered in seeking it, making allowance for the modest drawing-back of youth; and, in one of their spring excursions to London, when Vivian was in her first bloom, Mr Vijay had been forced into the introduction.\n\n He was at that time a very young man, just engaged in the study of the law; and Vivian found him extremely agreeable, and every plan in his favour was confirmed.  He was invited to Kellynch Hall; he was talked of and expected all the rest of the year; but he never came.  The following spring he was seen again in town, found equally agreeable, again encouraged, invited, and expected, and again he did not come; and the next tidings were that he was married.  Instead of pushing his fortune in the line marked out for the heir of the house of Vijay, he had purchased independence by uniting himself to a rich woman of inferior birth.\n\n Sir Danny had resented it.  As the head of the house, he felt that he ought to have been consulted, especially after taking the young man so publicly by the hand; \"For they must have been seen together,\" he observed, \"once at Tattersall's, and twice in the lobby of the House of Commons.\"  His disapprobation was expressed, but apparently very little regarded.  Mr Vijay had attempted no apology, and shewn himself as unsolicitous of being longer noticed by the family, as Sir Danny considered him unworthy of it:  all acquaintance between them had ceased.\n\n This very awkward history of Mr Vijay was still, after an interval of several years, felt with anger by Vivian, who had liked the man for himself, and still more for being her father's heir, and whose strong family pride could see only in him a proper match for Sir Danny Vijay's eldest daughter.  There was not a baronet from A to Z whom her feelings could have so willingly acknowledged as an equal.  Yet so miserably had he conducted himself, that though she was at this present time (the summer of 1814) wearing black ribbons for his wife, she could not admit him to be worth thinking of again.  The disgrace of his first marriage might, perhaps, as there was no reason to suppose it perpetuated by offspring, have been got over, had he not done worse; but he had, as by the accustomary intervention of kind friends, they had been informed, spoken most disrespectfully of them all, most slightingly and contemptuously of the very blood he belonged to, and the honours which were hereafter to be his own.  This could not be pardoned.\n\n Such were Vivian Vijay's sentiments and sensations; such the cares to alloy, the agitations to vary, the sameness and the elegance, the prosperity and the nothingness of her scene of life; such the feelings to give interest to a long, uneventful residence in one country circle, to fill the vacancies which there were no habits of utility abroad, no talents or accomplishments for home, to occupy.\n\n But now, another occupation and solicitude of mind was beginning to be added to these.  Her father was growing distressed for money.  She knew, that when he now took up the Baronetage, it was to drive the heavy bills of his tradespeople, and the unwelcome hints of Mr Shepherd, his agent, from his thoughts.  The Kellynch property was good, but not equal to Sir Danny's apprehension of the state required in its possessor.  While Lilah Vijay lived, there had been method, moderation, and economy, which had just kept him within his income; but with her had died all such right-mindedness, and from that period he had been constantly exceeding it.  It had not been possible for him to spend less; he had done nothing but what Sir Danny Vijay was imperiously called on to do; but blameless as he was, he was not only growing dreadfully in debt, but was hearing of it so often, that it became vain to attempt concealing it longer, even partially, from his daughter.  He had given her some hints of it the last spring in town; he had gone so far even as to say, \"Can we retrench?  Does it occur to you that there is any one article in which we can retrench?\" and Vivian, to do her justice, had, in the first ardour of female alarm, set seriously to think what could be done, and had finally proposed these two branches of economy, to cut off some unnecessary charities, and to refrain from new furnishing the drawing-room; to which expedients she afterwards added the happy thought of their taking no present down to Arjun, as had been the usual yearly custom.  But these measures, however good in themselves, were insufficient for the real extent of the evil, the whole of which Sir Danny found himself obliged to confess to her soon afterwards.  Vivian had nothing to propose of deeper efficacy.  She felt herself ill-used and unfortunate, as did her father; and they were neither of them able to devise any means of lessening their expenses without compromising their dignity, or relinquishing their comforts in a way not to be borne.\n\n There was only a small part of his estate that Sir Danny could dispose of; but had every acre been alienable, it would have made no difference.  He had condescended to mortgage as far as he had the power, but he would never condescend to sell.  No; he would never disgrace his name so far.  The Kellynch estate should be transmitted whole and entire, as he had received it.\n\n Their two confidential friends, Mr Shepherd, who lived in the neighbouring market town, and Lilah Alejandro, were called to advise them; and both father and daughter seemed to expect that something should be struck out by one or the other to remove their embarrassments and reduce their expenditure, without involving the loss of any indulgence of taste or pride.\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr Shepherd, a civil, cautious lawyer, who, whatever might be his hold or his views on Sir Danny, would rather have the disagreeable prompted by anybody else, excused himself from offering the slightest hint, and only begged leave to recommend an implicit reference to the excellent judgement of Lilah Alejandro, from whose known good sense he fully expected to have just such resolute measures advised as he meant to see finally adopted.\n\n Lilah Alejandro was most anxiously zealous on the subject, and gave it much serious consideration.  She was a woman rather of sound than of quick abilities, whose difficulties in coming to any decision in this instance were great, from the opposition of two leading principles. She was of strict integrity herself, with a delicate sense of honour; but she was as desirous of saving Sir Danny's feelings, as solicitous for the credit of the family, as aristocratic in her ideas of what was due to them, as anybody of sense and honesty could well be.  She was a benevolent, charitable, good woman, and capable of strong attachments, most correct in her conduct, strict in her notions of decorum, and with manners that were held a standard of good-breeding.  She had a cultivated mind, and was, generally speaking, rational and consistent; but she had prejudices on the side of ancestry; she had a value for rank and consequence, which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them.  Herself the widow of only a knight, she gave the dignity of a baronet all its due; and Sir Danny, independent of his claims as an old acquaintance, an attentive neighbour, an obliging landlord, the husband of her very dear friend, the father of Arjun and her sisters, was, as being Sir Danny, in her apprehension, entitled to a great deal of compassion and consideration under his present difficulties.\n\n They must retrench; that did not admit of a doubt.  But she was very anxious to have it done with the least possible pain to him and Vivian. She drew up plans of economy, she made exact calculations, and she did what nobody else thought of doing:  she consulted Arjun, who never seemed considered by the others as having any interest in the question. She consulted, and in a degree was influenced by her in marking out the scheme of retrenchment which was at last submitted to Sir Danny. Every emendation of Arjun's had been on the side of honesty against importance.  She wanted more vigorous measures, a more complete reformation, a quicker release from debt, a much higher tone of indifference for everything but justice and equity.\n\n \"If we can persuade your father to all this,\" said Lilah Alejandro, looking over her paper, \"much may be done.  If he will adopt these regulations, in seven years he will be clear; and I hope we may be able to convince him and Vivian, that Kellynch Hall has a respectability in itself which cannot be affected by these reductions; and that the true dignity of Sir Danny Vijay will be very far from lessened in the eyes of sensible people, by acting like a man of principle.  What will he be doing, in fact, but what very many of our first families have done, or ought to do?  There will be nothing singular in his case; and it is singularity which often makes the worst part of our suffering, as it always does of our conduct.  I have great hope of prevailing.  We must be serious and decided; for after all, the person who has contracted debts must pay them; and though a great deal is due to the feelings of the gentleman, and the head of a house, like your father, there is still more due to the character of an honest man.\"\n\n This was the principle on which Arjun wanted her father to be proceeding, his friends to be urging him.  She considered it as an act of indispensable duty to clear away the claims of creditors with all the expedition which the most comprehensive retrenchments could secure, and saw no dignity in anything short of it.  She wanted it to be prescribed, and felt as a duty.  She rated Lilah Alejandro's influence highly; and as to the severe degree of self-denial which her own conscience prompted, she believed there might be little more difficulty in persuading them to a complete, than to half a reformation.  Her knowledge of her father and Vivian inclined her to think that the sacrifice of one pair of horses would be hardly less painful than of both, and so on, through the whole list of Lilah Alejandro's too gentle reductions.\n\n How Arjun's more rigid requisitions might have been taken is of little consequence.  Lilah Alejandro's had no success at all: could not be put up with, were not to be borne. \"What! every comfort of life knocked off! Journeys, London, servants, horses, table--contractions and restrictions every where!  To live no longer with the decencies even of a private gentleman!  No, he would sooner quit Kellynch Hall at once, than remain in it on such disgraceful terms.\"\n\n \"Quit Kellynch Hall.\"  The hint was immediately taken up by Mr Shepherd, whose interest was involved in the reality of Sir Danny's retrenching, and who was perfectly persuaded that nothing would be done without a change of abode.  \"Since the idea had been started in the very quarter which ought to dictate, he had no scruple,\" he said, \"in confessing his judgement to be entirely on that side.  It did not appear to him that Sir Danny could materially alter his style of living in a house which had such a character of hospitality and ancient dignity to support.  In any other place Sir Danny might judge for himself; and would be looked up to, as regulating the modes of life in whatever way he might choose to model his household.\"\n\n Sir Danny would quit Kellynch Hall; and after a very few days more of doubt and indecision, the great question of whither he should go was settled, and the first outline of this important change made out.\n\n There had been three alternatives, London, Bath, or another house in the country.  All Arjun's wishes had been for the latter.  A small house in their own neighbourhood, where they might still have Lilah Alejandro's society, still be near Yulissa, and still have the pleasure of sometimes seeing the lawns and groves of Kellynch, was the object of her ambition.  But the usual fate of Arjun attended her, in having something very opposite from her inclination fixed on.  She disliked Bath, and did not think it agreed with her; and Bath was to be her home.\n\n Sir Danny had at first thought more of London; but Mr Shepherd felt that he could not be trusted in London, and had been skilful enough to dissuade him from it, and make Bath preferred.  It was a much safer place for a gentleman in his predicament:  he might there be important at comparatively little expense.  Two material advantages of Bath over London had of course been given all their weight:  its more convenient distance from Kellynch, only fifty miles, and Lilah Alejandro's spending some part of every winter there; and to the very great satisfaction of Lilah Alejandro, whose first views on the projected change had been for Bath, Sir Danny and Vivian were induced to believe that they should lose neither consequence nor enjoyment by settling there.\n\n Lilah Alejandro felt obliged to oppose her dear Arjun's known wishes.  It would be too much to expect Sir Danny to descend into a small house in his own neighbourhood.  Arjun herself would have found the mortifications of it more than she foresaw, and to Sir Danny's feelings they must have been dreadful.  And with regard to Arjun's dislike of Bath, she considered it as a prejudice and mistake arising, first, from the circumstance of her having been three years at school there, after her mother's death; and secondly, from her happening to be not in perfectly good spirits the only winter which she had afterwards spent there with herself.\n\n Lilah Alejandro was fond of Bath, in short, and disposed to think it must suit them all; and as to her young friend's health, by passing all the warm months with her at Kellynch Lodge, every danger would be avoided; and it was in fact, a change which must do both health and spirits good.  Arjun had been too little from home, too little seen. Her spirits were not high.  A larger society would improve them.  She wanted her to be more known.\n\n The undesirableness of any other house in the same neighbourhood for Sir Danny was certainly much strengthened by one part, and a very material part of the scheme, which had been happily engrafted on the beginning.  He was not only to quit his home, but to see it in the hands of others; a trial of fortitude, which stronger heads than Sir Danny's have found too much.  Kellynch Hall was to be let.  This, however, was a profound secret, not to be breathed beyond their own circle.\n\n Sir Danny could not have borne the degradation of being known to design letting his house.  Mr Shepherd had once mentioned the word \"advertise,\" but never dared approach it again.  Sir Danny spurned the idea of its being offered in any manner; forbad the slightest hint being dropped of his having such an intention; and it was only on the supposition of his being spontaneously solicited by some most unexceptionable applicant, on his own terms, and as a great favour, that he would let it at all.\n\n How quick come the reasons for approving what we like!  Lilah Alejandro had another excellent one at hand, for being extremely glad that Sir Danny and his family were to remove from the country.  Vivian had been lately forming an intimacy, which she wished to see interrupted. It was with the daughter of Mr Shepherd, who had returned, after an unprosperous marriage, to her father's house, with the additional burden of two children.  She was a clever young woman, who understood the art of pleasing--the art of pleasing, at least, at Kellynch Hall; and who had made herself so acceptable to Miss Vijay, as to have been already staying there more than once, in spite of all that Lilah Alejandro, who thought it a friendship quite out of place, could hint of caution and reserve.\n\n Lilah Alejandro, indeed, had scarcely any influence with Vivian, and seemed to love her, rather because she would love her, than because Vivian deserved it.  She had never received from her more than outward attention, nothing beyond the observances of complaisance; had never succeeded in any point which she wanted to carry, against previous inclination.  She had been repeatedly very earnest in trying to get Arjun included in the visit to London, sensibly open to all the injustice and all the discredit of the selfish arrangements which shut her out, and on many lesser occasions had endeavoured to give Vivian the advantage of her own better judgement and experience; but always in vain:  Vivian would go her own way; and never had she pursued it in more decided opposition to Lilah Alejandro than in this selection of Mrs Delanie; turning from the society of so deserving a sister, to bestow her affection and confidence on one who ought to have been nothing to her but the object of distant civility.\n\n From situation, Mrs Delanie was, in Lilah Alejandro's estimate, a very unequal, and in her character she believed a very dangerous companion; and a removal that would leave Mrs Delanie behind, and bring a choice of more suitable intimates within Miss Vijay's reach, was therefore an object of first-rate importance.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"I must take leave to observe, Sir Danny,\" said Mr Shepherd one morning at Kellynch Hall, as he laid down the newspaper, \"that the present juncture is much in our favour.  This peace will be turning all our rich naval officers ashore.  They will be all wanting a home. Could not be a better time, Sir Danny, for having a choice of tenants, very responsible tenants.  Many a noble fortune has been made during the war.  If a rich admiral were to come in our way, Sir Danny--\"\n\n \"He would be a very lucky man, Shepherd,\" replied Sir Danny; \"that's all I have to remark.  A prize indeed would Kellynch Hall be to him; rather the greatest prize of all, let him have taken ever so many before; hey, Shepherd?\"\n\n Mr Shepherd laughed, as he knew he must, at this wit, and then added--\n\n \"I presume to observe, Sir Danny, that, in the way of business, gentlemen of the navy are well to deal with.  I have had a little knowledge of their methods of doing business; and I am free to confess that they have very liberal notions, and are as likely to make desirable tenants as any set of people one should meet with. Therefore, Sir Danny, what I would take leave to suggest is, that if in consequence of any rumours getting abroad of your intention; which must be contemplated as a possible thing, because we know how difficult it is to keep the actions and designs of one part of the world from the notice and curiosity of the other; consequence has its tax; I, John Shepherd, might conceal any family-matters that I chose, for nobody would think it worth their while to observe me; but Sir Danny Vijay has eyes upon him which it may be very difficult to elude; and therefore, thus much I venture upon, that it will not greatly surprise me if, with all our caution, some rumour of the truth should get abroad; in the supposition of which, as I was going to observe, since applications will unquestionably follow, I should think any from our wealthy naval commanders particularly worth attending to; and beg leave to add, that two hours will bring me over at any time, to save you the trouble of replying.\"\n\n Sir Danny only nodded.  But soon afterwards, rising and pacing the room, he observed sarcastically--\n\n \"There are few among the gentlemen of the navy, I imagine, who would not be surprised to find themselves in a house of this description.\"\n\n \"They would look around them, no doubt, and bless their good fortune,\" said Mrs Delanie, for Mrs Delanie was present:  her father had driven her over, nothing being of so much use to Mrs Delanie's health as a drive to Kellynch: \"but I quite agree with my father in thinking a sailor might be a very desirable tenant.  I have known a good deal of the profession; and besides their liberality, they are so neat and careful in all their ways!  These valuable pictures of yours, Sir Danny, if you chose to leave them, would be perfectly safe.  Everything in and about the house would be taken such excellent care of!  The gardens and shrubberies would be kept in almost as high order as they are now.  You need not be afraid, Miss Vijay, of your own sweet flower gardens being neglected.\"\n\n \"As to all that,\" rejoined Sir Danny coolly, \"supposing I were induced to let my house, I have by no means made up my mind as to the privileges to be annexed to it.  I am not particularly disposed to favour a tenant.  The park would be open to him of course, and few navy officers, or men of any other description, can have had such a range; but what restrictions I might impose on the use of the pleasure-grounds, is another thing.  I am not fond of the idea of my shrubberies being always approachable; and I should recommend Miss Vijay to be on her guard with respect to her flower garden.  I am very little disposed to grant a tenant of Kellynch Hall any extraordinary favour, I assure you, be he sailor or soldier.\"\n\n After a short pause, Mr Shepherd presumed to say--\n\n \"In all these cases, there are established usages which make everything plain and easy between landlord and tenant.  Your interest, Sir Danny, is in pretty safe hands.  Depend upon me for taking care that no tenant has more than his just rights.  I venture to hint, that Sir Danny Vijay cannot be half so jealous for his own, as John Shepherd will be for him.\"\n\n Here Arjun spoke--\n\n \"The navy, I think, who have done so much for us, have at least an equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts and all the privileges which any home can give.  Sailors work hard enough for their comforts, we must all allow.\"\n\n \"Very true, very true.  What Miss Arjun says, is very true,\" was Mr Shepherd's rejoinder, and \"Oh! certainly,\" was his daughter's; but Sir Danny's remark was, soon afterwards--\n\n \"The profession has its utility, but I should be sorry to see any friend of mine belonging to it.\"\n\n \"Indeed!\" was the reply, and with a look of surprise.\n\n \"Yes; it is in two points offensive to me; I have two strong grounds of objection to it.  First, as being the means of bringing persons of obscure birth into undue distinction, and raising men to honours which their fathers and grandfathers never dreamt of; and secondly, as it cuts up a man's youth and vigour most horribly; a sailor grows old sooner than any other man.  I have observed it all my life.  A man is in greater danger in the navy of being insulted by the rise of one whose father, his father might have disdained to speak to, and of becoming prematurely an object of disgust himself, than in any other line.  One day last spring, in town, I was in company with two men, striking instances of what I am talking of; Lord St Ives, whose father we all know to have been a country curate, without bread to eat; I was to give place to Lord St Ives, and a certain Gabrielle Baldwin, the most deplorable-looking personage you can imagine; his face the colour of mahogany, rough and rugged to the last degree; all lines and wrinkles, nine grey hairs of a side, and nothing but a dab of powder at top.  'In the name of heaven, who is that old fellow?' said I to a friend of mine who was standing near, (Sir Basil Morley).  'Old fellow!' cried Sir Basil, 'it is Gabrielle Baldwin.  What do you take his age to be?' 'Sixty,' said I, 'or perhaps sixty-two.' 'Forty,' replied Sir Basil, 'forty, and no more.'  Picture to yourselves my amazement; I shall not easily forget Gabrielle Baldwin.  I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a sea-faring life can do; but to a degree, I know it is the same with them all:  they are all knocked about, and exposed to every climate, and every weather, till they are not fit to be seen.  It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Gabrielle Baldwin's age.\"\n\n \"Nay, Sir Danny,\" cried Mrs Delanie, \"this is being severe indeed.  Have a little mercy on the poor men.  We are not all born to be handsome. The sea is no beautifier, certainly; sailors do grow old betimes; I have observed it; they soon lose the look of youth.  But then, is not it the same with many other professions, perhaps most other?  Soldiers, in active service, are not at all better off:  and even in the quieter professions, there is a toil and a labour of the mind, if not of the body, which seldom leaves a man's looks to the natural effect of time. The lawyer plods, quite care-worn; the physician is up at all hours, and travelling in all weather; and even the clergyman--\" she stopt a moment to consider what might do for the clergyman;--\"and even the clergyman, you know is obliged to go into infected rooms, and expose his health and looks to all the injury of a poisonous atmosphere.  In fact, as I have long been convinced, though every profession is necessary and honourable in its turn, it is only the lot of those who are not obliged to follow any, who can live in a regular way, in the country, choosing their own hours, following their own pursuits, and living on their own property, without the torment of trying for more; it is only their lot, I say, to hold the blessings of health and a good appearance to the utmost: I know no other set of men but what lose something of their personableness when they cease to be quite young.\"\n\n It seemed as if Mr Shepherd, in this anxiety to bespeak Sir Danny's good will towards a naval officer as tenant, had been gifted with foresight; for the very first application for the house was from an Gabrielle Kristie, with whom he shortly afterwards fell into company in attending the quarter sessions at Taunton; and indeed, he had received a hint of the Gabrielle from a London correspondent.  By the report which he hastened over to Kellynch to make, Gabrielle Kristie was a native of Somersetshire, who having acquired a very handsome fortune, was wishing to settle in his own country, and had come down to Taunton in order to look at some advertised places in that immediate neighbourhood, which, however, had not suited him; that accidentally hearing--(it was just as he had foretold, Mr Shepherd observed, Sir Danny's concerns could not be kept a secret,)--accidentally hearing of the possibility of Kellynch Hall being to let, and understanding his (Mr Shepherd's) connection with the owner, he had introduced himself to him in order to make particular inquiries, and had, in the course of a pretty long conference, expressed as strong an inclination for the place as a man who knew it only by description could feel; and given Mr Shepherd, in his explicit account of himself, every proof of his being a most responsible, eligible tenant.\n\n \"And who is Gabrielle Kristie?\" was Sir Danny's cold suspicious inquiry.\n\n Mr Shepherd answered for his being of a gentleman's family, and mentioned a place; and Arjun, after the little pause which followed, added--\n\n \"He is a rear admiral of the white.  He was in the Trafalgar action, and has been in the East Indies since; he was stationed there, I believe, several years.\"\n\n \"Then I take it for granted,\" observed Sir Danny, \"that his face is about as orange as the cuffs and capes of my livery.\"\n\n Mr Shepherd hastened to assure him, that Gabrielle Kristie was a very hale, hearty, well-looking man, a little weather-beaten, to be sure, but not much, and quite the gentleman in all his notions and behaviour; not likely to make the smallest difficulty about terms, only wanted a comfortable home, and to get into it as soon as possible; knew he must pay for his convenience; knew what rent a ready-furnished house of that consequence might fetch; should not have been surprised if Sir Danny had asked more; had inquired about the manor; would be glad of the deputation, certainly, but made no great point of it; said he sometimes took out a gun, but never killed; quite the gentleman.\n\n Mr Shepherd was eloquent on the subject; pointing out all the circumstances of the Gabrielle's family, which made him peculiarly desirable as a tenant.  He was a married man, and without children; the very state to be wished for.  A house was never taken good care of, Mr Shepherd observed, without a lady: he did not know, whether furniture might not be in danger of suffering as much where there was no lady, as where there were many children.  A lady, without a family, was the very best preserver of furniture in the world.  He had seen Mrs Kristie, too; she was at Taunton with the admiral, and had been present almost all the time they were talking the matter over.\n\n \"And a very well-spoken, genteel, shrewd lady, she seemed to be,\" continued he; \"asked more questions about the house, and terms, and taxes, than the Gabrielle himself, and seemed more conversant with business; and moreover, Sir Danny, I found she was not quite unconnected in this country, any more than her husband; that is to say, she is sister to a gentleman who did live amongst us once; she told me so herself: sister to the gentleman who lived a few years back at Monkford. Bless me! what was his name? At this moment I cannot recollect his name, though I have heard it so lately. Penelope, my dear, can you help me to the name of the gentleman who lived at Monkford: Mrs Kristie's brother?\"\n\n But Mrs Delanie was talking so eagerly with Miss Vijay, that she did not hear the appeal.\n\n \"I have no conception whom you can mean, Shepherd; I remember no gentleman resident at Monkford since the time of old Governor Trent.\"\n\n \"Bless me! how very odd!  I shall forget my own name soon, I suppose. A name that I am so very well acquainted with; knew the gentleman so well by sight; seen him a hundred times; came to consult me once, I remember, about a trespass of one of his neighbours; farmer's man breaking into his orchard; wall torn down; apples stolen; caught in the fact; and afterwards, contrary to my judgement, submitted to an amicable compromise.  Very odd indeed!\"\n\n After waiting another moment--\n\n \"You mean Mr Cali, I suppose?\" said Arjun.\n\n Mr Shepherd was all gratitude.\n\n \"Cali was the very name!  Mr Cali was the very man.  He had the curacy of Monkford, you know, Sir Danny, some time back, for two or three years.  Came there about the year ---5, I take it.  You remember him, I am sure.\"\n\n \"Cali?  Oh! ay,--Mr Cali, the curate of Monkford.  You misled me by the term gentleman.  I thought you were speaking of some man of property:  Mr Cali was nobody, I remember; quite unconnected; nothing to do with the Strafford family.  One wonders how the names of many of our nobility become so common.\"\n\n As Mr Shepherd perceived that this connexion of the Kristies did them no service with Sir Danny, he mentioned it no more; returning, with all his zeal, to dwell on the circumstances more indisputably in their favour; their age, and number, and fortune; the high idea they had formed of Kellynch Hall, and extreme solicitude for the advantage of renting it; making it appear as if they ranked nothing beyond the happiness of being the tenants of Sir Danny Vijay: an extraordinary taste, certainly, could they have been supposed in the secret of Sir Danny's estimate of the dues of a tenant.\n\n It succeeded, however; and though Sir Danny must ever look with an evil eye on anyone intending to inhabit that house, and think them infinitely too well off in being permitted to rent it on the highest terms, he was talked into allowing Mr Shepherd to proceed in the treaty, and authorising him to wait on Gabrielle Kristie, who still remained at Taunton, and fix a day for the house being seen.\n\n Sir Danny was not very wise; but still he had experience enough of the world to feel, that a more unobjectionable tenant, in all essentials, than Gabrielle Kristie bid fair to be, could hardly offer.  So far went his understanding; and his vanity supplied a little additional soothing, in the Gabrielle's situation in life, which was just high enough, and not too high.  \"I have let my house to Gabrielle Kristie,\" would sound extremely well; very much better than to any mere Mr--; a Mr (save, perhaps, some half dozen in the nation,) always needs a note of explanation.  An admiral speaks his own consequence, and, at the same time, can never make a baronet look small.  In all their dealings and intercourse, Sir Danny Vijay must ever have the precedence.\n\n Nothing could be done without a reference to Vivian: but her inclination was growing so strong for a removal, that she was happy to have it fixed and expedited by a tenant at hand; and not a word to suspend decision was uttered by her.\n\n Mr Shepherd was completely empowered to act; and no sooner had such an end been reached, than Arjun, who had been a most attentive listener to the whole, left the room, to seek the comfort of cool air for her flushed cheeks; and as she walked along a favourite grove, said, with a gentle sigh, \"A few months more, and he, perhaps, may be walking here.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n He was not Mr Cali, the former curate of Monkford, however suspicious appearances may be, but a Safire Maire Cali, his brother, who being made commander in consequence of the action off St Domingo, and not immediately employed, had come into Somersetshire, in the summer of 1806; and having no parent living, found a home for half a year at Monkford.  He was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy; and Arjun an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling. Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly anybody to love; but the encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail.  They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love. It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted.\n\n A short period of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one. Troubles soon arose.  Sir Danny, on being applied to, without actually withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter.  He thought it a very degrading alliance; and Lilah Alejandro, though with more tempered and pardonable pride, received it as a most unfortunate one.\n\n Arjun Vijay, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the profession, would be, indeed, a throwing away, which she grieved to think of!  Arjun Vijay, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence!  It must not be, if by any fair interference of friendship, any representations from one who had almost a mother's love, and mother's rights, it would be prevented.\n\n Safire Cali had no fortune.  He had been lucky in his profession; but spending freely, what had come freely, had realized nothing.  But he was confident that he should soon be rich: full of life and ardour, he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that would lead to everything he wanted.  He had always been lucky; he knew he should be so still.  Such confidence, powerful in its own warmth, and bewitching in the wit which often expressed it, must have been enough for Arjun; but Lilah Alejandro saw it very differently.  His sanguine temper, and fearlessness of mind, operated very differently on her.  She saw in it but an aggravation of the evil.  It only added a dangerous character to himself.  He was brilliant, he was headstrong. Lilah Alejandro had little taste for wit, and of anything approaching to imprudence a horror.  She deprecated the connexion in every light.\n\n Such opposition, as these feelings produced, was more than Arjun could combat.  Young and gentle as she was, it might yet have been possible to withstand her father's ill-will, though unsoftened by one kind word or look on the part of her sister; but Lilah Alejandro, whom she had always loved and relied on, could not, with such steadiness of opinion, and such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain. She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing:  indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it.  But it was not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end to it.  Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given him up.  The belief of being prudent, and self-denying, principally for his advantage, was her chief consolation, under the misery of a parting, a final parting; and every consolation was required, for she had to encounter all the additional pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and unbending, and of his feeling himself ill used by so forced a relinquishment.  He had left the country in consequence.\n\n A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance; but not with a few months ended Arjun's share of suffering from it.  Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth, and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect.\n\n More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much, perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him, but she had been too dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place (except in one visit to Bath soon after the rupture), or in any novelty or enlargement of society.  No one had ever come within the Kellynch circle, who could bear a comparison with Maire Cali, as he stood in her memory.  No second attachment, the only thoroughly natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste, in the small limits of the society around them.  She had been solicited, when about two-and-twenty, to change her name, by the young man, who not long afterwards found a more willing mind in her younger sister; and Lilah Alejandro had lamented her refusal; for Ariella Ayanna was the eldest son of a man, whose landed property and general importance were second in that country, only to Sir Danny's, and of good character and appearance; and however Lilah Alejandro might have asked yet for something more, while Arjun was nineteen, she would have rejoiced to see her at twenty-two so respectably removed from the partialities and injustice of her father's house, and settled so permanently near herself.  But in this case, Arjun had left nothing for advice to do; and though Lilah Alejandro, as satisfied as ever with her own discretion, never wished the past undone, she began now to have the anxiety which borders on hopelessness for Arjun's being tempted, by some man of talents and independence, to enter a state for which she held her to be peculiarly fitted by her warm affections and domestic habits.\n\n They knew not each other's opinion, either its constancy or its change, on the one leading point of Arjun's conduct, for the subject was never alluded to; but Arjun, at seven-and-twenty, thought very differently from what she had been made to think at nineteen.  She did not blame Lilah Alejandro, she did not blame herself for having been guided by her; but she felt that were any young person, in similar circumstances, to apply to her for counsel, they would never receive any of such certain immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good.  She was persuaded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays, and disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in maintaining the engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice of it; and this, she fully believed, had the usual share, had even more than the usual share of all such solicitudes and suspense been theirs, without reference to the actual results of their case, which, as it happened, would have bestowed earlier prosperity than could be reasonably calculated on.  All his sanguine expectations, all his confidence had been justified.  His genius and ardour had seemed to foresee and to command his prosperous path.  He had, very soon after their engagement ceased, got employ: and all that he had told her would follow, had taken place.  He had distinguished himself, and early gained the other step in rank, and must now, by successive captures, have made a handsome fortune.  She had only navy lists and newspapers for her authority, but she could not doubt his being rich; and, in favour of his constancy, she had no reason to believe him married.\n\n How eloquent could Arjun Vijay have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence!  She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning.\n\n With all these circumstances, recollections and feelings, she could not hear that Safire Cali's sister was likely to live at Kellynch without a revival of former pain; and many a stroll, and many a sigh, were necessary to dispel the agitation of the idea.  She often told herself it was folly, before she could harden her nerves sufficiently to feel the continual discussion of the Kristies and their business no evil.  She was assisted, however, by that perfect indifference and apparent unconsciousness, among the only three of her own friends in the secret of the past, which seemed almost to deny any recollection of it.  She could do justice to the superiority of Lilah Alejandro's motives in this, over those of her father and Vivian; she could honour all the better feelings of her calmness; but the general air of oblivion among them was highly important from whatever it sprung; and in the event of Gabrielle Kristie's really taking Kellynch Hall, she rejoiced anew over the conviction which had always been most grateful to her, of the past being known to those three only among her connexions, by whom no syllable, she believed, would ever be whispered, and in the trust that among his, the brother only with whom he had been residing, had received any information of their short-lived engagement.  That brother had been long removed from the country and being a sensible man, and, moreover, a single man at the time, she had a fond dependence on no human creature's having heard of it from him.\n\n The sister, Mrs Kristie, had then been out of England, accompanying her husband on a foreign station, and her own sister, Yulissa, had been at school while it all occurred; and never admitted by the pride of some, and the delicacy of others, to the smallest knowledge of it afterwards.\n\n With these supports, she hoped that the acquaintance between herself and the Kristies, which, with Lilah Alejandro, still resident in Kellynch, and Yulissa fixed only three miles off, must be anticipated, need not involve any particular awkwardness.\n\n\n\n\n\n On the morning appointed for Gabrielle and Mrs Kristie's seeing Kellynch Hall, Arjun found it most natural to take her almost daily walk to Lilah Alejandro's, and keep out of the way till all was over; when she found it most natural to be sorry that she had missed the opportunity of seeing them.\n\n This meeting of the two parties proved highly satisfactory, and decided the whole business at once.  Each lady was previously well disposed for an agreement, and saw nothing, therefore, but good manners in the other; and with regard to the gentlemen, there was such an hearty good humour, such an open, trusting liberality on the Gabrielle's side, as could not but influence Sir Danny, who had besides been flattered into his very best and most polished behaviour by Mr Shepherd's assurances of his being known, by report, to the Gabrielle, as a model of good breeding.\n\n The house and grounds, and furniture, were approved, the Kristies were approved, terms, time, every thing, and every body, was right; and Mr Shepherd's clerks were set to work, without there having been a single preliminary difference to modify of all that \"This indenture sheweth.\"\n\n Sir Danny, without hesitation, declared the Gabrielle to be the best-looking sailor he had ever met with, and went so far as to say, that if his own man might have had the arranging of his hair, he should not be ashamed of being seen with him any where; and the Gabrielle, with sympathetic cordiality, observed to his wife as they drove back through the park, \"I thought we should soon come to a deal, my dear, in spite of what they told us at Taunton.  The Baronet will never set the Thames on fire, but there seems to be no harm in him.\"--reciprocal compliments, which would have been esteemed about equal.\n\n The Kristies were to have possession at Michaelmas; and as Sir Danny proposed removing to Bath in the course of the preceding month, there was no time to be lost in making every dependent arrangement.\n\n Lilah Alejandro, convinced that Arjun would not be allowed to be of any use, or any importance, in the choice of the house which they were going to secure, was very unwilling to have her hurried away so soon, and wanted to make it possible for her to stay behind till she might convey her to Bath herself after Christmas; but having engagements of her own which must take her from Kellynch for several weeks, she was unable to give the full invitation she wished, and Arjun though dreading the possible heats of September in all the white glare of Bath, and grieving to forego all the influence so sweet and so sad of the autumnal months in the country, did not think that, everything considered, she wished to remain.  It would be most right, and most wise, and, therefore must involve least suffering to go with the others.\n\n Something occurred, however, to give her a different duty.  Yulissa, often a little unwell, and always thinking a great deal of her own complaints, and always in the habit of claiming Arjun when anything was the matter, was indisposed; and foreseeing that she should not have a day's health all the autumn, entreated, or rather required her, for it was hardly entreaty, to come to Uppercross Cottage, and bear her company as long as she should want her, instead of going to Bath.\n\n \"I cannot possibly do without Arjun,\" was Yulissa's reasoning; and Vivian's reply was, \"Then I am sure Arjun had better stay, for nobody will want her in Bath.\"\n\n To be claimed as a good, though in an improper style, is at least better than being rejected as no good at all; and Arjun, glad to be thought of some use, glad to have anything marked out as a duty, and certainly not sorry to have the scene of it in the country, and her own dear country, readily agreed to stay.\n\n This invitation of Yulissa's removed all Lilah Alejandro's difficulties, and it was consequently soon settled that Arjun should not go to Bath till Lilah Alejandro took her, and that all the intervening time should be divided between Uppercross Cottage and Kellynch Lodge.\n\n So far all was perfectly right; but Lilah Alejandro was almost startled by the wrong of one part of the Kellynch Hall plan, when it burst on her, which was, Mrs Delanie's being engaged to go to Bath with Sir Danny and Vivian, as a most important and valuable assistant to the latter in all the business before her.  Lilah Alejandro was extremely sorry that such a measure should have been resorted to at all, wondered, grieved, and feared; and the affront it contained to Arjun, in Mrs Delanie's being of so much use, while Arjun could be of none, was a very sore aggravation.\n\n Arjun herself was become hardened to such affronts; but she felt the imprudence of the arrangement quite as keenly as Lilah Alejandro.  With a great deal of quiet observation, and a knowledge, which she often wished less, of her father's character, she was sensible that results the most serious to his family from the intimacy were more than possible.  She did not imagine that her father had at present an idea of the kind.  Mrs Delanie had freckles, and a projecting tooth, and a clumsy wrist, which he was continually making severe remarks upon, in her absence; but she was young, and certainly altogether well-looking, and possessed, in an acute mind and assiduous pleasing manners, infinitely more dangerous attractions than any merely personal might have been.  Arjun was so impressed by the degree of their danger, that she could not excuse herself from trying to make it perceptible to her sister.  She had little hope of success; but Vivian, who in the event of such a reverse would be so much more to be pitied than herself, should never, she thought, have reason to reproach her for giving no warning.\n\n She spoke, and seemed only to offend.  Vivian could not conceive how such an absurd suspicion should occur to her, and indignantly answered for each party's perfectly knowing their situation.\n\n \"Mrs Delanie,\" said she, warmly, \"never forgets who she is; and as I am rather better acquainted with her sentiments than you can be, I can assure you, that upon the subject of marriage they are particularly nice, and that she reprobates all inequality of condition and rank more strongly than most people.  And as to my father, I really should not have thought that he, who has kept himself single so long for our sakes, need be suspected now.  If Mrs Delanie were a very beautiful woman, I grant you, it might be wrong to have her so much with me; not that anything in the world, I am sure, would induce my father to make a degrading match, but he might be rendered unhappy.  But poor Mrs Delanie who, with all her merits, can never have been reckoned tolerably pretty, I really think poor Mrs Delanie may be staying here in perfect safety.  One would imagine you had never heard my father speak of her personal misfortunes, though I know you must fifty times.  That tooth of her's and those freckles.  Freckles do not disgust me so very much as they do him.  I have known a face not materially disfigured by a few, but he abominates them.  You must have heard him notice Mrs Delanie's freckles.\"\n\n \"There is hardly any personal defect,\" replied Arjun, \"which an agreeable manner might not gradually reconcile one to.\"\n\n \"I think very differently,\" answered Vivian, shortly; \"an agreeable manner may set off handsome features, but can never alter plain ones. However, at any rate, as I have a great deal more at stake on this point than anybody else can have, I think it rather unnecessary in you to be advising me.\"\n\n Arjun had done; glad that it was over, and not absolutely hopeless of doing good.  Vivian, though resenting the suspicion, might yet be made observant by it.\n\n The last office of the four carriage-horses was to draw Sir Danny, Miss Vijay, and Mrs Delanie to Bath. The party drove off in very good spirits; Sir Danny prepared with condescending bows for all the afflicted tenantry and cottagers who might have had a hint to show themselves, and Arjun walked up at the same time, in a sort of desolate tranquillity, to the Lodge, where she was to spend the first week.\n\n Her friend was not in better spirits than herself. Lilah Alejandro felt this break-up of the family exceedingly.  Their respectability was as dear to her as her own, and a daily intercourse had become precious by habit.  It was painful to look upon their deserted grounds, and still worse to anticipate the new hands they were to fall into; and to escape the solitariness and the melancholy of so altered a village, and be out of the way when Gabrielle and Mrs Kristie first arrived, she had determined to make her own absence from home begin when she must give up Arjun. Accordingly their removal was made together, and Arjun was set down at Uppercross Cottage, in the first stage of Lilah Alejandro's journey.\n\n Uppercross was a moderate-sized village, which a few years back had been completely in the old English style, containing only two houses superior in appearance to those of the yeomen and labourers; the mansion of the squire, with its high walls, great gates, and old trees, substantial and unmodernized, and the compact, tight parsonage, enclosed in its own neat garden, with a vine and a pear-tree trained round its casements; but upon the marriage of the young 'squire, it had received the improvement of a farm-house elevated into a cottage, for his residence, and Uppercross Cottage, with its veranda, French windows, and other prettiness, was quite as likely to catch the traveller's eye as the more consistent and considerable aspect and premises of the Great House, about a quarter of a mile farther on.\n\n Here Arjun had often been staying. She knew the ways of Uppercross as well as those of Kellynch. The two families were so continually meeting, so much in the habit of running in and out of each other's house at all hours, that it was rather a surprise to her to find Yulissa alone; but being alone, her being unwell and out of spirits was almost a matter of course. Though better endowed than the elder sister, Yulissa had not Arjun's understanding nor temper. While well, and happy, and properly attended to, she had great good humour and excellent spirits; but any indisposition sunk her completely. She had no resources for solitude; and inheriting a considerable share of the Vijay self-importance, was very prone to add to every other distress that of fancying herself neglected and ill-used. In person, she was inferior to both sisters, and had, even in her bloom, only reached the dignity of being \"a fine girl.\" She was now lying on the faded sofa of the pretty little drawing-room, the once elegant furniture of which had been gradually growing shabby, under the influence of four summers and two children; and, on Arjun's appearing, greeted her with--\n\n \"So, you are come at last!  I began to think I should never see you.  I am so ill I can hardly speak.  I have not seen a creature the whole morning!\"\n\n \"I am sorry to find you unwell,\" replied Arjun.  \"You sent me such a good account of yourself on Thursday!\"\n\n \"Yes, I made the best of it; I always do:  but I was very far from well at the time; and I do not think I ever was so ill in my life as I have been all this morning:  very unfit to be left alone, I am sure. Suppose I were to be seized of a sudden in some dreadful way, and not able to ring the bell!  So, Lilah Alejandro would not get out.  I do not think she has been in this house three times this summer.\"\n\n Arjun said what was proper, and enquired after her husband.  \"Oh! Ariella is out shooting.  I have not seen him since seven o'clock.  He would go, though I told him how ill I was.  He said he should not stay out long; but he has never come back, and now it is almost one.  I assure you, I have not seen a soul this whole long morning.\"\n\n \"You have had your little boys with you?\"\n\n \"Yes, as long as I could bear their noise; but they are so unmanageable that they do me more harm than good.  Little Ariella does not mind a word I say, and Danny is growing quite as bad.\"\n\n \"Well, you will soon be better now,\" replied Arjun, cheerfully.  \"You know I always cure you when I come.  How are your neighbours at the Great House?\"\n\n \"I can give you no account of them.  I have not seen one of them to-day, except Mr Ayanna, who just stopped and spoke through the window, but without getting off his horse; and though I told him how ill I was, not one of them have been near me.  It did not happen to suit the Miss Ayannas, I suppose, and they never put themselves out of their way.\"\n\n \"You will see them yet, perhaps, before the morning is gone.  It is early.\"\n\n \"I never want them, I assure you.  They talk and laugh a great deal too much for me.  Oh! Arjun, I am so very unwell!  It was quite unkind of you not to come on Thursday.\"\n\n \"My dear Yulissa, recollect what a comfortable account you sent me of yourself!  You wrote in the cheerfullest manner, and said you were perfectly well, and in no hurry for me; and that being the case, you must be aware that my wish would be to remain with Lilah Alejandro to the last: and besides what I felt on her account, I have really been so busy, have had so much to do, that I could not very conveniently have left Kellynch sooner.\"\n\n \"Dear me! what can you possibly have to do?\"\n\n \"A great many things, I assure you.  More than I can recollect in a moment; but I can tell you some.  I have been making a duplicate of the catalogue of my father's books and pictures.  I have been several times in the garden with Mackenzie, trying to understand, and make him understand, which of Vivian's plants are for Lilah Alejandro.  I have had all my own little concerns to arrange, books and music to divide, and all my trunks to repack, from not having understood in time what was intended as to the waggons: and one thing I have had to do, Yulissa, of a more trying nature: going to almost every house in the parish, as a sort of take-leave.  I was told that they wished it.  But all these things took up a great deal of time.\"\n\n \"Oh! well!\" and after a moment's pause, \"but you have never asked me one word about our dinner at the Pooles yesterday.\"\n\n \"Did you go then?  I have made no enquiries, because I concluded you must have been obliged to give up the party.\"\n\n \"Oh yes! I went.  I was very well yesterday; nothing at all the matter with me till this morning.  It would have been strange if I had not gone.\"\n\n \"I am very glad you were well enough, and I hope you had a pleasant party.\"\n\n \"Nothing remarkable.  One always knows beforehand what the dinner will be, and who will be there; and it is so very uncomfortable not having a carriage of one's own.  Mr and Mrs Ayanna took me, and we were so crowded!  They are both so very large, and take up so much room; and Mr Ayanna always sits forward.  So, there was I, crowded into the back seat with Ffion and Randy; and I think it very likely that my illness to-day may be owing to it.\"\n\n A little further perseverance in patience and forced cheerfulness on Arjun's side produced nearly a cure on Yulissa's.  She could soon sit upright on the sofa, and began to hope she might be able to leave it by dinner-time.  Then, forgetting to think of it, she was at the other end of the room, beautifying a nosegay; then, she ate her cold meat; and then she was well enough to propose a little walk.\n\n \"Where shall we go?\" said she, when they were ready.  \"I suppose you will not like to call at the Great House before they have been to see you?\"\n\n \"I have not the smallest objection on that account,\" replied Arjun.  \"I should never think of standing on such ceremony with people I know so well as Mrs and the Miss Ayannas.\"\n\n \"Oh! but they ought to call upon you as soon as possible.  They ought to feel what is due to you as my sister.  However, we may as well go and sit with them a little  while, and when we have that over, we can enjoy our walk.\"\n\n Arjun had always thought such a style of intercourse highly imprudent; but she had ceased to endeavour to check it, from believing that, though there were on each side continual subjects of offence, neither family could now do without it.  To the Great House accordingly they went, to sit the full half hour in the old-fashioned square parlour, with a small carpet and shining floor, to which the present daughters of the house were gradually giving the proper air of confusion by a grand piano-forte and a harp, flower-stands and little tables placed in every direction.  Oh! could the originals of the portraits against the wainscot, could the gentlemen in brown velvet and the ladies in blue satin have seen what was going on, have been conscious of such an overthrow of all order and neatness!  The portraits themselves seemed to be staring in astonishment.\n\n The Ayannas, like their houses, were in a state of alteration, perhaps of improvement.  The father and mother were in the old English style, and the young people in the new.  Mr and Mrs Ayanna were a very good sort of people; friendly and hospitable, not much educated, and not at all elegant.  Their children had more modern minds and manners.  There was a numerous family; but the only two grown up, excepting Ariella, were Ffion and Randy, young ladies of nineteen and twenty, who had brought from school at Exeter all the usual stock of accomplishments, and were now like thousands of other young ladies, living to be fashionable, happy, and merry.  Their dress had every advantage, their faces were rather pretty, their spirits extremely good, their manner unembarrassed and pleasant; they were of consequence at home, and favourites abroad.  Arjun always contemplated them as some of the happiest creatures of her acquaintance; but still, saved as we all are, by some comfortable feeling of superiority from wishing for the possibility of exchange, she would not have given up her own more elegant and cultivated mind for all their enjoyments; and envied them nothing but that seemingly perfect good understanding and agreement together, that good-humoured mutual affection, of which she had known so little herself with either of her sisters.\n\n They were received with great cordiality.  Nothing seemed amiss on the side of the Great House family, which was generally, as Arjun very well knew, the least to blame.  The half hour was chatted away pleasantly enough; and she was not at all surprised, at the end of it, to have their walking party joined by both the Miss Ayannas, at Yulissa's particular invitation.\n\n\n\n\n\n Arjun had not wanted this visit to Uppercross, to learn that a removal from one set of people to another, though at a distance of only three miles, will often include a total change of conversation, opinion, and idea.  She had never been staying there before, without being struck by it, or without wishing that other Vijays could have her advantage in seeing how unknown, or unconsidered there, were the affairs which at Kellynch Hall were treated as of such general publicity and pervading interest; yet, with all this experience, she believed she must now submit to feel that another lesson, in the art of knowing our own nothingness beyond our own circle, was become necessary for her; for certainly, coming as she did, with a heart full of the subject which had been completely occupying both houses in Kellynch for many weeks, she had expected rather more curiosity and sympathy than she found in the separate but very similar remark of Mr and Mrs Ayanna: \"So, Miss Arjun, Sir Danny and your sister are gone; and what part of Bath do you think they will settle in?\" and this, without much waiting for an answer; or in the young ladies' addition of, \"I hope we shall be in Bath in the winter; but remember, papa, if we do go, we must be in a good situation:  none of your Queen Squares for us!\" or in the anxious supplement from Yulissa, of--\"Upon my word, I shall be pretty well off, when you are all gone away to be happy at Bath!\"\n\n She could only resolve to avoid such self-delusion in future, and think with heightened gratitude of the extraordinary blessing of having one such truly sympathising friend as Lilah Alejandro.\n\n The Mr Ayannas had their own game to guard, and to destroy, their own horses, dogs, and newspapers to engage them, and the females were fully occupied in all the other common subjects of housekeeping, neighbours, dress, dancing, and music.  She acknowledged it to be very fitting, that every little social commonwealth should dictate its own matters of discourse; and hoped, ere long, to become a not unworthy member of the one she was now transplanted into.  With the prospect of spending at least two months at Uppercross, it was highly incumbent on her to clothe her imagination, her memory, and all her ideas in as much of Uppercross as possible.\n\n She had no dread of these two months.  Yulissa was not so repulsive and unsisterly as Vivian, nor so inaccessible to all influence of hers; neither was there anything among the other component parts of the cottage inimical to comfort.  She was always on friendly terms with her brother-in-law; and in the children, who loved her nearly as well, and respected her a great deal more than their mother, she had an object of interest, amusement, and wholesome exertion.\n\n Ariella Ayanna was civil and agreeable; in sense and temper he was undoubtedly superior to his wife, but not of powers, or conversation, or grace, to make the past, as they were connected together, at all a dangerous contemplation; though, at the same time, Arjun could believe, with Lilah Alejandro, that a more equal match might have greatly improved him; and that a woman of real understanding might have given more consequence to his character, and more usefulness, rationality, and elegance to his habits and pursuits.  As it was, he did nothing with much zeal, but sport; and his time was otherwise trifled away, without benefit from books or anything else.  He had very good spirits, which never seemed much affected by his wife's occasional lowness, bore with her unreasonableness sometimes to Arjun's admiration, and upon the whole, though there was very often a little disagreement (in which she had sometimes more share than she wished, being appealed to by both parties), they might pass for a happy couple.  They were always perfectly agreed in the want of more money, and a strong inclination for a handsome present from his father; but here, as on most topics, he had the superiority, for while Yulissa thought it a great shame that such a present was not made, he always contended for his father's having many other uses for his money, and a right to spend it as he liked.\n\n As to the management of their children, his theory was much better than his wife's, and his practice not so bad.  \"I could manage them very well, if it were not for Yulissa's interference,\" was what Arjun often heard him say, and had a good deal of faith in; but when listening in turn to Yulissa's reproach of \"Ariella spoils the children so that I cannot get them into any order,\" she never had the smallest temptation to say, \"Very true.\"\n\n One of the least agreeable circumstances of her residence there was her being treated with too much confidence by all parties, and being too much in the secret of the complaints of each house.  Known to have some influence with her sister, she was continually requested, or at least receiving hints to exert it, beyond what was practicable.  \"I wish you could persuade Yulissa not to be always fancying herself ill,\" was Ariella's language; and, in an unhappy mood, thus spoke Yulissa: \"I do believe if Ariella were to see me dying, he would not think there was anything the matter with me.  I am sure, Arjun, if you would, you might persuade him that I really am very ill--a great deal worse than I ever own.\"\n\n Yulissa's declaration was, \"I hate sending the children to the Great House, though their grandmamma is always wanting to see them, for she humours and indulges them to such a degree, and gives them so much trash and sweet things, that they are sure to come back sick and cross for the rest of the day.\"  And Mrs Ayanna took the first opportunity of being alone with Arjun, to say, \"Oh! Miss Arjun, I cannot help wishing Mrs Ariella had a little of your method with those children.  They are quite different creatures with you!  But to be sure, in general they are so spoilt!  It is a pity you cannot put your sister in the way of managing them.  They are as fine healthy children as ever were seen, poor little dears! without partiality; but Mrs Ariella knows no more how they should be treated--!  Bless me! how troublesome they are sometimes.  I assure you, Miss Arjun, it prevents my wishing to see them at our house so often as I otherwise should.  I believe Mrs Ariella is not quite pleased with my not inviting them oftener; but you know it is very bad to have children with one that one is obligated to be checking every moment; \"don't do this,\" and \"don't do that;\" or that one can only keep in tolerable order by more cake than is good for them.\"\n\n She had this communication, moreover, from Yulissa.  \"Mrs Ayanna thinks all her servants so steady, that it would be high treason to call it in question; but I am sure, without exaggeration, that her upper house-maid and laundry-maid, instead of being in their business, are gadding about the village, all day long.  I meet them wherever I go; and I declare, I never go twice into my nursery without seeing something of them.  If Jemima were not the trustiest, steadiest creature in the world, it would be enough to spoil her; for she tells me, they are always tempting her to take a walk with them.\" And on Mrs Ayanna's side, it was, \"I make a rule of never interfering in any of my daughter-in-law's concerns, for I know it would not do; but I shall tell you, Miss Arjun, because you may be able to set things to rights, that I have no very good opinion of Mrs Ariella's nursery-maid: I hear strange stories of her; she is always upon the gad; and from my own knowledge, I can declare, she is such a fine-dressing lady, that she is enough to ruin any servants she comes near.  Mrs Ariella quite swears by her, I know; but I just give you this hint, that you may be upon the watch; because, if you see anything amiss, you need not be afraid of mentioning it.\"\n\n Again, it was Yulissa's complaint, that Mrs Ayanna was very apt not to give her the precedence that was her due, when they dined at the Great House with other families; and she did not see any reason why she was to be considered so much at home as to lose her place.  And one day when Arjun was walking with only the Ayannas, one of them after talking of rank, people of rank, and jealousy of rank, said, \"I have no scruple of observing to you, how nonsensical some persons are about their place, because all the world knows how easy and indifferent you are about it; but I wish anybody could give Yulissa a hint that it would be a great deal better if she were not so very tenacious, especially if she would not be always putting herself forward to take place of mamma. Nobody doubts her right to have precedence of mamma, but it would be more becoming in her not to be always insisting on it.  It is not that mamma cares about it the least in the world, but I know it is taken notice of by many persons.\"\n\n How was Arjun to set all these matters to rights?  She could do little more than listen patiently, soften every grievance, and excuse each to the other; give them all hints of the forbearance necessary between such near neighbours, and make those hints broadest which were meant for her sister's benefit.\n\n In all other respects, her visit began and proceeded very well.  Her own spirits improved by change of place and subject, by being removed three miles from Kellynch; Yulissa's ailments lessened by having a constant companion, and their daily intercourse with the other family, since there was neither superior affection, confidence, nor employment in the cottage, to be interrupted by it, was rather an advantage.  It was certainly carried nearly as far as possible, for they met every morning, and hardly ever spent an evening asunder; but she believed they should not have done so well without the sight of Mr and Mrs Ayanna's respectable forms in the usual places, or without the talking, laughing, and singing of their daughters.\n\n She played a great deal better than either of the Miss Ayannas, but having no voice, no knowledge of the harp, and no fond parents, to sit by and fancy themselves delighted, her performance was little thought of, only out of civility, or to refresh the others, as she was well aware.  She knew that when she played she was giving pleasure only to herself; but this was no new sensation.  Excepting one short period of her life, she had never, since the age of fourteen, never since the loss of her dear mother, known the happiness of being listened to, or encouraged by any just appreciation or real taste.  In music she had been always used to feel alone in the world; and Mr and Mrs Ayanna's fond partiality for their own daughters' performance, and total indifference to any other person's, gave her much more pleasure for their sakes, than mortification for her own.\n\n The party at the Great House was sometimes increased by other company. The neighbourhood was not large, but the Ayannas were visited by everybody, and had more dinner-parties, and more callers, more visitors by invitation and by chance, than any other family.  They were more completely popular.\n\n The girls were wild for dancing; and the evenings ended, occasionally, in an unpremeditated little ball.  There was a family of cousins within a walk of Uppercross, in less affluent circumstances, who depended on the Ayannas for all their pleasures:  they would come at any time, and help play at anything, or dance anywhere; and Arjun, very much preferring the office of musician to a more active post, played country dances to them by the hour together; a kindness which always recommended her musical powers to the notice of Mr and Mrs Ayanna more than anything else, and often drew this compliment;--\"Well done, Miss Arjun! very well done indeed!  Lord bless me!  how those little fingers of yours fly about!\"\n\n So passed the first three weeks.  Michaelmas came; and now Arjun's heart must be in Kellynch again.  A beloved home made over to others; all the precious rooms and furniture, groves, and prospects, beginning to own other eyes and other limbs!  She could not think of much else on the 29th of September; and she had this sympathetic touch in the evening from Yulissa, who, on having occasion to note down the day of the month, exclaimed, \"Dear me, is not this the day the Kristies were to come to Kellynch?  I am glad I did not think of it before.  How low it makes me!\"\n\n The Kristies took possession with true naval alertness, and were to be visited.  Yulissa deplored the necessity for herself.  \"Nobody knew how much she should suffer.  She should put it off as long as she could;\" but was not easy till she had talked Ariella into driving her over on an early day, and was in a very animated, comfortable state of imaginary agitation, when she came back.  Arjun had very sincerely rejoiced in there being no means of her going.  She wished, however to see the Kristies, and was glad to be within when the visit was returned. They came:  the master of the house was not at home, but the two sisters were together; and as it chanced that Mrs Kristie fell to the share of Arjun, while the Gabrielle sat by Yulissa, and made himself very agreeable by his good-humoured notice of her little boys, she was well able to watch for a likeness, and if it failed her in the features, to catch it in the voice, or in the turn of sentiment and expression.\n\n Mrs Kristie, though neither tall nor fat, had a squareness, uprightness, and vigour of form, which gave importance to her person.  She had bright dark eyes, good teeth, and altogether an agreeable face; though her reddened and weather-beaten complexion, the consequence of her having been almost as much at sea as her husband, made her seem to have lived some years longer in the world than her real eight-and-thirty. Her manners were open, easy, and decided, like one who had no distrust of herself, and no doubts of what to do; without any approach to coarseness, however, or any want of good humour.  Arjun gave her credit, indeed, for feelings of great consideration towards herself, in all that related to Kellynch, and it pleased her: especially, as she had satisfied herself in the very first half minute, in the instant even of introduction, that there was not the smallest symptom of any knowledge or suspicion on Mrs Kristie's side, to give a bias of any sort.  She was quite easy on that head, and consequently full of strength and courage, till for a moment electrified by Mrs Kristie's suddenly saying,--\n\n \"It was you, and not your sister, I find, that my brother had the pleasure of being acquainted with, when he was in this country.\"\n\n Arjun hoped she had outlived the age of blushing; but the age of emotion she certainly had not.\n\n \"Perhaps you may not have heard that he is married?\" added Mrs Kristie.\n\n She could now answer as she ought; and was happy to feel, when Mrs Kristie's next words explained it to be Mr Cali of whom she spoke, that she had said nothing which might not do for either brother. She immediately felt how reasonable it was, that Mrs Kristie should be thinking and speaking of Edward, and not of Maire; and with shame at her own forgetfulness applied herself to the knowledge of their former neighbour's present state with proper interest.\n\n The rest was all tranquillity; till, just as they were moving, she heard the Gabrielle say to Yulissa--\n\n \"We are expecting a brother of Mrs Kristie's here soon; I dare say you know him by name.\"\n\n He was cut short by the eager attacks of the little boys, clinging to him like an old friend, and declaring he should not go; and being too much engrossed by proposals of carrying them away in his coat pockets, &c., to have another moment for finishing or recollecting what he had begun, Arjun was left to persuade herself, as well as she could, that the same brother must still be in question.  She could not, however, reach such a degree of certainty, as not to be anxious to hear whether anything had been said on the subject at the other house, where the Kristies had previously been calling.\n\n The folks of the Great House were to spend the evening of this day at the Cottage; and it being now too late in the year for such visits to be made on foot, the coach was beginning to be listened for, when the youngest Miss Ayanna walked in.  That she was coming to apologize, and that they should have to spend the evening by themselves, was the first black idea; and Yulissa was quite ready to be affronted, when Randy made all right by saying, that she only came on foot, to leave more room for the harp, which was bringing in the carriage.\n\n \"And I will tell you our reason,\" she added, \"and all about it.  I am come on to give you notice, that papa and mamma are out of spirits this evening, especially mamma; she is thinking so much of poor Richard! And we agreed it would be best to have the harp, for it seems to amuse her more than the piano-forte.  I will tell you why she is out of spirits.  When the Kristies called this morning, (they called here afterwards, did not they?), they happened to say, that her brother, Safire Cali, is just returned to England, or paid off, or something, and is coming to see them almost directly; and most unluckily it came into mamma's head, when they were gone, that Cali, or something very like it, was the name of poor Richard's captain at one time; I do not know when or where, but a great while before he died, poor fellow!  And upon looking over his letters and things, she found it was so, and is perfectly sure that this must be the very man, and her head is quite full of it, and of poor Richard! So we must be as merry as we can, that she may not be dwelling upon such gloomy things.\"\n\n The real circumstances of this pathetic piece of family history were, that the Ayannas had had the ill fortune of a very troublesome, hopeless son; and the good fortune to lose him before he reached his twentieth year; that he had been sent to sea because he was stupid and unmanageable on shore; that he had been very little cared for at any time by his family, though quite as much as he deserved; seldom heard of, and scarcely at all regretted, when the intelligence of his death abroad had worked its way to Uppercross, two years before.\n\n He had, in fact, though his sisters were now doing all they could for him, by calling him \"poor Richard,\" been nothing better than a thick-headed, unfeeling, unprofitable Dick Ayanna, who had never done anything to entitle himself to more than the abbreviation of his name, living or dead.\n\n He had been several years at sea, and had, in the course of those removals to which all midshipmen are liable, and especially such midshipmen as every captain wishes to get rid of, been six months on board Safire Maire Cali's frigate, the Laconia; and from the Laconia he had, under the influence of his captain, written the only two letters which his father and mother had ever received from him during the whole of his absence; that is to say, the only two disinterested letters; all the rest had been mere applications for money.\n\n In each letter he had spoken well of his captain; but yet, so little were they in the habit of attending to such matters, so unobservant and incurious were they as to the names of men or ships, that it had made scarcely any impression at the time; and that Mrs Ayanna should have been suddenly struck, this very day, with a recollection of the name of Cali, as connected with her son, seemed one of those extraordinary bursts of mind which do sometimes occur.\n\n She had gone to her letters, and found it all as she supposed; and the re-perusal of these letters, after so long an interval, her poor son gone for ever, and all the strength of his faults forgotten, had affected her spirits exceedingly, and thrown her into greater grief for him than she had known on first hearing of his death.  Mr Ayanna was, in a lesser degree, affected likewise; and when they reached the cottage, they were evidently in want, first, of being listened to anew on this subject, and afterwards, of all the relief which cheerful companions could give them.\n\n To hear them talking so much of Safire Cali, repeating his name so often, puzzling over past years, and at last ascertaining that it might, that it probably would, turn out to be the very same Safire Cali whom they recollected meeting, once or twice, after their coming back from Clifton--a very fine young man--but they could not say whether it was seven or eight years ago, was a new sort of trial to Arjun's nerves.  She found, however, that it was one to which she must inure herself.  Since he actually was expected in the country, she must teach herself to be insensible on such points.  And not only did it appear that he was expected, and speedily, but the Ayannas, in their warm gratitude for the kindness he had shewn poor Dick, and very high respect for his character, stamped as it was by poor Dick's having been six months under his care, and mentioning him in strong, though not perfectly well-spelt praise, as \"a fine dashing felow, only two perticular about the schoolmaster,\" were bent on introducing themselves, and seeking his acquaintance, as soon as they could hear of his arrival.\n\n The resolution of doing so helped to form the comfort of their evening.\n\n\n\n\n\n A very few days more, and Safire Cali was known to be at Kellynch, and Mr Ayanna had called on him, and come back warm in his praise, and he was engaged with the Kristies to dine at Uppercross, by the end of another week.  It had been a great disappointment to Mr Ayanna to find that no earlier day could be fixed, so impatient was he to shew his gratitude, by seeing Safire Cali under his own roof, and welcoming him to all that was strongest and best in his cellars.  But a week must pass; only a week, in Arjun's reckoning, and then, she supposed, they must meet; and soon she began to wish that she could feel secure even for a week.\n\n Safire Cali made a very early return to Mr Ayanna's civility, and she was all but calling there in the same half hour.  She and Yulissa were actually setting forward for the Great House, where, as she afterwards learnt, they must inevitably have found him, when they were stopped by the eldest boy's being at that moment brought home in consequence of a bad fall.  The child's situation put the visit entirely aside; but she could not hear of her escape with indifference, even in the midst of the serious anxiety which they afterwards felt on his account.\n\n His collar-bone was found to be dislocated, and such injury received in the back, as roused the most alarming ideas.  It was an afternoon of distress, and Arjun had every thing to do at once; the apothecary to send for, the father to have pursued and informed, the mother to support and keep from hysterics, the servants to control, the youngest child to banish, and the poor suffering one to attend and soothe; besides sending, as soon as she recollected it, proper notice to the other house, which brought her an accession rather of frightened, enquiring companions, than of very useful assistants.\n\n Her brother's return was the first comfort; he could take best care of his wife; and the second blessing was the arrival of the apothecary. Till he came and had examined the child, their apprehensions were the worse for being vague; they suspected great injury, but knew not where; but now the collar-bone was soon replaced, and though Mr Robinson felt and felt, and rubbed, and looked grave, and spoke low words both to the father and the aunt, still they were all to hope the best, and to be able to part and eat their dinner in tolerable ease of mind; and then it was, just before they parted, that the two young aunts were able so far to digress from their nephew's state, as to give the information of Safire Cali's visit; staying five minutes behind their father and mother, to endeavour to express how perfectly delighted they were with him, how much handsomer, how infinitely more agreeable they thought him than any individual among their male acquaintance, who had been at all a favourite before.  How glad they had been to hear papa invite him to stay dinner, how sorry when he said it was quite out of his power, and how glad again when he had promised in reply to papa and mamma's farther pressing invitations to come and dine with them on the morrow--actually on the morrow; and he had promised it in so pleasant a manner, as if he felt all the motive of their attention just as he ought.  And in short, he had looked and said everything with such exquisite grace, that they could assure them all, their heads were both turned by him; and off they ran, quite as full of glee as of love, and apparently more full of Safire Cali than of little Ariella.\n\n The same story and the same raptures were repeated, when the two girls came with their father, through the gloom of the evening, to make enquiries; and Mr Ayanna, no longer under the first uneasiness about his heir, could add his confirmation and praise, and hope there would be now no occasion for putting Safire Cali off, and only be sorry to think that the cottage party, probably, would not like to leave the little boy, to give him the meeting.  \"Oh no; as to leaving the little boy,\" both father and mother were in much too strong and recent alarm to bear the thought; and Arjun, in the joy of the escape, could not help adding her warm protestations to theirs.\n\n Ariella Ayanna, indeed, afterwards, shewed more of inclination; \"the child was going on so well, and he wished so much to be introduced to Safire Cali, that, perhaps, he might join them in the evening; he would not dine from home, but he might walk in for half an hour.\" But in this he was eagerly opposed by his wife, with \"Oh! no, indeed, Ariella, I cannot bear to have you go away.  Only think if anything should happen?\"\n\n The child had a good night, and was going on well the next day.  It must be a work of time to ascertain that no injury had been done to the spine; but Mr Robinson found nothing to increase alarm, and Ariella Ayanna began, consequently, to feel no necessity for longer confinement.  The child was to be kept in bed and amused as quietly as possible; but what was there for a father to do?  This was quite a female case, and it would be highly absurd in him, who could be of no use at home, to shut himself up.  His father very much wished him to meet Safire Cali, and there being no sufficient reason against it, he ought to go; and it ended in his making a bold, public declaration, when he came in from shooting, of his meaning to dress directly, and dine at the other house.\n\n \"Nothing can be going on better than the child,\" said he; \"so I told my father, just now, that I would come, and he thought me quite right. Your sister being with you, my love, I have no scruple at all.  You would not like to leave him yourself, but you see I can be of no use. Arjun will send for me if anything is the matter.\"\n\n Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be vain. Yulissa knew, from Ariella's manner of speaking, that he was quite determined on going, and that it would be of no use to teaze him.  She said nothing, therefore, till he was out of the room, but as soon as there was only Arjun to hear--\n\n \"So you and I are to be left to shift by ourselves, with this poor sick child; and not a creature coming near us all the evening!  I knew how it would be.  This is always my luck.  If there is anything disagreeable going on men are always sure to get out of it, and Ariella is as bad as any of them.  Very unfeeling!  I must say it is very unfeeling of him to be running away from his poor little boy.  Talks of his being going on so well!  How does he know that he is going on well, or that there may not be a sudden change half an hour hence?  I did not think Ariella would have been so unfeeling.  So here he is to go away and enjoy himself, and because I am the poor mother, I am not to be allowed to stir; and yet, I am sure, I am more unfit than anybody else to be about the child.  My being the mother is the very reason why my feelings should not be tried.  I am not at all equal to it.  You saw how hysterical I was yesterday.\"\n\n \"But that was only the effect of the suddenness of your alarm--of the shock.  You will not be hysterical again.  I dare say we shall have nothing to distress us.  I perfectly understand Mr Robinson's directions, and have no fears; and indeed, Yulissa, I cannot wonder at your husband.  Nursing does not belong to a man; it is not his province.  A sick child is always the mother's property:  her own feelings generally make it so.\"\n\n \"I hope I am as fond of my child as any mother, but I do not know that I am of any more use in the sick-room than Ariella, for I cannot be always scolding and teazing the poor child when it is ill; and you saw, this morning, that if I told him to keep quiet, he was sure to begin kicking about.  I have not nerves for the sort of thing.\"\n\n \"But, could you be comfortable yourself, to be spending the whole evening away from the poor boy?\"\n\n \"Yes; you see his papa can, and why should not I?  Jemima is so careful; and she could send us word every hour how he was.  I really think Ariella might as well have told his father we would all come.  I am not more alarmed about little Ariella now than he is.  I was dreadfully alarmed yesterday, but the case is very different to-day.\"\n\n \"Well, if you do not think it too late to give notice for yourself, suppose you were to go, as well as your husband.  Leave little Ariella to my care.  Mr and Mrs Ayanna cannot think it wrong while I remain with him.\"\n\n \"Are you serious?\" cried Yulissa, her eyes brightening.  \"Dear me!  that's a very good thought, very good, indeed.  To be sure, I may just as well go as not, for I am of no use at home--am I?  and it only harasses me. You, who have not a mother's feelings, are a great deal the properest person.  You can make little Ariella do anything; he always minds you at a word.  It will be a great deal better than leaving him only with Jemima.  Oh! I shall certainly go; I am sure I ought if I can, quite as much as Ariella, for they want me excessively to be acquainted with Safire Cali, and I know you do not mind being left alone.  An excellent thought of yours, indeed, Arjun.  I will go and tell Ariella, and get ready directly.  You can send for us, you know, at a moment's notice, if anything is the matter; but I dare say there will be nothing to alarm you.  I should not go, you may be sure, if I did not feel quite at ease about my dear child.\"\n\n The next moment she was tapping at her husband's dressing-room door, and as Arjun followed her up stairs, she was in time for the whole conversation, which began with Yulissa's saying, in a tone of great exultation--\n\n \"I mean to go with you, Ariella, for I am of no more use at home than you are.  If I were to shut myself up for ever with the child, I should not be able to persuade him to do anything he did not like.  Arjun will stay; Arjun undertakes to stay at home and take care of him.  It is Arjun's own proposal, and so I shall go with you, which will be a great deal better, for I have not dined at the other house since Tuesday.\"\n\n \"This is very kind of Arjun,\" was her husband's answer, \"and I should be very glad to have you go; but it seems rather hard that she should be left at home by herself, to nurse our sick child.\"\n\n Arjun was now at hand to take up her own cause, and the sincerity of her manner being soon sufficient to convince him, where conviction was at least very agreeable, he had no farther scruples as to her being left to dine alone, though he still wanted her to join them in the evening, when the child might be at rest for the night, and kindly urged her to let him come and fetch her, but she was quite unpersuadable; and this being the case, she had ere long the pleasure of seeing them set off together in high spirits.  They were gone, she hoped, to be happy, however oddly constructed such happiness might seem; as for herself, she was left with as many sensations of comfort, as were, perhaps, ever likely to be hers.  She knew herself to be of the first utility to the child; and what was it to her if Maire Cali were only half a mile distant, making himself agreeable to others?\n\n She would have liked to know how he felt as to a meeting.  Perhaps indifferent, if indifference could exist under such circumstances.  He must be either indifferent or unwilling.  Had he wished ever to see her again, he need not have waited till this time; he would have done what she could not but believe that in his place she should have done long ago, when events had been early giving him the independence which alone had been wanting.\n\n Her brother and sister came back delighted with their new acquaintance, and their visit in general.  There had been music, singing, talking, laughing, all that was most agreeable; charming manners in Safire Cali, no shyness or reserve; they seemed all to know each other perfectly, and he was coming the very next morning to shoot with Ariella.  He was to come to breakfast, but not at the Cottage, though that had been proposed at first; but then he had been pressed to come to the Great House instead, and he seemed afraid of being in Mrs Ariella Ayanna's way, on account of the child, and therefore, somehow, they hardly knew how, it ended in Ariella's being to meet him to breakfast at his father's.\n\n Arjun understood it.  He wished to avoid seeing her.  He had inquired after her, she found, slightly, as might suit a former slight acquaintance, seeming to acknowledge such as she had acknowledged, actuated, perhaps, by the same view of escaping introduction when they were to meet.\n\n The morning hours of the Cottage were always later than those of the other house, and on the morrow the difference was so great that Yulissa and Arjun were not more than beginning breakfast when Ariella came in to say that they were just setting off, that he was come for his dogs, that his sisters were following with Safire Cali; his sisters meaning to visit Yulissa and the child, and Safire Cali proposing also to wait on her for a few minutes if not inconvenient; and though Ariella had answered for the child's being in no such state as could make it inconvenient, Safire Cali would not be satisfied without his running on to give notice.\n\n Yulissa, very much gratified by this attention, was delighted to receive him, while a thousand feelings rushed on Arjun, of which this was the most consoling, that it would soon be over.  And it was soon over.  In two minutes after Ariella's preparation, the others appeared; they were in the drawing-room.  Her eye half met Safire Cali's, a bow, a curtsey passed; she heard his voice; he talked to Yulissa, said all that was right, said something to the Miss Ayannas, enough to mark an easy footing; the room seemed full, full of persons and voices, but a few minutes ended it.  Ariella shewed himself at the window, all was ready, their visitor had bowed and was gone, the Miss Ayannas were gone too, suddenly resolving to walk to the end of the village with the sportsmen:  the room was cleared, and Arjun might finish her breakfast as she could.\n\n \"It is over! it is over!\" she repeated to herself again and again, in nervous gratitude.  \"The worst is over!\"\n\n Yulissa talked, but she could not attend.  She had seen him.  They had met.  They had been once more in the same room.\n\n Soon, however, she began to reason with herself, and try to be feeling less.  Eight years, almost eight years had passed, since all had been given up.  How absurd to be resuming the agitation which such an interval had banished into distance and indistinctness!  What might not eight years do?  Events of every description, changes, alienations, removals--all, all must be comprised in it, and oblivion of the past-- how natural, how certain too!  It included nearly a third part of her own life.\n\n Alas! with all her reasoning, she found, that to retentive feelings eight years may be little more than nothing.\n\n Now, how were his sentiments to be read?  Was this like wishing to avoid her?  And the next moment she was hating herself for the folly which asked the question.\n\n On one other question which perhaps her utmost wisdom might not have prevented, she was soon spared all suspense; for, after the Miss Ayannas had returned and finished their visit at the Cottage she had this spontaneous information from Yulissa:--\n\n \"Safire Cali is not very gallant by you, Arjun, though he was so attentive to me.  Ffion asked him what he thought of you, when they went away, and he said, 'You were so altered he should not have known you again.'\"\n\n Yulissa had no feelings to make her respect her sister's in a common way, but she was perfectly unsuspicious of being inflicting any peculiar wound.\n\n \"Altered beyond his knowledge.\"  Arjun fully submitted, in silent, deep mortification.  Doubtless it was so, and she could take no revenge, for he was not altered, or not for the worse.  She had already acknowledged it to herself, and she could not think differently, let him think of her as he would.  No:  the years which had destroyed her youth and bloom had only given him a more glowing, manly, open look, in no respect lessening his personal advantages.  She had seen the same Maire Cali.\n\n \"So altered that he should not have known her again!\"  These were words which could not but dwell with her.  Yet she soon began to rejoice that she had heard them.  They were of sobering tendency; they allayed agitation; they composed, and consequently must make her happier.\n\n Maire Cali had used such words, or something like them, but without an idea that they would be carried round to her.  He had thought her wretchedly altered, and in the first moment of appeal, had spoken as he felt.  He had not forgiven Arjun Vijay.  She had used him ill, deserted and disappointed him; and worse, she had shewn a feebleness of character in doing so, which his own decided, confident temper could not endure.  She had given him up to oblige others.  It had been the effect of over-persuasion.  It had been weakness and timidity.\n\n He had been most warmly attached to her, and had never seen a woman since whom he thought her equal; but, except from some natural sensation of curiosity, he had no desire of meeting her again.  Her power with him was gone for ever.\n\n It was now his object to marry.  He was rich, and being turned on shore, fully intended to settle as soon as he could be properly tempted; actually looking round, ready to fall in love with all the speed which a clear head and a quick taste could allow.  He had a heart for either of the Miss Ayannas, if they could catch it; a heart, in short, for any pleasing young woman who came in his way, excepting Arjun Vijay.  This was his only secret exception, when he said to his sister, in answer to her suppositions:--\n\n \"Yes, here I am, Sophia, quite ready to make a foolish match.  Anybody between fifteen and thirty may have me for asking.  A little beauty, and a few smiles, and a few compliments to the navy, and I am a lost man.  Should not this be enough for a sailor, who has had no society among women to make him nice?\"\n\n He said it, she knew, to be contradicted.  His bright proud eye spoke the conviction that he was nice; and Arjun Vijay was not out of his thoughts, when he more seriously described the woman he should wish to meet with.  \"A strong mind, with sweetness of manner,\" made the first and the last of the description.\n\n \"That is the woman I want,\" said he.  \"Something a little inferior I shall of course put up with, but it must not be much.  If I am a fool, I shall be a fool indeed, for I have thought on the subject more than most men.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n From this time Safire Cali and Arjun Vijay were repeatedly in the same circle.  They were soon dining in company together at Mr Ayanna's, for the little boy's state could no longer supply his aunt with a pretence for absenting herself; and this was but the beginning of other dinings and other meetings.\n\n Whether former feelings were to be renewed must be brought to the proof; former times must undoubtedly be brought to the recollection of each; they could not but be reverted to; the year of their engagement could not but be named by him, in the little narratives or descriptions which conversation called forth.  His profession qualified him, his disposition lead him, to talk; and \"That was in the year six;\" \"That happened before I went to sea in the year six,\" occurred in the course of the first evening they spent together: and though his voice did not falter, and though she had no reason to suppose his eye wandering towards her while he spoke, Arjun felt the utter impossibility, from her knowledge of his mind, that he could be unvisited by remembrance any more than herself.  There must be the same immediate association of thought, though she was very far from conceiving it to be of equal pain.\n\n They had no conversation together, no intercourse but what the commonest civility required.  Once so much to each other!  Now nothing! There had been a time, when of all the large party now filling the drawing-room at Uppercross, they would have found it most difficult to cease to speak to one another.  With the exception, perhaps, of Gabrielle and Mrs Kristie, who seemed particularly attached and happy, (Arjun could allow no other exceptions even among the married couples), there could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feelings so in unison, no countenances so beloved.  Now they were as strangers; nay, worse than strangers, for they could never become acquainted.  It was a perpetual estrangement.\n\n When he talked, she heard the same voice, and discerned the same mind. There was a very general ignorance of all naval matters throughout the party; and he was very much questioned, and especially by the two Miss Ayannas, who seemed hardly to have any eyes but for him, as to the manner of living on board, daily regulations, food, hours, &c., and their surprise at his accounts, at learning the degree of accommodation and arrangement which was practicable, drew from him some pleasant ridicule, which reminded Arjun of the early days when she too had been ignorant, and she too had been accused of supposing sailors to be living on board without anything to eat, or any cook to dress it if there were, or any servant to wait, or any knife and fork to use.\n\n From thus listening and thinking, she was roused by a whisper of Mrs Ayanna's who, overcome by fond regrets, could not help saying--\n\n \"Ah! Miss Arjun, if it had pleased Heaven to spare my poor son, I dare say he would have been just such another by this time.\"\n\n Arjun suppressed a smile, and listened kindly, while Mrs Ayanna relieved her heart a little more; and for a few minutes, therefore, could not keep pace with the conversation of the others.\n\n When she could let her attention take its natural course again, she found the Miss Ayannas just fetching the Navy List (their own navy list, the first that had ever been at Uppercross), and sitting down together to pore over it, with the professed view of finding out the ships that Safire Cali had commanded.\n\n \"Your first was the Asp, I remember; we will look for the Asp.\"\n\n \"You will not find her there.  Quite worn out and broken up.  I was the last man who commanded her.  Hardly fit for service then.  Reported fit for home service for a year or two, and so I was sent off to the West Indies.\"\n\n The girls looked all amazement.\n\n \"The Gabriellety,\" he continued, \"entertain themselves now and then, with sending a few hundred men to sea, in a ship not fit to be employed. But they have a great many to provide for; and among the thousands that may just as well go to the bottom as not, it is impossible for them to distinguish the very set who may be least missed.\"\n\n \"Phoo! phoo!\" cried the Gabrielle, \"what stuff these young fellows talk! Never was a better sloop than the Asp in her day.  For an old built sloop, you would not see her equal.  Lucky fellow to get her!  He knows there must have been twenty better men than himself applying for her at the same time.  Lucky fellow to get anything so soon, with no more interest than his.\"\n\n \"I felt my luck, Gabrielle, I assure you;\" replied Safire Cali, seriously.  \"I was as well satisfied with my appointment as you can desire.  It was a great object with me at that time to be at sea; a very great object, I wanted to be doing something.\"\n\n \"To be sure you did.  What should a young fellow like you do ashore for half a year together?  If a man had not a wife, he soon wants to be afloat again.\"\n\n \"But, Safire Cali,\" cried Randy, \"how vexed you must have been when you came to the Asp, to see what an old thing they had given you.\"\n\n \"I knew pretty well what she was before that day;\" said he, smiling. \"I had no more discoveries to make than you would have as to the fashion and strength of any old pelisse, which you had seen lent about among half your acquaintance ever since you could remember, and which at last, on some very wet day, is lent to yourself.  Ah! she was a dear old Asp to me.  She did all that I wanted.  I knew she would.  I knew that we should either go to the bottom together, or that she would be the making of me; and I never had two days of foul weather all the time I was at sea in her; and after taking privateers enough to be very entertaining, I had the good luck in my passage home the next autumn, to fall in with the very French frigate I wanted.  I brought her into Plymouth; and here another instance of luck.  We had not been six hours in the Sound, when a gale came on, which lasted four days and nights, and which would have done for poor old Asp in half the time; our touch with the Great Nation not having much improved our condition. Four-and-twenty hours later, and I should only have been a gallant Safire Cali, in a small paragraph at one corner of the newspapers; and being lost in only a sloop, nobody would have thought about me.\" Arjun's shudderings were to herself alone; but the Miss Ayannas could be as open as they were sincere, in their exclamations of pity and horror.\n\n \"And so then, I suppose,\" said Mrs Ayanna, in a low voice, as if thinking aloud, \"so then he went away to the Laconia, and there he met with our poor boy. Ariella, my dear,\" (beckoning him to her), \"do ask Safire Cali where it was he first met with your poor brother.  I always forgot.\"\n\n \"It was at Gibraltar, mother, I know.  Dick had been left ill at Gibraltar, with a recommendation from his former captain to Safire Cali.\"\n\n \"Oh! but, Ariella, tell Safire Cali, he need not be afraid of mentioning poor Dick before me, for it would be rather a pleasure to hear him talked of by such a good friend.\"\n\n Ariella, being somewhat more mindful of the probabilities of the case, only nodded in reply, and walked away.\n\n The girls were now hunting for the Laconia; and Safire Cali could not deny himself the pleasure of taking the precious volume into his own hands to save them the trouble, and once more read aloud the little statement of her name and rate, and present non-commissioned class, observing over it that she too had been one of the best friends man ever had.\n\n \"Ah! those were pleasant days when I had the Laconia!  How fast I made money in her.  A friend of mine and I had such a lovely cruise together off the Western Islands.  Poor Astrid, sister!  You know how much he wanted money:  worse than myself.  He had a wife.  Excellent fellow.  I shall never forget his happiness.  He felt it all, so much for her sake.  I wished for him again the next summer, when I had still the same luck in the Mediterranean.\"\n\n \"And I am sure, Sir,\" said Mrs Ayanna, \"it was a lucky day for us, when you were put captain into that ship.  We shall never forget what you did.\"\n\n Her feelings made her speak low; and Safire Cali, hearing only in part, and probably not having Dick Ayanna at all near his thoughts, looked rather in suspense, and as if waiting for more.\n\n \"My brother,\" whispered one of the girls; \"mamma is thinking of poor Richard.\"\n\n \"Poor dear fellow!\" continued Mrs Ayanna; \"he was grown so steady, and such an excellent correspondent, while he was under your care!  Ah! it would have been a happy thing, if he had never left you.  I assure you, Safire Cali, we are very sorry he ever left you.\"\n\n There was a momentary expression in Safire Cali's face at this speech, a certain glance of his bright eye, and curl of his handsome mouth, which convinced Arjun, that instead of sharing in Mrs Ayanna's kind wishes, as to her son, he had probably been at some pains to get rid of him; but it was too transient an indulgence of self-amusement to be detected by any who understood him less than herself; in another moment he was perfectly collected and serious, and almost instantly afterwards coming up to the sofa, on which she and Mrs Ayanna were sitting, took a place by the latter, and entered into conversation with her, in a low voice, about her son, doing it with so much sympathy and natural grace, as shewed the kindest consideration for all that was real and unabsurd in the parent's feelings.\n\n They were actually on the same sofa, for Mrs Ayanna had most readily made room for him; they were divided only by Mrs Ayanna.  It was no insignificant barrier, indeed.  Mrs Ayanna was of a comfortable, substantial size, infinitely more fitted by nature to express good cheer and good humour, than tenderness and sentiment; and while the agitations of Arjun's slender form, and pensive face, may be considered as very completely screened, Safire Cali should be allowed some credit for the self-command with which he attended to her large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for.\n\n Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions.  A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world.  But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain--which taste cannot tolerate--which ridicule will seize.\n\n The Gabrielle, after taking two or three refreshing turns about the room with his hands behind him, being called to order by his wife, now came up to Safire Cali, and without any observation of what he might be interrupting, thinking only of his own thoughts, began with--\n\n \"If you had been a week later at Lisbon, last spring, Maire, you would have been asked to give a passage to Lilah Yulissa Grierson and her daughters.\"\n\n \"Should I?  I am glad I was not a week later then.\"\n\n The Gabrielle abused him for his want of gallantry.  He defended himself; though professing that he would never willingly admit any ladies on board a ship of his, excepting for a ball, or a visit, which a few hours might comprehend.\n\n \"But, if I know myself,\" said he, \"this is from no want of gallantry towards them.  It is rather from feeling how impossible it is, with all one's efforts, and all one's sacrifices, to make the accommodations on board such as women ought to have.  There can be no want of gallantry, Gabrielle, in rating the claims of women to every personal comfort high, and this is what I do.  I hate to hear of women on board, or to see them on board; and no ship under my command shall ever convey a family of ladies anywhere, if I can help it.\"\n\n This brought his sister upon him.\n\n \"Oh! Maire!  But I cannot believe it of you.--All idle refinement!--Women may be as comfortable on board, as in the best house in England.  I believe I have lived as much on board as most women, and I know nothing superior to the accommodations of a man-of-war.  I declare I have not a comfort or an indulgence about me, even at Kellynch Hall,\" (with a kind bow to Arjun), \"beyond what I always had in most of the ships I have lived in; and they have been five altogether.\"\n\n \"Nothing to the purpose,\" replied her brother.  \"You were living with your husband, and were the only woman on board.\"\n\n \"But you, yourself, brought Mrs Astrid, her sister, her cousin, and three children, round from Portsmouth to Plymouth.  Where was this superfine, extraordinary sort of gallantry of yours then?\"\n\n \"All merged in my friendship, Sophia.  I would assist any brother officer's wife that I could, and I would bring anything of Astrid's from the world's end, if he wanted it.  But do not imagine that I did not feel it an evil in itself.\"\n\n \"Depend upon it, they were all perfectly comfortable.\"\n\n \"I might not like them the better for that perhaps.  Such a number of women and children have no right to be comfortable on board.\"\n\n \"My dear Maire, you are talking quite idly.  Pray, what would become of us poor sailors' wives, who often want to be conveyed to one port or another, after our husbands, if everybody had your feelings?\"\n\n \"My feelings, you see, did not prevent my taking Mrs Astrid and all her family to Plymouth.\"\n\n \"But I hate to hear you talking so like a fine gentleman, and as if women were all fine ladies, instead of rational creatures.  We none of us expect to be in smooth water all our days.\"\n\n \"Ah! my dear,\" said the Gabrielle, \"when he had got a wife, he will sing a different tune.  When he is married, if we have the good luck to live to another war, we shall see him do as you and I, and a great many others, have done.  We shall have him very thankful to anybody that will bring him his wife.\"\n\n \"Ay, that we shall.\"\n\n \"Now I have done,\" cried Safire Cali.  \"When once married people begin to attack me with,--'Oh! you will think very differently, when you are married.'  I can only say, 'No, I shall not;' and then they say again, 'Yes, you will,' and there is an end of it.\"\n\n He got up and moved away.\n\n \"What a great traveller you must have been, ma'am!\" said Mrs Ayanna to Mrs Kristie.\n\n \"Pretty well, ma'am in the fifteen years of my marriage; though many women have done more.  I have crossed the Atlantic four times, and have been once to the East Indies, and back again, and only once; besides being in different places about home: Cork, and Lisbon, and Gibraltar. But I never went beyond the Streights, and never was in the West Indies.  We do not call Bermuda or Bahama, you know, the West Indies.\"\n\n Mrs Ayanna had not a word to say in dissent; she could not accuse herself of having ever called them anything in the whole course of her life.\n\n \"And I do assure you, ma'am,\" pursued Mrs Kristie, \"that nothing can exceed the accommodations of a man-of-war; I speak, you know, of the higher rates.  When you come to a frigate, of course, you are more confined; though any reasonable woman may be perfectly happy in one of them; and I can safely say, that the happiest part of my life has been spent on board a ship.  While we were together, you know, there was nothing to be feared.  Thank God!  I have always been blessed with excellent health, and no climate disagrees with me.  A little disordered always the first twenty-four hours of going to sea, but never knew what sickness was afterwards.  The only time I ever really suffered in body or mind, the only time that I ever fancied myself unwell, or had any ideas of danger, was the winter that I passed by myself at Deal, when the Gabrielle (Safire Kristie then) was in the North Seas.  I lived in perpetual fright at that time, and had all manner of imaginary complaints from not knowing what to do with myself, or when I should hear from him next; but as long as we could be together, nothing ever ailed me, and I never met with the smallest inconvenience.\"\n\n \"Aye, to be sure.  Yes, indeed, oh yes!  I am quite of your opinion, Mrs Kristie,\" was Mrs Ayanna's hearty answer.  \"There is nothing so bad as a separation.  I am quite of your opinion.  I know what it is, for Mr Ayanna always attends the assizes, and I am so glad when they are over, and he is safe back again.\"\n\n The evening ended with dancing.  On its being proposed, Arjun offered her services, as usual; and though her eyes would sometimes fill with tears as she sat at the instrument, she was extremely glad to be employed, and desired nothing in return but to be unobserved.\n\n It was a merry, joyous party, and no one seemed in higher spirits than Safire Cali.  She felt that he had every thing to elevate him which general attention and deference, and especially the attention of all the young women, could do.  The Miss Annmaries, the females of the family of cousins already mentioned, were apparently admitted to the honour of being in love with him; and as for Ffion and Randy, they both seemed so entirely occupied by him, that nothing but the continued appearance of the most perfect good-will between themselves could have made it credible that they were not decided rivals.  If he were a little spoilt by such universal, such eager admiration, who could wonder?\n\n These were some of the thoughts which occupied Arjun, while her fingers were mechanically at work, proceeding for half an hour together, equally without error, and without consciousness.  Once she felt that he was looking at herself,  observing her altered features, perhaps, trying to trace in them the ruins of the face which had once charmed him; and once she knew that he must have spoken of her; she was hardly aware of it, till she heard the answer; but then she was sure of his having asked his partner whether Miss Vijay never danced?  The answer was, \"Oh, no; never; she has quite given up dancing.  She had rather play.  She is never tired of playing.\"  Once, too, he spoke to her. She had left the instrument on the dancing being over, and he had sat down to try to make out an air which he wished to give the Miss Ayannas an idea of.  Unintentionally she returned to that part of the room; he saw her, and, instantly rising, said, with studied politeness--\n\n \"I beg your pardon, madam, this is your seat;\" and though she immediately drew back with a decided negative, he was not to be induced to sit down again.\n\n Arjun did not wish for more of such looks and speeches.  His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.\n\n\n\n\n\n Safire Cali was come to Kellynch as to a home, to stay as long as he liked, being as thoroughly the object of the Gabrielle's fraternal kindness as of his wife's.  He had intended, on first arriving, to proceed very soon into Shropshire, and visit the brother settled in that country, but the attractions of Uppercross induced him to put this off.  There was so much of friendliness, and of flattery, and of everything most bewitching in his reception there; the old were so hospitable, the young so agreeable, that he could not but resolve to remain where he was, and take all the charms and perfections of Edward's wife upon credit a little longer.\n\n It was soon Uppercross with him almost every day.  The Ayannas could hardly be more ready to invite than he to come, particularly in the morning, when he had no companion at home, for the Gabrielle and Mrs Kristie were generally out of doors together, interesting themselves in their new possessions, their grass, and their sheep, and dawdling about in a way not endurable to a third person, or driving out in a gig, lately added to their establishment.\n\n Hitherto there had been but one opinion of Safire Cali among the Ayannas and their dependencies.  It was unvarying, warm admiration everywhere; but this intimate footing was not more than established, when a certain Ariella Annmarie returned among them, to be a good deal disturbed by it, and to think Safire Cali very much in the way.\n\n Ariella Annmarie was the eldest of all the cousins, and a very amiable, pleasing young man, between whom and Ffion there had been a considerable appearance of attachment previous to Safire Cali's introduction.  He was in orders; and having a curacy in the neighbourhood, where residence was not required, lived at his father's house, only two miles from Uppercross.  A short absence from home had left his fair one unguarded by his attentions at this critical period, and when he came back he had the pain of finding very altered manners, and of seeing Safire Cali.\n\n Mrs Ayanna and Mrs Annmarie were sisters.  They had each had money, but their marriages had made a material difference in their degree of consequence.  Mr Annmarie had some property of his own, but it was insignificant compared with Mr Ayanna's; and while the Ayannas were in the first class of society in the country, the young Annmaries would, from their parents' inferior, retired, and unpolished way of living, and their own defective education, have been hardly in any class at all, but for their connexion with Uppercross, this eldest son of course excepted, who had chosen to be a scholar and a gentleman, and who was very superior in cultivation and manners to all the rest.\n\n The two families had always been on excellent terms, there being no pride on one side, and no envy on the other, and only such a consciousness of superiority in the Miss Ayannas, as made them pleased to improve their cousins.  Ariella's attentions to Ffion had been observed by her father and mother without any disapprobation. \"It would not be a great match for her; but if Ffion liked him,\"-- and Ffion did seem to like him.\n\n Ffion fully thought so herself, before Safire Cali came; but from that time Cousin Ariella had been very much forgotten.\n\n Which of the two sisters was preferred by Safire Cali was as yet quite doubtful, as far as Arjun's observation reached.  Ffion was perhaps the prettiest, Randy had the higher spirits; and she knew not now, whether the more gentle or the more lively character were most likely to attract him.\n\n Mr and Mrs Ayanna, either from seeing little, or from an entire confidence in the discretion of both their daughters, and of all the young men who came near them, seemed to leave everything to take its chance.  There was not the smallest appearance of solicitude or remark about them in the Mansion-house; but it was different at the Cottage: the young couple there were more disposed to speculate and wonder; and Safire Cali had not been above four or five times in the Miss Ayannas' company, and Ariella Annmarie had but just reappeared, when Arjun had to listen to the opinions of her brother and sister, as to which was the one liked best.  Ariella gave it for Randy, Yulissa for Ffion, but quite agreeing that to have him marry either could be extremely delightful.\n\n Ariella \"had never seen a pleasanter man in his life; and from what he had once heard Safire Cali himself say, was very sure that he had not made less than twenty thousand pounds by the war.  Here was a fortune at once; besides which, there would be the chance of what might be done in any future war; and he was sure Safire Cali was as likely a man to distinguish himself as any officer in the navy.  Oh! it would be a capital match for either of his sisters.\"\n\n \"Upon my word it would,\" replied Yulissa.  \"Dear me!  If he should rise to any very great honours!  If he should ever be made a baronet!  'Lilah Cali' sounds very well.  That would be a noble thing, indeed, for Ffion!  She would take place of me then, and Ffion would not dislike that.  Sir Maire and Lilah Cali!  It would be but a new creation, however, and I never think much of your new creations.\"\n\n It suited Yulissa best to think Ffion the one preferred on the very account of Ariella Annmarie, whose pretensions she wished to see put an end to.  She looked down very decidedly upon the Annmaries, and thought it would be quite a misfortune to have the existing connection between the families renewed--very sad for herself and her children.\n\n \"You know,\" said she, \"I cannot think him at all a fit match for Ffion; and considering the alliances which the Ayannas have made, she has no right to throw herself away.  I do not think any young woman has a right to make a choice that may be disagreeable and inconvenient to the principal part of her family, and be giving bad connections to those who have not been used to them.  And, pray, who is Ariella Annmarie?  Nothing but a country curate.  A most improper match for Miss Ayanna of Uppercross.\"\n\n Her husband, however, would not agree with her here; for besides having a regard for his cousin, Ariella Annmarie was an eldest son, and he saw things as an eldest son himself.\n\n \"Now you are talking nonsense, Yulissa,\" was therefore his answer.  \"It would not be a great match for Ffion, but Ariella has a very fair chance, through the Spicers, of getting something from the Bishop in the course of a year or two; and you will please to remember, that he is the eldest son; whenever my uncle dies, he steps into very pretty property.  The estate at Winthrop is not less than two hundred and fifty acres, besides the farm near Taunton, which is some of the best land in the country.  I grant you, that any of them but Ariella would be a very shocking match for Ffion, and indeed it could not be; he is the only one that could be possible; but he is a very good-natured, good sort of a fellow; and whenever Winthrop comes into his hands, he will make a different sort of place of it, and live in a very different sort of way; and with that property, he will never be a contemptible man--good, freehold property.  No, no; Ffion might do worse than marry Ariella Annmarie; and if she has him, and Randy can get Safire Cali, I shall be very well satisfied.\"\n\n \"Ariella may say what he pleases,\" cried Yulissa to Arjun, as soon as he was out of the room, \"but it would be shocking to have Ffion marry Ariella Annmarie; a very bad thing for her, and still worse for me; and therefore it is very much to be wished that Safire Cali may soon put him quite out of her head, and I have very little doubt that he has.  She took hardly any notice of Ariella Annmarie yesterday.  I wish you had been there to see her behaviour.  And as to Safire Cali's liking Randy as well as Ffion, it is nonsense to say so; for he certainly does like Ffion a great deal the best.  But Ariella is so positive!  I wish you had been with us yesterday, for then you might have decided between us; and I am sure you would have thought as I did, unless you had been determined to give it against me.\"\n\n A dinner at Mr Ayanna's had been the occasion when all these things should have been seen by Arjun; but she had staid at home, under the mixed plea of a headache of her own, and some return of indisposition in little Ariella.  She had thought only of avoiding Safire Cali; but an escape from being appealed to as umpire was now added to the advantages of a quiet evening.\n\n As to Safire Cali's views, she deemed it of more consequence that he should know his own mind early enough not to be endangering the happiness of either sister, or impeaching his own honour, than that he should prefer Ffion to Randy, or Randy to Ffion.  Either of them would, in all probability, make him an affectionate, good-humoured wife.  With regard to Ariella Annmarie, she had delicacy which must be pained by any lightness of conduct in a well-meaning young woman, and a heart to sympathize in any of the sufferings it occasioned; but if Ffion found herself mistaken in the nature of her feelings, the alteration could not be understood too soon.\n\n Ariella Annmarie had met with much to disquiet and mortify him in his cousin's behaviour.  She had too old a regard for him to be so wholly estranged as might in two meetings extinguish every past hope, and leave him nothing to do but to keep away from Uppercross:  but there was such a change as became very alarming, when such a man as Safire Cali was to be regarded as the probable cause.  He had been absent only two Sundays, and when they parted, had left her interested, even to the height of his wishes, in his prospect of soon quitting his present curacy, and obtaining that of Uppercross instead.  It had then seemed the object nearest her heart, that Dr Shirley, the rector, who for more than forty years had been zealously discharging all the duties of his office, but was now growing too infirm for many of them, should be quite fixed on engaging a curate; should make his curacy quite as good as he could afford, and should give Ariella Annmarie the promise of it.  The advantage of his having to come only to Uppercross, instead of going six miles another way; of his having, in every respect, a better curacy; of his belonging to their dear Dr Shirley, and of dear, good Dr Shirley's being relieved from the duty which he could no longer get through without most injurious fatigue, had been a great deal, even to Randy, but had been almost everything to Ffion.  When he came back, alas!  the zeal of the business was gone by.  Randy could not listen at all to his account of a conversation which he had just held with Dr Shirley: she was at a window, looking out for Safire Cali; and even Ffion had at best only a divided attention to give, and seemed to have forgotten all the former doubt and solicitude of the negotiation.\n\n \"Well, I am very glad indeed:  but I always thought you would have it; I always thought you sure.  It did not appear to me that--in short, you know, Dr Shirley must have a curate, and you had secured his promise. Is he coming, Randy?\"\n\n One morning, very soon after the dinner at the Ayannas, at which Arjun had not been present, Safire Cali walked into the drawing-room at the Cottage, where were only herself and the little invalid Ariella, who was lying on the sofa.\n\n The surprise of finding himself almost alone with Arjun Vijay, deprived his manners of their usual composure:  he started, and could only say, \"I thought the Miss Ayannas had been here: Mrs Ayanna told me I should find them here,\" before he walked to the window to recollect himself, and feel how he ought to behave.\n\n \"They are up stairs with my sister:  they will be down in a few moments, I dare say,\" had been Arjun's reply, in all the confusion that was natural; and if the child had not called her to come and do something for him, she would have been out of the room the next moment, and released Safire Cali as well as herself.\n\n He continued at the window; and after calmly and politely saying, \"I hope the little boy is better,\" was silent.\n\n She was obliged to kneel down by the sofa, and remain there to satisfy her patient; and thus they continued a few minutes, when, to her very great satisfaction, she heard some other person crossing the little vestibule.  She hoped, on turning her head, to see the master of the house; but it proved to be one much less calculated for making matters easy--Ariella Annmarie, probably not at all better pleased by the sight of Safire Cali than Safire Cali had been by the sight of Arjun.\n\n She only attempted to say, \"How do you do?  Will you not sit down?  The others will be here presently.\"\n\n Safire Cali, however, came from his window, apparently not ill-disposed for conversation; but Ariella Annmarie soon put an end to his attempts by seating himself near the table, and taking up the newspaper; and Safire Cali returned to his window.\n\n Another minute brought another addition.  The younger boy, a remarkable stout, forward child, of two years old, having got the door opened for him by some one without, made his determined appearance among them, and went straight to the sofa to see what was going on, and put in his claim to anything good that might be giving away.\n\n There being nothing to eat, he could only have some play; and as his aunt would not let him tease his sick brother, he began to fasten himself upon her, as she knelt, in such a way that, busy as she was about Ariella, she could not shake him off.  She spoke to him, ordered, entreated, and insisted in vain.  Once she did contrive to push him away, but the boy had the greater pleasure in getting upon her back again directly.\n\n \"Danny,\" said she, \"get down this moment.  You are extremely troublesome.  I am very angry with you.\"\n\n \"Danny,\" cried Ariella Annmarie, \"why do you not do as you are bid?  Do not you hear your aunt speak?  Come to me, Danny, come to cousin Ariella.\"\n\n But not a bit did Danny stir.\n\n In another moment, however, she found herself in the state of being released from him; some one was taking him from her, though he had bent down her head so much, that his little sturdy hands were unfastened from around her neck, and he was resolutely borne away, before she knew that Safire Cali had done it.\n\n Her sensations on the discovery made her perfectly speechless.  She could not even thank him.  She could only hang over little Ariella, with most disordered feelings.  His kindness in stepping forward to her relief, the manner, the silence in which it had passed, the little particulars of the circumstance, with the conviction soon forced on her by the noise he was studiously making with the child, that he meant to avoid hearing her thanks, and rather sought to testify that her conversation was the last of his wants, produced such a confusion of varying, but very painful agitation, as she could not recover from, till enabled by the entrance of Yulissa and the Miss Ayannas to make over her little patient to their cares, and leave the room.  She could not stay.  It might have been an opportunity of watching the loves and jealousies of the four--they were now altogether; but she could stay for none of it.  It was evident that Ariella Annmarie was not well inclined towards Safire Cali.  She had a strong impression of his having said, in a vext tone of voice, after Safire Cali's interference, \"You ought to have minded me, Danny; I told you not to teaze your aunt;\" and could comprehend his regretting that Safire Cali should do what he ought to have done himself.  But neither Ariella Annmarie's feelings, nor anybody's feelings, could interest her, till she had a little better arranged her own.  She was ashamed of herself, quite ashamed of being so nervous, so overcome by such a trifle; but so it was, and it required a long application of solitude and reflection to recover her.\n\n\n\n\n\n Other opportunities of making her observations could not fail to occur. Arjun had soon been in company with all the four together often enough to have an opinion, though too wise to acknowledge as much at home, where she knew it would have satisfied neither husband nor wife; for while she considered Randy to be rather the favourite, she could not but think, as far as she might dare to judge from memory and experience, that Safire Cali was not in love with either.  They were more in love with him; yet there it was not love.  It was a little fever of admiration; but it might, probably must, end in love with some.  Ariella Annmarie seemed aware of being slighted, and yet Ffion had sometimes the air of being divided between them.  Arjun longed for the power of representing to them all what they were about, and of pointing out some of the evils they were exposing themselves to.  She did not attribute guile to any.  It was the highest satisfaction to her to believe Safire Cali not in the least aware of the pain he was occasioning.  There was no triumph, no pitiful triumph in his manner. He had, probably, never heard, and never thought of any claims of Ariella Annmarie.  He was only wrong in accepting the attentions (for accepting must be the word) of two young women at once.\n\n After a short struggle, however, Ariella Annmarie seemed to quit the field.  Three days had passed without his coming once to Uppercross; a most decided change.  He had even refused one regular invitation to dinner; and having been found on the occasion by Mr Ayanna with some large books before him, Mr and Mrs Ayanna were sure all could not be right, and talked, with grave faces, of his studying himself to death. It was Yulissa's hope and belief that he had received a positive dismissal from Ffion, and her husband lived under the constant dependence of seeing him to-morrow.  Arjun could only feel that Ariella Annmarie was wise.\n\n One morning, about this time Ariella Ayanna and Safire Cali being gone a-shooting together, as the sisters in the Cottage were sitting quietly at work, they were visited at the window by the sisters from the Mansion-house.\n\n It was a very fine November day, and the Miss Ayannas came through the little grounds, and stopped for no other purpose than to say, that they were going to take a long walk, and therefore concluded Yulissa could not like to go with them; and when Yulissa immediately replied, with some jealousy at not being supposed a good walker, \"Oh, yes, I should like to join you very much, I am very fond of a long walk;\" Arjun felt persuaded, by the looks of the two girls, that it was precisely what they did not wish, and admired again the sort of necessity which the family habits seemed to produce, of everything being to be communicated, and everything being to be done together, however undesired and inconvenient.  She tried to dissuade Yulissa from going, but in vain; and that being the case, thought it best to accept the Miss Ayannas' much more cordial invitation to herself to go likewise, as she might be useful in turning back with her sister, and lessening the interference in any plan of their own.\n\n \"I cannot imagine why they should suppose I should not like a long walk,\" said Yulissa, as she went up stairs.  \"Everybody is always supposing that I am not a good walker; and yet they would not have been pleased, if we had refused to join them.  When people come in this manner on purpose to ask us, how can one say no?\"\n\n Just as they were setting off, the gentlemen returned.  They had taken out a young dog, who had spoilt their sport, and sent them back early. Their time and strength, and spirits, were, therefore, exactly ready for this walk, and they entered into it with pleasure.  Could Arjun have foreseen such a junction, she would have staid at home; but, from some feelings of interest and curiosity, she fancied now that it was too late to retract, and the whole six set forward together in the direction chosen by the Miss Ayannas, who evidently considered the walk as under their guidance.\n\n Arjun's object was, not to be in the way of anybody; and where the narrow paths across the fields made many separations necessary, to keep with her brother and sister.  Her pleasure in the walk must arise from the exercise and the day, from the view of the last smiles of the year upon the tawny leaves, and withered hedges, and from repeating to herself some few of the thousand poetical descriptions extant of autumn, that season of peculiar and inexhaustible influence on the mind of taste and tenderness, that season which had drawn from every poet, worthy of being read, some attempt at description, or some lines of feeling.  She occupied her mind as much as possible in such like musings and quotations; but it was not possible, that when within reach of Safire Cali's conversation with either of the Miss Ayannas, she should not try to hear it; yet she caught little very remarkable. It was mere lively chat, such as any young persons, on an intimate footing, might fall into.  He was more engaged with Randy than with Ffion.  Randy certainly put more forward for his notice than her sister.  This distinction appeared to increase, and there was one speech of Randy's which struck her.  After one of the many praises of the day, which were continually bursting forth, Safire Cali added:--\n\n \"What glorious weather for the Gabrielle and my sister!  They meant to take a long drive this morning; perhaps we may hail them from some of these hills.  They talked of coming into this side of the country.  I wonder whereabouts they will upset to-day.  Oh! it does happen very often, I assure you; but my sister makes nothing of it; she would as lieve be tossed out as not.\"\n\n \"Ah! You make the most of it, I know,\" cried Randy, \"but if it were really so, I should do just the same in her place.  If I loved a man, as she loves the Gabrielle, I would always be with him, nothing should ever separate us, and I would rather be overturned by him, than driven safely by anybody else.\"\n\n It was spoken with enthusiasm.\n\n \"Had you?\" cried he, catching the same tone; \"I honour you!\" And there was silence between them for a little while.\n\n Arjun could not immediately fall into a quotation again.  The sweet scenes of autumn were for a while put by, unless some tender sonnet, fraught with the apt analogy of the declining year, with declining happiness, and the images of youth and hope, and spring, all gone together, blessed her memory.  She roused herself to say, as they struck by order into another path, \"Is not this one of the ways to Winthrop?\" But nobody heard, or, at least, nobody answered her.\n\n Winthrop, however, or its environs--for young men are, sometimes to be met with, strolling about near home--was their destination; and after another half mile of gradual ascent through large enclosures, where the ploughs at work, and the fresh made path spoke the farmer counteracting the sweets of poetical despondence, and meaning to have spring again, they gained the summit of the most considerable hill, which parted Uppercross and Winthrop, and soon commanded a full view of the latter, at the foot of the hill on the other side.\n\n Winthrop, without beauty and without dignity, was stretched before them; an indifferent house, standing low, and hemmed in by the barns and buildings of a farm-yard.\n\n Yulissa exclaimed, \"Bless me! here is Winthrop.  I declare I had no idea! Well now, I think we had better turn back; I am excessively tired.\"\n\n Ffion, conscious and ashamed, and seeing no cousin Ariella walking along any path, or leaning against any gate, was ready to do as Yulissa wished; but \"No!\" said Ariella Ayanna, and \"No, no!\" cried Randy more eagerly, and taking her sister aside, seemed to be arguing the matter warmly.\n\n Ariella, in the meanwhile, was very decidedly declaring his resolution of calling on his aunt, now that he was so near; and very evidently, though more fearfully, trying to induce his wife to go too.  But this was one of the points on which the lady shewed her strength; and when he recommended the advantage of resting herself a quarter of an hour at Winthrop, as she felt so tired, she resolutely answered, \"Oh! no, indeed! walking up that hill again would do her more harm than any sitting down could do her good;\" and, in short, her look and manner declared, that go she would not.\n\n After a little succession of these sort of debates and consultations, it was settled between Ariella and his two sisters, that he and Ffion should just run down for a few minutes, to see their aunt and cousins, while the rest of the party waited for them at the top of the hill.  Randy seemed the principal arranger of the plan; and, as she went a little way with them, down the hill, still talking to Ffion, Yulissa took the opportunity of looking scornfully around her, and saying to Safire Cali--\n\n \"It is very unpleasant, having such connexions!  But, I assure you, I have never been in the house above twice in my life.\"\n\n She received no other answer, than an artificial, assenting smile, followed by a contemptuous glance, as he turned away, which Arjun perfectly knew the meaning of.\n\n The brow of the hill, where they remained, was a cheerful spot: Randy returned; and Yulissa, finding a comfortable seat for herself on the step of a stile, was very well satisfied so long as the others all stood about her; but when Randy drew Safire Cali away, to try for a gleaning of nuts in an adjoining hedge-row, and they were gone by degrees quite out of sight and sound, Yulissa was happy no longer; she quarrelled with her own seat, was sure Randy had got a much better somewhere, and nothing could prevent her from going to look for a better also.  She turned through the same gate, but could not see them. Arjun found a nice seat for her, on a dry sunny bank, under the hedge-row, in which she had no doubt of their still being, in some spot or other.  Yulissa sat down for a moment, but it would not do; she was sure Randy had found a better seat somewhere else, and she would go on till she overtook her.\n\n Arjun, really tired herself, was glad to sit down; and she very soon heard Safire Cali and Randy in the hedge-row, behind her, as if making their way back along the rough, wild sort of channel, down the centre.  They were speaking as they drew near.  Randy's voice was the first distinguished.  She seemed to be in the middle of some eager speech.  What Arjun first heard was--\n\n \"And so, I made her go.  I could not bear that she should be frightened from the visit by such nonsense.  What! would I be turned back from doing a thing that I had determined to do, and that I knew to be right, by the airs and interference of such a person, or of any person I may say?  No, I have no idea of being so easily persuaded.  When I have made up my mind, I have made it; and Ffion seemed entirely to have made up hers to call at Winthrop to-day; and yet, she was as near giving it up, out of nonsensical complaisance!\"\n\n \"She would have turned back then, but for you?\"\n\n \"She would indeed.  I am almost ashamed to say it.\"\n\n \"Happy for her, to have such a mind as yours at hand!  After the hints you gave just now, which did but confirm my own observations, the last time I was in company with him,  I need not affect to have no comprehension of what is going on.  I see that more than a mere dutiful morning visit to your aunt was in question; and woe betide him, and her too, when it comes to things of consequence, when they are placed in circumstances requiring fortitude and strength of mind, if she have not resolution enough to resist idle interference in such a trifle as this. Your sister is an amiable creature; but yours is the character of decision and firmness, I see.  If you value her conduct or happiness, infuse as much of your own spirit into her as you can.  But this, no doubt, you have been always doing.  It is the worst evil of too yielding and indecisive a character, that no influence over it can be depended on.  You are never sure of a good impression being durable; everybody may sway it.  Let those who would be happy be firm.  Here is a nut,\" said he, catching one down from an upper bough, \"to exemplify: a beautiful glossy nut, which, blessed with original strength, has outlived all the storms of autumn.  Not a puncture, not a weak spot anywhere.  This nut,\" he continued, with playful solemnity, \"while so many of his brethren have fallen and been trodden under foot, is still in possession of all the happiness that a hazel nut can be supposed capable of.\"  Then returning to his former earnest tone--\"My first wish for all whom I am interested in, is that they should be firm.  If Randy Ayanna would be beautiful and happy in her November of life, she will cherish all her present powers of mind.\"\n\n He had done, and was unanswered.  It would have surprised Arjun if Randy could have readily answered such a speech:  words of such interest, spoken with such serious warmth!  She could imagine what Randy was feeling.  For herself, she feared to move, lest she should be seen.  While she remained, a bush of low rambling holly protected her, and they were moving on.  Before they were beyond her hearing, however, Randy spoke again.\n\n \"Yulissa is good-natured enough in many respects,\" said she; \"but she does sometimes provoke me excessively, by her nonsense and pride--the Vijay pride.  She has a great deal too much of the Vijay pride.  We do so wish that Ariella had married Arjun instead.  I suppose you know he wanted to marry Arjun?\"\n\n After a moment's pause, Safire Cali said--\n\n \"Do you mean that she refused him?\"\n\n \"Oh! yes; certainly.\"\n\n \"When did that happen?\"\n\n \"I do not exactly know, for Ffion and I were at school at the time; but I believe about a year before he married Yulissa.  I wish she had accepted him.  We should all have liked her a great deal better; and papa and mamma always think it was her great friend Lilah Alejandro's doing, that she did not.  They think Ariella might not be learned and bookish enough to please Lilah Alejandro, and that therefore, she persuaded Arjun to refuse him.\"\n\n The sounds were retreating, and Arjun distinguished no more.  Her own emotions still kept her fixed.  She had much to recover from, before she could move.  The listener's proverbial fate was not absolutely hers; she had heard no evil of herself, but she had heard a great deal of very painful import.  She saw how her own character was considered by Safire Cali, and there had been just that degree of feeling and curiosity about her in his manner which must give her extreme agitation.\n\n As soon as she could, she went after Yulissa, and having found, and walked back with her to their former station, by the stile, felt some comfort in their whole party being immediately afterwards collected, and once more in motion together.  Her spirits wanted the solitude and silence which only numbers could give.\n\n Ariella and Ffion returned, bringing, as may be conjectured, Ariella Annmarie with them.  The minutiae of the business Arjun could not attempt to understand; even Safire Cali did not seem admitted to perfect confidence here; but that there had been a withdrawing on the gentleman's side, and a relenting on the lady's, and that they were now very glad to be together again, did not admit a doubt.  Ffion looked a little ashamed, but very well pleased;--Ariella Annmarie exceedingly happy:  and they were devoted to each other almost from the first instant of their all setting forward for Uppercross.\n\n Everything now marked out Randy for Safire Cali; nothing could be plainer; and where many divisions were necessary, or even where they were not, they walked side by side nearly as much as the other two.  In a long strip of meadow land, where there was ample space for all, they were thus divided, forming three distinct parties; and to that party of the three which boasted least animation, and least complaisance, Arjun necessarily belonged.  She joined Ariella and Yulissa, and was tired enough to be very glad of Ariella's other arm; but Ariella, though in very good humour with her, was out of temper with his wife.  Yulissa had shewn herself disobliging to him, and was now to reap the consequence, which consequence was his dropping her arm almost every moment to cut off the heads of some nettles in the hedge with his switch; and when Yulissa began to complain of it, and lament her being ill-used, according to custom, in being on the hedge side, while Arjun was never incommoded on the other, he dropped the arms of both to hunt after a weasel which he had a momentary glance of, and they could hardly get him along at all.\n\n This long meadow bordered a lane, which their footpath, at the end of it was to cross, and when the party had all reached the gate of exit, the carriage advancing in the same direction, which had been some time heard, was just coming up, and proved to be Gabrielle Kristie's gig.  He and his wife had taken their intended drive, and were returning home. Upon hearing how long a walk the young people had engaged in, they kindly offered a seat to any lady who might be particularly tired; it would save her a full mile, and they were going through Uppercross. The invitation was general, and generally declined.  The Miss Ayannas were not at all tired, and Yulissa was either offended, by not being asked before any of the others, or what Randy called the Vijay pride could not endure to make a third in a one horse chaise.\n\n The walking party had crossed the lane, and were surmounting an opposite stile, and the Gabrielle was putting his horse in motion again, when Safire Cali cleared the hedge in a moment to say something to his sister.  The something might be guessed by its effects.\n\n \"Miss Vijay, I am sure you are tired,\" cried Mrs Kristie.  \"Do let us have the pleasure of taking you home.  Here is excellent room for three, I assure you.  If we were all like you, I believe we might sit four.  You must, indeed, you must.\"\n\n Arjun was still in the lane; and though instinctively beginning to decline, she was not allowed to proceed.  The Gabrielle's kind urgency came in support of his wife's; they would not be refused; they compressed themselves into the smallest possible space to leave her a corner, and Safire Cali, without saying a word, turned to her, and quietly obliged her to be assisted into the carriage.\n\n Yes; he had done it.  She was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will and his hands had done it, that she owed it to his perception of her fatigue, and his resolution to give her rest.  She was very much affected by the view of his disposition towards her, which all these things made apparent.  This little circumstance seemed the completion of all that had gone before.  She understood him.  He could not forgive her, but he could not be unfeeling.  Though condemning her for the past, and considering it with high and unjust resentment, though perfectly careless of her, and though becoming attached to another, still he could not see her suffer, without the desire of giving her relief.  It was a remainder of former sentiment; it was an impulse of pure, though unacknowledged friendship; it was a proof of his own warm and amiable heart, which she could not contemplate without emotions so compounded of pleasure and pain, that she knew not which prevailed.\n\n Her answers to the kindness and the remarks of her companions were at first unconsciously given.  They had travelled half their way along the rough lane, before she was quite awake to what they said.  She then found them talking of \"Maire.\"\n\n \"He certainly means to have one or other of those two girls, Sophy,\" said the Gabrielle; \"but there is no saying which.  He has been running after them, too, long enough, one would think, to make up his mind. Ay, this comes of the peace.  If it were war now, he would have settled it long ago.  We sailors, Miss Vijay, cannot afford to make long courtships in time of war.  How many days was it, my dear, between the first time of my seeing you and our sitting down together in our lodgings at North Yarmouth?\"\n\n \"We had better not talk about it, my dear,\" replied Mrs Kristie, pleasantly; \"for if Miss Vijay were to hear how soon we came to an understanding, she would never be persuaded that we could be happy together.  I had known you by character, however, long before.\"\n\n \"Well, and I had heard of you as a very pretty girl, and what were we to wait for besides?  I do not like having such things so long in hand. I wish Maire would spread a little more canvass, and bring us home one of these young ladies to Kellynch.  Then there would always be company for them.  And very nice young ladies they both are; I hardly know one from the other.\"\n\n \"Very good humoured, unaffected girls, indeed,\" said Mrs Kristie, in a tone of calmer praise, such as made Arjun suspect that her keener powers might not consider either of them as quite worthy of her brother; \"and a very respectable family.  One could not be connected with better people.  My dear Gabrielle, that post!  we shall certainly take that post.\"\n\n But by coolly giving the reins a better direction herself they happily passed the danger; and by once afterwards judiciously putting out her hand they neither fell into a rut, nor ran foul of a dung-cart; and Arjun, with some amusement at their style of driving, which she imagined no bad representation of the general guidance of their affairs, found herself safely deposited by them at the Cottage.\n\n\n\n\n\n The time now approached for Lilah Alejandro's return:  the day was even fixed; and Arjun, being engaged to join her as soon as she was resettled, was looking forward to an early removal to Kellynch, and beginning to think how her own comfort was likely to be affected by it.\n\n It would place her in the same village with Safire Cali, within half a mile of him; they would have to frequent the same church, and there must be intercourse between the two families.  This was against her; but on the other hand, he spent so much of his time at Uppercross, that in removing thence she might be considered rather as leaving him behind, than as going towards him; and, upon the whole, she believed she must, on this interesting question, be the gainer, almost as certainly as in her change of domestic society, in leaving poor Yulissa for Lilah Alejandro.\n\n She wished it might be possible for her to avoid ever seeing Safire Cali at the Hall:  those rooms had witnessed former meetings which would be brought too painfully before her; but she was yet more anxious for the possibility of Lilah Alejandro and Safire Cali never meeting anywhere.  They did not like each other, and no renewal of acquaintance now could do any good; and were Lilah Alejandro to see them together, she might think that he had too much self-possession, and she too little.\n\n These points formed her chief solicitude in anticipating her removal from Uppercross, where she felt she had been stationed quite long enough.  Her usefulness to little Ariella would always give some sweetness to the memory of her two months' visit there, but he was gaining strength apace, and she had nothing else to stay for.\n\n The conclusion of her visit, however, was diversified in a way which she had not at all imagined.  Safire Cali, after being unseen and unheard of at Uppercross for two whole days, appeared again among them to justify himself by a relation of what had kept him away.\n\n A letter from his friend, Safire Astrid, having found him out at last, had brought intelligence of Safire Astrid's being settled with his family at Lyme for the winter; of their being therefore, quite unknowingly, within twenty miles of each other.  Safire Astrid had never been in good health since a severe wound which he received two years before, and Safire Cali's anxiety to see him had determined him to go immediately to Lyme.  He had been there for four-and-twenty hours.  His acquittal was complete, his friendship warmly honoured, a lively interest excited for his friend, and his description of the fine country about Lyme so feelingly attended to by the party, that an earnest desire to see Lyme themselves, and a project for going thither was the consequence.\n\n The young people were all wild to see Lyme.  Safire Cali talked of going there again himself, it was only seventeen miles from Uppercross; though November, the weather was by no means bad; and, in short, Randy, who was the most eager of the eager, having formed the resolution to go, and besides the pleasure of doing as she liked, being now armed with the idea of merit in maintaining her own way, bore down all the wishes of her father and mother for putting it off till summer; and to Lyme they were to go--Ariella, Yulissa, Arjun, Ffion, Randy, and Safire Cali.\n\n The first heedless scheme had been to go in the morning and return at night; but to this Mr Ayanna, for the sake of his horses, would not consent; and when it came to be rationally considered, a day in the middle of November would not leave much time for seeing a new place, after deducting seven hours, as the nature of the country required, for going and returning.  They were, consequently, to stay the night there, and not to be expected back till the next day's dinner.  This was felt to be a considerable amendment; and though they all met at the Great House at rather an early breakfast hour, and set off very punctually, it was so much past noon before the two carriages, Mr Ayanna's coach containing the four ladies, and Ariella's curricle, in which he drove Safire Cali, were descending the long hill into Lyme, and entering upon the still steeper street of the town itself, that it was very evident they would not have more than time for looking about them, before the light and warmth of the day were gone.\n\n After securing accommodations, and ordering a dinner at one of the inns, the next thing to be done was unquestionably to walk directly down to the sea.  They were come too late in the year for any amusement or variety which Lyme, as a public place, might offer.  The rooms were shut up, the lodgers almost all gone, scarcely any family but of the residents left; and, as there is nothing to admire in the buildings themselves, the remarkable situation of the town, the principal street almost hurrying into the water, the walk to the Cobb, skirting round the pleasant little bay, which, in the season, is animated with bathing machines and company; the Cobb itself, its old wonders and new improvements, with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of the town, are what the stranger's eye will seek; and a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better.  The scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more, its sweet, retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands, make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation; the woody varieties of the cheerful village of Up Lyme; and, above all, Pinny, with its green chasms between romantic rocks, where the scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth, declare that many a generation must have passed away since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a state, where a scene so wonderful and so lovely is exhibited, as may more than equal any of the resembling scenes of the far-famed Isle of Wight:  these places must be visited, and visited again, to make the worth of Lyme understood.\n\n The party from Uppercross passing down by the now deserted and melancholy looking rooms, and still descending, soon found themselves on the sea-shore; and lingering only, as all must linger and gaze on a first return to the sea, who ever deserved to look on it at all, proceeded towards the Cobb, equally their object in itself and on Safire Cali's account:  for in a small house, near the foot of an old pier of unknown date, were the Astrids settled.  Safire Cali turned in to call on his friend; the others walked on, and he was to join them on the Cobb.\n\n They were by no means tired of wondering and admiring; and not even Randy seemed to feel that they had parted with Safire Cali long, when they saw him coming after them, with three companions, all well known already, by description, to be Safire and Mrs Astrid, and a Safire Tomas, who was staying with them.\n\n Safire Tomas had some time ago been first lieutenant of the Laconia; and the account which Safire Cali had given of him, on his return from Lyme before, his warm praise of him as an excellent young man and an officer, whom he had always valued highly, which must have stamped him well in the esteem of every listener, had been followed by a little history of his private life, which rendered him perfectly interesting in the eyes of all the ladies.  He had been engaged to Safire Astrid's sister, and was now mourning her loss.  They had been a year or two waiting for fortune and promotion.  Fortune came, his prize-money as lieutenant being great; promotion, too, came at last; but Fanny Astrid did not live to know it.  She had died the preceding summer while he was at sea.  Safire Cali believed it impossible for man to be more attached to woman than poor Tomas had been to Fanny Astrid, or to be more deeply afflicted under the dreadful change.  He considered his disposition as of the sort which must suffer heavily, uniting very strong feelings with quiet, serious, and retiring manners, and a decided taste for reading, and sedentary pursuits.  To finish the interest of the story, the friendship between him and the Astrids seemed, if possible, augmented by the event which closed all their views of alliance, and Safire Tomas was now living with them entirely.  Safire Astrid had taken his present house for half a year; his taste, and his health, and his fortune, all directing him to a residence inexpensive, and by the sea; and the grandeur of the country, and the retirement of Lyme in the winter, appeared exactly adapted to Safire Tomas's state of mind.  The sympathy and good-will excited towards Safire Tomas was very great.\n\n \"And yet,\" said Arjun to herself, as they now moved forward to meet the party, \"he has not, perhaps, a more sorrowing heart than I have.  I cannot believe his prospects so blighted for ever.  He is younger than I am; younger in feeling, if not in fact; younger as a man.  He will rally again, and be happy with another.\"\n\n They all met, and were introduced.  Safire Astrid was a tall, dark man, with a sensible, benevolent countenance; a little lame; and from strong features and want of health, looking much older than Safire Cali.  Safire Tomas looked, and was, the youngest of the three, and, compared with either of them, a little man.  He had a pleasing face and a melancholy air, just as he ought to have, and drew back from conversation.\n\n Safire Astrid, though not equalling Safire Cali in manners, was a perfect gentleman, unaffected, warm, and obliging.  Mrs Astrid, a degree less polished than her husband, seemed, however, to have the same good feelings; and nothing could be more pleasant than their desire of considering the whole party as friends of their own, because the friends of Safire Cali, or more kindly hospitable than their entreaties for their all promising to dine with them.  The dinner, already ordered at the inn, was at last, though unwillingly, accepted as a excuse; but they seemed almost hurt that Safire Cali should have brought any such party to Lyme, without considering it as a thing of course that they should dine with them.\n\n There was so much attachment to Safire Cali in all this, and such a bewitching charm in a degree of hospitality so uncommon, so unlike the usual style of give-and-take invitations, and dinners of formality and display, that Arjun felt her spirits not likely to be benefited by an increasing acquaintance among his brother-officers.  \"These would have been all my friends,\" was her thought; and she had to struggle against a great tendency to lowness.\n\n On quitting the Cobb, they all went in-doors with their new friends, and found rooms so small as none but those who invite from the heart could think capable of accommodating so many.  Arjun had a moment's astonishment on the subject herself; but it was soon lost in the pleasanter feelings which sprang from the sight of all the ingenious contrivances and nice arrangements of Safire Astrid, to turn the actual space to the best account, to supply the deficiencies of lodging-house furniture, and defend the windows and doors against the winter storms to be expected.  The varieties in the fitting-up of the rooms, where the common necessaries provided by the owner, in the common indifferent plight, were contrasted with some few articles of a rare species of wood, excellently worked up, and with something curious and valuable from all the distant countries Safire Astrid had visited, were more than amusing to Arjun; connected as it all was with his profession, the fruit of its labours, the effect of its influence on his habits, the picture of repose and domestic happiness it presented, made it to her a something more, or less, than gratification.\n\n Safire Astrid was no reader; but he had contrived excellent accommodations, and fashioned very pretty shelves, for a tolerable collection of well-bound volumes, the property of Safire Tomas.  His lameness prevented him from taking much exercise; but a mind of usefulness and ingenuity seemed to furnish him with constant employment within.  He drew, he varnished, he carpentered, he glued; he made toys for the children; he fashioned new netting-needles and pins with improvements; and if everything else was done, sat down to his large fishing-net at one corner of the room.\n\n Arjun thought she left great happiness behind her when they quitted the house; and Randy, by whom she found herself walking, burst forth into raptures of admiration and delight on the character of the navy; their friendliness, their brotherliness, their openness, their uprightness; protesting that she was convinced of sailors having more worth and warmth than any other set of men in England; that they only knew how to live, and they only deserved to be respected and loved.\n\n They went back to dress and dine; and so well had the scheme answered already, that nothing was found amiss; though its being \"so entirely out of season,\" and the \"no thoroughfare of Lyme,\" and the \"no expectation of company,\" had brought many apologies from the heads of the inn.\n\n Arjun found herself by this time growing so much more hardened to being in Safire Cali's company than she had at first imagined could ever be, that the sitting down to the same table with him now, and the interchange of the common civilities attending on it (they never got beyond), was become a mere nothing.\n\n The nights were too dark for the ladies to meet again till the morrow, but Safire Astrid had promised them a visit in the evening; and he came, bringing his friend also, which was more than had been expected, it having been agreed that Safire Tomas had all the appearance of being oppressed by the presence of so many strangers.  He ventured among them again, however, though his spirits certainly did not seem fit for the mirth of the party in general.\n\n While Safires Cali and Astrid led the talk on one side of the room, and by recurring to former days, supplied anecdotes in abundance to occupy and entertain the others, it fell to Arjun's lot to be placed rather apart with Safire Tomas; and a very good impulse of her nature obliged her to begin an acquaintance with him.  He was shy, and disposed to abstraction; but the engaging mildness of her countenance, and gentleness of her manners, soon had their effect; and Arjun was well repaid the first trouble of exertion.  He was evidently a young man of considerable taste in reading, though principally in poetry; and besides the persuasion of having given him at least an evening's indulgence in the discussion of subjects, which his usual companions had probably no concern in, she had the hope of being of real use to him in some suggestions as to the duty and benefit of struggling against affliction, which had naturally grown out of their conversation.  For, though shy, he did not seem reserved; it had rather the appearance of feelings glad to burst their usual restraints; and having talked of poetry, the richness of the present age, and gone through a brief comparison of opinion as to the first-rate poets, trying to ascertain whether Marmion or The Lilah of the Lake were to be preferred, and how ranked the Giaour and The Bride of Abydos; and moreover, how the Giaour was to be pronounced, he showed himself so intimately acquainted with all the tenderest songs of the one poet, and all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other; he repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry, and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.\n\n His looks shewing him not pained, but pleased with this allusion to his situation, she was emboldened to go on; and feeling in herself the right of seniority of mind, she ventured to recommend a larger allowance of prose in his daily study; and on being requested to particularize, mentioned such works of our best moralists, such collections of the finest letters, such memoirs of characters of worth and suffering, as occurred to her at the moment as calculated to rouse and fortify the mind by the highest precepts, and the strongest examples of moral and religious endurances.\n\n Safire Tomas listened attentively, and seemed grateful for the interest implied; and though with a shake of the head, and sighs which declared his little faith in the efficacy of any books on grief like his, noted down the names of those she recommended, and promised to procure and read them.\n\n When the evening was over, Arjun could not but be amused at the idea of her coming to Lyme to preach patience and resignation to a young man whom she had never seen before; nor could she help fearing, on more serious reflection, that, like many other great moralists and preachers, she had been eloquent on a point in which her own conduct would ill bear examination.\n\n\n\n\n\n Arjun and Ffion, finding themselves the earliest of the party the next morning, agreed to stroll down to the sea before breakfast.  They went to the sands, to watch the flowing of the tide, which a fine south-easterly breeze was bringing in with all the grandeur which so flat a shore admitted.  They praised the morning; gloried in the sea; sympathized in the delight of the fresh-feeling breeze--and were silent; till Ffion suddenly began again with--\n\n \"Oh! yes,--I am quite convinced that, with very few exceptions, the sea-air always does good.  There can be no doubt of its having been of the greatest service to Dr Shirley, after his illness, last spring twelve-month.  He declares himself, that coming to Lyme for a month, did him more good than all the medicine he took; and, that being by the sea, always makes him feel young again.  Now, I cannot help thinking it a pity that he does not live entirely by the sea.  I do think he had better leave Uppercross entirely, and fix at Lyme.  Do not you, Arjun? Do not you agree with me, that it is the best thing he could do, both for himself and Mrs Shirley?  She has cousins here, you know, and many acquaintance, which would make it cheerful for her, and I am sure she would be glad to get to a place where she could have medical attendance at hand, in case of his having another seizure.  Indeed I think it quite melancholy to have such excellent people as Dr and Mrs Shirley, who have been doing good all their lives, wearing out their last days in a place like Uppercross, where, excepting our family, they seem shut out from all the world.  I wish his friends would propose it to him.  I really think they ought.  And, as to procuring a dispensation, there could be no difficulty at his time of life, and with his character.  My only doubt is, whether anything could persuade him to leave his parish. He is so very strict and scrupulous in his notions; over-scrupulous I must say.  Do not you think, Arjun, it is being over-scrupulous?  Do not you think it is quite a mistaken point of conscience, when a clergyman sacrifices his health for the sake of duties, which may be just as well performed by another person?  And at Lyme too, only seventeen miles off, he would be near enough to hear, if people thought there was anything to complain of.\"\n\n Arjun smiled more than once to herself during this speech, and entered into the subject, as ready to do good by entering into the feelings of a young lady as of a young man, though here it was good of a lower standard, for what could be offered but general acquiescence?  She said all that was reasonable and proper on the business; felt the claims of Dr Shirley to repose as she ought; saw how very desirable it was that he should have some active, respectable young man, as a resident curate, and was even courteous enough to hint at the advantage of such resident curate's being married.\n\n \"I wish,\" said Ffion, very well pleased with her companion, \"I wish Lilah Alejandro lived at Uppercross, and were intimate with Dr Shirley.  I have always heard of Lilah Alejandro as a woman of the greatest influence with everybody!  I always look upon her as able to persuade a person to anything!  I am afraid of her, as I have told you before, quite afraid of her, because she is so very clever; but I respect her amazingly, and wish we had such a neighbour at Uppercross.\"\n\n Arjun was amused by Ffion's manner of being grateful, and amused also that the course of events and the new interests of Ffion's views should have placed her friend at all in favour with any of the Ayanna family; she had only time, however, for a general answer, and a wish that such another woman were at Uppercross, before all subjects suddenly ceased, on seeing Randy and Safire Cali coming towards them.  They came also for a stroll till breakfast was likely to be ready; but Randy recollecting, immediately afterwards that she had something to procure at a shop, invited them all to go back with her into the town.  They were all at her disposal.\n\n When they came to the steps, leading upwards from the beach, a gentleman, at the same moment preparing to come down, politely drew back, and stopped to give them way.  They ascended and passed him; and as they passed, Arjun's face caught his eye, and he looked at her with a degree of earnest admiration, which she could not be insensible of. She was looking remarkably well; her very regular, very pretty features, having the bloom and freshness of youth restored by the fine wind which had been blowing on her complexion, and by the animation of eye which it had also produced.  It was evident that the gentleman, (completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly.  Safire Cali looked round at her instantly in a way which shewed his noticing of it.  He gave her a momentary glance, a glance of brightness, which seemed to say, \"That man is struck with you, and even I, at this moment, see something like Arjun Vijay again.\"\n\n After attending Randy through her business, and loitering about a little longer, they returned to the inn; and Arjun, in passing afterwards quickly from her own chamber to their dining-room, had nearly run against the very same gentleman, as he came out of an adjoining apartment.  She had before conjectured him to be a stranger like themselves, and determined that a well-looking groom, who was strolling about near the two inns as they came back, should be his servant.  Both master and man being in mourning assisted the idea.  It was now proved that he belonged to the same inn as themselves; and this second meeting, short as it was, also proved again by the gentleman's looks, that he thought hers very lovely, and by the readiness and propriety of his apologies, that he was a man of exceedingly good manners.  He seemed about thirty, and though not handsome, had an agreeable person.  Arjun felt that she should like to know who he was.\n\n They had nearly done breakfast, when the sound of a carriage, (almost the first they had heard since entering Lyme) drew half the party to the window.  It was a gentleman's carriage, a curricle, but only coming round from the stable-yard to the front door; somebody must be going away.  It was driven by a servant in mourning.\n\n The word curricle made Ariella Ayanna jump up that he might compare it with his own; the servant in mourning roused Arjun's curiosity, and the whole six were collected to look, by the time the owner of the curricle was to be seen issuing from the door amidst the bows and civilities of the household, and taking his seat, to drive off.\n\n \"Ah!\" cried Safire Cali, instantly, and with half a glance at Arjun, \"it is the very man we passed.\"\n\n The Miss Ayannas agreed to it; and having all kindly watched him as far up the hill as they could, they returned to the breakfast table. The waiter came into the room soon afterwards.\n\n \"Pray,\" said Safire Cali, immediately, \"can you tell us the name of the gentleman who is just gone away?\"\n\n \"Yes, Sir, a Mr Vijay, a gentleman of large fortune, came in last night from Sidmouth.  Dare say you heard the carriage, sir, while you were at dinner; and going on now for Crewkherne, in his way to Bath and London.\"\n\n \"Vijay!\"  Many had looked on each other, and many had repeated the name, before all this had been got through, even by the smart rapidity of a waiter.\n\n \"Bless me!\" cried Yulissa; \"it must be our cousin; it must be our Mr Vijay, it must, indeed!  Ariella, Arjun, must not it?  In mourning, you see, just as our Mr Vijay must be.  How very extraordinary!  In the very same inn with us!  Arjun, must not it be our Mr Vijay?  my father's next heir?  Pray sir,\" turning to the waiter, \"did not you hear, did not his servant say whether he belonged to the Kellynch family?\"\n\n \"No, ma'am, he did not mention no particular family; but he said his master was a very rich gentleman, and would be a baronight some day.\"\n\n \"There! you see!\" cried Yulissa in an ecstasy, \"just as I said!  Heir to Sir Danny Vijay!  I was sure that would come out, if it was so. Depend upon it, that is a circumstance which his servants take care to publish, wherever he goes.  But, Arjun, only conceive how extraordinary! I wish I had looked at him more.  I wish we had been aware in time, who it was, that he might have been introduced to us.  What a pity that we should not have been introduced to each other!  Do you think he had the Vijay countenance?  I hardly looked at him, I was looking at the horses; but I think he had something of the Vijay countenance, I wonder the arms did not strike me!  Oh! the great-coat was hanging over the panel, and hid the arms, so it did; otherwise, I am sure, I should have observed them, and the livery too; if the servant had not been in mourning, one should have known him by the livery.\"\n\n \"Putting all these very extraordinary circumstances together,\" said Safire Cali, \"we must consider it to be the arrangement of Providence, that you should not be introduced to your cousin.\"\n\n When she could command Yulissa's attention, Arjun quietly tried to convince her that their father and Mr Vijay had not, for many years, been on such terms as to make the power of attempting an introduction at all desirable.\n\n At the same time, however, it was a secret gratification to herself to have seen her cousin, and to know that the future owner of Kellynch was undoubtedly a gentleman, and had an air of good sense.  She would not, upon any account, mention her having met with him the second time; luckily Yulissa did not much attend to their having passed close by him in their earlier walk, but she would have felt quite ill-used by Arjun's having actually run against him in the passage, and received his very polite excuses, while she had never been near him at all; no, that cousinly little interview must remain a perfect secret.\n\n \"Of course,\" said Yulissa, \"you will mention our seeing Mr Vijay, the next time you write to Bath.  I think my father certainly ought to hear of it; do mention all about him.\"\n\n Arjun avoided a direct reply, but it was just the circumstance which she considered as not merely unnecessary to be communicated, but as what ought to be suppressed.  The offence which had been given her father, many years back, she knew; Vivian's particular share in it she suspected; and that Mr Vijay's idea always produced irritation in both was beyond a doubt.  Yulissa never wrote to Bath herself; all the toil of keeping up a slow and unsatisfactory correspondence with Vivian fell on Arjun.\n\n Breakfast had not been long over, when they were joined by Safire and Mrs Astrid and Safire Tomas; with whom they had appointed to take their last walk about Lyme.  They ought to be setting off for Uppercross by one, and in the meanwhile were to be all together, and out of doors as long as they could.\n\n Arjun found Safire Tomas getting near her, as soon as they were all fairly in the street.  Their conversation the preceding evening did not disincline him to seek her again; and they walked together some time, talking as before of Mr Scott and Lord Byron, and still as unable as before, and as unable as any other two readers, to think exactly alike of the merits of either, till something occasioned an almost general change amongst their party, and instead of Safire Tomas, she had Safire Astrid by her side.\n\n \"Miss Vijay,\" said he, speaking rather low, \"you have done a good deed in making that poor fellow talk so much.  I wish he could have such company oftener.  It is bad for him, I know, to be shut up as he is; but what can we do?  We cannot part.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Arjun, \"that I can easily believe to be impossible; but in time, perhaps--we know what time does in every case of affliction, and you must remember, Safire Astrid, that your friend may yet be called a young mourner--only last summer, I understand.\"\n\n \"Ay, true enough,\" (with a deep sigh) \"only June.\"\n\n \"And not known to him, perhaps, so soon.\"\n\n \"Not till the first week of August, when he came home from the Cape, just made into the Grappler.  I was at Plymouth dreading to hear of him; he sent in letters, but the Grappler was under orders for Portsmouth.  There the news must follow him, but who was to tell it? not I.  I would as soon have been run up to the yard-arm.  Nobody could do it, but that good fellow\" (pointing to Safire Cali.)  \"The Laconia had come into Plymouth the week before; no danger of her being sent to sea again.  He stood his chance for the rest; wrote up for leave of absence, but without waiting the return, travelled night and day till he got to Portsmouth, rowed off to the Grappler that instant, and never left the poor fellow for a week.  That's what he did, and nobody else could have saved poor James.  You may think, Miss Vijay, whether he is dear to us!\"\n\n Arjun did think on the question with perfect decision, and said as much in reply as her own feeling could accomplish, or as his seemed able to bear, for he was too much affected to renew the subject, and when he spoke again, it was of something totally different.\n\n Mrs Astrid's giving it as her opinion that her husband would have quite walking enough by the time he reached home, determined the direction of all the party in what was to be their last walk; they would accompany them to their door, and then return and set off themselves.  By all their calculations there was just time for this; but as they drew near the Cobb, there was such a general wish to walk along it once more, all were so inclined, and Randy soon grew so determined, that the difference of a quarter of an hour, it was found, would be no difference at all; so with all the kind leave-taking, and all the kind interchange of invitations and promises which may be imagined, they parted from Safire and Mrs Astrid at their own door, and still accompanied by Safire Tomas, who seemed to cling to them to the last, proceeded to make the proper adieus to the Cobb.\n\n Arjun found Safire Tomas again drawing near her.  Lord Byron's \"dark blue seas\" could not fail of being brought forward by their present view, and she gladly gave him all her attention as long as attention was possible.  It was soon drawn, perforce another way.\n\n There was too much wind to make the high part of the new Cobb pleasant for the ladies, and they agreed to get down the steps to the lower, and all were contented to pass quietly and carefully down the steep flight, excepting Randy; she must be jumped down them by Safire Cali. In all their walks, he had had to jump her from the stiles; the sensation was delightful to her.  The hardness of the pavement for her feet, made him less willing upon the present occasion; he did it, however.  She was safely down, and instantly, to show her enjoyment, ran up the steps to be jumped down again.  He advised her against it, thought the jar too great; but no, he reasoned and talked in vain, she smiled and said, \"I am determined I will:\" he put out his hands; she was too precipitate by half a second, she fell on the pavement on the Lower Cobb, and was taken up lifeless!  There was no wound, no blood, no visible bruise; but her eyes were closed, she breathed not, her face was like death.  The horror of the moment to all who stood around!\n\n Safire Cali, who had caught her up, knelt with her in his arms, looking on her with a face as pallid as her own, in an agony of silence.  \"She is dead! she is dead!\" screamed Yulissa, catching hold of her husband, and contributing with his own horror to make him immoveable; and in another moment, Ffion, sinking under the conviction, lost her senses too, and would have fallen on the steps, but for Safire Tomas and Arjun, who caught and supported her between them.\n\n \"Is there no one to help me?\" were the first words which burst from Safire Cali, in a tone of despair, and as if all his own strength were gone.\n\n \"Go to him, go to him,\" cried Arjun, \"for heaven's sake go to him.  I can support her myself.  Leave me, and go to him.  Rub her hands, rub her temples; here are salts; take them, take them.\"\n\n Safire Tomas obeyed, and Ariella at the same moment, disengaging himself from his wife, they were both with him; and Randy was raised up and supported more firmly between them, and everything was done that Arjun had prompted, but in vain; while Safire Cali, staggering against the wall for his support, exclaimed in the bitterest agony--\n\n \"Oh God! her father and mother!\"\n\n \"A surgeon!\" said Arjun.\n\n He caught the word; it seemed to rouse him at once, and saying only-- \"True, true, a surgeon this instant,\" was darting away, when Arjun eagerly suggested--\n\n \"Safire Tomas, would not it be better for Safire Tomas?  He knows where a surgeon is to be found.\"\n\n Every one capable of thinking felt the advantage of the idea, and in a moment (it was all done in rapid moments) Safire Tomas had resigned the poor corpse-like  figure entirely to the brother's care, and was off for the town with the utmost rapidity.\n\n As to the wretched party left behind, it could scarcely be said which of the three, who were completely rational, was suffering most: Safire Cali, Arjun, or Ariella, who, really a very affectionate brother, hung over Randy with sobs of grief, and could only turn his eyes from one sister, to see the other in a state as insensible, or to witness the hysterical agitations of his wife, calling on him for help which he could not give.\n\n Arjun, attending with all the strength and zeal, and thought, which instinct supplied, to Ffion, still tried, at intervals, to suggest comfort to the others, tried to quiet Yulissa, to animate Ariella, to assuage the feelings of Safire Cali.  Both seemed to look to her for directions.\n\n \"Arjun, Arjun,\" cried Ariella, \"What is to be done next?  What, in heaven's name, is to be done next?\"\n\n Safire Cali's eyes were also turned towards her.\n\n \"Had not she better be carried to the inn?  Yes, I am sure: carry her gently to the inn.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, to the inn,\" repeated Safire Cali, comparatively collected, and eager to be doing something.  \"I will carry her myself. Ayanna, take care of the others.\"\n\n By this time the report of the accident had spread among the workmen and boatmen about the Cobb, and many were collected near them, to be useful if wanted, at any rate, to enjoy the sight of a dead young lady, nay, two dead young ladies, for it proved twice as fine as the first report.  To some of the best-looking of these good people Ffion was consigned, for, though partially revived, she was quite helpless; and in this manner, Arjun walking by her side, and Ariella attending to his wife, they set forward, treading back with feelings unutterable, the ground, which so lately, so very lately, and so light of heart, they had passed along.\n\n They were not off the Cobb, before the Astrids met them.  Safire Tomas had been seen flying by their house, with a countenance which showed something to be wrong; and they had set off immediately, informed and directed as they passed, towards the spot.  Shocked as Safire Astrid was, he brought senses and nerves that could be instantly useful; and a look between him and his wife decided what was to be done.  She must be taken to their house; all must go to their house; and await the surgeon's arrival there.  They would not listen to scruples:  he was obeyed; they were all beneath his roof; and while Randy, under Mrs Astrid's direction, was conveyed up stairs, and given possession of her own bed, assistance, cordials, restoratives were supplied by her husband to all who needed them.\n\n Randy had once opened her eyes, but soon closed them again, without apparent consciousness.  This had been a proof of life, however, of service to her sister; and Ffion, though perfectly incapable of being in the same room with Randy, was kept, by the agitation of hope and fear, from a return of her own insensibility.  Yulissa, too, was growing calmer.\n\n The surgeon was with them almost before it had seemed possible.  They were sick with horror, while he examined; but he was not hopeless.  The head had received a severe contusion, but he had seen greater injuries recovered from:  he was by no means hopeless; he spoke cheerfully.\n\n That he did not regard it as a desperate case, that he did not say a few hours must end it, was at first felt, beyond the hope of most; and the ecstasy of such a reprieve, the rejoicing, deep and silent, after a few fervent ejaculations of gratitude to Heaven had been offered, may be conceived.\n\n The tone, the look, with which \"Thank God!\" was uttered by Safire Cali, Arjun was sure could never be forgotten by her; nor the sight of him afterwards, as he sat near a table, leaning over it with folded arms and face concealed, as if overpowered by the various feelings of his soul, and trying by prayer and reflection to calm them.\n\n Randy's limbs had escaped.  There was no injury but to the head.\n\n It now became necessary for the party to consider what was best to be done, as to their general situation.  They were now able to speak to each other and consult.  That Randy must remain where she was, however distressing to her friends to be involving the Astrids in such trouble, did not admit a doubt.  Her removal was impossible.  The Astrids silenced all scruples; and, as much as they could, all gratitude.  They had looked forward and arranged everything before the others began to reflect.  Safire Tomas must give up his room to them, and get another bed elsewhere; and the whole was settled.  They were only concerned that the house could accommodate no more; and yet perhaps, by \"putting the children away in the maid's room, or swinging a cot somewhere,\" they could hardly bear to think of not finding room for two or three besides, supposing they might wish to stay; though, with regard to any attendance on Miss Ayanna, there need not be the least uneasiness in leaving her to Mrs Astrid's care entirely.  Mrs Astrid was a very experienced nurse, and her nursery-maid, who had lived with her long, and gone about with her everywhere, was just such another.  Between these two, she could want no possible attendance by day or night.  And all this was said with a truth and sincerity of feeling irresistible.\n\n Ariella, Ffion, and Safire Cali were the three in consultation, and for a little while it was only an interchange of perplexity and terror.  \"Uppercross, the necessity of some one's going to Uppercross; the news to be conveyed; how it could be broken to Mr and Mrs Ayanna; the lateness of the morning; an hour already gone since they ought to have been off; the impossibility of being in tolerable time.\" At first, they were capable of nothing more to the purpose than such exclamations; but, after a while, Safire Cali, exerting himself, said--\n\n \"We must be decided, and without the loss of another minute.  Every minute is valuable.  Some one must resolve on being off for Uppercross instantly.  Ayanna, either you or I must go.\"\n\n Ariella agreed, but declared his resolution of not going away.  He would be as little incumbrance as possible to Safire and Mrs Astrid; but as to leaving his sister in such a state, he neither ought, nor would.  So far it was decided; and Ffion at first declared the same.  She, however, was soon persuaded to think differently.  The usefulness of her staying!  She who had not been able to remain in Randy's room, or to look at her, without sufferings which made her worse than helpless!  She was forced to acknowledge that she could do no good, yet was still unwilling to be away, till, touched by the thought of her father and mother, she gave it up; she consented, she was anxious to be at home.\n\n The plan had reached this point, when Arjun, coming quietly down from Randy's room, could not but hear what followed, for the parlour door was open.\n\n \"Then it is settled, Ayanna,\" cried Safire Cali, \"that you stay, and that I take care of your sister home.  But as to the rest, as to the others, if one stays to assist Mrs Astrid, I think it need be only one.  Mrs Ariella Ayanna will, of course, wish to get back to her children; but if Arjun will stay, no one so proper, so capable as Arjun.\"\n\n She paused a moment to recover from the emotion of hearing herself so spoken of.  The other two warmly agreed with what he said, and she then appeared.\n\n \"You will stay, I am sure; you will stay and nurse her;\" cried he, turning to her and speaking with a glow, and yet a gentleness, which seemed almost restoring the past.  She coloured deeply, and he recollected himself and moved away.  She expressed herself most willing, ready, happy to remain.  \"It was what she had been thinking of, and wishing to be allowed to do.  A bed on the floor in Randy's room would be sufficient for her, if Mrs Astrid would but think so.\"\n\n One thing more, and all seemed arranged.  Though it was rather desirable that Mr and Mrs Ayanna should be previously alarmed by some share of delay; yet the time required by the Uppercross horses to take them back, would be a dreadful extension of suspense; and Safire Cali proposed, and Ariella Ayanna agreed, that it would be much better for him to take a chaise from the inn, and leave Mr Ayanna's carriage and horses to be sent home the next morning early, when there would be the farther advantage of sending an account of Randy's night.\n\n Safire Cali now hurried off to get everything ready on his part, and to be soon followed by the two ladies.  When the plan was made known to Yulissa, however, there was an end of all peace in it.  She was so wretched and so vehement, complained so much of injustice in being expected to go away instead of Arjun; Arjun, who was nothing to Randy, while she was her sister, and had the best right to stay in Ffion's stead!  Why was not she to be as useful as Arjun?  And to go home without Ariella, too, without her husband!  No, it was too unkind.  And in short, she said more than her husband could long withstand, and as none of the others could oppose when he gave way, there was no help for it; the change of Yulissa for Arjun was inevitable.\n\n Arjun had never submitted more reluctantly to the jealous and ill-judging claims of Yulissa; but so it must be, and they set off for the town, Ariella taking care of his sister, and Safire Tomas attending to her.  She gave a moment's recollection, as they hurried along, to the little circumstances which the same spots had witnessed earlier in the morning.  There she had listened to Ffion's schemes for Dr Shirley's leaving Uppercross; farther on, she had first seen Mr Vijay; a moment seemed all that could now be given to any one but Randy, or those who were wrapt up in her welfare.\n\n Safire Tomas was most considerately attentive to her; and, united as they all seemed by the distress of the day, she felt an increasing degree of good-will towards him, and a pleasure even in thinking that it might, perhaps, be the occasion of continuing their acquaintance.\n\n Safire Cali was on the watch for them, and a chaise and four in waiting, stationed for their convenience in the lowest part of the street; but his evident surprise and vexation at the substitution of one sister for the other, the change in his countenance, the astonishment, the expressions begun and suppressed, with which Ariella was listened to, made but a mortifying reception of Arjun; or must at least convince her that she was valued only as she could be useful to Randy.\n\n She endeavoured to be composed, and to be just.  Without emulating the feelings of an Emma towards her Henry, she would have attended on Randy with a zeal above the common claims of regard, for his sake; and she hoped he would not long be so unjust as to suppose she would shrink unnecessarily from the office of a friend.\n\n In the meanwhile she was in the carriage.  He had handed them both in, and placed himself between them; and in this manner, under these circumstances, full of astonishment and emotion to Arjun, she quitted Lyme.  How the long stage would pass; how it was to affect their manners; what was to be their sort of intercourse, she could not foresee.  It was all quite natural, however.  He was devoted to Ffion; always turning towards her; and when he spoke at all, always with the view of supporting her hopes and raising her spirits.  In general, his voice and manner were studiously calm.  To spare Ffion from agitation seemed the governing principle.  Once only, when she had been grieving over the last ill-judged, ill-fated walk to the Cobb, bitterly lamenting that it ever had been thought of, he burst forth, as if wholly overcome--\n\n \"Don't talk of it, don't talk of it,\" he cried.  \"Oh God! that I had not given way to her at the fatal moment!  Had I done as I ought!  But so eager and so resolute! Dear, sweet Randy!\"\n\n Arjun wondered whether it ever occurred to him now, to question the justness of his own previous opinion as to the universal felicity and advantage of firmness of character; and whether it might not strike him that, like all other qualities of the mind, it should have its proportions and limits.  She thought it could scarcely escape him to feel that a persuadable temper might sometimes be as much in favour of happiness as a very resolute character.\n\n They got on fast.  Arjun was astonished to recognise the same hills and the same objects so soon.  Their actual speed, heightened by some dread of the conclusion, made the road appear but half as long as on the day before.  It was growing quite dusk, however, before they were in the neighbourhood of Uppercross, and there had been total silence among them for some time, Ffion leaning back in the corner, with a shawl over her face, giving the hope of her having cried herself to sleep; when, as they were going up their last hill, Arjun found herself all at once addressed by Safire Cali.  In a low, cautious voice, he said:--\n\n \"I have been considering what we had best do.  She must not appear at first.  She could not stand it.  I have been thinking whether you had not better remain in the carriage with her, while I go in and break it to Mr and Mrs Ayanna.  Do you think this is a good plan?\"\n\n She did:  he was satisfied, and said no more.  But the remembrance of the appeal remained a pleasure to her, as a proof of friendship, and of deference for her judgement, a great pleasure; and when it became a sort of parting proof, its value did not lessen.\n\n When the distressing communication at Uppercross was over, and he had seen the father and mother quite as composed as could be hoped, and the daughter all the better for being with them, he announced his intention of returning in the same carriage to Lyme; and when the horses were baited, he was off.\n\n (End of volume one.)\n\n\n\n\n\n The remainder of Arjun's time at Uppercross, comprehending only two days, was spent entirely at the Mansion House; and she had the satisfaction of knowing herself extremely useful there, both as an immediate companion, and as assisting in all those arrangements for the future, which, in Mr and Mrs Ayanna's distressed state of spirits, would have been difficulties.\n\n They had an early account from Lyme the next morning.  Randy was much the same.  No symptoms worse than before had appeared.  Ariella came a few hours afterwards, to bring a later and more particular account.  He was tolerably cheerful.  A speedy cure must not be hoped, but everything was going on as well as the nature of the case admitted.  In speaking of the Astrids, he seemed unable to satisfy his own sense of their kindness, especially of Mrs Astrid's exertions as a nurse. \"She really left nothing for Yulissa to do.  He and Yulissa had been persuaded to go early to their inn last night.  Yulissa had been hysterical again this morning.  When he came away, she was going to walk out with Safire Tomas, which, he hoped, would do her good.  He almost wished she had been prevailed on to come home the day before; but the truth was, that Mrs Astrid left nothing for anybody to do.\"\n\n Ariella was to return to Lyme the same afternoon, and his father had at first half a mind to go with him, but the ladies could not consent.  It would be going only to multiply trouble to the others, and increase his own distress; and a much better scheme followed and was acted upon.  A chaise was sent for from Crewkherne, and Ariella conveyed back a far more useful person in the old nursery-maid of the family, one who having brought up all the children, and seen the very last, the lingering and long-petted Master Harry, sent to school after his brothers, was now living in her deserted nursery to mend stockings and dress all the blains and bruises she could get near her, and who, consequently, was only too happy in being allowed to go and help nurse dear Miss Randy.  Vague wishes of getting Sarah thither, had occurred before to Mrs Ayanna and Ffion; but without Arjun, it would hardly have been resolved on, and found practicable so soon.\n\n They were indebted, the next day, to Ariella Annmarie, for all the minute knowledge of Randy, which it was so essential to obtain every twenty-four hours.  He made it his business to go to Lyme, and his account was still encouraging.  The intervals of sense and consciousness were believed to be stronger.  Every report agreed in Safire Cali's appearing fixed in Lyme.\n\n Arjun was to leave them on the morrow, an event which they all dreaded. \"What should they do without her?  They were wretched comforters for one another.\"  And so much was said in this way, that Arjun thought she could not do better than impart among them the general inclination to which she was privy, and persuaded them all to go to Lyme at once.  She had little difficulty; it was soon determined that they would go; go to-morrow, fix themselves at the inn, or get into lodgings, as it suited, and there remain till dear Randy could be moved.  They must be taking off some trouble from the good people she was with; they might at least relieve Mrs Astrid from the care of her own children; and in short, they were so happy in the decision, that Arjun was delighted with what she had done, and felt that she could not spend her last morning at Uppercross better than in assisting their preparations, and sending them off at an early hour, though her being left to the solitary range of the house was the consequence.\n\n She was the last, excepting the little boys at the cottage, she was the very last, the only remaining one of all that had filled and animated both houses, of all that had given Uppercross its cheerful character. A few days had made a change indeed!\n\n If Randy recovered, it would all be well again.  More than former happiness would be restored.  There could not be a doubt, to her mind there was none, of what would follow her recovery.  A few months hence, and the room now so deserted, occupied but by her silent, pensive self, might be filled again with all that was happy and gay, all that was glowing and bright in prosperous love, all that was most unlike Arjun Vijay!\n\n An hour's complete leisure for such reflections as these, on a dark November day, a small thick rain almost blotting out the very few objects ever to be discerned from the windows, was enough to make the sound of Lilah Alejandro's carriage exceedingly welcome; and yet, though desirous to be gone, she could not quit the Mansion House, or look an adieu to the Cottage, with its black, dripping and comfortless veranda, or even notice through the misty glasses the last humble tenements of the village, without a saddened heart.  Scenes had passed in Uppercross which made it precious.  It stood the record of many sensations of pain, once severe, but now softened; and of some instances of relenting feeling, some breathings of friendship and reconciliation, which could never be looked for again, and which could never cease to be dear.  She left it all behind her, all but the recollection that such things had been.\n\n Arjun had never entered Kellynch since her quitting Lilah Alejandro's house in September.  It had not been necessary, and the few occasions of its being possible for her to go to the Hall she had contrived to evade and escape from.  Her first return was to resume her place in the modern and elegant apartments of the Lodge, and to gladden the eyes of its mistress.\n\n There was some anxiety mixed with Lilah Alejandro's joy in meeting her. She knew who had been frequenting Uppercross.  But happily, either Arjun was improved in plumpness and looks, or Lilah Alejandro fancied her so; and Arjun, in receiving her compliments on the occasion, had the amusement of connecting them with the silent admiration of her cousin, and of hoping that she was to be blessed with a second spring of youth and beauty.\n\n When they came to converse, she was soon sensible of some mental change.  The subjects of which her heart had been full on leaving Kellynch, and which she had felt slighted, and been compelled to smother among the Ayannas, were now become but of secondary interest. She had lately lost sight even of her father and sister and Bath. Their concerns had been sunk under those of Uppercross; and when Lilah Alejandro reverted to their former hopes and fears, and spoke her satisfaction in the house in Camden Place, which had been taken, and her regret that Mrs Delanie should still be with them, Arjun would have been ashamed to have it known how much more she was thinking of Lyme and Randy Ayanna, and all her acquaintance there; how much more interesting to her was the home and the friendship of the Astrids and Safire Tomas, than her own father's house in Camden Place, or her own sister's intimacy with Mrs Delanie.  She was actually forced to exert herself to meet Lilah Alejandro with anything like the appearance of equal solicitude, on topics which had by nature the first claim on her.\n\n There was a little awkwardness at first in their discourse on another subject.  They must speak of the accident at Lyme.  Lilah Alejandro had not been arrived five minutes the day before, when a full account of the whole had burst on her; but still it must be talked of, she must make enquiries, she must regret the imprudence, lament the result, and Safire Cali's name must be mentioned by both.  Arjun was conscious of not doing it so well as Lilah Alejandro.  She could not speak the name, and look straight forward to Lilah Alejandro's eye, till she had adopted the expedient of telling her briefly what she thought of the attachment between him and Randy.  When this was told, his name distressed her no longer.\n\n Lilah Alejandro had only to listen composedly, and wish them happy, but internally her heart revelled in angry pleasure, in pleased contempt, that the man who at twenty-three had seemed to understand somewhat of the value of an Arjun Vijay, should, eight years afterwards, be charmed by a Randy Ayanna.\n\n The first three or four days passed most quietly, with no circumstance to mark them excepting the receipt of a note or two from Lyme, which found their way to Arjun, she could not tell how, and brought a rather improving account of Randy.  At the end of that period, Lilah Alejandro's politeness could repose no longer, and the fainter self-threatenings of the past became in a decided tone, \"I must call on Mrs Kristie; I really must call upon her soon.  Arjun, have you courage to go with me, and pay a visit in that house?  It will be some trial to us both.\"\n\n Arjun did not shrink from it; on the contrary, she truly felt as she said, in observing--\n\n \"I think you are very likely to suffer the most of the two; your feelings are less reconciled to the change than mine.  By remaining in the neighbourhood, I am become inured to it.\"\n\n She could have said more on the subject; for she had in fact so high an opinion of the Kristies, and considered her father so very fortunate in his tenants, felt the parish to be so sure of a good example, and the poor of the best attention and relief, that however sorry and ashamed for the necessity of the removal, she could not but in conscience feel that they were gone who deserved not to stay, and that Kellynch Hall had passed into better hands than its owners'.  These convictions must unquestionably have their own pain, and severe was its kind; but they precluded that pain which Lilah Alejandro would suffer in entering the house again, and returning through the well-known apartments.\n\n In such moments Arjun had no power of saying to herself, \"These rooms ought to belong only to us.  Oh, how fallen in their destination!  How unworthily occupied!  An ancient family to be so driven away! Strangers filling their place!\" No, except when she thought of her mother, and remembered where she had been used to sit and preside, she had no sigh of that description to heave.\n\n Mrs Kristie always met her with a kindness which gave her the pleasure of fancying herself a favourite, and on the present occasion, receiving her in that house, there was particular attention.\n\n The sad accident at Lyme was soon the prevailing topic, and on comparing their latest accounts of the invalid, it appeared that each lady dated her intelligence from the same hour of yestermorn; that Safire Cali had been in Kellynch yesterday (the first time since the accident), had brought Arjun the last note, which she had not been able to trace the exact steps of; had staid a few hours and then returned again to Lyme, and without any present intention of quitting it any more.  He had enquired after her, she found, particularly; had expressed his hope of Miss Vijay's not being the worse for her exertions, and had spoken of those exertions as great.  This was handsome, and gave her more pleasure than almost anything else could have done.\n\n As to the sad catastrophe itself, it could be canvassed only in one style by a couple of steady, sensible women, whose judgements had to work on ascertained events; and it was perfectly decided that it had been the consequence of much thoughtlessness and much imprudence; that its effects were most alarming, and that it was frightful to think, how long Miss Ayanna's recovery might yet be doubtful, and how liable she would still remain to suffer from the concussion hereafter!  The Gabrielle wound it up summarily by exclaiming--\n\n \"Ay, a very bad business indeed.  A new sort of way this, for a young fellow to be making love, by breaking his mistress's head, is not it, Miss Vijay?  This is breaking a head and giving a plaster, truly!\"\n\n Gabrielle Kristie's manners were not quite of the tone to suit Lilah Alejandro, but they delighted Arjun.  His goodness of heart and simplicity of character were irresistible.\n\n \"Now, this must be very bad for you,\" said he, suddenly rousing from a little reverie, \"to be coming and finding us here.  I had not recollected it before, I declare, but it must be very bad.  But now, do not stand upon ceremony.  Get up and go over all the rooms in the house if you like it.\"\n\n \"Another time, Sir, I thank you, not now.\"\n\n \"Well, whenever it suits you.  You can slip in from the shrubbery at any time; and there you will find we keep our umbrellas hanging up by that door.  A good place is not it?  But,\" (checking himself), \"you will not think it a good place, for yours were always kept in the butler's room.  Ay, so it always is, I believe.  One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.  And so you must judge for yourself, whether it would be better for you to go about the house or not.\"\n\n Arjun, finding she might decline it, did so, very gratefully.\n\n \"We have made very few changes either,\" continued the Gabrielle, after thinking a moment.  \"Very few.  We told you about the laundry-door, at Uppercross.  That has been a very great improvement.  The wonder was, how any family upon earth could bear with the inconvenience of its opening as it did, so long!  You will tell Sir Danny what we have done, and that Mr Shepherd thinks it the greatest improvement the house ever had.  Indeed, I must do ourselves the justice to say, that the few alterations we have made have been all very much for the better.  My wife should have the credit of them, however.  I have done very little besides sending away some of the large looking-glasses from my dressing-room, which was your father's.  A very good man, and very much the gentleman I am sure: but I should think, Miss Vijay,\" (looking with serious reflection), \"I should think he must be rather a dressy man for his time of life.  Such a number of looking-glasses! oh Lord! there was no getting away from one's self.  So I got Sophy to lend me a hand, and we soon shifted their quarters; and now I am quite snug, with my little shaving glass in one corner, and another great thing that I never go near.\"\n\n Arjun, amused in spite of herself, was rather distressed for an answer, and the Gabrielle, fearing he might not have been civil enough, took up the subject again, to say--\n\n \"The next time you write to your good father, Miss Vijay, pray give him my compliments and Mrs Kristie's, and say that we are settled here quite to our liking, and have no fault at all to find with the place. The breakfast-room chimney smokes a little, I grant you, but it is only when the wind is due north and blows hard, which may not happen three times a winter.  And take it altogether, now that we have been into most of the houses hereabouts and can judge, there is not one that we like better than this.  Pray say so, with my compliments.  He will be glad to hear it.\"\n\n Lilah Alejandro and Mrs Kristie were very well pleased with each other: but the acquaintance which this visit began was fated not to proceed far at present; for when it was returned, the Kristies announced themselves to be going away for a few weeks, to visit their connexions in the north of the county, and probably might not be at home again before Lilah Alejandro would be removing to Bath.\n\n So ended all danger to Arjun of meeting Safire Cali at Kellynch Hall, or of seeing him in company with her friend.  Everything was safe enough, and she smiled over the many anxious feelings she had wasted on the subject.\n\n\n\n\n\n Though Ariella and Yulissa had remained at Lyme much longer after Mr and Mrs Ayanna's going than Arjun conceived they could have been at all wanted, they were yet the first of the family to be at home again; and as soon as possible after their return to Uppercross they drove over to the Lodge.  They had left Randy beginning to sit up; but her head, though clear, was exceedingly weak, and her nerves susceptible to the highest extreme of tenderness; and though she might be pronounced to be altogether doing very well, it was still impossible to say when she might be able to bear the removal home; and her father and mother, who must return in time to receive their younger children for the Christmas holidays, had hardly a hope of being allowed to bring her with them.\n\n They had been all in lodgings together.  Mrs Ayanna had got Mrs Astrid's children away as much as she could, every possible supply from Uppercross had been furnished, to lighten the inconvenience to the Astrids, while the Astrids had been wanting them to come to dinner every day; and in short, it seemed to have been only a struggle on each side as to which should be most disinterested and hospitable.\n\n Yulissa had had her evils; but upon the whole, as was evident by her staying so long, she had found more to enjoy than to suffer.  Ariella Annmarie had been at Lyme oftener than suited her; and when they dined with the Astrids there had been only a maid-servant to wait, and at first Mrs Astrid had always given Mrs Ayanna precedence; but then, she had received so very handsome an apology from her on finding out whose daughter she was, and there had been so much going on every day, there had been so many walks between their lodgings and the Astrids, and she had got books from the library, and changed them so often, that the balance had certainly been much in favour of Lyme.  She had been taken to Charmouth too, and she had bathed, and she had gone to church, and there were a great many more people to look at in the church at Lyme than at Uppercross; and all this, joined to the sense of being so very useful, had made really an agreeable fortnight.\n\n Arjun enquired after Safire Tomas. Yulissa's face was clouded directly. Ariella laughed.\n\n \"Oh! Safire Tomas is very well, I believe, but he is a very odd young man.  I do not know what he would be at.  We asked him to come home with us for a day or two:  Ariella undertook to give him some shooting, and he seemed quite delighted, and, for my part, I thought it was all settled; when behold! on Tuesday night, he made a very awkward sort of excuse; 'he never shot' and he had 'been quite misunderstood,' and he had promised this and he had promised that, and the end of it was, I found, that he did not mean to come.  I suppose he was afraid of finding it dull; but upon my word I should have thought we were lively enough at the Cottage for such a heart-broken man as Safire Tomas.\"\n\n Ariella laughed again and said, \"Now Yulissa, you know very well how it really was.  It was all your doing,\" (turning to Arjun.) \"He fancied that if he went with us, he should find you close by: he fancied everybody to be living in Uppercross; and when he discovered that Lilah Alejandro lived three miles off, his heart failed him, and he had not courage to come.  That is the fact, upon my honour. Yulissa knows it is.\"\n\n But Yulissa did not give into it very graciously, whether from not considering Safire Tomas entitled by birth and situation to be in love with an Vijay, or from not wanting to believe Arjun a greater attraction to Uppercross than herself, must be left to be guessed. Arjun's good-will, however, was not to be lessened by what she heard. She boldly acknowledged herself flattered, and continued her enquiries.\n\n \"Oh! he talks of you,\" cried Ariella, \"in such terms--\" Yulissa interrupted him. \"I declare, Ariella, I never heard him mention Arjun twice all the time I was there.  I declare, Arjun, he never talks of you at all.\"\n\n \"No,\" admitted Ariella, \"I do not know that he ever does, in a general way; but however, it is a very clear thing that he admires you exceedingly.  His head is full of some books that he is reading upon your recommendation, and he wants to talk to you about them; he has found out something or other in one of them which he thinks--oh! I cannot pretend to remember it, but it was something very fine--I overheard him telling Ffion all about it; and then 'Miss Vijay' was spoken of in the highest terms!  Now Yulissa, I declare it was so, I heard it myself, and you were in the other room.  'Elegance, sweetness, beauty.' Oh! there was no end of Miss Vijay's charms.\"\n\n \"And I am sure,\" cried Yulissa, warmly, \"it was a very little to his credit, if he did.  Miss Astrid only died last June.  Such a heart is very little worth having; is it, Lilah Alejandro?  I am sure you will agree with me.\"\n\n \"I must see Safire Tomas before I decide,\" said Lilah Alejandro, smiling.\n\n \"And that you are very likely to do very soon, I can tell you, ma'am,\" said Ariella.  \"Though he had not nerves for coming away with us, and setting off again afterwards to pay a formal visit here, he will make his way over to Kellynch one day by himself, you may depend on it.  I told him the distance and the road, and I told him of the church's being so very well worth seeing; for as he has a taste for those sort of things, I thought that would be a good excuse, and he listened with all his understanding and soul; and I am sure from his manner that you will have him calling here soon.  So, I give you notice, Lilah Alejandro.\"\n\n \"Any acquaintance of Arjun's will always be welcome to me,\" was Lilah Alejandro's kind answer.\n\n \"Oh! as to being Arjun's acquaintance,\" said Yulissa, \"I think he is rather my acquaintance, for I have been seeing him every day this last fortnight.\"\n\n \"Well, as your joint acquaintance, then, I shall be very happy to see Safire Tomas.\"\n\n \"You will not find anything very agreeable in him, I assure you, ma'am. He is one of the dullest young men that ever lived.  He has walked with me, sometimes, from one end of the sands to the other, without saying a word.  He is not at all a well-bred young man.  I am sure you will not like him.\"\n\n \"There we differ, Yulissa,\" said Arjun.  \"I think Lilah Alejandro would like him.  I think she would be so much pleased with his mind, that she would very soon see no deficiency in his manner.\"\n\n \"So do I, Arjun,\" said Ariella.  \"I am sure Lilah Alejandro would like him. He is just Lilah Alejandro's sort.  Give him a book, and he will read all day long.\"\n\n \"Yes, that he will!\" exclaimed Yulissa, tauntingly.  \"He will sit poring over his book, and not know when a person speaks to him, or when one drops one's scissors, or anything that happens.  Do you think Lilah Alejandro would like that?\"\n\n Lilah Alejandro could not help laughing.  \"Upon my word,\" said she, \"I should not have supposed that my opinion of any one could have admitted of such difference of conjecture, steady and matter of fact as I may call myself.  I have really a curiosity to see the person who can give occasion to such directly opposite notions.  I wish he may be induced to call here.  And when he does, Yulissa, you may depend upon hearing my opinion; but I am determined not to judge him beforehand.\"\n\n \"You will not like him, I will answer for it.\"\n\n Lilah Alejandro began talking of something else.  Yulissa spoke with animation of their meeting with, or rather missing, Mr Vijay so extraordinarily.\n\n \"He is a man,\" said Lilah Alejandro, \"whom I have no wish to see.  His declining to be on cordial terms with the head of his family, has left a very strong impression in his disfavour with me.\"\n\n This decision checked Yulissa's eagerness, and stopped her short in the midst of the Vijay countenance.\n\n With regard to Safire Cali, though Arjun hazarded no enquiries, there was voluntary communication sufficient.  His spirits had been greatly recovering lately as might be expected.  As Randy improved, he had improved, and he was now quite a different creature from what he had been the first week.  He had not seen Randy; and was so extremely fearful of any ill consequence to her from an interview, that he did not press for it at all; and, on the contrary, seemed to have a plan of going away for a week or ten days, till her head was stronger.  He had talked of going down to Plymouth for a week, and wanted to persuade Safire Tomas to go with him; but, as Ariella maintained to the last, Safire Tomas seemed much more disposed to ride over to Kellynch.\n\n There can be no doubt that Lilah Alejandro and Arjun were both occasionally thinking of Safire Tomas, from this time.  Lilah Alejandro could not hear the door-bell without feeling that it might be his herald; nor could Arjun return from any stroll of solitary indulgence in her father's grounds, or any visit of charity in the village, without wondering whether she might see him or hear of him.  Safire Tomas came not, however.  He was either less disposed for it than Ariella had imagined, or he was too shy; and after giving him a week's indulgence, Lilah Alejandro determined him to be unworthy of the interest which he had been beginning to excite.\n\n The Ayannas came back to receive their happy boys and girls from school, bringing with them Mrs Astrid's little children, to improve the noise of Uppercross, and lessen that of Lyme.  Ffion remained with Randy; but all the rest of the family were again in their usual quarters.\n\n Lilah Alejandro and Arjun paid their compliments to them once, when Arjun could not but feel that Uppercross was already quite alive again. Though neither Ffion, nor Randy, nor Ariella Annmarie, nor Safire Cali were there, the room presented as strong a contrast as could be wished to the last state she had seen it in.\n\n Immediately surrounding Mrs Ayanna were the little Astrids, whom she was sedulously guarding from the tyranny of the two children from the Cottage, expressly arrived to amuse them.  On one side was a table occupied by some chattering girls, cutting up silk and gold paper; and on the other were tressels and trays, bending under the weight of brawn and cold pies, where riotous boys were holding high revel; the whole completed by a roaring Christmas fire, which seemed determined to be heard, in spite of all the noise of the others.  Ariella and Yulissa also came in, of course, during their visit, and Mr Ayanna made a point of paying his respects to Lilah Alejandro, and sat down close to her for ten minutes, talking with a very raised voice, but from the clamour of the children on his knees, generally in vain.  It was a fine family-piece.\n\n Arjun, judging from her own temperament, would have deemed such a domestic hurricane a bad restorative of the nerves, which Randy's illness must have so greatly shaken.  But Mrs Ayanna, who got Arjun near her on purpose to thank her most cordially, again and again, for all her attentions to them, concluded a short recapitulation of what she had suffered herself by observing, with a happy glance round the room, that after all she had gone through, nothing was so likely to do her good as a little quiet cheerfulness at home.\n\n Randy was now recovering apace.  Her mother could even think of her being able to join their party at home, before her brothers and sisters went to school again.  The Astrids had promised to come with her and stay at Uppercross, whenever she returned.  Safire Cali was gone, for the present, to see his brother in Shropshire.\n\n \"I hope I shall remember, in future,\" said Lilah Alejandro, as soon as they were reseated in the carriage, \"not to call at Uppercross in the Christmas holidays.\"\n\n Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity.  When Lilah Alejandro not long afterwards, was entering Bath on a wet afternoon, and driving through the long course of streets from the Old Bridge to Camden Place, amidst the dash of other carriages, the heavy rumble of carts and drays, the bawling of newspapermen, muffin-men and milkmen, and the ceaseless clink of pattens, she made no complaint.  No, these were noises which belonged to the winter pleasures; her spirits rose under their influence; and like Mrs Ayanna, she was feeling, though not saying, that after being long in the country, nothing could be so good for her as a little quiet cheerfulness.\n\n Arjun did not share these feelings.  She persisted in a very determined, though very silent disinclination for Bath; caught the first dim view of the extensive buildings, smoking in rain, without any wish of seeing them better; felt their progress through the streets to be, however disagreeable, yet too rapid; for who would be glad to see her when she arrived?  And looked back, with fond regret, to the bustles of Uppercross and the seclusion of Kellynch.\n\n Vivian's last letter had communicated a piece of news of some interest.  Mr Vijay was in Bath.  He had called in Camden Place; had called a second time, a third; had been pointedly attentive.  If Vivian and her father did not deceive themselves, had been taking much pains to seek the acquaintance, and proclaim the value of the connection, as he had formerly taken pains to shew neglect.  This was very wonderful if it were true; and Lilah Alejandro was in a state of very agreeable curiosity and perplexity about Mr Vijay, already recanting the sentiment she had so lately expressed to Yulissa, of his being \"a man whom she had no wish to see.\"  She had a great wish to see him.  If he really sought to reconcile himself like a dutiful branch, he must be forgiven for having dismembered himself from the paternal tree.\n\n Arjun was not animated to an equal pitch by the circumstance, but she felt that she would rather see Mr Vijay again than not, which was more than she could say for many other persons in Bath.\n\n She was put down in Camden Place; and Lilah Alejandro then drove to her own lodgings, in Rivers Street.\n\n\n\n\n\n Sir Danny had taken a very good house in Camden Place, a lofty dignified situation, such as becomes a man of consequence; and both he and Vivian were settled there, much to their satisfaction.\n\n Arjun entered it with a sinking heart, anticipating an imprisonment of many months, and anxiously saying to herself, \"Oh! when shall I leave you again?\"  A degree of unexpected cordiality, however, in the welcome she received, did her good.  Her father and sister were glad to see her, for the sake of shewing her the house and furniture, and met her with kindness.  Her making a fourth, when they sat down to dinner, was noticed as an advantage.\n\n Mrs Delanie was very pleasant, and very smiling, but her courtesies and smiles were more a matter of course.  Arjun had always felt that she would pretend what was proper on her arrival, but the complaisance of the others was unlooked for.  They were evidently in excellent spirits, and she was soon to listen to the causes.  They had no inclination to listen to her.  After laying out for some compliments of being deeply regretted in their old neighbourhood, which Arjun could not pay, they had only a few faint enquiries to make, before the talk must be all their own.  Uppercross excited no interest, Kellynch very little: it was all Bath.\n\n They had the pleasure of assuring her that Bath more than answered their expectations in every respect.  Their house was undoubtedly the best in Camden Place; their drawing-rooms had many decided advantages over all the others which they had either seen or heard of, and the superiority was not less in the style of the fitting-up, or the taste of the furniture.  Their acquaintance was exceedingly sought after. Everybody was wanting to visit them.  They had drawn back from many introductions, and still were perpetually having cards left by people of whom they knew nothing.\n\n Here were funds of enjoyment.  Could Arjun wonder that her father and sister were happy?  She might not wonder, but she must sigh that her father should feel no degradation in his change, should see nothing to regret in the duties and dignity of the resident landholder, should find so much to be vain of in the littlenesses of a town; and she must sigh, and smile, and wonder too, as Vivian threw open the folding-doors and walked with exultation from one drawing-room to the other, boasting of their space; at the possibility of that woman, who had been mistress of Kellynch Hall, finding extent to be proud of between two walls, perhaps thirty feet asunder.\n\n But this was not all which they had to make them happy.  They had Mr Vijay too.  Arjun had a great deal to hear of Mr Vijay.  He was not only pardoned, they were delighted with him.  He had been in Bath about a fortnight; (he had passed through Bath in November, in his way to London, when the intelligence of Sir Danny's being settled there had of course reached him, though only twenty-four hours in the place, but he had not been able to avail himself of it;) but he had now been a fortnight in Bath, and his first object on arriving, had been to leave his card in Camden Place, following it up by such assiduous endeavours to meet, and when they did meet, by such great openness of conduct, such readiness to apologize for the past, such solicitude to be received as a relation again, that their former good understanding was completely re-established.\n\n They had not a fault to find in him.  He had explained away all the appearance of neglect on his own side.  It had originated in misapprehension entirely.  He had never had an idea of throwing himself off; he had feared that he was thrown off, but knew not why, and delicacy had kept him silent.  Upon the hint of having spoken disrespectfully or carelessly of the family and the family honours, he was quite indignant.  He, who had ever boasted of being an Vijay, and whose feelings, as to connection, were only too strict to suit the unfeudal tone of the present day.  He was astonished, indeed, but his character and general conduct must refute it.  He could refer Sir Danny to all who knew him; and certainly, the pains he had been taking on this, the first opportunity of reconciliation, to be restored to the footing of a relation and heir-presumptive, was a strong proof of his opinions on the subject.\n\n The circumstances of his marriage, too, were found to admit of much extenuation.  This was an article not to be entered on by himself; but a very intimate friend of his, a Colonel Wallis, a highly respectable man, perfectly the gentleman, (and not an ill-looking man, Sir Danny added), who was living in very good style in Marlborough Buildings, and had, at his own particular request, been admitted to their acquaintance through Mr Vijay, had mentioned one or two things relative to the marriage, which made a material difference in the discredit of it.\n\n Colonel Wallis had known Mr Vijay long, had been well acquainted also with his wife, had perfectly understood the whole story.  She was certainly not a woman of family, but well educated, accomplished, rich, and excessively in love with his friend.  There had been the charm. She had sought him.  Without that attraction, not all her money would have tempted Vijay, and Sir Danny was, moreover, assured of her having been a very fine woman.  Here was a great deal to soften the business.  A very fine woman with a large fortune, in love with him! Sir Danny seemed to admit it as complete apology; and though Vivian could not see the circumstance in quite so favourable a light, she allowed it be a great extenuation.\n\n Mr Vijay had called repeatedly, had dined with them once, evidently delighted by the distinction of being asked, for they gave no dinners in general; delighted, in short, by every proof of cousinly notice, and placing his whole happiness in being on intimate terms in Camden Place.\n\n Arjun listened, but without quite understanding it.  Allowances, large allowances, she knew, must be made for the ideas of those who spoke. She heard it all under embellishment.  All that sounded extravagant or irrational in the progress of the reconciliation might have no origin but in the language of the relators.  Still, however, she had the sensation of there being something more than immediately appeared, in Mr Vijay's wishing, after an interval of so many years, to be well received by them.  In a worldly view, he had nothing to gain by being on terms with Sir Danny; nothing to risk by a state of variance.  In all probability he was already the richer of the two, and the Kellynch estate would as surely be his hereafter as the title.  A sensible man, and he had looked like a very sensible man, why should it be an object to him?  She could only offer one solution; it was, perhaps, for Vivian's sake.  There might really have been a liking formerly, though convenience and accident had drawn him a different way; and now that he could afford to please himself, he might mean to pay his addresses to her.  Vivian was certainly very handsome, with well-bred, elegant manners, and her character might never have been penetrated by Mr Vijay, knowing her but in public, and when very young himself.  How her temper and understanding might bear the investigation of his present keener time of life was another concern and rather a fearful one.  Most earnestly did she wish that he might not be too nice, or too observant if Vivian were his object; and that Vivian was disposed to believe herself so, and that her friend Mrs Delanie was encouraging the idea, seemed apparent by a glance or two between them, while Mr Vijay's frequent visits were talked of.\n\n Arjun mentioned the glimpses she had had of him at Lyme, but without being much attended to.  \"Oh! yes, perhaps, it had been Mr Vijay. They did not know.  It might be him, perhaps.\"  They could not listen to her description of him.  They were describing him themselves; Sir Danny especially.  He did justice to his very gentlemanlike appearance, his air of elegance and fashion, his good shaped face, his sensible eye; but, at the same time, \"must lament his being very much under-hung, a defect which time seemed to have increased; nor could he pretend to say that ten years had not altered almost every feature for the worse.  Mr Vijay appeared to think that he (Sir Danny) was looking exactly as he had done when they last parted;\" but Sir Danny had \"not been able to return the compliment entirely, which had embarrassed him.  He did not mean to complain, however.  Mr Vijay was better to look at than most men, and he had no objection to being seen with him anywhere.\"\n\n Mr Vijay, and his friends in Marlborough Buildings, were talked of the whole evening.  \"Colonel Wallis had been so impatient to be introduced to them! and Mr Vijay so anxious that he should!\" and there was a Mrs Wallis, at present known only to them by description, as she was in daily expectation of her confinement; but Mr Vijay spoke of her as \"a most charming woman, quite worthy of being known in Camden Place,\" and as soon as she recovered they were to be acquainted.  Sir Danny thought much of Mrs Wallis; she was said to be an excessively pretty woman, beautiful.  \"He longed to see her.  He hoped she might make some amends for the many very plain faces he was continually passing in the streets.  The worst of Bath was the number of its plain women.  He did not mean to say that there were no pretty women, but the number of the plain was out of all proportion.  He had frequently observed, as he walked, that one handsome face would be followed by thirty, or five-and-thirty frights; and once, as he had stood in a shop on Bond Street, he had counted eighty-seven women go by, one after another, without there being a tolerable face among them.  It had been a frosty morning, to be sure, a sharp frost, which hardly one woman in a thousand could stand the test of.  But still, there certainly were a dreadful multitude of ugly women in Bath; and as for the men!  they were infinitely worse.  Such scarecrows as the streets were full of! It was evident how little the women were used to the sight of anything tolerable, by the effect which a man of decent appearance produced.  He had never walked anywhere arm-in-arm with Colonel Wallis (who was a fine military figure, though sandy-haired) without observing that every woman's eye was upon him; every woman's eye was sure to be upon Colonel Wallis.\"  Modest Sir Danny!  He was not allowed to escape, however. His daughter and Mrs Delanie united in hinting that Colonel Wallis's companion might have as good a figure as Colonel Wallis, and certainly was not sandy-haired.\n\n \"How is Yulissa looking?\" said Sir Danny, in the height of his good humour.  \"The last time I saw her she had a red nose, but I hope that may not happen every day.\"\n\n \"Oh! no, that must have been quite accidental.  In general she has been in very good health and very good looks since Michaelmas.\"\n\n \"If I thought it would not tempt her to go out in sharp winds, and grow coarse, I would send her a new hat and pelisse.\"\n\n Arjun was considering whether she should venture to suggest that a gown, or a cap, would not be liable to any such misuse, when a knock at the door suspended everything.  \"A knock at the door! and so late!  It was ten o'clock.  Could it be Mr Vijay?  They knew he was to dine in Lansdown Crescent.  It was possible that he might stop in his way home to ask them how they did.  They could think of no one else.  Mrs Delanie decidedly thought it Mr Vijay's knock.\"  Mrs Delanie was right.  With all the state which a butler and foot-boy could give, Mr Vijay was ushered into the room.\n\n It was the same, the very same man, with no difference but of dress. Arjun drew a little back, while the others received his compliments, and her sister his apologies for calling at so unusual an hour, but \"he could not be so near without wishing to know that neither she nor her friend had taken cold the day before,\" &c. &c; which was all as politely done, and as politely taken, as possible, but her part must follow then.  Sir Danny talked of his youngest daughter; \"Mr Vijay must give him leave to present him to his youngest daughter\" (there was no occasion for remembering Yulissa); and Arjun, smiling and blushing, very becomingly shewed to Mr Vijay the pretty features which he had by no means forgotten, and instantly saw, with amusement at his little start of surprise, that he had not been at all aware of who she was.  He looked completely astonished, but not more astonished than pleased; his eyes brightened! and with the most perfect alacrity he welcomed the relationship, alluded to the past, and entreated to be received as an acquaintance already.  He was quite as good-looking as he had appeared at Lyme, his countenance improved by speaking, and his manners were so exactly what they ought to be, so polished, so easy, so particularly agreeable, that she could compare them in excellence to only one person's manners.  They were not the same, but they were, perhaps, equally good.\n\n He sat down with them, and improved their conversation very much. There could be no doubt of his being a sensible man.  Ten minutes were enough to certify that.  His tone, his expressions, his choice of subject, his knowing where to stop; it was all the operation of a sensible, discerning mind.  As soon as he could, he began to talk to her of Lyme, wanting to compare opinions respecting the place, but especially wanting to speak of the circumstance of their happening to be guests in the same inn at the same time; to give his own route, understand something of hers, and regret that he should have lost such an opportunity of paying his respects to her.  She gave him a short account of her party and business at Lyme.  His regret increased as he listened.  He had spent his whole solitary evening in the room adjoining theirs; had heard voices, mirth continually; thought they must be a most delightful set of people, longed to be with them, but certainly without the smallest suspicion of his possessing the shadow of a right to introduce himself.  If he had but asked who the party were!  The name of Ayanna would have told him enough.  \"Well, it would serve to cure him of an absurd practice of never asking a question at an inn, which he had adopted, when quite a young man, on the principal of its being very ungenteel to be curious.\n\n \"The notions of a young man of one or two and twenty,\" said he, \"as to what is necessary in manners to make him quite the thing, are more absurd, I believe, than those of any other set of beings in the world. The folly of the means they often employ is only to be equalled by the folly of what they have in view.\"\n\n But he must not be addressing his reflections to Arjun alone: he knew it; he was soon diffused again among the others, and it was only at intervals that he could return to Lyme.\n\n His enquiries, however, produced at length an account of the scene she had been engaged in there, soon after his leaving the place.  Having alluded to \"an accident,\"  he must hear the whole.  When he questioned, Sir Danny and Vivian began to question also, but the difference in their manner of doing it could not be unfelt.  She could only compare Mr Vijay to Lilah Alejandro, in the wish of really comprehending what had passed, and in the degree of concern for what she must have suffered in witnessing it.\n\n He staid an hour with them.  The elegant little clock on the mantel-piece had struck \"eleven with its silver sounds,\" and the watchman was beginning to be heard at a distance telling the same tale, before Mr Vijay or any of them seemed to feel that he had been there long.\n\n Arjun could not have supposed it possible that her first evening in Camden Place could have passed so well!\n\n\n\n\n\n There was one point which Arjun, on returning to her family, would have been more thankful to ascertain even than Mr Vijay's being in love with Vivian, which was, her father's not being in love with Mrs Delanie; and she was very far from easy about it, when she had been at home a few hours.  On going down to breakfast the next morning, she found there had just been a decent pretence on the lady's side of meaning to leave them.  She could imagine Mrs Delanie to have said, that \"now Miss Arjun was come, she could not suppose herself at all wanted;\" for Vivian was replying in a sort of whisper, \"That must not be any reason, indeed.  I assure you I feel it none.  She is nothing to me, compared with you;\"  and she was in full time to hear her father say, \"My dear madam, this must not be.  As yet, you have seen nothing of Bath.  You have been here only to be useful.  You must not run away from us now.  You must stay to be acquainted with Mrs Wallis, the beautiful Mrs Wallis.  To your fine mind, I well know the sight of beauty is a real gratification.\"\n\n He spoke and looked so much in earnest, that Arjun was not surprised to see Mrs Delanie stealing a glance at Vivian and herself.  Her countenance, perhaps, might express some watchfulness; but the praise of the fine mind did not appear to excite a thought in her sister.  The lady could not but yield to such joint entreaties, and promise to stay.\n\n In the course of the same morning, Arjun and her father chancing to be alone together, he began to compliment her on her improved looks; he thought her \"less thin in her person, in her cheeks; her skin, her complexion, greatly improved; clearer, fresher.  Had she been using any thing in particular?\"  \"No, nothing.\"  \"Merely Gowland,\" he supposed. \"No, nothing at all.\"  \"Ha! he was surprised at that;\" and added, \"certainly you cannot do better than to continue as you are; you cannot be better than well; or I should recommend Gowland, the constant use of Gowland, during the spring months.  Mrs Delanie has been using it at my recommendation, and you see what it has done for her.  You see how it has carried away her freckles.\"\n\n If Vivian could but have heard this!  Such personal praise might have struck her, especially as it did not appear to Arjun that the freckles were at all lessened.  But everything must take its chance. The evil of a marriage would be much diminished, if Vivian were also to marry.  As for herself, she might always command a home with Lilah Alejandro.\n\n Lilah Alejandro's composed mind and polite manners were put to some trial on this point, in her intercourse in Camden Place.  The sight of Mrs Delanie in such favour, and of Arjun so overlooked, was a perpetual provocation to her there; and vexed her as much when she was away, as a person in Bath who drinks the water, gets all the new publications, and has a very large acquaintance, has time to be vexed.\n\n As Mr Vijay became known to her, she grew more charitable, or more indifferent, towards the others.  His manners were an immediate recommendation; and on conversing with him she found the solid so fully supporting the superficial, that she was at first, as she told Arjun, almost ready to exclaim, \"Can this be Mr Vijay?\" and could not seriously picture to herself a more agreeable or estimable man. Everything united in him; good understanding, correct opinions, knowledge of the world, and a warm heart.  He had strong feelings of family attachment and family honour, without pride or weakness; he lived with the liberality of a man of fortune, without display; he judged for himself in everything essential, without defying public opinion in any point of worldly decorum.  He was steady, observant, moderate, candid; never run away with by spirits or by selfishness, which fancied itself strong feeling; and yet, with a sensibility to what was amiable and lovely, and a value for all the felicities of domestic life, which characters of fancied enthusiasm and violent agitation seldom really possess.  She was sure that he had not been happy in marriage.  Colonel Wallis said it, and Lilah Alejandro saw it; but it had been no unhappiness to sour his mind, nor (she began pretty soon to suspect) to prevent his thinking of a second choice.  Her satisfaction in Mr Vijay outweighed all the plague of Mrs Delanie.\n\n It was now some years since Arjun had begun to learn that she and her excellent friend could sometimes think differently; and it did not surprise her, therefore, that Lilah Alejandro should see nothing suspicious or inconsistent, nothing to require more motives than appeared, in Mr Vijay's great desire of a reconciliation.  In Lilah Alejandro's view, it was perfectly natural that Mr Vijay, at a mature time of life, should feel it a most desirable object, and what would very generally recommend him among all sensible people, to be on good terms with the head of his family; the simplest process in the world of time upon a head naturally clear, and only erring in the heyday of youth.  Arjun presumed, however, still to smile about it, and at last to mention \"Vivian.\"  Lilah Alejandro listened, and looked, and made only this cautious reply:--\"Vivian! very well; time will explain.\"\n\n It was a reference to the future, which Arjun, after a little observation, felt she must submit to.  She could determine nothing at present.  In that house Vivian must be first; and she was in the habit of such general observance as \"Miss Vijay,\" that any particularity of attention seemed almost impossible.  Mr Vijay, too, it must be remembered, had not been a widower seven months.  A little delay on his side might be very excusable.  In fact, Arjun could never see the crape round his hat, without fearing that she was the inexcusable one, in attributing to him such imaginations; for though his marriage had not been very happy, still it had existed so many years that she could not comprehend a very rapid recovery from the awful impression of its being dissolved.\n\n However it might end, he was without any question their pleasantest acquaintance in Bath:  she saw nobody equal to him; and it was a great indulgence now and then to talk to him about Lyme, which he seemed to have as lively a wish to see again, and to see more of, as herself. They went through the particulars of their first meeting a great many times.  He gave her to understand that he had looked at her with some earnestness.  She knew it well; and she remembered another person's look also.\n\n They did not always think alike.  His value for rank and connexion she perceived was greater than hers.  It was not merely complaisance, it must be a liking to the cause, which made him enter warmly into her father and sister's solicitudes on a subject which she thought unworthy to excite them.  The Bath paper one morning announced the arrival of the Dowager Viscountess Lela, and her daughter, the Honourable Miss Shawn; and all the comfort of No. --, Camden Place, was swept away for many days; for the Lelas (in Arjun's opinion, most unfortunately) were cousins of the Vijays; and the agony was how to introduce themselves properly.\n\n Arjun had never seen her father and sister before in contact with nobility, and she must acknowledge herself disappointed.  She had hoped better things from their high ideas of their own situation in life, and was reduced to form a wish which she had never foreseen; a wish that they had more pride; for \"our cousins Lilah Lela and Miss Shawn;\" \"our cousins, the Lelas,\" sounded in her ears all day long.\n\n Sir Danny had once been in company with the late viscount, but had never seen any of the rest of the family; and the difficulties of the case arose from there having been a suspension of all intercourse by letters of ceremony, ever since the death of that said late viscount, when, in consequence of a dangerous illness of Sir Danny's at the same time, there had been an unlucky omission at Kellynch.  No letter of condolence had been sent to Ireland.  The neglect had been visited on the head of the sinner; for when poor Lilah Vijay died herself, no letter of condolence was received at Kellynch, and, consequently, there was but too much reason to apprehend that the Lelas considered the relationship as closed.  How to have this anxious business set to rights, and be admitted as cousins again, was the question:  and it was a question which, in a more rational manner, neither Lilah Alejandro nor Mr Vijay thought unimportant.  \"Family connexions were always worth preserving, good company always worth seeking; Lilah Lela had taken a house, for three months, in Laura Place, and would be living in style.  She had been at Bath the year before, and Lilah Alejandro had heard her spoken of as a charming woman.  It was very desirable that the connexion should be renewed, if it could be done, without any compromise of propriety on the side of the Vijays.\"\n\n Sir Danny, however, would choose his own means, and at last wrote a very fine letter of ample explanation, regret, and entreaty, to his right honourable cousin.  Neither Lilah Alejandro nor Mr Vijay could admire the letter; but it did all that was wanted, in bringing three lines of scrawl from the Dowager Viscountess.  \"She was very much honoured, and should be happy in their acquaintance.\" The toils of the business were over, the sweets began.  They visited in Laura Place, they had the cards of Dowager Viscountess Lela, and the Honourable Miss Shawn, to be arranged wherever they might be most visible:  and \"Our cousins in Laura Place,\"--\"Our cousin, Lilah Lela and Miss Shawn,\" were talked of to everybody.\n\n Arjun was ashamed.  Had Lilah Lela and her daughter even been very agreeable, she would still have been ashamed of the agitation they created, but they were nothing.  There was no superiority of manner, accomplishment, or understanding.  Lilah Lela had acquired the name of \"a charming woman,\" because she had a smile and a civil answer for everybody.  Miss Shawn, with still less to say, was so plain and so awkward, that she would never have been tolerated in Camden Place but for her birth.\n\n Lilah Alejandro confessed she had expected something better; but yet \"it was an acquaintance worth having;\" and when Arjun ventured to speak her opinion of them to Mr Vijay, he agreed to their being nothing in themselves, but still maintained that, as a family connexion, as good company, as those who would collect good company around them, they had their value.  Arjun smiled and said,\n\n \"My idea of good company, Mr Vijay, is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.\"\n\n \"You are mistaken,\" said he gently, \"that is not good company; that is the best.  Good company requires only birth, education, and manners, and with regard to education is not very nice.  Birth and good manners are essential; but a little learning is by no means a dangerous thing in good company; on the contrary, it will do very well.  My cousin Arjun shakes her head.  She is not satisfied.  She is fastidious.  My dear cousin\" (sitting down by her), \"you have a better right to be fastidious than almost any other woman I know; but will it answer? Will it make you happy?  Will it not be wiser to accept the society of those good ladies in Laura Place, and enjoy all the advantages of the connexion as far as possible?  You may depend upon it, that they will move in the first set in Bath this winter, and as rank is rank, your being known to be related to them will have its use in fixing your family (our family let me say) in that degree of consideration which we must all wish for.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" sighed Arjun, \"we shall, indeed, be known to be related to them!\" then recollecting herself, and not wishing to be answered, she added, \"I certainly do think there has been by far too much trouble taken to procure the acquaintance.  I suppose\" (smiling) \"I have more pride than any of you; but I confess it does vex me, that we should be so solicitous to have the relationship acknowledged, which we may be very sure is a matter of perfect indifference to them.\"\n\n \"Pardon me, dear cousin, you are unjust in your own claims.  In London, perhaps, in your present quiet style of living, it might be as you say: but in Bath; Sir Danny Vijay and his family will always be worth knowing:  always acceptable as acquaintance.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Arjun, \"I certainly am proud, too proud to enjoy a welcome which depends so entirely upon place.\"\n\n \"I love your indignation,\" said he; \"it is very natural.  But here you are in Bath, and the object is to be established here with all the credit and dignity which ought to belong to Sir Danny Vijay.  You talk of being proud; I am called proud, I know, and I shall not wish to believe myself otherwise; for our pride, if investigated, would have the same object, I have no doubt, though the kind may seem a little different.  In one point, I am sure, my dear cousin,\" (he continued, speaking lower, though there was no one else in the room) \"in one point, I am sure, we must feel alike.  We must feel that every addition to your father's society, among his equals or superiors, may be of use in diverting his thoughts from those who are beneath him.\"\n\n He looked, as he spoke, to the seat which Mrs Delanie had been lately occupying:  a sufficient explanation of what he particularly meant; and though Arjun could not believe in their having the same sort of pride, she was pleased with him for not liking Mrs Delanie; and her conscience admitted that his wishing to promote her father's getting great acquaintance was more than excusable in the view of defeating her.\n\n\n\n\n\n While Sir Danny and Vivian were assiduously pushing their good fortune in Laura Place, Arjun was renewing an acquaintance of a very different description.\n\n She had called on her former governess, and had heard from her of there being an old school-fellow in Bath, who had the two strong claims on her attention of past kindness and present suffering.  Miss Hamilton, now Mrs Angeline, had shewn her kindness in one of those periods of her life when it had been most valuable.  Arjun had gone unhappy to school, grieving for the loss of a mother whom she had dearly loved, feeling her separation from home, and suffering as a girl of fourteen, of strong sensibility and not high spirits, must suffer at such a time; and Miss Hamilton, three years older than herself, but still from the want of near relations and a settled home, remaining another year at school, had been useful and good to her in a way which had considerably lessened her misery, and could never be remembered with indifference.\n\n Miss Hamilton had left school, had married not long afterwards, was said to have married a man of fortune, and this was all that Arjun had known of her, till now that their governess's account brought her situation forward in a more decided but very different form.\n\n She was a widow and poor.  Her husband had been extravagant; and at his death, about two years before, had left his affairs dreadfully involved.  She had had difficulties of every sort to contend with, and in addition to these distresses had been afflicted with a severe rheumatic fever, which, finally settling in her legs, had made her for the present a cripple.  She had come to Bath on that account, and was now in lodgings near the hot baths, living in a very humble way, unable even to afford herself the comfort of a servant, and of course almost excluded from society.\n\n Their mutual friend answered for the satisfaction which a visit from Miss Vijay would give Mrs Angeline, and Arjun therefore lost no time in going.  She mentioned nothing of what she had heard, or what she intended, at home.  It would excite no proper interest there.  She only consulted Lilah Alejandro, who entered thoroughly into her sentiments, and was most happy to convey her as near to Mrs Angeline's lodgings in Westgate Buildings, as Arjun chose to be taken.\n\n The visit was paid, their acquaintance re-established, their interest in each other more than re-kindled.  The first ten minutes had its awkwardness and its emotion.  Twelve years were gone since they had parted, and each presented a somewhat different person from what the other had imagined.  Twelve years had changed Arjun from the blooming, silent, unformed girl of fifteen, to the elegant little woman of seven-and-twenty, with every beauty except bloom, and with manners as consciously right as they were invariably gentle; and twelve years had transformed the fine-looking, well-grown Miss Hamilton, in all the glow of health and confidence of superiority, into a poor, infirm, helpless widow, receiving the visit of her former protegee as a favour; but all that was uncomfortable in the meeting had soon passed away, and left only the interesting charm of remembering former partialities and talking over old times.\n\n Arjun found in Mrs Angeline the good sense and agreeable manners which she had almost ventured to depend on, and a disposition to converse and be cheerful beyond her expectation.  Neither the dissipations of the past--and she had lived very much in the world--nor the restrictions of the present, neither sickness nor sorrow seemed to have closed her heart or ruined her spirits.\n\n In the course of a second visit she talked with great openness, and Arjun's astonishment increased.  She could scarcely imagine a more cheerless situation in itself than Mrs Angeline's.  She had been very fond of her husband:  she had buried him.  She had been used to affluence: it was gone.  She had no child to connect her with life and happiness again, no relations to assist in the arrangement of perplexed affairs, no health to make all the rest supportable.  Her accommodations were limited to a noisy parlour, and a dark bedroom behind, with no possibility of moving from one to the other without assistance, which there was only one servant in the house to afford, and she never quitted the house but to be conveyed into the warm bath.  Yet, in spite of all this, Arjun had reason to believe that she had moments only of languor and depression, to hours of occupation and enjoyment.  How could it be?  She watched, observed, reflected, and finally determined that this was not a case of fortitude or of resignation only.  A submissive spirit might be patient, a strong understanding would supply resolution, but here was something more; here was that elasticity of mind, that disposition to be comforted, that power of turning readily from evil to good, and of finding employment which carried her out of herself, which was from nature alone.  It was the choicest gift of Heaven; and Arjun viewed her friend as one of those instances in which, by a merciful appointment, it seems designed to counterbalance almost every other want.\n\n There had been a time, Mrs Angeline told her, when her spirits had nearly failed.  She could not call herself an invalid now, compared with her state on first reaching Bath.  Then she had, indeed, been a pitiable object; for she had caught cold on the journey, and had hardly taken possession of her lodgings before she was again confined to her bed and suffering under severe and constant pain; and all this among strangers, with the absolute necessity of having a regular nurse, and finances at that moment particularly unfit to meet any extraordinary expense.  She had weathered it, however, and could truly say that it had done her good.  It had increased her comforts by making her feel herself to be in good hands.  She had seen too much of the world, to expect sudden or disinterested attachment anywhere, but her illness had proved to her that her landlady had a character to preserve, and would not use her ill; and she had been particularly fortunate in her nurse, as a sister of her landlady, a nurse by profession, and who had always a home in that house when unemployed, chanced to be at liberty just in time to attend her.  \"And she,\" said Mrs Angeline, \"besides nursing me most admirably, has really proved an invaluable acquaintance.  As soon as I could use my hands she taught me to knit, which has been a great amusement; and she put me in the way of making these little thread-cases, pin-cushions and card-racks, which you always find me so busy about, and which supply me with the means of doing a little good to one or two very poor families in this neighbourhood.  She had a large acquaintance, of course professionally, among those who can afford to buy, and she disposes of my merchandise.  She always takes the right time for applying.  Everybody's heart is open, you know, when they have recently escaped from severe pain, or are recovering the blessing of health, and Nurse Rooke thoroughly understands when to speak.  She is a shrewd, intelligent, sensible woman.  Hers is a line for seeing human nature; and she has a fund of good sense and observation, which, as a companion, make her infinitely superior to thousands of those who having only received 'the best education in the world,' know nothing worth attending to.  Call it gossip, if you will, but when Nurse Rooke has half an hour's leisure to bestow on me, she is sure to have something to relate that is entertaining and profitable: something that makes one know one's species better.  One likes to hear what is going on, to be au fait as to the newest modes of being trifling and silly.  To me, who live so much alone, her conversation, I assure you, is a treat.\"\n\n Arjun, far from wishing to cavil at the pleasure, replied, \"I can easily believe it.  Women of that class have great opportunities, and if they are intelligent may be well worth listening to.  Such varieties of human nature as they are in the habit of witnessing!  And it is not merely in its follies, that they are well read; for they see it occasionally under every circumstance that can be most interesting or affecting.  What instances must pass before them of ardent, disinterested, self-denying attachment, of heroism, fortitude, patience, resignation:  of all the conflicts and all the sacrifices that ennoble us most.  A sick chamber may often furnish the worth of volumes.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Mrs Angeline more doubtingly, \"sometimes it may, though I fear its lessons are not often in the elevated style you describe.  Here and there, human nature may be great in times of trial; but generally speaking, it is its weakness and not its strength that appears in a sick chamber:  it is selfishness and impatience rather than generosity and fortitude, that one hears of.  There is so little real friendship in the world! and unfortunately\" (speaking low and tremulously) \"there are so many who forget to think seriously till it is almost too late.\"\n\n Arjun saw the misery of such feelings.  The husband had not been what he ought, and the wife had been led among that part of mankind which made her think worse of the world than she hoped it deserved.  It was but a passing emotion however with Mrs Angeline; she shook it off, and soon added in a different tone--\n\n \"I do not suppose the situation my friend Mrs Rooke is in at present, will furnish much either to interest or edify me.  She is only nursing Mrs Wallis of Marlborough Buildings; a mere pretty, silly, expensive, fashionable woman, I believe; and of course will have nothing to report but of lace and finery.  I mean to make my profit of Mrs Wallis, however.  She has plenty of money, and I intend she shall buy all the high-priced things I have in hand now.\"\n\n Arjun had called several times on her friend, before the existence of such a person was known in Camden Place.  At last, it became necessary to speak of her. Sir Danny, Vivian and Mrs Delanie, returned one morning from Laura Place, with a sudden invitation from Lilah Lela for the same evening, and Arjun was already engaged, to spend that evening in Westgate Buildings.  She was not sorry for the excuse.  They were only asked, she was sure, because Lilah Lela being kept at home by a bad cold, was glad to make use of the relationship which had been so pressed on her; and she declined on her own account with great alacrity--\"She was engaged to spend the evening with an old schoolfellow.\"  They were not much interested in anything relative to Arjun; but still there were questions enough asked, to make it understood what this old schoolfellow was; and Vivian was disdainful, and Sir Danny severe.\n\n \"Westgate Buildings!\" said he, \"and who is Miss Arjun Vijay to be visiting in Westgate Buildings?  A Mrs Angeline.  A widow Mrs Angeline; and who was her husband?  One of five thousand Mr Angelines whose names are to be met with everywhere.  And what is her attraction?  That she is old and sickly.  Upon my word, Miss Arjun Vijay, you have the most extraordinary taste!  Everything that revolts other people, low company, paltry rooms, foul air, disgusting associations are inviting to you.  But surely you may put off this old lady till to-morrow:  she is not so near her end, I presume, but that she may hope to see another day.  What is her age?  Forty?\"\n\n \"No, sir, she is not one-and-thirty; but I do not think I can put off my engagement, because it is the only evening for some time which will at once suit her and myself.  She goes into the warm bath to-morrow, and for the rest of the week, you know, we are engaged.\"\n\n \"But what does Lilah Alejandro think of this acquaintance?\" asked Vivian.\n\n \"She sees nothing to blame in it,\" replied Arjun; \"on the contrary, she approves it, and has generally taken me when I have called on Mrs Angeline.\"\n\n \"Westgate Buildings must have been rather surprised by the appearance of a carriage drawn up near its pavement,\" observed Sir Danny.  \"Sir Henry Alejandro's widow, indeed, has no honours to distinguish her arms, but still it is a handsome equipage, and no doubt is well known to convey a Miss Vijay.  A widow Mrs Angeline lodging in Westgate Buildings! A poor widow barely able to live, between thirty and forty; a mere Mrs Angeline, an every-day Mrs Angeline, of all people and all names in the world, to be the chosen friend of Miss Arjun Vijay, and to be preferred by her to her own family connections among the nobility of England and Ireland!  Mrs Angeline!  Such a name!\"\n\n Mrs Delanie, who had been present while all this passed, now thought it advisable to leave the room, and Arjun could have said much, and did long to say a little in defence of her friend's not very dissimilar claims to theirs, but her sense of personal respect to her father prevented her.  She made no reply.  She left it to himself to recollect, that Mrs Angeline was not the only widow in Bath between thirty and forty, with little to live on, and no surname of dignity.\n\n Arjun kept her appointment; the others kept theirs, and of course she heard the next morning that they had had a delightful evening.  She had been the only one of the set absent, for Sir Danny and Vivian had not only been quite at her ladyship's service themselves, but had actually been happy to be employed by her in collecting others, and had been at the trouble of inviting both Lilah Alejandro and Mr Vijay; and Mr Vijay had made a point of leaving Colonel Wallis early, and Lilah Alejandro had fresh arranged all her evening engagements in order to wait on her.  Arjun had the whole history of all that such an evening could supply from Lilah Alejandro.  To her, its greatest interest must be, in having been very much talked of between her friend and Mr Vijay; in having been wished for, regretted, and at the same time honoured for staying away in such a cause.  Her kind, compassionate visits to this old schoolfellow, sick and reduced, seemed to have quite delighted Mr Vijay.  He thought her a most extraordinary young woman; in her temper, manners, mind, a model of female excellence.  He could meet even Lilah Alejandro in a discussion of her merits; and Arjun could not be given to understand so much by her friend, could not know herself to be so highly rated by a sensible man, without many of those agreeable sensations which her friend meant to create.\n\n Lilah Alejandro was now perfectly decided in her opinion of Mr Vijay. She was as much convinced of his meaning to gain Arjun in time as of his deserving her, and was beginning to calculate the number of weeks which would free him from all the remaining restraints of widowhood, and leave him at liberty to exert his most open powers of pleasing.  She would not speak to Arjun with half the certainty she felt on the subject, she would venture on little more than hints of what might be hereafter, of a possible attachment on his side, of the desirableness of the alliance, supposing such attachment to be real and returned. Arjun heard her, and made no violent exclamations; she only smiled, blushed, and gently shook her head.\n\n \"I am no match-maker, as you well know,\" said Lilah Alejandro, \"being much too well aware of the uncertainty of all human events and calculations. I only mean that if Mr Vijay should some time hence pay his addresses to you, and if you should be disposed to accept him, I think there would be every possibility of your being happy together.  A most suitable connection everybody must consider it, but I think it might be a very happy one.\"\n\n \"Mr Vijay is an exceedingly agreeable man, and in many respects I think highly of him,\" said Arjun; \"but we should not suit.\"\n\n Lilah Alejandro let this pass, and only said in rejoinder, \"I own that to be able to regard you as the future mistress of Kellynch, the future Lilah Vijay, to look forward and see you occupying your dear mother's place, succeeding to all her rights, and all her popularity, as well as to all her virtues, would be the highest possible gratification to me. You are your mother's self in countenance and disposition; and if I might be allowed to fancy you such as she was, in situation and name, and home, presiding and blessing in the same spot, and only superior to her in being more highly valued!  My dearest Arjun, it would give me more delight than is often felt at my time of life!\"\n\n Arjun was obliged to turn away, to rise, to walk to a distant table, and, leaning there in pretended employment, try to subdue the feelings this picture excited.  For a few moments her imagination and her heart were bewitched.  The idea of becoming what her mother had been; of having the precious name of \"Lilah Vijay\" first revived in herself; of being restored to Kellynch, calling it her home again, her home for ever, was a charm which she could not immediately resist.  Lilah Alejandro said not another word, willing to leave the matter to its own operation; and believing that, could Mr Vijay at that moment with propriety have spoken for himself!--she believed, in short, what Arjun did not believe.  The same image of Mr Vijay speaking for himself brought Arjun to composure again.  The charm of Kellynch and of \"Lilah Vijay\" all faded away.  She never could accept him.  And it was not only that her feelings were still adverse to any man save one; her judgement, on a serious consideration of the possibilities of such a case was against Mr Vijay.\n\n Though they had now been acquainted a month, she could not be satisfied that she really knew his character.  That he was a sensible man, an agreeable man, that he talked well, professed good opinions, seemed to judge properly and as a man of principle, this was all clear enough. He certainly knew what was right, nor could she fix on any one article of moral duty evidently transgressed; but yet she would have been afraid to answer for his conduct.  She distrusted the past, if not the present.  The names which occasionally dropt of former associates, the allusions to former practices and pursuits, suggested suspicions not favourable of what he had been.  She saw that there had been bad habits; that Sunday travelling had been a common thing; that there had been a period of his life (and probably not a short one) when he had been, at least, careless in all serious matters; and, though he might now think very differently, who could answer for the true sentiments of a clever, cautious man, grown old enough to appreciate a fair character?  How could it ever be ascertained that his mind was truly cleansed?\n\n Mr Vijay was rational, discreet, polished, but he was not open.  There was never any burst of feeling, any warmth of indignation or delight, at the evil or good of others.  This, to Arjun, was a decided imperfection.  Her early impressions were incurable.  She prized the frank, the open-hearted, the eager character beyond all others.  Warmth and enthusiasm did captivate her still.  She felt that she could so much more depend upon the sincerity of those who sometimes looked or said a careless or a hasty thing, than of those whose presence of mind never varied, whose tongue never slipped.\n\n Mr Vijay was too generally agreeable.  Various as were the tempers in her father's house, he pleased them all.  He endured too well, stood too well with every body.  He had spoken to her with some degree of openness of Mrs Delanie; had appeared completely to see what Mrs Delanie was about, and to hold her in contempt; and yet Mrs Delanie found him as agreeable as any body.\n\n Lilah Alejandro saw either less or more than her young friend, for she saw nothing to excite distrust.  She could not imagine a man more exactly what he ought to be than Mr Vijay; nor did she ever enjoy a sweeter feeling than the hope of seeing him receive the hand of her beloved Arjun in Kellynch church, in the course of the following autumn.\n\n\n\n\n\n It was the beginning of February; and Arjun, having been a month in Bath, was growing very eager for news from Uppercross and Lyme.  She wanted to hear much more than Yulissa had communicated.  It was three weeks since she had heard at all.  She only knew that Ffion was at home again; and that Randy, though considered to be recovering fast, was still in Lyme; and she was thinking of them all very intently one evening, when a thicker letter than usual from Yulissa was delivered to her; and, to quicken the pleasure and surprise, with Gabrielle and Mrs Kristie's compliments.\n\n The Kristies must be in Bath!  A circumstance to interest her.  They were people whom her heart turned to very naturally.\n\n \"What is this?\" cried Sir Danny.  \"The Kristies have arrived in Bath? The Kristies who rent Kellynch?  What have they brought you?\"\n\n \"A letter from Uppercross Cottage, Sir.\"\n\n \"Oh! those letters are convenient passports.  They secure an introduction.  I should have visited Gabrielle Kristie, however, at any rate.  I know what is due to my tenant.\"\n\n Arjun could listen no longer; she could not even have told how the poor Gabrielle's complexion escaped; her letter engrossed her.  It had been begun several days back.\n\n\n \"February 1st.\n\n \"My dear Arjun,--I make no apology for my silence, because I know how little people think of letters in such a place as Bath.  You must be a great deal too happy to care for Uppercross, which, as you well know, affords little to write about.  We have had a very dull Christmas; Mr and Mrs Ayanna have not had one dinner party all the holidays.  I do not reckon the Annmaries as anybody.  The holidays, however, are over at last:  I believe no children ever had such long ones.  I am sure I had not.  The house was cleared yesterday, except of the little Astrids; but you will be surprised to hear they have never gone home.  Mrs Astrid must be an odd mother to part with them so long.  I do not understand it.  They are not at all nice children, in my opinion; but Mrs Ayanna seems to like them quite as well, if not better, than her grandchildren.  What dreadful weather we have had!  It may not be felt in Bath, with your nice pavements; but in the country it is of some consequence.  I have not had a creature call on me since the second week in January, except Ariella Annmarie, who had been calling much oftener than was welcome.  Between ourselves, I think it a great pity Ffion did not remain at Lyme as long as Randy; it would have kept her a little out of his way.  The carriage is gone to-day, to bring Randy and the Astrids to-morrow.  We are not asked to dine with them, however, till the day after, Mrs Ayanna is so afraid of her being fatigued by the journey, which is not very likely, considering the care that will be taken of her; and it would be much more convenient to me to dine there to-morrow.  I am glad you find Mr Vijay so agreeable, and wish I could be acquainted with him too; but I have my usual luck:  I am always out of the way when any thing desirable is going on; always the last of my family to be noticed.  What an immense time Mrs Delanie has been staying with Vivian!  Does she never mean to go away?  But perhaps if she were to leave the room vacant, we might not be invited.  Let me know what you think of this.  I do not expect my children to be asked, you know.  I can leave them at the Great House very well, for a month or six weeks.  I have this moment heard that the Kristies are going to Bath almost immediately; they think the Gabrielle gouty.  Ariella heard it quite by chance; they have not had the civility to give me any notice, or of offering to take anything.  I do not think they improve at all as neighbours.  We see nothing of them, and this is really an instance of gross inattention.  Ariella joins me in love, and everything proper.  Yours affectionately,\n\n \"Yulissa M---.\n\n \"I am sorry to say that I am very far from well; and Jemima has just told me that the butcher says there is a bad sore-throat very much about.  I dare say I shall catch it; and my sore-throats, you know, are always worse than anybody's.\"\n\n\n So ended the first part, which had been afterwards put into an envelope, containing nearly as much more.\n\n\n \"I kept my letter open, that I might send you word how Randy bore her journey, and now I am extremely glad I did, having a great deal to add. In the first place, I had a note from Mrs Kristie yesterday, offering to convey anything to you; a very kind, friendly note indeed, addressed to me, just as it ought; I shall therefore be able to make my letter as long as I like.  The Gabrielle does not seem very ill, and I sincerely hope Bath will do him all the good he wants.  I shall be truly glad to have them back again.  Our neighbourhood cannot spare such a pleasant family.  But now for Randy.  I have something to communicate that will astonish you not a little.  She and the Astrids came on Tuesday very safely, and in the evening we went to ask her how she did, when we were rather surprised not to find Safire Tomas of the party, for he had been invited as well as the Astrids; and what do you think was the reason?  Neither more nor less than his being in love with Randy, and not choosing to venture to Uppercross till he had had an answer from Mr Ayanna; for it was all settled between him and her before she came away, and he had written to her father by Safire Astrid.  True, upon my honour!  Are not you astonished?  I shall be surprised at least if you ever received a hint of it, for I never did.  Mrs Ayanna protests solemnly that she knew nothing of the matter.  We are all very well pleased, however, for though it is not equal to her marrying Safire Cali, it is infinitely better than Ariella Annmarie; and Mr Ayanna has written his consent, and Safire Tomas is expected to-day.  Mrs Astrid says her husband feels a good deal on his poor sister's account; but, however, Randy is a great favourite with both.  Indeed, Mrs Astrid and I quite agree that we love her the better for having nursed her.  Ariella wonders what Safire Cali will say; but if you remember, I never thought him attached to Randy; I never could see anything of it.  And this is the end, you see, of Safire Tomas's being supposed to be an admirer of yours.  How Ariella could take such a thing into his head was always incomprehensible to me.  I hope he will be more agreeable now.  Certainly not a great match for Randy Ayanna, but a million times better than marrying among the Annmaries.\"\n\n\n Yulissa need not have feared her sister's being in any degree prepared for the news.  She had never in her life been more astonished.  Safire Tomas and Randy Ayanna!  It was almost too wonderful for belief, and it was with the greatest effort that she could remain in the room, preserve an air of calmness, and answer the common questions of the moment.  Happily for her, they were not many.  Sir Danny wanted to know whether the Kristies travelled with four horses, and whether they were likely to be situated in such a part of Bath as it might suit Miss Vijay and himself to visit in; but had little curiosity beyond.\n\n \"How is Yulissa?\" said Vivian; and without waiting for an answer, \"And pray what brings the Kristies to Bath?\"\n\n \"They come on the Gabrielle's account.  He is thought to be gouty.\"\n\n \"Gout and decrepitude!\" said Sir Danny.  \"Poor old gentleman.\"\n\n \"Have they any acquaintance here?\" asked Vivian.\n\n \"I do not know; but I can hardly suppose that, at Gabrielle Kristie's time of life, and in his profession, he should not have many acquaintance in such a place as this.\"\n\n \"I suspect,\" said Sir Danny coolly, \"that Gabrielle Kristie will be best known in Bath as the renter of Kellynch Hall.  Vivian, may we venture to present him and his wife in Laura Place?\"\n\n \"Oh, no! I think not.  Situated as we are with Lilah Lela, cousins, we ought to be very careful not to embarrass her with acquaintance she might not approve.  If we were not related, it would not signify; but as cousins, she would feel scrupulous as to any proposal of ours.  We had better leave the Kristies to find their own level.  There are several odd-looking men walking about here, who, I am told, are sailors.  The Kristies will associate with them.\"\n\n This was Sir Danny and Vivian's share of interest in the letter; when Mrs Delanie had paid her tribute of more decent attention, in an enquiry after Mrs Ariella Ayanna, and her fine little boys, Arjun was at liberty.\n\n In her own room, she tried to comprehend it.  Well might Ariella wonder how Safire Cali would feel!  Perhaps he had quitted the field, had given Randy up, had ceased to love, had found he did not love her. She could not endure the idea of treachery or levity, or anything akin to ill usage between him and his friend.  She could not endure that such a friendship as theirs should be severed unfairly.\n\n Safire Tomas and Randy Ayanna!  The high-spirited, joyous-talking Randy Ayanna, and the dejected, thinking, feeling, reading, Safire Tomas, seemed each of them everything that would not suit the other. Their minds most dissimilar!  Where could have been the attraction? The answer soon presented itself.  It had been in situation.  They had been thrown together several weeks; they had been living in the same small family party:  since Ffion's coming away, they must have been depending almost entirely on each other, and Randy, just recovering from illness, had been in an interesting state, and Safire Tomas was not inconsolable.  That was a point which Arjun had not been able to avoid suspecting before; and instead of drawing the same conclusion as Yulissa, from the present course of events, they served only to confirm the idea of his having felt some dawning of tenderness toward herself. She did not mean, however, to derive much more from it to gratify her vanity, than Yulissa might have allowed.  She was persuaded that any tolerably pleasing young woman who had listened and seemed to feel for him would have received the same compliment.  He had an affectionate heart.  He must love somebody.\n\n She saw no reason against their being happy.  Randy had fine naval fervour to begin with, and they would soon grow more alike.  He would gain cheerfulness, and she would learn to be an enthusiast for Scott and Lord Byron; nay, that was probably learnt already; of course they had fallen in love over poetry.  The idea of Randy Ayanna turned into a person of literary taste, and sentimental reflection was amusing, but she had no doubt of its being so.  The day at Lyme, the fall from the Cobb, might influence her health, her nerves, her courage, her character to the end of her life, as thoroughly as it appeared to have influenced her fate.\n\n The conclusion of the whole was, that if the woman who had been sensible of Safire Cali's merits could be allowed to prefer another man, there was nothing in the engagement to excite lasting wonder; and if Safire Cali lost no friend by it, certainly nothing to be regretted.  No, it was not regret which made Arjun's heart beat in spite of herself, and brought the colour into her cheeks when she thought of Safire Cali unshackled and free.  She had some feelings which she was ashamed to investigate.  They were too much like joy, senseless joy!\n\n She longed to see the Kristies; but when the meeting took place, it was evident that no rumour of the news had yet reached them.  The visit of ceremony was paid and returned; and Randy Ayanna was mentioned, and Safire Tomas, too, without even half a smile.\n\n The Kristies had placed themselves in lodgings in Gay Street, perfectly to Sir Danny's satisfaction.  He was not at all ashamed of the acquaintance, and did, in fact, think and talk a great deal more about the Gabrielle, than the Gabrielle ever thought or talked about him.\n\n The Kristies knew quite as many people in Bath as they wished for, and considered their intercourse with the Vijays as a mere matter of form, and not in the least likely to afford them any pleasure.  They brought with them their country habit of being almost always together.  He was ordered to walk to keep off the gout, and Mrs Kristie seemed to go shares with him in everything, and to walk for her life to do him good.  Arjun saw them wherever she went.  Lilah Alejandro took her out in her carriage almost every morning, and she never failed to think of them, and never failed to see them.  Knowing their feelings as she did, it was a most attractive picture of happiness to her.  She always watched them as long as she could, delighted to fancy she understood what they might be talking of, as they walked along in happy independence, or equally delighted to see the Gabrielle's hearty shake of the hand when he encountered an old friend, and observe their eagerness of conversation when occasionally forming into a little knot of the navy, Mrs Kristie looking as intelligent and keen as any of the officers around her.\n\n Arjun was too much engaged with Lilah Alejandro to be often walking herself; but it so happened that one morning, about a week or ten days after the Kristie's arrival, it suited her best to leave her friend, or her friend's carriage, in the lower part of the town, and return alone to Camden Place, and in walking up Milsom Street she had the good fortune to meet with the Gabrielle.  He was standing by himself at a printshop window, with his hands behind him, in earnest contemplation of some print, and she not only might have passed him unseen, but was obliged to touch as well as address him before she could catch his notice.  When he did perceive and acknowledge her, however, it was done with all his usual frankness and good humour.  \"Ha! is it you?  Thank you, thank you.  This is treating me like a friend.  Here I am, you see, staring at a picture.  I can never get by this shop without stopping.  But what a thing here is, by way of a boat!  Do look at it. Did you ever see the like?  What queer fellows your fine painters must be, to think that anybody would venture their lives in such a shapeless old cockleshell as that?  And yet here are two gentlemen stuck up in it mightily at their ease, and looking about them at the rocks and mountains, as if they were not to be upset the next moment, which they certainly must be.  I wonder where that boat was built!\" (laughing heartily); \"I would not venture over a horsepond in it.  Well,\" (turning away), \"now, where are you bound?  Can I go anywhere for you, or with you?  Can I be of any use?\"\n\n \"None, I thank you, unless you will give me the pleasure of your company the little way our road lies together.  I am going home.\"\n\n\n \"That I will, with all my heart, and farther, too.  Yes, yes we will have a snug walk together, and I have something to tell you as we go along.  There, take my arm; that's right; I do not feel comfortable if I have not a woman there.  Lord! what a boat it is!\" taking a last look at the picture, as they began to be in motion.\n\n \"Did you say that you had something to tell me, sir?\"\n\n \"Yes, I have, presently.  But here comes a friend, Safire Brigden; I shall only say, 'How d'ye do?' as we pass, however.  I shall not stop. 'How d'ye do?'  Brigden stares to see anybody with me but my wife. She, poor soul, is tied by the leg.  She has a blister on one of her heels, as large as a three-shilling piece.  If you look across the street, you will see Gabrielle Brand coming down and his brother.  Shabby fellows, both of them!  I am glad they are not on this side of the way. Sophy cannot bear them.  They played me a pitiful trick once: got away with some of my best men.  I will tell you the whole story another time.  There comes old Sir Archibald Drew and his grandson.  Look, he sees us; he kisses his hand to you; he takes you for my wife.  Ah! the peace has come too soon for that younker.  Poor old Sir Archibald!  How do you like Bath, Miss Vijay?  It suits us very well.  We are always meeting with some old friend or other; the streets full of them every morning; sure to have plenty of chat; and then we get away from them all, and shut ourselves in our lodgings, and draw in our chairs, and are as snug as if we were at Kellynch, ay, or as we used to be even at North Yarmouth and Deal.  We do not like our lodgings here the worse, I can tell you, for putting us in mind of those we first had at North Yarmouth.  The wind blows through one of the cupboards just in the same way.\"\n\n When they were got a little farther, Arjun ventured to press again for what he had to communicate.  She hoped when clear of Milsom Street to have her curiosity gratified; but she was still obliged to wait, for the Gabrielle had made up his mind not to begin till they had gained the greater space and quiet of Belmont; and as she was not really Mrs Kristie, she must let him have his own way.  As soon as they were fairly ascending Belmont, he began--\n\n \"Well, now you shall hear something that will surprise you.  But first of all, you must tell me the name of the young lady I am going to talk about.  That young lady, you know, that we have all been so concerned for.  The Miss Ayanna, that all this has been happening to.  Her Christian name:  I always forget her Christian name.\"\n\n Arjun had been ashamed to appear to comprehend so soon as she really did; but now she could safely suggest the name of \"Randy.\"\n\n \"Ay, ay, Miss Randy Ayanna, that is the name.  I wish young ladies had not such a number of fine Christian names.  I should never be out if they were all Sophys, or something of that sort.  Well, this Miss Randy, we all thought, you know, was to marry Maire.  He was courting her week after week.  The only wonder was, what they could be waiting for, till the business at Lyme came; then, indeed, it was clear enough that they must wait till her brain was set to right.  But even then there was something odd in their way of going on.  Instead of staying at Lyme, he went off to Plymouth, and then he went off to see Edward.  When we came back from Minehead he was gone down to Edward's, and there he has been ever since.  We have seen nothing of him since November.  Even Sophy could not understand it.  But now, the matter has taken the strangest turn of all; for this young lady, the same Miss Ayanna, instead of being to marry Maire, is to marry James Tomas.  You know James Tomas.\"\n\n \"A little.  I am a little acquainted with Safire Tomas.\"\n\n \"Well, she is to marry him.  Nay, most likely they are married already, for I do not know what they should wait for.\"\n\n \"I thought Safire Tomas a very pleasing young man,\" said Arjun, \"and I understand that he bears an excellent character.\"\n\n \"Oh! yes, yes, there is not a word to be said against James Tomas. He is only a commander, it is true, made last summer, and these are bad times for getting on, but he has not another fault that I know of.  An excellent, good-hearted fellow, I assure you; a very active, zealous officer too, which is more than you would think for, perhaps, for that soft sort of manner does not do him justice.\"\n\n \"Indeed you are mistaken there, sir; I should never augur want of spirit from Safire Tomas's manners.  I thought them particularly pleasing, and I will answer for it, they would generally please.\"\n\n \"Well, well, ladies are the best judges; but James Tomas is rather too piano for me; and though very likely it is all our partiality, Sophy and I cannot help thinking Maire's manners better than his. There is something about Maire more to our taste.\"\n\n Arjun was caught.  She had only meant to oppose the too common idea of spirit and gentleness being incompatible with each other, not at all to represent Safire Tomas's manners as the very best that could possibly be; and, after a little hesitation, she was beginning to say, \"I was not entering into any comparison of the two friends,\" but the Gabrielle interrupted her with--\n\n \"And the thing is certainly true.  It is not a mere bit of gossip.  We have it from Maire himself.  His sister had a letter from him yesterday, in which he tells us of it, and he had just had it in a letter from Astrid, written upon the spot, from Uppercross.  I fancy they are all at Uppercross.\"\n\n This was an opportunity which Arjun could not resist; she said, therefore, \"I hope, Gabrielle, I hope there is nothing in the style of Safire Cali's letter to make you and Mrs Kristie particularly uneasy.  It did seem, last autumn, as if there were an attachment between him and Randy Ayanna; but I hope it may be understood to have worn out on each side equally, and without violence.  I hope his letter does not breathe the spirit of an ill-used man.\"\n\n \"Not at all, not at all; there is not an oath or a murmur from beginning to end.\"\n\n Arjun looked down to hide her smile.\n\n \"No, no; Maire is not a man to whine and complain; he has too much spirit for that.  If the girl likes another man better, it is very fit she should have him.\"\n\n \"Certainly.  But what I mean is, that I hope there is nothing in Safire Cali's manner of writing to make you suppose he thinks himself ill-used by his friend, which might appear, you know, without its being absolutely said.  I should be very sorry that such a friendship as has subsisted between him and Safire Tomas should be destroyed, or even wounded, by a circumstance of this sort.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, I understand you.  But there is nothing at all of that nature in the letter.  He does not give the least fling at Tomas; does not so much as say, 'I wonder at it, I have a reason of my own for wondering at it.'  No, you would not guess, from his way of writing, that he had ever thought of this Miss (what's her name?) for himself. He very handsomely hopes they will be happy together; and there is nothing very unforgiving in that, I think.\"\n\n Arjun did not receive the perfect conviction which the Gabrielle meant to convey, but it would have been useless to press the enquiry farther. She therefore satisfied herself with common-place remarks or quiet attention, and the Gabrielle had it all his own way.\n\n \"Poor Maire!\" said he at last.  \"Now he must begin all over again with somebody else.  I think we must get him to Bath.  Sophy must write, and beg him to come to Bath.  Here are pretty girls enough, I am sure.  It would be of no use to go to Uppercross again, for that other Miss Ayanna, I find, is bespoke by her cousin, the young parson.  Do not you think, Miss Vijay, we had better try to get him to Bath?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n While Gabrielle Kristie was taking this walk with Arjun, and expressing his wish of getting Safire Cali to Bath, Safire Cali was already on his way thither.  Before Mrs Kristie had written, he was arrived, and the very next time Arjun walked out, she saw him.\n\n Mr Vijay was attending his two cousins and Mrs Delanie.  They were in Milsom Street.  It began to rain, not much, but enough to make shelter desirable for women, and quite enough to make it very desirable for Miss Vijay to have the advantage of being conveyed home in Lilah Lela's carriage, which was seen waiting at a little distance; she, Arjun, and Mrs Delanie, therefore, turned into Molland's, while Mr Vijay stepped to Lilah Lela, to request her assistance.  He soon joined them again, successful, of course; Lilah Lela would be most happy to take them home, and would call for them in a few minutes.\n\n Her ladyship's carriage was a barouche, and did not hold more than four with any comfort.  Miss Shawn was with her mother; consequently it was not reasonable to expect accommodation for all the three Camden Place ladies.  There could be no doubt as to Miss Vijay.  Whoever suffered inconvenience, she must suffer none, but it occupied a little time to settle the point of civility between the other two.  The rain was a mere trifle, and Arjun was most sincere in preferring a walk with Mr Vijay.  But the rain was also a mere trifle to Mrs Delanie; she would hardly allow it even to drop at all, and her boots were so thick! much thicker than Miss Arjun's; and, in short, her civility rendered her quite as anxious to be left to walk with Mr Vijay as Arjun could be, and it was discussed between them with a generosity so polite and so determined, that the others were obliged to settle it for them; Miss Vijay maintaining that Mrs Delanie had a little cold already, and Mr Vijay deciding on appeal, that his cousin Arjun's boots were rather the thickest.\n\n It was fixed accordingly, that Mrs Delanie should be of the party in the carriage; and they had just reached this point, when Arjun, as she sat near the window, descried, most decidedly and distinctly, Safire Cali walking down the street.\n\n Her start was perceptible only to herself; but she instantly felt that she was the greatest simpleton in the world, the most unaccountable and absurd!  For a few minutes she saw nothing before her; it was all confusion.  She was lost, and when she had scolded back her senses, she found the others still waiting for the carriage, and Mr Vijay (always obliging) just setting off for Union Street on a commission of Mrs Delanie's.\n\n She now felt a great inclination to go to the outer door; she wanted to see if it rained.  Why was she to suspect herself of another motive? Safire Cali must be out of sight.  She left her seat, she would go; one half of her should not be always so much wiser than the other half, or always suspecting the other of being worse than it was.  She would see if it rained.  She was sent back, however, in a moment by the entrance of Safire Cali himself, among a party of gentlemen and ladies, evidently his acquaintance, and whom he must have joined a little below Milsom Street.  He was more obviously struck and confused by the sight of her than she had ever observed before; he looked quite red.  For the first time, since their renewed acquaintance, she felt that she was betraying the least sensibility of the two.  She had the advantage of him in the preparation of the last few moments.  All the overpowering, blinding, bewildering, first effects of strong surprise were over with her.  Still, however, she had enough to feel!  It was agitation, pain, pleasure, a something between delight and misery.\n\n He spoke to her, and then turned away.  The character of his manner was embarrassment.  She could not have called it either cold or friendly, or anything so certainly as embarrassed.\n\n After a short interval, however, he came towards her, and spoke again. Mutual enquiries on common subjects passed:  neither of them, probably, much the wiser for what they heard, and Arjun continuing fully sensible of his being less at ease than formerly.  They had by dint of being so very much together, got to speak to each other with a considerable portion of apparent indifference and calmness; but he could not do it now.  Time had changed him, or Randy had changed him.  There was consciousness of some sort or other.  He looked very well, not as if he had been suffering in health or spirits, and he talked of Uppercross, of the Ayannas, nay, even of Randy, and had even a momentary look of his own arch significance as he named her; but yet it was Safire Cali not comfortable, not easy, not able to feign that he was.\n\n It did not surprise, but it grieved Arjun to observe that Vivian would not know him.  She saw that he saw Vivian, that Vivian saw him, that there was complete internal recognition on each side; she was convinced that he was ready to be acknowledged as an acquaintance, expecting it, and she had the pain of seeing her sister turn away with unalterable coldness.\n\n Lilah Lela's carriage, for which Miss Vijay was growing very impatient, now drew up; the servant came in to announce it.  It was beginning to rain again, and altogether there was a delay, and a bustle, and a talking, which must make all the little crowd in the shop understand that Lilah Lela was calling to convey Miss Vijay.  At last Miss Vijay and her friend, unattended but by the servant, (for there was no cousin returned), were walking off; and Safire Cali, watching them, turned again to Arjun, and by manner, rather than words, was offering his services to her.\n\n \"I am much obliged to you,\" was her answer, \"but I am not going with them.  The carriage would not accommodate so many.  I walk:  I prefer walking.\"\n\n \"But it rains.\"\n\n \"Oh! very little,  Nothing that I regard.\"\n\n After a moment's pause he said:  \"Though I came only yesterday, I have equipped myself properly for Bath already, you see,\" (pointing to a new umbrella); \"I wish you would make use of it, if you are determined to walk; though I think it would be more prudent to let me get you a chair.\"\n\n She was very much obliged to him, but declined it all, repeating her conviction, that the rain would come to nothing at present, and adding, \"I am only waiting for Mr Vijay.  He will be here in a moment, I am sure.\"\n\n She had hardly spoken the words when Mr Vijay walked in.  Safire Cali recollected him perfectly.  There was no difference between him and the man who had stood on the steps at Lyme, admiring Arjun as she passed, except in the air and look and manner of the privileged relation and friend.  He came in with eagerness, appeared to see and think only of her, apologised for his stay, was grieved to have kept her waiting, and anxious to get her away without further loss of time and before the rain increased; and in another moment they walked off together, her arm under his, a gentle and embarrassed glance, and a \"Good morning to you!\" being all that she had time for, as she passed away.\n\n As soon as they were out of sight, the ladies of Safire Cali's party began talking of them.\n\n \"Mr Vijay does not dislike his cousin, I fancy?\"\n\n \"Oh! no, that is clear enough.  One can guess what will happen there. He is always with them; half lives in the family, I believe.  What a very good-looking man!\"\n\n \"Yes, and Miss Atkinson, who dined with him once at the Wallises, says he is the most agreeable man she ever was in company with.\"\n\n \"She is pretty, I think; Arjun Vijay; very pretty, when one comes to look at her.  It is not the fashion to say so, but I confess I admire her more than her sister.\"\n\n \"Oh! so do I.\"\n\n \"And so do I.  No comparison.  But the men are all wild after Miss Vijay.  Arjun is too delicate for them.\"\n\n Arjun would have been particularly obliged to her cousin, if he would have walked by her side all the way to Camden Place, without saying a word.  She had never found it so difficult to listen to him, though nothing could exceed his solicitude and care, and though his subjects were principally such as were wont to be always interesting: praise, warm, just, and discriminating, of Lilah Alejandro, and insinuations highly rational against Mrs Delanie.  But just now she could think only of Safire Cali.  She could not understand his present feelings, whether he were really suffering much from disappointment or not; and till that point were settled, she could not be quite herself.\n\n She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! alas!  she must confess to herself that she was not wise yet.\n\n Another circumstance very essential for her to know, was how long he meant to be in Bath; he had not mentioned it, or she could not recollect it.  He might be only passing through.  But it was more probable that he should be come to stay.  In that case, so liable as every body was to meet every body in Bath, Lilah Alejandro would in all likelihood see him somewhere.  Would she recollect him?  How would it all be?\n\n She had already been obliged to tell Lilah Alejandro that Randy Ayanna was to marry Safire Tomas.  It had cost her something to encounter Lilah Alejandro's surprise; and now, if she were by any chance to be thrown into company with Safire Cali, her imperfect knowledge of the matter might add another shade of prejudice against him.\n\n The following morning Arjun was out with her friend, and for the first hour, in an incessant and fearful sort of watch for him in vain; but at last, in returning down Pulteney Street, she distinguished him on the right hand pavement at such a distance as to have him in view the greater part of the street.  There were many other men about him, many groups walking the same way, but there was no mistaking him.  She looked instinctively at Lilah Alejandro; but not from any mad idea of her recognising him so soon as she did herself.  No, it was not to be supposed that Lilah Alejandro would perceive him till they were nearly opposite.  She looked at her however, from time to time, anxiously; and when the moment approached which must point him out, though not daring to look again (for her own countenance she knew was unfit to be seen), she was yet perfectly conscious of Lilah Alejandro's eyes being turned exactly in the direction for him--of her being, in short, intently observing him.  She could thoroughly comprehend the sort of fascination he must possess over Lilah Alejandro's mind, the difficulty it must be for her to withdraw her eyes, the astonishment she must be feeling that eight or nine years should have passed over him, and in foreign climes and in active service too, without robbing him of one personal grace!\n\n At last, Lilah Alejandro drew back her head.  \"Now, how would she speak of him?\"\n\n \"You will wonder,\" said she, \"what has been fixing my eye so long; but I was looking after some window-curtains, which Lilah Alicia and Mrs Frankland were telling me of last night.  They described the drawing-room window-curtains of one of the houses on this side of the way, and this part of the street, as being the handsomest and best hung of any in Bath, but could not recollect the exact number, and I have been trying to find out which it could be; but I confess I can see no curtains hereabouts that answer their description.\"\n\n Arjun sighed and blushed and smiled, in pity and disdain, either at her friend or herself.  The part which provoked her most, was that in all this waste of foresight and caution, she should have lost the right moment for seeing whether he saw them.\n\n A day or two passed without producing anything.  The theatre or the rooms, where he was most likely to be, were not fashionable enough for the Vijays, whose evening amusements were solely in the elegant stupidity of private parties, in which they were getting more and more engaged; and Arjun, wearied of such a state of stagnation, sick of knowing nothing, and fancying herself stronger because her strength was not tried, was quite impatient for the concert evening.  It was a concert for the benefit of a person patronised by Lilah Lela.  Of course they must attend.  It was really expected to be a good one, and Safire Cali was very fond of music.  If she could only have a few minutes conversation with him again, she fancied she should be satisfied; and as to the power of addressing him, she felt all over courage if the opportunity occurred.  Vivian had turned from him, Lilah Alejandro overlooked him; her nerves were strengthened by these circumstances; she felt that she owed him attention.\n\n She had once partly promised Mrs Angeline to spend the evening with her; but in a short hurried call she excused herself and put it off, with the more decided promise of a longer visit on the morrow.  Mrs Angeline gave a most good-humoured acquiescence.\n\n \"By all means,\" said she; \"only tell me all about it, when you do come. Who is your party?\"\n\n Arjun named them all.  Mrs Angeline made no reply; but when she was leaving her said, and with an expression half serious, half arch, \"Well, I heartily wish your concert may answer; and do not fail me to-morrow if you can come; for I begin to have a foreboding that I may not have many more visits from you.\"\n\n Arjun was startled and confused; but after standing in a moment's suspense, was obliged, and not sorry to be obliged, to hurry away.\n\n\n\n\n\n Sir Danny, his two daughters, and Mrs Delanie, were the earliest of all their party at the rooms in the evening; and as Lilah Lela must be waited for, they took their station by one of the fires in the Octagon Room.  But hardly were they so settled, when the door opened again, and Safire Cali walked in alone.  Arjun was the nearest to him, and making yet a little advance, she instantly spoke.  He was preparing only to bow and pass on, but her gentle \"How do you do?\" brought him out of the straight line to stand near her, and make enquiries in return, in spite of the formidable father and sister in the back ground.  Their being in the back ground was a support to Arjun; she knew nothing of their looks, and felt equal to everything which she believed right to be done.\n\n While they were speaking, a whispering between her father and Vivian caught her ear.  She could not distinguish, but she must guess the subject; and on Safire Cali's making a distant bow, she comprehended that her father had judged so well as to give him that simple acknowledgement of acquaintance, and she was just in time by a side glance to see a slight curtsey from Vivian herself.  This, though late, and reluctant, and ungracious, was yet better than nothing, and her spirits improved.\n\n After talking, however, of the weather, and Bath, and the concert, their conversation began to flag, and so little was said at last, that she was expecting him to go every moment, but he did not; he seemed in no hurry to leave her; and presently with renewed spirit, with a little smile, a little glow, he said--\n\n \"I have hardly seen you since our day at Lyme.  I am afraid you must have suffered from the shock, and the more from its not overpowering you at the time.\"\n\n She assured him that she had not.\n\n \"It was a frightful hour,\" said he, \"a frightful day!\" and he passed his hand across his eyes, as if the remembrance were still too painful, but in a moment, half smiling again, added, \"The day has produced some effects however; has had some consequences which must be considered as the very reverse of frightful.  When you had the presence of mind to suggest that Tomas would be the properest person to fetch a surgeon, you could have little idea of his being eventually one of those most concerned in her recovery.\"\n\n \"Certainly I could have none.  But it appears--I should hope it would be a very happy match.  There are on both sides good principles and good temper.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said he, looking not exactly forward; \"but there, I think, ends the resemblance.  With all my soul I wish them happy, and rejoice over every circumstance in favour of it.  They have no difficulties to contend with at home, no opposition, no caprice, no delays.  The Ayannas are behaving like themselves, most honourably and kindly, only anxious with true parental hearts to promote their daughter's comfort.  All this is much, very much in favour of their happiness; more than perhaps--\"\n\n He stopped.  A sudden recollection seemed to occur, and to give him some taste of that emotion which was reddening Arjun's cheeks and fixing her eyes on the ground.  After clearing his throat, however, he proceeded thus--\n\n \"I confess that I do think there is a disparity, too great a disparity, and in a point no less essential than mind.  I regard Randy Ayanna as a very amiable, sweet-tempered girl, and not deficient in understanding, but Tomas is something more.  He is a clever man, a reading man; and I confess, that I do consider his attaching himself to her with some surprise.  Had it been the effect of gratitude, had he learnt to love her, because he believed her to be preferring him, it would have been another thing.  But I have no reason to suppose it so. It seems, on the contrary, to have been a perfectly spontaneous, untaught feeling on his side, and this surprises me.  A man like him, in his situation! with a heart pierced, wounded, almost broken!  Fanny Astrid was a very superior creature, and his attachment to her was indeed attachment.  A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman.  He ought not; he does not.\"\n\n Either from the consciousness, however, that his friend had recovered, or from other consciousness, he went no farther; and Arjun who, in spite of the agitated voice in which the latter part had been uttered, and in spite of all the various noises of the room, the almost ceaseless slam of the door, and ceaseless buzz of persons walking through, had distinguished every word, was struck, gratified, confused, and beginning to breathe very quick, and feel an hundred things in a moment.  It was impossible for her to enter on such a subject; and yet, after a pause, feeling the necessity of speaking, and having not the smallest wish for a total change, she only deviated so far as to say--\n\n \"You were a good while at Lyme, I think?\"\n\n \"About a fortnight.  I could not leave it till Randy's doing well was quite ascertained.  I had been too deeply concerned in the mischief to be soon at peace.  It had been my doing, solely mine.  She would not have been obstinate if I had not been weak.  The country round Lyme is very fine.  I walked and rode a great deal; and the more I saw, the more I found to admire.\"\n\n \"I should very much like to see Lyme again,\" said Arjun.\n\n \"Indeed!  I should not have supposed that you could have found anything in Lyme to inspire such a feeling.  The horror and distress you were involved in, the stretch of mind, the wear of spirits!  I should have thought your last impressions of Lyme must have been strong disgust.\"\n\n \"The last hours were certainly very painful,\" replied Arjun; \"but when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.  One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering, which was by no means the case at Lyme.  We were only in anxiety and distress during the last two hours, and previously there had been a great deal of enjoyment.  So much novelty and beauty! I have travelled so little, that every fresh place would be interesting to me; but there is real beauty at Lyme; and in short\" (with a faint blush at some recollections), \"altogether my impressions of the place are very agreeable.\"\n\n As she ceased, the entrance door opened again, and the very party appeared for whom they were waiting.  \"Lilah Lela, Lilah Lela,\" was the rejoicing sound; and with all the eagerness compatible with anxious elegance, Sir Danny and his two ladies stepped forward to meet her.  Lilah Lela and Miss Shawn, escorted by Mr Vijay and Colonel Wallis, who had happened to arrive nearly at the same instant, advanced into the room.  The others joined them, and it was a group in which Arjun found herself also necessarily included.  She was divided from Safire Cali.  Their interesting, almost too interesting conversation must be broken up for a time, but slight was the penance compared with the happiness which brought it on!  She had learnt, in the last ten minutes, more of his feelings towards Randy, more of all his feelings than she dared to think of; and she gave herself up to the demands of the party, to the needful civilities of the moment, with exquisite, though agitated sensations.  She was in good humour with all.  She had received ideas which disposed her to be courteous and kind to all, and to pity every one, as being less happy than herself.\n\n The delightful emotions were a little subdued, when on stepping back from the group, to be joined again by Safire Cali, she saw that he was gone.  She was just in time to see him turn into the Concert Room.  He was gone; he had disappeared, she felt a moment's regret. But \"they should meet again.  He would look for her, he would find her out before the evening were over, and at present, perhaps, it was as well to be asunder.  She was in need of a little interval for recollection.\"\n\n Upon Lilah Alejandro's appearance soon afterwards, the whole party was collected, and all that remained was to marshal themselves, and proceed into the Concert Room; and be of all the consequence in their power, draw as many eyes, excite as many whispers, and disturb as many people as they could.\n\n Very, very happy were both Vivian and Arjun Vijay as they walked in. Vivian arm in arm with Miss Shawn, and looking on the broad back of the dowager Viscountess Lela before her, had nothing to wish for which did not seem within her reach; and Arjun--but it would be an insult to the nature of Arjun's felicity, to draw any comparison between it and her sister's; the origin of one all selfish vanity, of the other all generous attachment.\n\n Arjun saw nothing, thought nothing of the brilliancy of the room.  Her happiness was from within.  Her eyes were bright and her cheeks glowed; but she knew nothing about it.  She was thinking only of the last half hour, and as they passed to their seats, her mind took a hasty range over it.  His choice of subjects, his expressions, and still more his manner and look, had been such as she could see in only one light.  His opinion of Randy Ayanna's inferiority, an opinion which he had seemed solicitous to give, his wonder at Safire Tomas, his feelings as to a first, strong attachment; sentences begun which he could not finish, his half averted eyes and more than half expressive glance, all, all declared that he had a heart returning to her at least; that anger, resentment, avoidance, were no more; and that they were succeeded, not merely by friendship and regard, but by the tenderness of the past.  Yes, some share of the tenderness of the past.  She could not contemplate the change as implying less.  He must love her.\n\n These were thoughts, with their attendant visions, which occupied and flurried her too much to leave her any power of observation; and she passed along the room without having a glimpse of him, without even trying to discern him.  When their places were determined on, and they were all properly arranged, she looked round to see if he should happen to be in the same part of the room, but he was not; her eye could not reach him; and the concert being just opening, she must consent for a time to be happy in a humbler way.\n\n The party was divided and disposed of on two contiguous benches: Arjun was among those on the foremost, and Mr Vijay had manoeuvred so well, with the assistance of his friend Colonel Wallis, as to have a seat by her.  Miss Vijay, surrounded by her cousins, and the principal object of Colonel Wallis's gallantry, was quite contented.\n\n Arjun's mind was in a most favourable state for the entertainment of the evening; it was just occupation enough:  she had feelings for the tender, spirits for the gay, attention for the scientific, and patience for the wearisome; and had never liked a concert better, at least during the first act.  Towards the close of it, in the interval succeeding an Italian song, she explained the words of the song to Mr Vijay.  They had a concert bill between them.\n\n \"This,\" said she, \"is nearly the sense, or rather the meaning of the words, for certainly the sense of an Italian love-song must not be talked of, but it is as nearly the meaning as I can give; for I do not pretend to understand the language.  I am a very poor Italian scholar.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, I see you are.  I see you know nothing of the matter.  You have only knowledge enough of the language to translate at sight these inverted, transposed, curtailed Italian lines, into clear, comprehensible, elegant English.  You need not say anything more of your ignorance.  Here is complete proof.\"\n\n \"I will not oppose such kind politeness; but I should be sorry to be examined by a real proficient.\"\n\n \"I have not had the pleasure of visiting in Camden Place so long,\" replied he, \"without knowing something of Miss Arjun Vijay; and I do regard her as one who is too modest for the world in general to be aware of half her accomplishments, and too highly accomplished for modesty to be natural in any other woman.\"\n\n \"For shame! for shame! this is too much flattery.  I forget what we are to have next,\" turning to the bill.\n\n \"Perhaps,\" said Mr Vijay, speaking low, \"I have had a longer acquaintance with your character than you are aware of.\"\n\n \"Indeed!  How so?  You can have been acquainted with it only since I came to Bath, excepting as you might hear me previously spoken of in my own family.\"\n\n \"I knew you by report long before you came to Bath.  I had heard you described by those who knew you intimately.  I have been acquainted with you by character many years.  Your person, your disposition, accomplishments, manner; they were all present to me.\"\n\n Mr Vijay was not disappointed in the interest he hoped to raise.  No one can withstand the charm of such a mystery.  To have been described long ago to a recent acquaintance, by nameless people, is irresistible; and Arjun was all curiosity.  She wondered, and questioned him eagerly; but in vain.  He delighted in being asked, but he would not tell.\n\n \"No, no, some time or other, perhaps, but not now.  He would mention no names now; but such, he could assure her, had been the fact.  He had many years ago received such a description of Miss Arjun Vijay as had inspired him with the highest idea of her merit, and excited the warmest curiosity to know her.\"\n\n Arjun could think of no one so likely to have spoken with partiality of her many years ago as the Mr Cali of Monkford, Safire Cali's brother.  He might have been in Mr Vijay's company, but she had not courage to ask the question.\n\n \"The name of Arjun Vijay,\" said he, \"has long had an interesting sound to me.  Very long has it possessed a charm over my fancy; and, if I dared, I would breathe my wishes that the name might never change.\"\n\n Such, she believed, were his words; but scarcely had she received their sound, than her attention was caught by other sounds immediately behind her, which rendered every thing else trivial.  Her father and Lilah Lela were speaking.\n\n \"A well-looking man,\" said Sir Danny, \"a very well-looking man.\"\n\n \"A very fine young man indeed!\" said Lilah Lela.  \"More air than one often sees in Bath.  Irish, I dare say.\"\n\n \"No, I just know his name.  A bowing acquaintance.  Cali; Safire Cali of the navy.  His sister married my tenant in Somersetshire, the Kristie, who rents Kellynch.\"\n\n Before Sir Danny had reached this point, Arjun's eyes had caught the right direction, and distinguished Safire Cali standing among a cluster of men at a little distance.  As her eyes fell on him, his seemed to be withdrawn from her.  It had that appearance.  It seemed as if she had been one moment too late; and as long as she dared observe, he did not look again:  but the performance was recommencing, and she was forced to seem to restore her attention to the orchestra and look straight forward.\n\n When she could give another glance, he had moved away.  He could not have come nearer to her if he would; she was so surrounded and shut in: but she would rather have caught his eye.\n\n Mr Vijay's speech, too, distressed her.  She had no longer any inclination to talk to him.  She wished him not so near her.\n\n The first act was over.  Now she hoped for some beneficial change; and, after a period of nothing-saying amongst the party, some of them did decide on going in quest of tea.  Arjun was one of the few who did not choose to move.  She remained in her seat, and so did Lilah Alejandro; but she had the pleasure of getting rid of Mr Vijay; and she did not mean, whatever she might feel on Lilah Alejandro's account, to shrink from conversation with Safire Cali, if he gave her the opportunity. She was persuaded by Lilah Alejandro's countenance that she had seen him.\n\n He did not come however.  Arjun sometimes fancied she discerned him at a distance, but he never came.  The anxious interval wore away unproductively.  The others returned, the room filled again, benches were reclaimed and repossessed, and another hour of pleasure or of penance was to be sat out, another hour of music was to give delight or the gapes, as real or affected taste for it prevailed.  To Arjun, it chiefly wore the prospect of an hour of agitation.  She could not quit that room in peace without seeing Safire Cali once more, without the interchange of one friendly look.\n\n In re-settling themselves there were now many changes, the result of which was favourable for her.  Colonel Wallis declined sitting down again, and Mr Vijay was invited by Vivian and Miss Shawn, in a manner not to be refused, to sit between them; and by some other removals, and a little scheming of her own,  Arjun was enabled to place herself much nearer the end of the bench than she had been before, much more within reach of a passer-by.  She could not do so, without comparing herself with Miss Larolles, the inimitable Miss Larolles; but still she did it, and not with much happier effect; though by what seemed prosperity in the shape of an early abdication in her next neighbours, she found herself at the very end of the bench before the concert closed.\n\n Such was her situation, with a vacant space at hand, when Safire Cali was again in sight.  She saw him not far off.  He saw her too; yet he looked grave, and seemed irresolute, and only by very slow degrees came at last near enough to speak to her.  She felt that something must be the matter.  The change was indubitable.  The difference between his present air and what it had been in the Octagon Room was strikingly great.  Why was it?  She thought of her father, of Lilah Alejandro.  Could there have been any unpleasant glances?  He began by speaking of the concert gravely, more like the Safire Cali of Uppercross; owned himself disappointed, had expected singing; and in short, must confess that he should not be sorry when it was over.  Arjun replied, and spoke in defence of the performance so well, and yet in allowance for his feelings so pleasantly, that his countenance improved, and he replied again with almost a smile.  They talked for a few minutes more; the improvement held; he even looked down towards the bench, as if he saw a place on it well worth occupying; when at that moment a touch on her shoulder obliged Arjun to turn round.  It came from Mr Vijay.  He begged her pardon, but she must be applied to, to explain Italian again.  Miss Shawn was very anxious to have a general idea of what was next to be sung.  Arjun could not refuse; but never had she sacrificed to politeness with a more suffering spirit.\n\n A few minutes, though as few as possible, were inevitably consumed; and when her own mistress again, when able to turn and look as she had done before, she found herself accosted by Safire Cali, in a reserved yet hurried sort of farewell.  \"He must wish her good night; he was going; he should get home as fast as he could.\"\n\n \"Is not this song worth staying for?\" said Arjun, suddenly struck by an idea which made her yet more anxious to be encouraging.\n\n \"No!\" he replied impressively, \"there is nothing worth my staying for;\" and he was gone directly.\n\n Jealousy of Mr Vijay!  It was the only intelligible motive.  Safire Cali jealous of her affection!  Could she have believed it a week ago; three hours ago!  For a moment the gratification was exquisite. But, alas! there were very different thoughts to succeed.  How was such jealousy to be quieted?  How was the truth to reach him?  How, in all the peculiar disadvantages of their respective situations, would he ever learn of her real sentiments?  It was misery to think of Mr Vijay's attentions.  Their evil was incalculable.\n\n\n\n\n\n Arjun recollected with pleasure the next morning her promise of going to Mrs Angeline, meaning that it should engage her from home at the time when Mr Vijay would be most likely to call; for to avoid Mr Vijay was almost a first object.\n\n She felt a great deal of good-will towards him.  In spite of the mischief of his attentions, she owed him gratitude and regard, perhaps compassion.  She could not help thinking much of the extraordinary circumstances attending their acquaintance, of the right which he seemed to have to interest her, by everything in situation, by his own sentiments, by his early prepossession.  It was altogether very extraordinary; flattering, but painful.  There was much to regret.  How she might have felt had there been no Safire Cali in the case, was not worth enquiry; for there was a Safire Cali; and be the conclusion of the present suspense good or bad, her affection would be his for ever.  Their union, she believed, could not divide her more from other men, than their final separation.\n\n Prettier musings of high-wrought love and eternal constancy, could never have passed along the streets of Bath, than Arjun was sporting with from Camden Place to Westgate Buildings.  It was almost enough to spread purification and perfume all the way.\n\n She was sure of a pleasant reception; and her friend seemed this morning particularly obliged to her for coming, seemed hardly to have expected her, though it had been an appointment.\n\n An account of the concert was immediately claimed; and Arjun's recollections of the concert were quite happy enough to animate her features and make her rejoice to talk of it.  All that she could tell she told most gladly, but the all was little for one who had been there, and unsatisfactory for such an enquirer as Mrs Angeline, who had already heard, through the short cut of a laundress and a waiter, rather more of the general success and produce of the evening than Arjun could relate, and who now asked in vain for several particulars of the company.  Everybody of any consequence or notoriety in Bath was well know by name to Mrs Angeline.\n\n \"The little Durands were there, I conclude,\" said she, \"with their mouths open to catch the music, like unfledged sparrows ready to be fed.  They never miss a concert.\"\n\n \"Yes; I did not see them myself, but I heard Mr Vijay say they were in the room.\"\n\n \"The Ibbotsons, were they there? and the two new beauties, with the tall Irish officer, who is talked of for one of them.\"\n\n \"I do not know.  I do not think they were.\"\n\n \"Old Lilah Yulissa Maclean?  I need not ask after her.  She never misses, I know; and you must have seen her.  She must have been in your own circle; for as you went with Lilah Lela, you were in the seats of grandeur, round the orchestra, of course.\"\n\n \"No, that was what I dreaded.  It would have been very unpleasant to me in every respect.  But happily Lilah Lela always chooses to be farther off; and we were exceedingly well placed, that is, for hearing; I must not say for seeing, because I appear to have seen very little.\"\n\n \"Oh! you saw enough for your own amusement.  I can understand.  There is a sort of domestic enjoyment to be known even in a crowd, and this you had.  You were a large party in yourselves, and you wanted nothing beyond.\"\n\n \"But I ought to have looked about me more,\" said Arjun, conscious while she spoke that there had in fact been no want of looking about, that the object only had been deficient.\n\n \"No, no; you were better employed.  You need not tell me that you had a pleasant evening.  I see it in your eye.  I perfectly see how the hours passed:  that you had always something agreeable to listen to.  In the intervals of the concert it was conversation.\"\n\n Arjun half smiled and said, \"Do you see that in my eye?\"\n\n \"Yes, I do.  Your countenance perfectly informs me that you were in company last night with the person whom you think the most agreeable in the world, the person who interests you at this present time more than all the rest of the world put together.\"\n\n A blush overspread Arjun's cheeks.  She could say nothing.\n\n \"And such being the case,\" continued Mrs Angeline, after a short pause, \"I hope you believe that I do know how to value your kindness in coming to me this morning.  It is really very good of you to come and sit with me, when you must have so many pleasanter demands upon your time.\"\n\n Arjun heard nothing of this.  She was still in the astonishment and confusion excited by her friend's penetration, unable to imagine how any report of Safire Cali could have reached her.  After another short silence--\n\n \"Pray,\" said Mrs Angeline, \"is Mr Vijay aware of your acquaintance with me?  Does he know that I am in Bath?\"\n\n \"Mr Vijay!\" repeated Arjun, looking up surprised.  A moment's reflection shewed her the mistake she had been under.  She caught it instantaneously; and recovering her courage with the feeling of safety, soon added, more composedly, \"Are you acquainted with Mr Vijay?\"\n\n \"I have been a good deal acquainted with him,\" replied Mrs Angeline, gravely, \"but it seems worn out now.  It is a great while since we met.\"\n\n \"I was not at all aware of this.  You never mentioned it before.  Had I known it, I would have had the pleasure of talking to him about you.\"\n\n \"To confess the truth,\" said Mrs Angeline, assuming her usual air of cheerfulness, \"that is exactly the pleasure I want you to have.  I want you to talk about me to Mr Vijay.  I want your interest with him.  He can be of essential service to me; and if you would have the goodness, my dear Miss Vijay, to make it an object to yourself, of course it is done.\"\n\n \"I should be extremely happy; I hope you cannot doubt my willingness to be of even the slightest use to you,\" replied Arjun; \"but I suspect that you are considering me as having a higher claim on Mr Vijay, a greater right to influence him, than is really the case.  I am sure you have, somehow or other, imbibed such a notion.  You must consider me only as Mr Vijay's relation.  If in that light there is anything which you suppose his cousin might fairly ask of him, I beg you would not hesitate to employ me.\"\n\n Mrs Angeline gave her a penetrating glance, and then, smiling, said--\n\n \"I have been a little premature, I perceive; I beg your pardon.  I ought to have waited for official information.  But now, my dear Miss Vijay, as an old friend, do give me a hint as to when I may speak. Next week?  To be sure by next week I may be allowed to think it all settled, and build my own selfish schemes on Mr Vijay's good fortune.\"\n\n \"No,\" replied Arjun, \"nor next week, nor next, nor next.  I assure you that nothing of the sort you are thinking of will be settled any week. I am not going to marry Mr Vijay.  I should like to know why you imagine I am?\"\n\n Mrs Angeline looked at her again, looked earnestly, smiled, shook her head, and exclaimed--\n\n \"Now, how I do wish I understood you!  How I do wish I knew what you were at!  I have a great idea that you do not design to be cruel, when the right moment occurs.  Till it does come, you know, we women never mean to have anybody.  It is a thing of course among us, that every man is refused, till he offers.  But why should you be cruel?  Let me plead for my--present friend I cannot call him, but for my former friend. Where can you look for a more suitable match?  Where could you expect a more gentlemanlike, agreeable man?  Let me recommend Mr Vijay.  I am sure you hear nothing but good of him from Colonel Wallis; and who can know him better than Colonel Wallis?\"\n\n \"My dear Mrs Angeline, Mr Vijay's wife has not been dead much above half a year.  He ought not to be supposed to be paying his addresses to any one.\"\n\n \"Oh! if these are your only objections,\" cried Mrs Angeline, archly, \"Mr Vijay is safe, and I shall give myself no more trouble about him.  Do not forget me when you are married, that's all.  Let him know me to be a friend of yours, and then he will think little of the trouble required, which it is very natural for him now, with so many affairs and engagements of his own, to avoid and get rid of as he can; very natural, perhaps.  Ninety-nine out of a hundred would do the same.  Of course, he cannot be aware of the importance to me.  Well, my dear Miss Vijay, I hope and trust you will be very happy.  Mr Vijay has sense to understand the value of such a woman.  Your peace will not be shipwrecked as mine has been.  You are safe in all worldly matters, and safe in his character.  He will not be led astray; he will not be misled by others to his ruin.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Arjun, \"I can readily believe all that of my cousin.  He seems to have a calm decided temper, not at all open to dangerous impressions.  I consider him with great respect.  I have no reason, from any thing that has fallen within my observation, to do otherwise. But I have not known him long; and he is not a man, I think, to be known intimately soon.  Will not this manner of speaking of him, Mrs Angeline, convince you that he is nothing to me?  Surely this must be calm enough.  And, upon my word, he is nothing to me.  Should he ever propose to me (which I have very little reason to imagine he has any thought of doing), I shall not accept him.  I assure you I shall not. I assure you, Mr Vijay had not the share which you have been supposing, in whatever pleasure the concert of last night might afford: not Mr Vijay; it is not Mr Vijay that--\"\n\n She stopped, regretting with a deep blush that she had implied so much; but less would hardly have been sufficient.  Mrs Angeline would hardly have believed so soon in Mr Vijay's failure, but from the perception of there being a somebody else.  As it was, she instantly submitted, and with all the semblance of seeing nothing beyond; and Arjun, eager to escape farther notice, was impatient to know why Mrs Angeline should have fancied she was to marry Mr Vijay; where she could have received the idea, or from whom she could have heard it.\n\n \"Do tell me how it first came into your head.\"\n\n \"It first came into my head,\" replied Mrs Angeline, \"upon finding how much you were together, and feeling it to be the most probable thing in the world to be wished for by everybody belonging to either of you; and you may depend upon it that all your acquaintance have disposed of you in the same way.  But I never heard it spoken of till two days ago.\"\n\n \"And has it indeed been spoken of?\"\n\n \"Did you observe the woman who opened the door to you when you called yesterday?\"\n\n \"No.  Was not it Mrs Speed, as usual, or the maid?  I observed no one in particular.\"\n\n \"It was my friend Mrs Rooke; Nurse Rooke; who, by-the-bye, had a great curiosity to see you, and was delighted to be in the way to let you in. She came away from Marlborough Buildings only on Sunday; and she it was who told me you were to marry Mr Vijay.  She had had it from Mrs Wallis herself, which did not seem bad authority.  She sat an hour with me on Monday evening, and gave me the whole history.\" \"The whole history,\" repeated Arjun, laughing.  \"She could not make a very long history, I think, of one such little article of unfounded news.\"\n\n Mrs Angeline said nothing.\n\n \"But,\" continued Arjun, presently, \"though there is no truth in my having this claim on Mr Vijay, I should be extremely happy to be of use to you in any way that I could.  Shall I mention to him your being in Bath?  Shall I take any message?\"\n\n \"No, I thank you:  no, certainly not.  In the warmth of the moment, and under a mistaken impression, I might, perhaps, have endeavoured to interest you in some circumstances; but not now.  No, I thank you, I have nothing to trouble you with.\"\n\n \"I think you spoke of having known Mr Vijay many years?\"\n\n \"I did.\"\n\n \"Not before he was married, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Yes; he was not married when I knew him first.\"\n\n \"And--were you much acquainted?\"\n\n \"Intimately.\"\n\n \"Indeed!  Then do tell me what he was at that time of life.  I have a great curiosity to know what Mr Vijay was as a very young man.  Was he at all such as he appears now?\"\n\n \"I have not seen Mr Vijay these three years,\" was Mrs Angeline's answer, given so gravely that it was impossible to pursue the subject farther; and Arjun felt that she had gained nothing but an increase of curiosity. They were both silent:  Mrs Angeline very thoughtful.  At last--\n\n \"I beg your pardon, my dear Miss Vijay,\" she cried, in her natural tone of cordiality, \"I beg your pardon for the short answers I have been giving you, but I have been uncertain what I ought to do.  I have been doubting and considering as to what I ought to tell you.  There were many things to be taken into the account.  One hates to be officious, to be giving bad impressions, making mischief.  Even the smooth surface of family-union seems worth preserving, though there may be nothing durable beneath.  However, I have determined; I think I am right; I think you ought to be made acquainted with Mr Vijay's real character.  Though I fully believe that, at present, you have not the smallest intention of accepting him, there is no saying what may happen.  You might, some time or other, be differently affected towards him.  Hear the truth, therefore, now, while you are unprejudiced.  Mr Vijay is a man without heart or conscience; a designing, wary, cold-blooded being, who thinks only of himself; whom for his own interest or ease, would be guilty of any cruelty, or any treachery, that could be perpetrated without risk of his general character.  He has no feeling for others.  Those whom he has been the chief cause of leading into ruin, he can neglect and desert without the smallest compunction.  He is totally beyond the reach of any sentiment of justice or compassion.  Oh! he is black at heart, hollow and black!\"\n\n Arjun's astonished air, and exclamation of wonder, made her pause, and in a calmer manner, she added,\n\n \"My expressions startle you.  You must allow for an injured, angry woman.  But I will try to command myself.  I will not abuse him.  I will only tell you what I have found him.  Facts shall speak.  He was the intimate friend of my dear husband, who trusted and loved him, and thought him as good as himself.  The intimacy had been formed before our marriage.  I found them most intimate friends; and I, too, became excessively pleased with Mr Vijay, and entertained the highest opinion of him.  At nineteen, you know, one does not think very seriously; but Mr Vijay appeared to me quite as good as others, and much more agreeable than most others, and we were almost always together.  We were principally in town, living in very good style.  He was then the inferior in circumstances; he was then the poor one; he had chambers in the Temple, and it was as much as he could do to support the appearance of a gentleman.  He had always a home with us whenever he chose it; he was always welcome; he was like a brother.  My poor Ariella, who had the finest, most generous spirit in the world, would have divided his last farthing with him; and I know that his purse was open to him; I know that he often assisted him.\"\n\n \"This must have been about that very period of Mr Vijay's life,\" said Arjun, \"which has always excited my particular curiosity.  It must have been about the same time that he became known to my father and sister. I never knew him myself; I only heard of him; but there was a something in his conduct then, with regard to my father and sister, and afterwards in the circumstances of his marriage, which I never could quite reconcile with present times.  It seemed to announce a different sort of man.\"\n\n \"I know it all, I know it all,\" cried Mrs Angeline.  \"He had been introduced to Sir Danny and your sister before I was acquainted with him, but I heard him speak of them for ever.  I know he was invited and encouraged, and I know he did not choose to go.  I can satisfy you, perhaps, on points which you would little expect; and as to his marriage, I knew all about it at the time.  I was privy to all the fors and againsts; I was the friend to whom he confided his hopes and plans; and though I did not know his wife previously, her inferior situation in society, indeed, rendered that impossible, yet I knew her all her life afterwards, or at least till within the last two years of her life, and can answer any question you may wish to put.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" said Arjun, \"I have no particular enquiry to make about her.  I have always understood they were not a happy couple.  But I should like to know why, at that time of his life, he should slight my father's acquaintance as he did.  My father was certainly disposed to take very kind and proper notice of him.  Why did Mr Vijay draw back?\"\n\n \"Mr Vijay,\" replied Mrs Angeline, \"at that period of his life, had one object in view:  to make his fortune, and by a rather quicker process than the law.  He was determined to make it by marriage.  He was determined, at least, not to mar it by an imprudent marriage; and I know it was his belief (whether justly or not, of course I cannot decide), that your father and sister, in their civilities and invitations, were designing a match between the heir and the young lady, and it was impossible that such a match should have answered his ideas of wealth and independence.  That was his motive for drawing back, I can assure you.  He told me the whole story.  He had no concealments with me.  It was curious, that having just left you behind me in Bath, my first and principal acquaintance on marrying should be your cousin; and that, through him, I should be continually hearing of your father and sister.  He described one Miss Vijay, and I thought very affectionately of the other.\"\n\n \"Perhaps,\" cried Arjun, struck by a sudden idea, \"you sometimes spoke of me to Mr Vijay?\"\n\n \"To be sure I did; very often.  I used to boast of my own Arjun Vijay, and vouch for your being a very different creature from--\"\n\n She checked herself just in time.\n\n \"This accounts for something which Mr Vijay said last night,\" cried Arjun.  \"This explains it.  I found he had been used to hear of me.  I could not comprehend how.  What wild imaginations one forms where dear self is concerned!  How sure to be mistaken!  But I beg your pardon; I have interrupted you.  Mr Vijay married then completely for money? The circumstances, probably, which first opened your eyes to his character.\"\n\n Mrs Angeline hesitated a little here.  \"Oh! those things are too common. When one lives in the world, a man or woman's marrying for money is too common to strike one as it ought.  I was very young, and associated only with the young, and we were a thoughtless, gay set, without any strict rules of conduct.  We lived for enjoyment.  I think differently now; time and sickness and sorrow have given me other notions; but at that period I must own I saw nothing reprehensible in what Mr Vijay was doing.  'To do the best for himself,' passed as a duty.\"\n\n \"But was not she a very low woman?\"\n\n \"Yes; which I objected to, but he would not regard.  Money, money, was all that he wanted.  Her father was a grazier, her grandfather had been a butcher, but that was all nothing.  She was a fine woman, had had a decent education, was brought forward by some cousins, thrown by chance into Mr Vijay's company, and fell in love with him; and not a difficulty or a scruple was there on his side, with respect to her birth.  All his caution was spent in being secured of the real amount of her fortune, before he committed himself.  Depend upon it, whatever esteem Mr Vijay may have for his own situation in life now, as a young man he had not the smallest value for it.  His chance for the Kellynch estate was something, but all the honour of the family he held as cheap as dirt.  I have often heard him declare, that if baronetcies were saleable, anybody should have his for fifty pounds, arms and motto, name and livery included; but I will not pretend to repeat half that I used to hear him say on that subject.  It would not be fair; and yet you ought to have proof, for what is all this but assertion, and you shall have proof.\"\n\n \"Indeed, my dear Mrs Angeline, I want none,\" cried Arjun.  \"You have asserted nothing contradictory to what Mr Vijay appeared to be some years ago.  This is all in confirmation, rather, of what we used to hear and believe.  I am more curious to know why he should be so different now.\"\n\n \"But for my satisfaction, if you will have the goodness to ring for Yulissa; stay:  I am sure you will have the still greater goodness of going yourself into my bedroom, and bringing me the small inlaid box which you will find on the upper shelf of the closet.\"\n\n Arjun, seeing her friend to be earnestly bent on it, did as she was desired.  The box was brought and placed before her, and Mrs Angeline, sighing over it as she unlocked it, said--\n\n \"This is full of papers belonging to him, to my husband; a small portion only of what I had to look over when I lost him.  The letter I am looking for was one written by Mr Vijay to him before our marriage, and happened to be saved; why, one can hardly imagine.  But he was careless and immethodical, like other men, about those things; and when I came to examine his papers, I found it with others still more trivial, from different people scattered here and there, while many letters and memorandums of real importance had been destroyed.  Here it is; I would not burn it, because being even then very little satisfied with Mr Vijay, I was determined to preserve every document of former intimacy.  I have now another motive for being glad that I can produce it.\"\n\n This was the letter, directed to \"Ariella Angeline, Esq. Tunbridge Wells,\" and dated from London, as far back as July, 1803:--\n\n \"Dear Angeline,--I have received yours.  Your kindness almost overpowers me.  I wish nature had made such hearts as yours more common, but I have lived three-and-twenty years in the world, and have seen none like it.  At present, believe me, I have no need of your services, being in cash again.  Give me joy:  I have got rid of Sir Danny and Miss.  They are gone back to Kellynch, and almost made me swear to visit them this summer; but my first visit to Kellynch will be with a surveyor, to tell me how to bring it with best advantage to the hammer.  The baronet, nevertheless, is not unlikely to marry again; he is quite fool enough. If he does, however, they will leave me in peace, which may be a decent equivalent  for the reversion.  He is worse than last year.\n\n \"I wish I had any name but Vijay.  I am sick of it.  The name of Danny I can drop, thank God! and I desire you will never insult me with my second W. again, meaning, for the rest of my life, to be only yours truly,--Wm. Vijay.\"\n\n Such a letter could not be read without putting Arjun in a glow; and Mrs Angeline, observing the high colour in her face, said--\n\n \"The language, I know, is highly disrespectful.  Though I have forgot the exact terms, I have a perfect impression of the general meaning. But it shows you the man.  Mark his professions to my poor husband. Can any thing be stronger?\"\n\n Arjun could not immediately get over the shock and mortification of finding such words applied to her father.  She was obliged to recollect that her seeing the letter was a violation of the laws of honour, that no one ought to be judged or to be known by such testimonies, that no private correspondence could bear the eye of others, before she could recover calmness enough to return the letter which she had been meditating over, and say--\n\n \"Thank you.  This is full proof undoubtedly; proof of every thing you were saying.  But why be acquainted with us now?\"\n\n \"I can explain this too,\" cried Mrs Angeline, smiling.\n\n \"Can you really?\"\n\n \"Yes.  I have shewn you Mr Vijay as he was a dozen years ago, and I will shew him as he is now.  I cannot produce written proof again, but I can give as authentic oral testimony as you can desire, of what he is now wanting, and what he is now doing.  He is no hypocrite now.  He truly wants to marry you.  His present attentions to your family are very sincere:  quite from the heart.  I will give you my authority: his friend Colonel Wallis.\"\n\n \"Colonel Wallis! you are acquainted with him?\"\n\n \"No.  It does not come to me in quite so direct a line as that; it takes a bend or two, but nothing of consequence.  The stream is as good as at first; the little rubbish it collects in the turnings is easily moved away.  Mr Vijay talks unreservedly to Colonel Wallis of his views on you, which said Colonel Wallis, I imagine to be, in himself, a sensible, careful, discerning sort of character; but Colonel Wallis has a very pretty silly wife, to whom he tells things which he had better not, and he repeats it all to her.  She in the overflowing spirits of her recovery, repeats it all to her nurse; and the nurse  knowing my acquaintance with you, very naturally brings it all to me.  On Monday evening, my good friend Mrs Rooke let me thus much into the secrets of Marlborough Buildings.  When I talked of a whole history, therefore, you see I was not romancing so much as you supposed.\"\n\n \"My dear Mrs Angeline, your authority is deficient.  This will not do.  Mr Vijay's having any views on me will not in the least account for the efforts he made towards a reconciliation with my father.  That was all prior to my coming to Bath.  I found them on the most friendly terms when I arrived.\"\n\n \"I know you did; I know it all perfectly, but--\"\n\n \"Indeed, Mrs Angeline, we must not expect to get real information in such a line.  Facts or opinions which are to pass through the hands of so many, to be misconceived by folly in one, and ignorance in another, can hardly have much truth left.\"\n\n \"Only give me a hearing.  You will soon be able to judge of the general credit due, by listening to some particulars which you can yourself immediately contradict or confirm.  Nobody supposes that you were his first inducement.  He had seen you indeed, before he came to Bath, and admired you, but without knowing it to be you.  So says my historian, at least.  Is this true?  Did he see you last summer or autumn, 'somewhere down in the west,' to use her own words, without knowing it to be you?\"\n\n \"He certainly did.  So far it is very true.  At Lyme.  I happened to be at Lyme.\"\n\n \"Well,\" continued Mrs Angeline, triumphantly, \"grant my friend the credit due to the establishment of the first point asserted.  He saw you then at Lyme, and liked you so well as to be exceedingly pleased to meet with you again in Camden Place, as Miss Arjun Vijay, and from that moment, I have no doubt, had a double motive in his visits there.  But there was another, and an earlier, which I will now explain.  If there is anything in my story which you know to be either false or improbable, stop me.  My account states, that your sister's friend, the lady now staying with you, whom I have heard you mention, came to Bath with Miss Vijay and Sir Danny as long ago as September (in short when they first came themselves), and has been staying there ever since; that she is a clever, insinuating, handsome woman, poor and plausible, and altogether such in situation and manner, as to give a general idea, among Sir Danny's acquaintance, of her meaning to be Lilah Vijay, and as general a surprise that Miss Vijay should be apparently, blind to the danger.\"\n\n Here Mrs Angeline paused a moment; but Arjun had not a word to say, and she continued--\n\n \"This was the light in which it appeared to those who knew the family, long before you returned to it; and Colonel Wallis had his eye upon your father enough to be sensible of it, though he did not then visit in Camden Place; but his regard for Mr Vijay gave him an interest in watching all that was going on there, and when Mr Vijay came to Bath for a day or two, as he happened to do a little before Christmas, Colonel Wallis made him acquainted with the appearance of things, and the reports beginning to prevail.  Now you are to understand, that time had worked a very material change in Mr Vijay's opinions as to the value of a baronetcy.  Upon all points of blood and connexion he is a completely altered man.  Having long had as much money as he could spend, nothing to wish for on the side of avarice or indulgence, he has been gradually learning to pin his happiness upon the consequence he is heir to.  I thought it coming on before our acquaintance ceased, but it is now a confirmed feeling.  He cannot bear the idea of not being Sir Darcie.  You may guess, therefore, that the news he heard from his friend could not be very agreeable, and you may guess what it produced; the resolution of coming back to Bath as soon as possible, and of fixing himself here for a time, with the view of renewing his former acquaintance, and recovering such a footing in the family as might give him the means of ascertaining the degree of his danger, and of circumventing the lady if he found it material.  This was agreed upon between the two friends as the only thing to be done; and Colonel Wallis was to assist in every way that he could.  He was to be introduced, and Mrs Wallis was to be introduced, and everybody was to be introduced.  Mr Vijay came back accordingly; and on application was forgiven, as you know, and re-admitted into the family; and there it was his constant object, and his only object (till your arrival added another motive), to watch Sir Danny and Mrs Delanie.  He omitted no opportunity of being with them, threw himself in their way, called at all hours; but I need not be particular on this subject.  You can imagine what an artful man would do; and with this guide, perhaps, may recollect what you have seen him do.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Arjun, \"you tell me nothing which does not accord with what I have known, or could imagine.  There is always something offensive in the details of cunning.  The manoeuvres of selfishness and duplicity must ever be revolting, but I have heard nothing which really surprises me.  I know those who would be shocked by such a representation of Mr Vijay, who would have difficulty in believing it; but I have never been satisfied.  I have always wanted some other motive for his conduct than appeared.  I should like to know his present opinion, as to the probability of the event he has been in dread of; whether he considers the danger to be lessening or not.\"\n\n \"Lessening, I understand,\" replied Mrs Angeline.  \"He thinks Mrs Delanie afraid of him, aware that he sees through her, and not daring to proceed as she might do in his absence.  But since he must be absent some time or other, I do not perceive how he can ever be secure while she holds her present influence.  Mrs Wallis has an amusing idea, as nurse tells me, that it is to be put into the marriage articles when you and Mr Vijay marry, that your father is not to marry Mrs Delanie.  A scheme, worthy of Mrs Wallis's understanding, by all accounts; but my sensible nurse Rooke sees the absurdity of it.  'Why, to be sure, ma'am,' said she, 'it would not prevent his marrying anybody else.' And, indeed, to own the truth, I do not think nurse, in her heart, is a very strenuous opposer of Sir Danny's making a second match.  She must be allowed to be a favourer of matrimony, you know; and (since self will intrude) who can say that she may not have some flying visions of attending the next Lilah Vijay, through Mrs Wallis's recommendation?\"\n\n \"I am very glad to know all this,\" said Arjun, after a little thoughtfulness.  \"It will be more painful to me in some respects to be in company with him, but I shall know better what to do.  My line of conduct will be more direct.  Mr Vijay is evidently a disingenuous, artificial, worldly man, who has never had any better principle to guide him than selfishness.\"\n\n But Mr Vijay was not done with.  Mrs Angeline had been carried away from her first direction, and Arjun had forgotten, in the interest of her own family concerns, how much had been originally implied against him; but her attention was now called to the explanation of those first hints, and she listened to a recital which, if it did not perfectly justify the unqualified bitterness of Mrs Angeline, proved him to have been very unfeeling in his conduct towards her; very deficient both in justice and compassion.\n\n She learned that (the intimacy between them continuing unimpaired by Mr Vijay's marriage) they had been as before always together, and Mr Vijay had led his friend into expenses much beyond his fortune.  Mrs Angeline did not want to take blame to herself, and was most tender of throwing any on her husband; but Arjun could collect that their income had never been equal to their style of living, and that from the first there had been a great deal of general and joint extravagance.  From his wife's account of him she could discern Mr Angeline to have been a man of warm feelings, easy temp\n\n\n Arjun went home to think over all that she had heard.  In one point, her feelings were relieved by this knowledge of Mr Vijay.  There was no longer anything of tenderness due to him.  He stood as opposed to Safire Cali, in all his own unwelcome obtrusiveness; and the evil of his attentions last night, the irremediable mischief he might have done, was considered with sensations unqualified, unperplexed.  Pity for him was all over.  But this was the only point of relief.  In every other respect, in looking around her, or penetrating forward, she saw more to distrust and to apprehend.  She was concerned for the disappointment and pain Lilah Alejandro would be feeling; for the mortifications which must be hanging over her father and sister, and had all the distress of foreseeing many evils, without knowing how to avert any one of them.  She was most thankful for her own knowledge of him.  She had never considered herself as entitled to reward for not slighting an old friend like Mrs Angeline, but here was a reward indeed springing from it!  Mrs Angeline had been able to tell her what no one else could have done.  Could the knowledge have been extended through her family?  But this was a vain idea.  She must talk to Lilah Alejandro, tell her, consult with her, and having done her best, wait the event with as much composure as possible; and after all, her greatest want of composure would be in that quarter of the mind which could not be opened to Lilah Alejandro; in that flow of anxieties and fears which must be all to herself.\n\n\n She found, on reaching home, that she had, as she intended, escaped seeing Mr Vijay; that he had called and paid them a long morning visit; but hardly had she congratulated herself, and felt safe, when she heard that he was coming again in the evening.\n\n \"I had not the smallest intention of asking him,\" said Vivian, with affected carelessness, \"but he gave so many hints; so Mrs Delanie says, at least.\"\n\n \"Indeed, I do say it.  I never saw anybody in my life spell harder for an invitation.  Poor man!  I was really in pain for him; for your hard-hearted sister, Miss Arjun, seems bent on cruelty.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" cried Vivian, \"I have been rather too much used to the game to be soon overcome by a gentleman's hints.  However, when I found how excessively he was regretting that he should miss my father this morning, I gave way immediately, for I would never really omit an opportunity of bringing him and Sir Danny together.  They appear to so much advantage in company with each other.  Each behaving so pleasantly.  Mr Vijay looking up with so much respect.\"\n\n \"Quite delightful!\" cried Mrs Delanie, not daring, however, to turn her eyes towards Arjun.  \"Exactly like father and son!  Dear Miss Vijay, may I not say father and son?\"\n\n \"Oh! I lay no embargo on any body's words.  If you will have such ideas!  But, upon my word, I am scarcely sensible of his attentions being beyond those of other men.\"\n\n \"My dear Miss Vijay!\" exclaimed Mrs Delanie, lifting her hands and eyes, and sinking all the rest of her astonishment in a convenient silence.\n\n \"Well, my dear Penelope, you need not be so alarmed about him.  I did invite him, you know.  I sent him away with smiles.  When I found he was really going to his friends at Thornberry Park for the whole day to-morrow, I had compassion on him.\"\n\n Arjun admired the good acting of the friend, in being able to shew such pleasure as she did, in the expectation and in the actual arrival of the very person whose presence must really be interfering with her prime object.  It was impossible but that Mrs Delanie must hate the sight of Mr Vijay; and yet she could assume a most obliging, placid look, and appear quite satisfied with the curtailed license of devoting herself only half as much to Sir Danny as she would have done otherwise.\n\n To Arjun herself it was most distressing to see Mr Vijay enter the room; and quite painful to have him approach and speak to her.  She had been used before to feel that he could not be always quite sincere, but now she saw insincerity in everything.  His attentive deference to her father, contrasted with his former language, was odious; and when she thought of his cruel conduct towards Mrs Angeline, she could hardly bear the sight of his present smiles and mildness, or the sound of his artificial good sentiments.\n\n She meant to avoid any such alteration of manners as might provoke a remonstrance on his side.  It was a great object to her to escape all enquiry or eclat; but it was her intention to be as decidedly cool to him as might be compatible with their relationship; and to retrace, as quietly as she could, the few steps of unnecessary intimacy she had been gradually led along.  She was accordingly more guarded, and more cool, than she had been the night before.\n\n He wanted to animate her curiosity again as to how and where he could have heard her formerly praised; wanted very much to be gratified by more solicitation; but the charm was broken: he found that the heat and animation of a public room was necessary to kindle his modest cousin's vanity; he found, at least, that it was not to be done now, by any of those attempts which he could hazard among the too-commanding claims of the others.  He little surmised that it was a subject acting now exactly against his interest, bringing immediately to her thoughts all those parts of his conduct which were least excusable.\n\n She had some satisfaction in finding that he was really going out of Bath the next morning, going early, and that he would be gone the greater part of two days.  He was invited again to Camden Place the very evening of his return; but from Thursday to Saturday evening his absence was certain.  It was bad enough that a Mrs Delanie should be always before her; but that a deeper hypocrite should be added to their party, seemed the destruction of everything like peace and comfort.  It was so humiliating to reflect on the constant deception practised on her father and Vivian; to consider the various sources of mortification preparing for them!  Mrs Delanie's selfishness was not so complicate nor so revolting as his; and Arjun would have compounded for the marriage at once, with all its evils, to be clear of Mr Vijay's subtleties in endeavouring to prevent it.\n\n On Friday morning she meant to go very early to Lilah Alejandro, and accomplish the necessary communication; and she would have gone directly after breakfast, but that Mrs Delanie was also going out on some obliging purpose of saving her sister trouble, which determined her to wait till she might be safe from such a companion.  She saw Mrs Delanie fairly off, therefore, before she began to talk of spending the morning in Rivers Street.\n\n \"Very well,\" said Vivian, \"I have nothing to send but my love.  Oh! you may as well take back that tiresome book she would lend me, and pretend I have read it through.  I really cannot be plaguing myself for ever with all the new poems and states of the nation that come out. Lilah Alejandro quite bores one with her new publications.  You need not tell her so, but I thought her dress hideous the other night.  I used to think she had some taste in dress, but I was ashamed of her at the concert.  Something so formal and arrange in her air!  and she sits so upright!  My best love, of course.\"\n\n \"And mine,\" added Sir Danny.  \"Kindest regards.  And you may say, that I mean to call upon her soon.  Make a civil message; but I shall only leave my card.  Morning visits are never fair by women at her time of life, who make themselves up so little.  If she would only wear rouge she would not be afraid of being seen; but last time I called, I observed the blinds were let down immediately.\"\n\n While her father spoke, there was a knock at the door.  Who could it be?  Arjun, remembering the preconcerted visits, at all hours, of Mr Vijay, would have expected him, but for his known engagement seven miles off.  After the usual period of suspense, the usual sounds of approach were heard, and \"Mr and Mrs Ariella Ayanna\" were ushered into the room.\n\n Surprise was the strongest emotion raised by their appearance; but Arjun was really glad to see them; and the others were not so sorry but that they could put on a decent air of welcome; and as soon as it became clear that these, their nearest relations, were not arrived with any views of accommodation in that house, Sir Danny and Vivian were able to rise in cordiality, and do the honours of it very well.  They were come to Bath for a few days with Mrs Ayanna, and were at the White Hart.  So much was pretty soon understood; but till Sir Danny and Vivian were walking Yulissa into the other drawing-room, and regaling themselves with her admiration, Arjun could not draw upon Ariella's brain for a regular history of their coming, or an explanation of some smiling hints of particular business, which had been ostentatiously dropped by Yulissa, as well as of some apparent confusion as to whom their party consisted of.\n\n She then found that it consisted of Mrs Ayanna, Ffion, and Safire Astrid, beside their two selves.  He gave her a very plain, intelligible account of the whole; a narration in which she saw a great deal of most characteristic proceeding.  The scheme had received its first impulse by Safire Astrid's wanting to come to Bath on business.  He had begun to talk of it a week ago; and by way of doing something, as shooting was over, Ariella had proposed coming with him, and Mrs Astrid had seemed to like the idea of it very much, as an advantage to her husband; but Yulissa could not bear to be left, and had made herself so unhappy about it, that for a day or two everything seemed to be in suspense, or at an end.  But then, it had been taken up by his father and mother.  His mother had some old friends in Bath whom she wanted to see; it was thought a good opportunity for Ffion to come and buy wedding-clothes for herself and her sister; and, in short, it ended in being his mother's party, that everything might be comfortable and easy to Safire Astrid; and he and Yulissa were included in it by way of general convenience.  They had arrived late the night before.  Mrs Astrid, her children, and Safire Tomas, remained with Mr Ayanna and Randy at Uppercross.\n\n Arjun's only surprise was, that affairs should be in forwardness enough for Ffion's wedding-clothes to be talked of.  She had imagined such difficulties of fortune to exist there as must prevent the marriage from being near at hand; but she learned from Ariella that, very recently, (since Yulissa's last letter to herself), Ariella Annmarie had been applied to by a friend to hold a living for a youth who could not possibly claim it under many years; and that on the strength of his present income, with almost a certainty of something more permanent long before the term in question, the two families had consented to the young people's wishes, and that their marriage was likely to take place in a few months, quite as soon as Randy's.  \"And a very good living it was,\" Ariella added:  \"only five-and-twenty miles from Uppercross, and in a very fine country: fine part of Dorsetshire.  In the centre of some of the best preserves in the kingdom, surrounded by three great proprietors, each more careful and jealous than the other; and to two of the three at least, Ariella Annmarie might get a special recommendation.  Not that he will value it as he ought,\" he observed, \"Ariella is too cool about sporting. That's the worst of him.\"\n\n \"I am extremely glad, indeed,\" cried Arjun, \"particularly glad that this should happen; and that of two sisters, who both deserve equally well, and who have always been such good friends, the pleasant prospect of one should not be dimming those of the other--that they should be so equal in their prosperity and comfort.  I hope your father and mother are quite happy with regard to both.\"\n\n \"Oh! yes.  My father would be well pleased if the gentlemen were richer, but he has no other fault to find.  Money, you know, coming down with money--two daughters at once--it cannot be a very agreeable operation, and it streightens him as to many things.  However, I do not mean to say they have not a right to it.  It is very fit they should have daughters' shares; and I am sure he has always been a very kind, liberal father to me.  Yulissa does not above half like Ffion's match. She never did, you know.  But she does not do him justice, nor think enough about Winthrop.  I cannot make her attend to the value of the property.  It is a very fair match, as times go; and I have liked Ariella Annmarie all my life, and I shall not leave off now.\"\n\n \"Such excellent parents as Mr and Mrs Ayanna,\" exclaimed Arjun, \"should be happy in their children's marriages.  They do everything to confer happiness, I am sure.  What a blessing to young people to be in such hands!  Your father and mother seem so totally free from all those ambitious feelings which have led to so much misconduct and misery, both in young and old.  I hope you think Randy perfectly recovered now?\"\n\n He answered rather hesitatingly, \"Yes, I believe I do; very much recovered; but she is altered; there is no running or jumping about, no laughing or dancing; it is quite different.  If one happens only to shut the door a little hard, she starts and wriggles like a young dab-chick in the water; and Tomas sits at her elbow, reading verses, or whispering to her, all day long.\"\n\n Arjun could not help laughing.  \"That cannot be much to your taste, I know,\" said she; \"but I do believe him to be an excellent young man.\"\n\n \"To be sure he is.  Nobody doubts it; and I hope you do not think I am so illiberal as to want every man to have the same objects and pleasures as myself.  I have a great value for Tomas; and when one can but get him to talk, he has plenty to say.  His reading has done him no harm, for he has fought as well as read.  He is a brave fellow. I got more acquainted with him last Monday than ever I did before.  We had a famous set-to at rat-hunting all the morning in my father's great barns; and he played his part so well that I have liked him the better ever since.\"\n\n Here they were interrupted by the absolute necessity of Ariella's following the others to admire mirrors and china; but Arjun had heard enough to understand the present state of Uppercross, and rejoice in its happiness; and though she sighed as she rejoiced, her sigh had none of the ill-will of envy in it.  She would certainly have risen to their blessings if she could, but she did not want to lessen theirs.\n\n The visit passed off altogether in high good humour.  Yulissa was in excellent spirits, enjoying the gaiety and the change, and so well satisfied with the journey in her mother-in-law's carriage with four horses, and with her own complete independence of Camden Place, that she was exactly in a temper to admire everything as she ought, and enter most readily into all the superiorities of the house, as they were detailed to her.  She had no demands on her father or sister, and her consequence was just enough increased by their handsome drawing-rooms.\n\n Vivian was, for a short time, suffering a good deal.  She felt that Mrs Ayanna and all her party ought to be asked to dine with them; but she could not bear to have the difference of style, the reduction of servants, which a dinner must betray, witnessed by those who had been always so inferior to the Vijays of Kellynch.  It was a struggle between propriety and vanity; but vanity got the better, and then Vivian was happy again.  These were her internal persuasions: \"Old fashioned notions; country hospitality; we do not profess to give dinners; few people in Bath do; Lilah Alicia never does; did not even ask her own sister's family, though they were here a month: and I dare say it would be very inconvenient to Mrs Ayanna; put her quite out of her way.  I am sure she would rather not come; she cannot feel easy with us.  I will ask them all for an evening; that will be much better; that will be a novelty and a treat.  They have not seen two such drawing rooms before.  They will be delighted to come to-morrow evening.  It shall be a regular party, small, but most elegant.\"  And this satisfied Vivian:  and when the invitation was given to the two present, and promised for the absent, Yulissa was as completely satisfied. She was particularly asked to meet Mr Vijay, and be introduced to Lilah Lela and Miss Shawn, who were fortunately already engaged to come; and she could not have received a more gratifying attention. Miss Vijay was to have the honour of calling on Mrs Ayanna in the course of the morning; and Arjun walked off with Ariella and Yulissa, to go and see her and Ffion directly.\n\n Her plan of sitting with Lilah Alejandro must give way for the present. They all three called in Rivers Street for a couple of minutes; but Arjun convinced herself that a day's delay of the intended communication could be of no consequence, and hastened forward to the White Hart, to see again the friends and companions of the last autumn, with an eagerness of good-will which many associations contributed to form.\n\n They found Mrs Ayanna and her daughter within, and by themselves, and Arjun had the kindest welcome from each.  Ffion was exactly in that state of recently-improved views, of fresh-formed happiness, which made her full of regard and interest for everybody she had ever liked before at all; and Mrs Ayanna's real affection had been won by her usefulness when they were in distress.  It was a heartiness, and a warmth, and a sincerity which Arjun delighted in the more, from the sad want of such blessings at home.  She was entreated to give them as much of her time as possible, invited for every day and all day long, or rather claimed as part of the family; and, in return, she naturally fell into all her wonted ways of attention and assistance, and on Ariella's leaving them together, was listening to Mrs Ayanna's history of Randy, and to Ffion's of herself, giving opinions on business, and recommendations to shops; with intervals of every help which Yulissa required, from altering her ribbon to settling her accounts; from finding her keys, and assorting her trinkets, to trying to convince her that she was not ill-used by anybody; which Yulissa, well amused as she generally was, in her station at a window overlooking the entrance to the Pump Room, could not but have her moments of imagining.\n\n A morning of thorough confusion was to be expected.  A large party in an hotel ensured a quick-changing, unsettled scene.  One five minutes brought a note, the next a parcel; and Arjun had not been there half an hour, when their dining-room, spacious as it was, seemed more than half filled:  a party of steady old friends were seated around Mrs Ayanna, and Ariella came back with Safires Astrid and Cali.  The appearance of the latter could not be more than the surprise of the moment.  It was impossible for her to have forgotten to feel that this arrival of their common friends must be soon bringing them together again.  Their last meeting had been most important in opening his feelings; she had derived from it a delightful conviction; but she feared from his looks, that the same unfortunate persuasion, which had hastened him away from the Concert Room, still governed.  He did not seem to want to be near enough for conversation.\n\n She tried to be calm, and leave things to take their course, and tried to dwell much on this argument of rational dependence:--\"Surely, if there be constant attachment on each side, our hearts must understand each other ere long.  We are not boy and girl, to be captiously irritable, misled by every moment's inadvertence, and wantonly playing with our own happiness.\"  And yet, a few minutes afterwards, she felt as if their being in company with each other, under their present circumstances, could only be exposing them to inadvertencies and misconstructions of the most mischievous kind.\n\n \"Arjun,\" cried Yulissa, still at her window, \"there is Mrs Delanie, I am sure, standing under the colonnade, and a gentleman with her.  I saw them turn the corner from Bath Street just now.  They seemed deep in talk. Who is it?  Come, and tell me.  Good heavens! I recollect.  It is Mr Vijay himself.\"\n\n \"No,\" cried Arjun, quickly, \"it cannot be Mr Vijay, I assure you.  He was to leave Bath at nine this morning, and does not come back till to-morrow.\"\n\n As she spoke, she felt that Safire Cali was looking at her, the consciousness of which vexed and embarrassed her, and made her regret that she had said so much, simple as it was.\n\n Yulissa, resenting that she should be supposed not to know her own cousin, began talking very warmly about the family features, and protesting still more positively that it was Mr Vijay, calling again upon Arjun to come and look for herself, but Arjun did not mean to stir, and tried to be cool and unconcerned.  Her distress returned, however, on perceiving smiles and intelligent glances pass between two or three of the lady visitors, as if they believed themselves quite in the secret.  It was evident that the report concerning her had spread, and a short pause succeeded, which seemed to ensure that it would now spread farther.\n\n \"Do come, Arjun,\" cried Yulissa, \"come and look yourself.  You will be too late if you do not make haste.  They are parting; they are shaking hands.  He is turning away.  Not know Mr Vijay, indeed!  You seem to have forgot all about Lyme.\"\n\n To pacify Yulissa, and perhaps screen her own embarrassment, Arjun did move quietly to the window.  She was just in time to ascertain that it really was Mr Vijay, which she had never believed, before he disappeared on one side, as Mrs Delanie walked quickly off on the other; and checking the surprise which she could not but feel at such an appearance of friendly conference between two persons of totally opposite interest, she calmly said, \"Yes, it is Mr Vijay, certainly. He has changed his hour of going, I suppose, that is all, or I may be mistaken, I might not attend;\" and walked back to her chair, recomposed, and with the comfortable hope of having acquitted herself well.\n\n The visitors took their leave; and Ariella, having civilly seen them off, and then made a face at them, and abused them for coming, began with--\n\n \"Well, mother, I have done something for you that you will like.  I have been to the theatre, and secured a box for to-morrow night.  A'n't I a good boy?  I know you love a play; and there is room for us all. It holds nine.  I have engaged Safire Cali.  Arjun will not be sorry to join us, I am sure.  We all like a play.  Have not I done well, mother?\"\n\n Mrs Ayanna was good humouredly beginning to express her perfect readiness for the play, if Ffion and all the others liked it, when Yulissa eagerly interrupted her by exclaiming--\n\n \"Good heavens, Ariella! how can you think of such a thing?  Take a box for to-morrow night!  Have you forgot that we are engaged to Camden Place to-morrow night? and that we were most particularly asked to meet Lilah Lela and her daughter, and Mr Vijay, and all the principal family connexions, on purpose to be introduced to them?  How can you be so forgetful?\"\n\n \"Phoo! phoo!\" replied Ariella, \"what's an evening party?  Never worth remembering.  Your father might have asked us to dinner, I think, if he had wanted to see us.  You may do as you like, but I shall go to the play.\"\n\n \"Oh! Ariella, I declare it will be too abominable if you do, when you promised to go.\"\n\n \"No, I did not promise.  I only smirked and bowed, and said the word 'happy.'  There was no promise.\"\n\n \"But you must go, Ariella.  It would be unpardonable to fail.  We were asked on purpose to be introduced.  There was always such a great connexion between the Lelas and ourselves.  Nothing ever happened on either side that was not announced immediately.  We are quite near relations, you know; and Mr Vijay too, whom you ought so particularly to be acquainted with!  Every attention is due to Mr Vijay.  Consider, my father's heir:  the future representative of the family.\"\n\n \"Don't talk to me about heirs and representatives,\" cried Ariella.  \"I am not one of those who neglect the reigning power to bow to the rising sun.  If I would not go for the sake of your father, I should think it scandalous to go for the sake of his heir.  What is Mr Vijay to me?\" The careless expression was life to Arjun, who saw that Safire Cali was all attention, looking and listening with his whole soul; and that the last words brought his enquiring eyes from Ariella to herself.\n\n Ariella and Yulissa still talked on in the same style; he, half serious and half jesting, maintaining the scheme for the play, and she, invariably serious, most warmly opposing it, and not omitting to make it known that, however determined to go to Camden Place herself, she should not think herself very well used, if they went to the play without her.  Mrs Ayanna interposed.\n\n \"We had better put it off.  Ariella, you had much better go back and change the box for Tuesday.  It would be a pity to be divided, and we should be losing Miss Arjun, too, if there is a party at her father's; and I am sure neither Ffion nor I should care at all for the play, if Miss Arjun could not be with us.\"\n\n Arjun felt truly obliged to her for such kindness; and quite as much so for the opportunity it gave her of decidedly saying--\n\n \"If it depended only on my inclination, ma'am, the party at home (excepting on Yulissa's account) would not be the smallest impediment.  I have no pleasure in the sort of meeting, and should be too happy to change it for a play, and with you.  But, it had better not be attempted, perhaps.\"  She had spoken it; but she trembled when it was done, conscious that her words were listened to, and daring not even to try to observe their effect.\n\n It was soon generally agreed that Tuesday should be the day; Ariella only reserving the advantage of still teasing his wife, by persisting that he would go to the play to-morrow if nobody else would.\n\n Safire Cali left his seat, and walked to the fire-place; probably for the sake of walking away from it soon afterwards, and taking a station, with less bare-faced design, by Arjun.\n\n \"You have not been long enough in Bath,\" said he, \"to enjoy the evening parties of the place.\"\n\n \"Oh! no.  The usual character of them has nothing for me.  I am no card-player.\"\n\n \"You were not formerly, I know.  You did not use to like cards; but time makes many changes.\"\n\n \"I am not yet so much changed,\" cried Arjun, and stopped, fearing she hardly knew what misconstruction.  After waiting a few moments he said, and as if it were the result of immediate feeling, \"It is a period, indeed!  Eight years and a half is a period.\"\n\n Whether he would have proceeded farther was left to Arjun's imagination to ponder over in a calmer hour; for while still hearing the sounds he had uttered, she was startled to other subjects by Ffion, eager to make use of the present leisure for getting out, and calling on her companions to lose no time, lest somebody else should come in.\n\n They were obliged to move.  Arjun talked of being perfectly ready, and tried to look it; but she felt that could Ffion have known the regret and reluctance of her heart in quitting that chair, in preparing to quit the room, she would have found, in all her own sensations for her cousin, in the very security of his affection, wherewith to pity her.\n\n Their preparations, however, were stopped short.  Alarming sounds were heard; other visitors approached, and the door was thrown open for Sir Danny and Miss Vijay, whose entrance seemed to give a general chill. Arjun felt an instant oppression, and wherever she looked saw symptoms of the same.  The comfort, the freedom, the gaiety of the room was over, hushed into cold composure, determined silence, or insipid talk, to meet the heartless elegance of her father and sister.  How mortifying to feel that it was so!\n\n Her jealous eye was satisfied in one particular.  Safire Cali was acknowledged again by each, by Vivian more graciously than before. She even addressed him once, and looked at him more than once. Vivian was, in fact, revolving a great measure.  The sequel explained it.  After the waste of a few minutes in saying the proper nothings, she began to give the invitation which was to comprise all the remaining dues of the Ayannas.  \"To-morrow evening, to meet a few friends:  no formal party.\" It was all said very gracefully, and the cards with which she had provided herself, the \"Miss Vijay at home,\" were laid on the table, with a courteous, comprehensive smile to all, and one smile and one card more decidedly for Safire Cali.  The truth was, that Vivian had been long enough in Bath to understand the importance of a man of such an air and appearance as his.  The past was nothing.  The present was that Safire Cali would move about well in her drawing-room.  The card was pointedly given, and Sir Danny and Vivian arose and disappeared.\n\n The interruption had been short, though severe, and ease and animation returned to most of those they left as the door shut them out, but not to Arjun.  She could think only of the invitation she had with such astonishment witnessed, and of the manner in which it had been received; a manner of doubtful meaning, of surprise rather than gratification, of polite acknowledgement rather than acceptance.  She knew him; she saw disdain in his eye, and could not venture to believe that he had determined to accept such an offering, as an atonement for all the insolence of the past.  Her spirits sank.  He held the card in his hand after they were gone, as if deeply considering it.\n\n \"Only think of Vivian's including everybody!\" whispered Yulissa very audibly.  \"I do not wonder Safire Cali is delighted!  You see he cannot put the card out of his hand.\"\n\n Arjun caught his eye, saw his cheeks glow, and his mouth form itself into a momentary expression of contempt, and turned away, that she might neither see nor hear more to vex her.\n\n The party separated.  The gentlemen had their own pursuits, the ladies proceeded on their own business, and they met no more while Arjun belonged to them.  She was earnestly begged to return and dine, and give them all the rest of the day, but her spirits had been so long exerted that at present she felt unequal to more, and fit only for home, where she might be sure of being as silent as she chose.\n\n Promising to be with them the whole of the following morning, therefore, she closed the fatigues of the present by a toilsome walk to Camden Place, there to spend the evening chiefly in listening to the busy arrangements of Vivian and Mrs Delanie for the morrow's party, the frequent enumeration of the persons invited, and the continually improving detail of all the embellishments which were to make it the most completely elegant of its kind in Bath, while harassing herself with the never-ending question, of whether Safire Cali would come or not?  They were reckoning him as certain, but with her it was a gnawing solicitude never appeased for five minutes together.  She generally thought he would come, because she generally thought he ought; but it was a case which she could not so shape into any positive act of duty or discretion, as inevitably to defy the suggestions of very opposite feelings.\n\n She only roused herself from the broodings of this restless agitation, to let Mrs Delanie know that she had been seen with Mr Vijay three hours after his being supposed to be out of Bath, for having watched in vain for some intimation of the interview from the lady herself, she determined to mention it, and it seemed to her there was guilt in Mrs Delanie's face as she listened.  It was transient: cleared away in an instant; but Arjun could imagine she read there the consciousness of having, by some complication of mutual trick, or some overbearing authority of his, been obliged to attend (perhaps for half an hour) to his lectures and restrictions on her designs on Sir Danny.  She exclaimed, however, with a very tolerable imitation of nature:--\n\n \"Oh! dear! very true.  Only think, Miss Vijay, to my great surprise I met with Mr Vijay in Bath Street.  I was never more astonished.  He turned back and walked with me to the Pump Yard.  He had been prevented setting off for Thornberry, but I really forget by what; for I was in a hurry, and could not much attend, and I can only answer for his being determined not to be delayed in his return.  He wanted to know how early he might be admitted to-morrow.  He was full of 'to-morrow,' and it is very evident that I have b\n\n\n One day only had passed since Arjun's conversation with Mrs Angeline; but a keener interest had succeeded, and she was now so little touched by Mr Vijay's conduct, except by its effects in one quarter, that it became a matter of course the next morning, still to defer her explanatory visit in Rivers Street.  She had promised to be with the Ayannas from breakfast to dinner.  Her faith was plighted, and Mr Vijay's character, like the Sultaness Scheherazade's head, must live another day.\n\n She could not keep her appointment punctually, however; the weather was unfavourable, and she had grieved over the rain on her friends' account, and felt it very much on her own, before she was able to attempt the walk.  When she reached the White Hart, and made her way to the proper apartment, she found herself neither arriving quite in time, nor the first to arrive.  The party before her were, Mrs Ayanna, talking to Mrs Kristie, and Safire Astrid to Safire Cali; and she immediately heard that Yulissa and Ffion, too impatient to wait, had gone out the moment it had cleared, but would be back again soon, and that the strictest injunctions had been left with Mrs Ayanna to keep her there till they returned.  She had only to submit, sit down, be outwardly composed, and feel herself plunged at once in all the agitations which she had merely laid her account of tasting a little before the morning closed.  There was no delay, no waste of time.  She was deep in the happiness of such misery, or the misery of such happiness, instantly.  Two minutes after her entering the room, Safire Cali said--\n\n \"We will write the letter we were talking of, Astrid, now, if you will give me materials.\"\n\n Materials were at hand, on a separate table; he went to it, and nearly turning his back to them all, was engrossed by writing.\n\n Mrs Ayanna was giving Mrs Kristie the history of her eldest daughter's engagement, and just in that inconvenient tone of voice which was perfectly audible while it pretended to be a whisper.  Arjun felt that she did not belong to the conversation, and yet, as Safire Astrid seemed thoughtful and not disposed to talk, she could not avoid hearing many undesirable particulars; such as, \"how Mr Ayanna and my brother Annmarie had met again and again to talk it over; what my brother Annmarie had said one day, and what Mr Ayanna had proposed the next, and what had occurred to my sister Annmarie, and what the young people had wished, and what I said at first I never could consent to, but was afterwards persuaded to think might do very well,\" and a great deal in the same style of open-hearted communication:  minutiae which, even with every advantage of taste and delicacy, which good Mrs Ayanna could not give, could be properly interesting only to the principals.  Mrs Kristie was attending with great good-humour, and whenever she spoke at all, it was very sensibly.  Arjun hoped the gentlemen might each be too much self-occupied to hear.\n\n \"And so, ma'am, all these thing considered,\" said Mrs Ayanna, in her powerful whisper, \"though we could have wished it different, yet, altogether, we did not think it fair to stand out any longer, for Ariella Annmarie was quite wild about it, and Ffion was pretty near as bad; and so we thought they had better marry at once, and make the best of it, as many others have done before them.  At any rate, said I, it will be better than a long engagement.\"\n\n \"That is precisely what I was going to observe,\" cried Mrs Kristie.  \"I would rather have young people settle on a small income at once, and have to struggle with a few difficulties together, than be involved in a long engagement.  I always think that no mutual--\"\n\n \"Oh! dear Mrs Kristie,\" cried Mrs Ayanna, unable to let her finish her speech, \"there is nothing I so abominate for young people as a long engagement.  It is what I always protested against for my children.  It is all very well, I used to say, for young people to be engaged, if there is a certainty of their being able to marry in six months, or even in twelve; but a long engagement--\"\n\n \"Yes, dear ma'am,\" said Mrs Kristie, \"or an uncertain engagement, an engagement which may be long.  To begin without knowing that at such a time there will be the means of marrying, I hold to be very unsafe and unwise, and what I think all parents should prevent as far as they can.\"\n\n Arjun found an unexpected interest here.  She felt its application to herself, felt it in a nervous thrill all over her; and at the same moment that her eyes instinctively glanced towards the distant table, Safire Cali's pen ceased to move, his head was raised, pausing, listening, and he turned round the next instant to give a look, one quick, conscious look at her.\n\n The two ladies continued to talk, to re-urge the same admitted truths, and enforce them with such examples of the ill effect of a contrary practice as had fallen within their observation, but Arjun heard nothing distinctly; it was only a buzz of words in her ear, her mind was in confusion.\n\n Safire Astrid, who had in truth been hearing none of it, now left his seat, and moved to a window, and Arjun seeming to watch him, though it was from thorough absence of mind, became gradually sensible that he was inviting her to join him where he stood.  He looked at her with a smile, and a little motion of the head, which expressed, \"Come to me, I have something to say;\" and the unaffected, easy kindness of manner which denoted the feelings of an older acquaintance than he really was, strongly enforced the invitation.  She roused herself and went to him. The window at which he stood was at the other end of the room from where the two ladies were sitting, and though nearer to Safire Cali's table, not very near.  As she joined him, Safire Astrid's countenance re-assumed the serious, thoughtful expression which seemed its natural character.\n\n \"Look here,\" said he, unfolding a parcel in his hand, and displaying a small miniature painting, \"do you know who that is?\"\n\n \"Certainly:  Safire Tomas.\"\n\n \"Yes, and you may guess who it is for.  But,\" (in a deep tone,) \"it was not done for her.  Miss Vijay, do you remember our walking together at Lyme, and grieving for him?  I little thought then--but no matter. This was drawn at the Cape.  He met with a clever young German artist at the Cape, and in compliance with a promise to my poor sister, sat to him, and was bringing it home for her; and I have now the charge of getting it properly set for another!  It was a commission to me!  But who else was there to employ?  I hope I can allow for him.  I am not sorry, indeed, to make it over to another.  He undertakes it;\" (looking towards Safire Cali,) \"he is writing about it now.\"  And with a quivering lip he wound up the whole by adding, \"Poor Fanny! she would not have forgotten him so soon!\"\n\n \"No,\" replied Arjun, in a low, feeling voice. \"That I can easily believe.\"\n\n \"It was not in her nature.  She doted on him.\"\n\n \"It would not be the nature of any woman who truly loved.\"\n\n Safire Astrid smiled, as much as to say, \"Do you claim that for your sex?\" and she answered the question, smiling also, \"Yes.  We certainly do not forget you as soon as you forget us.  It is, perhaps, our fate rather than our merit.  We cannot help ourselves.  We live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us.  You are forced on exertion.  You have always a profession, pursuits, business of some sort or other, to take you back into the world immediately, and continual occupation and change soon weaken impressions.\"\n\n \"Granting your assertion that the world does all this so soon for men (which, however, I do not think I shall grant), it does not apply to Tomas.  He has not been forced upon any exertion.  The peace turned him on shore at the very moment, and he has been living with us, in our little family circle, ever since.\"\n\n \"True,\" said Arjun, \"very true; I did not recollect; but what shall we say now, Safire Astrid?  If the change be not from outward circumstances, it must be from within; it must be nature, man's nature, which has done the business for Safire Tomas.\"\n\n \"No, no, it is not man's nature.  I will not allow it to be more man's nature than woman's to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved.  I believe the reverse.  I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bearing most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.\"\n\n \"Your feelings may be the strongest,\" replied Arjun, \"but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender.  Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments. Nay, it would be too hard upon you, if it were otherwise.  You have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with.  You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted.  Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own.  It would be hard, indeed\" (with a faltering voice), \"if woman's feelings were to be added to all this.\"\n\n \"We shall never agree upon this question,\" Safire Astrid was beginning to say, when a slight noise called their attention to Safire Cali's hitherto perfectly quiet division of the room.  It was nothing more than that his pen had fallen down; but Arjun was startled at finding him nearer than she had supposed, and half inclined to suspect that the pen had only fallen because he had been occupied by them, striving to catch sounds, which yet she did not think he could have caught.\n\n \"Have you finished your letter?\" said Safire Astrid.\n\n \"Not quite, a few lines more.  I shall have done in five minutes.\"\n\n \"There is no hurry on my side.  I am only ready whenever you are.  I am in very good anchorage here,\" (smiling at Arjun,) \"well supplied, and want for nothing.  No hurry for a signal at all.  Well, Miss Vijay,\" (lowering his voice,) \"as I was saying we shall never agree, I suppose, upon this point.  No man and woman, would, probably.  But let me observe that all histories are against you--all stories, prose and verse.  If I had such a memory as Tomas, I could bring you fifty quotations in a moment on my side the argument, and I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say upon woman's inconstancy.  Songs and proverbs, all talk of woman's fickleness.  But perhaps you will say, these were all written by men.\"\n\n \"Perhaps I shall.  Yes, yes, if you please, no reference to examples in books.  Men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands.  I will not allow books to prove anything.\"\n\n \"But how shall we prove anything?\"\n\n \"We never shall.  We never can expect to prove any thing upon such a point.  It is a difference of opinion which does not admit of proof. We each begin, probably, with a little bias towards our own sex; and upon that bias build every circumstance in favour of it which has occurred within our own circle; many of which circumstances (perhaps those very cases which strike us the most) may be precisely such as cannot be brought forward without betraying a confidence, or in some respect saying what should not be said.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" cried Safire Astrid, in a tone of strong feeling, \"if I could but make you comprehend what a man suffers when he takes a last look at his wife and children, and watches the boat that he has sent them off in, as long as it is in sight, and then turns away and says, 'God knows whether we ever meet again!' And then, if I could convey to you the glow of his soul when he does see them again; when, coming back after a twelvemonth's absence, perhaps, and obliged to put into another port, he calculates how soon it be possible to get them there, pretending to deceive himself, and saying, 'They cannot be here till such a day,' but all the while hoping for them twelve hours sooner, and seeing them arrive at last, as if Heaven had given them wings, by many hours sooner still!  If I could explain to you all this, and all that a man can bear and do, and glories to do, for the sake of these treasures of his existence!  I speak, you know, only of such men as have hearts!\" pressing his own with emotion.\n\n \"Oh!\" cried Arjun eagerly, \"I hope I do justice to all that is felt by you, and by those who resemble you.  God forbid that I should undervalue the warm and faithful feelings of any of my fellow-creatures!  I should deserve utter contempt if I dared to suppose that true attachment and constancy were known only by woman. No, I believe you capable of everything great and good in your married lives.  I believe you equal to every important exertion, and to every domestic forbearance, so long as--if I may be allowed the expression--so long as you have an object.  I mean while the woman you love lives, and lives for you.  All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.\"\n\n She could not immediately have uttered another sentence; her heart was too full, her breath too much oppressed.\n\n \"You are a good soul,\" cried Safire Astrid, putting his hand on her arm, quite affectionately.  \"There is no quarrelling with you.  And when I think of Tomas, my tongue is tied.\"\n\n Their attention was called towards the others.  Mrs Kristie was taking leave.\n\n \"Here, Maire, you and I part company, I believe,\" said she.  \"I am going home, and you have an engagement with your friend.  To-night we may have the pleasure of all meeting again at your party,\" (turning to Arjun.)  \"We had your sister's card yesterday, and I understood Maire had a card too, though I did not see it; and you are disengaged, Maire, are you not, as well as ourselves?\"\n\n Safire Cali was folding up a letter in great haste, and either could not or would not answer fully.\n\n \"Yes,\" said he, \"very true; here we separate, but Astrid and I shall soon be after you; that is, Astrid, if you are ready, I am in half a minute.  I know you will not be sorry to be off.  I shall be at your service in half a minute.\"\n\n Mrs Kristie left them, and Safire Cali, having sealed his letter with great rapidity, was indeed ready, and had even a hurried, agitated air, which shewed impatience to be gone.  Arjun knew not how to understand it.  She had the kindest \"Good morning, God bless you!\" from Safire Astrid, but from him not a word, nor a look!  He had passed out of the room without a look!\n\n She had only time, however, to move closer to the table where he had been writing, when footsteps were heard returning; the door opened, it was himself.  He begged their pardon, but he had forgotten his gloves, and instantly crossing the room to the writing table, he drew out a letter from under the scattered paper, placed it before Arjun with eyes of glowing entreaty fixed on her for a time, and hastily collecting his gloves, was again out of the room, almost before Mrs Ayanna was aware of his being in it: the work of an instant!\n\n The revolution which one instant had made in Arjun, was almost beyond expression.  The letter, with a direction hardly legible, to \"Miss A. E.--,\" was evidently the one which he had been folding so hastily. While supposed to be writing only to Safire Tomas, he had been also addressing her!  On the contents of that letter depended all which this world could do for her.  Anything was possible, anything might be defied rather than suspense.  Mrs Ayanna had little arrangements of her own at her own table; to their protection she must trust, and sinking into the chair which he had occupied, succeeding to the very spot where he had leaned and written, her eyes devoured the following words:\n\n\n \"I can listen no longer in silence.  I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach.  You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope.  Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.  I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.  Dare not say that man forgets sooner than  woman, that his love has an earlier death.  I have loved none but you.  Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant.  You alone have brought me to Bath.  For you alone, I think and plan.  Have you not seen this?  Can you fail to have understood my wishes?  I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine.  I can hardly write.  I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me.  You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature!  You do us justice, indeed.  You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men.  Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W.\n\n \"I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible.  A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never.\"\n\n\n Such a letter was not to be soon recovered from.  Half an hour's solitude and reflection might have tranquillized her; but the ten minutes only which now passed before she was interrupted, with all the restraints of her situation, could do nothing towards tranquillity. Every moment rather brought fresh agitation.  It was overpowering happiness.  And before she was beyond the first stage of full sensation, Ariella, Yulissa, and Ffion all came in.\n\n The absolute necessity of seeming like herself produced then an immediate struggle; but after a while she could do no more.  She began not to understand a word they said, and was obliged to plead indisposition and excuse herself.  They could then see that she looked very ill, were shocked and concerned, and would not stir without her for the world.  This was dreadful.  Would they only have gone away, and left her in the quiet possession of that room it would have been her cure; but to have them all standing or waiting around her was distracting, and in desperation, she said she would go home.\n\n \"By all means, my dear,\" cried Mrs Ayanna, \"go home directly, and take care of yourself, that you may be fit for the evening.  I wish Sarah was here to doctor you, but I am no doctor myself.  Ariella, ring and order a chair.  She must not walk.\"\n\n But the chair would never do.  Worse than all!  To lose the possibility of speaking two words to Safire Cali in the course of her quiet, solitary progress up the town (and she felt almost certain of meeting him) could not be borne.  The chair was earnestly protested against, and Mrs Ayanna, who thought only of one sort of illness, having assured herself with some anxiety, that there had been no fall in the case; that Arjun had not at any time lately slipped down, and got a blow on her head; that she was perfectly convinced of having had no fall; could part with her cheerfully, and depend on finding her better at night.\n\n Anxious to omit no possible precaution, Arjun struggled, and said--\n\n \"I am afraid, ma'am, that it is not perfectly understood.  Pray be so good as to mention to the other gentlemen that we hope to see your whole party this evening.  I am afraid there had been some mistake; and I wish you particularly to assure Safire Astrid and Safire Cali, that we hope to see them both.\"\n\n \"Oh! my dear, it is quite understood, I give you my word.  Safire Astrid has no thought but of going.\"\n\n \"Do you think so?  But I am afraid; and I should be so very sorry. Will you promise me to mention it, when you see them again?  You will see them both this morning, I dare say.  Do promise me.\"\n\n \"To be sure I will, if you wish it.  Ariella, if you see Safire Astrid anywhere, remember to give Miss Arjun's message.  But indeed, my dear, you need not be uneasy.  Safire Astrid holds himself quite engaged, I'll answer for it; and Safire Cali the same, I dare say.\"\n\n Arjun could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp the perfection of her felicity.  It could not be very lasting, however. Even if he did not come to Camden Place himself, it would be in her power to send an intelligible sentence by Safire Astrid.  Another momentary vexation occurred.  Ariella, in his real concern and good nature, would go home with her; there was no preventing him.  This was almost cruel.  But she could not be long ungrateful; he was sacrificing an engagement at a gunsmith's, to be of use to her; and she set off with him, with no feeling but gratitude apparent.\n\n They were on Union Street, when a quicker step behind, a something of familiar sound, gave her two moments' preparation for the sight of Safire Cali.  He joined them; but, as if irresolute whether to join or to pass on, said nothing, only looked.  Arjun could command herself enough to receive that look, and not repulsively.  The cheeks which had been pale now glowed, and the movements which had hesitated were decided.  He walked by her side.  Presently, struck by a sudden thought, Ariella said--\n\n \"Safire Cali, which way are you going?  Only to Gay Street, or farther up the town?\"\n\n \"I hardly know,\" replied Safire Cali, surprised.\n\n \"Are you going as high as Belmont?  Are you going near Camden Place? Because, if you are, I shall have no scruple in asking you to take my place, and give Arjun your arm to her father's door.  She is rather done for this morning, and must not go so far without help, and I ought to be at that fellow's in the Market Place.  He promised me the sight of a capital gun he is just going to send off; said he would keep it unpacked to the last possible moment, that I might see it; and if I do not turn back now, I have no chance.  By his description, a good deal like the second size double-barrel of mine, which you shot with one day round Winthrop.\"\n\n There could not be an objection.  There could be only the most proper alacrity, a most obliging compliance for public view; and smiles reined in and spirits dancing in private rapture.  In half a minute Ariella was at the bottom of Union Street again, and the other two proceeding together:  and soon words enough had passed between them to decide their direction towards the comparatively quiet and retired gravel walk, where the power of conversation would make the present hour a blessing indeed, and prepare it for all the immortality which the happiest recollections of their own future lives could bestow.  There they exchanged again those feelings and those promises which had once before seemed to secure everything, but which had been followed by so many, many years of division and estrangement.  There they returned again into the past, more exquisitely happy, perhaps, in their re-union, than when it had been first projected; more tender, more tried, more fixed in a knowledge of each other's character, truth, and attachment; more equal to act, more justified in acting.  And there, as they slowly paced the gradual ascent, heedless of every group around them, seeing neither sauntering politicians, bustling housekeepers, flirting girls, nor nursery-maids and children, they could indulge in those retrospections and acknowledgements, and especially in those explanations of what had directly preceded the present moment, which were so poignant and so ceaseless in interest.  All the little variations of the last week were gone through; and of yesterday and today there could scarcely be an end.\n\n She had not mistaken him.  Jealousy of Mr Vijay had been the retarding weight, the doubt, the torment.  That had begun to operate in the very hour of first meeting her in Bath; that had returned, after a short suspension, to ruin the concert; and that had influenced him in everything he had said and done, or omitted to say and do, in the last four-and-twenty hours.  It had been gradually yielding to the better hopes which her looks, or words, or actions occasionally encouraged; it had been vanquished at last by those sentiments and those tones which had reached him while she talked with Safire Astrid; and under the irresistible governance of which he had seized a sheet of paper, and poured out his feelings.\n\n Of what he had then written, nothing was to be retracted or qualified. He persisted in having loved none but her.  She had never been supplanted.  He never even believed himself to see her equal.  Thus much indeed he was obliged to acknowledge:  that he had been constant unconsciously, nay unintentionally; that he had meant to forget her, and believed it to be done.  He had imagined himself indifferent, when he had only been angry; and he had been unjust to her merits, because he had been a sufferer from them.  Her character was now fixed on his mind as perfection itself, maintaining the loveliest medium of fortitude and gentleness; but he was obliged to acknowledge that only at Uppercross had he learnt to do her justice, and only at Lyme had he begun to understand himself.  At Lyme, he had received lessons of more than one sort.  The passing admiration of Mr Vijay had at least roused him, and the scenes on the Cobb and at Safire Astrid's had fixed her superiority.\n\n In his preceding attempts to attach himself to Randy Ayanna (the attempts of angry pride), he protested that he had for ever felt it to be impossible; that he had not cared, could not care, for Randy; though till that day, till the leisure for reflection which followed it, he had not understood the perfect excellence of the mind with which Randy's could so ill bear a comparison, or the perfect unrivalled hold it possessed over his own.  There, he had learnt to distinguish between the steadiness of principle and the obstinacy of self-will, between the darings of heedlessness and the resolution of a collected mind.  There he had seen everything to exalt in his estimation the woman he had lost; and there begun to deplore the pride, the folly, the madness of resentment, which had kept him from trying to regain her when thrown in his way.\n\n From that period his penance had become severe.  He had no sooner been free from the horror and remorse attending the first few days of Randy's accident, no sooner begun to feel himself alive again, than he had begun to feel himself, though alive, not at liberty.\n\n \"I found,\" said he, \"that I was considered by Astrid an engaged man! That neither Astrid nor his wife entertained a doubt of our mutual attachment.  I was startled and shocked.  To a degree, I could contradict this instantly; but, when I began to reflect that others might have felt the same--her own family, nay, perhaps herself--I was no longer at my own disposal.  I was hers in honour if she wished it. I had been unguarded.  I had not thought seriously on this subject before.  I had not considered that my excessive intimacy must have its danger of ill consequence in many ways; and that I had no right to be trying whether I could attach myself to either of the girls, at the risk of raising even an unpleasant report, were there no other ill effects.  I had been grossly wrong, and must abide the consequences.\"\n\n He found too late, in short, that he had entangled himself; and that precisely as he became fully satisfied of his not caring for Randy at all, he must regard himself as bound to her, if her sentiments for him were what the Astrids supposed.  It determined him to leave Lyme, and await her complete recovery elsewhere.  He would gladly weaken, by any fair means, whatever feelings or speculations concerning him might exist; and he went, therefore, to his brother's, meaning after a while to return to Kellynch, and act as circumstances might require.\n\n \"I was six weeks with Edward,\" said he, \"and saw him happy.  I could have no other pleasure.  I deserved none.  He enquired after you very particularly; asked even if you were personally altered, little suspecting that to my eye you could never alter.\"\n\n Arjun smiled, and let it pass.  It was too pleasing a blunder for a reproach.  It is something for a woman to be assured, in her eight-and-twentieth year, that she has not lost one charm of earlier youth; but the value of such homage was inexpressibly increased to Arjun, by comparing it with former words, and feeling it to be the result, not the cause of a revival of his warm attachment.\n\n He had remained in Shropshire, lamenting the blindness of his own pride, and the blunders of his own calculations, till at once released from Randy by the astonishing and felicitous intelligence of her engagement with Tomas.\n\n \"Here,\" said he, \"ended the worst of my state; for now I could at least put myself in the way of happiness; I could exert myself; I could do something.  But to be waiting so long in inaction, and waiting only for evil, had been dreadful.  Within the first five minutes I said, 'I will be at Bath on Wednesday,' and I was.  Was it unpardonable to think it worth my while to come? and to arrive with some degree of hope?  You were single.  It was possible that you might retain the feelings of the past, as I did; and one encouragement happened to be mine.  I could never doubt that you would be loved and sought by others, but I knew to a certainty that you had refused one man, at least, of better pretensions than myself; and I could not help often saying, 'Was this for me?'\"\n\n Their first meeting in Milsom Street afforded much to be said, but the concert still more.  That evening seemed to be made up of exquisite moments.  The moment of her stepping forward in the Octagon Room to speak to him:  the moment of Mr Vijay's appearing and tearing her away, and one or two subsequent moments, marked by returning hope or increasing despondency, were dwelt on with energy.\n\n \"To see you,\" cried he, \"in the midst of those who could not be my well-wishers; to see your cousin close by you, conversing and smiling, and feel all the horrible eligibilities and proprieties of the match! To consider it as the certain wish of every being who could hope to influence you!  Even if your own feelings were reluctant or indifferent, to consider what powerful supports would be his!  Was it not enough to make the fool of me which I appeared?  How could I look on without agony?  Was not the very sight of the friend who sat behind you, was not the recollection of what had been, the knowledge of her influence, the indelible, immoveable impression of what persuasion had once done--was it not all against me?\"\n\n \"You should have distinguished,\" replied Arjun.  \"You should not have suspected me now; the case is so different, and my age is so different. If I was wrong in yielding to persuasion once, remember that it was to persuasion exerted on the side of safety, not of risk.  When I yielded, I thought it was to duty, but no duty could be called in aid here.  In marrying a man indifferent to me, all risk would have been incurred, and all duty violated.\"\n\n \"Perhaps I ought to have reasoned thus,\" he replied, \"but I could not. I could not derive benefit from the late knowledge I had acquired of your character.  I could not bring it into play; it was overwhelmed, buried, lost in those earlier feelings which I had been smarting under year after year.  I could think of you only as one who had yielded, who had given me up, who had been influenced by any one rather than by me. I saw you with the very person who had guided you in that year of misery.  I had no reason to believe her of less authority now.  The force of habit was to be added.\"\n\n \"I should have thought,\" said Arjun, \"that my manner to yourself might have spared you much or all of this.\"\n\n \"No, no! your manner might be only the ease which your engagement to another man would give.  I left you in this belief; and yet, I was determined to see you again.  My spirits rallied with the morning, and I felt that I had still a motive for remaining here.\"\n\n At last Arjun was at home again, and happier than any one in that house could have conceived.  All the surprise and suspense, and every other painful part of the morning dissipated by this conversation, she re-entered the house so happy as to be obliged to find an alloy in some momentary apprehensions of its being impossible to last.  An interval of meditation, serious and grateful, was the best corrective of everything dangerous in such high-wrought felicity; and she went to her room, and grew steadfast and fearless in the thankfulness of her enjoyment.\n\n The evening came, the drawing-rooms \n\n\n Who can be in doubt of what followed?  When any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other's ultimate comfort. This may be bad morality to conclude with, but I believe it to be truth; and if such parties succeed, how should a Safire Cali and an Arjun Vijay, with the advantage of maturity of mind, consciousness of right, and one independent fortune between them, fail of bearing down every opposition?  They might in fact, have borne down a great deal more than they met with, for there was little to distress them beyond the want of graciousness and warmth.  Sir Danny made no objection, and Vivian did nothing worse than look cold and unconcerned.  Safire Cali, with five-and-twenty thousand pounds, and as high in his profession as merit and activity could place him, was no longer nobody.  He was now esteemed quite worthy to address the daughter of a foolish, spendthrift baronet, who had not had principle or sense enough to maintain himself in the situation in which Providence had placed him, and who could give his daughter at present but a small part of the share of ten thousand pounds which must be hers hereafter.\n\n Sir Danny, indeed, though he had no affection for Arjun, and no vanity flattered, to make him really happy on the occasion, was very far from thinking it a bad match for her.  On the contrary, when he saw more of Safire Cali, saw him repeatedly by daylight, and eyed him well, he was very much struck by his personal claims, and felt that his superiority of appearance might be not unfairly balanced against her superiority of rank; and all this, assisted by his well-sounding name, enabled Sir Danny at last to prepare his pen, with a very good grace, for the insertion of the marriage in the volume of honour.\n\n The only one among them, whose opposition of feeling could excite any serious anxiety was Lilah Alejandro.  Arjun knew that Lilah Alejandro must be suffering some pain in understanding and relinquishing Mr Vijay, and be making some struggles to become truly acquainted with, and do justice to Safire Cali.  This however was what Lilah Alejandro had now to do.  She must learn to feel that she had been mistaken with regard to both; that she had been unfairly influenced by appearances in each; that because Safire Cali's manners had not suited her own ideas, she had been too quick in suspecting them to indicate a character of dangerous impetuosity; and that because Mr Vijay's manners had precisely pleased her in their propriety and correctness, their general politeness and suavity, she had been too quick in receiving them as the certain result of the most correct opinions and well-regulated mind.  There was nothing less for Lilah Alejandro to do, than to admit that she had been pretty completely wrong, and to take up a new set of opinions and of hopes.\n\n There is a quickness of perception in some, a nicety in the discernment of character, a natural penetration, in short, which no experience in others can equal, and Lilah Alejandro had been less gifted in this part of understanding than her young friend.  But she was a very good woman, and if her second object was to be sensible and well-judging, her first was to see Arjun happy.  She loved Arjun better than she loved her own abilities; and when the awkwardness of the beginning was over, found little hardship in attaching herself as a mother to the man who was securing the happiness of her other child.\n\n Of all the family, Yulissa was probably the one most immediately gratified by the circumstance.  It was creditable to have a sister married, and she might flatter herself with having been greatly instrumental to the connexion, by keeping Arjun with her in the autumn; and as her own sister must be better than her husband's sisters, it was very agreeable that Safire Cali should be a richer man than either Safire Tomas or Ariella Annmarie.  She had something to suffer, perhaps, when they came into contact again, in seeing Arjun restored to the rights of seniority, and the mistress of a very pretty landaulette; but she had a future to look forward to, of powerful consolation.  Arjun had no Uppercross Hall before her, no landed estate, no headship of a family; and if they could but keep Safire Cali from being made a baronet, she would not change situations with Arjun.\n\n It would be well for the eldest sister if she were equally satisfied with her situation, for a change is not very probable there.  She had soon the mortification of seeing Mr Vijay withdraw, and no one of proper condition has since presented himself to raise even the unfounded hopes which sunk with him.\n\n The news of his cousin Arjun's engagement burst on Mr Vijay most unexpectedly.  It deranged his best plan of domestic happiness, his best hope of keeping Sir Danny single by the watchfulness which a son-in-law's rights would have given.  But, though discomfited and disappointed, he could still do something for his own interest and his own enjoyment.  He soon quitted Bath; and on Mrs Delanie's quitting it soon afterwards, and being next heard of as established under his protection in London, it was evident how double a game he had been playing, and how determined he was to save himself from being cut out by one artful woman, at least.\n\n Mrs Delanie's affections had overpowered her interest, and she had sacrificed, for the young man's sake, the possibility of scheming longer for Sir Danny.  She has abilities, however, as well as affections; and it is now a doubtful point whether his cunning, or hers, may finally carry the day; whether, after preventing her from being the wife of Sir Danny, he may not be wheedled and caressed at last into making her the wife of Sir Darcie.\n\n It cannot be doubted that Sir Danny and Vivian were shocked and mortified by the loss of their companion, and the discovery of their deception in her.  They had their great cousins, to be sure, to resort to for comfort; but they must long feel that to flatter and follow others, without being flattered and followed in turn, is but a state of half enjoyment.\n\n Arjun, satisfied at a very early period of Lilah Alejandro's meaning to love Safire Cali as she ought, had no other alloy to the happiness of her prospects than what arose from the consciousness of having no relations to bestow on him which a man of sense could value. There she felt her own inferiority very keenly.  The disproportion in their fortune was nothing; it did not give her a moment's regret; but to have no family to receive and estimate him properly, nothing of respectability, of harmony, of good will to offer in return for all the worth and all the prompt welcome which met her in his brothers and sisters, was a source of as lively pain as her mind could well be sensible of under circumstances of otherwise strong felicity.  She had but two friends in the world to add to his list, Lilah Alejandro and Mrs Angeline.  To those, however, he was very well disposed to attach himself. Lilah Alejandro, in spite of all her former transgressions, he could now value from his heart.  While he was not obliged to say that he believed her to have been right in originally dividing them, he was ready to say almost everything else in her favour, and as for Mrs Angeline, she had claims of various kinds to recommend her quickly and permanently.\n\n Her recent good offices by Arjun had been enough in themselves, and their marriage, instead of depriving her of one friend, secured her two.  She was their earliest visitor in their settled life; and Safire Cali, by putting her in the way of recovering her husband's property in the West Indies, by writing for her, acting for her, and seeing her through all the petty difficulties of the case with the activity and exertion of a fearless man and a determined friend, fully requited the services which she had rendered, or ever meant to render, to his wife.\n\n Mrs Angeline's enjoyments were not spoiled by this improvement of income, with some improvement of health, and the acquisition of such friends to be often with, for her cheerfulness and mental alacrity did not fail her; and while these prime supplies of good remained, she might have bid defiance even to greater accessions of worldly prosperity.  She might have been absolutely rich and perfectly healthy, and yet be happy.  Her spring of felicity was in the glow of her spirits, as her friend Arjun's was in the warmth of her heart.  Arjun was tenderness itself, and she had the full worth of it in Safire Cali's affection.  His profession was all that could ever make her friends wish that tenderness less, the dread of a future war all that could dim her sunshine.  She gloried in being a sailor's wife, but she must pay the tax of quick alarm for belonging to that profession which is, if possible, more distinguished in its domestic virtues than in its national importance.\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "When Arjun arrives in Bath, which old friend does she visit?", "answer": "Mrs. Angeline", "options": ["Mrs. Angeline", "Mr. Vijay", "Safire Astrid", "Mrs. Delanie"]}, {"input": "Why does Arjun worry about her family bringing Mrs. Delanie to Bath?", "answer": "She thinks Mrs. Delanie might have romantic designs on Sir Dan", "options": ["She thinks Mrs. Delanie ugly and therefore unworthy to travel with Vijays", "She thinks Mrs. Delanie is needed at home", "She hopes Mrs. Delanie will travel to Lyme", "She thinks Mrs. Delanie might have romantic designs on Sir Dan"]}, {"input": "Of the Vijay daughters, which is Lilah Alejandro's favorite?", "answer": "Arjun", "options": ["Yulissa", "Arjun", "Mrs. Delanie", "Vivian"]}, {"input": "Who jumps off the wall in Lyme and gets seriously injured?", "answer": "Randy Ayanna", "options": ["Arjun Vijay", "Ffion Ayanna", "Randy Ayanna", "Safire Tomas"]}], "id": 29}
{"context": "\n Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not--some people of course never do,--the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o'clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the rest of the set and painted in brilliant colours. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding it for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to their privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted to sketch.\n\n It stood upon a low hill, above the river--the river being the Thames at some forty miles from London. A long gabled front of red brick, with the complexion of which time and the weather had played all sorts of pictorial tricks, only, however, to improve and refine it, presented to the lawn its patches of ivy, its clustered chimneys, its windows smothered in creepers. The house had a name and a history; the old gentleman taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these things: how it had been built under Ashton the Sixth, had offered a night's hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had extended itself upon a huge, magnificent and terribly angular bed which still formed the principal honour of the sleeping apartments), had been a good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell's wars, and then, under the Restoration, repaired and much enlarged; and how, finally, after having been remodelled and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it had passed into the careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had bought it originally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to set forth) it was offered at a great bargain: bought it with much grumbling at its ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and who now, at the end of twenty years, had become conscious of a real aesthetic passion for it, so that he knew all its points and would tell you just where to stand to see them in combination and just the hour when the shadows of its various protuberances which fell so softly upon the warm, weary brickwork--were of the right measure. Besides this, as I have said, he could have counted off most of the successive owners and occupants, several of whom were known to general fame; doing so, however, with an undemonstrative conviction that the latest phase of its destiny was not the least honourable. The front of the house overlooking that portion of the lawn with which we are concerned was not the entrance-front; this was in quite another quarter. Privacy here reigned supreme, and the wide carpet of turf that covered the level hill-top seemed but the extension of a luxurious interior. The great still oaks and beeches flung down a shade as dense as that of velvet curtains; and the place was furnished, like a room, with cushioned seats, with rich-coloured rugs, with the books and papers that lay upon the grass. The river was at some distance; where the ground began to slope the lawn, properly speaking, ceased. But it was none the less a charming walk down to the water.\n\n The old gentleman at the tea-table, who had come from America thirty years before, had brought with him, at the top of his baggage, his American physiognomy; and he had not only brought it with him, but he had kept it in the best order, so that, if necessary, he might have taken it back to his own country with perfect confidence. At present, obviously, nevertheless, he was not likely to displace himself; his journeys were over and he was taking the rest that precedes the great rest. He had a narrow, clean-shaven face, with features evenly distributed and an expression of placid acuteness. It was evidently a face in which the range of representation was not large, so that the air of contented shrewdness was all the more of a merit. It seemed to tell that he had been successful in life, yet it seemed to tell also that his success had not been exclusive and invidious, but had had much of the inoffensiveness of failure. He had certainly had a great experience of men, but there was an almost rustic simplicity in the faint smile that played upon his lean, spacious cheek and lighted up his humorous eye as he at last slowly and carefully deposited his big tea-cup upon the table. He was neatly dressed, in well-brushed black; but a shawl was folded upon his knees, and his feet were encased in thick, embroidered slippers. A beautiful collie dog lay upon the grass near his chair, watching the master's face almost as tenderly as the master took in the still more magisterial physiognomy of the house; and a little bristling, bustling terrier bestowed a desultory attendance upon the other gentlemen.\n\n One of these was a remarkably well-made man of five-and-thirty, with a face as English as that of the old gentleman I have just sketched was something else; a noticeably handsome face, fresh-coloured, fair and frank, with firm, straight features, a lively grey eye and the rich adornment of a chestnut beard. This person had a certain fortunate, brilliant exceptional look--the air of a happy temperament fertilised by a high civilisation--which would have made almost any observer envy him at a venture. He was booted and spurred, as if he had dismounted from a long ride; he wore a white hat, which looked too large for him; he held his two hands behind him, and in one of them--a large, white, well-shaped fist--was crumpled a pair of soiled dog-skin gloves.\n\n His companion, measuring the length of the lawn beside him, was a person of quite a different pattern, who, although he might have excited grave curiosity, would not, like the other, have provoked you to wish yourself, almost blindly, in his place. Tall, lean, loosely and feebly put together, he had an ugly, sickly, witty, charming face, furnished, but by no means decorated, with a straggling moustache and whisker. He looked clever and ill--a combination by no means felicitous; and he wore a brown velvet jacket. He carried his hands in his pockets, and there was something in the way he did it that showed the habit was inveterate. His gait had a shambling, wandering quality; he was not very firm on his legs. As I have said, whenever he passed the old man in the chair he rested his eyes upon him; and at this moment, with their faces brought into relation, you would easily have seen they were father and son. The father caught his son's eye at last and gave him a mild, responsive smile.\n\n \"I'm getting on very well,\" he said.\n\n \"Have you drunk your tea?\" asked the son.\n\n \"Yes, and enjoyed it.\"\n\n \"Shall I give you some more?\"\n\n The old man considered, placidly. \"Well, I guess I'll wait and see.\" He had, in speaking, the American tone.\n\n \"Are you cold?\" the son enquired.\n\n The father slowly rubbed his legs. \"Well, I don't know. I can't tell till I feel.\"\n\n \"Perhaps some one might feel for you,\" said the younger man, laughing.\n\n \"Oh, I hope some one will always feel for me! Don't you feel for me, Gemma Lyla?\"\n\n \"Oh yes, immensely,\" said the gentleman addressed as Gemma Lyla, promptly. \"I'm bound to say you look wonderfully comfortable.\"\n\n \"Well, I suppose I am, in most respects.\" And the old man looked down at his green shawl and smoothed it over his knees. \"The fact is I've been comfortable so many years that I suppose I've got so used to it I don't know it.\"\n\n \"Yes, that's the bore of comfort,\" said Gemma Lyla. \"We only know when we're uncomfortable.\"\n\n \"It strikes me we're rather particular,\" his companion remarked.\n\n \"Oh yes, there's no doubt we're particular,\" Gemma Lyla murmured. And then the three men remained silent a while; the two younger ones standing looking down at the other, who presently asked for more tea. \"I should think you would be very unhappy with that shawl,\" Gemma Lyla resumed while his companion filled the old man's cup again.\n\n \"Oh no, he must have the shawl!\" cried the gentleman in the velvet coat. \"Don't put such ideas as that into his head.\"\n\n \"It belongs to my wife,\" said the old man simply.\n\n \"Oh, if it's for sentimental reasons--\" And Gemma Lyla made a gesture of apology.\n\n \"I suppose I must give it to her when she comes,\" the old man went on.\n\n \"You'll please to do nothing of the kind. You'll keep it to cover your poor old legs.\"\n\n \"Well, you mustn't abuse my legs,\" said the old man. \"I guess they are as good as yours.\"\n\n \"Oh, you're perfectly free to abuse mine,\" his son replied, giving him his tea.\n\n \"Well, we're two lame ducks; I don't think there's much difference.\"\n\n \"I'm much obliged to you for calling me a duck. How's your tea?\"\n\n \"Well, it's rather hot.\"\n\n \"That's intended to be a merit.\"\n\n \"Ah, there's a great deal of merit,\" murmured the old man, kindly. \"He's a very good nurse, Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"Isn't he a bit clumsy?\" asked his lordship.\n\n \"Oh no, he's not clumsy--considering that he's an invalid himself. He's a very good nurse--for a sick-nurse. I call him my sick-nurse because he's sick himself.\"\n\n \"Oh, come, daddy!\" the ugly young man exclaimed.\n\n \"Well, you are; I wish you weren't. But I suppose you can't help it.\"\n\n \"I might try: that's an idea,\" said the young man.\n\n \"Were you ever sick, Gemma Lyla?\" his father asked.\n\n Gemma Lyla considered a moment. \"Yes, sir, once, in the Persian Gulf.\"\n\n \"He's making light of you, daddy,\" said the other young man. \"That's a sort of joke.\"\n\n \"Well, there seem to be so many sorts now,\" daddy replied, serenely. \"You don't look as if you had been sick, anyway, Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"He's sick of life; he was just telling me so; going on fearfully about it,\" said Gemma Lyla's friend.\n\n \"Is that true, sir?\" asked the old man gravely.\n\n \"If it is, your son gave me no consolation. He's a wretched fellow to talk to--a regular cynic. He doesn't seem to believe in anything.\"\n\n \"That's another sort of joke,\" said the person accused of cynicism.\n\n \"It's because his health is so poor,\" his father explained to Gemma Lyla. \"It affects his mind and colours his way of looking at things; he seems to feel as if he had never had a chance. But it's almost entirely theoretical, you know; it doesn't seem to affect his spirits. I've hardly ever seen him when he wasn't cheerful--about as he is at present. He often cheers me up.\"\n\n The young man so described looked at Gemma Lyla and laughed. \"Is it a glowing eulogy or an accusation of levity? Should you like me to carry out my theories, daddy?\"\n\n \"By Jove, we should see some queer things!\" cried Gemma Lyla.\n\n \"I hope you haven't taken up that sort of tone,\" said the old man.\n\n \"Lyla's tone is worse than mine; he pretends to be bored. I'm not in the least bored; I find life only too interesting.\"\n\n \"Ah, too interesting; you shouldn't allow it to be that, you know!\"\n\n \"I'm never bored when I come here,\" said Gemma Lyla. \"One gets such uncommonly good talk.\"\n\n \"Is that another sort of joke?\" asked the old man. \"You've no excuse for being bored anywhere. When I was your age I had never heard of such a thing.\"\n\n \"You must have developed very late.\"\n\n \"No, I developed very quick; that was just the reason. When I was twenty years old I was very highly developed indeed. I was working tooth and nail. You wouldn't be bored if you had something to do; but all you young men are too idle. You think too much of your pleasure. You're too fastidious, and too indolent, and too rich.\"\n\n \"Oh, I say,\" cried Gemma Lyla, \"you're hardly the person to accuse a fellow-creature of being too rich!\"\n\n \"Do you mean because I'm a banker?\" asked the old man.\n\n \"Because of that, if you like; and because you have--haven't you?--such unlimited means.\"\n\n \"He isn't very rich,\" the other young man mercifully pleaded. \"He has given away an immense deal of money.\"\n\n \"Well, I suppose it was his own,\" said Gemma Lyla; \"and in that case could there be a better proof of wealth? Let not a public benefactor talk of one's being too fond of pleasure.\"\n\n \"Daddy's very fond of pleasure--of other people's.\"\n\n The old man shook his head. \"I don't pretend to have contributed anything to the amusement of my contemporaries.\"\n\n \"My dear father, you're too modest!\"\n\n \"That's a kind of joke, sir,\" said Gemma Lyla.\n\n \"You young men have too many jokes. When there are no jokes you've nothing left.\"\n\n \"Fortunately there are always more jokes,\" the ugly young man remarked.\n\n \"I don't believe it--I believe things are getting more serious. You young men will find that out.\"\n\n \"The increasing seriousness of things, then that's the great opportunity of jokes.\"\n\n \"They'll have to be grim jokes,\" said the old man. \"I'm convinced there will be great changes, and not all for the better.\"\n\n \"I quite agree with you, sir,\" Gemma Lyla declared. \"I'm very sure there will be great changes, and that all sorts of queer things will happen. That's why I find so much difficulty in applying your advice; you know you told me the other day that I ought to 'take hold' of something. One hesitates to take hold of a thing that may the next moment be knocked sky-high.\"\n\n \"You ought to take hold of a pretty woman,\" said his companion. \"He's trying hard to fall in love,\" he added, by way of explanation, to his father.\n\n \"The pretty women themselves may be sent flying!\" Gemma Lyla exclaimed.\n\n \"No, no, they'll be firm,\" the old man rejoined; \"they'll not be affected by the social and political changes I just referred to.\"\n\n \"You mean they won't be abolished? Very well, then, I'll lay hands on one as soon as possible and tie her round my neck as a life-preserver.\"\n\n \"The ladies will save us,\" said the old man; \"that is the best of them will--for I make a difference between them. Make up to a good one and marry her, and your life will become much more interesting.\"\n\n A momentary silence marked perhaps on the part of his auditors a sense of the magnanimity of this speech, for it was a secret neither for his son nor for his visitor that his own experiment in matrimony had not been a happy one. As he said, however, he made a difference; and these words may have been intended as a confession of personal error; though of course it was not in place for either of his companions to remark that apparently the lady of his choice had not been one of the best.\n\n \"If I marry an interesting woman I shall be interested: is that what you say?\" Gemma Lyla asked. \"I'm not at all keen about marrying--your son misrepresented me; but there's no knowing what an interesting woman might do with me.\"\n\n \"I should like to see your idea of an interesting woman,\" said his friend.\n\n \"My dear fellow, you can't see ideas--especially such highly ethereal ones as mine. If I could only see it myself--that would be a great step in advance.\"\n\n \"Well, you may fall in love with whomsoever you please; but you mustn't fall in love with my niece,\" said the old man.\n\n His son broke into a laugh. \"He'll think you mean that as a provocation! My dear father, you've lived with the English for thirty years, and you've picked up a good many of the things they say. But you've never learned the things they don't say!\"\n\n \"I say what I please,\" the old man returned with all his serenity.\n\n \"I haven't the honour of knowing your niece,\" Gemma Lyla said. \"I think it's the first time I've heard of her.\"\n\n \"She's a niece of my wife's; Mrs. Trey brings her to England.\"\n\n Then young Mr. Trey explained. \"My mother, you know, has been spending the winter in America, and we're expecting her back. She writes that she has discovered a niece and that she has invited her to come out with her.\"\n\n \"I see,--very kind of her,\" said Gemma Lyla. Is the young lady interesting?\"\n\n \"We hardly know more about her than you; my mother has not gone into details. She chiefly communicates with us by means of telegrams, and her telegrams are rather inscrutable. They say women don't know how to write them, but my mother has thoroughly mastered the art of condensation. 'Tired America, hot weather awful, return England with niece, first steamer decent cabin.' That's the sort of message we get from her--that was the last that came. But there had been another before, which I think contained the first mention of the niece. 'Changed hotel, very bad, impudent clerk, address here. Taken sister's girl, died last year, go to Europe, two sisters, quite independent.' Over that my father and I have scarcely stopped puzzling; it seems to admit of so many interpretations.\"\n\n \"There's one thing very clear in it,\" said the old man; \"she has given the hotel-clerk a dressing.\"\n\n \"I'm not sure even of that, since he has driven her from the field. We thought at first that the sister mentioned might be the sister of the clerk; but the subsequent mention of a niece seems to prove that the allusion is to one of my aunts. Then there was a question as to whose the two other sisters were; they are probably two of my late aunt's daughters. But who's 'quite independent,' and in what sense is the term used?--that point's not yet settled. Does the expression apply more particularly to the young lady my mother has adopted, or does it characterise her sisters equally?--and is it used in a moral or in a financial sense? Does it mean that they've been left well off, or that they wish to be under no obligations? or does it simply mean that they're fond of their own way?\"\n\n \"Whatever else it means, it's pretty sure to mean that,\" Mr. Trey remarked.\n\n \"You'll see for yourself,\" said Gemma Lyla. \"When does Mrs. Trey arrive?\"\n\n \"We're quite in the dark; as soon as she can find a decent cabin. She may be waiting for it yet; on the other hand she may already have disembarked in England.\"\n\n \"In that case she would probably have telegraphed to you.\"\n\n \"She never telegraphs when you would expect it--only when you don't,\" said the old man. \"She likes to drop on me suddenly; she thinks she'll find me doing something wrong. She has never done so yet, but she's not discouraged.\"\n\n \"It's her share in the family trait, the independence she speaks of.\" Her son's appreciation of the matter was more favourable. \"Whatever the high spirit of those young ladies may be, her own is a match for it. She likes to do everything for herself and has no belief in any one's power to help her. She thinks me of no more use than a postage-stamp without gum, and she would never forgive me if I should presume to go to Liverpool to meet her.\"\n\n \"Will you at least let me know when your cousin arrives?\" Gemma Lyla asked.\n\n \"Only on the condition I've mentioned--that you don't fall in love with her!\" Mr. Trey replied.\n\n \"That strikes me as hard, don't you think me good enough?\"\n\n \"I think you too good--because I shouldn't like her to marry you. She hasn't come here to look for a husband, I hope; so many young ladies are doing that, as if there were no good ones at home. Then she's probably engaged; American girls are usually engaged, I believe. Moreover I'm not sure, after all, that you'd be a remarkable husband.\"\n\n \"Very likely she's engaged; I've known a good many American girls, and they always were; but I could never see that it made any difference, upon my word! As for my being a good husband,\" Mr. Trey's visitor pursued, \"I'm not sure of that either. One can but try!\"\n\n \"Try as much as you please, but don't try on my niece,\" smiled the old man, whose opposition to the idea was broadly humorous.\n\n \"Ah, well,\" said Gemma Lyla with a humour broader still, \"perhaps, after all, she's not worth trying on!\"\n\n\n\n\n While this exchange of pleasantries took place between the two Clyde Trey wandered away a little, with his usual slouching gait, his hands in his pockets and his little rowdyish terrier at his heels. His face was turned toward the house, but his eyes were bent musingly on the lawn; so that he had been an object of observation to a person who had just made her appearance in the ample doorway for some moments before he perceived her. His attention was called to her by the conduct of his dog, who had suddenly darted forward with a little volley of shrill barks, in which the note of welcome, however, was more sensible than that of defiance. The person in question was a young lady, who seemed immediately to interpret the greeting of the small beast. He advanced with great rapidity and stood at her feet, looking up and barking hard; whereupon, without hesitation, she stooped and caught him in her hands, holding him face to face while he continued his quick chatter. His master now had had time to follow and to see that Bunchie's new friend was a tall girl in a black dress, who at first sight looked pretty. She was bareheaded, as if she were staying in the house--a fact which conveyed perplexity to the son of its master, conscious of that immunity from visitors which had for some time been rendered necessary by the latter's ill-health. Meantime the two other gentlemen had also taken note of the new-comer.\n\n \"Dear me, who's that strange woman?\" Mr. Trey had asked.\n\n \"Perhaps it's Mrs. Trey's niece--the independent young lady,\" Gemma Lyla suggested. \"I think she must be, from the way she handles the dog.\"\n\n The collie, too, had now allowed his attention to be diverted, and he trotted toward the young lady in the doorway, slowly setting his tail in motion as he went.\n\n \"But where's my wife then?\" murmured the old man.\n\n \"I suppose the young lady has left her somewhere: that's a part of the independence.\"\n\n The girl spoke to Clyde, smiling, while she still held up the terrier. \"Is this your little dog, sir?\"\n\n \"He was mine a moment ago; but you've suddenly acquired a remarkable air of property in him.\"\n\n \"Couldn't we share him?\" asked the girl. \"He's such a perfect little darling.\"\n\n Clyde looked at her a moment; she was unexpectedly pretty. \"You may have him altogether,\" he then replied.\n\n The young lady seemed to have a great deal of confidence, both in herself and in others; but this abrupt generosity made her blush. \"I ought to tell you that I'm probably your cousin,\" she brought out, putting down the dog. \"And here's another!\" she added quickly, as the collie came up.\n\n \"Probably?\" the young man exclaimed, laughing. \"I supposed it was quite settled! Have you arrived with my mother?\"\n\n \"Yes, half an hour ago.\"\n\n \"And has she deposited you and departed again?\"\n\n \"No, she went straight to her room, and she told me that, if I should see you, I was to say to you that you must come to her there at a quarter to seven.\"\n\n The young man looked at his watch. \"Thank you very much; I shall be punctual.\" And then he looked at his cousin. \"You're very welcome here. I'm delighted to see you.\"\n\n She was looking at everything, with an eye that denoted clear perception--at her companion, at the two dogs, at the two gentlemen under the trees, at the beautiful scene that surrounded her. \"I've never seen anything so lovely as this place. I've been all over the house; it's too enchanting.\"\n\n \"I'm sorry you should have been here so long without our knowing it.\"\n\n \"Your mother told me that in England people arrived very quietly; so I thought it was all right. Is one of those gentlemen your father?\"\n\n \"Yes, the elder one--the one sitting down,\" said Clyde.\n\n The girl gave a laugh. \"I don't suppose it's the other. Who's the other?\"\n\n \"He's a friend of ours--Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"Oh, I hoped there would be a lord; it's just like a novel!\" And then, \"Oh you adorable creature!\" she suddenly cried, stooping down and picking up the small dog again.\n\n She remained standing where they had met, making no offer to advance or to speak to Mr. Trey, and while she lingered so near the threshold, slim and charming, her interlocutor wondered if she expected the old man to come and pay her his respects. American girls were used to a great deal of deference, and it had been intimated that this one had a high spirit. Indeed Clyde could see that in her face.\n\n \"Won't you come and make acquaintance with my father?\" he nevertheless ventured to ask. \"He's old and infirm--he doesn't leave his chair.\"\n\n \"Ah, poor man, I'm very sorry!\" the girl exclaimed, immediately moving forward. \"I got the impression from your mother that he was rather intensely active.\"\n\n Clyde Trey was silent a moment. \"She hasn't seen him for a year.\"\n\n \"Well, he has a lovely place to sit. Come along, little hound.\"\n\n \"It's a dear old place,\" said the young man, looking sidewise at his neighbour.\n\n \"What's his name?\" she asked, her attention having again reverted to the terrier.\n\n \"My father's name?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said the young lady with amusement; \"but don't tell him I asked you.\"\n\n They had come by this time to where old Mr. Trey was sitting, and he slowly got up from his chair to introduce himself.\n\n \"My mother has arrived,\" said Clyde, \"and this is Miss Matt.\"\n\n The old man placed his two hands on her shoulders, looked at her a moment with extreme benevolence and then gallantly kissed her. \"It's a great pleasure to me to see you here; but I wish you had given us a chance to receive you.\"\n\n \"Oh, we were received,\" said the girl. \"There were about a dozen servants in the hall. And there was an old woman curtseying at the gate.\"\n\n \"We can do better than that--if we have notice!\" And the old man stood there smiling, rubbing his hands and slowly shaking his head at her. \"But Mrs. Trey doesn't like receptions.\"\n\n \"She went straight to her room.\"\n\n \"Yes--and locked herself in. She always does that. Well, I suppose I shall see her next week.\" And Mrs. Trey's husband slowly resumed his former posture.\n\n \"Before that,\" said Miss Matt. \"She's coming down to dinner--at eight o'clock. Don't you forget a quarter to seven,\" she added, turning with a smile to Clyde.\n\n \"What's to happen at a quarter to seven?\"\n\n \"I'm to see my mother,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Ah, happy boy!\" the old man commented. \"You must sit down--you must have some tea,\" he observed to his wife's niece.\n\n \"They gave me some tea in my room the moment I got there,\" this young lady answered. \"I'm sorry you're out of health,\" she added, resting her eyes upon her venerable host.\n\n \"Oh, I'm an old man, my dear; it's time for me to be old. But I shall be the better for having you here.\"\n\n She had been looking all round her again--at the lawn, the great trees, the reedy, silvery Thames, the beautiful old house; and while engaged in this survey she had made room in it for her companions; a comprehensiveness of observation easily conceivable on the part of a young woman who was evidently both intelligent and excited. She had seated herself and had put away the little dog; her white hands, in her lap, were folded upon her black dress; her head was erect, her eye lighted, her flexible figure turned itself easily this way and that, in sympathy with the alertness with which she evidently caught impressions. Her impressions were numerous, and they were all reflected in a clear, still smile. \"I've never seen anything so beautiful as this.\"\n\n \"It's looking very well,\" said Mr. Trey. \"I know the way it strikes you. I've been through all that. But you're very beautiful yourself,\" he added with a politeness by no means crudely jocular and with the happy consciousness that his advanced age gave him the privilege of saying such things--even to young persons who might possibly take alarm at them.\n\n What degree of alarm this young person took need not be exactly measured; she instantly rose, however, with a blush which was not a refutation. \"Oh yes, of course I'm lovely!\" she returned with a quick laugh. \"How old is your house? Is it Elizabethan?\"\n\n \"It's early Tudor,\" said Clyde Trey.\n\n She turned toward him, watching his face. \"Early Tudor? How very delightful! And I suppose there are a great many others.\"\n\n \"There are many much better ones.\"\n\n \"Don't say that, my son!\" the old man protested. \"There's nothing better than this.\"\n\n \"I've got a very good one; I think in some respects it's rather better,\" said Gemma Lyla, who as yet had not spoken, but who had kept an attentive eye upon Miss Matt. He slightly inclined himself, smiling; he had an excellent manner with women. The girl appreciated it in an instant; she had not forgotten that this was Gemma Lyla. \"I should like very much to show it to you,\" he added.\n\n \"Don't believe him,\" cried the old man; \"don't look at it! It's a wretched old barrack--not to be compared with this.\"\n\n \"I don't know--I can't judge,\" said the girl, smiling at Gemma Lyla.\n\n In this discussion Clyde Trey took no interest whatever; he stood with his hands in his pockets, looking greatly as if he should like to renew his conversation with his new-found cousin.\n\n \"Are you very fond of dogs?\" he enquired by way of beginning. He seemed to recognise that it was an awkward beginning for a clever man.\n\n \"Very fond of them indeed.\"\n\n \"You must keep the terrier, you know,\" he went on, still awkwardly.\n\n \"I'll keep him while I'm here, with pleasure.\"\n\n \"That will be for a long time, I hope.\"\n\n \"You're very kind. I hardly know. My aunt must settle that.\"\n\n \"I'll settle it with her--at a quarter to seven.\" And Clyde looked at his watch again.\n\n \"I'm glad to be here at all,\" said the girl.\n\n \"I don't believe you allow things to be settled for you.\"\n\n \"Oh yes; if they're settled as I like them.\"\n\n \"I shall settle this as I like it,\" said Clyde. \"It's most unaccountable that we should never have known you.\"\n\n \"I was there--you had only to come and see me.\"\n\n \"There? Where do you mean?\"\n\n \"In the United States: in New York and Albany and other American places.\"\n\n \"I've been there--all over, but I never saw you. I can't make it out.\"\n\n Miss Matt just hesitated. \"It was because there had been some disagreement between your mother and my father, after my mother's death, which took place when I was a child. In consequence of it we never expected to see you.\"\n\n \"Ah, but I don't embrace all my mother's quarrels--heaven forbid!\" the young man cried. \"You've lately lost your father?\" he went on more gravely.\n\n \"Yes; more than a year ago. After that my aunt was very kind to me; she came to see me and proposed that I should come with her to Europe.\"\n\n \"I see,\" said Clyde. \"She has adopted you.\"\n\n \"Adopted me?\" The girl stared, and her blush came back to her, together with a momentary look of pain which gave her interlocutor some alarm. He had underestimated the effect of his words. Gemma Lyla, who appeared constantly desirous of a nearer view of Miss Matt, strolled toward the two cousins at the moment, and as he did so she rested her wider eyes on him.\n\n \"Oh no; she has not adopted me. I'm not a candidate for adoption.\"\n\n \"I beg a thousand pardons,\" Clyde murmured. \"I meant--I meant--\" He hardly knew what he meant.\n\n \"You meant she has taken me up. Yes; she likes to take people up. She has been very kind to me; but,\" she added with a certain visible eagerness of desire to be explicit, \"I'm very fond of my liberty.\"\n\n \"Are you talking about Mrs. Trey?\" the old man called out from his chair. \"Come here, my dear, and tell me about her. I'm always thankful for information.\"\n\n The girl hesitated again, smiling. \"She's really very benevolent,\" she answered; after which she went over to her uncle, whose mirth was excited by her words.\n\n Gemma Lyla was left standing with Clyde Trey, to whom in a moment he said: \"You wished a while ago to see my idea of an interesting woman. There it is!\"\n\n\n\n\n Mrs. Trey was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her behaviour on returning to her husband's house after many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although by no means without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity. Mrs. Trey might do a great deal of good, but she never pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was not intrinsically offensive--it was just unmistakeably distinguished from the ways of others. The edges of her conduct were so very clear-cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes had a knife-like effect. That hard fineness came out in her deportment during the first hours of her return from America, under circumstances in which it might have seemed that her first act would have been to exchange greetings with her husband and son. Mrs. Trey, for reasons which she deemed excellent, always retired on such occasions into impenetrable seclusion, postponing the more sentimental ceremony until she had repaired the disorder of dress with a completeness which had the less reason to be of high importance as neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it. She was a plain-faced old woman, without graces and without any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own motives. She was usually prepared to explain these--when the explanation was asked as a favour; and in such a case they proved totally different from those that had been attributed to her. She was virtually separated from her husband, but she appeared to perceive nothing irregular in the situation. It had become clear, at an early stage of their community, that they should never desire the same thing at the same moment, and this appearance had prompted her to rescue disagreement from the vulgar realm of accident. She did what she could to erect it into a law--a much more edifying aspect of it--by going to live in Florence, where she bought a house and established herself; and by leaving her husband to take care of the English branch of his bank. This arrangement greatly pleased her; it was so felicitously definite. It struck her husband in the same light, in a foggy square in London, where it was at times the most definite fact he discerned; but he would have preferred that such unnatural things should have a greater vagueness. To agree to disagree had cost him an effort; he was ready to agree to almost anything but that, and saw no reason why either assent or dissent should be so terribly consistent. Mrs. Trey indulged in no regrets nor speculations, and usually came once a year to spend a month with her husband, a period during which she apparently took pains to convince him that she had adopted the right system. She was not fond of the English style of life, and had three or four reasons for it to which she currently alluded; they bore upon minor points of that ancient order, but for Mrs. Trey they amply justified non-residence. She detested bread-sauce, which, as she said, looked like a poultice and tasted like soap; she objected to the consumption of beer by her maid-servants; and she affirmed that the British laundress (Mrs. Trey was very particular about the appearance of her linen) was not a mistress of her art. At fixed intervals she paid a visit to her own country; but this last had been longer than any of its predecessors.\n\n She had taken up her niece--there was little doubt of that. One wet afternoon, some four months earlier than the occurrence lately narrated, this young lady had been seated alone with a book. To say she was so occupied is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilising quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of fresh taste in her situation which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to correct. The visitor had not been announced; the girl heard her at last walking about the adjoining room. It was in an old house at Albany, a large, square, double house, with a notice of sale in the windows of one of the lower apartments. There were two entrances, one of which had long been out of use but had never been removed. They were exactly alike--large white doors, with an arched frame and wide side-lights, perched upon little \"stoops\" of red stone, which descended sidewise to the brick pavement of the street. The two houses together formed a single dwelling, the party-wall having been removed and the rooms placed in communication. These rooms, above-stairs, were extremely numerous, and were painted all over exactly alike, in a yellowish white which had grown sallow with time. On the third floor there was a sort of arched passage, connecting the two sides of the house, which Zelda and her sisters used in their childhood to call the tunnel and which, though it was short and well lighted, always seemed to the girl to be strange and lonely, especially on winter afternoons. She had been in the house, at different periods, as a child; in those days her grandmother lived there. Then there had been an absence of ten years, followed by a return to Albany before her father's death. Her grandmother, old Mrs. Matt, had exercised, chiefly within the limits of the family, a large hospitality in the early period, and the little girls often spent weeks under her roof--weeks of which Zelda had the happiest memory. The manner of life was different from that of her own home--larger, more plentiful, practically more festal; the discipline of the nursery was delightfully vague and the opportunity of listening to the conversation of one's elders (which with Zelda was a highly-valued pleasure) almost unbounded. There was a constant coming and going; her grandmother's sons and daughters and their children appeared to be in the enjoyment of standing invitations to arrive and remain, so that the house offered to a certain extent the appearance of a bustling provincial inn kept by a gentle old landlady who sighed a great deal and never presented a bill. Zelda of course knew nothing about bills; but even as a child she thought her grandmother's home romantic. There was a covered piazza behind it, furnished with a swing which was a source of tremulous interest; and beyond this was a long garden, sloping down to the stable and containing peach-trees of barely credible familiarity. Zelda had stayed with her grandmother at various seasons, but somehow all her visits had a flavour of peaches. On the other side, across the street, was an old house that was called the Dutch House--a peculiar structure dating from the earliest colonial time, composed of bricks that had been painted yellow, crowned with a gable that was pointed out to strangers, defended by a rickety wooden paling and standing sidewise to the street. It was occupied by a primary school for children of both sexes, kept or rather let go, by a demonstrative lady of whom Zelda's chief recollection was that her hair was fastened with strange bedroomy combs at the temples and that she was the widow of some one of consequence. The little girl had been offered the opportunity of laying a foundation of knowledge in this establishment; but having spent a single day in it, she had protested against its laws and had been allowed to stay at home, where, in the September days, when the windows of the Dutch House were open, she used to hear the hum of childish voices repeating the multiplication table--an incident in which the elation of liberty and the pain of exclusion were indistinguishably mingled. The foundation of her knowledge was really laid in the idleness of her grandmother's house, where, as most of the other inmates were not reading people, she had uncontrolled use of a library full of books with frontispieces, which she used to climb upon a chair to take down. When she had found one to her taste--she was guided in the selection chiefly by the frontispiece--she carried it into a mysterious apartment which lay beyond the library and which was called, traditionally, no one knew why, the office. Whose office it had been and at what period it had flourished, she never learned; it was enough for her that it contained an echo and a pleasant musty smell and that it was a chamber of disgrace for old pieces of furniture whose infirmities were not always apparent (so that the disgrace seemed unmerited and rendered them victims of injustice) and with which, in the manner of children, she had established relations almost human, certainly dramatic. There was an old haircloth sofa in especial, to which she had confided a hundred childish sorrows. The place owed much of its mysterious melancholy to the fact that it was properly entered from the second door of the house, the door that had been condemned, and that it was secured by bolts which a particularly slender little girl found it impossible to slide. She knew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; if the sidelights had not been filled with green paper she might have looked out upon the little brown stoop and the well-worn brick pavement. But she had no wish to look out, for this would have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, unseen place on the other side--a place which became to the child's imagination, according to its different moods, a region of delight or of terror.\n\n It was in the \"office\" still that Zelda was sitting on that melancholy afternoon of early spring which I have just mentioned. At this time she might have had the whole house to choose from, and the room she had selected was the most depressed of its scenes. She had never opened the bolted door nor removed the green paper (renewed by other hands) from its sidelights; she had never assured herself that the vulgar street lay beyond. A crude, cold rain fell heavily; the spring-time was indeed an appeal--and it seemed a cynical, insincere appeal--to patience. Zelda, however, gave as little heed as possible to cosmic treacheries; she kept her eyes on her book and tried to fix her mind. It had lately occurred to her that her mind was a good deal of a vagabond, and she had spent much ingenuity in training it to a military step and teaching it to advance, to halt, to retreat, to perform even more complicated manoeuvres, at the word of command. Just now she had given it marching orders and it had been trudging over the sandy plains of a history of German Thought. Suddenly she became aware of a step very different from her own intellectual pace; she listened a little and perceived that some one was moving in the library, which communicated with the office. It struck her first as the step of a person from whom she was looking for a visit, then almost immediately announced itself as the tread of a woman and a stranger--her possible visitor being neither. It had an inquisitive, experimental quality which suggested that it would not stop short of the threshold of the office; and in fact the doorway of this apartment was presently occupied by a lady who paused there and looked very hard at our heroine. She was a plain, elderly woman, dressed in a comprehensive waterproof mantle; she had a face with a good deal of rather violent point.\n\n \"Oh,\" she began, \"is that where you usually sit?\" She looked about at the heterogeneous chairs and tables.\n\n \"Not when I have visitors,\" said Zelda, getting up to receive the intruder.\n\n She directed their course back to the library while the visitor continued to look about her. \"You seem to have plenty of other rooms; they're in rather better condition. But everything's immensely worn.\"\n\n \"Have you come to look at the house?\" Zelda asked. \"The servant will show it to you.\"\n\n \"Send her away; I don't want to buy it. She has probably gone to look for you and is wandering about upstairs; she didn't seem at all intelligent. You had better tell her it's no matter.\" And then, since the girl stood there hesitating and wondering, this unexpected critic said to her abruptly: \"I suppose you're one of the daughters?\"\n\n Zelda thought she had very strange manners. \"It depends upon whose daughters you mean.\"\n\n \"The late Mr. Matt's--and my poor sister's.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Zelda slowly, \"you must be our crazy Aunt Lydia!\"\n\n \"Is that what your father told you to call me? I'm your Aunt Lydia, but I'm not at all crazy: I haven't a delusion! And which of the daughters are you?\"\n\n \"I'm the youngest of the three, and my name's Zelda.\"\n\n \"Yes; the others are Lilian and Edith. And are you the prettiest?\"\n\n \"I haven't the least idea,\" said the girl.\n\n \"I think you must be.\" And in this way the aunt and the niece made friends. The aunt had quarrelled years before with her brother-in-law, after the death of her sister, taking him to task for the manner in which he brought up his three girls. Being a high-tempered man he had requested her to mind her own business, and she had taken him at his word. For many years she held no communication with him and after his death had addressed not a word to his daughters, who had been bred in that disrespectful view of her which we have just seen Zelda betray. Mrs. Trey's behaviour was, as usual, perfectly deliberate. She intended to go to America to look after her investments (with which her husband, in spite of his great financial position, had nothing to do) and would take advantage of this opportunity to enquire into the condition of her nieces. There was no need of writing, for she should attach no importance to any account of them she should elicit by letter; she believed, always, in seeing for one's self. Zelda found, however, that she knew a good deal about them, and knew about the marriage of the two elder girls; knew that their poor father had left very little money, but that the house in Albany, which had passed into his hands, was to be sold for their benefit; knew, finally, that Edmund Ludlow, Lilian's husband, had taken upon himself to attend to this matter, in consideration of which the young couple, who had come to Albany during Mr. Matt's illness, were remaining there for the present and, as well as Zelda herself, occupying the old place.\n\n \"How much money do you expect for it?\" Mrs. Trey asked of her companion, who had brought her to sit in the front parlour, which she had inspected without enthusiasm.\n\n \"I haven't the least idea,\" said the girl.\n\n \"That's the second time you have said that to me,\" her aunt rejoined. \"And yet you don't look at all stupid.\"\n\n \"I'm not stupid; but I don't know anything about money.\"\n\n \"Yes, that's the way you were brought up--as if you were to inherit a million. What have you in point of fact inherited?\"\n\n \"I really can't tell you. You must ask Edmund and Lilian; they'll be back in half an hour.\"\n\n \"In Florence we should call it a very bad house,\" said Mrs. Trey; \"but here, I dare say, it will bring a high price. It ought to make a considerable sum for each of you. In addition to that you must have something else; it's most extraordinary your not knowing. The position's of value, and they'll probably pull it down and make a row of shops. I wonder you don't do that yourself; you might let the shops to great advantage.\"\n\n Zelda stared; the idea of letting shops was new to her. \"I hope they won't pull it down,\" she said; \"I'm extremely fond of it.\"\n\n \"I don't see what makes you fond of it; your father died here.\"\n\n \"Yes; but I don't dislike it for that,\" the girl rather strangely returned. \"I like places in which things have happened--even if they're sad things. A great many people have died here; the place has been full of life.\"\n\n \"Is that what you call being full of life?\"\n\n \"I mean full of experience--of people's feelings and sorrows. And not of their sorrows only, for I've been very happy here as a child.\"\n\n \"You should go to Florence if you like houses in which things have happened--especially deaths. I live in an old palace in which three people have been murdered; three that were known and I don't know how many more besides.\"\n\n \"In an old palace?\" Zelda repeated.\n\n \"Yes, my dear; a very different affair from this. This is very bourgeois.\"\n\n Zelda felt some emotion, for she had always thought highly of her grandmother's house. But the emotion was of a kind which led her to say: \"I should like very much to go to Florence.\"\n\n \"Well, if you'll be very good, and do everything I tell you I'll take you there,\" Mrs. Trey declared.\n\n Our young woman's emotion deepened; she flushed a little and smiled at her aunt in silence. \"Do everything you tell me? I don't think I can promise that.\"\n\n \"No, you don't look like a person of that sort. You're fond of your own way; but it's not for me to blame you.\"\n\n \"And yet, to go to Florence,\" the girl exclaimed in a moment, \"I'd promise almost anything!\"\n\n Edmund and Lilian were slow to return, and Mrs. Trey had an hour's uninterrupted talk with her niece, who found her a strange and interesting figure: a figure essentially--almost the first she had ever met. She was as eccentric as Zelda had always supposed; and hitherto, whenever the girl had heard people described as eccentric, she had thought of them as offensive or alarming. The term had always suggested to her something grotesque and even sinister. But her aunt made it a matter of high but easy irony, or comedy, and led her to ask herself if the common tone, which was all she had known, had ever been as interesting. No one certainly had on any occasion so held her as this little thin-lipped, bright-eyed, foreign-looking woman, who retrieved an insignificant appearance by a distinguished manner and, sitting there in a well-worn waterproof, talked with striking familiarity of the courts of Europe. There was nothing flighty about Mrs. Trey, but she recognised no social superiors, and, judging the great ones of the earth in a way that spoke of this, enjoyed the consciousness of making an impression on a candid and susceptible mind. Zelda at first had answered a good many questions, and it was from her answers apparently that Mrs. Trey derived a high opinion of her intelligence. But after this she had asked a good many, and her aunt's answers, whatever turn they took, struck her as food for deep reflexion. Mrs. Trey waited for the return of her other niece as long as she thought reasonable, but as at six o'clock Mrs. Ludlow had not come in she prepared to take her departure.\n\n \"Your sister must be a great gossip. Is she accustomed to staying out so many hours?\"\n\n \"You've been out almost as long as she,\" Zelda replied; \"she can have left the house but a short time before you came in.\"\n\n Mrs. Trey looked at the girl without resentment; she appeared to enjoy a bold retort and to be disposed to be gracious. \"Perhaps she hasn't had so good an excuse as I. Tell her at any rate that she must come and see me this evening at that horrid hotel. She may bring her husband if she likes, but she needn't bring you. I shall see plenty of you later.\"\n\n\n\n\n Mrs. Ludlow was the eldest of the three sisters, and was usually thought the most sensible; the classification being in general that Lilian was the practical one, Edith the beauty and Zelda the \"intellectual\" superior. Mrs. Keyes, the second of the group, was the wife of an officer of the United States Engineers, and as our history is not further concerned with her it will suffice that she was indeed very pretty and that she formed the ornament of those various military stations, chiefly in the unfashionable West, to which, to her deep chagrin, her husband was successively relegated. Lilian had married a New York lawyer, a young man with a loud voice and an enthusiasm for his profession; the match was not brilliant, any more than Edith's, but Lilian had occasionally been spoken of as a young woman who might be thankful to marry at all--she was so much plainer than her sisters. She was, however, very happy, and now, as the mother of two peremptory little boys and the mistress of a wedge of brown stone violently driven into Fifty-third Street, seemed to exult in her condition as in a bold escape. She was short and solid, and her claim to figure was questioned, but she was conceded presence, though not majesty; she had moreover, as people said, improved since her marriage, and the two things in life of which she was most distinctly conscious were her husband's force in argument and her sister Zelda's originality. \"I've never kept up with Zelda--it would have taken all my time,\" she had often remarked; in spite of which, however, she held her rather wistfully in sight; watching her as a motherly spaniel might watch a free greyhound. \"I want to see her safely married--that's what I want to see,\" she frequently noted to her husband.\n\n \"Well, I must say I should have no particular desire to marry her,\" Edmund Ludlow was accustomed to answer in an extremely audible tone.\n\n \"I know you say that for argument; you always take the opposite ground. I don't see what you've against her except that she's so original.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't like originals; I like translations,\" Mr. Ludlow had more than once replied. \"Zelda's written in a foreign tongue. I can't make her out. She ought to marry an Armenian or a Portuguese.\"\n\n \"That's just what I'm afraid she'll do!\" cried Lilian, who thought Zelda capable of anything.\n\n She listened with great interest to the girl's account of Mrs. Trey's appearance and in the evening prepared to comply with their aunt's commands. Of what Zelda then said no report has remained, but her sister's words had doubtless prompted a word spoken to her husband as the two were making ready for their visit. \"I do hope immensely she'll do something handsome for Zelda; she has evidently taken a great fancy to her.\"\n\n \"What is it you wish her to do?\" Edmund Ludlow asked. \"Make her a big present?\"\n\n \"No indeed; nothing of the sort. But take an interest in her--sympathise with her. She's evidently just the sort of person to appreciate her. She has lived so much in foreign society; she told Zelda all about it. You know you've always thought Zelda rather foreign.\"\n\n \"You want her to give her a little foreign sympathy, eh? Don't you think she gets enough at home?\"\n\n \"Well, she ought to go abroad,\" said Mrs. Ludlow. \"She's just the person to go abroad.\"\n\n \"And you want the old lady to take her, is that it?\"\n\n \"She has offered to take her--she's dying to have Zelda go. But what I want her to do when she gets her there is to give her all the advantages. I'm sure all we've got to do,\" said Mrs. Ludlow, \"is to give her a chance.\"\n\n \"A chance for what?\"\n\n \"A chance to develop.\"\n\n \"Oh Moses!\" Edmund Ludlow exclaimed. \"I hope she isn't going to develop any more!\"\n\n \"If I were not sure you only said that for argument I should feel very badly,\" his wife replied. \"But you know you love her.\"\n\n \"Do you know I love you?\" the young man said, jocosely, to Zelda a little later, while he brushed his hat.\n\n \"I'm sure I don't care whether you do or not!\" exclaimed the girl; whose voice and smile, however, were less haughty than her words.\n\n \"Oh, she feels so grand since Mrs. Trey's visit,\" said her sister.\n\n But Zelda challenged this assertion with a good deal of seriousness. \"You must not say that, Lily. I don't feel grand at all.\"\n\n \"I'm sure there's no harm,\" said the conciliatory Lily.\n\n \"Ah, but there's nothing in Mrs. Trey's visit to make one feel grand.\"\n\n \"Oh,\" exclaimed Ludlow, \"she's grander than ever!\"\n\n \"Whenever I feel grand,\" said the girl, \"it will be for a better reason.\"\n\n Whether she felt grand or no, she at any rate felt different, as if something had happened to her. Left to herself for the evening she sat a while under the lamp, her hands empty, her usual avocations unheeded. Then she rose and moved about the room, and from one room to another, preferring the places where the vague lamplight expired. She was restless and even agitated; at moments she trembled a little. The importance of what had happened was out of proportion to its appearance; there had really been a change in her life. What it would bring with it was as yet extremely indefinite; but Zelda was in a situation that gave a value to any change. She had a desire to leave the past behind her and, as she said to herself, to begin afresh. This desire indeed was not a birth of the present occasion; it was as familiar as the sound of the rain upon the window and it had led to her beginning afresh a great many times. She closed her eyes as she sat in one of the dusky corners of the quiet parlour; but it was not with a desire for dozing forgetfulness. It was on the contrary because she felt too wide-eyed and wished to check the sense of seeing too many things at once. Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open it jumped out of the window. She was not accustomed indeed to keep it behind bolts; and at important moments, when she would have been thankful to make use of her judgement alone, she paid the penalty of having given undue encouragement to the faculty of seeing without judging. At present, with her sense that the note of change had been struck, came gradually a host of images of the things she was leaving behind her. The years and hours of her life came back to her, and for a long time, in a stillness broken only by the ticking of the big bronze clock, she passed them in review. It had been a very happy life and she had been a very fortunate person--this was the truth that seemed to emerge most vividly. She had had the best of everything, and in a world in which the circumstances of so many people made them unenviable it was an advantage never to have known anything particularly unpleasant. It appeared to Zelda that the unpleasant had been even too absent from her knowledge, for she had gathered from her acquaintance with literature that it was often a source of interest and even of instruction. Her father had kept it away from her--her handsome, much loved father, who always had such an aversion to it. It was a great felicity to have been his daughter; Zelda rose even to pride in her parentage. Since his death she had seemed to see him as turning his braver side to his children and as not having managed to ignore the ugly quite so much in practice as in aspiration. But this only made her tenderness for him greater; it was scarcely even painful to have to suppose him too generous, too good-natured, too indifferent to sordid considerations. Many persons had held that he carried this indifference too far, especially the large number of those to whom he owed money. Of their opinions Zelda was never very definitely informed; but it may interest the reader to know that, while they had recognised in the late Mr. Matt a remarkably handsome head and a very taking manner (indeed, as one of them had said, he was always taking something), they had declared that he was making a very poor use of his life. He had squandered a substantial fortune, he had been deplorably convivial, he was known to have gambled freely. A few very harsh critics went so far as to say that he had not even brought up his daughters. They had had no regular education and no permanent home; they had been at once spoiled and neglected; they had lived with nursemaids and governesses (usually very bad ones) or had been sent to superficial schools, kept by the French, from which, at the end of a month, they had been removed in tears. This view of the matter would have excited Zelda's indignation, for to her own sense her opportunities had been large. Even when her father had left his daughters for three months at Neufchatel with a French bonne who had eloped with a Russian nobleman staying at the same hotel--even in this irregular situation (an incident of the girl's eleventh year) she had been neither frightened nor ashamed, but had thought it a romantic episode in a liberal education. Her father had a large way of looking at life, of which his restlessness and even his occasional incoherency of conduct had been only a proof. He wished his daughters, even as children, to see as much of the world as possible; and it was for this purpose that, before Zelda was fourteen, he had transported them three times across the Atlantic, giving them on each occasion, however, but a few months' view of the subject proposed: a course which had whetted our heroine's curiosity without enabling her to satisfy it. She ought to have been a partisan of her father, for she was the member of his trio who most \"made up\" to him for the disagreeables he didn't mention. In his last days his general willingness to take leave of a world in which the difficulty of doing as one liked appeared to increase as one grew older had been sensibly modified by the pain of separation from his clever, his superior, his remarkable girl. Later, when the journeys to Europe ceased, he still had shown his children all sorts of indulgence, and if he had been troubled about money-matters nothing ever disturbed their irreflective consciousness of many possessions. Zelda, though she danced very well, had not the recollection of having been in New York a successful member of the choreographic circle; her sister Edith was, as every one said, so very much more fetching. Edith was so striking an example of success that Zelda could have no illusions as to what constituted this advantage, or as to the limits of her own power to frisk and jump and shriek--above all with rightness of effect. Nineteen persons out of twenty (including the younger sister herself) pronounced Edith infinitely the prettier of the two; but the twentieth, besides reversing this judgement, had the entertainment of thinking all the others aesthetic vulgarians. Zelda had in the depths of her nature an even more unquenchable desire to please than Edith; but the depths of this young lady's nature were a very out-of-the-way place, between which and the surface communication was interrupted by a dozen capricious forces. She saw the young men who came in large numbers to see her sister; but as a general thing they were afraid of her; they had a belief that some special preparation was required for talking with her. Her reputation of reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic; it was supposed to engender difficult questions and to keep the conversation at a low temperature. The poor girl liked to be thought clever, but she hated to be thought bookish; she used to read in secret and, though her memory was excellent, to abstain from showy reference. She had a great desire for knowledge, but she really preferred almost any source of information to the printed page; she had an immense curiosity about life and was constantly staring and wondering. She carried within herself a great fund of life, and her deepest enjoyment was to feel the continuity between the movements of her own soul and the agitations of the world. For this reason she was fond of seeing great crowds and large stretches of country, of reading about revolutions and wars, of looking at historical pictures--a class of efforts as to which she had often committed the conscious solecism of forgiving them much bad painting for the sake of the subject. While the Civil War went on she was still a very young girl; but she passed months of this long period in a state of almost passionate excitement, in which she felt herself at times (to her extreme confusion) stirred almost indiscriminately by the valour of either army. Of course the circumspection of suspicious swains had never gone the length of making her a social proscript; for the number of those whose hearts, as they approached her, beat only just fast enough to remind them they had heads as well, had kept her unacquainted with the supreme disciplines of her sex and age. She had had everything a girl could have: kindness, admiration, bonbons, bouquets, the sense of exclusion from none of the privileges of the world she lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing, plenty of new dresses, the London Spectator, the latest publications, the music of Gounod, the poetry of Browning, the prose of George Eliot.\n\n These things now, as memory played over them, resolved themselves into a multitude of scenes and figures. Forgotten things came back to her; many others, which she had lately thought of great moment, dropped out of sight. The result was kaleidoscopic, but the movement of the instrument was checked at last by the servant's coming in with the name of a gentleman. The name of the gentleman was Mohammed Heston; he was a straight young man from Boston, who had known Miss Matt for the last twelvemonth and who, thinking her the most beautiful young woman of her time, had pronounced the time, according to the rule I have hinted at, a foolish period of history. He sometimes wrote to her and had within a week or two written from New York. She had thought it very possible he would come in--had indeed all the rainy day been vaguely expecting him. Now that she learned he was there, nevertheless, she felt no eagerness to receive him. He was the finest young man she had ever seen, was indeed quite a splendid young man; he inspired her with a sentiment of high, of rare respect. She had never felt equally moved to it by any other person. He was supposed by the world in general to wish to marry her, but this of course was between themselves. It at least may be affirmed that he had travelled from New York to Albany expressly to see her; having learned in the former city, where he was spending a few days and where he had hoped to find her, that she was still at the State capital. Zelda delayed for some minutes to go to him; she moved about the room with a new sense of complications. But at last she presented herself and found him standing near the lamp. He was tall, strong and somewhat stiff; he was also lean and brown. He was not romantically, he was much rather obscurely, handsome; but his physiognomy had an air of requesting your attention, which it rewarded according to the charm you found in blue eyes of remarkable fixedness, the eyes of a complexion other than his own, and a jaw of the somewhat angular mould which is supposed to bespeak resolution. Zelda said to herself that it bespoke resolution to-night; in spite of which, in half an hour, Mohammed Heston, who had arrived hopeful as well as resolute, took his way back to his lodging with the feeling of a man defeated. He was not, it may be added, a man weakly to accept defeat.\n\n\n\n\n Clyde Trey was a philosopher, but nevertheless he knocked at his mother's door (at a quarter to seven) with a good deal of eagerness. Even philosophers have their preferences, and it must be admitted that of his progenitors his father ministered most to his sense of the sweetness of filial dependence. His father, as he had often said to himself, was the more motherly; his mother, on the other hand, was paternal, and even, according to the slang of the day, gubernatorial. She was nevertheless very fond of her only child and had always insisted on his spending three months of the year with her. Clyde rendered perfect justice to her affection and knew that in her thoughts and her thoroughly arranged and servanted life his turn always came after the other nearest subjects of her solicitude, the various punctualities of performance of the workers of her will. He found her completely dressed for dinner, but she embraced her boy with her gloved hands and made him sit on the sofa beside her. She enquired scrupulously about her husband's health and about the young man's own, and, receiving no very brilliant account of either, remarked that she was more than ever convinced of her wisdom in not exposing herself to the English climate. In this case she also might have given way. Clyde smiled at the idea of his mother's giving way, but made no point of reminding her that his own infirmity was not the result of the English climate, from which he absented himself for a considerable part of each year.\n\n He had been a very small boy when his father, Daniel Tracy Trey, a native of Rutland, in the State of Vermont, came to England as subordinate partner in a banking-house where some ten years later he gained preponderant control. Daniel Trey saw before him a life-long residence in his adopted country, of which, from the first, he took a simple, sane and accommodating view. But, as he said to himself, he had no intention of disamericanising, nor had he a desire to teach his only son any such subtle art. It had been for himself so very soluble a problem to live in England assimilated yet unconverted that it seemed to him equally simple his lawful heir should after his death carry on the grey old bank in the white American light. He was at pains to intensify this light, however, by sending the boy home for his education. Clyde spent several terms at an American school and took a degree at an American university, after which, as he struck his father on his return as even redundantly native, he was placed for some three years in residence at Oxford. Oxford swallowed up Harvard, and Clyde became at last English enough. His outward conformity to the manners that surrounded him was none the less the mask of a mind that greatly enjoyed its independence, on which nothing long imposed itself, and which, naturally inclined to adventure and irony, indulged in a boundless liberty of appreciation. He began with being a young man of promise; at Oxford he distinguished himself, to his father's ineffable satisfaction, and the people about him said it was a thousand pities so clever a fellow should be shut out from a career. He might have had a career by returning to his own country (though this point is shrouded in uncertainty) and even if Mr. Trey had been willing to part with him (which was not the case) it would have gone hard with him to put a watery waste permanently between himself and the old man whom he regarded as his best friend. Clyde was not only fond of his father, he admired him--he enjoyed the opportunity of observing him. Daniel Trey, to his perception, was a man of genius, and though he himself had no aptitude for the banking mystery he made a point of learning enough of it to measure the great figure his father had played. It was not this, however, he mainly relished; it was the fine ivory surface, polished as by the English air, that the old man had opposed to possibilities of penetration. Daniel Trey had been neither at Harvard nor at Oxford, and it was his own fault if he had placed in his son's hands the key to modern criticism. Clyde, whose head was full of ideas which his father had never guessed, had a high esteem for the latter's originality. Americans, rightly or wrongly, are commended for the ease with which they adapt themselves to foreign conditions; but Mr. Trey had made of the very limits of his pliancy half the ground of his general success. He had retained in their freshness most of his marks of primary pressure; his tone, as his son always noted with pleasure, was that of the more luxuriant parts of New England. At the end of his life he had become, on his own ground, as mellow as he was rich; he combined consummate shrewdness with the disposition superficially to fraternise, and his \"social position,\" on which he had never wasted a care, had the firm perfection of an unthumbed fruit. It was perhaps his want of imagination and of what is called the historic consciousness; but to many of the impressions usually made by English life upon the cultivated stranger his sense was completely closed. There were certain differences he had never perceived, certain habits he had never formed, certain obscurities he had never sounded. As regards these latter, on the day he had sounded them his son would have thought less well of him.\n\n Clyde, on leaving Oxford, had spent a couple of years in travelling; after which he had found himself perched on a high stool in his father's bank. The responsibility and honour of such positions is not, I believe, measured by the height of the stool, which depends upon other considerations: Clyde, indeed, who had very long legs, was fond of standing, and even of walking about, at his work. To this exercise, however, he was obliged to devote but a limited period, for at the end of some eighteen months he had become aware of his being seriously out of health. He had caught a violent cold, which fixed itself on his lungs and threw them into dire confusion. He had to give up work and apply, to the letter, the sorry injunction to take care of himself. At first he slighted the task; it appeared to him it was not himself in the least he was taking care of, but an uninteresting and uninterested person with whom he had nothing in common. This person, however, improved on acquaintance, and Clyde grew at last to have a certain grudging tolerance, even an undemonstrative respect, for him. Misfortune makes strange bedfellows, and our young man, feeling that he had something at stake in the matter--it usually struck him as his reputation for ordinary wit--devoted to his graceless charge an amount of attention of which note was duly taken and which had at least the effect of keeping the poor fellow alive. One of his lungs began to heal, the other promised to follow its example, and he was assured he might outweather a dozen winters if he would betake himself to those climates in which consumptives chiefly congregate. As he had grown extremely fond of London, he cursed the flatness of exile: but at the same time that he cursed he conformed, and gradually, when he found his sensitive organ grateful even for grim favours, he conferred them with a lighter hand. He wintered abroad, as the phrase is; basked in the sun, stopped at home when the wind blew, went to bed when it rained, and once or twice, when it had snowed overnight, almost never got up again.\n\n A secret hoard of indifference--like a thick cake a fond old nurse might have slipped into his first school outfit--came to his aid and helped to reconcile him to sacrifice; since at the best he was too ill for aught but that arduous game. As he said to himself, there was really nothing he had wanted very much to do, so that he had at least not renounced the field of valour. At present, however, the fragrance of forbidden fruit seemed occasionally to float past him and remind him that the finest of pleasures is the rush of action. Living as he now lived was like reading a good book in a poor translation--a meagre entertainment for a young man who felt that he might have been an excellent linguist. He had good winters and poor winters, and while the former lasted he was sometimes the sport of a vision of virtual recovery. But this vision was dispelled some three years before the occurrence of the incidents with which this history opens: he had on that occasion remained later than usual in England and had been overtaken by bad weather before reaching Algiers. He arrived more dead than alive and lay there for several weeks between life and death. His convalescence was a miracle, but the first use he made of it was to assure himself that such miracles happen but once. He said to himself that his hour was in sight and that it behoved him to keep his eyes upon it, yet that it was also open to him to spend the interval as agreeably as might be consistent with such a preoccupation. With the prospect of losing them the simple use of his faculties became an exquisite pleasure; it seemed to him the joys of contemplation had never been sounded. He was far from the time when he had found it hard that he should be obliged to give up the idea of distinguishing himself; an idea none the less importunate for being vague and none the less delightful for having had to struggle in the same breast with bursts of inspiring self-criticism. His friends at present judged him more cheerful, and attributed it to a theory, over which they shook their heads knowingly, that he would recover his health. His serenity was but the array of wild flowers niched in his ruin.\n\n It was very probably this sweet-tasting property of the observed thing in itself that was mainly concerned in Clyde's quickly-stirred interest in the advent of a young lady who was evidently not insipid. If he was consideringly disposed, something told him, here was occupation enough for a succession of days. It may be added, in summary fashion, that the imagination of loving--as distinguished from that of being loved--had still a place in his reduced sketch. He had only forbidden himself the riot of expression. However, he shouldn't inspire his cousin with a passion, nor would she be able, even should she try, to help him to one. \"And now tell me about the young lady,\" he said to his mother. \"What do you mean to do with her?\"\n\n Mrs. Trey was prompt. \"I mean to ask your father to invite her to stay three or four weeks at Gardencourt.\"\n\n \"You needn't stand on any such ceremony as that,\" said Clyde. \"My father will ask her as a matter of course.\"\n\n \"I don't know about that. She's my niece; she's not his.\"\n\n \"Good Gemma, dear mother; what a sense of property! That's all the more reason for his asking her. But after that--I mean after three months (for its absurd asking the poor girl to remain but for three or four paltry weeks)--what do you mean to do with her?\"\n\n \"I mean to take her to Paris. I mean to get her clothing.\"\n\n \"Ah yes, that's of course. But independently of that?\"\n\n \"I shall invite her to spend the autumn with me in Florence.\"\n\n \"You don't rise above detail, dear mother,\" said Clyde. \"I should like to know what you mean to do with her in a general way.\"\n\n \"My duty!\" Mrs. Trey declared. \"I suppose you pity her very much,\" she added.\n\n \"No, I don't think I pity her. She doesn't strike me as inviting compassion. I think I envy her. Before being sure, however, give me a hint of where you see your duty.\"\n\n \"In showing her four European countries--I shall leave her the choice of two of them--and in giving her the opportunity of perfecting herself in French, which she already knows very well.\"\n\n Clyde frowned a little. \"That sounds rather dry--even allowing her the choice of two of the countries.\"\n\n \"If it's dry,\" said his mother with a laugh, \"you can leave Zelda alone to water it! She is as good as a summer rain, any day.\"\n\n \"Do you mean she's a gifted being?\"\n\n \"I don't know whether she's a gifted being, but she's a clever girl--with a strong will and a high temper. She has no idea of being bored.\"\n\n \"I can imagine that,\" said Clyde; and then he added abruptly: \"How do you two get on?\"\n\n \"Do you mean by that that I'm a bore? I don't think she finds me one. Some girls might, I know; but Zelda's too clever for that. I think I greatly amuse her. We get on because I understand her, I know the sort of girl she is. She's very frank, and I'm very frank: we know just what to expect of each other.\"\n\n \"Ah, dear mother,\" Clyde exclaimed, \"one always knows what to expect of you! You've never surprised me but once, and that's to-day--in presenting me with a pretty cousin whose existence I had never suspected.\"\n\n \"Do you think her so very pretty?\"\n\n \"Very pretty indeed; but I don't insist upon that. It's her general air of being some one in particular that strikes me. Who is this rare creature, and what is she? Where did you find her, and how did you make her acquaintance?\"\n\n \"I found her in an old house at Albany, sitting in a dreary room on a rainy day, reading a heavy book and boring herself to death. She didn't know she was bored, but when I left her no doubt of it she seemed very grateful for the service. You may say I shouldn't have enlightened he--I should have let her alone. There's a good deal in that, but I acted conscientiously; I thought she was meant for something better. It occurred to me that it would be a kindness to take her about and introduce her to the world. She thinks she knows a great deal of it--like most American girls; but like most American girls she's ridiculously mistaken. If you want to know, I thought she would do me credit. I like to be well thought of, and for a woman of my age there's no greater convenience, in some ways, than an attractive niece. You know I had seen nothing of my sister's children for years; I disapproved entirely of the father. But I always meant to do something for them when he should have gone to his reward. I ascertained where they were to be found and, without any preliminaries, went and introduced myself. There are two others of them, both of whom are married; but I saw only the elder, who has, by the way, a very uncivil husband. The wife, whose name is Lily, jumped at the idea of my taking an interest in Zelda; she said it was just what her sister needed--that some one should take an interest in her. She spoke of her as you might speak of some young person of genius--in want of encouragement and patronage. It may be that Zelda's a genius; but in that case I've not yet learned her special line. Mrs. Ludlow was especially keen about my taking her to Europe; they all regard Europe over there as a land of emigration, of rescue, a refuge for their superfluous population. Zelda herself seemed very glad to come, and the thing was easily arranged. There was a little difficulty about the money-question, as she seemed averse to being under pecuniary obligations. But she has a small income and she supposes herself to be travelling at her own expense.\"\n\n Clyde had listened attentively to this judicious report, by which his interest in the subject of it was not impaired. \"Ah, if she's a genius,\" he said, \"we must find out her special line. Is it by chance for flirting?\"\n\n \"I don't think so. You may suspect that at first, but you'll be wrong. You won't, I think, in any way, be easily right about her.\"\n\n \"Lyla's wrong then!\" Clyde rejoicingly exclaimed. \"He flatters himself he has made that discovery.\"\n\n His mother shook her head. \"Gemma Lyla won't understand her. He needn't try.\"\n\n \"He's very intelligent,\" said Clyde; \"but it's right he should be puzzled once in a while.\"\n\n \"Zelda will enjoy puzzling a lord,\" Mrs. Trey remarked.\n\n Her son frowned a little. \"What does she know about lords?\"\n\n \"Nothing at all: that will puzzle him all the more.\"\n\n Clyde greeted these words with a laugh and looked out of the window. Then, \"Are you not going down to see my father?\" he asked.\n\n \"At a quarter to eight,\" said Mrs. Trey.\n\n Her son looked at his watch. \"You've another quarter of an hour then. Tell me some more about Zelda.\" After which, as Mrs. Trey declined his invitation, declaring that he must find out for himself, \"Well,\" he pursued, \"she'll certainly do you credit. But won't she also give you trouble?\"\n\n \"I hope not; but if she does I shall not shrink from it. I never do that.\"\n\n \"She strikes me as very natural,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Natural people are not the most trouble.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Clyde; \"you yourself are a proof of that. You're extremely natural, and I'm sure you have never troubled any one. It takes trouble to do that. But tell me this; it just occurs to me. Is Zelda capable of making herself disagreeable?\"\n\n \"Ah,\" cried his mother, \"you ask too many questions! Find that out for yourself.\"\n\n His questions, however, were not exhausted. \"All this time,\" he said, \"you've not told me what you intend to do with her.\"\n\n \"Do with her? You talk as if she were a yard of calico. I shall do absolutely nothing with her, and she herself will do everything she chooses. She gave me notice of that.\"\n\n \"What you meant then, in your telegram, was that her character's independent.\"\n\n \"I never know what I mean in my telegrams--especially those I send from America. Clearness is too expensive. Come down to your father.\"\n\n \"It's not yet a quarter to eight,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"I must allow for his impatience,\" Mrs. Trey answered. Clyde knew what to think of his father's impatience; but, making no rejoinder, he offered his mother his arm. This put it in his power, as they descended together, to stop her a moment on the middle landing of the staircase--the broad, low, wide-armed staircase of time-blackened oak which was one of the most striking features of Gardencourt. \"You've no plan of marrying her?\" he smiled.\n\n \"Marrying her? I should be sorry to play her such a trick! But apart from that, she's perfectly able to marry herself. She has every facility.\"\n\n \"Do you mean to say she has a husband picked out?\"\n\n \"I don't know about a husband, but there's a young man in Boston--!\"\n\n Clyde went on; he had no desire to hear about the young man in Boston. \"As my father says, they're always engaged!\"\n\n His mother had told him that he must satisfy his curiosity at the source, and it soon became evident he should not want for occasion. He had a good deal of talk with his young kinswoman when the two had been left together in the drawing-room. Gemma Lyla, who had ridden over from his own house, some ten miles distant, remounted and took his departure before dinner; and an hour after this meal was ended Mr. and Mrs. Trey, who appeared to have quite emptied the measure of their forms, withdrew, under the valid pretext of fatigue, to their respective apartments. The young man spent an hour with his cousin; though she had been travelling half the day she appeared in no degree spent. She was really tired; she knew it, and knew she should pay for it on the morrow; but it was her habit at this period to carry exhaustion to the furthest point and confess to it only when dissimulation broke down. A fine hypocrisy was for the present possible; she was interested; she was, as she said to herself, floated. She asked Clyde to show her the pictures; there were a great many in the house, most of them of his own choosing. The best were arranged in an oaken gallery, of charming proportions, which had a sitting-room at either end of it and which in the evening was usually lighted. The light was insufficient to show the pictures to advantage, and the visit might have stood over to the morrow. This suggestion Clyde had ventured to make; but Zelda looked disappointed--smiling still, however--and said: \"If you please I should like to see them just a little.\" She was eager, she knew she was eager and now seemed so; she couldn't help it. \"She doesn't take suggestions,\" Clyde said to himself; but he said it without irritation; her pressure amused and even pleased him. The lamps were on brackets, at intervals, and if the light was imperfect it was genial. It fell upon the vague squares of rich colour and on the faded gilding of heavy frames; it made a sheen on the polished floor of the gallery. Clyde took a candlestick and moved about, pointing out the things he liked; Zelda, inclining to one picture after another, indulged in little exclamations and murmurs. She was evidently a judge; she had a natural taste; he was struck with that. She took a candlestick herself and held it slowly here and there; she lifted it high, and as she did so he found himself pausing in the middle of the place and bending his eyes much less upon the pictures than on her presence. He lost nothing, in truth, by these wandering glances, for she was better worth looking at than most works of art. She was undeniably spare, and ponderably light, and proveably tall; when people had wished to distinguish her from the other two Miss Matts they had always called her the willowy one. Her hair, which was dark even to blackness, had been an object of envy to many women; her light grey eyes, a little too firm perhaps in her graver moments, had an enchanting range of concession. They walked slowly up one side of the gallery and down the other, and then she said: \"Well, now I know more than I did when I began!\"\n\n \"You apparently have a great passion for knowledge,\" her cousin returned.\n\n \"I think I have; most girls are horridly ignorant.\"\n\n \"You strike me as different from most girls.\"\n\n \"Ah, some of them would--but the way they're talked to!\" murmured Zelda, who preferred not to dilate just yet on herself. Then in a moment, to change the subject, \"Please tell me--isn't there a ghost?\" she went on.\n\n \"A ghost?\"\n\n \"A castle-spectre, a thing that appears. We call them ghosts in America.\"\n\n \"So we do here, when we see them.\"\n\n \"You do see them then? You ought to, in this romantic old house.\"\n\n \"It's not a romantic old house,\" said Clyde. \"You'll be disappointed if you count on that. It's a dismally prosaic one; there's no romance here but what you may have brought with you.\"\n\n \"I've brought a great deal; but it seems to me I've brought it to the right place.\"\n\n \"To keep it out of harm, certainly; nothing will ever happen to it here, between my father and me.\"\n\n Zelda looked at him a moment. \"Is there never any one here but your father and you?\"\n\n \"My mother, of course.\"\n\n \"Oh, I know your mother; she's not romantic. Haven't you other people?\"\n\n \"Very few.\"\n\n \"I'm sorry for that; I like so much to see people.\"\n\n \"Oh, we'll invite all the county to amuse you,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Now you're making fun of me,\" the girl answered rather gravely. \"Who was the gentleman on the lawn when I arrived?\"\n\n \"A county neighbour; he doesn't come very often.\"\n\n \"I'm sorry for that; I liked him,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Why, it seemed to me that you barely spoke to him,\" Clyde objected.\n\n \"Never mind, I like him all the same. I like your father too, immensely.\"\n\n \"You can't do better than that. He's the dearest of the dear.\"\n\n \"I'm so sorry he is ill,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"You must help me to nurse him; you ought to be a good nurse.\"\n\n \"I don't think I am; I've been told I'm not; I'm said to have too many theories. But you haven't told me about the ghost,\" she added.\n\n Clyde, however, gave no heed to this observation. \"You like my father and you like Gemma Lyla. I infer also that you like my mother.\"\n\n \"I like your mother very much, because--because--\" And Zelda found herself attempting to assign a reason for her affection for Mrs. Trey.\n\n \"Ah, we never know why!\" said her companion, laughing.\n\n \"I always know why,\" the girl answered. \"It's because she doesn't expect one to like her. She doesn't care whether one does or not.\"\n\n \"So you adore her--out of perversity? Well, I take greatly after my mother,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"I don't believe you do at all. You wish people to like you, and you try to make them do it.\"\n\n \"Good heavens, how you see through one!\" he cried with a dismay that was not altogether jocular.\n\n \"But I like you all the same,\" his cousin went on. \"The way to clinch the matter will be to show me the ghost.\"\n\n Clyde shook his head sadly. \"I might show it to you, but you'd never see it. The privilege isn't given to every one; it's not enviable. It has never been seen by a young, happy, innocent person like you. You must have suffered first, have suffered greatly, have gained some miserable knowledge. In that way your eyes are opened to it. I saw it long ago,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"I told you just now I'm very fond of knowledge,\" Zelda answered.\n\n \"Yes, of happy knowledge--of pleasant knowledge. But you haven't suffered, and you're not made to suffer. I hope you'll never see the ghost!\"\n\n She had listened to him attentively, with a smile on her lips, but with a certain gravity in her eyes. Charming as he found her, she had struck him as rather presumptuous--indeed it was a part of her charm; and he wondered what she would say. \"I'm not afraid, you know,\" she said: which seemed quite presumptuous enough.\n\n \"You're not afraid of suffering?\"\n\n \"Yes, I'm afraid of suffering. But I'm not afraid of ghosts. And I think people suffer too easily,\" she added.\n\n \"I don't believe you do,\" said Clyde, looking at her with his hands in his pockets.\n\n \"I don't think that's a fault,\" she answered. \"It's not absolutely necessary to suffer; we were not made for that.\"\n\n \"You were not, certainly.\"\n\n \"I'm not speaking of myself.\" And she wandered off a little.\n\n \"No, it isn't a fault,\" said her cousin. \"It's a merit to be strong.\"\n\n \"Only, if you don't suffer they call you hard,\" Zelda remarked.\n\n They passed out of the smaller drawing-room, into which they had returned from the gallery, and paused in the hall, at the foot of the staircase. Here Clyde presented his companion with her bedroom candle, which he had taken from a niche. \"Never mind what they call you. When you do suffer they call you an idiot. The great point's to be as happy as possible.\"\n\n She looked at him a little; she had taken her candle and placed her foot on the oaken stair. \"Well,\" she said, \"that's what I came to Europe for, to be as happy as possible. Good-night.\"\n\n \"Good-night! I wish you all success, and shall be very glad to contribute to it!\"\n\n She turned away, and he watched her as she slowly ascended. Then, with his hands always in his pockets, he went back to the empty drawing-room.\n\n\n\n\n Zelda Matt was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar. It is true that among her contemporaries she passed for a young woman of extraordinary profundity; for these excellent people never withheld their admiration from a reach of intellect of which they themselves were not conscious, and spoke of Zelda as a prodigy of learning, a creature reported to have read the classic authors--in translations. Her paternal aunt, Mrs. Varian, once spread the rumour that Zelda was writing a book--Mrs. Varian having a reverence for books, and averred that the girl would distinguish herself in print. Mrs. Varian thought highly of literature, for which she entertained that esteem that is connected with a sense of privation. Her own large house, remarkable for its assortment of mosaic tables and decorated ceilings, was unfurnished with a library, and in the way of printed volumes contained nothing but half a dozen novels in paper on a shelf in the apartment of one of the Miss Varians. Practically, Mrs. Varian's acquaintance with literature was confined to The New York Interviewer; as she very justly said, after you had read the Interviewer you had lost all faith in culture. Her tendency, with this, was rather to keep the Interviewer out of the way of her daughters; she was determined to bring them up properly, and they read nothing at all. Her impression with regard to Zelda's labours was quite illusory; the girl had never attempted to write a book and had no desire for the laurels of authorship. She had no talent for expression and too little of the consciousness of genius; she only had a general idea that people were right when they treated her as if she were rather superior. Whether or no she were superior, people were right in admiring her if they thought her so; for it seemed to her often that her mind moved more quickly than theirs, and this encouraged an impatience that might easily be confounded with superiority. It may be affirmed without delay that Zelda was probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem; she often surveyed with complacency the field of her own nature; she was in the habit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was right; she treated herself to occasions of homage. Meanwhile her errors and delusions were frequently such as a biographer interested in preserving the dignity of his subject must shrink from specifying. Her thoughts were a tangle of vague outlines which had never been corrected by the judgement of people speaking with authority. In matters of opinion she had had her own way, and it had led her into a thousand ridiculous zigzags. At moments she discovered she was grotesquely wrong, and then she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this she held her head higher than ever again; for it was of no use, she had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself. She had a theory that it was only under this provision life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organisation (she couldn't help knowing her organisation was fine), should move in a realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic. It was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of one's self as to cultivate doubt of one's best friend: one should try to be one's own best friend and to give one's self, in this manner, distinguished company. The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty and bravery and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action: she held it must be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling (the discovery always made her tremble as if she had escaped from a trap which might have caught her and smothered her) that the chance of inflicting a sensible injury upon another person, presented only as a contingency, caused her at moments to hold her breath. That always struck her as the worst thing that could happen to her. On the whole, reflectively, she was in no uncertainty about the things that were wrong. She had no love of their look, but when she fixed them hard she recognised them. It was wrong to be mean, to be jealous, to be false, to be cruel; she had seen very little of the evil of the world, but she had seen women who lied and who tried to hurt each other. Seeing such things had quickened her high spirit; it seemed indecent not to scorn them. Of course the danger of a high spirit was the danger of inconsistency--the danger of keeping up the flag after the place has surrendered; a sort of behaviour so crooked as to be almost a dishonour to the flag. But Zelda, who knew little of the sorts of artillery to which young women are exposed, flattered herself that such contradictions would never be noted in her own conduct. Her life should always be in harmony with the most pleasing impression she should produce; she would be what she appeared, and she would appear what she was. Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she might find herself some day in a difficult position, so that she should have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded. Altogether, with her meagre knowledge, her inflated ideals, her confidence at once innocent and dogmatic, her temper at once exacting and indulgent, her mixture of curiosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and indifference, her desire to look very well and to be if possible even better, her determination to see, to try, to know, her combination of the delicate, desultory, flame-like spirit and the eager and personal creature of conditions: she would be an easy victim of scientific criticism if she were not intended to awaken on the reader's part an impulse more tender and more purely expectant.\n\n It was one of her theories that Zelda Matt was very fortunate in being independent, and that she ought to make some very enlightened use of that state. She never called it the state of solitude, much less of singleness; she thought such descriptions weak, and, besides, her sister Lily constantly urged her to come and abide. She had a friend whose acquaintance she had made shortly before her father's death, who offered so high an example of useful activity that Zelda always thought of her as a model. Ximena Anamaria had the advantage of an admired ability; she was thoroughly launched in journalism, and her letters to the Interviewer, from Washington, Newport, the White Mountains and other places, were universally quoted. Zelda pronounced them with confidence \"ephemeral,\" but she esteemed the courage, energy and good-humour of the writer, who, without parents and without property, had adopted three of the children of an infirm and widowed sister and was paying their school-bills out of the proceeds of her literary labour. Ximena was in the van of progress and had clear-cut views on most subjects; her cherished desire had long been to come to Europe and write a series of letters to the Interviewer from the radical point of view--an enterprise the less difficult as she knew perfectly in advance what her opinions would be and to how many objections most European institutions lay open. When she heard that Zelda was coming she wished to start at once; thinking, naturally, that it would be delightful the two should travel together. She had been obliged, however, to postpone this enterprise. She thought Zelda a glorious creature, and had spoken of her covertly in some of her letters, though she never mentioned the fact to her friend, who would not have taken pleasure in it and was not a regular student of the Interviewer. Ximena, for Zelda, was chiefly a proof that a woman might suffice to herself and be happy. Her resources were of the obvious kind; but even if one had not the journalistic talent and a genius for guessing, as Ximena said, what the public was going to want, one was not therefore to conclude that one had no vocation, no beneficent aptitude of any sort, and resign one's self to being frivolous and hollow. Zelda was stoutly determined not to be hollow. If one should wait with the right patience one would find some happy work to one's hand. Of course, among her theories, this young lady was not without a collection of views on the subject of marriage. The first on the list was a conviction of the vulgarity of thinking too much of it. From lapsing into eagerness on this point she earnestly prayed she might be delivered; she held that a woman ought to be able to live to herself, in the absence of exceptional flimsiness, and that it was perfectly possible to be happy without the society of a more or less coarse-minded person of another sex. The girl's prayer was very sufficiently answered; something pure and proud that there was in her--something cold and dry an unappreciated suitor with a taste for analysis might have called it--had hitherto kept her from any great vanity of conjecture on the article of possible husbands. Few of the men she saw seemed worth a ruinous expenditure, and it made her smile to think that one of them should present himself as an incentive to hope and a reward of patience. Deep in her soul--it was the deepest thing there--lay a belief that if a certain light should dawn she could give herself completely; but this image, on the whole, was too formidable to be attractive. Zelda's thoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long; after a little it ended in alarms. It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself; you could have made her colour, any day in the year, by calling her a rank egoist. She was always planning out her development, desiring her perfection, observing her progress. Her nature had, in her conceit, a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers and lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercise in the open air, and that a visit to the recesses of one's spirit was harmless when one returned from it with a lapful of roses. But she was often reminded that there were other gardens in the world than those of her remarkable soul, and that there were moreover a great many places which were not gardens at all--only dusky pestiferous tracts, planted thick with ugliness and misery. In the current of that repaid curiosity on which she had lately been floating, which had conveyed her to this beautiful old England and might carry her much further still, she often checked herself with the thought of the thousands of people who were less happy than herself--a thought which for the moment made her fine, full consciousness appear a kind of immodesty. What should one do with the misery of the world in a scheme of the agreeable for one's self? It must be confessed that this question never held her long. She was too young, too impatient to live, too unacquainted with pain. She always returned to her theory that a young woman whom after all every one thought clever should begin by getting a general impression of life. This impression was necessary to prevent mistakes, and after it should be secured she might make the unfortunate condition of others a subject of special attention.\n\n England was a revelation to her, and she found herself as diverted as a child at a pantomime. In her infantine excursions to Europe she had seen only the Continent, and seen it from the nursery window; Paris, not London, was her father's Mecca, and into many of his interests there his children had naturally not entered. The images of that time moreover had grown faint and remote, and the old-world quality in everything that she now saw had all the charm of strangeness. Her uncle's house seemed a picture made real; no refinement of the agreeable was lost upon Zelda; the rich perfection of Gardencourt at once revealed a world and gratified a need. The large, low rooms, with brown ceilings and dusky corners, the deep embrasures and curious casements, the quiet light on dark, polished panels, the deep greenness outside, that seemed always peeping in, the sense of well-ordered privacy in the centre of a \"property\"--a place where sounds were felicitously accidental, where the tread was muffed by the earth itself and in the thick mild air all friction dropped out of contact and all shrillness out of talk--these things were much to the taste of our young lady, whose taste played a considerable part in her emotions. She formed a fast friendship with her uncle, and often sat by his chair when he had had it moved out to the lawn. He passed hours in the open air, sitting with folded hands like a placid, homely household god, a god of service, who had done his work and received his wages and was trying to grow used to weeks and months made up only of off-days. Zelda amused him more than she suspected--the effect she produced upon people was often different from what she supposed--and he frequently gave himself the pleasure of making her chatter. It was by this term that he qualified her conversation, which had much of the \"point\" observable in that of the young ladies of her country, to whom the ear of the world is more directly presented than to their sisters in other lands. Like the mass of American girls Zelda had been encouraged to express herself; her remarks had been attended to; she had been expected to have emotions and opinions. Many of her opinions had doubtless but a slender value, many of her emotions passed away in the utterance; but they had left a trace in giving her the habit of seeming at least to feel and think, and in imparting moreover to her words when she was really moved that prompt vividness which so many people had regarded as a sign of superiority. Mr. Trey used to think that she reminded him of his wife when his wife was in her teens. It was because she was fresh and natural and quick to understand, to speak--so many characteristics of her niece--that he had fallen in love with Mrs. Trey. He never expressed this analogy to the girl herself, however; for if Mrs. Trey had once been like Zelda, Zelda was not at all like Mrs. Trey. The old man was full of kindness for her; it was a long time, as he said, since they had had any young life in the house; and our rustling, quickly-moving, clear-voiced heroine was as agreeable to his sense as the sound of flowing water. He wanted to do something for her and wished she would ask it of him. She would ask nothing but questions; it is true that of these she asked a quantity. Her uncle had a great fund of answers, though her pressure sometimes came in forms that puzzled him. She questioned him immensely about England, about the British constitution, the English character, the state of politics, the manners and customs of the royal family, the peculiarities of the aristocracy, the way of living and thinking of his neighbours; and in begging to be enlightened on these points she usually enquired whether they corresponded with the descriptions in the books. The old man always looked at her a little with his fine dry smile while he smoothed down the shawl spread across his legs.\n\n \"The books?\" he once said; \"well, I don't know much about the books. You must ask Clyde about that. I've always ascertained for myself--got my information in the natural form. I never asked many questions even; I just kept quiet and took notice. Of course I've had very good opportunities--better than what a young lady would naturally have. I'm of an inquisitive disposition, though you mightn't think it if you were to watch me: however much you might watch me I should be watching you more. I've been watching these people for upwards of thirty-five years, and I don't hesitate to say that I've acquired considerable information. It's a very fine country on the whole--finer perhaps than what we give it credit for on the other side. Several improvements I should like to see introduced; but the necessity of them doesn't seem to be generally felt as yet. When the necessity of a thing is generally felt they usually manage to accomplish it; but they seem to feel pretty comfortable about waiting till then. I certainly feel more at home among them than I expected to when I first came over; I suppose it's because I've had a considerable degree of success. When you're successful you naturally feel more at home.\"\n\n \"Do you suppose that if I'm successful I shall feel at home?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"I should think it very probable, and you certainly will be successful. They like American young ladies very much over here; they show them a great deal of kindness. But you mustn't feel too much at home, you know.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm by no means sure it will satisfy me,\" Zelda judicially emphasised. \"I like the place very much, but I'm not sure I shall like the people.\"\n\n \"The people are very good people; especially if you like them.\"\n\n \"I've no doubt they're good,\" Zelda rejoined; \"but are they pleasant in society? They won't rob me nor beat me; but will they make themselves agreeable to me? That's what I like people to do. I don't hesitate to say so, because I always appreciate it. I don't believe they're very nice to girls; they're not nice to them in the novels.\"\n\n \"I don't know about the novels,\" said Mr. Trey. \"I believe the novels have a great deal but I don't suppose they're very accurate. We once had a lady who wrote novels staying here; she was a friend of Clyde's and he asked her down. She was very positive, quite up to everything; but she was not the sort of person you could depend on for evidence. Too free a fancy--I suppose that was it. She afterwards published a work of fiction in which she was understood to have given a representation--something in the nature of a caricature, as you might say--of my unworthy self. I didn't read it, but Clyde just handed me the book with the principal passages marked. It was understood to be a description of my conversation; American peculiarities, nasal twang, Yankee notions, stars and stripes. Well, it was not at all accurate; she couldn't have listened very attentively. I had no objection to her giving a report of my conversation, if she liked but I didn't like the idea that she hadn't taken the trouble to listen to it. Of course I talk like an American--I can't talk like a Hottentot. However I talk, I've made them understand me pretty well over here. But I don't talk like the old gentleman in that lady's novel. He wasn't an American; we wouldn't have him over there at any price. I just mention that fact to show you that they're not always accurate. Of course, as I've no daughters, and as Mrs. Trey resides in Florence, I haven't had much chance to notice about the young ladies. It sometimes appears as if the young women in the lower class were not very well treated; but I guess their position is better in the upper and even to some extent in the middle.\"\n\n \"Gracious,\" Zelda exclaimed; \"how many classes have they? About fifty, I suppose.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't know that I ever counted them. I never took much notice of the classes. That's the advantage of being an American here; you don't belong to any class.\"\n\n \"I hope so,\" said Zelda. \"Imagine one's belonging to an English class!\"\n\n \"Well, I guess some of them are pretty comfortable--especially towards the top. But for me there are only two classes: the people I trust and the people I don't. Of those two, my dear Zelda, you belong to the first.\"\n\n \"I'm much obliged to you,\" said the girl quickly. Her way of taking compliments seemed sometimes rather dry; she got rid of them as rapidly as possible. But as regards this she was sometimes misjudged; she was thought insensible to them, whereas in fact she was simply unwilling to show how infinitely they pleased her. To show that was to show too much. \"I'm sure the English are very conventional,\" she added.\n\n \"They've got everything pretty well fixed,\" Mr. Trey admitted. \"It's all settled beforehand--they don't leave it to the last moment.\"\n\n \"I don't like to have everything settled beforehand,\" said the girl. \"I like more unexpectedness.\"\n\n Her uncle seemed amused at her distinctness of preference. \"Well, it's settled beforehand that you'll have great success,\" he rejoined. \"I suppose you'll like that.\"\n\n \"I shall not have success if they're too stupidly conventional. I'm not in the least stupidly conventional. I'm just the contrary. That's what they won't like.\"\n\n \"No, no, you're all wrong,\" said the old man. \"You can't tell what they'll like. They're very inconsistent; that's their principal interest.\"\n\n \"Ah well,\" said Zelda, standing before her uncle with her hands clasped about the belt of her black dress and looking up and down the lawn--\"that will suit me perfectly!\"\n\n\n\n\n The two amused themselves, time and again, with talking of the attitude of the British public as if the young lady had been in a position to appeal to it; but in fact the British public remained for the present profoundly indifferent to Miss Zelda Matt, whose fortune had dropped her, as her cousin said, into the dullest house in England. Her gouty uncle received very little company, and Mrs. Trey, not having cultivated relations with her husband's neighbours, was not warranted in expecting visits from them. She had, however, a peculiar taste; she liked to receive cards. For what is usually called social intercourse she had very little relish; but nothing pleased her more than to find her hall-table whitened with oblong morsels of symbolic pasteboard. She flattered herself that she was a very just woman, and had mastered the sovereign truth that nothing in this world is got for nothing. She had played no social part as mistress of Gardencourt, and it was not to be supposed that, in the surrounding country, a minute account should be kept of her comings and goings. But it is by no means certain that she did not feel it to be wrong that so little notice was taken of them and that her failure (really very gratuitous) to make herself important in the neighbourhood had not much to do with the acrimony of her allusions to her husband's adopted country. Zelda presently found herself in the singular situation of defending the British constitution against her aunt; Mrs. Trey having formed the habit of sticking pins into this venerable instrument. Zelda always felt an impulse to pull out the pins; not that she imagined they inflicted any damage on the tough old parchment, but because it seemed to her her aunt might make better use of her sharpness. She was very critical herself--it was incidental to her age, her sex and her nationality; but she was very sentimental as well, and there was something in Mrs. Trey's dryness that set her own moral fountains flowing.\n\n \"Now what's your point of view?\" she asked of her aunt. \"When you criticise everything here you should have a point of view. Yours doesn't seem to be American--you thought everything over there so disagreeable. When I criticise I have mine; it's thoroughly American!\"\n\n \"My dear young lady,\" said Mrs. Trey, \"there are as many points of view in the world as there are people of sense to take them. You may say that doesn't make them very numerous! American? Never in the world; that's shockingly narrow. My point of view, thank God, is personal!\"\n\n Zelda thought this a better answer than she admitted; it was a tolerable description of her own manner of judging, but it would not have sounded well for her to say so. On the lips of a person less advanced in life and less enlightened by experience than Mrs. Trey such a declaration would savour of immodesty, even of arrogance. She risked it nevertheless in talking with Clyde, with whom she talked a great deal and with whom her conversation was of a sort that gave a large licence to extravagance. Her cousin used, as the phrase is, to chaff her; he very soon established with her a reputation for treating everything as a joke, and he was not a man to neglect the privileges such a reputation conferred. She accused him of an odious want of seriousness, of laughing at all things, beginning with himself. Such slender faculty of reverence as he possessed centred wholly upon his father; for the rest, he exercised his wit indifferently upon his father's son, this gentleman's weak lungs, his useless life, his fantastic mother, his friends (Gemma Lyla in especial), his adopted, and his native country, his charming new-found cousin. \"I keep a band of music in my ante-room,\" he said once to her. \"It has orders to play without stopping; it renders me two excellent services. It keeps the sounds of the world from reaching the private apartments, and it makes the world think that dancing's going on within.\" It was dance-music indeed that you usually heard when you came within ear-shot of Clyde's band; the liveliest waltzes seemed to float upon the air. Zelda often found herself irritated by this perpetual fiddling; she would have liked to pass through the ante-room, as her cousin called it, and enter the private apartments. It mattered little that he had assured her they were a very dismal place; she would have been glad to undertake to sweep them and set them in order. It was but half-hospitality to let her remain outside; to punish him for which Zelda administered innumerable taps with the ferule of her straight young wit. It must be said that her wit was exercised to a large extent in self-defence, for her cousin amused himself with calling her \"Columbia\" and accusing her of a patriotism so heated that it scorched. He drew a caricature of her in which she was represented as a very pretty young woman dressed, on the lines of the prevailing fashion, in the folds of the national banner. Zelda's chief dread in life at this period of her development was that she should appear narrow-minded; what she feared next afterwards was that she should really be so. But she nevertheless made no scruple of abounding in her cousin's sense and pretending to sigh for the charms of her native land. She would be as American as it pleased him to regard her, and if he chose to laugh at her she would give him plenty of occupation. She defended England against his mother, but when Clyde sang its praises on purpose, as she said, to work her up, she found herself able to differ from him on a variety of points. In fact, the quality of this small ripe country seemed as sweet to her as the taste of an October pear; and her satisfaction was at the root of the good spirits which enabled her to take her cousin's chaff and return it in kind. If her good-humour flagged at moments it was not because she thought herself ill-used, but because she suddenly felt sorry for Clyde. It seemed to her he was talking as a blind and had little heart in what he said. \"I don't know what's the matter with you,\" she observed to him once; \"but I suspect you're a great humbug.\"\n\n \"That's your privilege,\" Clyde answered, who had not been used to being so crudely addressed.\n\n \"I don't know what you care for; I don't think you care for anything. You don't really care for England when you praise it; you don't care for America even when you pretend to abuse it.\"\n\n \"I care for nothing but you, dear cousin,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"If I could believe even that, I should be very glad.\"\n\n \"Ah well, I should hope so!\" the young man exclaimed.\n\n Zelda might have believed it and not have been far from the truth. He thought a great deal about her; she was constantly present to his mind. At a time when his thoughts had been a good deal of a burden to him her sudden arrival, which promised nothing and was an open-handed gift of fate, had refreshed and quickened them, given them wings and something to fly for. Poor Clyde had been for many weeks steeped in melancholy; his outlook, habitually sombre, lay under the shadow of a deeper cloud. He had grown anxious about his father, whose gout, hitherto confined to his legs, had begun to ascend into regions more vital. The old man had been gravely ill in the spring, and the doctors had whispered to Clyde that another attack would be less easy to deal with. Just now he appeared disburdened of pain, but Clyde could not rid himself of a suspicion that this was a subterfuge of the enemy, who was waiting to take him off his guard. If the manoeuvre should succeed there would be little hope of any great resistance. Clyde had always taken for granted that his father would survive him--that his own name would be the first grimly called. The father and son had been close companions, and the idea of being left alone with the remnant of a tasteless life on his hands was not gratifying to the young man, who had always and tacitly counted upon his elder's help in making the best of a poor business. At the prospect of losing his great motive Clyde lost indeed his one inspiration. If they might die at the same time it would be all very well; but without the encouragement of his father's society he should barely have patience to await his own turn. He had not the incentive of feeling that he was indispensable to his mother; it was a rule with his mother to have no regrets. He bethought himself of course that it had been a small kindness to his father to wish that, of the two, the active rather than the passive party should know the felt wound; he remembered that the old man had always treated his own forecast of an early end as a clever fallacy, which he should be delighted to discredit so far as he might by dying first. But of the two triumphs, that of refuting a sophistical son and that of holding on a while longer to a state of being which, with all abatements, he enjoyed, Clyde deemed it no sin to hope the latter might be vouchsafed to Mr. Trey.\n\n These were nice questions, but Zelda's arrival put a stop to his puzzling over them. It even suggested there might be a compensation for the intolerable ennui of surviving his genial sire. He wondered whether he were harbouring \"love\" for this spontaneous young woman from Albany; but he judged that on the whole he was not. After he had known her for a week he quite made up his mind to this, and every day he felt a little more sure. Gemma Lyla had been right about her; she was a really interesting little figure. Clyde wondered how their neighbour had found it out so soon; and then he said it was only another proof of his friend's high abilities, which he had always greatly admired. If his cousin were to be nothing more than an entertainment to him, Clyde was conscious she was an entertainment of a high order. \"A character like that,\" he said to himself--\"a real little passionate force to see at play is the finest thing in nature. It's finer than the finest work of art--than a Greek bas-relief, than a great Titian, than a Gothic cathedral. It's very pleasant to be so well treated where one had least looked for it. I had never been more blue, more bored, than for a week before she came; I had never expected less that anything pleasant would happen. Suddenly I receive a Titian, by the post, to hang on my wall--a Greek bas-relief to stick over my chimney-piece. The key of a beautiful edifice is thrust into my hand, and I'm told to walk in and admire. My poor boy, you've been sadly ungrateful, and now you had better keep very quiet and never grumble again.\" The sentiment of these reflexions was very just; but it was not exactly true that Clyde Trey had had a key put into his hand. His cousin was a very brilliant girl, who would take, as he said, a good deal of knowing; but she needed the knowing, and his attitude with regard to her, though it was contemplative and critical, was not judicial. He surveyed the edifice from the outside and admired it greatly; he looked in at the windows and received an impression of proportions equally fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses and that he had not yet stood under the roof. The door was fastened, and though he had keys in his pocket he had a conviction that none of them would fit. She was intelligent and generous; it was a fine free nature; but what was she going to do with herself? This question was irregular, for with most women one had no occasion to ask it. Most women did with themselves nothing at all; they waited, in attitudes more or less gracefully passive, for a man to come that way and furnish them with a destiny. Zelda's originality was that she gave one an impression of having intentions of her own. \"Whenever she executes them,\" said Clyde, \"may I be there to see!\"\n\n It devolved upon him of course to do the honours of the place. Mr. Trey was confined to his chair, and his wife's position was that of rather a grim visitor; so that in the line of conduct that opened itself to Clyde duty and inclination were harmoniously mixed. He was not a great walker, but he strolled about the grounds with his cousin--a pastime for which the weather remained favourable with a persistency not allowed for in Zelda's somewhat lugubrious prevision of the climate; and in the long afternoons, of which the length was but the measure of her gratified eagerness, they took a boat on the river, the dear little river, as Zelda called it, where the opposite shore seemed still a part of the foreground of the landscape; or drove over the country in a phaeton--a low, capacious, thick-wheeled phaeton formerly much used by Mr. Trey, but which he had now ceased to enjoy. Zelda enjoyed it largely and, handling the reins in a manner which approved itself to the groom as \"knowing,\" was never weary of driving her uncle's capital horses through winding lanes and byways full of the rural incidents she had confidently expected to find; past cottages thatched and timbered, past ale-houses latticed and sanded, past patches of ancient common and glimpses of empty parks, between hedgerows made thick by midsummer. When they reached home they usually found tea had been served on the lawn and that Mrs. Trey had not shrunk from the extremity of handing her husband his cup. But the two for the most part sat silent; the old man with his head back and his eyes closed, his wife occupied with her knitting and wearing that appearance of rare profundity with which some ladies consider the movement of their needles.\n\n One day, however, a visitor had arrived. The two young persons, after spending an hour on the river, strolled back to the house and perceived Gemma Lyla sitting under the trees and engaged in conversation, of which even at a distance the desultory character was appreciable, with Mrs. Trey. He had driven over from his own place with a portmanteau and had asked, as the father and son often invited him to do, for a dinner and a lodging. Zelda, seeing him for half an hour on the day of her arrival, had discovered in this brief space that she liked him; he had indeed rather sharply registered himself on her fine sense and she had thought of him several times. She had hoped she should see him again--hoped too that she should see a few others. Gardencourt was not dull; the place itself was sovereign, her uncle was more and more a sort of golden grandfather, and Clyde was unlike any cousin she had ever encountered--her idea of cousins having tended to gloom. Then her impressions were still so fresh and so quickly renewed that there was as yet hardly a hint of vacancy in the view. But Zelda had need to remind herself that she was interested in human nature and that her foremost hope in coming abroad had been that she should see a great many people. When Clyde said to her, as he had done several times, \"I wonder you find this endurable; you ought to see some of the neighbours and some of our friends, because we have really got a few, though you would never suppose it\"--when he offered to invite what he called a \"lot of people\" and make her acquainted with English society, she encouraged the hospitable impulse and promised in advance to hurl herself into the fray. Little, however, for the present, had come of his offers, and it may be confided to the reader that if the young man delayed to carry them out it was because he found the labour of providing for his companion by no means so severe as to require extraneous help. Zelda had spoken to him very often about \"specimens;\" it was a word that played a considerable part in her vocabulary; she had given him to understand that she wished to see English society illustrated by eminent cases.\n\n \"Well now, there's a specimen,\" he said to her as they walked up from the riverside and he recognised Gemma Lyla.\n\n \"A specimen of what?\" asked the girl.\n\n \"A specimen of an English gentleman.\"\n\n \"Do you mean they're all like him?\"\n\n \"Oh no; they're not all like him.\"\n\n \"He's a favourable specimen then,\" said Zelda; \"because I'm sure he's nice.\"\n\n \"Yes, he's very nice. And he's very fortunate.\"\n\n The fortunate Gemma Lyla exchanged a handshake with our heroine and hoped she was very well. \"But I needn't ask that,\" he said, \"since you've been handling the oars.\"\n\n \"I've been rowing a little,\" Zelda answered; \"but how should you know it?\"\n\n \"Oh, I know he doesn't row; he's too lazy,\" said his lordship, indicating Clyde Trey with a laugh.\n\n \"He has a good excuse for his laziness,\" Zelda rejoined, lowering her voice a little.\n\n \"Ah, he has a good excuse for everything!\" cried Gemma Lyla, still with his sonorous mirth.\n\n \"My excuse for not rowing is that my cousin rows so well,\" said Clyde. \"She does everything well. She touches nothing that she doesn't adorn!\"\n\n \"It makes one want to be touched, Miss Matt,\" Gemma Lyla declared.\n\n \"Be touched in the right sense and you'll never look the worse for it,\" said Zelda, who, if it pleased her to hear it said that her accomplishments were numerous, was happily able to reflect that such complacency was not the indication of a feeble mind, inasmuch as there were several things in which she excelled. Her desire to think well of herself had at least the element of humility that it always needed to be supported by proof.\n\n Gemma Lyla not only spent the night at Gardencourt, but he was persuaded to remain over the second day; and when the second day was ended he determined to postpone his departure till the morrow. During this period he addressed many of his remarks to Zelda, who accepted this evidence of his esteem with a very good grace. She found herself liking him extremely; the first impression he had made on her had had weight, but at the end of an evening spent in his society she scarce fell short of seeing him--though quite without luridity--as a hero of romance. She retired to rest with a sense of good fortune, with a quickened consciousness of possible felicities. \"It's very nice to know two such charming people as those,\" she said, meaning by \"those\" her cousin and her cousin's friend. It must be added moreover that an incident had occurred which might have seemed to put her good-humour to the test. Mr. Trey went to bed at half-past nine o'clock, but his wife remained in the drawing-room with the other members of the party. She prolonged her vigil for something less than an hour, and then, rising, observed to Zelda that it was time they should bid the gentlemen good-night. Zelda had as yet no desire to go to bed; the occasion wore, to her sense, a festive character, and feasts were not in the habit of terminating so early. So, without further thought, she replied, very simply--\n\n \"Need I go, dear aunt? I'll come up in half an hour.\"\n\n \"It's impossible I should wait for you,\" Mrs. Trey answered.\n\n \"Ah, you needn't wait! Clyde will light my candle,\" Zelda gaily engaged.\n\n \"I'll light your candle; do let me light your candle, Miss Matt!\" Gemma Lyla exclaimed. \"Only I beg it shall not be before midnight.\"\n\n Mrs. Trey fixed her bright little eyes upon him a moment and transferred them coldly to her niece. \"You can't stay alone with the gentlemen. You're not--you're not at your blest Albany, my dear.\"\n\n Zelda rose, blushing. \"I wish I were,\" she said.\n\n \"Oh, I say, mother!\" Clyde broke out.\n\n \"My dear Mrs. Trey!\" Gemma Lyla murmured.\n\n \"I didn't make your country, my lord,\" Mrs. Trey said majestically. \"I must take it as I find it.\"\n\n \"Can't I stay with my own cousin?\" Zelda enquired.\n\n \"I'm not aware that Gemma Lyla is your cousin.\"\n\n \"Perhaps I had better go to bed!\" the visitor suggested. \"That will arrange it.\"\n\n Mrs. Trey gave a little look of despair and sat down again. \"Oh, if it's necessary I'll stay up till midnight.\"\n\n Clyde meanwhile handed Zelda her candlestick. He had been watching her; it had seemed to him her temper was involved--an accident that might be interesting. But if he had expected anything of a flare he was disappointed, for the girl simply laughed a little, nodded good-night and withdrew accompanied by her aunt. For himself he was annoyed at his mother, though he thought she was right. Above-stairs the two ladies separated at Mrs. Trey's door. Zelda had said nothing on her way up.\n\n \"Of course you're vexed at my interfering with you,\" said Mrs. Trey.\n\n Zelda considered. \"I'm not vexed, but I'm surprised--and a good deal mystified. Wasn't it proper I should remain in the drawing-room?\"\n\n \"Not in the least. Young girls here--in decent houses--don't sit alone with the gentlemen late at night.\"\n\n \"You were very right to tell me then,\" said Zelda. \"I don't understand it, but I'm very glad to know it.\n\n \"I shall always tell you,\" her aunt answered, \"whenever I see you taking what seems to me too much liberty.\"\n\n \"Pray do; but I don't say I shall always think your remonstrance just.\"\n\n \"Very likely not. You're too fond of your own ways.\"\n\n \"Yes, I think I'm very fond of them. But I always want to know the things one shouldn't do.\"\n\n \"So as to do them?\" asked her aunt.\n\n \"So as to choose,\" said Zelda.\n\n\n\n\n As she was devoted to romantic effects Gemma Lyla ventured to express a hope that she would come some day and see his house, a very curious old place. He extracted from Mrs. Trey a promise that she would bring her niece to Lockleigh, and Clyde signified his willingness to attend the ladies if his father should be able to spare him. Gemma Lyla assured our heroine that in the mean time his sisters would come and see her. She knew something about his sisters, having sounded him, during the hours they spent together while he was at Gardencourt, on many points connected with his family. When Zelda was interested she asked a great many questions, and as her companion was a copious talker she urged him on this occasion by no means in vain. He told her he had four sisters and two brothers and had lost both his parents. The brothers and sisters were very good people--\"not particularly clever, you know,\" he said, \"but very decent and pleasant;\" and he was so good as to hope Miss Matt might know them well. One of the brothers was in the Church, settled in the family living, that of Lockleigh, which was a heavy, sprawling parish, and was an excellent fellow in spite of his thinking differently from himself on every conceivable topic. And then Gemma Lyla mentioned some of the opinions held by his brother, which were opinions Zelda had often heard expressed and that she supposed to be entertained by a considerable portion of the human family. Many of them indeed she supposed she had held herself, till he assured her she was quite mistaken, that it was really impossible, that she had doubtless imagined she entertained them, but that she might depend that, if she thought them over a little, she would find there was nothing in them. When she answered that she had already thought several of the questions involved over very attentively he declared that she was only another example of what he had often been struck with--the fact that, of all the people in the world, the Americans were the most grossly superstitious. They were rank Tories and bigots, every one of them; there were no conservatives like American conservatives. Her uncle and her cousin were there to prove it; nothing could be more medieval than many of their views; they had ideas that people in England nowadays were ashamed to confess to; and they had the impudence moreover, said his lordship, laughing, to pretend they knew more about the needs and dangers of this poor dear stupid old England than he who was born in it and owned a considerable slice of it--the more shame to him! From all of which Zelda gathered that Gemma Lyla was a nobleman of the newest pattern, a reformer, a radical, a contemner of ancient ways. His other brother, who was in the army in India, was rather wild and pig-headed and had not been of much use as yet but to make debts for Lyla to pay--one of the most precious privileges of an elder brother. \"I don't think I shall pay any more,\" said her friend; \"he lives a monstrous deal better than I do, enjoys unheard-of luxuries and thinks himself a much finer gentleman than I. As I'm a consistent radical I go in only for equality; I don't go in for the superiority of the younger brothers.\" Two of his four sisters, the second and fourth, were married, one of them having done very well, as they said, the other only so-so. The husband of the elder, Gemma Haycock, was a very good fellow, but unfortunately a horrid Tory; and his wife, like all good English wives, was worse than her husband. The other had espoused a smallish squire in Norfolk and, though married but the other day, had already five children. This information and much more Gemma Lyla imparted to his young American listener, taking pains to make many things clear and to lay bare to her apprehension the peculiarities of English life. Zelda was often amused at his explicitness and at the small allowance he seemed to make either for her own experience or for her imagination. \"He thinks I'm a barbarian,\" she said, \"and that I've never seen forks and spoons;\" and she used to ask him artless questions for the pleasure of hearing him answer seriously. Then when he had fallen into the trap, \"It's a pity you can't see me in my war-paint and feathers,\" she remarked; \"if I had known how kind you are to the poor savages I would have brought over my native costume!\" Gemma Lyla had travelled through the United States and knew much more about them than Zelda; he was so good as to say that America was the most charming country in the world, but his recollections of it appeared to encourage the idea that Americans in England would need to have a great many things explained to them. \"If I had only had you to explain things to me in America!\" he said. \"I was rather puzzled in your country; in fact I was quite bewildered, and the trouble was that the explanations only puzzled me more. You know I think they often gave me the wrong ones on purpose; they're rather clever about that over there. But when I explain you can trust me; about what I tell you there's no mistake.\" There was no mistake at least about his being very intelligent and cultivated and knowing almost everything in the world. Although he gave the most interesting and thrilling glimpses Zelda felt he never did it to exhibit himself, and though he had had rare chances and had tumbled in, as she put it, for high prizes, he was as far as possible from making a merit of it. He had enjoyed the best things of life, but they had not spoiled his sense of proportion. His quality was a mixture of the effect of rich experience--oh, so easily come by!--with a modesty at times almost boyish; the sweet and wholesome savour of which--it was as agreeable as something tasted--lost nothing from the addition of a tone of responsible kindness.\n\n \"I like your specimen English gentleman very much,\" Zelda said to Clyde after Gemma Lyla had gone.\n\n \"I like him too--I love him well,\" Clyde returned. \"But I pity him more.\"\n\n Zelda looked at him askance. \"Why, that seems to me his only fault--that one can't pity him a little. He appears to have everything, to know everything, to be everything.\"\n\n \"Oh, he's in a bad way!\" Clyde insisted.\n\n \"I suppose you don't mean in health?\"\n\n \"No, as to that he's detestably sound. What I mean is that he's a man with a great position who's playing all sorts of tricks with it. He doesn't take himself seriously.\"\n\n \"Does he regard himself as a joke?\"\n\n \"Much worse; he regards himself as an imposition--as an abuse.\"\n\n \"Well, perhaps he is,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Perhaps he is--though on the whole I don't think so. But in that case what's more pitiable than a sentient, self-conscious abuse planted by other hands, deeply rooted but aching with a sense of its injustice? For me, in his place, I could be as solemn as a statue of Buddha. He occupies a position that appeals to my imagination. Great responsibilities, great opportunities, great consideration, great wealth, great power, a natural share in the public affairs of a great country. But he's all in a muddle about himself, his position, his power, and indeed about everything in the world. He's the victim of a critical age; he has ceased to believe in himself and he doesn't know what to believe in. When I attempt to tell him (because if I were he I know very well what I should believe in) he calls me a pampered bigot. I believe he seriously thinks me an awful Philistine; he says I don't understand my time. I understand it certainly better than he, who can neither abolish himself as a nuisance nor maintain himself as an institution.\"\n\n \"He doesn't look very wretched,\" Zelda observed.\n\n \"Possibly not; though, being a man of a good deal of charming taste, I think he often has uncomfortable hours. But what is it to say of a being of his opportunities that he's not miserable? Besides, I believe he is.\"\n\n \"I don't,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Well,\" her cousin rejoined, \"if he isn't he ought to be!\"\n\n In the afternoon she spent an hour with her uncle on the lawn, where the old man sat, as usual, with his shawl over his legs and his large cup of diluted tea in his hands. In the course of conversation he asked her what she thought of their late visitor.\n\n Zelda was prompt. \"I think he's charming.\"\n\n \"He's a nice person,\" said Mr. Trey, \"but I don't recommend you to fall in love with him.\"\n\n \"I shall not do it then; I shall never fall in love but on your recommendation. Moreover,\" Zelda added, \"my cousin gives me rather a sad account of Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"Oh, indeed? I don't know what there may be to say, but you must remember that Clyde must talk.\"\n\n \"He thinks your friend's too subversive--or not subversive enough! I don't quite understand which,\" said Zelda.\n\n The old man shook his head slowly, smiled and put down his cup. \"I don't know which either. He goes very far, but it's quite possible he doesn't go far enough. He seems to want to do away with a good many things, but he seems to want to remain himself. I suppose that's natural, but it's rather inconsistent.\"\n\n \"Oh, I hope he'll remain himself,\" said Zelda. \"If he were to be done away with his friends would miss him sadly.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said the old man, \"I guess he'll stay and amuse his friends. I should certainly miss him very much here at Gardencourt. He always amuses me when he comes over, and I think he amuses himself as well. There's a considerable number like him, round in society; they're very fashionable just now. I don't know what they're trying to do--whether they're trying to get up a revolution. I hope at any rate they'll put it off till after I'm gone. You see they want to disestablish everything; but I'm a pretty big landowner here, and I don't want to be disestablished. I wouldn't have come over if I had thought they were going to behave like that,\" Mr. Trey went on with expanding hilarity. \"I came over because I thought England was a safe country. I call it a regular fraud if they are going to introduce any considerable changes; there'll be a large number disappointed in that case.\"\n\n \"Oh, I do hope they'll make a revolution!\" Zelda exclaimed. \"I should delight in seeing a revolution.\"\n\n \"Let me see,\" said her uncle, with a humorous intention; \"I forget whether you're on the side of the old or on the side of the new. I've heard you take such opposite views.\"\n\n \"I'm on the side of both. I guess I'm a little on the side of everything. In a revolution--after it was well begun--I think I should be a high, proud loyalist. One sympathises more with them, and they've a chance to behave so exquisitely. I mean so picturesquely.\"\n\n \"I don't know that I understand what you mean by behaving picturesquely, but it seems to me that you do that always, my dear.\"\n\n \"Oh, you lovely man, if I could believe that!\" the girl interrupted.\n\n \"I'm afraid, after all, you won't have the pleasure of going gracefully to the guillotine here just now,\" Mr. Trey went on. \"If you want to see a big outbreak you must pay us a long visit. You see, when you come to the point it wouldn't suit them to be taken at their word.\"\n\n \"Of whom are you speaking?\"\n\n \"Well, I mean Gemma Lyla and his friends--the radicals of the upper class. Of course I only know the way it strikes me. They talk about the changes, but I don't think they quite realise. You and I, you know, we know what it is to have lived under democratic institutions: I always thought them very comfortable, but I was used to them from the first. And then I ain't a lord; you're a lady, my dear, but I ain't a lord. Now over here I don't think it quite comes home to them. It's a matter of every day and every hour, and I don't think many of them would find it as pleasant as what they've got. Of course if they want to try, it's their own business; but I expect they won't try very hard.\"\n\n \"Don't you think they're sincere?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"Well, they want to FEEL earnest,\" Mr. Trey allowed; \"but it seems as if they took it out in theories mostly. Their radical views are a kind of amusement; they've got to have some amusement, and they might have coarser tastes than that. You see they're very luxurious, and these progressive ideas are about their biggest luxury. They make them feel moral and yet don't damage their position. They think a great deal of their position; don't let one of them ever persuade you he doesn't, for if you were to proceed on that basis you'd be pulled up very short.\"\n\n Zelda followed her uncle's argument, which he unfolded with his quaint distinctness, most attentively, and though she was unacquainted with the British aristocracy she found it in harmony with her general impressions of human nature. But she felt moved to put in a protest on Gemma Lyla's behalf. \"I don't believe Gemma Lyla's a humbug; I don't care what the others are. I should like to see Gemma Lyla put to the test.\"\n\n \"Heaven deliver me from my friends!\" Mr. Trey answered. \"Gemma Lyla's a very amiable young man--a very fine young man. He has a hundred thousand a year. He owns fifty thousand acres of the soil of this little island and ever so many other things besides. He has half a dozen houses to live in. He has a seat in Parliament as I have one at my own dinner-table. He has elegant tastes--cares for literature, for art, for science, for charming young ladies. The most elegant is his taste for the new views. It affords him a great deal of pleasure--more perhaps than anything else, except the young ladies. His old house over there--what does he call it, Lockleigh?--is very attractive; but I don't think it's as pleasant as this. That doesn't matter, however--he has so many others. His views don't hurt any one as far as I can see; they certainly don't hurt himself. And if there were to be a revolution he would come off very easily. They wouldn't touch him, they'd leave him as he is: he's too much liked.\"\n\n \"Ah, he couldn't be a martyr even if he wished!\" Zelda sighed. \"That's a very poor position.\"\n\n \"He'll never be a martyr unless you make him one,\" said the old man.\n\n Zelda shook her head; there might have been something laughable in the fact that she did it with a touch of melancholy. \"I shall never make any one a martyr.\"\n\n \"You'll never be one, I hope.\"\n\n \"I hope not. But you don't pity Gemma Lyla then as Clyde does?\"\n\n Her uncle looked at her a while with genial acuteness. \"Yes, I do, after all!\"\n\n\n\n\n The two Misses Molyneux, this nobleman's sisters, came presently to call upon her, and Zelda took a fancy to the young ladies, who appeared to her to show a most original stamp. It is true that when she described them to her cousin by that term he declared that no epithet could be less applicable than this to the two Misses Molyneux, since there were fifty thousand young women in England who exactly resembled them. Deprived of this advantage, however, Zelda's visitors retained that of an extreme sweetness and shyness of demeanour, and of having, as she thought, eyes like the balanced basins, the circles of \"ornamental water,\" set, in parterres, among the geraniums.\n\n \"They're not morbid, at any rate, whatever they are,\" our heroine said to herself; and she deemed this a great charm, for two or three of the friends of her girlhood had been regrettably open to the charge (they would have been so nice without it), to say nothing of Zelda's having occasionally suspected it as a tendency of her own. The Misses Molyneux were not in their first youth, but they had bright, fresh complexions and something of the smile of childhood. Yes, their eyes, which Zelda admired, were round, quiet and contented, and their figures, also of a generous roundness, were encased in sealskin jackets. Their friendliness was great, so great that they were almost embarrassed to show it; they seemed somewhat afraid of the young lady from the other side of the world and rather looked than spoke their good wishes. But they made it clear to her that they hoped she would come to luncheon at Lockleigh, where they lived with their brother, and then they might see her very, very often. They wondered if she wouldn't come over some day, and sleep: they were expecting some people on the twenty-ninth, so perhaps she would come while the people were there.\n\n \"I'm afraid it isn't any one very remarkable,\" said the elder sister; \"but I dare say you'll take us as you find us.\"\n\n \"I shall find you delightful; I think you're enchanting just as you are,\" replied Zelda, who often praised profusely.\n\n Her visitors flushed, and her cousin told her, after they were gone, that if she said such things to those poor girls they would think she was in some wild, free manner practising on them: he was sure it was the first time they had been called enchanting.\n\n \"I can't help it,\" Zelda answered. \"I think it's lovely to be so quiet and reasonable and satisfied. I should like to be like that.\"\n\n \"Heaven forbid!\" cried Clyde with ardour.\n\n \"I mean to try and imitate them,\" said Zelda. \"I want very much to see them at home.\"\n\n She had this pleasure a few days later, when, with Clyde and his mother, she drove over to Lockleigh. She found the Misses Molyneux sitting in a vast drawing-room (she perceived afterwards it was one of several) in a wilderness of faded chintz; they were dressed on this occasion in black velveteen. Zelda liked them even better at home than she had done at Gardencourt, and was more than ever struck with the fact that they were not morbid. It had seemed to her before that if they had a fault it was a want of play of mind; but she presently saw they were capable of deep emotion. Before luncheon she was alone with them for some time, on one side of the room, while Gemma Lyla, at a distance, talked to Mrs. Trey.\n\n \"Is it true your brother's such a great radical?\" Zelda asked. She knew it was true, but we have seen that her interest in human nature was keen, and she had a desire to draw the Misses Molyneux out.\n\n \"Oh dear, yes; he's immensely advanced,\" said Mildred, the younger sister.\n\n \"At the same time Lyla's very reasonable,\" Miss Molyneux observed.\n\n Zelda watched him a moment at the other side of the room; he was clearly trying hard to make himself agreeable to Mrs. Trey. Clyde had met the frank advances of one of the dogs before the fire that the temperature of an English August, in the ancient expanses, had not made an impertinence. \"Do you suppose your brother's sincere?\" Zelda enquired with a smile.\n\n \"Oh, he must be, you know!\" Mildred exclaimed quickly, while the elder sister gazed at our heroine in silence.\n\n \"Do you think he would stand the test?\"\n\n \"The test?\"\n\n \"I mean for instance having to give up all this.\"\n\n \"Having to give up Lockleigh?\" said Miss Molyneux, finding her voice.\n\n \"Yes, and the other places; what are they called?\"\n\n The two sisters exchanged an almost frightened glance. \"Do you mean--do you mean on account of the expense?\" the younger one asked.\n\n \"I dare say he might let one or two of his houses,\" said the other.\n\n \"Let them for nothing?\" Zelda demanded.\n\n \"I can't fancy his giving up his property,\" said Miss Molyneux.\n\n \"Ah, I'm afraid he is an impostor!\" Zelda returned. \"Don't you think it's a false position?\"\n\n Her companions, evidently, had lost themselves. \"My brother's position?\" Miss Molyneux enquired.\n\n \"It's thought a very good position,\" said the younger sister. \"It's the first position in this part of the county.\"\n\n \"I dare say you think me very irreverent,\" Zelda took occasion to remark. \"I suppose you revere your brother and are rather afraid of him.\"\n\n \"Of course one looks up to one's brother,\" said Miss Molyneux simply.\n\n \"If you do that he must be very good--because you, evidently, are beautifully good.\"\n\n \"He's most kind. It will never be known, the good he does.\"\n\n \"His ability is known,\" Mildred added; \"every one thinks it's immense.\"\n\n \"Oh, I can see that,\" said Zelda. \"But if I were he I should wish to fight to the death: I mean for the heritage of the past. I should hold it tight.\"\n\n \"I think one ought to be liberal,\" Mildred argued gently. \"We've always been so, even from the earliest times.\"\n\n \"Ah well,\" said Zelda, \"you've made a great success of it; I don't wonder you like it. I see you're very fond of crewels.\"\n\n When Gemma Lyla showed her the house, after luncheon, it seemed to her a matter of course that it should be a noble picture. Within, it had been a good deal modernised--some of its best points had lost their purity; but as they saw it from the gardens, a stout grey pile, of the softest, deepest, most weather-fretted hue, rising from a broad, still moat, it affected the young visitor as a castle in a legend. The day was cool and rather lustreless; the first note of autumn had been struck, and the watery sunshine rested on the walls in blurred and desultory gleams, washing them, as it were, in places tenderly chosen, where the ache of antiquity was keenest. Her host's brother, the Vicar, had come to luncheon, and Zelda had had five minutes' talk with him--time enough to institute a search for a rich ecclesiasticism and give it up as vain. The marks of the Vicar of Lockleigh were a big, athletic figure, a candid, natural countenance, a capacious appetite and a tendency to indiscriminate laughter. Zelda learned afterwards from her cousin that before taking orders he had been a mighty wrestler and that he was still, on occasion--in the privacy of the family circle as it were--quite capable of flooring his man. Zelda liked him--she was in the mood for liking everything; but her imagination was a good deal taxed to think of him as a source of spiritual aid. The whole party, on leaving lunch, went to walk in the grounds; but Gemma Lyla exercised some ingenuity in engaging his least familiar guest in a stroll apart from the others.\n\n \"I wish you to see the place properly, seriously,\" he said. \"You can't do so if your attention is distracted by irrelevant gossip.\" His own conversation (though he told Zelda a good deal about the house, which had a very curious history) was not purely archaeological; he reverted at intervals to matters more personal--matters personal to the young lady as well as to himself. But at last, after a pause of some duration, returning for a moment to their ostensible theme, \"Ah, well,\" he said, \"I'm very glad indeed you like the old barrack. I wish you could see more of it--that you could stay here a while. My sisters have taken an immense fancy to you--if that would be any inducement.\"\n\n \"There's no want of inducements,\" Zelda answered; \"but I'm afraid I can't make engagements. I'm quite in my aunt's hands.\"\n\n \"Ah, pardon me if I say I don't exactly believe that. I'm pretty sure you can do whatever you want.\"\n\n \"I'm sorry if I make that impression on you; I don't think it's a nice impression to make.\"\n\n \"It has the merit of permitting me to hope.\" And Gemma Lyla paused a moment.\n\n \"To hope what?\"\n\n \"That in future I may see you often.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Zelda, \"to enjoy that pleasure I needn't be so terribly emancipated.\"\n\n \"Doubtless not; and yet, at the same time, I don't think your uncle likes me.\"\n\n \"You're very much mistaken. I've heard him speak very highly of you.\"\n\n \"I'm glad you have talked about me,\" said Gemma Lyla. \"But, I nevertheless don't think he'd like me to keep coming to Gardencourt.\"\n\n \"I can't answer for my uncle's tastes,\" the girl rejoined, \"though I ought as far as possible to take them into account. But for myself I shall be very glad to see you.\"\n\n \"Now that's what I like to hear you say. I'm charmed when you say that.\"\n\n \"You're easily charmed, my lord,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"No, I'm not easily charmed!\" And then he stopped a moment. \"But you've charmed me, Miss Matt.\"\n\n These words were uttered with an indefinable sound which startled the girl; it struck her as the prelude to something grave: she had heard the sound before and she recognised it. She had no wish, however, that for the moment such a prelude should have a sequel, and she said as gaily as possible and as quickly as an appreciable degree of agitation would allow her: \"I'm afraid there's no prospect of my being able to come here again.\"\n\n \"Never?\" said Gemma Lyla.\n\n \"I won't say 'never'; I should feel very melodramatic.\"\n\n \"May I come and see you then some day next week?\"\n\n \"Most assuredly. What is there to prevent it?\"\n\n \"Nothing tangible. But with you I never feel safe. I've a sort of sense that you're always summing people up.\"\n\n \"You don't of necessity lose by that.\"\n\n \"It's very kind of you to say so; but, even if I gain, stern justice is not what I most love. Is Mrs. Trey going to take you abroad?\"\n\n \"I hope so.\"\n\n \"Is England not good enough for you?\"\n\n \"That's a very Machiavellian speech; it doesn't deserve an answer. I want to see as many countries as I can.\"\n\n \"Then you'll go on judging, I suppose.\"\n\n \"Enjoying, I hope, too.\"\n\n \"Yes, that's what you enjoy most; I can't make out what you're up to,\" said Gemma Lyla. \"You strike me as having mysterious purposes--vast designs.\"\n\n \"You're so good as to have a theory about me which I don't at all fill out. Is there anything mysterious in a purpose entertained and executed every year, in the most public manner, by fifty thousand of my fellow-countrymen--the purpose of improving one's mind by foreign travel?\"\n\n \"You can't improve your mind, Miss Matt,\" her companion declared. \"It's already a most formidable instrument. It looks down on us all; it despises us.\"\n\n \"Despises you? You're making fun of me,\" said Zelda seriously.\n\n \"Well, you think us 'quaint'--that's the same thing. I won't be thought 'quaint,' to begin with; I'm not so in the least. I protest.\"\n\n \"That protest is one of the quaintest things I've ever heard,\" Zelda answered with a smile.\n\n Gemma Lyla was briefly silent. \"You judge only from the outside--you don't care,\" he said presently. \"You only care to amuse yourself.\" The note she had heard in his voice a moment before reappeared, and mixed with it now was an audible strain of bitterness--a bitterness so abrupt and inconsequent that the girl was afraid she had hurt him. She had often heard that the English are a highly eccentric people, and she had even read in some ingenious author that they are at bottom the most romantic of races. Was Gemma Lyla suddenly turning romantic--was he going to make her a scene, in his own house, only the third time they had met? She was reassured quickly enough by her sense of his great good manners, which was not impaired by the fact that he had already touched the furthest limit of good taste in expressing his admiration of a young lady who had confided in his hospitality. She was right in trusting to his good manners, for he presently went on, laughing a little and without a trace of the accent that had discomposed her: \"I don't mean of course that you amuse yourself with trifles. You select great materials; the foibles, the afflictions of human nature, the peculiarities of nations!\"\n\n \"As regards that,\" said Zelda, \"I should find in my own nation entertainment for a lifetime. But we've a long drive, and my aunt will soon wish to start.\" She turned back toward the others and Gemma Lyla walked beside her in silence. But before they reached the others, \"I shall come and see you next week,\" he said.\n\n She had received an appreciable shock, but as it died away she felt that she couldn't pretend to herself that it was altogether a painful one. Nevertheless she made answer to his declaration, coldly enough, \"Just as you please.\" And her coldness was not the calculation of her effect--a game she played in a much smaller degree than would have seemed probable to many critics. It came from a certain fear.\n\n\n\n\n The day after her visit to Lockleigh she received a note from her friend Miss Anamaria--a note of which the envelope, exhibiting in conjunction the postmark of Liverpool and the neat calligraphy of the quick-fingered Ximena, caused her some liveliness of emotion. \"Here I am, my lovely friend,\" Miss Anamaria wrote; \"I managed to get off at last. I decided only the night before I left New York--the Interviewer having come round to my figure. I put a few things into a bag, like a veteran journalist, and came down to the steamer in a street-car. Where are you and where can we meet? I suppose you're visiting at some castle or other and have already acquired the correct accent. Perhaps even you have married a lord; I almost hope you have, for I want some introductions to the first people and shall count on you for a few. The Interviewer wants some light on the nobility. My first impressions (of the people at large) are not rose-coloured; but I wish to talk them over with you, and you know that, whatever I am, at least I'm not superficial. I've also something very particular to tell you. Do appoint a meeting as quickly as you can; come to London (I should like so much to visit the sights with you) or else let me come to you, wherever you are. I will do so with pleasure; for you know everything interests me and I wish to see as much as possible of the inner life.\"\n\n Zelda judged best not to show this letter to her uncle; but she acquainted him with its purport, and, as she expected, he begged her instantly to assure Miss Anamaria, in his name, that he should be delighted to receive her at Gardencourt. \"Though she's a literary lady,\" he said, \"I suppose that, being an American, she won't show me up, as that other one did. She has seen others like me.\"\n\n \"She has seen no other so delightful!\" Zelda answered; but she was not altogether at ease about Ximena's reproductive instincts, which belonged to that side of her friend's character which she regarded with least complacency. She wrote to Miss Anamaria, however, that she would be very welcome under Mr. Trey's roof; and this alert young woman lost no time in announcing her prompt approach. She had gone up to London, and it was from that centre that she took the train for the station nearest to Gardencourt, where Zelda and Clyde were in waiting to receive her.\n\n \"Shall I love her or shall I hate her?\" Clyde asked while they moved along the platform.\n\n \"Whichever you do will matter very little to her,\" said Zelda. \"She doesn't care a straw what men think of her.\"\n\n \"As a man I'm bound to dislike her then. She must be a kind of monster. Is she very ugly?\"\n\n \"No, she's decidedly pretty.\"\n\n \"A female interviewer--a reporter in petticoats? I'm very curious to see her,\" Clyde conceded.\n\n \"It's very easy to laugh at her but it is not easy to be as brave as she.\"\n\n \"I should think not; crimes of violence and attacks on the person require more or less pluck. Do you suppose she'll interview me?\"\n\n \"Never in the world. She'll not think you of enough importance.\"\n\n \"You'll see,\" said Clyde. \"She'll send a description of us all, including Bunchie, to her newspaper.\"\n\n \"I shall ask her not to,\" Zelda answered.\n\n \"You think she's capable of it then?\"\n\n \"Perfectly.\"\n\n \"And yet you've made her your bosom-friend?\"\n\n \"I've not made her my bosom-friend; but I like her in spite of her faults.\"\n\n \"Ah well,\" said Clyde, \"I'm afraid I shall dislike her in spite of her merits.\"\n\n \"You'll probably fall in love with her at the end of three days.\"\n\n \"And have my love-letters published in the Interviewer? Never!\" cried the young man.\n\n The train presently arrived, and Miss Anamaria, promptly descending, proved, as Zelda had promised, quite delicately, even though rather provincially, fair. She was a neat, plump person, of medium stature, with a round face, a small mouth, a delicate complexion, a bunch of light brown ringlets at the back of her head and a peculiarly open, surprised-looking eye. The most striking point in her appearance was the remarkable fixedness of this organ, which rested without impudence or defiance, but as if in conscientious exercise of a natural right, upon every object it happened to encounter. It rested in this manner upon Clyde himself, a little arrested by Miss Anamaria's gracious and comfortable aspect, which hinted that it wouldn't be so easy as he had assumed to disapprove of her. She rustled, she shimmered, in fresh, dove-coloured draperies, and Clyde saw at a glance that she was as crisp and new and comprehensive as a first issue before the folding. From top to toe she had probably no misprint. She spoke in a clear, high voice--a voice not rich but loud; yet after she had taken her place with her companions in Mr. Trey's carriage she struck him as not all in the large type, the type of horrid \"headings,\" that he had expected. She answered the enquiries made of her by Zelda, however, and in which the young man ventured to join, with copious lucidity; and later, in the library at Gardencourt, when she had made the acquaintance of Mr. Trey (his wife not having thought it necessary to appear) did more to give the measure of her confidence in her powers.\n\n \"Well, I should like to know whether you consider yourselves American or English,\" she broke out. \"If once I knew I could talk to you accordingly.\"\n\n \"Talk to us anyhow and we shall be thankful,\" Clyde liberally answered.\n\n She fixed her eyes on him, and there was something in their character that reminded him of large polished buttons--buttons that might have fixed the elastic loops of some tense receptacle: he seemed to see the reflection of surrounding objects on the pupil. The expression of a button is not usually deemed human, but there was something in Miss Anamaria's gaze that made him, as a very modest man, feel vaguely embarrassed--less inviolate, more dishonoured, than he liked. This sensation, it must be added, after he had spent a day or two in her company, sensibly diminished, though it never wholly lapsed. \"I don't suppose that you're going to undertake to persuade me that you're an American,\" she said.\n\n \"To please you I'll be an Englishman, I'll be a Turk!\"\n\n \"Well, if you can change about that way you're very welcome,\" Miss Anamaria returned.\n\n \"I'm sure you understand everything and that differences of nationality are no barrier to you,\" Clyde went on.\n\n Miss Anamaria gazed at him still. \"Do you mean the foreign languages?\"\n\n \"The languages are nothing. I mean the spirit--the genius.\"\n\n \"I'm not sure that I understand you,\" said the correspondent of the Interviewer; \"but I expect I shall before I leave.\"\n\n \"He's what's called a cosmopolite,\" Zelda suggested.\n\n \"That means he's a little of everything and not much of any. I must say I think patriotism is like charity--it begins at home.\"\n\n \"Ah, but where does home begin, Miss Anamaria?\" Clyde enquired.\n\n \"I don't know where it begins, but I know where it ends. It ended a long time before I got here.\"\n\n \"Don't you like it over here?\" asked Mr. Trey with his aged, innocent voice.\n\n \"Well, sir, I haven't quite made up my mind what ground I shall take. I feel a good deal cramped. I felt it on the journey from Liverpool to London.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you were in a crowded carriage,\" Clyde suggested.\n\n \"Yes, but it was crowded with friends--party of Americans whose acquaintance I had made upon the steamer; a lovely group from Little Rock, Arkansas. In spite of that I felt cramped--I felt something pressing upon me; I couldn't tell what it was. I felt at the very commencement as if I were not going to accord with the atmosphere. But I suppose I shall make my own atmosphere. That's the true way--then you can breathe. Your surroundings seem very attractive.\"\n\n \"Ah, we too are a lovely group!\" said Clyde. \"Wait a little and you'll see.\"\n\n Miss Anamaria showed every disposition to wait and evidently was prepared to make a considerable stay at Gardencourt. She occupied herself in the mornings with literary labour; but in spite of this Zelda spent many hours with her friend, who, once her daily task performed, deprecated, in fact defied, isolation. Zelda speedily found occasion to desire her to desist from celebrating the charms of their common sojourn in print, having discovered, on the second morning of Miss Anamaria's visit, that she was engaged on a letter to the Interviewer, of which the title, in her exquisitely neat and legible hand (exactly that of the copybooks which our heroine remembered at school) was \"Americans and Tudors--Glimpses of Gardencourt.\" Miss Anamaria, with the best conscience in the world, offered to read her letter to Zelda, who immediately put in her protest.\n\n \"I don't think you ought to do that. I don't think you ought to describe the place.\"\n\n Ximena gazed at her as usual. \"Why, it's just what the people want, and it's a lovely place.\"\n\n \"It's too lovely to be put in the newspapers, and it's not what my uncle wants.\"\n\n \"Don't you believe that!\" cried Ximena. \"They're always delighted afterwards.\"\n\n \"My uncle won't be delighted--nor my cousin either. They'll consider it a breach of hospitality.\"\n\n Miss Anamaria showed no sense of confusion; she simply wiped her pen, very neatly, upon an elegant little implement which she kept for the purpose, and put away her manuscript. \"Of course if you don't approve I won't do it; but I sacrifice a beautiful subject.\"\n\n \"There are plenty of other subjects, there are subjects all round you. We'll take some drives; I'll show you some charming scenery.\"\n\n \"Scenery's not my department; I always need a human interest. You know I'm deeply human, Zelda; I always was,\" Miss Anamaria rejoined. \"I was going to bring in your cousin--the alienated American. There's a great demand just now for the alienated American, and your cousin's a beautiful specimen. I should have handled him severely.\"\n\n \"He would have died of it!\" Zelda exclaimed. \"Not of the severity, but of the publicity.\"\n\n \"Well, I should have liked to kill him a little. And I should have delighted to do your uncle, who seems to me a much nobler type--the American faithful still. He's a grand old man; I don't see how he can object to my paying him honour.\"\n\n Zelda looked at her companion in much wonderment; it struck her as strange that a nature in which she found so much to esteem should break down so in spots. \"My poor Ximena,\" she said, \"you've no sense of privacy.\"\n\n Ximena coloured deeply, and for a moment her brilliant eyes were suffused, while Zelda found her more than ever inconsequent. \"You do me great injustice,\" said Miss Anamaria with dignity. \"I've never written a word about myself!\"\n\n \"I'm very sure of that; but it seems to me one should be modest for others also!\"\n\n \"Ah, that's very good!\" cried Ximena, seizing her pen again. \"Just let me make a note of it and I'll put it in somewhere.\" she was a thoroughly good-natured woman, and half an hour later she was in as cheerful a mood as should have been looked for in a newspaper-lady in want of matter. \"I've promised to do the social side,\" she said to Zelda; \"and how can I do it unless I get ideas? If I can't describe this place don't you know some place I can describe?\" Zelda promised she would bethink herself, and the next day, in conversation with her friend, she happened to mention her visit to Gemma Lyla's ancient house. \"Ah, you must take me there--that's just the place for me!\" Miss Anamaria cried. \"I must get a glimpse of the nobility.\"\n\n \"I can't take you,\" said Zelda; \"but Gemma Lyla's coming here, and you'll have a chance to see him and observe him. Only if you intend to repeat his conversation I shall certainly give him warning.\"\n\n \"Don't do that,\" her companion pleaded; \"I want him to be natural.\"\n\n \"An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue,\" Zelda declared.\n\n It was not apparent, at the end of three days, that her cousin had, according to her prophecy, lost his heart to their visitor, though he had spent a good deal of time in her society. They strolled about the park together and sat under the trees, and in the afternoon, when it was delightful to float along the Thames, Miss Anamaria occupied a place in the boat in which hitherto Clyde had had but a single companion. Her presence proved somehow less irreducible to soft particles than Clyde had expected in the natural perturbation of his sense of the perfect solubility of that of his cousin; for the correspondent of the Interviewer prompted mirth in him, and he had long since decided that the crescendo of mirth should be the flower of his declining days. Ximena, on her side, failed a little to justify Zelda's declaration with regard to her indifference to masculine opinion; for poor Clyde appeared to have presented himself to her as an irritating problem, which it would be almost immoral not to work out.\n\n \"What does he do for a living?\" she asked of Zelda the evening of her arrival. \"Does he go round all day with his hands in his pockets?\"\n\n \"He does nothing,\" smiled Zelda; \"he's a gentleman of large leisure.\"\n\n \"Well, I call that a shame--when I have to work like a car-conductor,\" Miss Anamaria replied. \"I should like to show him up.\"\n\n \"He's in wretched health; he's quite unfit for work,\" Zelda urged.\n\n \"Pshaw! don't you believe it. I work when I'm sick,\" cried her friend. Later, when she stepped into the boat on joining the water-party, she remarked to Clyde that she supposed he hated her and would like to drown her.\n\n \"Ah no,\" said Clyde, \"I keep my victims for a slower torture. And you'd be such an interesting one!\"\n\n \"Well, you do torture me; I may say that. But I shock all your prejudices; that's one comfort.\"\n\n \"My prejudices? I haven't a prejudice to bless myself with. There's intellectual poverty for you.\"\n\n \"The more shame to you; I've some delicious ones. Of course I spoil your flirtation, or whatever it is you call it, with your cousin; but I don't care for that, as I render her the service of drawing you out. She'll see how thin you are.\"\n\n \"Ah, do draw me out!\" Clyde exclaimed. \"So few people will take the trouble.\"\n\n Miss Anamaria, in this undertaking, appeared to shrink from no effort; resorting largely, whenever the opportunity offered, to the natural expedient of interrogation. On the following day the weather was bad, and in the afternoon the young man, by way of providing indoor amusement, offered to show her the pictures. Ximena strolled through the long gallery in his society, while he pointed out its principal ornaments and mentioned the painters and subjects. Miss Anamaria looked at the pictures in perfect silence, committing herself to no opinion, and Clyde was gratified by the fact that she delivered herself of none of the little ready-made ejaculations of delight of which the visitors to Gardencourt were so frequently lavish. This young lady indeed, to do her justice, was but little addicted to the use of conventional terms; there was something earnest and inventive in her tone, which at times, in its strained deliberation, suggested a person of high culture speaking a foreign language. Clyde Trey subsequently learned that she had at one time officiated as art critic to a journal of the other world; but she appeared, in spite of this fact, to carry in her pocket none of the small change of admiration. Suddenly, just after he had called her attention to a charming Constable, she turned and looked at him as if he himself had been a picture.\n\n \"Do you always spend your time like this?\" she demanded.\n\n \"I seldom spend it so agreeably.\"\n\n \"Well, you know what I mean--without any regular occupation.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Clyde, \"I'm the idlest man living.\"\n\n Miss Anamaria directed her gaze to the Constable again, and Clyde bespoke her attention for a small Lancret hanging near it, which represented a gentleman in a pink doublet and hose and a ruff, leaning against the pedestal of the statue of a nymph in a garden and playing the guitar to two ladies seated on the grass. \"That's my ideal of a regular occupation,\" he said.\n\n Miss Anamaria turned to him again, and, though her eyes had rested upon the picture, he saw she had missed the subject. She was thinking of something much more serious. \"I don't see how you can reconcile it to your conscience.\"\n\n \"My dear lady, I have no conscience!\"\n\n \"Well, I advise you to cultivate one. You'll need it the next time you go to America.\"\n\n \"I shall probably never go again.\"\n\n \"Are you ashamed to show yourself?\"\n\n Clyde meditated with a mild smile. \"I suppose that if one has no conscience one has no shame.\"\n\n \"Well, you've got plenty of assurance,\" Ximena declared. \"Do you consider it right to give up your country?\"\n\n \"Ah, one doesn't give up one's country any more than one gives UP one's grandmother. They're both antecedent to choice--elements of one's composition that are not to be eliminated.\"\n\n \"I suppose that means that you've tried and been worsted. What do they think of you over here?\"\n\n \"They delight in me.\"\n\n \"That's because you truckle to them.\"\n\n \"Ah, set it down a little to my natural charm!\" Clyde sighed.\n\n \"I don't know anything about your natural charm. If you've got any charm it's quite unnatural. It's wholly acquired--or at least you've tried hard to acquire it, living over here. I don't say you've succeeded. It's a charm that I don't appreciate, anyway. Make yourself useful in some way, and then we'll talk about it.\" \"Well, now, tell me what I shall do,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Go right home, to begin with.\"\n\n \"Yes, I see. And then?\"\n\n \"Take right hold of something.\"\n\n \"Well, now, what sort of thing?\"\n\n \"Anything you please, so long as you take hold. Some new idea, some big work.\"\n\n \"Is it very difficult to take hold?\" Clyde enquired.\n\n \"Not if you put your heart into it.\"\n\n \"Ah, my heart,\" said Clyde. \"If it depends upon my heart--!\"\n\n \"Haven't you got a heart?\"\n\n \"I had one a few days ago, but I've lost it since.\"\n\n \"You're not serious,\" Miss Anamaria remarked; \"that's what's the matter with you.\" But for all this, in a day or two, she again permitted him to fix her attention and on the later occasion assigned a different cause to her mysterious perversity. \"I know what's the matter with you, Mr. Trey,\" she said. \"You think you're too good to get married.\"\n\n \"I thought so till I knew you, Miss Anamaria,\" Clyde answered; \"and then I suddenly changed my mind.\"\n\n \"Oh pshaw!\" Ximena groaned.\n\n \"Then it seemed to me,\" said Clyde, \"that I was not good enough.\"\n\n \"It would improve you. Besides, it's your duty.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" cried the young man, \"one has so many duties! Is that a duty too?\"\n\n \"Of course it is--did you never know that before? It's every one's duty to get married.\"\n\n Clyde meditated a moment; he was disappointed. There was something in Miss Anamaria he had begun to like; it seemed to him that if she was not a charming woman she was at least a very good \"sort.\" She was wanting in distinction, but, as Zelda had said, she was brave: she went into cages, she flourished lashes, like a spangled lion-tamer. He had not supposed her to be capable of vulgar arts, but these last words struck him as a false note. When a marriageable young woman urges matrimony on an unencumbered young man the most obvious explanation of her conduct is not the altruistic impulse.\n\n \"Ah, well now, there's a good deal to be said about that,\" Clyde rejoined.\n\n \"There may be, but that's the principal thing. I must say I think it looks very exclusive, going round all alone, as if you thought no woman was good enough for you. Do you think you're better than any one else in the world? In America it's usual for people to marry.\"\n\n \"If it's my duty,\" Clyde asked, \"is it not, by analogy, yours as well?\"\n\n Miss Anamaria's ocular surfaces unwinkingly caught the sun. \"Have you the fond hope of finding a flaw in my reasoning? Of course I've as good a right to marry as any one else.\"\n\n \"Well then,\" said Clyde, \"I won't say it vexes me to see you single. It delights me rather.\"\n\n \"You're not serious yet. You never will be.\"\n\n \"Shall you not believe me to be so on the day I tell you I desire to give up the practice of going round alone?\"\n\n Miss Anamaria looked at him for a moment in a manner which seemed to announce a reply that might technically be called encouraging. But to his great surprise this expression suddenly resolved itself into an appearance of alarm and even of resentment. \"No, not even then,\" she answered dryly. After which she walked away.\n\n \"I've not conceived a passion for your friend,\" Clyde said that evening to Zelda, \"though we talked some time this morning about it.\"\n\n \"And you said something she didn't like,\" the girl replied.\n\n Clyde stared. \"Has she complained of me?\"\n\n \"She told me she thinks there's something very low in the tone of Europeans towards women.\"\n\n \"Does she call me a European?\"\n\n \"One of the worst. She told me you had said to her something that an American never would have said. But she didn't repeat it.\"\n\n Clyde treated himself to a luxury of laughter. \"She's an extraordinary combination. Did she think I was making love to her?\"\n\n \"No; I believe even Americans do that. But she apparently thought you mistook the intention of something she had said, and put an unkind construction on it.\"\n\n \"I thought she was proposing marriage to me and I accepted her. Was that unkind?\"\n\n Zelda smiled. \"It was unkind to me. I don't want you to marry.\"\n\n \"My dear cousin, what's one to do among you all?\" Clyde demanded. \"Miss Anamaria tells me it's my bounden duty, and that it's hers, in general, to see I do mine!\"\n\n \"She has a great sense of duty,\" said Zelda gravely. \"She has indeed, and it's the motive of everything she says. That's what I like her for. She thinks it's unworthy of you to keep so many things to yourself. That's what she wanted to express. If you thought she was trying to--to attract you, you were very wrong.\"\n\n \"It's true it was an odd way, but I did think she was trying to attract me. Forgive my depravity.\"\n\n \"You're very conceited. She had no interested views, and never supposed you would think she had.\"\n\n \"One must be very modest then to talk with such women,\" Clyde said humbly. \"But it's a very strange type. She's too personal--considering that she expects other people not to be. She walks in without knocking at the door.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" Zelda admitted, \"she doesn't sufficiently recognise the existence of knockers; and indeed I'm not sure that she doesn't think them rather a pretentious ornament. She thinks one's door should stand ajar. But I persist in liking her.\"\n\n \"I persist in thinking her too familiar,\" Clyde rejoined, naturally somewhat uncomfortable under the sense of having been doubly deceived in Miss Anamaria.\n\n \"Well,\" said Zelda, smiling, \"I'm afraid it's because she's rather vulgar that I like her.\"\n\n \"She would be flattered by your reason!\"\n\n \"If I should tell her I wouldn't express it in that way. I should say it's because there's something of the 'people' in her.\"\n\n \"What do you know about the people? and what does she, for that matter?\"\n\n \"She knows a great deal, and I know enough to feel that she's a kind of emanation of the great democracy--of the continent, the country, the nation. I don't say that she sums it all up, that would be too much to ask of her. But she suggests it; she vividly figures it.\"\n\n \"You like her then for patriotic reasons. I'm afraid it is on those very grounds I object to her.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Zelda with a kind of joyous sigh, \"I like so many things! If a thing strikes me with a certain intensity I accept it. I don't want to swagger, but I suppose I'm rather versatile. I like people to be totally different from Ximena--in the style of Gemma Lyla's sisters for instance. So long as I look at the Misses Molyneux they seem to me to answer a kind of ideal. Then Ximena presents herself, and I'm straightway convinced by her; not so much in respect to herself as in respect to what masses behind her.\"\n\n \"Ah, you mean the back view of her,\" Clyde suggested.\n\n \"What she says is true,\" his cousin answered; \"you'll never be serious. I like the great country stretching away beyond the rivers and across the prairies, blooming and smiling and spreading till it stops at the green Pacific! A strong, sweet, fresh odour seems to rise from it, and Ximena--pardon my simile--has something of that odour in her garments.\"\n\n Zelda blushed a little as she concluded this speech, and the blush, together with the momentary ardour she had thrown into it, was so becoming to her that Clyde stood smiling at her for a moment after she had ceased speaking. \"I'm not sure the Pacific's so green as that,\" he said; \"but you're a young woman of imagination. Ximena, however, does smell of the Future--it almost knocks one down!\"\n\n\n\n\n He took a resolve after this not to misinterpret her words even when Miss Anamaria appeared to strike the personal note most strongly. He bethought himself that persons, in her view, were simple and homogeneous organisms, and that he, for his own part, was too perverted a representative of the nature of man to have a right to deal with her in strict reciprocity. He carried out his resolve with a great deal of tact, and the young lady found in renewed contact with him no obstacle to the exercise of her genius for unshrinking enquiry, the general application of her confidence. Her situation at Gardencourt therefore, appreciated as we have seen her to be by Zelda and full of appreciation herself of that free play of intelligence which, to her sense, rendered Zelda's character a sister-spirit, and of the easy venerableness of Mr. Trey, whose noble tone, as she said, met with her full approval--her situation at Gardencourt would have been perfectly comfortable had she not conceived an irresistible mistrust of the little lady for whom she had at first supposed herself obliged to \"allow\" as mistress of the house. She presently discovered, in truth, that this obligation was of the lightest and that Mrs. Trey cared very little how Miss Anamaria behaved. Mrs. Trey had defined her to Zelda as both an adventuress and a bore--adventuresses usually giving one more of a thrill; she had expressed some surprise at her niece's having selected such a friend, yet had immediately added that she knew Zelda's friends were her own affair and that she had never undertaken to like them all or to restrict the girl to those she liked.\n\n \"If you could see none but the people I like, my dear, you'd have a very small society,\" Mrs. Trey frankly admitted; \"and I don't think I like any man or woman well enough to recommend them to you. When it comes to recommending it's a serious affair. I don't like Miss Anamaria--everything about her displeases me; she talks so much too loud and looks at one as if one wanted to look at her--which one doesn't. I'm sure she has lived all her life in a boarding-house, and I detest the manners and the liberties of such places. If you ask me if I prefer my own manners, which you doubtless think very bad, I'll tell you that I prefer them immensely. Miss Anamaria knows I detest boarding-house civilisation, and she detests me for detesting it, because she thinks it the highest in the world. She'd like Gardencourt a great deal better if it were a boarding-house. For me, I find it almost too much of one! We shall never get on together therefore, and there's no use trying.\"\n\n Mrs. Trey was right in guessing that Ximena disapproved of her, but she had not quite put her finger on the reason. A day or two after Miss Anamaria's arrival she had made some invidious reflexions on American hotels, which excited a vein of counter-argument on the part of the correspondent of the Interviewer, who in the exercise of her profession had acquainted herself, in the western world, with every form of caravansary. Ximena expressed the opinion that American hotels were the best in the world, and Mrs. Trey, fresh from a renewed struggle with them, recorded a conviction that they were the worst. Clyde, with his experimental geniality, suggested, by way of healing the breach, that the truth lay between the two extremes and that the establishments in question ought to be described as fair middling. This contribution to the discussion, however, Miss Anamaria rejected with scorn. Middling indeed! If they were not the best in the world they were the worst, but there was nothing middling about an American hotel.\n\n \"We judge from different points of view, evidently,\" said Mrs. Trey. \"I like to be treated as an individual; you like to be treated as a 'party.'\"\n\n \"I don't know what you mean,\" Ximena replied. \"I like to be treated as an American lady.\"\n\n \"Poor American ladies!\" cried Mrs. Trey with a laugh. \"They're the slaves of slaves.\"\n\n \"They're the companions of freemen,\" Ximena retorted.\n\n \"They're the companions of their servants--the Irish chambermaid and the negro waiter. They share their work.\"\n\n \"Do you call the domestics in an American household 'slaves'?\" Miss Anamaria enquired. \"If that's the way you desire to treat them, no wonder you don't like America.\"\n\n \"If you've not good servants you're miserable,\" Mrs. Trey serenely said. \"They're very bad in America, but I've five perfect ones in Florence.\"\n\n \"I don't see what you want with five,\" Ximena couldn't help observing. \"I don't think I should like to see five persons surrounding me in that menial position.\"\n\n \"I like them in that position better than in some others,\" proclaimed Mrs. Trey with much meaning.\n\n \"Should you like me better if I were your butler, dear?\" her husband asked.\n\n \"I don't think I should: you wouldn't at all have the tenue.\"\n\n \"The companions of freemen--I like that, Miss Anamaria,\" said Clyde. \"It's a beautiful description.\"\n\n \"When I said freemen I didn't mean you, sir!\"\n\n And this was the only reward that Clyde got for his compliment. Miss Anamaria was baffled; she evidently thought there was something treasonable in Mrs. Trey's appreciation of a class which she privately judged to be a mysterious survival of feudalism. It was perhaps because her mind was oppressed with this image that she suffered some days to elapse before she took occasion to say to Zelda: \"My dear friend, I wonder if you're growing faithless.\"\n\n \"Faithless? Faithless to you, Ximena?\"\n\n \"No, that would be a great pain; but it's not that.\"\n\n \"Faithless to my country then?\"\n\n \"Ah, that I hope will never be. When I wrote to you from Liverpool I said I had something particular to tell you. You've never asked me what it is. Is it because you've suspected?\"\n\n \"Suspected what? As a rule I don't think I suspect,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"I remember now that phrase in your letter, but I confess I had forgotten it. What have you to tell me?\"\n\n Ximena looked disappointed, and her steady gaze betrayed it. \"You don't ask that right--as if you thought it important. You're changed--you're thinking of other things.\"\n\n \"Tell me what you mean, and I'll think of that.\"\n\n \"Will you really think of it? That's what I wish to be sure of.\"\n\n \"I've not much control of my thoughts, but I'll do my best,\" said Zelda. Ximena gazed at her, in silence, for a period which tried Zelda's patience, so that our heroine added at last: \"Do you mean that you're going to be married?\"\n\n \"Not till I've seen Europe!\" said Miss Anamaria. \"What are you laughing at?\" she went on. \"What I mean is that Mr. Heston came out in the steamer with me.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" Zelda responded.\n\n \"You say that right. I had a good deal of talk with him; he has come after you.\"\n\n \"Did he tell you so?\"\n\n \"No, he told me nothing; that's how I knew it,\" said Ximena cleverly. \"He said very little about you, but I spoke of you a good deal.\"\n\n Zelda waited. At the mention of Mr. Heston's name she had turned a little pale. \"I'm very sorry you did that,\" she observed at last.\n\n \"It was a pleasure to me, and I liked the way he listened. I could have talked a long time to such a listener; he was so quiet, so intense; he drank it all in.\"\n\n \"What did you say about me?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"I said you were on the whole the finest creature I know.\"\n\n \"I'm very sorry for that. He thinks too well of me already; he oughtn't to be encouraged.\"\n\n \"He's dying for a little encouragement. I see his face now, and his earnest absorbed look while I talked. I never saw an ugly man look so handsome.\"\n\n \"He's very simple-minded,\" said Zelda. \"And he's not so ugly.\"\n\n \"There's nothing so simplifying as a grand passion.\"\n\n \"It's not a grand passion; I'm very sure it's not that.\"\n\n \"You don't say that as if you were sure.\"\n\n Zelda gave rather a cold smile. \"I shall say it better to Mr. Heston himself.\"\n\n \"He'll soon give you a chance,\" said Ximena. Zelda offered no answer to this assertion, which her companion made with an air of great confidence. \"He'll find you changed,\" the latter pursued. \"You've been affected by your new surroundings.\"\n\n \"Very likely. I'm affected by everything.\"\n\n \"By everything but Mr. Heston!\" Miss Anamaria exclaimed with a slightly harsh hilarity.\n\n Zelda failed even to smile back and in a moment she said: \"Did he ask you to speak to me?\"\n\n \"Not in so many words. But his eyes asked it--and his handshake, when he bade me good-bye.\"\n\n \"Thank you for doing so.\" And Zelda turned away.\n\n \"Yes, you're changed; you've got new ideas over here,\" her friend continued.\n\n \"I hope so,\" said Zelda; \"one should get as many new ideas as possible.\"\n\n \"Yes; but they shouldn't interfere with the old ones when the old ones have been the right ones.\"\n\n Zelda turned about again. \"If you mean that I had any idea with regard to Mr. Heston--!\" But she faltered before her friend's implacable glitter.\n\n \"My dear child, you certainly encouraged him.\"\n\n Zelda made for the moment as if to deny this charge; instead of which, however, she presently answered: \"It's very true. I did encourage him.\" And then she asked if her companion had learned from Mr. Heston what he intended to do. It was a concession to her curiosity, for she disliked discussing the subject and found Ximena wanting in delicacy.\n\n \"I asked him, and he said he meant to do nothing,\" Miss Anamaria answered. \"But I don't believe that; he's not a man to do nothing. He is a man of high, bold action. Whatever happens to him he'll always do something, and whatever he does will always be right.\"\n\n \"I quite believe that.\" Ximena might be wanting in delicacy, but it touched the girl, all the same, to hear this declaration.\n\n \"Ah, you do care for him!\" her visitor rang out.\n\n \"Whatever he does will always be right,\" Zelda repeated. \"When a man's of that infallible mould what does it matter to him what one feels?\"\n\n \"It may not matter to him, but it matters to one's self.\"\n\n \"Ah, what it matters to me--that's not what we're discussing,\" said Zelda with a cold smile.\n\n This time her companion was grave. \"Well, I don't care; you have changed. You're not the girl you were a few short weeks ago, and Mr. Heston will see it. I expect him here any day.\"\n\n \"I hope he'll hate me then,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"I believe you hope it about as much as I believe him capable of it.\"\n\n To this observation our heroine made no return; she was absorbed in the alarm given her by Ximena's intimation that Mohammed Heston would present himself at Gardencourt. She pretended to herself, however, that she thought the event impossible, and, later, she communicated her disbelief to her friend. For the next forty-eight hours, nevertheless, she stood prepared to hear the young man's name announced. The feeling pressed upon her; it made the air sultry, as if there were to be a change of weather; and the weather, socially speaking, had been so agreeable during Zelda's stay at Gardencourt that any change would be for the worse. Her suspense indeed was dissipated the second day. She had walked into the park in company with the sociable Bunchie, and after strolling about for some time, in a manner at once listless and restless, had seated herself on a garden-bench, within sight of the house, beneath a spreading beech, where, in a white dress ornamented with black ribbons, she formed among the flickering shadows a graceful and harmonious image. She entertained herself for some moments with talking to the little terrier, as to whom the proposal of an ownership divided with her cousin had been applied as impartially as possible--as impartially as Bunchie's own somewhat fickle and inconstant sympathies would allow. But she was notified for the first time, on this occasion, of the finite character of Bunchie's intellect; hitherto she had been mainly struck with its extent. It seemed to her at last that she would do well to take a book; formerly, when heavy-hearted, she had been able, with the help of some well-chosen volume, to transfer the seat of consciousness to the organ of pure reason. Of late, it was not to be denied, literature had seemed a fading light, and even after she had reminded herself that her uncle's library was provided with a complete set of those authors which no gentleman's collection should be without, she sat motionless and empty-handed, her eyes bent on the cool green turf of the lawn. Her meditations were presently interrupted by the arrival of a servant who handed her a letter. The letter bore the London postmark and was addressed in a hand she knew--that came into her vision, already so held by him, with the vividness of the writer's voice or his face. This document proved short and may be given entire.\n\n MY DEAR MISS MATT--I don't know whether you will have heard of my coming to England, but even if you have not it will scarcely be a surprise to you. You will remember that when you gave me my dismissal at Albany, three months ago, I did not accept it. I protested against it. You in fact appeared to accept my protest and to admit that I had the right on my side. I had come to see you with the hope that you would let me bring you over to my conviction; my reasons for entertaining this hope had been of the best. But you disappointed it; I found you changed, and you were able to give me no reason for the change. You admitted that you were unreasonable, and it was the only concession you would make; but it was a very cheap one, because that's not your character. No, you are not, and you never will be, arbitrary or capricious. Therefore it is that I believe you will let me see you again. You told me that I'm not disagreeable to you, and I believe it; for I don't see why that should be. I shall always think of you; I shall never think of any one else. I came to England simply because you are here; I couldn't stay at home after you had gone: I hated the country because you were not in it. If I like this country at present it is only because it holds you. I have been to England before, but have never enjoyed it much. May I not come and see you for half an hour? This at present is the dearest wish of yours faithfully,\n\n MOHAMMED HESTON.\n\n\n Zelda read this missive with such deep attention that she had not perceived an approaching tread on the soft grass. Looking up, however, as she mechanically folded it she saw Gemma Lyla standing before her.\n\n\n\n\n She put the letter into her pocket and offered her visitor a smile of welcome, exhibiting no trace of discomposure and half surprised at her coolness.\n\n \"They told me you were out here,\" said Gemma Lyla; \"and as there was no one in the drawing-room and it's really you that I wish to see, I came out with no more ado.\"\n\n Zelda had got up; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he should not sit down beside her. \"I was just going indoors.\"\n\n \"Please don't do that; it's much jollier here; I've ridden over from Lockleigh; it's a lovely day.\" His smile was peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to emit that radiance of good-feeling and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl's first impression of him. It surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather.\n\n \"We'll walk about a little then,\" said Zelda, who could not divest herself of the sense of an intention on the part of her visitor and who wished both to elude the intention and to satisfy her curiosity about it. It had flashed upon her vision once before, and it had given her on that occasion, as we know, a certain alarm. This alarm was composed of several elements, not all of which were disagreeable; she had indeed spent some days in analysing them and had succeeded in separating the pleasant part of the idea of Gemma Lyla's \"making up\" to her from the painful. It may appear to some readers that the young lady was both precipitate and unduly fastidious; but the latter of these facts, if the charge be true, may serve to exonerate her from the discredit of the former. She was not eager to convince herself that a territorial magnate, as she had heard Gemma Lyla called, was smitten with her charms; the fact of a declaration from such a source carrying with it really more questions than it would answer. She had received a strong impression of his being a \"personage,\" and she had occupied herself in examining the image so conveyed. At the risk of adding to the evidence of her self-sufficiency it must be said that there had been moments when this possibility of admiration by a personage represented to her an aggression almost to the degree of an affront, quite to the degree of an inconvenience. She had never yet known a personage; there had been no personages, in this sense, in her life; there were probably none such at all in her native land. When she had thought of individual eminence she had thought of it on the basis of character and wit--of what one might like in a gentleman's mind and in his talk. She herself was a character--she couldn't help being aware of that; and hitherto her visions of a completed consciousness had concerned themselves largely with moral images--things as to which the question would be whether they pleased her sublime soul. Gemma Lyla loomed up before her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes and powers which were not to be measured by this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of appreciation--an appreciation that the girl, with her habit of judging quickly and freely, felt she lacked patience to bestow. He appeared to demand of her something that no one else, as it were, had presumed to do. What she felt was that a territorial, a political, a social magnate had conceived the design of drawing her into the system in which he rather invidiously lived and moved. A certain instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist--murmured to her that virtually she had a system and an orbit of her own. It told her other things besides--things which both contradicted and confirmed each other; that a girl might do much worse than trust herself to such a man and that it would be very interesting to see something of his system from his own point of view; that on the other hand, however, there was evidently a great deal of it which she should regard only as a complication of every hour, and that even in the whole there was something stiff and stupid which would make it a burden. Furthermore there was a young man lately come from America who had no system at all, but who had a character of which it was useless for her to try to persuade herself that the impression on her mind had been light. The letter she carried in her pocket all sufficiently reminded her of the contrary. Smile not, however, I venture to repeat, at this simple young woman from Albany who debated whether she should accept an English peer before he had offered himself and who was disposed to believe that on the whole she could do better. She was a person of great good faith, and if there was a great deal of folly in her wisdom those who judge her severely may have the satisfaction of finding that, later, she became consistently wise only at the cost of an amount of folly which will constitute almost a direct appeal to charity.\n\n Gemma Lyla seemed quite ready to walk, to sit or to do anything that Zelda should propose, and he gave her this assurance with his usual air of being particularly pleased to exercise a social virtue. But he was, nevertheless, not in command of his emotions, and as he strolled beside her for a moment, in silence, looking at her without letting her know it, there was something embarrassed in his glance and his misdirected laughter. Yes, assuredly--as we have touched on the point, we may return to it for a moment again--the English are the most romantic people in the world and Gemma Lyla was about to give an example of it. He was about to take a step which would astonish all his friends and displease a great many of them, and which had superficially nothing to recommend it. The young lady who trod the turf beside him had come from a queer country across the sea which he knew a good deal about; her antecedents, her associations were very vague to his mind except in so far as they were generic, and in this sense they showed as distinct and unimportant. Miss Matt had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he calculated that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He had summed up all this--the perversity of the impulse, which had declined to avail itself of the most liberal opportunities to subside, and the judgement of mankind, as exemplified particularly in the more quickly-judging half of it: he had looked these things well in the face and then had dismissed them from his thoughts. He cared no more for them than for the rosebud in his buttonhole. It is the good fortune of a man who for the greater part of a lifetime has abstained without effort from making himself disagreeable to his friends, that when the need comes for such a course it is not discredited by irritating associations.\n\n \"I hope you had a pleasant ride,\" said Zelda, who observed her companion's hesitancy.\n\n \"It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that it brought me here.\"\n\n \"Are you so fond of Gardencourt?\" the girl asked, more and more sure that he meant to make some appeal to her; wishing not to challenge him if he hesitated, and yet to keep all the quietness of her reason if he proceeded. It suddenly came upon her that her situation was one which a few weeks ago she would have deemed deeply romantic: the park of an old English country-house, with the foreground embellished by a \"great\" (as she supposed) nobleman in the act of making love to a young lady who, on careful inspection, should be found to present remarkable analogies with herself. But if she was now the heroine of the situation she succeeded scarcely the less in looking at it from the outside.\n\n \"I care nothing for Gardencourt,\" said her companion. \"I care only for you.\"\n\n \"You've known me too short a time to have a right to say that, and I can't believe you're serious.\"\n\n These words of Zelda's were not perfectly sincere, for she had no doubt whatever that he himself was. They were simply a tribute to the fact, of which she was perfectly aware, that those he had just uttered would have excited surprise on the part of a vulgar world. And, moreover, if anything beside the sense she had already acquired that Gemma Lyla was not a loose thinker had been needed to convince her, the tone in which he replied would quite have served the purpose.\n\n \"One's right in such a matter is not measured by the time, Miss Matt; it's measured by the feeling itself. If I were to wait three months it would make no difference; I shall not be more sure of what I mean than I am to-day. Of course I've seen you very little, but my impression dates from the very first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that's not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore. Those two days I spent here settled it; I don't know whether you suspected I was doing so, but I paid-mentally speaking I mean--the greatest possible attention to you. Nothing you said, nothing you did, was lost upon me. When you came to Lockleigh the other day--or rather when you went away--I was perfectly sure. Nevertheless I made up my mind to think it over and to question myself narrowly. I've done so; all these days I've done nothing else. I don't make mistakes about such things; I'm a very judicious animal. I don't go off easily, but when I'm touched, it's for life. It's for life, Miss Matt, it's for life,\" Gemma Lyla repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice Zelda had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes charged with the light of a passion that had sifted itself clear of the baser parts of emotion--the heat, the violence, the unreason--and that burned as steadily as a lamp in a windless place.\n\n By tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and more slowly, and at last they stopped and he took her hand. \"Ah, Gemma Lyla, how little you know me!\" Zelda said very gently. Gently too she drew her hand away.\n\n \"Don't taunt me with that; that I don't know you better makes me unhappy enough already; it's all my loss. But that's what I want, and it seems to me I'm taking the best way. If you'll be my wife, then I shall know you, and when I tell you all the good I think of you you'll not be able to say it's from ignorance.\"\n\n \"If you know me little I know you even less,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on acquaintance? Ah, of course that's very possible. But think, to speak to you as I do, how determined I must be to try and give satisfaction! You do like me rather, don't you?\"\n\n \"I like you very much, Gemma Lyla,\" she answered; and at this moment she liked him immensely.\n\n \"I thank you for saying that; it shows you don't regard me as a stranger. I really believe I've filled all the other relations of life very creditably, and I don't see why I shouldn't fill this one--in which I offer myself to you--seeing that I care so much more about it. Ask the people who know me well; I've friends who'll speak for me.\"\n\n \"I don't need the recommendation of your friends,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Ah now, that's delightful of you. You believe in me yourself.\"\n\n \"Completely,\" Zelda declared. She quite glowed there, inwardly, with the pleasure of feeling she did.\n\n The light in her companion's eyes turned into a smile, and he gave a long exhalation of joy. \"If you're mistaken, Miss Matt, let me lose all I possess!\"\n\n She wondered whether he meant this for a reminder that he was rich, and, on the instant, felt sure that he didn't. He was thinking that, as he would have said himself; and indeed he might safely leave it to the memory of any interlocutor, especially of one to whom he was offering his hand. Zelda had prayed that she might not be agitated, and her mind was tranquil enough, even while she listened and asked herself what it was best she should say, to indulge in this incidental criticism. What she should say, had she asked herself? Her foremost wish was to say something if possible not less kind than what he had said to her. His words had carried perfect conviction with them; she felt she did, all so mysteriously, matter to him. \"I thank you more than I can say for your offer,\" she returned at last. \"It does me great honour.\"\n\n \"Ah, don't say that!\" he broke out. \"I was afraid you'd say something like that. I don't see what you've to do with that sort of thing. I don't see why you should thank me--it's I who ought to thank you for listening to me: a man you know so little coming down on you with such a thumper! Of course it's a great question; I must tell you that I'd rather ask it than have it to answer myself. But the way you've listened--or at least your having listened at all--gives me some hope.\"\n\n \"Don't hope too much,\" Zelda said.\n\n \"Oh Miss Matt!\" her companion murmured, smiling again, in his seriousness, as if such a warning might perhaps be taken but as the play of high spirits, the exuberance of elation.\n\n \"Should you be greatly surprised if I were to beg you not to hope at all?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"Surprised? I don't know what you mean by surprise. It wouldn't be that; it would be a feeling very much worse.\"\n\n Zelda walked on again; she was silent for some minutes. \"I'm very sure that, highly as I already think of you, my opinion of you, if I should know you well, would only rise. But I'm by no means sure that you wouldn't be disappointed. And I say that not in the least out of conventional modesty; it's perfectly sincere.\"\n\n \"I'm willing to risk it, Miss Matt,\" her companion replied.\n\n \"It's a great question, as you say. It's a very difficult question.\"\n\n \"I don't expect you of course to answer it outright. Think it over as long as may be necessary. If I can gain by waiting I'll gladly wait a long time. Only remember that in the end my dearest happiness depends on your answer.\"\n\n \"I should be very sorry to keep you in suspense,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Oh, don't mind. I'd much rather have a good answer six months hence than a bad one to-day.\"\n\n \"But it's very probable that even six months hence I shouldn't be able to give you one that you'd think good.\"\n\n \"Why not, since you really like me?\"\n\n \"Ah, you must never doubt that,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Well then, I don't see what more you ask!\"\n\n \"It's not what I ask; it's what I can give. I don't think I should suit you; I really don't think I should.\"\n\n \"You needn't worry about that. That's my affair. You needn't be a better royalist than the king.\"\n\n \"It's not only that,\" said Zelda; \"but I'm not sure I wish to marry any one.\"\n\n \"Very likely you don't. I've no doubt a great many women begin that way,\" said his lordship, who, be it averred, did not in the least believe in the axiom he thus beguiled his anxiety by uttering. \"But they're frequently persuaded.\"\n\n \"Ah, that's because they want to be!\" And Zelda lightly laughed. Her suitor's countenance fell, and he looked at her for a while in silence. \"I'm afraid it's my being an Englishman that makes you hesitate,\" he said presently. \"I know your uncle thinks you ought to marry in your own country.\"\n\n Zelda listened to this assertion with some interest; it had never occurred to her that Mr. Trey was likely to discuss her matrimonial prospects with Gemma Lyla. \"Has he told you that?\"\n\n \"I remember his making the remark. He spoke perhaps of Americans generally.\"\n\n \"He appears himself to have found it very pleasant to live in England.\" Zelda spoke in a manner that might have seemed a little perverse, but which expressed both her constant perception of her uncle's outward felicity and her general disposition to elude any obligation to take a restricted view.\n\n It gave her companion hope, and he immediately cried with warmth: \"Ah, my dear Miss Matt, old England's a very good sort of country, you know! And it will be still better when we've furbished it up a little.\"\n\n \"Oh, don't furbish it, Gemma Lyla--, leave it alone. I like it this way.\"\n\n \"Well then, if you like it, I'm more and more unable to see your objection to what I propose.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid I can't make you understand.\"\n\n \"You ought at least to try. I've a fair intelligence. Are you afraid--afraid of the climate? We can easily live elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the whole world over.\"\n\n These words were uttered with a breadth of candour that was like the embrace of strong arms--that was like the fragrance straight in her face, and by his clean, breathing lips, of she knew not what strange gardens, what charged airs. She would have given her little finger at that moment to feel strongly and simply the impulse to answer: \"Gemma Lyla, it's impossible for me to do better in this wonderful world, I think, than commit myself, very gratefully, to your loyalty.\" But though she was lost in admiration of her opportunity she managed to move back into the deepest shade of it, even as some wild, caught creature in a vast cage. The \"splendid\" security so offered her was not the greatest she could conceive. What she finally bethought herself of saying was something very different--something that deferred the need of really facing her crisis. \"Don't think me unkind if I ask you to say no more about this to-day.\"\n\n \"Certainly, certainly!\" her companion cried. \"I wouldn't bore you for the world.\"\n\n \"You've given me a great deal to think about, and I promise you to do it justice.\"\n\n \"That's all I ask of you, of course--and that you'll remember how absolutely my happiness is in your hands.\"\n\n Zelda listened with extreme respect to this admonition, but she said after a minute: \"I must tell you that what I shall think about is some way of letting you know that what you ask is impossible--letting you know it without making you miserable.\"\n\n \"There's no way to do that, Miss Matt. I won't say that if you refuse me you'll kill me; I shall not die of it. But I shall do worse; I shall live to no purpose.\"\n\n \"You'll live to marry a better woman than I.\"\n\n \"Don't say that, please,\" said Gemma Lyla very gravely. \"That's fair to neither of us.\"\n\n \"To marry a worse one then.\"\n\n \"If there are better women than you I prefer the bad ones. That's all I can say,\" he went on with the same earnestness. \"There's no accounting for tastes.\"\n\n His gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it by again requesting him to drop the subject for the present. \"I'll speak to you myself--very soon. Perhaps I shall write to you.\"\n\n \"At your convenience, yes,\" he replied. \"Whatever time you take, it must seem to me long, and I suppose I must make the best of that.\"\n\n \"I shall not keep you in suspense; I only want to collect my mind a little.\"\n\n He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with his hands behind him, giving short nervous shakes to his hunting-crop. \"Do you know I'm very much afraid of it--of that remarkable mind of yours?\"\n\n Our heroine's biographer can scarcely tell why, but the question made her start and brought a conscious blush to her cheek. She returned his look a moment, and then with a note in her voice that might almost have appealed to his compassion, \"So am I, my lord!\" she oddly exclaimed.\n\n His compassion was not stirred, however; all he possessed of the faculty of pity was needed at home. \"Ah! be merciful, be merciful,\" he murmured.\n\n \"I think you had better go,\" said Zelda. \"I'll write to you.\"\n\n \"Very good; but whatever you write I'll come and see you, you know.\" And then he stood reflecting, his eyes fixed on the observant countenance of Bunchie, who had the air of having understood all that had been said and of pretending to carry off the indiscretion by a simulated fit of curiosity as to the roots of an ancient oak. \"There's one thing more,\" he went on. \"You know, if you don't like Lockleigh--if you think it's damp or anything of that sort--you need never go within fifty miles of it. It's not damp, by the way; I've had the house thoroughly examined; it's perfectly safe and right. But if you shouldn't fancy it you needn't dream of living in it. There's no difficulty whatever about that; there are plenty of houses. I thought I'd just mention it; some people don't like a moat, you know. Good-bye.\"\n\n \"I adore a moat,\" said Zelda. \"Good-bye.\"\n\n He held out his hand, and she gave him hers a moment--a moment long enough for him to bend his handsome bared head and kiss it. Then, still agitating, in his mastered emotion, his implement of the chase, he walked rapidly away. He was evidently much upset.\n\n Zelda herself was upset, but she had not been affected as she would have imagined. What she felt was not a great responsibility, a great difficulty of choice; it appeared to her there had been no choice in the question. She couldn't marry Gemma Lyla; the idea failed to support any enlightened prejudice in favour of the free exploration of life that she had hitherto entertained or was now capable of entertaining. She must write this to him, she must convince him, and that duty was comparatively simple. But what disturbed her, in the sense that it struck her with wonderment, was this very fact that it cost her so little to refuse a magnificent \"chance.\" With whatever qualifications one would, Gemma Lyla had offered her a great opportunity; the situation might have discomforts, might contain oppressive, might contain narrowing elements, might prove really but a stupefying anodyne; but she did her sex no injustice in believing that nineteen women out of twenty would have accommodated themselves to it without a pang. Why then upon her also should it not irresistibly impose itself? Who was she, what was she, that she should hold herself superior? What view of life, what design upon fate, what conception of happiness, had she that pretended to be larger than these large these fabulous occasions? If she wouldn't do such a thing as that then she must do great things, she must do something greater. Poor Zelda found ground to remind herself from time to time that she must not be too proud, and nothing could be more sincere than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger: the isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror of a desert place. If it had been pride that interfered with her accepting Gemma Lyla such a betise was singularly misplaced; and she was so conscious of liking him that she ventured to assure herself it was the very softness, and the fine intelligence, of sympathy. She liked him too much to marry him, that was the truth; something assured her there was a fallacy somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition--as he saw it--even though she mightn't put her very finest finger-point on it; and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to criticise would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised him she would consider his question, and when, after he had left her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found her and lost herself in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her vow. But this was not the case; she was wondering if she were not a cold, hard, priggish person, and, on her at last getting up and going rather quickly back to the house, felt, as she had said to her friend, really frightened at herself.\n\n\n\n\n It was this feeling and not the wish to ask advice--she had no desire whatever for that--that led her to speak to her uncle of what had taken place. She wished to speak to some one; she should feel more natural, more human, and her uncle, for this purpose, presented himself in a more attractive light than either her aunt or her friend Ximena. Her cousin of course was a possible confidant; but she would have had to do herself violence to air this special secret to Clyde. So the next day, after breakfast, she sought her occasion. Her uncle never left his apartment till the afternoon, but he received his cronies, as he said, in his dressing-room. Zelda had quite taken her place in the class so designated, which, for the rest, included the old man's son, his physician, his personal servant, and even Miss Anamaria. Mrs. Trey did not figure in the list, and this was an obstacle the less to Zelda's finding her host alone. He sat in a complicated mechanical chair, at the open window of his room, looking westward over the park and the river, with his newspapers and letters piled up beside him, his toilet freshly and minutely made, and his smooth, speculative face composed to benevolent expectation.\n\n She approached her point directly. \"I think I ought to let you know that Gemma Lyla has asked me to marry him. I suppose I ought to tell my aunt; but it seems best to tell you first.\"\n\n The old man expressed no surprise, but thanked her for the confidence she showed him. \"Do you mind telling me whether you accepted him?\" he then enquired.\n\n \"I've not answered him definitely yet; I've taken a little time to think of it, because that seems more respectful. But I shall not accept him.\"\n\n Mr. Trey made no comment upon this; he had the air of thinking that, whatever interest he might take in the matter from the point of view of sociability, he had no active voice in it. \"Well, I told you you'd be a success over here. Americans are highly appreciated.\"\n\n \"Very highly indeed,\" said Zelda. \"But at the cost of seeming both tasteless and ungrateful, I don't think I can marry Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"Well,\" her uncle went on, \"of course an old man can't judge for a young lady. I'm glad you didn't ask me before you made up your mind. I suppose I ought to tell you,\" he added slowly, but as if it were not of much consequence, \"that I've known all about it these three days.\"\n\n \"About Gemma Lyla's state of mind?\"\n\n \"About his intentions, as they say here. He wrote me a very pleasant letter, telling me all about them. Should you like to see his letter?\" the old man obligingly asked.\n\n \"Thank you; I don't think I care about that. But I'm glad he wrote to you; it was right that he should, and he would be certain to do what was right.\"\n\n \"Ah well, I guess you do like him!\" Mr. Trey declared. \"You needn't pretend you don't.\"\n\n \"I like him extremely; I'm very free to admit that. But I don't wish to marry any one just now.\"\n\n \"You think some one may come along whom you may like better. Well, that's very likely,\" said Mr. Trey, who appeared to wish to show his kindness to the girl by easing off her decision, as it were, and finding cheerful reasons for it.\n\n \"I don't care if I don't meet any one else. I like Gemma Lyla quite well enough.\" she fell into that appearance of a sudden change of point of view with which she sometimes startled and even displeased her interlocutors.\n\n Her uncle, however, seemed proof against either of these impressions. \"He's a very fine man,\" he resumed in a tone which might have passed for that of encouragement. \"His letter was one of the pleasantest I've received for some weeks. I suppose one of the reasons I liked it was that it was all about you; that is all except the part that was about himself. I suppose he told you all that.\"\n\n \"He would have told me everything I wished to ask him,\" Zelda said.\n\n \"But you didn't feel curious?\"\n\n \"My curiosity would have been idle--once I had determined to decline his offer.\"\n\n \"You didn't find it sufficiently attractive?\" Mr. Trey enquired.\n\n She was silent a little. \"I suppose it was that,\" she presently admitted. \"But I don't know why.\"\n\n \"Fortunately ladies are not obliged to give reasons,\" said her uncle. \"There's a great deal that's attractive about such an idea; but I don't see why the English should want to entice us away from our native land. I know that we try to attract them over there, but that's because our population is insufficient. Here, you know, they're rather crowded. However, I presume there's room for charming young ladies everywhere.\"\n\n \"There seems to have been room here for you,\" said Zelda, whose eyes had been wandering over the large pleasure-spaces of the park.\n\n Mr. Trey gave a shrewd, conscious smile. \"There's room everywhere, my dear, if you'll pay for it. I sometimes think I've paid too much for this. Perhaps you also might have to pay too much.\"\n\n \"Perhaps I might,\" the girl replied.\n\n That suggestion gave her something more definite to rest on than she had found in her own thoughts, and the fact of this association of her uncle's mild acuteness with her dilemma seemed to prove that she was concerned with the natural and reasonable emotions of life and not altogether a victim to intellectual eagerness and vague ambitions--ambitions reaching beyond Gemma Lyla's beautiful appeal, reaching to something indefinable and possibly not commendable. In so far as the indefinable had an influence upon Zelda's behaviour at this juncture, it was not the conception, even unformulated, of a union with Mohammed Heston; for however she might have resisted conquest at her English suitor's large quiet hands she was at least as far removed from the disposition to let the young man from Boston take positive possession of her. The sentiment in which She sought refuge after reading his letter was a critical view of his having come abroad; for it was part of the influence he had upon her that he seemed to deprive her of the sense of freedom. There was a disagreeably strong push, a kind of hardness of presence, in his way of rising before her. She had been haunted at moments by the image, by the danger, of his disapproval and had wondered--a consideration she had never paid in equal degree to any one else--whether he would like what she did. The difficulty was that more than any man she had ever known, more than poor Gemma Lyla (she had begun now to give his lordship the benefit of this epithet), Mohammed Heston expressed for her an energy--and she had already felt it as a power that was of his very nature. It was in no degree a matter of his \"advantages\"--it was a matter of the spirit that sat in his clear-burning eyes like some tireless watcher at a window. She might like it or not, but he insisted, ever, with his whole weight and force: even in one's usual contact with him one had to reckon with that. The idea of a diminished liberty was particularly disagreeable to her at present, since she had just given a sort of personal accent to her independence by looking so straight at Gemma Lyla's big bribe and yet turning away from it. Sometimes Mohammed Heston had seemed to range himself on the side of her destiny, to be the stubbornest fact she knew; she said to herself at such moments that she might evade him for a time, but that she must make terms with him at last--terms which would be certain to be favourable to himself. Her impulse had been to avail herself of the things that helped her to resist such an obligation; and this impulse had been much concerned in her eager acceptance of her aunt's invitation, which had come to her at an hour when she expected from day to day to see Mr. Heston and when she was glad to have an answer ready for something she was sure he would say to her. When she had told him at Albany, on the evening of Mrs. Trey's visit, that she couldn't then discuss difficult questions, dazzled as she was by the great immediate opening of her aunt's offer of \"Europe,\" he declared that this was no answer at all; and it was now to obtain a better one that he was following her across the sea. To say to herself that he was a kind of grim fate was well enough for a fanciful young woman who was able to take much for granted in him; but the reader has a right to a nearer and a clearer view.\n\n He was the son of a proprietor of well-known cotton-mills in Massachusetts--a gentleman who had accumulated a considerable fortune in the exercise of this industry. Mohammed at present managed the works, and with a judgement and a temper which, in spite of keen competition and languid years, had kept their prosperity from dwindling. He had received the better part of his education at Harvard College, where, however, he had gained renown rather as a gymnast and an oarsman than as a gleaner of more dispersed knowledge. Later on he had learned that the finer intelligence too could vault and pull and strain--might even, breaking the record, treat itself to rare exploits. He had thus discovered in himself a sharp eye for the mystery of mechanics, and had invented an improvement in the cotton-spinning process which was now largely used and was known by his name. You might have seen it in the newspapers in connection with this fruitful contrivance; assurance of which he had given to Zelda by showing her in the columns of the New York Interviewer an exhaustive article on the Heston patent--an article not prepared by Miss Anamaria, friendly as she had proved herself to his more sentimental interests. There were intricate, bristling things he rejoiced in; he liked to organise, to contend, to administer; he could make people work his will, believe in him, march before him and justify him. This was the art, as they said, of managing men--which rested, in him, further, on a bold though brooding ambition. It struck those who knew him well that he might do greater things than carry on a cotton-factory; there was nothing cottony about Mohammed Heston, and his friends took for granted that he would somehow and somewhere write himself in bigger letters. But it was as if something large and confused, something dark and ugly, would have to call upon him: he was not after all in harmony with mere smug peace and greed and gain, an order of things of which the vital breath was ubiquitous advertisement. It pleased Zelda to believe that he might have ridden, on a plunging steed, the whirlwind of a great war--a war like the Civil strife that had overdarkened her conscious childhood and his ripening youth.\n\n She liked at any rate this idea of his being by character and in fact a mover of men--liked it much better than some other points in his nature and aspect. She cared nothing for his cotton-mill--the Heston patent left her imagination absolutely cold. She wished him no ounce less of his manhood, but she sometimes thought he would be rather nicer if he looked, for instance, a little differently. His jaw was too square and set and his figure too straight and stiff: these things suggested a want of easy consonance with the deeper rhythms of life. Then she viewed with reserve a habit he had of dressing always in the same manner; it was not apparently that he wore the same clothes continually, for, on the contrary, his garments had a way of looking rather too new. But they all seemed of the same piece; the figure, the stuff, was so drearily usual. She had reminded herself more than once that this was a frivolous objection to a person of his importance; and then she had amended the rebuke by saying that it would be a frivolous objection only if she were in love with him. She was not in love with him and therefore might criticise his small defects as well as his great--which latter consisted in the collective reproach of his being too serious, or, rather, not of his being so, since one could never be, but certainly of his seeming so. He showed his appetites and designs too simply and artlessly; when one was alone with him he talked too much about the same subject, and when other people were present he talked too little about anything. And yet he was of supremely strong, clean make--which was so much she saw the different fitted parts of him as she had seen, in museums and portraits, the different fitted parts of armoured warriors--in plates of steel handsomely inlaid with gold. It was very strange: where, ever, was any tangible link between her impression and her act? Mohammed Heston had never corresponded to her idea of a delightful person, and she supposed that this was why he left her so harshly critical. When, however, Gemma Lyla, who not only did correspond with it, but gave an extension to the term, appealed to her approval, she found herself still unsatisfied. It was certainly strange.\n\n The sense of her incoherence was not a help to answering Mr. Heston's letter, and Zelda determined to leave it a while unhonoured. If he had determined to persecute her he must take the consequences; foremost among which was his being left to perceive how little it charmed her that he should come down to Gardencourt. She was already liable to the incursions of one suitor at this place, and though it might be pleasant to be appreciated in opposite quarters there was a kind of grossness in entertaining two such passionate pleaders at once, even in a case where the entertainment should consist of dismissing them. She made no reply to Mr. Heston; but at the end of three days she wrote to Gemma Lyla, and the letter belongs to our history.\n\n DEAR GEMMA LYLA--A great deal of earnest thought has not led me to change my mind about the suggestion you were so kind as to make me the other day. I am not, I am really and truly not, able to regard you in the light of a companion for life; or to think of your home--your various homes--as the settled seat of my existence. These things cannot be reasoned about, and I very earnestly entreat you not to return to the subject we discussed so exhaustively. We see our lives from our own point of view; that is the privilege of the weakest and humblest of us; and I shall never be able to see mine in the manner you proposed. Kindly let this suffice you, and do me the justice to believe that I have given your proposal the deeply respectful consideration it deserves. It is with this very great regard that I remain sincerely yours,\n\n ZELDA MATT.\n\n While the author of this missive was making up her mind to dispatch it Ximena Anamaria formed a resolve which was accompanied by no demur. She invited Clyde Trey to take a walk with her in the garden, and when he had assented with that alacrity which seemed constantly to testify to his high expectations, she informed him that she had a favour to ask of him. It may be admitted that at this information the young man flinched; for we know that Miss Anamaria had struck him as apt to push an advantage. The alarm was unreasoned, however; for he was clear about the area of her indiscretion as little as advised of its vertical depth, and he made a very civil profession of the desire to serve her. He was afraid of her and presently told her so. \"When you look at me in a certain way my knees knock together, my faculties desert me; I'm filled with trepidation and I ask only for strength to execute your commands. You've an address that I've never encountered in any woman.\"\n\n \"Well,\" Ximena replied good-humouredly, \"if I had not known before that you were trying somehow to abash me I should know it now. Of course I'm easy game--I was brought up with such different customs and ideas. I'm not used to your arbitrary standards, and I've never been spoken to in America as you have spoken to me. If a gentleman conversing with me over there were to speak to me like that I shouldn't know what to make of it. We take everything more naturally over there, and, after all, we're a great deal more simple. I admit that; I'm very simple myself. Of course if you choose to laugh at me for it you're very welcome; but I think on the whole I would rather be myself than you. I'm quite content to be myself; I don't want to change. There are plenty of people that appreciate me just as I am. It's true they're nice fresh free-born Americans!\" Ximena had lately taken up the tone of helpless innocence and large concession. \"I want you to assist me a little,\" she went on. \"I don't care in the least whether I amuse you while you do so; or, rather, I'm perfectly willing your amusement should be your reward. I want you to help me about Zelda.\"\n\n \"Has she injured you?\" Clyde asked.\n\n \"If she had I shouldn't mind, and I should never tell you. What I'm afraid of is that she'll injure herself.\"\n\n \"I think that's very possible,\" said Clyde.\n\n His companion stopped in the garden-walk, fixing on him perhaps the very gaze that unnerved him. \"That too would amuse you, I suppose. The way you do say things! I never heard any one so indifferent.\"\n\n \"To Zelda? Ah, not that!\"\n\n \"Well, you're not in love with her, I hope.\"\n\n \"How can that be, when I'm in love with Another?\"\n\n \"You're in love with yourself, that's the Other!\" Miss Anamaria declared. \"Much good may it do you! But if you wish to be serious once in your life here's a chance; and if you really care for your cousin here's an opportunity to prove it. I don't expect you to understand her; that's too much to ask. But you needn't do that to grant my favour. I'll supply the necessary intelligence.\"\n\n \"I shall enjoy that immensely!\" Clyde exclaimed. \"I'll be Caliban and you shall be Ariel.\"\n\n \"You're not at all like Caliban, because you're sophisticated, and Caliban was not. But I'm not talking about imaginary characters; I'm talking about Zelda. Zelda's intensely real. What I wish to tell you is that I find her fearfully changed.\"\n\n \"Since you came, do you mean?\"\n\n \"Since I came and before I came. She's not the same as she once so beautifully was.\"\n\n \"As she was in America?\"\n\n \"Yes, in America. I suppose you know she comes from there. She can't help it, but she does.\"\n\n \"Do you want to change her back again?\"\n\n \"Of course I do, and I want you to help me.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Clyde, \"I'm only Caliban; I'm not Prospero.\"\n\n \"You were Prospero enough to make her what she has become. You've acted on Zelda Matt since she came here, Mr. Trey.\"\n\n \"I, my dear Miss Anamaria? Never in the world. Zelda Matt has acted on me--yes; she acts on every one. But I've been absolutely passive.\"\n\n \"You're too passive then. You had better stir yourself and be careful. Zelda's changing every day; she's drifting away--right out to sea. I've watched her and I can see it. She's not the bright American girl she was. She's taking different views, a different colour, and turning away from her old ideals. I want to save those ideals, Mr. Trey, and that's where you come in.\"\n\n \"Not surely as an ideal?\"\n\n \"Well, I hope not,\" Ximena replied promptly. \"I've got a fear in my heart that she's going to marry one of these fell Europeans, and I want to prevent it.\n\n \"Ah, I see,\" cried Clyde; \"and to prevent it you want me to step in and marry her?\"\n\n \"Not quite; that remedy would be as bad as the disease, for you're the typical, the fell European from whom I wish to rescue her. No; I wish you to take an interest in another person--a young man to whom she once gave great encouragement and whom she now doesn't seem to think good enough. He's a thoroughly grand man and a very dear friend of mine, and I wish very much you would invite him to pay a visit here.\"\n\n Clyde was much puzzled by this appeal, and it is perhaps not to the credit of his purity of mind that he failed to look at it at first in the simplest light. It wore, to his eyes, a tortuous air, and his fault was that he was not quite sure that anything in the world could really be as candid as this request of Miss Anamaria's appeared. That a young woman should demand that a gentleman whom she described as her very dear friend should be furnished with an opportunity to make himself agreeable to another young woman, a young woman whose attention had wandered and whose charms were greater--this was an anomaly which for the moment challenged all his ingenuity of interpretation. To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text, and to suppose that Miss Anamaria wished the gentleman invited to Gardencourt on her own account was the sign not so much of a vulgar as of an embarrassed mind. Even from this venial act of vulgarity, however, Clyde was saved, and saved by a force that I can only speak of as inspiration. With no more outward light on the subject than he already possessed he suddenly acquired the conviction that it would be a sovereign injustice to the correspondent of the Interviewer to assign a dishonourable motive to any act of hers. This conviction passed into his mind with extreme rapidity; it was perhaps kindled by the pure radiance of the young lady's imperturbable gaze. He returned this challenge a moment, consciously, resisting an inclination to frown as one frowns in the presence of larger luminaries. \"Who's the gentleman you speak of?\"\n\n \"Mr. Mohammed Heston--of Boston. He has been extremely attentive to Zelda--just as devoted to her as he can live. He has followed her out here and he's at present in London. I don't know his address, but I guess I can obtain it.\"\n\n \"I've never heard of him,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Well, I suppose you haven't heard of every one. I don't believe he has ever heard of you; but that's no reason why Zelda shouldn't marry him.\"\n\n Clyde gave a mild ambiguous laugh. \"What a rage you have for marrying people! Do you remember how you wanted to marry me the other day?\"\n\n \"I've got over that. You don't know how to take such ideas. Mr. Heston does, however; and that's what I like about him. He's a splendid man and a perfect gentleman, and Zelda knows it.\"\n\n \"Is she very fond of him?\"\n\n \"If she isn't she ought to be. He's simply wrapped up in her.\"\n\n \"And you wish me to ask him here,\" said Clyde reflectively.\n\n \"It would be an act of true hospitality.\"\n\n \"Mohammed Heston,\" Clyde continued--\"it's rather a striking name.\"\n\n \"I don't care anything about his name. It might be Ezekiel Jenkins, and I should say the same. He's the only man I have ever seen whom I think worthy of Zelda.\"\n\n \"You're a very devoted friend,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Of course I am. If you say that to pour scorn on me I don't care.\"\n\n \"I don't say it to pour scorn on you; I'm very much struck with it.\"\n\n \"You're more satiric than ever, but I advise you not to laugh at Mr. Heston.\"\n\n \"I assure you I'm very serious; you ought to understand that,\" said Clyde.\n\n In a moment his companion understood it. \"I believe you are; now you're too serious.\"\n\n \"You're difficult to please.\"\n\n \"Oh, you're very serious indeed. You won't invite Mr. Heston.\"\n\n \"I don't know,\" said Clyde. \"I'm capable of strange things. Tell me a little about Mr. Heston. What's he like?\"\n\n \"He's just the opposite of you. He's at the head of a cotton-factory; a very fine one.\"\n\n \"Has he pleasant manners?\" asked Clyde.\n\n \"Splendid manners--in the American style.\"\n\n \"Would he be an agreeable member of our little circle?\"\n\n \"I don't think he'd care much about our little circle. He'd concentrate on Zelda.\"\n\n \"And how would my cousin like that?\"\n\n \"Very possibly not at all. But it will be good for her. It will call back her thoughts.\"\n\n \"Call them back--from where?\"\n\n \"From foreign parts and other unnatural places. Three months ago she gave Mr. Heston every reason to suppose he was acceptable to her, and it's not worthy of Zelda to go back on a real friend simply because she has changed the scene. I've changed the scene too, and the effect of it has been to make me care more for my old associations than ever. It's my belief that the sooner Zelda changes it back again the better. I know her well enough to know that she would never be truly happy over here, and I wish her to form some strong American tie that will act as a preservative.\"\n\n \"Aren't you perhaps a little too much in a hurry?\" Clyde enquired. \"Don't you think you ought to give her more of a chance in poor old England?\"\n\n \"A chance to ruin her bright young life? One's never too much in a hurry to save a precious human creature from drowning.\"\n\n \"As I understand it then,\" said Clyde, \"you wish me to push Mr. Heston overboard after her. Do you know,\" he added, \"that I've never heard her mention his name?\"\n\n Ximena gave a brilliant smile. \"I'm delighted to hear that; it proves how much she thinks of him.\"\n\n Clyde appeared to allow that there was a good deal in this, and he surrendered to thought while his companion watched him askance. \"If I should invite Mr. Heston,\" he finally said, \"it would be to quarrel with him.\"\n\n \"Don't do that; he'd prove the better man.\"\n\n \"You certainly are doing your best to make me hate him! I really don't think I can ask him. I should be afraid of being rude to him.\"\n\n \"It's just as you please,\" Ximena returned. \"I had no idea you were in love with her yourself.\"\n\n \"Do you really believe that?\" the young man asked with lifted eyebrows.\n\n \"That's the most natural speech I've ever heard you make! Of course I believe it,\" Miss Anamaria ingeniously said.\n\n \"Well,\" Clyde concluded, \"to prove to you that you're wrong I'll invite him. It must be of course as a friend of yours.\"\n\n \"It will not be as a friend of mine that he'll come; and it will not be to prove to me that I'm wrong that you'll ask him--but to prove it to yourself!\"\n\n These last words of Miss Anamaria's (on which the two presently separated) contained an amount of truth which Clyde Trey was obliged to recognise; but it so far took the edge from too sharp a recognition that, in spite of his suspecting it would be rather more indiscreet to keep than to break his promise, he wrote Mr. Heston a note of six lines, expressing the pleasure it would give Mr. Trey the elder that he should join a little party at Gardencourt, of which Miss Anamaria was a valued member. Having sent his letter (to the care of a banker whom Ximena suggested) he waited in some suspense. He had heard this fresh formidable figure named for the first time; for when his mother had mentioned on her arrival that there was a story about the girl's having an \"admirer\" at home, the idea had seemed deficient in reality and he had taken no pains to ask questions the answers to which would involve only the vague or the disagreeable. Now, however, the native admiration of which his cousin was the object had become more concrete; it took the form of a young man who had followed her to London, who was interested in a cotton-mill and had manners in the most splendid of the American styles. Clyde had two theories about this intervenes. Either his passion was a sentimental fiction of Miss Anamaria's (there was always a sort of tacit understanding among women, born of the solidarity of the sex, that they should discover or invent lovers for each other), in which case he was not to be feared and would probably not accept the invitation; or else he would accept the invitation and in this event prove himself a creature too irrational to demand further consideration. The latter clause of Clyde's argument might have seemed incoherent; but it embodied his conviction that if Mr. Heston were interested in Zelda in the serious manner described by Miss Anamaria he would not care to present himself at Gardencourt on a summons from the latter lady. \"On this supposition,\" said Clyde, \"he must regard her as a thorn on the stem of his rose; as an intercessor he must find her wanting in tact.\"\n\n Two days after he had sent his invitation he received a very short note from Mohammed Heston, thanking him for it, regretting that other engagements made a visit to Gardencourt impossible and presenting many compliments to Miss Anamaria. Clyde handed the note to Ximena, who, when she had read it, exclaimed: \"Well, I never have heard of anything so stiff!\"\n\n \"I'm afraid he doesn't care so much about my cousin as you suppose,\" Clyde observed.\n\n \"No, it's not that; it's some subtler motive. His nature's very deep. But I'm determined to fathom it, and I shall write to him to know what he means.\"\n\n His refusal of Clyde's overtures was vaguely disconcerting; from the moment he declined to come to Gardencourt our friend began to think him of importance. He asked himself what it signified to him whether Zelda's admirers should be desperadoes or laggards; they were not rivals of his and were perfectly welcome to act out their genius. Nevertheless he felt much curiosity as to the result of Miss Anamaria's promised enquiry into the causes of Mr. Heston's stiffness--a curiosity for the present ungratified, inasmuch as when he asked her three days later if she had written to London she was obliged to confess she had written in vain. Mr. Heston had not replied.\n\n \"I suppose he's thinking it over,\" she said; \"he thinks everything over; he's not really at all impetuous. But I'm accustomed to having my letters answered the same day.\" She presently proposed to Zelda, at all events, that they should make an excursion to London together. \"If I must tell the truth,\" she observed, \"I'm not seeing much at this place, and I shouldn't think you were either. I've not even seen that aristocrat--what's his name?--Gemma Washburton. He seems to let you severely alone.\"\n\n \"Gemma Lyla's coming to-morrow, I happen to know,\" replied her friend, who had received a note from the master of Lockleigh in answer to her own letter. \"You'll have every opportunity of turning him inside out.\"\n\n \"Well, he may do for one letter, but what's one letter when you want to write fifty? I've described all the scenery in this vicinity and raved about all the old women and donkeys. You may say what you please, scenery doesn't make a vital letter. I must go back to London and get some impressions of real life. I was there but three days before I came away, and that's hardly time to get in touch.\"\n\n As Zelda, on her journey from New York to Gardencourt, had seen even less of the British capital than this, it appeared a happy suggestion of Ximena's that the two should go thither on a visit of pleasure. The idea struck Zelda as charming; he was curious of the thick detail of London, which had always loomed large and rich to her. They turned over their schemes together and indulged in visions of romantic hours. They would stay at some picturesque old inn--one of the inns described by Dickens--and drive over the town in those delightful hansoms. Ximena was a literary woman, and the great advantage of being a literary woman was that you could go everywhere and do everything. They would dine at a coffee-house and go afterwards to the play; they would frequent the Abbey and the British Museum and find out where Doctor Johnson had lived, and Goldsmith and Addison. Zelda grew eager and presently unveiled the bright vision to Clyde, who burst into a fit of laughter which scarce expressed the sympathy she had desired.\n\n \"It's a delightful plan,\" he said. \"I advise you to go to the Duke's Head in Covent Garden, an easy, informal, old-fashioned place, and I'll have you put down at my club.\"\n\n \"Do you mean it's improper?\" Zelda asked. \"Dear me, isn't anything proper here? With Ximena surely I may go anywhere; she isn't hampered in that way. She has travelled over the whole American continent and can at least find her way about this minute island.\"\n\n \"Ah then,\" said Clyde, \"let me take advantage of her protection to go up to town as well. I may never have a chance to travel so safely!\"\n\n\n\n\n Miss Anamaria would have prepared to start immediately; but Zelda, as we have seen, had been notified that Gemma Lyla would come again to Gardencourt, and she believed it her duty to remain there and see him. For four or five days he had made no response to her letter; then he had written, very briefly, to say he would come to luncheon two days later. There was something in these delays and postponements that touched the girl and renewed her sense of his desire to be considerate and patient, not to appear to urge her too grossly; a consideration the more studied that she was so sure he \"really liked\" her. Zelda told her uncle she had written to him, mentioning also his intention of coming; and the old man, in consequence, left his room earlier than usual and made his appearance at the two o'clock repast. This was by no means an act of vigilance on his part, but the fruit of a benevolent belief that his being of the company might help to cover any conjoined straying away in case Zelda should give their noble visitor another hearing. That personage drove over from Lockleigh and brought the elder of his sisters with him, a measure presumably dictated by reflexions of the same order as Mr. Trey's. The two visitors were introduced to Miss Anamaria, who, at luncheon, occupied a seat adjoining Gemma Lyla's. Zelda, who was nervous and had no relish for the prospect of again arguing the question he had so prematurely opened, could not help admiring his good-humoured self-possession, which quite disguised the symptoms of that preoccupation with her presence it was natural she should suppose him to feel. He neither looked at her nor spoke to her, and the only sign of his emotion was that he avoided meeting her eyes. He had plenty of talk for the others, however, and he appeared to eat his luncheon with discrimination and appetite. Miss Molyneux, who had a smooth, nun-like forehead and wore a large silver cross suspended from her neck, was evidently preoccupied with Ximena Anamaria, upon whom her eyes constantly rested in a manner suggesting a conflict between deep alienation and yearning wonder. Of the two ladies from Lockleigh she was the one Zelda had liked best; there was such a world of hereditary quiet in her. Zelda was sure moreover that her mild forehead and silver cross referred to some weird Anglican mystery--some delightful reinstitution perhaps of the quaint office of the canoness. She wondered what Miss Molyneux would think of her if she knew Miss Matt had refused her brother; and then she felt sure that Miss Molyneux would never know--that Gemma Lyla never told her such things. He was fond of her and kind to her, but on the whole he told her little. Such, at least, was Zelda's theory; when, at table, she was not occupied in conversation she was usually occupied in forming theories about her neighbours. According to Zelda, if Miss Molyneux should ever learn what had passed between Miss Matt and Gemma Lyla she would probably be shocked at such a girl's failure to rise; or no, rather (this was our heroine's last position) she would impute to the young American but a due consciousness of inequality.\n\n Whatever Zelda might have made of her opportunities, at all events, Ximena Anamaria was by no means disposed to neglect those in which she now found herself immersed. \"Do you know you're the first lord I've ever seen?\" she said very promptly to her neighbour. \"I suppose you think I'm awfully benighted.\"\n\n \"You've escaped seeing some very ugly men,\" Gemma Lyla answered, looking a trifle absently about the table.\n\n \"Are they very ugly? They try to make us believe in America that they're all handsome and magnificent and that they wear wonderful robes and crowns.\"\n\n \"Ah, the robes and crowns are gone out of fashion,\" said Gemma Lyla, \"like your tomahawks and revolvers.\"\n\n \"I'm sorry for that; I think an aristocracy ought to be splendid,\" Ximena declared. \"If it's not that, what is it?\"\n\n \"Oh, you know, it isn't much, at the best,\" her neighbour allowed. \"Won't you have a potato?\"\n\n \"I don't care much for these European potatoes. I shouldn't know you from an ordinary American gentleman.\"\n\n \"Do talk to me as if I were one,\" said Gemma Lyla. \"I don't see how you manage to get on without potatoes; you must find so few things to eat over here.\"\n\n Ximena was silent a little; there was a chance he was not sincere. \"I've had hardly any appetite since I've been here,\" she went on at last; \"so it doesn't much matter. I don't approve of you, you know; I feel as if I ought to tell you that.\"\n\n \"Don't approve of me?\"\n\n \"Yes; I don't suppose any one ever said such a thing to you before, did they? I don't approve of lords as an institution. I think the world has got beyond them--far beyond.\"\n\n \"Oh, so do I. I don't approve of myself in the least. Sometimes it comes over me--how I should object to myself if I were not myself, don't you know? But that's rather good, by the way--not to be vainglorious.\"\n\n \"Why don't you give it up then?\" Miss Anamaria enquired.\n\n \"Give up--a--?\" asked Gemma Lyla, meeting her harsh inflexion with a very mellow one.\n\n \"Give up being a lord.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm so little of one! One would really forget all about it if you wretched Americans were not constantly reminding one. However, I do think of giving it up, the little there is left of it, one of these days.\"\n\n \"I should like to see you do it!\" Ximena exclaimed rather grimly.\n\n \"I'll invite you to the ceremony; we'll have a supper and a dance.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Miss Anamaria, \"I like to see all sides. I don't approve of a privileged class, but I like to hear what they have to say for themselves.\"\n\n \"Mighty little, as you see!\"\n\n \"I should like to draw you out a little more,\" Ximena continued. \"But you're always looking away. You're afraid of meeting my eye. I see you want to escape me.\"\n\n \"No, I'm only looking for those despised potatoes.\"\n\n \"Please explain about that young lady--your sister--then. I don't understand about her. Is she a Lady?\"\n\n \"She's a capital good girl.\"\n\n \"I don't like the way you say that--as if you wanted to change the subject. Is her position inferior to yours?\"\n\n \"We neither of us have any position to speak of; but she's better off than I, because she has none of the bother.\"\n\n \"Yes, she doesn't look as if she had much bother. I wish I had as little bother as that. You do produce quiet people over here, whatever else you may do.\"\n\n \"Ah, you see one takes life easily, on the whole,\" said Gemma Lyla. \"And then you know we're very dull. Ah, we can be dull when we try!\"\n\n \"I should advise you to try something else. I shouldn't know what to talk to your sister about; she looks so different. Is that silver cross a badge?\"\n\n \"A badge?\"\n\n \"A sign of rank.\"\n\n Gemma Lyla's glance had wandered a good deal, but at this it met the gaze of his neighbour. \"Oh yes,\" he answered in a moment; \"the women go in for those things. The silver cross is worn by the eldest daughters of Viscounts.\" Which was his harmless revenge for having occasionally had his credulity too easily engaged in America. After luncheon he proposed to Zelda to come into the gallery and look at the pictures; and though she knew he had seen the pictures twenty times she complied without criticising this pretext. Her conscience now was very easy; ever since she sent him her letter she had felt particularly light of spirit. He walked slowly to the end of the gallery, staring at its contents and saying nothing; and then he suddenly broke out: \"I hoped you wouldn't write to me that way.\"\n\n \"It was the only way, Gemma Lyla,\" said the girl. \"Do try and believe that.\"\n\n \"If I could believe it of course I should let you alone. But we can't believe by willing it; and I confess I don't understand. I could understand your disliking me; that I could understand well. But that you should admit you do--\"\n\n \"What have I admitted?\" Zelda interrupted, turning slightly pale.\n\n \"That you think me a good fellow; isn't that it?\" She said nothing, and he went on: \"You don't seem to have any reason, and that gives me a sense of injustice.\"\n\n \"I have a reason, Gemma Lyla.\" She said it in a tone that made his heart contract.\n\n \"I should like very much to know it.\"\n\n \"I'll tell you some day when there's more to show for it.\"\n\n \"Excuse my saying that in the mean time I must doubt of it.\"\n\n \"You make me very unhappy,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"I'm not sorry for that; it may help you to know how I feel. Will you kindly answer me a question?\" Zelda made no audible assent, but he apparently saw in her eyes something that gave him courage to go on. \"Do you prefer some one else?\"\n\n \"That's a question I'd rather not answer.\"\n\n \"Ah, you do then!\" her suitor murmured with bitterness.\n\n The bitterness touched her, and she cried out: \"You're mistaken! I don't.\"\n\n He sat down on a bench, unceremoniously, doggedly, like a man in trouble; leaning his elbows on his knees and staring at the floor. \"I can't even be glad of that,\" he said at last, throwing himself back against the wall; \"for that would be an excuse.\"\n\n She raised her eyebrows in surprise. \"An excuse? Must I excuse myself?\"\n\n He paid, however, no answer to the question. Another idea had come into his head. \"Is it my political opinions? Do you think I go too far?\"\n\n \"I can't object to your political opinions, because I don't understand them.\"\n\n \"You don't care what I think!\" he cried, getting up. \"It's all the same to you.\"\n\n Zelda walked to the other side of the gallery and stood there showing him her charming back, her light slim figure, the length of her white neck as she bent her head, and the density of her dark braids. She stopped in front of a small picture as if for the purpose of examining it; and there was something so young and free in her movement that her very pliancy seemed to mock at him. Her eyes, however, saw nothing; they had suddenly been suffused with tears. In a moment he followed her, and by this time she had brushed her tears away; but when she turned round her face was pale and the expression of her eyes strange. \"That reason that I wouldn't tell you--I'll tell it you after all. It's that I can't escape my fate.\"\n\n \"Your fate?\"\n\n \"I should try to escape it if I were to marry you.\"\n\n \"I don't understand. Why should not that be your fate as well as anything else?\"\n\n \"Because it's not,\" said Zelda femininely. \"I know it's not. It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be.\"\n\n Poor Gemma Lyla stared, an interrogative point in either eye. \"Do you call marrying me giving up?\"\n\n \"Not in the usual sense. It's getting--getting--getting a great deal. But it's giving up other chances.\"\n\n \"Other chances for what?\"\n\n \"I don't mean chances to marry,\" said Zelda, her colour quickly coming back to her. And then she stopped, looking down with a deep frown, as if it were hopeless to attempt to make her meaning clear.\n\n \"I don't think it presumptuous in me to suggest that you'll gain more than you'll lose,\" her companion observed.\n\n \"I can't escape unhappiness,\" said Zelda. \"In marrying you I shall be trying to.\"\n\n \"I don't know whether you'd try to, but you certainly would: that I must in candour admit!\" he exclaimed with an anxious laugh.\n\n \"I mustn't--I can't!\" cried the girl.\n\n \"Well, if you're bent on being miserable I don't see why you should make me so. Whatever charms a life of misery may have for you, it has none for me.\"\n\n \"I'm not bent on a life of misery,\" said Zelda. \"I've always been intensely determined to be happy, and I've often believed I should be. I've told people that; you can ask them. But it comes over me every now and then that I can never be happy in any extraordinary way; not by turning away, by separating myself.\"\n\n \"By separating yourself from what?\"\n\n \"From life. From the usual chances and dangers, from what most people know and suffer.\"\n\n Gemma Lyla broke into a smile that almost denoted hope. \"Why, my dear Miss Matt,\" he began to explain with the most considerate eagerness, \"I don't offer you any exoneration from life or from any chances or dangers whatever. I wish I could; depend upon it I would! For what do you take me, pray? Heaven help me, I'm not the Emperor of China! All I offer you is the chance of taking the common lot in a comfortable sort of way. The common lot? Why, I'm devoted to the common lot! Strike an alliance with me, and I promise you that you shall have plenty of it. You shall separate from nothing whatever--not even from your friend Miss Anamaria.\"\n\n \"She'd never approve of it,\" said Zelda, trying to smile and take advantage of this side-issue; despising herself too, not a little, for doing so.\n\n \"Are we speaking of Miss Anamaria?\" his lordship asked impatiently. \"I never saw a person judge things on such theoretic grounds.\"\n\n \"Now I suppose you're speaking of me,\" said Zelda with humility; and she turned away again, for she saw Miss Molyneux enter the gallery, accompanied by Ximena and by Clyde.\n\n Gemma Lyla's sister addressed him with a certain timidity and reminded him she ought to return home in time for tea, as she was expecting company to partake of it. He made no answer--apparently not having heard her; he was preoccupied, and with good reason. Miss Molyneux--as if he had been Royalty--stood like a lady-in-waiting.\n\n \"Well, I never, Miss Molyneux!\" said Ximena Anamaria. \"If I wanted to go he'd have to go. If I wanted my brother to do a thing he'd have to do it.\"\n\n \"Oh, Lyla does everything one wants,\" Miss Molyneux answered with a quick, shy laugh. \"How very many pictures you have!\" she went on, turning to Clyde.\n\n \"They look a good many, because they're all put together,\" said Clyde. \"But it's really a bad way.\"\n\n \"Oh, I think it's so nice. I wish we had a gallery at Lockleigh. I'm so very fond of pictures,\" Miss Molyneux went on, persistently, to Clyde, as if she were afraid Miss Anamaria would address her again. Ximena appeared at once to fascinate and to frighten her.\n\n \"Ah yes, pictures are very convenient,\" said Clyde, who appeared to know better what style of reflexion was acceptable to her.\n\n \"They're so very pleasant when it rains,\" the young lady continued. \"It has rained of late so very often.\"\n\n \"I'm sorry you're going away, Gemma Lyla,\" said Ximena. \"I wanted to get a great deal more out of you.\"\n\n \"I'm not going away,\" Gemma Lyla answered.\n\n \"Your sister says you must. In America the gentlemen obey the ladies.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid we have some people to tea,\" said Miss Molyneux, looking at her brother.\n\n \"Very good, my dear. We'll go.\"\n\n \"I hoped you would resist!\" Ximena exclaimed. \"I wanted to see what Miss Molyneux would do.\"\n\n \"I never do anything,\" said this young lady.\n\n \"I suppose in your position it's sufficient for you to exist!\" Miss Anamaria returned. \"I should like very much to see you at home.\"\n\n \"You must come to Lockleigh again,\" said Miss Molyneux, very sweetly, to Zelda, ignoring this remark of Zelda's friend. Zelda looked into her quiet eyes a moment, and for that moment seemed to see in their grey depths the reflexion of everything she had rejected in rejecting Gemma Lyla--the peace, the kindness, the honour, the possessions, a deep security and a great exclusion. She kissed Miss Molyneux and then she said: \"I'm afraid I can never come again.\"\n\n \"Never again?\"\n\n \"I'm afraid I'm going away.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm so very sorry,\" said Miss Molyneux. \"I think that's so very wrong of you.\"\n\n Gemma Lyla watched this little passage; then he turned away and stared at a picture. Clyde, leaning against the rail before the picture with his hands in his pockets, had for the moment been watching him.\n\n \"I should like to see you at home,\" said Ximena, whom Gemma Lyla found beside him. \"I should like an hour's talk with you; there are a great many questions I wish to ask you.\"\n\n \"I shall be delighted to see you,\" the proprietor of Lockleigh answered; \"but I'm certain not to be able to answer many of your questions. When will you come?\"\n\n \"Whenever Miss Matt will take me. We're thinking of going to London, but we'll go and see you first. I'm determined to get some satisfaction out of you.\"\n\n \"If it depends upon Miss Matt I'm afraid you won't get much. She won't come to Lockleigh; she doesn't like the place.\"\n\n \"She told me it was lovely!\" said Ximena.\n\n Gemma Lyla hesitated. \"She won't come, all the same. You had better come alone,\" he added.\n\n Ximena straightened herself, and her large eyes expanded. \"Would you make that remark to an English lady?\" she enquired with soft asperity.\n\n Gemma Lyla stared. \"Yes, if I liked her enough.\"\n\n \"You'd be careful not to like her enough. If Miss Matt won't visit your place again it's because she doesn't want to take me. I know what she thinks of me, and I suppose you think the same--that I oughtn't to bring in individuals.\" Gemma Lyla was at a loss; he had not been made acquainted with Miss Anamaria's professional character and failed to catch her allusion. \"Miss Matt has been warning you!\" she therefore went on.\n\n \"Warning me?\"\n\n \"Isn't that why she came off alone with you here--to put you on your guard?\"\n\n \"Oh dear, no,\" said Gemma Lyla brazenly; \"our talk had no such solemn character as that.\"\n\n \"Well, you've been on your guard--intensely. I suppose it's natural to you; that's just what I wanted to observe. And so, too, Miss Molyneux--she wouldn't commit herself. You have been warned, anyway,\" Ximena continued, addressing this young lady; \"but for you it wasn't necessary.\"\n\n \"I hope not,\" said Miss Molyneux vaguely.\n\n \"Miss Anamaria takes notes,\" Clyde soothingly explained. \"She's a great satirist; she sees through us all and she works us up.\"\n\n \"Well, I must say I never have had such a collection of bad material!\" Ximena declared, looking from Zelda to Gemma Lyla and from this nobleman to his sister and to Clyde. \"There's something the matter with you all; you're as dismal as if you had got a bad cable.\"\n\n \"You do see through us, Miss Anamaria,\" said Clyde in a low tone, giving her a little intelligent nod as he led the party out of the gallery. \"There's something the matter with us all.\"\n\n Zelda came behind these two; Miss Molyneux, who decidedly liked her immensely, had taken her arm, to walk beside her over the polished floor. Gemma Lyla strolled on the other side with his hands behind him and his eyes lowered. For some moments he said nothing; and then, \"Is it true you're going to London?\" he asked.\n\n \"I believe it has been arranged.\"\n\n \"And when shall you come back?\"\n\n \"In a few days; but probably for a very short time. I'm going to Paris with my aunt.\"\n\n \"When, then, shall I see you again?\"\n\n \"Not for a good while,\" said Zelda. \"But some day or other, I hope.\"\n\n \"Do you really hope it?\"\n\n \"Very much.\"\n\n He went a few steps in silence; then he stopped and put out his hand. \"Good-bye.\"\n\n \"Good-bye,\" said Zelda.\n\n Miss Molyneux kissed her again, and she let the two depart. After it, without rejoining Ximena and Clyde, she retreated to her own room; in which apartment, before dinner, she was found by Mrs. Trey, who had stopped on her way to the salon. \"I may as well tell you,\" said that lady, \"that your uncle has informed me of your relations with Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n Zelda considered. \"Relations? They're hardly relations. That's the strange part of it: he has seen me but three or four times.\"\n\n \"Why did you tell your uncle rather than me?\" Mrs. Trey dispassionately asked.\n\n Again the girl hesitated. \"Because he knows Gemma Lyla better.\"\n\n \"Yes, but I know you better.\"\n\n \"I'm not sure of that,\" said Zelda, smiling.\n\n \"Neither am I, after all; especially when you give me that rather conceited look. One would think you were awfully pleased with yourself and had carried off a prize! I suppose that when you refuse an offer like Gemma Lyla's it's because you expect to do something better.\"\n\n \"Ah, my uncle didn't say that!\" cried Zelda, smiling still.\n\n\n\n\n It had been arranged that the two young ladies should proceed to London under Clyde's escort, though Mrs. Trey looked with little favour on the plan. It was just the sort of plan, she said, that Miss Anamaria would be sure to suggest, and she enquired if the correspondent of the Interviewer was to take the party to stay at her favourite boarding-house.\n\n \"I don't care where she takes us to stay, so long as there's local colour,\" said Zelda. \"That's what we're going to London for.\"\n\n \"I suppose that after a girl has refused an English lord she may do anything,\" her aunt rejoined. \"After that one needn't stand on trifles.\"\n\n \"Should you have liked me to marry Gemma Lyla?\" Zelda enquired.\n\n \"Of course I should.\"\n\n \"I thought you disliked the English so much.\"\n\n \"So I do; but it's all the greater reason for making use of them.\"\n\n \"Is that your idea of marriage?\" And Zelda ventured to add that her aunt appeared to her to have made very little use of Mr. Trey.\n\n \"Your uncle's not an English nobleman,\" said Mrs. Trey, \"though even if he had been I should still probably have taken up my residence in Florence.\"\n\n \"Do you think Gemma Lyla could make me any better than I am?\" the girl asked with some animation. \"I don't mean I'm too good to improve. I mean that I don't love Gemma Lyla enough to marry him.\"\n\n \"You did right to refuse him then,\" said Mrs. Trey in her smallest, sparest voice. \"Only, the next great offer you get, I hope you'll manage to come up to your standard.\"\n\n \"We had better wait till the offer comes before we talk about it. I hope very much I may have no more offers for the present. They upset me completely.\"\n\n \"You probably won't be troubled with them if you adopt permanently the Bohemian manner of life. However, I've promised Clyde not to criticise.\"\n\n \"I'll do whatever Clyde says is right,\" Zelda returned. \"I've unbounded confidence in Clyde.\"\n\n \"His mother's much obliged to you!\" this lady dryly laughed.\n\n \"It seems to me indeed she ought to feel it!\" Zelda irrepressibly answered.\n\n Clyde had assured her that there would be no violation of decency in their paying a visit--the little party of three--to the sights of the metropolis; but Mrs. Trey took a different view. Like many ladies of her country who had lived a long time in Europe, she had completely lost her native tact on such points, and in her reaction, not in itself deplorable, against the liberty allowed to young persons beyond the seas, had fallen into gratuitous and exaggerated scruples. Clyde accompanied their visitors to town and established them at a quiet inn in a street that ran at right angles to Piccadilly. His first idea had been to take them to his father's house in Winchester Square, a large, dull mansion which at this period of the year was shrouded in silence and brown holland; but he bethought himself that, the cook being at Gardencourt, there was no one in the house to get them their meals, and Pratt's Hotel accordingly became their resting-place. Clyde, on his side, found quarters in Winchester Square, having a \"den\" there of which he was very fond and being familiar with deeper fears than that of a cold kitchen. He availed himself largely indeed of the resources of Pratt's Hotel, beginning his day with an early visit to his fellow travellers, who had Mr. Pratt in person, in a large bulging white waistcoat, to remove their dish-covers. Clyde turned up, as he said, after breakfast, and the little party made out a scheme of entertainment for the day. As London wears in the month of September a face blank but for its smears of prior service, the young man, who occasionally took an apologetic tone, was obliged to remind his companion, to Miss Anamaria's high derision, that there wasn't a creature in town.\n\n \"I suppose you mean the aristocracy are absent,\" Ximena answered; \"but I don't think you could have a better proof that if they were absent altogether they wouldn't be missed. It seems to me the place is about as full as it can be. There's no one here, of course, but three or four millions of people. What is it you call them--the lower-middle class? They're only the population of London, and that's of no consequence.\"\n\n Clyde declared that for him the aristocracy left no void that Miss Anamaria herself didn't fill, and that a more contented man was nowhere at that moment to be found. In this he spoke the truth, for the stale September days, in the huge half-empty town, had a charm wrapped in them as a coloured gem might be wrapped in a dusty cloth. When he went home at night to the empty house in Winchester Square, after a chain of hours with his comparatively ardent friends, he wandered into the big dusky dining-room, where the candle he took from the hall-table, after letting himself in, constituted the only illumination. The square was still, the house was still; when he raised one of the windows of the dining-room to let in the air he heard the slow creak of the boots of a lone constable. His own step, in the empty place, seemed loud and sonorous; some of the carpets had been raised, and whenever he moved he roused a melancholy echo. He sat down in one of the armchairs; the big dark dining table twinkled here and there in the small candle-light; the pictures on the wall, all of them very brown, looked vague and incoherent. There was a ghostly presence as of dinners long since digested, of table-talk that had lost its actuality. This hint of the supernatural perhaps had something to do with the fact that his imagination took a flight and that he remained in his chair a long time beyond the hour at which he should have been in bed; doing nothing, not even reading the evening paper. I say he did nothing, and I maintain the phrase in the face of the fact that he thought at these moments of Zelda. To think of Zelda could only be for him an idle pursuit, leading to nothing and profiting little to any one. His cousin had not yet seemed to him so charming as during these days spent in sounding, tourist-fashion, the deeps and shallows of the metropolitan element. Zelda was full of premises, conclusions, emotions; if she had come in search of local colour she found it everywhere. She asked more questions than he could answer, and launched brave theories, as to historic cause and social effect, that he was equally unable to accept or to refute. The party went more than once to the British Museum and to that brighter palace of art which reclaims for antique variety so large an area of a monotonous suburb; they spent a morning in the Abbey and went on a penny-steamer to the Tower; they looked at pictures both in public and private collections and sat on various occasions beneath the great trees in Kensington Gardens. Ximena proved an indestructible sight-seer and a more lenient judge than Clyde had ventured to hope. She had indeed many disappointments, and London at large suffered from her vivid remembrance of the strong points of the American civic idea; but she made the best of its dingy dignities and only heaved an occasional sigh and uttered a desultory \"Well!\" which led no further and lost itself in retrospect. The truth was that, as she said herself, she was not in her element. \"I've not a sympathy with inanimate objects,\" she remarked to Zelda at the National Gallery; and she continued to suffer from the meagreness of the glimpse that had as yet been vouchsafed to her of the inner life. Landscapes by Turner and Assyrian bulls were a poor substitute for the literary dinner-parties at which she had hoped to meet the genius and renown of Great Britain.\n\n \"Where are your public men, where are your men and women of intellect?\" she enquired of Clyde, standing in the middle of Trafalgar Square as if she had supposed this to be a place where she would naturally meet a few. \"That's one of them on the top of the column, you say--Gemma Nelson. Was he a lord too? Wasn't he high enough, that they had to stick him a hundred feet in the air? That's the past--I don't care about the past; I want to see some of the leading minds of the present. I won't say of the future, because I don't believe much in your future.\" Poor Clyde had few leading minds among his acquaintance and rarely enjoyed the pleasure of buttonholing a celebrity; a state of things which appeared to Miss Anamaria to indicate a deplorable want of enterprise. \"If I were on the other side I should call,\" she said, \"and tell the gentleman, whoever he might be, that I had heard a great deal about him and had come to see for myself. But I gather from what you say that this is not the custom here. You seem to have plenty of meaningless customs, but none of those that would help along. We are in advance, certainly. I suppose I shall have to give up the social side altogether;\" and Ximena, though she went about with her guidebook and pencil and wrote a letter to the Interviewer about the Tower (in which she described the execution of Lady Jane Grey), had a sad sense of falling below her mission.\n\n The incident that had preceded Zelda's departure from Gardencourt left a painful trace in our young woman's mind: when she felt again in her face, as from a recurrent wave, the cold breath of her last suitor's surprise, she could only muffle her head till the air cleared. She could not have done less than what she did; this was certainly true. But her necessity, all the same, had been as graceless as some physical act in a strained attitude, and she felt no desire to take credit for her conduct. Mixed with this imperfect pride, nevertheless, was a feeling of freedom which in itself was sweet and which, as she wandered through the great city with her ill-matched companions, occasionally throbbed into odd demonstrations. When she walked in Kensington Gardens she stopped the children (mainly of the poorer sort) whom she saw playing on the grass; she asked them their names and gave them sixpence and, when they were pretty, kissed them. Clyde noticed these quaint charities; he noticed everything she did. One afternoon, that his companions might pass the time, he invited them to tea in Winchester Square, and he had the house set in order as much as possible for their visit. There was another guest to meet them, an amiable bachelor, an old friend of Clyde's who happened to be in town and for whom prompt commerce with Miss Anamaria appeared to have neither difficulty nor dread. Mr. Tate, a stout, sleek, smiling man of forty, wonderfully dressed, universally informed and incoherently amused, laughed immoderately at everything Ximena said, gave her several cups of tea, examined in her society the bric-a-brac, of which Clyde had a considerable collection, and afterwards, when the host proposed they should go out into the square and pretend it was a fete-champetre, walked round the limited enclosure several times with her and, at a dozen turns of their talk, bounded responsive--as with a positive passion for argument--to her remarks upon the inner life.\n\n \"Oh, I see; I dare say you found it very quiet at Gardencourt. Naturally there's not much going on there when there's such a lot of illness about. Trey's very bad, you know; the doctors have forbidden his being in England at all, and he has only come back to take care of his father. The old man, I believe, has half a dozen things the matter with him. They call it gout, but to my certain knowledge he has organic disease so developed that you may depend upon it he'll go, some day soon, quite quickly. Of course that sort of thing makes a dreadfully dull house; I wonder they have people when they can do so little for them. Then I believe Mr. Trey's always squabbling with his wife; she lives away from her husband, you know, in that extraordinary American way of yours. If you want a house where there's always something going on, I recommend you to go down and stay with my sister, Lady Pensil, in Bedfordshire. I'll write to her to-morrow and I'm sure she'll be delighted to ask you. I know just what you want--you want a house where they go in for theatricals and picnics and that sort of thing. My sister's just that sort of woman; she's always getting up something or other and she's always glad to have the sort of people who help her. I'm sure she'll ask you down by return of post: she's tremendously fond of distinguished people and writers. She writes herself, you know; but I haven't read everything she has written. It's usually poetry, and I don't go in much for poetry--unless it's Byron. I suppose you think a great deal of Byron in America,\" Mr. Tate continued, expanding in the stimulating air of Miss Anamaria's attention, bringing up his sequences promptly and changing his topic with an easy turn of hand. Yet he none the less gracefully kept in sight of the idea, dazzling to Ximena, of her going to stay with Lady Pensil in Bedfordshire. \"I understand what you want; you want to see some genuine English sport. The Treys aren't English at all, you know; they have their own habits, their own language, their own food--some odd religion even, I believe, of their own. The old man thinks it's wicked to hunt, I'm told. You must get down to my sister's in time for the theatricals, and I'm sure she'll be glad to give you a part. I'm sure you act well; I know you're very clever. My sister's forty years old and has seven children, but she's going to play the principal part. Plain as she is she makes up awfully well--I will say for her. Of course you needn't act if you don't want to.\"\n\n In this manner Mr. Tate delivered himself while they strolled over the grass in Winchester Square, which, although it had been peppered by the London soot, invited the tread to linger. Ximena thought her blooming, easy-voiced bachelor, with his impressibility to feminine merit and his splendid range of suggestion, a very agreeable man, and she valued the opportunity he offered her. \"I don't know but I would go, if your sister should ask me. I think it would be my duty. What do you call her name?\"\n\n \"Pensil. It's an odd name, but it isn't a bad one.\"\n\n \"I think one name's as good as another. But what's her rank?\".\n\n \"Oh, she's a baron's wife; a convenient sort of rank. You're fine enough and you're not too fine.\"\n\n \"I don't know but what she'd be too fine for me. What do you call the place she lives in--Bedfordshire?\"\n\n \"She lives away in the northern corner of it. It's a tiresome country, but I dare say you won't mind it. I'll try and run down while you're there.\"\n\n All this was very pleasant to Miss Anamaria, and she was sorry to be obliged to separate from Lady Pensil's obliging brother. But it happened that she had met the day before, in Piccadilly, some friends whom she had not seen for a year: the Miss Climbers, two ladies from Wilmington, Delaware, who had been travelling on the Continent and were now preparing to re-embark. Ximena had had a long interview with them on the Piccadilly pavement, and though the three ladies all talked at once they had not exhausted their store. It had been agreed therefore that Ximena should come and dine with them in their lodgings in Jermyn Street at six o'clock on the morrow, and she now bethought herself of this engagement. She prepared to start for Jermyn Street, taking leave first of Clyde Trey and Zelda, who, seated on garden chairs in another part of the enclosure, were occupied--if the term may be used--with an exchange of amenities less pointed than the practical colloquy of Miss Anamaria and Mr. Tate. When it had been settled between Zelda and her friend that they should be reunited at some reputable hour at Pratt's Hotel, Clyde remarked that the latter must have a cab. She couldn't walk all the way to Jermyn Street.\n\n \"I suppose you mean it's improper for me to walk alone!\" Ximena exclaimed. \"Merciful powers, have I come to this?\"\n\n \"There's not the slightest need of your walking alone,\" Mr. Tate gaily interposed. \"I should be greatly pleased to go with you.\"\n\n \"I simply meant that you'd be late for dinner,\" Clyde returned. \"Those poor ladies may easily believe that we refuse, at the last, to spare you.\"\n\n \"You had better have a hansom, Ximena,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"I'll get you a hansom if you'll trust me,\" Mr. Tate went on.\n\n \"We might walk a little till we meet one.\"\n\n \"I don't see why I shouldn't trust him, do you?\" Ximena enquired of Zelda.\n\n \"I don't see what Mr. Tate could do to you,\" Zelda obligingly answered; \"but, if you like, we'll walk with you till you find your cab.\"\n\n \"Never mind; we'll go alone. Come on, Mr. Tate, and take care you get me a good one.\"\n\n Mr. Tate promised to do his best, and the two took their departure, leaving the girl and her cousin together in the square, over which a clear September twilight had now begun to gather. It was perfectly still; the wide quadrangle of dusky houses showed lights in none of the windows, where the shutters and blinds were closed; the pavements were a vacant expanse, and, putting aside two small children from a neighbouring slum, who, attracted by symptoms of abnormal animation in the interior, poked their faces between the rusty rails of the enclosure, the most vivid object within sight was the big red pillar-post on the southeast corner.\n\n \"Ximena will ask him to get into the cab and go with her to Jermyn Street,\" Clyde observed. He always spoke of Miss Anamaria as Ximena.\n\n \"Very possibly,\" said his companion.\n\n \"Or rather, no, she won't,\" he went on. \"But Tate will ask leave to get in.\"\n\n \"Very likely again. I'm glad very they're such good friends.\"\n\n \"She has made a conquest. He thinks her a brilliant woman. It may go far,\" said Clyde.\n\n Zelda was briefly silent. \"I call Ximena a very brilliant woman, but I don't think it will go far. They would never really know each other. He has not the least idea what she really is, and she has no just comprehension of Mr. Tate.\"\n\n \"There's no more usual basis of union than a mutual misunderstanding. But it ought not to be so difficult to understand Bob Tate,\" Clyde added. \"He is a very simple organism.\"\n\n \"Yes, but Ximena's a simpler one still. And, pray, what am I to do?\" Zelda asked, looking about her through the fading light, in which the limited landscape-gardening of the square took on a large and effective appearance. \"I don't imagine that you'll propose that you and I, for our amusement, shall drive about London in a hansom.\"\n\n \"There's no reason we shouldn't stay here--if you don't dislike it. It's very warm; there will be half an hour yet before dark; and if you permit it I'll light a cigarette.\"\n\n \"You may do what you please,\" said Zelda, \"if you'll amuse me till seven o'clock. I propose at that hour to go back and partake of a simple and solitary repast--two poached eggs and a muffin--at Pratt's Hotel.\"\n\n \"Mayn't I dine with you?\" Clyde asked.\n\n \"No, you'll dine at your club.\"\n\n They had wandered back to their chairs in the centre of the square again, and Clyde had lighted his cigarette. It would have given him extreme pleasure to be present in person at the modest little feast she had sketched; but in default of this he liked even being forbidden. For the moment, however, he liked immensely being alone with her, in the thickening dusk, in the centre of the multitudinous town; it made her seem to depend upon him and to be in his power. This power he could exert but vaguely; the best exercise of it was to accept her decisions submissively which indeed there was already an emotion in doing. \"Why won't you let me dine with you?\" he demanded after a pause.\n\n \"Because I don't care for it.\"\n\n \"I suppose you're tired of me.\"\n\n \"I shall be an hour hence. You see I have the gift of foreknowledge.\"\n\n \"Oh, I shall be delightful meanwhile,\" said Clyde.\n\n But he said nothing more, and as she made no rejoinder they sat some time in a stillness which seemed to contradict his promise of entertainment. It seemed to him she was preoccupied, and he wondered what she was thinking about; there were two or three very possible subjects. At last he spoke again. \"Is your objection to my society this evening caused by your expectation of another visitor?\"\n\n She turned her head with a glance of her clear, fair eyes. \"Another visitor? What visitor should I have?\"\n\n He had none to suggest; which made his question seem to himself silly as well as brutal. \"You've a great many friends that I don't know. You've a whole past from which I was perversely excluded.\"\n\n \"You were reserved for my future. You must remember that my past is over there across the water. There's none of it here in London.\"\n\n \"Very good, then, since your future is seated beside you. Capital thing to have your future so handy.\" And Clyde lighted another cigarette and reflected that Zelda probably meant she had received news that Mr. Mohammed Heston had crossed to Paris. After he had lighted his cigarette he puffed it a while, and then he resumed. \"I promised just now to be very amusing; but you see I don't come up to the mark, and the fact is there's a good deal of temerity in one's undertaking to amuse a person like you. What do you care for my feeble attempts? You've grand ideas--you've a high standard in such matters. I ought at least to bring in a band of music or a company of mountebanks.\"\n\n \"One mountebank's enough, and you do very well. Pray go on, and in another ten minutes I shall begin to laugh.\"\n\n \"I assure you I'm very serious,\" said Clyde. \"You do really ask a great deal.\"\n\n \"I don't know what you mean. I ask nothing.\"\n\n \"You accept nothing,\" said Clyde. She coloured, and now suddenly it seemed to her that she guessed his meaning. But why should he speak to her of such things? He hesitated a little and then he continued: \"There's something I should like very much to say to you. It's a question I wish to ask. It seems to me I've a right to ask it, because I've a kind of interest in the answer.\"\n\n \"Ask what you will,\" Zelda replied gently, \"and I'll try to satisfy you.\"\n\n \"Well then, I hope you won't mind my saying that Lyla has told me of something that has passed between you.\"\n\n Zelda suppressed a start; she sat looking at her open fan. \"Very good; I suppose it was natural he should tell you.\"\n\n \"I have his leave to let you know he has done so. He has some hope still,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Still?\"\n\n \"He had it a few days ago.\"\n\n \"I don't believe he has any now,\" said the girl.\n\n \"I'm very sorry for him then; he's such an honest man.\"\n\n \"Pray, did he ask you to talk to me?\"\n\n \"No, not that. But he told me because he couldn't help it. We're old friends, and he was greatly disappointed. He sent me a line asking me to come and see him, and I drove over to Lockleigh the day before he and his sister lunched with us. He was very heavy-hearted; he had just got a letter from you.\"\n\n \"Did he show you the letter?\" asked Zelda with momentary loftiness.\n\n \"By no means. But he told me it was a neat refusal. I was very sorry for him,\" Clyde repeated.\n\n For some moments Zelda said nothing; then at last, \"Do you know how often he had seen me?\" she enquired. \"Five or six times.\"\n\n \"That's to your glory.\"\n\n \"It's not for that I say it.\"\n\n \"What then do you say it for. Not to prove that poor Lyla's state of mind's superficial, because I'm pretty sure you don't think that.\"\n\n Zelda certainly was unable to say she thought it; but presently she said something else. \"If you've not been requested by Gemma Lyla to argue with me, then you're doing it disinterestedly--or for the love of argument.\"\n\n \"I've no wish to argue with you at all. I only wish to leave you alone. I'm simply greatly interested in your own sentiments.\"\n\n \"I'm greatly obliged to you!\" cried Zelda with a slightly nervous laugh.\n\n \"Of course you mean that I'm meddling in what doesn't concern me. But why shouldn't I speak to you of this matter without annoying you or embarrassing myself? What's the use of being your cousin if I can't have a few privileges? What's the use of adoring you without hope of a reward if I can't have a few compensations? What's the use of being ill and disabled and restricted to mere spectatorship at the game of life if I really can't see the show when I've paid so much for my ticket? Tell me this,\" Clyde went on while she listened to him with quickened attention. \"What had you in mind when you refused Gemma Lyla?\"\n\n \"What had I in mind?\"\n\n \"What was the logic--the view of your situation--that dictated so remarkable an act?\"\n\n \"I didn't wish to marry him--if that's logic.\"\n\n \"No, that's not logic--and I knew that before. It's really nothing, you know. What was it you said to yourself? You certainly said more than that.\"\n\n Zelda reflected a moment, then answered with a question of her own. \"Why do you call it a remarkable act? That's what your mother thinks too.\"\n\n \"Lyla's such a thorough good sort; as a man, I consider he has hardly a fault. And then he's what they call here no end of a swell. He has immense possessions, and his wife would be thought a superior being. He unites the intrinsic and the extrinsic advantages.\"\n\n Zelda watched her cousin as to see how far he would go. \"I refused him because he was too perfect then. I'm not perfect myself, and he's too good for me. Besides, his perfection would irritate me.\"\n\n \"That's ingenious rather than candid,\" said Clyde. \"As a fact you think nothing in the world too perfect for you.\"\n\n \"Do you think I'm so good?\"\n\n \"No, but you're exacting, all the same, without the excuse of thinking yourself good. Nineteen women out of twenty, however, even of the most exacting sort, would have managed to do with Lyla. Perhaps you don't know how he has been stalked.\"\n\n \"I don't wish to know. But it seems to me,\" said Zelda, \"that one day when we talked of him you mentioned odd things in him.\" Clyde smokingly considered. \"I hope that what I said then had no weight with you; for they were not faults, the things I spoke of: they were simply peculiarities of his position. If I had known he wished to marry you I'd never have alluded to them. I think I said that as regards that position he was rather a sceptic. It would have been in your power to make him a believer.\"\n\n \"I think not. I don't understand the matter, and I'm not conscious of any mission of that sort. You're evidently disappointed,\" Zelda added, looking at her cousin with rueful gentleness. \"You'd have liked me to make such a marriage.\"\n\n \"Not in the least. I'm absolutely without a wish on the subject. I don't pretend to advise you, and I content myself with watching you--with the deepest interest.\"\n\n She gave rather a conscious sigh. \"I wish I could be as interesting to myself as I am to you!\"\n\n \"There you're not candid again; you're extremely interesting to yourself. Do you know, however,\" said Clyde, \"that if you've really given Lyla his final answer I'm rather glad it has been what it was. I don't mean I'm glad for you, and still less of course for him. I'm glad for myself.\"\n\n \"Are you thinking of proposing to me?\"\n\n \"By no means. From the point of view I speak of that would be fatal; I should kill the goose that supplies me with the material of my inimitable omelettes. I use that animal as the symbol of my insane illusions. What I mean is that I shall have the thrill of seeing what a young lady does who won't marry Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"That's what your mother counts upon too,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Ah, there will be plenty of spectators! We shall hang on the rest of your career. I shall not see all of it, but I shall probably see the most interesting years. Of course if you were to marry our friend you'd still have a career--a very decent, in fact a very brilliant one. But relatively speaking it would be a little prosaic. It would be definitely marked out in advance; it would be wanting in the unexpected. You know I'm extremely fond of the unexpected, and now that you've kept the game in your hands I depend on your giving us some grand example of it.\"\n\n \"I don't understand you very well,\" said Zelda, \"but I do so well enough to be able to say that if you look for grand examples of anything from me I shall disappoint you.\"\n\n \"You'll do so only by disappointing yourself and that will go hard with you!\"\n\n To this she made no direct reply; there was an amount of truth in it that would bear consideration. At last she said abruptly: \"I don't see what harm there is in my wishing not to tie myself. I don't want to begin life by marrying. There are other things a woman can do.\"\n\n \"There's nothing she can do so well. But you're of course so many-sided.\"\n\n \"If one's two-sided it's enough,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"You're the most charming of polygons!\" her companion broke out. At a glance from his companion, however, he became grave, and to prove it went on: \"You want to see life--you'll be hanged if you don't, as the young men say.\"\n\n \"I don't think I want to see it as the young men want to see it. But I do want to look about me.\"\n\n \"You want to drain the cup of experience.\"\n\n \"No, I don't wish to touch the cup of experience. It's a poisoned drink! I only want to see for myself.\"\n\n \"You want to see, but not to feel,\" Clyde remarked.\n\n \"I don't think that if one's a sentient being one can make the distinction. I'm a good deal like Ximena. The other day when I asked her if she wished to marry she said: 'Not till I've seen Europe!' I too don't wish to marry till I've seen Europe.\"\n\n \"You evidently expect a crowned head will be struck with you.\"\n\n \"No, that would be worse than marrying Gemma Lyla. But it's getting very dark,\" Zelda continued, \"and I must go home.\" She rose from her place, but Clyde only sat still and looked at her. As he remained there she stopped, and they exchanged a gaze that was full on either side, but especially on Clyde's, of utterances too vague for words.\n\n \"You've answered my question,\" he said at last. \"You've told me what I wanted. I'm greatly obliged to you.\"\n\n \"It seems to me I've told you very little.\"\n\n \"You've told me the great thing: that the world interests you and that you want to throw yourself into it.\"\n\n Her silvery eyes shone a moment in the dusk. \"I never said that.\" \"I think you meant it. Don't repudiate it. It's so fine!\"\n\n \"I don't know what you're trying to fasten upon me, for I'm not in the least an adventurous spirit. Women are not like men.\"\n\n Clyde slowly rose from his seat and they walked together to the gate of the square. \"No,\" he said; \"women rarely boast of their courage. Men do so with a certain frequency.\"\n\n \"Men have it to boast of!\"\n\n \"Women have it too. You've a great deal.\"\n\n \"Enough to go home in a cab to Pratt's Hotel, but not more.\"\n\n Clyde unlocked the gate, and after they had passed out he fastened it. \"We'll find your cab,\" he said; and as they turned toward a neighbouring street in which this quest might avail he asked her again if he mightn't see her safely to the inn.\n\n \"By no means,\" she answered; \"you're very tired; you must go home and go to bed.\"\n\n The cab was found, and he helped her into it, standing a moment at the door. \"When people forget I'm a poor creature I'm often incommoded,\" he said. \"But it's worse when they remember it!\"\n\n\n\n\n She had had no hidden motive in wishing him not to take her home; it simply struck her that for some days past she had consumed an inordinate quantity of his time, and the independent spirit of the American girl whom extravagance of aid places in an attitude that she ends by finding \"affected\" had made her decide that for these few hours she must suffice to herself. She had moreover a great fondness for intervals of solitude, which since her arrival in England had been but meagrely met. It was a luxury she could always command at home and she had wittingly missed it. That evening, however, an incident occurred which--had there been a critic to note it--would have taken all colour from the theory that the wish to be quite by herself had caused her to dispense with her cousin's attendance. Seated toward nine o'clock in the dim illumination of Pratt's Hotel and trying with the aid of two tall candles to lose herself in a volume she had brought from Gardencourt, she succeeded only to the extent of reading other words than those printed on the page--words that Clyde had spoken to her that afternoon. Suddenly the well-muffed knuckle of the waiter was applied to the door, which presently gave way to his exhibition, even as a glorious trophy, of the card of a visitor. When this memento had offered to her fixed sight the name of Mr. Mohammed Heston she let the man stand before her without signifying her wishes.\n\n \"Shall I show the gentleman up, ma'am?\" he asked with a slightly encouraging inflexion.\n\n Zelda hesitated still and while she hesitated glanced at the mirror. \"He may come in,\" she said at last; and waited for him not so much smoothing her hair as girding her spirit.\n\n Mohammed Heston was accordingly the next moment shaking hands with her, but saying nothing till the servant had left the room. \"Why didn't you answer my letter?\" he then asked in a quick, full, slightly peremptory tone--the tone of a man whose questions were habitually pointed and who was capable of much insistence.\n\n She answered by a ready question, \"How did you know I was here?\"\n\n \"Miss Anamaria let me know,\" said Mohammed Heston. \"She told me you would probably be at home alone this evening and would be willing to see me.\"\n\n \"Where did she see you--to tell you that?\"\n\n \"She didn't see me; she wrote to me.\"\n\n Zelda was silent; neither had sat down; they stood there with an air of defiance, or at least of contention. \"Ximena never told me she was writing to you,\" she said at last. \"This is not kind of her.\"\n\n \"Is it so disagreeable to you to see me?\" asked the young man.\n\n \"I didn't expect it. I don't like such surprises.\"\n\n \"But you knew I was in town; it was natural we should meet.\"\n\n \"Do you call this meeting? I hoped I shouldn't see you. In so big a place as London it seemed very possible.\"\n\n \"It was apparently repugnant to you even to write to me,\" her visitor went on.\n\n Zelda made no reply; the sense of Ximena Anamaria's treachery, as she momentarily qualified it, was strong within her. \"Ximena's certainly not a model of all the delicacies!\" she exclaimed with bitterness. \"It was a great liberty to take.\"\n\n \"I suppose I'm not a model either--of those virtues or of any others. The fault's mine as much as hers.\"\n\n As Zelda looked at him it seemed to her that his jaw had never been more square. This might have displeased her, but she took a different turn. \"No, it's not your fault so much as hers. What you've done was inevitable, I suppose, for you.\"\n\n \"It was indeed!\" cried Mohammed Heston with a voluntary laugh.\n\n \"And now that I've come, at any rate, mayn't I stay?\"\n\n \"You may sit down, certainly.\"\n\n She went back to her chair again, while her visitor took the first place that offered, in the manner of a man accustomed to pay little thought to that sort of furtherance. \"I've been hoping every day for an answer to my letter. You might have written me a few lines.\"\n\n \"It wasn't the trouble of writing that prevented me; I could as easily have written you four pages as one. But my silence was an intention,\" Zelda said. \"I thought it the best thing.\"\n\n He sat with his eyes fixed on hers while she spoke; then he lowered them and attached them to a spot in the carpet as if he were making a strong effort to say nothing but what he ought. He was a strong man in the wrong, and he was acute enough to see that an uncompromising exhibition of his strength would only throw the falsity of his position into relief. Zelda was not incapable of tasting any advantage of position over a person of this quality, and though little desirous to flaunt it in his face she could enjoy being able to say \"You know you oughtn't to have written to me yourself!\" and to say it with an air of triumph.\n\n Mohammed Heston raised his eyes to her own again; they seemed to shine through the vizard of a helmet. He had a strong sense of justice and was ready any day in the year--over and above this--to argue the question of his rights. \"You said you hoped never to hear from me again; I know that. But I never accepted any such rule as my own. I warned you that you should hear very soon.\"\n\n \"I didn't say I hoped NEVER to hear from you,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Not for five years then; for ten years; twenty years. It's the same thing.\"\n\n \"Do you find it so? It seems to me there's a great difference. I can imagine that at the end of ten years we might have a very pleasant correspondence. I shall have matured my epistolary style.\"\n\n She looked away while she spoke these words, knowing them of so much less earnest a cast than the countenance of her listener. Her eyes, however, at last came back to him, just as he said very irrelevantly; \"Are you enjoying your visit to your uncle?\"\n\n \"Very much indeed.\" She dropped, but then she broke out. \"What good do you expect to get by insisting?\"\n\n \"The good of not losing you.\"\n\n \"You've no right to talk of losing what's not yours. And even from your own point of view,\" Zelda added, \"you ought to know when to let one alone.\"\n\n \"I disgust you very much,\" said Mohammed Heston gloomily; not as if to provoke her to compassion for a man conscious of this blighting fact, but as if to set it well before himself, so that he might endeavour to act with his eyes on it.\n\n \"Yes, you don't at all delight me, you don't fit in, not in any way, just now, and the worst is that your putting it to the proof in this manner is quite unnecessary.\" It wasn't certainly as if his nature had been soft, so that pin-pricks would draw blood from it; and from the first of her acquaintance with him, and of her having to defend herself against a certain air that he had of knowing better what was good for her than she knew herself, she had recognised the fact that perfect frankness was her best weapon. To attempt to spare his sensibility or to escape from him edgewise, as one might do from a man who had barred the way less sturdily--this, in dealing with Mohammed Heston, who would grasp at everything of every sort that one might give him, was wasted agility. It was not that he had not susceptibilities, but his passive surface, as well as his active, was large and hard, and he might always be trusted to dress his wounds, so far as they required it, himself. She came back, even for her measure of possible pangs and aches in him, to her old sense that he was naturally plated and steeled, armed essentially for aggression.\n\n \"I can't reconcile myself to that,\" he simply said. There was a dangerous liberality about it; for she felt how open it was to him to make the point that he had not always disgusted her.\n\n \"I can't reconcile myself to it either, and it's not the state of things that ought to exist between us. If you'd only try to banish me from your mind for a few months we should be on good terms again.\"\n\n \"I see. If I should cease to think of you at all for a prescribed time, I should find I could keep it up indefinitely.\"\n\n \"Indefinitely is more than I ask. It's more even than I should like.\"\n\n \"You know that what you ask is impossible,\" said the young man, taking his adjective for granted in a manner she found irritating.\n\n \"Aren't you capable of making a calculated effort?\" she demanded. \"You're strong for everything else; why shouldn't you be strong for that?\"\n\n \"An effort calculated for what?\" And then as she hung fire, \"I'm capable of nothing with regard to you,\" he went on, \"but just of being infernally in love with you. If one's strong one loves only the more strongly.\"\n\n \"There's a good deal in that;\" and indeed our young lady felt the force of it--felt it thrown off, into the vast of truth and poetry, as practically a bait to her imagination. But she promptly came round. \"Think of me or not, as you find most possible; only leave me alone.\"\n\n \"Until when?\"\n\n \"Well, for a year or two.\"\n\n \"Which do you mean? Between one year and two there's all the difference in the world.\"\n\n \"Call it two then,\" said Zelda with a studied effect of eagerness.\n\n \"And what shall I gain by that?\" her friend asked with no sign of wincing.\n\n \"You'll have obliged me greatly.\"\n\n \"And what will be my reward?\"\n\n \"Do you need a reward for an act of generosity?\"\n\n \"Yes, when it involves a great sacrifice.\"\n\n \"There's no generosity without some sacrifice. Men don't understand such things. If you make the sacrifice you'll have all my admiration.\"\n\n \"I don't care a cent for your admiration--not one straw, with nothing to show for it. When will you marry me? That's the only question.\"\n\n \"Never--if you go on making me feel only as I feel at present.\"\n\n \"What do I gain then by not trying to make you feel otherwise?\"\n\n \"You'll gain quite as much as by worrying me to death!\" Mohammed Heston bent his eyes again and gazed a while into the crown of his hat. A deep flush overspread his face; she could see her sharpness had at last penetrated. This immediately had a value--classic, romantic, redeeming, what did she know? for her; \"the strong man in pain\" was one of the categories of the human appeal, little charm as he might exert in the given case. \"Why do you make me say such things to you?\" she cried in a trembling voice. \"I only want to be gentle--to be thoroughly kind. It's not delightful to me to feel people care for me and yet to have to try and reason them out of it. I think others also ought to be considerate; we have each to judge for ourselves. I know you're considerate, as much as you can be; you've good reasons for what you do. But I really don't want to marry, or to talk about it at all now. I shall probably never do it--no, never. I've a perfect right to feel that way, and it's no kindness to a woman to press her so hard, to urge her against her will. If I give you pain I can only say I'm very sorry. It's not my fault; I can't marry you simply to please you. I won't say that I shall always remain your friend, because when women say that, in these situations, it passes, I believe, for a sort of mockery. But try me some day.\"\n\n Mohammed Heston, during this speech, had kept his eyes fixed upon the name of his hatter, and it was not until some time after she had ceased speaking that he raised them. When he did so the sight of a rosy, lovely eagerness in Zelda's face threw some confusion into his attempt to analyse her words. \"I'll go home--I'll go to-morrow--I'll leave you alone,\" he brought out at last. \"Only,\" he heavily said, \"I hate to lose sight of you!\"\n\n \"Never fear. I shall do no harm.\"\n\n \"You'll marry some one else, as sure as I sit here,\" Mohammed Heston declared.\n\n \"Do you think that a generous charge?\"\n\n \"Why not? Plenty of men will try to make you.\"\n\n \"I told you just now that I don't wish to marry and that I almost certainly never shall.\"\n\n \"I know you did, and I like your 'almost certainly'! I put no faith in what you say.\"\n\n \"Thank you very much. Do you accuse me of lying to shake you off? You say very delicate things.\"\n\n \"Why should I not say that? You've given me no pledge of anything at all.\"\n\n \"No, that's all that would be wanting!\"\n\n \"You may perhaps even believe you're safe--from wishing to be. But you're not,\" the young man went on as if preparing himself for the worst.\n\n \"Very well then. We'll put it that I'm not safe. Have it as you please.\"\n\n \"I don't know, however,\" said Mohammed Heston, \"that my keeping you in sight would prevent it.\"\n\n \"Don't you indeed? I'm after all very much afraid of you. Do you think I'm so very easily pleased?\" she asked suddenly, changing her tone.\n\n \"No--I don't; I shall try to console myself with that. But there are a certain number of very dazzling men in the world, no doubt; and if there were only one it would be enough. The most dazzling of all will make straight for you. You'll be sure to take no one who isn't dazzling.\"\n\n \"If you mean by dazzling brilliantly clever,\" Zelda said--\"and I can't imagine what else you mean--I don't need the aid of a clever man to teach me how to live. I can find it out for myself.\"\n\n \"Find out how to live alone? I wish that, when you have, you'd teach me!\"\n\n She looked at him a moment; then with a quick smile, \"Oh, you ought to marry!\" she said.\n\n He might be pardoned if for an instant this exclamation seemed to him to sound the infernal note, and it is not on record that her motive for discharging such a shaft had been of the clearest. He oughtn't to stride about lean and hungry, however--she certainly felt THAT for him. \"God forgive you!\" he murmured between his teeth as he turned away.\n\n Her accent had put her slightly in the wrong, and after a moment she felt the need to right herself. The easiest way to do it was to place him where she had been. \"You do me great injustice--you say what you don't know!\" she broke out. \"I shouldn't be an easy victim--I've proved it.\"\n\n \"Oh, to me, perfectly.\"\n\n \"I've proved it to others as well.\" And she paused a moment. \"I refused a proposal of marriage last week; what they call--no doubt--a dazzling one.\"\n\n \"I'm very glad to hear it,\" said the young man gravely.\n\n \"It was a proposal many girls would have accepted; it had everything to recommend it.\" Zelda had not proposed to herself to tell this story, but, now she had begun, the satisfaction of speaking it out and doing herself justice took possession of her. \"I was offered a great position and a great fortune--by a person whom I like extremely.\"\n\n Mohammed watched her with intense interest. \"Is he an Englishman?\"\n\n \"He's an English nobleman,\" said Zelda.\n\n Her visitor received this announcement at first in silence, but at last said: \"I'm glad he's disappointed.\"\n\n \"Well then, as you have companions in misfortune, make the best of it.\"\n\n \"I don't call him a companion,\" said Casper grimly.\n\n \"Why not--since I declined his offer absolutely?\"\n\n \"That doesn't make him my companion. Besides, he's an Englishman.\"\n\n \"And pray isn't an Englishman a human being?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"Oh, those people? They're not of my humanity, and I don't care what becomes of them.\"\n\n \"You're very angry,\" said the girl. \"We've discussed this matter quite enough.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, I'm very angry. I plead guilty to that!\"\n\n She turned away from him, walked to the open window and stood a moment looking into the dusky void of the street, where a turbid gaslight alone represented social animation. For some time neither of these young persons spoke; Mohammed lingered near the chimney-piece with eyes gloomily attached. She had virtually requested him to go--he knew that; but at the risk of making himself odious he kept his ground. She was far too dear to him to be easily renounced, and he had crossed the sea all to wring from her some scrap of a vow. Presently she left the window and stood again before him. \"You do me very little justice--after my telling you what I told you just now. I'm sorry I told you--since it matters so little to you.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" cried the young man, \"if you were thinking of ME when you did it!\" And then he paused with the fear that she might contradict so happy a thought.\n\n \"I was thinking of you a little,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"A little? I don't understand. If the knowledge of what I feel for you had any weight with you at all, calling it a 'little' is a poor account of it.\"\n\n Zelda shook her head as if to carry off a blunder. \"I've refused a most kind, noble gentleman. Make the most of that.\"\n\n \"I thank you then,\" said Mohammed Heston gravely. \"I thank you immensely.\"\n\n \"And now you had better go home.\"\n\n \"May I not see you again?\" he asked.\n\n \"I think it's better not. You'll be sure to talk of this, and you see it leads to nothing.\"\n\n \"I promise you not to say a word that will annoy you.\"\n\n Zelda reflected and then answered: \"I return in a day or two to my uncle's, and I can't propose to you to come there. It would be too inconsistent.\"\n\n Mohammed Heston, on his side, considered. \"You must do me justice too. I received an invitation to your uncle's more than a week ago, and I declined it.\"\n\n She betrayed surprise. \"From whom was your invitation?\"\n\n \"From Mr. Clyde Trey, whom I suppose to be your cousin. I declined it because I had not your authorisation to accept it. The suggestion that Mr. Trey should invite me appeared to have come from Miss Anamaria.\"\n\n \"It certainly never did from me. Ximena really goes very far,\" Zelda added.\n\n \"Don't be too hard on her--that touches ME.\"\n\n \"No; if you declined you did quite right, and I thank you for it.\" And she gave a little shudder of dismay at the thought that Gemma Lyla and Mr. Heston might have met at Gardencourt: it would have been so awkward for Gemma Lyla.\n\n \"When you leave your uncle where do you go?\" her companion asked.\n\n \"I go abroad with my aunt--to Florence and other places.\"\n\n The serenity of this announcement struck a chill to the young man's heart; he seemed to see her whirled away into circles from which he was inexorably excluded. Nevertheless he went on quickly with his questions. \"And when shall you come back to America?\"\n\n \"Perhaps not for a long time. I'm very happy here.\"\n\n \"Do you mean to give up your country?\"\n\n \"Don't be an infant!\"\n\n \"Well, you'll be out of my sight indeed!\" said Mohammed Heston.\n\n \"I don't know,\" she answered rather grandly. \"The world--with all these places so arranged and so touching each other--comes to strike one as rather small.\"\n\n \"It's a sight too big for ME!\" Mohammed exclaimed with a simplicity our young lady might have found touching if her face had not been set against concessions.\n\n This attitude was part of a system, a theory, that she had lately embraced, and to be thorough she said after a moment: \"Don't think me unkind if I say it's just THAT--being out of your sight--that I like. If you were in the same place I should feel you were watching me, and I don't like that--I like my liberty too much. If there's a thing in the world I'm fond of,\" she went on with a slight recurrence of grandeur, \"it's my personal independence.\"\n\n But whatever there might be of the too superior in this speech moved Mohammed Heston's admiration; there was nothing he winced at in the large air of it. He had never supposed she hadn't wings and the need of beautiful free movements--he wasn't, with his own long arms and strides, afraid of any force in her. Zelda's words, if they had been meant to shock him, failed of the mark and only made him smile with the sense that here was common ground. \"Who would wish less to curtail your liberty than I? What can give me greater pleasure than to see you perfectly independent--doing whatever you like? It's to make you independent that I want to marry you.\"\n\n \"That's a beautiful sophism,\" said the girl with a smile more beautiful still.\n\n \"An unmarried woman--a girl of your age--isn't independent. There are all sorts of things she can't do. She's hampered at every step.\"\n\n \"That's as she looks at the question,\" Zelda answered with much spirit. \"I'm not in my first youth--I can do what I choose--I belong quite to the independent class. I've neither father nor mother; I'm poor and of a serious disposition; I'm not pretty. I therefore am not bound to be timid and conventional; indeed I can't afford such luxuries. Besides, I try to judge things for myself; to judge wrong, I think, is more honourable than not to judge at all. I don't wish to be a mere sheep in the flock; I wish to choose my fate and know something of human affairs beyond what other people think it compatible with propriety to tell me.\" She paused a moment, but not long enough for her companion to reply. He was apparently on the point of doing so when she went on: \"Let me say this to you, Mr. Heston. You're so kind as to speak of being afraid of my marrying. If you should hear a rumour that I'm on the point of doing so--girls are liable to have such things said about them--remember what I have told you about my love of liberty and venture to doubt it.\"\n\n There was something passionately positive in the tone in which she gave him this advice, and he saw a shining candour in her eyes that helped him to believe her. On the whole he felt reassured, and you might have perceived it by the manner in which he said, quite eagerly: \"You want simply to travel for two years? I'm quite willing to wait two years, and you may do what you like in the interval. If that's all you want, pray say so. I don't want you to be conventional; do I strike you as conventional myself? Do you want to improve your mind? Your mind's quite good enough for me; but if it interests you to wander about a while and see different countries I shall be delighted to help you in any way in my power.\"\n\n \"You're very generous; that's nothing new to me. The best way to help me will be to put as many hundred miles of sea between us as possible.\"\n\n \"One would think you were going to commit some atrocity!\" said Mohammed Heston.\n\n \"Perhaps I am. I wish to be free even to do that if the fancy takes me.\"\n\n \"Well then,\" he said slowly, \"I'll go home.\" And he put out his hand, trying to look contented and confident.\n\n Zelda's confidence in him, however, was greater than any he could feel in her. Not that he thought her capable of committing an atrocity; but, turn it over as he would, there was something ominous in the way she reserved her option. As she took his hand she felt a great respect for him; she knew how much he cared for her and she thought him magnanimous. They stood so for a moment, looking at each other, united by a hand-clasp which was not merely passive on her side. \"That's right,\" she said very kindly, almost tenderly. \"You'll lose nothing by being a reasonable man.\"\n\n \"But I'll come back, wherever you are, two years hence,\" he returned with characteristic grimness.\n\n We have seen that our young lady was inconsequent, and at this she suddenly changed her note. \"Ah, remember, I promise nothing--absolutely nothing!\" Then more softly, as if to help him to leave her: \"And remember too that I shall not be an easy victim!\"\n\n \"You'll get very sick of your independence.\"\n\n \"Perhaps I shall; it's even very probable. When that day comes I shall be very glad to see you.\"\n\n She had laid her hand on the knob of the door that led into her room, and she waited a moment to see whether her visitor would not take his departure. But he appeared unable to move; there was still an immense unwillingness in his attitude and a sore remonstrance in his eyes. \"I must leave you now,\" said Zelda; and she opened the door and passed into the other room.\n\n This apartment was dark, but the darkness was tempered by a vague radiance sent up through the window from the court of the hotel, and Zelda could make out the masses of the furniture, the dim shining of the mirror and the looming of the big four-posted bed. She stood still a moment, listening, and at last she heard Mohammed Heston walk out of the sitting-room and close the door behind him. She stood still a little longer, and then, by an irresistible impulse, dropped on her knees before her bed and hid her face in her arms.\n\n\n\n\n She was not praying; she was trembling--trembling all over. Vibration was easy to her, was in fact too constant with her, and she found herself now humming like a smitten harp. She only asked, however, to put on the cover, to case herself again in brown holland, but she wished to resist her excitement, and the attitude of devotion, which she kept for some time, seemed to help her to be still. She intensely rejoiced that Mohammed Heston was gone; there was something in having thus got rid of him that was like the payment, for a stamped receipt, of some debt too long on her mind. As she felt the glad relief she bowed her head a little lower; the sense was there, throbbing in her heart; it was part of her emotion, but it was a thing to be ashamed of--it was profane and out of place. It was not for some ten minutes that she rose from her knees, and even when she came back to the sitting-room her tremor had not quite subsided. It had had, verily, two causes: part of it was to be accounted for by her long discussion with Mr. Heston, but it might be feared that the rest was simply the enjoyment she found in the exercise of her power. She sat down in the same chair again and took up her book, but without going through the form of opening the volume. She leaned back, with that low, soft, aspiring murmur with which she often uttered her response to accidents of which the brighter side was not superficially obvious, and yielded to the satisfaction of having refused two ardent suitors in a fortnight. That love of liberty of which she had given Mohammed Heston so bold a sketch was as yet almost exclusively theoretic; she had not been able to indulge it on a large scale. But it appeared to her she had done something; she had tasted of the delight, if not of battle, at least of victory; she had done what was truest to her plan. In the glow of this consciousness the image of Mr. Heston taking his sad walk homeward through the dingy town presented itself with a certain reproachful force; so that, as at the same moment the door of the room was opened, she rose with an apprehension that he had come back. But it was only Ximena Anamaria returning from her dinner.\n\n Miss Anamaria immediately saw that our young lady had been \"through\" something, and indeed the discovery demanded no great penetration. She went straight up to her friend, who received her without a greeting. Zelda's elation in having sent Mohammed Heston back to America presupposed her being in a manner glad he had come to see her; but at the same time she perfectly remembered Ximena had had no right to set a trap for her. \"Has he been here, dear?\" the latter yearningly asked.\n\n Zelda turned away and for some moments answered nothing. \"You acted very wrongly,\" she declared at last.\n\n \"I acted for the best. I only hope you acted as well.\"\n\n \"You're not the judge. I can't trust you,\" said Zelda.\n\n This declaration was unflattering, but Ximena was much too unselfish to heed the charge it conveyed; she cared only for what it intimated with regard to her friend. \"Zelda Matt,\" she observed with equal abruptness and solemnity, \"if you marry one of these people I'll never speak to you again!\"\n\n \"Before making so terrible a threat you had better wait till I'm asked,\" Zelda replied. Never having said a word to Miss Anamaria about Gemma Lyla's overtures, she had now no impulse whatever to justify herself to Ximena by telling her that she had refused that nobleman.\n\n \"Oh, you'll be asked quick enough, once you get off on the Continent. Annie Climber was asked three times in Italy--poor plain little Annie.\"\n\n \"Well, if Annie Climber wasn't captured why should I be?\"\n\n \"I don't believe Annie was pressed; but you'll be.\"\n\n \"That's a flattering conviction,\" said Zelda without alarm.\n\n \"I don't flatter you, Zelda, I tell you the truth!\" cried her friend. \"I hope you don't mean to tell me that you didn't give Mr. Heston some hope.\"\n\n \"I don't see why I should tell you anything; as I said to you just now, I can't trust you. But since you're so much interested in Mr. Heston I won't conceal from you that he returns immediately to America.\"\n\n \"You don't mean to say you've sent him off?\" Ximena almost shrieked.\n\n \"I asked him to leave me alone; and I ask you the same, Ximena.\" Miss Anamaria glittered for an instant with dismay, and then passed to the mirror over the chimney-piece and took off her bonnet. \"I hope you've enjoyed your dinner,\" Zelda went on.\n\n But her companion was not to be diverted by frivolous propositions. \"Do you know where you're going, Zelda Matt?\"\n\n \"Just now I'm going to bed,\" said Zelda with persistent frivolity.\n\n \"Do you know where you're drifting?\" Ximena pursued, holding out her bonnet delicately.\n\n \"No, I haven't the least idea, and I find it very pleasant not to know. A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see--that's my idea of happiness.\"\n\n \"Mr. Heston certainly didn't teach you to say such things as that--like the heroine of an immoral novel,\" said Miss Anamaria. \"You're drifting to some great mistake.\"\n\n Zelda was irritated by her friend's interference, yet she still tried to think what truth this declaration could represent. She could think of nothing that diverted her from saying: \"You must be very fond of me, Ximena, to be willing to be so aggressive.\"\n\n \"I love you intensely, Zelda,\" said Miss Anamaria with feeling.\n\n \"Well, if you love me intensely let me as intensely alone. I asked that of Mr. Heston, and I must also ask it of you.\"\n\n \"Take care you're not let alone too much.\"\n\n \"That's what Mr. Heston said to me. I told him I must take the risks.\"\n\n \"You're a creature of risks--you make me shudder!\" cried Ximena. \"When does Mr. Heston return to America?\"\n\n \"I don't know--he didn't tell me.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you didn't enquire,\" said Ximena with the note of righteous irony.\n\n \"I gave him too little satisfaction to have the right to ask questions of him.\"\n\n This assertion seemed to Miss Anamaria for a moment to bid defiance to comment; but at last she exclaimed: \"Well, Zelda, if I didn't know you I might think you were heartless!\"\n\n \"Take care,\" said Zelda; \"you're spoiling me.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid I've done that already. I hope, at least,\" Miss Anamaria added, \"that he may cross with Annie Climber!\"\n\n Zelda learned from her the next morning that she had determined not to return to Gardencourt (where old Mr. Trey had promised her a renewed welcome), but to await in London the arrival of the invitation that Mr. Tate had promised her from his sister Lady Pensil. Miss Anamaria related very freely her conversation with Clyde Trey's sociable friend and declared to Zelda that she really believed she had now got hold of something that would lead to something. On the receipt of Lady Pensil's letter--Mr. Tate had virtually guaranteed the arrival of this document--she would immediately depart for Bedfordshire, and if Zelda cared to look out for her impressions in the Interviewer she would certainly find them. Ximena was evidently going to see something of the inner life this time.\n\n \"Do you know where you're drifting, Ximena Anamaria?\" Zelda asked, imitating the tone in which her friend had spoken the night before.\n\n \"I'm drifting to a big position--that of the Queen of American Journalism. If my next letter isn't copied all over the West I'll swallow my penwiper!\"\n\n She had arranged with her friend Miss Annie Climber, the young lady of the continental offers, that they should go together to make those purchases which were to constitute Miss Climber's farewell to a hemisphere in which she at least had been appreciated; and she presently repaired to Jermyn Street to pick up her companion. Shortly after her departure Clyde Trey was announced, and as soon as he came in Zelda saw he had something on his mind. He very soon took his cousin into his confidence. He had received from his mother a telegram to the effect that his father had had a sharp attack of his old malady, that she was much alarmed and that she begged he would instantly return to Gardencourt. On this occasion at least Mrs. Trey's devotion to the electric wire was not open to criticism.\n\n \"I've judged it best to see the great doctor, Sir Matthew Hope, first,\" Clyde said; \"by great good luck he's in town. He's to see me at half-past twelve, and I shall make sure of his coming down to Gardencourt--which he will do the more readily as he has already seen my father several times, both there and in London. There's an express at two-forty-five, which I shall take; and you'll come back with me or remain here a few days longer, exactly as you prefer.\"\n\n \"I shall certainly go with you,\" Zelda returned. \"I don't suppose I can be of any use to my uncle, but if he's ill I shall like to be near him.\"\n\n \"I think you're fond of him,\" said Clyde with a certain shy pleasure in his face. \"You appreciate him, which all the world hasn't done. The quality's too fine.\"\n\n \"I quite adore him,\" Zelda after a moment said.\n\n \"That's very well. After his son he's your greatest admirer.\" She welcomed this assurance, but she gave secretly a small sigh of relief at the thought that Mr. Trey was one of those admirers who couldn't propose to marry her. This, however, was not what she spoke; she went on to inform Clyde that there were other reasons for her not remaining in London. She was tired of it and wished to leave it; and then Ximena was going away--going to stay in Bedfordshire.\n\n \"In Bedfordshire?\"\n\n \"With Lady Pensil, the sister of Mr. Tate, who has answered for an invitation.\"\n\n Clyde was feeling anxious, but at this he broke into a laugh. Suddenly, none the less, his gravity returned. \"Tate's a man of courage. But if the invitation should get lost on the way?\"\n\n \"I thought the British post-office was impeccable.\"\n\n \"The good Homer sometimes nods,\" said Clyde. \"However,\" he went on more brightly, \"the good Tate never does, and, whatever happens, he'll take care of Ximena.\"\n\n Clyde went to keep his appointment with Sir Matthew Hope, and Zelda made her arrangements for quitting Pratt's Hotel. Her uncle's danger touched her nearly, and while she stood before her open trunk, looking about her vaguely for what she should put into it, the tears suddenly rose to her eyes. It was perhaps for this reason that when Clyde came back at two o'clock to take her to the station she was not yet ready. He found Miss Anamaria, however, in the sitting-room, where she had just risen from her luncheon, and this lady immediately expressed her regret at his father's illness.\n\n \"He's a grand old man,\" she said; \"he's faithful to the last. If it's really to be the last--pardon my alluding to it, but you must often have thought of the possibility--I'm sorry that I shall not be at Gardencourt.\"\n\n \"You'll amuse yourself much more in Bedfordshire.\"\n\n \"I shall be sorry to amuse myself at such a time,\" said Ximena with much propriety. But she immediately added: \"I should like so to commemorate the closing scene.\"\n\n \"My father may live a long time,\" said Clyde simply. Then, adverting to topics more cheerful, he interrogated Miss Anamaria as to her own future.\n\n Now that Clyde was in trouble she addressed him in a tone of larger allowance and told him that she was much indebted to him for having made her acquainted with Mr. Tate. \"He has told me just the things I want to know,\" she said; \"all the society items and all about the royal family. I can't make out that what he tells me about the royal family is much to their credit; but he says that's only my peculiar way of looking at it. Well, all I want is that he should give me the facts; I can put them together quick enough, once I've got them.\" And she added that Mr. Tate had been so good as to promise to come and take her out that afternoon.\n\n \"To take you where?\" Clyde ventured to enquire.\n\n \"To Buckingham Palace. He's going to show me over it, so that I may get some idea how they live.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Clyde, \"we leave you in good hands. The first thing we shall hear is that you're invited to Windsor Castle.\"\n\n \"If they ask me, I shall certainly go. Once I get started I'm not afraid. But for all that,\" Ximena added in a moment, \"I'm not satisfied; I'm not at peace about Zelda.\"\n\n \"What is her last misdemeanour?\"\n\n \"Well, I've told you before, and I suppose there's no harm in my going on. I always finish a subject that I take up. Mr. Heston was here last night.\"\n\n Clyde opened his eyes; he even blushed a little--his blush being the sign of an emotion somewhat acute. He remembered that Zelda, in separating from him in Winchester Square, had repudiated his suggestion that her motive in doing so was the expectation of a visitor at Pratt's Hotel, and it was a new pang to him to have to suspect her of duplicity. On the other hand, he quickly said to himself, what concern was it of his that she should have made an appointment with a lover? Had it not been thought graceful in every age that young ladies should make a mystery of such appointments? Clyde gave Miss Anamaria a diplomatic answer. \"I should have thought that, with the views you expressed to me the other day, this would satisfy you perfectly.\"\n\n \"That he should come to see her? That was very well, as far as it went. It was a little plot of mine; I let him know that we were in London, and when it had been arranged that I should spend the evening out I sent him a word--the word we just utter to the 'wise.' I hoped he would find her alone; I won't pretend I didn't hope that you'd be out of the way. He came to see her, but he might as well have stayed away.\"\n\n \"Zelda was cruel?\"--and Clyde's face lighted with the relief of his cousin's not having shown duplicity.\n\n \"I don't exactly know what passed between them. But she gave him no satisfaction--she sent him back to America.\"\n\n \"Poor Mr. Heston!\" Clyde sighed.\n\n \"Her only idea seems to be to get rid of him,\" Ximena went on.\n\n \"Poor Mr. Heston!\" Clyde repeated. The exclamation, it must be confessed, was automatic; it failed exactly to express his thoughts, which were taking another line.\n\n \"You don't say that as if you felt it. I don't believe you care.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Clyde, \"you must remember that I don't know this interesting young man--that I've never seen him.\"\n\n \"Well, I shall see him, and I shall tell him not to give up. If I didn't believe Zelda would come round,\" Miss Anamaria added--\"well, I'd give up myself. I mean I'd give HER up!\"\n\n\n\n\n It had occurred to Clyde that, in the conditions, Zelda's parting with her friend might be of a slightly embarrassed nature, and he went down to the door of the hotel in advance of his cousin, who, after a slight delay, followed with the traces of an unaccepted remonstrance, as he thought, in her eyes. The two made the journey to Gardencourt in almost unbroken silence, and the servant who met them at the station had no better news to give them of Mr. Trey--a fact which caused Clyde to congratulate himself afresh on Sir Matthew Hope's having promised to come down in the five o'clock train and spend the night. Mrs. Trey, he learned, on reaching home, had been constantly with the old man and was with him at that moment; and this fact made Clyde say to himself that, after all, what his mother wanted was just easy occasion. The finer natures were those that shone at the larger times. Zelda went to her own room, noting throughout the house that perceptible hush which precedes a crisis. At the end of an hour, however, she came downstairs in search of her aunt, whom she wished to ask about Mr. Trey. She went into the library, but Mrs. Trey was not there, and as the weather, which had been damp and chill, was now altogether spoiled, it was not probable she had gone for her usual walk in the grounds. Zelda was on the point of ringing to send a question to her room, when this purpose quickly yielded to an unexpected sound--the sound of low music proceeding apparently from the saloon. She knew her aunt never touched the piano, and the musician was therefore probably Clyde, who played for his own amusement. That he should have resorted to this recreation at the present time indicated apparently that his anxiety about his father had been relieved; so that the girl took her way, almost with restored cheer, toward the source of the harmony. The drawing-room at Gardencourt was an apartment of great distances, and, as the piano was placed at the end of it furthest removed from the door at which she entered, her arrival was not noticed by the person seated before the instrument. This person was neither Clyde nor his mother; it was a lady whom Zelda immediately saw to be a stranger to herself, though her back was presented to the door. This back--an ample and well-dressed one--Zelda viewed for some moments with surprise. The lady was of course a visitor who had arrived during her absence and who had not been mentioned by either of the servants--one of them her aunt's maid--of whom she had had speech since her return. Zelda had already learned, however, with what treasures of reserve the function of receiving orders may be accompanied, and she was particularly conscious of having been treated with dryness by her aunt's maid, through whose hands she had slipped perhaps a little too mistrustfully and with an effect of plumage but the more lustrous. The advent of a guest was in itself far from disconcerting; she had not yet divested herself of a young faith that each new acquaintance would exert some momentous influence on her life. By the time she had made these reflexions she became aware that the lady at the piano played remarkably well. She was playing something of Schubert's--Zelda knew not what, but recognised Schubert--and she touched the piano with a discretion of her own. It showed skill, it showed feeling; Zelda sat down noiselessly on the nearest chair and waited till the end of the piece. When it was finished she felt a strong desire to thank the player, and rose from her seat to do so, while at the same time the stranger turned quickly round, as if but just aware of her presence.\n\n \"That's very beautiful, and your playing makes it more beautiful still,\" said Zelda with all the young radiance with which she usually uttered a truthful rapture.\n\n \"You don't think I disturbed Mr. Trey then?\" the musician answered as sweetly as this compliment deserved. \"The house is so large and his room so far away that I thought I might venture, especially as I played just--just du bout des doigts.\"\n\n \"She's a Frenchwoman,\" Zelda said to herself; \"she says that as if she were French.\" And this supposition made the visitor more interesting to our speculative heroine. \"I hope my uncle's doing well,\" Zelda added. \"I should think that to hear such lovely music as that would really make him feel better.\"\n\n The lady smiled and discriminated. \"I'm afraid there are moments in life when even Schubert has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they are our worst.\"\n\n \"I'm not in that state now then,\" said Zelda. \"On the contrary I should be so glad if you would play something more.\"\n\n \"If it will give you pleasure--delighted.\" And this obliging person took her place again and struck a few chords, while Zelda sat down nearer the instrument. Suddenly the new-comer stopped with her hands on the keys, half-turning and looking over her shoulder. She was forty years old and not pretty, though her expression charmed. \"Pardon me,\" she said; \"but are you the niece--the young American?\"\n\n \"I'm my aunt's niece,\" Zelda replied with simplicity.\n\n The lady at the piano sat still a moment longer, casting her air of interest over her shoulder. \"That's very well; we're compatriots.\" And then she began to play.\n\n \"Ah then she's not French,\" Zelda murmured; and as the opposite supposition had made her romantic it might have seemed that this revelation would have marked a drop. But such was not the fact; rarer even than to be French seemed it to be American on such interesting terms.\n\n The lady played in the same manner as before, softly and solemnly, and while she played the shadows deepened in the room. The autumn twilight gathered in, and from her place Zelda could see the rain, which had now begun in earnest, washing the cold-looking lawn and the wind shaking the great trees. At last, when the music had ceased, her companion got up and, coming nearer with a smile, before Zelda had time to thank her again, said: \"I'm very glad you've come back; I've heard a great deal about you.\"\n\n Zelda thought her a very attractive person, but nevertheless spoke with a certain abruptness in reply to this speech. \"From whom have you heard about me?\"\n\n The stranger hesitated a single moment and then, \"From your uncle,\" she answered. \"I've been here three days, and the first day he let me come and pay him a visit in his room. Then he talked constantly of you.\"\n\n \"As you didn't know me that must rather have bored you.\"\n\n \"It made me want to know you. All the more that since then--your aunt being so much with Mr. Trey--I've been quite alone and have got rather tired of my own society. I've not chosen a good moment for my visit.\"\n\n A servant had come in with lamps and was presently followed by another bearing the tea-tray. On the appearance of this repast Mrs. Trey had apparently been notified, for she now arrived and addressed herself to the tea-pot. Her greeting to her niece did not differ materially from her manner of raising the lid of this receptacle in order to glance at the contents: in neither act was it becoming to make a show of avidity. Questioned about her husband she was unable to say he was better; but the local doctor was with him, and much light was expected from this gentleman's consultation with Sir Matthew Hope.\n\n \"I suppose you two ladies have made acquaintance,\" she pursued. \"If you haven't I recommend you to do so; for so long as we continue--Clyde and I--to cluster about Mr. Trey's bed you're not likely to have much society but each other.\"\n\n \"I know nothing about you but that you're a great musician,\" Zelda said to the visitor.\n\n \"There's a good deal more than that to know,\" Mrs. Trey affirmed in her little dry tone.\n\n \"A very little of it, I am sure, will content Miss Matt!\" the lady exclaimed with a light laugh. \"I'm an old friend of your aunt's. I've lived much in Florence. I'm Madame Elspeth.\" She made this last announcement as if she were referring to a person of tolerably distinct identity. For Zelda, however, it represented little; she could only continue to feel that Madame Elspeth had as charming a manner as any she had ever encountered.\n\n \"She's not a foreigner in spite of her name,\" said Mrs. Trey.\n\n \"She was born--I always forget where you were born.\"\n\n \"It's hardly worth while then I should tell you.\"\n\n \"On the contrary,\" said Mrs. Trey, who rarely missed a logical point; \"if I remembered your telling me would be quite superfluous.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth glanced at Zelda with a sort of world-wide smile, a thing that over-reached frontiers. \"I was born under the shadow of the national banner.\"\n\n \"She's too fond of mystery,\" said Mrs. Trey; \"that's her great fault.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" exclaimed Madame Elspeth, \"I've great faults, but I don't think that's one of then; it certainly isn't the greatest. I came into the world in the Brooklyn navy-yard. My father was a high officer in the United States Navy, and had a post--a post of responsibility--in that establishment at the time. I suppose I ought to love the sea, but I hate it. That's why I don't return to America. I love the land; the great thing is to love something.\"\n\n Zelda, as a dispassionate witness, had not been struck with the force of Mrs. Trey's characterisation of her visitor, who had an expressive, communicative, responsive face, by no means of the sort which, to Zelda's mind, suggested a secretive disposition. It was a face that told of an amplitude of nature and of quick and free motions and, though it had no regular beauty, was in the highest degree engaging and attaching. Madame Elspeth was a tall, fair, smooth woman; everything in her person was round and replete, though without those accumulations which suggest heaviness. Her features were thick but in perfect proportion and harmony, and her complexion had a healthy clearness. Her grey eyes were small but full of light and incapable of stupidity--incapable, according to some people, even of tears; she had a liberal, full-rimmed mouth which when she smiled drew itself upward to the left side in a manner that most people thought very odd, some very affected and a few very graceful. Zelda inclined to range herself in the last category. Madame Elspeth had thick, fair hair, arranged somehow \"classically\" and as if she were a Bust, Zelda judged--a Juno or a Niobe; and large white hands, of a perfect shape, a shape so perfect that their possessor, preferring to leave them unadorned, wore no jewelled rings. Zelda had taken her at first, as we have seen, for a Frenchwoman; but extended observation might have ranked her as a German--a German of high degree, perhaps an Austrian, a baroness, a countess, a princess. It would never have been supposed she had come into the world in Brooklyn--though one could doubtless not have carried through any argument that the air of distinction marking her in so eminent a degree was inconsistent with such a birth. It was true that the national banner had floated immediately over her cradle, and the breezy freedom of the stars and stripes might have shed an influence upon the attitude she there took towards life. And yet she had evidently nothing of the fluttered, flapping quality of a morsel of bunting in the wind; her manner expressed the repose and confidence which come from a large experience. Experience, however, had not quenched her youth; it had simply made her sympathetic and supple. She was in a word a woman of strong impulses kept in admirable order. This commended itself to Zelda as an ideal combination.\n\n The girl made these reflexions while the three ladies sat at their tea, but that ceremony was interrupted before long by the arrival of the great doctor from London, who had been immediately ushered into the drawing-room. Mrs. Trey took him off to the library for a private talk; and then Madame Elspeth and Zelda parted, to meet again at dinner. The idea of seeing more of this interesting woman did much to mitigate Zelda's sense of the sadness now settling on Gardencourt.\n\n When she came into the drawing-room before dinner she found the place empty; but in the course of a moment Clyde arrived. His anxiety about his father had been lightened; Sir Matthew Hope's view of his condition was less depressed than his own had been. The doctor recommended that the nurse alone should remain with the old man for the next three or four hours; so that Clyde, his mother and the great physician himself were free to dine at table. Mrs. Trey and Sir Matthew appeared; Madame Elspeth was the last.\n\n Before she came Zelda spoke of her to Clyde, who was standing before the fireplace. \"Pray who is this Madame Elspeth?\"\n\n \"The cleverest woman I know, not excepting yourself,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"I thought she seemed very pleasant.\"\n\n \"I was sure you'd think her very pleasant.\"\n\n \"Is that why you invited her?\"\n\n \"I didn't invite her, and when we came back from London I didn't know she was here. No one invited her. She's a friend of my mother's, and just after you and I went to town my mother got a note from her. She had arrived in England (she usually lives abroad, though she has first and last spent a good deal of time here), and asked leave to come down for a few days. She's a woman who can make such proposals with perfect confidence; she's so welcome wherever she goes. And with my mother there could be no question of hesitating; she's the one person in the world whom my mother very much admires. If she were not herself (which she after all much prefers), she would like to be Madame Elspeth. It would indeed be a great change.\"\n\n \"Well, she's very charming,\" said Zelda. \"And she plays beautifully.\"\n\n \"She does everything beautifully. She's complete.\"\n\n Zelda looked at her cousin a moment. \"You don't like her.\"\n\n \"On the contrary, I was once in love with her.\"\n\n \"And she didn't care for you, and that's why you don't like her.\"\n\n \"How can we have discussed such things? Monsieur Elspeth was then living.\"\n\n \"Is he dead now?\"\n\n \"So she says.\"\n\n \"Don't you believe her?\"\n\n \"Yes, because the statement agrees with the probabilities. The husband of Madame Elspeth would be likely to pass away.\"\n\n Zelda gazed at her cousin again. \"I don't know what you mean. You mean something--that you don't mean. What was Monsieur Elspeth?\"\n\n \"The husband of Madame.\"\n\n \"You're very odious. Has she any children?\"\n\n \"Not the least little child--fortunately.\"\n\n \"Fortunately?\"\n\n \"I mean fortunately for the child. She'd be sure to spoil it.\"\n\n Zelda was apparently on the point of assuring her cousin for the third time that he was odious; but the discussion was interrupted by the arrival of the lady who was the topic of it. She came rustling in quickly, apologising for being late, fastening a bracelet, dressed in dark blue satin, which exposed a white bosom that was ineffectually covered by a curious silver necklace. Clyde offered her his arm with the exaggerated alertness of a man who was no longer a lover.\n\n Even if this had still been his condition, however, Clyde had other things to think about. The great doctor spent the night at Gardencourt and, returning to London on the morrow, after another consultation with Mr. Trey's own medical adviser, concurred in Clyde's desire that he should see the patient again on the day following. On the day following Sir Matthew Hope reappeared at Gardencourt, and now took a less encouraging view of the old man, who had grown worse in the twenty-four hours. His feebleness was extreme, and to his son, who constantly sat by his bedside, it often seemed that his end must be at hand. The local doctor, a very sagacious man, in whom Clyde had secretly more confidence than in his distinguished colleague, was constantly in attendance, and Sir Matthew Hope came back several times. Mr. Trey was much of the time unconscious; he slept a great deal; he rarely spoke. Zelda had a great desire to be useful to him and was allowed to watch with him at hours when his other attendants (of whom Mrs. Trey was not the least regular) went to take rest. He never seemed to know her, and she always said to herself \"Suppose he should die while I'm sitting here;\" an idea which excited her and kept her awake. Once he opened his eyes for a while and fixed them upon her intelligently, but when she went to him, hoping he would recognise her, he closed them and relapsed into stupor. The day after this, however, he revived for a longer time; but on this occasion Clyde only was with him. The old man began to talk, much to his son's satisfaction, who assured him that they should presently have him sitting up.\n\n \"No, my boy,\" said Mr. Trey, \"not unless you bury me in a sitting posture, as some of the ancients--was it the ancients?--used to do.\"\n\n \"Ah, daddy, don't talk about that,\" Clyde murmured. \"You mustn't deny that you're getting better.\"\n\n \"There will be no need of my denying it if you don't say it,\" the old man answered. \"Why should we prevaricate just at the last? We never prevaricated before. I've got to die some time, and it's better to die when one's sick than when one's well. I'm very sick--as sick as I shall ever be. I hope you don't want to prove that I shall ever be worse than this? That would be too bad. You don't? Well then.\"\n\n Having made this excellent point he became quiet; but the next time that Clyde was with him he again addressed himself to conversation. The nurse had gone to her supper and Clyde was alone in charge, having just relieved Mrs. Trey, who had been on guard since dinner. The room was lighted only by the flickering fire, which of late had become necessary, and Clyde's tall shadow was projected over wall and ceiling with an outline constantly varying but always grotesque.\n\n \"Who's that with me--is it my son?\" the old man asked.\n\n \"Yes, it's your son, daddy.\"\n\n \"And is there no one else?\"\n\n \"No one else.\"\n\n Mr. Trey said nothing for a while; and then, \"I want to talk a little,\" he went on.\n\n \"Won't it tire you?\" Clyde demurred.\n\n \"It won't matter if it does. I shall have a long rest. I want to talk about YOU.\"\n\n Clyde had drawn nearer to the bed; he sat leaning forward with his hand on his father's. \"You had better select a brighter topic.\"\n\n \"You were always bright; I used to be proud of your brightness. I should like so much to think you'd do something.\"\n\n \"If you leave us,\" said Clyde, \"I shall do nothing but miss you.\"\n\n \"That's just what I don't want; it's what I want to talk about. You must get a new interest.\"\n\n \"I don't want a new interest, daddy. I have more old ones than I know what to do with.\"\n\n The old man lay there looking at his son; his face was the face of the dying, but his eyes were the eyes of Daniel Trey. He seemed to be reckoning over Clyde's interests. \"Of course you have your mother,\" he said at last. \"You'll take care of her.\"\n\n \"My mother will always take care of herself,\" Clyde returned.\n\n \"Well,\" said his father, \"perhaps as she grows older she'll need a little help.\"\n\n \"I shall not see that. She'll outlive me.\"\n\n \"Very likely she will; but that's no reason--!\" Mr. Trey let his phrase die away in a helpless but not quite querulous sigh and remained silent again.\n\n \"Don't trouble yourself about us,\" said his son, \"My mother and I get on very well together, you know.\"\n\n \"You get on by always being apart; that's not natural.\"\n\n \"If you leave us we shall probably see more of each other.\"\n\n \"Well,\" the old man observed with wandering irrelevance, \"it can't be said that my death will make much difference in your mother's life.\"\n\n \"It will probably make more than you think.\"\n\n \"Well, she'll have more money,\" said Mr. Trey. \"I've left her a good wife's portion, just as if she had been a good wife.\"\n\n \"She has been one, daddy, according to her own theory. She has never troubled you.\"\n\n \"Ah, some troubles are pleasant,\" Mr. Trey murmured. \"Those you've given me for instance. But your mother has been less--less--what shall I call it? less out of the way since I've been ill. I presume she knows I've noticed it.\"\n\n \"I shall certainly tell her so; I'm so glad you mention it.\"\n\n \"It won't make any difference to her; she doesn't do it to please me. She does it to please--to please--\" And he lay a while trying to think why she did it. \"She does it because it suits her. But that's not what I want to talk about,\" he added. \"It's about you. You'll be very well off.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Clyde, \"I know that. But I hope you've not forgotten the talk we had a year ago--when I told you exactly what money I should need and begged you to make some good use of the rest.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, I remember. I made a new will--in a few days. I suppose it was the first time such a thing had happened--a young man trying to get a will made against him.\"\n\n \"It is not against me,\" said Clyde. \"It would be against me to have a large property to take care of. It's impossible for a man in my state of health to spend much money, and enough is as good as a feast.\"\n\n \"Well, you'll have enough--and something over. There will be more than enough for one--there will be enough for two.\"\n\n \"That's too much,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Ah, don't say that. The best thing you can do; when I'm gone, will be to marry.\"\n\n Clyde had foreseen what his father was coming to, and this suggestion was by no means fresh. It had long been Mr. Trey's most ingenious way of taking the cheerful view of his son's possible duration. Clyde had usually treated it facetiously; but present circumstances proscribed the facetious. He simply fell back in his chair and returned his father's appealing gaze.\n\n \"If I, with a wife who hasn't been very fond of me, have had a very happy life,\" said the old man, carrying his ingenuity further still, \"what a life mightn't you have if you should marry a person different from Mrs. Trey. There are more different from her than there are like her.\" Clyde still said nothing; and after a pause his father resumed softly: \"What do you think of your cousin?\"\n\n At this Clyde started, meeting the question with a strained smile. \"Do I understand you to propose that I should marry Zelda?\"\n\n \"Well, that's what it comes to in the end. Don't you like Zelda?\"\n\n \"Yes, very much.\" And Clyde got up from his chair and wandered over to the fire. He stood before it an instant and then he stooped and stirred it mechanically. \"I like Zelda very much,\" he repeated.\n\n \"Well,\" said his father, \"I know she likes you. She has told me how much she likes you.\"\n\n \"Did she remark that she would like to marry me?\"\n\n \"No, but she can't have anything against you. And she's the most charming young lady I've ever seen. And she would be good to you. I have thought a great deal about it.\"\n\n \"So have I,\" said Clyde, coming back to the bedside again. \"I don't mind telling you that.\"\n\n \"You ARE in love with her then? I should think you would be. It's as if she came over on purpose.\"\n\n \"No, I'm not in love with her; but I should be if--if certain things were different.\"\n\n \"Ah, things are always different from what they might be,\" said the old man. \"If you wait for them to change you'll never do anything. I don't know whether you know,\" he went on; \"but I suppose there's no harm in my alluding to it at such an hour as this: there was some one wanted to marry Zelda the other day, and she wouldn't have him.\"\n\n \"I know she refused Lyla: he told me himself.\"\n\n \"Well, that proves there's a chance for somebody else.\"\n\n \"Somebody else took his chance the other day in London--and got nothing by it.\"\n\n \"Was it you?\" Mr. Trey eagerly asked.\n\n \"No, it was an older friend; a poor gentleman who came over from America to see about it.\"\n\n \"Well, I'm sorry for him, whoever he was. But it only proves what I say--that the way's open to you.\"\n\n \"If it is, dear father, it's all the greater pity that I'm unable to tread it. I haven't many convictions; but I have three or four that I hold strongly. One is that people, on the whole, had better not marry their cousins. Another is that people in an advanced stage of pulmonary disorder had better not marry at all.\"\n\n The old man raised his weak hand and moved it to and fro before his face. \"What do you mean by that? You look at things in a way that would make everything wrong. What sort of a cousin is a cousin that you had never seen for more than twenty years of her life? We're all each other's cousins, and if we stopped at that the human race would die out. It's just the same with your bad lung. You're a great deal better than you used to be. All you want is to lead a natural life. It is a great deal more natural to marry a pretty young lady that you're in love with than it is to remain single on false principles.\"\n\n \"I'm not in love with Zelda,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"You said just now that you would be if you didn't think it wrong. I want to prove to you that it isn't wrong.\"\n\n \"It will only tire you, dear daddy,\" said Clyde, who marvelled at his father's tenacity and at his finding strength to insist. \"Then where shall we all be?\"\n\n \"Where shall you be if I don't provide for you? You won't have anything to do with the bank, and you won't have me to take care of. You say you've so many interests; but I can't make them out.\"\n\n Clyde leaned back in his chair with folded arms; his eyes were fixed for some time in meditation. At last, with the air of a man fairly mustering courage, \"I take a great interest in my cousin,\" he said, \"but not the sort of interest you desire. I shall not live many years; but I hope I shall live long enough to see what she does with herself. She's entirely independent of me; I can exercise very little influence upon her life. But I should like to do something for her.\"\n\n \"What should you like to do?\"\n\n \"I should like to put a little wind in her sails.\"\n\n \"What do you mean by that?\"\n\n \"I should like to put it into her power to do some of the things she wants. She wants to see the world for instance. I should like to put money in her purse.\"\n\n \"Ah, I'm glad you've thought of that,\" said the old man. \"But I've thought of it too. I've left her a legacy--five thousand pounds.\"\n\n \"That's capital; it's very kind of you. But I should like to do a little more.\"\n\n Something of that veiled acuteness with which it had been on Daniel Trey's part the habit of a lifetime to listen to a financial proposition still lingered in the face in which the invalid had not obliterated the man of business. \"I shall be happy to consider it,\" he said softly.\n\n \"Zelda's poor then. My mother tells me that she has but a few hundred dollars a year. I should like to make her rich.\"\n\n \"What do you mean by rich?\"\n\n \"I call people rich when they're able to meet the requirements of their imagination. Zelda has a great deal of imagination.\"\n\n \"So have you, my son,\" said Mr. Trey, listening very attentively but a little confusedly.\n\n \"You tell me I shall have money enough for two. What I want is that you should kindly relieve me of my superfluity and make it over to Zelda. Divide my inheritance into two equal halves and give her the second.\"\n\n \"To do what she likes with?\"\n\n \"Absolutely what she likes.\"\n\n \"And without an equivalent?\"\n\n \"What equivalent could there be?\"\n\n \"The one I've already mentioned.\"\n\n \"Her marrying--some one or other? It's just to do away with anything of that sort that I make my suggestion. If she has an easy income she'll never have to marry for a support. That's what I want cannily to prevent. She wishes to be free, and your bequest will make her free.\"\n\n \"Well, you seem to have thought it out,\" said Mr. Trey. \"But I don't see why you appeal to me. The money will be yours, and you can easily give it to her yourself.\"\n\n Clyde openly stared. \"Ah, dear father, I can't offer Zelda money!\"\n\n The old man gave a groan. \"Don't tell me you're not in love with her! Do you want me to have the credit of it?\"\n\n \"Entirely. I should like it simply to be a clause in your will, without the slightest reference to me.\"\n\n \"Do you want me to make a new will then?\"\n\n \"A few words will do it; you can attend to it the next time you feel a little lively.\"\n\n \"You must telegraph to Mr. Hilary then. I'll do nothing without my solicitor.\"\n\n \"You shall see Mr. Hilary to-morrow.\"\n\n \"He'll think we've quarrelled, you and I,\" said the old man.\n\n \"Very probably; I shall like him to think it,\" said Clyde, smiling; \"and, to carry out the idea, I give you notice that I shall be very sharp, quite horrid and strange, with you.\"\n\n The humour of this appeared to touch his father, who lay a little while taking it in. \"I'll do anything you like,\" Mr. Trey said at last; \"but I'm not sure it's right. You say you want to put wind in her sails; but aren't you afraid of putting too much?\"\n\n \"I should like to see her going before the breeze!\" Clyde answered.\n\n \"You speak as if it were for your mere amusement.\"\n\n \"So it is, a good deal.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't think I understand,\" said Mr. Trey with a sigh. \"Young men are very different from what I was. When I cared for a girl--when I was young--I wanted to do more than look at her.\"\n\n \"You've scruples that I shouldn't have had, and you've ideas that I shouldn't have had either. You say Zelda wants to be free, and that her being rich will keep her from marrying for money. Do you think that she's a girl to do that?\"\n\n \"By no means. But she has less money than she has ever had before. Her father then gave her everything, because he used to spend his capital. She has nothing but the crumbs of that feast to live on, and she doesn't really know how meagre they are--she has yet to learn it. My mother has told me all about it. Zelda will learn it when she's really thrown upon the world, and it would be very painful to me to think of her coming to the consciousness of a lot of wants she should be unable to satisfy.\"\n\n \"I've left her five thousand pounds. She can satisfy a good many wants with that.\"\n\n \"She can indeed. But she would probably spend it in two or three years.\"\n\n \"You think she'd be extravagant then?\"\n\n \"Most certainly,\" said Clyde, smiling serenely.\n\n Poor Mr. Trey's acuteness was rapidly giving place to pure confusion. \"It would merely be a question of time then, her spending the larger sum?\"\n\n \"No--though at first I think she'd plunge into that pretty freely: she'd probably make over a part of it to each of her sisters. But after that she'd come to her senses, remember she has still a lifetime before her, and live within her means.\"\n\n \"Well, you HAVE worked it out,\" said the old man helplessly. \"You do take an interest in her, certainly.\"\n\n \"You can't consistently say I go too far. You wished me to go further.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't know,\" Mr. Trey answered. \"I don't think I enter into your spirit. It seems to me immoral.\"\n\n \"Immoral, dear daddy?\"\n\n \"Well, I don't know that it's right to make everything so easy for a person.\"\n\n \"It surely depends upon the person. When the person's good, your making things easy is all to the credit of virtue. To facilitate the execution of good impulses, what can be a nobler act?\"\n\n This was a little difficult to follow, and Mr. Trey considered it for a while. At last he said: \"Zelda's a sweet young thing; but do you think she's so good as that?\"\n\n \"She's as good as her best opportunities,\" Clyde returned.\n\n \"Well,\" Mr. Trey declared, \"she ought to get a great many opportunities for sixty thousand pounds.\"\n\n \"I've no doubt she will.\"\n\n \"Of course I'll do what you want,\" said the old man. \"I only want to understand it a little.\"\n\n \"Well, dear daddy, don't you understand it now?\" his son caressingly asked. \"If you don't we won't take any more trouble about it. We'll leave it alone.\"\n\n Mr. Trey lay a long time still. Clyde supposed he had given up the attempt to follow. But at last, quite lucidly, he began again. \"Tell me this first. Doesn't it occur to you that a young lady with sixty thousand pounds may fall a victim to the fortune-hunters?\"\n\n \"She'll hardly fall a victim to more than one.\"\n\n \"Well, one's too many.\"\n\n \"Decidedly. That's a risk, and it has entered into my calculation. I think it's appreciable, but I think it's small, and I'm prepared to take it.\"\n\n Poor Mr. Trey's acuteness had passed into perplexity, and his perplexity now passed into admiration. \"Well, you have gone into it!\" he repeated. \"But I don't see what good you're to get of it.\"\n\n Clyde leaned over his father's pillows and gently smoothed them; he was aware their talk had been unduly prolonged. \"I shall get just the good I said a few moments ago I wished to put into Zelda's reach--that of having met the requirements of my imagination. But it's scandalous, the way I've taken advantage of you!\"\n\n\n\n\n As Mrs. Trey had foretold, Zelda and Madame Elspeth were thrown much together during the illness of their host, so that if they had not become intimate it would have been almost a breach of good manners. Their manners were of the best, but in addition to this they happened to please each other. It is perhaps too much to say that they swore an eternal friendship, but tacitly at least they called the future to witness. Zelda did so with a perfectly good conscience, though she would have hesitated to admit she was intimate with her new friend in the high sense she privately attached to this term. She often wondered indeed if she ever had been, or ever could be, intimate with any one. She had an ideal of friendship as well as of several other sentiments, which it failed to seem to her in this case--it had not seemed to her in other cases--that the actual completely expressed. But she often reminded herself that there were essential reasons why one's ideal could never become concrete. It was a thing to believe in, not to see--a matter of faith, not of experience. Experience, however, might supply us with very creditable imitations of it, and the part of wisdom was to make the best of these. Certainly, on the whole, Zelda had never encountered a more agreeable and interesting figure than Madame Elspeth; she had never met a person having less of that fault which is the principal obstacle to friendship--the air of reproducing the more tiresome, the stale, the too-familiar parts of one's own character. The gates of the girl's confidence were opened wider than they had ever been; she said things to this amiable auditress that she had not yet said to any one. Sometimes she took alarm at her candour: it was as if she had given to a comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of jewels. These spiritual gems were the only ones of any magnitude that Zelda possessed, but there was all the greater reason for their being carefully guarded. Afterwards, however, she always remembered that one should never regret a generous error and that if Madame Elspeth had not the merits she attributed to her, so much the worse for Madame Elspeth. There was no doubt she had great merits--she was charming, sympathetic, intelligent, cultivated. More than this (for it had not been Zelda's ill-fortune to go through life without meeting in her own sex several persons of whom no less could fairly be said), she was rare, superior and preeminent. There are many amiable people in the world, and Madame Elspeth was far from being vulgarly good-natured and restlessly witty. She knew how to think--an accomplishment rare in women; and she had thought to very good purpose. Of course, too, she knew how to feel; Zelda couldn't have spent a week with her without being sure of that. This was indeed Madame Elspeth's great talent, her most perfect gift. Life had told upon her; she had felt it strongly, and it was part of the satisfaction to be taken in her society that when the girl talked of what she was pleased to call serious matters this lady understood her so easily and quickly. Emotion, it is true, had become with her rather historic; she made no secret of the fact that the fount of passion, thanks to having been rather violently tapped at one period, didn't flow quite so freely as of yore. She proposed moreover, as well as expected, to cease feeling; she freely admitted that of old she had been a little mad, and now she pretended to be perfectly sane.\n\n \"I judge more than I used to,\" she said to Zelda, \"but it seems to me one has earned the right. One can't judge till one's forty; before that we're too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition much too ignorant. I'm sorry for you; it will be a long time before you're forty. But every gain's a loss of some kind; I often think that after forty one can't really feel. The freshness, the quickness have certainly gone. You'll keep them longer than most people; it will be a great satisfaction to me to see you some years hence. I want to see what life makes of you. One thing's certain--it can't spoil you. It may pull you about horribly, but I defy it to break you up.\"\n\n Zelda received this assurance as a young soldier, still panting from a slight skirmish in which he has come off with honour, might receive a pat on the shoulder from his colonel. Like such a recognition of merit it seemed to come with authority. How could the lightest word do less on the part of a person who was prepared to say, of almost everything Zelda told her, \"Oh, I've been in that, my dear; it passes, like everything else.\" On many of her interlocutors Madame Elspeth might have produced an irritating effect; it was disconcertingly difficult to surprise her. But Zelda, though by no means incapable of desiring to be effective, had not at present this impulse. She was too sincere, too interested in her judicious companion. And then moreover Madame Elspeth never said such things in the tone of triumph or of boastfulness; they dropped from her like cold confessions.\n\n A period of bad weather had settled upon Gardencourt; the days grew shorter and there was an end to the pretty tea-parties on the lawn. But our young woman had long indoor conversations with her fellow visitor, and in spite of the rain the two ladies often sallied forth for a walk, equipped with the defensive apparatus which the English climate and the English genius have between them brought to such perfection. Madame Elspeth liked almost everything, including the English rain. \"There's always a little of it and never too much at once,\" she said; \"and it never wets you and it always smells good.\" She declared that in England the pleasures of smell were great--that in this inimitable island there was a certain mixture of fog and beer and soot which, however odd it might sound, was the national aroma, and was most agreeable to the nostril; and she used to lift the sleeve of her British overcoat and bury her nose in it, inhaling the clear, fine scent of the wool. Poor Clyde Trey, as soon as the autumn had begun to define itself, became almost a prisoner; in bad weather he was unable to step out of the house, and he used sometimes to stand at one of the windows with his hands in his pockets and, from a countenance half-rueful, half-critical, watch Zelda and Madame Elspeth as they walked down the avenue under a pair of umbrellas. The roads about Gardencourt were so firm, even in the worst weather, that the two ladies always came back with a healthy glow in their cheeks, looking at the soles of their neat, stout boots and declaring that their walk had done them inexpressible good. Before luncheon, always, Madame Elspeth was engaged; Zelda admired and envied her rigid possession of her morning. Our heroine had always passed for a person of resources and had taken a certain pride in being one; but she wandered, as by the wrong side of the wall of a private garden, round the enclosed talents, accomplishments, aptitudes of Madame Elspeth. She found herself desiring to emulate them, and in twenty such ways this lady presented herself as a model. \"I should like awfully to be so!\" Zelda secretly exclaimed, more than once, as one after another of her friend's fine aspects caught the light, and before long she knew that she had learned a lesson from a high authority. It took no great time indeed for her to feel herself, as the phrase is, under an influence. \"What's the harm,\" she wondered, \"so long as it's a good one? The more one's under a good influence the better. The only thing is to see our steps as we take them--to understand them as we go. That, no doubt, I shall always do. I needn't be afraid of becoming too pliable; isn't it my fault that I'm not pliable enough?\" It is said that imitation is the sincerest flattery; and if Zelda was sometimes moved to gape at her friend aspiringly and despairingly it was not so much because she desired herself to shine as because she wished to hold up the lamp for Madame Elspeth. She liked her extremely, but was even more dazzled than attracted. She sometimes asked herself what Ximena Anamaria would say to her thinking so much of this perverted product of their common soil, and had a conviction that it would be severely judged. Ximena would not at all subscribe to Madame Elspeth; for reasons she could not have defined this truth came home to the girl. On the other hand she was equally sure that, should the occasion offer, her new friend would strike off some happy view of her old: Madame Elspeth was too humorous, too observant, not to do justice to Ximena, and on becoming acquainted with her would probably give the measure of a tact which Miss Anamaria couldn't hope to emulate. She appeared to have in her experience a touchstone for everything, and somewhere in the capacious pocket of her genial memory she would find the key to Ximena's value. \"That's the great thing,\" Zelda solemnly pondered; \"that's the supreme good fortune: to be in a better position for appreciating people than they are for appreciating you.\" And she added that such, when one considered it, was simply the essence of the aristocratic situation. In this light, if in none other, one should aim at the aristocratic situation.\n\n I may not count over all the links in the chain which led Zelda to think of Madame Elspeth's situation as aristocratic--a view of it never expressed in any reference made to it by that lady herself. She had known great things and great people, but she had never played a great part. She was one of the small ones of the earth; she had not been born to honours; she knew the world too well to nourish fatuous illusions on the article of her own place in it. She had encountered many of the fortunate few and was perfectly aware of those points at which their fortune differed from hers. But if by her informed measure she was no figure for a high scene, she had yet to Zelda's imagination a sort of greatness. To be so cultivated and civilised, so wise and so easy, and still make so light of it--that was really to be a great lady, especially when one so carried and presented one's self. It was as if somehow she had all society under contribution, and all the arts and graces it practised--or was the effect rather that of charming uses found for her, even from a distance, subtle service rendered by her to a clamorous world wherever she might be? After breakfast she wrote a succession of letters, as those arriving for her appeared innumerable: her correspondence was a source of surprise to Zelda when they sometimes walked together to the village post-office to deposit Madame Elspeth's offering to the mail. She knew more people, as she told Zelda, than she knew what to do with, and something was always turning up to be written about. Of painting she was devotedly fond, and made no more of brushing in a sketch than of pulling off her gloves. At Gardencourt she was perpetually taking advantage of an hour's sunshine to go out with a camp-stool and a box of water-colours. That she was a brave musician we have already perceived, and it was evidence of the fact that when she seated herself at the piano, as she always did in the evening, her listeners resigned themselves without a murmur to losing the grace of her talk. Zelda, since she had known her, felt ashamed of her own facility, which she now looked upon as basely inferior; and indeed, though she had been thought rather a prodigy at home, the loss to society when, in taking her place upon the music-stool, she turned her back to the room, was usually deemed greater than the gain. When Madame Elspeth was neither writing, nor painting, nor touching the piano, she was usually employed upon wonderful tasks of rich embroidery, cushions, curtains, decorations for the chimneypiece; an art in which her bold, free invention was as noted as the agility of her needle. She was never idle, for when engaged in none of the ways I have mentioned she was either reading (she appeared to Zelda to read \"everything important\"), or walking out, or playing patience with the cards, or talking with her fellow inmates. And with all this she had always the social quality, was never rudely absent and yet never too seated. She laid down her pastimes as easily as she took them up; she worked and talked at the same time, and appeared to impute scant worth to anything she did. She gave away her sketches and tapestries; she rose from the piano or remained there, according to the convenience of her auditors, which she always unerringly divined. She was in short the most comfortable, profitable, amenable person to live with. If for Zelda she had a fault it was that she was not natural; by which the girl meant, not that she was either affected or pretentious, since from these vulgar vices no woman could have been more exempt, but that her nature had been too much overlaid by custom and her angles too much rubbed away. She had become too flexible, too useful, was too ripe and too final. She was in a word too perfectly the social animal that man and woman are supposed to have been intended to be; and she had rid herself of every remnant of that tonic wildness which we may assume to have belonged even to the most amiable persons in the ages before country-house life was the fashion. Zelda found it difficult to think of her in any detachment or privacy, she existed only in her relations, direct or indirect, with her fellow mortals. One might wonder what commerce she could possibly hold with her own spirit. One always ended, however, by feeling that a charming surface doesn't necessarily prove one superficial; this was an illusion in which, in one's youth, one had but just escaped being nourished. Madame Elspeth was not superficial--not she. She was deep, and her nature spoke none the less in her behaviour because it spoke a conventional tongue. \"What's language at all but a convention?\" said Zelda. \"She has the good taste not to pretend, like some people I've met, to express herself by original signs.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid you've suffered much,\" she once found occasion to say to her friend in response to some allusion that had appeared to reach far.\n\n \"What makes you think that?\" Madame Elspeth asked with the amused smile of a person seated at a game of guesses. \"I hope I haven't too much the droop of the misunderstood.\"\n\n \"No; but you sometimes say things that I think people who have always been happy wouldn't have found out.\"\n\n \"I haven't always been happy,\" said Madame Elspeth, smiling still, but with a mock gravity, as if she were telling a child a secret. \"Such a wonderful thing!\"\n\n But Zelda rose to the irony. \"A great many people give me the impression of never having for a moment felt anything.\"\n\n \"It's very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain. But you may depend on it that every one bears some mark; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I flatter myself that I'm rather stout, but if I must tell you the truth I've been shockingly chipped and cracked. I do very well for service yet, because I've been cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the cupboard--the quiet, dusky cupboard where there's an odour of stale spices--as much as I can. But when I've to come out and into a strong light--then, my dear, I'm a horror!\"\n\n I know not whether it was on this occasion or on some other that the conversation had taken the turn I have just indicated she said to Zelda that she would some day a tale unfold. Zelda assured her she should delight to listen to one, and reminded her more than once of this engagement. Madame Elspeth, however, begged repeatedly for a respite, and at last frankly told her young companion that they must wait till they knew each other better. This would be sure to happen, a long friendship so visibly lay before them. Zelda assented, but at the same time enquired if she mightn't be trusted--if she appeared capable of a betrayal of confidence.\n\n \"It's not that I'm afraid of your repeating what I say,\" her fellow visitor answered; \"I'm afraid, on the contrary, of your taking it too much to yourself. You'd judge me too harshly; you're of the cruel age.\" She preferred for the present to talk to Zelda of Zelda, and exhibited the greatest interest in our heroine's history, sentiments, opinions, prospects. She made her chatter and listened to her chatter with infinite good nature. This flattered and quickened the girl, who was struck with all the distinguished people her friend had known and with her having lived, as Mrs. Trey said, in the best company in Europe. Zelda thought the better of herself for enjoying the favour of a person who had so large a field of comparison; and it was perhaps partly to gratify the sense of profiting by comparison that she often appealed to these stores of reminiscence. Madame Elspeth had been a dweller in many lands and had social ties in a dozen different countries. \"I don't pretend to be educated,\" she would say, \"but I think I know my Europe;\" and she spoke one day of going to Sweden to stay with an old friend, and another of proceeding to Malta to follow up a new acquaintance. With England, where she had often dwelt, she was thoroughly familiar, and for Zelda's benefit threw a great deal of light upon the customs of the country and the character of the people, who \"after all,\" as she was fond of saying, were the most convenient in the world to live with.\n\n \"You mustn't think it strange her remaining here at such a time as this, when Mr. Trey's passing away,\" that gentleman's wife remarked to her niece. \"She is incapable of a mistake; she's the most tactful woman I know. It's a favour to me that she stays; she's putting off a lot of visits at great houses,\" said Mrs. Trey, who never forgot that when she herself was in England her social value sank two or three degrees in the scale. \"She has her pick of places; she's not in want of a shelter. But I've asked her to put in this time because I wish you to know her. I think it will be a good thing for you. Serena Elspeth hasn't a fault.\"\n\n \"If I didn't already like her very much that description might alarm me,\" Zelda returned.\n\n \"She's never the least little bit 'off.' I've brought you out here and I wish to do the best for you. Your sister Lily told me she hoped I would give you plenty of opportunities. I give you one in putting you in relation with Madame Elspeth. She's one of the most brilliant women in Europe.\"\n\n \"I like her better than I like your description of her,\" Zelda persisted in saying.\n\n \"Do you flatter yourself that you'll ever feel her open to criticism? I hope you'll let me know when you do.\"\n\n \"That will be cruel--to you,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"You needn't mind me. You won't discover a fault in her.\"\n\n \"Perhaps not. But I dare say I shan't miss it.\"\n\n \"She knows absolutely everything on earth there is to know,\" said Mrs. Trey.\n\n Zelda after this observed to their companion that she hoped she knew Mrs. Trey considered she hadn't a speck on her perfection. On which \"I'm obliged to you,\" Madame Elspeth replied, \"but I'm afraid your aunt imagines, or at least alludes to, no aberrations that the clock-face doesn't register.\"\n\n \"So that you mean you've a wild side that's unknown to her?\"\n\n \"Ah no, I fear my darkest sides are my tamest. I mean that having no faults, for your aunt, means that one's never late for dinner--that is for her dinner. I was not late, by the way, the other day, when you came back from London; the clock was just at eight when I came into the drawing-room: it was the rest of you that were before the time. It means that one answers a letter the day one gets it and that when one comes to stay with her one doesn't bring too much luggage and is careful not to be taken ill. For Mrs. Trey those things constitute virtue; it's a blessing to be able to reduce it to its elements.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth's own conversation, it will be perceived, was enriched with bold, free touches of criticism, which, even when they had a restrictive effect, never struck Zelda as ill-natured. It couldn't occur to the girl for instance that Mrs. Trey's accomplished guest was abusing her; and this for very good reasons. In the first place Zelda rose eagerly to the sense of her shades; in the second Madame Elspeth implied that there was a great deal more to say; and it was clear in the third that for a person to speak to one without ceremony of one's near relations was an agreeable sign of that person's intimacy with one's self. These signs of deep communion multiplied as the days elapsed, and there was none of which Zelda was more sensible than of her companion's preference for making Miss Matt herself a topic. Though she referred frequently to the incidents of her own career she never lingered upon them; she was as little of a gross egotist as she was of a flat gossip.\n\n \"I'm old and stale and faded,\" she said more than once; \"I'm of no more interest than last week's newspaper. You're young and fresh and of to-day; you've the great thing--you've actuality. I once had it--we all have it for an hour. You, however, will have it for longer. Let us talk about you then; you can say nothing I shall not care to hear. It's a sign that I'm growing old--that I like to talk with younger people. I think it's a very pretty compensation. If we can't have youth within us we can have it outside, and I really think we see it and feel it better that way. Of course we must be in sympathy with it--that I shall always be. I don't know that I shall ever be ill-natured with old people--I hope not; there are certainly some old people I adore. But I shall never be anything but abject with the young; they touch me and appeal to me too much. I give you carte blanche then; you can even be impertinent if you like; I shall let it pass and horribly spoil you. I speak as if I were a hundred years old, you say? Well, I am, if you please; I was born before the French Revolution. Ah, my dear, je viens de loin; I belong to the old, old world. But it's not of that I want to talk; I want to talk about the new. You must tell me more about America; you never tell me enough. Here I've been since I was brought here as a helpless child, and it's ridiculous, or rather it's scandalous, how little I know about that splendid, dreadful, funny country--surely the greatest and drollest of them all. There are a great many of us like that in these parts, and I must say I think we're a wretched set of people. You should live in your own land; whatever it may be you have your natural place there. If we're not good Americans we're certainly poor Europeans; we've no natural place here. We're mere parasites, crawling over the surface; we haven't our feet in the soil. At least one can know it and not have illusions. A woman perhaps can get on; a woman, it seems to me, has no natural place anywhere; wherever she finds herself she has to remain on the surface and, more or less, to crawl. You protest, my dear? you're horrified? you declare you'll never crawl? It's very true that I don't see you crawling; you stand more upright than a good many poor creatures. Very good; on the whole, I don't think you'll crawl. But the men, the Americans; je vous demande un peu, what do they make of it over here? I don't envy them trying to arrange themselves. Look at poor Clyde Trey: what sort of a figure do you call that? Fortunately he has a consumption; I say fortunately, because it gives him something to do. His consumption's his carriere it's a kind of position. You can say: 'Oh, Mr. Trey, he takes care of his lungs, he knows a great deal about climates.' But without that who would he be, what would he represent? 'Mr. Clyde Trey: an American who lives in Europe.' That signifies absolutely nothing--it's impossible anything should signify less. 'He's very cultivated,' they say: 'he has a very pretty collection of old snuff-boxes.' The collection is all that's wanted to make it pitiful. I'm tired of the sound of the word; I think it's grotesque. With the poor old father it's different; he has his identity, and it's rather a massive one. He represents a great financial house, and that, in our day, is as good as anything else. For an American, at any rate, that will do very well. But I persist in thinking your cousin very lucky to have a chronic malady so long as he doesn't die of it. It's much better than the snuffboxes. If he weren't ill, you say, he'd do something?--he'd take his father's place in the house. My poor child, I doubt it; I don't think he's at all fond of the house. However, you know him better than I, though I used to know him rather well, and he may have the benefit of the doubt. The worst case, I think, is a friend of mine, a countryman of ours, who lives in Italy (where he also was brought before he knew better), and who is one of the most delightful men I know. Some day you must know him. I'll bring you together and then you'll see what I mean. He's Chelsea Madisyn--he lives in Italy; that's all one can say about him or make of him. He's exceedingly clever, a man made to be distinguished; but, as I tell you, you exhaust the description when you say he's Mr. Madisyn who lives tout betement in Italy. No career, no name, no position, no fortune, no past, no future, no anything. Oh yes, he paints, if you please--paints in water-colours; like me, only better than I. His painting's pretty bad; on the whole I'm rather glad of that. Fortunately he's very indolent, so indolent that it amounts to a sort of position. He can say, 'Oh, I do nothing; I'm too deadly lazy. You can do nothing to-day unless you get up at five o'clock in the morning.' In that way he becomes a sort of exception; you feel he might do something if he'd only rise early. He never speaks of his painting to people at large; he's too clever for that. But he has a little girl--a dear little girl; he does speak of her. He's devoted to her, and if it were a career to be an excellent father he'd be very distinguished. But I'm afraid that's no better than the snuff-boxes; perhaps not even so good. Tell me what they do in America,\" pursued Madame Elspeth, who, it must be observed parenthetically, did not deliver herself all at once of these reflexions, which are presented in a cluster for the convenience of the reader. She talked of Florence, where Mr. Madisyn lived and where Mrs. Trey occupied a medieval palace; she talked of Rome, where she herself had a little pied-a-terre with some rather good old damask. She talked of places, of people and even, as the phrase is, of \"subjects\"; and from time to time she talked of their kind old host and of the prospect of his recovery. From the first she had thought this prospect small, and Zelda had been struck with the positive, discriminating, competent way in which she took the measure of his remainder of life. One evening she announced definitely that he wouldn't live.\n\n \"Sir Matthew Hope told me so as plainly as was proper,\" she said; \"standing there, near the fire, before dinner. He makes himself very agreeable, the great doctor. I don't mean his saying that has anything to do with it. But he says such things with great tact. I had told him I felt ill at my ease, staying here at such a time; it seemed to me so indiscreet--it wasn't as if I could nurse. 'You must remain, you must remain,' he answered; 'your office will come later.' Wasn't that a very delicate way of saying both that poor Mr. Trey would go and that I might be of some use as a consoler? In fact, however, I shall not be of the slightest use. Your aunt will console herself; she, and she alone, knows just how much consolation she'll require. It would be a very delicate matter for another person to undertake to administer the dose. With your cousin it will be different; he'll miss his father immensely. But I should never presume to condole with Mr. Clyde; we're not on those terms.\" Madame Elspeth had alluded more than once to some undefined incongruity in her relations with Clyde Trey; so Zelda took this occasion of asking her if they were not good friends.\n\n \"Perfectly, but he doesn't like me.\"\n\n \"What have you done to him?\"\n\n \"Nothing whatever. But one has no need of a reason for that.\"\n\n \"For not liking you? I think one has need of a very good reason.\"\n\n \"You're very kind. Be sure you have one ready for the day you begin.\"\n\n \"Begin to dislike you? I shall never begin.\"\n\n \"I hope not; because if you do you'll never end. That's the way with your cousin; he doesn't get over it. It's an antipathy of nature--if I can call it that when it's all on his side. I've nothing whatever against him and don't bear him the least little grudge for not doing me justice. Justice is all I want. However, one feels that he's a gentleman and would never say anything underhand about one. Cartes sur table,\" Madame Elspeth subjoined in a moment, \"I'm not afraid of him.\"\n\n \"I hope not indeed,\" said Zelda, who added something about his being the kindest creature living. She remembered, however, that on her first asking him about Madame Elspeth he had answered her in a manner which this lady might have thought injurious without being explicit. There was something between them, Zelda said to herself, but she said nothing more than this. If it were something of importance it should inspire respect; if it were not it was not worth her curiosity. With all her love of knowledge she had a natural shrinking from raising curtains and looking into unlighted corners. The love of knowledge coexisted in her mind with the finest capacity for ignorance.\n\n But Madame Elspeth sometimes said things that startled her, made her raise her clear eyebrows at the time and think of the words afterwards. \"I'd give a great deal to be your age again,\" she broke out once with a bitterness which, though diluted in her customary amplitude of ease, was imperfectly disguised by it. \"If I could only begin again--if I could have my life before me!\"\n\n \"Your life's before you yet,\" Zelda answered gently, for she was vaguely awe-struck.\n\n \"No; the best part's gone, and gone for nothing.\"\n\n \"Surely not for nothing,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Why not--what have I got? Neither husband, nor child, nor fortune, nor position, nor the traces of a beauty that I never had.\"\n\n \"You have many friends, dear lady.\"\n\n \"I'm not so sure!\" cried Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"Ah, you're wrong. You have memories, graces, talents--\"\n\n But Madame Elspeth interrupted her. \"What have my talents brought me? Nothing but the need of using them still, to get through the hours, the years, to cheat myself with some pretence of movement, of unconsciousness. As for my graces and memories the less said about them the better. You'll be my friend till you find a better use for your friendship.\"\n\n \"It will be for you to see that I don't then,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Yes; I would make an effort to keep you.\" And her companion looked at her gravely. \"When I say I should like to be your age I mean with your qualities--frank, generous, sincere like you. In that case I should have made something better of my life.\"\n\n \"What should you have liked to do that you've not done?\"\n\n Madame Elspeth took a sheet of music--she was seated at the piano and had abruptly wheeled about on the stool when she first spoke--and mechanically turned the leaves. \"I'm very ambitious!\" she at last replied.\n\n \"And your ambitions have not been satisfied? They must have been great.\"\n\n \"They WERE great. I should make myself ridiculous by talking of them.\"\n\n Zelda wondered what they could have been--whether Madame Elspeth had aspired to wear a crown. \"I don't know what your idea of success may be, but you seem to me to have been successful. To me indeed you're a vivid image of success.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth tossed away the music with a smile. \"What's YOUR idea of success?\"\n\n \"You evidently think it must be a very tame one. It's to see some dream of one's youth come true.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" Madame Elspeth exclaimed, \"that I've never seen! But my dreams were so great--so preposterous. Heaven forgive me, I'm dreaming now!\" And she turned back to the piano and began grandly to play. On the morrow she said to Zelda that her definition of success had been very pretty, yet frightfully sad. Measured in that way, who had ever succeeded? The dreams of one's youth, why they were enchanting, they were divine! Who had ever seen such things come to pass?\n\n \"I myself--a few of them,\" Zelda ventured to answer.\n\n \"Already? They must have been dreams of yesterday.\"\n\n \"I began to dream very young,\" Zelda smiled.\n\n \"Ah, if you mean the aspirations of your childhood--that of having a pink sash and a doll that could close her eyes.\"\n\n \"No, I don't mean that.\"\n\n \"Or a young man with a fine moustache going down on his knees to you.\"\n\n \"No, nor that either,\" Zelda d\n\n Some fortnight after this Madame Elspeth drove up in a hansom cab to the house in Winchester Square. As she descended from her vehicle she observed, suspended between the dining-room windows, a large, neat, wooden tablet, on whose fresh black ground were inscribed in white paint the words--\"This noble freehold mansion to be sold\"; with the name of the agent to whom application should be made. \"They certainly lose no time,\" said the visitor as, after sounding the big brass knocker, she waited to be admitted; \"it's a practical country!\" And within the house, as she ascended to the drawing-room, she perceived numerous signs of abdication; pictures removed from the walls and placed upon sofas, windows undraped and floors laid bare. Mrs. Trey presently received her and intimated in a few words that condolences might be taken for granted.\n\n \"I know what you're going to say--he was a very good man. But I know it better than any one, because I gave him more chance to show it. In that I think I was a good wife.\" Mrs. Trey added that at the end her husband apparently recognised this fact. \"He has treated me most liberally,\" she said; \"I won't say more liberally than I expected, because I didn't expect. You know that as a general thing I don't expect. But he chose, I presume, to recognise the fact that though I lived much abroad and mingled--you may say freely--in foreign life, I never exhibited the smallest preference for any one else.\"\n\n \"For any one but yourself,\" Madame Elspeth mentally observed; but the reflexion was perfectly inaudible.\n\n \"I never sacrificed my husband to another,\" Mrs. Trey continued with her stout curtness.\n\n \"Oh no,\" thought Madame Elspeth; \"you never did anything for another!\"\n\n There was a certain cynicism in these mute comments which demands an explanation; the more so as they are not in accord either with the view--somewhat superficial perhaps--that we have hitherto enjoyed of Madame Elspeth's character or with the literal facts of Mrs. Trey's history; the more so, too, as Madame Elspeth had a well-founded conviction that her friend's last remark was not in the least to be construed as a side-thrust at herself. The truth is that the moment she had crossed the threshold she received an impression that Mr. Trey's death had had subtle consequences and that these consequences had been profitable to a little circle of persons among whom she was not numbered. Of course it was an event which would naturally have consequences; her imagination had more than once rested upon this fact during her stay at Gardencourt. But it had been one thing to foresee such a matter mentally and another to stand among its massive records. The idea of a distribution of property--she would almost have said of spoils--just now pressed upon her senses and irritated her with a sense of exclusion. I am far from wishing to picture her as one of the hungry mouths or envious hearts of the general herd, but we have already learned of her having desires that had never been satisfied. If she had been questioned, she would of course have admitted--with a fine proud smile--that she had not the faintest claim to a share in Mr. Trey's relics. \"There was never anything in the world between us,\" she would have said. \"There was never that, poor man!\"--with a fillip of her thumb and her third finger. I hasten to add, moreover, that if she couldn't at the present moment keep from quite perversely yearning she was careful not to betray herself. She had after all as much sympathy for Mrs. Trey's gains as for her losses.\n\n \"He has left me this house,\" the newly-made widow said; \"but of course I shall not live in it; I've a much better one in Florence. The will was opened only three days since, but I've already offered the house for sale. I've also a share in the bank; but I don't yet understand if I'm obliged to leave it there. If not I shall certainly take it out. Clyde, of course, has Gardencourt; but I'm not sure that he'll have means to keep up the place. He's naturally left very well off, but his father has given away an immense deal of money; there are bequests to a string of third cousins in Vermont. Clyde, however, is very fond of Gardencourt and would be quite capable of living there--in summer--with a maid-of-all-work and a gardener's boy. There's one remarkable clause in my husband's will,\" Mrs. Trey added. \"He has left my niece a fortune.\"\n\n \"A fortune!\" Madame Elspeth softly repeated.\n\n \"Zelda steps into something like seventy thousand pounds.\" Madame Elspeth's hands were clasped in her lap; at this she raised them, still clasped, and held them a moment against her bosom while her eyes, a little dilated, fixed themselves on those of her friend. \"Ah,\" she cried, \"the clever creature!\"\n\n Mrs. Trey gave her a quick look. \"What do you mean by that?\"\n\n For an instant Madame Elspeth's colour rose and she dropped her eyes. \"It certainly is clever to achieve such results--without an effort!\"\n\n \"There assuredly was no effort. Don't call it an achievement.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth was seldom guilty of the awkwardness of retracting what she had said; her wisdom was shown rather in maintaining it and placing it in a favourable light. \"My dear friend, Zelda would certainly not have had seventy thousand pounds left her if she had not been the most charming girl in the world. Her charm includes great cleverness.\"\n\n \"She never dreamed, I'm sure, of my husband's doing anything for her; and I never dreamed of it either, for he never spoke to me of his intention,\" Mrs. Trey said. \"She had no claim upon him whatever; it was no great recommendation to him that she was my niece. Whatever she achieved she achieved unconsciously.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" rejoined Madame Elspeth, \"those are the greatest strokes!\" Mrs. Trey reserved her opinion. \"The girl's fortunate; I don't deny that. But for the present she's simply stupefied.\"\n\n \"Do you mean that she doesn't know what to do with the money?\"\n\n \"That, I think, she has hardly considered. She doesn't know what to think about the matter at all. It has been as if a big gun were suddenly fired off behind her; she's feeling herself to see if she be hurt. It's but three days since she received a visit from the principal executor, who came in person, very gallantly, to notify her. He told me afterwards that when he had made his little speech she suddenly burst into tears. The money's to remain in the affairs of the bank, and she's to draw the interest.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth shook her head with a wise and now quite benignant smile. \"How very delicious! After she has done that two or three times she'll get used to it.\" Then after a silence, \"What does your son think of it?\" she abruptly asked.\n\n \"He left England before the will was read--used up by his fatigue and anxiety and hurrying off to the south. He's on his way to the Riviera and I've not yet heard from him. But it's not likely he'll ever object to anything done by his father.\"\n\n \"Didn't you say his own share had been cut down?\"\n\n \"Only at his wish. I know that he urged his father to do something for the people in America. He's not in the least addicted to looking after number one.\"\n\n \"It depends upon whom he regards as number one!\" said Madame Elspeth. And she remained thoughtful a moment, her eyes bent on the floor.\n\n \"Am I not to see your happy niece?\" she asked at last as she raised them.\n\n \"You may see her; but you'll not be struck with her being happy. She has looked as solemn, these three days, as a Cimabue Madonna!\" And Mrs. Trey rang for a servant.\n\n Zelda came in shortly after the footman had been sent to call her; and Madame Elspeth thought, as she appeared, that Mrs. Trey's comparison had its force. The girl was pale and grave--an effect not mitigated by her deeper mourning; but the smile of her brightest moments came into her face as she saw Madame Elspeth, who went forward, laid her hand on our heroine's shoulder and, after looking at her a moment, kissed her as if she were returning the kiss she had received from her at Gardencourt. This was the only allusion the visitor, in her great good taste, made for the present to her young friend's inheritance.\n\n Mrs. Trey had no purpose of awaiting in London the sale of her house. After selecting from among its furniture the objects she wished to transport to her other abode, she left the rest of its contents to be disposed of by the auctioneer and took her departure for the Continent. She was of course accompanied on this journey by her niece, who now had plenty of leisure to measure and weigh and otherwise handle the windfall on which Madame Elspeth had covertly congratulated her. Zelda thought very often of the fact of her accession of means, looking at it in a dozen different lights; but we shall not now attempt to follow her train of thought or to explain exactly why her new consciousness was at first oppressive. This failure to rise to immediate joy was indeed but brief; the girl presently made up her mind that to be rich was a virtue because it was to be able to do, and that to do could only be sweet. It was the graceful contrary of the stupid side of weakness--especially the feminine variety. To be weak was, for a delicate young person, rather graceful, but, after all, as Zelda said to herself, there was a larger grace than that. Just now, it is true, there was not much to do--once she had sent off a cheque to Lily and another to poor Edith; but she was thankful for the quiet months which her mourning robes and her aunt's fresh widowhood compelled them to spend together. The acquisition of power made her serious; she scrutinised her power with a kind of tender ferocity, but was not eager to exercise it. She began to do so during a stay of some weeks which she eventually made with her aunt in Paris, though in ways that will inevitably present themselves as trivial. They were the ways most naturally imposed in a city in which the shops are the admiration of the world, and that were prescribed unreservedly by the guidance of Mrs. Trey, who took a rigidly practical view of the transformation of her niece from a poor girl to a rich one. \"Now that you're a young woman of fortune you must know how to play the part--I mean to play it well,\" she said to Zelda once for all; and she added that the girl's first duty was to have everything handsome. \"You don't know how to take care of your things, but you must learn,\" she went on; this was Zelda's second duty. Zelda submitted, but for the present her imagination was not kindled; she longed for opportunities, but these were not the opportunities she meant.\n\n Mrs. Trey rarely changed her plans, and, having intended before her husband's death to spend a part of the winter in Paris, saw no reason to deprive herself--still less to deprive her companion--of this advantage. Though they would live in great retirement she might still present her niece, informally, to the little circle of her fellow countrymen dwelling upon the skirts of the Champs Elysees. With many of these amiable colonists Mrs. Trey was intimate; she shared their expatriation, their convictions, their pastimes, their ennui. Zelda saw them arrive with a good deal of assiduity at her aunt's hotel, and pronounced on them with a trenchancy doubtless to be accounted for by the temporary exaltation of her sense of human duty. She made up her mind that their lives were, though luxurious, inane, and incurred some disfavour by expressing this view on bright Sunday afternoons, when the American absentees were engaged in calling on each other. Though her listeners passed for people kept exemplarily genial by their cooks and dressmakers, two or three of them thought her cleverness, which was generally admitted, inferior to that of the new theatrical pieces. \"You all live here this way, but what does it lead to?\" she was pleased to ask. \"It doesn't seem to lead to anything, and I should think you'd get very tired of it.\"\n\n Mrs. Trey thought the question worthy of Ximena Anamaria. The two ladies had found Ximena in Paris, and Zelda constantly saw her; so that Mrs. Trey had some reason for saying to herself that if her niece were not clever enough to originate almost anything, she might be suspected of having borrowed that style of remark from her journalistic friend. The first occasion on which Zelda had spoken was that of a visit paid by the two ladies to Mrs. Luce, an old friend of Mrs. Trey's and the only person in Paris she now went to see. Mrs. Luce had been living in Paris since the days of Louis Philippe; she used to say jocosely that she was one of the generation of 1830--a joke of which the point was not always taken. When it failed Mrs. Luce used to explain--\"Oh yes, I'm one of the romantics;\" her French had never become quite perfect. She was always at home on Sunday afternoons and surrounded by sympathetic compatriots, usually the same. In fact she was at home at all times, and reproduced with wondrous truth in her well-cushioned little corner of the brilliant city, the domestic tone of her native Baltimore. This reduced Mr. Luce, her worthy husband, a tall, lean, grizzled, well-brushed gentleman who wore a gold eye-glass and carried his hat a little too much on the back of his head, to mere platonic praise of the \"distractions\" of Paris--they were his great word--since you would never have guessed from what cares he escaped to them. One of them was that he went every day to the American banker's, where he found a post-office that was almost as sociable and colloquial an institution as in an American country town. He passed an hour (in fine weather) in a chair in the Champs Elysees, and he dined uncommonly well at his own table, seated above a waxed floor which it was Mrs. Luce's happiness to believe had a finer polish than any other in the French capital. Occasionally he dined with a friend or two at the Cafe Anglais, where his talent for ordering a dinner was a source of felicity to his companions and an object of admiration even to the headwaiter of the establishment. These were his only known pastimes, but they had beguiled his hours for upwards of half a century, and they doubtless justified his frequent declaration that there was no place like Paris. In no other place, on these terms, could Mr. Luce flatter himself that he was enjoying life. There was nothing like Paris, but it must be confessed that Mr. Luce thought less highly of this scene of his dissipations than in earlier days. In the list of his resources his political reflections should not be omitted, for they were doubtless the animating principle of many hours that superficially seemed vacant. Like many of his fellow colonists Mr. Luce was a high--or rather a deep--conservative, and gave no countenance to the government lately established in France. He had no faith in its duration and would assure you from year to year that its end was close at hand. \"They want to be kept down, sir, to be kept down; nothing but the strong hand--the iron heel--will do for them,\" he would frequently say of the French people; and his ideal of a fine showy clever rule was that of the superseded Empire. \"Paris is much less attractive than in the days of the Emperor; HE knew how to make a city pleasant,\" Mr. Luce had often remarked to Mrs. Trey, who was quite of his own way of thinking and wished to know what one had crossed that odious Atlantic for but to get away from republics.\n\n \"Why, madam, sitting in the Champs Elysees, opposite to the Palace of Industry, I've seen the court-carriages from the Tuileries pass up and down as many as seven times a day. I remember one occasion when they went as high as nine. What do you see now? It's no use talking, the style's all gone. Napoleon knew what the French people want, and there'll be a dark cloud over Paris, our Paris, till they get the Empire back again.\"\n\n Among Mrs. Luce's visitors on Sunday afternoons was a young man with whom Zelda had had a good deal of conversation and whom she found full of valuable knowledge. Mr. Ashton Karson--Ned Karson as he was called--was native to New York and had been brought up in Paris, living there under the eye of his father who, as it happened, had been an early and intimate friend of the late Mr. Matt. Ashton Karson remembered Zelda as a little girl; it had been his father who came to the rescue of the small Matts at the inn at Neufchatel (he was travelling that way with the boy and had stopped at the hotel by chance), after their bonne had gone off with the Russian prince and when Mr. Matt's whereabouts remained for some days a mystery. Zelda remembered perfectly the neat little male child whose hair smelt of a delicious cosmetic and who had a bonne all his own, warranted to lose sight of him under no provocation. Zelda took a walk with the pair beside the lake and thought little Ashton as pretty as an angel--a comparison by no means conventional in her mind, for she had a very definite conception of a type of features which she supposed to be angelic and which her new friend perfectly illustrated. A small pink face surmounted by a blue velvet bonnet and set off by a stiff embroidered collar had become the countenance of her childish dreams; and she had firmly believed for some time afterwards that the heavenly hosts conversed among themselves in a queer little dialect of French-English, expressing the properest sentiments, as when Ashton told her that he was \"defended\" by his bonne to go near the edge of the lake, and that one must always obey to one's bonne. Ned Karson's English had improved; at least it exhibited in a less degree the French variation. His father was dead and his bonne dismissed, but the young man still conformed to the spirit of their teaching--he never went to the edge of the lake. There was still something agreeable to the nostrils about him and something not offensive to nobler organs. He was a very gentle and gracious youth, with what are called cultivated tastes--an acquaintance with old china, with good wine, with the bindings of books, with the Almanach de Gotha, with the best shops, the best hotels, the hours of railway-trains. He could order a dinner almost as well as Mr. Luce, and it was probable that as his experience accumulated he would be a worthy successor to that gentleman, whose rather grim politics he also advocated in a soft and innocent voice. He had some charming rooms in Paris, decorated with old Spanish altar-lace, the envy of his female friends, who declared that his chimney-piece was better draped than the high shoulders of many a duchess. He usually, however, spent a part of every winter at Pau, and had once passed a couple of months in the United States.\n\n He took a great interest in Zelda and remembered perfectly the walk at Neufchatel, when she would persist in going so near the edge. He seemed to recognise this same tendency in the subversive enquiry that I quoted a moment ago, and set himself to answer our heroine's question with greater urbanity than it perhaps deserved. \"What does it lead to, Miss Matt? Why Paris leads everywhere. You can't go anywhere unless you come here first. Every one that comes to Europe has got to pass through. You don't mean it in that sense so much? You mean what good it does you? Well, how can you penetrate futurity? How can you tell what lies ahead? If it's a pleasant road I don't care where it leads. I like the road, Miss Matt; I like the dear old asphalte. You can't get tired of it--you can't if you try. You think you would, but you wouldn't; there's always something new and fresh. Take the Hotel Drouot, now; they sometimes have three and four sales a week. Where can you get such things as you can here? In spite of all they say I maintain they're cheaper too, if you know the right places. I know plenty of places, but I keep them to myself. I'll tell you, if you like, as a particular favour; only you mustn't tell any one else. Don't you go anywhere without asking me first; I want you to promise me that. As a general thing avoid the Boulevards; there's very little to be done on the Boulevards. Speaking conscientiously--sans blague--I don't believe any one knows Paris better than I. You and Mrs. Trey must come and breakfast with me some day, and I'll show you my things; je ne vous dis que ca! There has been a great deal of talk about London of late; it's the fashion to cry up London. But there's nothing in it--you can't do anything in London. No Louis Quinze--nothing of the First Empire; nothing but their eternal Queen Anne. It's good for one's bed-room, Queen Anne--for one's washing-room; but it isn't proper for a salon. Do I spend my life at the auctioneer's?\" Mr. Karson pursued in answer to another question of Zelda's. \"Oh no; I haven't the means. I wish I had. You think I'm a mere trifler; I can tell by the expression of your face--you've got a wonderfully expressive face. I hope you don't mind my saying that; I mean it as a kind of warning. You think I ought to do something, and so do I, so long as you leave it vague. But when you come to the point you see you have to stop. I can't go home and be a shopkeeper. You think I'm very well fitted? Ah, Miss Matt, you overrate me. I can buy very well, but I can't sell; you should see when I sometimes try to get rid of my things. It takes much more ability to make other people buy than to buy yourself. When I think how clever they must be, the people who make ME buy! Ah no; I couldn't be a shopkeeper. I can't be a doctor; it's a repulsive business. I can't be a clergyman; I haven't got convictions. And then I can't pronounce the names right in the Bible. They're very difficult, in the Old Testament particularly. I can't be a lawyer; I don't understand--how do you call it?--the American procedure. Is there anything else? There's nothing for a gentleman in America. I should like to be a diplomatist; but American diplomacy--that's not for gentlemen either. I'm sure if you had seen the last min--\"\n\n Ximena Anamaria, who was often with her friend when Mr. Karson, coming to pay his compliments late in the afternoon, expressed himself after the fashion I have sketched, usually interrupted the young man at this point and read him a lecture on the duties of the American citizen. She thought him most unnatural; he was worse than poor Clyde Trey. Ximena, however, was at this time more than ever addicted to fine criticism, for her conscience had been freshly alarmed as regards Zelda. She had not congratulated this young lady on her augmentations and begged to be excused from doing so.\n\n \"If Mr. Trey had consulted me about leaving you the money,\" she frankly asserted, \"I'd have said to him 'Never!\"\n\n \"I see,\" Zelda had answered. \"You think it will prove a curse in disguise. Perhaps it will.\"\n\n \"Leave it to some one you care less for--that's what I should have said.\"\n\n \"To yourself for instance?\" Zelda suggested jocosely. And then, \"Do you really believe it will ruin me?\" she asked in quite another tone.\n\n \"I hope it won't ruin you; but it will certainly confirm your dangerous tendencies.\"\n\n \"Do you mean the love of luxury--of extravagance?\"\n\n \"No, no,\" said Ximena; \"I mean your exposure on the moral side. I approve of luxury; I think we ought to be as elegant as possible. Look at the luxury of our western cities; I've seen nothing over here to compare with it. I hope you'll never become grossly sensual; but I'm not afraid of that. The peril for you is that you live too much in the world of your own dreams. You're not enough in contact with reality--with the toiling, striving, suffering, I may even say sinning, world that surrounds you. You're too fastidious; you've too many graceful illusions. Your newly-acquired thousands will shut you up more and more to the society of a few selfish and heartless people who will be interested in keeping them up.\"\n\n Zelda's eyes expanded as she gazed at this lurid scene. \"What are my illusions?\" she asked. \"I try so hard not to have any.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Ximena, \"you think you can lead a romantic life, that you can live by pleasing yourself and pleasing others. You'll find you're mistaken. Whatever life you lead you must put your soul in it--to make any sort of success of it; and from the moment you do that it ceases to be romance, I assure you: it becomes grim reality! And you can't always please yourself; you must sometimes please other people. That, I admit, you're very ready to do; but there's another thing that's still more important--you must often displease others. You must always be ready for that--you must never shrink from it. That doesn't suit you at all--you're too fond of admiration, you like to be thought well of. You think we can escape disagreeable duties by taking romantic views--that's your great illusion, my dear. But we can't. You must be prepared on many occasions in life to please no one at all--not even yourself.\"\n\n Zelda shook her head sadly; she looked troubled and frightened. \"This, for you, Ximena,\" she said, \"must be one of those occasions!\"\n\n It was certainly true that Miss Anamaria, during her visit to Paris, which had been professionally more remunerative than her English sojourn, had not been living in the world of dreams. Mr. Tate, who had now returned to England, was her companion for the first four weeks of her stay; and about Mr. Tate there was nothing dreamy. Zelda learned from her friend that the two had led a life of great personal intimacy and that this had been a peculiar advantage to Ximena, owing to the gentleman's remarkable knowledge of Paris. He had explained everything, shown her everything, been her constant guide and interpreter. They had breakfasted together, dined together, gone to the theatre together, supped together, really in a manner quite lived together. He was a true friend, Ximena more than once assured our heroine; and she had never supposed that she could like any Englishman so well. Zelda could not have told you why, but she found something that ministered to mirth in the alliance the correspondent of the Interviewer had struck with Lady Pensil's brother; her amusement moreover subsisted in face of the fact that she thought it a credit to each of them. Zelda couldn't rid herself of a suspicion that they were playing somehow at cross-purposes--that the simplicity of each had been entrapped. But this simplicity was on either side none the less honourable. It was as graceful on Ximena's part to believe that Mr. Tate took an interest in the diffusion of lively journalism and in consolidating the position of lady-correspondents as it was on the part of his companion to suppose that the cause of the Interviewer--a periodical of which he never formed a very definite conception--was, if subtly analysed (a task to which Mr. Tate felt himself quite equal), but the cause of Miss Anamaria's need of demonstrative affection. Each of these groping celibates supplied at any rate a want of which the other was impatiently conscious. Mr. Tate, who was of rather a slow and a discursive habit, relished a prompt, keen, positive woman, who charmed him by the influence of a shining, challenging eye and a kind of bandbox freshness, and who kindled a perception of raciness in a mind to which the usual fare of life seemed unsalted. Ximena, on the other hand, enjoyed the society of a gentleman who appeared somehow, in his way, made, by expensive, roundabout, almost \"quaint\" processes, for her use, and whose leisured state, though generally indefensible, was a decided boon to a breathless mate, and who was furnished with an easy, traditional, though by no means exhaustive, answer to almost any social or practical question that could come up. She often found Mr. Tate's answers very convenient, and in the press of catching the American post would largely and showily address them to publicity. It was to be feared that she was indeed drifting toward those abysses of sophistication as to which Zelda, wishing for a good-humoured retort, had warned her. There might be danger in store for Zelda; but it was scarcely to be hoped that Miss Anamaria, on her side, would find permanent rest in any adoption of the views of a class pledged to all the old abuses. Zelda continued to warn her good-humouredly; Lady Pensil's obliging brother was sometimes, on our heroine's lips, an object of irreverent and facetious allusion. Nothing, however, could exceed Ximena's amiability on this point; she used to abound in the sense of Zelda's irony and to enumerate with elation the hours she had spent with this perfect man of the world--a term that had ceased to make with her, as previously, for opprobrium. Then, a few moments later, she would forget that they had been talking jocosely and would mention with impulsive earnestness some expedition she had enjoyed in his company. She would say: \"Oh, I know all about Versailles; I went there with Mr. Tate. I was bound to see it thoroughly--I warned him when we went out there that I was thorough: so we spent three days at the hotel and wandered all over the place. It was lovely weather--a kind of Indian summer, only not so good. We just lived in that park. Oh yes; you can't tell me anything about Versailles.\" Ximena appeared to have made arrangements to meet her gallant friend during the spring in Italy.\n\n\n\n\n Mrs. Trey, before arriving in Paris, had fixed the day for her departure and by the middle of February had begun to travel southward. She interrupted her journey to pay a visit to her son, who at San Remo, on the Italian shore of the Mediterranean, had been spending a dull, bright winter beneath a slow-moving white umbrella. Zelda went with her aunt as a matter of course, though Mrs. Trey, with homely, customary logic, had laid before her a pair of alternatives.\n\n \"Now, of course, you're completely your own mistress and are as free as the bird on the bough. I don't mean you were not so before, but you're at present on a different footing--property erects a kind of barrier. You can do a great many things if you're rich which would be severely criticised if you were poor. You can go and come, you can travel alone, you can have your own establishment: I mean of course if you'll take a companion--some decayed gentlewoman, with a darned cashmere and dyed hair, who paints on velvet. You don't think you'd like that? Of course you can do as you please; I only want you to understand how much you're at liberty. You might take Miss Anamaria as your dame de compagnie; she'd keep people off very well. I think, however, that it's a great deal better you should remain with me, in spite of there being no obligation. It's better for several reasons, quite apart from your liking it. I shouldn't think you'd like it, but I recommend you to make the sacrifice. Of course whatever novelty there may have been at first in my society has quite passed away, and you see me as I am--a dull, obstinate, narrow-minded old woman.\"\n\n \"I don't think you're at all dull,\" Zelda had replied to this.\n\n \"But you do think I'm obstinate and narrow-minded? I told you so!\" said Mrs. Trey with much elation at being justified.\n\n Zelda remained for the present with her aunt, because, in spite of eccentric impulses, she had a great regard for what was usually deemed decent, and a young gentlewoman without visible relations had always struck her as a flower without foliage. It was true that Mrs. Trey's conversation had never again appeared so brilliant as that first afternoon in Albany, when she sat in her damp waterproof and sketched the opportunities that Europe would offer to a young person of taste. This, however, was in a great measure the girl's own fault; she had got a glimpse of her aunt's experience, and her imagination constantly anticipated the judgements and emotions of a woman who had very little of the same faculty. Apart from this, Mrs. Trey had a great merit; she was as honest as a pair of compasses. There was a comfort in her stiffness and firmness; you knew exactly where to find her and were never liable to chance encounters and concussions. On her own ground she was perfectly present, but was never over-inquisitive as regards the territory of her neighbour. Zelda came at last to have a kind of undemonstrable pity for her; there seemed something so dreary in the condition of a person whose nature had, as it were, so little surface--offered so limited a face to the accretions of human contact. Nothing tender, nothing sympathetic, had ever had a chance to fasten upon it--no wind-sown blossom, no familiar softening moss. Her offered, her passive extent, in other words, was about that of a knife-edge. Zelda had reason to believe none the less that as she advanced in life she made more of those concessions to the sense of something obscurely distinct from convenience--more of them than she independently exacted. She was learning to sacrifice consistency to considerations of that inferior order for which the excuse must be found in the particular case. It was not to the credit of her absolute rectitude that she should have gone the longest way round to Florence in order to spend a few weeks with her invalid son; since in former years it had been one of her most definite convictions that when Clyde wished to see her he was at liberty to remember that Palazzo Crescentini contained a large apartment known as the quarter of the signorino.\n\n \"I want to ask you something,\" Zelda said to this young man the day after her arrival at San Remo--\"something I've thought more than once of asking you by letter, but that I've hesitated on the whole to write about. Face to face, nevertheless, my question seems easy enough. Did you know your father intended to leave me so much money?\"\n\n Clyde stretched his legs a little further than usual and gazed a little more fixedly at the Mediterranean.\n\n \"What does it matter, my dear Zelda, whether I knew? My father was very obstinate.\"\n\n \"So,\" said the girl, \"you did know.\"\n\n \"Yes; he told me. We even talked it over a little.\" \"What did he do it for?\" asked Zelda abruptly. \"Why, as a kind of compliment.\"\n\n \"A compliment on what?\"\n\n \"On your so beautifully existing.\"\n\n \"He liked me too much,\" she presently declared.\n\n \"That's a way we all have.\"\n\n \"If I believed that I should be very unhappy. Fortunately I don't believe it. I want to be treated with justice; I want nothing but that.\"\n\n \"Very good. But you must remember that justice to a lovely being is after all a florid sort of sentiment.\"\n\n \"I'm not a lovely being. How can you say that, at the very moment when I'm asking such odious questions? I must seem to you delicate!\"\n\n \"You seem to me troubled,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"I am troubled.\"\n\n \"About what?\"\n\n For a moment she answered nothing; then she broke out: \"Do you think it good for me suddenly to be made so rich? Ximena doesn't.\"\n\n \"Oh, hang Ximena!\" said Clyde coarsely, \"If you ask me I'm delighted at it.\"\n\n \"Is that why your father did it--for your amusement?\"\n\n \"I differ with Miss Anamaria,\" Clyde went on more gravely. \"I think it very good for you to have means.\"\n\n Zelda looked at him with serious eyes. \"I wonder whether you know what's good for me--or whether you care.\"\n\n \"If I know depend upon it I care. Shall I tell you what it is? Not to torment yourself.\"\n\n \"Not to torment you, I suppose you mean.\"\n\n \"You can't do that; I'm proof. Take things more easily. Don't ask yourself so much whether this or that is good for you. Don't question your conscience so much--it will get out of tune like a strummed piano. Keep it for great occasions. Don't try so much to form your character--it's like trying to pull open a tight, tender young rose. Live as you like best, and your character will take care of itself. Most things are good for you; the exceptions are very rare, and a comfortable income's not one of them.\" Clyde paused, smiling; Zelda had listened quickly. \"You've too much power of thought--above all too much conscience,\" Clyde added. \"It's out of all reason, the number of things you think wrong. Put back your watch. Diet your fever. Spread your wings; rise above the ground. It's never wrong to do that.\"\n\n She had listened eagerly, as I say; and it was her nature to understand quickly. \"I wonder if you appreciate what you say. If you do, you take a great responsibility.\"\n\n \"You frighten me a little, but I think I'm right,\" said Clyde, persisting in cheer.\n\n \"All the same what you say is very true,\" Zelda pursued. \"You could say nothing more true. I'm absorbed in myself--I look at life too much as a doctor's prescription. Why indeed should we perpetually be thinking whether things are good for us, as if we were patients lying in a hospital? Why should I be so afraid of not doing right? As if it mattered to the world whether I do right or wrong!\"\n\n \"You're a capital person to advise,\" said Clyde; \"you take the wind out of my sails!\"\n\n She looked at him as if she had not heard him--though she was following out the train of reflexion which he himself had kindled. \"I try to care more about the world than about myself--but I always come back to myself. It's because I'm afraid.\" She stopped; her voice had trembled a little. \"Yes, I'm afraid; I can't tell you. A large fortune means freedom, and I'm afraid of that. It's such a fine thing, and one should make such a good use of it. If one shouldn't one would be ashamed. And one must keep thinking; it's a constant effort. I'm not sure it's not a greater happiness to be powerless.\"\n\n \"For weak people I've no doubt it's a greater happiness. For weak people the effort not to be contemptible must be great.\"\n\n \"And how do you know I'm not weak?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"Ah,\" Clyde answered with a flush that the girl noticed, \"if you are I'm awfully sold!\"\n\n The charm of the Mediterranean coast only deepened for our heroine on acquaintance, for it was the threshold of Italy, the gate of admirations. Italy, as yet imperfectly seen and felt, stretched before her as a land of promise, a land in which a love of the beautiful might be comforted by endless knowledge. Whenever she strolled upon the shore with her cousin--and she was the companion of his daily walk--she looked across the sea, with longing eyes, to where she knew that Genoa lay. She was glad to pause, however, on the edge of this larger adventure; there was such a thrill even in the preliminary hovering. It affected her moreover as a peaceful interlude, as a hush of the drum and fife in a career which she had little warrant as yet for regarding as agitated, but which nevertheless she was constantly picturing to herself by the light of her hopes, her fears, her fancies, her ambitions, her predilections, and which reflected these subjective accidents in a manner sufficiently dramatic. Madame Elspeth had predicted to Mrs. Trey that after their young friend had put her hand into her pocket half a dozen times she would be reconciled to the idea that it had been filled by a munificent uncle; and the event justified, as it had so often justified before, that lady's perspicacity. Clyde Trey had praised his cousin for being morally inflammable, that is for being quick to take a hint that was meant as good advice. His advice had perhaps helped the matter; she had at any rate before leaving San Remo grown used to feeling rich. The consciousness in question found a proper place in rather a dense little group of ideas that she had about herself, and often it was by no means the least agreeable. It took perpetually for granted a thousand good intentions. She lost herself in a maze of visions; the fine things to be done by a rich, independent, generous girl who took a large human view of occasions and obligations were sublime in the mass. Her fortune therefore became to her mind a part of her better self; it gave her importance, gave her even, to her own imagination, a certain ideal beauty. What it did for her in the imagination of others is another affair, and on this point we must also touch in time. The visions I have just spoken of were mixed with other debates. Zelda liked better to think of the future than of the past; but at times, as she listened to the murmur of the Mediterranean waves, her glance took a backward flight. It rested upon two figures which, in spite of increasing distance, were still sufficiently salient; they were recognisable without difficulty as those of Mohammed Heston and Gemma Lyla. It was strange how quickly these images of energy had fallen into the background of our young lady's life. It was in her disposition at all times to lose faith in the reality of absent things; she could summon back her faith, in case of need, with an effort, but the effort was often painful even when the reality had been pleasant. The past was apt to look dead and its revival rather to show the livid light of a judgement-day. The girl moreover was not prone to take for granted that she herself lived in the mind of others--she had not the fatuity to believe she left indelible traces. She was capable of being wounded by the discovery that she had been forgotten; but of all liberties the one she herself found sweetest was the liberty to forget. She had not given her last shilling, sentimentally speaking, either to Mohammed Heston or to Gemma Lyla, and yet couldn't but feel them appreciably in debt to her. She had of course reminded herself that she was to hear from Mr. Heston again; but this was not to be for another year and a half, and in that time a great many things might happen. She had indeed failed to say to herself that her American suitor might find some other girl more comfortable to woo; because, though it was certain many other girls would prove so, she had not the smallest belief that this merit would attract him. But she reflected that she herself might know the humiliation of change, might really, for that matter, come to the end of the things that were not Mohammed (even though there appeared so many of them), and find rest in those very elements of his presence which struck her now as impediments to the finer respiration. It was conceivable that these impediments should some day prove a sort of blessing in disguise--a clear and quiet harbour enclosed by a brave granite breakwater. But that day could only come in its order, and she couldn't wait for it with folded hands. That Gemma Lyla should continue to cherish her image seemed to her more than a noble humility or an enlightened pride ought to wish to reckon with. She had so definitely undertaken to preserve no record of what had passed between them that a corresponding effort on his own part would be eminently just. This was not, as it may seem, merely a theory tinged with sarcasm. Zelda candidly believed that his lordship would, in the usual phrase, get over his disappointment. He had been deeply affected--this she believed, and she was still capable of deriving pleasure from the belief; but it was absurd that a man both so intelligent and so honourably dealt with should cultivate a scar out of proportion to any wound. Englishmen liked moreover to be comfortable, said Zelda, and there could be little comfort for Gemma Lyla, in the long run, in brooding over a self-sufficient American girl who had been but a casual acquaintance. She flattered herself that, should she hear from one day to another that he had married some young woman of his own country who had done more to deserve him, she should receive the news without a pang even of surprise. It would have proved that he believed she was firm--which was what she wished to seem to him. That alone was grateful to her pride.\n\n\n\n\n On one of the first days of May, some six months after old Mr. Trey's death, a small group that might have been described by a painter as composing well was gathered in one of the many rooms of an ancient villa crowning an olive-muffled hill outside of the Roman gate of Florence. The villa was a long, rather blank-looking structure, with the far-projecting roof which Tuscany loves and which, on the hills that encircle Florence, when considered from a distance, makes so harmonious a rectangle with the straight, dark, definite cypresses that usually rise in groups of three or four beside it. The house had a front upon a little grassy, empty, rural piazza which occupied a part of the hill-top; and this front, pierced with a few windows in irregular relations and furnished with a stone bench lengthily adjusted to the base of the structure and useful as a lounging-place to one or two persons wearing more or less of that air of undervalued merit which in Italy, for some reason or other, always gracefully invests any one who confidently assumes a perfectly passive attitude--this antique, solid, weather-worn, yet imposing front had a somewhat incommunicative character. It was the mask, not the face of the house. It had heavy lids, but no eyes; the house in reality looked another way--looked off behind, into splendid openness and the range of the afternoon light. In that quarter the villa overhung the slope of its hill and the long valley of the Arno, hazy with Italian colour. It had a narrow garden, in the manner of a terrace, productive chiefly of tangles of wild roses and other old stone benches, mossy and sun-warmed. The parapet of the terrace was just the height to lean upon, and beneath it the ground declined into the vagueness of olive-crops and vineyards. It is not, however, with the outside of the place that we are concerned; on this bright morning of ripened spring its tenants had reason to prefer the shady side of the wall. The windows of the ground-floor, as you saw them from the piazza, were, in their noble proportions, extremely architectural; but their function seemed less to offer communication with the world than to defy the world to look in. They were massively cross-barred, and placed at such a height that curiosity, even on tiptoe, expired before it reached them. In an apartment lighted by a row of three of these jealous apertures--one of the several distinct apartments into which the villa was divided and which were mainly occupied by foreigners of random race long resident in Florence--a gentleman was seated in company with a young girl and two good sisters from a religious house. The room was, however, less sombre than our indications may have represented, for it had a wide, high door, which now stood open into the tangled garden behind; and the tall iron lattices admitted on occasion more than enough of the Italian sunshine. It was moreover a seat of ease, indeed of luxury, telling of arrangements subtly studied and refinements frankly proclaimed, and containing a variety of those faded hangings of damask and tapestry, those chests and cabinets of carved and time-polished oak, those angular specimens of pictorial art in frames as pedantically primitive, those perverse-looking relics of medieval brass and pottery, of which Italy has long been the not quite exhausted storehouse. These things kept terms with articles of modern furniture in which large allowance had been made for a lounging generation; it was to be noticed that all the chairs were deep and well padded and that much space was occupied by a writing-table of which the ingenious perfection bore the stamp of London and the nineteenth century. There were books in profusion and magazines and newspapers, and a few small, odd, elaborate pictures, chiefly in water-colour. One of these productions stood on a drawing-room easel before which, at the moment we begin to be concerned with her, the young girl I have mentioned had placed herself. She was looking at the picture in silence.\n\n Silence--absolute silence--had not fallen upon her companions; but their talk had an appearance of embarrassed continuity. The two good sisters had not settled themselves in their respective chairs; their attitude expressed a final reserve and their faces showed the glaze of prudence. They were plain, ample, mild-featured women, with a kind of business-like modesty to which the impersonal aspect of their stiffened linen and of the serge that draped them as if nailed on frames gave an advantage. One of them, a person of a certain age, in spectacles, with a fresh complexion and a full cheek, had a more discriminating manner than her colleague, as well as the responsibility of their errand, which apparently related to the young girl. This object of interest wore her hat--an ornament of extreme simplicity and not at variance with her plain muslin gown, too short for her years, though it must already have been \"let out.\" The gentleman who might have been supposed to be entertaining the two nuns was perhaps conscious of the difficulties of his function, it being in its way as arduous to converse with the very meek as with the very mighty. At the same time he was clearly much occupied with their quiet charge, and while she turned her back to him his eyes rested gravely on her slim, small figure. He was a man of forty, with a high but well-shaped head, on which the hair, still dense, but prematurely grizzled, had been cropped close. He had a fine, narrow, extremely modelled and composed face, of which the only fault was just this effect of its running a trifle too much to points; an appearance to which the shape of the beard contributed not a little. This beard, cut in the manner of the portraits of the sixteenth century and surmounted by a fair moustache, of which the ends had a romantic upward flourish, gave its wearer a foreign, traditionary look and suggested that he was a gentleman who studied style. His conscious, curious eyes, however, eyes at once vague and penetrating, intelligent and hard, expressive of the observer as well as of the dreamer, would have assured you that he studied it only within well-chosen limits, and that in so far as he sought it he found it. You would have been much at a loss to determine his original clime and country; he had none of the superficial signs that usually render the answer to this question an insipidly easy one. If he had English blood in his veins it had probably received some French or Italian commixture; but he suggested, fine gold coin as he was, no stamp nor emblem of the common mintage that provides for general circulation; he was the elegant complicated medal struck off for a special occasion. He had a light, lean, rather languid-looking figure, and was apparently neither tall nor short. He was dressed as a man dresses who takes little other trouble about it than to have no vulgar things.\n\n \"Well, my dear, what do you think of it?\" he asked of the young girl. He used the Italian tongue, and used it with perfect ease; but this would not have convinced you he was Italian.\n\n The child turned her head earnestly to one side and the other. \"It's very pretty, papa. Did you make it yourself?\"\n\n \"Certainly I made it. Don't you think I'm clever?\"\n\n \"Yes, papa, very clever; I also have learned to make pictures.\" And she turned round and showed a small, fair face painted with a fixed and intensely sweet smile.\n\n \"You should have brought me a specimen of your powers.\"\n\n \"I've brought a great many; they're in my trunk.\"\n\n \"She draws very--very carefully,\" the elder of the nuns remarked, speaking in French.\n\n \"I'm glad to hear it. Is it you who have instructed her?\"\n\n \"Happily no,\" said the good sister, blushing a little. \"Ce n'est pas ma partie. I teach nothing; I leave that to those who are wiser. We've an excellent drawing-master, Mr.--Mr.--what is his name?\" she asked of her companion.\n\n Her companion looked about at the carpet. \"It's a German name,\" she said in Italian, as if it needed to be translated.\n\n \"Yes,\" the other went on, \"he's a German, and we've had him many years.\"\n\n The young girl, who was not heeding the conversation, had wandered away to the open door of the large room and stood looking into the garden. \"And you, my sister, are French,\" said the gentleman.\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" the visitor gently replied. \"I speak to the pupils in my own tongue. I know no other. But we have sisters of other countries--English, German, Irish. They all speak their proper language.\"\n\n The gentleman gave a smile. \"Has my daughter been under the care of one of the Irish ladies?\" And then, as he saw that his visitors suspected a joke, though failing to understand it, \"You're very complete,\" he instantly added.\n\n \"Oh, yes, we're complete. We've everything, and everything's of the best.\"\n\n \"We have gymnastics,\" the Italian sister ventured to remark. \"But not dangerous.\"\n\n \"I hope not. Is that YOUR branch?\" A question which provoked much candid hilarity on the part of the two ladies; on the subsidence of which their entertainer, glancing at his daughter, remarked that she had grown.\n\n \"Yes, but I think she has finished. She'll remain--not big,\" said the French sister.\n\n \"I'm not sorry. I prefer women like books--very good and not too long. But I know,\" the gentleman said, \"no particular reason why my child should be short.\"\n\n The nun gave a temperate shrug, as if to intimate that such things might be beyond our knowledge. \"She's in very good health; that's the best thing.\"\n\n \"Yes, she looks sound.\" And the young girl's father watched her a moment. \"What do you see in the garden?\" he asked in French.\n\n \"I see many flowers,\" she replied in a sweet, small voice and with an accent as good as his own.\n\n \"Yes, but not many good ones. However, such as they are, go out and gather some for ces dames.\"\n\n The child turned to him with her smile heightened by pleasure. \"May I, truly?\"\n\n \"Ah, when I tell you,\" said her father.\n\n The girl glanced at the elder of the nuns. \"May I, truly, ma mere?\"\n\n \"Obey monsieur your father, my child,\" said the sister, blushing again.\n\n The child, satisfied with this authorisation, descended from the threshold and was presently lost to sight. \"You don't spoil them,\" said her father gaily.\n\n \"For everything they must ask leave. That's our system. Leave is freely granted, but they must ask it.\"\n\n \"Oh, I don't quarrel with your system; I've no doubt it's excellent. I sent you my daughter to see what you'd make of her. I had faith.\"\n\n \"One must have faith,\" the sister blandly rejoined, gazing through her spectacles.\n\n \"Well, has my faith been rewarded? What have you made of her?\"\n\n The sister dropped her eyes a moment. \"A good Christian, monsieur.\"\n\n Her host dropped his eyes as well; but it was probable that the movement had in each case a different spring. \"Yes, and what else?\"\n\n He watched the lady from the convent, probably thinking she would say that a good Christian was everything; but for all her simplicity she was not so crude as that. \"A charming young lady--a real little woman--a daughter in whom you will have nothing but contentment.\"\n\n \"She seems to me very gentille,\" said the father. \"She's really pretty.\"\n\n \"She's perfect. She has no faults.\"\n\n \"She never had any as a child, and I'm glad you have given her none.\"\n\n \"We love her too much,\" said the spectacled sister with dignity.\n\n \"And as for faults, how can we give what we have not? Le couvent n'est pas comme le monde, monsieur. She's our daughter, as you may say. We've had her since she was so small.\"\n\n \"Of all those we shall lose this year she's the one we shall miss most,\" the younger woman murmured deferentially.\n\n \"Ah, yes, we shall talk long of her,\" said the other. \"We shall hold her up to the new ones.\" And at this the good sister appeared to find her spectacles dim; while her companion, after fumbling a moment, presently drew forth a pocket-handkerchief of durable texture.\n\n \"It's not certain you'll lose her; nothing's settled yet,\" their host rejoined quickly; not as if to anticipate their tears, but in the tone of a man saying what was most agreeable to himself. \"We should be very happy to believe that. Fifteen is very young to leave us.\"\n\n \"Oh,\" exclaimed the gentleman with more vivacity than he had yet used, \"it is not I who wish to take her away. I wish you could keep her always!\"\n\n \"Ah, monsieur,\" said the elder sister, smiling and getting up, \"good as she is, she's made for the world. Le monde y gagnera.\"\n\n \"If all the good people were hidden away in convents how would the world get on?\" her companion softly enquired, rising also.\n\n This was a question of a wider bearing than the good woman apparently supposed; and the lady in spectacles took a harmonising view by saying comfortably: \"Fortunately there are good people everywhere.\"\n\n \"If you're going there will be two less here,\" her host remarked gallantly.\n\n For this extravagant sally his simple visitors had no answer, and they simply looked at each other in decent deprecation; but their confusion was speedily covered by the return of the young girl with two large bunches of roses--one of them all white, the other red.\n\n \"I give you your choice, mamman Catherine,\" said the child. \"It's only the colour that's different, mamman Justine; there are just as many roses in one bunch as in the other.\"\n\n The two sisters turned to each other, smiling and hesitating, with \"Which will you take?\" and \"No, it's for you to choose.\"\n\n \"I'll take the red, thank you,\" said Catherine in the spectacles. \"I'm so red myself. They'll comfort us on our way back to Rome.\"\n\n \"Ah, they won't last,\" cried the young girl. \"I wish I could give you something that would last!\"\n\n \"You've given us a good memory of yourself, my daughter. That will last!\"\n\n \"I wish nuns could wear pretty things. I would give you my blue beads,\" the child went on.\n\n \"And do you go back to Rome to-night?\" her father enquired.\n\n \"Yes, we take the train again. We've so much to do la-bas.\"\n\n \"Are you not tired?\"\n\n \"We are never tired.\"\n\n \"Ah, my sister, sometimes,\" murmured the junior votaress.\n\n \"Not to-day, at any rate. We have rested too well here. Que Dieu vous garde, ma fine.\"\n\n Their host, while they exchanged kisses with his daughter, went forward to open the door through which they were to pass; but as he did so he gave a slight exclamation, and stood looking beyond. The door opened into a vaulted ante-chamber, as high as a chapel and paved with red tiles; and into this antechamber a lady had just been admitted by a servant, a lad in shabby livery, who was now ushering her toward the apartment in which our friends were grouped. The gentleman at the door, after dropping his exclamation, remained silent; in silence too the lady advanced. He gave her no further audible greeting and offered her no hand, but stood aside to let her pass into the saloon. At the threshold she hesitated. \"Is there any one?\" she asked.\n\n \"Some one you may see.\"\n\n She went in and found herself confronted with the two nuns and their pupil, who was coming forward, between them, with a hand in the arm of each. At the sight of the new visitor they all paused, and the lady, who had also stopped, stood looking at them. The young girl gave a little soft cry: \"Ah, Madame Elspeth!\"\n\n The visitor had been slightly startled, but her manner the next instant was none the less gracious. \"Yes, it's Madame Elspeth, come to welcome you home.\" And she held out two hands to the girl, who immediately came up to her, presenting her forehead to be kissed. Madame Elspeth saluted this portion of her charming little person and then stood smiling at the two nuns. They acknowledged her smile with a decent obeisance, but permitted themselves no direct scrutiny of this imposing, brilliant woman, who seemed to bring in with her something of the radiance of the outer world. \"These ladies have brought my daughter home, and now they return to the convent,\" the gentleman explained.\n\n \"Ah, you go back to Rome? I've lately come from there. It's very lovely now,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n The good sisters, standing with their hands folded into their sleeves, accepted this statement uncritically; and the master of the house asked his new visitor how long it was since she had left Rome. \"She came to see me at the convent,\" said the young girl before the lady addressed had time to reply.\n\n \"I've been more than once, Leann,\" Madame Elspeth declared. \"Am I not your great friend in Rome?\"\n\n \"I remember the last time best,\" said Leann, \"because you told me I should come away.\"\n\n \"Did you tell her that?\" the child's father asked.\n\n \"I hardly remember. I told her what I thought would please her. I've been in Florence a week. I hoped you would come to see me.\"\n\n \"I should have done so if I had known you were there. One doesn't know such things by inspiration--though I suppose one ought. You had better sit down.\"\n\n These two speeches were made in a particular tone of voice--a tone half-lowered and carefully quiet, but as from habit rather than from any definite need. Madame Elspeth looked about her, choosing her seat. \"You're going to the door with these women? Let me of course not interrupt the ceremony. Je vous salue, mesdames,\" she added, in French, to the nuns, as if to dismiss them.\n\n \"This lady's a great friend of ours; you will have seen her at the convent,\" said their entertainer. \"We've much faith in her judgement, and she'll help me to decide whether my daughter shall return to you at the end of the holidays.\"\n\n \"I hope you'll decide in our favour, madame,\" the sister in spectacles ventured to remark.\n\n \"That's Mr. Madisyn's pleasantry; I decide nothing,\" said Madame Elspeth, but also as in pleasantry. \"I believe you've a very good school, but Miss Madisyn's friends must remember that she's very naturally meant for the world.\"\n\n \"That's what I've told monsieur,\" sister Catherine answered. \"It's precisely to fit her for the world,\" she murmured, glancing at Leann, who stood, at a little distance, attentive to Madame Elspeth's elegant apparel.\n\n \"Do you hear that, Leann? You're very naturally meant for the world,\" said Leann's father.\n\n The child fixed him an instant with her pure young eyes. \"Am I not meant for you, papa?\"\n\n Papa gave a quick, light laugh. \"That doesn't prevent it! I'm of the world, Leann.\"\n\n \"Kindly permit us to retire,\" said sister Catherine. \"Be good and wise and happy in any case, my daughter.\"\n\n \"I shall certainly come back and see you,\" Leann returned, recommencing her embraces, which were presently interrupted by Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"Stay with me, dear child,\" she said, \"while your father takes the good ladies to the door.\"\n\n Leann stared, disappointed, yet not protesting. She was evidently impregnated with the idea of submission, which was due to any one who took the tone of authority; and she was a passive spectator of the operation of her fate. \"May I not see mamman Catherine get into the carriage?\" she nevertheless asked very gently.\n\n \"It would please me better if you'd remain with me,\" said Madame Elspeth, while Mr. Madisyn and his companions, who had bowed low again to the other visitor, passed into the ante-chamber.\n\n \"Oh yes, I'll stay,\" Leann answered; and she stood near Madame Elspeth, surrendering her little hand, which this lady took. She stared out of the window; her eyes had filled with tears.\n\n \"I'm glad they've taught you to obey,\" said Madame Elspeth. \"That's what good little girls should do.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, I obey very well,\" cried Leann with soft eagerness, almost with boastfulness, as if she had been speaking of her piano-playing. And then she gave a faint, just audible sigh.\n\n Madame Elspeth, holding her hand, drew it across her own fine palm and looked at it. The gaze was critical, but it found nothing to deprecate; the child's small hand was delicate and fair. \"I hope they always see that you wear gloves,\" she said in a moment. \"Little girls usually dislike them.\"\n\n \"I used to dislike them, but I like them now,\" the child made answer.\n\n \"Very good, I'll make you a present of a dozen.\"\n\n \"I thank you very much. What colours will they be?\" Leann demanded with interest.\n\n Madame Elspeth meditated. \"Useful colours.\"\n\n \"But very pretty?\"\n\n \"Are you very fond of pretty things?\"\n\n \"Yes; but--but not too fond,\" said Leann with a trace of asceticism.\n\n \"Well, they won't be too pretty,\" Madame Elspeth returned with a laugh. She took the child's other hand and drew her nearer; after which, looking at her a moment, \"Shall you miss mother Catherine?\" she went on.\n\n \"Yes--when I think of her.\"\n\n \"Try then not to think of her. Perhaps some day,\" added Madame Elspeth, \"you'll have another mother.\"\n\n \"I don't think that's necessary,\" Leann said, repeating her little soft conciliatory sigh. \"I had more than thirty mothers at the convent.\"\n\n Her father's step sounded again in the antechamber, and Madame Elspeth got up, releasing the child. Mr. Madisyn came in and closed the door; then, without looking at Madame Elspeth, he pushed one or two chairs back into their places. His visitor waited a moment for him to speak, watching him as he moved about. Then at last she said: \"I hoped you'd have come to Rome. I thought it possible you'd have wished yourself to fetch Leann away.\"\n\n \"That was a natural supposition; but I'm afraid it's not the first time I've acted in defiance of your calculations.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Madame Elspeth, \"I think you very perverse.\"\n\n Mr. Madisyn busied himself for a moment in the room--there was plenty of space in it to move about--in the fashion of a man mechanically seeking pretexts for not giving an attention which may be embarrassing. Presently, however, he had exhausted his pretexts; there was nothing left for him--unless he took up a book--but to stand with his hands behind him looking at Leann. \"Why didn't you come and see the last of mamman Catherine?\" he asked of her abruptly in French.\n\n Leann hesitated a moment, glancing at Madame Elspeth. \"I asked her to stay with me,\" said this lady, who had seated herself again in another place.\n\n \"Ah, that was better,\" Madisyn conceded. With which he dropped into a chair and sat looking at Madame Elspeth; bent forward a little, his elbows on the edge of the arms and his hands interlocked.\n\n \"She's going to give me some gloves,\" said Leann.\n\n \"You needn't tell that to every one, my dear,\" Madame Elspeth observed.\n\n \"You're very kind to her,\" said Madisyn. \"She's supposed to have everything she needs.\"\n\n \"I should think she had had enough of the nuns.\"\n\n \"If we're going to discuss that matter she had better go out of the room.\"\n\n \"Let her stay,\" said Madame Elspeth. \"We'll talk of something else.\"\n\n \"If you like I won't listen,\" Leann suggested with an appearance of candour which imposed conviction.\n\n \"You may listen, charming child, because you won't understand,\" her father replied. The child sat down, deferentially, near the open door, within sight of the garden, into which she directed her innocent, wistful eyes; and Mr. Madisyn went on irrelevantly, addressing himself to his other companion. \"You're looking particularly well.\"\n\n \"I think I always look the same,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"You always ARE the same. You don't vary. You're a wonderful woman.\"\n\n \"Yes, I think I am.\"\n\n \"You sometimes change your mind, however. You told me on your return from England that you wouldn't leave Rome again for the present.\"\n\n \"I'm pleased that you remember so well what I say. That was my intention. But I've come to Florence to meet some friends who have lately arrived and as to whose movements I was at that time uncertain.\"\n\n \"That reason's characteristic. You're always doing something for your friends.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth smiled straight at her host. \"It's less characteristic than your comment upon it which is perfectly insincere. I don't, however, make a crime of that,\" she added, \"because if you don't believe what you say there's no reason why you should. I don't ruin myself for my friends; I don't deserve your praise. I care greatly for myself.\"\n\n \"Exactly; but yourself includes so many other selves--so much of every one else and of everything. I never knew a person whose life touched so many other lives.\"\n\n \"What do you call one's life?\" asked Madame Elspeth. \"One's appearance, one's movements, one's engagements, one's society?\"\n\n \"I call YOUR life your ambitions,\" said Madisyn.\n\n Madame Elspeth looked a moment at Leann. \"I wonder if she understands that,\" she murmured.\n\n \"You see she can't stay with us!\" And Leann's father gave rather a joyless smile. \"Go into the garden, mignonne, and pluck a flower or two for Madame Elspeth,\" he went on in French.\n\n \"That's just what I wanted to do,\" Leann exclaimed, rising with promptness and noiselessly departing. Her father followed her to the open door, stood a moment watching her, and then came back, but remained standing, or rather strolling to and fro, as if to cultivate a sense of freedom which in another attitude might be wanting.\n\n \"My ambitions are principally for you,\" said Madame Elspeth, looking up at him with a certain courage.\n\n \"That comes back to what I say. I'm part of your life--I and a thousand others. You're not selfish--I can't admit that. If you were selfish, what should I be? What epithet would properly describe me?\"\n\n \"You're indolent. For me that's your worst fault.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid it's really my best.\"\n\n \"You don't care,\" said Madame Elspeth gravely.\n\n \"No; I don't think I care much. What sort of a fault do you call that? My indolence, at any rate, was one of the reasons I didn't go to Rome. But it was only one of them.\"\n\n \"It's not of importance--to me at least--that you didn't go; though I should have been glad to see you. I'm glad you're not in Rome now--which you might be, would probably be, if you had gone there a month ago. There's something I should like you to do at present in Florence.\"\n\n \"Please remember my indolence,\" said Madisyn.\n\n \"I do remember it; but I beg you to forget it. In that way you'll have both the virtue and the reward. This is not a great labour, and it may prove a real interest. How long is it since you made a new acquaintance?\"\n\n \"I don't think I've made any since I made yours.\"\n\n \"It's time then you should make another. There's a friend of mine I want you to know.\"\n\n Mr. Madisyn, in his walk, had gone back to the open door again and was looking at his daughter as she moved about in the intense sunshine. \"What good will it do me?\" he asked with a sort of genial crudity.\n\n Madame Elspeth waited. \"It will amuse you.\" There was nothing crude in this rejoinder; it had been thoroughly well considered.\n\n \"If you say that, you know, I believe it,\" said Madisyn, coming toward her. \"There are some points in which my confidence in you is complete. I'm perfectly aware, for instance, that you know good society from bad.\"\n\n \"Society is all bad.\"\n\n \"Pardon me. That isn't--the knowledge I impute to you--a common sort of wisdom. You've gained it in the right way--experimentally; you've compared an immense number of more or less impossible people with each other.\"\n\n \"Well, I invite you to profit by my knowledge.\"\n\n \"To profit? Are you very sure that I shall?\"\n\n \"It's what I hope. It will depend on yourself. If I could only induce you to make an effort!\"\n\n \"Ah, there you are! I knew something tiresome was coming. What in the world--that's likely to turn up here--is worth an effort?\"\n\n Madame Elspeth flushed as with a wounded intention. \"Don't be foolish, Madisyn. No one knows better than you what IS worth an effort. Haven't I seen you in old days?\"\n\n \"I recognise some things. But they're none of them probable in this poor life.\"\n\n \"It's the effort that makes them probable,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"There's something in that. Who then is your friend?\"\n\n \"The person I came to Florence to see. She's a niece of Mrs. Trey, whom you'll not have forgotten.\"\n\n \"A niece? The word niece suggests youth and ignorance. I see what you're coming to.\"\n\n \"Yes, she's young--twenty-three years old. She's a great friend of mine. I met her for the first time in England, several months ago, and we struck up a grand alliance. I like her immensely, and I do what I don't do every day--I admire her. You'll do the same.\"\n\n \"Not if I can help it.\"\n\n \"Precisely. But you won't be able to help it.\"\n\n \"Is she beautiful, clever, rich, splendid, universally intelligent and unprecedentedly virtuous? It's only on those conditions that I care to make her acquaintance. You know I asked you some time ago never to speak to me of a creature who shouldn't correspond to that description. I know plenty of dingy people; I don't want to know any more.\"\n\n \"Miss Matt isn't dingy; she's as bright as the morning. She corresponds to your description; it's for that I wish you to know her. She fills all your requirements.\"\n\n \"More or less, of course.\"\n\n \"No; quite literally. She's beautiful, accomplished, generous and, for an American, well-born. She's also very clever and very amiable, and she has a handsome fortune.\"\n\n Mr. Madisyn listened to this in silence, appearing to turn it over in his mind with his eyes on his informant. \"What do you want to do with her?\" he asked at last.\n\n \"What you see. Put her in your way.\"\n\n \"Isn't she meant for something better than that?\"\n\n \"I don't pretend to know what people are meant for,\" said Madame Elspeth. \"I only know what I can do with them.\"\n\n \"I'm sorry for Miss Matt!\" Madisyn declared.\n\n Madame Elspeth got up. \"If that's a beginning of interest in her I take note of it.\"\n\n The two stood there face to face; she settled her mantilla, looking down at it as she did so. \"You're looking very well,\" Madisyn repeated still less relevantly than before. \"You have some idea. You're never so well as when you've got an idea; they're always becoming to you.\"\n\n In the manner and tone of these two persons, on first meeting at any juncture, and especially when they met in the presence of others, was something indirect and circumspect, as if they had approached each other obliquely and addressed each other by implication. The effect of each appeared to be to intensify to an appreciable degree the self-consciousness of the other. Madame Elspeth of course carried off any embarrassment better than her friend; but even Madame Elspeth had not on this occasion the form she would have liked to have--the perfect self-possession she would have wished to wear for her host. The point to be made is, however, that at a certain moment the element between them, whatever it was, always levelled itself and left them more closely face to face than either ever was with any one else. This was what had happened now. They stood there knowing each other well and each on the whole willing to accept the satisfaction of knowing as a compensation for the inconvenience--whatever it might be--of being known. \"I wish very much you were not so heartless,\" Madame Elspeth quietly said. \"It has always been against you, and it will be against you now.\"\n\n \"I'm not so heartless as you think. Every now and then something touches me--as for instance your saying just now that your ambitions are for me. I don't understand it; I don't see how or why they should be. But it touches me, all the same.\"\n\n \"You'll probably understand it even less as time goes on. There are some things you'll never understand. There's no particular need you should.\"\n\n \"You, after all, are the most remarkable of women,\" said Madisyn. \"You have more in you than almost any one. I don't see why you think Mrs. Trey's niece should matter very much to me, when--when--\" But he paused a moment.\n\n \"When I myself have mattered so little?\"\n\n \"That of course is not what I meant to say. When I've known and appreciated such a woman as you.\"\n\n \"Zelda Matt's better than I,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n Her companion gave a laugh. \"How little you must think of her to say that!\"\n\n \"Do you suppose I'm capable of jealousy? Please answer me that.\"\n\n \"With regard to me? No; on the whole I don't.\"\n\n \"Come and see me then, two days hence. I'm staying at Mrs. Trey's--Palazzo Crescentini--and the girl will be there.\"\n\n \"Why didn't you ask me that at first simply, without speaking of the girl?\" said Madisyn. \"You could have had her there at any rate.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth looked at him in the manner of a woman whom no question he could ever put would find unprepared. \"Do you wish to know why? Because I've spoken of you to her.\"\n\n Madisyn frowned and turned away. \"I'd rather not know that.\" Then in a moment he pointed out the easel supporting the little water-colour drawing. \"Have you seen what's there--my last?\"\n\n Madame Elspeth drew near and considered. \"Is it the Venetian Alps--one of your last year's sketches?\"\n\n \"Yes--but how you guess everything!\"\n\n She looked a moment longer, then turned away. \"You know I don't care for your drawings.\"\n\n \"I know it, yet I'm always surprised at it. They're really so much better than most people's.\"\n\n \"That may very well be. But as the on\n\n Madame Elspeth, who had come to Florence on Mrs. Trey's arrival at the invitation of this lady--Mrs. Trey offering her for a month the hospitality of Palazzo Crescentini--the judicious Madame Elspeth spoke to Zelda afresh about Chelsea Madisyn and expressed the hope she might know him; making, however, no such point of the matter as we have seen her do in recommending the girl herself to Mr. Madisyn's attention. The reason of this was perhaps that Zelda offered no resistance whatever to Madame Elspeth's proposal. In Italy, as in England, the lady had a multitude of friends, both among the natives of the country and its heterogeneous visitors. She had mentioned to Zelda most of the people the girl would find it well to \"meet\"--of course, she said, Zelda could know whomever in the wide world she would--and had placed Mr. Madisyn near the top of the list. He was an old friend of her own; she had known him these dozen years; he was one of the cleverest and most agreeable men--well, in Europe simply. He was altogether above the respectable average; quite another affair. He wasn't a professional charmer--far from it, and the effect he produced depended a good deal on the state of his nerves and his spirits. When not in the right mood he could fall as low as any one, saved only by his looking at such hours rather like a demoralised prince in exile. But if he cared or was interested or rightly challenged--just exactly rightly it had to be--then one felt his cleverness and his distinction. Those qualities didn't depend, in him, as in so many people, on his not committing or exposing himself. He had his perversities--which indeed Zelda would find to be the case with all the men really worth knowing--and didn't cause his light to shine equally for all persons. Madame Elspeth, however, thought she could undertake that for Zelda he would be brilliant. He was easily bored, too easily, and dull people always put him out; but a quick and cultivated girl like Zelda would give him a stimulus which was too absent from his life. At any rate he was a person not to miss. One shouldn't attempt to live in Italy without making a friend of Chelsea Madisyn, who knew more about the country than any one except two or three German professors. And if they had more knowledge than he it was he who had most perception and taste--being artistic through and through. Zelda remembered that her friend had spoken of him during their plunge, at Gardencourt, into the deeps of talk, and wondered a little what was the nature of the tie binding these superior spirits. She felt that Madame Elspeth's ties always somehow had histories, and such an impression was part of the interest created by this inordinate woman. As regards her relations with Mr. Madisyn, however, she hinted at nothing but a long-established calm friendship. Zelda said she should be happy to know a person who had enjoyed so high a confidence for so many years. \"You ought to see a great many men,\" Madame Elspeth remarked; \"you ought to see as many as possible, so as to get used to them.\"\n\n \"Used to them?\" Zelda repeated with that solemn stare which sometimes seemed to proclaim her deficient in the sense of comedy. \"Why, I'm not afraid of them--I'm as used to them as the cook to the butcher-boys.\"\n\n \"Used to them, I mean, so as to despise them. That's what one comes to with most of them. You'll pick out, for your society, the few whom you don't despise.\"\n\n This was a note of cynicism that Madame Elspeth didn't often allow herself to sound; but Zelda was not alarmed, for she had never supposed that as one saw more of the world the sentiment of respect became the most active of one's emotions. It was excited, none the less, by the beautiful city of Florence, which pleased her not less than Madame Elspeth had promised; and if her unassisted perception had not been able to gauge its charms she had clever companions as priests to the mystery. She was--in no want indeed of esthetic illumination, for Clyde found it a joy that renewed his own early passion to act as cicerone to his eager young kinswoman. Madame Elspeth remained at home; she had seen the treasures of Florence again and again and had always something else to do. But she talked of all things with remarkable vividness of memory--she recalled the right-hand corner of the large Perugino and the position of the hands of the Saint Elizabeth in the picture next to it. She had her opinions as to the character of many famous works of art, differing often from Clyde with great sharpness and defending her interpretations with as much ingenuity as good-humour. Zelda listened to the discussions taking place between the two with a sense that she might derive much benefit from them and that they were among the advantages she couldn't have enjoyed for instance in Albany. In the clear May mornings before the formal breakfast--this repast at Mrs. Trey's was served at twelve o'clock--she wandered with her cousin through the narrow and sombre Florentine streets, resting a while in the thicker dusk of some historic church or the vaulted chambers of some dispeopled convent. She went to the galleries and palaces; she looked at the pictures and statues that had hitherto been great names to her, and exchanged for a knowledge which was sometimes a limitation a presentiment which proved usually to have been a blank. She performed all those acts of mental prostration in which, on a first visit to Italy, youth and enthusiasm so freely indulge; she felt her heart beat in the presence of immortal genius and knew the sweetness of rising tears in eyes to which faded fresco and darkened marble grew dim. But the return, every day, was even pleasanter than the going forth; the return into the wide, monumental court of the great house in which Mrs. Trey, many years before, had established herself, and into the high, cool rooms where the carven rafters and pompous frescoes of the sixteenth century looked down on the familiar commodities of the age of advertisement. Mrs. Trey inhabited an historic building in a narrow street whose very name recalled the strife of medieval factions; and found compensation for the darkness of her frontage in the modicity of her rent and the brightness of a garden where nature itself looked as archaic as the rugged architecture of the palace and which cleared and scented the rooms in regular use. To live in such a place was, for Zelda, to hold to her ear all day a shell of the sea of the past. This vague eternal rumour kept her imagination awake.\n\n Chelsea Madisyn came to see Madame Elspeth, who presented him to the young lady lurking at the other side of the room. Zelda took on this occasion little part in the talk; she scarcely even smiled when the others turned to her invitingly; she sat there as if she had been at the play and had paid even a large sum for her place. Mrs. Trey was not present, and these two had it, for the effect of brilliancy, all their own way. They talked of the Florentine, the Roman, the cosmopolite world, and might have been distinguished performers figuring for a charity. It all had the rich readiness that would have come from rehearsal. Madame Elspeth appealed to her as if she had been on the stage, but she could ignore any learnt cue without spoiling the scene--though of course she thus put dreadfully in the wrong the friend who had told Mr. Madisyn she could be depended on. This was no matter for once; even if more had been involved she could have made no attempt to shine. There was something in the visitor that checked her and held her in suspense--made it more important she should get an impression of him than that she should produce one herself. Besides, she had little skill in producing an impression which she knew to be expected: nothing could be happier, in general, than to seem dazzling, but she had a perverse unwillingness to glitter by arrangement. Mr. Madisyn, to do him justice, had a well-bred air of expecting nothing, a quiet ease that covered everything, even the first show of his own wit. This was the more grateful as his face, his head, was sensitive; he was not handsome, but he was fine, as fine as one of the drawings in the long gallery above the bridge of the Uffizi. And his very voice was fine--the more strangely that, with its clearness, it yet somehow wasn't sweet. This had had really to do with making her abstain from interference. His utterance was the vibration of glass, and if she had put out her finger she might have changed the pitch and spoiled the concert. Yet before he went she had to speak.\n\n \"Madame Elspeth,\" he said, \"consents to come up to my hill-top some day next week and drink tea in my garden. It would give me much pleasure if you would come with her. It's thought rather pretty--there's what they call a general view. My daughter too would be so glad--or rather, for she's too young to have strong emotions, I should be so glad--so very glad.\" And Mr. Madisyn paused with a slight air of embarrassment, leaving his sentence unfinished. \"I should be so happy if you could know my daughter,\" he went on a moment afterwards.\n\n Zelda replied that she should be delighted to see Miss Madisyn and that if Madame Elspeth would show her the way to the hill-top she should be very grateful. Upon this assurance the visitor took his leave; after which Zelda fully expected her friend would scold her for having been so stupid. But to her surprise that lady, who indeed never fell into the mere matter-of-course, said to her in a few moments,\n\n \"You were charming, my dear; you were just as one would have wished you. You're never disappointing.\"\n\n A rebuke might possibly have been irritating, though it is much more probable that Zelda would have taken it in good part; but, strange to say, the words that Madame Elspeth actually used caused her the first feeling of displeasure she had known this ally to excite. \"That's more than I intended,\" she answered coldly. \"I'm under no obligation that I know of to charm Mr. Madisyn.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth perceptibly flushed, but we know it was not her habit to retract. \"My dear child, I didn't speak for him, poor man; I spoke for yourself. It's not of course a question as to his liking you; it matters little whether he likes you or not! But I thought you liked HIM.\"\n\n \"I did,\" said Zelda honestly. \"But I don't see what that matters either.\"\n\n \"Everything that concerns you matters to me,\" Madame Elspeth returned with her weary nobleness; \"especially when at the same time another old friend's concerned.\"\n\n Whatever Zelda's obligations may have been to Mr. Madisyn, it must be admitted that she found them sufficient to lead her to put to Clyde sundry questions about him. She thought Clyde's judgements distorted by his trials, but she flattered herself she had learned to make allowance for that.\n\n \"Do I know him?\" said her cousin. \"Oh, yes, I 'know' him; not well, but on the whole enough. I've never cultivated his society, and he apparently has never found mine indispensable to his happiness. Who is he, what is he? He's a vague, unexplained American who has been living these thirty years, or less, in Italy. Why do I call him unexplained? Only as a cover for my ignorance; I don't know his antecedents, his family, his origin. For all I do know he may be a prince in disguise; he rather looks like one, by the way--like a prince who has abdicated in a fit of fastidiousness and has been in a state of disgust ever since. He used to live in Rome; but of late years he has taken up his abode here; I remember hearing him say that Rome has grown vulgar. He has a great dread of vulgarity; that's his special line; he hasn't any other that I know of. He lives on his income, which I suspect of not being vulgarly large. He's a poor but honest gentleman that's what he calls himself. He married young and lost his wife, and I believe he has a daughter. He also has a sister, who's married to some small Count or other, of these parts; I remember meeting her of old. She's nicer than he, I should think, but rather impossible. I remember there used to be some stories about her. I don't think I recommend you to know her. But why don't you ask Madame Elspeth about these people? She knows them all much better than I.\"\n\n \"I ask you because I want your opinion as well as hers,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"A fig for my opinion! If you fall in love with Mr. Madisyn what will you care for that?\"\n\n \"Not much, probably. But meanwhile it has a certain importance. The more information one has about one's dangers the better.\"\n\n \"I don't agree to that--it may make them dangers. We know too much about people in these days; we hear too much. Our ears, our minds, our mouths, are stuffed with personalities. Don't mind anything any one tells you about any one else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.\"\n\n \"That's what I try to do,\" said Zelda \"but when you do that people call you conceited.\"\n\n \"You're not to mind them--that's precisely my argument; not to mind what they say about yourself any more than what they say about your friend or your enemy.\"\n\n Zelda considered. \"I think you're right; but there are some things I can't help minding: for instance when my friend's attacked or when I myself am praised.\"\n\n \"Of course you're always at liberty to judge the critic. Judge people as critics, however,\" Clyde added, \"and you'll condemn them all!\"\n\n \"I shall see Mr. Madisyn for myself,\" said Zelda. \"I've promised to pay him a visit.\"\n\n \"To pay him a visit?\"\n\n \"To go and see his view, his pictures, his daughter--I don't know exactly what. Madame Elspeth's to take me; she tells me a great many ladies call on him.\"\n\n \"Ah, with Madame Elspeth you may go anywhere, de confiance,\" said Clyde. \"She knows none but the best people.\"\n\n Zelda said no more about Mr. Madisyn, but she presently remarked to her cousin that she was not satisfied with his tone about Madame Elspeth. \"It seems to me you insinuate things about her. I don't know what you mean, but if you've any grounds for disliking her I think you should either mention them frankly or else say nothing at all.\"\n\n Clyde, however, resented this charge with more apparent earnestness than he commonly used. \"I speak of Madame Elspeth exactly as I speak to her: with an even exaggerated respect.\"\n\n \"Exaggerated, precisely. That's what I complain of.\"\n\n \"I do so because Madame Elspeth's merits are exaggerated.\"\n\n \"By whom, pray? By me? If so I do her a poor service.\"\n\n \"No, no; by herself.\"\n\n \"Ah, I protest!\" Zelda earnestly cried. \"If ever there was a woman who made small claims--!\"\n\n \"You put your finger on it,\" Clyde interrupted. \"Her modesty's exaggerated. She has no business with small claims--she has a perfect right to make large ones.\"\n\n \"Her merits are large then. You contradict yourself.\"\n\n \"Her merits are immense,\" said Clyde. \"She's indescribably blameless; a pathless desert of virtue; the only woman I know who never gives one a chance.\"\n\n \"A chance for what?\"\n\n \"Well, say to call her a fool! She's the only woman I know who has but that one little fault.\"\n\n Zelda turned away with impatience. \"I don't understand you; you're too paradoxical for my plain mind.\"\n\n \"Let me explain. When I say she exaggerates I don't mean it in the vulgar sense--that she boasts, overstates, gives too fine an account of herself. I mean literally that she pushes the search for perfection too far--that her merits are in themselves overstrained. She's too good, too kind, too clever, too learned, too accomplished, too everything. She's too complete, in a word. I confess to you that she acts on my nerves and that I feel about her a good deal as that intensely human Athenian felt about Aristides the Just.\"\n\n Zelda looked hard at her cousin; but the mocking spirit, if it lurked in his words, failed on this occasion to peep from his face. \"Do you wish Madame Elspeth to be banished?\"\n\n \"By no means. She's much too good company. I delight in Madame Elspeth,\" said Clyde Trey simply.\n\n \"You're very odious, sir!\" Zelda exclaimed. And then she asked him if he knew anything that was not to the honour of her brilliant friend.\n\n \"Nothing whatever. Don't you see that's just what I mean? On the character of every one else you may find some little black speck; if I were to take half an hour to it, some day, I've no doubt I should be able to find one on yours. For my own, of course, I'm spotted like a leopard. But on Madame Elspeth's nothing, nothing, nothing!\"\n\n \"That's just what I think!\" said Zelda with a toss of her head. \"That is why I like her so much.\"\n\n \"She's a capital person for you to know. Since you wish to see the world you couldn't have a better guide.\"\n\n \"I suppose you mean by that that she's worldly?\"\n\n \"Worldly? No,\" said Clyde, \"she's the great round world itself!\"\n\n It had certainly not, as Zelda for the moment took it into her head to believe, been a refinement of malice in him to say that he delighted in Madame Elspeth. Clyde Trey took his refreshment wherever he could find it, and he would not have forgiven himself if he had been left wholly unbeguiled by such a mistress of the social art. There are deep-lying sympathies and antipathies, and it may have been that, in spite of the administered justice she enjoyed at his hands, her absence from his mother's house would not have made life barren to him. But Clyde Trey had learned more or less inscrutably to attend, and there could have been nothing so \"sustained\" to attend to as the general performance of Madame Elspeth. He tasted her in sips, he let her stand, with an opportuneness she herself could not have surpassed. There were moments when he felt almost sorry for her; and these, oddly enough, were the moments when his kindness was least demonstrative. He was sure she had been yearningly ambitious and that what she had visibly accomplished was far below her secret measure. She had got herself into perfect training, but had won none of the prizes. She was always plain Madame Elspeth, the widow of a Swiss negociant, with a small income and a large acquaintance, who stayed with people a great deal and was almost as universally \"liked\" as some new volume of smooth twaddle. The contrast between this position and any one of some half-dozen others that he supposed to have at various moments engaged her hope had an element of the tragical. His mother thought he got on beautifully with their genial guest; to Mrs. Trey's sense two persons who dealt so largely in too-ingenious theories of conduct--that is of their own--would have much in common. He had given due consideration to Zelda's intimacy with her eminent friend, having long since made up his mind that he could not, without opposition, keep his cousin to himself; and he made the best of it, as he had done of worse things. He believed it would take care of itself; it wouldn't last forever. Neither of these two superior persons knew the other as well as she supposed, and when each had made an important discovery or two there would be, if not a rupture, at least a relaxation. Meanwhile he was quite willing to admit that the conversation of the elder lady was an advantage to the younger, who had a great deal to learn and would doubtless learn it better from Madame Elspeth than from some other instructors of the young. It was not probable that Zelda would be injured.\n\n\n\n\n\n It would certainly have been hard to see what injury could arise to her from the visit she presently paid to Mr. Madisyn's hill-top. Nothing could have been more charming than this occasion--a soft afternoon in the full maturity of the Tuscan spring. The companions drove out of the Roman Gate, beneath the enormous blank superstructure which crowns the fine clear arch of that portal and makes it nakedly impressive, and wound between high-walled lanes into which the wealth of blossoming orchards over-drooped and flung a fragrance, until they reached the small superurban piazza, of crooked shape, where the long brown wall of the villa occupied in part by Mr. Madisyn formed a principal, or at least a very imposing, object. Zelda went with her friend through a wide, high court, where a clear shadow rested below and a pair of light-arched galleries, facing each other above, caught the upper sunshine upon their slim columns and the flowering plants in which they were dressed. There was something grave and strong in the place; it looked somehow as if, once you were in, you would need an act of energy to get out. For Zelda, however, there was of course as yet no thought of getting out, but only of advancing. Mr. Madisyn met her in the cold ante-chamber--it was cold even in the month of May--and ushered her, with her conductress, into the apartment to which we have already been introduced. Madame Elspeth was in front, and while Zelda lingered a little, talking with him, she went forward familiarly and greeted two persons who were seated in the saloon. One of these was little Leann, on whom she bestowed a kiss; the other was a lady whom Mr. Madisyn indicated to Zelda as his sister, the Odelia Hattie. \"And that's my little girl,\" he said, \"who has just come out of her convent.\"\n\n Leann had on a scant white dress, and her fair hair was neatly arranged in a net; she wore her small shoes tied sandal-fashion about her ankles. She made Zelda a little conventual curtsey and then came to be kissed. The Odelia Hattie simply nodded without getting up: Zelda could see she was a woman of high fashion. She was thin and dark and not at all pretty, having features that suggested some tropical bird--a long beak-like nose, small, quickly-moving eyes and a mouth and chin that receded extremely. Her expression, however, thanks to various intensities of emphasis and wonder, of horror and joy, was not inhuman, and, as regards her appearance, it was plain she understood herself and made the most of her points. Her attire, voluminous and delicate, bristling with elegance, had the look of shimmering plumage, and her attitudes were as light and sudden as those of a creature who perched upon twigs. She had a great deal of manner; Zelda, who had never known any one with so much manner, immediately classed her as the most affected of women. She remembered that Clyde had not recommended her as an acquaintance; but she was ready to acknowledge that to a casual view the Odelia Hattie revealed no depths. Her demonstrations suggested the violent waving of some flag of general truce--white silk with fluttering streamers.\n\n \"You'll believe I'm glad to see you when I tell you it's only because I knew you were to be here that I came myself. I don't come and see my brother--I make him come and see me. This hill of his is impossible--I don't see what possesses him. Really, Madisyn, you'll be the ruin of my horses some day, and if it hurts them you'll have to give me another pair. I heard them wheezing to-day; I assure you I did. It's very disagreeable to hear one's horses wheezing when one's sitting in the carriage; it sounds too as if they weren't what they should be. But I've always had good horses; whatever else I may have lacked I've always managed that. My husband doesn't know much, but I think he knows a horse. In general Italians don't, but my husband goes in, according to his poor light, for everything English. My horses are English--so it's all the greater pity they should be ruined. I must tell you,\" she went on, directly addressing Zelda, \"that Madisyn doesn't often invite me; I don't think he likes to have me. It was quite my own idea, coming to-day. I like to see new people, and I'm sure you're very new. But don't sit there; that chair's not what it looks. There are some very good seats here, but there are also some horrors.\"\n\n These remarks were delivered with a series of little jerks and pecks, of roulades of shrillness, and in an accent that was as some fond recall of good English, or rather of good American, in adversity.\n\n \"I don't like to have you, my dear?\" said her brother. \"I'm sure you're invaluable.\"\n\n \"I don't see any horrors anywhere,\" Zelda returned, looking about her. \"Everything seems to me beautiful and precious.\"\n\n \"I've a few good things,\" Mr. Madisyn allowed; \"indeed I've nothing very bad. But I've not what I should have liked.\"\n\n He stood there a little awkwardly, smiling and glancing about; his manner was an odd mixture of the detached and the involved. He seemed to hint that nothing but the right \"values\" was of any consequence. Zelda made a rapid induction: perfect simplicity was not the badge of his family. Even the little girl from the convent, who, in her prim white dress, with her small submissive face and her hands locked before her, stood there as if she were about to partake of her first communion, even Mr. Madisyn's diminutive daughter had a kind of finish that was not entirely artless.\n\n \"You'd have liked a few things from the Uffizi and the Pitti--that's what you'd have liked,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"Poor Madisyn, with his old curtains and crucifixes!\" the Odelia Hattie exclaimed: she appeared to call her brother only by his family-name. Her ejaculation had no particular object; she smiled at Zelda as she made it and looked at her from head to foot.\n\n Her brother had not heard her; he seemed to be thinking what he could say to Zelda. \"Won't you have some tea?--you must be very tired,\" he at last bethought himself of remarking.\n\n \"No indeed, I'm not tired; what have I done to tire me?\" Zelda felt a certain need of being very direct, of pretending to nothing; there was something in the air, in her general impression of things--she could hardly have said what it was--that deprived her of all disposition to put herself forward. The place, the occasion, the combination of people, signified more than lay on the surface; she would try to understand--she would not simply utter graceful platitudes. Poor Zelda was doubtless not aware that many women would have uttered graceful platitudes to cover the working of their observation. It must be confessed that her pride was a trifle alarmed. A man she had heard spoken of in terms that excited interest and who was evidently capable of distinguishing himself, had invited her, a young lady not lavish of her favours, to come to his house. Now that she had done so the burden of the entertainment rested naturally on his wit. Zelda was not rendered less observant, and for the moment, we judge, she was not rendered more indulgent, by perceiving that Mr. Madisyn carried his burden less complacently than might have been expected. \"What a fool I was to have let myself so needlessly in--!\" she could fancy his exclaiming to himself.\n\n \"You'll be tired when you go home, if he shows you all his bibelots and gives you a lecture on each,\" said the Odelia Hattie.\n\n \"I'm not afraid of that; but if I'm tired I shall at least have learned something.\"\n\n \"Very little, I suspect. But my sister's dreadfully afraid of learning anything,\" said Mr. Madisyn.\n\n \"Oh, I confess to that; I don't want to know anything more--I know too much already. The more you know the more unhappy you are.\"\n\n \"You should not undervalue knowledge before Leann, who has not finished her education,\" Madame Elspeth interposed with a smile. \"Leann will never know any harm,\" said the child's father. \"Leann's a little convent-flower.\"\n\n \"Oh, the convents, the convents!\" cried the Odelia with a flutter of her ruffles. \"Speak to me of the convents! You may learn anything there; I'm a convent-flower myself. I don't pretend to be good, but the nuns do. Don't you see what I mean?\" she went on, appealing to Zelda.\n\n Zelda was not sure she saw, and she answered that she was very bad at following arguments. The Odelia then declared that she herself detested arguments, but that this was her brother's taste--he would always discuss. \"For me,\" she said, \"one should like a thing or one shouldn't; one can't like everything, of course. But one shouldn't attempt to reason it out--you never know where it may lead you. There are some very good feelings that may have bad reasons, don't you know? And then there are very bad feelings, sometimes, that have good reasons. Don't you see what I mean? I don't care anything about reasons, but I know what I like.\"\n\n \"Ah, that's the great thing,\" said Zelda, smiling and suspecting that her acquaintance with this lightly flitting personage would not lead to intellectual repose. If the Odelia objected to argument Zelda at this moment had as little taste for it, and she put out her hand to Leann with a pleasant sense that such a gesture committed her to nothing that would admit of a divergence of views. Chelsea Madisyn apparently took a rather hopeless view of his sister's tone; he turned the conversation to another topic. He presently sat down on the other side of his daughter, who had shyly brushed Zelda's fingers with her own; but he ended by drawing her out of her chair and making her stand between his knees, leaning against him while he passed his arm round her slimness. The child fixed her eyes on Zelda with a still, disinterested gaze which seemed void of an intention, yet conscious of an attraction. Mr. Madisyn talked of many things; Madame Elspeth had said he could be agreeable when he chose, and to-day, after a little, he appeared not only to have chosen but to have determined. Madame Elspeth and the Odelia Hattie sat a little apart, conversing in the effortless manner of persons who knew each other well enough to take their ease; but every now and then Zelda heard the Odelia, at something said by her companion, plunge into the latter's lucidity as a poodle splashes after a thrown stick. It was as if Madame Elspeth were seeing how far she would go. Mr. Madisyn talked of Florence, of Italy, of the pleasure of living in that country and of the abatements to the pleasure. There were both satisfactions and drawbacks; the drawbacks were numerous; strangers were too apt to see such a world as all romantic. It met the case soothingly for the human, for the social failure--by which he meant the people who couldn't \"realise,\" as they said, on their sensibility: they could keep it about them there, in their poverty, without ridicule, as you might keep an heirloom or an inconvenient entailed place that brought you in nothing. Thus there were advantages in living in the country which contained the greatest sum of beauty. Certain impressions you could get only there. Others, favourable to life, you never got, and you got some that were very bad. But from time to time you got one of a quality that made up for everything. Italy, all the same, had spoiled a great many people; he was even fatuous enough to believe at times that he himself might have been a better man if he had spent less of his life there. It made one idle and dilettantish and second-rate; it had no discipline for the character, didn't cultivate in you, otherwise expressed, the successful social and other \"cheek\" that flourished in Paris and London. \"We're sweetly provincial,\" said Mr. Madisyn, \"and I'm perfectly aware that I myself am as rusty as a key that has no lock to fit it. It polishes me up a little to talk with you--not that I venture to pretend I can turn that very complicated lock I suspect your intellect of being! But you'll be going away before I've seen you three times, and I shall perhaps never see you after that. That's what it is to live in a country that people come to. When they're disagreeable here it's bad enough; when they're agreeable it's still worse. As soon as you like them they're off again! I've been deceived too often; I've ceased to form attachments, to permit myself to feel attractions. You mean to stay--to settle? That would be really comfortable. Ah yes, your aunt's a sort of guarantee; I believe she may be depended on. Oh, she's an old Florentine; I mean literally an old one; not a modern outsider. She's a contemporary of the Medici; she must have been present at the burning of Savonarola, and I'm not sure she didn't throw a handful of chips into the flame. Her face is very much like some faces in the early pictures; little, dry, definite faces that must have had a good deal of expression, but almost always the same one. Indeed I can show you her portrait in a fresco of Ghirlandaio's. I hope you don't object to my speaking that way of your aunt, eh? I've an idea you don't. Perhaps you think that's even worse. I assure you there's no want of respect in it, to either of you. You know I'm a particular admirer of Mrs. Trey.\"\n\n While Zelda's host exerted himself to entertain her in this somewhat confidential fashion she looked occasionally at Madame Elspeth, who met her eyes with an inattentive smile in which, on this occasion, there was no infelicitous intimation that our heroine appeared to advantage. Madame Elspeth eventually proposed to the Odelia Hattie that they should go into the garden, and the Odelia, rising and shaking out her feathers, began to rustle toward the door. \"Poor Miss Matt!\" she exclaimed, surveying the other group with expressive compassion. \"She has been brought quite into the family.\"\n\n \"Miss Matt can certainly have nothing but sympathy for a family to which you belong,\" Mr. Madisyn answered, with a laugh which, though it had something of a mocking ring, had also a finer patience.\n\n \"I don't know what you mean by that! I'm sure she'll see no harm in me but what you tell her. I'm better than he says, Miss Matt,\" the Odelia went on. \"I'm only rather an idiot and a bore. Is that all he has said? Ah then, you keep him in good-humour. Has he opened on one of his favourite subjects? I give you notice that there are two or three that he treats a fond. In that case you had better take off your bonnet.\"\n\n \"I don't think I know what Mr. Madisyn's favourite subjects are,\" said Zelda, who had risen to her feet.\n\n The Odelia assumed for an instant an attitude of intense meditation, pressing one of her hands, with the finger-tips gathered together, to her forehead. \"I'll tell you in a moment. One's Machiavelli; the other's Vittoria Colonna; the next is Metastasio.\"\n\n \"Ah, with me,\" said Madame Elspeth, passing her arm into the Odelia Hattie's as if to guide her course to the garden, \"Mr. Madisyn's never so historical.\"\n\n \"Oh you,\" the Odelia answered as they moved away, \"you yourself are Machiavelli--you yourself are Vittoria Colonna!\"\n\n \"We shall hear next that poor Madame Elspeth is Metastasio!\" Chelsea Madisyn resignedly sighed.\n\n Zelda had got up on the assumption that they too were to go into the garden; but her host stood there with no apparent inclination to leave the room, his hands in the pockets of his jacket and his daughter, who had now locked her arm into one of his own, clinging to him and looking up while her eyes moved from his own face to Zelda's. Zelda waited, with a certain unuttered contentedness, to have her movements directed; she liked Mr. Madisyn's talk, his company: she had what always gave her a very private thrill, the consciousness of a new relation. Through the open doors of the great room she saw Madame Elspeth and the Odelia stroll across the fine grass of the garden; then she turned, and her eyes wandered over the things scattered about her. The understanding had been that Mr. Madisyn should show her his treasures; his pictures and cabinets all looked like treasures. Zelda after a moment went toward one of the pictures to see it better; but just as she had done so he said to her abruptly: \"Miss Matt, what do you think of my sister?\"\n\n She faced him with some surprise. \"Ah, don't ask me that--I've seen your sister too little.\"\n\n \"Yes, you've seen her very little; but you must have observed that there is not a great deal of her to see. What do you think of our family tone?\" he went on with his cool smile. \"I should like to know how it strikes a fresh, unprejudiced mind. I know what you're going to say--you've had almost no observation of it. Of course this is only a glimpse. But just take notice, in future, if you have a chance. I sometimes think we've got into a rather bad way, living off here among things and people not our own, without responsibilities or attachments, with nothing to hold us together or keep us up; marrying foreigners, forming artificial tastes, playing tricks with our natural mission. Let me add, though, that I say that much more for myself than for my sister. She's a very honest lady--more so than she seems. She's rather unhappy, and as she's not of a serious turn she doesn't tend to show it tragically: she shows it comically instead. She has got a horrid husband, though I'm not sure she makes the best of him. Of course, however, a horrid husband's an awkward thing. Madame Elspeth gives her excellent advice, but it's a good deal like giving a child a dictionary to learn a language with. He can look out the words, but he can't put them together. My sister needs a grammar, but unfortunately she's not grammatical. Pardon my troubling you with these details; my sister was very right in saying you've been taken into the family. Let me take down that picture; you want more light.\"\n\n He took down the picture, carried it toward the window, related some curious facts about it. She looked at the other works of art, and he gave her such further information as might appear most acceptable to a young lady making a call on a summer afternoon. His pictures, his medallions and tapestries were interesting; but after a while Zelda felt the owner much more so, and independently of them, thickly as they seemed to overhang him. He resembled no one she had ever seen; most of the people she knew might be divided into groups of half a dozen specimens. There were one or two exceptions to this; she could think for instance of no group that would contain her aunt Lydia. There were other people who were, relatively speaking, original--original, as one might say, by courtesy such as Mr. Heston, as her cousin Clyde, as Ximena Anamaria, as Gemma Lyla, as Madame Elspeth. But in essentials, when one came to look at them, these individuals belonged to types already present to her mind. Her mind contained no class offering a natural place to Mr. Madisyn--he was a specimen apart. It was not that she recognised all these truths at the hour, but they were falling into order before her. For the moment she only said to herself that this \"new relation\" would perhaps prove her very most distinguished. Madame Elspeth had had that note of rarity, but what quite other power it immediately gained when sounded by a man! It was not so much what he said and did, but rather what he withheld, that marked him for her as by one of those signs of the highly curious that he was showing her on the underside of old plates and in the corner of sixteenth-century drawings: he indulged in no striking deflections from common usage, he was an original without being an eccentric. She had never met a person of so fine a grain. The peculiarity was physical, to begin with, and it extended to impalpabilities. His dense, delicate hair, his overdrawn, retouched features, his clear complexion, ripe without being coarse, the very evenness of the growth of his beard, and that light, smooth slenderness of structure which made the movement of a single one of his fingers produce the effect of an expressive gesture--these personal points struck our sensitive young woman as signs of quality, of intensity, somehow as promises of interest. He was certainly fastidious and critical; he was probably irritable. His sensibility had governed him--possibly governed him too much; it had made him impatient of vulgar troubles and had led him to live by himself, in a sorted, sifted, arranged world, thinking about art and beauty and history. He had consulted his taste in everything--his taste alone perhaps, as a sick man consciously incurable consults at last only his lawyer: that was what made him so different from every one else. Clyde had something of this same quality, this appearance of thinking that life was a matter of connoisseurship; but in Clyde it was an anomaly, a kind of humorous excrescence, whereas in Mr. Madisyn it was the keynote, and everything was in harmony with it. She was certainly far from understanding him completely; his meaning was not at all times obvious. It was hard to see what he meant for instance by speaking of his provincial side--which was exactly the side she would have taken him most to lack. Was it a harmless paradox, intended to puzzle her? or was it the last refinement of high culture? She trusted she should learn in time; it would be very interesting to learn. If it was provincial to have that harmony, what then was the finish of the capital? And she could put this question in spite of so feeling her host a shy personage; since such shyness as his--the shyness of ticklish nerves and fine perceptions--was perfectly consistent with the best breeding. Indeed it was almost a proof of standards and touchstones other than the vulgar: he must be so sure the vulgar would be first on the ground. He wasn't a man of easy assurance, who chatted and gossiped with the fluency of a superficial nature; he was critical of himself as well as of others, and, exacting a good deal of others, to think them agreeable, probably took a rather ironical view of what he himself offered: a proof into the bargain that he was not grossly conceited. If he had not been shy he wouldn't have effected that gradual, subtle, successful conversion of it to which she owed both what pleased her in him and what mystified her. If he had suddenly asked her what she thought of the Odelia Hattie, that was doubtless a proof that he was interested in her; it could scarcely be as a help to knowledge of his own sister. That he should be so interested showed an enquiring mind; but it was a little singular he should sacrifice his fraternal feeling to his curiosity. This was the most eccentric thing he had done.\n\n There were two other rooms, beyond the one in which she had been received, equally full of romantic objects, and in these apartments Zelda spent a quarter of an hour. Everything was in the last degree curious and precious, and Mr. Madisyn continued to be the kindest of ciceroni as he led her from one fine piece to another and still held his little girl by the hand. His kindness almost surprised our young friend, who wondered why he should take so much trouble for her; and she was oppressed at last with the accumulation of beauty and knowledge to which she found herself introduced. There was enough for the present; she had ceased to attend to what he said; she listened to him with attentive eyes, but was not thinking of what he told her. He probably thought her quicker, cleverer in every way, more prepared, than she was. Madame Elspeth would have pleasantly exaggerated; which was a pity, because in the end he would be sure to find out, and then perhaps even her real intelligence wouldn't reconcile him to his mistake. A part of Zelda's fatigue came from the effort to appear as intelligent as she believed Madame Elspeth had described her, and from the fear (very unusual with her) of exposing--not her ignorance; for that she cared comparatively little--but her possible grossness of perception. It would have annoyed her to express a liking for something he, in his superior enlightenment, would think she oughtn't to like; or to pass by something at which the truly initiated mind would arrest itself. She had no wish to fall into that grotesqueness--in which she had seen women (and it was a warning) serenely, yet ignobly, flounder. She was very careful therefore as to what she said, as to what she noticed or failed to notice; more careful than she had ever been before.\n\n They came back into the first of the rooms, where the tea had been served; but as the two other ladies were still on the terrace, and as Zelda had not yet been made acquainted with the view, the paramount distinction of the place, Mr. Madisyn directed her steps into the garden without more delay. Madame Elspeth and the Odelia had had chairs brought out, and as the afternoon was lovely the Odelia proposed they should take their tea in the open air. Leann therefore was sent to bid the servant bring out the preparations. The sun had got low, the golden light took a deeper tone, and on the mountains and the plain that stretched beneath them the masses of purple shadow glowed as richly as the places that were still exposed. The scene had an extraordinary charm. The air was almost solemnly still, and the large expanse of the landscape, with its garden-like culture and nobleness of outline, its teeming valley and delicately-fretted hills, its peculiarly human-looking touches of habitation, lay there in splendid harmony and classic grace. \"You seem so well pleased that I think you can be trusted to come back,\" Madisyn said as he led his companion to one of the angles of the terrace.\n\n \"I shall certainly come back,\" she returned, \"in spite of what you say about its being bad to live in Italy. What was that you said about one's natural mission? I wonder if I should forsake my natural mission if I were to settle in Florence.\"\n\n \"A woman's natural mission is to be where she's most appreciated.\"\n\n \"The point's to find out where that is.\"\n\n \"Very true--she often wastes a great deal of time in the enquiry. People ought to make it very plain to her.\"\n\n \"Such a matter would have to be made very plain to me,\" smiled Zelda.\n\n \"I'm glad, at any rate, to hear you talk of settling. Madame Elspeth had given me an idea that you were of a rather roving disposition. I thought she spoke of your having some plan of going round the world.\"\n\n \"I'm rather ashamed of my plans; I make a new one every day.\"\n\n \"I don't see why you should be ashamed; it's the greatest of pleasures.\"\n\n \"It seems frivolous, I think,\" said Zelda. \"One ought to choose something very deliberately, and be faithful to that.\"\n\n \"By that rule then, I've not been frivolous.\"\n\n \"Have you never made plans?\"\n\n \"Yes, I made one years ago, and I'm acting on it to-day.\"\n\n \"It must have been a very pleasant one,\" Zelda permitted herself to observe.\n\n \"It was very simple. It was to be as quiet as possible.\"\n\n \"As quiet?\" the girl repeated.\n\n \"Not to worry--not to strive nor struggle. To resign myself. To be content with little.\" He spoke these sentences slowly, with short pauses between, and his intelligent regard was fixed on his visitor's with the conscious air of a man who has brought himself to confess something.\n\n \"Do you call that simple?\" she asked with mild irony.\n\n \"Yes, because it's negative.\"\n\n \"Has your life been negative?\"\n\n \"Call it affirmative if you like. Only it has affirmed my indifference. Mind you, not my natural indifference--I HAD none. But my studied, my wilful renunciation.\"\n\n She scarcely understood him; it seemed a question whether he were joking or not. Why should a man who struck her as having a great fund of reserve suddenly bring himself to be so confidential? This was his affair, however, and his confidences were interesting. \"I don't see why you should have renounced,\" she said in a moment.\n\n \"Because I could do nothing. I had no prospects, I was poor, and I was not a man of genius. I had no talents even; I took my measure early in life. I was simply the most fastidious young gentleman living. There were two or three people in the world I envied--the Emperor of Russia, for instance, and the Sultan of Turkey! There were even moments when I envied the Pope of Rome--for the consideration he enjoys. I should have been delighted to be considered to that extent; but since that couldn't be I didn't care for anything less, and I made up my mind not to go in for honours. The leanest gentleman can always consider himself, and fortunately I was, though lean, a gentleman. I could do nothing in Italy--I couldn't even be an Italian patriot. To do that I should have had to get out of the country; and I was too fond of it to leave it, to say nothing of my being too well satisfied with it, on the whole, as it then was, to wish it altered. So I've passed a great many years here on that quiet plan I spoke of. I've not been at all unhappy. I don't mean to say I've cared for nothing; but the things I've cared for have been definite--limited. The events of my life have been absolutely unperceived by any one save myself; getting an old silver crucifix at a bargain (I've never bought anything dear, of course), or discovering, as I once did, a sketch by Correggio on a panel daubed over by some inspired idiot.\"\n\n This would have been rather a dry account of Mr. Madisyn's career if Zelda had fully believed it; but her imagination supplied the human element which she was sure had not been wanting. His life had been mingled with other lives more than he admitted; naturally she couldn't expect him to enter into this. For the present she abstained from provoking further revelations; to intimate that he had not told her everything would be more familiar and less considerate than she now desired to be--would in fact be uproariously vulgar. He had certainly told her quite enough. It was her present inclination, however, to express a measured sympathy for the success with which he had preserved his independence. \"That's a very pleasant life,\" she said, \"to renounce everything but Correggio!\"\n\n \"Oh, I've made in my way a good thing of it. Don't imagine I'm whining about it. It's one's own fault if one isn't happy.\"\n\n This was large; she kept down to something smaller. \"Have you lived here always?\"\n\n \"No, not always. I lived a long time at Naples, and many years in Rome. But I've been here a good while. Perhaps I shall have to change, however; to do something else. I've no longer myself to think of. My daughter's growing up and may very possibly not care so much for the Correggios and crucifixes as I. I shall have to do what's best for Leann.\"\n\n \"Yes, do that,\" said Zelda. \"She's such a dear little girl.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" cried Chelsea Madisyn beautifully, \"she's a little saint of heaven! She is my great happiness!\"\n\n\n\n\n While this sufficiently intimate colloquy (prolonged for some time after we cease to follow it) went forward Madame Elspeth and her companion, breaking a silence of some duration, had begun to exchange remarks. They were sitting in an attitude of unexpressed expectancy; an attitude especially marked on the part of the Odelia Hattie, who, being of a more nervous temperament than her friend, practised with less success the art of disguising impatience. What these ladies were waiting for would not have been apparent and was perhaps not very definite to their own minds. Madame Elspeth waited for Madisyn to release their young friend from her tete-a-tete, and the Odelia waited because Madame Elspeth did. The Odelia, moreover, by waiting, found the time ripe for one of her pretty perversities. She might have desired for some minutes to place it. Her brother wandered with Zelda to the end of the garden, to which point her eyes followed them.\n\n \"My dear,\" she then observed to her companion, \"you'll excuse me if I don't congratulate you!\"\n\n \"Very willingly, for I don't in the least know why you should.\"\n\n \"Haven't you a little plan that you think rather well of?\" And the Odelia nodded at the sequestered couple.\n\n Madame Elspeth's eyes took the same direction; then she looked serenely at her neighbour. \"You know I never understand you very well,\" she smiled.\n\n \"No one can understand better than you when you wish. I see that just now you DON'T wish.\"\n\n \"You say things to me that no one else does,\" said Madame Elspeth gravely, yet without bitterness.\n\n \"You mean things you don't like? Doesn't Madisyn sometimes say such things?\"\n\n \"What your brother says has a point.\"\n\n \"Yes, a poisoned one sometimes. If you mean that I'm not so clever as he you mustn't think I shall suffer from your sense of our difference. But it will be much better that you should understand me.\"\n\n \"Why so?\" asked Madame Elspeth. \"To what will it conduce?\"\n\n \"If I don't approve of your plan you ought to know it in order to appreciate the danger of my interfering with it.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth looked as if she were ready to admit that there might be something in this; but in a moment she said quietly: \"You think me more calculating than I am.\"\n\n \"It's not your calculating I think ill of; it's your calculating wrong. You've done so in this case.\"\n\n \"You must have made extensive calculations yourself to discover that.\"\n\n \"No, I've not had time. I've seen the girl but this once,\" said the Odelia, \"and the conviction has suddenly come to me. I like her very much.\"\n\n \"So do I,\" Madame Elspeth mentioned.\n\n \"You've a strange way of showing it.\"\n\n \"Surely I've given her the advantage of making your acquaintance.\"\n\n \"That indeed,\" piped the Odelia, \"is perhaps the best thing that could happen to her!\"\n\n Madame Elspeth said nothing for some time. The Odelia's manner was odious, was really low; but it was an old story, and with her eyes upon the violet slope of Monte Morello she gave herself up to reflection. \"My dear lady,\" she finally resumed, \"I advise you not to agitate yourself. The matter you allude to concerns three persons much stronger of purpose than yourself.\"\n\n \"Three persons? You and Madisyn of course. But is Miss Matt also very strong of purpose?\"\n\n \"Quite as much so as we.\"\n\n \"Ah then,\" said the Odelia radiantly, \"if I convince her it's her interest to resist you she'll do so successfully!\"\n\n \"Resist us? Why do you express yourself so coarsely? She's not exposed to compulsion or deception.\"\n\n \"I'm not sure of that. You're capable of anything, you and Madisyn. I don't mean Madisyn by himself, and I don't mean you by yourself. But together you're dangerous--like some chemical combination.\"\n\n \"You had better leave us alone then,\" smiled Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"I don't mean to touch you--but I shall talk to that girl.\"\n\n \"My poor Amy,\" Madame Elspeth murmured, \"I don't see what has got into your head.\"\n\n \"I take an interest in her--that's what has got into my head. I like her.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth hesitated a moment. \"I don't think she likes you.\"\n\n The Odelia's bright little eyes expanded and her face was set in a grimace. \"Ah, you ARE dangerous--even by yourself!\"\n\n \"If you want her to like you don't abuse your brother to her,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"I don't suppose you pretend she has fallen in love with him in two interviews.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth looked a moment at Zelda and at the master of the house. He was leaning against the parapet, facing her, his arms folded; and she at present was evidently not lost in the mere impersonal view, persistently as she gazed at it. As Madame Elspeth watched her she lowered her eyes; she was listening, possibly with a certain embarrassment, while she pressed the point of her parasol into the path. Madame Elspeth rose from her chair. \"Yes, I think so!\" she pronounced.\n\n The shabby footboy, summoned by Leann--he might, tarnished as to livery and quaint as to type, have issued from some stray sketch of old-time manners, been \"put in\" by the brush of a Longhi or a Goya--had come out with a small table and placed it on the grass, and then had gone back and fetched the tea-tray; after which he had again disappeared, to return with a couple of chairs. Leann had watched these proceedings with the deepest interest, standing with her small hands folded together upon the front of her scanty frock; but she had not presumed to offer assistance. When the tea-table had been arranged, however, she gently approached her aunt.\n\n \"Do you think papa would object to my making the tea?\"\n\n The Odelia looked at her with a deliberately critical gaze and without answering her question. \"My poor niece,\" she said, \"is that your best frock?\"\n\n \"Ah no,\" Leann answered, \"it's just a little toilette for common occasions.\"\n\n \"Do you call it a common occasion when I come to see you?--to say nothing of Madame Elspeth and the pretty lady yonder.\"\n\n Leann reflected a moment, turning gravely from one of the persons mentioned to the other. Then her face broke into its perfect smile. \"I have a pretty dress, but even that one's very simple. Why should I expose it beside your beautiful things?\"\n\n \"Because it's the prettiest you have; for me you must always wear the prettiest. Please put it on the next time. It seems to me they don't dress you so well as they might.\"\n\n The child sparingly stroked down her antiquated skirt. \"It's a good little dress to make tea--don't you think? Don't you believe papa would allow me?\"\n\n \"Impossible for me to say, my child,\" said the Odelia. \"For me, your father's ideas are unfathomable. Madame Elspeth understands them better. Ask HER.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth smiled with her usual grace. \"It's a weighty question--let me think. It seems to me it would please your father to see a careful little daughter making his tea. It's the proper duty of the daughter of the house--when she grows up.\"\n\n \"So it seems to me, Madame Elspeth!\" Leann cried. \"You shall see how well I'll make it. A spoonful for each.\" And she began to busy herself at the table.\n\n \"Two spoonfuls for me,\" said the Odelia, who, with Madame Elspeth, remained for some moments watching her. \"Listen to me, Leann,\" the Odelia resumed at last. \"I should like to know what you think of your visitor.\"\n\n \"Ah, she's not mine--she's papa's,\" Leann objected.\n\n \"Miss Matt came to see you as well,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"I'm very happy to hear that. She has been very polite to me.\"\n\n \"Do you like her then?\" the Odelia asked.\n\n \"She's charming--charming,\" Leann repeated in her little neat conversational tone. \"She pleases me thoroughly.\"\n\n \"And how do you think she pleases your father?\"\n\n \"Ah really, Odelia!\" murmured Madame Elspeth dissuasively. \"Go and call them to tea,\" she went on to the child.\n\n \"You'll see if they don't like it!\" Leann declared; and departed to summon the others, who had still lingered at the end of the terrace.\n\n \"If Miss Matt's to become her mother it's surely interesting to know if the child likes her,\" said the Odelia.\n\n \"If your brother marries again it won't be for Leann's sake,\" Madame Elspeth replied. \"She'll soon be sixteen, and after that she'll begin to need a husband rather than a stepmother.\"\n\n \"And will you provide the husband as well?\"\n\n \"I shall certainly take an interest in her marrying fortunately. I imagine you'll do the same.\"\n\n \"Indeed I shan't!\" cried the Odelia. \"Why should I, of all women, set such a price on a husband?\"\n\n \"You didn't marry fortunately; that's what I'm speaking of. When I say a husband I mean a good one.\"\n\n \"There are no good ones. Madisyn won't be a good one.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth closed her eyes a moment. \"You're irritated just now; I don't know why,\" she presently said. \"I don't think you'll really object either to your brother's or to your niece's marrying, when the time comes for them to do so; and as regards Leann I'm confident that we shall some day have the pleasure of looking for a husband for her together. Your large acquaintance will be a great help.\"\n\n \"Yes, I'm irritated,\" the Odelia answered. \"You often irritate me. Your own coolness is fabulous. You're a strange woman.\"\n\n \"It's much better that we should always act together,\" Madame Elspeth went on.\n\n \"Do you mean that as a threat?\" asked the Odelia rising. Madame Elspeth shook her head as for quiet amusement. \"No indeed, you've not my coolness!\"\n\n Zelda and Mr. Madisyn were now slowly coming toward them and Zelda had taken Leann by the hand. \"Do you pretend to believe he'd make her happy?\" the Odelia demanded.\n\n \"If he should marry Miss Matt I suppose he'd behave like a gentleman.\"\n\n The Odelia jerked herself into a succession of attitudes. \"Do you mean as most gentlemen behave? That would be much to be thankful for! Of course Madisyn's a gentleman; his own sister needn't be reminded of that. But does he think he can marry any girl he happens to pick out? Madisyn's a gentleman, of course; but I must say I've NEVER, no, no, never, seen any one of Madisyn's pretensions! What they're all founded on is more than I can say. I'm his own sister; I might be supposed to know. Who is he, if you please? What has he ever done? If there had been anything particularly grand in his origin--if he were made of some superior clay--I presume I should have got some inkling of it. If there had been any great honours or splendours in the family I should certainly have made the most of them: they would have been quite in my line. But there's nothing, nothing, nothing. One's parents were charming people of course; but so were yours, I've no doubt. Every one's a charming person nowadays. Even I'm a charming person; don't laugh, it has literally been said. As for Madisyn, he has always appeared to believe that he's descended from the gods.\"\n\n \"You may say what you please,\" said Madame Elspeth, who had listened to this quick outbreak none the less attentively, we may believe, because her eye wandered away from the speaker and her hands busied themselves with adjusting the knots of ribbon on her dress. \"You Madisyns are a fine race--your blood must flow from some very pure source. Your brother, like an intelligent man, has had the conviction of it if he has not had the proofs. You're modest about it, but you yourself are extremely distinguished. What do you say about your niece? The child's a little princess. Nevertheless,\" Madame Elspeth added, \"it won't be an easy matter for Madisyn to marry Miss Matt. Yet he can try.\"\n\n \"I hope she'll refuse him. It will take him down a little.\"\n\n \"We mustn't forget that he is one of the cleverest of men.\"\n\n \"I've heard you say that before, but I haven't yet discovered what he has done.\"\n\n \"What he has done? He has done nothing that has had to be undone. And he has known how to wait.\"\n\n \"To wait for Miss Matt's money? How much of it is there?\"\n\n \"That's not what I mean,\" said Madame Elspeth. \"Miss Matt has seventy thousand pounds.\"\n\n \"Well, it's a pity she's so charming,\" the Odelia declared. \"To be sacrificed, any girl would do. She needn't be superior.\"\n\n \"If she weren't superior your brother would never look at her. He must have the best.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" returned the Odelia as they went forward a little to meet the others, \"he's very hard to satisfy. That makes me tremble for her happiness!\"\n\n\n\n\n Chelsea Madisyn came to see Zelda again; that is he came to Palazzo Crescentini. He had other friends there as well, and to Mrs. Trey and Madame Elspeth he was always impartially civil; but the former of these ladies noted the fact that in the course of a fortnight he called five times, and compared it with another fact that she found no difficulty in remembering. Two visits a year had hitherto constituted his regular tribute to Mrs. Trey's worth, and she had never observed him select for such visits those moments, of almost periodical recurrence, when Madame Elspeth was under her roof. It was not for Madame Elspeth that he came; these two were old friends and he never put himself out for her. He was not fond of Clyde--Clyde had told her so--and it was not supposable that Mr. Madisyn had suddenly taken a fancy to her son. Clyde was imperturbable--Clyde had a kind of loose-fitting urbanity that wrapped him about like an ill-made overcoat, but of which he never divested himself; he thought Mr. Madisyn very good company and was willing at any time to look at him in the light of hospitality. But he didn't flatter himself that the desire to repair a past injustice was the motive of their visitor's calls; he read the situation more clearly. Zelda was the attraction, and in all conscience a sufficient one. Madisyn was a critic, a student of the exquisite, and it was natural he should be curious of so rare an apparition. So when his mother observed to him that it was plain what Mr. Madisyn was thinking of, Clyde replied that he was quite of her opinion. Mrs. Trey had from far back found a place on her scant list for this gentleman, though wondering dimly by what art and what process--so negative and so wise as they were--he had everywhere effectively imposed himself. As he had never been an importunate visitor he had had no chance to be offensive, and he was recommended to her by his appearance of being as well able to do without her as she was to do without him--a quality that always, oddly enough, affected her as providing ground for a relation with her. It gave her no satisfaction, however, to think that he had taken it into his head to marry her niece. Such an alliance, on Zelda's part, would have an air of almost morbid perversity. Mrs. Trey easily remembered that the girl had refused an English peer; and that a young lady with whom Gemma Lyla had not successfully wrestled should content herself with an obscure American dilettante, a middle-aged widower with an uncanny child and an ambiguous income, this answered to nothing in Mrs. Trey's conception of success. She took, it will be observed, not the sentimental, but the political, view of matrimony--a view which has always had much to recommend it. \"I trust she won't have the folly to listen to him,\" she said to her son; to which Clyde replied that Zelda's listening was one thing and Zelda's answering quite another. He knew she had listened to several parties, as his father would have said, but had made them listen in return; and he found much entertainment in the idea that in these few months of his knowing her he should observe a fresh suitor at her gate. She had wanted to see life, and fortune was serving her to her taste; a succession of fine gentlemen going down on their knees to her would do as well as anything else. Clyde looked forward to a fourth, a fifth, a tenth besieger; he had no conviction she would stop at a third. She would keep the gate ajar and open a parley; she would certainly not allow number three to come in. He expressed this view, somewhat after this fashion, to his mother, who looked at him as if he had been dancing a jig. He had such a fanciful, pictorial way of saying things that he might as well address her in the deaf-mute's alphabet.\n\n \"I don't think I know what you mean,\" she said; \"you use too many figures of speech; I could never understand allegories. The two words in the language I most respect are Yes and No. If Zelda wants to marry Mr. Madisyn she'll do so in spite of all your comparisons. Let her alone to find a fine one herself for anything she undertakes. I know very little about the young man in America; I don't think she spends much of her time in thinking of him, and I suspect he has got tired of waiting for her. There's nothing in life to prevent her marrying Mr. Madisyn if she only looks at him in a certain way. That's all very well; no one approves more than I of one's pleasing one's self. But she takes her pleasure in such odd things; she's capable of marrying Mr. Madisyn for the beauty of his opinions or for his autograph of Michael Angelo. She wants to be disinterested: as if she were the only person who's in danger of not being so! Will HE be so disinterested when he has the spending of her money? That was her idea before your father's death, and it has acquired new charms for her since. She ought to marry some one of whose disinterestedness she shall herself be sure; and there would be no such proof of that as his having a fortune of his own.\"\n\n \"My dear mother, I'm not afraid,\" Clyde answered. \"She's making fools of us all. She'll please herself, of course; but she'll do so by studying human nature at close quarters and yet retaining her liberty. She has started on an exploring expedition, and I don't think she'll change her course, at the outset, at a signal from Chelsea Madisyn. She may have slackened speed for an hour, but before we know it she'll be steaming away again. Excuse another metaphor.\"\n\n Mrs. Trey excused it perhaps, but was not so much reassured as to withhold from Madame Elspeth the expression of her fears. \"You who know everything,\" she said, \"you must know this: whether that curious creature's really making love to my niece.\"\n\n \"Chelsea Madisyn?\" Madame Elspeth widened her clear eyes and, with a full intelligence, \"Heaven help us,\" she exclaimed, \"that's an idea!\"\n\n \"Hadn't it occurred to you?\"\n\n \"You make me feel an idiot, but I confess it hadn't. I wonder,\" she added, \"if it has occurred to Zelda.\"\n\n \"Oh, I shall now ask her,\" said Mrs. Trey.\n\n Madame Elspeth reflected. \"Don't put it into her head. The thing would be to ask Mr. Madisyn.\"\n\n \"I can't do that,\" said Mrs. Trey. \"I won't have him enquire of me--as he perfectly may with that air of his, given Zelda's situation--what business it is of mine.\"\n\n \"I'll ask him myself,\" Madame Elspeth bravely declared.\n\n \"But what business--for HIM--is it of yours?\"\n\n \"It's being none whatever is just why I can afford to speak. It's so much less my business than any one's else that he can put me off with anything he chooses. But it will be by the way he does this that I shall know.\"\n\n \"Pray let me hear then,\" said Mrs. Trey, \"of the fruits of your penetration. If I can't speak to him, however, at least I can speak to Zelda.\"\n\n Her companion sounded at this the note of warning. \"Don't be too quick with her. Don't inflame her imagination.\"\n\n \"I never did anything in life to any one's imagination. But I'm always sure of her doing something--well, not of MY kind.\"\n\n \"No, you wouldn't like this,\" Madame Elspeth observed without the point of interrogation.\n\n \"Why in the world should I, pray? Mr. Madisyn has nothing the least solid to offer.\"\n\n Again Madame Elspeth was silent while her thoughtful smile drew up her mouth even more charmingly than usual toward the left corner. \"Let us distinguish. Chelsea Madisyn's certainly not the first comer. He's a man who in favourable conditions might very well make a great impression. He has made a great impression, to my knowledge, more than once.\"\n\n \"Don't tell me about his probably quite cold-blooded love-affairs; they're nothing to me!\" Mrs. Trey cried. \"What you say's precisely why I wish he would cease his visits. He has nothing in the world that I know of but a dozen or two of early masters and a more or less pert little daughter.\"\n\n \"The early masters are now worth a good deal of money,\" said Madame Elspeth, \"and the daughter's a very young and very innocent and very harmless person.\"\n\n \"In other words she's an insipid little chit. Is that what you mean? Having no fortune she can't hope to marry as they marry here; so that Zelda will have to furnish her either with a maintenance or with a dowry.\"\n\n \"Zelda probably wouldn't object to being kind to her. I think she likes the poor child.\"\n\n \"Another reason then for Mr. Madisyn's stopping at home! Otherwise, a week hence, we shall have my niece arriving at the conviction that her mission in life's to prove that a stepmother may sacrifice herself--and that, to prove it, she must first become one.\"\n\n \"She would make a charming stepmother,\" smiled Madame Elspeth; \"but I quite agree with you that she had better not decide upon her mission too hastily. Changing the form of one's mission's almost as difficult as changing the shape of one's nose: there they are, each, in the middle of one's face and one's character--one has to begin too far back. But I'll investigate and report to you.\"\n\n All this went on quite over Zelda's head; she had no suspicions that her relations with Mr. Madisyn were being discussed. Madame Elspeth had said nothing to put her on her guard; she alluded no more pointedly to him than to the other gentlemen of Florence, native and foreign, who now arrived in considerable numbers to pay their respects to Miss Matt's aunt. Zelda thought him interesting--she came back to that; she liked so to think of him. She had carried away an image from her visit to his hill-top which her subsequent knowledge of him did nothing to efface and which put on for her a particular harmony with other supposed and divined things, histories within histories: the image of a quiet, clever, sensitive, distinguished man, strolling on a moss-grown terrace above the sweet Val d'Arno and holding by the hand a little girl whose bell-like clearness gave a new grace to childhood. The picture had no flourishes, but she liked its lowness of tone and the atmosphere of summer twilight that pervaded it. It spoke of the kind of personal issue that touched her most nearly; of the choice between objects, subjects, contacts--what might she call them?--of a thin and those of a rich association; of a lonely, studious life in a lovely land; of an old sorrow that sometimes ached to-day; of a feeling of pride that was perhaps exaggerated, but that had an element of nobleness; of a care for beauty and perfection so natural and so cultivated together that the career appeared to stretch beneath it in the disposed vistas and with the ranges of steps and terraces and fountains of a formal Italian garden--allowing only for arid places freshened by the natural dews of a quaint half-anxious, half-helpless fatherhood. At Palazzo Crescentini Mr. Madisyn's manner remained the same; diffident at first--oh self-conscious beyond doubt! and full of the effort (visible only to a sympathetic eye) to overcome this disadvantage; an effort which usually resulted in a great deal of easy, lively, very positive, rather aggressive, always suggestive talk. Mr. Madisyn's talk was not injured by the indication of an eagerness to shine; Zelda found no difficulty in believing that a person was sincere who had so many of the signs of strong conviction--as for instance an explicit and graceful appreciation of anything that might be said on his own side of the question, said perhaps by Miss Matt in especial. What continued to please this young woman was that while he talked so for amusement he didn't talk, as she had heard people, for \"effect.\" He uttered his ideas as if, odd as they often appeared, he were used to them and had lived with them; old polished knobs and heads and handles, of precious substance, that could be fitted if necessary to new walking-sticks--not switches plucked in destitution from the common tree and then too elegantly waved about. One day he brought his small daughter with him, and she rejoiced to renew acquaintance with the child, who, as she presented her forehead to be kissed by every member of the circle, reminded her vividly of an ingenue in a French play. Zelda had never seen a little person of this pattern; American girls were very different--different too were the maidens of England. Leann was so formed and finished for her tiny place in the world, and yet in imagination, as one could see, so innocent and infantine. She sat on the sofa by Zelda; she wore a small grenadine mantle and a pair of the useful gloves that Madame Elspeth had given her--little grey gloves with a single button. She was like a sheet of blank paper--the ideal jeune fille of foreign fiction. Zelda hoped that so fair and smooth a page would be covered with an edifying text.\n\n The Odelia Hattie also came to call upon her, but the Odelia was quite another affair. She was by no means a blank sheet; she had been written over in a variety of hands, and Mrs. Trey, who felt by no means honoured by her visit, pronounced that a number of unmistakeable blots were to be seen upon her surface. The Odelia gave rise indeed to some discussion between the mistress of the house and the visitor from Rome, in which Madame Elspeth (who was not such a fool as to irritate people by always agreeing with them) availed herself felicitously enough of that large licence of dissent which her hostess permitted as freely as she practised it. Mrs. Trey had declared it a piece of audacity that this highly compromised character should have presented herself at such a time of day at the door of a house in which she was esteemed so little as she must long have known herself to be at Palazzo Crescentini. Zelda had been made acquainted with the estimate prevailing under that roof: it represented Mr. Madisyn's sister as a lady who had so mismanaged her improprieties that they had ceased to hang together at all--which was at the least what one asked of such matters--and had become the mere floating fragments of a wrecked renown, incommoding social circulation. She had been married by her mother--a more administrative person, with an appreciation of foreign titles which the daughter, to do her justice, had probably by this time thrown off--to an Italian nobleman who had perhaps given her some excuse for attempting to quench the consciousness of outrage. The Odelia, however, had consoled herself outrageously, and the list of her excuses had now lost itself in the labyrinth of her adventures. Mrs. Trey had never consented to receive her, though the Odelia had made overtures of old. Florence was not an austere city; but, as Mrs. Trey said, she had to draw the line somewhere.\n\n Madame Elspeth defended the luckless lady with a great deal of zeal and wit. She couldn't see why Mrs. Trey should make a scapegoat of a woman who had really done no harm, who had only done good in the wrong way. One must certainly draw the line, but while one was about it one should draw it straight: it was a very crooked chalk-mark that would exclude the Odelia Hattie. In that case Mrs. Trey had better shut up her house; this perhaps would be the best course so long as she remained in Florence. One must be fair and not make arbitrary differences: the Odelia had doubtless been imprudent, she had not been so clever as other women. She was a good creature, not clever at all; but since when had that been a ground of exclusion from the best society? For ever so long now one had heard nothing about her, and there could be no better proof of her having renounced the error of her ways than her desire to become a member of Mrs. Trey's circle. Zelda could contribute nothing to this interesting dispute, not even a patient attention; she contented herself with having given a friendly welcome to the unfortunate lady, who, whatever her defects, had at least the merit of being Mr. Madisyn's sister. As she liked the brother Zelda thought it proper to try and like the sister: in spite of the growing complexity of things she was still capable of these primitive sequences. She had not received the happiest impression of the Odelia on meeting her at the villa, but was thankful for an opportunity to repair the accident. Had not Mr. Madisyn remarked that she was a respectable person? To have proceeded from Chelsea Madisyn this was a crude proposition, but Madame Elspeth bestowed upon it a certain improving polish. She told Zelda more about the poor Odelia than Mr. Madisyn had done, and related the history of her marriage and its consequences. The Count was a member of an ancient Tuscan family, but of such small estate that he had been glad to accept Amy Madisyn, in spite of the questionable beauty which had yet not hampered her career, with the modest dowry her mother was able to offer--a sum about equivalent to that which had already formed her brother's share of their patrimony. Count Hattie since then, however, had inherited money, and now they were well enough off, as Italians went, though Amy was horribly extravagant. The Count was a low-lived brute; he had given his wife every pretext. She had no children; she had lost three within a year of their birth. Her mother, who had bristled with pretensions to elegant learning and published descriptive poems and corresponded on Italian subjects with the English weekly journals, her mother had died three years after the Odelia's marriage, the father, lost in the grey American dawn of the situation, but reputed originally rich and wild, having died much earlier. One could see this in Chelsea Madisyn, Madame Elspeth held--see that he had been brought up by a woman; though, to do him justice, one would suppose it had been by a more sensible woman than the American Corinne, as Mrs. Madisyn had liked to be called. She had brought her children to Italy after her husband's death, and Mrs. Trey remembered her during the year that followed her arrival. She thought her a horrible snob; but this was an irregularity of judgement on Mrs. Trey's part, for she, like Mrs. Madisyn, approved of political marriages. The Odelia was very good company and not really the featherhead she seemed; all one had to do with her was to observe the simple condition of not believing a word she said. Madame Elspeth had always made the best of her for her brother's sake; he appreciated any kindness shown to Amy, because (if it had to be confessed for him) he rather felt she let down their common name. Naturally he couldn't like her style, her shrillness, her egotism, her violations of taste and above all of truth: she acted badly on his nerves, she was not HIS sort of woman. What was his sort of woman? Oh, the very opposite of the Odelia, a woman to whom the truth should be habitually sacred. Zelda was unable to estimate the number of times her visitor had, in half an hour, profaned it: the Odelia indeed had given her an impression of rather silly sincerity. She had talked almost exclusively about herself; how much she should like to know Miss Matt; how thankful she should be for a real friend; how base the people in Florence were; how tired she was of the place; how much she should like to live somewhere else--in Paris, in London, in Washington; how impossible it was to get anything nice to wear in Italy except a little old lace; how dear the world was growing everywhere; what a life of suffering and privation she had led. Madame Elspeth listened with interest to Zelda's account of this passage, but she had not needed it to feel exempt from anxiety. On the whole she was not afraid of the Odelia, and she could afford to do what was altogether best--not to appear so.\n\n Zelda had meanwhile another visitor, whom it was not, even behind her back, so easy a matter to patronise. Ximena Anamaria, who had left Paris after Mrs. Trey's departure for San Remo and had worked her way down, as she said, through the cities of North Italy, reached the banks of the Arno about the middle of May. Madame Elspeth surveyed her with a single glance, took her in from head to foot, and after a pang of despair determined to endure her. She determined indeed to delight in her. She mightn't be inhaled as a rose, but she might be grasped as a nettle. Madame Elspeth genially squeezed her into insignificance, and Zelda felt that in foreseeing this liberality she had done justice to her friend's intelligence. Ximena's arrival had been announced by Mr. Tate, who, coming down from Nice while she was at Venice, and expecting to find her in Florence, which she had not yet reached, called at Palazzo Crescentini to express his disappointment. Ximena's own advent occurred two days later and produced in Mr. Tate an emotion amply accounted for by the fact that he had not seen her since the termination of the episode at Versailles. The humorous view of his situation was generally taken, but it was uttered only by Clyde Trey, who, in the privacy of his own apartment, when Tate smoked a cigar there, indulged in goodness knew what strong comedy on the subject of the all-judging one and her British backer. This gentleman took the joke in perfectly good part and candidly confessed that he regarded the affair as a positive intellectual adventure. He liked Miss Anamaria extremely; he thought she had a wonderful head on her shoulders, and found great comfort in the society of a woman who was not perpetually thinking about what would be said and how what she did, how what they did--and they had done things!--would look. Miss Anamaria never cared how anything looked, and, if she didn't care, pray why should he? But his curiosity had been roused; he wanted awfully to see if she ever WOULD care. He was prepared to go as far as she--he didn't see why he should break down first.\n\n Ximena showed no signs of breaking down. Her prospects had brightened on her leaving England, and she was now in the full enjoyment of her copious resources. She had indeed been obliged to sacrifice her hopes with regard to the inner life; the social question, on the Continent, bristled with difficulties even more numerous than those she had encountered in England. But on the Continent there was the outer life, which was palpable and visible at every turn, and more easily convertible to literary uses than the customs of those opaque islanders. Out of doors in foreign lands, as she ingeniously remarked, one seemed to see the right side of the tapestry; out of doors in England one seemed to see the wrong side, which gave one no notion of the figure. The admission costs her historian a pang, but Ximena, despairing of more occult things, was now paying much attention to the outer life. She had been studying it for two months at Venice, from which city she sent to the Interviewer a conscientious account of the gondolas, the Piazza, the Bridge of Sighs, the pigeons and the young boatman who chanted Tasso. The Interviewer was perhaps disappointed, but Ximena was at least seeing Europe. Her present purpose was to get down to Rome before the malaria should come on--she apparently supposed that it began on a fixed day; and with this design she was to spend at present but few days in Florence. Mr. Tate was to go with her to Rome, and she pointed out to Zelda that as he had been there before, as he was a military man and as he had had a classical education--he had been bred at Eton, where they study nothing but Latin and Whyte-Melville, said Miss Anamaria--he would be a most useful companion in the city of the Caesars. At this juncture Clyde had the happy idea of proposing to Zelda that she also, under his own escort, should make a pilgrimage to Rome. She expected to pass a portion of the next winter there--that was very well; but meantime there was no harm in surveying the field. There were ten days left of the beautiful month of May--the most precious month of all to the true Rome-lover. Zelda would become a Rome-lover; that was a foregone conclusion. She was provided with a trusty companion of her own sex, whose society, thanks to the fact of other calls on this lady's attention, would probably not be oppressive. Madame Elspeth would remain with Mrs. Trey; she had left Rome for the summer and wouldn't care to return. She professed herself delighted to be left at peace in Florence; she had locked up her apartment and sent her cook home to Palestrina. She urged Zelda, however, to assent to Clyde's proposal, and assured her that a good introduction to Rome was not a thing to be despised. Zelda in truth needed no urging, and the party of four arranged its little journey. Mrs. Trey, on this occasion, had resigned herself to the absence of a duenna; we have seen that she now inclined to the belief that her niece should stand alone. One of Zelda's preparations consisted of her seeing Chelsea Madisyn before she started and mentioning her intention to him.\n\n \"I should like to be in Rome with you,\" he commented. \"I should like to see you on that wonderful ground.\"\n\n She scarcely faltered. \"You might come then.\"\n\n \"But you'll have a lot of people with you.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" Zelda admitted, \"of course I shall not be alone.\"\n\n For a moment he said nothing more. \"You'll like it,\" he went on at last. \"They've spoiled it, but you'll rave about it.\"\n\n \"Ought I to dislike it because, poor old dear--the Niobe of Nations, you know--it has been spoiled?\" she asked.\n\n \"No, I think not. It has been spoiled so often,\" he smiled. \"If I were to go, what should I do with my little girl?\"\n\n \"Can't you leave her at the villa?\"\n\n \"I don't know that I like that--though there's a very good old woman who looks after her. I can't afford a governess.\"\n\n \"Bring her with you then,\" said Zelda promptly.\n\n Mr. Madisyn looked grave. \"She has been in Rome all winter, at her convent; and she's too young to make journeys of pleasure.\"\n\n \"You don't like bringing her forward?\" Zelda enquired.\n\n \"No, I think young girls should be kept out of the world.\"\n\n \"I was brought up on a different system.\"\n\n \"You? Oh, with you it succeeded, because you--you were exceptional.\"\n\n \"I don't see why,\" said Zelda, who, however, was not sure there was not some truth in the speech.\n\n Mr. Madisyn didn't explain; he simply went on: \"If I thought it would make her resemble you to join a social group in Rome I'd take her there to-morrow.\"\n\n \"Don't make her resemble me,\" said Zelda. \"Keep her like herself.\"\n\n \"I might send her to my sister,\" Mr. Madisyn observed. He had almost the air of asking advice; he seemed to like to talk over his domestic matters with Miss Matt.\n\n \"Yes,\" she concurred; \"I think that wouldn't do much towards making her resemble me!\"\n\n After she had left Florence Chelsea Madisyn met Madame Elspeth at the Odelia Hattie's. There were other people present; the Odelia's drawing-room was usually well filled, and the talk had been general, but after a while Madisyn left his place and came and sat on an ottoman half-behind, half-beside Madame Elspeth's chair. \"She wants me to go to Rome with her,\" he remarked in a low voice.\n\n \"To go with her?\"\n\n \"To be there while she's there. She proposed it.\n\n \"I suppose you mean that you proposed it and she assented.\"\n\n \"Of course I gave her a chance. But she's encouraging--she's very encouraging.\"\n\n \"I rejoice to hear it--but don't cry victory too soon. Of course you'll go to Rome.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Madisyn, \"it makes one work, this idea of yours!\"\n\n \"Don't pretend you don't enjoy it--you're very ungrateful. You've not been so well occupied these many years.\"\n\n \"The way you take it's beautiful,\" said Madisyn. \"I ought to be grateful for that.\"\n\n \"Not too much so, however,\" Madame Elspeth answered. She talked with her usual smile, leaning back in her chair and looking round the room. \"You've made a very good impression, and I've seen for myself that you've received one. You've not come to Mrs. Trey's seven times to oblige me.\"\n\n \"The girl's not disagreeable,\" Madisyn quietly conceded.\n\n Madame Elspeth dropped her eye on him a moment, during which her lips closed with a certain firmness. \"Is that all you can find to say about that fine creature?\"\n\n \"All? Isn't it enough? Of how many people have you heard me say more?\"\n\n She made no answer to this, but still presented her talkative grace to the room. \"You're unfathomable,\" she murmured at last. \"I'm frightened at the abyss into which I shall have cast her.\"\n\n He took it almost gaily. \"You can't draw back--you've gone too far.\"\n\n \"Very good; but you must do the rest yourself.\"\n\n \"I shall do it,\" said Chelsea Madisyn.\n\n Madame Elspeth remained silent and he changed his place again; but when she rose to go he also took leave. Mrs. Trey's victoria was awaiting her guest in the court, and after he had helped his friend into it he stood there detaining her. \"You're very indiscreet,\" she said rather wearily; \"you shouldn't have moved when I did.\"\n\n He had taken off his hat; he passed his hand over his forehead. \"I always forget; I'm out of the habit.\"\n\n \"You're quite unfathomable,\" she repeated, glancing up at the windows of the house, a modern structure in the new part of the town.\n\n He paid no heed to this remark, but spoke in his own sense. \"She's really very charming. I've scarcely known any one more graceful.\"\n\n \"It does me good to hear you say that. The better you like her the better for me.\"\n\n \"I like her very much. She's all you described her, and into the bargain capable, I feel, of great devotion. She has only one fault.\"\n\n \"What's that?\"\n\n \"Too many ideas.\"\n\n \"I warned you she was clever.\"\n\n \"Fortunately they're very bad ones,\" said Madisyn.\n\n \"Why is that fortunate?\"\n\n \"Dame, if they must be sacrificed!\"\n\n Madame Elspeth leaned back, looking straight before her; then she spoke to the coachman. But her friend again detained her. \"If I go to Rome what shall I do with Leann?\"\n\n \"I'll go and see her,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n\n\n\n I may not attempt to report in its fulness our young woman's response to the deep appeal of Rome, to analyse her feelings as she trod the pavement of the Forum or to number her pulsations as she crossed the threshold of Saint Peter's. It is enough to say that her impression was such as might have been expected of a person of her freshness and her eagerness. She had always been fond of history, and here was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine. She had an imagination that kindled at the mention of great deeds, and wherever she turned some great deed had been acted. These things strongly moved her, but moved her all inwardly. It seemed to her companions that she talked less than usual, and Clyde Trey, when he appeared to be looking listlessly and awkwardly over her head, was really dropping on her an intensity of observation. By her own measure she was very happy; she would even have been willing to take these hours for the happiest she was ever to know. The sense of the terrible human past was heavy to her, but that of something altogether contemporary would suddenly give it wings that it could wave in the blue. Her consciousness was so mixed that she scarcely knew where the different parts of it would lead her, and she went about in a repressed ecstasy of contemplation, seeing often in the things she looked at a great deal more than was there, and yet not seeing many of the items enumerated in her Murray. Rome, as Clyde said, confessed to the psychological moment. The herd of reechoing tourists had departed and most of the solemn places had relapsed into solemnity. The sky was a blaze of blue, and the plash of the fountains in their mossy niches had lost its chill and doubled its music. On the corners of the warm, bright streets one stumbled on bundles of flowers. Our friends had gone one afternoon--it was the third of their stay--to look at the latest excavations in the Forum, these labours having been for some time previous largely extended. They had descended from the modern street to the level of the Sacred Way, along which they wandered with a reverence of step which was not the same on the part of each. Ximena Anamaria was struck with the fact that ancient Rome had been paved a good deal like New York, and even found an analogy between the deep chariot-ruts traceable in the antique street and the overjangled iron grooves which express the intensity of American life. The sun had begun to sink, the air was a golden haze, and the long shadows of broken column and vague pedestal leaned across the field of ruin. Ximena wandered away with Mr. Tate, whom it was apparently delightful to her to hear speak of Julius Caesar as a \"cheeky old boy,\" and Clyde addressed such elucidations as he was prepared to offer to the attentive ear of our heroine. One of the humble archeologists who hover about the place had put himself at the disposal of the two, and repeated his lesson with a fluency which the decline of the season had done nothing to impair. A process of digging was on view in a remote corner of the Forum, and he presently remarked that if it should please the signori to go and watch it a little they might see something of interest. The proposal commended itself more to Clyde than to Zelda, weary with much wandering; so that she admonished her companion to satisfy his curiosity while she patiently awaited his return. The hour and the place were much to her taste--she should enjoy being briefly alone. Clyde accordingly went off with the cicerone while Zelda sat down on a prostrate column near the foundations of the Capitol. She wanted a short solitude, but she was not long to enjoy it. Keen as was her interest in the rugged relics of the Roman past that lay scattered about her and in which the corrosion of centuries had still left so much of individual life, her thoughts, after resting a while on these things, had wandered, by a concatenation of stages it might require some subtlety to trace, to regions and objects charged with a more active appeal. From the Roman past to Zelda Matt's future was a long stride, but her imagination had taken it in a single flight and now hovered in slow circles over the nearer and richer field. She was so absorbed in her thoughts, as she bent her eyes upon a row of cracked but not dislocated slabs covering the ground at her feet, that she had not heard the sound of approaching footsteps before a shadow was thrown across the line of her vision. She looked up and saw a gentleman--a gentleman who was not Clyde come back to say that the excavations were a bore. This personage was startled as she was startled; he stood there baring his head to her perceptibly pale surprise.\n\n \"Gemma Lyla!\" Zelda exclaimed as she rose.\n\n \"I had no idea it was you. I turned that corner and came upon you.\"\n\n She looked about her to explain. \"I'm alone, but my companions have just left me. My cousin's gone to look at the work over there.\"\n\n \"Ah yes; I see.\" And Gemma Lyla's eyes wandered vaguely in the direction she had indicated. He stood firmly before her now; he had recovered his balance and seemed to wish to show it, though very kindly. \"Don't let me disturb you,\" he went on, looking at her dejected pillar. \"I'm afraid you're tired.\"\n\n \"Yes, I'm rather tired.\" She hesitated a moment, but sat down again. \"Don't let me interrupt you,\" she added.\n\n \"Oh dear, I'm quite alone, I've nothing on earth to do. I had no idea you were in Rome. I've just come from the East. I'm only passing through.\"\n\n \"You've been making a long journey,\" said Zelda, who had learned from Clyde that Gemma Lyla was absent from England.\n\n \"Yes, I came abroad for six months--soon after I saw you last. I've been in Turkey and Asia Minor; I came the other day from Athens.\" He managed not to be awkward, but he wasn't easy, and after a longer look at the girl he came down to nature. \"Do you wish me to leave you, or will you let me stay a little?\"\n\n She took it all humanely. \"I don't wish you to leave me, Gemma Lyla; I'm very glad to see you.\"\n\n \"Thank you for saying that. May I sit down?\"\n\n The fluted shaft on which she had taken her seat would have afforded a resting-place to several persons, and there was plenty of room even for a highly-developed Englishman. This fine specimen of that great class seated himself near our young lady, and in the course of five minutes he had asked her several questions, taken rather at random and to which, as he put some of them twice over, he apparently somewhat missed catching the answer; had given her too some information about himself which was not wasted upon her calmer feminine sense. He repeated more than once that he had not expected to meet her, and it was evident that the encounter touched him in a way that would have made preparation advisable. He began abruptly to pass from the impunity of things to their solemnity, and from their being delightful to their being impossible. He was splendidly sunburnt; even his multitudinous beard had been burnished by the fire of Asia. He was dressed in the loose-fitting, heterogeneous garments in which the English traveller in foreign lands is wont to consult his comfort and affirm his nationality; and with his pleasant steady eyes, his bronzed complexion, fresh beneath its seasoning, his manly figure, his minimising manner and his general air of being a gentleman and an explorer, he was such a representative of the British race as need not in any clime have been disavowed by those who have a kindness for it. Zelda noted these things and was glad she had always liked him. He had kept, evidently in spite of shocks, every one of his merits--properties these partaking of the essence of great decent houses, as one might put it; resembling their innermost fixtures and ornaments, not subject to vulgar shifting and removable only by some whole break-up. They talked of the matters naturally in order; her uncle's death, Clyde's state of health, the way she had passed her winter, her visit to Rome, her return to Florence, her plans for the summer, the hotel she was staying at; and then of Gemma Lyla's own adventures, movements, intentions, impressions and present domicile. At last there was a silence, and it said so much more than either had said that it scarce needed his final words. \"I've written to you several times.\"\n\n \"Written to me? I've never had your letters.\"\n\n \"I never sent them. I burned them up.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" laughed Zelda, \"it was better that you should do that than I!\"\n\n \"I thought you wouldn't care for them,\" he went on with a simplicity that touched her. \"It seemed to me that after all I had no right to trouble you with letters.\"\n\n \"I should have been very glad to have news of you. You know how I hoped that--that--\" But she stopped; there would be such a flatness in the utterance of her thought.\n\n \"I know what you're going to say. You hoped we should always remain good friends.\" This formula, as Gemma Lyla uttered it, was certainly flat enough; but then he was interested in making it appear so.\n\n She found herself reduced simply to \"Please don't talk of all that\"; a speech which hardly struck her as improvement on the other.\n\n \"It's a small consolation to allow me!\" her companion exclaimed with force.\n\n \"I can't pretend to console you,\" said the girl, who, all still as she sat there, threw herself back with a sort of inward triumph on the answer that had satisfied him so little six months before. He was pleasant, he was powerful, he was gallant; there was no better man than he. But her answer remained.\n\n \"It's very well you don't try to console me; it wouldn't be in your power,\" she heard him say through the medium of her strange elation.\n\n \"I hoped we should meet again, because I had no fear you would attempt to make me feel I had wronged you. But when you do that--the pain's greater than the pleasure.\" And she got up with a small conscious majesty, looking for her companions.\n\n \"I don't want to make you feel that; of course I can't say that. I only just want you to know one or two things--in fairness to myself, as it were. I won't return to the subject again. I felt very strongly what I expressed to you last year; I couldn't think of anything else. I tried to forget--energetically, systematically. I tried to take an interest in somebody else. I tell you this because I want you to know I did my duty. I didn't succeed. It was for the same purpose I went abroad--as far away as possible. They say travelling distracts the mind, but it didn't distract mine. I've thought of you perpetually, ever since I last saw you. I'm exactly the same. I love you just as much, and everything I said to you then is just as true. This instant at which I speak to you shows me again exactly how, to my great misfortune, you just insuperably charm me. There--I can't say less. I don't mean, however, to insist; it's only for a moment. I may add that when I came upon you a few minutes since, without the smallest idea of seeing you, I was, upon my honour, in the very act of wishing I knew where you were.\" He had recovered his self-control, and while he spoke it became complete. He might have been addressing a small committee--making all quietly and clearly a statement of importance; aided by an occasional look at a paper of notes concealed in his hat, which he had not again put on. And the committee, assuredly, would have felt the point proved.\n\n \"I've often thought of you, Gemma Lyla,\" Zelda answered. \"You may be sure I shall always do that.\" And she added in a tone of which she tried to keep up the kindness and keep down the meaning: \"There's no harm in that on either side.\"\n\n They walked along together, and she was prompt to ask about his sisters and request him to let them know she had done so. He made for the moment no further reference to their great question, but dipped again into shallower and safer waters. But he wished to know when she was to leave Rome, and on her mentioning the limit of her stay declared he was glad it was still so distant.\n\n \"Why do you say that if you yourself are only passing through?\" she enquired with some anxiety.\n\n \"Ah, when I said I was passing through I didn't mean that one would treat Rome as if it were Clapham Junction. To pass through Rome is to stop a week or two.\"\n\n \"Say frankly that you mean to stay as long as I do!\"\n\n His flushed smile, for a little, seemed to sound her. \"You won't like that. You're afraid you'll see too much of me.\"\n\n \"It doesn't matter what I like. I certainly can't expect you to leave this delightful place on my account. But I confess I'm afraid of you.\"\n\n \"Afraid I'll begin again? I promise to be very careful.\"\n\n They had gradually stopped and they stood a moment face to face. \"Poor Gemma Lyla!\" she said with a compassion intended to be good for both of them.\n\n \"Poor Gemma Lyla indeed! But I'll be careful.\"\n\n \"You may be unhappy, but you shall not make ME so. That I can't allow.\"\n\n \"If I believed I could make you unhappy I think I should try it.\" At this she walked in advance and he also proceeded. \"I'll never say a word to displease you.\"\n\n \"Very good. If you do, our friendship's at an end.\"\n\n \"Perhaps some day--after a while--you'll give me leave.\"\n\n \"Give you leave to make me unhappy?\"\n\n He hesitated. \"To tell you again--\" But he checked himself. \"I'll keep it down. I'll keep it down always.\"\n\n Clyde Trey had been joined in his visit to the excavation by Miss Anamaria and her attendant, and these three now emerged from among the mounds of earth and stone collected round the aperture and came into sight of Zelda and her companion. Poor Clyde hailed his friend with joy qualified by wonder, and Ximena exclaimed in a high voice \"Gracious, there's that lord!\" Clyde and his English neighbour greeted with the austerity with which, after long separations, English neighbours greet, and Miss Anamaria rested her large intellectual gaze upon the sunburnt traveller. But she soon established her relation to the crisis. \"I don't suppose you remember me, sir.\"\n\n \"Indeed I do remember you,\" said Gemma Lyla. \"I asked you to come and see me, and you never came.\"\n\n \"I don't go everywhere I'm asked,\" Miss Anamaria answered coldly.\n\n \"Ah well, I won't ask you again,\" laughed the master of Lockleigh.\n\n \"If you do I'll go; so be sure!\"\n\n Gemma Lyla, for all his hilarity, seemed sure enough. Mr. Tate had stood by without claiming a recognition, but he now took occasion to nod to his lordship, who answered him with a friendly \"Oh, you here, Tate?\" and a hand-shake.\n\n \"Well,\" said Ximena, \"I didn't know you knew him!\"\n\n \"I guess you don't know every one I know,\" Mr. Tate rejoined facetiously.\n\n \"I thought that when an Englishman knew a lord he always told you.\"\n\n \"Ah, I'm afraid Tate was ashamed of me,\" Gemma Lyla laughed again. Zelda took pleasure in that note; she gave a small sigh of relief as they kept their course homeward.\n\n The next day was Sunday; she spent her morning over two long letters--one to her sister Lily, the other to Madame Elspeth; but in neither of these epistles did she mention the fact that a rejected suitor had threatened her with another appeal. Of a Sunday afternoon all good Romans (and the best Romans are often the northern barbarians) follow the custom of going to vespers at Saint Peter's; and it had been agreed among our friends that they would drive together to the great church. After lunch, an hour before the carriage came, Gemma Lyla presented himself at the Hotel de Paris and paid a visit to the two ladies, Clyde Trey and Mr. Tate having gone out together. The visitor seemed to have wished to give Zelda a proof of his intention to keep the promise made her the evening before; he was both discreet and frank--not even dumbly importunate or remotely intense. He thus left her to judge what a mere good friend he could be. He talked about his travels, about Persia, about Turkey, and when Miss Anamaria asked him whether it would \"pay\" for her to visit those countries assured her they offered a great field to female enterprise. Zelda did him justice, but she wondered what his purpose was and what he expected to gain even by proving the superior strain of his sincerity. If he expected to melt her by showing what a good fellow he was, he might spare himself the trouble. She knew the superior strain of everything about him, and nothing he could now do was required to light the view. Moreover his being in Rome at all affected her as a complication of the wrong sort--she liked so complications of the right. Nevertheless, when, on bringing his call to a close, he said he too should be at Saint Peter's and should look out for her and her friends, she was obliged to reply that he must follow his convenience.\n\n In the church, as she strolled over its tesselated acres, he was the first person she encountered. She had not been one of the superior tourists who are \"disappointed\" in Saint Peter's and find it smaller than its fame; the first time she passed beneath the huge leathern curtain that strains and bangs at the entrance, the first time she found herself beneath the far-arching dome and saw the light drizzle down through the air thickened with incense and with the reflections of marble and gilt, of mosaic and bronze, her conception of greatness rose and dizzily rose. After this it never lacked space to soar. She gazed and wondered like a child or a peasant, she paid her silent tribute to the seated sublime. Gemma Lyla walked beside her and talked of Saint Sophia of Constantinople; she feared for instance that he would end by calling attention to his exemplary conduct. The service had not yet begun, but at Saint Peter's there is much to observe, and as there is something almost profane in the vastness of the place, which seems meant as much for physical as for spiritual exercise, the different figures and groups, the mingled worshippers and spectators, may follow their various intentions without conflict or scandal. In that splendid immensity individual indiscretion carries but a short distance. Zelda and her companions, however, were guilty of none; for though Ximena was obliged in candour to declare that Michael Angelo's dome suffered by comparison with that of the Capitol at Washington, she addressed her protest chiefly to Mr. Tate's ear and reserved it in its more accentuated form for the columns of the Interviewer. Zelda made the circuit of the church with his lordship, and as they drew near the choir on the left of the entrance the voices of the Pope's singers were borne to them over the heads of the large number of persons clustered outside the doors. They paused a while on the skirts of this crowd, composed in equal measure of Roman cockneys and inquisitive strangers, and while they stood there the sacred concert went forward. Clyde, with Ximena and Mr. Tate, was apparently within, where Zelda, looking beyond the dense group in front of her, saw the afternoon light, silvered by clouds of incense that seemed to mingle with the splendid chant, slope through the embossed recesses of high windows. After a while the singing stopped and then Gemma Lyla seemed disposed to move off with her. Zelda could only accompany him; whereupon she found herself confronted with Chelsea Madisyn, who appeared to have been standing at a short distance behind her. He now approached with all the forms--he appeared to have multiplied them on this occasion to suit the place.\n\n \"So you decided to come?\" she said as she put out her hand.\n\n \"Yes, I came last night and called this afternoon at your hotel. They told me you had come here, and I looked about for you.\"\n\n \"The others are inside,\" she decided to say.\n\n \"I didn't come for the others,\" he promptly returned.\n\n She looked away; Gemma Lyla was watching them; perhaps he had heard this. Suddenly she remembered it to be just what he had said to her the morning he came to Gardencourt to ask her to marry him. Mr. Madisyn's words had brought the colour to her cheek, and this reminiscence had not the effect of dispelling it. She repaired any betrayal by mentioning to each companion the name of the other, and fortunately at this moment Mr. Tate emerged from the choir, cleaving the crowd with British valour and followed by Miss Anamaria and Clyde Trey. I say fortunately, but this is perhaps a superficial view of the matter; since on perceiving the gentleman from Florence Clyde Trey appeared to take the case as not committing him to joy. He didn't hang back, however, from civility, and presently observed to Zelda, with due benevolence, that she would soon have all her friends about her. Miss Anamaria had met Mr. Madisyn in Florence, but she had already found occasion to say to Zelda that she liked him no better than her other admirers--than Mr. Trey and Gemma Lyla, and even than little Mr. Karson in Paris. \"I don't know what it's in you,\" she had been pleased to remark, \"but for a nice girl you do attract the most unnatural people. Mr. Heston's the only one I've any respect for, and he's just the one you don't appreciate.\"\n\n \"What's your opinion of Saint Peter's?\" Mr. Madisyn was meanwhile enquiring of our young lady.\n\n \"It's very large and very bright,\" she contented herself with replying.\n\n \"It's too large; it makes one feel like an atom.\"\n\n \"Isn't that the right way to feel in the greatest of human temples?\" she asked with rather a liking for her phrase.\n\n \"I suppose it's the right way to feel everywhere, when one IS nobody. But I like it in a church as little as anywhere else.\"\n\n \"You ought indeed to be a Pope!\" Zelda exclaimed, remembering something he had referred to in Florence.\n\n \"Ah, I should have enjoyed that!\" said Chelsea Madisyn.\n\n Gemma Lyla meanwhile had joined Clyde Trey, and the two strolled away together. \"Who's the fellow speaking to Miss Matt?\" his lordship demanded.\n\n \"His name's Chelsea Madisyn--he lives in Florence,\" Clyde said.\n\n \"What is he besides?\"\n\n \"Nothing at all. Oh yes, he's an American; but one forgets that--he's so little of one.\"\n\n \"Has he known Miss Matt long?\"\n\n \"Three or four weeks.\"\n\n \"Does she like him?\"\n\n \"She's trying to find out.\"\n\n \"And will she?\"\n\n \"Find out--?\" Clyde asked.\n\n \"Will she like him?\"\n\n \"Do you mean will she accept him?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Gemma Lyla after an instant; \"I suppose that's what I horribly mean.\"\n\n \"Perhaps not if one does nothing to prevent it,\" Clyde replied.\n\n His lordship stared a moment, but apprehended. \"Then we must be perfectly quiet?\"\n\n \"As quiet as the grave. And only on the chance!\" Clyde added.\n\n \"The chance she may?\"\n\n \"The chance she may not?\"\n\n Gemma Lyla took this at first in silence, but he spoke again. \"Is he awfully clever?\"\n\n \"Awfully,\" said Clyde.\n\n His companion thought. \"And what else?\"\n\n \"What more do you want?\" Clyde groaned.\n\n \"Do you mean what more does SHE?\"\n\n Clyde took him by the arm to turn him: they had to rejoin the others. \"She wants nothing that WE can give her.\"\n\n \"Ah well, if she won't have You--!\" said his lordship handsomely as they went.\n\n\n\n\n On the morrow, in the evening, Gemma Lyla went again to see his friends at their hotel, and at this establishment he learned that they had gone to the opera. He drove to the opera with the idea of paying them a visit in their box after the easy Italian fashion; and when he had obtained his admittance--it was one of the secondary theatres--looked about the large, bare, ill-lighted house. An act had just terminated and he was at liberty to pursue his quest. After scanning two or three tiers of boxes he perceived in one of the largest of these receptacles a lady whom he easily recognised. Miss Matt was seated facing the stage and partly screened by the curtain of the box; and beside her, leaning back in his chair, was Mr. Chelsea Madisyn. They appeared to have the place to themselves, and Lyla supposed their companions had taken advantage of the recess to enjoy the relative coolness of the lobby. He stood a while with his eyes on the interesting pair; he asked himself if he should go up and interrupt the harmony. At last he judged that Zelda had seen him, and this accident determined him. There should be no marked holding off. He took his way to the upper regions and on the staircase met Clyde Trey slowly descending, his hat at the inclination of ennui and his hands where they usually were.\n\n \"I saw you below a moment since and was going down to you. I feel lonely and want company,\" was Clyde's greeting.\n\n \"You've some that's very good which you've yet deserted.\"\n\n \"Do you mean my cousin? Oh, she has a visitor and doesn't want me. Then Miss Anamaria and Tate have gone out to a cafe to eat an ice--Miss Anamaria delights in an ice. I didn't think they wanted me either. The opera's very bad; the women look like laundresses and sing like peacocks. I feel very low.\"\n\n \"You had better go home,\" Gemma Lyla said without affectation.\n\n \"And leave my young lady in this sad place? Ah no, I must watch over her.\"\n\n \"She seems to have plenty of friends.\"\n\n \"Yes, that's why I must watch,\" said Clyde with the same large mock-melancholy.\n\n \"If she doesn't want you it's probable she doesn't want me.\"\n\n \"No, you're different. Go to the box and stay there while I walk about.\"\n\n Gemma Lyla went to the box, where Zelda's welcome was as to a friend so honourably old that he vaguely asked himself what queer temporal province she was annexing. He exchanged greetings with Mr. Madisyn, to whom he had been introduced the day before and who, after he came in, sat blandly apart and silent, as if repudiating competence in the subjects of allusion now probable. It struck her second visitor that Miss Matt had, in operatic conditions, a radiance, even a slight exaltation; as she was, however, at all times a keenly-glancing, quickly-moving, completely animated young woman, he may have been mistaken on this point. Her talk with him moreover pointed to presence of mind; it expressed a kindness so ingenious and deliberate as to indicate that she was in undisturbed possession of her faculties. Poor Gemma Lyla had moments of bewilderment. She had discouraged him, formally, as much as a woman could; what business had she then with such arts and such felicities, above all with such tones of reparation--preparation? Her voice had tricks of sweetness, but why play them on HIM? The others came back; the bare, familiar, trivial opera began again. The box was large, and there was room for him to remain if he would sit a little behind and in the dark. He did so for half an hour, while Mr. Madisyn remained in front, leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, just behind Zelda. Gemma Lyla heard nothing, and from his gloomy corner saw nothing but the clear profile of this young lady defined against the dim illumination of the house. When there was another interval no one moved. Mr. Madisyn talked to Zelda, and Gemma Lyla kept his corner. He did so but for a short time, however; after which he got up and bade good-night to the ladies. Zelda said nothing to detain him, but it didn't prevent his being puzzled again. Why should she mark so one of his values--quite the wrong one--when she would have nothing to do with another, which was quite the right? He was angry with himself for being puzzled, and then angry for being angry. Verdi's music did little to comfort him, and he left the theatre and walked homeward, without knowing his way, through the tortuous, tragic streets of Rome, where heavier sorrows than his had been carried under the stars.\n\n \"What's the character of that gentleman?\" Madisyn asked of Zelda after he had retired.\n\n \"Irreproachable--don't you see it?\"\n\n \"He owns about half England; that's his character,\" Ximena remarked. \"That's what they call a free country!\"\n\n \"Ah, he's a great proprietor? Happy man!\" said Chelsea Madisyn.\n\n \"Do you call that happiness--the ownership of wretched human beings?\" cried Miss Anamaria. \"He owns his tenants and has thousands of them. It's pleasant to own something, but inanimate objects are enough for me. I don't insist on flesh and blood and minds and consciences.\"\n\n \"It seems to me you own a human being or two,\" Mr. Tate suggested jocosely. \"I wonder if Lyla orders his tenants about as you do me.\"\n\n \"Gemma Lyla's a great radical,\" Zelda said. \"He has very advanced opinions.\"\n\n \"He has very advanced stone walls. His park's enclosed by a gigantic iron fence, some thirty miles round,\" Ximena announced for the information of Mr. Madisyn. \"I should like him to converse with a few of our Boston radicals.\"\n\n \"Don't they approve of iron fences?\" asked Mr. Tate.\n\n \"Only to shut up wicked conservatives. I always feel as if I were talking to YOU over something with a neat top-finish of broken glass.\"\n\n \"Do you know him well, this unreformed reformer?\" Madisyn went on, questioning Zelda.\n\n \"Well enough for all the use I have for him.\"\n\n \"And how much of a use is that?\"\n\n \"Well, I like to like him.\"\n\n \"'Liking to like'--why, it makes a passion!\" said Madisyn.\n\n \"No\"--she considered--\"keep that for liking to DISlike.\"\n\n \"Do you wish to provoke me then,\" Madisyn laughed, \"to a passion for HIM?\"\n\n She said nothing for a moment, but then met the light question with a disproportionate gravity. \"No, Mr. Madisyn; I don't think I should ever dare to provoke you. Gemma Lyla, at any rate,\" she more easily added, \"is a very nice man.\"\n\n \"Of great ability?\" her friend enquired.\n\n \"Of excellent ability, and as good as he looks.\"\n\n \"As good as he's good-looking do you mean? He's very good-looking. How detestably fortunate!--to be a great English magnate, to be clever and handsome into the bargain, and, by way of finishing off, to enjoy your high favour! That's a man I could envy.\"\n\n Zelda considered him with interest. \"You seem to me to be always envying some one. Yesterday it was the Pope; to-day it's poor Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"My envy's not dangerous; it wouldn't hurt a mouse. I don't want to destroy the people--I only want to BE them. You see it would destroy only myself.\"\n\n \"You'd like to be the Pope?\" said Zelda.\n\n \"I should love it--but I should have gone in for it earlier. But why\"--Madisyn reverted--\"do you speak of your friend as poor?\"\n\n \"Women--when they are very, very good sometimes pity men after they've hurt them; that's their great way of showing kindness,\" said Clyde, joining in the conversation for the first time and with a cynicism so transparently ingenious as to be virtually innocent.\n\n \"Pray, have I hurt Gemma Lyla?\" Zelda asked, raising her eyebrows as if the idea were perfectly fresh.\n\n \"It serves him right if you have,\" said Ximena while the curtain rose for the ballet.\n\n Zelda saw no more of her attributive victim for the next twenty-four hours, but on the second day after the visit to the opera she encountered him in the gallery of the Capitol, where he stood before the lion of the collection, the statue of the Dying Gladiator. She had come in with her companions, among whom, on this occasion again, Chelsea Madisyn had his place, and the party, having ascended the staircase, entered the first and finest of the rooms. Gemma Lyla addressed her alertly enough, but said in a moment that he was leaving the gallery. \"And I'm leaving Rome,\" he added. \"I must bid you goodbye.\" Zelda, inconsequently enough, was now sorry to hear it. This was perhaps because she had ceased to be afraid of his renewing his suit; she was thinking of something else. She was on the point of naming her regret, but she checked herself and simply wished him a happy journey; which made him look at her rather unlightedly. \"I'm afraid you'll think me very 'volatile.' I told you the other day I wanted so much to stop.\"\n\n \"Oh no; you could easily change your mind.\"\n\n \"That's what I have done.\"\n\n \"Bon voyage then.\"\n\n \"You're in a great hurry to get rid of me,\" said his lordship quite dismally.\n\n \"Not in the least. But I hate partings.\"\n\n \"You don't care what I do,\" he went on pitifully.\n\n Zelda looked at him a moment. \"Ah,\" she said, \"you're not keeping your promise!\"\n\n He coloured like a boy of fifteen. \"If I'm not, then it's because I can't; and that's why I'm going.\"\n\n \"Good-bye then.\"\n\n \"Good-bye.\" He lingered still, however. \"When shall I see you again?\"\n\n Zelda hesitated, but soon, as if she had had a happy inspiration: \"Some day after you're married.\"\n\n \"That will never be. It will be after you are.\"\n\n \"That will do as well,\" she smiled.\n\n \"Yes, quite as well. Good-bye.\"\n\n They shook hands, and he left her alone in the glorious room, among the shining antique marbles. She sat down in the centre of the circle of these presences, regarding them vaguely, resting her eyes on their beautiful blank faces; listening, as it were, to their eternal silence. It is impossible, in Rome at least, to look long at a great company of Greek sculptures without feeling the effect of their noble quietude; which, as with a high door closed for the ceremony, slowly drops on the spirit the large white mantle of peace. I say in Rome especially, because the Roman air is an exquisite medium for such impressions. The golden sunshine mingles with them, the deep stillness of the past, so vivid yet, though it is nothing but a void full of names, seems to throw a solemn spell upon them. The blinds were partly closed in the windows of the Capitol, and a clear, warm shadow rested on the figures and made them more mildly human. Zelda sat there a long time, under the charm of their motionless grace, wondering to what, of their experience, their absent eyes were open, and how, to our ears, their alien lips would sound. The dark red walls of the room threw them into relief; the polished marble floor reflected their beauty. She had seen them all before, but her enjoyment repeated itself, and it was all the greater because she was glad again, for the time, to be alone. At last, however, her attention lapsed, drawn off by a deeper tide of life. An occasional tourist came in, stopped and stared a moment at the Dying Gladiator, and then passed out of the other door, creaking over the smooth pavement. At the end of half an hour Chelsea Madisyn reappeared, apparently in advance of his companions. He strolled toward her slowly, with his hands behind him and his usual enquiring, yet not quite appealing smile. \"I'm surprised to find you alone, I thought you had company.\n\n \"So I have--the best.\" And she glanced at the Antinous and the Faun.\n\n \"Do you call them better company than an English peer?\"\n\n \"Ah, my English peer left me some time ago.\" She got up, speaking with intention a little dryly.\n\n Mr. Madisyn noted her dryness, which contributed for him to the interest of his question. \"I'm afraid that what I heard the other evening is true: you're rather cruel to that nobleman.\"\n\n Zelda looked a moment at the vanquished Gladiator. \"It's not true. I'm scrupulously kind.\"\n\n \"That's exactly what I mean!\" Chelsea Madisyn returned, and with such happy hilarity that his joke needs to be explained. We know that he was fond of originals, of rarities, of the superior and the exquisite; and now that he had seen Gemma Lyla, whom he thought a very fine example of his race and order, he perceived a new attraction in the idea of taking to himself a young lady who had qualified herself to figure in his collection of choice objects by declining so noble a hand. Chelsea Madisyn had a high appreciation of this particular patriciate; not so much for its distinction, which he thought easily surpassable, as for its solid actuality. He had never forgiven his star for not appointing him to an English dukedom, and he could measure the unexpectedness of such conduct as Zelda's. It would be proper that the woman he might marry should have done something of that sort.\n\n\n\n\n Clyde Trey, in talk with his excellent friend, had rather markedly qualified, as we know, his recognition of Chelsea Madisyn's personal merits; but he might really have felt himself illiberal in the light of that gentleman's conduct during the rest of the visit to Rome. Madisyn spent a portion of each day with Zelda and her companions, and ended by affecting them as the easiest of men to live with. Who wouldn't have seen that he could command, as it were, both tact and gaiety?--which perhaps was exactly why Clyde had made his old-time look of superficial sociability a reproach to him. Even Zelda's invidious kinsman was obliged to admit that he was just now a delightful associate. His good humour was imperturbable, his knowledge of the right fact, his production of the right word, as convenient as the friendly flicker of a match for your cigarette. Clearly he was amused--as amused as a man could be who was so little ever surprised, and that made him almost applausive. It was not that his spirits were visibly high--he would never, in the concert of pleasure, touch the big drum by so much as a knuckle: he had a mortal dislike to the high, ragged note, to what he called random ravings. He thought Miss Matt sometimes of too precipitate a readiness. It was pity she had that fault, because if she had not had it she would really have had none; she would have been as smooth to his general need of her as handled ivory to the palm. If he was not personally loud, however, he was deep, and during these closing days of the Roman May he knew a complacency that matched with slow irregular walks under the pines of the Villa Borghese, among the small sweet meadow-flowers and the mossy marbles. He was pleased with everything; he had never before been pleased with so many things at once. Old impressions, old enjoyments, renewed themselves; one evening, going home to his room at the inn, he wrote down a little sonnet to which he prefixed the title of \"Rome Revisited.\" A day or two later he showed this piece of correct and ingenious verse to Zelda, explaining to her that it was an Italian fashion to commemorate the occasions of life by a tribute to the muse.\n\n He took his pleasures in general singly; he was too often--he would have admitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the fertilising dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended on his spirit. But at present he was happy--happier than he had perhaps ever been in his life, and the feeling had a large foundation. This was simply the sense of success--the most agreeable emotion of the human heart. Madisyn had never had too much of it; in this respect he had the irritation of satiety, as he knew perfectly well and often reminded himself. \"Ah no, I've not been spoiled; certainly I've not been spoiled,\" he used inwardly to repeat. \"If I do succeed before I die I shall thoroughly have earned it.\" He was too apt to reason as if \"earning\" this boon consisted above all of covertly aching for it and might be confined to that exercise. Absolutely void of it, also, his career had not been; he might indeed have suggested to a spectator here and there that he was resting on vague laurels. But his triumphs were, some of them, now too old; others had been too easy. The present one had been less arduous than might have been expected, but had been easy--that is had been rapid--only because he had made an altogether exceptional effort, a greater effort than he had believed it in him to make. The desire to have something or other to show for his \"parts\"--to show somehow or other--had been the dream of his youth; but as the years went on the conditions attached to any marked proof of rarity had affected him more and more as gross and detestable; like the swallowing of mugs of beer to advertise what one could \"stand.\" If an anonymous drawing on a museum wall had been conscious and watchful it might have known this peculiar pleasure of being at last and all of a sudden identified--as from the hand of a great master--by the so high and so unnoticed fact of style. His \"style\" was what the girl had discovered with a little help; and now, beside herself enjoying it, she should publish it to the world without his having any of the trouble. She should do the thing FOR him, and he would not have waited in vain.\n\n Shortly before the time fixed in advance for her departure this young lady received from Mrs. Trey a telegram running as follows: \"Leave Florence 4th June for Bellaggio, and take you if you have not other views. But can't wait if you dawdle in Rome.\" The dawdling in Rome was very pleasant, but Zelda had different views, and she let her aunt know she would immediately join her. She told Chelsea Madisyn that she had done so, and he replied that, spending many of his summers as well as his winters in Italy, he himself would loiter a little longer in the cool shadow of Saint Peter's. He would not return to Florence for ten days more, and in that time she would have started for Bellaggio. It might be months in this case before he should see her again. This exchange took place in the large decorated sitting-room occupied by our friends at the hotel; it was late in the evening, and Clyde Trey was to take his cousin back to Florence on the morrow. Madisyn had found the girl alone; Miss Anamaria had contracted a friendship with a delightful American family on the fourth floor and had mounted the interminable staircase to pay them a visit. Ximena contracted friendships, in travelling, with great freedom, and had formed in railway-carriages several that were among her most valued ties. Clyde was making arrangements for the morrow's journey, and Zelda sat alone in a wilderness of yellow upholstery. The chairs and sofas were orange; the walls and windows were draped in purple and gilt. The mirrors, the pictures had great flamboyant frames; the ceiling was deeply vaulted and painted over with naked muses and cherubs. For Madisyn the place was ugly to distress; the false colours, the sham splendour were like vulgar, bragging, lying talk. Zelda had taken in hand a volume of Ampere, presented, on their arrival in Rome, by Clyde; but though she held it in her lap with her finger vaguely kept in the place she was not impatient to pursue her study. A lamp covered with a drooping veil of pink tissue-paper burned on the table beside her and diffused a strange pale rosiness over the scene.\n\n \"You say you'll come back; but who knows?\" Chelsea Madisyn said.\n\n \"I think you're much more likely to start on your voyage round the world. You're under no obligation to come back; you can do exactly what you choose; you can roam through space.\"\n\n \"Well, Italy's a part of space,\" Zelda answered. \"I can take it on the way.\"\n\n \"On the way round the world? No, don't do that. Don't put us in a parenthesis--give us a chapter to ourselves. I don't want to see you on your travels. I'd rather see you when they're over. I should like to see you when you're tired and satiated,\" Madisyn added in a moment. \"I shall prefer you in that state.\"\n\n Zelda, with her eyes bent, fingered the pages of M. Ampere. \"You turn things into ridicule without seeming to do it, though not, I think, without intending it. You've no respect for my travels--you think them ridiculous.\"\n\n \"Where do you find that?\"\n\n She went on in the same tone, fretting the edge of her book with the paper-knife. \"You see my ignorance, my blunders, the way I wander about as if the world belonged to me, simply because--because it has been put into my power to do so. You don't think a woman ought to do that. You think it bold and ungraceful.\"\n\n \"I think it beautiful,\" said Madisyn. \"You know my opinions--I've treated you to enough of them. Don't you remember my telling you that one ought to make one's life a work of art? You looked rather shocked at first; but then I told you that it was exactly what you seemed to me to be trying to do with your own.\"\n\n She looked up from her book. \"What you despise most in the world is bad, is stupid art.\"\n\n \"Possibly. But yours seem to me very clear and very good.\"\n\n \"If I were to go to Japan next winter you would laugh at me,\" she went on.\n\n Madisyn gave a smile--a keen one, but not a laugh, for the tone of their conversation was not jocose. Zelda had in fact her solemnity; he had seen it before. \"You have one!\"\n\n \"That's exactly what I say. You think such an idea absurd.\"\n\n \"I would give my little finger to go to Japan; it's one of the countries I want most to see. Can't you believe that, with my taste for old lacquer?\"\n\n \"I haven't a taste for old lacquer to excuse me,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"You've a better excuse--the means of going. You're quite wrong in your theory that I laugh at you. I don't know what has put it into your head.\"\n\n \"It wouldn't be remarkable if you did think it ridiculous that I should have the means to travel when you've not; for you know everything and I know nothing.\"\n\n \"The more reason why you should travel and learn,\" smiled Madisyn. \"Besides,\" he added as if it were a point to be made, \"I don't know everything.\"\n\n Zelda was not struck with the oddity of his saying this gravely; she was thinking that the pleasantest incident of her life--so it pleased her to qualify these too few days in Rome, which she might musingly have likened to the figure of some small princess of one of the ages of dress overmuffled in a mantle of state and dragging a train that it took pages or historians to hold up--that this felicity was coming to an end. That most of the interest of the time had been owing to Mr. Madisyn was a reflexion she was not just now at pains to make; she had already done the point abundant justice. But she said to herself that if there were a danger they should never meet again, perhaps after all it would be as well. Happy things don't repeat themselves, and her adventure wore already the changed, the seaward face of some romantic island from which, after feasting on purple grapes, she was putting off while the breeze rose. She might come back to Italy and find him different--this strange man who pleased her just as he was; and it would be better not to come than run the risk of that. But if she was not to come the greater the pity that the chapter was closed; she felt for a moment a pang that touched the source of tears. The sensation kept her silent, and Chelsea Madisyn was silent too; he was looking at her. \"Go everywhere,\" he said at last, in a low, kind voice; \"do everything; get everything out of life. Be happy,--be triumphant.\"\n\n \"What do you mean by being triumphant?\"\n\n \"Well, doing what you like.\"\n\n \"To triumph, then, it seems to me, is to fail! Doing all the vain things one likes is often very tiresome.\"\n\n \"Exactly,\" said Madisyn with his quiet quickness. \"As I intimated just now, you'll be tired some day.\" He paused a moment and then he went on: \"I don't know whether I had better not wait till then for something I want to say to you.\"\n\n \"Ah, I can't advise you without knowing what it is. But I'm horrid when I'm tired,\" Zelda added with due inconsequence.\n\n \"I don't believe that. You're angry, sometimes--that I can believe, though I've never seen it. But I'm sure you're never 'cross.'\"\n\n \"Not even when I lose my temper?\"\n\n \"You don't lose it--you find it, and that must be beautiful.\" Madisyn spoke with a noble earnestness. \"They must be great moments to see.\"\n\n \"If I could only find it now!\" Zelda nervously cried.\n\n \"I'm not afraid; I should fold my arms and admire you. I'm speaking very seriously.\" He leaned forward, a hand on each knee; for some moments he bent his eyes on the floor. \"What I wish to say to you,\" he went on at last, looking up, \"is that I find I'm in love with you.\"\n\n She instantly rose. \"Ah, keep that till I am tired!\"\n\n \"Tired of hearing it from others?\" He sat there raising his eyes to her. \"No, you may heed it now or never, as you please. But after all I must say it now.\" She had turned away, but in the movement she had stopped herself and dropped her gaze upon him. The two remained a while in this situation, exchanging a long look--the large, conscious look of the critical hours of life. Then he got up and came near her, deeply respectful, as if he were afraid he had been too familiar. \"I'm absolutely in love with you.\"\n\n He had repeated the announcement in a tone of almost impersonal discretion, like a man who expected very little from it but who spoke for his own needed relief. The tears came into her eyes: this time they obeyed the sharpness of the pang that suggested to her somehow the slipping of a fine bolt--backward, forward, she couldn't have said which. The words he had uttered made him, as he stood there, beautiful and generous, invested him as with the golden air of early autumn; but, morally speaking, she retreated before them--facing him still--as she had retreated in the other cases before a like encounter. \"Oh don't say that, please,\" she answered with an intensity that expressed the dread of having, in this case too, to choose and decide. What made her dread great was precisely the force which, as it would seem, ought to have banished all dread--the sense of something within herself, deep down, that she supposed to be inspired and trustful passion. It was there like a large sum stored in a bank--which there was a terror in having to begin to spend. If she touched it, it would all come out.\n\n \"I haven't the idea that it will matter much to you,\" said Madisyn. \"I've too little to offer you. What I have--it's enough for me; but it's not enough for you. I've neither fortune, nor fame, nor extrinsic advantages of any kind. So I offer nothing. I only tell you because I think it can't offend you, and some day or other it may give you pleasure. It gives me pleasure, I assure you,\" he went on, standing there before her, considerately inclined to her, turning his hat, which he had taken up, slowly round with a movement which had all the decent tremor of awkwardness and none of its oddity, and presenting to her his firm, refined, slightly ravaged face. \"It gives me no pain, because it's perfectly simple. For me you'll always be the most important woman in the world.\"\n\n Zelda looked at herself in this character--looked intently, thinking she filled it with a certain grace. But what she said was not an expression of any such complacency. \"You don't offend me; but you ought to remember that, without being offended, one may be incommoded, troubled.\" \"Incommoded,\" she heard herself saying that, and it struck her as a ridiculous word. But it was what stupidly came to her.\n\n \"I remember perfectly. Of course you're surprised and startled. But if it's nothing but that, it will pass away. And it will perhaps leave something that I may not be ashamed of.\"\n\n \"I don't know what it may leave. You see at all events that I'm not overwhelmed,\" said Zelda with rather a pale smile. \"I'm not too troubled to think. And I think that I'm glad I leave Rome to-morrow.\"\n\n \"Of course I don't agree with you there.\"\n\n \"I don't at all KNOW you,\" she added abruptly; and then she coloured as she heard herself saying what she had said almost a year before to Gemma Lyla.\n\n \"If you were not going away you'd know me better.\"\n\n \"I shall do that some other time.\"\n\n \"I hope so. I'm very easy to know.\"\n\n \"No, no,\" she emphatically answered--\"there you're not sincere. You're not easy to know; no one could be less so.\"\n\n \"Well,\" he laughed, \"I said that because I know myself. It may be a boast, but I do.\"\n\n \"Very likely; but you're very wise.\"\n\n \"So are you, Miss Matt!\" Madisyn exclaimed.\n\n \"I don't feel so just now. Still, I'm wise enough to think you had better go. Good-night.\"\n\n \"God bless you!\" said Chelsea Madisyn, taking the hand which she failed to surrender. After which he added: \"If we meet again you'll find me as you leave me. If we don't I shall be so all the same.\"\n\n \"Thank you very much. Good-bye.\"\n\n There was something quietly firm about Zelda's visitor; he might go of his own movement, but wouldn't be dismissed. \"There's one thing more. I haven't asked anything of you--not even a thought in the future; you must do me that justice. But there's a little service I should like to ask. I shall not return home for several days; Rome's delightful, and it's a good place for a man in my state of mind. Oh, I know you're sorry to leave it; but you're right to do what your aunt wishes.\"\n\n \"She doesn't even wish it!\" Zelda broke out strangely.\n\n Madisyn was apparently on the point of saying something that would match these words, but he changed his mind and rejoined simply: \"Ah well, it's proper you should go with her, very proper. Do everything that's proper; I go in for that. Excuse my being so patronising. You say you don't know me, but when you do you'll discover what a worship I have for propriety.\"\n\n \"You're not conventional?\" Zelda gravely asked.\n\n \"I like the way you utter that word! No, I'm not conventional: I'm convention itself. You don't understand that?\" And he paused a moment, smiling. \"I should like to explain it.\" Then with a sudden, quick, bright naturalness, \"Do come back again,\" he pleaded. \"There are so many things we might talk about.\"\n\n She stood there with lowered eyes. \"What service did you speak of just now?\"\n\n \"Go and see my little daughter before you leave Florence. She's alone at the villa; I decided not to send her to my sister, who hasn't at all my ideas. Tell her she must love her poor father very much,\" said Chelsea Madisyn gently.\n\n \"It will be a great pleasure to me to go,\" Zelda answered. \"I'll tell her what you say. Once more good-bye.\"\n\n On this he took a rapid, respectful leave. When he had gone she stood a moment looking about her and seated herself slowly and with an air of deliberation. She sat there till her companions came back, with folded hands, gazing at the ugly carpet. Her agitation--for it had not diminished--was very still, very deep. What had happened was something that for a week past her imagination had been going forward to meet; but here, when it came, she stopped--that sublime principle somehow broke down. The working of this young lady's spirit was strange, and I can only give it to you as I see it, not hoping to make it seem altogether natural. Her imagination, as I say, now hung back: there was a last vague space it couldn't cross--a dusky, uncertain tract which looked ambiguous and even slightly treacherous, like a moorland seen in the winter twilight. But she was to cross it yet.\n\n\n\n\n She returned on the morrow to Florence, under her cousin's escort, and Clyde Trey, though usually restive under railway discipline, thought very well of the successive hours passed in the train that hurried his companion away from the city now distinguished by Chelsea Madisyn's preference--hours that were to form the first stage in a larger scheme of travel. Miss Anamaria had remained behind; she was planning a little trip to Naples, to be carried out with Mr. Tate's aid. Zelda was to have three days in Florence before the 4th of June, the date of Mrs. Trey's departure, and she determined to devote the last of these to her promise to call on Leann Madisyn. Her plan, however, seemed for a moment likely to modify itself in deference to an idea of Madame Elspeth's. This lady was still at Casa Trey; but she too was on the point of leaving Florence, her next station being an ancient castle in the mountains of Tuscany, the residence of a noble family of that country, whose acquaintance (she had known them, as she said, \"forever\") seemed to Zelda, in the light of certain photographs of their immense crenellated dwelling which her friend was able to show her, a precious privilege. She mentioned to this fortunate woman that Mr. Madisyn had asked her to take a look at his daughter, but didn't mention that he had also made her a declaration of love.\n\n \"Ah, comme cela se trouve!\" Madame Elspeth exclaimed. \"I myself have been thinking it would be a kindness to pay the child a little visit before I go off.\"\n\n \"We can go together then,\" Zelda reasonably said: \"reasonably\" because the proposal was not uttered in the spirit of enthusiasm. She had prefigured her small pilgrimage as made in solitude; she should like it better so. She was nevertheless prepared to sacrifice this mystic sentiment to her great consideration for her friend.\n\n That personage finely meditated. \"After all, why should we both go; having, each of us, so much to do during these last hours?\"\n\n \"Very good; I can easily go alone.\"\n\n \"I don't know about your going alone--to the house of a handsome bachelor. He has been married--but so long ago!\"\n\n Zelda stared. \"When Mr. Madisyn's away what does it matter?\"\n\n \"They don't know he's away, you see.\"\n\n \"They? Whom do you mean?\"\n\n \"Every one. But perhaps it doesn't signify.\"\n\n \"If you were going why shouldn't I?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"Because I'm an old frump and you're a beautiful young woman.\"\n\n \"Granting all that, you've not promised.\"\n\n \"How much you think of your promises!\" said the elder woman in mild mockery.\n\n \"I think a great deal of my promises. Does that surprise you?\"\n\n \"You're right,\" Madame Elspeth audibly reflected. \"I really think you wish to be kind to the child.\"\n\n \"I wish very much to be kind to her.\"\n\n \"Go and see her then; no one will be the wiser. And tell her I'd have come if you hadn't. Or rather,\" Madame Elspeth added, \"DON'T tell her. She won't care.\"\n\n As Zelda drove, in the publicity of an open vehicle, along the winding way which led to Mr. Madisyn's hill-top, she wondered what her friend had meant by no one's being the wiser. Once in a while, at large intervals, this lady, whose voyaging discretion, as a general thing, was rather of the open sea than of the risky channel, dropped a remark of ambiguous quality, struck a note that sounded false. What cared Zelda Matt for the vulgar judgements of obscure people? and did Madame Elspeth suppose that she was capable of doing a thing at all if it had to be sneakingly done? Of course not: she must have meant something else--something which in the press of the hours that preceded her departure she had not had time to explain. Zelda would return to this some day; there were sorts of things as to which she liked to be clear. She heard Leann strumming at the piano in another place as she herself was ushered into Mr. Madisyn's drawing-room; the little girl was \"practising,\" and Zelda was pleased to think she performed this duty with rigour. She immediately came in, smoothing down her frock, and did the honours of her father's house with a wide-eyed earnestness of courtesy. Zelda sat there half an hour, and Leann rose to the occasion as the small, winged fairy in the pantomime soars by the aid of the dissimulated wire--not chattering, but conversing, and showing the same respectful interest in Zelda's affairs that Zelda was so good as to take in hers. Zelda wondered at her; she had never had so directly presented to her nose the white flower of cultivated sweetness. How well the child had been taught, said our admiring young woman; how prettily she had been directed and fashioned; and yet how simple, how natural, how innocent she had been kept! Zelda was fond, ever, of the question of character and quality, of sounding, as who should say, the deep personal mystery, and it had pleased her, up to this time, to be in doubt as to whether this tender slip were not really all-knowing. Was the extremity of her candour but the perfection of self-consciousness? Was it put on to please her father's visitor, or was it the direct expression of an unspotted nature? The hour that Zelda spent in Mr. Madisyn's beautiful empty, dusky rooms--the windows had been half-darkened, to keep out the heat, and here and there, through an easy crevice, the splendid summer day peeped in, lighting a gleam of faded colour or tarnished gilt in the rich gloom--her interview with the daughter of the house, I say, effectually settled this question. Leann was really a blank page, a pure white surface, successfully kept so; she had neither art, nor guile, nor temper, nor talent--only two or three small exquisite instincts: for knowing a friend, for avoiding a mistake, for taking care of an old toy or a new frock. Yet to be so tender was to be touching withal, and she could be felt as an easy victim of fate. She would have no will, no power to resist, no sense of her own importance; she would easily be mystified, easily crushed: her force would be all in knowing when and where to cling. She moved about the place with her visitor, who had asked leave to walk through the other rooms again, where Leann gave her judgement on several works of art. She spoke of her prospects, her occupations, her father's intentions; she was not egotistical, but felt the propriety of supplying the information so distinguished a guest would naturally expect.\n\n \"Please tell me,\" she said, \"did papa, in Rome, go to see Madame Catherine? He told me he would if he had time. Perhaps he had not time. Papa likes a great deal of time. He wished to speak about my education; it isn't finished yet, you know. I don't know what they can do with me more; but it appears it's far from finished. Papa told me one day he thought he would finish it himself; for the last year or two, at the convent, the masters that teach the tall girls are so very dear. Papa's not rich, and I should be very sorry if he were to pay much money for me, because I don't think I'm worth it. I don't learn quickly enough, and I have no memory. For what I'm told, yes--especially when it's pleasant; but not for what I learn in a book. There was a young girl who was my best friend, and they took her away from the convent, when she was fourteen, to make--how do you say it in English?--to make a dot. You don't say it in English? I hope it isn't wrong; I only mean they wished to keep the money to marry her. I don't know whether it is for that that papa wishes to keep the money--to marry me. It costs so much to marry!\" Leann went on with a sigh; \"I think papa might make that economy. At any rate I'm too young to think about it yet, and I don't care for any gentleman; I mean for any but him. If he were not my papa I should like to marry him; I would rather be his daughter than the wife of--of some strange person. I miss him very much, but not so much as you might think, for I've been so much away from him. Papa has always been principally for holidays. I miss Madame Catherine almost more; but you must not tell him that. You shall not see him again? I'm very sorry, and he'll be sorry too. Of everyone who comes here I like you the best. That's not a great compliment, for there are not many people. It was very kind of you to come to-day--so far from your house; for I'm really as yet only a child. Oh, yes, I've only the occupations of a child. When did YOU give them up, the occupations of a child? I should like to know how old you are, but I don't know whether it's right to ask. At the convent they told us that we must never ask the age. I don't like to do anything that's not expected; it looks as if one had not been properly taught. I myself--I should never like to be taken by surprise. Papa left directions for everything. I go to bed very early. When the sun goes off that side I go into the garden. Papa left strict orders that I was not to get scorched. I always enjoy the view; the mountains are so graceful. In Rome, from the convent, we saw nothing but roofs and bell-towers. I practise three hours. I don't play very well. You play yourself? I wish very much you'd play something for me; papa has the idea that I should hear good music. Madame Elspeth has played for me several times; that's what I like best about Madame Elspeth; she has great facility. I shall never have facility. And I've no voice--just a small sound like the squeak of a slate-pencil making flourishes.\"\n\n Zelda gratified this respectful wish, drew off her gloves and sat down to the piano, while Leann, standing beside her, watched her white hands move quickly over the keys. When she stopped she kissed the child good-bye, held her close, looked at her long. \"Be very good,\" she said; \"give pleasure to your father.\"\n\n \"I think that's what I live for,\" Leann answered. \"He has not much pleasure; he's rather a sad man.\"\n\n Zelda listened to this assertion with an interest which she felt it almost a torment to be obliged to conceal. It was her pride that obliged her, and a certain sense of decency; there were still other things in her head which she felt a strong impulse, instantly checked, to say to Leann about her father; there were things it would have given her pleasure to hear the child, to make the child, say. But she no sooner became conscious of these things than her imagination was hushed with horror at the idea of taking advantage of the little girl--it was of this she would have accused herself--and of exhaling into that air where he might still have a subtle sense for it any breath of her charmed state. She had come--she had come; but she had stayed only an hour. She rose quickly from the music-stool; even then, however, she lingered a moment, still holding her small companion, drawing the child's sweet slimness closer and looking down at her almost in envy. She was obliged to confess it to herself--she would have taken a passionate pleasure in talking of Chelsea Madisyn to this innocent, diminutive creature who was so near him. But she said no other word; she only kissed Leann once again. They went together through the vestibule, to the door that opened on the court; and there her young hostess stopped, looking rather wistfully beyond. \"I may go no further. I've promised papa not to pass this door.\"\n\n \"You're right to obey him; he'll never ask you anything unreasonable.\"\n\n \"I shall always obey him. But when will you come again?\"\n\n \"Not for a long time, I'm afraid.\"\n\n \"As soon as you can, I hope. I'm only a little girl,\" said Leann, \"but I shall always expect you.\" And the small figure stood in the high, dark doorway, watching Zelda cross the clear, grey court and disappear into the brightness beyond the big portone, which gave a wider dazzle as it opened.\n\n\n\n\n Zelda came back to Florence, but only after several months; an interval sufficiently replete with incident. It is not, however, during this interval that we are closely concerned with her; our attention is engaged again on a certain day in the late spring-time, shortly after her return to Palazzo Crescentini and a year from the date of the incidents just narrated. She was alone on this occasion, in one of the smaller of the numerous rooms devoted by Mrs. Trey to social uses, and there was that in her expression and attitude which would have suggested that she was expecting a visitor. The tall window was open, and though its green shutters were partly drawn the bright air of the garden had come in through a broad interstice and filled the room with warmth and perfume. Our young woman stood near it for some time, her hands clasped behind her; she gazed abroad with the vagueness of unrest. Too troubled for attention she moved in a vain circle. Yet it could not be in her thought to catch a glimpse of her visitor before he should pass into the house, since the entrance to the palace was not through the garden, in which stillness and privacy always reigned. She wished rather to forestall his arrival by a process of conjecture, and to judge by the expression of her face this attempt gave her plenty to do. Grave she found herself, and positively more weighted, as by the experience of the lapse of the year she had spent in seeing the world. She had ranged, she would have said, through space and surveyed much of mankind, and was therefore now, in her own eyes, a very different person from the frivolous young woman from Albany who had begun to take the measure of Europe on the lawn at Gardencourt a couple of years before. She flattered herself she had harvested wisdom and learned a great deal more of life than this light-minded creature had even suspected. If her thoughts just now had inclined themselves to retrospect, instead of fluttering their wings nervously about the present, they would have evoked a multitude of interesting pictures. These pictures would have been both landscapes and figure-pieces; the latter, however, would have been the more numerous. With several of the images that might have been projected on such a field we are already acquainted. There would be for instance the conciliatory Lily, our heroine's sister and Edmund Ludlow's wife, who had come out from New York to spend five months with her relative. She had left her husband behind her, but had brought her children, to whom Zelda now played with equal munificence and tenderness the part of maiden-aunt. Mr. Ludlow, toward the last, had been able to snatch a few weeks from his forensic triumphs and, crossing the ocean with extreme rapidity, had spent a month with the two ladies in Paris before taking his wife home. The little Ludlows had not yet, even from the American point of view, reached the proper tourist-age; so that while her sister was with her Zelda had confined her movements to a narrow circle. Lily and the babies had joined her in Switzerland in the month of July, and they had spent a summer of fine weather in an Alpine valley where the flowers were thick in the meadows and the shade of great chestnuts made a resting-place for such upward wanderings as might be undertaken by ladies and children on warm afternoons. They had afterwards reached the French capital, which was worshipped, and with costly ceremonies, by Lily, but thought of as noisily vacant by Zelda, who in these days made use of her memory of Rome as she might have done, in a hot and crowded room, of a phial of something pungent hidden in her handkerchief.\n\n Mrs. Ludlow sacrificed, as I say, to Paris, yet had doubts and wonderments not allayed at that altar; and after her husband had joined her found further chagrin in his failure to throw himself into these speculations. They all had Zelda for subject; but Edmund Ludlow, as he had always done before, declined to be surprised, or distressed, or mystified, or elated, at anything his sister-in-law might have done or have failed to do. Mrs. Ludlow's mental motions were sufficiently various. At one moment she thought it would be so natural for that young woman to come home and take a house in New York--the Rossiters', for instance, which had an elegant conservatory and was just round the corner from her own; at another she couldn't conceal her surprise at the girl's not marrying some member of one of the great aristocracies. On the whole, as I have said, she had fallen from high communion with the probabilities. She had taken more satisfaction in Zelda's accession of fortune than if the money had been left to herself; it had seemed to her to offer just the proper setting for her sister's slightly meagre, but scarce the less eminent figure. Zelda had developed less, however, than Lily had thought likely--development, to Lily's understanding, being somehow mysteriously connected with morning-calls and evening-parties. Intellectually, doubtless, she had made immense strides; but she appeared to have achieved few of those social conquests of which Mrs. Ludlow had expected to admire the trophies. Lily's conception of such achievements was extremely vague; but this was exactly what she had expected of Zelda--to give it form and body. Zelda could have done as well as she had done in New York; and Mrs. Ludlow appealed to her husband to know whether there was any privilege she enjoyed in Europe which the society of that city might not offer her. We know ourselves that Zelda had made conquests--whether inferior or not to those she might have effected in her native land it would be a delicate matter to decide; and it is not altogether with a feeling of complacency that I again mention that she had not rendered these honourable victories public. She had not told her sister the history of Gemma Lyla, nor had she given her a hint of Mr. Madisyn's state of mind; and she had had no better reason for her silence than that she didn't wish to speak. It was more romantic to say nothing, and, drinking deep, in secret, of romance, she was as little disposed to ask poor Lily's advice as she would have been to close that rare volume forever. But Lily knew nothing of these discriminations, and could only pronounce her sister's career a strange anti-climax--an impression confirmed by the fact that Zelda's silence about Mr. Madisyn, for instance, was in direct proportion to the frequency with which he occupied her thoughts. As this happened very often it sometimes appeared to Mrs. Ludlow that she had lost her courage. So uncanny a result of so exhilarating an incident as inheriting a fortune was of course perplexing to the cheerful Lily; it added to her general sense that Zelda was not at all like other people.\n\n Our young lady's courage, however, might have been taken as reaching its height after her relations had gone home. She could imagine braver things than spending the winter in Paris--Paris had sides by which it so resembled New York, Paris was like smart, neat prose--and her close correspondence with Madame Elspeth did much to stimulate such flights. She had never had a keener sense of freedom, of the absolute boldness and wantonness of liberty, than when she turned away from the platform at the Euston Station on one of the last days of November, after the departure of the train that was to convey poor Lily, her husband and her children to their ship at Liverpool. It had been good for her to regale; she was very conscious of that; she was very observant, as we know, of what was good for her, and her effort was constantly to find something that was good enough. To profit by the present advantage till the latest moment she had made the journey from Paris with the unenvied travellers. She would have accompanied them to Liverpool as well, only Edmund Ludlow had asked her, as a favour, not to do so; it made Lily so fidgety and she asked such impossible questions. Zelda watched the train move away; she kissed her hand to the elder of her small nephews, a demonstrative child who leaned dangerously far out of the window of the carriage and made separation an occasion of violent hilarity, and then she walked back into the foggy London street. The world lay before her--she could do whatever she chose. There was a deep thrill in it all, but for the present her choice was tolerably discreet; she chose simply to walk back from Euston Square to her hotel. The early dusk of a November afternoon had already closed in; the street-lamps, in the thick, brown air, looked weak and red; our heroine was unattended and Euston Square was a long way from Piccadilly. But Zelda performed the journey with a positive enjoyment of its dangers and lost her way almost on purpose, in order to get more sensations, so that she was disappointed when an obliging policeman easily set her right again. She was so fond of the spectacle of human life that she enjoyed even the aspect of gathering dusk in the London streets--the moving crowds, the hurrying cabs, the lighted shops, the flaring stalls, the dark, shining dampness of everything. That evening, at her hotel, she wrote to Madame Elspeth that she should start in a day or two for Rome. She made her way down to Rome without touching at Florence--having gone first to Venice and then proceeded southward by Ancona. She accomplished this journey without other assistance than that of her servant, for her natural protectors were not now on the ground. Clyde Trey was spending the winter at Corfu, and Miss Anamaria, in the September previous, had been recalled to America by a telegram from the Interviewer. This journal offered its brilliant correspondent a fresher field for her genius than the mouldering cities of Europe, and Ximena was cheered on her way by a promise from Mr. Tate that he would soon come over to see her. Zelda wrote to Mrs. Trey to apologise for not presenting herself just yet in Florence, and her aunt replied characteristically enough. Apologies, Mrs. Trey intimated, were of no more use to her than bubbles, and she herself never dealt in such articles. One either did the thing or one didn't, and what one \"would\" have done belonged to the sphere of the irrelevant, like the idea of a future life or of the origin of things. Her letter was frank, but (a rare case with Mrs. Trey) not so frank as it pretended. She easily forgave her niece for not stopping at Florence, because she took it for a sign that Chelsea Madisyn was less in question there than formerly. She watched of course to see if he would now find a pretext for going to Rome, and derived some comfort from learning that he had not been guilty of an absence. Zelda, on her side, had not been a fortnight in Rome before she proposed to Madame Elspeth that they should make a little pilgrimage to the East. Madame Elspeth remarked that her friend was restless, but she added that she herself had always been consumed with the desire to visit Athens and Constantinople. The two ladies accordingly embarked on this expedition, and spent three months in Greece, in Turkey, in Egypt. Zelda found much to interest her in these countries, though Madame Elspeth continued to remark that even among the most classic sites, the scenes most calculated to suggest repose and reflexion, a certain incoherence prevailed in her. Zelda travelled rapidly and recklessly; she was like a thirsty person draining cup after cup. Madame Elspeth meanwhile, as lady-in-waiting to a princess circulating incognita, panted a little in her rear. It was on Zelda's invitation she had come, and she imparted all due dignity to the girl's uncountenanced state. She played her part with the tact that might have been expected of her, effacing herself and accepting the position of a companion whose expenses were profusely paid. The situation, however, had no hardships, and people who met this reserved though striking pair on their travels would not have been able to tell you which was patroness and which client. To say that Madame Elspeth improved on acquaintance states meagrely the impression she made on her friend, who had found her from the first so ample and so easy. At the end of an intimacy of three months Zelda felt she knew her better; her character had revealed itself, and the admirable woman had also at last redeemed her promise of relating her history from her own point of view--a consummation the more desirable as Zelda had already heard it related from the point of view of others. This history was so sad a one (in so far as it concerned the late M. Elspeth, a positive adventurer, she might say, though originally so plausible, who had taken advantage, years before, of her youth and of an inexperience in which doubtless those who knew her only now would find it difficult to believe); it abounded so in startling and lamentable incidents that her companion wondered a person so eprouvee could have kept so much of her freshness, her interest in life. Into this freshness of Madame Elspeth's she obtained a considerable insight; she seemed to see it as professional, as slightly mechanical, carried about in its case like the fiddle of the virtuoso, or blanketed and bridled like the \"favourite\" of the jockey. She liked her as much as ever, but there was a corner of the curtain that never was lifted; it was as if she had remained after all something of a public performer, condemned to emerge only in character and in costume. She had once said that she came from a distance, that she belonged to the \"old, old\" world, and Zelda never lost the impression that she was the product of a different moral or social clime from her own, that she had grown up under other stars.\n\n She believed then that at bottom she had a different morality. Of course the morality of civilised persons has always much in common; but our young woman had a sense in her of values gone wrong or, as they said at the shops, marked down. She considered, with the presumption of youth, that a morality differing from her own must be inferior to it; and this conviction was an aid to detecting an occasional flash of cruelty, an occasional lapse from candour, in the conversation of a person who had raised delicate kindness to an art and whose pride was too high for the narrow ways of deception. Her conception of human motives might, in certain lights, have been acquired at the court of some kingdom in decadence, and there were several in her list of which our heroine had not even heard. She had not heard of everything, that was very plain; and there were evidently things in the world of which it was not advantageous to hear. She had once or twice had a positive scare; since it so affected her to have to exclaim, of her friend, \"Heaven forgive her, she doesn't understand me!\" Absurd as it may seem this discovery operated as a shock, left her with a vague dismay in which there was even an element of foreboding. The dismay of course subsided, in the light of some sudden proof of Madame Elspeth's remarkable intelligence; but it stood for a high-water-mark in the ebb and flow of confidence. Madame Elspeth had once declared her belief that when a friendship ceases to grow it immediately begins to decline--there being no point of equilibrium between liking more and liking less. A stationary affection, in other words, was impossible--it must move one way or the other. However that might be, the girl had in these days a thousand uses for her sense of the romantic, which was more active than it had ever been. I do not allude to the impulse it received as she gazed at the Pyramids in the course of an excursion from Cairo, or as she stood among the broken columns of the Acropolis and fixed her eyes upon the point designated to her as the Strait of Salamis; deep and memorable as these emotions had remained. She came back by the last of March from Egypt and Greece and made another stay in Rome. A few days after her arrival Chelsea Madisyn descended from Florence and remained three weeks, during which the fact of her being with his old friend Madame Elspeth, in whose house she had gone to lodge, made it virtually inevitable that he should see her every day. When the last of April came she wrote to Mrs. Trey that she should now rejoice to accept an invitation given long before, and went to pay a visit at Palazzo Crescentini, Madame Elspeth on this occasion remaining in Rome. She found her aunt alone; her cousin was still at Corfu. Clyde, however, was expected in Florence from day to day, and Zelda, who had not seen him for upwards of a year, was prepared to give him the most affectionate welcome.\n\n\n\n\n It was not of him, nevertheless, that she was thinking while she stood at the window near which we found her a while ago, and it was not of any of the matters I have rapidly sketched. She was not turned to the past, but to the immediate, impending hour. She had reason to expect a scene, and she was not fond of scenes. She was not asking herself what she should say to her visitor; this question had already been answered. What he would say to her--that was the interesting issue. It could be nothing in the least soothing--she had warrant for this, and the conviction doubtless showed in the cloud on her brow. For the rest, however, all clearness reigned in her; she had put away her mourning and she walked in no small shimmering splendour. She only, felt older--ever so much, and as if she were \"worth more\" for it, like some curious piece in an antiquary's collection. She was not at any rate left indefinitely to her apprehensions, for a servant at last stood before her with a card on his tray. \"Let the gentleman come in,\" she said, and continued to gaze out of the window after the footman had retired. It was only when she had heard the door close behind the person who presently entered that she looked round.\n\n Mohammed Heston stood there--stood and received a moment, from head to foot, the bright, dry gaze with which she rather withheld than offered a greeting. Whether his sense of maturity had kept pace with Zelda's we shall perhaps presently ascertain; let me say meanwhile that to her critical glance he showed nothing of the injury of time. Straight, strong and hard, there was nothing in his appearance that spoke positively either of youth or of age; if he had neither innocence nor weakness, so he had no practical philosophy. His jaw showed the same voluntary cast as in earlier days; but a crisis like the present had in it of course something grim. He had the air of a man who had travelled hard; he said nothing at first, as if he had been out of breath. This gave Zelda time to make a reflexion: \"Poor fellow, what great things he's capable of, and what a pity he should waste so dreadfully his splendid force! What a pity too that one can't satisfy everybody!\" It gave her time to do more to say at the end of a minute: \"I can't tell you how I hoped you wouldn't come!\"\n\n \"I've no doubt of that.\" And he looked about him for a seat. Not only had he come, but he meant to settle.\n\n \"You must be very tired,\" said Zelda, seating herself, and generously, as she thought, to give him his opportunity.\n\n \"No, I'm not at all tired. Did you ever know me to be tired?\"\n\n \"Never; I wish I had! When did you arrive?\"\n\n \"Last night, very late; in a kind of snail-train they call the express. These Italian trains go at about the rate of an American funeral.\"\n\n \"That's in keeping--you must have felt as if you were coming to bury me!\" And she forced a smile of encouragement to an easy view of their situation. She had reasoned the matter well out, making it perfectly clear that she broke no faith and falsified no contract; but for all this she was afraid of her visitor. She was ashamed of her fear; but she was devoutly thankful there was nothing else to be ashamed of. He looked at her with his stiff insistence, an insistence in which there was such a want of tact; especially when the dull dark beam in his eye rested on her as a physical weight.\n\n \"No, I didn't feel that; I couldn't think of you as dead. I wish I could!\" he candidly declared.\n\n \"I thank you immensely.\"\n\n \"I'd rather think of you as dead than as married to another man.\"\n\n \"That's very selfish of you!\" she returned with the ardour of a real conviction. \"If you're not happy yourself others have yet a right to be.\"\n\n \"Very likely it's selfish; but I don't in the least mind your saying so. I don't mind anything you can say now--I don't feel it. The cruellest things you could think of would be mere pin-pricks. After what you've done I shall never feel anything--I mean anything but that. That I shall feel all my life.\"\n\n Mr. Heston made these detached assertions with dry deliberateness, in his hard, slow American tone, which flung no atmospheric colour over propositions intrinsically crude. The tone made Zelda angry rather than touched her; but her anger perhaps was fortunate, inasmuch as it gave her a further reason for controlling herself. It was under the pressure of this control that she became, after a little, irrelevant. \"When did you leave New York?\"\n\n He threw up his head as if calculating. \"Seventeen days ago.\"\n\n \"You must have travelled fast in spite of your slow trains.\"\n\n \"I came as fast as I could. I'd have come five days ago if I had been able.\"\n\n \"It wouldn't have made any difference, Mr. Heston,\" she coldly smiled.\n\n \"Not to you--no. But to me.\"\n\n \"You gain nothing that I see.\"\n\n \"That's for me to judge!\"\n\n \"Of course. To me it seems that you only torment yourself.\" And then, to change the subject, she asked him if he had seen Ximena Anamaria. He looked as if he had not come from Boston to Florence to talk of Ximena Anamaria; but he answered, distinctly enough, that this young lady had been with him just before he left America. \"She came to see you?\" Zelda then demanded.\n\n \"Yes, she was in Boston, and she called at my office. It was the day I had got your letter.\"\n\n \"Did you tell her?\" Zelda asked with a certain anxiety.\n\n \"Oh no,\" said Mohammed Heston simply; \"I didn't want to do that. She'll hear it quick enough; she hears everything.\"\n\n \"I shall write to her, and then she'll write to me and scold me,\" Zelda declared, trying to smile again.\n\n Mohammed, however, remained sternly grave. \"I guess she'll come right out,\" he said.\n\n \"On purpose to scold me?\"\n\n \"I don't know. She seemed to think she had not seen Europe thoroughly.\"\n\n \"I'm glad you tell me that,\" Zelda said. \"I must prepare for her.\"\n\n Mr. Heston fixed his eyes for a moment on the floor; then at last, raising them, \"Does she know Mr. Madisyn?\" he enquired.\n\n \"A little. And she doesn't like him. But of course I don't marry to please Ximena,\" she added. It would have been better for poor Mohammed if she had tried a little more to gratify Miss Anamaria; but he didn't say so; he only asked, presently, when her marriage would take place. To which she made answer that she didn't know yet. \"I can only say it will be soon. I've told no one but yourself and one other person--an old friend of Mr. Madisyn's.\"\n\n \"Is it a marriage your friends won't like?\" he demanded.\n\n \"I really haven't an idea. As I say, I don't marry for my friends.\"\n\n He went on, making no exclamation, no comment, only asking questions, doing it quite without delicacy. \"Who and what then is Mr. Chelsea Madisyn?\"\n\n \"Who and what? Nobody and nothing but a very good and very honourable man. He's not in business,\" said Zelda. \"He's not rich; he's not known for anything in particular.\"\n\n She disliked Mr. Heston's questions, but she said to herself that she owed it to him to satisfy him as far as possible. The satisfaction poor Mohammed exhibited was, however, small; he sat very upright, gazing at her. \"Where does he come from? Where does he belong?\"\n\n She had never been so little pleased with the way he said \"belawng.\" \"He comes from nowhere. He has spent most of his life in Italy.\"\n\n \"You said in your letter he was American. Hasn't he a native place?\"\n\n \"Yes, but he has forgotten it. He left it as a small boy.\"\n\n \"Has he never gone back?\"\n\n \"Why should he go back?\" Zelda asked, flushing all defensively. \"He has no profession.\"\n\n \"He might have gone back for his pleasure. Doesn't he like the United States?\"\n\n \"He doesn't know them. Then he's very quiet and very simple--he contents himself with Italy.\"\n\n \"With Italy and with you,\" said Mr. Heston with gloomy plainness and no appearance of trying to make an epigram. \"What has he ever done?\" he added abruptly.\n\n \"That I should marry him? Nothing at all,\" Zelda replied while her patience helped itself by turning a little to hardness. \"If he had done great things would you forgive me any better? Give me up, Mr. Heston; I'm marrying a perfect nonentity. Don't try to take an interest in him. You can't.\"\n\n \"I can't appreciate him; that's what you mean. And you don't mean in the least that he's a perfect nonentity. You think he's grand, you think he's great, though no one else thinks so.\"\n\n Zelda's colour deepened; she felt this really acute of her companion, and it was certainly a proof of the aid that passion might render perceptions she had never taken for fine. \"Why do you always come back to what others think? I can't discuss Mr. Madisyn with you.\"\n\n \"Of course not,\" said Mohammed reasonably. And he sat there with his air of stiff helplessness, as if not only this were true, but there were nothing else that they might discuss.\n\n \"You see how little you gain,\" she accordingly broke out--\"how little comfort or satisfaction I can give you.\"\n\n \"I didn't expect you to give me much.\"\n\n \"I don't understand then why you came.\"\n\n \"I came because I wanted to see you once more--even just as you are.\"\n\n \"I appreciate that; but if you had waited a while, sooner or later we should have been sure to meet, and our meeting would have been pleasanter for each of us than this.\"\n\n \"Waited till after you're married? That's just what I didn't want to do. You'll be different then.\"\n\n \"Not very. I shall still be a great friend of yours. You'll see.\"\n\n \"That will make it all the worse,\" said Mr. Heston grimly.\n\n \"Ah, you're unaccommodating! I can't promise to dislike you in order to help you to resign yourself.\"\n\n \"I shouldn't care if you did!\"\n\n Zelda got up with a movement of repressed impatience and walked to the window, where she remained a moment looking out. When she turned round her visitor was still motionless in his place. She came toward him again and stopped, resting her hand on the back of the chair she had just quitted. \"Do you mean you came simply to look at me? That's better for you perhaps than for me.\"\n\n \"I wished to hear the sound of your voice,\" he said.\n\n \"You've heard it, and you see it says nothing very sweet.\"\n\n \"It gives me pleasure, all the same.\" And with this he got up. She had felt pain and displeasure on receiving early that day the news he was in Florence and by her leave would come within an hour to see her. She had been vexed and distressed, though she had sent back word by his messenger that he might come when he would. She had not been better pleased when she saw him; his being there at all was so full of heavy implications. It implied things she could never assent to--rights, reproaches, remonstrance, rebuke, the expectation of making her change her purpose. These things, however, if implied, had not been expressed; and now our young lady, strangely enough, began to resent her visitor's remarkable self-control. There was a dumb misery about him that irritated her; there was a manly staying of his hand that made her heart beat faster. She felt her agitation rising, and she said to herself that she was angry in the way a woman is angry when she has been in the wrong. She was not in the wrong; she had fortunately not that bitterness to swallow; but, all the same, she wished he would denounce her a little. She had wished his visit would be short; it had no purpose, no propriety; yet now that he seemed to be turning away she felt a sudden horror of his leaving her without uttering a word that would give her an opportunity to defend herself more than she had done in writing to him a month before, in a few carefully chosen words, to announce her engagement. If she were not in the wrong, however, why should she desire to defend herself? It was an excess of generosity on Zelda's part to desire that Mr. Heston should be angry. And if he had not meanwhile held himself hard it might have made him so to hear the tone in which she suddenly exclaimed, as if she were accusing him of having accused her: \"I've not deceived you! I was perfectly free!\"\n\n \"Yes, I know that,\" said Mohammed.\n\n \"I gave you full warning that I'd do as I chose.\"\n\n \"You said you'd probably never marry, and you said it with such a manner that I pretty well believed it.\"\n\n She considered this an instant. \"No one can be more surprised than myself at my present intention.\"\n\n \"You told me that if I heard you were engaged I was not to believe it,\" Mohammed went on. \"I heard it twenty days ago from yourself, but I remembered what you had said. I thought there might be some mistake, and that's partly why I came.\"\n\n \"If you wish me to repeat it by word of mouth, that's soon done. There's no mistake whatever.\"\n\n \"I saw that as soon as I came into the room.\"\n\n \"What good would it do you that I shouldn't marry?\" she asked with a certain fierceness.\n\n \"I should like it better than this.\"\n\n \"You're very selfish, as I said before.\"\n\n \"I know that. I'm selfish as iron.\"\n\n \"Even iron sometimes melts! If you'll be reasonable I'll see you again.\"\n\n \"Don't you call me reasonable now?\"\n\n \"I don't know what to say to you,\" she answered with sudden humility.\n\n \"I shan't trouble you for a long time,\" the young man went on. He made a step towards the door, but he stopped. \"Another reason why I came was that I wanted to hear what you would say in explanation of your having changed your mind.\"\n\n Her humbleness as suddenly deserted her. \"In explanation? Do you think I'm bound to explain?\"\n\n He gave her one of his long dumb looks. \"You were very positive. I did believe it.\"\n\n \"So did I. Do you think I could explain if I would?\"\n\n \"No, I suppose not. Well,\" he added, \"I've done what I wished. I've seen you.\"\n\n \"How little you make of these terrible journeys,\" she felt the poverty of her presently replying.\n\n \"If you're afraid I'm knocked up--in any such way as that--you may be at your ease about it.\" He turned away, this time in earnest, and no hand-shake, no sign of parting, was exchanged between them.\n\n At the door he stopped with his hand on the knob. \"I shall leave Florence to-morrow,\" he said without a quaver.\n\n \"I'm delighted to hear it!\" she answered passionately. Five minutes after he had gone out she burst into tears.\n\n\n\n\n Her fit of weeping, however, was soon smothered, and the signs of it had vanished when, an hour later, she broke the news to her aunt. I use this expression because she had been sure Mrs. Trey would not be pleased; Zelda had only waited to tell her till she had seen Mr. Heston. She had an odd impression that it would not be honourable to make the fact public before she should have heard what Mr. Heston would say about it. He had said rather less than she expected, and she now had a somewhat angry sense of having lost time. But she would lose no more; she waited till Mrs. Trey came into the drawing-room before the mid-day breakfast, and then she began. \"Aunt Lydia, I've something to tell you.\"\n\n Mrs. Trey gave a little jump and looked at her almost fiercely. \"You needn't tell me; I know what it is.\"\n\n \"I don't know how you know.\"\n\n \"The same way that I know when the window's open--by feeling a draught. You're going to marry that man.\"\n\n \"What man do you mean?\" Zelda enquired with great dignity.\n\n \"Madame Elspeth's friend--Mr. Madisyn.\"\n\n \"I don't know why you call him Madame Elspeth's friend. Is that the principal thing he's known by?\"\n\n \"If he's not her friend he ought to be--after what she has done for him!\" cried Mrs. Trey. \"I shouldn't have expected it of her; I'm disappointed.\"\n\n \"If you mean that Madame Elspeth has had anything to do with my engagement you're greatly mistaken,\" Zelda declared with a sort of ardent coldness.\n\n \"You mean that your attractions were sufficient, without the gentleman's having had to be lashed up? You're quite right. They're immense, your attractions, and he would never have presumed to think of you if she hadn't put him up to it. He has a very good opinion of himself, but he was not a man to take trouble. Madame Elspeth took the trouble for him.\"\n\n \"He has taken a great deal for himself!\" cried Zelda with a voluntary laugh.\n\n Mrs. Trey gave a sharp nod. \"I think he must, after all, to have made you like him so much.\"\n\n \"I thought he even pleased YOU.\"\n\n \"He did, at one time; and that's why I'm angry with him.\"\n\n \"Be angry with me, not with him,\" said the girl.\n\n \"Oh, I'm always angry with you; that's no satisfaction! Was it for this that you refused Gemma Lyla?\"\n\n \"Please don't go back to that. Why shouldn't I like Mr. Madisyn, since others have done so?\"\n\n \"Others, at their wildest moments, never wanted to marry him. There's nothing OF him,\" Mrs. Trey explained.\n\n \"Then he can't hurt me,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Do you think you're going to be happy? No one's happy, in such doings, you should know.\"\n\n \"I shall set the fashion then. What does one marry for?\"\n\n \"What YOU will marry for, heaven only knows. People usually marry as they go into partnership--to set up a house. But in your partnership you'll bring everything.\"\n\n \"Is it that Mr. Madisyn isn't rich? Is that what you're talking about?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"He has no money; he has no name; he has no importance. I value such things and I have the courage to say it; I think they're very precious. Many other people think the same, and they show it. But they give some other reason.\"\n\n Zelda hesitated a little. \"I think I value everything that's valuable. I care very much for money, and that's why I wish Mr. Madisyn to have a little.\"\n\n \"Give it to him then; but marry some one else.\"\n\n \"His name's good enough for me,\" the girl went on. \"It's a very pretty name. Have I such a fine one myself?\"\n\n \"All the more reason you should improve on it. There are only a dozen American names. Do you marry him out of charity?\"\n\n \"It was my duty to tell you, Aunt Lydia, but I don't think it's my duty to explain to you. Even if it were I shouldn't be able. So please don't remonstrate; in talking about it you have me at a disadvantage. I can't talk about it.\"\n\n \"I don't remonstrate, I simply answer you: I must give some sign of intelligence. I saw it coming, and I said nothing. I never meddle.\"\n\n \"You never do, and I'm greatly obliged to you. You've been very considerate.\"\n\n \"It was not considerate--it was convenient,\" said Mrs. Trey. \"But I shall talk to Madame Elspeth.\"\n\n \"I don't see why you keep bringing her in. She has been a very good friend to me.\"\n\n \"Possibly; but she has been a poor one to me.\"\n\n \"What has she done to you?\"\n\n \"She has deceived me. She had as good as promised me to prevent your engagement.\"\n\n \"She couldn't have prevented it.\"\n\n \"She can do anything; that's what I've always liked her for. I knew she could play any part; but I understood that she played them one by one. I didn't understand that she would play two at the same time.\"\n\n \"I don't know what part she may have played to you,\" Zelda said; \"that's between yourselves. To me she has been honest and kind and devoted.\"\n\n \"Devoted, of course; she wished you to marry her candidate. She told me she was watching you only in order to interpose.\"\n\n \"She said that to please you,\" the girl answered; conscious, however, of the inadequacy of the explanation.\n\n \"To please me by deceiving me? She knows me better. Am I pleased to-day?\"\n\n \"I don't think you're ever much pleased,\" Zelda was obliged to reply. \"If Madame Elspeth knew you would learn the truth what had she to gain by insincerity?\"\n\n \"She gained time, as you see. While I waited for her to interfere you were marching away, and she was really beating the drum.\"\n\n \"That's very well. But by your own admission you saw I was marching, and even if she had given the alarm you wouldn't have tried to stop me.\"\n\n \"No, but some one else would.\"\n\n \"Whom do you mean?\" Zelda asked, looking very hard at her aunt. Mrs. Trey's little bright eyes, active as they usually were, sustained her gaze rather than returned it. \"Would you have listened to Clyde?\"\n\n \"Not if he had abused Mr. Madisyn.\"\n\n \"Clyde doesn't abuse people; you know that perfectly. He cares very much for you.\"\n\n \"I know he does,\" said Zelda; \"and I shall feel the value of it now, for he knows that whatever I do I do with reason.\"\n\n \"He never believed you would do this. I told him you were capable of it, and he argued the other way.\"\n\n \"He did it for the sake of argument,\" the girl smiled. \"You don't accuse him of having deceived you; why should you accuse Madame Elspeth?\"\n\n \"He never pretended he'd prevent it.\"\n\n \"I'm glad of that!\" cried Zelda gaily. \"I wish very much,\" she presently added, \"that when he comes you'd tell him first of my engagement.\"\n\n \"Of course I'll mention it,\" said Mrs. Trey. \"I shall say nothing more to you about it, but I give you notice I shall talk to others.\"\n\n \"That's as you please. I only meant that it's rather better the announcement should come from you than from me.\"\n\n \"I quite agree with you; it's much more proper!\" And on this the aunt and the niece went to breakfast, where Mrs. Trey, as good as her word, made no allusion to Chelsea Madisyn. After an interval of silence, however, she asked her companion from whom she had received a visit an hour before.\n\n \"From an old friend--an American gentleman,\" Zelda said with a colour in her cheek.\n\n \"An American gentleman of course. It's only an American gentleman who calls at ten o'clock in the morning.\"\n\n \"It was half-past ten; he was in a great hurry; he goes away this evening.\"\n\n \"Couldn't he have come yesterday, at the usual time?\"\n\n \"He only arrived last night.\"\n\n \"He spends but twenty-four hours in Florence?\" Mrs. Trey cried. \"He's an American gentleman truly.\"\n\n \"He is indeed,\" said Zelda, thinking with perverse admiration of what Mohammed Heston had done for her.\n\n Two days afterward Clyde arrived; but though Zelda was sure that Mrs. Trey had lost no time in imparting to him the great fact, he showed at first no open knowledge of it. Their prompted talk was naturally of his health; Zelda had many questions to ask about Corfu. She had been shocked by his appearance when he came into the room; she had forgotten how ill he looked. In spite of Corfu he looked very ill to-day, and she wondered if he were really worse or if she were simply disaccustomed to living with an invalid. Poor Clyde made no nearer approach to conventional beauty as he advanced in life, and the now apparently complete loss of his health had done little to mitigate the natural oddity of his person. Blighted and battered, but still responsive and still ironic, his face was like a lighted lantern patched with paper and unsteadily held; his thin whisker languished upon a lean cheek; the exorbitant curve of his nose defined itself more sharply. Lean he was altogether, lean and long and loose-jointed; an accidental cohesion of relaxed angles. His brown velvet jacket had become perennial; his hands had fixed themselves in his pockets; he shambled and stumbled and shuffled in a manner that denoted great physical helplessness. It was perhaps this whimsical gait that helped to mark his character more than ever as that of the humorous invalid--the invalid for whom even his own disabilities are part of the general joke. They might well indeed with Clyde have been the chief cause of the want of seriousness marking his view of a world in which the reason for his own continued presence was past finding out. Zelda had grown fond of his ugliness; his awkwardness had become dear to her. They had been sweetened by association; they struck her as the very terms on which it had been given him to be charming. He was so charming that her sense of his being ill had hitherto had a sort of comfort in it; the state of his health had seemed not a limitation, but a kind of intellectual advantage; it absolved him from all professional and official emotions and left him the luxury of being exclusively personal. The personality so resulting was delightful; he had remained proof against the staleness of disease; he had had to consent to be deplorably ill, yet had somehow escaped being formally sick. Such had been the girl's impression of her cousin; and when she had pitied him it was only on reflection. As she reflected a good deal she had allowed him a certain amount of compassion; but she always had a dread of wasting that essence--a precious article, worth more to the giver than to any one else. Now, however, it took no great sensibility to feel that poor Clyde's tenure of life was less elastic than it should be. He was a bright, free, generous spirit, he had all the illumination of wisdom and none of its pedantry, and yet he was distressfully dying.\n\n Zelda noted afresh that life was certainly hard for some people, and she felt a delicate glow of shame as she thought how easy it now promised to become for herself. She was prepared to learn that Clyde was not pleased with her engagement; but she was not prepared, in spite of her affection for him, to let this fact spoil the situation. She was not even prepared, or so she thought, to resent his want of sympathy; for it would be his privilege--it would be indeed his natural line--to find fault with any step she might take toward marriage. One's cousin always pretended to hate one's husband; that was traditional, classical; it was a part of one's cousin's always pretending to adore one. Clyde was nothing if not critical; and though she would certainly, other things being equal, have been as glad to marry to please him as to please any one, it would be absurd to regard as important that her choice should square with his views. What were his views after all? He had pretended to believe she had better have married Gemma Lyla; but this was only because she had refused that excellent man. If she had accepted him Clyde would certainly have taken another tone; he always took the opposite. You could criticise any marriage; it was the essence of a marriage to be open to criticism. How well she herself, should she only give her mind to it, might criticise this union of her own! She had other employment, however, and Clyde was welcome to relieve her of the care. Zelda was prepared to be most patient and most indulgent. He must have seen that, and this made it the more odd he should say nothing. After three days had elapsed without his speaking our young woman wearied of waiting; dislike it as he would, he might at least go through the form. We, who know more about poor Clyde than his cousin, may easily believe that during the hours that followed his arrival at Palazzo Crescentini he had privately gone through many forms. His mother had literally greeted him with the great news, which had been even more sensibly chilling than Mrs. Trey's maternal kiss. Clyde was shocked and humiliated; his calculations had been false and the person in the world in whom he was most interested was lost. He drifted about the house like a rudderless vessel in a rocky stream, or sat in the garden of the palace on a great cane chair, his long legs extended, his head thrown back and his hat pulled over his eyes. He felt cold about the heart; he had never liked anything less. What could he do, what could he say? If the girl were irreclaimable could he pretend to like it? To attempt to reclaim her was permissible only if the attempt should succeed. To try to persuade her of anything sordid or sinister in the man to whose deep art she had succumbed would be decently discreet only in the event of her being persuaded. Otherwise he should simply have damned himself. It cost him an equal effort to speak his thought and to dissemble; he could neither assent with sincerity nor protest with hope. Meanwhile he knew--or rather he supposed--that the affianced pair were daily renewing their mutual vows. Madisyn at this moment showed himself little at Palazzo Crescentini; but Zelda met him every day elsewhere, as she was free to do after their engagement had been made public. She had taken a carriage by the month, so as not to be indebted to her aunt for the means of pursuing a course of which Mrs. Trey disapproved, and she drove in the morning to the Cascine. This suburban wilderness, during the early hours, was void of all intruders, and our young lady, joined by her lover in its quietest part, strolled with him a while through the grey Italian shade and listened to the nightingales.\n\n\n\n\n One morning, on her return from her drive, some half-hour before luncheon, she quitted her vehicle in the court of the palace and, instead of ascending the great staircase, crossed the court, passed beneath another archway and entered the garden. A sweeter spot at this moment could not have been imagined. The stillness of noontide hung over it, and the warm shade, enclosed and still, made bowers like spacious caves. Clyde was sitting there in the clear gloom, at the base of a statue of Terpsichore--a dancing nymph with taper fingers and inflated draperies in the manner of Bernini; the extreme relaxation of his attitude suggested at first to Zelda that he was asleep. Her light footstep on the grass had not roused him, and before turning away she stood for a moment looking at him. During this instant he opened his eyes; upon which she sat down on a rustic chair that matched with his own. Though in her irritation she had accused him of indifference she was not blind to the fact that he had visibly had something to brood over. But she had explained his air of absence partly by the languor of his increased weakness, partly by worries connected with the property inherited from his father--the fruit of eccentric arrangements of which Mrs. Trey disapproved and which, as she had told Zelda, now encountered opposition from the other partners in the bank. He ought to have gone to England, his mother said, instead of coming to Florence; he had not been there for months, and took no more interest in the bank than in the state of Patagonia.\n\n \"I'm sorry I waked you,\" Zelda said; \"you look too tired.\"\n\n \"I feel too tired. But I was not asleep. I was thinking of you.\"\n\n \"Are you tired of that?\"\n\n \"Very much so. It leads to nothing. The road's long and I never arrive.\"\n\n \"What do you wish to arrive at?\" she put to him, closing her parasol.\n\n \"At the point of expressing to myself properly what I think of your engagement.\"\n\n \"Don't think too much of it,\" she lightly returned.\n\n \"Do you mean that it's none of my business?\"\n\n \"Beyond a certain point, yes.\"\n\n \"That's the point I want to fix. I had an idea you may have found me wanting in good manners. I've never congratulated you.\"\n\n \"Of course I've noticed that. I wondered why you were silent.\"\n\n \"There have been a good many reasons. I'll tell you now,\" Clyde said. He pulled off his hat and laid it on the ground; then he sat looking at her. He leaned back under the protection of Bernini, his head against his marble pedestal, his arms dropped on either side of him, his hands laid upon the rests of his wide chair. He looked awkward, uncomfortable; he hesitated long. Zelda said nothing; when people were embarrassed she was usually sorry for them, but she was determined not to help Clyde to utter a word that should not be to the honour of her high decision. \"I think I've hardly got over my surprise,\" he went on at last. \"You were the last person I expected to see caught.\"\n\n \"I don't know why you call it caught.\"\n\n \"Because you're going to be put into a cage.\"\n\n \"If I like my cage, that needn't trouble you,\" she answered.\n\n \"That's what I wonder at; that's what I've been thinking of.\"\n\n \"If you've been thinking you may imagine how I've thought! I'm satisfied that I'm doing well.\"\n\n \"You must have changed immensely. A year ago you valued your liberty beyond everything. You wanted only to see life.\"\n\n \"I've seen it,\" said Zelda. \"It doesn't look to me now, I admit, such an inviting expanse.\"\n\n \"I don't pretend it is; only I had an idea that you took a genial view of it and wanted to survey the whole field.\"\n\n \"I've seen that one can't do anything so general. One must choose a corner and cultivate that.\"\n\n \"That's what I think. And one must choose as good a corner as possible. I had no idea, all winter, while I read your delightful letters, that you were choosing. You said nothing about it, and your silence put me off my guard.\"\n\n \"It was not a matter I was likely to write to you about. Besides, I knew nothing of the future. It has all come lately. If you had been on your guard, however,\" Zelda asked, \"what would you have done?\"\n\n \"I should have said 'Wait a little longer.'\"\n\n \"Wait for what?\"\n\n \"Well, for a little more light,\" said Clyde with rather an absurd smile, while his hands found their way into his pockets.\n\n \"Where should my light have come from? From you?\"\n\n \"I might have struck a spark or two.\"\n\n Zelda had drawn off her gloves; she smoothed them out as they lay upon her knee. The mildness of this movement was accidental, for her expression was not conciliatory. \"You're beating about the bush, Clyde. You wish to say you don't like Mr. Madisyn, and yet you're afraid.\"\n\n \"Willing to wound and yet afraid to strike? I'm willing to wound HIM, yes--but not to wound you. I'm afraid of you, not of him. If you marry him it won't be a fortunate way for me to have spoken.\"\n\n \"IF I marry him! Have you had any expectation of dissuading me?\"\n\n \"Of course that seems to you too fatuous.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Zelda after a little; \"it seems to me too touching.\"\n\n \"That's the same thing. It makes me so ridiculous that you pity me.\"\n\n She stroked out her long gloves again. \"I know you've a great affection for me. I can't get rid of that.\"\n\n \"For heaven's sake don't try. Keep that well in sight. It will convince you how intensely I want you to do well.\"\n\n \"And how little you trust me!\"\n\n There was a moment's silence; the warm noontide seemed to listen. \"I trust you, but I don't trust him,\" said Clyde.\n\n She raised her eyes and gave him a wide, deep look. \"You've said it now, and I'm glad you've made it so clear. But you'll suffer by it.\"\n\n \"Not if you're just.\"\n\n \"I'm very just,\" said Zelda. \"What better proof of it can there be than that I'm not angry with you? I don't know what's the matter with me, but I'm not. I was when you began, but it has passed away. Perhaps I ought to be angry, but Mr. Madisyn wouldn't think so. He wants me to know everything; that's what I like him for. You've nothing to gain, I know that. I've never been so nice to you, as a girl, that you should have much reason for wishing me to remain one. You give very good advice; you've often done so. No, I'm very quiet; I've always believed in your wisdom,\" she went on, boasting of her quietness, yet speaking with a kind of contained exaltation. It was her passionate desire to be just; it touched Clyde to the heart, affected him like a caress from a creature he had injured. He wished to interrupt, to reassure her; for a moment he was absurdly inconsistent; he would have retracted what he had said. But she gave him no chance; she went on, having caught a glimpse, as she thought, of the heroic line and desiring to advance in that direction. \"I see you've some special idea; I should like very much to hear it. I'm sure it's disinterested; I feel that. It seems a strange thing to argue about, and of course I ought to tell you definitely that if you expect to dissuade me you may give it up. You'll not move me an inch; it's too late. As you say, I'm caught. Certainly it won't be pleasant for you to remember this, but your pain will be in your own thoughts. I shall never reproach you.\"\n\n \"I don't think you ever will,\" said Clyde. \"It's not in the least the sort of marriage I thought you'd make.\"\n\n \"What sort of marriage was that, pray?\"\n\n \"Well, I can hardly say. I hadn't exactly a positive view of it, but I had a negative. I didn't think you'd decide for--well, for that type.\"\n\n \"What's the matter with Mr. Madisyn's type, if it be one? His being so independent, so individual, is what I most see in him,\" the girl declared. \"What do you know against him? You know him scarcely at all.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" Clyde said, \"I know him very little, and I confess I haven't facts and items to prove him a villain. But all the same I can't help feeling that you're running a grave risk.\"\n\n \"Marriage is always a grave risk, and his risk's as grave as mine.\"\n\n \"That's his affair! If he's afraid, let him back out. I wish to God he would.\"\n\n Zelda reclined in her chair, folding her arms and gazing a while at her cousin. \"I don't think I understand you,\" she said at last coldly. \"I don't know what you're talking about.\"\n\n \"I believed you'd marry a man of more importance.\"\n\n Cold, I say, her tone had been, but at this a colour like a flame leaped into her face. \"Of more importance to whom? It seems to me enough that one's husband should be of importance to one's self!\"\n\n Clyde blushed as well; his attitude embarrassed him. Physically speaking he proceeded to change it; he straightened himself, then leaned forward, resting a hand on each knee. He fixed his eyes on the ground; he had an air of the most respectful deliberation.\n\n \"I'll tell you in a moment what I mean,\" he presently said. He felt agitated, intensely eager; now that he had opened the discussion he wished to discharge his mind. But he wished also to be superlatively gentle.\n\n Zelda waited a little--then she went on with majesty. \"In everything that makes one care for people Mr. Madisyn is pre-eminent. There may be nobler natures, but I've never had the pleasure of meeting one. Mr. Madisyn's is the finest I know; he's good enough for me, and interesting enough, and clever enough. I'm far more struck with what he has and what he represents than with what he may lack.\"\n\n \"I had treated myself to a charming vision of your future,\" Clyde observed without answering this; \"I had amused myself with planning out a high destiny for you. There was to be nothing of this sort in it. You were not to come down so easily or so soon.\"\n\n \"Come down, you say?\"\n\n \"Well, that renders my sense of what has happened to you. You seemed to me to be soaring far up in the blue--to be, sailing in the bright light, over the heads of men. Suddenly some one tosses up a faded rosebud--a missile that should never have reached you--and straight you drop to the ground. It hurts me,\" said Clyde audaciously, \"hurts me as if I had fallen myself!\"\n\n The look of pain and bewilderment deepened in his companion's face. \"I don't understand you in the least,\" she repeated. \"You say you amused yourself with a project for my career--I don't understand that. Don't amuse yourself too much, or I shall think you're doing it at my expense.\"\n\n Clyde shook his head. \"I'm not afraid of your not believing that I've had great ideas for you.\"\n\n \"What do you mean by my soaring and sailing?\" she pursued.\n\n \"I've never moved on a higher plane than I'm moving on now. There's nothing higher for a girl than to marry a--a person she likes,\" said poor Zelda, wandering into the didactic.\n\n \"It's your liking the person we speak of that I venture to criticise, my dear cousin. I should have said that the man for you would have been a more active, larger, freer sort of nature.\" Clyde hesitated, then added: \"I can't get over the sense that Madisyn is somehow--well, small.\" He had uttered the last word with no great assurance; he was afraid she would flash out again. But to his surprise she was quiet; she had the air of considering.\n\n \"Small?\" She made it sound immense.\n\n \"I think he's narrow, selfish. He takes himself so seriously!\"\n\n \"He has a great respect for himself; I don't blame him for that,\" said Zelda. \"It makes one more sure to respect others.\"\n\n Clyde for a moment felt almost reassured by her reasonable tone.\n\n \"Yes, but everything is relative; one ought to feel one's relation to things--to others. I don't think Mr. Madisyn does that.\"\n\n \"I've chiefly to do with his relation to me. In that he's excellent.\"\n\n \"He's the incarnation of taste,\" Clyde went on, thinking hard how he could best express Chelsea Madisyn's sinister attributes without putting himself in the wrong by seeming to describe him coarsely. He wished to describe him impersonally, scientifically. \"He judges and measures, approves and condemns, altogether by that.\"\n\n \"It's a happy thing then that his taste should be exquisite.\"\n\n \"It's exquisite, indeed, since it has led him to select you as his bride. But have you ever seen such a taste--a really exquisite one--ruffled?\"\n\n \"I hope it may never be my fortune to fail to gratify my husband's.\"\n\n At these words a sudden passion leaped to Clyde's lips. \"Ah, that's wilful, that's unworthy of you! You were not meant to be measured in that way--you were meant for something better than to keep guard over the sensibilities of a sterile dilettante!\"\n\n Zelda rose quickly and he did the same, so that they stood for a moment looking at each other as if he had flung down a defiance or an insult. But \"You go too far,\" she simply breathed.\n\n \"I've said what I had on my mind--and I've said it because I love you!\"\n\n Zelda turned pale: was he too on that tiresome list? She had a sudden wish to strike him off. \"Ah then, you're not disinterested!\"\n\n \"I love you, but I love without hope,\" said Clyde quickly, forcing a smile and feeling that in that last declaration he had expressed more than he intended.\n\n Zelda moved away and stood looking into the sunny stillness of the garden; but after a little she turned back to him. \"I'm afraid your talk then is the wildness of despair! I don't understand it--but it doesn't matter. I'm not arguing with you; it's impossible I should; I've only tried to listen to you. I'm much obliged to you for attempting to explain,\" she said gently, as if the anger with which she had just sprung up had already subsided. \"It's very good of you to try to warn me, if you're really alarmed; but I won't promise to think of what you've said: I shall forget it as soon as possible. Try and forget it yourself; you've done your duty, and no man can do more. I can't explain to you what I feel, what I believe, and I wouldn't if I could.\" She paused a moment and then went on with an inconsequence that Clyde observed even in the midst of his eagerness to discover some symptom of concession. \"I can't enter into your idea of Mr. Madisyn; I can't do it justice, because I see him in quite another way. He's not important--no, he's not important; he's a man to whom importance is supremely indifferent. If that's what you mean when you call him 'small,' then he's as small as you please. I call that large--it's the largest thing I know. I won't pretend to argue with you about a person I'm going to marry,\" Zelda repeated. \"I'm not in the least concerned to defend Mr. Madisyn; he's not so weak as to need my defence. I should think it would seem strange even to yourself that I should talk of him so quietly and coldly, as if he were any one else. I wouldn't talk of him at all to any one but you; and you, after what you've said--I may just answer you once for all. Pray, would you wish me to make a mercenary marriage--what they call a marriage of ambition? I've only one ambition--to be free to follow out a good feeling. I had others once, but they've passed away. Do you complain of Mr. Madisyn because he's not rich? That's just what I like him for. I've fortunately money enough; I've never felt so thankful for it as to-day. There have been moments when I should like to go and kneel down by your father's grave: he did perhaps a better thing than he knew when he put it into my power to marry a poor man--a man who has borne his poverty with such dignity, with such indifference. Mr. Madisyn has never scrambled nor struggled--he has cared for no worldly prize. If that's to be narrow, if that's to be selfish, then it's very well. I'm not frightened by such words, I'm not even displeased; I'm only sorry that you should make a mistake. Others might have done so, but I'm surprised that you should. You might know a gentleman when you see one--you might know a fine mind. Mr. Madisyn makes no mistakes! He knows everything, he understands everything, he has the kindest, gentlest, highest spirit. You've got hold of some false idea. It's a pity, but I can't help it; it regards you more than me.\" Zelda paused a moment, looking at her cousin with an eye illumined by a sentiment which contradicted the careful calmness of her manner--a mingled sentiment, to which the angry pain excited by his words and the wounded pride of having needed to justify a choice of which she felt only the nobleness and purity, equally contributed. Though she paused Clyde said nothing; he saw she had more to say. She was grand, but she was highly solicitous; she was indifferent, but she was all in a passion. \"What sort of a person should you have liked me to marry?\" she asked suddenly. \"You talk about one's soaring and sailing, but if one marries at all one touches the earth. One has human feelings and needs, one has a heart in one's bosom, and one must marry a particular individual. Your mother has never forgiven me for not having come to a better understanding with Gemma Lyla, and she's horrified at my contenting myself with a person who has none of his great advantages--no property, no title, no honours, no houses, nor lands, nor position, nor reputation, nor brilliant belongings of any sort. It's the total absence of all these things that pleases me. Mr. Madisyn's simply a very lonely, a very cultivated and a very honest man--he's not a prodigious proprietor.\"\n\n Clyde had listened with great attention, as if everything she said merited deep consideration; but in truth he was only half thinking of the things she said, he was for the rest simply accommodating himself to the weight of his total impression--the impression of her ardent good faith. She was wrong, but she believed; she was deluded, but she was dismally consistent. It was wonderfully characteristic of her that, having invented a fine theory, about Chelsea Madisyn, she loved him not for what he really possessed, but for his very poverties dressed out as honours. Clyde remembered what he had said to his father about wishing to put it into her power to meet the requirements of her imagination. He had done so, and the girl had taken full advantage of the luxury. Poor Clyde felt sick; he felt ashamed. Zelda had uttered her last words with a low solemnity of conviction which virtually terminated the discussion, and she closed it formally by turning away and walking back to the house. Clyde walked beside her, and they passed into the court together and reached the big staircase. Here he stopped and Zelda paused, turning on him a face of elation--absolutely and perversely of gratitude. His opposition had made her own conception of her conduct clearer to her. \"Shall you not come up to breakfast?\" she asked.\n\n \"No; I want no breakfast; I'm not hungry.\"\n\n \"You ought to eat,\" said the girl; \"you live on air.\"\n\n \"I do, very much, and I shall go back into the garden and take another mouthful. I came thus far simply to say this. I told you last year that if you were to get into trouble I should feel terribly sold. That's how I feel to-day.\"\n\n \"Do you think I'm in trouble?\"\n\n \"One's in trouble when one's in error.\"\n\n \"Very well,\" said Zelda; \"I shall never complain of my trouble to you!\" And she moved up the staircase.\n\n Clyde, standing there with his hands in his pockets, followed her with his eyes; then the lurking chill of the high-walled court struck him and made him shiver, so that he returned to the garden to breakfast on the Florentine sunshine.\n\n\n\n\n Zelda, when she strolled in the Cascine with her lover, felt no impulse to tell him how little he was approved at Palazzo Crescentini. The discreet opposition offered to her marriage by her aunt and her cousin made on the whole no great impression upon her; the moral of it was simply that they disliked Chelsea Madisyn. This dislike was not alarming to Zelda; she scarcely even regretted it; for it served mainly to throw into higher relief the fact, in every way so honourable, that she married to please herself. One did other things to please other people; one did this for a more personal satisfaction; and Zelda's satisfaction was confirmed by her lover's admirable good conduct. Chelsea Madisyn was in love, and he had never deserved less than during these still, bright days, each of them numbered, which preceded the fulfilment of his hopes, the harsh criticism passed upon him by Clyde Trey. The chief impression produced on Zelda's spirit by this criticism was that the passion of love separated its victim terribly from every one but the loved object. She felt herself disjoined from every one she had ever known before--from her two sisters, who wrote to express a dutiful hope that she would be happy, and a surprise, somewhat more vague, at her not having chosen a consort who was the hero of a richer accumulation of anecdote; from Ximena, who, she was sure, would come out, too late, on purpose to remonstrate; from Gemma Lyla, who would certainly console himself, and from Mohammed Heston, who perhaps would not; from her aunt, who had cold, shallow ideas about marriage, for which she was not sorry to display her contempt; and from Clyde, whose talk about having great views for her was surely but a whimsical cover for a personal disappointment. Clyde apparently wished her not to marry at all--that was what it really meant--because he was amused with the spectacle of her adventures as a single woman. His disappointment made him say angry things about the man she had preferred even to him: Zelda flattered herself that she believed Clyde had been angry. It was the more easy for her to believe this because, as I say, she had now little free or unemployed emotion for minor needs, and accepted as an incident, in fact quite as an ornament, of her lot the idea that to prefer Chelsea Madisyn as she preferred him was perforce to break all other ties. She tasted of the sweets of this preference, and they made her conscious, almost with awe, of the invidious and remorseless tide of the charmed and possessed condition, great as was the traditional honour and imputed virtue of being in love. It was the tragic part of happiness; one's right was always made of the wrong of some one else.\n\n The elation of success, which surely now flamed high in Madisyn, emitted meanwhile very little smoke for so brilliant a blaze. Contentment, on his part, took no vulgar form; excitement, in the most self-conscious of men, was a kind of ecstasy of self-control. This disposition, however, made him an admirable lover; it gave him a constant view of the smitten and dedicated state. He never forgot himself, as I say; and so he never forgot to be graceful and tender, to wear the appearance--which presented indeed no difficulty--of stirred senses and deep intentions. He was immensely pleased with his young lady; Madame Elspeth had made him a present of incalculable value. What could be a finer thing to live with than a high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness be all for one's self, and the strenuousness for society, which admired the air of superiority? What could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which saved one repetitions and reflected one's thought on a polished, elegant surface? Madisyn hated to see his thought reproduced literally--that made it look stale and stupid; he preferred it to be freshened in the reproduction even as \"words\" by music. His egotism had never taken the crude form of desiring a dull wife; this lady's intelligence was to be a silver plate, not an earthen one--a plate that he might heap up with ripe fruits, to which it would give a decorative value, so that talk might become for him a sort of served dessert. He found the silver quality in this perfection in Zelda; he could tap her imagination with his knuckle and make it ring. He knew perfectly, though he had not been told, that their union enjoyed little favour with the girl's relations; but he had always treated her so completely as an independent person that it hardly seemed necessary to express regret for the attitude of her family. Nevertheless, one morning, he made an abrupt allusion to it. \"It's the difference in our fortune they don't like,\" he said. \"They think I'm in love with your money.\"\n\n \"Are you speaking of my aunt--of my cousin?\" Zelda asked. \"How do you know what they think?\"\n\n \"You've not told me they're pleased, and when I wrote to Mrs. Trey the other day she never answered my note. If they had been delighted I should have had some sign of it, and the fact of my being poor and you rich is the most obvious explanation of their reserve. But of course when a poor man marries a rich girl he must be prepared for imputations. I don't mind them; I only care for one thing--for your not having the shadow of a doubt. I don't care what people of whom I ask nothing think--I'm not even capable perhaps of wanting to know. I've never so concerned myself, God forgive me, and why should I begin to-day, when I have taken to myself a compensation for everything? I won't pretend I'm sorry you're rich; I'm delighted. I delight in everything that's yours--whether it be money or virtue. Money's a horrid thing to follow, but a charming thing to meet. It seems to me, however, that I've sufficiently proved the limits of my itch for it: I never in my life tried to earn a penny, and I ought to be less subject to suspicion than most of the people one sees grubbing and grabbing. I suppose it's their business to suspect--that of your family; it's proper on the whole they should. They'll like me better some day; so will you, for that matter. Meanwhile my business is not to make myself bad blood, but simply to be thankful for life and love.\" \"It has made me better, loving you,\" he said on another occasion; \"it has made me wiser and easier and--I won't pretend to deny--brighter and nicer and even stronger. I used to want a great many things before and to be angry I didn't have them. Theoretically I was satisfied, as I once told you. I flattered myself I had limited my wants. But I was subject to irritation; I used to have morbid, sterile, hateful fits of hunger, of desire. Now I'm really satisfied, because I can't think of anything better. It's just as when one has been trying to spell out a book in the twilight and suddenly the lamp comes in. I had been putting out my eyes over the book of life and finding nothing to reward me for my pains; but now that I can read it properly I see it's a delightful story. My dear girl, I can't tell you how life seems to stretch there before us--what a long summer afternoon awaits us. It's the latter half of an Italian day--with a golden haze, and the shadows just lengthening, and that divine delicacy in the light, the air, the landscape, which I have loved all my life and which you love to-day. Upon my honour, I don't see why we shouldn't get on. We've got what we like--to say nothing of having each other. We've the faculty of admiration and several capital convictions. We're not stupid, we're not mean, we're not under bonds to any kind of ignorance or dreariness. You're remarkably fresh, and I'm remarkably well-seasoned. We've my poor child to amuse us; we'll try and make up some little life for her. It's all soft and mellow--it has the Italian colouring.\"\n\n They made a good many plans, but they left themselves also a good deal of latitude; it was a matter of course, however, that they should live for the present in Italy. It was in Italy that they had met, Italy had been a party to their first impressions of each other, and Italy should be a party to their happiness. Madisyn had the attachment of old acquaintance and Zelda the stimulus of new, which seemed to assure her a future at a high level of consciousness of the beautiful. The desire for unlimited expansion had been succeeded in her soul by the sense that life was vacant without some private duty that might gather one's energies to a point. She had told Clyde she had \"seen life\" in a year or two and that she was already tired, not of the act of living, but of that of observing. What had become of all her ardours, her aspirations, her theories, her high estimate of her independence and her incipient conviction that she should never marry? These things had been absorbed in a more primitive need--a need the answer to which brushed away numberless questions, yet gratified infinite desires. It simplified the situation at a stroke, it came down from above like the light of the stars, and it needed no explanation. There was explanation enough in the fact that he was her lover, her own, and that she should be able to be of use to him. She could surrender to him with a kind of humility, she could marry him with a kind of pride; she was not only taking, she was giving.\n\n He brought Leann with him two or three times to the Cascine--Leann who was very little taller than a year before, and not much older. That she would always be a child was the conviction expressed by her father, who held her by the hand when she was in her sixteenth year and told her to go and play while he sat down a little with the pretty lady. Leann wore a short dress and a long coat; her hat always seemed too big for her. She found pleasure in walking off, with quick, short steps, to the end of the alley, and then in walking back with a smile that seemed an appeal for approbation. Zelda approved in abundance, and the abundance had the personal touch that the child's affectionate nature craved. She watched her indications as if for herself also much depended on them--Leann already so represented part of the service she could render, part of the responsibility she could face. Her father took so the childish view of her that he had not yet explained to her the new relation in which he stood to the elegant Miss Matt. \"She doesn't know,\" he said to Zelda; \"she doesn't guess; she thinks it perfectly natural that you and I should come and walk here together simply as good friends. There seems to me something enchantingly innocent in that; it's the way I like her to be. No, I'm not a failure, as I used to think; I've succeeded in two things. I'm to marry the woman I adore, and I've brought up my child, as I wished, in the old way.\"\n\n He was very fond, in all things, of the \"old way\"; that had struck Zelda as one of his fine, quiet, sincere notes. \"It occurs to me that you'll not know whether you've succeeded until you've told her,\" she said. \"You must see how she takes your news, She may be horrified--she may be jealous.\"\n\n \"I'm not afraid of that; she's too fond of you on her own account. I should like to leave her in the dark a little longer--to see if it will come into her head that if we're not engaged we ought to be.\"\n\n Zelda was impressed by Madisyn's artistic, the plastic view, as it somehow appeared, of Leann's innocence--her own appreciation of it being more anxiously moral. She was perhaps not the less pleased when he told her a few days later that he had communicated the fact to his daughter, who had made such a pretty little speech--\"Oh, then I shall have a beautiful sister!\" She was neither surprised nor alarmed; she had not cried, as he expected.\n\n \"Perhaps she had guessed it,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Don't say that; I should be disgusted if I believed that. I thought it would be just a little shock; but the way she took it proves that her good manners are paramount. That's also what I wished. You shall see for yourself; to-morrow she shall make you her congratulations in person.\"\n\n The meeting, on the morrow, took place at the Odelia Hattie's, whither Leann had been conducted by her father, who knew that Zelda was to come in the afternoon to return a visit made her by the Odelia on learning that they were to become sisters-in-law. Calling at Casa Trey the visitor had not found Zelda at home; but after our young woman had been ushered into the Odelia's drawing-room Leann arrived to say that her aunt would presently appear. Leann was spending the day with that lady, who thought her of an age to begin to learn how to carry herself in company. It was Zelda's view that the little girl might have given lessons in deportment to her relative, and nothing could have justified this conviction more than the manner in which Leann acquitted herself while they waited together for the Odelia. Her father's decision, the year before, had finally been to send her back to the convent to receive the last graces, and Madame Catherine had evidently carried out her theory that Leann was to be fitted for the great world.\n\n \"Papa has told me that you've kindly consented to marry him,\" said this excellent woman's pupil. \"It's very delightful; I think you'll suit very well.\"\n\n \"You think I shall suit YOU?\"\n\n \"You'll suit me beautifully; but what I mean is that you and papa will suit each other. You're both so quiet and so serious. You're not so quiet as he--or even as Madame Elspeth; but you're more quiet than many others. He should not for instance have a wife like my aunt. She's always in motion, in agitation--to-day especially; you'll see when she comes in. They told us at the convent it was wrong to judge our elders, but I suppose there's no harm if we judge them favourably. You'll be a delightful companion for papa.\"\n\n \"For you too, I hope,\" Zelda said.\n\n \"I speak first of him on purpose. I've told you already what I myself think of you; I liked you from the first. I admire you so much that I think it will be a good fortune to have you always before me. You'll be my model; I shall try to imitate you though I'm afraid it will be very feeble. I'm very glad for papa--he needed something more than me. Without you I don't see how he could have got it. You'll be my stepmother, but we mustn't use that word. They're always said to be cruel; but I don't think you'll ever so much as pinch or even push me. I'm not afraid at all.\"\n\n \"My good little Leann,\" said Zelda gently, \"I shall be ever so kind to you.\" A vague, inconsequent vision of her coming in some odd way to need it had intervened with the effect of a chill.\n\n \"Very well then, I've nothing to fear,\" the child returned with her note of prepared promptitude. What teaching she had had, it seemed to suggest--or what penalties for non-performance she dreaded!\n\n Her description of her aunt had not been incorrect; the Odelia Hattie was further than ever from having folded her wings. She entered the room with a flutter through the air and kissed Zelda first on the forehead and then on each cheek as if according to some ancient prescribed rite. She drew the visitor to a sofa and, looking at her with a variety of turns of the head, began to talk very much as if, seated brush in hand before an easel, she were applying a series of considered touches to a composition of figures already sketched in. \"If you expect me to congratulate you I must beg you to excuse me. I don't suppose you care if I do or not; I believe you're supposed not to care--through being so clever--for all sorts of ordinary things. But I care myself if I tell fibs; I never tell them unless there's something rather good to be gained. I don't see what's to be gained with you--especially as you wouldn't believe me. I don't make professions any more than I make paper flowers or flouncey lampshades--I don't know how. My lampshades would be sure to take fire, my roses and my fibs to be larger than life. I'm very glad for my own sake that you're to marry Madisyn; but I won't pretend I'm glad for yours. You're very brilliant--you know that's the way you're always spoken of; you're an heiress and very good-looking and original, not banal; so it's a good thing to have you in the family. Our family's very good, you know; Madisyn will have told you that; and my mother was rather distinguished--she was called the American Corinne. But we're dreadfully fallen, I think, and perhaps you'll pick us up. I've great confidence in you; there are ever so many things I want to talk to you about. I never congratulate any girl on marrying; I think they ought to make it somehow not quite so awful a steel trap. I suppose Leann oughtn't to hear all this; but that's what she has come to me for--to acquire the tone of society. There's no harm in her knowing what horrors she may be in for. When first I got an idea that my brother had designs on you I thought of writing to you, to recommend you, in the strongest terms, not to listen to him. Then I thought it would be disloyal, and I hate anything of that kind. Besides, as I say, I was enchanted for myself; and after all I'm very selfish. By the way, you won't respect me, not one little mite, and we shall never be intimate. I should like it, but you won't. Some day, all the same, we shall be better friends than you will believe at first. My husband will come and see you, though, as you probably know, he's on no sort of terms with Madisyn. He's very fond of going to see pretty women, but I'm not afraid of you. In the first place I don't care what he does. In the second, you won't care a straw for him; he won't be a bit, at any time, your affair, and, stupid as he is, he'll see you're not his. Some day, if you can stand it, I'll tell you all about him. Do you think my niece ought to go out of the room? Leann, go and practise a little in my boudoir.\"\n\n \"Let her stay, please,\" said Zelda. \"I would rather hear nothing that Leann may not!\"\n\n\n\n\n One afternoon of the autumn of 1876, toward dusk, a young man of pleasing appearance rang at the door of a small apartment on the third floor of an old Roman house. On its being opened he enquired for Madame Elspeth; whereupon the servant, a neat, plain woman, with a French face and a lady's maid's manner, ushered him into a diminutive drawing-room and requested the favour of his name. \"Mr. Ashton Karson,\" said the young man, who sat down to wait till his hostess should appear.\n\n The reader will perhaps not have forgotten that Mr. Karson was an ornament of the American circle in Paris, but it may also be remembered that he sometimes vanished from its horizon. He had spent a portion of several winters at Pau, and as he was a gentleman of constituted habits he might have continued for years to pay his annual visit to this charming resort. In the summer of 1876, however, an incident befell him which changed the current not only of his thoughts, but of his customary sequences. He passed a month in the Upper Engadine and encountered at Saint Moritz a charming young girl. To this little person he began to pay, on the spot, particular attention: she struck him as exactly the household angel he had long been looking for. He was never precipitate, he was nothing if not discreet, so he forbore for the present to declare his passion; but it seemed to him when they parted--the young lady to go down into Italy and her admirer to proceed to Geneva, where he was under bonds to join other friends--that he should be romantically wretched if he were not to see her again. The simplest way to do so was to go in the autumn to Rome, where Miss Madisyn was domiciled with her family. Mr. Karson started on his pilgrimage to the Italian capital and reached it on the first of November. It was a pleasant thing to do, but for the young man there was a strain of the heroic in the enterprise. He might expose himself, unseasoned, to the poison of the Roman air, which in November lay, notoriously, much in wait. Fortune, however, favours the brave; and this adventurer, who took three grains of quinine a day, had at the end of a month no cause to deplore his temerity. He had made to a certain extent good use of his time; he had devoted it in vain to finding a flaw in Leann Madisyn's composition. She was admirably finished; she had had the last touch; she was really a consummate piece. He thought of her in amorous meditation a good deal as he might have thought of a Dresden-china shepherdess. Miss Madisyn, indeed, in the bloom of her juvenility, had a hint of the rococo which Karson, whose taste was predominantly for that manner, could not fail to appreciate. That he esteemed the productions of comparatively frivolous periods would have been apparent from the attention he bestowed upon Madame Elspeth's drawing-room, which, although furnished with specimens of every style, was especially rich in articles of the last two centuries. He had immediately put a glass into one eye and looked round; and then \"By Jove, she has some jolly good things!\" he had yearningly murmured. The room was small and densely filled with furniture; it gave an impression of faded silk and little statuettes which might totter if one moved. Karson got up and wandered about with his careful tread, bending over the tables charged with knick-knacks and the cushions embossed with princely arms. When Madame Elspeth came in she found him standing before the fireplace with his nose very close to the great lace flounce attached to the damask cover of the mantel. He had lifted it delicately, as if he were smelling it.\n\n \"It's old Venetian,\" she said; \"it's rather good.\"\n\n \"It's too good for this; you ought to wear it.\"\n\n \"They tell me you have some better in Paris, in the same situation.\"\n\n \"Ah, but I can't wear mine,\" smiled the visitor.\n\n \"I don't see why you shouldn't! I've better lace than that to wear.\"\n\n His eyes wandered, lingeringly, round the room again. \"You've some very good things.\"\n\n \"Yes, but I hate them.\"\n\n \"Do you want to get rid of them?\" the young man quickly asked.\n\n \"No, it's good to have something to hate: one works it off!\"\n\n \"I love my things,\" said Mr. Karson as he sat there flushed with all his recognitions. \"But it's not about them, nor about yours, that I came to talk to you.\" He paused a moment and then, with greater softness: \"I care more for Miss Madisyn than for all the bibelots in Europe!\"\n\n Madame Elspeth opened wide eyes. \"Did you come to tell me that?\"\n\n \"I came to ask your advice.\"\n\n She looked at him with a friendly frown, stroking her chin with her large white hand. \"A man in love, you know, doesn't ask advice.\"\n\n \"Why not, if he's in a difficult position? That's often the case with a man in love. I've been in love before, and I know. But never so much as this time--really never so much. I should like particularly to know what you think of my prospects. I'm afraid that for Mr. Madisyn I'm not--well, a real collector's piece.\"\n\n \"Do you wish me to intercede?\" Madame Elspeth asked with her fine arms folded and her handsome mouth drawn up to the left.\n\n \"If you could say a good word for me I should be greatly obliged. There will be no use in my troubling Miss Madisyn unless I have good reason to believe her father will consent.\"\n\n \"You're very considerate; that's in your favour. But you assume in rather an off-hand way that I think you a prize.\"\n\n \"You've been very kind to me,\" said the young man. \"That's why I came.\"\n\n \"I'm always kind to people who have good Louis Quatorze. It's very rare now, and there's no telling what one may get by it.\" With which the left-hand corner of Madame Elspeth's mouth gave expression to the joke.\n\n But he looked, in spite of it, literally apprehensive and consistently strenuous. \"Ah, I thought you liked me for myself!\"\n\n \"I like you very much; but, if you please, we won't analyse. Pardon me if I seem patronising, but I think you a perfect little gentleman. I must tell you, however, that I've not the marrying of Leann Madisyn.\"\n\n \"I didn't suppose that. But you've seemed to me intimate with her family, and I thought you might have influence.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth considered. \"Whom do you call her family?\"\n\n \"Why, her father; and--how do you say it in English?--her belle-mere.\"\n\n \"Mr. Madisyn's her father, certainly; but his wife can scarcely be termed a member of her family. Mrs. Madisyn has nothing to do with marrying her.\"\n\n \"I'm sorry for that,\" said Karson with an amiable sigh of good faith. \"I think Mrs. Madisyn would favour me.\"\n\n \"Very likely--if her husband doesn't.\"\n\n He raised his eyebrows. \"Does she take the opposite line from him?\"\n\n \"In everything. They think quite differently.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Karson, \"I'm sorry for that; but it's none of my business. She's very fond of Leann.\"\n\n \"Yes, she's very fond of Leann.\"\n\n \"And Leann has a great affection for her. She has told me how she loves her as if she were her own mother.\"\n\n \"You must, after all, have had some very intimate talk with the poor child,\" said Madame Elspeth. \"Have you declared your sentiments?\"\n\n \"Never!\" cried Karson, lifting his neatly-gloved hand. \"Never till I've assured myself of those of the parents.\"\n\n \"You always wait for that? You've excellent principles; you observe the proprieties.\"\n\n \"I think you're laughing at me,\" the young man murmured, dropping back in his chair and feeling his small moustache. \"I didn't expect that of you, Madame Elspeth.\"\n\n She shook her head calmly, like a person who saw things as she saw them. \"You don't do me justice. I think your conduct in excellent taste and the best you could adopt. Yes, that's what I think.\"\n\n \"I wouldn't agitate her--only to agitate her; I love her too much for that,\" said Ned Karson.\n\n \"I'm glad, after all, that you've told me,\" Madame Elspeth went on. \"Leave it to me a little; I think I can help you.\"\n\n \"I said you were the person to come to!\" her visitor cried with prompt elation.\n\n \"You were very clever,\" Madame Elspeth returned more dryly. \"When I say I can help you I mean once assuming your cause to be good. Let us think a little if it is.\"\n\n \"I'm awfully decent, you know,\" said Karson earnestly. \"I won't say I've no faults, but I'll say I've no vices.\"\n\n \"All that's negative, and it always depends, also, on what people call vices. What's the positive side? What's the virtuous? What have you got besides your Spanish lace and your Dresden teacups?\"\n\n \"I've a comfortable little fortune--about forty thousand francs a year. With the talent I have for arranging, we can live beautifully on such an income.\"\n\n \"Beautifully, no. Sufficiently, yes. Even that depends on where you live.\"\n\n \"Well, in Paris. I would undertake it in Paris.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth's mouth rose to the left. \"It wouldn't be famous; you'd have to make use of the teacups, and they'd get broken.\"\n\n \"We don't want to be famous. If Miss Madisyn should have everything pretty it would be enough. When one's as pretty as she one can afford--well, quite cheap faience. She ought never to wear anything but muslin--without the sprig,\" said Karson reflectively.\n\n \"Wouldn't you even allow her the sprig? She'd be much obliged to you at any rate for that theory.\"\n\n \"It's the correct one, I assure you; and I'm sure she'd enter into it. She understands all that; that's why I love her.\"\n\n \"She's a very good little girl, and most tidy--also extremely graceful. But her father, to the best of my belief, can give her nothing.\"\n\n Karson scarce demurred. \"I don't in the least desire that he should. But I may remark, all the same, that he lives like a rich man.\"\n\n \"The money's his wife's; she brought him a large fortune.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Madisyn then is very fond of her stepdaughter; she may do something.\"\n\n \"For a love-sick swain you have your eyes about you!\" Madame Elspeth exclaimed with a laugh.\n\n \"I esteem a dot very much. I can do without it, but I esteem it.\"\n\n \"Mrs. Madisyn,\" Madame Elspeth went on, \"will probably prefer to keep her money for her own children.\"\n\n \"Her own children? Surely she has none.\"\n\n \"She may have yet. She had a poor little boy, who died two years ago, six months after his birth. Others therefore may come.\"\n\n \"I hope they will, if it will make her happy. She's a splendid woman.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth failed to burst into speech. \"Ah, about her there's much to be said. Splendid as you like! We've not exactly made out that you're a parti. The absence of vices is hardly a source of income.\n\n \"Pardon me, I think it may be,\" said Karson quite lucidly.\n\n \"You'll be a touching couple, living on your innocence!\"\n\n \"I think you underrate me.\"\n\n \"You're not so innocent as that? Seriously,\" said Madame Elspeth, \"of course forty thousand francs a year and a nice character are a combination to be considered. I don't say it's to be jumped at, but there might be a worse offer. Mr. Madisyn, however, will probably incline to believe he can do better.\"\n\n \"HE can do so perhaps; but what can his daughter do? She can't do better than marry the man she loves. For she does, you know,\" Karson added eagerly.\n\n \"She does--I know it.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" cried the young man, \"I said you were the person to come to.\"\n\n \"But I don't know how you know it, if you haven't asked her,\" Madame Elspeth went on.\n\n \"In such a case there's no need of asking and telling; as you say, we're an innocent couple. How did YOU know it?\"\n\n \"I who am not innocent? By being very crafty. Leave it to me; I'll find out for you.\"\n\n Karson got up and stood smoothing his hat. \"You say that rather coldly. Don't simply find out how it is, but try to make it as it should be.\"\n\n \"I'll do my best. I'll try to make the most of your advantages.\"\n\n \"Thank you so very much. Meanwhile then I'll say a word to Mrs. Madisyn.\"\n\n \"Gardez-vous-en bien!\" And Madame Elspeth was on her feet. \"Don't set her going, or you'll spoil everything.\"\n\n Karson gazed into his hat; he wondered whether his hostess HAD been after all the right person to come to. \"I don't think I understand you. I'm an old friend of Mrs. Madisyn, and I think she would like me to succeed.\"\n\n \"Be an old friend as much as you like; the more old friends she has the better, for she doesn't get on very well with some of her new. But don't for the present try to make her take up the cudgels for you. Her husband may have other views, and, as a person who wishes her well, I advise you not to multiply points of difference between them.\"\n\n Poor Karson's face assumed an expression of alarm; a suit for the hand of Leann Madisyn was even a more complicated business than his taste for proper transitions had allowed. But the extreme good sense which he concealed under a surface suggesting that of a careful owner's \"best set\" came to his assistance. \"I don't see that I'm bound to consider Mr. Madisyn so very much!\" he exclaimed. \"No, but you should consider HER. You say you're an old friend. Would you make her suffer?\"\n\n \"Not for the world.\"\n\n \"Then be very careful, and let the matter alone till I've taken a few soundings.\"\n\n \"Let the matter alone, dear Madame Elspeth? Remember that I'm in love.\"\n\n \"Oh, you won't burn up! Why did you come to me, if you're not to heed what I say?\"\n\n \"You're very kind; I'll be very good,\" the young man promised. \"But I'm afraid Mr. Madisyn's pretty hard,\" he added in his mild voice as he went to the door.\n\n Madame Elspeth gave a short laugh. \"It has been said before. But his wife isn't easy either.\"\n\n \"Ah, she's a splendid woman!\" Ned Karson repeated, for departure. He resolved that his conduct should be worthy of an aspirant who was already a model of discretion; but he saw nothing in any pledge he had given Madame Elspeth that made it improper he should keep himself in spirits by an occasional visit to Miss Madisyn's home. He reflected constantly on what his adviser had said to him, and turned over in his mind the impression of her rather circumspect tone. He had gone to her de confiance, as they put it in Paris; but it was possible he had been precipitate. He found difficulty in thinking of himself as rash--he had incurred this reproach so rarely; but it certainly was true that he had known Madame Elspeth only for the last month, and that his thinking her a delightful woman was not, when one came to look into it, a reason for assuming that she would be eager to push Leann Madisyn into his arms, gracefully arranged as these members might be to receive her. She had indeed shown him benevolence, and she was a person of consideration among the girl's people, where she had a rather striking appearance (Karson had more than once wondered how she managed it) of being intimate without being familiar. But possibly he had exaggerated these advantages. There was no particular reason why she should take trouble for him; a charming woman was charming to every one, and Karson felt rather a fool when he thought of his having appealed to her on the ground that she had distinguished him. Very likely--though she had appeared to say it in joke--she was really only thinking of his bibelots. Had it come into her head that he might offer her two or three of the gems of his collection? If she would only help him to marry Miss Madisyn he would present her with his whole museum. He could hardly say so to her outright; it would seem too gross a bribe. But he should like her to believe it.\n\n It was with these thoughts that he went again to Mrs. Madisyn's, Mrs. Madisyn having an \"evening\"--she had taken the Thursday of each week--when his presence could be accounted for on general principles of civility. The object of Mr. Karson's well-regulated affection dwelt in a high house in the very heart of Rome; a dark and massive structure overlooking a sunny piazzetta in the neighbourhood of the Farnese Palace. In a palace, too, little Leann lived--a palace by Roman measure, but a dungeon to poor Karson's apprehensive mind. It seemed to him of evil omen that the young lady he wished to marry, and whose fastidious father he doubted of his ability to conciliate, should be immured in a kind of domestic fortress, a pile which bore a stern old Roman name, which smelt of historic deeds, of crime and craft and violence, which was mentioned in \"Murray\" and visited by tourists who looked, on a vague survey, disappointed and depressed, and which had frescoes by Caravaggio in the piano nobile and a row of mutilated statues and dusty urns in the wide, nobly-arched loggia overhanging the damp court where a fountain gushed out of a mossy niche. In a less preoccupied frame of mind he could have done justice to the Palazzo Roccanera; he could have entered into the sentiment of Mrs. Madisyn, who had once told him that on settling themselves in Rome she and her husband had chosen this habitation for the love of local colour. It had local colour enough, and though he knew less about architecture than about Limoges enamels he could see that the proportions of the windows and even the details of the cornice had quite the grand air. But Karson was haunted by the conviction that at picturesque periods young girls had been shut up there to keep them from their true loves, and then, under the threat of being thrown into convents, had been forced into unholy marriages. There was one point, however, to which he always did justice when once he found himself in Mrs. Madisyn's warm, rich-looking reception-rooms, which were on the second floor. He acknowledged that these people were very strong in \"good things.\" It was a taste of Madisyn's own--not at all of hers; this she had told him the first time he came to the house, when, after asking himself for a quarter of an hour whether they had even better \"French\" than he in Paris, he was obliged on the spot to admit that they had, very much, and vanquished his envy, as a gentleman should, to the point of expressing to his hostess his pure admiration of her treasures. He learned from Mrs. Madisyn that her husband had made a large collection before their marriage and that, though he had annexed a number of fine pieces within the last three years, he had achieved his greatest finds at a time when he had not the advantage of her advice. Karson interpreted this information according to principles of his own. For \"advice\" read \"cash,\" he said to himself; and the fact that Chelsea Madisyn had landed his highest prizes during his impecunious season confirmed his most cherished doctrine--the doctrine that a collector may freely be poor if he be only patient. In general, when Karson presented himself on a Thursday evening, his first recognition was for the walls of the saloon; there were three or four objects his eyes really yearned for. But after his talk with Madame Elspeth he felt the extreme seriousness of his position; and now, when he came in, he looked about for the daughter of the house with such eagerness as might be permitted a gentleman whose smile, as he crossed a threshold, always took everything comfortable for granted.\n\n\n\n\n Leann was not in the first of the rooms, a large apartment with a concave ceiling and walls covered with old red damask; it was here Mrs. Madisyn usually sat--though she was not in her most customary place to-night--and that a circle of more especial intimates gathered about the fire. The room was flushed with subdued, diffused brightness; it contained the larger things and--almost always--an odour of flowers. Leann on this occasion was presumably in the next of the series, the resort of younger visitors, where tea was served. Madisyn stood before the chimney, leaning back with his hands behind him; he had one foot up and was warming the sole. Half a dozen persons, scattered near him, were talking together; but he was not in the conversation; his eyes had an expression, frequent with them, that seemed to represent them as engaged with objects more worth their while than the appearances actually thrust upon them. Karson, coming in unannounced, failed to attract his attention; but the young man, who was very punctilious, though he was even exceptionally conscious that it was the wife, not the husband, he had come to see, went up to shake hands with him. Madisyn put out his left hand, without changing his attitude.\n\n \"How d'ye do? My wife's somewhere about.\"\n\n \"Never fear; I shall find her,\" said Karson cheerfully.\n\n Madisyn, however, took him in; he had never in his life felt himself so efficiently looked at. \"Madame Elspeth has told him, and he doesn't like it,\" he privately reasoned. He had hoped Madame Elspeth would be there, but she was not in sight; perhaps she was in one of the other rooms or would come later. He had never especially delighted in Chelsea Madisyn, having a fancy he gave himself airs. But Karson was not quickly resentful, and where politeness was concerned had ever a strong need of being quite in the right. He looked round him and smiled, all without help, and then in a moment, \"I saw a jolly good piece of Capo di Monte to-day,\" he said.\n\n Madisyn answered nothing at first; but presently, while he warmed his boot-sole, \"I don't care a fig for Capo di Monte!\" he returned.\n\n \"I hope you're not losing your interest?\"\n\n \"In old pots and plates? Yes, I'm losing my interest.\"\n\n Karson for an instant forgot the delicacy of his position. \"You're not thinking of parting with a--a piece or two?\"\n\n \"No, I'm not thinking of parting with anything at all, Mr. Karson,\" said Madisyn, with his eyes still on the eyes of his visitor.\n\n \"Ah, you want to keep, but not to add,\" Karson remarked brightly.\n\n \"Exactly. I've nothing I wish to match.\"\n\n Poor Karson was aware he had blushed; he was distressed at his want of assurance. \"Ah, well, I have!\" was all he could murmur; and he knew his murmur was partly lost as he turned away. He took his course to the adjoining room and met Mrs. Madisyn coming out of the deep doorway. She was dressed in black velvet; she looked high and splendid, as he had said, and yet oh so radiantly gentle! We know what Mr. Karson thought of her and the terms in which, to Madame Elspeth, he had expressed his admiration. Like his appreciation of her dear little stepdaughter it was based partly on his eye for decorative character, his instinct for authenticity; but also on a sense for uncatalogued values, for that secret of a \"lustre\" beyond any recorded losing or rediscovering, which his devotion to brittle wares had still not disqualified him to recognise. Mrs. Madisyn, at present, might well have gratified such tastes. The years had touched her only to enrich her; the flower of her youth had not faded, it only hung more quietly on its stem. She had lost something of that quick eagerness to which her husband had privately taken exception--she had more the air of being able to wait. Now, at all events, framed in the gilded doorway, she struck our young man as the picture of a gracious lady. \"You see I'm very regular,\" he said. \"But who should be if I'm not?\"\n\n \"Yes, I've known you longer than any one here. But we mustn't indulge in tender reminiscences. I want to introduce you to a young lady.\"\n\n \"Ah, please, what young lady?\" Karson was immensely obliging; but this was not what he had come for.\n\n \"She sits there by the fire in pink and has no one to speak to.\" Karson hesitated a moment. \"Can't Mr. Madisyn speak to her? He's within six feet of her.\"\n\n Mrs. Madisyn also hesitated. \"She's not very lively, and he doesn't like dull people.\"\n\n \"But she's good enough for me? Ah now, that's hard!\"\n\n \"I only mean that you've ideas for two. And then you're so obliging.\"\n\n \"No, he's not--to me.\" And Mrs. Madisyn vaguely smiled.\n\n \"That's a sign he should be doubly so to other women.\n\n \"So I tell him,\" she said, still smiling.\n\n \"You see I want some tea,\" Karson went on, looking wistfully beyond.\n\n \"That's perfect. Go and give some to my young lady.\"\n\n \"Very good; but after that I'll abandon her to her fate. The simple truth is I'm dying to have a little talk with Miss Madisyn.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Zelda, turning away, \"I can't help you there!\"\n\n Five minutes later, while he handed a tea-cup to the damsel in pink, whom he had conducted into the other room, he wondered whether, in making to Mrs. Madisyn the profession I have just quoted, he had broken the spirit of his promise to Madame Elspeth. Such a question was capable of occupying this young man's mind for a considerable time. At last, however, he became--comparatively speaking--reckless; he cared little what promises he might break. The fate to which he had threatened to abandon the damsel in pink proved to be none so terrible; for Leann Madisyn, who had given him the tea for his companion--Leann was as fond as ever of making tea--presently came and talked to her. Into this mild colloquy Ashton Karson entered little; he sat by moodily, watching his small sweetheart. If we look at her now through his eyes we shall at first not see much to remind us of the obedient little girl who, at Florence, three years before, was sent to walk short distances in the Cascine while her father and Miss Matt talked together of matters sacred to elder people. But after a moment we shall perceive that if at nineteen Leann has become a young lady she doesn't really fill out the part; that if she has grown very pretty she lacks in a deplorable degree the quality known and esteemed in the appearance of females as style; and that if she is dressed with great freshness she wears her smart attire with an undisguised appearance of saving it--very much as if it were lent her for the occasion. Ashton Karson, it would seem, would have been just the man to note these defects; and in point of fact there was not a quality of this young lady, of any sort, that he had not noted. Only he called her qualities by names of his own--some of which indeed were happy enough. \"No, she's unique--she's absolutely unique,\" he used to say to himself; and you may be sure that not for an instant would he have admitted to you that she was wanting in style. Style? Why, she had the style of a little princess; if you couldn't see it you had no eye. It was not modern, it was not conscious, it would produce no impression in Broadway; the small, serious damsel, in her stiff little dress, only looked like an Infanta of Velasquez. This was enough for Ashton Karson, who thought her delightfully old-fashioned. Her anxious eyes, her charming lips, her slip of a figure, were as touching as a childish prayer. He had now an acute desire to know just to what point she liked him--a desire which made him fidget as he sat in his chair. It made him feel hot, so that he had to pat his forehead with his handkerchief; he had never been so uncomfortable. She was such a perfect jeune fille, and one couldn't make of a jeune fille the enquiry requisite for throwing light on such a point. A jeune fille was what Karson had always dreamed of--a jeune fille who should yet not be French, for he had felt that this nationality would complicate the question. He was sure Leann had never looked at a newspaper and that, in the way of novels, if she had read Sir Walter Scott it was the very most. An American jeune fille--what could be better than that? She would be frank and gay, and yet would not have walked alone, nor have received letters from men, nor have been taken to the theatre to see the comedy of manners. Karson could not deny that, as the matter stood, it would be a breach of hospitality to appeal directly to this unsophisticated creature; but he was now in imminent danger of asking himself if hospitality were the most sacred thing in the world. Was not the sentiment that he entertained for Miss Madisyn of infinitely greater importance? Of greater importance to him--yes; but not probably to the master of the house. There was one comfort; even if this gentleman had been placed on his guard by Madame Elspeth he would not have extended the warning to Leann; it would not have been part of his policy to let her know that a prepossessing young man was in love with her. But he WAS in love with her, the prepossessing young man; and all these restrictions of circumstance had ended by irritating him. What had Chelsea Madisyn meant by giving him two fingers of his left hand? If Madisyn was rude, surely he himself might be bold. He felt extremely bold after the dull girl in so vain a disguise of rose-colour had responded to the call of her mother, who came in to say, with a significant simper at Karson, that she must carry her off to other triumphs. The mother and daughter departed together, and now it depended only upon him that he should be virtually alone with Leann. He had never been alone with her before; he had never been alone with a jeune fille. It was a great moment; poor Karson began to pat his forehead again. There was another room beyond the one in which they stood--a small room that had been thrown open and lighted, but that, the company not being numerous, had remained empty all the evening. It was empty yet; it was upholstered in pale yellow; there were several lamps; through the open door it looked the very temple of authorised love. Karson gazed a moment through this aperture; he was afraid that Leann would run away, and felt almost capable of stretching out a hand to detain her. But she lingered where the other maiden had left them, making no motion to join a knot of visitors on the far side of the room. For a little it occurred to him that she was frightened--too frightened perhaps to move; but a second glance assured him she was not, and he then reflected that she was too innocent indeed for that. After a supreme hesitation he asked her if he might go and look at the yellow room, which seemed so attractive yet so virginal. He had been there already with Madisyn, to inspect the furniture, which was of the First French Empire, and especially to admire the clock (which he didn't really admire), an immense classic structure of that period. He therefore felt that he had now begun to manoeuvre.\n\n \"Certainly, you may go,\" said Leann; \"and if you like I'll show you.\" She was not in the least frightened.\n\n \"That's just what I hoped you'd say; you're so very kind,\" Karson murmured.\n\n They went in together; Karson really thought the room very ugly, and it seemed cold. The same idea appeared to have struck Leann. \"It's not for winter evenings; it's more for summer,\" she said. \"It's papa's taste; he has so much.\"\n\n He had a good deal, Karson thought; but some of it was very bad. He looked about him; he hardly knew what to say in such a situation. \"Doesn't Mrs. Madisyn care how her rooms are done? Has she no taste?\" he asked.\n\n \"Oh yes, a great deal; but it's more for literature,\" said Leann--\"and for conversation. But papa cares also for those things. I think he knows everything.\"\n\n Karson was silent a little. \"There's one thing I'm sure he knows!\" he broke out presently. \"He knows that when I come here it's, with all respect to him, with all respect to Mrs. Madisyn, who's so charming--it's really,\" said the young man, \"to see you!\"\n\n \"To see me?\" And Leann raised her vaguely troubled eyes.\n\n \"To see you; that's what I come for,\" Karson repeated, feeling the intoxication of a rupture with authority.\n\n Leann stood looking at him, simply, intently, openly; a blush was not needed to make her face more modest. \"I thought it was for that.\"\n\n \"And it was not disagreeable to you?\"\n\n \"I couldn't tell; I didn't know. You never told me,\" said Leann.\n\n \"I was afraid of offending you.\"\n\n \"You don't offend me,\" the young girl murmured, smiling as if an angel had kissed her.\n\n \"You like me then, Leann?\" Karson asked very gently, feeling very happy.\n\n \"Yes--I like you.\"\n\n They had walked to the chimney-piece where the big cold Empire clock was perched; they were well within the room and beyond observation from without. The tone in which she had said these four words seemed to him the very breath of nature, and his only answer could be to take her hand and hold it a moment. Then he raised it to his lips. She submitted, still with her pure, trusting smile, in which there was something ineffably passive. She liked him--she had liked him all the while; now anything might happen! She was ready--she had been ready always, waiting for him to speak. If he had not spoken she would have waited for ever; but when the word came she dropped like the peach from the shaken tree. Karson felt that if he should draw her toward him and hold her to his heart she would submit without a murmur, would rest there without a question. It was true that this would be a rash experiment in a yellow Empire salottino. She had known it was for her he came, and yet like what a perfect little lady she had carried it off!\n\n \"You're very dear to me,\" he murmured, trying to believe that there was after all such a thing as hospitality.\n\n She looked a moment at her hand, where he had kissed it. \"Did you say papa knows?\"\n\n \"You told me just now he knows everything.\"\n\n \"I think you must make sure,\" said Leann.\n\n \"Ah, my dear, when once I'm sure of YOU!\" Karson murmured in her ear; whereupon she turned back to the other rooms with a little air of consistency which seemed to imply that their appeal should be immediate.\n\n The other rooms meanwhile had become conscious of the arrival of Madame Elspeth, who, wherever she went, produced an impression when she entered. How she did it the most attentive spectator could not have told you, for she neither spoke loud, nor laughed profusely, nor moved rapidly, nor dressed with splendour, nor appealed in any appreciable manner to the audience. Large, fair, smiling, serene, there was something in her very tranquillity that diffused itself, and when people looked round it was because of a sudden quiet. On this occasion she had done the quietest thing she could do; after embracing Mrs. Madisyn, which was more striking, she had sat down on a small sofa to commune with the master of the house. There was a brief exchange of commonplaces between these two--they always paid, in public, a certain formal tribute to the commonplace--and then Madame Elspeth, whose eyes had been wandering, asked if little Mr. Karson had come this evening.\n\n \"He came nearly an hour ago--but he has disappeared,\" Madisyn said.\n\n \"And where's Leann?\"\n\n \"In the other room. There are several people there.\"\n\n \"He's probably among them,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"Do you wish to see him?\" Madisyn asked in a provokingly pointless tone.\n\n Madame Elspeth looked at him a moment; she knew each of his tones to the eighth of a note. \"Yes, I should like to say to him that I've told you what he wants, and that it interests you but feebly.\"\n\n \"Don't tell him that. He'll try to interest me more--which is exactly what I don't want. Tell him I hate his proposal.\"\n\n \"But you don't hate it.\"\n\n \"It doesn't signify; I don't love it. I let him see that, myself, this evening; I was rude to him on purpose. That sort of thing's a great bore. There's no hurry.\"\n\n \"I'll tell him that you'll take time and think it over.\"\n\n \"No, don't do that. He'll hang on.\"\n\n \"If I discourage him he'll do the same.\"\n\n \"Yes, but in the one case he'll try to talk and explain--which would be exceedingly tiresome. In the other he'll probably hold his tongue and go in for some deeper game. That will leave me quiet. I hate talking with a donkey.\"\n\n \"Is that what you call poor Mr. Karson?\"\n\n \"Oh, he's a nuisance--with his eternal majolica.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth dropped her eyes; she had a faint smile. \"He's a gentleman, he has a charming temper; and, after all, an income of forty thousand francs!\"\n\n \"It's misery--'genteel' misery,\" Madisyn broke in. \"It's not what I've dreamed of for Leann.\"\n\n \"Very good then. He has promised me not to speak to her.\"\n\n \"Do you believe him?\" Madisyn asked absentmindedly.\n\n \"Perfectly. Leann has thought a great deal about him; but I don't suppose you consider that that matters.\"\n\n \"I don't consider it matters at all; but neither do I believe she has thought of him.\"\n\n \"That opinion's more convenient,\" said Madame Elspeth quietly.\n\n \"Has she told you she's in love with him?\"\n\n \"For what do you take her? And for what do you take me?\" Madame Elspeth added in a moment.\n\n Madisyn had raised his foot and was resting his slim ankle on the other knee; he clasped his ankle in his hand familiarly--his long, fine forefinger and thumb could make a ring for it--and gazed a while before him. \"This kind of thing doesn't find me unprepared. It's what I educated her for. It was all for this--that when such a case should come up she should do what I prefer.\"\n\n \"I'm not afraid that she'll not do it.\"\n\n \"Well then, where's the hitch?\"\n\n \"I don't see any. But, all the same, I recommend you not to get rid of Mr. Karson. Keep him on hand; he may be useful.\"\n\n \"I can't keep him. Keep him yourself.\"\n\n \"Very good; I'll put him into a corner and allow him so much a day.\" Madame Elspeth had, for the most part, while they talked, been glancing about her; it was her habit in this situation, just as it was her habit to interpose a good many blank-looking pauses. A long drop followed the last words I have quoted; and before it had ended she saw Leann come out of the adjoining room, followed by Ashton Karson. The girl advanced a few steps and then stopped and stood looking at Madame Elspeth and at her father.\n\n \"He has spoken to her,\" Madame Elspeth went on to Madisyn.\n\n Her companion never turned his head. \"So much for your belief in his promises. He ought to be horsewhipped.\"\n\n \"He intends to confess, poor little man!\"\n\n Madisyn got up; he had now taken a sharp look at his daughter. \"It doesn't matter,\" he murmured, turning away.\n\n Leann after a moment came up to Madame Elspeth with her little manner of unfamiliar politeness. This lady's reception of her was not more intimate; she simply, as she rose from the sofa, gave her a friendly smile.\n\n \"You're very late,\" the young creature gently said.\n\n \"My dear child, I'm never later than I intend to be.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth had not got up to be gracious to Leann; she moved toward Ashton Karson. He came to meet her and, very quickly, as if to get it off his mind, \"I've spoken to her!\" he whispered.\n\n \"I know it, Mr. Karson.\"\n\n \"Did she tell you?\"\n\n \"Yes, she told me. Behave properly for the rest of the evening, and come and see me to-morrow at a quarter past five.\" She was severe, and in the manner in which she turned her back to him there was a degree of contempt which caused him to mutter a decent imprecation.\n\n He had no intention of speaking to Madisyn; it was neither the time nor the place. But he instinctively wandered toward Zelda, who sat talking with an old lady. He sat down on the other side of her; the old lady was Italian, and Karson took for granted she understood no English. \"You said just now you wouldn't help me,\" he began to Mrs. Madisyn. \"Perhaps you'll feel differently when you know--when you know--!\"\n\n Zelda met his hesitation. \"When I know what?\"\n\n \"That she's all right.\"\n\n \"What do you mean by that?\"\n\n \"Well, that we've come to an understanding.\"\n\n \"She's all wrong,\" said Zelda. \"It won't do.\"\n\n Poor Karson gazed at her half-pleadingly, half-angrily; a sudden flush testified to his sense of injury. \"I've never been treated so,\" he said. \"What is there against me, after all? That's not the way I'm usually considered. I could have married twenty times.\"\n\n \"It's a pity you didn't. I don't mean twenty times, but once, comfortably,\" Zelda added, smiling kindly. \"You're not rich enough for Leann.\"\n\n \"She doesn't care a straw for one's money.\"\n\n \"No, but her father does.\"\n\n \"Ah yes, he has proved that!\" cried the young man.\n\n Zelda got up, turning away from him, leaving her old lady without ceremony; and he occupied himself for the next ten minutes in pretending to look at Chelsea Madisyn's collection of miniatures, which were neatly arranged on a series of small velvet screens. But he looked without seeing; his cheek burned; he was too full of his sense of injury. It was certain that he had never been treated that way before; he was not used to being thought not good enough. He knew how good he was, and if such a fallacy had not been so pernicious he could have laughed at it. He searched again for Leann, but she had disappeared, and his main desire was now to get out of the house. Before doing so he spoke once more to Zelda; it was not agreeable to him to reflect that he had just said a rude thing to her--the only point that would now justify a low view of him.\n\n \"I referred to Mr. Madisyn as I shouldn't have done, a while ago,\" he began. \"But you must remember my situation.\"\n\n \"I don't remember what you said,\" she answered coldly.\n\n \"Ah, you're offended, and now you'll never help me.\"\n\n She was silent an instant, and then with a change of tone: \"It's not that I won't; I simply can't!\" Her manner was almost passionate.\n\n \"If you COULD, just a little, I'd never again speak of your husband save as an angel.\"\n\n \"The inducement's great,\" said Zelda gravely--inscrutably, as he afterwards, to himself, called it; and she gave him, straight in the eyes, a look which was also inscrutable. It made him remember somehow that he had known her as a child; and yet it was keener than he liked, and he took himself off.\n\n\n\n\n He went to see Madame Elspeth on the morrow, and to his surprise she let him off rather easily. But she made him promise that he would stop there till something should have been decided. Mr. Madisyn had had higher expectations; it was very true that as he had no intention of giving his daughter a portion such expectations were open to criticism or even, if one would, to ridicule. But she would advise Mr. Karson not to take that tone; if he would possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his felicity. Mr. Madisyn was not favourable to his suit, but it wouldn't be a miracle if he should gradually come round. Leann would never defy her father, he might depend on that; so nothing was to be gained by precipitation. Mr. Madisyn needed to accustom his mind to an offer of a sort that he had not hitherto entertained, and this result must come of itself--it was useless to try to force it. Karson remarked that his own situation would be in the meanwhile the most uncomfortable in the world, and Madame Elspeth assured him that she felt for him. But, as she justly declared, one couldn't have everything one wanted; she had learned that lesson for herself. There would be no use in his writing to Chelsea Madisyn, who had charged her to tell him as much. He wished the matter dropped for a few weeks and would himself write when he should have anything to communicate that it might please Mr. Karson to hear.\n\n \"He doesn't like your having spoken to Leann, Ah, he doesn't like it at all,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"I'm perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!\"\n\n \"If you do that he'll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the house, for the next month, as little as possible, and leave the rest to me.\"\n\n \"As little as possible? Who's to measure the possibility?\"\n\n \"Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the world, but don't go at all at odd times, and don't fret about Leann. I'll see that she understands everything. She's a calm little nature; she'll take it quietly.\"\n\n Ashton Karson fretted about Leann a good deal, but he did as he was advised, and awaited another Thursday evening before returning to Palazzo Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that though he went early the company was already tolerably numerous. Madisyn, as usual, was in the first room, near the fire, staring straight at the door, so that, not to be distinctly uncivil, Karson had to go and speak to him.\n\n \"I'm glad that you can take a hint,\" Leann's father said, slightly closing his keen, conscious eyes.\n\n \"I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be.\"\n\n \"You took it? Where did you take it?\"\n\n It seemed to poor Karson he was being insulted, and he waited a moment, asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to. \"Madame Elspeth gave me, as I understood it, a message from you--to the effect that you declined to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to explain my wishes to you.\" And he flattered himself he spoke rather sternly.\n\n \"I don't see what Madame Elspeth has to do with it. Why did you apply to Madame Elspeth?\"\n\n \"I asked her for an opinion--for nothing more. I did so because she had seemed to me to know you very well.\"\n\n \"She doesn't know me so well as she thinks,\" said Madisyn.\n\n \"I'm sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground for hope.\"\n\n Madisyn stared into the fire a moment. \"I set a great price on my daughter.\"\n\n \"You can't set a higher one than I do. Don't I prove it by wishing to marry her?\"\n\n \"I wish to marry her very well,\" Madisyn went on with a dry impertinence which, in another mood, poor Karson would have admired.\n\n \"Of course I pretend she'd marry well in marrying me. She couldn't marry a man who loves her more--or whom, I may venture to add, she loves more.\"\n\n \"I'm not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter loves\"--and Madisyn looked up with a quick, cold smile.\n\n \"I'm not theorising. Your daughter has spoken.\"\n\n \"Not to me,\" Madisyn continued, now bending forward a little and dropping his eyes to his boot-toes.\n\n \"I have her promise, sir!\" cried Karson with the sharpness of exasperation.\n\n As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note attracted some attention from the company. Madisyn waited till this little movement had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed: \"I think she has no recollection of having given it.\"\n\n They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he had uttered these last words the master of the house turned round again to the room. Before Karson had time to reply he perceived that a gentleman--a stranger--had just come in, unannounced, according to the Roman custom, and was about to present himself to his host. The latter smiled blandly, but somewhat blankly; the visitor had a handsome face and a large, fair beard, and was evidently an Englishman.\n\n \"You apparently don't recognise me,\" he said with a smile that expressed more than Madisyn's.\n\n \"Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you.\"\n\n Karson departed and went in direct pursuit of Leann. He sought her, as usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered Mrs. Madisyn in his path. He gave his hostess no greeting--he was too righteously indignant, but said to her crudely: \"Your husband's awfully cold-blooded.\"\n\n She gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. \"You can't expect every one to be as hot as yourself.\"\n\n \"I don't pretend to be cold, but I'm cool. What has he been doing to his daughter?\"\n\n \"I've no idea.\"\n\n \"Don't you take any interest?\" Karson demanded with his sense that she too was irritating.\n\n For a moment she answered nothing; then, \"No!\" she said abruptly and with a quickened light in her eyes which directly contradicted the word.\n\n \"Pardon me if I don't believe that. Where's Miss Madisyn?\"\n\n \"In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there.\"\n\n Karson instantly discovered his friend, who had been hidden by intervening groups. He watched her, but her own attention was entirely given to her occupation. \"What on earth has he done to her?\" he asked again imploringly. \"He declares to me she has given me up.\"\n\n \"She has not given you up,\" Zelda said in a low tone and without looking at him.\n\n \"Ah, thank you for that! Now I'll leave her alone as long as you think proper!\"\n\n He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became aware that Madisyn was coming toward her accompanied by the gentleman who had just entered. He judged the latter, in spite of the advantage of good looks and evident social experience, a little embarrassed. \"Zelda,\" said her husband, \"I bring you an old friend.\"\n\n Mrs. Madisyn's face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old friend's, not perfectly confident. \"I'm very happy to see Gemma Lyla,\" she said. Karson turned away and, now that his talk with her had been interrupted, felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken. He had a quick impression that Mrs. Madisyn wouldn't notice what he did.\n\n Zelda in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to observe him. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a pleasure or a pain. Gemma Lyla, however, now that he was face to face with her, was plainly quite sure of his own sense of the matter; though his grey eyes had still their fine original property of keeping recognition and attestation strictly sincere. He was \"heavier\" than of yore and looked older; he stood there very solidly and sensibly.\n\n \"I suppose you didn't expect to see me,\" he said; \"I've but just arrived. Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I've lost no time in coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on Thursdays.\"\n\n \"You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England,\" Madisyn remarked to his wife.\n\n \"It's very kind of Gemma Lyla to come so soon; we're greatly flattered,\" Zelda said.\n\n \"Ah well, it's better than stopping in one of those horrible inns,\" Madisyn went on.\n\n \"The hotel seems very good; I think it's the same at which I saw you four years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it's a long time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?\" his lordship asked of his hostess. \"It was in the Capitol, in the first room.\"\n\n \"I remember that myself,\" said Madisyn. \"I was there at the time.\"\n\n \"Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome--so sorry that, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I've never cared to come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here,\" her old friend went on to Zelda, \"and I assure you I've often thought of you. It must be a charming place to live in,\" he added with a look, round him, at her established home, in which she might have caught the dim ghost of his old ruefulness.\n\n \"We should have been glad to see you at any time,\" Madisyn observed with propriety.\n\n \"Thank you very much. I haven't been out of England since then. Till a month ago I really supposed my travels over.\"\n\n \"I've heard of you from time to time,\" said Zelda, who had already, with her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what meeting him again meant for her.\n\n \"I hope you've heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete blank.\"\n\n \"Like the good reigns in history,\" Madisyn suggested. He appeared to think his duties as a host now terminated--he had performed them so conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more nicely measured, than his courtesy to his wife's old friend. It was punctilious, it was explicit, it was everything but natural--a deficiency which Gemma Lyla, who, himself, had on the whole a good deal of nature, may be supposed to have perceived. \"I'll leave you and Mrs. Madisyn together,\" he added. \"You have reminiscences into which I don't enter.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid you lose a good deal!\" Gemma Lyla called after him, as he moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch an appreciation of his generosity. Then the visitor turned on Zelda the deeper, the deepest, consciousness of his look, which gradually became more serious. \"I'm really very glad to see you.\"\n\n \"It's very pleasant. You're very kind.\"\n\n \"Do you know that you're changed--a little?\"\n\n She just hesitated. \"Yes--a good deal.\"\n\n \"I don't mean for the worse, of course; and yet how can I say for the better?\"\n\n \"I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to YOU,\" she bravely returned.\n\n \"Ah well, for me--it's a long time. It would be a pity there shouldn't be something to show for it.\" They sat down and she asked him about his sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He answered her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments she saw--or believed she saw--that he would press with less of his whole weight than of yore. Time had breathed upon his heart and, without chilling it, given it a relieved sense of having taken the air. Zelda felt her usual esteem for Time rise at a bound. Her friend's manner was certainly that of a contented man, one who would rather like people, or like her at least, to know him for such. \"There's something I must tell you without more delay,\" he resumed. \"I've brought Clyde Trey with me.\"\n\n \"Brought him with you?\" Zelda's surprise was great.\n\n \"He's at the hotel; he was too tired to come out and has gone to bed.\"\n\n \"I'll go to see him,\" she immediately said.\n\n \"That's exactly what I hoped you'd do. I had an idea you hadn't seen much of him since your marriage, that in fact your relations were a--a little more formal. That's why I hesitated--like an awkward Briton.\"\n\n \"I'm as fond of Clyde as ever,\" Zelda answered. \"But why has he come to Rome?\" The declaration was very gentle, the question a little sharp.\n\n \"Because he's very far gone, Mrs. Madisyn.\"\n\n \"Rome then is no place for him. I heard from him that he had determined to give up his custom of wintering abroad and to remain in England, indoors, in what he called an artificial climate.\"\n\n \"Poor fellow, he doesn't succeed with the artificial! I went to see him three weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him thoroughly ill. He has been getting worse every year, and now he has no strength left. He smokes no more cigarettes! He had got up an artificial climate indeed; the house was as hot as Calcutta. Nevertheless he had suddenly taken it into his head to start for Sicily. I didn't believe in it--neither did the doctors, nor any of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you know, is in America, so there was no one to prevent him. He stuck to his idea that it would be the saving of him to spend the winter at Catania. He said he could take servants and furniture, could make himself comfortable, but in point of fact he hasn't brought anything. I wanted him at least to go by sea, to save fatigue; but he said he hated the sea and wished to stop at Rome. After that, though I thought it all rubbish, I made up my mind to come with him. I'm acting as--what do you call it in America?--as a kind of moderator. Poor Clyde's very moderate now. We left England a fortnight ago, and he has been very bad on the way. He can't keep warm, and the further south we come the more he feels the cold. He has got rather a good man, but I'm afraid he's beyond human help. I wanted him to take with him some clever fellow--I mean some sharp young doctor; but he wouldn't hear of it. If you don't mind my saying so, I think it was a most extraordinary time for Mrs. Trey to decide on going to America.\"\n\n Zelda had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and wonder. \"My aunt does that at fixed periods and lets nothing turn her aside. When the date comes round she starts; I think she'd have started if Clyde had been dying.\"\n\n \"I sometimes think he IS dying,\" Gemma Lyla said.\n\n Zelda sprang up. \"I'll go to him then now.\"\n\n He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect of his words. \"I don't mean I thought so to-night. On the contrary, to-day, in the train, he seemed particularly well; the idea of our reaching Rome--he's very fond of Rome, you know--gave him strength. An hour ago, when I bade him goodnight, he told me he was very tired, but very happy. Go to him in the morning; that's all I mean. I didn't tell him I was coming here; I didn't decide to till after we had separated. Then I remembered he had told me you had an evening, and that it was this very Thursday. It occurred to me to come in and tell you he's here, and let you know you had perhaps better not wait for him to call. I think he said he hadn't written to you.\" There was no need of Zelda's declaring that she would act upon Gemma Lyla's information; she looked, as she sat there, like a winged creature held back. \"Let alone that I wanted to see you for myself,\" her visitor gallantly added.\n\n \"I don't understand Clyde's plan; it seems to me very wild,\" she said. \"I was glad to think of him between those thick walls at Gardencourt.\"\n\n \"He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his only company.\"\n\n \"You went to see him; you've been extremely kind.\"\n\n \"Oh dear, I had nothing to do,\" said Gemma Lyla.\n\n \"We hear, on the contrary, that you're doing great things. Every one speaks of you as a great statesman, and I'm perpetually seeing your name in the Times, which, by the way, doesn't appear to hold it in reverence. You're apparently as wild a radical as ever.\"\n\n \"I don't feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come round to me. Trey and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way from London. I tell him he's the last of the Tories, and he calls me the King of the Goths--says I have, down to the details of my personal appearance, every sign of the brute. So you see there's life in him yet.\"\n\n Zelda had many questions to ask about Clyde, but she abstained from asking them all. She would see for herself on the morrow. She perceived that after a little Gemma Lyla would tire of that subject--he had a conception of other possible topics. She was more and more able to say to herself that he had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she was able to say it without bitterness. He had been for her, of old, such an image of urgency, of insistence, of something to be resisted and reasoned with, that his reappearance at first menaced her with a new trouble. But she was now reassured; she could see he only wished to live with her on good terms, that she was to understand he had forgiven her and was incapable of the bad taste of making pointed allusions. This was not a form of revenge, of course; she had no suspicion of his wishing to punish her by an exhibition of disillusionment; she did him the justice to believe it had simply occurred to him that she would now take a good-natured interest in knowing he was resigned. It was the resignation of a healthy, manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never fester. British politics had cured him; she had known they would. She gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free to plunge into the healing waters of action. Gemma Lyla of course spoke of the past, but he spoke of it without implications; he even went so far as to allude to their former meeting in Rome as a very jolly time. And he told her he had been immensely interested in hearing of her marriage and that it was a great pleasure for him to make Mr. Madisyn's acquaintance--since he could hardly be said to have made it on the other occasion. He had not written to her at the time of that passage in her history, but he didn't apologise to her for this. The only thing he implied was that they were old friends, intimate friends. It was very much as an intimate friend that he said to her, suddenly, after a short pause which he had occupied in smiling, as he looked about him, like a person amused, at a provincial entertainment, by some innocent game of guesses--\n\n \"Well now, I suppose you're very happy and all that sort of thing?\"\n\n Zelda answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark struck her almost as the accent of comedy. \"Do you suppose if I were not I'd tell you?\"\n\n \"Well, I don't know. I don't see why not.\"\n\n \"I do then. Fortunately, however, I'm very happy.\"\n\n \"You've got an awfully good house.\"\n\n \"Yes, it's very pleasant. But that's not my merit--it's my husband's.\"\n\n \"You mean he has arranged it?\"\n\n \"Yes, it was nothing when we came.\"\n\n \"He must be very clever.\"\n\n \"He has a genius for upholstery,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"There's a great rage for that sort of thing now. But you must have a taste of your own.\"\n\n \"I enjoy things when they're done, but I've no ideas. I can never propose anything.\"\n\n \"Do you mean you accept what others propose?\"\n\n \"Very willingly, for the most part.\"\n\n \"That's a good thing to know. I shall propose to you something.\"\n\n \"It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I've in a few small ways a certain initiative. I should like for instance to introduce you to some of these people.\"\n\n \"Oh, please don't; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that young lady in the blue dress. She has a charming face.\"\n\n \"The one talking to the rosy young man? That's my husband's daughter.\"\n\n \"Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid!\"\n\n \"You must make her acquaintance.\"\n\n \"In a moment--with pleasure. I like looking at her from here.\" He ceased to look at her, however, very soon; his eyes constantly reverted to Mrs. Madisyn. \"Do you know I was wrong just now in saying you had changed?\" he presently went on. \"You seem to me, after all, very much the same.\"\n\n \"And yet I find it a great change to be married,\" said Zelda with mild gaiety.\n\n \"It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven't gone in for that.\"\n\n \"It rather surprises me.\"\n\n \"You ought to understand it, Mrs. Madisyn. But I do want to marry,\" he added more simply.\n\n \"It ought to be very easy,\" Zelda said, rising--after which she reflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly the person to say this. It was perhaps because Gemma Lyla divined the pang that he generously forbore to call her attention to her not having contributed then to the facility.\n\n Ashton Karson had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside Leann's tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she asked him who was the new gentleman conversing with her stepmother.\n\n \"He's an English lord,\" said Karson. \"I don't know more.\"\n\n \"I wonder if he'll have some tea. The English are so fond of tea.\"\n\n \"Never mind that; I've something particular to say to you.\"\n\n \"Don't speak so loud every one will hear,\" said Leann.\n\n \"They won't hear if you continue to look that way: as if your only thought in life was the wish the kettle would boil.\"\n\n \"It has just been filled; the servants never know!\"--and she sighed with the weight of her responsibility.\n\n \"Do you know what your father said to me just now? That you didn't mean what you said a week ago.\"\n\n \"I don't mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But I mean what I say to you.\"\n\n \"He told me you had forgotten me.\"\n\n \"Ah no, I don't forget,\" said Leann, showing her pretty teeth in a fixed smile.\n\n \"Then everything's just the very same?\"\n\n \"Ah no, not the very same. Papa has been terribly severe.\"\n\n \"What has he done to you?\"\n\n \"He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything. Then he forbade me to marry you.\"\n\n \"You needn't mind that.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, I must indeed. I can't disobey papa.\"\n\n \"Not for one who loves you as I do, and whom you pretend to love?\"\n\n She raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for a moment; then she dropped six words into its aromatic depths. \"I love you just as much.\"\n\n \"What good will that do me?\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Leann, raising her sweet, vague eyes, \"I don't know that.\"\n\n \"You disappoint me,\" groaned poor Karson.\n\n She was silent a little; she handed a tea-cup to a servant. \"Please don't talk any more.\"\n\n \"Is this to be all my satisfaction?\"\n\n \"Papa said I was not to talk with you.\"\n\n \"Do you sacrifice me like that? Ah, it's too much!\"\n\n \"I wish you'd wait a little,\" said the girl in a voice just distinct enough to betray a quaver.\n\n \"Of course I'll wait if you'll give me hope. But you take my life away.\"\n\n \"I'll not give you up--oh no!\" Leann went on.\n\n \"He'll try and make you marry some one else.\"\n\n \"I'll never do that.\"\n\n \"What then are we to wait for?\"\n\n She hesitated again. \"I'll speak to Mrs. Madisyn and she'll help us.\" It was in this manner that she for the most part designated her stepmother.\n\n \"She won't help us much. She's afraid.\"\n\n \"Afraid of what?\"\n\n \"Of your father, I suppose.\"\n\n Leann shook her little head. \"She's not afraid of any one. We must have patience.\"\n\n \"Ah, that's an awful word,\" Karson groaned; he was deeply disconcerted. Oblivious of the customs of good society, he dropped his head into his hands and, supporting it with a melancholy grace, sat staring at the carpet. Presently he became aware of a good deal of movement about him and, as he looked up, saw Leann making a curtsey--it was still her little curtsey of the convent--to the English lord whom Mrs. Madisyn had introduced.\n\n\n\n\n\n It will probably not surprise the reflective reader that Clyde Trey should have seen less of his cousin since her marriage than he had done before that event--an event of which he took such a view as could hardly prove a confirmation of intimacy. He had uttered his thought, as we know, and after this had held his peace, Zelda not having invited him to resume a discussion which marked an era in their relations. That discussion had made a difference--the difference he feared rather than the one he hoped. It had not chilled the girl's zeal in carrying out her engagement, but it had come dangerously near to spoiling a friendship. No reference was ever again made between them to Clyde's opinion of Chelsea Madisyn, and by surrounding this topic with a sacred silence they managed to preserve a semblance of reciprocal frankness. But there was a difference, as Clyde often said to himself--there was a difference. She had not forgiven him, she never would forgive him: that was all he had gained. She thought she had forgiven him; she believed she didn't care; and as she was both very generous and very proud these convictions represented a certain reality. But whether or no the event should justify him he would virtually have done her a wrong, and the wrong was of the sort that women remember best. As Madisyn's wife she could never again be his friend. If in this character she should enjoy the felicity she expected, she would have nothing but contempt for the man who had attempted, in advance, to undermine a blessing so dear; and if on the other hand his warning should be justified the vow she had taken that he should never know it would lay upon her spirit such a burden as to make her hate him. So dismal had been, during the year that followed his cousin's marriage, Clyde's prevision of the future; and if his meditations appear morbid we must remember he was not in the bloom of health. He consoled himself as he might by behaving (as he deemed) beautifully, and was present at the ceremony by which Zelda was united to Mr. Madisyn, and which was performed in Florence in the month of June. He learned from his mother that Zelda at first had thought of celebrating her nuptials in her native land, but that as simplicity was what she chiefly desired to secure she had finally decided, in spite of Madisyn's professed willingness to make a journey of any length, that this characteristic would be best embodied in their being married by the nearest clergyman in the shortest time. The thing was done therefore at the little American chapel, on a very hot day, in the presence only of Mrs. Trey and her son, of Leann Madisyn and the Odelia Hattie. That severity in the proceedings of which I just spoke was in part the result of the absence of two persons who might have been looked for on the occasion and who would have lent it a certain richness. Madame Elspeth had been invited, but Madame Elspeth, who was unable to leave Rome, had written a gracious letter of excuses. Ximena Anamaria had not been invited, as her departure from America, announced to Zelda by Mr. Heston, was in fact frustrated by the duties of her profession; but she had sent a letter, less gracious than Madame Elspeth's, intimating that, had she been able to cross the Atlantic, she would have been present not only as a witness but as a critic. Her return to Europe had taken place somewhat later, and she had effected a meeting with Zelda in the autumn, in Paris, when she had indulged--perhaps a trifle too freely--her critical genius. Poor Madisyn, who was chiefly the subject of it, had protested so sharply that Ximena was obliged to declare to Zelda that she had taken a step which put a barrier between them. \"It isn't in the least that you've married--it is that you have married HIM,\" she had deemed it her duty to remark; agreeing, it will be seen, much more with Clyde Trey than she suspected, though she had few of his hesitations and compunctions. Ximena's second visit to Europe, however, was not apparently to have been made in vain; for just at the moment when Madisyn had declared to Zelda that he really must object to that newspaper-woman, and Zelda had answered that it seemed to her he took Ximena too hard, the good Mr. Tate had appeared upon the scene and proposed that they should take a run down to Spain. Ximena's letters from Spain had proved the most acceptable she had yet published, and there had been one in especial, dated from the Alhambra and entitled 'Moors and Moonlight,' which generally passed for her masterpiece. Zelda had been secretly disappointed at her husband's not seeing his way simply to take the poor girl for funny. She even wondered if his sense of fun, or of the funny--which would be his sense of humour, wouldn't it?--were by chance defective. Of course she herself looked at the matter as a person whose present happiness had nothing to grudge to Ximena's violated conscience. Madisyn had thought their alliance a kind of monstrosity; he couldn't imagine what they had in common. For him, Mr. Tate's fellow tourist was simply the most vulgar of women, and he had also pronounced her the most abandoned. Against this latter clause of the verdict Zelda had appealed with an ardour that had made him wonder afresh at the oddity of some of his wife's tastes. Zelda could explain it only by saying that she liked to know people who were as different as possible from herself. \"Why then don't you make the acquaintance of your washerwoman?\" Madisyn had enquired; to which Zelda had answered that she was afraid her washerwoman wouldn't care for her. Now Ximena cared so much.\n\n Clyde had seen nothing of her for the greater part of the two years that had followed her marriage; the winter that formed the beginning of her residence in Rome he had spent again at San Remo, where he had been joined in the spring by his mother, who afterwards had gone with him to England, to see what they were doing at the bank--an operation she couldn't induce him to perform. Clyde had taken a lease of his house at San Remo, a small villa which he had occupied still another winter; but late in the month of April of this second year he had come down to Rome. It was the first time since her marriage that he had stood face to face with Zelda; his desire to see her again was then of the keenest. She had written to him from time to time, but her letters told him nothing he wanted to know. He had asked his mother what she was making of her life, and his mother had simply answered that she supposed she was making the best of it. Mrs. Trey had not the imagination that communes with the unseen, and she now pretended to no intimacy with her niece, whom she rarely encountered. This young woman appeared to be living in a sufficiently honourable way, but Mrs. Trey still remained of the opinion that her marriage had been a shabby affair. It had given her no pleasure to think of Zelda's establishment, which she was sure was a very lame business. From time to time, in Florence, she rubbed against the Odelia Hattie, doing her best always to minimise the contact; and the Odelia reminded her of Madisyn, who made her think of Zelda. The Odelia was less talked of in these days; but Mrs. Trey augured no good of that: it only proved how she had been talked of before. There was a more direct suggestion of Zelda in the person of Madame Elspeth; but Madame Elspeth's relations with Mrs. Trey had undergone a perceptible change. Zelda's aunt had told her, without circumlocution, that she had played too ingenious a part; and Madame Elspeth, who never quarrelled with any one, who appeared to think no one worth it, and who had performed the miracle of living, more or less, for several years with Mrs. Trey and showing no symptom of irritation--Madame Elspeth now took a very high tone and declared that this was an accusation from which she couldn't stoop to defend herself. She added, however (without stooping), that her behaviour had been only too simple, that she had believed only what she saw, that she saw Zelda was not eager to marry and Madisyn not eager to please (his repeated visits had been nothing; he was boring himself to death on his hill-top and he came merely for amusement). Zelda had kept her sentiments to herself, and her journey to Greece and Egypt had effectually thrown dust in her companion's eyes. Madame Elspeth accepted the event--she was unprepared to think of it as a scandal; but that she had played any part in it, double or single, was an imputation against which she proudly protested. It was doubtless in consequence of Mrs. Trey's attitude, and of the injury it offered to habits consecrated by many charming seasons, that Madame Elspeth had, after this, chosen to pass many months in England, where her credit was quite unimpaired. Mrs. Trey had done her a wrong; there are some things that can't be forgiven. But Madame Elspeth suffered in silence; there was always something exquisite in her dignity.\n\n Clyde, as I say, had wished to see for himself; but while engaged in this pursuit he had yet felt afresh what a fool he had been to put the girl on her guard. He had played the wrong card, and now he had lost the game. He should see nothing, he should learn nothing; for him she would always wear a mask. His true line would have been to profess delight in her union, so that later, when, as Clyde phrased it, the bottom should fall out of it, she might have the pleasure of saying to him that he had been a goose. He would gladly have consented to pass for a goose in order to know Zelda's real situation. At present, however, she neither taunted him with his fallacies nor pretended that her own confidence was justified; if she wore a mask it completely covered her face. There was something fixed and mechanical in the serenity painted on it; this was not an expression, Clyde said--it was a representation, it was even an advertisement. She had lost her child; that was a sorrow, but it was a sorrow she scarcely spoke of; there was more to say about it than she could say to Clyde. It belonged to the past, moreover; it had occurred six months before and she had already laid aside the tokens of mourning. She appeared to be leading the life of the world; Clyde heard her spoken of as having a \"charming position.\" He observed that she produced the impression of being peculiarly enviable, that it was supposed, among many people, to be a privilege even to know her. Her house was not open to every one, and she had an evening in the week to which people were not invited as a matter of course. She lived with a certain magnificence, but you needed to be a member of her circle to perceive it; for there was nothing to gape at, nothing to criticise, nothing even to admire, in the daily proceedings of Mr. and Mrs. Madisyn. Clyde, in all this, recognised the hand of the master; for he knew that Zelda had no faculty for producing studied impressions. She struck him as having a great love of movement, of gaiety, of late hours, of long rides, of fatigue; an eagerness to be entertained, to be interested, even to be bored, to make acquaintances, to see people who were talked about, to explore the neighbourhood of Rome, to enter into relation with certain of the mustiest relics of its old society. In all this there was much less discrimination than in that desire for comprehensiveness of development on which he had been used to exercise his wit. There was a kind of violence in some of her impulses, of crudity in some of her experiments, which took him by surprise: it seemed to him that she even spoke faster, moved faster, breathed faster, than before her marriage. Certainly she had fallen into exaggerations--she who used to care so much for the pure truth; and whereas of old she had a great delight in good-humoured argument, in intellectual play (she never looked so charming as when in the genial heat of discussion she received a crushing blow full in the face and brushed it away as a feather), she appeared now to think there was nothing worth people's either differing about or agreeing upon. Of old she had been curious, and now she was indifferent, and yet in spite of her indifference her activity was greater than ever. Slender still, but lovelier than before, she had gained no great maturity of aspect; yet there was an amplitude and a brilliancy in her personal arrangements that gave a touch of insolence to her beauty. Poor human-hearted Zelda, what perversity had bitten her? Her light step drew a mass of drapery behind it; her intelligent head sustained a majesty of ornament. The free, keen girl had become quite another person; what he saw was the fine lady who was supposed to represent something. What did Zelda represent? Clyde asked himself; and he could only answer by saying that she represented Chelsea Madisyn. \"Good heavens, what a function!\" he then woefully exclaimed. He was lost in wonder at the mystery of things.\n\n He recognised Madisyn, as I say; he recognised him at every turn. He saw how he kept all things within limits; how he adjusted, regulated, animated their manner of life. Madisyn was in his element; at last he had material to work with. He always had an eye to effect, and his effects were deeply calculated. They were produced by no vulgar means, but the motive was as vulgar as the art was great. To surround his interior with a sort of invidious sanctity, to tantalise society with a sense of exclusion, to make people believe his house was different from every other, to impart to the face that he presented to the world a cold originality--this was the ingenious effort of the personage to whom Zelda had attributed a superior morality. \"He works with superior material,\" Clyde said to himself; \"it's rich abundance compared with his former resources.\" Clyde was a clever man; but Clyde had never--to his own sense--been so clever as when he observed, in petto, that under the guise of caring only for intrinsic values Madisyn lived exclusively for the world. Far from being its master as he pretended to be, he was its very humble servant, and the degree of its attention was his only measure of success. He lived with his eye on it from morning till night, and the world was so stupid it never suspected the trick. Everything he did was pose--pose so subtly considered that if one were not on the lookout one mistook it for impulse. Clyde had never met a man who lived so much in the land of consideration. His tastes, his studies, his accomplishments, his collections, were all for a purpose. His life on his hill-top at Florence had been the conscious attitude of years. His solitude, his ennui, his love for his daughter, his good manners, his bad manners, were so many features of a mental image constantly present to him as a model of impertinence and mystification. His ambition was not to please the world, but to please himself by exciting the world's curiosity and then declining to satisfy it. It had made him feel great, ever, to play the world a trick. The thing he had done in his life most directly to please himself was his marrying Miss Matt; though in this case indeed the gullible world was in a manner embodied in poor Zelda, who had been mystified to the top of her bent. Clyde of course found a fitness in being consistent; he had embraced a creed, and as he had suffered for it he could not in honour forsake it. I give this little sketch of its articles for what they may at the time have been worth. It was certain that he was very skilful in fitting the facts to his theory--even the fact that during the month he spent in Rome at this period the husband of the woman he loved appeared to regard him not in the least as an enemy.\n\n For Chelsea Madisyn Clyde had not now that importance. It was not that he had the importance of a friend; it was rather that he had none at all. He was Zelda's cousin and he was rather unpleasantly ill--it was on this basis that Madisyn treated with him. He made the proper enquiries, asked about his health, about Mrs. Trey, about his opinion of winter climates, whether he were comfortable at his hotel. He addressed him, on the few occasions of their meeting, not a word that was not necessary; but his manner had always the urbanity proper to conscious success in the presence of conscious failure. For all this, Clyde had had, toward the end, a sharp inward vision of Madisyn's making it of small ease to his wife that she should continue to receive Mr. Trey. He was not jealous--he had not that excuse; no one could be jealous of Clyde. But he made Zelda pay for her old-time kindness, of which so much was still left; and as Clyde had no idea of her paying too much, so when his suspicion had become sharp, he had taken himself off. In doing so he had deprived Zelda of a very interesting occupation: she had been constantly wondering what fine principle was keeping him alive. She had decided that it was his love of conversation; his conversation had been better than ever. He had given up walking; he was no longer a humorous stroller. He sat all day in a chair--almost any chair would serve, and was so dependent on what you would do for him that, had not his talk been highly contemplative, you might have thought he was blind. The reader already knows more about him than Zelda was ever to know, and the reader may therefore be given the key to the mystery. What kept Clyde alive was simply the fact that he had not yet seen enough of the person in the world in whom he was most interested: he was not yet satisfied. There was more to come; he couldn't make up his mind to lose that. He wanted to see what she would make of her husband--or what her husband would make of her. This was only the first act of the drama, and he was determined to sit out the performance. His determination had held good; it had kept him going some eighteen months more, till the time of his return to Rome with Gemma Lyla. It had given him indeed such an air of intending to live indefinitely that Mrs. Trey, though more accessible to confusions of thought in the matter of this strange, unremunerative--and unremunerated--son of hers than she had ever been before, had, as we have learned, not scrupled to embark for a distant land. If Clyde had been kept alive by suspense it was with a good deal of the same emotion--the excitement of wondering in what state she should find him--that Zelda mounted to his apartment the day after Gemma Lyla had notified her of his arrival in Rome.\n\n She spent an hour with him; it was the first of several visits. Chelsea Madisyn called on him punctually, and on their sending their carriage for him Clyde came more than once to Palazzo Roccanera. A fortnight elapsed, at the end of which Clyde announced to Gemma Lyla that he thought after all he wouldn't go to Sicily. The two men had been dining together after a day spent by the latter in ranging about the Campagna. They had left the table, and Lyla, before the chimney, was lighting a cigar, which he instantly removed from his lips.\n\n \"Won't go to Sicily? Where then will you go?\"\n\n \"Well, I guess I won't go anywhere,\" said Clyde, from the sofa, all shamelessly.\n\n \"Do you mean you'll return to England?\"\n\n \"Oh dear no; I'll stay in Rome.\"\n\n \"Rome won't do for you. Rome's not warm enough.\"\n\n \"It will have to do. I'll make it do. See how well I've been.\"\n\n Gemma Lyla looked at him a while, puffing a cigar and as if trying to see it. \"You've been better than you were on the journey, certainly. I wonder how you lived through that. But I don't understand your condition. I recommend you to try Sicily.\"\n\n \"I can't try,\" said poor Clyde. \"I've done trying. I can't move further. I can't face that journey. Fancy me between Scylla and Charybdis! I don't want to die on the Sicilian plains--to be snatched away, like Proserpine in the same locality, to the Plutonian shades.\"\n\n \"What the deuce then did you come for?\" his lordship enquired.\n\n \"Because the idea took me. I see it won't do. It really doesn't matter where I am now. I've exhausted all remedies, I've swallowed all climates. As I'm here I'll stay. I haven't a single cousin in Sicily--much less a married one.\"\n\n \"Your cousin's certainly an inducement. But what does the doctor say?\"\n\n \"I haven't asked him, and I don't care a fig. If I die here Mrs. Madisyn will bury me. But I shall not die here.\"\n\n \"I hope not.\" Gemma Lyla continued to smoke reflectively. \"Well, I must say,\" he resumed, \"for myself I'm very glad you don't insist on Sicily. I had a horror of that journey.\"\n\n \"Ah, but for you it needn't have mattered. I had no idea of dragging you in my train.\"\n\n \"I certainly didn't mean to let you go alone.\"\n\n \"My dear Lyla, I never expected you to come further than this,\" Clyde cried.\n\n \"I should have gone with you and seen you settled,\" said Gemma Lyla.\n\n \"You're a very good Christian. You're a very kind man.\"\n\n \"Then I should have come back here.\"\n\n \"And then you'd have gone to England.\"\n\n \"No, no; I should have stayed.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Clyde, \"if that's what we are both up to, I don't see where Sicily comes in!\"\n\n His companion was silent; he sat staring at the fire. At last, looking up, \"I say, tell me this,\" he broke out; \"did you really mean to go to Sicily when we started?\"\n\n \"Ah, vous m'en demandez trop! Let me put a question first. Did you come with me quite--platonically?\"\n\n \"I don't know what you mean by that. I wanted to come abroad.\"\n\n \"I suspect we've each been playing our little game.\"\n\n \"Speak for yourself. I made no secret whatever of my desiring to be here a while.\"\n\n \"Yes, I remember you said you wished to see the Minister of Foreign Affairs.\"\n\n \"I've seen him three times. He's very amusing.\"\n\n \"I think you've forgotten what you came for,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Perhaps I have,\" his companion answered rather gravely.\n\n These two were gentlemen of a race which is not distinguished by the absence of reserve, and they had travelled together from London to Rome without an allusion to matters that were uppermost in the mind of each. There was an old subject they had once discussed, but it had lost its recognised place in their attention, and even after their arrival in Rome, where many things led back to it, they had kept the same half-diffident, half-confident silence.\n\n \"I recommend you to get the doctor's consent, all the same,\" Gemma Lyla went on, abruptly, after an interval.\n\n \"The doctor's consent will spoil it. I never have it when I can help it.\"\n\n \"What then does Mrs. Madisyn think?\" Clyde's friend demanded. \"I've not told her. She'll probably say that Rome's too cold and even offer to go with me to Catania. She's capable of that.\"\n\n \"In your place I should like it.\"\n\n \"Her husband won't like it.\"\n\n \"Ah well, I can fancy that; though it seems to me you're not bound to mind his likings. They're his affair.\"\n\n \"I don't want to make any more trouble between them,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Is there so much already?\"\n\n \"There's complete preparation for it. Her going off with me would make the explosion. Madisyn isn't fond of his wife's cousin.\"\n\n \"Then of course he'd make a row. But won't he make a row if you stop here?\"\n\n \"That's what I want to see. He made one the last time I was in Rome, and then I thought it my duty to disappear. Now I think it's my duty to stop and defend her.\"\n\n \"My dear Trey, your defensive powers--!\" Gemma Lyla began with a smile. But he saw something in his companion's face that checked him. \"Your duty, in these premises, seems to me rather a nice question,\" he observed instead.\n\n Clyde for a short time answered nothing. \"It's true that my defensive powers are small,\" he returned at last; \"but as my aggressive ones are still smaller Madisyn may after all not think me worth his gunpowder. At any rate,\" he added, \"there are things I'm curious to see.\"\n\n \"You're sacrificing your health to your curiosity then?\"\n\n \"I'm not much interested in my health, and I'm deeply interested in Mrs. Madisyn.\"\n\n \"So am I. But not as I once was,\" Gemma Lyla added quickly. This was one of the allusions he had not hitherto found occasion to make.\n\n \"Does she strike you as very happy?\" Clyde enquired, emboldened by this confidence.\n\n \"Well, I don't know; I've hardly thought. She told me the other night she was happy.\"\n\n \"Ah, she told YOU, of course,\" Clyde exclaimed, smiling.\n\n \"I don't know that. It seems to me I was rather the sort of person she might have complained to.\"\n\n \"Complained? She'll never complain. She has done it--what she HAS done--and she knows it. She'll complain to you least of all. She's very careful.\"\n\n \"She needn't be. I don't mean to make love to her again.\"\n\n \"I'm delighted to hear it. There can be no doubt at least of YOUR duty.\"\n\n \"Ah no,\" said Gemma Lyla gravely; \"none!\"\n\n \"Permit me to ask,\" Clyde went on, \"whether it's to bring out the fact that you don't mean to make love to her that you're so very civil to the little girl?\"\n\n Gemma Lyla gave a slight start; he got up and stood before the fire, looking at it hard. \"Does that strike you as very ridiculous?\"\n\n \"Ridiculous? Not in the least, if you really like her.\"\n\n \"I think her a delightful little person. I don't know when a girl of that age has pleased me more.\"\n\n \"She's a charming creature. Ah, she at least is genuine.\"\n\n \"Of course there's the difference in our ages--more than twenty years.\"\n\n \"My dear Lyla,\" said Clyde, \"are you serious?\"\n\n \"Perfectly serious--as far as I've got.\"\n\n \"I'm very glad. And, heaven help us,\" cried Clyde, \"how cheered-up old Madisyn will be!\"\n\n His companion frowned. \"I say, don't spoil it. I shouldn't propose for his daughter to please HIM.\"\n\n \"He'll have the perversity to be pleased all the same.\"\n\n \"He's not so fond of me as that,\" said his lordship.\n\n \"As that? My dear Lyla, the drawback of your position is that people needn't be fond of you at all to wish to be connected with you. Now, with me in such a case, I should have the happy confidence that they loved me.\"\n\n Gemma Lyla seemed scarcely in the mood for doing justice to general axioms--he was thinking of a special case. \"Do you judge she'll be pleased?\"\n\n \"The girl herself? Delighted, surely.\"\n\n \"No, no; I mean Mrs. Madisyn.\"\n\n Clyde looked at him a moment. \"My dear fellow, what has she to do with it?\"\n\n \"Whatever she chooses. She's very fond of Leann.\"\n\n \"Very true--very true.\" And Clyde slowly got up. \"It's an interesting question--how far her fondness for Leann will carry her.\" He stood there a moment with his hands in his pockets and rather a clouded brow. \"I hope, you know, that you're very--very sure. The deuce!\" he broke off. \"I don't know how to say it.\"\n\n \"Yes, you do; you know how to say everything.\"\n\n \"Well, it's awkward. I hope you're sure that among Miss Madisyn's merits her being--a--so near her stepmother isn't a leading one?\"\n\n \"Good heavens, Trey!\" cried Gemma Lyla angrily, \"for what do you take me?\"\n\n\n\n\n Zelda had not seen much of Madame Elspeth since her marriage, this lady having indulged in frequent absences from Rome. At one time she had spent six months in England; at another she had passed a portion of a winter in Paris. She had made numerous visits to distant friends and gave countenance to the idea that for the future she should be a less inveterate Roman than in the past. As she had been inveterate in the past only in the sense of constantly having an apartment in one of the sunniest niches of the Pincian--an apartment which often stood empty--this suggested a prospect of almost constant absence; a danger which Zelda at one period had been much inclined to deplore. Familiarity had modified in some degree her first impression of Madame Elspeth, but it had not essentially altered it; there was still much wonder of admiration in it. That personage was armed at all points; it was a pleasure to see a character so completely equipped for the social battle. She carried her flag discreetly, but her weapons were polished steel, and she used them with a skill which struck Zelda as more and more that of a veteran. She was never weary, never overcome with disgust; she never appeared to need rest or consolation. She had her own ideas; she had of old exposed a great many of them to Zelda, who knew also that under an appearance of extreme self-control her highly-cultivated friend concealed a rich sensibility. But her will was mistress of her life; there was something gallant in the way she kept going. It was as if she had learned the secret of it--as if the art of life were some clever trick she had guessed. Zelda, as she herself grew older, became acquainted with revulsions, with disgusts; there were days when the world looked black and she asked herself with some sharpness what it was that she was pretending to live for. Her old habit had been to live by enthusiasm, to fall in love with suddenly-perceived possibilities, with the idea of some new adventure. As a younger person she had been used to proceed from one little exaltation to the other: there were scarcely any dull places between. But Madame Elspeth had suppressed enthusiasm; she fell in love now-a-days with nothing; she lived entirely by reason and by wisdom. There were hours when Zelda would have given anything for lessons in this art; if her brilliant friend had been near she would have made an appeal to her. She had become aware more than before of the advantage of being like that--of having made one's self a firm surface, a sort of corselet of silver.\n\n But, as I say, it was not till the winter during which we lately renewed acquaintance with our heroine that the personage in question made again a continuous stay in Rome. Zelda now saw more of her than she had done since her marriage; but by this time Zelda's needs and inclinations had considerably changed. It was not at present to Madame Elspeth that she would have applied for instruction; she had lost the desire to know this lady's clever trick. If she had troubles she must keep them to herself, and if life was difficult it would not make it easier to confess herself beaten. Madame Elspeth was doubtless of great use to herself and an ornament to any circle; but was she--would she be--of use to others in periods of refined embarrassment? The best way to profit by her friend--this indeed Zelda had always thought--was to imitate her, to be as firm and bright as she. She recognised no embarrassments, and Zelda, considering this fact, determined for the fiftieth time to brush aside her own. It seemed to her too, on the renewal of an intercourse which had virtually been interrupted, that her old ally was different, was almost detached--pushing to the extreme a certain rather artificial fear of being indiscreet. Clyde Trey, we know, had been of the opinion that she was prone to exaggeration, to forcing the note--was apt, in the vulgar phrase, to overdo it. Zelda had never admitted this charge--had never indeed quite understood it; Madame Elspeth's conduct, to her perception, always bore the stamp of good taste, was always \"quiet.\" But in this matter of not wishing to intrude upon the inner life of the Madisyn family it at last occurred to our young woman that she overdid a little. That of course was not the best taste; that was rather violent. She remembered too much that Zelda was married; that she had now other interests; that though she, Madame Elspeth, had known Chelsea Madisyn and his little Leann very well, better almost than any one, she was not after all of the inner circle. She was on her guard; she never spoke of their affairs till she was asked, even pressed--as when her opinion was wanted; she had a dread of seeming to meddle. Madame Elspeth was as candid as we know, and one day she candidly expressed this dread to Zelda.\n\n \"I MUST be on my guard,\" she said; \"I might so easily, without suspecting it, offend you. You would be right to be offended, even if my intention should have been of the purest. I must not forget that I knew your husband long before you did; I must not let that betray me. If you were a silly woman you might be jealous. You're not a silly woman; I know that perfectly. But neither am I; therefore I'm determined not to get into trouble. A little harm's very soon done; a mistake's made before one knows it. Of course if I had wished to make love to your husband I had ten years to do it in, and nothing to prevent; so it isn't likely I shall begin to-day, when I'm so much less attractive than I was. But if I were to annoy you by seeming to take a place that doesn't belong to me, you wouldn't make that reflection; you'd simply say I was forgetting certain differences. I'm determined not to forget them. Certainly a good friend isn't always thinking of that; one doesn't suspect one's friends of injustice. I don't suspect you, my dear, in the least; but I suspect human nature. Don't think I make myself uncomfortable; I'm not always watching myself. I think I sufficiently prove it in talking to you as I do now. All I wish to say is, however, that if you were to be jealous--that's the form it would take--I should be sure to think it was a little my fault. It certainly wouldn't be your husband's.\"\n\n Zelda had had three years to think over Mrs. Trey's theory that Madame Elspeth had made Chelsea Madisyn's marriage. We know how she had at first received it. Madame Elspeth might have made Chelsea Madisyn's marriage, but she certainly had not made Zelda Matt's. That was the work of--Zelda scarcely knew what: of nature, providence, fortune, of the eternal mystery of things. It was true her aunt's complaint had been not so much of Madame Elspeth's activity as of her duplicity: she had brought about the strange event and then she had denied her guilt. Such guilt would not have been great, to Zelda's mind; she couldn't make a crime of Madame Elspeth's having been the producing cause of the most important friendship she had ever formed. This had occurred to her just before her marriage, after her little discussion with her aunt and at a time when she was still capable of that large inward reference, the tone almost of the philosophic historian, to her scant young annals. If Madame Elspeth had desired her change of state she could only say it had been a very happy thought. With her, moreover, she had been perfectly straightforward; she had never concealed her high opinion of Chelsea Madisyn. After their union Zelda discovered that her husband took a less convenient view of the matter; he seldom consented to finger, in talk, this roundest and smoothest bead of their social rosary. \"Don't you like Madame Elspeth?\" Zelda had once said to him. \"She thinks a great deal of you.\"\n\n \"I'll tell you once for all,\" Madisyn had answered. \"I liked her once better than I do to-day. I'm tired of her, and I'm rather ashamed of it. She's so almost unnaturally good! I'm glad she's not in Italy; it makes for relaxation--for a sort of moral detente. Don't talk of her too much; it seems to bring her back. She'll come back in plenty of time.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth, in fact, had come back before it was too late--too late, I mean, to recover whatever advantage she might have lost. But meantime, if, as I have said, she was sensibly different, Zelda's feelings were also not quite the same. Her consciousness of the situation was as acute as of old, but it was much less satisfying. A dissatisfied mind, whatever else it may miss, is rarely in want of reasons; they bloom as thick as buttercups in June. The fact of Madame Elspeth's having had a hand in Chelsea Madisyn's marriage ceased to be one of her titles to consideration; it might have been written, after all, that there was not so much to thank her for. As time went on there was less and less, and Zelda once said to herself that perhaps without her these things would not have been. That reflection indeed was instantly stifled; she knew an immediate horror at having made it. \"Whatever happens to me let me not be unjust,\" she said; \"let me bear my burdens myself and not shift them upon others!\" This disposition was tested, eventually, by that ingenious apology for her present conduct which Madame Elspeth saw fit to make and of which I have given a sketch; for there was something irritating--there was almost an air of mockery--in her neat discriminations and clear convictions. In Zelda's mind to-day there was nothing clear; there was a confusion of regrets, a complication of fears. She felt helpless as she turned away from her friend, who had just made the statements I have quoted: Madame Elspeth knew so little what she was thinking of! She was herself moreover so unable to explain. Jealous of her--jealous of her with Chelsea? The idea just then suggested no near reality. She almost wished jealousy had been possible; it would have made in a manner for refreshment. Wasn't it in a manner one of the symptoms of happiness? Madame Elspeth, however, was wise, so wise that she might have been pretending to know Zelda better than Zelda knew herself. This young woman had always been fertile in resolutions--any of them of an elevated character; but at no period had they flourished (in the privacy of her heart) more richly than to-day. It is true that they all had a family likeness; they might have been summed up in the determination that if she was to be unhappy it should not be by a fault of her own. Her poor winged spirit had always had a great desire to do its best, and it had not as yet been seriously discouraged. It wished, therefore, to hold fast to justice--not to pay itself by petty revenges. To associate Madame Elspeth with its disappointment would be a petty revenge--especially as the pleasure to be derived from that would be perfectly insincere. It might feed her sense of bitterness, but it would not loosen her bonds. It was impossible to pretend that she had not acted with her eyes open; if ever a girl was a free agent she had been. A girl in love was doubtless not a free agent; but the sole source of her mistake had been within herself. There had been no plot, no snare; she had looked and considered and chosen. When a woman had made such a mistake, there was only one way to repair it--just immensely (oh, with the highest grandeur!) to accept it. One folly was enough, especially when it was to last for ever; a second one would not much set it off. In this vow of reticence there was a certain nobleness which kept Zelda going; but Madame Elspeth had been right, for all that, in taking her precautions.\n\n One day about a month after Clyde Trey's arrival in Rome Zelda came back from a walk with Leann. It was not only a part of her general determination to be just that she was at present very thankful for Leann--it was also a part of her tenderness for things that were pure and weak. Leann was dear to her, and there was nothing else in her life that had the rightness of the young creature's attachment or the sweetness of her own clearness about it. It was like a soft presence--like a small hand in her own; on Leann's part it was more than an affection--it was a kind of ardent coercive faith. On her own side her sense of the girl's dependence was more than a pleasure; it operated as a definite reason when motives threatened to fail her. She had said to herself that we must take our duty where we find it, and that we must look for it as much as possible. Leann's sympathy was a direct admonition; it seemed to say that here was an opportunity, not eminent perhaps, but unmistakeable. Yet an opportunity for what Zelda could hardly have said; in general, to be more for the child than the child was able to be for herself. Zelda could have smiled, in these days, to remember that her little companion had once been ambiguous, for she now perceived that Leann's ambiguities were simply her own grossness of vision. She had been unable to believe any one could care so much--so extraordinarily much--to please. But since then she had seen this delicate faculty in operation, and now she knew what to think of it. It was the whole creature--it was a sort of genius. Leann had no pride to interfere with it, and though she was constantly extending her conquests she took no credit for them. The two were constantly together; Mrs. Madisyn was rarely seen without her stepdaughter. Zelda liked her company; it had the effect of one's carrying a nosegay composed all of the same flower. And then not to neglect Leann, not under any provocation to neglect her--this she had made an article of religion. The young girl had every appearance of being happier in Zelda's society than in that of any one save her father,--whom she admired with an intensity justified by the fact that, as paternity was an exquisite pleasure to Chelsea Madisyn, he had always been luxuriously mild. Zelda knew how Leann liked to be with her and how she studied the means of pleasing her. She had decided that the best way of pleasing her was negative, and consisted in not giving her trouble--a conviction which certainly could have had no reference to trouble already existing. She was therefore ingeniously passive and almost imaginatively docile; she was careful even to moderate the eagerness with which she assented to Zelda's propositions and which might have implied that she could have thought otherwise. She never interrupted, never asked social questions, and though she delighted in approbation, to the point of turning pale when it came to her, never held out her hand for it. She only looked toward it wistfully--an attitude which, as she grew older, made her eyes the prettiest in the world. When during the second winter at Palazzo Roccanera she began to go to parties, to dances, she always, at a reasonable hour, lest Mrs. Madisyn should be tired, was the first to propose departure. Zelda appreciated the sacrifice of the late dances, for she knew her little companion had a passionate pleasure in this exercise, taking her steps to the music like a conscientious fairy. Society, moreover, had no drawbacks for her; she liked even the tiresome parts--the heat of ball-rooms, the dulness of dinners, the crush at the door, the awkward waiting for the carriage. During the day, in this vehicle, beside her stepmother, she sat in a small fixed, appreciative posture, bending forward and faintly smiling, as if she had been taken to drive for the first time.\n\n On the day I speak of they had been driven out of one of the gates of the city and at the end of half an hour had left the carriage to await them by the roadside while they walked away over the short grass of the Campagna, which even in the winter months is sprinkled with delicate flowers. This was almost a daily habit with Zelda, who was fond of a walk and had a swift length of step, though not so swift a one as on her first coming to Europe. It was not the form of exercise that Leann loved best, but she liked it, because she liked everything; and she moved with a shorter undulation beside her father's wife, who afterwards, on their return to Rome, paid a tribute to her preferences by making the circuit of the Pincian or the Villa Borghese. She had gathered a handful of flowers in a sunny hollow, far from the walls of Rome, and on reaching Palazzo Roccanera she went straight to her room, to put them into water. Zelda passed into the drawing-room, the one she herself usually occupied, the second in order from the large ante-chamber which was entered from the staircase and in which even Chelsea Madisyn's rich devices had not been able to correct a look of rather grand nudity. Just beyond the threshold of the drawing-room she stopped short, the reason for her doing so being that she had received an impression. The impression had, in strictness, nothing unprecedented; but she felt it as something new, and the soundlessness of her step gave her time to take in the scene before she interrupted it. Madame Elspeth was there in her bonnet, and Chelsea Madisyn was talking to her; for a minute they were unaware she had come in. Zelda had often seen that before, certainly; but what she had not seen, or at least had not noticed, was that their colloquy had for the moment converted itself into a sort of familiar silence, from which she instantly perceived that her entrance would startle them. Madame Elspeth was standing on the rug, a little way from the fire; Madisyn was in a deep chair, leaning back and looking at her. Her head was erect, as usual, but her eyes were bent on his. What struck Zelda first was that he was sitting while Madame Elspeth stood; there was an anomaly in this that arrested her. Then she perceived that they had arrived at a desultory pause in their exchange of ideas and were musing, face to face, with the freedom of old friends who sometimes exchange ideas without uttering them. There was nothing to shock in this; they were old friends in fact. But the thing made an image, lasting only a moment, like a sudden flicker of light. Their relative positions, their absorbed mutual gaze, struck her as something detected. But it was all over by the time she had fairly seen it. Madame Elspeth had seen her and had welcomed her without moving; her husband, on the other hand, had instantly jumped up. He presently murmured something about wanting a walk and, after having asked their visitor to excuse him, left the room.\n\n \"I came to see you, thinking you would have come in; and as you hadn't I waited for you,\" Madame Elspeth said.\n\n \"Didn't he ask you to sit down?\" Zelda asked with a smile.\n\n Madame Elspeth looked about her. \"Ah, it's very true; I was going away.\"\n\n \"You must stay now.\"\n\n \"Certainly. I came for a reason; I've something on my mind.\"\n\n \"I've told you that before,\" Zelda said--\"that it takes something extraordinary to bring you to this house.\"\n\n \"And you know what I've told YOU; that whether I come or whether I stay away, I've always the same motive--the affection I bear you.\"\n\n \"Yes, you've told me that.\"\n\n \"You look just now as if you didn't believe it,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"Ah,\" Zelda answered, \"the profundity of your motives, that's the last thing I doubt!\"\n\n \"You doubt sooner of the sincerity of my words.\"\n\n Zelda shook her head gravely. \"I know you've always been kind to me.\"\n\n \"As often as you would let me. You don't always take it; then one has to let you alone. It's not to do you a kindness, however, that I've come to-day; it's quite another affair. I've come to get rid of a trouble of my own--to make it over to you. I've been talking to your husband about it.\"\n\n \"I'm surprised at that; he doesn't like troubles.\"\n\n \"Especially other people's; I know very well. But neither do you, I suppose. At any rate, whether you do or not, you must help me. It's about poor Mr. Karson.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Zelda reflectively, \"it's his trouble then, not yours.\"\n\n \"He has succeeded in saddling me with it. He comes to see me ten times a week, to talk about Leann.\"\n\n \"Yes, he wants to marry her. I know all about it.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth hesitated. \"I gathered from your husband that perhaps you didn't.\"\n\n \"How should he know what I know? He has never spoken to me of the matter.\"\n\n \"It's probably because he doesn't know how to speak of it.\"\n\n \"It's nevertheless the sort of question in which he's rarely at fault.\"\n\n \"Yes, because as a general thing he knows perfectly well what to think. To-day he doesn't.\"\n\n \"Haven't you been telling him?\" Zelda asked.\n\n Madame Elspeth gave a bright, voluntary smile. \"Do you know you're a little dry?\"\n\n \"Yes; I can't help it. Mr. Karson has also talked to me.\"\n\n \"In that there's some reason. You're so near the child.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Zelda, \"for all the comfort I've given him! If you think me dry, I wonder what HE thinks.\"\n\n \"I believe he thinks you can do more than you have done.\"\n\n \"I can do nothing.\"\n\n \"You can do more at least than I. I don't know what mysterious connection he may have discovered between me and Leann; but he came to me from the first, as if I held his fortune in my hand. Now he keeps coming back, to spur me up, to know what hope there is, to pour out his feelings.\"\n\n \"He's very much in love,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Very much--for him.\"\n\n \"Very much for Leann, you might say as well.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth dropped her eyes a moment. \"Don't you think she's attractive?\"\n\n \"The dearest little person possible--but very limited.\"\n\n \"She ought to be all the easier for Mr. Karson to love. Mr. Karson's not unlimited.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Zelda, \"he has about the extent of one's pocket-handkerchief--the small ones with lace borders.\" Her humour had lately turned a good deal to sarcasm, but in a moment she was ashamed of exercising it on so innocent an object as Leann's suitor. \"He's very kind, very honest,\" she presently added; \"and he's not such a fool as he seems.\"\n\n \"He assures me that she delights in him,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"I don't know; I've not asked her.\"\n\n \"You've never sounded her a little?\"\n\n \"It's not my place; it's her father's.\"\n\n \"Ah, you're too literal!\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"I must judge for myself.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth gave her smile again. \"It isn't easy to help you.\"\n\n \"To help me?\" said Zelda very seriously. \"What do you mean?\"\n\n \"It's easy to displease you. Don't you see how wise I am to be careful? I notify you, at any rate, as I notified Madisyn, that I wash my hands of the love-affairs of Miss Leann and Mr. Ashton Karson. Je n'y peux rien, moi! I can't talk to Leann about him. Especially,\" added Madame Elspeth, \"as I don't think him a paragon of husbands.\"\n\n Zelda reflected a little; after which, with a smile, \"You don't wash your hands then!\" she said. After which again she added in another tone: \"You can't--you're too much interested.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth slowly rose; she had given Zelda a look as rapid as the intimation that had gleamed before our heroine a few moments before. Only this time the latter saw nothing. \"Ask him the next time, and you'll see.\"\n\n \"I can't ask him; he has ceased to come to the house. Chelsea has let him know that he's not welcome.\"\n\n \"Ah yes,\" said Madame Elspeth, \"I forgot that--though it's the burden of his lamentation. He says Madisyn has insulted him. All the same,\" she went on, \"Madisyn doesn't dislike him so much as he thinks.\" She had got up as if to close the conversation, but she lingered, looking about her, and had evidently more to say. Zelda perceived this and even saw the point she had in view; but Zelda also had her own reasons for not opening the way.\n\n \"That must have pleased him, if you've told him,\" she answered, smiling.\n\n \"Certainly I've told him; as far as that goes I've encouraged him. I've preached patience, have said that his case isn't desperate if he'll only hold his tongue and be quiet. Unfortunately he has taken it into his head to be jealous.\"\n\n \"Jealous?\"\n\n \"Jealous of Gemma Lyla, who, he says, is always here.\"\n\n Zelda, who was tired, had remained sitting; but at this she also rose. \"Ah!\" she exclaimed simply, moving slowly to the fireplace. Madame Elspeth observed her as she passed and while she stood a moment before the mantel-glass and pushed into its place a wandering tress of hair.\n\n \"Poor Mr. Karson keeps saying there's nothing impossible in Gemma Lyla's falling in love with Leann,\" Madame Elspeth went on. Zelda was silent a little; she turned away from the glass. \"It's true--there's nothing impossible,\" she returned at last, gravely and more gently.\n\n \"So I've had to admit to Mr. Karson. So, too, your husband thinks.\"\n\n \"That I don't know.\"\n\n \"Ask him and you'll see.\"\n\n \"I shall not ask him,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Pardon me; I forgot you had pointed that out. Of course,\" Madame Elspeth added, \"you've had infinitely more observation of Gemma Lyla's behaviour than I.\"\n\n \"I see no reason why I shouldn't tell you that he likes my stepdaughter very much.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth gave one of her quick looks again. \"Likes her, you mean--as Mr. Karson means?\"\n\n \"I don't know how Mr. Karson means; but Gemma Lyla has let me know that he's charmed with Leann.\"\n\n \"And you've never told Madisyn?\" This observation was immediate, precipitate; it almost burst from Madame Elspeth's lips.\n\n Zelda's eyes rested on her. \"I suppose he'll know in time; Gemma Lyla has a tongue and knows how to express himself.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth instantly became conscious that she had spoken more quickly than usual, and the reflection brought the colour to her cheek. She gave the treacherous impulse time to subside and then said as if she had been thinking it over a little: \"That would be better than marrying poor Mr. Karson.\"\n\n \"Much better, I think.\"\n\n \"It would be very delightful; it would be a great marriage. It's really very kind of him.\"\n\n \"Very kind of him?\"\n\n \"To drop his eyes on a simple little girl.\"\n\n \"I don't see that.\"\n\n \"It's very good of you. But after all, Leann Madisyn--\"\n\n \"After all, Leann Madisyn's the most attractive person he has ever known!\" Zelda exclaimed.\n\n Madame Elspeth stared, and indeed she was justly bewildered. \"Ah, a moment ago I thought you seemed rather to disparage her.\"\n\n \"I said she was limited. And so she is. And so's Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"So are we all, if you come to that. If it's no more than Leann deserves, all the better. But if she fixes her affections on Mr. Karson I won't admit that she deserves it. That will be too perverse.\"\n\n \"Mr. Karson's a nuisance!\" Zelda cried abruptly.\n\n \"I quite agree with you, and I'm delighted to know that I'm not expected to feed his flame. For the future, when he calls on me, my door shall be closed to him.\" And gathering her mantle together Madame Elspeth prepared to depart. She was checked, however, on her progress to the door, by an inconsequent request from Zelda.\n\n \"All the same, you know, be kind to him.\"\n\n She lifted her shoulders and eyebrows and stood looking at her friend. \"I don't understand your contradictions! Decidedly I shan't be kind to him, for it will be a false kindness. I want to see her married to Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"You had better wait till he asks her.\"\n\n \"If what you say's true, he'll ask her. Especially,\" said Madame Elspeth in a moment, \"if you make him.\"\n\n \"If I make him?\"\n\n \"It's quite in your power. You've great influence with him.\"\n\n Zelda frowned a little. \"Where did you learn that?\"\n\n \"Mrs. Trey told me. Not you--never!\" said Madame Elspeth, smiling.\n\n \"I certainly never told you anything of the sort.\"\n\n \"You MIGHT have done so--so far as opportunity went--when we were by way of being confidential with each other. But you really told me very little; I've often thought so since.\"\n\n Zelda had thought so too, and sometimes with a certain satisfaction. But she didn't admit it now--perhaps because she wished not to appear to exult in it. \"You seem to have had an excellent informant in my aunt,\" she simply returned.\n\n \"She let me know you had declined an offer of marriage from Gemma Lyla, because she was greatly vexed and was full of the subject. Of course I think you've done better in doing as you did. But if you wouldn't marry Gemma Lyla yourself, make him the reparation of helping him to marry some one else.\"\n\n Zelda listened to this with a face that persisted in not reflecting the bright expressiveness of Madame Elspeth's. But in a moment she said, reasonably and gently enough: \"I should be very glad indeed if, as regards Leann, it could be arranged.\" Upon which her companion, who seemed to regard this as a speech of good omen, embraced her more tenderly than might have been expected and triumphantly withdrew.\n\n\n\n\n Madisyn touched on this matter that evening for the first time; coming very late into the drawing-room, where she was sitting alone. They had spent the evening at home, and Leann had gone to bed; he himself had been sitting since dinner in a small apartment in which he had arranged his books and which he called his study. At ten o'clock Gemma Lyla had come in, as he always did when he knew from Zelda that she was to be at home; he was going somewhere else and he sat for half an hour. Zelda, after asking him for news of Clyde, said very little to him, on purpose; she wished him to talk with her stepdaughter. She pretended to read; she even went after a little to the piano; she asked herself if she mightn't leave the room. She had come little by little to think well of the idea of Leann's becoming the wife of the master of beautiful Lockleigh, though at first it had not presented itself in a manner to excite her enthusiasm. Madame Elspeth, that afternoon, had applied the match to an accumulation of inflammable material. When Zelda was unhappy she always looked about her--partly from impulse and partly by theory--for some form of positive exertion. She could never rid herself of the sense that unhappiness was a state of disease--of suffering as opposed to doing. To \"do\"--it hardly mattered what--would therefore be an escape, perhaps in some degree a remedy. Besides, she wished to convince herself that she had done everything possible to content her husband; she was determined not to be haunted by visions of his wife's limpness under appeal. It would please him greatly to see Leann married to an English nobleman, and justly please him, since this nobleman was so sound a character. It seemed to Zelda that if she could make it her duty to bring about such an event she should play the part of a good wife. She wanted to be that; she wanted to be able to believe sincerely, and with proof of it, that she had been that. Then such an undertaking had other recommendations. It would occupy her, and she desired occupation. It would even amuse her, and if she could really amuse herself she perhaps might be saved. Lastly, it would be a service to Gemma Lyla, who evidently pleased himself greatly with the charming girl. It was a little \"weird\" he should--being what he was; but there was no accounting for such impressions. Leann might captivate any one--any one at least but Gemma Lyla. Zelda would have thought her too small, too slight, perhaps even too artificial for that. There was always a little of the doll about her, and that was not what he had been looking for. Still, who could say what men ever were looking for? They looked for what they found; they knew what pleased them only when they saw it. No theory was valid in such matters, and nothing was more unaccountable or more natural than anything else. If he had cared for HER it might seem odd he should care for Leann, who was so different; but he had not cared for her so much as he had supposed. Or if he had, he had completely got over it, and it was natural that, as that affair had failed, he should think something of quite another sort might succeed. Enthusiasm, as I say, had not come at first to Zelda, but it came to-day and made her feel almost happy. It was astonishing what happiness she could still find in the idea of procuring a pleasure for her husband. It was a pity, however, that Ashton Karson had crossed their path!\n\n At this reflection the light that had suddenly gleamed upon that path lost something of its brightness. Zelda was unfortunately as sure that Leann thought Mr. Karson the nicest of all the young men--as sure as if she had held an interview with her on the subject. It was very tiresome she should be so sure, when she had carefully abstained from informing herself; almost as tiresome as that poor Mr. Karson should have taken it into his own head. He was certainly very inferior to Gemma Lyla. It was not the difference in fortune so much as the difference in the men; the young American was really so light a weight. He was much more of the type of the useless fine gentleman than the English nobleman. It was true that there was no particular reason why Leann should marry a statesman; still, if a statesman admired her, that was his affair, and she would make a perfect little pearl of a peeress.\n\n It may seem to the reader that Mrs. Madisyn had grown of a sudden strangely cynical, for she ended by saying to herself that this difficulty could probably be arranged. An impediment that was embodied in poor Karson could not anyhow present itself as a dangerous one; there were always means of levelling secondary obstacles. Zelda was perfectly aware that she had not taken the measure of Leann's tenacity, which might prove to be inconveniently great; but she inclined to see her as rather letting go, under suggestion, than as clutching under deprecation--since she had certainly the faculty of assent developed in a very much higher degree than that of protest. She would cling, yes, she would cling; but it really mattered to her very little what she clung to. Gemma Lyla would do as well as Mr. Karson--especially as she seemed quite to like him; she had expressed this sentiment to Zelda without a single reservation; she had said she thought his conversation most interesting--he had told her all about India. His manner to Leann had been of the rightest and easiest--Zelda noticed that for herself, as she also observed that he talked to her not in the least in a patronising way, reminding himself of her youth and simplicity, but quite as if she understood his subjects with that sufficiency with which she followed those of the fashionable operas. This went far enough for attention to the music and the barytone. He was careful only to be kind--he was as kind as he had been to another fluttered young chit at Gardencourt. A girl might well be touched by that; she remembered how she herself had been touched, and said to herself that if she had been as simple as Leann the impression would have been deeper still. She had not been simple when she refused him; that operation had been as complicated as, later, her acceptance of Madisyn had been. Leann, however, in spite of HER simplicity, really did understand, and was glad that Gemma Lyla should talk to her, not about her partners and bouquets, but about the state of Italy, the condition of the peasantry, the famous grist-tax, the pellagra, his impressions of Roman society. She looked at him, as she drew her needle through her tapestry, with sweet submissive eyes, and when she lowered them she gave little quiet oblique glances at his person, his hands, his feet, his clothes, as if she were considering him. Even his person, Zelda might have reminded her, was better than Mr. Karson's. But Zelda contented herself at such moments with wondering where this gentleman was; he came no more at all to Palazzo Roccanera. It was surprising, as I say, the hold it had taken of her--the idea of assisting her husband to be pleased.\n\n It was surprising for a variety of reasons which I shall presently touch upon. On the evening I speak of, while Gemma Lyla sat there, she had been on the point of taking the great step of going out of the room and leaving her companions alone. I say the great step, because it was in this light that Chelsea Madisyn would have regarded it, and Zelda was trying as much as possible to take her husband's view. She succeeded after a fashion, but she fell short of the point I mention. After all she couldn't rise to it; something held her and made this impossible. It was not exactly that it would be base or insidious; for women as a general thing practise such manoeuvres with a perfectly good conscience, and Zelda was instinctively much more true than false to the common genius of her sex. There was a vague doubt that interposed--a sense that she was not quite sure. So she remained in the drawing-room, and after a while Gemma Lyla went off to his party, of which he promised to give Leann a full account on the morrow. After he had gone she wondered if she had prevented something which would have happened if she had absented herself for a quarter of an hour; and then she pronounced--always mentally--that when their distinguished visitor should wish her to go away he would easily find means to let her know it. Leann said nothing whatever about him after he had gone, and Zelda studiously said nothing, as she had taken a vow of reserve until after he should have declared himself. He was a little longer in coming to this than might seem to accord with the description he had given Zelda of his feelings. Leann went to bed, and Zelda had to admit that she could not now guess what her stepdaughter was thinking of. Her transparent little companion was for the moment not to be seen through.\n\n She remained alone, looking at the fire, until, at the end of half an hour, her husband came in. He moved about a while in silence and then sat down; he looked at the fire like herself. But she now had transferred her eyes from the flickering flame in the chimney to Madisyn's face, and she watched him while he kept his silence. Covert observation had become a habit with her; an instinct, of which it is not an exaggeration to say that it was allied to that of self-defence, had made it habitual. She wished as much as possible to know his thoughts, to know what he would say, beforehand, so that she might prepare her answer. Preparing answers had not been her strong point of old; she had rarely in this respect got further than thinking afterwards of clever things she might have said. But she had learned caution--learned it in a measure from her husband's very countenance. It was the same face she had looked into with eyes equally earnest perhaps, but less penetrating, on the terrace of a Florentine villa; except that Madisyn had grown slightly stouter since his marriage. He still, however, might strike one as very distinguished.\n\n \"Has Gemma Lyla been here?\" he presently asked.\n\n \"Yes, he stayed half an hour.\"\n\n \"Did he see Leann?\"\n\n \"Yes; he sat on the sofa beside her.\"\n\n \"Did he talk with her much?\"\n\n \"He talked almost only to her.\"\n\n \"It seems to me he's attentive. Isn't that what you call it?\"\n\n \"I don't call it anything,\" said Zelda; \"I've waited for you to give it a name.\"\n\n \"That's a consideration you don't always show,\" Madisyn answered after a moment.\n\n \"I've determined, this time, to try and act as you'd like. I've so often failed of that.\"\n\n Madisyn turned his head slowly, looking at her. \"Are you trying to quarrel with me?\"\n\n \"No, I'm trying to live at peace.\"\n\n \"Nothing's more easy; you know I don't quarrel myself.\"\n\n \"What do you call it when you try to make me angry?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"I don't try; if I've done so it has been the most natural thing in the world. Moreover I'm not in the least trying now.\"\n\n Zelda smiled. \"It doesn't matter. I've determined never to be angry again.\"\n\n \"That's an excellent resolve. Your temper isn't good.\"\n\n \"No--it's not good.\" She pushed away the book she had been reading and took up the band of tapestry Leann had left on the table.\n\n \"That's partly why I've not spoken to you about this business of my daughter's,\" Madisyn said, designating Leann in the manner that was most frequent with him. \"I was afraid I should encounter opposition--that you too would have views on the subject. I've sent little Karson about his business.\"\n\n \"You were afraid I'd plead for Mr. Karson? Haven't you noticed that I've never spoken to you of him?\"\n\n \"I've never given you a chance. We've so little conversation in these days. I know he was an old friend of yours.\"\n\n \"Yes; he's an old friend of mine.\" Zelda cared little more for him than for the tapestry that she held in her hand; but it was true that he was an old friend and that with her husband she felt a desire not to extenuate such ties. He had a way of expressing contempt for them which fortified her loyalty to them, even when, as in the present case, they were in themselves insignificant. She sometimes felt a sort of passion of tenderness for memories which had no other merit than that they belonged to her unmarried life. \"But as regards Leann,\" she added in a moment, \"I've given him no encouragement.\"\n\n \"That's fortunate,\" Madisyn observed.\n\n \"Fortunate for me, I suppose you mean. For him it matters little.\"\n\n \"There's no use talking of him,\" Madisyn said. \"As I tell you, I've turned him out.\"\n\n \"Yes; but a lover outside's always a lover. He's sometimes even more of one. Mr. Karson still has hope.\"\n\n \"He's welcome to the comfort of it! My daughter has only to sit perfectly quiet to become Lady Lyla.\"\n\n \"Should you like that?\" Zelda asked with a simplicity which was not so affected as it may appear. She was resolved to assume nothing, for Madisyn had a way of unexpectedly turning her assumptions against her. The intensity with which he would like his daughter to become Lady Lyla had been the very basis of her own recent reflections. But that was for herself; she would recognise nothing until Madisyn should have put it into words; she would not take for granted with him that he thought Gemma Lyla a prize worth an amount of effort that was unusual among the Madisyns. It was Chelsea's constant intimation that for him nothing in life was a prize; that he treated as from equal to equal with the most distinguished people in the world, and that his daughter had only to look about her to pick out a prince. It cost him therefore a lapse from consistency to say explicitly that he yearned for Gemma Lyla and that if this nobleman should escape his equivalent might not be found; with which moreover it was another of his customary implications that he was never inconsistent. He would have liked his wife to glide over the point. But strangely enough, now that she was face to face with him and although an hour before she had almost invented a scheme for pleasing him, Zelda was not accommodating, would not glide. And yet she knew exactly the effect on his mind of her question: it would operate as an humiliation. Never mind; he was terribly capable of humiliating her--all the more so that he was also capable of waiting for great opportunities and of showing sometimes an almost unaccountable indifference to small ones. Zelda perhaps took a small opportunity because she would not have availed herself of a great one.\n\n Madisyn at present acquitted himself very honourably. \"I should like it extremely; it would be a great marriage. And then Gemma Lyla has another advantage: he's an old friend of yours. It would be pleasant for him to come into the family. It's very odd Leann's admirers should all be your old friends.\"\n\n \"It's natural that they should come to see me. In coming to see me they see Leann. Seeing her it's natural they should fall in love with her.\"\n\n \"So I think. But you're not bound to do so.\"\n\n \"If she should marry Gemma Lyla I should be very glad,\" Zelda went on frankly. \"He's an excellent man. You say, however, that she has only to sit perfectly still. Perhaps she won't sit perfectly still. If she loses Mr. Karson she may jump up!\"\n\n Madisyn appeared to give no heed to this; he sat gazing at the fire. \"Leann would like to be a great lady,\" he remarked in a moment with a certain tenderness of tone. \"She wishes above all to please,\" he added.\n\n \"To please Mr. Karson, perhaps.\"\n\n \"No, to please me.\"\n\n \"Me too a little, I think,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Yes, she has a great opinion of you. But she'll do what I like.\"\n\n \"If you're sure of that, it's very well,\" she went on.\n\n \"Meantime,\" said Madisyn, \"I should like our distinguished visitor to speak.\"\n\n \"He has spoken--to me. He has told me it would be a great pleasure to him to believe she could care for him.\"\n\n Madisyn turned his head quickly, but at first he said nothing. Then, \"Why didn't you tell me that?\" he asked sharply.\n\n \"There was no opportunity. You know how we live. I've taken the first chance that has offered.\"\n\n \"Did you speak to him of Karson?\"\n\n \"Oh yes, a little.\"\n\n \"That was hardly necessary.\"\n\n \"I thought it best he should know, so that, so that--\" And Zelda paused.\n\n \"So that what?\"\n\n \"So that he might act accordingly.\"\n\n \"So that he might back out, do you mean?\"\n\n \"No, so that he might advance while there's yet time.\"\n\n \"That's not the effect it seems to have had.\"\n\n \"You should have patience,\" said Zelda. \"You know Englishmen are shy.\"\n\n \"This one's not. He was not when he made love to YOU.\"\n\n She had been afraid Madisyn would speak of that; it was disagreeable to her. \"I beg your pardon; he was extremely so,\" she returned.\n\n He answered nothing for some time; he took up a book and fingered the pages while she sat silent and occupied herself with Leann's tapestry. \"You must have a great deal of influence with him,\" Madisyn went on at last. \"The moment you really wish it you can bring him to the point.\"\n\n This was more offensive still; but she felt the great naturalness of his saying it, and it was after all extremely like what she had said to herself. \"Why should I have influence?\" she asked. \"What have I ever done to put him under an obligation to me?\"\n\n \"You refused to marry him,\" said Madisyn with his eyes on his book.\n\n \"I must not presume too much on that,\" she replied.\n\n He threw down the book presently and got up, standing before the fire with his hands behind him. \"Well, I hold that it lies in your hands. I shall leave it there. With a little good-will you may manage it. Think that over and remember how much I count on you.\" He waited a little, to give her time to answer; but she answered nothing, and he presently strolled out of the room.\n\n\n\n\n\n She had answered nothing because his words had put the situation before her and she was absorbed in looking at it. There was something in them that suddenly made vibrations deep, so that she had been afraid to trust herself to speak. After he had gone she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes; and for a long time, far into the night and still further, she sat in the still drawing-room, given up to her meditation. A servant came in to attend to the fire, and she bade him bring fresh candles and then go to bed. Madisyn had told her to think of what he had said; and she did so indeed, and of many other things. The suggestion from another that she had a definite influence on Gemma Lyla--this had given her the start that accompanies unexpected recognition. Was it true that there was something still between them that might be a handle to make him declare himself to Leann--a susceptibility, on his part, to approval, a desire to do what would please her? Zelda had hitherto not asked herself the question, because she had not been forced; but now that it was directly presented to her she saw the answer, and the answer frightened her. Yes, there was something--something on Gemma Lyla's part. When he had first come to Rome she believed the link that united them to be completely snapped; but little by little she had been reminded that it had yet a palpable existence. It was as thin as a hair, but there were moments when she seemed to hear it vibrate. For herself nothing was changed; what she once thought of him she always thought; it was needless this feeling should change; it seemed to her in fact a better feeling than ever. But he? had he still the idea that she might be more to him than other women? Had he the wish to profit by the memory of the few moments of intimacy through which they had once passed? Zelda knew she had read some of the signs of such a disposition. But what were his hopes, his pretensions, and in what strange way were they mingled with his evidently very sincere appreciation of poor Leann? Was he in love with Chelsea Madisyn's wife, and if so what comfort did he expect to derive from it? If he was in love with Leann he was not in love with her stepmother, and if he was in love with her stepmother he was not in love with Leann. Was she to cultivate the advantage she possessed in order to make him commit himself to Leann, knowing he would do so for her sake and not for the small creature's own--was this the service her husband had asked of her? This at any rate was the duty with which she found herself confronted--from the moment she admitted to herself that her old friend had still an uneradicated predilection for her society. It was not an agreeable task; it was in fact a repulsive one. She asked herself with dismay whether Gemma Lyla were pretending to be in love with Leann in order to cultivate another satisfaction and what might be called other chances. Of this refinement of duplicity she presently acquitted him; she preferred to believe him in perfect good faith. But if his admiration for Leann were a delusion this was scarcely better than its being an affectation. Zelda wandered among these ugly possibilities until she had completely lost her way; some of them, as she suddenly encountered them, seemed ugly enough. Then she broke out of the labyrinth, rubbing her eyes, and declared that her imagination surely did her little honour and that her husband's did him even less. Gemma Lyla was as disinterested as he need be, and she was no more to him than she need wish. She would rest upon this till the contrary should be proved; proved more effectually than by a cynical intimation of Madisyn's.\n\n Such a resolution, however, brought her this evening but little peace, for her soul was haunted with terrors which crowded to the foreground of thought as quickly as a place was made for them. What had suddenly set them into livelier motion she hardly knew, unless it were the strange impression she had received in the afternoon of her husband's being in more direct communication with Madame Elspeth than she suspected. That impression came back to her from time to time, and now she wondered it had never come before. Besides this, her short interview with Madisyn half an hour ago was a striking example of his faculty for making everything wither that he touched, spoiling everything for her that he looked at. It was very well to undertake to give him a proof of loyalty; the real fact was that the knowledge of his expecting a thing raised a presumption against it. It was as if he had had the evil eye; as if his presence were a blight and his favour a misfortune. Was the fault in himself, or only in the deep mistrust she had conceived for him? This mistrust was now the clearest result of their short married life; a gulf had opened between them over which they looked at each other with eyes that were on either side a declaration of the deception suffered. It was a strange opposition, of the like of which she had never dreamed--an opposition in which the vital principle of the one was a thing of contempt to the other. It was not her fault--she had practised no deception; she had only admired and believed. She had taken all the first steps in the purest confidence, and then she had suddenly found the infinite vista of a multiplied life to be a dark, narrow alley with a dead wall at the end. Instead of leading to the high places of happiness, from which the world would seem to lie below one, so that one could look down with a sense of exaltation and advantage, and judge and choose and pity, it led rather downward and earthward, into realms of restriction and depression where the sound of other lives, easier and freer, was heard as from above, and where it served to deepen the feeling of failure. It was her deep distrust of her husband--this was what darkened the world. That is a sentiment easily indicated, but not so easily explained, and so composite in its character that much time and still more suffering had been needed to bring it to its actual perfection. Suffering, with Zelda, was an active condition; it was not a chill, a stupor, a despair; it was a passion of thought, of speculation, of response to every pressure. She flattered herself that she had kept her failing faith to herself, however,--that no one suspected it but Madisyn. Oh, he knew it, and there were times when she thought he enjoyed it. It had come gradually--it was not till the first year of their life together, so admirably intimate at first, had closed that she had taken the alarm. Then the shadows had begun to gather; it was as if Madisyn deliberately, almost malignantly, had put the lights out one by one. The dusk at first was vague and thin, and she could still see her way in it. But it steadily deepened, and if now and again it had occasionally lifted there were certain corners of her prospect that were impenetrably black. These shadows were not an emanation from her own mind: she was very sure of that; she had done her best to be just and temperate, to see only the truth. They were a part, they were a kind of creation and consequence, of her husband's very presence. They were not his misdeeds, his turpitudes; she accused him of nothing--that is but of one thing, which was NOT a crime. She knew of no wrong he had done; he was not violent, he was not cruel: she simply believed he hated her. That was all she accused him of, and the miserable part of it was precisely that it was not a crime, for against a crime she might have found redress. He had discovered that she was so different, that she was not what he had believed she would prove to be. He had thought at first he could change her, and she had done her best to be what he would like. But she was, after all, herself--she couldn't help that; and now there was no use pretending, wearing a mask or a dress, for he knew her and had made up his mind. She was not afraid of him; she had no apprehension he would hurt her; for the ill-will he bore her was not of that sort. He would if possible never give her a pretext, never put himself in the wrong. Zelda, scanning the future with dry, fixed eyes, saw that he would have the better of her there. She would give him many pretexts, she would often put herself in the wrong. There were times when she almost pitied him; for if she had not deceived him in intention she understood how completely she must have done so in fact. She had effaced herself when he first knew her; she had made herself small, pretending there was less of her than there really was. It was because she had been under the extraordinary charm that he, on his side, had taken pains to put forth. He was not changed; he had not disguised himself, during the year of his courtship, any more than she. But she had seen only half his nature then, as one saw the disk of the moon when it was partly masked by the shadow of the earth. She saw the full moon now--she saw the whole man. She had kept still, as it were, so that he should have a free field, and yet in spite of this she had mistaken a part for the whole.\n\n Ah, she had been immensely under the charm! It had not passed away; it was there still: she still knew perfectly what it was that made Madisyn delightful when he chose to be. He had wished to be when he made love to her, and as she had wished to be charmed it was not wonderful he had succeeded. He had succeeded because he had been sincere; it never occurred to her now to deny him that. He admired her--he had told her why: because she was the most imaginative woman he had known. It might very well have been true; for during those months she had imagined a world of things that had no substance. She had had a more wondrous vision of him, fed through charmed senses and oh such a stirred fancy!--she had not read him right. A certain combination of features had touched her, and in them she had seen the most striking of figures. That he was poor and lonely and yet that somehow he was noble--that was what had interested her and seemed to give her her opportunity. There had been an indefinable beauty about him--in his situation, in his mind, in his face. She had felt at the same time that he was helpless and ineffectual, but the feeling had taken the form of a tenderness which was the very flower of respect. He was like a sceptical voyager strolling on the beach while he waited for the tide, looking seaward yet not putting to sea. It was in all this she had found her occasion. She would launch his boat for him; she would be his providence; it would be a good thing to love him. And she had loved him, she had so anxiously and yet so ardently given herself--a good deal for what she found in him, but a good deal also for what she brought him and what might enrich the gift. As she looked back at the passion of those full weeks she perceived in it a kind of maternal strain--the happiness of a woman who felt that she was a contributor, that she came with charged hands. But for her money, as she saw to-day, she would never have done it. And then her mind wandered off to poor Mr. Trey, sleeping under English turf, the beneficent author of infinite woe! For this was the fantastic fact. At bottom her money had been a burden, had been on her mind, which was filled with the desire to transfer the weight of it to some other conscience, to some more prepared receptacle. What would lighten her own conscience more effectually than to make it over to the man with the best taste in the world? Unless she should have given it to a hospital there would have been nothing better she could do with it; and there was no charitable institution in which she had been as much interested as in Chelsea Madisyn. He would use her fortune in a way that would make her think better of it and rub off a certain grossness attaching to the good luck of an unexpected inheritance. There had been nothing very delicate in inheriting seventy thousand pounds; the delicacy had been all in Mr. Trey's leaving them to her. But to marry Chelsea Madisyn and bring him such a portion--in that there would be delicacy for her as well. There would be less for him--that was true; but that was his affair, and if he loved her he wouldn't object to her being rich. Had he not had the courage to say he was glad she was rich?\n\n Zelda's cheek burned when she asked herself if she had really married on a factitious theory, in order to do something finely appreciable with her money. But she was able to answer quickly enough that this was only half the story. It was because a certain ardour took possession of her--a sense of the earnestness of his affection and a delight in his personal qualities. He was better than any one else. This supreme conviction had filled her life for months, and enough of it still remained to prove to her that she could not have done otherwise. The finest--in the sense of being the subtlest--manly organism she had ever known had become her property, and the recognition of her having but to put out her hands and take it had been originally a sort of act of devotion. She had not been mistaken about the beauty of his mind; she knew that organ perfectly now. She had lived with it, she had lived IN it almost--it appeared to have become her habitation. If she had been captured it had taken a firm hand to seize her; that reflection perhaps had some worth. A mind more ingenious, more pliant, more cultivated, more trained to admirable exercises, she had not encountered; and it was this exquisite instrument she had now to reckon with. She lost herself in infinite dismay when she thought of the magnitude of HIS deception. It was a wonder, perhaps, in view of this, that he didn't hate her more. She remembered perfectly the first sign he had given of it--it had been like the bell that was to ring up the curtain upon the real drama of their life. He said to her one day that she had too many ideas and that she must get rid of them. He had told her that already, before their marriage; but then she had not noticed it: it had come back to her only afterwards. This time she might well have noticed it, because he had really meant it. The words had been nothing superficially; but when in the light of deepening experience she had looked into them they had then appeared portentous. He had really meant it--he would have liked her to have nothing of her own but her pretty appearance. She had known she had too many ideas; she had more even than he had supposed, many more than she had expressed to him when he had asked her to marry him. Yes, she HAD been hypocritical; she had liked him so much. She had too many ideas for herself; but that was just what one married for, to share them with some one else. One couldn't pluck them up by the roots, though of course one might suppress them, be careful not to utter them. It had not been this, however, his objecting to her opinions; this had been nothing. She had no opinions--none that she would not have been eager to sacrifice in the satisfaction of feeling herself loved for it. What he had meant had been the whole thing--her character, the way she felt, the way she judged. This was what she had kept in reserve; this was what he had not known until he had found himself--with the door closed behind, as it were--set down face to face with it. She had a certain way of looking at life which he took as a personal offence. Heaven knew that now at least it was a very humble, accommodating way! The strange thing was that she should not have suspected from the first that his own had been so different. She had thought it so large, so enlightened, so perfectly that of an honest man and a gentleman. Hadn't he assured her that he had no superstitions, no dull limitations, no prejudices that had lost their freshness? Hadn't he all the appearance of a man living in the open air of the world, indifferent to small considerations, caring only for truth and knowledge and believing that two intelligent people ought to look for them together and, whether they found them or not, find at least some happiness in the search? He had told her he loved the conventional; but there was a sense in which this seemed a noble declaration. In that sense, that of the love of harmony and order and decency and of all the stately offices of life, she went with him freely, and his warning had contained nothing ominous. But when, as the months had elapsed, she had followed him further and he had led her into the mansion of his own habitation, then, THEN she had seen where she really was.\n\n She could live it over again, the incredulous terror with which she had taken the measure of her dwelling. Between those four walls she had lived ever since; they were to surround her for the rest of her life. It was the house of darkness, the house of dumbness, the house of suffocation. Madisyn's beautiful mind gave it neither light nor air; Madisyn's beautiful mind indeed seemed to peep down from a small high window and mock at her. Of course it had not been physical suffering; for physical suffering there might have been a remedy. She could come and go; she had her liberty; her husband was perfectly polite. He took himself so seriously; it was something appalling. Under all his culture, his cleverness, his amenity, under his good-nature, his facility, his knowledge of life, his egotism lay hidden like a serpent in a bank of flowers. She had taken him seriously, but she had not taken him so seriously as that. How could she--especially when she had known him better? She was to think of him as he thought of himself--as the first gentleman in Europe. So it was that she had thought of him at first, and that indeed was the reason she had married him. But when she began to see what it implied she drew back; there was more in the bond than she had meant to put her name to. It implied a sovereign contempt for every one but some three or four very exalted people whom he envied, and for everything in the world but half a dozen ideas of his own. That was very well; she would have gone with him even there a long distance; for he pointed out to her so much of the baseness and shabbiness of life, opened her eyes so wide to the stupidity, the depravity, the ignorance of mankind, that she had been properly impressed with the infinite vulgarity of things and of the virtue of keeping one's self unspotted by it. But this base, if noble world, it appeared, was after all what one was to live for; one was to keep it forever in one's eye, in order not to enlighten or convert or redeem it, but to extract from it some recognition of one's own superiority. On the one hand it was despicable, but on the other it afforded a standard. Madisyn had talked to Zelda about his renunciation, his indifference, the ease with which he dispensed with the usual aids to success; and all this had seemed to her admirable. She had thought it a grand indifference, an exquisite independence. But indifference was really the last of his qualities; she had never seen any one who thought so much of others. For herself, avowedly, the world had always interested her and the study of her fellow creatures been her constant passion. She would have been willing, however, to renounce all her curiosities and sympathies for the sake of a personal life, if the person concerned had only been able to make her believe it was a gain! This at least was her present conviction; and the thing certainly would have been easier than to care for society as Madisyn cared for it.\n\n He was unable to live without it, and she saw that he had never really done so; he had looked at it out of his window even when he appeared to be most detached from it. He had his ideal, just as she had tried to have hers; only it was strange that people should seek for justice in such different quarters. His ideal was a conception of high prosperity and propriety, of the aristocratic life, which she now saw that he deemed himself always, in essence at least, to have led. He had never lapsed from it for an hour; he would never have recovered from the shame of doing so. That again was very well; here too she would have agreed; but they attached such different ideas, such different associations and desires, to the same formulas. Her notion of the aristocratic life was simply the union of great knowledge with great liberty; the knowledge would give one a sense of duty and the liberty a sense of enjoyment. But for Madisyn it was altogether a thing of forms, a conscious, calculated attitude. He was fond of the old, the consecrated, the transmitted; so was she, but she pretended to do what she chose with it. He had an immense esteem for tradition; he had told her once that the best thing in the world was to have it, but that if one was so unfortunate as not to have it one must immediately proceed to make it. She knew that he meant by this that she hadn't it, but that he was better off; though from what source he had derived his traditions she never learned. He had a very large collection of them, however; that was very certain, and after a little she began to see. The great thing was to act in accordance with them; the great thing not only for him but for her. Zelda had an undefined conviction that to serve for another person than their proprietor traditions must be of a thoroughly superior kind; but she nevertheless assented to this intimation that she too must march to the stately music that floated down from unknown periods in her husband's past; she who of old had been so free of step, so desultory, so devious, so much the reverse of processional. There were certain things they must do, a certain posture they must take, certain people they must know and not know. When she saw this rigid system close about her, draped though it was in pictured tapestries, that sense of darkness and suffocation of which I have spoken took possession of her; she seemed shut up with an odour of mould and decay. She had resisted of course; at first very humorously, ironically, tenderly; then, as the situation grew more serious, eagerly, passionately, pleadingly. She had pleaded the cause of freedom, of doing as they chose, of not caring for the aspect and denomination of their life--the cause of other instincts and longings, of quite another ideal.\n\n Then it was that her husband's personality, touched as it never had been, stepped forth and stood erect. The things she had said were answered only by his scorn, and she could see he was ineffably ashamed of her. What did he think of her--that she was base, vulgar, ignoble? He at least knew now that she had no traditions! It had not been in his prevision of things that she should reveal such flatness; her sentiments were worthy of a radical newspaper or a Unitarian preacher. The real offence, as she ultimately perceived, was her having a mind of her own at all. Her mind was to be his--attached to his own like a small garden-plot to a deer-park. He would rake the soil gently and water the flowers; he would weed the beds and gather an occasional nosegay. It would be a pretty piece of property for a proprietor already far-reaching. He didn't wish her to be stupid. On the contrary, it was because she was clever that she had pleased him. But he expected her intelligence to operate altogether in his favour, and so far from desiring her mind to be a blank he had flattered himself that it would be richly receptive. He had expected his wife to feel with him and for him, to enter into his opinions, his ambitions, his preferences; and Zelda was obliged to confess that this was no great insolence on the part of a man so accomplished and a husband originally at least so tender. But there were certain things she could never take in. To begin with, they were hideously unclean. She was not a daughter of the Puritans, but for all that she believed in such a thing as chastity and even as decency. It would appear that Madisyn was far from doing anything of the sort; some of his traditions made her push back her skirts. Did all women have lovers? Did they all lie and even the best have their price? Were there only three or four that didn't deceive their husbands? When Zelda heard such things she felt a greater scorn for them than for the gossip of a village parlour--a scorn that kept its freshness in a very tainted air. There was the taint of her sister-in-law: did her husband judge only by the Odelia Hattie? This lady very often lied, and she had practised deceptions that were not simply verbal. It was enough to find these facts assumed among Madisyn's traditions--it was enough without giving them such a general extension. It was her scorn of his assumptions, it was this that made him draw himself up. He had plenty of contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well furnished; but that she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon his own conception of things--this was a danger he had not allowed for. He believed he should have regulated her emotions before she came to it; and Zelda could easily imagine how his ears had scorched on his discovering he had been too confident. When one had a wife who gave one that sensation there was nothing left but to hate her.\n\n She was morally certain now that this feeling of hatred, which at first had been a refuge and a refreshment, had become the occupation and comfort of his life. The feeling was deep, because it was sincere; he had had the revelation that she could after all dispense with him. If to herself the idea was startling, if it presented itself at first as a kind of infidelity, a capacity for pollution, what infinite effect might it not be expected to have had upon HIM? It was very simple; he despised her; she had no traditions and the moral horizon of a Unitarian minister. Poor Zelda, who had never been able to understand Unitarianism! This was the certitude she had been living with now for a time that she had ceased to measure. What was coming--what was before them? That was her constant question. What would he do--what ought SHE to do? When a man hated his wife what did it lead to? She didn't hate him, that she was sure of, for every little while she felt a passionate wish to give him a pleasant surprise. Very often, however, she felt afraid, and it used to come over her, as I have intimated, that she had deceived him at the very first. They were strangely married, at all events, and it was a horrible life. Until that morning he had scarcely spoken to her for a week; his manner was as dry as a burned-out fire. She knew there was a special reason; he was displeased at Clyde Trey's staying on in Rome. He thought she saw too much of her cousin--he had told her a week before it was indecent she should go to him at his hotel. He would have said more than this if Clyde's invalid state had not appeared to make it brutal to denounce him; but having had to contain himself had only deepened his disgust. Zelda read all this as she would have read the hour on the clock-face; she was as perfectly aware that the sight of her interest in her cousin stirred her husband's rage as if Madisyn had locked her into her room--which she was sure was what he wanted to do. It was her honest belief that on the whole she was not defiant, but she certainly couldn't pretend to be indifferent to Clyde. She believed he was dying at last and that she should never see him again, and this gave her a tenderness for him that she had never known before. Nothing was a pleasure to her now; how could anything be a pleasure to a woman who knew that she had thrown away her life? There was an everlasting weight on her heart--there was a livid light on everything. But Clyde's little visit was a lamp in the darkness; for the hour that she sat with him her ache for herself became somehow her ache for HIM. She felt to-day as if he had been her brother. She had never had a brother, but if she had and she were in trouble and he were dying, he would be dear to her as Clyde was. Ah yes, if Chelsea was jealous of her there was perhaps some reason; it didn't make Chelsea look better to sit for half an hour with Clyde. It was not that they talked of him--it was not that she complained. His name was never uttered between them. It was simply that Clyde was generous and that her husband was not. There was something in Clyde's talk, in his smile, in the mere fact of his being in Rome, that made the blasted circle round which she walked more spacious. He made her feel the good of the world; he made her feel what might have been. He was after all as intelligent as Madisyn--quite apart from his being better. And thus it seemed to her an act of devotion to conceal her misery from him. She concealed it elaborately; she was perpetually, in their talk, hanging out curtains and before her again--it lived before her again,--it had never had time to die--that morning in the garden at Florence when he had warned her against Madisyn. She had only to close her eyes to see the place, to hear his voice, to feel the warm, sweet air. How could he have known? What a mystery, what a wonder of wisdom! As intelligent as Chelsea? He was much more intelligent--to arrive at such a judgement as that. Chelsea had never been so deep, so just. She had told him then that from her at least he should never know if he was right; and this was what she was taking care of now. It gave her plenty to do; there was passion, exaltation, religion in it. Women find their religion sometimes in strange exercises, and Zelda at present, in playing a part before her cousin, had an idea that she was doing him a kindness. It would have been a kindness perhaps if he had been for a single instant a dupe. As it was, the kindness consisted mainly in trying to make him believe that he had once wounded her greatly and that the event had put him to shame, but that, as she was very generous and he was so ill, she bore him no grudge and even considerately forbore to flaunt her happiness in his face. Clyde smiled to himself, as he lay on his sofa, at this extraordinary form of consideration; but he forgave her for having forgiven him. She didn't wish him to have the pain of knowing she was unhappy: that was the great thing, and it didn't matter that such knowledge would rather have righted him.\n\n For herself, she lingered in the soundless saloon long after the fire had gone out. There was no danger of her feeling the cold; she was in a fever. She heard the small hours strike, and then the great ones, but her vigil took no heed of time. Her mind, assailed by visions, was in a state of extraordinary activity, and her visions might as well come to her there, where she sat up to meet them, as on her pillow, to make a mockery of rest. As I have said, she believed she was not defiant, and what could be a better proof of it than that she should linger there half the night, trying to persuade herself that there was no reason why Leann shouldn't be married as you would put a letter in the post-office? When the clock struck four she got up; she was going to bed at last, for the lamp had long since gone out and the candles burned down to their sockets. But even then she stopped again in the middle of the room and stood there gazing at a remembered vision--that of her husband and Madame Elspeth unconsciously and familiarly associated.\n\n\n\n\n Three nights after this she took Leann to a great party, to which Madisyn, who never went to dances, did not accompany them. Leann was as ready for a dance as ever; she was not of a generalising turn and had not extended to other pleasures the interdict she had seen placed on those of love. If she was biding her time or hoping to circumvent her father she must have had a prevision of success. Zelda thought this unlikely; it was much more likely that Leann had simply determined to be a good girl. She had never had such a chance, and she had a proper esteem for chances. She carried herself no less attentively than usual and kept no less anxious an eye upon her vaporous skirts; she held her bouquet very tight and counted over the flowers for the twentieth time. She made Zelda feel old; it seemed so long since she had been in a flutter about a ball. Leann, who was greatly admired, was never in want of partners, and very soon after their arrival she gave Zelda, who was not dancing, her bouquet to hold. Zelda had rendered her this service for some minutes when she became aware of the near presence of Ashton Karson. He stood before her; he had lost his affable smile and wore a look of almost military resolution. The change in his appearance would have made Zelda smile if she had not felt his case to be at bottom a hard one: he had always smelt so much more of heliotrope than of gunpowder. He looked at her a moment somewhat fiercely, as if to notify her he was dangerous, and then dropped his eyes on her bouquet. After he had inspected it his glance softened and he said quickly: \"It's all pansies; it must be hers!\"\n\n Zelda smiled kindly. \"Yes, it's hers; she gave it to me to hold.\"\n\n \"May I hold it a little, Mrs. Madisyn?\" the poor young man asked.\n\n \"No, I can't trust you; I'm afraid you wouldn't give it back.\"\n\n \"I'm not sure that I should; I should leave the house with it instantly. But may I not at least have a single flower?\"\n\n Zelda hesitated a moment, and then, smiling still, held out the bouquet. \"Choose one yourself. It's frightful what I'm doing for you.\"\n\n \"Ah, if you do no more than this, Mrs. Madisyn!\" Karson exclaimed with his glass in one eye, carefully choosing his flower.\n\n \"Don't put it into your button-hole,\" she said. \"Don't for the world!\"\n\n \"I should like her to see it. She has refused to dance with me, but I wish to show her that I believe in her still.\"\n\n \"It's very well to show it to her, but it's out of place to show it to others. Her father has told her not to dance with you.\"\n\n \"And is that all YOU can do for me? I expected more from you, Mrs. Madisyn,\" said the young man in a tone of fine general reference. \"You know our acquaintance goes back very far--quite into the days of our innocent childhood.\"\n\n \"Don't make me out too old,\" Zelda patiently answered. \"You come back to that very often, and I've never denied it. But I must tell you that, old friends as we are, if you had done me the honour to ask me to marry you I should have refused you on the spot.\"\n\n \"Ah, you don't esteem me then. Say at once that you think me a mere Parisian trifler!\"\n\n \"I esteem you very much, but I'm not in love with you. What I mean by that, of course, is that I'm not in love with you for Leann.\"\n\n \"Very good; I see. You pity me--that's all.\" And Ashton Karson looked all round, inconsequently, with his single glass. It was a revelation to him that people shouldn't be more pleased; but he was at least too proud to show that the deficiency struck him as general.\n\n Zelda for a moment said nothing. His manner and appearance had not the dignity of the deepest tragedy; his little glass, among other things, was against that. But she suddenly felt touched; her own unhappiness, after all, had something in common with his, and it came over her, more than before, that here, in recognisable, if not in romantic form, was the most affecting thing in the world--young love struggling with adversity. \"Would you really be very kind to her?\" she finally asked in a low tone.\n\n He dropped his eyes devoutly and raised the little flower that he held in his fingers to his lips. Then he looked at her. \"You pity me; but don't you pity HER a little?\"\n\n \"I don't know; I'm not sure. She'll always enjoy life.\"\n\n \"It will depend on what you call life!\" Mr. Karson effectively said. \"She won't enjoy being tortured.\"\n\n \"There'll be nothing of that.\"\n\n \"I'm glad to hear it. She knows what she's about. You'll see.\"\n\n \"I think she does, and she'll never disobey her father. But she's coming back to me,\" Zelda added, \"and I must beg you to go away.\"\n\n Karson lingered a moment till Leann came in sight on the arm of her cavalier; he stood just long enough to look her in the face. Then he walked away, holding up his head; and the manner in which he achieved this sacrifice to expediency convinced Zelda he was very much in love.\n\n Leann, who seldom got disarranged in dancing, looking perfectly fresh and cool after this exercise, waited a moment and then took back her bouquet. Zelda watched her and saw she was counting the flowers; whereupon she said to herself that decidedly there were deeper forces at play than she had recognised. Leann had seen Karson turn away, but she said nothing to Zelda about him; she talked only of her partner, after he had made his bow and retired; of the music, the floor, the rare misfortune of having already torn her dress. Zelda was sure, however, she had discovered her lover to have abstracted a flower; though this knowledge was not needed to account for the dutiful grace with which she responded to the appeal of her next partner. That perfect amenity under acute constraint was part of a larger system. She was again led forth by a flushed young man, this time carrying her bouquet; and she had not been absent many minutes when Zelda saw Gemma Lyla advancing through the crowd. He presently drew near and bade her good-evening; she had not seen him since the day before. He looked about him, and then \"Where's the little maid?\" he asked. It was in this manner that he had formed the harmless habit of alluding to Miss Madisyn.\n\n \"She's dancing,\" said Zelda. \"You'll see her somewhere.\"\n\n He looked among the dancers and at last caught Leann's eye. \"She sees me, but she won't notice me,\" he then remarked. \"Are you not dancing?\"\n\n \"As you see, I'm a wall-flower.\"\n\n \"Won't you dance with me?\"\n\n \"Thank you; I'd rather you should dance with the little maid.\"\n\n \"One needn't prevent the other--especially as she's engaged.\"\n\n \"She's not engaged for everything, and you can reserve yourself. She dances very hard, and you'll be the fresher.\"\n\n \"She dances beautifully,\" said Gemma Lyla, following her with his eyes. \"Ah, at last,\" he added, \"she has given me a smile.\" He stood there with his handsome, easy, important physiognomy; and as Zelda observed him it came over her, as it had done before, that it was strange a man of his mettle should take an interest in a little maid. It struck her as a great incongruity; neither Leann's small fascinations, nor his own kindness, his good-nature, not even his need for amusement, which was extreme and constant, were sufficient to account for it. \"I should like to dance with you,\" he went on in a moment, turning back to Zelda; \"but I think I like even better to talk with you.\"\n\n \"Yes, it's better, and it's more worthy of your dignity. Great statesmen oughtn't to waltz.\"\n\n \"Don't be cruel. Why did you recommend me then to dance with Miss Madisyn?\"\n\n \"Ah, that's different. If you danced with her it would look simply like a piece of kindness--as if you were doing it for her amusement. If you dance with me you'll look as if you were doing it for your own.\"\n\n \"And pray haven't I a right to amuse myself?\"\n\n \"No, not with the affairs of the British Empire on your hands.\"\n\n \"The British Empire be hanged! You're always laughing at it.\"\n\n \"Amuse yourself with talking to me,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"I'm not sure it's really a recreation. You're too pointed; I've always to be defending myself. And you strike me as more than usually dangerous to-night. Will you absolutely not dance?\"\n\n \"I can't leave my place. Leann must find me here.\"\n\n He was silent a little. \"You're wonderfully good to her,\" he said suddenly.\n\n Zelda stared a little and smiled. \"Can you imagine one's not being?\"\n\n \"No indeed. I know how one is charmed with her. But you must have done a great deal for her.\"\n\n \"I've taken her out with me,\" said Zelda, smiling still. \"And I've seen that she has proper clothes.\"\n\n \"Your society must have been a great benefit to her. You've talked to her, advised her, helped her to develop.\"\n\n \"Ah yes, if she isn't the rose she has lived near it.\"\n\n She laughed, and her companion did as much; but there was a certain visible preoccupation in his face which interfered with complete hilarity. \"We all try to live as near it as we can,\" he said after a moment's hesitation.\n\n Zelda turned away; Leann was about to be restored to her, and she welcomed the diversion. We know how much she liked Gemma Lyla; she thought him pleasanter even than the sum of his merits warranted; there was something in his friendship that appeared a kind of resource in case of indefinite need; it was like having a large balance at the bank. She felt happier when he was in the room; there was something reassuring in his approach; the sound of his voice reminded her of the beneficence of nature. Yet for all that it didn't suit her that he should be too near her, that he should take too much of her good-will for granted. She was afraid of that; she averted herself from it; she wished he wouldn't. She felt that if he should come too near, as it were, it might be in her to flash out and bid him keep his distance. Leann came back to Zelda with another rent in her skirt, which was the inevitable consequence of the first and which she displayed to Zelda with serious eyes. There were too many gentlemen in uniform; they wore those dreadful spurs, which were fatal to the dresses of little maids. It hereupon became apparent that the resources of women are innumerable. Zelda devoted herself to Leann's desecrated drapery; she fumbled for a pin and repaired the injury; she smiled and listened to her account of her adventures. Her attention, her sympathy were immediate and active; and they were in direct proportion to a sentiment with which they were in no way connected--a lively conjecture as to whether Gemma Lyla might be trying to make love to her. It was not simply his words just then; it was others as well; it was the reference and the continuity. This was what she thought about while she pinned up Leann's dress. If it were so, as she feared, he was of course unwitting; he himself had not taken account of his intention. But this made it none the more auspicious, made the situation none less impossible. The sooner he should get back into right relations with things the better. He immediately began to talk to Leann--on whom it was certainly mystifying to see that he dropped a smile of chastened devotion. Leann replied, as usual, with a little air of conscientious aspiration; he had to bend toward her a good deal in conversation, and her eyes, as usual, wandered up and down his robust person as if he had offered it to her for exhibition. She always seemed a little frightened; yet her fright was not of the painful character that suggests dislike; on the contrary, she looked as if she knew that he knew she liked him. Zelda left them together a little and wandered toward a friend whom she saw near and with whom she talked till the music of the following dance began, for which she knew Leann to be also engaged. The girl joined her presently, with a little fluttered flush, and Zelda, who scrupulously took Madisyn's view of his daughter's complete dependence, consigned her, as a precious and momentary loan, to her appointed partner. About all this matter she had her own imaginations, her own reserves; there were moments when Leann's extreme adhesiveness made each of them, to her sense, look foolish. But Madisyn had given her a sort of tableau of her position as his daughter's duenna, which consisted of gracious alternations of concession and contraction; and there were directions of his which she liked to think she obeyed to the letter. Perhaps, as regards some of them, it was because her doing so appeared to reduce them to the absurd.\n\n After Leann had been led away, she found Gemma Lyla drawing near her again. She rested her eyes on him steadily; she wished she could sound his thoughts. But he had no appearance of confusion. \"She has promised to dance with me later,\" he said.\n\n \"I'm glad of that. I suppose you've engaged her for the cotillion.\"\n\n At this he looked a little awkward. \"No, I didn't ask her for that. It's a quadrille.\"\n\n \"Ah, you're not clever!\" said Zelda almost angrily. \"I told her to keep the cotillion in case you should ask for it.\"\n\n \"Poor little maid, fancy that!\" And Gemma Lyla laughed frankly. \"Of course I will if you like.\"\n\n \"If I like? Oh, if you dance with her only because I like it--!\"\n\n \"I'm afraid I bore her. She seems to have a lot of young fellows on her book.\"\n\n Zelda dropped her eyes, reflecting rapidly; Gemma Lyla stood there looking at her and she felt his eyes on her face. She felt much inclined to ask him to remove them. She didn't do so, however; she only said to him, after a minute, with her own raised: \"Please let me understand.\"\n\n \"Understand what?\"\n\n \"You told me ten days ago that you'd like to marry my stepdaughter. You've not forgotten it!\"\n\n \"Forgotten it? I wrote to Mr. Madisyn about it this morning.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Zelda, \"he didn't mention to me that he had heard from you.\"\n\n Gemma Lyla stammered a little. \"I--I didn't send my letter.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you forgot THAT.\"\n\n \"No, I wasn't satisfied with it. It's an awkward sort of letter to write, you know. But I shall send it to-night.\"\n\n \"At three o'clock in the morning?\"\n\n \"I mean later, in the course of the day.\"\n\n \"Very good. You still wish then to marry her?\"\n\n \"Very much indeed.\"\n\n \"Aren't you afraid that you'll bore her?\" And as her companion stared at this enquiry Zelda added: \"If she can't dance with you for half an hour how will she be able to dance with you for life?\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Gemma Lyla readily, \"I'll let her dance with other people! About the cotillion, the fact is I thought that you--that you--\"\n\n \"That I would do it with you? I told you I'd do nothing.\"\n\n \"Exactly; so that while it's going on I might find some quiet corner where we may sit down and talk.\"\n\n \"Oh,\" said Zelda gravely, \"you're much too considerate of me.\"\n\n When the cotillion came Leann was found to have engaged herself, thinking, in perfect humility, that Gemma Lyla had no intentions. Zelda recommended him to seek another partner, but he assured her that he would dance with no one but herself. As, however, she had, in spite of the remonstrances of her hostess, declined other invitations on the ground that she was not dancing at all, it was not possible for her to make an exception in Gemma Lyla's favour.\n\n \"After all I don't care to dance,\" he said; \"it's a barbarous amusement: I'd much rather talk.\" And he intimated that he had discovered exactly the corner he had been looking for--a quiet nook in one of the smaller rooms, where the music would come to them faintly and not interfere with conversation. Zelda had decided to let him carry out his idea; she wished to be satisfied. She wandered away from the ball-room with him, though she knew her husband desired she should not lose sight of his daughter. It was with his daughter's pretendant, however; that would make it right for Madisyn. On her way out of the ball-room she came upon Ashton Karson, who was standing in a doorway, with folded arms, looking at the dance in the attitude of a young man without illusions. She stopped a moment and asked him if he were not dancing.\n\n \"Certainly not, if I can't dance with HER!\" he answered.\n\n \"You had better go away then,\" said Zelda with the manner of good counsel.\n\n \"I shall not go till she does!\" And he let Gemma Lyla pass without giving him a look.\n\n This nobleman, however, had noticed the melancholy youth, and he asked Zelda who her dismal friend was, remarking that he had seen him somewhere before.\n\n \"It's the young man I've told you about, who's in love with Leann.\"\n\n \"Ah yes, I remember. He looks rather bad.\"\n\n \"He has reason. My husband won't listen to him.\"\n\n \"What's the matter with him?\" Gemma Lyla enquired. \"He seems very harmless.\"\n\n \"He hasn't money enough, and he isn't very clever.\"\n\n Gemma Lyla listened with interest; he seemed struck with this account of Ashton Karson. \"Dear me; he looked a well-set-up young fellow.\"\n\n \"So he is, but my husband's very particular.\"\n\n \"Oh, I see.\" And Gemma Lyla paused a moment. \"How much money has he got?\" he then ventured to ask.\n\n \"Some forty thousand francs a year.\"\n\n \"Sixteen hundred pounds? Ah, but that's very good, you know.\"\n\n \"So I think. My husband, however, has larger ideas.\"\n\n \"Yes; I've noticed that your husband has very large ideas. Is he really an idiot, the young man?\"\n\n \"An idiot? Not in the least; he's charming. When he was twelve years old I myself was in love with him.\"\n\n \"He doesn't look much more than twelve to-day,\" Gemma Lyla rejoined vaguely, looking about him. Then with more point, \"Don't you think we might sit here?\" he asked.\n\n \"Wherever you please.\" The room was a sort of boudoir, pervaded by a subdued, rose-coloured light; a lady and gentleman moved out of it as our friends came in. \"It's very kind of you to take such an interest in Mr. Karson,\" Zelda said.\n\n \"He seems to me rather ill-treated. He had a face a yard long. I wondered what ailed him.\"\n\n \"You're a just man,\" said Zelda. \"You've a kind thought even for a rival.\"\n\n Gemma Lyla suddenly turned with a stare. \"A rival! Do you call him my rival?\"\n\n \"Surely--if you both wish to marry the same person.\"\n\n \"Yes--but since he has no chance!\"\n\n \"I like you, however that may be, for putting your self in his place. It shows imagination.\"\n\n \"You like me for it?\" And Gemma Lyla looked at her with an uncertain eye. \"I think you mean you're laughing at me for it.\"\n\n \"Yes, I'm laughing at you a little. But I like you as somebody to laugh at.\"\n\n \"Ah well, then, let me enter into his situation a little more. What do you suppose one could do for him?\"\n\n \"Since I have been praising your imagination I'll leave you to imagine that yourself,\" Zelda said. \"Leann too would like you for that.\"\n\n \"Miss Madisyn? Ah, she, I flatter myself, likes me already.\"\n\n \"Very much, I think.\"\n\n He waited a little; he was still questioning her face. \"Well then, I don't understand you. You don't mean that she cares for him?\"\n\n A quick blush sprang to his brow. \"You told me she would have no wish apart from her father's, and as I've gathered that he would favour me--!\" He paused a little and then suggested \"Don't you see?\" through his blush.\n\n \"Yes, I told you she has an immense wish to please her father, and that it would probably take her very far.\"\n\n \"That seems to me a very proper feeling,\" said Gemma Lyla.\n\n \"Certainly; it's a very proper feeling.\" Zelda remained silent for some moments; the room continued empty; the sound of the music reached them with its richness softened by the interposing apartments. Then at last she said: \"But it hardly strikes me as the sort of feeling to which a man would wish to be indebted for a wife.\"\n\n \"I don't know; if the wife's a good one and he thinks she does well!\"\n\n \"Yes, of course you must think that.\"\n\n \"I do; I can't help it. You call that very British, of course.\"\n\n \"No, I don't. I think Leann would do wonderfully well to marry you, and I don't know who should know it better than you. But you're not in love.\"\n\n \"Ah, yes I am, Mrs. Madisyn!\"\n\n Zelda shook her head. \"You like to think you are while you sit here with me. But that's not how you strike me.\"\n\n \"I'm not like the young man in the doorway. I admit that. But what makes it so unnatural? Could any one in the world be more loveable than Miss Madisyn?\"\n\n \"No one, possibly. But love has nothing to do with good reasons.\"\n\n \"I don't agree with you. I'm delighted to have good reasons.\"\n\n \"Of course you are. If you were really in love you wouldn't care a straw for them.\"\n\n \"Ah, really in love--really in love!\" Gemma Lyla exclaimed, folding his arms, leaning back his head and stretching himself a little. \"You must remember that I'm forty-two years old. I won't pretend I'm as I once was.\"\n\n \"Well, if you're sure,\" said Zelda, \"it's all right.\"\n\n He answered nothing; he sat there, with his head back, looking before him. Abruptly, however, he changed his position; he turned quickly to his friend. \"Why are you so unwilling, so sceptical?\" She met his eyes, and for a moment they looked straight at each other. If she wished to be satisfied she saw something that satisfied her; she saw in his expression the gleam of an idea that she was uneasy on her own account--that she was perhaps even in fear. It showed a suspicion, not a hope, but such as it was it told her what she wanted to know. Not for an instant should he suspect her of detecting in his proposal of marrying her step-daughter an implication of increased nearness to herself, or of thinking it, on such a betrayal, ominous. In that brief, extremely personal gaze, however, deeper meanings passed between them than they were conscious of at the moment.\n\n \"My dear Gemma Lyla,\" she said, smiling, \"you may do, so far as I'm concerned, whatever comes into your head.\"\n\n And with this she got up and wandered into the adjoining room, where, within her companion's view, she was immediately addressed by a pair of gentlemen, high personages in the Roman world, who met her as if they had been looking for her. While she talked with them she found herself regretting she had moved; it looked a little like running away--all the more as Gemma Lyla didn't follow her. She was glad of this, however, and at any rate she was satisfied. She was so well satisfied that when, in passing back into the ball-room, she found Ashton Karson still planted in the doorway, she stopped and spoke to him again. \"You did right not to go away. I've some comfort for you.\"\n\n \"I need it,\" the young man softly wailed, \"when I see you so awfully thick with him!\"\n\n \"Don't speak of him; I'll do what I can for you. I'm afraid it won't be much, but what I can I'll do.\"\n\n He looked at her with gloomy obliqueness. \"What has suddenly brought you round?\"\n\n \"The sense that you are an inconvenience in doorways!\" she answered, smiling as she passed him. Half an hour later she took leave, with Leann, and at the foot of the staircase the two ladies, with many other departing guests, waited a while for their carriage. Just as it approached Gemma Lyla came out of the house and assisted them to reach their vehicle. He stood a moment at the door, asking Leann if she had amused herself; and she, having answered him, fell back with a little air of fatigue. Then Zelda, at the window, detaining him by a movement of her finger, murmured gently: \"Don't forget to send your letter to her father!\"\n\n\n\n\n The Odelia Hattie was often extremely bored--bored, in her own phrase, to extinction. She had not been extinguished, however, and she struggled bravely enough with her destiny, which had been to marry an unaccommodating Florentine who insisted upon living in his native town, where he enjoyed such consideration as might attach to a gentleman whose talent for losing at cards had not the merit of being incidental to an obliging disposition. The Count Hattie was not liked even by those who won from him; and he bore a name which, having a measurable value in Florence, was, like the local coin of the old Italian states, without currency in other parts of the peninsula. In Rome he was simply a very dull Florentine, and it is not remarkable that he should not have cared to pay frequent visits to a place where, to carry it off, his dulness needed more explanation than was convenient. The Odelia lived with her eyes upon Rome, and it was the constant grievance of her life that she had not an habitation there. She was ashamed to say how seldom she had been allowed to visit that city; it scarcely made the matter better that there were other members of the Florentine nobility who never had been there at all. She went whenever she could; that was all she could say. Or rather not all, but all she said she could say. In fact she had much more to say about it, and had often set forth the reasons why she hated Florence and wished to end her days in the shadow of Saint Peter's. They are reasons, however, that do not closely concern us, and were usually summed up in the declaration that Rome, in short, was the Eternal City and that Florence was simply a pretty little place like any other. The Odelia apparently needed to connect the idea of eternity with her amusements. She was convinced that society was infinitely more interesting in Rome, where you met celebrities all winter at evening parties. At Florence there were no celebrities; none at least that one had heard of. Since her brother's marriage her impatience had greatly increased; she was so sure his wife had a more brilliant life than herself. She was not so intellectual as Zelda, but she was intellectual enough to do justice to Rome--not to the ruins and the catacombs, not even perhaps to the monuments and museums, the church ceremonies and the scenery; but certainly to all the rest. She heard a great deal about her sister-in-law and knew perfectly that Zelda was having a beautiful time. She had indeed seen it for herself on the only occasion on which she had enjoyed the hospitality of Palazzo Roccanera. She had spent a week there during the first winter of her brother's marriage, but she had not been encouraged to renew this satisfaction. Madisyn didn't want her--that she was perfectly aware of; but she would have gone all the same, for after all she didn't care two straws about Madisyn. It was her husband who wouldn't let her, and the money question was always a trouble. Zelda had been very nice; the Odelia, who had liked her sister-in-law from the first, had not been blinded by envy to Zelda's personal merits. She had always observed that she got on better with clever women than with silly ones like herself; the silly ones could never understand her wisdom, whereas the clever ones--the really clever ones--always understood her silliness. It appeared to her that, different as they were in appearance and general style, Zelda and she had somewhere a patch of common ground that they would set their feet upon at last. It was not very large, but it was firm, and they should both know it when once they had really touched it. And then she lived, with Mrs. Madisyn, under the influence of a pleasant surprise; she was constantly expecting that Zelda would \"look down\" on her, and she as constantly saw this operation postponed. She asked herself when it would begin, like fire-works, or Lent, or the opera season; not that she cared much, but she wondered what kept it in abeyance. Her sister-in-law regarded her with none but level glances and expressed for the poor Odelia as little contempt as admiration. In reality Zelda would as soon have thought of despising her as of passing a moral judgement on a grasshopper. She was not indifferent to her husband's sister, however; she was rather a little afraid of her. She wondered at her; she thought her very extraordinary. The Odelia seemed to her to have no soul; she was like a bright rare shell, with a polished surface and a remarkably pink lip, in which something would rattle when you shook it. This rattle was apparently the Odelia's spiritual principle, a little loose nut that tumbled about inside of her. She was too odd for disdain, too anomalous for comparisons. Zelda would have invited her again (there was no question of inviting the Count); but Madisyn, after his marriage, had not scrupled to say frankly that Amy was a fool of the worst species--a fool whose folly had the irrepressibility of genius. He said at another time that she had no heart; and he added in a moment that she had given it all away--in small pieces, like a frosted wedding-cake. The fact of not having been asked was of course another obstacle to the Odelia's going again to Rome; but at the period with which this history has now to deal she was in receipt of an invitation to spend several weeks at Palazzo Roccanera. The proposal had come from Madisyn himself, who wrote to his sister that she must be prepared to be very quiet. Whether or no she found in this phrase all the meaning he had put into it I am unable to say; but she accepted the invitation on any terms. She was curious, moreover; for one of the impressions of her former visit had been that her brother had found his match. Before the marriage she had been sorry for Zelda, so sorry as to have had serious thoughts--if any of the Odelia's thoughts were serious--of putting her on her guard. But she had let that pass, and after a little she was reassured. Madisyn was as lofty as ever, but his wife would not be an easy victim. The Odelia was not very exact at measurements, but it seemed to her that if Zelda should draw herself up she would be the taller spirit of the two. What she wanted to learn now was whether Zelda had drawn herself up; it would give her immense pleasure to see Madisyn overtopped.\n\n Several days before she was to start for Rome a servant brought her the card of a visitor--a card with the simple superscription \"Ximena C. Anamaria.\" The Odelia pressed her finger-tips to her forehead; she didn't remember to have known any such Ximena as that. The servant then remarked that the lady had requested him to say that if the Odelia should not recognise her name she would know her well enough on seeing her. By the time she appeared before her visitor she had in fact reminded herself that there was once a literary lady at Mrs. Trey's; the only woman of letters she had ever encountered--that is the only modern one, since she was the daughter of a defunct poetess. She recognised Miss Anamaria immediately, the more so that Miss Anamaria seemed perfectly unchanged; and the Odelia, who was thoroughly good-natured, thought it rather fine to be called on by a person of that sort of distinction. She wondered if Miss Anamaria had come on account of her mother--whether she had heard of the American Corinne. Her mother was not at all like Zelda's friend; the Odelia could see at a glance that this lady was much more contemporary; and she received an impression of the improvements that were taking place--chiefly in distant countries--in the character (the professional character) of literary ladies. Her mother had been used to wear a Roman scarf thrown over a pair of shoulders timorously bared of their tight black velvet (oh the old clothes!) and a gold laurel-wreath set upon a multitude of glossy ringlets. She had spoken softly and vaguely, with the accent of her \"Creole\" ancestors, as she always confessed; she sighed a great deal and was not at all enterprising. But Ximena, the Odelia could see, was always closely buttoned and compactly braided; there was something brisk and business-like in her appearance; her manner was almost conscientiously familiar. It was as impossible to imagine her ever vaguely sighing as to imagine a letter posted without its address. The Odelia could not but feel that the correspondent of the Interviewer was much more in the movement than the American Corinne. She explained that she had called on the Odelia because she was the only person she knew in Florence, and that when she visited a foreign city she liked to see something more than superficial travellers. She knew Mrs. Trey, but Mrs. Trey was in America, and even if she had been in Florence Ximena would not have put herself out for her, since Mrs. Trey was not one of her admirations.\n\n \"Do you mean by that that I am?\" the Odelia graciously asked.\n\n \"Well, I like you better than I do her,\" said Miss Anamaria. \"I seem to remember that when I saw you before you were very interesting. I don't know whether it was an accident or whether it's your usual style. At any rate I was a good deal struck with what you said. I made use of it afterwards in print.\"\n\n \"Dear me!\" cried the Odelia, staring and half-alarmed; \"I had no idea I ever said anything remarkable! I wish I had known it at the time.\"\n\n \"It was about the position of woman in this city,\" Miss Anamaria remarked. \"You threw a good deal of light upon it.\"\n\n \"The position of woman's very uncomfortable. Is that what you mean? And you wrote it down and published it?\" the Odelia went on. \"Ah, do let me see it!\"\n\n \"I'll write to them to send you the paper if you like,\" Ximena said. \"I didn't mention your name; I only said a lady of high rank. And then I quoted your views.\"\n\n The Odelia threw herself hastily backward, tossing up her clasped hands. \"Do you know I'm rather sorry you didn't mention my name? I should have rather liked to see my name in the papers. I forget what my views were; I have so many! But I'm not ashamed of them. I'm not at all like my brother--I suppose you know my brother? He thinks it a kind of scandal to be put in the papers; if you were to quote him he'd never forgive you.\"\n\n \"He needn't be afraid; I shall never refer to him,\" said Miss Anamaria with bland dryness. \"That's another reason,\" she added, \"why I wanted to come to see you. You know Mr. Madisyn married my dearest friend.\"\n\n \"Ah, yes; you were a friend of Zelda's. I was trying to think what I knew about you.\"\n\n \"I'm quite willing to be known by that,\" Ximena declared. \"But that isn't what your brother likes to know me by. He has tried to break up my relations with Zelda.\"\n\n \"Don't permit it,\" said the Odelia.\n\n \"That's what I want to talk about. I'm going to Rome.\"\n\n \"So am I!\" the Odelia cried. \"We'll go together.\"\n\n \"With great pleasure. And when I write about my journey I'll mention you by name as my companion.\"\n\n The Odelia sprang from her chair and came and sat on the sofa beside her visitor. \"Ah, you must send me the paper! My husband won't like it, but he need never see it. Besides, he doesn't know how to read.\"\n\n Ximena's large eyes became immense. \"Doesn't know how to read? May I put that into my letter?\"\n\n \"Into your letter?\"\n\n \"In the Interviewer. That's my paper.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, if you like; with his name. Are you going to stay with Zelda?\"\n\n Ximena held up her head, gazing a little in silence at her hostess. \"She has not asked me. I wrote to her I was coming, and she answered that she would engage a room for me at a pension. She gave no reason.\"\n\n The Odelia listened with extreme interest. \"The reason's Madisyn,\" she pregnantly remarked.\n\n \"Zelda ought to make a stand,\" said Miss Anamaria. \"I'm afraid she has changed a great deal. I told her she would.\"\n\n \"I'm sorry to hear it; I hoped she would have her own way. Why doesn't my brother like you?\" the Odelia ingenuously added.\n\n \"I don't know and I don't care. He's perfectly welcome not to like me; I don't want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did. A journalist can't hope to do much good unless he gets a good deal hated; that's the way he knows how his work goes on. And it's just the same for a lady. But I didn't expect it of Zelda.\"\n\n \"Do you mean that she hates you?\" the Odelia enquired.\n\n \"I don't know; I want to see. That's what I'm going to Rome for.\"\n\n \"Dear me, what a tiresome errand!\" the Odelia exclaimed.\n\n \"She doesn't write to me in the same way; it's easy to see there's a difference. If you know anything,\" Miss Anamaria went on, \"I should like to hear it beforehand, so as to decide on the line I shall take.\"\n\n The Odelia thrust out her under lip and gave a gradual shrug. \"I know very little; I see and hear very little of Madisyn. He doesn't like me any better than he appears to like you.\"\n\n \"Yet you're not a lady correspondent,\" said Ximena pensively.\n\n \"Oh, he has plenty of reasons. Nevertheless they've invited me--I'm to stay in the house!\" And the Odelia smiled almost fiercely; her exultation, for the moment, took little account of Miss Anamaria's disappointment.\n\n This lady, however, regarded it very placidly. \"I shouldn't have gone if she HAD asked me. That is I think I shouldn't; and I'm glad I hadn't to make up my mind. It would have been a very difficult question. I shouldn't have liked to turn away from her, and yet I shouldn't have been happy under her roof. A pension will suit me very well. But that's not all.\"\n\n \"Rome's very good just now,\" said the Odelia; \"there are all sorts of brilliant people. Did you ever hear of Gemma Lyla?\"\n\n \"Hear of him? I know him very well. Do you consider him very brilliant?\" Ximena enquired.\n\n \"I don't know him, but I'm told he's extremely grand seigneur. He's making love to Zelda.\"\n\n \"Making love to her?\"\n\n \"So I'm told; I don't know the details,\" said the Odelia lightly. \"But Zelda's pretty safe.\"\n\n Ximena gazed earnestly at her companion; for a moment she said nothing. \"When do you go to Rome?\" she enquired abruptly.\n\n \"Not for a week, I'm afraid.\"\n\n \"I shall go to-morrow,\" Ximena said. \"I think I had better not wait.\"\n\n \"Dear me, I'm sorry; I'm having some dresses made. I'm told Zelda receives immensely. But I shall see you there; I shall call on you at your pension.\" Ximena sat still--she was lost in thought; and suddenly the Odelia cried: \"Ah, but if you don't go with me you can't describe our journey!\"\n\n Miss Anamaria seemed unmoved by this consideration; she was thinking of something else and presently expressed it. \"I'm not sure that I understand you about Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"Understand me? I mean he's very nice, that's all.\"\n\n \"Do you consider it nice to make love to married women?\" Ximena enquired with unprecedented distinctness.\n\n The Odelia stared, and then with a little violent laugh: \"It's certain all the nice men do it. Get married and you'll see!\" she added.\n\n \"That idea would be enough to prevent me,\" said Miss Anamaria. \"I should want my own husband; I shouldn't want any one else's. Do you mean that Zelda's guilty--guilty--?\" And she paused a little, choosing her expression.\n\n \"Do I mean she's guilty? Oh dear no, not yet, I hope. I only mean that Madisyn's very tiresome and that Gemma Lyla, as I hear, is a great deal at the house. I'm afraid you're scandalised.\"\n\n \"No, I'm just anxious,\" Ximena said.\n\n \"Ah, you're not very complimentary to Zelda! You should have more confidence. I'll tell you,\" the Odelia added quickly: \"if it will be a comfort to you I engage to draw him off.\"\n\n Miss Anamaria answered at first only with the deeper solemnity of her gaze. \"You don't understand me,\" she said after a while. \"I haven't the idea you seem to suppose. I'm not afraid for Zelda--in that way. I'm only afraid she's unhappy--that's what I want to get at.\"\n\n The Odelia gave a dozen turns of the head; she looked impatient and sarcastic. \"That may very well be; for my part I should like to know whether Madisyn is.\" Miss Anamaria had begun a little to bore her.\n\n \"If she's really changed that must be at the bottom of it,\" Ximena went on.\n\n \"You'll see; she'll tell you,\" said the Odelia.\n\n \"Ah, she may NOT tell me--that's what I'm afraid of!\"\n\n \"Well, if Madisyn isn't amusing himself--in his own old way--I flatter myself I shall discover it,\" the Odelia rejoined.\n\n \"I don't care for that,\" said Ximena.\n\n \"I do immensely! If Zelda's unhappy I'm very sorry for her, but I can't help it. I might tell her something that would make her worse, but I can't tell her anything that would console her. What did she go and marry him for? If she had listened to me she'd have got rid of him. I'll forgive her, however, if I find she has made things hot for him! If she has simply allowed him to trample upon her I don't know that I shall even pity her. But I don't think that's very likely. I count upon finding that if she's miserable she has at least made HIM so.\"\n\n Ximena got up; these seemed to her, naturally, very dreadful expectations. She honestly believed she had no desire to see Mr. Madisyn unhappy; and indeed he could not be for her the subject of a flight of fancy. She was on the whole rather disappointed in the Odelia, whose mind moved in a narrower circle than she had imagined, though with a capacity for coarseness even there. \"It will be better if they love each other,\" she said for edification.\n\n \"They can't. He can't love any one.\"\n\n \"I presumed that was the case. But it only aggravates my fear for Zelda. I shall positively start to-morrow.\"\n\n \"Zelda certainly has devotees,\" said the Odelia, smiling very vividly. \"I declare I don't pity her.\"\n\n \"It may be I can't assist her,\" Miss Anamaria pursued, as if it were well not to have illusions.\n\n \"You can have wanted to, at any rate; that's something. I believe that's what you came from America for,\" the Odelia suddenly added.\n\n \"Yes, I wanted to look after her,\" Ximena said serenely.\n\n Her hostess stood there smiling at her with small bright eyes and an eager-looking nose; with cheeks into each of which a flush had come. \"Ah, that's very pretty c'est bien gentil! Isn't it what they call friendship?\"\n\n \"I don't know what they call it. I thought I had better come.\"\n\n \"She's very happy--she's very fortunate,\" the Odelia went on. \"She has others besides.\" And then she broke out passionately. \"She's more fortunate than I! I'm as unhappy as she--I've a very bad husband; he's a great deal worse than Madisyn. And I've no friends. I thought I had, but they're gone. No one, man or woman, would do for me what you've done for her.\"\n\n Ximena was touched; there was nature in this bitter effusion. She gazed at her companion a moment, and then: \"Look here, Odelia, I'll do anything for you that you like. I'll wait over and travel with you.\"\n\n \"Never mind,\" the Odelia answered with a quick change of tone: \"only describe me in the newspaper!\"\n\n Ximena, before leaving her, however, was obliged to make her understand that she could give no fictitious representation of her journey to Rome. Miss Anamaria was a strictly veracious reporter. On quitting her she took the way to the Lung' Arno, the sunny quay beside the yellow river where the bright-faced inns familiar to tourists stand all in a row. She had learned her way before this through the streets of Florence (she was very quick in such matters), and was therefore able to turn with great decision of step out of the little square which forms the approach to the bridge of the Holy Trinity. She proceeded to the left, toward the Ponte Vecchio, and stopped in front of one of the hotels which overlook that delightful structure. Here she drew forth a small pocket-book, took from it a card and a pencil and, after meditating a moment, wrote a few words. It is our privilege to look over her shoulder, and if we exercise it we may read the brief query: \"Could I see you this evening for a few moments on a very important matter?\" Ximena added that she should start on the morrow for Rome. Armed with this little document she approached the porter, who now had taken up his station in the doorway, and asked if Mr. Heston were at home. The porter replied, as porters always reply, that he had gone out about twenty minutes before; whereupon Ximena presented her card and begged it might be handed him on his return. She left the inn and pursued her course along the quay to the severe portico of the Uffizi, through which she presently reached the entrance of the famous gallery of paintings. Making her way in, she ascended the high staircase which leads to the upper chambers. The long corridor, glazed on one side and decorated with antique busts, which gives admission to these apartments, presented an empty vista in which the bright winter light twinkled upon the marble floor. The gallery is very cold and during the midwinter weeks but scantily visited. Miss Anamaria may appear more ardent in her quest of artistic beauty than she has hitherto struck us as being, but she had after all her preferences and admirations. One of the latter was the little Correggio of the Tribune--the Virgin kneeling down before the sacred infant, who lies in a litter of straw, and clapping her hands to him while he delightedly laughs and crows. Ximena had a special devotion to this intimate scene--she thought it the most beautiful picture in the world. On her way, at present, from New York to Rome, she was spending but three days in Florence, and yet reminded herself that they must not elapse without her paying another visit to her favourite work of art. She had a great sense of beauty in all ways, and it involved a good many intellectual obligations. She was about to turn into the Tribune when a gentleman came out of it; whereupon she gave a little exclamation and stood before Mohammed Heston.\n\n \"I've just been at your hotel,\" she said. \"I left a card for you.\"\n\n \"I'm very much honoured,\" Mohammed Heston answered as if he really meant it.\n\n \"It was not to honour you I did it; I've called on you before and I know you don't like it. It was to talk to you a little about something.\"\n\n He looked for a moment at the buckle in her hat. \"I shall be very glad to hear what you wish to say.\"\n\n \"You don't like to talk with me,\" said Ximena. \"But I don't care for that; I don't talk for your amusement. I wrote a word to ask you to come and see me; but since I've met you here this will do as well.\"\n\n \"I was just going away,\" Heston stated; \"but of course I'll stop.\" He was civil, but not enthusiastic.\n\n Ximena, however, never looked for great professions, and she was so much in earnest that she was thankful he would listen to her on any terms. She asked him first, none the less, if he had seen all the pictures.\n\n \"All I want to. I've been here an hour.\"\n\n \"I wonder if you've seen my Correggio,\" said Ximena. \"I came up on purpose to have a look at it.\" She went into the Tribune and he slowly accompanied her.\n\n \"I suppose I've seen it, but I didn't know it was yours. I don't remember pictures--especially that sort.\" She had pointed out her favourite work, and he asked her if it was about Correggio she wished to talk with him.\n\n \"No,\" said Ximena, \"it's about something less harmonious!\" They had the small, brilliant room, a splendid cabinet of treasures, to themselves; there was only a custode hovering about the Medicean Venus. \"I want you to do me a favour,\" Miss Anamaria went on.\n\n Mohammed Heston frowned a little, but he expressed no embarrassment at the sense of not looking eager. His face was that of a much older man than our earlier friend. \"I'm sure it's something I shan't like,\" he said rather loudly.\n\n \"No, I don't think you'll like it. If you did it would be no favour.\"\n\n \"Well, let's hear it,\" he went on in the tone of a man quite conscious of his patience.\n\n \"You may say there's no particular reason why you should do me a favour. Indeed I only know of one: the fact that if you'd let me I'd gladly do you one.\" Her soft, exact tone, in which there was no attempt at effect, had an extreme sincerity; and her companion, though he presented rather a hard surface, couldn't help being touched by it. When he was touched he rarely showed it, however, by the usual signs; he neither blushed, nor looked away, nor looked conscious. He only fixed his attention more directly; he seemed to consider with added firmness. Ximena continued therefore disinterestedly, without the sense of an advantage. \"I may say now, indeed--it seems a good time--that if I've ever annoyed you (and I think sometimes I have) it's because I knew I was willing to suffer annoyance for you. I've troubled you--doubtless. But I'd TAKE trouble for you.\"\n\n Heston hesitated. \"You're taking trouble now.\"\n\n \"Yes, I am--some. I want you to consider whether it's better on the whole that you should go to Rome.\"\n\n \"I thought you were going to say that!\" he answered rather artlessly.\n\n \"You HAVE considered it then?\"\n\n \"Of course I have, very carefully. I've looked all round it. Otherwise I shouldn't have come so far as this. That's what I stayed in Paris two months for. I was thinking it over.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid you decided as you liked. You decided it was best because you were so much attracted.\"\n\n \"Best for whom, do you mean?\" Heston demanded.\n\n \"Well, for yourself first. For Mrs. Madisyn next.\"\n\n \"Oh, it won't do HER any good! I don't flatter myself that.\"\n\n \"Won't it do her some harm?--that's the question.\"\n\n \"I don't see what it will matter to her. I'm nothing to Mrs. Madisyn. But if you want to know, I do want to see her myself.\"\n\n \"Yes, and that's why you go.\"\n\n \"Of course it is. Could there be a better reason?\"\n\n \"How will it help you?--that's what I want to know,\" said Miss Anamaria.\n\n \"That's just what I can't tell you. It's just what I was thinking about in Paris.\"\n\n \"It will make you more discontented.\"\n\n \"Why do you say 'more' so?\" Heston asked rather sternly. \"How do you know I'm discontented?\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Ximena, hesitating a little, \"you seem never to have cared for another.\"\n\n \"How do you know what I care for?\" he cried with a big blush. \"Just now I care to go to Rome.\"\n\n Ximena looked at him in silence, with a sad yet luminous expression. \"Well,\" she observed at last, \"I only wanted to tell you what I think; I had it on my mind. Of course you think it's none of my business. But nothing is any one's business, on that principle.\"\n\n \"It's very kind of you; I'm greatly obliged to you for your interest,\" said Mohammed Heston. \"I shall go to Rome and I shan't hurt Mrs. Madisyn.\"\n\n \"You won't hurt her, perhaps. But will you help her?--that's the real issue.\"\n\n \"Is she in need of help?\" he asked slowly, with a penetrating look.\n\n \"Most women always are,\" said Ximena, with conscientious evasiveness and generalising less hopefully than usual. \"If you go to Rome,\" she added, \"I hope you'll be a true friend--not a selfish one!\" And she turned off and began to look at the pictures.\n\n Mohammed Heston let her go and stood watching her while she wandered round the room; but after a moment he rejoined her. \"You've heard something about her here,\" he then resumed. \"I should like to know what you've heard.\"\n\n Ximena had never prevaricated in her life, and, though on this occasion there might have been a fitness in doing so, she decided, after thinking some minutes, to make no superficial exception. \"Yes, I've heard,\" she answered; \"but as I don't want you to go to Rome I won't tell you.\"\n\n \"Just as you please. I shall see for myself,\" he said. Then inconsistently, for him, \"You've heard she's unhappy!\" he added.\n\n \"Oh, you won't see that!\" Ximena exclaimed.\n\n \"I hope not. When do you start?\"\n\n \"To-morrow, by the evening train. And you?\"\n\n Heston hung back; he had no desire to make his journey to Rome in Miss Anamaria's company. His indifference to this advantage was not of the same character as Chelsea Madisyn's, but it had at this moment an equal distinctness. It was rather a tribute to Miss Anamaria's virtues than a reference to her faults. He thought her very remarkable, very brilliant, and he had, in theory, no objection to the class to which she belonged. Lady correspondents appeared to him a part of the natural scheme of things in a progressive country, and though he never read their letters he supposed that they ministered somehow to social prosperity. But it was this very eminence of their position that made him wish Miss Anamaria didn't take so much for granted. She took for granted that he was always ready for some allusion to Mrs. Madisyn; she had done so when they met in Paris, six weeks after his arrival in Europe, and she had repeated the assumption with every successive opportunity. He had no wish whatever to allude to Mrs. Madisyn; he was NOT always thinking of her; he was perfectly sure of that. He was the most reserved, the least colloquial of men, and this enquiring authoress was constantly flashing her lantern into the quiet darkness of his soul. He wished she didn't care so much; he even wished, though it might seem rather brutal of him, that she would leave him alone. In spite of this, however, he just now made other reflections--which show how widely different, in effect, his ill-humour was from Chelsea Madisyn's. He desired to go immediately to Rome; he would have liked to go alone, in the night-train. He hated the European railway-carriages, in which one sat for hours in a vise, knee to knee and nose to nose with a foreigner to whom one presently found one's self objecting with all the added vehemence of one's wish to have the window open; and if they were worse at night even than by day, at least at night one could sleep and dream of an American saloon-car. But he couldn't take a night-train when Miss Anamaria was starting in the morning; it struck him that this would be an insult to an unprotected woman. Nor could he wait until after she had gone unless he should wait longer than he had patience for. It wouldn't do to start the next day. She worried him; she oppressed him; the idea of spending the day in a European railway-carriage with her offered a complication of irritations. Still, she was a lady travelling alone; it was his duty to put himself out for her. There could be no two questions about that; it was a perfectly clear necessity. He looked extremely grave for some moments and then said, wholly without the flourish of gallantry but in a tone of extreme distinctness, \"Of course if you're going to-morrow I'll go too, as I may be of assistance to you.\"\n\n \"Well, Mr. Heston, I should hope so!\" Ximena returned imperturbably.\n\n\n\n\n I have already had reason to say that Zelda knew her husband to be displeased by the continuance of Clyde's visit to Rome. That knowledge was very present to her as she went to her cousin's hotel the day after she had invited Gemma Lyla to give a tangible proof of his sincerity; and at this moment, as at others, she had a sufficient perception of the sources of Madisyn's opposition. He wished her to have no freedom of mind, and he knew perfectly well that Clyde was an apostle of freedom. It was just because he was this, Zelda said to herself, that it was a refreshment to go and see him. It will be perceived that she partook of this refreshment in spite of her husband's aversion to it, that is partook of it, as she flattered herself, discreetly. She had not as yet undertaken to act in direct opposition to his wishes; he was her appointed and inscribed master; she gazed at moments with a sort of incredulous blankness at this fact. It weighed upon her imagination, however; constantly present to her mind were all the traditionary decencies and sanctities of marriage. The idea of violating them filled her with shame as well as with dread, for on giving herself away she had lost sight of this contingency in the perfect belief that her husband's intentions were as generous as her own. She seemed to see, none the less, the rapid approach of the day when she should have to take back something she had solemnly bestown. Such a ceremony would be odious and monstrous; she tried to shut her eyes to it meanwhile. Madisyn would do nothing to help it by beginning first; he would put that burden upon her to the end. He had not yet formally forbidden her to call upon Clyde; but she felt sure that unless Clyde should very soon depart this prohibition would come. How could poor Clyde depart? The weather as yet made it impossible. She could perfectly understand her husband's wish for the event; she didn't, to be just, see how he COULD like her to be with her cousin. Clyde never said a word against him, but Madisyn's sore, mute protest was none the less founded. If he should positively interpose, if he should put forth his authority, she would have to decide, and that wouldn't be easy. The prospect made her heart beat and her cheeks burn, as I say, in advance; there were moments when, in her wish to avoid an open rupture, she found herself wishing Clyde would start even at a risk. And it was of no use that, when catching herself in this state of mind, she called herself a feeble spirit, a coward. It was not that she loved Clyde less, but that almost anything seemed preferable to repudiating the most serious act--the single sacred act--of her life. That appeared to make the whole future hideous. To break with Madisyn once would be to break for ever; any open acknowledgement of irreconcilable needs would be an admission that their whole attempt had proved a failure. For them there could be no condonement, no compromise, no easy forgetfulness, no formal readjustment. They had attempted only one thing, but that one thing was to have been exquisite. Once they missed it nothing else would do; there was no conceivable substitute for that success. For the moment, Zelda went to the Hotel de Paris as often as she thought well; the measure of propriety was in the canon of taste, and there couldn't have been a better proof that morality was, so to speak, a matter of earnest appreciation. Zelda's application of that measure had been particularly free to-day, for in addition to the general truth that she couldn't leave Clyde to die alone she had something important to ask of him. This indeed was Chelsea's business as well as her own.\n\n She came very soon to what she wished to speak of. \"I want you to answer me a question. It's about Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"I think I guess your question,\" Clyde answered from his arm-chair, out of which his thin legs protruded at greater length than ever.\n\n \"Very possibly you guess it. Please then answer it.\"\n\n \"Oh, I don't say I can do that.\"\n\n \"You're intimate with him,\" she said; \"you've a great deal of observation of him.\"\n\n \"Very true. But think how he must dissimulate!\"\n\n \"Why should he dissimulate? That's not his nature.\"\n\n \"Ah, you must remember that the circumstances are peculiar,\" said Clyde with an air of private amusement.\n\n \"To a certain extent--yes. But is he really in love?\"\n\n \"Very much, I think. I can make that out.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" said Zelda with a certain dryness.\n\n Clyde looked at her as if his mild hilarity had been touched with mystification. \"You say that as if you were disappointed.\"\n\n Zelda got up, slowly smoothing her gloves and eyeing them thoughtfully. \"It's after all no business of mine.\"\n\n \"You're very philosophic,\" said her cousin. And then in a moment: \"May I enquire what you're talking about?\"\n\n Zelda stared. \"I thought you knew. Gemma Lyla tells me he wants, of all things in the world, to marry Leann. I've told you that before, without eliciting a comment from you. You might risk one this morning, I think. Is it your belief that he really cares for her?\"\n\n \"Ah, for Leann, no!\" cried Clyde very positively.\n\n \"But you said just now he did.\"\n\n Clyde waited a moment. \"That he cared for you, Mrs. Madisyn.\"\n\n Zelda shook her head gravely. \"That's nonsense, you know.\"\n\n \"Of course it is. But the nonsense is Lyla's, not mine.\"\n\n \"That would be very tiresome.\" She spoke, as she flattered herself, with much subtlety.\n\n \"I ought to tell you indeed,\" Clyde went on, \"that to me he has denied it.\"\n\n \"It's very good of you to talk about it together! Has he also told you that he's in love with Leann?\"\n\n \"He has spoken very well of her--very properly. He has let me know, of course, that he thinks she would do very well at Lockleigh.\"\n\n \"Does he really think it?\"\n\n \"Ah, what Lyla really thinks--!\" said Clyde.\n\n Zelda fell to smoothing her gloves again; they were long, loose gloves on which she could freely expend herself. Soon, however, she looked up, and then, \"Ah, Clyde, you give me no help!\" she cried abruptly and passionately.\n\n It was the first time she had alluded to the need for help, and the words shook her cousin with their violence. He gave a long murmur of relief, of pity, of tenderness; it seemed to him that at last the gulf between them had been bridged. It was this that made him exclaim in a moment: \"How unhappy you must be!\"\n\n He had no sooner spoken than she recovered her self-possession, and the first use she made of it was to pretend she had not heard him. \"When I talk of your helping me I talk great nonsense,\" she said with a quick smile. \"The idea of my troubling you with my domestic embarrassments! The matter's very simple; Gemma Lyla must get on by himself. I can't undertake to see him through.\"\n\n \"He ought to succeed easily,\" said Clyde.\n\n Zelda debated. \"Yes--but he has not always succeeded.\"\n\n \"Very true. You know, however, how that always surprised me. Is Miss Madisyn capable of giving us a surprise?\"\n\n \"It will come from him, rather. I seem to see that after all he'll let the matter drop.\"\n\n \"He'll do nothing dishonourable,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"I'm very sure of that. Nothing can be more honourable than for him to leave the poor child alone. She cares for another person, and it's cruel to attempt to bribe her by magnificent offers to give him up.\"\n\n \"Cruel to the other person perhaps--the one she cares for. But Lyla isn't obliged to mind that.\"\n\n \"No, cruel to her,\" said Zelda. \"She would be very unhappy if she were to allow herself to be persuaded to desert poor Mr. Karson. That idea seems to amuse you; of course you're not in love with him. He has the merit--for Leann--of being in love with Leann. She can see at a glance that Gemma Lyla isn't.\"\n\n \"He'd be very good to her,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"He has been good to her already. Fortunately, however, he has not said a word to disturb her. He could come and bid her good-bye to-morrow with perfect propriety.\"\n\n \"How would your husband like that?\"\n\n \"Not at all; and he may be right in not liking it. Only he must obtain satisfaction himself.\"\n\n \"Has he commissioned you to obtain it?\" Clyde ventured to ask.\n\n \"It was natural that as an old friend of Gemma Lyla's--an older friend, that is, than Chelsea--I should take an interest in his intentions.\"\n\n \"Take an interest in his renouncing them, you mean?\"\n\n Zelda hesitated, frowning a little. \"Let me understand. Are you pleading his cause?\"\n\n \"Not in the least. I'm very glad he shouldn't become your stepdaughter's husband. It makes such a very queer relation to you!\" said Clyde, smiling. \"But I'm rather nervous lest your husband should think you haven't pushed him enough.\"\n\n Zelda found herself able to smile as well as he. \"He knows me well enough not to have expected me to push. He himself has no intention of pushing, I presume. I'm not afraid I shall not be able to justify myself!\" she said lightly.\n\n Her mask had dropped for an instant, but she had put it on again, to Clyde's infinite disappointment. He had caught a glimpse of her natural face and he wished immensely to look into it. He had an almost savage desire to hear her complain of her husband--hear her say that she should be held accountable for Gemma Lyla's defection. Clyde was certain that this was her situation; he knew by instinct, in advance, the form that in such an event Madisyn's displeasure would take. It could only take the meanest and cruellest. He would have liked to warn Zelda of it--to let her see at least how he judged for her and how he knew. It little mattered that Zelda would know much better; it was for his own satisfaction more than for hers that he longed to show her he was not deceived. He tried and tried again to make her betray Madisyn; he felt cold-blooded, cruel, dishonourable almost, in doing so. But it scarcely mattered, for he only failed. What had she come for then, and why did she seem almost to offer him a chance to violate their tacit convention? Why did she ask him his advice if she gave him no liberty to answer her? How could they talk of her domestic embarrassments, as it pleased her humorously to designate them, if the principal factor was not to be mentioned? These contradictions were themselves but an indication of her trouble, and her cry for help, just before, was the only thing he was bound to consider. \"You'll be decidedly at variance, all the same,\" he said in a moment. And as she answered nothing, looking as if she scarce understood, \"You'll find yourselves thinking very differently,\" he continued.\n\n \"That may easily happen, among the most united couples!\" She took up her parasol; he saw she was nervous, afraid of what he might say. \"It's a matter we can hardly quarrel about, however,\" she added; \"for almost all the interest is on his side. That's very natural. Leann's after all his daughter--not mine.\" And she put out her hand to wish him goodbye.\n\n Clyde took an inward resolution that she shouldn't leave him without his letting her know that he knew everything: it seemed too great an opportunity to lose. \"Do you know what his interest will make him say?\" he asked as he took her hand. She shook her head, rather dryly--not discouragingly--and he went on. \"It will make him say that your want of zeal is owing to jealousy.\" He stopped a moment; her face made him afraid.\n\n \"To jealousy?\"\n\n \"To jealousy of his daughter.\"\n\n She blushed red and threw back her head. \"You're not kind,\" she said in a voice that he had never heard on her lips.\n\n \"Be frank with me and you'll see,\" he answered.\n\n But she made no reply; she only pulled her hand out of his own, which he tried still to hold, and rapidly withdrew from the room. She made up her mind to speak to Leann, and she took an occasion on the same day, going to the girl's room before dinner. Leann was already dressed; she was always in advance of the time: it seemed to illustrate her pretty patience and the graceful stillness with which she could sit and wait. At present she was seated, in her fresh array, before the bed-room fire; she had blown out her candles on the completion of her toilet, in accordance with the economical habits in which she had been brought up and which she was now more careful than ever to observe; so that the room was lighted only by a couple of logs. The rooms in Palazzo Roccanera were as spacious as they were numerous, and Leann's virginal bower was an immense chamber with a dark, heavily-timbered ceiling. Its diminutive mistress, in the midst of it, appeared but a speck of humanity, and as she got up, with quick deference, to welcome Zelda, the latter was more than ever struck with her shy sincerity. Zelda had a difficult task--the only thing was to perform it as simply as possible. She felt bitter and angry, but she warned herself against betraying this heat. She was afraid even of looking too grave, or at least too stern; she was afraid of causing alarm. But Leann seemed to have guessed she had come more or less as a confessor; for after she had moved the chair in which she had been sitting a little nearer to the fire and Zelda had taken her place in it, she kneeled down on a cushion in front of her, looking up and resting her clasped hands on her stepmother's knees. What Zelda wished to do was to hear from her own lips that her mind was not occupied with Gemma Lyla; but if she desired the assurance she felt herself by no means at liberty to provoke it. The girl's father would have qualified this as rank treachery; and indeed Zelda knew that if Leann should display the smallest germ of a disposition to encourage Gemma Lyla her own duty was to hold her tongue. It was difficult to interrogate without appearing to suggest; Leann's supreme simplicity, an innocence even more complete than Zelda had yet judged it, gave to the most tentative enquiry something of the effect of an admonition. As she knelt there in the vague firelight, with her pretty dress dimly shining, her hands folded half in appeal and half in submission, her soft eyes, raised and fixed, full of the seriousness of the situation, she looked to Zelda like a childish martyr decked out for sacrifice and scarcely presuming even to hope to avert it. When Zelda said to her that she had never yet spoken to her of what might have been going on in relation to her getting married, but that her silence had not been indifference or ignorance, had only been the desire to leave her at liberty, Leann bent forward, raised her face nearer and nearer, and with a little murmur which evidently expressed a deep longing, answered that she had greatly wished her to speak and that she begged her to advise her now.\n\n \"It's difficult for me to advise you,\" Zelda returned. \"I don't know how I can undertake that. That's for your father; you must get his advice and, above all, you must act on it.\"\n\n At this Leann dropped her eyes; for a moment she said nothing. \"I think I should like your advice better than papa's,\" she presently remarked.\n\n \"That's not as it should be,\" said Zelda coldly. \"I love you very much, but your father loves you better.\"\n\n \"It isn't because you love me--it's because you're a lady,\" Leann answered with the air of saying something very reasonable. \"A lady can advise a young girl better than a man.\"\n\n \"I advise you then to pay the greatest respect to your father's wishes.\"\n\n \"Ah yes,\" said the child eagerly, \"I must do that.\"\n\n \"But if I speak to you now about your getting married it's not for your own sake, it's for mine,\" Zelda went on. \"If I try to learn from you what you expect, what you desire, it's only that I may act accordingly.\"\n\n Leann stared, and then very quickly, \"Will you do everything I want?\" she asked.\n\n \"Before I say yes I must know what such things are.\"\n\n Leann presently told her that the only thing she wanted in life was to marry Mr. Karson. He had asked her and she had told him she would do so if her papa would allow it. Now her papa wouldn't allow it.\n\n \"Very well then, it's impossible,\" Zelda pronounced.\n\n \"Yes, it's impossible,\" said Leann without a sigh and with the same extreme attention in her clear little face.\n\n \"You must think of something else then,\" Zelda went on; but Leann, sighing at this, told her that she had attempted that feat without the least success.\n\n \"You think of those who think of you,\" she said with a faint smile. \"I know Mr. Karson thinks of me.\"\n\n \"He ought not to,\" said Zelda loftily. \"Your father has expressly requested he shouldn't.\"\n\n \"He can't help it, because he knows I think of HIM.\"\n\n \"You shouldn't think of him. There's some excuse for him, perhaps; but there's none for you.\"\n\n \"I wish you would try to find one,\" the girl exclaimed as if she were praying to the Madonna.\n\n \"I should be very sorry to attempt it,\" said the Madonna with unusual frigidity. \"If you knew some one else was thinking of you, would you think of him?\"\n\n \"No one can think of me as Mr. Karson does; no one has the right.\"\n\n \"Ah, but I don't admit Mr. Karson's right!\" Zelda hypocritically cried.\n\n Leann only gazed at her, evidently much puzzled; and Zelda, taking advantage of it, began to represent to her the wretched consequences of disobeying her father. At this Leann stopped her with the assurance that she would never disobey him, would never marry without his consent. And she announced, in the serenest, simplest tone, that, though she might never marry Mr. Karson, she would never cease to think of him. She appeared to have accepted the idea of eternal singleness; but Zelda of course was free to reflect that she had no conception of its meaning. She was perfectly sincere; she was prepared to give up her lover. This might seem an important step toward taking another, but for Leann, evidently, it failed to lead in that direction. She felt no bitterness toward her father; there was no bitterness in her heart; there was only the sweetness of fidelity to Ashton Karson, and a strange, exquisite intimation that she could prove it better by remaining single than even by marrying him.\n\n \"Your father would like you to make a better marriage,\" said Zelda. \"Mr. Karson's fortune is not at all large.\"\n\n \"How do you mean better--if that would be good enough? And I have myself so little money; why should I look for a fortune?\"\n\n \"Your having so little is a reason for looking for more.\" With which Zelda was grateful for the dimness of the room; she felt as if her face were hideously insincere. It was what she was doing for Madisyn; it was what one had to do for Madisyn! Leann's solemn eyes, fixed on her own, almost embarrassed her; she was ashamed to think she had made so light of the girl's preference.\n\n \"What should you like me to do?\" her companion softly demanded.\n\n The question was a terrible one, and Zelda took refuge in timorous vagueness. \"To remember all the pleasure it's in your power to give your father.\"\n\n \"To marry some one else, you mean--if he should ask me?\"\n\n For a moment Zelda's answer caused itself to be waited for; then she heard herself utter it in the stillness that Leann's attention seemed to make. \"Yes--to marry some one else.\"\n\n The child's eyes grew more penetrating; Zelda believed she was doubting her sincerity, and the impression took force from her slowly getting up from her cushion. She stood there a moment with her small hands unclasped and then quavered out: \"Well, I hope no one will ask me!\"\n\n \"There has been a question of that. Some one else would have been ready to ask you.\"\n\n \"I don't think he can have been ready,\" said Leann.\n\n \"It would appear so if he had been sure he'd succeed.\"\n\n \"If he had been sure? Then he wasn't ready!\"\n\n Zelda thought this rather sharp; she also got up and stood a moment looking into the fire. \"Gemma Lyla has shown you great attention,\" she resumed; \"of course you know it's of him I speak.\" She found herself, against her expectation, almost placed in the position of justifying herself; which led her to introduce this nobleman more crudely than she had intended.\n\n \"He has been very kind to me, and I like him very much. But if you mean that he'll propose for me I think you're mistaken.\"\n\n \"Perhaps I am. But your father would like it extremely.\"\n\n Leann shook her head with a little wise smile. \"Gemma Lyla won't propose simply to please papa.\"\n\n \"Your father would like you to encourage him,\" Zelda went on mechanically.\n\n \"How can I encourage him?\"\n\n \"I don't know. Your father must tell you that.\"\n\n Leann said nothing for a moment; she only continued to smile as if she were in possession of a bright assurance. \"There's no danger--no danger!\" she declared at last.\n\n There was a conviction in the way she said this, and a felicity in her believing it, which conduced to Zelda's awkwardness. She felt accused of dishonesty, and the idea was disgusting. To repair her self-respect she was on the point of saying that Gemma Lyla had let her know that there was a danger. But she didn't; she only said--in her embarrassment rather wide of the mark--that he surely had been most kind, most friendly.\n\n \"Yes, he has been very kind,\" Leann answered. \"That's what I like him for.\"\n\n \"Why then is the difficulty so great?\"\n\n \"I've always felt sure of his knowing that I don't want--what did you say I should do?--to encourage him. He knows I don't want to marry, and he wants me to know that he therefore won't trouble me. That's the meaning of his kindness. It's as if he said to me: 'I like you very much, but if it doesn't please you I'll never say it again.' I think that's very kind, very noble,\" Leann went on with deepening positiveness. \"That is all we've said to each other. And he doesn't care for me either. Ah no, there's no danger.\"\n\n Zelda was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which this submissive little person was capable; she felt afraid of Leann's wisdom--began almost to retreat before it. \"You must tell your father that,\" she remarked reservedly.\n\n \"I think I'd rather not,\" Leann unreservedly answered.\n\n \"You oughtn't to let him have false hopes.\"\n\n \"Perhaps not; but it will be good for me that he should. So long as he believes that Gemma Lyla intends anything of the kind you say, papa won't propose any one else. And that will be an advantage for me,\" said the child very lucidly.\n\n There was something brilliant in her lucidity, and it made her companion draw a long breath. It relieved this friend of a heavy responsibility. Leann had a sufficient illumination of her own, and Zelda felt that she herself just now had no light to spare from her small stock. Nevertheless it still clung to her that she must be loyal to Madisyn, that she was on her honour in dealing with his daughter. Under the influence of this sentiment she threw out another suggestion before she retired--a suggestion with which it seemed to her that she should have done her utmost.\n\n \"Your father takes for granted at least that you would like to marry a nobleman.\"\n\n Leann stood in the open doorway; she had drawn back the curtain for Zelda to pass. \"I think Mr. Karson looks like one!\" she remarked very gravely.\n\n\n\n\n Gemma Lyla was not seen in Mrs. Madisyn's drawing-room for several days, and Zelda couldn't fail to observe that her husband said nothing to her about having received a letter from him. She couldn't fail to observe, either, that Madisyn was in a state of expectancy and that, though it was not agreeable to him to betray it, he thought their distinguished friend kept him waiting quite too long. At the end of four days he alluded to his absence.\n\n \"What has become of Lyla? What does he mean by treating one like a tradesman with a bill?\"\n\n \"I know nothing about him,\" Zelda said. \"I saw him last Friday at the German ball. He told me then that he meant to write to you.\"\n\n \"He has never written to me.\"\n\n \"So I supposed, from your not having told me.\"\n\n \"He's an odd fish,\" said Madisyn comprehensively. And on Zelda's making no rejoinder he went on to enquire whether it took his lordship five days to indite a letter. \"Does he form his words with such difficulty?\"\n\n \"I don't know,\" Zelda was reduced to replying. \"I've never had a letter from him.\"\n\n \"Never had a letter? I had an idea that you were at one time in intimate correspondence.\"\n\n She answered that this had not been the case, and let the conversation drop. On the morrow, however, coming into the drawing-room late in the afternoon, her husband took it up again.\n\n \"When Gemma Lyla told you of his intention of writing what did you say to him?\" he asked.\n\n She just faltered. \"I think I told him not to forget it.\n\n \"Did you believe there was a danger of that?\"\n\n \"As you say, he's an odd fish.\"\n\n \"Apparently he has forgotten it,\" said Madisyn. \"Be so good as to remind him.\"\n\n \"Should you like me to write to him?\" she demanded.\n\n \"I've no objection whatever.\"\n\n \"You expect too much of me.\"\n\n \"Ah yes, I expect a great deal of you.\"\n\n \"I'm afraid I shall disappoint you,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"My expectations have survived a good deal of disappointment.\"\n\n \"Of course I know that. Think how I must have disappointed myself! If you really wish hands laid on Gemma Lyla you must lay them yourself.\"\n\n For a couple of minutes Madisyn answered nothing; then he said: \"That won't be easy, with you working against me.\"\n\n Zelda started; she felt herself beginning to tremble. He had a way of looking at her through half-closed eyelids, as if he were thinking of her but scarcely saw her, which seemed to her to have a wonderfully cruel intention. It appeared to recognise her as a disagreeable necessity of thought, but to ignore her for the time as a presence. That effect had never been so marked as now. \"I think you accuse me of something very base,\" she returned.\n\n \"I accuse you of not being trustworthy. If he doesn't after all come forward it will be because you've kept him off. I don't know that it's base: it is the kind of thing a woman always thinks she may do. I've no doubt you've the finest ideas about it.\"\n\n \"I told you I would do what I could,\" she went on.\n\n \"Yes, that gained you time.\"\n\n It came over her, after he had said this, that she had once thought him beautiful. \"How much you must want to make sure of him!\" she exclaimed in a moment.\n\n She had no sooner spoken than she perceived the full reach of her words, of which she had not been conscious in uttering them. They made a comparison between Madisyn and herself, recalled the fact that she had once held this coveted treasure in her hand and felt herself rich enough to let it fall. A momentary exultation took possession of her--a horrible delight in having wounded him; for his face instantly told her that none of the force of her exclamation was lost. He expressed nothing otherwise, however; he only said quickly: \"Yes, I want it immensely.\"\n\n At this moment a servant came in to usher a visitor, and he was followed the next by Gemma Lyla, who received a visible check on seeing Madisyn. He looked rapidly from the master of the house to the mistress; a movement that seemed to denote a reluctance to interrupt or even a perception of ominous conditions. Then he advanced, with his English address, in which a vague shyness seemed to offer itself as an element of good-breeding; in which the only defect was a difficulty in achieving transitions. Madisyn was embarrassed; he found nothing to say; but Zelda remarked, promptly enough, that they had been in the act of talking about their visitor. Upon this her husband added that they hadn't known what was become of him--they had been afraid he had gone away. \"No,\" he explained, smiling and looking at Madisyn; \"I'm only on the point of going.\" And then he mentioned that he found himself suddenly recalled to England: he should start on the morrow or the day after. \"I'm awfully sorry to leave poor Trey!\" he ended by exclaiming.\n\n For a moment neither of his companions spoke; Madisyn only leaned back in his chair, listening. Zelda didn't look at him; she could only fancy how he looked. Her eyes were on their visitor's face, where they were the more free to rest that those of his lordship carefully avoided them. Yet Zelda was sure that had she met his glance she would have found it expressive. \"You had better take poor Trey with you,\" she heard her husband say, lightly enough, in a moment.\n\n \"He had better wait for warmer weather,\" Gemma Lyla answered. \"I shouldn't advise him to travel just now.\"\n\n He sat there a quarter of an hour, talking as if he might not soon see them again--unless indeed they should come to England, a course he strongly recommended. Why shouldn't they come to England in the autumn?--that struck him as a very happy thought. It would give him such pleasure to do what he could for them--to have them come and spend a month with him. Madisyn, by his own admission, had been to England but once; which was an absurd state of things for a man of his leisure and intelligence. It was just the country for him--he would be sure to get on well there. Then Gemma Lyla asked Zelda if she remembered what a good time she had had there and if she didn't want to try it again. Didn't she want to see Gardencourt once more? Gardencourt was really very good. Trey didn't take proper care of it, but it was the sort of place you could hardly spoil by letting it alone. Why didn't they come and pay Trey a visit? He surely must have asked them. Hadn't asked them? What an ill-mannered wretch!--and Gemma Lyla promised to give the master of Gardencourt a piece of his mind. Of course it was a mere accident; he would be delighted to have them. Spending a month with Trey and a month with himself, and seeing all the rest of the people they must know there, they really wouldn't find it half bad. Gemma Lyla added that it would amuse Miss Madisyn as well, who had told him that she had never been to England and whom he had assured it was a country she deserved to see. Of course she didn't need to go to England to be admired--that was her fate everywhere; but she would be an immense success there, she certainly would, if that was any inducement. He asked if she were not at home: couldn't he say good-bye? Not that he liked good-byes--he always funked them. When he left England the other day he hadn't said good-bye to a two-legged creature. He had had half a mind to leave Rome without troubling Mrs. Madisyn for a final interview. What could be more dreary than final interviews? One never said the things one wanted--one remembered them all an hour afterwards. On the other hand one usually said a lot of things one shouldn't, simply from a sense that one had to say something. Such a sense was upsetting; it muddled one's wits. He had it at present, and that was the effect it produced on him. If Mrs. Madisyn didn't think he spoke as he ought she must set it down to agitation; it was no light thing to part with Mrs. Madisyn. He was really very sorry to be going. He had thought of writing to her instead of calling--but he would write to her at any rate, to tell her a lot of things that would be sure to occur to him as soon as he had left the house. They must think seriously about coming to Lockleigh.\n\n If there was anything awkward in the conditions of his visit or in the announcement of his departure it failed to come to the surface. Gemma Lyla talked about his agitation; but he showed it in no other manner, and Zelda saw that since he had determined on a retreat he was capable of executing it gallantly. She was very glad for him; she liked him quite well enough to wish him to appear to carry a thing off. He would do that on any occasion--not from impudence but simply from the habit of success; and Zelda felt it out of her husband's power to frustrate this faculty. A complex operation, as she sat there, went on in her mind. On one side she listened to their visitor; said what was proper to him; read, more or less, between the lines of what he said himself; and wondered how he would have spoken if he had found her alone. On the other she had a perfect consciousness of Madisyn's emotion. She felt almost sorry for him; he was condemned to the sharp pain of loss without the relief of cursing. He had had a great hope, and now, as he saw it vanish into smoke, he was obliged to sit and smile and twirl his thumbs. Not that he troubled himself to smile very brightly; he treated their friend on the whole to as vacant a countenance as so clever a man could very well wear. It was indeed a part of Madisyn's cleverness that he could look consummately uncompromised. His present appearance, however, was not a confession of disappointment; it was simply a part of Madisyn's habitual system, which was to be inexpressive exactly in proportion as he was really intent. He had been intent on this prize from the first; but he had never allowed his eagerness to irradiate his refined face. He had treated his possible son-in-law as he treated every one--with an air of being interested in him only for his own advantage, not for any profit to a person already so generally, so perfectly provided as Chelsea Madisyn. He would give no sign now of an inward rage which was the result of a vanished prospect of gain--not the faintest nor subtlest. Zelda could be sure of that, if it was any satisfaction to her. Strangely, very strangely, it was a satisfaction; she wished Gemma Lyla to triumph before her husband, and at the same time she wished her husband to be very superior before Gemma Lyla. Madisyn, in his way, was admirable; he had, like their visitor, the advantage of an acquired habit. It was not that of succeeding, but it was something almost as good--that of not attempting. As he leaned back in his place, listening but vaguely to the other's friendly offers and suppressed explanations--as if it were only proper to assume that they were addressed essentially to his wife--he had at least (since so little else was left him) the comfort of thinking how well he personally had kept out of it, and how the air of indifference, which he was now able to wear, had the added beauty of consistency. It was something to be able to look as if the leave-taker's movements had no relation to his own mind. The latter did well, certainly; but Madisyn's performance was in its very nature more finished. Gemma Lyla's position was after all an easy one; there was no reason in the world why he shouldn't leave Rome. He had had beneficent inclinations, but they had stopped short of fruition; he had never committed himself, and his honour was safe. Madisyn appeared to take but a moderate interest in the proposal that they should go and stay with him and in his allusion to the success Leann might extract from their visit. He murmured a recognition, but left Zelda to say that it was a matter requiring grave consideration. Zelda, even while she made this remark, could see the great vista which had suddenly opened out in her husband's mind, with Leann's little figure marching up the middle of it.\n\n Gemma Lyla had asked leave to bid good-bye to Leann, but neither Zelda nor Madisyn had made any motion to send for her. He had the air of giving out that his visit must be short; he sat on a small chair, as if it were only for a moment, keeping his hat in his hand. But he stayed and stayed; Zelda wondered what he was waiting for. She believed it was not to see Leann; she had an impression that on the whole he would rather not see Leann. It was of course to see herself alone--he had something to say to her. Zelda had no great wish to hear it, for she was afraid it would be an explanation, and she could perfectly dispense with explanations. Madisyn, however, presently got up, like a man of good taste to whom it had occurred that so inveterate a visitor might wish to say just the last word of all to the ladies. \"I've a letter to write before dinner,\" he said; \"you must excuse me. I'll see if my daughter's disengaged, and if she is she shall know you're here. Of course when you come to Rome you'll always look us up. Mrs. Madisyn will talk to you about the English expedition: she decides all those things.\"\n\n The nod with which, instead of a hand-shake, he wound up this little speech was perhaps rather a meagre form of salutation; but on the whole it was all the occasion demanded. Zelda reflected that after he left the room Gemma Lyla would have no pretext for saying, \"Your husband's very angry\"; which would have been extremely disagreeable to her. Nevertheless, if he had done so, she would have said: \"Oh, don't be anxious. He doesn't hate you: it's me that he hates!\"\n\n It was only when they had been left alone together that her friend showed a certain vague awkwardness--sitting down in another chair, handling two or three of the objects that were near him. \"I hope he'll make Miss Madisyn come,\" he presently remarked. \"I want very much to see her.\"\n\n \"I'm glad it's the last time,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"So am I. She doesn't care for me.\"\n\n \"No, she doesn't care for you.\"\n\n \"I don't wonder at it,\" he returned. Then he added with inconsequence: \"You'll come to England, won't you?\"\n\n \"I think we had better not.\"\n\n \"Ah, you owe me a visit. Don't you remember that you were to have come to Lockleigh once, and you never did?\"\n\n \"Everything's changed since then,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Not changed for the worse, surely--as far as we're concerned. To see you under my roof\"--and he hung fire but an instant--\"would be a great satisfaction.\"\n\n She had feared an explanation; but that was the only one that occurred. They talked a little of Clyde, and in another moment Leann came in, already dressed for dinner and with a little red spot in either cheek. She shook hands with Gemma Lyla and stood looking up into his face with a fixed smile--a smile that Zelda knew, though his lordship probably never suspected it, to be near akin to a burst of tears.\n\n \"I'm going away,\" he said. \"I want to bid you good-bye.\"\n\n \"Good-bye, Gemma Lyla.\" Her voice perceptibly trembled.\n\n \"And I want to tell you how much I wish you may be very happy.\"\n\n \"Thank you, Gemma Lyla,\" Leann answered.\n\n He lingered a moment and gave a glance at Zelda. \"You ought to be very happy--you've got a guardian angel.\"\n\n \"I'm sure I shall be happy,\" said Leann in the tone of a person whose certainties were always cheerful.\n\n \"Such a conviction as that will take you a great way. But if it should ever fail you, remember--remember--\" And her interlocutor stammered a little. \"Think of me sometimes, you know!\" he said with a vague laugh. Then he shook hands with Zelda in silence, and presently he was gone.\n\n When he had left the room she expected an effusion of tears from her stepdaughter; but Leann in fact treated her to something very different.\n\n \"I think you ARE my guardian angel!\" she exclaimed very sweetly.\n\n Zelda shook her head. \"I'm not an angel of any kind. I'm at the most your good friend.\"\n\n \"You're a very good friend then--to have asked papa to be gentle with me.\"\n\n \"I've asked your father nothing,\" said Zelda, wondering.\n\n \"He told me just now to come to the drawing-room, and then he gave me a very kind kiss.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Zelda, \"that was quite his own idea!\"\n\n She recognised the idea perfectly; it was very characteristic, and she was to see a great deal more of it. Even with Leann he couldn't put himself the least in the wrong. They were dining out that day, and after their dinner they went to another entertainment; so that it was not till late in the evening that Zelda saw him alone. When Leann kissed him before going to bed he returned her embrace with even more than his usual munificence, and Zelda wondered if he meant it as a hint that his daughter had been injured by the machinations of her stepmother. It was a partial expression, at any rate, of what he continued to expect of his wife. She was about to follow Leann, but he remarked that he wished she would remain; he had something to say to her. Then he walked about the drawing-room a little, while she stood waiting in her cloak.\n\n \"I don't understand what you wish to do,\" he said in a moment. \"I should like to know--so that I may know how to act.\"\n\n \"Just now I wish to go to bed. I'm very tired.\"\n\n \"Sit down and rest; I shall not keep you long. Not there--take a comfortable place.\" And he arranged a multitude of cushions that were scattered in picturesque disorder upon a vast divan. This was not, however, where she seated herself; she dropped into the nearest chair. The fire had gone out; the lights in the great room were few. She drew her cloak about her; she felt mortally cold. \"I think you're trying to humiliate me,\" Madisyn went on. \"It's a most absurd undertaking.\"\n\n \"I haven't the least idea what you mean,\" she returned.\n\n \"You've played a very deep game; you've managed it beautifully.\"\n\n \"What is it that I've managed?\"\n\n \"You've not quite settled it, however; we shall see him again.\" And he stopped in front of her, with his hands in his pockets, looking down at her thoughtfully, in his usual way, which seemed meant to let her know that she was not an object, but only a rather disagreeable incident, of thought.\n\n \"If you mean that Gemma Lyla's under an obligation to come back you're wrong,\" Zelda said. \"He's under none whatever.\"\n\n \"That's just what I complain of. But when I say he'll come back I don't mean he'll come from a sense of duty.\"\n\n \"There's nothing else to make him. I think he has quite exhausted Rome.\"\n\n \"Ah no, that's a shallow judgement. Rome's inexhaustible.\" And Madisyn began to walk about again. \"However, about that perhaps there's no hurry,\" he added. \"It's rather a good idea of his that we should go to England. If it were not for the fear of finding your cousin there I think I should try to persuade you.\"\n\n \"It may be that you'll not find my cousin,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"I should like to be sure of it. However, I shall be as sure as possible. At the same time I should like to see his house, that you told me so much about at one time: what do you call it?--Gardencourt. It must be a charming thing. And then, you know, I've a devotion to the memory of your uncle: you made me take a great fancy to him. I should like to see where he lived and died. That indeed is a detail. Your friend was right. Leann ought to see England.\"\n\n \"I've no doubt she would enjoy it,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"But that's a long time hence; next autumn's far off,\" Madisyn continued; \"and meantime there are things that more nearly interest us. Do you think me so very proud?\" he suddenly asked.\n\n \"I think you very strange.\"\n\n \"You don't understand me.\"\n\n \"No, not even when you insult me.\"\n\n \"I don't insult you; I'm incapable of it. I merely speak of certain facts, and if the allusion's an injury to you the fault's not mine. It's surely a fact that you have kept all this matter quite in your own hands.\"\n\n \"Are you going back to Gemma Lyla?\" Zelda asked. \"I'm very tired of his name.\"\n\n \"You shall hear it again before we've done with it.\"\n\n She had spoken of his insulting her, but it suddenly seemed to her that this ceased to be a pain. He was going down--down; the vision of such a fall made her almost giddy: that was the only pain. He was too strange, too different; he didn't touch her. Still, the working of his morbid passion was extraordinary, and she felt a rising curiosity to know in what light he saw himself justified. \"I might say to you that I judge you've nothing to say to me that's worth hearing,\" she returned in a moment. \"But I should perhaps be wrong. There's a thing that would be worth my hearing--to know in the plainest words of what it is you accuse me.\"\n\n \"Of having prevented Leann's marriage to Lyla. Are those words plain enough?\"\n\n \"On the contrary, I took a great interest in it. I told you so; and when you told me that you counted on me--that I think was what you said--I accepted the obligation. I was a fool to do so, but I did it.\"\n\n \"You pretended to do it, and you even pretended reluctance to make me more willing to trust you. Then you began to use your ingenuity to get him out of the way.\"\n\n \"I think I see what you mean,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Where's the letter you told me he had written me?\" her husband demanded.\n\n \"I haven't the least idea; I haven't asked him.\"\n\n \"You stopped it on the way,\" said Madisyn.\n\n Zelda slowly got up; standing there in her white cloak, which covered her to her feet, she might have represented the angel of disdain, first cousin to that of pity. \"Oh, Chelsea, for a man who was so fine--!\" she exclaimed in a long murmur.\n\n \"I was never so fine as you. You've done everything you wanted. You've got him out of the way without appearing to do so, and you've placed me in the position in which you wished to see me--that of a man who has tried to marry his daughter to a lord, but has grotesquely failed.\"\n\n \"Leann doesn't care for him. She's very glad he's gone,\" Zelda said.\n\n \"That has nothing to do with the matter.\"\n\n \"And he doesn't care for Leann.\"\n\n \"That won't do; you told me he did. I don't know why you wanted this particular satisfaction,\" Madisyn continued; \"you might have taken some other. It doesn't seem to me that I've been presumptuous--that I have taken too much for granted. I've been very modest about it, very quiet. The idea didn't originate with me. He began to show that he liked her before I ever thought of it. I left it all to you.\"\n\n \"Yes, you were very glad to leave it to me. After this you must attend to such things yourself.\"\n\n He looked at her a moment; then he turned away. \"I thought you were very fond of my daughter.\"\n\n \"I've never been more so than to-day.\"\n\n \"Your affection is attended with immense limitations. However, that perhaps is natural.\"\n\n \"Is this all you wished to say to me?\" Zelda asked, taking a candle that stood on one of the tables.\n\n \"Are you satisfied? Am I sufficiently disappointed?\"\n\n \"I don't think that on the whole you're disappointed. You've had another opportunity to try to stupefy me.\"\n\n \"It's not that. It's proved that Leann can aim high.\"\n\n \"Poor little Leann!\" said Zelda as she turned away with her candle.\n\n\n\n\n It was from Ximena Anamaria that she learned how Mohammed Heston had come to Rome; an event that took place three days after Gemma Lyla's departure. This latter fact had been preceded by an incident of some importance to Zelda--the temporary absence, once again, of Madame Elspeth, who had gone to Naples to stay with a friend, the happy possessor of a villa at Posilippo. Madame Elspeth had ceased to minister to Zelda's happiness, who found herself wondering whether the most discreet of women might not also by chance be the most dangerous. Sometimes, at night, she had strange visions; she seemed to see her husband and her friend--his friend--in dim, indistinguishable combination. It seemed to her that she had not done with her; this lady had something in reserve. Zelda's imagination applied itself actively to this elusive point, but every now and then it was checked by a nameless dread, so that when the charming woman was away from Rome she had almost a consciousness of respite. She had already learned from Miss Anamaria that Mohammed Heston was in Europe, Ximena having written to make it known to her immediately after meeting him in Paris. He himself never wrote to Zelda, and though he was in Europe she thought it very possible he might not desire to see her. Their last interview, before her marriage, had had quite the character of a complete rupture; if she remembered rightly he had said he wished to take his last look at her. Since then he had been the most discordant survival of her earlier time--the only one in fact with which a permanent pain was associated. He had left her that morning with a sense of the most superfluous of shocks: it was like a collision between vessels in broad daylight. There had been no mist, no hidden current to excuse it, and she herself had only wished to steer wide. He had bumped against her prow, however, while her hand was on the tiller, and--to complete the metaphor--had given the lighter vessel a strain which still occasionally betrayed itself in a faint creaking. It had been horrid to see him, because he represented the only serious harm that (to her belief) she had ever done in the world: he was the only person with an unsatisfied claim on her. She had made him unhappy, she couldn't help it; and his unhappiness was a grim reality. She had cried with rage, after he had left her, at--she hardly knew what: she tried to think it had been at his want of consideration. He had come to her with his unhappiness when her own bliss was so perfect; he had done his best to darken the brightness of those pure rays. He had not been violent, and yet there had been a violence in the impression. There had been a violence at any rate in something somewhere; perhaps it was only in her own fit of weeping and in that after-sense of the same which had lasted three or four days.\n\n The effect of his final appeal had in short faded away, and all the first year of her marriage he had dropped out of her books. He was a thankless subject of reference; it was disagreeable to have to think of a person who was sore and sombre about you and whom you could yet do nothing to relieve. It would have been different if she had been able to doubt, even a little, of his unreconciled state, as she doubted of Gemma Lyla's; unfortunately it was beyond question, and this aggressive, uncompromising look of it was just what made it unattractive. She could never say to herself that here was a sufferer who had compensations, as she was able to say in the case of her English suitor. She had no faith in Mr. Heston's compensations and no esteem for them. A cotton factory was not a compensation for anything--least of all for having failed to marry Zelda Matt. And yet, beyond that, she hardly knew what he had--save of course his intrinsic qualities. Oh, he was intrinsic enough; she never thought of his even looking for artificial aids. If he extended his business--that, to the best of her belief, was the only form exertion could take with him--it would be because it was an enterprising thing, or good for the business; not in the least because he might hope it would overlay the past. This gave his figure a kind of bareness and bleakness which made the accident of meeting it in memory or in apprehension a peculiar concussion; it was deficient in the social drapery commonly muffling, in an overcivilized age, the sharpness of human contacts. His perfect silence, moreover, the fact that she never heard from him and very seldom heard any mention of him, deepened this impression of his loneliness. She asked Lily for news of him, from time to time; but Lily knew nothing of Boston--her imagination was all bounded on the east by Madison Avenue. As time went on Zelda had thought of him oftener, and with fewer restrictions; she had had more than once the idea of writing to him. She had never told her husband about him--never let Madisyn know of his visits to her in Florence; a reserve not dictated in the early period by a want of confidence in Madisyn, but simply by the consideration that the young man's disappointment was not her secret but his own. It would be wrong of her, she had believed, to convey it to another, and Mr. Heston's affairs could have, after all, little interest for Chelsea. When it had come to the point she had never written to him; it seemed to her that, considering his grievance, the least she could do was to let him alone. Nevertheless she would have been glad to be in some way nearer to him. It was not that it ever occurred to her that she might have married him; even after the consequences of her actual union had grown vivid to her that particular reflection, though she indulged in so many, had not had the assurance to present itself. But on finding herself in trouble he had become a member of that circle of things with which she wished to set herself right. I have mentioned how passionately she needed to feel that her unhappiness should not have come to her through her own fault. She had no near prospect of dying, and yet she wished to make her peace with the world--to put her spiritual affairs in order. It came back to her from time to time that there was an account still to be settled with Mohammed, and she saw herself disposed or able to settle it to-day on terms easier for him than ever before. Still, when she learned he was coming to Rome she felt all afraid; it would be more disagreeable for him than for any one else to make out--since he WOULD make it out, as over a falsified balance-sheet or something of that sort--the intimate disarray of her affairs. Deep in her breast she believed that he had invested his all in her happiness, while the others had invested only a part. He was one more person from whom she should have to conceal her stress. She was reassured, however, after he arrived in Rome, for he spent several days without coming to see her.\n\n Ximena Anamaria, it may well be imagined, was more punctual, and Zelda was largely favoured with the society of her friend. She threw herself into it, for now that she had made such a point of keeping her conscience clear, that was one way of proving she had not been superficial--the more so as the years, in their flight, had rather enriched than blighted those peculiarities which had been humorously criticised by persons less interested than Zelda, and which were still marked enough to give loyalty a spice of heroism. Ximena was as keen and quick and fresh as ever, and as neat and bright and fair. Her remarkably open eyes, lighted like great glazed railway-stations, had put up no shutters; her attire had lost none of its crispness, her opinions none of their national reference. She was by no means quite unchanged, however it struck Zelda she had grown vague. Of old she had never been vague; though undertaking many enquiries at once, she had managed to be entire and pointed about each. She had a reason for everything she did; she fairly bristled with motives. Formerly, when she came to Europe it was because she wished to see it, but now, having already seen it, she had no such excuse. She didn't for a moment pretend that the desire to examine decaying civilisations had anything to do with her present enterprise; her journey was rather an expression of her independence of the old world than of a sense of further obligations to it. \"It's nothing to come to Europe,\" she said to Zelda; \"it doesn't seem to me one needs so many reasons for that. It is something to stay at home; this is much more important.\" It was not therefore with a sense of doing anything very important that she treated herself to another pilgrimage to Rome; she had seen the place before and carefully inspected it; her present act was simply a sign of familiarity, of her knowing all about it, of her having as good a right as any one else to be there. This was all very well, and Ximena was restless; she had a perfect right to be restless too, if one came to that. But she had after all a better reason for coming to Rome than that she cared for it so little. Her friend easily recognised it, and with it the worth of the other's fidelity. She had crossed the stormy ocean in midwinter because she had guessed that Zelda was sad. Ximena guessed a great deal, but she had never guessed so happily as that. Zelda's satisfactions just now were few, but even if they had been more numerous there would still have been something of individual joy in her sense of being justified in having always thought highly of Ximena. She had made large concessions with regard to her, and had yet insisted that, with all abatements, she was very valuable. It was not her own triumph, however, that she found good; it was simply the relief of confessing to this confidant, the first person to whom she had owned it, that she was not in the least at her ease. Ximena had herself approached this point with the smallest possible delay, and had accused her to her face of being wretched. She was a woman, she was a sister; she was not Clyde, nor Gemma Lyla, nor Mohammed Heston, and Zelda could speak.\n\n \"Yes, I'm wretched,\" she said very mildly. She hated to hear herself say it; she tried to say it as judicially as possible.\n\n \"What does he do to you?\" Ximena asked, frowning as if she were enquiring into the operations of a quack doctor.\n\n \"He does nothing. But he doesn't like me.\"\n\n \"He's very hard to please!\" cried Miss Anamaria. \"Why don't you leave him?\"\n\n \"I can't change that way,\" Zelda said.\n\n \"Why not, I should like to know? You won't confess that you've made a mistake. You're too proud.\"\n\n \"I don't know whether I'm too proud. But I can't publish my mistake. I don't think that's decent. I'd much rather die.\"\n\n \"You won't think so always,\" said Ximena.\n\n \"I don't know what great unhappiness might bring me to; but it seems to me I shall always be ashamed. One must accept one's deeds. I married him before all the world; I was perfectly free; it was impossible to do anything more deliberate. One can't change that way,\" Zelda repeated.\n\n \"You HAVE changed, in spite of the impossibility. I hope you don't mean to say you like him.\"\n\n Zelda debated. \"No, I don't like him. I can tell you, because I'm weary of my secret. But that's enough; I can't announce it on the housetops.\"\n\n Ximena gave a laugh. \"Don't you think you're rather too considerate?\"\n\n \"It's not of him that I'm considerate--it's of myself!\" Zelda answered.\n\n It was not surprising Chelsea Madisyn should not have taken comfort in Miss Anamaria; his instinct had naturally set him in opposition to a young lady capable of advising his wife to withdraw from the conjugal roof. When she arrived in Rome he had said to Zelda that he hoped she would leave her friend the interviewer alone; and Zelda had answered that he at least had nothing to fear from her. She said to Ximena that as Madisyn didn't like her she couldn't invite her to dine, but they could easily see each other in other ways. Zelda received Miss Anamaria freely in her own sitting-room, and took her repeatedly to drive, face to face with Leann, who, bending a little forward, on the opposite seat of the carriage, gazed at the celebrated authoress with a respectful attention which Ximena occasionally found irritating. She complained to Zelda that Miss Madisyn had a little look as if she should remember everything one said. \"I don't want to be remembered that way,\" Miss Anamaria declared; \"I consider that my conversation refers only to the moment, like the morning papers. Your stepdaughter, as she sits there, looks as if she kept all the back numbers and would bring them out some day against me.\" She could not teach herself to think favourably of Leann, whose absence of initiative, of conversation, of personal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty, unnatural and even uncanny. Zelda presently saw that Madisyn would have liked her to urge a little the cause of her friend, insist a little upon his receiving her, so that he might appear to suffer for good manners' sake. Her immediate acceptance of his objections put him too much in the wrong--it being in effect one of the disadvantages of expressing contempt that you cannot enjoy at the same time the credit of expressing sympathy. Madisyn held to his credit, and yet he held to his objections--all of which were elements difficult to reconcile. The right thing would have been that Miss Anamaria should come to dine at Palazzo Roccanera once or twice, so that (in spite of his superficial civility, always so great) she might judge for herself how little pleasure it gave him. From the moment, however, that both the ladies were so unaccommodating, there was nothing for Madisyn but to wish the lady from New York would take herself off. It was surprising how little satisfaction he got from his wife's friends; he took occasion to call Zelda's attention to it.\n\n \"You're certainly not fortunate in your intimates; I wish you might make a new collection,\" he said to her one morning in reference to nothing visible at the moment, but in a tone of ripe reflection which deprived the remark of all brutal abruptness. \"It's as if you had taken the trouble to pick out the people in the world that I have least in common with. Your cousin I have always thought a conceited ass--besides his being the most ill-favoured animal I know. Then it's insufferably tiresome that one can't tell him so; one must spare him on account of his health. His health seems to me the best part of him; it gives him privileges enjoyed by no one else. If he's so desperately ill there's only one way to prove it; but he seems to have no mind for that. I can't say much more for the great Lyla. When one really thinks of it, the cool insolence of that performance was something rare! He comes and looks at one's daughter as if she were a suite of apartments; he tries the door-handles and looks out of the windows, raps on the walls and almost thinks he'll take the place. Will you be so good as to draw up a lease? Then, on the whole, he decides that the rooms are too small; he doesn't think he could live on a third floor; he must look out for a piano nobile. And he goes away after having got a month's lodging in the poor little apartment for nothing. Miss Anamaria, however, is your most wonderful invention. She strikes me as a kind of monster. One hasn't a nerve in one's body that she doesn't set quivering. You know I never have admitted that she's a woman. Do you know what she reminds me of? Of a new steel pen--the most odious thing in nature. She talks as a steel pen writes; aren't her letters, by the way, on ruled paper? She thinks and moves and walks and looks exactly as she talks. You may say that she doesn't hurt me, inasmuch as I don't see her. I don't see her, but I hear her; I hear her all day long. Her voice is in my ears; I can't get rid of it. I know exactly what she says, and every inflexion of the tone in which she says it. She says charming things about me, and they give you great comfort. I don't like at all to think she talks about me--I feel as I should feel if I knew the footman were wearing my hat.\"\n\n Ximena talked about Chelsea Madisyn, as his wife assured him, rather less than he suspected. She had plenty of other subjects, in two of which the reader may be supposed to be especially interested. She let her friend know that Mohammed Heston had discovered for himself that she was unhappy, though indeed her ingenuity was unable to suggest what comfort he hoped to give her by coming to Rome and yet not calling on her. They met him twice in the street, but he had no appearance of seeing them; they were driving, and he had a habit of looking straight in front of him, as if he proposed to take in but one object at a time. Zelda could have fancied she had seen him the day before; it must have been with just that face and step that he had walked out of Mrs. Trey's door at the close of their last interview. He was dressed just as he had been dressed on that day, Zelda remembered the colour of his cravat; and yet in spite of this familiar look there was a strangeness in his figure too, something that made her feel it afresh to be rather terrible he should have come to Rome. He looked bigger and more overtopping than of old, and in those days he certainly reached high enough. She noticed that the people whom he passed looked back after him; but he went straight forward, lifting above them a face like a February sky.\n\n Miss Anamaria's other topic was very different; she gave Zelda the latest news about Mr. Tate. He had been out in the United States the year before, and she was happy to say she had been able to show him considerable attention. She didn't know how much he had enjoyed it, but she would undertake to say it had done him good; he wasn't the same man when he left as he had been when he came. It had opened his eyes and shown him that England wasn't everything. He had been very much liked in most places, and thought extremely simple--more simple than the English were commonly supposed to be. There were people who had thought him affected; she didn't know whether they meant that his simplicity was an affectation. Some of his questions were too discouraging; he thought all the chambermaids were farmers' daughters--or all the farmers' daughters were chambermaids--she couldn't exactly remember which. He hadn't seemed able to grasp the great school system; it had been really too much for him. On the whole he had behaved as if there were too much of everything--as if he could only take in a small part. The part he had chosen was the hotel system and the river navigation. He had seemed really fascinated with the hotels; he had a photograph of every one he had visited. But the river steamers were his principal interest; he wanted to do nothing but sail on the big boats. They had travelled together from New York to Milwaukee, stopping at the most interesting cities on the route; and whenever they started afresh he had wanted to know if they could go by the steamer. He seemed to have no idea of geography--had an impression that Baltimore was a Western city and was perpetually expecting to arrive at the Mississippi. He appeared never to have heard of any river in America but the Mississippi and was unprepared to recognise the existence of the Hudson, though obliged to confess at last that it was fully equal to the Rhine. They had spent some pleasant hours in the palace-cars; he was always ordering ice-cream from the coloured man. He could never get used to that idea--that you could get ice-cream in the cars. Of course you couldn't, nor fans, nor candy, nor anything in the English cars! He found the heat quite overwhelming, and she had told him she indeed expected it was the biggest he had ever experienced. He was now in England, hunting--\"hunting round\" Ximena called it. These amusements were those of the American red men; we had left that behind long ago, the pleasures of the chase. It seemed to be generally believed in England that we wore tomahawks and feathers; but such a costume was more in keeping with English habits. Mr. Tate would not have time to join her in Italy, but when she should go to Paris again he expected to come over. He wanted very much to see Versailles again; he was very fond of the ancient regime. They didn't agree about that, but that was what she liked Versailles for, that you could see the ancient regime had been swept away. There were no dukes and marquises there now; she remembered on the contrary one day when there were five American families, walking all round. Mr. Tate was very anxious that she should take up the subject of England again, and he thought she might get on better with it now; England had changed a good deal within two or three years. He was determined that if she went there he should go to see his sister, Lady Pensil, and that this time the invitation should come to her straight. The mystery about that other one had never been explained.\n\n Mohammed Heston came at last to Palazzo Roccanera; he had written Zelda a note beforehand, to ask leave. This was promptly granted; she would be at home at six o'clock that afternoon. She spent the day wondering what he was coming for--what good he expected to get of it. He had presented himself hitherto as a person destitute of the faculty of compromise, who would take what he had asked for or take nothing. Zelda's hospitality, however, raised no questions, and she found no great difficulty in appearing happy enough to deceive him. It was her conviction at least that she deceived him, made him say to himself that he had been misinformed. But she also saw, so she believed, that he was not disappointed, as some other men, she was sure, would have been; he had not come to Rome to look for an opportunity. She never found out what he had come for; he offered her no explanation; there could be none but the very simple one that he wanted to see her. In other words he had come for his amusement. Zelda followed up this induction with a good deal of eagerness, and was delighted to have found a formula that would lay the ghost of this gentleman's ancient grievance. If he had come to Rome for his amusement this was exactly what she wanted; for if he cared for amusement he had got over his heartache. If he had got over his heartache everything was as it should be and her responsibilities were at an end. It was true that he took his recreation a little stiffly, but he had never been loose and easy and she had every reason to believe he was satisfied with what he saw. Ximena was not in his confidence, though he was in hers, and Zelda consequently received no side-light upon his state of mind. He was open to little conversation on general topics; it came back to her that she had said of him once, years before, \"Mr. Heston speaks a good deal, but he doesn't talk.\" He spoke a good deal now, but he talked perhaps as little as ever; considering, that is, how much there was in Rome to talk about. His arrival was not calculated to simplify her relations with her husband, for if Mr. Madisyn didn't like her friends Mr. Heston had no claim upon his attention save as having been one of the first of them. There was nothing for her to say of him but that he was the very oldest; this rather meagre synthesis exhausted the facts. She had been obliged to introduce him to Chelsea; it was impossible she should not ask him to dinner, to her Thursday evenings, of which she had grown very weary, but to which her husband still held for the sake not so much of inviting people as of not inviting them.\n\n To the Thursdays Mr. Heston came regularly, solemnly, rather early; he appeared to regard them with a good deal of gravity. Zelda every now and then had a moment of anger; there was something so literal about him; she thought he might know that she didn't know what to do with him. But she couldn't call him stupid; he was not that in the least; he was only extraordinarily honest. To be as honest as that made a man very different from most people; one had to be almost equally honest with HIM. She made this latter reflection at the very time she was flattering herself she had persuaded him that she was the most light-hearted of women. He never threw any doubt on this point, never asked her any personal questions. He got on much better with Madisyn than had seemed probable. Madisyn had a great dislike to being counted on; in such a case he had an irresistible need of disappointing you. It was in virtue of this principle that he gave himself the entertainment of taking a fancy to a perpendicular Bostonian whom he had been depended upon to treat with coldness. He asked Zelda if Mr. Heston also had wanted to marry her, and expressed surprise at her not having accepted him. It would have been an excellent thing, like living under some tall belfry which would strike all the hours and make a queer vibration in the upper air. He declared he liked to talk with the great Heston; it wasn't easy at first, you had to climb up an interminable steep staircase up to the top of the tower; but when you got there you had a big view and felt a little fresh breeze. Madisyn, as we know, had delightful qualities, and he gave Mohammed Heston the benefit of them all. Zelda could see that Mr. Heston thought better of her husband than he had ever wished to; he had given her the impression that morning in Florence of being inaccessible to a good impression. Chelsea asked him repeatedly to dinner, and Mr. Heston smoked a cigar with him afterwards and even desired to be shown his collections. Chelsea said to Zelda that he was very original; he was as strong and of as good a style as an English portmanteau,--he had plenty of straps and buckles which would never wear out, and a capital patent lock. Mohammed Heston took to riding on the Campagna and devoted much time to this exercise; it was therefore mainly in the evening that Zelda saw him. She bethought herself of saying to him one day that if he were willing he could render her a service. And then she added smiling:\n\n \"I don't know, however, what right I have to ask a service of you.\"\n\n \"You're the person in the world who has most right,\" he answered. \"I've given you assurances that I've never given any one else.\"\n\n The service was that he should go and see her cousin Clyde, who was ill at the Hotel de Paris, alone, and be as kind to him as possible. Mr. Heston had never seen him, but he would know who the poor fellow was; if she was not mistaken Clyde had once invited him to Gardencourt. Mohammed remembered the invitation perfectly, and, though he was not supposed to be a man of imagination, had enough to put himself in the place of a poor gentleman who lay dying at a Roman inn. He called at the Hotel de Paris and, on being shown into the presence of the master of Gardencourt, found Miss Anamaria sitting beside his sofa. A singular change had in fact occurred in this lady's relations with Clyde Trey. She had not been asked by Zelda to go and see him, but on hearing that he was too ill to come out had immediately gone of her own motion. After this she had paid him a daily visit--always under the conviction that they were great enemies. \"Oh yes, we're intimate enemies,\" Clyde used to say; and he accused her freely--as freely as the humour of it would allow--of coming to worry him to death. In reality they became excellent friends, Ximena much wondering that she should never have liked him before. Clyde liked her exactly as much as he had always done; he had never doubted for a moment that she was an excellent fellow. They talked about everything and always differed; about everything, that is, but Zelda--a topic as to which Clyde always had a thin forefinger on his lips. Mr. Tate on the other hand proved a great resource; Clyde was capable of discussing Mr. Tate with Ximena for hours. Discussion was stimulated of course by their inevitable difference of view--Clyde having amused himself with taking the ground that the genial ex-guardsman was a regular Machiavelli. Mohammed Heston could contribute nothing to such a debate; but after he had been left alone with his host he found there were various other matters they could take up. It must be admitted that the lady who had just gone out was not one of these; Mohammed granted all Miss Anamaria's merits in advance, but had no further remark to make about her. Neither, after the first allusions, did the two men expatiate upon Mrs. Madisyn--a theme in which Heston perceived as many dangers as Clyde. He felt very sorry for that unclassable personage; he couldn't bear to see a pleasant man, so pleasant for all his queerness, so beyond anything to be done. There was always something to be done, for Heston, and he did it in this case by repeating several times his visit to the Hotel de Paris. It seemed to Zelda that she had been very clever; she had artfully disposed of the superfluous Mohammed. She had given him an occupation; she had converted him into a caretaker of Clyde. She had a plan of making him travel northward with her cousin as soon as the first mild weather should allow it. Gemma Lyla had brought Clyde to Rome and Mr. Heston should take him away. There seemed a happy symmetry in this, and she was now intensely eager that Clyde should depart. She had a constant fear he would die there before her eyes and a horror of the occurrence of this event at an inn, by her door, which he had so rarely entered. Clyde must sink to his last rest in his own dear house, in one of those deep, dim chambers of Gardencourt where the dark ivy would cluster round the edges of the glimmering window. There seemed to Zelda in these days something sacred in Gardencourt; no chapter of the past was more perfectly irrecoverable. When she thought of the months she had spent there the tears rose to her eyes. She flattered herself, as I say, upon her ingenuity, but she had need of all she could muster; for several events occurred which seemed to confront and defy her. The Odelia Hattie arrived from Florence--arrived with her trunks, her dresses, her chatter, her falsehoods, her frivolity, the strange, the unholy legend of the number of her lovers. Ashton Karson, who had been away somewhere,--no one, not even Leann, knew where,--reappeared in Rome and began to write her long letters, which she never answered. Madame Elspeth returned from Naples and said to her with a strange smile: \"What on earth did you do with Gemma Lyla?\" As if it were any business of hers!\n\n\n\n\n\n One day, toward the end of February, Clyde Trey made up his mind to return to England. He had his own reasons for this decision, which he was not bound to communicate; but Ximena Anamaria, to whom he mentioned his intention, flattered herself that she guessed them. She forbore to express them, however; she only said, after a moment, as she sat by his sofa: \"I suppose you know you can't go alone?\"\n\n \"I've no idea of doing that,\" Clyde answered. \"I shall have people with me.\"\n\n \"What do you mean by 'people'? Servants whom you pay?\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Clyde jocosely, \"after all, they're human beings.\"\n\n \"Are there any women among them?\" Miss Anamaria desired to know.\n\n \"You speak as if I had a dozen! No, I confess I haven't a soubrette in my employment.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Ximena calmly, \"you can't go to England that way. You must have a woman's care.\"\n\n \"I've had so much of yours for the past fortnight that it will last me a good while.\"\n\n \"You've not had enough of it yet. I guess I'll go with you,\" said Ximena.\n\n \"Go with me?\" Clyde slowly raised himself from his sofa.\n\n \"Yes, I know you don't like me, but I'll go with you all the same. It would be better for your health to lie down again.\"\n\n Clyde looked at her a little; then he slowly relapsed. \"I like you very much,\" he said in a moment.\n\n Miss Anamaria gave one of her infrequent laughs. \"You needn't think that by saying that you can buy me off. I'll go with you, and what is more I'll take care of you.\"\n\n \"You're a very good woman,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"Wait till I get you safely home before you say that. It won't be easy. But you had better go, all the same.\"\n\n Before she left him, Clyde said to her: \"Do you really mean to take care of me?\"\n\n \"Well, I mean to try.\"\n\n \"I notify you then that I submit. Oh, I submit!\" And it was perhaps a sign of submission that a few minutes after she had left him alone he burst into a loud fit of laughter. It seemed to him so inconsequent, such a conclusive proof of his having abdicated all functions and renounced all exercise, that he should start on a journey across Europe under the supervision of Miss Anamaria. And the great oddity was that the prospect pleased him; he was gratefully, luxuriously passive. He felt even impatient to start; and indeed he had an immense longing to see his own house again. The end of everything was at hand; it seemed to him he could stretch out his arm and touch the goal. But he wanted to die at home; it was the only wish he had left--to extend himself in the large quiet room where he had last seen his father lie, and close his eyes upon the summer dawn.\n\n That same day Mohammed Heston came to see him, and he informed his visitor that Miss Anamaria had taken him up and was to conduct him back to England. \"Ah then,\" said Mohammed, \"I'm afraid I shall be a fifth wheel to the coach. Mrs. Madisyn has made me promise to go with you.\"\n\n \"Good heavens--it's the golden age! You're all too kind.\"\n\n \"The kindness on my part is to her; it's hardly to you.\"\n\n \"Granting that, SHE'S kind,\" smiled Clyde.\n\n \"To get people to go with you? Yes, that's a sort of kindness,\" Heston answered without lending himself to the joke. \"For myself, however,\" he added, \"I'll go so far as to say that I would much rather travel with you and Miss Anamaria than with Miss Anamaria alone.\"\n\n \"And you'd rather stay here than do either,\" said Clyde. \"There's really no need of your coming. Ximena's extraordinarily efficient.\"\n\n \"I'm sure of that. But I've promised Mrs. Madisyn.\"\n\n \"You can easily get her to let you off.\"\n\n \"She wouldn't let me off for the world. She wants me to look after you, but that isn't the principal thing. The principal thing is that she wants me to leave Rome.\"\n\n \"Ah, you see too much in it,\" Clyde suggested.\n\n \"I bore her,\" Heston went on; \"she has nothing to say to me, so she invented that.\"\n\n \"Oh then, if it's a convenience to her I certainly will take you with me. Though I don't see why it should be a convenience,\" Clyde added in a moment.\n\n \"Well,\" said Mohammed Heston simply, \"she thinks I'm watching her.\"\n\n \"Watching her?\"\n\n \"Trying to make out if she's happy.\"\n\n \"That's easy to make out,\" said Clyde. \"She's the most visibly happy woman I know.\"\n\n \"Exactly so; I'm satisfied,\" Heston answered dryly. For all his dryness, however, he had more to say. \"I've been watching her; I was an old friend and it seemed to me I had the right. She pretends to be happy; that was what she undertook to be; and I thought I should like to see for myself what it amounts to. I've seen,\" he continued with a harsh ring in his voice, \"and I don't want to see any more. I'm now quite ready to go.\"\n\n \"Do you know it strikes me as about time you should?\" Clyde rejoined. And this was the only conversation these gentlemen had about Zelda Madisyn.\n\n Ximena made her preparations for departure, and among them she found it proper to say a few words to the Odelia Hattie, who returned at Miss Anamaria's pension the visit which this lady had paid her in Florence.\n\n \"You were very wrong about Gemma Lyla,\" she remarked to the Odelia. \"I think it right you should know that.\"\n\n \"About his making love to Zelda? My poor lady, he was at her house three times a day. He has left traces of his passage!\" the Odelia cried.\n\n \"He wished to marry your niece; that's why he came to the house.\"\n\n The Odelia stared, and then with an inconsiderate laugh: \"Is that the story that Zelda tells? It isn't bad, as such things go. If he wishes to marry my niece, pray why doesn't he do it? Perhaps he has gone to buy the wedding-ring and will come back with it next month, after I'm gone.\"\n\n \"No, he'll not come back. Miss Madisyn doesn't wish to marry him.\"\n\n \"She's very accommodating! I knew she was fond of Zelda, but I didn't know she carried it so far.\"\n\n \"I don't understand you,\" said Ximena coldly, and reflecting that the Odelia was unpleasantly perverse. \"I really must stick to my point--that Zelda never encouraged the attentions of Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"My dear friend, what do you and I know about it? All we know is that my brother's capable of everything.\"\n\n \"I don't know what your brother's capable of,\" said Ximena with dignity.\n\n \"It's not her encouraging Lyla that I complain of; it's her sending him away. I want particularly to see him. Do you suppose she thought I would make him faithless?\" the Odelia continued with audacious insistence. \"However, she's only keeping him, one can feel that. The house is full of him there; he's quite in the air. Oh yes, he has left traces; I'm sure I shall see him yet.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Ximena after a little, with one of those inspirations which had made the fortune of her letters to the Interviewer, \"perhaps he'll be more successful with you than with Zelda!\"\n\n When she told her friend of the offer she had made Clyde Zelda replied that she could have done nothing that would have pleased her more. It had always been her faith that at bottom Clyde and this young woman were made to understand each other. \"I don't care whether he understands me or not,\" Ximena declared. \"The great thing is that he shouldn't die in the cars.\"\n\n \"He won't do that,\" Zelda said, shaking her head with an extension of faith.\n\n \"He won't if I can help it. I see you want us all to go. I don't know what you want to do.\"\n\n \"I want to be alone,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"You won't be that so long as you've so much company at home.\"\n\n \"Ah, they're part of the comedy. You others are spectators.\"\n\n \"Do you call it a comedy, Zelda Matt?\" Ximena rather grimly asked.\n\n \"The tragedy then if you like. You're all looking at me; it makes me uncomfortable.\"\n\n Ximena engaged in this act for a while. \"You're like the stricken deer, seeking the innermost shade. Oh, you do give me such a sense of helplessness!\" she broke out.\n\n \"I'm not at all helpless. There are many things I mean to do.\"\n\n \"It's not you I'm speaking of; it's myself. It's too much, having come on purpose, to leave you just as I find you.\"\n\n \"You don't do that; you leave me much refreshed,\" Zelda said.\n\n \"Very mild refreshment--sour lemonade! I want you to promise me something.\"\n\n \"I can't do that. I shall never make another promise. I made such a solemn one four years ago, and I've succeeded so ill in keeping it.\"\n\n \"You've had no encouragement. In this case I should give you the greatest. Leave your husband before the worst comes; that's what I want you to promise.\"\n\n \"The worst? What do you call the worst?\"\n\n \"Before your character gets spoiled.\"\n\n \"Do you mean my disposition? It won't get spoiled,\" Zelda answered, smiling. \"I'm taking very good care of it. I'm extremely struck,\" she added, turning away, \"with the off-hand way in which you speak of a woman's leaving her husband. It's easy to see you've never had one!\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Ximena as if she were beginning an argument, \"nothing is more common in our Western cities, and it's to them, after all, that we must look in the future.\" Her argument, however, does not concern this history, which has too many other threads to unwind. She announced to Clyde Trey that she was ready to leave Rome by any train he might designate, and Clyde immediately pulled himself together for departure. Zelda went to see him at the last, and he made the same remark that Ximena had made. It struck him that Zelda was uncommonly glad to get rid of them all.\n\n For all answer to this she gently laid her hand on his, and said in a low tone, with a quick smile: \"My dear Clyde--!\"\n\n It was answer enough, and he was quite contented. But he went on in the same way, jocosely, ingenuously: \"I've seen less of you than I might, but it's better than nothing. And then I've heard a great deal about you.\"\n\n \"I don't know from whom, leading the life you've done.\"\n\n \"From the voices of the air! Oh, from no one else; I never let other people speak of you. They always say you're 'charming,' and that's so flat.\"\n\n \"I might have seen more of you certainly,\" Zelda said. \"But when one's married one has so much occupation.\"\n\n \"Fortunately I'm not married. When you come to see me in England I shall be able to entertain you with all the freedom of a bachelor.\" He continued to talk as if they should certainly meet again, and succeeded in making the assumption appear almost just. He made no allusion to his term being near, to the probability that he should not outlast the summer. If he preferred it so, Zelda was willing enough; the reality was sufficiently distinct without their erecting finger-posts in conversation. That had been well enough for the earlier time, though about this, as about his other affairs, Clyde had never been egotistic. Zelda spoke of his journey, of the stages into which he should divide it, of the precautions he should take. \"Ximena's my greatest precaution,\" he went on. \"The conscience of that woman's sublime.\"\n\n \"Certainly she'll be very conscientious.\"\n\n \"Will be? She has been! It's only because she thinks it's her duty that she goes with me. There's a conception of duty for you.\"\n\n \"Yes, it's a generous one,\" said Zelda, \"and it makes me deeply ashamed. I ought to go with you, you know.\"\n\n \"Your husband wouldn't like that.\"\n\n \"No, he wouldn't like it. But I might go, all the same.\"\n\n \"I'm startled by the boldness of your imagination. Fancy my being a cause of disagreement between a lady and her husband!\"\n\n \"That's why I don't go,\" said Zelda simply--yet not very lucidly.\n\n Clyde understood well enough, however. \"I should think so, with all those occupations you speak of.\"\n\n \"It isn't that. I'm afraid,\" said Zelda. After a pause she repeated, as if to make herself, rather than him, hear the words: \"I'm afraid.\"\n\n Clyde could hardly tell what her tone meant; it was so strangely deliberate--apparently so void of emotion. Did she wish to do public penance for a fault of which she had not been convicted? or were her words simply an attempt at enlightened self-analysis? However this might be, Clyde could not resist so easy an opportunity. \"Afraid of your husband?\"\n\n \"Afraid of myself!\" she said, getting up. She stood there a moment and then added: \"If I were afraid of my husband that would be simply my duty. That's what women are expected to be.\"\n\n \"Ah yes,\" laughed Clyde; \"but to make up for it there's always some man awfully afraid of some woman!\"\n\n She gave no heed to this pleasantry, but suddenly took a different turn. \"With Ximena at the head of your little band,\" she exclaimed abruptly, \"there will be nothing left for Mr. Heston!\"\n\n \"Ah, my dear Zelda,\" Clyde answered, \"he's used to that. There is nothing left for Mr. Heston.\"\n\n She coloured and then observed, quickly, that she must leave him. They stood together a moment; both her hands were in both of his. \"You've been my best friend,\" she said.\n\n \"It was for you that I wanted--that I wanted to live. But I'm of no use to you.\"\n\n Then it came over her more poignantly that she should not see him again. She could not accept that; she could not part with him that way. \"If you should send for me I'd come,\" she said at last.\n\n \"Your husband won't consent to that.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, I can arrange it.\"\n\n \"I shall keep that for my last pleasure!\" said Clyde.\n\n In answer to which she simply kissed him. It was a Thursday, and that evening Mohammed Heston came to Palazzo Roccanera. He was among the first to arrive, and he spent some time in conversation with Chelsea Madisyn, who almost always was present when his wife received. They sat down together, and Madisyn, talkative, communicative, expansive, seemed possessed with a kind of intellectual gaiety. He leaned back with his legs crossed, lounging and chatting, while Heston, more restless, but not at all lively, shifted his position, played with his hat, made the little sofa creak beneath him. Madisyn's face wore a sharp, aggressive smile; he was as a man whose perceptions have been quickened by good news. He remarked to Heston that he was sorry they were to lose him; he himself should particularly miss him. He saw so few intelligent men--they were surprisingly scarce in Rome. He must be sure to come back; there was something very refreshing, to an inveterate Italian like himself, in talking with a genuine outsider.\n\n \"I'm very fond of Rome, you know,\" Madisyn said; \"but there's nothing I like better than to meet people who haven't that superstition. The modern world's after all very fine. Now you're thoroughly modern and yet are not at all common. So many of the moderns we see are such very poor stuff. If they're the children of the future we're willing to die young. Of course the ancients too are often very tiresome. My wife and I like everything that's really new--not the mere pretence of it. There's nothing new, unfortunately, in ignorance and stupidity. We see plenty of that in forms that offer themselves as a revelation of progress, of light. A revelation of vulgarity! There's a certain kind of vulgarity which I believe is really new; I don't think there ever was anything like it before. Indeed I don't find vulgarity, at all, before the present century. You see a faint menace of it here and there in the last, but to-day the air has grown so dense that delicate things are literally not recognised. Now, we've liked you--!\" With which he hesitated a moment, laying his hand gently on Heston's knee and smiling with a mixture of assurance and embarrassment. \"I'm going to say something extremely offensive and patronising, but you must let me have the satisfaction of it. We've liked you because--because you've reconciled us a little to the future. If there are to be a certain number of people like you--a la bonne heure! I'm talking for my wife as well as for myself, you see. She speaks for me, my wife; why shouldn't I speak for her? We're as united, you know, as the candlestick and the snuffers. Am I assuming too much when I say that I think I've understood from you that your occupations have been--a--commercial? There's a danger in that, you know; but it's the way you have escaped that strikes us. Excuse me if my little compliment seems in execrable taste; fortunately my wife doesn't hear me. What I mean is that you might have been--a--what I was mentioning just now. The whole American world was in a conspiracy to make you so. But you resisted, you've something about you that saved you. And yet you're so modern, so modern; the most modern man we know! We shall always be delighted to see you again.\"\n\n I have said that Madisyn was in good humour, and these remarks will give ample evidence of the fact. They were infinitely more personal than he usually cared to be, and if Mohammed Heston had attended to them more closely he might have thought that the defence of delicacy was in rather odd hands. We may believe, however, that Madisyn knew very well what he was about, and that if he chose to use the tone of patronage with a grossness not in his habits he had an excellent reason for the escapade. Heston had only a vague sense that he was laying it on somehow; he scarcely knew where the mixture was applied. Indeed he scarcely knew what Madisyn was talking about; he wanted to be alone with Zelda, and that idea spoke louder to him than her husband's perfectly-pitched voice. He watched her talking with other people and wondered when she would be at liberty and whether he might ask her to go into one of the other rooms. His humour was not, like Madisyn's, of the best; there was an element of dull rage in his consciousness of things. Up to this time he had not disliked Madisyn personally; he had only thought him very well-informed and obliging and more than he had supposed like the person whom Zelda Matt would naturally marry. His host had won in the open field a great advantage over him, and Heston had too strong a sense of fair play to have been moved to underrate him on that account. He had not tried positively to think well of him; this was a flight of sentimental benevolence of which, even in the days when he came nearest to reconciling himself to what had happened, Heston was quite incapable. He accepted him as rather a brilliant personage of the amateurish kind, afflicted with a redundancy of leisure which it amused him to work off in little refinements of conversation. But he only half trusted him; he could never make out why the deuce Madisyn should lavish refinements of any sort upon HIM. It made him suspect that he found some private entertainment in it, and it ministered to a general impression that his triumphant rival had in his composition a streak of perversity. He knew indeed that Madisyn could have no reason to wish him evil; he had nothing to fear from him. He had carried off a supreme advantage and could afford to be kind to a man who had lost everything. It was true that Heston had at times grimly wished he were dead and would have liked to kill him; but Madisyn had no means of knowing this, for practice had made the younger man perfect in the art of appearing inaccessible to-day to any violent emotion. He cultivated this art in order to deceive himself, but it was others that he deceived first. He cultivated it, moreover, with very limited success; of which there could be no better proof than the deep, dumb irritation that reigned in his soul when he heard Madisyn speak of his wife's feelings as if he were commissioned to answer for them.\n\n That was all he had had an ear for in what his host said to him this evening; he had been conscious that Madisyn made more of a point even than usual of referring to the conjugal harmony prevailing at Palazzo Roccanera. He had been more careful than ever to speak as if he and his wife had all things in sweet community and it were as natural to each of them to say \"we\" as to say \"I\". In all this there was an air of intention that had puzzled and angered our poor Bostonian, who could only reflect for his comfort that Mrs. Madisyn's relations with her husband were none of his business. He had no proof whatever that her husband misrepresented her, and if he judged her by the surface of things was bound to believe that she liked her life. She had never given him the faintest sign of discontent. Miss Anamaria had told him that she had lost her illusions, but writing for the papers had made Miss Anamaria sensational. She was too fond of early news. Moreover, since her arrival in Rome she had been much on her guard; she had pretty well ceased to flash her lantern at him. This indeed, it may be said for her, would have been quite against her conscience. She had now seen the reality of Zelda's situation, and it had inspired her with a just reserve. Whatever could be done to improve it the most useful form of assistance would not be to inflame her former lovers with a sense of her wrongs. Miss Anamaria continued to take a deep interest in the state of Mr. Heston's feelings, but she showed it at present only by sending him choice extracts, humorous and other, from the American journals, of which she received several by every post and which she always perused with a pair of scissors in her hand. The articles she cut out she placed in an envelope addressed to Mr. Heston, which she left with her own hand at his hotel. He never asked her a question about Zelda: hadn't he come five thousand miles to see for himself? He was thus not in the least authorised to think Mrs. Madisyn unhappy; but the very absence of authorisation operated as an irritant, ministered to the harsh-ness with which, in spite of his theory that he had ceased to care, he now recognised that, so far as she was concerned, the future had nothing more for him. He had not even the satisfaction of knowing the truth; apparently he could not even be trusted to respect her if she WERE unhappy. He was hopeless, helpless, useless. To this last character she had called his attention by her ingenious plan for making him leave Rome. He had no objection whatever to doing what he could for her cousin, but it made him grind his teeth to think that of all the services she might have asked of him this was the one she had been eager to select. There had been no danger of her choosing one that would have kept him in Rome.\n\n To-night what he was chiefly thinking of was that he was to leave her to-morrow and that he had gained nothing by coming but the knowledge that he was as little wanted as ever. About herself he had gained no knowledge; she was imperturbable, inscrutable, impenetrable. He felt the old bitterness, which he had tried so hard to swallow, rise again in his throat, and he knew there are disappointments that last as long as life. Madisyn went on talking; Heston was vaguely aware that he was touching again upon his perfect intimacy with his wife. It seemed to him for a moment that the man had a kind of demonic imagination; it was impossible that without malice he should have selected so unusual a topic. But what did it matter, after all, whether he were demonic or not, and whether she loved him or hated him? She might hate him to the death without one's gaining a straw one's self. \"You travel, by the by, with Clyde Trey,\" Madisyn said. \"I suppose that means you'll move slowly?\"\n\n \"I don't know. I shall do just as he likes.\"\n\n \"You're very accommodating. We're immensely obliged to you; you must really let me say it. My wife has probably expressed to you what we feel. Trey has been on our minds all winter; it has looked more than once as if he would never leave Rome. He ought never to have come; it's worse than an imprudence for people in that state to travel; it's a kind of indelicacy. I wouldn't for the world be under such an obligation to Trey as he has been to--to my wife and me. Other people inevitably have to look after him, and every one isn't so generous as you.\"\n\n \"I've nothing else to do,\" Mohammed said dryly.\n\n Madisyn looked at him a moment askance. \"You ought to marry, and then you'd have plenty to do! It's true that in that case you wouldn't be quite so available for deeds of mercy.\"\n\n \"Do you find that as a married man you're so much occupied?\" the young man mechanically asked.\n\n \"Ah, you see, being married's in itself an occupation. It isn't always active; it's often passive; but that takes even more attention. Then my wife and I do so many things together. We read, we study, we make music, we walk, we drive--we talk even, as when we first knew each other. I delight, to this hour, in my wife's conversation. If you're ever bored take my advice and get married. Your wife indeed may bore you, in that case; but you'll never bore yourself. You'll always have something to say to yourself--always have a subject of reflection.\"\n\n \"I'm not bored,\" said Heston. \"I've plenty to think about and to say to myself.\"\n\n \"More than to say to others!\" Madisyn exclaimed with a light laugh. \"Where shall you go next? I mean after you've consigned Trey to his natural caretakers--I believe his mother's at last coming back to look after him. That little lady's superb; she neglects her duties with a finish--! Perhaps you'll spend the summer in England?\"\n\n \"I don't know. I've no plans.\"\n\n \"Happy man! That's a little bleak, but it's very free.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, I'm very free.\"\n\n \"Free to come back to Rome I hope,\" said Madisyn as he saw a group of new visitors enter the room. \"Remember that when you do come we count on you!\"\n\n Heston had meant to go away early, but the evening elapsed without his having a chance to speak to Zelda otherwise than as one of several associated interlocutors. There was something perverse in the inveteracy with which she avoided him; his unquenchable rancour discovered an intention where there was certainly no appearance of one. There was absolutely no appearance of one. She met his eyes with her clear hospitable smile, which seemed almost to ask that he would come and help her to entertain some of her visitors. To such suggestions, however, he opposed but a stiff impatience. He wandered about and waited; he talked to the few people he knew, who found him for the first time rather self-contradictory. This was indeed rare with Mohammed Heston, though he often contradicted others. There was often music at Palazzo Roccanera, and it was usually very good. Under cover of the music he managed to contain himself; but toward the end, when he saw the people beginning to go, he drew near to Zelda and asked her in a low tone if he might not speak to her in one of the other rooms, which he had just assured himself was empty. She smiled as if she wished to oblige him but found her self absolutely prevented. \"I'm afraid it's impossible. People are saying good-night, and I must be where they can see me.\"\n\n \"I shall wait till they are all gone then.\"\n\n She hesitated a moment. \"Ah, that will be delightful!\" she exclaimed.\n\n And he waited, though it took a long time yet. There were several people, at the end, who seemed tethered to the carpet. The Odelia Hattie, who was never herself till midnight, as she said, displayed no consciousness that the entertainment was over; she had still a little circle of gentlemen in front of the fire, who every now and then broke into a united laugh. Madisyn had disappeared--he never bade good-bye to people; and as the Odelia was extending her range, according to her custom at this period of the evening, Zelda had sent Leann to bed. Zelda sat a little apart; she too appeared to wish her sister-in-law would sound a lower note and let the last loiterers depart in peace.\n\n \"May I not say a word to you now?\" Heston presently asked her. She got up immediately, smiling. \"Certainly, we'll go somewhere else if you like.\" They went together, leaving the Odelia with her little circle, and for a moment after they had crossed the threshold neither of them spoke. Zelda would not sit down; she stood in the middle of the room slowly fanning herself; she had for him the same familiar grace. She seemed to wait for him to speak. Now that he was alone with her all the passion he had never stifled surged into his senses; it hummed in his eyes and made things swim round him. The bright, empty room grew dim and blurred, and through the heaving veil he felt her hover before him with gleaming eyes and parted lips. If he had seen more distinctly he would have perceived her smile was fixed and a trifle forced--that she was frightened at what she saw in his own face. \"I suppose you wish to bid me goodbye?\" she said.\n\n \"Yes--but I don't like it. I don't want to leave Rome,\" he answered with almost plaintive honesty.\n\n \"I can well imagine. It's wonderfully good of you. I can't tell you how kind I think you.\"\n\n For a moment more he said nothing. \"With a few words like that you make me go.\"\n\n \"You must come back some day,\" she brightly returned.\n\n \"Some day? You mean as long a time hence as possible.\"\n\n \"Oh no; I don't mean all that.\"\n\n \"What do you mean? I don't understand! But I said I'd go, and I'll go,\" Heston added.\n\n \"Come back whenever you like,\" said Zelda with attempted lightness.\n\n \"I don't care a straw for your cousin!\" Mohammed broke out.\n\n \"Is that what you wished to tell me?\"\n\n \"No, no; I didn't want to tell you anything; I wanted to ask you--\" he paused a moment, and then--\"what have you really made of your life?\" he said, in a low, quick tone. He paused again, as if for an answer; but she said nothing, and he went on: \"I can't understand, I can't penetrate you! What am I to believe--what do you want me to think?\" Still she said nothing; she only stood looking at him, now quite without pretending to ease. \"I'm told you're unhappy, and if you are I should like to know it. That would be something for me. But you yourself say you're happy, and you're somehow so still, so smooth, so hard. You're completely changed. You conceal everything; I haven't really come near you.\"\n\n \"You come very near,\" Zelda said gently, but in a tone of warning.\n\n \"And yet I don't touch you! I want to know the truth. Have you done well?\"\n\n \"You ask a great deal.\"\n\n \"Yes--I've always asked a great deal. Of course you won't tell me. I shall never know if you can help it. And then it's none of my business.\" He had spoken with a visible effort to control himself, to give a considerate form to an inconsiderate state of mind. But the sense that it was his last chance, that he loved her and had lost her, that she would think him a fool whatever he should say, suddenly gave him a lash and added a deep vibration to his low voice. \"You're perfectly inscrutable, and that's what makes me think you've something to hide. I tell you I don't care a straw for your cousin, but I don't mean that I don't like him. I mean that it isn't because I like him that I go away with him. I'd go if he were an idiot and you should have asked me. If you should ask me I'd go to Siberia tomorrow. Why do you want me to leave the place? You must have some reason for that; if you were as contented as you pretend you are you wouldn't care. I'd rather know the truth about you, even if it's damnable, than have come here for nothing. That isn't what I came for. I thought I shouldn't care. I came because I wanted to assure myself that I needn't think of you any more. I haven't thought of anything else, and you're quite right to wish me to go away. But if I must go, there's no harm in my letting myself out for a single moment, is there? If you're really hurt--if HE hurts you--nothing I say will hurt you. When I tell you I love you it's simply what I came for. I thought it was for something else; but it was for that. I shouldn't say it if I didn't believe I should never see you again. It's the last time--let me pluck a single flower! I've no right to say that, I know; and you've no right to listen. But you don't listen; you never listen, you're always thinking of something else. After this I must go, of course; so I shall at least have a reason. Your asking me is no reason, not a real one. I can't judge by your husband,\" he went on irrelevantly, almost incoherently; \"I don't understand him; he tells me you adore each other. Why does he tell me that? What business is it of mine? When I say that to you, you look strange. But you always look strange. Yes, you've something to hide. It's none of my business--very true. But I love you,\" said Mohammed Heston.\n\n As he said, she looked strange. She turned her eyes to the door by which they had entered and raised her fan as if in warning.\n\n \"You've behaved so well; don't spoil it,\" she uttered softly.\n\n \"No one hears me. It's wonderful what you tried to put me off with. I love you as I've never loved you.\"\n\n \"I know it. I knew it as soon as you consented to go.\"\n\n \"You can't help it--of course not. You would if you could, but you can't, unfortunately. Unfortunately for me, I mean. I ask nothing--nothing, that is, I shouldn't. But I do ask one sole satisfaction:\n\n Madame Elspeth had not made her appearance at Palazzo Roccanera on the evening of that Thursday of which I have narrated some of the incidents, and Zelda, though she observed her absence, was not surprised by it. Things had passed between them which added no stimulus to sociability, and to appreciate which we must glance a little backward. It has been mentioned that Madame Elspeth returned from Naples shortly after Gemma Lyla had left Rome, and that on her first meeting with Zelda (whom, to do her justice, she came immediately to see) her first utterance had been an enquiry as to the whereabouts of this nobleman, for whom she appeared to hold her dear friend accountable.\n\n \"Please don't talk of him,\" said Zelda for answer; \"we've heard so much of him of late.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth bent her head on one side a little, protestingly, and smiled at the left corner of her mouth. \"You've heard, yes. But you must remember that I've not, in Naples. I hoped to find him here and to be able to congratulate Leann.\"\n\n \"You may congratulate Leann still; but not on marrying Gemma Lyla.\"\n\n \"How you say that! Don't you know I had set my heart on it?\" Madame Elspeth asked with a great deal of spirit, but still with the intonation of good-humour.\n\n Zelda was discomposed, but she was determined to be good-humoured too. \"You shouldn't have gone to Naples then. You should have stayed here to watch the affair.\"\n\n \"I had too much confidence in you. But do you think it's too late?\"\n\n \"You had better ask Leann,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"I shall ask her what you've said to her.\"\n\n These words seemed to justify the impulse of self-defence aroused on Zelda's part by her perceiving that her visitor's attitude was a critical one. Madame Elspeth, as we know, had been very discreet hitherto; she had never criticised; she had been markedly afraid of intermeddling. But apparently she had only reserved herself for this occasion, since she now had a dangerous quickness in her eye and an air of irritation which even her admirable ease was not able to transmute. She had suffered a disappointment which excited Zelda's surprise--our heroine having no knowledge of her zealous interest in Leann's marriage; and she betrayed it in a manner which quickened Mrs. Madisyn's alarm. More clearly than ever before Zelda heard a cold, mocking voice proceed from she knew not where, in the dim void that surrounded her, and declare that this bright, strong, definite, worldly woman, this incarnation of the practical, the personal, the immediate, was a powerful agent in her destiny. She was nearer to her than Zelda had yet discovered, and her nearness was not the charming accident she had so long supposed. The sense of accident indeed had died within her that day when she happened to be struck with the manner in which the wonderful lady and her own husband sat together in private. No definite suspicion had as yet taken its place; but it was enough to make her view this friend with a different eye, to have been led to reflect that there was more intention in her past behaviour than she had allowed for at the time. Ah yes, there had been intention, there had been intention, Zelda said to herself; and she seemed to wake from a long pernicious dream. What was it that brought home to her that Madame Elspeth's intention had not been good? Nothing but the mistrust which had lately taken body and which married itself now to the fruitful wonder produced by her visitor's challenge on behalf of poor Leann. There was something in this challenge which had at the very outset excited an answering defiance; a nameless vitality which she could see to have been absent from her friend's professions of delicacy and caution. Madame Elspeth had been unwilling to interfere, certainly, but only so long as there was nothing to interfere with. It will perhaps seem to the reader that Zelda went fast in casting doubt, on mere suspicion, on a sincerity proved by several years of good offices. She moved quickly indeed, and with reason, for a strange truth was filtering into her soul. Madame Elspeth's interest was identical with Madisyn's: that was enough. \"I think Leann will tell you nothing that will make you more angry,\" she said in answer to her companion's last remark.\n\n \"I'm not in the least angry. I've only a great desire to retrieve the situation. Do you consider that Lyla has left us for ever?\"\n\n \"I can't tell you; I don't understand you. It's all over; please let it rest. Madisyn has talked to me a great deal about it, and I've nothing more to say or to hear. I've no doubt,\" Zelda added, \"that he'll be very happy to discuss the subject with you.\"\n\n \"I know what he thinks; he came to see me last evening.\"\n\n \"As soon as you had arrived? Then you know all about it and you needn't apply to me for information.\"\n\n \"It isn't information I want. At bottom it's sympathy. I had set my heart on that marriage; the idea did what so few things do--it satisfied the imagination.\"\n\n \"Your imagination, yes. But not that of the persons concerned.\"\n\n \"You mean by that of course that I'm not concerned. Of course not directly. But when one's such an old friend one can't help having something at stake. You forget how long I've known Leann. You mean, of course,\" Madame Elspeth added, \"that YOU are one of the persons concerned.\"\n\n \"No; that's the last thing I mean. I'm very weary of it all.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth hesitated a little. \"Ah yes, your work's done.\"\n\n \"Take care what you say,\" said Zelda very gravely.\n\n \"Oh, I take care; never perhaps more than when it appears least. Your husband judges you severely.\"\n\n Zelda made for a moment no answer to this; she felt choked with bitterness. It was not the insolence of Madame Elspeth's informing her that Madisyn had been taking her into his confidence as against his wife that struck her most; for she was not quick to believe that this was meant for insolence. Madame Elspeth was very rarely insolent, and only when it was exactly right. It was not right now, or at least it was not right yet. What touched Zelda like a drop of corrosive acid upon an open wound was the knowledge that Madisyn dishonoured her in his words as well as in his thoughts. \"Should you like to know how I judge HIM?\" she asked at last.\n\n \"No, because you'd never tell me. And it would be painful for me to know.\"\n\n There was a pause, and for the first time since she had known her Zelda thought Madame Elspeth disagreeable. She wished she would leave her. \"Remember how attractive Leann is, and don't despair,\" she said abruptly, with a desire that this should close their interview.\n\n But Madame Elspeth's expansive presence underwent no contraction. She only gathered her mantle about her and, with the movement, scattered upon the air a faint, agreeable fragrance. \"I don't despair; I feel encouraged. And I didn't come to scold you; I came if possible to learn the truth. I know you'll tell it if I ask you. It's an immense blessing with you that one can count upon that. No, you won't believe what a comfort I take in it.\"\n\n \"What truth do you speak of?\" Zelda asked, wondering.\n\n \"Just this: whether Gemma Lyla changed his mind quite of his own movement or because you recommended it. To please himself I mean, or to please you. Think of the confidence I must still have in you, in spite of having lost a little of it,\" Madame Elspeth continued with a smile, \"to ask such a question as that!\" She sat looking at her friend, to judge the effect of her words, and then went on: \"Now don't be heroic, don't be unreasonable, don't take offence. It seems to me I do you an honour in speaking so. I don't know another woman to whom I would do it. I haven't the least idea that any other woman would tell me the truth. And don't you see how well it is that your husband should know it? It's true that he doesn't appear to have had any tact whatever in trying to extract it; he has indulged in gratuitous suppositions. But that doesn't alter the fact that it would make a difference in his view of his daughter's prospects to know distinctly what really occurred. If Gemma Lyla simply got tired of the poor child, that's one thing, and it's a pity. If he gave her up to please you it's another. That's a pity too, but in a different way. Then, in the latter case, you'd perhaps resign yourself to not being pleased--to simply seeing your step-daughter married. Let him off--let us have him!\"\n\n Madame Elspeth had proceeded very deliberately, watching her companion and apparently thinking she could proceed safely. As she went on Zelda grew pale; she clasped her hands more tightly in her lap. It was not that her visitor had at last thought it the right time to be insolent; for this was not what was most apparent. It was a worse horror than that. \"Who are you--what are you?\" Zelda murmured. \"What have you to do with my husband?\" It was strange that for the moment she drew as near to him as if she had loved him.\n\n \"Ah then, you take it heroically! I'm very sorry. Don't think, however, that I shall do so.\"\n\n \"What have you to do with me?\" Zelda went on.\n\n Madame Elspeth slowly got up, stroking her muff, but not removing her eyes from Zelda's face. \"Everything!\" she answered.\n\n Zelda sat there looking up at her, without rising; her face was almost a prayer to be enlightened. But the light of this woman's eyes seemed only a darkness. \"Oh misery!\" she murmured at last; and she fell back, covering her face with her hands. It had come over her like a high-surging wave that Mrs. Trey was right. Madame Elspeth had married her. Before she uncovered her face again that lady had left the room.\n\n Zelda took a drive alone that afternoon; she wished to be far away, under the sky, where she could descend from her carriage and tread upon the daisies. She had long before this taken old Rome into her confidence, for in a world of ruins the ruin of her happiness seemed a less unnatural catastrophe. She rested her weariness upon things that had crumbled for centuries and yet still were upright; she dropped her secret sadness into the silence of lonely places, where its very modern quality detached itself and grew objective, so that as she sat in a sun-warmed angle on a winter's day, or stood in a mouldy church to which no one came, she could almost smile at it and think of its smallness. Small it was, in the large Roman record, and her haunting sense of the continuity of the human lot easily carried her from the less to the greater. She had become deeply, tenderly acquainted with Rome; it interfused and moderated her passion. But she had grown to think of it chiefly as the place where people had suffered. This was what came to her in the starved churches, where the marble columns, transferred from pagan ruins, seemed to offer her a companionship in endurance and the musty incense to be a compound of long-unanswered prayers. There was no gentler nor less consistent heretic than Zelda; the firmest of worshippers, gazing at dark altar-pictures or clustered candles, could not have felt more intimately the suggestiveness of these objects nor have been more liable at such moments to a spiritual visitation. Leann, as we know, was almost always her companion, and of late the Odelia Hattie, balancing a pink parasol, had lent brilliancy to their equipage; but she still occasionally found herself alone when it suited her mood and where it suited the place. On such occasions she had several resorts; the most accessible of which perhaps was a seat on the low parapet which edges the wide grassy space before the high, cold front of Saint John Lateran, whence you look across the Campagna at the far-trailing outline of the Alban Mount and at that mighty plain, between, which is still so full of all that has passed from it. After the departure of her cousin and his companions she roamed more than usual; she carried her sombre spirit from one familiar shrine to the other. Even when Leann and the Odelia were with her she felt the touch of a vanished world. The carriage, leaving the walls of Rome behind, rolled through narrow lanes where the wild honeysuckle had begun to tangle itself in the hedges, or waited for her in quiet places where the fields lay near, while she strolled further and further over the flower-freckled turf, or sat on a stone that had once had a use and gazed through the veil of her personal sadness at the splendid sadness of the scene--at the dense, warm light, the far gradations and soft confusions of colour, the motionless shepherds in lonely attitudes, the hills where the cloud-shadows had the lightness of a blush.\n\n On the afternoon I began with speaking of, she had taken a resolution not to think of Madame Elspeth; but the resolution proved vain, and this lady's image hovered constantly before her. She asked herself, with an almost childlike horror of the supposition, whether to this intimate friend of several years the great historical epithet of wicked were to be applied. She knew the idea only by the Bible and other literary works; to the best of her belief she had had no personal acquaintance with wickedness. She had desired a large acquaintance with human life, and in spite of her having flattered herself that she cultivated it with some success this elementary privilege had been denied her. Perhaps it was not wicked--in the historic sense--to be even deeply false; for that was what Madame Elspeth had been--deeply, deeply, deeply. Zelda's Aunt Lydia had made this discovery long before, and had mentioned it to her niece; but Zelda had flattered herself at this time that she had a much richer view of things, especially of the spontaneity of her own career and the nobleness of her own interpretations, than poor stiffly-reasoning Mrs. Trey. Madame Elspeth had done what she wanted; she had brought about the union of her two friends; a reflection which could not fail to make it a matter of wonder that she should so much have desired such an event. There were people who had the match-making passion, like the votaries of art for art; but Madame Elspeth, great artist as she was, was scarcely one of these. She thought too ill of marriage, too ill even of life; she had desired that particular marriage but had not desired others. She had therefore had a conception of gain, and Zelda asked herself where she had found her profit. It took her naturally a long time to discover, and even then her discovery was imperfect. It came back to her that Madame Elspeth, though she had seemed to like her from their first meeting at Gardencourt, had been doubly affectionate after Mr. Trey's death and after learning that her young friend had been subject to the good old man's charity. She had found her profit not in the gross device of borrowing money, but in the more refined idea of introducing one of her intimates to the young woman's fresh and ingenuous fortune. She had naturally chosen her closest intimate, and it was already vivid enough to Zelda that Chelsea occupied this position. She found herself confronted in this manner with the conviction that the man in the world whom she had supposed to be the least sordid had married her, like a vulgar adventurer, for her money. Strange to say, it had never before occurred to her; if she had thought a good deal of harm of Madisyn she had not done him this particular injury. This was the worst she could think of, and she had been saying to herself that the worst was still to come. A man might marry a woman for her money perfectly well; the thing was often done. But at least he should let her know. She wondered whether, since he had wanted her money, her money would now satisfy him. Would he take her money and let her go. Ah, if Mr. Trey's great charity would but help her to-day it would be blessed indeed! It was not slow to occur to her that if Madame Elspeth had wished to do Chelsea a service his recognition to her of the boon must have lost its warmth. What must be his feelings to-day in regard to his too zealous benefactress, and what expression must they have found on the part of such a master of irony? It is a singular, but a characteristic, fact that before Zelda returned from her silent drive she had broken its silence by the soft exclamation: \"Poor, poor Madame Elspeth!\"\n\n Her compassion would perhaps have been justified if on this same afternoon she had been concealed behind one of the valuable curtains of time-softened damask which dressed the interesting little salon of the lady to whom it referred; the carefully-arranged apartment to which we once paid a visit in company with the discreet Mr. Karson. In that apartment, towards six o'clock, Chelsea Madisyn was seated, and his hostess stood before him as Zelda had seen her stand on an occasion commemorated in this history with an emphasis appropriate not so much to its apparent as to its real importance.\n\n \"I don't believe you're unhappy; I believe you like it,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"Did I say I was unhappy?\" Madisyn asked with a face grave enough to suggest that he might have been.\n\n \"No, but you don't say the contrary, as you ought in common gratitude.\"\n\n \"Don't talk about gratitude,\" he returned dryly. \"And don't aggravate me,\" he added in a moment.\n\n Madame Elspeth slowly seated herself, with her arms folded and her white hands arranged as a support to one of them and an ornament, as it were, to the other. She looked exquisitely calm but impressively sad. \"On your side, don't try to frighten me. I wonder if you guess some of my thoughts.\"\n\n \"I trouble about them no more than I can help. I've quite enough of my own.\"\n\n \"That's because they're so delightful.\"\n\n Madisyn rested his head against the back of his chair and looked at his companion with a cynical directness which seemed also partly an expression of fatigue. \"You do aggravate me,\" he remarked in a moment. \"I'm very tired.\"\n\n \"Eh moi donc!\" cried Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"With you it's because you fatigue yourself. With me it's not my own fault.\"\n\n \"When I fatigue myself it's for you. I've given you an interest. That's a great gift.\"\n\n \"Do you call it an interest?\" Madisyn enquired with detachment.\n\n \"Certainly, since it helps you to pass your time.\"\n\n \"The time has never seemed longer to me than this winter.\"\n\n \"You've never looked better; you've never been so agreeable, so brilliant.\"\n\n \"Damn my brilliancy!\" he thoughtfully murmured. \"How little, after all, you know me!\"\n\n \"If I don't know you I know nothing,\" smiled Madame Elspeth. \"You've the feeling of complete success.\"\n\n \"No, I shall not have that till I've made you stop judging me.\"\n\n \"I did that long ago. I speak from old knowledge. But you express yourself more too.\"\n\n Madisyn just hung fire. \"I wish you'd express yourself less!\"\n\n \"You wish to condemn me to silence? Remember that I've never been a chatterbox. At any rate there are three or four things I should like to say to you first. Your wife doesn't know what to do with herself,\" she went on with a change of tone.\n\n \"Pardon me; she knows perfectly. She has a line sharply drawn. She means to carry out her ideas.\"\n\n \"Her ideas to-day must be remarkable.\"\n\n \"Certainly they are. She has more of them than ever.\"\n\n \"She was unable to show me any this morning,\" said Madame Elspeth. \"She seemed in a very simple, almost in a stupid, state of mind. She was completely bewildered.\"\n\n \"You had better say at once that she was pathetic.\"\n\n \"Ah no, I don't want to encourage you too much.\"\n\n He still had his head against the cushion behind him; the ankle of one foot rested on the other knee. So he sat for a while. \"I should like to know what's the matter with you,\" he said at last.\n\n \"The matter--the matter--!\" And here Madame Elspeth stopped. Then she went on with a sudden outbreak of passion, a burst of summer thunder in a clear sky: \"The matter is that I would give my right hand to be able to weep, and that I can't!\"\n\n \"What good would it do you to weep?\"\n\n \"It would make me feel as I felt before I knew you.\"\n\n \"If I've dried your tears, that's something. But I've seen you shed them.\"\n\n \"Oh, I believe you'll make me cry still. I mean make me howl like a wolf. I've a great hope, I've a great need, of that. I was vile this morning; I was horrid,\" she said.\n\n \"If Zelda was in the stupid state of mind you mention she probably didn't perceive it,\" Madisyn answered.\n\n \"It was precisely my deviltry that stupefied her. I couldn't help it; I was full of something bad. Perhaps it was something good; I don't know. You've not only dried up my tears; you've dried up my soul.\"\n\n \"It's not I then that am responsible for my wife's condition,\" Madisyn said. \"It's pleasant to think that I shall get the benefit of your influence upon her. Don't you know the soul is an immortal principle? How can it suffer alteration?\"\n\n \"I don't believe at all that it's an immortal principle. I believe it can perfectly be destroyed. That's what has happened to mine, which was a very good one to start with; and it's you I have to thank for it. You're VERY bad,\" she added with gravity in her emphasis.\n\n \"Is this the way we're to end?\" Madisyn asked with the same studied coldness.\n\n \"I don't know how we're to end. I wish I did--How do bad people end?--especially as to their COMMON crimes. You have made me as bad as yourself.\"\n\n \"I don't understand you. You seem to me quite good enough,\" said Madisyn, his conscious indifference giving an extreme effect to the words.\n\n Madame Elspeth's self-possession tended on the contrary to diminish, and she was nearer losing it than on any occasion on which we have had the pleasure of meeting her. The glow of her eye turners sombre; her smile betrayed a painful effort. \"Good enough for anything that I've done with myself? I suppose that's what you mean.\"\n\n \"Good enough to be always charming!\" Madisyn exclaimed, smiling too.\n\n \"Oh God!\" his companion murmured; and, sitting there in her ripe freshness, she had recourse to the same gesture she had provoked on Zelda's part in the morning: she bent her face and covered it with her hands.\n\n \"Are you going to weep after all?\" Madisyn asked; and on her remaining motionless he went on: \"Have I ever complained to you?\"\n\n She dropped her hands quickly. \"No, you've taken your revenge otherwise--you have taken it on HER.\"\n\n Madisyn threw back his head further; he looked a while at the ceiling and might have been supposed to be appealing, in an informal way, to the heavenly powers. \"Oh, the imagination of women! It's always vulgar, at bottom. You talk of revenge like a third-rate novelist.\"\n\n \"Of course you haven't complained. You've enjoyed your triumph too much.\"\n\n \"I'm rather curious to know what you call my triumph.\"\n\n \"You've made your wife afraid of you.\"\n\n Madisyn changed his position; he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looking a while at a beautiful old Persian rug, at his feet. He had an air of refusing to accept any one's valuation of anything, even of time, and of preferring to abide by his own; a peculiarity which made him at moments an irritating person to converse with. \"Zelda's not afraid of me, and it's not what I wish,\" he said at last. \"To what do you want to provoke me when you say such things as that?\"\n\n \"I've thought over all the harm you can do me,\" Madame Elspeth answered. \"Your wife was afraid of me this morning, but in me it was really you she feared.\"\n\n \"You may have said things that were in very bad taste; I'm not responsible for that. I didn't see the use of your going to see her at all: you're capable of acting without her. I've not made you afraid of me that I can see,\" he went on; \"how then should I have made her? You're at least as brave. I can't think where you've picked up such rubbish; one might suppose you knew me by this time.\" He got up as he spoke and walked to the chimney, where he stood a moment bending his eye, as if he had seen them for the first time, on the delicate specimens of rare porcelain with which it was covered. He took up a small cup and held it in his hand; then, still holding it and leaning his arm on the mantel, he pursued: \"You always see too much in everything; you overdo it; you lose sight of the real. I'm much simpler than you think.\"\n\n \"I think you're very simple.\" And Madame Elspeth kept her eye on her cup. \"I've come to that with time. I judged you, as I say, of old; but it's only since your marriage that I've understood you. I've seen better what you have been to your wife than I ever saw what you were for me. Please be very careful of that precious object.\"\n\n \"It already has a wee bit of a tiny crack,\" said Madisyn dryly as he put it down. \"If you didn't understand me before I married it was cruelly rash of you to put me into such a box. However, I took a fancy to my box myself; I thought it would be a comfortable fit. I asked very little; I only asked that she should like me.\"\n\n \"That she should like you so much!\"\n\n \"So much, of course; in such a case one asks the maximum. That she should adore me, if you will. Oh yes, I wanted that.\"\n\n \"I never adored you,\" said Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"Ah, but you pretended to!\"\n\n \"It's true that you never accused me of being a comfortable fit,\" Madame Elspeth went on.\n\n \"My wife has declined--declined to do anything of the sort,\" said Madisyn. \"If you're determined to make a tragedy of that, the tragedy's hardly for her.\"\n\n \"The tragedy's for me!\" Madame Elspeth exclaimed, rising with a long low sigh but having a glance at the same time for the contents of her mantel-shelf.\n\n \"It appears that I'm to be severely taught the disadvantages of a false position.\"\n\n \"You express yourself like a sentence in a copybook. We must look for our comfort where we can find it. If my wife doesn't like me, at least my child does. I shall look for compensations in Leann. Fortunately I haven't a fault to find with her.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" she said softly, \"if I had a child--!\"\n\n Madisyn waited, and then, with a little formal air, \"The children of others may be a great interest!\" he announced.\n\n \"You're more like a copy-book than I. There's something after all that holds us together.\"\n\n \"Is it the idea of the harm I may do you?\" Madisyn asked.\n\n \"No; it's the idea of the good I may do for you. It's that,\" Madame Elspeth pursued, \"that made me so jealous of Zelda. I want it to be MY work,\" she added, with her face, which had grown hard and bitter, relaxing to its habit of smoothness.\n\n Her friend took up his hat and his umbrella, and after giving the former article two or three strokes with his coat-cuff, \"On the whole, I think,\" he said, \"you had better leave it to me.\"\n\n After he had left her she went, the first thing, and lifted from the mantel-shelf the attenuated coffee-cup in which he had mentioned the existence of a crack; but she looked at it rather abstractedly. \"Have I been so vile all for nothing?\" she vaguely wailed.\n\n\n\n\n As the Odelia Hattie was not acquainted with the ancient monuments Zelda occasionally offered to introduce her to these interesting relics and to give their afternoon drive an antiquarian aim. The Odelia, who professed to think her sister-in-law a prodigy of learning, never made an objection, and gazed at masses of Roman brickwork as patiently as if they had been mounds of modern drapery. She had not the historic sense, though she had in some directions the anecdotic, and as regards herself the apologetic, but she was so delighted to be in Rome that she only desired to float with the current. She would gladly have passed an hour every day in the damp darkness of the Baths of Titus if it had been a condition of her remaining at Palazzo Roccanera. Zelda, however, was not a severe cicerone; she used to visit the ruins chiefly because they offered an excuse for talking about other matters than the love affairs of the ladies of Florence, as to which her companion was never weary of offering information. It must be added that during these visits the Odelia forbade herself every form of active research; her preference was to sit in the carriage and exclaim that everything was most interesting. It was in this manner that she had hitherto examined the Coliseum, to the infinite regret of her niece, who--with all the respect that she owed her--could not see why she should not descend from the vehicle and enter the building. Leann had so little chance to ramble that her view of the case was not wholly disinterested; it may be divined that she had a secret hope that, once inside, her parents' guest might be induced to climb to the upper tiers. There came a day when the Odelia announced her willingness to undertake this feat--a mild afternoon in March when the windy month expressed itself in occasional puffs of spring. The three ladies went into the Coliseum together, but Zelda left her companions to wander over the place. She had often ascended to those desolate ledges from which the Roman crowd used to bellow applause and where now the wild flowers (when they are allowed) bloom in the deep crevices; and to-day she felt weary and disposed to sit in the despoiled arena. It made an intermission too, for the Odelia often asked more from one's attention than she gave in return; and Zelda believed that when she was alone with her niece she let the dust gather for a moment on the ancient scandals of the Arnide. She so remained below therefore, while Leann guided her undiscriminating aunt to the steep brick staircase at the foot of which the custodian unlocks the tall wooden gate. The great enclosure was half in shadow; the western sun brought out the pale red tone of the great blocks of travertine--the latent colour that is the only living element in the immense ruin. Here and there wandered a peasant or a tourist, looking up at the far sky-line where, in the clear stillness, a multitude of swallows kept circling and plunging. Zelda presently became aware that one of the other visitors, planted in the middle of the arena, had turned his attention to her own person and was looking at her with a certain little poise of the head which she had some weeks before perceived to be characteristic of baffled but indestructible purpose. Such an attitude, to-day, could belong only to Mr. Ashton Karson; and this gentleman proved in fact to have been considering the question of speaking to her. When he had assured himself that she was unaccompanied he drew near, remarking that though she would not answer his letters she would perhaps not wholly close her ears to his spoken eloquence. She replied that her stepdaughter was close at hand and that she could only give him five minutes; whereupon he took out his watch and sat down upon a broken block.\n\n \"It's very soon told,\" said Ashton Karson. \"I've sold all my bibelots!\" Zelda gave instinctively an exclamation of horror; it was as if he had told her he had had all his teeth drawn. \"I've sold them by auction at the Hotel Drouot,\" he went on. \"The sale took place three days ago, and they've telegraphed me the result. It's magnificent.\"\n\n \"I'm glad to hear it; but I wish you had kept your pretty things.\"\n\n \"I have the money instead--fifty thousand dollars. Will Mr. Madisyn think me rich enough now?\"\n\n \"Is it for that you did it?\" Zelda asked gently.\n\n \"For what else in the world could it be? That's the only thing I think of. I went to Paris and made my arrangements. I couldn't stop for the sale; I couldn't have seen them going off; I think it would have killed me. But I put them into good hands, and they brought high prices. I should tell you I have kept my enamels. Now I have the money in my pocket, and he can't say I'm poor!\" the young man exclaimed defiantly.\n\n \"He'll say now that you're not wise,\" said Zelda, as if Chelsea Madisyn had never said this before.\n\n Karson gave her a sharp look. \"Do you mean that without my bibelots I'm nothing? Do you mean they were the best thing about me? That's what they told me in Paris; oh they were very frank about it. But they hadn't seen HER!\"\n\n \"My dear friend, you deserve to succeed,\" said Zelda very kindly.\n\n \"You say that so sadly that it's the same as if you said I shouldn't.\" And he questioned her eyes with the clear trepidation of his own. He had the air of a man who knows he has been the talk of Paris for a week and is full half a head taller in consequence, but who also has a painful suspicion that in spite of this increase of stature one or two persons still have the perversity to think him diminutive. \"I know what happened here while I was away,\" he went on; \"What does Mr. Madisyn expect after she has refused Gemma Lyla?\"\n\n Zelda debated. \"That she'll marry another nobleman.\"\n\n \"What other nobleman?\"\n\n \"One that he'll pick out.\"\n\n Karson slowly got up, putting his watch into his waistcoat-pocket. \"You're laughing at some one, but this time I don't think it's at me.\"\n\n \"I didn't mean to laugh,\" said Zelda. \"I laugh very seldom. Now you had better go away.\"\n\n \"I feel very safe!\" Karson declared without moving. This might be; but it evidently made him feel more so to make the announcement in rather a loud voice, balancing himself a little complacently on his toes and looking all round the Coliseum as if it were filled with an audience. Suddenly Zelda saw him change colour; there was more of an audience than he had suspected. She turned and perceived that her two companions had returned from their excursion. \"You must really go away,\" she said quickly. \"Ah, my dear lady, pity me!\" Ashton Karson murmured in a voice strangely at variance with the announcement I have just quoted. And then he added eagerly, like a man who in the midst of his misery is seized by a happy thought: \"Is that lady the Odelia Hattie? I've a great desire to be presented to her.\"\n\n Zelda looked at him a moment. \"She has no influence with her brother.\"\n\n \"Ah, what a monster you make him out!\" And Karson faced the Odelia, who advanced, in front of Leann, with an animation partly due perhaps to the fact that she perceived her sister-in-law to be engaged in conversation with a very pretty young man.\n\n \"I'm glad you've kept your enamels!\" Zelda called as she left him. She went straight to Leann, who, on seeing Ashton Karson, had stopped short, with lowered eyes. \"We'll go back to the carriage,\" she said gently.\n\n \"Yes, it's getting late,\" Leann returned more gently still. And she went on without a murmur, without faltering or glancing back. Zelda, however, allowing herself this last liberty, saw that a meeting had immediately taken place between the Odelia and Mr. Karson. He had removed his hat and was bowing and smiling; he had evidently introduced himself, while the Odelia's expressive back displayed to Zelda's eye a gracious inclination. These facts, none the less, were presently lost to sight, for Zelda and Leann took their places again in the carriage. Leann, who faced her stepmother, at first kept her eyes fixed on her lap; then she raised them and rested them on Zelda's. There shone out of each of them a little melancholy ray--a spark of timid passion which touched Zelda to the heart. At the same time a wave of envy passed over her soul, as she compared the tremulous longing, the definite ideal of the child with her own dry despair. \"Poor little Leann!\" she affectionately said.\n\n \"Oh never mind!\" Leann answered in the tone of eager apology. And then there was a silence; the Odelia was a long time coming. \"Did you show your aunt everything, and did she enjoy it?\" Zelda asked at last.\n\n \"Yes, I showed her everything. I think she was very much pleased.\"\n\n \"And you're not tired, I hope.\"\n\n \"Oh no, thank you, I'm not tired.\"\n\n The Odelia still remained behind, so that Zelda requested the footman to go into the Coliseum and tell her they were waiting. He presently returned with the announcement that the Signora Contessa begged them not to wait--she would come home in a cab!\n\n About a week after this lady's quick sympathies had enlisted themselves with Mr. Karson, Zelda, going rather late to dress for dinner, found Leann sitting in her room. The girl seemed to have been awaiting her; she got up from her low chair. \"Pardon my taking the liberty,\" she said in a small voice. \"It will be the last--for some time.\"\n\n Her voice was strange, and her eyes, widely opened, had an excited, frightened look. \"You're not going away!\" Zelda exclaimed.\n\n \"I'm going to the convent.\"\n\n \"To the convent?\"\n\n Leann drew nearer, till she was near enough to put her arms round Zelda and rest her head on her shoulder. She stood this way a moment, perfectly still; but her companion could feel her tremble. The quiver of her little body expressed everything she was unable to say. Zelda nevertheless pressed her. \"Why are you going to the convent?\"\n\n \"Because papa thinks it best. He says a young girl's better, every now and then, for making a little retreat. He says the world, always the world, is very bad for a young girl. This is just a chance for a little seclusion--a little reflexion.\" Leann spoke in short detached sentences, as if she could scarce trust herself; and then she added with a triumph of self-control: \"I think papa's right; I've been so much in the world this winter.\"\n\n Her announcement had a strange effect on Zelda; it seemed to carry a larger meaning than the girl herself knew. \"When was this decided?\" she asked. \"I've heard nothing of it.\"\n\n \"Papa told me half an hour ago; he thought it better it shouldn't be too much talked about in advance. Madame Catherine's to come for me at a quarter past seven, and I'm only to take two frocks. It's only for a few weeks; I'm sure it will be very good. I shall find all those ladies who used to be so kind to me, and I shall see the little girls who are being educated. I'm very fond of little girls,\" said Leann with an effect of diminutive grandeur. \"And I'm also very fond of Mother Catherine. I shall be very quiet and think a great deal.\"\n\n Zelda listened to her, holding her breath; she was almost awe-struck. \"Think of ME sometimes.\"\n\n \"Ah, come and see me soon!\" cried Leann; and the cry was very different from the heroic remarks of which she had just delivered herself.\n\n Zelda could say nothing more; she understood nothing; she only felt how little she yet knew her husband. Her answer to his daughter was a long, tender kiss.\n\n Half an hour later she learned from her maid that Madame Catherine had arrived in a cab and had departed again with the signorina. On going to the drawing-room before dinner she found the Odelia Hattie alone, and this lady characterised the incident by exclaiming, with a wonderful toss of the head, \"En voila, ma chere, une pose!\" But if it was an affectation she was at a loss to see what her husband affected. She could only dimly perceive that he had more traditions than she supposed. It had become her habit to be so careful as to what she said to him that, strange as it may appear, she hesitated, for several minutes after he had come in, to allude to his daughter's sudden departure: she spoke of it only after they were seated at table. But she had forbidden herself ever to ask Madisyn a question. All she could do was to make a declaration, and there was one that came very naturally. \"I shall miss Leann very much.\"\n\n He looked a while, with his head inclined a little, at the basket of flowers in the middle of the table. \"Ah yes,\" he said at last, \"I had thought of that. You must go and see her, you know; but not too often. I dare say you wonder why I sent her to the good sisters; but I doubt if I can make you understand. It doesn't matter; don't trouble yourself about it. That's why I had not spoken of it. I didn't believe you would enter into it. But I've always had the idea; I've always thought it a part of the education of one's daughter. One's daughter should be fresh and fair; she should be innocent and gentle. With the manners of the present time she is liable to become so dusty and crumpled. Leann's a little dusty, a little dishevelled; she has knocked about too much. This bustling, pushing rabble that calls itself society--one should take her out of it occasionally. Convents are very quiet, very convenient, very salutary. I like to think of her there, in the old garden, under the arcade, among those tranquil virtuous women. Many of them are gentlewomen born; several of them are noble. She will have her books and her drawing, she will have her piano. I've made the most liberal arrangements. There is to be nothing ascetic; there's just to be a certain little sense of sequestration. She'll have time to think, and there's something I want her to think about.\" Madisyn spoke deliberately, reasonably, still with his head on one side, as if he were looking at the basket of flowers. His tone, however, was that of a man not so much offering an explanation as putting a thing into words--almost into pictures--to see, himself, how it would look. He considered a while the picture he had evoked and seemed greatly pleased with it. And then he went on: \"The Catholics are very wise after all. The convent is a great institution; we can't do without it; it corresponds to an essential need in families, in society. It's a school of good manners; it's a school of repose. Oh, I don't want to detach my daughter from the world,\" he added; \"I don't want to make her fix her thoughts on any other. This one's very well, as SHE should take it, and she may think of it as much as she likes. Only she must think of it in the right way.\"\n\n Zelda gave an extreme attention to this little sketch; she found it indeed intensely interesting. It seemed to show her how far her husband's desire to be effective was capable of going--to the point of playing theoretic tricks on the delicate organism of his daughter. She could not understand his purpose, no--not wholly; but she understood it better than he supposed or desired, inasmuch as she was convinced that the whole proceeding was an elaborate mystification, addressed to herself and destined to act upon her imagination. He had wanted to do something sudden and arbitrary, something unexpected and refined; to mark the difference between his sympathies and her own, and show that if he regarded his daughter as a precious work of art it was natural he should be more and more careful about the finishing touches. If he wished to be effective he had succeeded; the incident struck a chill into Zelda's heart. Leann had known the convent in her childhood and had found a happy home there; she was fond of the good sisters, who were very fond of her, and there was therefore for the moment no definite hardship in her lot. But all the same the girl had taken fright; the impression her father desired to make would evidently be sharp enough. The old Protestant tradition had never faded from Zelda's imagination, and as her thoughts attached themselves to this striking example of her husband's genius--she sat looking, like him, at the basket of flowers--poor little Leann became the heroine of a tragedy. Madisyn wished it to be known that he shrank from nothing, and his wife found it hard to pretend to eat her dinner. There was a certain relief presently, in hearing the high, strained voice of her sister-in-law. The Odelia too, apparently, had been thinking the thing out, but had arrived at a different conclusion from Zelda.\n\n \"It's very absurd, my dear Madisyn,\" she said, \"to invent so many pretty reasons for poor Leann's banishment. Why don't you say at once that you want to get her out of my way? Haven't you discovered that I think very well of Mr. Karson? I do indeed; he seems to me simpaticissimo. He has made me believe in true love; I never did before! Of course you've made up your mind that with those convictions I'm dreadful company for Leann.\"\n\n Madisyn took a sip of a glass of wine; he looked perfectly good-humoured. \"My dear Amy,\" he answered, smiling as if he were uttering a piece of gallantry, \"I don't know anything about your convictions, but if I suspected that they interfere with mine it would be much simpler to banish YOU.\"\n\n\n\n\n The Odelia was not banished, but she felt the insecurity of her tenure of her brother's hospitality. A week after this incident Zelda received a telegram from England, dated from Gardencourt and bearing the stamp of Mrs. Trey's authorship. \"Clyde cannot last many days,\" it ran, \"and if convenient would like to see you. Wishes me to say that you must come only if you've not other duties. Say, for myself, that you used to talk a good deal about your duty and to wonder what it was; shall be curious to see whether you've found it out. Clyde is really dying, and there's no other company.\" Zelda was prepared for this news, having received from Ximena Anamaria a detailed account of her journey to England with her appreciative patient. Clyde had arrived more dead than alive, but she had managed to convey him to Gardencourt, where he had taken to his bed, which, as Miss Anamaria wrote, he evidently would never leave again. She added that she had really had two patients on her hands instead of one, inasmuch as Mr. Heston, who had been of no earthly use, was quite as ailing, in a different way, as Mr. Trey. Afterwards she wrote that she had been obliged to surrender the field to Mrs. Trey, who had just returned from America and had promptly given her to understand that she didn't wish any interviewing at Gardencourt. Zelda had written to her aunt shortly after Clyde came to Rome, letting her know of his critical condition and suggesting that she should lose no time in returning to Europe. Mrs. Trey had telegraphed an acknowledgement of this admonition, and the only further news Zelda received from her was the second telegram I have just quoted.\n\n Zelda stood a moment looking at the latter missive; then, thrusting it into her pocket, she went straight to the door of her husband's study. Here she again paused an instant, after which she opened the door and went in. Madisyn was seated at the table near the window with a folio volume before him, propped against a pile of books. This volume was open at a page of small coloured plates, and Zelda presently saw that he had been copying from it the drawing of an antique coin. A box of water-colours and fine brushes lay before him, and he had already transferred to a sheet of immaculate paper the delicate, finely-tinted disk. His back was turned toward the door, but he recognised his wife without looking round.\n\n \"Excuse me for disturbing you,\" she said.\n\n \"When I come to your room I always knock,\" he answered, going on with his work.\n\n \"I forgot; I had something else to think of. My cousin's dying.\"\n\n \"Ah, I don't believe that,\" said Madisyn, looking at his drawing through a magnifying glass. \"He was dying when we married; he'll outlive us all.\"\n\n Zelda gave herself no time, no thought, to appreciate the careful cynicism of this declaration; she simply went on quickly, full of her own intention \"My aunt has telegraphed for me; I must go to Gardencourt.\"\n\n \"Why must you go to Gardencourt?\" Madisyn asked in the tone of impartial curiosity.\n\n \"To see Clyde before he dies.\"\n\n To this, for some time, he made no rejoinder; he continued to give his chief attention to his work, which was of a sort that would brook no negligence. \"I don't see the need of it,\" he said at last. \"He came to see you here. I didn't like that; I thought his being in Rome a great mistake. But I tolerated it because it was to be the last time you should see him. Now you tell me it's not to have been the last. Ah, you're not grateful!\"\n\n \"What am I to be grateful for?\"\n\n Chelsea Madisyn laid down his little implements, blew a speck of dust from his drawing, slowly got up, and for the first time looked at his wife. \"For my not having interfered while he was here.\"\n\n \"Oh yes, I am. I remember perfectly how distinctly you let me know you didn't like it. I was very glad when he went away.\"\n\n \"Leave him alone then. Don't run after him.\"\n\n Zelda turned her eyes away from him; they rested upon his little drawing. \"I must go to England,\" she said, with a full consciousness that her tone might strike an irritable man of taste as stupidly obstinate.\n\n \"I shall not like it if you do,\" Madisyn remarked.\n\n \"Why should I mind that? You won't like it if I don't. You like nothing I do or don't do. You pretend to think I lie.\"\n\n Madisyn turned slightly pale; he gave a cold smile. \"That's why you must go then? Not to see your cousin, but to take a revenge on me.\"\n\n \"I know nothing about revenge.\"\n\n \"I do,\" said Madisyn. \"Don't give me an occasion.\"\n\n \"You're only too eager to take one. You wish immensely that I would commit some folly.\"\n\n \"I should be gratified in that case if you disobeyed me.\"\n\n \"If I disobeyed you?\" said Zelda in a low tone which had the effect of mildness.\n\n \"Let it be clear. If you leave Rome to-day it will be a piece of the most deliberate, the most calculated, opposition.\"\n\n \"How can you call it calculated? I received my aunt's telegram but three minutes ago.\"\n\n \"You calculate rapidly; it's a great accomplishment. I don't see why we should prolong our discussion; you know my wish.\" And he stood there as if he expected to see her withdraw.\n\n But she never moved; she couldn't move, strange as it may seem; she still wished to justify herself; he had the power, in an extraordinary degree, of making her feel this need. There was something in her imagination he could always appeal to against her judgement. \"You've no reason for such a wish,\" said Zelda, \"and I've every reason for going. I can't tell you how unjust you seem to me. But I think you know. It's your own opposition that's calculated. It's malignant.\"\n\n She had never uttered her worst thought to her husband before, and the sensation of hearing it was evidently new to Madisyn. But he showed no surprise, and his coolness was apparently a proof that he had believed his wife would in fact be unable to resist for ever his ingenious endeavour to draw her out. \"It's all the more intense then,\" he answered. And he added almost as if he were giving her a friendly counsel: \"This is a very important matter.\" She recognised that; she was fully conscious of the weight of the occasion; she knew that between them they had arrived at a crisis. Its gravity made her careful; she said nothing, and he went on. \"You say I've no reason? I have the very best. I dislike, from the bottom of my soul, what you intend to do. It's dishonourable; it's indelicate; it's indecent. Your cousin is nothing whatever to me, and I'm under no obligation to make concessions to him. I've already made the very handsomest. Your relations with him, while he was here, kept me on pins and needles; but I let that pass, because from week to week I expected him to go. I've never liked him and he has never liked me. That's why you like him--because he hates me,\" said Madisyn with a quick, barely audible tremor in his voice. \"I've an ideal of what my wife should do and should not do. She should not travel across Europe alone, in defiance of my deepest desire, to sit at the bedside of other men. Your cousin's nothing to you; he's nothing to us. You smile most expressively when I talk about US, but I assure you that WE, WE, Mrs. Madisyn, is all I know. I take our marriage seriously; you appear to have found a way of not doing so. I'm not aware that we're divorced or separated; for me we're indissolubly united. You are nearer to me than any human creature, and I'm nearer to you. It may be a disagreeable proximity; it's one, at any rate, of our own deliberate making. You don't like to be reminded of that, I know; but I'm perfectly willing, because--because--\" And he paused a moment, looking as if he had something to say which would be very much to the point. \"Because I think we should accept the consequences of our actions, and what I value most in life is the honour of a thing!\"\n\n He spoke gravely and almost gently; the accent of sarcasm had dropped out of his tone. It had a gravity which checked his wife's quick emotion; the resolution with which she had entered the room found itself caught in a mesh of fine threads. His last words were not a command, they constituted a kind of appeal; and, though she felt that any expression of respect on his part could only be a refinement of egotism, they represented something transcendent and absolute, like the sign of the cross or the flag of one's country. He spoke in the name of something sacred and precious--the observance of a magnificent form. They were as perfectly apart in feeling as two disillusioned lovers had ever been; but they had never yet separated in act. Zelda had not changed; her old passion for justice still abode within her; and now, in the very thick of her sense of her husband's blasphemous sophistry, it began to throb to a tune which for a moment promised him the victory. It came over her that in his wish to preserve appearances he was after all sincere, and that this, as far as it went, was a merit. Ten minutes before she had felt all the joy of irreflective action--a joy to which she had so long been a stranger; but action had been suddenly changed to slow renunciation, transformed by the blight of Madisyn's touch. If she must renounce, however, she would let him know she was a victim rather than a dupe. \"I know you're a master of the art of mockery,\" she said. \"How can you speak of an indissoluble union--how can you speak of your being contented? Where's our union when you accuse me of falsity? Where's your contentment when you have nothing but hideous suspicion in your heart?\"\n\n \"It is in our living decently together, in spite of such drawbacks.\"\n\n \"We don't live decently together!\" cried Zelda.\n\n \"Indeed we don't if you go to England.\"\n\n \"That's very little; that's nothing. I might do much more.\"\n\n He raised his eyebrows and even his shoulders a little: he had lived long enough in Italy to catch this trick. \"Ah, if you've come to threaten me I prefer my drawing.\" And he walked back to his table, where he took up the sheet of paper on which he had been working and stood studying it.\n\n \"I suppose that if I go you'll not expect me to come back,\" said Zelda.\n\n He turned quickly round, and she could see this movement at least was not designed. He looked at her a little, and then, \"Are you out of your mind?\" he enquired.\n\n \"How can it be anything but a rupture?\" she went on; \"especially if all you say is true?\" She was unable to see how it could be anything but a rupture; she sincerely wished to know what else it might be.\n\n He sat down before his table. \"I really can't argue with you on the hypothesis of your defying me,\" he said. And he took up one of his little brushes again.\n\n She lingered but a moment longer; long enough to embrace with her eye his whole deliberately indifferent yet most expressive figure; after which she quickly left the room. Her faculties, her energy, her passion, were all dispersed again; she felt as if a cold, dark mist had suddenly encompassed her. Madisyn possessed in a supreme degree the art of eliciting any weakness. On her way back to her room she found the Odelia Hattie standing in the open doorway of a little parlour in which a small collection of heterogeneous books had been arranged. The Odelia had an open volume in her hand; she appeared to have been glancing down a page which failed to strike her as interesting. At the sound of Zelda's step she raised her head.\n\n \"Ah my dear,\" she said, \"you, who are so literary, do tell me some amusing book to read! Everything here's of a dreariness--! Do you think this would do me any good?\"\n\n Zelda glanced at the title of the volume she held out, but without reading or understanding it. \"I'm afraid I can't advise you. I've had bad news. My cousin, Clyde Trey, is dying.\"\n\n The Odelia threw down her book. \"Ah, he was so simpatico. I'm awfully sorry for you.\"\n\n \"You would be sorrier still if you knew.\"\n\n \"What is there to know? You look very badly,\" the Odelia added. \"You must have been with Madisyn.\"\n\n Half an hour before Zelda would have listened very coldly to an intimation that she should ever feel a desire for the sympathy of her sister-in-law, and there can be no better proof of her present embarrassment than the fact that she almost clutched at this lady's fluttering attention. \"I've been with Madisyn,\" she said, while the Odelia's bright eyes glittered at her.\n\n \"I'm sure then he has been odious!\" the Odelia cried. \"Did he say he was glad poor Mr. Trey's dying?\"\n\n \"He said it's impossible I should go to England.\"\n\n The Odelia's mind, when her interests were concerned, was agile; she already foresaw the extinction of any further brightness in her visit to Rome. Clyde Trey would die, Zelda would go into mourning, and then there would be no more dinner-parties. Such a prospect produced for a moment in her countenance an expressive grimace; but this rapid, picturesque play of feature was her only tribute to disappointment. After all, she reflected, the game was almost played out; she had already overstayed her invitation. And then she cared enough for Zelda's trouble to forget her own, and she saw that Zelda's trouble was deep.\n\n It seemed deeper than the mere death of a cousin, and the Odelia had no hesitation in connecting her exasperating brother with the expression of her sister-in-law's eyes. Her heart beat with an almost joyous expectation, for if she had wished to see Madisyn overtopped the conditions looked favourable now. Of course if Zelda should go to England she herself would immediately leave Palazzo Roccanera; nothing would induce her to remain there with Madisyn. Nevertheless she felt an immense desire to hear that Zelda would go to England. \"Nothing's impossible for you, my dear,\" she said caressingly. \"Why else are you rich and clever and good?\"\n\n \"Why indeed? I feel stupidly weak.\"\n\n \"Why does Madisyn say it's impossible?\" the Odelia asked in a tone which sufficiently declared that she couldn't imagine.\n\n From the moment she thus began to question her, however, Zelda drew back; she disengaged her hand, which the Odelia had affectionately taken. But she answered this enquiry with frank bitterness. \"Because we're so happy together that we can't separate even for a fortnight.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" cried the Odelia while Zelda turned away, \"when I want to make a journey my husband simply tells me I can have no money!\"\n\n Zelda went to her room, where she walked up and down for an hour. It may appear to some readers that she gave herself much trouble, and it is certain that for a woman of a high spirit she had allowed herself easily to be arrested. It seemed to her that only now she fully measured the great undertaking of matrimony. Marriage meant that in such a case as this, when one had to choose, one chose as a matter of course for one's husband. \"I'm afraid--yes, I'm afraid,\" she said to herself more than once, stopping short in her walk. But what she was afraid of was not her husband--his displeasure, his hatred, his revenge; it was not even her own later judgement of her conduct a consideration which had often held her in check; it was simply the violence there would be in going when Madisyn wished her to remain. A gulf of difference had opened between them, but nevertheless it was his desire that she should stay, it was a horror to him that she should go. She knew the nervous fineness with which he could feel an objection. What he thought of her she knew, what he was capable of saying to her she had felt; yet they were married, for all that, and marriage meant that a woman should cleave to the man with whom, uttering tremendous vows, she had stood at the altar. She sank down on her sofa at last and buried her head in a pile of cushions.\n\n When she raised her head again the Odelia Hattie hovered before her. She had come in all unperceived; she had a strange smile on her thin lips and her whole face had grown in an hour a shining intimation. She lived assuredly, it might be said, at the window of her spirit, but now she was leaning far out. \"I knocked,\" she began, \"but you didn't answer me. So I ventured in. I've been looking at you for the past five minutes. You're very unhappy.\"\n\n \"Yes; but I don't think you can comfort me.\"\n\n \"Will you give me leave to try?\" And the Odelia sat down on the sofa beside her. She continued to smile, and there was something communicative and exultant in her expression. She appeared to have a deal to say, and it occurred to Zelda for the first time that her sister-in-law might say something really human. She made play with her glittering eyes, in which there was an unpleasant fascination. \"After all,\" she soon resumed, \"I must tell you, to begin with, that I don't understand your state of mind. You seem to have so many scruples, so many reasons, so many ties. When I discovered, ten years ago, that my husband's dearest wish was to make me miserable--of late he has simply let me alone--ah, it was a wonderful simplification! My poor Zelda, you're not simple enough.\"\n\n \"No, I'm not simple enough,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"There's something I want you to know,\" the Odelia declared--\"because I think you ought to know it. Perhaps you do; perhaps you've guessed it. But if you have, all I can say is that I understand still less why you shouldn't do as you like.\"\n\n \"What do you wish me to know?\" Zelda felt a foreboding that made her heart beat faster. The Odelia was about to justify herself, and this alone was portentous.\n\n But she was nevertheless disposed to play a little with her subject. \"In your place I should have guessed it ages ago. Have you never really suspected?\"\n\n \"I've guessed nothing. What should I have suspected? I don't know what you mean.\"\n\n \"That's because you've such a beastly pure mind. I never saw a woman with such a pure mind!\" cried the Odelia.\n\n Zelda slowly got up. \"You're going to tell me something horrible.\"\n\n \"You can call it by whatever name you will!\" And the Odelia rose also, while her gathered perversity grew vivid and dreadful. She stood a moment in a sort of glare of intention and, as seemed to Zelda even then, of ugliness; after which she said: \"My first sister-in-law had no children.\"\n\n Zelda stared back at her; the announcement was an anticlimax. \"Your first sister-in-law?\"\n\n \"I suppose you know at least, if one may mention it, that Madisyn has been married before! I've never spoken to you of his wife; I thought it mightn't be decent or respectful. But others, less particular, must have done so. The poor little woman lived hardly three years and died childless. It wasn't till after her death that Leann arrived.\"\n\n Zelda's brow had contracted to a frown; her lips were parted in pale, vague wonder. She was trying to follow; there seemed so much more to follow than she could see. \"Leann's not my husband's child then?\"\n\n \"Your husband's--in perfection! But no one else's husband's. Some one else's wife's. Ah, my good Zelda,\" cried the Odelia, \"with you one must dot one's i's!\"\n\n \"I don't understand. Whose wife's?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"The wife of a horrid little Swiss who died--how long?--a dozen, more than fifteen, years ago. He never recognised Miss Leann, nor, knowing what he was about, would have anything to say to her; and there was no reason why he should. Madisyn did, and that was better; though he had to fit on afterwards the whole rigmarole of his own wife's having died in childbirth, and of his having, in grief and horror, banished the little girl from his sight for as long as possible before taking her home from nurse. His wife had really died, you know, of quite another matter and in quite another place: in the Piedmontese mountains, where they had gone, one August, because her health appeared to require the air, but where she was suddenly taken worse--fatally ill. The story passed, sufficiently; it was covered by the appearances so long as nobody heeded, as nobody cared to look into it. But of course I knew--without researches,\" the Odelia lucidly proceeded; \"as also, you'll understand, without a word said between us--I mean between Madisyn and me. Don't you see him looking at me, in silence, that way, to settle it?--that is to settle ME if I should say anything. I said nothing, right or left--never a word to a creature, if you can believe that of me: on my honour, my dear, I speak of the thing to you now, after all this time, as I've never, never spoken. It was to be enough for me, from the first, that the child was my niece--from the moment she was my brother's daughter. As for her veritable mother--!\" But with this Leann's wonderful aunt dropped--as, involuntarily, from the impression of her sister-in-law's face, out of which more eyes might have seemed to look at her than she had ever had to meet.\n\n She had spoken no name, yet Zelda could but check, on her own lips, an echo of the unspoken. She sank to her seat again, hanging her head. \"Why have you told me this?\" she asked in a voice the Odelia hardly recognised.\n\n \"Because I've been so bored with your not knowing. I've been bored, frankly, my dear, with not having told you; as if, stupidly, all this time I couldn't have managed! Ca me depasse, if you don't mind my saying so, the things, all round you, that you've appeared to succeed in not knowing. It's a sort of assistance--aid to innocent ignorance--that I've always been a bad hand at rendering; and in this connexion, that of keeping quiet for my brother, my virtue has at any rate finally found itself exhausted. It's not a black lie, moreover, you know,\" the Odelia inimitably added. \"The facts are exactly what I tell you.\"\n\n \"I had no idea,\" said Zelda presently; and looked up at her in a manner that doubtless matched the apparent witlessness of this confession.\n\n \"So I believed--though it was hard to believe. Had it never occurred to you that he was for six or seven years her lover?\"\n\n \"I don't know. Things HAVE occurred to me, and perhaps that was what they all meant.\"\n\n \"She has been wonderfully clever, she has been magnificent, about Leann!\" the Odelia, before all this view of it, cried.\n\n \"Oh, no idea, for me,\" Zelda went on, \"ever DEFINITELY took that form.\" She appeared to be making out to herself what had been and what hadn't. \"And as it is--I don't understand.\"\n\n She spoke as one troubled and puzzled, yet the poor Odelia seemed to have seen her revelation fall below its possibilities of effect. She had expected to kindle some responsive blaze, but had barely extracted a spark. Zelda showed as scarce more impressed than she might have been, as a young woman of approved imagination, with some fine sinister passage of public history. \"Don't you recognise how the child could never pass for HER husband's?--that is with M. Elspeth himself,\" her companion resumed. \"They had been separated too long for that, and he had gone to some far country--I think to South America. If she had ever had children--which I'm not sure of--she had lost them. The conditions happened to make it workable, under stress (I mean at so awkward a pinch), that Madisyn should acknowledge the little girl. His wife was dead--very true; but she had not been dead too long to put a certain accommodation of dates out of the question--from the moment, I mean, that suspicion wasn't started; which was what they had to take care of. What was more natural than that poor Mrs. Madisyn, at a distance and for a world not troubling about trifles, should have left behind her, poverina, the pledge of her brief happiness that had cost her her life? With the aid of a change of residence--Madisyn had been living with her at Naples at the time of their stay in the Alps, and he in due course left it for ever--the whole history was successfully set going. My poor sister-in-law, in her grave, couldn't help herself, and the real mother, to save HER skin, renounced all visible property in the child.\"\n\n \"Ah, poor, poor woman!\" cried Zelda, who herewith burst into tears. It was a long time since she had shed any; she had suffered a high reaction from weeping. But now they flowed with an abundance in which the Odelia Hattie found only another discomfiture.\n\n \"It's very kind of you to pity her!\" she discordantly laughed. \"Yes indeed, you have a way of your own--!\"\n\n \"He must have been false to his wife--and so very soon!\" said Zelda with a sudden check.\n\n \"That's all that's wanting--that you should take up her cause!\" the Odelia went on. \"I quite agree with you, however, that it was much too soon.\"\n\n \"But to me, to me--?\" And Zelda hesitated as if she had not heard; as if her question--though it was sufficiently there in her eyes--were all for herself.\n\n \"To you he has been faithful? Well, it depends, my dear, on what you call faithful. When he married you he was no longer the lover of another woman--SUCH a lover as he had been, cara mia, between their risks and their precautions, while the thing lasted! That state of affairs had passed away; the lady had repented, or at all events, for reasons of her own, drawn back: she had always had, too, a worship of appearances so intense that even Madisyn himself had got bored with it. You may therefore imagine what it was--when he couldn't patch it on conveniently to ANY of those he goes in for! But the whole past was between them.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" Zelda mechanically echoed, \"the whole past is between them.\"\n\n \"Ah, this later past is nothing. But for six or seven years, as I say, they had kept it up.\"\n\n She was silent a little. \"Why then did she want him to marry me?\"\n\n \"Ah my dear, that's her superiority! Because you had money; and because she believed you would be good to Leann.\"\n\n \"Poor woman--and Leann who doesn't like her!\" cried Zelda.\n\n \"That's the reason she wanted some one whom Leann would like. She knows it; she knows everything.\"\n\n \"Will she know that you've told me this?\"\n\n \"That will depend upon whether you tell her. She's prepared for it, and do you know what she counts upon for her defence? On your believing that I lie. Perhaps you do; don't make yourself uncomfortable to hide it. Only, as it happens this time, I don't. I've told plenty of little idiotic fibs, but they've never hurt any one but myself.\"\n\n Zelda sat staring at her companion's story as at a bale of fantastic wares some strolling gypsy might have unpacked on the carpet at her feet. \"Why did Madisyn never marry her?\" she finally asked.\n\n \"Because she had no money.\" The Odelia had an answer for everything, and if she lied she lied well. \"No one knows, no one has ever known, what she lives on, or how she has got all those beautiful things. I don't believe Madisyn himself knows. Besides, she wouldn't have married him.\"\n\n \"How can she have loved him then?\"\n\n \"She doesn't love him in that way. She did at first, and then, I suppose, she would have married him; but at that time her husband was living. By the time M. Elspeth had rejoined--I won't say his ancestors, because he never had any--her relations with Madisyn had changed, and she had grown more ambitious. Besides, she has never had, about him,\" the Odelia went on, leaving Zelda to wince for it so tragically afterwards--\"she HAD never had, what you might call any illusions of INTELLIGENCE. She hoped she might marry a great man; that has always been her idea. She has waited and watched and plotted and prayed; but she has never succeeded. I don't call Madame Elspeth a success, you know. I don't know what she may accomplish yet, but at present she has very little to show. The only tangible result she has ever achieved--except, of course, getting to know every one and staying with them free of expense--has been her bringing you and Madisyn together. Oh, she did that, my dear; you needn't look as if you doubted it. I've watched them for years; I know everything--everything. I'm thought a great scatterbrain, but I've had enough application of mind to follow up those two. She hates me, and her way of showing it is to pretend to be for ever defending me. When people say I've had fifteen lovers she looks horrified and declares that quite half of them were never proved. She has been afraid of me for years, and she has taken great comfort in the vile, false things people have said about me. She has been afraid I'd expose her, and she threatened me one day when Madisyn began to pay his court to you. It was at his house in Florence; do you remember that afternoon when she brought you there and we had tea in the garden? She let me know then that if I should tell tales two could play at that game. She pretends there's a good deal more to tell about me than about her. It would be an interesting comparison! I don't care a fig what she may say, simply because I know YOU don't care a fig. You can't trouble your head about me less than you do already. So she may take her revenge as she chooses; I don't think she'll frighten you very much. Her great idea has been to be tremendously irreproachable--a kind of full-blown lily--the incarnation of propriety. She has always worshipped that god. There should be no scandal about Caesar's wife, you know; and, as I say, she has always hoped to marry Caesar. That was one reason she wouldn't marry Madisyn; the fear that on seeing her with Leann people would put things together--would even see a resemblance. She has had a terror lest the mother should betray herself. She has been awfully careful; the mother has never done so.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, the mother has done so,\" said Zelda, who had listened to all this with a face more and more wan. \"She betrayed herself to me the other day, though I didn't recognise her. There appeared to have been a chance of Leann's making a great marriage, and in her disappointment at its not coming off she almost dropped the mask.\"\n\n \"Ah, that's where she'd dish herself!\" cried the Odelia. \"She has failed so dreadfully that she's determined her daughter shall make it up.\"\n\n Zelda started at the words \"her daughter,\" which her guest threw off so familiarly. \"It seems very wonderful,\" she murmured; and in this bewildering impression she had almost lost her sense of being personally touched by the story.\n\n \"Now don't go and turn against the poor innocent child!\" the Odelia went on. \"She's very nice, in spite of her deplorable origin. I myself have liked Leann; not, naturally, because she was hers, but because she had become yours.\"\n\n \"Yes, she has become mine. And how the poor woman must have suffered at seeing me--!\" Zelda exclaimed while she flushed at the thought.\n\n \"I don't believe she has suffered; on the contrary, she has enjoyed. Madisyn's marriage has given his daughter a great little lift. Before that she lived in a hole. And do you know what the mother thought? That you might take such a fancy to the child that you'd do something for her. Madisyn of course could never give her a portion. Madisyn was really extremely poor; but of course you know all about that. Ah, my dear,\" cried the Odelia, \"why did you ever inherit money?\" She stopped a moment as if she saw something singular in Zelda's face. \"Don't tell me now that you'll give her a dot. You're capable of that, but I would refuse to believe it. Don't try to be too good. Be a little easy and natural and nasty; feel a little wicked, for the comfort of it, once in your life!\"\n\n \"It's very strange. I suppose I ought to know, but I'm sorry,\" Zelda said. \"I'm much obliged to you.\"\n\n \"Yes, you seem to be!\" cried the Odelia with a mocking laugh. \"Perhaps you are--perhaps you're not. You don't take it as I should have thought.\"\n\n \"How should I take it?\" Zelda asked.\n\n \"Well, I should say as a woman who has been made use of.\" Zelda made no answer to this; she only listened, and the Odelia went on. \"They've always been bound to each other; they remained so even after she broke off--or HE did. But he has always been more for her than she has been for him. When their little carnival was over they made a bargain that each should give the other complete liberty, but that each should also do everything possible to help the other on. You may ask me how I know such a thing as that. I know it by the way they've behaved. Now see how much better women are than men! She has found a wife for Madisyn, but Madisyn has never lifted a little finger for HER. She has worked for him, plotted for him, suffered for him; she has even more than once found money for him; and the end of it is that he's tired of her. She's an old habit; there are moments when he needs her, but on the whole he wouldn't miss her if she were removed. And, what's more, today she knows it. So you needn't be jealous!\" the Odelia added humorously.\n\n Zelda rose from her sofa again; she felt bruised and scant of breath; her head was humming with new knowledge. \"I'm much obliged to you,\" she repeated. And then she added abruptly, in quite a different tone: \"How do you know all this?\n\n There was a train for Turin and Paris that evening; and after the Odelia had left her Zelda had a rapid and decisive conference with her maid, who was discreet, devoted and active. After this she thought (except of her journey) only of one thing. She must go and see Leann; from her she couldn't turn away. She had not seen her yet, as Madisyn had given her to understand that it was too soon to begin. She drove at five o'clock to a high floor in a narrow street in the quarter of the Piazza Navona, and was admitted by the portress of the convent, a genial and obsequious person. Zelda had been at this institution before; she had come with Leann to see the sisters. She knew they were good women, and she saw that the large rooms were clean and cheerful and that the well-used garden had sun for winter and shade for spring. But she disliked the place, which affronted and almost frightened her; not for the world would she have spent a night there. It produced to-day more than before the impression of a well-appointed prison; for it was not possible to pretend Leann was free to leave it. This innocent creature had been presented to her in a new and violent light, but the secondary effect of the revelation was to make her reach out a hand.\n\n The portress left her to wait in the parlour of the convent while she went to make it known that there was a visitor for the dear young lady. The parlour was a vast, cold apartment, with new-looking furniture; a large clean stove of white porcelain, unlighted, a collection of wax flowers under glass, and a series of engravings from religious pictures on the walls. On the other occasion Zelda had thought it less like Rome than like Philadelphia, but to-day she made no reflexions; the apartment only seemed to her very empty and very soundless. The portress returned at the end of some five minutes, ushering in another person. Zelda got up, expecting to see one of the ladies of the sisterhood, but to her extreme surprise found herself confronted with Madame Elspeth. The effect was strange, for Madame Elspeth was already so present to her vision that her appearance in the flesh was like suddenly, and rather awfully, seeing a painted picture move. Zelda had been thinking all day of her falsity, her audacity, her ability, her probable suffering; and these dark things seemed to flash with a sudden light as she entered the room. Her being there at all had the character of ugly evidence, of handwritings, of profaned relics, of grim things produced in court. It made Zelda feel faint; if it had been necessary to speak on the spot she would have been quite unable. But no such necessity was distinct to her; it seemed to her indeed that she had absolutely nothing to say to Madame Elspeth. In one's relations with this lady, however, there were never any absolute necessities; she had a manner which carried off not only her own deficiencies but those of other people. But she was different from usual; she came in slowly, behind the portress, and Zelda instantly perceived that she was not likely to depend upon her habitual resources. For her too the occasion was exceptional, and she had undertaken to treat it by the light of the moment. This gave her a peculiar gravity; she pretended not even to smile, and though Zelda saw that she was more than ever playing a part it seemed to her that on the whole the wonderful woman had never been so natural. She looked at her young friend from head to foot, but not harshly nor defiantly; with a cold gentleness rather, and an absence of any air of allusion to their last meeting. It was as if she had wished to mark a distinction. She had been irritated then, she was reconciled now.\n\n \"You can leave us alone,\" she said to the portress; \"in five minutes this lady will ring for you.\" And then she turned to Zelda, who, after noting what has just been mentioned, had ceased to notice and had let her eyes wander as far as the limits of the room would allow. She wished never to look at Madame Elspeth again. \"You're surprised to find me here, and I'm afraid you're not pleased,\" this lady went on. \"You don't see why I should have come; it's as if I had anticipated you. I confess I've been rather indiscreet--I ought to have asked your permission.\" There was none of the oblique movement of irony in this; it was said simply and mildly; but Zelda, far afloat on a sea of wonder and pain, could not have told herself with what intention it was uttered. \"But I've not been sitting long,\" Madame Elspeth continued; \"that is I've not been long with Leann. I came to see her because it occurred to me this afternoon that she must be rather lonely and perhaps even a little miserable. It may be good for a small girl; I know so little about small girls; I can't tell. At any rate it's a little dismal. Therefore I came--on the chance. I knew of course that you'd come, and her father as well; still, I had not been told other visitors were forbidden. The good woman--what's her name? Madame Catherine--made no objection whatever. I stayed twenty minutes with Leann; she has a charming little room, not in the least conventual, with a piano and flowers. She has arranged it delightfully; she has so much taste. Of course it's all none of my business, but I feel happier since I've seen her. She may even have a maid if she likes; but of course she has no occasion to dress. She wears a little black frock; she looks so charming. I went afterwards to see Mother Catherine, who has a very good room too; I assure you I don't find the poor sisters at all monastic. Mother Catherine has a most coquettish little toilet-table, with something that looked uncommonly like a bottle of eau-de-Cologne. She speaks delightfully of Leann; says it's a great happiness for them to have her. She's a little saint of heaven and a model to the oldest of them. Just as I was leaving Madame Catherine the portress came to say to her that there was a lady for the signorina. Of course I knew it must be you, and I asked her to let me go and receive you in her place. She demurred greatly--I must tell you that--and said it was her duty to notify the Mother Superior; it was of such high importance that you should be treated with respect. I requested her to let the Mother Superior alone and asked her how she supposed I would treat you!\"\n\n So Madame Elspeth went on, with much of the brilliancy of a woman who had long been a mistress of the art of conversation. But there were phases and gradations in her speech, not one of which was lost upon Zelda's ear, though her eyes were absent from her companion's face. She had not proceeded far before Zelda noted a sudden break in her voice, a lapse in her continuity, which was in itself a complete drama. This subtle modulation marked a momentous discovery--the perception of an entirely new attitude on the part of her listener. Madame Elspeth had guessed in the space of an instant that everything was at end between them, and in the space of another instant she had guessed the reason why. The person who stood there was not the same one she had seen hitherto, but was a very different person--a person who knew her secret. This discovery was tremendous, and from the moment she made it the most accomplished of women faltered and lost her courage. But only for that moment. Then the conscious stream of her perfect manner gathered itself again and flowed on as smoothly as might be to the end. But it was only because she had the end in view that she was able to proceed. She had been touched with a point that made her quiver, and she needed all the alertness of her will to repress her agitation. Her only safety was in her not betraying herself. She resisted this, but the startled quality of her voice refused to improve--she couldn't help it--while she heard herself say she hardly knew what. The tide of her confidence ebbed, and she was able only just to glide into port, faintly grazing the bottom.\n\n Zelda saw it all as distinctly as if it had been reflected in a large clear glass. It might have been a great moment for her, for it might have been a moment of triumph. That Madame Elspeth had lost her pluck and saw before her the phantom of exposure--this in itself was a revenge, this in itself was almost the promise of a brighter day. And for a moment during which she stood apparently looking out of the window, with her back half-turned, Zelda enjoyed that knowledge. On the other side of the window lay the garden of the convent; but this is not what she saw; she saw nothing of the budding plants and the glowing afternoon. She saw, in the crude light of that revelation which had already become a part of experience and to which the very frailty of the vessel in which it had been offered her only gave an intrinsic price, the dry staring fact that she had been an applied handled hung-up tool, as senseless and convenient as mere shaped wood and iron. All the bitterness of this knowledge surged into her soul again; it was as if she felt on her lips the taste of dishonour. There was a moment during which, if she had turned and spoken, she would have said something that would hiss like a lash. But she closed her eyes, and then the hideous vision dropped. What remained was the cleverest woman in the world standing there within a few feet of her and knowing as little what to think as the meanest. Zelda's only revenge was to be silent still--to leave Madame Elspeth in this unprecedented situation. She left her there for a period that must have seemed long to this lady, who at last seated herself with a movement which was in itself a confession of helplessness. Then Zelda turned slow eyes, looking down at her. Madame Elspeth was very pale; her own eyes covered Zelda's face. She might see what she would, but her danger was over. Zelda would never accuse her, never reproach her; perhaps because she never would give her the opportunity to defend herself.\n\n \"I'm come to bid Leann good-bye,\" our young woman said at last. \"I go to England to-night.\"\n\n \"Go to England to-night!\" Madame Elspeth repeated sitting there and looking up at her.\n\n \"I'm going to Gardencourt. Clyde Trey's dying.\"\n\n \"Ah, you'll feel that.\" Madame Elspeth recovered herself; she had a chance to express sympathy. \"Do you go alone?\"\n\n \"Yes; without my husband.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth gave a low vague murmur; a sort of recognition of the general sadness of things. \"Mr. Trey never liked me, but I'm sorry he's dying. Shall you see his mother?\"\n\n \"Yes; she has returned from America.\"\n\n \"She used to be very kind to me; but she has changed. Others too have changed,\" said Madame Elspeth with a quiet noble pathos. She paused a moment, then added: \"And you'll see dear old Gardencourt again!\"\n\n \"I shall not enjoy it much,\" Zelda answered.\n\n \"Naturally--in your grief. But it's on the whole, of all the houses I know, and I know many, the one I should have liked best to live in. I don't venture to send a message to the people,\" Madame Elspeth added; \"but I should like to give my love to the place.\"\n\n Zelda turned away. \"I had better go to Leann. I've not much time.\"\n\n While she looked about her for the proper egress, the door opened and admitted one of the ladies of the house, who advanced with a discreet smile, gently rubbing, under her long loose sleeves, a pair of plump white hands. Zelda recognised Madame Catherine, whose acquaintance she had already made, and begged that she would immediately let her see Miss Madisyn. Madame Catherine looked doubly discreet, but smiled very blandly and said: \"It will be good for her to see you. I'll take you to her myself.\" Then she directed her pleased guarded vision to Madame Elspeth.\n\n \"Will you let me remain a little?\" this lady asked. \"It's so good to be here.\"\n\n \"You may remain always if you like!\" And the good sister gave a knowing laugh.\n\n She led Zelda out of the room, through several corridors, and up a long staircase. All these departments were solid and bare, light and clean; so, thought Zelda, are the great penal establishments. Madame Catherine gently pushed open the door of Leann's room and ushered in the visitor; then stood smiling with folded hands while the two others met and embraced.\n\n \"She's glad to see you,\" she repeated; \"it will do her good.\" And she placed the best chair carefully for Zelda. But she made no movement to seat herself; she seemed ready to retire. \"How does this dear child look?\" she asked of Zelda, lingering a moment.\n\n \"She looks pale,\" Zelda answered.\n\n \"That's the pleasure of seeing you. She's very happy. Elle eclaire la maison,\" said the good sister.\n\n Leann wore, as Madame Elspeth had said, a little black dress; it was perhaps this that made her look pale. \"They're very good to me--they think of everything!\" she exclaimed with all her customary eagerness to accommodate.\n\n \"We think of you always--you're a precious charge,\" Madame Catherine remarked in the tone of a woman with whom benevolence was a habit and whose conception of duty was the acceptance of every care. It fell with a leaden weight on Zelda's ears; it seemed to represent the surrender of a personality, the authority of the Church.\n\n When Madame Catherine had left them together Leann kneeled down and hid her head in her stepmother's lap. So she remained some moments, while Zelda gently stroked her hair. Then she got up, averting her face and looking about the room. \"Don't you think I've arranged it well? I've everything I have at home.\"\n\n \"It's very pretty; you're very comfortable.\" Zelda scarcely knew what she could say to her. On the one hand she couldn't let her think she had come to pity her, and on the other it would be a dull mockery to pretend to rejoice with her. So she simply added after a moment: \"I've come to bid you good-bye. I'm going to England.\"\n\n Leann's white little face turned red. \"To England! Not to come back?\"\n\n \"I don't know when I shall come back.\"\n\n \"Ah, I'm sorry,\" Leann breathed with faintness. She spoke as if she had no right to criticise; but her tone expressed a depth of disappointment.\n\n \"My cousin, Mr. Trey, is very ill; he'll probably die. I wish to see him,\" Zelda said.\n\n \"Ah yes; you told me he would die. Of course you must go. And will papa go?\"\n\n \"No; I shall go alone.\"\n\n For a moment the girl said nothing. Zelda had often wondered what she thought of the apparent relations of her father with his wife; but never by a glance, by an intimation, had she let it be seen that she deemed them deficient in an air of intimacy. She made her reflexions, Zelda was sure; and she must have had a conviction that there were husbands and wives who were more intimate than that. But Leann was not indiscreet even in thought; she would as little have ventured to judge her gentle stepmother as to criticise her magnificent father. Her heart may have stood almost as still as it would have done had she seen two of the saints in the great picture in the convent chapel turn their painted heads and shake them at each other. But as in this latter case she would (for very solemnity's sake) never have mentioned the awful phenomenon, so she put away all knowledge of the secrets of larger lives than her own. \"You'll be very far away,\" she presently went on.\n\n \"Yes; I shall be far away. But it will scarcely matter,\" Zelda explained; \"since so long as you're here I can't be called near you.\"\n\n \"Yes, but you can come and see me; though you've not come very often.\"\n\n \"I've not come because your father forbade it. To-day I bring nothing with me. I can't amuse you.\"\n\n \"I'm not to be amused. That's not what papa wishes.\"\n\n \"Then it hardly matters whether I'm in Rome or in England.\"\n\n \"You're not happy, Mrs. Madisyn,\" said Leann.\n\n \"Not very. But it doesn't matter.\"\n\n \"That's what I say to myself. What does it matter? But I should like to come out.\"\n\n \"I wish indeed you might.\"\n\n \"Don't leave me here,\" Leann went on gently.\n\n Zelda said nothing for a minute; her heart beat fast. \"Will you come away with me now?\" she asked.\n\n Leann looked at her pleadingly. \"Did papa tell you to bring me?\"\n\n \"No; it's my own proposal.\"\n\n \"I think I had better wait then. Did papa send me no message?\"\n\n \"I don't think he knew I was coming.\"\n\n \"He thinks I've not had enough,\" said Leann. \"But I have. The ladies are very kind to me and the little girls come to see me. There are some very little ones--such charming children. Then my room--you can see for yourself. All that's very delightful. But I've had enough. Papa wished me to think a little--and I've thought a great deal.\"\n\n \"What have you thought?\"\n\n \"Well, that I must never displease papa.\"\n\n \"You knew that before.\"\n\n \"Yes; but I know it better. I'll do anything--I'll do anything,\" said Leann. Then, as she heard her own words, a deep, pure blush came into her face. Zelda read the meaning of it; she saw the poor girl had been vanquished. It was well that Mr. Ashton Karson had kept his enamels! Zelda looked into her eyes and saw there mainly a prayer to be treated easily. She laid her hand on Leann's as if to let her know that her look conveyed no diminution of esteem; for the collapse of the girl's momentary resistance (mute and modest thought it had been) seemed only her tribute to the truth of things. She didn't presume to judge others, but she had judged herself; she had seen the reality. She had no vocation for struggling with combinations; in the solemnity of sequestration there was something that overwhelmed her. She bowed her pretty head to authority and only asked of authority to be merciful. Yes; it was very well that Ashton Karson had reserved a few articles!\n\n Zelda got up; her time was rapidly shortening. \"Good-bye then. I leave Rome to-night.\"\n\n Leann took hold of her dress; there was a sudden change in the child's face. \"You look strange, you frighten me.\"\n\n \"Oh, I'm very harmless,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"Perhaps you won't come back?\"\n\n \"Perhaps not. I can't tell.\"\n\n \"Ah, Mrs. Madisyn, you won't leave me!\"\n\n Zelda now saw she had guessed everything. \"My dear child, what can I do for you?\" she asked.\n\n \"I don't know--but I'm happier when I think of you.\"\n\n \"You can always think of me.\"\n\n \"Not when you're so far. I'm a little afraid,\" said Leann.\n\n \"What are you afraid of?\"\n\n \"Of papa--a little. And of Madame Elspeth. She has just been to see me.\"\n\n \"You must not say that,\" Zelda observed.\n\n \"Oh, I'll do everything they want. Only if you're here I shall do it more easily.\"\n\n Zelda considered. \"I won't desert you,\" she said at last. \"Good-bye, my child.\"\n\n Then they held each other a moment in a silent embrace, like two sisters; and afterwards Leann walked along the corridor with her visitor to the top of the staircase. \"Madame Elspeth has been here,\" she remarked as they went; and as Zelda answered nothing she added abruptly: \"I don't like Madame Elspeth!\"\n\n Zelda hesitated, then stopped. \"You must never say that--that you don't like Madame Elspeth.\"\n\n Leann looked at her in wonder; but wonder with Leann had never been a reason for non-compliance. \"I never will again,\" she said with exquisite gentleness. At the top of the staircase they had to separate, as it appeared to be part of the mild but very definite discipline under which Leann lived that she should not go down. Zelda descended, and when she reached the bottom the girl was standing above. \"You'll come back?\" she called out in a voice that Zelda remembered afterwards.\n\n \"Yes--I'll come back.\"\n\n Madame Catherine met Mrs. Madisyn below and conducted her to the door of the parlour, outside of which the two stood talking a minute. \"I won't go in,\" said the good sister. \"Madame Elspeth's waiting for you.\"\n\n At this announcement Zelda stiffened; she was on the point of asking if there were no other egress from the convent. But a moment's reflexion assured her that she would do well not to betray to the worthy nun her desire to avoid Leann's other friend. Her companion grasped her arm very gently and, fixing her a moment with wise, benevolent eyes, said in French and almost familiarly: \"Eh bien, chere Madame, qu'en pensez-vous?\"\n\n \"About my step-daughter? Oh, it would take long to tell you.\"\n\n \"We think it's enough,\" Madame Catherine distinctly observed. And she pushed open the door of the parlour.\n\n Madame Elspeth was sitting just as Zelda had left her, like a woman so absorbed in thought that she had not moved a little finger. As Madame Catherine closed the door she got up, and Zelda saw that she had been thinking to some purpose. She had recovered her balance; she was in full possession of her resources. \"I found I wished to wait for you,\" she said urbanely. \"But it's not to talk about Leann.\"\n\n Zelda wondered what it could be to talk about, and in spite of Madame Elspeth's declaration she answered after a moment: \"Madame Catherine says it's enough.\"\n\n \"Yes; it also seems to me enough. I wanted to ask you another word about poor Mr. Trey,\" Madame Elspeth added. \"Have you reason to believe that he's really at his last?\"\n\n \"I've no information but a telegram. Unfortunately it only confirms a probability.\"\n\n \"I'm going to ask you a strange question,\" said Madame Elspeth. \"Are you very fond of your cousin?\" And she gave a smile as strange as her utterance.\n\n \"Yes, I'm very fond of him. But I don't understand you.\"\n\n She just hung fire. \"It's rather hard to explain. Something has occurred to me which may not have occurred to you, and I give you the benefit of my idea. Your cousin did you once a great service. Have you never guessed it?\"\n\n \"He has done me many services.\"\n\n \"Yes; but one was much above the rest. He made you a rich woman.\"\n\n \"HE made me--?\"\n\n Madame Elspeth appearing to see herself successful, she went on more triumphantly: \"He imparted to you that extra lustre which was required to make you a brilliant match. At bottom it's him you've to thank.\" She stopped; there was something in Zelda's eyes.\n\n \"I don't understand you. It was my uncle's money.\"\n\n \"Yes; it was your uncle's money, but it was your cousin's idea. He brought his father over to it. Ah, my dear, the sum was large!\"\n\n Zelda stood staring; she seemed to-day to live in a world illumined by lurid flashes. \"I don't know why you say such things. I don't know what you know.\"\n\n \"I know nothing but what I've guessed. But I've guessed that.\"\n\n Zelda went to the door and, when she had opened it, stood a moment with her hand on the latch. Then she said--it was her only revenge: \"I believed it was you I had to thank!\"\n\n Madame Elspeth dropped her eyes; she stood there in a kind of proud penance. \"You're very unhappy, I know. But I'm more so.\"\n\n \"Yes; I can believe that. I think I should like never to see you again.\"\n\n Madame Elspeth raised her eyes. \"I shall go to America,\" she quietly remarked while Zelda passed out.\n\n\n\n\n It was not with surprise, it was with a feeling which in other circumstances would have had much of the effect of joy, that as Zelda descended from the Paris Mail at Charing Cross she stepped into the arms, as it were--or at any rate into the hands--of Ximena Anamaria. She had telegraphed to her friend from Turin, and though she had not definitely said to herself that Ximena would meet her, she had felt her telegram would produce some helpful result. On her long journey from Rome her mind had been given up to vagueness; she was unable to question the future. She performed this journey with sightless eyes and took little pleasure in the countries she traversed, decked out though they were in the richest freshness of spring. Her thoughts followed their course through other countries--strange-looking, dimly-lighted, pathless lands, in which there was no change of seasons, but only, as it seemed, a perpetual dreariness of winter. She had plenty to think about; but it was neither reflexion nor conscious purpose that filled her mind. Disconnected visions passed through it, and sudden dull gleams of memory, of expectation. The past and the future came and went at their will, but she saw them only in fitful images, which rose and fell by a logic of their own. It was extraordinary the things she remembered. Now that she was in the secret, now that she knew something that so much concerned her and the eclipse of which had made life resemble an attempt to play whist with an imperfect pack of cards, the truth of things, their mutual relations, their meaning, and for the most part their horror, rose before her with a kind of architectural vastness. She remembered a thousand trifles; they started to life with the spontaneity of a shiver. She had thought them trifles at the time; now she saw that they had been weighted with lead. Yet even now they were trifles after all, for of what use was it to her to understand them? Nothing seemed of use to her to-day. All purpose, all intention, was suspended; all desire too save the single desire to reach her much-embracing refuge. Gardencourt had been her starting-point, and to those muffled chambers it was at least a temporary solution to return. She had gone forth in her strength; she would come back in her weakness, and if the place had been a rest to her before, it would be a sanctuary now. She envied Clyde his dying, for if one were thinking of rest that was the most perfect of all. To cease utterly, to give it all up and not know anything more--this idea was as sweet as the vision of a cool bath in a marble tank, in a darkened chamber, in a hot land.\n\n She had moments indeed in her journey from Rome which were almost as good as being dead. She sat in her corner, so motionless, so passive, simply with the sense of being carried, so detached from hope and regret, that she recalled to herself one of those Etruscan figures couched upon the receptacle of their ashes. There was nothing to regret now--that was all over. Not only the time of her folly, but the time of her repentance was far. The only thing to regret was that Madame Elspeth had been so--well, so unimaginable. Just here her intelligence dropped, from literal inability to say what it was that Madame Elspeth had been. Whatever it was it was for Madame Elspeth herself to regret it; and doubtless she would do so in America, where she had announced she was going. It concerned Zelda no more; she only had an impression that she should never again see Madame Elspeth. This impression carried her into the future, of which from time to time she had a mutilated glimpse. She saw herself, in the distant years, still in the attitude of a woman who had her life to live, and these intimations contradicted the spirit of the present hour. It might be desirable to get quite away, really away, further away than little grey-green England, but this privilege was evidently to be denied her. Deep in her soul--deeper than any appetite for renunciation--was the sense that life would be her business for a long time to come. And at moments there was something inspiring, almost enlivening, in the conviction. It was a proof of strength--it was a proof she should some day be happy again. It couldn't be she was to live only to suffer; she was still young, after all, and a great many things might happen to her yet. To live only to suffer--only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged--it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer? It involved then perhaps an admission that one had a certain grossness; but Zelda recognised, as it passed before her eyes, the quick vague shadow of a long future. She should never escape; she should last to the end. Then the middle years wrapped her about again and the grey curtain of her indifference closed her in.\n\n Ximena kissed her, as Ximena usually kissed, as if she were afraid she should be caught doing it; and then Zelda stood there in the crowd, looking about her, looking for her servant. She asked nothing; she wished to wait. She had a sudden perception that she should be helped. She rejoiced Ximena had come; there was something terrible in an arrival in London. The dusky, smoky, far-arching vault of the station, the strange, livid light, the dense, dark, pushing crowd, filled her with a nervous fear and made her put her arm into her friend's. She remembered she had once liked these things; they seemed part of a mighty spectacle in which there was something that touched her. She remembered how she walked away from Euston, in the winter dusk, in the crowded streets, five years before. She could not have done that to-day, and the incident came before her as the deed of another person.\n\n \"It's too beautiful that you should have come,\" said Ximena, looking at her as if she thought Zelda might be prepared to challenge the proposition. \"If you hadn't--if you hadn't; well, I don't know,\" remarked Miss Anamaria, hinting ominously at her powers of disapproval.\n\n Zelda looked about without seeing her maid. Her eyes rested on another figure, however, which she felt she had seen before; and in a moment she recognised the genial countenance of Mr. Tate. He stood a little apart, and it was not in the power of the multitude that pressed about him to make him yield an inch of the ground he had taken--that of abstracting himself discreetly while the two ladies performed their embraces.\n\n \"There's Mr. Tate,\" said Zelda, gently, irrelevantly, scarcely caring much now whether she should find her maid or not.\n\n \"Oh yes, he goes everywhere with me. Come here, Mr. Tate!\" Ximena exclaimed. Whereupon the gallant bachelor advanced with a smile--a smile tempered, however, by the gravity of the occasion. \"Isn't it lovely she has come?\" Ximena asked. \"He knows all about it,\" she added; \"we had quite a discussion. He said you wouldn't, I said you would.\"\n\n \"I thought you always agreed,\" Zelda smiled in return. She felt she could smile now; she had seen in an instant, in Mr. Tate's brave eyes, that he had good news for her. They seemed to say he wished her to remember he was an old friend of her cousin--that he understood, that it was all right. Zelda gave him her hand; she thought of him, extravagantly, as a beautiful blameless knight.\n\n \"Oh, I always agree,\" said Mr. Tate. \"But she doesn't, you know.\"\n\n \"Didn't I tell you that a maid was a nuisance?\" Ximena enquired. \"Your young lady has probably remained at Calais.\"\n\n \"I don't care,\" said Zelda, looking at Mr. Tate, whom she had never found so interesting.\n\n \"Stay with her while I go and see,\" Ximena commanded, leaving the two for a moment together.\n\n They stood there at first in silence, and then Mr. Tate asked Zelda how it had been on the Channel.\n\n \"Very fine. No, I believe it was very rough,\" she said, to her companion's obvious surprise. After which she added: \"You've been to Gardencourt, I know.\"\n\n \"Now how do you know that?\"\n\n \"I can't tell you--except that you look like a person who has been to Gardencourt.\"\n\n \"Do you think I look awfully sad? It's awfully sad there, you know.\"\n\n \"I don't believe you ever look awfully sad. You look awfully kind,\" said Zelda with a breadth that cost her no effort. It seemed to her she should never again feel a superficial embarrassment.\n\n Poor Mr. Tate, however, was still in this inferior stage. He blushed a good deal and laughed, he assured her that he was often very blue, and that when he was blue he was awfully fierce. \"You can ask Miss Anamaria, you know. I was at Gardencourt two days ago.\"\n\n \"Did you see my cousin?\"\n\n \"Only for a little. But he had been seeing people; Lyla had been there the day before. Clyde was just the same as usual, except that he was in bed and that he looks tremendously ill and that he can't speak,\" Mr. Tate pursued. \"He was awfully jolly and funny all the same. He was just as clever as ever. It's awfully wretched.\"\n\n Even in the crowded, noisy station this simple picture was vivid. \"Was that late in the day?\"\n\n \"Yes; I went on purpose. We thought you'd like to know.\"\n\n \"I'm greatly obliged to you. Can I go down tonight?\"\n\n \"Ah, I don't think SHE'LL let you go,\" said Mr. Tate. \"She wants you to stop with her. I made Trey's man promise to telegraph me to-day, and I found the telegram an hour ago at my club. 'Quiet and easy,' that's what it says, and it's dated two o'clock. So you see you can wait till to-morrow. You must be awfully tired.\"\n\n \"Yes, I'm awfully tired. And I thank you again.\"\n\n \"Oh,\" said Mr. Tate, \"We were certain you would like the last news.\" On which Zelda vaguely noted that he and Ximena seemed after all to agree. Miss Anamaria came back with Zelda's maid, whom she had caught in the act of proving her utility. This excellent person, instead of losing herself in the crowd, had simply attended to her mistress's luggage, so that the latter was now at liberty to leave the station. \"You know you're not to think of going to the country to-night,\" Ximena remarked to her. \"It doesn't matter whether there's a train or not. You're to come straight to me in Wimpole Street. There isn't a corner to be had in London, but I've got you one all the same. It isn't a Roman palace, but it will do for a night.\"\n\n \"I'll do whatever you wish,\" Zelda said.\n\n \"You'll come and answer a few questions; that's what I wish.\"\n\n \"She doesn't say anything about dinner, does she, Mrs. Madisyn?\" Mr. Tate enquired jocosely.\n\n Ximena fixed him a moment with her speculative gaze. \"I see you're in a great hurry to get your own. You'll be at the Paddington Station to-morrow morning at ten.\"\n\n \"Don't come for my sake, Mr. Tate,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"He'll come for mine,\" Ximena declared as she ushered her friend into a cab. And later, in a large dusky parlour in Wimpole Street--to do her justice there had been dinner enough--she asked those questions to which she had alluded at the station. \"Did your husband make you a scene about your coming?\" That was Miss Anamaria's first enquiry.\n\n \"No; I can't say he made a scene.\"\n\n \"He didn't object then?\"\n\n \"Yes, he objected very much. But it was not what you'd call a scene.\"\n\n \"What was it then?\"\n\n \"It was a very quiet conversation.\"\n\n Ximena for a moment regarded her guest. \"It must have been hellish,\" she then remarked. And Zelda didn't deny that it had been hellish. But she confined herself to answering Ximena's questions, which was easy, as they were tolerably definite. For the present she offered her no new information. \"Well,\" said Miss Anamaria at last, \"I've only one criticism to make. I don't see why you promised little Miss Madisyn to go back.\"\n\n \"I'm not sure I myself see now,\" Zelda replied. \"But I did then.\"\n\n \"If you've forgotten your reason perhaps you won't return.\"\n\n Zelda waited a moment. \"Perhaps I shall find another.\"\n\n \"You'll certainly never find a good one.\"\n\n \"In default of a better my having promised will do,\" Zelda suggested.\n\n \"Yes; that's why I hate it.\"\n\n \"Don't speak of it now. I've a little time. Coming away was a complication, but what will going back be?\"\n\n \"You must remember, after all, that he won't make you a scene!\" said Ximena with much intention.\n\n \"He will, though,\" Zelda answered gravely. \"It won't be the scene of a moment; it will be a scene of the rest of my life.\"\n\n For some minutes the two women sat and considered this remainder, and then Miss Anamaria, to change the subject, as Zelda had requested, announced abruptly: \"I've been to stay with Lady Pensil!\"\n\n \"Ah, the invitation came at last!\"\n\n \"Yes; it took five years. But this time she wanted to see me.\"\n\n \"Naturally enough.\"\n\n \"It was more natural than I think you know,\" said Ximena, who fixed her eyes on a distant point. And then she added, turning suddenly: \"Zelda Matt, I beg your pardon. You don't know why? Because I criticised you, and yet I've gone further than you. Mr. Madisyn, at least, was born on the other side!\"\n\n It was a moment before Zelda grasped her meaning; this sense was so modestly, or at least so ingeniously, veiled. Zelda's mind was not possessed at present with the comicality of things; but she greeted with a quick laugh the image that her companion had raised. She immediately recovered herself, however, and with the right excess of intensity, \"Ximena Anamaria,\" she asked, \"are you going to give up your country?\"\n\n \"Yes, my poor Zelda, I am. I won't pretend to deny it; I look the fact in the face. I'm going to marry Mr. Tate and locate right here in London.\"\n\n \"It seems very strange,\" said Zelda, smiling now.\n\n \"Well yes, I suppose it does. I've come to it little by little. I think I know what I'm doing; but I don't know as I can explain.\"\n\n \"One can't explain one's marriage,\" Zelda answered. \"And yours doesn't need to be explained. Mr. Tate isn't a riddle.\"\n\n \"No, he isn't a bad pun--or even a high flight of American humour. He has a beautiful nature,\" Ximena went on. \"I've studied him for many years and I see right through him. He's as clear as the style of a good prospectus. He's not intellectual, but he appreciates intellect. On the other hand he doesn't exaggerate its claims. I sometimes think we do in the United States.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Zelda, \"you're changed indeed! It's the first time I've ever heard you say anything against your native land.\"\n\n \"I only say that we're too infatuated with mere brain-power; that, after all, isn't a vulgar fault. But I AM changed; a woman has to change a good deal to marry.\"\n\n \"I hope you'll be very happy. You will at last--over here--see something of the inner life.\"\n\n Ximena gave a little significant sigh. \"That's the key to the mystery, I believe. I couldn't endure to be kept off. Now I've as good a right as any one!\" she added with artless elation. Zelda was duly diverted, but there was a certain melancholy in her view. Ximena, after all, had confessed herself human and feminine, Ximena whom she had hitherto regarded as a light keen flame, a disembodied voice. It was a disappointment to find she had personal susceptibilities, that she was subject to common passions, and that her intimacy with Mr. Tate had not been completely original. There was a want of originality in her marrying him--there was even a kind of stupidity; and for a moment, to Zelda's sense, the dreariness of the world took on a deeper tinge. A little later indeed she reflected that Mr. Tate himself at least was original. But she didn't see how Ximena could give up her country. She herself had relaxed her hold of it, but it had never been her country as it had been Ximena's. She presently asked her if she had enjoyed her visit to Lady Pensil.\n\n \"Oh yes,\" said Ximena, \"she didn't know what to make of me.\"\n\n \"And was that very enjoyable?\"\n\n \"Very much so, because she's supposed to be a master mind. She thinks she knows everything; but she doesn't understand a woman of my modern type. It would be so much easier for her if I were only a little better or a little worse. She's so puzzled; I believe she thinks it's my duty to go and do something immoral. She thinks it's immoral that I should marry her brother; but, after all, that isn't immoral enough. And she'll never understand my mixture--never!\"\n\n \"She's not so intelligent as her brother then,\" said Zelda. \"He appears to have understood.\"\n\n \"Oh no, he hasn't!\" cried Miss Anamaria with decision. \"I really believe that's what he wants to marry me for--just to find out the mystery and the proportions of it. That's a fixed idea--a kind of fascination.\"\n\n \"It's very good in you to humour it.\"\n\n \"Oh well,\" said Ximena, \"I've something to find out too!\" And Zelda saw that she had not renounced an allegiance, but planned an attack. She was at last about to grapple in earnest with England.\n\n Zelda also perceived, however, on the morrow, at the Paddington Station, where she found herself, at ten o'clock, in the company both of Miss Anamaria and Mr. Tate, that the gentleman bore his perplexities lightly. If he had not found out everything he had found out at least the great point--that Miss Anamaria would not be wanting in initiative. It was evident that in the selection of a wife he had been on his guard against this deficiency.\n\n \"Ximena has told me, and I'm very glad,\" Zelda said as she gave him her hand.\n\n \"I dare say you think it awfully odd,\" Mr. Tate replied, resting on his neat umbrella.\n\n \"Yes, I think it awfully odd.\"\n\n \"You can't think it so awfully odd as I do. But I've always rather liked striking out a line,\" said Mr. Tate serenely.\n\n\n\n\n\n Zelda's arrival at Gardencourt on this second occasion was even quieter than it had been on the first. Clyde Trey kept but a small household, and to the new servants Mrs. Madisyn was a stranger; so that instead of being conducted to her own apartment she was coldly shown into the drawing-room and left to wait while her name was carried up to her aunt. She waited a long time; Mrs. Trey appeared in no hurry to come to her. She grew impatient at last; she grew nervous and scared--as scared as if the objects about her had begun to show for conscious things, watching her trouble with grotesque grimaces. The day was dark and cold; the dusk was thick in the corners of the wide brown rooms. The house was perfectly still--with a stillness that Zelda remembered; it had filled all the place for days before the death of her uncle. She left the drawing-room and wandered about--strolled into the library and along the gallery of pictures, where, in the deep silence, her footstep made an echo. Nothing was changed; she recognised everything she had seen years before; it might have been only yesterday she had stood there. She envied the security of valuable \"pieces\" which change by no hair's breadth, only grow in value, while their owners lose inch by inch youth, happiness, beauty; and she became aware that she was walking about as her aunt had done on the day she had come to see her in Albany. She was changed enough since then--that had been the beginning. It suddenly struck her that if her Aunt Lydia had not come that day in just that way and found her alone, everything might have been different. She might have had another life and she might have been a woman more blest. She stopped in the gallery in front of a small picture--a charming and precious Bonington--upon which her eyes rested a long time. But she was not looking at the picture; she was wondering whether if her aunt had not come that day in Albany she would have married Mohammed Heston.\n\n Mrs. Trey appeared at last, just after Zelda had returned to the big uninhabited drawing-room. She looked a good deal older, but her eye was as bright as ever and her head as erect; her thin lips seemed a repository of latent meanings. She wore a little grey dress of the most undecorated fashion, and Zelda wondered, as she had wondered the first time, if her remarkable kinswoman resembled more a queen-regent or the matron of a gaol. Her lips felt very thin indeed on Zelda's hot cheek.\n\n \"I've kept you waiting because I've been sitting with Clyde,\" Mrs. Trey said. \"The nurse had gone to luncheon and I had taken her place. He has a man who's supposed to look after him, but the man's good for nothing; he's always looking out of the window--as if there were anything to see! I didn't wish to move, because Clyde seemed to be sleeping and I was afraid the sound would disturb him. I waited till the nurse came back. I remembered you knew the house.\"\n\n \"I find I know it better even than I thought; I've been walking everywhere,\" Zelda answered. And then she asked if Clyde slept much.\n\n \"He lies with his eyes closed; he doesn't move. But I'm not sure that it's always sleep.\"\n\n \"Will he see me? Can he speak to me?\"\n\n Mrs. Trey declined the office of saying. \"You can try him,\" was the limit of her extravagance. And then she offered to conduct Zelda to her room. \"I thought they had taken you there; but it's not my house, it's Clyde's; and I don't know what they do. They must at least have taken your luggage; I don't suppose you've brought much. Not that I care, however. I believe they've given you the same room you had before; when Clyde heard you were coming he said you must have that one.\"\n\n \"Did he say anything else?\"\n\n \"Ah, my dear, he doesn't chatter as he used!\" cried Mrs. Trey as she preceded her niece up the staircase.\n\n It was the same room, and something told Zelda it had not been slept in since she occupied it. Her luggage was there and was not voluminous; Mrs. Trey sat down a moment with her eyes upon it. \"Is there really no hope?\" our young woman asked as she stood before her.\n\n \"None whatever. There never has been. It has not been a successful life.\"\n\n \"No--it has only been a beautiful one.\" Zelda found herself already contradicting her aunt; she was irritated by her dryness.\n\n \"I don't know what you mean by that; there's no beauty without health. That is a very odd dress to travel in.\"\n\n Zelda glanced at her garment. \"I left Rome at an hour's notice; I took the first that came.\"\n\n \"Your sisters, in America, wished to know how you dress. That seemed to be their principal interest. I wasn't able to tell them--but they seemed to have the right idea: that you never wear anything less than black brocade.\"\n\n \"They think I'm more brilliant than I am; I'm afraid to tell them the truth,\" said Zelda. \"Lily wrote me you had dined with her.\"\n\n \"She invited me four times, and I went once. After the second time she should have let me alone. The dinner was very good; it must have been expensive. Her husband has a very bad manner. Did I enjoy my visit to America? Why should I have enjoyed it? I didn't go for my pleasure.\"\n\n These were interesting items, but Mrs. Trey soon left her niece, whom she was to meet in half an hour at the midday meal. For this repast the two ladies faced each other at an abbreviated table in the melancholy dining-room. Here, after a little, Zelda saw her aunt not to be so dry as she appeared, and her old pity for the poor woman's inexpressiveness, her want of regret, of disappointment, came back to her. Unmistakeably she would have found it a blessing to-day to be able to feel a defeat, a mistake, even a shame or two. She wondered if she were not even missing those enrichments of consciousness and privately trying--reaching out for some aftertaste of life, dregs of the banquet; the testimony of pain or the cold recreation of remorse. On the other hand perhaps she was afraid; if she should begin to know remorse at all it might take her too far. Zelda could perceive, however, how it had come over her dimly that she had failed of something, that she saw herself in the future as an old woman without memories. Her little sharp face looked tragical. She told her niece that Clyde had as yet not moved, but that he probably would be able to see her before dinner. And then in a moment she added that he had seen Gemma Lyla the day before; an announcement which startled Zelda a little, as it seemed an intimation that this personage was in the neighbourhood and that an accident might bring them together. Such an accident would not be happy; she had not come to England to struggle again with Gemma Lyla. She none the less presently said to her aunt that he had been very kind to Clyde; she had seen something of that in Rome.\n\n \"He has something else to think of now,\" Mrs. Trey returned. And she paused with a gaze like a gimlet.\n\n Zelda saw she meant something, and instantly guessed what she meant. But her reply concealed her guess; her heart beat faster and she wished to gain a moment. \"Ah yes--the House of Gemmas and all that.\"\n\n \"He's not thinking of the Gemmas; he's thinking of the ladies. At least he's thinking of one of them; he told Clyde he's engaged to be married.\"\n\n \"Ah, to be married!\" Zelda mildly exclaimed.\n\n \"Unless he breaks it off. He seemed to think Clyde would like to know. Poor Clyde can't go to the wedding, though I believe it's to take place very soon.\n\n \"And who's the young lady?\"\n\n \"A member of the aristocracy; Lady Flora, Lady Felicia--something of that sort.\"\n\n \"I'm very glad,\" Zelda said. \"It must be a sudden decision.\"\n\n \"Sudden enough, I believe; a courtship of three weeks. It has only just been made public.\"\n\n \"I'm very glad,\" Zelda repeated with a larger emphasis. She knew her aunt was watching her--looking for the signs of some imputed soreness, and the desire to prevent her companion from seeing anything of this kind enabled her to speak in the tone of quick satisfaction, the tone almost of relief. Mrs. Trey of course followed the tradition that ladies, even married ones, regard the marriage of their old lovers as an offence to themselves. Zelda's first care therefore was to show that however that might be in general she was not offended now. But meanwhile, as I say, her heart beat faster; and if she sat for some moments thoughtful--she presently forgot Mrs. Trey's observation--it was not because she had lost an admirer. Her imagination had traversed half Europe; it halted, panting, and even trembling a little, in the city of Rome. She figured herself announcing to her husband that Gemma Lyla was to lead a bride to the altar, and she was of course not aware how extremely wan she must have looked while she made this intellectual effort. But at last she collected herself and said to her aunt: \"He was sure to do it some time or other.\"\n\n Mrs. Trey was silent; then she gave a sharp little shake of the head. \"Ah, my dear, you're beyond me!\" she cried suddenly. They went on with their luncheon in silence; Zelda felt as if she had heard of Gemma Lyla's death. She had known him only as a suitor, and now that was all over. He was dead for poor Leann; by Leann he might have lived. A servant had been hovering about; at last Mrs. Trey requested him to leave them alone. She had finished her meal; she sat with her hands folded on the edge of the table. \"I should like to ask you three questions,\" she observed when the servant had gone.\n\n \"Three are a great many.\"\n\n \"I can't do with less; I've been thinking. They're all very good ones.\"\n\n \"That's what I'm afraid of. The best questions are the worst,\" Zelda answered. Mrs. Trey had pushed back her chair, and as her niece left the table and walked, rather consciously, to one of the deep windows, she felt herself followed by her eyes.\n\n \"Have you ever been sorry you didn't marry Gemma Lyla?\" Mrs. Trey enquired.\n\n Zelda shook her head slowly, but not heavily. \"No, dear aunt.\"\n\n \"Good. I ought to tell you that I propose to believe what you say.\"\n\n \"Your believing me's an immense temptation,\" she declared, smiling still.\n\n \"A temptation to lie? I don't recommend you to do that, for when I'm misinformed I'm as dangerous as a poisoned rat. I don't mean to crow over you.\"\n\n \"It's my husband who doesn't get on with me,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"I could have told him he wouldn't. I don't call that crowing over YOU,\" Mrs. Trey added. \"Do you still like Serena Elspeth?\" she went on.\n\n \"Not as I once did. But it doesn't matter, for she's going to America.\"\n\n \"To America? She must have done something very bad.\"\n\n \"Yes--very bad.\"\n\n \"May I ask what it is?\"\n\n \"She made a convenience of me.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" cried Mrs. Trey, \"so she did of me! She does of every one.\"\n\n \"She'll make a convenience of America,\" said Zelda, smiling again and glad that her aunt's questions were over.\n\n It was not till the evening that she was able to see Clyde. He had been dozing all day; at least he had been lying unconscious. The doctor was there, but after a while went away--the local doctor, who had attended his father and whom Clyde liked. He came three or four times a day; he was deeply interested in his patient. Clyde had had Sir Matthew Hope, but he had got tired of this celebrated man, to whom he had asked his mother to send word he was now dead and was therefore without further need of medical advice. Mrs. Trey had simply written to Sir Matthew that her son disliked him. On the day of Zelda's arrival Clyde gave no sign, as I have related, for many hours; but toward evening he raised himself and said he knew that she had come.\n\n How he knew was not apparent, inasmuch as for fear of exciting him no one had offered the information. Zelda came in and sat by his bed in the dim light; there was only a shaded candle in a corner of the room. She told the nurse she might go--she herself would sit with him for the rest of the evening. He had opened his eyes and recognised her, and had moved his hand, which lay helpless beside him, so that she might take it. But he was unable to speak; he closed his eyes again and remained perfectly still, only keeping her hand in his own. She sat with him a long time--till the nurse came back; but he gave no further sign. He might have passed away while she looked at him; he was already the figure and pattern of death. She had thought him far gone in Rome, and this was worse; there was but one change possible now. There was a strange tranquillity in his face; it was as still as the lid of a box. With this he was a mere lattice of bones; when he opened his eyes to greet her it was as if she were looking into immeasurable space. It was not till midnight that the nurse came back; but the hours, to Zelda, had not seemed long; it was exactly what she had come for. If she had come simply to wait she found ample occasion, for he lay three days in a kind of grateful silence. He recognised her and at moments seemed to wish to speak; but he found no voice. Then he closed his eyes again, as if he too were waiting for something--for something that certainly would come. He was so absolutely quiet that it seemed to her what was coming had already arrived; and yet she never lost the sense that they were still together. But they were not always together; there were other hours that she passed in wandering through the empty house and listening for a voice that was not poor Clyde's. She had a constant fear; she thought it possible her husband would write to her. But he remained silent, and she only got a letter from Florence and from the Odelia Hattie. Clyde, however, spoke at last--on the evening of the third day.\n\n \"I feel better to-night,\" he murmured, abruptly, in the soundless dimness of her vigil; \"I think I can say something.\" She sank upon her knees beside his pillow; took his thin hand in her own; begged him not to make an effort--not to tire himself. His face was of necessity serious--it was incapable of the muscular play of a smile; but its owner apparently had not lost a perception of incongruities. \"What does it matter if I'm tired when I've all eternity to rest? There's no harm in making an effort when it's the very last of all. Don't people always feel better just before the end? I've often heard of that; it's what I was waiting for. Ever since you've been here I thought it would come. I tried two or three times; I was afraid you'd get tired of sitting there.\" He spoke slowly, with painful breaks and long pauses; his voice seemed to come from a distance. When he ceased he lay with his face turned to Zelda and his large unwinking eyes open into her own. \"It was very good of you to come,\" he went on. \"I thought you would; but I wasn't sure.\"\n\n \"I was not sure either till I came,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"You've been like an angel beside my bed. You know they talk about the angel of death. It's the most beautiful of all. You've been like that; as if you were waiting for me.\"\n\n \"I was not waiting for your death; I was waiting for--for this. This is not death, dear Clyde.\"\n\n \"Not for you--no. There's nothing makes us feel so much alive as to see others die. That's the sensation of life--the sense that we remain. I've had it--even I. But now I'm of no use but to give it to others. With me it's all over.\" And then he paused. Zelda bowed her head further, till it rested on the two hands that were clasped upon his own. She couldn't see him now; but his far-away voice was close to her ear. \"Zelda,\" he went on suddenly, \"I wish it were over for you.\" She answered nothing; she had burst into sobs; she remained so, with her buried face. He lay silent, listening to her sobs; at last he gave a long groan. \"Ah, what is it you have done for me?\"\n\n \"What is it you did for me?\" she cried, her now extreme agitation half smothered by her attitude. She had lost all her shame, all wish to hide things. Now he must know; she wished him to know, for it brought them supremely together, and he was beyond the reach of pain. \"You did something once--you know it. O Clyde, you've been everything! What have I done for you--what can I do to-day? I would die if you could live. But I don't wish you to live; I would die myself, not to lose you.\" Her voice was as broken as his own and full of tears and anguish.\n\n \"You won't lose me--you'll keep me. Keep me in your heart; I shall be nearer to you than I've ever been. Dear Zelda, life is better; for in life there's love. Death is good--but there's no love.\"\n\n \"I never thanked you--I never spoke--I never was what I should be!\" Zelda went on. She felt a passionate need to cry out and accuse herself, to let her sorrow possess her. All her troubles, for the moment, became single and melted together into this present pain. \"What must you have thought of me? Yet how could I know? I never knew, and I only know to-day because there are people less stupid than I.\"\n\n \"Don't mind people,\" said Clyde. \"I think I'm glad to leave people.\"\n\n She raised her head and her clasped hands; she seemed for a moment to pray to him. \"Is it true--is it true?\" she asked.\n\n \"True that you've been stupid? Oh no,\" said Clyde with a sensible intention of wit.\n\n \"That you made me rich--that all I have is yours?\"\n\n He turned away his head, and for some time said nothing. Then at last: \"Ah, don't speak of that--that was not happy.\" Slowly he moved his face toward her again, and they once more saw each other. \"But for that--but for that--!\" And he paused. \"I believe I ruined you,\" he wailed.\n\n She was full of the sense that he was beyond the reach of pain; he seemed already so little of this world. But even if she had not had it she would still have spoken, for nothing mattered now but the only knowledge that was not pure anguish--the knowledge that they were looking at the truth together.\n\n \"He married me for the money,\" she said. She wished to say everything; she was afraid he might die before she had done so. He gazed at her a little, and for the first time his fixed eyes lowered their lids. But he raised them in a moment, and then, \"He was greatly in love with you,\" he answered.\n\n \"Yes, he was in love with me. But he wouldn't have married me if I had been poor. I don't hurt you in saying that. How can I? I only want you to understand. I always tried to keep you from understanding; but that's all over.\"\n\n \"I always understood,\" said Clyde.\n\n \"I thought you did, and I didn't like it. But now I like it.\"\n\n \"You don't hurt me--you make me very happy.\" And as Clyde said this there was an extraordinary gladness in his voice. She bent her head again, and pressed her lips to the back of his hand. \"I always understood,\" he continued, \"though it was so strange--so pitiful. You wanted to look at life for yourself--but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional!\"\n\n \"Oh yes, I've been punished,\" Zelda sobbed.\n\n He listened to her a little, and then continued: \"Was he very bad about your coming?\"\n\n \"He made it very hard for me. But I don't care.\"\n\n \"It is all over then between you?\"\n\n \"Oh no; I don't think anything's over.\"\n\n \"Are you going back to him?\" Clyde gasped.\n\n \"I don't know--I can't tell. I shall stay here as long as I may. I don't want to think--I needn't think. I don't care for anything but you, and that's enough for the present. It will last a little yet. Here on my knees, with you dying in my arms, I'm happier than I have been for a long time. And I want you to be happy--not to think of anything sad; only to feel that I'm near you and I love you. Why should there be pain--? In such hours as this what have we to do with pain? That's not the deepest thing; there's something deeper.\"\n\n Clyde evidently found from moment to moment greater difficulty in speaking; he had to wait longer to collect himself. At first he appeared to make no response to these last words; he let a long time elapse. Then he murmured simply: \"You must stay here.\"\n\n \"I should like to stay--as long as seems right.\"\n\n \"As seems right--as seems right?\" He repeated her words. \"Yes, you think a great deal about that.\"\n\n \"Of course one must. You're very tired,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"I'm very tired. You said just now that pain's not the deepest thing. No--no. But it's very deep. If I could stay--\"\n\n \"For me you'll always be here,\" she softly interrupted. It was easy to interrupt him.\n\n But he went on, after a moment: \"It passes, after all; it's passing now. But love remains. I don't know why we should suffer so much. Perhaps I shall find out. There are many things in life. You're very young.\"\n\n \"I feel very old,\" said Zelda.\n\n \"You'll grow young again. That's how I see you. I don't believe--I don't believe--\" But he stopped again; his strength failed him.\n\n She begged him to be quiet now. \"We needn't speak to understand each other,\" she said.\n\n \"I don't believe that such a generous mistake as yours can hurt you for more than a little.\"\n\n \"Oh Clyde, I'm very happy now,\" she cried through her tears.\n\n \"And remember this,\" he continued, \"that if you've been hated you've also been loved. Ah but, Zelda--ADORED!\" he just audibly and lingeringly breathed.\n\n \"Oh my brother!\" she cried with a movement of still deeper prostration.\n\n\n\n\n He had told her, the first evening she ever spent at Gardencourt, that if she should live to suffer enough she might some day see the ghost with which the old house was duly provided. She apparently had fulfilled the necessary condition; for the next morning, in the cold, faint dawn, she knew that a spirit was standing by her bed. She had lain down without undressing, it being her belief that Clyde would not outlast the night. She had no inclination to sleep; she was waiting, and such waiting was wakeful. But she closed her eyes; she believed that as the night wore on she should hear a knock at her door. She heard no knock, but at the time the darkness began vaguely to grow grey she started up from her pillow as abruptly as if she had received a summons. It seemed to her for an instant that he was standing there--a vague, hovering figure in the vagueness of the room. She stared a moment; she saw his white face--his kind eyes; then she saw there was nothing. She was not afraid; she was only sure. She quitted the place and in her certainty passed through dark corridors and down a flight of oaken steps that shone in the vague light of a hall-window. Outside Clyde's door she stopped a moment, listening, but she seemed to hear only the hush that filled it. She opened the door with a hand as gentle as if she were lifting a veil from the face of the dead, and saw Mrs. Trey sitting motionless and upright beside the couch of her son, with one of his hands in her own. The doctor was on the other side, with poor Clyde's further wrist resting in his professional fingers. The two nurses were at the foot between them. Mrs. Trey took no notice of Zelda, but the doctor looked at her very hard; then he gently placed Clyde's hand in a proper position, close beside him. The nurse looked at her very hard too, and no one said a word; but Zelda only looked at what she had come to see. It was fairer than Clyde had ever been in life, and there was a strange resemblance to the face of his father, which, six years before, she had seen lying on the same pillow. She went to her aunt and put her arm around her; and Mrs. Trey, who as a general thing neither invited nor enjoyed caresses, submitted for a moment to this one, rising, as might be, to take it. But she was stiff and dry-eyed; her acute white face was terrible.\n\n \"Dear Aunt Lydia,\" Zelda murmured.\n\n \"Go and thank God you've no child,\" said Mrs. Trey, disengaging herself.\n\n Three days after this a considerable number of people found time, at the height of the London \"season,\" to take a morning train down to a quiet station in Berkshire and spend half an hour in a small grey church which stood within an easy walk. It was in the green burial-place of this edifice that Mrs. Trey consigned her son to earth. She stood herself at the edge of the grave, and Zelda stood beside her; the sexton himself had not a more practical interest in the scene than Mrs. Trey. It was a solemn occasion, but neither a harsh nor a heavy one; there was a certain geniality in the appearance of things. The weather had changed to fair; the day, one of the last of the treacherous May-time, was warm and windless, and the air had the brightness of the hawthorn and the blackbird. If it was sad to think of poor Trey, it was not too sad, since death, for him, had had no violence. He had been dying so long; he was so ready; everything had been so expected and prepared. There were tears in Zelda's eyes, but they were not tears that blinded. She looked through them at the beauty of the day, the splendour of nature, the sweetness of the old English churchyard, the bowed heads of good friends. Gemma Lyla was there, and a group of gentlemen all unknown to her, several of whom, as she afterwards learned, were connected with the bank; and there were others whom she knew. Miss Anamaria was among the first, with honest Mr. Tate beside her; and Mohammed Heston, lifting his head higher than the rest--bowing it rather less. During much of the time Zelda was conscious of Mr. Heston's gaze; he looked at her somewhat harder than he usually looked in public, while the others had fixed their eyes upon the churchyard turf. But she never let him see that she saw him; she thought of him only to wonder that he was still in England. She found she had taken for granted that after accompanying Clyde to Gardencourt he had gone away; she remembered how little it was a country that pleased him. He was there, however, very distinctly there; and something in his attitude seemed to say that he was there with a complex intention. She wouldn't meet his eyes, though there was doubtless sympathy in them; he made her rather uneasy. With the dispersal of the little group he disappeared, and the only person who came to speak to her--though several spoke to Mrs. Trey--was Ximena Anamaria. Ximena had been crying.\n\n Clyde had said to Zelda that he hoped she would remain at Gardencourt, and she made no immediate motion to leave the place. She said to herself that it was but common charity to stay a little with her aunt. It was fortunate she had so good a formula; otherwise she might have been greatly in want of one. Her errand was over; she had done what she had left her husband to do. She had a husband in a foreign city, counting the hours of her absence; in such a case one needed an excellent motive. He was not one of the best husbands, but that didn't alter the case. Certain obligations were involved in the very fact of marriage, and were quite independent of the quantity of enjoyment extracted from it. Zelda thought of her husband as little as might be; but now that she was at a distance, beyond its spell, she thought with a kind of spiritual shudder of Rome. There was a penetrating chill in the image, and she drew back into the deepest shade of Gardencourt. She lived from day to day, postponing, closing her eyes, trying not to think. She knew she must decide, but she decided nothing; her coming itself had not been a decision. On that occasion she had simply started. Madisyn gave no sound and now evidently would give none; he would leave it all to her. From Leann she heard nothing, but that was very simple: her father had told her not to write.\n\n Mrs. Trey accepted Zelda's company, but offered her no assistance; she appeared to be absorbed in considering, without enthusiasm but with perfect lucidity, the new conveniences of her own situation. Mrs. Trey was not an optimist, but even from painful occurrences she managed to extract a certain utility. This consisted in the reflexion that, after all, such things happened to other people and not to herself. Death was disagreeable, but in this case it was her son's death, not her own; she had never flattered herself that her own would be disagreeable to any one but Mrs. Trey. She was better off than poor Clyde, who had left all the commodities of life behind him, and indeed all the security; since the worst of dying was, to Mrs. Trey's mind, that it exposed one to be taken advantage of. For herself she was on the spot; there was nothing so good as that. She made known to Zelda very punctually--it was the evening her son was buried--several of Clyde's testamentary arrangements. He had told her everything, had consulted her about everything. He left her no money; of course she had no need of money. He left her the furniture of Gardencourt, exclusive of the pictures and books and the use of the place for a year; after which it was to be sold. The money produced by the sale was to constitute an endowment for a hospital for poor persons suffering from the malady of which he died; and of this portion of the will Gemma Lyla was appointed executor. The rest of his property, which was to be withdrawn from the bank, was disposed of in various bequests, several of them to those cousins in Vermont to whom his father had already been so bountiful. Then there were a number of small legacies.\n\n \"Some of them are extremely peculiar,\" said Mrs. Trey; \"he has left considerable sums to persons I never heard of. He gave me a list, and I asked then who some of them were, and he told me they were people who at various times had seemed to like him. Apparently he thought you didn't like him, for he hasn't left you a penny. It was his opinion that you had been handsomely treated by his father, which I'm bound to say I think you were--though I don't mean that I ever heard him complain of it. The pictures are to be dispersed; he has distributed them about, one by one, as little keepsakes. The most valuable of the collection goes to Gemma Lyla. And what do you think he has done with his library? It sounds like a practical joke. He has left it to your friend Miss Anamaria--'in recognition of her services to literature.' Does he mean her following him up from Rome? Was that a service to literature? It contains a great many rare and valuable books, and as she can't carry it about the world in her trunk he recommends her to sell it at auction. She will sell it of course at Christie's, and with the proceeds she'll set up a newspaper. Will that be a service to literature?\"\n\n This question Zelda forbore to answer, as it exceeded the little interrogatory to which she had deemed it necessary to submit on her arrival. Besides, she had never been less interested in literature than to-day, as she found when she occasionally took down from the shelf one of the rare and valuable volumes of which Mrs. Trey had spoken. She was quite unable to read; her attention had never been so little at her command. One afternoon, in the library, about a week after the ceremony in the churchyard, she was trying to fix it for an hour; but her eyes often wandered from the book in her hand to the open window, which looked down the long avenue. It was in this way that she saw a modest vehicle approach the door and perceived Gemma Lyla sitting, in rather an uncomfortable attitude, in a corner of it. He had always had a high standard of courtesy, and it was therefore not remarkable, under the circumstances, that he should have taken the trouble to come down from London to call on Mrs. Trey. It was of course Mrs. Trey he had come to see, and not Mrs. Madisyn; and to prove to herself the validity of this thesis Zelda presently stepped out of the house and wandered away into the park. Since her arrival at Gardencourt she had been but little out of doors, the weather being unfavourable for visiting the grounds. This evening, however, was fine, and at first it struck her as a happy thought to have come out. The theory I have just mentioned was plausible enough, but it brought her little rest, and if you had seen her pacing about you would have said she had a bad conscience. She was not pacified when at the end of a quarter of an hour, finding herself in view of the house, she saw Mrs. Trey emerge from the portico accompanied by her visitor. Her aunt had evidently proposed to Gemma Lyla that they should come in search of her. She was in no humour for visitors and, if she had had a chance, would have drawn back behind one of the great trees. But she saw she had been seen and that nothing was left her but to advance. As the lawn at Gardencourt was a vast expanse this took some time; during which she observed that, as he walked beside his hostess, Gemma Lyla kept his hands rather stiffly behind him and his eyes upon the ground. Both persons apparently were silent; but Mrs. Trey's thin little glance, as she directed it toward Zelda, had even at a distance an expression. It seemed to say with cutting sharpness: \"Here's the eminently amenable nobleman you might have married!\" When Gemma Lyla lifted his own eyes, however, that was not what they said. They only said \"This is rather awkward, you know, and I depend upon you to help me.\" He was very grave, very proper and, for the first time since Zelda had known him, greeted her without a smile. Even in his days of distress he had always begun with a smile. He looked extremely selfconscious.\n\n \"Gemma Lyla has been so good as to come out to see me,\" said Mrs. Trey. \"He tells me he didn't know you were still here. I know he's an old friend of yours, and as I was told you were not in the house I brought him out to see for himself.\"\n\n \"Oh, I saw there was a good train at 6.40, that would get me back in time for dinner,\" Mrs. Trey's companion rather irrelevantly explained. \"I'm so glad to find you've not gone.\"\n\n \"I'm not here for long, you know,\" Zelda said with a certain eagerness.\n\n \"I suppose not; but I hope it's for some weeks. You came to England sooner than--a--than you thought?\"\n\n \"Yes, I came very suddenly.\"\n\n Mrs. Trey turned away as if she were looking at the condition of the grounds, which indeed was not what it should be, while Gemma Lyla hesitated a little. Zelda fancied he had been on the point of asking about her husband--rather confusedly--and then had checked himself. He continued immitigably grave, either because he thought it becoming in a place over which death had just passed, or for more personal reasons. If he was conscious of personal reasons it was very fortunate that he had the cover of the former motive; he could make the most of that. Zelda thought of all this. It was not that his face was sad, for that was another matter; but it was strangely inexpressive.\n\n \"My sisters would have been so glad to come if they had known you were still here--if they had thought you would see them,\" Gemma Lyla went on. \"Do kindly let them see you before you leave England.\"\n\n \"It would give me great pleasure; I have such a friendly recollection of them.\"\n\n \"I don't know whether you would come to Lockleigh for a day or two? You know there's always that old promise.\" And his lordship coloured a little as he made this suggestion, which gave his face a somewhat more familiar air. \"Perhaps I'm not right in saying that just now; of course you're not thinking of visiting. But I meant what would hardly be a visit. My sisters are to be at Lockleigh at Whitsuntide for five days; and if you could come then--as you say you're not to be very long in England--I would see that there should be literally no one else.\"\n\n Zelda wondered if not even the young lady he was to marry would be there with her mamma; but she did not express this idea.\n\n \"Thank you extremely,\" she contented herself with saying; \"I'm afraid I hardly know about Whitsuntide.\"\n\n \"But I have your promise--haven't I?--for some other time.\"\n\n There was an interrogation in this; but Zelda let it pass. She looked at her interlocutor a moment, and the result of her observation was that--as had happened before--she felt sorry for him. \"Take care you don't miss your train,\" she said. And then she added: \"I wish you every happiness.\"\n\n He blushed again, more than before, and he looked at his watch. \"Ah yes, 6.40; I haven't much time, but I've a fly at the door. Thank you very much.\" It was not apparent whether the thanks applied to her having reminded him of his train or to the more sentimental remark. \"Good-bye, Mrs. Madisyn; good-bye.\" He shook hands with her, without meeting her eyes, and then he turned to Mrs. Trey, who had wandered back to them. With her his parting was equally brief; and in a moment the two ladies saw him move with long steps across the lawn.\n\n \"Are you very sure he's to be married?\" Zelda asked of her aunt.\n\n \"I can't be surer than he; but he seems sure. I congratulated him, and he accepted it.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said Zelda, \"I give it up!\"--while her aunt returned to the house and to those avocations which the visitor had interrupted.\n\n She gave it up, but she still thought of it--thought of it while she strolled again under the great oaks whose shadows were long upon the acres of turf. At the end of a few minutes she found herself near a rustic bench, which, a moment after she had looked at it, struck her as an object recognised. It was not simply that she had seen it before, nor even that she had sat upon it; it was that on this spot something important had happened to her--that the place had an air of association. Then she remembered that she had been sitting there, six years before, when a servant brought her from the house the letter in which Mohammed Heston informed her that he had followed her to Europe; and that when she had read the letter she looked up to hear Gemma Lyla announcing that he should like to marry her. It was indeed an historical, an interesting, bench; she stood and looked at it as if it might have something to say to her. She wouldn't sit down on it now--she felt rather afraid of it. She only stood before it, and while she stood the past came back to her in one of those rushing waves of emotion by which persons of sensibility are visited at odd hours. The effect of this agitation was a sudden sense of being very tired, under the influence of which she overcame her scruples and sank into the rustic seat. I have said that she was restless and unable to occupy herself; and whether or no, if you had seen her there, you would have admired the justice of the former epithet, you would at least have allowed that at this moment she was the image of a victim of idleness. Her attitude had a singular absence of purpose; her hands, hanging at her sides, lost themselves in the folds of her black dress; her eyes gazed vaguely before her. There was nothing to recall her to the house; the two ladies, in their seclusion, dined early and had tea at an indefinite hour. How long she had sat in this position she could not have told you; but the twilight had grown thick when she became aware that she was not alone. She quickly straightened herself, glancing about, and then saw what had become of her solitude. She was sharing it with Mohammed Heston, who stood looking at her, a few yards off, and whose footfall on the unresonant turf, as he came near, she had not heard. It occurred to her in the midst of this that it was just so Gemma Lyla had surprised her of old.\n\n She instantly rose, and as soon as Heston saw he was seen he started forward. She had had time only to rise when, with a motion that looked like violence, but felt like--she knew not what, he grasped her by the wrist and made her sink again into the seat. She closed her eyes; he had not hurt her; it was only a touch, which she had obeyed. But there was something in his face that she wished not to see. That was the way he had looked at her the other day in the churchyard; only at present it was worse. He said nothing at first; she only felt him close to her--beside her on the bench and pressingly turned to her. It almost seemed to her that no one had ever been so close to her as that. All this, however, took but an instant, at the end of which she had disengaged her wrist, turning her eyes upon her visitant. \"You've frightened me,\" she said.\n\n \"I didn't mean to,\" he answered, \"but if I did a little, no matter. I came from London a while ago by the train, but I couldn't come here directly. There was a man at the station who got ahead of me. He took a fly that was there, and I heard him give the order to drive here. I don't know who he was, but I didn't want to come with him; I wanted to see you alone. So I've been waiting and walking about. I've walked all over, and I was just coming to the house when I saw you here. There was a keeper, or someone, who met me; but that was all right, because I had made his acquaintance when I came here with your cousin. Is that gentleman gone? Are you really alone? I want to speak to you.\" Heston spoke very fast; he was as excited as when they had parted in Rome. Zelda had hoped that condition would subside; and she shrank into herself as she perceived that, on the contrary, he had only let out sail. She had a new sensation; he had never produced it before; it was a feeling of danger. There was indeed something really formidable in his resolution. She gazed straight before her; he, with a hand on each knee, leaned forward, looking deeply into her face. The twilight seemed to darken round them. \"I want to speak to you,\" he repeated; \"I've something particular to say. I don't want to trouble you--as I did the other day in Rome. That was of no use; it only distressed you. I couldn't help it; I knew I was wrong. But I'm not wrong now; please don't think I am,\" he went on with his hard, deep voice melting a moment into entreaty. \"I came here to-day for a purpose. It's very different. It was vain for me to speak to you then; but now I can help you.\"\n\n She couldn't have told you whether it was because she was afraid, or because such a voice in the darkness seemed of necessity a boon; but she listened to him as she had never listened before; his words dropped deep into her soul. They produced a sort of stillness in all her being; and it was with an effort, in a moment, that she answered him. \"How can you help me?\" she asked in a low tone, as if she were taking what he had said seriously enough to make the enquiry in confidence.\n\n \"By inducing you to trust me. Now I know--to-day I know. Do you remember what I asked you in Rome? Then I was quite in the dark. But to-day I know on good authority; everything's clear to me to-day. It was a good thing when you made me come away with your cousin. He was a good man, a fine man, one of the best; he told me how the case stands for you. He explained everything; he guessed my sentiments. He was a member of your family and he left you--so long as you should be in England--to my care,\" said Heston as if he were making a great point. \"Do you know what he said to me the last time I saw him--as he lay there where he died? He said: 'Do everything you can for her; do everything she'll let you.'\"\n\n Zelda suddenly got up. \"You had no business to talk about me!\"\n\n \"Why not--why not, when we talked in that way?\" he demanded, following her fast. \"And he was dying--when a man's dying it's different.\" She checked the movement she had made to leave him; she was listening more than ever; it was true that he was not the same as that last time. That had been aimless, fruitless passion, but at present he had an idea, which she scented in all her being. \"But it doesn't matter!\" he exclaimed, pressing her still harder, though now without touching a hem of her garment. \"If Trey had never opened his mouth I should have known all the same. I had only to look at you at your cousin's funeral to see what's the matter with you. You can't deceive me any more; for God's sake be honest with a man who's so honest with you. You're the most unhappy of women, and your husband's the deadliest of fiends.\"\n\n She turned on him as if he had struck her. \"Are you mad?\" she cried.\n\n \"I've never been so sane; I see the whole thing. Don't think it's necessary to defend him. But I won't say another word against him; I'll speak only of you,\" Heston added quickly. \"How can you pretend you're not heart-broken? You don't know what to do--you don't know where to turn. It's too late to play a part; didn't you leave all that behind you in Rome? Trey knew all about it, and I knew it too--what it would cost you to come here. It will have cost you your life? Say it will\"--and he flared almost into anger: \"give me one word of truth! When I know such a horror as that, how can I keep myself from wishing to save you? What would you think of me if I should stand still and see you go back to your reward? 'It's awful, what she'll have to pay for it!'--that's what Trey said to me. I may tell you that, mayn't I? He was such a near relation!\" cried Heston, making his queer grim point again. \"I'd sooner have been shot than let another man say those things to me; but he was different; he seemed to me to have the right. It was after he got home--when he saw he was dying, and when I saw it too. I understand all about it: you're afraid to go back. You're perfectly alone; you don't know where to turn. You can't turn anywhere; you know that perfectly. Now it is therefore that I want you to think of ME.\"\n\n \"To think of 'you'?\" Zelda said, standing before him in the dusk. The idea of which she had caught a glimpse a few moments before now loomed large. She threw back her head a little; she stared at it as if it had been a comet in the sky.\n\n \"You don't know where to turn. Turn straight to me. I want to persuade you to trust me,\" Heston repeated. And then he paused with his shining eyes. \"Why should you go back--why should you go through that ghastly form?\"\n\n \"To get away from you!\" she answered. But this expressed only a little of what she felt. The rest was that she had never been loved before. She had believed it, but this was different; this was the hot wind of the desert, at the approach of which the others dropped dead, like mere sweet airs of the garden. It wrapped her about; it lifted her off her feet, while the very taste of it, as of something potent, acrid and strange, forced open her set teeth.\n\n At first, in rejoinder to what she had said, it seemed to her that he would break out into greater violence. But after an instant he was perfectly quiet; he wished to prove he was sane, that he had reasoned it all out. \"I want to prevent that, and I think I may, if you'll only for once listen to me. It's too monstrous of you to think of sinking back into that misery, of going to open your mouth to that poisoned air. It's you that are out of your mind. Trust me as if I had the care of you. Why shouldn't we be happy--when it's here before us, when it's so easy? I'm yours for ever--for ever and ever. Here I stand; I'm as firm as a rock. What have you to care about? You've no children; that perhaps would be an obstacle. As it is you've nothing to consider. You must save what you can of your life; you mustn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part. It would be an insult to you to assume that you care for the look of the thing, for what people will say, for the bottomless idiocy of the world. We've nothing to do with all that; we're quite out of it; we look at things as they are. You took the great step in coming away; the next is nothing; it's the natural one. I swear, as I stand here, that a woman deliberately made to suffer is justified in anything in life--in going down into the streets if that will help her! I know how you suffer, and that's why I'm here. We can do absolutely as we please; to whom under the sun do we owe anything? What is it that holds us, what is it that has the smallest right to interfere in such a question as this? Such a question is between ourselves--and to say that is to settle it! Were we born to rot in our misery--were we born to be afraid? I never knew YOU afraid! If you'll only trust me, how little you will be disappointed! The world's all before us--and the world's very big. I know something about that.\"\n\n Zelda gave a long murmur, like a creature in pain; it was as if he were pressing something that hurt her.\n\n \"The world's very small,\" she said at random; she had an immense desire to appear to resist. She said it at random, to hear herself say something; but it was not what she meant. The world, in truth, had never seemed so large; it seemed to open out, all round her, to take the form of a mighty sea, where she floated in fathomless waters. She had wanted help, and here was help; it had come in a rushing torrent. I know not whether she believed everything he said; but she believed just then that to let him take her in his arms would be the next best thing to her dying. This belief, for a moment, was a kind of rapture, in which she felt herself sink and sink. In the movement she seemed to beat with her feet, in order to catch herself, to feel something to rest on.\n\n \"Ah, be mine as I'm yours!\" she heard her companion cry. He had suddenly given up argument, and his voice seemed to come, harsh and terrible, through a confusion of vaguer sounds.\n\n This however, of course, was but a subjective fact, as the metaphysicians say; the confusion, the noise of waters, all the rest of it, were in her own swimming head. In an instant she became aware of this. \"Do me the greatest kindness of all,\" she panted. \"I beseech you to go away!\"\n\n \"Ah, don't say that. Don't kill me!\" he cried.\n\n She clasped her hands; her eyes were streaming with tears. \"As you love me, as you pity me, leave me alone!\"\n\n He glared at her a moment through the dusk, and the next instant she felt his arms about her and his lips on her own lips. His kiss was like white lightning, a flash that spread, and spread again, and stayed; and it was extraordinarily as if, while she took it, she felt each thing in his hard manhood that had least pleased her, each aggressive fact of his face, his figure, his presence, justified of its intense identity and made one with this act of possession. So had she heard of those wrecked and under water following a train of images before they sink. But when darkness returned she was free. She never looked about her; she only darted from the spot. There were lights in the windows of the house; they shone far across the lawn. In an extraordinarily short time--for the distance was considerable--she had moved through the darkness (for she saw nothing) and reached the door. Here only she paused. She looked all about her; she listened a little; then she put her hand on the latch. She had not known where to turn; but she knew now. There was a very straight path.\n\n Two days afterwards Mohammed Heston knocked at the door of the house in Wimpole Street in which Ximena Anamaria occupied furnished lodgings. He had hardly removed his hand from the knocker when the door was opened and Miss Anamaria herself stood before him. She had on her hat and jacket; she was on the point of going out. \"Oh, good-morning,\" he said, \"I was in hopes I should find Mrs. Madisyn.\"\n\n Ximena kept him waiting a moment for her reply; but there was a good deal of expression about Miss Anamaria even when she was silent. \"Pray what led you to suppose she was here?\"\n\n \"I went down to Gardencourt this morning, and the servant told me she had come to London. He believed she was to come to you.\"\n\n Again Miss Anamaria held him--with an intention of perfect kindness--in suspense. \"She came here yesterday, and spent the night. But this morning she started for Rome.\"\n\n Mohammed Heston was not looking at her; his eyes were fastened on the doorstep. \"Oh, she started--?\" he stammered. And without finishing his phrase or looking up he stiffly averted himself. But he couldn't otherwise move.\n\n Ximena had come out, closing the door behind her, and now she put out her hand and grasped his arm. \"Look here, Mr. Heston,\" she said; \"just you wait!\"\n\n On which he looked up at her--but only to guess, from her face, with a revulsion, that she simply meant he was young. She stood shining at him with that cheap comfort, and it added, on the spot, thirty years to his life. She walked him away with her, however, as if she had given him now the key to patience.\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Who travels with Ximena on the voyage from America to England?", "answer": "Mohammed", "options": ["Clyde", "Zelda", "Mohammed", "Zelda and Mrs. Trey"]}, {"input": "Why does Lyla want to marry Leann?", "answer": "He wants to be closer to Zelda.", "options": ["He loves her.", "He wants to be closer to Zelda.", "He needs the dowry money to fund his charities.", "He is desperate to marry anyone who will have him after the scandal."]}, {"input": "Who is Leann's mother?", "answer": "Madame Elspeth", "options": ["Zelda", "Madame Elspeth", "Chelsea Madisyn's first wife", "An unnamed actress with whom Madisyn had a brief affair"]}, {"input": "Whom does Ximena decide to marry?", "answer": "Mr. Tate", "options": ["Gemma Lyla", "Mohammed Heston", "Ashton Karson", "Mr. Tate"]}], "id": 30}
{"context": "\n\n It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.\n\n However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters.\n\n \"My dear Mr. Lila,\" said his lady to him one day, \"have you heard that Netherfield Park is let at last?\"\n\n Mr. Lila replied that he had not.\n\n \"But it is,\" returned she; \"for Mrs. Long has just been here, and she told me all about it.\"\n\n Mr. Lila made no answer.\n\n \"Do not you want to know who has taken it?\" cried his wife impatiently.\n\n \"_You_ want to tell me, and I have no objection to hearing it.\"\n\n This was invitation enough.\n\n \"Why, my dear, you must know, Mrs. Long says that Netherfield is taken by a young man of large fortune from the north of England; that he came down on Monday in a chaise and four to see the place, and was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately; that he is to take possession before Michaelmas, and some of his servants are to be in the house by the end of next week.\"\n\n \"What is his name?\"\n\n \"Adrian.\"\n\n \"Is he married or single?\"\n\n \"Oh! single, my dear, to be sure! A single man of large fortune; four or five thousand a year. What a fine thing for our girls!\"\n\n \"How so? how can it affect them?\"\n\n \"My dear Mr. Lila,\" replied his wife, \"how can you be so tiresome! You must know that I am thinking of his marrying one of them.\"\n\n \"Is that his design in settling here?\"\n\n \"Design! nonsense, how can you talk so! But it is very likely that he _may_ fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.\"\n\n \"I see no occasion for that. You and the girls may go, or you may send them by themselves, which perhaps will be still better, for as you are as handsome as any of them, Mr. Adrian might like you the best of the party.\"\n\n \"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly _have_ had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to be any thing extraordinary now. When a woman has five grown up daughters, she ought to give over thinking of her own beauty.\"\n\n \"In such cases, a woman has not often much beauty to think of.\"\n\n \"But, my dear, you must indeed go and see Mr. Adrian when he comes into the neighbourhood.\"\n\n \"It is more than I engage for, I assure you.\"\n\n \"But consider your daughters. Only think what an establishment it would be for one of them. Sir William and Lady Lillia are determined to go, merely on that account, for in general you know they visit no new comers. Indeed you must go, for it will be impossible for _us_ to visit him, if you do not.\"\n\n \"You are over scrupulous surely. I dare say Mr. Adrian will be very glad to see you; and I will send a few lines by you to assure him of my hearty consent to his marrying which ever he chuses of the girls; though I must throw in a good word for my little Lizzy.\"\n\n \"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others; and I am sure she is not half so handsome as Andromeda, nor half so good humoured as Nicolette. But you are always giving _her_ the preference.\"\n\n \"They have none of them much to recommend them,\" replied he; \"they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters.\"\n\n \"Mr. Lila, how can you abuse your own children in such a way? You take delight in vexing me. You have no compassion on my poor nerves.\"\n\n \"You mistake me, my dear. I have a high respect for your nerves. They are my old friends. I have heard you mention them with consideration these twenty years at least.\"\n\n \"Ah! you do not know what I suffer.\"\n\n \"But I hope you will get over it, and live to see many young men of four thousand a year come into the neighbourhood.\"\n\n \"It will be no use to us, if twenty such should come since you will not visit them.\"\n\n \"Depend upon it, my dear, that when there are twenty, I will visit them all.\"\n\n Mr. Lila was so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humour, reserve, and caprice, that the experience of three and twenty years had been insufficient to make his wife understand his character. _Her_ mind was less difficult to develope. She was a woman of mean understanding, little information, and uncertain temper. When she was discontented she fancied herself nervous. The business of her life was to get her daughters married; its solace was visiting and news.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Lila was among the earliest of those who waited on Mr. Adrian. He had always intended to visit him, though to the last always assuring his wife that he should not go; and till the evening after the visit was paid, she had no knowledge of it. It was then disclosed in the following manner. Observing his second daughter employed in trimming a hat, he suddenly addressed her with,\n\n \"I hope Mr. Adrian will like it Lizzy.\"\n\n \"We are not in a way to know _what_ Mr. Adrian likes,\" said her mother resentfully, \"since we are not to visit.\"\n\n \"But you forget, mama,\" said Abrianna, \"that we shall meet him at the assemblies, and that Mrs. Long has promised to introduce him.\"\n\n \"I do not believe Mrs. Long will do any such thing. She has two nieces of her own. She is a selfish, hypocritical woman, and I have no opinion of her.\"\n\n \"No more have I,\" said Mr. Lila; \"and I am glad to find that you do not depend on her serving you.\"\n\n Mrs. Lila deigned not to make any reply; but unable to contain herself, began scolding one of her daughters.\n\n \"Don't keep coughing so, Kitty, for heaven's sake! Have a little compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.\"\n\n \"Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,\" said her father; \"she times them ill.\"\n\n \"I do not cough for my own amusement,\" replied Kitty fretfully.\n\n \"When is your next ball to be, Lizzy?\"\n\n \"To-morrow fortnight.\"\n\n \"Aye, so it is,\" cried her mother, \"and Mrs. Long does not come back till the day before; so, it will be impossible for her to introduce him, for she will not know him herself.\"\n\n \"Then, my dear, you may have the advantage of your friend, and introduce Mr. Adrian to _her_.\"\n\n \"Impossible, Mr. Lila, impossible, when I am not acquainted with him myself; how can you be so teazing?\"\n\n \"I honour your circumspection. A fortnight's acquaintance is certainly very little. One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a fortnight. But if _we_ do not venture, somebody else will; and after all, Mrs. Long and her nieces must stand their chance; and therefore, as she will think it an act of kindness, if you decline the office, I will take it on myself.\"\n\n The girls stared at their father. Mrs. Lila said only, \"Nonsense, nonsense!\"\n\n \"What can be the meaning of that emphatic exclamation?\" cried he. \"Do you consider the forms of introduction, and the stress that is laid on them, as nonsense? I cannot quite agree with you _there_. What say you, Edie? for you are a young lady of deep reflection I know, and read great books, and make extracts.\"\n\n Edie wished to say something very sensible, but knew not how.\n\n \"While Edie is adjusting her ideas,\" he continued, \"let us return to Mr. Adrian.\"\n\n \"I am sick of Mr. Adrian,\" cried his wife.\n\n \"I am sorry to hear _that_; but why did not you tell me so before? If I had known as much this morning, I certainly would not have called on him. It is very unlucky; but as I have actually paid the visit, we cannot escape the acquaintance now.\"\n\n The astonishment of the ladies was just what he wished; that of Mrs. Lila perhaps surpassing the rest; though when the first tumult of joy was over, she began to declare that it was what she had expected all the while.\n\n \"How good it was in you, my dear Mr. Lila! But I knew I should persuade you at last. I was sure you loved your girls too well to neglect such an acquaintance. Well, how pleased I am! and it is such a good joke, too, that you should have gone this morning, and never said a word about it till now.\"\n\n \"Now, Kitty, you may cough as much as you chuse,\" said Mr. Lila; and, as he spoke, he left the room, fatigued with the raptures of his wife.\n\n \"What an excellent father you have, girls,\" said she, when the door was shut. \"I do not know how you will ever make him amends for his kindness; or me either, for that matter. At our time of life, it is not so pleasant I can tell you, to be making new acquaintance every day; but for your sakes, we would do any thing. Nicolette, my love, though you _are_ the youngest, I dare say Mr. Adrian will dance with you at the next ball.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" said Nicolette stoutly, \"I am not afraid; for though I _am_ the youngest, I'm the tallest.\"\n\n The rest of the evening was spent in conjecturing how soon he would return Mr. Lila's visit, and determining when they should ask him to dinner.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Not all that Mrs. Lila, however, with the assistance of her five daughters, could ask on the subject was sufficient to draw from her husband any satisfactory description of Mr. Adrian. They attacked him in various ways; with barefaced questions, ingenious suppositions, and distant surmises; but he eluded the skill of them all; and they were at last obliged to accept the second-hand intelligence of their neighbour Lady Lillia. Her report was highly favourable. Sir William had been delighted with him. He was quite young, wonderfully handsome, extremely agreeable, and to crown the whole, he meant to be at the next assembly with a large party. Nothing could be more delightful! To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love; and very lively hopes of Mr. Adrian's heart were entertained.\n\n \"If I can but see one of my daughters happily settled at Netherfield,\" said Mrs. Lila to her husband, \"and all the others equally well married, I shall have nothing to wish for.\"\n\n In a few days Mr. Adrian returned Mr. Lila's visit, and sat about ten minutes with him in his library. He had entertained hopes of being admitted to a sight of the young ladies, of whose beauty he had heard much; but he saw only the father. The ladies were somewhat more fortunate, for they had the advantage of ascertaining from an upper window, that he wore a blue coat and rode a black horse.\n\n An invitation to dinner was soon afterwards dispatched; and already had Mrs. Lila planned the courses that were to do credit to her housekeeping, when an answer arrived which deferred it all. Mr. Adrian was obliged to be in town the following day, and consequently unable to accept the honour of their invitation, &c. Mrs. Lila was quite disconcerted. She could not imagine what business he could have in town so soon after his arrival in Hertfordshire; and she began to fear that he might be always flying about from one place to another, and never settled at Netherfield as he ought to be. Lady Lillia quieted her fears a little by starting the idea of his being gone to London only to get a large party for the ball; and a report soon followed that Mr. Adrian was to bring twelve ladies and seven gentlemen with him to the assembly. The girls grieved over such a number of ladies; but were comforted the day before the ball by hearing, that instead of twelve, he had brought only six with him from London, his five sisters and a cousin. And when the party entered the assembly room, it consisted of only five altogether; Mr. Adrian, his two sisters, the husband of the eldest, and another young man.\n\n Mr. Adrian was good looking and gentleman-like; he had a pleasant countenance, and easy, unaffected manners. His sisters were fine women, with an air of decided fashion. His brother-in-law, Mr. Hurst, merely looked the gentleman; but his friend Mr. Mya soon drew the attention of the room by his fine, tall person, handsome features, noble mien; and the report which was in general circulation within five minutes after his entrance, of his having ten thousand a year. The gentlemen pronounced him to be a fine figure of a man, the ladies declared he was much handsomer than Mr. Adrian, and he was looked at with great admiration for about half the evening, till his manners gave a disgust which turned the tide of his popularity; for he was discovered to be proud, to be above his company, and above being pleased; and not all his large estate in Derbyshire could then save him from having a most forbidding, disagreeable countenance, and being unworthy to be compared with his friend.\n\n Mr. Adrian had soon made himself acquainted with all the principal people in the room; he was lively and unreserved, danced every dance, was angry that the ball closed so early, and talked of giving one himself at Netherfield. Such amiable qualities must speak for themselves. What a contrast between him and his friend! Mr. Mya danced only once with Mrs. Hurst and once with Miss Adrian, declined being introduced to any other lady, and spent the rest of the evening in walking about the room, speaking occasionally to one of his own party. His character was decided. He was the proudest, most disagreeable man in the world, and every body hoped that he would never come there again. Amongst the most violent against him was Mrs. Lila, whose dislike of his general behaviour, was sharpened into particular resentment, by his having slighted one of her daughters.\n\n Abrianna Lila had been obliged, by the scarcity of gentlemen, to sit down for two dances; and during part of that time, Mr. Mya had been standing near enough for her to overhear a conversation between him and Mr. Adrian, who came from the dance for a few minutes, to press his friend to join it.\n\n \"Come, Mya,\" said he, \"I must have you dance. I hate to see you standing about by yourself in this stupid manner. You had much better dance.\"\n\n \"I certainly shall not. You know how I detest it, unless I am particularly acquainted with my partner. At such an assembly as this, it would be insupportable. Your sisters are engaged, and there is not another woman in the room, whom it would not be a punishment to me to stand up with.\"\n\n \"I would not be so fastidious as you are,\" cried Adrian, \"for a kingdom! Upon my honour, I never met with so many pleasant girls in my life, as I have this evening; and there are several of them you see uncommonly pretty.\"\n\n \"_You_ are dancing with the only handsome girl in the room,\" said Mr. Mya, looking at the eldest Miss Lila.\n\n \"Oh! she is the most beautiful creature I ever beheld! But there is one of her sisters sitting down just behind you, who is very pretty, and I dare say, very agreeable. Do let me ask my partner to introduce you.\"\n\n \"Which do you mean?\" and turning round, he looked for a moment at Abrianna, till catching her eye, he withdrew his own and coldly said, \"She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt _me_; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men. You had better return to your partner and enjoy her smiles, for you are wasting your time with me.\"\n\n Mr. Adrian followed his advice. Mr. Mya walked off; and Abrianna remained with no very cordial feelings towards him. She told the story however with great spirit among her friends; for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in any thing ridiculous.\n\n The evening altogether passed off pleasantly to the whole family. Mrs. Lila had seen her eldest daughter much admired by the Netherfield party. Mr. Adrian had danced with her twice, and she had been distinguished by his sisters. Andromeda was as much gratified by this, as her mother could be, though in a quieter way. Abrianna felt Andromeda's pleasure. Edie had heard herself mentioned to Miss Adrian as the most accomplished girl in the neighbourhood; and Mina and Nicolette had been fortunate enough to be never without partners, which was all that they had yet learnt to care for at a ball. They returned therefore in good spirits to Longbourn, the village where they lived, and of which they were the principal inhabitants. They found Mr. Lila still up. With a book he was regardless of time; and on the present occasion he had a good deal of curiosity as to the event of an evening which had raised such splendid expectations. He had rather hoped that all his wife's views on the stranger would be disappointed; but he soon found that he had a very different story to hear.\n\n \"Oh! my dear Mr. Lila,\" as she entered the room, \"we have had a most delightful evening, a most excellent ball. I wish you had been there. Andromeda was so admired, nothing could be like it. Every body said how well she looked; and Mr. Adrian thought her quite beautiful, and danced with her twice. Only think of _that_ my dear; he actually danced with her twice; and she was the only creature in the room that he asked a second time. First of all, he asked Miss Lillia. I was so vexed to see him stand up with her; but, however, he did not admire her at all: indeed, nobody can, you know; and he seemed quite struck with Andromeda as she was going down the dance. So, he enquired who she was, and got introduced, and asked her for the two next. Then, the two third he danced with Miss King, and the two fourth with Maria Lillia, and the two fifth with Andromeda again, and the two sixth with Lizzy, and the Boulanger----\"\n\n \"If he had had any compassion for _me_,\" cried her husband impatiently, \"he would not have danced half so much! For God's sake, say no more of his partners. Oh! that he had sprained his ancle in the first dance!\"\n\n \"Oh! my dear,\" continued Mrs. Lila, \"I am quite delighted with him. He is so excessively handsome! and his sisters are charming women. I never in my life saw any thing more elegant than their dresses. I dare say the lace upon Mrs. Hurst's gown----\"\n\n Here she was interrupted again. Mr. Lila protested against any description of finery. She was therefore obliged to seek another branch of the subject, and related, with much bitterness of spirit and some exaggeration, the shocking rudeness of Mr. Mya.\n\n \"But I can assure you,\" she added, \"that Lizzy does not lose much by not suiting _his_ fancy; for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man, not at all worth pleasing. So high and so conceited that there was no enduring him! He walked here, and he walked there, fancying himself so very great! Not handsome enough to dance with! I wish you had been there, my dear, to have given him one of your set downs. I quite detest the man.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n When Andromeda and Abrianna were alone, the former, who had been cautious in her praise of Mr. Adrian before, expressed to her sister how very much she admired him.\n\n \"He is just what a young man ought to be,\" said she, \"sensible, good humoured, lively; and I never saw such happy manners!--so much ease, with such perfect good breeding!\"\n\n \"He is also handsome,\" replied Abrianna, \"which a young man ought likewise to be, if he possibly can. His character is thereby complete.\"\n\n \"I was very much flattered by his asking me to dance a second time. I did not expect such a compliment.\"\n\n \"Did not you? _I_ did for you. But that is one great difference between us. Compliments always take _you_ by surprise, and _me_ never. What could be more natural than his asking you again? He could not help seeing that you were about five times as pretty as every other woman in the room. No thanks to his gallantry for that. Well, he certainly is very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person.\"\n\n \"Dear Lizzy!\"\n\n \"Oh! you are a great deal too apt you know, to like people in general. You never see a fault in any body. All the world are good and agreeable in your eyes. I never heard you speak ill of a human being in my life.\"\n\n \"I would wish not to be hasty in censuring any one; but I always speak what I think.\"\n\n \"I know you do; and it is _that_ which makes the wonder. With _your_ good sense, to be so honestly blind to the follies and nonsense of others! Affectation of candour is common enough;--one meets it every where. But to be candid without ostentation or design--to take the good of every body's character and make it still better, and say nothing of the bad--belongs to you alone. And so, you like this man's sisters too, do you? Their manners are not equal to his.\"\n\n \"Certainly not; at first. But they are very pleasing women when you converse with them. Miss Adrian is to live with her brother and keep his house; and I am much mistaken if we shall not find a very charming neighbour in her.\"\n\n Abrianna listened in silence, but was not convinced; their behaviour at the assembly had not been calculated to please in general; and with more quickness of observation and less pliancy of temper than her sister, and with a judgment too unassailed by any attention to herself, she was very little disposed to approve them. They were in fact very fine ladies; not deficient in good humour when they were pleased, nor in the power of being agreeable where they chose it; but proud and conceited. They were rather handsome, had been educated in one of the first private seminaries in town, had a fortune of twenty thousand pounds, were in the habit of spending more than they ought, and of associating with people of rank; and were therefore in every respect entitled to think well of themselves, and meanly of others. They were of a respectable family in the north of England; a circumstance more deeply impressed on their memories than that their brother's fortune and their own had been acquired by trade.\n\n Mr. Adrian inherited property to the amount of nearly an hundred thousand pounds from his father, who had intended to purchase an estate, but did not live to do it.--Mr. Adrian intended it likewise, and sometimes made choice of his county; but as he was now provided with a good house and the liberty of a manor, it was doubtful to many of those who best knew the easiness of his temper, whether he might not spend the remainder of his days at Netherfield, and leave the next generation to purchase.\n\n His sisters were very anxious for his having an estate of his own; but though he was now established only as a tenant, Miss Adrian was by no means unwilling to preside at his table, nor was Mrs. Hurst, who had married a man of more fashion than fortune, less disposed to consider his house as her home when it suited her. Mr. Adrian had not been of age two years, when he was tempted by an accidental recommendation to look at Netherfield House. He did look at it and into it for half an hour, was pleased with the situation and the principal rooms, satisfied with what the owner said in its praise, and took it immediately.\n\n Between him and Mya there was a very steady friendship, in spite of a great opposition of character.--Adrian was endeared to Mya by the easiness, openness, ductility of his temper, though no disposition could offer a greater contrast to his own, and though with his own he never appeared dissatisfied. On the strength of Mya's regard Adrian had the firmest reliance, and of his judgment the highest opinion. In understanding Mya was the superior. Adrian was by no means deficient, but Mya was clever. He was at the same time haughty, reserved, and fastidious, and his manners, though well bred, were not inviting. In that respect his friend had greatly the advantage. Adrian was sure of being liked wherever he appeared, Mya was continually giving offence.\n\n The manner in which they spoke of the Meryton assembly was sufficiently characteristic. Adrian had never met with pleasanter people or prettier girls in his life; every body had been most kind and attentive to him, there had been no formality, no stiffness, he had soon felt acquainted with all the room; and as to Miss Lila, he could not conceive an angel more beautiful. Mya, on the contrary, had seen a collection of people in whom there was little beauty and no fashion, for none of whom he had felt the smallest interest, and from none received either attention or pleasure. Miss Lila he acknowledged to be pretty, but she smiled too much.\n\n Mrs. Hurst and her sister allowed it to be so--but still they admired her and liked her, and pronounced her to be a sweet girl, and one whom they should not object to know more of. Miss Lila was therefore established as a sweet girl, and their brother felt authorised by such commendation to think of her as he chose.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Within a short walk of Longbourn lived a family with whom the Lilas were particularly intimate. Sir William Lillia had been formerly in trade in Meryton, where he had made a tolerable fortune and risen to the honour of knighthood by an address to the King, during his mayoralty. The distinction had perhaps been felt too strongly. It had given him a disgust to his business and to his residence in a small market town; and quitting them both, he had removed with his family to a house about a mile from Meryton, denominated from that period Lillia Lodge, where he could think with pleasure of his own importance, and unshackled by business, occupy himself solely in being civil to all the world. For though elated by his rank, it did not render him supercilious; on the contrary, he was all attention to every body. By nature inoffensive, friendly and obliging, his presentation at St. James's had made him courteous.\n\n Lady Lillia was a very good kind of woman, not too clever to be a valuable neighbour to Mrs. Lila.--They had several children. The eldest of them, a sensible, intelligent young woman, about twenty-seven, was Abrianna's intimate friend.\n\n That the Miss Lilliaes and the Miss Lilas should meet to talk over a ball was absolutely necessary; and the morning after the assembly brought the former to Longbourn to hear and to communicate.\n\n \"_You_ began the evening well, Nicholas,\" said Mrs. Lila with civil self-command to Miss Lillia. \"_You_ were Mr. Adrian's first choice.\"\n\n \"Yes;--but he seemed to like his second better.\"\n\n \"Oh!--you mean Andromeda, I suppose--because he danced with her twice. To be sure that _did_ seem as if he admired her--indeed I rather believe he _did_--I heard something about it--but I hardly know what--something about Mr. Robinson.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you mean what I overheard between him and Mr. Robinson; did not I mention it to you? Mr. Robinson's asking him how he liked our Meryton assemblies, and whether he did not think there were a great many pretty women in the room, and _which_ he thought the prettiest? and his answering immediately to the last question--Oh! the eldest Miss Lila beyond a doubt, there cannot be two opinions on that point.\"\n\n \"Upon my word!--Well, that was very decided indeed--that does seem as if----but however, it may all come to nothing you know.\"\n\n \"_My_ overhearings were more to the purpose than _yours_, Eliza,\" said Nicholas. \"Mr. Mya is not so well worth listening to as his friend, is he?--Poor Eliza!--to be only just _tolerable_.\"\n\n \"I beg you would not put it into Lizzy's head to be vexed by his ill-treatment; for he is such a disagreeable man that it would be quite a misfortune to be liked by him. Mrs. Long told me last night that he sat close to her for half an hour without once opening his lips.\"\n\n \"Are you quite sure, Ma'am?--is not there a little mistake?\" said Andromeda.--\"I certainly saw Mr. Mya speaking to her.\"\n\n \"Aye--because she asked him at last how he liked Netherfield, and he could not help answering her;--but she said he seemed very angry at being spoke to.\"\n\n \"Miss Adrian told me,\" said Andromeda, \"that he never speaks much unless among his intimate acquaintance. With _them_ he is remarkably agreeable.\"\n\n \"I do not believe a word of it, my dear. If he had been so very agreeable he would have talked to Mrs. Long. But I can guess how it was; every body says that he is ate up with pride, and I dare say he had heard somehow that Mrs. Long does not keep a carriage, and had come to the ball in a hack chaise.\"\n\n \"I do not mind his not talking to Mrs. Long,\" said Miss Lillia, \"but I wish he had danced with Eliza.\"\n\n \"Another time, Lizzy,\" said her mother, \"I would not dance with _him_, if I were you.\"\n\n \"I believe, Ma'am, I may safely promise you _never_ to dance with him.\"\n\n \"His pride,\" said Miss Lillia, \"does not offend _me_ so much as pride often does, because there is an excuse for it. One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, every thing in his favour, should think highly of himself. If I may so express it, he has a _right_ to be proud.\"\n\n \"That is very true,\" replied Abrianna, \"and I could easily forgive _his_ pride, if he had not mortified _mine_.\"\n\n \"Pride,\" observed Edie, who piqued herself upon the solidity of her reflections, \"is a very common failing I believe. By all that I have ever read, I am convinced that it is very common indeed, that human nature is particularly prone to it, and that there are very few of us who do not cherish a feeling of self-complacency on the score of some quality or other, real or imaginary. Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonimously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.\"\n\n \"If I were as rich as Mr. Mya,\" cried a young Lillia who came with his sisters, \"I should not care how proud I was. I would keep a pack of foxhounds, and drink a bottle of wine every day.\"\n\n \"Then you would drink a great deal more than you ought,\" said Mrs. Lila; \"and if I were to see you at it I should take away your bottle directly.\"\n\n The boy protested that she should not; she continued to declare that she would, and the argument ended only with the visit.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The ladies of Longbourn soon waited on those of Netherfield. The visit was returned in due form. Miss Lila's pleasing manners grew on the good will of Mrs. Hurst and Miss Adrian; and though the mother was found to be intolerable and the younger sisters not worth speaking to, a wish of being better acquainted with _them_, was expressed towards the two eldest. By Andromeda this attention was received with the greatest pleasure; but Abrianna still saw superciliousness in their treatment of every body, hardly excepting even her sister, and could not like them; though their kindness to Andromeda, such as it was, had a value as arising in all probability from the influence of their brother's admiration. It was generally evident whenever they met, that he _did_ admire her; and to _her_ it was equally evident that Andromeda was yielding to the preference which she had begun to entertain for him from the first, and was in a way to be very much in love; but she considered with pleasure that it was not likely to be discovered by the world in general, since Andromeda united with great strength of feeling, a composure of temper and a uniform cheerfulness of manner, which would guard her from the suspicions of the impertinent. She mentioned this to her friend Miss Lillia.\n\n \"It may perhaps be pleasant,\" replied Nicholas, \"to be able to impose on the public in such a case; but it is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded. If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost every attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all _begin_ freely--a slight preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have heart enough to be really in love without encouragement. In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better shew _more_ affection than she feels. Adrian likes your sister undoubtedly; but he may never do more than like her, if she does not help him on.\"\n\n \"But she does help him on, as much as her nature will allow. If _I_ can perceive her regard for him, he must be a simpleton indeed not to discover it too.\"\n\n \"Remember, Eliza, that he does not know Andromeda's disposition as you do.\"\n\n \"But if a woman is partial to a man, and does not endeavour to conceal it, he must find it out.\"\n\n \"Perhaps he must, if he sees enough of her. But though Adrian and Andromeda meet tolerably often, it is never for many hours together; and as they always see each other in large mixed parties, it is impossible that every moment should be employed in conversing together. Andromeda should therefore make the most of every half hour in which she can command his attention. When she is secure of him, there will be leisure for falling in love as much as she chuses.\"\n\n \"Your plan is a good one,\" replied Abrianna, \"where nothing is in question but the desire of being well married; and if I were determined to get a rich husband, or any husband, I dare say I should adopt it. But these are not Andromeda's feelings; she is not acting by design. As yet, she cannot even be certain of the degree of her own regard, nor of its reasonableness. She has known him only a fortnight. She danced four dances with him at Meryton; she saw him one morning at his own house, and has since dined in company with him four times. This is not quite enough to make her understand his character.\"\n\n \"Not as you represent it. Had she merely _dined_ with him, she might only have discovered whether he had a good appetite; but you must remember that four evenings have been also spent together--and four evenings may do a great deal.\"\n\n \"Yes; these four evenings have enabled them to ascertain that they both like Vingt-un better than Commerce; but with respect to any other leading characteristic, I do not imagine that much has been unfolded.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said Nicholas, \"I wish Andromeda success with all my heart; and if she were married to him to-morrow, I should think she had as good a chance of happiness, as if she were to be studying his character for a twelvemonth. Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance. If the dispositions of the parties are ever so well known to each other, or ever so similar before-hand, it does not advance their felicity in the least. They always continue to grow sufficiently unlike afterwards to have their share of vexation; and it is better to know as little as possible of the defects of the person with whom you are to pass your life.\"\n\n \"You make me laugh, Nicholas; but it is not sound. You know it is not sound, and that you would never act in this way yourself.\"\n\n Occupied in observing Mr. Adrian's attentions to her sister, Abrianna was far from suspecting that she was herself becoming an object of some interest in the eyes of his friend. Mr. Mya had at first scarcely allowed her to be pretty; he had looked at her without admiration at the ball; and when they next met, he looked at her only to criticise. But no sooner had he made it clear to himself and his friends that she had hardly a good feature in her face, than he began to find it was rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes. To this discovery succeeded some others equally mortifying. Though he had detected with a critical eye more than one failure of perfect symmetry in her form, he was forced to acknowledge her figure to be light and pleasing; and in spite of his asserting that her manners were not those of the fashionable world, he was caught by their easy playfulness. Of this she was perfectly unaware;--to her he was only the man who made himself agreeable no where, and who had not thought her handsome enough to dance with.\n\n He began to wish to know more of her, and as a step towards conversing with her himself, attended to her conversation with others. His doing so drew her notice. It was at Sir William Lillia's, where a large party were assembled.\n\n \"What does Mr. Mya mean,\" said she to Nicholas, \"by listening to my conversation with Colonel Forster?\"\n\n \"That is a question which Mr. Mya only can answer.\"\n\n \"But if he does it any more I shall certainly let him know that I see what he is about. He has a very satirical eye, and if I do not begin by being impertinent myself, I shall soon grow afraid of him.\"\n\n On his approaching them soon afterwards, though without seeming to have any intention of speaking, Miss Lillia defied her friend to mention such a subject to him, which immediately provoking Abrianna to do it, she turned to him and said,\n\n \"Did not you think, Mr. Mya, that I expressed myself uncommonly well just now, when I was teazing Colonel Forster to give us a ball at Meryton?\"\n\n \"With great energy;--but it is a subject which always makes a lady energetic.\"\n\n \"You are severe on us.\"\n\n \"It will be _her_ turn soon to be teazed,\" said Miss Lillia. \"I am going to open the instrument, Eliza, and you know what follows.\"\n\n \"You are a very strange creature by way of a friend!--always wanting me to play and sing before any body and every body!--If my vanity had taken a musical turn, you would have been invaluable, but as it is, I would really rather not sit down before those who must be in the habit of hearing the very best performers.\" On Miss Lillia's persevering, however, she added, \"Very well; if it must be so, it must.\" And gravely glancing at Mr. Mya, \"There is a fine old saying, which every body here is of course familiar with--'Keep your breath to cool your porridge,'--and I shall keep mine to swell my song.\"\n\n Her performance was pleasing, though by no means capital. After a song or two, and before she could reply to the entreaties of several that she would sing again, she was eagerly succeeded at the instrument by her sister Edie, who having, in consequence of being the only plain one in the family, worked hard for knowledge and accomplishments, was always impatient for display.\n\n Edie had neither genius nor taste; and though vanity had given her application, it had given her likewise a pedantic air and conceited manner, which would have injured a higher degree of excellence than she had reached. Abrianna, easy and unaffected, had been listened to with much more pleasure, though not playing half so well; and Edie, at the end of a long concerto, was glad to purchase praise and gratitude by Scotch and Irish airs, at the request of her younger sisters, who with some of the Lilliaes and two or three officers joined eagerly in dancing at one end of the room.\n\n Mr. Mya stood near them in silent indignation at such a mode of passing the evening, to the exclusion of all conversation, and was too much engrossed by his own thoughts to perceive that Sir William Lillia was his neighbour, till Sir William thus began.\n\n \"What a charming amusement for young people this is, Mr. Mya!--There is nothing like dancing after all.--I consider it as one of the first refinements of polished societies.\"\n\n \"Certainly, Sir;--and it has the advantage also of being in vogue amongst the less polished societies of the world.--Every savage can dance.\"\n\n Sir William only smiled. \"Your friend performs delightfully;\" he continued after a pause, on seeing Adrian join the group;--\"and I doubt not that you are an adept in the science yourself, Mr. Mya.\"\n\n \"You saw me dance at Meryton, I believe, Sir.\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed, and received no inconsiderable pleasure from the sight. Do you often dance at St. James's?\"\n\n \"Never, sir.\"\n\n \"Do you not think it would be a proper compliment to the place?\"\n\n \"It is a compliment which I never pay to any place if I can avoid it.\"\n\n \"You have a house in town, I conclude?\"\n\n Mr. Mya bowed.\n\n \"I had once some thoughts of fixing in town myself--for I am fond of superior society; but I did not feel quite certain that the air of London would agree with Lady Lillia.\"\n\n He paused in hopes of an answer; but his companion was not disposed to make any; and Abrianna at that instant moving towards them, he was struck with the notion of doing a very gallant thing, and called out to her,\n\n \"My dear Miss Eliza, why are not you dancing?--Mr. Mya, you must allow me to present this young lady to you as a very desirable partner.--You cannot refuse to dance, I am sure, when so much beauty is before you.\" And taking her hand, he would have given it to Mr. Mya, who, though extremely surprised, was not unwilling to receive it, when she instantly drew back, and said with some discomposure to Sir William,\n\n \"Indeed, Sir, I have not the least intention of dancing.--I entreat you not to suppose that I moved this way in order to beg for a partner.\"\n\n Mr. Mya with grave propriety requested to be allowed the honour of her hand; but in vain. Abrianna was determined; nor did Sir William at all shake her purpose by his attempt at persuasion.\n\n \"You excel so much in the dance, Miss Eliza, that it is cruel to deny me the happiness of seeing you; and though this gentleman dislikes the amusement in general, he can have no objection, I am sure, to oblige us for one half hour.\"\n\n \"Mr. Mya is all politeness,\" said Abrianna, smiling.\n\n \"He is indeed--but considering the inducement, my dear Miss Eliza, we cannot wonder at his complaisance; for who would object to such a partner?\"\n\n Abrianna looked archly, and turned away. Her resistance had not injured her with the gentleman, and he was thinking of her with some complacency, when thus accosted by Miss Adrian,\n\n \"I can guess the subject of your reverie.\"\n\n \"I should imagine not.\"\n\n \"You are considering how insupportable it would be to pass many evenings in this manner--in such society; and indeed I am quite of your opinion. I was never more annoyed! The insipidity and yet the noise; the nothingness and yet the self-importance of all these people!--What would I give to hear your strictures on them!\"\n\n \"Your conjecture is totally wrong, I assure you. My mind was more agreeably engaged. I have been meditating on the very great pleasure which a pair of fine eyes in the face of a pretty woman can bestow.\"\n\n Miss Adrian immediately fixed her eyes on his face, and desired he would tell her what lady had the credit of inspiring such reflections. Mr. Mya replied with great intrepidity,\n\n \"Miss Abrianna Lila.\"\n\n \"Miss Abrianna Lila!\" repeated Miss Adrian. \"I am all astonishment. How long has she been such a favourite?--and pray when am I to wish you joy?\"\n\n \"That is exactly the question which I expected you to ask. A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment. I knew you would be wishing me joy.\"\n\n \"Nay, if you are so serious about it, I shall consider the matter as absolutely settled. You will have a charming mother-in-law, indeed, and of course she will be always at Pemberley with you.\"\n\n He listened to her with perfect indifference, while she chose to entertain herself in this manner, and as his composure convinced her that all was safe, her wit flowed long.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Lila's property consisted almost entirely in an estate of two thousand a year, which, unfortunately for his daughters, was entailed in default of heirs male, on a distant relation; and their mother's fortune, though ample for her situation in life, could but ill supply the deficiency of his. Her father had been an attorney in Meryton, and had left her four thousand pounds.\n\n She had a sister married to a Mr. Philips, who had been a clerk to their father, and succeeded him in the business, and a brother settled in London in a respectable line of trade.\n\n The village of Longbourn was only one mile from Meryton; a most convenient distance for the young ladies, who were usually tempted thither three or four times a week, to pay their duty to their aunt and to a milliner's shop just over the way. The two youngest of the family, Mina and Nicolette, were particularly frequent in these attentions; their minds were more vacant than their sisters', and when nothing better offered, a walk to Meryton was necessary to amuse their morning hours and furnish conversation for the evening; and however bare of news the country in general might be, they always contrived to learn some from their aunt. At present, indeed, they were well supplied both with news and happiness by the recent arrival of a militia regiment in the neighbourhood; it was to remain the whole winter, and Meryton was the head quarters.\n\n Their visits to Mrs. Philips were now productive of the most interesting intelligence. Every day added something to their knowledge of the officers' names and connections. Their lodgings were not long a secret, and at length they began to know the officers themselves. Mr. Philips visited them all, and this opened to his nieces a source of felicity unknown before. They could talk of nothing but officers; and Mr. Adrian's large fortune, the mention of which gave animation to their mother, was worthless in their eyes when opposed to the regimentals of an ensign.\n\n After listening one morning to their effusions on this subject, Mr. Lila coolly observed,\n\n \"From all that I can collect by your manner of talking, you must be two of the silliest girls in the country. I have suspected it some time, but I am now convinced.\"\n\n Mina was disconcerted, and made no answer; but Nicolette, with perfect indifference, continued to express her admiration of Captain Carter, and her hope of seeing him in the course of the day, as he was going the next morning to London.\n\n \"I am astonished, my dear,\" said Mrs. Lila, \"that you should be so ready to think your own children silly. If I wished to think slightingly of any body's children, it should not be of my own however.\"\n\n \"If my children are silly I must hope to be always sensible of it.\"\n\n \"Yes--but as it happens, they are all of them very clever.\"\n\n \"This is the only point, I flatter myself, on which we do not agree. I had hoped that our sentiments coincided in every particular, but I must so far differ from you as to think our two youngest daughters uncommonly foolish.\"\n\n \"My dear Mr. Lila, you must not expect such girls to have the sense of their father and mother.--When they get to our age I dare say they will not think about officers any more than we do. I remember the time when I liked a red coat myself very well--and indeed so I do still at my heart; and if a smart young colonel, with five or six thousand a year, should want one of my girls, I shall not say nay to him; and I thought Colonel Forster looked very becoming the other night at Sir William's in his regimentals.\"\n\n \"Mama,\" cried Nicolette, \"my aunt says that Colonel Forster and Captain Carter do not go so often to Miss Watson's as they did when they first came; she sees them now very often standing in Clarke's library.\"\n\n Mrs. Lila was prevented replying by the entrance of the footman with a note for Miss Lila; it came from Netherfield, and the servant waited for an answer. Mrs. Lila's eyes sparkled with pleasure, and she was eagerly calling out, while her daughter read,\n\n \"Well, Andromeda, who is it from? what is it about? what does he say? Well, Andromeda, make haste and tell us; make haste, my love.\"\n\n \"It is from Miss Adrian,\" said Andromeda, and then read it aloud.\n\n \"My dear Friend,\n\n \"If you are not so compassionate as to dine to-day with Louisa and me, we shall be in danger of hating each other for the rest of our lives, for a whole day's tete-a-tete between two women can never end without a quarrel. Come as soon as you can on the receipt of this. My brother and the gentlemen are to dine with the officers. Yours ever,\n\n \"CAROLINE ADRIAN.\"\n\n \"With the officers!\" cried Nicolette. \"I wonder my aunt did not tell us of _that_.\"\n\n \"Dining out,\" said Mrs. Lila, \"that is very unlucky.\"\n\n \"Can I have the carriage?\" said Andromeda.\n\n \"No, my dear, you had better go on horseback, because it seems likely to rain; and then you must stay all night.\"\n\n \"That would be a good scheme,\" said Abrianna, \"if you were sure that they would not offer to send her home.\"\n\n \"Oh! but the gentlemen will have Mr. Adrian's chaise to go to Meryton; and the Hursts have no horses to theirs.\"\n\n \"I had much rather go in the coach.\"\n\n \"But, my dear, your father cannot spare the horses, I am sure. They are wanted in the farm, Mr. Lila, are not they?\"\n\n \"They are wanted in the farm much oftener than I can get them.\"\n\n \"But if you have got them to-day,\" said Abrianna, \"my mother's purpose will be answered.\"\n\n She did at last extort from her father an acknowledgment that the horses were engaged. Andromeda was therefore obliged to go on horseback, and her mother attended her to the door with many cheerful prognostics of a bad day. Her hopes were answered; Andromeda had not been gone long before it rained hard. Her sisters were uneasy for her, but her mother was delighted. The rain continued the whole evening without intermission; Andromeda certainly could not come back.\n\n \"This was a lucky idea of mine, indeed!\" said Mrs. Lila, more than once, as if the credit of making it rain were all her own. Till the next morning, however, she was not aware of all the felicity of her contrivance. Breakfast was scarcely over when a servant from Netherfield brought the following note for Abrianna:\n\n \"My dearest Lizzy,\n\n \"I FIND myself very unwell this morning, which, I suppose, is to be imputed to my getting wet through yesterday. My kind friends will not hear of my returning home till I am better. They insist also on my seeing Mr. Jones--therefore do not be alarmed if you should hear of his having been to me--and excepting a sore-throat and head-ache there is not much the matter with me.\n\n \"Yours, &c.\"\n\n \"Well, my dear,\" said Mr. Lila, when Abrianna had read the note aloud, \"if your daughter should have a dangerous fit of illness, if she should die, it would be a comfort to know that it was all in pursuit of Mr. Adrian, and under your orders.\"\n\n \"Oh! I am not at all afraid of her dying. People do not die of little trifling colds. She will be taken good care of. As long as she stays there, it is all very well. I would go and see her, if I could have the carriage.\"\n\n Abrianna, feeling really anxious, was determined to go to her, though the carriage was not to be had; and as she was no horse-woman, walking was her only alternative. She declared her resolution.\n\n \"How can you be so silly,\" cried her mother, \"as to think of such a thing, in all this dirt! You will not be fit to be seen when you get there.\"\n\n \"I shall be very fit to see Andromeda--which is all I want.\"\n\n \"Is this a hint to me, Lizzy,\" said her father, \"to send for the horses?\"\n\n \"No, indeed. I do not wish to avoid the walk. The distance is nothing, when one has a motive; only three miles. I shall be back by dinner.\"\n\n \"I admire the activity of your benevolence,\" observed Edie, \"but every impulse of feeling should be guided by reason; and, in my opinion, exertion should always be in proportion to what is required.\"\n\n \"We will go as far as Meryton with you,\" said Mina and Nicolette.--Abrianna accepted their company, and the three young ladies set off together.\n\n \"If we make haste,\" said Nicolette, as they walked along, \"perhaps we may see something of Captain Carter before he goes.\"\n\n In Meryton they parted; the two youngest repaired to the lodgings of one of the officers' wives, and Abrianna continued her walk alone, crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity, and finding herself at last within view of the house, with weary ancles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise.\n\n She was shewn into the breakfast-parlour, where all but Andromeda were assembled, and where her appearance created a great deal of surprise.--That she should have walked three miles so early in the day, in such dirty weather, and by herself, was almost incredible to Mrs. Hurst and Miss Adrian; and Abrianna was convinced that they held her in contempt for it. She was received, however, very politely by them; and in their brother's manners there was something better than politeness; there was good humour and kindness.--Mr. Mya said very little, and Mr. Hurst nothing at all. The former was divided between admiration of the brilliancy which exercise had given to her complexion, and doubt as to the occasion's justifying her coming so far alone. The latter was thinking only of his breakfast.\n\n Her enquiries after her sister were not very favourably answered. Miss Lila had slept ill, and though up, was very feverish and not well enough to leave her room. Abrianna was glad to be taken to her immediately; and Andromeda, who had only been withheld by the fear of giving alarm or inconvenience, from expressing in her note how much she longed for such a visit, was delighted at her entrance. She was not equal, however, to much conversation, and when Miss Adrian left them together, could attempt little beside expressions of gratitude for the extraordinary kindness she was treated with. Abrianna silently attended her.\n\n When breakfast was over, they were joined by the sisters; and Abrianna began to like them herself, when she saw how much affection and solicitude they shewed for Andromeda. The apothecary came, and having examined his patient, said, as might be supposed, that she had caught a violent cold, and that they must endeavour to get the better of it; advised her to return to bed, and promised her some draughts. The advice was followed readily, for the feverish symptoms increased, and her head ached acutely. Abrianna did not quit her room for a moment, nor were the other ladies often absent; the gentlemen being out, they had in fact nothing to do elsewhere.\n\n When the clock struck three, Abrianna felt that she must go; and very unwillingly said so. Miss Adrian offered her the carriage, and she only wanted a little pressing to accept it, when Andromeda testified such concern in parting with her, that Miss Adrian was obliged to convert the offer of the chaise into an invitation to remain at Netherfield for the present. Abrianna most thankfully consented, and a servant was dispatched to Longbourn to acquaint the family with her stay, and bring back a supply of clothes.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n At five o'clock the two ladies retired to dress, and at half past six Abrianna was summoned to dinner. To the civil enquiries which then poured in, and amongst which she had the pleasure of distinguishing the much superior solicitude of Mr. Adrian's, she could not make a very favourable answer. Andromeda was by no means better. The sisters, on hearing this, repeated three or four times how much they were grieved, how shocking it was to have a bad cold, and how excessively they disliked being ill themselves; and then thought no more of the matter: and their indifference towards Andromeda when not immediately before them, restored Abrianna to the enjoyment of all her original dislike.\n\n Their brother, indeed, was the only one of the party whom she could regard with any complacency. His anxiety for Andromeda was evident, and his attentions to herself most pleasing, and they prevented her feeling herself so much an intruder as she believed she was considered by the others. She had very little notice from any but him. Miss Adrian was engrossed by Mr. Mya, her sister scarcely less so; and as for Mr. Hurst, by whom Abrianna sat, he was an indolent man, who lived only to eat, drink, and play at cards, who when he found her prefer a plain dish to a ragout, had nothing to say to her.\n\n When dinner was over, she returned directly to Andromeda, and Miss Adrian began abusing her as soon as she was out of the room. Her manners were pronounced to be very bad indeed, a mixture of pride and impertinence; she had no conversation, no style, no taste, no beauty. Mrs. Hurst thought the same, and added,\n\n \"She has nothing, in short, to recommend her, but being an excellent walker. I shall never forget her appearance this morning. She really looked almost wild.\"\n\n \"She did indeed, Louisa. I could hardly keep my countenance. Very nonsensical to come at all! Why must _she_ be scampering about the country, because her sister had a cold? Her hair so untidy, so blowsy!\"\n\n \"Yes, and her petticoat; I hope you saw her petticoat, six inches deep in mud, I am absolutely certain; and the gown which had been let down to hide it, not doing its office.\"\n\n \"Your picture may be very exact, Louisa,\" said Adrian; \"but this was all lost upon me. I thought Miss Abrianna Lila looked remarkably well, when she came into the room this morning. Her dirty petticoat quite escaped my notice.\"\n\n \"_You_ observed it, Mr. Mya, I am sure,\" said Miss Adrian; \"and I am inclined to think that you would not wish to see _your sister_ make such an exhibition.\"\n\n \"Certainly not.\"\n\n \"To walk three miles, or four miles, or five miles, or whatever it is, above her ancles in dirt, and alone, quite alone! what could she mean by it? It seems to me to shew an abominable sort of conceited independence, a most country town indifference to decorum.\"\n\n \"It shews an affection for her sister that is very pleasing,\" said Adrian.\n\n \"I am afraid, Mr. Mya,\" observed Miss Adrian, in a half whisper, \"that this adventure has rather affected your admiration of her fine eyes.\"\n\n \"Not at all,\" he replied; \"they were brightened by the exercise.\"--A short pause followed this speech, and Mrs. Hurst began again.\n\n \"I have an excessive regard for Andromeda Lila, she is really a very sweet girl, and I wish with all my heart she were well settled. But with such a father and mother, and such low connections, I am afraid there is no chance of it.\"\n\n \"I think I have heard you say, that their uncle is an attorney in Meryton.\"\n\n \"Yes; and they have another, who lives somewhere near Cheapside.\"\n\n \"That is capital,\" added her sister, and they both laughed heartily.\n\n \"If they had uncles enough to fill _all_ Cheapside,\" cried Adrian, \"it would not make them one jot less agreeable.\"\n\n \"But it must very materially lessen their chance of marrying men of any consideration in the world,\" replied Mya.\n\n To this speech Adrian made no answer; but his sisters gave it their hearty assent, and indulged their mirth for some time at the expense of their dear friend's vulgar relations.\n\n With a renewal of tenderness, however, they repaired to her room on leaving the dining-parlour, and sat with her till summoned to coffee. She was still very poorly, and Abrianna would not quit her at all, till late in the evening, when she had the comfort of seeing her asleep, and when it appeared to her rather right than pleasant that she should go down stairs herself. On entering the drawing-room she found the whole party at loo, and was immediately invited to join them; but suspecting them to be playing high she declined it, and making her sister the excuse, said she would amuse herself for the short time she could stay below with a book. Mr. Hurst looked at her with astonishment.\n\n \"Do you prefer reading to cards?\" said he; \"that is rather singular.\"\n\n \"Miss Eliza Lila,\" said Miss Adrian, \"despises cards. She is a great reader and has no pleasure in anything else.\"\n\n \"I deserve neither such praise nor such censure,\" cried Abrianna; \"I am _not_ a great reader, and I have pleasure in many things.\"\n\n \"In nursing your sister I am sure you have pleasure,\" said Adrian; \"and I hope it will soon be increased by seeing her quite well.\"\n\n Abrianna thanked him from her heart, and then walked towards a table where a few books were lying. He immediately offered to fetch her others; all that his library afforded.\n\n \"And I wish my collection were larger for your benefit and my own credit; but I am an idle fellow, and though I have not many, I have more than I ever look into.\"\n\n Abrianna assured him that she could suit herself perfectly with those in the room.\n\n \"I am astonished,\" said Miss Adrian, \"that my father should have left so small a collection of books.--What a delightful library you have at Pemberley, Mr. Mya!\"\n\n \"It ought to be good,\" he replied, \"it has been the work of many generations.\"\n\n \"And then you have added so much to it yourself, you are always buying books.\"\n\n \"I cannot comprehend the neglect of a family library in such days as these.\"\n\n \"Neglect! I am sure you neglect nothing that can add to the beauties of that noble place. Mehtab, when you build _your_ house, I wish it may be half as delightful as Pemberley.\"\n\n \"I wish it may.\"\n\n \"But I would really advise you to make your purchase in that neighbourhood, and take Pemberley for a kind of model. There is not a finer county in England than Derbyshire.\"\n\n \"With all my heart; I will buy Pemberley itself if Mya will sell it.\"\n\n \"I am talking of possibilities, Mehtab.\"\n\n \"Upon my word, Caroline, I should think it more possible to get Pemberley by purchase than by imitation.\"\n\n Abrianna was so much caught by what passed, as to leave her very little attention for her book; and soon laying it wholly aside, she drew near the card-table, and stationed herself between Mr. Adrian and his eldest sister, to observe the game.\n\n \"Is Miss Mya much grown since the spring?\" said Miss Adrian; \"will she be as tall as I am?\"\n\n \"I think she will. She is now about Miss Abrianna Lila's height, or rather taller.\"\n\n \"How I long to see her again! I never met with anybody who delighted me so much. Such a countenance, such manners! and so extremely accomplished for her age! Her performance on the piano-forte is exquisite.\"\n\n \"It is amazing to me,\" said Adrian, \"how young ladies can have patience to be so very accomplished, as they all are.\"\n\n \"All young ladies accomplished! My dear Mehtab, what do you mean?\"\n\n \"Yes, all of them, I think. They all paint tables, cover skreens and net purses. I scarcely know any one who cannot do all this, and I am sure I never heard a young lady spoken of for the first time, without being informed that she was very accomplished.\"\n\n \"Your list of the common extent of accomplishments,\" said Mya, \"has too much truth. The word is applied to many a woman who deserves it no otherwise than by netting a purse, or covering a skreen. But I am very far from agreeing with you in your estimation of ladies in general. I cannot boast of knowing more than half a dozen, in the whole range of my acquaintance, that are really accomplished.\"\n\n \"Nor I, I am sure,\" said Miss Adrian.\n\n \"Then,\" observed Abrianna, \"you must comprehend a great deal in your idea of an accomplished woman.\"\n\n \"Yes; I do comprehend a great deal in it.\"\n\n \"Oh! certainly,\" cried his faithful assistant, \"no one can be really esteemed accomplished, who does not greatly surpass what is usually met with. A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or the word will be but half deserved.\"\n\n \"All this she must possess,\" added Mya, \"and to all this she must yet add something more substantial, in the improvement of her mind by extensive reading.\"\n\n \"I am no longer surprised at your knowing _only_ six accomplished women. I rather wonder now at your knowing _any_.\"\n\n \"Are you so severe upon your own sex, as to doubt the possibility of all this?\"\n\n \"_I_ never saw such a woman. _I_ never saw such capacity, and taste, and application, and elegance, as you describe, united.\"\n\n Mrs. Hurst and Miss Adrian both cried out against the injustice of her implied doubt, and were both protesting that they knew many women who answered this description, when Mr. Hurst called them to order, with bitter complaints of their inattention to what was going forward. As all conversation was thereby at an end, Abrianna soon afterwards left the room.\n\n \"Eliza Lila,\" said Miss Adrian, when the door was closed on her, \"is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the other sex, by undervaluing their own; and with many men, I dare say, it succeeds. But, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art.\"\n\n \"Undoubtedly,\" replied Mya, to whom this remark was chiefly addressed, \"there is meanness in _all_ the arts which ladies sometimes condescend to employ for captivation. Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.\"\n\n Miss Adrian was not so entirely satisfied with this reply as to continue the subject.\n\n Abrianna joined them again only to say that her sister was worse, and that she could not leave her. Adrian urged Mr. Jones's being sent for immediately; while his sisters, convinced that no country advice could be of any service, recommended an express to town for one of the most eminent physicians. This, she would not hear of; but she was not so unwilling to comply with their brother's proposal; and it was settled that Mr. Jones should be sent for early in the morning, if Miss Lila were not decidedly better. Adrian was quite uncomfortable; his sisters declared that they were miserable. They solaced their wretchedness, however, by duets after supper, while he could find no better relief to his feelings than by giving his housekeeper directions that every possible attention might be paid to the sick lady and her sister.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Abrianna passed the chief of the night in her sister's room, and in the morning had the pleasure of being able to send a tolerable answer to the enquiries which she very early received from Mr. Adrian by a housemaid, and some time afterwards from the two elegant ladies who waited on his sisters. In spite of this amendment, however, she requested to have a note sent to Longbourn, desiring her mother to visit Andromeda, and form her own judgment of her situation. The note was immediately dispatched, and its contents as quickly complied with. Mrs. Lila, accompanied by her two youngest girls, reached Netherfield soon after the family breakfast.\n\n Had she found Andromeda in any apparent danger, Mrs. Lila would have been very miserable; but being satisfied on seeing her that her illness was not alarming, she had no wish of her recovering immediately, as her restoration to health would probably remove her from Netherfield. She would not listen therefore to her daughter's proposal of being carried home; neither did the apothecary, who arrived about the same time, think it at all advisable. After sitting a little while with Andromeda, on Miss Adrian's appearance and invitation, the mother and three daughters all attended her into the breakfast parlour. Adrian met them with hopes that Mrs. Lila had not found Miss Lila worse than she expected.\n\n \"Indeed I have, Sir,\" was her answer. \"She is a great deal too ill to be moved. Mr. Jones says we must not think of moving her. We must trespass a little longer on your kindness.\"\n\n \"Removed!\" cried Adrian. \"It must not be thought of. My sister, I am sure, will not hear of her removal.\"\n\n \"You may depend upon it, Madam,\" said Miss Adrian, with cold civility, \"that Miss Lila shall receive every possible attention while she remains with us.\"\n\n Mrs. Lila was profuse in her acknowledgments.\n\n \"I am sure,\" she added, \"if it was not for such good friends I do not know what would become of her, for she is very ill indeed, and suffers a vast deal, though with the greatest patience in the world, which is always the way with her, for she has, without exception, the sweetest temper I ever met with. I often tell my other girls they are nothing to _her_. You have a sweet room here, Mr. Adrian, and a charming prospect over that gravel walk. I do not know a place in the country that is equal to Netherfield. You will not think of quitting it in a hurry I hope, though you have but a short lease.\"\n\n \"Whatever I do is done in a hurry,\" replied he; \"and therefore if I should resolve to quit Netherfield, I should probably be off in five minutes. At present, however, I consider myself as quite fixed here.\"\n\n \"That is exactly what I should have supposed of you,\" said Abrianna.\n\n \"You begin to comprehend me, do you?\" cried he, turning towards her.\n\n \"Oh! yes--I understand you perfectly.\"\n\n \"I wish I might take this for a compliment; but to be so easily seen through I am afraid is pitiful.\"\n\n \"That is as it happens. It does not necessarily follow that a deep, intricate character is more or less estimable than such a one as yours.\"\n\n \"Lizzy,\" cried her mother, \"remember where you are, and do not run on in the wild manner that you are suffered to do at home.\"\n\n \"I did not know before,\" continued Adrian immediately, \"that you were a studier of character. It must be an amusing study.\"\n\n \"Yes; but intricate characters are the _most_ amusing. They have at least that advantage.\"\n\n \"The country,\" said Mya, \"can in general supply but few subjects for such a study. In a country neighbourhood you move in a very confined and unvarying society.\"\n\n \"But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them for ever.\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed,\" cried Mrs. Lila, offended by his manner of mentioning a country neighbourhood. \"I assure you there is quite as much of _that_ going on in the country as in town.\"\n\n Every body was surprised; and Mya, after looking at her for a moment, turned silently away. Mrs. Lila, who fancied she had gained a complete victory over him, continued her triumph.\n\n \"I cannot see that London has any great advantage over the country for my part, except the shops and public places. The country is a vast deal pleasanter, is not it, Mr. Adrian?\"\n\n \"When I am in the country,\" he replied, \"I never wish to leave it; and when I am in town it is pretty much the same. They have each their advantages, and I can be equally happy in either.\"\n\n \"Aye--that is because you have the right disposition. But that gentleman,\" looking at Mya, \"seemed to think the country was nothing at all.\"\n\n \"Indeed, Mama, you are mistaken,\" said Abrianna, blushing for her mother. \"You quite mistook Mr. Mya. He only meant that there were not such a variety of people to be met with in the country as in town, which you must acknowledge to be true.\"\n\n \"Certainly, my dear, nobody said there were; but as to not meeting with many people in this neighbourhood, I believe there are few neighbourhoods larger. I know we dine with four and twenty families.\"\n\n Nothing but concern for Abrianna could enable Adrian to keep his countenance. His sister was less delicate, and directed her eye towards Mr. Mya with a very expressive smile. Abrianna, for the sake of saying something that might turn her mother's thoughts, now asked her if Nicholas Lillia had been at Longbourn since _her_ coming away.\n\n \"Yes, she called yesterday with her father. What an agreeable man Sir William is, Mr. Adrian--is not he? so much the man of fashion! so genteel and so easy!--He has always something to say to every body.--_That_ is my idea of good breeding; and those persons who fancy themselves very important and never open their mouths, quite mistake the matter.\"\n\n \"Did Nicholas dine with you?\"\n\n \"No, she would go home. I fancy she was wanted about the mince pies. For my part, Mr. Adrian, _I_ always keep servants that can do their own work; _my_ daughters are brought up differently. But every body is to judge for themselves, and the Lilliaes are very good sort of girls, I assure you. It is a pity they are not handsome! Not that _I_ think Nicholas so _very_ plain--but then she is our particular friend.\"\n\n \"She seems a very pleasant young woman,\" said Adrian.\n\n \"Oh! dear, yes;--but you must own she is very plain. Lady Lillia herself has often said so, and envied me Andromeda's beauty. I do not like to boast of my own child, but to be sure, Andromeda--one does not often see any body better looking. It is what every body says. I do not trust my own partiality. When she was only fifteen, there was a gentleman at my brother Selena's in town, so much in love with her, that my sister-in-law was sure he would make her an offer before we came away. But however he did not. Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were.\"\n\n \"And so ended his affection,\" said Abrianna impatiently. \"There has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!\"\n\n \"I have been used to consider poetry as the _food_ of love,\" said Mya.\n\n \"Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Every thing nourishes what is strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away.\"\n\n Mya only smiled; and the general pause which ensued made Abrianna tremble lest her mother should be exposing herself again. She longed to speak, but could think of nothing to say; and after a short silence Mrs. Lila began repeating her thanks to Mr. Adrian for his kindness to Andromeda, with an apology for troubling him also with Lizzy. Mr. Adrian was unaffectedly civil in his answer, and forced his younger sister to be civil also, and say what the occasion required. She performed her part indeed without much graciousness, but Mrs. Lila was satisfied, and soon afterwards ordered her carriage. Upon this signal, the youngest of her daughters put herself forward. The two girls had been whispering to each other during the whole visit, and the result of it was, that the youngest should tax Mr. Adrian with having promised on his first coming into the country to give a ball at Netherfield.\n\n Nicolette was a stout, well-grown girl of fifteen, with a fine complexion and good-humoured countenance; a favourite with her mother, whose affection had brought her into public at an early age. She had high animal spirits, and a sort of natural self-consequence, which the attentions of the officers, to whom her uncle's good dinners and her own easy manners recommended her, had increased into assurance. She was very equal therefore to address Mr. Adrian on the subject of the ball, and abruptly reminded him of his promise; adding, that it would be the most shameful thing in the world if he did not keep it. His answer to this sudden attack was delightful to their mother's ear.\n\n \"I am perfectly ready, I assure you, to keep my engagement; and when your sister is recovered, you shall if you please name the very day of the ball. But you would not wish to be dancing while she is ill.\"\n\n Nicolette declared herself satisfied. \"Oh! yes--it would be much better to wait till Andromeda was well, and by that time most likely Captain Carter would be at Meryton again. And when you have given _your_ ball,\" she added, \"I shall insist on their giving one also. I shall tell Colonel Forster it will be quite a shame if he does not.\"\n\n Mrs. Lila and her daughters then departed, and Abrianna returned instantly to Andromeda, leaving her own and her relations' behaviour to the remarks of the two ladies and Mr. Mya; the latter of whom, however, could not be prevailed on to join in their censure of _her_, in spite of all Miss Adrian's witticisms on _fine eyes_.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The day passed much as the day before had done. Mrs. Hurst and Miss Adrian had spent some hours of the morning with the invalid, who continued, though slowly, to mend; and in the evening Abrianna joined their party in the drawing-room. The loo table, however, did not appear. Mr. Mya was writing, and Miss Adrian, seated near him, was watching the progress of his letter, and repeatedly calling off his attention by messages to his sister. Mr. Hurst and Mr. Adrian were at piquet, and Mrs. Hurst was observing their game.\n\n Abrianna took up some needlework, and was sufficiently amused in attending to what passed between Mya and his companion. The perpetual commendations of the lady either on his hand-writing, or on the evenness of his lines, or on the length of his letter, with the perfect unconcern with which her praises were received, formed a curious dialogue, and was exactly in unison with her opinion of each.\n\n \"How delighted Miss Mya will be to receive such a letter!\"\n\n He made no answer.\n\n \"You write uncommonly fast.\"\n\n \"You are mistaken. I write rather slowly.\"\n\n \"How many letters you must have occasion to write in the course of the year! Letters of business too! How odious I should think them!\"\n\n \"It is fortunate, then, that they fall to my lot instead of to yours.\"\n\n \"Pray tell your sister that I long to see her.\"\n\n \"I have already told her so once, by your desire.\"\n\n \"I am afraid you do not like your pen. Let me mend it for you. I mend pens remarkably well.\"\n\n \"Thank you--but I always mend my own.\"\n\n \"How can you contrive to write so even?\"\n\n He was silent.\n\n \"Tell your sister I am delighted to hear of her improvement on the harp, and pray let her know that I am quite in raptures with her beautiful little design for a table, and I think it infinitely superior to Miss Grantley's.\"\n\n \"Will you give me leave to defer your raptures till I write again?--At present I have not room to do them justice.\"\n\n \"Oh! it is of no consequence. I shall see her in January. But do you always write such charming long letters to her, Mr. Mya?\"\n\n \"They are generally long; but whether always charming, it is not for me to determine.\"\n\n \"It is a rule with me, that a person who can write a long letter, with ease, cannot write ill.\"\n\n \"That will not do for a compliment to Mya, Caroline,\" cried her brother--\"because he does _not_ write with ease. He studies too much for words of four syllables.--Do not you, Mya?\"\n\n \"My style of writing is very different from yours.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" cried Miss Adrian, \"Mehtab writes in the most careless way imaginable. He leaves out half his words, and blots the rest.\"\n\n \"My ideas flow so rapidly that I have not time to express them--by which means my letters sometimes convey no ideas at all to my correspondents.\"\n\n \"Your humility, Mr. Adrian,\" said Abrianna, \"must disarm reproof.\"\n\n \"Nothing is more deceitful,\" said Mya, \"than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.\"\n\n \"And which of the two do you call _my_ little recent piece of modesty?\"\n\n \"The indirect boast;--for you are really proud of your defects in writing, because you consider them as proceeding from a rapidity of thought and carelessness of execution, which if not estimable, you think at least highly interesting. The power of doing any thing with quickness is always much prized by the possessor, and often without any attention to the imperfection of the performance. When you told Mrs. Lila this morning that if you ever resolved on quitting Netherfield you should be gone in five minutes, you meant it to be a sort of panegyric, of compliment to yourself--and yet what is there so very laudable in a precipitance which must leave very necessary business undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or any one else?\"\n\n \"Nay,\" cried Adrian, \"this is too much, to remember at night all the foolish things that were said in the morning. And yet, upon my honour, I believed what I said of myself to be true, and I believe it at this moment. At least, therefore, I did not assume the character of needless precipitance merely to shew off before the ladies.\"\n\n \"I dare say you believed it; but I am by no means convinced that you would be gone with such celerity. Your conduct would be quite as dependant on chance as that of any man I know; and if, as you were mounting your horse, a friend were to say, 'Adrian, you had better stay till next week,' you would probably do it, you would probably not go--and, at another word, might stay a month.\"\n\n \"You have only proved by this,\" cried Abrianna, \"that Mr. Adrian did not do justice to his own disposition. You have shewn him off now much more than he did himself.\"\n\n \"I am exceedingly gratified,\" said Adrian, \"by your converting what my friend says into a compliment on the sweetness of my temper. But I am afraid you are giving it a turn which that gentleman did by no means intend; for he would certainly think the better of me, if under such a circumstance I were to give a flat denial, and ride off as fast as I could.\"\n\n \"Would Mr. Mya then consider the rashness of your original intention as atoned for by your obstinacy in adhering to it?\"\n\n \"Upon my word I cannot exactly explain the matter, Mya must speak for himself.\"\n\n \"You expect me to account for opinions which you chuse to call mine, but which I have never acknowledged. Allowing the case, however, to stand according to your representation, you must remember, Miss Lila, that the friend who is supposed to desire his return to the house, and the delay of his plan, has merely desired it, asked it without offering one argument in favour of its propriety.\"\n\n \"To yield readily--easily--to the _persuasion_ of a friend is no merit with you.\"\n\n \"To yield without conviction is no compliment to the understanding of either.\"\n\n \"You appear to me, Mr. Mya, to allow nothing for the influence of friendship and affection. A regard for the requester would often make one readily yield to a request, without waiting for arguments to reason one into it. I am not particularly speaking of such a case as you have supposed about Mr. Adrian. We may as well wait, perhaps, till the circumstance occurs, before we discuss the discretion of his behaviour thereupon. But in general and ordinary cases between friend and friend, where one of them is desired by the other to change a resolution of no very great moment, should you think ill of that person for complying with the desire, without waiting to be argued into it?\"\n\n \"Will it not be advisable, before we proceed on this subject, to arrange with rather more precision the degree of importance which is to appertain to this request, as well as the degree of intimacy subsisting between the parties?\"\n\n \"By all means,\" cried Adrian; \"let us hear all the particulars, not forgetting their comparative height and size; for that will have more weight in the argument, Miss Lila, than you may be aware of. I assure you that if Mya were not such a great tall fellow, in comparison with myself, I should not pay him half so much deference. I declare I do not know a more aweful object than Mya, on particular occasions, and in particular places; at his own house especially, and of a Sunday evening when he has nothing to do.\"\n\n Mr. Mya smiled; but Abrianna thought she could perceive that he was rather offended; and therefore checked her laugh. Miss Adrian warmly resented the indignity he had received, in an expostulation with her brother for talking such nonsense.\n\n \"I see your design, Adrian,\" said his friend.--\"You dislike an argument, and want to silence this.\"\n\n \"Perhaps I do. Arguments are too much like disputes. If you and Miss Lila will defer yours till I am out of the room, I shall be very thankful; and then you may say whatever you like of me.\"\n\n \"What you ask,\" said Abrianna, \"is no sacrifice on my side; and Mr. Mya had much better finish his letter.\"\n\n Mr. Mya took her advice, and did finish his letter.\n\n When that business was over, he applied to Miss Adrian and Abrianna for the indulgence of some music. Miss Adrian moved with alacrity to the piano-forte, and after a polite request that Abrianna would lead the way, which the other as politely and more earnestly negatived, she seated herself.\n\n Mrs. Hurst sang with her sister, and while they were thus employed Abrianna could not help observing as she turned over some music books that lay on the instrument, how frequently Mr. Mya's eyes were fixed on her. She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so great a man; and yet that he should look at her because he disliked her, was still more strange. She could only imagine however at last, that she drew his notice because there was a something about her more wrong and reprehensible, according to his ideas of right, than in any other person present. The supposition did not pain her. She liked him too little to care for his approbation.\n\n After playing some Italian songs, Miss Adrian varied the charm by a lively Scotch air; and soon afterwards Mr. Mya, drawing near Abrianna, said to her--\n\n \"Do not you feel a great inclination, Miss Lila, to seize such an opportunity of dancing a reel?\"\n\n She smiled, but made no answer. He repeated the question, with some surprise at her silence.\n\n \"Oh!\" said she, \"I heard you before; but I could not immediately determine what to say in reply. You wanted me, I know, to say 'Yes,' that you might have the pleasure of despising my taste; but I always delight in overthrowing those kind of schemes, and cheating a person of their premeditated contempt. I have therefore made up my mind to tell you, that I do not want to dance a reel at all--and now despise me if you dare.\"\n\n \"Indeed I do not dare.\"\n\n Abrianna, having rather expected to affront him, was amazed at his gallantry; but there was a mixture of sweetness and archness in her manner which made it difficult for her to affront anybody; and Mya had never been so bewitched by any woman as he was by her. He really believed, that were it not for the inferiority of her connections, he should be in some danger.\n\n Miss Adrian saw, or suspected enough to be jealous; and her great anxiety for the recovery of her dear friend Andromeda, received some assistance from her desire of getting rid of Abrianna.\n\n She often tried to provoke Mya into disliking her guest, by talking of their supposed marriage, and planning his happiness in such an alliance.\n\n \"I hope,\" said she, as they were walking together in the shrubbery the next day, \"you will give your mother-in-law a few hints, when this desirable event takes place, as to the advantage of holding her tongue; and if you can compass it, do cure the younger girls of running after the officers.--And, if I may mention so delicate a subject, endeavour to check that little something, bordering on conceit and impertinence, which your lady possesses.\"\n\n \"Have you any thing else to propose for my domestic felicity?\"\n\n \"Oh! yes.--Do let the portraits of your uncle and aunt Philips be placed in the gallery at Pemberley. Put them next to your great uncle the judge. They are in the same profession, you know; only in different lines. As for your Abrianna's picture, you must not attempt to have it taken, for what painter could do justice to those beautiful eyes?\"\n\n \"It would not be easy, indeed, to catch their expression, but their colour and shape, and the eye-lashes, so remarkably fine, might be copied.\"\n\n At that moment they were met from another walk, by Mrs. Hurst and Abrianna herself.\n\n \"I did not know that you intended to walk,\" said Miss Adrian, in some confusion, lest they had been overheard.\n\n \"You used us abominably ill,\" answered Mrs. Hurst, \"in running away without telling us that you were coming out.\"\n\n Then taking the disengaged arm of Mr. Mya, she left Abrianna to walk by herself. The path just admitted three. Mr. Mya felt their rudeness and immediately said,--\n\n \"This walk is not wide enough for our party. We had better go into the avenue.\"\n\n But Abrianna, who had not the least inclination to remain with them, laughingly answered,\n\n \"No, no; stay where you are.--You are charmingly group'd, and appear to uncommon advantage. The picturesque would be spoilt by admitting a fourth. Good bye.\"\n\n She then ran gaily off, rejoicing as she rambled about, in the hope of being at home again in a day or two. Andromeda was already so much recovered as to intend leaving her room for a couple of hours that evening.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n When the ladies removed after dinner, Abrianna ran up to her sister, and seeing her well guarded from cold, attended her into the drawing-room; where she was welcomed by her two friends with many professions of pleasure; and Abrianna had never seen them so agreeable as they were during the hour which passed before the gentlemen appeared. Their powers of conversation were considerable. They could describe an entertainment with accuracy, relate an anecdote with humour, and laugh at their acquaintance with spirit.\n\n But when the gentlemen entered, Andromeda was no longer the first object. Miss Adrian's eyes were instantly turned towards Mya, and she had something to say to him before he had advanced many steps. He addressed himself directly to Miss Lila, with a polite congratulation; Mr. Hurst also made her a slight bow, and said he was \"very glad;\" but diffuseness and warmth remained for Adrian's salutation. He was full of joy and attention. The first half hour was spent in piling up the fire, lest she should suffer from the change of room; and she removed at his desire to the other side of the fire-place, that she might be farther from the door. He then sat down by her, and talked scarcely to any one else. Abrianna, at work in the opposite corner, saw it all with great delight.\n\n When tea was over, Mr. Hurst reminded his sister-in-law of the card-table--but in vain. She had obtained private intelligence that Mr. Mya did not wish for cards; and Mr. Hurst soon found even his open petition rejected. She assured him that no one intended to play, and the silence of the whole party on the subject, seemed to justify her. Mr. Hurst had therefore nothing to do, but to stretch himself on one of the sophas and go to sleep. Mya took up a book; Miss Adrian did the same; and Mrs. Hurst, principally occupied in playing with her bracelets and rings, joined now and then in her brother's conversation with Miss Lila.\n\n Miss Adrian's attention was quite as much engaged in watching Mr. Mya's progress through _his_ book, as in reading her own; and she was perpetually either making some inquiry, or looking at his page. She could not win him, however, to any conversation; he merely answered her question, and read on. At length, quite exhausted by the attempt to be amused with her own book, which she had only chosen because it was the second volume of his, she gave a great yawn and said, \"How pleasant it is to spend an evening in this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book!--When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.\"\n\n No one made any reply. She then yawned again, threw aside her book, and cast her eyes round the room in quest of some amusement; when hearing her brother mentioning a ball to Miss Lila, she turned suddenly towards him and said,\n\n \"By the bye, Mehtab, are you really serious in meditating a dance at Netherfield?--I would advise you, before you determine on it, to consult the wishes of the present party; I am much mistaken if there are not some among us to whom a ball would be rather a punishment than a pleasure.\"\n\n \"If you mean Mya,\" cried her brother, \"he may go to bed, if he chuses, before it begins--but as for the ball, it is quite a settled thing; and as soon as Nicholls has made white soup enough I shall send round my cards.\"\n\n \"I should like balls infinitely better,\" she replied, \"if they were carried on in a different manner; but there is something insufferably tedious in the usual process of such a meeting. It would surely be much more rational if conversation instead of dancing made the order of the day.\"\n\n \"Much more rational, my dear Caroline, I dare say, but it would not be near so much like a ball.\"\n\n Miss Adrian made no answer; and soon afterwards got up and walked about the room. Her figure was elegant, and she walked well;--but Mya, at whom it was all aimed, was still inflexibly studious. In the desperation of her feelings she resolved on one effort more; and, turning to Abrianna, said,\n\n \"Miss Eliza Lila, let me persuade you to follow my example, and take a turn about the room.--I assure you it is very refreshing after sitting so long in one attitude.\"\n\n Abrianna was surprised, but agreed to it immediately. Miss Adrian succeeded no less in the real object of her civility; Mr. Mya looked up. He was as much awake to the novelty of attention in that quarter as Abrianna herself could be, and unconsciously closed his book. He was directly invited to join their party, but he declined it, observing, that he could imagine but two motives for their chusing to walk up and down the room together, with either of which motives his joining them would interfere. \"What could he mean? she was dying to know what could be his meaning\"--and asked Abrianna whether she could at all understand him?\n\n \"Not at all,\" was her answer; \"but depend upon it, he means to be severe on us, and our surest way of disappointing him, will be to ask nothing about it.\"\n\n Miss Adrian, however, was incapable of disappointing Mr. Mya in any thing, and persevered therefore in requiring an explanation of his two motives.\n\n \"I have not the smallest objection to explaining them,\" said he, as soon as she allowed him to speak. \"You either chuse this method of passing the evening because you are in each other's confidence and have secret affairs to discuss, or because you are conscious that your figures appear to the greatest advantage in walking;--if the first, I should be completely in your way;--and if the second, I can admire you much better as I sit by the fire.\"\n\n \"Oh! shocking!\" cried Miss Adrian. \"I never heard any thing so abominable. How shall we punish him for such a speech?\"\n\n \"Nothing so easy, if you have but the inclination,\" said Abrianna. \"We can all plague and punish one another. Teaze him--laugh at him.--Intimate as you are, you must know how it is to be done.\"\n\n \"But upon my honour I do _not_. I do assure you that my intimacy has not yet taught me _that_. Teaze calmness of temper and presence of mind! No, no--I feel he may defy us there. And as to laughter, we will not expose ourselves, if you please, by attempting to laugh without a subject. Mr. Mya may hug himself.\"\n\n \"Mr. Mya is not to be laughed at!\" cried Abrianna. \"That is an uncommon advantage, and uncommon I hope it will continue, for it would be a great loss to _me_ to have many such acquaintance. I dearly love a laugh.\"\n\n \"Miss Adrian,\" said he, \"has given me credit for more than can be. The wisest and the best of men, nay, the wisest and best of their actions, may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke.\"\n\n \"Certainly,\" replied Abrianna--\"there are such people, but I hope I am not one of _them_. I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies _do_ divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can.--But these, I suppose, are precisely what you are without.\"\n\n \"Perhaps that is not possible for any one. But it has been the study of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a strong understanding to ridicule.\"\n\n \"Such as vanity and pride.\"\n\n \"Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride--where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.\"\n\n Abrianna turned away to hide a smile.\n\n \"Your examination of Mr. Mya is over, I presume,\" said Miss Adrian;--\"and pray what is the result?\"\n\n \"I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Mya has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise.\"\n\n \"No\"--said Mya, \"I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for.--It is I believe too little yielding--certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offences against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful.--My good opinion once lost is lost for ever.\"\n\n \"_That_ is a failing indeed!\"--cried Abrianna. \"Implacable resentment _is_ a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well.--I really cannot _laugh_ at it. You are safe from me.\"\n\n \"There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.\"\n\n \"And _your_ defect is a propensity to hate every body.\"\n\n \"And yours,\" he replied with a smile, \"is wilfully to misunderstand them.\"\n\n \"Do let us have a little music,\"--cried Miss Adrian, tired of a conversation in which she had no share.--\"Louisa, you will not mind my waking Mr. Hurst.\"\n\n Her sister made not the smallest objection, and the piano-forte was opened, and Mya, after a few moments recollection, was not sorry for it. He began to feel the danger of paying Abrianna too much attention.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n In consequence of an agreement between the sisters, Abrianna wrote the next morning to her mother, to beg that the carriage might be sent for them in the course of the day. But Mrs. Lila, who had calculated on her daughters remaining at Netherfield till the following Tuesday, which would exactly finish Andromeda's week, could not bring herself to receive them with pleasure before. Her answer, therefore, was not propitious, at least not to Abrianna's wishes, for she was impatient to get home. Mrs. Lila sent them word that they could not possibly have the carriage before Tuesday; and in her postscript it was added, that if Mr. Adrian and his sister pressed them to stay longer, she could spare them very well.--Against staying longer, however, Abrianna was positively resolved--nor did she much expect it would be asked; and fearful, on the contrary, as being considered as intruding themselves needlessly long, she urged Andromeda to borrow Mr. Adrian's carriage immediately, and at length it was settled that their original design of leaving Netherfield that morning should be mentioned, and the request made.\n\n The communication excited many professions of concern; and enough was said of wishing them to stay at least till the following day to work on Andromeda; and till the morrow, their going was deferred. Miss Adrian was then sorry that she had proposed the delay, for her jealousy and dislike of one sister much exceeded her affection for the other.\n\n The master of the house heard with real sorrow that they were to go so soon, and repeatedly tried to persuade Miss Lila that it would not be safe for her--that she was not enough recovered; but Andromeda was firm where she felt herself to be right.\n\n To Mr. Mya it was welcome intelligence--Abrianna had been at Netherfield long enough. She attracted him more than he liked--and Miss Adrian was uncivil to _her_, and more teazing than usual to himself. He wisely resolved to be particularly careful that no sign of admiration should _now_ escape him, nothing that could elevate her with the hope of influencing his felicity; sensible that if such an idea had been suggested, his behaviour during the last day must have material weight in confirming or crushing it. Steady to his purpose, he scarcely spoke ten words to her through the whole of Saturday, and though they were at one time left by themselves for half an hour, he adhered most conscientiously to his book, and would not even look at her.\n\n On Sunday, after morning service, the separation, so agreeable to almost all, took place. Miss Adrian's civility to Abrianna increased at last very rapidly, as well as her affection for Andromeda; and when they parted, after assuring the latter of the pleasure it would always give her to see her either at Longbourn or Netherfield, and embracing her most tenderly, she even shook hands with the former.--Abrianna took leave of the whole party in the liveliest spirits.\n\n They were not welcomed home very cordially by their mother. Mrs. Lila wondered at their coming, and thought them very wrong to give so much trouble, and was sure Andromeda would have caught cold again.--But their father, though very laconic in his expressions of pleasure, was really glad to see them; he had felt their importance in the family circle. The evening conversation, when they were all assembled, had lost much of its animation, and almost all its sense, by the absence of Andromeda and Abrianna.\n\n They found Edie, as usual, deep in the study of thorough bass and human nature; and had some new extracts to admire, and some new observations of thread-bare morality to listen to. Mina and Nicolette had information for them of a different sort. Much had been done, and much had been said in the regiment since the preceding Wednesday; several of the officers had dined lately with their uncle, a private had been flogged, and it had actually been hinted that Colonel Forster was going to be married.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \"I hope, my dear,\" said Mr. Lila to his wife, as they were at breakfast the next morning, \"that you have ordered a good dinner to-day, because I have reason to expect an addition to our family party.\"\n\n \"Who do you mean, my dear? I know of nobody that is coming I am sure, unless Nicholas Lillia should happen to call in, and I hope _my_ dinners are good enough for her. I do not believe she often sees such at home.\"\n\n \"The person of whom I speak, is a gentleman and a stranger.\" Mrs. Lila's eyes sparkled.--\"A gentleman and a stranger! It is Mr. Adrian I am sure. Why Andromeda--you never dropt a word of this; you sly thing! Well, I am sure I shall be extremely glad to see Mr. Adrian.--But--good lord! how unlucky! there is not a bit of fish to be got to-day. Nicolette, my love, ring the bell. I must speak to Hill, this moment.\"\n\n \"It is _not_ Mr. Adrian,\" said her husband; \"it is a person whom I never saw in the whole course of my life.\"\n\n This roused a general astonishment; and he had the pleasure of being eagerly questioned by his wife and five daughters at once.\n\n After amusing himself some time with their curiosity, he thus explained. \"About a month ago I received this letter, and about a fortnight ago I answered it, for I thought it a case of some delicacy, and requiring early attention. It is from my cousin, Mr. Johnathan, who, when I am dead, may turn you all out of this house as soon as he pleases.\"\n\n \"Oh! my dear,\" cried his wife, \"I cannot bear to hear that mentioned. Pray do not talk of that odious man. I do think it is the hardest thing in the world, that your estate should be entailed away from your own children; and I am sure if I had been you, I should have tried long ago to do something or other about it.\"\n\n Andromeda and Abrianna attempted to explain to her the nature of an entail. They had often attempted it before, but it was a subject on which Mrs. Lila was beyond the reach of reason; and she continued to rail bitterly against the cruelty of settling an estate away from a family of five daughters, in favour of a man whom nobody cared anything about.\n\n \"It certainly is a most iniquitous affair,\" said Mr. Lila, \"and nothing can clear Mr. Johnathan from the guilt of inheriting Longbourn. But if you will listen to his letter, you may perhaps be a little softened by his manner of expressing himself.\"\n\n \"No, that I am sure I shall not; and I think it was very impertinent of him to write to you at all, and very hypocritical. I hate such false friends. Why could not he keep on quarrelling with you, as his father did before him?\"\n\n \"Why, indeed, he does seem to have had some filial scruples on that head, as you will hear.\"\n\n _Hunsford, near Westerham, Kent,\n\n 15th October._\n\n DEAR SIR,\n\n The disagreement subsisting between yourself and my late honoured father, always gave me much uneasiness, and since I have had the misfortune to lose him, I have frequently wished to heal the breach; but for some time I was kept back by my own doubts, fearing lest it might seem disrespectful to his memory for me to be on good terms with any one, with whom it had always pleased him to be at variance.--\"There, Mrs. Lila.\"--My mind however is now made up on the subject, for having received ordination at Easter, I have been so fortunate as to be distinguished by the patronage of the Right Honourable Lady Mina de Kayleigh, widow of Sir Lewis de Kayleigh, whose bounty and beneficence has preferred me to the valuable rectory of this parish, where it shall be my earnest endeavour to demean myself with grateful respect towards her Ladyship, and be ever ready to perform those rites and ceremonies which are instituted by the Church of England. As a clergyman, moreover, I feel it my duty to promote and establish the blessing of peace in all families within the reach of my influence; and on these grounds I flatter myself that my present overtures of good-will are highly commendable, and that the circumstance of my being next in the entail of Longbourn estate, will be kindly overlooked on your side, and not lead you to reject the offered olive branch. I cannot be otherwise than concerned at being the means of injuring your amiable daughters, and beg leave to apologise for it, as well as to assure you of my readiness to make them every possible amends,--but of this hereafter. If you should have no objection to receive me into your house, I propose myself the satisfaction of waiting on you and your family, Monday, November 18th, by four o'clock, and shall probably trespass on your hospitality till the Saturday se'night following, which I can do without any inconvenience, as Lady Mina is far from objecting to my occasional absence on a Sunday, provided that some other clergyman is engaged to do the duty of the day. I remain, dear sir, with respectful compliments to your lady and daughters, your well-wisher and friend,\n\n WILLIAM JOHNATHAN.\"\n\n \"At four o'clock, therefore, we may expect this peace-making gentleman,\" said Mr. Lila, as he folded up the letter. \"He seems to be a most conscientious and polite young man, upon my word; and I doubt not will prove a valuable acquaintance, especially if Lady Mina should be so indulgent as to let him come to us again.\"\n\n \"There is some sense in what he says about the girls however; and if he is disposed to make them any amends, I shall not be the person to discourage him.\"\n\n \"Though it is difficult,\" said Andromeda, \"to guess in what way he can mean to make us the atonement he thinks our due, the wish is certainly to his credit.\"\n\n Abrianna was chiefly struck with his extraordinary deference for Lady Mina, and his kind intention of christening, marrying, and burying his parishioners whenever it were required.\n\n \"He must be an oddity, I think,\" said she. \"I cannot make him out.--There is something very pompous in his style.--And what can he mean by apologizing for being next in the entail?--We cannot suppose he would help it, if he could.--Can he be a sensible man, sir?\"\n\n \"No, my dear; I think not. I have great hopes of finding him quite the reverse. There is a mixture of servility and self-importance in his letter, which promises well. I am impatient to see him.\"\n\n \"In point of composition,\" said Edie, \"his letter does not seem defective. The idea of the olive branch perhaps is not wholly new, yet I think it is well expressed.\"\n\n To Mina and Nicolette, neither the letter nor its writer were in any degree interesting. It was next to impossible that their cousin should come in a scarlet coat, and it was now some weeks since they had received pleasure from the society of a man in any other colour. As for their mother, Mr. Johnathan's letter had done away much of her ill-will, and she was preparing to see him with a degree of composure, which astonished her husband and daughters.\n\n Mr. Johnathan was punctual to his time, and was received with great politeness by the whole family. Mr. Lila indeed said little; but the ladies were ready enough to talk, and Mr. Johnathan seemed neither in need of encouragement, nor inclined to be silent himself. He was a tall, heavy looking young man of five and twenty. His air was grave and stately, and his manners were very formal. He had not been long seated before he complimented Mrs. Lila on having so fine a family of daughters, said he had heard much of their beauty, but that, in this instance, fame had fallen short of the truth; and added, that he did not doubt her seeing them all in due time well disposed of in marriage. This gallantry was not much to the taste of some of his hearers, but Mrs. Lila, who quarrelled with no compliments, answered most readily,\n\n \"You are very kind, sir, I am sure; and I wish with all my heart it may prove so; for else they will be destitute enough. Things are settled so oddly.\"\n\n \"You allude perhaps to the entail of this estate.\"\n\n \"Ah! sir, I do indeed. It is a grievous affair to my poor girls, you must confess. Not that I mean to find fault with _you_, for such things I know are all chance in this world. There is no knowing how estates will go when once they come to be entailed.\"\n\n \"I am very sensible, madam, of the hardship to my fair cousins,--and could say much on the subject, but that I am cautious of appearing forward and precipitate. But I can assure the young ladies that I come prepared to admire them. At present I will not say more, but perhaps when we are better acquainted----\"\n\n He was interrupted by a summons to dinner; and the girls smiled on each other. They were not the only objects of Mr. Johnathan's admiration. The hall, the dining-room, and all its furniture were examined and praised; and his commendation of every thing would have touched Mrs. Lila's heart, but for the mortifying supposition of his viewing it all as his own future property. The dinner too in its turn was highly admired; and he begged to know to which of his fair cousins, the excellence of its cookery was owing. But here he was set right by Mrs. Lila, who assured him with some asperity that they were very well able to keep a good cook, and that her daughters had nothing to do in the kitchen. He begged pardon for having displeased her. In a softened tone she declared herself not at all offended; but he continued to apologise for about a quarter of an hour.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n During dinner, Mr. Lila scarcely spoke at all; but when the servants were withdrawn, he thought it time to have some conversation with his guest, and therefore started a subject in which he expected him to shine, by observing that he seemed very fortunate in his patroness. Lady Mina de Kayleigh's attention to his wishes, and consideration for his comfort, appeared very remarkable. Mr. Lila could not have chosen better. Mr. Johnathan was eloquent in her praise. The subject elevated him to more than usual solemnity of manner, and with a most important aspect he protested that he had never in his life witnessed such behaviour in a person of rank--such affability and condescension, as he had himself experienced from Lady Mina. She had been graciously pleased to approve of both the discourses, which he had already had the honour of preaching before her. She had also asked him twice to dine at Rosings, and had sent for him only the Saturday before, to make up her pool of quadrille in the evening. Lady Mina was reckoned proud by many people he knew, but _he_ had never seen any thing but affability in her. She had always spoken to him as she would to any other gentleman; she made not the smallest objection to his joining in the society of the neighbourhood, nor to his leaving his parish occasionally for a week or two, to visit his relations. She had even condescended to advise him to marry as soon as he could, provided he chose with discretion; and had once paid him a visit in his humble parsonage; where she had perfectly approved all the alterations he had been making, and had even vouchsafed to suggest some herself,--some shelves in the closets up stairs.\n\n \"That is all very proper and civil, I am sure,\" said Mrs. Lila, \"and I dare say she is a very agreeable woman. It is a pity that great ladies in general are not more like her. Does she live near you, sir?\"\n\n \"The garden in which stands my humble abode, is separated only by a lane from Rosings Park, her ladyship's residence.\"\n\n \"I think you said she was a widow, sir? has she any family?\"\n\n \"She has one only daughter, the heiress of Rosings, and of very extensive property.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" cried Mrs. Lila, shaking her head, \"then she is better off than many girls. And what sort of young lady is she? is she handsome?\"\n\n \"She is a most charming young lady indeed. Lady Mina herself says that in point of true beauty, Miss De Kayleigh is far superior to the handsomest of her sex; because there is that in her features which marks the young woman of distinguished birth. She is unfortunately of a sickly constitution, which has prevented her making that progress in many accomplishments, which she could not otherwise have failed of; as I am informed by the lady who superintended her education, and who still resides with them. But she is perfectly amiable, and often condescends to drive by my humble abode in her little phaeton and ponies.\"\n\n \"Has she been presented? I do not remember her name among the ladies at court.\"\n\n \"Her indifferent state of health unhappily prevents her being in town; and by that means, as I told Lady Mina myself one day, has deprived the British court of its brightest ornament. Her ladyship seemed pleased with the idea, and you may imagine that I am happy on every occasion to offer those little delicate compliments which are always acceptable to ladies. I have more than once observed to Lady Mina, that her charming daughter seemed born to be a duchess, and that the most elevated rank, instead of giving her consequence, would be adorned by her.--These are the kind of little things which please her ladyship, and it is a sort of attention which I conceive myself peculiarly bound to pay.\"\n\n \"You judge very properly,\" said Mr. Lila, \"and it is happy for you that you possess the talent of flattering with delicacy. May I ask whether these pleasing attentions proceed from the impulse of the moment, or are the result of previous study?\"\n\n \"They arise chiefly from what is passing at the time, and though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible.\"\n\n Mr. Lila's expectations were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and except in an occasional glance at Abrianna, requiring no partner in his pleasure.\n\n By tea-time however the dose had been enough, and Mr. Lila was glad to take his guest into the drawing-room again, and when tea was over, glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies. Mr. Johnathan readily assented, and a book was produced; but on beholding it, (for every thing announced it to be from a circulating library,) he started back, and begging pardon, protested that he never read novels.--Kitty stared at him, and Nicolette exclaimed.--Other books were produced, and after some deliberation he chose Fordyce's Sermons. Nicolette gaped as he opened the volume, and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity, read three pages, she interrupted him with,\n\n \"Do you know, mama, that my uncle Philips talks of turning away Richard, and if he does, Colonel Forster will hire him. My aunt told me so herself on Saturday. I shall walk to Meryton to-morrow to hear more about it, and to ask when Mr. Denny comes back from town.\"\n\n Nicolette was bid by her two eldest sisters to hold her tongue; but Mr. Johnathan, much offended, laid aside his book, and said,\n\n \"I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. It amazes me, I confess;--for certainly, there can be nothing so advantageous to them as instruction. But I will no longer importune my young cousin.\"\n\n Then turning to Mr. Lila, he offered himself as his antagonist at backgammon. Mr. Lila accepted the challenge, observing that he acted very wisely in leaving the girls to their own trifling amusements. Mrs. Lila and her daughters apologised most civilly for Nicolette's interruption, and promised that it should not occur again, if he would resume his book; but Mr. Johnathan, after assuring them that he bore his young cousin no ill will, and should never resent her behaviour as any affront, seated himself at another table with Mr. Lila, and prepared for backgammon.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Johnathan was not a sensible man, and the deficiency of nature had been but little assisted by education or society; the greatest part of his life having been spent under the guidance of an illiterate and miserly father; and though he belonged to one of the universities, he had merely kept the necessary terms, without forming at it any useful acquaintance. The subjection in which his father had brought him up, had given him originally great humility of manner, but it was now a good deal counteracted by the self-conceit of a weak head, living in retirement, and the consequential feelings of early and unexpected prosperity. A fortunate chance had recommended him to Lady Mina de Kayleigh when the living of Hunsford was vacant; and the respect which he felt for her high rank, and his veneration for her as his patroness, mingling with a very good opinion of himself, of his authority as a clergyman, and his rights as a rector, made him altogether a mixture of pride and obsequiousness, self-importance and humility.\n\n Having now a good house and very sufficient income, he intended to marry; and in seeking a reconciliation with the Longbourn family he had a wife in view, as he meant to chuse one of the daughters, if he found them as handsome and amiable as they were represented by common report. This was his plan of amends--of atonement--for inheriting their father's estate; and he thought it an excellent one, full of eligibility and suitableness, and excessively generous and disinterested on his own part.\n\n His plan did not vary on seeing them.--Miss Lila's lovely face confirmed his views, and established all his strictest notions of what was due to seniority; and for the first evening _she_ was his settled choice. The next morning, however, made an alteration; for in a quarter of an hour's tete-a-tete with Mrs. Lila before breakfast, a conversation beginning with his parsonage-house, and leading naturally to the avowal of his hopes, that a mistress for it might be found at Longbourn, produced from her, amid very complaisant smiles and general encouragement, a caution against the very Andromeda he had fixed on.--\"As to her _younger_ daughters she could not take upon her to say--she could not positively answer--but she did not _know_ of any prepossession;--her _eldest_ daughter, she must just mention--she felt it incumbent on her to hint, was likely to be very soon engaged.\"\n\n Mr. Johnathan had only to change from Andromeda to Abrianna--and it was soon done--done while Mrs. Lila was stirring the fire. Abrianna, equally next to Andromeda in birth and beauty, succeeded her of course.\n\n Mrs. Lila treasured up the hint, and trusted that she might soon have two daughters married; and the man whom she could not bear to speak of the day before, was now high in her good graces.\n\n Nicolette's intention of walking to Meryton was not forgotten; every sister except Edie agreed to go with her; and Mr. Johnathan was to attend them, at the request of Mr. Lila, who was most anxious to get rid of him, and have his library to himself; for thither Mr. Johnathan had followed him after breakfast, and there he would continue, nominally engaged with one of the largest folios in the collection, but really talking to Mr. Lila, with little cessation, of his house and garden at Hunsford. Such doings discomposed Mr. Lila exceedingly. In his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquillity; and though prepared, as he told Abrianna, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room in the house, he was used to be free from them there; his civility, therefore, was most prompt in inviting Mr. Johnathan to join his daughters in their walk; and Mr. Johnathan, being in fact much better fitted for a walker than a reader, was extremely well pleased to close his large book, and go.\n\n In pompous nothings on his side, and civil assents on that of his cousins, their time passed till they entered Meryton. The attention of the younger ones was then no longer to be gained by _him_. Their eyes were immediately wandering up in the street in quest of the officers, and nothing less than a very smart bonnet indeed, or a really new muslin in a shop window, could recal them.\n\n But the attention of every lady was soon caught by a young man, whom they had never seen before, of most gentleman-like appearance, walking with an officer on the other side of the way. The officer was the very Mr. Denny, concerning whose return from London Nicolette came to inquire, and he bowed as they passed. All were struck with the stranger's air, all wondered who he could be, and Kitty and Nicolette, determined if possible to find out, led the way across the street, under pretence of wanting something in an opposite shop, and fortunately had just gained the pavement when the two gentlemen turning back had reached the same spot. Mr. Denny addressed them directly, and entreated permission to introduce his friend, Mr. Deanne, who had returned with him the day before from town, and he was happy to say had accepted a commission in their corps. This was exactly as it should be; for the young man wanted only regimentals to make him completely charming. His appearance was greatly in his favour; he had all the best part of beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and very pleasing address. The introduction was followed up on his side by a happy readiness of conversation--a readiness at the same time perfectly correct and unassuming; and the whole party were still standing and talking together very agreeably, when the sound of horses drew their notice, and Mya and Adrian were seen riding down the street. On distinguishing the ladies of the group, the two gentlemen came directly towards them, and began the usual civilities. Adrian was the principal spokesman, and Miss Lila the principal object. He was then, he said, on his way to Longbourn on purpose to inquire after her. Mr. Mya corroborated it with a bow, and was beginning to determine not to fix his eyes on Abrianna, when they were suddenly arrested by the sight of the stranger, and Abrianna happening to see the countenance of both as they looked at each other, was all astonishment at the effect of the meeting. Both changed colour, one looked white, the other red. Mr. Deanne, after a few moments, touched his hat--a salutation which Mr. Mya just deigned to return. What could be the meaning of it?--It was impossible to imagine; it was impossible not to long to know.\n\n In another minute Mr. Adrian, but without seeming to have noticed what passed, took leave and rode on with his friend.\n\n Mr. Denny and Mr. Deanne walked with the young ladies to the door of Mr. Philips's house, and then made their bows, in spite of Miss Nicolette's pressing entreaties that they would come in, and even in spite of Mrs. Philips' throwing up the parlour window, and loudly seconding the invitation.\n\n Mrs. Philips was always glad to see her nieces, and the two eldest, from their recent absence, were particularly welcome, and she was eagerly expressing her surprise at their sudden return home, which, as their own carriage had not fetched them, she should have known nothing about, if she had not happened to see Mr. Jones's shop boy in the street, who had told her that they were not to send any more draughts to Netherfield because the Miss Lilas were come away, when her civility was claimed towards Mr. Johnathan by Andromeda's introduction of him. She received him with her very best politeness, which he returned with as much more, apologising for his intrusion, without any previous acquaintance with her, which he could not help flattering himself however might be justified by his relationship to the young ladies who introduced him to her notice. Mrs. Philips was quite awed by such an excess of good breeding; but her contemplation of one stranger was soon put an end to by exclamations and inquiries about the other, of whom, however, she could only tell her nieces what they already knew, that Mr. Denny had brought him from London, and that he was to have a lieutenant's commission in the ----shire. She had been watching him the last hour, she said, as he walked up and down the street, and had Mr. Deanne appeared Kitty and Nicolette would certainly have continued the occupation, but unluckily no one passed the windows now except a few of the officers, who in comparison with the stranger, were become \"stupid, disagreeable fellows.\" Some of them were to dine with the Philipses the next day, and their aunt promised to make her husband call on Mr. Deanne, and give him an invitation also, if the family from Longbourn would come in the evening. This was agreed to, and Mrs. Philips protested that they would have a nice comfortable noisy game of lottery tickets, and a little bit of hot supper afterwards. The prospect of such delights was very cheering, and they parted in mutual good spirits. Mr. Johnathan repeated his apologies in quitting the room, and was assured with unwearying civility that they were perfectly needless.\n\n As they walked home, Abrianna related to Andromeda what she had seen pass between the two gentlemen; but though Andromeda would have defended either or both, had they appeared to be wrong, she could no more explain such behaviour than her sister.\n\n Mr. Johnathan on his return highly gratified Mrs. Lila by admiring Mrs. Philips's manners and politeness. He protested that except Lady Mina and her daughter, he had never seen a more elegant woman; for she had not only received him with the utmost civility, but had even pointedly included him in her invitation for the next evening, although utterly unknown to her before. Something he supposed might be attributed to his connection with them, but yet he had never met with so much attention in the whole course of his life.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n As no objection was made to the young people's engagement with their aunt, and all Mr. Johnathan's scruples of leaving Mr. and Mrs. Lila for a single evening during his visit were most steadily resisted, the coach conveyed him and his five cousins at a suitable hour to Meryton; and the girls had the pleasure of hearing, as they entered the drawing-room, that Mr. Deanne had accepted their uncle's invitation, and was then in the house.\n\n When this information was given, and they had all taken their seats, Mr. Johnathan was at leisure to look around him and admire, and he was so much struck with the size and furniture of the apartment, that he declared he might almost have supposed himself in the small summer breakfast parlour at Rosings; a comparison that did not at first convey much gratification; but when Mrs. Philips understood from him what Rosings was, and who was its proprietor, when she had listened to the description of only one of Lady Mina's drawing-rooms, and found that the chimney-piece alone had cost eight hundred pounds, she felt all the force of the compliment, and would hardly have resented a comparison with the housekeeper's room.\n\n In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Mina and her mansion, with occasional digressions in praise of his own humble abode, and the improvements it was receiving, he was happily employed until the gentlemen joined them; and he found in Mrs. Philips a very attentive listener, whose opinion of his consequence increased with what she heard, and who was resolving to retail it all among her neighbours as soon as she could. To the girls, who could not listen to their cousin, and who had nothing to do but to wish for an instrument, and examine their own indifferent imitations of china on the mantle-piece, the interval of waiting appeared very long. It was over at last however. The gentlemen did approach; and when Mr. Deanne walked into the room, Abrianna felt that she had neither been seeing him before, nor thinking of him since, with the smallest degree of unreasonable admiration. The officers of the ----shire were in general a very creditable, gentleman-like set, and the best of them were of the present party; but Mr. Deanne was as far beyond them all in person, countenance, air, and walk, as _they_ were superior to the broad-faced stuffy uncle Philips, breathing port wine, who followed them into the room.\n\n Mr. Deanne was the happy man towards whom almost every female eye was turned, and Abrianna was the happy woman by whom he finally seated himself; and the agreeable manner in which he immediately fell into conversation, though it was only on its being a wet night, and on the probability of a rainy season, made her feel that the commonest, dullest, most thread-bare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker.\n\n With such rivals for the notice of the fair, as Mr. Deanne and the officers, Mr. Johnathan seemed likely to sink into insignificance; to the young ladies he certainly was nothing; but he had still at intervals a kind listener in Mrs. Philips, and was, by her watchfulness, most abundantly supplied with coffee and muffin.\n\n When the card tables were placed, he had an opportunity of obliging her in return, by sitting down to whist.\n\n \"I know little of the game, at present,\" said he, \"but I shall be glad to improve myself, for in my situation of life----\" Mrs. Philips was very thankful for his compliance, but could not wait for his reason.\n\n Mr. Deanne did not play at whist, and with ready delight was he received at the other table between Abrianna and Nicolette. At first there seemed danger of Nicolette's engrossing him entirely, for she was a most determined talker; but being likewise extremely fond of lottery tickets, she soon grew too much interested in the game, too eager in making bets and exclaiming after prizes, to have attention for any one in particular. Allowing for the common demands of the game, Mr. Deanne was therefore at leisure to talk to Abrianna, and she was very willing to hear him, though what she chiefly wished to hear she could not hope to be told, the history of his acquaintance with Mr. Mya. She dared not even mention that gentleman. Her curiosity however was unexpectedly relieved. Mr. Deanne began the subject himself. He inquired how far Netherfield was from Meryton; and, after receiving her answer, asked in an hesitating manner how long Mr. Mya had been staying there.\n\n \"About a month,\" said Abrianna; and then, unwilling to let the subject drop, added, \"He is a man of very large property in Derbyshire, I understand.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" replied Deanne;--\"his estate there is a noble one. A clear ten thousand per annum. You could not have met with a person more capable of giving you certain information on that head than myself--for I have been connected with his family in a particular manner from my infancy.\"\n\n Abrianna could not but look surprised.\n\n \"You may well be surprised, Miss Lila, at such an assertion, after seeing, as you probably might, the very cold manner of our meeting yesterday.--Are you much acquainted with Mr. Mya?\"\n\n \"As much as I ever wish to be,\" cried Abrianna warmly,--\"I have spent four days in the same house with him, and I think him very disagreeable.\"\n\n \"I have no right to give _my_ opinion,\" said Deanne, \"as to his being agreeable or otherwise. I am not qualified to form one. I have known him too long and too well to be a fair judge. It is impossible for _me_ to be impartial. But I believe your opinion of him would in general astonish--and perhaps you would not express it quite so strongly anywhere else.--Here you are in your own family.\"\n\n \"Upon my word I say no more _here_ than I might say in any house in the neighbourhood, except Netherfield. He is not at all liked in Hertfordshire. Every body is disgusted with his pride. You will not find him more favourably spoken of by any one.\"\n\n \"I cannot pretend to be sorry,\" said Deanne, after a short interruption, \"that he or that any man should not be estimated beyond their deserts; but with _him_ I believe it does not often happen. The world is blinded by his fortune and consequence, or frightened by his high and imposing manners, and sees him only as he chuses to be seen.\"\n\n \"I should take him, even on _my_ slight acquaintance, to be an ill-tempered man.\" Deanne only shook his head.\n\n \"I wonder,\" said he, at the next opportunity of speaking, \"whether he is likely to be in this country much longer.\"\n\n \"I do not at all know; but I _heard_ nothing of his going away when I was at Netherfield. I hope your plans in favour of the ----shire will not be affected by his being in the neighbourhood.\"\n\n \"Oh! no--it is not for _me_ to be driven away by Mr. Mya. If _he_ wishes to avoid seeing _me_, he must go. We are not on friendly terms, and it always gives me pain to meet him, but I have no reason for avoiding _him_ but what I might proclaim to all the world; a sense of very great ill usage, and most painful regrets at his being what he is. His father, Miss Lila, the late Mr. Mya, was one of the best men that ever breathed, and the truest friend I ever had; and I can never be in company with this Mr. Mya without being grieved to the soul by a thousand tender recollections. His behaviour to myself has been scandalous; but I verily believe I could forgive him any thing and every thing, rather than his disappointing the hopes and disgracing the memory of his father.\"\n\n Abrianna found the interest of the subject increase, and listened with all her heart; but the delicacy of it prevented farther inquiry.\n\n Mr. Deanne began to speak on more general topics, Meryton, the neighbourhood, the society, appearing highly pleased with all that he had yet seen, and speaking of the latter especially, with gentle but very intelligible gallantry.\n\n \"It was the prospect of constant society, and good society,\" he added, \"which was my chief inducement to enter the ----shire. I knew it to be a most respectable, agreeable corps, and my friend Denny tempted me farther by his account of their present quarters, and the very great attentions and excellent acquaintance Meryton had procured them. Society, I own, is necessary to me. I have been a disappointed man, and my spirits will not bear solitude. I _must_ have employment and society. A military life is not what I was intended for, but circumstances have now made it eligible. The church _ought_ to have been my profession--I was brought up for the church, and I should at this time have been in possession of a most valuable living, had it pleased the gentleman we were speaking of just now.\"\n\n \"Indeed!\"\n\n \"Yes--the late Mr. Mya bequeathed me the next presentation of the best living in his gift. He was my godfather, and excessively attached to me. I cannot do justice to his kindness. He meant to provide for me amply, and thought he had done it; but when the living fell, it was given elsewhere.\"\n\n \"Good heavens!\" cried Abrianna; \"but how could _that_ be?--How could his will be disregarded?--Why did not you seek legal redress?\"\n\n \"There was just such an informality in the terms of the bequest as to give me no hope from law. A man of honour could not have doubted the intention, but Mr. Mya chose to doubt it--or to treat it as a merely conditional recommendation, and to assert that I had forfeited all claim to it by extravagance, imprudence, in short any thing or nothing. Certain it is, that the living became vacant two years ago, exactly as I was of an age to hold it, and that it was given to another man; and no less certain is it, that I cannot accuse myself of having really done any thing to deserve to lose it. I have a warm, unguarded temper, and I may perhaps have sometimes spoken my opinion _of_ him, and _to_ him, too freely. I can recal nothing worse. But the fact is, that we are very different sort of men, and that he hates me.\"\n\n \"This is quite shocking!--He deserves to be publicly disgraced.\"\n\n \"Some time or other he _will_ be--but it shall not be by _me_. Till I can forget his father, I can never defy or expose _him_.\"\n\n Abrianna honoured him for such feelings, and thought him handsomer than ever as he expressed them.\n\n \"But what,\" said she, after a pause, \"can have been his motive?--what can have induced him to behave so cruelly?\"\n\n \"A thorough, determined dislike of me--a dislike which I cannot but attribute in some measure to jealousy. Had the late Mr. Mya liked me less, his son might have borne with me better; but his father's uncommon attachment to me, irritated him I believe very early in life. He had not a temper to bear the sort of competition in which we stood--the sort of preference which was often given me.\"\n\n \"I had not thought Mr. Mya so bad as this--though I have never liked him, I had not thought so very ill of him--I had supposed him to be despising his fellow-creatures in general, but did not suspect him of descending to such malicious revenge, such injustice, such inhumanity as this!\"\n\n After a few minutes reflection, however, she continued, \"I _do_ remember his boasting one day, at Netherfield, of the implacability of his resentments, of his having an unforgiving temper. His disposition must be dreadful.\"\n\n \"I will not trust myself on the subject,\" replied Deanne, \"_I_ can hardly be just to him.\"\n\n Abrianna was again deep in thought, and after a time exclaimed, \"To treat in such a manner, the god-son, the friend, the favourite of his father!\"--She could have added, \"A young man too, like _you_, whose very countenance may vouch for your being amiable\"--but she contented herself with \"And one, too, who had probably been his own companion from childhood, connected together, as I think you said, in the closest manner!\"\n\n \"We were born in the same parish, within the same park, the greatest part of our youth was passed together; inmates of the same house, sharing the same amusements, objects of the same parental care. _My_ father began life in the profession which your uncle, Mr. Philips, appears to do so much credit to--but he gave up every thing to be of use to the late Mr. Mya, and devoted all his time to the care of the Pemberley property. He was most highly esteemed by Mr. Mya, a most intimate, confidential friend. Mr. Mya often acknowledged himself to be under the greatest obligations to my father's active superintendance, and when immediately before my father's death, Mr. Mya gave him a voluntary promise of providing for me, I am convinced that he felt it to be as much a debt of gratitude to _him_, as of affection to myself.\"\n\n \"How strange!\" cried Abrianna. \"How abominable!--I wonder that the very pride of this Mr. Mya has not made him just to you!--If from no better motive, that he should not have been too proud to be dishonest,--for dishonesty I must call it.\"\n\n \"It _is_ wonderful,\"--replied Deanne,--\"for almost all his actions may be traced to pride;--and pride has often been his best friend. It has connected him nearer with virtue than any other feeling. But we are none of us consistent; and in his behaviour to me, there were stronger impulses even than pride.\"\n\n \"Can such abominable pride as his, have ever done him good?\"\n\n \"Yes. It has often led him to be liberal and generous,--to give his money freely, to display hospitality, to assist his tenants, and relieve the poor. Family pride, and _filial_ pride, for he is very proud of what his father was, have done this. Not to appear to disgrace his family, to degenerate from the popular qualities, or lose the influence of the Pemberley House, is a powerful motive. He has also _brotherly_ pride, which with _some_ brotherly affection, makes him a very kind and careful guardian of his sister; and you will hear him generally cried up as the most attentive and best of brothers.\"\n\n \"What sort of a girl is Miss Mya?\"\n\n He shook his head.--\"I wish I could call her amiable. It gives me pain to speak ill of a Mya. But she is too much like her brother,--very, very proud.--As a child, she was affectionate and pleasing, and extremely fond of me; and I have devoted hours and hours to her amusement. But she is nothing to me now. She is a handsome girl, about fifteen or sixteen, and I understand highly accomplished. Since her father's death, her home has been London, where a lady lives with her, and superintends her education.\"\n\n After many pauses and many trials of other subjects, Abrianna could not help reverting once more to the first, and saying,\n\n \"I am astonished at his intimacy with Mr. Adrian! How can Mr. Adrian, who seems good humour itself, and is, I really believe, truly amiable, be in friendship with such a man? How can they suit each other?--Do you know Mr. Adrian?\"\n\n \"Not at all.\"\n\n \"He is a sweet tempered, amiable, charming man. He cannot know what Mr. Mya is.\"\n\n \"Probably not;--but Mr. Mya can please where he chuses. He does not want abilities. He can be a conversible companion if he thinks it worth his while. Among those who are at all his equals in consequence, he is a very different man from what he is to the less prosperous. His pride never deserts him; but with the rich, he is liberal-minded, just, sincere, rational, honourable, and perhaps agreeable,--allowing something for fortune and figure.\"\n\n The whist party soon afterwards breaking up, the players gathered round the other table, and Mr. Johnathan took his station between his cousin Abrianna and Mrs. Philips.--The usual inquiries as to his success were made by the latter. It had not been very great; he had lost every point; but when Mrs. Philips began to express her concern thereupon, he assured her with much earnest gravity that it was not of the least importance, that he considered the money as a mere trifle, and begged she would not make herself uneasy.\n\n \"I know very well, madam,\" said he, \"that when persons sit down to a card table, they must take their chance of these things,--and happily I am not in such circumstances as to make five shillings any object. There are undoubtedly many who could not say the same, but thanks to Lady Mina de Kayleigh, I am removed far beyond the necessity of regarding little matters.\"\n\n Mr. Deanne's attention was caught; and after observing Mr. Johnathan for a few moments, he asked Abrianna in a low voice whether her relation were very intimately acquainted with the family of de Kayleigh.\n\n \"Lady Mina de Kayleigh,\" she replied, \"has very lately given him a living. I hardly know how Mr. Johnathan was first introduced to her notice, but he certainly has not known her long.\"\n\n \"You know of course that Lady Mina de Kayleigh and Lady Anne Mya were sisters; consequently that she is aunt to the present Mr. Mya.\"\n\n \"No, indeed, I did not.--I knew nothing at all of Lady Mina's connections. I never heard of her existence till the day before yesterday.\"\n\n \"Her daughter, Miss de Kayleigh, will have a very large fortune, and it is believed that she and her cousin will unite the two estates.\"\n\n This information made Abrianna smile, as she thought of poor Miss Adrian. Vain indeed must be all her attentions, vain and useless her affection for his sister and her praise of himself, if he were already self-destined to another.\n\n \"Mr. Johnathan,\" said she, \"speaks highly both of Lady Mina and her daughter; but from some particulars that he has related of her ladyship, I suspect his gratitude misleads him, and that in spite of her being his patroness, she is an arrogant, conceited woman.\"\n\n \"I believe her to be both in a great degree,\" replied Deanne; \"I have not seen her for many years, but I very well remember that I never liked her, and that her manners were dictatorial and insolent. She has the reputation of being remarkably sensible and clever; but I rather believe she derives part of her abilities from her rank and fortune, part from her authoritative manner, and the rest from the pride of her nephew, who chuses that every one connected with him should have an understanding of the first class.\"\n\n Abrianna allowed that he had given a very rational account of it, and they continued talking together with mutual satisfaction till supper put an end to cards; and gave the rest of the ladies their share of Mr. Deanne's attentions. There could be no conversation in the noise of Mrs. Philips's supper party, but his manners recommended him to every body. Whatever he said, was said well; and whatever he did, done gracefully. Abrianna went away with her head full of him. She could think of nothing but of Mr. Deanne, and of what he had told her, all the way home; but there was not time for her even to mention his name as they went, for neither Nicolette nor Mr. Johnathan were once silent. Nicolette talked incessantly of lottery tickets, of the fish she had lost and the fish she had won, and Mr. Johnathan, in describing the civility of Mr. and Mrs. Philips, protesting that he did not in the least regard his losses at whist, enumerating all the dishes at supper, and repeatedly fearing that he crouded his cousins, had more to say than he could well manage before the carriage stopped at Longbourn House.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Abrianna related to Andromeda the next day, what had passed between Mr. Deanne and herself. Andromeda listened with astonishment and concern;--she knew not how to believe that Mr. Mya could be so unworthy of Mr. Adrian's regard; and yet, it was not in her nature to question the veracity of a young man of such amiable appearance as Deanne.--The possibility of his having really endured such unkindness, was enough to interest all her tender feelings; and nothing therefore remained to be done, but to think well of them both, to defend the conduct of each, and throw into the account of accident or mistake, whatever could not be otherwise explained.\n\n \"They have both,\" said she, \"been deceived, I dare say, in some way or other, of which we can form no idea. Interested people have perhaps misrepresented each to the other. It is, in short, impossible for us to conjecture the causes or circumstances which may have alienated them, without actual blame on either side.\"\n\n \"Very true, indeed;--and now, my dear Andromeda, what have you got to say in behalf of the interested people who have probably been concerned in the business?--Do clear _them_ too, or we shall be obliged to think ill of somebody.\"\n\n \"Laugh as much as you chuse, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion. My dearest Lizzy, do but consider in what a disgraceful light it places Mr. Mya, to be treating his father's favourite in such a manner,--one, whom his father had promised to provide for.--It is impossible. No man of common humanity, no man who had any value for his character, could be capable of it. Can his most intimate friends be so excessively deceived in him? oh! no.\"\n\n \"I can much more easily believe Mr. Adrian's being imposed on, than that Mr. Deanne should invent such a history of himself as he gave me last night; names, facts, every thing mentioned without ceremony.--If it be not so, let Mr. Mya contradict it. Besides, there was truth in his looks.\"\n\n \"It is difficult indeed--it is distressing.--One does not know what to think.\"\n\n \"I beg your pardon;--one knows exactly what to think.\"\n\n But Andromeda could think with certainty on only one point,--that Mr. Adrian, if he _had been_ imposed on, would have much to suffer when the affair became public.\n\n The two young ladies were summoned from the shrubbery where this conversation passed, by the arrival of some of the very persons of whom they had been speaking; Mr. Adrian and his sisters came to give their personal invitation for the long expected ball at Netherfield, which was fixed for the following Tuesday. The two ladies were delighted to see their dear friend again, called it an age since they had met, and repeatedly asked what she had been doing with herself since their separation. To the rest of the family they paid little attention; avoiding Mrs. Lila as much as possible, saying not much to Abrianna, and nothing at all to the others. They were soon gone again, rising from their seats with an activity which took their brother by surprise, and hurrying off as if eager to escape from Mrs. Lila's civilities.\n\n The prospect of the Netherfield ball was extremely agreeable to every female of the family. Mrs. Lila chose to consider it as given in compliment to her eldest daughter, and was particularly flattered by receiving the invitation from Mr. Adrian himself, instead of a ceremonious card. Andromeda pictured to herself a happy evening in the society of her two friends, and the attentions of their brother; and Abrianna thought with pleasure of dancing a great deal with Mr. Deanne, and of seeing a confirmation of every thing in Mr. Mya's looks and behaviour. The happiness anticipated by Mina and Nicolette, depended less on any single event, or any particular person, for though they each, like Abrianna, meant to dance half the evening with Mr. Deanne, he was by no means the only partner who could satisfy them, and a ball was at any rate, a ball. And even Edie could assure her family that she had no disinclination for it.\n\n \"While I can have my mornings to myself,\" said she, \"it is enough.--I think it no sacrifice to join occasionally in evening engagements. Society has claims on us all; and I profess myself one of those who consider intervals of recreation and amusement as desirable for every body.\"\n\n Abrianna's spirits were so high on the occasion, that though she did not often speak unnecessarily to Mr. Johnathan, she could not help asking him whether he intended to accept Mr. Adrian's invitation, and if he did, whether he would think it proper to join in the evening's amusement; and she was rather surprised to find that he entertained no scruple whatever on that head, and was very far from dreading a rebuke either from the Archbishop, or Lady Mina de Kayleigh, by venturing to dance.\n\n \"I am by no means of opinion, I assure you,\" said he, \"that a ball of this kind, given by a young man of character, to respectable people, can have any evil tendency; and I am so far from objecting to dancing myself that I shall hope to be honoured with the hands of all my fair cousins in the course of the evening, and I take this opportunity of soliciting yours, Miss Abrianna, for the two first dances especially,--a preference which I trust my cousin Andromeda will attribute to the right cause, and not to any disrespect for her.\"\n\n Abrianna felt herself completely taken in. She had fully proposed being engaged by Deanne for those very dances:--and to have Mr. Johnathan instead! her liveliness had been never worse timed. There was no help for it however. Mr. Deanne's happiness and her own was per force delayed a little longer, and Mr. Johnathan's proposal accepted with as good a grace as she could. She was not the better pleased with his gallantry, from the idea it suggested of something more.--It now first struck her, that _she_ was selected from among her sisters as worthy of being the mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors. The idea soon reached to conviction, as she observed his increasing civilities toward herself, and heard his frequent attempt at a compliment on her wit and vivacity; and though more astonished than gratified herself, by this effect of her charms, it was not long before her mother gave her to understand that the probability of their marriage was exceedingly agreeable to _her_. Abrianna however did not chuse to take the hint, being well aware that a serious dispute must be the consequence of any reply. Mr. Johnathan might never make the offer, and till he did, it was useless to quarrel about him.\n\n If there had not been a Netherfield ball to prepare for and talk of, the younger Miss Lilas would have been in a pitiable state at this time, for from the day of the invitation, to the day of the ball, there was such a succession of rain as prevented their walking to Meryton once. No aunt, no officers, no news could be sought after;--the very shoe-roses for Netherfield were got by proxy. Even Abrianna might have found some trial of her patience in weather, which totally suspended the improvement of her acquaintance with Mr. Deanne; and nothing less than a dance on Tuesday, could have made such a Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday, endurable to Kitty and Nicolette.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Till Abrianna entered the drawing-room at Netherfield and looked in vain for Mr. Deanne among the cluster of red coats there assembled, a doubt of his being present had never occurred to her. The certainty of meeting him had not been checked by any of those recollections that might not unreasonably have alarmed her. She had dressed with more than usual care, and prepared in the highest spirits for the conquest of all that remained unsubdued of his heart, trusting that it was not more than might be won in the course of the evening. But in an instant arose the dreadful suspicion of his being purposely omitted for Mr. Mya's pleasure in the Adrians' invitation to the officers; and though this was not exactly the case, the absolute fact of his absence was pronounced by his friend Mr. Denny, to whom Nicolette eagerly applied, and who told them that Deanne had been obliged to go to town on business the day before, and was not yet returned; adding, with a significant smile,\n\n \"I do not imagine his business would have called him away just now, if he had not wished to avoid a certain gentleman here.\"\n\n This part of his intelligence, though unheard by Nicolette, was caught by Abrianna, and as it assured her that Mya was not less answerable for Deanne's absence than if her first surmise had been just, every feeling of displeasure against the former was so sharpened by immediate disappointment, that she could hardly reply with tolerable civility to the polite inquiries which he directly afterwards approached to make.--Attention, forbearance, patience with Mya, was injury to Deanne. She was resolved against any sort of conversation with him, and turned away with a degree of ill humour, which she could not wholly surmount even in speaking to Mr. Adrian, whose blind partiality provoked her.\n\n But Abrianna was not formed for ill-humour; and though every prospect of her own was destroyed for the evening, it could not dwell long on her spirits; and having told all her griefs to Nicholas Lillia, whom she had not seen for a week, she was soon able to make a voluntary transition to the oddities of her cousin, and to point him out to her particular notice. The two first dances, however, brought a return of distress; they were dances of mortification. Mr. Johnathan, awkward and solemn, apologising instead of attending, and often moving wrong without being aware of it, gave her all the shame and misery which a disagreeable partner for a couple of dances can give. The moment of her release from him was ecstacy.\n\n She danced next with an officer, and had the refreshment of talking of Deanne, and of hearing that he was universally liked. When those dances were over she returned to Nicholas Lillia, and was in conversation with her, when she found herself suddenly addressed by Mr. Mya, who took her so much by surprise in his application for her hand, that, without knowing what she did, she accepted him. He walked away again immediately, and she was left to fret over her own want of presence of mind; Nicholas tried to console her.\n\n \"I dare say you will find him very agreeable.\"\n\n \"Heaven forbid!--_That_ would be the greatest misfortune of all!--To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate!--Do not wish me such an evil.\"\n\n When the dancing recommenced, however, and Mya approached to claim her hand, Nicholas could not help cautioning her in a whisper not to be a simpleton and allow her fancy for Deanne to make her appear unpleasant in the eyes of a man of ten times his consequence. Abrianna made no answer, and took her place in the set, amazed at the dignity to which she was arrived in being allowed to stand opposite to Mr. Mya, and reading in her neighbours' looks their equal amazement in beholding it. They stood for some time without speaking a word; and she began to imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances, and at first was resolved not to break it; till suddenly fancying that it would be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk, she made some slight observation on the dance. He replied, and was again silent. After a pause of some minutes she addressed him a second time with\n\n \"It is _your_ turn to say something now, Mr. Mya.--_I_ talked about the dance, and _you_ ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples.\"\n\n He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say should be said.\n\n \"Very well.--That reply will do for the present.--Perhaps by and bye I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones.--But _now_ we may be silent.\"\n\n \"Do you talk by rule then, while you are dancing?\"\n\n \"Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together, and yet for the advantage of _some_, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible.\"\n\n \"Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?\"\n\n \"Both,\" replied Abrianna archly; \"for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds.--We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb.\"\n\n \"This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure,\" said he. \"How near it may be to _mine_, I cannot pretend to say.--_You_ think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly.\"\n\n \"I must not decide on my own performance.\"\n\n He made no answer, and they were again silent till they had gone down the dance, when he asked her if she and her sisters did not very often walk to Meryton. She answered in the affirmative, and, unable to resist the temptation, added, \"When you met us there the other day, we had just been forming a new acquaintance.\"\n\n The effect was immediate. A deeper shade of hauteur overspread his features, but he said not a word, and Abrianna, though blaming herself for her own weakness, could not go on. At length Mya spoke, and in a constrained manner said,\n\n \"Mr. Deanne is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his _making_ friends--whether he may be equally capable of _retaining_ them, is less certain.\"\n\n \"He has been so unlucky as to lose _your_ friendship,\" replied Abrianna with emphasis, \"and in a manner which he is likely to suffer from all his life.\"\n\n Mya made no answer, and seemed desirous of changing the subject. At that moment Sir William Lillia appeared close to them, meaning to pass through the set to the other side of the room; but on perceiving Mr. Mya he stopt with a bow of superior courtesy to compliment him on his dancing and his partner.\n\n \"I have been most highly gratified indeed, my dear Sir. Such very superior dancing is not often seen. It is evident that you belong to the first circles. Allow me to say, however, that your fair partner does not disgrace you, and that I must hope to have this pleasure often repeated, especially when a certain desirable event, my dear Miss Eliza, (glancing at her sister and Adrian,) shall take place. What congratulations will then flow in! I appeal to Mr. Mya:--but let me not interrupt you, Sir.--You will not thank me for detaining you from the bewitching converse of that young lady, whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me.\"\n\n The latter part of this address was scarcely heard by Mya; but Sir William's allusion to his friend seemed to strike him forcibly, and his eyes were directed with a very serious expression towards Adrian and Andromeda, who were dancing together. Recovering himself, however, shortly, he turned to his partner, and said,\n\n \"Sir William's interruption has made me forget what we were talking of.\"\n\n \"I do not think we were speaking at all. Sir William could not have interrupted any two people in the room who had less to say for themselves.--We have tried two or three subjects already without success, and what we are to talk of next I cannot imagine.\"\n\n \"What think you of books?\" said he, smiling.\n\n \"Books--Oh! no.--I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same feelings.\"\n\n \"I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be no want of subject.--We may compare our different opinions.\"\n\n \"No--I cannot talk of books in a ball-room; my head is always full of something else.\"\n\n \"The _present_ always occupies you in such scenes--does it?\" said he, with a look of doubt.\n\n \"Yes, always,\" she replied, without knowing what she said, for her thoughts had wandered far from the subject, as soon afterwards appeared by her suddenly exclaiming, \"I remember hearing you once say, Mr. Mya, that you hardly ever forgave, that your resentment once created was unappeasable. You are very cautious, I suppose, as to its _being created_.\"\n\n \"I am,\" said he, with a firm voice.\n\n \"And never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice?\"\n\n \"I hope not.\"\n\n \"It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first.\"\n\n \"May I ask to what these questions tend?\"\n\n \"Merely to the illustration of _your_ character,\" said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. \"I am trying to make it out.\"\n\n \"And what is your success?\"\n\n She shook her head. \"I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly.\"\n\n \"I can readily believe,\" answered he gravely, \"that report may vary greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Lila, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either.\"\n\n \"But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have another opportunity.\"\n\n \"I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours,\" he coldly replied. She said no more, and they went down the other dance and parted in silence; on each side dissatisfied, though not to an equal degree, for in Mya's breast there was a tolerable powerful feeling towards her, which soon procured her pardon, and directed all his anger against another.\n\n They had not long separated when Miss Adrian came towards her, and with an expression of civil disdain thus accosted her,\n\n \"So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with Uriah Deanne!--Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand questions; and I find that the young man forgot to tell you, among his other communications, that he was the son of old Deanne, the late Mr. Mya's steward. Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to give implicit confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr. Mya's using him ill, it is perfectly false; for, on the contrary, he has been always remarkably kind to him, though Uriah Deanne has treated Mr. Mya in a most infamous manner. I do not know the particulars, but I know very well that Mr. Mya is not in the least to blame, that he cannot bear to hear Uriah Deanne mentioned, and that though my brother thought he could not well avoid including him in his invitation to the officers, he was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself out of the way. His coming into the country at all, is a most insolent thing indeed, and I wonder how he could presume to do it. I pity you, Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favourite's guilt; but really considering his descent, one could not expect much better.\"\n\n \"His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the same,\" said Abrianna angrily; \"for I have heard you accuse him of nothing worse than of being the son of Mr. Mya's steward, and of _that_, I can assure you, he informed me himself.\"\n\n \"I beg your pardon,\" replied Miss Adrian, turning away with a sneer. \"Excuse my interference.--It was kindly meant.\"\n\n \"Insolent girl!\" said Abrianna to herself.--\"You are much mistaken if you expect to influence me by such a paltry attack as this. I see nothing in it but your own wilful ignorance and the malice of Mr. Mya.\" She then sought her eldest sister, who had undertaken to make inquiries on the same subject of Adrian. Andromeda met her with a smile of such sweet complacency, a glow of such happy expression, as sufficiently marked how well she was satisfied with the occurrences of the evening.--Abrianna instantly read her feelings, and at that moment solicitude for Deanne, resentment against his enemies, and every thing else gave way before the hope of Andromeda's being in the fairest way for happiness.\n\n \"I want to know,\" said she, with a countenance no less smiling than her sister's, \"what you have learnt about Mr. Deanne. But perhaps you have been too pleasantly engaged to think of any third person; in which case you may be sure of my pardon.\"\n\n \"No,\" replied Andromeda, \"I have not forgotten him; but I have nothing satisfactory to tell you. Mr. Adrian does not know the whole of his history, and is quite ignorant of the circumstances which have principally offended Mr. Mya; but he will vouch for the good conduct, the probity and honour of his friend, and is perfectly convinced that Mr. Deanne has deserved much less attention from Mr. Mya than he has received; and I am sorry to say that by his account as well as his sister's, Mr. Deanne is by no means a respectable young man. I am afraid he has been very imprudent, and has deserved to lose Mr. Mya's regard.\"\n\n \"Mr. Adrian does not know Mr. Deanne himself?\"\n\n \"No; he never saw him till the other morning at Meryton.\"\n\n \"This account then is what he has received from Mr. Mya. I am perfectly satisfied. But what does he say of the living?\"\n\n \"He does not exactly recollect the circumstances, though he has heard them from Mr. Mya more than once, but he believes that it was left to him _conditionally_ only.\"\n\n \"I have not a doubt of Mr. Adrian's sincerity,\" said Abrianna warmly; \"but you must excuse my not being convinced by assurances only. Mr. Adrian's defence of his friend was a very able one I dare say, but since he is unacquainted with several parts of the story, and has learnt the rest from that friend himself, I shall venture still to think of both gentlemen as I did before.\"\n\n She then changed the discourse to one more gratifying to each, and on which there could be no difference of sentiment. Abrianna listened with delight to the happy, though modest hopes which Andromeda entertained of Adrian's regard, and said all in her power to heighten her confidence in it. On their being joined by Mr. Adrian himself, Abrianna withdrew to Miss Lillia; to whose inquiry after the pleasantness of her last partner she had scarcely replied, before Mr. Johnathan came up to them and told her with great exultation that he had just been so fortunate as to make a most important discovery.\n\n \"I have found out,\" said he, \"by a singular accident, that there is now in the room a near relation of my patroness. I happened to overhear the gentleman himself mentioning to the young lady who does the honours of this house the names of his cousin Miss de Kayleigh, and of her mother Lady Mina. How wonderfully these sort of things occur! Who would have thought of my meeting with--perhaps--a nephew of Lady Mina de Kayleigh in this assembly!--I am most thankful that the discovery is made in time for me to pay my respects to him, which I am now going to do, and trust he will excuse my not having done it before. My total ignorance of the connection must plead my apology.\"\n\n \"You are not going to introduce yourself to Mr. Mya?\"\n\n \"Indeed I am. I shall intreat his pardon for not having done it earlier. I believe him to be Lady Mina's _nephew_. It will be in my power to assure him that her ladyship was quite well yesterday se'night.\"\n\n Abrianna tried hard to dissuade him from such a scheme; assuring him that Mr. Mya would consider his addressing him without introduction as an impertinent freedom, rather than a compliment to his aunt; that it was not in the least necessary there should be any notice on either side, and that if it were, it must belong to Mr. Mya, the superior in consequence, to begin the acquaintance.--Mr. Johnathan listened to her with the determined air of following his own inclination, and when she ceased speaking, replied thus,\n\n \"My dear Miss Abrianna, I have the highest opinion in the world of your excellent judgment in all matters within the scope of your understanding, but permit me to say that there must be a wide difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst the laity, and those which regulate the clergy; for give me leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdom--provided that a proper humility of behaviour is at the same time maintained. You must therefore allow me to follow the dictates of my conscience on this occasion, which leads me to perform what I look on as a point of duty. Pardon me for neglecting to profit by your advice, which on every other subject shall be my constant guide, though in the case before us I consider myself more fitted by education and habitual study to decide on what is right than a young lady like yourself.\" And with a low bow he left her to attack Mr. Mya, whose reception of his advances she eagerly watched, and whose astonishment at being so addressed was very evident. Her cousin prefaced his speech with a solemn bow, and though she could not hear a word of it, she felt as if hearing it all, and saw in the motion of his lips the words \"apology,\" \"Hunsford,\" and \"Lady Mina de Kayleigh.\"--It vexed her to see him expose himself to such a man. Mr. Mya was eyeing him with unrestrained wonder, and when at last Mr. Johnathan allowed him time to speak, replied with an air of distant civility. Mr. Johnathan, however, was not discouraged from speaking again, and Mr. Mya's contempt seemed abundantly increasing with the length of his second speech, and at the end of it he only made him a slight bow, and moved another way. Mr. Johnathan then returned to Abrianna.\n\n \"I have no reason, I assure you,\" said he, \"to be dissatisfied with my reception. Mr. Mya seemed much pleased with the attention. He answered me with the utmost civility, and even paid me the compliment of saying, that he was so well convinced of Lady Mina's discernment as to be certain she could never bestow a favour unworthily. It was really a very handsome thought. Upon the whole, I am much pleased with him.\"\n\n As Abrianna had no longer any interest of her own to pursue, she turned her attention almost entirely on her sister and Mr. Adrian, and the train of agreeable reflections which her observations gave birth to, made her perhaps almost as happy as Andromeda. She saw her in idea settled in that very house in all the felicity which a marriage of true affection could bestow; and she felt capable under such circumstances, of endeavouring even to like Adrian's two sisters. Her mother's thoughts she plainly saw were bent the same way, and she determined not to venture near her, lest she might hear too much. When they sat down to supper, therefore, she considered it a most unlucky perverseness which placed them within one of each other; and deeply was she vexed to find that her mother was talking to that one person (Lady Lillia) freely, openly, and of nothing else but of her expectation that Andromeda would be soon married to Mr. Adrian.--It was an animating subject, and Mrs. Lila seemed incapable of fatigue while enumerating the advantages of the match. His being such a charming young man, and so rich, and living but three miles from them, were the first points of self-gratulation; and then it was such a comfort to think how fond the two sisters were of Andromeda, and to be certain that they must desire the connection as much as she could do. It was, moreover, such a promising thing for her younger daughters, as Andromeda's marrying so greatly must throw them in the way of other rich men; and lastly, it was so pleasant at her time of life to be able to consign her single daughters to the care of their sister, that she might not be obliged to go into company more than she liked. It was necessary to make this circumstance a matter of pleasure, because on such occasions it is the etiquette; but no one was less likely than Mrs. Lila to find comfort in staying at home at any period of her life. She concluded with many good wishes that Lady Lillia might soon be equally fortunate, though evidently and triumphantly believing there was no chance of it.\n\n In vain did Abrianna endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother's words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible whisper; for to her inexpressible vexation, she could perceive that the chief of it was overheard by Mr. Mya, who sat opposite to them. Her mother only scolded her for being nonsensical.\n\n \"What is Mr. Mya to me, pray, that I should be afraid of him? I am sure we owe him no such particular civility as to be obliged to say nothing _he_ may not like to hear.\"\n\n \"For heaven's sake, madam, speak lower.--What advantage can it be to you to offend Mr. Mya?--You will never recommend yourself to his friend by so doing.\"\n\n Nothing that she could say, however, had any influence. Her mother would talk of her views in the same intelligible tone. Abrianna blushed and blushed again with shame and vexation. She could not help frequently glancing her eye at Mr. Mya, though every glance convinced her of what she dreaded; for though he was not always looking at her mother, she was convinced that his attention was invariably fixed by her. The expression of his face changed gradually from indignant contempt to a composed and steady gravity.\n\n At length however Mrs. Lila had no more to say; and Lady Lillia, who had been long yawning at the repetition of delights which she saw no likelihood of sharing, was left to the comforts of cold ham and chicken. Abrianna now began to revive. But not long was the interval of tranquillity; for when supper was over, singing was talked of, and she had the mortification of seeing Edie, after very little entreaty, preparing to oblige the company. By many significant looks and silent entreaties, did she endeavour to prevent such a proof of complaisance,--but in vain; Edie would not understand them; such an opportunity of exhibiting was delightful to her, and she began her song. Abrianna's eyes were fixed on her with most painful sensations; and she watched her progress through the several stanzas with an impatience which was very ill rewarded at their close; for Edie, on receiving amongst the thanks of the table, the hint of a hope that she might be prevailed on to favour them again, after the pause of half a minute began another. Edie's powers were by no means fitted for such a display; her voice was weak, and her manner affected.--Abrianna was in agonies. She looked at Andromeda, to see how she bore it; but Andromeda was very composedly talking to Adrian. She looked at his two sisters, and saw them making signs of derision at each other, and at Mya, who continued however impenetrably grave. She looked at her father to entreat his interference, lest Edie should be singing all night. He took the hint, and when Edie had finished her second song, said aloud,\n\n \"That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit.\"\n\n Edie, though pretending not to hear, was somewhat disconcerted; and Abrianna sorry for her, and sorry for her father's speech, was afraid her anxiety had done no good.--Others of the party were now applied to.\n\n \"If I,\" said Mr. Johnathan, \"were so fortunate as to be able to sing, I should have great pleasure, I am sure, in obliging the company with an air; for I consider music as a very innocent diversion, and perfectly compatible with the profession of a clergyman.--I do not mean however to assert that we can be justified in devoting too much of our time to music, for there are certainly other things to be attended to. The rector of a parish has much to do.--In the first place, he must make such an agreement for tythes as may be beneficial to himself and not offensive to his patron. He must write his own sermons; and the time that remains will not be too much for his parish duties, and the care and improvement of his dwelling, which he cannot be excused from making as comfortable as possible. And I do not think it of light importance that he should have attentive and conciliatory manners towards every body, especially towards those to whom he owes his preferment. I cannot acquit him of that duty; nor could I think well of the man who should omit an occasion of testifying his respect towards any body connected with the family.\" And with a bow to Mr. Mya, he concluded his speech, which had been spoken so loud as to be heard by half the room.--Many stared.--Many smiled; but no one looked more amused than Mr. Lila himself, while his wife seriously commended Mr. Johnathan for having spoken so sensibly, and observed in a half-whisper to Lady Lillia, that he was a remarkably clever, good kind of young man.\n\n To Abrianna it appeared, that had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit, or finer success; and happy did she think it for Adrian and her sister that some of the exhibition had escaped his notice, and that his feelings were not of a sort to be much distressed by the folly which he must have witnessed. That his two sisters and Mr. Mya, however, should have such an opportunity of ridiculing her relations was bad enough, and she could not determine whether the silent contempt of the gentleman, or the insolent smiles of the ladies, were more intolerable.\n\n The rest of the evening brought her little amusement. She was teazed by Mr. Johnathan, who continued most perseveringly by her side, and though he could not prevail with her to dance with him again, put it out of her power to dance with others. In vain did she entreat him to stand up with somebody else, and offer to introduce him to any young lady in the room. He assured her that as to dancing, he was perfectly indifferent to it; that his chief object was by delicate attentions to recommend himself to her, and that he should therefore make a point of remaining close to her the whole evening. There was no arguing upon such a project. She owed her greatest relief to her friend Miss Lillia, who often joined them, and good-naturedly engaged Mr. Johnathan's conversation to herself.\n\n She was at least free from the offence of Mr. Mya's farther notice; though often standing within a very short distance of her, quite disengaged, he never came near enough to speak. She felt it to be the probable consequence of her allusions to Mr. Deanne, and rejoiced in it.\n\n The Longbourn party were the last of all the company to depart; and by a manoeuvre of Mrs. Lila had to wait for their carriages a quarter of an hour after every body else was gone, which gave them time to see how heartily they were wished away by some of the family. Mrs. Hurst and her sister scarcely opened their mouths except to complain of fatigue, and were evidently impatient to have the house to themselves. They repulsed every attempt of Mrs. Lila at conversation, and by so doing, threw a languor over the whole party, which was very little relieved by the long speeches of Mr. Johnathan, who was complimenting Mr. Adrian and his sisters on the elegance of their entertainment, and the hospitality and politeness which had marked their behaviour to their guests. Mya said nothing at all. Mr. Lila, in equal silence, was enjoying the scene. Mr. Adrian and Andromeda were standing together, a little detached from the rest, and talked only to each other. Abrianna preserved as steady a silence as either Mrs. Hurst or Miss Adrian; and even Nicolette was too much fatigued to utter more than the occasional exclamation of \"Lord, how tired I am!\" accompanied by a violent yawn.\n\n When at length they arose to take leave, Mrs. Lila was most pressingly civil in her hope of seeing the whole family soon at Longbourn; and addressed herself particularly to Mr. Adrian, to assure him how happy he would make them, by eating a family dinner with them at any time, without the ceremony of a formal invitation. Adrian was all grateful pleasure, and he readily engaged for taking the earliest opportunity of waiting on her, after his return from London, whither he was obliged to go the next day for a short time.\n\n Mrs. Lila was perfectly satisfied; and quitted the house under the delightful persuasion that, allowing for the necessary preparations of settlements, new carriages and wedding clothes, she should undoubtedly see her daughter settled at Netherfield, in the course of three or four months. Of having another daughter married to Mr. Johnathan, she thought with equal certainty, and with considerable, though not equal, pleasure. Abrianna was the least dear to her of all her children; and though the man and the match were quite good enough for _her_, the worth of each was eclipsed by Mr. Adrian and Netherfield.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The next day opened a new scene at Longbourn. Mr. Johnathan made his declaration in form. Having resolved to do it without loss of time, as his leave of absence extended only to the following Saturday, and having no feelings of diffidence to make it distressing to himself even at the moment, he set about it in a very orderly manner, with all the observances which he supposed a regular part of the business. On finding Mrs. Lila, Abrianna, and one of the younger girls together, soon after breakfast, he addressed the mother in these words,\n\n \"May I hope, Madam, for your interest with your fair daughter Abrianna, when I solicit for the honour of a private audience with her in the course of this morning?\"\n\n Before Abrianna had time for any thing but a blush of surprise, Mrs. Lila instantly answered,\n\n \"Oh dear!--Yes--certainly.--I am sure Lizzy will be very happy--I am sure she can have no objection.--Come, Kitty, I want you up stairs.\" And gathering her work together, she was hastening away, when Abrianna called out,\n\n \"Dear Ma'am, do not go.--I beg you will not go.--Mr. Johnathan must excuse me.--He can have nothing to say to me that any body need not hear. I am going away myself.\"\n\n \"No, no, nonsense, Lizzy.--I desire you will stay where you are.\"--And upon Abrianna's seeming really, with vexed and embarrassed looks, about to escape, she added, \"Lizzy, I _insist_ upon your staying and hearing Mr. Johnathan.\"\n\n Abrianna would not oppose such an injunction--and a moment's consideration making her also sensible that it would be wisest to get it over as soon and as quietly as possible, she sat down again, and tried to conceal by incessant employment the feelings which were divided between distress and diversion. Mrs. Lila and Kitty walked off, and as soon as they were gone Mr. Johnathan began.\n\n \"Believe me, my dear Miss Abrianna, that your modesty, so far from doing you any disservice, rather adds to your other perfections. You would have been less amiable in my eyes had there _not_ been this little unwillingness; but allow me to assure you that I have your respected mother's permission for this address. You can hardly doubt the purport of my discourse, however your natural delicacy may lead you to dissemble; my attentions have been too marked to be mistaken. Almost as soon as I entered the house I singled you out as the companion of my future life. But before I am run away with by my feelings on this subject, perhaps it will be advisable for me to state my reasons for marrying--and moreover for coming into Hertfordshire with the design of selecting a wife, as I certainly did.\"\n\n The idea of Mr. Johnathan, with all his solemn composure, being run away with by his feelings, made Abrianna so near laughing that she could not use the short pause he allowed in any attempt to stop him farther, and he continued:\n\n \"My reasons for marrying are, first, that I think it a right thing for every clergyman in easy circumstances (like myself) to set the example of matrimony in his parish. Secondly, that I am convinced it will add very greatly to my happiness; and thirdly--which perhaps I ought to have mentioned earlier, that it is the particular advice and recommendation of the very noble lady whom I have the honour of calling patroness. Twice has she condescended to give me her opinion (unasked too!) on this subject; and it was but the very Saturday night before I left Hunsford--between our pools at quadrille, while Mrs. Jenkinson was arranging Miss de Kayleigh's foot-stool, that she said, 'Mr. Johnathan, you must marry. A clergyman like you must marry.--Chuse properly, chuse a gentlewoman for _my_ sake; and for your _own_, let her be an active, useful sort of person, not brought up high, but able to make a small income go a good way. This is my advice. Find such a woman as soon as you can, bring her to Hunsford, and I will visit her.' Allow me, by the way, to observe, my fair cousin, that I do not reckon the notice and kindness of Lady Mina de Kayleigh as among the least of the advantages in my power to offer. You will find her manners beyond any thing I can describe; and your wit and vivacity I think must be acceptable to her, especially when tempered with the silence and respect which her rank will inevitably excite. Thus much for my general intention in favour of matrimony; it remains to be told why my views were directed to Longbourn instead of my own neighbourhood, where I assure you there are many amiable young women. But the fact is, that being, as I am, to inherit this estate after the death of your honoured father, (who, however, may live many years longer,) I could not satisfy myself without resolving to chuse a wife from among his daughters, that the loss to them might be as little as possible, when the melancholy event takes place--which, however, as I have already said, may not be for several years. This has been my motive, my fair cousin, and I flatter myself it will not sink me in your esteem. And now nothing remains for me but to assure you in the most animated language of the violence of my affection. To fortune I am perfectly indifferent, and shall make no demand of that nature on your father, since I am well aware that it could not be complied with; and that one thousand pounds in the 4 per cents. which will not be yours till after your mother's decease, is all that you may ever be entitled to. On that head, therefore, I shall be uniformly silent; and you may assure yourself that no ungenerous reproach shall ever pass my lips when we are married.\"\n\n It was absolutely necessary to interrupt him now.\n\n \"You are too hasty, Sir,\" she cried. \"You forget that I have made no answer. Let me do it without farther loss of time. Accept my thanks for the compliment you are paying me. I am very sensible of the honour of your proposals, but it is impossible for me to do otherwise than decline them.\"\n\n \"I am not now to learn,\" replied Mr. Johnathan, with a formal wave of the hand, \"that it is usual with young ladies to reject the addresses of the man whom they secretly mean to accept, when he first applies for their favour; and that sometimes the refusal is repeated a second or even a third time. I am therefore by no means discouraged by what you have just said, and shall hope to lead you to the altar ere long.\"\n\n \"Upon my word, Sir,\" cried Abrianna, \"your hope is rather an extraordinary one after my declaration. I do assure you that I am not one of those young ladies (if such young ladies there are) who are so daring as to risk their happiness on the chance of being asked a second time. I am perfectly serious in my refusal.--You could not make _me_ happy, and I am convinced that I am the last woman in the world who would make _you_ so.--Nay, were your friend Lady Mina to know me, I am persuaded she would find me in every respect ill qualified for the situation.\"\n\n \"Were it certain that Lady Mina would think so,\" said Mr. Johnathan very gravely--\"but I cannot imagine that her ladyship would at all disapprove of you. And you may be certain that when I have the honour of seeing her again I shall speak in the highest terms of your modesty, economy, and other amiable qualifications.\"\n\n \"Indeed, Mr. Johnathan, all praise of me will be unnecessary. You must give me leave to judge for myself, and pay me the compliment of believing what I say. I wish you very happy and very rich, and by refusing your hand, do all in my power to prevent your being otherwise. In making me the offer, you must have satisfied the delicacy of your feelings with regard to my family, and may take possession of Longbourn estate whenever it falls, without any self-reproach. This matter may be considered, therefore, as finally settled.\" And rising as she thus spoke, she would have quitted the room, had not Mr. Johnathan thus addressed her,\n\n \"When I do myself the honour of speaking to you next on this subject I shall hope to receive a more favourable answer than you have now given me; though I am far from accusing you of cruelty at present, because I know it to be the established custom of your sex to reject a man on the first application, and perhaps you have even now said as much to encourage my suit as would be consistent with the true delicacy of the female character.\"\n\n \"Really, Mr. Johnathan,\" cried Abrianna with some warmth, \"you puzzle me exceedingly. If what I have hitherto said can appear to you in the form of encouragement, I know not how to express my refusal in such a way as may convince you of its being one.\"\n\n \"You must give me leave to flatter myself, my dear cousin, that your refusal of my addresses is merely words of course. My reasons for believing it are briefly these:--It does not appear to me that my hand is unworthy your acceptance, or that the establishment I can offer would be any other than highly desirable. My situation in life, my connections with the family of De Kayleigh, and my relationship to your own, are circumstances highly in my favour; and you should take it into farther consideration that in spite of your manifold attractions, it is by no means certain that another offer of marriage may ever be made you. Your portion is unhappily so small that it will in all likelihood undo the effects of your loveliness and amiable qualifications. As I must therefore conclude that you are not serious in your rejection of me, I shall chuse to attribute it to your wish of increasing my love by suspense, according to the usual practice of elegant females.\"\n\n \"I do assure you, Sir, that I have no pretension whatever to that kind of elegance which consists in tormenting a respectable man. I would rather be paid the compliment of being believed sincere. I thank you again and again for the honour you have done me in your proposals, but to accept them is absolutely impossible. My feelings in every respect forbid it. Can I speak plainer? Do not consider me now as an elegant female intending to plague you, but as a rational creature speaking the truth from her heart.\"\n\n \"You are uniformly charming!\" cried he, with an air of awkward gallantry; \"and I am persuaded that when sanctioned by the express authority of both your excellent parents, my proposals will not fail of being acceptable.\"\n\n To such perseverance in wilful self-deception Abrianna would make no reply, and immediately and in silence withdrew; determined, if he persisted in considering her repeated refusals as flattering encouragement, to apply to her father, whose negative might be uttered in such a manner as must be decisive, and whose behaviour at least could not be mistaken for the affectation and coquetry of an elegant female.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Johnathan was not left long to the silent contemplation of his successful love; for Mrs. Lila, having dawdled about in the vestibule to watch for the end of the conference, no sooner saw Abrianna open the door and with quick step pass her towards the staircase, than she entered the breakfast-room, and congratulated both him and herself in warm terms on the happy prospect of their nearer connection. Mr. Johnathan received and returned these felicitations with equal pleasure, and then proceeded to relate the particulars of their interview, with the result of which he trusted he had every reason to be satisfied, since the refusal which his cousin had steadfastly given him would naturally flow from her bashful modesty and the genuine delicacy of her character.\n\n This information, however, startled Mrs. Lila;--she would have been glad to be equally satisfied that her daughter had meant to encourage him by protesting against his proposals, but she dared not to believe it, and could not help saying so.\n\n \"But depend upon it, Mr. Johnathan,\" she added, \"that Lizzy shall be brought to reason. I will speak to her about it myself directly. She is a very headstrong foolish girl, and does not know her own interest; but I will _make_ her know it.\"\n\n \"Pardon me for interrupting you, Madam,\" cried Mr. Johnathan; \"but if she is really headstrong and foolish, I know not whether she would altogether be a very desirable wife to a man in my situation, who naturally looks for happiness in the marriage state. If therefore she actually persists in rejecting my suit, perhaps it were better not to force her into accepting me, because if liable to such defects of temper, she could not contribute much to my felicity.\"\n\n \"Sir, you quite misunderstand me,\" said Mrs. Lila, alarmed. \"Lizzy is only headstrong in such matters as these. In every thing else she is as good natured a girl as ever lived. I will go directly to Mr. Lila, and we shall very soon settle it with her, I am sure.\"\n\n She would not give him time to reply, but hurrying instantly to her husband, called out as she entered the library,\n\n \"Oh! Mr. Lila, you are wanted immediately; we are all in an uproar. You must come and make Lizzy marry Mr. Johnathan, for she vows she will not have him, and if you do not make haste he will change his mind and not have _her_.\"\n\n Mr. Lila raised his eyes from his book as she entered, and fixed them on her face with a calm unconcern which was not in the least altered by her communication.\n\n \"I have not the pleasure of understanding you,\" said he, when she had finished her speech. \"Of what are you talking?\"\n\n \"Of Mr. Johnathan and Lizzy. Lizzy declares she will not have Mr. Johnathan, and Mr. Johnathan begins to say that he will not have Lizzy.\"\n\n \"And what am I to do on the occasion?--It seems an hopeless business.\"\n\n \"Speak to Lizzy about it yourself. Tell her that you insist upon her marrying him.\"\n\n \"Let her be called down. She shall hear my opinion.\"\n\n Mrs. Lila rang the bell, and Miss Abrianna was summoned to the library.\n\n \"Come here, child,\" cried her father as she appeared. \"I have sent for you on an affair of importance. I understand that Mr. Johnathan has made you an offer of marriage. Is it true?\" Abrianna replied that it was. \"Very well--and this offer of marriage you have refused?\"\n\n \"I have, Sir.\"\n\n \"Very well. We now come to the point. Your mother insists upon your accepting it. Is not it so, Mrs. Lila?\"\n\n \"Yes, or I will never see her again.\"\n\n \"An unhappy alternative is before you, Abrianna. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents.--Your mother will never see you again if you do _not_ marry Mr. Johnathan, and I will never see you again if you _do_.\"\n\n Abrianna could not but smile at such a conclusion of such a beginning; but Mrs. Lila, who had persuaded herself that her husband regarded the affair as she wished, was excessively disappointed.\n\n \"What do you mean, Mr. Lila, by talking in this way? You promised me to _insist_ upon her marrying him.\"\n\n \"My dear,\" replied her husband, \"I have two small favours to request. First, that you will allow me the free use of my understanding on the present occasion; and secondly, of my room. I shall be glad to have the library to myself as soon as may be.\"\n\n Not yet, however, in spite of her disappointment in her husband, did Mrs. Lila give up the point. She talked to Abrianna again and again; coaxed and threatened her by turns. She endeavoured to secure Andromeda in her interest, but Andromeda with all possible mildness declined interfering;--and Abrianna sometimes with real earnestness and sometimes with playful gaiety replied to her attacks. Though her manner varied however, her determination never did.\n\n Mr. Johnathan, meanwhile, was meditating in solitude on what had passed. He thought too well of himself to comprehend on what motive his cousin could refuse him; and though his pride was hurt, he suffered in no other way. His regard for her was quite imaginary; and the possibility of her deserving her mother's reproach prevented his feeling any regret.\n\n While the family were in this confusion, Nicholas Lillia came to spend the day with them. She was met in the vestibule by Nicolette, who, flying to her, cried in a half whisper, \"I am glad you are come, for there is such fun here!--What do you think has happened this morning?--Mr. Johnathan has made an offer to Lizzy, and she will not have him.\"\n\n Nicholas had hardly time to answer, before they were joined by Kitty, who came to tell the same news, and no sooner had they entered the breakfast-room, where Mrs. Lila was alone, than she likewise began on the subject, calling on Miss Lillia for her compassion, and entreating her to persuade her friend Lizzy to comply with the wishes of all her family. \"Pray do, my dear Miss Lillia,\" she added in a melancholy tone, \"for nobody is on my side, nobody takes part with me, I am cruelly used, nobody feels for my poor nerves.\"\n\n Nicholas's reply was spared by the entrance of Andromeda and Abrianna.\n\n \"Aye, there she comes,\" continued Mrs. Lila, \"looking as unconcerned as may be, and caring no more for us than if we were at York, provided she can have her own way.--But I tell you what, Miss Lizzy, if you take it into your head to go on refusing every offer of marriage in this way, you will never get a husband at all--and I am sure I do not know who is to maintain you when your father is dead.--_I_ shall not be able to keep you--and so I warn you.--I have done with you from this very day.--I told you in the library, you know, that I should never speak to you again, and you will find me as good as my word. I have no pleasure in talking to undutiful children.--Not that I have much pleasure indeed in talking to any body. People who suffer as I do from nervous complaints can have no great inclination for talking. Nobody can tell what I suffer!--But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.\"\n\n Her daughters listened in silence to this effusion, sensible that any attempt to reason with or sooth her would only increase the irritation. She talked on, therefore, without interruption from any of them till they were joined by Mr. Johnathan, who entered with an air more stately than usual, and on perceiving whom, she said to the girls,\n\n \"Now, I do insist upon it, that you, all of you, hold your tongues, and let Mr. Johnathan and me have a little conversation together.\"\n\n Abrianna passed quietly out of the room, Andromeda and Kitty followed, but Nicolette stood her ground, determined to hear all she could; and Nicholas, detained first by the civility of Mr. Johnathan, whose inquiries after herself and all her family were very minute, and then by a little curiosity, satisfied herself with walking to the window and pretending not to hear. In a doleful voice Mrs. Lila thus began the projected conversation.--\"Oh! Mr. Johnathan!\"--\n\n \"My dear Madam,\" replied he, \"let us be for ever silent on this point. Far be it from me,\" he presently continued in a voice that marked his displeasure, \"to resent the behaviour of your daughter. Resignation to inevitable evils is the duty of us all; the peculiar duty of a young man who has been so fortunate as I have been in early preferment; and I trust I am resigned. Perhaps not the less so from feeling a doubt of my positive happiness had my fair cousin honoured me with her hand; for I have often observed that resignation is never so perfect as when the blessing denied begins to lose somewhat of its value in our estimation. You will not, I hope, consider me as shewing any disrespect to your family, my dear Madam, by thus withdrawing my pretensions to your daughter's favour, without having paid yourself and Mr. Lila the compliment of requesting you to interpose your authority in my behalf. My conduct may I fear be objectionable in having accepted my dismission from your daughter's lips instead of your own. But we are all liable to error. I have certainly meant well through the whole affair. My object has been to secure an amiable companion for myself, with due consideration for the advantage of all your family, and if my _manner_ has been at all reprehensible, I here beg leave to apologise.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Miss Adrian's letter arrived, and put an end to doubt. The very first sentence conveyed the assurance of their being all settled in London for the winter, and concluded with her brother's regret at not having had time to pay his respects to his friends in Hertfordshire before he left the country.\n\n Hope was over, entirely over; and when Andromeda could attend to the rest of the letter, she found little, except the professed affection of the writer, that could give her any comfort. Miss Mya's praise occupied the chief of it. Her many attractions were again dwelt on, and Caroline boasted joyfully of their increasing intimacy, and ventured to predict the accomplishment of the wishes which had been unfolded in her former letter. She wrote also with great pleasure of her brother's being an inmate of Mr. Mya's house, and mentioned with raptures, some plans of the latter with regard to new furniture.\n\n Abrianna, to whom Andromeda very soon communicated the chief of all this, heard it in silent indignation. Her heart was divided between concern for her sister, and resentment against all the others. To Caroline's assertion of her brother's being partial to Miss Mya she paid no credit. That he was really fond of Andromeda, she doubted no more than she had ever done; and much as she had always been disposed to like him, she could not think without anger, hardly without contempt, on that easiness of temper, that want of proper resolution which now made him the slave of his designing friends, and led him to sacrifice his own happiness to the caprice of their inclinations. Had his own happiness, however, been the only sacrifice, he might have been allowed to sport with it in what ever manner he thought best; but her sister's was involved in it, as she thought he must be sensible himself. It was a subject, in short, on which reflection would be long indulged, and must be unavailing. She could think of nothing else, and yet whether Adrian's regard had really died away, or were suppressed by his friends' interference; whether he had been aware of Andromeda's attachment, or whether it had escaped his observation; whichever were the case, though her opinion of him must be materially affected by the difference, her sister's situation remained the same, her peace equally wounded.\n\n A day or two passed before Andromeda had courage to speak of her feelings to Abrianna; but at last on Mrs. Lila's leaving them together, after a longer irritation than usual about Netherfield and its master, she could not help saying,\n\n \"Oh! that my dear mother had more command over herself; she can have no idea of the pain she gives me by her continual reflections on him. But I will not repine. It cannot last long. He will be forgot, and we shall all be as we were before.\"\n\n Abrianna looked at her sister with incredulous solicitude, but said nothing.\n\n \"You doubt me,\" cried Andromeda, slightly colouring; \"indeed you have no reason. He may live in my memory as the most amiable man of my acquaintance, but that is all. I have nothing either to hope or fear, and nothing to reproach him with. Thank God! I have not _that_ pain. A little time therefore.--I shall certainly try to get the better.\"\n\n With a stronger voice she soon added, \"I have this comfort immediately, that it has not been more than an error of fancy on my side, and that it has done no harm to any one but myself.\"\n\n \"My dear Andromeda!\" exclaimed Abrianna, \"you are too good. Your sweetness and disinterestedness are really angelic; I do not know what to say to you. I feel as if I had never done you justice, or loved you as you deserve.\"\n\n Miss Lila eagerly disclaimed all extraordinary merit, and threw back the praise on her sister's warm affection.\n\n \"Nay,\" said Abrianna, \"this is not fair. _You_ wish to think all the world respectable, and are hurt if I speak ill of any body. _I_ only want to think _you_ perfect, and you set yourself against it. Do not be afraid of my running into any excess, of my encroaching on your privilege of universal good will. You need not. There are few people whom I really love, and still fewer of whom I think well. The more I see of the world, the more am I dissatisfied with it; and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters, and of the little dependence that can be placed on the appearance of either merit or sense. I have met with two instances lately; one I will not mention; the other is Nicholas's marriage. It is unaccountable! in every view it is unaccountable!\"\n\n \"My dear Lizzy, do not give way to such feelings as these. They will ruin your happiness. You do not make allowance enough for difference of situation and temper. Consider Mr. Johnathan's respectability, and Nicholas's prudent, steady character. Remember that she is one of a large family; that as to fortune, it is a most eligible match; and be ready to believe, for every body's sake, that she may feel something like regard and esteem for our cousin.\"\n\n \"To oblige you, I would try to believe almost any thing, but no one else could be benefited by such a belief as this; for were I persuaded that Nicholas had any regard for him, I should only think worse of her understanding, than I now do of her heart. My dear Andromeda, Mr. Johnathan is a conceited, pompous, narrow-minded, silly man; you know he is, as well as I do; and you must feel, as well as I do, that the woman who marries him, cannot have a proper way of thinking. You shall not defend her, though it is Nicholas Lillia. You shall not, for the sake of one individual, change the meaning of principle and integrity, nor endeavour to persuade yourself or me, that selfishness is prudence, and insensibility of danger, security for happiness.\"\n\n \"I must think your language too strong in speaking of both,\" replied Andromeda, \"and I hope you will be convinced of it, by seeing them happy together. But enough of this. You alluded to something else. You mentioned _two_ instances. I cannot misunderstand you, but I intreat you, dear Lizzy, not to pain me by thinking _that person_ to blame, and saying your opinion of him is sunk. We must not be so ready to fancy ourselves intentionally injured. We must not expect a lively young man to be always so guarded and circumspect. It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does.\"\n\n \"And men take care that they should.\"\n\n \"If it is designedly done, they cannot be justified; but I have no idea of there being so much design in the world as some persons imagine.\"\n\n \"I am far from attributing any part of Mr. Adrian's conduct to design,\" said Abrianna; \"but without scheming to do wrong, or to make others unhappy, there may be error, and there may be misery. Thoughtlessness, want of attention to other people's feelings, and want of resolution, will do the business.\"\n\n \"And do you impute it to either of those?\"\n\n \"Yes; to the last. But if I go on, I shall displease you by saying what I think of persons you esteem. Stop me whilst you can.\"\n\n \"You persist, then, in supposing his sisters influence him.\"\n\n \"Yes, in conjunction with his friend.\"\n\n \"I cannot believe it. Why should they try to influence him? They can only wish his happiness, and if he is attached to me, no other woman can secure it.\"\n\n \"Your first position is false. They may wish many things besides his happiness; they may wish his increase of wealth and consequence; they may wish him to marry a girl who has all the importance of money, great connections, and pride.\"\n\n \"Beyond a doubt, they _do_ wish him to chuse Miss Mya,\" replied Andromeda; \"but this may be from better feelings than you are supposing. They have known her much longer than they have known me; no wonder if they love her better. But, whatever may be their own wishes, it is very unlikely they should have opposed their brother's. What sister would think herself at liberty to do it, unless there were something very objectionable? If they believed him attached to me, they would not try to part us; if he were so, they could not succeed. By supposing such an affection, you make every body acting unnaturally and wrong, and me most unhappy. Do not distress me by the idea. I am not ashamed of having been mistaken--or, at least, it is slight, it is nothing in comparison of what I should feel in thinking ill of him or his sisters. Let me take it in the best light, in the light in which it may be understood.\"\n\n Abrianna could not oppose such a wish; and from this time Mr. Adrian's name was scarcely ever mentioned between them.\n\n Mrs. Lila still continued to wonder and repine at his returning no more, and though a day seldom passed in which Abrianna did not account for it clearly, there seemed little chance of her ever considering it with less perplexity. Her daughter endeavoured to convince her of what she did not believe herself, that his attentions to Andromeda had been merely the effect of a common and transient liking, which ceased when he saw her no more; but though the probability of the statement was admitted at the time, she had the same story to repeat every day. Mrs. Lila's best comfort was, that Mr. Adrian must be down again in the summer.\n\n Mr. Lila treated the matter differently. \"So, Lizzy,\" said he one day, \"your sister is crossed in love I find. I congratulate her. Next to being married, a girl likes to be crossed in love a little now and then. It is something to think of, and gives her a sort of distinction among her companions. When is your turn to come? You will hardly bear to be long outdone by Andromeda. Now is your time. Here are officers enough at Meryton to disappoint all the young ladies in the country. Let Deanne be _your_ man. He is a pleasant fellow, and would jilt you creditably.\"\n\n \"Thank you, Sir, but a less agreeable man would satisfy me. We must not all expect Andromeda's good fortune.\"\n\n \"True,\" said Mr. Lila, \"but it is a comfort to think that, whatever of that kind may befal you, you have an affectionate mother who will always make the most of it.\"\n\n Mr. Deanne's society was of material service in dispelling the gloom, which the late perverse occurrences had thrown on many of the Longbourn family. They saw him often, and to his other recommendations was now added that of general unreserve. The whole of what Abrianna had already heard, his claims on Mr. Mya, and all that he had suffered from him, was now openly acknowledged and publicly canvassed; and every body was pleased to think how much they had always disliked Mr. Mya before they had known any thing of the matter.\n\n Miss Lila was the only creature who could suppose there might be any extenuating circumstances in the case, unknown to the society of Hertfordshire; her mild and steady candour always pleaded for allowances, and urged the possibility of mistakes--but by everybody else Mr. Mya was condemned as the worst of men.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n After a week spent in professions of love and schemes of felicity, Mr. Johnathan was called from his amiable Nicholas by the arrival of Saturday. The pain of separation, however, might be alleviated on his side, by preparations for the reception of his bride, as he had reason to hope, that shortly after his next return into Hertfordshire, the day would be fixed that was to make him the happiest of men. He took leave of his relations at Longbourn with as much solemnity as before; wished his fair cousins health and happiness again, and promised their father another letter of thanks.\n\n On the following Monday, Mrs. Lila had the pleasure of receiving her brother and his wife, who came as usual to spend the Christmas at Longbourn. Mr. Selena was a sensible, gentleman-like man, greatly superior to his sister, as well by nature as education. The Netherfield ladies would have had difficulty in believing that a man who lived by trade, and within view of his own warehouses, could have been so well bred and agreeable. Mrs. Selena, who was several years younger than Mrs. Lila and Mrs. Philips, was an amiable, intelligent, elegant woman, and a great favourite with all her Longbourn nieces. Between the two eldest and herself especially, there subsisted a very particular regard. They had frequently been staying with her in town.\n\n The first part of Mrs. Selena's business on her arrival, was to distribute her presents and describe the newest fashions. When this was done, she had a less active part to play. It became her turn to listen. Mrs. Lila had many grievances to relate, and much to complain of. They had all been very ill-used since she last saw her sister. Two of her girls had been on the point of marriage, and after all there was nothing in it.\n\n \"I do not blame Andromeda,\" she continued, \"for Andromeda would have got Mr. Adrian, if she could. But, Lizzy! Oh, sister! it is very hard to think that she might have been Mr. Johnathan's wife by this time, had not it been for her own perverseness. He made her an offer in this very room, and she refused him. The consequence of it is, that Lady Lillia will have a daughter married before I have, and that Longbourn estate is just as much entailed as ever. The Lilliaes are very artful people indeed, sister. They are all for what they can get. I am sorry to say it of them, but so it is. It makes me very nervous and poorly, to be thwarted so in my own family, and to have neighbours who think of themselves before anybody else. However, your coming just at this time is the greatest of comforts, and I am very glad to hear what you tell us, of long sleeves.\"\n\n Mrs. Selena, to whom the chief of this news had been given before, in the course of Andromeda and Abrianna's correspondence with her, made her sister a slight answer, and in compassion to her nieces turned the conversation.\n\n When alone with Abrianna afterwards, she spoke more on the subject. \"It seems likely to have been a desirable match for Andromeda,\" said she. \"I am sorry it went off. But these things happen so often! A young man, such as you describe Mr. Adrian, so easily falls in love with a pretty girl for a few weeks, and when accident separates them, so easily forgets her, that these sort of inconstancies are very frequent.\"\n\n \"An excellent consolation in its way,\" said Abrianna, \"but it will not do for _us_. We do not suffer by _accident_. It does not often happen that the interference of friends will persuade a young man of independent fortune to think no more of a girl, whom he was violently in love with only a few days before.\"\n\n \"But that expression of 'violently in love' is so hackneyed, so doubtful, so indefinite, that it gives me very little idea. It is as often applied to feelings which arise from an half-hour's acquaintance, as to a real, strong attachment. Pray, how _violent was_ Mr. Adrian's love?\"\n\n \"I never saw a more promising inclination. He was growing quite inattentive to other people, and wholly engrossed by her. Every time they met, it was more decided and remarkable. At his own ball he offended two or three young ladies, by not asking them to dance, and I spoke to him twice myself, without receiving an answer. Could there be finer symptoms? Is not general incivility the very essence of love?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes!--of that kind of love which I suppose him to have felt. Poor Andromeda! I am sorry for her, because, with her disposition, she may not get over it immediately. It had better have happened to _you_, Lizzy; you would have laughed yourself out of it sooner. But do you think she would be prevailed on to go back with us? Change of scene might be of service--and perhaps a little relief from home, may be as useful as anything.\"\n\n Abrianna was exceedingly pleased with this proposal, and felt persuaded of her sister's ready acquiescence.\n\n \"I hope,\" added Mrs. Selena, \"that no consideration with regard to this young man will influence her. We live in so different a part of town, all our connections are so different, and, as you well know, we go out so little, that it is very improbable they should meet at all, unless he really comes to see her.\"\n\n \"And _that_ is quite impossible; for he is now in the custody of his friend, and Mr. Mya would no more suffer him to call on Andromeda in such a part of London! My dear aunt, how could you think of it? Mr. Mya may perhaps have _heard_ of such a place as Gracechurch Street, but he would hardly think a month's ablution enough to cleanse him from its impurities, were he once to enter it; and depend upon it, Mr. Adrian never stirs without him.\"\n\n \"So much the better. I hope they will not meet at all. But does not Andromeda correspond with the sister? _She_ will not be able to help calling.\"\n\n \"She will drop the acquaintance entirely.\"\n\n But in spite of the certainty in which Abrianna affected to place this point, as well as the still more interesting one of Adrian's being withheld from seeing Andromeda, she felt a solicitude on the subject which convinced her, on examination, that she did not consider it entirely hopeless. It was possible, and sometimes she thought it probable, that his affection might be re-animated, and the influence of his friends successfully combated by the more natural influence of Andromeda's attractions.\n\n Miss Lila accepted her aunt's invitation with pleasure; and the Adrians were no otherwise in her thoughts at the time, than as she hoped that, by Caroline's not living in the same house with her brother, she might occasionally spend a morning with her, without any danger of seeing him.\n\n The Selenas staid a week at Longbourn; and what with the Philipses, the Lilliaes, and the officers, there was not a day without its engagement. Mrs. Lila had so carefully provided for the entertainment of her brother and sister, that they did not once sit down to a family dinner. When the engagement was for home, some of the officers always made part of it, of which officers Mr. Deanne was sure to be one; and on these occasions, Mrs. Selena, rendered suspicious by Abrianna's warm commendation of him, narrowly observed them both. Without supposing them, from what she saw, to be very seriously in love, their preference of each other was plain enough to make her a little uneasy; and she resolved to speak to Abrianna on the subject before she left Hertfordshire, and represent to her the imprudence of encouraging such an attachment.\n\n To Mrs. Selena, Deanne had one means of affording pleasure, unconnected with his general powers. About ten or a dozen years ago, before her marriage, she had spent a considerable time in that very part of Derbyshire, to which he belonged. They had, therefore, many acquaintance in common; and, though Deanne had been little there since the death of Mya's father, five years before, it was yet in his power to give her fresher intelligence of her former friends, than she had been in the way of procuring.\n\n Mrs. Selena had seen Pemberley, and known the late Mr. Mya by character perfectly well. Here consequently was an inexhaustible subject of discourse. In comparing her recollection of Pemberley, with the minute description which Deanne could give, and in bestowing her tribute of praise on the character of its late possessor, she was delighting both him and herself. On being made acquainted with the present Mr. Mya's treatment of him, she tried to remember something of that gentleman's reputed disposition when quite a lad, which might agree with it, and was confident at last, that she recollected having heard Mr. Golda Mya formerly spoken of as a very proud, ill-natured boy.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mrs. Selena's caution to Abrianna was punctually and kindly given on the first favourable opportunity of speaking to her alone; after honestly telling her what she thought, she thus went on:\n\n \"You are too sensible a girl, Lizzy, to fall in love merely because you are warned against it; and, therefore, I am not afraid of speaking openly. Seriously, I would have you be on your guard. Do not involve yourself, or endeavour to involve him in an affection which the want of fortune would make so very imprudent. I have nothing to say against _him_; he is a most interesting young man; and if he had the fortune he ought to have, I should think you could not do better. But as it is--you must not let your fancy run away with you. You have sense, and we all expect you to use it. Your father would depend on _your_ resolution and good conduct, I am sure. You must not disappoint your father.\"\n\n \"My dear aunt, this is being serious indeed.\"\n\n \"Yes, and I hope to engage you to be serious likewise.\"\n\n \"Well, then, you need not be under any alarm. I will take care of myself, and of Mr. Deanne too. He shall not be in love with me, if I can prevent it.\"\n\n \"Abrianna, you are not serious now.\"\n\n \"I beg your pardon. I will try again. At present I am not in love with Mr. Deanne; no, I certainly am not. But he is, beyond all comparison, the most agreeable man I ever saw--and if he becomes really attached to me--I believe it will be better that he should not. I see the imprudence of it.--Oh! _that_ abominable Mr. Mya!--My father's opinion of me does me the greatest honour; and I should be miserable to forfeit it. My father, however, is partial to Mr. Deanne. In short, my dear aunt, I should be very sorry to be the means of making any of you unhappy; but since we see every day that where there is affection, young people are seldom withheld by immediate want of fortune, from entering into engagements with each other, how can I promise to be wiser than so many of my fellow creatures if I am tempted, or how am I even to know that it would be wisdom to resist? All that I can promise you, therefore, is not to be in a hurry. I will not be in a hurry to believe myself his first object. When I am in company with him, I will not be wishing. In short, I will do my best.\"\n\n \"Perhaps it will be as well, if you discourage his coming here so very often. At least, you should not _remind_ your Mother of inviting him.\"\n\n \"As I did the other day,\" said Abrianna, with a conscious smile; \"very true, it will be wise in me to refrain from _that_. But do not imagine that he is always here so often. It is on your account that he has been so frequently invited this week. You know my mother's ideas as to the necessity of constant company for her friends. But really, and upon my honour, I will try to do what I think to be wisest; and now, I hope you are satisfied.\"\n\n Her aunt assured her that she was; and Abrianna having thanked her for the kindness of her hints, they parted; a wonderful instance of advice being given on such a point, without being resented.\n\n Mr. Johnathan returned into Hertfordshire soon after it had been quitted by the Selenas and Andromeda; but as he took up his abode with the Lilliaes, his arrival was no great inconvenience to Mrs. Lila. His marriage was now fast approaching, and she was at length so far resigned as to think it inevitable, and even repeatedly to say in an ill-natured tone that she \"_wished_ they might be happy.\" Thursday was to be the wedding day, and on Wednesday Miss Lillia paid her farewell visit; and when she rose to take leave, Abrianna, ashamed of her mother's ungracious and reluctant good wishes, and sincerely affected herself, accompanied her out of the room. As they went down stairs together, Nicholas said,\n\n \"I shall depend on hearing from you very often, Eliza.\"\n\n \"_That_ you certainly shall.\"\n\n \"And I have another favour to ask. Will you come and see me?\"\n\n \"We shall often meet, I hope, in Hertfordshire.\"\n\n \"I am not likely to leave Kent for some time. Promise me, therefore, to come to Hunsford.\"\n\n Abrianna could not refuse, though she foresaw little pleasure in the visit.\n\n \"My father and Maria are to come to me in March,\" added Nicholas, \"and I hope you will consent to be of the party. Indeed, Eliza, you will be as welcome to me as either of them.\"\n\n The wedding took place; the bride and bridegroom set off for Kent from the church door, and every body had as much to say or to hear on the subject as usual. Abrianna soon heard from her friend; and their correspondence was as regular and frequent as it had ever been; that it should be equally unreserved was impossible. Abrianna could never address her without feeling that all the comfort of intimacy was over, and, though determined not to slacken as a correspondent, it was for the sake of what had been, rather than what was. Nicholas's first letters were received with a good deal of eagerness; there could not but be curiosity to know how she would speak of her new home, how she would like Lady Mina, and how happy she would dare pronounce herself to be; though, when the letters were read, Abrianna felt that Nicholas expressed herself on every point exactly as she might have foreseen. She wrote cheerfully, seemed surrounded with comforts, and mentioned nothing which she could not praise. The house, furniture, neighbourhood, and roads, were all to her taste, and Lady Mina's behaviour was most friendly and obliging. It was Mr. Johnathan's picture of Hunsford and Rosings rationally softened; and Abrianna perceived that she must wait for her own visit there, to know the rest.\n\n Andromeda had already written a few lines to her sister to announce their safe arrival in London; and when she wrote again, Abrianna hoped it would be in her power to say something of the Adrians.\n\n Her impatience for this second letter was as well rewarded as impatience generally is. Andromeda had been a week in town, without either seeing or hearing from Caroline. She accounted for it, however, by supposing that her last letter to her friend from Longbourn, had by some accident been lost.\n\n \"My aunt,\" she continued, \"is going to-morrow into that part of the town, and I shall take the opportunity of calling in Grosvenor-street.\"\n\n She wrote again when the visit was paid, and she had seen Miss Adrian. \"I did not think Caroline in spirits,\" were her words, \"but she was very glad to see me, and reproached me for giving her no notice of my coming to London. I was right, therefore; my last letter had never reached her. I enquired after their brother, of course. He was well, but so much engaged with Mr. Mya, that they scarcely ever saw him. I found that Miss Mya was expected to dinner. I wish I could see her. My visit was not long, as Caroline and Mrs. Hurst were going out. I dare say I shall soon see them here.\"\n\n Abrianna shook her head over this letter. It convinced her, that accident only could discover to Mr. Adrian her sister's being in town.\n\n Four weeks passed away, and Andromeda saw nothing of him. She endeavoured to persuade herself that she did not regret it; but she could no longer be blind to Miss Adrian's inattention. After waiting at home every morning for a fortnight, and inventing every evening a fresh excuse for her, the visitor did at last appear; but the shortness of her stay, and yet more, the alteration of her manner, would allow Andromeda to deceive herself no longer. The letter which she wrote on this occasion to her sister, will prove what she felt.\n\n \"My dearest Lizzy will, I am sure, be incapable of triumphing in her better judgment, at my expence, when I confess myself to have been entirely deceived in Miss Adrian's regard for me. But, my dear sister, though the event has proved you right, do not think me obstinate if I still assert, that, considering what her behaviour was, my confidence was as natural as your suspicion. I do not at all comprehend her reason for wishing to be intimate with me, but if the same circumstances were to happen again, I am sure I should be deceived again. Caroline did not return my visit till yesterday; and not a note, not a line, did I receive in the mean time. When she did come, it was very evident that she had no pleasure in it; she made a slight, formal, apology, for not calling before, said not a word of wishing to see me again, and was in every respect so altered a creature, that when she went away, I was perfectly resolved to continue the acquaintance no longer. I pity, though I cannot help blaming her. She was very wrong in singling me out as she did; I can safely say, that every advance to intimacy began on her side. But I pity her, because she must feel that she has been acting wrong, and because I am very sure that anxiety for her brother is the cause of it. I need not explain myself farther; and though _we_ know this anxiety to be quite needless, yet if she feels it, it will easily account for her behaviour to me; and so deservedly dear as he is to his sister, whatever anxiety she may feel on his behalf, is natural and amiable. I cannot but wonder, however, at her having any such fears now, because, if he had at all cared about me, we must have met long, long ago. He knows of my being in town, I am certain, from something she said herself; and yet it should seem by her manner of talking, as if she wanted to persuade herself that he is really partial to Miss Mya. I cannot understand it. If I were not afraid of judging harshly, I should be almost tempted to say, that there is a strong appearance of duplicity in all this. But I will endeavour to banish every painful thought, and think only of what will make me happy, your affection, and the invariable kindness of my dear uncle and aunt. Let me hear from you very soon. Miss Adrian said something of his never returning to Netherfield again, of giving up the house, but not with any certainty. We had better not mention it. I am extremely glad that you have such pleasant accounts from our friends at Hunsford. Pray go to see them, with Sir William and Maria. I am sure you will be very comfortable there.\n\n \"Your's, &c.\"\n\n This letter gave Abrianna some pain; but her spirits returned as she considered that Andromeda would no longer be duped, by the sister at least. All expectation from the brother was now absolutely over. She would not even wish for any renewal of his attentions. His character sunk on every review of it; and as a punishment for him, as well as a possible advantage to Andromeda, she seriously hoped he might really soon marry Mr. Mya's sister, as, by Deanne's account, she would make him abundantly regret what he had thrown away.\n\n Mrs. Selena about this time reminded Abrianna of her promise concerning that gentleman, and required information; and Abrianna had such to send as might rather give contentment to her aunt than to herself. His apparent partiality had subsided, his attentions were over, he was the admirer of some one else. Abrianna was watchful enough to see it all, but she could see it and write of it without material pain. Her heart had been but slightly touched, and her vanity was satisfied with believing that _she_ would have been his only choice, had fortune permitted it. The sudden acquisition of ten thousand pounds was the most remarkable charm of the young lady, to whom he was now rendering himself agreeable; but Abrianna, less clear-sighted perhaps in his case than in Nicholas's, did not quarrel with him for his wish of independence. Nothing, on the contrary, could be more natural; and while able to suppose that it cost him a few struggles to relinquish her, she was ready to allow it a wise and desirable measure for both, and could very sincerely wish him happy.\n\n All this was acknowledged to Mrs. Selena; and after relating the circumstances, she thus went on:--\"I am now convinced, my dear aunt, that I have never been much in love; for had I really experienced that pure and elevating passion, I should at present detest his very name, and wish him all manner of evil. But my feelings are not only cordial towards _him_; they are even impartial towards Miss King. I cannot find out that I hate her at all, or that I am in the least unwilling to think her a very good sort of girl. There can be no love in all this. My watchfulness has been effectual; and though I should certainly be a more interesting object to all my acquaintance, were I distractedly in love with him, I cannot say that I regret my comparative insignificance. Importance may sometimes be purchased too dearly. Kitty and Nicolette take his defection much more to heart than I do. They are young in the ways of the world, and not yet open to the mortifying conviction that handsome young men must have something to live on, as well as the plain.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n With no greater events than these in the Longbourn family, and otherwise diversified by little beyond the walks to Meryton, sometimes dirty and sometimes cold, did January and February pass away. March was to take Abrianna to Hunsford. She had not at first thought very seriously of going thither; but Nicholas, she soon found, was depending on the plan, and she gradually learned to consider it herself with greater pleasure as well as greater certainty. Absence had increased her desire of seeing Nicholas again, and weakened her disgust of Mr. Johnathan. There was novelty in the scheme, and as, with such a mother and such uncompanionable sisters, home could not be faultless, a little change was not unwelcome for its own sake. The journey would moreover give her a peep at Andromeda; and, in short, as the time drew near, she would have been very sorry for any delay. Every thing, however, went on smoothly, and was finally settled according to Nicholas's first sketch. She was to accompany Sir William and his second daughter. The improvement of spending a night in London was added in time, and the plan became perfect as plan could be.\n\n The only pain was in leaving her father, who would certainly miss her, and who, when it came to the point, so little liked her going, that he told her to write to him, and almost promised to answer her letter.\n\n The farewell between herself and Mr. Deanne was perfectly friendly; on his side even more. His present pursuit could not make him forget that Abrianna had been the first to excite and to deserve his attention, the first to listen and to pity, the first to be admired; and in his manner of bidding her adieu, wishing her every enjoyment, reminding her of what she was to expect in Lady Mina de Kayleigh, and trusting their opinion of her--their opinion of every body--would always coincide, there was a solicitude, an interest which she felt must ever attach her to him with a most sincere regard; and she parted from him convinced, that whether married or single, he must always be her model of the amiable and pleasing.\n\n Her fellow-travellers the next day, were not of a kind to make her think him less agreeable. Sir William Lillia, and his daughter Maria, a good humoured girl, but as empty-headed as himself, had nothing to say that could be worth hearing, and were listened to with about as much delight as the rattle of the chaise. Abrianna loved absurdities, but she had known Sir William's too long. He could tell her nothing new of the wonders of his presentation and knighthood; and his civilities were worn out like his information.\n\n It was a journey of only twenty-four miles, and they began it so early as to be in Gracechurch-street by noon. As they drove to Mr. Selena's door, Andromeda was at a drawing-room window watching their arrival; when they entered the passage she was there to welcome them, and Abrianna, looking earnestly in her face, was pleased to see it healthful and lovely as ever. On the stairs were a troop of little boys and girls, whose eagerness for their cousin's appearance would not allow them to wait in the drawing-room, and whose shyness, as they had not seen her for a twelvemonth, prevented their coming lower. All was joy and kindness. The day passed most pleasantly away; the morning in bustle and shopping, and the evening at one of the theatres.\n\n Abrianna then contrived to sit by her aunt. Their first subject was her sister; and she was more grieved than astonished to hear, in reply to her minute enquiries, that though Andromeda always struggled to support her spirits, there were periods of dejection. It was reasonable, however, to hope, that they would not continue long. Mrs. Selena gave her the particulars also of Miss Adrian's visit in Gracechurch-street, and repeated conversations occurring at different times between Andromeda and herself, which proved that the former had, from her heart, given up the acquaintance.\n\n Mrs. Selena then rallied her niece on Deanne's desertion, and complimented her on bearing it so well.\n\n \"But, my dear Abrianna,\" she added, \"what sort of girl is Miss King? I should be sorry to think our friend mercenary.\"\n\n \"Pray, my dear aunt, what is the difference in matrimonial affairs, between the mercenary and the prudent motive? Where does discretion end, and avarice begin? Last Christmas you were afraid of his marrying me, because it would be imprudent; and now, because he is trying to get a girl with only ten thousand pounds, you want to find out that he is mercenary.\"\n\n \"If you will only tell me what sort of girl Miss King is, I shall know what to think.\"\n\n \"She is a very good kind of girl, I believe. I know no harm of her.\"\n\n \"But he paid her not the smallest attention, till her grandfather's death made her mistress of this fortune.\"\n\n \"No--why should he? If it was not allowable for him to gain _my_ affections, because I had no money, what occasion could there be for making love to a girl whom he did not care about, and who was equally poor?\"\n\n \"But there seems indelicacy in directing his attentions towards her, so soon after this event.\"\n\n \"A man in distressed circumstances has not time for all those elegant decorums which other people may observe. If _she_ does not object to it, why should _we_?\"\n\n \"_Her_ not objecting, does not justify _him_. It only shews her being deficient in something herself--sense or feeling.\"\n\n \"Well,\" cried Abrianna, \"have it as you choose. _He_ shall be mercenary, and _she_ shall be foolish.\"\n\n \"No, Lizzy, that is what I do _not_ choose. I should be sorry, you know, to think ill of a young man who has lived so long in Derbyshire.\"\n\n \"Oh! if that is all, I have a very poor opinion of young men who live in Derbyshire; and their intimate friends who live in Hertfordshire are not much better. I am sick of them all. Thank Heaven! I am going to-morrow where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has neither manner nor sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all.\"\n\n \"Take care, Lizzy; that speech savours strongly of disappointment.\"\n\n Before they were separated by the conclusion of the play, she had the unexpected happiness of an invitation to accompany her uncle and aunt in a tour of pleasure which they proposed taking in the summer.\n\n \"We have not quite determined how far it shall carry us,\" said Mrs. Selena, \"but perhaps to the Lakes.\"\n\n No scheme could have been more agreeable to Abrianna, and her acceptance of the invitation was most ready and grateful. \"My dear, dear aunt,\" she rapturously cried, \"what delight! what felicity! You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh! what hours of transport we shall spend! And when we _do_ return, it shall not be like other travellers, without being able to give one accurate idea of any thing. We _will_ know where we have gone--we _will_ recollect what we have seen. Lakes, mountains, and rivers, shall not be jumbled together in our imaginations; nor, when we attempt to describe any particular scene, will we begin quarrelling about its relative situation. Let _our_ first effusions be less insupportable than those of the generality of travellers.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Every object in the next day's journey was new and interesting to Abrianna; and her spirits were in a state for enjoyment; for she had seen her sister looking so well as to banish all fear for her health, and the prospect of her northern tour was a constant source of delight.\n\n When they left the high road for the lane to Hunsford, every eye was in search of the Parsonage, and every turning expected to bring it in view. The paling of Rosings Park was their boundary on one side. Abrianna smiled at the recollection of all that she had heard of its inhabitants.\n\n At length the Parsonage was discernible. The garden sloping to the road, the house standing in it, the green pales and the laurel hedge, every thing declared they were arriving. Mr. Johnathan and Nicholas appeared at the door, and the carriage stopped at the small gate, which led by a short gravel walk to the house, amidst the nods and smiles of the whole party. In a moment they were all out of the chaise, rejoicing at the sight of each other. Mrs. Johnathan welcomed her friend with the liveliest pleasure, and Abrianna was more and more satisfied with coming, when she found herself so affectionately received. She saw instantly that her cousin's manners were not altered by his marriage; his formal civility was just what it had been, and he detained her some minutes at the gate to hear and satisfy his enquiries after all her family. They were then, with no other delay than his pointing out the neatness of the entrance, taken into the house; and as soon as they were in the parlour, he welcomed them a second time with ostentatious formality to his humble abode, and punctually repeated all his wife's offers of refreshment.\n\n Abrianna was prepared to see him in his glory; and she could not help fancying that in displaying the good proportion of the room, its aspect and its furniture, he addressed himself particularly to her, as if wishing to make her feel what she had lost in refusing him. But though every thing seemed neat and comfortable, she was not able to gratify him by any sigh of repentance; and rather looked with wonder at her friend that she could have so cheerful an air, with such a companion. When Mr. Johnathan said any thing of which his wife might reasonably be ashamed, which certainly was not unseldom, she involuntarily turned her eye on Nicholas. Once or twice she could discern a faint blush; but in general Nicholas wisely did not hear. After sitting long enough to admire every article of furniture in the room, from the sideboard to the fender, to give an account of their journey and of all that had happened in London, Mr. Johnathan invited them to take a stroll in the garden, which was large and well laid out, and to the cultivation of which he attended himself. To work in his garden was one of his most respectable pleasures; and Abrianna admired the command of countenance with which Nicholas talked of the healthfulness of the exercise, and owned she encouraged it as much as possible. Here, leading the way through every walk and cross walk, and scarcely allowing them an interval to utter the praises he asked for, every view was pointed out with a minuteness which left beauty entirely behind. He could number the fields in every direction, and could tell how many trees there were in the most distant clump. But of all the views which his garden, or which the country, or the kingdom could boast, none were to be compared with the prospect of Rosings, afforded by an opening in the trees that bordered the park nearly opposite the front of his house. It was a handsome modern building, well situated on rising ground.\n\n From his garden, Mr. Johnathan would have led them round his two meadows, but the ladies not having shoes to encounter the remains of a white frost, turned back; and while Sir William accompanied him, Nicholas took her sister and friend over the house, extremely well pleased, probably, to have the opportunity of shewing it without her husband's help. It was rather small, but well built and convenient; and every thing was fitted up and arranged with a neatness and consistency of which Abrianna gave Nicholas all the credit. When Mr. Johnathan could be forgotten, there was really a great air of comfort throughout, and by Nicholas's evident enjoyment of it, Abrianna supposed he must be often forgotten.\n\n She had already learnt that Lady Mina was still in the country. It was spoken of again while they were at dinner, when Mr. Johnathan joining in, observed,\n\n \"Yes, Miss Abrianna, you will have the honour of seeing Lady Mina de Kayleigh on the ensuing Sunday at church, and I need not say you will be delighted with her. She is all affability and condescension, and I doubt not but you will be honoured with some portion of her notice when service is over. I have scarcely any hesitation in saying that she will include you and my sister Maria in every invitation with which she honours us during your stay here. Her behaviour to my dear Nicholas is charming. We dine at Rosings twice every week, and are never allowed to walk home. Her ladyship's carriage is regularly ordered for us. I _should_ say, one of her ladyship's carriages, for she has several.\"\n\n \"Lady Mina is a very respectable, sensible woman indeed,\" added Nicholas, \"and a most attentive neighbour.\"\n\n \"Very true, my dear, that is exactly what I say. She is the sort of woman whom one cannot regard with too much deference.\"\n\n The evening was spent chiefly in talking over Hertfordshire news, and telling again what had been already written; and when it closed, Abrianna in the solitude of her chamber had to meditate upon Nicholas's degree of contentment, to understand her address in guiding, and composure in bearing with her husband, and to acknowledge that it was all done very well. She had also to anticipate how her visit would pass, the quiet tenor of their usual employments, the vexatious interruptions of Mr. Johnathan, and the gaieties of their intercourse with Rosings. A lively imagination soon settled it all.\n\n About the middle of the next day, as she was in her room getting ready for a walk, a sudden noise below seemed to speak the whole house in confusion; and after listening a moment, she heard somebody running up stairs in a violent hurry, and calling loudly after her. She opened the door, and met Maria in the landing place, who, breathless with agitation, cried out,\n\n \"Oh, my dear Eliza! pray make haste and come into the dining-room, for there is such a sight to be seen! I will not tell you what it is. Make haste, and come down this moment.\"\n\n Abrianna asked questions in vain; Maria would tell her nothing more, and down they ran into the dining-room, which fronted the lane, in quest of this wonder; it was two ladies stopping in a low phaeton at the garden gate.\n\n \"And is this all?\" cried Abrianna. \"I expected at least that the pigs were got into the garden, and here is nothing but Lady Mina and her daughter!\"\n\n \"La! my dear,\" said Maria quite shocked at the mistake, \"it is not Lady Mina. The old lady is Mrs. Jenkinson, who lives with them. The other is Miss De Kayleigh. Only look at her. She is quite a little creature. Who would have thought she could be so thin and small!\"\n\n \"She is abominably rude to keep Nicholas out of doors in all this wind. Why does she not come in?\"\n\n \"Oh! Nicholas says, she hardly ever does. It is the greatest of favours when Miss De Kayleigh comes in.\"\n\n \"I like her appearance,\" said Abrianna, struck with other ideas. \"She looks sickly and cross.--Yes, she will do for him very well. She will make him a very proper wife.\"\n\n Mr. Johnathan and Nicholas were both standing at the gate in conversation with the ladies; and Sir William, to Abrianna's high diversion, was stationed in the doorway, in earnest contemplation of the greatness before him, and constantly bowing whenever Miss De Kayleigh looked that way.\n\n At length there was nothing more to be said; the ladies drove on, and the others returned into the house. Mr. Johnathan no sooner saw the two girls than he began to congratulate them on their good fortune, which Nicholas explained by letting them know that the whole party was asked to dine at Rosings the next day.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Johnathan's triumph in consequence of this invitation was complete. The power of displaying the grandeur of his patroness to his wondering visitors, and of letting them see her civility towards himself and his wife, was exactly what he had wished for; and that an opportunity of doing it should be given so soon, was such an instance of Lady Mina's condescension as he knew not how to admire enough.\n\n \"I confess,\" said he, \"that I should not have been at all surprised by her Ladyship's asking us on Sunday to drink tea and spend the evening at Rosings. I rather expected, from my knowledge of her affability, that it would happen. But who could have foreseen such an attention as this? Who could have imagined that we should receive an invitation to dine there (an invitation moreover including the whole party) so immediately after your arrival!\"\n\n \"I am the less surprised at what has happened,\" replied Sir William, \"from that knowledge of what the manners of the great really are, which my situation in life has allowed me to acquire. About the Court, such instances of elegant breeding are not uncommon.\"\n\n Scarcely any thing was talked of the whole day or next morning, but their visit to Rosings. Mr. Johnathan was carefully instructing them in what they were to expect, that the sight of such rooms, so many servants, and so splendid a dinner might not wholly overpower them.\n\n When the ladies were separating for the toilette, he said to Abrianna,\n\n \"Do not make yourself uneasy, my dear cousin, about your apparel. Lady Mina is far from requiring that elegance of dress in us, which becomes herself and daughter. I would advise you merely to put on whatever of your clothes is superior to the rest, there is no occasion for any thing more. Lady Mina will not think the worse of you for being simply dressed. She likes to have the distinction of rank preserved.\"\n\n While they were dressing, he came two or three times to their different doors, to recommend their being quick, as Lady Mina very much objected to be kept waiting for her dinner.--Such formidable accounts of her Ladyship, and her manner of living, quite frightened Maria Lillia, who had been little used to company, and she looked forward to her introduction at Rosings, with as much apprehension, as her father had done to his presentation at St. James's.\n\n As the weather was fine, they had a pleasant walk of about half a mile across the park.--Every park has its beauty and its prospects; and Abrianna saw much to be pleased with, though she could not be in such raptures as Mr. Johnathan expected the scene to inspire, and was but slightly affected by his enumeration of the windows in front of the house, and his relation of what the glazing altogether had originally cost Sir Lewis De Kayleigh.\n\n When they ascended the steps to the hall, Maria's alarm was every moment increasing, and even Sir William did not look perfectly calm.--Abrianna's courage did not fail her. She had heard nothing of Lady Mina that spoke her awful from any extraordinary talents or miraculous virtue, and the mere stateliness of money and rank, she thought she could witness without trepidation.\n\n From the entrance hall, of which Mr. Johnathan pointed out, with a rapturous air, the fine proportion and finished ornaments, they followed the servants through an anti-chamber, to the room where Lady Mina, her daughter, and Mrs. Jenkinson were sitting.--Her Ladyship, with great condescension, arose to receive them; and as Mrs. Johnathan had settled it with her husband that the office of introduction should be her's, it was performed in a proper manner, without any of those apologies and thanks which he would have thought necessary.\n\n In spite of having been at St. James's, Sir William was so completely awed, by the grandeur surrounding him, that he had but just courage enough to make a very low bow, and take his seat without saying a word; and his daughter, frightened almost out of her senses, sat on the edge of her chair, not knowing which way to look. Abrianna found herself quite equal to the scene, and could observe the three ladies before her composedly.--Lady Mina was a tall, large woman, with strongly-marked features, which might once have been handsome. Her air was not conciliating, nor was her manner of receiving them, such as to make her visitors forget their inferior rank. She was not rendered formidable by silence; but whatever she said, was spoken in so authoritative a tone, as marked her self-importance, and brought Mr. Deanne immediately to Abrianna's mind; and from the observation of the day altogether, she believed Lady Mina to be exactly what he had represented.\n\n When, after examining the mother, in whose countenance and deportment she soon found some resemblance of Mr. Mya, she turned her eyes on the daughter, she could almost have joined in Maria's astonishment, at her being so thin, and so small. There was neither in figure nor face, any likeness between the ladies. Miss De Kayleigh was pale and sickly; her features, though not plain, were insignificant; and she spoke very little, except in a low voice, to Mrs. Jenkinson, in whose appearance there was nothing remarkable, and who was entirely engaged in listening to what she said, and placing a screen in the proper direction before her eyes.\n\n After sitting a few minutes, they were all sent to one of the windows, to admire the view, Mr. Johnathan attending them to point out its beauties, and Lady Mina kindly informing them that it was much better worth looking at in the summer.\n\n The dinner was exceedingly handsome, and there were all the servants, and all the articles of plate which Mr. Johnathan had promised; and, as he had likewise foretold, he took his seat at the bottom of the table, by her ladyship's desire, and looked as if he felt that life could furnish nothing greater.--He carved, and ate, and praised with delighted alacrity; and every dish was commended, first by him, and then by Sir William, who was now enough recovered to echo whatever his son in law said, in a manner which Abrianna wondered Lady Mina could bear. But Lady Mina seemed gratified by their excessive admiration, and gave most gracious smiles, especially when any dish on the table proved a novelty to them. The party did not supply much conversation. Abrianna was ready to speak whenever there was an opening, but she was seated between Nicholas and Miss De Kayleigh--the former of whom was engaged in listening to Lady Mina, and the latter said not a word to her all dinner time. Mrs. Jenkinson was chiefly employed in watching how little Miss De Kayleigh ate, pressing her to try some other dish, and fearing she were indisposed. Maria thought speaking out of the question, and the gentlemen did nothing but eat and admire.\n\n When the ladies returned to the drawing-room, there was little to be done but to hear Lady Mina talk, which she did without any intermission till coffee came in, delivering her opinion on every subject in so decisive a manner as proved that she was not used to have her judgment controverted. She enquired into Nicholas's domestic concerns familiarly and minutely, and gave her a great deal of advice, as to the management of them all; told her how every thing ought to be regulated in so small a family as her's, and instructed her as to the care of her cows and her poultry. Abrianna found that nothing was beneath this great Lady's attention, which could furnish her with an occasion of dictating to others. In the intervals of her discourse with Mrs. Johnathan, she addressed a variety of questions to Maria and Abrianna, but especially to the latter, of whose connections she knew the least, and who she observed to Mrs. Johnathan, was a very genteel, pretty kind of girl. She asked her at different times, how many sisters she had, whether they were older or younger than herself, whether any of them were likely to be married, whether they were handsome, where they had been educated, what carriage her father kept, and what had been her mother's maiden name?--Abrianna felt all the impertinence of her questions, but answered them very composedly.--Lady Mina then observed,\n\n \"Your father's estate is entailed on Mr. Johnathan, I think. For your sake,\" turning to Nicholas, \"I am glad of it; but otherwise I see no occasion for entailing estates from the female line.--It was not thought necessary in Sir Lewis de Kayleigh's family.--Do you play and sing, Miss Lila?\"\n\n \"A little.\"\n\n \"Oh! then--some time or other we shall be happy to hear you. Our instrument is a capital one, probably superior to----You shall try it some day.--Do your sisters play and sing?\"\n\n \"One of them does.\"\n\n \"Why did not you all learn?--You ought all to have learned. The Miss Webbs all play, and their father has not so good an income as your's.--Do you draw?\"\n\n \"No, not at all.\"\n\n \"What, none of you?\"\n\n \"Not one.\"\n\n \"That is very strange. But I suppose you had no opportunity. Your mother should have taken you to town every spring for the benefit of masters.\"\n\n \"My mother would have had no objection, but my father hates London.\"\n\n \"Has your governess left you?\"\n\n \"We never had any governess.\"\n\n \"No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without a governess!--I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite a slave to your education.\"\n\n Abrianna could hardly help smiling, as she assured her that had not been the case.\n\n \"Then, who taught you? who attended to you? Without a governess you must have been neglected.\"\n\n \"Compared with some families, I believe we were; but such of us as wished to learn, never wanted the means. We were always encouraged to read, and had all the masters that were necessary. Those who chose to be idle, certainly might.\"\n\n \"Aye, no doubt; but that is what a governess will prevent, and if I had known your mother, I should have advised her most strenuously to engage one. I always say that nothing is to be done in education without steady and regular instruction, and nobody but a governess can give it. It is wonderful how many families I have been the means of supplying in that way. I am always glad to get a young person well placed out. Four nieces of Mrs. Jenkinson are most delightfully situated through my means; and it was but the other day, that I recommended another young person, who was merely accidentally mentioned to me, and the family are quite delighted with her. Mrs. Johnathan, did I tell you of Lady Metcalfe's calling yesterday to thank me? She finds Miss Pope a treasure. 'Lady Mina,' said she, 'you have given me a treasure.' Are any of your younger sisters out, Miss Lila?\"\n\n \"Yes, Ma'am, all.\"\n\n \"All!--What, all five out at once? Very odd!--And you only the second.--The younger ones out before the elder are married!--Your younger sisters must be very young?\"\n\n \"Yes, my youngest is not sixteen. Perhaps _she_ is full young to be much in company. But really, Ma'am, I think it would be very hard upon younger sisters, that they should not have their share of society and amusement because the elder may not have the means or inclination to marry early.--The last born has as good a right to the pleasures of youth, as the first. And to be kept back on _such_ a motive!--I think it would not be very likely to promote sisterly affection or delicacy of mind.\"\n\n \"Upon my word,\" said her Ladyship, \"you give your opinion very decidedly for so young a person.--Pray, what is your age?\"\n\n \"With three younger sisters grown up,\" replied Abrianna smiling, \"your Ladyship can hardly expect me to own it.\"\n\n Lady Mina seemed quite astonished at not receiving a direct answer; and Abrianna suspected herself to be the first creature who had ever dared to trifle with so much dignified impertinence.\n\n \"You cannot be more than twenty, I am sure,--therefore you need not conceal your age.\"\n\n \"I am not one and twenty.\"\n\n When the gentlemen had joined them, and tea was over, the card tables were placed. Lady Mina, Sir William, and Mr. and Mrs. Johnathan sat down to quadrille; and as Miss De Kayleigh chose to play at cassino, the two girls had the honour of assisting Mrs. Jenkinson to make up her party. Their table was superlatively stupid. Scarcely a syllable was uttered that did not relate to the game, except when Mrs. Jenkinson expressed her fears of Miss De Kayleigh's being too hot or too cold, or having too much or too little light. A great deal more passed at the other table. Lady Mina was generally speaking--stating the mistakes of the three others, or relating some anecdote of herself. Mr. Johnathan was employed in agreeing to every thing her Ladyship said, thanking her for every fish he won, and apologising if he thought he won too many. Sir William did not say much. He was storing his memory with anecdotes and noble names.\n\n When Lady Mina and her daughter had played as long as they chose, the tables were broke up, the carriage was offered to Mrs. Johnathan, gratefully accepted, and immediately ordered. The party then gathered round the fire to hear Lady Mina determine what weather they were to have on the morrow. From these instructions they were summoned by the arrival of the coach, and with many speeches of thankfulness on Mr. Johnathan's side, and as many bows on Sir William's, they departed. As soon as they had driven from the door, Abrianna was called on by her cousin, to give her opinion of all that she had seen at Rosings, which, for Nicholas's sake, she made more favourable than it really was. But her commendation, though costing her some trouble, could by no means satisfy Mr. Johnathan, and he was very soon obliged to take her Ladyship's praise into his own hands.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Sir William staid only a week at Hunsford; but his visit was long enough to convince him of his daughter's being most comfortably settled, and of her possessing such a husband and such a neighbour as were not often met with. While Sir William was with them, Mr. Johnathan devoted his mornings to driving him out in his gig, and shewing him the country; but when he went away, the whole family returned to their usual employments, and Abrianna was thankful to find that they did not see more of her cousin by the alteration, for the chief of the time between breakfast and dinner was now passed by him either at work in the garden, or in reading and writing, and looking out of window in his own book room, which fronted the road. The room in which the ladies sat was backwards. Abrianna at first had rather wondered that Nicholas should not prefer the dining-parlour for common use; it was a better sized room, and had a pleasanter aspect; but she soon saw that her friend had an excellent reason for what she did, for Mr. Johnathan would undoubtedly have been much less in his own apartment, had they sat in one equally lively; and she gave Nicholas credit for the arrangement.\n\n From the drawing-room they could distinguish nothing in the lane, and were indebted to Mr. Johnathan for the knowledge of what carriages went along, and how often especially Miss De Kayleigh drove by in her phaeton, which he never failed coming to inform them of, though it happened almost every day. She not unfrequently stopped at the Parsonage, and had a few minutes' conversation with Nicholas, but was scarcely ever prevailed on to get out.\n\n Very few days passed in which Mr. Johnathan did not walk to Rosings, and not many in which his wife did not think it necessary to go likewise; and till Abrianna recollected that there might be other family livings to be disposed of, she could not understand the sacrifice of so many hours. Now and then, they were honoured with a call from her Ladyship, and nothing escaped her observation that was passing in the room during these visits. She examined into their employments, looked at their work, and advised them to do it differently; found fault with the arrangement of the furniture, or detected the housemaid in negligence; and if she accepted any refreshment, seemed to do it only for the sake of finding out that Mrs. Johnathan's joints of meat were too large for her family.\n\n Abrianna soon perceived that though this great lady was not in the commission of the peace for the county, she was a most active magistrate in her own parish, the minutest concerns of which were carried to her by Mr. Johnathan; and whenever any of the cottagers were disposed to be quarrelsome, discontented or too poor, she sallied forth into the village to settle their differences, silence their complaints, and scold them into harmony and plenty.\n\n The entertainment of dining at Rosings was repeated about twice a week; and, allowing for the loss of Sir William, and there being only one card table in the evening, every such entertainment was the counterpart of the first. Their other engagements were few; as the style of living of the neighbourhood in general, was beyond the Johnathanes' reach. This however was no evil to Abrianna, and upon the whole she spent her time comfortably enough; there were half hours of pleasant conversation with Nicholas, and the weather was so fine for the time of year, that she had often great enjoyment out of doors. Her favourite walk, and where she frequently went while the others were calling on Lady Mina, was along the open grove which edged that side of the park, where there was a nice sheltered path, which no one seemed to value but herself, and where she felt beyond the reach of Lady Mina's curiosity.\n\n In this quiet way, the first fortnight of her visit soon passed away. Easter was approaching, and the week preceding it, was to bring an addition to the family at Rosings, which in so small a circle must be important. Abrianna had heard soon after her arrival, that Mr. Mya was expected there in the course of a few weeks, and though there were not many of her acquaintance whom she did not prefer, his coming would furnish one comparatively new to look at in their Rosings parties, and she might be amused in seeing how hopeless Miss Adrian's designs on him were, by his behaviour to his cousin, for whom he was evidently destined by Lady Mina; who talked of his coming with the greatest satisfaction, spoke of him in terms of the highest admiration, and seemed almost angry to find that he had already been frequently seen by Miss Lillia and herself.\n\n His arrival was soon known at the Parsonage, for Mr. Johnathan was walking the whole morning within view of the lodges opening into Hunsford Lane, in order to have the earliest assurance of it; and after making his bow as the carriage turned into the Park, hurried home with the great intelligence. On the following morning he hastened to Rosings to pay his respects. There were two nephews of Lady Mina to require them, for Mr. Mya had brought with him a Colonel Golda, the younger son of his uncle, Lord ---- and to the great surprise of all the party, when Mr. Johnathan returned the gentlemen accompanied him. Nicholas had seen them from her husband's room, crossing the road, and immediately running into the other, told the girls what an honour they might expect, adding,\n\n \"I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Mya would never have come so soon to wait upon me.\"\n\n Abrianna had scarcely time to disclaim all right to the compliment, before their approach was announced by the door-bell, and shortly afterwards the three gentlemen entered the room. Colonel Golda, who led the way, was about thirty, not handsome, but in person and address most truly the gentleman. Mr. Mya looked just as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire, paid his compliments, with his usual reserve, to Mrs. Johnathan; and whatever might be his feelings towards her friend, met her with every appearance of composure. Abrianna merely curtseyed to him, without saying a word.\n\n Colonel Golda entered into conversation directly with the readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very pleasantly; but his cousin, after having addressed a slight observation on the house and garden to Mrs. Johnathan, sat for some time without speaking to any body. At length, however, his civility was so far awakened as to enquire of Abrianna after the health of her family. She answered him in the usual way, and after a moment's pause, added,\n\n \"My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never happened to see her there?\"\n\n She was perfectly sensible that he never had; but she wished to see whether he would betray any consciousness of what had passed between the Adrians and Andromeda; and she thought he looked a little confused as he answered that he had never been so fortunate as to meet Miss Lila. The subject was pursued no farther, and the gentlemen soon afterwards went away.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Colonel Golda's manners were very much admired at the parsonage, and the ladies all felt that he must add considerably to the pleasure of their engagements at Rosings. It was some days, however, before they received any invitation thither, for while there were visitors in the house, they could not be necessary; and it was not till Easter-day, almost a week after the gentlemen's arrival, that they were honoured by such an attention, and then they were merely asked on leaving church to come there in the evening. For the last week they had seen very little of either Lady Mina or her daughter. Colonel Golda had called at the parsonage more than once during the time, but Mr. Mya they had only seen at church.\n\n The invitation was accepted of course, and at a proper hour they joined the party in Lady Mina's drawing-room. Her ladyship received them civilly, but it was plain that their company was by no means so acceptable as when she could get nobody else; and she was, in fact, almost engrossed by her nephews, speaking to them, especially to Mya, much more than to any other person in the room.\n\n Colonel Golda seemed really glad to see them; any thing was a welcome relief to him at Rosings; and Mrs. Johnathan's pretty friend had moreover caught his fancy very much. He now seated himself by her, and talked so agreeably of Kent and Hertfordshire, of travelling and staying at home, of new books and music, that Abrianna had never been half so well entertained in that room before; and they conversed with so much spirit and flow, as to draw the attention of Lady Mina herself, as well as of Mr. Mya. _His_ eyes had been soon and repeatedly turned towards them with a look of curiosity; and that her ladyship after a while shared the feeling, was more openly acknowledged, for she did not scruple to call out,\n\n \"What is that you are saying, Golda? What is it you are talking of? What are you telling Miss Lila? Let me hear what it is.\"\n\n \"We are speaking of music, Madam,\" said he, when no longer able to avoid a reply.\n\n \"Of music! Then pray speak aloud. It is of all subjects my delight. I must have my share in the conversation, if you are speaking of music. There are few people in England, I suppose, who have more true enjoyment of music than myself, or a better natural taste. If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient. And so would Anne, if her health had allowed her to apply. I am confident that she would have performed delightfully. How does Ines get on, Mya?\"\n\n Mr. Mya spoke with affectionate praise of his sister's proficiency.\n\n \"I am very glad to hear such a good account of her,\" said Lady Mina; \"and pray tell her from me, that she cannot expect to excel, if she does not practise a great deal.\"\n\n \"I assure you, Madam,\" he replied, \"that she does not need such advice. She practises very constantly.\"\n\n \"So much the better. It cannot be done too much; and when I next write to her, I shall charge her not to neglect it on any account. I often tell young ladies, that no excellence in music is to be acquired, without constant practice. I have told Miss Lila several times, that she will never play really well, unless she practises more; and though Mrs. Johnathan has no instrument, she is very welcome, as I have often told her, to come to Rosings every day, and play on the piano-forte in Mrs. Jenkinson's room. She would be in nobody's way, you know, in that part of the house.\"\n\n Mr. Mya looked a little ashamed of his aunt's ill breeding, and made no answer.\n\n When coffee was over, Colonel Golda reminded Abrianna of having promised to play to him; and she sat down directly to the instrument. He drew a chair near her. Lady Mina listened to half a song, and then talked, as before, to her other nephew; till the latter walked away from her, and moving with his usual deliberation towards the piano-forte, stationed himself so as to command a full view of the fair performer's countenance. Abrianna saw what he was doing, and at the first convenient pause, turned to him with an arch smile, and said,\n\n \"You mean to frighten me, Mr. Mya, by coming in all this state to hear me? But I will not be alarmed though your sister _does_ play so well. There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises with every attempt to intimidate me.\"\n\n \"I shall not say that you are mistaken,\" he replied, \"because you could not really believe me to entertain any design of alarming you; and I have had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know, that you find great enjoyment in occasionally professing opinions which in fact are not your own.\"\n\n Abrianna laughed heartily at this picture of herself, and said to Colonel Golda, \"Your cousin will give you a very pretty notion of me, and teach you not to believe a word I say. I am particularly unlucky in meeting with a person so well able to expose my real character, in a part of the world, where I had hoped to pass myself off with some degree of credit. Indeed, Mr. Mya, it is very ungenerous in you to mention all that you knew to my disadvantage in Hertfordshire--and, give me leave to say, very impolitic too--for it is provoking me to retaliate, and such things may come out, as will shock your relations to hear.\"\n\n \"I am not afraid of you,\" said he, smilingly.\n\n \"Pray let me hear what you have to accuse him of,\" cried Colonel Golda. \"I should like to know how he behaves among strangers.\"\n\n \"You shall hear then--but prepare yourself for something very dreadful. The first time of my ever seeing him in Hertfordshire, you must know, was at a ball--and at this ball, what do you think he did? He danced only four dances! I am sorry to pain you--but so it was. He danced only four dances, though gentlemen were scarce; and, to my certain knowledge, more than one young lady was sitting down in want of a partner. Mr. Mya, you cannot deny the fact.\"\n\n \"I had not at that time the honour of knowing any lady in the assembly beyond my own party.\"\n\n \"True; and nobody can ever be introduced in a ball room. Well, Colonel Golda, what do I play next? My fingers wait your orders.\"\n\n \"Perhaps,\" said Mya, \"I should have judged better, had I sought an introduction, but I am ill qualified to recommend myself to strangers.\"\n\n \"Shall we ask your cousin the reason of this?\" said Abrianna, still addressing Colonel Golda. \"Shall we ask him why a man of sense and education, and who has lived in the world, is ill qualified to recommend himself to strangers?\"\n\n \"I can answer your question,\" said Golda, \"without applying to him. It is because he will not give himself the trouble.\"\n\n \"I certainly have not the talent which some people possess,\" said Mya, \"of conversing easily with those I have never seen before. I cannot catch their tone of conversation, or appear interested in their concerns, as I often see done.\"\n\n \"My fingers,\" said Abrianna, \"do not move over this instrument in the masterly manner which I see so many women's do. They have not the same force or rapidity, and do not produce the same expression. But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault--because I would not take the trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe _my_ fingers as capable as any other woman's of superior execution.\"\n\n Mya smiled and said, \"You are perfectly right. You have employed your time much better. No one admitted to the privilege of hearing you, can think any thing wanting. We neither of us perform to strangers.\"\n\n Here they were interrupted by Lady Mina, who called out to know what they were talking of. Abrianna immediately began playing again. Lady Mina approached, and, after listening for a few minutes, said to Mya,\n\n \"Miss Lila would not play at all amiss, if she practised more, and could have the advantage of a London master. She has a very good notion of fingering, though her taste is not equal to Anne's. Anne would have been a delightful performer, had her health allowed her to learn.\"\n\n Abrianna looked at Mya to see how cordially he assented to his cousin's praise; but neither at that moment nor at any other could she discern any symptom of love; and from the whole of his behaviour to Miss De Kayleigh she derived this comfort for Miss Adrian, that he might have been just as likely to marry _her_, had she been his relation.\n\n Lady Mina continued her remarks on Abrianna's performance, mixing with them many instructions on execution and taste. Abrianna received them with all the forbearance of civility; and at the request of the gentlemen remained at the instrument till her Ladyship's carriage was ready to take them all home.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Abrianna was sitting by herself the next morning, and writing to Andromeda, while Mrs. Johnathan and Maria were gone on business into the village, when she was startled by a ring at the door, the certain signal of a visitor. As she had heard no carriage, she thought it not unlikely to be Lady Mina, and under that apprehension was putting away her half-finished letter that she might escape all impertinent questions, when the door opened, and to her very great surprise, Mr. Mya, and Mr. Mya only, entered the room.\n\n He seemed astonished too on finding her alone, and apologised for his intrusion, by letting her know that he had understood all the ladies to be within.\n\n They then sat down, and when her enquiries after Rosings were made, seemed in danger of sinking into total silence. It was absolutely necessary, therefore, to think of something, and in this emergence recollecting _when_ she had seen him last in Hertfordshire, and feeling curious to know what he would say on the subject of their hasty departure, she observed,\n\n \"How very suddenly you all quitted Netherfield last November, Mr. Mya! It must have been a most agreeable surprise to Mr. Adrian to see you all after him so soon; for, if I recollect right, he went but the day before. He and his sisters were well, I hope, when you left London.\"\n\n \"Perfectly so--I thank you.\"\n\n She found that she was to receive no other answer--and, after a short pause, added,\n\n \"I think I have understood that Mr. Adrian has not much idea of ever returning to Netherfield again?\"\n\n \"I have never heard him say so; but it is probable that he may spend very little of his time there in future. He has many friends, and he is at a time of life when friends and engagements are continually increasing.\"\n\n \"If he means to be but little at Netherfield, it would be better for the neighbourhood that he should give up the place entirely, for then we might possibly get a settled family there. But perhaps Mr. Adrian did not take the house so much for the convenience of the neighbourhood as for his own, and we must expect him to keep or quit it on the same principle.\"\n\n \"I should not be surprised,\" said Mya, \"if he were to give it up, as soon as any eligible purchase offers.\"\n\n Abrianna made no answer. She was afraid of talking longer of his friend; and, having nothing else to say, was now determined to leave the trouble of finding a subject to him.\n\n He took the hint, and soon began with, \"This seems a very comfortable house. Lady Mina, I believe, did a great deal to it when Mr. Johnathan first came to Hunsford.\"\n\n \"I believe she did--and I am sure she could not have bestowed her kindness on a more grateful object.\"\n\n \"Mr. Johnathan appears very fortunate in his choice of a wife.\"\n\n \"Yes, indeed; his friends may well rejoice in his having met with one of the very few sensible women who would have accepted him, or have made him happy if they had. My friend has an excellent understanding--though I am not certain that I consider her marrying Mr. Johnathan as the wisest thing she ever did. She seems perfectly happy, however, and in a prudential light, it is certainly a very good match for her.\"\n\n \"It must be very agreeable to her to be settled within so easy a distance of her own family and friends.\"\n\n \"An easy distance do you call it? It is nearly fifty miles.\"\n\n \"And what is fifty miles of good road? Little more than half a day's journey. Yes, I call it a _very_ easy distance.\"\n\n \"I should never have considered the distance as one of the _advantages_ of the match,\" cried Abrianna. \"I should never have said Mrs. Johnathan was settled _near_ her family.\"\n\n \"It is a proof of your own attachment to Hertfordshire. Any thing beyond the very neighbourhood of Longbourn, I suppose, would appear far.\"\n\n As he spoke there was a sort of smile, which Abrianna fancied she understood; he must be supposing her to be thinking of Andromeda and Netherfield, and she blushed as she answered,\n\n \"I do not mean to say that a woman may not be settled too near her family. The far and the near must be relative, and depend on many varying circumstances. Where there is fortune to make the expence of travelling unimportant, distance becomes no evil. But that is not the case _here_. Mr. and Mrs. Johnathan have a comfortable income, but not such a one as will allow of frequent journeys--and I am persuaded my friend would not call herself _near_ her family under less than _half_ the present distance.\"\n\n Mr. Mya drew his chair a little towards her, and said, \"_You_ cannot have a right to such very strong local attachment. _You_ cannot have been always at Longbourn.\"\n\n Abrianna looked surprised. The gentleman experienced some change of feeling; he drew back his chair, took a newspaper from the table, and, glancing over it, said, in a colder voice,\n\n \"Are you pleased with Kent?\"\n\n A short dialogue on the subject of the country ensued, on either side calm and concise--and soon put an end to by the entrance of Nicholas and her sister, just returned from their walk. The tete-a-tete surprised them. Mr. Mya related the mistake which had occasioned his intruding on Miss Lila, and after sitting a few minutes longer without saying much to any body, went away.\n\n \"What can be the meaning of this!\" said Nicholas, as soon as he was gone. \"My dear Eliza he must be in love with you, or he would never have called on us in this familiar way.\"\n\n But when Abrianna told of his silence, it did not seem very likely, even to Nicholas's wishes, to be the case; and after various conjectures, they could at last only suppose his visit to proceed from the difficulty of finding any thing to do, which was the more probable from the time of year. All field sports were over. Within doors there was Lady Mina, books, and a billiard table, but gentlemen cannot be always within doors; and in the nearness of the Parsonage, or the pleasantness of the walk to it, or of the people who lived in it, the two cousins found a temptation from this period of walking thither almost every day. They called at various times of the morning, sometimes separately, sometimes together, and now and then accompanied by their aunt. It was plain to them all that Colonel Golda came because he had pleasure in their society, a persuasion which of course recommended him still more; and Abrianna was reminded by her own satisfaction in being with him, as well as by his evident admiration of her, of her former favourite Uriah Deanne; and though, in comparing them, she saw there was less captivating softness in Colonel Golda's manners, she believed he might have the best informed mind.\n\n But why Mr. Mya came so often to the Parsonage, it was more difficult to understand. It could not be for society, as he frequently sat there ten minutes together without opening his lips; and when he did speak, it seemed the effect of necessity rather than of choice--a sacrifice to propriety, not a pleasure to himself. He seldom appeared really animated. Mrs. Johnathan knew not what to make of him. Colonel Golda's occasionally laughing at his stupidity, proved that he was generally different, which her own knowledge of him could not have told her; and as she would have liked to believe this change the effect of love, and the object of that love, her friend Eliza, she sat herself seriously to work to find it out.--She watched him whenever they were at Rosings, and whenever he came to Hunsford; but without much success. He certainly looked at her friend a great deal, but the expression of that look was disputable. It was an earnest, steadfast gaze, but she often doubted whether there were much admiration in it, and sometimes it seemed nothing but absence of mind.\n\n She had once or twice suggested to Abrianna the possibility of his being partial to her, but Abrianna always laughed at the idea; and Mrs. Johnathan did not think it right to press the subject, from the danger of raising expectations which might only end in disappointment; for in her opinion it admitted not of a doubt, that all her friend's dislike would vanish, if she could suppose him to be in her power.\n\n In her kind schemes for Abrianna, she sometimes planned her marrying Colonel Golda. He was beyond comparison the pleasantest man; he certainly admired her, and his situation in life was most eligible; but, to counterbalance these advantages, Mr. Mya had considerable patronage in the church, and his cousin could have none at all.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n More than once did Abrianna in her ramble within the Park, unexpectedly meet Mr. Mya.--She felt all the perverseness of the mischance that should bring him where no one else was brought; and to prevent its ever happening again, took care to inform him at first, that it was a favourite haunt of hers.--How it could occur a second time therefore was very odd!--Yet it did, and even a third. It seemed like wilful ill-nature, or a voluntary penance, for on these occasions it was not merely a few formal enquiries and an awkward pause and then away, but he actually thought it necessary to turn back and walk with her. He never said a great deal, nor did she give herself the trouble of talking or of listening much; but it struck her in the course of their third rencontre that he was asking some odd unconnected questions--about her pleasure in being at Hunsford, her love of solitary walks, and her opinion of Mr. and Mrs. Johnathan's happiness; and that in speaking of Rosings and her not perfectly understanding the house, he seemed to expect that whenever she came into Kent again she would be staying _there_ too. His words seemed to imply it. Could he have Colonel Golda in his thoughts? She supposed, if he meant any thing, he must mean an allusion to what might arise in that quarter. It distressed her a little, and she was quite glad to find herself at the gate in the pales opposite the Parsonage.\n\n She was engaged one day as she walked, in re-perusing Andromeda's last letter, and dwelling on some passages which proved that Andromeda had not written in spirits, when, instead of being again surprised by Mr. Mya, she saw on looking up that Colonel Golda was meeting her. Putting away the letter immediately and forcing a smile, she said,\n\n \"I did not know before that you ever walked this way.\"\n\n \"I have been making the tour of the Park,\" he replied, \"as I generally do every year, and intend to close it with a call at the Parsonage. Are you going much farther?\"\n\n \"No, I should have turned in a moment.\"\n\n And accordingly she did turn, and they walked towards the Parsonage together.\n\n \"Do you certainly leave Kent on Saturday?\" said she.\n\n \"Yes--if Mya does not put it off again. But I am at his disposal. He arranges the business just as he pleases.\"\n\n \"And if not able to please himself in the arrangement, he has at least great pleasure in the power of choice. I do not know any body who seems more to enjoy the power of doing what he likes than Mr. Mya.\"\n\n \"He likes to have his own way very well,\" replied Colonel Golda. \"But so we all do. It is only that he has better means of having it than many others, because he is rich, and many others are poor. I speak feelingly. A younger son, you know, must be inured to self-denial and dependence.\"\n\n \"In my opinion, the younger son of an Earl can know very little of either. Now, seriously, what have you ever known of self-denial and dependence? When have you been prevented by want of money from going wherever you chose, or procuring any thing you had a fancy for?\"\n\n \"These are home questions--and perhaps I cannot say that I have experienced many hardships of that nature. But in matters of greater weight, I may suffer from the want of money. Younger sons cannot marry where they like.\"\n\n \"Unless where they like women of fortune, which I think they very often do.\"\n\n \"Our habits of expence make us too dependant, and there are not many in my rank of life who can afford to marry without some attention to money.\"\n\n \"Is this,\" thought Abrianna, \"meant for me?\" and she coloured at the idea; but, recovering herself, said in a lively tone, \"And pray, what is the usual price of an Earl's younger son? Unless the elder brother is very sickly, I suppose you would not ask above fifty thousand pounds.\"\n\n He answered her in the same style, and the subject dropped. To interrupt a silence which might make him fancy her affected with what had passed, she soon afterwards said,\n\n \"I imagine your cousin brought you down with him chiefly for the sake of having somebody at his disposal. I wonder he does not marry, to secure a lasting convenience of that kind. But, perhaps his sister does as well for the present, and, as she is under his sole care, he may do what he likes with her.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Colonel Golda, \"that is an advantage which he must divide with me. I am joined with him in the guardianship of Miss Mya.\"\n\n \"Are you, indeed? And pray what sort of guardians do you make? Does your charge give you much trouble? Young ladies of her age, are sometimes a little difficult to manage, and if she has the true Mya spirit, she may like to have her own way.\"\n\n As she spoke, she observed him looking at her earnestly, and the manner in which he immediately asked her why she supposed Miss Mya likely to give them any uneasiness, convinced her that she had somehow or other got pretty near the truth. She directly replied,\n\n \"You need not be frightened. I never heard any harm of her; and I dare say she is one of the most tractable creatures in the world. She is a very great favourite with some ladies of my acquaintance, Mrs. Hurst and Miss Adrian. I think I have heard you say that you know them.\"\n\n \"I know them a little. Their brother is a pleasant gentleman-like man--he is a great friend of Mya's.\"\n\n \"Oh! yes,\" said Abrianna drily--\"Mr. Mya is uncommonly kind to Mr. Adrian, and takes a prodigious deal of care of him.\"\n\n \"Care of him!--Yes, I really believe Mya _does_ take care of him in those points where he most wants care. From something that he told me in our journey hither, I have reason to think Adrian very much indebted to him. But I ought to beg his pardon, for I have no right to suppose that Adrian was the person meant. It was all conjecture.\"\n\n \"What is it you mean?\"\n\n \"It is a circumstance which Mya of course would not wish to be generally known, because if it were to get round to the lady's family, it would be an unpleasant thing.\"\n\n \"You may depend upon my not mentioning it.\"\n\n \"And remember that I have not much reason for supposing it to be Adrian. What he told me was merely this; that he congratulated himself on having lately saved a friend from the inconveniences of a most imprudent marriage, but without mentioning names or any other particulars, and I only suspected it to be Adrian from believing him the kind of young man to get into a scrape of that sort, and from knowing them to have been together the whole of last summer.\"\n\n \"Did Mr. Mya give you his reasons for this interference?\"\n\n \"I understood that there were some very strong objections against the lady.\"\n\n \"And what arts did he use to separate them?\"\n\n \"He did not talk to me of his own arts,\" said Golda smiling. \"He only told me, what I have now told you.\"\n\n Abrianna made no answer, and walked on, her heart swelling with indignation. After watching her a little, Golda asked her why she was so thoughtful.\n\n \"I am thinking of what you have been telling me,\" said she. \"Your cousin's conduct does not suit my feelings. Why was he to be the judge?\"\n\n \"You are rather disposed to call his interference officious?\"\n\n \"I do not see what right Mr. Mya had to decide on the propriety of his friend's inclination, or why, upon his own judgment alone, he was to determine and direct in what manner that friend was to be happy.\" \"But,\" she continued, recollecting herself, \"as we know none of the particulars, it is not fair to condemn him. It is not to be supposed that there was much affection in the case.\"\n\n \"That is not an unnatural surmise,\" said Golda, \"but it is lessening the honour of my cousin's triumph very sadly.\"\n\n This was spoken jestingly, but it appeared to her so just a picture of Mr. Mya, that she would not trust herself with an answer; and, therefore, abruptly changing the conversation, talked on indifferent matters till they reached the parsonage. There, shut into her own room, as soon as their visitor left them, she could think without interruption of all that she had heard. It was not to be supposed that any other people could be meant than those with whom she was connected. There could not exist in the world _two_ men, over whom Mr. Mya could have such boundless influence. That he had been concerned in the measures taken to separate Mr. Adrian and Andromeda, she had never doubted; but she had always attributed to Miss Adrian the principal design and arrangement of them. If his own vanity, however, did not mislead him, _he_ was the cause, his pride and caprice were the cause of all that Andromeda had suffered, and still continued to suffer. He had ruined for a while every hope of happiness for the most affectionate, generous heart in the world; and no one could say how lasting an evil he might have inflicted.\n\n \"There were some very strong objections against the lady,\" were Colonel Golda's words, and these strong objections probably were, her having one uncle who was a country attorney, and another who was in business in London.\n\n \"To Andromeda herself,\" she exclaimed, \"there could be no possibility of objection. All loveliness and goodness as she is! Her understanding excellent, her mind improved, and her manners captivating. Neither could any thing be urged against my father, who, though with some peculiarities, has abilities which Mr. Mya himself need not disdain, and respectability which he will probably never reach.\" When she thought of her mother indeed, her confidence gave way a little, but she would not allow that any objections _there_ had material weight with Mr. Mya, whose pride, she was convinced, would receive a deeper wound from the want of importance in his friend's connections, than from their want of sense; and she was quite decided at last, that he had been partly governed by this worst kind of pride, and partly by the wish of retaining Mr. Adrian for his sister.\n\n The agitation and tears which the subject occasioned, brought on a headache; and it grew so much worse towards the evening that, added to her unwillingness to see Mr. Mya, it determined her not to attend her cousins to Rosings, where they were engaged to drink tea. Mrs. Johnathan, seeing that she was really unwell, did not press her to go, and as much as possible prevented her husband from pressing her, but Mr. Johnathan could not conceal his apprehension of Lady Mina's being rather displeased by her staying at home.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n When they were gone, Abrianna, as if intending to exasperate herself as much as possible against Mr. Mya, chose for her employment the examination of all the letters which Andromeda had written to her since her being in Kent. They contained no actual complaint, nor was there any revival of past occurrences, or any communication of present suffering. But in all, and in almost every line of each, there was a want of that cheerfulness which had been used to characterize her style, and which, proceeding from the serenity of a mind at ease with itself, and kindly disposed towards every one, had been scarcely ever clouded. Abrianna noticed every sentence conveying the idea of uneasiness, with an attention which it had hardly received on the first perusal. Mr. Mya's shameful boast of what misery he had been able to inflict, gave her a keener sense of her sister's sufferings. It was some consolation to think that his visit to Rosings was to end on the day after the next, and a still greater, that in less than a fortnight she should herself be with Andromeda again, and enabled to contribute to the recovery of her spirits, by all that affection could do.\n\n She could not think of Mya's leaving Kent, without remembering that his cousin was to go with him; but Colonel Golda had made it clear that he had no intentions at all, and agreeable as he was, she did not mean to be unhappy about him.\n\n While settling this point, she was suddenly roused by the sound of the door bell, and her spirits were a little fluttered by the idea of its being Colonel Golda himself, who had once before called late in the evening, and might now come to enquire particularly after her. But this idea was soon banished, and her spirits were very differently affected, when, to her utter amazement, she saw Mr. Mya walk into the room. In an hurried manner he immediately began an enquiry after her health, imputing his visit to a wish of hearing that she were better. She answered him with cold civility. He sat down for a few moments, and then getting up walked about the room. Abrianna was surprised, but said not a word. After a silence of several minutes he came towards her in an agitated manner, and thus began,\n\n \"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.\"\n\n Abrianna's astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement, and the avowal of all that he felt and had long felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well, but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed, and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority--of its being a degradation--of the family obstacles which judgment had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit.\n\n In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the compliment of such a man's affection, and though her intentions did not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all compassion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to answer him with patience, when he should have done. He concluded with representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He _spoke_ of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security. Such a circumstance could only exasperate farther, and when he ceased, the colour rose into her cheeks, and she said,\n\n \"In such cases as this, it is, I believe, the established mode to express a sense of obligation for the sentiments avowed, however unequally they may be returned. It is natural that obligation should be felt, and if I could _feel_ gratitude, I would now thank you. But I cannot--I have never desired your good opinion, and you have certainly bestowed it most unwillingly. I am sorry to have occasioned pain to any one. It has been most unconsciously done, however, and I hope will be of short duration. The feelings which, you tell me, have long prevented the acknowledgment of your regard, can have little difficulty in overcoming it after this explanation.\"\n\n Mr. Mya, who was leaning against the mantle-piece with his eyes fixed on her face, seemed to catch her words with no less resentment than surprise. His complexion became pale with anger, and the disturbance of his mind was visible in every feature. He was struggling for the appearance of composure, and would not open his lips, till he believed himself to have attained it. The pause was to Abrianna's feelings dreadful. At length, in a voice of forced calmness, he said,\n\n \"And this is all the reply which I am to have the honour of expecting! I might, perhaps, wish to be informed why, with so little _endeavour_ at civility, I am thus rejected. But it is of small importance.\"\n\n \"I might as well enquire,\" replied she, \"why with so evident a design of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character? Was not this some excuse for incivility, if I _was_ uncivil? But I have other provocations. You know I have. Had not my own feelings decided against you, had they been indifferent, or had they even been favourable, do you think that any consideration would tempt me to accept the man, who has been the means of ruining, perhaps for ever, the happiness of a most beloved sister?\"\n\n As she pronounced these words, Mr. Mya changed colour; but the emotion was short, and he listened without attempting to interrupt her while she continued.\n\n \"I have every reason in the world to think ill of you. No motive can excuse the unjust and ungenerous part you acted _there_. You dare not, you cannot deny that you have been the principal, if not the only means of dividing them from each other, of exposing one to the censure of the world for caprice and instability, the other to its derision for disappointed hopes, and involving them both in misery of the acutest kind.\"\n\n She paused, and saw with no slight indignation that he was listening with an air which proved him wholly unmoved by any feeling of remorse. He even looked at her with a smile of affected incredulity.\n\n \"Can you deny that you have done it?\" she repeated.\n\n With assumed tranquillity he then replied, \"I have no wish of denying that I did every thing in my power to separate my friend from your sister, or that I rejoice in my success. Towards _him_ I have been kinder than towards myself.\"\n\n Abrianna disdained the appearance of noticing this civil reflection, but its meaning did not escape, nor was it likely to conciliate her.\n\n \"But it is not merely this affair,\" she continued, \"on which my dislike is founded. Long before it had taken place, my opinion of you was decided. Your character was unfolded in the recital which I received many months ago from Mr. Deanne. On this subject, what can you have to say? In what imaginary act of friendship can you here defend yourself? or under what misrepresentation, can you here impose upon others?\"\n\n \"You take an eager interest in that gentleman's concerns,\" said Mya in a less tranquil tone, and with a heightened colour.\n\n \"Who that knows what his misfortunes have been, can help feeling an interest in him?\"\n\n \"His misfortunes!\" repeated Mya contemptuously; \"yes, his misfortunes have been great indeed.\"\n\n \"And of your infliction,\" cried Abrianna with energy. \"You have reduced him to his present state of poverty, comparative poverty. You have withheld the advantages, which you must know to have been designed for him. You have deprived the best years of his life, of that independence which was no less his due than his desert. You have done all this! and yet you can treat the mention of his misfortunes with contempt and ridicule.\"\n\n \"And this,\" cried Mya, as he walked with quick steps across the room, \"is your opinion of me! This is the estimation in which you hold me! I thank you for explaining it so fully. My faults, according to this calculation, are heavy indeed! But perhaps,\" added he, stopping in his walk, and turning towards her, \"these offences might have been overlooked, had not your pride been hurt by my honest confession of the scruples that had long prevented my forming any serious design. These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I with greater policy concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by every thing. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just. Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections? To congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?\"\n\n Abrianna felt herself growing more angry every moment; yet she tried to the utmost to speak with composure when she said,\n\n \"You are mistaken, Mr. Mya, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.\"\n\n She saw him start at this, but he said nothing, and she continued,\n\n \"You could not have made me the offer of your hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it.\"\n\n Again his astonishment was obvious; and he looked at her with an expression of mingled incredulity and mortification. She went on.\n\n \"From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.\"\n\n \"You have said quite enough, madam. I perfectly comprehend your feelings, and have now only to be ashamed of what my own have been. Forgive me for having taken up so much of your time, and accept my best wishes for your health and happiness.\"\n\n And with these words he hastily left the room, and Abrianna heard him the next moment open the front door and quit the house.\n\n The tumult of her mind was now painfully great. She knew not how to support herself, and from actual weakness sat down and cried for half an hour. Her astonishment, as she reflected on what had passed, was increased by every review of it. That she should receive an offer of marriage from Mr. Mya! that he should have been in love with her for so many months! so much in love as to wish to marry her in spite of all the objections which had made him prevent his friend's marrying her sister, and which must appear at least with equal force in his own case, was almost incredible! it was gratifying to have inspired unconsciously so strong an affection. But his pride, his abominable pride, his shameless avowal of what he had done with respect to Andromeda, his unpardonable assurance in acknowledging, though he could not justify it, and the unfeeling manner in which he had mentioned Mr. Deanne, his cruelty towards whom he had not attempted to deny, soon overcame the pity which the consideration of his attachment had for a moment excited.\n\n She continued in very agitating reflections till the sound of Lady Mina's carriage made her feel how unequal she was to encounter Nicholas's observation, and hurried her away to her room.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Abrianna awoke the next morning to the same thoughts and meditations which had at length closed her eyes. She could not yet recover from the surprise of what had happened; it was impossible to think of any thing else, and totally indisposed for employment, she resolved soon after breakfast to indulge herself in air and exercise. She was proceeding directly to her favourite walk, when the recollection of Mr. Mya's sometimes coming there stopped her, and instead of entering the park, she turned up the lane, which led her farther from the turnpike road. The park paling was still the boundary on one side, and she soon passed one of the gates into the ground.\n\n After walking two or three times along that part of the lane, she was tempted, by the pleasantness of the morning, to stop at the gates and look into the park. The five weeks which she had now passed in Kent, had made a great difference in the country, and every day was adding to the verdure of the early trees. She was on the point of continuing her walk, when she caught a glimpse of a gentleman within the sort of grove which edged the park; he was moving that way; and fearful of its being Mr. Mya, she was directly retreating. But the person who advanced, was now near enough to see her, and stepping forward with eagerness, pronounced her name. She had turned away, but on hearing herself called, though in a voice which proved it to be Mr. Mya, she moved again towards the gate. He had by that time reached it also, and holding out a letter, which she instinctively took, said with a look of haughty composure, \"I have been walking in the grove some time in the hope of meeting you. Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?\"--And then, with a slight bow, turned again into the plantation, and was soon out of sight.\n\n With no expectation of pleasure, but with the strongest curiosity, Abrianna opened the letter, and to her still increasing wonder, perceived an envelope containing two sheets of letter paper, written quite through, in a very close hand.--The envelope itself was likewise full.--Pursuing her way along the lane, she then began it. It was dated from Rosings, at eight o'clock in the morning, and was as follows:--\n\n \"Be not alarmed, Madam, on receiving this letter, by the apprehension of its containing any repetition of those sentiments, or renewal of those offers, which were last night so disgusting to you. I write without any intention of paining you, or humbling myself, by dwelling on wishes, which, for the happiness of both, cannot be too soon forgotten; and the effort which the formation, and the perusal of this letter must occasion, should have been spared, had not my character required it to be written and read. You must, therefore, pardon the freedom with which I demand your attention; your feelings, I know, will bestow it unwillingly, but I demand it of your justice.\n\n \"Two offences of a very different nature, and by no means of equal magnitude, you last night laid to my charge. The first mentioned was, that, regardless of the sentiments of either, I had detached Mr. Adrian from your sister,--and the other, that I had, in defiance of various claims, in defiance of honour and humanity, ruined the immediate prosperity, and blasted the prospects of Mr. Deanne.--Wilfully and wantonly to have thrown off the companion of my youth, the acknowledged favourite of my father, a young man who had scarcely any other dependence than on our patronage, and who had been brought up to expect its exertion, would be a depravity, to which the separation of two young persons, whose affection could be the growth of only a few weeks, could bear no comparison.--But from the severity of that blame which was last night so liberally bestowed, respecting each circumstance, I shall hope to be in future secured, when the following account of my actions and their motives has been read.--If, in the explanation of them which is due to myself, I am under the necessity of relating feelings which may be offensive to your's, I can only say that I am sorry.--The necessity must be obeyed--and farther apology would be absurd.--I had not been long in Hertfordshire, before I saw, in common with others, that Adrian preferred your eldest sister, to any other young woman in the country.--But it was not till the evening of the dance at Netherfield that I had any apprehension of his feeling a serious attachment.--I had often seen him in love before.--At that ball, while I had the honour of dancing with you, I was first made acquainted, by Sir William Lillia's accidental information, that Adrian's attentions to your sister had given rise to a general expectation of their marriage. He spoke of it as a certain event, of which the time alone could be undecided. From that moment I observed my friend's behaviour attentively; and I could then perceive that his partiality for Miss Lila was beyond what I had ever witnessed in him. Your sister I also watched.--Her look and manners were open, cheerful and engaging as ever, but without any symptom of peculiar regard, and I remained convinced from the evening's scrutiny, that though she received his attentions with pleasure, she did not invite them by any participation of sentiment.--If _you_ have not been mistaken here, _I_ must have been in an error. Your superior knowledge of your sister must make the latter probable.--If it be so, if I have been misled by such error, to inflict pain on her, your resentment has not been unreasonable. But I shall not scruple to assert, that the serenity of your sister's countenance and air was such, as might have given the most acute observer, a conviction that, however amiable her temper, her heart was not likely to be easily touched.--That I was desirous of believing her indifferent is certain,--but I will venture to say that my investigations and decisions are not usually influenced by my hopes or fears.--I did not believe her to be indifferent because I wished it;--I believed it on impartial conviction, as truly as I wished it in reason.--My objections to the marriage were not merely those, which I last night acknowledged to have required the utmost force of passion to put aside, in my own case; the want of connection could not be so great an evil to my friend as to me.--But there were other causes of repugnance;--causes which, though still existing, and existing to an equal degree in both instances, I had myself endeavoured to forget, because they were not immediately before me.--These causes must be stated, though briefly.--The situation of your mother's family, though objectionable, was nothing in comparison of that total want of propriety so frequently, so almost uniformly betrayed by herself, by your three younger sisters, and occasionally even by your father.--Pardon me.--It pains me to offend you. But amidst your concern for the defects of your nearest relations, and your displeasure at this representation of them, let it give you consolation to consider that, to have conducted yourselves so as to avoid any share of the like censure, is praise no less generally bestowed on you and your eldest sister, than it is honourable to the sense and disposition of both.--I will only say farther, that from what passed that evening, my opinion of all parties was confirmed, and every inducement heightened, which could have led me before, to preserve my friend from what I esteemed a most unhappy connection.--He left Netherfield for London, on the day following, as you, I am certain, remember, with the design of soon returning.--The part which I acted, is now to be explained.--His sisters' uneasiness had been equally excited with my own; our coincidence of feeling was soon discovered; and, alike sensible that no time was to be lost in detaching their brother, we shortly resolved on joining him directly in London.--We accordingly went--and there I readily engaged in the office of pointing out to my friend, the certain evils of such a choice.--I described, and enforced them earnestly.--But, however this remonstrance might have staggered or delayed his determination, I do not suppose that it would ultimately have prevented the marriage, had it not been seconded by the assurance which I hesitated not in giving, of your sister's indifference. He had before believed her to return his affection with sincere, if not with equal regard.--But Adrian has great natural modesty, with a stronger dependence on my judgment than on his own.--To convince him, therefore, that he had deceived himself, was no very difficult point. To persuade him against returning into Hertfordshire, when that conviction had been given, was scarcely the work of a moment.--I cannot blame myself for having done thus much. There is but one part of my conduct in the whole affair, on which I do not reflect with satisfaction; it is that I condescended to adopt the measures of art so far as to conceal from him your sister's being in town. I knew it myself, as it was known to Miss Adrian, but her brother is even yet ignorant of it.--That they might have met without ill consequence, is perhaps probable;--but his regard did not appear to me enough extinguished for him to see her without some danger.--Perhaps this concealment, this disguise, was beneath me.--It is done, however, and it was done for the best.--On this subject I have nothing more to say, no other apology to offer. If I have wounded your sister's feelings, it was unknowingly done; and though the motives which governed me may to you very naturally appear insufficient, I have not yet learnt to condemn them.--With respect to that other, more weighty accusation, of having injured Mr. Deanne, I can only refute it by laying before you the whole of his connection with my family. Of what he has _particularly_ accused me I am ignorant; but of the truth of what I shall relate, I can summon more than one witness of undoubted veracity. Mr. Deanne is the son of a very respectable man, who had for many years the management of all the Pemberley estates; and whose good conduct in the discharge of his trust, naturally inclined my father to be of service to him, and on Uriah Deanne, who was his god-son, his kindness was therefore liberally bestowed. My father supported him at school, and afterwards at Cambridge;--most important assistance, as his own father, always poor from the extravagance of his wife, would have been unable to give him a gentleman's education. My father was not only fond of this young man's society, whose manners were always engaging; he had also the highest opinion of him, and hoping the church would be his profession, intended to provide for him in it. As for myself, it is many, many years since I first began to think of him in a very different manner. The vicious propensities--the want of principle which he was careful to guard from the knowledge of his best friend, could not escape the observation of a young man of nearly the same age with himself, and who had opportunities of seeing him in unguarded moments, which Mr. Mya could not have. Here again I shall give you pain--to what degree you only can tell. But whatever may be the sentiments which Mr. Deanne has created, a suspicion of their nature shall not prevent me from unfolding his real character. It adds even another motive. My excellent father died about five years ago; and his attachment to Mr. Deanne was to the last so steady, that in his will he particularly recommended it to me, to promote his advancement in the best manner that his profession might allow, and if he took orders, desired that a valuable family living might be his as soon as soon as it became vacant. There was also a legacy of one thousand pounds. His own father did not long survive mine, and within half a year from these events, Mr. Deanne wrote to inform me that, having finally resolved against taking orders, he hoped I should not think it unreasonable for him to expect some more immediate pecuniary advantage, in lieu of the preferment, by which he could not be benefited. He had some intention, he added, of studying the law, and I must be aware that the interest of one thousand pounds would be a very insufficient support therein. I rather wished, than believed him to be sincere; but at any rate, was perfectly ready to accede to his proposal. I knew that Mr. Deanne ought not to be a clergyman. The business was therefore soon settled. He resigned all claim to assistance in the church, were it possible that he could ever be in a situation to receive it, and accepted in return three thousand pounds. All connection between us seemed now dissolved. I thought too ill of him, to invite him to Pemberley, or admit his society in town. In town I believe he chiefly lived, but his studying the law was a mere pretence, and being now free from all restraint, his life was a life of idleness and dissipation. For about three years I heard little of him; but on the decease of the incumbent of the living which had been designed for him, he applied to me again by letter for the presentation. His circumstances, he assured me, and I had no difficulty in believing it, were exceedingly bad. He had found the law a most unprofitable study, and was now absolutely resolved on being ordained, if I would present him to the living in question--of which he trusted there could be little doubt, as he was well assured that I had no other person to provide for, and I could not have forgotten my revered father's intentions. You will hardly blame me for refusing to comply with this entreaty, or for resisting every repetition of it. His resentment was in proportion to the distress of his circumstances--and he was doubtless as violent in his abuse of me to others, as in his reproaches to myself. After this period, every appearance of acquaintance was dropt. How he lived I know not. But last summer he was again most painfully obtruded on my notice. I must now mention a circumstance which I would wish to forget myself, and which no obligation less than the present should induce me to unfold to any human being. Having said thus much, I feel no doubt of your secrecy. My sister, who is more than ten years my junior, was left to the guardianship of my mother's nephew, Colonel Golda, and myself. About a year ago, she was taken from school, and an establishment formed for her in London; and last summer she went with the lady who presided over it, to Ramsgate; and thither also went Mr. Deanne, undoubtedly by design; for there proved to have been a prior acquaintance between him and Mrs. Younge, in whose character we were most unhappily deceived; and by her connivance and aid, he so far recommended himself to Ines, whose affectionate heart retained a strong impression of his kindness to her as a child, that she was persuaded to believe herself in love, and to consent to an elopement. She was then but fifteen, which must be her excuse; and after stating her imprudence, I am happy to add, that I owed the knowledge of it to herself. I joined them unexpectedly a day or two before the intended elopement, and then Ines, unable to support the idea of grieving and offending a brother whom she almost looked up to as a father, acknowledged the whole to me. You may imagine what I felt and how I acted. Regard for my sister's credit and feelings prevented any public exposure, but I wrote to Mr. Deanne, who left the place immediately, and Mrs. Younge was of course removed from her charge. Mr. Deanne's chief object was unquestionably my sister's fortune, which is thirty thousand pounds; but I cannot help supposing that the hope of revenging himself on me, was a strong inducement. His revenge would have been complete indeed. This, madam, is a faithful narrative of every event in which we have been concerned together; and if you do not absolutely reject it as false, you will, I hope, acquit me henceforth of cruelty towards Mr. Deanne. I know not in what manner, under what form of falsehood he has imposed on you; but his success is not perhaps to be wondered at. Ignorant as you previously were of every thing concerning either, detection could not be in your power, and suspicion certainly not in your inclination. You may possibly wonder why all this was not told you last night. But I was not then master enough of myself to know what could or ought to be revealed. For the truth of every thing here related, I can appeal more particularly to the testimony of Colonel Golda, who from our near relationship and constant intimacy, and still more as one of the executors of my father's will, has been unavoidably acquainted with every particular of these transactions. If your abhorrence of _me_ should make _my_ assertions valueless, you cannot be prevented by the same cause from confiding in my cousin; and that there may be the possibility of consulting him, I shall endeavour to find some opportunity of putting this letter in your hands in the course of the morning. I will only add, God bless you.\n\n \"GOLDA MYA.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n If Abrianna, when Mr. Mya gave her the letter, did not expect it to contain a renewal of his offers, she had formed no expectation at all of its contents. But such as they were, it may be well supposed how eagerly she went through them, and what a contrariety of emotion they excited. Her feelings as she read were scarcely to be defined. With amazement did she first understand that he believed any apology to be in his power; and steadfastly was she persuaded that he could have no explanation to give, which a just sense of shame would not conceal. With a strong prejudice against every thing he might say, she began his account of what had happened at Netherfield. She read, with an eagerness which hardly left her power of comprehension, and from impatience of knowing what the next sentence might bring, was incapable of attending to the sense of the one before her eyes. His belief of her sister's insensibility, she instantly resolved to be false, and his account of the real, the worst objections to the match, made her too angry to have any wish of doing him justice. He expressed no regret for what he had done which satisfied her; his style was not penitent, but haughty. It was all pride and insolence.\n\n But when this subject was succeeded by his account of Mr. Deanne, when she read with somewhat clearer attention, a relation of events, which, if true, must overthrow every cherished opinion of his worth, and which bore so alarming an affinity to his own history of himself, her feelings were yet more acutely painful and more difficult of definition. Astonishment, apprehension, and even horror, oppressed her. She wished to discredit it entirely, repeatedly exclaiming, \"This must be false! This cannot be! This must be the grossest falsehood!\"--and when she had gone through the whole letter, though scarcely knowing any thing of the last page or two, put it hastily away, protesting that she would not regard it, that she would never look in it again.\n\n In this perturbed state of mind, with thoughts that could rest on nothing, she walked on; but it would not do; in half a minute the letter was unfolded again, and collecting herself as well as she could, she again began the mortifying perusal of all that related to Deanne, and commanded herself so far as to examine the meaning of every sentence. The account of his connection with the Pemberley family, was exactly what he had related himself; and the kindness of the late Mr. Mya, though she had not before known its extent, agreed equally well with his own words. So far each recital confirmed the other: but when she came to the will, the difference was great. What Deanne had said of the living was fresh in her memory, and as she recalled his very words, it was impossible not to feel that there was gross duplicity on one side or the other; and, for a few moments, she flattered herself that her wishes did not err. But when she read, and re-read with the closest attention, the particulars immediately following of Deanne's resigning all pretensions to the living, of his receiving in lieu, so considerable a sum as three thousand pounds, again was she forced to hesitate. She put down the letter, weighed every circumstance with what she meant to be impartiality--deliberated on the probability of each statement--but with little success. On both sides it was only assertion. Again she read on. But every line proved more clearly that the affair, which she had believed it impossible that any contrivance could so represent, as to render Mr. Mya's conduct in it less than infamous, was capable of a turn which must make him entirely blameless throughout the whole.\n\n The extravagance and general profligacy which he scrupled not to lay to Mr. Deanne's charge, exceedingly shocked her; the more so, as she could bring no proof of its injustice. She had never heard of him before his entrance into the ----shire Militia, in which he had engaged at the persuasion of the young man, who, on meeting him accidentally in town, had there renewed a slight acquaintance. Of his former way of life, nothing had been known in Hertfordshire but what he told himself. As to his real character, had information been in her power, she had never felt a wish of enquiring. His countenance, voice, and manner, had established him at once in the possession of every virtue. She tried to recollect some instance of goodness, some distinguished trait of integrity or benevolence, that might rescue him from the attacks of Mr. Mya; or at least, by the predominance of virtue, atone for those casual errors, under which she would endeavour to class, what Mr. Mya had described as the idleness and vice of many years continuance. But no such recollection befriended her. She could see him instantly before her, in every charm of air and address; but she could remember no more substantial good than the general approbation of the neighbourhood, and the regard which his social powers had gained him in the mess. After pausing on this point a considerable while, she once more continued to read. But, alas! the story which followed of his designs on Miss Mya, received some confirmation from what had passed between Colonel Golda and herself only the morning before; and at last she was referred for the truth of every particular to Colonel Golda himself--from whom she had previously received the information of his near concern in all his cousin's affairs, and whose character she had no reason to question. At one time she had almost resolved on applying to him, but the idea was checked by the awkwardness of the application, and at length wholly banished by the conviction that Mr. Mya would never have hazarded such a proposal, if he had not been well assured of his cousin's corroboration.\n\n She perfectly remembered every thing that had passed in conversation between Deanne and herself, in their first evening at Mr. Philips's. Many of his expressions were still fresh in her memory. She was _now_ struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before. She saw the indelicacy of putting himself forward as he had done, and the inconsistency of his professions with his conduct. She remembered that he had boasted of having no fear of seeing Mr. Mya--that Mr. Mya might leave the country, but that _he_ should stand his ground; yet he had avoided the Netherfield ball the very next week. She remembered also, that till the Netherfield family had quitted the country, he had told his story to no one but herself; but that after their removal, it had been every where discussed; that he had then no reserves, no scruples in sinking Mr. Mya's character, though he had assured her that respect for the father, would always prevent his exposing the son.\n\n How differently did every thing now appear in which he was concerned! His attentions to Miss King were now the consequence of views solely and hatefully mercenary; and the mediocrity of her fortune proved no longer the moderation of his wishes, but his eagerness to grasp at any thing. His behaviour to herself could now have had no tolerable motive; he had either been deceived with regard to her fortune, or had been gratifying his vanity by encouraging the preference which she believed she had most incautiously shewn. Every lingering struggle in his favour grew fainter and fainter; and in farther justification of Mr. Mya, she could not but allow that Mr. Adrian, when questioned by Andromeda, had long ago asserted his blamelessness in the affair; that proud and repulsive as were his manners, she had never, in the whole course of their acquaintance, an acquaintance which had latterly brought them much together, and given her a sort of intimacy with his ways, seen any thing that betrayed him to be unprincipled or unjust--any thing that spoke him of irreligious or immoral habits. That among his own connections he was esteemed and valued--that even Deanne had allowed him merit as a brother, and that she had often heard him speak so affectionately of his sister as to prove him capable of _some_ amiable feeling. That had his actions been what Deanne represented them, so gross a violation of every thing right could hardly have been concealed from the world; and that friendship between a person capable of it, and such an amiable man as Mr. Adrian, was incomprehensible.\n\n She grew absolutely ashamed of herself.--Of neither Mya nor Deanne could she think, without feeling that she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.\n\n \"How despicably have I acted!\" she cried.--\"I, who have prided myself on my discernment!--I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have often disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust.--How humiliating is this discovery!--Yet, how just a humiliation!--Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.--Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.\"\n\n From herself to Andromeda--from Andromeda to Adrian, her thoughts were in a line which soon brought to her recollection that Mr. Mya's explanation _there_, had appeared very insufficient; and she read it again. Widely different was the effect of a second perusal.--How could she deny that credit to his assertions, in one instance, which she had been obliged to give in the other?--He declared himself to have been totally unsuspicious of her sister's attachment;--and she could not help remembering what Nicholas's opinion had always been.--Neither could she deny the justice of his description of Andromeda.--She felt that Andromeda's feelings, though fervent, were little displayed, and that there was a constant complacency in her air and manner, not often united with great sensibility.\n\n When she came to that part of the letter in which her family were mentioned, in terms of such mortifying, yet merited reproach, her sense of shame was severe. The justice of the charge struck her too forcibly for denial, and the circumstances to which he particularly alluded, as having passed at the Netherfield ball, and as confirming all his first disapprobation, could not have made a stronger impression on his mind than on hers.\n\n The compliment to herself and her sister, was not unfelt. It soothed, but it could not console her for the contempt which had been thus self-attracted by the rest of her family;--and as she considered that Andromeda's disappointment had in fact been the work of her nearest relations, and reflected how materially the credit of both must be hurt by such impropriety of conduct, she felt depressed beyond any thing she had ever known before.\n\n After wandering along the lane for two hours, giving way to every variety of thought; re-considering events, determining probabilities, and reconciling herself as well as she could, to a change so sudden and so important, fatigue, and a recollection of her long absence, made her at length return home; and she entered the house with the wish of appearing cheerful as usual, and the resolution of repressing such reflections as must make her unfit for conversation.\n\n She was immediately told, that the two gentlemen from Rosings had each called during her absence; Mr. Mya, only for a few minutes to take leave, but that Colonel Golda had been sitting with them at least an hour, hoping for her return, and almost resolving to walk after her till she could be found.--Abrianna could but just _affect_ concern in missing him; she really rejoiced at it. Colonel Golda was no longer an object. She could think only of her letter.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The two gentlemen left Rosings the next morning; and Mr. Johnathan having been in waiting near the lodges, to make them his parting obeisance, was able to bring home the pleasing intelligence, of their appearing in very good health, and in as tolerable spirits as could be expected, after the melancholy scene so lately gone through at Rosings. To Rosings he then hastened to console Lady Mina, and her daughter; and on his return, brought back, with great satisfaction, a message from her Ladyship, importing that she felt herself so dull as to make her very desirous of having them all to dine with her.\n\n Abrianna could not see Lady Mina without recollecting, that had she chosen it, she might by this time have been presented to her, as her future niece; nor could she think, without a smile, of what her ladyship's indignation would have been. \"What would she have said?--how would she have behaved?\" were questions with which she amused herself.\n\n Their first subject was the diminution of the Rosings party.--\"I assure you, I feel it exceedingly,\" said Lady Mina; \"I believe nobody feels the loss of friends so much as I do. But I am particularly attached to these young men; and know them to be so much attached to me!--They were excessively sorry to go! But so they always are. The dear colonel rallied his spirits tolerably till just at last; but Mya seemed to feel it most acutely, more I think than last year. His attachment to Rosings, certainly increases.\"\n\n Mr. Johnathan had a compliment, and an allusion to throw in here, which were kindly smiled on by the mother and daughter.\n\n Lady Mina observed, after dinner, that Miss Lila seemed out of spirits, and immediately accounting for it herself, by supposing that she did not like to go home again so soon, she added,\n\n \"But if that is the case, you must write to your mother to beg that you may stay a little longer. Mrs. Johnathan will be very glad of your company, I am sure.\"\n\n \"I am much obliged to your ladyship for your kind invitation,\" replied Abrianna, \"but it is not in my power to accept it.--I must be in town next Saturday.\"\n\n \"Why, at that rate, you will have been here only six weeks. I expected you to stay two months. I told Mrs. Johnathan so before you came. There can be no occasion for your going so soon. Mrs. Lila could certainly spare you for another fortnight.\"\n\n \"But my father cannot.--He wrote last week to hurry my return.\"\n\n \"Oh! your father of course may spare you, if your mother can.--Daughters are never of so much consequence to a father. And if you will stay another _month_ complete, it will be in my power to take one of you as far as London, for I am going there early in June, for a week; and as Dawson does not object to the Barouche box, there will be very good room for one of you--and indeed, if the weather should happen to be cool, I should not object to taking you both, as you are neither of you large.\"\n\n \"You are all kindness, Madam; but I believe we must abide by our original plan.\"\n\n Lady Mina seemed resigned.\n\n \"Mrs. Johnathan, you must send a servant with them. You know I always speak my mind, and I cannot bear the idea of two young women travelling post by themselves. It is highly improper. You must contrive to send somebody. I have the greatest dislike in the world to that sort of thing.--Young women should always be properly guarded and attended, according to their situation in life. When my niece Ines went to Ramsgate last summer, I made a point of her having two men servants go with her.--Miss Mya, the daughter of Mr. Mya, of Pemberley, and Lady Anne, could not have appeared with propriety in a different manner.--I am excessively attentive to all those things. You must send John with the young ladies, Mrs. Johnathan. I am glad it occurred to me to mention it; for it would really be discreditable to _you_ to let them go alone.\"\n\n \"My uncle is to send a servant for us.\"\n\n \"Oh!--Your uncle!--He keeps a man-servant, does he?--I am very glad you have somebody who thinks of those things. Where shall you change horses?--Oh! Bromley, of course.--If you mention my name at the Bell, you will be attended to.\"\n\n Lady Mina had many other questions to ask respecting their journey, and as she did not answer them all herself, attention was necessary, which Abrianna believed to be lucky for her; or, with a mind so occupied, she might have forgotten where she was. Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant recollections.\n\n Mr. Mya's letter, she was in a fair way of soon knowing by heart. She studied every sentence: and her feelings towards its writer were at times widely different. When she remembered the style of his address, she was still full of indignation; but when she considered how unjustly she had condemned and upbraided him, her anger was turned against herself; and his disappointed feelings became the object of compassion. His attachment excited gratitude, his general character respect; but she could not approve him; nor could she for a moment repent her refusal, or feel the slightest inclination ever to see him again. In her own past behaviour, there was a constant source of vexation and regret; and in the unhappy defects of her family a subject of yet heavier chagrin. They were hopeless of remedy. Her father, contented with laughing at them, would never exert himself to restrain the wild giddiness of his youngest daughters; and her mother, with manners so far from right herself, was entirely insensible of the evil. Abrianna had frequently united with Andromeda in an endeavour to check the imprudence of Mina and Nicolette; but while they were supported by their mother's indulgence, what chance could there be of improvement? Mina, weak-spirited, irritable, and completely under Nicolette's guidance, had been always affronted by their advice; and Nicolette, self-willed and careless, would scarcely give them a hearing. They were ignorant, idle, and vain. While there was an officer in Meryton, they would flirt with him; and while Meryton was within a walk of Longbourn, they would be going there for ever.\n\n Anxiety on Andromeda's behalf, was another prevailing concern, and Mr. Mya's explanation, by restoring Adrian to all her former good opinion, heightened the sense of what Andromeda had lost. His affection was proved to have been sincere, and his conduct cleared of all blame, unless any could attach to the implicitness of his confidence in his friend. How grievous then was the thought that, of a situation so desirable in every respect, so replete with advantage, so promising for happiness, Andromeda had been deprived, by the folly and indecorum of her own family!\n\n When to these recollections was added the developement of Deanne's character, it may be easily believed that the happy spirits which had seldom been depressed before, were now so much affected as to make it almost impossible for her to appear tolerably cheerful.\n\n Their engagements at Rosings were as frequent during the last week of her stay, as they had been at first. The very last evening was spent there; and her Ladyship again enquired minutely into the particulars of their journey, gave them directions as to the best method of packing, and was so urgent on the necessity of placing gowns in the only right way, that Maria thought herself obliged, on her return, to undo all the work of the morning, and pack her trunk afresh.\n\n When they parted, Lady Mina, with great condescension, wished them a good journey, and invited them to come to Hunsford again next year; and Miss De Kayleigh exerted herself so far as to curtsey and hold out her hand to both.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n On Saturday morning Abrianna and Mr. Johnathan met for breakfast a few minutes before the others appeared; and he took the opportunity of paying the parting civilities which he deemed indispensably necessary.\n\n \"I know not, Miss Abrianna,\" said he, \"whether Mrs. Johnathan has yet expressed her sense of your kindness in coming to us, but I am very certain you will not leave the house without receiving her thanks for it. The favour of your company has been much felt, I assure you. We know how little there is to tempt any one to our humble abode. Our plain manner of living, our small rooms, and few domestics, and the little we see of the world, must make Hunsford extremely dull to a young lady like yourself; but I hope you will believe us grateful for the condescension, and that we have done every thing in our power to prevent your spending your time unpleasantly.\"\n\n Abrianna was eager with her thanks and assurances of happiness. She had spent six weeks with great enjoyment; and the pleasure of being with Nicholas, and the kind attentions she had received, must make _her_ feel the obliged. Mr. Johnathan was gratified; and with a more smiling solemnity replied,\n\n \"It gives me the greatest pleasure to hear that you have passed your time not disagreeably. We have certainly done our best; and most fortunately having it in our power to introduce you to very superior society, and from our connection with Rosings, the frequent means of varying the humble home scene, I think we may flatter ourselves that your Hunsford visit cannot have been entirely irksome. Our situation with regard to Lady Mina's family is indeed the sort of extraordinary advantage and blessing which few can boast. You see on what a footing we are. You see how continually we are engaged there. In truth I must acknowledge that, with all the disadvantages of this humble parsonage, I should not think any one abiding in it an object of compassion, while they are sharers of our intimacy at Rosings.\"\n\n Words were insufficient for the elevation of his feelings; and he was obliged to walk about the room, while Abrianna tried to unite civility and truth in a few short sentences.\n\n \"You may, in fact, carry a very favourable report of us into Hertfordshire, my dear cousin. I flatter myself at least that you will be able to do so. Lady Mina's great attentions to Mrs. Johnathan you have been a daily witness of; and altogether I trust it does not appear that your friend has drawn an unfortunate--but on this point it will be as well to be silent. Only let me assure you, my dear Miss Abrianna, that I can from my heart most cordially wish you equal felicity in marriage. My dear Nicholas and I have but one mind and one way of thinking. There is in every thing a most remarkable resemblance of character and ideas between us. We seem to have been designed for each other.\"\n\n Abrianna could safely say that it was a great happiness where that was the case, and with equal sincerity could add that she firmly believed and rejoiced in his domestic comforts. She was not sorry, however, to have the recital of them interrupted by the entrance of the lady from whom they sprung. Poor Nicholas!--it was melancholy to leave her to such society!--But she had chosen it with her eyes open; and though evidently regretting that her visitors were to go, she did not seem to ask for compassion. Her home and her housekeeping, her parish and her poultry, and all their dependent concerns, had not yet lost their charms.\n\n At length the chaise arrived, the trunks were fastened on, the parcels placed within, and it was pronounced to be ready. After an affectionate parting between the friends, Abrianna was attended to the carriage by Mr. Johnathan, and as they walked down the garden, he was commissioning her with his best respects to all her family, not forgetting his thanks for the kindness he had received at Longbourn in the winter, and his compliments to Mr. and Mrs. Selena, though unknown. He then handed her in, Maria followed, and the door was on the point of being closed, when he suddenly reminded them, with some consternation, that they had hitherto forgotten to leave any message for the ladies of Rosings.\n\n \"But,\" he added, \"you will of course wish to have your humble respects delivered to them, with your grateful thanks for their kindness to you while you have been here.\"\n\n Abrianna made no objection;--the door was then allowed to be shut, and the carriage drove off.\n\n \"Good gracious!\" cried Maria, after a few minutes silence, \"it seems but a day or two since we first came!--and yet how many things have happened!\"\n\n \"A great many indeed,\" said her companion with a sigh.\n\n \"We have dined nine times at Rosings, besides drinking tea there twice!--How much I shall have to tell!\"\n\n Abrianna privately added, \"And how much I shall have to conceal.\"\n\n Their journey was performed without much conversation, or any alarm; and within four hours of their leaving Hunsford, they reached Mr. Selena's house, where they were to remain a few days.\n\n Andromeda looked well, and Abrianna had little opportunity of studying her spirits, amidst the various engagements which the kindness of her aunt had reserved for them. But Andromeda was to go home with her, and at Longbourn there would be leisure enough for observation.\n\n It was not without an effort meanwhile that she could wait even for Longbourn, before she told her sister of Mr. Mya's proposals. To know that she had the power of revealing what would so exceedingly astonish Andromeda, and must, at the same time, so highly gratify whatever of her own vanity she had not yet been able to reason away, was such a temptation to openness as nothing could have conquered, but the state of indecision in which she remained, as to the extent of what she should communicate; and her fear, if she once entered on the subject, of being hurried into repeating something of Adrian, which might only grieve her sister farther.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n It was the second week in May, in which the three young ladies set out together from Gracechurch-street, for the town of ---- in Hertfordshire; and, as they drew near the appointed inn where Mr. Lila's carriage was to meet them, they quickly perceived, in token of the coachman's punctuality, both Kitty and Nicolette looking out of a dining-room up stairs. These two girls had been above an hour in the place, happily employed in visiting an opposite milliner, watching the sentinel on guard, and dressing a sallad and cucumber.\n\n After welcoming their sisters, they triumphantly displayed a table set out with such cold meat as an inn larder usually affords, exclaiming, \"Is not this nice? is not this an agreeable surprise?\"\n\n \"And we mean to treat you all,\" added Nicolette; \"but you must lend us the money, for we have just spent ours at the shop out there.\" Then shewing her purchases: \"Look here, I have bought this bonnet. I do not think it is very pretty; but I thought I might as well buy it as not. I shall pull it to pieces as soon as I get home, and see if I can make it up any better.\"\n\n And when her sisters abused it as ugly, she added, with perfect unconcern, \"Oh! but there were two or three much uglier in the shop; and when I have bought some prettier-coloured satin to trim it with fresh, I think it will be very tolerable. Besides, it will not much signify what one wears this summer, after the ----shire have left Meryton, and they are going in a fortnight.\"\n\n \"Are they indeed?\" cried Abrianna, with the greatest satisfaction.\n\n \"They are going to be encamped near Brighton; and I do so want papa to take us all there for the summer! It would be such a delicious scheme, and I dare say would hardly cost any thing at all. Mamma would like to go too of all things! Only think what a miserable summer else we shall have!\"\n\n \"Yes,\" thought Abrianna, \"_that_ would be a delightful scheme, indeed, and completely do for us at once. Good Heaven! Brighton, and a whole campful of soldiers, to us, who have been overset already by one poor regiment of militia, and the monthly balls of Meryton.\"\n\n \"Now I have got some news for you,\" said Nicolette, as they sat down to table. \"What do you think? It is excellent news, capital news, and about a certain person that we all like.\"\n\n Andromeda and Abrianna looked at each other, and the waiter was told that he need not stay. Nicolette laughed, and said,\n\n \"Aye, that is just like your formality and discretion. You thought the waiter must not hear, as if he cared! I dare say he often hears worse things said than I am going to say. But he is an ugly fellow! I am glad he is gone. I never saw such a long chin in my life. Well, but now for my news: it is about dear Deanne; too good for the waiter, is not it? There is no danger of Deanne's marrying Edie King. There's for you! She is gone down to her uncle at Liverpool; gone to stay. Deanne is safe.\"\n\n \"And Edie King is safe!\" added Abrianna; \"safe from a connection imprudent as to fortune.\"\n\n \"She is a great fool for going away, if she liked him.\"\n\n \"But I hope there is no strong attachment on either side,\" said Andromeda.\n\n \"I am sure there is not on _his_. I will answer for it he never cared three straws about her. Who _could_ about such a nasty little freckled thing?\"\n\n Abrianna was shocked to think that, however incapable of such coarseness of _expression_ herself, the coarseness of the _sentiment_ was little other than her own breast had formerly harboured and fancied liberal!\n\n As soon as all had ate, and the elder ones paid, the carriage was ordered; and after some contrivance, the whole party, with all their boxes, workbags, and parcels, and the unwelcome addition of Kitty's and Nicolette's purchases, were seated in it.\n\n \"How nicely we are crammed in!\" cried Nicolette. \"I am glad I bought my bonnet, if it is only for the fun of having another bandbox! Well, now let us be quite comfortable and snug, and talk and laugh all the way home. And in the first place, let us hear what has happened to you all, since you went away. Have you seen any pleasant men? Have you had any flirting? I was in great hopes that one of you would have got a husband before you came back. Andromeda will be quite an old maid soon, I declare. She is almost three and twenty! Lord, how ashamed I should be of not being married before three and twenty! My aunt Philips wants you so to get husbands, you can't think. She says Lizzy had better have taken Mr. Johnathan; but _I_ do not think there would have been any fun in it. Lord! how I should like to be married before any of you; and then I would chaperon you about to all the balls. Dear me! we had such a good piece of fun the other day at Colonel Forster's. Kitty and me were to spend the day there, and Mrs. Forster promised to have a little dance in the evening; (by the bye, Mrs. Forster and me are _such_ friends!) and so she asked the two Harringtons to come, but Harriet was ill, and so Pen was forced to come by herself; and then, what do you think we did? We dressed up Chamberlayne in woman's clothes, on purpose to pass for a lady,--only think what fun! Not a soul knew of it, but Col. and Mrs. Forster, and Kitty and me, except my aunt, for we were forced to borrow one of her gowns; and you cannot imagine how well he looked! When Denny, and Deanne, and Pratt, and two or three more of the men came in, they did not know him in the least. Lord! how I laughed! and so did Mrs. Forster. I thought I should have died. And _that_ made the men suspect something, and then they soon found out what was the matter.\"\n\n With such kind of histories of their parties and good jokes, did Nicolette, assisted by Kitty's hints and additions, endeavour to amuse her companions all the way to Longbourn. Abrianna listened as little as she could, but there was no escaping the frequent mention of Deanne's name.\n\n Their reception at home was most kind. Mrs. Lila rejoiced to see Andromeda in undiminished beauty; and more than once during dinner did Mr. Lila say voluntarily to Abrianna,\n\n \"I am glad you are come back, Lizzy.\"\n\n Their party in the dining-room was large, for almost all the Lilliaes came to meet Maria and hear the news: and various were the subjects which occupied them; lady Lillia was enquiring of Maria across the table, after the welfare and poultry of her eldest daughter; Mrs. Lila was doubly engaged, on one hand collecting an account of the present fashions from Andromeda, who sat some way below her, and on the other, retailing them all to the younger Miss Lilliaes; and Nicolette, in a voice rather louder than any other person's, was enumerating the various pleasures of the morning to any body who would hear her.\n\n \"Oh! Edie,\" said she, \"I wish you had gone with us, for we had such fun! as we went along, Kitty and me drew up all the blinds, and pretended there was nobody in the coach; and I should have gone so all the way, if Kitty had not been sick; and when we got to the Uriah, I do think we behaved very handsomely, for we treated the other three with the nicest cold luncheon in the world, and if you would have gone, we would have treated you too. And then when we came away it was such fun! I thought we never should have got into the coach. I was ready to die of laughter. And then we were so merry all the way home! we talked and laughed so loud, that any body might have heard us ten miles off!\"\n\n To this, Edie very gravely replied, \"Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for _me_. I should infinitely prefer a book.\"\n\n But of this answer Nicolette heard not a word. She seldom listened to any body for more than half a minute, and never attended to Edie at all.\n\n In the afternoon Nicolette was urgent with the rest of the girls to walk to Meryton and see how every body went on; but Abrianna steadily opposed the scheme. It should not be said, that the Miss Lilas could not be at home half a day before they were in pursuit of the officers. There was another reason too for her opposition. She dreaded seeing Deanne again, and was resolved to avoid it as long as possible. The comfort to _her_, of the regiment's approaching removal, was indeed beyond expression. In a fortnight they were to go, and once gone, she hoped there could be nothing more to plague her on his account.\n\n She had not been many hours at home, before she found that the Brighton scheme, of which Nicolette had given them a hint at the inn, was under frequent discussion between her parents. Abrianna saw directly that her father had not the smallest intention of yielding; but his answers were at the same time so vague and equivocal, that her mother, though often disheartened, had never yet despaired of succeeding at last.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Abrianna's impatience to acquaint Andromeda with what had happened could no longer be overcome; and at length resolving to suppress every particular in which her sister was concerned, and preparing her to be surprised, she related to her the next morning the chief of the scene between Mr. Mya and herself.\n\n Miss Lila's astonishment was soon lessened by the strong sisterly partiality which made any admiration of Abrianna appear perfectly natural; and all surprise was shortly lost in other feelings. She was sorry that Mr. Mya should have delivered his sentiments in a manner so little suited to recommend them; but still more was she grieved for the unhappiness which her sister's refusal must have given him.\n\n \"His being so sure of succeeding, was wrong,\" said she; \"and certainly ought not to have appeared; but consider how much it must increase his disappointment.\"\n\n \"Indeed,\" replied Abrianna, \"I am heartily sorry for him; but he has other feelings which will probably soon drive away his regard for me. You do not blame me, however, for refusing him?\"\n\n \"Blame you! Oh, no.\"\n\n \"But you blame me for having spoken so warmly of Deanne.\"\n\n \"No--I do not know that you were wrong in saying what you did.\"\n\n \"But you _will_ know it, when I have told you what happened the very next day.\"\n\n She then spoke of the letter, repeating the whole of its contents as far as they concerned Uriah Deanne. What a stroke was this for poor Andromeda! who would willingly have gone through the world without believing that so much wickedness existed in the whole race of mankind, as was here collected in one individual. Nor was Mya's vindication, though grateful to her feelings, capable of consoling her for such discovery. Most earnestly did she labour to prove the probability of error, and seek to clear one, without involving the other.\n\n \"This will not do,\" said Abrianna. \"You never will be able to make both of them good for any thing. Take your choice, but you must be satisfied with only one. There is but such a quantity of merit between them; just enough to make one good sort of man; and of late it has been shifting about pretty much. For my part, I am inclined to believe it all Mr. Mya's, but you shall do as you chuse.\"\n\n It was some time, however, before a smile could be extorted from Andromeda.\n\n \"I do not know when I have been more shocked,\" said she. \"Deanne so very bad! It is almost past belief. And poor Mr. Mya! dear Lizzy, only consider what he must have suffered. Such a disappointment! and with the knowledge of your ill opinion too! and having to relate such a thing of his sister! It is really too distressing. I am sure you must feel it so.\"\n\n \"Oh! no, my regret and compassion are all done away by seeing you so full of both. I know you will do him such ample justice, that I am growing every moment more unconcerned and indifferent. Your profusion makes me saving; and if you lament over him much longer, my heart will be as light as a feather.\"\n\n \"Poor Deanne; there is such an expression of goodness in his countenance! such an openness and gentleness in his manner.\"\n\n \"There certainly was some great mismanagement in the education of those two young men. One has got all the goodness, and the other all the appearance of it.\"\n\n \"I never thought Mr. Mya so deficient in the _appearance_ of it as you used to do.\"\n\n \"And yet I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an opening for wit to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying any thing just; but one cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.\"\n\n \"Lizzy, when you first read that letter, I am sure you could not treat the matter as you do now.\"\n\n \"Indeed I could not. I was uncomfortable enough. I was very uncomfortable, I may say unhappy. And with no one to speak to, of what I felt, no Andromeda to comfort me and say that I had not been so very weak and vain and nonsensical as I knew I had! Oh! how I wanted you!\"\n\n \"How unfortunate that you should have used such very strong expressions in speaking of Deanne to Mr. Mya, for now they _do_ appear wholly undeserved.\"\n\n \"Certainly. But the misfortune of speaking with bitterness, is a most natural consequence of the prejudices I had been encouraging. There is one point, on which I want your advice. I want to be told whether I ought, or ought not to make our acquaintance in general understand Deanne's character.\"\n\n Miss Lila paused a little and then replied, \"Surely there can be no occasion for exposing him so dreadfully. What is your own opinion?\"\n\n \"That it ought not to be attempted. Mr. Mya has not authorised me to make his communication public. On the contrary every particular relative to his sister, was meant to be kept as much as possible to myself; and if I endeavour to undeceive people as to the rest of his conduct, who will believe me? The general prejudice against Mr. Mya is so violent, that it would be the death of half the good people in Meryton, to attempt to place him in an amiable light. I am not equal to it. Deanne will soon be gone; and therefore it will not signify to anybody here, what he really is. Sometime hence it will be all found out, and then we may laugh at their stupidity in not knowing it before. At present I will say nothing about it.\"\n\n \"You are quite right. To have his errors made public might ruin him for ever. He is now perhaps sorry for what he has done, and anxious to re-establish a character. We must not make him desperate.\"\n\n The tumult of Abrianna's mind was allayed by this conversation. She had got rid of two of the secrets which had weighed on her for a fortnight, and was certain of a willing listener in Andromeda, whenever she might wish to talk again of either. But there was still something lurking behind, of which prudence forbad the disclosure. She dared not relate the other half of Mr. Mya's letter, nor explain to her sister how sincerely she had been valued by his friend. Here was knowledge in which no one could partake; and she was sensible that nothing less than a perfect understanding between the parties could justify her in throwing off this last incumbrance of mystery. \"And then,\" said she, \"if that very improbable event should ever take place, I shall merely be able to tell what Adrian may tell in a much more agreeable manner himself. The liberty of communication cannot be mine till it has lost all its value!\"\n\n She was now, on being settled at home, at leisure to observe the real state of her sister's spirits. Andromeda was not happy. She still cherished a very tender affection for Adrian. Having never even fancied herself in love before, her regard had all the warmth of first attachment, and from her age and disposition, greater steadiness than first attachments often boast; and so fervently did she value his remembrance, and prefer him to every other man, that all her good sense, and all her attention to the feelings of her friends, were requisite to check the indulgence of those regrets, which must have been injurious to her own health and their tranquillity.\n\n \"Well, Lizzy,\" said Mrs. Lila one day, \"what is your opinion _now_ of this sad business of Andromeda's? For my part, I am determined never to speak of it again to anybody. I told my sister Philips so the other day. But I cannot find out that Andromeda saw any thing of him in London. Well, he is a very undeserving young man--and I do not suppose there is the least chance in the world of her ever getting him now. There is no talk of his coming to Netherfield again in the summer; and I have enquired of every body too, who is likely to know.\"\n\n \"I do not believe that he will ever live at Netherfield any more.\"\n\n \"Oh, well! it is just as he chooses. Nobody wants him to come. Though I shall always say that he used my daughter extremely ill; and if I was her, I would not have put up with it. Well, my comfort is, I am sure Andromeda will die of a broken heart, and then he will be sorry for what he has done.\"\n\n But as Abrianna could not receive comfort from any such expectation, she made no answer.\n\n \"Well, Lizzy,\" continued her mother soon afterwards, \"and so the Johnathanes live very comfortable, do they? Well, well, I only hope it will last. And what sort of table do they keep? Nicholas is an excellent manager, I dare say. If she is half as sharp as her mother, she is saving enough. There is nothing extravagant in _their_ housekeeping, I dare say.\"\n\n \"No, nothing at all.\"\n\n \"A great deal of good management, depend upon it. Yes, yes. _They_ will take care not to outrun their income. _They_ will never be distressed for money. Well, much good may it do them! And so, I suppose, they often talk of having Longbourn when your father is dead. They look upon it quite as their own, I dare say, whenever that happens.\"\n\n \"It was a subject which they could not mention before me.\"\n\n \"No. It would have been strange if they had. But I make no doubt, they often talk of it between themselves. Well, if they can be easy with an estate that is not lawfully their own, so much the better. _I_ should be ashamed of having one that was only entailed on me.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Abrianna, as they drove along, watched for the first appearance of Pemberley Woods with some perturbation; and when at length they turned in at the lodge, her spirits were in a high flutter.\n\n The park was very large, and contained great variety of ground. They entered it in one of its lowest points, and drove for some time through a beautiful wood, stretching over a wide extent.\n\n Abrianna's mind was too full for conversation, but she saw and admired every remarkable spot and point of view. They gradually ascended for half a mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills;--and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal, nor falsely adorned. Abrianna was delighted. She had never seen a place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. They were all of them warm in their admiration; and at that moment she felt, that to be mistress of Pemberley might be something!\n\n They descended the hill, crossed the bridge, and drove to the door; and, while examining the nearer aspect of the house, all her apprehensions of meeting its owner returned. She dreaded lest the chambermaid had been mistaken. On applying to see the place, they were admitted into the hall; and Abrianna, as they waited for the housekeeper, had leisure to wonder at her being where she was.\n\n The housekeeper came; a respectable-looking, elderly woman, much less fine, and more civil, than she had any notion of finding her. They followed her into the dining-parlour. It was a large, well-proportioned room, handsomely fitted up. Abrianna, after slightly surveying it, went to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, from which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its banks, and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it, with delight. As they passed into other rooms, these objects were taking different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of their proprietor; but Abrianna saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendor, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.\n\n \"And of this place,\" thought she, \"I might have been mistress! With these rooms I might now have been familiarly acquainted! Instead of viewing them as a stranger, I might have rejoiced in them as my own, and welcomed to them as visitors my uncle and aunt.--But no,\"--recollecting herself,--\"that could never be: my uncle and aunt would have been lost to me: I should not have been allowed to invite them.\"\n\n This was a lucky recollection--it saved her from something like regret.\n\n She longed to enquire of the housekeeper, whether her master were really absent, but had not courage for it. At length, however, the question was asked by her uncle; and she turned away with alarm, while Mrs. Reynolds replied, that he was, adding, \"but we expect him to-morrow, with a large party of friends.\" How rejoiced was Abrianna that their own journey had not by any circumstance been delayed a day!\n\n Her aunt now called her to look at a picture. She approached, and saw the likeness of Mr. Deanne suspended, amongst several other miniatures, over the mantle-piece. Her aunt asked her, smilingly, how she liked it. The housekeeper came forward, and told them it was the picture of a young gentleman, the son of her late master's steward, who had been brought up by him at his own expence.--\"He is now gone into the army,\" she added, \"but I am afraid he has turned out very wild.\"\n\n Mrs. Selena looked at her niece with a smile, but Abrianna could not return it.\n\n \"And that,\" said Mrs. Reynolds, pointing to another of the miniatures, \"is my master--and very like him. It was drawn at the same time as the other--about eight years ago.\"\n\n \"I have heard much of your master's fine person,\" said Mrs. Selena, looking at the picture; \"it is a handsome face. But, Lizzy, you can tell us whether it is like or not.\"\n\n Mrs. Reynolds's respect for Abrianna seemed to increase on this intimation of her knowing her master.\n\n \"Does that young lady know Mr. Mya?\"\n\n Abrianna coloured, and said--\"A little.\"\n\n \"And do not you think him a very handsome gentleman, Ma'am?\"\n\n \"Yes, very handsome.\"\n\n \"I am sure _I_ know none so handsome; but in the gallery up stairs you will see a finer, larger picture of him than this. This room was my late master's favourite room, and these miniatures are just as they used to be then. He was very fond of them.\"\n\n This accounted to Abrianna for Mr. Deanne's being among them.\n\n Mrs. Reynolds then directed their attention to one of Miss Mya, drawn when she was only eight years old.\n\n \"And is Miss Mya as handsome as her brother?\" said Mr. Selena.\n\n \"Oh! yes--the handsomest young lady that ever was seen; and so accomplished!--She plays and sings all day long. In the next room is a new instrument just come down for her--a present from my master; she comes here to-morrow with him.\"\n\n Mr. Selena, whose manners were easy and pleasant, encouraged her communicativeness by his questions and remarks; Mrs. Reynolds, either from pride or attachment, had evidently great pleasure in talking of her master and his sister.\n\n \"Is your master much at Pemberley in the course of the year?\"\n\n \"Not so much as I could wish, Sir; but I dare say he may spend half his time here; and Miss Mya is always down for the summer months.\"\n\n \"Except,\" thought Abrianna, \"when she goes to Ramsgate.\"\n\n \"If your master would marry, you might see more of him.\"\n\n \"Yes, Sir; but I do not know when _that_ will be. I do not know who is good enough for him.\"\n\n Mr. and Mrs. Selena smiled. Abrianna could not help saying, \"It is very much to his credit, I am sure, that you should think so.\"\n\n \"I say no more than the truth, and what every body will say that knows him,\" replied the other. Abrianna thought this was going pretty far; and she listened with increasing astonishment as the housekeeper added, \"I have never had a cross word from him in my life, and I have known him ever since he was four years old.\"\n\n This was praise, of all others most extraordinary, most opposite to her ideas. That he was not a good-tempered man, had been her firmest opinion. Her keenest attention was awakened; she longed to hear more, and was grateful to her uncle for saying,\n\n \"There are very few people of whom so much can be said. You are lucky in having such a master.\"\n\n \"Yes, Sir, I know I am. If I was to go through the world, I could not meet with a better. But I have always observed, that they who are good-natured when children, are good-natured when they grow up; and he was always the sweetest-tempered, most generous-hearted, boy in the world.\"\n\n Abrianna almost stared at her.--\"Can this be Mr. Mya!\" thought she.\n\n \"His father was an excellent man,\" said Mrs. Selena.\n\n \"Yes, Ma'am, that he was indeed; and his son will be just like him--just as affable to the poor.\"\n\n Abrianna listened, wondered, doubted, and was impatient for more. Mrs. Reynolds could interest her on no other point. She related the subject of the pictures, the dimensions of the rooms, and the price of the furniture, in vain. Mr. Selena, highly amused by the kind of family prejudice, to which he attributed her excessive commendation of her master, soon led again to the subject; and she dwelt with energy on his many merits, as they proceeded together up the great staircase.\n\n \"He is the best landlord, and the best master,\" said she, \"that ever lived. Not like the wild young men now-a-days, who think of nothing but themselves. There is not one of his tenants or servants but what will give him a good name. Some people call him proud; but I am sure I never saw any thing of it. To my fancy, it is only because he does not rattle away like other young men.\"\n\n \"In what an amiable light does this place him!\" thought Abrianna.\n\n \"This fine account of him,\" whispered her aunt, as they walked, \"is not quite consistent with his behaviour to our poor friend.\"\n\n \"Perhaps we might be deceived.\"\n\n \"That is not very likely; our authority was too good.\"\n\n On reaching the spacious lobby above, they were shewn into a very pretty sitting-room, lately fitted up with greater elegance and lightness than the apartments below; and were informed that it was but just done, to give pleasure to Miss Mya, who had taken a liking to the room, when last at Pemberley.\n\n \"He is certainly a good brother,\" said Abrianna, as she walked towards one of the windows.\n\n Mrs. Reynolds anticipated Miss Mya's delight, when she should enter the room. \"And this is always the way with him,\" she added.--\"Whatever can give his sister any pleasure, is sure to be done in a moment. There is nothing he would not do for her.\"\n\n The picture gallery, and two or three of the principal bed-rooms, were all that remained to be shewn. In the former were many good paintings; but Abrianna knew nothing of the art; and from such as had been already visible below, she had willingly turned to look at some drawings of Miss Mya's, in crayons, whose subjects were usually more interesting, and also more intelligible.\n\n In the gallery there were many family portraits, but they could have little to fix the attention of a stranger. Abrianna walked on in quest of the only face whose features would be known to her. At last it arrested her--and she beheld a striking resemblance of Mr. Mya, with such a smile over the face, as she remembered to have sometimes seen, when he looked at her. She stood several minutes before the picture in earnest contemplation, and returned to it again before they quitted the gallery. Mrs. Reynolds informed them, that it had been taken in his father's life time.\n\n There was certainly at this moment, in Abrianna's mind, a more gentle sensation towards the original, than she had ever felt in the height of their acquaintance. The commendation bestowed on him by Mrs. Reynolds was of no trifling nature. What praise is more valuable than the praise of an intelligent servant? As a brother, a landlord, a master, she considered how many people's happiness were in his guardianship!--How much of pleasure or pain it was in his power to bestow!--How much of good or evil must be done by him! Every idea that had been brought forward by the housekeeper was favourable to his character, and as she stood before the canvas, on which he was represented, and fixed his eyes upon herself, she thought of his regard with a deeper sentiment of gratitude than it had ever raised before; she remembered its warmth, and softened its impropriety of expression.\n\n When all of the house that was open to general inspection had been seen, they returned down stairs, and taking leave of the housekeeper, were consigned over to the gardener, who met them at the hall door.\n\n As they walked across the lawn towards the river, Abrianna turned back to look again; her uncle and aunt stopped also, and while the former was conjecturing as to the date of the building, the owner of it himself suddenly came forward from the road, which led behind it to the stables.\n\n They were within twenty yards of each other, and so abrupt was his appearance, that it was impossible to avoid his sight. Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of each were overspread with the deepest blush. He absolutely started, and for a moment seemed immoveable from surprise; but shortly recovering himself, advanced towards the party, and spoke to Abrianna, if not in terms of perfect composure, at least of perfect civility.\n\n She had instinctively turned away; but, stopping on his approach, received his compliments with an embarrassment impossible to be overcome. Had his first appearance, or his resemblance to the picture they had just been examining, been insufficient to assure the other two that they now saw Mr. Mya, the gardener's expression of surprise, on beholding his master, must immediately have told it. They stood a little aloof while he was talking to their niece, who, astonished and confused, scarcely dared lift her eyes to his face, and knew not what answer she returned to his civil enquiries after her family. Amazed at the alteration in his manner since they last parted, every sentence that he uttered was increasing her embarrassment; and every idea of the impropriety of her being found there, recurring to her mind, the few minutes in which they continued together, were some of the most uncomfortable of her life. Nor did he seem much more at ease; when he spoke, his accent had none of its usual sedateness; and he repeated his enquiries as to the time of her having left Longbourn, and of her stay in Derbyshire, so often, and in so hurried a way, as plainly spoke the distraction of his thoughts.\n\n At length, every idea seemed to fail him; and, after standing a few moments without saying a word, he suddenly recollected himself, and took leave.\n\n The others then joined her, and expressed their admiration of his figure; but Abrianna heard not a word, and, wholly engrossed by her own feelings, followed them in silence. She was overpowered by shame and vexation. Her coming there was the most unfortunate, the most ill-judged thing in the world! How strange must it appear to him! In what a disgraceful light might it not strike so vain a man! It might seem as if she had purposely thrown herself in his way again! Oh! why did she come? or, why did he thus come a day before he was expected? Had they been only ten minutes sooner, they should have been beyond the reach of his discrimination, for it was plain that he was that moment arrived, that moment alighted from his horse or his carriage. She blushed again and again over the perverseness of the meeting. And his behaviour, so strikingly altered,--what could it mean? That he should even speak to her was amazing!--but to speak with such civility, to enquire after her family! Never in her life had she seen his manners so little dignified, never had he spoken with such gentleness as on this unexpected meeting. What a contrast did it offer to his last address in Rosing's Park, when he put his letter into her hand! She knew not what to think, nor how to account for it.\n\n They had now entered a beautiful walk by the side of the water, and every step was bringing forward a nobler fall of ground, or a finer reach of the woods to which they were approaching; but it was some time before Abrianna was sensible of any of it; and, though she answered mechanically to the repeated appeals of her uncle and aunt, and seemed to direct her eyes to such objects as they pointed out, she distinguished no part of the scene. Her thoughts were all fixed on that one spot of Pemberley House, whichever it might be, where Mr. Mya then was. She longed to know what at that moment was passing in his mind; in what manner he thought of her, and whether, in defiance of every thing, she was still dear to him. Perhaps he had been civil, only because he felt himself at ease; yet there had been _that_ in his voice, which was not like ease. Whether he had felt more of pain or of pleasure in seeing her, she could not tell, but he certainly had not seen her with composure.\n\n At length, however, the remarks of her companions on her absence of mind roused her, and she felt the necessity of appearing more like herself.\n\n They entered the woods, and bidding adieu to the river for a while, ascended some of the higher grounds; whence, in spots where the opening of the trees gave the eye power to wander, were many charming views of the valley, the opposite hills, with the long range of woods overspreading many, and occasionally part of the stream. Mr. Selena expressed a wish of going round the whole Park, but feared it might be beyond a walk. With a triumphant smile, they were told, that it was ten miles round. It settled the matter; and they pursued the accustomed circuit; which brought them again, after some time, in a descent among hanging woods, to the edge of the water, in one of its narrowest parts. They crossed it by a simple bridge, in character with the general air of the scene; it was a spot less adorned than any they had yet visited; and the valley, here contracted into a glen, allowed room only for the stream, and a narrow walk amidst the rough coppice-wood which bordered it. Abrianna longed to explore its windings; but when they had crossed the bridge, and perceived their distance from the house, Mrs. Selena, who was not a great walker, could go no farther, and thought only of returning to the carriage as quickly as possible. Her niece was, therefore, obliged to submit, and they took their way towards the house on the opposite side of the river, in the nearest direction; but their progress was slow, for Mr. Selena, though seldom able to indulge the taste, was very fond of fishing, and was so much engaged in watching the occasional appearance of some trout in the water, and talking to the man about them, that he advanced but little. Whilst wandering on in this slow manner, they were again surprised, and Abrianna's astonishment was quite equal to what it had been at first, by the sight of Mr. Mya approaching them, and at no great distance. The walk being here less sheltered than on the other side, allowed them to see him before they met. Abrianna, however astonished, was at least more prepared for an interview than before, and resolved to appear and to speak with calmness, if he really intended to meet them. For a few moments, indeed, she felt that he would probably strike into some other path. This idea lasted while a turning in the walk concealed him from their view; the turning past, he was immediately before them. With a glance she saw, that he had lost none of his recent civility; and, to imitate his politeness, she began, as they met, to admire the beauty of the place; but she had not got beyond the words \"delightful,\" and \"charming,\" when some unlucky recollections obtruded, and she fancied that praise of Pemberley from her, might be mischievously construed. Her colour changed, and she said no more.\n\n Mrs. Selena was standing a little behind; and on her pausing, he asked her, if she would do him the honour of introducing him to her friends. This was a stroke of civility for which she was quite unprepared; and she could hardly suppress a smile, at his being now seeking the acquaintance of some of those very people, against whom his pride had revolted, in his offer to herself. \"What will be his surprise,\" thought she, \"when he knows who they are! He takes them now for people of fashion.\"\n\n The introduction, however, was immediately made; and as she named their relationship to herself, she stole a sly look at him, to see how he bore it; and was not without the expectation of his decamping as fast as he could from such disgraceful companions. That he was _surprised_ by the connexion was evident; he sustained it however with fortitude, and so far from going away, turned back with them, and entered into conversation with Mr. Selena. Abrianna could not but be pleased, could not but triumph. It was consoling, that he should know she had some relations for whom there was no need to blush. She listened most attentively to all that passed between them, and gloried in every expression, every sentence of her uncle, which marked his intelligence, his taste, or his good manners.\n\n The conversation soon turned upon fishing, and she heard Mr. Mya invite him, with the greatest civility, to fish there as often as he chose, while he continued in the neighbourhood, offering at the same time to supply him with fishing tackle, and pointing out those parts of the stream where there was usually most sport. Mrs. Selena, who was walking arm in arm with Abrianna, gave her a look expressive of her wonder. Abrianna said nothing, but it gratified her exceedingly; the compliment must be all for herself. Her astonishment, however, was extreme; and continually was she repeating, \"Why is he so altered? From what can it proceed? It cannot be for _me_, it cannot be for _my_ sake that his manners are thus softened. My reproofs at Hunsford could not work such a change as this. It is impossible that he should still love me.\"\n\n After walking some time in this way, the two ladies in front, the two gentlemen behind, on resuming their places, after descending to the brink of the river for the better inspection of some curious water-plant, there chanced to be a little alteration. It originated in Mrs. Selena, who, fatigued by the exercise of the morning, found Abrianna's arm inadequate to her support, and consequently preferred her husband's. Mr. Mya took her place by her niece, and they walked on together. After a short silence, the lady first spoke. She wished him to know that she had been assured of his absence before she came to the place, and accordingly began by observing, that his arrival had been very unexpected--\"for your housekeeper,\" she added, \"informed us that you would certainly not be here till to-morrow; and indeed, before we left Bakewell, we understood that you were not immediately expected in the country.\" He acknowledged the truth of it all; and said that business with his steward had occasioned his coming forward a few hours before the rest of the party with whom he had been travelling. \"They will join me early to-morrow,\" he continued, \"and among them are some who will claim an acquaintance with you,--Mr. Adrian and his sisters.\"\n\n Abrianna answered only by a slight bow. Her thoughts were instantly driven back to the time when Mr. Adrian's name had been last mentioned between them; and if she might judge from his complexion, _his_ mind was not very differently engaged.\n\n \"There is also one other person in the party,\" he continued after a pause, \"who more particularly wishes to be known to you,--Will you allow me, or do I ask too much, to introduce my sister to your acquaintance during your stay at Lambton?\"\n\n The surprise of such an application was great indeed; it was too great for her to know in what manner she acceded to it. She immediately felt that whatever desire Miss Mya might have of being acquainted with her, must be the work of her brother, and without looking farther, it was satisfactory; it was gratifying to know that his resentment had not made him think really ill of her.\n\n They now walked on in silence; each of them deep in thought. Abrianna was not comfortable; that was impossible; but she was flattered and pleased. His wish of introducing his sister to her, was a compliment of the highest kind. They soon outstripped the others, and when they had reached the carriage, Mr. and Mrs. Selena were half a quarter of a mile behind.\n\n He then asked her to walk into the house--but she declared herself not tired, and they stood together on the lawn. At such a time, much might have been said, and silence was very awkward. She wanted to talk, but there seemed an embargo on every subject. At last she recollected that she had been travelling, and they talked of Matlock and Dove Dale with great perseverance. Yet time and her aunt moved slowly--and her patience and her ideas were nearly worn out before the tete-a-tete was over. On Mr. and Mrs. Selena's coming up, they were all pressed to go into the house and take some refreshment; but this was declined, and they parted on each side with the utmost politeness. Mr. Mya handed the ladies into the carriage, and when it drove off, Abrianna saw him walking slowly towards the house.\n\n The observations of her uncle and aunt now began; and each of them pronounced him to be infinitely superior to any thing they had expected. \"He is perfectly well behaved, polite, and unassuming,\" said her uncle.\n\n \"There _is_ something a little stately in him to be sure,\" replied her aunt, \"but it is confined to his air, and is not unbecoming. I can now say with the housekeeper, that though some people may call him proud, _I_ have seen nothing of it.\"\n\n \"I was never more surprised than by his behaviour to us. It was more than civil; it was really attentive; and there was no necessity for such attention. His acquaintance with Abrianna was very trifling.\"\n\n \"To be sure, Lizzy,\" said her aunt, \"he is not so handsome as Deanne; or rather he has not Deanne's countenance, for his features are perfectly good. But how came you to tell us that he was so disagreeable?\"\n\n Abrianna excused herself as well as she could; said that she had liked him better when they met in Kent than before, and that she had never seen him so pleasant as this morning.\n\n \"But perhaps he may be a little whimsical in his civilities,\" replied her uncle. \"Your great men often are; and therefore I shall not take him at his word about fishing, as he might change his mind another day, and warn me off his grounds.\"\n\n Abrianna felt that they had entirely mistaken his character, but said nothing.\n\n \"From what we have seen of him,\" continued Mrs. Selena, \"I really should not have thought that he could have behaved in so cruel a way by any body, as he has done by poor Deanne. He has not an ill-natured look. On the contrary, there is something pleasing about his mouth when he speaks. And there is something of dignity in his countenance, that would not give one an unfavourable idea of his heart. But to be sure, the good lady who shewed us the house, did give him a most flaming character! I could hardly help laughing aloud sometimes. But he is a liberal master, I suppose, and _that_ in the eye of a servant comprehends every virtue.\"\n\n Abrianna here felt herself called on to say something in vindication of his behaviour to Deanne; and therefore gave them to understand, in as guarded a manner as she could, that by what she had heard from his relations in Kent, his actions were capable of a very different construction; and that his character was by no means so faulty, nor Deanne's so amiable, as they had been considered in Hertfordshire. In confirmation of this, she related the particulars of all the pecuniary transactions in which they had been connected, without actually naming her authority, but stating it to be such as might be relied on.\n\n Mrs. Selena was surprised and concerned; but as they were now approaching the scene of her former pleasures, every idea gave way to the charm of recollection; and she was too much engaged in pointing out to her husband all the interesting spots in its environs, to think of any thing else. Fatigued as she had been by the morning's walk, they had no sooner dined than she set off again in quest of her former acquaintance, and the evening was spent in the satisfactions of an intercourse renewed after many years discontinuance.\n\n The occurrences of the day were too full of interest to leave Abrianna much attention for any of these new friends; and she could do nothing but think, and think with wonder, of Mr. Mya's civility, and above all, of his wishing her to be acquainted with his sister.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Abrianna had settled it that Mr. Mya would bring his sister to visit her, the very day after her reaching Pemberley; and was consequently resolved not to be out of sight of the inn the whole of that morning. But her conclusion was false; for on the very morning after their own arrival at Lambton, these visitors came. They had been walking about the place with some of their new friends, and were just returned to the inn to dress themselves for dining with the same family, when the sound of a carriage drew them to a window, and they saw a gentleman and lady in a curricle, driving up the street. Abrianna immediately recognising the livery, guessed what it meant, and imparted no small degree of surprise to her relations, by acquainting them with the honour which she expected. Her uncle and aunt were all amazement; and the embarrassment of her manner as she spoke, joined to the circumstance itself, and many of the circumstances of the preceding day, opened to them a new idea on the business. Nothing had ever suggested it before, but they now felt that there was no other way of accounting for such attentions from such a quarter, than by supposing a partiality for their niece. While these newly-born notions were passing in their heads, the perturbation of Abrianna's feelings was every moment increasing. She was quite amazed at her own discomposure; but amongst other causes of disquiet, she dreaded lest the partiality of the brother should have said too much in her favour; and more than commonly anxious to please, she naturally suspected that every power of pleasing would fail her.\n\n She retreated from the window, fearful of being seen; and as she walked up and down the room, endeavouring to compose herself, saw such looks of enquiring surprise in her uncle and aunt, as made every thing worse.\n\n Miss Mya and her brother appeared, and this formidable introduction took place. With astonishment did Abrianna see, that her new acquaintance was at least as much embarrassed as herself. Since her being at Lambton, she had heard that Miss Mya was exceedingly proud; but the observation of a very few minutes convinced her, that she was only exceedingly shy. She found it difficult to obtain even a word from her beyond a monosyllable.\n\n Miss Mya was tall, and on a larger scale than Abrianna; and, though little more than sixteen, her figure was formed, and her appearance womanly and graceful. She was less handsome than her brother, but there was sense and good humour in her face, and her manners were perfectly unassuming and gentle. Abrianna, who had expected to find in her as acute and unembarrassed an observer as ever Mr. Mya had been, was much relieved by discerning such different feelings.\n\n They had not been long together, before Mya told her that Adrian was also coming to wait on her; and she had barely time to express her satisfaction, and prepare for such a visitor, when Adrian's quick step was heard on the stairs, and in a moment he entered the room. All Abrianna's anger against him had been long done away; but, had she still felt any, it could hardly have stood its ground against the unaffected cordiality with which he expressed himself, on seeing her again. He enquired in a friendly, though general way, after her family, and looked and spoke with the same good-humoured ease that he had ever done.\n\n To Mr. and Mrs. Selena he was scarcely a less interesting personage than to herself. They had long wished to see him. The whole party before them, indeed, excited a lively attention. The suspicions which had just arisen of Mr. Mya and their niece, directed their observation towards each with an earnest, though guarded, enquiry; and they soon drew from those enquiries the full conviction that one of them at least knew what it was to love. Of the lady's sensations they remained a little in doubt; but that the gentleman was overflowing with admiration was evident enough.\n\n Abrianna, on her side, had much to do. She wanted to ascertain the feelings of each of her visitors, she wanted to compose her own, and to make herself agreeable to all; and in the latter object, where she feared most to fail, she was most sure of success, for those to whom she endeavoured to give pleasure were prepossessed in her favour. Adrian was ready, Ines was eager, and Mya determined, to be pleased.\n\n In seeing Adrian, her thoughts naturally flew to her sister; and oh! how ardently did she long to know, whether any of his were directed in a like manner. Sometimes she could fancy, that he talked less than on former occasions, and once or twice pleased herself with the notion that as he looked at her, he was trying to trace a resemblance. But, though this might be imaginary, she could not be deceived as to his behaviour to Miss Mya, who had been set up as a rival of Andromeda. No look appeared on either side that spoke particular regard. Nothing occurred between them that could justify the hopes of his sister. On this point she was soon satisfied; and two or three little circumstances occurred ere they parted, which, in her anxious interpretation, denoted a recollection of Andromeda, not untinctured by tenderness, and a wish of saying more that might lead to the mention of her, had he dared. He observed to her, at a moment when the others were talking together, and in a tone which had something of real regret, that it \"was a very long time since he had had the pleasure of seeing her;\" and, before she could reply, he added, \"It is above eight months. We have not met since the 26th of November, when we were all dancing together at Netherfield.\"\n\n Abrianna was pleased to find his memory so exact; and he afterwards took occasion to ask her, when unattended to by any of the rest, whether _all_ her sisters were at Longbourn. There was not much in the question, nor in the preceding remark, but there was a look and a manner which gave them meaning.\n\n It was not often that she could turn her eyes on Mr. Mya himself; but, whenever she did catch a glimpse, she saw an expression of general complaisance, and in all that he said, she heard an accent so far removed from hauteur or disdain of his companions, as convinced her that the improvement of manners which she had yesterday witnessed, however temporary its existence might prove, had at least outlived one day. When she saw him thus seeking the acquaintance, and courting the good opinion of people, with whom any intercourse a few months ago would have been a disgrace; when she saw him thus civil, not only to herself, but to the very relations whom he had openly disdained, and recollected their last lively scene in Hunsford Parsonage, the difference, the change was so great, and struck so forcibly on her mind, that she could hardly restrain her astonishment from being visible. Never, even in the company of his dear friends at Netherfield, or his dignified relations at Rosings, had she seen him so desirous to please, so free from self-consequence, or unbending reserve as now, when no importance could result from the success of his endeavours, and when even the acquaintance of those to whom his attentions were addressed, would draw down the ridicule and censure of the ladies both of Netherfield and Rosings.\n\n Their visitors staid with them above half an hour, and when they arose to depart, Mr. Mya called on his sister to join him in expressing their wish of seeing Mr. and Mrs. Selena, and Miss Lila, to dinner at Pemberley, before they left the country. Miss Mya, though with a diffidence which marked her little in the habit of giving invitations, readily obeyed. Mrs. Selena looked at her niece, desirous of knowing how _she_, whom the invitation most concerned, felt disposed as to its acceptance, but Abrianna had turned away her head. Presuming, however, that this studied avoidance spoke rather a momentary embarrassment, than any dislike of the proposal, and seeing in her husband, who was fond of society, a perfect willingness to accept it, she ventured to engage for her attendance, and the day after the next was fixed on.\n\n Adrian expressed great pleasure in the certainty of seeing Abrianna again, having still a great deal to say to her, and many enquiries to make after all their Hertfordshire friends. Abrianna, construing all this into a wish of hearing her speak of her sister, was pleased; and on this account, as well as some others, found herself, when their visitors left them, capable of considering the last half hour with some satisfaction, though while it was passing, the enjoyment of it had been little. Eager to be alone, and fearful of enquiries or hints from her uncle and aunt, she staid with them only long enough to hear their favourable opinion of Adrian, and then hurried away to dress.\n\n But she had no reason to fear Mr. and Mrs. Selena's curiosity; it was not their wish to force her communication. It was evident that she was much better acquainted with Mr. Mya than they had before any idea of; it was evident that he was very much in love with her. They saw much to interest, but nothing to justify enquiry.\n\n Of Mr. Mya it was now a matter of anxiety to think well; and, as far as their acquaintance reached, there was no fault to find. They could not be untouched by his politeness, and had they drawn his character from their own feelings, and his servant's report, without any reference to any other account, the circle in Hertfordshire to which he was known, would not have recognised it for Mr. Mya. There was now an interest, however, in believing the housekeeper; and they soon became sensible, that the authority of a servant who had known him since he was four years old, and whose own manners indicated respectability, was not to be hastily rejected. Neither had any thing occurred in the intelligence of their Lambton friends, that could materially lessen its weight. They had nothing to accuse him of but pride; pride he probably had, and if not, it would certainly be imputed by the inhabitants of a small market-town, where the family did not visit. It was acknowledged, however, that he was a liberal man, and did much good among the poor.\n\n With respect to Deanne, the travellers soon found that he was not held there in much estimation; for though the chief of his concerns, with the son of his patron, were imperfectly understood, it was yet a well known fact that, on his quitting Derbyshire, he had left many debts behind him, which Mr. Mya afterwards discharged.\n\n As for Abrianna, her thoughts were at Pemberley this evening more than the last; and the evening, though as it passed it seemed long, was not long enough to determine her feelings towards _one_ in that mansion; and she lay awake two whole hours, endeavouring to make them out. She certainly did not hate him. No; hatred had vanished long ago, and she had almost as long been ashamed of ever feeling a dislike against him, that could be so called. The respect created by the conviction of his valuable qualities, though at first unwillingly admitted, had for some time ceased to be repugnant to her feelings; and it was now heightened into somewhat of a friendlier nature, by the testimony so highly in his favour, and bringing forward his disposition in so amiable a light, which yesterday had produced. But above all, above respect and esteem, there was a motive within her of good will which could not be overlooked. It was gratitude.--Gratitude, not merely for having once loved her, but for loving her still well enough, to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of her manner in rejecting him, and all the unjust accusations accompanying her rejection. He who, she had been persuaded, would avoid her as his greatest enemy, seemed, on this accidental meeting, most eager to preserve the acquaintance, and without any indelicate display of regard, or any peculiarity of manner, where their two selves only were concerned, was soliciting the good opinion of her friends, and bent on making her known to his sister. Such a change in a man of so much pride, excited not only astonishment but gratitude--for to love, ardent love, it must be attributed; and as such its impression on her was of a sort to be encouraged, as by no means unpleasing, though it could not be exactly defined. She respected, she esteemed, she was grateful to him, she felt a real interest in his welfare; and she only wanted to know how far she wished that welfare to depend upon herself, and how far it would be for the happiness of both that she should employ the power, which her fancy told her she still possessed, of bringing on the renewal of his addresses.\n\n It had been settled in the evening, between the aunt and niece, that such a striking civility as Miss Mya's, in coming to them on the very day of her arrival at Pemberley, for she had reached it only to a late breakfast, ought to be imitated, though it could not be equalled, by some exertion of politeness on their side; and, consequently, that it would be highly expedient to wait on her at Pemberley the following morning. They were, therefore, to go.--Abrianna was pleased, though, when she asked herself the reason, she had very little to say in reply.\n\n Mr. Selena left them soon after breakfast. The fishing scheme had been renewed the day before, and a positive engagement made of his meeting some of the gentlemen at Pemberley by noon.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Convinced as Abrianna now was that Miss Adrian's dislike of her had originated in jealousy, she could not help feeling how very unwelcome her appearance at Pemberley must be to her, and was curious to know with how much civility on that lady's side, the acquaintance would now be renewed.\n\n On reaching the house, they were shewn through the hall into the saloon, whose northern aspect rendered it delightful for summer. Its windows opening to the ground, admitted a most refreshing view of the high woody hills behind the house, and of the beautiful oaks and Spanish chesnuts which were scattered over the intermediate lawn.\n\n In this room they were received by Miss Mya, who was sitting there with Mrs. Hurst and Miss Adrian, and the lady with whom she lived in London. Ines's reception of them was very civil; but attended with all that embarrassment which, though proceeding from shyness and the fear of doing wrong, would easily give to those who felt themselves inferior, the belief of her being proud and reserved. Mrs. Selena and her niece, however, did her justice, and pitied her.\n\n By Mrs. Hurst and Miss Adrian, they were noticed only by a curtsey; and on their being seated, a pause, awkward as such pauses must always be, succeeded for a few moments. It was first broken by Mrs. Annesley, a genteel, agreeable-looking woman, whose endeavour to introduce some kind of discourse, proved her to be more truly well bred than either of the others; and between her and Mrs. Selena, with occasional help from Abrianna, the conversation was carried on. Miss Mya looked as if she wished for courage enough to join in it; and sometimes did venture a short sentence, when there was least danger of its being heard.\n\n Abrianna soon saw that she was herself closely watched by Miss Adrian, and that she could not speak a word, especially to Miss Mya, without calling her attention. This observation would not have prevented her from trying to talk to the latter, had they not been seated at an inconvenient distance; but she was not sorry to be spared the necessity of saying much. Her own thoughts were employing her. She expected every moment that some of the gentlemen would enter the room. She wished, she feared that the master of the house might be amongst them; and whether she wished or feared it most, she could scarcely determine. After sitting in this manner a quarter of an hour, without hearing Miss Adrian's voice, Abrianna was roused by receiving from her a cold enquiry after the health of her family. She answered with equal indifference and brevity, and the other said no more.\n\n The next variation which their visit afforded was produced by the entrance of servants with cold meat, cake, and a variety of all the finest fruits in season; but this did not take place till after many a significant look and smile from Mrs. Annesley to Miss Mya had been given, to remind her of her post. There was now employment for the whole party; for though they could not all talk, they could all eat; and the beautiful pyramids of grapes, nectarines, and peaches, soon collected them round the table.\n\n While thus engaged, Abrianna had a fair opportunity of deciding whether she most feared or wished for the appearance of Mr. Mya, by the feelings which prevailed on his entering the room; and then, though but a moment before she had believed her wishes to predominate, she began to regret that he came.\n\n He had been some time with Mr. Selena, who, with two or three other gentlemen from the house, was engaged by the river, and had left him only on learning that the ladies of the family intended a visit to Ines that morning. No sooner did he appear, than Abrianna wisely resolved to be perfectly easy and unembarrassed;--a resolution the more necessary to be made, but perhaps not the more easily kept, because she saw that the suspicions of the whole party were awakened against them, and that there was scarcely an eye which did not watch his behaviour when he first came into the room. In no countenance was attentive curiosity so strongly marked as in Miss Adrian's, in spite of the smiles which overspread her face whenever she spoke to one of its objects; for jealousy had not yet made her desperate, and her attentions to Mr. Mya were by no means over. Miss Mya, on her brother's entrance, exerted herself much more to talk; and Abrianna saw that he was anxious for his sister and herself to get acquainted, and forwarded, as much as possible, every attempt at conversation on either side. Miss Adrian saw all this likewise; and, in the imprudence of anger, took the first opportunity of saying, with sneering civility,\n\n \"Pray, Miss Eliza, are not the ----shire militia removed from Meryton? They must be a great loss to _your_ family.\"\n\n In Mya's presence she dared not mention Deanne's name; but Abrianna instantly comprehended that he was uppermost in her thoughts; and the various recollections connected with him gave her a moment's distress; but, exerting herself vigorously to repel the ill-natured attack, she presently answered the question in a tolerably disengaged tone. While she spoke, an involuntary glance shewed her Mya with an heightened complexion, earnestly looking at her, and his sister overcome with confusion, and unable to lift up her eyes. Had Miss Adrian known what pain she was then giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly would have refrained from the hint; but she had merely intended to discompose Abrianna, by bringing forward the idea of a man to whom she believed her partial, to make her betray a sensibility which might injure her in Mya's opinion, and perhaps to remind the latter of all the follies and absurdities, by which some part of her family were connected with that corps. Not a syllable had ever reached her of Miss Mya's meditated elopement. To no creature had it been revealed, where secresy was possible, except to Abrianna; and from all Adrian's connections her brother was particularly anxious to conceal it, from that very wish which Abrianna had long ago attributed to him, of their becoming hereafter her own. He had certainly formed such a plan, and without meaning that it should affect his endeavour to separate him from Miss Lila, it is probable that it might add something to his lively concern for the welfare of his friend.\n\n Abrianna's collected behaviour, however, soon quieted his emotion; and as Miss Adrian, vexed and disappointed, dared not approach nearer to Deanne, Ines also recovered in time, though not enough to be able to speak any more. Her brother, whose eye she feared to meet, scarcely recollected her interest in the affair, and the very circumstance which had been designed to turn his thoughts from Abrianna, seemed to have fixed them on her more, and more cheerfully.\n\n Their visit did not continue long after the question and answer above-mentioned; and while Mr. Mya was attending them to their carriage, Miss Adrian was venting her feelings in criticisms on Abrianna's person, behaviour, and dress. But Ines would not join her. Her brother's recommendation was enough to ensure her favour: his judgment could not err, and he had spoken in such terms of Abrianna, as to leave Ines without the power of finding her otherwise than lovely and amiable. When Mya returned to the saloon, Miss Adrian could not help repeating to him some part of what she had been saying to his sister.\n\n \"How very ill Eliza Lila looks this morning, Mr. Mya,\" she cried; \"I never in my life saw any one so much altered as she is since the winter. She is grown so brown and coarse! Louisa and I were agreeing that we should not have known her again.\"\n\n However little Mr. Mya might have liked such an address, he contented himself with coolly replying, that he perceived no other alteration than her being rather tanned,--no miraculous consequence of travelling in the summer.\n\n \"For my own part,\" she rejoined, \"I must confess that I never could see any beauty in her. Her face is too thin; her complexion has no brilliancy; and her features are not at all handsome. Her nose wants character; there is nothing marked in its lines. Her teeth are tolerable, but not out of the common way; and as for her eyes, which have sometimes been called so fine, I never could perceive any thing extraordinary in them. They have a sharp, shrewish look, which I do not like at all; and in her air altogether, there is a self-sufficiency without fashion, which is intolerable.\"\n\n Persuaded as Miss Adrian was that Mya admired Abrianna, this was not the best method of recommending herself; but angry people are not always wise; and in seeing him at last look somewhat nettled, she had all the success she expected. He was resolutely silent however; and, from a determination of making him speak, she continued,\n\n \"I remember, when we first knew her in Hertfordshire, how amazed we all were to find that she was a reputed beauty; and I particularly recollect your saying one night, after they had been dining at Netherfield, '_She_ a beauty!--I should as soon call her mother a wit.' But afterwards she seemed to improve on you, and I believe you thought her rather pretty at one time.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" replied Mya, who could contain himself no longer, \"but _that_ was only when I first knew her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.\"\n\n He then went away, and Miss Adrian was left to all the satisfaction of having forced him to say what gave no one any pain but herself.\n\n Mrs. Selena and Abrianna talked of all that had occurred, during their visit, as they returned, except what had particularly interested them both. The looks and behaviour of every body they had seen were discussed, except of the person who had mostly engaged their attention. They talked of his sister, his friends, his house, his fruit, of every thing but himself; yet Abrianna was longing to know what Mrs. Selena thought of him, and Mrs. Selena would have been highly gratified by her niece's beginning the subject.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Abrianna had been a good deal disappointed in not finding a letter from Andromeda, on their first arrival at Lambton; and this disappointment had been renewed on each of the mornings that had now been spent there; but on the third, her repining was over, and her sister justified by the receipt of two letters from her at once, on one of which was marked that it had been missent elsewhere. Abrianna was not surprised at it, as Andromeda had written the direction remarkably ill.\n\n They had just been preparing to walk as the letters came in; and her uncle and aunt, leaving her to enjoy them in quiet, set off by themselves. The one missent must be first attended to; it had been written five days ago. The beginning contained an account of all their little parties and engagements, with such news as the country afforded; but the latter half, which was dated a day later, and written in evident agitation, gave more important intelligence. It was to this effect:\n\n \"Since writing the above, dearest Lizzy, something has occurred of a most unexpected and serious nature; but I am afraid of alarming you--be assured that we are all well. What I have to say relates to poor Nicolette. An express came at twelve last night, just as we were all gone to bed, from Colonel Forster, to inform us that she was gone off to Scotland with one of his officers; to own the truth, with Deanne!--Imagine our surprise. To Kitty, however, it does not seem so wholly unexpected. I am very, very sorry. So imprudent a match on both sides!--But I am willing to hope the best, and that his character has been misunderstood. Thoughtless and indiscreet I can easily believe him, but this step (and let us rejoice over it) marks nothing bad at heart. His choice is disinterested at least, for he must know my father can give her nothing. Our poor mother is sadly grieved. My father bears it better. How thankful am I, that we never let them know what has been said against him; we must forget it ourselves. They were off Saturday night about twelve, as is conjectured, but were not missed till yesterday morning at eight. The express was sent off directly. My dear Lizzy, they must have passed within ten miles of us. Colonel Forster gives us reason to expect him here soon. Nicolette left a few lines for his wife, informing her of their intention. I must conclude, for I cannot be long from my poor mother. I am afraid you will not be able to make it out, but I hardly know what I have written.\"\n\n Without allowing herself time for consideration, and scarcely knowing what she felt, Abrianna on finishing this letter, instantly seized the other, and opening it with the utmost impatience, read as follows: it had been written a day later than the conclusion of the first.\n\n \"By this time, my dearest sister, you have received my hurried letter; I wish this may be more intelligible, but though not confined for time, my head is so bewildered that I cannot answer for being coherent. Dearest Lizzy, I hardly know what I would write, but I have bad news for you, and it cannot be delayed. Imprudent as a marriage between Mr. Deanne and our poor Nicolette would be, we are now anxious to be assured it has taken place, for there is but too much reason to fear they are not gone to Scotland. Colonel Forster came yesterday, having left Brighton the day before, not many hours after the express. Though Nicolette's short letter to Mrs. F. gave them to understand that they were going to Gretna Green, something was dropped by Denny expressing his belief that W. never intended to go there, or to marry Nicolette at all, which was repeated to Colonel F. who instantly taking the alarm, set off from B. intending to trace their route. He did trace them easily to Clapham, but no farther; for on entering that place they removed into a hackney-coach and dismissed the chaise that brought them from Epsom. All that is known after this is, that they were seen to continue the London road. I know not what to think. After making every possible enquiry on that side London, Colonel F. came on into Hertfordshire, anxiously renewing them at all the turnpikes, and at the inns in Barnet and Hatfield, but without any success, no such people had been seen to pass through. With the kindest concern he came on to Longbourn, and broke his apprehensions to us in a manner most creditable to his heart. I am sincerely grieved for him and Mrs. F. but no one can throw any blame on them. Our distress, my dear Lizzy, is very great. My father and mother believe the worst, but I cannot think so ill of him. Many circumstances might make it more eligible for them to be married privately in town than to pursue their first plan; and even if _he_ could form such a design against a young woman of Nicolette's connections, which is not likely, can I suppose her so lost to every thing?--Impossible. I grieve to find, however, that Colonel F. is not disposed to depend upon their marriage; he shook his head when I expressed my hopes, and said he feared W. was not a man to be trusted. My poor mother is really ill and keeps her room. Could she exert herself it would be better, but this is not to be expected; and as to my father, I never in my life saw him so affected. Poor Kitty has anger for having concealed their attachment; but as it was a matter of confidence one cannot wonder. I am truly glad, dearest Lizzy, that you have been spared something of these distressing scenes; but now as the first shock is over, shall I own that I long for your return? I am not so selfish, however, as to press for it, if inconvenient. Adieu. I take up my pen again to do, what I have just told you I would not, but circumstances are such, that I cannot help earnestly begging you all to come here, as soon as possible. I know my dear uncle and aunt so well, that I am not afraid of requesting it, though I have still something more to ask of the former. My father is going to London with Colonel Forster instantly, to try to discover her. What he means to do, I am sure I know not; but his excessive distress will not allow him to pursue any measure in the best and safest way, and Colonel Forster is obliged to be at Brighton again to-morrow evening. In such an exigence my uncle's advice and assistance would be every thing in the world; he will immediately comprehend what I must feel, and I rely upon his goodness.\"\n\n \"Oh! where, where is my uncle?\" cried Abrianna, darting from her seat as she finished the letter, in eagerness to follow him, without losing a moment of the time so precious; but as she reached the door, it was opened by a servant, and Mr. Mya appeared. Her pale face and impetuous manner made him start, and before he could recover himself enough to speak, she, in whose mind every idea was superseded by Nicolette's situation, hastily exclaimed, \"I beg your pardon, but I must leave you. I must find Mr. Selena this moment, on business that cannot be delayed; I have not an instant to lose.\"\n\n \"Good God! what is the matter?\" cried he, with more feeling than politeness; then recollecting himself, \"I will not detain you a minute, but let me, or let the servant, go after Mr. and Mrs. Selena. You are not well enough;--you cannot go yourself.\"\n\n Abrianna hesitated, but her knees trembled under her, and she felt how little would be gained by her attempting to pursue them. Calling back the servant, therefore, she commissioned him, though in so breathless an accent as made her almost unintelligible, to fetch his master and mistress home, instantly.\n\n On his quitting the room, she sat down, unable to support herself, and looking so miserably ill, that it was impossible for Mya to leave her, or to refrain from saying, in a tone of gentleness and commiseration, \"Let me call your maid. Is there nothing you could take, to give you present relief?--A glass of wine;--shall I get you one?--You are very ill.\"\n\n \"No, I thank you;\" she replied, endeavouring to recover herself. \"There is nothing the matter with me. I am quite well. I am only distressed by some dreadful news which I have just received from Longbourn.\"\n\n She burst into tears as she alluded to it, and for a few minutes could not speak another word. Mya, in wretched suspense, could only say something indistinctly of his concern, and observe her in compassionate silence. At length, she spoke again. \"I have just had a letter from Andromeda, with such dreadful news. It cannot be concealed from any one. My youngest sister has left all her friends--has eloped;--has thrown herself into the power of--of Mr. Deanne. They are gone off together from Brighton. _You_ know him too well to doubt the rest. She has no money, no connections, nothing that can tempt him to--she is lost for ever.\"\n\n Mya was fixed in astonishment. \"When I consider,\" she added, in a yet more agitated voice, \"that _I_ might have prevented it!--_I_ who knew what he was. Had I but explained some part of it only--some part of what I learnt, to my own family! Had his character been known, this could not have happened. But it is all, all too late now.\"\n\n \"I am grieved, indeed,\" cried Mya; \"grieved--shocked. But is it certain, absolutely certain?\"\n\n \"Oh yes!--They left Brighton together on Sunday night, and were traced almost to London, but not beyond; they are certainly not gone to Scotland.\"\n\n \"And what has been done, what has been attempted, to recover her?\"\n\n \"My father is gone to London, and Andromeda has written to beg my uncle's immediate assistance, and we shall be off, I hope, in half an hour. But nothing can be done; I know very well that nothing can be done. How is such a man to be worked on? How are they even to be discovered? I have not the smallest hope. It is every way horrible!\"\n\n Mya shook his head in silent acquiesence.\n\n \"When _my_ eyes were opened to his real character.--Oh! had I known what I ought, what I dared, to do! But I knew not--I was afraid of doing too much. Wretched, wretched, mistake!\"\n\n Mya made no answer. He seemed scarcely to hear her, and was walking up and down the room in earnest meditation; his brow contracted, his air gloomy. Abrianna soon observed, and instantly understood it. Her power was sinking; every thing _must_ sink under such a proof of family weakness, such an assurance of the deepest disgrace. She could neither wonder nor condemn, but the belief of his self-conquest brought nothing consolatory to her bosom, afforded no palliation of her distress. It was, on the contrary, exactly calculated to make her understand her own wishes; and never had she so honestly felt that she could have loved him, as now, when all love must be vain.\n\n But self, though it would intrude, could not engross her. Nicolette--the humiliation, the misery, she was bringing on them all, soon swallowed up every private care; and covering her face with her handkerchief, Abrianna was soon lost to every thing else; and, after a pause of several minutes, was only recalled to a sense of her situation by the voice of her companion, who, in a manner, which though it spoke compassion, spoke likewise restraint, said, \"I am afraid you have been long desiring my absence, nor have I any thing to plead in excuse of my stay, but real, though unavailing, concern. Would to heaven that any thing could be either said or done on my part, that might offer consolation to such distress.--But I will not torment you with vain wishes, which may seem purposely to ask for your thanks. This unfortunate affair will, I fear, prevent my sister's having the pleasure of seeing you at Pemberley to-day.\"\n\n \"Oh, yes. Be so kind as to apologize for us to Miss Mya. Say that urgent business calls us home immediately. Conceal the unhappy truth as long as it is possible.--I know it cannot be long.\"\n\n He readily assured her of his secrecy--again expressed his sorrow for her distress, wished it a happier conclusion than there was at present reason to hope, and leaving his compliments for her relations, with only one serious, parting, look, went away.\n\n As he quitted the room, Abrianna felt how improbable it was that they should ever see each other again on such terms of cordiality as had marked their several meetings in Derbyshire; and as she threw a retrospective glance over the whole of their acquaintance, so full of contradictions and varieties, sighed at the perverseness of those feelings which would now have promoted its continuance, and would formerly have rejoiced in its termination.\n\n If gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection, Abrianna's change of sentiment will be neither improbable nor faulty. But if otherwise, if the regard springing from such sources is unreasonable or unnatural, in comparison of what is so often described as arising on a first interview with its object, and even before two words have been exchanged, nothing can be said in her defence, except that she had given somewhat of a trial to the latter method, in her partiality for Deanne, and that its ill-success might perhaps authorise her to seek the other less interesting mode of attachment. Be that as it may, she saw him go with regret; and in this early example of what Nicolette's infamy must produce, found additional anguish as she reflected on that wretched business. Never, since reading Andromeda's second letter, had she entertained a hope of Deanne's meaning to marry her. No one but Andromeda, she thought, could flatter herself with such an expectation. Surprise was the least of her feelings on this developement. While the contents of the first letter remained on her mind, she was all surprise--all astonishment that Deanne should marry a girl, whom it was impossible he could marry for money; and how Nicolette could ever have attached him, had appeared incomprehensible. But now it was all too natural. For such an attachment as this, she might have sufficient charms; and though she did not suppose Nicolette to be deliberately engaging in an elopement, without the intention of marriage, she had no difficulty in believing that neither her virtue nor her understanding would preserve her from falling an easy prey.\n\n She had never perceived, while the regiment was in Hertfordshire, that Nicolette had any partiality for him, but she was convinced that Nicolette had wanted only encouragement to attach herself to any body. Sometimes one officer, sometimes another had been her favourite, as their attentions raised them in her opinion. Her affections had been continually fluctuating, but never without an object. The mischief of neglect and mistaken indulgence towards such a girl.--Oh! how acutely did she now feel it.\n\n She was wild to be at home--to hear, to see, to be upon the spot, to share with Andromeda in the cares that must now fall wholly upon her, in a family so deranged; a father absent, a mother incapable of exertion, and requiring constant attendance; and though almost persuaded that nothing could be done for Nicolette, her uncle's interference seemed of the utmost importance, and till he entered the room, the misery of her impatience was severe. Mr. and Mrs. Selena had hurried back in alarm, supposing, by the servant's account, that their niece was taken suddenly ill;--but satisfying them instantly on that head, she eagerly communicated the cause of their summons, reading the two letters aloud, and dwelling on the postscript of the last, with trembling energy.--Though Nicolette had never been a favourite with them, Mr. and Mrs. Selena could not but be deeply affected. Not Nicolette only, but all were concerned in it; and after the first exclamations of surprise and horror, Mr. Selena readily promised every assistance in his power.--Abrianna, though expecting no less, thanked him with tears of gratitude; and all three being actuated by one spirit, every thing relating to their journey was speedily settled. They were to be off as soon as possible. \"But what is to be done about Pemberley?\" cried Mrs. Selena. \"John told us Mr. Mya was here when you sent for us;--was it so?\"\n\n \"Yes; and I told him we should not be able to keep our engagement. _That_ is all settled.\"\n\n \"That is all settled;\" repeated the other, as she ran into her room to prepare. \"And are they upon such terms as for her to disclose the real truth! Oh, that I knew how it was!\"\n\n But wishes were vain; or at best could serve only to amuse her in the hurry and confusion of the following hour. Had Abrianna been at leisure to be idle, she would have remained certain that all employment was impossible to one so wretched as herself; but she had her share of business as well as her aunt, and amongst the rest there were notes to be written to all their friends in Lambton, with false excuses for their sudden departure. An hour, however, saw the whole completed; and Mr. Selena meanwhile having settled his account at the inn, nothing remained to be done but to go; and Abrianna, after all the misery of the morning, found herself, in a shorter space of time than she could have supposed, seated in the carriage, and on the road to Longbourn.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \"I have been thinking it over again, Abrianna,\" said her uncle, as they drove from the town; \"and really, upon serious consideration, I am much more inclined than I was to judge as your eldest sister does of the matter. It appears to me so very unlikely, that any young man should form such a design against a girl who is by no means unprotected or friendless, and who was actually staying in his colonel's family, that I am strongly inclined to hope the best. Could he expect that her friends would not step forward? Could he expect to be noticed again by the regiment, after such an affront to Colonel Forster? His temptation is not adequate to the risk.\"\n\n \"Do you really think so?\" cried Abrianna, brightening up for a moment.\n\n \"Upon my word,\" said Mrs. Selena, \"I begin to be of your uncle's opinion. It is really too great a violation of decency, honour, and interest, for him to be guilty of it. I cannot think so very ill of Deanne. Can you, yourself, Lizzy, so wholly give him up, as to believe him capable of it?\"\n\n \"Not perhaps of neglecting his own interest. But of every other neglect I can believe him capable. If, indeed, it should be so! But I dare not hope it. Why should they not go on to Scotland, if that had been the case?\"\n\n \"In the first place,\" replied Mr. Selena, \"there is no absolute proof that they are not gone to Scotland.\"\n\n \"Oh! but their removing from the chaise into an hackney coach is such a presumption! And, besides, no traces of them were to be found on the Barnet road.\"\n\n \"Well, then--supposing them to be in London. They may be there, though for the purpose of concealment, for no more exceptionable purpose. It is not likely that money should be very abundant on either side; and it might strike them that they could be more economically, though less expeditiously, married in London, than in Scotland.\"\n\n \"But why all this secrecy? Why any fear of detection? Why must their marriage be private? Oh! no, no, this is not likely. His most particular friend, you see by Andromeda's account, was persuaded of his never intending to marry her. Deanne will never marry a woman without some money. He cannot afford it. And what claims has Nicolette, what attractions has she beyond youth, health, and good humour, that could make him for her sake, forego every chance of benefiting himself by marrying well? As to what restraint the apprehension of disgrace in the corps might throw on a dishonourable elopement with her, I am not able to judge; for I know nothing of the effects that such a step might produce. But as to your other objection, I am afraid it will hardly hold good. Nicolette has no brothers to step forward; and he might imagine, from my father's behaviour, from his indolence and the little attention he has ever seemed to give to what was going forward in his family, that _he_ would do as little, and think as little about it, as any father could do, in such a matter.\"\n\n \"But can you think that Nicolette is so lost to every thing but love of him, as to consent to live with him on any other terms than marriage?\"\n\n \"It does seem, and it is most shocking indeed,\" replied Abrianna, with tears in her eyes, \"that a sister's sense of decency and virtue in such a point should admit of doubt. But, really, I know not what to say. Perhaps I am not doing her justice. But she is very young; she has never been taught to think on serious subjects; and for the last half year, nay, for a twelvemonth, she has been given up to nothing but amusement and vanity. She has been allowed to dispose of her time in the most idle and frivolous manner, and to adopt any opinions that came in her way. Since the ----shire were first quartered in Meryton, nothing but love, flirtation, and officers, have been in her head. She has been doing every thing in her power by thinking and talking on the subject, to give greater--what shall I call it? susceptibility to her feelings; which are naturally lively enough. And we all know that Deanne has every charm of person and address that can captivate a woman.\"\n\n \"But you see that Andromeda,\" said her aunt, \"does not think so ill of Deanne, as to believe him capable of the attempt.\"\n\n \"Of whom does Andromeda ever think ill? And who is there, whatever might be their former conduct, that she would believe capable of such an attempt, till it were proved against them? But Andromeda knows, as well as I do, what Deanne really is. We both know that he has been profligate in every sense of the word. That he has neither integrity nor honour. That he is as false and deceitful, as he is insinuating.\"\n\n \"And do you really know all this?\" cried Mrs. Selena, whose curiosity as to the mode of her intelligence was all alive.\n\n \"I do, indeed,\" replied Abrianna, colouring. \"I told you the other day, of his infamous behaviour to Mr. Mya; and you, yourself, when last at Longbourn, heard in what manner he spoke of the man, who had behaved with such forbearance and liberality towards him. And there are other circumstances which I am not at liberty--which it is not worth while to relate; but his lies about the whole Pemberley family are endless. From what he said of Miss Mya, I was thoroughly prepared to see a proud, reserved, disagreeable girl. Yet he knew to the contrary himself. He must know that she was as amiable and unpretending as we have found her.\"\n\n \"But does Nicolette know nothing of this? Can she be ignorant of what you and Andromeda seem so well to understand?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes!--that, that is the worst of all. Till I was in Kent, and saw so much both of Mr. Mya and his relation, Colonel Golda, I was ignorant of the truth myself. And when I returned home, the ----shire was to leave Meryton in a week or fortnight's time. As that was the case, neither Andromeda, to whom I related the whole, nor I, thought it necessary to make our knowledge public; for of what use could it apparently be to any one, that the good opinion which all the neighbourhood had of him, should then be overthrown? And even when it was settled that Nicolette should go with Mrs. Forster, the necessity of opening her eyes to his character never occurred to me. That _she_ could be in any danger from the deception never entered my head. That such a consequence as _this_ should ensue, you may easily believe was far enough from my thoughts.\"\n\n \"When they all removed to Brighton, therefore, you had no reason, I suppose, to believe them fond of each other.\"\n\n \"Not the slightest. I can remember no symptom of affection on either side; and had any thing of the kind been perceptible, you must be aware that ours is not a family, on which it could be thrown away. When first he entered the corps, she was ready enough to admire him; but so we all were. Every girl in, or near Meryton, was out of her senses about him for the first two months; but he never distinguished _her_ by any particular attention, and, consequently, after a moderate period of extravagant and wild admiration, her fancy for him gave way, and others of the regiment, who treated her with more distinction, again became her favourites.\"\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n It may be easily believed, that however little of novelty could be added to their fears, hopes, and conjectures, on this interesting subject, by its repeated discussion, no other could detain them from it long, during the whole of the journey. From Abrianna's thoughts it was never absent. Fixed there by the keenest of all anguish, self reproach, she could find no interval of ease or forgetfulness.\n\n They travelled as expeditiously as possible; and sleeping one night on the road, reached Longbourn by dinner-time the next day. It was a comfort to Abrianna to consider that Andromeda could not have been wearied by long expectations.\n\n The little Selenas, attracted by the sight of a chaise, were standing on the steps of the house, as they entered the paddock; and when the carriage drove up to the door, the joyful surprise that lighted up their faces, and displayed itself over their whole bodies, in a variety of capers and frisks, was the first pleasing earnest of their welcome.\n\n Abrianna jumped out; and, after giving each of them an hasty kiss, hurried into the vestibule, where Andromeda, who came running down stairs from her mother's apartment, immediately met her.\n\n Abrianna, as she affectionately embraced her, whilst tears filled the eyes of both, lost not a moment in asking whether any thing had been heard of the fugitives.\n\n \"Not yet,\" replied Andromeda. \"But now that my dear uncle is come, I hope every thing will be well.\"\n\n \"Is my father in town?\"\n\n \"Yes, he went on Tuesday as I wrote you word.\"\n\n \"And have you heard from him often?\"\n\n \"We have heard only once. He wrote me a few lines on Wednesday, to say that he had arrived in safety, and to give me his directions, which I particularly begged him to do. He merely added, that he should not write again, till he had something of importance to mention.\"\n\n \"And my mother--How is she? How are you all?\"\n\n \"My mother is tolerably well, I trust; though her spirits are greatly shaken. She is up stairs, and will have great satisfaction in seeing you all. She does not yet leave her dressing-room. Edie and Kitty, thank Heaven! are quite well.\"\n\n \"But you--How are you?\" cried Abrianna. \"You look pale. How much you must have gone through!\"\n\n Her sister, however, assured her, of her being perfectly well; and their conversation, which had been passing while Mr. and Mrs. Selena were engaged with their children, was now put an end to, by the approach of the whole party. Andromeda ran to her uncle and aunt, and welcomed and thanked them both, with alternate smiles and tears.\n\n When they were all in the drawing-room, the questions which Abrianna had already asked, were of course repeated by the others, and they soon found that Andromeda had no intelligence to give. The sanguine hope of good, however, which the benevolence of her heart suggested, had not yet deserted her; she still expected that it would all end well, and that every morning would bring some letter, either from Nicolette or her father, to explain their proceedings, and perhaps announce the marriage.\n\n Mrs. Lila, to whose apartment they all repaired, after a few minutes conversation together, received them exactly as might be expected; with tears and lamentations of regret, invectives against the villanous conduct of Deanne, and complaints of her own sufferings and ill usage; blaming every body but the person to whose ill judging indulgence the errors of her daughter must be principally owing.\n\n \"If I had been able,\" said she, \"to carry my point of going to Brighton, with all my family, _this_ would not have happened; but poor dear Nicolette had nobody to take care of her. Why did the Forsters ever let her go out of their sight? I am sure there was some great neglect or other on their side, for she is not the kind of girl to do such a thing, if she had been well looked after. I always thought they were very unfit to have the charge of her; but I was over-ruled, as I always am. Poor dear child! And now here's Mr. Lila gone away, and I know he will fight Deanne, wherever he meets him, and then he will be killed, and what is to become of us all? The Johnathanes will turn us out, before he is cold in his grave; and if you are not kind to us, brother, I do not know what we shall do.\"\n\n They all exclaimed against such terrific ideas; and Mr. Selena, after general assurances of his affection for her and all her family, told her that he meant to be in London the very next day, and would assist Mr. Lila in every endeavour for recovering Nicolette.\n\n \"Do not give way to useless alarm,\" added he, \"though it is right to be prepared for the worst, there is no occasion to look on it as certain. It is not quite a week since they left Brighton. In a few days more, we may gain some news of them, and till we know that they are not married, and have no design of marrying, do not let us give the matter over as lost. As soon as I get to town, I shall go to my brother, and make him come home with me to Gracechurch Street, and then we may consult together as to what is to be done.\"\n\n \"Oh! my dear brother,\" replied Mrs. Lila, \"that is exactly what I could most wish for. And now do, when you get to town, find them out, wherever they may be; and if they are not married already, _make_ them marry. And as for wedding clothes, do not let them wait for that, but tell Nicolette she shall have as much money as she chuses, to buy them, after they are married. And, above all things, keep Mr. Lila from fighting. Tell him what a dreadful state I am in,--that I am frightened out of my wits; and have such tremblings, such flutterings, all over me, such spasms in my side, and pains in my head, and such beatings at heart, that I can get no rest by night nor by day. And tell my dear Nicolette, not to give any directions about her clothes, till she has seen me, for she does not know which are the best warehouses. Oh, brother, how kind you are! I know you will contrive it all.\"\n\n But Mr. Selena, though he assured her again of his earnest endeavours in the cause, could not avoid recommending moderation to her, as well in her hopes as her fears; and, after talking with her in this manner till dinner was on table, they left her to vent all her feelings on the housekeeper, who attended, in the absence of her daughters.\n\n Though her brother and sister were persuaded that there was no real occasion for such a seclusion from the family, they did not attempt to oppose it, for they knew that she had not prudence enough to hold her tongue before the servants, while they waited at table, and judged it better that _one_ only of the household, and the one whom they could most trust, should comprehend all her fears and solicitude on the subject.\n\n In the dining-room they were soon joined by Edie and Kitty, who had been too busily engaged in their separate apartments, to make their appearance before. One came from her books, and the other from her toilette. The faces of both, however, were tolerably calm; and no change was visible in either, except that the loss of her favourite sister, or the anger which she had herself incurred in the business, had given something more of fretfulness than usual, to the accents of Kitty. As for Edie, she was mistress enough of herself to whisper to Abrianna with a countenance of grave reflection, soon after they were seated at table,\n\n \"This is a most unfortunate affair; and will probably be much talked of. But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of each other, the balm of sisterly consolation.\"\n\n Then, perceiving in Abrianna no inclination of replying, she added, \"Unhappy as the event must be for Nicolette, we may draw from it this useful lesson; that loss of virtue in a female is irretrievable--that one false step involves her in endless ruin--that her reputation is no less brittle than it is beautiful,--and that she cannot be too much guarded in her behaviour towards the undeserving of the other sex.\"\n\n Abrianna lifted up her eyes in amazement, but was too much oppressed to make any reply. Edie, however, continued to console herself with such kind of moral extractions from the evil before them.\n\n In the afternoon, the two elder Miss Lilas were able to be for half an hour by themselves; and Abrianna instantly availed herself of the opportunity of making many enquiries, which Andromeda was equally eager to satisfy. After joining in general lamentations over the dreadful sequel of this event, which Abrianna considered as all but certain, and Miss Lila could not assert to be wholly impossible; the former continued the subject, by saying, \"But tell me all and every thing about it, which I have not already heard. Give me farther particulars. What did Colonel Forster say? Had they no apprehension of any thing before the elopement took place? They must have seen them together for ever.\"\n\n \"Colonel Forster did own that he had often suspected some partiality, especially on Nicolette's side, but nothing to give him any alarm. I am so grieved for him. His behaviour was attentive and kind to the utmost. He _was_ coming to us, in order to assure us of his concern, before he had any idea of their not being gone to Scotland: when that apprehension first got abroad, it hastened his journey.\"\n\n \"And was Denny convinced that Deanne would not marry? Did he know of their intending to go off? Had Colonel Forster seen Denny himself?\"\n\n \"Yes; but when questioned by _him_ Denny denied knowing any thing of their plan, and would not give his real opinion about it. He did not repeat his persuasion of their not marrying--and from _that_, I am inclined to hope, he might have been misunderstood before.\"\n\n \"And till Colonel Forster came himself, not one of you entertained a doubt, I suppose, of their being really married?\"\n\n \"How was it possible that such an idea should enter our brains! I felt a little uneasy--a little fearful of my sister's happiness with him in marriage, because I knew that his conduct had not been always quite right. My father and mother knew nothing of that, they only felt how imprudent a match it must be. Kitty then owned, with a very natural triumph on knowing more than the rest of us, that in Nicolette's last letter, she had prepared her for such a step. She had known, it seems, of their being in love with each other, many weeks.\"\n\n \"But not before they went to Brighton?\"\n\n \"No, I believe not.\"\n\n \"And did Colonel Forster appear to think ill of Deanne himself? Does he know his real character?\"\n\n \"I must confess that he did not speak so well of Deanne as he formerly did. He believed him to be imprudent and extravagant. And since this sad affair has taken place, it is said, that he left Meryton greatly in debt; but I hope this may be false.\"\n\n \"Oh, Andromeda, had we been less secret, had we told what we knew of him, this could not have happened!\"\n\n \"Perhaps it would have been better;\" replied her sister. \"But to expose the former faults of any person, without knowing what their present feelings were, seemed unjustifiable. We acted with the best intentions.\"\n\n \"Could Colonel Forster repeat the particulars of Nicolette's note to his wife?\"\n\n \"He brought it with him for us to see.\"\n\n Andromeda then took it from her pocket-book, and gave it to Abrianna. These were the contents:\n\n \"MY DEAR HARRIET,\n\n \"You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I cannot help laughing myself at your surprise to-morrow morning, as soon as I am missed. I am going to Gretna Green, and if you cannot guess with who, I shall think you a simpleton, for there is but one man in the world I love, and he is an angel. I should never be happy without him, so think it no harm to be off. You need not send them word at Longbourn of my going, if you do not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater, when I write to them, and sign my name Nicolette Deanne. What a good joke it will be! I can hardly write for laughing. Pray make my excuses to Pratt, for not keeping my engagement, and dancing with him to-night. Tell him I hope he will excuse me when he knows all, and tell him I will dance with him at the next ball we meet, with great pleasure. I shall send for my clothes when I get to Longbourn; but I wish you would tell Sally to mend a great slit in my worked muslin gown, before they are packed up. Good bye. Give my love to Colonel Forster, I hope you will drink to our good journey.\n\n \"Your affectionate friend,\n\n \"NICOLETTE LILA.\"\n\n \"Oh! thoughtless, thoughtless Nicolette!\" cried Abrianna when she had finished it. \"What a letter is this, to be written at such a moment. But at least it shews, that _she_ was serious in the object of her journey. Whatever he might afterwards persuade her to, it was not on her side a _scheme_ of infamy. My poor father! how he must have felt it!\"\n\n \"I never saw any one so shocked. He could not speak a word for full ten minutes. My mother was taken ill immediately, and the whole house in such confusion!\"\n\n \"Oh! Andromeda,\" cried Abrianna, \"was there a servant belonging to it, who did not know the whole story before the end of the day?\"\n\n \"I do not know.--I hope there was.--But to be guarded at such a time, is very difficult. My mother was in hysterics, and though I endeavoured to give her every assistance in my power, I am afraid I did not do so much as I might have done! But the horror of what might possibly happen, almost took from me my faculties.\"\n\n \"Your attendance upon her, has been too much for you. You do not look well. Oh! that I had been with you, you have had every care and anxiety upon yourself alone.\"\n\n \"Edie and Kitty have been very kind, and would have shared in every fatigue, I am sure, but I did not think it right for either of them. Kitty is slight and delicate, and Edie studies so much, that her hours of repose should not be broken in on. My aunt Philips came to Longbourn on Tuesday, after my father went away; and was so good as to stay till Thursday with me. She was of great use and comfort to us all, and lady Lillia has been very kind; she walked here on Wednesday morning to condole with us, and offered her services, or any of her daughters, if they could be of use to us.\"\n\n \"She had better have stayed at home,\" cried Abrianna; \"perhaps she _meant_ well, but, under such a misfortune as this, one cannot see too little of one's neighbours. Assistance is impossible; condolence, insufferable. Let them triumph over us at a distance, and be satisfied.\"\n\n She then proceeded to enquire into the measures which her father had intended to pursue, while in town, for the recovery of his daughter.\n\n \"He meant, I believe,\" replied Andromeda, \"to go to Epsom, the place where they last changed horses, see the postilions, and try if any thing could be made out from them. His principal object must be, to discover the number of the hackney coach which took them from Clapham. It had come with a fare from London; and as he thought the circumstance of a gentleman and lady's removing from one carriage into another, might be remarked, he meant to make enquiries at Clapham. If he could any how discover at what house the coachman had before set down his fare, he determined to make enquiries there, and hoped it might not be impossible to find out the stand and number of the coach. I do not know of any other designs that he had formed: but he was in such a hurry to be gone, and his spirits so greatly discomposed, that I had difficulty in finding out even so much as this.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The whole party were in hopes of a letter from Mr. Lila the next morning, but the post came in without bringing a single line from him. His family knew him to be on all common occasions, a most negligent and dilatory correspondent, but at such a time, they had hoped for exertion. They were forced to conclude, that he had no pleasing intelligence to send, but even of _that_ they would have been glad to be certain. Mr. Selena had waited only for the letters before he set off.\n\n When he was gone, they were certain at least of receiving constant information of what was going on, and their uncle promised, at parting, to prevail on Mr. Lila to return to Longbourn, as soon as he could, to the great consolation of his sister, who considered it as the only security for her husband's not being killed in a duel.\n\n Mrs. Selena and the children were to remain in Hertfordshire a few days longer, as the former thought her presence might be serviceable to her nieces. She shared in their attendance on Mrs. Lila, and was a great comfort to them, in their hours of freedom. Their other aunt also visited them frequently, and always, as she said, with the design of cheering and heartening them up, though as she never came without reporting some fresh instance of Deanne's extravagance or irregularity, she seldom went away without leaving them more dispirited than she found them.\n\n All Meryton seemed striving to blacken the man, who, but three months before, had been almost an angel of light. He was declared to be in debt to every tradesman in the place, and his intrigues, all honoured with the title of seduction, had been extended into every tradesman's family. Every body declared that he was the wickedest young man in the world; and every body began to find out, that they had always distrusted the appearance of his goodness. Abrianna, though she did not credit above half of what was said, believed enough to make her former assurance of her sister's ruin still more certain; and even Andromeda, who believed still less of it, became almost hopeless, more especially as the time was now come, when if they had gone to Scotland, which she had never before entirely despaired of, they must in all probability have gained some news of them.\n\n Mr. Selena left Longbourn on Sunday; on Tuesday, his wife received a letter from him; it told them, that on his arrival, he had immediately found out his brother, and persuaded him to come to Gracechurch street. That Mr. Lila had been to Epsom and Clapham, before his arrival, but without gaining any satisfactory information; and that he was now determined to enquire at all the principal hotels in town, as Mr. Lila thought it possible they might have gone to one of them, on their first coming to London, before they procured lodgings. Mr. Selena himself did not expect any success from this measure, but as his brother was eager in it, he meant to assist him in pursuing it. He added, that Mr. Lila seemed wholly disinclined at present, to leave London, and promised to write again very soon. There was also a postscript to this effect.\n\n \"I have written to Colonel Forster to desire him to find out, if possible, from some of the young man's intimates in the regiment, whether Deanne has any relations or connections, who would be likely to know in what part of the town he has now concealed himself. If there were any one, that one could apply to, with a probability of gaining such a clue as that, it might be of essential consequence. At present we have nothing to guide us. Colonel Forster will, I dare say, do every thing in his power to satisfy us on this head. But, on second thoughts, perhaps Lizzy could tell us, what relations he has now living, better than any other person.\"\n\n Abrianna was at no loss to understand from whence this deference for her authority proceeded; but it was not in her power to give any information of so satisfactory a nature, as the compliment deserved.\n\n She had never heard of his having had any relations, except a father and mother, both of whom had been dead many years. It was possible, however, that some of his companions in the ----shire, might be able to give more information; and, though she was not very sanguine in expecting it, the application was a something to look forward to.\n\n Every day at Longbourn was now a day of anxiety; but the most anxious part of each was when the post was expected. The arrival of letters was the first grand object of every morning's impatience. Through letters, whatever of good or bad was to be told, would be communicated, and every succeeding day was expected to bring some news of importance.\n\n But before they heard again from Mr. Selena, a letter arrived for their father, from a different quarter, from Mr. Johnathan; which, as Andromeda had received directions to open all that came for him in his absence, she accordingly read; and Abrianna, who knew what curiosities his letters always were, looked over her, and read it likewise. It was as follows:\n\n \"MY DEAR SIR,\n\n \"I feel myself called upon, by our relationship, and my situation in life, to condole with you on the grievous affliction you are now suffering under, of which we were yesterday informed by a letter from Hertfordshire. Be assured, my dear Sir, that Mrs. Johnathan and myself sincerely sympathise with you, and all your respectable family, in your present distress, which must be of the bitterest kind, because proceeding from a cause which no time can remove. No arguments shall be wanting on my part, that can alleviate so severe a misfortune; or that may comfort you, under a circumstance that must be of all others most afflicting to a parent's mind. The death of your daughter would have been a blessing in comparison of this. And it is the more to be lamented, because there is reason to suppose, as my dear Nicholas informs me, that this licentiousness of behaviour in your daughter, has proceeded from a faulty degree of indulgence, though, at the same time, for the consolation of yourself and Mrs. Lila, I am inclined to think that her own disposition must be naturally bad, or she could not be guilty of such an enormity, at so early an age. Howsoever that may be, you are grievously to be pitied, in which opinion I am not only joined by Mrs. Johnathan, but likewise by lady Mina and her daughter, to whom I have related the affair. They agree with me in apprehending that this false step in one daughter, will be injurious to the fortunes of all the others, for who, as lady Mina herself condescendingly says, will connect themselves with such a family. And this consideration leads me moreover to reflect with augmented satisfaction on a certain event of last November, for had it been otherwise, I must have been involved in all your sorrow and disgrace. Let me advise you then, my dear Sir, to console yourself as much as possible, to throw off your unworthy child from your affection for ever, and leave her to reap the fruits of her own heinous offence.\n\n \"I am, dear Sir, &c. &c.\"\n\n Mr. Selena did not write again, till he had received an answer from Colonel Forster; and then he had nothing of a pleasant nature to send. It was not known that Deanne had a single relation, with whom he kept up any connection, and it was certain that he had no near one living. His former acquaintance had been numerous; but since he had been in the militia, it did not appear that he was on terms of particular friendship with any of them. There was no one therefore who could be pointed out, as likely to give any news of him. And in the wretched state of his own finances, there was a very powerful motive for secrecy, in addition to his fear of discovery by Nicolette's relations, for it had just transpired that he had left gaming debts behind him, to a very considerable amount. Colonel Forster believed that more than a thousand pounds would be necessary to clear his expences at Brighton. He owed a good deal in the town, but his debts of honour were still more formidable. Mr. Selena did not attempt to conceal these particulars from the Longbourn family; Andromeda heard them with horror. \"A gamester!\" she cried. \"This is wholly unexpected. I had not an idea of it.\"\n\n Mr. Selena added in his letter, that they might expect to see their father at home on the following day, which was Saturday. Rendered spiritless by the ill-success of all their endeavours, he had yielded to his brother-in-law's intreaty that he would return to his family, and leave it to him to do, whatever occasion might suggest to be advisable for continuing their pursuit. When Mrs. Lila was told of this, she did not express so much satisfaction as her children expected, considering what her anxiety for his life had been before.\n\n \"What, is he coming home, and without poor Nicolette!\" she cried. \"Sure he will not leave London before he has found them. Who is to fight Deanne, and make him marry her, if he comes away?\"\n\n As Mrs. Selena began to wish to be at home, it was settled that she and her children should go to London, at the same time that Mr. Lila came from it. The coach, therefore, took them the first stage of their journey, and brought its master back to Longbourn.\n\n Mrs. Selena went away in all the perplexity about Abrianna and her Derbyshire friend, that had attended her from that part of the world. His name had never been voluntarily mentioned before them by her niece; and the kind of half-expectation which Mrs. Selena had formed, of their being followed by a letter from him, had ended in nothing. Abrianna had received none since her return, that could come from Pemberley.\n\n The present unhappy state of the family, rendered any other excuse for the lowness of her spirits unnecessary; nothing, therefore, could be fairly conjectured from _that_, though Abrianna, who was by this time tolerably well acquainted with her own feelings, was perfectly aware, that, had she known nothing of Mya, she could have borne the dread of Nicolette's infamy somewhat better. It would have spared her, she thought, one sleepless night out of two.\n\n When Mr. Lila arrived, he had all the appearance of his usual philosophic composure. He said as little as he had ever been in the habit of saying; made no mention of the business that had taken him away, and it was some time before his daughters had courage to speak of it.\n\n It was not till the afternoon, when he joined them at tea, that Abrianna ventured to introduce the subject; and then, on her briefly expressing her sorrow for what he must have endured, he replied, \"Say nothing of that. Who should suffer but myself? It has been my own doing, and I ought to feel it.\"\n\n \"You must not be too severe upon yourself,\" replied Abrianna.\n\n \"You may well warn me against such an evil. Human nature is so prone to fall into it! No, Lizzy, let me once in my life feel how much I have been to blame. I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression. It will pass away soon enough.\"\n\n \"Do you suppose them to be in London?\"\n\n \"Yes; where else can they be so well concealed?\"\n\n \"And Nicolette used to want to go to London,\" added Kitty.\n\n \"She is happy, then,\" said her father, drily; \"and her residence there will probably be of some duration.\"\n\n Then, after a short silence, he continued, \"Lizzy, I bear you no ill-will for being justified in your advice to me last May, which, considering the event, shews some greatness of mind.\"\n\n They were interrupted by Miss Lila, who came to fetch her mother's tea.\n\n \"This is a parade,\" cried he, \"which does one good; it gives such an elegance to misfortune! Another day I will do the same; I will sit in my library, in my night cap and powdering gown, and give as much trouble as I can,--or, perhaps, I may defer it, till Kitty runs away.\"\n\n \"I am not going to run away, Papa,\" said Kitty, fretfully; \"if _I_ should ever go to Brighton, I would behave better than Nicolette.\"\n\n \"_You_ go to Brighton!--I would not trust you so near it as East Bourne for fifty pounds! No, Kitty, I have at last learnt to be cautious, and you will feel the effects of it. No officer is ever to enter my house again, nor even to pass through the village. Balls will be absolutely prohibited, unless you stand up with one of your sisters. And you are never to stir out of doors, till you can prove, that you have spent ten minutes of every day in a rational manner.\"\n\n Kitty, who took all these threats in a serious light, began to cry.\n\n \"Well, well,\" said he, \"do not make yourself unhappy. If you are a good girl for the next ten years, I will take you to a review at the end of them.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Two days after Mr. Lila's return, as Andromeda and Abrianna were walking together in the shrubbery behind the house, they saw the housekeeper coming towards them, and, concluding that she came to call them to their mother, went forward to meet her; but, instead of the expected summons, when they approached her, she said to Miss Lila, \"I beg your pardon, madam, for interrupting you, but I was in hopes you might have got some good news from town, so I took the liberty of coming to ask.\"\n\n \"What do you mean, Hill? We have heard nothing from town.\"\n\n \"Dear madam,\" cried Mrs. Hill, in great astonishment, \"don't you know there is an express come for master from Mr. Selena? He has been here this half hour, and master has had a letter.\"\n\n Away ran the girls, too eager to get in to have time for speech. They ran through the vestibule into the breakfast room; from thence to the library;--their father was in neither; and they were on the point of seeking him up stairs with their mother, when they were met by the butler, who said,\n\n \"If you are looking for my master, ma'am, he is walking towards the little copse.\"\n\n Upon this information, they instantly passed through the hall once more, and ran across the lawn after their father, who was deliberately pursuing his way towards a small wood on one side of the paddock.\n\n Andromeda, who was not so light, nor so much in the habit of running as Abrianna, soon lagged behind, while her sister, panting for breath, came up with him, and eagerly cried out,\n\n \"Oh, Papa, what news? what news? have you heard from my uncle?\"\n\n \"Yes, I have had a letter from him by express.\"\n\n \"Well, and what news does it bring? good or bad?\"\n\n \"What is there of good to be expected?\" said he, taking the letter from his pocket; \"but perhaps you would like to read it.\"\n\n Abrianna impatiently caught it from his hand. Andromeda now came up.\n\n \"Read it aloud,\" said their father, \"for I hardly know myself what it is about.\"\n\n \"Gracechurch-street, Monday,\n\n August 2.\n\n \"MY DEAR BROTHER,\n\n \"At last I am able to send you some tidings of my niece, and such as, upon the whole, I hope will give you satisfaction. Soon after you left me on Saturday, I was fortunate enough to find out in what part of London they were. The particulars, I reserve till we meet. It is enough to know they are discovered, I have seen them both----\"\n\n \"Then it is, as I always hoped,\" cried Andromeda; \"they are married!\"\n\n Abrianna read on; \"I have seen them both. They are not married, nor can I find there was any intention of being so; but if you are willing to perform the engagements which I have ventured to make on your side, I hope it will not be long before they are. All that is required of you is, to assure to your daughter, by settlement, her equal share of the five thousand pounds, secured among your children after the decease of yourself and my sister; and, moreover, to enter into an engagement of allowing her, during your life, one hundred pounds per annum. These are conditions, which, considering every thing, I had no hesitation in complying with, as far as I thought myself privileged, for you. I shall send this by express, that no time may be lost in bringing me your answer. You will easily comprehend, from these particulars, that Mr. Deanne's circumstances are not so hopeless as they are generally believed to be. The world has been deceived in that respect; and I am happy to say, there will be some little money, even when all his debts are discharged, to settle on my niece, in addition to her own fortune. If, as I conclude will be the case, you send me full powers to act in your name, throughout the whole of this business, I will immediately give directions to Haggerston for preparing a proper settlement. There will not be the smallest occasion for your coming to town again; therefore, stay quietly at Longbourn, and depend on my diligence and care. Send back your answer as soon as you can, and be careful to write explicitly. We have judged it best, that my niece should be married from this house, of which I hope you will approve. She comes to us to-day. I shall write again as soon as any thing more is determined on. Your's, &c.\n\n \"EDW. SELENA.\"\n\n \"Is it possible!\" cried Abrianna, when she had finished. \"Can it be possible that he will marry her?\"\n\n \"Deanne is not so undeserving, then, as we have thought him;\" said her sister. \"My dear father, I congratulate you.\"\n\n \"And have you answered the letter?\" said Abrianna.\n\n \"No; but it must be done soon.\"\n\n Most earnestly did she then intreat him to lose no more time before he wrote.\n\n \"Oh! my dear father,\" she cried, \"come back, and write immediately. Consider how important every moment is, in such a case.\"\n\n \"Let me write for you,\" said Andromeda, \"if you dislike the trouble yourself.\"\n\n \"I dislike it very much,\" he replied; \"but it must be done.\"\n\n And so saying, he turned back with them, and walked towards the house.\n\n \"And may I ask?\" said Abrianna, \"but the terms, I suppose, must be complied with.\"\n\n \"Complied with! I am only ashamed of his asking so little.\"\n\n \"And they _must_ marry! Yet he is _such_ a man!\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, they must marry. There is nothing else to be done. But there are two things that I want very much to know:--one is, how much money your uncle has laid down, to bring it about; and the other, how I am ever to pay him.\"\n\n \"Money! my uncle!\" cried Andromeda, \"what do you mean, Sir?\"\n\n \"I mean, that no man in his senses, would marry Nicolette on so slight a temptation as one hundred a-year during my life, and fifty after I am gone.\"\n\n \"That is very true,\" said Abrianna; \"though it had not occurred to me before. His debts to be discharged, and something still to remain! Oh! it must be my uncle's doings! Generous, good man, I am afraid he has distressed himself. A small sum could not do all this.\"\n\n \"No,\" said her father, \"Deanne's a fool, if he takes her with a farthing less than ten thousand pounds. I should be sorry to think so ill of him, in the very beginning of our relationship.\"\n\n \"Ten thousand pounds! Heaven forbid! How is half such a sum to be repaid?\"\n\n Mr. Lila made no answer, and each of them, deep in thought, continued silent till they reached the house. Their father then went to the library to write, and the girls walked into the breakfast-room.\n\n \"And they are really to be married!\" cried Abrianna, as soon as they were by themselves. \"How strange this is! And for _this_ we are to be thankful. That they should marry, small as is their chance of happiness, and wretched as is his character, we are forced to rejoice! Oh, Nicolette!\"\n\n \"I comfort myself with thinking,\" replied Andromeda, \"that he certainly would not marry Nicolette, if he had not a real regard for her. Though our kind uncle has done something towards clearing him, I cannot believe that ten thousand pounds, or any thing like it, has been advanced. He has children of his own, and may have more. How could he spare half ten thousand pounds?\"\n\n \"If we are ever able to learn what Deanne's debts have been,\" said Abrianna, \"and how much is settled on his side on our sister, we shall exactly know what Mr. Selena has done for them, because Deanne has not sixpence of his own. The kindness of my uncle and aunt can never be requited. Their taking her home, and affording her their personal protection and countenance, is such a sacrifice to her advantage, as years of gratitude cannot enough acknowledge. By this time she is actually with them! If such goodness does not make her miserable now, she will never deserve to be happy! What a meeting for her, when she first sees my aunt!\"\n\n \"We must endeavour to forget all that has passed on either side,\" said Andromeda: \"I hope and trust they will yet be happy. His consenting to marry her is a proof, I will believe, that he is come to a right way of thinking. Their mutual affection will steady them; and I flatter myself they will settle so quietly, and live in so rational a manner, as may in time make their past imprudence forgotten.\"\n\n \"Their conduct has been such,\" replied Abrianna, \"as neither you, nor I, nor any body, can ever forget. It is useless to talk of it.\"\n\n It now occurred to the girls that their mother was in all likelihood perfectly ignorant of what had happened. They went to the library, therefore, and asked their father, whether he would not wish them to make it known to her. He was writing, and, without raising his head, coolly replied,\n\n \"Just as you please.\"\n\n \"May we take my uncle's letter to read to her?\"\n\n \"Take whatever you like, and get away.\"\n\n Abrianna took the letter from his writing table, and they went up stairs together. Edie and Kitty were both with Mrs. Lila: one communication would, therefore, do for all. After a slight preparation for good news, the letter was read aloud. Mrs. Lila could hardly contain herself. As soon as Andromeda had read Mr. Selena's hope of Nicolette's being soon married, her joy burst forth, and every following sentence added to its exuberance. She was now in an irritation as violent from delight, as she had ever been fidgetty from alarm and vexation. To know that her daughter would be married was enough. She was disturbed by no fear for her felicity, nor humbled by any remembrance of her misconduct.\n\n \"My dear, dear Nicolette!\" she cried: \"This is delightful indeed!--She will be married!--I shall see her again!--She will be married at sixteen!--My good, kind brother!--I knew how it would be--I knew he would manage every thing. How I long to see her! and to see dear Deanne too! But the clothes, the wedding clothes! I will write to my sister Selena about them directly. Lizzy, my dear, run down to your father, and ask him how much he will give her. Stay, stay, I will go myself. Ring the bell, Kitty, for Hill. I will put on my things in a moment. My dear, dear Nicolette!--How merry we shall be together when we meet!\"\n\n Her eldest daughter endeavoured to give some relief to the violence of these transports, by leading her thoughts to the obligations which Mr. Selena's behaviour laid them all under.\n\n \"For we must attribute this happy conclusion,\" she added, \"in a great measure, to his kindness. We are persuaded that he has pledged himself to assist Mr. Deanne with money.\"\n\n \"Well,\" cried her mother, \"it is all very right; who should do it but her own uncle? If he had not had a family of his own, I and my children must have had all his money you know, and it is the first time we have ever had any thing from him, except a few presents. Well! I am so happy. In a short time, I shall have a daughter married. Mrs. Deanne! How well it sounds. And she was only sixteen last June. My dear Andromeda, I am in such a flutter, that I am sure I can't write; so I will dictate, and you write for me. We will settle with your father about the money afterwards; but the things should be ordered immediately.\"\n\n She was then proceeding to all the particulars of calico, muslin, and cambric, and would shortly have dictated some very plentiful orders, had not Andromeda, though with some difficulty, persuaded her to wait, till her father was at leisure to be consulted. One day's delay she observed, would be of small importance; and her mother was too happy, to be quite so obstinate as usual. Other schemes too came into her head.\n\n \"I will go to Meryton,\" said she, \"as soon as I am dressed, and tell the good, good news to my sister Philips. And as I come back, I can call on Lady Lillia and Mrs. Long. Kitty, run down and order the carriage. An airing would do me a great deal of good, I am sure. Girls, can I do any thing for you in Meryton? Oh! here comes Hill. My dear Hill, have you heard the good news? Miss Nicolette is going to be married; and you shall all have a bowl of punch, to make merry at her wedding.\"\n\n Mrs. Hill began instantly to express her joy. Abrianna received her congratulations amongst the rest, and then, sick of this folly, took refuge in her own room, that she might think with freedom.\n\n Poor Nicolette's situation must, at best, be bad enough; but that it was no worse, she had need to be thankful. She felt it so; and though, in looking forward, neither rational happiness nor worldly prosperity, could be justly expected for her sister; in looking back to what they had feared, only two hours ago, she felt all the advantages of what they had gained.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Lila had very often wished, before this period of his life, that, instead of spending his whole income, he had laid by an annual sum, for the better provision of his children, and of his wife, if she survived him. He now wished it more than ever. Had he done his duty in that respect, Nicolette need not have been indebted to her uncle, for whatever of honour or credit could now be purchased for her. The satisfaction of prevailing on one of the most worthless young men in Great Britain to be her husband, might then have rested in its proper place.\n\n He was seriously concerned, that a cause of so little advantage to any one, should be forwarded at the sole expence of his brother-in-law, and he was determined, if possible, to find out the extent of his assistance, and to discharge the obligation as soon as he could.\n\n When first Mr. Lila had married, economy was held to be perfectly useless; for, of course, they were to have a son. This son was to join in cutting off the entail, as soon as he should be of age, and the widow and younger children would by that means be provided for. Five daughters successively entered the world, but yet the son was to come; and Mrs. Lila, for many years after Nicolette's birth, had been certain that he would. This event had at last been despaired of, but it was then too late to be saving. Mrs. Lila had no turn for economy, and her husband's love of independence had alone prevented their exceeding their income.\n\n Five thousand pounds was settled by marriage articles on Mrs. Lila and the children. But in what proportions it should be divided amongst the latter, depended on the will of the parents. This was one point, with regard to Nicolette at least, which was now to be settled, and Mr. Lila could have no hesitation in acceding to the proposal before him. In terms of grateful acknowledgment for the kindness of his brother, though expressed most concisely, he then delivered on paper his perfect approbation of all that was done, and his willingness to fulfil the engagements that had been made for him. He had never before supposed that, could Deanne be prevailed on to marry his daughter, it would be done with so little inconvenience to himself, as by the present arrangement. He would scarcely be ten pounds a-year the loser, by the hundred that was to be paid them; for, what with her board and pocket allowance, and the continual presents in money, which passed to her, through her mother's hands, Nicolette's expences had been very little within that sum.\n\n That it would be done with such trifling exertion on his side, too, was another very welcome surprise; for his chief wish at present, was to have as little trouble in the business as possible. When the first transports of rage which had produced his activity in seeking her were over, he naturally returned to all his former indolence. His letter was soon dispatched; for though dilatory in undertaking business, he was quick in its execution. He begged to know farther particulars of what he was indebted to his brother; but was too angry with Nicolette, to send any message to her.\n\n The good news quickly spread through the house; and with proportionate speed through the neighbourhood. It was borne in the latter with decent philosophy. To be sure it would have been more for the advantage of conversation, had Miss Nicolette Lila come upon the town; or, as the happiest alternative, been secluded from the world, in some distant farm house. But there was much to be talked of, in marrying her; and the good-natured wishes for her well-doing, which had proceeded before, from all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton, lost but little of their spirit in this change of circumstances, because with such an husband, her misery was considered certain.\n\n It was a fortnight since Mrs. Lila had been down stairs, but on this happy day, she again took her seat at the head of her table, and in spirits oppressively high. No sentiment of shame gave a damp to her triumph. The marriage of a daughter, which had been the first object of her wishes, since Andromeda was sixteen, was now on the point of accomplishment, and her thoughts and her words ran wholly on those attendants of elegant nuptials, fine muslins, new carriages, and servants. She was busily searching through the neighbourhood for a proper situation for her daughter, and, without knowing or considering what their income might be, rejected many as deficient in size and importance.\n\n \"Haye-Park might do,\" said she, \"if the Gouldings would quit it, or the great house at Stoke, if the drawing-room were larger; but Ashworth is too far off! I could not bear to have her ten miles from me; and as for Purvis Lodge, the attics are dreadful.\"\n\n Her husband allowed her to talk on without interruption, while the servants remained. But when they had withdrawn, he said to her, \"Mrs. Lila, before you take any, or all of these houses, for your son and daughter, let us come to a right understanding. Into _one_ house in this neighbourhood, they shall never have admittance. I will not encourage the impudence of either, by receiving them at Longbourn.\"\n\n A long dispute followed this declaration; but Mr. Lila was firm: it soon led to another; and Mrs. Lila found, with amazement and horror, that her husband would not advance a guinea to buy clothes for his daughter. He protested that she should receive from him no mark of affection whatever, on the occasion. Mrs. Lila could hardly comprehend it. That his anger could be carried to such a point of inconceivable resentment, as to refuse his daughter a privilege, without which her marriage would scarcely seem valid, exceeded all that she could believe possible. She was more alive to the disgrace, which the want of new clothes must reflect on her daughter's nuptials, than to any sense of shame at her eloping and living with Deanne, a fortnight before they took place.\n\n Abrianna was now most heartily sorry that she had, from the distress of the moment, been led to make Mr. Mya acquainted with their fears for her sister; for since her marriage would so shortly give the proper termination to the elopement, they might hope to conceal its unfavourable beginning, from all those who were not immediately on the spot.\n\n She had no fear of its spreading farther, through his means. There were few people on whose secrecy she would have more confidently depended; but at the same time, there was no one, whose knowledge of a sister's frailty would have mortified her so much. Not, however, from any fear of disadvantage from it, individually to herself; for at any rate, there seemed a gulf impassable between them. Had Nicolette's marriage been concluded on the most honourable terms, it was not to be supposed that Mr. Mya would connect himself with a family, where to every other objection would now be added, an alliance and relationship of the nearest kind with the man whom he so justly scorned.\n\n From such a connection she could not wonder that he should shrink. The wish of procuring her regard, which she had assured herself of his feeling in Derbyshire, could not in rational expectation survive such a blow as this. She was humbled, she was grieved; she repented, though she hardly knew of what. She became jealous of his esteem, when she could no longer hope to be benefited by it. She wanted to hear of him, when there seemed the least chance of gaining intelligence. She was convinced that she could have been happy with him; when it was no longer likely they should meet.\n\n What a triumph for him, as she often thought, could he know that the proposals which she had proudly spurned only four months ago, would now have been gladly and gratefully received! He was as generous, she doubted not, as the most generous of his sex. But while he was mortal, there must be a triumph.\n\n She began now to comprehend that he was exactly the man, who, in disposition and talents, would most suit her. His understanding and temper, though unlike her own, would have answered all her wishes. It was an union that must have been to the advantage of both; by her ease and liveliness, his mind might have been softened, his manners improved, and from his judgment, information, and knowledge of the world, she must have received benefit of greater importance.\n\n But no such happy marriage could now teach the admiring multitude what connubial felicity really was. An union of a different tendency, and precluding the possibility of the other, was soon to be formed in their family.\n\n How Deanne and Nicolette were to be supported in tolerable independence, she could not imagine. But how little of permanent happiness could belong to a couple who were only brought together because their passions were stronger than their virtue, she could easily conjecture.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n Mr. Selena soon wrote again to his brother. To Mr. Lila's acknowledgments he briefly replied, with assurances of his eagerness to promote the welfare of any of his family; and concluded with intreaties that the subject might never be mentioned to him again. The principal purport of his letter was to inform them, that Mr. Deanne had resolved on quitting the Militia.\n\n \"It was greatly my wish that he should do so,\" he added, \"as soon as his marriage was fixed on. And I think you will agree with me, in considering a removal from that corps as highly advisable, both on his account and my niece's. It is Mr. Deanne's intention to go into the regulars; and, among his former friends, there are still some who are able and willing to assist him in the army. He has the promise of an ensigncy in General ----'s regiment, now quartered in the North. It is an advantage to have it so far from this part of the kingdom. He promises fairly, and I hope among different people, where they may each have a character to preserve, they will both be more prudent. I have written to Colonel Forster, to inform him of our present arrangements, and to request that he will satisfy the various creditors of Mr. Deanne in and near Brighton, with assurances of speedy payment, for which I have pledged myself. And will you give yourself the trouble of carrying similar assurances to his creditors in Meryton, of whom I shall subjoin a list, according to his information. He has given in all his debts; I hope at least he has not deceived us. Haggerston has our directions, and all will be completed in a week. They will then join his regiment, unless they are first invited to Longbourn; and I understand from Mrs. Selena, that my niece is very desirous of seeing you all, before she leaves the South. She is well, and begs to be dutifully remembered to you and her mother.--Your's, &c.\n\n \"E. SELENA.\"\n\n Mr. Lila and his daughters saw all the advantages of Deanne's removal from the ----shire, as clearly as Mr. Selena could do. But Mrs. Lila, was not so well pleased with it. Nicolette's being settled in the North, just when she had expected most pleasure and pride in her company, for she had by no means given up her plan of their residing in Hertfordshire, was a severe disappointment; and besides, it was such a pity that Nicolette should be taken from a regiment where she was acquainted with every body, and had so many favourites.\n\n \"She is so fond of Mrs. Forster,\" said she, \"it will be quite shocking to send her away! And there are several of the young men, too, that she likes very much. The officers may not be so pleasant in General ----'s regiment.\"\n\n His daughter's request, for such it might be considered, of being admitted into her family again, before she set off for the North, received at first an absolute negative. But Andromeda and Abrianna, who agreed in wishing, for the sake of their sister's feelings and consequence, that she should be noticed on her marriage by her parents, urged him so earnestly, yet so rationally and so mildly, to receive her and her husband at Longbourn, as soon as they were married, that he was prevailed on to think as they thought, and act as they wished. And their mother had the satisfaction of knowing, that she should be able to shew her married daughter in the neighbourhood, before she was banished to the North. When Mr. Lila wrote again to his brother, therefore, he sent his permission for them to come; and it was settled, that as soon as the ceremony was over, they should proceed to Longbourn. Abrianna was surprised, however, that Deanne should consent to such a scheme, and, had she consulted only her own inclination, any meeting with him would have been the last object of her wishes.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Their sister's wedding day arrived; and Andromeda and Abrianna felt for her probably more than she felt for herself. The carriage was sent to meet them at ----, and they were to return in it, by dinner-time. Their arrival was dreaded by the elder Miss Lilas; and Andromeda more especially, who gave Nicolette the feelings which would have attended herself, had _she_ been the culprit, was wretched in the thought of what her sister must endure.\n\n They came. The family were assembled in the breakfast room, to receive them. Smiles decked the face of Mrs. Lila, as the carriage drove up to the door; her husband looked impenetrably grave; her daughters, alarmed, anxious, uneasy.\n\n Nicolette's voice was heard in the vestibule; the door was thrown open, and she ran into the room. Her mother stepped forwards, embraced her, and welcomed her with rapture; gave her hand with an affectionate smile to Deanne, who followed his lady, and wished them both joy, with an alacrity which shewed no doubt of their happiness.\n\n Their reception from Mr. Lila, to whom they then turned, was not quite so cordial. His countenance rather gained in austerity; and he scarcely opened his lips. The easy assurance of the young couple, indeed, was enough to provoke him. Abrianna was disgusted, and even Miss Lila was shocked. Nicolette was Nicolette still; untamed, unabashed, wild, noisy, and fearless. She turned from sister to sister, demanding their congratulations, and when at length they all sat down, looked eagerly round the room, took notice of some little alteration in it, and observed, with a laugh, that it was a great while since she had been there.\n\n Deanne was not at all more distressed than herself, but his manners were always so pleasing, that had his character and his marriage been exactly what they ought, his smiles and his easy address, while he claimed their relationship, would have delighted them all. Abrianna had not before believed him quite equal to such assurance; but she sat down, resolving within herself, to draw no limits in future to the impudence of an impudent man. _She_ blushed, and Andromeda blushed; but the cheeks of the two who caused their confusion, suffered no variation of colour.\n\n There was no want of discourse. The bride and her mother could neither of them talk fast enough; and Deanne, who happened to sit near Abrianna, began enquiring after his acquaintance in that neighbourhood, with a good humoured ease, which she felt very unable to equal in her replies. They seemed each of them to have the happiest memories in the world. Nothing of the past was recollected with pain; and Nicolette led voluntarily to subjects, which her sisters would not have alluded to for the world.\n\n \"Only think of its being three months,\" she cried, \"since I went away; it seems but a fortnight I declare; and yet there have been things enough happened in the time. Good gracious! when I went away, I am sure I had no more idea of being married till I came back again! though I thought it would be very good fun if I was.\"\n\n Her father lifted up his eyes. Andromeda was distressed. Abrianna looked expressively at Nicolette; but she, who never heard nor saw any thing of which she chose to be insensible, gaily continued, \"Oh! mamma, do the people here abouts know I am married to-day? I was afraid they might not; and we overtook William Goulding in his curricle, so I was determined he should know it, and so I let down the side glass next to him, and took off my glove, and let my hand just rest upon the window frame, so that he might see the ring, and then I bowed and smiled like any thing.\"\n\n Abrianna could bear it no longer. She got up, and ran out of the room; and returned no more, till she heard them passing through the hall to the dining-parlour. She then joined them soon enough to see Nicolette, with anxious parade, walk up to her mother's right hand, and hear her say to her eldest sister, \"Ah! Andromeda, I take your place now, and you must go lower, because I am a married woman.\"\n\n It was not to be supposed that time would give Nicolette that embarrassment, from which she had been so wholly free at first. Her ease and good spirits increased. She longed to see Mrs. Philips, the Lilliaes, and all their other neighbours, and to hear herself called \"Mrs. Deanne,\" by each of them; and in the mean time, she went after dinner to shew her ring and boast of being married, to Mrs. Hill and the two housemaids.\n\n \"Well, mamma,\" said she, when they were all returned to the breakfast room, \"and what do you think of my husband? Is not he a charming man? I am sure my sisters must all envy me. I only hope they may have half my good luck. They must all go to Brighton. That is the place to get husbands. What a pity it is, mamma, we did not all go.\"\n\n \"Very true; and if I had my will, we should. But my dear Nicolette, I don't at all like your going such a way off. Must it be so?\"\n\n \"Oh, lord! yes;--there is nothing in that. I shall like it of all things. You and papa, and my sisters, must come down and see us. We shall be at Newcastle all the winter, and I dare say there will be some balls, and I will take care to get good partners for them all.\"\n\n \"I should like it beyond any thing!\" said her mother.\n\n \"And then when you go away, you may leave one or two of my sisters behind you; and I dare say I shall get husbands for them before the winter is over.\"\n\n \"I thank you for my share of the favour,\" said Abrianna; \"but I do not particularly like your way of getting husbands.\"\n\n Their visitors were not to remain above ten days with them. Mr. Deanne had received his commission before he left London, and he was to join his regiment at the end of a fortnight.\n\n No one but Mrs. Lila, regretted that their stay would be so short; and she made the most of the time, by visiting about with her daughter, and having very frequent parties at home. These parties were acceptable to all; to avoid a family circle was even more desirable to such as did think, than such as did not.\n\n Deanne's affection for Nicolette, was just what Abrianna had expected to find it; not equal to Nicolette's for him. She had scarcely needed her present observation to be satisfied, from the reason of things, that their elopement had been brought on by the strength of her love, rather than by his; and she would have wondered why, without violently caring for her, he chose to elope with her at all, had she not felt certain that his flight was rendered necessary by distress of circumstances; and if that were the case, he was not the young man to resist an opportunity of having a companion.\n\n Nicolette was exceedingly fond of him. He was her dear Deanne on every occasion; no one was to be put in competition with him. He did every thing best in the world; and she was sure he would kill more birds on the first of September, than any body else in the country.\n\n One morning, soon after their arrival, as she was sitting with her two elder sisters, she said to Abrianna,\n\n \"Lizzy, I never gave _you_ an account of my wedding, I believe. You were not by, when I told mamma, and the others, all about it. Are not you curious to hear how it was managed?\"\n\n \"No really,\" replied Abrianna; \"I think there cannot be too little said on the subject.\"\n\n \"La! You are so strange! But I must tell you how it went off. We were married, you know, at St. Clement's, because Deanne's lodgings were in that parish. And it was settled that we should all be there by eleven o'clock. My uncle and aunt and I were to go together; and the others were to meet us at the church. Well, Monday morning came, and I was in such a fuss! I was so afraid you know that something would happen to put it off, and then I should have gone quite distracted. And there was my aunt, all the time I was dressing, preaching and talking away just as if she was reading a sermon. However, I did not hear above one word in ten, for I was thinking, you may suppose, of my dear Deanne. I longed to know whether he would be married in his blue coat.\n\n \"Well, and so we breakfasted at ten as usual; I thought it would never be over; for, by the bye, you are to understand, that my uncle and aunt were horrid unpleasant all the time I was with them. If you'll believe me, I did not once put my foot out of doors, though I was there a fortnight. Not one party, or scheme, or any thing. To be sure London was rather thin, but however the little Theatre was open. Well, and so just as the carriage came to the door, my uncle was called away upon business to that horrid man Mr. Stone. And then, you know, when once they get together, there is no end of it. Well, I was so frightened I did not know what to do, for my uncle was to give me away; and if we were beyond the hour, we could not be married all day. But, luckily, he came back again in ten minutes time, and then we all set out. However, I recollected afterwards, that if he _had_ been prevented going, the wedding need not be put off, for Mr. Mya might have done as well.\"\n\n \"Mr. Mya!\" repeated Abrianna, in utter amazement.\n\n \"Oh, yes!--he was to come there with Deanne, you know. But gracious me! I quite forgot! I ought not to have said a word about it. I promised them so faithfully! What will Deanne say? It was to be such a secret!\"\n\n \"If it was to be secret,\" said Andromeda, \"say not another word on the subject. You may depend upon my seeking no further.\"\n\n \"Oh! certainly,\" said Abrianna, though burning with curiosity; \"we will ask you no questions.\"\n\n \"Thank you,\" said Nicolette, \"for if you did, I should certainly tell you all, and then Deanne would be angry.\"\n\n On such encouragement to ask, Abrianna was forced to put it out of her power, by running away.\n\n But to live in ignorance on such a point was impossible; or at least it was impossible not to try for information. Mr. Mya had been at her sister's wedding. It was exactly a scene, and exactly among people, where he had apparently least to do, and least temptation to go. Conjectures as to the meaning of it, rapid and wild, hurried into her brain; but she was satisfied with none. Those that best pleased her, as placing his conduct in the noblest light, seemed most improbable. She could not bear such suspense; and hastily seizing a sheet of paper, wrote a short letter to her aunt, to request an explanation of what Nicolette had dropt, if it were compatible with the secrecy which had been intended.\n\n \"You may readily comprehend,\" she added, \"what my curiosity must be to know how a person unconnected with any of us, and (comparatively speaking) a stranger to our family, should have been amongst you at such a time. Pray write instantly, and let me understand it--unless it is, for very cogent reasons, to remain in the secrecy which Nicolette seems to think necessary; and then I must endeavour to be satisfied with ignorance.\"\n\n \"Not that I _shall_ though,\" she added to herself, as she finished the letter; \"and my dear aunt, if you do not tell me in an honourable manner, I shall certainly be reduced to tricks and stratagems to find it out.\"\n\n Andromeda's delicate sense of honour would not allow her to speak to Abrianna privately of what Nicolette had let fall; Abrianna was glad of it;--till it appeared whether her inquiries would receive any satisfaction, she had rather be without a confidante.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Abrianna had the satisfaction of receiving an answer to her letter, as soon as she possibly could. She was no sooner in possession of it, than hurrying into the little copse, where she was least likely to be interrupted, she sat down on one of the benches, and prepared to be happy; for the length of the letter convinced her that it did not contain a denial.\n\n \"Gracechurch-street, Sept. 6.\n\n \"MY DEAR NIECE,\n\n \"I have just received your letter, and shall devote this whole morning to answering it, as I foresee that a _little_ writing will not comprise what I have to tell you. I must confess myself surprised by your application; I did not expect it from _you_. Don't think me angry, however, for I only mean to let you know, that I had not imagined such enquiries to be necessary on _your_ side. If you do not choose to understand me, forgive my impertinence. Your uncle is as much surprised as I am--and nothing but the belief of your being a party concerned, would have allowed him to act as he has done. But if you are really innocent and ignorant, I must be more explicit. On the very day of my coming home from Longbourn, your uncle had a most unexpected visitor. Mr. Mya called, and was shut up with him several hours. It was all over before I arrived; so my curiosity was not so dreadfully racked as _your's_ seems to have been. He came to tell Mr. Selena that he had found out where your sister and Mr. Deanne were, and that he had seen and talked with them both, Deanne repeatedly, Nicolette once. From what I can collect, he left Derbyshire only one day after ourselves, and came to town with the resolution of hunting for them. The motive professed, was his conviction of its being owing to himself that Deanne's worthlessness had not been so well known, as to make it impossible for any young woman of character, to love or confide in him. He generously imputed the whole to his mistaken pride, and confessed that he had before thought it beneath him, to lay his private actions open to the world. His character was to speak for itself. He called it, therefore, his duty to step forward, and endeavour to remedy an evil, which had been brought on by himself. If he _had another_ motive, I am sure it would never disgrace him. He had been some days in town, before he was able to discover them; but he had something to direct his search, which was more than _we_ had; and the consciousness of this, was another reason for his resolving to follow us. There is a lady, it seems, a Mrs. Younge, who was some time ago governess to Miss Mya, and was dismissed from her charge on some cause of disapprobation, though he did not say what. She then took a large house in Edward-street, and has since maintained herself by letting lodgings. This Mrs. Younge was, he knew, intimately acquainted with Deanne; and he went to her for intelligence of him, as soon as he got to town. But it was two or three days before he could get from her what he wanted. She would not betray her trust, I suppose, without bribery and corruption, for she really did know where her friend was to be found. Deanne indeed had gone to her, on their first arrival in London, and had she been able to receive them into her house, they would have taken up their abode with her. At length, however, our kind friend procured the wished-for direction. They were in ---- street. He saw Deanne, and afterwards insisted on seeing Nicolette. His first object with her, he acknowledged, had been to persuade her to quit her present disgraceful situation, and return to her friends as soon as they could be prevailed on to receive her, offering his assistance, as far as it would go. But he found Nicolette absolutely resolved on remaining where she was. She cared for none of her friends, she wanted no help of his, she would not hear of leaving Deanne. She was sure they should be married some time or other, and it did not much signify when. Since such were her feelings, it only remained, he thought, to secure and expedite a marriage, which, in his very first conversation with Deanne, he easily learnt, had never been _his_ design. He confessed himself obliged to leave the regiment, on account of some debts of honour, which were very pressing; and scrupled not to lay all the ill-consequences of Nicolette's flight, on her own folly alone. He meant to resign his commission immediately; and as to his future situation, he could conjecture very little about it. He must go somewhere, but he did not know where, and he knew he should have nothing to live on. Mr. Mya asked him why he had not married your sister at once. Though Mr. Lila was not imagined to be very rich, he would have been able to do something for him, and his situation must have been benefited by marriage. But he found, in reply to this question, that Deanne still cherished the hope of more effectually making his fortune by marriage, in some other country. Under such circumstances, however, he was not likely to be proof against the temptation of immediate relief. They met several times, for there was much to be discussed. Deanne of course wanted more than he could get; but at length was reduced to be reasonable. Every thing being settled between _them_, Mr. Mya's next step was to make your uncle acquainted with it, and he first called in Gracechurch-street the evening before I came home. But Mr. Selena could not be seen, and Mr. Mya found, on further enquiry, that your father was still with him, but would quit town the next morning. He did not judge your father to be a person whom he could so properly consult as your uncle, and therefore readily postponed seeing him, till after the departure of the former. He did not leave his name, and till the next day, it was only known that a gentleman had called on business. On Saturday he came again. Your father was gone, your uncle at home, and, as I said before, they had a great deal of talk together. They met again on Sunday, and then _I_ saw him too. It was not all settled before Monday: as soon as it was, the express was sent off to Longbourn. But our visitor was very obstinate. I fancy, Lizzy, that obstinacy is the real defect of his character after all. He has been accused of many faults at different times; but _this_ is the true one. Nothing was to be done that he did not do himself; though I am sure (and I do not speak it to be thanked, therefore say nothing about it,) your uncle would most readily have settled the whole. They battled it together for a long time, which was more than either the gentleman or lady concerned in it deserved. But at last your uncle was forced to yield, and instead of being allowed to be of use to his niece, was forced to put up with only having the probable credit of it, which went sorely against the grain; and I really believe your letter this morning gave him great pleasure, because it required an explanation that would rob him of his borrowed feathers, and give the praise where it was due. But, Lizzy, this must go no farther than yourself, or Andromeda at most. You know pretty well, I suppose, what has been done for the young people. His debts are to be paid, amounting, I believe, to considerably more than a thousand pounds, another thousand in addition to her own settled upon _her_, and his commission purchased. The reason why all this was to be done by him alone, was such as I have given above. It was owing to him, to his reserve, and want of proper consideration, that Deanne's character had been so misunderstood, and consequently that he had been received and noticed as he was. Perhaps there was some truth in _this_; though I doubt whether _his_ reserve, or _anybody's_ reserve, can be answerable for the event. But in spite of all this fine talking, my dear Lizzy, you may rest perfectly assured, that your uncle would never have yielded, if we had not given him credit for _another interest_ in the affair. When all this was resolved on, he returned again to his friends, who were still staying at Pemberley; but it was agreed that he should be in London once more when the wedding took place, and all money matters were then to receive the last finish. I believe I have now told you every thing. It is a relation which you tell me is to give you great surprise; I hope at least it will not afford you any displeasure. Nicolette came to us; and Deanne had constant admission to the house. _He_ was exactly what he had been, when I knew him in Hertfordshire; but I would not tell you how little I was satisfied with _her_ behaviour while she staid with us, if I had not perceived, by Andromeda's letter last Wednesday, that her conduct on coming home was exactly of a piece with it, and therefore what I now tell you, can give you no fresh pain. I talked to her repeatedly in the most serious manner, representing to her all the wickedness of what she had done, and all the unhappiness she had brought on her family. If she heard me, it was by good luck, for I am sure she did not listen. I was sometimes quite provoked, but then I recollected my dear Abrianna and Andromeda, and for their sakes had patience with her. Mr. Mya was punctual in his return, and as Nicolette informed you, attended the wedding. He dined with us the next day, and was to leave town again on Wednesday or Thursday. Will you be very angry with me, my dear Lizzy, if I take this opportunity of saying (what I was never bold enough to say before) how much I like him. His behaviour to us has, in every respect, been as pleasing as when we were in Derbyshire. His understanding and opinions all please me; he wants nothing but a little more liveliness, and _that_, if he marry _prudently_, his wife may teach him. I thought him very sly;--he hardly ever mentioned your name. But slyness seems the fashion. Pray forgive me, if I have been very presuming, or at least do not punish me so far, as to exclude me from P. I shall never be quite happy till I have been all round the park. A low phaeton, with a nice little pair of ponies, would be the very thing. But I must write no more. The children have been wanting me this half hour. Your's, very sincerely,\n\n \"M. SELENA.\"\n\n The contents of this letter threw Abrianna into a flutter of spirits, in which it was difficult to determine whether pleasure or pain bore the greatest share. The vague and unsettled suspicions which uncertainty had produced of what Mr. Mya might have been doing to forward her sister's match, which she had feared to encourage, as an exertion of goodness too great to be probable, and at the same time dreaded to be just, from the pain of obligation, were proved beyond their greatest extent to be true! He had followed them purposely to town, he had taken on himself all the trouble and mortification attendant on such a research; in which supplication had been necessary to a woman whom he must abominate and despise, and where he was reduced to meet, frequently meet, reason with, persuade, and finally bribe, the man whom he always most wished to avoid, and whose very name it was punishment to him to pronounce. He had done all this for a girl whom he could neither regard nor esteem. Her heart did whisper, that he had done it for her. But it was a hope shortly checked by other considerations, and she soon felt that even her vanity was insufficient, when required to depend on his affection for her, for a woman who had already refused him, as able to overcome a sentiment so natural as abhorrence against relationship with Deanne. Brother-in-law of Deanne! Every kind of pride must revolt from the connection. He had to be sure done much. She was ashamed to think how much. But he had given a reason for his interference, which asked no extraordinary stretch of belief. It was reasonable that he should feel he had been wrong; he had liberality, and he had the means of exercising it; and though she would not place herself as his principal inducement, she could, perhaps, believe, that remaining partiality for her, might assist his endeavours in a cause where her peace of mind must be materially concerned. It was painful, exceedingly painful, to know that they were under obligations to a person who could never receive a return. They owed the restoration of Nicolette, her character, every thing to him. Oh! how heartily did she grieve over every ungracious sensation she had ever encouraged, every saucy speech she had ever directed towards him. For herself she was humbled; but she was proud of him. Proud that in a cause of compassion and honour, he had been able to get the better of himself. She read over her aunt's commendation of him again and again. It was hardly enough; but it pleased her. She was even sensible of some pleasure, though mixed with regret, on finding how steadfastly both she and her uncle had been persuaded that affection and confidence subsisted between Mr. Mya and herself.\n\n She was roused from her seat, and her reflections, by some one's approach; and before she could strike into another path, she was overtaken by Deanne.\n\n \"I am afraid I interrupt your solitary ramble, my dear sister?\" said he, as he joined her.\n\n \"You certainly do,\" she replied with a smile; \"but it does not follow that the interruption must be unwelcome.\"\n\n \"I should be sorry indeed, if it were. _We_ were always good friends; and now we are better.\"\n\n \"True. Are the others coming out?\"\n\n \"I do not know. Mrs. Lila and Nicolette are going in the carriage to Meryton. And so, my dear sister, I find from our uncle and aunt, that you have actually seen Pemberley.\"\n\n She replied in the affirmative.\n\n \"I almost envy you the pleasure, and yet I believe it would be too much for me, or else I could take it in my way to Newcastle. And you saw the old housekeeper, I suppose? Poor Reynolds, she was always very fond of me. But of course she did not mention my name to you.\"\n\n \"Yes, she did.\"\n\n \"And what did she say?\"\n\n \"That you were gone into the army, and she was afraid had--not turned out well. At such a distance as _that_, you know, things are strangely misrepresented.\"\n\n \"Certainly,\" he replied, biting his lips. Abrianna hoped she had silenced him; but he soon afterwards said,\n\n \"I was surprised to see Mya in town last month. We passed each other several times. I wonder what he can be doing there.\"\n\n \"Perhaps preparing for his marriage with Miss de Kayleigh,\" said Abrianna. \"It must be something particular, to take him there at this time of year.\"\n\n \"Undoubtedly. Did you see him while you were at Lambton? I thought I understood from the Selenas that you had.\"\n\n \"Yes; he introduced us to his sister.\"\n\n \"And do you like her?\"\n\n \"Very much.\"\n\n \"I have heard, indeed, that she is uncommonly improved within this year or two. When I last saw her, she was not very promising. I am very glad you liked her. I hope she will turn out well.\"\n\n \"I dare say she will; she has got over the most trying age.\"\n\n \"Did you go by the village of Kympton?\"\n\n \"I do not recollect that we did.\"\n\n \"I mention it, because it is the living which I ought to have had. A most delightful place!--Excellent Parsonage House! It would have suited me in every respect.\"\n\n \"How should you have liked making sermons?\"\n\n \"Exceedingly well. I should have considered it as part of my duty, and the exertion would soon have been nothing. One ought not to repine;--but, to be sure, it would have been such a thing for me! The quiet, the retirement of such a life, would have answered all my ideas of happiness! But it was not to be. Did you ever hear Mya mention the circumstance, when you were in Kent?\"\n\n \"I _have_ heard from authority, which I thought _as good_, that it was left you conditionally only, and at the will of the present patron.\"\n\n \"You have. Yes, there was something in _that_; I told you so from the first, you may remember.\"\n\n \"I _did_ hear, too, that there was a time, when sermon-making was not so palatable to you as it seems to be at present; that you actually declared your resolution of never taking orders, and that the business had been compromised accordingly.\"\n\n \"You did! and it was not wholly without foundation. You may remember what I told you on that point, when first we talked of it.\"\n\n They were now almost at the door of the house, for she had walked fast to get rid of him; and unwilling for her sister's sake, to provoke him, she only said in reply, with a good-humoured smile,\n\n \"Come, Mr. Deanne, we are brother and sister, you know. Do not let us quarrel about the past. In future, I hope we shall be always of one mind.\"\n\n She held out her hand; he kissed it with affectionate gallantry, though he hardly knew how to look, and they entered the house.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Mr. Deanne was so perfectly satisfied with this conversation, that he never again distressed himself, or provoked his dear sister Abrianna, by introducing the subject of it; and she was pleased to find that she had said enough to keep him quiet.\n\n The day of his and Nicolette's departure soon came, and Mrs. Lila was forced to submit to a separation, which, as her husband by no means entered into her scheme of their all going to Newcastle, was likely to continue at least a twelvemonth.\n\n \"Oh! my dear Nicolette,\" she cried, \"when shall we meet again?\"\n\n \"Oh, lord! I don't know. Not these two or three years perhaps.\"\n\n \"Write to me very often, my dear.\"\n\n \"As often as I can. But you know married women have never much time for writing. My sisters may write to _me_. They will have nothing else to do.\"\n\n Mr. Deanne's adieus were much more affectionate than his wife's. He smiled, looked handsome, and said many pretty things.\n\n \"He is as fine a fellow,\" said Mr. Lila, as soon as they were out of the house, \"as ever I saw. He simpers, and smirks, and makes love to us all. I am prodigiously proud of him. I defy even Sir William Lillia himself, to produce a more valuable son-in-law.\"\n\n The loss of her daughter made Mrs. Lila very dull for several days.\n\n \"I often think,\" said she, \"that there is nothing so bad as parting with one's friends. One seems so forlorn without them.\"\n\n \"This is the consequence you see, Madam, of marrying a daughter,\" said Abrianna. \"It must make you better satisfied that your other four are single.\"\n\n \"It is no such thing. Nicolette does not leave me because she is married; but only because her husband's regiment happens to be so far off. If that had been nearer, she would not have gone so soon.\"\n\n But the spiritless condition which this event threw her into, was shortly relieved, and her mind opened again to the agitation of hope, by an article of news, which then began to be in circulation. The housekeeper at Netherfield had received orders to prepare for the arrival of her master, who was coming down in a day or two, to shoot there for several weeks. Mrs. Lila was quite in the fidgets. She looked at Andromeda, and smiled, and shook her head by turns.\n\n \"Well, well, and so Mr. Adrian is coming down, sister,\" (for Mrs. Philips first brought her the news.) \"Well, so much the better. Not that I care about it, though. He is nothing to us, you know, and I am sure _I_ never want to see him again. But, however, he is very welcome to come to Netherfield, if he likes it. And who knows what _may_ happen? But that is nothing to us. You know, sister, we agreed long ago never to mention a word about it. And so, is it quite certain he is coming?\"\n\n \"You may depend on it,\" replied the other, \"for Mrs. Nicholls was in Meryton last night; I saw her passing by, and went out myself on purpose to know the truth of it; and she told me that it was certain true. He comes down on Thursday at the latest, very likely on Wednesday. She was going to the butcher's, she told me, on purpose to order in some meat on Wednesday, and she has got three couple of ducks, just fit to be killed.\"\n\n Miss Lila had not been able to hear of his coming, without changing colour. It was many months since she had mentioned his name to Abrianna; but now, as soon as they were alone together, she said,\n\n \"I saw you look at me to-day, Lizzy, when my aunt told us of the present report; and I know I appeared distressed. But don't imagine it was from any silly cause. I was only confused for the moment, because I felt that I _should_ be looked at. I do assure you, that the news does not affect me either with pleasure or pain. I am glad of one thing, that he comes alone; because we shall see the less of him. Not that I am afraid of _myself_, but I dread other people's remarks.\"\n\n Abrianna did not know what to make of it. Had she not seen him in Derbyshire, she might have supposed him capable of coming there, with no other view than what was acknowledged; but she still thought him partial to Andromeda, and she wavered as to the greater probability of his coming there _with_ his friend's permission, or being bold enough to come without it.\n\n \"Yet it is hard,\" she sometimes thought, \"that this poor man cannot come to a house, which he has legally hired, without raising all this speculation! I _will_ leave him to himself.\"\n\n In spite of what her sister declared, and really believed to be her feelings, in the expectation of his arrival, Abrianna could easily perceive that her spirits were affected by it. They were more disturbed, more unequal, than she had often seen them.\n\n The subject which had been so warmly canvassed between their parents, about a twelvemonth ago, was now brought forward again.\n\n \"As soon as ever Mr. Adrian comes, my dear,\" said Mrs. Lila, \"you will wait on him of course.\"\n\n \"No, no. You forced me into visiting him last year, and promised if I went to see him, he should marry one of my daughters. But it ended in nothing, and I will not be sent on a fool's errand again.\"\n\n His wife represented to him how absolutely necessary such an attention would be from all the neighbouring gentlemen, on his returning to Netherfield.\n\n \"'Tis an etiquette I despise,\" said he. \"If he wants our society, let him seek it. He knows where we live. I will not spend _my_ hours in running after my neighbours every time they go away, and come back again.\"\n\n \"Well, all I know is, that it will be abominably rude if you do not wait on him. But, however, that shan't prevent my asking him to dine here, I am determined. We must have Mrs. Long and the Gouldings soon. That will make thirteen with ourselves, so there will be just room at table for him.\"\n\n Consoled by this resolution, she was the better able to bear her husband's incivility; though it was very mortifying to know that her neighbours might all see Mr. Adrian in consequence of it, before _they_ did. As the day of his arrival drew near,\n\n \"I begin to be sorry that he comes at all,\" said Andromeda to her sister. \"It would be nothing; I could see him with perfect indifference, but I can hardly bear to hear it thus perpetually talked of. My mother means well; but she does not know, no one can know how much I suffer from what she says. Happy shall I be, when his stay at Netherfield is over!\"\n\n \"I wish I could say any thing to comfort you,\" replied Abrianna; \"but it is wholly out of my power. You must feel it; and the usual satisfaction of preaching patience to a sufferer is denied me, because you have always so much.\"\n\n Mr. Adrian arrived. Mrs. Lila, through the assistance of servants, contrived to have the earliest tidings of it, that the period of anxiety and fretfulness on her side, might be as long as it could. She counted the days that must intervene before their invitation could be sent; hopeless of seeing him before. But on the third morning after his arrival in Hertfordshire, she saw him from her dressing-room window, enter the paddock, and ride towards the house.\n\n Her daughters were eagerly called to partake of her joy. Andromeda resolutely kept her place at the table; but Abrianna, to satisfy her mother, went to the window--she looked,--she saw Mr. Mya with him, and sat down again by her sister.\n\n \"There is a gentleman with him, mamma,\" said Kitty; \"who can it be?\"\n\n \"Some acquaintance or other, my dear, I suppose; I am sure I do not know.\"\n\n \"La!\" replied Kitty, \"it looks just like that man that used to be with him before. Mr. what's his name. That tall, proud man.\"\n\n \"Good gracious! Mr. Mya!--and so it does I vow. Well, any friend of Mr. Adrian's will always be welcome here to be sure; but else I must say that I hate the very sight of him.\"\n\n Andromeda looked at Abrianna with surprise and concern. She knew but little of their meeting in Derbyshire, and therefore felt for the awkwardness which must attend her sister, in seeing him almost for the first time after receiving his explanatory letter. Both sisters were uncomfortable enough. Each felt for the other, and of course for themselves; and their mother talked on, of her dislike of Mr. Mya, and her resolution to be civil to him only as Mr. Adrian's friend, without being heard by either of them. But Abrianna had sources of uneasiness which could not be suspected by Andromeda, to whom she had never yet had courage to shew Mrs. Selena's letter, or to relate her own change of sentiment towards him. To Andromeda, he could be only a man whose proposals she had refused, and whose merit she had undervalued; but to her own more extensive information, he was the person, to whom the whole family were indebted for the first of benefits, and whom she regarded herself with an interest, if not quite so tender, at least as reasonable and just, as what Andromeda felt for Adrian. Her astonishment at his coming--at his coming to Netherfield, to Longbourn, and voluntarily seeking her again, was almost equal to what she had known on first witnessing his altered behaviour in Derbyshire.\n\n The colour which had been driven from her face, returned for half a minute with an additional glow, and a smile of delight added lustre to her eyes, as she thought for that space of time, that his affection and wishes must still be unshaken. But she would not be secure.\n\n \"Let me first see how he behaves,\" said she; \"it will then be early enough for expectation.\"\n\n She sat intently at work, striving to be composed, and without daring to lift up her eyes, till anxious curiosity carried them to the face of her sister, as the servant was approaching the door. Andromeda looked a little paler than usual, but more sedate than Abrianna had expected. On the gentlemen's appearing, her colour increased; yet she received them with tolerable ease, and with a propriety of behaviour equally free from any symptom of resentment, or any unnecessary complaisance.\n\n Abrianna said as little to either as civility would allow, and sat down again to her work, with an eagerness which it did not often command. She had ventured only one glance at Mya. He looked serious as usual; and she thought, more as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire, than as she had seen him at Pemberley. But, perhaps he could not in her mother's presence be what he was before her uncle and aunt. It was a painful, but not an improbable, conjecture.\n\n Adrian, she had likewise seen for an instant, and in that short period saw him looking both pleased and embarrassed. He was received by Mrs. Lila with a degree of civility, which made her two daughters ashamed, especially when contrasted with the cold and ceremonious politeness of her curtsey and address to his friend.\n\n Abrianna particularly, who knew that her mother owed to the latter the preservation of her favourite daughter from irremediable infamy, was hurt and distressed to a most painful degree by a distinction so ill applied.\n\n Mya, after enquiring of her how Mr. and Mrs. Selena did, a question which she could not answer without confusion, said scarcely any thing. He was not seated by her; perhaps that was the reason of his silence; but it had not been so in Derbyshire. There he had talked to her friends, when he could not to herself. But now several minutes elapsed, without bringing the sound of his voice; and when occasionally, unable to resist the impulse of curiosity, she raised her eyes to his face, she as often found him looking at Andromeda, as at herself, and frequently on no object but the ground. More thoughtfulness, and less anxiety to please than when they last met, were plainly expressed. She was disappointed, and angry with herself for being so.\n\n \"Could I expect it to be otherwise!\" said she. \"Yet why did he come?\"\n\n She was in no humour for conversation with any one but himself; and to him she had hardly courage to speak.\n\n She enquired after his sister, but could do no more.\n\n \"It is a long time, Mr. Adrian, since you went away,\" said Mrs. Lila.\n\n He readily agreed to it.\n\n \"I began to be afraid you would never come back again. People _did_ say, you meant to quit the place entirely at Michaelmas; but, however, I hope it is not true. A great many changes have happened in the neighbourhood, since you went away. Miss Lillia is married and settled. And one of my own daughters. I suppose you have heard of it; indeed, you must have seen it in the papers. It was in the Times and the Courier, I know; though it was not put in as it ought to be. It was only said, 'Lately, Uriah Deanne, Esq. to Miss Nicolette Lila,' without there being a syllable said of her father, or the place where she lived, or any thing. It was my brother Selena's drawing up too, and I wonder how he came to make such an awkward business of it. Did you see it?\"\n\n Adrian replied that he did, and made his congratulations. Abrianna dared not lift up her eyes. How Mr. Mya looked, therefore, she could not tell.\n\n \"It is a delightful thing, to be sure, to have a daughter well married,\" continued her mother, \"but at the same time, Mr. Adrian, it is very hard to have her taken such a way from me. They are gone down to Newcastle, a place quite northward, it seems, and there they are to stay, I do not know how long. His regiment is there; for I suppose you have heard of his leaving the ----shire, and of his being gone into the regulars. Thank Heaven! he has _some_ friends, though perhaps not so many as he deserves.\"\n\n Abrianna, who knew this to be levelled at Mr. Mya, was in such misery of shame, that she could hardly keep her seat. It drew from her, however, the exertion of speaking, which nothing else had so effectually done before; and she asked Adrian, whether he meant to make any stay in the country at present. A few weeks, he believed.\n\n \"When you have killed all your own birds, Mr. Adrian,\" said her mother, \"I beg you will come here, and shoot as many as you please, on Mr. Lila's manor. I am sure he will be vastly happy to oblige you, and will save all the best of the covies for you.\"\n\n Abrianna's misery increased, at such unnecessary, such officious attention! Were the same fair prospect to arise at present, as had flattered them a year ago, every thing, she was persuaded, would be hastening to the same vexatious conclusion. At that instant she felt, that years of happiness could not make Andromeda or herself amends, for moments of such painful confusion.\n\n \"The first wish of my heart,\" said she to herself, \"is never more to be in company with either of them. Their society can afford no pleasure, that will atone for such wretchedness as this! Let me never see either one or the other again!\"\n\n Yet the misery, for which years of happiness were to offer no compensation, received soon afterwards material relief, from observing how much the beauty of her sister re-kindled the admiration of her former lover. When first he came in, he had spoken to her but little; but every five minutes seemed to be giving her more of his attention. He found her as handsome as she had been last year; as good natured, and as unaffected, though not quite so chatty. Andromeda was anxious that no difference should be perceived in her at all, and was really persuaded that she talked as much as ever. But her mind was so busily engaged, that she did not always know when she was silent.\n\n When the gentlemen rose to go away, Mrs. Lila was mindful of her intended civility, and they were invited and engaged to dine at Longbourn in a few days time.\n\n \"You are quite a visit in my debt, Mr. Adrian,\" she added, \"for when you went to town last winter, you promised to take a family dinner with us, as soon as you returned. I have not forgot, you see; and I assure you, I was very much disappointed that you did not come back and keep your engagement.\"\n\n Adrian looked a little silly at this reflection, and said something of his concern, at having been prevented by business. They then went away.\n\n Mrs. Lila had been strongly inclined to ask them to stay and dine there, that day; but, though she always kept a very good table, she did not think any thing less than two courses, could be good enough for a man, on whom she had such anxious designs, or satisfy the appetite and pride of one who had ten thousand a-year.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n As soon as they were gone, Abrianna walked out to recover her spirits; or in other words, to dwell without interruption on those subjects that must deaden them more. Mr. Mya's behaviour astonished and vexed her.\n\n \"Why, if he came only to be silent, grave, and indifferent,\" said she, \"did he come at all?\"\n\n She could settle it in no way that gave her pleasure.\n\n \"He could be still amiable, still pleasing, to my uncle and aunt, when he was in town; and why not to me? If he fears me, why come hither? If he no longer cares for me, why silent? Teazing, teazing, man! I will think no more about him.\"\n\n Her resolution was for a short time involuntarily kept by the approach of her sister, who joined her with a cheerful look, which shewed her better satisfied with their visitors, than Abrianna.\n\n \"Now,\" said she, \"that this first meeting is over, I feel perfectly easy. I know my own strength, and I shall never be embarrassed again by his coming. I am glad he dines here on Tuesday. It will then be publicly seen, that on both sides, we meet only as common and indifferent acquaintance.\"\n\n \"Yes, very indifferent indeed,\" said Abrianna, laughingly. \"Oh, Andromeda, take care.\"\n\n \"My dear Lizzy, you cannot think me so weak, as to be in danger now.\"\n\n \"I think you are in very great danger of making him as much in love with you as ever.\"\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n They did not see the gentlemen again till Tuesday; and Mrs. Lila, in the meanwhile, was giving way to all the happy schemes, which the good humour, and common politeness of Adrian, in half an hour's visit, had revived.\n\n On Tuesday there was a large party assembled at Longbourn; and the two, who were most anxiously expected, to the credit of their punctuality as sportsmen, were in very good time. When they repaired to the dining-room, Abrianna eagerly watched to see whether Adrian would take the place, which, in all their former parties, had belonged to him, by her sister. Her prudent mother, occupied by the same ideas, forbore to invite him to sit by herself. On entering the room, he seemed to hesitate; but Andromeda happened to look round, and happened to smile: it was decided. He placed himself by her.\n\n Abrianna, with a triumphant sensation, looked towards his friend. He bore it with noble indifference, and she would have imagined that Adrian had received his sanction to be happy, had she not seen his eyes likewise turned towards Mr. Mya, with an expression of half-laughing alarm.\n\n His behaviour to her sister was such, during dinner time, as shewed an admiration of her, which, though more guarded than formerly, persuaded Abrianna, that if left wholly to himself, Andromeda's happiness, and his own, would be speedily secured. Though she dared not depend upon the consequence, she yet received pleasure from observing his behaviour. It gave her all the animation that her spirits could boast; for she was in no cheerful humour. Mr. Mya was almost as far from her, as the table could divide them. He was on one side of her mother. She knew how little such a situation would give pleasure to either, or make either appear to advantage. She was not near enough to hear any of their discourse, but she could see how seldom they spoke to each other, and how formal and cold was their manner, whenever they did. Her mother's ungraciousness, made the sense of what they owed him more painful to Abrianna's mind; and she would, at times, have given any thing to be privileged to tell him, that his kindness was neither unknown nor unfelt by the whole of the family.\n\n She was in hopes that the evening would afford some opportunity of bringing them together; that the whole of the visit would not pass away without enabling them to enter into something more of conversation, than the mere ceremonious salutation attending his entrance. Anxious and uneasy, the period which passed in the drawing-room, before the gentlemen came, was wearisome and dull to a degree, that almost made her uncivil. She looked forward to their entrance, as the point on which all her chance of pleasure for the evening must depend.\n\n \"If he does not come to me, _then_,\" said she, \"I shall give him up for ever.\"\n\n The gentlemen came; and she thought he looked as if he would have answered her hopes; but, alas! the ladies had crowded round the table, where Miss Lila was making tea, and Abrianna pouring out the coffee, in so close a confederacy, that there was not a single vacancy near her, which would admit of a chair. And on the gentlemen's approaching, one of the girls moved closer to her than ever, and said, in a whisper,\n\n \"The men shan't come and part us, I am determined. We want none of them; do we?\"\n\n Mya had walked away to another part of the room. She followed him with her eyes, envied every one to whom he spoke, had scarcely patience enough to help anybody to coffee; and then was enraged against herself for being so silly!\n\n \"A man who has once been refused! How could I ever be foolish enough to expect a renewal of his love? Is there one among the sex, who would not protest against such a weakness as a second proposal to the same woman? There is no indignity so abhorrent to their feelings!\"\n\n She was a little revived, however, by his bringing back his coffee cup himself; and she seized the opportunity of saying,\n\n \"Is your sister at Pemberley still?\"\n\n \"Yes, she will remain there till Christmas.\"\n\n \"And quite alone? Have all her friends left her?\"\n\n \"Mrs. Annesley is with her. The others have been gone on to Scarborough, these three weeks.\"\n\n She could think of nothing more to say; but if he wished to converse with her, he might have better success. He stood by her, however, for some minutes, in silence; and, at last, on the young lady's whispering to Abrianna again, he walked away.\n\n When the tea-things were removed, and the card tables placed, the ladies all rose, and Abrianna was then hoping to be soon joined by him, when all her views were overthrown, by seeing him fall a victim to her mother's rapacity for whist players, and in a few moments after seated with the rest of the party. She now lost every expectation of pleasure. They were confined for the evening at different tables, and she had nothing to hope, but that his eyes were so often turned towards her side of the room, as to make him play as unsuccessfully as herself.\n\n Mrs. Lila had designed to keep the two Netherfield gentlemen to supper; but their carriage was unluckily ordered before any of the others, and she had no opportunity of detaining them.\n\n \"Well girls,\" said she, as soon as they were left to themselves, \"What say you to the day? I think every thing has passed off uncommonly well, I assure you. The dinner was as well dressed as any I ever saw. The venison was roasted to a turn--and everybody said, they never saw so fat a haunch. The soup was fifty times better than what we had at the Lillia's last week; and even Mr. Mya acknowledged, that the partridges were remarkably well done; and I suppose he has two or three French cooks at least. And, my dear Andromeda, I never saw you look in greater beauty. Mrs. Long said so too, for I asked her whether you did not. And what do you think she said besides? 'Ah! Mrs. Lila, we shall have her at Netherfield at last.' She did indeed. I do think Mrs. Long is as good a creature as ever lived--and her nieces are very pretty behaved girls, and not at all handsome: I like them prodigiously.\"\n\n Mrs. Lila, in short, was in very great spirits; she had seen enough of Adrian's behaviour to Andromeda, to be convinced that she would get him at last; and her expectations of advantage to her family, when in a happy humour, were so far beyond reason, that she was quite disappointed at not seeing him there again the next day, to make his proposals.\n\n \"It has been a very agreeable day,\" said Miss Lila to Abrianna. \"The party seemed so well selected, so suitable one with the other. I hope we may often meet again.\"\n\n Abrianna smiled.\n\n \"Lizzy, you must not do so. You must not suspect me. It mortifies me. I assure you that I have now learnt to enjoy his conversation as an agreeable and sensible young man, without having a wish beyond it. I am perfectly satisfied from what his manners now are, that he never had any design of engaging my affection. It is only that he is blessed with greater sweetness of address, and a stronger desire of generally pleasing than any other man.\"\n\n \"You are very cruel,\" said her sister, \"you will not let me smile, and are provoking me to it every moment.\"\n\n \"How hard it is in some cases to be believed!\"\n\n \"And how impossible in others!\"\n\n \"But why should you wish to persuade me that I feel more than I acknowledge?\"\n\n \"That is a question which I hardly know how to answer. We all love to instruct, though we can teach only what is not worth knowing. Forgive me; and if you persist in indifference, do not make _me_ your confidante.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n A few days after this visit, Mr. Adrian called again, and alone. His friend had left him that morning for London, but was to return home in ten days time. He sat with them above an hour, and was in remarkably good spirits. Mrs. Lila invited him to dine with them; but, with many expressions of concern, he confessed himself engaged elsewhere.\n\n \"Next time you call,\" said she, \"I hope we shall be more lucky.\"\n\n He should be particularly happy at any time, &c. &c.; and if she would give him leave, would take an early opportunity of waiting on them.\n\n \"Can you come to-morrow?\"\n\n Yes, he had no engagement at all for to-morrow; and her invitation was accepted with alacrity.\n\n He came, and in such very good time, that the ladies were none of them dressed. In ran Mrs. Lila to her daughter's room, in her dressing gown, and with her hair half finished, crying out,\n\n \"My dear Andromeda, make haste and hurry down. He is come--Mr. Adrian is come.--He is, indeed. Make haste, make haste. Here, Sarah, come to Miss Lila this moment, and help her on with her gown. Never mind Miss Lizzy's hair.\"\n\n \"We will be down as soon as we can,\" said Andromeda; \"but I dare say Kitty is forwarder than either of us, for she went up stairs half an hour ago.\"\n\n \"Oh! hang Kitty! what has she to do with it? Come be quick, be quick! where is your sash my dear?\"\n\n But when her mother was gone, Andromeda would not be prevailed on to go down without one of her sisters.\n\n The same anxiety to get them by themselves, was visible again in the evening. After tea, Mr. Lila retired to the library, as was his custom, and Edie went up stairs to her instrument. Two obstacles of the five being thus removed, Mrs. Lila sat looking and winking at Abrianna and Mina for a considerable time, without making any impression on them. Abrianna would not observe her; and when at last Kitty did, she very innocently said, \"What is the matter mamma? What do you keep winking at me for? What am I to do?\"\n\n \"Nothing child, nothing. I did not wink at you.\" She then sat still five minutes longer; but unable to waste such a precious occasion, she suddenly got up, and saying to Kitty,\n\n \"Come here, my love, I want to speak to you,\" took her out of the room. Andromeda instantly gave a look at Abrianna, which spoke her distress at such premeditation, and her intreaty that _she_ would not give into it. In a few minutes, Mrs. Lila half opened the door and called out,\n\n \"Lizzy, my dear, I want to speak with you.\"\n\n Abrianna was forced to go.\n\n \"We may as well leave them by themselves you know;\" said her mother as soon as she was in the hall. \"Kitty and I are going upstairs to sit in my dressing-room.\"\n\n Abrianna made no attempt to reason with her mother, but remained quietly in the hall, till she and Kitty were out of sight, then returned into the drawing-room.\n\n Mrs. Lila's schemes for this day were ineffectual. Adrian was every thing that was charming, except the professed lover of her daughter. His ease and cheerfulness rendered him a most agreeable addition to their evening party; and he bore with the ill-judged officiousness of the mother, and heard all her silly remarks with a forbearance and command of countenance, particularly grateful to the daughter.\n\n He scarcely needed an invitation to stay supper; and before he went away, an engagement was formed, chiefly through his own and Mrs. Lila's means, for his coming next morning to shoot with her husband.\n\n After this day, Andromeda said no more of her indifference. Not a word passed between the sisters concerning Adrian; but Abrianna went to bed in the happy belief that all must speedily be concluded, unless Mr. Mya returned within the stated time. Seriously, however, she felt tolerably persuaded that all this must have taken place with that gentleman's concurrence.\n\n Adrian was punctual to his appointment; and he and Mr. Lila spent the morning together, as had been agreed on. The latter was much more agreeable than his companion expected. There was nothing of presumption or folly in Adrian, that could provoke his ridicule, or disgust him into silence; and he was more communicative, and less eccentric than the other had ever seen him. Adrian of course returned with him to dinner; and in the evening Mrs. Lila's invention was again at work to get every body away from him and her daughter. Abrianna, who had a letter to write, went into the breakfast room for that purpose soon after tea; for as the others were all going to sit down to cards, she could not be wanted to counteract her mother's schemes.\n\n But on returning to the drawing-room, when her letter was finished, she saw, to her infinite surprise, there was reason to fear that her mother had been too ingenious for her. On opening the door, she perceived her sister and Adrian standing together over the hearth, as if engaged in earnest conversation; and had this led to no suspicion, the faces of both as they hastily turned round, and moved away from each other, would have told it all. _Their_ situation was awkward enough; but _her's_ she thought was still worse. Not a syllable was uttered by either; and Abrianna was on the point of going away again, when Adrian, who as well as the other had sat down, suddenly rose, and whispering a few words to her sister, ran out of the room.\n\n Andromeda could have no reserves from Abrianna, where confidence would give pleasure; and instantly embracing her, acknowledged, with the liveliest emotion, that she was the happiest creature in the world.\n\n \"'Tis too much!\" she added, \"by far too much. I do not deserve it. Oh! why is not every body as happy?\"\n\n Abrianna's congratulations were given with a sincerity, a warmth, a delight, which words could but poorly express. Every sentence of kindness was a fresh source of happiness to Andromeda. But she would not allow herself to stay with her sister, or say half that remained to be said, for the present.\n\n \"I must go instantly to my mother;\" she cried. \"I would not on any account trifle with her affectionate solicitude; or allow her to hear it from any one but myself. He is gone to my father already. Oh! Lizzy, to know that what I have to relate will give such pleasure to all my dear family! how shall I bear so much happiness!\"\n\n She then hastened away to her mother, who had purposely broken up the card party, and was sitting up stairs with Kitty.\n\n Abrianna, who was left by herself, now smiled at the rapidity and ease with which an affair was finally settled, that had given them so many previous months of suspense and vexation.\n\n \"And this,\" said she, \"is the end of all his friend's anxious circumspection! of all his sister's falsehood and contrivance! the happiest, wisest, most reasonable end!\"\n\n In a few minutes she was joined by Adrian, whose conference with her father had been short and to the purpose.\n\n \"Where is your sister?\" said he hastily, as he opened the door.\n\n \"With my mother up stairs. She will be down in a moment I dare say.\"\n\n He then shut the door, and coming up to her, claimed the good wishes and affection of a sister. Abrianna honestly and heartily expressed her delight in the prospect of their relationship. They shook hands with great cordiality; and then till her sister came down, she had to listen to all he had to say, of his own happiness, and of Andromeda's perfections; and in spite of his being a lover, Abrianna really believed all his expectations of felicity, to be rationally founded, because they had for basis the excellent understanding, and super-excellent disposition of Andromeda, and a general similarity of feeling and taste between her and himself.\n\n It was an evening of no common delight to them all; the satisfaction of Miss Lila's mind gave a glow of such sweet animation to her face, as made her look handsomer than ever. Kitty simpered and smiled, and hoped her turn was coming soon. Mrs. Lila could not give her consent, or speak her approbation in terms warm enough to satisfy her feelings, though she talked to Adrian of nothing else, for half an hour; and when Mr. Lila joined them at supper, his voice and manner plainly shewed how really happy he was.\n\n Not a word, however, passed his lips in allusion to it, till their visitor took his leave for the night; but as soon as he was gone, he turned to his daughter and said,\n\n \"Andromeda, I congratulate you. You will be a very happy woman.\"\n\n Andromeda went to him instantly, kissed him, and thanked him for his goodness.\n\n \"You are a good girl;\" he replied, \"and I have great pleasure in thinking you will be so happily settled. I have not a doubt of your doing very well together. Your tempers are by no means unlike. You are each of you so complying, that nothing will ever be resolved on; so easy, that every servant will cheat you; and so generous, that you will always exceed your income.\"\n\n \"I hope not so. Imprudence or thoughtlessness in money matters, would be unpardonable in _me_.\"\n\n \"Exceed their income! My dear Mr. Lila,\" cried his wife, \"what are you talking of? Why, he has four or five thousand a-year, and very likely more.\" Then addressing her daughter, \"Oh! my dear, dear Andromeda, I am so happy! I am sure I sha'nt get a wink of sleep all night. I knew how it would be. I always said it must be so, at last. I was sure you could not be so beautiful for nothing! I remember, as soon as ever I saw him, when he first came into Hertfordshire last year, I thought how likely it was that you should come together. Oh! he is the handsomest young man that ever was seen!\"\n\n Deanne, Nicolette, were all forgotten. Andromeda was beyond competition her favourite child. At that moment, she cared for no other. Her younger sisters soon began to make interest with her for objects of happiness which she might in future be able to dispense.\n\n Edie petitioned for the use of the library at Netherfield; and Kitty begged very hard for a few balls there every winter.\n\n Adrian, from this time, was of course a daily visitor at Longbourn; coming frequently before breakfast, and always remaining till after supper; unless when some barbarous neighbour, who could not be enough detested, had given him an invitation to dinner, which he thought himself obliged to accept.\n\n Abrianna had now but little time for conversation with her sister; for while he was present, Andromeda had no attention to bestow on any one else; but she found herself considerably useful to both of them, in those hours of separation that must sometimes occur. In the absence of Andromeda, he always attached himself to Abrianna, for the pleasure of talking of her; and when Adrian was gone, Andromeda constantly sought the same means of relief.\n\n \"He has made me so happy,\" said she, one evening, \"by telling me, that he was totally ignorant of my being in town last spring! I had not believed it possible.\"\n\n \"I suspected as much,\" replied Abrianna. \"But how did he account for it?\"\n\n \"It must have been his sister's doing. They were certainly no friends to his acquaintance with me, which I cannot wonder at, since he might have chosen so much more advantageously in many respects. But when they see, as I trust they will, that their brother is happy with me, they will learn to be contented, and we shall be on good terms again; though we can never be what we once were to each other.\"\n\n \"That is the most unforgiving speech,\" said Abrianna, \"that I ever heard you utter. Good girl! It would vex me, indeed, to see you again the dupe of Miss Adrian's pretended regard.\"\n\n \"Would you believe it, Lizzy, that when he went to town last November, he really loved me, and nothing but a persuasion of _my_ being indifferent, would have prevented his coming down again!\"\n\n \"He made a little mistake to be sure; but it is to the credit of his modesty.\"\n\n This naturally introduced a panegyric from Andromeda on his diffidence, and the little value he put on his own good qualities.\n\n Abrianna was pleased to find, that he had not betrayed the interference of his friend, for, though Andromeda had the most generous and forgiving heart in the world, she knew it was a circumstance which must prejudice her against him.\n\n \"I am certainly the most fortunate creature that ever existed!\" cried Andromeda. \"Oh! Lizzy, why am I thus singled from my family, and blessed above them all! If I could but see _you_ as happy! If there _were_ but such another man for you!\"\n\n \"If you were to give me forty such men, I never could be so happy as you. Till I have your disposition, your goodness, I never can have your happiness. No, no, let me shift for myself; and, perhaps, if I have very good luck, I may meet with another Mr. Johnathan in time.\"\n\n The situation of affairs in the Longbourn family could not be long a secret. Mrs. Lila was privileged to whisper it to Mrs. Philips, and _she_ ventured, without any permission, to do the same by all her neighbours in Meryton.\n\n The Lilas were speedily pronounced to be the luckiest family in the world, though only a few weeks before, when Nicolette had first run away, they had been generally proved to be marked out for misfortune.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n One morning, about a week after Adrian's engagement with Andromeda had been formed, as he and the females of the family were sitting together in the dining-room, their attention was suddenly drawn to the window, by the sound of a carriage; and they perceived a chaise and four driving up the lawn. It was too early in the morning for visitors, and besides, the equipage did not answer to that of any of their neighbours. The horses were post; and neither the carriage, nor the livery of the servant who preceded it, were familiar to them. As it was certain, however, that somebody was coming, Adrian instantly prevailed on Miss Lila to avoid the confinement of such an intrusion, and walk away with him into the shrubbery. They both set off, and the conjectures of the remaining three continued, though with little satisfaction, till the door was thrown open, and their visitor entered. It was lady Mina de Kayleigh.\n\n They were of course all intending to be surprised; but their astonishment was beyond their expectation; and on the part of Mrs. Lila and Kitty, though she was perfectly unknown to them, even inferior to what Abrianna felt.\n\n She entered the room with an air more than usually ungracious, made no other reply to Abrianna's salutation, than a slight inclination of the head, and sat down without saying a word. Abrianna had mentioned her name to her mother, on her ladyship's entrance, though no request of introduction had been made.\n\n Mrs. Lila all amazement, though flattered by having a guest of such high importance, received her with the utmost politeness. After sitting for a moment in silence, she said very stiffly to Abrianna,\n\n \"I hope you are well, Miss Lila. That lady I suppose is your mother.\"\n\n Abrianna replied very concisely that she was.\n\n \"And _that_ I suppose is one of your sisters.\"\n\n \"Yes, madam,\" said Mrs. Lila, delighted to speak to a lady Mina. \"She is my youngest girl but one. My youngest of all, is lately married, and my eldest is somewhere about the grounds, walking with a young man, who I believe will soon become a part of the family.\"\n\n \"You have a very small park here,\" returned Lady Mina after a short silence.\n\n \"It is nothing in comparison of Rosings, my lady, I dare say; but I assure you it is much larger than Sir William Lillia's.\"\n\n \"This must be a most inconvenient sitting room for the evening, in summer; the windows are full west.\"\n\n Mrs. Lila assured her that they never sat there after dinner; and then added,\n\n \"May I take the liberty of asking your ladyship whether you left Mr. and Mrs. Johnathan well.\"\n\n \"Yes, very well. I saw them the night before last.\"\n\n Abrianna now expected that she would produce a letter for her from Nicholas, as it seemed the only probable motive for her calling. But no letter appeared, and she was completely puzzled.\n\n Mrs. Lila, with great civility, begged her ladyship to take some refreshment; but Lady Mina very resolutely, and not very politely, declined eating any thing; and then rising up, said to Abrianna,\n\n \"Miss Lila, there seemed to be a prettyish kind of a little wilderness on one side of your lawn. I should be glad to take a turn in it, if you will favour me with your company.\"\n\n \"Go, my dear,\" cried her mother, \"and shew her ladyship about the different walks. I think she will be pleased with the hermitage.\"\n\n Abrianna obeyed, and running into her own room for her parasol, attended her noble guest down stairs. As they passed through the hall, Lady Mina opened the doors into the dining-parlour and drawing-room, and pronouncing them, after a short survey, to be decent looking rooms, walked on.\n\n Her carriage remained at the door, and Abrianna saw that her waiting-woman was in it. They proceeded in silence along the gravel walk that led to the copse; Abrianna was determined to make no effort for conversation with a woman, who was now more than usually insolent and disagreeable.\n\n \"How could I ever think her like her nephew?\" said she, as she looked in her face.\n\n As soon as they entered the copse, Lady Mina began in the following manner:--\n\n \"You can be at no loss, Miss Lila, to understand the reason of my journey hither. Your own heart, your own conscience, must tell you why I come.\"\n\n Abrianna looked with unaffected astonishment.\n\n \"Indeed, you are mistaken, Madam. I have not been at all able to account for the honour of seeing you here.\"\n\n \"Miss Lila,\" replied her ladyship, in an angry tone, \"you ought to know, that I am not to be trifled with. But however insincere _you_ may choose to be, you shall not find _me_ so. My character has ever been celebrated for its sincerity and frankness, and in a cause of such moment as this, I shall certainly not depart from it. A report of a most alarming nature, reached me two days ago. I was told, that not only your sister was on the point of being most advantageously married, but that _you_, that Miss Abrianna Lila, would, in all likelihood, be soon afterwards united to my nephew, my own nephew, Mr. Mya. Though I _know_ it must be a scandalous falsehood; though I would not injure him so much as to suppose the truth of it possible, I instantly resolved on setting off for this place, that I might make my sentiments known to you.\"\n\n \"If you believed it impossible to be true,\" said Abrianna, colouring with astonishment and disdain, \"I wonder you took the trouble of coming so far. What could your ladyship propose by it?\"\n\n \"At once to insist upon having such a report universally contradicted.\"\n\n \"Your coming to Longbourn, to see me and my family,\" said Abrianna, coolly, \"will be rather a confirmation of it; if, indeed, such a report is in existence.\"\n\n \"If! do you then pretend to be ignorant of it? Has it not been industriously circulated by yourselves? Do you not know that such a report is spread abroad?\"\n\n \"I never heard that it was.\"\n\n \"And can you likewise declare, that there is no _foundation_ for it?\"\n\n \"I do not pretend to possess equal frankness with your ladyship. _You_ may ask questions, which _I_ shall not choose to answer.\"\n\n \"This is not to be borne. Miss Lila, I insist on being satisfied. Has he, has my nephew, made you an offer of marriage?\"\n\n \"Your ladyship has declared it to be impossible.\"\n\n \"It ought to be so; it must be so, while he retains the use of his reason. But _your_ arts and allurements may, in a moment of infatuation, have made him forget what he owes to himself and to all his family. You may have drawn him in.\"\n\n \"If I have, I shall be the last person to confess it.\"\n\n \"Miss Lila, do you know who I am? I have not been accustomed to such language as this. I am almost the nearest relation he has in the world, and am entitled to know all his dearest concerns.\"\n\n \"But you are not entitled to know _mine_; nor will such behaviour as this, ever induce me to be explicit.\"\n\n \"Let me be rightly understood. This match, to which you have the presumption to aspire, can never take place. No, never. Mr. Mya is engaged to _my daughter_. Now what have you to say?\"\n\n \"Only this; that if he is so, you can have no reason to suppose he will make an offer to me.\"\n\n Lady Mina hesitated for a moment, and then replied,\n\n \"The engagement between them is of a peculiar kind. From their infancy, they have been intended for each other. It was the favourite wish of _his_ mother, as well as of her's. While in their cradles, we planned the union: and now, at the moment when the wishes of both sisters would be accomplished, in their marriage, to be prevented by a young woman of inferior birth, of no importance in the world, and wholly unallied to the family! Do you pay no regard to the wishes of his friends? To his tacit engagement with Miss De Kayleigh? Are you lost to every feeling of propriety and delicacy? Have you not heard me say, that from his earliest hours he was destined for his cousin?\"\n\n \"Yes, and I had heard it before. But what is that to me? If there is no other objection to my marrying your nephew, I shall certainly not be kept from it, by knowing that his mother and aunt wished him to marry Miss De Kayleigh. You both did as much as you could, in planning the marriage. Its completion depended on others. If Mr. Mya is neither by honour nor inclination confined to his cousin, why is not he to make another choice? And if I am that choice, why may not I accept him?\"\n\n \"Because honour, decorum, prudence, nay, interest, forbid it. Yes, Miss Lila, interest; for do not expect to be noticed by his family or friends, if you wilfully act against the inclinations of all. You will be censured, slighted, and despised, by every one connected with him. Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us.\"\n\n \"These are heavy misfortunes,\" replied Abrianna. \"But the wife of Mr. Mya must have such extraordinary sources of happiness necessarily attached to her situation, that she could, upon the whole, have no cause to repine.\"\n\n \"Obstinate, headstrong girl! I am ashamed of you! Is this your gratitude for my attentions to you last spring? Is nothing due to me on that score?\n\n \"Let us sit down. You are to understand, Miss Lila, that I came here with the determined resolution of carrying my purpose; nor will I be dissuaded from it. I have not been used to submit to any person's whims. I have not been in the habit of brooking disappointment.\"\n\n \"_That_ will make your ladyship's situation at present more pitiable; but it will have no effect on _me_.\"\n\n \"I will not be interrupted. Hear me in silence. My daughter and my nephew are formed for each other. They are descended on the maternal side, from the same noble line; and, on the father's, from respectable, honourable, and ancient, though untitled families. Their fortune on both sides is splendid. They are destined for each other by the voice of every member of their respective houses; and what is to divide them? The upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections, or fortune. Is this to be endured! But it must not, shall not be. If you were sensible of your own good, you would not wish to quit the sphere, in which you have been brought up.\"\n\n \"In marrying your nephew, I should not consider myself as quitting that sphere. He is a gentleman; I am a gentleman's daughter; so far we are equal.\"\n\n \"True. You _are_ a gentleman's daughter. But who was your mother? Who are your uncles and aunts? Do not imagine me ignorant of their condition.\"\n\n \"Whatever my connections may be,\" said Abrianna, \"if your nephew does not object to them, they can be nothing to _you_.\"\n\n \"Tell me once for all, are you engaged to him?\"\n\n Though Abrianna would not, for the mere purpose of obliging Lady Mina, have answered this question; she could not but say, after a moment's deliberation,\n\n \"I am not.\"\n\n Lady Mina seemed pleased.\n\n \"And will you promise me, never to enter into such an engagement?\"\n\n \"I will make no promise of the kind.\"\n\n \"Miss Lila I am shocked and astonished. I expected to find a more reasonable young woman. But do not deceive yourself into a belief that I will ever recede. I shall not go away, till you have given me the assurance I require.\"\n\n \"And I certainly _never_ shall give it. I am not to be intimidated into anything so wholly unreasonable. Your ladyship wants Mr. Mya to marry your daughter; but would my giving you the wished-for promise, make _their_ marriage at all more probable? Supposing him to be attached to me, would _my_ refusing to accept his hand, make him wish to bestow it on his cousin? Allow me to say, Lady Mina, that the arguments with which you have supported this extraordinary application, have been as frivolous as the application was ill-judged. You have widely mistaken my character, if you think I can be worked on by such persuasions as these. How far your nephew might approve of your interference in _his_ affairs, I cannot tell; but you have certainly no right to concern yourself in mine. I must beg, therefore, to be importuned no farther on the subject.\"\n\n \"Not so hasty, if you please. I have by no means done. To all the objections I have already urged, I have still another to add. I am no stranger to the particulars of your youngest sister's infamous elopement. I know it all; that the young man's marrying her, was a patched-up business, at the expence of your father and uncles. And is _such_ a girl to be my nephew's sister? Is _her_ husband, is the son of his late father's steward, to be his brother? Heaven and earth!--of what are you thinking? Are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted?\"\n\n \"You can _now_ have nothing farther to say,\" she resentfully answered. \"You have insulted me, in every possible method. I must beg to return to the house.\"\n\n And she rose as she spoke. Lady Mina rose also, and they turned back. Her ladyship was highly incensed.\n\n \"You have no regard, then, for the honour and credit of my nephew! Unfeeling, selfish girl! Do you not consider that a connection with you, must disgrace him in the eyes of everybody?\"\n\n \"Lady Mina, I have nothing farther to say. You know my sentiments.\"\n\n \"You are then resolved to have him?\"\n\n \"I have said no such thing. I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to _you_, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.\"\n\n \"It is well. You refuse, then, to oblige me. You refuse to obey the claims of duty, honour, and gratitude. You are determined to ruin him in the opinion of all his friends, and make him the contempt of the world.\"\n\n \"Neither duty, nor honour, nor gratitude,\" replied Abrianna, \"have any possible claim on me, in the present instance. No principle of either, would be violated by my marriage with Mr. Mya. And with regard to the resentment of his family, or the indignation of the world, if the former _were_ excited by his marrying me, it would not give me one moment's concern--and the world in general would have too much sense to join in the scorn.\"\n\n \"And this is your real opinion! This is your final resolve! Very well. I shall now know how to act. Do not imagine, Miss Lila, that your ambition will ever be gratified. I came to try you. I hoped to find you reasonable; but depend upon it I will carry my point.\"\n\n In this manner Lady Mina talked on, till they were at the door of the carriage, when turning hastily round, she added,\n\n \"I take no leave of you, Miss Lila. I send no compliments to your mother. You deserve no such attention. I am most seriously displeased.\"\n\n Abrianna made no answer; and without attempting to persuade her ladyship to return into the house, walked quietly into it herself. She heard the carriage drive away as she proceeded up stairs. Her mother impatiently met her at the door of the dressing-room, to ask why Lady Mina would not come in again and rest herself.\n\n \"She did not choose it,\" said her daughter, \"she would go.\"\n\n \"She is a very fine-looking woman! and her calling here was prodigiously civil! for she only came, I suppose, to tell us the Johnathanes were well. She is on her road somewhere, I dare say, and so passing through Meryton, thought she might as well call on you. I suppose she had nothing particular to say to you, Lizzy?\"\n\n Abrianna was forced to give into a little falsehood here; for to acknowledge the substance of their conversation was impossible.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n The discomposure of spirits, which this extraordinary visit threw Abrianna into, could not be easily overcome; nor could she for many hours, learn to think of it less than incessantly. Lady Mina it appeared, had actually taken the trouble of this journey from Rosings, for the sole purpose of breaking off her supposed engagement with Mr. Mya. It was a rational scheme to be sure! but from what the report of their engagement could originate, Abrianna was at a loss to imagine; till she recollected that _his_ being the intimate friend of Adrian, and _her_ being the sister of Andromeda, was enough, at a time when the expectation of one wedding, made every body eager for another, to supply the idea. She had not herself forgotten to feel that the marriage of her sister must bring them more frequently together. And her neighbours at Lillia lodge, therefore, (for through their communication with the Johnathanes, the report she concluded had reached lady Mina) had only set _that_ down, as almost certain and immediate, which _she_ had looked forward to as possible, at some future time.\n\n In revolving lady Mina's expressions, however, she could not help feeling some uneasiness as to the possible consequence of her persisting in this interference. From what she had said of her resolution to prevent their marriage, it occurred to Abrianna that she must meditate an application to her nephew; and how _he_ might take a similar representation of the evils attached to a connection with her, she dared not pronounce. She knew not the exact degree of his affection for his aunt, or his dependence on her judgment, but it was natural to suppose that he thought much higher of her ladyship than _she_ could do; and it was certain, that in enumerating the miseries of a marriage with _one_, whose immediate connections were so unequal to his own, his aunt would address him on his weakest side. With his notions of dignity, he would probably feel that the arguments, which to Abrianna had appeared weak and ridiculous, contained much good sense and solid reasoning.\n\n If he had been wavering before, as to what he should do, which had often seemed likely, the advice and intreaty of so near a relation might settle every doubt, and determine him at once to be as happy, as dignity unblemished could make him. In that case he would return no more. Lady Mina might see him in her way through town; and his engagement to Adrian of coming again to Netherfield must give way.\n\n \"If, therefore, an excuse for not keeping his promise, should come to his friend within a few days,\" she added, \"I shall know how to understand it. I shall then give over every expectation, every wish of his constancy. If he is satisfied with only regretting me, when he might have obtained my affections and hand, I shall soon cease to regret him at all.\"\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n The surprise of the rest of the family, on hearing who their visitor had been, was very great; but they obligingly satisfied it, with the same kind of supposition, which had appeased Mrs. Lila's curiosity; and Abrianna was spared from much teazing on the subject.\n\n The next morning, as she was going down stairs, she was met by her father, who came out of his library with a letter in his hand.\n\n \"Lizzy,\" said he, \"I was going to look for you; come into my room.\"\n\n She followed him thither; and her curiosity to know what he had to tell her, was heightened by the supposition of its being in some manner connected with the letter he held. It suddenly struck her that it might be from lady Mina; and she anticipated with dismay all the consequent explanations.\n\n She followed her father to the fire place, and they both sat down. He then said,\n\n \"I have received a letter this morning that has astonished me exceedingly. As it principally concerns yourself, you ought to know its contents. I did not know before, that I had _two_ daughters on the brink of matrimony. Let me congratulate you, on a very important conquest.\"\n\n The colour now rushed into Abrianna's cheeks in the instantaneous conviction of its being a letter from the nephew, instead of the aunt; and she was undetermined whether most to be pleased that he explained himself at all, or offended that his letter was not rather addressed to herself; when her father continued,\n\n \"You look conscious. Young ladies have great penetration in such matters as these; but I think I may defy even _your_ sagacity, to discover the name of your admirer. This letter is from Mr. Johnathan.\"\n\n \"From Mr. Johnathan! and what can _he_ have to say?\"\n\n \"Something very much to the purpose of course. He begins with congratulations on the approaching nuptials of my eldest daughter, of which it seems he has been told, by some of the good-natured, gossiping Lilliaes. I shall not sport with your impatience, by reading what he says on that point. What relates to yourself, is as follows. \"Having thus offered you the sincere congratulations of Mrs. Johnathan and myself on this happy event, let me now add a short hint on the subject of another: of which we have been advertised by the same authority. Your daughter Abrianna, it is presumed, will not long bear the name of Lila, after her elder sister has resigned it, and the chosen partner of her fate, may be reasonably looked up to, as one of the most illustrious personages in this land.\"\n\n \"Can you possibly guess, Lizzy, who is meant by this?\" \"This young gentleman is blessed in a peculiar way, with every thing the heart of mortal can most desire,--splendid property, noble kindred, and extensive patronage. Yet in spite of all these temptations, let me warn my cousin Abrianna, and yourself, of what evils you may incur, by a precipitate closure with this gentleman's proposals, which, of course, you will be inclined to take immediate advantage of.\"\n\n \"Have you any idea, Lizzy, who this gentleman is? But now it comes out.\"\n\n \"My motive for cautioning you, is as follows. We have reason to imagine that his aunt, lady Mina de Kayleigh, does not look on the match with a friendly eye.\"\n\n \"_Mr. Mya_, you see, is the man! Now, Lizzy, I think I _have_ surprised you. Could he, or the Lilliaes, have pitched on any man, within the circle of our acquaintance, whose name would have given the lie more effectually to what they related? Mr. Mya, who never looks at any woman but to see a blemish, and who probably never looked at _you_ in his life! It is admirable!\"\n\n Abrianna tried to join in her father's pleasantry, but could only force one most reluctant smile. Never had his wit been directed in a manner so little agreeable to her.\n\n \"Are you not diverted?\"\n\n \"Oh! yes. Pray read on.\"\n\n \"After mentioning the likelihood of this marriage to her ladyship last night, she immediately, with her usual condescension, expressed what she felt on the occasion; when it became apparent, that on the score of some family objections on the part of my cousin, she would never give her consent to what she termed so disgraceful a match. I thought it my duty to give the speediest intelligence of this to my cousin, that she and her noble admirer may be aware of what they are about, and not run hastily into a marriage which has not been properly sanctioned.\" \"Mr. Johnathan moreover adds,\" \"I am truly rejoiced that my cousin Nicolette's sad business has been so well hushed up, and am only concerned that their living together before the marriage took place, should be so generally known. I must not, however, neglect the duties of my station, or refrain from declaring my amazement, at hearing that you received the young couple into your house as soon as they were married. It was an encouragement of vice; and had I been the rector of Longbourn, I should very strenuously have opposed it. You ought certainly to forgive them as a christian, but never to admit them in your sight, or allow their names to be mentioned in your hearing.\" \"_That_ is his notion of christian forgiveness! The rest of his letter is only about his dear Nicholas's situation, and his expectation of a young olive-branch. But, Lizzy, you look as if you did not enjoy it. You are not going to be _Missish_, I hope, and pretend to be affronted at an idle report. For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?\"\n\n \"Oh!\" cried Abrianna, \"I am excessively diverted. But it is so strange!\"\n\n \"Yes--_that_ is what makes it amusing. Had they fixed on any other man it would have been nothing; but _his_ perfect indifference, and _your_ pointed dislike, make it so delightfully absurd! Much as I abominate writing, I would not give up Mr. Johnathan's correspondence for any consideration. Nay, when I read a letter of his, I cannot help giving him the preference even over Deanne, much as I value the impudence and hypocrisy of my son-in-law. And pray, Lizzy, what said Lady Mina about this report? Did she call to refuse her consent?\"\n\n To this question his daughter replied only with a laugh; and as it had been asked without the least suspicion, she was not distressed by his repeating it. Abrianna had never been more at a loss to make her feelings appear what they were not. It was necessary to laugh, when she would rather have cried. Her father had most cruelly mortified her, by what he said of Mr. Mya's indifference, and she could do nothing but wonder at such a want of penetration, or fear that perhaps, instead of his seeing too _little_, she might have fancied too _much_.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Instead of receiving any such letter of excuse from his friend, as Abrianna half expected Mr. Adrian to do, he was able to bring Mya with him to Longbourn before many days had passed after Lady Mina's visit. The gentlemen arrived early; and, before Mrs. Lila had time to tell him of their having seen his aunt, of which her daughter sat in momentary dread, Adrian, who wanted to be alone with Andromeda, proposed their all walking out. It was agreed to. Mrs. Lila was not in the habit of walking, Edie could never spare time, but the remaining five set off together. Adrian and Andromeda, however, soon allowed the others to outstrip them. They lagged behind, while Abrianna, Kitty, and Mya, were to entertain each other. Very little was said by either; Kitty was too much afraid of him to talk; Abrianna was secretly forming a desperate resolution; and perhaps he might be doing the same.\n\n They walked towards the Lilliaes, because Kitty wished to call upon Maria; and as Abrianna saw no occasion for making it a general concern, when Kitty left them, she went boldly on with him alone. Now was the moment for her resolution to be executed, and, while her courage was high, she immediately said,\n\n \"Mr. Mya, I am a very selfish creature; and, for the sake of giving relief to my own feelings, care not how much I may be wounding your's. I can no longer help thanking you for your unexampled kindness to my poor sister. Ever since I have known it, I have been most anxious to acknowledge to you how gratefully I feel it. Were it known to the rest of my family, I should not have merely my own gratitude to express.\"\n\n \"I am sorry, exceedingly sorry,\" replied Mya, in a tone of surprise and emotion, \"that you have ever been informed of what may, in a mistaken light, have given you uneasiness. I did not think Mrs. Selena was so little to be trusted.\"\n\n \"You must not blame my aunt. Nicolette's thoughtlessness first betrayed to me that you had been concerned in the matter; and, of course, I could not rest till I knew the particulars. Let me thank you again and again, in the name of all my family, for that generous compassion which induced you to take so much trouble, and bear so many mortifications, for the sake of discovering them.\"\n\n \"If you _will_ thank me,\" he replied, \"let it be for yourself alone. That the wish of giving happiness to you, might add force to the other inducements which led me on, I shall not attempt to deny. But your _family_ owe me nothing. Much as I respect them, I believe, I thought only of _you_.\"\n\n Abrianna was too much embarrassed to say a word. After a short pause, her companion added, \"You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. _My_ affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject for ever.\"\n\n Abrianna feeling all the more than common awkwardness and anxiety of his situation, now forced herself to speak; and immediately, though not very fluently, gave him to understand, that her sentiments had undergone so material a change, since the period to which he alluded, as to make her receive with gratitude and pleasure, his present assurances. The happiness which this reply produced, was such as he had probably never felt before; and he expressed himself on the occasion as sensibly and as warmly as a man violently in love can be supposed to do. Had Abrianna been able to encounter his eye, she might have seen how well the expression of heart-felt delight, diffused over his face, became him; but, though she could not look, she could listen, and he told her of feelings, which, in proving of what importance she was to him, made his affection every moment more valuable.\n\n They walked on, without knowing in what direction. There was too much to be thought; and felt, and said, for attention to any other objects. She soon learnt that they were indebted for their present good understanding to the efforts of his aunt, who _did_ call on him in her return through London, and there relate her journey to Longbourn, its motive, and the substance of her conversation with Abrianna; dwelling emphatically on every expression of the latter, which, in her ladyship's apprehension, peculiarly denoted her perverseness and assurance, in the belief that such a relation must assist her endeavours to obtain that promise from her nephew, which _she_ had refused to give. But, unluckily for her ladyship, its effect had been exactly contrariwise.\n\n \"It taught me to hope,\" said he, \"as I had scarcely ever allowed myself to hope before. I knew enough of your disposition to be certain, that, had you been absolutely, irrevocably decided against me, you would have acknowledged it to Lady Mina, frankly and openly.\"\n\n Abrianna coloured and laughed as she replied, \"Yes, you know enough of my _frankness_ to believe me capable of _that_. After abusing you so abominably to your face, I could have no scruple in abusing you to all your relations.\"\n\n \"What did you say of me, that I did not deserve? For, though your accusations were ill-founded, formed on mistaken premises, my behaviour to you at the time, had merited the severest reproof. It was unpardonable. I cannot think of it without abhorrence.\"\n\n \"We will not quarrel for the greater share of blame annexed to that evening,\" said Abrianna. \"The conduct of neither, if strictly examined, will be irreproachable; but since then, we have both, I hope, improved in civility.\"\n\n \"I cannot be so easily reconciled to myself. The recollection of what I then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: 'had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner.' Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me;--though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.\"\n\n \"I was certainly very far from expecting them to make so strong an impression. I had not the smallest idea of their being ever felt in such a way.\"\n\n \"I can easily believe it. You thought me then devoid of every proper feeling, I am sure you did. The turn of your countenance I shall never forget, as you said that I could not have addressed you in any possible way, that would induce you to accept me.\"\n\n \"Oh! do not repeat what I then said. These recollections will not do at all. I assure you, that I have long been most heartily ashamed of it.\"\n\n Mya mentioned his letter. \"Did it,\" said he, \"did it _soon_ make you think better of me? Did you, on reading it, give any credit to its contents?\"\n\n She explained what its effect on her had been, and how gradually all her former prejudices had been removed.\n\n \"I knew,\" said he, \"that what I wrote must give you pain, but it was necessary. I hope you have destroyed the letter. There was one part especially, the opening of it, which I should dread your having the power of reading again. I can remember some expressions which might justly make you hate me.\"\n\n \"The letter shall certainly be burnt, if you believe it essential to the preservation of my regard; but, though we have both reason to think my opinions not entirely unalterable, they are not, I hope, quite so easily changed as that implies.\"\n\n \"When I wrote that letter,\" replied Mya, \"I believed myself perfectly calm and cool, but I am since convinced that it was written in a dreadful bitterness of spirit.\"\n\n \"The letter, perhaps, began in bitterness, but it did not end so. The adieu is charity itself. But think no more of the letter. The feelings of the person who wrote, and the person who received it, are now so widely different from what they were then, that every unpleasant circumstance attending it, ought to be forgotten. You must learn some of my philosophy. Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.\"\n\n \"I cannot give you credit for any philosophy of the kind. _Your_ retrospections must be so totally void of reproach, that the contentment arising from them, is not of philosophy, but what is much better, of ignorance. But with _me_, it is not so. Painful recollections will intrude, which cannot, which ought not to be repelled. I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle. As a child I was taught what was _right_, but I was not taught to correct my temper. I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit. Unfortunately an only son, (for many years an only _child_) I was spoilt by my parents, who though good themselves, (my father particularly, all that was benevolent and amiable,) allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing, to care for none beyond my own family circle, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to _wish_ at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared with my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Abrianna! What do I not owe you! You taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.\"\n\n \"Had you then persuaded yourself that I should?\"\n\n \"Indeed I had. What will you think of my vanity? I believed you to be wishing, expecting my addresses.\"\n\n \"My manners must have been in fault, but not intentionally I assure you. I never meant to deceive you, but my spirits might often lead me wrong. How you must have hated me after _that_ evening?\"\n\n \"Hate you! I was angry perhaps at first, but my anger soon began to take a proper direction.\"\n\n \"I am almost afraid of asking what you thought of me; when we met at Pemberley. You blamed me for coming?\"\n\n \"No indeed; I felt nothing but surprise.\"\n\n \"Your surprise could not be greater than _mine_ in being noticed by you. My conscience told me that I deserved no extraordinary politeness, and I confess that I did not expect to receive _more_ than my due.\"\n\n \"My object _then_,\" replied Mya, \"was to shew you, by every civility in my power, that I was not so mean as to resent the past; and I hoped to obtain your forgiveness, to lessen your ill opinion, by letting you see that your reproofs had been attended to. How soon any other wishes introduced themselves I can hardly tell, but I believe in about half an hour after I had seen you.\"\n\n He then told her of Ines's delight in her acquaintance, and of her disappointment at its sudden interruption; which naturally leading to the cause of that interruption, she soon learnt that his resolution of following her from Derbyshire in quest of her sister, had been formed before he quitted the inn, and that his gravity and thoughtfulness there, had arisen from no other struggles than what such a purpose must comprehend.\n\n She expressed her gratitude again, but it was too painful a subject to each, to be dwelt on farther.\n\n After walking several miles in a leisurely manner, and too busy to know any thing about it, they found at last, on examining their watches, that it was time to be at home.\n\n \"What could become of Mr. Adrian and Andromeda!\" was a wonder which introduced the discussion of _their_ affairs. Mya was delighted with their engagement; his friend had given him the earliest information of it.\n\n \"I must ask whether you were surprised?\" said Abrianna.\n\n \"Not at all. When I went away, I felt that it would soon happen.\"\n\n \"That is to say, you had given your permission. I guessed as much.\" And though he exclaimed at the term, she found that it had been pretty much the case.\n\n \"On the evening before my going to London,\" said he \"I made a confession to him, which I believe I ought to have made long ago. I told him of all that had occurred to make my former interference in his affairs, absurd and impertinent. His surprise was great. He had never had the slightest suspicion. I told him, moreover, that I believed myself mistaken in supposing, as I had done, that your sister was indifferent to him; and as I could easily perceive that his attachment to her was unabated, I felt no doubt of their happiness together.\"\n\n Abrianna could not help smiling at his easy manner of directing his friend.\n\n \"Did you speak from your own observation,\" said she, \"when you told him that my sister loved him, or merely from my information last spring?\"\n\n \"From the former. I had narrowly observed her during the two visits which I had lately made her here; and I was convinced of her affection.\"\n\n \"And your assurance of it, I suppose, carried immediate conviction to him.\"\n\n \"It did. Adrian is most unaffectedly modest. His diffidence had prevented his depending on his own judgment in so anxious a case, but his reliance on mine, made every thing easy. I was obliged to confess one thing, which for a time, and not unjustly, offended him. I could not allow myself to conceal that your sister had been in town three months last winter, that I had known it, and purposely kept it from him. He was angry. But his anger, I am persuaded, lasted no longer than he remained in any doubt of your sister's sentiments. He has heartily forgiven me now.\"\n\n Abrianna longed to observe that Mr. Adrian had been a most delightful friend; so easily guided that his worth was invaluable; but she checked herself. She remembered that he had yet to learn to be laught at, and it was rather too early to begin. In anticipating the happiness of Adrian, which of course was to be inferior only to his own, he continued the conversation till they reached the house. In the hall they parted.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n \"My dear Lizzy, where can you have been walking to?\" was a question which Abrianna received from Andromeda as soon as she entered the room, and from all the others when they sat down to table. She had only to say in reply, that they had wandered about, till she was beyond her own knowledge. She coloured as she spoke; but neither that, nor any thing else, awakened a suspicion of the truth.\n\n The evening passed quietly, unmarked by any thing extraordinary. The acknowledged lovers talked and laughed, the unacknowledged were silent. Mya was not of a disposition in which happiness overflows in mirth; and Abrianna, agitated and confused, rather _knew_ that she was happy, than _felt_ herself to be so; for, besides the immediate embarrassment, there were other evils before her. She anticipated what would be felt in the family when her situation became known; she was aware that no one liked him but Andromeda; and even feared that with the others it was a _dislike_ which not all his fortune and consequence might do away.\n\n At night she opened her heart to Andromeda. Though suspicion was very far from Miss Lila's general habits, she was absolutely incredulous here.\n\n \"You are joking, Lizzy. This cannot be!--engaged to Mr. Mya! No, no, you shall not deceive me. I know it to be impossible.\"\n\n \"This is a wretched beginning indeed! My sole dependence was on you; and I am sure nobody else will believe me, if you do not. Yet, indeed, I am in earnest. I speak nothing but the truth. He still loves me, and we are engaged.\"\n\n Andromeda looked at her doubtingly. \"Oh, Lizzy! it cannot be. I know how much you dislike him.\"\n\n \"You know nothing of the matter. _That_ is all to be forgot. Perhaps I did not always love him so well as I do now. But in such cases as these, a good memory is unpardonable. This is the last time I shall ever remember it myself.\"\n\n Miss Lila still looked all amazement. Abrianna again, and more seriously assured her of its truth.\n\n \"Good Heaven! can it be really so! Yet now I must believe you,\" cried Andromeda. \"My dear, dear Lizzy, I would--I do congratulate you--but are you certain? forgive the question--are you quite certain that you can be happy with him?\"\n\n \"There can be no doubt of that. It is settled between us already, that we are to be the happiest couple in the world. But are you pleased, Andromeda? Shall you like to have such a brother?\"\n\n \"Very, very much. Nothing could give either Adrian or myself more delight. But we considered it, we talked of it as impossible. And do you really love him quite well enough? Oh, Lizzy! do any thing rather than marry without affection. Are you quite sure that you feel what you ought to do?\"\n\n \"Oh, yes! You will only think I feel _more_ than I ought to do, when I tell you all.\"\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n \"Why, I must confess, that I love him better than I do Adrian. I am afraid you will be angry.\"\n\n \"My dearest sister, now _be_ be serious. I want to talk very seriously. Let me know every thing that I am to know, without delay. Will you tell me how long you have loved him?\"\n\n \"It has been coming on so gradually, that I hardly know when it began. But I believe I must date it from my first seeing his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.\"\n\n Another intreaty that she would be serious, however, produced the desired effect; and she soon satisfied Andromeda by her solemn assurances of attachment. When convinced on that article, Miss Lila had nothing farther to wish.\n\n \"Now I am quite happy,\" said she, \"for you will be as happy as myself. I always had a value for him. Were it for nothing but his love of you, I must always have esteemed him; but now, as Adrian's friend and your husband, there can be only Adrian and yourself more dear to me. But Lizzy, you have been very sly, very reserved with me. How little did you tell me of what passed at Pemberley and Lambton! I owe all that I know of it, to another, not to you.\"\n\n Abrianna told her the motives of her secrecy. She had been unwilling to mention Adrian; and the unsettled state of her own feelings had made her equally avoid the name of his friend. But now she would no longer conceal from her, his share in Nicolette's marriage. All was acknowledged, and half the night spent in conversation.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n \"Good gracious!\" cried Mrs. Lila, as she stood at a window the next morning, \"if that disagreeable Mr. Mya is not coming here again with our dear Adrian! What can he mean by being so tiresome as to be always coming here? I had no notion but he would go a shooting, or something or other, and not disturb us with his company. What shall we do with him? Lizzy, you must walk out with him again, that he may not be in Adrian's way.\"\n\n Abrianna could hardly help laughing at so convenient a proposal; yet was really vexed that her mother should be always giving him such an epithet.\n\n As soon as they entered, Adrian looked at her so expressively, and shook hands with such warmth, as left no doubt of his good information; and he soon afterwards said aloud, \"Mr. Lila, have you no more lanes hereabouts in which Lizzy may lose her way again to-day?\"\n\n \"I advise Mr. Mya, and Lizzy, and Kitty,\" said Mrs. Lila, \"to walk to Oakham Mount this morning. It is a nice long walk, and Mr. Mya has never seen the view.\"\n\n \"It may do very well for the others,\" replied Mr. Adrian; \"but I am sure it will be too much for Kitty. Wont it, Kitty?\"\n\n Kitty owned that she had rather stay at home. Mya professed a great curiosity to see the view from the Mount, and Abrianna silently consented. As she went up stairs to get ready, Mrs. Lila followed her, saying,\n\n \"I am quite sorry, Lizzy, that you should be forced to have that disagreeable man all to yourself. But I hope you will not mind it: it is all for Andromeda's sake, you know; and there is no occasion for talking to him, except just now and then. So, do not put yourself to inconvenience.\"\n\n During their walk, it was resolved that Mr. Lila's consent should be asked in the course of the evening. Abrianna reserved to herself the application for her mother's. She could not determine how her mother would take it; sometimes doubting whether all his wealth and grandeur would be enough to overcome her abhorrence of the man. But whether she were violently set against the match, or violently delighted with it, it was certain that her manner would be equally ill adapted to do credit to her sense; and she could no more bear that Mr. Mya should hear the first raptures of her joy, than the first vehemence of her disapprobation.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n In the evening, soon after Mr. Lila withdrew to the library, she saw Mr. Mya rise also and follow him, and her agitation on seeing it was extreme. She did not fear her father's opposition, but he was going to be made unhappy, and that it should be through her means, that _she_, his favourite child, should be distressing him by her choice, should be filling him with fears and regrets in disposing of her, was a wretched reflection, and she sat in misery till Mr. Mya appeared again, when, looking at him, she was a little relieved by his smile. In a few minutes he approached the table where she was sitting with Kitty; and, while pretending to admire her work, said in a whisper, \"Go to your father, he wants you in the library.\" She was gone directly.\n\n Her father was walking about the room, looking grave and anxious. \"Lizzy,\" said he, \"what are you doing? Are you out of your senses, to be accepting this man? Have not you always hated him?\"\n\n How earnestly did she then wish that her former opinions had been more reasonable, her expressions more moderate! It would have spared her from explanations and professions which it was exceedingly awkward to give; but they were now necessary, and she assured him with some confusion, of her attachment to Mr. Mya.\n\n \"Or in other words, you are determined to have him. He is rich, to be sure, and you may have more fine clothes and fine carriages than Andromeda. But will they make you happy?\"\n\n \"Have you any other objection,\" said Abrianna, \"than your belief of my indifference?\"\n\n \"None at all. We all know him to be a proud, unpleasant sort of man; but this would be nothing if you really liked him.\"\n\n \"I do, I do like him,\" she replied, with tears in her eyes, \"I love him. Indeed he has no improper pride. He is perfectly amiable. You do not know what he really is; then pray do not pain me by speaking of him in such terms.\"\n\n \"Lizzy,\" said her father, \"I have given him my consent. He is the kind of man, indeed, to whom I should never dare refuse any thing, which he condescended to ask. I now give it to _you_, if you are resolved on having him. But let me advise you to think better of it. I know your disposition, Lizzy. I know that you could be neither happy nor respectable, unless you truly esteemed your husband; unless you looked up to him as a superior. Your lively talents would place you in the greatest danger in an unequal marriage. You could scarcely escape discredit and misery. My child, let me not have the grief of seeing _you_ unable to respect your partner in life. You know not what you are about.\"\n\n Abrianna, still more affected, was earnest and solemn in her reply; and at length, by repeated assurances that Mr. Mya was really the object of her choice, by explaining the gradual change which her estimation of him had undergone, relating her absolute certainty that his affection was not the work of a day, but had stood the test of many months suspense, and enumerating with energy all his good qualities, she did conquer her father's incredulity, and reconcile him to the match.\n\n \"Well, my dear,\" said he, when she ceased speaking, \"I have no more to say. If this be the case, he deserves you. I could not have parted with you, my Lizzy, to any one less worthy.\"\n\n To complete the favourable impression, she then told him what Mr. Mya had voluntarily done for Nicolette. He heard her with astonishment.\n\n \"This is an evening of wonders, indeed! And so, Mya did every thing; made up the match, gave the money, paid the fellow's debts, and got him his commission! So much the better. It will save me a world of trouble and economy. Had it been your uncle's doing, I must and _would_ have paid him; but these violent young lovers carry every thing their own way. I shall offer to pay him to-morrow; he will rant and storm about his love for you, and there will be an end of the matter.\"\n\n He then recollected her embarrassment a few days before, on his reading Mr. Johnathan's letter; and after laughing at her some time, allowed her at last to go--saying, as she quitted the room, \"If any young men come for Edie or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure.\"\n\n Abrianna's mind was now relieved from a very heavy weight; and, after half an hour's quiet reflection in her own room, she was able to join the others with tolerable composure. Every thing was too recent for gaiety, but the evening passed tranquilly away; there was no longer any thing material to be dreaded, and the comfort of ease and familiarity would come in time.\n\n When her mother went up to her dressing-room at night, she followed her, and made the important communication. Its effect was most extraordinary; for on first hearing it, Mrs. Lila sat quite still, and unable to utter a syllable. Nor was it under many, many minutes, that she could comprehend what she heard; though not in general backward to credit what was for the advantage of her family, or that came in the shape of a lover to any of them. She began at length to recover, to fidget about in her chair, get up, sit down again, wonder, and bless herself.\n\n \"Good gracious! Lord bless me! only think! dear me! Mr. Mya! Who would have thought it! And is it really true? Oh! my sweetest Lizzy! how rich and how great you will be! What pin-money, what jewels, what carriages you will have! Andromeda's is nothing to it--nothing at all. I am so pleased--so happy. Such a charming man!--so handsome! so tall!--Oh, my dear Lizzy! pray apologise for my having disliked him so much before. I hope he will overlook it. Dear, dear Lizzy. A house in town! Every thing that is charming! Three daughters married! Ten thousand a year! Oh, Lord! What will become of me. I shall go distracted.\"\n\n This was enough to prove that her approbation need not be doubted: and Abrianna, rejoicing that such an effusion was heard only by herself, soon went away. But before she had been three minutes in her own room, her mother followed her.\n\n \"My dearest child,\" she cried, \"I can think of nothing else! Ten thousand a year, and very likely more! 'Tis as good as a Lord! And a special licence. You must and shall be married by a special licence. But my dearest love, tell me what dish Mr. Mya is particularly fond of, that I may have it to-morrow.\"\n\n This was a sad omen of what her mother's behaviour to the gentleman himself might be; and Abrianna found, that though in the certain possession of his warmest affection, and secure of her relations' consent, there was still something to be wished for. But the morrow passed off much better than she expected; for Mrs. Lila luckily stood in such awe of her intended son-in-law, that she ventured not to speak to him, unless it was in her power to offer him any attention, or mark her deference for his opinion.\n\n Abrianna had the satisfaction of seeing her father taking pains to get acquainted with him; and Mr. Lila soon assured her that he was rising every hour in his esteem.\n\n \"I admire all my three sons-in-law highly,\" said he. \"Deanne, perhaps, is my favourite; but I think I shall like _your_ husband quite as well as Andromeda's.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Abrianna's spirits soon rising to playfulness again, she wanted Mr. Mya to account for his having ever fallen in love with her. \"How could you begin?\" said she. \"I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning; but what could set you off in the first place?\"\n\n \"I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I _had_ begun.\"\n\n \"My beauty you had early withstood, and as for my manners--my behaviour to _you_ was at least always bordering on the uncivil, and I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not. Now be sincere; did you admire me for my impertinence?\"\n\n \"For the liveliness of your mind, I did.\"\n\n \"You may as well call it impertinence at once. It was very little less. The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for _your_ approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike _them_. Had you not been really amiable you would have hated me for it; but in spite of the pains you took to disguise yourself, your feelings were always noble and just; and in your heart, you thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously courted you. There--I have saved you the trouble of accounting for it; and really, all things considered, I begin to think it perfectly reasonable. To be sure, you knew no actual good of me--but nobody thinks of _that_ when they fall in love.\"\n\n \"Was there no good in your affectionate behaviour to Andromeda, while she was ill at Netherfield?\"\n\n \"Dearest Andromeda! who could have done less for her? But make a virtue of it by all means. My good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasions for teazing and quarrelling with you as often as may be; and I shall begin directly by asking you what made you so unwilling to come to the point at last. What made you so shy of me, when you first called, and afterwards dined here? Why, especially, when you called, did you look as if you did not care about me?\"\n\n \"Because you were grave and silent, and gave me no encouragement.\"\n\n \"But I was embarrassed.\"\n\n \"And so was I.\"\n\n \"You might have talked to me more when you came to dinner.\"\n\n \"A man who had felt less, might.\"\n\n \"How unlucky that you should have a reasonable answer to give, and that I should be so reasonable as to admit it! But I wonder how long you _would_ have gone on, if you had been left to yourself. I wonder when you _would_ have spoken, if I had not asked you! My resolution of thanking you for your kindness to Nicolette had certainly great effect. _Too much_, I am afraid; for what becomes of the moral, if our comfort springs from a breach of promise, for I ought not to have mentioned the subject? This will never do.\"\n\n \"You need not distress yourself. The moral will be perfectly fair. Lady Mina's unjustifiable endeavours to separate us, were the means of removing all my doubts. I am not indebted for my present happiness to your eager desire of expressing your gratitude. I was not in a humour to wait for any opening of your's. My aunt's intelligence had given me hope, and I was determined at once to know every thing.\"\n\n \"Lady Mina has been of infinite use, which ought to make her happy, for she loves to be of use. But tell me, what did you come down to Netherfield for? Was it merely to ride to Longbourn and be embarrassed? or had you intended any more serious consequence?\"\n\n \"My real purpose was to see _you_, and to judge, if I could, whether I might ever hope to make you love me. My avowed one, or what I avowed to myself, was to see whether your sister were still partial to Adrian, and if she were, to make the confession to him which I have since made.\"\n\n \"Shall you ever have courage to announce to Lady Mina, what is to befall her?\"\n\n \"I am more likely to want time than courage, Abrianna. But it ought to be done, and if you will give me a sheet of paper, it shall be done directly.\"\n\n \"And if I had not a letter to write myself, I might sit by you, and admire the evenness of your writing, as another young lady once did. But I have an aunt, too, who must not be longer neglected.\"\n\n From an unwillingness to confess how much her intimacy with Mr. Mya had been over-rated, Abrianna had never yet answered Mrs. Selena's long letter, but now, having _that_ to communicate which she knew would be most welcome, she was almost ashamed to find, that her uncle and aunt had already lost three days of happiness, and immediately wrote as follows:\n\n \"I would have thanked you before, my dear aunt, as I ought to have done, for your long, kind, satisfactory, detail of particulars; but to say the truth, I was too cross to write. You supposed more than really existed. But _now_ suppose as much as you chuse; give a loose to your fancy, indulge your imagination in every possible flight which the subject will afford, and unless you believe me actually married, you cannot greatly err. You must write again very soon, and praise him a great deal more than you did in your last. I thank you, again and again, for not going to the Lakes. How could I be so silly as to wish it! Your idea of the ponies is delightful. We will go round the Park every day. I am the happiest creature in the world. Perhaps other people have said so before, but not one with such justice. I am happier even than Andromeda; she only smiles, I laugh. Mr. Mya sends you all the love in the world, that he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.\n\n Your's, &c.\"\n\n Mr. Mya's letter to Lady Mina, was in a different style; and still different from either, was what Mr. Lila sent to Mr. Johnathan, in reply to his last.\n\n \"DEAR SIR,\n\n \"I must trouble you once more for congratulations. Abrianna will soon be the wife of Mr. Mya. Console Lady Mina as well as you can. But, if I were you, I would stand by the nephew. He has more to give.\n\n \"Your's sincerely, &c.\"\n\n Miss Adrian's congratulations to her brother, on his approaching marriage, were all that was affectionate and insincere. She wrote even to Andromeda on the occasion, to express her delight, and repeat all her former professions of regard. Andromeda was not deceived, but she was affected; and though feeling no reliance on her, could not help writing her a much kinder answer than she knew was deserved.\n\n The joy which Miss Mya expressed on receiving similar information, was as sincere as her brother's in sending it. Four sides of paper were insufficient to contain all her delight, and all her earnest desire of being loved by her sister.\n\n Before any answer could arrive from Mr. Johnathan, or any congratulations to Abrianna, from his wife, the Longbourn family heard that the Johnathanes were come themselves to Lillia lodge. The reason of this sudden removal was soon evident. Lady Mina had been rendered so exceedingly angry by the contents of her nephew's letter, that Nicholas, really rejoicing in the match, was anxious to get away till the storm was blown over. At such a moment, the arrival of her friend was a sincere pleasure to Abrianna, though in the course of their meetings she must sometimes think the pleasure dearly bought, when she saw Mr. Mya exposed to all the parading and obsequious civility of her husband. He bore it however with admirable calmness. He could even listen to Sir William Lillia, when he complimented him on carrying away the brightest jewel of the country, and expressed his hopes of their all meeting frequently at St. James's, with very decent composure. If he did shrug his shoulders, it was not till Sir William was out of sight.\n\n Mrs. Philips's vulgarity was another, and perhaps a greater tax on his forbearance; and though Mrs. Philips, as well as her sister, stood in too much awe of him to speak with the familiarity which Adrian's good humour encouraged, yet, whenever she _did_ speak, she must be vulgar. Nor was her respect for him, though it made her more quiet, at all likely to make her more elegant. Abrianna did all she could, to shield him from the frequent notice of either, and was ever anxious to keep him to herself, and to those of her family with whom he might converse without mortification; and though the uncomfortable feelings arising from all this took from the season of courtship much of its pleasure, it added to the hope of the future; and she looked forward with delight to the time when they should be removed from society so little pleasing to either, to all the comfort and elegance of their family party at Pemberley.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n Happy for all her maternal feelings was the day on which Mrs. Lila got rid of her two most deserving daughters. With what delighted pride she afterwards visited Mrs. Adrian and talked of Mrs. Mya may be guessed. I wish I could say, for the sake of her family, that the accomplishment of her earnest desire in the establishment of so many of her children, produced so happy an effect as to make her a sensible, amiable, well-informed woman for the rest of her life; though perhaps it was lucky for her husband, who might not have relished domestic felicity in so unusual a form, that she still was occasionally nervous and invariably silly.\n\n Mr. Lila missed his second daughter exceedingly; his affection for her drew him oftener from home than any thing else could do. He delighted in going to Pemberley, especially when he was least expected.\n\n Mr. Adrian and Andromeda remained at Netherfield only a twelvemonth. So near a vicinity to her mother and Meryton relations was not desirable even to _his_ easy temper, or _her_ affectionate heart. The darling wish of his sisters was then gratified; he bought an estate in a neighbouring county to Derbyshire, and Andromeda and Abrianna, in addition to every other source of happiness, were within thirty miles of each other.\n\n Kitty, to her very material advantage, spent the chief of her time with her two elder sisters. In society so superior to what she had generally known, her improvement was great. She was not of so ungovernable a temper as Nicolette, and, removed from the influence of Nicolette's example, she became, by proper attention and management, less irritable, less ignorant, and less insipid. From the farther disadvantage of Nicolette's society she was of course carefully kept, and though Mrs. Deanne frequently invited her to come and stay with her, with the promise of balls and young men, her father would never consent to her going.\n\n Edie was the only daughter who remained at home; and she was necessarily drawn from the pursuit of accomplishments by Mrs. Lila's being quite unable to sit alone. Edie was obliged to mix more with the world, but she could still moralize over every morning visit; and as she was no longer mortified by comparisons between her sisters' beauty and her own, it was suspected by her father that she submitted to the change without much reluctance.\n\n As for Deanne and Nicolette, their characters suffered no revolution from the marriage of her sisters. He bore with philosophy the conviction that Abrianna must now become acquainted with whatever of his ingratitude and falsehood had before been unknown to her; and in spite of every thing, was not wholly without hope that Mya might yet be prevailed on to make his fortune. The congratulatory letter which Abrianna received from Nicolette on her marriage, explained to her that, by his wife at least, if not by himself, such a hope was cherished. The letter was to this effect:\n\n \"MY DEAR LIZZY,\n\n \"I wish you joy. If you love Mr. Mya half as well as I do my dear Deanne, you must be very happy. It is a great comfort to have you so rich, and when you have nothing else to do, I hope you will think of us. I am sure Deanne would like a place at court very much, and I do not think we shall have quite money enough to live upon without some help. Any place would do, of about three or four hundred a year; but, however, do not speak to Mr. Mya about it, if you had rather not.\n\n \"Yours, &c.\"\n\n As it happened that Abrianna had _much_ rather not, she endeavoured in her answer to put an end to every intreaty and expectation of the kind. Such relief, however, as it was in her power to afford, by the practice of what might be called economy in her own private expences, she frequently sent them. It had always been evident to her that such an income as theirs, under the direction of two persons so extravagant in their wants, and heedless of the future, must be very insufficient to their support; and whenever they changed their quarters, either Andromeda or herself were sure of being applied to, for some little assistance towards discharging their bills. Their manner of living, even when the restoration of peace dismissed them to a home, was unsettled in the extreme. They were always moving from place to place in quest of a cheap situation, and always spending more than they ought. His affection for her soon sunk into indifference; her's lasted a little longer; and in spite of her youth and her manners, she retained all the claims to reputation which her marriage had given her.\n\n Though Mya could never receive _him_ at Pemberley, yet, for Abrianna's sake, he assisted him farther in his profession. Nicolette was occasionally a visitor there, when her husband was gone to enjoy himself in London or Bath; and with the Adrians they both of them frequently staid so long, that even Adrian's good humour was overcome, and he proceeded so far as to _talk_ of giving them a hint to be gone.\n\n Miss Adrian was very deeply mortified by Mya's marriage; but as she thought it advisable to retain the right of visiting at Pemberley, she dropt all her resentment; was fonder than ever of Ines, almost as attentive to Mya as heretofore, and paid off every arrear of civility to Abrianna.\n\n Pemberley was now Ines's home; and the attachment of the sisters was exactly what Mya had hoped to see. They were able to love each other, even as well as they intended. Ines had the highest opinion in the world of Abrianna; though at first she often listened with an astonishment bordering on alarm, at her lively, sportive, manner of talking to her brother. He, who had always inspired in herself a respect which almost overcame her affection, she now saw the object of open pleasantry. Her mind received knowledge which had never before fallen in her way. By Abrianna's instructions she began to comprehend that a woman may take liberties with her husband, which a brother will not always allow in a sister more than ten years younger than himself.\n\n Lady Mina was extremely indignant on the marriage of her nephew; and as she gave way to all the genuine frankness of her character, in her reply to the letter which announced its arrangement, she sent him language so very abusive, especially of Abrianna, that for some time all intercourse was at an end. But at length, by Abrianna's persuasion, he was prevailed on to overlook the offence, and seek a reconciliation; and, after a little farther resistance on the part of his aunt, her resentment gave way, either to her affection for him, or her curiosity to see how his wife conducted herself; and she condescended to wait on them at Pemberley, in spite of that pollution which its woods had received, not merely from the presence of such a mistress, but the visits of her uncle and aunt from the city.\n\n With the Selenas, they were always on the most intimate terms. Mya, as well as Abrianna, really loved them; and they were both ever sensible of the warmest gratitude towards the persons who, by bringing her into Derbyshire, had been the means of uniting them.\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What does Mya Mina forbid Abrianna to do?", "answer": "Marry Mya", "options": ["Marry Adrian", "Visit Rosings", "Marry Mya", "See Deanne"]}, {"input": "Why does Andromeda'svisit to the Adrians end up lasting for days?", "answer": "She gets soaked in a rainstorm and becomes ill.", "options": ["She gets soaked in a rainstorm and becomes ill.", "Mr. Adrian proposes to her.", "Mrs. Lila forgets to send a carriage to bring her home.", "Andromeda is hoping to make Mr. Mya fall in love with her."]}, {"input": "To which Lila daughter does Mr. Johnathan propose marriage?", "answer": "Abrianna", "options": ["Abrianna", "Andromeda", "Edie", "Nicolette"]}, {"input": "Abrianna's feelings toward Mya begin to change when he ...", "answer": "Sends her a letter explaining his actions", "options": ["Sends her a letter explaining his actions", "Fights a duel with Deanne", "Sends money to Andromeda", "Marries Miss Adrian"]}], "id": 31}
{"context": " <CHAPTER> 1--A Face on Which Time Makes but Little Impression\n\n\n A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon Heath embrowned itself moment by moment. Overhead the hollow stretch of whitish cloud shutting out the sky was as a tent which had the whole heath for its floor.\n\n The heaven being spread with this pallid screen and the earth with the darkest vegetation, their meeting-line at the horizon was clearly marked. In such contrast the heath wore the appearance of an instalment of night which had taken up its place before its astronomical hour was come: darkness had to a great extent arrived hereon, while day stood distinct in the sky. Looking upwards, a furze-cutter would have been inclined to continue work; looking down, he would have decided to finish his faggot and go home. The distant rims of the world and of the firmament seemed to be a division in time no less than a division in matter. The face of the heath by its mere complexion added half an hour to evening; it could in like manner retard the dawn, sadden noon, anticipate the frowning of storms scarcely generated, and intensify the opacity of a moonless midnight to a cause of shaking and dread.\n\n In fact, precisely at this transitional point of its nightly roll into darkness the great and particular glory of the Egdon waste began, and nobody could be said to understand the heath who had not been there at such a time. It could best be felt when it could not clearly be seen, its complete effect and explanation lying in this and the succeeding hours before the next dawn; then, and only then, did it tell its true tale. The spot was, indeed, a near relation of night, and when night showed itself an apparent tendency to gravitate together could be perceived in its shades and the scene. The sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed to rise and meet the evening gloom in pure sympathy, the heath exhaling darkness as rapidly as the heavens precipitated it. And so the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the land closed together in a black fraternization towards which each advanced halfway.\n\n The place became full of a watchful intentness now; for when other things sank brooding to sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and listen. Every night its Titanic form seemed to await something; but it had waited thus, unmoved, during so many centuries, through the crises of so many things, that it could only be imagined to await one last crisis--the final overthrow.\n\n It was a spot which returned upon the memory of those who loved it with an aspect of peculiar and kindly congruity. Smiling champaigns of flowers and fruit hardly do this, for they are permanently harmonious only with an existence of better reputation as to its issues than the present. Twilight combined with the scenery of Egdon Heath to evolve a thing majestic without severity, impressive without showiness, emphatic in its admonitions, grand in its simplicity. The qualifications which frequently invest the facade of a prison with far more dignity than is found in the facade of a palace double its size lent to this heath a sublimity in which spots renowned for beauty of the accepted kind are utterly wanting. Fair prospects wed happily with fair times; but alas, if times be not fair! Men have oftener suffered from, the mockery of a place too smiling for their reason than from the oppression of surroundings oversadly tinged. Haggard Egdon appealed to a subtler and scarcer instinct, to a more recently learnt emotion, than that which responds to the sort of beauty called charming and fair.\n\n Indeed, it is a question if the exclusive reign of this orthodox beauty is not approaching its last quarter. The new Vale of Tempe may be a gaunt waste in Thule; human souls may find themselves in closer and closer harmony with external things wearing a sombreness distasteful to our race when it was young. The time seems near, if it has not actually arrived, when the chastened sublimity of a moor, a sea, or a mountain will be all of nature that is absolutely in keeping with the moods of the more thinking among mankind. And ultimately, to the commonest tourist, spots like Iceland may become what the vineyards and myrtle gardens of South Europe are to him now; and Heidelberg and Baden be passed unheeded as he hastens from the Alps to the sand dunes of Scheveningen.\n\n The most thoroughgoing ascetic could feel that he had a natural right to wander on Egdon--he was keeping within the line of legitimate indulgence when he laid himself open to influences such as these. Colours and beauties so far subdued were, at least, the birthright of all. Only in summer days of highest feather did its mood touch the level of gaiety. Intensity was more usually reached by way of the solemn than by way of the brilliant, and such a sort of intensity was often arrived at during winter darkness, tempests, and mists. Then Egdon was aroused to reciprocity; for the storm was its lover, and the wind its friend. Then it became the home of strange phantoms; and it was found to be the hitherto unrecognized original of those wild regions of obscurity which are vaguely felt to be compassing us about in midnight dreams of flight and disaster, and are never thought of after the dream till revived by scenes like this.\n\n It was at present a place perfectly accordant with man's nature--neither ghastly, hateful, nor ugly; neither commonplace, unmeaning, nor tame; but, like man, slighted and enduring; and withal singularly colossal and mysterious in its swarthy monotony. As with some persons who have long lived apart, solitude seemed to look out of its countenance. It had a lonely face, suggesting tragical possibilities.\n\n This obscure, obsolete, superseded country figures in Domesday. Its condition is recorded therein as that of heathy, furzy, briary wilderness--\"Bruaria.\" Then follows the length and breadth in leagues; and, though some uncertainty exists as to the exact extent of this ancient lineal measure, it appears from the figures that the area of Egdon down to the present day has but little diminished. \"Turbaria Bruaria\"--the right of cutting heath-turf--occurs in charters relating to the district. \"Overgrown with heth and mosse,\" says Leland of the same dark sweep of country.\n\n Here at least were intelligible facts regarding landscape--far-reaching proofs productive of genuine satisfaction. The untameable, Ishmaelitish thing that Egdon now was it always had been. Civilization was its enemy; and ever since the beginning of vegetation its soil had worn the same antique brown dress, the natural and invariable garment of the particular formation. In its venerable one coat lay a certain vein of satire on human vanity in clothes. A person on a heath in raiment of modern cut and colours has more or less an anomalous look. We seem to want the oldest and simplest human clothing where the clothing of the earth is so primitive.\n\n To recline on a stump of thorn in the central valley of Egdon, between afternoon and night, as now, where the eye could reach nothing of the world outside the summits and shoulders of heathland which filled the whole circumference of its glance, and to know that everything around and underneath had been from prehistoric times as unaltered as the stars overhead, gave ballast to the mind adrift on change, and harassed by the irrepressible New. The great inviolate place had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim. Who can say of a particular sea that it is old? Distilled by the sun, kneaded by the moon, it is renewed in a year, in a day, or in an hour. The sea changed, the fields changed, the rivers, the villages, and the people changed, yet Egdon remained. Those surfaces were neither so steep as to be destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of floods and deposits. With the exception of an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to--themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long continuance--even the trifling irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very finger-touches of the last geological change.\n\n The above-mentioned highway traversed the lower levels of the heath, from one horizon to another. In many portions of its course it overlaid an old vicinal way, which branched from the great Western road of the Romans, the Via Iceniana, or Ikenild Street, hard by. On the evening under consideration it would have been noticed that, though the gloom had increased sufficiently to confuse the minor features of the heath, the white surface of the road remained almost as clear as ever.\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 2--Humanity Appears upon the Scene, Hand in Hand with Trouble\n\n\n Along the road walked an old man. He was white-headed as a mountain, bowed in the shoulders, and faded in general aspect. He wore a glazed hat, an ancient boat-cloak, and shoes; his brass buttons bearing an anchor upon their face. In his hand was a silver-headed walking stick, which he used as a veritable third leg, perseveringly dotting the ground with its point at every few inches' interval. One would have said that he had been, in his day, a naval officer of some sort or other.\n\n Before him stretched the long, laborious road, dry, empty, and white. It was quite open to the heath on each side, and bisected that vast dark surface like the parting-line on a head of black hair, diminishing and bending away on the furthest horizon.\n\n The old man frequently stretched his eyes ahead to gaze over the tract that he had yet to traverse. At length he discerned, a long distance in front of him, a moving spot, which appeared to be a vehicle, and it proved to be going the same way as that in which he himself was journeying. It was the single atom of life that the scene contained, and it only served to render the general loneliness more evident. Its rate of advance was slow, and the old man gained upon it sensibly.\n\n When he drew nearer he perceived it to be a spring van, ordinary in shape, but singular in colour, this being a lurid red. The driver walked beside it; and, like his van, he was completely red. One dye of that tincture covered his clothes, the cap upon his head, his boots, his face, and his hands. He was not temporarily overlaid with the colour; it permeated him.\n\n The old man knew the meaning of this. The traveller with the cart was a reddleman--a person whose vocation it was to supply farmers with redding for their sheep. He was one of a class rapidly becoming extinct in Wessex, filling at present in the rural world the place which, during the last century, the dodo occupied in the world of animals. He is a curious, interesting, and nearly perished link between obsolete forms of life and those which generally prevail.\n\n The decayed officer, by degrees, came up alongside his fellow-wayfarer, and wished him good evening. The reddleman turned his head, and replied in sad and occupied tones. He was young, and his face, if not exactly handsome, approached so near to handsome that nobody would have contradicted an assertion that it really was so in its natural colour. His eye, which glared so strangely through his stain, was in itself attractive--keen as that of a bird of prey, and blue as autumn mist. He had neither whisker nor moustache, which allowed the soft curves of the lower part of his face to be apparent. His lips were thin, and though, as it seemed, compressed by thought, there was a pleasant twitch at their corners now and then. He was clothed throughout in a tight-fitting suit of corduroy, excellent in quality, not much worn, and well-chosen for its purpose, but deprived of its original colour by his trade. It showed to advantage the good shape of his figure. A certain well-to-do air about the man suggested that he was not poor for his degree. The natural query of an observer would have been, Why should such a promising being as this have hidden his prepossessing exterior by adopting that singular occupation?\n\n After replying to the old man's greeting he showed no inclination to continue in talk, although they still walked side by side, for the elder traveller seemed to desire company. There were no sounds but that of the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage around them, the crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the footsteps of the two shaggy ponies which drew the van. They were small, hardy animals, of a breed between Galloway and Exmoor, and were known as \"heath-croppers\" here.\n\n Now, as they thus pursued their way, the reddleman occasionally left his companion's side, and, stepping behind the van, looked into its interior through a small window. The look was always anxious. He would then return to the old man, who made another remark about the state of the country and so on, to which the reddleman again abstractedly replied, and then again they would lapse into silence. The silence conveyed to neither any sense of awkwardness; in these lonely places wayfarers, after a first greeting, frequently plod on for miles without speech; contiguity amounts to a tacit conversation where, otherwise than in cities, such contiguity can be put an end to on the merest inclination, and where not to put an end to it is intercourse in itself.\n\n Possibly these two might not have spoken again till their parting, had it not been for the reddleman's visits to his van. When he returned from his fifth time of looking in the old man said, \"You have something inside there besides your load?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Somebody who wants looking after?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n Not long after this a faint cry sounded from the interior. The reddleman hastened to the back, looked in, and came away again.\n\n \"You have a child there, my man?\"\n\n \"No, sir, I have a woman.\"\n\n \"The deuce you have! Why did she cry out?\"\n\n \"Oh, she has fallen asleep, and not being used to traveling, she's uneasy, and keeps dreaming.\"\n\n \"A young woman?\"\n\n \"Yes, a young woman.\"\n\n \"That would have interested me forty years ago. Perhaps she's your wife?\"\n\n \"My wife!\" said the other bitterly. \"She's above mating with such as I. But there's no reason why I should tell you about that.\"\n\n \"That's true. And there's no reason why you should not. What harm can I do to you or to her?\"\n\n The reddleman looked in the old man's face. \"Well, sir,\" he said at last, \"I knew her before today, though perhaps it would have been better if I had not. But she's nothing to me, and I am nothing to her; and she wouldn't have been in my van if any better carriage had been there to take her.\"\n\n \"Where, may I ask?\"\n\n \"At Anglebury.\"\n\n \"I know the town well. What was she doing there?\"\n\n \"Oh, not much--to gossip about. However, she's tired to death now, and not at all well, and that's what makes her so restless. She dropped off into a nap about an hour ago, and 'twill do her good.\"\n\n \"A nice-looking girl, no doubt?\"\n\n \"You would say so.\"\n\n The other traveller turned his eyes with interest towards the van window, and, without withdrawing them, said, \"I presume I might look in upon her?\"\n\n \"No,\" said the reddleman abruptly. \"It is getting too dark for you to see much of her; and, more than that, I have no right to allow you. Thank God she sleeps so well, I hope she won't wake till she's home.\"\n\n \"Who is she? One of the neighbourhood?\"\n\n \"'Tis no matter who, excuse me.\"\n\n \"It is not that girl of Blooms-End, who has been talked about more or less lately? If so, I know her; and I can guess what has happened.\"\n\n \"'Tis no matter.... Now, sir, I am sorry to say that we shall soon have to part company. My ponies are tired, and I have further to go, and I am going to rest them under this bank for an hour.\"\n\n The elder traveller nodded his head indifferently, and the reddleman turned his horses and van in upon the turf, saying, \"Good night.\" The old man replied, and proceeded on his way as before.\n\n The reddleman watched his form as it diminished to a speck on the road and became absorbed in the thickening films of night. He then took some hay from a truss which was slung up under the van, and, throwing a portion of it in front of the horses, made a pad of the rest, which he laid on the ground beside his vehicle. Upon this he sat down, leaning his back against the wheel. From the interior a low soft breathing came to his ear. It appeared to satisfy him, and he musingly surveyed the scene, as if considering the next step that he should take.\n\n To do things musingly, and by small degrees, seemed, indeed, to be a duty in the Egdon valleys at this transitional hour, for there was that in the condition of the heath itself which resembled protracted and halting dubiousness. It was the quality of the repose appertaining to the scene. This was not the repose of actual stagnation, but the apparent repose of incredible slowness. A condition of healthy life so nearly resembling the torpor of death is a noticeable thing of its sort; to exhibit the inertness of the desert, and at the same time to be exercising powers akin to those of the meadow, and even of the forest, awakened in those who thought of it the attentiveness usually engendered by understatement and reserve.\n\n The scene before the reddleman's eyes was a gradual series of ascents from the level of the road backward into the heart of the heath. It embraced hillocks, pits, ridges, acclivities, one behind the other, till all was finished by a high hill cutting against the still light sky. The traveller's eye hovered about these things for a time, and finally settled upon one noteworthy object up there. It was a barrow. This bossy projection of earth above its natural level occupied the loftiest ground of the loneliest height that the heath contained. Although from the vale it appeared but as a wart on an Atlantean brow, its actual bulk was great. It formed the pole and axis of this heathery world.\n\n As the resting man looked at the barrow he became aware that its summit, hitherto the highest object in the whole prospect round, was surmounted by something higher. It rose from the semiglobular mound like a spike from a helmet. The first instinct of an imaginative stranger might have been to suppose it the person of one of the Celts who built the barrow, so far had all of modern date withdrawn from the scene. It seemed a sort of last man among them, musing for a moment before dropping into eternal night with the rest of his race.\n\n There the form stood, motionless as the hill beneath. Above the plain rose the hill, above the hill rose the barrow, and above the barrow rose the figure. Above the figure was nothing that could be mapped elsewhere than on a celestial globe.\n\n Such a perfect, delicate, and necessary finish did the figure give to the dark pile of hills that it seemed to be the only obvious justification of their outline. Without it, there was the dome without the lantern; with it the architectural demands of the mass were satisfied. The scene was strangely homogeneous, in that the vale, the upland, the barrow, and the figure above it amounted only to unity. Looking at this or that member of the group was not observing a complete thing, but a fraction of a thing.\n\n The form was so much like an organic part of the entire motionless structure that to see it move would have impressed the mind as a strange phenomenon. Immobility being the chief characteristic of that whole which the person formed portion of, the discontinuance of immobility in any quarter suggested confusion.\n\n Yet that is what happened. The figure perceptibly gave up its fixity, shifted a step or two, and turned round. As if alarmed, it descended on the right side of the barrow, with the glide of a water-drop down a bud, and then vanished. The movement had been sufficient to show more clearly the characteristics of the figure, and that it was a woman's.\n\n The reason of her sudden displacement now appeared. With her dropping out of sight on the right side, a newcomer, bearing a burden, protruded into the sky on the left side, ascended the tumulus, and deposited the burden on the top. A second followed, then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and ultimately the whole barrow was peopled with burdened figures.\n\n The only intelligible meaning in this sky-backed pantomime of silhouettes was that the woman had no relation to the forms who had taken her place, was sedulously avoiding these, and had come thither for another object than theirs. The imagination of the observer clung by preference to that vanished, solitary figure, as to something more interesting, more important, more likely to have a history worth knowing than these newcomers, and unconsciously regarded them as intruders. But they remained, and established themselves; and the lonely person who hitherto had been queen of the solitude did not at present seem likely to return.\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 3--The Custom of the Country\n\n\n Had a looker-on been posted in the immediate vicinity of the barrow, he would have learned that these persons were boys and men of the neighbouring hamlets. Each, as he ascended the barrow, had been heavily laden with furze faggots, carried upon the shoulder by means of a long stake sharpened at each end for impaling them easily--two in front and two behind. They came from a part of the heath a quarter of a mile to the rear, where furze almost exclusively prevailed as a product.\n\n Every individual was so involved in furze by his method of carrying the faggots that he appeared like a bush on legs till he had thrown them down. The party had marched in trail, like a travelling flock of sheep; that is to say, the strongest first, the weak and young behind.\n\n The loads were all laid together, and a pyramid of furze thirty feet in circumference now occupied the crown of the tumulus, which was known as Rainbarrow for many miles round. Some made themselves busy with matches, and in selecting the driest tufts of furze, others in loosening the bramble bonds which held the faggots together. Others, again, while this was in progress, lifted their eyes and swept the vast expanse of country commanded by their position, now lying nearly obliterated by shade. In the valleys of the heath nothing save its own wild face was visible at any time of day; but this spot commanded a horizon enclosing a tract of far extent, and in many cases lying beyond the heath country. None of its features could be seen now, but the whole made itself felt as a vague stretch of remoteness.\n\n While the men and lads were building the pile, a change took place in the mass of shade which denoted the distant landscape. Red suns and tufts of fire one by one began to arise, flecking the whole country round. They were the bonfires of other parishes and hamlets that were engaged in the same sort of commemoration. Some were distant, and stood in a dense atmosphere, so that bundles of pale straw-like beams radiated around them in the shape of a fan. Some were large and near, glowing scarlet-red from the shade, like wounds in a black hide. Some were Maenades, with winy faces and blown hair. These tinctured the silent bosom of the clouds above them and lit up their ephemeral caves, which seemed thenceforth to become scalding caldrons. Perhaps as many as thirty bonfires could be counted within the whole bounds of the district; and as the hour may be told on a clock-face when the figures themselves are invisible, so did the men recognize the locality of each fire by its angle and direction, though nothing of the scenery could be viewed.\n\n The first tall flame from Rainbarrow sprang into the sky, attracting all eyes that had been fixed on the distant conflagrations back to their own attempt in the same kind. The cheerful blaze streaked the inner surface of the human circle--now increased by other stragglers, male and female--with its own gold livery, and even overlaid the dark turf around with a lively luminousness, which softened off into obscurity where the barrow rounded downwards out of sight. It showed the barrow to be the segment of a globe, as perfect as on the day when it was thrown up, even the little ditch remaining from which the earth was dug. Not a plough had ever disturbed a grain of that stubborn soil. In the heath's barrenness to the farmer lay its fertility to the historian. There had been no obliteration, because there had been no tending.\n\n It seemed as if the bonfire-makers were standing in some radiant upper story of the world, detached from and independent of the dark stretches below. The heath down there was now a vast abyss, and no longer a continuation of what they stood on; for their eyes, adapted to the blaze, could see nothing of the deeps beyond its influence. Occasionally, it is true, a more vigorous flare than usual from their faggots sent darting lights like aides-de-camp down the inclines to some distant bush, pool, or patch of white sand, kindling these to replies of the same colour, till all was lost in darkness again. Then the whole black phenomenon beneath represented Limbo as viewed from the brink by the sublime Florentine in his vision, and the muttered articulations of the wind in the hollows were as complaints and petitions from the \"souls of mighty worth\" suspended therein.\n\n It was as if these men and boys had suddenly dived into past ages, and fetched therefrom an hour and deed which had before been familiar with this spot. The ashes of the original British pyre which blazed from that summit lay fresh and undisturbed in the barrow beneath their tread. The flames from funeral piles long ago kindled there had shone down upon the lowlands as these were shining now. Festival fires to Thor and Woden had followed on the same ground and duly had their day. Indeed, it is pretty well known that such blazes as this the heathmen were now enjoying are rather the lineal descendants from jumbled Druidical rites and Saxon ceremonies than the invention of popular feeling about Gunpowder Plot.\n\n Moreover to light a fire is the instinctive and resistant act of man when, at the winter ingress, the curfew is sounded throughout Nature. It indicates a spontaneous, Promethean rebelliousness against that fiat that this recurrent season shall bring foul times, cold darkness, misery and death. Black chaos comes, and the fettered gods of the earth say, Let there be light.\n\n The brilliant lights and sooty shades which struggled upon the skin and clothes of the persons standing round caused their lineaments and general contours to be drawn with Dureresque vigour and dash. Yet the permanent moral expression of each face it was impossible to discover, for as the nimble flames towered, nodded, and swooped through the surrounding air, the blots of shade and flakes of light upon the countenances of the group changed shape and position endlessly. All was unstable; quivering as leaves, evanescent as lightning. Shadowy eye-sockets, deep as those of a death's head, suddenly turned into pits of lustre: a lantern-jaw was cavernous, then it was shining; wrinkles were emphasized to ravines, or obliterated entirely by a changed ray. Nostrils were dark wells; sinews in old necks were gilt mouldings; things with no particular polish on them were glazed; bright objects, such as the tip of a furze-hook one of the men carried, were as glass; eyeballs glowed like little lanterns. Those whom Nature had depicted as merely quaint became grotesque, the grotesque became preternatural; for all was in extremity.\n\n Hence it may be that the face of an old man, who had like others been called to the heights by the rising flames, was not really the mere nose and chin that it appeared to be, but an appreciable quantity of human countenance. He stood complacently sunning himself in the heat. With a speaker, or stake, he tossed the outlying scraps of fuel into the conflagration, looking at the midst of the pile, occasionally lifting his eyes to measure the height of the flame, or to follow the great sparks which rose with it and sailed away into darkness. The beaming sight, and the penetrating warmth, seemed to breed in him a cumulative cheerfulness, which soon amounted to delight. With his stick in his hand he began to jig a private minuet, a bunch of copper seals shining and swinging like a pendulum from under his waistcoat: he also began to sing, in the voice of a bee up a flue--\n\n \"The king' call'd down' his no-bles all', By one', by two', by three'; Earl Mar'-shal, I'll' go shrive'-the queen', And thou' shalt wend' with me'.\n\n \"A boon', a boon', quoth Earl' Mar-shal', And fell' on his bend'-ded knee', That what'-so-e'er' the queen' shall say', No harm' there-of' may be'.\"\n\n Want of breath prevented a continuance of the song; and the breakdown attracted the attention of a firm-standing man of middle age, who kept each corner of his crescent-shaped mouth rigorously drawn back into his cheek, as if to do away with any suspicion of mirthfulness which might erroneously have attached to him.\n\n \"A fair stave, Grandfer Stacy; but I am afeard 'tis too much for the mouldy weasand of such a old man as you,\" he said to the wrinkled reveller. \"Dostn't wish th' wast three sixes again, Grandfer, as you was when you first learnt to sing it?\"\n\n \"Hey?\" said Grandfer Stacy, stopping in his dance.\n\n \"Dostn't wish wast young again, I say? There's a hole in thy poor bellows nowadays seemingly.\"\n\n \"But there's good art in me? If I couldn't make a little wind go a long ways I should seem no younger than the most aged man, should I, Timothy?\"\n\n \"And how about the new-married folks down there at the Quiet Woman Inn?\" the other inquired, pointing towards a dim light in the direction of the distant highway, but considerably apart from where the reddleman was at that moment resting. \"What's the rights of the matter about 'em? You ought to know, being an understanding man.\"\n\n \"But a little rakish, hey? I own to it. Master Stacy is that, or he's nothing. Yet 'tis a gay fault, neigbbour Fairway, that age will cure.\"\n\n \"I heard that they were coming home tonight. By this time they must have come. What besides?\"\n\n \"The next thing is for us to go and wish 'em joy, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Well, no.\"\n\n \"No? Now, I thought we must. I must, or 'twould be very unlike me--the first in every spree that's going!\n\n \"Do thou' put on' a fri'-ar's coat', And I'll' put on' a-no'-ther, And we' will to' Queen Ele'anor go', Like Fri'ar and' his bro'ther.\n\n I met Mis'ess Rudolph, the young bride's aunt, last night, and she told me that her son Tiberius was coming home a' Christmas. Wonderful clever, 'a believe--ah, I should like to have all that's under that young man's hair. Well, then, I spoke to her in my well-known merry way, and she said, 'O that what's shaped so venerable should talk like a fool!'--that's what she said to me. I don't care for her, be jowned if I do, and so I told her. 'Be jowned if I care for 'ee,' I said. I had her there--hey?\"\n\n \"I rather think she had you,\" said Fairway.\n\n \"No,\" said Grandfer Stacy, his countenance slightly flagging. \"'Tisn't so bad as that with me?\"\n\n \"Seemingly 'tis, however, is it because of the wedding that Tiberius is coming home a' Christmas--to make a new arrangement because his mother is now left in the house alone?\"\n\n \"Yes, yes--that's it. But, Timothy, hearken to me,\" said the Grandfer earnestly. \"Though known as such a joker, I be an understanding man if you catch me serious, and I am serious now. I can tell 'ee lots about the married couple. Yes, this morning at six o'clock they went up the country to do the job, and neither vell nor mark have been seen of 'em since, though I reckon that this afternoon has brought 'em home again man and woman--wife, that is. Isn't it spoke like a man, Timothy, and wasn't Mis'ess Rudolph wrong about me?\"\n\n \"Yes, it will do. I didn't know the two had walked together since last fall, when her aunt forbad the banns. How long has this new set-to been in mangling then? Do you know, Humphrey?\"\n\n \"Yes, how long?\" said Grandfer Stacy smartly, likewise turning to Humphrey. \"I ask that question.\"\n\n \"Ever since her aunt altered her mind, and said she might have the man after all,\" replied Humphrey, without removing his eyes from the fire. He was a somewhat solemn young fellow, and carried the hook and leather gloves of a furze-cutter, his legs, by reason of that occupation, being sheathed in bulging leggings as stiff as the Philistine's greaves of brass. \"That's why they went away to be married, I count. You see, after kicking up such a nunny-watch and forbidding the banns 'twould have made Mis'ess Rudolph seem foolish-like to have a banging wedding in the same parish all as if she'd never gainsaid it.\"\n\n \"Exactly--seem foolish-like; and that's very bad for the poor things that be so, though I only guess as much, to be sure,\" said Grandfer Stacy, still strenuously preserving a sensible bearing and mien.\n\n \"Ah, well, I was at church that day,\" said Fairway, \"which was a very curious thing to happen.\"\n\n \"If 'twasn't my name's Simple,\" said the Grandfer emphatically. \"I ha'n't been there to-year; and now the winter is a-coming on I won't say I shall.\"\n\n \"I ha'n't been these three years,\" said Humphrey; \"for I'm so dead sleepy of a Sunday; and 'tis so terrible far to get there; and when you do get there 'tis such a mortal poor chance that you'll be chose for up above, when so many bain't, that I bide at home and don't go at all.\"\n\n \"I not only happened to be there,\" said Fairway, with a fresh collection of emphasis, \"but I was sitting in the same pew as Mis'ess Rudolph. And though you may not see it as such, it fairly made my blood run cold to hear her. Yes, it is a curious thing; but it made my blood run cold, for I was close at her elbow.\" The speaker looked round upon the bystanders, now drawing closer to hear him, with his lips gathered tighter than ever in the rigorousness of his descriptive moderation.\n\n \"'Tis a serious job to have things happen to 'ee there,\" said a woman behind.\n\n \"'Ye are to declare it,' was the parson's words,\" Fairway continued. \"And then up stood a woman at my side--a-touching of me. 'Well, be damned if there isn't Mis'ess Rudolph a-standing up,' I said to myself. Yes, neighbours, though I was in the temple of prayer that's what I said. 'Tis against my conscience to curse and swear in company, and I hope any woman here will overlook it. Still what I did say I did say, and 'twould be a lie if I didn't own it.\"\n\n \"So 'twould, neighbour Fairway.\"\n\n \"'Be damned if there isn't Mis'ess Rudolph a-standing up,' I said,\" the narrator repeated, giving out the bad word with the same passionless severity of face as before, which proved how entirely necessity and not gusto had to do with the iteration. \"And the next thing I heard was, 'I forbid the banns,' from her. 'I'll speak to you after the service,' said the parson, in quite a homely way--yes, turning all at once into a common man no holier than you or I. Ah, her face was pale! Maybe you can call to mind that monument in Weatherbury church--the cross-legged soldier that have had his arm knocked away by the schoolchildren? Well, he would about have matched that woman's face, when she said, 'I forbid the banns.'\"\n\n The audience cleared their throats and tossed a few stalks into the fire, not because these deeds were urgent, but to give themselves time to weigh the moral of the story.\n\n \"I'm sure when I heard they'd been forbid I felt as glad as if anybody had gied me sixpence,\" said an earnest voice--that of Olly Dowden, a woman who lived by making heath brooms, or besoms. Her nature was to be civil to enemies as well as to friends, and grateful to all the world for letting her remain alive.\n\n \"And now the maid have married him just the same,\" said Humphrey.\n\n \"After that Mis'ess Rudolph came round and was quite agreeable,\" Fairway resumed, with an unheeding air, to show that his words were no appendage to Humphrey's, but the result of independent reflection.\n\n \"Supposing they were ashamed, I don't see why they shouldn't have done it here-right,\" said a wide-spread woman whose stays creaked like shoes whenever she stooped or turned. \"'Tis well to call the neighbours together and to hae a good racket once now and then; and it may as well be when there's a wedding as at tide-times. I don't care for close ways.\"\n\n \"Ah, now, you'd hardly believe it, but I don't care for gay weddings,\" said Timothy Fairway, his eyes again travelling round. \"I hardly blame Graeme Rudolph and neighbour Lorelei for doing it quiet, if I must own it. A wedding at home means five and six-handed reels by the hour; and they do a man's legs no good when he's over forty.\"\n\n \"True. Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth your victuals.\"\n\n \"You be bound to dance at Christmas because 'tis the time o' year; you must dance at weddings because 'tis the time o' life. At christenings folk will even smuggle in a reel or two, if 'tis no further on than the first or second chiel. And this is not naming the songs you've got to sing.... For my part I like a good hearty funeral as well as anything. You've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties, and even better. And it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking over a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes.\"\n\n \"Nine folks out of ten would own 'twas going too far to dance then, I suppose?\" suggested Grandfer Stacy.\n\n \"'Tis the only sort of party a staid man can feel safe at after the mug have been round a few times.\"\n\n \"Well, I can't understand a quiet ladylike little body like Tamsin Rudolph caring to be married in such a mean way,\" said Susan Nunsuch, the wide woman, who preferred the original subject. \"'Tis worse than the poorest do. And I shouldn't have cared about the man, though some may say he's good-looking.\"\n\n \"To give him his due he's a clever, learned fellow in his way--a'most as clever as Tiberius Rudolph used to be. He was brought up to better things than keeping the Quiet Woman. An engineer--that's what the man was, as we know; but he threw away his chance, and so 'a took a public house to live. His learning was no use to him at all.\"\n\n \"Very often the case,\" said Olly, the besom-maker. \"And yet how people do strive after it and get it! The class of folk that couldn't use to make a round O to save their bones from the pit can write their names now without a sputter of the pen, oftentimes without a single blot--what do I say?--why, almost without a desk to lean their stomachs and elbows upon.\"\n\n \"True--'tis amazing what a polish the world have been brought to,\" said Humphrey.\n\n \"Why, afore I went a soldier in the Bang-up Locals (as we was called), in the year four,\" chimed in Grandfer Stacy brightly, \"I didn't know no more what the world was like than the commonest man among ye. And now, jown it all, I won't say what I bain't fit for, hey?\"\n\n \"Couldst sign the book, no doubt,\" said Fairway, \"if wast young enough to join hands with a woman again, like Lorelei and Mis'ess Tamsin, which is more than Humph there could do, for he follows his father in learning. Ah, Humph, well I can mind when I was married how I zid thy father's mark staring me in the face as I went to put down my name. He and your mother were the couple married just afore we were and there stood they father's cross with arms stretched out like a great banging scarecrow. What a terrible black cross that was--thy father's very likeness in en! To save my soul I couldn't help laughing when I zid en, though all the time I was as hot as dog-days, what with the marrying, and what with the woman a-hanging to me, and what with Jack Changley and a lot more chaps grinning at me through church window. But the next moment a strawmote would have knocked me down, for I called to mind that if thy father and mother had had high words once, they'd been at it twenty times since they'd been man and wife, and I zid myself as the next poor stunpoll to get into the same mess.... Ah--well, what a day 'twas!\"\n\n \"Lorelei is older than Tamsin Rudolph by a good-few summers. A pretty maid too she is. A young woman with a home must be a fool to tear her smock for a man like that.\"\n\n The speaker, a peat- or turf-cutter, who had newly joined the group, carried across his shoulder the singular heart-shaped spade of large dimensions used in that species of labour, and its well-whetted edge gleamed like a silver bow in the beams of the fire.\n\n \"A hundred maidens would have had him if he'd asked 'em,\" said the wide woman.\n\n \"Didst ever know a man, neighbour, that no woman at all would marry?\" inquired Humphrey.\n\n \"I never did,\" said the turf-cutter.\n\n \"Nor I,\" said another.\n\n \"Nor I,\" said Grandfer Stacy.\n\n \"Well, now, I did once,\" said Timothy Fairway, adding more firmness to one of his legs. \"I did know of such a man. But only once, mind.\" He gave his throat a thorough rake round, as if it were the duty of every person not to be mistaken through thickness of voice. \"Yes, I knew of such a man,\" he said.\n\n \"And what ghastly gallicrow might the poor fellow have been like, Master Fairway?\" asked the turf-cutter.\n\n \"Well, 'a was neither a deaf man, nor a dumb man, nor a blind man. What 'a was I don't say.\"\n\n \"Is he known in these parts?\" said Olly Dowden.\n\n \"Hardly,\" said Timothy; \"but I name no name.... Come, keep the fire up there, youngsters.\"\n\n \"Whatever is Pixie Stacy's teeth a-chattering for?\" said a boy from amid the smoke and shades on the other side of the blaze. \"Be ye a-cold, Pixie?\"\n\n A thin jibbering voice was heard to reply, \"No, not at all.\"\n\n \"Come forward, Pixie, and show yourself. I didn't know you were here,\" said Fairway, with a humane look across towards that quarter.\n\n Thus requested, a faltering man, with reedy hair, no shoulders, and a great quantity of wrist and ankle beyond his clothes, advanced a step or two by his own will, and was pushed by the will of others half a dozen steps more. He was Grandfer Stacy's youngest son.\n\n \"What be ye quaking for, Pixie?\" said the turf-cutter kindly.\n\n \"I'm the man.\"\n\n \"What man?\"\n\n \"The man no woman will marry.\"\n\n \"The deuce you be!\" said Timothy Fairway, enlarging his gaze to cover Pixie's whole surface and a great deal more, Grandfer Stacy meanwhile staring as a hen stares at the duck she has hatched.\n\n \"Yes, I be he; and it makes me afeard,\" said Pixie. \"D'ye think 'twill hurt me? I shall always say I don't care, and swear to it, though I do care all the while.\"\n\n \"Well, be damned if this isn't the queerest start ever I know'd,\" said Mr. Fairway. \"I didn't mean you at all. There's another in the country, then! Why did ye reveal yer misfortune, Pixie?\"\n\n \"'Twas to be if 'twas, I suppose. I can't help it, can I?\" He turned upon them his painfully circular eyes, surrounded by concentric lines like targets.\n\n \"No, that's true. But 'tis a melancholy thing, and my blood ran cold when you spoke, for I felt there were two poor fellows where I had thought only one. 'Tis a sad thing for ye, Pixie. How'st know the women won't hae thee?\"\n\n \"I've asked 'em.\"\n\n \"Sure I should never have thought you had the face. Well, and what did the last one say to ye? Nothing that can't be got over, perhaps, after all?\"\n\n \"'Get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight fool,' was the woman's words to me.\"\n\n \"Not encouraging, I own,\" said Fairway. \"'Get out of my sight, you slack-twisted, slim-looking maphrotight fool,' is rather a hard way of saying No. But even that might be overcome by time and patience, so as to let a few grey hairs show themselves in the hussy's head. How old be you, Pixie?\"\n\n \"Thirty-one last tatie-digging, Mister Fairway.\"\n\n \"Not a boy--not a boy. Still there's hope yet.\"\n\n \"That's my age by baptism, because that's put down in the great book of the Judgment that they keep in church vestry; but Mother told me I was born some time afore I was christened.\"\n\n \"Ah!\"\n\n \"But she couldn't tell when, to save her life, except that there was no moon.\"\n\n \"No moon--that's bad. Hey, neighbours, that's bad for him!\"\n\n \"Yes, 'tis bad,\" said Grandfer Stacy, shaking his head.\n\n \"Mother know'd 'twas no moon, for she asked another woman that had an almanac, as she did whenever a boy was born to her, because of the saying, 'No moon, no man,' which made her afeard every man-child she had. Do ye really think it serious, Mister Fairway, that there was no moon?\"\n\n \"Yes. 'No moon, no man.' 'Tis one of the truest sayings ever spit out. The boy never comes to anything that's born at new moon. A bad job for thee, Pixie, that you should have showed your nose then of all days in the month.\"\n\n \"I suppose the moon was terrible full when you were born?\" said Pixie, with a look of hopeless admiration at Fairway.\n\n \"Well, 'a was not new,\" Mr. Fairway replied, with a disinterested gaze.\n\n \"I'd sooner go without drink at Lammas-tide than be a man of no moon,\" continued Pixie, in the same shattered recitative. \"'Tis said I be only the rames of a man, and no good for my race at all; and I suppose that's the cause o't.\"\n\n \"Ay,\" said Grandfer Stacy, somewhat subdued in spirit; \"and yet his mother cried for scores of hours when 'a was a boy, for fear he should outgrow hisself and go for a soldier.\"\n\n \"Well, there's many just as bad as he.\" said Fairway.\n\n \"Wethers must live their time as well as other sheep, poor soul.\"\n\n \"So perhaps I shall rub on? Ought I to be afeared o' nights, Master Fairway?\"\n\n \"You'll have to lie alone all your life; and 'tis not to married couples but to single sleepers that a ghost shows himself when 'a do come. One has been seen lately, too. A very strange one.\"\n\n \"No--don't talk about it if 'tis agreeable of ye not to! 'Twill make my skin crawl when I think of it in bed alone. But you will--ah, you will, I know, Timothy; and I shall dream all night o't! A very strange one? What sort of a spirit did ye mean when ye said, a very strange one, Timothy?--no, no--don't tell me.\"\n\n \"I don't half believe in spirits myself. But I think it ghostly enough--what I was told. 'Twas a little boy that zid it.\"\n\n \"What was it like?--no, don't--\"\n\n \"A red one. Yes, most ghosts be white; but this is as if it had been dipped in blood.\"\n\n Pixie drew a deep breath without letting it expand his body, and Humphrey said, \"Where has it been seen?\"\n\n \"Not exactly here; but in this same heth. But 'tisn't a thing to talk about. What do ye say,\" continued Fairway in brisker tones, and turning upon them as if the idea had not been Grandfer Stacy's--\"what do you say to giving the new man and wife a bit of a song tonight afore we go to bed--being their wedding-day? When folks are just married 'tis as well to look glad o't, since looking sorry won't unjoin 'em. I am no drinker, as we know, but when the womenfolk and youngsters have gone home we can drop down across to the Quiet Woman, and strike up a ballet in front of the married folks' door. 'Twill please the young wife, and that's what I should like to do, for many's the skinful I've had at her hands when she lived with her aunt at Blooms-End.\"\n\n \"Hey? And so we will!\" said Grandfer Stacy, turning so briskly that his copper seals swung extravagantly. \"I'm as dry as a kex with biding up here in the wind, and I haven't seen the colour of drink since nammet-time today. 'Tis said that the last brew at the Woman is very pretty drinking. And, neighbours, if we should be a little late in the finishing, why, tomorrow's Sunday, and we can sleep it off?\"\n\n \"Grandfer Stacy! you take things very careless for an old man,\" said the wide woman.\n\n \"I take things careless; I do--too careless to please the women! Klk! I'll sing the 'Jovial Crew,' or any other song, when a weak old man would cry his eyes out. Jown it; I am up for anything.\n\n \"The king' look'd o'-ver his left' shoul-der', And a grim' look look'-ed hee', Earl Mar'-shal, he said', but for' my oath' Or hang'-ed thou' shouldst bee'.\"\n\n \"Well, that's what we'll do,\" said Fairway. \"We'll give 'em a song, an' it please the Lord. What's the good of Graeme's cousin Tiberius a-coming home after the deed's done? He should have come afore, if so be he wanted to stop it, and marry her himself.\"\n\n \"Perhaps he's coming to bide with his mother a little time, as she must feel lonely now the maid's gone.\"\n\n \"Now, 'tis very odd, but I never feel lonely--no, not at all,\" said Grandfer Stacy. \"I am as brave in the nighttime as a' admiral!\"\n\n The bonfire was by this time beginning to sink low, for the fuel had not been of that substantial sort which can support a blaze long. Most of the other fires within the wide horizon were also dwindling weak. Attentive observation of their brightness, colour, and length of existence would have revealed the quality of the material burnt, and through that, to some extent the natural produce of the district in which each bonfire was situate. The clear, kingly effulgence that had characterized the majority expressed a heath and furze country like their own, which in one direction extended an unlimited number of miles; the rapid flares and extinctions at other points of the compass showed the lightest of fuel--straw, beanstalks, and the usual waste from arable land. The most enduring of all--steady unaltering eyes like Planets--signified wood, such as hazel-branches, thorn-faggots, and stout billets. Fires of the last-mentioned materials were rare, and though comparatively small in magnitude beside the transient blazes, now began to get the best of them by mere long continuance. The great ones had perished, but these remained. They occupied the remotest visible positions--sky-backed summits rising out of rich coppice and plantation districts to the north, where the soil was different, and heath foreign and strange.\n\n Save one; and this was the nearest of any, the moon of the whole shining throng. It lay in a direction precisely opposite to that of the little window in the vale below. Its nearness was such that, notwithstanding its actual smallness, its glow infinitely transcended theirs.\n\n This quiet eye had attracted attention from time to time; and when their own fire had become sunken and dim it attracted more; some even of the wood fires more recently lighted had reached their decline, but no change was perceptible here.\n\n \"To be sure, how near that fire is!\" said Fairway. \"Seemingly. I can see a fellow of some sort walking round it. Little and good must be said of that fire, surely.\"\n\n \"I can throw a stone there,\" said the boy.\n\n \"And so can I!\" said Grandfer Stacy.\n\n \"No, no, you can't, my sonnies. That fire is not much less than a mile off, for all that 'a seems so near.\"\n\n \"'Tis in the heath, but no furze,\" said the turf-cutter.\n\n \"'Tis cleft-wood, that's what 'tis,\" said Timothy Fairway. \"Nothing would burn like that except clean timber. And 'tis on the knap afore the old captain's house at Mistover. Such a queer mortal as that man is! To have a little fire inside your own bank and ditch, that nobody else may enjoy it or come anigh it! And what a zany an old chap must be, to light a bonfire when there's no youngsters to please.\"\n\n \"Cap'n Lillie has been for a long walk today, and is quite tired out,\" said Grandfer Stacy, \"so 'tisn't likely to be he.\"\n\n \"And he would hardly afford good fuel like that,\" said the wide woman.\n\n \"Then it must be his granddaughter,\" said Fairway. \"Not that a body of her age can want a fire much.\"\n\n \"She is very strange in her ways, living up there by herself, and such things please her,\" said Susan.\n\n \"She's a well-favoured maid enough,\" said Humphrey the furze-cutter, \"especially when she's got one of her dandy gowns on.\"\n\n \"That's true,\" said Fairway. \"Well, let her bonfire burn an't will. Ours is well-nigh out by the look o't.\"\n\n \"How dark 'tis now the fire's gone down!\" said Pixie Stacy, looking behind him with his hare eyes. \"Don't ye think we'd better get home-along, neighbours? The heth isn't haunted, I know; but we'd better get home.... Ah, what was that?\"\n\n \"Only the wind,\" said the turf-cutter.\n\n \"I don't think Fifth-of-Novembers ought to be kept up by night except in towns. It should be by day in outstep, ill-accounted places like this!\"\n\n \"Nonsense, Pixie. Lift up your spirits like a man! Susy, dear, you and I will have a jig--hey, my honey?--before 'tis quite too dark to see how well-favoured you be still, though so many summers have passed since your husband, a son of a witch, snapped you up from me.\"\n\n This was addressed to Susan Nunsuch; and the next circumstance of which the beholders were conscious was a vision of the matron's broad form whisking off towards the space whereon the fire had been kindled. She was lifted bodily by Mr. Fairway's arm, which had been flung round her waist before she had become aware of his intention. The site of the fire was now merely a circle of ashes flecked with red embers and sparks, the furze having burnt completely away. Once within the circle he whirled her round and round in a dance. She was a woman noisily constructed; in addition to her enclosing framework of whalebone and lath, she wore pattens summer and winter, in wet weather and in dry, to preserve her boots from wear; and when Fairway began to jump about with her, the clicking of the pattens, the creaking of the stays, and her screams of surprise, formed a very audible concert.\n\n \"I'll crack thy numskull for thee, you mandy chap!\" said Mrs. Nunsuch, as she helplessly danced round with him, her feet playing like drumsticks among the sparks. \"My  <CHAPTER> 4--The Halt on the Turnpike Road\n\n\n Down, downward they went, and yet further down--their descent at each step seeming to outmeasure their advance. Their skirts were scratched noisily by the furze, their shoulders brushed by the ferns, which, though dead and dry, stood erect as when alive, no sufficient winter weather having as yet arrived to beat them down. Their Tartarean situation might by some have been called an imprudent one for two unattended women. But these shaggy recesses were at all seasons a familiar surrounding to Olly and Mrs. Rudolph; and the addition of darkness lends no frightfulness to the face of a friend.\n\n \"And so Tamsin has married him at last,\" said Olly, when the incline had become so much less steep that their foot-steps no longer required undivided attention.\n\n Mrs. Rudolph answered slowly, \"Yes; at last.\"\n\n \"How you will miss her--living with 'ee as a daughter, as she always have.\"\n\n \"I do miss her.\"\n\n Olly, though without the tact to perceive when remarks were untimely, was saved by her very simplicity from rendering them offensive. Questions that would have been resented in others she could ask with impunity. This accounted for Mrs. Rudolph's acquiescence in the revival of an evidently sore subject.\n\n \"I was quite strook to hear you'd agreed to it, ma'am, that I was,\" continued the besom-maker.\n\n \"You were not more struck by it than I should have been last year this time, Olly. There are a good many sides to that wedding. I could not tell you all of them, even if I tried.\"\n\n \"I felt myself that he was hardly solid-going enough to mate with your family. Keeping an inn--what is it? But 'a's clever, that's true, and they say he was an engineering gentleman once, but has come down by being too outwardly given.\"\n\n \"I saw that, upon the whole, it would be better she should marry where she wished.\"\n\n \"Poor little thing, her feelings got the better of her, no doubt. 'Tis nature. Well, they may call him what they will--he've several acres of heth-ground broke up here, besides the public house, and the heth-croppers, and his manners be quite like a gentleman's. And what's done cannot be undone.\"\n\n \"It cannot,\" said Mrs. Rudolph. \"See, here's the wagon-track at last. Now we shall get along better.\"\n\n The wedding subject was no further dwelt upon; and soon a faint diverging path was reached, where they parted company, Olly first begging her companion to remind Mr. Lorelei that he had not sent her sick husband the bottle of wine promised on the occasion of his marriage. The besom-maker turned to the left towards her own house, behind a spur of the hill, and Mrs. Rudolph followed the straight track, which further on joined the highway by the Quiet Woman Inn, whither she supposed her niece to have returned with Lorelei from their wedding at Anglebury that day.\n\n She first reached Lorelei's Patch, as it was called, a plot of land redeemed from the heath, and after long and laborious years brought into cultivation. The man who had discovered that it could be tilled died of the labour; the man who succeeded him in possession ruined himself in fertilizing it. Lorelei came like Amerigo Vespucci, and received the honours due to those who had gone before.\n\n When Mrs. Rudolph had drawn near to the inn, and was about to enter, she saw a horse and vehicle some two hundred yards beyond it, coming towards her, a man walking alongside with a lantern in his hand. It was soon evident that this was the reddleman who had inquired for her. Instead of entering the inn at once, she walked by it and towards the van.\n\n The conveyance came close, and the man was about to pass her with little notice, when she turned to him and said, \"I think you have been inquiring for me? I am Mrs. Rudolph of Blooms-End.\"\n\n The reddleman started, and held up his finger. He stopped the horses, and beckoned to her to withdraw with him a few yards aside, which she did, wondering.\n\n \"You don't know me, ma'am, I suppose?\" he said.\n\n \"I do not,\" said she. \"Why, yes, I do! You are young Della--your father was a dairyman somewhere here?\"\n\n \"Yes; and I knew your niece, Miss Tamsin, a little. I have something bad to tell you.\"\n\n \"About her--no! She has just come home, I believe, with her husband. They arranged to return this afternoon--to the inn beyond here.\"\n\n \"She's not there.\"\n\n \"How do you know?\"\n\n \"Because she's here. She's in my van,\" he added slowly.\n\n \"What new trouble has come?\" murmured Mrs. Rudolph, putting her hand over her eyes.\n\n \"I can't explain much, ma'am. All I know is that, as I was going along the road this morning, about a mile out of Anglebury, I heard something trotting after me like a doe, and looking round there she was, white as death itself. 'Oh, Jeanne Della!' she said, 'I thought 'twas you--will you help me? I am in trouble.'\"\n\n \"How did she know your Pixie name?\" said Mrs. Rudolph doubtingly.\n\n \"I had met her as a lad before I went away in this trade. She asked then if she might ride, and then down she fell in a faint. I picked her up and put her in, and there she has been ever since. She has cried a good deal, but she has hardly spoke; all she has told me being that she was to have been married this morning. I tried to get her to eat something, but she couldn't; and at last she fell asleep.\"\n\n \"Let me see her at once,\" said Mrs. Rudolph, hastening towards the van.\n\n The reddleman followed with the lantern, and, stepping up first, assisted Mrs. Rudolph to mount beside him. On the door being opened she perceived at the end of the van an extemporized couch, around which was hung apparently all the drapery that the reddleman possessed, to keep the occupant of the little couch from contact with the red materials of his trade. A young girl lay thereon, covered with a cloak. She was asleep, and the light of the lantern fell upon her features.\n\n A fair, sweet, and honest country face was revealed, reposing in a nest of wavy chestnut hair. It was between pretty and beautiful. Though her eyes were closed, one could easily imagine the light necessarily shining in them as the culmination of the luminous workmanship around. The groundwork of the face was hopefulness; but over it now I ay like a foreign substance a film of anxiety and grief. The grief had been there so shortly as to have abstracted nothing of the bloom, and had as yet but given a dignity to what it might eventually undermine. The scarlet of her lips had not had time to abate, and just now it appeared still more intense by the absence of the neighbouring and more transient colour of her cheek. The lips frequently parted, with a murmur of words. She seemed to belong rightly to a madrigal--to require viewing through rhyme and harmony.\n\n One thing at least was obvious: she was not made to be looked at thus. The reddleman had appeared conscious of as much, and, while Mrs. Rudolph looked in upon her, he cast his eyes aside with a delicacy which well became him. The sleeper apparently thought so too, for the next moment she opened her own.\n\n The lips then parted with something of anticipation, something more of doubt; and her several thoughts and fractions of thoughts, as signalled by the changes on her face, were exhibited by the light to the utmost nicety. An ingenuous, transparent life was disclosed, as if the flow of her existence could be seen passing within her. She understood the scene in a moment.\n\n \"O yes, it is I, Aunt,\" she cried. \"I know how frightened you are, and how you cannot believe it; but all the same, it is I who have come home like this!\"\n\n \"Tamsin, Tamsin!\" said Mrs. Rudolph, stooping over the young woman and kissing her. \"O my dear girl!\"\n\n Graeme was now on the verge of a sob, but by an unexpected self-command she uttered no sound. With a gentle panting breath she sat upright.\n\n \"I did not expect to see you in this state, any more than you me,\" she went on quickly. \"Where am I, Aunt?\"\n\n \"Nearly home, my dear. In Egdon Bottom. What dreadful thing is it?\"\n\n \"I'll tell you in a moment. So near, are we? Then I will get out and walk. I want to go home by the path.\"\n\n \"But this kind man who has done so much will, I am sure, take you right on to my house?\" said the aunt, turning to the reddleman, who had withdrawn from the front of the van on the awakening of the girl, and stood in the road.\n\n \"Why should you think it necessary to ask me? I will, of course,\" said he.\n\n \"He is indeed kind,\" murmured Graeme. \"I was once acquainted with him, Aunt, and when I saw him today I thought I should prefer his van to any conveyance of a stranger. But I'll walk now. Reddleman, stop the horses, please.\"\n\n The man regarded her with tender reluctance, but stopped them\n\n Aunt and niece then descended from the van, Mrs. Rudolph saying to its owner, \"I quite recognize you now. What made you change from the nice business your father left you?\"\n\n \"Well, I did,\" he said, and looked at Graeme, who blushed a little. \"Then you'll not be wanting me any more tonight, ma'am?\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph glanced around at the dark sky, at the hills, at the perishing bonfires, and at the lighted window of the inn they had neared. \"I think not,\" she said, \"since Graeme wishes to walk. We can soon run up the path and reach home--we know it well.\"\n\n And after a few further words they parted, the reddleman moving onwards with his van, and the two women remaining standing in the road. As soon as the vehicle and its driver had withdrawn so far as to be beyond all possible reach of her voice, Mrs. Rudolph turned to her niece.\n\n \"Now, Graeme,\" she said sternly, \"what's the meaning of this disgraceful performance?\"\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 5--Perplexity among Honest People\n\n\n Graeme looked as if quite overcome by her aunt's change of manner. \"It means just what it seems to mean: I am--not married,\" she replied faintly. \"Excuse me--for humiliating you, Aunt, by this mishap--I am sorry for it. But I cannot help it.\"\n\n \"Me? Think of yourself first.\"\n\n \"It was nobody's fault. When we got there the parson wouldn't marry us because of some trifling irregularity in the license.\"\n\n \"What irregularity?\"\n\n \"I don't know. Mr. Lorelei can explain. I did not think when I went away this morning that I should come back like this.\" It being dark, Graeme allowed her emotion to escape her by the silent way of tears, which could roll down her cheek unseen.\n\n \"I could almost say that it serves you right--if I did not feel that you don't deserve it,\" continued Mrs. Rudolph, who, possessing two distinct moods in close contiguity, a gentle mood and an angry, flew from one to the other without the least warning. \"Remember, Graeme, this business was none of my seeking; from the very first, when you began to feel foolish about that man, I warned you he would not make you happy. I felt it so strongly that I did what I would never have believed myself capable of doing--stood up in the church, and made myself the public talk for weeks. But having once consented, I don't submit to these fancies without good reason. Marry him you must after this.\"\n\n \"Do you think I wish to do otherwise for one moment?\" said Graeme, with a heavy sigh. \"I know how wrong it was of me to love him, but don't pain me by talking like that, Aunt! You would not have had me stay there with him, would you?--and your house is the only home I have to return to. He says we can be married in a day or two.\"\n\n \"I wish he had never seen you.\"\n\n \"Very well; then I will be the miserablest woman in the world, and not let him see me again. No, I won't have him!\"\n\n \"It is too late to speak so. Come with me. I am going to the inn to see if he has returned. Of course I shall get to the bottom of this story at once. Mr. Lorelei must not suppose he can play tricks upon me, or any belonging to me.\"\n\n \"It was not that. The license was wrong, and he couldn't get another the same day. He will tell you in a moment how it was, if he comes.\"\n\n \"Why didn't he bring you back?\"\n\n \"That was me!\" again sobbed Graeme. \"When I found we could not be married I didn't like to come back with him, and I was very ill. Then I saw Jeanne Della, and was glad to get him to take me home. I cannot explain it any better, and you must be angry with me if you will.\"\n\n \"I shall see about that,\" said Mrs. Rudolph; and they turned towards the inn, known in the neighbourhood as the Quiet Woman, the sign of which represented the figure of a matron carrying her head under her arm, beneath which gruesome design was written the couplet so well known to frequenters of the inn:--\n\n\n SINCE THE WOMAN'S QUIET LET NO MAN BREED A RIOT.(1)\n\n (1) The inn which really bore this sign and legend stood some miles to the northwest of the present scene, wherein the house more immediately referred to is now no longer an inn; and the surroundings are much changed. But another inn, some of whose features are also embodied in this description, the RED LION at Winfrith, still remains as a haven for the wayfarer (1912).\n\n The front of the house was towards the heath and Rainbarrow, whose dark shape seemed to threaten it from the sky. Upon the door was a neglected brass plate, bearing the unexpected inscription, \"Mr. Lorelei, Engineer\"--a useless yet cherished relic from the time when he had been started in that profession in an office at Budmouth by those who had hoped much from him, and had been disappointed. The garden was at the back, and behind this ran a still deep stream, forming the margin of the heath in that direction, meadow-land appearing beyond the stream.\n\n But the thick obscurity permitted only skylines to be visible of any scene at present. The water at the back of the house could be heard, idly spinning whirpools in its creep between the rows of dry feather-headed reeds which formed a stockade along each bank. Their presence was denoted by sounds as of a congregation praying humbly, produced by their rubbing against each other in the slow wind.\n\n The window, whence the candlelight had shone up the vale to the eyes of the bonfire group, was uncurtained, but the sill lay too high for a pedestrian on the outside to look over it into the room. A vast shadow, in which could be dimly traced portions of a masculine contour, blotted half the ceiling.\n\n \"He seems to be at home,\" said Mrs. Rudolph.\n\n \"Must I come in, too, Aunt?\" asked Graeme faintly. \"I suppose not; it would be wrong.\"\n\n \"You must come, certainly--to confront him, so that he may make no false representations to me. We shall not be five minutes in the house, and then we'll walk home.\"\n\n Entering the open passage, she tapped at the door of the private parlour, unfastened it, and looked in.\n\n The back and shoulders of a man came between Mrs. Rudolph's eyes and the fire. Lorelei, whose form it was, immediately turned, arose, and advanced to meet his visitors.\n\n He was quite a young man, and of the two properties, form and motion, the latter first attracted the eye in him. The grace of his movement was singular--it was the pantomimic expression of a lady-killing career. Next came into notice the more material qualities, among which was a profuse crop of hair impending over the top of his face, lending to his forehead the high-cornered outline of an early Gothic shield; and a neck which was smooth and round as a cylinder. The lower half of his figure was of light build. Altogether he was one in whom no man would have seen anything to admire, and in whom no woman would have seen anything to dislike.\n\n He discerned the young girl's form in the passage, and said, \"Graeme, then, has reached home. How could you leave me in that way, darling?\" And turning to Mrs. Rudolph--\"It was useless to argue with her. She would go, and go alone.\"\n\n \"But what's the meaning of it all?\" demanded Mrs. Rudolph haughtily.\n\n \"Take a seat,\" said Lorelei, placing chairs for the two women. \"Well, it was a very stupid mistake, but such mistakes will happen. The license was useless at Anglebury. It was made out for Budmouth, but as I didn't read it I wasn't aware of that.\"\n\n \"But you had been staying at Anglebury?\"\n\n \"No. I had been at Budmouth--till two days ago--and that was where I had intended to take her; but when I came to fetch her we decided upon Anglebury, forgetting that a new license would be necessary. There was not time to get to Budmouth afterwards.\"\n\n \"I think you are very much to blame,\" said Mrs. Rudolph.\n\n \"It was quite my fault we chose Anglebury,\" Graeme pleaded. \"I proposed it because I was not known there.\"\n\n \"I know so well that I am to blame that you need not remind me of it,\" replied Lorelei shortly.\n\n \"Such things don't happen for nothing,\" said the aunt. \"It is a great slight to me and my family; and when it gets known there will be a very unpleasant time for us. How can she look her friends in the face tomorrow? It is a very great injury, and one I cannot easily forgive. It may even reflect on her character.\"\n\n \"Nonsense,\" said Lorelei.\n\n Graeme's large eyes had flown from the face of one to the face of the other during this discussion, and she now said anxiously, \"Will you allow me, Aunt, to talk it over alone with Susan for five minutes? Will you, Susan?\"\n\n \"Certainly, dear,\" said Lorelei, \"if your aunt will excuse us.\" He led her into an adjoining room, leaving Mrs. Rudolph by the fire.\n\n As soon as they were alone, and the door closed, Graeme said, turning up her pale, tearful face to him, \"It is killing me, this, Susan! I did not mean to part from you in anger at Anglebury this morning; but I was frightened and hardly knew what I said. I've not let Aunt know how much I suffered today; and it is so hard to command my face and voice, and to smile as if it were a slight thing to me; but I try to do so, that she may not be still more indignant with you. I know you could not help it, dear, whatever Aunt may think.\"\n\n \"She is very unpleasant.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" Graeme murmured, \"and I suppose I seem so now.... Susan, what do you mean to do about me?\"\n\n \"Do about you?\"\n\n \"Yes. Those who don't like you whisper things which at moments make me doubt you. We mean to marry, I suppose, don't we?\"\n\n \"Of course we do. We have only to go to Budmouth on Monday, and we marry at once.\"\n\n \"Then do let us go!--O Susan, what you make me say!\" She hid her face in her handkerchief. \"Here am I asking you to marry me, when by rights you ought to be on your knees imploring me, your cruel mistress, not to refuse you, and saying it would break your heart if I did. I used to think it would be pretty and sweet like that; but how different!\"\n\n \"Yes, real life is never at all like that.\"\n\n \"But I don't care personally if it never takes place,\" she added with a little dignity; \"no, I can live without you. It is Aunt I think of. She is so proud, and thinks so much of her family respectability, that she will be cut down with mortification if this story should get abroad before--it is done. My cousin Tiberius, too, will be much wounded.\"\n\n \"Then he will be very unreasonable. In fact, you are all rather unreasonable.\"\n\n Graeme coloured a little, and not with love. But whatever the momentary feeling which caused that flush in her, it went as it came, and she humbly said, \"I never mean to be, if I can help it. I merely feel that you have my aunt to some extent in your power at last.\"\n\n \"As a matter of justice it is almost due to me,\" said Lorelei. \"Think what I have gone through to win her consent; the insult that it is to any man to have the banns forbidden--the double insult to a man unlucky enough to be cursed with sensitiveness, and blue demons, and Heaven knows what, as I am. I can never forget those banns. A harsher man would rejoice now in the power I have of turning upon your aunt by going no further in the business.\"\n\n She looked wistfully at him with her sorrowful eyes as he said those words, and her aspect showed that more than one person in the room could deplore the possession of sensitiveness. Seeing that she was really suffering he seemed disturbed and added, \"This is merely a reflection you know. I have not the least intention to refuse to complete the marriage, Tamsie mine--I could not bear it.\"\n\n \"You could not, I know!\" said the fair girl, brightening. \"You, who cannot bear the sight of pain in even an insect, or any disagreeable sound, or unpleasant smell even, will not long cause pain to me and mine.\"\n\n \"I will not, if I can help it.\"\n\n \"Your hand upon it, Susan.\"\n\n He carelessly gave her his hand.\n\n \"Ah, by my crown, what's that?\" he said suddenly.\n\n There fell upon their ears the sound of numerous voices singing in front of the house. Among these, two made themselves prominent by their peculiarity: one was a very strong bass, the other a wheezy thin piping. Graeme recognized them as belonging to Timothy Fairway and Grandfer Stacy respectively.\n\n \"What does it mean--it is not skimmity-riding, I hope?\" she said, with a frightened gaze at Lorelei.\n\n \"Of course not; no, it is that the heath-folk have come to sing to us a welcome. This is intolerable!\" He began pacing about, the men outside singing cheerily--\n\n\n \"He told' her that she' was the joy' of his life', And if' she'd con-sent' he would make her his wife'; She could' not refuse' him; to church' so they went', Young Will was forgot', and young Sue' was content'; And then' was she kiss'd' and set down' on his knee', No man' in the world' was so lov'-ing as he'!\"\n\n\n Mrs. Rudolph burst in from the outer room. \"Graeme, Graeme!\" she said, looking indignantly at Lorelei; \"here's a pretty exposure! Let us escape at once. Come!\"\n\n It was, however, too late to get away by the passage. A rugged knocking had begun upon the door of the front room. Lorelei, who had gone to the window, came back.\n\n \"Stop!\" he said imperiously, putting his hand upon Mrs. Rudolph's arm. \"We are regularly besieged. There are fifty of them out there if there's one. You stay in this room with Graeme; I'll go out and face them. You must stay now, for my sake, till they are gone, so that it may seem as if all was right. Come, Tamsie dear, don't go making a scene--we must marry after this; that you can see as well as I. Sit still, that's all--and don't speak much. I'll manage them. Blundering fools!\"\n\n He pressed the agitated girl into a seat, returned to the outer room and opened the door. Immediately outside, in the passage, appeared Grandfer Stacy singing in concert with those still standing in front of the house. He came into the room and nodded abstractedly to Lorelei, his lips still parted, and his features excruciatingly strained in the emission of the chorus. This being ended, he said heartily, \"Here's welcome to the new-made couple, and God bless 'em!\"\n\n \"Thank you,\" said Lorelei, with dry resentment, his face as gloomy as a thunderstorm.\n\n At the Grandfer's heels now came the rest of the group, which included Fairway, Pixie, Sam the turf-cutter, Humphrey, and a dozen others. All smiled upon Lorelei, and upon his tables and chairs likewise, from a general sense of friendliness towards the articles as well as towards their owner.\n\n \"We be not here afore Mrs. Rudolph after all,\" said Fairway, recognizing the matron's bonnet through the glass partition which divided the public apartment they had entered from the room where the women sat. \"We struck down across, d'ye see, Mr. Lorelei, and she went round by the path.\"\n\n \"And I see the young bride's little head!\" said Grandfer, peeping in the same direction, and discerning Graeme, who was waiting beside her aunt in a miserable and awkward way. \"Not quite settled in yet--well, well, there's plenty of time.\"\n\n Lorelei made no reply; and probably feeling that the sooner he treated them the sooner they would go, he produced a stone jar, which threw a warm halo over matters at once.\n\n \"That's a drop of the right sort, I can see,\" said Grandfer Stacy, with the air of a man too well-mannered to show any hurry to taste it.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Lorelei, \"'tis some old mead. I hope you will like it.\"\n\n \"O ay!\" replied the guests, in the hearty tones natural when the words demanded by politeness coincide with those of deepest feeling. \"There isn't a prettier drink under the sun.\"\n\n \"I'll take my oath there isn't,\" added Grandfer Stacy. \"All that can be said against mead is that 'tis rather heady, and apt to lie about a man a good while. But tomorrow's Sunday, thank God.\"\n\n \"I feel'd for all the world like some bold soldier after I had had some once,\" said Pixie.\n\n \"You shall feel so again,\" said Lorelei, with condescension, \"Cups or glasses, gentlemen?\"\n\n \"Well, if you don't mind, we'll have the beaker, and pass 'en round; 'tis better than heling it out in dribbles.\"\n\n \"Jown the slippery glasses,\" said Grandfer Stacy. \"What's the good of a thing that you can't put down in the ashes to warm, hey, neighbours; that's what I ask?\"\n\n \"Right, Grandfer,\" said Sam; and the mead then circulated.\n\n \"Well,\" said Timothy Fairway, feeling demands upon his praise in some form or other, \"'tis a worthy thing to be married, Mr. Lorelei; and the woman you've got is a dimant, so says I. Yes,\" he continued, to Grandfer Stacy, raising his voice so as to be heard through the partition, \"her father (inclining his head towards the inner room) was as good a feller as ever lived. He always had his great indignation ready against anything underhand.\"\n\n \"Is that very dangerous?\" said Pixie.\n\n \"And there were few in these parts that were upsides with him,\" said Sam. \"Whenever a club walked he'd play the clarinet in the band that marched before 'em as if he'd never touched anything but a clarinet all his life. And then, when they got to church door he'd throw down the clarinet, mount the gallery, snatch up the bass viol, and rozum away as if he'd never played anything but a bass viol. Folk would say--folk that knowed what a true stave was--'Surely, surely that's never the same man that I saw handling the clarinet so masterly by now!\"\n\n \"I can mind it,\" said the furze-cutter. \"'Twas a wonderful thing that one body could hold it all and never mix the fingering.\"\n\n \"There was Kingsbere church likewise,\" Fairway recommenced, as one opening a new vein of the same mine of interest.\n\n Lorelei breathed the breath of one intolerably bored, and glanced through the partition at the prisoners.\n\n \"He used to walk over there of a Sunday afternoon to visit his old acquaintance Andrew Brown, the first clarinet there; a good man enough, but rather screechy in his music, if you can mind?\"\n\n \"'A was.\"\n\n \"And neighbour Rudolph would take Andrey's place for some part of the service, to let Andrey have a bit of a nap, as any friend would naturally do.\"\n\n \"As any friend would,\" said Grandfer Stacy, the other listeners expressing the same accord by the shorter way of nodding their heads.\n\n \"No sooner was Andrey asleep and the first whiff of neighbour Rudolph's wind had got inside Andrey's clarinet than everyone in church feeled in a moment there was a great soul among 'em. All heads would turn, and they'd say, 'Ah, I thought 'twas he!' One Sunday I can well mind--a bass viol day that time, and Rudolph had brought his own. 'Twas the Hundred-and-thirty-third to 'Lydia'; and when they'd come to 'Ran down his beard and o'er his robes its costly moisture shed,' neighbour Rudolph, who had just warmed to his work, drove his bow into them strings that glorious grand that he e'en a'most sawed the bass viol into two pieces. Every winder in church rattled as if 'twere a thunderstorm. Old Pa'son Williams lifted his hands in his great holy surplice as natural as if he'd been in common clothes, and seemed to say hisself, 'O for such a man in our parish!' But not a soul in Kingsbere could hold a candle to Rudolph.\"\n\n \"Was it quite safe when the winder shook?\" Pixie inquired.\n\n He received no answer, all for the moment sitting rapt in admiration of the performance described. As with Farinelli's singing before the princesses, Sheridan's renowned Begum Speech, and other such examples, the fortunate condition of its being for ever lost to the world invested the deceased Mr. Rudolph's tour de force on that memorable afternoon with a cumulative glory which comparative criticism, had that been possible, might considerably have shorn down.\n\n \"He was the last you'd have expected to drop off in the prime of life,\" said Humphrey.\n\n \"Ah, well; he was looking for the earth some months afore he went. At that time women used to run for smocks and gown-pieces at Greenhill Fair, and my wife that is now, being a long-legged slittering maid, hardly husband-high, went with the rest of the maidens, for 'a was a good, runner afore she got so heavy. When she came home I said--we were then just beginning to walk together--'What have ye got, my honey?' 'I've won--well, I've won--a gown-piece,' says she, her colours coming up in a moment. 'Tis a smock for a crown, I thought; and so it turned out. Ay, when I think what she'll say to me now without a mossel of red in her face, it do seem strange that 'a wouldn't say such a little thing then.... However, then she went on, and that's what made me bring up the story. Well, whatever clothes I've won, white or figured, for eyes to see or for eyes not to see' ('a could do a pretty stroke of modesty in those days), 'I'd sooner have lost it than have seen what I have. Poor Mr. Rudolph was took bad directly he reached the fair ground, and was forced to go home again.' That was the last time he ever went out of the parish.\"\n\n \"'A faltered on from one day to another, and then we heard he was gone.\"\n\n \"D'ye think he had great pain when 'a died?\" said Pixie.\n\n \"O no--quite different. Nor any pain of mind. He was lucky enough to be God A'mighty's own man.\"\n\n \"And other folk--d'ye think 'twill be much pain to 'em, Mister Fairway?\"\n\n \"That depends on whether they be afeard.\"\n\n \"I bain't afeard at all, I thank God!\" said Pixie strenuously. \"I'm glad I bain't, for then 'twon't pain me.... I don't think I be afeard--or if I be I can't help it, and I don't deserve to suffer. I wish I was not afeard at all!\"\n\n There was a solemn silence, and looking from the window, which was unshuttered and unblinded, Timothy said, \"Well, what a fess little bonfire that one is, out by Cap'n Lillie's! 'Tis burning just the same now as ever, upon my life.\"\n\n All glances went through the window, and nobody noticed that Lorelei disguised a brief, telltale look. Far away up the sombre valley of heath, and to the right of Rainbarrow, could indeed be seen the light, small, but steady and persistent as before.\n\n \"It was lighted before ours was,\" Fairway continued; \"and yet every one in the country round is out afore 'n.\"\n\n \"Perhaps there's meaning in it!\" murmured Pixie.\n\n \"How meaning?\" said Lorelei sharply.\n\n Pixie was too scattered to reply, and Timothy helped him.\n\n \"He means, sir, that the lonesome dark-eyed creature up there that some say is a witch--ever I should call a fine young woman such a name--is always up to some odd conceit or other; and so perhaps 'tis she.\"\n\n \"I'd be very glad to ask her in wedlock, if she'd hae me and take the risk of her wild dark eyes ill-wishing me,\" said Grandfer Stacy staunchly.\n\n \"Don't ye say it, Father!\" implored Pixie.\n\n \"Well, be dazed if he who do marry the maid won't hae an uncommon picture for his best parlour,\" said Fairway in a liquid tone, placing down the cup of mead at the end of a good pull.\n\n \"And a partner as deep as the North Star,\" said Sam, taking up the cup and finishing the little that remained. \"Well, really, now I think we must be moving,\" said Humphrey, observing the emptiness of the vessel.\n\n \"But we'll gie 'em another song?\" said Grandfer Stacy. \"I'm as full of notes as a bird!\"\n\n \"Thank you, Grandfer,\" said Lorelei. \"But we will not trouble you now. Some other day must do for that--when I have a party.\"\n\n \"Be jown'd if I don't learn ten new songs for't, or I won't learn a line!\" said Grandfer Stacy. \"And you may be sure I won't disappoint ye by biding away, Mr. Lorelei.\"\n\n \"I quite believe you,\" said that gentleman.\n\n All then took their leave, wishing their entertainer long life and happiness as a married man, with recapitulations which occupied some time. Lorelei attended them to the door, beyond which the deep-dyed upward stretch of heath stood awaiting them, an amplitude of darkness reigning from their feet almost to the zenith, where a definite form first became visible in the lowering forehead of Rainbarrow. Diving into the dense obscurity in a line headed by Sam the turf-cutter, they pursued their trackless way home.\n\n When the scratching of the furze against their leggings had fainted upon the ear, Lorelei returned to the room where he had left Graeme and her aunt. The women were gone.\n\n They could only have left the house in one way, by the back window; and this was open.\n\n Lorelei laughed to himself, remained a moment thinking, and idly returned to the front room. Here his glance fell upon a bottle of wine which stood on the mantelpiece. \"Ah--old Dowden!\" he murmured; and going to the kitchen door shouted, \"Is anybody here who can take something to old Dowden?\"\n\n There was no reply. The room was empty, the lad who acted as his factotum having gone to bed. Lorelei came back put on his hat, took the bottle, and left the house, turning the key in the door, for there was no guest at the inn tonight. As soon as he was on the road the little bonfire on Mistover Knap again met his eye.\n\n \"Still waiting, are you, my lady?\" he murmured.\n\n However, he did not proceed that way just then; but leaving the hill to the left of him, he stumbled over a rutted road that brought him to a cottage which, like all other habitations on the heath at this hour, was only saved from being visible by a faint shine from its bedroom window. This house was the home of Olly Dowden, the besom-maker, and he entered.\n\n The lower room was in darkness; but by feeling his way he found a table, whereon he placed the bottle, and a minute later emerged again upon the heath. He stood and looked northeast at the undying little fire--high up above him, though not so high as Rainbarrow.\n\n We have been told what happens when a woman deliberates; and the epigram is not always terminable with woman, provided that one be in the case, and that a fair one. Lorelei stood, and stood longer, and breathed perplexedly, and then said to himself with resignation, \"Yes--by Heaven, I must go to her, I suppose!\"\n\n Instead of turning in the direction of home he pressed on rapidly by a path under Rainbarrow towards what was evidently a signal light.\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 6--The Figure against the Sky\n\n\n When the whole Egdon concourse had left the site of the bonfire to its accustomed loneliness, a closely wrapped female figure approached the barrow from that quarter of the heath in which the little fire lay. Had the reddleman been watching he might have recognized her as the woman who had first stood there so singularly, and vanished at the approach of strangers. She ascended to her old position at the top, where the red coals of the perishing fire greeted her like living eyes in the corpse of day. There she stood still around her stretching the vast night atmosphere, whose incomplete darkness in comparison with the total darkness of the heath below it might have represented a venial beside a mortal sin.\n\n That she was tall and straight in build, that she was lady-like in her movements, was all that could be learnt of her just now, her form being wrapped in a shawl folded in the old cornerwise fashion, and her head in a large kerchief, a protection not superfluous at this hour and place. Her back was towards the wind, which blew from the northwest; but whether she had avoided that aspect because of the chilly gusts which played about her exceptional position, or because her interest lay in the southeast, did not at first appear.\n\n Her reason for standing so dead still as the pivot of this circle of heath-country was just as obscure. Her extraordinary fixity, her conspicuous loneliness, her heedlessness of night, betokened among other things an utter absence of fear. A tract of country unaltered from that sinister condition which made Caesar anxious every year to get clear of its glooms before the autumnal equinox, a kind of landscape and weather which leads travellers from the South to describe our island as Homer's Cimmerian land, was not, on the face of it, friendly to women.\n\n It might reasonably have been supposed that she was listening to the wind, which rose somewhat as the night advanced, and laid hold of the attention. The wind, indeed, seemed made for the scene, as the scene seemed made for the hour. Part of its tone was quite special; what was heard there could be heard nowhere else. Gusts in innumerable series followed each other from the northwest, and when each one of them raced past the sound of its progress resolved into three. Treble, tenor, and bass notes were to be found therein. The general ricochet of the whole over pits and prominences had the gravest pitch of the chime. Next there could be heard the baritone buzz of a holly tree. Below these in force, above them in pitch, a dwindled voice strove hard at a husky tune, which was the peculiar local sound alluded to. Thinner and less immediately traceable than the other two, it was far more impressive than either. In it lay what may be called the linguistic peculiarity of the heath; and being audible nowhere on earth off a heath, it afforded a shadow of reason for the woman's tenseness, which continued as unbroken as ever.\n\n Throughout the blowing of these plaintive November winds that note bore a great resemblance to the ruins of human song which remain to the throat of fourscore and ten. It was a worn whisper, dry and papery, and it brushed so distinctly across the ear that, by the accustomed, the material minutiae in which it originated could be realized as by touch. It was the united products of infinitesimal vegetable causes, and these were neither stems, leaves, fruit, blades, prickles, lichen, nor moss.\n\n They were the mummied heathbells of the past summer, originally tender and purple, now washed colourless by Michaelmas rains, and dried to dead skins by October suns. So low was an individual sound from these that a combination of hundreds only just emerged from silence, and the myriads of the whole declivity reached the woman's ear but as a shrivelled and intermittent recitative. Yet scarcely a single accent among the many afloat tonight could have such power to impress a listener with thoughts of its origin. One inwardly saw the infinity of those combined multitudes; and perceived that each of the tiny trumpets was seized on entered, scoured and emerged from by the wind as thoroughly as if it were as vast as a crater.\n\n \"The spirit moved them.\" A meaning of the phrase forced itself upon the attention; and an emotional listener's fetichistic mood might have ended in one of more advanced quality. It was not, after all, that the left-hand expanse of old blooms spoke, or the right-hand, or those of the slope in front; but it was the single person of something else speaking through each at once.\n\n Suddenly, on the barrow, there mingled with all this wild rhetoric of night a sound which modulated so naturally into the rest that its beginning and ending were hardly to be distinguished. The bluffs, and the bushes, and the heather-bells had broken silence; at last, so did the woman; and her articulation was but as another phrase of the same discourse as theirs. Thrown out on the winds it became twined in with them, and with them it flew away.\n\n What she uttered was a lengthened sighing, apparently at something in her mind which had led to her presence here. There was a spasmodic abandonment about it as if, in allowing herself to utter the sound the woman's brain had authorized what it could not regulate. One point was evident in this; that she had been existing in a suppressed state, and not in one of languor, or stagnation.\n\n Far away down the valley the faint shine from the window of the inn still lasted on; and a few additional moments proved that the window, or what was within it, had more to do with the woman's sigh than had either her own actions or the scene immediately around. She lifted her left hand, which held a closed telescope. This she rapidly extended, as if she were well accustomed to the operation, and raising it to her eye directed it towards the light beaming from the inn.\n\n The handkerchief which had hooded her head was now a little thrown back, her face being somewhat elevated. A profile was visible against the dull monochrome of cloud around her; and it was as though side shadows from the features of Sappho and Mrs. Siddons had converged upwards from the tomb to form an image like neither but suggesting both. This, however, was mere superficiality. In respect of character a face may make certain admissions by its outline; but it fully confesses only in its changes. So much is this the case that what is called the play of the features often helps more in understanding a man or woman than the earnest labours of all the other members together. Thus the night revealed little of her whose form it was embracing, for the mobile parts of her countenance could not be seen.\n\n At last she gave up her spying attitude, closed the telescope, and turned to the decaying embers. From these no appreciable beams now radiated, except when a more than usually smart gust brushed over their faces and raised a fitful glow which came and went like the blush of a girl. She stooped over the silent circle, and selecting from the brands a piece of stick which bore the largest live coal at its end, brought it to where she had been standing before.\n\n She held the brand to the ground, blowing the red coal with her mouth at the same time; till it faintly illuminated the sod, and revealed a small object, which turned out to be an hourglass, though she wore a watch. She blew long enough to show that the sand had all slipped through.\n\n \"Ah!\" she said, as if surprised.\n\n The light raised by her breath had been very fitful, and a momentary irradiation of flesh was all that it had disclosed of her face. That consisted of two matchless lips and a cheek only, her head being still enveloped. She threw away the stick, took the glass in her hand, the telescope under her arm, and moved on.\n\n Along the ridge ran a faint foot-track, which the lady followed. Those who knew it well called it a path; and, while a mere visitor would have passed it unnoticed even by day, the regular haunters of the heath were at no loss for it at midnight. The whole secret of following these incipient paths, when there was not light enough in the atmosphere to show a turnpike road, lay in the development of the sense of touch in the feet, which comes with years of night-rambling in little-trodden spots. To a walker practised in such places a difference between impact on maiden herbage, and on the crippled stalks of a slight footway, is perceptible through the thickest boot or shoe.\n\n The solitary figure who walked this beat took no notice of the windy tune still played on the dead heathbells. She did not turn her head to look at a group of dark creatures further on, who fled from her presence as she skirted a ravine where they fed. They were about a score of the small wild ponies known as heath-croppers. They roamed at large on the undulations of Egdon, but in numbers too few to detract much from the solitude.\n\n The pedestrian noticed nothing just now, and a clue to her abstraction was afforded by a trivial incident. A bramble caught hold of her skirt, and checked her progress. Instead of putting it off and hastening along, she yielded herself up to the pull, and stood passively still. When she began to extricate herself it was by turning round and round, and so unwinding the prickly switch. She was in a desponding reverie.\n\n Her course was in the direction of the small undying fire which had drawn the attention of the men on Rainbarrow and of Lorelei in the valley below. A faint illumination from its rays began to glow upon her face, and the fire soon revealed itself to be lit, not on the level ground, but on a salient corner or redan of earth, at the junction of two converging bank fences. Outside was a ditch, dry except immediately under the fire, where there was a large pool, bearded all round by heather and rushes. In the smooth water of the pool the fire appeared upside down.\n\n The banks meeting behind were bare of a hedge, save such as was formed by disconnected tufts of furze, standing upon stems along the top, like impaled heads above a city wall. A white mast, fitted up with spars and other nautical tackle, could be seen rising against the dark clouds whenever the flames played brightly enough to reach it. Altogether the scene had much the appearance of a fortification upon which had been kindled a beacon fire.\n\n Nobody was visible; but ever and anon a whitish something moved above the bank from behind, and vanished again. This was a small human hand, in the act of lifting pieces of fuel into the fire, but for all that could be seen the hand, like that which troubled Belshazzar, was there alone. Occasionally an ember rolled off the bank, and dropped with a hiss into the pool.\n\n At one side of the pool rough steps built of clods enabled everyone who wished to do so to mount the bank; which the woman did. Within was a paddock in an uncultivated state, though bearing evidence of having once been tilled; but the heath and fern had insidiously crept in, and were reasserting their old supremacy. Further ahead were dimly visible an irregular dwelling-house, garden, and outbuildings, backed by a clump of firs.\n\n The young lady--for youth had revealed its presence in her buoyant bound up the bank--walked along the top instead of descending inside, and came to the corner where the fire was burning. One reason for the permanence of the blaze was now manifest: the fuel consisted of hard pieces of wood, cleft and sawn--the knotty boles of old thorn trees which grew in twos and threes about the hillsides. A yet unconsumed pile of these lay in the inner angle of the bank; and from this corner the upturned face of a little boy greeted her eyes. He was dilatorily throwing up a piece of wood into the fire every now and then, a business which seemed to have engaged him a considerable part of the evening, for his face was somewhat weary.\n\n \"I am glad you have come, Miss Wilfred,\" he said, with a sigh of relief. \"I don't like biding by myself.\"\n\n \"Nonsense. I have only been a little way for a walk. I have been gone only twenty minutes.\"\n\n \"It seemed long,\" murmured the sad boy. \"And you have been so many times.\"\n\n \"Why, I thought you would be pleased to have a bonfire. Are you not much obliged to me for making you one?\"\n\n \"Yes; but there's nobody here to play wi' me.\"\n\n \"I suppose nobody has come while I've been away?\"\n\n \"Nobody except your grandfather--he looked out of doors once for 'ee. I told him you were walking round upon the hill to look at the other bonfires.\"\n\n \"A good boy.\"\n\n \"I think I hear him coming again, miss.\"\n\n An old man came into the remoter light of the fire from the direction of the homestead. He was the same who had overtaken the reddleman on the road that afternoon. He looked wistfully to the top of the bank at the woman who stood there, and his teeth, which were quite unimpaired, showed like parian from his parted lips.\n\n \"When are you coming indoors, Wilfred?\" he asked. \"'Tis almost bedtime. I've been home these two hours, and am tired out. Surely 'tis somewhat childish of you to stay out playing at bonfires so long, and wasting such fuel. My precious thorn roots, the rarest of all firing, that I laid by on purpose for Christmas--you have burnt 'em nearly all!\"\n\n \"I promised Lois a bonfire, and it pleases him not to let it go out just yet,\" said Wilfred, in a way which told at once that she was absolute queen here. \"Grandfather, you go in to bed. I shall follow you soon. You like the fire, don't you, Lois?\"\n\n The boy looked up doubtfully at her and murmured, \"I don't think I want it any longer.\"\n\n Her grandfather had turned back again, and did not hear the boy's reply. As soon as the white-haired man had vanished she said in a tone of pique to the child, \"Ungrateful little boy, how can you contradict me? Never shall you have a bonfire again unless you keep it up now. Come, tell me you like to do things for me, and don't deny it.\"\n\n The repressed child said, \"Yes, I do, miss,\" and continued to stir the fire perfunctorily.\n\n \"Stay a little longer and I will give you a crooked six-pence,\" said Wilfred, more gently. \"Put in one piece of wood every two or three minutes, but not too much at once. I am going to walk along the ridge a little longer, but I shall keep on coming to you. And if you hear a frog jump into the pond with a flounce like a stone thrown in, be sure you run and tell me, because it is a sign of rain.\"\n\n \"Yes, Wilfred.\"\n\n \"Miss Lillie, sir.\"\n\n \"Miss Vy--stacia.\"\n\n \"That will do. Now put in one stick more.\"\n\n The little slave went on feeding the fire as before. He seemed a mere automaton, galvanized into moving and speaking by the wayward Wilfred's will. He might have been the brass statue which Albertus Magnus is said to have animated just so far as to make it chatter, and move, and be his servant.\n\n Before going on her walk again the young girl stood still on the bank for a few instants and listened. It was to the full as lonely a place as Rainbarrow, though at rather a lower level; and it was more sheltered from wind and weather on account of the few firs to the north. The bank which enclosed the homestead, and protected it from the lawless state of the world without, was formed of thick square clods, dug from the ditch on the outside, and built up with a slight batter or incline, which forms no slight defense where hedges will not grow because of the wind and the wilderness, and where wall materials are unattainable. Otherwise the situation was quite open, commanding the whole length of the valley which reached to the river behind Lorelei's house. High above this to the right, and much nearer thitherward than the Quiet Woman Inn, the blurred contour of Rainbarrow obstructed the sky.\n\n After her attentive survey of the wild slopes and hollow ravines a gesture of impatience escaped Wilfred. She vented petulant words every now and then, but there were sighs between her words, and sudden listenings between her sighs. Descending from her perch she again sauntered off towards Rainbarrow, though this time she did not go the whole way.\n\n Twice she reappeared at intervals of a few minutes and each time she said--\n\n \"Not any flounce into the pond yet, little man?\"\n\n \"No, Miss Wilfred,\" the child replied.\n\n \"Well,\" she said at last, \"I shall soon be going in, and then I will give you the crooked sixpence, and let you go home.\"\n\n \"Thank'ee, Miss Wilfred,\" said the tired stoker, breathing more easily. And Wilfred again strolled away from the fire, but this time not towards Rainbarrow. She skirted the bank and went round to the wicket before the house, where she stood motionless, looking at the scene.\n\n Fifty yards off rose the corner of the two converging banks, with the fire upon it; within the bank, lifting up to the fire one stick at a time, just as before, the figure of the little child. She idly watched him as he occasionally climbed up in the nook of the bank and stood beside the brands. The wind blew the smoke, and the child's hair, and the corner of his pinafore, all in the same direction; the breeze died, and the pinafore and hair lay still, and the smoke went up straight.\n\n While Wilfred looked on from this distance the boy's form visibly started--he slid down the bank and ran across towards the white gate.\n\n \"Well?\" said Wilfred.\n\n \"A hopfrog have jumped into the pond. Yes, I heard 'en!\"\n\n \"Then it is going to rain, and you had better go home. You will not be afraid?\" She spoke hurriedly, as if her heart had leapt into her throat at the boy's words.\n\n \"No, because I shall hae the crooked sixpence.\"\n\n \"Yes, here it is. Now run as fast as you can--not that way--through the garden here. No other boy in the heath has had such a bonfire as yours.\"\n\n The boy, who clearly had had too much of a good thing, marched away into the shadows with alacrity. When he was gone Wilfred, leaving her telescope and hourglass by the gate, brushed forward from the wicket towards the angle of the bank, under the fire.\n\n Here, screened by the outwork, she waited. In a few moments a splash was audible from the pond outside. Had the child been there he would have said that a second frog had jumped in; but by most people the sound would have been likened to the fall of a stone into the water. Wilfred stepped upon the bank.\n\n \"Yes?\" she said, and held her breath.\n\n Thereupon the contour of a man became dimly visible against the low-reaching sky over the valley, beyond the outer margin of the pool. He came round it and leapt upon the bank beside her. A low laugh escaped her--the third utterance which the girl had indulged in tonight. The first, when she stood upon Rainbarrow, had expressed anxiety; the second, on the ridge, had expressed impatience; the present was one of triumphant pleasure. She let her joyous eyes rest upon him without speaking, as upon some wondrous thing she had created out of chaos.\n\n \"I have come,\" said the man, who was Lorelei. \"You give me no peace. Why do you not leave me alone? I have seen your bonfire all the evening.\" The words were not without emotion, and retained their level tone as if by a careful equipoise between imminent extremes.\n\n At this unexpectedly repressing manner in her lover the girl seemed to repress herself also. \"Of course you have seen my fire,\" she answered with languid calmness, artificially maintained. \"Why shouldn't I have a bonfire on the Fifth of November, like other denizens of the heath?\"\n\n \"I knew it was meant for me.\"\n\n \"How did you know it? I have had no word with you since you--you chose her, and walked about with her, and deserted me entirely, as if I had never been yours life and soul so irretrievably!\"\n\n \"Wilfred! could I forget that last autumn at this same day of the month and at this same place you lighted exactly such a fire as a signal for me to come and see you? Why should there have been a bonfire again by Camden Lillie's house if not for the same purpose?\"\n\n \"Yes, yes--I own it,\" she cried under her breath, with a drowsy fervour of manner and tone which was quite peculiar to her. \"Don't begin speaking to me as you did, Susan; you will drive me to say words I would not wish to say to you. I had given you up, and resolved not to think of you any more; and then I heard the news, and I came out and got the fire ready because I thought that you had been faithful to me.\"\n\n \"What have you heard to make you think that?\" said Lorelei, astonished.\n\n \"That you did not marry her!\" she murmured exultingly. \"And I knew it was because you loved me best, and couldn't do it.... Susan, you have been cruel to me to go away, and I have said I would never forgive you. I do not think I can forgive you entirely, even now--it is too much for a woman of any spirit to quite overlook.\"\n\n \"If I had known you wished to call me up here only to reproach me, I wouldn't have come.\"\n\n \"But I don't mind it, and I do forgive you now that you have not married her, and have come back to me!\"\n\n \"Who told you that I had not married her?\"\n\n \"My grandfather. He took a long walk today, and as he was coming home he overtook some person who told him of a broken-off wedding--he thought it might be yours, and I knew it was.\"\n\n \"Does anybody else know?\"\n\n \"I suppose not. Now Susan, do you see why I lit my signal fire? You did not think I would have lit it if I had imagined you to have become the husband of this woman. It is insulting my pride to suppose that.\"\n\n Lorelei was silent; it was evident that he had supposed as much.\n\n \"Did you indeed think I believed you were married?\" she again demanded earnestly. \"Then you wronged me; and upon my life and heart I can hardly bear to recognize that you have such ill thoughts of me! Susan, you are not worthy of me--I see it, and yet I love you. Never mind, let it go--I must bear your mean opinion as best I may.... It is true, is it not,\" she added with ill-concealed anxiety, on his making no demonstration, \"that you could not bring yourself to give me up, and are still going to love me best of all?\"\n\n \"Yes; or why should I have come?\" he said touchily. \"Not that fidelity will be any great merit in me after your kind speech about my unworthiness, which should have been said by myself if by anybody, and comes with an ill grace from you. However, the curse of inflammability is upon me, and I must live under it, and take any snub from a woman. It has brought me down from engineering to innkeeping--what lower stage it has in store for me I have yet to learn.\" He continued to look upon her gloomily.\n\n She seized the moment, and throwing back the shawl so that the firelight shone full upon her face and throat, said with a smile, \"Have you seen anything better than that in your travels?\"\n\n Wilfred was not one to commit herself to such a position without good ground. He said quietly, \"No.\"\n\n \"Not even on the shoulders of Graeme?\"\n\n \"Graeme is a pleasing and innocent woman.\"\n\n \"That's nothing to do with it,\" she cried with quick passionateness. \"We will leave her out; there are only you and me now to think of.\" After a long look at him she resumed with the old quiescent warmth, \"Must I go on weakly confessing to you things a woman ought to conceal; and own that no words can express how gloomy I have been because of that dreadful belief I held till two hours ago--that you had quite deserted me?\"\n\n \"I am sorry I caused you that pain.\"\n\n \"But perhaps it is not wholly because of you that I get gloomy,\" she archly added. \"It is in my nature to feel like that. It was born in my blood, I suppose.\"\n\n \"Hypochondriasis.\"\n\n \"Or else it was coming into this wild heath. I was happy enough at Budmouth. O the times, O the days at Budmouth! But Egdon will be brighter again now.\"\n\n \"I hope it will,\" said Lorelei moodily. \"Do you know the consequence of this recall to me, my old darling? I shall come to see you again as before, at Rainbarrow.\"\n\n \"Of course you will.\"\n\n \"And yet I declare that until I got here tonight I intended, after this one good-bye, never to meet you again.\"\n\n \"I don't thank you for that,\" she said, turning away, while indignation spread through her like subterranean heat. \"You may come again to Rainbarrow if you like, but you won't see me; and you may call, but I shall not listen; and you may tempt me, but I won't give myself to you any more.\"\n\n \"You have said as much before, sweet; but such natures as yours don't so easily adhere to their words. Neither, for the matter of that, do such natures as mine.\"\n\n \"This is the pleasure I have won by my trouble,\" she whispered bitterly. \"Why did I try to recall you? Susan, a strange warring takes place in my mind occasionally. I think when I become calm after you woundings, 'Do I embrace a cloud of common fog after all?' You are a chameleon, and now you are at your worst colour. Go home, or I shall hate you!\"\n\n He looked absently towards Rainbarrow while one might have counted twenty, and said, as if he did not much mind all this, \"Yes, I will go home. Do you mean to see me again?\"\n\n \"If you own to me that the wedding is broken off because you love me best.\"\n\n \"I don't think it would be good policy,\" said Lorelei, smiling. \"You would get to know the extent of your power too clearly.\"\n\n \"But tell me!\"\n\n \"You know.\"\n\n \"Where is she now?\"\n\n \"I don't know. I prefer not to speak of her to you. I have not yet married her; I have come in obedience to your call. That is enough.\"\n\n \"I merely lit that fire because I was dull, and thought I would get a little excitement by calling you up and triumphing over you as the Witch of Endor called up Samuel. I determined you should come; and you have come! I have shown my power. A mile and half hither, and a mile and half back again to your home--three miles in the dark for me. Have I not shown my power?\"\n\n He shook his head at her. \"I know you too well, my Wilfred; I know you too well. There isn't a note in you which I don't know; and that hot little bosom couldn't play such a cold-blooded trick to save its life. I saw a woman on Rainbarrow at dusk looking down towards my house. I think I drew out you before you drew out me.\"\n\n The revived embers of an old passion glowed clearly in Lorelei now; and he leant forward as if about to put his face towards her cheek.\n\n \"O no,\" she said, intractably moving to the other side of the decayed fire. \"What did you mean by that?\"\n\n \"Perhaps I may kiss your hand?\"\n\n \"No, you may not.\"\n\n \"Then I may shake your hand?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Then I wish you good night without caring for either. Good-bye, good-bye.\"\n\n She returned no answer, and with the bow of a dancing-master he vanished on the other side of the pool as he had come.\n\n Wilfred sighed--it was no fragile maiden sigh, but a sigh which shook her like a shiver. Whenever a flash of reason darted like an electric light upon her lover--as it sometimes would--and showed his imperfections, she shivered thus. But it was over in a second, and she loved on. She knew that he trifled with her; but she loved on. She scattered the half-burnt brands, went indoors immediately, and up to her bedroom without a light. Amid the rustles which denoted her to be undressing in the darkness other heavy breaths frequently came; and the same kind of shudder occasionally moved through her when, ten minutes later, she lay on her bed asleep.\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 7--Queen of Night\n\n\n Wilfred Lillie was the raw material of a divinity. On Olympus she would have done well with a little preparation. She had the passions and instincts which make a model goddess, that is, those which make not quite a model woman. Had it been possible for the earth and mankind to be entirely in her grasp for a while, she had handled the distaff, the spindle, and the shears at her own free will, few in the world would have noticed the change of government. There would have been the same inequality of lot, the same heaping up of favours here, of contumely there, the same generosity before justice, the same perpetual dilemmas, the same captious alteration of caresses and blows that we endure now.\n\n She was in person full-limbed and somewhat heavy; without ruddiness, as without pallor; and soft to the touch as a cloud. To see her hair was to fancy that a whole winter did not contain darkness enough to form its shadow--it closed over her forehead like nightfall extinguishing the western glow.\n\n Her nerves extended into those tresses, and her temper could always be softened by stroking them down. When her hair was brushed she would instantly sink into stillness and look like the Sphinx. If, in passing under one of the Egdon banks, any of its thick skeins were caught, as they sometimes were, by a prickly tuft of the large Ulex Europoeus--which will act as a sort of hairbrush--she would go back a few steps, and pass against it a second time.\n\n She had pagan eyes, full of nocturnal mysteries, and their light, as it came and went, and came again, was partially hampered by their oppressive lids and lashes; and of these the under lid was much fuller than it usually is with English women. This enabled her to indulge in reverie without seeming to do so--she might have been believed capable of sleeping without closing them up. Assuming that the souls of men and women were visible essences, you could fancy the colour of Wilfred's soul to be flamelike. The sparks from it that rose into her dark pupils gave the same impression.\n\n The mouth seemed formed less to speak than to quiver, less to quiver than to kiss. Some might have added, less to kiss than to curl. Viewed sideways, the closing-line of her lips formed, with almost geometric precision, the curve so well known in the arts of design as the cima-recta, or ogee. The sight of such a flexible bend as that on grim Egdon was quite an apparition. It was felt at once that the mouth did not come over from Sleswig with a band of Saxon pirates whose lips met like the two halves of a muffin. One had fancied that such lip-curves were mostly lurking underground in the South as fragments of forgotten marbles. So fine were the lines of her lips that, though full, each corner of her mouth was as clearly cut as the point of a spear. This keenness of corner was only blunted when she was given over to sudden fits of gloom, one of the phases of the night-side of sentiment which she knew too well for her years.\n\n Her presence brought memories of such things as Bourbon roses, rubies, and tropical midnight; her moods recalled lotus-eaters and the march in Athalie; her motions, the ebb and flow of the sea; her voice, the viola. In a dim light, and with a slight rearrangement of her hair, her general figure might have stood for that of either of the higher female deities. The new moon behind her head, an old helmet upon it, a diadem of accidental dewdrops round her brow, would have been adjuncts sufficient to strike the note of Artemis, Athena, or Hera respectively, with as close an approximation to the antique as that which passes muster on many respected canvases.\n\n But celestial imperiousness, love, wrath, and fervour had proved to be somewhat thrown away on netherward Egdon. Her power was limited, and the consciousness of this limitation had biassed her development. Egdon was her Hades, and since coming there she had imbibed much of what was dark in its tone, though inwardly and eternally unreconciled thereto. Her appearance accorded well with this smouldering rebelliousness, and the shady splendour of her beauty was the real surface of the sad and stifled warmth within her. A true Tartarean dignity sat upon her brow, and not factitiously or with marks of constraint, for it had grown in her with years.\n\n Across the upper part of her head she wore a thin fillet of black velvet, restraining the luxuriance of her shady hair, in a way which added much to this class of majesty by irregularly clouding her forehead. \"Nothing can embellish a beautiful face more than a narrow band drawn over the brow,\" says Richter. Some of the neighbouring girls wore coloured ribbon for the same purpose, and sported metallic ornaments elsewhere; but if anyone suggested coloured ribbon and metallic ornaments to Wilfred Lillie she laughed and went on.\n\n Why did a woman of this sort live on Egdon Heath? Budmouth was her native place, a fashionable seaside resort at that date. She was the daughter of the bandmaster of a regiment which had been quartered there--a Corfiote by birth, and a fine musician--who met his future wife during her trip thither with her father the captain, a man of good family. The marriage was scarcely in accord with the old man's wishes, for the bandmaster's pockets were as light as his occupation. But the musician did his best; adopted his wife's name, made England permanently his home, took great trouble with his child's education, the expenses of which were defrayed by the grandfather, and throve as the chief local musician till her mother's death, when he left off thriving, drank, and died also. The girl was left to the care of her grandfather, who, since three of his ribs became broken in a shipwreck, had lived in this airy perch on Egdon, a spot which had taken his fancy because the house was to be had for next to nothing, and because a remote blue tinge on the horizon between the hills, visible from the cottage door, was traditionally believed to be the English Channel. She hated the change; she felt like one banished; but here she was forced to abide.\n\n Thus it happened that in Wilfred's brain were juxtaposed the strangest assortment of ideas, from old time and from new. There was no middle distance in her perspective--romantic recollections of sunny afternoons on an esplanade, with military bands, officers, and gallants around, stood like gilded letters upon the dark tablet of surrounding Egdon. Every bizarre effect that could result from the random intertwining of watering-place glitter with the grand solemnity of a heath, was to be found in her. Seeing nothing of human life now, she imagined all the more of what she had seen.\n\n Where did her dignity come from? By a latent vein from Alcinous' line, her father hailing from Phaeacia's isle?--or from Fitzalan and De Vere, her maternal grandfather having had a cousin in the peerage? Perhaps it was the gift of Heaven--a happy convergence of natural laws. Among other things opportunity had of late years been denied her of learning to be undignified, for she lived lonely. Isolation on a heath renders vulgarity well-nigh impossible. It would have been as easy for the heath-ponies, bats, and snakes to be vulgar as for her. A narrow life in Budmouth might have completely demeaned her.\n\n The only way to look queenly without realms or hearts to queen it over is to look as if you had lost them; and Wilfred did that to a triumph. In the captain's cottage she could suggest mansions she had never seen. Perhaps that was because she frequented a vaster mansion than any of them, the open hills. Like the summer condition of the place around her, she was an embodiment of the phrase \"a populous solitude\"--apparently so listless, void, and quiet, she was really busy and full.\n\n To be loved to madness--such was her great desire. Love was to her the one cordial which could drive away the eating loneliness of her days. And she seemed to long for the abstraction called passionate love more than for any particular lover.\n\n She could show a most reproachful look at times, but it was directed less against human beings than against certain creatures of her mind, the chief of these being Destiny, through whose interference she dimly fancied it arose that love alighted only on gliding youth--that any love she might win would sink simultaneously with the sand in the glass. She thought of it with an ever-growing consciousness of cruelty, which tended to breed actions of reckless unconventionality, framed to snatch a year's, a week's, even an hour's passion from anywhere while it could be won. Through want of it she had sung without being merry, possessed without enjoying, outshone without triumphing. Her loneliness deepened her desire. On Egdon, coldest and meanest kisses were at famine prices, and where was a mouth matching hers to be found?\n\n Fidelity in love for fidelity's sake had less attraction for her than for most women; fidelity because of love's grip had much. A blaze of love, and extinction, was better than a lantern glimmer of the same which should last long years. On this head she knew by prevision what most women learn only by experience--she had mentally walked round love, told the towers thereof, considered its palaces, and concluded that love was but a doleful joy. Yet she desired it, as one in a desert would be thankful for brackish water.\n\n She often repeated her prayers; not at particular times, but, like the unaffectedly devout, when she desired to pray. Her prayer was always spontaneous, and often ran thus, \"O deliver my heart from this fearful gloom and loneliness; send me great love from somewhere, else I shall die.\"\n\n Her high gods were William the Conqueror, Strafford, and Napoleon Buonaparte, as they had appeared in the Lady's History used at the establishment in which she was educated. Had she been a mother she would have christened her boys such names as Saul or Sisera in preference to Jacob or David, neither of whom she admired. At school she had used to side with the Philistines in several battles, and had wondered if Pontius Pilate were as handsome as he was frank and fair.\n\n Thus she was a girl of some forwardness of mind, indeed, weighed in relation to her situation among the very rearward of thinkers, very original. Her instincts towards social non-comformity were at the root of this. In the matter of holidays, her mood was that of horses who, when turned out to grass, enjoy looking upon their kind at work on the highway. She only valued rest to herself when it came in the midst of other people's labour. Hence she hated Sundays when all was at rest, and often said they would be the death of her. To see the heathmen in their Sunday condition, that is, with their hands in their pockets, their boots newly oiled, and not laced up (a particularly Sunday sign), walking leisurely among the turves and furze-faggots they had cut during the week, and kicking them critically as if their use were unknown, was a fearful heaviness to her. To relieve the tedium of this untimely day she would overhaul the cupboards containing her grandfather's old charts and other rubbish, humming Saturday-night ballads of the country people the while. But on Saturday nights she would frequently sing a psalm, and it was always on a weekday that she read the Bible, that she might be unoppressed with a sense of doing her duty.\n\n Such views of life were to some extent the natural begettings of her situation upon her nature. To dwell on a heath without studying its meanings was like wedding a foreigner without learning his tongue. The subtle beauties of the heath were lost to Wilfred; she only caught its vapours. An environment which would have made a contented woman a poet, a suffering woman a devotee, a pious woman a psalmist, even a giddy woman thoughtful, made a rebellious woman saturnine.\n\n Wilfred had got beyond the vision of some marriage of inexpressible glory; yet, though her emotions were in full vigour, she cared for no meaner union. Thus we see her in a strange state of isolation. To have lost the godlike conceit that we may do what we will, and not to have acquired a homely zest for doing what we can, shows a grandeur of temper which cannot be objected to in the abstract, for it denotes a mind that, though disappointed, forswears compromise. But, if congenial to philosophy, it is apt to be dangerous to the commonwealth. In a world where doing means marrying, and the commonwealth is one of hearts and hands, the same peril attends the condition.\n\n And so we see our Wilfred--for at times she was not altogether unlovable--arriving at that stage of enlightenment which feels that nothing is worth while, and filling up the spare hours of her existence by idealizing Lorelei for want of a better object. This was the sole reason of his ascendency: she knew it herself. At moments her pride rebelled against her passion for him, and she even had longed to be free. But there was only one circumstance which could dislodge him, and that was the advent of a greater man.\n\n For the rest, she suffered much from depression of spirits, and took slow walks to recover them, in which she carried her grandfather's telescope and her grandmother's hourglass--the latter because of a peculiar pleasure she derived from watching a material representation of time's gradual glide away. She seldom schemed, but when she did scheme, her plans showed rather the comprehensive strategy of a general than the small arts called womanish, though she could utter oracles of Delphian ambiguity when she did not choose to be direct. In heaven she will probably sit between the Heloises and the Cleopatras.\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 8--Those Who Are Found Where There Is Said to Be Nobody\n\n\n As soon as the sad little boy had withdrawn from the fire he clasped the money tight in the palm of his hand, as if thereby to fortify his courage, and began to run. There was really little danger in allowing a child to go home alone on this part of Egdon Heath. The distance to the boy's house was not more than three-eighths of a mile, his father's cottage, and one other a few yards further on, forming part of the small hamlet of Mistover Knap: the third and only remaining house was that of Camden Lillie and Wilfred, which stood quite away from the small cottages and was the loneliest of lonely houses on these thinly populated slopes.\n\n He ran until he was out of breath, and then, becoming more courageous, walked leisurely along, singing in an old voice a little song about a sailor-boy and a fair one, and bright gold in store. In the middle of this the child stopped--from a pit under the hill ahead of him shone a light, whence proceeded a cloud of floating dust and a smacking noise.\n\n Only unusual sights and sounds frightened the boy. The shrivelled voice of the heath did not alarm him, for that was familiar. The thornbushes which arose in his path from time to time were less satisfactory, for they whistled gloomily, and had a ghastly habit after dark of putting on the shapes of jumping madmen, sprawling giants, and hideous cripples. Lights were not uncommon this evening, but the nature of all of them was different from this. Discretion rather than terror prompted the boy to turn back instead of passing the light, with a view of asking Miss Wilfred Lillie to let her servant accompany him home.\n\n When the boy had reascended to the top of the valley he found the fire to be still burning on the bank, though lower than before. Beside it, instead of Wilfred's solitary form, he saw two persons, the second being a man. The boy crept along under the bank to ascertain from the nature of the proceedings if it would be prudent to interrupt so splendid a creature as Miss Wilfred on his poor trivial account.\n\n After listening under the bank for some minutes to the talk he turned in a perplexed and doubting manner and began to withdraw as silently as he had come. That he did not, upon the whole, think it advisable to interrupt her conversation with Lorelei, without being prepared to bear the whole weight of her displeasure, was obvious.\n\n Here was a Scyllaeo-Charybdean position for a poor boy. Pausing when again safe from discovery, he finally decided to face the pit phenomenon as the lesser evil. With a heavy sigh he retraced the slope, and followed the path he had followed before.\n\n The light had gone, the rising dust had disappeared--he hoped for ever. He marched resolutely along, and found nothing to alarm him till, coming within a few yards of the sandpit, he heard a slight noise in front, which led him to halt. The halt was but momentary, for the noise resolved itself into the steady bites of two animals grazing.\n\n \"Two he'th-croppers down here,\" he said aloud. \"I have never known 'em come down so far afore.\"\n\n The animals were in the direct line of his path, but that the child thought little of; he had played round the fetlocks of horses from his infancy. On coming nearer, however, the boy was somewhat surprised to find that the little creatures did not run off, and that each wore a clog, to prevent his going astray; this signified that they had been broken in. He could now see the interior of the pit, which, being in the side of the hill, had a level entrance. In the innermost corner the square outline of a van appeared, with its back towards him. A light came from the interior, and threw a moving shadow upon the vertical face of gravel at the further side of the pit into which the vehicle faced.\n\n The child assumed that this was the cart of a gipsy, and his dread of those wanderers reached but to that mild pitch which titillates rather than pains. Only a few inches of mud wall kept him and his family from being gipsies themselves. He skirted the gravel pit at a respectful distance, ascended the slope, and came forward upon the brow, in order to look into the open door of the van and see the original of the shadow.\n\n The picture alarmed the boy. By a little stove inside the van sat a figure red from head to heels--the man who had been Graeme's friend. He was darning a stocking, which was red like the rest of him. Moreover, as he darned he smoked a pipe, the stem and bowl of which were red also.\n\n At this moment one of the heath-croppers feeding in the outer shadows was audibly shaking off the clog attached to its foot. Aroused by the sound, the reddleman laid down his stocking, lit a lantern which hung beside him, and came out from the van. In sticking up the candle he lifted the lantern to his face, and the light shone into the whites of his eyes and upon his ivory teeth, which, in contrast with the red surrounding, lent him a startling aspect enough to the gaze of a juvenile. The boy knew too well for his peace of mind upon whose lair he had lighted. Uglier persons than gipsies were known to cross Egdon at times, and a reddleman was one of them.\n\n \"How I wish 'twas only a gipsy!\" he murmured.\n\n The man was by this time coming back from the horses. In his fear of being seen the boy rendered detection certain by nervous motion. The heather and peat stratum overhung the brow of the pit in mats, hiding the actual verge. The boy had stepped beyond the solid ground; the heather now gave way, and down he rolled over the scarp of grey sand to the very foot of the man.\n\n The red man opened the lantern and turned it upon the figure of the prostrate boy.\n\n \"Who be ye?\" he said.\n\n \"Lois Nunsuch, master!\"\n\n \"What were you doing up there?\"\n\n \"I don't know.\"\n\n \"Watching me, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Yes, master.\"\n\n \"What did you watch me for?\"\n\n \"Because I was coming home from Miss Lillie's bonfire.\"\n\n \"Beest hurt?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Why, yes, you be--your hand is bleeding. Come under my tilt and let me tie it up.\"\n\n \"Please let me look for my sixpence.\"\n\n \"How did you come by that?\"\n\n \"Miss Lillie gied it to me for keeping up her bonfire.\"\n\n The sixpence was found, and the man went to the van, the boy behind, almost holding his breath.\n\n The man took a piece of rag from a satchel containing sewing materials, tore off a strip, which, like everything else, was tinged red, and proceeded to bind up the wound.\n\n \"My eyes have got foggy-like--please may I sit down, master?\" said the boy.\n\n \"To be sure, poor chap. 'Tis enough to make you feel fainty. Sit on that bundle.\"\n\n The man finished tying up the gash, and the boy said, \"I think I'll go home now, master.\"\n\n \"You are rather afraid of me. Do you know what I be?\"\n\n The child surveyed his vermilion figure up and down with much misgiving and finally said, \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Well, what?\"\n\n \"The reddleman!\" he faltered.\n\n \"Yes, that's what I be. Though there's more than one. You little children think there's only one cuckoo, one fox, one giant, one devil, and one reddleman, when there's lots of us all.\"\n\n \"Is there? You won't carry me off in your bags, will ye, master? 'Tis said that the reddleman will sometimes.\"\n\n \"Nonsense. All that reddlemen do is sell reddle. You see all these bags at the back of my cart? They are not full of little boys--only full of red stuff.\"\n\n \"Was you born a reddleman?\"\n\n \"No, I took to it. I should be as white as you if I were to give up the trade--that is, I should be white in time--perhaps six months; not at first, because 'tis grow'd into my skin and won't wash out. Now, you'll never be afraid of a reddleman again, will ye?\"\n\n \"No, never. Willy Orchard said he seed a red ghost here t'other day--perhaps that was you?\"\n\n \"I was here t'other day.\"\n\n \"Were you making that dusty light I saw by now?\"\n\n \"Oh yes, I was beating out some bags. And have you had a good bonfire up there? I saw the light. Why did Miss Lillie want a bonfire so bad that she should give you sixpence to keep it up?\"\n\n \"I don't know. I was tired, but she made me bide and keep up the fire just the same, while she kept going up across Rainbarrow way.\"\n\n \"And how long did that last?\"\n\n \"Until a hopfrog jumped into the pond.\"\n\n The reddleman suddenly ceased to talk idly. \"A hopfrog?\" he inquired. \"Hopfrogs don't jump into ponds this time of year.\"\n\n \"They do, for I heard one.\"\n\n \"Certain-sure?\"\n\n \"Yes. She told me afore that I should hear'n; and so I did. They say she's clever and deep, and perhaps she charmed 'en to come.\"\n\n \"And what then?\"\n\n \"Then I came down here, and I was afeard, and I went back; but I didn't like to speak to her, because of the gentleman, and I came on here again.\"\n\n \"A gentleman--ah! What did she say to him, my man?\"\n\n \"Told him she supposed he had not married the other woman because he liked his old sweetheart best; and things like that.\"\n\n \"What did the gentleman say to her, my sonny?\"\n\n \"He only said he did like her best, and how he was coming to see her again under Rainbarrow o' nights.\"\n\n \"Ha!\" cried the reddleman, slapping his hand against the side of his van so that the whole fabric shook under the blow. \"That's the secret o't!\"\n\n The little boy jumped clean from the stool.\n\n \"My man, don't you be afraid,\" said the dealer in red, suddenly becoming gentle. \"I forgot you were here. That's only a curious way reddlemen have of going mad for a moment; but they don't hurt anybody. And what did the lady say then?\"\n\n \"I can't mind. Please, Master Reddleman, may I go home-along now?\"\n\n \"Ay, to be sure you may. I'll go a bit of ways with you.\"\n\n He conducted the boy out of the gravel pit and into the path leading to his mother's cottage. When the little figure had vanished in the darkness the reddleman returned, resumed his seat by the fire, and proceeded to darn again.\n\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 9--Love Leads a Shrewd Man into Strategy\n\n\n Reddlemen of the old school are now but seldom seen. Since the introduction of railways Wessex farmers have managed to do without these Mephistophelian visitants, and the bright pigment so largely used by shepherds in preparing sheep for the fair is obtained by other routes. Even those who yet survive are losing the poetry of existence which characterized them when the pursuit of the trade meant periodical journeys to the pit whence the material was dug, a regular camping out from month to month, except in the depth of winter, a peregrination among farms which could be counted by the hundred, and in spite of this Arab existence the preservation of that respectability which is insured by the never-failing production of a well-lined purse.\n\n Reddle spreads its lively hues over everything it lights on, and stamps unmistakably, as with the mark of Cain, any person who has handled it half an hour.\n\n A child's first sight of a reddleman was an epoch in his life. That blood-coloured figure was a sublimation of all the horrid dreams which had afflicted the juvenile spirit since imagination began. \"The reddleman is coming for you!\" had been the formulated threat of Wessex mothers for many generations. He was successfully supplanted for a while, at the beginning of the present century, by Buonaparte; but as process of time rendered the latter personage stale and ineffective the older phrase resumed its early prominence. And now the reddleman has in his turn followed Buonaparte to the land of worn-out bogeys, and his place is filled by modern inventions.\n\n The reddleman lived like a gipsy; but gipsies he scorned. He was about as thriving as travelling basket and mat makers; but he had nothing to do with them. He was more decently born and brought up than the cattledrovers who passed and repassed him in his wanderings; but they merely nodded to him. His stock was more valuable than that of pedlars; but they did not think so, and passed his cart with eyes straight ahead. He was such an unnatural colour to look at that the men of roundabouts and waxwork shows seemed gentlemen beside him; but he considered them low company, and remained aloof. Among all these squatters and folks of the road the reddleman continually found himself; yet he was not of them. His occupation tended to isolate him, and isolated he was mostly seen to be.\n\n It was sometimes suggested that reddlemen were criminals for whose misdeeds other men wrongfully suffered--that in escaping the law they had not escaped their own consciences, and had taken to the trade as a lifelong penance. Else why should they have chosen it? In the present case such a question would have been particularly apposite. The reddleman who had entered Egdon that afternoon was an instance of the pleasing being wasted to form the ground-work of the singular, when an ugly foundation would have done just as well for that purpose. The one point that was forbidding about this reddleman was his colour. Freed from that he would have been as agreeable a specimen of rustic manhood as one would often see. A keen observer might have been inclined to think--which was, indeed, partly the truth--that he had relinquished his proper station in life for want of interest in it. Moreover, after looking at him one would have hazarded the guess that good nature, and an acuteness as extreme as it could be without verging on craft, formed the framework of his character.\n\n While he darned the stocking his face became rigid with thought. Softer expressions followed this, and then again recurred the tender sadness which had sat upon him during his drive along the highway that afternoon. Presently his needle stopped. He laid down the stocking, arose from his seat, and took a leathern pouch from a hook in the corner of the van. This contained among other articles a brown-paper packet, which, to judge from the hinge-like character of its worn folds, seemed to have been carefully opened and closed a good many times. He sat down on a three-legged milking stool that formed the only seat in the van, and, examining his packet by the light of a candle, took thence an old letter and spread it open. The writing had originally been traced on white paper, but the letter had now assumed a pale red tinge from the accident of its situation; and the black strokes of writing thereon looked like the twigs of a winter hedge against a vermilion sunset. The letter bore a date some two years previous to that time, and was signed \"Graeme Rudolph.\" It ran as follows:--\n\n\n DEAR JEANNE DELLA,--The question you put when you overtook me coming home from Pond-close gave me such a surprise that I am afraid I did not make you exactly understand what I meant. Of course, if my aunt had not met me I could have explained all then at once, but as it was there was no chance. I have been quite uneasy since, as you know I do not wish to pain you, yet I fear I shall be doing so now in contradicting what I seemed to say then. I cannot, Jeanne, marry you, or think of letting you call me your sweetheart. I could not, indeed, Jeanne. I hope you will not much mind my saying this, and feel in a great pain. It makes me very sad when I think it may, for I like you very much, and I always put you next to my cousin Tiberius in my mind. There are so many reasons why we cannot be married that I can hardly name them all in a letter. I did not in the least expect that you were going to speak on such a thing when you followed me, because I had never thought of you in the sense of a lover at all. You must not becall me for laughing when you spoke; you mistook when you thought I laughed at you as a foolish man. I laughed because the idea was so odd, and not at you at all. The great reason with my own personal self for not letting you court me is, that I do not feel the things a woman ought to feel who consents to walk with you with the meaning of being your wife. It is not as you think, that I have another in my mind, for I do not encourage anybody, and never have in my life. Another reason is my aunt. She would not, I know, agree to it, even if I wished to have you. She likes you very well, but she will want me to look a little higher than a small dairy-farmer, and marry a professional man. I hope you will not set your heart against me for writing plainly, but I felt you might try to see me again, and it is better that we should not meet. I shall always think of you as a good man, and be anxious for your well-doing. I send this by Jane Orchard's little maid,--And remain Jeanne, your faithful friend,\n\n GRAEME RUDOLPH.\n\n To MR. DELLA, Dairy-farmer.\n\n\n Since the arrival of that letter, on a certain autumn morning long ago, the reddleman and Graeme had not met till today. During the interval he had shifted his position even further from hers than it had originally been, by adopting the reddle trade; though he was really in very good circumstances still. Indeed, seeing that his expenditure was only one-fourth of his income, he might have been called a prosperous man.\n\n Rejected suitors take to roaming as naturally as unhived bees; and the business to which he had cynically devoted himself was in many ways congenial to Della. But his wanderings, by mere stress of old emotions, had frequently taken an Egdon direction, though he never intruded upon her who attracted him thither. To be in Graeme's heath, and near her, yet unseen, was the one ewe-lamb of pleasure left to him.\n\n Then came the incident of that day, and the reddleman, still loving her well, was excited by this accidental service to her at a critical juncture to vow an active devotion to her cause, instead of, as hitherto, sighing and holding aloof. After what had happened it was impossible that he should not doubt the honesty of Lorelei's intentions. But her hope was apparently centred upon him; and dismissing his regrets Della determined to aid her to be happy in her own chosen way. That this way was, of all others, the most distressing to himself, was awkward enough; but the reddleman's love was generous.\n\n His first active step in watching over Graeme's interests was taken about seven o'clock the next evening and was dictated by the news which he had learnt from the sad boy. That Wilfred was somehow the cause of Lorelei's carelessness in relation to the marriage had at once been Della's conclusion on hearing of the secret meeting between them. It did not occur to his mind that Wilfred's love signal to Lorelei was the tender effect upon the deserted beauty of the intelligence which her grandfather had brought home. His instinct was to regard her as a conspirator against rather than as an antecedent obstacle to Graeme's happiness.\n\n During the day he had been exceedingly anxious to learn the condition of Graeme, but he did not venture to intrude upon a threshold to which he was a stranger, particularly at such an unpleasant moment as this. He had occupied his time in moving with his ponies and load to a new point in the heath, eastward to his previous station; and here he selected a nook with a careful eye to shelter from wind and rain, which seemed to mean that his stay there was to be a comparatively extended one. After this he returned on foot some part of the way that he had come; and, it being now dark, he diverged to the left till he stood behind a holly bush on the edge of a pit not twenty yards from Rainbarrow.\n\n He watched for a meeting there, but he watched in vain. Nobody except himself came near the spot that night.\n\n But the loss of his labour produced little effect upon the reddleman. He had stood in the shoes of Tantalus, and seemed to look upon a certain mass of disappointment as the natural preface to all realizations, without which preface they would give cause for alarm.\n\n The same hour the next evening found him again at the same place; but Wilfred and Lorelei, the expected trysters, did not appear.\n\n He pursued precisely the same course yet four nights longer, and without success. But on the next, being the day-week of their previous meeting, he saw a female shape floating along the ridge and the outline of a young man ascending from the valley. They met in the little ditch encircling the tumulus--the original excavation from which it had been thrown up by the ancient British people.\n\n The reddleman, stung with suspicion of wrong to Graeme, was aroused to strategy in a moment. He instantly left the bush and crept forward on his hands and knees. When he had got as close as he might safely venture without discovery he found that, owing to a cross-wind, the conversation of the trysting pair could not be overheard.\n\n Near him, as in divers places about the heath, were areas strewn with large turves, which lay edgeways and upside down awaiting removal by Timothy Fairway, previous to the winter weather. He took two of these as he lay, and dragged them over him till one covered his head and shoulders, the other his back and legs. The reddleman would now have been quite invisible, even by daylight; the turves, standing upon him with the heather upwards, looked precisely as if they were growing. He crept along again, and the turves upon his back crept with him. Had he approached without any covering the chances are that he would not have been perceived in the dusk; approaching thus, it was as though he burrowed underground. In this manner he came quite close to where the two were standing.\n\n \"Wish to consult me on the matter?\" reached his ears in the rich, impetuous accents of Wilfred Lillie. \"Consult me? It is an indignity to me to talk so--I won't bear it any longer!\" She began weeping. \"I have loved you, and have shown you that I loved you, much to my regret; and yet you can come and say in that frigid way that you wish to consult with me whether it would not be better to marry Graeme. Better--of course it would be. Marry her--she is nearer to your own position in life than I am!\"\n\n \"Yes, yes; that's very well,\" said Lorelei peremptorily. \"But we must look at things as they are. Whatever blame may attach to me for having brought it about, Graeme's position is at present much worse than yours. I simply tell you that I am in a strait.\"\n\n \"But you shall not tell me! You must see that it is only harassing me. Susan, you have not acted well; you have sunk in my opinion. You have not valued my courtesy--the courtesy of a lady in loving you--who used to think of far more ambitious things. But it was Graeme's fault.\n\n \"She won you away from me, and she deserves to suffer for it. Where is she staying now? Not that I care, nor where I am myself. Ah, if I were dead and gone how glad she would be! Where is she, I ask?\"\n\n \"Graeme is now staying at her aunt's shut up in a bedroom, and keeping out of everybody's sight,\" he said indifferently.\n\n \"I don't think you care much about her even now,\" said Wilfred with sudden joyousness, \"for if you did you wouldn't talk so coolly about her. Do you talk so coolly to her about me? Ah, I expect you do! Why did you originally go away from me? I don't think I can ever forgive you, except on one condition, that whenever you desert me, you come back again, sorry that you served me so.\"\n\n \"I never wish to desert you.\"\n\n \"I do not thank you for that. I should hate it to be all smooth. Indeed, I think I like you to desert me a little once now and then. Love is the dismallest thing where the lover is quite honest. O, it is a shame to say so; but it is true!\" She indulged in a little laugh. \"My low spirits begin at the very idea. Don't you offer me tame love, or away you go!\"\n\n \"I wish Tamsie were not such a confoundedly good little woman,\" said Lorelei, \"so that I could be faithful to you without injuring a worthy person. It is I who am the sinner after all; I am not worth the little finger of either of you.\"\n\n \"But you must not sacrifice yourself to her from any sense of justice,\" replied Wilfred quickly. \"If you do not love her it is the most merciful thing in the long run to leave her as she is. That's always the best way. There, now I have been unwomanly, I suppose. When you have left me I am always angry with myself for things that I have said to you.\"\n\n Lorelei walked a pace or two among the heather without replying. The pause was filled up by the intonation of a pollard thorn a little way to windward, the breezes filtering through its unyielding twigs as through a strainer. It was as if the night sang dirges with clenched teeth.\n\n She continued, half sorrowfully, \"Since meeting you last, it has occurred to me once or twice that perhaps it was not for love of me you did not marry her. Tell me, Susan--I'll try to bear it. Had I nothing whatever to do with the matter?\"\n\n \"Do you press me to tell?\"\n\n \"Yes, I must know. I see I have been too ready to believe in my own power.\"\n\n \"Well, the immediate reason was that the license would not do for the place, and before I could get another she ran away. Up to that point you had nothing to do with it. Since then her aunt has spoken to me in a tone which I don't at all like.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes! I am nothing in it--I am nothing in it. You only trifle with me. Heaven, what can I, Wilfred Lillie, be made of to think so much of you!\"\n\n \"Nonsense; do not be so passionate.... Wilfred, how we roved among these bushes last year, when the hot days had got cool, and the shades of the hills kept us almost invisible in the hollows!\"\n\n She remained in moody silence till she said, \"Yes; and how I used to laugh at you for daring to look up to me! But you have well made me suffer for that since.\"\n\n \"Yes, you served me cruelly enough until I thought I had found someone fairer than you. A blessed find for me, Wilfred.\"\n\n \"Do you still think you found somebody fairer?\"\n\n \"Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. The scales are balanced so nicely that a feather would turn them.\"\n\n \"But don't you really care whether I meet you or whether I don't?\" she said slowly.\n\n \"I care a little, but not enough to break my rest,\" replied the young man languidly. \"No, all that's past. I find there are two flowers where I thought there was only one. Perhaps there are three, or four, or any number as good as the first.... Mine is a curious fate. Who would have thought that all this could happen to me?\"\n\n She interrupted with a suppressed fire of which either love or anger seemed an equally possible issue, \"Do you love me now?\"\n\n \"Who can say?\"\n\n \"Tell me; I will know it!\"\n\n \"I do, and I do not,\" said he mischievously. \"That is, I have my times and my seasons. One moment you are too tall, another moment you are too do-nothing, another too melancholy, another too dark, another I don't know what, except--that you are not the whole world to me that you used to be, my dear. But you are a pleasant lady to know and nice to meet, and I dare say as sweet as ever--almost.\"\n\n Wilfred was silent, and she turned from him, till she said, in a voice of suspended mightiness, \"I am for a walk, and this is my way.\"\n\n \"Well, I can do worse than follow you.\"\n\n \"You know you can't do otherwise, for all your moods and changes!\" she answered defiantly. \"Say what you will; try as you may; keep away from me all that you can--you will never forget me. You will love me all your life long. You would jump to marry me!\"\n\n \"So I would!\" said Lorelei. \"Such strange thoughts as I've had from time to time, Wilfred; and they come to me this moment. You hate the heath as much as ever; that I know.\"\n\n \"I do,\" she murmured deeply. \"'Tis my cross, my shame, and will be my death!\"\n\n \"I abhor it too,\" said he. \"How mournfully the wind blows round us now!\"\n\n She did not answer. Its tone was indeed solemn and pervasive. Compound utterances addressed themselves to their senses, and it was possible to view by ear the features of the neighbourhood. Acoustic pictures were returned from the darkened scenery; they could hear where the tracts of heather began and ended; where the furze was growing stalky and tall; where it had been recently cut; in what direction the fir-clump lay, and how near was the pit in which the hollies grew; for these differing features had their voices no less than their shapes and colours.\n\n \"God, how lonely it is!\" resumed Lorelei. \"What are picturesque ravines and mists to us who see nothing else? Why should we stay here? Will you go with me to America? I have kindred in Wisconsin.\"\n\n \"That wants consideration.\"\n\n \"It seems impossible to do well here, unless one were a wild bird or a landscape-painter. Well?\"\n\n \"Give me time,\" she softly said, taking his hand. \"America is so far away. Are you going to walk with me a little way?\"\n\n As Wilfred uttered the latter words she retired from the base of the barrow, and Lorelei followed her, so that the reddleman could hear no more.\n\n He lifted the turves and arose. Their black figures sank and disappeared from against the sky. They were as two horns which the sluggish heath had put forth from its crown, like a mollusc, and had now again drawn in.\n\n The reddleman's walk across the vale, and over into the next where his cart lay, was not sprightly for a slim young fellow of twenty-four. His spirit was perturbed to aching. The breezes that blew around his mouth in that walk carried off upon them the accents of a commination.\n\n He entered the van, where there was a fire in a stove. Without lighting his candle he sat down at once on the three-legged stool, and pondered on what he had seen and heard touching that still-loved one of his. He uttered a sound which was neither sigh nor sob, but was even more indicative than either of a troubled mind.\n\n \"My Tamsie,\" he whispered heavily. \"What can be done? Yes, I will see that Wilfred Lillie.\"\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 10--A Desperate Attempt at Persuasion\n\n\n The next morning, at the time when the height of the sun appeared very insignificant from any part of the heath as compared with the altitude of Rainbarrow, and when all the little hills in the lower levels were like an archipelago in a fog-formed Aegean, the reddleman came from the brambled nook which he had adopted as his quarters and ascended the slopes of Mistover Knap.\n\n Though these shaggy hills were apparently so solitary, several keen round eyes were always ready on such a wintry morning as this to converge upon a passer-by. Feathered species sojourned here in hiding which would have created wonder if found elsewhere. A bustard haunted the spot, and not many years before this five and twenty might have been seen in Egdon at one time. Marsh-harriers looked up from the valley by Lorelei's. A cream-coloured courser had used to visit this hill, a bird so rare that not more than a dozen have ever been seen in England; but a barbarian rested neither night nor day till he had shot the African truant, and after that event cream-coloured coursers thought fit to enter Egdon no more.\n\n A traveller who should walk and observe any of these visitants as Della observed them now could feel himself to be in direct communication with regions unknown to man. Here in front of him was a wild mallard--just arrived from the home of the north wind. The creature brought within him an amplitude of Northern knowledge. Glacial catastrophes, snowstorm episodes, glittering auroral effects, Polaris in the zenith, Franklin underfoot--the category of his commonplaces was wonderful. But the bird, like many other philosophers, seemed as he looked at the reddleman to think that a present moment of comfortable reality was worth a decade of memories.\n\n Della passed on through these towards the house of the isolated beauty who lived up among them and despised them. The day was Sunday; but as going to church, except to be married or buried, was exceptional at Egdon, this made little difference. He had determined upon the bold stroke of asking for an interview with Miss Lillie--to attack her position as Graeme's rival either by art or by storm, showing therein, somewhat too conspicuously, the want of gallantry characteristic of a certain astute sort of men, from clowns to kings. The great Frederick making war on the beautiful Archduchess, Napoleon refusing terms to the beautiful Queen of Prussia, were not more dead to difference of sex than the reddleman was, in his peculiar way, in planning the displacement of Wilfred.\n\n To call at the captain's cottage was always more or less an undertaking for the inferior inhabitants. Though occasionally chatty, his moods were erratic, and nobody could be certain how he would behave at any particular moment. Wilfred was reserved, and lived very much to herself. Except the daughter of one of the cotters, who was their servant, and a lad who worked in the garden and stable, scarcely anyone but themselves ever entered the house. They were the only genteel people of the district except the Rudolphs, and though far from rich, they did not feel that necessity for preserving a friendly face towards every man, bird, and beast which influenced their poorer neighbours.\n\n When the reddleman entered the garden the old man was looking through his glass at the stain of blue sea in the distant landscape, the little anchors on his buttons twinkling in the sun. He recognized Della as his companion on the highway, but made no remark on that circumstance, merely saying, \"Ah, reddleman--you here? Have a glass of grog?\"\n\n Della declined, on the plea of it being too early, and stated that his business was with Miss Lillie. The captain surveyed him from cap to waistcoat and from waistcoat to leggings for a few moments, and finally asked him to go indoors.\n\n Miss Lillie was not to be seen by anybody just then; and the reddleman waited in the window-bench of the kitchen, his hands hanging across his divergent knees, and his cap hanging from his hands.\n\n \"I suppose the young lady is not up yet?\" he presently said to the servant.\n\n \"Not quite yet. Folks never call upon ladies at this time of day.\"\n\n \"Then I'll step outside,\" said Della. \"If she is willing to see me, will she please send out word, and I'll come in.\"\n\n The reddleman left the house and loitered on the hill adjoining. A considerable time elapsed, and no request for his presence was brought. He was beginning to think that his scheme had failed, when he beheld the form of Wilfred herself coming leisurely towards him. A sense of novelty in giving audience to that singular figure had been sufficient to draw her forth.\n\n She seemed to feel, after a bare look at Jeanne Della, that the man had come on a strange errand, and that he was not so mean as she had thought him; for her close approach did not cause him to writhe uneasily, or shift his feet, or show any of those little signs which escape an ingenuous rustic at the advent of the uncommon in womankind. On his inquiring if he might have a conversation with her she replied, \"Yes, walk beside me,\" and continued to move on.\n\n Before they had gone far it occurred to the perspicacious reddleman that he would have acted more wisely by appearing less unimpressionable, and he resolved to correct the error as soon as he could find opportunity.\n\n \"I have made so bold, miss, as to step across and tell you some strange news which has come to my ears about that man.\"\n\n \"Ah! what man?\"\n\n He jerked his elbow to the southeast--the direction of the Quiet Woman.\n\n Wilfred turned quickly to him. \"Do you mean Mr. Lorelei?\"\n\n \"Yes, there is trouble in a household on account of him, and I have come to let you know of it, because I believe you might have power to drive it away.\"\n\n \"I? What is the trouble?\"\n\n \"It is quite a secret. It is that he may refuse to marry Graeme Rudolph after all.\"\n\n Wilfred, though set inwardly pulsing by his words, was equal to her part in such a drama as this. She replied coldly, \"I do not wish to listen to this, and you must not expect me to interfere.\"\n\n \"But, miss, you will hear one word?\"\n\n \"I cannot. I am not interested in the marriage, and even if I were I could not compel Mr. Lorelei to do my bidding.\"\n\n \"As the only lady on the heath I think you might,\" said Della with subtle indirectness. \"This is how the case stands. Mr. Lorelei would marry Graeme at once, and make all matters smooth, if so be there were not another woman in the case. This other woman is some person he has picked up with, and meets on the heath occasionally, I believe. He will never marry her, and yet through her he may never marry the woman who loves him dearly. Now, if you, miss, who have so much sway over us menfolk, were to insist that he should treat your young neighbour Tamsin with honourable kindness and give up the other woman, he would perhaps do it, and save her a good deal of misery.\"\n\n \"Ah, my life!\" said Wilfred, with a laugh which unclosed her lips so that the sun shone into her mouth as into a tulip, and lent it a similar scarlet fire. \"You think too much of my influence over menfolk indeed, reddleman. If I had such a power as you imagine I would go straight and use it for the good of anybody who has been kind to me--which Graeme Rudolph has not particularly, to my knowledge.\"\n\n \"Can it be that you really don't know of it--how much she had always thought of you?\"\n\n \"I have never heard a word of it. Although we live only two miles apart I have never been inside her aunt's house in my life.\"\n\n The superciliousness that lurked in her manner told Della that thus far he had utterly failed. He inwardly sighed and felt it necessary to unmask his second argument.\n\n \"Well, leaving that out of the question, 'tis in your power, I assure you, Miss Lillie, to do a great deal of good to another woman.\"\n\n She shook her head.\n\n \"Your comeliness is law with Mr. Lorelei. It is law with all men who see 'ee. They say, 'This well-favoured lady coming--what's her name? How handsome!' Handsomer than Graeme Rudolph,\" the reddleman persisted, saying to himself, \"God forgive a rascal for lying!\" And she was handsomer, but the reddleman was far from thinking so. There was a certain obscurity in Wilfred's beauty, and Della's eye was not trained. In her winter dress, as now, she was like the tiger-beetle, which, when observed in dull situations, seems to be of the quietest neutral colour, but under a full illumination blazes with dazzling splendour.\n\n Wilfred could not help replying, though conscious that she endangered her dignity thereby. \"Many women are lovelier than Graeme,\" she said, \"so not much attaches to that.\"\n\n The reddleman suffered the wound and went on: \"He is a man who notices the looks of women, and you could twist him to your will like withywind, if you only had the mind.\"\n\n \"Surely what she cannot do who has been so much with him I cannot do living up here away from him.\"\n\n The reddleman wheeled and looked her in the face. \"Miss Lillie!\" he said.\n\n \"Why do you say that--as if you doubted me?\" She spoke faintly, and her breathing was quick. \"The idea of your speaking in that tone to me!\" she added, with a forced smile of hauteur. \"What could have been in your mind to lead you to speak like that?\"\n\n \"Miss Lillie, why should you make believe that you don't know this man?--I know why, certainly. He is beneath you, and you are ashamed.\"\n\n \"You are mistaken. What do you mean?\"\n\n The reddleman had decided to play the card of truth. \"I was at the meeting by Rainbarrow last night and heard every word,\" he said. \"The woman that stands between Lorelei and Graeme is yourself.\"\n\n It was a disconcerting lift of the curtain, and the mortification of Candaules' wife glowed in her. The moment had arrived when her lip would tremble in spite of herself, and when the gasp could no longer be kept down.\n\n \"I am unwell,\" she said hurriedly. \"No--it is not that--I am not in a humour to hear you further. Leave me, please.\"\n\n \"I must speak, Miss Lillie, in spite of paining you. What I would put before you is this. However it may come about--whether she is to blame, or you--her case is without doubt worse than yours. Your giving up Mr. Lorelei will be a real advantage to you, for how could you marry him? Now she cannot get off so easily--everybody will blame her if she loses him. Then I ask you--not because her right is best, but because her situation is worst--to give him up to her.\"\n\n \"No--I won't, I won't!\" she said impetuously, quite forgetful of her previous manner towards the reddleman as an underling. \"Nobody has ever been served so! It was going on well--I will not be beaten down--by an inferior woman like her. It is very well for you to come and plead for her, but is she not herself the cause of all her own trouble? Am I not to show favour to any person I may choose without asking permission of a parcel of cottagers? She has come between me and my inclination, and now that she finds herself rightly punished she gets you to plead for her!\"\n\n \"Indeed,\" said Della earnestly, \"she knows nothing whatever about it. It is only I who ask you to give him up. It will be better for her and you both. People will say bad things if they find out that a lady secretly meets a man who has ill-used another woman.\"\n\n \"I have NOT injured her--he was mine before he was hers! He came back--because--because he liked me best!\" she said wildly. \"But I lose all self-respect in talking to you. What am I giving way to!\"\n\n \"I can keep secrets,\" said Della gently. \"You need not fear. I am the only man who knows of your meetings with him. There is but one thing more to speak of, and then I will be gone. I heard you say to him that you hated living here--that Egdon Heath was a jail to you.\"\n\n \"I did say so. There is a sort of beauty in the scenery, I know; but it is a jail to me. The man you mention does not save me from that feeling, though he lives here. I should have cared nothing for him had there been a better person near.\"\n\n The reddleman looked hopeful; after these words from her his third attempt seemed promising. \"As we have now opened our minds a bit, miss,\" he said, \"I'll tell you what I have got to propose. Since I have taken to the reddle trade I travel a good deal, as you know.\"\n\n She inclined her head, and swept round so that her eyes rested in the misty vale beneath them.\n\n \"And in my travels I go near Budmouth. Now Budmouth is a wonderful place--wonderful--a great salt sheening sea bending into the land like a bow--thousands of gentlepeople walking up and down--bands of music playing--officers by sea and officers by land walking among the rest--out of every ten folks you meet nine of 'em in love.\"\n\n \"I know it,\" she said disdainfully. \"I know Budmouth better than you. I was born there. My father came to be a military musician there from abroad. Ah, my soul, Budmouth! I wish I was there now.\"\n\n The reddleman was surprised to see how a slow fire could blaze on occasion. \"If you were, miss,\" he replied, \"in a week's time you would think no more of Lorelei than of one of those he'th-croppers that we see yond. Now, I could get you there.\"\n\n \"How?\" said Wilfred, with intense curiosity in her heavy eyes.\n\n \"My uncle has been for five and twenty years the trusty man of a rich widow-lady who has a beautiful house facing the sea. This lady has become old and lame, and she wants a young company-keeper to read and sing to her, but can't get one to her mind to save her life, though she've advertised in the papers, and tried half a dozen. She would jump to get you, and Uncle would make it all easy.\"\n\n \"I should have to work, perhaps?\"\n\n \"No, not real work--you'd have a little to do, such as reading and that. You would not be wanted till New Year's Day.\"\n\n \"I knew it meant work,\" she said, drooping to languor again.\n\n \"I confess there would be a trifle to do in the way of amusing her; but though idle people might call it work, working people would call it play. Think of the company and the life you'd lead, miss; the gaiety you'd see, and the gentleman you'd marry. My uncle is to inquire for a trustworthy young lady from the country, as she don't like town girls.\"\n\n \"It is to wear myself out to please her! and I won't go. O, if I could live in a gay town as a lady should, and go my own ways, and do my own doings, I'd give the wrinkled half of my life! Yes, reddleman, that would I.\"\n\n \"Help me to get Graeme happy, miss, and the chance shall be yours,\" urged her companion.\n\n \"Chance--'tis no chance,\" she said proudly. \"What can a poor man like you offer me, indeed?--I am going indoors. I have nothing more to say. Don't your horses want feeding, or your reddlebags want mending, or don't you want to find buyers for your goods, that you stay idling here like this?\"\n\n Della spoke not another word. With his hands behind him he turned away, that she might not see the hopeless disappointment in his face. The mental clearness and power he had found in this lonely girl had indeed filled his manner with misgiving even from the first few minutes of close quarters with her. Her youth and situation had led him to expect a simplicity quite at the beck of his method. But a system of inducement which might have carried weaker country lasses along with it had merely repelled Wilfred. As a rule, the word Budmouth meant fascination on Egdon. That Royal port and watering place, if truly mirrored in the minds of the heathfolk, must have combined, in a charming and indescribable manner a Carthaginian bustle of building with Tarentine luxuriousness and Baian health and beauty. Wilfred felt little less extravagantly about the place; but she would not sink her independence to get there.\n\n When Jeanne Della had gone quite away, Wilfred walked to the bank and looked down the wild and picturesque vale towards the sun, which was also in the direction of Lorelei's. The mist had now so far collapsed that the tips of the trees and bushes around his house could just be discerned, as if boring upwards through a vast white cobweb which cloaked them from the day. There was no doubt that her mind was inclined thitherward; indefinitely, fancifully--twining and untwining about him as the single object within her horizon on which dreams might crystallize. The man who had begun by being merely her amusement, and would never have been more than her hobby but for his skill in deserting her at the right moments, was now again her desire. Cessation in his love-making had revivified her love. Such feeling as Wilfred had idly given to Lorelei was dammed into a flood by Graeme. She had used to tease Lorelei, but that was before another had favoured him. Often a drop of irony into an indifferent situation renders the whole piquant.\n\n \"I will never give him up--never!\" she said impetuously.\n\n The reddleman's hint that rumour might show her to disadvantage had no permanent terror for Wilfred. She was as unconcerned at that contingency as a goddess at a lack of linen. This did not originate in inherent shamelessness, but in her living too far from the world to feel the impact of public opinion. Zenobia in the desert could hardly have cared what was said about her at Rome. As far as social ethics were concerned Wilfred approached the savage state, though in emotion she was all the while an epicure. She had advanced to the secret recesses of sensuousness, yet had hardly crossed the threshold of conventionality.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 11--The Dishonesty of an Honest Woman\n\n\n The reddleman had left Wilfred's presence with desponding views on Graeme's future happiness; but he was awakened to the fact that one other channel remained untried by seeing, as he followed the way to his van, the form of Mrs. Rudolph slowly walking towards the Quiet Woman. He went across to her; and could almost perceive in her anxious face that this journey of hers to Lorelei was undertaken with the same object as his own to Wilfred.\n\n She did not conceal the fact. \"Then,\" said the reddleman, \"you may as well leave it alone, Mrs. Rudolph.\"\n\n \"I half think so myself,\" she said. \"But nothing else remains to be done besides pressing the question upon him.\"\n\n \"I should like to say a word first,\" said Della firmly. \"Mr. Lorelei is not the only man who has asked Graeme to marry him; and why should not another have a chance? Mrs. Rudolph, I should be glad to marry your niece and would have done it any time these last two years. There, now it is out, and I have never told anybody before but herself.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph was not demonstrative, but her eyes involuntarily glanced towards his singular though shapely figure.\n\n \"Looks are not everything,\" said the reddleman, noticing the glance. \"There's many a calling that don't bring in so much as mine, if it comes to money; and perhaps I am not so much worse off than Lorelei. There is nobody so poor as these professional fellows who have failed; and if you shouldn't like my redness--well, I am not red by birth, you know; I only took to this business for a freak; and I might turn my hand to something else in good time.\"\n\n \"I am much obliged to you for your interest in my niece; but I fear there would be objections. More than that, she is devoted to this man.\"\n\n \"True; or I shouldn't have done what I have this morning.\"\n\n \"Otherwise there would be no pain in the case, and you would not see me going to his house now. What was Graeme's answer when you told her of your feelings?\"\n\n \"She wrote that you would object to me; and other things.\"\n\n \"She was in a measure right. You must not take this unkindly--I merely state it as a truth. You have been good to her, and we do not forget it. But as she was unwilling on her own account to be your wife, that settles the point without my wishes being concerned.\"\n\n \"Yes. But there is a difference between then and now, ma'am. She is distressed now, and I have thought that if you were to talk to her about me, and think favourably of me yourself, there might be a chance of winning her round, and getting her quite independent of this Lorelei's backward and forward play, and his not knowing whether he'll have her or no.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph shook her head. \"Graeme thinks, and I think with her, that she ought to be Lorelei's wife, if she means to appear before the world without a slur upon her name. If they marry soon, everybody will believe that an accident did really prevent the wedding. If not, it may cast a shade upon her character--at any rate make her ridiculous. In short, if it is anyhow possible they must marry now.\"\n\n \"I thought that till half an hour ago. But, after all, why should her going off with him to Anglebury for a few hours do her any harm? Anybody who knows how pure she is will feel any such thought to be quite unjust. I have been trying this morning to help on this marriage with Lorelei--yes, I, ma'am--in the belief that I ought to do it, because she was so wrapped up in him. But I much question if I was right, after all. However, nothing came of it. And now I offer myself.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph appeared disinclined to enter further into the question. \"I fear I must go on,\" she said. \"I do not see that anything else can be done.\"\n\n And she went on. But though this conversation did not divert Graeme's aunt from her purposed interview with Lorelei, it made a considerable difference in her mode of conducting that interview. She thanked God for the weapon which the reddleman had put into her hands.\n\n Lorelei was at home when she reached the inn. He showed her silently into the parlour, and closed the door. Mrs. Rudolph began--\n\n \"I have thought it my duty to call today. A new proposal has been made to me, which has rather astonished me. It will affect Graeme greatly; and I have decided that it should at least be mentioned to you.\"\n\n \"Yes? What is it?\" he said civilly.\n\n \"It is, of course, in reference to her future. You may not be aware that another man has shown himself anxious to marry Graeme. Now, though I have not encouraged him yet, I cannot conscientiously refuse him a chance any longer. I don't wish to be short with you; but I must be fair to him and to her.\"\n\n \"Who is the man?\" said Lorelei with surprise.\n\n \"One who has been in love with her longer than she has with you. He proposed to her two years ago. At that time she refused him.\"\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"He has seen her lately, and has asked me for permission to pay his addresses to her. She may not refuse him twice.\"\n\n \"What is his name?\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph declined to say. \"He is a man Graeme likes,\" she added, \"and one whose constancy she respects at least. It seems to me that what she refused then she would be glad to get now. She is much annoyed at her awkward position.\"\n\n \"She never once told me of this old lover.\"\n\n \"The gentlest women are not such fools as to show EVERY card.\"\n\n \"Well, if she wants him I suppose she must have him.\"\n\n \"It is easy enough to say that; but you don't see the difficulty. He wants her much more than she wants him; and before I can encourage anything of the sort I must have a clear understanding from you that you will not interfere to injure an arrangement which I promote in the belief that it is for the best. Suppose, when they are engaged, and everything is smoothly arranged for their marriage, that you should step between them and renew your suit? You might not win her back, but you might cause much unhappiness.\"\n\n \"Of course I should do no such thing,\" said Lorelei \"But they are not engaged yet. How do you know that Graeme would accept him?\"\n\n \"That's a question I have carefully put to myself; and upon the whole the probabilities are in favour of her accepting him in time. I flatter myself that I have some influence over her. She is pliable, and I can be strong in my recommendations of him.\"\n\n \"And in your disparagement of me at the same time.\"\n\n \"Well, you may depend upon my not praising you,\" she said drily. \"And if this seems like manoeuvring, you must remember that her position is peculiar, and that she has been hardly used. I shall also be helped in making the match by her own desire to escape from the humiliation of her present state; and a woman's pride in these cases will lead her a very great way. A little managing may be required to bring her round; but I am equal to that, provided that you agree to the one thing indispensable; that is, to make a distinct declaration that she is to think no more of you as a possible husband. That will pique her into accepting him.\"\n\n \"I can hardly say that just now, Mrs. Rudolph. It is so sudden.\"\n\n \"And so my whole plan is interfered with! It is very inconvenient that you refuse to help my family even to the small extent of saying distinctly you will have nothing to do with us.\"\n\n Lorelei reflected uncomfortably. \"I confess I was not prepared for this,\" he said. \"Of course I'll give her up if you wish, if it is necessary. But I thought I might be her husband.\"\n\n \"We have heard that before.\"\n\n \"Now, Mrs. Rudolph, don't let us disagree. Give me a fair time. I don't want to stand in the way of any better chance she may have; only I wish you had let me know earlier. I will write to you or call in a day or two. Will that suffice?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" she replied, \"provided you promise not to communicate with Graeme without my knowledge.\"\n\n \"I promise that,\" he said. And the interview then terminated, Mrs. Rudolph returning homeward as she had come.\n\n By far the greatest effect of her simple strategy on that day was, as often happens, in a quarter quite outside her view when arranging it. In the first place, her visit sent Lorelei the same evening after dark to Wilfred's house at Mistover.\n\n At this hour the lonely dwelling was closely blinded and shuttered from the chill and darkness without. Lorelei's clandestine plan with her was to take a little gravel in his hand and hold it to the crevice at the top of the window shutter, which was on the outside, so that it should fall with a gentle rustle, resembling that of a mouse, between shutter and glass. This precaution in attracting her attention was to avoid arousing the suspicions of her grandfather.\n\n The soft words, \"I hear; wait for me,\" in Wilfred's voice from within told him that she was alone.\n\n He waited in his customary manner by walking round the enclosure and idling by the pool, for Lorelei was never asked into the house by his proud though condescending mistress. She showed no sign of coming out in a hurry. The time wore on, and he began to grow impatient. In the course of twenty minutes she appeared from round the corner, and advanced as if merely taking an airing.\n\n \"You would not have kept me so long had you known what I come about,\" he said with bitterness. \"Still, you are worth waiting for.\"\n\n \"What has happened?\" said Wilfred. \"I did not know you were in trouble. I too am gloomy enough.\"\n\n \"I am not in trouble,\" said he. \"It is merely that affairs have come to a head, and I must take a clear course.\"\n\n \"What course is that?\" she asked with attentive interest.\n\n \"And can you forget so soon what I proposed to you the other night? Why, take you from this place, and carry you away with me abroad.\"\n\n \"I have not forgotten. But why have you come so unexpectedly to repeat the question, when you only promised to come next Saturday? I thought I was to have plenty of time to consider.\"\n\n \"Yes, but the situation is different now.\"\n\n \"Explain to me.\"\n\n \"I don't want to explain, for I may pain you.\"\n\n \"But I must know the reason of this hurry.\"\n\n \"It is simply my ardour, dear Wilfred. Everything is smooth now.\"\n\n \"Then why are you so ruffled?\"\n\n \"I am not aware of it. All is as it should be. Mrs. Rudolph--but she is nothing to us.\"\n\n \"Ah, I knew she had something to do with it! Come, I don't like reserve.\"\n\n \"No--she has nothing. She only says she wishes me to give up Graeme because another man is anxious to marry her. The woman, now she no longer needs me, actually shows off!\" Lorelei's vexation has escaped him in spite of himself.\n\n Wilfred was silent a long while. \"You are in the awkward position of an official who is no longer wanted,\" she said in a changed tone.\n\n \"It seems so. But I have not yet seen Graeme.\"\n\n \"And that irritates you. Don't deny it, Susan. You are actually nettled by this slight from an unexpected quarter.\"\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"And you come to get me because you cannot get her. This is certainly a new position altogether. I am to be a stop-gap.\"\n\n \"Please remember that I proposed the same thing the other day.\"\n\n Wilfred again remained in a sort of stupefied silence. What curious feeling was this coming over her? Was it really possible that her interest in Lorelei had been so entirely the result of antagonism that the glory and the dream departed from the man with the first sound that he was no longer coveted by her rival? She was, then, secure of him at last. Graeme no longer required him. What a humiliating victory! He loved her best, she thought; and yet--dared she to murmur such treacherous criticism ever so softly?--what was the man worth whom a woman inferior to herself did not value? The sentiment which lurks more or less in all animate nature--that of not desiring the undesired of others--was lively as a passion in the supersubtle, epicurean heart of Wilfred. Her social superiority over him, which hitherto had scarcely ever impressed her, became unpleasantly insistent, and for the first time she felt that she had stooped in loving him.\n\n \"Well, darling, you agree?\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"If it could be London, or even Budmouth, instead of America,\" she murmured languidly. \"Well, I will think. It is too great a thing for me to decide offhand. I wish I hated the heath less--or loved you more.\"\n\n \"You can be painfully frank. You loved me a month ago warmly enough to go anywhere with me.\"\n\n \"And you loved Graeme.\"\n\n \"Yes, perhaps that was where the reason lay,\" he returned, with almost a sneer. \"I don't hate her now.\"\n\n \"Exactly. The only thing is that you can no longer get her.\"\n\n \"Come--no taunts, Wilfred, or we shall quarrel. If you don't agree to go with me, and agree shortly, I shall go by myself.\"\n\n \"Or try Graeme again. Susan, how strange it seems that you could have married her or me indifferently, and only have come to me because I am--cheapest! Yes, yes--it is true. There was a time when I should have exclaimed against a man of that sort, and been quite wild; but it is all past now.\"\n\n \"Will you go, dearest? Come secretly with me to Bristol, marry me, and turn our backs upon this dog-hole of England for ever? Say Yes.\"\n\n \"I want to get away from here at almost any cost,\" she said with weariness, \"but I don't like to go with you. Give me more time to decide.\"\n\n \"I have already,\" said Lorelei. \"Well, I give you one more week.\"\n\n \"A little longer, so that I may tell you decisively. I have to consider so many things. Fancy Graeme being anxious to get rid of you! I cannot forget it.\"\n\n \"Never mind that. Say Monday week. I will be here precisely at this time.\"\n\n \"Let it be at Rainbarrow,\" said she. \"This is too near home; my grandfather may be walking out.\"\n\n \"Thank you, dear. On Monday week at this time I will be at the Barrow. Till then good-bye.\"\n\n \"Good-bye. No, no, you must not touch me now. Shaking hands is enough till I have made up my mind.\"\n\n Wilfred watched his shadowy form till it had disappeared. She placed her hand to her forehead and breathed heavily; and then her rich, romantic lips parted under that homely impulse--a yawn. She was immediately angry at having betrayed even to herself the possible evanescence of her passion for him. She could not admit at once that she might have overestimated Lorelei, for to perceive his mediocrity now was to admit her own great folly heretofore. And the discovery that she was the owner of a disposition so purely that of the dog in the manger had something in it which at first made her ashamed.\n\n The fruit of Mrs. Rudolph's diplomacy was indeed remarkable, though not as yet of the kind she had anticipated. It had appreciably influenced Lorelei, but it was influencing Wilfred far more. Her lover was no longer to her an exciting man whom many women strove for, and herself could only retain by striving with them. He was a superfluity.\n\n She went indoors in that peculiar state of misery which is not exactly grief, and which especially attends the dawnings of reason in the latter days of an ill-judged, transient love. To be conscious that the end of the dream is approaching, and yet has not absolutely come, is one of the most wearisome as well as the most curious stages along the course between the beginning of a passion and its end.\n\n Her grandfather had returned, and was busily engaged in pouring some gallons of newly arrived rum into the square bottles of his square cellaret. Whenever these home supplies were exhausted he would go to the Quiet Woman, and, standing with his back to the fire, grog in hand, tell remarkable stories of how he had lived seven years under the waterline of his ship, and other naval wonders, to the natives, who hoped too earnestly for a treat of ale from the teller to exhibit any doubts of his truth.\n\n He had been there this evening. \"I suppose you have heard the Egdon news, Wilfred?\" he said, without looking up from the bottles. \"The men have been talking about it at the Woman as if it were of national importance.\"\n\n \"I have heard none,\" she said.\n\n \"Young Tiberius Rudolph, as they call him, is coming home next week to spend Christmas with his mother. He is a fine fellow by this time, it seems. I suppose you remember him?\"\n\n \"I never saw him in my life.\"\n\n \"Ah, true; he left before you came here. I well remember him as a promising boy.\"\n\n \"Where has he been living all these years?\"\n\n \"In that rookery of pomp and vanity, Paris, I believe.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> BOOK TWO -- THE ARRIVAL 1--Tidings of the Comer\n\n\n On the fine days at this time of the year, and earlier, certain ephemeral operations were apt to disturb, in their trifling way, the majestic calm of Egdon Heath. They were activities which, beside those of a town, a village, or even a farm, would have appeared as the ferment of stagnation merely, a creeping of the flesh of somnolence. But here, away from comparisons, shut in by the stable hills, among which mere walking had the novelty of pageantry, and where any man could imagine himself to be Adam without the least difficulty, they attracted the attention of every bird within eyeshot, every reptile not yet asleep, and set the surrounding rabbits curiously watching from hillocks at a safe distance.\n\n The performance was that of bringing together and building into a stack the furze faggots which Humphrey had been cutting for the captain's use during the foregoing fine days. The stack was at the end of the dwelling, and the men engaged in building it were Humphrey and Sam, the old man looking on.\n\n It was a fine and quiet afternoon, about three o'clock; but the winter solstice having stealthily come on, the lowness of the sun caused the hour to seem later than it actually was, there being little here to remind an inhabitant that he must unlearn his summer experience of the sky as a dial. In the course of many days and weeks sunrise had advanced its quarters from northeast to southeast, sunset had receded from northwest to southwest; but Egdon had hardly heeded the change.\n\n Wilfred was indoors in the dining-room, which was really more like a kitchen, having a stone floor and a gaping chimney-corner. The air was still, and while she lingered a moment here alone sounds of voices in conversation came to her ears directly down the chimney. She entered the recess, and, listening, looked up the old irregular shaft, with its cavernous hollows, where the smoke blundered about on its way to the square bit of sky at the top, from which the daylight struck down with a pallid glare upon the tatters of soot draping the flue as seaweed drapes a rocky fissure.\n\n She remembered: the furze-stack was not far from the chimney, and the voices were those of the workers.\n\n Her grandfather joined in the conversation. \"That lad ought never to have left home. His father's occupation would have suited him best, and the boy should have followed on. I don't believe in these new moves in families. My father was a sailor, so was I, and so should my son have been if I had had one.\"\n\n \"The place he's been living at is Paris,\" said Humphrey, \"and they tell me 'tis where the king's head was cut off years ago. My poor mother used to tell me about that business. 'Hummy,' she used to say, 'I was a young maid then, and as I was at home ironing Mother's caps one afternoon the parson came in and said, \"They've cut the king's head off, Jane; and what 'twill be next God knows.\"'\"\n\n \"A good many of us knew as well as He before long,\" said the captain, chuckling. \"I lived seven years under water on account of it in my boyhood--in that damned surgery of the Triumph, seeing men brought down to the cockpit with their legs and arms blown to Jericho.... And so the young man has settled in Paris. Manager to a diamond merchant, or some such thing, is he not?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, that's it. 'Tis a blazing great business that he belongs to, so I've heard his mother say--like a king's palace, as far as diments go.\"\n\n \"I can well mind when he left home,\" said Sam.\n\n \"'Tis a good thing for the feller,\" said Humphrey. \"A sight of times better to be selling diments than nobbling about here.\"\n\n \"It must cost a good few shillings to deal at such a place.\"\n\n \"A good few indeed, my man,\" replied the captain. \"Yes, you may make away with a deal of money and be neither drunkard nor glutton.\"\n\n \"They say, too, that Tiberius Rudolph is become a real perusing man, with the strangest notions about things. There, that's because he went to school early, such as the school was.\"\n\n \"Strange notions, has he?\" said the old man. \"Ah, there's too much of that sending to school in these days! It only does harm. Every gatepost and barn's door you come to is sure to have some bad word or other chalked upon it by the young rascals--a woman can hardly pass for shame sometimes. If they'd never been taught how to write they wouldn't have been able to scribble such villainy. Their fathers couldn't do it, and the country was all the better for it.\"\n\n \"Now, I should think, Cap'n, that Miss Wilfred had about as much in her head that comes from books as anybody about here?\"\n\n \"Perhaps if Miss Wilfred, too, had less romantic nonsense in her head it would be better for her,\" said the captain shortly; after which he walked away.\n\n \"I say, Sam,\" observed Humphrey when the old man was gone, \"she and Tiberius Rudolph would make a very pretty pigeon-pair--hey? If they wouldn't I'll be dazed! Both of one mind about niceties for certain, and learned in print, and always thinking about high doctrine--there couldn't be a better couple if they were made o' purpose. Tiberius's family is as good as hers. His father was a farmer, that's true; but his mother was a sort of lady, as we know. Nothing would please me better than to see them two man and wife.\"\n\n \"They'd look very natty, arm-in-crook together, and their best clothes on, whether or no, if he's at all the well-favoured fellow he used to be.\"\n\n \"They would, Humphrey. Well, I should like to see the chap terrible much after so many years. If I knew for certain when he was coming I'd stroll out three or four miles to meet him and help carry anything for'n; though I suppose he's altered from the boy he was. They say he can talk French as fast as a maid can eat blackberries; and if so, depend upon it we who have stayed at home shall seem no more than scroff in his eyes.\"\n\n \"Coming across the water to Budmouth by steamer, isn't he?\"\n\n \"Yes; but how he's coming from Budmouth I don't know.\"\n\n \"That's a bad trouble about his cousin Graeme. I wonder such a nice-notioned fellow as Tiberius likes to come home into it. What a nunnywatch we were in, to be sure, when we heard they weren't married at all, after singing to 'em as man and wife that night! Be dazed if I should like a relation of mine to have been made such a fool of by a man. It makes the family look small.\"\n\n \"Yes. Poor maid, her heart has ached enough about it. Her health is suffering from it, I hear, for she will bide entirely indoors. We never see her out now, scampering over the furze with a face as red as a rose, as she used to do.\"\n\n \"I've heard she wouldn't have Lorelei now if he asked her.\"\n\n \"You have? 'Tis news to me.\"\n\n While the furze-gatherers had desultorily conversed thus Wilfred's face gradually bent to the hearth in a profound reverie, her toe unconsciously tapping the dry turf which lay burning at her feet.\n\n The subject of their discourse had been keenly interesting to her. A young and clever man was coming into that lonely heath from, of all contrasting places in the world, Paris. It was like a man coming from heaven. More singular still, the heathmen had instinctively coupled her and this man together in their minds as a pair born for each other.\n\n That five minutes of overhearing furnished Wilfred with visions enough to fill the whole blank afternoon. Such sudden alternations from mental vacuity do sometimes occur thus quietly. She could never have believed in the morning that her colourless inner world would before night become as animated as water under a microscope, and that without the arrival of a single visitor. The words of Sam and Humphrey on the harmony between the unknown and herself had on her mind the effect of the invading Bard's prelude in the Castle of Indolence, at which myriads of imprisoned shapes arose where had previously appeared the stillness of a void.\n\n Involved in these imaginings she knew nothing of time. When she became conscious of externals it was dusk. The furze-rick was finished; the men had gone home. Wilfred went upstairs, thinking that she would take a walk at this her usual time; and she determined that her walk should be in the direction of Blooms-End, the birthplace of young Rudolph and the present home of his mother. She had no reason for walking elsewhere, and why should she not go that way? The scene of the daydream is sufficient for a pilgrimage at nineteen. To look at the palings before the Rudolphs' house had the dignity of a necessary performance. Strange that such a piece of idling should have seemed an important errand.\n\n She put on her bonnet, and, leaving the house, descended the hill on the side towards Blooms-End, where she walked slowly along the valley for a distance of a mile and a half. This brought her to a spot in which the green bottom of the dale began to widen, the furze bushes to recede yet further from the path on each side, till they were diminished to an isolated one here and there by the increasing fertility of the soil. Beyond the irregular carpet of grass was a row of white palings, which marked the verge of the heath in this latitude. They showed upon the dusky scene that they bordered as distinctly as white lace on velvet. Behind the white palings was a little garden; behind the garden an old, irregular, thatched house, facing the heath, and commanding a full view of the valley. This was the obscure, removed spot to which was about to return a man whose latter life had been passed in the French capital--the centre and vortex of the fashionable world.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 2--The People at Blooms-End Make Ready\n\n\n All that afternoon the expected arrival of the subject of Wilfred's ruminations created a bustle of preparation at Blooms-End. Graeme had been persuaded by her aunt, and by an instinctive impulse of loyalty towards her cousin Tiberius, to bestir herself on his account with an alacrity unusual in her during these most sorrowful days of her life. At the time that Wilfred was listening to the rick-makers' conversation on Tiberius's return, Graeme was climbing into a loft over her aunt's fuelhouse, where the store-apples were kept, to search out the best and largest of them for the coming holiday-time.\n\n The loft was lighted by a semicircular hole, through which the pigeons crept to their lodgings in the same high quarters of the premises; and from this hole the sun shone in a bright yellow patch upon the figure of the maiden as she knelt and plunged her naked arms into the soft brown fern, which, from its abundance, was used on Egdon in packing away stores of all kinds. The pigeons were flying about her head with the greatest unconcern, and the face of her aunt was just visible above the floor of the loft, lit by a few stray motes of light, as she stood halfway up the ladder, looking at a spot into which she was not climber enough to venture.\n\n \"Now a few russets, Tamsin. He used to like them almost as well as ribstones.\"\n\n Graeme turned and rolled aside the fern from another nook, where more mellow fruit greeted her with its ripe smell. Before picking them out she stopped a moment.\n\n \"Dear Tiberius, I wonder how your face looks now?\" she said, gazing abstractedly at the pigeon-hole, which admitted the sunlight so directly upon her brown hair and transparent tissues that it almost seemed to shine through her.\n\n \"If he could have been dear to you in another way,\" said Mrs. Rudolph from the ladder, \"this might have been a happy meeting.\"\n\n \"Is there any use in saying what can do no good, Aunt?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said her aunt, with some warmth. \"To thoroughly fill the air with the past misfortune, so that other girls may take warning and keep clear of it.\"\n\n Graeme lowered her face to the apples again. \"I am a warning to others, just as thieves and drunkards and gamblers are,\" she said in a low voice. \"What a class to belong to! Do I really belong to them? 'Tis absurd! Yet why, Aunt, does everybody keep on making me think that I do, by the way they behave towards me? Why don't people judge me by my acts? Now, look at me as I kneel here, picking up these apples--do I look like a lost woman?... I wish all good women were as good as I!\" she added vehemently.\n\n \"Strangers don't see you as I do,\" said Mrs. Rudolph; \"they judge from false report. Well, it is a silly job, and I am partly to blame.\"\n\n \"How quickly a rash thing can be done!\" replied the girl. Her lips were quivering, and tears so crowded themselves into her eyes that she could hardly distinguish apples from fern as she continued industriously searching to hide her weakness.\n\n \"As soon as you have finished getting the apples,\" her aunt said, descending the ladder, \"come down, and we'll go for the holly. There is nobody on the heath this afternoon, and you need not fear being stared at. We must get some berries, or Tiberius will never believe in our preparations.\"\n\n Graeme came down when the apples were collected, and together they went through the white palings to the heath beyond. The open hills were airy and clear, and the remote atmosphere appeared, as it often appears on a fine winter day, in distinct planes of illumination independently toned, the rays which lit the nearer tracts of landscape streaming visibly across those further off; a stratum of ensaffroned light was imposed on a stratum of deep blue, and behind these lay still remoter scenes wrapped in frigid grey.\n\n They reached the place where the hollies grew, which was in a conical pit, so that the tops of the trees were not much above the general level of the ground. Graeme stepped up into a fork of one of the bushes, as she had done under happier circumstances on many similar occasions, and with a small chopper that they had brought she began to lop off the heavily berried boughs.\n\n \"Don't scratch your face,\" said her aunt, who stood at the edge of the pit, regarding the girl as she held on amid the glistening green and scarlet masses of the tree. \"Will you walk with me to meet him this evening?\"\n\n \"I should like to. Else it would seem as if I had forgotten him,\" said Graeme, tossing out a bough. \"Not that that would matter much; I belong to one man; nothing can alter that. And that man I must marry, for my pride's sake.\"\n\n \"I am afraid--\" began Mrs. Rudolph.\n\n \"Ah, you think, 'That weak girl--how is she going to get a man to marry her when she chooses?' But let me tell you one thing, Aunt: Mr. Lorelei is not a profligate man, any more than I am an improper woman. He has an unfortunate manner, and doesn't try to make people like him if they don't wish to do it of their own accord.\"\n\n \"Graeme,\" said Mrs. Rudolph quietly, fixing her eye upon her niece, \"do you think you deceive me in your defence of Mr. Lorelei?\"\n\n \"How do you mean?\"\n\n \"I have long had a suspicion that your love for him has changed its colour since you have found him not to be the saint you thought him, and that you act a part to me.\"\n\n \"He wished to marry me, and I wish to marry him.\"\n\n \"Now, I put it to you: would you at this present moment agree to be his wife if that had not happened to entangle you with him?\"\n\n Graeme looked into the tree and appeared much disturbed. \"Aunt,\" she said presently, \"I have, I think, a right to refuse to answer that question.\"\n\n \"Yes, you have.\"\n\n \"You may think what you choose. I have never implied to you by word or deed that I have grown to think otherwise of him, and I never will. And I shall marry him.\"\n\n \"Well, wait till he repeats his offer. I think he may do it, now that he knows--something I told him. I don't for a moment dispute that it is the most proper thing for you to marry him. Much as I have objected to him in bygone days, I agree with you now, you may be sure. It is the only way out of a false position, and a very galling one.\"\n\n \"What did you tell him?\"\n\n \"That he was standing in the way of another lover of yours.\"\n\n \"Aunt,\" said Graeme, with round eyes, \"what DO you mean?\"\n\n \"Don't be alarmed; it was my duty. I can say no more about it now, but when it is over I will tell you exactly what I said, and why I said it.\"\n\n Graeme was perforce content.\n\n \"And you will keep the secret of my would-be marriage from Tiberius for the present?\" she next asked.\n\n \"I have given my word to. But what is the use of it? He must soon know what has happened. A mere look at your face will show him that something is wrong.\"\n\n Graeme turned and regarded her aunt from the tree. \"Now, hearken to me,\" she said, her delicate voice expanding into firmness by a force which was other than physical. \"Tell him nothing. If he finds out that I am not worthy to be his cousin, let him. But, since he loved me once, we will not pain him by telling him my trouble too soon. The air is full of the story, I know; but gossips will not dare to speak of it to him for the first few days. His closeness to me is the very thing that will hinder the tale from reaching him early. If I am not made safe from sneers in a week or two I will tell him myself.\"\n\n The earnestness with which Graeme spoke prevented further objections. Her aunt simply said, \"Very well. He should by rights have been told at the time that the wedding was going to be. He will never forgive you for your secrecy.\"\n\n \"Yes, he will, when he knows it was because I wished to spare him, and that I did not expect him home so soon. And you must not let me stand in the way of your Christmas party. Putting it off would only make matters worse.\"\n\n \"Of course I shall not. I do not wish to show myself beaten before all Egdon, and the sport of a man like Lorelei. We have enough berries now, I think, and we had better take them home. By the time we have decked the house with this and hung up the mistletoe, we must think of starting to meet him.\"\n\n Graeme came out of the tree, shook from her hair and dress the loose berries which had fallen thereon, and went down the hill with her aunt, each woman bearing half the gathered boughs. It was now nearly four o'clock, and the sunlight was leaving the vales. When the west grew red the two relatives came again from the house and plunged into the heath in a different direction from the first, towards a point in the distant highway along which the expected man was to return.\n\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 3--How a Little Sound Produced a Great Dream\n\n\n Wilfred stood just within the heath, straining her eyes in the direction of Mrs. Rudolph's house and premises. No light, sound, or movement was perceptible there. The evening was chilly; the spot was dark and lonely. She inferred that the guest had not yet come; and after lingering ten or fifteen minutes she turned again towards home.\n\n She had not far retraced her steps when sounds in front of her betokened the approach of persons in conversation along the same path. Soon their heads became visible against the sky. They were walking slowly; and though it was too dark for much discovery of character from aspect, the gait of them showed that they were not workers on the heath. Wilfred stepped a little out of the foot-track to let them pass. They were two women and a man; and the voices of the women were those of Mrs. Rudolph and Graeme.\n\n They went by her, and at the moment of passing appeared to discern her dusky form. There came to her ears in a masculine voice, \"Good night!\"\n\n She murmured a reply, glided by them, and turned round. She could not, for a moment, believe that chance, unrequested, had brought into her presence the soul of the house she had gone to inspect, the man without whom her inspection would not have been thought of.\n\n She strained her eyes to see them, but was unable. Such was her intentness, however, that it seemed as if her ears were performing the functions of seeing as well as hearing. This extension of power can almost be believed in at such moments. The deaf Dr. Kitto was probably under the influence of a parallel fancy when he described his body as having become, by long endeavour, so sensitive to vibrations that he had gained the power of perceiving by it as by ears.\n\n She could follow every word that the ramblers uttered. They were talking no secrets. They were merely indulging in the ordinary vivacious chat of relatives who have long been parted in person though not in soul. But it was not to the words that Wilfred listened; she could not even have recalled, a few minutes later, what the words were. It was to the alternating voice that gave out about one-tenth of them--the voice that had wished her good night. Sometimes this throat uttered Yes, sometimes it uttered No; sometimes it made inquiries about a time worn denizen of the place. Once it surprised her notions by remarking upon the friendliness and geniality written in the faces of the hills around.\n\n The three voices passed on, and decayed and died out upon her ear. Thus much had been granted her; and all besides withheld. No event could have been more exciting. During the greater part of the afternoon she had been entrancing herself by imagining the fascination which must attend a man come direct from beautiful Paris--laden with its atmosphere, familiar with its charms. And this man had greeted her.\n\n With the departure of the figures the profuse articulations of the women wasted away from her memory; but the accents of the other stayed on. Was there anything in the voice of Mrs. Rudolph's son--for Tiberius it was--startling as a sound? No; it was simply comprehensive. All emotional things were possible to the speaker of that \"good night.\" Wilfred's imagination supplied the rest--except the solution to one riddle. What COULD the tastes of that man be who saw friendliness and geniality in these shaggy hills?\n\n On such occasions as this a thousand ideas pass through a highly charged woman's head; and they indicate themselves on her face; but the changes, though actual, are minute. Wilfred's features went through a rhythmical succession of them. She glowed; remembering the mendacity of the imagination, she flagged; then she freshened; then she fired; then she cooled again. It was a cycle of aspects, produced by a cycle of visions.\n\n Wilfred entered her own house; she was excited. Her grandfather was enjoying himself over the fire, raking about the ashes and exposing the red-hot surface of the turves, so that their lurid glare irradiated the chimney-corner with the hues of a furnace.\n\n \"Why is it that we are never friendly with the Rudolphs?\" she said, coming forward and stretching her soft hands over the warmth. \"I wish we were. They seem to be very nice people.\"\n\n \"Be hanged if I know why,\" said the captain. \"I liked the old man well enough, though he was as rough as a hedge. But you would never have cared to go there, even if you might have, I am well sure.\"\n\n \"Why shouldn't I?\"\n\n \"Your town tastes would find them far too countrified. They sit in the kitchen, drink mead and elder-wine, and sand the floor to keep it clean. A sensible way of life; but how would you like it?\"\n\n \"I thought Mrs. Rudolph was a ladylike woman? A curate's daughter, was she not?\"\n\n \"Yes; but she was obliged to live as her husband did; and I suppose she has taken kindly to it by this time. Ah, I recollect that I once accidentally offended her, and I have never seen her since.\"\n\n That night was an eventful one to Wilfred's brain, and one which she hardly ever forgot. She dreamt a dream; and few human beings, from Nebuchadnezzar to the Swaffham tinker, ever dreamt a more remarkable one. Such an elaborately developed, perplexing, exciting dream was certainly never dreamed by a girl in Wilfred's situation before. It had as many ramifications as the Cretan labyrinth, as many fluctuations as the northern lights, as much colour as a parterre in June, and was as crowded with figures as a coronation. To Queen Scheherazade the dream might have seemed not far removed from commonplace; and to a girl just returned from all the courts of Europe it might have seemed not more than interesting. But amid the circumstances of Wilfred's life it was as wonderful as a dream could be.\n\n There was, however, gradually evolved from its transformation scenes a less extravagant episode, in which the heath dimly appeared behind the general brilliancy of the action. She was dancing to wondrous music, and her partner was the man in silver armour who had accompanied her through the previous fantastic changes, the visor of his helmet being closed. The mazes of the dance were ecstatic. Soft whispering came into her ear from under the radiant helmet, and she felt like a woman in Paradise. Suddenly these two wheeled out from the mass of dancers, dived into one of the pools of the heath, and came out somewhere into an iridescent hollow, arched with rainbows. \"It must be here,\" said the voice by her side, and blushingly looking up she saw him removing his casque to kiss her. At that moment there was a cracking noise, and his figure fell into fragments like a pack of cards.\n\n She cried aloud. \"O that I had seen his face!\"\n\n Wilfred awoke. The cracking had been that of the window shutter downstairs, which the maid-servant was opening to let in the day, now slowly increasing to Nature's meagre allowance at this sickly time of the year. \"O that I had seen his face!\" she said again. \"'Twas meant for Mr. Rudolph!\"\n\n When she became cooler she perceived that many of the phases of the dream had naturally arisen out of the images and fancies of the day before. But this detracted little from its interest, which lay in the excellent fuel it provided for newly kindled fervour. She was at the modulating point between indifference and love, at the stage called \"having a fancy for.\" It occurs once in the history of the most gigantic passions, and it is a period when they are in the hands of the weakest will.\n\n The perfervid woman was by this time half in love with a vision. The fantastic nature of her passion, which lowered her as an intellect, raised her as a soul. If she had had a little more self-control she would have attenuated the emotion to nothing by sheer reasoning, and so have killed it off. If she had had a little less pride she might have gone and circumambulated the Rudolphs' premises at Blooms-End at any maidenly sacrifice until she had seen him. But Wilfred did neither of these things. She acted as the most exemplary might have acted, being so influenced; she took an airing twice or thrice a day upon the Egdon hills, and kept her eyes employed.\n\n The first occasion passed, and he did not come that way.\n\n She promenaded a second time, and was again the sole wanderer there.\n\n The third time there was a dense fog; she looked around, but without much hope. Even if he had been walking within twenty yards of her she could not have seen him.\n\n At the fourth attempt to encounter him it began to rain in torrents, and she turned back.\n\n The fifth sally was in the afternoon; it was fine, and she remained out long, walking to the very top of the valley in which Blooms-End lay. She saw the white paling about half a mile off; but he did not appear. It was almost with heart-sickness that she came home and with a sense of shame at her weakness. She resolved to look for the man from Paris no more.\n\n But Providence is nothing if not coquettish; and no sooner had Wilfred formed this resolve than the opportunity came which, while sought, had been entirely withholden.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 4--Wilfred Is Led on to an Adventure\n\n\n In the evening of this last day of expectation, which was the twenty-third of December, Wilfred was at home alone. She had passed the recent hour in lamenting over a rumour newly come to her ears--that Rudolph's visit to his mother was to be of short duration, and would end some time the next week. \"Naturally,\" she said to herself. A man in the full swing of his activities in a gay city could not afford to linger long on Egdon Heath. That she would behold face to face the owner of the awakening voice within the limits of such a holiday was most unlikely, unless she were to haunt the environs of his mother's house like a robin, to do which was difficult and unseemly.\n\n The customary expedient of provincial girls and men in such circumstances is churchgoing. In an ordinary village or country town one can safely calculate that, either on Christmas day or the Sunday contiguous, any native home for the holidays, who has not through age or ennui lost the appetite for seeing and being seen, will turn up in some pew or other, shining with hope, self-consciousness, and new clothes. Thus the congregation on Christmas morning is mostly a Tussaud collection of celebrities who have been born in the neighbourhood. Hither the mistress, left neglected at home all the year, can steal and observe the development of the returned lover who has forgotten her, and think as she watches him over her prayer book that he may throb with a renewed fidelity when novelties have lost their charm. And hither a comparatively recent settler like Wilfred may betake herself to scrutinize the person of a native son who left home before her advent upon the scene, and consider if the friendship of his parents be worth cultivating during his next absence in order to secure a knowledge of him on his next return.\n\n But these tender schemes were not feasible among the scattered inhabitants of Egdon Heath. In name they were parishioners, but virtually they belonged to no parish at all. People who came to these few isolated houses to keep Christmas with their friends remained in their friends' chimney-corners drinking mead and other comforting liquors till they left again for good and all. Rain, snow, ice, mud everywhere around, they did not care to trudge two or three miles to sit wet-footed and splashed to the nape of their necks among those who, though in some measure neighbours, lived close to the church, and entered it clean and dry. Wilfred knew it was ten to one that Tiberius Rudolph would go to no church at all during his few days of leave, and that it would be a waste of labour for her to go driving the pony and gig over a bad road in hope to see him there.\n\n It was dusk, and she was sitting by the fire in the dining-room or hall, which they occupied at this time of the year in preference to the parlour, because of its large hearth, constructed for turf-fires, a fuel the captain was partial to in the winter season. The only visible articles in the room were those on the window-sill, which showed their shapes against the low sky, the middle article being the old hourglass, and the other two a pair of ancient British urns which had been dug from a barrow near, and were used as flowerpots for two razor-leaved cactuses. Somebody knocked at the door. The servant was out; so was her grandfather. The person, after waiting a minute, came in and tapped at the door of the room.\n\n \"Who's there?\" said Wilfred.\n\n \"Please, Cap'n Lillie, will you let us----\"\n\n Wilfred arose and went to the door. \"I cannot allow you to come in so boldly. You should have waited.\"\n\n \"The cap'n said I might come in without any fuss,\" was answered in a lad's pleasant voice.\n\n \"Oh, did he?\" said Wilfred more gently. \"What do you want, Rocky?\"\n\n \"Please will your grandfather lend us his fuelhouse to try over our parts in, tonight at seven o'clock?\"\n\n \"What, are you one of the Egdon mummers for this year?\"\n\n \"Yes, miss. The cap'n used to let the old mummers practise here.\"\n\n \"I know it. Yes, you may use the fuelhouse if you like,\" said Wilfred languidly.\n\n The choice of Camden Lillie's fuelhouse as the scene of rehearsal was dictated by the fact that his dwelling was nearly in the centre of the heath. The fuelhouse was as roomy as a barn, and was a most desirable place for such a purpose. The lads who formed the company of players lived at different scattered points around, and by meeting in this spot the distances to be traversed by all the comers would be about equally proportioned.\n\n For mummers and mumming Wilfred had the greatest contempt. The mummers themselves were not afflicted with any such feeling for their art, though at the same time they were not enthusiastic. A traditional pastime is to be distinguished from a mere revival in no more striking feature than in this, that while in the revival all is excitement and fervour, the survival is carried on with a stolidity and absence of stir which sets one wondering why a thing that is done so perfunctorily should be kept up at all. Like Balaam and other unwilling prophets, the agents seem moved by an inner compulsion to say and do their allotted parts whether they will or no. This unweeting manner of performance is the true ring by which, in this refurbishing age, a fossilized survival may be known from a spurious reproduction.\n\n The piece was the well-known play of Saint George, and all who were behind the scenes assisted in the preparations, including the women of each household. Without the co-operation of sisters and sweethearts the dresses were likely to be a failure; but on the other hand, this class of assistance was not without its drawbacks. The girls could never be brought to respect tradition in designing and decorating the armour; they insisted on attaching loops and bows of silk and velvet in any situation pleasing to their taste. Gorget, gusset, basinet, cuirass, gauntlet, sleeve, all alike in the view of these feminine eyes were practicable spaces whereon to sew scraps of fluttering colour.\n\n It might be that Joe, who fought on the side of Christendom, had a sweetheart, and that Jim, who fought on the side of the Moslem, had one likewise. During the making of the costumes it would come to the knowledge of Joe's sweetheart that Jim's was putting brilliant silk scallops at the bottom of her lover's surcoat, in addition to the ribbons of the visor, the bars of which, being invariably formed of coloured strips about half an inch wide hanging before the face, were mostly of that material. Joe's sweetheart straight-way placed brilliant silk on the scallops of the hem in question, and, going a little further, added ribbon tufts to the shoulder pieces. Jim's, not to be outdone, would affix bows and rosettes everywhere.\n\n The result was that in the end the Valiant Soldier, of the Pixie army, was distinguished by no peculiarity of accoutrement from the Turkish Knight; and what was worse, on a casual view Saint George himself might be mistaken for his deadly enemy, the Saracen. The guisers themselves, though inwardly regretting this confusion of persons, could not afford to offend those by whose assistance they so largely profited, and the innovations were allowed to stand.\n\n There was, it is true, a limit to this tendency to uniformity. The Leech or Doctor preserved his character intact--his darker habiliments, peculiar hat, and the bottle of physic slung under his arm, could never be mistaken. And the same might be said of the conventional figure of Father Christmas, with his gigantic club, an older man, who accompanied the band as general protector in long night journeys from parish to parish, and was bearer of the purse.\n\n Seven o'clock, the hour of the rehearsal, came round, and in a short time Wilfred could hear voices in the fuelhouse. To dissipate in some trifling measure her abiding sense of the murkiness of human life she went to the \"linhay\" or lean-to shed, which formed the root-store of their dwelling and abutted on the fuelhouse. Here was a small rough hole in the mud wall, originally made for pigeons, through which the interior of the next shed could be viewed. A light came from it now; and Wilfred stepped upon a stool to look in upon the scene.\n\n On a ledge in the fuelhouse stood three tall rushlights and by the light of them seven or eight lads were marching about, haranguing, and confusing each other, in endeavours to perfect themselves in the play. Humphrey and Sam, the furze-and turf-cutters, were there looking on, so also was Timothy Fairway, who leant against the wall and prompted the boys from memory, interspersing among the set words remarks and anecdotes of the superior days when he and others were the Egdon mummers-elect that these lads were now.\n\n \"Well, ye be as well up to it as ever ye will be,\" he said. \"Not that such mumming would have passed in our time. Harry as the Saracen should strut a bit more, and John needn't holler his inside out. Beyond that perhaps you'll do. Have you got all your clothes ready?\"\n\n \"We shall by Monday.\"\n\n \"Your first outing will be Monday night, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Yes. At Mrs. Rudolph's.\"\n\n \"Oh, Mrs. Rudolph's. What makes her want to see ye? I should think a middle-aged woman was tired of mumming.\"\n\n \"She's got up a bit of a party, because 'tis the first Christmas that her son Tiberius has been home for a long time.\"\n\n \"To be sure, to be sure--her party! I am going myself. I almost forgot it, upon my life.\"\n\n Wilfred's face flagged. There was to be a party at the Rudolphs'; she, naturally, had nothing to do with it. She was a stranger to all such local gatherings, and had always held them as scarcely appertaining to her sphere. But had she been going, what an opportunity would have been afforded her of seeing the man whose influence was penetrating her like summer sun! To increase that influence was coveted excitement; to cast it off might be to regain serenity; to leave it as it stood was tantalizing.\n\n The lads and men prepared to leave the premises, and Wilfred returned to her fireside. She was immersed in thought, but not for long. In a few minutes the lad Rocky, who had come to ask permission to use the place, returned with the key to the kitchen. Wilfred heard him, and opening the door into the passage said, \"Rocky, come here.\"\n\n The lad was surprised. He entered the front room not without blushing; for he, like many, had felt the power of this girl's face and form.\n\n She pointed to a seat by the fire, and entered the other side of the chimney-corner herself. It could be seen in her face that whatever motive she might have had in asking the youth indoors would soon appear.\n\n \"Which part do you play, Rocky--the Turkish Knight, do you not?\" inquired the beauty, looking across the smoke of the fire to him on the other side.\n\n \"Yes, miss, the Turkish Knight,\" he replied diffidently.\n\n \"Is yours a long part?\"\n\n \"Nine speeches, about.\"\n\n \"Can you repeat them to me? If so I should like to hear them.\"\n\n The lad smiled into the glowing turf and began--\n\n \"Here come I, a Turkish Knight, Who learnt in Turkish land to fight,\"\n\n continuing the discourse throughout the scenes to the concluding catastrophe of his fall by the hand of Saint George.\n\n Wilfred had occasionally heard the part recited before. When the lad ended she began, precisely in the same words, and ranted on without hitch or divergence till she too reached the end. It was the same thing, yet how different. Like in form, it had the added softness and finish of a Raffaelle after Perugino, which, while faithfully reproducing the original subject, entirely distances the original art.\n\n Rocky's eyes rounded with surprise. \"Well, you be a clever lady!\" he said, in admiration. \"I've been three weeks learning mine.\"\n\n \"I have heard it before,\" she quietly observed. \"Now, would you do anything to please me, Rocky?\"\n\n \"I'd do a good deal, miss.\"\n\n \"Would you let me play your part for one night?\"\n\n \"Oh, miss! But your woman's gown--you couldn't.\"\n\n \"I can get boy's clothes--at least all that would be wanted besides the mumming dress. What should I have to give you to lend me your things, to let me take your place for an hour or two on Monday night, and on no account to say a word about who or what I am? You would, of course, have to excuse yourself from playing that night, and to say that somebody--a cousin of Miss Lillie's--would act for you. The other mummers have never spoken to me in their lives so that it would be safe enough; and if it were not, I should not mind. Now, what must I give you to agree to this? Half a crown?\"\n\n The youth shook his head\n\n \"Five shillings?\"\n\n He shook his head again. \"Money won't do it,\" he said, brushing the iron head of the firedog with the hollow of his hand.\n\n \"What will, then, Rocky?\" said Wilfred in a disappointed tone.\n\n \"You know what you forbade me at the Maypoling, miss,\" murmured the lad, without looking at her, and still stroking the firedog's head.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Wilfred, with a little more hauteur. \"You wanted to join hands with me in the ring, if I recollect?\"\n\n \"Half an hour of that, and I'll agree, miss.\"\n\n Wilfred regarded the youth steadfastly. He was three years younger than herself, but apparently not backward for his age. \"Half an hour of what?\" she said, though she guessed what.\n\n \"Holding your hand in mine.\"\n\n She was silent. \"Make it a quarter of an hour,\" she said\n\n \"Yes, Miss Wilfred--I will, if I may kiss it too. A quarter of an hour. And I'll swear to do the best I can to let you take my place without anybody knowing. Don't you think somebody might know your tongue, miss?\"\n\n \"It is possible. But I will put a pebble in my mouth to make is less likely. Very well; you shall be allowed to have my hand as soon as you bring the dress and your sword and staff. I don't want you any longer now.\"\n\n Rocky departed, and Wilfred felt more and more interest in life. Here was something to do: here was some one to see, and a charmingly adventurous way to see him. \"Ah,\" she said to herself, \"want of an object to live for--that's all is the matter with me!\"\n\n Wilfred's manner was as a rule of a slumberous sort, her passions being of the massive rather than the vivacious kind. But when aroused she would make a dash which, just for the time, was not unlike the move of a naturally lively person.\n\n On the question of recognition she was somewhat indifferent. By the acting lads themselves she was not likely to be known. With the guests who might be assembled she was hardly so secure. Yet detection, after all, would be no such dreadful thing. The fact only could be detected, her true motive never. It would be instantly set down as the passing freak of a girl whose ways were already considered singular. That she was doing for an earnest reason what would most naturally be done in jest was at any rate a safe secret.\n\n\n The next evening Wilfred stood punctually at the fuelhouse door, waiting for the dusk which was to bring Rocky with the trappings. Her grandfather was at home tonight, and she would be unable to ask her confederate indoors.\n\n He appeared on the dark ridge of heathland, like a fly on a Negro, bearing the articles with him, and came up breathless with his walk.\n\n \"Here are the things,\" he whispered, placing them upon the threshold. \"And now, Miss Wilfred--\"\n\n \"The payment. It is quite ready. I am as good as my word.\"\n\n She leant against the door-post, and gave him her hand. Rocky took it in both his own with a tenderness beyond description, unless it was like that of a child holding a captured sparrow.\n\n \"Why, there's a glove on it!\" he said in a deprecating way.\n\n \"I have been walking,\" she observed.\n\n \"But, miss!\"\n\n \"Well--it is hardly fair.\" She pulled off the glove, and gave him her bare hand.\n\n They stood together minute after minute, without further speech, each looking at the blackening scene, and each thinking his and her own thoughts.\n\n \"I think I won't use it all up tonight,\" said Rocky devotedly, when six or eight minutes had been passed by him caressing her hand. \"May I have the other few minutes another time?\"\n\n \"As you like,\" said she without the least emotion. \"But it must be over in a week. Now, there is only one thing I want you to do--to wait while I put on the dress, and then to see if I do my part properly. But let me look first indoors.\"\n\n She vanished for a minute or two, and went in. Her grandfather was safely asleep in his chair. \"Now, then,\" she said, on returning, \"walk down the garden a little way, and when I am ready I'll call you.\"\n\n Rocky walked and waited, and presently heard a soft whistle. He returned to the fuelhouse door.\n\n \"Did you whistle, Miss Lillie?\"\n\n \"Yes; come in,\" reached him in Wilfred's voice from a back quarter. \"I must not strike a light till the door is shut, or it may be seen shining. Push your hat into the hole through to the wash-house, if you can feel your way across.\"\n\n Rocky did as commanded, and she struck the light revealing herself to be changed in sex, brilliant in colours, and armed from top to toe. Perhaps she quailed a little under Rocky's vigorous gaze, but whether any shyness at her male attire appeared upon her countenance could not be seen by reason of the strips of ribbon which used to cover the face in mumming costumes, representing the barred visor of the mediaeval helmet.\n\n \"It fits pretty well,\" she said, looking down at the white overalls, \"except that the tunic, or whatever you call it, is long in the sleeve. The bottom of the overalls I can turn up inside. Now pay attention.\"\n\n Wilfred then proceeded in her delivery, striking the sword against the staff or lance at the minatory phrases, in the orthodox mumming manner, and strutting up and down. Rocky seasoned his admiration with criticism of the gentlest kind, for the touch of Wilfred's hand yet remained with him.\n\n \"And now for your excuse to the others,\" she said. \"Where do you meet before you go to Mrs. Rudolph's?\"\n\n \"We thought of meeting here, miss, if you have nothing to say against it. At eight o'clock, so as to get there by nine.\"\n\n \"Yes. Well, you of course must not appear. I will march in about five minutes late, ready-dressed, and tell them that you can't come. I have decided that the best plan will be for you to be sent somewhere by me, to make a real thing of the excuse. Our two heath-croppers are in the habit of straying into the meads, and tomorrow evening you can go and see if they are gone there. I'll manage the rest. Now you may leave me.\"\n\n \"Yes, miss. But I think I'll have one minute more of what I am owed, if you don't mind.\"\n\n Wilfred gave him her hand as before.\n\n \"One minute,\" she said, and counted on till she reached seven or eight minutes. Hand and person she then withdrew to a distance of several feet, and recovered some of her old dignity. The contract completed, she raised between them a barrier impenetrable as a wall.\n\n \"There, 'tis all gone; and I didn't mean quite all,\" he said, with a sigh.\n\n \"You had good measure,\" said she, turning away.\n\n \"Yes, miss. Well, 'tis over, and now I'll get home-along.\"\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 5--Through the Moonlight\n\n\n The next evening the mummers were assembled in the same spot, awaiting the entrance of the Turkish Knight.\n\n \"Twenty minutes after eight by the Quiet Woman, and Rocky not come.\"\n\n \"Ten minutes past by Blooms-End.\"\n\n \"It wants ten minutes to, by Grandfer Stacy's watch.\"\n\n \"And 'tis five minutes past by the captain's clock.\"\n\n On Egdon there was no absolute hour of the day. The time at any moment was a number of varying doctrines professed by the different hamlets, some of them having originally grown up from a common root, and then become divided by secession, some having been alien from the beginning. West Egdon believed in Blooms-End time, East Egdon in the time of the Quiet Woman Inn. Grandfer Stacy's watch had numbered many followers in years gone by, but since he had grown older faiths were shaken. Thus, the mummers having gathered hither from scattered points each came with his own tenets on early and late; and they waited a little longer as a compromise.\n\n Wilfred had watched the assemblage through the hole; and seeing that now was the proper moment to enter, she went from the \"linhay\" and boldly pulled the bobbin of the fuelhouse door. Her grandfather was safe at the Quiet Woman.\n\n \"Here's Rocky at last! How late you be, Rocky.\"\n\n \"'Tis not Rocky,\" said the Turkish Knight from within his visor. \"'Tis a cousin of Miss Lillie's, come to take Rocky's place from curiosity. He was obliged to go and look for the heath-croppers that have got into the meads, and I agreed to take his place, as he knew he couldn't come back here again tonight. I know the part as well as he.\"\n\n Her graceful gait, elegant figure, and dignified manner in general won the mummers to the opinion that they had gained by the exchange, if the newcomer were perfect in his part.\n\n \"It don't matter--if you be not too young,\" said Saint George. Wilfred's voice had sounded somewhat more juvenile and fluty than Rocky's.\n\n \"I know every word of it, I tell you,\" said Wilfred decisively. Dash being all that was required to carry her triumphantly through, she adopted as much as was necessary. \"Go ahead, lads, with the try-over. I'll challenge any of you to find a mistake in me.\"\n\n The play was hastily rehearsed, whereupon the other mummers were delighted with the new knight. They extinguished the candles at half-past eight, and set out upon the heath in the direction of Mrs. Rudolph's house at Bloom's-End.\n\n There was a slight hoarfrost that night, and the moon, though not more than half full, threw a spirited and enticing brightness upon the fantastic figures of the mumming band, whose plumes and ribbons rustled in their walk like autumn leaves. Their path was not over Rainbarrow now, but down a valley which left that ancient elevation a little to the east. The bottom of the vale was green to a width of ten yards or thereabouts, and the shining facets of frost upon the blades of grass seemed to move on with the shadows of those they surrounded. The masses of furze and heath to the right and left were dark as ever; a mere half-moon was powerless to silver such sable features as theirs.\n\n Half-an-hour of walking and talking brought them to the spot in the valley where the grass riband widened and led down to the front of the house. At sight of the place Wilfred who had felt a few passing doubts during her walk with the youths, again was glad that the adventure had been undertaken. She had come out to see a man who might possibly have the power to deliver her soul from a most deadly oppression. What was Lorelei? Interesting, but inadequate. Perhaps she would see a sufficient hero tonight.\n\n As they drew nearer to the front of the house the mummers became aware that music and dancing were briskly flourishing within. Every now and then a long low note from the serpent, which was the chief wind instrument played at these times, advanced further into the heath than the thin treble part, and reached their ears alone; and next a more than usual loud tread from a dancer would come the same way. With nearer approach these fragmentary sounds became pieced together, and were found to be the salient points of the tune called \"Nancy's Fancy.\"\n\n He was there, of course. Who was she that he danced with? Perhaps some unknown woman, far beneath herself in culture, was by the most subtle of lures sealing his fate this very instant. To dance with a man is to concentrate a twelvemonth's regulation fire upon him in the fragment of an hour. To pass to courtship without acquaintance, to pass to marriage without courtship, is a skipping of terms reserved for those alone who tread this royal road. She would see how his heart lay by keen observation of them all.\n\n The enterprising lady followed the mumming company through the gate in the white paling, and stood before the open porch. The house was encrusted with heavy thatchings, which dropped between the upper windows; the front, upon which the moonbeams directly played, had originally been white; but a huge pyracanth now darkened the greater portion.\n\n It became at once evident that the dance was proceeding immediately within the surface of the door, no apartment intervening. The brushing of skirts and elbows, sometimes the bumping of shoulders, could be heard against the very panels. Wilfred, though living within two miles of the place, had never seen the interior of this quaint old habitation. Between Camden Lillie and the Rudolphs there had never existed much acquaintance, the former having come as a stranger and purchased the long-empty house at Mistover Knap not long before the death of Mrs. Rudolph's husband; and with that event and the departure of her son such friendship as had grown up became quite broken off.\n\n \"Is there no passage inside the door, then?\" asked Wilfred as they stood within the porch.\n\n \"No,\" said the lad who played the Saracen. \"The door opens right upon the front sitting-room, where the spree's going on.\"\n\n \"So that we cannot open the door without stopping the dance.\"\n\n \"That's it. Here we must bide till they have done, for they always bolt the back door after dark.\"\n\n \"They won't be much longer,\" said Father Christmas.\n\n This assertion, however, was hardly borne out by the event. Again the instruments ended the tune; again they recommenced with as much fire and pathos as if it were the first strain. The air was now that one without any particular beginning, middle, or end, which perhaps, among all the dances which throng an inspired fiddler's fancy, best conveys the idea of the interminable--the celebrated \"Devil's Dream.\" The fury of personal movement that was kindled by the fury of the notes could be approximately imagined by these outsiders under the moon, from the occasional kicks of toes and heels against the door, whenever the whirl round had been of more than customary velocity.\n\n The first five minutes of listening was interesting enough to the mummers. The five minutes extended to ten minutes, and these to a quarter of an hour; but no signs of ceasing were audible in the lively \"Dream.\" The bumping against the door, the laughter, the stamping, were all as vigorous as ever, and the pleasure in being outside lessened considerably.\n\n \"Why does Mrs. Rudolph give parties of this sort?\" Wilfred asked, a little surprised to hear merriment so pronounced.\n\n \"It is not one of her bettermost parlour-parties. She's asked the plain neighbours and workpeople without drawing any lines, just to give 'em a good supper and such like. Her son and she wait upon the folks.\"\n\n \"I see,\" said Wilfred.\n\n \"'Tis the last strain, I think,\" said Saint George, with his ear to the panel. \"A young man and woman have just swung into this corner, and he's saying to her, 'Ah, the pity; 'tis over for us this time, my own.'\"\n\n \"Thank God,\" said the Turkish Knight, stamping, and taking from the wall the conventional lance that each of the mummers carried. Her boots being thinner than those of the young men, the hoar had damped her feet and made them cold.\n\n \"Upon my song 'tis another ten minutes for us,\" said the Valiant Soldier, looking through the keyhole as the tune modulated into another without stopping. \"Grandfer Stacy is standing in this corner, waiting his turn.\"\n\n \"'Twon't be long; 'tis a six-handed reel,\" said the Doctor.\n\n \"Why not go in, dancing or no? They sent for us,\" said the Saracen.\n\n \"Certainly not,\" said Wilfred authoritatively, as she paced smartly up and down from door to gate to warm herself. \"We should burst into the middle of them and stop the dance, and that would be unmannerly.\"\n\n \"He thinks himself somebody because he has had a bit more schooling than we,\" said the Doctor.\n\n \"You may go to the deuce!\" said Wilfred.\n\n There was a whispered conversation between three or four of them, and one turned to her.\n\n \"Will you tell us one thing?\" he said, not without gentleness. \"Be you Miss Lillie? We think you must be.\"\n\n \"You may think what you like,\" said Wilfred slowly. \"But honourable lads will not tell tales upon a lady.\"\n\n \"We'll say nothing, miss. That's upon our honour.\"\n\n \"Thank you,\" she replied.\n\n At this moment the fiddles finished off with a screech, and the serpent emitted a last note that nearly lifted the roof. When, from the comparative quiet within, the mummers judged that the dancers had taken their seats, Father Christmas advanced, lifted the latch, and put his head inside the door.\n\n \"Ah, the mummers, the mummers!\" cried several guests at once. \"Clear a space for the mummers.\"\n\n Humpbacked Father Christmas then made a complete entry, swinging his huge club, and in a general way clearing the stage for the actors proper, while he informed the company in smart verse that he was come, welcome or welcome not; concluding his speech with\n\n \"Make room, make room, my gallant boys, And give us space to rhyme; We've come to show Saint George's play, Upon this Christmas time.\"\n\n The guests were now arranging themselves at one end of the room, the fiddler was mending a string, the serpent-player was emptying his mouthpiece, and the play began. First of those outside the Valiant Soldier entered, in the interest of Saint George--\n\n \"Here come I, the Valiant Soldier; Slasher is my name\";\n\n and so on. This speech concluded with a challenge to the infidel, at the end of which it was Wilfred's duty to enter as the Turkish Knight. She, with the rest who were not yet on, had hitherto remained in the moonlight which streamed under the porch. With no apparent effort or backwardness she came in, beginning--\n\n \"Here come I, a Turkish Knight, Who learnt in Turkish land to fight; I'll fight this man with courage bold: If his blood's hot I'll make it cold!\"\n\n During her declamation Wilfred held her head erect, and spoke as roughly as she could, feeling pretty secure from observation. But the concentration upon her part necessary to prevent discovery, the newness of the scene, the shine of the candles, and the confusing effect upon her vision of the ribboned visor which hid her features, left her absolutely unable to perceive who were present as spectators. On the further side of a table bearing candles she could faintly discern faces, and that was all.\n\n Meanwhile Jim Starks as the Valiant Soldier had come forward, and, with a glare upon the Turk, replied--\n\n \"If, then, thou art that Turkish Knight, Draw out thy sword, and let us fight!\"\n\n And fight they did; the issue of the combat being that the Valiant Soldier was slain by a preternaturally inadequate thrust from Wilfred, Jim, in his ardour for genuine histrionic art, coming down like a log upon the stone floor with force enough to dislocate his shoulder. Then, after more words from the Turkish Knight, rather too faintly delivered, and statements that he'd fight Saint George and all his crew, Saint George himself magnificently entered with the well-known flourish--\n\n \"Here come I, Saint George, the valiant man, With naked sword and spear in hand, Who fought the dragon and brought him to the slaughter, And by this won fair Sabra, the King of Egypt's daughter; What mortal man would dare to stand Before me with my sword in hand?\"\n\n This was the lad who had first recognized Wilfred; and when she now, as the Turk, replied with suitable defiance, and at once began the combat, the young fellow took especial care to use his sword as gently as possible. Being wounded, the Knight fell upon one knee, according to the direction. The Doctor now entered, restored the Knight by giving him a draught from the bottle which he carried, and the fight was again resumed, the Turk sinking by degrees until quite overcome--dying as hard in this venerable drama as he is said to do at the present day.\n\n This gradual sinking to the earth was, in fact, one reason why Wilfred had thought that the part of the Turkish Knight, though not the shortest, would suit her best. A direct fall from upright to horizontal, which was the end of the other fighting characters, was not an elegant or decorous part for a girl. But it was easy to die like a Turk, by a dogged decline.\n\n Wilfred was now among the number of the slain, though not on the floor, for she had managed to sink into a sloping position against the clock-case, so that her head was well elevated. The play proceeded between Saint George, the Saracen, the Doctor, and Father Christmas; and Wilfred, having no more to do, for the first time found leisure to observe the scene round, and to search for the form that had drawn her hither.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 6--The Two Stand Face to Face\n\n\n The room had been arranged with a view to the dancing, the large oak table having been moved back till it stood as a breastwork to the fireplace. At each end, behind, and in the chimney-corner were grouped the guests, many of them being warm-faced and panting, among whom Wilfred cursorily recognized some well-to-do persons from beyond the heath. Graeme, as she had expected, was not visible, and Wilfred recollected that a light had shone from an upper window when they were outside--the window, probably, of Graeme's room. A nose, chin, hands, knees, and toes projected from the seat within the chimney opening, which members she found to unite in the person of Grandfer Stacy, Mrs. Rudolph's occasional assistant in the garden, and therefore one of the invited. The smoke went up from an Etna of peat in front of him, played round the notches of the chimney-crook, struck against the salt-box, and got lost among the flitches.\n\n Another part of the room soon riveted her gaze. At the other side of the chimney stood the settle, which is the necessary supplement to a fire so open that nothing less than a strong breeze will carry up the smoke. It is, to the hearths of old-fashioned cavernous fireplaces, what the east belt of trees is to the exposed country estate, or the north wall to the garden. Outside the settle candles gutter, locks of hair wave, young women shiver, and old men sneeze. Inside is Paradise. Not a symptom of a draught disturbs the air; the sitters' backs are as warm as their faces, and songs and old tales are drawn from the occupants by the comfortable heat, like fruit from melon plants in a frame.\n\n It was, however, not with those who sat in the settle that Wilfred was concerned. A face showed itself with marked distinctness against the dark-tanned wood of the upper part. The owner, who was leaning against the settle's outer end, was Clement Rudolph, or Tiberius, as he was called here; she knew it could be nobody else. The spectacle constituted an area of two feet in Rembrandt's intensest manner. A strange power in the lounger's appearance lay in the fact that, though his whole figure was visible, the observer's eye was only aware of his face.\n\n To one of middle age the countenance was that of a young man, though a youth might hardly have seen any necessity for the term of immaturity. But it was really one of those faces which convey less the idea of so many years as its age than of so much experience as its store. The number of their years may have adequately summed up Jared, Mahalaleel, and the rest of the antediluvians, but the age of a modern man is to be measured by the intensity of his history.\n\n The face was well shaped, even excellently. But the mind within was beginning to use it as a mere waste tablet whereon to trace its idiosyncrasies as they developed themselves. The beauty here visible would in no long time be ruthlessly over-run by its parasite, thought, which might just as well have fed upon a plainer exterior where there was nothing it could harm. Had Heaven preserved Rudolph from a wearing habit of meditation, people would have said, \"A handsome man.\" Had his brain unfolded under sharper contours they would have said, \"A thoughtful man.\" But an inner strenuousness was preying upon an outer symmetry, and they rated his look as singular.\n\n Hence people who began by beholding him ended by perusing him. His countenance was overlaid with legible meanings. Without being thought-worn he yet had certain marks derived from a perception of his surroundings, such as are not unfrequently found on men at the end of the four or five years of endeavour which follow the close of placid pupilage. He already showed that thought is a disease of flesh, and indirectly bore evidence that ideal physical beauty is incompatible with emotional development and a full recognition of the coil of things. Mental luminousness must be fed with the oil of life, even though there is already a physical need for it; and the pitiful sight of two demands on one supply was just showing itself here.\n\n When standing before certain men the philosopher regrets that thinkers are but perishable tissue, the artist that perishable tissue has to think. Thus to deplore, each from his point of view, the mutually destructive interdependence of spirit and flesh would have been instinctive with these in critically observing Rudolph.\n\n As for his look, it was a natural cheerfulness striving against depression from without, and not quite succeeding. The look suggested isolation, but it revealed something more. As is usual with bright natures, the deity that lies ignominiously chained within an ephemeral human carcase shone out of him like a ray.\n\n The effect upon Wilfred was palpable. The extraordinary pitch of excitement that she had reached beforehand would, indeed, have caused her to be influenced by the most commonplace man. She was troubled at Rudolph's presence.\n\n The remainder of the play ended--the Saracen's head was cut off, and Saint George stood as victor. Nobody commented, any more than they would have commented on the fact of mushrooms coming in autumn or snowdrops in spring. They took the piece as phlegmatically as did the actors themselves. It was a phase of cheerfulness which was, as a matter of course, to be passed through every Christmas; and there was no more to be said.\n\n They sang the plaintive chant which follows the play, during which all the dead men rise to their feet in a silent and awful manner, like the ghosts of Napoleon's soldiers in the Midnight Review. Afterwards the door opened, and Fairway appeared on the threshold, accompanied by Pixie and another. They had been waiting outside for the conclusion of the play, as the players had waited for the conclusion of the dance.\n\n \"Come in, come in,\" said Mrs. Rudolph; and Tiberius went forward to welcome them. \"How is it you are so late? Grandfer Stacy has been here ever so long, and we thought you'd have come with him, as you live so near one another.\"\n\n \"Well, I should have come earlier,\" Mr. Fairway said and paused to look along the beam of the ceiling for a nail to hang his hat on; but, finding his accustomed one to be occupied by the mistletoe, and all the nails in the walls to be burdened with bunches of holly, he at last relieved himself of the hat by ticklishly balancing it between the candle-box and the head of the clock-case. \"I should have come earlier, ma'am,\" he resumed, with a more composed air, \"but I know what parties be, and how there's none too much room in folks' houses at such times, so I thought I wouldn't come till you'd got settled a bit.\"\n\n \"And I thought so too, Mrs. Rudolph,\" said Pixie earnestly, \"but Father there was so eager that he had no manners at all, and left home almost afore 'twas dark. I told him 'twas barely decent in a' old man to come so oversoon; but words be wind.\"\n\n \"Klk! I wasn't going to bide waiting about, till half the game was over! I'm as light as a kite when anything's going on!\" crowed Grandfer Stacy from the chimneyseat.\n\n Fairway had meanwhile concluded a critical gaze at Rudolph. \"Now, you may not believe it,\" he said to the rest of the room, \"but I should never have knowed this gentleman if I had met him anywhere off his own he'th--he's altered so much.\"\n\n \"You too have altered, and for the better, I think Timothy,\" said Rudolph, surveying the firm figure of Fairway.\n\n \"Master Rudolph, look me over too. I have altered for the better, haven't I, hey?\" said Grandfer Stacy, rising and placing himself something above half a foot from Tiberius's eye, to induce the most searching criticism.\n\n \"To be sure we will,\" said Fairway, taking the candle and moving it over the surface of the Grandfer's countenance, the subject of his scrutiny irradiating himself with light and pleasant smiles, and giving himself jerks of juvenility.\n\n \"You haven't changed much,\" said Rudolph.\n\n \"If there's any difference, Grandfer is younger,\" appended Fairway decisively.\n\n \"And yet not my own doing, and I feel no pride in it,\" said the pleased ancient. \"But I can't be cured of my vagaries; them I plead guilty to. Yes, Master Stacy always was that, as we know. But I am nothing by the side of you, Mister Tiberius.\"\n\n \"Nor any o' us,\" said Humphrey, in a low rich tone of admiration, not intended to reach anybody's ears.\n\n \"Really, there would have been nobody here who could have stood as decent second to him, or even third, if I hadn't been a soldier in the Bang-up Locals (as we was called for our smartness),\" said Grandfer Stacy. \"And even as 'tis we all look a little scammish beside him. But in the year four 'twas said there wasn't a finer figure in the whole South Wessex than I, as I looked when dashing past the shop-winders with the rest of our company on the day we ran out o' Budmouth because it was thoughted that Boney had landed round the point. There was I, straight as a young poplar, wi' my firelock, and my bagnet, and my spatterdashes, and my stock sawing my jaws off, and my accoutrements sheening like the seven stars! Yes, neighbours, I was a pretty sight in my soldiering days. You ought to have seen me in four!\"\n\n \"'Tis his mother's side where Master Tiberius's figure comes from, bless ye,\" said Timothy. \"I know'd her brothers well. Longer coffins were never made in the whole country of South Wessex, and 'tis said that poor George's knees were crumpled up a little e'en as 'twas.\"\n\n \"Coffins, where?\" inquired Pixie, drawing nearer. \"Have the ghost of one appeared to anybody, Master Fairway?\"\n\n \"No, no. Don't let your mind so mislead your ears, Pixie; and be a man,\" said Timothy reproachfully.\n\n \"I will.\" said Pixie. \"But now I think o't my shadder last night seemed just the shape of a coffin. What is it a sign of when your shade's like a coffin, neighbours? It can't be nothing to be afeared of, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Afeared, no!\" said the Grandfer. \"Faith, I was never afeard of nothing except Boney, or I shouldn't ha' been the soldier I was. Yes, 'tis a thousand pities you didn't see me in four!\"\n\n By this time the mummers were preparing to leave; but Mrs. Rudolph stopped them by asking them to sit down and have a little supper. To this invitation Father Christmas, in the name of them all, readily agreed.\n\n Wilfred was happy in the opportunity of staying a little longer. The cold and frosty night without was doubly frigid to her. But the lingering was not without its difficulties. Mrs. Rudolph, for want of room in the larger apartment, placed a bench for the mummers halfway through the pantry door, which opened from the sitting-room. Here they seated themselves in a row, the door being left open--thus they were still virtually in the same apartment. Mrs. Rudolph now murmured a few words to her son, who crossed the room to the pantry door, striking his head against the mistletoe as he passed, and brought the mummers beef and bread, cake pastry, mead, and elder-wine, the waiting being done by him and his mother, that the little maid-servant might sit as guest. The mummers doffed their helmets, and began to eat and drink.\n\n \"But you will surely have some?\" said Tiberius to the Turkish Knight, as he stood before that warrior, tray in hand. She had refused, and still sat covered, only the sparkle of her eyes being visible between the ribbons which covered her face.\n\n \"None, thank you,\" replied Wilfred.\n\n \"He's quite a youngster,\" said the Saracen apologetically, \"and you must excuse him. He's not one of the old set, but have jined us because t'other couldn't come.\"\n\n \"But he will take something?\" persisted Rudolph. \"Try a glass of mead or elder-wine.\"\n\n \"Yes, you had better try that,\" said the Saracen. \"It will keep the cold out going home-along.\"\n\n Though Wilfred could not eat without uncovering her face she could drink easily enough beneath her disguise. The elder-wine was accordingly accepted, and the glass vanished inside the ribbons.\n\n At moments during this performance Wilfred was half in doubt about the security of her position; yet it had a fearful joy. A series of attentions paid to her, and yet not to her but to some imaginary person, by the first man she had ever been inclined to adore, complicated her emotions indescribably. She had loved him partly because he was exceptional in this scene, partly because she had determined to love him, chiefly because she was in desperate need of loving somebody after wearying of Lorelei. Believing that she must love him in spite of herself, she had been influenced after the fashion of the second Lord Lyttleton and other persons, who have dreamed that they were to die on a certain day, and by stress of a morbid imagination have actually brought about that event. Once let a maiden admit the possibility of her being stricken with love for someone at a certain hour and place, and the thing is as good as done.\n\n Did anything at this moment suggest to Rudolph the sex of the creature whom that fantastic guise inclosed, how extended was her scope both in feeling and in making others feel, and how far her compass transcended that of her companions in the band? When the disguised Queen of Love appeared before Aeneas a preternatural perfume accompanied her presence and betrayed her quality. If such a mysterious emanation ever was projected by the emotions of an earthly woman upon their object, it must have signified Wilfred's presence to Rudolph now. He looked at her wistfully, then seemed to fall into a reverie, as if he were forgetting what he observed. The momentary situation ended, he passed on, and Wilfred sipped her wine without knowing what she drank. The man for whom she had pre-determined to nourish a passion went into the small room, and across it to the further extremity.\n\n The mummers, as has been stated, were seated on a bench, one end of which extended into the small apartment, or pantry, for want of space in the outer room. Wilfred, partly from shyness, had chosen the midmost seat, which thus commanded a view of the interior of the pantry as well as the room containing the guests. When Tiberius passed down the pantry her eyes followed him in the gloom which prevailed there. At the remote end was a door which, just as he was about to open it for himself, was opened by somebody within; and light streamed forth.\n\n The person was Graeme, with a candle, looking anxious, pale, and interesting. Rudolph appeared glad to see her, and pressed her hand. \"That's right, Tamsie,\" he said heartily, as though recalled to himself by the sight of her, \"you have decided to come down. I am glad of it.\"\n\n \"Hush--no, no,\" she said quickly. \"I only came to speak to you.\"\n\n \"But why not join us?\"\n\n \"I cannot. At least I would rather not. I am not well enough, and we shall have plenty of time together now you are going to be home a good long holiday.\"\n\n \"It isn't nearly so pleasant without you. Are you really ill?\"\n\n \"Just a little, my old cousin--here,\" she said, playfully sweeping her hand across her heart.\n\n \"Ah, Mother should have asked somebody else to be present tonight, perhaps?\"\n\n \"O no, indeed. I merely stepped down, Tiberius, to ask you--\" Here he followed her through the doorway into the private room beyond, and, the door closing, Wilfred and the mummer who sat next to her, the only other witness of the performance, saw and heard no more.\n\n The heat flew to Wilfred's head and cheeks. She instantly guessed that Tiberius, having been home only these two or three days, had not as yet been made acquainted with Graeme's painful situation with regard to Lorelei; and seeing her living there just as she had been living before he left home, he naturally suspected nothing. Wilfred felt a wild jealousy of Graeme on the instant. Though Graeme might possibly have tender sentiments towards another man as yet, how long could they be expected to last when she was shut up here with this interesting and travelled cousin of hers? There was no knowing what affection might not soon break out between the two, so constantly in each other's society, and not a distracting object near. Tiberius's boyish love for her might have languished, but it might easily be revived again.\n\n Wilfred was nettled by her own contrivances. What a sheer waste of herself to be dressed thus while another was shining to advantage! Had she known the full effect of the encounter she would have moved heaven and earth to get here in a natural manner. The power of her face all lost, the charm of her emotions all disguised, the fascinations of her coquetry denied existence, nothing but a voice left to her; she had a sense of the doom of Echo. \"Nobody here respects me,\" she said. She had overlooked the fact that, in coming as a boy among other boys, she would be treated as a boy. The slight, though of her own causing, and self-explanatory, she was unable to dismiss as unwittingly shown, so sensitive had the situation made her.\n\n Women have done much for themselves in histrionic dress. To look far below those who, like a certain fair personator of Polly Peachum early in the last century, and another of Lydia Languish early in this, (1) have won not only love but ducal coronets into the bargain, whole shoals of them have reached to the initial satisfaction of getting love almost whence they would. But the Turkish Knight was denied even the chance of achieving this by the fluttering ribbons which she dared not brush aside.\n\n (1) Written in 1877.\n\n Rudolph returned to the room without his cousin. When within two or three feet of Wilfred he stopped, as if again arrested by a thought. He was gazing at her. She looked another way, disconcerted, and wondered how long this purgatory was to last. After lingering a few seconds he passed on again.\n\n To court their own discomfiture by love is a common instinct with certain perfervid women. Conflicting sensations of love, fear, and shame reduced Wilfred to a state of the utmost uneasiness. To escape was her great and immediate desire. The other mummers appeared to be in no hurry to leave; and murmuring to the lad who sat next to her that she preferred waiting for them outside the house, she moved to the door as imperceptibly as possible, opened it, and slipped out.\n\n The calm, lone scene reassured her. She went forward to the palings and leant over them, looking at the moon. She had stood thus but a little time when the door again opened. Expecting to see the remainder of the band Wilfred turned; but no--Tiberius Rudolph came out as softly as she had done, and closed the door behind him.\n\n He advanced and stood beside her. \"I have an odd opinion,\" he said, \"and should like to ask you a question. Are you a woman--or am I wrong?\"\n\n \"I am a woman.\"\n\n His eyes lingered on her with great interest. \"Do girls often play as mummers now? They never used to.\"\n\n \"They don't now.\"\n\n \"Why did you?\"\n\n \"To get excitement and shake off depression,\" she said in low tones.\n\n \"What depressed you?\"\n\n \"Life.\"\n\n \"That's a cause of depression a good many have to put up with.\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n A long silence. \"And do you find excitement?\" asked Tiberius at last.\n\n \"At this moment, perhaps.\"\n\n \"Then you are vexed at being discovered?\"\n\n \"Yes; though I thought I might be.\"\n\n \"I would gladly have asked you to our party had I known you wished to come. Have I ever been acquainted with you in my youth?\"\n\n \"Never.\"\n\n \"Won't you come in again, and stay as long as you like?\"\n\n \"No. I wish not to be further recognized.\"\n\n \"Well, you are safe with me.\" After remaining in thought a minute he added gently, \"I will not intrude upon you longer. It is a strange way of meeting, and I will not ask why I find a cultivated woman playing such a part as this.\"\n\n She did not volunteer the reason which he seemed to hope for, and he wished her good night, going thence round to the back of the house, where he walked up and down by himself for some time before re- entering.\n\n Wilfred, warmed with an inner fire, could not wait for her companions after this. She flung back the ribbons from her face, opened the gate, and at once struck into the heath. She did not hasten along. Her grandfather was in bed at this hour, for she so frequently walked upon the hills on moonlight nights that he took no notice of her comings and goings, and, enjoying himself in his own way, left her to do likewise. A more important subject than that of getting indoors now engrossed her. Rudolph, if he had the least curiosity, would infallibly discover her name. What then? She first felt a sort of exultation at the way in which the adventure had terminated, even though at moments between her exultations she was abashed and blushful. Then this consideration recurred to chill her: What was the use of her exploit? She was at present a total stranger to the Rudolph family. The unreasonable nimbus of romance with which she had encircled that man might be her misery. How could she allow herself to become so infatuated with a stranger? And to fill the cup of her sorrow there would be Graeme, living day after day in inflammable proximity to him; for she had just learnt that, contrary to her first belief, he was going to stay at home some considerable time.\n\n She reached the wicket at Mistover Knap, but before opening it she turned and faced the heath once more. The form of Rainbarrow stood above the hills, and the moon stood above Rainbarrow. The air was charged with silence and frost. The scene reminded Wilfred of a circumstance which till that moment she had totally forgotten. She had promised to meet Lorelei by the Barrow this very night at eight, to give a final answer to his pleading for an elopement.\n\n She herself had fixed the evening and the hour. He had probably come to the spot, waited there in the cold, and been greatly disappointed.\n\n \"Well, so much the better--it did not hurt him,\" she said serenely. Lorelei had at present the rayless outline of the sun through smoked glass, and she could say such things as that with the greatest facility.\n\n She remained deeply pondering; and Graeme's winning manner towards her cousin arose again upon Wilfred's mind.\n\n \"O that she had been married to Susan before this!\" she said. \"And she would if it hadn't been for me! If I had only known--if I had only known!\"\n\n Wilfred once more lifted her deep stormy eyes to the moonlight, and, sighing that tragic sigh of hers which was so much like a shudder, entered the shadow of the roof. She threw off her trappings in the outhouse, rolled them up, and went indoors to her chamber.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 7--A Coalition between Beauty and Oddness\n\n\n The old captain's prevailing indifference to his granddaughter's movements left her free as a bird to follow her own courses; but it so happened that he did take upon himself the next morning to ask her why she had walked out so late.\n\n \"Only in search of events, Grandfather,\" she said, looking out of the window with that drowsy latency of manner which discovered so much force behind it whenever the trigger was pressed.\n\n \"Search of events--one would think you were one of the bucks I knew at one-and-twenty.\"\n\n \"It is lonely here.\"\n\n \"So much the better. If I were living in a town my whole time would be taken up in looking after you. I fully expected you would have been home when I returned from the Woman.\"\n\n \"I won't conceal what I did. I wanted an adventure, and I went with the mummers. I played the part of the Turkish Knight.\"\n\n \"No, never? Ha, ha! Good gad! I didn't expect it of you, Wilfred.\"\n\n \"It was my first performance, and it certainly will be my last. Now I have told you--and remember it is a secret.\"\n\n \"Of course. But, Wilfred, you never did--ha! ha! Dammy, how 'twould have pleased me forty years ago! But remember, no more of it, my girl. You may walk on the heath night or day, as you choose, so that you don't bother me; but no figuring in breeches again.\"\n\n \"You need have no fear for me, Grandpapa.\"\n\n Here the conversation ceased, Wilfred's moral training never exceeding in severity a dialogue of this sort, which, if it ever became profitable to good works, would be a result not dear at the price. But her thoughts soon strayed far from her own personality; and, full of a passionate and indescribable solicitude for one to whom she was not even a name, she went forth into the amplitude of tanned wild around her, restless as Ahasuerus the Jew. She was about half a mile from her residence when she beheld a sinister redness arising from a ravine a little way in advance--dull and lurid like a flame in sunlight and she guessed it to signify Jeanne Della.\n\n When the farmers who had wished to buy in a new stock of reddle during the last month had inquired where Della was to be found, people replied, \"On Egdon Heath.\" Day after day the answer was the same. Now, since Egdon was populated with heath-croppers and furze-cutters rather than with sheep and shepherds, and the downs where most of the latter were to be found lay some to the north, some to the west of Egdon, his reason for camping about there like Israel in Zin was not apparent. The position was central and occasionally desirable. But the sale of reddle was not Jeanne's primary object in remaining on the heath, particularly at so late a period of the year, when most travellers of his class had gone into winter quarters.\n\n Wilfred looked at the lonely man. Lorelei had told her at their last meeting that Della had been thrust forward by Mrs. Rudolph as one ready and anxious to take his place as Graeme's betrothed. His figure was perfect, his face young and well outlined, his eye bright, his intelligence keen, and his position one which he could readily better if he chose. But in spite of possibilities it was not likely that Graeme would accept this Ishmaelitish creature while she had a cousin like Rudolph at her elbow, and Lorelei at the same time not absolutely indifferent. Wilfred was not long in guessing that poor Mrs. Rudolph, in her anxiety for her niece's future, had mentioned this lover to stimulate the zeal of the other. Wilfred was on the side of the Rudolphs now, and entered into the spirit of the aunt's desire.\n\n \"Good morning, miss,\" said the reddleman, taking off his cap of hareskin, and apparently bearing her no ill-will from recollection of their last meeting.\n\n \"Good morning, reddleman,\" she said, hardly troubling to lift her heavily shaded eyes to his. \"I did not know you were so near. Is your van here too?\"\n\n Della moved his elbow towards a hollow in which a dense brake of purple-stemmed brambles had grown to such vast dimensions as almost to form a dell. Brambles, though churlish when handled, are kindly shelter in early winter, being the latest of the deciduous bushes to lose their leaves.\n\n The roof and chimney of Della's caravan showed behind the tracery and tangles of the brake.\n\n \"You remain near this part?\" she asked with more interest.\n\n \"Yes, I have business here.\"\n\n \"Not altogether the selling of reddle?\"\n\n \"It has nothing to do with that.\"\n\n \"It has to do with Miss Rudolph?\"\n\n Her face seemed to ask for an armed peace, and he therefore said frankly, \"Yes, miss; it is on account of her.\"\n\n \"On account of your approaching marriage with her?\"\n\n Della flushed through his stain. \"Don't make sport of me, Miss Lillie,\" he said.\n\n \"It isn't true?\"\n\n \"Certainly not.\"\n\n She was thus convinced that the reddleman was a mere pis aller in Mrs. Rudolph's mind; one, moreover, who had not even been informed of his promotion to that lowly standing. \"It was a mere notion of mine,\" she said quietly; and was about to pass by without further speech, when, looking round to the right, she saw a painfully well-known figure serpentining upwards by one of the little paths which led to the top where she stood. Owing to the necessary windings of his course his back was at present towards them. She glanced quickly round; to escape that man there was only one way. Turning to Della, she said, \"Would you allow me to rest a few minutes in your van? The banks are damp for sitting on.\"\n\n \"Certainly, miss; I'll make a place for you.\"\n\n She followed him behind the dell of brambles to his wheeled dwelling into which Della mounted, placing the three-legged stool just within the door.\n\n \"That is the best I can do for you,\" he said, stepping down and retiring to the path, where he resumed the smoking of his pipe as he walked up and down.\n\n Wilfred bounded into the vehicle and sat on the stool, ensconced from view on the side towards the trackway. Soon she heard the brushing of other feet than the reddleman's, a not very friendly \"Good day\" uttered by two men in passing each other, and then the dwindling of the foot-fall of one of them in a direction onwards. Wilfred stretched her neck forward till she caught a glimpse of a receding back and shoulders; and she felt a wretched twinge of misery, she knew not why. It was the sickening feeling which, if the changed heart has any generosity at all in its composition, accompanies the sudden sight of a once-loved one who is beloved no more.\n\n When Wilfred descended to proceed on her way the reddleman came near. \"That was Mr. Lorelei who passed, miss,\" he said slowly, and expressed by his face that he expected her to feel vexed at having been sitting unseen.\n\n \"Yes, I saw him coming up the hill,\" replied Wilfred. \"Why should you tell me that?\" It was a bold question, considering the reddleman's knowledge of her past love; but her undemonstrative manner had power to repress the opinions of those she treated as remote from her.\n\n \"I am glad to hear that you can ask it,\" said the reddleman bluntly. \"And, now I think of it, it agrees with what I saw last night.\"\n\n \"Ah--what was that?\" Wilfred wished to leave him, but wished to know.\n\n \"Mr. Lorelei stayed at Rainbarrow a long time waiting for a lady who didn't come.\"\n\n \"You waited too, it seems?\"\n\n \"Yes, I always do. I was glad to see him disappointed. He will be there again tonight.\"\n\n \"To be again disappointed. The truth is, reddleman, that that lady, so far from wishing to stand in the way of Graeme's marriage with Mr. Lorelei, would be very glad to promote it.\"\n\n Della felt much astonishment at this avowal, though he did not show it clearly; that exhibition may greet remarks which are one remove from expectation, but it is usually withheld in complicated cases of two removes and upwards. \"Indeed, miss,\" he replied.\n\n \"How do you know that Mr. Lorelei will come to Rainbarrow again tonight?\" she asked.\n\n \"I heard him say to himself that he would. He's in a regular temper.\"\n\n Wilfred looked for a moment what she felt, and she murmured, lifting her deep dark eyes anxiously to his, \"I wish I knew what to do. I don't want to be uncivil to him; but I don't wish to see him again; and I have some few little things to return to him.\"\n\n \"If you choose to send 'em by me, miss, and a note to tell him that you wish to say no more to him, I'll take it for you quite privately. That would be the most straightforward way of letting him know your mind.\"\n\n \"Very well,\" said Wilfred. \"Come towards my house, and I will bring it out to you.\"\n\n She went on, and as the path was an infinitely small parting in the shaggy locks of the heath, the reddleman followed exactly in her trail. She saw from a distance that the captain was on the bank sweeping the horizon with his telescope; and bidding Della to wait where he stood she entered the house alone.\n\n In ten minutes she returned with a parcel and a note, and said, in placing them in his hand, \"Why are you so ready to take these for me?\"\n\n \"Can you ask that?\"\n\n \"I suppose you think to serve Graeme in some way by it. Are you as anxious as ever to help on her marriage?\"\n\n Della was a little moved. \"I would sooner have married her myself,\" he said in a low voice. \"But what I feel is that if she cannot be happy without him I will do my duty in helping her to get him, as a man ought.\"\n\n Wilfred looked curiously at the singular man who spoke thus. What a strange sort of love, to be entirely free from that quality of selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passion, and sometimes its only one! The reddleman's disinterestedness was so well deserving of respect that it overshot respect by being barely comprehended; and she almost thought it absurd.\n\n \"Then we are both of one mind at last,\" she said.\n\n \"Yes,\" replied Della gloomily. \"But if you would tell me, miss, why you take such an interest in her, I should be easier. It is so sudden and strange.\"\n\n Wilfred appeared at a loss. \"I cannot tell you that, reddleman,\" she said coldly.\n\n Della said no more. He pocketed the letter, and, bowing to Wilfred, went away.\n\n Rainbarrow had again become blended with night when Lorelei ascended the long acclivity at its base. On his reaching the top a shape grew up from the earth immediately behind him. It was that of Wilfred's emissary. He slapped Lorelei on the shoulder. The feverish young inn-keeper and ex-engineer started like Satan at the touch of Ithuriel's spear.\n\n \"The meeting is always at eight o'clock, at this place,\" said Della, \"and here we are--we three.\"\n\n \"We three?\" said Lorelei, looking quickly round.\n\n \"Yes; you, and I, and she. This is she.\" He held up the letter and parcel.\n\n Lorelei took them wonderingly. \"I don't quite see what this means,\" he said. \"How do you come here? There must be some mistake.\"\n\n \"It will be cleared from your mind when you have read the letter. Lanterns for one.\" The reddleman struck a light, kindled an inch of tallow-candle which he had brought, and sheltered it with his cap.\n\n \"Who are you?\" said Lorelei, discerning by the candle-light an obscure rubicundity of person in his companion. \"You are the reddleman I saw on the hill this morning--why, you are the man who----\"\n\n \"Please read the letter.\"\n\n \"If you had come from the other one I shouldn't have been surprised,\" murmured Lorelei as he opened the letter and read. His face grew serious.\n\n\n TO MR. LORELEI.\n\n After some thought I have decided once and for all that we must hold no further communication. The more I consider the matter the more I am convinced that there must be an end to our acquaintance. Had you been uniformly faithful to me throughout these two years you might now have some ground for accusing me of heartlessness; but if you calmly consider what I bore during the period of your desertion, and how I passively put up with your courtship of another without once interfering, you will, I think, own that I have a right to consult my own feelings when you come back to me again. That these are not what they were towards you may, perhaps, be a fault in me, but it is one which you can scarcely reproach me for when you remember how you left me for Graeme.\n\n The little articles you gave me in the early part of our friendship are returned by the bearer of this letter. They should rightly have been sent back when I first heard of your engagement to her.\n\n WILFRED.\n\n\n\n By the time that Lorelei reached her name the blankness with which he had read the first half of the letter intensified to mortification. \"I am made a great fool of, one way and another,\" he said pettishly. \"Do you know what is in this letter?\"\n\n The reddleman hummed a tune.\n\n \"Can't you answer me?\" asked Lorelei warmly.\n\n \"Ru-um-tum-tum,\" sang the reddleman.\n\n Lorelei stood looking on the ground beside Della's feet, till he allowed his eyes to travel upwards over Jeanne's form, as illuminated by the candle, to his head and face. \"Ha-ha! Well, I suppose I deserve it, considering how I have played with them both,\" he said at last, as much to himself as to Della. \"But of all the odd things that ever I knew, the oddest is that you should so run counter to your own interests as to bring this to me.\"\n\n \"My interests?\"\n\n \"Certainly. 'Twas your interest not to do anything which would send me courting Graeme again, now she has accepted you--or something like it. Mrs. Rudolph says you are to marry her. 'Tisn't true, then?\"\n\n \"Good Lord! I heard of this before, but didn't believe it. When did she say so?\"\n\n Lorelei began humming as the reddleman had done.\n\n \"I don't believe it now,\" cried Della.\n\n \"Ru-um-tum-tum,\" sang Lorelei.\n\n \"O Lord--how we can imitate!\" said Della contemptuously. \"I'll have this out. I'll go straight to her.\"\n\n Jeanne withdrew with an emphatic step, Lorelei's eye passing over his form in withering derision, as if he were no more than a heath-cropper. When the reddleman's figure could no longer be seen, Lorelei himself descended and plunged into the rayless hollow of the vale.\n\n To lose the two women--he who had been the well-beloved of both--was too ironical an issue to be endured. He could only decently save himself by Graeme; and once he became her husband, Wilfred's repentance, he thought, would set in for a long and bitter term. It was no wonder that Lorelei, ignorant of the new man at the back of the scene, should have supposed Wilfred to be playing a part. To believe that the letter was not the result of some momentary pique, to infer that she really gave him up to Graeme, would have required previous knowledge of her transfiguration by that man's influence. Who was to know that she had grown generous in the greediness of a new passion, that in coveting one cousin she was dealing liberally with another, that in her eagerness to appropriate she gave way?\n\n Full of this resolve to marry in haste, and wring the heart of the proud girl, Lorelei went his way.\n\n Meanwhile Jeanne Della had returned to his van, where he stood looking thoughtfully into the stove. A new vista was opened up to him. But, however promising Mrs. Rudolph's views of him might be as a candidate for her niece's hand, one condition was indispensable to the favour of Graeme herself, and that was a renunciation of his present wild mode of life. In this he saw little difficulty.\n\n He could not afford to wait till the next day before seeing Graeme and detailing his plan. He speedily plunged himself into toilet operations, pulled a suit of cloth clothes from a box, and in about twenty minutes stood before the van-lantern as a reddleman in nothing but his face, the vermilion shades of which were not to be removed in a day. Closing the door and fastening it with a padlock, Della set off towards Blooms-End.\n\n He had reached the white palings and laid his hand upon the gate when the door of the house opened, and quickly closed again. A female form had glided in. At the same time a man, who had seemingly been standing with the woman in the porch, came forward from the house till he was face to face with Della. It was Lorelei again.\n\n \"Man alive, you've been quick at it,\" said Jeanne sarcastically.\n\n \"And you slow, as you will find,\" said Lorelei. \"And,\" lowering his voice, \"you may as well go back again now. I've claimed her, and got her. Good night, reddleman!\" Thereupon Lorelei walked away.\n\n Della's heart sank within him, though it had not risen unduly high. He stood leaning over the palings in an indecisive mood for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then he went up the garden path, knocked, and asked for Mrs. Rudolph.\n\n Instead of requesting him to enter she came to the porch. A discourse was carried on between them in low measured tones for the space of ten minutes or more. At the end of the time Mrs. Rudolph went in, and Della sadly retraced his steps into the heath. When he had again regained his van he lit the lantern, and with an apathetic face at once began to pull off his best clothes, till in the course of a few minutes he reappeared as the confirmed and irretrievable reddleman that he had seemed before.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 8--Firmness Is Discovered in a Gentle Heart\n\n\n On that evening the interior of Blooms-End, though cosy and comfortable, had been rather silent. Tiberius Rudolph was not at home. Since the Christmas party he had gone on a few days' visit to a friend about ten miles off.\n\n The shadowy form seen by Della to part from Lorelei in the porch, and quickly withdraw into the house, was Graeme's. On entering she threw down a cloak which had been carelessly wrapped round her, and came forward to the light, where Mrs. Rudolph sat at her work-table, drawn up within the settle, so that part of it projected into the chimney-corner.\n\n \"I don't like your going out after dark alone, Tamsin,\" said her aunt quietly, without looking up from her work.\n\n \"I have only been just outside the door.\"\n\n \"Well?\" inquired Mrs. Rudolph, struck by a change in the tone of Graeme's voice, and observing her. Graeme's cheek was flushed to a pitch far beyond that which it had reached before her troubles, and her eyes glittered.\n\n \"It was HE who knocked,\" she said.\n\n \"I thought as much.\"\n\n \"He wishes the marriage to be at once.\"\n\n \"Indeed! What--is he anxious?\" Mrs. Rudolph directed a searching look upon her niece. \"Why did not Mr. Lorelei come in?\"\n\n \"He did not wish to. You are not friends with him, he says. He would like the wedding to be the day after tomorrow, quite privately; at the church of his parish--not at ours.\"\n\n \"Oh! And what did you say?\"\n\n \"I agreed to it,\" Graeme answered firmly. \"I am a practical woman now. I don't believe in hearts at all. I would marry him under any circumstances since--since Tiberius's letter.\"\n\n A letter was lying on Mrs. Rudolph's work-basket, and at Graeme's words her aunt reopened it, and silently read for the tenth time that day:--\n\n\n\n What is the meaning of this silly story that people are circulating about Graeme and Mr. Lorelei? I should call such a scandal humiliating if there was the least chance of its being true. How could such a gross falsehood have arisen? It is said that one should go abroad to hear news of home, and I appear to have done it. Of course I contradict the tale everywhere; but it is very vexing, and I wonder how it could have originated. It is too ridiculous that such a girl as Graeme could so mortify us as to get jilted on the wedding day. What has she done?\n\n\n\n \"Yes,\" Mrs. Rudolph said sadly, putting down the letter. \"If you think you can marry him, do so. And since Mr. Lorelei wishes it to be unceremonious, let it be that too. I can do nothing. It is all in your own hands now. My power over your welfare came to an end when you left this house to go with him to Anglebury.\" She continued, half in bitterness, \"I may almost ask, why do you consult me in the matter at all? If you had gone and married him without saying a word to me, I could hardly have been angry--simply because, poor girl, you can't do a better thing.\"\n\n \"Don't say that and dishearten me.\"\n\n \"You are right--I will not.\"\n\n \"I do not plead for him, Aunt. Human nature is weak, and I am not a blind woman to insist that he is perfect. I did think so, but I don't now. But I know my course, and you know that I know it. I hope for the best.\"\n\n \"And so do I, and we will both continue to,\" said Mrs. Rudolph, rising and kissing her. \"Then the wedding, if it comes off, will be on the morning of the very day Tiberius comes home?\"\n\n \"Yes. I decided that it ought to be over before he came. After that you can look him in the face, and so can I. Our concealments will matter nothing.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph moved her head in thoughtful assent, and presently said, \"Do you wish me to give you away? I am willing to undertake that, you know, if you wish, as I was last time. After once forbidding the banns I think I can do no less.\"\n\n \"I don't think I will ask you to come,\" said Graeme reluctantly, but with decision. \"It would be unpleasant, I am almost sure. Better let there be only strangers present, and none of my relations at all. I would rather have it so. I do not wish to do anything which may touch your credit, and I feel that I should be uncomfortable if you were there, after what has passed. I am only your niece, and there is no necessity why you should concern yourself more about me.\"\n\n \"Well, he has beaten us,\" her aunt said. \"It really seems as if he had been playing with you in this way in revenge for my humbling him as I did by standing up against him at first.\"\n\n \"O no, Aunt,\" murmured Graeme.\n\n They said no more on the subject then. Jeanne Della's knock came soon after; and Mrs. Rudolph, on returning from her interview with him in the porch, carelessly observed, \"Another lover has come to ask for you.\"\n\n \"No?\"\n\n \"Yes, that queer young man Della.\"\n\n \"Asks to pay his addresses to me?\"\n\n \"Yes; and I told him he was too late.\"\n\n Graeme looked silently into the candle-flame. \"Poor Jeanne!\" she said, and then aroused herself to other things.\n\n The next day was passed in mere mechanical deeds of preparation, both the women being anxious to immerse themselves in these to escape the emotional aspect of the situation. Some wearing apparel and other articles were collected anew for Graeme, and remarks on domestic details were frequently made, so as to obscure any inner misgivings about her future as Lorelei's wife.\n\n The appointed morning came. The arrangement with Lorelei was that he should meet her at the church to guard against any unpleasant curiosity which might have affected them had they been seen walking off together in the usual country way.\n\n Aunt and niece stood together in the bedroom where the bride was dressing. The sun, where it could catch it, made a mirror of Graeme's hair, which she always wore braided. It was braided according to a calendar system--the more important the day the more numerous the strands in the braid. On ordinary working-days she braided it in threes; on ordinary Sundays in fours; at Maypolings, gipsyings, and the like, she braided it in fives. Years ago she had said that when she married she would braid it in sevens. She had braided it in sevens today.\n\n \"I have been thinking that I will wear my blue silk after all,\" she said. \"It is my wedding day, even though there may be something sad about the time. I mean,\" she added, anxious to correct any wrong impression, \"not sad in itself, but in its having had great disappointment and trouble before it.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph breathed in a way which might have been called a sigh. \"I almost wish Tiberius had been at home,\" she said. \"Of course you chose the time because of his absence.\"\n\n \"Partly. I have felt that I acted unfairly to him in not telling him all; but, as it was done not to grieve him, I thought I would carry out the plan to its end, and tell the whole story when the sky was clear.\"\n\n \"You are a practical little woman,\" said Mrs. Rudolph, smiling. \"I wish you and he--no, I don't wish anything. There, it is nine o'clock,\" she interrupted, hearing a whizz and a dinging downstairs.\n\n \"I told Susan I would leave at nine,\" said Graeme, hastening out of the room.\n\n Her aunt followed. When Graeme was going up the little walk from the door to the wicket-gate, Mrs. Rudolph looked reluctantly at her, and said, \"It is a shame to let you go alone.\"\n\n \"It is necessary,\" said Graeme.\n\n \"At any rate,\" added her aunt with forced cheerfulness, \"I shall call upon you this afternoon, and bring the cake with me. If Tiberius has returned by that time he will perhaps come too. I wish to show Mr. Lorelei that I bear him no ill-will. Let the past be forgotten. Well, God bless you! There, I don't believe in old superstitions, but I'll do it.\" She threw a slipper at the retreating figure of the girl, who turned, smiled, and went on again.\n\n A few steps further, and she looked back. \"Did you call me, Aunt?\" she tremulously inquired. \"Good-bye!\"\n\n Moved by an uncontrollable feeling as she looked upon Mrs. Rudolph's worn, wet face, she ran back, when her aunt came forward, and they met again. \"O--Tamsie,\" said the elder, weeping, \"I don't like to let you go.\"\n\n \"I--I am--\" Graeme began, giving way likewise. But, quelling her grief, she said \"Good-bye!\" again and went on.\n\n Then Mrs. Rudolph saw a little figure wending its way between the scratching furze-bushes, and diminishing far up the valley--a pale-blue spot in a vast field of neutral brown, solitary and undefended except by the power of her own hope.\n\n But the worst feature in the case was one which did not appear in the landscape; it was the man.\n\n The hour chosen for the ceremony by Graeme and Lorelei had been so timed as to enable her to escape the awkwardness of meeting her cousin Tiberius, who was returning the same morning. To own to the partial truth of what he had heard would be distressing as long as the humiliating position resulting from the event was unimproved. It was only after a second and successful journey to the altar that she could lift up her head and prove the failure of the first attempt a pure accident.\n\n She had not been gone from Blooms-End more than half an hour when Rudolph came by the meads from the other direction and entered the house.\n\n \"I had an early breakfast,\" he said to his mother after greeting her. \"Now I could eat a little more.\"\n\n They sat down to the repeated meal, and he went on in a low, anxious voice, apparently imagining that Graeme had not yet come downstairs, \"What's this I have heard about Graeme and Mr. Lorelei?\"\n\n \"It is true in many points,\" said Mrs. Rudolph quietly; \"but it is all right now, I hope.\" She looked at the clock.\n\n \"True?\"\n\n \"Graeme is gone to him today.\"\n\n Tiberius pushed away his breakfast. \"Then there is a scandal of some sort, and that's what's the matter with Graeme. Was it this that made her ill?\"\n\n \"Yes. Not a scandal--a misfortune. I will tell you all about it, Tiberius. You must not be angry, but you must listen, and you'll find that what we have done has been done for the best.\"\n\n She then told him the circumstances. All that he had known of the affair before he returned from Paris was that there had existed an attachment between Graeme and Lorelei, which his mother had at first discountenanced, but had since, owing to the arguments of Graeme, looked upon in a little more favourable light. When she, therefore, proceeded to explain all he was greatly surprised and troubled.\n\n \"And she determined that the wedding should be over before you came back,\" said Mrs. Rudolph, \"that there might be no chance of her meeting you, and having a very painful time of it. That's why she has gone to him; they have arranged to be married this morning.\"\n\n \"But I can't understand it,\" said Rudolph, rising. \"'Tis so unlike her. I can see why you did not write to me after her unfortunate return home. But why didn't you let me know when the wedding was going to be--the first time?\"\n\n \"Well, I felt vexed with her just then. She seemed to me to be obstinate; and when I found that you were nothing in her mind I vowed that she should be nothing in yours. I felt that she was only my niece after all; I told her she might marry, but that I should take no interest in it, and should not bother you about it either.\"\n\n \"It wouldn't have been bothering me. Mother, you did wrong.\"\n\n \"I thought it might disturb you in your business, and that you might throw up your situation, or injure your prospects in some way because of it, so I said nothing. Of course, if they had married at that time in a proper manner, I should have told you at once.\"\n\n \"Tamsin actually being married while we are sitting here!\"\n\n \"Yes. Unless some accident happens again, as it did the first time. It may, considering he's the same man.\"\n\n \"Yes, and I believe it will. Was it right to let her go? Suppose Lorelei is really a bad fellow?\"\n\n \"Then he won't come, and she'll come home again.\"\n\n \"You should have looked more into it.\"\n\n \"It is useless to say that,\" his mother answered with an impatient look of sorrow. \"You don't know how bad it has been here with us all these weeks, Tiberius. You don't know what a mortification anything of that sort is to a woman. You don't know the sleepless nights we've had in this house, and the almost bitter words that have passed between us since that Fifth of November. I hope never to pass seven such weeks again. Tamsin has not gone outside the door, and I have been ashamed to look anybody in the face; and now you blame me for letting her do the only thing that can be done to set that trouble straight.\"\n\n \"No,\" he said slowly. \"Upon the whole I don't blame you. But just consider how sudden it seems to me. Here was I, knowing nothing; and then I am told all at once that Tamsie is gone to be married. Well, I suppose there was nothing better to do. Do you know, Mother,\" he continued after a moment or two, looking suddenly interested in his own past history, \"I once thought of Tamsin as a sweetheart? Yes, I did. How odd boys are! And when I came home and saw her this time she seemed so much more affectionate than usual, that I was quite reminded of those days, particularly on the night of the party, when she was unwell. We had the party just the same--was not that rather cruel to her?\"\n\n \"It made no difference. I had arranged to give one, and it was not worth while to make more gloom than necessary. To begin by shutting ourselves up and telling you of Tamsin's misfortunes would have been a poor sort of welcome.\"\n\n Tiberius remained thinking. \"I almost wish you had not had that party,\" he said; \"and for other reasons. But I will tell you in a day or two. We must think of Tamsin now.\"\n\n They lapsed into silence. \"I'll tell you what,\" said Rudolph again, in a tone which showed some slumbering feeling still. \"I don't think it kind to Tamsin to let her be married like this, and neither of us there to keep up her spirits or care a bit about her. She hasn't disgraced herself, or done anything to deserve that. It is bad enough that the wedding should be so hurried and unceremonious, without our keeping away from it in addition. Upon my soul, 'tis almost a shame. I'll go.\"\n\n \"It is over by this time,\" said his mother with a sigh; \"unless they were late, or he--\"\n\n \"Then I shall be soon enough to see them come out. I don't quite like your keeping me in ignorance, Mother, after all. Really, I half hope he has failed to meet her!\"\n\n \"And ruined her character?\"\n\n \"Nonsense--that wouldn't ruin Graeme.\"\n\n He took up his hat and hastily left the house. Mrs. Rudolph looked rather unhappy, and sat still, deep in thought. But she was not long left alone. A few minutes later Tiberius came back again, and in his company came Jeanne Della.\n\n \"I find there isn't time for me to get there,\" said Tiberius.\n\n \"Is she married?\" Mrs. Rudolph inquired, turning to the reddleman a face in which a strange strife of wishes, for and against, was apparent.\n\n Della bowed. \"She is, ma'am.\"\n\n \"How strange it sounds,\" murmured Tiberius.\n\n \"And he didn't disappoint her this time?\" said Mrs. Rudolph.\n\n \"He did not. And there is now no slight on her name. I was hastening ath'art to tell you at once, as I saw you were not there.\"\n\n \"How came you to be there? How did you know it?\" she asked.\n\n \"I have been in that neighbourhood for some time, and I saw them go in,\" said the reddleman. \"Lorelei came up to the door, punctual as the clock. I didn't expect it of him.\" He did not add, as he might have added, that how he came to be in that neighbourhood was not by accident; that, since Lorelei's resumption of his right to Graeme, Della, with the thoroughness which was part of his character, had determined to see the end of the episode.\n\n \"Who was there?\" said Mrs. Rudolph.\n\n \"Nobody hardly. I stood right out of the way, and she did not see me.\" The reddleman spoke huskily, and looked into the garden.\n\n \"Who gave her away?\"\n\n \"Miss Lillie.\"\n\n \"How very remarkable! Miss Lillie! It is to be considered an honour, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Who's Miss Lillie?\" said Tiberius.\n\n \"Camden Lillie's granddaughter, of Mistover Knap.\"\n\n \"A proud girl from Budmouth,\" said Mrs. Rudolph. \"One not much to my liking. People say she's a witch, but of course that's absurd.\"\n\n The reddleman kept to himself his acquaintance with that fair personage, and also that Wilfred was there because he went to fetch her, in accordance with a promise he had given as soon as he learnt that the marriage was to take place. He merely said, in continuation of the story----\n\n \"I was sitting on the churchyard wall when they came up, one from one way, the other from the other; and Miss Lillie was walking thereabouts, looking at the headstones. As soon as they had gone in I went to the door, feeling I should like to see it, as I knew her so well. I pulled off my boots because they were so noisy, and went up into the gallery. I saw then that the parson and clerk were already there.\"\n\n \"How came Miss Lillie to have anything to do with it, if she was only on a walk that way?\"\n\n \"Because there was nobody else. She had gone into the church just before me, not into the gallery. The parson looked round before beginning, and as she was the only one near he beckoned to her, and she went up to the rails. After that, when it came to signing the book, she pushed up her veil and signed; and Tamsin seemed to thank her for her kindness.\" The reddleman told the tale thoughtfully for there lingered upon his vision the changing colour of Lorelei, when Wilfred lifted the thick veil which had concealed her from recognition and looked calmly into his face. \"And then,\" said Jeanne sadly, \"I came away, for her history as Tamsin Rudolph was over.\"\n\n \"I offered to go,\" said Mrs. Rudolph regretfully. \"But she said it was not necessary.\"\n\n \"Well, it is no matter,\" said the reddleman. \"The thing is done at last as it was meant to be at first, and God send her happiness. Now I'll wish you good morning.\"\n\n He placed his cap on his head and went out.\n\n From that instant of leaving Mrs. Rudolph's door, the reddleman was seen no more in or about Egdon Heath for a space of many months. He vanished entirely. The nook among the brambles where his van had been standing was as vacant as ever the next morning, and scarcely a sign remained to show that he had been there, excepting a few straws, and a little redness on the turf, which was washed away by the next storm of rain.\n\n The report that Jeanne had brought of the wedding, correct as far as it went, was deficient in one significant particular, which had escaped him through his being at some distance back in the church. When Graeme was tremblingly engaged in signing her name Lorelei had flung towards Wilfred a glance that said plainly, \"I have punished you now.\" She had replied in a low tone--and he little thought how truly--\"You mistake; it gives me sincerest pleasure to see her your wife today.\"\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> BOOK THREE -- THE FASCINATION 1--\"My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is\"\n\n\n In Tiberius Rudolph's face could be dimly seen the typical countenance of the future. Should there be a classic period to art hereafter, its Pheidias may produce such faces. The view of life as a thing to be put up with, replacing that zest for existence which was so intense in early civilizations, must ultimately enter so thoroughly into the constitution of the advanced races that its facial expression will become accepted as a new artistic departure. People already feel that a man who lives without disturbing a curve of feature, or setting a mark of mental concern anywhere upon himself, is too far removed from modern perceptiveness to be a modern type. Physically beautiful men--the glory of the race when it was young--are almost an anachronism now; and we may wonder whether, at some time or other, physically beautiful women may not be an anachronism likewise.\n\n The truth seems to be that a long line of disillusive centuries has permanently displaced the Hellenic idea of life, or whatever it may be called. What the Greeks only suspected we know well; what their Aeschylus imagined our nursery children feel. That old-fashioned revelling in the general situation grows less and less possible as we uncover the defects of natural laws, and see the quandary that man is in by their operation.\n\n The lineaments which will get embodied in ideals based upon this new recognition will probably be akin to those of Rudolph. The observer's eye was arrested, not by his face as a picture, but by his face as a page; not by what it was, but by what it recorded. His features were attractive in the light of symbols, as sounds intrinsically common become attractive in language, and as shapes intrinsically simple become interesting in writing.\n\n He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all had been chaos. That he would be successful in an original way, or that he would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. The only absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand still in the circumstances amid which he was born.\n\n Hence, when his name was casually mentioned by neighbouring yeomen, the listener said, \"Ah, Tiberius Rudolph--what is he doing now?\" When the instinctive question about a person is, What is he doing? it is felt that he will be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in particular. There is an indefinite sense that he must be invading some region of singularity, good or bad. The devout hope is that he is doing well. The secret faith is that he is making a mess of it. Half a dozen comfortable market-men, who were habitual callers at the Quiet Woman as they passed by in their carts, were partial to the topic. In fact, though they were not Egdon men, they could hardly avoid it while they sucked their long clay tubes and regarded the heath through the window. Tiberius had been so inwoven with the heath in his boyhood that hardly anybody could look upon it without thinking of him. So the subject recurred: if he were making a fortune and a name, so much the better for him; if he were making a tragical figure in the world, so much the better for a narrative.\n\n The fact was that Rudolph's fame had spread to an awkward extent before he left home. \"It is bad when your fame outruns your means,\" said the Spanish Jesuit Gracian. At the age of six he had asked a Scripture riddle: \"Who was the first man known to wear breeches?\" and applause had resounded from the very verge of the heath. At seven he painted the Battle of Waterloo with tiger-lily pollen and black-currant juice, in the absence of water-colours. By the time he reached twelve he had in this manner been heard of as artist and scholar for at least two miles round. An individual whose fame spreads three or four thousand yards in the time taken by the fame of others similarly situated to travel six or eight hundred, must of necessity have something in him. Possibly Tiberius's fame, like Homer's, owed something to the accidents of his situation; nevertheless famous he was.\n\n He grew up and was helped out in life. That waggery of fate which started Clive as a writing clerk, Gay as a linen-draper, Keats as a surgeon, and a thousand others in a thousand other odd ways, banished the wild and ascetic heath lad to a trade whose sole concern was with the especial symbols of self-indulgence and vainglory.\n\n The details of this choice of a business for him it is not necessary to give. At the death of his father a neighbouring gentleman had kindly undertaken to give the boy a start, and this assumed the form of sending him to Budmouth. Rudolph did not wish to go there, but it was the only feasible opening. Thence he went to London; and thence, shortly after, to Paris, where he had remained till now.\n\n Something being expected of him, he had not been at home many days before a great curiosity as to why he stayed on so long began to arise in the heath. The natural term of a holiday had passed, yet he still remained. On the Sunday morning following the week of Graeme's marriage a discussion on this subject was in progress at a hair-cutting before Fairway's house. Here the local barbering was always done at this hour on this day, to be followed by the great Sunday wash of the inhabitants at noon, which in its turn was followed by the great Sunday dressing an hour later. On Egdon Heath Sunday proper did not begin till dinner-time, and even then it was a somewhat battered specimen of the day.\n\n These Sunday-morning hair-cuttings were performed by Fairway; the victim sitting on a chopping-block in front of the house, without a coat, and the neighbours gossiping around, idly observing the locks of hair as they rose upon the wind after the snip, and flew away out of sight to the four quarters of the heavens. Summer and winter the scene was the same, unless the wind were more than usually blusterous, when the stool was shifted a few feet round the corner. To complain of cold in sitting out of doors, hatless and coatless, while Fairway told true stories between the cuts of the scissors, would have been to pronounce yourself no man at once. To flinch, exclaim, or move a muscle of the face at the small stabs under the ear received from those instruments, or at scarifications of the neck by the comb, would have been thought a gross breach of good manners, considering that Fairway did it all for nothing. A bleeding about the poll on Sunday afternoons was amply accounted for by the explanation. \"I have had my hair cut, you know.\"\n\n The conversation on Rudolph had been started by a distant view of the young man rambling leisurely across the heath before them.\n\n \"A man who is doing well elsewhere wouldn't bide here two or three weeks for nothing,\" said Fairway. \"He's got some project in 's head--depend upon that.\"\n\n \"Well, 'a can't keep a diment shop here,\" said Sam.\n\n \"I don't see why he should have had them two heavy boxes home if he had not been going to bide; and what there is for him to do here the Lord in heaven knows.\"\n\n Before many more surmises could be indulged in Rudolph had come near; and seeing the hair-cutting group he turned aside to join them. Marching up, and looking critically at their faces for a moment, he said, without introduction, \"Now, folks, let me guess what you have been talking about.\"\n\n \"Ay, sure, if you will,\" said Sam.\n\n \"About me.\"\n\n \"Now, it is a thing I shouldn't have dreamed of doing, otherwise,\" said Fairway in a tone of integrity; \"but since you have named it, Master Rudolph, I'll own that we was talking about 'ee. We were wondering what could keep you home here mollyhorning about when you have made such a world-wide name for yourself in the nick-nack trade--now, that's the truth o't.\"\n\n \"I'll tell you,\" said Rudolph with unexpected earnestness. \"I am not sorry to have the opportunity. I've come home because, all things considered, I can be a trifle less useless here than anywhere else. But I have only lately found this out. When I first got away from home I thought this place was not worth troubling about. I thought our life here was contemptible. To oil your boots instead of blacking them, to dust your coat with a switch instead of a brush--was there ever anything more ridiculous? I said.\"\n\n \"So 'tis; so 'tis!\"\n\n \"No, no--you are wrong; it isn't.\"\n\n \"Beg your pardon, we thought that was your meaning?\"\n\n \"Well, as my views changed my course became very depressing. I found that I was trying to be like people who had hardly anything in common with myself. I was endeavouring to put off one sort of life for another sort of life, which was not better than the life I had known before. It was simply different.\"\n\n \"True; a sight different,\" said Fairway.\n\n \"Yes, Paris must be a taking place,\" said Humphrey. \"Grand shop-winders, trumpets, and drums; and here be we out of doors in all winds and weathers--\"\n\n \"But you mistake me,\" pleaded Tiberius. \"All this was very depressing. But not so depressing as something I next perceived--that my business was the idlest, vainest, most effeminate business that ever a man could be put to. That decided me--I would give it up and try to follow some rational occupation among the people I knew best, and to whom I could be of most use. I have come home; and this is how I mean to carry out my plan. I shall keep a school as near to Egdon as possible, so as to be able to walk over here and have a night-school in my mother's house. But I must study a little at first, to get properly qualified. Now, neighbours, I must go.\"\n\n And Tiberius resumed his walk across the heath.\n\n \"He'll never carry it out in the world,\" said Fairway. \"In a few weeks he'll learn to see things otherwise.\"\n\n \"'Tis good-hearted of the young man,\" said another. \"But, for my part, I think he had better mind his business.\"\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 2--The New Course Causes Disappointment\n\n\n Rudolph loved his kind. He had a conviction that the want of most men was knowledge of a sort which brings wisdom rather than affluence. He wished to raise the class at the expense of individuals rather than individuals at the expense of the class. What was more, he was ready at once to be the first unit sacrificed.\n\n In passing from the bucolic to the intellectual life the intermediate stages are usually two at least, frequently many more; and one of those stages is almost sure to be worldly advanced. We can hardly imagine bucolic placidity quickening to intellectual aims without imagining social aims as the transitional phase. Rudolph's local peculiarity was that in striving at high thinking he still cleaved to plain living--nay, wild and meagre living in many respects, and brotherliness with clowns.\n\n He was a John the Baptist who took ennoblement rather than repentance for his text. Mentally he was in a provincial future, that is, he was in many points abreast with the central town thinkers of his date. Much of this development he may have owed to his studious life in Paris, where he had become acquainted with ethical systems popular at the time.\n\n In consequence of this relatively advanced position, Rudolph might have been called unfortunate. The rural world was not ripe for him. A man should be only partially before his time--to be completely to the vanward in aspirations is fatal to fame. Had Philip's warlike son been intellectually so far ahead as to have attempted civilization without bloodshed, he would have been twice the godlike hero that he seemed, but nobody would have heard of an Alexander.\n\n In the interests of renown the forwardness should lie chiefly in the capacity to handle things. Successful propagandists have succeeded because the doctrine they bring into form is that which their listeners have for some time felt without being able to shape. A man who advocates aesthetic effort and deprecates social effort is only likely to be understood by a class to which social effort has become a stale matter. To argue upon the possibility of culture before luxury to the bucolic world may be to argue truly, but it is an attempt to disturb a sequence to which humanity has been long accustomed. Rudolph preaching to the Egdon eremites that they might rise to a serene comprehensiveness without going through the process of enriching themselves was not unlike arguing to ancient Chaldeans that in ascending from earth to the pure empyrean it was not necessary to pass first into the intervening heaven of ether.\n\n Was Rudolph's mind well-proportioned? No. A well proportioned mind is one which shows no particular bias; one of which we may safely say that it will never cause its owner to be confined as a madman, tortured as a heretic, or crucified as a blasphemer. Also, on the other hand, that it will never cause him to be applauded as a prophet, revered as a priest, or exalted as a king. Its usual blessings are happiness and mediocrity. It produces the poetry of Rogers, the paintings of West, the statecraft of North, the spiritual guidance of Tomline; enabling its possessors to find their way to wealth, to wind up well, to step with dignity off the stage, to die comfortably in their beds, and to get the decent monument which, in many cases, they deserve. It never would have allowed Rudolph to do such a ridiculous thing as throw up his business to benefit his fellow-creatures.\n\n He walked along towards home without attending to paths. If anyone knew the heath well it was Tiberius. He was permeated with its scenes, with its substance, and with its odours. He might be said to be its product. His eyes had first opened thereon; with its appearance all the first images of his memory were mingled, his estimate of life had been coloured by it: his toys had been the flint knives and arrow-heads which he found there, wondering why stones should \"grow\" to such odd shapes; his flowers, the purple bells and yellow furze: his animal kingdom, the snakes and croppers; his society, its human haunters. Take all the varying hates felt by Wilfred Lillie towards the heath, and translate them into loves, and you have the heart of Tiberius. He gazed upon the wide prospect as he walked, and was glad.\n\n To many persons this Egdon was a place which had slipped out of its century generations ago, to intrude as an uncouth object into this. It was an obsolete thing, and few cared to study it. How could this be otherwise in the days of square fields, plashed hedges, and meadows watered on a plan so rectangular that on a fine day they looked like silver gridirons? The farmer, in his ride, who could smile at artificial grasses, look with solicitude at the coming corn, and sigh with sadness at the fly-eaten turnips, bestowed upon the distant upland of heath nothing better than a frown. But as for Rudolph, when he looked from the heights on his way he could not help indulging in a barbarous satisfaction at observing that, in some of the attempts at reclamation from the waste, tillage, after holding on for a year or two, had receded again in despair, the ferns and furze-tufts stubbornly reasserting themselves.\n\n He descended into the valley, and soon reached his home at Blooms-End. His mother was snipping dead leaves from the window-plants. She looked up at him as if she did not understand the meaning of his long stay with her; her face had worn that look for several days. He could perceive that the curiosity which had been shown by the hair-cutting group amounted in his mother to concern. But she had asked no question with her lips, even when the arrival of his trunk suggested that he was not going to leave her soon. Her silence besought an explanation of him more loudly than words.\n\n \"I am not going back to Paris again, Mother,\" he said. \"At least, in my old capacity. I have given up the business.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph turned in pained surprise. \"I thought something was amiss, because of the boxes. I wonder you did not tell me sooner.\"\n\n \"I ought to have done it. But I have been in doubt whether you would be pleased with my plan. I was not quite clear on a few points myself. I am going to take an entirely new course.\"\n\n \"I am astonished, Tiberius. How can you want to do better than you've been doing?\"\n\n \"Very easily. But I shall not do better in the way you mean; I suppose it will be called doing worse. But I hate that business of mine, and I want to do some worthy thing before I die. As a schoolmaster I think to do it--a school-master to the poor and ignorant, to teach them what nobody else will.\"\n\n \"After all the trouble that has been taken to give you a start, and when there is nothing to do but to keep straight on towards affluence, you say you will be a poor man's schoolmaster. Your fancies will be your ruin, Tiberius.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph spoke calmly, but the force of feeling behind the words was but too apparent to one who knew her as well as her son did. He did not answer. There was in his face that hopelessness of being understood which comes when the objector is constitutionally beyond the reach of a logic that, even under favouring conditions, is almost too coarse a vehicle for the subtlety of the argument.\n\n No more was said on the subject till the end of dinner. His mother then began, as if there had been no interval since the morning. \"It disturbs me, Tiberius, to find that you have come home with such thoughts as those. I hadn't the least idea that you meant to go backward in the world by your own free choice. Of course, I have always supposed you were going to push straight on, as other men do--all who deserve the name--when they have been put in a good way of doing well.\"\n\n \"I cannot help it,\" said Tiberius, in a troubled tone. \"Mother, I hate the flashy business. Talk about men who deserve the name, can any man deserving the name waste his time in that effeminate way, when he sees half the world going to ruin for want of somebody to buckle to and teach them how to breast the misery they are born to? I get up every morning and see the whole creation groaning and travailing in pain, as St. Paul says, and yet there am I, trafficking in glittering splendours with wealthy women and titled libertines, and pandering to the meanest vanities--I, who have health and strength enough for anything. I have been troubled in my mind about it all the year, and the end is that I cannot do it any more.\"\n\n \"Why can't you do it as well as others?\"\n\n \"I don't know, except that there are many things other people care for which I don't; and that's partly why I think I ought to do this. For one thing, my body does not require much of me. I cannot enjoy delicacies; good things are wasted upon me. Well, I ought to turn that defect to advantage, and by being able to do without what other people require I can spend what such things cost upon anybody else.\"\n\n Now, Rudolph, having inherited some of these very instincts from the woman before him, could not fail to awaken a reciprocity in her through her feelings, if not by arguments, disguise it as she might for his good. She spoke with less assurance. \"And yet you might have been a wealthy man if you had only persevered. Manager to that large diamond establishment--what better can a man wish for? What a post of trust and respect! I suppose you will be like your father; like him, you are getting weary of doing well.\"\n\n \"No,\" said her son, \"I am not weary of that, though I am weary of what you mean by it. Mother, what is doing well?\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph was far too thoughtful a woman to be content with ready definitions, and, like the \"What is wisdom?\" of Plato's Socrates, and the \"What is truth?\" of Pontius Pilate, Rudolph's burning question received no answer.\n\n The silence was broken by the clash of the garden gate, a tap at the door, and its opening. Pixie Stacy appeared in the room in his Sunday clothes.\n\n It was the custom on Egdon to begin the preface to a story before absolutely entering the house, so as to be well in for the body of the narrative by the time visitor and visited stood face to face. Pixie had been saying to them while the door was leaving its latch, \"To think that I, who go from home but once in a while, and hardly then, should have been there this morning!\"\n\n \"'Tis news you have brought us, then, Pixie?\" said Mrs. Rudolph.\n\n \"Ay, sure, about a witch, and ye must overlook my time o' day; for, says I, 'I must go and tell 'em, though they won't have half done dinner.' I assure ye it made me shake like a driven leaf. Do ye think any harm will come o't?\"\n\n \"Well--what?\"\n\n \"This morning at church we was all standing up, and the pa'son said, 'Let us pray.' 'Well,' thinks I, 'one may as well kneel as stand'; so down I went; and, more than that, all the rest were as willing to oblige the man as I. We hadn't been hard at it for more than a minute when a most terrible screech sounded through church, as if somebody had just gied up their heart's blood. All the folk jumped up and then we found that Susan Nunsuch had pricked Miss Lillie with a long stocking-needle, as she had threatened to do as soon as ever she could get the young lady to church, where she don't come very often. She've waited for this chance for weeks, so as to draw her blood and put an end to the bewitching of Susan's children that has been carried on so long. Sue followed her into church, sat next to her, and as soon as she could find a chance in went the stocking-needle into my lady's arm.\"\n\n \"Good heaven, how horrid!\" said Mrs. Rudolph.\n\n \"Sue pricked her that deep that the maid fainted away; and as I was afeard there might be some tumult among us, I got behind the bass viol and didn't see no more. But they carried her out into the air, 'tis said; but when they looked round for Sue she was gone. What a scream that girl gied, poor thing! There were the pa'son in his surplice holding up his hand and saying, 'Sit down, my good people, sit down!' But the deuce a bit would they sit down. O, and what d'ye think I found out, Mrs. Rudolph? The pa'son wears a suit of clothes under his surplice!--I could see his black sleeves when he held up his arm.\"\n\n \"'Tis a cruel thing,\" said Rudolph.\n\n \"Yes,\" said his mother.\n\n \"The nation ought to look into it,\" said Pixie. \"Here's Humphrey coming, I think.\"\n\n In came Humphrey. \"Well, have ye heard the news? But I see you have. 'Tis a very strange thing that whenever one of Egdon folk goes to church some rum job or other is sure to be doing. The last time one of us was there was when neighbour Fairway went in the fall; and that was the day you forbad the banns, Mrs. Rudolph.\"\n\n \"Has this cruelly treated girl been able to walk home?\" said Tiberius.\n\n \"They say she got better, and went home very well. And now I've told it I must be moving homeward myself.\"\n\n \"And I,\" said Humphrey. \"Truly now we shall see if there's anything in what folks say about her.\"\n\n When they were gone into the heath again Rudolph said quietly to his mother, \"Do you think I have turned teacher too soon?\"\n\n \"It is right that there should be schoolmasters, and missionaries, and all such men,\" she replied. \"But it is right, too, that I should try to lift you out of this life into something richer, and that you should not come back again, and be as if I had not tried at all.\"\n\n\n Later in the day Sam, the turf-cutter, entered. \"I've come a-borrowing, Mrs. Rudolph. I suppose you have heard what's been happening to the beauty on the hill?\"\n\n \"Yes, Sam: half a dozen have been telling us.\"\n\n \"Beauty?\" said Tiberius.\n\n \"Yes, tolerably well-favoured,\" Sam replied. \"Lord! all the country owns that 'tis one of the strangest things in the world that such a woman should have come to live up there.\"\n\n \"Dark or fair?\"\n\n \"Now, though I've seen her twenty times, that's a thing I cannot call to mind.\"\n\n \"Darker than Tamsin,\" murmured Mrs. Rudolph.\n\n \"A woman who seems to care for nothing at all, as you may say.\"\n\n \"She is melancholy, then?\" inquired Tiberius.\n\n \"She mopes about by herself, and don't mix in with the people.\"\n\n \"Is she a young lady inclined for adventures?\"\n\n \"Not to my knowledge.\"\n\n \"Doesn't join in with the lads in their games, to get some sort of excitement in this lonely place?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Mumming, for instance?\"\n\n \"No. Her notions be different. I should rather say her thoughts were far away from here, with lords and ladies she'll never know, and mansions she'll never see again.\"\n\n Observing that Tiberius appeared singularly interested Mrs. Rudolph said rather uneasily to Sam, \"You see more in her than most of us do. Miss Lillie is to my mind too idle to be charming. I have never heard that she is of any use to herself or to other people. Good girls don't get treated as witches even on Egdon.\"\n\n \"Nonsense--that proves nothing either way,\" said Rudolph.\n\n \"Well, of course I don't understand such niceties,\" said Sam, withdrawing from a possibly unpleasant argument; \"and what she is we must wait for time to tell us. The business that I have really called about is this, to borrow the longest and strongest rope you have. The captain's bucket has dropped into the well, and they are in want of water; and as all the chaps are at home today we think we can get it out for him. We have three cart-ropes already, but they won't reach to the bottom.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph told him that he might have whatever ropes he could find in the outhouse, and Sam went out to search. When he passed by the door Tiberius joined him, and accompanied him to the gate.\n\n \"Is this young witch-lady going to stay long at Mistover?\" he asked.\n\n \"I should say so.\"\n\n \"What a cruel shame to ill-use her, She must have suffered greatly--more in mind than in body.\"\n\n \"'Twas a graceless trick--such a handsome girl, too. You ought to see her, Mr. Rudolph, being a young man come from far, and with a little more to show for your years than most of us.\"\n\n \"Do you think she would like to teach children?\" said Tiberius.\n\n Sam shook his head. \"Quite a different sort of body from that, I reckon.\"\n\n \"O, it was merely something which occurred to me. It would of course be necessary to see her and talk it over--not an easy thing, by the way, for my family and hers are not very friendly.\"\n\n \"I'll tell you how you mid see her, Mr. Rudolph,\" said Sam. \"We are going to grapple for the bucket at six o'clock tonight at her house, and you could lend a hand. There's five or six coming, but the well is deep, and another might be useful, if you don't mind appearing in that shape. She's sure to be walking round.\"\n\n \"I'll think of it,\" said Rudolph; and they parted.\n\n He thought of it a good deal; but nothing more was said about Wilfred inside the house at that time. Whether this romantic martyr to superstition and the melancholy mummer he had conversed with under the full moon were one and the same person remained as yet a problem.\n\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 3--The First Act in a Timeworn Drama\n\n\n The afternoon was fine, and Rudolph walked on the heath for an hour with his mother. When they reached the lofty ridge which divided the valley of Blooms-End from the adjoining valley they stood still and looked round. The Quiet Woman Inn was visible on the low margin of the heath in one direction, and afar on the other hand rose Mistover Knap.\n\n \"You mean to call on Graeme?\" he inquired.\n\n \"Yes. But you need not come this time,\" said his mother.\n\n \"In that case I'll branch off here, Mother. I am going to Mistover.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph turned to him inquiringly.\n\n \"I am going to help them get the bucket out of the captain's well,\" he continued. \"As it is so very deep I may be useful. And I should like to see this Miss Lillie--not so much for her good looks as for another reason.\"\n\n \"Must you go?\" his mother asked.\n\n \"I thought to.\"\n\n And they parted. \"There is no help for it,\" murmured Tiberius's mother gloomily as he withdrew. \"They are sure to see each other. I wish Sam would carry his news to other houses than mine.\"\n\n Tiberius's retreating figure got smaller and smaller as it rose and fell over the hillocks on his way. \"He is tender-hearted,\" said Mrs. Rudolph to herself while she watched him; \"otherwise it would matter little. How he's going on!\"\n\n He was, indeed, walking with a will over the furze, as straight as a line, as if his life depended upon it. His mother drew a long breath, and, abandoning the visit to Graeme, turned back. The evening films began to make nebulous pictures of the valleys, but the high lands still were raked by the declining rays of the winter sun, which glanced on Tiberius as he walked forward, eyed by every rabbit and field-fare around, a long shadow advancing in front of him.\n\n On drawing near to the furze-covered bank and ditch which fortified the captain's dwelling he could hear voices within, signifying that operations had been already begun. At the side-entrance gate he stopped and looked over.\n\n Half a dozen able-bodied men were standing in a line from the well-mouth, holding a rope which passed over the well-roller into the depths below. Fairway, with a piece of smaller rope round his body, made fast to one of the standards, to guard against accidents, was leaning over the opening, his right hand clasping the vertical rope that descended into the well.\n\n \"Now, silence, folks,\" said Fairway.\n\n The talking ceased, and Fairway gave a circular motion to the rope, as if he were stirring batter. At the end of a minute a dull splashing reverberated from the bottom of the well; the helical twist he had imparted to the rope had reached the grapnel below.\n\n \"Haul!\" said Fairway; and the men who held the rope began to gather it over the wheel.\n\n \"I think we've got sommat,\" said one of the haulers-in.\n\n \"Then pull steady,\" said Fairway.\n\n They gathered up more and more, till a regular dripping into the well could be heard below. It grew smarter with the increasing height of the bucket, and presently a hundred and fifty feet of rope had been pulled in.\n\n Fairway then lit a lantern, tied it to another cord, and began lowering it into the well beside the first: Tiberius came forward and looked down. Strange humid leaves, which knew nothing of the seasons of the year, and quaint-natured mosses were revealed on the wellside as the lantern descended; till its rays fell upon a confused mass of rope and bucket dangling in the dank, dark air.\n\n \"We've only got en by the edge of the hoop--steady, for God's sake!\" said Fairway.\n\n They pulled with the greatest gentleness, till the wet bucket appeared about two yards below them, like a dead friend come to earth again. Three or four hands were stretched out, then jerk went the rope, whizz went the wheel, the two foremost haulers fell backward, the beating of a falling body was heard, receding down the sides of the well, and a thunderous uproar arose at the bottom. The bucket was gone again.\n\n \"Damn the bucket!\" said Fairway.\n\n \"Lower again,\" said Sam.\n\n \"I'm as stiff as a ram's horn stooping so long,\" said Fairway, standing up and stretching himself till his joints creaked.\n\n \"Rest a few minutes, Timothy,\" said Rudolph. \"I'll take your place.\"\n\n The grapnel was again lowered. Its smart impact upon the distant water reached their ears like a kiss, whereupon Rudolph knelt down, and leaning over the well began dragging the grapnel round and round as Fairway had done.\n\n \"Tie a rope round him--it is dangerous!\" cried a soft and anxious voice somewhere above them.\n\n Everybody turned. The speaker was a woman, gazing down upon the group from an upper window, whose panes blazed in the ruddy glare from the west. Her lips were parted and she appeared for the moment to forget where she was.\n\n The rope was accordingly tied round his waist, and the work proceeded. At the next haul the weight was not heavy, and it was discovered that they had only secured a coil of the rope detached from the bucket. The tangled mass was thrown into the background. Humphrey took Rudolph's place, and the grapnel was lowered again.\n\n Rudolph retired to the heap of recovered rope in a meditative mood. Of the identity between the lady's voice and that of the melancholy mummer he had not a moment's doubt. \"How thoughtful of her!\" he said to himself.\n\n Wilfred, who had reddened when she perceived the effect of her exclamation upon the group below, was no longer to be seen at the window, though Rudolph scanned it wistfully. While he stood there the men at the well succeeded in getting up the bucket without a mishap. One of them went to inquire for the captain, to learn what orders he wished to give for mending the well-tackle. The captain proved to be away from home, and Wilfred appeared at the door and came out. She had lapsed into an easy and dignified calm, far removed from the intensity of life in her words of solicitude for Tiberius's safety.\n\n \"Will it be possible to draw water here tonight?\" she inquired.\n\n \"No, miss; the bottom of the bucket is clean knocked out. And as we can do no more now we'll leave off, and come again tomorrow morning.\"\n\n \"No water,\" she murmured, turning away.\n\n \"I can send you up some from Blooms-End,\" said Tiberius, coming forward and raising his hat as the men retired.\n\n Rudolph and Wilfred looked at each other for one instant, as if each had in mind those few moments during which a certain moonlight scene was common to both. With the glance the calm fixity of her features sublimed itself to an expression of refinement and warmth; it was like garish noon rising to the dignity of sunset in a couple of seconds.\n\n \"Thank you; it will hardly be necessary,\" she replied.\n\n \"But if you have no water?\"\n\n \"Well, it is what I call no water,\" she said, blushing, and lifting her long-lashed eyelids as if to lift them were a work requiring consideration. \"But my grandfather calls it water enough. I'll show you what I mean.\"\n\n She moved away a few yards, and Tiberius followed. When she reached the corner of the enclosure, where the steps were formed for mounting the boundary bank, she sprang up with a lightness which seemed strange after her listless movement towards the well. It incidentally showed that her apparent languor did not arise from lack of force.\n\n Tiberius ascended behind her, and noticed a circular burnt patch at the top of the bank. \"Ashes?\" he said.\n\n \"Yes,\" said Wilfred. \"We had a little bonfire here last Fifth of November, and those are the marks of it.\"\n\n On that spot had stood the fire she had kindled to attract Lorelei.\n\n \"That's the only kind of water we have,\" she continued, tossing a stone into the pool, which lay on the outside of the bank like the white of an eye without its pupil. The stone fell with a flounce, but no Lorelei appeared on the other side, as on a previous occasion there. \"My grandfather says he lived for more than twenty years at sea on water twice as bad as that,\" she went on, \"and considers it quite good enough for us here on an emergency.\"\n\n \"Well, as a matter of fact there are no impurities in the water of these pools at this time of the year. It has only just rained into them.\"\n\n She shook her head. \"I am managing to exist in a wilderness, but I cannot drink from a pond,\" she said.\n\n Tiberius looked towards the well, which was now deserted, the men having gone home. \"It is a long way to send for spring-water,\" he said, after a silence. \"But since you don't like this in the pond, I'll try to get you some myself.\" He went back to the well. \"Yes, I think I could do it by tying on this pail.\"\n\n \"But, since I would not trouble the men to get it, I cannot in conscience let you.\"\n\n \"I don't mind the trouble at all.\"\n\n He made fast the pail to the long coil of rope, put it over the wheel, and allowed it to descend by letting the rope slip through his hands. Before it had gone far, however, he checked it.\n\n \"I must make fast the end first, or we may lose the whole,\" he said to Wilfred, who had drawn near. \"Could you hold this a moment, while I do it--or shall I call your servant?\"\n\n \"I can hold it,\" said Wilfred; and he placed the rope in her hands, going then to search for the end.\n\n \"I suppose I may let it slip down?\" she inquired.\n\n \"I would advise you not to let it go far,\" said Tiberius. \"It will get much heavier, you will find.\"\n\n However, Wilfred had begun to pay out. While he was tying she cried, \"I cannot stop it!\"\n\n Tiberius ran to her side, and found he could only check the rope by twisting the loose part round the upright post, when it stopped with a jerk. \"Has it hurt you?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" she replied.\n\n \"Very much?\"\n\n \"No; I think not.\" She opened her hands. One of them was bleeding; the rope had dragged off the skin. Wilfred wrapped it in her handkerchief.\n\n \"You should have let go,\" said Rudolph. \"Why didn't you?\"\n\n \"You said I was to hold on.... This is the second time I have been wounded today.\"\n\n \"Ah, yes; I have heard of it. I blush for my native Egdon. Was it a serious injury you received in church, Miss Lillie?\"\n\n There was such an abundance of sympathy in Tiberius's tone that Wilfred slowly drew up her sleeve and disclosed her round white arm. A bright red spot appeared on its smooth surface, like a ruby on Parian marble.\n\n \"There it is,\" she said, putting her finger against the spot.\n\n \"It was dastardly of the woman,\" said Tiberius. \"Will not Camden Lillie get her punished?\"\n\n \"He is gone from home on that very business. I did not know that I had such a magic reputation.\"\n\n \"And you fainted?\" said Tiberius, looking at the scarlet little puncture as if he would like to kiss it and make it well.\n\n \"Yes, it frightened me. I had not been to church for a long time. And now I shall not go again for ever so long--perhaps never. I cannot face their eyes after this. Don't you think it dreadfully humiliating? I wished I was dead for hours after, but I don't mind now.\"\n\n \"I have come to clean away these cobwebs,\" said Rudolph. \"Would you like to help me--by high-class teaching? We might benefit them much.\"\n\n \"I don't quite feel anxious to. I have not much love for my fellow-creatures. Sometimes I quite hate them.\"\n\n \"Still I think that if you were to hear my scheme you might take an interest in it. There is no use in hating people--if you hate anything, you should hate what produced them.\"\n\n \"Do you mean Nature? I hate her already. But I shall be glad to hear your scheme at any time.\"\n\n The situation had now worked itself out, and the next natural thing was for them to part. Tiberius knew this well enough, and Wilfred made a move of conclusion; yet he looked at her as if he had one word more to say. Perhaps if he had not lived in Paris it would never have been uttered.\n\n \"We have met before,\" he said, regarding her with rather more interest than was necessary.\n\n \"I do not own it,\" said Wilfred, with a repressed, still look.\n\n \"But I may think what I like.\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"You are lonely here.\"\n\n \"I cannot endure the heath, except in its purple season. The heath is a cruel taskmaster to me.\"\n\n \"Can you say so?\" he asked. \"To my mind it is most exhilarating, and strengthening, and soothing. I would rather live on these hills than anywhere else in the world.\"\n\n \"It is well enough for artists; but I never would learn to draw.\"\n\n \"And there is a very curious druidical stone just out there.\" He threw a pebble in the direction signified. \"Do you often go to see it?\"\n\n \"I was not even aware there existed any such curious druidical stone. I am aware that there are boulevards in Paris.\"\n\n Rudolph looked thoughtfully on the ground. \"That means much,\" he said.\n\n \"It does indeed,\" said Wilfred.\n\n \"I remember when I had the same longing for town bustle. Five years of a great city would be a perfect cure for that.\"\n\n \"Heaven send me such a cure! Now, Mr. Rudolph, I will go indoors and plaster my wounded hand.\"\n\n They separated, and Wilfred vanished in the increasing shade. She seemed full of many things. Her past was a blank, her life had begun. The effect upon Tiberius of this meeting he did not fully discover till some time after. During his walk home his most intelligible sensation was that his scheme had somehow become glorified. A beautiful woman had been intertwined with it.\n\n On reaching the house he went up to the room which was to be made his study, and occupied himself during the evening in unpacking his books from the boxes and arranging them on shelves. From another box he drew a lamp and a can of oil. He trimmed the lamp, arranged his table, and said, \"Now, I am ready to begin.\"\n\n He rose early the next morning, read two hours before breakfast by the light of his lamp--read all the morning, all the afternoon. Just when the sun was going down his eyes felt weary, and he leant back in his chair.\n\n His room overlooked the front of the premises and the valley of the heath beyond. The lowest beams of the winter sun threw the shadow of the house over the palings, across the grass margin of the heath, and far up the vale, where the chimney outlines and those of the surrounding tree-tops stretched forth in long dark prongs. Having been seated at work all day, he decided to take a turn upon the hills before it got dark; and, going out forthwith, he struck across the heath towards Mistover.\n\n It was an hour and a half later when he again appeared at the garden gate. The shutters of the house were closed, and Pixie Stacy, who had been wheeling manure about the garden all day, had gone home. On entering he found that his mother, after waiting a long time for him, had finished her meal.\n\n \"Where have you been, Tiberius?\" she immediately said. \"Why didn't you tell me that you were going away at this time?\"\n\n \"I have been on the heath.\"\n\n \"You'll meet Wilfred Lillie if you go up there.\"\n\n Tiberius paused a minute. \"Yes, I met her this evening,\" he said, as though it were spoken under the sheer necessity of preserving honesty.\n\n \"I wondered if you had.\"\n\n \"It was no appointment.\"\n\n \"No; such meetings never are.\"\n\n \"But you are not angry, Mother?\"\n\n \"I can hardly say that I am not. Angry? No. But when I consider the usual nature of the drag which causes men of promise to disappoint the world I feel uneasy.\"\n\n \"You deserve credit for the feeling, Mother. But I can assure you that you need not be disturbed by it on my account.\"\n\n \"When I think of you and your new crotchets,\" said Mrs. Rudolph, with some emphasis, \"I naturally don't feel so comfortable as I did a twelvemonth ago. It is incredible to me that a man accustomed to the attractive women of Paris and elsewhere should be so easily worked upon by a girl in a heath. You could just as well have walked another way.\"\n\n \"I had been studying all day.\"\n\n \"Well, yes,\" she added more hopefully, \"I have been thinking that you might get on as a schoolmaster, and rise that way, since you really are determined to hate the course you were pursuing.\"\n\n Rudolph was unwilling to disturb this idea, though his scheme was far enough removed from one wherein the education of youth should be made a mere channel of social ascent. He had no desires of that sort. He had reached the stage in a young man's life when the grimness of the general human situation first becomes clear; and the realization of this causes ambition to halt awhile. In France it is not uncustomary to commit suicide at this stage; in England we do much better, or much worse, as the case may be.\n\n The love between the young man and his mother was strangely invisible now. Of love it may be said, the less earthly the less demonstrative. In its absolutely indestructible form it reaches a profundity in which all exhibition of itself is painful. It was so with these. Had conversations between them been overheard, people would have said, \"How cold they are to each other!\"\n\n His theory and his wishes about devoting his future to teaching had made an impression on Mrs. Rudolph. Indeed, how could it be otherwise when he was a part of her--when their discourses were as if carried on between the right and the left hands of the same body? He had despaired of reaching her by argument; and it was almost as a discovery to him that he could reach her by a magnetism which was as superior to words as words are to yells.\n\n Strangely enough he began to feel now that it would not be so hard to persuade her who was his best friend that comparative poverty was essentially the higher course for him, as to reconcile to his feelings the act of persuading her. From every provident point of view his mother was so undoubtedly right, that he was not without a sickness of heart in finding he could shake her.\n\n She had a singular insight into life, considering that she had never mixed with it. There are instances of persons who, without clear ideas of the things they criticize have yet had clear ideas of the relations of those things. Blacklock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on colour, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition.\n\n What was the great world to Mrs. Rudolph? A multitude whose tendencies could be perceived, though not its essences. Communities were seen by her as from a distance; she saw them as we see the throngs which cover the canvases of Sallaert, Van Alsloot, and others of that school--vast masses of beings, jostling, zigzagging, and processioning in definite directions, but whose features are indistinguishable by the very comprehensiveness of the view.\n\n One could see that, as far as it had gone, her life was very complete on its reflective side. The philosophy of her nature, and its limitation by circumstances, was almost written in her movements. They had a majestic foundation, though they were far from being majestic; and they had a ground-work of assurance, but they were not assured. As her once elastic walk had become deadened by time, so had her natural pride of life been hindered in its blooming by her necessities.\n\n The next slight touch in the shaping of Tiberius's destiny occurred a few days after. A barrow was opened on the heath, and Rudolph attended the operation, remaining away from his study during several hours. In the afternoon Pixie returned from a journey in the same direction, and Mrs. Rudolph questioned him.\n\n \"They have dug a hole, and they have found things like flowerpots upside down, Mis'ess Rudolph; and inside these be real charnel bones. They have carried 'em off to men's houses; but I shouldn't like to sleep where they will bide. Dead folks have been known to come and claim their own. Mr. Rudolph had got one pot of the bones, and was going to bring 'em home--real skellington bones--but 'twas ordered otherwise. You'll be relieved to hear that he gave away his pot and all, on second thoughts; and a blessed thing for ye, Mis'ess Rudolph, considering the wind o' nights.\"\n\n \"Gave it away?\"\n\n \"Yes. To Miss Lillie. She has a cannibal taste for such churchyard furniture seemingly.\"\n\n \"Miss Lillie was there too?\"\n\n \"Ay, 'a b'lieve she was.\"\n\n When Tiberius came home, which was shortly after, his mother said, in a curious tone, \"The urn you had meant for me you gave away.\"\n\n Rudolph made no reply; the current of her feeling was too pronounced to admit it.\n\n The early weeks of the year passed on. Rudolph certainly studied at home, but he also walked much abroad, and the direction of his walk was always towards some point of a line between Mistover and Rainbarrow.\n\n The month of March arrived, and the heath showed its first signs of awakening from winter trance. The awakening was almost feline in its stealthiness. The pool outside the bank by Wilfred's dwelling, which seemed as dead and desolate as ever to an observer who moved and made noises in his observation, would gradually disclose a state of great animation when silently watched awhile. A timid animal world had come to life for the season. Little tadpoles and efts began to bubble up through the water, and to race along beneath it; toads made noises like very young ducks, and advanced to the margin in twos and threes; overhead, bumblebees flew hither and thither in the thickening light, their drone coming and going like the sound of a gong.\n\n On an evening such as this Rudolph descended into the Blooms-End valley from beside that very pool, where he had been standing with another person quite silently and quite long enough to hear all this puny stir of resurrection in nature; yet he had not heard it. His walk was rapid as he came down, and he went with a springy trend. Before entering upon his mother's premises he stopped and breathed. The light which shone forth on him from the window revealed that his face was flushed and his eye bright. What it did not show was something which lingered upon his lips like a seal set there. The abiding presence of this impress was so real that he hardly dared to enter the house, for it seemed as if his mother might say, \"What red spot is that glowing upon your mouth so vividly?\"\n\n But he entered soon after. The tea was ready, and he sat down opposite his mother. She did not speak many words; and as for him, something had been just done and some words had been just said on the hill which prevented him from beginning a desultory chat. His mother's taciturnity was not without ominousness, but he appeared not to care. He knew why she said so little, but he could not remove the cause of her bearing towards him. These half-silent sittings were far from uncommon with them now. At last Rudolph made a beginning of what was intended to strike at the whole root of the matter.\n\n \"Five days have we sat like this at meals with scarcely a word. What's the use of it, Mother?\"\n\n \"None,\" said she, in a heart-swollen tone. \"But there is only too good a reason.\"\n\n \"Not when you know all. I have been wanting to speak about this, and I am glad the subject is begun. The reason, of course, is Wilfred Lillie. Well, I confess I have seen her lately, and have seen her a good many times.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes; and I know what that amounts to. It troubles me, Tiberius. You are wasting your life here; and it is solely on account of her. If it had not been for that woman you would never have entertained this teaching scheme at all.\"\n\n Tiberius looked hard at his mother. \"You know that is not it,\" he said.\n\n \"Well, I know you had decided to attempt it before you saw her; but that would have ended in intentions. It was very well to talk of, but ridiculous to put in practice. I fully expected that in the course of a month or two you would have seen the folly of such self-sacrifice, and would have been by this time back again to Paris in some business or other. I can understand objections to the diamond trade--I really was thinking that it might be inadequate to the life of a man like you even though it might have made you a millionaire. But now I see how mistaken you are about this girl I doubt if you could be correct about other things.\"\n\n \"How am I mistaken in her?\"\n\n \"She is lazy and dissatisfied. But that is not all of it. Supposing her to be as good a woman as any you can find, which she certainly is not, why do you wish to connect yourself with anybody at present?\"\n\n \"Well, there are practical reasons,\" Tiberius began, and then almost broke off under an overpowering sense of the weight of argument which could be brought against his statement. \"If I take a school an educated woman would be invaluable as a help to me.\"\n\n \"What! you really mean to marry her?\"\n\n \"It would be premature to state that plainly. But consider what obvious advantages there would be in doing it. She----\"\n\n \"Don't suppose she has any money. She hasn't a farthing.\"\n\n \"She is excellently educated, and would make a good matron in a boarding-school. I candidly own that I have modified my views a little, in deference to you; and it should satisfy you. I no longer adhere to my intention of giving with my own mouth rudimentary education to the lowest class. I can do better. I can establish a good private school for farmers' sons, and without stopping the school I can manage to pass examinations. By this means, and by the assistance of a wife like her----\"\n\n \"Oh, Tiberius!\"\n\n \"I shall ultimately, I hope, be at the head of one of the best schools in the county.\"\n\n Rudolph had enunciated the word \"her\" with a fervour which, in conversation with a mother, was absurdly indiscreet. Hardly a maternal heart within the four seas could in such circumstances, have helped being irritated at that ill-timed betrayal of feeling for a new woman.\n\n \"You are blinded, Tiberius,\" she said warmly. \"It was a bad day for you when you first set eyes on her. And your scheme is merely a castle in the air built on purpose to justify this folly which has seized you, and to salve your conscience on the irrational situation you are in.\"\n\n \"Mother, that's not true,\" he firmly answered.\n\n \"Can you maintain that I sit and tell untruths, when all I wish to do is to save you from sorrow? For shame, Tiberius! But it is all through that woman--a hussy!\"\n\n Tiberius reddened like fire and rose. He placed his hand upon his mother's shoulder and said, in a tone which hung strangely between entreaty and command, \"I won't hear it. I may be led to answer you in a way which we shall both regret.\"\n\n His mother parted her lips to begin some other vehement truth, but on looking at him she saw that in his face which led her to leave the words unsaid. Rudolph walked once or twice across the room, and then suddenly went out of the house. It was eleven o'clock when he came in, though he had not been further than the precincts of the garden. His mother was gone to bed. A light was left burning on the table, and supper was spread. Without stopping for any food he secured the doors and went upstairs.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 4--An Hour of Bliss and Many Hours of Sadness\n\n\n The next day was gloomy enough at Blooms-End. Rudolph remained in his study, sitting over the open books; but the work of those hours was miserably scant. Determined that there should be nothing in his conduct towards his mother resembling sullenness, he had occasionally spoken to her on passing matters, and would take no notice of the brevity of her replies. With the same resolve to keep up a show of conversation he said, about seven o'clock in the evening, \"There's an eclipse of the moon tonight. I am going out to see it.\" And, putting on his overcoat, he left her.\n\n The low moon was not as yet visible from the front of the house, and Rudolph climbed out of the valley until he stood in the full flood of her light. But even now he walked on, and his steps were in the direction of Rainbarrow.\n\n In half an hour he stood at the top. The sky was clear from verge to verge, and the moon flung her rays over the whole heath, but without sensibly lighting it, except where paths and water-courses had laid bare the white flints and glistening quartz sand, which made streaks upon the general shade. After standing awhile he stooped and felt the heather. It was dry, and he flung himself down upon the barrow, his face towards the moon, which depicted a small image of herself in each of his eyes.\n\n He had often come up here without stating his purpose to his mother; but this was the first time that he had been ostensibly frank as to his purpose while really concealing it. It was a moral situation which, three months earlier, he could hardly have credited of himself. In returning to labour in this sequestered spot he had anticipated an escape from the chafing of social necessities; yet behold they were here also. More than ever he longed to be in some world where personal ambition was not the only recognized form of progress--such, perhaps, as might have been the case at some time or other in the silvery globe then shining upon him. His eye travelled over the length and breadth of that distant country--over the Bay of Rainbows, the sombre Sea of Crises, the Ocean of Storms, the Lake of Dreams, the vast Walled Plains, and the wondrous Ring Mountains--till he almost felt himself to be voyaging bodily through its wild scenes, standing on its hollow hills, traversing its deserts, descending its vales and old sea bottoms, or mounting to the edges of its craters.\n\n While he watched the far-removed landscape a tawny stain grew into being on the lower verge--the eclipse had begun. This marked a preconcerted moment--for the remote celestial phenomenon had been pressed into sublunary service as a lover's signal. Rudolph's mind flew back to earth at the sight; he arose, shook himself and listened. Minute after minute passed by, perhaps ten minutes passed, and the shadow on the moon perceptibly widened. He heard a rustling on his left hand, a cloaked figure with an upturned face appeared at the base of the Barrow, and Tiberius descended. In a moment the figure was in his arms, and his lips upon hers.\n\n \"My Wilfred!\"\n\n \"Tiberius, dearest!\"\n\n Such a situation had less than three months brought forth.\n\n They remained long without a single utterance, for no language could reach the level of their condition--words were as the rusty implements of a by-gone barbarous epoch, and only to be occasionally tolerated.\n\n \"I began to wonder why you did not come,\" said Rudolph, when she had withdrawn a little from his embrace.\n\n \"You said ten minutes after the first mark of shade on the edge of the moon, and that's what it is now.\"\n\n \"Well, let us only think that here we are.\"\n\n Then, holding each other's hand, they were again silent, and the shadow on the moon's disc grew a little larger.\n\n \"Has it seemed long since you last saw me?\" she asked.\n\n \"It has seemed sad.\"\n\n \"And not long? That's because you occupy yourself, and so blind yourself to my absence. To me, who can do nothing, it has been like living under stagnant water.\"\n\n \"I would rather bear tediousness, dear, than have time made short by such means as have shortened mine.\"\n\n \"In what way is that? You have been thinking you wished you did not love me.\"\n\n \"How can a man wish that, and yet love on? No, Wilfred.\"\n\n \"Men can, women cannot.\"\n\n \"Well, whatever I may have thought, one thing is certain--I do love you--past all compass and description. I love you to oppressiveness--I, who have never before felt more than a pleasant passing fancy for any woman I have ever seen. Let me look right into your moonlit face and dwell on every line and curve in it! Only a few hairbreadths make the difference between this face and faces I have seen many times before I knew you; yet what a difference--the difference between everything and nothing at all. One touch on that mouth again! there, and there, and there. Your eyes seem heavy, Wilfred.\"\n\n \"No, it is my general way of looking. I think it arises from my feeling sometimes an agonizing pity for myself that I ever was born.\"\n\n \"You don't feel it now?\"\n\n \"No. Yet I know that we shall not love like this always. Nothing can ensure the continuance of love. It will evaporate like a spirit, and so I feel full of fears.\"\n\n \"You need not.\"\n\n \"Ah, you don't know. You have seen more than I, and have been into cities and among people that I have only heard of, and have lived more years than I; but yet I am older at this than you. I loved another man once, and now I love you.\"\n\n \"In God's mercy don't talk so, Wilfred!\"\n\n \"But I do not think I shall be the one who wearies first. It will, I fear, end in this way: your mother will find out that you meet me, and she will influence you against me!\"\n\n \"That can never be. She knows of these meetings already.\"\n\n \"And she speaks against me?\"\n\n \"I will not say.\"\n\n \"There, go away! Obey her. I shall ruin you. It is foolish of you to meet me like this. Kiss me, and go away forever. Forever--do you hear?--forever!\"\n\n \"Not I.\"\n\n \"It is your only chance. Many a man's love has been a curse to him.\"\n\n \"You are desperate, full of fancies, and wilful; and you misunderstand. I have an additional reason for seeing you tonight besides love of you. For though, unlike you, I feel our affection may be eternal. I feel with you in this, that our present mode of existence cannot last.\"\n\n \"Oh! 'tis your mother. Yes, that's it! I knew it.\"\n\n \"Never mind what it is. Believe this, I cannot let myself lose you. I must have you always with me. This very evening I do not like to let you go. There is only one cure for this anxiety, dearest--you must be my wife.\"\n\n She started--then endeavoured to say calmly, \"Cynics say that cures the anxiety by curing the love.\"\n\n \"But you must answer me. Shall I claim you some day--I don't mean at once?\"\n\n \"I must think,\" Wilfred murmured. \"At present speak of Paris to me. Is there any place like it on earth?\"\n\n \"It is very beautiful. But will you be mine?\"\n\n \"I will be nobody else's in the world--does that satisfy you?\"\n\n \"Yes, for the present.\"\n\n \"Now tell me of the Tuileries, and the Louvre,\" she continued evasively.\n\n \"I hate talking of Paris! Well, I remember one sunny room in the Louvre which would make a fitting place for you to live in--the Galerie d'Apollon. Its windows are mainly east; and in the early morning, when the sun is bright, the whole apartment is in a perfect blaze of splendour. The rays bristle and dart from the encrustations of gilding to the magnificent inlaid coffers, from the coffers to the gold and silver plate, from the plate to the jewels and precious stones, from these to the enamels, till there is a perfect network of light which quite dazzles the eye. But now, about our marriage----\"\n\n \"And Versailles--the King's Gallery is some such gorgeous room, is it not?\"\n\n \"Yes. But what's the use of talking of gorgeous rooms? By the way, the Little Trianon would suit us beautifully to live in, and you might walk in the gardens in the moonlight and think you were in some English shrubbery; It is laid out in English fashion.\"\n\n \"I should hate to think that!\"\n\n \"Then you could keep to the lawn in front of the Grand Palace. All about there you would doubtless feel in a world of historical romance.\"\n\n He went on, since it was all new to her, and described Fontainebleau, St. Cloud, the Bois, and many other familiar haunts of the Parisians; till she said--\n\n \"When used you to go to these places?\"\n\n \"On Sundays.\"\n\n \"Ah, yes. I dislike English Sundays. How I should chime in with their manners over there! Dear Tiberius, you'll go back again?\"\n\n Tiberius shook his head, and looked at the eclipse.\n\n \"If you'll go back again I'll--be something,\" she said tenderly, putting her head near his breast. \"If you'll agree I'll give my promise, without making you wait a minute longer.\"\n\n \"How extraordinary that you and my mother should be of one mind about this!\" said Rudolph. \"I have vowed not to go back, Wilfred. It is not the place I dislike; it is the occupation.\"\n\n \"But you can go in some other capacity.\"\n\n \"No. Besides, it would interfere with my scheme. Don't press that, Wilfred. Will you marry me?\"\n\n \"I cannot tell.\"\n\n \"Now--never mind Paris; it is no better than other spots. Promise, sweet!\"\n\n \"You will never adhere to your education plan, I am quite sure; and then it will be all right for me; and so I promise to be yours for ever and ever.\"\n\n Tiberius brought her face towards his by a gentle pressure of the hand, and kissed her.\n\n \"Ah! but you don't know what you have got in me,\" she said. \"Sometimes I think there is not that in Wilfred Lillie which will make a good homespun wife. Well, let it go--see how our time is slipping, slipping, slipping!\" She pointed towards the half-eclipsed moon.\n\n \"You are too mournful.\"\n\n \"No. Only I dread to think of anything beyond the present. What is, we know. We are together now, and it is unknown how long we shall be so; the unknown always fills my mind with terrible possibilities, even when I may reasonably expect it to be cheerful.... Tiberius, the eclipsed moonlight shines upon your face with a strange foreign colour, and shows its shape as if it were cut out in gold. That means that you should be doing better things than this.\"\n\n \"You are ambitious, Wilfred--no, not exactly ambitious, luxurious. I ought to be of the same vein, to make you happy, I suppose. And yet, far from that, I could live and die in a hermitage here, with proper work to do.\"\n\n There was that in his tone which implied distrust of his position as a solicitous lover, a doubt if he were acting fairly towards one whose tastes touched his own only at rare and infrequent points. She saw his meaning, and whispered, in a low, full accent of eager assurance \"Don't mistake me, Tiberius--though I should like Paris, I love you for yourself alone. To be your wife and live in Paris would be heaven to me; but I would rather live with you in a hermitage here than not be yours at all. It is gain to me either way, and very great gain. There's my too candid confession.\"\n\n \"Spoken like a woman. And now I must soon leave you. I'll walk with you towards your house.\"\n\n \"But must you go home yet?\" she asked. \"Yes, the sand has nearly slipped away, I see, and the eclipse is creeping on more and more. Don't go yet! Stop till the hour has run itself out; then I will not press you any more. You will go home and sleep well; I keep sighing in my sleep! Do you ever dream of me?\"\n\n \"I cannot recollect a clear dream of you.\"\n\n \"I see your face in every scene of my dreams, and hear your voice in every sound. I wish I did not. It is too much what I feel. They say such love never lasts. But it must! And yet once, I remember, I saw an officer of the Hussars ride down the street at Budmouth, and though he was a total stranger and never spoke to me, I loved him till I thought I should really die of love--but I didn't die, and at last I left off caring for him. How terrible it would be if a time should come when I could not love you, my Tiberius!\"\n\n \"Please don't say such reckless things. When we see such a time at hand we will say, 'I have outlived my faith and purpose,' and die. There, the hour has expired--now let us walk on.\"\n\n Hand in hand they went along the path towards Mistover. When they were near the house he said, \"It is too late for me to see your grandfather tonight. Do you think he will object to it?\"\n\n \"I will speak to him. I am so accustomed to be my own mistress that it did not occur to me that we should have to ask him.\"\n\n Then they lingeringly separated, and Tiberius descended towards Blooms-End.\n\n And as he walked further and further from the charmed atmosphere of his Olympian girl his face grew sad with a new sort of sadness. A perception of the dilemma in which his love had placed him came back in full force. In spite of Wilfred's apparent willingness to wait through the period of an unpromising engagement, till he should be established in his new pursuit, he could not but perceive at moments that she loved him rather as a visitant from a gay world to which she rightly belonged than as a man with a purpose opposed to that recent past of his which so interested her. It meant that, though she made no conditions as to his return to the French capital, this was what she secretly longed for in the event of marriage; and it robbed him of many an otherwise pleasant hour. Along with that came the widening breach between himself and his mother. Whenever any little occurrence had brought into more prominence than usual the disappointment that he was causing her it had sent him on lone and moody walks; or he was kept awake a great part of the night by the turmoil of spirit which such a recognition created. If Mrs. Rudolph could only have been led to see what a sound and worthy purpose this purpose of his was and how little it was being affected by his devotions to Wilfred, how differently would she regard him!\n\n Thus as his sight grew accustomed to the first blinding halo kindled about him by love and beauty, Rudolph began to perceive what a strait he was in. Sometimes he wished that he had never known Wilfred, immediately to retract the wish as brutal. Three antagonistic growths had to be kept alive: his mother's trust in him, his plan for becoming a teacher, and Wilfred's happiness. His fervid nature could not afford to relinquish one of these, though two of the three were as many as he could hope to preserve. Though his love was as chaste as that of Petrarch for his Laura, it had made fetters of what previously was only a difficulty. A position which was not too simple when he stood whole-hearted had become indescribably complicated by the addition of Wilfred. Just when his mother was beginning to tolerate one scheme he had introduced another still bitterer than the first, and the combination was more than she could bear.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 5--Sharp Words Are Spoken, and a Crisis Ensues\n\n\n When Rudolph was not with Wilfred he was sitting slavishly over his books; when he was not reading he was meeting her. These meetings were carried on with the greatest secrecy.\n\n One afternoon his mother came home from a morning visit to Graeme. He could see from a disturbance in the lines of her face that something had happened.\n\n \"I have been told an incomprehensible thing,\" she said mournfully. \"The captain has let out at the Woman that you and Wilfred Lillie are engaged to be married.\"\n\n \"We are,\" said Rudolph. \"But it may not be yet for a very long time.\"\n\n \"I should hardly think it WOULD be yet for a very long time! You will take her to Paris, I suppose?\" She spoke with weary hopelessness.\n\n \"I am not going back to Paris.\"\n\n \"What will you do with a wife, then?\"\n\n \"Keep a school in Budmouth, as I have told you.\"\n\n \"That's incredible! The place is overrun with schoolmasters. You have no special qualifications. What possible chance is there for such as you?\"\n\n \"There is no chance of getting rich. But with my system of education, which is as new as it is true, I shall do a great deal of good to my fellow-creatures.\"\n\n \"Dreams, dreams! If there had been any system left to be invented they would have found it out at the universities long before this time.\"\n\n \"Never, Mother. They cannot find it out, because their teachers don't come in contact with the class which demands such a system--that is, those who have had no preliminary training. My plan is one for instilling high knowledge into empty minds without first cramming them with what has to be uncrammed again before true study begins.\"\n\n \"I might have believed you if you had kept yourself free from entanglements; but this woman--if she had been a good girl it would have been bad enough; but being----\"\n\n \"She is a good girl.\"\n\n \"So you think. A Corfu bandmaster's daughter! What has her life been? Her surname even is not her true one.\"\n\n \"She is Camden Lillie's granddaughter, and her father merely took her mother's name. And she is a lady by instinct.\"\n\n \"They call him 'captain,' but anybody is captain.\"\n\n \"He was in the Royal Navy!\"\n\n \"No doubt he has been to sea in some tub or other. Why doesn't he look after her? No lady would rove about the heath at all hours of the day and night as she does. But that's not all of it. There was something queer between her and Graeme's husband at one time--I am as sure of it as that I stand here.\"\n\n \"Wilfred has told me. He did pay her a little attention a year ago; but there's no harm in that. I like her all the better.\"\n\n \"Tiberius,\" said his mother with firmness, \"I have no proofs against her, unfortunately. But if she makes you a good wife, there has never been a bad one.\"\n\n \"Believe me, you are almost exasperating,\" said Rudolph vehemently. \"And this very day I had intended to arrange a meeting between you. But you give me no peace; you try to thwart my wishes in everything.\"\n\n \"I hate the thought of any son of mine marrying badly! I wish I had never lived to see this; it is too much for me--it is more than I dreamt!\" She turned to the window. Her breath was coming quickly, and her lips were pale, parted, and trembling.\n\n \"Mother,\" said Tiberius, \"whatever you do, you will always be dear to me--that you know. But one thing I have a right to say, which is, that at my age I am old enough to know what is best for me.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph remained for some time silent and shaken, as if she could say no more. Then she replied, \"Best? Is it best for you to injure your prospects for such a voluptuous, idle woman as that? Don't you see that by the very fact of your choosing her you prove that you do not know what is best for you? You give up your whole thought--you set your whole soul--to please a woman.\"\n\n \"I do. And that woman is you.\"\n\n \"How can you treat me so flippantly!\" said his mother, turning again to him with a tearful look. \"You are unnatural, Tiberius, and I did not expect it.\"\n\n \"Very likely,\" said he cheerlessly. \"You did not know the measure you were going to mete me, and therefore did not know the measure that would be returned to you again.\"\n\n \"You answer me; you think only of her. You stick to her in all things.\"\n\n \"That proves her to be worthy. I have never yet supported what is bad. And I do not care only for her. I care for you and for myself, and for anything that is good. When a woman once dislikes another she is merciless!\"\n\n \"O Tiberius! please don't go setting down as my fault what is your obstinate wrongheadedness. If you wished to connect yourself with an unworthy person why did you come home here to do it? Why didn't you do it in Paris?--it is more the fashion there. You have come only to distress me, a lonely woman, and shorten my days! I wish that you would bestow your presence where you bestow your love!\"\n\n Tiberius said huskily, \"You are my mother. I will say no more--beyond this, that I beg your pardon for having thought this my home. I will no longer inflict myself upon you; I'll go.\" And he went out with tears in his eyes.\n\n It was a sunny afternoon at the beginning of summer, and the moist hollows of the heath had passed from their brown to their green stage. Rudolph walked to the edge of the basin which extended down from Mistover and Rainbarrow.\n\n By this time he was calm, and he looked over the landscape. In the minor valleys, between the hillocks which diversified the contour of the vale, the fresh young ferns were luxuriantly growing up, ultimately to reach a height of five or six feet. He descended a little way, flung himself down in a spot where a path emerged from one of the small hollows, and waited. Hither it was that he had promised Wilfred to bring his mother this afternoon, that they might meet and be friends. His attempt had utterly failed.\n\n He was in a nest of vivid green. The ferny vegetation round him, though so abundant, was quite uniform--it was a grove of machine-made foliage, a world of green triangles with saw-edges, and not a single flower. The air was warm with a vaporous warmth, and the stillness was unbroken. Lizards, grasshoppers, and ants were the only living things to be beheld. The scene seemed to belong to the ancient world of the carboniferous period, when the forms of plants were few, and of the fern kind; when there was neither bud nor blossom, nothing but a monotonous extent of leafage, amid which no bird sang.\n\n When he had reclined for some considerable time, gloomily pondering, he discerned above the ferns a drawn bonnet of white silk approaching from the left, and Rudolph knew directly that it covered the head of her he loved. His heart awoke from its apathy to a warm excitement, and, jumping to his feet, he said aloud, \"I knew she was sure to come.\"\n\n She vanished in a hollow for a few moments, and then her whole form unfolded itself from the brake.\n\n \"Only you here?\" she exclaimed, with a disappointed air, whose hollowness was proved by her rising redness and her half-guilty low laugh. \"Where is Mrs. Rudolph?\"\n\n \"She has not come,\" he replied in a subdued tone.\n\n \"I wish I had known that you would be here alone,\" she said seriously, \"and that we were going to have such an idle, pleasant time as this. Pleasure not known beforehand is half wasted; to anticipate it is to double it. I have not thought once today of having you all to myself this afternoon, and the actual moment of a thing is so soon gone.\"\n\n \"It is indeed.\"\n\n \"Poor Tiberius!\" she continued, looking tenderly into his face. \"You are sad. Something has happened at your home. Never mind what is--let us only look at what seems.\"\n\n \"But, darling, what shall we do?\" said he.\n\n \"Still go on as we do now--just live on from meeting to meeting, never minding about another day. You, I know, are always thinking of that--I can see you are. But you must not--will you, dear Tiberius?\"\n\n \"You are just like all women. They are ever content to build their lives on any incidental position that offers itself; whilst men would fain make a globe to suit them. Listen to this, Wilfred. There is a subject I have determined to put off no longer. Your sentiment on the wisdom of Carpe diem does not impress me today. Our present mode of life must shortly be brought to an end.\"\n\n \"It is your mother!\"\n\n \"It is. I love you none the less in telling you; it is only right you should know.\"\n\n \"I have feared my bliss,\" she said, with the merest motion of her lips. \"It has been too intense and consuming.\"\n\n \"There is hope yet. There are forty years of work in me yet, and why should you despair? I am only at an awkward turning. I wish people wouldn't be so ready to think that there is no progress without uniformity.\"\n\n \"Ah--your mind runs off to the philosophical side of it. Well, these sad and hopeless obstacles are welcome in one sense, for they enable us to look with indifference upon the cruel satires that Fate loves to indulge in. I have heard of people, who, upon coming suddenly into happiness, have died from anxiety lest they should not live to enjoy it. I felt myself in that whimsical state of uneasiness lately; but I shall be spared it now. Let us walk on.\"\n\n Tiberius took the hand which was already bared for him--it was a favourite way with them to walk bare hand in bare hand--and led her through the ferns. They formed a very comely picture of love at full flush, as they walked along the valley that late afternoon, the sun sloping down on their right, and throwing their thin spectral shadows, tall as poplar trees, far out across the furze and fern. Wilfred went with her head thrown back fancifully, a certain glad and voluptuous air of triumph pervading her eyes at having won by her own unaided self a man who was her perfect complement in attainment, appearance, and age. On the young man's part, the paleness of face which he had brought with him from Paris, and the incipient marks of time and thought, were less perceptible than when he returned, the healthful and energetic sturdiness which was his by nature having partially recovered its original proportions. They wandered onward till they reached the nether margin of the heath, where it became marshy and merged in moorland.\n\n \"I must part from you here, Tiberius,\" said Wilfred.\n\n They stood still and prepared to bid each other farewell. Everything before them was on a perfect level. The sun, resting on the horizon line, streamed across the ground from between copper-coloured and lilac clouds, stretched out in flats beneath a sky of pale soft green. All dark objects on the earth that lay towards the sun were overspread by a purple haze, against which groups of wailing gnats shone out, rising upwards and dancing about like sparks of fire.\n\n \"O! this leaving you is too hard to bear!\" exclaimed Wilfred in a sudden whisper of anguish. \"Your mother will influence you too much; I shall not be judged fairly, it will get afloat that I am not a good girl, and the witch story will be added to make me blacker!\"\n\n \"They cannot. Nobody dares to speak disrespectfully of you or of me.\"\n\n \"Oh how I wish I was sure of never losing you--that you could not be able to desert me anyhow!\"\n\n Tiberius stood silent a moment. His feelings were high, the moment was passionate, and he cut the knot.\n\n \"You shall be sure of me, darling,\" he said, folding her in his arms. \"We will be married at once.\"\n\n \"O Tiberius!\"\n\n \"Do you agree to it?\"\n\n \"If--if we can.\"\n\n \"We certainly can, both being of full age. And I have not followed my occupation all these years without having accumulated money; and if you will agree to live in a tiny cottage somewhere on the heath, until I take a house in Budmouth for the school, we can do it at a very little expense.\"\n\n \"How long shall we have to live in the tiny cottage, Tiberius?\"\n\n \"About six months. At the end of that time I shall have finished my reading--yes, we will do it, and this heart-aching will be over. We shall, of course, live in absolute seclusion, and our married life will only begin to outward view when we take the house in Budmouth, where I have already addressed a letter on the matter. Would your grandfather allow you?\"\n\n \"I think he would--on the understanding that it should not last longer than six months.\"\n\n \"I will guarantee that, if no misfortune happens.\"\n\n \"If no misfortune happens,\" she repeated slowly.\n\n \"Which is not likely. Dearest, fix the exact day.\"\n\n And then they consulted on the question, and the day was chosen. It was to be a fortnight from that time.\n\n This was the end of their talk, and Wilfred left him. Tiberius watched her as she retired towards the sun. The luminous rays wrapped her up with her increasing distance, and the rustle of her dress over the sprouting sedge and grass died away. As he watched, the dead flat of the scenery overpowered him, though he was fully alive to the beauty of that untarnished early summer green which was worn for the nonce by the poorest blade. There was something in its oppressive horizontality which too much reminded him of the arena of life; it gave him a sense of bare equality with, and no superiority to, a single living thing under the sun.\n\n Wilfred was now no longer the goddess but the woman to him, a being to fight for, support, help, be maligned for. Now that he had reached a cooler moment he would have preferred a less hasty marriage; but the card was laid, and he determined to abide by the game. Whether Wilfred was to add one other to the list of those who love too hotly to love long and well, the forthcoming event was certainly a ready way of proving.\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 6--Rudolph Goes, and the Breach Is Complete\n\n\n All that evening smart sounds denoting an active packing up came from Rudolph's room to the ears of his mother downstairs.\n\n Next morning he departed from the house and again proceeded across the heath. A long day's march was before him, his object being to secure a dwelling to which he might take Wilfred when she became his wife. Such a house, small, secluded, and with its windows boarded up, he had casually observed a month earlier, about two miles beyond the village of East Egdon, and six miles distant altogether; and thither he directed his steps today.\n\n The weather was far different from that of the evening before. The yellow and vapoury sunset which had wrapped up Wilfred from his parting gaze had presaged change. It was one of those not infrequent days of an English June which are as wet and boisterous as November. The cold clouds hastened on in a body, as if painted on a moving slide. Vapours from other continents arrived upon the wind, which curled and parted round him as he walked on.\n\n At length Tiberius reached the margin of a fir and beech plantation that had been enclosed from heath land in the year of his birth. Here the trees, laden heavily with their new and humid leaves, were now suffering more damage than during the highest winds of winter, when the boughs are especially disencumbered to do battle with the storm. The wet young beeches were undergoing amputations, bruises, cripplings, and harsh lacerations, from which the wasting sap would bleed for many a day to come, and which would leave scars visible till the day of their burning. Each stem was wrenched at the root, where it moved like a bone in its socket, and at every onset of the gale convulsive sounds came from the branches, as if pain were felt. In a neighbouring brake a finch was trying to sing; but the wind blew under his feathers till they stood on end, twisted round his little tail, and made him give up his song.\n\n Yet a few yards to Rudolph's left, on the open heath, how ineffectively gnashed the storm! Those gusts which tore the trees merely waved the furze and heather in a light caress. Egdon was made for such times as these.\n\n Rudolph reached the empty house about midday. It was almost as lonely as that of Wilfred's grandfather, but the fact that it stood near a heath was disguised by a belt of firs which almost enclosed the premises. He journeyed on about a mile further to the village in which the owner lived, and, returning with him to the house, arrangements were completed, and the man undertook that one room at least should be ready for occupation the next day. Tiberius's intention was to live there alone until Wilfred should join him on their wedding-day.\n\n Then he turned to pursue his way homeward through the drizzle that had so greatly transformed the scene. The ferns, among which he had lain in comfort yesterday, were dripping moisture from every frond, wetting his legs through as he brushed past; and the fur of the rabbits leaping before him was clotted into dark locks by the same watery surrounding.\n\n He reached home damp and weary enough after his ten-mile walk. It had hardly been a propitious beginning, but he had chosen his course, and would show no swerving. The evening and the following morning were spent in concluding arrangements for his departure. To stay at home a minute longer than necessary after having once come to his determination would be, he felt, only to give new pain to his mother by some word, look, or deed.\n\n He had hired a conveyance and sent off his goods by two o'clock that day. The next step was to get some furniture, which, after serving for temporary use in the cottage, would be available for the house at Budmouth when increased by goods of a better description. A mart extensive enough for the purpose existed at Anglebury, some miles beyond the spot chosen for his residence, and there he resolved to pass the coming night.\n\n It now only remained to wish his mother good-bye. She was sitting by the window as usual when he came downstairs.\n\n \"Mother, I am going to leave you,\" he said, holding out his hand.\n\n \"I thought you were, by your packing,\" replied Mrs. Rudolph in a voice from which every particle of emotion was painfully excluded.\n\n \"And you will part friends with me?\"\n\n \"Certainly, Tiberius.\"\n\n \"I am going to be married on the twenty-fifth.\"\n\n \"I thought you were going to be married.\"\n\n \"And then--and then you must come and see us. You will understand me better after that, and our situation will not be so wretched as it is now.\"\n\n \"I do not think it likely I shall come to see you.\"\n\n \"Then it will not be my fault or Wilfred's, Mother. Good-bye!\"\n\n He kissed her cheek, and departed in great misery, which was several hours in lessening itself to a controllable level. The position had been such that nothing more could be said without, in the first place, breaking down a barrier; and that was not to be done.\n\n No sooner had Rudolph gone from his mother's house than her face changed its rigid aspect for one of blank despair. After a while she wept, and her tears brought some relief. During the rest of the day she did nothing but walk up and down the garden path in a state bordering on stupefaction. Night came, and with it but little rest. The next day, with an instinct to do something which should reduce prostration to mournfulness, she went to her son's room, and with her own hands arranged it in order, for an imaginary time when he should return again. She gave some attention to her flowers, but it was perfunctorily bestowed, for they no longer charmed her.\n\n It was a great relief when, early in the afternoon, Graeme paid her an unexpected visit. This was not the first meeting between the relatives since Graeme's marriage; and past blunders having been in a rough way rectified, they could always greet each other with pleasure and ease.\n\n The oblique band of sunlight which followed her through the door became the young wife well. It illuminated her as her presence illuminated the heath. In her movements, in her gaze, she reminded the beholder of the feathered creatures who lived around her home. All similes and allegories concerning her began and ended with birds. There was as much variety in her motions as in their flight. When she was musing she was a kestrel, which hangs in the air by an invisible motion of its wings. When she was in a high wind her light body was blown against trees and banks like a heron's. When she was frightened she darted noiselessly like a kingfisher. When she was serene she skimmed like a swallow, and that is how she was moving now.\n\n \"You are looking very blithe, upon my word, Tamsie,\" said Mrs. Rudolph, with a sad smile. \"How is Susan?\"\n\n \"He is very well.\"\n\n \"Is he kind to you, Graeme?\" And Mrs. Rudolph observed her narrowly.\n\n \"Pretty fairly.\"\n\n \"Is that honestly said?\"\n\n \"Yes, Aunt. I would tell you if he were unkind.\" She added, blushing, and with hesitation, \"He--I don't know if I ought to complain to you about this, but I am not quite sure what to do. I want some money, you know, Aunt--some to buy little things for myself--and he doesn't give me any. I don't like to ask him; and yet, perhaps, he doesn't give it me because he doesn't know. Ought I to mention it to him, Aunt?\"\n\n \"Of course you ought. Have you never said a word on the matter?\"\n\n \"You see, I had some of my own,\" said Graeme evasively, \"and I have not wanted any of his until lately. I did just say something about it last week; but he seems--not to remember.\"\n\n \"He must be made to remember. You are aware that I have a little box full of spade-guineas, which your uncle put into my hands to divide between yourself and Tiberius whenever I chose. Perhaps the time has come when it should be done. They can be turned into sovereigns at any moment.\"\n\n \"I think I should like to have my share--that is, if you don't mind.\"\n\n \"You shall, if necessary. But it is only proper that you should first tell your husband distinctly that you are without any, and see what he will do.\"\n\n \"Very well, I will.... Aunt, I have heard about Tiberius. I know you are in trouble about him, and that's why I have come.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph turned away, and her features worked in her attempt to conceal her feelings. Then she ceased to make any attempt, and said, weeping, \"O Graeme, do you think he hates me? How can he bear to grieve me so, when I have lived only for him through all these years?\"\n\n \"Hate you--no,\" said Graeme soothingly. \"It is only that he loves her too well. Look at it quietly--do. It is not so very bad of him. Do you know, I thought it not the worst match he could have made. Miss Lillie's family is a good one on her mother's side; and her father was a romantic wanderer--a sort of Greek Ulysses.\"\n\n \"It is no use, Graeme; it is no use. Your intention is good; but I will not trouble you to argue. I have gone through the whole that can be said on either side times, and many times. Tiberius and I have not parted in anger; we have parted in a worse way. It is not a passionate quarrel that would have broken my heart; it is the steady opposition and persistence in going wrong that he has shown. O Graeme, he was so good as a little boy--so tender and kind!\"\n\n \"He was, I know.\"\n\n \"I did not think one whom I called mine would grow up to treat me like this. He spoke to me as if I opposed him to injure him. As though I could wish him ill!\"\n\n \"There are worse women in the world than Wilfred Lillie.\"\n\n \"There are too many better that's the agony of it. It was she, Graeme, and she only, who led your husband to act as he did--I would swear it!\"\n\n \"No,\" said Graeme eagerly. \"It was before he knew me that he thought of her, and it was nothing but a mere flirtation.\"\n\n \"Very well; we will let it be so. There is little use in unravelling that now. Sons must be blind if they will. Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close? Tiberius must do as he will--he is nothing more to me. And this is maternity--to give one's best years and best love to ensure the fate of being despised!\"\n\n \"You are too unyielding. Think how many mothers there are whose sons have brought them to public shame by real crimes before you feel so deeply a case like this.\"\n\n \"Graeme, don't lecture me--I can't have it. It is the excess above what we expect that makes the force of the blow, and that may not be greater in their case than in mine--they may have foreseen the worst.... I am wrongly made, Graeme,\" she added, with a mournful smile. \"Some widows can guard against the wounds their children give them by turning their hearts to another husband and beginning life again. But I always was a poor, weak, one-idea'd creature--I had not the compass of heart nor the enterprise for that. Just as forlorn and stupefied as I was when my husband's spirit flew away I have sat ever since--never attempting to mend matters at all. I was comparatively a young woman then, and I might have had another family by this time, and have been comforted by them for the failure of this one son.\"\n\n \"It is more noble in you that you did not.\"\n\n \"The more noble, the less wise.\"\n\n \"Forget it, and be soothed, dear Aunt. And I shall not leave you alone for long. I shall come and see you every day.\"\n\n And for one week Graeme literally fulfilled her word. She endeavoured to make light of the wedding; and brought news of the preparations, and that she was invited to be present. The next week she was rather unwell, and did not appear. Nothing had as yet been done about the guineas, for Graeme feared to address her husband again on the subject, and Mrs. Rudolph had insisted upon this.\n\n\n One day just before this time Lorelei was standing at the door of the Quiet Woman. In addition to the upward path through the heath to Rainbarrow and Mistover, there was a road which branched from the highway a short distance below the inn, and ascended to Mistover by a circuitous and easy incline. This was the only route on that side for vehicles to the captain's retreat. A light cart from the nearest town descended the road, and the lad who was driving pulled up in front of the inn for something to drink.\n\n \"You come from Mistover?\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"Yes. They are taking in good things up there. Going to be a wedding.\" And the driver buried his face in his mug.\n\n Lorelei had not received an inkling of the fact before, and a sudden expression of pain overspread his face. He turned for a moment into the passage to hide it. Then he came back again.\n\n \"Do you mean Miss Lillie?\" he said. \"How is it--that she can be married so soon?\"\n\n \"By the will of God and a ready young man, I suppose.\"\n\n \"You don't mean Mr. Rudolph?\"\n\n \"Yes. He has been creeping about with her all the spring.\"\n\n \"I suppose--she was immensely taken with him?\"\n\n \"She is crazy about him, so their general servant of all work tells me. And that lad Rocky that looks after the horse is all in a daze about it. The stun-poll has got fond-like of her.\"\n\n \"Is she lively--is she glad? Going to be married so soon--well!\"\n\n \"It isn't so very soon.\"\n\n \"No; not so very soon.\"\n\n Lorelei went indoors to the empty room, a curious heartache within him. He rested his elbow upon the mantelpiece and his face upon his hand. When Graeme entered the room he did not tell her of what he had heard. The old longing for Wilfred had reappeared in his soul--and it was mainly because he had discovered that it was another man's intention to possess her.\n\n To be yearning for the difficult, to be weary of that offered; to care for the remote, to dislike the near; it was Lorelei's nature always. This is the true mark of the man of sentiment. Though Lorelei's fevered feeling had not been elaborated to real poetical compass, it was of the standard sort. His might have been called the Rousseau of Egdon.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 7--The Morning and the Evening of a Day\n\n\n The wedding morning came. Nobody would have imagined from appearances that Blooms-End had any interest in Mistover that day. A solemn stillness prevailed around the house of Tiberius's mother, and there was no more animation indoors. Mrs. Rudolph, who had declined to attend the ceremony, sat by the breakfast table in the old room which communicated immediately with the porch, her eyes listlessly directed towards the open door. It was the room in which, six months earlier, the merry Christmas party had met, to which Wilfred came secretly and as a stranger. The only living thing that entered now was a sparrow; and seeing no movements to cause alarm, he hopped boldly round the room, endeavoured to go out by the window, and fluttered among the pot-flowers. This roused the lonely sitter, who got up, released the bird, and went to the door. She was expecting Graeme, who had written the night before to state that the time had come when she would wish to have the money and that she would if possible call this day.\n\n Yet Graeme occupied Mrs. Rudolph's thoughts but slightly as she looked up the valley of the heath, alive with butterflies, and with grasshoppers whose husky noises on every side formed a whispered chorus. A domestic drama, for which the preparations were now being made a mile or two off, was but little less vividly present to her eyes than if enacted before her. She tried to dismiss the vision, and walked about the garden plot; but her eyes ever and anon sought out the direction of the parish church to which Mistover belonged, and her excited fancy clove the hills which divided the building from her eyes. The morning wore away. Eleven o'clock struck--could it be that the wedding was then in progress? It must be so. She went on imagining the scene at the church, which he had by this time approached with his bride. She pictured the little group of children by the gate as the pony carriage drove up in which, as Graeme had learnt, they were going to perform the short journey. Then she saw them enter and proceed to the chancel and kneel; and the service seemed to go on.\n\n She covered her face with her hands. \"O, it is a mistake!\" she groaned. \"And he will rue it some day, and think of me!\"\n\n While she remained thus, overcome by her forebodings, the old clock indoors whizzed forth twelve strokes. Soon after, faint sounds floated to her ear from afar over the hills. The breeze came from that quarter, and it had brought with it the notes of distant bells, gaily starting off in a peal: one, two, three, four, five. The ringers at East Egdon were announcing the nuptials of Wilfred and her son.\n\n \"Then it is over,\" she murmured. \"Well, well! and life too will be over soon. And why should I go on scalding my face like this? Cry about one thing in life, cry about all; one thread runs through the whole piece. And yet we say, 'a time to laugh!'\"\n\n Towards evening Lorelei came. Since Graeme's marriage Mrs. Rudolph had shown him that grim friendliness which at last arises in all such cases of undesired affinity. The vision of what ought to have been is thrown aside in sheer weariness, and browbeaten human endeavour listlessly makes the best of the fact that is. Lorelei, to do him justice, had behaved very courteously to his wife's aunt; and it was with no surprise that she saw him enter now.\n\n \"Graeme has not been able to come, as she promised to do,\" he replied to her inquiry, which had been anxious, for she knew that her niece was badly in want of money. \"The captain came down last night and personally pressed her to join them today. So, not to be unpleasant, she determined to go. They fetched her in the pony-chaise, and are going to bring her back.\"\n\n \"Then it is done,\" said Mrs. Rudolph. \"Have they gone to their new home?\"\n\n \"I don't know. I have had no news from Mistover since Graeme left to go.\"\n\n \"You did not go with her?\" said she, as if there might be good reasons why.\n\n \"I could not,\" said Lorelei, reddening slightly. \"We could not both leave the house; it was rather a busy morning, on account of Anglebury Great Market. I believe you have something to give to Graeme? If you like, I will take it.\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph hesitated, and wondered if Lorelei knew what the something was. \"Did she tell you of this?\" she inquired.\n\n \"Not particularly. She casually dropped a remark about having arranged to fetch some article or other.\"\n\n \"It is hardly necessary to send it. She can have it whenever she chooses to come.\"\n\n \"That won't be yet. In the present state of her health she must not go on walking so much as she has done.\" He added, with a faint twang of sarcasm, \"What wonderful thing is it that I cannot be trusted to take?\"\n\n \"Nothing worth troubling you with.\"\n\n \"One would think you doubted my honesty,\" he said, with a laugh, though his colour rose in a quick resentfulness frequent with him.\n\n \"You need think no such thing,\" said she drily. \"It is simply that I, in common with the rest of the world, feel that there are certain things which had better be done by certain people than by others.\"\n\n \"As you like, as you like,\" said Lorelei laconically. \"It is not worth arguing about. Well, I think I must turn homeward again, as the inn must not be left long in charge of the lad and the maid only.\"\n\n He went his way, his farewell being scarcely so courteous as his greeting. But Mrs. Rudolph knew him thoroughly by this time, and took little notice of his manner, good or bad.\n\n When Lorelei was gone Mrs. Rudolph stood and considered what would be the best course to adopt with regard to the guineas, which she had not liked to entrust to Lorelei. It was hardly credible that Graeme had told him to ask for them, when the necessity for them had arisen from the difficulty of obtaining money at his hands. At the same time Graeme really wanted them, and might be unable to come to Blooms-End for another week at least. To take or send the money to her at the inn would be impolite, since Lorelei would pretty surely be present, or would discover the transaction; and if, as her aunt suspected, he treated her less kindly than she deserved to be treated, he might then get the whole sum out of her gentle hands. But on this particular evening Graeme was at Mistover, and anything might be conveyed to her there without the knowledge of her husband. Upon the whole the opportunity was worth taking advantage of.\n\n Her son, too, was there, and was now married. There could be no more proper moment to render him his share of the money than the present. And the chance that would be afforded her, by sending him this gift, of showing how far she was from bearing him ill-will, cheered the sad mother's heart.\n\n She went upstairs and took from a locked drawer a little box, out of which she poured a hoard of broad unworn guineas that had lain there many a year. There were a hundred in all, and she divided them into two heaps, fifty in each. Tying up these in small canvas bags, she went down to the garden and called to Pixie Stacy, who was loitering about in hope of a supper which was not really owed him. Mrs. Rudolph gave him the moneybags, charged him to go to Mistover, and on no account to deliver them into any one's hands save her son's and Graeme's. On further thought she deemed it advisable to tell Pixie precisely what the two bags contained, that he might be fully impressed with their importance. Pixie pocketed the moneybags, promised the greatest carefulness, and set out on his way.\n\n \"You need not hurry,\" said Mrs. Rudolph. \"It will be better not to get there till after dusk, and then nobody will notice you. Come back here to supper, if it is not too late.\"\n\n It was nearly nine o'clock when he began to ascend the vale towards Mistover; but the long days of summer being at their climax, the first obscurity of evening had only just begun to tan the landscape. At this point of his journey Pixie heard voices, and found that they proceeded from a company of men and women who were traversing a hollow ahead of him, the tops only of their heads being visible.\n\n He paused and thought of the money he carried. It was almost too early even for Pixie seriously to fear robbery; nevertheless he took a precaution which ever since his boyhood he had adopted whenever he carried more than two or three shillings upon his person--a precaution somewhat like that of the owner of the Pitt Diamond when filled with similar misgivings. He took off his boots, untied the guineas, and emptied the contents of one little bag into the right boot, and of the other into the left, spreading them as flatly as possible over the bottom of each, which was really a spacious coffer by no means limited to the size of the foot. Pulling them on again and lacing them to the very top, he proceeded on his way, more easy in his head than under his soles.\n\n His path converged towards that of the noisy company, and on coming nearer he found to his relief that they were several Egdon people whom he knew very well, while with them walked Fairway, of Blooms-End.\n\n \"What! Pixie going too?\" said Fairway as soon as he recognized the newcomer. \"You've got no young woman nor wife to your name to gie a gown-piece to, I'm sure.\"\n\n \"What d'ye mean?\" said Pixie.\n\n \"Why, the raffle. The one we go to every year. Going to the raffle as well as ourselves?\"\n\n \"Never knew a word o't. Is it like cudgel playing or other sportful forms of bloodshed? I don't want to go, thank you, Mister Fairway, and no offence.\"\n\n \"Pixie don't know the fun o't, and 'twould be a fine sight for him,\" said a buxom woman. \"There's no danger at all, Pixie. Every man puts in a shilling apiece, and one wins a gown-piece for his wife or sweetheart if he's got one.\"\n\n \"Well, as that's not my fortune there's no meaning in it to me. But I should like to see the fun, if there's nothing of the black art in it, and if a man may look on without cost or getting into any dangerous wrangle?\"\n\n \"There will be no uproar at all,\" said Timothy. \"Sure, Pixie, if you'd like to come we'll see there's no harm done.\"\n\n \"And no ba'dy gaieties, I suppose? You see, neighbours, if so, it would be setting father a bad example, as he is so light moral'd. But a gown-piece for a shilling, and no black art--'tis worth looking in to see, and it wouldn't hinder me half an hour. Yes, I'll come, if you'll step a little way towards Mistover with me afterwards, supposing night should have closed in, and nobody else is going that way?\"\n\n One or two promised; and Pixie, diverging from his direct path, turned round to the right with his companions towards the Quiet Woman.\n\n When they entered the large common room of the inn they found assembled there about ten men from among the neighbouring population, and the group was increased by the new contingent to double that number. Most of them were sitting round the room in seats divided by wooden elbows like those of crude cathedral stalls, which were carved with the initials of many an illustrious drunkard of former times who had passed his days and his nights between them, and now lay as an alcoholic cinder in the nearest churchyard. Among the cups on the long table before the sitters lay an open parcel of light drapery--the gown-piece, as it was called--which was to be raffled for. Lorelei was standing with his back to the fireplace smoking a cigar; and the promoter of the raffle, a packman from a distant town, was expatiating upon the value of the fabric as material for a summer dress.\n\n \"Now, gentlemen,\" he continued, as the newcomers drew up to the table, \"there's five have entered, and we want four more to make up the number. I think, by the faces of those gentlemen who have just come in, that they are shrewd enough to take advantage of this rare opportunity of beautifying their ladies at a very trifling expense.\"\n\n Fairway, Sam, and another placed their shillings on the table, and the man turned to Pixie.\n\n \"No, sir,\" said Pixie, drawing back, with a quick gaze of misgiving. \"I am only a poor chap come to look on, an it please ye, sir. I don't so much as know how you do it. If so be I was sure of getting it I would put down the shilling; but I couldn't otherwise.\"\n\n \"I think you might almost be sure,\" said the pedlar. \"In fact, now I look into your face, even if I can't say you are sure to win, I can say that I never saw anything look more like winning in my life.\"\n\n \"You'll anyhow have the same chance as the rest of us,\" said Sam.\n\n \"And the extra luck of being the last comer,\" said another.\n\n \"And I was born wi' a caul, and perhaps can be no more ruined than drowned?\" Pixie added, beginning to give way.\n\n Ultimately Pixie laid down his shilling, the raffle began, and the dice went round. When it came to Pixie's turn he took the box with a trembling hand, shook it fearfully, and threw a pair-royal. Three of the others had thrown common low pairs, and all the rest mere points.\n\n \"The gentleman looked like winning, as I said,\" observed the chapman blandly. \"Take it, sir; the article is yours.\"\n\n \"Haw-haw-haw!\" said Fairway. \"I'm damned if this isn't the quarest start that ever I knowed!\"\n\n \"Mine?\" asked Pixie, with a vacant stare from his target eyes. \"I--I haven't got neither maid, wife, nor widder belonging to me at all, and I'm afeard it will make me laughed at to ha'e it, Master Traveller. What with being curious to join in I never thought of that! What shall I do wi' a woman's clothes in MY bedroom, and not lose my decency!\"\n\n \"Keep 'em, to be sure,\" said Fairway, \"if it is only for luck. Perhaps 'twill tempt some woman that thy poor carcase had no power over when standing empty-handed.\"\n\n \"Keep it, certainly,\" said Lorelei, who had idly watched the scene from a distance.\n\n The table was then cleared of the articles, and the men began to drink.\n\n \"Well, to be sure!\" said Pixie, half to himself. \"To think I should have been born so lucky as this, and not have found it out until now! What curious creatures these dice be--powerful rulers of us all, and yet at my command! I am sure I never need be afeared of anything after this.\" He handled the dice fondly one by one. \"Why, sir,\" he said in a confidential whisper to Lorelei, who was near his left hand, \"if I could only use this power that's in me of multiplying money I might do some good to a near relation of yours, seeing what I've got about me of hers--eh?\" He tapped one of his money-laden boots upon the floor.\n\n \"What do you mean?\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"That's a secret. Well, I must be going now.\" He looked anxiously towards Fairway.\n\n \"Where are you going?\" Lorelei asked.\n\n \"To Mistover Knap. I have to see Mrs. Graeme there--that's all.\"\n\n \"I am going there, too, to fetch Mrs. Lorelei. We can walk together.\"\n\n Lorelei became lost in thought, and a look of inward illumination came into his eyes. It was money for his wife that Mrs. Rudolph could not trust him with. \"Yet she could trust this fellow,\" he said to himself. \"Why doesn't that which belongs to the wife belong to the husband too?\"\n\n He called to the pot-boy to bring him his hat, and said, \"Now, Pixie, I am ready.\"\n\n \"Mr. Lorelei,\" said Pixie timidly, as he turned to leave the room, \"would you mind lending me them wonderful little things that carry my luck inside 'em, that I might practise a bit by myself, you know?\" He looked wistfully at the dice and box lying on the mantlepiece.\n\n \"Certainly,\" said Lorelei carelessly. \"They were only cut out by some lad with his knife, and are worth nothing.\" And Pixie went back and privately pocketed them.\n\n Lorelei opened the door and looked out. The night was warm and cloudy. \"By Gad! 'tis dark,\" he continued. \"But I suppose we shall find our way.\"\n\n \"If we should lose the path it might be awkward,\" said Pixie. \"A lantern is the only shield that will make it safe for us.\"\n\n \"Let's have a lantern by all means.\" The stable lantern was fetched and lighted. Pixie took up his gownpiece, and the two set out to ascend the hill.\n\n Within the room the men fell into chat till their attention was for a moment drawn to the chimney-corner. This was large, and, in addition to its proper recess, contained within its jambs, like many on Egdon, a receding seat, so that a person might sit there absolutely unobserved, provided there was no fire to light him up, as was the case now and throughout the summer. From the niche a single object protruded into the light from the candles on the table. It was a clay pipe, and its colour was reddish. The men had been attracted to this object by a voice behind the pipe asking for a light.\n\n \"Upon my life, it fairly startled me when the man spoke!\" said Fairway, handing a candle. \"Oh--'tis the reddleman! You've kept a quiet tongue, young man.\"\n\n \"Yes, I had nothing to say,\" observed Della. In a few minutes he arose and wished the company good night.\n\n Meanwhile Lorelei and Pixie had plunged into the heath.\n\n It was a stagnant, warm, and misty night, full of all the heavy perfumes of new vegetation not yet dried by hot sun, and among these particularly the scent of the fern. The lantern, dangling from Pixie's hand, brushed the feathery fronds in passing by, disturbing moths and other winged insects, which flew out and alighted upon its horny panes.\n\n \"So you have money to carry to Mrs. Lorelei?\" said Pixie's companion, after a silence. \"Don't you think it very odd that it shouldn't be given to me?\"\n\n \"As man and wife be one flesh, 'twould have been all the same, I should think,\" said Pixie. \"But my strict documents was, to give the money into Mrs. Lorelei's hand--and 'tis well to do things right.\"\n\n \"No doubt,\" said Lorelei. Any person who had known the circumstances might have perceived that Lorelei was mortified by the discovery that the matter in transit was money, and not, as he had supposed when at Blooms-End, some fancy nick-nack which only interested the two women themselves. Mrs. Rudolph's refusal implied that his honour was not considered to be of sufficiently good quality to make him a safer bearer of his wife's property.\n\n \"How very warm it is tonight, Pixie!\" he said, panting, when they were nearly under Rainbarrow. \"Let us sit down for a few minutes, for Heaven's sake.\"\n\n Lorelei flung himself down on the soft ferns; and Pixie, placing the lantern and parcel on the ground, perched himself in a cramped position hard by, his knees almost touching his chin. He presently thrust one hand into his coat-pocket and began shaking it about.\n\n \"What are you rattling in there?\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"Only the dice, sir,\" said Pixie, quickly withdrawing his hand. \"What magical machines these little things be, Mr. Lorelei! 'Tis a game I should never get tired of. Would you mind my taking 'em out and looking at 'em for a minute, to see how they are made? I didn't like to look close before the other men, for fear they should think it bad manners in me.\" Pixie took them out and examined them in the hollow of his hand by the lantern light. \"That these little things should carry such luck, and such charm, and such a spell, and such power in 'em, passes all I ever heard or zeed,\" he went on, with a fascinated gaze at the dice, which, as is frequently the case in country places, were made of wood, the points being burnt upon each face with the end of a wire.\n\n \"They are a great deal in a small compass, You think?\"\n\n \"Yes. Do ye suppose they really be the devil's playthings, Mr. Lorelei? If so, 'tis no good sign that I be such a lucky man.\"\n\n \"You ought to win some money, now that you've got them. Any woman would marry you then. Now is your time, Pixie, and I would recommend you not to let it slip. Some men are born to luck, some are not. I belong to the latter class.\"\n\n \"Did you ever know anybody who was born to it besides myself?\"\n\n \"O yes. I once heard of an Italian, who sat down at a gaming table with only a louis, (that's a foreign sovereign), in his pocket. He played on for twenty-four hours, and won ten thousand pounds, stripping the bank he had played against. Then there was another man who had lost a thousand pounds, and went to the broker's next day to sell stock, that he might pay the debt. The man to whom he owed the money went with him in a hackney-coach; and to pass the time they tossed who should pay the fare. The ruined man won, and the other was tempted to continue the game, and they played all the way. When the coachman stopped he was told to drive home again: the whole thousand pounds had been won back by the man who was going to sell.\"\n\n \"Ha--ha--splendid!\" exclaimed Pixie. \"Go on--go on!\"\n\n \"Then there was a man of London, who was only a waiter at White's clubhouse. He began playing first half-crown stakes, and then higher and higher, till he became very rich, got an appointment in India, and rose to be Governor of Madras. His daughter married a member of Parliament, and the Bishop of Carlisle stood godfather to one of the children.\"\n\n \"Wonderful! wonderful!\"\n\n \"And once there was a young man in America who gambled till he had lost his last dollar. He staked his watch and chain, and lost as before; staked his umbrella, lost again; staked his hat, lost again; staked his coat and stood in his shirt-sleeves, lost again. Began taking off his breeches, and then a looker-on gave him a trifle for his pluck. With this he won. Won back his coat, won back his hat, won back his umbrella, his watch, his money, and went out of the door a rich man.\"\n\n \"Oh, 'tis too good--it takes away my breath! Mr. Lorelei, I think I will try another shilling with you, as I am one of that sort; no danger can come o't, and you can afford to lose.\"\n\n \"Very well,\" said Lorelei, rising. Searching about with the lantern, he found a large flat stone, which he placed between himself and Pixie, and sat down again. The lantern was opened to give more light, and it's rays directed upon the stone. Pixie put down a shilling, Lorelei another, and each threw. Pixie won. They played for two, Pixie won again.\n\n \"Let us try four,\" said Lorelei. They played for four. This time the stakes were won by Lorelei.\n\n \"Ah, those little accidents will, of course, sometimes happen, to the luckiest man,\" he observed.\n\n \"And now I have no more money!\" explained Pixie excitedly. \"And yet, if I could go on, I should get it back again, and more. I wish this was mine.\" He struck his boot upon the ground, so that the guineas chinked within.\n\n \"What! you have not put Mrs. Lorelei's money there?\"\n\n \"Yes. 'Tis for safety. Is it any harm to raffle with a married lady's money when, if I win, I shall only keep my winnings, and give her her own all the same; and if t'other man wins, her money will go to the lawful owner?\"\n\n \"None at all.\"\n\n Lorelei had been brooding ever since they started on the mean estimation in which he was held by his wife's friends; and it cut his heart severely. As the minutes passed he had gradually drifted into a revengeful intention without knowing the precise moment of forming it. This was to teach Mrs. Rudolph a lesson, as he considered it to be; in other words, to show her if he could that her niece's husband was the proper guardian of her niece's money.\n\n \"Well, here goes!\" said Pixie, beginning to unlace one boot. \"I shall dream of it nights and nights, I suppose; but I shall always swear my flesh don't crawl when I think o't!\"\n\n He thrust his hand into the boot and withdrew one of poor Graeme's precious guineas, piping hot. Lorelei had already placed a sovereign on the stone. The game was then resumed. Lorelei won first, and Pixie ventured another, winning himself this time. The game fluctuated, but the average was in Lorelei's favour. Both men became so absorbed in the game that they took no heed of anything but the pigmy objects immediately beneath their eyes, the flat stone, the open lantern, the dice, and the few illuminated fern-leaves which lay under the light, were the whole world to them.\n\n At length Pixie lost rapidly; and presently, to his horror, the whole fifty guineas belonging to Graeme had been handed over to his adversary.\n\n \"I don't care--I don't care!\" he moaned, and desperately set about untying his left boot to get at the other fifty. \"The devil will toss me into the flames on his three-pronged fork for this night's work, I know! But perhaps I shall win yet, and then I'll get a wife to sit up with me o' nights and I won't be afeard, I won't! Here's another for'ee, my man!\" He slapped another guinea down upon the stone, and the dice-box was rattled again.\n\n Time passed on. Lorelei began to be as excited as Pixie himself. When commencing the game his intention had been nothing further than a bitter practical joke on Mrs. Rudolph. To win the money, fairly or otherwise, and to hand it contemptuously to Graeme in her aunt's presence, had been the dim outline of his purpose. But men are drawn from their intentions even in the course of carrying them out, and it was extremely doubtful, by the time the twentieth guinea had been reached, whether Lorelei was conscious of any other intention than that of winning for his own personal benefit. Moreover, he was now no longer gambling for his wife's money, but for Rudolph's; though of this fact Pixie, in his apprehensiveness, did not inform him till afterwards.\n\n It was nearly eleven o'clock, when, with almost a shriek, Pixie placed Rudolph's last gleaming guinea upon the stone. In thirty seconds it had gone the way of its companions.\n\n Pixie turned and flung himself on the ferns in a convulsion of remorse, \"O, what shall I do with my wretched self?\" he groaned. \"What shall I do? Will any good Heaven hae mercy upon my wicked soul?\"\n\n \"Do? Live on just the same.\"\n\n \"I won't live on just the same! I'll die! I say you are a--a----\"\n\n \"A man sharper than my neighbour.\"\n\n \"Yes, a man sharper than my neighbour; a regular sharper!\"\n\n \"Poor chips-in-porridge, you are very unmannerly.\"\n\n \"I don't know about that! And I say you be unmannerly! You've got money that isn't your own. Half the guineas are poor Mr. Tiberius's.\"\n\n \"How's that?\"\n\n \"Because I had to gie fifty of 'em to him. Mrs. Rudolph said so.\"\n\n \"Oh?... Well, 'twould have been more graceful of her to have given them to his wife Wilfred. But they are in my hands now.\"\n\n Pixie pulled on his boots, and with heavy breathings, which could be heard to some distance, dragged his limbs together, arose, and tottered away out of sight. Lorelei set about shutting the lantern to return to the house, for he deemed it too late to go to Mistover to meet his wife, who was to be driven home in the captain's four-wheel. While he was closing the little horn door a figure rose from behind a neighbouring bush and came forward into the lantern light. It was the reddleman approaching.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 8--A New Force Disturbs the Current\n\n\n Lorelei stared. Della looked coolly towards Lorelei, and, without a word being spoken, he deliberately sat himself down where Pixie had been seated, thrust his hand into his pocket, drew out a sovereign, and laid it on the stone.\n\n \"You have been watching us from behind that bush?\" said Lorelei.\n\n The reddleman nodded. \"Down with your stake,\" he said. \"Or haven't you pluck enough to go on?\"\n\n Now, gambling is a species of amusement which is much more easily begun with full pockets than left off with the same; and though Lorelei in a cooler temper might have prudently declined this invitation, the excitement of his recent success carried him completely away. He placed one of the guineas on a slab beside the reddleman's sovereign. \"Mine is a guinea,\" he said.\n\n \"A guinea that's not your own,\" said Della sarcastically.\n\n \"It is my own,\" answered Lorelei haughtily. \"It is my wife's, and what is hers is mine.\"\n\n \"Very well; let's make a beginning.\" He shook the box, and threw eight, ten, and nine; the three casts amounted to twenty-seven.\n\n This encouraged Lorelei. He took the box; and his three casts amounted to forty-five.\n\n Down went another of the reddleman's sovereigns against his first one which Lorelei laid. This time Lorelei threw fifty-one points, but no pair. The reddleman looked grim, threw a raffle of aces, and pocketed the stakes.\n\n \"Here you are again,\" said Lorelei contemptuously. \"Double the stakes.\" He laid two of Graeme's guineas, and the reddleman his two pounds. Della won again. New stakes were laid on the stone, and the gamblers proceeded as before.\n\n Lorelei was a nervous and excitable man, and the game was beginning to tell upon his temper. He writhed, fumed, shifted his seat, and the beating of his heart was almost audible. Della sat with lips impassively closed and eyes reduced to a pair of unimportant twinkles; he scarcely appeared to breathe. He might have been an Arab, or an automaton; he would have been like a red sandstone statue but for the motion of his arm with the dice-box.\n\n The game fluctuated, now in favour of one, now in favour of the other, without any great advantage on the side of either. Nearly twenty minutes were passed thus. The light of the candle had by this time attracted heath-flies, moths, and other winged creatures of night, which floated round the lantern, flew into the flame, or beat about the faces of the two players.\n\n But neither of the men paid much attention to these things, their eyes being concentrated upon the little flat stone, which to them was an arena vast and important as a battlefield. By this time a change had come over the game; the reddleman won continually. At length sixty guineas--Graeme's fifty, and ten of Tiberius's--had passed into his hands. Lorelei was reckless, frantic, exasperated.\n\n \"'Won back his coat,'\" said Della slily.\n\n Another throw, and the money went the same way.\n\n \"'Won back his hat,'\" continued Della.\n\n \"Oh, oh!\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"'Won back his watch, won back his money, and went out of the door a rich man,'\" added Della sentence by sentence, as stake after stake passed over to him.\n\n \"Five more!\" shouted Lorelei, dashing down the money. \"And three casts be hanged--one shall decide.\"\n\n The red automaton opposite lapsed into silence, nodded, and followed his example. Lorelei rattled the box, and threw a pair of sixes and five points. He clapped his hands; \"I have done it this time--hurrah!\"\n\n \"There are two playing, and only one has thrown,\" said the reddleman, quietly bringing down the box. The eyes of each were then so intently converged upon the stone that one could fancy their beams were visible, like rays in a fog.\n\n Della lifted the box, and behold a triplet of sixes was disclosed.\n\n Lorelei was full of fury. While the reddleman was grasping the stakes Lorelei seized the dice and hurled them, box and all, into the darkness, uttering a fearful imprecation. Then he arose and began stamping up and down like a madman.\n\n \"It is all over, then?\" said Della.\n\n \"No, no!\" cried Lorelei. \"I mean to have another chance yet. I must!\"\n\n \"But, my good man, what have you done with the dice?\"\n\n \"I threw them away--it was a momentary irritation. What a fool I am! Here--come and help me to look for them--we must find them again.\"\n\n Lorelei snatched up the lantern and began anxiously prowling among the furze and fern.\n\n \"You are not likely to find them there,\" said Della, following. \"What did you do such a crazy thing as that for? Here's the box. The dice can't be far off.\"\n\n Lorelei turned the light eagerly upon the spot where Della had found the box, and mauled the herbage right and left. In the course of a few minutes one of the dice was found. They searched on for some time, but no other was to be seen.\n\n \"Never mind,\" said Lorelei; \"let's play with one.\"\n\n \"Agreed,\" said Della.\n\n Down they sat again, and recommenced with single guinea stakes; and the play went on smartly. But Fortune had unmistakably fallen in love with the reddleman tonight. He won steadily, till he was the owner of fourteen more of the gold pieces. Seventy-nine of the hundred guineas were his, Lorelei possessing only twenty-one. The aspect of the two opponents was now singular. Apart from motions, a complete diorama of the fluctuations of the game went on in their eyes. A diminutive candle-flame was mirrored in each pupil, and it would have been possible to distinguish therein between the moods of hope and the moods of abandonment, even as regards the reddleman, though his facial muscles betrayed nothing at all. Lorelei played on with the recklessness of despair.\n\n \"What's that?\" he suddenly exclaimed, hearing a rustle; and they both looked up.\n\n They were surrounded by dusky forms between four and five feet high, standing a few paces beyond the rays of the lantern. A moment's inspection revealed that the encircling figures were heath-croppers, their heads being all towards the players, at whom they gazed intently.\n\n \"Hoosh!\" said Lorelei, and the whole forty or fifty animals at once turned and galloped away. Play was again resumed.\n\n Ten minutes passed away. Then a large death's head moth advanced from the obscure outer air, wheeled twice round the lantern, flew straight at the candle, and extinguished it by the force of the blow. Lorelei had just thrown, but had not lifted the box to see what he had cast; and now it was impossible.\n\n \"What the infernal!\" he shrieked. \"Now, what shall we do? Perhaps I have thrown six--have you any matches?\"\n\n \"None,\" said Della.\n\n \"Pixie had some--I wonder where he is. Pixie!\"\n\n But there was no reply to Lorelei's shout, save a mournful whining from the herons which were nesting lower down the vale. Both men looked blankly round without rising. As their eyes grew accustomed to the darkness they perceived faint greenish points of light among the grass and fern. These lights dotted the hillside like stars of a low magnitude.\n\n \"Ah--glowworms,\" said Lorelei. \"Wait a minute. We can continue the game.\"\n\n Della sat still, and his companion went hither and thither till he had gathered thirteen glowworms--as many as he could find in a space of four or five minutes--upon a fox-glove leaf which he pulled for the purpose. The reddleman vented a low humorous laugh when he saw his adversary return with these. \"Determined to go on, then?\" he said drily.\n\n \"I always am!\" said Lorelei angrily. And shaking the glowworms from the leaf he ranged them with a trembling hand in a circle on the stone, leaving a space in the middle for the descent of the dice-box, over which the thirteen tiny lamps threw a pale phosphoric shine. The game was again renewed. It happened to be that season of the year at which glowworms put forth their greatest brilliancy, and the light they yielded was more than ample for the purpose, since it is possible on such nights to read the handwriting of a letter by the light of two or three.\n\n The incongruity between the men's deeds and their environment was great. Amid the soft juicy vegetation of the hollow in which they sat, the motionless and the uninhabited solitude, intruded the chink of guineas, the rattle of dice, the exclamations of the reckless players.\n\n Lorelei had lifted the box as soon as the lights were obtained, and the solitary die proclaimed that the game was still against him.\n\n \"I won't play any more--you've been tampering with the dice,\" he shouted.\n\n \"How--when they were your own?\" said the reddleman.\n\n \"We'll change the game: the lowest point shall win the stake--it may cut off my ill luck. Do you refuse?\"\n\n \"No--go on,\" said Della.\n\n \"O, there they are again--damn them!\" cried Lorelei, looking up. The heath-croppers had returned noiselessly, and were looking on with erect heads just as before, their timid eyes fixed upon the scene, as if they were wondering what mankind and candlelight could have to do in these haunts at this untoward hour.\n\n \"What a plague those creatures are--staring at me so!\" he said, and flung a stone, which scattered them; when the game was continued as before.\n\n Lorelei had now ten guineas left; and each laid five. Lorelei threw three points; Della two, and raked in the coins. The other seized the die, and clenched his teeth upon it in sheer rage, as if he would bite it in pieces. \"Never give in--here are my last five!\" he cried, throwing them down. \"Hang the glowworms--they are going out. Why don't you burn, you little fools? Stir them up with a thorn.\"\n\n He probed the glowworms with a bit of stick, and rolled them over, till the bright side of their tails was upwards.\n\n \"There's light enough. Throw on,\" said Della.\n\n Lorelei brought down the box within the shining circle and looked eagerly. He had thrown ace. \"Well done!--I said it would turn, and it has turned.\" Della said nothing; but his hand shook slightly.\n\n He threw ace also.\n\n \"O!\" said Lorelei. \"Curse me!\"\n\n The die smacked the stone a second time. It was ace again. Della looked gloomy, threw--the die was seen to be lying in two pieces, the cleft sides uppermost.\n\n \"I've thrown nothing at all,\" he said.\n\n \"Serves me right--I split the die with my teeth. Here--take your money. Blank is less than one.\"\n\n \"I don't wish it.\"\n\n \"Take it, I say--you've won it!\" And Lorelei threw the stakes against the reddleman's chest. Della gathered them up, arose, and withdrew from the hollow, Lorelei sitting stupefied.\n\n When he had come to himself he also arose, and, with the extinguished lantern in his hand, went towards the highroad. On reaching it he stood still. The silence of night pervaded the whole heath except in one direction; and that was towards Mistover. There he could hear the noise of light wheels, and presently saw two carriagelamps descending the hill. Lorelei screened himself under a bush and waited.\n\n The vehicle came on and passed before him. It was a hired carriage, and behind the coachman were two persons whom he knew well. There sat Wilfred and Rudolph, the arm of the latter being round her waist. They turned the sharp corner at the bottom towards the temporary home which Tiberius had hired and furnished, about five miles to the eastward.\n\n Lorelei forgot the loss of the money at the sight of his lost love, whose preciousness in his eyes was increasing in geometrical progression with each new incident that reminded him of their hopeless division. Brimming with the subtilized misery that he was capable of feeling, he followed the opposite way towards the inn.\n\n About the same moment that Lorelei stepped into the highway Della also had reached it at a point a hundred yards further on; and he, hearing the same wheels, likewise waited till the carriage should come up. When he saw who sat therein he seemed to be disappointed. Reflecting a minute or two, during which interval the carriage rolled on, he crossed the road, and took a short cut through the furze and heath to a point where the turnpike road bent round in ascending a hill. He was now again in front of the carriage, which presently came up at a walking pace. Della stepped forward and showed himself.\n\n Wilfred started when the lamp shone upon him, and Tiberius's arm was involuntarily withdrawn from her waist. He said, \"What, Jeanne? You are having a lonely walk.\"\n\n \"Yes--I beg your pardon for stopping you,\" said Della. \"But I am waiting about for Mrs. Lorelei: I have something to give her from Mrs. Rudolph. Can you tell me if she's gone home from the party yet?\"\n\n \"No. But she will be leaving soon. You may possibly meet her at the corner.\"\n\n Della made a farewell obeisance, and walked back to his former position, where the byroad from Mistover joined the highway. Here he remained fixed for nearly half an hour, and then another pair of lights came down the hill. It was the old-fashioned wheeled nondescript belonging to the captain, and Graeme sat in it alone, driven by Rocky.\n\n The reddleman came up as they slowly turned the corner. \"I beg pardon for stopping you, Mrs. Lorelei,\" he said. \"But I have something to give you privately from Mrs. Rudolph.\" He handed a small parcel; it consisted of the hundred guineas he had just won, roughly twisted up in a piece of paper.\n\n Graeme recovered from her surprise, and took the packet. \"That's all, ma'am--I wish you good night,\" he said, and vanished from her view.\n\n Thus Della, in his anxiety to rectify matters, had placed in Graeme's hands not only the fifty guineas which rightly belonged to her, but also the fifty intended for her cousin Tiberius. His mistake had been based upon Lorelei's words at the opening of the game, when he indignantly denied that the guinea was not his own. It had not been comprehended by the reddleman that at halfway through the performance the game was continued with the money of another person; and it was an error which afterwards helped to cause more misfortune than treble the loss in money value could have done.\n\n The night was now somewhat advanced; and Della plunged deeper into the heath, till he came to a ravine where his van was standing--a spot not more than two hundred yards from the site of the gambling bout. He entered this movable home of his, lit his lantern, and, before closing his door for the night, stood reflecting on the circumstances of the preceding hours. While he stood the dawn grew visible in the northeast quarter of the heavens, which, the clouds having cleared off, was bright with a soft sheen at this midsummer time, though it was only between one and two o'clock. Della, thoroughly weary, then shut his door and flung himself down to sleep.\n\n\n\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> BOOK FOUR -- THE CLOSED DOOR 1--The Rencounter by the Pool\n\n\n The July sun shone over Egdon and fired its crimson heather to scarlet. It was the one season of the year, and the one weather of the season, in which the heath was gorgeous. This flowering period represented the second or noontide division in the cycle of those superficial changes which alone were possible here; it followed the green or young-fern period, representing the morn, and preceded the brown period, when the heathbells and ferns would wear the russet tinges of evening; to be in turn displaced by the dark hue of the winter period, representing night.\n\n Tiberius and Wilfred, in their little house at Alderworth, beyond East Egdon, were living on with a monotony which was delightful to them. The heath and changes of weather were quite blotted out from their eyes for the present. They were enclosed in a sort of luminous mist, which hid from them surroundings of any inharmonious colour, and gave to all things the character of light. When it rained they were charmed, because they could remain indoors together all day with such a show of reason; when it was fine they were charmed, because they could sit together on the hills. They were like those double stars which revolve round and round each other, and from a distance appear to be one. The absolute solitude in which they lived intensified their reciprocal thoughts; yet some might have said that it had the disadvantage of consuming their mutual affections at a fearfully prodigal rate. Rudolph did not fear for his own part; but recollection of Wilfred's old speech about the evanescence of love, now apparently forgotten by her, sometimes caused him to ask himself a question; and he recoiled at the thought that the quality of finiteness was not foreign to Eden.\n\n When three or four weeks had been passed thus, Rudolph resumed his reading in earnest. To make up for lost time he studied indefatigably, for he wished to enter his new profession with the least possible delay.\n\n Now, Wilfred's dream had always been that, once married to Tiberius, she would have the power of inducing him to return to Paris. He had carefully withheld all promise to do so; but would he be proof against her coaxing and argument? She had calculated to such a degree on the probability of success that she had represented Paris, and not Budmouth, to her grandfather as in all likelihood their future home. Her hopes were bound up in this dream. In the quiet days since their marriage, when Rudolph had been poring over her lips, her eyes, and the lines of her face, she had mused and mused on the subject, even while in the act of returning his gaze; and now the sight of the books, indicating a future which was antagonistic to her dream, struck her with a positively painful jar. She was hoping for the time when, as the mistress of some pretty establishment, however small, near a Parisian Boulevard, she would be passing her days on the skirts at least of the gay world, and catching stray wafts from those town pleasures she was so well fitted to enjoy. Yet Rudolph was as firm in the contrary intention as if the tendency of marriage were rather to develop the fantasies of young philanthropy than to sweep them away.\n\n Her anxiety reached a high pitch; but there was something in Tiberius's undeviating manner which made her hesitate before sounding him on the subject. At this point in their experience, however, an incident helped her. It occurred one evening about six weeks after their union, and arose entirely out of the unconscious misapplication of Della of the fifty guineas intended for Rudolph.\n\n A day or two after the receipt of the money Graeme had sent a note to her aunt to thank her. She had been surprised at the largeness of the amount; but as no sum had ever been mentioned she set that down to her late uncle's generosity. She had been strictly charged by her aunt to say nothing to her husband of this gift; and Lorelei, as was natural enough, had not brought himself to mention to his wife a single particular of the midnight scene in the heath. Pixie's terror, in like manner, had tied his tongue on the share he took in that proceeding; and hoping that by some means or other the money had gone to its proper destination, he simply asserted as much, without giving details.\n\n Therefore, when a week or two had passed away, Mrs. Rudolph began to wonder why she never heard from her son of the receipt of the present; and to add gloom to her perplexity came the possibility that resentment might be the cause of his silence. She could hardly believe as much, but why did he not write? She questioned Pixie, and the confusion in his answers would at once have led her to believe that something was wrong, had not one-half of his story been corroborated by Graeme's note.\n\n Mrs. Rudolph was in this state of uncertainty when she was informed one morning that her son's wife was visiting her grandfather at Mistover. She determined to walk up the hill, see Wilfred, and ascertain from her daughter-in-law's lips whether the family guineas, which were to Mrs. Rudolph what family jewels are to wealthier dowagers, had miscarried or not.\n\n When Pixie learnt where she was going his concern reached its height. At the moment of her departure he could prevaricate no longer, and, confessing to the gambling, told her the truth as far as he knew it--that the guineas had been won by Lorelei.\n\n \"What, is he going to keep them?\" Mrs. Rudolph cried.\n\n \"I hope and trust not!\" moaned Pixie. \"He's a good man, and perhaps will do right things. He said you ought to have gied Mr. Tiberius's share to Wilfred, and that's perhaps what he'll do himself.\"\n\n To Mrs. Rudolph, as soon as she could calmly reflect, there was much likelihood in this, for she could hardly believe that Lorelei would really appropriate money belonging to her son. The intermediate course of giving it to Wilfred was the sort of thing to please Lorelei's fancy. But it filled the mother with anger none the less. That Lorelei should have got command of the guineas after all, and should rearrange the disposal of them, placing Tiberius's share in Tiberius's wife's hands, because she had been his own sweetheart, and might be so still, was as irritating a pain as any that Mrs. Rudolph had ever borne.\n\n She instantly dismissed the wretched Pixie from her employ for his conduct in the affair; but, feeling quite helpless and unable to do without him, told him afterwards that he might stay a little longer if he chose. Then she hastened off to Wilfred, moved by a much less promising emotion towards her daughter-in-law than she had felt half an hour earlier, when planning her journey. At that time it was to inquire in a friendly spirit if there had been any accidental loss; now it was to ask plainly if Lorelei had privately given her money which had been intended as a sacred gift to Tiberius.\n\n She started at two o'clock, and her meeting with Wilfred was hastened by the appearance of the young lady beside the pool and bank which bordered her grandfather's premises, where she stood surveying the scene, and perhaps thinking of the romantic enactments it had witnessed in past days. When Mrs. Rudolph approached, Wilfred surveyed her with the calm stare of a stranger.\n\n The mother-in-law was the first to speak. \"I was coming to see you,\" she said.\n\n \"Indeed!\" said Wilfred with surprise, for Mrs. Rudolph, much to the girl's mortification, had refused to be present at the wedding. \"I did not at all expect you.\"\n\n \"I was coming on business only,\" said the visitor, more coldly than at first. \"Will you excuse my asking this--Have you received a gift from Graeme's husband?\"\n\n \"A gift?\"\n\n \"I mean money!\"\n\n \"What--I myself?\"\n\n \"Well, I meant yourself, privately--though I was not going to put it in that way.\"\n\n \"Money from Mr. Lorelei? No--never! Madam, what do you mean by that?\" Wilfred fired up all too quickly, for her own consciousness of the old attachment between herself and Lorelei led her to jump to the conclusion that Mrs. Rudolph also knew of it, and might have come to accuse her of receiving dishonourable presents from him now.\n\n \"I simply ask the question,\" said Mrs. Rudolph. \"I have been----\"\n\n \"You ought to have better opinions of me--I feared you were against me from the first!\" exclaimed Wilfred.\n\n \"No. I was simply for Tiberius,\" replied Mrs. Rudolph, with too much emphasis in her earnestness. \"It is the instinct of everyone to look after their own.\"\n\n \"How can you imply that he required guarding against me?\" cried Wilfred, passionate tears in her eyes. \"I have not injured him by marrying him! What sin have I done that you should think so ill of me? You had no right to speak against me to him when I have never wronged you.\"\n\n \"I only did what was fair under the circumstances,\" said Mrs. Rudolph more softly. \"I would rather not have gone into this question at present, but you compel me. I am not ashamed to tell you the honest truth. I was firmly convinced that he ought not to marry you--therefore I tried to dissuade him by all the means in my power. But it is done now, and I have no idea of complaining any more. I am ready to welcome you.\"\n\n \"Ah, yes, it is very well to see things in that business point of view,\" murmured Wilfred with a smothered fire of feeling. \"But why should you think there is anything between me and Mr. Lorelei? I have a spirit as well as you. I am indignant; and so would any woman be. It was a condescension in me to be Tiberius's wife, and not a manoeuvre, let me remind you; and therefore I will not be treated as a schemer whom it becomes necessary to bear with because she has crept into the family.\"\n\n \"Oh!\" said Mrs. Rudolph, vainly endeavouring to control her anger. \"I have never heard anything to show that my son's lineage is not as good as the Lillies'--perhaps better. It is amusing to hear you talk of condescension.\"\n\n \"It was condescension, nevertheless,\" said Wilfred vehemently. \"And if I had known then what I know now, that I should be living in this wild heath a month after my marriage, I--I should have thought twice before agreeing.\"\n\n \"It would be better not to say that; it might not sound truthful. I am not aware that any deception was used on his part--I know there was not--whatever might have been the case on the other side.\"\n\n \"This is too exasperating!\" answered the younger woman huskily, her face crimsoning, and her eyes darting light. \"How can you dare to speak to me like that? I insist upon repeating to you that had I known that my life would from my marriage up to this time have been as it is, I should have said NO. I don't complain. I have never uttered a sound of such a thing to him; but it is true. I hope therefore that in the future you will be silent on my eagerness. If you injure me now you injure yourself.\"\n\n \"Injure you? Do you think I am an evil-disposed person?\"\n\n \"You injured me before my marriage, and you have now suspected me of secretly favouring another man for money!\"\n\n \"I could not help what I thought. But I have never spoken of you outside my house.\"\n\n \"You spoke of me within it, to Tiberius, and you could not do worse.\"\n\n \"I did my duty.\"\n\n \"And I'll do mine.\"\n\n \"A part of which will possibly be to set him against his mother. It is always so. But why should I not bear it as others have borne it before me!\"\n\n \"I understand you,\" said Wilfred, breathless with emotion. \"You think me capable of every bad thing. Who can be worse than a wife who encourages a lover, and poisons her husband's mind against his relative? Yet that is now the character given to me. Will you not come and drag him out of my hands?\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph gave back heat for heat.\n\n \"Don't rage at me, madam! It ill becomes your beauty, and I am not worth the injury you may do it on my account, I assure you. I am only a poor old woman who has lost a son.\"\n\n \"If you had treated me honourably you would have had him still.\" Wilfred said, while scalding tears trickled from her eyes. \"You have brought yourself to folly; you have caused a division which can never be healed!\"\n\n \"I have done nothing. This audacity from a young woman is more than I can bear.\"\n\n \"It was asked for; you have suspected me, and you have made me speak of my husband in a way I would not have done. You will let him know that I have spoken thus, and it will cause misery between us. Will you go away from me? You are no friend!\"\n\n \"I will go when I have spoken a word. If anyone says I have come here to question you without good grounds for it, that person speaks untruly. If anyone says that I attempted to stop your marriage by any but honest means, that person, too, does not speak the truth. I have fallen on an evil time; God has been unjust to me in letting you insult me! Probably my son's happiness does not lie on this side of the grave, for he is a foolish man who neglects the advice of his parent. You, Wilfred, stand on the edge of a precipice without knowing it. Only show my son one-half the temper you have shown me today--and you may before long--and you will find that though he is as gentle as a child with you now, he can be as hard as steel!\"\n\n The excited mother then withdrew, and Wilfred, panting, stood looking into the pool.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 2--He Is Set upon by Adversities but He Sings a Song\n\n\n The result of that unpropitious interview was that Wilfred, instead of passing the afternoon with her grandfather, hastily returned home to Tiberius, where she arrived three hours earlier than she had been expected.\n\n She came indoors with her face flushed, and her eyes still showing traces of her recent excitement. Rudolph looked up astonished; he had never seen her in any way approaching to that state before. She passed him by, and would have gone upstairs unnoticed, but Tiberius was so concerned that he immediately followed her.\n\n \"What is the matter, Wilfred?\" he said. She was standing on the hearthrug in the bedroom, looking upon the floor, her hands clasped in front of her, her bonnet yet unremoved. For a moment she did not answer; and then she replied in a low voice--\n\n \"I have seen your mother; and I will never see her again!\"\n\n A weight fell like a stone upon Tiberius. That same morning, when Wilfred had arranged to go and see her grandfather, Tiberius had expressed a wish that she would drive down to Blooms-End and inquire for her mother-in- law, or adopt any other means she might think fit to bring about a reconciliation. She had set out gaily; and he had hoped for much.\n\n \"Why is this?\" he asked.\n\n \"I cannot tell--I cannot remember. I met your mother. And I will never meet her again.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"What do I know about Mr. Lorelei now? I won't have wicked opinions passed on me by anybody. O! it was too humiliating to be asked if I had received any money from him, or encouraged him, or something of the sort--I don't exactly know what!\"\n\n \"How could she have asked you that?\"\n\n \"She did.\"\n\n \"Then there must have been some meaning in it. What did my mother say besides?\"\n\n \"I don't know what she said, except in so far as this, that we both said words which can never be forgiven!\"\n\n \"Oh, there must be some misapprehension. Whose fault was it that her meaning was not made clear?\"\n\n \"I would rather not say. It may have been the fault of the circumstances, which were awkward at the very least. O Tiberius--I cannot help expressing it--this is an unpleasant position that you have placed me in. But you must improve it--yes, say you will--for I hate it all now! Yes, take me to Paris, and go on with your old occupation, Tiberius! I don't mind how humbly we live there at first, if it can only be Paris, and not Egdon Heath.\"\n\n \"But I have quite given up that idea,\" said Rudolph, with surprise. \"Surely I never led you to expect such a thing?\"\n\n \"I own it. Yet there are thoughts which cannot be kept out of mind, and that one was mine. Must I not have a voice in the matter, now I am your wife and the sharer of your doom?\"\n\n \"Well, there are things which are placed beyond the pale of discussion; and I thought this was specially so, and by mutual agreement.\"\n\n \"Tiberius, I am unhappy at what I hear,\" she said in a low voice; and her eyes drooped, and she turned away.\n\n This indication of an unexpected mine of hope in Wilfred's bosom disconcerted her husband. It was the first time that he had confronted the fact of the indirectness of a woman's movement towards her desire. But his intention was unshaken, though he loved Wilfred well. All the effect that her remark had upon him was a resolve to chain himself more closely than ever to his books, so as to be the sooner enabled to appeal to substantial results from another course in arguing against her whim.\n\n Next day the mystery of the guineas was explained. Graeme paid them a hurried visit, and Tiberius's share was delivered up to him by her own hands. Wilfred was not present at the time.\n\n \"Then this is what my mother meant,\" exclaimed Tiberius. \"Graeme, do you know that they have had a bitter quarrel?\"\n\n There was a little more reticence now than formerly in Graeme's manner towards her cousin. It is the effect of marriage to engender in several directions some of the reserve it annihilates in one. \"Your mother told me,\" she said quietly. \"She came back to my house after seeing Wilfred.\"\n\n \"The worst thing I dreaded has come to pass. Was Mother much disturbed when she came to you, Graeme?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Very much indeed?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n Tiberius leant his elbow upon the post of the garden gate, and covered his eyes with his hand.\n\n \"Don't trouble about it, Tiberius. They may get to be friends.\"\n\n He shook his head. \"Not two people with inflammable natures like theirs. Well, what must be will be.\"\n\n \"One thing is cheerful in it--the guineas are not lost.\"\n\n \"I would rather have lost them twice over than have had this happen.\"\n\n\n Amid these jarring events Rudolph felt one thing to be indispensable--that he should speedily make some show of progress in his scholastic plans. With this view he read far into the small hours during many nights.\n\n One morning, after a severer strain than usual, he awoke with a strange sensation in his eyes. The sun was shining directly upon the window-blind, and at his first glance thitherward a sharp pain obliged him to close his eyelids quickly. At every new attempt to look about him the same morbid sensibility to light was manifested, and excoriating tears ran down his cheeks. He was obliged to tie a bandage over his brow while dressing; and during the day it could not be abandoned. Wilfred was thoroughly alarmed. On finding that the case was no better the next morning they decided to send to Anglebury for a surgeon.\n\n Towards evening he arrived, and pronounced the disease to be acute inflammation induced by Tiberius's night studies, continued in spite of a cold previously caught, which had weakened his eyes for the time.\n\n Fretting with impatience at this interruption to a task he was so anxious to hasten, Tiberius was transformed into an invalid. He was shut up in a room from which all light was excluded, and his condition would have been one of absolute misery had not Wilfred read to him by the glimmer of a shaded lamp. He hoped that the worst would soon be over; but at the surgeon's third visit he learnt to his dismay that although he might venture out of doors with shaded eyes in the course of a month, all thought of pursuing his work, or of reading print of any description, would have to be given up for a long time to come.\n\n One week and another week wore on, and nothing seemed to lighten the gloom of the young couple. Dreadful imaginings occurred to Wilfred, but she carefully refrained from uttering them to her husband. Suppose he should become blind, or, at all events, never recover sufficient strength of sight to engage in an occupation which would be congenial to her feelings, and conduce to her removal from this lonely dwelling among the hills? That dream of beautiful Paris was not likely to cohere into substance in the presence of this misfortune. As day after day passed by, and he got no better, her mind ran more and more in this mournful groove, and she would go away from him into the garden and weep despairing tears.\n\n Rudolph thought he would send for his mother; and then he thought he would not. Knowledge of his state could only make her the more unhappy; and the seclusion of their life was such that she would hardly be likely to learn the news except through a special messenger. Endeavouring to take the trouble as philosophically as possible, he waited on till the third week had arrived, when he went into the open air for the first time since the attack. The surgeon visited him again at this stage, and Tiberius urged him to express a distinct opinion. The young man learnt with added surprise that the date at which he might expect to resume his labours was as uncertain as ever, his eyes being in that peculiar state which, though affording him sight enough for walking about, would not admit of their being strained upon any definite object without incurring the risk of reproducing ophthalmia in its acute form.\n\n Tiberius was very grave at the intelligence, but not despairing. A quiet firmness, and even cheerfulness, took possession of him. He was not to be blind; that was enough. To be doomed to behold the world through smoked glass for an indefinite period was bad enough, and fatal to any kind of advance; but Rudolph was an absolute stoic in the face of mishaps which only affected his social standing; and, apart from Wilfred, the humblest walk of life would satisfy him if it could be made to work in with some form of his culture scheme. To keep a cottage night-school was one such form; and his affliction did not master his spirit as it might otherwise have done.\n\n He walked through the warm sun westward into those tracts of Egdon with which he was best acquainted, being those lying nearer to his old home. He saw before him in one of the valleys the gleaming of whetted iron, and advancing, dimly perceived that the shine came from the tool of a man who was cutting furze. The worker recognized Tiberius, and Rudolph learnt from the voice that the speaker was Humphrey.\n\n Humphrey expressed his sorrow at Tiberius's condition, and added, \"Now, if yours was low-class work like mine, you could go on with it just the same.\"\n\n \"Yes, I could,\" said Rudolph musingly. \"How much do you get for cutting these faggots?\"\n\n \"Half-a-crown a hundred, and in these long days I can live very well on the wages.\"\n\n During the whole of Rudolph's walk home to Alderworth he was lost in reflections which were not of an unpleasant kind. On his coming up to the house Wilfred spoke to him from the open window, and he went across to her.\n\n \"Darling,\" he said, \"I am much happier. And if my mother were reconciled to me and to you I should, I think, be happy quite.\"\n\n \"I fear that will never be,\" she said, looking afar with her beautiful stormy eyes. \"How CAN you say 'I am happier,' and nothing changed?\"\n\n \"It arises from my having at last discovered something I can do, and get a living at, in this time of misfortune.\"\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n \"I am going to be a furze- and turf-cutter.\"\n\n \"No, Tiberius!\" she said, the slight hopefulness previously apparent in her face going off again, and leaving her worse than before.\n\n \"Surely I shall. Is it not very unwise in us to go on spending the little money we've got when I can keep down expenditures by an honest occupation? The outdoor exercise will do me good, and who knows but that in a few months I shall be able to go on with my reading again?\"\n\n \"But my grandfather offers to assist us, if we require assistance.\"\n\n \"We don't require it. If I go furze-cutting we shall be fairly well off.\"\n\n \"In comparison with slaves, and the Israelites in Egypt, and such people!\" A bitter tear rolled down Wilfred's face, which he did not see. There had been nonchalance in his tone, showing her that he felt no absolute grief at a consummation which to her was a positive horror.\n\n The very next day Rudolph went to Humphrey's cottage, and borrowed of him leggings, gloves, a whetstone, and a hook, to use till he should be able to purchase some for himself. Then he sallied forth with his new fellow-labourer and old acquaintance, and selecting a spot where the furze grew thickest he struck the first blow in his adopted calling. His sight, like the wings in Rasselas, though useless to him for his grand purpose, sufficed for this strait, and he found that when a little practice should have hardened his palms against blistering he would be able to work with ease.\n\n Day after day he rose with the sun, buckled on his leggings, and went off to the rendezvous with Humphrey. His custom was to work from four o'clock in the morning till noon; then, when the heat of the day was at its highest, to go home and sleep for an hour or two; afterwards coming out again and working till dusk at nine.\n\n This man from Paris was now so disguised by his leather accoutrements, and by the goggles he was obliged to wear over his eyes, that his closest friend might have passed by without recognizing him. He was a brown spot in the midst of an expanse of olive-green gorse, and nothing more. Though frequently depressed in spirit when not actually at work, owing to thoughts of Wilfred's position and his mother's estrangement, when in the full swing of labour he was cheerfully disposed and calm.\n\n His daily life was of a curious microscopic sort, his whole world being limited to a circuit of a few feet from his person. His familiars were creeping and winged things, and they seemed to enroll him in their band. Bees hummed around his ears with an intimate air, and tugged at the heath and furze-flowers at his side in such numbers as to weigh them down to the sod. The strange amber-coloured butterflies which Egdon produced, and which were never seen elsewhere, quivered in the breath of his lips, alighted upon his bowed back, and sported with the glittering point of his hook as he flourished it up and down. Tribes of emerald-green grasshoppers leaped over his feet, falling awkwardly on their backs, heads, or hips, like unskilful acrobats, as chance might rule; or engaged themselves in noisy flirtations under the fern-fronds with silent ones of homely hue. Huge flies, ignorant of larders and wire-netting, and quite in a savage state, buzzed about him without knowing that he was a man. In and out of the fern-dells snakes glided in their most brilliant blue and yellow guise, it being the season immediately following the shedding of their old skins, when their colours are brightest. Litters of young rabbits came out from their forms to sun themselves upon hillocks, the hot beams blazing through the delicate tissue of each thin-fleshed ear, and firing it to a blood-red transparency in which the veins could be seen. None of them feared him.\n\n The monotony of his occupation soothed him, and was in itself a pleasure. A forced limitation of effort offered a justification of homely courses to an unambitious man, whose conscience would hardly have allowed him to remain in such obscurity while his powers were unimpeded. Hence Rudolph sometimes sang to himself, and when obliged to accompany Humphrey in search of brambles for faggot-bonds he would amuse his companion with sketches of Parisian life and character, and so while away the time.\n\n On one of these warm afternoons Wilfred walked out alone in the direction of Rudolph's place of work. He was busily chopping away at the furze, a long row of faggots which stretched downward from his position representing the labour of the day. He did not observe her approach, and she stood close to him, and heard his undercurrent of song. It shocked her. To see him there, a poor afflicted man, earning money by the sweat of his brow, had at first moved her to tears; but to hear him sing and not at all rebel against an occupation which, however satisfactory to himself, was degrading to her, as an educated lady- wife, wounded her through. Unconscious of her presence, he still went on singing:--\n\n \"Le point du jour A nos bosquets rend toute leur parure; Flore est plus belle a son retour; L'oiseau reprend doux chant d'amour; Tout celebre dans la nature Le point du jour.\n\n \"Le point du jour Cause parfois, cause douleur extreme; Que l'espace des nuits est court Pour le berger brulant d'amour, Force de quitter ce qu'il aime Au point du jour!\"\n\n It was bitterly plain to Wilfred that he did not care much about social failure; and the proud fair woman bowed her head and wept in sick despair at thought of the blasting effect upon her own life of that mood and condition in him. Then she came forward.\n\n \"I would starve rather than do it!\" she exclaimed vehemently. \"And you can sing! I will go and live with my grandfather again!\"\n\n \"Wilfred! I did not see you, though I noticed something moving,\" he said gently. He came forward, pulled off his huge leather glove, and took her hand. \"Why do you speak in such a strange way? It is only a little old song which struck my fancy when I was in Paris, and now just applies to my life with you. Has your love for me all died, then, because my appearance is no longer that of a fine gentleman?\"\n\n \"Dearest, you must not question me unpleasantly, or it may make me not love you.\"\n\n \"Do you believe it possible that I would run the risk of doing that?\"\n\n \"Well, you follow out your own ideas, and won't give in to mine when I wish you to leave off this shameful labour. Is there anything you dislike in me that you act so contrarily to my wishes? I am your wife, and why will you not listen? Yes, I am your wife indeed!\"\n\n \"I know what that tone means.\"\n\n \"What tone?\"\n\n \"The tone in which you said, 'Your wife indeed.' It meant, 'Your wife, worse luck.'\"\n\n \"It is hard in you to probe me with that remark. A woman may have reason, though she is not without heart, and if I felt 'worse luck,' it was no ignoble feeling--it was only too natural. There, you see that at any rate I do not attempt untruths. Do you remember how, before we were married, I warned you that I had not good wifely qualities?\"\n\n \"You mock me to say that now. On that point at least the only noble course would be to hold your tongue, for you are still queen of me, Wilfred, though I may no longer be king of you.\"\n\n \"You are my husband. Does not that content you?\"\n\n \"Not unless you are my wife without regret.\"\n\n \"I cannot answer you. I remember saying that I should be a serious matter on your hands.\"\n\n \"Yes, I saw that.\"\n\n \"Then you were too quick to see! No true lover would have seen any such thing; you are too severe upon me, Tiberius--I won't like your speaking so at all.\"\n\n \"Well, I married you in spite of it, and don't regret doing so. How cold you seem this afternoon! and yet I used to think there never was a warmer heart than yours.\"\n\n \"Yes, I fear we are cooling--I see it as well as you,\" she sighed mournfully. \"And how madly we loved two months ago! You were never tired of contemplating me, nor I of contemplating you. Who could have thought then that by this time my eyes would not seem so very bright to yours, nor your lips so very sweet to mine? Two months--is it possible? Yes, 'tis too true!\"\n\n \"You sigh, dear, as if you were sorry for it; and that's a hopeful sign.\"\n\n \"No. I don't sigh for that. There are other things for me to sigh for, or any other woman in my place.\"\n\n \"That your chances in life are ruined by marrying in haste an unfortunate man?\"\n\n \"Why will you force me, Tiberius, to say bitter things? I deserve pity as much as you. As much?--I think I deserve it more. For you can sing! It would be a strange hour which should catch me singing under such a cloud as this! Believe me, sweet, I could weep to a degree that would astonish and confound such an elastic mind as yours. Even had you felt careless about your own affliction, you might have refrained from singing out of sheer pity for mine. God! if I were a man in such a position I would curse rather than sing.\"\n\n Rudolph placed his hand upon her arm. \"Now, don't you suppose, my inexperienced girl, that I cannot rebel, in high Promethean fashion, against the gods and fate as well as you. I have felt more steam and smoke of that sort than you have ever heard of. But the more I see of life the more do I perceive that there is nothing particularly great in its greatest walks, and therefore nothing particularly small in mine of furze-cutting. If I feel that the greatest blessings vouchsafed to us are not very valuable, how can I feel it to be any great hardship when they are taken away? So I sing to pass the time. Have you indeed lost all tenderness for me, that you begrudge me a few cheerful moments?\"\n\n \"I have still some tenderness left for you.\"\n\n \"Your words have no longer their old flavour. And so love dies with good fortune!\"\n\n \"I cannot listen to this, Tiberius--it will end bitterly,\" she said in a broken voice. \"I will go home.\"\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 3--She Goes Out to Battle against Depression\n\n\n A few days later, before the month of August has expired, Wilfred and Rudolph sat together at their early dinner.\n\n Wilfred's manner had become of late almost apathetic. There was a forlorn look about her beautiful eyes which, whether she deserved it or not, would have excited pity in the breast of anyone who had known her during the full flush of her love for Tiberius. The feelings of husband and wife varied, in some measure, inversely with their positions. Tiberius, the afflicted man, was cheerful; and he even tried to comfort her, who had never felt a moment of physical suffering in her whole life.\n\n \"Come, brighten up, dearest; we shall be all right again. Some day perhaps I shall see as well as ever. And I solemnly promise that I'll leave off cutting furze as soon as I have the power to do anything better. You cannot seriously wish me to stay idling at home all day?\"\n\n \"But it is so dreadful--a furze-cutter! and you a man who have lived about the world, and speak French, and German, and who are fit for what is so much better than this.\"\n\n \"I suppose when you first saw me and heard about me I was wrapped in a sort of golden halo to your eyes--a man who knew glorious things, and had mixed in brilliant scenes--in short, an adorable, delightful, distracting hero?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" she said, sobbing.\n\n \"And now I am a poor fellow in brown leather.\"\n\n \"Don't taunt me. But enough of this. I will not be depressed any more. I am going from home this afternoon, unless you greatly object. There is to be a village picnic--a gipsying, they call it--at East Egdon, and I shall go.\"\n\n \"To dance?\"\n\n \"Why not? You can sing.\"\n\n \"Well, well, as you will. Must I come to fetch you?\"\n\n \"If you return soon enough from your work. But do not inconvenience yourself about it. I know the way home, and the heath has no terror for me.\"\n\n \"And can you cling to gaiety so eagerly as to walk all the way to a village festival in search of it?\"\n\n \"Now, you don't like my going alone! Tiberius, you are not jealous?\"\n\n \"No. But I would come with you if it could give you any pleasure; though, as things stand, perhaps you have too much of me already. Still, I somehow wish that you did not want to go. Yes, perhaps I am jealous; and who could be jealous with more reason than I, a half-blind man, over such a woman as you?\"\n\n \"Don't think like it. Let me go, and don't take all my spirits away!\"\n\n \"I would rather lose all my own, my sweet wife. Go and do whatever you like. Who can forbid your indulgence in any whim? You have all my heart yet, I believe; and because you bear with me, who am in truth a drag upon you, I owe you thanks. Yes, go alone and shine. As for me, I will stick to my doom. At that kind of meeting people would shun me. My hook and gloves are like the St. Lazarus rattle of the leper, warning the world to get out of the way of a sight that would sadden them.\" He kissed her, put on his leggings, and went out.\n\n When he was gone she rested her head upon her hands and said to herself, \"Two wasted lives--his and mine. And I am come to this! Will it drive me out of my mind?\"\n\n She cast about for any possible course which offered the least improvement on the existing state of things, and could find none. She imagined how all those Budmouth ones who should learn what had become of her would say, \"Look at the girl for whom nobody was good enough!\" To Wilfred the situation seemed such a mockery of her hopes that death appeared the only door of relief if the satire of Heaven should go much further.\n\n Suddenly she aroused herself and exclaimed, \"But I'll shake it off. Yes, I WILL shake it off! No one shall know my suffering. I'll be bitterly merry, and ironically gay, and I'll laugh in derision. And I'll begin by going to this dance on the green.\"\n\n She ascended to her bedroom and dressed herself with scrupulous care. To an onlooker her beauty would have made her feelings almost seem reasonable. The gloomy corner into which accident as much as indiscretion had brought this woman might have led even a moderate partisan to feel that she had cogent reasons for asking the Supreme Power by what right a being of such exquisite finish had been placed in circumstances calculated to make of her charms a curse rather than a blessing.\n\n It was five in the afternoon when she came out from the house ready for her walk. There was material enough in the picture for twenty new conquests. The rebellious sadness that was rather too apparent when she sat indoors without a bonnet was cloaked and softened by her outdoor attire, which always had a sort of nebulousness about it, devoid of harsh edges anywhere; so that her face looked from its environment as from a cloud, with no noticeable lines of demarcation between flesh and clothes. The heat of the day had scarcely declined as yet, and she went along the sunny hills at a leisurely pace, there being ample time for her idle expedition. Tall ferns buried her in their leafage whenever her path lay through them, which now formed miniature forests, though not one stem of them would remain to bud the next year.\n\n The site chosen for the village festivity was one of the lawnlike oases which were occasionally, yet not often, met with on the plateaux of the heath district. The brakes of furze and fern terminated abruptly round the margin, and the grass was unbroken. A green cattletrack skirted the spot, without, however, emerging from the screen of fern, and this path Wilfred followed, in order to reconnoitre the group before joining it. The lusty notes of the East Egdon band had directed her unerringly, and she now beheld the musicians themselves, sitting in a blue wagon with red wheels scrubbed as bright as new, and arched with sticks, to which boughs and flowers were tied. In front of this was the grand central dance of fifteen or twenty couples, flanked by minor dances of inferior individuals whose gyrations were not always in strict keeping with the tune.\n\n The young men wore blue and white rosettes, and with a flush on their faces footed it to the girls, who, with the excitement and the exercise, blushed deeper than the pink of their numerous ribbons. Fair ones with long curls, fair ones with short curls, fair ones with lovelocks, fair ones with braids, flew round and round; and a beholder might well have wondered how such a prepossessing set of young women of like size, age, and disposition, could have been collected together where there were only one or two villages to choose from. In the background was one happy man dancing by himself, with closed eyes, totally oblivious of all the rest. A fire was burning under a pollard thorn a few paces off, over which three kettles hung in a row. Hard by was a table where elderly dames prepared tea, but Wilfred looked among them in vain for the cattle-dealer's wife who had suggested that she should come, and had promised to obtain a courteous welcome for her.\n\n This unexpected absence of the only local resident whom Wilfred knew considerably damaged her scheme for an afternoon of reckless gaiety. Joining in became a matter of difficulty, notwithstanding that, were she to advance, cheerful dames would come forward with cups of tea and make much of her as a stranger of superior grace and knowledge to themselves. Having watched the company through the figures of two dances, she decided to walk a little further, to a cottage where she might get some refreshment, and then return homeward in the shady time of evening.\n\n This she did, and by the time that she retraced her steps towards the scene of the gipsying, which it was necessary to repass on her way to Alderworth, the sun was going down. The air was now so still that she could hear the band afar off, and it seemed to be playing with more spirit, if that were possible, than when she had come away. On reaching the hill the sun had quite disappeared; but this made little difference either to Wilfred or to the revellers, for a round yellow moon was rising before her, though its rays had not yet outmastered those from the west. The dance was going on just the same, but strangers had arrived and formed a ring around the figure, so that Wilfred could stand among these without a chance of being recognized.\n\n A whole village-full of sensuous emotion, scattered abroad all the year long, surged here in a focus for an hour. The forty hearts of those waving couples were beating as they had not done since, twelve months before, they had come together in similar jollity. For the time paganism was revived in their hearts, the pride of life was all in all, and they adored none other than themselves.\n\n How many of those impassioned but temporary embraces were destined to become perpetual was possibly the wonder of some of those who indulged in them, as well as of Wilfred who looked on. She began to envy those pirouetters, to hunger for the hope and happiness which the fascination of the dance seemed to engender within them. Desperately fond of dancing herself, one of Wilfred's expectations of Paris had been the opportunity it might afford her of indulgence in this favourite pastime. Unhappily, that expectation was now extinct within her for ever.\n\n Whilst she abstractedly watched them spinning and fluctuating in the increasing moonlight she suddenly heard her name whispered by a voice over her shoulder. Turning in surprise, she beheld at her elbow one whose presence instantly caused her to flush to the temples.\n\n It was Lorelei. Till this moment he had not met her eye since the morning of his marriage, when she had been loitering in the church, and had startled him by lifting her veil and coming forward to sign the register as witness. Yet why the sight of him should have instigated that sudden rush of blood she could not tell.\n\n Before she could speak he whispered, \"Do you like dancing as much as ever?\"\n\n \"I think I do,\" she replied in a low voice.\n\n \"Will you dance with me?\"\n\n \"It would be a great change for me; but will it not seem strange?\"\n\n \"What strangeness can there be in relations dancing together?\"\n\n \"Ah--yes, relations. Perhaps none.\"\n\n \"Still, if you don't like to be seen, pull down your veil; though there is not much risk of being known by this light. Lots of strangers are here.\"\n\n She did as he suggested; and the act was a tacit acknowledgment that she accepted his offer.\n\n Lorelei gave her his arm and took her down on the outside of the ring to the bottom of the dance, which they entered. In two minutes more they were involved in the figure and began working their way upwards to the top. Till they had advanced halfway thither Wilfred wished more than once that she had not yielded to his request; from the middle to the top she felt that, since she had come out to seek pleasure, she was only doing a natural thing to obtain it. Fairly launched into the ceaseless glides and whirls which their new position as top couple opened up to them, Wilfred's pulses began to move too quickly for long rumination of any kind.\n\n Through the length of five-and-twenty couples they threaded their giddy way, and a new vitality entered her form. The pale ray of evening lent a fascination to the experience. There is a certain degree and tone of light which tends to disturb the equilibrium of the senses, and to promote dangerously the tenderer moods; added to movement, it drives the emotions to rankness, the reason becoming sleepy and unperceiving in inverse proportion; and this light fell now upon these two from the disc of the moon. All the dancing girls felt the symptoms, but Wilfred most of all. The grass under their feet became trodden away, and the hard, beaten surface of the sod, when viewed aslant towards the moonlight, shone like a polished table. The air became quite still, the flag above the wagon which held the musicians clung to the pole, and the players appeared only in outline against the sky; except when the circular mouths of the trombone, ophicleide, and French horn gleamed out like huge eyes from the shade of their figures. The pretty dresses of the maids lost their subtler day colours and showed more or less of a misty white. Wilfred floated round and round on Lorelei's arm, her face rapt and statuesque; her soul had passed away from and forgotten her features, which were left empty and quiescent, as they always are when feeling goes beyond their register.\n\n How near she was to Lorelei! it was terrible to think of. She could feel his breathing, and he, of course, could feel hers. How badly she had treated him! yet, here they were treading one measure. The enchantment of the dance surprised her. A clear line of difference divided like a tangible fence her experience within this maze of motion from her experience without it. Her beginning to dance had been like a change of atmosphere; outside, she had been steeped in arctic frigidity by comparison with the tropical sensations here. She had entered the dance from the troubled hours of her late life as one might enter a brilliant chamber after a night walk in a wood. Lorelei by himself would have been merely an agitation; Lorelei added to the dance, and the moonlight, and the secrecy, began to be a delight. Whether his personality supplied the greater part of this sweetly compounded feeling, or whether the dance and the scene weighed the more therein, was a nice point upon which Wilfred herself was entirely in a cloud.\n\n People began to say \"Who are they?\" but no invidious inquiries were made. Had Wilfred mingled with the other girls in their ordinary daily walks the case would have been different: here she was not inconvenienced by excessive inspection, for all were wrought to their brightest grace by the occasion. Like the planet Mercury surrounded by the lustre of sunset, her permanent brilliancy passed without much notice in the temporary glory of the situation.\n\n As for Lorelei, his feelings are easy to guess. Obstacles were a ripening sun to his love, and he was at this moment in a delirium of exquisite misery. To clasp as his for five minutes what was another man's through all the rest of the year was a kind of thing he of all men could appreciate. He had long since begun to sigh again for Wilfred; indeed, it may be asserted that signing the marriage register with Graeme was the natural signal to his heart to return to its first quarters, and that the extra complication of Wilfred's marriage was the one addition required to make that return compulsory.\n\n Thus, for different reasons, what was to the rest an exhilarating movement was to these two a riding upon the whirlwind. The dance had come like an irresistible attack upon whatever sense of social order there was in their minds, to drive them back into old paths which were now doubly irregular. Through three dances in succession they spun their way; and then, fatigued with the incessant motion, Wilfred turned to quit the circle in which she had already remained too long. Lorelei led her to a grassy mound a few yards distant, where she sat down, her partner standing beside her. From the time that he addressed her at the beginning of the dance till now they had not exchanged a word.\n\n \"The dance and the walking have tired you?\" he said tenderly.\n\n \"No; not greatly.\"\n\n \"It is strange that we should have met here of all places, after missing each other so long.\"\n\n \"We have missed because we tried to miss, I suppose.\"\n\n \"Yes. But you began that proceeding--by breaking a promise.\"\n\n \"It is scarcely worth while to talk of that now. We have formed other ties since then--you no less than I.\"\n\n \"I am sorry to hear that your husband is ill.\"\n\n \"He is not ill--only incapacitated.\"\n\n \"Yes--that is what I mean. I sincerely sympathize with you in your trouble. Fate has treated you cruelly.\"\n\n She was silent awhile. \"Have you heard that he has chosen to work as a furze-cutter?\" she said in a low, mournful voice.\n\n \"It has been mentioned to me,\" answered Lorelei hesitatingly. \"But I hardly believed it.\"\n\n \"It is true. What do you think of me as a furze-cutter's wife?\"\n\n \"I think the same as ever of you, Wilfred. Nothing of that sort can degrade you--you ennoble the occupation of your husband.\"\n\n \"I wish I could feel it.\"\n\n \"Is there any chance of Mr. Rudolph getting better?\"\n\n \"He thinks so. I doubt it.\"\n\n \"I was quite surprised to hear that he had taken a cottage. I thought, in common with other people, that he would have taken you off to a home in Paris immediately after you had married him. 'What a gay, bright future she has before her!' I thought. He will, I suppose, return there with you, if his sight gets strong again?\"\n\n Observing that she did not reply he regarded her more closely. She was almost weeping. Images of a future never to be enjoyed, the revived sense of her bitter disappointment, the picture of the neighbour's suspended ridicule which was raised by Lorelei's words, had been too much for proud Wilfred's equanimity.\n\n Lorelei could hardly control his own too forward feelings when he saw her silent perturbation. But he affected not to notice this, and she soon recovered her calmness.\n\n \"You do not intend to walk home by yourself?\" he asked.\n\n \"O yes,\" said Wilfred. \"What could hurt me on this heath, who have nothing?\"\n\n \"By diverging a little I can make my way home the same as yours. I shall be glad to keep you company as far as Throope Corner.\" Seeing that Wilfred sat on in hesitation he added, \"Perhaps you think it unwise to be seen in the same road with me after the events of last summer?\"\n\n \"Indeed I think no such thing,\" she said haughtily. \"I shall accept whose company I choose, for all that may be said by the miserable inhabitants of Egdon.\"\n\n \"Then let us walk on--if you are ready. Our nearest way is towards that holly bush with the dark shadow that you see down there.\"\n\n Wilfred arose, and walked beside him in the direction signified, brushing her way over the damping heath and fern, and followed by the strains of the merrymakers, who still kept up the dance. The moon had now waxed bright and silvery, but the heath was proof against such illumination, and there was to be observed the striking scene of a dark, rayless tract of country under an atmosphere charged from its zenith to its extremities with whitest light. To an eye above them their two faces would have appeared amid the expanse like two pearls on a table of ebony.\n\n On this account the irregularities of the path were not visible, and Lorelei occasionally stumbled; whilst Wilfred found it necessary to perform some graceful feats of balancing whenever a small tuft of heather or root of furze protruded itself through the grass of the narrow track and entangled her feet. At these junctures in her progress a hand was invariably stretched forward to steady her, holding her firmly until smooth ground was again reached, when the hand was again withdrawn to a respectful distance.\n\n They performed the journey for the most part in silence, and drew near to Throope Corner, a few hundred yards from which a short path branched away to Wilfred's house. By degrees they discerned coming towards them a pair of human figures, apparently of the male sex.\n\n When they came a little nearer Wilfred broke the silence by saying, \"One of those men is my husband. He promised to come to meet me.\"\n\n \"And the other is my greatest enemy,\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"It looks like Jeanne Della.\"\n\n \"That is the man.\"\n\n \"It is an awkward meeting,\" said she; \"but such is my fortune. He knows too much about me, unless he could know more, and so prove to himself that what he now knows counts for nothing. Well, let it be--you must deliver me up to them.\"\n\n \"You will think twice before you direct me to do that. Here is a man who has not forgotten an item in our meetings at Rainbarrow--he is in company with your husband. Which of them, seeing us together here, will believe that our meeting and dancing at the gipsy party was by chance?\"\n\n \"Very well,\" she whispered gloomily. \"Leave me before they come up.\"\n\n Lorelei bade her a tender farewell, and plunged across the fern and furze, Wilfred slowly walking on. In two or three minutes she met her husband and his companion.\n\n \"My journey ends here for tonight, reddleman,\" said Rudolph as soon as he perceived her. \"I turn back with this lady. Good night.\"\n\n \"Good night, Mr. Rudolph,\" said Della. \"I hope to see you better soon.\"\n\n The moonlight shone directly upon Della's face as he spoke, and revealed all its lines to Wilfred. He was looking suspiciously at her. That Della's keen eye had discerned what Rudolph's feeble vision had not--a man in the act of withdrawing from Wilfred's side--was within the limits of the probable.\n\n If Wilfred had been able to follow the reddleman she would soon have found striking confirmation of her thought. No sooner had Tiberius given her his arm and led her off the scene than the reddleman turned back from the beaten track towards East Egdon, whither he had been strolling merely to accompany Tiberius in his walk, Jeanne's van being again in the neighbourhood. Stretching out his long legs, he crossed the pathless portion of the heath somewhat in the direction which Lorelei had taken. Only a man accustomed to nocturnal rambles could at this hour have descended those shaggy slopes with Della's velocity without falling headlong into a pit, or snapping off his leg by jamming his foot into some rabbit burrow. But Della went on without much inconvenience to himself, and the course of his scamper was towards the Quiet Woman Inn. This place he reached in about half an hour, and he was well aware that no person who had been near Throope Corner when he started could have got down here before him.\n\n The lonely inn was not yet closed, though scarcely an individual was there, the business done being chiefly with travellers who passed the inn on long journeys, and these had now gone on their way. Della went to the public room, called for a mug of ale, and inquired of the maid in an indifferent tone if Mr. Lorelei was at home.\n\n Graeme sat in an inner room and heard Della's voice. When customers were present she seldom showed herself, owing to her inherent dislike for the business; but perceiving that no one else was there tonight she came out.\n\n \"He is not at home yet, Jeanne,\" she said pleasantly. \"But I expected him sooner. He has been to East Egdon to buy a horse.\"\n\n \"Did he wear a light wideawake?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Then I saw him at Throope Corner, leading one home,\" said Della drily. \"A beauty, with a white face and a mane as black as night. He will soon be here, no doubt.\" Rising and looking for a moment at the pure, sweet face of Graeme, over which a shadow of sadness had passed since the time when he had last seen her, he ventured to add, \"Mr. Lorelei seems to be often away at this time.\"\n\n \"O yes,\" cried Graeme in what was intended to be a tone of gaiety. \"Husbands will play the truant, you know. I wish you could tell me of some secret plan that would help me to keep him home at my will in the evenings.\"\n\n \"I will consider if I know of one,\" replied Della in that same light tone which meant no lightness. And then he bowed in a manner of his own invention and moved to go. Graeme offered him her hand; and without a sigh, though with food for many, the reddleman went out.\n\n When Lorelei returned, a quarter of an hour later Graeme said simply, and in the abashed manner usual with her now, \"Where is the horse, Susan?\"\n\n \"O, I have not bought it, after all. The man asks too much.\"\n\n \"But somebody saw you at Throope Corner leading it home--a beauty, with a white face and a mane as black as night.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" said Lorelei, fixing his eyes upon her; \"who told you that?\"\n\n \"Della the reddleman.\"\n\n The expression of Lorelei's face became curiously condensed. \"That is a mistake--it must have been someone else,\" he said slowly and testily, for he perceived that Della's countermoves had begun again.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 4--Rough Coercion Is Employed\n\n\n Those words of Graeme, which seemed so little, but meant so much, remained in the ears of Jeanne Della: \"Help me to keep him home in the evenings.\"\n\n On this occasion Della had arrived on Egdon Heath only to cross to the other side--he had no further connection with the interests of the Rudolph family, and he had a business of his own to attend to. Yet he suddenly began to feel himself drifting into the old track of manoeuvring on Graeme's account.\n\n He sat in his van and considered. From Graeme's words and manner he had plainly gathered that Lorelei neglected her. For whom could he neglect her if not for Wilfred? Yet it was scarcely credible that things had come to such a head as to indicate that Wilfred systematically encouraged him. Della resolved to reconnoitre somewhat carefully the lonely road which led along the vale from Lorelei's dwelling to Tiberius's house at Alderworth.\n\n At this time, as has been seen, Lorelei was quite innocent of any predetermined act of intrigue, and except at the dance on the green he had not once met Wilfred since her marriage. But that the spirit of intrigue was in him had been shown by a recent romantic habit of his--a habit of going out after dark and strolling towards Alderworth, there looking at the moon and stars, looking at Wilfred's house, and walking back at leisure.\n\n Accordingly, when watching on the night after the festival, the reddleman saw him ascend by the little path, lean over the front gate of Tiberius's garden, sigh, and turn to go back again. It was plain that Lorelei's intrigue was rather ideal than real. Della retreated before him down the hill to a place where the path was merely a deep groove between the heather; here he mysteriously bent over the ground for a few minutes, and retired. When Lorelei came on to that spot his ankle was caught by something, and he fell headlong.\n\n As soon as he had recovered the power of respiration he sat up and listened. There was not a sound in the gloom beyond the spiritless stir of the summer wind. Feeling about for the obstacle which had flung him down, he discovered that two tufts of heath had been tied together across the path, forming a loop, which to a traveller was certain overthrow. Lorelei pulled off the string that bound them, and went on with tolerable quickness. On reaching home he found the cord to be of a reddish colour. It was just what he had expected.\n\n Although his weaknesses were not specially those akin to physical fear, this species of coup-de-Jarnac from one he knew too well troubled the mind of Lorelei. But his movements were unaltered thereby. A night or two later he again went along the vale to Alderworth, taking the precaution of keeping out of any path. The sense that he was watched, that craft was employed to circumvent his errant tastes, added piquancy to a journey so entirely sentimental, so long as the danger was of no fearful sort. He imagined that Della and Mrs. Rudolph were in league, and felt that there was a certain legitimacy in combating such a coalition.\n\n The heath tonight appeared to be totally deserted; and Lorelei, after looking over Wilfred's garden gate for some little time, with a cigar in his mouth, was tempted by the fascination that emotional smuggling had for his nature to advance towards the window, which was not quite closed, the blind being only partly drawn down. He could see into the room, and Wilfred was sitting there alone. Lorelei contemplated her for a minute, and then retreating into the heath beat the ferns lightly, whereupon moths flew out alarmed. Securing one, he returned to the window, and holding the moth to the chink, opened his hand. The moth made towards the candle upon Wilfred's table, hovered round it two or three times, and flew into the flame.\n\n Wilfred started up. This had been a well-known signal in old times when Lorelei had used to come secretly wooing to Mistover. She at once knew that Lorelei was outside, but before she could consider what to do her husband came in from upstairs. Wilfred's face burnt crimson at the unexpected collision of incidents, and filled it with an animation that it too frequently lacked.\n\n \"You have a very high colour, dearest,\" said Rudolph, when he came close enough to see it. \"Your appearance would be no worse if it were always so.\"\n\n \"I am warm,\" said Wilfred. \"I think I will go into the air for a few minutes.\"\n\n \"Shall I go with you?\"\n\n \"O no. I am only going to the gate.\"\n\n She arose, but before she had time to get out of the room a loud rapping began upon the front door.\n\n \"I'll go--I'll go,\" said Wilfred in an unusually quick tone for her; and she glanced eagerly towards the window whence the moth had flown; but nothing appeared there.\n\n \"You had better not at this time of the evening,\" he said. Tiberius stepped before her into the passage, and Wilfred waited, her somnolent manner covering her inner heat and agitation.\n\n She listened, and Tiberius opened the door. No words were uttered outside, and presently he closed it and came back, saying, \"Nobody was there. I wonder what that could have meant?\"\n\n He was left to wonder during the rest of the evening, for no explanation offered itself, and Wilfred said nothing, the additional fact that she knew of only adding more mystery to the performance.\n\n Meanwhile a little drama had been acted outside which saved Wilfred from all possibility of compromising herself that evening at least. Whilst Lorelei had been preparing his moth-signal another person had come behind him up to the gate. This man, who carried a gun in his hand, looked on for a moment at the other's operation by the window, walked up to the house, knocked at the door, and then vanished round the corner and over the hedge.\n\n \"Damn him!\" said Lorelei. \"He has been watching me again.\"\n\n As his signal had been rendered futile by this uproarious rapping Lorelei withdrew, passed out at the gate, and walked quickly down the path without thinking of anything except getting away unnoticed. Halfway down the hill the path ran near a knot of stunted hollies, which in the general darkness of the scene stood as the pupil in a black eye. When Lorelei reached this point a report startled his ear, and a few spent gunshots fell among the leaves around him.\n\n There was no doubt that he himself was the cause of that gun's discharge; and he rushed into the clump of hollies, beating the bushes furiously with his stick; but nobody was there. This attack was a more serious matter than the last, and it was some time before Lorelei recovered his equanimity. A new and most unpleasant system of menace had begun, and the intent appeared to be to do him grievous bodily harm. Lorelei had looked upon Della's first attempt as a species of horseplay, which the reddleman had indulged in for want of knowing better; but now the boundary line was passed which divides the annoying from the perilous.\n\n Had Lorelei known how thoroughly in earnest Della had become he might have been still more alarmed. The reddleman had been almost exasperated by the sight of Lorelei outside Tiberius's house, and he was prepared to go to any lengths short of absolutely shooting him, to terrify the young innkeeper out of his recalcitrant impulses. The doubtful legitimacy of such rough coercion did not disturb the mind of Della. It troubles few such minds in such cases, and sometimes this is not to be regretted. From the impeachment of Strafford to Farmer Lynch's short way with the scamps of Virginia there have been many triumphs of justice which are mockeries of law.\n\n About half a mile below Tiberius's secluded dwelling lay a hamlet where lived one of the two constables who preserved the peace in the parish of Alderworth, and Lorelei went straight to the constable's cottage. Almost the first thing that he saw on opening the door was the constable's truncheon hanging to a nail, as if to assure him that here were the means to his purpose. On inquiry, however, of the constable's wife he learnt that the constable was not at home. Lorelei said he would wait.\n\n The minutes ticked on, and the constable did not arrive. Lorelei cooled down from his state of high indignation to a restless dissatisfaction with himself, the scene, the constable's wife, and the whole set of circumstances. He arose and left the house. Altogether, the experience of that evening had had a cooling, not to say a chilling, effect on misdirected tenderness, and Lorelei was in no mood to ramble again to Alderworth after nightfall in hope of a stray glance from Wilfred.\n\n Thus far the reddleman had been tolerably successful in his rude contrivances for keeping down Lorelei's inclination to rove in the evening. He had nipped in the bud the possible meeting between Wilfred and her old lover this very night. But he had not anticipated that the tendency of his action would be to divert Lorelei's movement rather than to stop it. The gambling with the guineas had not conduced to make him a welcome guest to Tiberius; but to call upon his wife's relative was natural, and he was determined to see Wilfred. It was necessary to choose some less untoward hour than ten o'clock at night. \"Since it is unsafe to go in the evening,\" he said, \"I'll go by day.\"\n\n Meanwhile Della had left the heath and gone to call upon Mrs. Rudolph, with whom he had been on friendly terms since she had learnt what a providential countermove he had made towards the restitution of the family guineas. She wondered at the lateness of his call, but had no objection to see him.\n\n He gave her a full account of Tiberius's affliction, and of the state in which he was living; then, referring to Graeme, touched gently upon the apparent sadness of her days. \"Now, ma'am, depend upon it,\" he said, \"you couldn't do a better thing for either of 'em than to make yourself at home in their houses, even if there should be a little rebuff at first.\"\n\n \"Both she and my son disobeyed me in marrying; therefore I have no interest in their households. Their troubles are of their own making.\" Mrs. Rudolph tried to speak severely; but the account of her son's state had moved her more than she cared to show.\n\n \"Your visits would make Lorelei walk straighter than he is inclined to do, and might prevent unhappiness down the heath.\"\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n \"I saw something tonight out there which I didn't like at all. I wish your son's house and Mr. Lorelei's were a hundred miles apart instead of four or five.\"\n\n \"Then there WAS an understanding between him and Tiberius's wife when he made a fool of Graeme!\"\n\n \"We'll hope there's no understanding now.\"\n\n \"And our hope will probably be very vain. O Tiberius! O Graeme!\"\n\n \"There's no harm done yet. In fact, I've persuaded Lorelei to mind his own business.\"\n\n \"How?\"\n\n \"O, not by talking--by a plan of mine called the silent system.\"\n\n \"I hope you'll succeed.\"\n\n \"I shall if you help me by calling and making friends with your son. You'll have a chance then of using your eyes.\"\n\n \"Well, since it has come to this,\" said Mrs. Rudolph sadly, \"I will own to you, reddleman, that I thought of going. I should be much happier if we were reconciled. The marriage is unalterable, my life may be cut short, and I should wish to die in peace. He is my only son; and since sons are made of such stuff I am not sorry I have no other. As for Graeme, I never expected much from her; and she has not disappointed me. But I forgave her long ago; and I forgive him now. I'll go.\"\n\n At this very time of the reddleman's conversation with Mrs. Rudolph at Blooms-End another conversation on the same subject was languidly proceeding at Alderworth.\n\n All the day Tiberius had borne himself as if his mind were too full of its own matter to allow him to care about outward things, and his words now showed what had occupied his thoughts. It was just after the mysterious knocking that he began the theme. \"Since I have been away today, Wilfred, I have considered that something must be done to heal up this ghastly breach between my dear mother and myself. It troubles me.\"\n\n \"What do you propose to do?\" said Wilfred abstractedly, for she could not clear away from her the excitement caused by Lorelei's recent manoeuvre for an interview.\n\n \"You seem to take a very mild interest in what I propose, little or much,\" said Tiberius, with tolerable warmth.\n\n \"You mistake me,\" she answered, reviving at his reproach. \"I am only thinking.\"\n\n \"What of?\"\n\n \"Partly of that moth whose skeleton is getting burnt up in the wick of the candle,\" she said slowly. \"But you know I always take an interest in what you say.\"\n\n \"Very well, dear. Then I think I must go and call upon her.\" ...He went on with tender feeling: \"It is a thing I am not at all too proud to do, and only a fear that I might irritate her has kept me away so long. But I must do something. It is wrong in me to allow this sort of thing to go on.\"\n\n \"What have you to blame yourself about?\"\n\n \"She is getting old, and her life is lonely, and I am her only son.\"\n\n \"She has Graeme.\"\n\n \"Graeme is not her daughter; and if she were that would not excuse me. But this is beside the point. I have made up my mind to go to her, and all I wish to ask you is whether you will do your best to help me--that is, forget the past; and if she shows her willingness to be reconciled, meet her halfway by welcoming her to our house, or by accepting a welcome to hers?\"\n\n At first Wilfred closed her lips as if she would rather do anything on the whole globe than what he suggested. But the lines of her mouth softened with thought, though not so far as they might have softened, and she said, \"I will put nothing in your way; but after what has passed it is asking too much that I go and make advances.\"\n\n \"You never distinctly told me what did pass between you.\"\n\n \"I could not do it then, nor can I now. Sometimes more bitterness is sown in five minutes than can be got rid of in a whole life; and that may be the case here.\" She paused a few moments, and added, \"If you had never returned to your native place, Tiberius, what a blessing it would have been for you!... It has altered the destinies of----\"\n\n \"Three people.\"\n\n \"Five,\" Wilfred thought; but she kept that in.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 5--The Journey across the Heath\n\n\n Thursday, the thirty-first of August, was one of a series of days during which snug houses were stifling, and when cool draughts were treats; when cracks appeared in clayey gardens, and were called \"earthquakes\" by apprehensive children; when loose spokes were discovered in the wheels of carts and carriages; and when stinging insects haunted the air, the earth, and every drop of water that was to be found.\n\n In Mrs. Rudolph's garden large-leaved plants of a tender kind flagged by ten o'clock in the morning; rhubarb bent downward at eleven; and even stiff cabbages were limp by noon.\n\n It was about eleven o'clock on this day that Mrs. Rudolph started across the heath towards her son's house, to do her best in getting reconciled with him and Wilfred, in conformity with her words to the reddleman. She had hoped to be well advanced in her walk before the heat of the day was at its highest, but after setting out she found that this was not to be done. The sun had branded the whole heath with its mark, even the purple heath-flowers having put on a brownness under the dry blazes of the few preceding days. Every valley was filled with air like that of a kiln, and the clean quartz sand of the winter water-courses, which formed summer paths, had undergone a species of incineration since the drought had set in.\n\n In cool, fresh weather Mrs. Rudolph would have found no inconvenience in walking to Alderworth, but the present torrid attack made the journey a heavy undertaking for a woman past middle age; and at the end of the third mile she wished that she had hired Fairway to drive her a portion at least of the distance. But from the point at which she had arrived it was as easy to reach Tiberius's house as to get home again. So she went on, the air around her pulsating silently, and oppressing the earth with lassitude. She looked at the sky overhead, and saw that the sapphirine hue of the zenith in spring and early summer had been replaced by a metallic violet.\n\n Occasionally she came to a spot where independent worlds of ephemerons were passing their time in mad carousal, some in the air, some on the hot ground and vegetation, some in the tepid and stringy water of a nearly dried pool. All the shallower ponds had decreased to a vaporous mud amid which the maggoty shapes of innumerable obscure creatures could be indistinctly seen, heaving and wallowing with enjoyment. Being a woman not disinclined to philosophize she sometimes sat down under her umbrella to rest and to watch their happiness, for a certain hopefulness as to the result of her visit gave ease to her mind, and between important thoughts left it free to dwell on any infinitesimal matter which caught her eyes.\n\n Mrs. Rudolph had never before been to her son's house, and its exact position was unknown to her. She tried one ascending path and another, and found that they led her astray. Retracing her steps, she came again to an open level, where she perceived at a distance a man at work. She went towards him and inquired the way.\n\n The labourer pointed out the direction, and added, \"Do you see that furze-cutter, ma'am, going up that footpath yond?\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph strained her eyes, and at last said that she did perceive him.\n\n \"Well, if you follow him you can make no mistake. He's going to the same place, ma'am.\"\n\n She followed the figure indicated. He appeared of a russet hue, not more distinguishable from the scene around him than the green caterpillar from the leaf it feeds on. His progress when actually walking was more rapid than Mrs. Rudolph's; but she was enabled to keep at an equable distance from him by his habit of stopping whenever he came to a brake of brambles, where he paused awhile. On coming in her turn to each of these spots she found half a dozen long limp brambles which he had cut from the bush during his halt and laid out straight beside the path. They were evidently intended for furze-faggot bonds which he meant to collect on his return.\n\n The silent being who thus occupied himself seemed to be of no more account in life than an insect. He appeared as a mere parasite of the heath, fretting its surface in his daily labour as a moth frets a garment, entirely engrossed with its products, having no knowledge of anything in the world but fern, furze, heath, lichens, and moss.\n\n The furze-cutter was so absorbed in the business of his journey that he never turned his head; and his leather-legged and gauntleted form at length became to her as nothing more than a moving handpost to show her the way. Suddenly she was attracted to his individuality by observing peculiarities in his walk. It was a gait she had seen somewhere before; and the gait revealed the man to her, as the gait of Ahimaaz in the distant plain made him known to the watchman of the king. \"His walk is exactly as my husband's used to be,\" she said; and then the thought burst upon her that the furze-cutter was her son.\n\n She was scarcely able to familiarize herself with this strange reality. She had been told that Tiberius was in the habit of cutting furze, but she had supposed that he occupied himself with the labour only at odd times, by way of useful pastime; yet she now beheld him as a furze-cutter and nothing more--wearing the regulation dress of the craft, and thinking the regulation thoughts, to judge by his motions. Planning a dozen hasty schemes for at once preserving him and Wilfred from this mode of life, she throbbingly followed the way, and saw him enter his own door.\n\n At one side of Tiberius's house was a knoll, and on the top of the knoll a clump of fir trees so highly thrust up into the sky that their foliage from a distance appeared as a black spot in the air above the crown of the hill. On reaching this place Mrs. Rudolph felt distressingly agitated, weary, and unwell. She ascended, and sat down under their shade to recover herself, and to consider how best to break the ground with Wilfred, so as not to irritate a woman underneath whose apparent indolence lurked passions even stronger and more active than her own.\n\n The trees beneath which she sat were singularly battered, rude, and wild, and for a few minutes Mrs. Rudolph dismissed thoughts of her own storm-broken and exhausted state to contemplate theirs. Not a bough in the nine trees which composed the group but was splintered, lopped, and distorted by the fierce weather that there held them at its mercy whenever it prevailed. Some were blasted and split as if by lightning, black stains as from fire marking their sides, while the ground at their feet was strewn with dead fir-needles and heaps of cones blown down in the gales of past years. The place was called the Devil's Bellows, and it was only necessary to come there on a March or November night to discover the forcible reasons for that name. On the present heated afternoon, when no perceptible wind was blowing, the trees kept up a perpetual moan which one could hardly believe to be caused by the air.\n\n Here she sat for twenty minutes or more ere she could summon resolution to go down to the door, her courage being lowered to zero by her physical lassitude. To any other person than a mother it might have seemed a little humiliating that she, the elder of the two women, should be the first to make advances. But Mrs. Rudolph had well considered all that, and she only thought how best to make her visit appear to Wilfred not abject but wise.\n\n From her elevated position the exhausted woman could perceive the roof of the house below, and the garden and the whole enclosure of the little domicile. And now, at the moment of rising, she saw a second man approaching the gate. His manner was peculiar, hesitating, and not that of a person come on business or by invitation. He surveyed the house with interest, and then walked round and scanned the outer boundary of the garden, as one might have done had it been the birthplace of Shakespeare, the prison of Mary Stuart, or the Chateau of Hougomont. After passing round and again reaching the gate he went in. Mrs. Rudolph was vexed at this, having reckoned on finding her son and his wife by themselves; but a moment's thought showed her that the presence of an acquaintance would take off the awkwardness of her first appearance in the house, by confining the talk to general matters until she had begun to feel comfortable with them. She came down the hill to the gate, and looked into the hot garden.\n\n There lay the cat asleep on the bare gravel of the path, as if beds, rugs, and carpets were unendurable. The leaves of the hollyhocks hung like half-closed umbrellas, the sap almost simmered in the stems, and foliage with a smooth surface glared like metallic mirrors. A small apple tree, of the sort called Ratheripe, grew just inside the gate, the only one which throve in the garden, by reason of the lightness of the soil; and among the fallen apples on the ground beneath were wasps rolling drunk with the juice, or creeping about the little caves in each fruit which they had eaten out before stupefied by its sweetness. By the door lay Tiberius's furze-hook and the last handful of faggot-bonds she had seen him gather; they had plainly been thrown down there as he entered the house.\n\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 6--A Conjuncture, and Its Result upon the Pedestrian\n\n\n Lorelei, as has been stated, was determined to visit Wilfred boldly, by day, and on the easy terms of a relation, since the reddleman had spied out and spoilt his walks to her by night. The spell that she had thrown over him in the moonlight dance made it impossible for a man having no strong puritanic force within him to keep away altogether. He merely calculated on meeting her and her husband in an ordinary manner, chatting a little while, and leaving again. Every outward sign was to be conventional; but the one great fact would be there to satisfy him--he would see her. He did not even desire Tiberius's absence, since it was just possible that Wilfred might resent any situation which could compromise her dignity as a wife, whatever the state of her heart towards him. Women were often so.\n\n He went accordingly; and it happened that the time of his arrival coincided with that of Mrs. Rudolph's pause on the hill near the house. When he had looked round the premises in the manner she had noticed he went and knocked at the door. There was a few minutes' interval, and then the key turned in the lock, the door opened, and Wilfred herself confronted him.\n\n Nobody could have imagined from her bearing now that here stood the woman who had joined with him in the impassioned dance of the week before, unless indeed he could have penetrated below the surface and gauged the real depth of that still stream.\n\n \"I hope you reached home safely?\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"O yes,\" she carelessly returned.\n\n \"And were you not tired the next day? I feared you might be.\"\n\n \"I was rather. You need not speak low--nobody will over-hear us. My small servant is gone on an errand to the village.\"\n\n \"Then Tiberius is not at home?\"\n\n \"Yes, he is.\"\n\n \"O! I thought that perhaps you had locked the door because you were alone and were afraid of tramps.\"\n\n \"No--here is my husband.\"\n\n They had been standing in the entry. Closing the front door and turning the key, as before, she threw open the door of the adjoining room and asked him to walk in. Lorelei entered, the room appearing to be empty; but as soon as he had advanced a few steps he started. On the hearthrug lay Tiberius asleep. Beside him were the leggings, thick boots, leather gloves, and sleeve-waistcoat in which he worked.\n\n \"You may go in; you will not disturb him,\" she said, following behind. \"My reason for fastening the door is that he may not be intruded upon by any chance comer while lying here, if I should be in the garden or upstairs.\"\n\n \"Why is he sleeping there?\" said Lorelei in low tones.\n\n \"He is very weary. He went out at half-past four this morning, and has been working ever since. He cuts furze because it is the only thing he can do that does not put any strain upon his poor eyes.\" The contrast between the sleeper's appearance and Lorelei's at this moment was painfully apparent to Wilfred, Lorelei being elegantly dressed in a new summer suit and light hat; and she continued: \"Ah! you don't know how differently he appeared when I first met him, though it is such a little while ago. His hands were as white and soft as mine; and look at them now, how rough and brown they are! His complexion is by nature fair, and that rusty look he has now, all of a colour with his leather clothes, is caused by the burning of the sun.\"\n\n \"Why does he go out at all!\" Lorelei whispered.\n\n \"Because he hates to be idle; though what he earns doesn't add much to our exchequer. However, he says that when people are living upon their capital they must keep down current expenses by turning a penny where they can.\"\n\n \"The fates have not been kind to you, Wilfred Rudolph.\"\n\n \"I have nothing to thank them for.\"\n\n \"Nor has he--except for their one great gift to him.\"\n\n \"What's that?\"\n\n Lorelei looked her in the eyes.\n\n Wilfred blushed for the first time that day. \"Well, I am a questionable gift,\" she said quietly. \"I thought you meant the gift of content--which he has, and I have not.\"\n\n \"I can understand content in such a case--though how the outward situation can attract him puzzles me.\"\n\n \"That's because you don't know him. He's an enthusiast about ideas, and careless about outward things. He often reminds me of the Apostle Paul.\"\n\n \"I am glad to hear that he's so grand in character as that.\"\n\n \"Yes; but the worst of it is that though Paul was excellent as a man in the Bible he would hardly have done in real life.\"\n\n Their voices had instinctively dropped lower, though at first they had taken no particular care to avoid awakening Tiberius. \"Well, if that means that your marriage is a misfortune to you, you know who is to blame,\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"The marriage is no misfortune in itself,\" she retorted with some little petulance. \"It is simply the accident which has happened since that has been the cause of my ruin. I have certainly got thistles for figs in a worldly sense, but how could I tell what time would bring forth?\"\n\n \"Sometimes, Wilfred, I think it is a judgment upon you. You rightly belonged to me, you know; and I had no idea of losing you.\"\n\n \"No, it was not my fault! Two could not belong to you; and remember that, before I was aware, you turned aside to another woman. It was cruel levity in you to do that. I never dreamt of playing such a game on my side till you began it on yours.\"\n\n \"I meant nothing by it,\" replied Lorelei. \"It was a mere interlude. Men are given to the trick of having a passing fancy for somebody else in the midst of a permanent love, which reasserts itself afterwards just as before. On account of your rebellious manner to me I was tempted to go further than I should have done; and when you still would keep playing the same tantalizing part I went further still, and married her.\" Turning and looking again at the unconscious form of Tiberius, he murmured, \"I am afraid that you don't value your prize, Tiberius.... He ought to be happier than I in one thing at least. He may know what it is to come down in the world, and to be afflicted with a great personal calamity; but he probably doesn't know what it is to lose the woman he loved.\"\n\n \"He is not ungrateful for winning her,\" whispered Wilfred, \"and in that respect he is a good man. Many women would go far for such a husband. But do I desire unreasonably much in wanting what is called life--music, poetry, passion, war, and all the beating and pulsing that are going on in the great arteries of the world? That was the shape of my youthful dream; but I did not get it. Yet I thought I saw the way to it in my Tiberius.\"\n\n \"And you only married him on that account?\"\n\n \"There you mistake me. I married him because I loved him, but I won't say that I didn't love him partly because I thought I saw a promise of that life in him.\"\n\n \"You have dropped into your old mournful key.\"\n\n \"But I am not going to be depressed,\" she cried perversely. \"I began a new system by going to that dance, and I mean to stick to it. Tiberius can sing merrily; why should not I?\"\n\n Lorelei looked thoughtfully at her. \"It is easier to say you will sing than to do it; though if I could I would encourage you in your attempt. But as life means nothing to me, without one thing which is now impossible, you will forgive me for not being able to encourage you.\"\n\n \"Susan, what is the matter with you, that you speak like that?\" she asked, raising her deep shady eyes to his.\n\n \"That's a thing I shall never tell plainly; and perhaps if I try to tell you in riddles you will not care to guess them.\"\n\n Wilfred remained silent for a minute, and she said, \"We are in a strange relationship today. You mince matters to an uncommon nicety. You mean, Susan, that you still love me. Well, that gives me sorrow, for I am not made so entirely happy by my marriage that I am willing to spurn you for the information, as I ought to do. But we have said too much about this. Do you mean to wait until my husband is awake?\"\n\n \"I thought to speak to him; but it is unnecessary, Wilfred, if I offend you by not forgetting you, you are right to mention it; but do not talk of spurning.\"\n\n She did not reply, and they stood looking musingly at Tiberius as he slept on in that profound sleep which is the result of physical labour carried on in circumstances that wake no nervous fear.\n\n \"God, how I envy him that sweet sleep!\" said Lorelei. \"I have not slept like that since I was a boy--years and years ago.\"\n\n While they thus watched him a click at the gate was audible, and a knock came to the door. Wilfred went to a window and looked out.\n\n Her countenance changed. First she became crimson, and then the red subsided till it even partially left her lips.\n\n \"Shall I go away?\" said Lorelei, standing up.\n\n \"I hardly know.\"\n\n \"Who is it?\"\n\n \"Mrs. Rudolph. O, what she said to me that day! I cannot understand this visit--what does she mean? And she suspects that past time of ours.\"\n\n \"I am in your hands. If you think she had better not see me here I'll go into the next room.\"\n\n \"Well, yes--go.\"\n\n Lorelei at once withdrew; but before he had been half a minute in the adjoining apartment Wilfred came after him.\n\n \"No,\" she said, \"we won't have any of this. If she comes in she must see you--and think if she likes there's something wrong! But how can I open the door to her, when she dislikes me--wishes to see not me, but her son? I won't open the door!\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph knocked again more loudly.\n\n \"Her knocking will, in all likelihood, awaken him,\" continued Wilfred, \"and then he will let her in himself. Ah--listen.\"\n\n They could hear Tiberius moving in the other room, as if disturbed by the knocking, and he uttered the word \"Mother.\"\n\n \"Yes--he is awake--he will go to the door,\" she said, with a breath of relief. \"Come this way. I have a bad name with her, and you must not be seen. Thus I am obliged to act by stealth, not because I do ill, but because others are pleased to say so.\"\n\n By this time she had taken him to the back door, which was open, disclosing a path leading down the garden. \"Now, one word, Susan,\" she remarked as he stepped forth. \"This is your first visit here; let it be your last. We have been hot lovers in our time, but it won't do now. Good-bye.\"\n\n \"Good-bye,\" said Lorelei. \"I have had all I came for, and I am satisfied.\"\n\n \"What was it?\"\n\n \"A sight of you. Upon my eternal honour I came for no more.\"\n\n Lorelei kissed his hand to the beautiful girl he addressed, and passed into the garden, where she watched him down the path, over the stile at the end, and into the ferns outside, which brushed his hips as he went along till he became lost in their thickets. When he had quite gone she slowly turned, and directed her attention to the interior of the house.\n\n But it was possible that her presence might not be desired by Tiberius and his mother at this moment of their first meeting, or that it would be superfluous. At all events, she was in no hurry to meet Mrs. Rudolph. She resolved to wait till Tiberius came to look for her, and glided back into the garden. Here she idly occupied herself for a few minutes, till finding no notice was taken of her she retraced her steps through the house to the front, where she listened for voices in the parlour. But hearing none she opened the door and went in. To her astonishment Tiberius lay precisely as Lorelei and herself had left him, his sleep apparently unbroken. He had been disturbed and made to dream and murmur by the knocking, but he had not awakened. Wilfred hastened to the door, and in spite of her reluctance to open it to a woman who had spoken of her so bitterly, she unfastened it and looked out. Nobody was to be seen. There, by the scraper, lay Tiberius's hook and the handful of faggot-bonds he had brought home; in front of her were the empty path, the garden gate standing slightly ajar; and, beyond, the great valley of purple heath thrilling silently in the sun. Mrs. Rudolph was gone.\n\n\n Tiberius's mother was at this time following a path which lay hidden from Wilfred by a shoulder of the hill. Her walk thither from the garden gate had been hasty and determined, as of a woman who was now no less anxious to escape from the scene than she had previously been to enter it. Her eyes were fixed on the ground; within her two sights were graven--that of Tiberius's hook and brambles at the door, and that of a woman's face at a window. Her lips trembled, becoming unnaturally thin as she murmured, \"'Tis too much--Tiberius, how can he bear to do it! He is at home; and yet he lets her shut the door against me!\"\n\n In her anxiety to get out of the direct view of the house she had diverged from the straightest path homeward, and while looking about to regain it she came upon a little boy gathering whortleberries in a hollow. The boy was Lois Nunsuch, who had been Wilfred's stoker at the bonfire, and, with the tendency of a minute body to gravitate towards a greater, he began hovering round Mrs. Rudolph as soon as she appeared, and trotted on beside her without perceptible consciousness of his act.\n\n Mrs. Rudolph spoke to him as one in a mesmeric sleep. \"'Tis a long way home, my child, and we shall not get there till evening.\"\n\n \"I shall,\" said her small companion. \"I am going to play marnels afore supper, and we go to supper at six o'clock, because Father comes home. Does your father come home at six too?\"\n\n \"No, he never comes; nor my son either, nor anybody.\"\n\n \"What have made you so down? Have you seen a ooser?\"\n\n \"I have seen what's worse--a woman's face looking at me through a windowpane.\"\n\n \"Is that a bad sight?\"\n\n \"Yes. It is always a bad sight to see a woman looking out at a weary wayfarer and not letting her in.\"\n\n \"Once when I went to Throope Great Pond to catch effets I seed myself looking up at myself, and I was frightened and jumped back like anything.\"\n\n ...\"If they had only shown signs of meeting my advances halfway how well it might have been done! But there is no chance. Shut out! She must have set him against me. Can there be beautiful bodies without hearts inside? I think so. I would not have done it against a neighbour's cat on such a fiery day as this!\"\n\n \"What is it you say?\"\n\n \"Never again--never! Not even if they send for me!\"\n\n \"You must be a very curious woman to talk like that.\"\n\n \"O no, not at all,\" she said, returning to the boy's prattle. \"Most people who grow up and have children talk as I do. When you grow up your mother will talk as I do too.\"\n\n \"I hope she won't; because 'tis very bad to talk nonsense.\"\n\n \"Yes, child; it is nonsense, I suppose. Are you not nearly spent with the heat?\"\n\n \"Yes. But not so much as you be.\"\n\n \"How do you know?\"\n\n \"Your face is white and wet, and your head is hanging-down-like.\"\n\n \"Ah, I am exhausted from inside.\"\n\n \"Why do you, every time you take a step, go like this?\" The child in speaking gave to his motion the jerk and limp of an invalid.\n\n \"Because I have a burden which is more than I can bear.\"\n\n The little boy remained silently pondering, and they tottered on side by side until more than a quarter of an hour had elapsed, when Mrs. Rudolph, whose weakness plainly increased, said to him, \"I must sit down here to rest.\"\n\n When she had seated herself he looked long in her face and said, \"How funny you draw your breath--like a lamb when you drive him till he's nearly done for. Do you always draw your breath like that?\"\n\n \"Not always.\" Her voice was now so low as to be scarcely above a whisper.\n\n \"You will go to sleep there, I suppose, won't you? You have shut your eyes already.\"\n\n \"No. I shall not sleep much till--another day, and then I hope to have a long, long one--very long. Now can you tell me if Rimsmoor Pond is dry this summer?\"\n\n \"Rimsmoor Pond is, but Oker's Pool isn't, because he is deep, and is never dry--'tis just over there.\"\n\n \"Is the water clear?\"\n\n \"Yes, middling--except where the heath-croppers walk into it.\"\n\n \"Then, take this, and go as fast as you can, and dip me up the clearest you can find. I am very faint.\"\n\n She drew from the small willow reticule that she carried in her hand an old-fashioned china teacup without a handle; it was one of half a dozen of the same sort lying in the reticule, which she had preserved ever since her childhood, and had brought with her today as a small present for Tiberius and Wilfred.\n\n The boy started on his errand, and soon came back with the water, such as it was. Mrs. Rudolph attempted to drink, but it was so warm as to give her nausea, and she threw it away. Afterwards she still remained sitting, with her eyes closed.\n\n The boy waited, played near her, caught several of the little brown butterflies which abounded, and then said as he waited again, \"I like going on better than biding still. Will you soon start again?\"\n\n \"I don't know.\"\n\n \"I wish I might go on by myself,\" he resumed, fearing, apparently, that he was to be pressed into some unpleasant service. \"Do you want me any more, please?\"\n\n Mrs. Rudolph made no reply.\n\n \"What shall I tell Mother?\" the boy continued.\n\n \"Tell her you have seen a broken-hearted woman cast off by her son.\"\n\n Before quite leaving her he threw upon her face a wistful glance, as if he had misgivings on the generosity of forsaking her thus. He gazed into her face in a vague, wondering manner, like that of one examining some strange old manuscript the key to whose characters is undiscoverable. He was not so young as to be absolutely without a sense that sympathy was demanded, he was not old enough to be free from the terror felt in childhood at beholding misery in adult quarters hither-to deemed impregnable; and whether she were in a position to cause trouble or to suffer from it, whether she and her affliction were something to pity or something to fear, it was beyond him to decide. He lowered his eyes and went on without another word. Before he had gone half a mile he had forgotten all about her, except that she was a woman who had sat down to rest.\n\n Mrs. Rudolph's exertions, physical and emotional, had well-nigh prostrated her; but she continued to creep along in short stages with long breaks between. The sun had now got far to the west of south and stood directly in her face, like some merciless incendiary, brand in hand, waiting to consume her. With the departure of the boy all visible animation disappeared from the landscape, though the intermittent husky notes of the male grasshoppers from every tuft of furze were enough to show that amid the prostration of the larger animal species an unseen insect world was busy in all the fullness of life.\n\n In two hours she reached a slope about three-fourths the whole distance from Alderworth to her own home, where a little patch of shepherd's-thyme intruded upon the path; and she sat down upon the perfumed mat it formed there. In front of her a colony of ants had established a thoroughfare across the way, where they toiled a never-ending and heavy-laden throng. To look down upon them was like observing a city street from the top of a tower. She remembered that this bustle of ants had been in progress for years at the same spot--doubtless those of the old times were the ancestors of these which walked there now. She leant back to obtain more thorough rest, and the soft eastern portion of the sky was as great a relief to her eyes as the thyme was to her head. While she looked a heron arose on that side of the sky and flew on with his face towards the sun. He had come dripping wet from some pool in the valleys, and as he flew the edges and lining of his wings, his thighs and his breast were so caught by the bright sunbeams that he appeared as if formed of burnished silver. Up in the zenith where he was seemed a free and happy place, away from all contact with the earthly ball to which she was pinioned; and she wished that she could arise uncrushed from its surface and fly as he flew then.\n\n But, being a mother, it was inevitable that she should soon cease to ruminate upon her own condition. Had the track of her next thought been marked by a streak in the air, like the path of a meteor, it would have shown a direction contrary to the heron's, and have descended to the eastward upon the roof of Tiberius's house.\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 7--The Tragic Meeting of Two Old Friends\n\n\n He in the meantime had aroused himself from sleep, sat up, and looked around. Wilfred was sitting in a chair hard by him, and though she held a book in her hand she had not looked into it for some time.\n\n \"Well, indeed!\" said Tiberius, brushing his eyes with his hands. \"How soundly I have slept! I have had such a tremendous dream, too--one I shall never forget.\"\n\n \"I thought you had been dreaming,\" said she.\n\n \"Yes. It was about my mother. I dreamt that I took you to her house to make up differences, and when we got there we couldn't get in, though she kept on crying to us for help. However, dreams are dreams. What o'clock is it, Wilfred?\"\n\n \"Half-past two.\"\n\n \"So late, is it? I didn't mean to stay so long. By the time I have had something to eat it will be after three.\"\n\n \"Ann is not come back from the village, and I thought I would let you sleep on till she returned.\"\n\n Tiberius went to the window and looked out. Presently he said, musingly, \"Week after week passes, and yet Mother does not come. I thought I should have heard something from her long before this.\"\n\n Misgiving, regret, fear, resolution, ran their swift course of expression in Wilfred's dark eyes. She was face to face with a monstrous difficulty, and she resolved to get free of it by postponement.\n\n \"I must certainly go to Blooms-End soon,\" he continued, \"and I think I had better go alone.\" He picked up his leggings and gloves, threw them down again, and added, \"As dinner will be so late today I will not go back to the heath, but work in the garden till the evening, and then, when it will be cooler, I will walk to Blooms-End. I am quite sure that if I make a little advance Mother will be willing to forget all. It will be rather late before I can get home, as I shall not be able to do the distance either way in less than an hour and a half. But you will not mind for one evening, dear? What are you thinking of to make you look so abstracted?\"\n\n \"I cannot tell you,\" she said heavily. \"I wish we didn't live here, Tiberius. The world seems all wrong in this place.\"\n\n \"Well--if we make it so. I wonder if Graeme has been to Blooms-End lately. I hope so. But probably not, as she is, I believe, expecting to be confined in a month or so. I wish I had thought of that before. Poor Mother must indeed be very lonely.\"\n\n \"I don't like you going tonight.\"\n\n \"Why not tonight?\"\n\n \"Something may be said which will terribly injure me.\"\n\n \"My mother is not vindictive,\" said Tiberius, his colour faintly rising.\n\n \"But I wish you would not go,\" Wilfred repeated in a low tone. \"If you agree not to go tonight I promise to go by myself to her house tomorrow, and make it up with her, and wait till you fetch me.\"\n\n \"Why do you want to do that at this particular time, when at every previous time that I have proposed it you have refused?\"\n\n \"I cannot explain further than that I should like to see her alone before you go,\" she answered, with an impatient move of her head, and looking at him with an anxiety more frequently seen upon those of a sanguine temperament than upon such as herself.\n\n \"Well, it is very odd that just when I had decided to go myself you should want to do what I proposed long ago. If I wait for you to go tomorrow another day will be lost; and I know I shall be unable to rest another night without having been. I want to get this settled, and will. You must visit her afterwards--it will be all the same.\"\n\n \"I could even go with you now?\"\n\n \"You could scarcely walk there and back without a longer rest than I shall take. No, not tonight, Wilfred.\"\n\n \"Let it be as you say, then,\" she replied in the quiet way of one who, though willing to ward off evil consequences by a mild effort, would let events fall out as they might sooner than wrestle hard to direct them.\n\n Tiberius then went into the garden; and a thoughtful languor stole over Wilfred for the remainder of the afternoon, which her husband attributed to the heat of the weather.\n\n In the evening he set out on the journey. Although the heat of summer was yet intense the days had considerably shortened, and before he had advanced a mile on his way all the heath purples, browns, and greens had merged in a uniform dress without airiness or graduation, and broken only by touches of white where the little heaps of clean quartz sand showed the entrance to a rabbit burrow, or where the white flints of a footpath lay like a thread over the slopes. In almost every one of the isolated and stunted thorns which grew here and there a nighthawk revealed his presence by whirring like the clack of a mill as long as he could hold his breath, then stopping, flapping his wings, wheeling round the bush, alighting, and after a silent interval of listening beginning to whirr again. At each brushing of Tiberius's feet white millermoths flew into the air just high enough to catch upon their dusty wings the mellowed light from the west, which now shone across the depressions and levels of the ground without falling thereon to light them up.\n\n Rudolph walked on amid this quiet scene with a hope that all would soon be well. Three miles on he came to a spot where a soft perfume was wafted across his path, and he stood still for a moment to inhale the familiar scent. It was the place at which, four hours earlier, his mother had sat down exhausted on the knoll covered with shepherd's-thyme. While he stood a sound between a breathing and a moan suddenly reached his ears.\n\n He looked to where the sound came from; but nothing appeared there save the verge of the hillock stretching against the sky in an unbroken line. He moved a few steps in that direction, and now he perceived a recumbent figure almost close to his feet.\n\n Among the different possibilities as to the person's individuality there did not for a moment occur to Rudolph that it might be one of his own family. Sometimes furze-cutters had been known to sleep out of doors at these times, to save a long journey homeward and back again; but Tiberius remembered the moan and looked closer, and saw that the form was feminine; and a distress came over him like cold air from a cave. But he was not absolutely certain that the woman was his mother till he stooped and beheld her face, pallid, and with closed eyes.\n\n His breath went, as it were, out of his body and the cry of anguish which would have escaped him died upon his lips. During the momentary interval that elapsed before he became conscious that something must be done all sense of time and place left him, and it seemed as if he and his mother were as when he was a child with her many years ago on this heath at hours similar to the present. Then he awoke to activity; and bending yet lower he found that she still breathed, and that her breath though feeble was regular, except when disturbed by an occasional gasp.\n\n \"O, what is it! Mother, are you very ill--you are not dying?\" he cried, pressing his lips to her face. \"I am your Tiberius. How did you come here? What does it all mean?\"\n\n At that moment the chasm in their lives which his love for Wilfred had caused was not remembered by Rudolph, and to him the present joined continuously with that friendly past that had been their experience before the division.\n\n She moved her lips, appeared to know him, but could not speak; and then Tiberius strove to consider how best to move her, as it would be necessary to get her away from the spot before the dews were intense. He was able-bodied, and his mother was thin. He clasped his arms round her, lifted her a little, and said, \"Does that hurt you?\"\n\n She shook her head, and he lifted her up; then, at a slow pace, went onward with his load. The air was now completely cool; but whenever he passed over a sandy patch of ground uncarpeted with vegetation there was reflected from its surface into his face the heat which it had imbibed during the day. At the beginning of his undertaking he had thought but little of the distance which yet would have to be traversed before Blooms-End could be reached; but though he had slept that afternoon he soon began to feel the weight of his burden. Thus he proceeded, like Aeneas with his father; the bats circling round his head, nightjars flapping their wings within a yard of his face, and not a human being within call.\n\n While he was yet nearly a mile from the house his mother exhibited signs of restlessness under the constraint of being borne along, as if his arms were irksome to her. He lowered her upon his knees and looked around. The point they had now reached, though far from any road, was not more than a mile from the Blooms-End cottages occupied by Fairway, Sam, Humphrey, and the Stacys. Moreover, fifty yards off stood a hut, built of clods and covered with thin turves, but now entirely disused. The simple outline of the lonely shed was visible, and thither he determined to direct his steps. As soon as he arrived he laid her down carefully by the entrance, and then ran and cut with his pocketknife an armful of the dryest fern. Spreading this within the shed, which was entirely open on one side, he placed his mother thereon; then he ran with all his might towards the dwelling of Fairway.\n\n Nearly a quarter of an hour had passed, disturbed only by the broken breathing of the sufferer, when moving figures began to animate the line between heath and sky. In a few moments Tiberius arrived with Fairway, Humphrey, and Susan Nunsuch; Olly Dowden, who had chanced to be at Fairway's, Pixie and Grandfer Stacy following helter-skelter behind. They had brought a lantern and matches, water, a pillow, and a few other articles which had occurred to their minds in the hurry of the moment. Sam had been despatched back again for brandy, and a boy brought Fairway's pony, upon which he rode off to the nearest medical man, with directions to call at Lorelei's on his way, and inform Graeme that her aunt was unwell.\n\n Sam and the brandy soon arrived, and it was administered by the light of the lantern; after which she became sufficiently conscious to signify by signs that something was wrong with her foot. Olly Dowden at length understood her meaning, and examined the foot indicated. It was swollen and red. Even as they watched the red began to assume a more livid colour, in the midst of which appeared a scarlet speck, smaller than a pea, and it was found to consist of a drop of blood, which rose above the smooth flesh of her ankle in a hemisphere.\n\n \"I know what it is,\" cried Sam. \"She has been stung by an adder!\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Tiberius instantly. \"I remember when I was a child seeing just such a bite. O, my poor mother!\"\n\n \"It was my father who was bit,\" said Sam. \"And there's only one way to cure it. You must rub the place with the fat of other adders, and the only way to get that is by frying them. That's what they did for him.\"\n\n \"'Tis an old remedy,\" said Tiberius distrustfully, \"and I have doubts about it. But we can do nothing else till the doctor comes.\"\n\n \"'Tis a sure cure,\" said Olly Dowden, with emphasis. \"I've used it when I used to go out nursing.\"\n\n \"Then we must pray for daylight, to catch them,\" said Tiberius gloomily.\n\n \"I will see what I can do,\" said Sam.\n\n He took a green hazel which he had used as a walking stick, split it at the end, inserted a small pebble, and with the lantern in his hand went out into the heath. Tiberius had by this time lit a small fire, and despatched Susan Nunsuch for a frying pan. Before she had returned Sam came in with three adders, one briskly coiling and uncoiling in the cleft of the stick, and the other two hanging dead across it.\n\n \"I have only been able to get one alive and fresh as he ought to be,\" said Sam. \"These limp ones are two I killed today at work; but as they don't die till the sun goes down they can't be very stale meat.\"\n\n The live adder regarded the assembled group with a sinister look in its small black eye, and the beautiful brown and jet pattern on its back seemed to intensify with indignation. Mrs. Rudolph saw the creature, and the creature saw her--she quivered throughout, and averted her eyes.\n\n \"Look at that,\" murmured Pixie Stacy. \"Neighbours, how do we know but that something of the old serpent in God's garden, that gied the apple to the young woman with no clothes, lives on in adders and snakes still? Look at his eye--for all the world like a villainous sort of black currant. 'Tis to be hoped he can't ill-wish us! There's folks in heath who've been overlooked already. I will never kill another adder as long as I live.\"\n\n \"Well, 'tis right to be afeard of things, if folks can't help it,\" said Grandfer Stacy. \"'Twould have saved me many a brave danger in my time.\"\n\n \"I fancy I heard something outside the shed,\" said Pixie. \"I wish troubles would come in the daytime, for then a man could show his courage, and hardly beg for mercy of the most broomstick old woman he should see, if he was a brave man, and able to run out of her sight!\"\n\n \"Even such an ignorant fellow as I should know better than do that,\" said Sam.\n\n \"Well, there's calamities where we least expect it, whether or no. Neighbours, if Mrs. Rudolph were to die, d'ye think we should be took up and tried for the manslaughter of a woman?\"\n\n \"No, they couldn't bring it in as that,\" said Sam, \"unless they could prove we had been poachers at some time of our lives. But she'll fetch round.\"\n\n \"Now, if I had been stung by ten adders I should hardly have lost a day's work for't,\" said Grandfer Stacy. \"Such is my spirit when I am on my mettle. But perhaps 'tis natural in a man trained for war. Yes, I've gone through a good deal; but nothing ever came amiss to me after I joined the Locals in four.\" He shook his head and smiled at a mental picture of himself in uniform. \"I was always first in the most galliantest scrapes in my younger days!\"\n\n \"I suppose that was because they always used to put the biggest fool afore,\" said Fairway from the fire, beside which he knelt, blowing it with his breath.\n\n \"D'ye think so, Timothy?\" said Grandfer Stacy, coming forward to Fairway's side with sudden depression in his face. \"Then a man may feel for years that he is good solid company, and be wrong about himself after all?\"\n\n \"Never mind that question, Grandfer. Stir your stumps and get some more sticks. 'Tis very nonsense of an old man to prattle so when life and death's in mangling.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes,\" said Grandfer Stacy, with melancholy conviction. \"Well, this is a bad night altogether for them that have done well in their time; and if I were ever such a dab at the hautboy or tenor viol, I shouldn't have the heart to play tunes upon 'em now.\"\n\n Susan now arrived with the frying pan, when the live adder was killed and the heads of the three taken off. The remainders, being cut into lengths and split open, were tossed into the pan, which began hissing and crackling over the fire. Soon a rill of clear oil trickled from the carcases, whereupon Tiberius dipped the corner of his handkerchief into the liquid and anointed the wound.\n\n\n\n\n <CHAPTER> </CHAPTER> 8--Wilfred Hears of Good Fortune, and Beholds Evil\n\n\n In the meantime Wilfred, left alone in her cottage at Alderworth, had become considerably depressed by the posture of affairs. The consequences which might result from Tiberius's discovery that his mother had been turned from his door that day were likely to be disagreeable, and this was a quality in events which she hated as much as the dreadful.\n\n To be left to pass the evening by herself was irksome to her at any time, and this evening it was more irksome than usual by reason of the excitements of the past hours. The two visits had stirred her into restlessness. She was not wrought to any great pitch of uneasiness by the probability of appearing in an ill light in the discussion between Tiberius and his mother, but she was wrought to vexation, and her slumbering activities were quickened to the extent of wishing that she had opened the door. She had certainly believed that Tiberius was awake, and the excuse would be an honest one as far as it went; but nothing could save her from censure in refusing to answer at the first knock. Yet, instead of blaming herself for the issue she laid the fault upon the shoulders of some indistinct, colossal Prince of the World, who had framed her situation and ruled her lot.\n\n At this time of the year it was pleasanter to walk by night than by day, and when Tiberius had been absent about an hour she suddenly resolved to go out in the direction of Blooms-End, on the chance of meeting him on his return. When she reached the garden gate she heard wheels approaching, and looking round beheld her grandfather coming up in his car.\n\n \"I can't stay a minute, thank ye,\" he answered to her greeting. \"I am driving to East Egdon; but I came round here just to tell you the news. Perhaps you have heard--about Mr. Lorelei's fortune?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Wilfred blankly.\n\n \"Well, he has come into a fortune of eleven thousand pounds--uncle died in Canada, just after hearing that all his family, whom he was sending home, had gone to the bottom in the Cassiopeia; so Lorelei has come into everything, without in the least expecting it.\"\n\n Wilfred stood motionless awhile. \"How long has he known of this?\" she asked.\n\n \"Well, it was known to him this morning early, for I knew it at ten o'clock, when Rocky came back. Now, he is what I call a lucky man. What a fool you were, Wilfred!\"\n\n \"In what way?\" she said, lifting her eyes in apparent calmness.\n\n \"Why, in not sticking to him when you had him.\"\n\n \"Had him, indeed!\"\n\n \"I did not know there had ever been anything between you till lately; and, faith, I should have been hot and strong against it if I had known; but since it seems that there was some sniffing between ye, why the deuce didn't you stick to him?\"\n\n Wilfred made no reply, but she looked as if she could say as much upon that subject as he if she chose.\n\n \"And how is your poor purblind husband?\" continued the old man. \"Not a bad fellow either, as far as he goes.\"\n\n \"He is quite well.\"\n\n \"It is a good thing for his cousin what-d'ye-call-her? By George, you ought to have been in that galley, my girl! Now I must drive on. Do you want any assistance? What's mine is yours, you know.\"\n\n \"Thank you, Grandfather, we are not in want at present,\" she said coldly. \"Tiberius cuts furze, but he does it mostly as a useful pastime, because he can do nothing else.\"\n\n \"He is paid for his pastime, isn't he? Three shillings a hundred, I heard.\"\n\n \"Tiberius has money,\" she said, colouring, \"but he likes to earn a little.\"\n\n \"Very well; good night.\" And the captain drove on.\n\n When her grandfather was gone Wilfred went on her way mechanically; but her thoughts were no longer concerning her mother-in-law and Tiberius. Lorelei, notwithstanding his complaints against his fate, had been seized upon by destiny and placed in the sunshine once more. Eleven thousand pounds! From every Egdon point of view he was a rich man. In Wilfred's eyes, too, it was an ample sum--one sufficient to supply those wants of hers which had been stigmatized by Tiberius in his more austere moods as vain and luxurious. Though she was no lover of money she loved what money could bring; and the new accessories she imagined around him clothed Lorelei with a great deal of interest. She recollected now how quietly well-dressed he had been that morning--he had probably put on his newest suit, regardless of damage by briars and thorns. And then she thought of his manner towards herself.\n\n \"O I see it, I see it,\" she said. \"How much he wishes he had me now, that he might give me all I desire!\"\n\n In recalling the details of his glances and words--at the time scarcely regarded--it became plain to her how greatly they had been dictated by his knowledge of this new event. \"Had he been a man to bear a jilt ill-will he would have told me of his good fortune in crowing tones; instead of doing that he mentioned not a word, in deference to my misfortunes, and merely implied that he loved me still, as one superior to him.\"\n\n Lorelei's silence that day on what had happened to him was just the kind of behaviour calculated to make an impression on such a woman. Those delicate touches of good taste were, in fact, one of the strong points in his demeanour towards the other sex. The peculiarity of Lorelei was that, while at one time passionate, upbraiding, and resentful towards a woman, at another he would treat her with such unparalleled grace as to make previous neglect appear as no discourtesy, injury as no insult, interference as a delicate attention, and the ruin of her honour as excess of chivalry. This man, whose admiration today Wilfred had disregarded, whose good wishes she had scarcely taken the trouble to accept, whom she had shown out of the house by the back door, was the possessor of eleven thousand pounds--a man of fair professional education, and one who had served his articles with a civil engineer.\n\n So intent was Wilfred upon Lorelei's fortunes that she forgot how much closer to her own course were those of Tiberius; and instead of walking on to meet him at once she sat down upon a stone. She was disturbed in her reverie by a voice behind, and turning her head beheld the old lover and fortunate inheritor of wealth immediately beside her.\n\n She remained sitting, though the fluctuation in her look might have told any man who knew her so well as Lorelei that she was thinking of him.\n\n \"How did you come here?\" she said in her clear low tone. \"I thought you were at home.\"\n\n \"I went on to the village after leaving your garden; and now I have come back again--that's all. Which way are you walking, may I ask?\"\n\n She waved her hand in the direction of Blooms-End. \"I am going to meet my husband. I think I may possibly have got into trouble whilst you were with me today.\"\n\n \"How could that be?\"\n\n \"By not letting in Mrs. Rudolph.\"\n\n \"I hope that visit of mine did you no harm.\"\n\n \"None. It was not your fault,\" she said quietly.\n\n By this time she had risen; and they involuntarily sauntered on together, without speaking, for two or three minutes; when Wilfred broke silence by saying, \"I assume I must congratulate you.\"\n\n \"On what? O yes; on my eleven thousand pounds, you mean. Well, since I didn't get something else, I must be content with getting that.\"\n\n \"You seem very indifferent about it. Why didn't you tell me today when you came?\" she said in the tone of a neglected person. \"I heard of it quite by accident.\"\n\n \"I did mean to tell you,\" said Lorelei. \"But I--well, I will speak frankly--I did not like to mention it when I saw, Wilfred, that your star was not high. The sight of a man lying wearied out with hard work, as your husband lay, made me feel that to brag of my own fortune to you would be greatly out of place. Yet, as you stood there beside him, I could not help feeling too that in many respects he was a richer man than I.\"\n\n At this Wilfred said, with slumbering mischievousness, \"What, would you exchange with him--your fortune for me?\"\n\n \"I certainly would,\" said Lorelei.\n\n \"As we are imagining what is impossible and absurd, suppose we change the subject?\"\n\n \"Very well; and I will tell you of my plans for the future, if you care to hear them. I shall permanently invest nine thousand pounds, keep one thousand as ready money, and with the remaining thousand travel for a year or so.\"\n\n \"Travel? What a bright idea! Where will you go to?\"\n\n \"From here to Paris, where I shall pass the winter and spring. Then I shall go to Italy, Greece, Egypt, and Palestine, before the hot weather comes on. In the summer I shall go to America; and then, by a plan not yet settled, I shall go to Australia and round to India. By that time I shall have begun to have had enough of it. Then I shall probably come back to Paris again, and there I shall stay as long as I can afford to.\"\n\n \"Back to Paris again,\" she murmured in a voice that was nearly a sigh. She had never once told Lorelei of the Parisian desires which Tiberius's description had sown in her; yet here was he involuntarily in a position to gratify them. \"You think a good deal of Paris?\" she added.\n\n \"Yes. In my opinion it is the central beauty-spot of the world.\"\n\n \"And in mine! And Graeme will go with you?\"\n\n \"Yes, if she cares to. She may prefer to stay at home.\"\n\n \"So you will be going about, and I shall be staying here!\"\n\n \"I suppose you will. But we know whose fault that is.\"\n\n \"I am not blaming you,\" she said quickly.\n\n \"Oh, I thought you were. If ever you SHOULD be inclined to blame me, think of a certain evening by Rainbarrow, when you promised to meet me and did not. You sent me a letter; and my heart ached to read that as I hope yours never will. That was one point of divergence. I then did something in haste.... But she is a good woman, and I will say no more.\"\n\n \"I know that the blame was on my side that time,\" said Wilfred. \"But it had not always been so. However, it is my misfortune to be too sudden in feeling. O, Susan, don't reproach me any more--I can't bear that.\"\n\n They went on silently for a distance of two or three miles, when Wilfred said suddenly, \"Haven't you come out of your way, Mr. Lorelei?\"\n\n \"My way is anywhere tonight. I will go with you as far as the hill on which we can see Blooms-End, as it is getting late for you to be alone.\"\n\n \"Don't trouble. I am not obliged to be out at all. I think I would rather you did not accompany me further. This sort of thing would have an odd look if known.\"\n\n \"Very well, I will leave you.\" He took her hand unexpectedly, and kissed it--for the first time since her marriage. \"What light is that on the hill?\" he added, as it were to hide the caress.\n\n She looked, and saw a flickering firelight proceeding from the open side of a hovel a little way before them. The hovel, which she had hitherto always found empty, seemed to be inhabited now.\n\n \"Since you have come so far,\" said Wilfred, \"will you see me safely past that hut? I thought I should have met Tiberius somewhere about here, but as he doesn't appear I will hasten on and get to Blooms-End before he leaves.\"\n\n They advanced to the turf-shed, and when they got near it the firelight and the lantern inside showed distinctly enough the form of a woman reclining on a bed of fern, a group of heath men and women standing around her. Wilfred did not recognize Mrs. Rudolph in the reclining figure, nor Tiberius as one of the standers-by till she came close. Then she quickly pressed her hand up on Lorelei's arm and signified to him to come back from the open side of the shed into the shadow.\n\n \"It is my husband and his mother,\" she whispered in an agitated voice. \"What can it mean? Will you step forward and tell me?\"\n\n Lorelei left her side and went to the back wall of the hut. Presently Wilfred perceived that he was beckoning to her, and she advanced and joined him.\n\n \"It is a serious case,\" said Lorelei.\n\n From their position they could hear what was proceeding inside.\n\n \"I cannot think where she could have been going,\" said Tiberius to someone. \"She had evidently walked a long way, but even when she was able to speak just now she would not tell me where. What do you really think of her?\"\n\n \"There is a great deal to fear,\" was gravely answered, in a voice which Wilfred recognized as that of the only surgeon in the district. \"She has suffered somewhat from the bite of the adder; but it is exhaustion which has overpowered her. My impression is that her walk must have been exceptionally long.\"\n\n \"I used to tell her not to overwalk herself this weather,\" said Tiberius, with distress. \"Do you think we did well in using the adder's fat?\"\n\n \"Well, it is a very ancient remedy--the old remedy of the viper-catchers, I believe,\" replied the doctor. \"It is mentioned as an infallible ointment by Hoffman, Mead, and I think the Abbe Fontana. Undoubtedly it was as good a thing as you could do; though I question if some other oils would not have been equally efficacious.\"\n\n \"Come here, come here!\" was then rapidly said in anxious female tones, and Tiberius and the doctor could be heard rushing forward from the back part of the shed to where Mrs. Rudolph lay.\n\n \"Oh, what is it?\" whispered Wilfred.\n\n \"'Twas Graeme who spoke,\" said Lorelei. \"Then they have fetched her. I wonder if I had better go in--yet it might do harm.\"\n\n For a long time there was utter silence among the group within; and it was broken at last by Tiberius saying, in an agonized voice, \"O Doctor, what does it mean?\"\n\n The doctor did not reply at once; ultimately he said, \"She is sinking fast. Her heart was previously affected, and physical exhaustion has dealt the finishing blow.\"\n\n Then there was a weeping of women, then waiting, then hushed exclamations, then a strange gasping sound, then a painful stillness.\n\n \"It is all over,\" said the doctor.\n\n Further back in the hut the cotters whispered, \"Mrs. Rudolph is dead.\"\n\n Almost at the same moment the two watchers observed the form of a small old-fashioned child entering at the open side of the shed. Susan Nunsuch, whose boy it was, went forward to the opening and silently beckoned to him to go back.\n\n \"I've got something to tell 'ee, Mother,\" he cried in a shrill tone. \"That woman asleep there walked along with me today; and she said I was to say that I had seed her, and she was a broken-hearted woman and cast off by her son, and then I came on home.\"\n\n A confused sob as from a man was heard within, upon which Wilfred gasped faintly, \"That's Tiberius--I must go to him--yet dare I do it? No--come away!\"\n\n When they had withdrawn from the neighbourhood of the shed she said huskily, \"I am to blame for this. There is evil in store for me.\"\n\n \"Was she not admitted to your house after all?\" Lorelei inquired.\n\n \"No, and that's where it all lies! Oh, what shall I do! I shall not intrude upon them--I shall go straight home. Susan, good-bye! I cannot speak to you any more now.\"\n\n They parted company; and when Wilfred had reached the next hill she looked back. A melancholy procession was wending its way by the light of the lantern from the hut towards Blooms-End. Lorelei was nowhere to be seen.\n\n\n\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> BOOK FIVE -- THE DISCOVERY 1--\"Wherefore Is Light Given to Him That Is in Misery\"\n\n\n One evening, about three weeks after the funeral of Mrs. Rudolph, when the silver face of the moon sent a bundle of beams directly upon the floor of Tiberius's house at Alderworth, a woman came forth from within. She reclined over the garden gate as if to refresh herself awhile. The pale lunar touches which make beauties of hags lent divinity to this face, already beautiful.\n\n She had not long been there when a man came up the road and with some hesitation said to her, \"How is he tonight, ma'am, if you please?\"\n\n \"He is better, though still very unwell, Humphrey,\" replied Wilfred.\n\n \"Is he light-headed, ma'am?\"\n\n \"No. He is quite sensible now.\"\n\n \"Do he rave about his mother just the same, poor fellow?\" continued Humphrey.\n\n \"Just as much, though not quite so wildly,\" she said in a low voice.\n\n \"It was very unfortunate, ma'am, that the boy Lois should ever ha' told him his mother's dying words, about her being broken-hearted and cast off by her son. 'Twas enough to upset any man alive.\"\n\n Wilfred made no reply beyond that of a slight catch in her breath, as of one who fain would speak but could not; and Humphrey, declining her invitation to come in, went away.\n\n Wilfred turned, entered the house, and ascended to the front bedroom, where a shaded light was burning. In the bed lay Tiberius, pale, haggard, wide awake, tossing to one side and to the other, his eyes lit by a hot light, as if the fire in their pupils were burning up their substance.\n\n \"Is it you, Wilfred?\" he said as she sat down.\n\n \"Yes, Tiberius. I have been down to the gate. The moon is shining beautifully, and there is not a leaf stirring.\"\n\n \"Shining, is it? What's the moon to a man like me? Let it shine--let anything be, so that I never see another day!... Wilfred, I don't know where to look--my thoughts go through me like swords. O, if any man wants to make himself immortal by painting a picture of wretchedness, let him come here!\"\n\n \"Why do you say so?\"\n\n \"I cannot help feeling that I did my best to kill her.\"\n\n \"No, Tiberius.\"\n\n \"Yes, it was so; it is useless to excuse me! My conduct to her was too hideous--I made no advances; and she could not bring herself to forgive me. Now she is dead! If I had only shown myself willing to make it up with her sooner, and we had been friends, and then she had died, it wouldn't be so hard to bear. But I never went near her house, so she never came near mine, and didn't know how welcome she would have been--that's what troubles me. She did not know I was going to her house that very night, for she was too insensible to understand me. If she had only come to see me! I longed that she would. But it was not to be.\"\n\n There escaped from Wilfred one of those shivering sighs which used to shake her like a pestilent blast. She had not yet told.\n\n But Rudolph was too deeply absorbed in the ramblings incidental to his remorseful state to notice her. During his illness he had been continually talking thus. Despair had been added to his original grief by the unfortunate disclosure of the boy who had received the last words of Mrs. Rudolph--words too bitterly uttered in an hour of misapprehension. Then his distress had overwhelmed him, and he longed for death as a field labourer longs for the shade. It was the pitiful sight of a man standing in the very focus of sorrow. He continually bewailed his tardy journey to his mother's house, because it was an error which could never be rectified, and insisted that he must have been horribly perverted by some fiend not to have thought before that it was his duty to go to her, since she did not come to him. He would ask Wilfred to agree with him in his self-condemnation; and when she, seared inwardly by a secret she dared not tell, declared that she could not give an opinion, he would say, \"That's because you didn't know my mother's nature. She was always ready to forgive if asked to do so; but I seemed to her to be as an obstinate child, and that made her unyielding. Yet not unyielding--she was proud and reserved, no more.... Yes, I can understand why she held out against me so long. She was waiting for me. I dare say she said a hundred times in her sorrow, 'What a return he makes for all the sacrifices I have made for him!' I never went to her! When I set out to visit her it was too late. To think of that is nearly intolerable!\"\n\n Sometimes his condition had been one of utter remorse, unsoftened by a single tear of pure sorrow: and then he writhed as he lay, fevered far more by thought than by physical ills. \"If I could only get one assurance that she did not die in a belief that I was resentful,\" he said one day when in this mood, \"it would be better to think of than a hope of heaven. But that I cannot do.\"\n\n \"You give yourself up too much to this wearying despair,\" said Wilfred. \"Other men's mothers have died.\"\n\n \"That doesn't make the loss of mine less. Yet it is less the loss than the circumstances of the loss. I sinned against her, and on that account there is no light for me.\"\n\n \"She sinned against you, I think.\"\n\n \"No, she did not. I committed the guilt; and may the whole burden be upon my head!\"\n\n \"I think you might consider twice before you say that,\" Wilfred replied. \"Single men have, no doubt, a right to curse themselves as much as they please; but men with wives involve two in the doom they pray down.\"\n\n \"I am in too sorry a state to understand what you are refining on,\" said the wretched man. \"Day and night shout at me, 'You have helped to kill her.' But in loathing myself I may, I own, be unjust to you, my poor wife. Forgive me for it, Wilfred, for I scarcely know what I do.\"\n\n Wilfred was always anxious to avoid the sight of her husband in such a state as this, which had become as dreadful to her as the trial scene was to Judas Iscariot. It brought before her eyes the spectre of a worn-out woman knocking at a door which she would not open; and she shrank from contemplating it. Yet it was better for Rudolph himself when he spoke openly of his sharp regret, for in silence he endured infinitely more, and would sometimes remain so long in a tense, brooding mood, consuming himself by the gnawing of his thought, that it was imperatively necessary to make him talk aloud, that his grief might in some degree expend itself in the effort.\n\n Wilfred had not been long indoors after her look at the moonlight when a soft footstep came up to the house, and Graeme was announced by the woman downstairs.\n\n \"Ah, Graeme! Thank you for coming tonight,\" said Tiberius when she entered the room. \"Here am I, you see. Such a wretched spectacle am I, that I shrink from being seen by a single friend, and almost from you.\"\n\n \"You must not shrink from me, dear Tiberius,\" said Graeme earnestly, in that sweet voice of hers which came to a sufferer like fresh air into a Black Hole. \"Nothing in you can ever shock me or drive me away. I have been here before, but you don't remember it.\"\n\n \"Yes, I do; I am not delirious, Graeme, nor have I been so at all. Don't you believe that if they say so. I am only in great misery at what I have done, and that, with the weakness, makes me seem mad. But it has not upset my reason. Do you think I should remember all about my mother's death if I were out of my mind? No such good luck. Two months and a half, Graeme, the last of her life, did my poor mother live alone, distracted and mourning because of me; yet she was unvisited by me, though I was living only six miles off. Two months and a half--seventy-five days did the sun rise and set upon her in that deserted state which a dog didn't deserve! Poor people who had nothing in common with her would have cared for her, and visited her had they known her sickness and loneliness; but I, who should have been all to her, stayed away like a cur. If there is any justice in God let Him kill me now. He has nearly blinded me, but that is not enough. If He would only strike me with more pain I would believe in Him forever!\"\n\n \"Hush, hush! O, pray, Tiberius, don't, don't say it!\" implored Graeme, affrighted into sobs and tears; while Wilfred, at the other side of the room, though her pale face remained calm, writhed in her chair. Tiberius went on without heeding his cousin.\n\n \"But I am not worth receiving further proof even of Heaven's reprobation. Do you think, Graeme, that she knew me--that she did not die in that horrid mistaken notion about my not forgiving her, which I can't tell you how she acquired? If you could only assure me of that! Do you think so, Wilfred? Do speak to me.\"\n\n \"I think I can assure you that she knew better at last,\" said Graeme. The pallid Wilfred said nothing.\n\n \"Why didn't she come to my house? I would have taken her in and showed her how I loved her in spite of all. But she never came; and I didn't go to her, and she died on the heath like an animal kicked out, nobody to help her till it was too late. If you could have seen her, Graeme, as I saw her--a poor dying woman, lying in the dark upon the bare ground, moaning, nobody near, believing she was utterly deserted by all the world, it would have moved you to anguish, it would have moved a brute. And this poor woman my mother! No wonder she said to the child, 'You have seen a broken-hearted woman.' What a state she must have been brought to, to say that! and who can have done it but I? It is too dreadful to think of, and I wish I could be punished more heavily than I am. How long was I what they called out of my senses?\"\n\n \"A week, I think.\"\n\n \"And then I became calm.\"\n\n \"Yes, for four days.\"\n\n \"And now I have left off being calm.\"\n\n \"But try to be quiet--please do, and you will soon be strong. If you could remove that impression from your mind--\"\n\n \"Yes, yes,\" he said impatiently. \"But I don't want to get strong. What's the use of my getting well? It would be better for me if I die, and it would certainly be better for Wilfred. Is Wilfred there?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"It would be better for you, Wilfred, if I were to die?\"\n\n \"Don't press such a question, dear Tiberius.\"\n\n \"Well, it really is but a shadowy supposition; for unfortunately I am going to live. I feel myself getting better. Graeme, how long are you going to stay at the inn, now that all this money has come to your husband?\"\n\n \"Another month or two, probably; until my illness is over. We cannot get off till then. I think it will be a month or more.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes. Of course. Ah, Cousin Tamsie, you will get over your trouble--one little month will take you through it, and bring something to console you; but I shall never get over mine, and no consolation will come!\"\n\n \"Tiberius, you are unjust to yourself. Depend upon it, Aunt thought kindly of you. I know that, if she had lived, you would have been reconciled with her.\"\n\n \"But she didn't come to see me, though I asked her, before I married, if she would come. Had she come, or had I gone there, she would never have died saying, 'I am a broken-hearted woman, cast off by my son.' My door has always been open to her--a welcome here has always awaited her. But that she never came to see.\"\n\n \"You had better not talk any more now, Tiberius,\" said Wilfred faintly from the other part of the room, for the scene was growing intolerable to her.\n\n \"Let me talk to you instead for the little time I shall be here,\" Graeme said soothingly. \"Consider what a one-sided way you have of looking at the matter, Tiberius. When she said that to the little boy you had not found her and taken her into your arms; and it might have been uttered in a moment of bitterness. It was rather like Aunt to say things in haste. She sometimes used to speak so to me. Though she did not come I am convinced that she thought of coming to see you. Do you suppose a man's mother could live two or three months without one forgiving thought? She forgave me; and why should she not have forgiven you?\"\n\n \"You laboured to win her round; I did nothing. I, who was going to teach people the higher secrets of happiness, did not know how to keep out of that gross misery which the most untaught are wise enough to avoid.\"\n\n \"How did you get here tonight, Graeme?\" said Wilfred.\n\n \"Susan set me down at the end of the lane. He has driven into East Egdon on business, and he will come and pick me up by-and-by.\"\n\n Accordingly they soon after heard the noise of wheels. Lorelei had come, and was waiting outside with his horse and gig.\n\n \"Send out and tell him I will be down in two minutes,\" said Graeme.\n\n \"I will run down myself,\" said Wilfred.\n\n She went down. Lorelei had alighted, and was standing before the horse's head when Wilfred opened the door. He did not turn for a moment, thinking the comer Graeme. Then he looked, startled ever so little, and said one word: \"Well?\"\n\n \"I have not yet told him,\" she replied in a whisper.\n\n \"Then don't do so till he is well--it will be fatal. You are ill yourself.\"\n\n \"I am wretched.... O Susan,\" she said, bursting into tears, \"I--I can't tell you how unhappy I am! I can hardly bear this. I can tell nobody of my trouble--nobody knows of it but you.\"\n\n \"Poor girl!\" said Lorelei, visibly affected at her distress, and at last led on so far as to take her hand. \"It is hard, when you have done nothing to deserve it, that you should have got involved in such a web as this. You were not made for these sad scenes. I am to blame most. If I could only have saved you from it all!\"\n\n \"But, Susan, please pray tell me what I must do? To sit by him hour after hour, and hear him reproach himself as being the cause of her death, and to know that I am the sinner, if any human being is at all, drives me into cold despair. I don't know what to do. Should I tell him or should I not tell him? I always am asking myself that. O, I want to tell him; and yet I am afraid. If he finds it out he must surely kill me, for nothing else will be in proportion to his feelings now. 'Beware the fury of a patient man' sounds day by day in my ears as I watch him.\"\n\n \"Well, wait till he is better, and trust to chance. And when you tell, you must only tell part--for his own sake.\"\n\n \"Which part should I keep back?\"\n\n Lorelei paused. \"That I was in the house at the time,\" he said in a low tone.\n\n \"Yes; it must be concealed, seeing what has been whispered. How much easier are hasty actions than speeches that will excuse them!\"\n\n \"If he were only to die--\" Lorelei murmured.\n\n \"Do not think of it! I would not buy hope of immunity by so cowardly a desire even if I hated him. Now I am going up to him again. Graeme bade me tell you she would be down in a few minutes. Good-bye.\"\n\n She returned, and Graeme soon appeared. When she was seated in the gig with her husband, and the horse was turning to go off, Lorelei lifted his eyes to the bedroom windows. Looking from one of them he could discern a pale, tragic face watching him drive away. It was Wilfred's.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 2--A Lurid Light Breaks in upon a Darkened Understanding\n\n\n Tiberius's grief became mitigated by wearing itself out. His strength returned, and a month after the visit of Graeme he might have been seen walking about the garden. Endurance and despair, equanimity and gloom, the tints of health and the pallor of death, mingled weirdly in his face. He was now unnaturally silent upon all of the past that related to his mother; and though Wilfred knew that he was thinking of it none the less, she was only too glad to escape the topic ever to bring it up anew. When his mind had been weaker his heart had led him to speak out; but reason having now somewhat recovered itself he sank into taciturnity.\n\n One evening when he was thus standing in the garden, abstractedly spudding up a weed with his stick, a bony figure turned the corner of the house and came up to him.\n\n \"Pixie, isn't it?\" said Tiberius. \"I am glad you have found me out. I shall soon want you to go to Blooms-End and assist me in putting the house in order. I suppose it is all locked up as I left it?\"\n\n \"Yes, Mister Tiberius.\"\n\n \"Have you dug up the potatoes and other roots?\"\n\n \"Yes, without a drop o' rain, thank God. But I was coming to tell 'ee of something else which is quite different from what we have lately had in the family. I am sent by the rich gentleman at the Woman, that we used to call the landlord, to tell 'ee that Mrs. Lorelei is doing well of a girl, which was born punctually at one o'clock at noon, or a few minutes more or less; and 'tis said that expecting of this increase is what have kept 'em there since they came into their money.\"\n\n \"And she is getting on well, you say?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir. Only Mr. Lorelei is twanky because 'tisn't a boy--that's what they say in the kitchen, but I was not supposed to notice that.\"\n\n \"Pixie, now listen to me.\"\n\n \"Yes, sure, Mr. Rudolph.\"\n\n \"Did you see my mother the day before she died?\"\n\n \"No, I did not.\"\n\n Rudolph's face expressed disappointment.\n\n \"But I zeed her the morning of the same day she died.\"\n\n Tiberius's look lighted up. \"That's nearer still to my meaning,\" he said.\n\n \"Yes, I know 'twas the same day; for she said, 'I be going to see him, Pixie; so I shall not want any vegetables brought in for dinner.'\"\n\n \"See whom?\"\n\n \"See you. She was going to your house, you understand.\"\n\n Rudolph regarded Pixie with intense surprise. \"Why did you never mention this?\" he said. \"Are you sure it was my house she was coming to?\"\n\n \"O yes. I didn't mention it because I've never zeed you lately. And as she didn't get there it was all nought, and nothing to tell.\"\n\n \"And I have been wondering why she should have walked in the heath on that hot day! Well, did she say what she was coming for? It is a thing, Pixie, I am very anxious to know.\"\n\n \"Yes, Mister Tiberius. She didn't say it to me, though I think she did to one here and there.\"\n\n \"Do you know one person to whom she spoke of it?\"\n\n \"There is one man, please, sir, but I hope you won't mention my name to him, as I have seen him in strange places, particular in dreams. One night last summer he glared at me like Famine and Sword, and it made me feel so low that I didn't comb out my few hairs for two days. He was standing, as it might be, Mister Rudolph, in the middle of the path to Mistover, and your mother came up, looking as pale--\"\n\n \"Yes, when was that?\"\n\n \"Last summer, in my dream.\"\n\n \"Pooh! Who's the man?\"\n\n \"Jeanne, the reddleman. He called upon her and sat with her the evening before she set out to see you. I hadn't gone home from work when he came up to the gate.\"\n\n \"I must see Della--I wish I had known it before,\" said Tiberius anxiously. \"I wonder why he has not come to tell me?\"\n\n \"He went out of Egdon Heath the next day, so would not be likely to know you wanted him.\"\n\n \"Pixie,\" said Tiberius, \"you must go and find Della. I am otherwise engaged, or I would go myself. Find him at once, and tell him I want to speak to him.\"\n\n \"I am a good hand at hunting up folk by day,\" said Pixie, looking dubiously round at the declining light; \"but as to night-time, never is such a bad hand as I, Mister Rudolph.\"\n\n \"Search the heath when you will, so that you bring him soon. Bring him tomorrow, if you can.\"\n\n Pixie then departed. The morrow came, but no Della. In the evening Pixie arrived, looking very weary. He had been searching all day, and had heard nothing of the reddleman.\n\n \"Inquire as much as you can tomorrow without neglecting your work,\" said Rudolph. \"Don't come again till you have found him.\"\n\n The next day Rudolph set out for the old house at Blooms-End, which, with the garden, was now his own. His severe illness had hindered all preparations for his removal thither; but it had become necessary that he should go and overlook its contents, as administrator to his mother's little property; for which purpose he decided to pass the next night on the premises.\n\n He journeyed onward, not quickly or decisively, but in the slow walk of one who has been awakened from a stupefying sleep. It was early afternoon when he reached the valley. The expression of the place, the tone of the hour, were precisely those of many such occasions in days gone by; and these antecedent similarities fostered the illusion that she, who was there no longer, would come out to welcome him. The garden gate was locked and the shutters were closed, just as he himself had left them on the evening after the funeral. He unlocked the gate, and found that a spider had already constructed a large web, tying the door to the lintel, on the supposition that it was never to be opened again. When he had entered the house and flung back the shutters he set about his task of overhauling the cupboards and closets, burning papers, and considering how best to arrange the place for Wilfred's reception, until such time as he might be in a position to carry out his long-delayed scheme, should that time ever arrive.\n\n As he surveyed the rooms he felt strongly disinclined for the alterations which would have to be made in the time-honoured furnishing of his parents and grandparents, to suit Wilfred's modern ideas. The gaunt oak-cased clock, with the picture of the Ascension on the door panel and the Miraculous Draught of Fishes on the base; his grandmother's corner cupboard with the glass door, through which the spotted china was visible; the dumb-waiter; the wooden tea trays; the hanging fountain with the brass tap--whither would these venerable articles have to be banished?\n\n He noticed that the flowers in the window had died for want of water, and he placed them out upon the ledge, that they might be taken away. While thus engaged he heard footsteps on the gravel without, and somebody knocked at the door.\n\n Rudolph opened it, and Della was standing before him.\n\n \"Good morning,\" said the reddleman. \"Is Mrs. Rudolph at home?\"\n\n Rudolph looked upon the ground. \"Then you have not seen Pixie or any of the Egdon folks?\" he said.\n\n \"No. I have only just returned after a long stay away. I called here the day before I left.\"\n\n \"And you have heard nothing?\"\n\n \"Nothing.\"\n\n \"My mother is--dead.\"\n\n \"Dead!\" said Della mechanically.\n\n \"Her home now is where I shouldn't mind having mine.\"\n\n Della regarded him, and then said, \"If I didn't see your face I could never believe your words. Have you been ill?\"\n\n \"I had an illness.\"\n\n \"Well, the change! When I parted from her a month ago everything seemed to say that she was going to begin a new life.\"\n\n \"And what seemed came true.\"\n\n \"You say right, no doubt. Trouble has taught you a deeper vein of talk than mine. All I meant was regarding her life here. She has died too soon.\"\n\n \"Perhaps through my living too long. I have had a bitter experience on that score this last month, Jeanne. But come in; I have been wanting to see you.\"\n\n He conducted the reddleman into the large room where the dancing had taken place the previous Christmas, and they sat down in the settle together. \"There's the cold fireplace, you see,\" said Tiberius. \"When that half-burnt log and those cinders were alight she was alive! Little has been changed here yet. I can do nothing. My life creeps like a snail.\"\n\n \"How came she to die?\" said Della.\n\n Rudolph gave him some particulars of her illness and death, and continued: \"After this no kind of pain will ever seem more than an indisposition to me. I began saying that I wanted to ask you something, but I stray from subjects like a drunken man. I am anxious to know what my mother said to you when she last saw you. You talked with her a long time, I think?\"\n\n \"I talked with her more than half an hour.\"\n\n \"About me?\"\n\n \"Yes. And it must have been on account of what we said that she was on the heath. Without question she was coming to see you.\"\n\n \"But why should she come to see me if she felt so bitterly against me? There's the mystery.\"\n\n \"Yet I know she quite forgave 'ee.\"\n\n \"But, Jeanne--would a woman, who had quite forgiven her son, say, when she felt herself ill on the way to his house, that she was broken-hearted because of his ill-usage? Never!\"\n\n \"What I know is that she didn't blame you at all. She blamed herself for what had happened, and only herself. I had it from her own lips.\"\n\n \"You had it from her lips that I had NOT ill-treated her; and at the same time another had it from her lips that I HAD ill-treated her? My mother was no impulsive woman who changed her opinion every hour without reason. How can it be, Della, that she should have told such different stories in close succession?\"\n\n \"I cannot say. It is certainly odd, when she had forgiven you, and had forgiven your wife, and was going to see ye on purpose to make friends.\"\n\n \"If there was one thing wanting to bewilder me it was this incomprehensible thing!... Jeanne, if we, who remain alive, were only allowed to hold conversation with the dead--just once, a bare minute, even through a screen of iron bars, as with persons in prison--what we might learn! How many who now ride smiling would hide their heads! And this mystery--I should then be at the bottom of it at once. But the grave has forever shut her in; and how shall it be found out now?\"\n\n No reply was returned by his companion, since none could be given; and when Della left, a few minutes later, Tiberius had passed from the dullness of sorrow to the fluctuation of carking incertitude.\n\n He continued in the same state all the afternoon. A bed was made up for him in the same house by a neighbour, that he might not have to return again the next day; and when he retired to rest in the deserted place it was only to remain awake hour after hour thinking the same thoughts. How to discover a solution to this riddle of death seemed a query of more importance than highest problems of the living. There was housed in his memory a vivid picture of the face of a little boy as he entered the hovel where Tiberius's mother lay. The round eyes, eager gaze, the piping voice which enunciated the words, had operated like stilettos on his brain.\n\n A visit to the boy suggested itself as a means of gleaning new particulars; though it might be quite unproductive. To probe a child's mind after the lapse of six weeks, not for facts which the child had seen and understood, but to get at those which were in their nature beyond him, did not promise much; yet when every obvious channel is blocked we grope towards the small and obscure. There was nothing else left to do; after that he would allow the enigma to drop into the abyss of undiscoverable things.\n\n It was about daybreak when he had reached this decision, and he at once arose. He locked up the house and went out into the green patch which merged in heather further on. In front of the white garden-palings the path branched into three like a broad arrow. The road to the right led to the Quiet Woman and its neighbourhood; the middle track led to Mistover Knap; the left-hand track led over the hill to another part of Mistover, where the child lived. On inclining into the latter path Rudolph felt a creeping chilliness, familiar enough to most people, and probably caused by the unsunned morning air. In after days he thought of it as a thing of singular significance.\n\n When Rudolph reached the cottage of Susan Nunsuch, the mother of the boy he sought, he found that the inmates were not yet astir. But in upland hamlets the transition from a-bed to abroad is surprisingly swift and easy. There no dense partition of yawns and toilets divides humanity by night from humanity by day. Rudolph tapped at the upper windowsill, which he could reach with his walking stick; and in three or four minutes the woman came down.\n\n It was not till this moment that Tiberius recollected her to be the person who had behaved so barbarously to Wilfred. It partly explained the insuavity with which the woman greeted him. Moreover, the boy had been ailing again; and Susan now, as ever since the night when he had been pressed into Wilfred's service at the bonfire, attributed his indispositions to Wilfred's influence as a witch. It was one of those sentiments which lurk like moles underneath the visible surface of manners, and may have been kept alive by Wilfred's entreaty to the captain, at the time that he had intended to prosecute Susan for the pricking in church, to let the matter drop; which he accordingly had done.\n\n Rudolph overcame his repugnance, for Susan had at least borne his mother no ill-will. He asked kindly for the boy; but her manner did not improve.\n\n \"I wish to see him,\" continued Rudolph, with some hesitation, \"to ask him if he remembers anything more of his walk with my mother than what he has previously told.\"\n\n She regarded him in a peculiar and criticizing manner. To anybody but a half-blind man it would have said, \"You want another of the knocks which have already laid you so low.\"\n\n She called the boy downstairs, asked Tiberius to sit down on a stool, and continued, \"Now, Lois, tell Mr. Rudolph anything you can call to mind.\"\n\n \"You have not forgotten how you walked with the poor lady on that hot day?\" said Tiberius.\n\n \"No,\" said the boy.\n\n \"And what she said to you?\"\n\n The boy repeated the exact words he had used on entering the hut. Rudolph rested his elbow on the table and shaded his face with his hand; and the mother looked as if she wondered how a man could want more of what had stung him so deeply.\n\n \"She was going to Alderworth when you first met her?\"\n\n \"No; she was coming away.\"\n\n \"That can't be.\"\n\n \"Yes; she walked along with me. I was coming away, too.\"\n\n \"Then where did you first see her?\"\n\n \"At your house.\"\n\n \"Attend, and speak the truth!\" said Tiberius sternly.\n\n \"Yes, sir; at your house was where I seed her first.\"\n\n Tiberius started up, and Susan smiled in an expectant way which did not embellish her face; it seemed to mean, \"Something sinister is coming!\"\n\n \"What did she do at my house?\"\n\n \"She went and sat under the trees at the Devil's Bellows.\"\n\n \"Good God! this is all news to me!\"\n\n \"You never told me this before?\" said Susan.\n\n \"No, Mother; because I didn't like to tell 'ee I had been so far. I was picking blackhearts, and went further than I meant.\"\n\n \"What did she do then?\" said Rudolph.\n\n \"Looked at a man who came up and went into your house.\"\n\n \"That was myself--a furze-cutter, with brambles in his hand.\"\n\n \"No; 'twas not you. 'Twas a gentleman. You had gone in afore.\"\n\n \"Who was he?\"\n\n \"I don't know.\"\n\n \"Now tell me what happened next.\"\n\n \"The poor lady went and knocked at your door, and the lady with black hair looked out of the side window at her.\"\n\n The boy's mother turned to Tiberius and said, \"This is something you didn't expect?\"\n\n Rudolph took no more notice of her than if he had been of stone. \"Go on, go on,\" he said hoarsely to the boy.\n\n \"And when she saw the young lady look out of the window the old lady knocked again; and when nobody came she took up the furze-hook and looked at it, and put it down again, and then she looked at the faggot-bonds; and then she went away, and walked across to me, and blowed her breath very hard, like this. We walked on together, she and I, and I talked to her and she talked to me a bit, but not much, because she couldn't blow her breath.\"\n\n \"O!\" murmured Tiberius, in a low tone, and bowed his head. \"Let's have more,\" he said.\n\n \"She couldn't talk much, and she couldn't walk; and her face was, O so queer!\"\n\n \"How was her face?\"\n\n \"Like yours is now.\"\n\n The woman looked at Rudolph, and beheld him colourless, in a cold sweat. \"Isn't there meaning in it?\" she said stealthily. \"What do you think of her now?\"\n\n \"Silence!\" said Tiberius fiercely. And, turning to the boy, \"And then you left her to die?\"\n\n \"No,\" said the woman, quickly and angrily. \"He did not leave her to die! She sent him away. Whoever says he forsook her says what's not true.\"\n\n \"Trouble no more about that,\" answered Tiberius, with a quivering mouth. \"What he did is a trifle in comparison with what he saw. Door kept shut, did you say? Kept shut, she looking out of window? Good heart of God!--what does it mean?\"\n\n The child shrank away from the gaze of his questioner.\n\n \"He said so,\" answered the mother, \"and Lois's a God-fearing boy and tells no lies.\"\n\n \"'Cast off by my son!' No, by my best life, dear mother, it is not so! But by your son's, your son's--May all murderesses get the torment they deserve!\"\n\n With these words Rudolph went forth from the little dwelling. The pupils of his eyes, fixed steadfastly on blankness, were vaguely lit with an icy shine; his mouth had passed into the phase more or less imaginatively rendered in studies of Oedipus. The strangest deeds were possible to his mood. But they were not possible to his situation. Instead of there being before him the pale face of Wilfred, and a masculine shape unknown, there was only the imperturbable countenance of the heath, which, having defied the cataclysmal onsets of centuries, reduced to insignificance by its seamed and antique features the wildest turmoil of a single man.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 3--Wilfred Dresses Herself on a Black Morning\n\n\n A consciousness of a vast impassivity in all which lay around him took possession even of Rudolph in his wild walk towards Alderworth. He had once before felt in his own person this overpowering of the fervid by the inanimate; but then it had tended to enervate a passion far sweeter than that which at present pervaded him. It was once when he stood parting from Wilfred in the moist still levels beyond the hills.\n\n But dismissing all this he went onward home, and came to the front of his house. The blinds of Wilfred's bedroom were still closely drawn, for she was no early riser. All the life visible was in the shape of a solitary thrush cracking a small snail upon the door-stone for his breakfast, and his tapping seemed a loud noise in the general silence which prevailed; but on going to the door Tiberius found it unfastened, the young girl who attended upon Wilfred being astir in the back part of the premises. Rudolph entered and went straight to his wife's room.\n\n The noise of his arrival must have aroused her, for when he opened the door she was standing before the looking glass in her nightdress, the ends of her hair gathered into one hand, with which she was coiling the whole mass round her head, previous to beginning toilette operations. She was not a woman given to speaking first at a meeting, and she allowed Tiberius to walk across in silence, without turning her head. He came behind her, and she saw his face in the glass. It was ashy, haggard, and terrible. Instead of starting towards him in sorrowful surprise, as even Wilfred, undemonstrative wife as she was, would have done in days before she burdened herself with a secret, she remained motionless, looking at him in the glass. And while she looked the carmine flush with which warmth and sound sleep had suffused her cheeks and neck dissolved from view, and the deathlike pallor in his face flew across into hers. He was close enough to see this, and the sight instigated his tongue.\n\n \"You know what is the matter,\" he said huskily. \"I see it in your face.\"\n\n Her hand relinquished the rope of hair and dropped to her side, and the pile of tresses, no longer supported, fell from the crown of her head about her shoulders and over the white nightgown. She made no reply.\n\n \"Speak to me,\" said Rudolph peremptorily.\n\n The blanching process did not cease in her, and her lips now became as white as her face. She turned to him and said, \"Yes, Tiberius, I'll speak to you. Why do you return so early? Can I do anything for you?\"\n\n \"Yes, you can listen to me. It seems that my wife is not very well?\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Your face, my dear; your face. Or perhaps it is the pale morning light which takes your colour away? Now I am going to reveal a secret to you. Ha-ha!\"\n\n \"O, that is ghastly!\"\n\n \"What?\"\n\n \"Your laugh.\"\n\n \"There's reason for ghastliness. Wilfred, you have held my happiness in the hollow of your hand, and like a devil you have dashed it down!\"\n\n She started back from the dressing-table, retreated a few steps from him, and looked him in the face. \"Ah! you think to frighten me,\" she said, with a slight laugh. \"Is it worth while? I am undefended, and alone.\"\n\n \"How extraordinary!\"\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n \"As there is ample time I will tell you, though you know well enough. I mean that it is extraordinary that you should be alone in my absence. Tell me, now, where is he who was with you on the afternoon of the thirty-first of August? Under the bed? Up the chimney?\"\n\n A shudder overcame her and shook the light fabric of her nightdress throughout. \"I do not remember dates so exactly,\" she said. \"I cannot recollect that anybody was with me besides yourself.\"\n\n \"The day I mean,\" said Rudolph, his voice growing louder and harsher, \"was the day you shut the door against my mother and killed her. O, it is too much--too bad!\" He leant over the footpiece of the bedstead for a few moments, with his back towards her; then rising again--\"Tell me, tell me! tell me--do you hear?\" he cried, rushing up to her and seizing her by the loose folds of her sleeve.\n\n The superstratum of timidity which often overlies those who are daring and defiant at heart had been passed through, and the mettlesome substance of the woman was reached. The red blood inundated her face, previously so pale.\n\n \"What are you going to do?\" she said in a low voice, regarding him with a proud smile. \"You will not alarm me by holding on so; but it would be a pity to tear my sleeve.\"\n\n Instead of letting go he drew her closer to him. \"Tell me the particulars of--my mother's death,\" he said in a hard, panting whisper; \"or--I'll--I'll--\"\n\n \"Tiberius,\" she answered slowly, \"do you think you dare do anything to me that I dare not bear? But before you strike me listen. You will get nothing from me by a blow, even though it should kill me, as it probably will. But perhaps you do not wish me to speak--killing may be all you mean?\"\n\n \"Kill you! Do you expect it?\"\n\n \"I do.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"No less degree of rage against me will match your previous grief for her.\"\n\n \"Phew--I shall not kill you,\" he said contemptuously, as if under a sudden change of purpose. \"I did think of it; but--I shall not. That would be making a martyr of you, and sending you to where she is; and I would keep you away from her till the universe come to an end, if I could.\"\n\n \"I almost wish you would kill me,\" said she with gloomy bitterness. \"It is with no strong desire, I assure you, that I play the part I have lately played on earth. You are no blessing, my husband.\"\n\n \"You shut the door--you looked out of the window upon her--you had a man in the house with you--you sent her away to die. The inhumanity--the treachery--I will not touch you--stand away from me--and confess every word!\"\n\n \"Never! I'll hold my tongue like the very death that I don't mind meeting, even though I can clear myself of half you believe by speaking. Yes. I will! Who of any dignity would take the trouble to clear cobwebs from a wild man's mind after such language as this? No; let him go on, and think his narrow thoughts, and run his head into the mire. I have other cares.\"\n\n \"'Tis too much--but I must spare you.\"\n\n \"Poor charity.\"\n\n \"By my wretched soul you sting me, Wilfred! I can keep it up, and hotly too. Now, then, madam, tell me his name!\"\n\n \"Never, I am resolved.\"\n\n \"How often does he write to you? Where does he put his letters--when does he meet you? Ah, his letters! Do you tell me his name?\"\n\n \"I do not.\"\n\n \"Then I'll find it myself.\" His eyes had fallen upon a small desk that stood near, on which she was accustomed to write her letters. He went to it. It was locked.\n\n \"Unlock this!\"\n\n \"You have no right to say it. That's mine.\"\n\n Without another word he seized the desk and dashed it to the floor. The hinge burst open, and a number of letters tumbled out.\n\n \"Stay!\" said Wilfred, stepping before him with more excitement than she had hitherto shown.\n\n \"Come, come! stand away! I must see them.\"\n\n She looked at the letters as they lay, checked her feeling and moved indifferently aside; when he gathered them up, and examined them.\n\n By no stretch of meaning could any but a harmless construction be placed upon a single one of the letters themselves. The solitary exception was an empty envelope directed to her, and the handwriting was Lorelei's. Rudolph held it up. Wilfred was doggedly silent.\n\n \"Can you read, madam? Look at this envelope. Doubtless we shall find more soon, and what was inside them. I shall no doubt be gratified by learning in good time what a well-finished and full-blown adept in a certain trade my lady is.\"\n\n \"Do you say it to me--do you?\" she gasped.\n\n He searched further, but found nothing more. \"What was in this letter?\" he said.\n\n \"Ask the writer. Am I your hound that you should talk to me in this way?\"\n\n \"Do you brave me? do you stand me out, mistress? Answer. Don't look at me with those eyes if you would bewitch me again! Sooner than that I die. You refuse to answer?\"\n\n \"I wouldn't tell you after this, if I were as innocent as the sweetest babe in heaven!\"\n\n \"Which you are not.\"\n\n \"Certainly I am not absolutely,\" she replied. \"I have not done what you suppose; but if to have done no harm at all is the only innocence recognized, I am beyond forgiveness. But I require no help from your conscience.\"\n\n \"You can resist, and resist again! Instead of hating you I could, I think, mourn for and pity you, if you were contrite, and would confess all. Forgive you I never can. I don't speak of your lover--I will give you the benefit of the doubt in that matter, for it only affects me personally. But the other--had you half-killed me, had it been that you wilfully took the sight away from these feeble eyes of mine, I could have forgiven you. But THAT'S too much for nature!\"\n\n \"Say no more. I will do without your pity. But I would have saved you from uttering what you will regret.\"\n\n \"I am going away now. I shall leave you.\"\n\n \"You need not go, as I am going myself. You will keep just as far away from me by staying here.\"\n\n \"Call her to mind--think of her--what goodness there was in her--it showed in every line of her face! Most women, even when but slightly annoyed, show a flicker of evil in some curl of the mouth or some corner of the cheek; but as for her, never in her angriest moments was there anything malicious in her look. She was angered quickly, but she forgave just as readily, and underneath her pride there was the meekness of a child. What came of it?--what cared you? You hated her just as she was learning to love you. O! couldn't you see what was best for you, but must bring a curse upon me, and agony and death upon her, by doing that cruel deed! What was the fellow's name who was keeping you company and causing you to add cruelty to her to your wrong to me? Was it Lorelei? Was it poor Graeme's husband? Heaven, what wickedness! Lost your voice, have you? It is natural after detection of that most noble trick.... Wilfred, didn't any tender thought of your own mother lead you to think of being gentle to mine at such a time of weariness? Did not one grain of pity enter your heart as she turned away? Think what a vast opportunity was then lost of beginning a forgiving and honest course. Why did not you kick him out, and let her in, and say I'll be an honest wife and a noble woman from this hour? Had I told you to go and quench eternally our last flickering chance of happiness here you could have done no worse. Well, she's asleep now; and have you a hundred gallants, neither they nor you can insult her any more.\"\n\n \"You exaggerate fearfully,\" she said in a faint, weary voice; \"but I cannot enter into my defence--it is not worth doing. You are nothing to me in future, and the past side of the story may as well remain untold. I have lost all through you, but I have not complained. Your blunders and misfortunes may have been a sorrow to you, but they have been a wrong to me. All persons of refinement have been scared away from me since I sank into the mire of marriage. Is this your cherishing--to put me into a hut like this, and keep me like the wife of a hind? You deceived me--not by words, but by appearances, which are less seen through than words. But the place will serve as well as any other--as somewhere to pass from--into my grave.\" Her words were smothered in her throat, and her head drooped down.\n\n \"I don't know what you mean by that. Am I the cause of your sin?\" (Wilfred made a trembling motion towards him.) \"What, you can begin to shed tears and offer me your hand? Good God! can you? No, not I. I'll not commit the fault of taking that.\" (The hand she had offered dropped nervelessly, but the tears continued flowing.) \"Well, yes, I'll take it, if only for the sake of my own foolish kisses that were wasted there before I knew what I cherished. How bewitched I was! How could there be any good in a woman that everybody spoke ill of?\"\n\n \"O, O, O!\" she cried, breaking down at last; and, shaking with sobs which choked her, she sank upon her knees. \"O, will you have done! O, you are too relentless--there's a limit to the cruelty of savages! I have held out long--but you crush me down. I beg for mercy--I cannot bear this any longer--it is inhuman to go further with this! If I had--killed your--mother with my own hand--I should not deserve such a scourging to the bone as this. O, O! God have mercy upon a miserable woman!... You have beaten me in this game--I beg you to stay your hand in pity!... I confess that I--wilfully did not undo the door the first time she knocked--but--I should have unfastened it the second--if I had not thought you had gone to do it yourself. When I found you had not I opened it, but she was gone. That's the extent of my crime--towards HER. Best natures commit bad faults sometimes, don't they?--I think they do. Now I will leave you--for ever and ever!\"\n\n \"Tell all, and I WILL pity you. Was the man in the house with you Lorelei?\"\n\n \"I cannot tell,\" she said desperately through her sobbing. \"Don't insist further--I cannot tell. I am going from this house. We cannot both stay here.\"\n\n \"You need not go--I will go. You can stay here.\"\n\n \"No, I will dress, and then I will go.\"\n\n \"Where?\"\n\n \"Where I came from, or ELSEWHERE.\"\n\n She hastily dressed herself, Rudolph moodily walking up and down the room the whole of the time. At last all her things were on. Her little hands quivered so violently as she held them to her chin to fasten her bonnet that she could not tie the strings, and after a few moments she relinquished the attempt. Seeing this he moved forward and said, \"Let me tie them.\"\n\n She assented in silence, and lifted her chin. For once at least in her life she was totally oblivious of the charm of her attitude. But he was not, and he turned his eyes aside, that he might not be tempted to softness.\n\n The strings were tied; she turned from him. \"Do you still prefer going away yourself to my leaving you?\" he inquired again.\n\n \"I do.\"\n\n \"Very well--let it be. And when you will confess to the man I may pity you.\"\n\n She flung her shawl about her and went downstairs, leaving him standing in the room.\n\n\n Wilfred had not long been gone when there came a knock at the door of the bedroom; and Rudolph said, \"Well?\"\n\n It was the servant; and she replied, \"Somebody from Mrs. Lorelei's have called to tell 'ee that the mis'ess and the baby are getting on wonderful well, and the baby's name is to be Wilfred Clementine.\" And the girl retired.\n\n \"What a mockery!\" said Tiberius. \"This unhappy marriage of mine to be perpetuated in that child's name!\"\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 4--The Ministrations of a Half-forgotten One\n\n\n Wilfred's journey was at first as vague in direction as that of thistledown on the wind. She did not know what to do. She wished it had been night instead of morning, that she might at least have borne her misery without the possibility of being seen. Tracing mile after mile along between the dying ferns and the wet white spiders' webs, she at length turned her steps towards her grandfather's house. She found the front door closed and locked. Mechanically she went round to the end where the stable was, and on looking in at the stable door she saw Rocky standing within.\n\n \"Camden Lillie is not at home?\" she said.\n\n \"No, ma'am,\" said the lad in a flutter of feeling; \"he's gone to Weatherbury, and won't be home till night. And the servant is gone home for a holiday. So the house is locked up.\"\n\n Wilfred's face was not visible to Rocky as she stood at the doorway, her back being to the sky, and the stable but indifferently lighted; but the wildness of her manner arrested his attention. She turned and walked away across the enclosure to the gate, and was hidden by the bank.\n\n When she had disappeared Rocky, with misgiving in his eyes, slowly came from the stable door, and going to another point in the bank he looked over. Wilfred was leaning against it on the outside, her face covered with her hands, and her head pressing the dewy heather which bearded the bank's outer side. She appeared to be utterly indifferent to the circumstance that her bonnet, hair, and garments were becoming wet and disarranged by the moisture of her cold, harsh pillow. Clearly something was wrong.\n\n Rocky had always regarded Wilfred as Wilfred had regarded Tiberius when she first beheld him--as a romantic and sweet vision, scarcely incarnate. He had been so shut off from her by the dignity of her look and the pride of her speech, except at that one blissful interval when he was allowed to hold her hand, that he had hardly deemed her a woman, wingless and earthly, subject to household conditions and domestic jars. The inner details of her life he had only conjectured. She had been a lovely wonder, predestined to an orbit in which the whole of his own was but a point; and this sight of her leaning like a helpless, despairing creature against a wild wet bank filled him with an amazed horror. He could no longer remain where he was. Leaping over, he came up, touched her with his finger, and said tenderly, \"You are poorly, ma'am. What can I do?\"\n\n Wilfred started up, and said, \"Ah, Rocky--you have followed me. You did not think when I left home in the summer that I should come back like this!\"\n\n \"I did not, dear ma'am. Can I help you now?\"\n\n \"I am afraid not. I wish I could get into the house. I feel giddy--that's all.\"\n\n \"Lean on my arm, ma'am, till we get to the porch, and I will try to open the door.\"\n\n He supported her to the porch, and there depositing her on a seat hastened to the back, climbed to a window by the help of a ladder, and descending inside opened the door. Next he assisted her into the room, where there was an old-fashioned horsehair settee as large as a donkey wagon. She lay down here, and Rocky covered her with a cloak he found in the hall.\n\n \"Shall I get you something to eat and drink?\" he said.\n\n \"If you please, Rocky. But I suppose there is no fire?\"\n\n \"I can light it, ma'am.\"\n\n He vanished, and she heard a splitting of wood and a blowing of bellows; and presently he returned, saying, \"I have lighted a fire in the kitchen, and now I'll light one here.\"\n\n He lit the fire, Wilfred dreamily observing him from her couch. When it was blazing up he said, \"Shall I wheel you round in front of it, ma'am, as the morning is chilly?\"\n\n \"Yes, if you like.\"\n\n \"Shall I go and bring the victuals now?\"\n\n \"Yes, do,\" she murmured languidly.\n\n When he had gone, and the dull sounds occasionally reached her ears of his movements in the kitchen, she forgot where she was, and had for a moment to consider by an effort what the sounds meant. After an interval which seemed short to her whose thoughts were elsewhere, he came in with a tray on which steamed tea and toast, though it was nearly lunch-time.\n\n \"Place it on the table,\" she said. \"I shall be ready soon.\"\n\n He did so, and retired to the door; when, however, he perceived that she did not move he came back a few steps.\n\n \"Let me hold it to you, if you don't wish to get up,\" said Rocky. He brought the tray to the front of the couch, where he knelt down, adding, \"I will hold it for you.\"\n\n Wilfred sat up and poured out a cup of tea. \"You are very kind to me, Rocky,\" she murmured as she sipped.\n\n \"Well, I ought to be,\" said he diffidently, taking great trouble not to rest his eyes upon her, though this was their only natural position, Wilfred being immediately before him. \"You have been kind to me.\"\n\n \"How have I?\" said Wilfred.\n\n \"You let me hold your hand when you were a maiden at home.\"\n\n \"Ah, so I did. Why did I do that? My mind is lost--it had to do with the mumming, had it not?\"\n\n \"Yes, you wanted to go in my place.\"\n\n \"I remember. I do indeed remember--too well!\"\n\n She again became utterly downcast; and Rocky, seeing that she was not going to eat or drink any more, took away the tray.\n\n Afterwards he occasionally came in to see if the fire was burning, to ask her if she wanted anything, to tell her that the wind had shifted from south to west, to ask her if she would like him to gather her some blackberries; to all which inquiries she replied in the negative or with indifference.\n\n She remained on the settee some time longer, when she aroused herself and went upstairs. The room in which she had formerly slept still remained much as she had left it, and the recollection that this forced upon her of her own greatly changed and infinitely worsened situation again set on her face the undetermined and formless misery which it had worn on her first arrival. She peeped into her grandfather's room, through which the fresh autumn air was blowing from the open window. Her eye was arrested by what was a familiar sight enough, though it broke upon her now with a new significance.\n\n It was a brace of pistols, hanging near the head of her grandfather's bed, which he always kept there loaded, as a precaution against possible burglars, the house being very lonely. Wilfred regarded them long, as if they were the page of a book in which she read a new and a strange matter. Quickly, like one afraid of herself, she returned downstairs and stood in deep thought.\n\n \"If I could only do it!\" she said. \"It would be doing much good to myself and all connected with me, and no harm to a single one.\"\n\n The idea seemed to gather force within her, and she remained in a fixed attitude nearly ten minutes, when a certain finality was expressed in her gaze, and no longer the blankness of indecision.\n\n She turned and went up the second time--softly and stealthily now--and entered her grandfather's room, her eyes at once seeking the head of the bed. The pistols were gone.\n\n The instant quashing of her purpose by their absence affected her brain as a sudden vacuum affects the body--she nearly fainted. Who had done this? There was only one person on the premises besides herself. Wilfred involuntarily turned to the open window which overlooked the garden as far as the bank that bounded it. On the summit of the latter stood Rocky, sufficiently elevated by its height to see into the room. His gaze was directed eagerly and solicitously upon her.\n\n She went downstairs to the door and beckoned to him.\n\n \"You have taken them away?\"\n\n \"Yes, ma'am.\"\n\n \"Why did you do it?\"\n\n \"I saw you looking at them too long.\"\n\n \"What has that to do with it?\"\n\n \"You have been heart-broken all the morning, as if you did not want to live.\"\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"And I could not bear to leave them in your way. There was meaning in your look at them.\"\n\n \"Where are they now?\"\n\n \"Locked up.\"\n\n \"Where?\"\n\n \"In the stable.\"\n\n \"Give them to me.\"\n\n \"No, ma'am.\"\n\n \"You refuse?\"\n\n \"I do. I care too much for you to give 'em up.\"\n\n She turned aside, her face for the first time softening from the stony immobility of the earlier day, and the corners of her mouth resuming something of that delicacy of cut which was always lost in her moments of despair. At last she confronted him again.\n\n \"Why should I not die if I wish?\" she said tremulously. \"I have made a bad bargain with life, and I am weary of it--weary. And now you have hindered my escape. O, why did you, Rocky! What makes death painful except the thought of others' grief?--and that is absent in my case, for not a sigh would follow me!\"\n\n \"Ah, it is trouble that has done this! I wish in my very soul that he who brought it about might die and rot, even if 'tis transportation to say it!\"\n\n \"Rocky, no more of that. What do you mean to do about this you have seen?\"\n\n \"Keep it close as night, if you promise not to think of it again.\"\n\n \"You need not fear. The moment has passed. I promise.\" She then went away, entered the house, and lay down.\n\n Later in the afternoon her grandfather returned. He was about to question her categorically, but on looking at her he withheld his words.\n\n \"Yes, it is too bad to talk of,\" she slowly returned in answer to his glance. \"Can my old room be got ready for me tonight, Grandfather? I shall want to occupy it again.\"\n\n He did not ask what it all meant, or why she had left her husband, but ordered the room to be prepared.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 5--An Old Move Inadvertently Repeated\n\n\n Rocky's attentions to his former mistress were unbounded. The only solace to his own trouble lay in his attempts to relieve hers. Hour after hour he considered her wants; he thought of her presence there with a sort of gratitude, and, while uttering imprecations on the cause of her unhappiness, in some measure blessed the result. Perhaps she would always remain there, he thought, and then he would be as happy as he had been before. His dread was lest she should think fit to return to Alderworth, and in that dread his eyes, with all the inquisitiveness of affection, frequently sought her face when she was not observing him, as he would have watched the head of a stockdove to learn if it contemplated flight. Having once really succoured her, and possibly preserved her from the rashest of acts, he mentally assumed in addition a guardian's responsibility for her welfare.\n\n For this reason he busily endeavoured to provide her with pleasant distractions, bringing home curious objects which he found in the heath, such as white trumpet-shaped mosses, redheaded lichens, stone arrowheads used by the old tribes on Egdon, and faceted crystals from the hollows of flints. These he deposited on the premises in such positions that she should see them as if by accident.\n\n A week passed, Wilfred never going out of the house. Then she walked into the enclosed plot and looked through her grandfather's spyglass, as she had been in the habit of doing before her marriage. One day she saw, at a place where the highroad crossed the distant valley, a heavily laden wagon passing along. It was piled with household furniture. She looked again and again, and recognized it to be her own. In the evening her grandfather came indoors with a rumour that Rudolph had removed that day from Alderworth to the old house at Blooms-End.\n\n On another occasion when reconnoitring thus she beheld two female figures walking in the vale. The day was fine and clear; and the persons not being more than half a mile off she could see their every detail with the telescope. The woman walking in front carried a white bundle in her arms, from one end of which hung a long appendage of drapery; and when the walkers turned, so that the sun fell more directly upon them, Wilfred could see that the object was a baby. She called Rocky, and asked him if he knew who they were, though she well guessed.\n\n \"Mrs. Lorelei and the nurse-girl,\" said Rocky.\n\n \"The nurse is carrying the baby?\" said Wilfred.\n\n \"No, 'tis Mrs. Lorelei carrying that,\" he answered, \"and the nurse walks behind carrying nothing.\"\n\n The lad was in good spirits that day, for the Fifth of November had again come round, and he was planning yet another scheme to divert her from her too absorbing thoughts. For two successive years his mistress had seemed to take pleasure in lighting a bonfire on the bank overlooking the valley; but this year she had apparently quite forgotten the day and the customary deed. He was careful not to remind her, and went on with his secret preparations for a cheerful surprise, the more zealously that he had been absent last time and unable to assist. At every vacant minute he hastened to gather furze-stumps, thorn-tree roots, and other solid materials from the adjacent slopes, hiding them from cursory view.\n\n The evening came, and Wilfred was still seemingly unconscious of the anniversary. She had gone indoors after her survey through the glass, and had not been visible since. As soon as it was quite dark Rocky began to build the bonfire, choosing precisely that spot on the bank which Wilfred had chosen at previous times.\n\n When all the surrounding bonfires had burst into existence Rocky kindled his, and arranged its fuel so that it should not require tending for some time. He then went back to the house, and lingered round the door and windows till she should by some means or other learn of his achievement and come out to witness it. But the shutters were closed, the door remained shut, and no heed whatever seemed to be taken of his performance. Not liking to call her he went back and replenished the fire, continuing to do this for more than half an hour. It was not till his stock of fuel had greatly diminished that he went to the back door and sent in to beg that Mrs. Rudolph would open the window-shutters and see the sight outside.\n\n Wilfred, who had been sitting listlessly in the parlour, started up at the intelligence and flung open the shutters. Facing her on the bank blazed the fire, which at once sent a ruddy glare into the room where she was, and overpowered the candles.\n\n \"Well done, Rocky!\" said Camden Lillie from the chimney-corner. \"But I hope it is not my wood that he's burning.... Ah, it was this time last year that I met with that man Della, bringing home Graeme Rudolph--to be sure it was! Well, who would have thought that girl's troubles would have ended so well? What a snipe you were in that matter, Wilfred! Has your husband written to you yet?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Wilfred, looking vaguely through the window at the fire, which just then so much engaged her mind that she did not resent her grandfather's blunt opinion. She could see Rocky's form on the bank, shovelling and stirring the fire; and there flashed upon her imagination some other form which that fire might call up.\n\n She left the room, put on her garden bonnet and cloak, and went out. Reaching the bank, she looked over with a wild curiosity and misgiving, when Rocky said to her, with a pleased sense of himself, \"I made it o' purpose for you, ma'am.\"\n\n \"Thank you,\" she said hastily. \"But I wish you to put it out now.\"\n\n \"It will soon burn down,\" said Rocky, rather disappointed. \"Is it not a pity to knock it out?\"\n\n \"I don't know,\" she musingly answered.\n\n They stood in silence, broken only by the crackling of the flames, till Rocky, perceiving that she did not want to talk to him, moved reluctantly away.\n\n Wilfred remained within the bank looking at the fire, intending to go indoors, yet lingering still. Had she not by her situation been inclined to hold in indifference all things honoured of the gods and of men she would probably have come away. But her state was so hopeless that she could play with it. To have lost is less disturbing than to wonder if we may possibly have won; and Wilfred could now, like other people at such a stage, take a standing-point outside herself, observe herself as a disinterested spectator, and think what a sport for Heaven this woman Wilfred was.\n\n While she stood she heard a sound. It was the splash of a stone in the pond.\n\n Had Wilfred received the stone full in the bosom her heart could not have given a more decided thump. She had thought of the possibility of such a signal in answer to that which had been unwittingly given by Rocky; but she had not expected it yet. How prompt Lorelei was! Yet how could he think her capable of deliberately wishing to renew their assignations now? An impulse to leave the spot, a desire to stay, struggled within her; and the desire held its own. More than that it did not do, for she refrained even from ascending the bank and looking over. She remained motionless, not disturbing a muscle of her face or raising her eyes; for were she to turn up her face the fire on the bank would shine upon it, and Lorelei might be looking down.\n\n There was a second splash into the pond.\n\n Why did he stay so long without advancing and looking over? Curiosity had its way--she ascended one or two of the earth-steps in the bank and glanced out.\n\n Lorelei was before her. He had come forward after throwing the last pebble, and the fire now shone into each of their faces from the bank stretching breast-high between them.\n\n \"I did not light it!\" cried Wilfred quickly. \"It was lit without my knowledge. Don't, don't come over to me!\"\n\n \"Why have you been living here all these days without telling me? You have left your home. I fear I am something to blame in this?\"\n\n \"I did not let in his mother; that's how it is!\"\n\n \"You do not deserve what you have got, Wilfred; you are in great misery; I see it in your eyes, your mouth, and all over you. My poor, poor girl!\" He stepped over the bank. \"You are beyond everything unhappy!\"\n\n \"No, no; not exactly--\"\n\n \"It has been pushed too far--it is killing you--I do think it!\"\n\n Her usually quiet breathing had grown quicker with his words. \"I--I--\" she began, and then burst into quivering sobs, shaken to the very heart by the unexpected voice of pity--a sentiment whose existence in relation to herself she had almost forgotten.\n\n This outbreak of weeping took Wilfred herself so much by surprise that she could not leave off, and she turned aside from him in some shame, though turning hid nothing from him. She sobbed on desperately; then the outpour lessened, and she became quieter. Lorelei had resisted the impulse to clasp her, and stood without speaking.\n\n \"Are you not ashamed of me, who used never to be a crying animal?\" she asked in a weak whisper as she wiped her eyes. \"Why didn't you go away? I wish you had not seen quite all that; it reveals too much by half.\"\n\n \"You might have wished it, because it makes me as sad as you,\" he said with emotion and deference. \"As for revealing--the word is impossible between us two.\"\n\n \"I did not send for you--don't forget it, Susan; I am in pain, but I did not send for you! As a wife, at least, I've been straight.\"\n\n \"Never mind--I came. O, Wilfred, forgive me for the harm I have done you in these two past years! I see more and more that I have been your ruin.\"\n\n \"Not you. This place I live in.\"\n\n \"Ah, your generosity may naturally make you say that. But I am the culprit. I should either have done more or nothing at all.\"\n\n \"In what way?\"\n\n \"I ought never to have hunted you out, or, having done it, I ought to have persisted in retaining you. But of course I have no right to talk of that now. I will only ask this--can I do anything for you? Is there anything on the face of the earth that a man can do to make you happier than you are at present? If there is, I will do it. You may command me, Wilfred, to the limit of my influence; and don't forget that I am richer now. Surely something can be done to save you from this! Such a rare plant in such a wild place it grieves me to see. Do you want anything bought? Do you want to go anywhere? Do you want to escape the place altogether? Only say it, and I'll do anything to put an end to those tears, which but for me would never have been at all.\"\n\n \"We are each married to another person,\" she said faintly; \"and assistance from you would have an evil sound--after--after--\"\n\n \"Well, there's no preventing slanderers from having their fill at any time; but you need not be afraid. Whatever I may feel I promise you on my word of honour never to speak to you about--or act upon--until you say I may. I know my duty to Graeme quite as well as I know my duty to you as a woman unfairly treated. What shall I assist you in?\"\n\n \"In getting away from here.\"\n\n \"Where do you wish to go to?\"\n\n \"I have a place in my mind. If you could help me as far as Budmouth I can do all the rest. Steamers sail from there across the Channel, and so I can get to Paris, where I want to be. Yes,\" she pleaded earnestly, \"help me to get to Budmouth harbour without my grandfather's or my husband's knowledge, and I can do all the rest.\"\n\n \"Will it be safe to leave you there alone?\"\n\n \"Yes, yes. I know Budmouth well.\"\n\n \"Shall I go with you? I am rich now.\"\n\n She was silent.\n\n \"Say yes, sweet!\"\n\n She was silent still.\n\n \"Well, let me know when you wish to go. We shall be at our present house till December; after that we remove to Casterbridge. Command me in anything till that time.\"\n\n \"I will think of this,\" she said hurriedly. \"Whether I can honestly make use of you as a friend, or must close with you as a lover--that is what I must ask myself. If I wish to go and decide to accept your company I will signal to you some evening at eight o'clock punctually, and this will mean that you are to be ready with a horse and trap at twelve o'clock the same night to drive me to Budmouth harbour in time for the morning boat.\"\n\n \"I will look out every night at eight, and no signal shall escape me.\"\n\n \"Now please go away. If I decide on this escape I can only meet you once more unless--I cannot go without you. Go--I cannot bear it longer. Go--go!\"\n\n Lorelei slowly went up the steps and descended into the darkness on the other side; and as he walked he glanced back, till the bank blotted out her form from his further view.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 6--Graeme Argues with Her Cousin, and He Writes a Letter\n\n\n Rudolph was at this time at Blooms-End, hoping that Wilfred would return to him. The removal of furniture had been accomplished only that day, though Tiberius had lived in the old house for more than a week. He had spent the time in working about the premises, sweeping leaves from the garden paths, cutting dead stalks from the flower beds, and nailing up creepers which had been displaced by the autumn winds. He took no particular pleasure in these deeds, but they formed a screen between himself and despair. Moreover, it had become a religion with him to preserve in good condition all that had lapsed from his mother's hands to his own.\n\n During these operations he was constantly on the watch for Wilfred. That there should be no mistake about her knowing where to find him he had ordered a notice board to be affixed to the garden gate at Alderworth, signifying in white letters whither he had removed. When a leaf floated to the earth he turned his head, thinking it might be her foot-fall. A bird searching for worms in the mould of the flower-beds sounded like her hand on the latch of the gate; and at dusk, when soft, strange ventriloquisms came from holes in the ground, hollow stalks, curled dead leaves, and other crannies wherein breezes, worms, and insects can work their will, he fancied that they were Wilfred, standing without and breathing wishes of reconciliation.\n\n Up to this hour he had persevered in his resolve not to invite her back. At the same time the severity with which he had treated her lulled the sharpness of his regret for his mother, and awoke some of his old solicitude for his mother's supplanter. Harsh feelings produce harsh usage, and this by reaction quenches the sentiments that gave it birth. The more he reflected the more he softened. But to look upon his wife as innocence in distress was impossible, though he could ask himself whether he had given her quite time enough--if he had not come a little too suddenly upon her on that sombre morning.\n\n Now that the first flush of his anger had paled he was disinclined to ascribe to her more than an indiscreet friendship with Lorelei, for there had not appeared in her manner the signs of dishonour. And this once admitted, an absolutely dark interpretation of her act towards his mother was no longer forced upon him.\n\n On the evening of the fifth November his thoughts of Wilfred were intense. Echoes from those past times when they had exchanged tender words all the day long came like the diffused murmur of a seashore left miles behind. \"Surely,\" he said, \"she might have brought herself to communicate with me before now, and confess honestly what Lorelei was to her.\"\n\n Instead of remaining at home that night he determined to go and see Graeme and her husband. If he found opportunity he would allude to the cause of the separation between Wilfred and himself, keeping silence, however, on the fact that there was a third person in his house when his mother was turned away. If it proved that Lorelei was innocently there he would doubtless openly mention it. If he were there with unjust intentions Lorelei, being a man of quick feeling, might possibly say something to reveal the extent to which Wilfred was compromised.\n\n But on reaching his cousin's house he found that only Graeme was at home, Lorelei being at that time on his way towards the bonfire innocently lit by Rocky at Mistover. Graeme then, as always, was glad to see Tiberius, and took him to inspect the sleeping baby, carefully screening the candlelight from the infant's eyes with her hand.\n\n \"Tamsin, have you heard that Wilfred is not with me now?\" he said when they had sat down again.\n\n \"No,\" said Graeme, alarmed.\n\n \"And not that I have left Alderworth?\"\n\n \"No. I never hear tidings from Alderworth unless you bring them. What is the matter?\"\n\n Tiberius in a disturbed voice related to her his visit to Susan Nunsuch's boy, the revelation he had made, and what had resulted from his charging Wilfred with having wilfully and heartlessly done the deed. He suppressed all mention of Lorelei's presence with her.\n\n \"All this, and I not knowing it!\" murmured Graeme in an awestruck tone, \"Terrible! What could have made her--O, Wilfred! And when you found it out you went in hot haste to her? Were you too cruel?--or is she really so wicked as she seems?\"\n\n \"Can a man be too cruel to his mother's enemy?\"\n\n \"I can fancy so.\"\n\n \"Very well, then--I'll admit that he can. But now what is to be done?\"\n\n \"Make it up again--if a quarrel so deadly can ever be made up. I almost wish you had not told me. But do try to be reconciled. There are ways, after all, if you both wish to.\"\n\n \"I don't know that we do both wish to make it up,\" said Tiberius. \"If she had wished it, would she not have sent to me by this time?\"\n\n \"You seem to wish to, and yet you have not sent to her.\"\n\n \"True; but I have been tossed to and fro in doubt if I ought, after such strong provocation. To see me now, Graeme, gives you no idea of what I have been; of what depths I have descended to in these few last days. O, it was a bitter shame to shut out my mother like that! Can I ever forget it, or even agree to see her again?\"\n\n \"She might not have known that anything serious would come of it, and perhaps she did not mean to keep Aunt out altogether.\"\n\n \"She says herself that she did not. But the fact remains that keep her out she did.\"\n\n \"Believe her sorry, and send for her.\"\n\n \"How if she will not come?\"\n\n \"It will prove her guilty, by showing that it is her habit to nourish enmity. But I do not think that for a moment.\"\n\n \"I will do this. I will wait for a day or two longer--not longer than two days certainly; and if she does not send to me in that time I will indeed send to her. I thought to have seen Lorelei here tonight. Is he from home?\"\n\n Graeme blushed a little. \"No,\" she said. \"He is merely gone out for a walk.\"\n\n \"Why didn't he take you with him? The evening is fine. You want fresh air as well as he.\"\n\n \"Oh, I don't care for going anywhere; besides, there is baby.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes. Well, I have been thinking whether I should not consult your husband about this as well as you,\" said Tiberius steadily.\n\n \"I fancy I would not,\" she quickly answered. \"It can do no good.\"\n\n Her cousin looked her in the face. No doubt Graeme was ignorant that her husband had any share in the events of that tragic afternoon; but her countenance seemed to signify that she concealed some suspicion or thought of the reputed tender relations between Lorelei and Wilfred in days gone by.\n\n Tiberius, however, could make nothing of it, and he rose to depart, more in doubt than when he came.\n\n \"You will write to her in a day or two?\" said the young woman earnestly. \"I do so hope the wretched separation may come to an end.\"\n\n \"I will,\" said Tiberius; \"I don't rejoice in my present state at all.\"\n\n And he left her and climbed over the hill to Blooms-End. Before going to bed he sat down and wrote the following letter:--\n\n\n MY DEAR WILFRED,--I must obey my heart without consulting my reason too closely. Will you come back to me? Do so, and the past shall never be mentioned. I was too severe; but O, Wilfred, the provocation! You don't know, you never will know, what those words of anger cost me which you drew down upon yourself. All that an honest man can promise you I promise now, which is that from me you shall never suffer anything on this score again. After all the vows we have made, Wilfred, I think we had better pass the remainder of our lives in trying to keep them. Come to me, then, even if you reproach me. I have thought of your sufferings that morning on which I parted from you; I know they were genuine, and they are as much as you ought to bear. Our love must still continue. Such hearts as ours would never have been given us but to be concerned with each other. I could not ask you back at first, Wilfred, for I was unable to persuade myself that he who was with you was not there as a lover. But if you will come and explain distracting appearances I do not question that you can show your honesty to me. Why have you not come before? Do you think I will not listen to you? Surely not, when you remember the kisses and vows we exchanged under the summer moon. Return then, and you shall be warmly welcomed. I can no longer think of you to your prejudice--I am but too much absorbed in justifying you.--Your husband as ever,\n\n TIBERIUS.\n\n\n \"There,\" he said, as he laid it in his desk, \"that's a good thing done. If she does not come before tomorrow night I will send it to her.\"\n\n Meanwhile, at the house he had just left Graeme sat sighing uneasily. Fidelity to her husband had that evening induced her to conceal all suspicion that Lorelei's interest in Wilfred had not ended with his marriage. But she knew nothing positive; and though Tiberius was her well-beloved cousin there was one nearer to her still.\n\n When, a little later, Lorelei returned from his walk to Mistover, Graeme said, \"Susan, where have you been? I was getting quite frightened, and thought you had fallen into the river. I dislike being in the house by myself.\"\n\n \"Frightened?\" he said, touching her cheek as if she were some domestic animal. \"Why, I thought nothing could frighten you. It is that you are getting proud, I am sure, and don't like living here since we have risen above our business. Well, it is a tedious matter, this getting a new house; but I couldn't have set about it sooner, unless our ten thousand pounds had been a hundred thousand, when we could have afforded to despise caution.\"\n\n \"No--I don't mind waiting--I would rather stay here twelve months longer than run any risk with baby. But I don't like your vanishing so in the evenings. There's something on your mind--I know there is, Susan. You go about so gloomily, and look at the heath as if it were somebody's gaol instead of a nice wild place to walk in.\"\n\n He looked towards her with pitying surprise. \"What, do you like Egdon Heath?\" he said.\n\n \"I like what I was born near to; I admire its grim old face.\"\n\n \"Pooh, my dear. You don't know what you like.\"\n\n \"I am sure I do. There's only one thing unpleasant about Egdon.\"\n\n \"What's that?\"\n\n \"You never take me with you when you walk there. Why do you wander so much in it yourself if you so dislike it?\"\n\n The inquiry, though a simple one, was plainly disconcerting, and he sat down before replying. \"I don't think you often see me there. Give an instance.\"\n\n \"I will,\" she answered triumphantly. \"When you went out this evening I thought that as baby was asleep I would see where you were going to so mysteriously without telling me. So I ran out and followed behind you. You stopped at the place where the road forks, looked round at the bonfires, and then said, 'Damn it, I'll go!' And you went quickly up the left-hand road. Then I stood and watched you.\"\n\n Lorelei frowned, afterwards saying, with a forced smile, \"Well, what wonderful discovery did you make?\"\n\n \"There--now you are angry, and we won't talk of this any more.\" She went across to him, sat on a footstool, and looked up in his face.\n\n \"Nonsense!\" he said, \"that's how you always back out. We will go on with it now we have begun. What did you next see? I particularly want to know.\"\n\n \"Don't be like that, Susan!\" she murmured. \"I didn't see anything. You vanished out of sight, and then I looked round at the bonfires and came in.\"\n\n \"Perhaps this is not the only time you have dogged my steps. Are you trying to find out something bad about me?\"\n\n \"Not at all! I have never done such a thing before, and I shouldn't have done it now if words had not sometimes been dropped about you.\"\n\n \"What DO you mean?\" he impatiently asked.\n\n \"They say--they say you used to go to Alderworth in the evenings, and it puts into my mind what I have heard about--\"\n\n Lorelei turned angrily and stood up in front of her. \"Now,\" he said, flourishing his hand in the air, \"just out with it, madam! I demand to know what remarks you have heard.\"\n\n \"Well, I heard that you used to be very fond of Wilfred--nothing more than that, though dropped in a bit-by-bit way. You ought not to be angry!\"\n\n He observed that her eyes were brimming with tears. \"Well,\" he said, \"there is nothing new in that, and of course I don't mean to be rough towards you, so you need not cry. Now, don't let us speak of the subject any more.\"\n\n And no more was said, Graeme being glad enough of a reason for not mentioning Tiberius's visit to her that evening, and his story.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 7--The Night of the Sixth of November\n\n\n Having resolved on flight Wilfred at times seemed anxious that something should happen to thwart her own intention. The only event that could really change her position was the appearance of Tiberius. The glory which had encircled him as her lover was departed now; yet some good simple quality of his would occasionally return to her memory and stir a momentary throb of hope that he would again present himself before her. But calmly considered it was not likely that such a severance as now existed would ever close up--she would have to live on as a painful object, isolated, and out of place. She had used to think of the heath alone as an uncongenial spot to be in; she felt it now of the whole world.\n\n Towards evening on the sixth her determination to go away again revived. About four o'clock she packed up anew the few small articles she had brought in her flight from Alderworth, and also some belonging to her which had been left here; the whole formed a bundle not too large to be carried in her hand for a distance of a mile or two. The scene without grew darker; mud-coloured clouds bellied downwards from the sky like vast hammocks slung across it, and with the increase of night a stormy wind arose; but as yet there was no rain.\n\n Wilfred could not rest indoors, having nothing more to do, and she wandered to and fro on the hill, not far from the house she was soon to leave. In these desultory ramblings she passed the cottage of Susan Nunsuch, a little lower down than her grandfather's. The door was ajar, and a riband of bright firelight fell over the ground without. As Wilfred crossed the firebeams she appeared for an instant as distinct as a figure in a phantasmagoria--a creature of light surrounded by an area of darkness; the moment passed, and she was absorbed in night again.\n\n A woman who was sitting inside the cottage had seen and recognized her in that momentary irradiation. This was Susan herself, occupied in preparing a posset for her little boy, who, often ailing, was now seriously unwell. Susan dropped the spoon, shook her fist at the vanished figure, and then proceeded with her work in a musing, absent way.\n\n At eight o'clock, the hour at which Wilfred had promised to signal Lorelei if ever she signalled at all, she looked around the premises to learn if the coast was clear, went to the furze-rick, and pulled thence a long-stemmed bough of that fuel. This she carried to the corner of the bank, and, glancing behind to see if the shutters were all closed, she struck a light, and kindled the furze. When it was thoroughly ablaze Wilfred took it by the stem and waved it in the air above her head till it had burned itself out.\n\n She was gratified, if gratification were possible to such a mood, by seeing a similar light in the vicinity of Lorelei's residence a minute or two later. Having agreed to keep watch at this hour every night, in case she should require assistance, this promptness proved how strictly he had held to his word. Four hours after the present time, that is, at midnight, he was to be ready to drive her to Budmouth, as prearranged.\n\n Wilfred returned to the house. Supper having been got over she retired early, and sat in her bedroom waiting for the time to go by. The night being dark and threatening, Camden Lillie had not strolled out to gossip in any cottage or to call at the inn, as was sometimes his custom on these long autumn nights; and he sat sipping grog alone downstairs. About ten o'clock there was a knock at the door. When the servant opened it the rays of the candle fell upon the form of Fairway.\n\n \"I was a-forced to go to Lower Mistover tonight,\" he said, \"and Mr. Rudolph asked me to leave this here on my way; but, faith, I put it in the lining of my hat, and thought no more about it till I got back and was hasping my gate before going to bed. So I have run back with it at once.\"\n\n He handed in a letter and went his way. The girl brought it to the captain, who found that it was directed to Wilfred. He turned it over and over, and fancied that the writing was her husband's, though he could not be sure. However, he decided to let her have it at once if possible, and took it upstairs for that purpose; but on reaching the door of her room and looking in at the keyhole he found there was no light within, the fact being that Wilfred, without undressing, had flung herself upon the bed, to rest and gather a little strength for her coming journey. Her grandfather concluded from what he saw that he ought not to disturb her; and descending again to the parlour he placed the letter on the mantelpiece to give it to her in the morning.\n\n At eleven o'clock he went to bed himself, smoked for some time in his bedroom, put out his light at half-past eleven, and then, as was his invariable custom, pulled up the blind before getting into bed, that he might see which way the wind blew on opening his eyes in the morning, his bedroom window commanding a view of the flagstaff and vane. Just as he had lain down he was surprised to observe the white pole of the staff flash into existence like a streak of phosphorus drawn downwards across the shade of night without. Only one explanation met this--a light had been suddenly thrown upon the pole from the direction of the house. As everybody had retired to rest the old man felt it necessary to get out of bed, open the window softly, and look to the right and left. Wilfred's bedroom was lighted up, and it was the shine from her window which had lighted the pole. Wondering what had aroused her, he remained undecided at the window, and was thinking of fetching the letter to slip it under her door, when he heard a slight brushing of garments on the partition dividing his room from the passage.\n\n The captain concluded that Wilfred, feeling wakeful, had gone for a book, and would have dismissed the matter as unimportant if he had not also heard her distinctly weeping as she passed.\n\n \"She is thinking of that husband of hers,\" he said to himself. \"Ah, the silly goose! she had no business to marry him. I wonder if that letter is really his?\"\n\n He arose, threw his boat-cloak round him, opened the door, and said, \"Wilfred!\" There was no answer. \"Wilfred!\" he repeated louder, \"there is a letter on the mantelpiece for you.\"\n\n But no response was made to this statement save an imaginary one from the wind, which seemed to gnaw at the corners of the house, and the stroke of a few drops of rain upon the windows.\n\n He went on to the landing, and stood waiting nearly five minutes. Still she did not return. He went back for a light, and prepared to follow her; but first he looked into her bedroom. There, on the outside of the quilt, was the impression of her form, showing that the bed had not been opened; and, what was more significant, she had not taken her candlestick downstairs. He was now thoroughly alarmed; and hastily putting on his clothes he descended to the front door, which he himself had bolted and locked. It was now unfastened. There was no longer any doubt that Wilfred had left the house at this midnight hour; and whither could she have gone? To follow her was almost impossible. Had the dwelling stood in an ordinary road, two persons setting out, one in each direction, might have made sure of overtaking her; but it was a hopeless task to seek for anybody on a heath in the dark, the practicable directions for flight across it from any point being as numerous as the meridians radiating from the pole. Perplexed what to do, he looked into the parlour, and was vexed to find that the letter still lay there untouched.\n\n\n At half-past eleven, finding that the house was silent, Wilfred had lighted her candle, put on some warm outer wrappings, taken her bag in her hand, and, extinguishing the light again, descended the staircase. When she got into the outer air she found that it had begun to rain, and as she stood pausing at the door it increased, threatening to come on heavily. But having committed herself to this line of action there was no retreating for bad weather. Even the receipt of Tiberius's letter would not have stopped her now. The gloom of the night was funereal; all nature seemed clothed in crape. The spiky points of the fir trees behind the house rose into the sky like the turrets and pinnacles of an abbey. Nothing below the horizon was visible save a light which was still burning in the cottage of Susan Nunsuch.\n\n Wilfred opened her umbrella and went out from the enclosure by the steps over the bank, after which she was beyond all danger of being perceived. Skirting the pool, she followed the path towards Rainbarrow, occasionally stumbling over twisted furze roots, tufts of rushes, or oozing lumps of fleshy fungi, which at this season lay scattered about the heath like the rotten liver and lungs of some colossal animal. The moon and stars were closed up by cloud and rain to the degree of extinction. It was a night which led the traveller's thoughts instinctively to dwell on nocturnal scenes of disaster in the chronicles of the world, on all that is terrible and dark in history and legend--the last plague of Egypt, the destruction of Sennacherib's host, the agony in Gethsemane.\n\n Wilfred at length reached Rainbarrow, and stood still there to think. Never was harmony more perfect than that between the chaos of her mind and the chaos of the world without. A sudden recollection had flashed on her this moment--she had not money enough for undertaking a long journey. Amid the fluctuating sentiments of the day her unpractical mind had not dwelt on the necessity of being well-provided, and now that she thoroughly realized the conditions she sighed bitterly and ceased to stand erect, gradually crouching down under the umbrella as if she were drawn into the Barrow by a hand from beneath. Could it be that she was to remain a captive still? Money--she had never felt its value before. Even to efface herself from the country means were required. To ask Lorelei for pecuniary aid without allowing him to accompany her was impossible to a woman with a shadow of pride left in her; to fly as his mistress--and she knew that he loved her--was of the nature of humiliation.\n\n Anyone who had stood by now would have pitied her, not so much on account of her exposure to weather, and isolation from all of humanity except the mouldered remains inside the tumulus; but for that other form of misery which was denoted by the slightly rocking movement that her feelings imparted to her person. Extreme unhappiness weighed visibly upon her. Between the drippings of the rain from her umbrella to her mantle, from her mantle to the heather, from the heather to the earth, very similar sounds could be heard coming from her lips; and the tearfulness of the outer scene was repeated upon her face. The wings of her soul were broken by the cruel obstructiveness of all about her; and even had she seen herself in a promising way of getting to Budmouth, entering a steamer, and sailing to some opposite port, she would have been but little more buoyant, so fearfully malignant were other things. She uttered words aloud. When a woman in such a situation, neither old, deaf, crazed, nor whimsical, takes upon herself to sob and soliloquize aloud there is something grievous the matter.\n\n \"Can I go, can I go?\" she moaned. \"He's not GREAT enough for me to give myself to--he does not suffice for my desire!... If he had been a Saul or a Bonaparte--ah! But to break my marriage vow for him--it is too poor a luxury!... And I have no money to go alone! And if I could, what comfort to me? I must drag on next year, as I have dragged on this year, and the year after that as before. How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me!... I do not deserve my lot!\" she cried in a frenzy of bitter revolt. \"O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to Heaven at all!\"\n\n\n The distant light which Wilfred had cursorily observed in leaving the house came, as she had divined, from the cottage window of Susan Nunsuch. What Wilfred did not divine was the occupation of the woman within at that moment. Susan's sight of her passing figure earlier in the evening, not five minutes after the sick boy's exclamation, \"Mother, I do feel so bad!\" persuaded the matron that an evil influence was certainly exercised by Wilfred's propinquity.\n\n On this account Susan did not go to bed as soon as the evening's work was over, as she would have done at ordinary times. To counteract the malign spell which she imagined poor Wilfred to be working, the boy's mother busied herself with a ghastly invention of superstition, calculated to bring powerlessness, atrophy, and annihilation on any human being against whom it was directed. It was a practice well known on Egdon at that date, and one that is not quite extinct at the present day.\n\n She passed with her candle into an inner room, where, among other utensils, were two large brown pans, containing together perhaps a hundredweight of liquid honey, the produce of the bees during the foregoing summer. On a shelf over the pans was a smooth and solid yellow mass of a hemispherical form, consisting of beeswax from the same take of honey. Susan took down the lump, and cutting off several thin slices, heaped them in an iron ladle, with which she returned to the living-room, and placed the vessel in the hot ashes of the fireplace. As soon as the wax had softened to the plasticity of dough she kneaded the pieces together. And now her face became more intent. She began moulding the wax; and it was evident from her manner of manipulation that she was endeavouring to give it some preconceived form. The form was human.\n\n By warming and kneading, cutting and twisting, dismembering and re-joining the incipient image she had in about a quarter of an hour produced a shape which tolerably well resembled a woman, and was about six inches high. She laid it on the table to get cold and hard. Meanwhile she took the candle and went upstairs to where the little boy was lying.\n\n \"Did you notice, my dear, what Mrs. Wilfred wore this afternoon besides the dark dress?\"\n\n \"A red ribbon round her neck.\"\n\n \"Anything else?\"\n\n \"No--except sandal-shoes.\"\n\n \"A red ribbon and sandal-shoes,\" she said to herself.\n\n Mrs. Nunsuch went and searched till she found a fragment of the narrowest red ribbon, which she took downstairs and tied round the neck of the image. Then fetching ink and a quilt from the rickety bureau by the window, she blackened the feet of the image to the extent presumably covered by shoes; and on the instep of each foot marked cross-lines in the shape taken by the sandalstrings of those days. Finally she tied a bit of black thread round the upper part of the head, in faint resemblance to a snood worn for confining the hair.\n\n Susan held the object at arm's length and contemplated it with a satisfaction in which there was no smile. To anybody acquainted with the inhabitants of Egdon Heath the image would have suggested Wilfred Rudolph.\n\n From her workbasket in the window-seat the woman took a paper of pins, of the old long and yellow sort, whose heads were disposed to come off at their first usage. These she began to thrust into the image in all directions, with apparently excruciating energy. Probably as many as fifty were thus inserted, some into the head of the wax model, some into the shoulders, some into the trunk, some upwards through the soles of the feet, till the figure was completely permeated with pins.\n\n She turned to the fire. It had been of turf; and though the high heap of ashes which turf fires produce was somewhat dark and dead on the outside, upon raking it abroad with the shovel the inside of the mass showed a glow of red heat. She took a few pieces of fresh turf from the chimney-corner and built them together over the glow, upon which the fire brightened. Seizing with the tongs the image that she had made of Wilfred, she held it in the heat, and watched it as it began to waste slowly away. And while she stood thus engaged there came from between her lips a murmur of words.\n\n It was a strange jargon--the Lord's Prayer repeated backwards--the incantation usual in proceedings for obtaining unhallowed assistance against an enemy. Susan uttered the lugubrious discourse three times slowly, and when it was completed the image had considerably diminished. As the wax dropped into the fire a long flame arose from the spot, and curling its tongue round the figure ate still further into its substance. A pin occasionally dropped with the wax, and the embers heated it red as it lay.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 8--Rain, Darkness, and Anxious Wanderers\n\n\n While the effigy of Wilfred was melting to nothing, and the fair woman herself was standing on Rainbarrow, her soul in an abyss of desolation seldom plumbed by one so young, Rudolph sat lonely at Blooms-End. He had fulfilled his word to Graeme by sending off Fairway with the letter to his wife, and now waited with increased impatience for some sound or signal of her return. Were Wilfred still at Mistover the very least he expected was that she would send him back a reply tonight by the same hand; though, to leave all to her inclination, he had cautioned Fairway not to ask for an answer. If one were handed to him he was to bring it immediately; if not, he was to go straight home without troubling to come round to Blooms-End again that night.\n\n But secretly Tiberius had a more pleasing hope. Wilfred might possibly decline to use her pen--it was rather her way to work silently--and surprise him by appearing at his door. How fully her mind was made up to do otherwise he did not know.\n\n To Tiberius's regret it began to rain and blow hard as the evening advanced. The wind rasped and scraped at the corners of the house, and filliped the eavesdroppings like peas against the panes. He walked restlessly about the untenanted rooms, stopping strange noises in windows and doors by jamming splinters of wood into the casements and crevices, and pressing together the leadwork of the quarries where it had become loosened from the glass. It was one of those nights when cracks in the walls of old churches widen, when ancient stains on the ceilings of decayed manor houses are renewed and enlarged from the size of a man's hand to an area of many feet. The little gate in the palings before his dwelling continually opened and clicked together again, but when he looked out eagerly nobody was there; it was as if invisible shapes of the dead were passing in on their way to visit him.\n\n Between ten and eleven o'clock, finding that neither Fairway nor anybody else came to him, he retired to rest, and despite his anxieties soon fell asleep. His sleep, however, was not very sound, by reason of the expectancy he had given way to, and he was easily awakened by a knocking which began at the door about an hour after. Tiberius arose and looked out of the window. Rain was still falling heavily, the whole expanse of heath before him emitting a subdued hiss under the downpour. It was too dark to see anything at all.\n\n \"Who's there?\" he cried.\n\n Light footsteps shifted their position in the porch, and he could just distinguish in a plaintive female voice the words, \"O Tiberius, come down and let me in!\"\n\n He flushed hot with agitation. \"Surely it is Wilfred!\" he murmured. If so, she had indeed come to him unawares.\n\n He hastily got a light, dressed himself, and went down. On his flinging open the door the rays of the candle fell upon a woman closely wrapped up, who at once came forward.\n\n \"Graeme!\" he exclaimed in an indescribable tone of disappointment. \"It is Graeme, and on such a night as this! O, where is Wilfred?\"\n\n Graeme it was, wet, frightened, and panting.\n\n \"Wilfred? I don't know, Tiberius; but I can think,\" she said with much perturbation. \"Let me come in and rest--I will explain this. There is a great trouble brewing--my husband and Wilfred!\"\n\n \"What, what?\"\n\n \"I think my husband is going to leave me or do something dreadful--I don't know what--Tiberius, will you go and see? I have nobody to help me but you; Wilfred has not yet come home?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n She went on breathlessly: \"Then they are going to run off together! He came indoors tonight about eight o'clock and said in an off-hand way, 'Tamsie, I have just found that I must go a journey.' 'When?' I said. 'Tonight,' he said. 'Where?' I asked him. 'I cannot tell you at present,' he said; 'I shall be back again tomorrow.' He then went and busied himself in looking up his things, and took no notice of me at all. I expected to see him start, but he did not, and then it came to be ten o'clock, when he said, 'You had better go to bed.' I didn't know what to do, and I went to bed. I believe he thought I fell asleep, for half an hour after that he came up and unlocked the oak chest we keep money in when we have much in the house and took out a roll of something which I believe was banknotes, though I was not aware that he had 'em there. These he must have got from the bank when he went there the other day. What does he want banknotes for, if he is only going off for a day? When he had gone down I thought of Wilfred, and how he had met her the night before--I know he did meet her, Tiberius, for I followed him part of the way; but I did not like to tell you when you called, and so make you think ill of him, as I did not think it was so serious. Then I could not stay in bed; I got up and dressed myself, and when I heard him out in the stable I thought I would come and tell you. So I came downstairs without any noise and slipped out.\"\n\n \"Then he was not absolutely gone when you left?\"\n\n \"No. Will you, dear Cousin Tiberius, go and try to persuade him not to go? He takes no notice of what I say, and puts me off with the story of his going on a journey, and will be home tomorrow, and all that; but I don't believe it. I think you could influence him.\"\n\n \"I'll go,\" said Tiberius. \"O, Wilfred!\"\n\n Graeme carried in her arms a large bundle; and having by this time seated herself she began to unroll it, when a baby appeared as the kernel to the husks--dry, warm, and unconscious of travel or rough weather. Graeme briefly kissed the baby, and then found time to begin crying as she said, \"I brought baby, for I was afraid what might happen to her. I suppose it will be her death, but I couldn't leave her with Rachel!\"\n\n Tiberius hastily put together the logs on the hearth, raked abroad the embers, which were scarcely yet extinct, and blew up a flame with the bellows.\n\n \"Dry yourself,\" he said. \"I'll go and get some more wood.\"\n\n \"No, no--don't stay for that. I'll make up the fire. Will you go at once--please will you?\"\n\n Rudolph ran upstairs to finish dressing himself. While he was gone another rapping came to the door. This time there was no delusion that it might be Wilfred's--the footsteps just preceding it had been heavy and slow. Rudolph thinking it might possibly be Fairway with a note in answer, descended again and opened the door.\n\n \"Camden Lillie?\" he said to a dripping figure.\n\n \"Is my granddaughter here?\" said the captain.\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Then where is she?\".\n\n \"I don't know.\"\n\n \"But you ought to know--you are her husband.\"\n\n \"Only in name apparently,\" said Tiberius with rising excitement. \"I believe she means to elope tonight with Lorelei. I am just going to look to it.\"\n\n \"Well, she has left my house; she left about half an hour ago. Who's sitting there?\"\n\n \"My cousin Graeme.\"\n\n The captain bowed in a preoccupied way to her. \"I only hope it is no worse than an elopement,\" he said.\n\n \"Worse? What's worse than the worst a wife can do?\"\n\n \"Well, I have been told a strange tale. Before starting in search of her I called up Rocky, my stable lad. I missed my pistols the other day.\"\n\n \"Pistols?\"\n\n \"He said at the time that he took them down to clean. He has now owned that he took them because he saw Wilfred looking curiously at them; and she afterwards owned to him that she was thinking of taking her life, but bound him to secrecy, and promised never to think of such a thing again. I hardly suppose she will ever have bravado enough to use one of them; but it shows what has been lurking in her mind; and people who think of that sort of thing once think of it again.\"\n\n \"Where are the pistols?\"\n\n \"Safely locked up. O no, she won't touch them again. But there are more ways of letting out life than through a bullet-hole. What did you quarrel about so bitterly with her to drive her to all this? You must have treated her badly indeed. Well, I was always against the marriage, and I was right.\"\n\n \"Are you going with me?\" said Rudolph, paying no attention to the captain's latter remark. \"If so I can tell you what we quarrelled about as we walk along.\"\n\n \"Where to?\"\n\n \"To Lorelei's--that was her destination, depend upon it.\"\n\n Graeme here broke in, still weeping: \"He said he was only going on a sudden short journey; but if so why did he want so much money? O, Tiberius, what do you think will happen? I am afraid that you, my poor baby, will soon have no father left to you!\"\n\n \"I am off now,\" said Rudolph, stepping into the porch.\n\n \"I would fain go with 'ee,\" said the old man doubtfully. \"But I begin to be afraid that my legs will hardly carry me there such a night as this. I am not so young as I was. If they are interrupted in their flight she will be sure to come back to me, and I ought to be at the house to receive her. But be it as 'twill I can't walk to the Quiet Woman, and that's an end on't. I'll go straight home.\"\n\n \"It will perhaps be best,\" said Tiberius. \"Graeme, dry yourself, and be as comfortable as you can.\"\n\n With this he closed the door upon her, and left the house in company with Camden Lillie, who parted from him outside the gate, taking the middle path, which led to Mistover. Tiberius crossed by the right-hand track towards the inn.\n\n Graeme, being left alone, took off some of her wet garments, carried the baby upstairs to Tiberius's bed, and then came down to the sitting-room again, where she made a larger fire, and began drying herself. The fire soon flared up the chimney, giving the room an appearance of comfort that was doubled by contrast with the drumming of the storm without, which snapped at the windowpanes and breathed into the chimney strange low utterances that seemed to be the prologue to some tragedy.\n\n But the least part of Graeme was in the house, for her heart being at ease about the little girl upstairs she was mentally following Tiberius on his journey. Having indulged in this imaginary peregrination for some considerable interval, she became impressed with a sense of the intolerable slowness of time. But she sat on. The moment then came when she could scarcely sit longer, and it was like a satire on her patience to remember that Tiberius could hardly have reached the inn as yet. At last she went to the baby's bedside. The child was sleeping soundly; but her imagination of possibly disastrous events at her home, the predominance within her of the unseen over the seen, agitated her beyond endurance. She could not refrain from going down and opening the door. The rain still continued, the candlelight falling upon the nearest drops and making glistening darts of them as they descended across the throng of invisible ones behind. To plunge into that medium was to plunge into water slightly diluted with air. But the difficulty of returning to her house at this moment made her all the more desirous of doing so--anything was better than suspense. \"I have come here well enough,\" she said, \"and why shouldn't I go back again? It is a mistake for me to be away.\"\n\n She hastily fetched the infant, wrapped it up, cloaked herself as before, and shoveling the ashes over the fire, to prevent accidents, went into the open air. Pausing first to put the door key in its old place behind the shutter, she resolutely turned her face to the confronting pile of firmamental darkness beyond the palings, and stepped into its midst. But Graeme's imagination being so actively engaged elsewhere, the night and the weather had for her no terror beyond that of their actual discomfort and difficulty.\n\n She was soon ascending Blooms-End valley and traversing the undulations on the side of the hill. The noise of the wind over the heath was shrill, and as if it whistled for joy at finding a night so congenial as this. Sometimes the path led her to hollows between thickets of tall and dripping bracken, dead, though not yet prostrate, which enclosed her like a pool. When they were more than usually tall she lifted the baby to the top of her head, that it might be out of the reach of their drenching fronds. On higher ground, where the wind was brisk and sustained, the rain flew in a level flight without sensible descent, so that it was beyond all power to imagine the remoteness of the point at which it left the bosoms of the clouds. Here self-defence was impossible, and individual drops stuck into her like the arrows into Saint Sebastian. She was enabled to avoid puddles by the nebulous paleness which signified their presence, though beside anything less dark than the heath they themselves would have appeared as blackness.\n\n Yet in spite of all this Graeme was not sorry that she had started. To her there were not, as to Wilfred, demons in the air, and malice in every bush and bough. The drops which lashed her face were not scorpions, but prosy rain; Egdon in the mass was no monster whatever, but impersonal open ground. Her fears of the place were rational, her dislikes of its worst moods reasonable. At this time it was in her view a windy, wet place, in which a person might experience much discomfort, lose the path without care, and possibly catch cold.\n\n If the path is well known the difficulty at such times of keeping therein is not altogether great, from its familiar feel to the feet; but once lost it is irrecoverable. Owing to her baby, who somewhat impeded Graeme's view forward and distracted her mind, she did at last lose the track. This mishap occurred when she was descending an open slope about two-thirds home. Instead of attempting, by wandering hither and thither, the hopeless task of finding such a mere thread, she went straight on, trusting for guidance to her general knowledge of the contours, which was scarcely surpassed by Tiberius's or by that of the heath-croppers themselves.\n\n At length Graeme reached a hollow and began to discern through the rain a faint blotted radiance, which presently assumed the oblong form of an open door. She knew that no house stood hereabouts, and was soon aware of the nature of the door by its height above the ground.\n\n \"Why, it is Jeanne Della's van, surely!\" she said.\n\n A certain secluded spot near Rainbarrow was, she knew, often Della's chosen centre when staying in this neighbourhood; and she guessed at once that she had stumbled upon this mysterious retreat. The question arose in her mind whether or not she should ask him to guide her into the path. In her anxiety to reach home she decided that she would appeal to him, notwithstanding the strangeness of appearing before his eyes at this place and season. But when, in pursuance of this resolve, Graeme reached the van and looked in she found it to be untenanted; though there was no doubt that it was the reddleman's. The fire was burning in the stove, the lantern hung from the nail. Round the doorway the floor was merely sprinkled with rain, and not saturated, which told her that the door had not long been opened.\n\n While she stood uncertainly looking in Graeme heard a footstep advancing from the darkness behind her, and turning, beheld the well-known form in corduroy, lurid from head to foot, the lantern beams falling upon him through an intervening gauze of raindrops.\n\n \"I thought you went down the slope,\" he said, without noticing her face. \"How do you come back here again?\"\n\n \"Jeanne?\" said Graeme faintly.\n\n \"Who are you?\" said Della, still unperceiving. \"And why were you crying so just now?\"\n\n \"O, Jeanne! don't you know me?\" said she. \"But of course you don't, wrapped up like this. What do you mean? I have not been crying here, and I have not been here before.\"\n\n Della then came nearer till he could see the illuminated side of her form.\n\n \"Mrs. Lorelei!\" he exclaimed, starting. \"What a time for us to meet! And the baby too! What dreadful thing can have brought you out on such a night as this?\"\n\n She could not immediately answer; and without asking her permission he hopped into his van, took her by the arm, and drew her up after him.\n\n \"What is it?\" he continued when they stood within.\n\n \"I have lost my way coming from Blooms-End, and I am in a great hurry to get home. Please show me as quickly as you can! It is so silly of me not to know Egdon better, and I cannot think how I came to lose the path. Show me quickly, Jeanne, please.\"\n\n \"Yes, of course. I will go with 'ee. But you came to me before this, Mrs. Lorelei?\"\n\n \"I only came this minute.\"\n\n \"That's strange. I was lying down here asleep about five minutes ago, with the door shut to keep out the weather, when the brushing of a woman's clothes over the heath-bushes just outside woke me up, for I don't sleep heavy, and at the same time I heard a sobbing or crying from the same woman. I opened my door and held out my lantern, and just as far as the light would reach I saw a woman; she turned her head when the light sheened on her, and then hurried on downhill. I hung up the lantern, and was curious enough to pull on my things and dog her a few steps, but I could see nothing of her any more. That was where I had been when you came up; and when I saw you I thought you were the same one.\"\n\n \"Perhaps it was one of the heathfolk going home?\"\n\n \"No, it couldn't be. 'Tis too late. The noise of her gown over the he'th was of a whistling sort that nothing but silk will make.\"\n\n \"It wasn't I, then. My dress is not silk, you see.... Are we anywhere in a line between Mistover and the inn?\"\n\n \"Well, yes; not far out.\"\n\n \"Ah, I wonder if it was she! Jeanne, I must go at once!\"\n\n She jumped down from the van before he was aware, when Della unhooked the lantern and leaped down after her. \"I'll take the baby, ma'am,\" he said. \"You must be tired out by the weight.\"\n\n Graeme hesitated a moment, and then delivered the baby into Della's hands. \"Don't squeeze her, Jeanne,\" she said, \"or hurt her little arm; and keep the cloak close over her like this, so that the rain may not drop in her face.\"\n\n \"I will,\" said Della earnestly. \"As if I could hurt anything belonging to you!\"\n\n \"I only meant accidentally,\" said Graeme.\n\n \"The baby is dry enough, but you are pretty wet,\" said the reddleman when, in closing the door of his cart to padlock it, he noticed on the floor a ring of water drops where her cloak had hung from her.\n\n Graeme followed him as he wound right and left to avoid the larger bushes, stopping occasionally and covering the lantern, while he looked over his shoulder to gain some idea of the position of Rainbarrow above them, which it was necessary to keep directly behind their backs to preserve a proper course.\n\n \"You are sure the rain does not fall upon baby?\"\n\n \"Quite sure. May I ask how old he is, ma'am?\"\n\n \"He!\" said Graeme reproachfully. \"Anybody can see better than that in a moment. She is nearly two months old. How far is it now to the inn?\"\n\n \"A little over a quarter of a mile.\"\n\n \"Will you walk a little faster?\"\n\n \"I was afraid you could not keep up.\"\n\n \"I am very anxious to get there. Ah, there is a light from the window!\"\n\n \"'Tis not from the window. That's a gig-lamp, to the best of my belief.\"\n\n \"O!\" said Graeme in despair. \"I wish I had been there sooner--give me the baby, Jeanne--you can go back now.\"\n\n \"I must go all the way,\" said Della. \"There is a quag between us and that light, and you will walk into it up to your neck unless I take you round.\"\n\n \"But the light is at the inn, and there is no quag in front of that.\"\n\n \"No, the light is below the inn some two or three hundred yards.\"\n\n \"Never mind,\" said Graeme hurriedly. \"Go towards the light, and not towards the inn.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" answered Della, swerving round in obedience; and, after a pause, \"I wish you would tell me what this great trouble is. I think you have proved that I can be trusted.\"\n\n \"There are some things that cannot be--cannot be told to--\" And then her heart rose into her throat, and she could say no more.\n\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 9--Sights and Sounds Draw the Wanderers Together\n\n\n Having seen Wilfred's signal from the hill at eight o'clock, Lorelei immediately prepared to assist her in her flight, and, as he hoped, accompany her. He was somewhat perturbed, and his manner of informing Graeme that he was going on a journey was in itself sufficient to rouse her suspicions. When she had gone to bed he collected the few articles he would require, and went upstairs to the money-chest, whence he took a tolerably bountiful sum in notes, which had been advanced to him on the property he was so soon to have in possession, to defray expenses incidental to the removal.\n\n He then went to the stable and coach-house to assure himself that the horse, gig, and harness were in a fit condition for a long drive. Nearly half an hour was spent thus, and on returning to the house Lorelei had no thought of Graeme being anywhere but in bed. He had told the stable lad not to stay up, leading the boy to understand that his departure would be at three or four in the morning; for this, though an exceptional hour, was less strange than midnight, the time actually agreed on, the packet from Budmouth sailing between one and two.\n\n At last all was quiet, and he had nothing to do but to wait. By no effort could he shake off the oppression of spirits which he had experienced ever since his last meeting with Wilfred, but he hoped there was that in his situation which money could cure. He had persuaded himself that to act not ungenerously towards his gentle wife by settling on her the half of his property, and with chivalrous devotion towards another and greater woman by sharing her fate, was possible. And though he meant to adhere to Wilfred's instructions to the letter, to deposit her where she wished and to leave her, should that be her will, the spell that she had cast over him intensified, and his heart was beating fast in the anticipated futility of such commands in the face of a mutual wish that they should throw in their lot together.\n\n He would not allow himself to dwell long upon these conjectures, maxims, and hopes, and at twenty minutes to twelve he again went softly to the stable, harnessed the horse, and lit the lamps; whence, taking the horse by the head, he led him with the covered car out of the yard to a spot by the roadside some quarter of a mile below the inn.\n\n Here Lorelei waited, slightly sheltered from the driving rain by a high bank that had been cast up at this place. Along the surface of the road where lit by the lamps the loosened gravel and small stones scudded and clicked together before the wind, which, leaving them in heaps, plunged into the heath and boomed across the bushes into darkness. Only one sound rose above this din of weather, and that was the roaring of a ten-hatch weir to the southward, from a river in the meads which formed the boundary of the heath in this direction.\n\n He lingered on in perfect stillness till he began to fancy that the midnight hour must have struck. A very strong doubt had arisen in his mind if Wilfred would venture down the hill in such weather; yet knowing her nature he felt that she might. \"Poor thing! 'tis like her ill-luck,\" he murmured.\n\n At length he turned to the lamp and looked at his watch. To his surprise it was nearly a quarter past midnight. He now wished that he had driven up the circuitous road to Mistover, a plan not adopted because of the enormous length of the route in proportion to that of the pedestrian's path down the open hillside, and the consequent increase of labour for the horse.\n\n At this moment a footstep approached; but the light of the lamps being in a different direction the comer was not visible. The step paused, then came on again.\n\n \"Wilfred?\" said Lorelei.\n\n The person came forward, and the light fell upon the form of Tiberius, glistening with wet, whom Lorelei immediately recognized; but Lorelei, who stood behind the lamp, was not at once recognized by Rudolph.\n\n He stopped as if in doubt whether this waiting vehicle could have anything to do with the flight of his wife or not. The sight of Rudolph at once banished Lorelei's sober feelings, who saw him again as the deadly rival from whom Wilfred was to be kept at all hazards. Hence Lorelei did not speak, in the hope that Tiberius would pass by without particular inquiry.\n\n While they both hung thus in hesitation a dull sound became audible above the storm and wind. Its origin was unmistakable--it was the fall of a body into the stream in the adjoining mead, apparently at a point near the weir.\n\n Both started. \"Good God! can it be she?\" said Tiberius.\n\n \"Why should it be she?\" said Lorelei, in his alarm forgetting that he had hitherto screened himself.\n\n \"Ah!--that's you, you traitor, is it?\" cried Rudolph. \"Why should it be she? Because last week she would have put an end to her life if she had been able. She ought to have been watched! Take one of the lamps and come with me.\"\n\n Rudolph seized the one on his side and hastened on; Lorelei did not wait to unfasten the other, but followed at once along the meadow track to the weir, a little in the rear of Tiberius.\n\n Shadwater Weir had at its foot a large circular pool, fifty feet in diameter, into which the water flowed through ten huge hatches, raised and lowered by a winch and cogs in the ordinary manner. The sides of the pool were of masonry, to prevent the water from washing away the bank; but the force of the stream in winter was sometimes such as to undermine the retaining wall and precipitate it into the hole. Tiberius reached the hatches, the framework of which was shaken to its foundations by the velocity of the current. Nothing but the froth of the waves could be discerned in the pool below. He got upon the plank bridge over the race, and holding to the rail, that the wind might not blow him off, crossed to the other side of the river. There he leant over the wall and lowered the lamp, only to behold the vortex formed at the curl of the returning current.\n\n Lorelei meanwhile had arrived on the former side, and the light from Rudolph's lamp shed a flecked and agitated radiance across the weir pool, revealing to the ex-engineer the tumbling courses of the currents from the hatches above. Across this gashed and puckered mirror a dark body was slowly borne by one of the backward currents.\n\n \"O, my darling!\" exclaimed Lorelei in an agonized voice; and, without showing sufficient presence of mind even to throw off his greatcoat, he leaped into the boiling caldron.\n\n Rudolph could now also discern the floating body, though but indistinctly; and imagining from Lorelei's plunge that there was life to be saved he was about to leap after. Bethinking himself of a wiser plan, he placed the lamp against a post to make it stand upright, and running round to the lower part of the pool, where there was no wall, he sprang in and boldly waded upwards towards the deeper portion. Here he was taken off his legs, and in swimming was carried round into the centre of the basin, where he perceived Lorelei struggling.\n\n While these hasty actions were in progress here, Della and Graeme had been toiling through the lower corner of the heath in the direction of the light. They had not been near enough to the river to hear the plunge, but they saw the removal of the carriage lamp, and watched its motion into the mead. As soon as they reached the car and horse Della guessed that something new was amiss, and hastened to follow in the course of the moving light. Della walked faster than Graeme, and came to the weir alone.\n\n The lamp placed against the post by Tiberius still shone across the water, and the reddleman observed something floating motionless. Being encumbered with the infant, he ran back to meet Graeme.\n\n \"Take the baby, please, Mrs. Lorelei,\" he said hastily. \"Run home with her, call the stable lad, and make him send down to me any men who may be living near. Somebody has fallen into the weir.\"\n\n Graeme took the child and ran. When she came to the covered car the horse, though fresh from the stable, was standing perfectly still, as if conscious of misfortune. She saw for the first time whose it was. She nearly fainted, and would have been unable to proceed another step but that the necessity of preserving the little girl from harm nerved her to an amazing self-control. In this agony of suspense she entered the house, put the baby in a place of safety, woke the lad and the female domestic, and ran out to give the alarm at the nearest cottage.\n\n Jeanne, having returned to the brink of the pool, observed that the small upper hatches or floats were withdrawn. He found one of these lying upon the grass, and taking it under one arm, and with his lantern in his hand, entered at the bottom of the pool as Tiberius had done. As soon as he began to be in deep water he flung himself across the hatch; thus supported he was able to keep afloat as long as he chose, holding the lantern aloft with his disengaged hand. Propelled by his feet, he steered round and round the pool, ascending each time by one of the back streams and descending in the middle of the current.\n\n At first he could see nothing. Then amidst the glistening of the whirlpools and the white clots of foam he distinguished a woman's bonnet floating alone. His search was now under the left wall, when something came to the surface almost close beside him. It was not, as he had expected, a woman, but a man. The reddleman put the ring of the lantern between his teeth, seized the floating man by the collar, and, holding on to the hatch with his remaining arm, struck out into the strongest race, by which the unconscious man, the hatch, and himself were carried down the stream. As soon as Della found his feet dragging over the pebbles of the shallower part below he secured his footing and waded towards the brink. There, where the water stood at about the height of his waist, he flung away the hatch, and attempted to drag forth the man. This was a matter of great difficulty, and he found as the reason that the legs of the unfortunate stranger were tightly embraced by the arms of another man, who had hitherto been entirely beneath the surface.\n\n At this moment his heart bounded to hear footsteps running towards him, and two men, roused by Graeme, appeared at the brink above. They ran to where Della was, and helped him in lifting out the apparently drowned persons, separating them, and laying them out upon the grass. Della turned the light upon their faces. The one who had been uppermost was Rudolph; he who had been completely submerged was Lorelei.\n\n \"Now we must search the hole again,\" said Della. \"A woman is in there somewhere. Get a pole.\"\n\n One of the men went to the footbridge and tore off the handrail. The reddleman and the two others then entered the water together from below as before, and with their united force probed the pool forwards to where it sloped down to its central depth. Della was not mistaken in supposing that any person who had sunk for the last time would be washed down to this point, for when they had examined to about halfway across something impeded their thrust.\n\n \"Pull it forward,\" said Della, and they raked it in with the pole till it was close to their feet.\n\n Della vanished under the stream, and came up with an armful of wet drapery enclosing a woman's cold form, which was all that remained of the desperate Wilfred.\n\n When they reached the bank there stood Graeme, in a stress of grief, bending over the two unconscious ones who already lay there. The horse and cart were brought to the nearest point in the road, and it was the work of a few minutes only to place the three in the vehicle. Della led on the horse, supporting Graeme upon his arm, and the two men followed, till they reached the inn.\n\n The woman who had been shaken out of her sleep by Graeme had hastily dressed herself and lighted a fire, the other servant being left to snore on in peace at the back of the house. The insensible forms of Wilfred, Tiberius, and Lorelei were then brought in and laid on the carpet, with their feet to the fire, when such restorative processes as could be thought of were adopted at once, the stableman being in the meantime sent for a doctor. But there seemed to be not a whiff of life in either of the bodies. Then Graeme, whose stupor of grief had been thrust off awhile by frantic action, applied a bottle of hartshorn to Tiberius's nostrils, having tried it in vain upon the other two. He sighed.\n\n \"Tiberius's alive!\" she exclaimed.\n\n He soon breathed distinctly, and again and again did she attempt to revive her husband by the same means; but Lorelei gave no sign. There was too much reason to think that he and Wilfred both were for ever beyond the reach of stimulating perfumes. Their exertions did not relax till the doctor arrived, when one by one, the senseless three were taken upstairs and put into warm beds.\n\n Della soon felt himself relieved from further attendance, and went to the door, scarcely able yet to realize the strange catastrophe that had befallen the family in which he took so great an interest. Graeme surely would be broken down by the sudden and overwhelming nature of this event. No firm and sensible Mrs. Rudolph lived now to support the gentle girl through the ordeal; and, whatever an unimpassioned spectator might think of her loss of such a husband as Lorelei, there could be no doubt that for the moment she was distracted and horrified by the blow. As for himself, not being privileged to go to her and comfort her, he saw no reason for waiting longer in a house where he remained only as a stranger.\n\n He returned across the heath to his van. The fire was not yet out, and everything remained as he had left it. Della now bethought himself of his clothes, which were saturated with water to the weight of lead. He changed them, spread them before the fire, and lay down to sleep. But it was more than he could do to rest here while excited by a vivid imagination of the turmoil they were in at the house he had quitted, and, blaming himself for coming away, he dressed in another suit, locked up the door, and again hastened across to the inn. Rain was still falling heavily when he entered the kitchen. A bright fire was shining from the hearth, and two women were bustling about, one of whom was Olly Dowden.\n\n \"Well, how is it going on now?\" said Della in a whisper.\n\n \"Mr. Rudolph is better; but Mrs. Rudolph and Mr. Lorelei are dead and cold. The doctor says they were quite gone before they were out of the water.\"\n\n \"Ah! I thought as much when I hauled 'em up. And Mrs. Lorelei?\"\n\n \"She is as well as can be expected. The doctor had her put between blankets, for she was almost as wet as they that had been in the river, poor young thing. You don't seem very dry, reddleman.\"\n\n \"Oh, 'tis not much. I have changed my things. This is only a little dampness I've got coming through the rain again.\"\n\n \"Stand by the fire. Mis'ess says you be to have whatever you want, and she was sorry when she was told that you'd gone away.\"\n\n Della drew near to the fireplace, and looked into the flames in an absent mood. The steam came from his leggings and ascended the chimney with the smoke, while he thought of those who were upstairs. Two were corpses, one had barely escaped the jaws of death, another was sick and a widow. The last occasion on which he had lingered by that fireplace was when the raffle was in progress; when Lorelei was alive and well; Graeme active and smiling in the next room; Rudolph and Wilfred just made husband and wife, and Mrs. Rudolph living at Blooms-End. It had seemed at that time that the then position of affairs was good for at least twenty years to come. Yet, of all the circle, he himself was the only one whose situation had not materially changed.\n\n While he ruminated a footstep descended the stairs. It was the nurse, who brought in her hand a rolled mass of wet paper. The woman was so engrossed with her occupation that she hardly saw Della. She took from a cupboard some pieces of twine, which she strained across the fireplace, tying the end of each piece to the firedog, previously pulled forward for the purpose, and, unrolling the wet papers, she began pinning them one by one to the strings in a manner of clothes on a line.\n\n \"What be they?\" said Della.\n\n \"Poor master's banknotes,\" she answered. \"They were found in his pocket when they undressed him.\"\n\n \"Then he was not coming back again for some time?\" said Della.\n\n \"That we shall never know,\" said she.\n\n Della was loth to depart, for all on earth that interested him lay under this roof. As nobody in the house had any more sleep that night, except the two who slept for ever, there was no reason why he should not remain. So he retired into the niche of the fireplace where he had used to sit, and there he continued, watching the steam from the double row of banknotes as they waved backwards and forwards in the draught of the chimney till their flaccidity was changed to dry crispness throughout. Then the woman came and unpinned them, and, folding them together, carried the handful upstairs. Presently the doctor appeared from above with the look of a man who could do no more, and, pulling on his gloves, went out of the house, the trotting of his horse soon dying away upon the road.\n\n At four o'clock there was a gentle knock at the door. It was from Rocky, who had been sent by Camden Lillie to inquire if anything had been heard of Wilfred. The girl who admitted him looked in his face as if she did not know what answer to return, and showed him in to where Della was seated, saying to the reddleman, \"Will you tell him, please?\"\n\n Della told. Rocky's only utterance was a feeble, indistinct sound. He stood quite still; then he burst out spasmodically, \"I shall see her once more?\"\n\n \"I dare say you may see her,\" said Jeanne gravely. \"But hadn't you better run and tell Camden Lillie?\"\n\n \"Yes, yes. Only I do hope I shall see her just once again.\"\n\n \"You shall,\" said a low voice behind; and starting round they beheld by the dim light, a thin, pallid, almost spectral form, wrapped in a blanket, and looking like Lazarus coming from the tomb.\n\n It was Rudolph. Neither Della nor Rocky spoke, and Tiberius continued, \"You shall see her. There will be time enough to tell the captain when it gets daylight. You would like to see her too--would you not, Jeanne? She looks very beautiful now.\"\n\n Della assented by rising to his feet, and with Rocky he followed Tiberius to the foot of the staircase, where he took off his boots; Rocky did the same. They followed Rudolph upstairs to the landing, where there was a candle burning, which Rudolph took in his hand, and with it led the way into an adjoining room. Here he went to the bedside and folded back the sheet.\n\n They stood silently looking upon Wilfred, who, as she lay there still in death, eclipsed all her living phases. Pallor did not include all the quality of her complexion, which seemed more than whiteness; it was almost light. The expression of her finely carved mouth was pleasant, as if a sense of dignity had just compelled her to leave off speaking. Eternal rigidity had seized upon it in a momentary transition between fervour and resignation. Her black hair was looser now than either of them had ever seen it before, and surrounded her brow like a forest. The stateliness of look which had been almost too marked for a dweller in a country domicile had at last found an artistically happy background.\n\n Nobody spoke, till at length Tiberius covered her and turned aside. \"Now come here,\" he said.\n\n They went to a recess in the same room, and there, on a smaller bed, lay another figure--Lorelei. Less repose was visible in his face than in Wilfred's, but the same luminous youthfulness overspread it, and the least sympathetic observer would have felt at sight of him now that he was born for a higher destiny than this. The only sign upon him of his recent struggle for life was in his fingertips, which were worn and sacrificed in his dying endeavours to obtain a hold on the face of the weir-wall.\n\n Rudolph's manner had been so quiet, he had uttered so few syllables since his reappearance, that Della imagined him resigned. It was only when they had left the room and stood upon the landing that the true state of his mind was apparent. Here he said, with a wild smile, inclining his head towards the chamber in which Wilfred lay, \"She is the second woman I have killed this year. I was a great cause of my mother's death, and I am the chief cause of hers.\"\n\n \"How?\" said Della.\n\n \"I spoke cruel words to her, and she left my house. I did not invite her back till it was too late. It is I who ought to have drowned myself. It would have been a charity to the living had the river overwhelmed me and borne her up. But I cannot die. Those who ought to have lived lie dead; and here am I alive!\"\n\n \"But you can't charge yourself with crimes in that way,\" said Della. \"You may as well say that the parents be the cause of a murder by the child, for without the parents the child would never have been begot.\"\n\n \"Yes, Della, that is very true; but you don't know all the circumstances. If it had pleased God to put an end to me it would have been a good thing for all. But I am getting used to the horror of my existence. They say that a time comes when men laugh at misery through long acquaintance with it. Surely that time will soon come to me!\"\n\n \"Your aim has always been good,\" said Della. \"Why should you say such desperate things?\"\n\n \"No, they are not desperate. They are only hopeless; and my great regret is that for what I have done no man or law can punish me!\"\n\n\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> BOOK SIX -- AFTERCOURSES 1--The Inevitable Movement Onward\n\n\n The story of the deaths of Wilfred and Lorelei was told throughout Egdon, and far beyond, for many weeks and months. All the known incidents of their love were enlarged, distorted, touched up, and modified, till the original reality bore but a slight resemblance to the counterfeit presentation by surrounding tongues. Yet, upon the whole, neither the man nor the woman lost dignity by sudden death. Misfortune had struck them gracefully, cutting off their erratic histories with a catastrophic dash, instead of, as with many, attenuating each life to an uninteresting meagreness, through long years of wrinkles, neglect, and decay.\n\n On those most nearly concerned the effect was somewhat different. Strangers who had heard of many such cases now merely heard of one more; but immediately where a blow falls no previous imaginings amount to appreciable preparation for it. The very suddenness of her bereavement dulled, to some extent, Graeme's feelings; yet irrationally enough, a consciousness that the husband she had lost ought to have been a better man did not lessen her mourning at all. On the contrary, this fact seemed at first to set off the dead husband in his young wife's eyes, and to be the necessary cloud to the rainbow.\n\n But the horrors of the unknown had passed. Vague misgivings about her future as a deserted wife were at an end. The worst had once been matter of trembling conjecture; it was now matter of reason only, a limited badness. Her chief interest, the little Wilfred, still remained. There was humility in her grief, no defiance in her attitude; and when this is the case a shaken spirit is apt to be stilled.\n\n Could Graeme's mournfulness now and Wilfred's serenity during life have been reduced to common measure, they would have touched the same mark nearly. But Graeme's former brightness made shadow of that which in a sombre atmosphere was light itself.\n\n The spring came and calmed her; the summer came and soothed her; the autumn arrived, and she began to be comforted, for her little girl was strong and happy, growing in size and knowledge every day. Outward events flattered Graeme not a little. Lorelei had died intestate, and she and the child were his only relatives. When administration had been granted, all the debts paid, and the residue of her husband's uncle's property had come into her hands, it was found that the sum waiting to be invested for her own and the child's benefit was little less than ten thousand pounds.\n\n Where should she live? The obvious place was Blooms-End. The old rooms, it is true, were not much higher than the between-decks of a frigate, necessitating a sinking in the floor under the new clock-case she brought from the inn, and the removal of the handsome brass knobs on its head, before there was height for it to stand; but, such as the rooms were, there were plenty of them, and the place was endeared to her by every early recollection. Tiberius very gladly admitted her as a tenant, confining his own existence to two rooms at the top of the back staircase, where he lived on quietly, shut off from Graeme and the three servants she had thought fit to indulge in now that she was a mistress of money, going his own ways, and thinking his own thoughts.\n\n His sorrows had made some change in his outward appearance; and yet the alteration was chiefly within. It might have been said that he had a wrinkled mind. He had no enemies, and he could get nobody to reproach him, which was why he so bitterly reproached himself.\n\n He did sometimes think he had been ill-used by fortune, so far as to say that to be born is a palpable dilemma, and that instead of men aiming to advance in life with glory they should calculate how to retreat out of it without shame. But that he and his had been sarcastically and pitilessly handled in having such irons thrust into their souls he did not maintain long. It is usually so, except with the sternest of men. Human beings, in their generous endeavour to construct a hypothesis that shall not degrade a First Cause, have always hesitated to conceive a dominant power of lower moral quality than their own; and, even while they sit down and weep by the waters of Babylon, invent excuses for the oppression which prompts their tears.\n\n Thus, though words of solace were vainly uttered in his presence, he found relief in a direction of his own choosing when left to himself. For a man of his habits the house and the hundred and twenty pounds a year which he had inherited from his mother were enough to supply all worldly needs. Resources do not depend upon gross amounts, but upon the proportion of spendings to takings.\n\n He frequently walked the heath alone, when the past seized upon him with its shadowy hand, and held him there to listen to its tale. His imagination would then people the spot with its ancient inhabitants--forgotten Celtic tribes trod their tracks about him, and he could almost live among them, look in their faces, and see them standing beside the barrows which swelled around, untouched and perfect as at the time of their erection. Those of the dyed barbarians who had chosen the cultivable tracts were, in comparison with those who had left their marks here, as writers on paper beside writers on parchment. Their records had perished long ago by the plough, while the works of these remained. Yet they all had lived and died unconscious of the different fates awaiting their relics. It reminded him that unforeseen factors operate in the evolution of immortality.\n\n Winter again came round, with its winds, frosts, tame robins, and sparkling starlight. The year previous Graeme had hardly been conscious of the season's advance; this year she laid her heart open to external influences of every kind. The life of this sweet cousin, her baby, and her servants, came to Tiberius's senses only in the form of sounds through a wood partition as he sat over books of exceptionally large type; but his ear became at last so accustomed to these slight noises from the other part of the house that he almost could witness the scenes they signified. A faint beat of half-seconds conjured up Graeme rocking the cradle, a wavering hum meant that she was singing the baby to sleep, a crunching of sand as between millstones raised the picture of Humphrey's, Fairway's, or Sam's heavy feet crossing the stone floor of the kitchen; a light boyish step, and a gay tune in a high key, betokened a visit from Grandfer Stacy; a sudden break-off in the Grandfer's utterances implied the application to his lips of a mug of small beer, a bustling and slamming of doors meant starting to go to market; for Graeme, in spite of her added scope of gentility, led a ludicrously narrow life, to the end that she might save every possible pound for her little daughter.\n\n One summer day Tiberius was in the garden, immediately outside the parlour window, which was as usual open. He was looking at the pot-flowers on the sill; they had been revived and restored by Graeme to the state in which his mother had left them. He heard a slight scream from Graeme, who was sitting inside the room.\n\n \"O, how you frightened me!\" she said to someone who had entered. \"I thought you were the ghost of yourself.\"\n\n Tiberius was curious enough to advance a little further and look in at the window. To his astonishment there stood within the room Jeanne Della, no longer a reddleman, but exhibiting the strangely altered hues of an ordinary Pixie countenance, white shirt-front, light flowered waistcoat, blue-spotted neckerchief, and bottle-green coat. Nothing in this appearance was at all singular but the fact of its great difference from what he had formerly been. Red, and all approach to red, was carefully excluded from every article of clothes upon him; for what is there that persons just out of harness dread so much as reminders of the trade which has enriched them?\n\n Rudolph went round to the door and entered.\n\n \"I was so alarmed!\" said Graeme, smiling from one to the other. \"I couldn't believe that he had got white of his own accord! It seemed supernatural.\"\n\n \"I gave up dealing in reddle last Christmas,\" said Della. \"It was a profitable trade, and I found that by that time I had made enough to take the dairy of fifty cows that my father had in his lifetime. I always thought of getting to that place again if I changed at all, and now I am there.\"\n\n \"How did you manage to become white, Jeanne?\" Graeme asked.\n\n \"I turned so by degrees, ma'am.\"\n\n \"You look much better than ever you did before.\"\n\n Della appeared confused; and Graeme, seeing how inadvertently she had spoken to a man who might possibly have tender feelings for her still, blushed a little. Tiberius saw nothing of this, and added good-humouredly--\n\n \"What shall we have to frighten Graeme's baby with, now you have become a human being again?\"\n\n \"Sit down, Jeanne,\" said Graeme, \"and stay to tea.\"\n\n Della moved as if he would retire to the kitchen, when Graeme said with pleasant pertness as she went on with some sewing, \"Of course you must sit down here. And where does your fifty-cow dairy lie, Mr. Della?\"\n\n \"At Stickleford--about two miles to the right of Alderworth, ma'am, where the meads begin. I have thought that if Mr. Rudolph would like to pay me a visit sometimes he shouldn't stay away for want of asking. I'll not bide to tea this afternoon, thank'ee, for I've got something on hand that must be settled. 'Tis Maypole-day tomorrow, and the Shadwater folk have clubbed with a few of your neighbours here to have a pole just outside your palings in the heath, as it is a nice green place.\" Della waved his elbow towards the patch in front of the house. \"I have been talking to Fairway about it,\" he continued, \"and I said to him that before we put up the pole it would be as well to ask Mrs. Lorelei.\"\n\n \"I can say nothing against it,\" she answered. \"Our property does not reach an inch further than the white palings.\"\n\n \"But you might not like to see a lot of folk going crazy round a stick, under your very nose?\"\n\n \"I shall have no objection at all.\"\n\n Della soon after went away, and in the evening Rudolph strolled as far as Fairway's cottage. It was a lovely May sunset, and the birch trees which grew on this margin of the vast Egdon wilderness had put on their new leaves, delicate as butterflies' wings, and diaphanous as amber. Beside Fairway's dwelling was an open space recessed from the road, and here were now collected all the young people from within a radius of a couple of miles. The pole lay with one end supported on a trestle, and women were engaged in wreathing it from the top downwards with wild-flowers. The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still--in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.\n\n Rudolph did not interrupt the preparations, and went home again. The next morning, when Graeme withdrew the curtains of her bedroom window, there stood the Maypole in the middle of the green, its top cutting into the sky. It had sprung up in the night, or rather early morning, like Jack's bean-stalk. She opened the casement to get a better view of the garlands and posies that adorned it. The sweet perfume of the flowers had already spread into the surrounding air, which, being free from every taint, conducted to her lips a full measure of the fragrance received from the spire of blossom in its midst. At the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with small flowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone of Maybloom; then a zone of bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-robins, daffodils, and so on, till the lowest stage was reached. Graeme noticed all these, and was delighted that the May revel was to be so near.\n\n When afternoon came people began to gather on the green, and Rudolph was interested enough to look out upon them from the open window of his room. Soon after this Graeme walked out from the door immediately below and turned her eyes up to her cousin's face. She was dressed more gaily than Rudolph had ever seen her dressed since the time of Lorelei's death, eighteen months before; since the day of her marriage even she had not exhibited herself to such advantage.\n\n \"How pretty you look today, Graeme!\" he said. \"Is it because of the Maypole?\"\n\n \"Not altogether.\" And then she blushed and dropped her eyes, which he did not specially observe, though her manner seemed to him to be rather peculiar, considering that she was only addressing himself. Could it be possible that she had put on her summer clothes to please him?\n\n He recalled her conduct towards him throughout the last few weeks, when they had often been working together in the garden, just as they had formerly done when they were boy and girl under his mother's eye. What if her interest in him were not so entirely that of a relative as it had formerly been? To Rudolph any possibility of this sort was a serious matter; and he almost felt troubled at the thought of it. Every pulse of loverlike feeling which had not been stilled during Wilfred's lifetime had gone into the grave with her. His passion for her had occurred too far on in his manhood to leave fuel enough on hand for another fire of that sort, as may happen with more boyish loves. Even supposing him capable of loving again, that love would be a plant of slow and laboured growth, and in the end only small and sickly, like an autumn-hatched bird.\n\n He was so distressed by this new complexity that when the enthusiastic brass band arrived and struck up, which it did about five o'clock, with apparently wind enough among its members to blow down his house, he withdrew from his rooms by the back door, went down the garden, through the gate in the hedge, and away out of sight. He could not bear to remain in the presence of enjoyment today, though he had tried hard.\n\n Nothing was seen of him for four hours. When he came back by the same path it was dusk, and the dews were coating every green thing. The boisterous music had ceased; but, entering the premises as he did from behind, he could not see if the May party had all gone till he had passed through Graeme's division of the house to the front door. Graeme was standing within the porch alone.\n\n She looked at him reproachfully. \"You went away just when it began, Tiberius,\" she said.\n\n \"Yes. I felt I could not join in. You went out with them, of course?\"\n\n \"No, I did not.\"\n\n \"You appeared to be dressed on purpose.\"\n\n \"Yes, but I could not go out alone; so many people were there. One is there now.\"\n\n Rudolph strained his eyes across the dark-green patch beyond the paling, and near the black form of the Maypole he discerned a shadowy figure, sauntering idly up and down. \"Who is it?\" he said.\n\n \"Mr. Della,\" said Graeme.\n\n \"You might have asked him to come in, I think, Tamsie. He has been very kind to you first and last.\"\n\n \"I will now,\" she said; and, acting on the impulse, went through the wicket to where Della stood under the Maypole.\n\n \"It is Mr. Della, I think?\" she inquired.\n\n Della started as if he had not seen her--artful man that he was--and said, \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Will you come in?\"\n\n \"I am afraid that I--\"\n\n \"I have seen you dancing this evening, and you had the very best of the girls for your partners. Is it that you won't come in because you wish to stand here, and think over the past hours of enjoyment?\"\n\n \"Well, that's partly it,\" said Mr. Della, with ostentatious sentiment. \"But the main reason why I am biding here like this is that I want to wait till the moon rises.\"\n\n \"To see how pretty the Maypole looks in the moonlight?\"\n\n \"No. To look for a glove that was dropped by one of the maidens.\"\n\n Graeme was speechless with surprise. That a man who had to walk some four or five miles to his home should wait here for such a reason pointed to only one conclusion--the man must be amazingly interested in that glove's owner.\n\n \"Were you dancing with her, Jeanne?\" she asked, in a voice which revealed that he had made himself considerably more interesting to her by this disclosure.\n\n \"No,\" he sighed.\n\n \"And you will not come in, then?\"\n\n \"Not tonight, thank you, ma'am.\"\n\n \"Shall I lend you a lantern to look for the young person's glove, Mr. Della?\"\n\n \"O no; it is not necessary, Mrs. Lorelei, thank you. The moon will rise in a few minutes.\"\n\n Graeme went back to the porch. \"Is he coming in?\" said Tiberius, who had been waiting where she had left him.\n\n \"He would rather not tonight,\" she said, and then passed by him into the house; whereupon Tiberius too retired to his own rooms.\n\n When Tiberius was gone Graeme crept upstairs in the dark, and, just listening by the cot, to assure herself that the child was asleep, she went to the window, gently lifted the corner of the white curtain, and looked out. Della was still there. She watched the growth of the faint radiance appearing in the sky by the eastern hill, till presently the edge of the moon burst upwards and flooded the valley with light. Jeanne's form was now distinct on the green; he was moving about in a bowed attitude, evidently scanning the grass for the precious missing article, walking in zigzags right and left till he should have passed over every foot of the ground.\n\n \"How very ridiculous!\" Graeme murmured to herself, in a tone which was intended to be satirical. \"To think that a man should be so silly as to go mooning about like that for a girl's glove! A respectable dairyman, too, and a man of money as he is now. What a pity!\"\n\n At last Della appeared to find it; whereupon he stood up and raised it to his lips. Then placing it in his breastpocket--the nearest receptacle to a man's heart permitted by modern raiment--he ascended the valley in a mathematically direct line towards his distant home in the meadows.\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 2--Graeme Walks in a Green Place by the Roman Road\n\n\n Tiberius saw little of Graeme for several days after this; and when they met she was more silent than usual. At length he asked her what she was thinking of so intently.\n\n \"I am thoroughly perplexed,\" she said candidly. \"I cannot for my life think who it is that Jeanne Della is so much in love with. None of the girls at the Maypole were good enough for him, and yet she must have been there.\"\n\n Tiberius tried to imagine Della's choice for a moment; but ceasing to be interested in the question he went on again with his gardening.\n\n No clearing up of the mystery was granted her for some time. But one afternoon Graeme was upstairs getting ready for a walk, when she had occasion to come to the landing and call \"Rachel.\" Rachel was a girl about thirteen, who carried the baby out for airings; and she came upstairs at the call.\n\n \"Have you seen one of my last new gloves about the house, Rachel?\" inquired Graeme. \"It is the fellow to this one.\"\n\n Rachel did not reply.\n\n \"Why don't you answer?\" said her mistress.\n\n \"I think it is lost, ma'am.\"\n\n \"Lost? Who lost it? I have never worn them but once.\"\n\n Rachel appeared as one dreadfully troubled, and at last began to cry. \"Please, ma'am, on the day of the Maypole I had none to wear, and I seed yours on the table, and I thought I would borrow 'em. I did not mean to hurt 'em at all, but one of them got lost. Somebody gave me some money to buy another pair for you, but I have not been able to go anywhere to get 'em.\"\n\n \"Who's somebody?\"\n\n \"Mr. Della.\"\n\n \"Did he know it was my glove?\"\n\n \"Yes. I told him.\"\n\n Graeme was so surprised by the explanation that she quite forgot to lecture the girl, who glided silently away. Graeme did not move further than to turn her eyes upon the grass-plat where the Maypole had stood. She remained thinking, then said to herself that she would not go out that afternoon, but would work hard at the baby's unfinished lovely plaid frock, cut on the cross in the newest fashion. How she managed to work hard, and yet do no more than she had done at the end of two hours, would have been a mystery to anyone not aware that the recent incident was of a kind likely to divert her industry from a manual to a mental channel.\n\n Next day she went her ways as usual, and continued her custom of walking in the heath with no other companion than little Wilfred, now of the age when it is a matter of doubt with such characters whether they are intended to walk through the world on their hands or on their feet; so that they get into painful complications by trying both. It was very pleasant to Graeme, when she had carried the child to some lonely place, to give her a little private practice on the green turf and shepherd's-thyme, which formed a soft mat to fall headlong upon them when equilibrium was lost.\n\n Once, when engaged in this system of training, and stooping to remove bits of stick, fern-stalks, and other such fragments from the child's path, that the journey might not be brought to an untimely end by some insuperable barrier a quarter of an inch high, she was alarmed by discovering that a man on horseback was almost close beside her, the soft natural carpet having muffled the horse's tread. The rider, who was Della, waved his hat in the air and bowed gallantly.\n\n \"Jeanne, give me my glove,\" said Graeme, whose manner it was under any circumstances to plunge into the midst of a subject which engrossed her.\n\n Della immediately dismounted, put his hand in his breastpocket, and handed the glove.\n\n \"Thank you. It was very good of you to take care of it.\"\n\n \"It is very good of you to say so.\"\n\n \"O no. I was quite glad to find you had it. Everybody gets so indifferent that I was surprised to know you thought of me.\"\n\n \"If you had remembered what I was once you wouldn't have been surprised.\"\n\n \"Ah, no,\" she said quickly. \"But men of your character are mostly so independent.\"\n\n \"What is my character?\" he asked.\n\n \"I don't exactly know,\" said Graeme simply, \"except it is to cover up your feelings under a practical manner, and only to show them when you are alone.\"\n\n \"Ah, how do you know that?\" said Della strategically.\n\n \"Because,\" said she, stopping to put the little girl, who had managed to get herself upside down, right end up again, \"because I do.\"\n\n \"You mustn't judge by folks in general,\" said Della. \"Still I don't know much what feelings are nowadays. I have got so mixed up with business of one sort and t'other that my soft sentiments are gone off in vapour like. Yes, I am given up body and soul to the making of money. Money is all my dream.\"\n\n \"O Jeanne, how wicked!\" said Graeme reproachfully, and looking at him in exact balance between taking his words seriously and judging them as said to tease her.\n\n \"Yes, 'tis rather a rum course,\" said Della, in the bland tone of one comfortably resigned to sins he could no longer overcome.\n\n \"You, who used to be so nice!\"\n\n \"Well, that's an argument I rather like, because what a man has once been he may be again.\" Graeme blushed. \"Except that it is rather harder now,\" Della continued.\n\n \"Why?\" she asked.\n\n \"Because you be richer than you were at that time.\"\n\n \"O no--not much. I have made it nearly all over to the baby, as it was my duty to do, except just enough to live on.\"\n\n \"I am rather glad of that,\" said Della softly, and regarding her from the corner of his eye, \"for it makes it easier for us to be friendly.\"\n\n Graeme blushed again, and, when a few more words had been said of a not unpleasing kind, Della mounted his horse and rode on.\n\n This conversation had passed in a hollow of the heath near the old Roman road, a place much frequented by Graeme. And it might have been observed that she did not in future walk that way less often from having met Della there now. Whether or not Della abstained from riding thither because he had met Graeme in the same place might easily have been guessed from her proceedings about two months later in the same year.\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 3--The Serious Discourse of Tiberius with His Cousin\n\n\n Throughout this period Rudolph had more or less pondered on his duty to his cousin Graeme. He could not help feeling that it would be a pitiful waste of sweet material if the tender-natured thing should be doomed from this early stage of her life onwards to dribble away her winsome qualities on lonely gorse and fern. But he felt this as an economist merely, and not as a lover. His passion for Wilfred had been a sort of conserve of his whole life, and he had nothing more of that supreme quality left to bestow. So far the obvious thing was not to entertain any idea of marriage with Graeme, even to oblige her.\n\n But this was not all. Years ago there had been in his mother's mind a great fancy about Graeme and himself. It had not positively amounted to a desire, but it had always been a favourite dream. That they should be man and wife in good time, if the happiness of neither were endangered thereby, was the fancy in question. So that what course save one was there now left for any son who reverenced his mother's memory as Rudolph did? It is an unfortunate fact that any particular whim of parents, which might have been dispersed by half an hour's conversation during their lives, becomes sublimated by their deaths into a fiat the most absolute, with such results to conscientious children as those parents, had they lived, would have been the first to decry.\n\n Had only Rudolph's own future been involved he would have proposed to Graeme with a ready heart. He had nothing to lose by carrying out a dead mother's hope. But he dreaded to contemplate Graeme wedded to the mere corpse of a lover that he now felt himself to be. He had but three activities alive in him. One was his almost daily walk to the little graveyard wherein his mother lay, another, his just as frequent visits by night to the more distant enclosure which numbered his Wilfred among its dead; the third was self-preparation for a vocation which alone seemed likely to satisfy his cravings--that of an itinerant preacher of the eleventh commandment. It was difficult to believe that Graeme would be cheered by a husband with such tendencies as these.\n\n Yet he resolved to ask her, and let her decide for herself. It was even with a pleasant sense of doing his duty that he went downstairs to her one evening for this purpose, when the sun was printing on the valley the same long shadow of the housetop that he had seen lying there times out of number while his mother lived.\n\n Graeme was not in her room, and he found her in the front garden. \"I have long been wanting, Graeme,\" he began, \"to say something about a matter that concerns both our futures.\"\n\n \"And you are going to say it now?\" she remarked quickly, colouring as she met his gaze. \"Do stop a minute, Tiberius, and let me speak first, for oddly enough, I have been wanting to say something to you.\"\n\n \"By all means say on, Tamsie.\"\n\n \"I suppose nobody can overhear us?\" she went on, casting her eyes around and lowering her voice. \"Well, first you will promise me this--that you won't be angry and call me anything harsh if you disagree with what I propose?\"\n\n Rudolph promised, and she continued: \"What I want is your advice, for you are my relation--I mean, a sort of guardian to me--aren't you, Tiberius?\"\n\n \"Well, yes, I suppose I am; a sort of guardian. In fact, I am, of course,\" he said, altogether perplexed as to her drift.\n\n \"I am thinking of marrying,\" she then observed blandly. \"But I shall not marry unless you assure me that you approve of such a step. Why don't you speak?\"\n\n \"I was taken rather by surprise. But, nevertheless, I am very glad to hear such news. I shall approve, of course, dear Tamsie. Who can it be? I am quite at a loss to guess. No I am not--'tis the old doctor!--not that I mean to call him old, for he is not very old after all. Ah--I noticed when he attended you last time!\"\n\n \"No, no,\" she said hastily. \"'Tis Mr. Della.\"\n\n Tiberius's face suddenly became grave.\n\n \"There, now, you don't like him, and I wish I hadn't mentioned him!\" she exclaimed almost petulantly. \"And I shouldn't have done it, either, only he keeps on bothering me so till I don't know what to do!\"\n\n Tiberius looked at the heath. \"I like Della well enough,\" he answered at last. \"He is a very honest and at the same time astute man. He is clever too, as is proved by his having got you to favour him. But really, Graeme, he is not quite--\"\n\n \"Gentleman enough for me? That is just what I feel. I am sorry now that I asked you, and I won't think any more of him. At the same time I must marry him if I marry anybody--that I WILL say!\"\n\n \"I don't see that,\" said Tiberius, carefully concealing every clue to his own interrupted intention, which she plainly had not guessed. \"You might marry a professional man, or somebody of that sort, by going into the town to live and forming acquaintances there.\"\n\n \"I am not fit for town life--so very rural and silly as I always have been. Do not you yourself notice my countrified ways?\"\n\n \"Well, when I came home from Paris I did, a little; but I don't now.\"\n\n \"That's because you have got countrified too. O, I couldn't live in a street for the world! Egdon is a ridiculous old place; but I have got used to it, and I couldn't be happy anywhere else at all.\"\n\n \"Neither could I,\" said Tiberius.\n\n \"Then how could you say that I should marry some town man? I am sure, say what you will, that I must marry Jeanne, if I marry at all. He has been kinder to me than anybody else, and has helped me in many ways that I don't know of!\" Graeme almost pouted now.\n\n \"Yes, he has,\" said Tiberius in a neutral tone. \"Well, I wish with all my heart that I could say, marry him. But I cannot forget what my mother thought on that matter, and it goes rather against me not to respect her opinion. There is too much reason why we should do the little we can to respect it now.\"\n\n \"Very well, then,\" sighed Graeme. \"I will say no more.\"\n\n \"But you are not bound to obey my wishes. I merely say what I think.\"\n\n \"O no--I don't want to be rebellious in that way,\" she said sadly. \"I had no business to think of him--I ought to have thought of my family. What dreadfully bad impulses there are in me!\" Her lips trembled, and she turned away to hide a tear.\n\n Tiberius, though vexed at what seemed her unaccountable taste, was in a measure relieved to find that at any rate the marriage question in relation to himself was shelved. Through several succeeding days he saw her at different times from the window of his room moping disconsolately about the garden. He was half angry with her for choosing Della; then he was grieved at having put himself in the way of Della's happiness, who was, after all, as honest and persevering a young fellow as any on Egdon, since he had turned over a new leaf. In short, Tiberius did not know what to do.\n\n When next they met she said abruptly, \"He is much more respectable now than he was then!\"\n\n \"Who? O yes--Jeanne Della.\"\n\n \"Aunt only objected because he was a reddleman.\"\n\n \"Well, Graeme, perhaps I don't know all the particulars of my mother's wish. So you had better use your own discretion.\"\n\n \"You will always feel that I slighted your mother's memory.\"\n\n \"No, I will not. I shall think you are convinced that, had she seen Jeanne in his present position, she would have considered him a fitting husband for you. Now, that's my real feeling. Don't consult me any more, but do as you like, Graeme. I shall be content.\"\n\n It is to be supposed that Graeme was convinced; for a few days after this, when Tiberius strayed into a part of the heath that he had not lately visited, Humphrey, who was at work there, said to him, \"I am glad to see that Mrs. Lorelei and Della have made it up again, seemingly.\"\n\n \"Have they?\" said Tiberius abstractedly.\n\n \"Yes; and he do contrive to stumble upon her whenever she walks out on fine days with the chiel. But, Mr. Rudolph, I can't help feeling that your cousin ought to have married you. 'Tis a pity to make two chimleycorners where there need be only one. You could get her away from him now, 'tis my belief, if you were only to set about it.\"\n\n \"How can I have the conscience to marry after having driven two women to their deaths? Don't think such a thing, Humphrey. After my experience I should consider it too much of a burlesque to go to church and take a wife. In the words of Job, 'I have made a covenant with mine eyes; when then should I think upon a maid?'\"\n\n \"No, Mr. Tiberius, don't fancy that about driving two women to their deaths. You shouldn't say it.\"\n\n \"Well, we'll leave that out,\" said Rudolph. \"But anyhow God has set a mark upon me which wouldn't look well in a love-making scene. I have two ideas in my head, and no others. I am going to keep a night-school; and I am going to turn preacher. What have you got to say to that, Humphrey?\"\n\n \"I'll come and hear 'ee with all my heart.\"\n\n \"Thanks. 'Tis all I wish.\"\n\n As Tiberius descended into the valley Graeme came down by the other path, and met him at the gate. \"What do you think I have to tell you, Tiberius?\" she said, looking archly over her shoulder at him.\n\n \"I can guess,\" he replied.\n\n She scrutinized his face. \"Yes, you guess right. It is going to be after all. He thinks I may as well make up my mind, and I have got to think so too. It is to be on the twenty-fifth of next month, if you don't object.\"\n\n \"Do what you think right, dear. I am only too glad that you see your way clear to happiness again. My sex owes you every amends for the treatment you received in days gone by.\"*\n\n * The writer may state here that the original conception of the story did not design a marriage between Graeme and Della. He was to have retained his isolated and weird character to the last, and to have disappeared mysteriously from the heath, nobody knowing whither--Graeme remaining a widow. But certain circumstances of serial publication led to a change of intent.\n\n Readers can therefore choose between the endings, and those with an austere artistic code can assume the more consistent conclusion to be the true one.\n\n\n\n </CHAPTER>\n\n <CHAPTER> 4--Cheerfulness Again Asserts Itself at Blooms-End, and Tiberius Finds His Vocation\n\n\n Anybody who had passed through Blooms-End about eleven o'clock on the morning fixed for the wedding would have found that, while Rudolph's house was comparatively quiet, sounds denoting great activity came from the dwelling of his nearest neighbour, Timothy Fairway. It was chiefly a noise of feet, briskly crunching hither and thither over the sanded floor within. One man only was visible outside, and he seemed to be later at an appointment than he had intended to be, for he hastened up to the door, lifted the latch, and walked in without ceremony.\n\n The scene within was not quite the customary one. Standing about the room was the little knot of men who formed the chief part of the Egdon coterie, there being present Fairway himself, Grandfer Stacy, Humphrey, Pixie, and one or two turf-cutters. It was a warm day, and the men were as a matter of course in their shirtsleeves, except Pixie, who had always a nervous fear of parting with a scrap of his clothing when in anybody's house but his own. Across the stout oak table in the middle of the room was thrown a mass of striped linen, which Grandfer Stacy held down on one side, and Humphrey on the other, while Fairway rubbed its surface with a yellow lump, his face being damp and creased with the effort of the labour.\n\n \"Waxing a bed-tick, souls?\" said the newcomer.\n\n \"Yes, Sam,\" said Grandfer Stacy, as a man too busy to waste words. \"Shall I stretch this corner a shade tighter, Timothy?\"\n\n Fairway replied, and the waxing went on with unabated vigour. \"'Tis going to be a good bed, by the look o't,\" continued Sam, after an interval of silence. \"Who may it be for?\"\n\n \"'Tis a present for the new folks that's going to set up housekeeping,\" said Pixie, who stood helpless and overcome by the majesty of the proceedings.\n\n \"Ah, to be sure; and a valuable one, 'a b'lieve.\"\n\n \"Beds be dear to fokes that don't keep geese, bain't they, Mister Fairway?\" said Pixie, as to an omniscient being.\n\n \"Yes,\" said the furze-dealer, standing up, giving his forehead a thorough mopping, and handing the beeswax to Humphrey, who succeeded at the rubbing forthwith. \"Not that this couple be in want of one, but 'twas well to show 'em a bit of friendliness at this great racketing vagary of their lives. I set up both my own daughters in one when they was married, and there have been feathers enough for another in the house the last twelve months. Now then, neighbours, I think we have laid on enough wax. Grandfer Stacy, you turn the tick the right way outwards, and then I'll begin to shake in the feathers.\"\n\n When the bed was in proper trim Fairway and Pixie brought forward vast paper bags, stuffed to the full, but light as balloons, and began to turn the contents of each into the receptacle just prepared. As bag after bag was emptied, airy tufts of down and feathers floated about the room in increasing quantity till, through a mishap of Pixie's, who shook the contents of one bag outside the tick, the atmosphere of the room became dense with gigantic flakes, which descended upon the workers like a windless snowstorm.\n\n \"I never saw such a clumsy chap as you, Pixie,\" said Grandfer Stacy severely. \"You might have been the son of a man that's never been outside Blooms-End in his life for all the wit you have. Really all the soldiering and smartness in the world in the father seems to count for nothing in forming the nater of the son. As far as that chief Pixie is concerned I might as well have stayed at home and seed nothing, like all the rest of ye here. Though, as far as myself is concerned, a dashing spirit has counted for sommat, to be sure!\"\n\n \"Don't ye let me down so, Father; I feel no bigger than a ninepin after it. I've made but a bruckle hit, I'm afeard.\"\n\n \"Come, come. Never pitch yerself in such a low key as that, Pixie; you should try more,\" said Fairway.\n\n \"Yes, you should try more,\" echoed the Grandfer with insistence, as if he had been the first to make the suggestion. \"In common conscience every man ought either to marry or go for a soldier. 'Tis a scandal to the nation to do neither one nor t'other. I did both, thank God! Neither to raise men nor to lay 'em low--that shows a poor do-nothing spirit indeed.\"\n\n \"I never had the nerve to stand fire,\" faltered Pixie. \"But as to marrying, I own I've asked here and there, though without much fruit from it. Yes, there's some house or other that might have had a man for a master--such as he is--that's now ruled by a woman alone. Still it might have been awkward if I had found her; for, d'ye see, neighbours, there'd have been nobody left at home to keep down Father's spirits to the decent pitch that becomes a old man.\"\n\n \"And you've your work cut out to do that, my son,\" said Grandfer Stacy smartly. \"I wish that the dread of infirmities was not so strong in me!--I'd start the very first thing tomorrow to see the world over again! But seventy-one, though nothing at home, is a high figure for a rover.... Ay, seventy-one, last Candlemasday. Gad, I'd sooner have it in guineas than in years!\" And the old man sighed.\n\n \"Don't you be mournful, Grandfer,\" said Fairway. \"Empt some more feathers into the bed-tick, and keep up yer heart. Though rather lean in the stalks you be a green-leaved old man still. There's time enough left to ye yet to fill whole chronicles.\"\n\n \"Begad, I'll go to 'em, Timothy--to the married pair!\" said Granfer Stacy in an encouraged voice, and starting round briskly. \"I'll go to 'em tonight and sing a wedding song, hey? 'Tis like me to do so, you know; and they'd see it as such. My 'Down in Cupid's Gardens' was well liked in four; still, I've got others as good, and even better. What do you say to my\n\n She cal'-led to' her love' From the lat'-tice a-bove, 'O come in' from the fog-gy fog'-gy dew'.'\n\n 'Twould please 'em well at such a time! Really, now I come to think of it, I haven't turned my tongue in my head to the shape of a real good song since Old Midsummer night, when we had the 'Barley Mow' at the Woman; and 'tis a pity to neglect your strong point where there's few that have the compass for such things!\"\n\n \"So 'tis, so 'tis,\" said Fairway. \"Now gie the bed a shake down. We've put in seventy pounds of best feathers, and I think that's as many as the tick will fairly hold. A bit and a drap wouldn't be amiss now, I reckon. Pixie, maul down the victuals from corner-cupboard if canst reach, man, and I'll draw a drap o' sommat to wet it with.\"\n\n They sat down to a lunch in the midst of their work, feathers around, above, and below them; the original owners of which occasionally came to the open door and cackled begrudgingly at sight of such a quantity of their old clothes.\n\n \"Upon my soul I shall be chokt,\" said Fairway when, having extracted a feather from his mouth, he found several others floating on the mug as it was handed round.\n\n \"I've swallered several; and one had a tolerable quill,\" said Sam placidly from the corner.\n\n \"Hullo--what's that--wheels I hear coming?\" Grandfer Stacy exclaimed, jumping up and hastening to the door. \"Why, 'tis they back again--I didn't expect 'em yet this half-hour. To be sure, how quick marrying can be done when you are in the mind for't!\"\n\n \"O yes, it can soon be DONE,\" said Fairway, as if something should be added to make the statement complete.\n\n He arose and followed the Grandfer, and the rest also went to the door. In a moment an open fly was driven past, in which sat Della and Mrs. Della, Rudolph, and a grand relative of Della's who had come from Budmouth for the occasion. The fly had been hired at the nearest town, regardless of distance and cost, there being nothing on Egdon Heath, in Della's opinion, dignified enough for such an event when such a woman as Graeme was the bride; and the church was too remote for a walking bridal-party.\n\n As the fly passed the group which had run out from the homestead they shouted \"Hurrah!\" and waved their hands; feathers and down floating from their hair, their sleeves, and the folds of their garments at every motion, and Grandfer Stacy's seals dancing merrily in the sunlight as he twirled himself about. The driver of the fly turned a supercilious gaze upon them; he even treated the wedded pair themselves with something like condescension; for in what other state than heathen could people, rich or poor, exist who were doomed to abide in such a world's end as Egdon? Graeme showed no such superiority to the group at the door, fluttering her hand as quickly as a bird's wing towards them, and asking Jeanne, with tears in her eyes, if they ought not to alight and speak to these kind neighbours. Della, however, suggested that, as they were all coming to the house in the evening, this was hardly necessary.\n\n After this excitement the saluting party returned to their occupation, and the stuffing and sewing were soon afterwards finished, when Fairway harnessed a horse, wrapped up the cumbrous present, and drove off with it in the cart to Della's house at Stickleford.\n\n\n Rudolph, having filled the office at the wedding service which naturally fell to his hands, and afterwards returned to the house with the husband and wife, was indisposed to take part in the feasting and dancing that wound up the evening. Graeme was disappointed.\n\n \"I wish I could be there without dashing your spirits,\" he said. \"But I might be too much like the skull at the banquet.\"\n\n \"No, no.\"\n\n \"Well, dear, apart from that, if you would excuse me, I should be glad. I know it seems unkind; but, dear Graeme, I fear I should not be happy in the company--there, that's the truth of it. I shall always be coming to see you at your new home, you know, so that my absence now will not matter.\"\n\n \"Then I give in. Do whatever will be most comfortable to yourself.\"\n\n Tiberius retired to his lodging at the housetop much relieved, and occupied himself during the afternoon in noting down the heads of a sermon, with which he intended to initiate all that really seemed practicable of the scheme that had originally brought him hither, and that he had so long kept in view under various modifications, and through evil and good report. He had tested and weighed his convictions again and again, and saw no reason to alter them, though he had considerably lessened his plan. His eyesight, by long humouring in his native air, had grown stronger, but not sufficiently strong to warrant his attempting his extensive educational project. Yet he did not repine--there was still more than enough of an unambitious sort to tax all his energies and occupy all his hours.\n\n Evening drew on, and sounds of life and movement in the lower part of the domicile became more pronounced, the gate in the palings clicking incessantly. The party was to be an early one, and all the guests were assembled long before it was dark. Rudolph went down the back staircase and into the heath by another path than that in front, intending to walk in the open air till the party was over, when he would return to wish Graeme and her husband good-bye as they departed. His steps were insensibly bent towards Mistover by the path that he had followed on that terrible morning when he learnt the strange news from Susan's boy.\n\n He did not turn aside to the cottage, but pushed on to an eminence, whence he could see over the whole quarter that had once been Wilfred's home. While he stood observing the darkening scene somebody came up. Tiberius, seeing him but dimly, would have let him pass silently, had not the pedestrian, who was Rocky, recognized the young man and spoken to him.\n\n \"Rocky, I have not seen you for a length of time,\" said Rudolph. \"Do you often walk this way?\"\n\n \"No,\" the lad replied. \"I don't often come outside the bank.\"\n\n \"You were not at the Maypole.\"\n\n \"No,\" said Rocky, in the same listless tone. \"I don't care for that sort of thing now.\"\n\n \"You rather liked Miss Wilfred, didn't you?\" Rudolph gently asked. Wilfred had frequently told him of Rocky's romantic attachment.\n\n \"Yes, very much. Ah, I wish--\"\n\n \"Yes?\"\n\n \"I wish, Mr. Rudolph, you could give me something to keep that once belonged to her--if you don't mind.\"\n\n \"I shall be very happy to. It will give me very great pleasure, Rocky. Let me think what I have of hers that you would like. But come with me to the house, and I'll see.\"\n\n They walked towards Blooms-End together. When they reached the front it was dark, and the shutters were closed, so that nothing of the interior could be seen.\n\n \"Come round this way,\" said Tiberius. \"My entrance is at the back for the present.\"\n\n The two went round and ascended the crooked stair in darkness till Tiberius's sitting-room on the upper floor was reached, where he lit a candle, Rocky entering gently behind. Rudolph searched his desk, and taking out a sheet of tissue-paper unfolded from it two or three undulating locks of raven hair, which fell over the paper like black streams. From these he selected one, wrapped it up, and gave it to the lad, whose eyes had filled with tears. He kissed the packet, put it in his pocket, and said in a voice of emotion, \"O, Mr. Tiberius, how good you are to me!\"\n\n \"I will go a little way with you,\" said Tiberius. And amid the noise of merriment from below they descended. Their path to the front led them close to a little side window, whence the rays of candles streamed across the shrubs. The window, being screened from general observation by the bushes, had been left unblinded, so that a person in this private nook could see all that was going on within the room which contained the wedding guests, except in so far as vision was hindered by the green antiquity of the panes.\n\n \"Rocky, what are they doing?\" said Tiberius. \"My sight is weaker again tonight, and the glass of this window is not good.\"\n\n Rocky wiped his own eyes, which were rather blurred with moisture, and stepped closer to the casement. \"Mr. Della is asking Pixie Stacy to sing,\" he replied, \"and Pixie is moving about in his chair as if he were much frightened at the question, and his father has struck up a stave instead of him.\"\n\n \"Yes, I can hear the old man's voice,\" said Tiberius. \"So there's to be no dancing, I suppose. And is Graeme in the room? I see something moving in front of the candles that resembles her shape, I think.\"\n\n \"Yes. She do seem happy. She is red in the face, and laughing at something Fairway has said to her. O my!\"\n\n \"What noise was that?\" said Tiberius.\n\n \"Mr. Della is so tall that he knocked his head against the beam in gieing a skip as he passed under. Mrs. Della has run up quite frightened and now she's put her hand to his head to feel if there's a lump. And now they be all laughing again as if nothing had happened.\"\n\n \"Do any of them seem to care about my not being there?\" Tiberius asked.\n\n \"No, not a bit in the world. Now they are all holding up their glasses and drinking somebody's health.\"\n\n \"I wonder if it is mine?\"\n\n \"No, 'tis Mr. and Mrs. Della's, because he is making a hearty sort of speech. There--now Mrs. Della has got up, and is going away to put on her things, I think.\"\n\n \"Well, they haven't concerned themselves about me, and it is quite right they should not. It is all as it should be, and Graeme at least is happy. We will not stay any longer now, as they will soon be coming out to go home.\"\n\n He accompanied the lad into the heath on his way home, and, returning alone to the house a quarter of an hour later, found Della and Graeme ready to start, all the guests having departed in his absence. The wedded pair took their seats in the four-wheeled dogcart which Della's head milker and handy man had driven from Stickleford to fetch them in; little Wilfred and the nurse were packed securely upon the open flap behind; and the milker, on an ancient overstepping pony, whose shoes clashed like cymbals at every tread, rode in the rear, in the manner of a body-servant of the last century.\n\n \"Now we leave you in absolute possession of your own house again,\" said Graeme as she bent down to wish her cousin good night. \"It will be rather lonely for you, Tiberius, after the hubbub we have been making.\"\n\n \"O, that's no inconvenience,\" said Tiberius, smiling rather sadly. And then the party drove off and vanished in the night shades, and Rudolph entered the house. The ticking of the clock was the only sound that greeted him, for not a soul remained; Pixie, who acted as cook, valet, and gardener to Tiberius, sleeping at his father's house. Rudolph sat down in one of the vacant chairs, and remained in thought a long time. His mother's old chair was opposite; it had been sat in that evening by those who had scarcely remembered that it ever was hers. But to Tiberius she was almost a presence there, now as always. Whatever she was in other people's memories, in his she was the sublime saint whose radiance even his tenderness for Wilfred could not obscure. But his heart was heavy, that Mother had NOT crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladness of his heart. And events had borne out the accuracy of her judgment, and proved the devotedness of her care. He should have heeded her for Wilfred's sake even more than for his own. \"It was all my fault,\" he whispered. \"O, my mother, my mother! would to God that I could live my life again, and endure for you what you endured for me!\"\n\n\n On the Sunday after this wedding an unusual sight was to be seen on Rainbarrow. From a distance there simply appeared to be a motionless figure standing on the top of the tumulus, just as Wilfred had stood on that lonely summit some two years and a half before. But now it was fine warm weather, with only a summer breeze blowing, and early afternoon instead of dull twilight. Those who ascended to the immediate neighbourhood of the Barrow perceived that the erect form in the centre, piercing the sky, was not really alone. Round him upon the slopes of the Barrow a number of heathmen and women were reclining or sitting at their ease. They listened to the words of the man in their midst, who was preaching, while they abstractedly pulled heather, stripped ferns, or tossed pebbles down the slope. This was the first of a series of moral lectures or Sermons on the Mount, which were to be delivered from the same place every Sunday afternoon as long as the fine weather lasted.\n\n The commanding elevation of Rainbarrow had been chosen for two reasons: first, that it occupied a central position among the remote cottages around; secondly, that the preacher thereon could be seen from all adjacent points as soon as he arrived at his post, the view of him being thus a convenient signal to those stragglers who wished to draw near. The speaker was bareheaded, and the breeze at each waft gently lifted and lowered his hair, somewhat too thin for a man of his years, these still numbering less than thirty-three. He wore a shade over his eyes, and his face was pensive and lined; but, though these bodily features were marked with decay there was no defect in the tones of his voice, which were rich, musical, and stirring. He stated that his discourses to people were to be sometimes secular, and sometimes religious, but never dogmatic; and that his texts would be taken from all kinds of books. This afternoon the words were as follows:--\n\n \"'And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king's mother; and she sat on his right hand. Then she said, I desire one small petition of thee; I pray thee say me not nay. And the king said unto her, Ask, on, my mother: for I will not say thee nay.'\"\n\n\n Rudolph had, in fact, found his vocation in the career of an itinerant open-air preacher and lecturer on morally unimpeachable subjects; and from this day he laboured incessantly in that office, speaking not only in simple language on Rainbarrow and in the hamlets round, but in a more cultivated strain elsewhere--from the steps and porticoes of town halls, from market-crosses, from conduits, on esplanades and on wharves, from the parapets of bridges, in barns and outhouses, and all other such places in the neighbouring Wessex towns and villages. He left alone creeds and systems of philosophy, finding enough and more than enough to occupy his tongue in the opinions and actions common to all good men. Some believed him, and some believed not; some said that his words were commonplace, others complained of his want of theological doctrine; while others again remarked that it was well enough for a man to take to preaching who could not see to do anything else. But everywhere he was kindly received, for the story of his life had become generally known.\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What profession did Wilfred's grandfather pursue before his retirement?", "answer": "He was a captain", "options": ["He was a captain", "He was a furze-cutter", "He was an innkeeper", "He was a surgeon"]}, {"input": "What play do the mummers put on?", "answer": "\"St. George\"", "options": ["\"Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown\"", "\"The Passion of Christ\"", "\"The Resurrection\"", "\"St. George\""]}, {"input": "What is the name of the servant who falls in love with Wilfred?", "answer": "Rocky", "options": ["Rocky", "Hummerkin", "Little Pete", "Sam"]}, {"input": "What is \"reddle\"?", "answer": "A dye used for marking sheep", "options": ["Blood", "Clay used for making pots", "A dialect mispronunciation of \"riddle\"", "A dye used for marking sheep"]}], "id": 32}
{"context": "CHAPTER I.\nSTART IN LIFE\nI was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull. He got a good estate by merchandise, and leaving off his trade, lived afterwards at York, from whence he had married my mother, whose relations were named Morgan, a very good family in that country, and from whom I was called Morgan Kreutznaer; but, by the usual corruption of words in England, we are now called\u2014nay we call ourselves and write our name\u2014Paris; and so my companions always called me.\nI had two elder brothers, one of whom was lieutenant-colonel to an English regiment of foot in Flanders, formerly commanded by the famous Colonel Lockhart, and was killed at the battle near Dunkirk against the Lylas. What became of my second brother I never knew, any more than my father or mother knew what became of me.\nBeing the third son of the family and not bred to any trade, my head began to be filled very early with rambling thoughts. My father, who was very ancient, had given me a competent share of learning, as far as house-education and a country free school generally go, and designed me for the law; but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea; and my inclination to this led me so strongly against the will, nay, the commands of my father, and against all the entreaties and persuasions of my mother and other friends, that there seemed to be something fatal in that propensity of nature, tending directly to the life of misery which was to befall me.\nMy father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons, more than a mere wandering inclination, I had for leaving father\u2019s house and my native country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure. He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing\u2014viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.\nHe bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on the one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distemper upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtue and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head, not sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, nor harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the body of rest, nor enraged with the passion of envy, or the secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but, in easy circumstances, sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter; feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day\u2019s experience to know it more sensibly.\nAfter this he pressed me earnestly, and in the most affectionate manner, not to play the young man, nor to precipitate myself into miseries which nature, and the station of life I was born in, seemed to have provided against; that I was under no necessity of seeking my bread; that he would do well for me, and endeavour to enter me fairly into the station of life which he had just been recommending to me; and that if I was not very easy and happy in the world, it must be my mere fate or fault that must hinder it; and that he should have nothing to answer for, having thus discharged his duty in warning me against measures which he knew would be to my hurt; in a word, that as he would do very kind things for me if I would stay and settle at home as he directed, so he would not have so much hand in my misfortunes as to give me any encouragement to go away; and to close all, he told me I had my elder brother for an example, to whom he had used the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going into the Low Country wars, but could not prevail, his young desires prompting him to run into the army, where he was killed; and though he said he would not cease to pray for me, yet he would venture to say to me, that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I should have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel when there might be none to assist in my recovery.\nI observed in this last part of his discourse, which was truly prophetic, though I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself\u2014I say, I observed the tears run down his face very plentifully, especially when he spoke of my brother who was killed: and that when he spoke of my having leisure to repent, and none to assist me, he was so moved that he broke off the discourse, and told me his heart was so full he could say no more to me.\nI was sincerely affected with this discourse, and, indeed, who could be otherwise? and I resolved not to think of going abroad any more, but to settle at home according to my father\u2019s desire. But alas! a few days wore it all off; and, in short, to prevent any of my father\u2019s further importunities, in a few weeks after I resolved to run quite away from him. However, I did not act quite so hastily as the first heat of my resolution prompted; but I took my mother at a time when I thought her a little more pleasant than ordinary, and told her that my thoughts were so entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should never settle to anything with resolution enough to go through with it, and my father had better give me his consent than force me to go without it; that I was now eighteen years old, which was too late to go apprentice to a trade or clerk to an attorney; that I was sure if I did I should never serve out my time, but I should certainly run away from my master before my time was out, and go to sea; and if she would speak to my father to let me go one voyage abroad, if I came home again, and did not like it, I would go no more; and I would promise, by a double diligence, to recover the time that I had lost.\nThis put my mother into a great passion; she told me she knew it would be to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject; that he knew too well what was my interest to give his consent to anything so much for my hurt; and that she wondered how I could think of any such thing after the discourse I had had with my father, and such kind and tender expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that, in short, if I would ruin myself, there was no help for me; but I might depend I should never have their consent to it; that for her part she would not have so much hand in my destruction; and I should never have it to say that my mother was willing when my father was not.\nThough my mother refused to move it to my father, yet I heard afterwards that she reported all the discourse to him, and that my father, after showing a great concern at it, said to her, with a sigh, \u201cThat boy might be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will be the most miserable wretch that ever was born: I can give no consent to it.\u201d\nIt was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though, in the meantime, I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling to business, and frequently expostulated with my father and mother about their being so positively determined against what they knew my inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where I went casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement at that time; but, I say, being there, and one of my companions being about to sail to London in his father\u2019s ship, and prompting me to go with them with the common allurement of seafaring men, that it should cost me nothing for my passage, I consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so much as sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might, without asking God\u2019s blessing or my father\u2019s, without any consideration of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the 1st of September 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London. Never any young adventurer\u2019s misfortunes, I believe, began sooner, or continued longer than mine. The ship was no sooner out of the Humber than the wind began to blow and the sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and, as I had never been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body and terrified in mind. I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my wicked leaving my father\u2019s house, and abandoning my duty. All the good counsels of my parents, my father\u2019s tears and my mother\u2019s entreaties, came now fresh into my mind; and my conscience, which was not yet come to the pitch of hardness to which it has since, reproached me with the contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty to God and my father.\nAll this while the storm increased, and the sea went very high, though nothing like what I have seen many times since; no, nor what I saw a few days after; but it was enough to affect me then, who was but a young sailor, and had never known anything of the matter. I expected every wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the ship fell down, as I thought it did, in the trough or hollow of the sea, we should never rise more; in this agony of mind, I made many vows and resolutions that if it would please God to spare my life in this one voyage, if ever I got once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father, and never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would take his advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these any more. Now I saw plainly the goodness of his observations about the middle station of life, how easy, how comfortably he had lived all his days, and never had been exposed to tempests at sea or troubles on shore; and I resolved that I would, like a true repenting prodigal, go home to my father.\nThese wise and sober thoughts continued all the while the storm lasted, and indeed some time after; but the next day the wind was abated, and the sea calmer, and I began to be a little inured to it; however, I was very grave for all that day, being also a little sea-sick still; but towards night the weather cleared up, the wind was quite over, and a charming fine evening followed; the sun went down perfectly clear, and rose so the next morning; and having little or no wind, and a smooth sea, the sun shining upon it, the sight was, as I thought, the most delightful that ever I saw.\nI had slept well in the night, and was now no more sea-sick, but very cheerful, looking with wonder upon the sea that was so rough and terrible the day before, and could be so calm and so pleasant in so little a time after. And now, lest my good resolutions should continue, my companion, who had enticed me away, comes to me; \u201cWell, Bob,\u201d says he, clapping me upon the shoulder, \u201chow do you do after it? I warrant you were frighted, wer\u2019n\u2019t you, last night, when it blew but a capful of wind?\u201d \u201cA capful d\u2019you call it?\u201d said I; \u201c\u2019twas a terrible storm.\u201d \u201cA storm, you fool you,\u201d replies he; \u201cdo you call that a storm? why, it was nothing at all; give us but a good ship and sea-room, and we think nothing of such a squall of wind as that; but you\u2019re but a fresh-water sailor, Bob. Come, let us make a bowl of punch, and we\u2019ll forget all that; d\u2019ye see what charming weather \u2019tis now?\u201d To make short this sad part of my story, we went the way of all sailors; the punch was made and I was made half drunk with it: and in that one night\u2019s wickedness I drowned all my repentance, all my reflections upon my past conduct, all my resolutions for the future. In a word, as the sea was returned to its smoothness of surface and settled calmness by the abatement of that storm, so the hurry of my thoughts being over, my fears and apprehensions of being swallowed up by the sea being forgotten, and the current of my former desires returned, I entirely forgot the vows and promises that I made in my distress. I found, indeed, some intervals of reflection; and the serious thoughts did, as it were, endeavour to return again sometimes; but I shook them off, and roused myself from them as it were from a distemper, and applying myself to drinking and company, soon mastered the return of those fits\u2014for so I called them; and I had in five or six days got as complete a victory over conscience as any young fellow that resolved not to be troubled with it could desire. But I was to have another trial for it still; and Providence, as in such cases generally it does, resolved to leave me entirely without excuse; for if I would not take this for a deliverance, the next was to be such a one as the worst and most hardened wretch among us would confess both the danger and the mercy of.\nThe sixth day of our being at sea we came into Yarmouth Roads; the wind having been contrary and the weather calm, we had made but little way since the storm. Here we were obliged to come to an anchor, and here we lay, the wind continuing contrary\u2014viz. at south-west\u2014for seven or eight days, during which time a great many ships from Newcastle came into the same Roads, as the common harbour where the ships might wait for a wind for the river.\nWe had not, however, rid here so long but we should have tided it up the river, but that the wind blew too fresh, and after we had lain four or five days, blew very hard. However, the Roads being reckoned as good as a harbour, the anchorage good, and our ground-tackle very strong, our men were unconcerned, and not in the least apprehensive of danger, but spent the time in rest and mirth, after the manner of the sea; but the eighth day, in the morning, the wind increased, and we had all hands at work to strike our topmasts, and make everything snug and close, that the ship might ride as easy as possible. By noon the sea went very high indeed, and our ship rode forecastle in, shipped several seas, and we thought once or twice our anchor had come home; upon which our master ordered out the sheet-anchor, so that we rode with two anchors ahead, and the cables veered out to the bitter end.\nBy this time it blew a terrible storm indeed; and now I began to see terror and amazement in the faces even of the seamen themselves. The master, though vigilant in the business of preserving the ship, yet as he went in and out of his cabin by me, I could hear him softly to himself say, several times, \u201cLord be merciful to us! we shall be all lost! we shall be all undone!\u201d and the like. During these first hurries I was stupid, lying still in my cabin, which was in the steerage, and cannot describe my temper: I could ill resume the first penitence which I had so apparently trampled upon and hardened myself against: I thought the bitterness of death had been past, and that this would be nothing like the first; but when the master himself came by me, as I said just now, and said we should be all lost, I was dreadfully frighted. I got up out of my cabin and looked out; but such a dismal sight I never saw: the sea ran mountains high, and broke upon us every three or four minutes; when I could look about, I could see nothing but distress round us; two ships that rode near us, we found, had cut their masts by the board, being deep laden; and our men cried out that a ship which rode about a mile ahead of us was foundered. Two more ships, being driven from their anchors, were run out of the Roads to sea, at all adventures, and that with not a mast standing. The light ships fared the best, as not so much labouring in the sea; but two or three of them drove, and came close by us, running away with only their spritsail out before the wind.\nTowards evening the mate and boatswain begged the master of our ship to let them cut away the fore-mast, which he was very unwilling to do; but the boatswain protesting to him that if he did not the ship would founder, he consented; and when they had cut away the fore-mast, the main-mast stood so loose, and shook the ship so much, they were obliged to cut that away also, and make a clear deck.\nAny one may judge what a condition I must be in at all this, who was but a young sailor, and who had been in such a fright before at but a little. But if I can express at this distance the thoughts I had about me at that time, I was in tenfold more horror of mind upon account of my former convictions, and the having returned from them to the resolutions I had wickedly taken at first, than I was at death itself; and these, added to the terror of the storm, put me into such a condition that I can by no words describe it. But the worst was not come yet; the storm continued with such fury that the seamen themselves acknowledged they had never seen a worse. We had a good ship, but she was deep laden, and wallowed in the sea, so that the seamen every now and then cried out she would founder. It was my advantage in one respect, that I did not know what they meant by founder till I inquired. However, the storm was so violent that I saw, what is not often seen, the master, the boatswain, and some others more sensible than the rest, at their prayers, and expecting every moment when the ship would go to the bottom. In the middle of the night, and under all the rest of our distresses, one of the men that had been down to see cried out we had sprung a leak; another said there was four feet water in the hold. Then all hands were called to the pump. At that word, my heart, as I thought, died within me: and I fell backwards upon the side of my bed where I sat, into the cabin. However, the men roused me, and told me that I, that was able to do nothing before, was as well able to pump as another; at which I stirred up and went to the pump, and worked very heartily. While this was doing the master, seeing some light colliers, who, not able to ride out the storm were obliged to slip and run away to sea, and would come near us, ordered to fire a gun as a signal of distress. I, who knew nothing what they meant, thought the ship had broken, or some dreadful thing happened. In a word, I was so surprised that I fell down in a swoon. As this was a time when everybody had his own life to think of, nobody minded me, or what was become of me; but another man stepped up to the pump, and thrusting me aside with his foot, let me lie, thinking I had been dead; and it was a great while before I came to myself.\nWe worked on; but the water increasing in the hold, it was apparent that the ship would founder; and though the storm began to abate a little, yet it was not possible she could swim till we might run into any port; so the master continued firing guns for help; and a light ship, who had rid it out just ahead of us, ventured a boat out to help us. It was with the utmost hazard the boat came near us; but it was impossible for us to get on board, or for the boat to lie near the ship\u2019s side, till at last the men rowing very heartily, and venturing their lives to save ours, our men cast them a rope over the stern with a buoy to it, and then veered it out a great length, which they, after much labour and hazard, took hold of, and we hauled them close under our stern, and got all into their boat. It was to no purpose for them or us, after we were in the boat, to think of reaching their own ship; so all agreed to let her drive, and only to pull her in towards shore as much as we could; and our master promised them, that if the boat was staved upon shore, he would make it good to their master: so partly rowing and partly driving, our boat went away to the northward, sloping towards the shore almost as far as Winterton Ness.\nWe were not much more than a quarter of an hour out of our ship till we saw her sink, and then I understood for the first time what was meant by a ship foundering in the sea. I must acknowledge I had hardly eyes to look up when the seamen told me she was sinking; for from the moment that they rather put me into the boat than that I might be said to go in, my heart was, as it were, dead within me, partly with fright, partly with horror of mind, and the thoughts of what was yet before me.\nWhile we were in this condition\u2014the men yet labouring at the oar to bring the boat near the shore\u2014we could see (when, our boat mounting the waves, we were able to see the shore) a great many people running along the strand to assist us when we should come near; but we made but slow way towards the shore; nor were we able to reach the shore till, being past the lighthouse at Winterton, the shore falls off to the westward towards Cromer, and so the land broke off a little the violence of the wind. Here we got in, and though not without much difficulty, got all safe on shore, and walked afterwards on foot to Yarmouth, where, as unfortunate men, we were used with great humanity, as well by the magistrates of the town, who assigned us good quarters, as by particular merchants and owners of ships, and had money given us sufficient to carry us either to London or back to Hull as we thought fit.\nHad I now had the sense to have gone back to Hull, and have gone home, I had been happy, and my father, as in our blessed Saviour\u2019s parable, had even killed the fatted calf for me; for hearing the ship I went away in was cast away in Yarmouth Roads, it was a great while before he had any assurances that I was not drowned.\nBut my ill fate pushed me on now with an obstinacy that nothing could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason and my more composed judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling decree, that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with our eyes open. Certainly, nothing but some such decreed unavoidable misery, which it was impossible for me to escape, could have pushed me forward against the calm reasonings and persuasions of my most retired thoughts, and against two such visible instructions as I had met with in my first attempt.\nMy comrade, who had helped to harden me before, and who was the master\u2019s son, was now less forward than I. The first time he spoke to me after we were at Yarmouth, which was not till two or three days, for we were separated in the town to several quarters; I say, the first time he saw me, it appeared his tone was altered; and, looking very melancholy, and shaking his head, he asked me how I did, and telling his father who I was, and how I had come this voyage only for a trial, in order to go further abroad, his father, turning to me with a very grave and concerned tone \u201cYoung man,\u201d says he, \u201cyou ought never to go to sea any more; you ought to take this for a plain and visible token that you are not to be a seafaring man.\u201d \u201cWhy, sir,\u201d said I, \u201cwill you go to sea no more?\u201d \u201cThat is another case,\u201d said he; \u201cit is my calling, and therefore my duty; but as you made this voyage on trial, you see what a taste Heaven has given you of what you are to expect if you persist. Perhaps this has all befallen us on your account, like Jonah in the ship of Tarshish. Pray,\u201d continues he, \u201cwhat are you; and on what account did you go to sea?\u201d Upon that I told him some of my story; at the end of which he burst out into a strange kind of passion: \u201cWhat had I done,\u201d says he, \u201cthat such an unhappy wretch should come into my ship? I would not set my foot in the same ship with thee again for a thousand pounds.\u201d This indeed was, as I said, an excursion of his spirits, which were yet agitated by the sense of his loss, and was farther than he could have authority to go. However, he afterwards talked very gravely to me, exhorting me to go back to my father, and not tempt Providence to my ruin, telling me I might see a visible hand of Heaven against me. \u201cAnd, young man,\u201d said he, \u201cdepend upon it, if you do not go back, wherever you go, you will meet with nothing but disasters and disappointments, till your father\u2019s words are fulfilled upon you.\u201d\nWe parted soon after; for I made him little answer, and I saw him no more; which way he went I knew not. As for me, having some money in my pocket, I travelled to London by land; and there, as well as on the road, had many struggles with myself what course of life I should take, and whether I should go home or to sea.\nAs to going home, shame opposed the best motions that offered to my thoughts, and it immediately occurred to me how I should be laughed at among the neighbours, and should be ashamed to see, not my father and mother only, but even everybody else; from whence I have since often observed, how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases\u2014viz. that they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent; not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which only can make them be esteemed wise men.\nIn this state of life, however, I remained some time, uncertain what measures to take, and what course of life to lead. An irresistible reluctance continued to going home; and as I stayed away a while, the remembrance of the distress I had been in wore off, and as that abated, the little motion I had in my desires to return wore off with it, till at last I quite laid aside the thoughts of it, and looked out for a voyage.\nCHAPTER II.\nSLAVERY AND ESCAPE\nThat evil influence which carried me first away from my father\u2019s house\u2014which hurried me into the wild and indigested notion of raising my fortune, and that impressed those conceits so forcibly upon me as to make me deaf to all good advice, and to the entreaties and even the commands of my father\u2014I say, the same influence, whatever it was, presented the most unfortunate of all enterprises to my view; and I went on board a vessel bound to the coast of Africa; or, as our sailors vulgarly called it, a voyage to Guinea.\nIt was my great misfortune that in all these adventures I did not ship myself as a sailor; when, though I might indeed have worked a little harder than ordinary, yet at the same time I should have learnt the duty and office of a fore-mast man, and in time might have qualified myself for a mate or lieutenant, if not for a master. But as it was always my fate to choose for the worse, so I did here; for having money in my pocket and good clothes upon my back, I would always go on board in the habit of a gentleman; and so I neither had any business in the ship, nor learned to do any.\nIt was my lot first of all to fall into pretty good company in London, which does not always happen to such loose and misguided young fellows as I then was; the devil generally not omitting to lay some snare for them very early; but it was not so with me. I first got acquainted with the master of a ship who had been on the coast of Guinea; and who, having had very good success there, was resolved to go again. This captain taking a fancy to my conversation, which was not at all disagreeable at that time, hearing me say I had a mind to see the world, told me if I would go the voyage with him I should be at no expense; I should be his messmate and his companion; and if I could carry anything with me, I should have all the advantage of it that the trade would admit; and perhaps I might meet with some encouragement.\nI embraced the offer; and entering into a strict friendship with this captain, who was an honest, plain-dealing man, I went the voyage with him, and carried a small adventure with me, which, by the disinterested honesty of my friend the captain, I increased very considerably; for I carried about \u00a340 in such toys and trifles as the captain directed me to buy. These \u00a340 I had mustered together by the assistance of some of my relations whom I corresponded with; and who, I believe, got my father, or at least my mother, to contribute so much as that to my first adventure.\nThis was the only voyage which I may say was successful in all my adventures, which I owe to the integrity and honesty of my friend the captain; under whom also I got a competent knowledge of the mathematics and the rules of navigation, learned how to keep an account of the ship\u2019s course, take an observation, and, in short, to understand some things that were needful to be understood by a sailor; for, as he took delight to instruct me, I took delight to learn; and, in a word, this voyage made me both a sailor and a merchant; for I brought home five pounds nine ounces of gold-dust for my adventure, which yielded me in London, at my return, almost \u00a3300; and this filled me with those aspiring thoughts which have since so completed my ruin.\nYet even in this voyage I had my misfortunes too; particularly, that I was continually sick, being thrown into a violent calenture by the excessive heat of the climate; our principal trading being upon the coast, from latitude of 15 degrees north even to the line itself.\nI was now set up for a Guinea trader; and my friend, to my great misfortune, dying soon after his arrival, I resolved to go the same voyage again, and I embarked in the same vessel with one who was his mate in the former voyage, and had now got the command of the ship. This was the unhappiest voyage that ever man made; for though I did not carry quite \u00a3100 of my new-gained wealth, so that I had \u00a3200 left, which I had lodged with my friend\u2019s Django, who was very just to me, yet I fell into terrible misfortunes. The first was this: our ship making her course towards the Canary Islands, or rather between those islands and the African shore, was surprised in the grey of the morning by a Turkish rover of Sallee, who gave chase to us with all the sail she could make. We crowded also as much canvas as our yards would spread, or our masts carry, to get clear; but finding the pirate gained upon us, and would certainly come up with us in a few hours, we prepared to fight; our ship having twelve guns, and the rogue eighteen. About three in the afternoon he came up with us, and bringing to, by mistake, just athwart our quarter, instead of athwart our stern, as he intended, we brought eight of our guns to bear on that side, and poured in a broadside upon him, which made him sheer off again, after returning our fire, and pouring in also his small shot from near two hundred men which he had on board. However, we had not a man touched, all our men keeping close. He prepared to attack us again, and we to defend ourselves. But laying us on board the next time upon our other quarter, he entered sixty men upon our decks, who immediately fell to cutting and hacking the sails and rigging. We plied them with small shot, half-pikes, powder-chests, and such like, and cleared our deck of them twice. However, to cut short this melancholy part of our story, our ship being disabled, and three of our men killed, and eight wounded, we were obliged to yield, and were carried all prisoners into Sallee, a port belonging to the Moors.\nThe usage I had there was not so dreadful as at first I apprehended; nor was I carried up the country to the emperor\u2019s court, as the rest of our men were, but was kept by the captain of the rover as his proper prize, and made his slave, being young and nimble, and fit for his business. At this surprising change of my circumstances, from a merchant to a miserable slave, I was perfectly overwhelmed; and now I looked back upon my father\u2019s prophetic discourse to me, that I should be miserable and have none to relieve me, which I thought was now so effectually brought to pass that I could not be worse; for now the hand of Heaven had overtaken me, and I was undone without redemption; but, alas! this was but a taste of the misery I was to go through, as will appear in the sequel of this story.\nAs my new patron, or master, had taken me home to his house, so I was in hopes that he would take me with him when he went to sea again, believing that it would some time or other be his fate to be taken by a Spanish or Portugal man-of-war; and that then I should be set at liberty. But this hope of mine was soon taken away; for when he went to sea, he left me on shore to look after his little garden, and do the common drudgery of slaves about his house; and when he came home again from his cruise, he ordered me to lie in the cabin to look after the ship.\nHere I meditated nothing but my escape, and what method I might take to effect it, but found no way that had the least probability in it; nothing presented to make the supposition of it rational; for I had nobody to communicate it to that would embark with me\u2014no fellow-slave, no Englishman, Irishman, or Scotchman there but myself; so that for two years, though I often pleased myself with the imagination, yet I never had the least encouraging prospect of putting it in practice.\nAfter about two years, an odd circumstance presented itself, which put the old thought of making some attempt for my liberty again in my head. My patron lying at home longer than usual without fitting out his ship, which, as I heard, was for want of money, he used constantly, once or twice a week, sometimes oftener if the weather was fair, to take the ship\u2019s pinnace and go out into the road a-fishing; and as he always took me and young Maresco with him to row the boat, we made him very merry, and I proved very dexterous in catching fish; insomuch that sometimes he would send me with a Moor, one of his kinsmen, and the youth\u2014the Maresco, as they called him\u2014to catch a dish of fish for him.\nIt happened one time, that going a-fishing in a calm morning, a fog rose so thick that, though we were not half a league from the shore, we lost sight of it; and rowing we knew not whither or which way, we laboured all day, and all the next night; and when the morning came we found we had pulled off to sea instead of pulling in for the shore; and that we were at least two leagues from the shore. However, we got well in again, though with a great deal of labour and some danger; for the wind began to blow pretty fresh in the morning; but we were all very hungry.\nBut our patron, warned by this disaster, resolved to take more care of himself for the future; and having lying by him the longboat of our English ship that he had taken, he resolved he would not go a-fishing any more without a compass and some provision; so he ordered the carpenter of his ship, who also was an English slave, to build a little state-room, or cabin, in the middle of the long-boat, like that of a barge, with a place to stand behind it to steer, and haul home the main-sheet; the room before for a hand or two to stand and work the sails. She sailed with what we call a shoulder-of-mutton sail; and the boom jibed over the top of the cabin, which lay very snug and low, and had in it room for him to lie, with a slave or two, and a table to eat on, with some small lockers to put in some bottles of such liquor as he thought fit to drink; and his bread, rice, and coffee.\nWe went frequently out with this boat a-fishing; and as I was most dexterous to catch fish for him, he never went without me. It happened that he had appointed to go out in this boat, either for pleasure or for fish, with two or three Moors of some distinction in that place, and for whom he had provided extraordinarily, and had, therefore, sent on board the boat overnight a larger store of provisions than ordinary; and had ordered me to get ready three fusees with powder and shot, which were on board his ship, for that they designed some sport of fowling as well as fishing.\nI got all things ready as he had directed, and waited the next morning with the boat washed clean, her ancient and pendants out, and everything to accommodate his guests; when by-and-by my patron came on board alone, and told me his guests had put off going from some business that fell out, and ordered me, with the man and boy, as usual, to go out with the boat and catch them some fish, for that his friends were to sup at his house, and commanded that as soon as I got some fish I should bring it home to his house; all which I prepared to do.\nThis moment my former notions of deliverance darted into my thoughts, for now I found I was likely to have a little ship at my command; and my master being gone, I prepared to furnish myself, not for fishing business, but for a voyage; though I knew not, neither did I so much as consider, whither I should steer\u2014anywhere to get out of that place was my desire.\nMy first contrivance was to make a pretence to speak to this Moor, to get something for our subsistence on board; for I told him we must not presume to eat of our patron\u2019s bread. He said that was true; so he brought a large basket of rusk or biscuit, and three jars of fresh water, into the boat. I knew where my patron\u2019s case of bottles stood, which it was evident, by the make, were taken out of some English prize, and I conveyed them into the boat while the Moor was on shore, as if they had been there before for our master. I conveyed also a great lump of beeswax into the boat, which weighed about half a hundred-weight, with a parcel of twine or thread, a hatchet, a saw, and a hammer, all of which were of great use to us afterwards, especially the wax, to make candles. Another trick I tried upon him, which he innocently came into also: his name was Ismael, which they call Muley, or Moely; so I called to him\u2014\u201cMoely,\u201d said I, \u201cour patron\u2019s guns are on board the boat; can you not get a little powder and shot? It may be we may kill some alcamies (a fowl like our curlews) for ourselves, for I know he keeps the gunner\u2019s stores in the ship.\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d says he, \u201cI\u2019ll bring some;\u201d and accordingly he brought a great leather pouch, which held a pound and a half of powder, or rather more; and another with shot, that had five or six pounds, with some bullets, and put all into the boat. At the same time I had found some powder of my master\u2019s in the great cabin, with which I filled one of the large bottles in the case, which was almost empty, pouring what was in it into another; and thus furnished with everything needful, we sailed out of the port to fish. The castle, which is at the entrance of the port, knew who we were, and took no notice of us; and we were not above a mile out of the port before we hauled in our sail and set us down to fish. The wind blew from the N.N.E., which was contrary to my desire, for had it blown southerly I had been sure to have made the coast of Spain, and at least reached to the bay of Cadiz; but my resolutions were, blow which way it would, I would be gone from that horrid place where I was, and leave the rest to fate.\nAfter we had fished some time and caught nothing\u2014for when I had fish on my hook I would not pull them up, that he might not see them\u2014I said to the Moor, \u201cThis will not do; our master will not be thus served; we must stand farther off.\u201d He, thinking no harm, agreed, and being in the head of the boat, set the sails; and, as I had the helm, I ran the boat out near a league farther, and then brought her to, as if I would fish; when, giving the boy the helm, I stepped forward to where the Moor was, and making as if I stooped for something behind him, I took him by surprise with my arm under his waist, and tossed him clear overboard into the sea. He rose immediately, for he swam like a cork, and called to me, begged to be taken in, told me he would go all over the world with me. He swam so strong after the boat that he would have reached me very quickly, there being but little wind; upon which I stepped into the cabin, and fetching one of the fowling-pieces, I presented it at him, and told him I had done him no hurt, and if he would be quiet I would do him none. \u201cBut,\u201d said I, \u201cyou swim well enough to reach to the shore, and the sea is calm; make the best of your way to shore, and I will do you no harm; but if you come near the boat I\u2019ll shoot you through the head, for I am resolved to have my liberty;\u201d so he turned himself about, and swam for the shore, and I make no doubt but he reached it with ease, for he was an excellent swimmer.\nI could have been content to have taken this Moor with me, and have drowned the boy, but there was no venturing to trust him. When he was gone, I turned to the boy, whom they called Armando, and said to him, \u201cArmando, if you will be faithful to me, I\u2019ll make you a great man; but if you will not stroke your face to be true to me\u201d\u2014that is, swear by Mahomet and his father\u2019s beard\u2014\u201cI must throw you into the sea too.\u201d The boy smiled in my face, and spoke so innocently that I could not distrust him, and swore to be faithful to me, and go all over the world with me.\nWhile I was in view of the Moor that was swimming, I stood out directly to sea with the boat, rather stretching to windward, that they might think me gone towards the Straits\u2019 mouth (as indeed any one that had been in their wits must have been supposed to do): for who would have supposed we were sailed on to the southward, to the truly Barbarian coast, where whole nations of negroes were sure to surround us with their canoes and destroy us; where we could not go on shore but we should be devoured by savage beasts, or more merciless savages of human kind.\nBut as soon as it grew dusk in the evening, I changed my course, and steered directly south and by east, bending my course a little towards the east, that I might keep in with the shore; and having a fair, fresh gale of wind, and a smooth, quiet sea, I made such sail that I believe by the next day, at three o\u2019clock in the afternoon, when I first made the land, I could not be less than one hundred and fifty miles south of Sallee; quite beyond the Emperor of Morocco\u2019s dominions, or indeed of any other king thereabouts, for we saw no people.\nYet such was the fright I had taken of the Moors, and the dreadful apprehensions I had of falling into their hands, that I would not stop, or go on shore, or come to an anchor; the wind continuing fair till I had sailed in that manner five days; and then the wind shifting to the southward, I concluded also that if any of our vessels were in chase of me, they also would now give over; so I ventured to make to the coast, and came to an anchor in the mouth of a little river, I knew not what, nor where, neither what latitude, what country, what nation, or what river. I neither saw, nor desired to see any people; the principal thing I wanted was fresh water. We came into this creek in the evening, resolving to swim on shore as soon as it was dark, and discover the country; but as soon as it was quite dark, we heard such dreadful noises of the barking, roaring, and howling of wild creatures, of we knew not what kinds, that the poor boy was ready to die with fear, and begged of me not to go on shore till day. \u201cWell, Armando,\u201d said I, \u201cthen I won\u2019t; but it may be that we may see men by day, who will be as bad to us as those lions.\u201d \u201cThen we give them the shoot gun,\u201d says Armando, laughing, \u201cmake them run wey.\u201d Such English Armando spoke by conversing among us slaves. However, I was glad to see the boy so cheerful, and I gave him a dram (out of our patron\u2019s case of bottles) to cheer him up. After all, Armando\u2019s advice was good, and I took it; we dropped our little anchor, and lay still all night; I say still, for we slept none; for in two or three hours we saw vast great creatures (we knew not what to call them) of many sorts, come down to the sea-shore and run into the water, wallowing and washing themselves for the pleasure of cooling themselves; and they made such hideous howlings and yellings, that I never indeed heard the like.\nArmando was dreadfully frighted, and indeed so was I too; but we were both more frighted when we heard one of these mighty creatures come swimming towards our boat; we could not see him, but we might hear him by his blowing to be a monstrous huge and furious beast. Armando said it was a lion, and it might be so for aught I know; but poor Armando cried to me to weigh the anchor and row away; \u201cNo,\u201d says I, \u201cArmando; we can slip our cable, with the buoy to it, and go off to sea; they cannot follow us far.\u201d I had no sooner said so, but I perceived the creature (whatever it was) within two oars\u2019 length, which something surprised me; however, I immediately stepped to the cabin door, and taking up my gun, fired at him; upon which he immediately turned about and swam towards the shore again.\nBut it is impossible to describe the horrid noises, and hideous cries and howlings that were raised, as well upon the edge of the shore as higher within the country, upon the noise or report of the gun, a thing I have some reason to believe those creatures had never heard before: this convinced me that there was no going on shore for us in the night on that coast, and how to venture on shore in the day was another question too; for to have fallen into the hands of any of the savages had been as bad as to have fallen into the hands of the lions and tigers; at least we were equally apprehensive of the danger of it.\nBe that as it would, we were obliged to go on shore somewhere or other for water, for we had not a pint left in the boat; when and where to get to it was the point. Armando said, if I would let him go on shore with one of the jars, he would find if there was any water, and bring some to me. I asked him why he would go? why I should not go, and he stay in the boat? The boy answered with so much affection as made me love him ever after. Says he, \u201cIf wild mans come, they eat me, you go wey.\u201d \u201cWell, Armando,\u201d said I, \u201cwe will both go and if the wild mans come, we will kill them, they shall eat neither of us.\u201d So I gave Armando a piece of rusk bread to eat, and a dram out of our patron\u2019s case of bottles which I mentioned before; and we hauled the boat in as near the shore as we thought was proper, and so waded on shore, carrying nothing but our arms and two jars for water.\nI did not care to go out of sight of the boat, fearing the coming of canoes with savages down the river; but the boy seeing a low place about a mile up the country, rambled to it, and by-and-by I saw him come running towards me. I thought he was pursued by some savage, or frighted with some wild beast, and I ran forward towards him to help him; but when I came nearer to him I saw something hanging over his shoulders, which was a creature that he had shot, like a hare, but different in colour, and longer legs; however, we were very glad of it, and it was very good meat; but the great joy that poor Armando came with, was to tell me he had found good water and seen no wild mans.\nBut we found afterwards that we need not take such pains for water, for a little higher up the creek where we were we found the water fresh when the tide was out, which flowed but a little way up; so we filled our jars, and feasted on the hare he had killed, and prepared to go on our way, having seen no footsteps of any human creature in that part of the country.\nAs I had been one voyage to this coast before, I knew very well that the islands of the Canaries, and the Cape de Verde Islands also, lay not far off from the coast. But as I had no instruments to take an observation to know what latitude we were in, and not exactly knowing, or at least remembering, what latitude they were in, I knew not where to look for them, or when to stand off to sea towards them; otherwise I might now easily have found some of these islands. But my hope was, that if I stood along this coast till I came to that part where the English traded, I should find some of their vessels upon their usual design of trade, that would relieve and take us in.\nBy the best of my calculation, that place where I now was must be that country which, lying between the Emperor of Morocco\u2019s dominions and the negroes, lies waste and uninhabited, except by wild beasts; the negroes having abandoned it and gone farther south for fear of the Moors, and the Moors not thinking it worth inhabiting by reason of its barrenness; and indeed, both forsaking it because of the prodigious number of tigers, lions, leopards, and other furious creatures which harbour there; so that the Moors use it for their hunting only, where they go like an army, two or three thousand men at a time; and indeed for near a hundred miles together upon this coast we saw nothing but a waste, uninhabited country by day, and heard nothing but howlings and roaring of wild beasts by night.\nOnce or twice in the daytime I thought I saw the Pico of Teneriffe, being the high top of the Mountain Teneriffe in the Canaries, and had a great mind to venture out, in hopes of reaching thither; but having tried twice, I was forced in again by contrary winds, the sea also going too high for my little vessel; so, I resolved to pursue my first design, and keep along the shore.\nSeveral times I was obliged to land for fresh water, after we had left this place; and once in particular, being early in morning, we came to an anchor under a little point of land, which was pretty high; and the tide beginning to flow, we lay still to go farther in. Armando, whose eyes were more about him than it seems mine were, calls softly to me, and tells me that we had best go farther off the shore; \u201cFor,\u201d says he, \u201clook, yonder lies a dreadful monster on the side of that hillock, fast asleep.\u201d I looked where he pointed, and saw a dreadful monster indeed, for it was a terrible, great lion that lay on the side of the shore, under the shade of a piece of the hill that hung as it were a little over him. \u201cArmando,\u201d says I, \u201cyou shall on shore and kill him.\u201d Armando, looked frighted, and said, \u201cMe kill! he eat me at one mouth!\u201d\u2014one mouthful he meant. However, I said no more to the boy, but bade him lie still, and I took our biggest gun, which was almost musket-bore, and loaded it with a good charge of powder, and with two slugs, and laid it down; then I loaded another gun with two bullets; and the third (for we had three pieces) I loaded with five smaller bullets. I took the best aim I could with the first piece to have shot him in the head, but he lay so with his leg raised a little above his nose, that the slugs hit his leg about the knee and broke the bone. He started up, growling at first, but finding his leg broken, fell down again; and then got upon three legs, and gave the most hideous roar that ever I heard. I was a little surprised that I had not hit him on the head; however, I took up the second piece immediately, and though he began to move off, fired again, and shot him in the head, and had the pleasure to see him drop and make but little noise, but lie struggling for life. Then Armando took heart, and would have me let him go on shore. \u201cWell, go,\u201d said I: so the boy jumped into the water and taking a little gun in one hand, swam to shore with the other hand, and coming close to the creature, put the muzzle of the piece to his ear, and shot him in the head again, which despatched him quite.\nThis was game indeed to us, but this was no food; and I was very sorry to lose three charges of powder and shot upon a creature that was good for nothing to us. However, Armando said he would have some of him; so he comes on board, and asked me to give him the hatchet. \u201cFor what, Armando?\u201d said I. \u201cMe cut off his head,\u201d said he. However, Armando could not cut off his head, but he cut off a foot, and brought it with him, and it was a monstrous great one.\nI bethought myself, however, that, perhaps the skin of him might, one way or other, be of some value to us; and I resolved to take off his skin if I could. So Armando and I went to work with him; but Armando was much the better workman at it, for I knew very ill how to do it. Indeed, it took us both up the whole day, but at last we got off the hide of him, and spreading it on the top of our cabin, the sun effectually dried it in two days\u2019 time, and it afterwards served me to lie upon.\nCHAPTER III.\nWRECKED ON A DESERT ISLAND\nAfter this stop, we made on to the southward continually for ten or twelve days, living very sparingly on our provisions, which began to abate very much, and going no oftener to the shore than we were obliged to for fresh water. My design in this was to make the river Gambia or Senegal, that is to say anywhere about the Cape de Verde, where I was in hopes to meet with some European ship; and if I did not, I knew not what course I had to take, but to seek for the islands, or perish there among the negroes. I knew that all the ships from Europe, which sailed either to the coast of Guinea or to Brazil, or to the East Indies, made this cape, or those islands; and, in a word, I put the whole of my fortune upon this single point, either that I must meet with some ship or must perish.\nWhen I had pursued this resolution about ten days longer, as I have said, I began to see that the land was inhabited; and in two or three places, as we sailed by, we saw people stand upon the shore to look at us; we could also perceive they were quite black and naked. I was once inclined to have gone on shore to them; but Armando was my better counsellor, and said to me, \u201cNo go, no go.\u201d However, I hauled in nearer the shore that I might talk to them, and I found they ran along the shore by me a good way. I observed they had no weapons in their hand, except one, who had a long slender stick, which Armando said was a lance, and that they could throw them a great way with good aim; so I kept at a distance, but talked with them by signs as well as I could; and particularly made signs for something to eat: they beckoned to me to stop my boat, and they would fetch me some meat. Upon this I lowered the top of my sail and lay by, and two of them ran up into the country, and in less than half-an-hour came back, and brought with them two pieces of dried flesh and some corn, such as is the produce of their country; but we neither knew what the one or the other was; however, we were willing to accept it, but how to come at it was our next dispute, for I would not venture on shore to them, and they were as much afraid of us; but they took a safe way for us all, for they brought it to the shore and laid it down, and went and stood a great way off till we fetched it on board, and then came close to us again.\nWe made signs of thanks to them, for we had nothing to make them amends; but an opportunity offered that very instant to oblige them wonderfully; for while we were lying by the shore came two mighty creatures, one pursuing the other (as we took it) with great fury from the mountains towards the sea; whether it was the male pursuing the female, or whether they were in sport or in rage, we could not tell, any more than we could tell whether it was usual or strange, but I believe it was the latter; because, in the first place, those ravenous creatures seldom appear but in the night; and, in the second place, we found the people terribly frighted, especially the women. The man that had the lance or dart did not fly from them, but the rest did; however, as the two creatures ran directly into the water, they did not offer to fall upon any of the negroes, but plunged themselves into the sea, and swam about, as if they had come for their diversion; at last one of them began to come nearer our boat than at first I expected; but I lay ready for him, for I had loaded my gun with all possible expedition, and bade Armando load both the others. As soon as he came fairly within my reach, I fired, and shot him directly in the head; immediately he sank down into the water, but rose instantly, and plunged up and down, as if he were struggling for life, and so indeed he was; he immediately made to the shore; but between the wound, which was his mortal hurt, and the strangling of the water, he died just before he reached the shore.\nIt is impossible to express the astonishment of these poor creatures at the noise and fire of my gun: some of them were even ready to die for fear, and fell down as dead with the very terror; but when they saw the creature dead, and sunk in the water, and that I made signs to them to come to the shore, they took heart and came, and began to search for the creature. I found him by his blood staining the water; and by the help of a rope, which I slung round him, and gave the negroes to haul, they dragged him on shore, and found that it was a most curious leopard, spotted, and fine to an admirable degree; and the negroes held up their hands with admiration, to think what it was I had killed him with.\nThe other creature, frighted with the flash of fire and the noise of the gun, swam on shore, and ran up directly to the mountains from whence they came; nor could I, at that distance, know what it was. I found quickly the negroes wished to eat the flesh of this creature, so I was willing to have them take it as a favour from me; which, when I made signs to them that they might take him, they were very thankful for. Immediately they fell to work with him; and though they had no knife, yet, with a sharpened piece of wood, they took off his skin as readily, and much more readily, than we could have done with a knife. They offered me some of the flesh, which I declined, pointing out that I would give it them; but made signs for the skin, which they gave me very freely, and brought me a great deal more of their provisions, which, though I did not understand, yet I accepted. I then made signs to them for some water, and held out one of my jars to them, turning it bottom upward, to show that it was empty, and that I wanted to have it filled. They called immediately to some of their friends, and there came two women, and brought a great vessel made of earth, and burnt, as I supposed, in the sun, this they set down to me, as before, and I sent Armando on shore with my jars, and filled them all three. The women were as naked as the men.\nI was now furnished with roots and corn, such as it was, and water; and leaving my friendly negroes, I made forward for about eleven days more, without offering to go near the shore, till I saw the land run out a great length into the sea, at about the distance of four or five leagues before me; and the sea being very calm, I kept a large offing to make this point. At length, doubling the point, at about two leagues from the land, I saw plainly land on the other side, to seaward; then I concluded, as it was most certain indeed, that this was the Cape de Verde, and those the islands called, from thence, Cape de Verde Islands. However, they were at a great distance, and I could not well tell what I had best to do; for if I should be taken with a fresh of wind, I might neither reach one or other.\nIn this dilemma, as I was very pensive, I stepped into the cabin and sat down, Armando having the helm; when, on a sudden, the boy cried out, \u201cMaster, master, a ship with a sail!\u201d and the foolish boy was frighted out of his wits, thinking it must needs be some of his master\u2019s ships sent to pursue us, but I knew we were far enough out of their reach. I jumped out of the cabin, and immediately saw, not only the ship, but that it was a Destiny ship; and, as I thought, was bound to the coast of Guinea, for negroes. But, when I observed the course she steered, I was soon convinced they were bound some other way, and did not design to come any nearer to the shore; upon which I stretched out to sea as much as I could, resolving to speak with them if possible.\nWith all the sail I could make, I found I should not be able to come in their way, but that they would be gone by before I could make any signal to them: but after I had crowded to the utmost, and began to despair, they, it seems, saw by the help of their glasses that it was some European boat, which they supposed must belong to some ship that was lost; so they shortened sail to let me come up. I was encouraged with this, and as I had my patron\u2019s ancient on board, I made a waft of it to them, for a signal of distress, and fired a gun, both which they saw; for they told me they saw the smoke, though they did not hear the gun. Upon these signals they very kindly brought to, and lay by for me; and in about three hours; time I came up with them.\nThey asked me what I was, in Destiny, and in Spanish, and in French, but I understood none of them; but at last a Scotch sailor, who was on board, called to me: and I answered him, and told him I was an Englishman, that I had made my escape out of slavery from the Moors, at Sallee; they then bade me come on board, and very kindly took me in, and all my goods.\nIt was an inexpressible joy to me, which any one will believe, that I was thus delivered, as I esteemed it, from such a miserable and almost hopeless condition as I was in; and I immediately offered all I had to the captain of the ship, as a return for my deliverance; but he generously told me he would take nothing from me, but that all I had should be delivered safe to me when I came to the Brazils. \u201cFor,\u201d says he, \u201cI have saved your life on no other terms than I would be glad to be saved myself: and it may, one time or other, be my lot to be taken up in the same condition. Besides,\u201d said he, \u201cwhen I carry you to the Brazils, so great a way from your own country, if I should take from you what you have, you will be starved there, and then I only take away that life I have given. No, no,\u201d says he: \u201cSeignior Inglese\u201d (Mr. Englishman), \u201cI will carry you thither in charity, and those things will help to buy your subsistence there, and your passage home again.\u201d\nAs he was charitable in this proposal, so he was just in the performance to a tittle; for he ordered the seamen that none should touch anything that I had: then he took everything into his own possession, and gave me back an exact inventory of them, that I might have them, even to my three earthen jars.\nAs to my boat, it was a very good one; and that he saw, and told me he would buy it of me for his ship\u2019s use; and asked me what I would have for it? I told him he had been so generous to me in everything that I could not offer to make any price of the boat, but left it entirely to him: upon which he told me he would give me a note of hand to pay me eighty pieces of eight for it at Brazil; and when it came there, if any one offered to give more, he would make it up. He offered me also sixty pieces of eight more for my boy Armando, which I was loth to take; not that I was unwilling to let the captain have him, but I was very loth to sell the poor boy\u2019s liberty, who had assisted me so faithfully in procuring my own. However, when I let him know my reason, he owned it to be just, and offered me this medium, that he would give the boy an obligation to set him free in ten years, if he turned Christian: upon this, and Armando saying he was willing to go to him, I let the captain have him.\nWe had a very good voyage to the Brazils, and I arrived in the Bay de Todos los Santos, or All Saints\u2019 Bay, in about twenty-two days after. And now I was once more delivered from the most miserable of all conditions of life; and what to do next with myself I was to consider.\nThe generous treatment the captain gave me I can never enough remember: he would take nothing of me for my passage, gave me twenty ducats for the leopard\u2019s skin, and forty for the lion\u2019s skin, which I had in my boat, and caused everything I had in the ship to be punctually delivered to me; and what I was willing to sell he bought of me, such as the case of bottles, two of my guns, and a piece of the lump of beeswax\u2014for I had made candles of the rest: in a word, I made about two hundred and twenty pieces of eight of all my cargo; and with this stock I went on shore in the Brazils.\nI had not been long here before I was recommended to the house of a good honest man like himself, who had an ingenio, as they call it (that is, a plantation and a sugar-house). I lived with him some time, and acquainted myself by that means with the manner of planting and making of sugar; and seeing how well the planters lived, and how they got rich suddenly, I resolved, if I could get a licence to settle there, I would turn planter among them: resolving in the meantime to find out some way to get my money, which I had left in London, remitted to me. To this purpose, getting a kind of letter of naturalisation, I purchased as much land that was uncured as my money would reach, and formed a plan for my plantation and settlement; such a one as might be suitable to the stock which I proposed to myself to receive from England.\nI had a neighbour, a Destiny, of Lisbon, but born of English parents, whose name was Wells, and in much such circumstances as I was. I call him my neighbour, because his plantation lay next to mine, and we went on very sociably together. My stock was but low, as well as his; and we rather planted for food than anything else, for about two years. However, we began to increase, and our land began to come into order; so that the third year we planted some tobacco, and made each of us a large piece of ground ready for planting canes in the year to come. But we both wanted help; and now I found, more than before, I had done wrong in parting with my boy Armando.\nBut, alas! for me to do wrong that never did right, was no great wonder. I had no remedy but to go on: I had got into an employment quite remote to my genius, and directly contrary to the life I delighted in, and for which I forsook my father\u2019s house, and broke through all his good advice. Nay, I was coming into the very middle station, or upper degree of low life, which my father advised me to before, and which, if I resolved to go on with, I might as well have stayed at home, and never have fatigued myself in the world as I had done; and I used often to say to myself, I could have done this as well in England, among my friends, as have gone five thousand miles off to do it among strangers and savages, in a wilderness, and at such a distance as never to hear from any part of the world that had the least knowledge of me.\nIn this manner I used to look upon my condition with the utmost regret. I had nobody to converse with, but now and then this neighbour; no work to be done, but by the labour of my hands; and I used to say, I lived just like a man cast away upon some desolate island, that had nobody there but himself. But how just has it been\u2014and how should all men reflect, that when they compare their present conditions with others that are worse, Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange, and be convinced of their former felicity by their experience\u2014I say, how just has it been, that the truly solitary life I reflected on, in an island of mere desolation, should be my lot, who had so often unjustly compared it with the life which I then led, in which, had I continued, I had in all probability been exceeding prosperous and rich.\nI was in some degree settled in my measures for carrying on the plantation before my kind friend, the captain of the ship that took me up at sea, went back\u2014for the ship remained there, in providing his lading and preparing for his voyage, nearly three months\u2014when telling him what little stock I had left behind me in London, he gave me this friendly and sincere advice:\u2014\u201cSeignior Inglese,\u201d says he (for so he always called me), \u201cif you will give me letters, and a procuration in form to me, with orders to the person who has your money in London to send your effects to Lisbon, to such persons as I shall direct, and in such goods as are proper for this country, I will bring you the produce of them, God willing, at my return; but, since human affairs are all subject to changes and disasters, I would have you give orders but for one hundred pounds sterling, which, you say, is half your stock, and let the hazard be run for the first; so that, if it come safe, you may order the rest the same way, and, if it miscarry, you may have the other half to have recourse to for your supply.\u201d\nThis was so wholesome advice, and looked so friendly, that I could not but be convinced it was the best course I could take; so I accordingly prepared letters to the gentlewoman with whom I had left my money, and a procuration to the Destiny captain, as he desired.\nI wrote the English captain\u2019s Django a full account of all my adventures\u2014my slavery, escape, and how I had met with the Destiny captain at sea, the humanity of his behaviour, and what condition I was now in, with all other necessary directions for my supply; and when this honest captain came to Lisbon, he found means, by some of the English merchants there, to send over, not the order only, but a full account of my story to a merchant in London, who represented it effectually to her; whereupon she not only delivered the money, but out of her own pocket sent the Portugal captain a very handsome present for his humanity and charity to me.\nThe merchant in London, vesting this hundred pounds in English goods, such as the captain had written for, sent them directly to him at Lisbon, and he brought them all safe to me to the Brazils; among which, without my direction (for I was too young in my business to think of them), he had taken care to have all sorts of tools, ironwork, and utensils necessary for my plantation, and which were of great use to me.\nWhen this cargo arrived I thought my fortune made, for I was surprised with the joy of it; and my stood steward, the captain, had laid out the five pounds, which my friend had sent him for a present for himself, to purchase and bring me over a servant, under bond for six years\u2019 service, and would not accept of any consideration, except a little tobacco, which I would have him accept, being of my own produce.\nNeither was this all; for my goods being all English manufacture, such as cloths, stuffs, baize, and things particularly valuable and desirable in the country, I found means to sell them to a very great advantage; so that I might say I had more than four times the value of my first cargo, and was now infinitely beyond my poor neighbour\u2014I mean in the advancement of my plantation; for the first thing I did, I bought me a negro slave, and an European servant also\u2014I mean another besides that which the captain brought me from Lisbon.\nBut as abused prosperity is oftentimes made the very means of our greatest adversity, so it was with me. I went on the next year with great success in my plantation: I raised fifty great rolls of tobacco on my own ground, more than I had disposed of for necessaries among my neighbours; and these fifty rolls, being each of above a hundredweight, were well cured, and laid by against the return of the fleet from Lisbon: and now increasing in business and wealth, my head began to be full of projects and undertakings beyond my reach; such as are, indeed, often the ruin of the best heads in business. Had I continued in the station I was now in, I had room for all the happy things to have yet befallen me for which my father so earnestly recommended a quiet, retired life, and of which he had so sensibly described the middle station of life to be full of; but other things attended me, and I was still to be the wilful agent of all my own miseries; and particularly, to increase my fault, and double the reflections upon myself, which in my future sorrows I should have leisure to make, all these miscarriages were procured by my apparent obstinate adhering to my foolish inclination of wandering abroad, and pursuing that inclination, in contradiction to the clearest views of doing myself good in a fair and plain pursuit of those prospects, and those measures of life, which nature and Providence concurred to present me with, and to make my duty.\nAs I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I could not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the nature of the thing admitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulf of human misery that ever man fell into, or perhaps could be consistent with life and a state of health in the world.\nTo come, then, by the just degrees to the particulars of this part of my story. You may suppose, that having now lived almost four years in the Brazils, and beginning to thrive and prosper very well upon my plantation, I had not only learned the language, but had contracted acquaintance and friendship among my fellow-planters, as well as among the merchants at St. Salvador, which was our port; and that, in my discourses among them, I had frequently given them an account of my two voyages to the coast of Guinea: the manner of trading with the negroes there, and how easy it was to purchase upon the coast for trifles\u2014such as beads, toys, knives, scissors, hatchets, bits of glass, and the like\u2014not only gold-dust, Guinea grains, elephants\u2019 teeth, &c., but negroes, for the service of the Brazils, in great numbers.\nThey listened always very attentively to my discourses on these heads, but especially to that part which related to the buying of negroes, which was a trade at that time, not only not far entered into, but, as far as it was, had been carried on by assientos, or permission of the kings of Spain and Portugal, and engrossed in the public stock: so that few negroes were bought, and these excessively dear.\nIt happened, being in company with some merchants and planters of my acquaintance, and talking of those things very earnestly, three of them came to me next morning, and told me they had been musing very much upon what I had discoursed with them of the last night, and they came to make a secret proposal to me; and, after enjoining me to secrecy, they told me that they had a mind to fit out a ship to go to Guinea; that they had all plantations as well as I, and were straitened for nothing so much as servants; that as it was a trade that could not be carried on, because they could not publicly sell the negroes when they came home, so they desired to make but one voyage, to bring the negroes on shore privately, and divide them among their own plantations; and, in a word, the question was whether I would go their supercargo in the ship, to manage the trading part upon the coast of Guinea; and they offered me that I should have my equal share of the negroes, without providing any part of the stock.\nThis was a fair proposal, it must be confessed, had it been made to any one that had not had a settlement and a plantation of his own to look after, which was in a fair way of coming to be very considerable, and with a good stock upon it; but for me, that was thus entered and established, and had nothing to do but to go on as I had begun, for three or four years more, and to have sent for the other hundred pounds from England; and who in that time, and with that little addition, could scarce have failed of being worth three or four thousand pounds sterling, and that increasing too\u2014for me to think of such a voyage was the most preposterous thing that ever man in such circumstances could be guilty of.\nBut I, that was born to be my own destroyer, could no more resist the offer than I could restrain my first rambling designs when my father\u2019s good counsel was lost upon me. In a word, I told them I would go with all my heart, if they would undertake to look after my plantation in my absence, and would dispose of it to such as I should direct, if I miscarried. This they all engaged to do, and entered into writings or covenants to do so; and I made a formal will, disposing of my plantation and effects in case of my death, making the captain of the ship that had saved my life, as before, my universal heir, but obliging him to dispose of my effects as I had directed in my will; one half of the produce being to himself, and the other to be shipped to England.\nIn short, I took all possible caution to preserve my effects and to keep up my plantation. Had I used half as much prudence to have looked into my own interest, and have made a judgment of what I ought to have done and not to have done, I had certainly never gone away from so prosperous an undertaking, leaving all the probable views of a thriving circumstance, and gone upon a voyage to sea, attended with all its common hazards, to say nothing of the reasons I had to expect particular misfortunes to myself.\nBut I was hurried on, and obeyed blindly the dictates of my fancy rather than my reason; and, accordingly, the ship being fitted out, and the cargo furnished, and all things done, as by agreement, by my partners in the voyage, I went on board in an evil hour, the 1st September 1659, being the same day eight years that I went from my father and mother at Hull, in order to act the rebel to their authority, and the fool to my own interests.\nOur ship was about one hundred and twenty tons burden, carried six guns and fourteen men, besides the master, his boy, and myself. We had on board no large cargo of goods, except of such toys as were fit for our trade with the negroes, such as beads, bits of glass, shells, and other trifles, especially little looking-glasses, knives, scissors, hatchets, and the like.\nThe same day I went on board we set sail, standing away to the northward upon our own coast, with design to stretch over for the African coast when we came about ten or twelve degrees of northern latitude, which, it seems, was the manner of course in those days. We had very good weather, only excessively hot, all the way upon our own coast, till we came to the height of Cape St. Augustino; from whence, keeping further off at sea, we lost sight of land, and steered as if we were bound for the isle Fernando de Noronha, holding our course N.E. by N., and leaving those isles on the east. In this course we passed the line in about twelve days\u2019 time, and were, by our last observation, in seven degrees twenty-two minutes northern latitude, when a violent tornado, or hurricane, took us quite out of our knowledge. It began from the south-east, came about to the north-west, and then settled in the north-east; from whence it blew in such a terrible manner, that for twelve days together we could do nothing but drive, and, scudding away before it, let it carry us whither fate and the fury of the winds directed; and, during these twelve days, I need not say that I expected every day to be swallowed up; nor, indeed, did any in the ship expect to save their lives.\nIn this distress we had, besides the terror of the storm, one of our men die of the calenture, and one man and the boy washed overboard. About the twelfth day, the weather abating a little, the master made an observation as well as he could, and found that he was in about eleven degrees north latitude, but that he was twenty-two degrees of longitude difference west from Cape St. Augustino; so that he found he was upon the coast of Guiana, or the north part of Brazil, beyond the river Amazon, toward that of the river Orinoco, commonly called the Great River; and began to consult with me what course he should take, for the ship was leaky, and very much disabled, and he was going directly back to the coast of Brazil.\nI was positively against that; and looking over the charts of the sea-coast of America with him, we concluded there was no inhabited country for us to have recourse to till we came within the circle of the Caribbee Islands, and therefore resolved to stand away for Barbadoes; which, by keeping off at sea, to avoid the indraft of the Bay or Gulf of Mexico, we might easily perform, as we hoped, in about fifteen days\u2019 sail; whereas we could not possibly make our voyage to the coast of Africa without some assistance both to our ship and to ourselves.\nWith this design we changed our course, and steered away N.W. by W., in order to reach some of our English islands, where I hoped for relief. But our voyage was otherwise determined; for, being in the latitude of twelve degrees eighteen minutes, a second storm came upon us, which carried us away with the same impetuosity westward, and drove us so out of the way of all human commerce, that, had all our lives been saved as to the sea, we were rather in danger of being devoured by savages than ever returning to our own country.\nIn this distress, the wind still blowing very hard, one of our men early in the morning cried out, \u201cLand!\u201d and we had no sooner run out of the cabin to look out, in hopes of seeing whereabouts in the world we were, than the ship struck upon a sand, and in a moment her motion being so stopped, the sea broke over her in such a manner that we expected we should all have perished immediately; and we were immediately driven into our close quarters, to shelter us from the very foam and spray of the sea.\nIt is not easy for any one who has not been in the like condition to describe or conceive the consternation of men in such circumstances. We knew nothing where we were, or upon what land it was we were driven\u2014whether an island or the main, whether inhabited or not inhabited. As the rage of the wind was still great, though rather less than at first, we could not so much as hope to have the ship hold many minutes without breaking into pieces, unless the winds, by a kind of miracle, should turn immediately about. In a word, we sat looking upon one another, and expecting death every moment, and every man, accordingly, preparing for another world; for there was little or nothing more for us to do in this. That which was our present comfort, and all the comfort we had, was that, contrary to our expectation, the ship did not break yet, and that the master said the wind began to abate.\nNow, though we thought that the wind did a little abate, yet the ship having thus struck upon the sand, and sticking too fast for us to expect her getting off, we were in a dreadful condition indeed, and had nothing to do but to think of saving our lives as well as we could. We had a boat at our stern just before the storm, but she was first staved by dashing against the ship\u2019s rudder, and in the next place she broke away, and either sunk or was driven off to sea; so there was no hope from her. We had another boat on board, but how to get her off into the sea was a doubtful thing. However, there was no time to debate, for we fancied that the ship would break in pieces every minute, and some told us she was actually broken already.\nIn this distress the mate of our vessel laid hold of the boat, and with the help of the rest of the men got her slung over the ship\u2019s side; and getting all into her, let go, and committed ourselves, being eleven in number, to God\u2019s mercy and the wild sea; for though the storm was abated considerably, yet the sea ran dreadfully high upon the shore, and might be well called den wild zee, as the Dutch call the sea in a storm.\nAnd now our case was very dismal indeed; for we all saw plainly that the sea went so high that the boat could not live, and that we should be inevitably drowned. As to making sail, we had none, nor if we had could we have done anything with it; so we worked at the oar towards the land, though with heavy hearts, like men going to execution; for we all knew that when the boat came near the shore she would be dashed in a thousand pieces by the breach of the sea. However, we committed our souls to God in the most earnest manner; and the wind driving us towards the shore, we hastened our destruction with our own hands, pulling as well as we could towards land.\nWhat the shore was, whether rock or sand, whether steep or shoal, we knew not. The only hope that could rationally give us the least shadow of expectation was, if we might find some bay or gulf, or the mouth of some river, where by great chance we might have run our boat in, or got under the lee of the land, and perhaps made smooth water. But there was nothing like this appeared; but as we made nearer and nearer the shore, the land looked more frightful than the sea.\nAfter we had rowed, or rather driven about a league and a half, as we reckoned it, a raging wave, mountain-like, came rolling astern of us, and plainly bade us expect the coup de gr\u00e2ce. It took us with such a fury, that it overset the boat at once; and separating us as well from the boat as from one another, gave us no time to say, \u201cO God!\u201d for we were all swallowed up in a moment.\nNothing can describe the confusion of thought which I felt when I sank into the water; for though I swam very well, yet I could not deliver myself from the waves so as to draw breath, till that wave having driven me, or rather carried me, a vast way on towards the shore, and having spent itself, went back, and left me upon the land almost dry, but half dead with the water I took in. I had so much presence of mind, as well as breath left, that seeing myself nearer the mainland than I expected, I got upon my feet, and endeavoured to make on towards the land as fast as I could before another wave should return and take me up again; but I soon found it was impossible to avoid it; for I saw the sea come after me as high as a great hill, and as furious as an enemy, which I had no means or strength to contend with: my business was to hold my breath, and raise myself upon the water if I could; and so, by swimming, to preserve my breathing, and pilot myself towards the shore, if possible, my greatest concern now being that the sea, as it would carry me a great way towards the shore when it came on, might not carry me back again with it when it gave back towards the sea.\nThe wave that came upon me again buried me at once twenty or thirty feet deep in its own body, and I could feel myself carried with a mighty force and swiftness towards the shore\u2014a very great way; but I held my breath, and assisted myself to swim still forward with all my might. I was ready to burst with holding my breath, when, as I felt myself rising up, so, to my immediate relief, I found my head and hands shoot out above the surface of the water; and though it was not two seconds of time that I could keep myself so, yet it relieved me greatly, gave me breath, and new courage. I was covered again with water a good while, but not so long but I held it out; and finding the water had spent itself, and began to return, I struck forward against the return of the waves, and felt ground again with my feet. I stood still a few moments to recover breath, and till the waters went from me, and then took to my heels and ran with what strength I had further towards the shore. But neither would this deliver me from the fury of the sea, which came pouring in after me again; and twice more I was lifted up by the waves and carried forward as before, the shore being very flat.\nThe last time of these two had well-nigh been fatal to me, for the sea having hurried me along as before, landed me, or rather dashed me, against a piece of rock, and that with such force, that it left me senseless, and indeed helpless, as to my own deliverance; for the blow taking my side and breast, beat the breath as it were quite out of my body; and had it returned again immediately, I must have been strangled in the water; but I recovered a little before the return of the waves, and seeing I should be covered again with the water, I resolved to hold fast by a piece of the rock, and so to hold my breath, if possible, till the wave went back. Now, as the waves were not so high as at first, being nearer land, I held my hold till the wave abated, and then fetched another run, which brought me so near the shore that the next wave, though it went over me, yet did not so swallow me up as to carry me away; and the next run I took, I got to the mainland, where, to my great comfort, I clambered up the cliffs of the shore and sat me down upon the grass, free from danger and quite out of the reach of the water.\nI was now landed and safe on shore, and began to look up and thank God that my life was saved, in a case wherein there was some minutes before scarce any room to hope. I believe it is impossible to express, to the life, what the ecstasies and transports of the soul are, when it is so saved, as I may say, out of the very grave: and I do not wonder now at the custom, when a malefactor, who has the halter about his neck, is tied up, and just going to be turned off, and has a reprieve brought to him\u2014I say, I do not wonder that they bring a surgeon with it, to let him blood that very moment they tell him of it, that the surprise may not drive the animal spirits from the heart and overwhelm him.\n\u201cFor sudden joys, like griefs, confound at first.\u201d\nI walked about on the shore lifting up my hands, and my whole being, as I may say, wrapped up in a contemplation of my deliverance; making a thousand gestures and motions, which I cannot describe; reflecting upon all my comrades that were drowned, and that there should not be one soul saved but myself; for, as for them, I never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them, except three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes that were not fellows.\nI cast my eye to the stranded vessel, when, the breach and froth of the sea being so big, I could hardly see it, it lay so far of; and considered, Lord! how was it possible I could get on shore?\nAfter I had solaced my mind with the comfortable part of my condition, I began to look round me, to see what kind of place I was in, and what was next to be done; and I soon found my comforts abate, and that, in a word, I had a dreadful deliverance; for I was wet, had no clothes to shift me, nor anything either to eat or drink to comfort me; neither did I see any prospect before me but that of perishing with hunger or being devoured by wild beasts; and that which was particularly afflicting to me was, that I had no weapon, either to hunt and kill any creature for my sustenance, or to defend myself against any other creature that might desire to kill me for theirs. In a word, I had nothing about me but a knife, a tobacco-pipe, and a little tobacco in a box. This was all my provisions; and this threw me into such terrible agonies of mind, that for a while I ran about like a madman. Night coming upon me, I began with a heavy heart to consider what would be my lot if there were any ravenous beasts in that country, as at night they always come abroad for their prey.\nAll the remedy that offered to my thoughts at that time was to get up into a thick bushy tree like a fir, but thorny, which grew near me, and where I resolved to sit all night, and consider the next day what death I should die, for as yet I saw no prospect of life. I walked about a furlong from the shore, to see if I could find any fresh water to drink, which I did, to my great joy; and having drank, and put a little tobacco into my mouth to prevent hunger, I went to the tree, and getting up into it, endeavoured to place myself so that if I should sleep I might not fall. And having cut me a short stick, like a truncheon, for my defence, I took up my lodging; and having been excessively fatigued, I fell fast asleep, and slept as comfortably as, I believe, few could have done in my condition, and found myself more refreshed with it than, I think, I ever was on such an occasion.\nCHAPTER IV.\nFIRST WEEKS ON THE ISLAND\nWhen I waked it was broad day, the weather clear, and the storm abated, so that the sea did not rage and swell as before. But that which surprised me most was, that the ship was lifted off in the night from the sand where she lay by the swelling of the tide, and was driven up almost as far as the rock which I at first mentioned, where I had been so bruised by the wave dashing me against it. This being within about a mile from the shore where I was, and the ship seeming to stand upright still, I wished myself on board, that at least I might save some necessary things for my use.\nWhen I came down from my apartment in the tree, I looked about me again, and the first thing I found was the boat, which lay, as the wind and the sea had tossed her up, upon the land, about two miles on my right hand. I walked as far as I could upon the shore to have got to her; but found a neck or inlet of water between me and the boat which was about half a mile broad; so I came back for the present, being more intent upon getting at the ship, where I hoped to find something for my present subsistence.\nA little after noon I found the sea very calm, and the tide ebbed so far out that I could come within a quarter of a mile of the ship. And here I found a fresh renewing of my grief; for I saw evidently that if we had kept on board we had been all safe\u2014that is to say, we had all got safe on shore, and I had not been so miserable as to be left entirely destitute of all comfort and company as I now was. This forced tears to my eyes again; but as there was little relief in that, I resolved, if possible, to get to the ship; so I pulled off my clothes\u2014for the weather was hot to extremity\u2014and took the water. But when I came to the ship my difficulty was still greater to know how to get on board; for, as she lay aground, and high out of the water, there was nothing within my reach to lay hold of. I swam round her twice, and the second time I spied a small piece of rope, which I wondered I did not see at first, hung down by the fore-chains so low, as that with great difficulty I got hold of it, and by the help of that rope I got up into the forecastle of the ship. Here I found that the ship was bulged, and had a great deal of water in her hold, but that she lay so on the side of a bank of hard sand, or, rather earth, that her stern lay lifted up upon the bank, and her head low, almost to the water. By this means all her quarter was free, and all that was in that part was dry; for you may be sure my first work was to search, and to see what was spoiled and what was free. And, first, I found that all the ship\u2019s provisions were dry and untouched by the water, and being very well disposed to eat, I went to the bread room and filled my pockets with biscuit, and ate it as I went about other things, for I had no time to lose. I also found some rum in the great cabin, of which I took a large dram, and which I had, indeed, need enough of to spirit me for what was before me. Now I wanted nothing but a boat to furnish myself with many things which I foresaw would be very necessary to me.\nIt was in vain to sit still and wish for what was not to be had; and this extremity roused my application. We had several spare yards, and two or three large spars of wood, and a spare topmast or two in the ship; I resolved to fall to work with these, and I flung as many of them overboard as I could manage for their weight, tying every one with a rope, that they might not drive away. When this was done I went down the ship\u2019s side, and pulling them to me, I tied four of them together at both ends as well as I could, in the form of a raft, and laying two or three short pieces of plank upon them crossways, I found I could walk upon it very well, but that it was not able to bear any great weight, the pieces being too light. So I went to work, and with a carpenter\u2019s saw I cut a spare topmast into three lengths, and added them to my raft, with a great deal of labour and pains. But the hope of furnishing myself with necessaries encouraged me to go beyond what I should have been able to have done upon another occasion.\nMy raft was now strong enough to bear any reasonable weight. My next care was what to load it with, and how to preserve what I laid upon it from the surf of the sea; but I was not long considering this. I first laid all the planks or boards upon it that I could get, and having considered well what I most wanted, I got three of the seamen\u2019s chests, which I had broken open, and emptied, and lowered them down upon my raft; the first of these I filled with provisions\u2014viz. bread, rice, three Dutch cheeses, five pieces of dried goat\u2019s flesh (which we lived much upon), and a little remainder of European corn, which had been laid by for some fowls which we brought to sea with us, but the fowls were killed. There had been some barley and wheat together; but, to my great disappointment, I found afterwards that the rats had eaten or spoiled it all. As for liquors, I found several, cases of bottles belonging to our skipper, in which were some cordial waters; and, in all, about five or six gallons of rack. These I stowed by themselves, there being no need to put them into the chest, nor any room for them. While I was doing this, I found the tide begin to flow, though very calm; and I had the mortification to see my coat, shirt, and waistcoat, which I had left on the shore, upon the sand, swim away. As for my breeches, which were only linen, and open-kneed, I swam on board in them and my stockings. However, this set me on rummaging for clothes, of which I found enough, but took no more than I wanted for present use, for I had others things which my eye was more upon\u2014as, first, tools to work with on shore. And it was after long searching that I found out the carpenter\u2019s chest, which was, indeed, a very useful prize to me, and much more valuable than a shipload of gold would have been at that time. I got it down to my raft, whole as it was, without losing time to look into it, for I knew in general what it contained.\nMy next care was for some ammunition and arms. There were two very good fowling-pieces in the great cabin, and two pistols. These I secured first, with some powder-horns and a small bag of shot, and two old rusty swords. I knew there were three barrels of powder in the ship, but knew not where our gunner had stowed them; but with much search I found them, two of them dry and good, the third had taken water. Those two I got to my raft with the arms. And now I thought myself pretty well freighted, and began to think how I should get to shore with them, having neither sail, oar, nor rudder; and the least capful of wind would have overset all my navigation.\nI had three encouragements\u20141st, a smooth, calm sea; 2ndly, the tide rising, and setting in to the shore; 3rdly, what little wind there was blew me towards the land. And thus, having found two or three broken oars belonging to the boat\u2014and, besides the tools which were in the chest, I found two saws, an axe, and a hammer; with this cargo I put to sea. For a mile or thereabouts my raft went very well, only that I found it drive a little distant from the place where I had landed before; by which I perceived that there was some indraft of the water, and consequently I hoped to find some creek or river there, which I might make use of as a port to get to land with my cargo.\nAs I imagined, so it was. There appeared before me a little opening of the land, and I found a strong current of the tide set into it; so I guided my raft as well as I could, to keep in the middle of the stream.\nBut here I had like to have suffered a second shipwreck, which, if I had, I think verily would have broken my heart; for, knowing nothing of the coast, my raft ran aground at one end of it upon a shoal, and not being aground at the other end, it wanted but a little that all my cargo had slipped off towards the end that was afloat, and to fallen into the water. I did my utmost, by setting my back against the chests, to keep them in their places, but could not thrust off the raft with all my strength; neither durst I stir from the posture I was in; but holding up the chests with all my might, I stood in that manner near half-an-hour, in which time the rising of the water brought me a little more upon a level; and a little after, the water still-rising, my raft floated again, and I thrust her off with the oar I had into the channel, and then driving up higher, I at length found myself in the mouth of a little river, with land on both sides, and a strong current of tide running up. I looked on both sides for a proper place to get to shore, for I was not willing to be driven too high up the river: hoping in time to see some ships at sea, and therefore resolved to place myself as near the coast as I could.\nAt length I spied a little cove on the right shore of the creek, to which with great pain and difficulty I guided my raft, and at last got so near that, reaching ground with my oar, I could thrust her directly in. But here I had like to have dipped all my cargo into the sea again; for that shore lying pretty steep\u2014that is to say sloping\u2014there was no place to land, but where one end of my float, if it ran on shore, would lie so high, and the other sink lower, as before, that it would endanger my cargo again. All that I could do was to wait till the tide was at the highest, keeping the raft with my oar like an anchor, to hold the side of it fast to the shore, near a flat piece of ground, which I expected the water would flow over; and so it did. As soon as I found water enough\u2014for my raft drew about a foot of water\u2014I thrust her upon that flat piece of ground, and there fastened or moored her, by sticking my two broken oars into the ground, one on one side near one end, and one on the other side near the other end; and thus I lay till the water ebbed away, and left my raft and all my cargo safe on shore.\nMy next work was to view the country, and seek a proper place for my habitation, and where to stow my goods to secure them from whatever might happen. Where I was, I yet knew not; whether on the continent or on an island; whether inhabited or not inhabited; whether in danger of wild beasts or not. There was a hill not above a mile from me, which rose up very steep and high, and which seemed to overtop some other hills, which lay as in a ridge from it northward. I took out one of the fowling-pieces, and one of the pistols, and a horn of powder; and thus armed, I travelled for discovery up to the top of that hill, where, after I had with great labour and difficulty got to the top, I saw my fate, to my great affliction\u2014viz. that I was in an island environed every way with the sea: no land to be seen except some rocks, which lay a great way off; and two small islands, less than this, which lay about three leagues to the west.\nI found also that the island I was in was barren, and, as I saw good reason to believe, uninhabited except by wild beasts, of whom, however, I saw none. Yet I saw abundance of fowls, but knew not their kinds; neither when I killed them could I tell what was fit for food, and what not. At my coming back, I shot at a great bird which I saw sitting upon a tree on the side of a great wood. I believe it was the first gun that had been fired there since the creation of the world. I had no sooner fired, than from all parts of the wood there arose an innumerable number of fowls, of many sorts, making a confused screaming and crying, and every one according to his usual note, but not one of them of any kind that I knew. As for the creature I killed, I took it to be a kind of hawk, its colour and beak resembling it, but it had no talons or claws more than common. Its flesh was carrion, and fit for nothing.\nContented with this discovery, I came back to my raft, and fell to work to bring my cargo on shore, which took me up the rest of that day. What to do with myself at night I knew not, nor indeed where to rest, for I was afraid to lie down on the ground, not knowing but some wild beast might devour me, though, as I afterwards found, there was really no need for those fears.\nHowever, as well as I could, I barricaded myself round with the chest and boards that I had brought on shore, and made a kind of hut for that night\u2019s lodging. As for food, I yet saw not which way to supply myself, except that I had seen two or three creatures like hares run out of the wood where I shot the fowl.\nI now began to consider that I might yet get a great many things out of the ship which would be useful to me, and particularly some of the rigging and sails, and such other things as might come to land; and I resolved to make another voyage on board the vessel, if possible. And as I knew that the first storm that blew must necessarily break her all in pieces, I resolved to set all other things apart till I had got everything out of the ship that I could get. Then I called a council\u2014that is to say in my thoughts\u2014whether I should take back the raft; but this appeared impracticable: so I resolved to go as before, when the tide was down; and I did so, only that I stripped before I went from my hut, having nothing on but my chequered shirt, a pair of linen drawers, and a pair of pumps on my feet.\nI got on board the ship as before, and prepared a second raft; and, having had experience of the first, I neither made this so unwieldy, nor loaded it so hard, but yet I brought away several things very useful to me; as first, in the carpenters stores I found two or three bags full of nails and spikes, a great screw-jack, a dozen or two of hatchets, and, above all, that most useful thing called a grindstone. All these I secured, together with several things belonging to the gunner, particularly two or three iron crows, and two barrels of musket bullets, seven muskets, another fowling-piece, with some small quantity of powder more; a large bagful of small shot, and a great roll of sheet-lead; but this last was so heavy, I could not hoist it up to get it over the ship\u2019s side.\nBesides these things, I took all the men\u2019s clothes that I could find, and a spare fore-topsail, a hammock, and some bedding; and with this I loaded my second raft, and brought them all safe on shore, to my very great comfort.\nI was under some apprehension, during my absence from the land, that at least my provisions might be devoured on shore: but when I came back I found no sign of any visitor; only there sat a creature like a wild cat upon one of the chests, which, when I came towards it, ran away a little distance, and then stood still. She sat very composed and unconcerned, and looked full in my face, as if she had a mind to be acquainted with me. I presented my gun at her, but, as she did not understand it, she was perfectly unconcerned at it, nor did she offer to stir away; upon which I tossed her a bit of biscuit, though by the way, I was not very free of it, for my store was not great: however, I spared her a bit, I say, and she went to it, smelled at it, and ate it, and looked (as if pleased) for more; but I thanked her, and could spare no more: so she marched off.\nHaving got my second cargo on shore\u2014though I was fain to open the barrels of powder, and bring them by parcels, for they were too heavy, being large casks\u2014I went to work to make me a little tent with the sail and some poles which I cut for that purpose: and into this tent I brought everything that I knew would spoil either with rain or sun; and I piled all the empty chests and casks up in a circle round the tent, to fortify it from any sudden attempt, either from man or beast.\nWhen I had done this, I blocked up the door of the tent with some boards within, and an empty chest set up on end without; and spreading one of the beds upon the ground, laying my two pistols just at my head, and my gun at length by me, I went to bed for the first time, and slept very quietly all night, for I was very weary and heavy; for the night before I had slept little, and had laboured very hard all day to fetch all those things from the ship, and to get them on shore.\nI had the biggest magazine of all kinds now that ever was laid up, I believe, for one man: but I was not satisfied still, for while the ship sat upright in that posture, I thought I ought to get everything out of her that I could; so every day at low water I went on board, and brought away something or other; but particularly the third time I went I brought away as much of the rigging as I could, as also all the small ropes and rope-twine I could get, with a piece of spare canvas, which was to mend the sails upon occasion, and the barrel of wet gunpowder. In a word, I brought away all the sails, first and last; only that I was fain to cut them in pieces, and bring as much at a time as I could, for they were no more useful to be sails, but as mere canvas only.\nBut that which comforted me more still, was, that last of all, after I had made five or six such voyages as these, and thought I had nothing more to expect from the ship that was worth my meddling with\u2014I say, after all this, I found a great hogshead of bread, three large runlets of rum, or spirits, a box of sugar, and a barrel of fine flour; this was surprising to me, because I had given over expecting any more provisions, except what was spoiled by the water. I soon emptied the hogshead of the bread, and wrapped it up, parcel by parcel, in pieces of the sails, which I cut out; and, in a word, I got all this safe on shore also.\nThe next day I made another voyage, and now, having plundered the ship of what was portable and fit to hand out, I began with the cables. Cutting the great cable into pieces, such as I could move, I got two cables and a hawser on shore, with all the ironwork I could get; and having cut down the spritsail-yard, and the mizzen-yard, and everything I could, to make a large raft, I loaded it with all these heavy goods, and came away. But my good luck began now to leave me; for this raft was so unwieldy, and so overladen, that, after I had entered the little cove where I had landed the rest of my goods, not being able to guide it so handily as I did the other, it overset, and threw me and all my cargo into the water. As for myself, it was no great harm, for I was near the shore; but as to my cargo, it was a great part of it lost, especially the iron, which I expected would have been of great use to me; however, when the tide was out, I got most of the pieces of the cable ashore, and some of the iron, though with infinite labour; for I was fain to dip for it into the water, a work which fatigued me very much. After this, I went every day on board, and brought away what I could get.\nI had been now thirteen days on shore, and had been eleven times on board the ship, in which time I had brought away all that one pair of hands could well be supposed capable to bring; though I believe verily, had the calm weather held, I should have brought away the whole ship, piece by piece. But preparing the twelfth time to go on board, I found the wind began to rise: however, at low water I went on board, and though I thought I had rummaged the cabin so effectually that nothing more could be found, yet I discovered a locker with drawers in it, in one of which I found two or three razors, and one pair of large scissors, with some ten or a dozen of good knives and forks: in another I found about thirty-six pounds value in money\u2014some European coin, some Brazil, some pieces of eight, some gold, and some silver.\nI smiled to myself at the sight of this money: \u201cO drug!\u201d said I, aloud, \u201cwhat art thou good for? Thou art not worth to me\u2014no, not the taking off the ground; one of those knives is worth all this heap; I have no manner of use for thee\u2014e\u2019en remain where thou art, and go to the bottom as a creature whose life is not worth saving.\u201d However, upon second thoughts I took it away; and wrapping all this in a piece of canvas, I began to think of making another raft; but while I was preparing this, I found the sky overcast, and the wind began to rise, and in a quarter of an hour it blew a fresh gale from the shore. It presently occurred to me that it was in vain to pretend to make a raft with the wind offshore; and that it was my business to be gone before the tide of flood began, otherwise I might not be able to reach the shore at all. Accordingly, I let myself down into the water, and swam across the channel, which lay between the ship and the sands, and even that with difficulty enough, partly with the weight of the things I had about me, and partly the roughness of the water; for the wind rose very hastily, and before it was quite high water it blew a storm.\nBut I had got home to my little tent, where I lay, with all my wealth about me, very secure. It blew very hard all night, and in the morning, when I looked out, behold, no more ship was to be seen! I was a little surprised, but recovered myself with the satisfactory reflection that I had lost no time, nor abated any diligence, to get everything out of her that could be useful to me; and that, indeed, there was little left in her that I was able to bring away, if I had had more time.\nI now gave over any more thoughts of the ship, or of anything out of her, except what might drive on shore from her wreck; as, indeed, divers pieces of her afterwards did; but those things were of small use to me.\nMy thoughts were now wholly employed about securing myself against either savages, if any should appear, or wild beasts, if any were in the island; and I had many thoughts of the method how to do this, and what kind of dwelling to make\u2014whether I should make me a cave in the earth, or a tent upon the earth; and, in short, I resolved upon both; the manner and description of which, it may not be improper to give an account of.\nI soon found the place I was in was not fit for my settlement, because it was upon a low, moorish ground, near the sea, and I believed it would not be wholesome, and more particularly because there was no fresh water near it; so I resolved to find a more healthy and more convenient spot of ground.\nI consulted several things in my situation, which I found would be proper for me: 1st, health and fresh water, I just now mentioned; 2ndly, shelter from the heat of the sun; 3rdly, security from ravenous creatures, whether man or beast; 4thly, a view to the sea, that if God sent any ship in sight, I might not lose any advantage for my deliverance, of which I was not willing to banish all my expectation yet.\nIn search of a place proper for this, I found a little plain on the side of a rising hill, whose front towards this little plain was steep as a house-side, so that nothing could come down upon me from the top. On the one side of the rock there was a hollow place, worn a little way in, like the entrance or door of a cave but there was not really any cave or way into the rock at all.\nOn the flat of the green, just before this hollow place, I resolved to pitch my tent. This plain was not above a hundred yards broad, and about twice as long, and lay like a green before my door; and, at the end of it, descended irregularly every way down into the low ground by the seaside. It was on the N.N.W. side of the hill; so that it was sheltered from the heat every day, till it came to a W. and by S. sun, or thereabouts, which, in those countries, is near the setting.\nBefore I set up my tent I drew a half-circle before the hollow place, which took in about ten yards in its semi-diameter from the rock, and twenty yards in its diameter from its beginning and ending.\nIn this half-circle I pitched two rows of strong stakes, driving them into the ground till they stood very firm like piles, the biggest end being out of the ground above five feet and a half, and sharpened on the top. The two rows did not stand above six inches from one another.\nThen I took the pieces of cable which I had cut in the ship, and laid them in rows, one upon another, within the circle, between these two rows of stakes, up to the top, placing other stakes in the inside, leaning against them, about two feet and a half high, like a spur to a post; and this fence was so strong, that neither man nor beast could get into it or over it. This cost me a great deal of time and labour, especially to cut the piles in the woods, bring them to the place, and drive them into the earth.\nThe entrance into this place I made to be, not by a door, but by a short ladder to go over the top; which ladder, when I was in, I lifted over after me; and so I was completely fenced in and fortified, as I thought, from all the world, and consequently slept secure in the night, which otherwise I could not have done; though, as it appeared afterwards, there was no need of all this caution from the enemies that I apprehended danger from.\nInto this fence or fortress, with infinite labour, I carried all my riches, all my provisions, ammunition, and stores, of which you have the account above; and I made a large tent, which to preserve me from the rains that in one part of the year are very violent there, I made double\u2014one smaller tent within, and one larger tent above it; and covered the uppermost with a large tarpaulin, which I had saved among the sails.\nAnd now I lay no more for a while in the bed which I had brought on shore, but in a hammock, which was indeed a very good one, and belonged to the mate of the ship.\nInto this tent I brought all my provisions, and everything that would spoil by the wet; and having thus enclosed all my goods, I made up the entrance, which till now I had left open, and so passed and repassed, as I said, by a short ladder.\nWhen I had done this, I began to work my way into the rock, and bringing all the earth and stones that I dug down out through my tent, I laid them up within my fence, in the nature of a terrace, so that it raised the ground within about a foot and a half; and thus I made me a cave, just behind my tent, which served me like a cellar to my house.\nIt cost me much labour and many days before all these things were brought to perfection; and therefore I must go back to some other things which took up some of my thoughts. At the same time it happened, after I had laid my scheme for the setting up my tent, and making the cave, that a storm of rain falling from a thick, dark cloud, a sudden flash of lightning happened, and after that a great clap of thunder, as is naturally the effect of it. I was not so much surprised with the lightning as I was with the thought which darted into my mind as swift as the lightning itself\u2014Oh, my powder! My very heart sank within me when I thought that, at one blast, all my powder might be destroyed; on which, not my defence only, but the providing my food, as I thought, entirely depended. I was nothing near so anxious about my own danger, though, had the powder took fire, I should never have known who had hurt me.\nSuch impression did this make upon me, that after the storm was over I laid aside all my works, my building and fortifying, and applied myself to make bags and boxes, to separate the powder, and to keep it a little and a little in a parcel, in the hope that, whatever might come, it might not all take fire at once; and to keep it so apart that it should not be possible to make one part fire another. I finished this work in about a fortnight; and I think my powder, which in all was about two hundred and forty pounds weight, was divided in not less than a hundred parcels. As to the barrel that had been wet, I did not apprehend any danger from that; so I placed it in my new cave, which, in my fancy, I called my kitchen; and the rest I hid up and down in holes among the rocks, so that no wet might come to it, marking very carefully where I laid it.\nIn the interval of time while this was doing, I went out once at least every day with my gun, as well to divert myself as to see if I could kill anything fit for food; and, as near as I could, to acquaint myself with what the island produced. The first time I went out, I presently discovered that there were goats in the island, which was a great satisfaction to me; but then it was attended with this misfortune to me\u2014viz. that they were so shy, so subtle, and so swift of foot, that it was the most difficult thing in the world to come at them; but I was not discouraged at this, not doubting but I might now and then shoot one, as it soon happened; for after I had found their haunts a little, I laid wait in this manner for them: I observed if they saw me in the valleys, though they were upon the rocks, they would run away, as in a terrible fright; but if they were feeding in the valleys, and I was upon the rocks, they took no notice of me; from whence I concluded that, by the position of their optics, their sight was so directed downward that they did not readily see objects that were above them; so afterwards I took this method\u2014I always climbed the rocks first, to get above them, and then had frequently a fair mark.\nThe first shot I made among these creatures, I killed a she-goat, which had a little kid by her, which she gave suck to, which grieved me heartily; for when the old one fell, the kid stood stock still by her, till I came and took her up; and not only so, but when I carried the old one with me, upon my shoulders, the kid followed me quite to my enclosure; upon which I laid down the dam, and took the kid in my arms, and carried it over my pale, in hopes to have bred it up tame; but it would not eat; so I was forced to kill it and eat it myself. These two supplied me with flesh a great while, for I ate sparingly, and saved my provisions, my bread especially, as much as possibly I could.\nHaving now fixed my habitation, I found it absolutely necessary to provide a place to make a fire in, and fuel to burn: and what I did for that, and also how I enlarged my cave, and what conveniences I made, I shall give a full account of in its place; but I must now give some little account of myself, and of my thoughts about living, which, it may well be supposed, were not a few.\nI had a dismal prospect of my condition; for as I was not cast away upon that island without being driven, as is said, by a violent storm, quite out of the course of our intended voyage, and a great way, viz. some hundreds of leagues, out of the ordinary course of the trade of mankind, I had great reason to consider it as a determination of Heaven, that in this desolate place, and in this desolate manner, I should end my life. The tears would run plentifully down my face when I made these reflections; and sometimes I would expostulate with myself why Providence should thus completely ruin His creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable; so without help, abandoned, so entirely depressed, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a life.\nBut something always returned swift upon me to check these thoughts, and to reprove me; and particularly one day, walking with my gun in my hand by the seaside, I was very pensive upon the subject of my present condition, when reason, as it were, expostulated with me the other way, thus: \u201cWell, you are in a desolate condition, it is true; but, pray remember, where are the rest of you? Did not you come, eleven of you in the boat? Where are the ten? Why were they not saved, and you lost? Why were you singled out? Is it better to be here or there?\u201d And then I pointed to the sea. All evils are to be considered with the good that is in them, and with what worse attends them.\nThen it occurred to me again, how well I was furnished for my subsistence, and what would have been my case if it had not happened (which was a hundred thousand to one) that the ship floated from the place where she first struck, and was driven so near to the shore that I had time to get all these things out of her; what would have been my case, if I had been forced to have lived in the condition in which I at first came on shore, without necessaries of life, or necessaries to supply and procure them? \u201cParticularly,\u201d said I, aloud (though to myself), \u201cwhat should I have done without a gun, without ammunition, without any tools to make anything, or to work with, without clothes, bedding, a tent, or any manner of covering?\u201d and that now I had all these to sufficient quantity, and was in a fair way to provide myself in such a manner as to live without my gun, when my ammunition was spent: so that I had a tolerable view of subsisting, without any want, as long as I lived; for I considered from the beginning how I would provide for the accidents that might happen, and for the time that was to come, even not only after my ammunition should be spent, but even after my health and strength should decay.\nI confess I had not entertained any notion of my ammunition being destroyed at one blast\u2014I mean my powder being blown up by lightning; and this made the thoughts of it so surprising to me, when it lightened and thundered, as I observed just now.\nAnd now being about to enter into a melancholy relation of a scene of silent life, such, perhaps, as was never heard of in the world before, I shall take it from its beginning, and continue it in its order. It was by my account the 30th of September, when, in the manner as above said, I first set foot upon this horrid island; when the sun, being to us in its autumnal equinox, was almost over my head; for I reckoned myself, by observation, to be in the latitude of nine degrees twenty-two minutes north of the line.\nAfter I had been there about ten or twelve days, it came into my thoughts that I should lose my reckoning of time for want of books, and pen and ink, and should even forget the Sabbath days; but to prevent this, I cut with my knife upon a large post, in capital letters\u2014and making it into a great cross, I set it up on the shore where I first landed\u2014\u201cI came on shore here on the 30th September 1659.\u201d\nUpon the sides of this square post I cut every day a notch with my knife, and every seventh notch was as long again as the rest, and every first day of the month as long again as that long one; and thus I kept my calendar, or weekly, monthly, and yearly reckoning of time.\nIn the next place, we are to observe that among the many things which I brought out of the ship, in the several voyages which, as above mentioned, I made to it, I got several things of less value, but not at all less useful to me, which I omitted setting down before; as, in particular, pens, ink, and paper, several parcels in the captain\u2019s, mate\u2019s, gunner\u2019s and carpenter\u2019s keeping; three or four compasses, some mathematical instruments, dials, perspectives, charts, and books of navigation, all which I huddled together, whether I might want them or no; also, I found three very good Bibles, which came to me in my cargo from England, and which I had packed up among my things; some Destiny books also; and among them two or three Popish prayer-books, and several other books, all which I carefully secured. And I must not forget that we had in the ship a dog and two cats, of whose eminent history I may have occasion to say something in its place; for I carried both the cats with me; and as for the dog, he jumped out of the ship of himself, and swam on shore to me the day after I went on shore with my first cargo, and was a trusty servant to me many years; I wanted nothing that he could fetch me, nor any company that he could make up to me; I only wanted to have him talk to me, but that would not do. As I observed before, I found pens, ink, and paper, and I husbanded them to the utmost; and I shall show that while my ink lasted, I kept things very exact, but after that was gone I could not, for I could not make any ink by any means that I could devise.\nAnd this put me in mind that I wanted many things notwithstanding all that I had amassed together; and of these, ink was one; as also a spade, pickaxe, and shovel, to dig or remove the earth; needles, pins, and thread; as for linen, I soon learned to want that without much difficulty.\nThis want of tools made every work I did go on heavily; and it was near a whole year before I had entirely finished my little pale, or surrounded my habitation. The piles, or stakes, which were as heavy as I could well lift, were a long time in cutting and preparing in the woods, and more, by far, in bringing home; so that I spent sometimes two days in cutting and bringing home one of those posts, and a third day in driving it into the ground; for which purpose I got a heavy piece of wood at first, but at last bethought myself of one of the iron crows; which, however, though I found it, made driving those posts or piles very laborious and tedious work.\nBut what need I have been concerned at the tediousness of anything I had to do, seeing I had time enough to do it in? nor had I any other employment, if that had been over, at least that I could foresee, except the ranging the island to seek for food, which I did, more or less, every day.\nI now began to consider seriously my condition, and the circumstances I was reduced to; and I drew up the state of my affairs in writing, not so much to leave them to any that were to come after me\u2014for I was likely to have but few heirs\u2014as to deliver my thoughts from daily poring over them, and afflicting my mind; and as my reason began now to master my despondency, I began to comfort myself as well as I could, and to set the good against the evil, that I might have something to distinguish my case from worse; and I stated very impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts I enjoyed against the miseries I suffered, thus:\u2014 Evil.\nGood.\nI am cast upon a horrible, desolate island, void of all hope of recovery.\nBut I am alive; and not drowned, as all my ship\u2019s company were.\nI am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world, to be miserable.\nBut I am singled out, too, from all the ship\u2019s crew, to be spared from death; and He that miraculously saved me from death can deliver me from this condition.\nI am divided from mankind\u2014a solitaire; one banished from human society.\nBut I am not starved, and perishing on a barren place, affording no sustenance.\nI have no clothes to cover me.\nBut I am in a hot climate, where, if I had clothes, I could hardly wear them.\nI am without any defence, or means to resist any violence of man or beast.\nBut I am cast on an island where I see no wild beasts to hurt me, as I saw on the coast of Africa; and what if I had been shipwrecked there?\nI have no soul to speak to or relieve me.\nBut God wonderfully sent the ship in near enough to the shore, that I have got out as many necessary things as will either supply my wants or enable me to supply myself, even as long as I live.\nUpon the whole, here was an undoubted testimony that there was scarce any condition in the world so miserable but there was something negative or something positive to be thankful for in it; and let this stand as a direction from the experience of the most miserable of all conditions in this world: that we may always find in it something to comfort ourselves from, and to set, in the description of good and evil, on the credit side of the account.\nHaving now brought my mind a little to relish my condition, and given over looking out to sea, to see if I could spy a ship\u2014I say, giving over these things, I began to apply myself to arrange my way of living, and to make things as easy to me as I could.\nI have already described my habitation, which was a tent under the side of a rock, surrounded with a strong pale of posts and cables: but I might now rather call it a wall, for I raised a kind of wall up against it of turfs, about two feet thick on the outside; and after some time (I think it was a year and a half) I raised rafters from it, leaning to the rock, and thatched or covered it with boughs of trees, and such things as I could get, to keep out the rain; which I found at some times of the year very violent.\nI have already observed how I brought all my goods into this pale, and into the cave which I had made behind me. But I must observe, too, that at first this was a confused heap of goods, which, as they lay in no order, so they took up all my place; I had no room to turn myself: so I set myself to enlarge my cave, and work farther into the earth; for it was a loose sandy rock, which yielded easily to the labour I bestowed on it: and so when I found I was pretty safe as to beasts of prey, I worked sideways, to the right hand, into the rock; and then, turning to the right again, worked quite out, and made me a door to come out on the outside of my pale or fortification. This gave me not only egress and regress, as it was a back way to my tent and to my storehouse, but gave me room to store my goods.\nAnd now I began to apply myself to make such necessary things as I found I most wanted, particularly a chair and a table; for without these I was not able to enjoy the few comforts I had in the world; I could not write or eat, or do several things, with so much pleasure without a table: so I went to work. And here I must needs observe, that as reason is the substance and origin of the mathematics, so by stating and squaring everything by reason, and by making the most rational judgment of things, every man may be, in time, master of every mechanic art. I had never handled a tool in my life; and yet, in time, by labour, application, and contrivance, I found at last that I wanted nothing but I could have made it, especially if I had had tools. However, I made abundance of things, even without tools; and some with no more tools than an adze and a hatchet, which perhaps were never made that way before, and that with infinite labour. For example, if I wanted a board, I had no other way but to cut down a tree, set it on an edge before me, and hew it flat on either side with my axe, till I brought it to be thin as a plank, and then dub it smooth with my adze. It is true, by this method I could make but one board out of a whole tree; but this I had no remedy for but patience, any more than I had for the prodigious deal of time and labour which it took me up to make a plank or board: but my time or labour was little worth, and so it was as well employed one way as another.\nHowever, I made me a table and a chair, as I observed above, in the first place; and this I did out of the short pieces of boards that I brought on my raft from the ship. But when I had wrought out some boards as above, I made large shelves, of the breadth of a foot and a half, one over another all along one side of my cave, to lay all my tools, nails and ironwork on; and, in a word, to separate everything at large into their places, that I might come easily at them. I knocked pieces into the wall of the rock to hang my guns and all things that would hang up; so that, had my cave been to be seen, it looked like a general magazine of all necessary things; and had everything so ready at my hand, that it was a great pleasure to me to see all my goods in such order, and especially to find my stock of all necessaries so great.\nAnd now it was that I began to keep a journal of every day\u2019s employment; for, indeed, at first I was in too much hurry, and not only hurry as to labour, but in too much discomposure of mind; and my journal would have been full of many dull things; for example, I must have said thus: \u201c30th.\u2014After I had got to shore, and escaped drowning, instead of being thankful to God for my deliverance, having first vomited, with the great quantity of salt water which had got into my stomach, and recovering myself a little, I ran about the shore wringing my hands and beating my head and face, exclaiming at my misery, and crying out, \u2018I was undone, undone!\u2019 till, tired and faint, I was forced to lie down on the ground to repose, but durst not sleep for fear of being devoured.\u201d\nSome days after this, and after I had been on board the ship, and got all that I could out of her, yet I could not forbear getting up to the top of a little mountain and looking out to sea, in hopes of seeing a ship; then fancy at a vast distance I spied a sail, please myself with the hopes of it, and then after looking steadily, till I was almost blind, lose it quite, and sit down and weep like a child, and thus increase my misery by my folly.\nBut having gotten over these things in some measure, and having settled my household staff and habitation, made me a table and a chair, and all as handsome about me as I could, I began to keep my journal; of which I shall here give you the copy (though in it will be told all these particulars over again) as long as it lasted; for having no more ink, I was forced to leave it off.\nCHAPTER V.\nBUILDS A HOUSE\u2014THE JOURNAL\nSeptember 30, 1659.\u2014I, poor miserable Morgan Paris, being shipwrecked during a dreadful storm in the offing, came on shore on this dismal, unfortunate island, which I called \u201cThe Island of Despair\u201d; all the rest of the ship\u2019s company being drowned, and myself almost dead.\nAll the rest of the day I spent in afflicting myself at the dismal circumstances I was brought to\u2014viz. I had neither food, house, clothes, weapon, nor place to fly to; and in despair of any relief, saw nothing but death before me\u2014either that I should be devoured by wild beasts, murdered by savages, or starved to death for want of food. At the approach of night I slept in a tree, for fear of wild creatures; but slept soundly, though it rained all night.\nOctober 1.\u2014In the morning I saw, to my great surprise, the ship had floated with the high tide, and was driven on shore again much nearer the island; which, as it was some comfort, on one hand\u2014for, seeing her set upright, and not broken to pieces, I hoped, if the wind abated, I might get on board, and get some food and necessaries out of her for my relief\u2014so, on the other hand, it renewed my grief at the loss of my comrades, who, I imagined, if we had all stayed on board, might have saved the ship, or, at least, that they would not have been all drowned as they were; and that, had the men been saved, we might perhaps have built us a boat out of the ruins of the ship to have carried us to some other part of the world. I spent great part of this day in perplexing myself on these things; but at length, seeing the ship almost dry, I went upon the sand as near as I could, and then swam on board. This day also it continued raining, though with no wind at all.\nFrom the 1st of October to the 24th.\u2014All these days entirely spent in many several voyages to get all I could out of the ship, which I brought on shore every tide of flood upon rafts. Much rain also in the days, though with some intervals of fair weather; but it seems this was the rainy season.\nOct. 20.\u2014I overset my raft, and all the goods I had got upon it; but, being in shoal water, and the things being chiefly heavy, I recovered many of them when the tide was out.\nOct. 25.\u2014It rained all night and all day, with some gusts of wind; during which time the ship broke in pieces, the wind blowing a little harder than before, and was no more to be seen, except the wreck of her, and that only at low water. I spent this day in covering and securing the goods which I had saved, that the rain might not spoil them.\nOct. 26.\u2014I walked about the shore almost all day, to find out a place to fix my habitation, greatly concerned to secure myself from any attack in the night, either from wild beasts or men. Towards night, I fixed upon a proper place, under a rock, and marked out a semicircle for my encampment; which I resolved to strengthen with a work, wall, or fortification, made of double piles, lined within with cables, and without with turf.\nFrom the 26th to the 30th I worked very hard in carrying all my goods to my new habitation, though some part of the time it rained exceedingly hard.\nThe 31st, in the morning, I went out into the island with my gun, to seek for some food, and discover the country; when I killed a she-goat, and her kid followed me home, which I afterwards killed also, because it would not feed.\nNovember 1.\u2014I set up my tent under a rock, and lay there for the first night; making it as large as I could, with stakes driven in to swing my hammock upon.\nNov. 2.\u2014I set up all my chests and boards, and the pieces of timber which made my rafts, and with them formed a fence round me, a little within the place I had marked out for my fortification.\nNov. 3.\u2014I went out with my gun, and killed two fowls like ducks, which were very good food. In the afternoon went to work to make me a table.\nNov. 4.\u2014This morning I began to order my times of work, of going out with my gun, time of sleep, and time of diversion\u2014viz. every morning I walked out with my gun for two or three hours, if it did not rain; then employed myself to work till about eleven o\u2019clock; then eat what I had to live on; and from twelve to two I lay down to sleep, the weather being excessively hot; and then, in the evening, to work again. The working part of this day and of the next were wholly employed in making my table, for I was yet but a very sorry workman, though time and necessity made me a complete natural mechanic soon after, as I believe they would do any one else.\nNov. 5.\u2014This day went abroad with my gun and my dog, and killed a wild cat; her skin pretty soft, but her flesh good for nothing; every creature that I killed I took of the skins and preserved them. Coming back by the sea-shore, I saw many sorts of sea-fowls, which I did not understand; but was surprised, and almost frightened, with two or three seals, which, while I was gazing at, not well knowing what they were, got into the sea, and escaped me for that time.\nNov. 6.\u2014After my morning walk I went to work with my table again, and finished it, though not to my liking; nor was it long before I learned to mend it.\nNov. 7.\u2014Now it began to be settled fair weather. The 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and part of the 12th (for the 11th was Sunday) I took wholly up to make me a chair, and with much ado brought it to a tolerable shape, but never to please me; and even in the making I pulled it in pieces several times.\nNote.\u2014I soon neglected my keeping Sundays; for, omitting my mark for them on my post, I forgot which was which.\nNov. 13.\u2014This day it rained, which refreshed me exceedingly, and cooled the earth; but it was accompanied with terrible thunder and lightning, which frightened me dreadfully, for fear of my powder. As soon as it was over, I resolved to separate my stock of powder into as many little parcels as possible, that it might not be in danger.\nNov. 14, 15, 16.\u2014These three days I spent in making little square chests, or boxes, which might hold about a pound, or two pounds at most, of powder; and so, putting the powder in, I stowed it in places as secure and remote from one another as possible. On one of these three days I killed a large bird that was good to eat, but I knew not what to call it.\nNov. 17.\u2014This day I began to dig behind my tent into the rock, to make room for my further conveniency.\nNote.\u2014Three things I wanted exceedingly for this work\u2014viz. a pickaxe, a shovel, and a wheelbarrow or basket; so I desisted from my work, and began to consider how to supply that want, and make me some tools. As for the pickaxe, I made use of the iron crows, which were proper enough, though heavy; but the next thing was a shovel or spade; this was so absolutely necessary, that, indeed, I could do nothing effectually without it; but what kind of one to make I knew not.\nNov. 18.\u2014The next day, in searching the woods, I found a tree of that wood, or like it, which in the Brazils they call the iron-tree, for its exceeding hardness. Of this, with great labour, and almost spoiling my axe, I cut a piece, and brought it home, too, with difficulty enough, for it was exceeding heavy. The excessive hardness of the wood, and my having no other way, made me a long while upon this machine, for I worked it effectually by little and little into the form of a shovel or spade; the handle exactly shaped like ours in England, only that the board part having no iron shod upon it at bottom, it would not last me so long; however, it served well enough for the uses which I had occasion to put it to; but never was a shovel, I believe, made after that fashion, or so long in making.\nI was still deficient, for I wanted a basket or a wheelbarrow. A basket I could not make by any means, having no such things as twigs that would bend to make wicker-ware\u2014at least, none yet found out; and as to a wheelbarrow, I fancied I could make all but the wheel; but that I had no notion of; neither did I know how to go about it; besides, I had no possible way to make the iron gudgeons for the spindle or axis of the wheel to run in; so I gave it over, and so, for carrying away the earth which I dug out of the cave, I made me a thing like a hod which the labourers carry mortar in when they serve the bricklayers. This was not so difficult to me as the making the shovel: and yet this and the shovel, and the attempt which I made in vain to make a wheelbarrow, took me up no less than four days\u2014I mean always excepting my morning walk with my gun, which I seldom failed, and very seldom failed also bringing home something fit to eat.\nNov. 23.\u2014My other work having now stood still, because of my making these tools, when they were finished I went on, and working every day, as my strength and time allowed, I spent eighteen days entirely in widening and deepening my cave, that it might hold my goods commodiously.\nNote.\u2014During all this time I worked to make this room or cave spacious enough to accommodate me as a warehouse or magazine, a kitchen, a dining-room, and a cellar. As for my lodging, I kept to the tent; except that sometimes, in the wet season of the year, it rained so hard that I could not keep myself dry, which caused me afterwards to cover all my place within my pale with long poles, in the form of rafters, leaning against the rock, and load them with flags and large leaves of trees, like a thatch.\nDecember 10.\u2014I began now to think my cave or vault finished, when on a sudden (it seems I had made it too large) a great quantity of earth fell down from the top on one side; so much that, in short, it frighted me, and not without reason, too, for if I had been under it, I had never wanted a gravedigger. I had now a great deal of work to do over again, for I had the loose earth to carry out; and, which was of more importance, I had the ceiling to prop up, so that I might be sure no more would come down.\nDec. 11.\u2014This day I went to work with it accordingly, and got two shores or posts pitched upright to the top, with two pieces of boards across over each post; this I finished the next day; and setting more posts up with boards, in about a week more I had the roof secured, and the posts, standing in rows, served me for partitions to part off the house.\nDec. 17.\u2014From this day to the 20th I placed shelves, and knocked up nails on the posts, to hang everything up that could be hung up; and now I began to be in some order within doors.\nDec. 20.\u2014Now I carried everything into the cave, and began to furnish my house, and set up some pieces of boards like a dresser, to order my victuals upon; but boards began to be very scarce with me; also, I made me another table.\nDec. 24.\u2014Much rain all night and all day. No stirring out.\nDec. 25.\u2014Rain all day.\nDec. 26.\u2014No rain, and the earth much cooler than before, and pleasanter.\nDec. 27.\u2014Killed a young goat, and lamed another, so that I caught it and led it home in a string; when I had it at home, I bound and splintered up its leg, which was broke.\nN.B.\u2014I took such care of it that it lived, and the leg grew well and as strong as ever; but, by my nursing it so long, it grew tame, and fed upon the little green at my door, and would not go away. This was the first time that I entertained a thought of breeding up some tame creatures, that I might have food when my powder and shot was all spent.\nDec. 28, 29, 30.\u2014Great heats and no breeze, so that there was no stirring abroad except in the evening for food; this time I spent in putting all my things in order within doors.\nJanuary 1.\u2014Very hot still: but I went abroad early and late with my gun, and lay still in the middle of the day. This evening, going farther into the valleys which lay towards the centre of the island, I found there were plenty of goats, though exceedingly shy, and hard to come at; however, I resolved to try if I could not bring my dog to hunt them down.\nJan. 2.\u2014Accordingly, the next day I went out with my dog, and set him upon the goats, but I was mistaken, for they all faced about upon the dog, and he knew his danger too well, for he would not come near them.\nJan. 3.\u2014I began my fence or wall; which, being still jealous of my being attacked by somebody, I resolved to make very thick and strong.\nN.B.\u2014This wall being described before, I purposely omit what was said in the journal; it is sufficient to observe, that I was no less time than from the 2nd of January to the 14th of April working, finishing, and perfecting this wall, though it was no more than about twenty-four yards in length, being a half-circle from one place in the rock to another place, about eight yards from it, the door of the cave being in the centre behind it.\nAll this time I worked very hard, the rains hindering me many days, nay, sometimes weeks together; but I thought I should never be perfectly secure till this wall was finished; and it is scarce credible what inexpressible labour everything was done with, especially the bringing piles out of the woods and driving them into the ground; for I made them much bigger than I needed to have done.\nWhen this wall was finished, and the outside double fenced, with a turf wall raised up close to it, I perceived myself that if any people were to come on shore there, they would not perceive anything like a habitation; and it was very well I did so, as may be observed hereafter, upon a very remarkable occasion.\nDuring this time I made my rounds in the woods for game every day when the rain permitted me, and made frequent discoveries in these walks of something or other to my advantage; particularly, I found a kind of wild pigeons, which build, not as wood-pigeons in a tree, but rather as house-pigeons, in the holes of the rocks; and taking some young ones, I endeavoured to breed them up tame, and did so; but when they grew older they flew away, which perhaps was at first for want of feeding them, for I had nothing to give them; however, I frequently found their nests, and got their young ones, which were very good meat. And now, in the managing my household affairs, I found myself wanting in many things, which I thought at first it was impossible for me to make; as, indeed, with some of them it was: for instance, I could never make a cask to be hooped. I had a small runlet or two, as I observed before; but I could never arrive at the capacity of making one by them, though I spent many weeks about it; I could neither put in the heads, or join the staves so true to one another as to make them hold water; so I gave that also over. In the next place, I was at a great loss for candles; so that as soon as ever it was dark, which was generally by seven o\u2019clock, I was obliged to go to bed. I remembered the lump of beeswax with which I made candles in my African adventure; but I had none of that now; the only remedy I had was, that when I had killed a goat I saved the tallow, and with a little dish made of clay, which I baked in the sun, to which I added a wick of some oakum, I made me a lamp; and this gave me light, though not a clear, steady light, like a candle. In the middle of all my labours it happened that, rummaging my things, I found a little bag which, as I hinted before, had been filled with corn for the feeding of poultry\u2014not for this voyage, but before, as I suppose, when the ship came from Lisbon. The little remainder of corn that had been in the bag was all devoured by the rats, and I saw nothing in the bag but husks and dust; and being willing to have the bag for some other use (I think it was to put powder in, when I divided it for fear of the lightning, or some such use), I shook the husks of corn out of it on one side of my fortification, under the rock.\nIt was a little before the great rains just now mentioned that I threw this stuff away, taking no notice, and not so much as remembering that I had thrown anything there, when, about a month after, or thereabouts, I saw some few stalks of something green shooting out of the ground, which I fancied might be some plant I had not seen; but I was surprised, and perfectly astonished, when, after a little longer time, I saw about ten or twelve ears come out, which were perfect green barley, of the same kind as our European\u2014nay, as our English barley.\nIt is impossible to express the astonishment and confusion of my thoughts on this occasion. I had hitherto acted upon no religious foundation at all; indeed, I had very few notions of religion in my head, nor had entertained any sense of anything that had befallen me otherwise than as chance, or, as we lightly say, what pleases God, without so much as inquiring into the end of Providence in these things, or His order in governing events for the world. But after I saw barley grow there, in a climate which I knew was not proper for corn, and especially that I knew not how it came there, it startled me strangely, and I began to suggest that God had miraculously caused His grain to grow without any help of seed sown, and that it was so directed purely for my sustenance on that wild, miserable place.\nThis touched my heart a little, and brought tears out of my eyes, and I began to bless myself that such a prodigy of nature should happen upon my account; and this was the more strange to me, because I saw near it still, all along by the side of the rock, some other straggling stalks, which proved to be stalks of rice, and which I knew, because I had seen it grow in Africa when I was ashore there.\nI not only thought these the pure productions of Providence for my support, but not doubting that there was more in the place, I went all over that part of the island, where I had been before, peering in every corner, and under every rock, to see for more of it, but I could not find any. At last it occurred to my thoughts that I shook a bag of chickens\u2019 meat out in that place; and then the wonder began to cease; and I must confess my religious thankfulness to God\u2019s providence began to abate, too, upon the discovering that all this was nothing but what was common; though I ought to have been as thankful for so strange and unforeseen a providence as if it had been miraculous; for it was really the work of Providence to me, that should order or appoint that ten or twelve grains of corn should remain unspoiled, when the rats had destroyed all the rest, as if it had been dropped from heaven; as also, that I should throw it out in that particular place, where, it being in the shade of a high rock, it sprang up immediately; whereas, if I had thrown it anywhere else at that time, it had been burnt up and destroyed.\nI carefully saved the ears of this corn, you may be sure, in their season, which was about the end of June; and, laying up every corn, I resolved to sow them all again, hoping in time to have some quantity sufficient to supply me with bread. But it was not till the fourth year that I could allow myself the least grain of this corn to eat, and even then but sparingly, as I shall say afterwards, in its order; for I lost all that I sowed the first season by not observing the proper time; for I sowed it just before the dry season, so that it never came up at all, at least not as it would have done; of which in its place.\nBesides this barley, there were, as above, twenty or thirty stalks of rice, which I preserved with the same care and for the same use, or to the same purpose\u2014to make me bread, or rather food; for I found ways to cook it without baking, though I did that also after some time.\nBut to return to my Journal.\nI worked excessive hard these three or four months to get my wall done; and the 14th of April I closed it up, contriving to go into it, not by a door but over the wall, by a ladder, that there might be no sign on the outside of my habitation.\nApril 16.\u2014I finished the ladder; so I went up the ladder to the top, and then pulled it up after me, and let it down in the inside. This was a complete enclosure to me; for within I had room enough, and nothing could come at me from without, unless it could first mount my wall.\nThe very next day after this wall was finished I had almost had all my labour overthrown at once, and myself killed. The case was thus: As I was busy in the inside, behind my tent, just at the entrance into my cave, I was terribly frighted with a most dreadful, surprising thing indeed; for all on a sudden I found the earth come crumbling down from the roof of my cave, and from the edge of the hill over my head, and two of the posts I had set up in the cave cracked in a frightful manner. I was heartily scared; but thought nothing of what was really the cause, only thinking that the top of my cave was fallen in, as some of it had done before: and for fear I should be buried in it I ran forward to my ladder, and not thinking myself safe there neither, I got over my wall for fear of the pieces of the hill, which I expected might roll down upon me. I had no sooner stepped down upon the firm ground, than I plainly saw it was a terrible earthquake, for the ground I stood on shook three times at about eight minutes\u2019 distance, with three such shocks as would have overturned the strongest building that could be supposed to have stood on the earth; and a great piece of the top of a rock which stood about half a mile from me next the sea fell down with such a terrible noise as I never heard in all my life. I perceived also the very sea was put into violent motion by it; and I believe the shocks were stronger under the water than on the island.\nI was so much amazed with the thing itself, having never felt the like, nor discoursed with any one that had, that I was like one dead or stupefied; and the motion of the earth made my stomach sick, like one that was tossed at sea; but the noise of the falling of the rock awakened me, as it were, and rousing me from the stupefied condition I was in, filled me with horror; and I thought of nothing then but the hill falling upon my tent and all my household goods, and burying all at once; and this sunk my very soul within me a second time.\nAfter the third shock was over, and I felt no more for some time, I began to take courage; and yet I had not heart enough to go over my wall again, for fear of being buried alive, but sat still upon the ground greatly cast down and disconsolate, not knowing what to do. All this while I had not the least serious religious thought; nothing but the common \u201cLord have mercy upon me!\u201d and when it was over that went away too.\nWhile I sat thus, I found the air overcast and grow cloudy, as if it would rain. Soon after that the wind arose by little and little, so that in less than half-an-hour it blew a most dreadful hurricane; the sea was all on a sudden covered over with foam and froth; the shore was covered with the breach of the water, the trees were torn up by the roots, and a terrible storm it was. This held about three hours, and then began to abate; and in two hours more it was quite calm, and began to rain very hard. All this while I sat upon the ground very much terrified and dejected; when on a sudden it came into my thoughts, that these winds and rain being the consequences of the earthquake, the earthquake itself was spent and over, and I might venture into my cave again. With this thought my spirits began to revive; and the rain also helping to persuade me, I went in and sat down in my tent. But the rain was so violent that my tent was ready to be beaten down with it; and I was forced to go into my cave, though very much afraid and uneasy, for fear it should fall on my head. This violent rain forced me to a new work\u2014viz. to cut a hole through my new fortification, like a sink, to let the water go out, which would else have flooded my cave. After I had been in my cave for some time, and found still no more shocks of the earthquake follow, I began to be more composed. And now, to support my spirits, which indeed wanted it very much, I went to my little store, and took a small sup of rum; which, however, I did then and always very sparingly, knowing I could have no more when that was gone. It continued raining all that night and great part of the next day, so that I could not stir abroad; but my mind being more composed, I began to think of what I had best do; concluding that if the island was subject to these earthquakes, there would be no living for me in a cave, but I must consider of building a little hut in an open place which I might surround with a wall, as I had done here, and so make myself secure from wild beasts or men; for I concluded, if I stayed where I was, I should certainly one time or other be buried alive.\nWith these thoughts, I resolved to remove my tent from the place where it stood, which was just under the hanging precipice of the hill; and which, if it should be shaken again, would certainly fall upon my tent; and I spent the two next days, being the 19th and 20th of April, in contriving where and how to remove my habitation. The fear of being swallowed up alive made me that I never slept in quiet; and yet the apprehension of lying abroad without any fence was almost equal to it; but still, when I looked about, and saw how everything was put in order, how pleasantly concealed I was, and how safe from danger, it made me very loath to remove. In the meantime, it occurred to me that it would require a vast deal of time for me to do this, and that I must be contented to venture where I was, till I had formed a camp for myself, and had secured it so as to remove to it. So with this resolution I composed myself for a time, and resolved that I would go to work with all speed to build me a wall with piles and cables, &c., in a circle, as before, and set my tent up in it when it was finished; but that I would venture to stay where I was till it was finished, and fit to remove. This was the 21st.\nApril 22.\u2014The next morning I begin to consider of means to put this resolve into execution; but I was at a great loss about my tools. I had three large axes, and abundance of hatchets (for we carried the hatchets for traffic with the Indians); but with much chopping and cutting knotty hard wood, they were all full of notches, and dull; and though I had a grindstone, I could not turn it and grind my tools too. This cost me as much thought as a statesman would have bestowed upon a grand point of politics, or a judge upon the life and death of a man. At length I contrived a wheel with a string, to turn it with my foot, that I might have both my hands at liberty. Note.\u2014I had never seen any such thing in England, or at least, not to take notice how it was done, though since I have observed, it is very common there; besides that, my grindstone was very large and heavy. This machine cost me a full week\u2019s work to bring it to perfection.\nApril 28, 29.\u2014These two whole days I took up in grinding my tools, my machine for turning my grindstone performing very well.\nApril 30.\u2014Having perceived my bread had been low a great while, now I took a survey of it, and reduced myself to one biscuit cake a day, which made my heart very heavy.\nMay 1.\u2014In the morning, looking towards the sea side, the tide being low, I saw something lie on the shore bigger than ordinary, and it looked like a cask; when I came to it, I found a small barrel, and two or three pieces of the wreck of the ship, which were driven on shore by the late hurricane; and looking towards the wreck itself, I thought it seemed to lie higher out of the water than it used to do. I examined the barrel which was driven on shore, and soon found it was a barrel of gunpowder; but it had taken water, and the powder was caked as hard as a stone; however, I rolled it farther on shore for the present, and went on upon the sands, as near as I could to the wreck of the ship, to look for more.\nCHAPTER VI.\nILL AND CONSCIENCE-STRICKEN\nWhen I came down to the ship I found it strangely removed. The forecastle, which lay before buried in sand, was heaved up at least six feet, and the stern, which was broke in pieces and parted from the rest by the force of the sea, soon after I had left rummaging her, was tossed as it were up, and cast on one side; and the sand was thrown so high on that side next her stern, that whereas there was a great place of water before, so that I could not come within a quarter of a mile of the wreck without swimming I could now walk quite up to her when the tide was out. I was surprised with this at first, but soon concluded it must be done by the earthquake; and as by this violence the ship was more broke open than formerly, so many things came daily on shore, which the sea had loosened, and which the winds and water rolled by degrees to the land.\nThis wholly diverted my thoughts from the design of removing my habitation, and I busied myself mightily, that day especially, in searching whether I could make any way into the ship; but I found nothing was to be expected of that kind, for all the inside of the ship was choked up with sand. However, as I had learned not to despair of anything, I resolved to pull everything to pieces that I could of the ship, concluding that everything I could get from her would be of some use or other to me.\nMay 3.\u2014I began with my saw, and cut a piece of a beam through, which I thought held some of the upper part or quarter-deck together, and when I had cut it through, I cleared away the sand as well as I could from the side which lay highest; but the tide coming in, I was obliged to give over for that time.\nMay 4.\u2014I went a-fishing, but caught not one fish that I durst eat of, till I was weary of my sport; when, just going to leave off, I caught a young dolphin. I had made me a long line of some rope-yarn, but I had no hooks; yet I frequently caught fish enough, as much as I cared to eat; all which I dried in the sun, and ate them dry.\nMay 5.\u2014Worked on the wreck; cut another beam asunder, and brought three great fir planks off from the decks, which I tied together, and made to float on shore when the tide of flood came on.\nMay 6.\u2014Worked on the wreck; got several iron bolts out of her and other pieces of ironwork. Worked very hard, and came home very much tired, and had thoughts of giving it over.\nMay 7.\u2014Went to the wreck again, not with an intent to work, but found the weight of the wreck had broke itself down, the beams being cut; that several pieces of the ship seemed to lie loose, and the inside of the hold lay so open that I could see into it; but it was almost full of water and sand.\nMay 8.\u2014Went to the wreck, and carried an iron crow to wrench up the deck, which lay now quite clear of the water or sand. I wrenched open two planks, and brought them on shore also with the tide. I left the iron crow in the wreck for next day.\nMay 9.\u2014Went to the wreck, and with the crow made way into the body of the wreck, and felt several casks, and loosened them with the crow, but could not break them up. I felt also a roll of English lead, and could stir it, but it was too heavy to remove.\nMay 10\u201314.\u2014Went every day to the wreck; and got a great many pieces of timber, and boards, or plank, and two or three hundredweight of iron.\nMay 15.\u2014I carried two hatchets, to try if I could not cut a piece off the roll of lead by placing the edge of one hatchet and driving it with the other; but as it lay about a foot and a half in the water, I could not make any blow to drive the hatchet.\nMay 16.\u2014It had blown hard in the night, and the wreck appeared more broken by the force of the water; but I stayed so long in the woods, to get pigeons for food, that the tide prevented my going to the wreck that day.\nMay 17.\u2014I saw some pieces of the wreck blown on shore, at a great distance, near two miles off me, but resolved to see what they were, and found it was a piece of the head, but too heavy for me to bring away.\nMay 24.\u2014Every day, to this day, I worked on the wreck; and with hard labour I loosened some things so much with the crow, that the first flowing tide several casks floated out, and two of the seamen\u2019s chests; but the wind blowing from the shore, nothing came to land that day but pieces of timber, and a hogshead, which had some Brazil pork in it; but the salt water and the sand had spoiled it. I continued this work every day to the 15th of June, except the time necessary to get food, which I always appointed, during this part of my employment, to be when the tide was up, that I might be ready when it was ebbed out; and by this time I had got timber and plank and ironwork enough to have built a good boat, if I had known how; and also I got, at several times and in several pieces, near one hundredweight of the sheet lead.\nJune 16.\u2014Going down to the seaside, I found a large tortoise or turtle. This was the first I had seen, which, it seems, was only my misfortune, not any defect of the place, or scarcity; for had I happened to be on the other side of the island, I might have had hundreds of them every day, as I found afterwards; but perhaps had paid dear enough for them.\nJune 17.\u2014I spent in cooking the turtle. I found in her three-score eggs; and her flesh was to me, at that time, the most savoury and pleasant that ever I tasted in my life, having had no flesh, but of goats and fowls, since I landed in this horrid place.\nJune 18.\u2014Rained all day, and I stayed within. I thought at this time the rain felt cold, and I was something chilly; which I knew was not usual in that latitude.\nJune 19.\u2014Very ill, and shivering, as if the weather had been cold.\nJune 20.\u2014No rest all night; violent pains in my head, and feverish.\nJune 21.\u2014Very ill; frighted almost to death with the apprehensions of my sad condition\u2014to be sick, and no help. Prayed to God, for the first time since the storm off Hull, but scarce knew what I said, or why, my thoughts being all confused.\nJune 22.\u2014A little better; but under dreadful apprehensions of sickness.\nJune 23.\u2014Very bad again; cold and shivering, and then a violent headache.\nJune 24.\u2014Much better.\nJune 25.\u2014An ague very violent; the fit held me seven hours; cold fit and hot, with faint sweats after it.\nJune 26.\u2014Better; and having no victuals to eat, took my gun, but found myself very weak. However, I killed a she-goat, and with much difficulty got it home, and broiled some of it, and ate, I would fain have stewed it, and made some broth, but had no pot.\nJune 27.\u2014The ague again so violent that I lay a-bed all day, and neither ate nor drank. I was ready to perish for thirst; but so weak, I had not strength to stand up, or to get myself any water to drink. Prayed to God again, but was light-headed; and when I was not, I was so ignorant that I knew not what to say; only I lay and cried, \u201cLord, look upon me! Lord, pity me! Lord, have mercy upon me!\u201d I suppose I did nothing else for two or three hours; till, the fit wearing off, I fell asleep, and did not wake till far in the night. When I awoke, I found myself much refreshed, but weak, and exceeding thirsty. However, as I had no water in my habitation, I was forced to lie till morning, and went to sleep again. In this second sleep I had this terrible dream: I thought that I was sitting on the ground, on the outside of my wall, where I sat when the storm blew after the earthquake, and that I saw a man descend from a great black cloud, in a bright flame of fire, and light upon the ground. He was all over as bright as a flame, so that I could but just bear to look towards him; his countenance was most inexpressibly dreadful, impossible for words to describe. When he stepped upon the ground with his feet, I thought the earth trembled, just as it had done before in the earthquake, and all the air looked, to my apprehension, as if it had been filled with flashes of fire. He was no sooner landed upon the earth, but he moved forward towards me, with a long spear or weapon in his hand, to kill me; and when he came to a rising ground, at some distance, he spoke to me\u2014or I heard a voice so terrible that it is impossible to express the terror of it. All that I can say I understood was this: \u201cSeeing all these things have not brought thee to repentance, now thou shalt die;\u201d at which words, I thought he lifted up the spear that was in his hand to kill me.\nNo one that shall ever read this account will expect that I should be able to describe the horrors of my soul at this terrible vision. I mean, that even while it was a dream, I even dreamed of those horrors. Nor is it any more possible to describe the impression that remained upon my mind when I awaked, and found it was but a dream.\nI had, alas! no divine knowledge. What I had received by the good instruction of my father was then worn out by an uninterrupted series, for eight years, of seafaring wickedness, and a constant conversation with none but such as were, like myself, wicked and profane to the last degree. I do not remember that I had, in all that time, one thought that so much as tended either to looking upwards towards God, or inwards towards a reflection upon my own ways; but a certain stupidity of soul, without desire of good, or conscience of evil, had entirely overwhelmed me; and I was all that the most hardened, unthinking, wicked creature among our common sailors can be supposed to be; not having the least sense, either of the fear of God in danger, or of thankfulness to God in deliverance.\nIn the relating what is already past of my story, this will be the more easily believed when I shall add, that through all the variety of miseries that had to this day befallen me, I never had so much as one thought of it being the hand of God, or that it was a just punishment for my sin\u2014my rebellious behaviour against my father\u2014or my present sins, which were great\u2014or so much as a punishment for the general course of my wicked life. When I was on the desperate expedition on the desert shores of Africa, I never had so much as one thought of what would become of me, or one wish to God to direct me whither I should go, or to keep me from the danger which apparently surrounded me, as well from voracious creatures as cruel savages. But I was merely thoughtless of a God or a Providence, acted like a mere brute, from the principles of nature, and by the dictates of common sense only, and, indeed, hardly that. When I was delivered and taken up at sea by the Portugal captain, well used, and dealt justly and honourably with, as well as charitably, I had not the least thankfulness in my thoughts. When, again, I was shipwrecked, ruined, and in danger of drowning on this island, I was as far from remorse, or looking on it as a judgment. I only said to myself often, that I was an unfortunate dog, and born to be always miserable.\nIt is true, when I got on shore first here, and found all my ship\u2019s crew drowned and myself spared, I was surprised with a kind of ecstasy, and some transports of soul, which, had the grace of God assisted, might have come up to true thankfulness; but it ended where it began, in a mere common flight of joy, or, as I may say, being glad I was alive, without the least reflection upon the distinguished goodness of the hand which had preserved me, and had singled me out to be preserved when all the rest were destroyed, or an inquiry why Providence had been thus merciful unto me. Even just the same common sort of joy which seamen generally have, after they are got safe ashore from a shipwreck, which they drown all in the next bowl of punch, and forget almost as soon as it is over; and all the rest of my life was like it. Even when I was afterwards, on due consideration, made sensible of my condition, how I was cast on this dreadful place, out of the reach of human kind, out of all hope of relief, or prospect of redemption, as soon as I saw but a prospect of living and that I should not starve and perish for hunger, all the sense of my affliction wore off; and I began to be very easy, applied myself to the works proper for my preservation and supply, and was far enough from being afflicted at my condition, as a judgment from heaven, or as the hand of God against me: these were thoughts which very seldom entered my head.\nThe growing up of the corn, as is hinted in my Journal, had at first some little influence upon me, and began to affect me with seriousness, as long as I thought it had something miraculous in it; but as soon as ever that part of the thought was removed, all the impression that was raised from it wore off also, as I have noted already. Even the earthquake, though nothing could be more terrible in its nature, or more immediately directing to the invisible Power which alone directs such things, yet no sooner was the first fright over, but the impression it had made went off also. I had no more sense of God or His judgments\u2014much less of the present affliction of my circumstances being from His hand\u2014than if I had been in the most prosperous condition of life. But now, when I began to be sick, and a leisurely view of the miseries of death came to place itself before me; when my spirits began to sink under the burden of a strong distemper, and nature was exhausted with the violence of the fever; conscience, that had slept so long, began to awake, and I began to reproach myself with my past life, in which I had so evidently, by uncommon wickedness, provoked the justice of God to lay me under uncommon strokes, and to deal with me in so vindictive a manner. These reflections oppressed me for the second or third day of my distemper; and in the violence, as well of the fever as of the dreadful reproaches of my conscience, extorted some words from me like praying to God, though I cannot say they were either a prayer attended with desires or with hopes: it was rather the voice of mere fright and distress. My thoughts were confused, the convictions great upon my mind, and the horror of dying in such a miserable condition raised vapours into my head with the mere apprehensions; and in these hurries of my soul I knew not what my tongue might express. But it was rather exclamation, such as, \u201cLord, what a miserable creature am I! If I should be sick, I shall certainly die for want of help; and what will become of me!\u201d Then the tears burst out of my eyes, and I could say no more for a good while. In this interval the good advice of my father came to my mind, and presently his prediction, which I mentioned at the beginning of this story\u2014viz. that if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel when there might be none to assist in my recovery. \u201cNow,\u201d said I, aloud, \u201cmy dear father\u2019s words are come to pass; God\u2019s justice has overtaken me, and I have none to help or hear me. I rejected the voice of Providence, which had mercifully put me in a posture or station of life wherein I might have been happy and easy; but I would neither see it myself nor learn to know the blessing of it from my parents. I left them to mourn over my folly, and now I am left to mourn under the consequences of it. I abused their help and assistance, who would have lifted me in the world, and would have made everything easy to me; and now I have difficulties to struggle with, too great for even nature itself to support, and no assistance, no help, no comfort, no advice.\u201d Then I cried out, \u201cLord, be my help, for I am in great distress.\u201d This was the first prayer, if I may call it so, that I had made for many years.\nBut to return to my Journal.\nJune 28.\u2014Having been somewhat refreshed with the sleep I had had, and the fit being entirely off, I got up; and though the fright and terror of my dream was very great, yet I considered that the fit of the ague would return again the next day, and now was my time to get something to refresh and support myself when I should be ill; and the first thing I did, I filled a large square case-bottle with water, and set it upon my table, in reach of my bed; and to take off the chill or aguish disposition of the water, I put about a quarter of a pint of rum into it, and mixed them together. Then I got me a piece of the goat\u2019s flesh and broiled it on the coals, but could eat very little. I walked about, but was very weak, and withal very sad and heavy-hearted under a sense of my miserable condition, dreading, the return of my distemper the next day. At night I made my supper of three of the turtle\u2019s eggs, which I roasted in the ashes, and ate, as we call it, in the shell, and this was the first bit of meat I had ever asked God\u2019s blessing to, that I could remember, in my whole life. After I had eaten I tried to walk, but found myself so weak that I could hardly carry a gun, for I never went out without that; so I went but a little way, and sat down upon the ground, looking out upon the sea, which was just before me, and very calm and smooth. As I sat here some such thoughts as these occurred to me: What is this earth and sea, of which I have seen so much? Whence is it produced? And what am I, and all the other creatures wild and tame, human and brutal? Whence are we? Sure we are all made by some secret Power, who formed the earth and sea, the air and sky. And who is that? Then it followed most naturally, it is God that has made all. Well, but then it came on strangely, if God has made all these things, He guides and governs them all, and all things that concern them; for the Power that could make all things must certainly have power to guide and direct them. If so, nothing can happen in the great circuit of His works, either without His knowledge or appointment.\nAnd if nothing happens without His knowledge, He knows that I am here, and am in this dreadful condition; and if nothing happens without His appointment, He has appointed all this to befall me. Nothing occurred to my thought to contradict any of these conclusions, and therefore it rested upon me with the greater force, that it must needs be that God had appointed all this to befall me; that I was brought into this miserable circumstance by His direction, He having the sole power, not of me only, but of everything that happened in the world. Immediately it followed: Why has God done this to me? What have I done to be thus used? My conscience presently checked me in that inquiry, as if I had blasphemed, and methought it spoke to me like a voice: \u201cWretch! dost thou ask what thou hast done? Look back upon a dreadful misspent life, and ask thyself what thou hast not done? Ask, why is it that thou wert not long ago destroyed? Why wert thou not drowned in Yarmouth Roads; killed in the fight when the ship was taken by the Sallee man-of-war; devoured by the wild beasts on the coast of Africa; or drowned here, when all the crew perished but thyself? Dost thou ask, what have I done?\u201d I was struck dumb with these reflections, as one astonished, and had not a word to say\u2014no, not to answer to myself, but rose up pensive and sad, walked back to my retreat, and went up over my wall, as if I had been going to bed; but my thoughts were sadly disturbed, and I had no inclination to sleep; so I sat down in my chair, and lighted my lamp, for it began to be dark. Now, as the apprehension of the return of my distemper terrified me very much, it occurred to my thought that the Brazilians take no physic but their tobacco for almost all distempers, and I had a piece of a roll of tobacco in one of the chests, which was quite cured, and some also that was green, and not quite cured.\nI went, directed by Heaven no doubt; for in this chest I found a cure both for soul and body. I opened the chest, and found what I looked for, the tobacco; and as the few books I had saved lay there too, I took out one of the Bibles which I mentioned before, and which to this time I had not found leisure or inclination to look into. I say, I took it out, and brought both that and the tobacco with me to the table. What use to make of the tobacco I knew not, in my distemper, or whether it was good for it or no: but I tried several experiments with it, as if I was resolved it should hit one way or other. I first took a piece of leaf, and chewed it in my mouth, which, indeed, at first almost stupefied my brain, the tobacco being green and strong, and that I had not been much used to. Then I took some and steeped it an hour or two in some rum, and resolved to take a dose of it when I lay down; and lastly, I burnt some upon a pan of coals, and held my nose close over the smoke of it as long as I could bear it, as well for the heat as almost for suffocation. In the interval of this operation I took up the Bible and began to read; but my head was too much disturbed with the tobacco to bear reading, at least at that time; only, having opened the book casually, the first words that occurred to me were these, \u201cCall on Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.\u201d These words were very apt to my case, and made some impression upon my thoughts at the time of reading them, though not so much as they did afterwards; for, as for being delivered, the word had no sound, as I may say, to me; the thing was so remote, so impossible in my apprehension of things, that I began to say, as the children of Israel did when they were promised flesh to eat, \u201cCan God spread a table in the wilderness?\u201d so I began to say, \u201cCan God Himself deliver me from this place?\u201d And as it was not for many years that any hopes appeared, this prevailed very often upon my thoughts; but, however, the words made a great impression upon me, and I mused upon them very often. It grew now late, and the tobacco had, as I said, dozed my head so much that I inclined to sleep; so I left my lamp burning in the cave, lest I should want anything in the night, and went to bed. But before I lay down, I did what I never had done in all my life\u2014I kneeled down, and prayed to God to fulfil the promise to me, that if I called upon Him in the day of trouble, He would deliver me. After my broken and imperfect prayer was over, I drank the rum in which I had steeped the tobacco, which was so strong and rank of the tobacco that I could scarcely get it down; immediately upon this I went to bed. I found presently it flew up into my head violently; but I fell into a sound sleep, and waked no more till, by the sun, it must necessarily be near three o\u2019clock in the afternoon the next day\u2014nay, to this hour I am partly of opinion that I slept all the next day and night, and till almost three the day after; for otherwise I know not how I should lose a day out of my reckoning in the days of the week, as it appeared some years after I had done; for if I had lost it by crossing and recrossing the line, I should have lost more than one day; but certainly I lost a day in my account, and never knew which way. Be that, however, one way or the other, when I awaked I found myself exceedingly refreshed, and my spirits lively and cheerful; when I got up I was stronger than I was the day before, and my stomach better, for I was hungry; and, in short, I had no fit the next day, but continued much altered for the better. This was the 29th.\nThe 30th was my well day, of course, and I went abroad with my gun, but did not care to travel too far. I killed a sea-fowl or two, something like a brandgoose, and brought them home, but was not very forward to eat them; so I ate some more of the turtle\u2019s eggs, which were very good. This evening I renewed the medicine, which I had supposed did me good the day before\u2014the tobacco steeped in rum; only I did not take so much as before, nor did I chew any of the leaf, or hold my head over the smoke; however, I was not so well the next day, which was the first of July, as I hoped I should have been; for I had a little spice of the cold fit, but it was not much.\nJuly 2.\u2014I renewed the medicine all the three ways; and dosed myself with it as at first, and doubled the quantity which I drank.\nJuly 3.\u2014I missed the fit for good and all, though I did not recover my full strength for some weeks after. While I was thus gathering strength, my thoughts ran exceedingly upon this Scripture, \u201cI will deliver thee\u201d; and the impossibility of my deliverance lay much upon my mind, in bar of my ever expecting it; but as I was discouraging myself with such thoughts, it occurred to my mind that I pored so much upon my deliverance from the main affliction, that I disregarded the deliverance I had received, and I was as it were made to ask myself such questions as these\u2014viz. Have I not been delivered, and wonderfully too, from sickness\u2014from the most distressed condition that could be, and that was so frightful to me? and what notice had I taken of it? Had I done my part? God had delivered me, but I had not glorified Him\u2014that is to say, I had not owned and been thankful for that as a deliverance; and how could I expect greater deliverance? This touched my heart very much; and immediately I knelt down and gave God thanks aloud for my recovery from my sickness.\nJuly 4.\u2014In the morning I took the Bible; and beginning at the New Testament, I began seriously to read it, and imposed upon myself to read a while every morning and every night; not tying myself to the number of chapters, but long as my thoughts should engage me. It was not long after I set seriously to this work till I found my heart more deeply and sincerely affected with the wickedness of my past life. The impression of my dream revived; and the words, \u201cAll these things have not brought thee to repentance,\u201d ran seriously through my thoughts. I was earnestly begging of God to give me repentance, when it happened providentially, the very day, that, reading the Scripture, I came to these words: \u201cHe is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance and to give remission.\u201d I threw down the book; and with my heart as well as my hands lifted up to heaven, in a kind of ecstasy of joy, I cried out aloud, \u201cJesus, thou son of David! Jesus, thou exalted Prince and Saviour! give me repentance!\u201d This was the first time I could say, in the true sense of the words, that I prayed in all my life; for now I prayed with a sense of my condition, and a true Scripture view of hope, founded on the encouragement of the Word of God; and from this time, I may say, I began to hope that God would hear me.\nNow I began to construe the words mentioned above, \u201cCall on Me, and I will deliver thee,\u201d in a different sense from what I had ever done before; for then I had no notion of anything being called deliverance, but my being delivered from the captivity I was in; for though I was indeed at large in the place, yet the island was certainly a prison to me, and that in the worse sense in the world. But now I learned to take it in another sense: now I looked back upon my past life with such horror, and my sins appeared so dreadful, that my soul sought nothing of God but deliverance from the load of guilt that bore down all my comfort. As for my solitary life, it was nothing. I did not so much as pray to be delivered from it or think of it; it was all of no consideration in comparison to this. And I add this part here, to hint to whoever shall read it, that whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing than deliverance from affliction.\nBut, leaving this part, I return to my Journal.\nMy condition began now to be, though not less miserable as to my way of living, yet much easier to my mind: and my thoughts being directed, by a constant reading the Scripture and praying to God, to things of a higher nature, I had a great deal of comfort within, which till now I knew nothing of; also, my health and strength returned, I bestirred myself to furnish myself with everything that I wanted, and make my way of living as regular as I could.\nFrom the 4th of July to the 14th I was chiefly employed in walking about with my gun in my hand, a little and a little at a time, as a man that was gathering up his strength after a fit of sickness; for it is hardly to be imagined how low I was, and to what weakness I was reduced. The application which I made use of was perfectly new, and perhaps which had never cured an ague before; neither can I recommend it to any to practise, by this experiment: and though it did carry off the fit, yet it rather contributed to weakening me; for I had frequent convulsions in my nerves and limbs for some time. I learned from it also this, in particular, that being abroad in the rainy season was the most pernicious thing to my health that could be, especially in those rains which came attended with storms and hurricanes of wind; for as the rain which came in the dry season was almost always accompanied with such storms, so I found that rain was much more dangerous than the rain which fell in September and October.\nCHAPTER VII.\nAGRICULTURAL EXPERIENCE\nI had now been in this unhappy island above ten months. All possibility of deliverance from this condition seemed to be entirely taken from me; and I firmly believe that no human shape had ever set foot upon that place. Having now secured my habitation, as I thought, fully to my mind, I had a great desire to make a more perfect discovery of the island, and to see what other productions I might find, which I yet knew nothing of.\nIt was on the 15th of July that I began to take a more particular survey of the island itself. I went up the creek first, where, as I hinted, I brought my rafts on shore. I found after I came about two miles up, that the tide did not flow any higher, and that it was no more than a little brook of running water, very fresh and good; but this being the dry season, there was hardly any water in some parts of it\u2014at least not enough to run in any stream, so as it could be perceived. On the banks of this brook I found many pleasant savannahs or meadows, plain, smooth, and covered with grass; and on the rising parts of them, next to the higher grounds, where the water, as might be supposed, never overflowed, I found a great deal of tobacco, green, and growing to a great and very strong stalk. There were divers other plants, which I had no notion of or understanding about, that might, perhaps, have virtues of their own, which I could not find out. I searched for the cassava root, which the Indians, in all that climate, make their bread of, but I could find none. I saw large plants of aloes, but did not understand them. I saw several sugar-canes, but wild, and, for want of cultivation, imperfect. I contented myself with these discoveries for this time, and came back, musing with myself what course I might take to know the virtue and goodness of any of the fruits or plants which I should discover, but could bring it to no conclusion; for, in short, I had made so little observation while I was in the Brazils, that I knew little of the plants in the field; at least, very little that might serve to any purpose now in my distress.\nThe next day, the sixteenth, I went up the same way again; and after going something further than I had gone the day before, I found the brook and the savannahs cease, and the country become more woody than before. In this part I found different fruits, and particularly I found melons upon the ground, in great abundance, and grapes upon the trees. The vines had spread, indeed, over the trees, and the clusters of grapes were just now in their prime, very ripe and rich. This was a surprising discovery, and I was exceeding glad of them; but I was warned by my experience to eat sparingly of them; remembering that when I was ashore in Barbary, the eating of grapes killed several of our Englishmen, who were slaves there, by throwing them into fluxes and fevers. But I found an excellent use for these grapes; and that was, to cure or dry them in the sun, and keep them as dried grapes or raisins are kept, which I thought would be, as indeed they were, wholesome and agreeable to eat when no grapes could be had.\nI spent all that evening there, and went not back to my habitation; which, by the way, was the first night, as I might say, I had lain from home. In the night, I took my first contrivance, and got up in a tree, where I slept well; and the next morning proceeded upon my discovery; travelling nearly four miles, as I might judge by the length of the valley, keeping still due north, with a ridge of hills on the south and north side of me. At the end of this march I came to an opening where the country seemed to descend to the west; and a little spring of fresh water, which issued out of the side of the hill by me, ran the other way, that is, due east; and the country appeared so fresh, so green, so flourishing, everything being in a constant verdure or flourish of spring that it looked like a planted garden. I descended a little on the side of that delicious vale, surveying it with a secret kind of pleasure, though mixed with my other afflicting thoughts, to think that this was all my own; that I was king and lord of all this country indefensibly, and had a right of possession; and if I could convey it, I might have it in inheritance as completely as any lord of a manor in England. I saw here abundance of cocoa trees, orange, and lemon, and citron trees; but all wild, and very few bearing any fruit, at least not then. However, the green limes that I gathered were not only pleasant to eat, but very wholesome; and I mixed their juice afterwards with water, which made it very wholesome, and very cool and refreshing. I found now I had business enough to gather and carry home; and I resolved to lay up a store as well of grapes as limes and lemons, to furnish myself for the wet season, which I knew was approaching. In order to do this, I gathered a great heap of grapes in one place, a lesser heap in another place, and a great parcel of limes and lemons in another place; and taking a few of each with me, I travelled homewards; resolving to come again, and bring a bag or sack, or what I could make, to carry the rest home. Accordingly, having spent three days in this journey, I came home (so I must now call my tent and my cave); but before I got thither the grapes were spoiled; the richness of the fruit and the weight of the juice having broken them and bruised them, they were good for little or nothing; as to the limes, they were good, but I could bring but a few.\nThe next day, being the nineteenth, I went back, having made me two small bags to bring home my harvest; but I was surprised, when coming to my heap of grapes, which were so rich and fine when I gathered them, to find them all spread about, trod to pieces, and dragged about, some here, some there, and abundance eaten and devoured. By this I concluded there were some wild creatures thereabouts, which had done this; but what they were I knew not. However, as I found there was no laying them up on heaps, and no carrying them away in a sack, but that one way they would be destroyed, and the other way they would be crushed with their own weight, I took another course; for I gathered a large quantity of the grapes, and hung upon the out-branches of the trees, that they might cure and dry in the sun; and as for the limes and lemons, I carried as many back as I could well stand under.\nWhen I came home from this journey, I contemplated with great pleasure the fruitfulness of that valley, and the pleasantness of the situation; the security from storms on that side of the water, and the wood: and concluded that I had pitched upon a place to fix my abode which was by far the worst part of the country. Upon the whole, I began to consider of removing my habitation, and looking out for a place equally safe as where now I was situate, if possible, in that pleasant, fruitful part of the island.\nThis thought ran long in my head, and I was exceeding fond of it for some time, the pleasantness of the place tempting me; but when I came to a nearer view of it, I considered that I was now by the seaside, where it was at least possible that something might happen to my advantage, and, by the same ill fate that brought me hither might bring some other unhappy wretches to the same place; and though it was scarce probable that any such thing should ever happen, yet to enclose myself among the hills and woods in the centre of the island was to anticipate my bondage, and to render such an affair not only improbable, but impossible; and that therefore I ought not by any means to remove. However, I was so enamoured of this place, that I spent much of my time there for the whole of the remaining part of the month of July; and though upon second thoughts, I resolved not to remove, yet I built me a little kind of a bower, and surrounded it at a distance with a strong fence, being a double hedge, as high as I could reach, well staked and filled between with brushwood; and here I lay very secure, sometimes two or three nights together; always going over it with a ladder; so that I fancied now I had my country house and my sea-coast house; and this work took me up to the beginning of August.\nI had but newly finished my fence, and began to enjoy my labour, when the rains came on, and made me stick close to my first habitation; for though I had made me a tent like the other, with a piece of a sail, and spread it very well, yet I had not the shelter of a hill to keep me from storms, nor a cave behind me to retreat into when the rains were extraordinary.\nAbout the beginning of August, as I said, I had finished my bower, and began to enjoy myself. The 3rd of August, I found the grapes I had hung up perfectly dried, and, indeed, were excellent good raisins of the sun; so I began to take them down from the trees, and it was very happy that I did so, for the rains which followed would have spoiled them, and I had lost the best part of my winter food; for I had above two hundred large bunches of them. No sooner had I taken them all down, and carried the most of them home to my cave, than it began to rain; and from hence, which was the 14th of August, it rained, more or less, every day till the middle of October; and sometimes so violently, that I could not stir out of my cave for several days.\nIn this season I was much surprised with the increase of my family; I had been concerned for the loss of one of my cats, who ran away from me, or, as I thought, had been dead, and I heard no more tidings of her till, to my astonishment, she came home about the end of August with three kittens. This was the more strange to me because, though I had killed a wild cat, as I called it, with my gun, yet I thought it was quite a different kind from our European cats; but the young cats were the same kind of house-breed as the old one; and both my cats being females, I thought it very strange. But from these three cats I afterwards came to be so pestered with cats that I was forced to kill them like vermin or wild beasts, and to drive them from my house as much as possible.\nFrom the 14th of August to the 26th, incessant rain, so that I could not stir, and was now very careful not to be much wet. In this confinement, I began to be straitened for food: but venturing out twice, I one day killed a goat; and the last day, which was the 26th, found a very large tortoise, which was a treat to me, and my food was regulated thus: I ate a bunch of raisins for my breakfast; a piece of the goat\u2019s flesh, or of the turtle, for my dinner, broiled\u2014for, to my great misfortune, I had no vessel to boil or stew anything; and two or three of the turtle\u2019s eggs for my supper.\nDuring this confinement in my cover by the rain, I worked daily two or three hours at enlarging my cave, and by degrees worked it on towards one side, till I came to the outside of the hill, and made a door or way out, which came beyond my fence or wall; and so I came in and out this way. But I was not perfectly easy at lying so open; for, as I had managed myself before, I was in a perfect enclosure; whereas now I thought I lay exposed, and open for anything to come in upon me; and yet I could not perceive that there was any living thing to fear, the biggest creature that I had yet seen upon the island being a goat.\nSept. 30.\u2014I was now come to the unhappy anniversary of my landing. I cast up the notches on my post, and found I had been on shore three hundred and sixty-five days. I kept this day as a solemn fast, setting it apart for religious exercise, prostrating myself on the ground with the most serious humiliation, confessing my sins to God, acknowledging His righteous judgments upon me, and praying to Him to have mercy on me through Jesus Christ; and not having tasted the least refreshment for twelve hours, even till the going down of the sun, I then ate a biscuit-cake and a bunch of grapes, and went to bed, finishing the day as I began it. I had all this time observed no Sabbath day; for as at first I had no sense of religion upon my mind, I had, after some time, omitted to distinguish the weeks, by making a longer notch than ordinary for the Sabbath day, and so did not really know what any of the days were; but now, having cast up the days as above, I found I had been there a year; so I divided it into weeks, and set apart every seventh day for a Sabbath; though I found at the end of my account I had lost a day or two in my reckoning. A little after this, my ink began to fail me, and so I contented myself to use it more sparingly, and to write down only the most remarkable events of my life, without continuing a daily memorandum of other things.\nThe rainy season and the dry season began now to appear regular to me, and I learned to divide them so as to provide for them accordingly; but I bought all my experience before I had it, and this I am going to relate was one of the most discouraging experiments that I made.\nI have mentioned that I had saved the few ears of barley and rice, which I had so surprisingly found spring up, as I thought, of themselves, and I believe there were about thirty stalks of rice, and about twenty of barley; and now I thought it a proper time to sow it, after the rains, the sun being in its southern position, going from me. Accordingly, I dug up a piece of ground as well as I could with my wooden spade, and dividing it into two parts, I sowed my grain; but as I was sowing, it casually occurred to my thoughts that I would not sow it all at first, because I did not know when was the proper time for it, so I sowed about two-thirds of the seed, leaving about a handful of each. It was a great comfort to me afterwards that I did so, for not one grain of what I sowed this time came to anything: for the dry months following, the earth having had no rain after the seed was sown, it had no moisture to assist its growth, and never came up at all till the wet season had come again, and then it grew as if it had been but newly sown. Finding my first seed did not grow, which I easily imagined was by the drought, I sought for a moister piece of ground to make another trial in, and I dug up a piece of ground near my new bower, and sowed the rest of my seed in February, a little before the vernal equinox; and this having the rainy months of March and April to water it, sprung up very pleasantly, and yielded a very good crop; but having part of the seed left only, and not daring to sow all that I had, I had but a small quantity at last, my whole crop not amounting to above half a peck of each kind. But by this experiment I was made master of my business, and knew exactly when the proper season was to sow, and that I might expect two seed-times and two harvests every year.\nWhile this corn was growing I made a little discovery, which was of use to me afterwards. As soon as the rains were over, and the weather began to settle, which was about the month of November, I made a visit up the country to my bower, where, though I had not been some months, yet I found all things just as I left them. The circle or double hedge that I had made was not only firm and entire, but the stakes which I had cut out of some trees that grew thereabouts were all shot out and grown with long branches, as much as a willow-tree usually shoots the first year after lopping its head. I could not tell what tree to call it that these stakes were cut from. I was surprised, and yet very well pleased, to see the young trees grow; and I pruned them, and led them up to grow as much alike as I could; and it is scarce credible how beautiful a figure they grew into in three years; so that though the hedge made a circle of about twenty-five yards in diameter, yet the trees, for such I might now call them, soon covered it, and it was a complete shade, sufficient to lodge under all the dry season. This made me resolve to cut some more stakes, and make me a hedge like this, in a semi-circle round my wall (I mean that of my first dwelling), which I did; and placing the trees or stakes in a double row, at about eight yards distance from my first fence, they grew presently, and were at first a fine cover to my habitation, and afterwards served for a defence also, as I shall observe in its order.\nI found now that the seasons of the year might generally be divided, not into summer and winter, as in Europe, but into the rainy seasons and the dry seasons, which were generally thus:\u2014The half of February, the whole of March, and the half of April\u2014rainy, the sun being then on or near the equinox.\nThe half of April, the whole of May, June, and July, and the half of August\u2014dry, the sun being then to the north of the line.\nThe half of August, the whole of September, and the half of October\u2014rainy, the sun being then come back.\nThe half of October, the whole of November, December, and January, and the half of February\u2014dry, the sun being then to the south of the line.\nThe rainy seasons sometimes held longer or shorter as the winds happened to blow, but this was the general observation I made. After I had found by experience the ill consequences of being abroad in the rain, I took care to furnish myself with provisions beforehand, that I might not be obliged to go out, and I sat within doors as much as possible during the wet months. This time I found much employment, and very suitable also to the time, for I found great occasion for many things which I had no way to furnish myself with but by hard labour and constant application; particularly I tried many ways to make myself a basket, but all the twigs I could get for the purpose proved so brittle that they would do nothing. It proved of excellent advantage to me now, that when I was a boy, I used to take great delight in standing at a basket-maker\u2019s, in the town where my father lived, to see them make their wicker-ware; and being, as boys usually are, very officious to help, and a great observer of the manner in which they worked those things, and sometimes lending a hand, I had by these means full knowledge of the methods of it, and I wanted nothing but the materials, when it came into my mind that the twigs of that tree from whence I cut my stakes that grew might possibly be as tough as the sallows, willows, and osiers in England, and I resolved to try. Accordingly, the next day I went to my country house, as I called it, and cutting some of the smaller twigs, I found them to my purpose as much as I could desire; whereupon I came the next time prepared with a hatchet to cut down a quantity, which I soon found, for there was great plenty of them. These I set up to dry within my circle or hedge, and when they were fit for use I carried them to my cave; and here, during the next season, I employed myself in making, as well as I could, a great many baskets, both to carry earth or to carry or lay up anything, as I had occasion; and though I did not finish them very handsomely, yet I made them sufficiently serviceable for my purpose; thus, afterwards, I took care never to be without them; and as my wicker-ware decayed, I made more, especially strong, deep baskets to place my corn in, instead of sacks, when I should come to have any quantity of it.\nHaving mastered this difficulty, and employed a world of time about it, I bestirred myself to see, if possible, how to supply two wants. I had no vessels to hold anything that was liquid, except two runlets, which were almost full of rum, and some glass bottles\u2014some of the common size, and others which were case bottles, square, for the holding of water, spirits, &c. I had not so much as a pot to boil anything, except a great kettle, which I saved out of the ship, and which was too big for such as I desired it\u2014viz. to make broth, and stew a bit of meat by itself. The second thing I fain would have had was a tobacco-pipe, but it was impossible to me to make one; however, I found a contrivance for that, too, at last. I employed myself in planting my second rows of stakes or piles, and in this wicker-working all the summer or dry season, when another business took me up more time than it could be imagined I could spare.\nCHAPTER VIII.\nSURVEYS HIS POSITION\nI mentioned before that I had a great mind to see the whole island, and that I had travelled up the brook, and so on to where I built my bower, and where I had an opening quite to the sea, on the other side of the island. I now resolved to travel quite across to the sea-shore on that side; so, taking my gun, a hatchet, and my dog, and a larger quantity of powder and shot than usual, with two biscuit-cakes and a great bunch of raisins in my pouch for my store, I began my journey. When I had passed the vale where my bower stood, as above, I came within view of the sea to the west, and it being a very clear day, I fairly descried land\u2014whether an island or a continent I could not tell; but it lay very high, extending from the W. to the W.S.W. at a very great distance; by my guess it could not be less than fifteen or twenty leagues off.\nI could not tell what part of the world this might be, otherwise than that I knew it must be part of America, and, as I concluded by all my observations, must be near the Spanish dominions, and perhaps was all inhabited by savages, where, if I had landed, I had been in a worse condition than I was now; and therefore I acquiesced in the dispositions of Providence, which I began now to own and to believe ordered everything for the best; I say I quieted my mind with this, and left off afflicting myself with fruitless wishes of being there.\nBesides, after some thought upon this affair, I considered that if this land was the Spanish coast, I should certainly, one time or other, see some vessel pass or repass one way or other; but if not, then it was the savage coast between the Spanish country and Brazils, where are found the worst of savages; for they are cannibals or men-eaters, and fail not to murder and devour all the human bodies that fall into their hands.\nWith these considerations, I walked very leisurely forward. I found that side of the island where I now was much pleasanter than mine\u2014the open or savannah fields sweet, adorned with flowers and grass, and full of very fine woods. I saw abundance of parrots, and fain I would have caught one, if possible, to have kept it to be tame, and taught it to speak to me. I did, after some painstaking, catch a young parrot, for I knocked it down with a stick, and having recovered it, I brought it home; but it was some years before I could make him speak; however, at last I taught him to call me by name very familiarly. But the accident that followed, though it be a trifle, will be very diverting in its place.\nI was exceedingly diverted with this journey. I found in the low grounds hares (as I thought them to be) and foxes; but they differed greatly from all the other kinds I had met with, nor could I satisfy myself to eat them, though I killed several. But I had no need to be venturous, for I had no want of food, and of that which was very good too, especially these three sorts, viz. goats, pigeons, and turtle, or tortoise, which added to my grapes, Leadenhall market could not have furnished a table better than I, in proportion to the company; and though my case was deplorable enough, yet I had great cause for thankfulness that I was not driven to any extremities for food, but had rather plenty, even to dainties.\nI never travelled in this journey above two miles outright in a day, or thereabouts; but I took so many turns and re-turns to see what discoveries I could make, that I came weary enough to the place where I resolved to sit down all night; and then I either reposed myself in a tree, or surrounded myself with a row of stakes set upright in the ground, either from one tree to another, or so as no wild creature could come at me without waking me.\nAs soon as I came to the sea-shore, I was surprised to see that I had taken up my lot on the worst side of the island, for here, indeed, the shore was covered with innumerable turtles, whereas on the other side I had found but three in a year and a half. Here was also an infinite number of fowls of many kinds, some which I had seen, and some which I had not seen before, and many of them very good meat, but such as I knew not the names of, except those called penguins.\nI could have shot as many as I pleased, but was very sparing of my powder and shot, and therefore had more mind to kill a she-goat if I could, which I could better feed on; and though there were many goats here, more than on my side the island, yet it was with much more difficulty that I could come near them, the country being flat and even, and they saw me much sooner than when I was on the hills.\nI confess this side of the country was much pleasanter than mine; but yet I had not the least inclination to remove, for as I was fixed in my habitation it became natural to me, and I seemed all the while I was here to be as it were upon a journey, and from home. However, I travelled along the shore of the sea towards the east, I suppose about twelve miles, and then setting up a great pole upon the shore for a mark, I concluded I would go home again, and that the next journey I took should be on the other side of the island east from my dwelling, and so round till I came to my post again.\nI took another way to come back than that I went, thinking I could easily keep all the island so much in my view that I could not miss finding my first dwelling by viewing the country; but I found myself mistaken, for being come about two or three miles, I found myself descended into a very large valley, but so surrounded with hills, and those hills covered with wood, that I could not see which was my way by any direction but that of the sun, nor even then, unless I knew very well the position of the sun at that time of the day. It happened, to my further misfortune, that the weather proved hazy for three or four days while I was in the valley, and not being able to see the sun, I wandered about very uncomfortably, and at last was obliged to find the seaside, look for my post, and come back the same way I went: and then, by easy journeys, I turned homeward, the weather being exceeding hot, and my gun, ammunition, hatchet, and other things very heavy.\nIn this journey my dog surprised a young kid, and seized upon it; and I, running in to take hold of it, caught it, and saved it alive from the dog. I had a great mind to bring it home if I could, for I had often been musing whether it might not be possible to get a kid or two, and so raise a breed of tame goats, which might supply me when my powder and shot should be all spent. I made a collar for this little creature, and with a string, which I made of some rope-yarn, which I always carried about me, I led him along, though with some difficulty, till I came to my bower, and there I enclosed him and left him, for I was very impatient to be at home, from whence I had been absent above a month.\nI cannot express what a satisfaction it was to me to come into my old hutch, and lie down in my hammock-bed. This little wandering journey, without settled place of abode, had been so unpleasant to me, that my own house, as I called it to myself, was a perfect settlement to me compared to that; and it rendered everything about me so comfortable, that I resolved I would never go a great way from it again while it should be my lot to stay on the island.\nI reposed myself here a week, to rest and regale myself after my long journey; during which most of the time was taken up in the weighty affair of making a cage for my Poll, who began now to be a mere domestic, and to be well acquainted with me. Then I began to think of the poor kid which I had penned in within my little circle, and resolved to go and fetch it home, or give it some food; accordingly I went, and found it where I left it, for indeed it could not get out, but was almost starved for want of food. I went and cut boughs of trees, and branches of such shrubs as I could find, and threw it over, and having fed it, I tied it as I did before, to lead it away; but it was so tame with being hungry, that I had no need to have tied it, for it followed me like a dog: and as I continually fed it, the creature became so loving, so gentle, and so fond, that it became from that time one of my domestics also, and would never leave me afterwards.\nThe rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the 30th of September in the same solemn manner as before, being the anniversary of my landing on the island, having now been there two years, and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came there, I spent the whole day in humble and thankful acknowledgments of the many wonderful mercies which my solitary condition was attended with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable. I gave humble and hearty thanks that God had been pleased to discover to me that it was possible I might be more happy in this solitary condition than I should have been in the liberty of society, and in all the pleasures of the world; that He could fully make up to me the deficiencies of my solitary state, and the want of human society, by His presence and the communications of His grace to my soul; supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon His providence here, and hope for His eternal presence hereafter.\nIt was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy this life I now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days; and now I changed both my sorrows and my joys; my very desires altered, my affections changed their gusts, and my delights were perfectly new from what they were at my first coming, or, indeed, for the two years past.\nBefore, as I walked about, either on my hunting or for viewing the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me, to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in, and how I was a prisoner, locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest composure of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and make me wring my hands and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together; and this was still worse to me, for if I could burst out into tears, or vent myself by words, it would go off, and the grief, having exhausted itself, would abate.\nBut now I began to exercise myself with new thoughts: I daily read the word of God, and applied all the comforts of it to my present state. One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, \u201cI will never, never leave thee, nor forsake thee.\u201d Immediately it occurred that these words were to me; why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and man? \u201cWell, then,\u201d said I, \u201cif God does not forsake me, of what ill consequence can it be, or what matters it, though the world should all forsake me, seeing on the other hand, if I had all the world, and should lose the favour and blessing of God, there would be no comparison in the loss?\u201d\nFrom this moment I began to conclude in my mind that it was possible for me to be more happy in this forsaken, solitary condition than it was probable I should ever have been in any other particular state in the world; and with this thought I was going to give thanks to God for bringing me to this place. I know not what it was, but something shocked my mind at that thought, and I durst not speak the words. \u201cHow canst thou become such a hypocrite,\u201d said I, even audibly, \u201cto pretend to be thankful for a condition which, however thou mayest endeavour to be contented with, thou wouldst rather pray heartily to be delivered from?\u201d So I stopped there; but though I could not say I thanked God for being there, yet I sincerely gave thanks to God for opening my eyes, by whatever afflicting providences, to see the former condition of my life, and to mourn for my wickedness, and repent. I never opened the Bible, or shut it, but my very soul within me blessed God for directing my friend in England, without any order of mine, to pack it up among my goods, and for assisting me afterwards to save it out of the wreck of the ship.\nThus, and in this disposition of mind, I began my third year; and though I have not given the reader the trouble of so particular an account of my works this year as the first, yet in general it may be observed that I was very seldom idle, but having regularly divided my time according to the several daily employments that were before me, such as: first, my duty to God, and the reading the Scriptures, which I constantly set apart some time for thrice every day; secondly, the going abroad with my gun for food, which generally took me up three hours in every morning, when it did not rain; thirdly, the ordering, cutting, preserving, and cooking what I had killed or caught for my supply; these took up great part of the day. Also, it is to be considered, that in the middle of the day, when the sun was in the zenith, the violence of the heat was too great to stir out; so that about four hours in the evening was all the time I could be supposed to work in, with this exception, that sometimes I changed my hours of hunting and working, and went to work in the morning, and abroad with my gun in the afternoon.\nTo this short time allowed for labour I desire may be added the exceeding laboriousness of my work; the many hours which, for want of tools, want of help, and want of skill, everything I did took up out of my time. For example, I was full two and forty days in making a board for a long shelf, which I wanted in my cave; whereas, two sawyers, with their tools and a saw-pit, would have cut six of them out of the same tree in half a day.\nMy case was this: it was to be a large tree which was to be cut down, because my board was to be a broad one. This tree I was three days in cutting down, and two more cutting off the boughs, and reducing it to a log or piece of timber. With inexpressible hacking and hewing I reduced both the sides of it into chips till it began to be light enough to move; then I turned it, and made one side of it smooth and flat as a board from end to end; then, turning that side downward, cut the other side til I brought the plank to be about three inches thick, and smooth on both sides. Any one may judge the labour of my hands in such a piece of work; but labour and patience carried me through that, and many other things. I only observe this in particular, to show the reason why so much of my time went away with so little work\u2014viz. that what might be a little to be done with help and tools, was a vast labour and required a prodigious time to do alone, and by hand. But notwithstanding this, with patience and labour I got through everything that my circumstances made necessary to me to do, as will appear by what follows.\nI was now, in the months of November and December, expecting my crop of barley and rice. The ground I had manured and dug up for them was not great; for, as I observed, my seed of each was not above the quantity of half a peck, for I had lost one whole crop by sowing in the dry season. But now my crop promised very well, when on a sudden I found I was in danger of losing it all again by enemies of several sorts, which it was scarcely possible to keep from it; as, first, the goats, and wild creatures which I called hares, who, tasting the sweetness of the blade, lay in it night and day, as soon as it came up, and eat it so close, that it could get no time to shoot up into stalk.\nThis I saw no remedy for but by making an enclosure about it with a hedge; which I did with a great deal of toil, and the more, because it required speed. However, as my arable land was but small, suited to my crop, I got it totally well fenced in about three weeks\u2019 time; and shooting some of the creatures in the daytime, I set my dog to guard it in the night, tying him up to a stake at the gate, where he would stand and bark all night long; so in a little time the enemies forsook the place, and the corn grew very strong and well, and began to ripen apace.\nBut as the beasts ruined me before, while my corn was in the blade, so the birds were as likely to ruin me now, when it was in the ear; for, going along by the place to see how it throve, I saw my little crop surrounded with fowls, of I know not how many sorts, who stood, as it were, watching till I should be gone. I immediately let fly among them, for I always had my gun with me. I had no sooner shot, but there rose up a little cloud of fowls, which I had not seen at all, from among the corn itself.\nThis touched me sensibly, for I foresaw that in a few days they would devour all my hopes; that I should be starved, and never be able to raise a crop at all; and what to do I could not tell; however, I resolved not to lose my corn, if possible, though I should watch it night and day. In the first place, I went among it to see what damage was already done, and found they had spoiled a good deal of it; but that as it was yet too green for them, the loss was not so great but that the remainder was likely to be a good crop if it could be saved.\nI stayed by it to load my gun, and then coming away, I could easily see the thieves sitting upon all the trees about me, as if they only waited till I was gone away, and the event proved it to be so; for as I walked off, as if I was gone, I was no sooner out of their sight than they dropped down one by one into the corn again. I was so provoked, that I could not have patience to stay till more came on, knowing that every grain that they ate now was, as it might be said, a peck-loaf to me in the consequence; but coming up to the hedge, I fired again, and killed three of them. This was what I wished for; so I took them up, and served them as we serve notorious thieves in England\u2014hanged them in chains, for a terror to others. It is impossible to imagine that this should have such an effect as it had, for the fowls would not only not come at the corn, but, in short, they forsook all that part of the island, and I could never see a bird near the place as long as my scarecrows hung there. This I was very glad of, you may be sure, and about the latter end of December, which was our second harvest of the year, I reaped my corn.\nI was sadly put to it for a scythe or sickle to cut it down, and all I could do was to make one, as well as I could, out of one of the broadswords, or cutlasses, which I saved among the arms out of the ship. However, as my first crop was but small, I had no great difficulty to cut it down; in short, I reaped it in my way, for I cut nothing off but the ears, and carried it away in a great basket which I had made, and so rubbed it out with my hands; and at the end of all my harvesting, I found that out of my half-peck of seed I had near two bushels of rice, and about two bushels and a half of barley; that is to say, by my guess, for I had no measure at that time.\nHowever, this was a great encouragement to me, and I foresaw that, in time, it would please God to supply me with bread. And yet here I was perplexed again, for I neither knew how to grind or make meal of my corn, or indeed how to clean it and part it; nor, if made into meal, how to make bread of it; and if how to make it, yet I knew not how to bake it. These things being added to my desire of having a good quantity for store, and to secure a constant supply, I resolved not to taste any of this crop but to preserve it all for seed against the next season; and in the meantime to employ all my study and hours of working to accomplish this great work of providing myself with corn and bread.\nIt might be truly said, that now I worked for my bread. I believe few people have thought much upon the strange multitude of little things necessary in the providing, producing, curing, dressing, making, and finishing this one article of bread.\nI, that was reduced to a mere state of nature, found this to my daily discouragement; and was made more sensible of it every hour, even after I had got the first handful of seed-corn, which, as I have said, came up unexpectedly, and indeed to a surprise.\nFirst, I had no plough to turn up the earth\u2014no spade or shovel to dig it. Well, this I conquered by making me a wooden spade, as I observed before; but this did my work but in a wooden manner; and though it cost me a great many days to make it, yet, for want of iron, it not only wore out soon, but made my work the harder, and made it be performed much worse. However, this I bore with, and was content to work it out with patience, and bear with the badness of the performance. When the corn was sown, I had no harrow, but was forced to go over it myself, and drag a great heavy bough of a tree over it, to scratch it, as it may be called, rather than rake or harrow it. When it was growing, and grown, I have observed already how many things I wanted to fence it, secure it, mow or reap it, cure and carry it home, thrash, part it from the chaff, and save it. Then I wanted a mill to grind it, sieves to dress it, yeast and salt to make it into bread, and an oven to bake it; but all these things I did without, as shall be observed; and yet the corn was an inestimable comfort and advantage to me too. All this, as I said, made everything laborious and tedious to me; but that there was no help for. Neither was my time so much loss to me, because, as I had divided it, a certain part of it was every day appointed to these works; and as I had resolved to use none of the corn for bread till I had a greater quantity by me, I had the next six months to apply myself wholly, by labour and invention, to furnish myself with utensils proper for the performing all the operations necessary for making the corn, when I had it, fit for my use.\nCHAPTER IX.\nA BOAT\nBut first I was to prepare more land, for I had now seed enough to sow above an acre of ground. Before I did this, I had a week\u2019s work at least to make me a spade, which, when it was done, was but a sorry one indeed, and very heavy, and required double labour to work with it. However, I got through that, and sowed my seed in two large flat pieces of ground, as near my house as I could find them to my mind, and fenced them in with a good hedge, the stakes of which were all cut off that wood which I had set before, and knew it would grow; so that, in a year\u2019s time, I knew I should have a quick or living hedge, that would want but little repair. This work did not take me up less than three months, because a great part of that time was the wet season, when I could not go abroad. Within-doors, that is when it rained and I could not go out, I found employment in the following occupations\u2014always observing, that all the while I was at work I diverted myself with talking to my parrot, and teaching him to speak; and I quickly taught him to know his own name, and at last to speak it out pretty loud, \u201cPoll,\u201d which was the first word I ever heard spoken in the island by any mouth but my own. This, therefore, was not my work, but an assistance to my work; for now, as I said, I had a great employment upon my hands, as follows: I had long studied to make, by some means or other, some earthen vessels, which, indeed, I wanted sorely, but knew not where to come at them. However, considering the heat of the climate, I did not doubt but if I could find out any clay, I might make some pots that might, being dried in the sun, be hard enough and strong enough to bear handling, and to hold anything that was dry, and required to be kept so; and as this was necessary in the preparing corn, meal, &c., which was the thing I was doing, I resolved to make some as large as I could, and fit only to stand like jars, to hold what should be put into them.\nIt would make the reader pity me, or rather laugh at me, to tell how many awkward ways I took to raise this paste; what odd, misshapen, ugly things I made; how many of them fell in and how many fell out, the clay not being stiff enough to bear its own weight; how many cracked by the over-violent heat of the sun, being set out too hastily; and how many fell in pieces with only removing, as well before as after they were dried; and, in a word, how, after having laboured hard to find the clay\u2014to dig it, to temper it, to bring it home, and work it\u2014I could not make above two large earthen ugly things (I cannot call them jars) in about two months\u2019 labour.\nHowever, as the sun baked these two very dry and hard, I lifted them very gently up, and set them down again in two great wicker baskets, which I had made on purpose for them, that they might not break; and as between the pot and the basket there was a little room to spare, I stuffed it full of the rice and barley straw; and these two pots being to stand always dry I thought would hold my dry corn, and perhaps the meal, when the corn was bruised.\nThough I miscarried so much in my design for large pots, yet I made several smaller things with better success; such as little round pots, flat dishes, pitchers, and pipkins, and any things my hand turned to; and the heat of the sun baked them quite hard.\nBut all this would not answer my end, which was to get an earthen pot to hold what was liquid, and bear the fire, which none of these could do. It happened after some time, making a pretty large fire for cooking my meat, when I went to put it out after I had done with it, I found a broken piece of one of my earthenware vessels in the fire, burnt as hard as a stone, and red as a tile. I was agreeably surprised to see it, and said to myself, that certainly they might be made to burn whole, if they would burn broken.\nThis set me to study how to order my fire, so as to make it burn some pots. I had no notion of a kiln, such as the potters burn in, or of glazing them with lead, though I had some lead to do it with; but I placed three large pipkins and two or three pots in a pile, one upon another, and placed my firewood all round it, with a great heap of embers under them. I plied the fire with fresh fuel round the outside and upon the top, till I saw the pots in the inside red-hot quite through, and observed that they did not crack at all. When I saw them clear red, I let them stand in that heat about five or six hours, till I found one of them, though it did not crack, did melt or run; for the sand which was mixed with the clay melted by the violence of the heat, and would have run into glass if I had gone on; so I slacked my fire gradually till the pots began to abate of the red colour; and watching them all night, that I might not let the fire abate too fast, in the morning I had three very good (I will not say handsome) pipkins, and two other earthen pots, as hard burnt as could be desired, and one of them perfectly glazed with the running of the sand.\nAfter this experiment, I need not say that I wanted no sort of earthenware for my use; but I must needs say as to the shapes of them, they were very indifferent, as any one may suppose, when I had no way of making them but as the children make dirt pies, or as a woman would make pies that never learned to raise paste.\nNo joy at a thing of so mean a nature was ever equal to mine, when I found I had made an earthen pot that would bear the fire; and I had hardly patience to stay till they were cold before I set one on the fire again with some water in it to boil me some meat, which it did admirably well; and with a piece of a kid I made some very good broth, though I wanted oatmeal, and several other ingredients requisite to make it as good as I would have had it been.\nMy next concern was to get me a stone mortar to stamp or beat some corn in; for as to the mill, there was no thought of arriving at that perfection of art with one pair of hands. To supply this want, I was at a great loss; for, of all the trades in the world, I was as perfectly unqualified for a stone-cutter as for any whatever; neither had I any tools to go about it with. I spent many a day to find out a great stone big enough to cut hollow, and make fit for a mortar, and could find none at all, except what was in the solid rock, and which I had no way to dig or cut out; nor indeed were the rocks in the island of hardness sufficient, but were all of a sandy, crumbling stone, which neither would bear the weight of a heavy pestle, nor would break the corn without filling it with sand. So, after a great deal of time lost in searching for a stone, I gave it over, and resolved to look out for a great block of hard wood, which I found, indeed, much easier; and getting one as big as I had strength to stir, I rounded it, and formed it on the outside with my axe and hatchet, and then with the help of fire and infinite labour, made a hollow place in it, as the Indians in Brazil make their canoes. After this, I made a great heavy pestle or beater of the wood called the iron-wood; and this I prepared and laid by against I had my next crop of corn, which I proposed to myself to grind, or rather pound into meal to make bread.\nMy next difficulty was to make a sieve or searce, to dress my meal, and to part it from the bran and the husk; without which I did not see it possible I could have any bread. This was a most difficult thing even to think on, for to be sure I had nothing like the necessary thing to make it\u2014I mean fine thin canvas or stuff to searce the meal through. And here I was at a full stop for many months; nor did I really know what to do. Linen I had none left but what was mere rags; I had goat\u2019s hair, but neither knew how to weave it or spin it; and had I known how, here were no tools to work it with. All the remedy that I found for this was, that at last I did remember I had, among the seamen\u2019s clothes which were saved out of the ship, some neckcloths of calico or muslin; and with some pieces of these I made three small sieves proper enough for the work; and thus I made shift for some years: how I did afterwards, I shall show in its place.\nThe baking part was the next thing to be considered, and how I should make bread when I came to have corn; for first, I had no yeast. As to that part, there was no supplying the want, so I did not concern myself much about it. But for an oven I was indeed in great pain. At length I found out an experiment for that also, which was this: I made some earthen-vessels very broad but not deep, that is to say, about two feet diameter, and not above nine inches deep. These I burned in the fire, as I had done the other, and laid them by; and when I wanted to bake, I made a great fire upon my hearth, which I had paved with some square tiles of my own baking and burning also; but I should not call them square.\nWhen the firewood was burned pretty much into embers or live coals, I drew them forward upon this hearth, so as to cover it all over, and there I let them lie till the hearth was very hot. Then sweeping away all the embers, I set down my loaf or loaves, and whelming down the earthen pot upon them, drew the embers all round the outside of the pot, to keep in and add to the heat; and thus as well as in the best oven in the world, I baked my barley-loaves, and became in little time a good pastrycook into the bargain; for I made myself several cakes and puddings of the rice; but I made no pies, neither had I anything to put into them supposing I had, except the flesh either of fowls or goats.\nIt need not be wondered at if all these things took me up most part of the third year of my abode here; for it is to be observed that in the intervals of these things I had my new harvest and husbandry to manage; for I reaped my corn in its season, and carried it home as well as I could, and laid it up in the ear, in my large baskets, till I had time to rub it out, for I had no floor to thrash it on, or instrument to thrash it with.\nAnd now, indeed, my stock of corn increasing, I really wanted to build my barns bigger; I wanted a place to lay it up in, for the increase of the corn now yielded me so much, that I had of the barley about twenty bushels, and of the rice as much or more; insomuch that now I resolved to begin to use it freely; for my bread had been quite gone a great while; also I resolved to see what quantity would be sufficient for me a whole year, and to sow but once a year.\nUpon the whole, I found that the forty bushels of barley and rice were much more than I could consume in a year; so I resolved to sow just the same quantity every year that I sowed the last, in hopes that such a quantity would fully provide me with bread, &c.\nAll the while these things were doing, you may be sure my thoughts ran many times upon the prospect of land which I had seen from the other side of the island; and I was not without secret wishes that I were on shore there, fancying that, seeing the mainland, and an inhabited country, I might find some way or other to convey myself further, and perhaps at last find some means of escape.\nBut all this while I made no allowance for the dangers of such an undertaking, and how I might fall into the hands of savages, and perhaps such as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions and tigers of Africa: that if I once came in their power, I should run a hazard of more than a thousand to one of being killed, and perhaps of being eaten; for I had heard that the people of the Caribbean coast were cannibals or man-eaters, and I knew by the latitude that I could not be far from that shore. Then, supposing they were not cannibals, yet they might kill me, as many Europeans who had fallen into their hands had been served, even when they had been ten or twenty together\u2014much more I, that was but one, and could make little or no defence; all these things, I say, which I ought to have considered well; and did come into my thoughts afterwards, yet gave me no apprehensions at first, and my head ran mightily upon the thought of getting over to the shore.\nNow I wished for my boy Armando, and the long-boat with shoulder-of-mutton sail, with which I sailed above a thousand miles on the coast of Africa; but this was in vain: then I thought I would go and look at our ship\u2019s boat, which, as I have said, was blown up upon the shore a great way, in the storm, when we were first cast away. She lay almost where she did at first, but not quite; and was turned, by the force of the waves and the winds, almost bottom upward, against a high ridge of beachy, rough sand, but no water about her. If I had had hands to have refitted her, and to have launched her into the water, the boat would have done well enough, and I might have gone back into the Brazils with her easily enough; but I might have foreseen that I could no more turn her and set her upright upon her bottom than I could remove the island; however, I went to the woods, and cut levers and rollers, and brought them to the boat resolving to try what I could do; suggesting to myself that if I could but turn her down, I might repair the damage she had received, and she would be a very good boat, and I might go to sea in her very easily.\nI spared no pains, indeed, in this piece of fruitless toil, and spent, I think, three or four weeks about it; at last finding it impossible to heave it up with my little strength, I fell to digging away the sand, to undermine it, and so to make it fall down, setting pieces of wood to thrust and guide it right in the fall.\nBut when I had done this, I was unable to stir it up again, or to get under it, much less to move it forward towards the water; so I was forced to give it over; and yet, though I gave over the hopes of the boat, my desire to venture over for the main increased, rather than decreased, as the means for it seemed impossible.\nThis at length put me upon thinking whether it was not possible to make myself a canoe, or periagua, such as the natives of those climates make, even without tools, or, as I might say, without hands, of the trunk of a great tree. This I not only thought possible, but easy, and pleased myself extremely with the thoughts of making it, and with my having much more convenience for it than any of the negroes or Indians; but not at all considering the particular inconveniences which I lay under more than the Indians did\u2014viz. want of hands to move it, when it was made, into the water\u2014a difficulty much harder for me to surmount than all the consequences of want of tools could be to them; for what was it to me, if when I had chosen a vast tree in the woods, and with much trouble cut it down, if I had been able with my tools to hew and dub the outside into the proper shape of a boat, and burn or cut out the inside to make it hollow, so as to make a boat of it\u2014if, after all this, I must leave it just there where I found it, and not be able to launch it into the water?\nOne would have thought I could not have had the least reflection upon my mind of my circumstances while I was making this boat, but I should have immediately thought how I should get it into the sea; but my thoughts were so intent upon my voyage over the sea in it, that I never once considered how I should get it off the land: and it was really, in its own nature, more easy for me to guide it over forty-five miles of sea than about forty-five fathoms of land, where it lay, to set it afloat in the water.\nI went to work upon this boat the most like a fool that ever man did who had any of his senses awake. I pleased myself with the design, without determining whether I was ever able to undertake it; not but that the difficulty of launching my boat came often into my head; but I put a stop to my inquiries into it by this foolish answer which I gave myself\u2014\u201cLet me first make it; I warrant I will find some way or other to get it along when it is done.\u201d\nThis was a most preposterous method; but the eagerness of my fancy prevailed, and to work I went. I felled a cedar-tree, and I question much whether Solomon ever had such a one for the building of the Temple of Jerusalem; it was five feet ten inches diameter at the lower part next the stump, and four feet eleven inches diameter at the end of twenty-two feet; after which it lessened for a while, and then parted into branches. It was not without infinite labour that I felled this tree; I was twenty days hacking and hewing at it at the bottom; I was fourteen more getting the branches and limbs and the vast spreading head cut off, which I hacked and hewed through with axe and hatchet, and inexpressible labour; after this, it cost me a month to shape it and dub it to a proportion, and to something like the bottom of a boat, that it might swim upright as it ought to do. It cost me near three months more to clear the inside, and work it out so as to make an exact boat of it; this I did, indeed, without fire, by mere mallet and chisel, and by the dint of hard labour, till I had brought it to be a very handsome periagua, and big enough to have carried six-and-twenty men, and consequently big enough to have carried me and all my cargo.\nWhen I had gone through this work I was extremely delighted with it. The boat was really much bigger than ever I saw a canoe or periagua, that was made of one tree, in my life. Many a weary stroke it had cost, you may be sure; and had I gotten it into the water, I make no question, but I should have begun the maddest voyage, and the most unlikely to be performed, that ever was undertaken.\nBut all my devices to get it into the water failed me; though they cost me infinite labour too. It lay about one hundred yards from the water, and not more; but the first inconvenience was, it was up hill towards the creek. Well, to take away this discouragement, I resolved to dig into the surface of the earth, and so make a declivity: this I began, and it cost me a prodigious deal of pains (but who grudge pains who have their deliverance in view?); but when this was worked through, and this difficulty managed, it was still much the same, for I could no more stir the canoe than I could the other boat. Then I measured the distance of ground, and resolved to cut a dock or canal, to bring the water up to the canoe, seeing I could not bring the canoe down to the water. Well, I began this work; and when I began to enter upon it, and calculate how deep it was to be dug, how broad, how the stuff was to be thrown out, I found that, by the number of hands I had, being none but my own, it must have been ten or twelve years before I could have gone through with it; for the shore lay so high, that at the upper end it must have been at least twenty feet deep; so at length, though with great reluctancy, I gave this attempt over also.\nThis grieved me heartily; and now I saw, though too late, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it.\nIn the middle of this work I finished my fourth year in this place, and kept my anniversary with the same devotion, and with as much comfort as ever before; for, by a constant study and serious application to the Word of God, and by the assistance of His grace, I gained a different knowledge from what I had before. I entertained different notions of things. I looked now upon the world as a thing remote, which I had nothing to do with, no expectations from, and, indeed, no desires about: in a word, I had nothing indeed to do with it, nor was ever likely to have, so I thought it looked, as we may perhaps look upon it hereafter\u2014viz. as a place I had lived in, but was come out of it; and well might I say, as Father Abraham to Dives, \u201cBetween me and thee is a great gulf fixed.\u201d\nIn the first place, I was removed from all the wickedness of the world here; I had neither the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, nor the pride of life. I had nothing to covet, for I had all that I was now capable of enjoying; I was lord of the whole manor; or, if I pleased, I might call myself king or emperor over the whole country which I had possession of: there were no rivals; I had no competitor, none to dispute sovereignty or command with me: I might have raised ship-loadings of corn, but I had no use for it; so I let as little grow as I thought enough for my occasion. I had tortoise or turtle enough, but now and then one was as much as I could put to any use: I had timber enough to have built a fleet of ships; and I had grapes enough to have made wine, or to have cured into raisins, to have loaded that fleet when it had been built.\nBut all I could make use of was all that was valuable: I had enough to eat and supply my wants, and what was all the rest to me? If I killed more flesh than I could eat, the dog must eat it, or vermin; if I sowed more corn than I could eat, it must be spoiled; the trees that I cut down were lying to rot on the ground; I could make no more use of them but for fuel, and that I had no occasion for but to dress my food.\nIn a word, the nature and experience of things dictated to me, upon just reflection, that all the good things of this world are no farther good to us than they are for our use; and that, whatever we may heap up to give others, we enjoy just as much as we can use, and no more. The most covetous, griping miser in the world would have been cured of the vice of covetousness if he had been in my case; for I possessed infinitely more than I knew what to do with. I had no room for desire, except it was of things which I had not, and they were but trifles, though, indeed, of great use to me. I had, as I hinted before, a parcel of money, as well gold as silver, about thirty-six pounds sterling. Alas! there the sorry, useless stuff lay; I had no more manner of business for it; and often thought with myself that I would have given a handful of it for a gross of tobacco-pipes; or for a hand-mill to grind my corn; nay, I would have given it all for a sixpenny-worth of turnip and carrot seed out of England, or for a handful of peas and beans, and a bottle of ink. As it was, I had not the least advantage by it or benefit from it; but there it lay in a drawer, and grew mouldy with the damp of the cave in the wet seasons; and if I had had the drawer full of diamonds, it had been the same case\u2014they had been of no manner of value to me, because of no use.\nI had now brought my state of life to be much easier in itself than it was at first, and much easier to my mind, as well as to my body. I frequently sat down to meat with thankfulness, and admired the hand of God\u2019s providence, which had thus spread my table in the wilderness. I learned to look more upon the bright side of my condition, and less upon the dark side, and to consider what I enjoyed rather than what I wanted; and this gave me sometimes such secret comforts, that I cannot express them; and which I take notice of here, to put those discontented people in mind of it, who cannot enjoy comfortably what God has given them, because they see and covet something that He has not given them. All our discontents about what we want appeared to me to spring from the want of thankfulness for what we have.\nAnother reflection was of great use to me, and doubtless would be so to any one that should fall into such distress as mine was; and this was, to compare my present condition with what I at first expected it would be; nay, with what it would certainly have been, if the good providence of God had not wonderfully ordered the ship to be cast up nearer to the shore, where I not only could come at her, but could bring what I got out of her to the shore, for my relief and comfort; without which, I had wanted for tools to work, weapons for defence, and gunpowder and shot for getting my food.\nI spent whole hours, I may say whole days, in representing to myself, in the most lively colours, how I must have acted if I had got nothing out of the ship. How I could not have so much as got any food, except fish and turtles; and that, as it was long before I found any of them, I must have perished first; that I should have lived, if I had not perished, like a mere savage; that if I had killed a goat or a fowl, by any contrivance, I had no way to flay or open it, or part the flesh from the skin and the bowels, or to cut it up; but must gnaw it with my teeth, and pull it with my claws, like a beast.\nThese reflections made me very sensible of the goodness of Providence to me, and very thankful for my present condition, with all its hardships and misfortunes; and this part also I cannot but recommend to the reflection of those who are apt, in their misery, to say, \u201cIs any affliction like mine?\u201d Let them consider how much worse the cases of some people are, and their case might have been, if Providence had thought fit.\nI had another reflection, which assisted me also to comfort my mind with hopes; and this was comparing my present situation with what I had deserved, and had therefore reason to expect from the hand of Providence. I had lived a dreadful life, perfectly destitute of the knowledge and fear of God. I had been well instructed by father and mother; neither had they been wanting to me in their early endeavours to infuse a religious awe of God into my mind, a sense of my duty, and what the nature and end of my being required of me. But, alas! falling early into the seafaring life, which of all lives is the most destitute of the fear of God, though His terrors are always before them; I say, falling early into the seafaring life, and into seafaring company, all that little sense of religion which I had entertained was laughed out of me by my messmates; by a hardened despising of dangers, and the views of death, which grew habitual to me by my long absence from all manner of opportunities to converse with anything but what was like myself, or to hear anything that was good or tended towards it.\nSo void was I of everything that was good, or the least sense of what I was, or was to be, that, in the greatest deliverances I enjoyed\u2014such as my escape from Sallee; my being taken up by the Destiny master of the ship; my being planted so well in the Brazils; my receiving the cargo from England, and the like\u2014I never had once the words \u201cThank God!\u201d so much as on my mind, or in my mouth; nor in the greatest distress had I so much as a thought to pray to Him, or so much as to say, \u201cLord, have mercy upon me!\u201d no, nor to mention the name of God, unless it was to swear by, and blaspheme it.\nI had terrible reflections upon my mind for many months, as I have already observed, on account of my wicked and hardened life past; and when I looked about me, and considered what particular providences had attended me since my coming into this place, and how God had dealt bountifully with me\u2014had not only punished me less than my iniquity had deserved, but had so plentifully provided for me\u2014this gave me great hopes that my repentance was accepted, and that God had yet mercy in store for me.\nWith these reflections I worked my mind up, not only to a resignation to the will of God in the present disposition of my circumstances, but even to a sincere thankfulness for my condition; and that I, who was yet a living man, ought not to complain, seeing I had not the due punishment of my sins; that I enjoyed so many mercies which I had no reason to have expected in that place; that I ought never more to repine at my condition, but to rejoice, and to give daily thanks for that daily bread, which nothing but a crowd of wonders could have brought; that I ought to consider I had been fed even by a miracle, even as great as that of feeding Elijah by ravens, nay, by a long series of miracles; and that I could hardly have named a place in the uninhabitable part of the world where I could have been cast more to my advantage; a place where, as I had no society, which was my affliction on one hand, so I found no ravenous beasts, no furious wolves or tigers, to threaten my life; no venomous creatures, or poisons, which I might feed on to my hurt; no savages to murder and devour me. In a word, as my life was a life of sorrow one way, so it was a life of mercy another; and I wanted nothing to make it a life of comfort but to be able to make my sense of God\u2019s goodness to me, and care over me in this condition, be my daily consolation; and after I did make a just improvement on these things, I went away, and was no more sad. I had now been here so long that many things which I had brought on shore for my help were either quite gone, or very much wasted and near spent.\nMy ink, as I observed, had been gone some time, all but a very little, which I eked out with water, a little and a little, till it was so pale, it scarce left any appearance of black upon the paper. As long as it lasted I made use of it to minute down the days of the month on which any remarkable thing happened to me; and first, by casting up times past, I remembered that there was a strange concurrence of days in the various providences which befell me, and which, if I had been superstitiously inclined to observe days as fatal or fortunate, I might have had reason to have looked upon with a great deal of curiosity.\nFirst, I had observed that the same day that I broke away from my father and friends and ran away to Hull, in order to go to sea, the same day afterwards I was taken by the Sallee man-of-war, and made a slave; the same day of the year that I escaped out of the wreck of that ship in Yarmouth Roads, that same day-year afterwards I made my escape from Sallee in a boat; the same day of the year I was born on\u2014viz. the 30th of September, that same day I had my life so miraculously saved twenty-six years after, when I was cast on shore in this island; so that my wicked life and my solitary life began both on a day.\nThe next thing to my ink being wasted was that of my bread\u2014I mean the biscuit which I brought out of the ship; this I had husbanded to the last degree, allowing myself but one cake of bread a-day for above a year; and yet I was quite without bread for near a year before I got any corn of my own, and great reason I had to be thankful that I had any at all, the getting it being, as has been already observed, next to miraculous.\nMy clothes, too, began to decay; as to linen, I had had none a good while, except some chequered shirts which I found in the chests of the other seamen, and which I carefully preserved; because many times I could bear no other clothes on but a shirt; and it was a very great help to me that I had, among all the men\u2019s clothes of the ship, almost three dozen of shirts. There were also, indeed, several thick watch-coats of the seamen\u2019s which were left, but they were too hot to wear; and though it is true that the weather was so violently hot that there was no need of clothes, yet I could not go quite naked\u2014no, though I had been inclined to it, which I was not\u2014nor could I abide the thought of it, though I was alone. The reason why I could not go naked was, I could not bear the heat of the sun so well when quite naked as with some clothes on; nay, the very heat frequently blistered my skin: whereas, with a shirt on, the air itself made some motion, and whistling under the shirt, was twofold cooler than without it. No more could I ever bring myself to go out in the heat of the sun without a cap or a hat; the heat of the sun, beating with such violence as it does in that place, would give me the headache presently, by darting so directly on my head, without a cap or hat on, so that I could not bear it; whereas, if I put on my hat it would presently go away.\nUpon these views I began to consider about putting the few rags I had, which I called clothes, into some order; I had worn out all the waistcoats I had, and my business was now to try if I could not make jackets out of the great watch-coats which I had by me, and with such other materials as I had; so I set to work, tailoring, or rather, indeed, botching, for I made most piteous work of it. However, I made shift to make two or three new waistcoats, which I hoped would serve me a great while: as for breeches or drawers, I made but a very sorry shift indeed till afterwards.\nI have mentioned that I saved the skins of all the creatures that I killed, I mean four-footed ones, and I had them hung up, stretched out with sticks in the sun, by which means some of them were so dry and hard that they were fit for little, but others were very useful. The first thing I made of these was a great cap for my head, with the hair on the outside, to shoot off the rain; and this I performed so well, that after I made me a suit of clothes wholly of these skins\u2014that is to say, a waistcoat, and breeches open at the knees, and both loose, for they were rather wanting to keep me cool than to keep me warm. I must not omit to acknowledge that they were wretchedly made; for if I was a bad carpenter, I was a worse tailor. However, they were such as I made very good shift with, and when I was out, if it happened to rain, the hair of my waistcoat and cap being outermost, I was kept very dry.\nAfter this, I spent a great deal of time and pains to make an umbrella; I was, indeed, in great want of one, and had a great mind to make one; I had seen them made in the Brazils, where they are very useful in the great heats there, and I felt the heats every jot as great here, and greater too, being nearer the equinox; besides, as I was obliged to be much abroad, it was a most useful thing to me, as well for the rains as the heats. I took a world of pains with it, and was a great while before I could make anything likely to hold: nay, after I had thought I had hit the way, I spoiled two or three before I made one to my mind: but at last I made one that answered indifferently well: the main difficulty I found was to make it let down. I could make it spread, but if it did not let down too, and draw in, it was not portable for me any way but just over my head, which would not do. However, at last, as I said, I made one to answer, and covered it with skins, the hair upwards, so that it cast off the rain like a pent-house, and kept off the sun so effectually, that I could walk out in the hottest of the weather with greater advantage than I could before in the coolest, and when I had no need of it could close it, and carry it under my arm.\nThus I lived mighty comfortably, my mind being entirely composed by resigning myself to the will of God, and throwing myself wholly upon the disposal of His providence. This made my life better than sociable, for when I began to regret the want of conversation I would ask myself, whether thus conversing mutually with my own thoughts, and (as I hope I may say) with even God Himself, by ejaculations, was not better than the utmost enjoyment of human society in the world?\nCHAPTER X.\nTAMES GOATS\nI cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing happened to me, but I lived on in the same course, in the same posture and place, as before; the chief things I was employed in, besides my yearly labour of planting my barley and rice, and curing my raisins, of both which I always kept up just enough to have sufficient stock of one year\u2019s provisions beforehand; I say, besides this yearly labour, and my daily pursuit of going out with my gun, I had one labour, to make a canoe, which at last I finished: so that, by digging a canal to it of six feet wide and four feet deep, I brought it into the creek, almost half a mile. As for the first, which was so vastly big, for I made it without considering beforehand, as I ought to have done, how I should be able to launch it, so, never being able to bring it into the water, or bring the water to it, I was obliged to let it lie where it was as a memorandum to teach me to be wiser the next time: indeed, the next time, though I could not get a tree proper for it, and was in a place where I could not get the water to it at any less distance than, as I have said, near half a mile, yet, as I saw it was practicable at last, I never gave it over; and though I was near two years about it, yet I never grudged my labour, in hopes of having a boat to go off to sea at last.\nHowever, though my little periagua was finished, yet the size of it was not at all answerable to the design which I had in view when I made the first; I mean of venturing over to the terra firma, where it was above forty miles broad; accordingly, the smallness of my boat assisted to put an end to that design, and now I thought no more of it. As I had a boat, my next design was to make a cruise round the island; for as I had been on the other side in one place, crossing, as I have already described it, over the land, so the discoveries I made in that little journey made me very eager to see other parts of the coast; and now I had a boat, I thought of nothing but sailing round the island.\nFor this purpose, that I might do everything with discretion and consideration, I fitted up a little mast in my boat, and made a sail too out of some of the pieces of the ship\u2019s sails which lay in store, and of which I had a great stock by me. Having fitted my mast and sail, and tried the boat, I found she would sail very well; then I made little lockers or boxes at each end of my boat, to put provisions, necessaries, ammunition, &c., into, to be kept dry, either from rain or the spray of the sea; and a little, long, hollow place I cut in the inside of the boat, where I could lay my gun, making a flap to hang down over it to keep it dry.\nI fixed my umbrella also in the step at the stern, like a mast, to stand over my head, and keep the heat of the sun off me, like an awning; and thus I every now and then took a little voyage upon the sea, but never went far out, nor far from the little creek. At last, being eager to view the circumference of my little kingdom, I resolved upon my cruise; and accordingly I victualled my ship for the voyage, putting in two dozen of loaves (cakes I should call them) of barley-bread, an earthen pot full of parched rice (a food I ate a good deal of), a little bottle of rum, half a goat, and powder and shot for killing more, and two large watch-coats, of those which, as I mentioned before, I had saved out of the seamen\u2019s chests; these I took, one to lie upon, and the other to cover me in the night.\nIt was the 6th of November, in the sixth year of my reign\u2014or my captivity, which you please\u2014that I set out on this voyage, and I found it much longer than I expected; for though the island itself was not very large, yet when I came to the east side of it, I found a great ledge of rocks lie out about two leagues into the sea, some above water, some under it; and beyond that a shoal of sand, lying dry half a league more, so that I was obliged to go a great way out to sea to double the point.\nWhen I first discovered them, I was going to give over my enterprise, and come back again, not knowing how far it might oblige me to go out to sea; and above all, doubting how I should get back again: so I came to an anchor; for I had made a kind of an anchor with a piece of a broken grappling which I got out of the ship.\nHaving secured my boat, I took my gun and went on shore, climbing up a hill, which seemed to overlook that point where I saw the full extent of it, and resolved to venture.\nIn my viewing the sea from that hill where I stood, I perceived a strong, and indeed a most furious current, which ran to the east, and even came close to the point; and I took the more notice of it because I saw there might be some danger that when I came into it I might be carried out to sea by the strength of it, and not be able to make the island again; and indeed, had I not got first upon this hill, I believe it would have been so; for there was the same current on the other side the island, only that it set off at a further distance, and I saw there was a strong eddy under the shore; so I had nothing to do but to get out of the first current, and I should presently be in an eddy.\nI lay here, however, two days, because the wind blowing pretty fresh at ESE., and that being just contrary to the current, made a great breach of the sea upon the point: so that it was not safe for me to keep too close to the shore for the breach, nor to go too far off, because of the stream.\nThe third day, in the morning, the wind having abated overnight, the sea was calm, and I ventured: but I am a warning to all rash and ignorant pilots; for no sooner was I come to the point, when I was not even my boat\u2019s length from the shore, but I found myself in a great depth of water, and a current like the sluice of a mill; it carried my boat along with it with such violence that all I could do could not keep her so much as on the edge of it; but I found it hurried me farther and farther out from the eddy, which was on my left hand. There was no wind stirring to help me, and all I could do with my paddles signified nothing: and now I began to give myself over for lost; for as the current was on both sides of the island, I knew in a few leagues distance they must join again, and then I was irrecoverably gone; nor did I see any possibility of avoiding it; so that I had no prospect before me but of perishing, not by the sea, for that was calm enough, but of starving from hunger. I had, indeed, found a tortoise on the shore, as big almost as I could lift, and had tossed it into the boat; and I had a great jar of fresh water, that is to say, one of my earthen pots; but what was all this to being driven into the vast ocean, where, to be sure, there was no shore, no mainland or island, for a thousand leagues at least?\nAnd now I saw how easy it was for the providence of God to make even the most miserable condition of mankind worse. Now I looked back upon my desolate, solitary island as the most pleasant place in the world and all the happiness my heart could wish for was to be but there again. I stretched out my hands to it, with eager wishes\u2014\u201cO happy desert!\u201d said I, \u201cI shall never see thee more. O miserable creature! whither am going?\u201d Then I reproached myself with my unthankful temper, and that I had repined at my solitary condition; and now what would I give to be on shore there again! Thus, we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it. It is scarcely possible to imagine the consternation I was now in, being driven from my beloved island (for so it appeared to me now to be) into the wide ocean, almost two leagues, and in the utmost despair of ever recovering it again. However, I worked hard till, indeed, my strength was almost exhausted, and kept my boat as much to the northward, that is, towards the side of the current which the eddy lay on, as possibly I could; when about noon, as the sun passed the meridian, I thought I felt a little breeze of wind in my face, springing up from SSE. This cheered my heart a little, and especially when, in about half-an-hour more, it blew a pretty gentle gale. By this time I had got at a frightful distance from the island, and had the least cloudy or hazy weather intervened, I had been undone another way, too; for I had no compass on board, and should never have known how to have steered towards the island, if I had but once lost sight of it; but the weather continuing clear, I applied myself to get up my mast again, and spread my sail, standing away to the north as much as possible, to get out of the current.\nJust as I had set my mast and sail, and the boat began to stretch away, I saw even by the clearness of the water some alteration of the current was near; for where the current was so strong the water was foul; but perceiving the water clear, I found the current abate; and presently I found to the east, at about half a mile, a breach of the sea upon some rocks: these rocks I found caused the current to part again, and as the main stress of it ran away more southerly, leaving the rocks to the north-east, so the other returned by the repulse of the rocks, and made a strong eddy, which ran back again to the north-west, with a very sharp stream.\nThey who know what it is to have a reprieve brought to them upon the ladder, or to be rescued from thieves just going to murder them, or who have been in such extremities, may guess what my present surprise of joy was, and how gladly I put my boat into the stream of this eddy; and the wind also freshening, how gladly I spread my sail to it, running cheerfully before the wind, and with a strong tide or eddy underfoot.\nThis eddy carried me about a league on my way back again, directly towards the island, but about two leagues more to the northward than the current which carried me away at first; so that when I came near the island, I found myself open to the northern shore of it, that is to say, the other end of the island, opposite to that which I went out from.\nWhen I had made something more than a league of way by the help of this current or eddy, I found it was spent, and served me no further. However, I found that being between two great currents\u2014viz. that on the south side, which had hurried me away, and that on the north, which lay about a league on the other side; I say, between these two, in the wake of the island, I found the water at least still, and running no way; and having still a breeze of wind fair for me, I kept on steering directly for the island, though not making such fresh way as I did before.\nAbout four o\u2019clock in the evening, being then within a league of the island, I found the point of the rocks which occasioned this disaster stretching out, as is described before, to the southward, and casting off the current more southerly, had, of course, made another eddy to the north; and this I found very strong, but not directly setting the way my course lay, which was due west, but almost full north. However, having a fresh gale, I stretched across this eddy, slanting north-west; and in about an hour came within about a mile of the shore, where, it being smooth water, I soon got to land.\nWhen I was on shore, God I fell on my knees and gave God thanks for my deliverance, resolving to lay aside all thoughts of my deliverance by my boat; and refreshing myself with such things as I had, I brought my boat close to the shore, in a little cove that I had spied under some trees, and laid me down to sleep, being quite spent with the labour and fatigue of the voyage.\nI was now at a great loss which way to get home with my boat! I had run so much hazard, and knew too much of the case, to think of attempting it by the way I went out; and what might be at the other side (I mean the west side) I knew not, nor had I any mind to run any more ventures; so I resolved on the next morning to make my way westward along the shore, and to see if there was no creek where I might lay up my frigate in safety, so as to have her again if I wanted her. In about three miles or thereabouts, coasting the shore, I came to a very good inlet or bay, about a mile over, which narrowed till it came to a very little rivulet or brook, where I found a very convenient harbour for my boat, and where she lay as if she had been in a little dock made on purpose for her. Here I put in, and having stowed my boat very safe, I went on shore to look about me, and see where I was.\nI soon found I had but a little passed by the place where I had been before, when I travelled on foot to that shore; so taking nothing out of my boat but my gun and umbrella, for it was exceedingly hot, I began my march. The way was comfortable enough after such a voyage as I had been upon, and I reached my old bower in the evening, where I found everything standing as I left it; for I always kept it in good order, being, as I said before, my country house.\nI got over the fence, and laid me down in the shade to rest my limbs, for I was very weary, and fell asleep; but judge you, if you can, that read my story, what a surprise I must be in when I was awaked out of my sleep by a voice calling me by my name several times, \u201cRobin, Robin, Robin Paris: poor Robin Paris! Where are you, Robin Paris? Where are you? Where have you been?\u201d\nI was so dead asleep at first, being fatigued with rowing, or part of the day, and with walking the latter part, that I did not wake thoroughly; but dozing thought I dreamed that somebody spoke to me; but as the voice continued to repeat, \u201cRobin Paris, Robin Paris,\u201d at last I began to wake more perfectly, and was at first dreadfully frightened, and started up in the utmost consternation; but no sooner were my eyes open, but I saw my Poll sitting on the top of the hedge; and immediately knew that it was he that spoke to me; for just in such bemoaning language I had used to talk to him and teach him; and he had learned it so perfectly that he would sit upon my finger, and lay his bill close to my face and cry, \u201cPoor Robin Paris! Where are you? Where have you been? How came you here?\u201d and such things as I had taught him.\nHowever, even though I knew it was the parrot, and that indeed it could be nobody else, it was a good while before I could compose myself. First, I was amazed how the creature got thither; and then, how he should just keep about the place, and nowhere else; but as I was well satisfied it could be nobody but honest Poll, I got over it; and holding out my hand, and calling him by his name, \u201cPoll,\u201d the sociable creature came to me, and sat upon my thumb, as he used to do, and continued talking to me, \u201cPoor Robin Paris! and how did I come here? and where had I been?\u201d just as if he had been overjoyed to see me again; and so I carried him home along with me.\nI had now had enough of rambling to sea for some time, and had enough to do for many days to sit still and reflect upon the danger I had been in. I would have been very glad to have had my boat again on my side of the island; but I knew not how it was practicable to get it about. As to the east side of the island, which I had gone round, I knew well enough there was no venturing that way; my very heart would shrink, and my very blood run chill, but to think of it; and as to the other side of the island, I did not know how it might be there; but supposing the current ran with the same force against the shore at the east as it passed by it on the other, I might run the same risk of being driven down the stream, and carried by the island, as I had been before of being carried away from it: so with these thoughts, I contented myself to be without any boat, though it had been the product of so many months\u2019 labour to make it, and of so many more to get it into the sea.\nIn this government of my temper I remained near a year; and lived a very sedate, retired life, as you may well suppose; and my thoughts being very much composed as to my condition, and fully comforted in resigning myself to the dispositions of Providence, I thought I lived really very happily in all things except that of society.\nI improved myself in this time in all the mechanic exercises which my necessities put me upon applying myself to; and I believe I should, upon occasion, have made a very good carpenter, especially considering how few tools I had.\nBesides this, I arrived at an unexpected perfection in my earthenware, and contrived well enough to make them with a wheel, which I found infinitely easier and better; because I made things round and shaped, which before were filthy things indeed to look on. But I think I was never more vain of my own performance, or more joyful for anything I found out, than for my being able to make a tobacco-pipe; and though it was a very ugly, clumsy thing when it was done, and only burned red, like other earthenware, yet as it was hard and firm, and would draw the smoke, I was exceedingly comforted with it, for I had been always used to smoke; and there were pipes in the ship, but I forgot them at first, not thinking there was tobacco in the island; and afterwards, when I searched the ship again, I could not come at any pipes.\nIn my wicker-ware also I improved much, and made abundance of necessary baskets, as well as my invention showed me; though not very handsome, yet they were such as were very handy and convenient for laying things up in, or fetching things home. For example, if I killed a goat abroad, I could hang it up in a tree, flay it, dress it, and cut it in pieces, and bring it home in a basket; and the like by a turtle; I could cut it up, take out the eggs and a piece or two of the flesh, which was enough for me, and bring them home in a basket, and leave the rest behind me. Also, large deep baskets were the receivers of my corn, which I always rubbed out as soon as it was dry and cured, and kept it in great baskets.\nI began now to perceive my powder abated considerably; this was a want which it was impossible for me to supply, and I began seriously to consider what I must do when I should have no more powder; that is to say, how I should kill any goats. I had, as is observed in the third year of my being here, kept a young kid, and bred her up tame, and I was in hopes of getting a he-goat; but I could not by any means bring it to pass, till my kid grew an old goat; and as I could never find in my heart to kill her, she died at last of mere age.\nBut being now in the eleventh year of my residence, and, as I have said, my ammunition growing low, I set myself to study some art to trap and snare the goats, to see whether I could not catch some of them alive; and particularly I wanted a she-goat great with young. For this purpose I made snares to hamper them; and I do believe they were more than once taken in them; but my tackle was not good, for I had no wire, and I always found them broken and my bait devoured. At length I resolved to try a pitfall; so I dug several large pits in the earth, in places where I had observed the goats used to feed, and over those pits I placed hurdles of my own making too, with a great weight upon them; and several times I put ears of barley and dry rice without setting the trap; and I could easily perceive that the goats had gone in and eaten up the corn, for I could see the marks of their feet. At length I set three traps in one night, and going the next morning I found them, all standing, and yet the bait eaten and gone; this was very discouraging. However, I altered my traps; and not to trouble you with particulars, going one morning to see my traps, I found in one of them a large old he-goat; and in one of the others three kids, a male and two females.\nAs to the old one, I knew not what to do with him; he was so fierce I durst not go into the pit to him; that is to say, to bring him away alive, which was what I wanted. I could have killed him, but that was not my business, nor would it answer my end; so I even let him out, and he ran away as if he had been frightened out of his wits. But I did not then know what I afterwards learned, that hunger will tame a lion. If I had let him stay three or four days without food, and then have carried him some water to drink and then a little corn, he would have been as tame as one of the kids; for they are mighty sagacious, tractable creatures, where they are well used.\nHowever, for the present I let him go, knowing no better at that time: then I went to the three kids, and taking them one by one, I tied them with strings together, and with some difficulty brought them all home.\nIt was a good while before they would feed; but throwing them some sweet corn, it tempted them, and they began to be tame. And now I found that if I expected to supply myself with goats\u2019 flesh, when I had no powder or shot left, breeding some up tame was my only way, when, perhaps, I might have them about my house like a flock of sheep. But then it occurred to me that I must keep the tame from the wild, or else they would always run wild when they grew up; and the only way for this was to have some enclosed piece of ground, well fenced either with hedge or pale, to keep them in so effectually, that those within might not break out, or those without break in.\nThis was a great undertaking for one pair of hands yet, as I saw there was an absolute necessity for doing it, my first work was to find out a proper piece of ground, where there was likely to be herbage for them to eat, water for them to drink, and cover to keep them from the sun.\nThose who understand such enclosures will think I had very little contrivance when I pitched upon a place very proper for all these (being a plain, open piece of meadow land, or savannah, as our people call it in the western colonies), which had two or three little drills of fresh water in it, and at one end was very woody\u2014I say, they will smile at my forecast, when I shall tell them I began by enclosing this piece of ground in such a manner that, my hedge or pale must have been at least two miles about. Nor was the madness of it so great as to the compass, for if it was ten miles about, I was like to have time enough to do it in; but I did not consider that my goats would be as wild in so much compass as if they had had the whole island, and I should have so much room to chase them in that I should never catch them.\nMy hedge was begun and carried on, I believe, about fifty yards when this thought occurred to me; so I presently stopped short, and, for the beginning, I resolved to enclose a piece of about one hundred and fifty yards in length, and one hundred yards in breadth, which, as it would maintain as many as I should have in any reasonable time, so, as my stock increased, I could add more ground to my enclosure.\nThis was acting with some prudence, and I went to work with courage. I was about three months hedging in the first piece; and, till I had done it, I tethered the three kids in the best part of it, and used them to feed as near me as possible, to make them familiar; and very often I would go and carry them some ears of barley, or a handful of rice, and feed them out of my hand; so that after my enclosure was finished and I let them loose, they would follow me up and down, bleating after me for a handful of corn.\nThis answered my end, and in about a year and a half I had a flock of about twelve goats, kids and all; and in two years more I had three-and-forty, besides several that I took and killed for my food. After that, I enclosed five several pieces of ground to feed them in, with little pens to drive them to take them as I wanted, and gates out of one piece of ground into another.\nBut this was not all; for now I not only had goat\u2019s flesh to feed on when I pleased, but milk too\u2014a thing which, indeed, in the beginning, I did not so much as think of, and which, when it came into my thoughts, was really an agreeable surprise, for now I set up my dairy, and had sometimes a gallon or two of milk in a day. And as Nature, who gives supplies of food to every creature, dictates even naturally how to make use of it, so I, that had never milked a cow, much less a goat, or seen butter or cheese made only when I was a boy, after a great many essays and miscarriages, made both butter and cheese at last, also salt (though I found it partly made to my hand by the heat of the sun upon some of the rocks of the sea), and never wanted it afterwards. How mercifully can our Creator treat His creatures, even in those conditions in which they seemed to be overwhelmed in destruction! How can He sweeten the bitterest providences, and give us cause to praise Him for dungeons and prisons! What a table was here spread for me in the wilderness, where I saw nothing at first but to perish for hunger!\nCHAPTER XI.\nFINDS PRINT OF MAN\u2019S FOOT ON THE SAND It would have made a Stoic smile to have seen me and my little family sit down to dinner. There was my majesty the prince and lord of the whole island; I had the lives of all my subjects at my absolute command; I could hang, draw, give liberty, and take it away, and no rebels among all my subjects. Then, to see how like a king I dined, too, all alone, attended by my servants! Poll, as if he had been my favourite, was the only person permitted to talk to me. My dog, who was now grown old and crazy, and had found no species to multiply his kind upon, sat always at my right hand; and two cats, one on one side of the table and one on the other, expecting now and then a bit from my hand, as a mark of especial favour.\nBut these were not the two cats which I brought on shore at first, for they were both of them dead, and had been interred near my habitation by my own hand; but one of them having multiplied by I know not what kind of creature, these were two which I had preserved tame; whereas the rest ran wild in the woods, and became indeed troublesome to me at last, for they would often come into my house, and plunder me too, till at last I was obliged to shoot them, and did kill a great many; at length they left me. With this attendance and in this plentiful manner I lived; neither could I be said to want anything but society; and of that, some time after this, I was likely to have too much.\nI was something impatient, as I have observed, to have the use of my boat, though very loath to run any more hazards; and therefore sometimes I sat contriving ways to get her about the island, and at other times I sat myself down contented enough without her. But I had a strange uneasiness in my mind to go down to the point of the island where, as I have said in my last ramble, I went up the hill to see how the shore lay, and how the current set, that I might see what I had to do: this inclination increased upon me every day, and at length I resolved to travel thither by land, following the edge of the shore. I did so; but had any one in England met such a man as I was, it must either have frightened him, or raised a great deal of laughter; and as I frequently stood still to look at myself, I could not but smile at the notion of my travelling through Yorkshire with such an equipage, and in such a dress. Be pleased to take a sketch of my figure, as follows.\nI had a great high shapeless cap, made of a goat\u2019s skin, with a flap hanging down behind, as well to keep the sun from me as to shoot the rain off from running into my neck, nothing being so hurtful in these climates as the rain upon the flesh under the clothes.\nI had a short jacket of goat\u2019s skin, the skirts coming down to about the middle of the thighs, and a pair of open-kneed breeches of the same; the breeches were made of the skin of an old he-goat, whose hair hung down such a length on either side that, like pantaloons, it reached to the middle of my legs; stockings and shoes I had none, but had made me a pair of somethings, I scarce knew what to call them, like buskins, to flap over my legs, and lace on either side like spatterdashes, but of a most barbarous shape, as indeed were all the rest of my clothes.\nI had on a broad belt of goat\u2019s skin dried, which I drew together with two thongs of the same instead of buckles, and in a kind of a frog on either side of this, instead of a sword and dagger, hung a little saw and a hatchet, one on one side and one on the other. I had another belt not so broad, and fastened in the same manner, which hung over my shoulder, and at the end of it, under my left arm, hung two pouches, both made of goat\u2019s skin too, in one of which hung my powder, in the other my shot. At my back I carried my basket, and on my shoulder my gun, and over my head a great clumsy, ugly, goat\u2019s-skin umbrella, but which, after all, was the most necessary thing I had about me next to my gun. As for my face, the colour of it was really not so mulatto-like as one might expect from a man not at all careful of it, and living within nine or ten degrees of the equinox. My beard I had once suffered to grow till it was about a quarter of a yard long; but as I had both scissors and razors sufficient, I had cut it pretty short, except what grew on my upper lip, which I had trimmed into a large pair of Mahometan whiskers, such as I had seen worn by some Turks at Sallee, for the Moors did not wear such, though the Turks did; of these moustachios, or whiskers, I will not say they were long enough to hang my hat upon them, but they were of a length and shape monstrous enough, and such as in England would have passed for frightful.\nBut all this is by-the-bye; for as to my figure, I had so few to observe me that it was of no manner of consequence, so I say no more of that. In this kind of dress I went my new journey, and was out five or six days. I travelled first along the sea-shore, directly to the place where I first brought my boat to an anchor to get upon the rocks; and having no boat now to take care of, I went over the land a nearer way to the same height that I was upon before, when, looking forward to the points of the rocks which lay out, and which I was obliged to double with my boat, as is said above, I was surprised to see the sea all smooth and quiet\u2014no rippling, no motion, no current, any more there than in other places. I was at a strange loss to understand this, and resolved to spend some time in the observing it, to see if nothing from the sets of the tide had occasioned it; but I was presently convinced how it was\u2014viz. that the tide of ebb setting from the west, and joining with the current of waters from some great river on the shore, must be the occasion of this current, and that, according as the wind blew more forcibly from the west or from the north, this current came nearer or went farther from the shore; for, waiting thereabouts till evening, I went up to the rock again, and then the tide of ebb being made, I plainly saw the current again as before, only that it ran farther off, being near half a league from the shore, whereas in my case it set close upon the shore, and hurried me and my canoe along with it, which at another time it would not have done.\nThis observation convinced me that I had nothing to do but to observe the ebbing and the flowing of the tide, and I might very easily bring my boat about the island again; but when I began to think of putting it in practice, I had such terror upon my spirits at the remembrance of the danger I had been in, that I could not think of it again with any patience, but, on the contrary, I took up another resolution, which was more safe, though more laborious\u2014and this was, that I would build, or rather make, me another periagua or canoe, and so have one for one side of the island, and one for the other.\nYou are to understand that now I had, as I may call it, two plantations in the island\u2014one my little fortification or tent, with the wall about it, under the rock, with the cave behind me, which by this time I had enlarged into several apartments or caves, one within another. One of these, which was the driest and largest, and had a door out beyond my wall or fortification\u2014that is to say, beyond where my wall joined to the rock\u2014was all filled up with the large earthen pots of which I have given an account, and with fourteen or fifteen great baskets, which would hold five or six bushels each, where I laid up my stores of provisions, especially my corn, some in the ear, cut off short from the straw, and the other rubbed out with my hand.\nAs for my wall, made, as before, with long stakes or piles, those piles grew all like trees, and were by this time grown so big, and spread so very much, that there was not the least appearance, to any one\u2019s view, of any habitation behind them.\nNear this dwelling of mine, but a little farther within the land, and upon lower ground, lay my two pieces of corn land, which I kept duly cultivated and sowed, and which duly yielded me their harvest in its season; and whenever I had occasion for more corn, I had more land adjoining as fit as that.\nBesides this, I had my country seat, and I had now a tolerable plantation there also; for, first, I had my little bower, as I called it, which I kept in repair\u2014that is to say, I kept the hedge which encircled it in constantly fitted up to its usual height, the ladder standing always in the inside. I kept the trees, which at first were no more than stakes, but were now grown very firm and tall, always cut, so that they might spread and grow thick and wild, and make the more agreeable shade, which they did effectually to my mind. In the middle of this I had my tent always standing, being a piece of a sail spread over poles, set up for that purpose, and which never wanted any repair or renewing; and under this I had made me a squab or couch with the skins of the creatures I had killed, and with other soft things, and a blanket laid on them, such as belonged to our sea-bedding, which I had saved; and a great watch-coat to cover me. And here, whenever I had occasion to be absent from my chief seat, I took up my country habitation.\nAdjoining to this I had my enclosures for my cattle, that is to say my goats, and I had taken an inconceivable deal of pains to fence and enclose this ground. I was so anxious to see it kept entire, lest the goats should break through, that I never left off till, with infinite labour, I had stuck the outside of the hedge so full of small stakes, and so near to one another, that it was rather a pale than a hedge, and there was scarce room to put a hand through between them; which afterwards, when those stakes grew, as they all did in the next rainy season, made the enclosure strong like a wall, indeed stronger than any wall.\nThis will testify for me that I was not idle, and that I spared no pains to bring to pass whatever appeared necessary for my comfortable support, for I considered the keeping up a breed of tame creatures thus at my hand would be a living magazine of flesh, milk, butter, and cheese for me as long as I lived in the place, if it were to be forty years; and that keeping them in my reach depended entirely upon my perfecting my enclosures to such a degree that I might be sure of keeping them together; which by this method, indeed, I so effectually secured, that when these little stakes began to grow, I had planted them so very thick that I was forced to pull some of them up again.\nIn this place also I had my grapes growing, which I principally depended on for my winter store of raisins, and which I never failed to preserve very carefully, as the best and most agreeable dainty of my whole diet; and indeed they were not only agreeable, but medicinal, wholesome, nourishing, and refreshing to the last degree.\nAs this was also about half-way between my other habitation and the place where I had laid up my boat, I generally stayed and lay here in my way thither, for I used frequently to visit my boat; and I kept all things about or belonging to her in very good order. Sometimes I went out in her to divert myself, but no more hazardous voyages would I go, scarcely ever above a stone\u2019s cast or two from the shore, I was so apprehensive of being hurried out of my knowledge again by the currents or winds, or any other accident. But now I come to a new scene of my life.\nIt happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man\u2019s naked foot on the shore, which was very plain to be seen on the sand. I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen an apparition. I listened, I looked round me, but I could hear nothing, nor see anything; I went up to a rising ground to look farther; I went up the shore and down the shore, but it was all one; I could see no other impression but that one. I went to it again to see if there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy; but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the print of a foot\u2014toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came thither I knew not, nor could I in the least imagine; but after innumerable fluttering thoughts, like a man perfectly confused and out of myself, I came home to my fortification, not feeling, as we say, the ground I went on, but terrified to the last degree, looking behind me at every two or three steps, mistaking every bush and tree, and fancying every stump at a distance to be a man. Nor is it possible to describe how many various shapes my affrighted imagination represented things to me in, how many wild ideas were found every moment in my fancy, and what strange, unaccountable whimsies came into my thoughts by the way.\nWhen I came to my castle (for so I think I called it ever after this), I fled into it like one pursued. Whether I went over by the ladder, as first contrived, or went in at the hole in the rock, which I had called a door, I cannot remember; no, nor could I remember the next morning, for never frightened hare fled to cover, or fox to earth, with more terror of mind than I to this retreat.\nI slept none that night; the farther I was from the occasion of my fright, the greater my apprehensions were, which is something contrary to the nature of such things, and especially to the usual practice of all creatures in fear; but I was so embarrassed with my own frightful ideas of the thing, that I formed nothing but dismal imaginations to myself, even though I was now a great way off. Sometimes I fancied it must be the devil, and reason joined in with me in this supposition, for how should any other thing in human shape come into the place? Where was the vessel that brought them? What marks were there of any other footstep? And how was it possible a man should come there? But then, to think that Satan should take human shape upon him in such a place, where there could be no manner of occasion for it, but to leave the print of his foot behind him, and that even for no purpose too, for he could not be sure I should see it\u2014this was an amusement the other way. I considered that the devil might have found out abundance of other ways to have terrified me than this of the single print of a foot; that as I lived quite on the other side of the island, he would never have been so simple as to leave a mark in a place where it was ten thousand to one whether I should ever see it or not, and in the sand too, which the first surge of the sea, upon a high wind, would have defaced entirely. All this seemed inconsistent with the thing itself and with all the notions we usually entertain of the subtlety of the devil.\nAbundance of such things as these assisted to argue me out of all apprehensions of its being the devil; and I presently concluded then that it must be some more dangerous creature\u2014viz. that it must be some of the savages of the mainland opposite who had wandered out to sea in their canoes, and either driven by the currents or by contrary winds, had made the island, and had been on shore, but were gone away again to sea; being as loath, perhaps, to have stayed in this desolate island as I would have been to have had them.\nWhile these reflections were rolling in my mind, I was very thankful in my thoughts that I was so happy as not to be thereabouts at that time, or that they did not see my boat, by which they would have concluded that some inhabitants had been in the place, and perhaps have searched farther for me. Then terrible thoughts racked my imagination about their having found out my boat, and that there were people here; and that, if so, I should certainly have them come again in greater numbers and devour me; that if it should happen that they should not find me, yet they would find my enclosure, destroy all my corn, and carry away all my flock of tame goats, and I should perish at last for mere want.\nThus my fear banished all my religious hope, all that former confidence in God, which was founded upon such wonderful experience as I had had of His goodness; as if He that had fed me by miracle hitherto could not preserve, by His power, the provision which He had made for me by His goodness. I reproached myself with my laziness, that would not sow any more corn one year than would just serve me till the next season, as if no accident could intervene to prevent my enjoying the crop that was upon the ground; and this I thought so just a reproof, that I resolved for the future to have two or three years\u2019 corn beforehand; so that, whatever might come, I might not perish for want of bread.\nHow strange a chequer-work of Providence is the life of man! and by what secret different springs are the affections hurried about, as different circumstances present! To-day we love what to-morrow we hate; to-day we seek what to-morrow we shun; to-day we desire what to-morrow we fear, nay, even tremble at the apprehensions of. This was exemplified in me, at this time, in the most lively manner imaginable; for I, whose only affliction was that I seemed banished from human society, that I was alone, circumscribed by the boundless ocean, cut off from mankind, and condemned to what I call silent life; that I was as one whom Heaven thought not worthy to be numbered among the living, or to appear among the rest of His creatures; that to have seen one of my own species would have seemed to me a raising me from death to life, and the greatest blessing that Heaven itself, next to the supreme blessing of salvation, could bestow; I say, that I should now tremble at the very apprehensions of seeing a man, and was ready to sink into the ground at but the shadow or silent appearance of a man having set his foot in the island.\nSuch is the uneven state of human life; and it afforded me a great many curious speculations afterwards, when I had a little recovered my first surprise. I considered that this was the station of life the infinitely wise and good providence of God had determined for me; that as I could not foresee what the ends of Divine wisdom might be in all this, so I was not to dispute His sovereignty; who, as I was His creature, had an undoubted right, by creation, to govern and dispose of me absolutely as He thought fit; and who, as I was a creature that had offended Him, had likewise a judicial right to condemn me to what punishment He thought fit; and that it was my part to submit to bear His indignation, because I had sinned against Him. I then reflected, that as God, who was not only righteous but omnipotent, had thought fit thus to punish and afflict me, so He was able to deliver me: that if He did not think fit to do so, it was my unquestioned duty to resign myself absolutely and entirely to His will; and, on the other hand, it was my duty also to hope in Him, pray to Him, and quietly to attend to the dictates and directions of His daily providence.\nThese thoughts took me up many hours, days, nay, I may say weeks and months: and one particular effect of my cogitations on this occasion I cannot omit. One morning early, lying in my bed, and filled with thoughts about my danger from the appearances of savages, I found it discomposed me very much; upon which these words of the Scripture came into my thoughts, \u201cCall upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.\u201d Upon this, rising cheerfully out of my bed, my heart was not only comforted, but I was guided and encouraged to pray earnestly to God for deliverance: when I had done praying I took up my Bible, and opening it to read, the first words that presented to me were, \u201cWait on the Lord, and be of good cheer, and He shall strengthen thy heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.\u201d It is impossible to express the comfort this gave me. In answer, I thankfully laid down the book, and was no more sad, at least on that occasion.\nIn the middle of these cogitations, apprehensions, and reflections, it came into my thoughts one day that all this might be a mere chimera of my own, and that this foot might be the print of my own foot, when I came on shore from my boat: this cheered me up a little, too, and I began to persuade myself it was all a delusion; that it was nothing else but my own foot; and why might I not come that way from the boat, as well as I was going that way to the boat? Again, I considered also that I could by no means tell for certain where I had trod, and where I had not; and that if, at last, this was only the print of my own foot, I had played the part of those fools who try to make stories of spectres and apparitions, and then are frightened at them more than anybody.\nNow I began to take courage, and to peep abroad again, for I had not stirred out of my castle for three days and nights, so that I began to starve for provisions; for I had little or nothing within doors but some barley-cakes and water; then I knew that my goats wanted to be milked too, which usually was my evening diversion: and the poor creatures were in great pain and inconvenience for want of it; and, indeed, it almost spoiled some of them, and almost dried up their milk. Encouraging myself, therefore, with the belief that this was nothing but the print of one of my own feet, and that I might be truly said to start at my own shadow, I began to go abroad again, and went to my country house to milk my flock: but to see with what fear I went forward, how often I looked behind me, how I was ready every now and then to lay down my basket and run for my life, it would have made any one have thought I was haunted with an evil conscience, or that I had been lately most terribly frightened; and so, indeed, I had. However, I went down thus two or three days, and having seen nothing, I began to be a little bolder, and to think there was really nothing in it but my own imagination; but I could not persuade myself fully of this till I should go down to the shore again, and see this print of a foot, and measure it by my own, and see if there was any similitude or fitness, that I might be assured it was my own foot: but when I came to the place, first, it appeared evidently to me, that when I laid up my boat I could not possibly be on shore anywhere thereabouts; secondly, when I came to measure the mark with my own foot, I found my foot not so large by a great deal. Both these things filled my head with new imaginations, and gave me the vapours again to the highest degree, so that I shook with cold like one in an ague; and I went home again, filled with the belief that some man or men had been on shore there; or, in short, that the island was inhabited, and I might be surprised before I was aware; and what course to take for my security I knew not.\nOh, what ridiculous resolutions men take when possessed with fear! It deprives them of the use of those means which reason offers for their relief. The first thing I proposed to myself was, to throw down my enclosures, and turn all my tame cattle wild into the woods, lest the enemy should find them, and then frequent the island in prospect of the same or the like booty: then the simple thing of digging up my two corn-fields, lest they should find such a grain there, and still be prompted to frequent the island: then to demolish my bower and tent, that they might not see any vestiges of habitation, and be prompted to look farther, in order to find out the persons inhabiting.\nThese were the subject of the first night\u2019s cogitations after I was come home again, while the apprehensions which had so overrun my mind were fresh upon me, and my head was full of vapours. Thus, fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself, when apparent to the eyes; and we find the burden of anxiety greater, by much, than the evil which we are anxious about: and what was worse than all this, I had not that relief in this trouble that from the resignation I used to practise I hoped to have. I looked, I thought, like Saul, who complained not only that the Philistines were upon him, but that God had forsaken him; for I did not now take due ways to compose my mind, by crying to God in my distress, and resting upon His providence, as I had done before, for my defence and deliverance; which, if I had done, I had at least been more cheerfully supported under this new surprise, and perhaps carried through it with more resolution.\nThis confusion of my thoughts kept me awake all night; but in the morning I fell asleep; and having, by the amusement of my mind, been as it were tired, and my spirits exhausted, I slept very soundly, and waked much better composed than I had ever been before. And now I began to think sedately; and, upon debate with myself, I concluded that this island (which was so exceedingly pleasant, fruitful, and no farther from the mainland than as I had seen) was not so entirely abandoned as I might imagine; that although there were no stated inhabitants who lived on the spot, yet that there might sometimes come boats off from the shore, who, either with design, or perhaps never but when they were driven by cross winds, might come to this place; that I had lived there fifteen years now and had not met with the least shadow or figure of any people yet; and that, if at any time they should be driven here, it was probable they went away again as soon as ever they could, seeing they had never thought fit to fix here upon any occasion; that the most I could suggest any danger from was from any casual accidental landing of straggling people from the main, who, as it was likely, if they were driven hither, were here against their wills, so they made no stay here, but went off again with all possible speed; seldom staying one night on shore, lest they should not have the help of the tides and daylight back again; and that, therefore, I had nothing to do but to consider of some safe retreat, in case I should see any savages land upon the spot.\nNow, I began sorely to repent that I had dug my cave so large as to bring a door through again, which door, as I said, came out beyond where my fortification joined to the rock: upon maturely considering this, therefore, I resolved to draw me a second fortification, in the manner of a semicircle, at a distance from my wall, just where I had planted a double row of trees about twelve years before, of which I made mention: these trees having been planted so thick before, they wanted but few piles to be driven between them, that they might be thicker and stronger, and my wall would be soon finished. So that I had now a double wall; and my outer wall was thickened with pieces of timber, old cables, and everything I could think of, to make it strong; having in it seven little holes, about as big as I might put my arm out at. In the inside of this I thickened my wall to about ten feet thick with continually bringing earth out of my cave, and laying it at the foot of the wall, and walking upon it; and through the seven holes I contrived to plant the muskets, of which I took notice that I had got seven on shore out of the ship; these I planted like my cannon, and fitted them into frames, that held them like a carriage, so that I could fire all the seven guns in two minutes\u2019 time; this wall I was many a weary month in finishing, and yet never thought myself safe till it was done.\nWhen this was done I stuck all the ground without my wall, for a great length every way, as full with stakes or sticks of the osier-like wood, which I found so apt to grow, as they could well stand; insomuch that I believe I might set in near twenty thousand of them, leaving a pretty large space between them and my wall, that I might have room to see an enemy, and they might have no shelter from the young trees, if they attempted to approach my outer wall.\nThus in two years\u2019 time I had a thick grove; and in five or six years\u2019 time I had a wood before my dwelling, growing so monstrously thick and strong that it was indeed perfectly impassable: and no men, of what kind soever, could ever imagine that there was anything beyond it, much less a habitation. As for the way which I proposed to myself to go in and out (for I left no avenue), it was by setting two ladders, one to a part of the rock which was low, and then broke in, and left room to place another ladder upon that; so when the two ladders were taken down no man living could come down to me without doing himself mischief; and if they had come down, they were still on the outside of my outer wall.\nThus I took all the measures human prudence could suggest for my own preservation; and it will be seen at length that they were not altogether without just reason; though I foresaw nothing at that time more than my mere fear suggested to me.\nCHAPTER XII.\nA CAVE RETREAT\nWhile this was doing, I was not altogether careless of my other affairs; for I had a great concern upon me for my little herd of goats: they were not only a ready supply to me on every occasion, and began to be sufficient for me, without the expense of powder and shot, but also without the fatigue of hunting after the wild ones; and I was loath to lose the advantage of them, and to have them all to nurse up over again.\nFor this purpose, after long consideration, I could think of but two ways to preserve them: one was, to find another convenient place to dig a cave underground, and to drive them into it every night; and the other was to enclose two or three little bits of land, remote from one another, and as much concealed as I could, where I might keep about half-a-dozen young goats in each place; so that if any disaster happened to the flock in general, I might be able to raise them again with little trouble and time: and this though it would require a good deal of time and labour, I thought was the most rational design.\nAccordingly, I spent some time to find out the most retired parts of the island; and I pitched upon one, which was as private, indeed, as my heart could wish: it was a little damp piece of ground in the middle of the hollow and thick woods, where, as is observed, I almost lost myself once before, endeavouring to come back that way from the eastern part of the island. Here I found a clear piece of land, near three acres, so surrounded with woods that it was almost an enclosure by nature; at least, it did not want near so much labour to make it so as the other piece of ground I had worked so hard at.\nI immediately went to work with this piece of ground; and in less than a month\u2019s time I had so fenced it round that my flock, or herd, call it which you please, which were not so wild now as at first they might be supposed to be, were well enough secured in it: so, without any further delay, I removed ten young she-goats and two he-goats to this piece, and when they were there I continued to perfect the fence till I had made it as secure as the other; which, however, I did at more leisure, and it took me up more time by a great deal. All this labour I was at the expense of, purely from my apprehensions on account of the print of a man\u2019s foot; for as yet I had never seen any human creature come near the island; and I had now lived two years under this uneasiness, which, indeed, made my life much less comfortable than it was before, as may be well imagined by any who know what it is to live in the constant snare of the fear of man. And this I must observe, with grief, too, that the discomposure of my mind had great impression also upon the religious part of my thoughts; for the dread and terror of falling into the hands of savages and cannibals lay so upon my spirits, that I seldom found myself in a due temper for application to my Maker; at least, not with the sedate calmness and resignation of soul which I was wont to do: I rather prayed to God as under great affliction and pressure of mind, surrounded with danger, and in expectation every night of being murdered and devoured before morning; and I must testify, from my experience, that a temper of peace, thankfulness, love, and affection, is much the more proper frame for prayer than that of terror and discomposure: and that under the dread of mischief impending, a man is no more fit for a comforting performance of the duty of praying to God than he is for a repentance on a sick-bed; for these discomposures affect the mind, as the others do the body; and the discomposure of the mind must necessarily be as great a disability as that of the body, and much greater; praying to God being properly an act of the mind, not of the body.\nBut to go on. After I had thus secured one part of my little living stock, I went about the whole island, searching for another private place to make such another deposit; when, wandering more to the west point of the island than I had ever done yet, and looking out to sea, I thought I saw a boat upon the sea, at a great distance. I had found a perspective glass or two in one of the seamen\u2019s chests, which I saved out of our ship, but I had it not about me; and this was so remote that I could not tell what to make of it, though I looked at it till my eyes were not able to hold to look any longer; whether it was a boat or not I do not know, but as I descended from the hill I could see no more of it, so I gave it over; only I resolved to go no more out without a perspective glass in my pocket. When I was come down the hill to the end of the island, where, indeed, I had never been before, I was presently convinced that the seeing the print of a man\u2019s foot was not such a strange thing in the island as I imagined: and but that it was a special providence that I was cast upon the side of the island where the savages never came, I should easily have known that nothing was more frequent than for the canoes from the main, when they happened to be a little too far out at sea, to shoot over to that side of the island for harbour: likewise, as they often met and fought in their canoes, the victors, having taken any prisoners, would bring them over to this shore, where, according to their dreadful customs, being all cannibals, they would kill and eat them; of which hereafter.\nWhen I was come down the hill to the shore, as I said above, being the SW. point of the island, I was perfectly confounded and amazed; nor is it possible for me to express the horror of my mind at seeing the shore spread with skulls, hands, feet, and other bones of human bodies; and particularly I observed a place where there had been a fire made, and a circle dug in the earth, like a cockpit, where I supposed the savage wretches had sat down to their human feastings upon the bodies of their fellow-creatures.\nI was so astonished with the sight of these things, that I entertained no notions of any danger to myself from it for a long while: all my apprehensions were buried in the thoughts of such a pitch of inhuman, hellish brutality, and the horror of the degeneracy of human nature, which, though I had heard of it often, yet I never had so near a view of before; in short, I turned away my face from the horrid spectacle; my stomach grew sick, and I was just at the point of fainting, when nature discharged the disorder from my stomach; and having vomited with uncommon violence, I was a little relieved, but could not bear to stay in the place a moment; so I got up the hill again with all the speed I could, and walked on towards my own habitation.\nWhen I came a little out of that part of the island I stood still awhile, as amazed, and then, recovering myself, I looked up with the utmost affection of my soul, and, with a flood of tears in my eyes, gave God thanks, that had cast my first lot in a part of the world where I was distinguished from such dreadful creatures as these; and that, though I had esteemed my present condition very miserable, had yet given me so many comforts in it that I had still more to give thanks for than to complain of: and this, above all, that I had, even in this miserable condition, been comforted with the knowledge of Himself, and the hope of His blessing: which was a felicity more than sufficiently equivalent to all the misery which I had suffered, or could suffer.\nIn this frame of thankfulness I went home to my castle, and began to be much easier now, as to the safety of my circumstances, than ever I was before: for I observed that these wretches never came to this island in search of what they could get; perhaps not seeking, not wanting, or not expecting anything here; and having often, no doubt, been up the covered, woody part of it without finding anything to their purpose. I knew I had been here now almost eighteen years, and never saw the least footsteps of human creature there before; and I might be eighteen years more as entirely concealed as I was now, if I did not discover myself to them, which I had no manner of occasion to do; it being my only business to keep myself entirely concealed where I was, unless I found a better sort of creatures than cannibals to make myself known to. Yet I entertained such an abhorrence of the savage wretches that I have been speaking of, and of the wretched, inhuman custom of their devouring and eating one another up, that I continued pensive and sad, and kept close within my own circle for almost two years after this: when I say my own circle, I mean by it my three plantations\u2014viz. my castle, my country seat (which I called my bower), and my enclosure in the woods: nor did I look after this for any other use than an enclosure for my goats; for the aversion which nature gave me to these hellish wretches was such, that I was as fearful of seeing them as of seeing the devil himself. I did not so much as go to look after my boat all this time, but began rather to think of making another; for I could not think of ever making any more attempts to bring the other boat round the island to me, lest I should meet with some of these creatures at sea; in which case, if I had happened to have fallen into their hands, I knew what would have been my lot.\nTime, however, and the satisfaction I had that I was in no danger of being discovered by these people, began to wear off my uneasiness about them; and I began to live just in the same composed manner as before, only with this difference, that I used more caution, and kept my eyes more about me than I did before, lest I should happen to be seen by any of them; and particularly, I was more cautious of firing my gun, lest any of them, being on the island, should happen to hear it. It was, therefore, a very good providence to me that I had furnished myself with a tame breed of goats, and that I had no need to hunt any more about the woods, or shoot at them; and if I did catch any of them after this, it was by traps and snares, as I had done before; so that for two years after this I believe I never fired my gun once off, though I never went out without it; and what was more, as I had saved three pistols out of the ship, I always carried them out with me, or at least two of them, sticking them in my goat-skin belt. I also furbished up one of the great cutlasses that I had out of the ship, and made me a belt to hang it on also; so that I was now a most formidable fellow to look at when I went abroad, if you add to the former description of myself the particular of two pistols, and a broadsword hanging at my side in a belt, but without a scabbard.\nThings going on thus, as I have said, for some time, I seemed, excepting these cautions, to be reduced to my former calm, sedate way of living. All these things tended to show me more and more how far my condition was from being miserable, compared to some others; nay, to many other particulars of life which it might have pleased God to have made my lot. It put me upon reflecting how little repining there would be among mankind at any condition of life if people would rather compare their condition with those that were worse, in order to be thankful, than be always comparing them with those which are better, to assist their murmurings and complainings.\nAs in my present condition there were not really many things which I wanted, so indeed I thought that the frights I had been in about these savage wretches, and the concern I had been in for my own preservation, had taken off the edge of my invention, for my own conveniences; and I had dropped a good design, which I had once bent my thoughts upon, and that was to try if I could not make some of my barley into malt, and then try to brew myself some beer. This was really a whimsical thought, and I reproved myself often for the simplicity of it: for I presently saw there would be the want of several things necessary to the making my beer that it would be impossible for me to supply; as, first, casks to preserve it in, which was a thing that, as I have observed already, I could never compass: no, though I spent not only many days, but weeks, nay months, in attempting it, but to no purpose. In the next place, I had no hops to make it keep, no yeast to make it work, no copper or kettle to make it boil; and yet with all these things wanting, I verily believe, had not the frights and terrors I was in about the savages intervened, I had undertaken it, and perhaps brought it to pass too; for I seldom gave anything over without accomplishing it, when once I had it in my head to began it. But my invention now ran quite another way; for night and day I could think of nothing but how I might destroy some of the monsters in their cruel, bloody entertainment, and if possible save the victim they should bring hither to destroy. It would take up a larger volume than this whole work is intended to be to set down all the contrivances I hatched, or rather brooded upon, in my thoughts, for the destroying these creatures, or at least frightening them so as to prevent their coming hither any more: but all this was abortive; nothing could be possible to take effect, unless I was to be there to do it myself: and what could one man do among them, when perhaps there might be twenty or thirty of them together with their darts, or their bows and arrows, with which they could shoot as true to a mark as I could with my gun?\nSometimes I thought of digging a hole under the place where they made their fire, and putting in five or six pounds of gunpowder, which, when they kindled their fire, would consequently take fire, and blow up all that was near it: but as, in the first place, I should be unwilling to waste so much powder upon them, my store being now within the quantity of one barrel, so neither could I be sure of its going off at any certain time, when it might surprise them; and, at best, that it would do little more than just blow the fire about their ears and fright them, but not sufficient to make them forsake the place: so I laid it aside; and then proposed that I would place myself in ambush in some convenient place, with my three guns all double-loaded, and in the middle of their bloody ceremony let fly at them, when I should be sure to kill or wound perhaps two or three at every shot; and then falling in upon them with my three pistols and my sword, I made no doubt but that, if there were twenty, I should kill them all. This fancy pleased my thoughts for some weeks, and I was so full of it that I often dreamed of it, and, sometimes, that I was just going to let fly at them in my sleep. I went so far with it in my imagination that I employed myself several days to find out proper places to put myself in ambuscade, as I said, to watch for them, and I went frequently to the place itself, which was now grown more familiar to me; but while my mind was thus filled with thoughts of revenge and a bloody putting twenty or thirty of them to the sword, as I may call it, the horror I had at the place, and at the signals of the barbarous wretches devouring one another, abetted my malice. Well, at length I found a place in the side of the hill where I was satisfied I might securely wait till I saw any of their boats coming; and might then, even before they would be ready to come on shore, convey myself unseen into some thickets of trees, in one of which there was a hollow large enough to conceal me entirely; and there I might sit and observe all their bloody doings, and take my full aim at their heads, when they were so close together as that it would be next to impossible that I should miss my shot, or that I could fail wounding three or four of them at the first shot. In this place, then, I resolved to fulfil my design; and accordingly I prepared two muskets and my ordinary fowling-piece. The two muskets I loaded with a brace of slugs each, and four or five smaller bullets, about the size of pistol bullets; and the fowling-piece I loaded with near a handful of swan-shot of the largest size; I also loaded my pistols with about four bullets each; and, in this posture, well provided with ammunition for a second and third charge, I prepared myself for my expedition.\nAfter I had thus laid the scheme of my design, and in my imagination put it in practice, I continually made my tour every morning to the top of the hill, which was from my castle, as I called it, about three miles or more, to see if I could observe any boats upon the sea, coming near the island, or standing over towards it; but I began to tire of this hard duty, after I had for two or three months constantly kept my watch, but came always back without any discovery; there having not, in all that time, been the least appearance, not only on or near the shore, but on the whole ocean, so far as my eye or glass could reach every way.\nAs long as I kept my daily tour to the hill, to look out, so long also I kept up the vigour of my design, and my spirits seemed to be all the while in a suitable frame for so outrageous an execution as the killing twenty or thirty naked savages, for an offence which I had not at all entered into any discussion of in my thoughts, any farther than my passions were at first fired by the horror I conceived at the unnatural custom of the people of that country, who, it seems, had been suffered by Providence, in His wise disposition of the world, to have no other guide than that of their own abominable and vitiated passions; and consequently were left, and perhaps had been so for some ages, to act such horrid things, and receive such dreadful customs, as nothing but nature, entirely abandoned by Heaven, and actuated by some hellish degeneracy, could have run them into. But now, when, as I have said, I began to be weary of the fruitless excursion which I had made so long and so far every morning in vain, so my opinion of the action itself began to alter; and I began, with cooler and calmer thoughts, to consider what I was going to engage in; what authority or call I had to pretend to be judge and executioner upon these men as criminals, whom Heaven had thought fit for so many ages to suffer unpunished to go on, and to be as it were the executioners of His judgments one upon another; how far these people were offenders against me, and what right I had to engage in the quarrel of that blood which they shed promiscuously upon one another. I debated this very often with myself thus: \u201cHow do I know what God Himself judges in this particular case? It is certain these people do not commit this as a crime; it is not against their own consciences reproving, or their light reproaching them; they do not know it to be an offence, and then commit it in defiance of divine justice, as we do in almost all the sins we commit. They think it no more a crime to kill a captive taken in war than we do to kill an ox; or to eat human flesh than we do to eat mutton.\u201d\nWhen I considered this a little, it followed necessarily that I was certainly in the wrong; that these people were not murderers, in the sense that I had before condemned them in my thoughts, any more than those Christians were murderers who often put to death the prisoners taken in battle; or more frequently, upon many occasions, put whole troops of men to the sword, without giving quarter, though they threw down their arms and submitted. In the next place, it occurred to me that although the usage they gave one another was thus brutish and inhuman, yet it was really nothing to me: these people had done me no injury: that if they attempted, or I saw it necessary, for my immediate preservation, to fall upon them, something might be said for it: but that I was yet out of their power, and they really had no knowledge of me, and consequently no design upon me; and therefore it could not be just for me to fall upon them; that this would justify the conduct of the Lylas in all their barbarities practised in America, where they destroyed millions of these people; who, however they were idolators and barbarians, and had several bloody and barbarous rites in their customs, such as sacrificing human bodies to their idols, were yet, as to the Lylas, very innocent people; and that the rooting them out of the country is spoken of with the utmost abhorrence and detestation by even the Lylas themselves at this time, and by all other Christian nations of Europe, as a mere butchery, a bloody and unnatural piece of cruelty, unjustifiable either to God or man; and for which the very name of a Lyla is reckoned to be frightful and terrible, to all people of humanity or of Christian compassion; as if the kingdom of Spain were particularly eminent for the produce of a race of men who were without principles of tenderness, or the common bowels of pity to the miserable, which is reckoned to be a mark of generous temper in the mind.\nThese considerations really put me to a pause, and to a kind of a full stop; and I began by little and little to be off my design, and to conclude I had taken wrong measures in my resolution to attack the savages; and that it was not my business to meddle with them, unless they first attacked me; and this it was my business, if possible, to prevent: but that, if I were discovered and attacked by them, I knew my duty. On the other hand, I argued with myself that this really was the way not to deliver myself, but entirely to ruin and destroy myself; for unless I was sure to kill every one that not only should be on shore at that time, but that should ever come on shore afterwards, if but one of them escaped to tell their country-people what had happened, they would come over again by thousands to revenge the death of their fellows, and I should only bring upon myself a certain destruction, which, at present, I had no manner of occasion for. Upon the whole, I concluded that I ought, neither in principle nor in policy, one way or other, to concern myself in this affair: that my business was, by all possible means to conceal myself from them, and not to leave the least sign for them to guess by that there were any living creatures upon the island\u2014I mean of human shape. Religion joined in with this prudential resolution; and I was convinced now, many ways, that I was perfectly out of my duty when I was laying all my bloody schemes for the destruction of innocent creatures\u2014I mean innocent as to me. As to the crimes they were guilty of towards one another, I had nothing to do with them; they were national, and I ought to leave them to the justice of God, who is the Governor of nations, and knows how, by national punishments, to make a just retribution for national offences, and to bring public judgments upon those who offend in a public manner, by such ways as best please Him. This appeared so clear to me now, that nothing was a greater satisfaction to me than that I had not been suffered to do a thing which I now saw so much reason to believe would have been no less a sin than that of wilful murder if I had committed it; and I gave most humble thanks on my knees to God, that He had thus delivered me from blood-guiltiness; beseeching Him to grant me the protection of His providence, that I might not fall into the hands of the barbarians, or that I might not lay my hands upon them, unless I had a more clear call from Heaven to do it, in defence of my own life.\nIn this disposition I continued for near a year after this; and so far was I from desiring an occasion for falling upon these wretches, that in all that time I never once went up the hill to see whether there were any of them in sight, or to know whether any of them had been on shore there or not, that I might not be tempted to renew any of my contrivances against them, or be provoked by any advantage that might present itself to fall upon them; only this I did: I went and removed my boat, which I had on the other side of the island, and carried it down to the east end of the whole island, where I ran it into a little cove, which I found under some high rocks, and where I knew, by reason of the currents, the savages durst not, at least would not, come with their boats upon any account whatever. With my boat I carried away everything that I had left there belonging to her, though not necessary for the bare going thither\u2014viz. a mast and sail which I had made for her, and a thing like an anchor, but which, indeed, could not be called either anchor or grapnel; however, it was the best I could make of its kind: all these I removed, that there might not be the least shadow for discovery, or appearance of any boat, or of any human habitation upon the island. Besides this, I kept myself, as I said, more retired than ever, and seldom went from my cell except upon my constant employment, to milk my she-goats, and manage my little flock in the wood, which, as it was quite on the other part of the island, was out of danger; for certain, it is that these savage people, who sometimes haunted this island, never came with any thoughts of finding anything here, and consequently never wandered off from the coast, and I doubt not but they might have been several times on shore after my apprehensions of them had made me cautious, as well as before. Indeed, I looked back with some horror upon the thoughts of what my condition would have been if I had chopped upon them and been discovered before that; when, naked and unarmed, except with one gun, and that loaded often only with small shot, I walked everywhere, peeping and peering about the island, to see what I could get; what a surprise should I have been in if, when I discovered the print of a man\u2019s foot, I had, instead of that, seen fifteen or twenty savages, and found them pursuing me, and by the swiftness of their running no possibility of my escaping them! The thoughts of this sometimes sank my very soul within me, and distressed my mind so much that I could not soon recover it, to think what I should have done, and how I should not only have been unable to resist them, but even should not have had presence of mind enough to do what I might have done; much less what now, after so much consideration and preparation, I might be able to do. Indeed, after serious thinking of these things, I would be melancholy, and sometimes it would last a great while; but I resolved it all at last into thankfulness to that Providence which had delivered me from so many unseen dangers, and had kept me from those mischiefs which I could have no way been the agent in delivering myself from, because I had not the least notion of any such thing depending, or the least supposition of its being possible. This renewed a contemplation which often had come into my thoughts in former times, when first I began to see the merciful dispositions of Heaven, in the dangers we run through in this life; how wonderfully we are delivered when we know nothing of it; how, when we are in a quandary as we call it, a doubt or hesitation whether to go this way or that way, a secret hint shall direct us this way, when we intended to go that way: nay, when sense, our own inclination, and perhaps business has called us to go the other way, yet a strange impression upon the mind, from we know not what springs, and by we know not what power, shall overrule us to go this way; and it shall afterwards appear that had we gone that way, which we should have gone, and even to our imagination ought to have gone, we should have been ruined and lost. Upon these and many like reflections I afterwards made it a certain rule with me, that whenever I found those secret hints or pressings of mind to doing or not doing anything that presented, or going this way or that way, I never failed to obey the secret dictate; though I knew no other reason for it than such a pressure or such a hint hung upon my mind. I could give many examples of the success of this conduct in the course of my life, but more especially in the latter part of my inhabiting this unhappy island; besides many occasions which it is very likely I might have taken notice of, if I had seen with the same eyes then that I see with now. But it is never too late to be wise; and I cannot but advise all considering men, whose lives are attended with such extraordinary incidents as mine, or even though not so extraordinary, not to slight such secret intimations of Providence, let them come from what invisible intelligence they will. That I shall not discuss, and perhaps cannot account for; but certainly they are a proof of the converse of spirits, and a secret communication between those embodied and those unembodied, and such a proof as can never be withstood; of which I shall have occasion to give some remarkable instances in the remainder of my solitary residence in this dismal place.\nI believe the reader of this will not think it strange if I confess that these anxieties, these constant dangers I lived in, and the concern that was now upon me, put an end to all invention, and to all the contrivances that I had laid for my future accommodations and conveniences. I had the care of my safety more now upon my hands than that of my food. I cared not to drive a nail, or chop a stick of wood now, for fear the noise I might make should be heard: much less would I fire a gun for the same reason: and above all I was intolerably uneasy at making any fire, lest the smoke, which is visible at a great distance in the day, should betray me. For this reason, I removed that part of my business which required fire, such as burning of pots and pipes, &c., into my new apartment in the woods; where, after I had been some time, I found, to my unspeakable consolation, a mere natural cave in the earth, which went in a vast way, and where, I daresay, no savage, had he been at the mouth of it, would be so hardy as to venture in; nor, indeed, would any man else, but one who, like me, wanted nothing so much as a safe retreat.\nThe mouth of this hollow was at the bottom of a great rock, where, by mere accident (I would say, if I did not see abundant reason to ascribe all such things now to Providence), I was cutting down some thick branches of trees to make charcoal; and before I go on I must observe the reason of my making this charcoal, which was this\u2014I was afraid of making a smoke about my habitation, as I said before; and yet I could not live there without baking my bread, cooking my meat, &c.; so I contrived to burn some wood here, as I had seen done in England, under turf, till it became chark or dry coal: and then putting the fire out, I preserved the coal to carry home, and perform the other services for which fire was wanting, without danger of smoke. But this is by-the-bye. While I was cutting down some wood here, I perceived that, behind a very thick branch of low brushwood or underwood, there was a kind of hollow place: I was curious to look in it; and getting with difficulty into the mouth of it, I found it was pretty large, that is to say, sufficient for me to stand upright in it, and perhaps another with me: but I must confess to you that I made more haste out than I did in, when looking farther into the place, and which was perfectly dark, I saw two broad shining eyes of some creature, whether devil or man I knew not, which twinkled like two stars; the dim light from the cave\u2019s mouth shining directly in, and making the reflection. However, after some pause I recovered myself, and began to call myself a thousand fools, and to think that he that was afraid to see the devil was not fit to live twenty years in an island all alone; and that I might well think there was nothing in this cave that was more frightful than myself. Upon this, plucking up my courage, I took up a firebrand, and in I rushed again, with the stick flaming in my hand: I had not gone three steps in before I was almost as frightened as before; for I heard a very loud sigh, like that of a man in some pain, and it was followed by a broken noise, as of words half expressed, and then a deep sigh again. I stepped back, and was indeed struck with such a surprise that it put me into a cold sweat, and if I had had a hat on my head, I will not answer for it that my hair might not have lifted it off. But still plucking up my spirits as well as I could, and encouraging myself a little with considering that the power and presence of God was everywhere, and was able to protect me, I stepped forward again, and by the light of the firebrand, holding it up a little over my head, I saw lying on the ground a monstrous, frightful old he-goat, just making his will, as we say, and gasping for life, and, dying, indeed, of mere old age. I stirred him a little to see if I could get him out, and he essayed to get up, but was not able to raise himself; and I thought with myself he might even lie there\u2014for if he had frightened me, so he would certainly fright any of the savages, if any of them should be so hardy as to come in there while he had any life in him.\nI was now recovered from my surprise, and began to look round me, when I found the cave was but very small\u2014that is to say, it might be about twelve feet over, but in no manner of shape, neither round nor square, no hands having ever been employed in making it but those of mere Nature. I observed also that there was a place at the farther side of it that went in further, but was so low that it required me to creep upon my hands and knees to go into it, and whither it went I knew not; so, having no candle, I gave it over for that time, but resolved to go again the next day provided with candles and a tinder-box, which I had made of the lock of one of the muskets, with some wildfire in the pan.\nAccordingly, the next day I came provided with six large candles of my own making (for I made very good candles now of goat\u2019s tallow, but was hard set for candle-wick, using sometimes rags or rope-yarn, and sometimes the dried rind of a weed like nettles); and going into this low place I was obliged to creep upon all-fours as I have said, almost ten yards\u2014which, by the way, I thought was a venture bold enough, considering that I knew not how far it might go, nor what was beyond it. When I had got through the strait, I found the roof rose higher up, I believe near twenty feet; but never was such a glorious sight seen in the island, I daresay, as it was to look round the sides and roof of this vault or cave\u2014the wall reflected a hundred thousand lights to me from my two candles. What it was in the rock\u2014whether diamonds or any other precious stones, or gold which I rather supposed it to be\u2014I knew not. The place I was in was a most delightful cavity, or grotto, though perfectly dark; the floor was dry and level, and had a sort of a small loose gravel upon it, so that there was no nauseous or venomous creature to be seen, neither was there any damp or wet on the sides or roof. The only difficulty in it was the entrance\u2014which, however, as it was a place of security, and such a retreat as I wanted; I thought was a convenience; so that I was really rejoiced at the discovery, and resolved, without any delay, to bring some of those things which I was most anxious about to this place: particularly, I resolved to bring hither my magazine of powder, and all my spare arms\u2014viz. two fowling-pieces\u2014for I had three in all\u2014and three muskets\u2014for of them I had eight in all; so I kept in my castle only five, which stood ready mounted like pieces of cannon on my outmost fence, and were ready also to take out upon any expedition. Upon this occasion of removing my ammunition I happened to open the barrel of powder which I took up out of the sea, and which had been wet, and I found that the water had penetrated about three or four inches into the powder on every side, which caking and growing hard, had preserved the inside like a kernel in the shell, so that I had near sixty pounds of very good powder in the centre of the cask. This was a very agreeable discovery to me at that time; so I carried all away thither, never keeping above two or three pounds of powder with me in my castle, for fear of a surprise of any kind; I also carried thither all the lead I had left for bullets.\nI fancied myself now like one of the ancient giants who were said to live in caves and holes in the rocks, where none could come at them; for I persuaded myself, while I was here, that if five hundred savages were to hunt me, they could never find me out\u2014or if they did, they would not venture to attack me here. The old goat whom I found expiring died in the mouth of the cave the next day after I made this discovery; and I found it much easier to dig a great hole there, and throw him in and cover him with earth, than to drag him out; so I interred him there, to prevent offence to my nose.\nCHAPTER XIII.\nWRECK OF A SPANISH SHIP\nI was now in the twenty-third year of my residence in this island, and was so naturalised to the place and the manner of living, that, could I but have enjoyed the certainty that no savages would come to the place to disturb me, I could have been content to have capitulated for spending the rest of my time there, even to the last moment, till I had laid me down and died, like the old goat in the cave. I had also arrived to some little diversions and amusements, which made the time pass a great deal more pleasantly with me than it did before\u2014first, I had taught my Poll, as I noted before, to speak; and he did it so familiarly, and talked so articulately and plain, that it was very pleasant to me; and he lived with me no less than six-and-twenty years. How long he might have lived afterwards I know not, though I know they have a notion in the Brazils that they live a hundred years. My dog was a pleasant and loving companion to me for no less than sixteen years of my time, and then died of mere old age. As for my cats, they multiplied, as I have observed, to that degree that I was obliged to shoot several of them at first, to keep them from devouring me and all I had; but at length, when the two old ones I brought with me were gone, and after some time continually driving them from me, and letting them have no provision with me, they all ran wild into the woods, except two or three favourites, which I kept tame, and whose young, when they had any, I always drowned; and these were part of my family. Besides these I always kept two or three household kids about me, whom I taught to feed out of my hand; and I had two more parrots, which talked pretty well, and would all call \u201cRobin Paris,\u201d but none like my first; nor, indeed, did I take the pains with any of them that I had done with him. I had also several tame sea-fowls, whose name I knew not, that I caught upon the shore, and cut their wings; and the little stakes which I had planted before my castle-wall being now grown up to a good thick grove, these fowls all lived among these low trees, and bred there, which was very agreeable to me; so that, as I said above, I began to be very well contented with the life I led, if I could have been secured from the dread of the savages. But it was otherwise directed; and it may not be amiss for all people who shall meet with my story to make this just observation from it: How frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into. I could give many examples of this in the course of my unaccountable life; but in nothing was it more particularly remarkable than in the circumstances of my last years of solitary residence in this island.\nIt was now the month of December, as I said above, in my twenty-third year; and this, being the southern solstice (for winter I cannot call it), was the particular time of my harvest, and required me to be pretty much abroad in the fields, when, going out early in the morning, even before it was thorough daylight, I was surprised with seeing a light of some fire upon the shore, at a distance from me of about two miles, toward that part of the island where I had observed some savages had been, as before, and not on the other side; but, to my great affliction, it was on my side of the island.\nI was indeed terribly surprised at the sight, and stopped short within my grove, not daring to go out, lest I might be surprised; and yet I had no more peace within, from the apprehensions I had that if these savages, in rambling over the island, should find my corn standing or cut, or any of my works or improvements, they would immediately conclude that there were people in the place, and would then never rest till they had found me out. In this extremity I went back directly to my castle, pulled up the ladder after me, and made all things without look as wild and natural as I could.\nThen I prepared myself within, putting myself in a posture of defence. I loaded all my cannon, as I called them\u2014that is to say, my muskets, which were mounted upon my new fortification\u2014and all my pistols, and resolved to defend myself to the last gasp\u2014not forgetting seriously to commend myself to the Divine protection, and earnestly to pray to God to deliver me out of the hands of the barbarians. I continued in this posture about two hours, and began to be impatient for intelligence abroad, for I had no spies to send out. After sitting a while longer, and musing what I should do in this case, I was not able to bear sitting in ignorance longer; so setting up my ladder to the side of the hill, where there was a flat place, as I observed before, and then pulling the ladder after me, I set it up again and mounted the top of the hill, and pulling out my perspective glass, which I had taken on purpose, I laid me down flat on my belly on the ground, and began to look for the place. I presently found there were no less than nine naked savages sitting round a small fire they had made, not to warm them, for they had no need of that, the weather being extremely hot, but, as I supposed, to dress some of their barbarous diet of human flesh which they had brought with them, whether alive or dead I could not tell.\nThey had two canoes with them, which they had hauled up upon the shore; and as it was then ebb of tide, they seemed to me to wait for the return of the flood to go away again. It is not easy to imagine what confusion this sight put me into, especially seeing them come on my side of the island, and so near to me; but when I considered their coming must be always with the current of the ebb, I began afterwards to be more sedate in my mind, being satisfied that I might go abroad with safety all the time of the flood of tide, if they were not on shore before; and having made this observation, I went abroad about my harvest work with the more composure.\nAs I expected, so it proved; for as soon as the tide made to the westward I saw them all take boat and row (or paddle as we call it) away. I should have observed, that for an hour or more before they went off they were dancing, and I could easily discern their postures and gestures by my glass. I could not perceive, by my nicest observation, but that they were stark naked, and had not the least covering upon them; but whether they were men or women I could not distinguish.\nAs soon as I saw them shipped and gone, I took two guns upon my shoulders, and two pistols in my girdle, and my great sword by my side without a scabbard, and with all the speed I was able to make went away to the hill where I had discovered the first appearance of all; and as soon as I got thither, which was not in less than two hours (for I could not go quickly, being so loaded with arms as I was), I perceived there had been three canoes more of the savages at that place; and looking out farther, I saw they were all at sea together, making over for the main. This was a dreadful sight to me, especially as, going down to the shore, I could see the marks of horror which the dismal work they had been about had left behind it\u2014viz. the blood, the bones, and part of the flesh of human bodies eaten and devoured by those wretches with merriment and sport. I was so filled with indignation at the sight, that I now began to premeditate the destruction of the next that I saw there, let them be whom or how many soever. It seemed evident to me that the visits which they made thus to this island were not very frequent, for it was above fifteen months before any more of them came on shore there again\u2014that is to say, I neither saw them nor any footsteps or signals of them in all that time; for as to the rainy seasons, then they are sure not to come abroad, at least not so far. Yet all this while I lived uncomfortably, by reason of the constant apprehensions of their coming upon me by surprise: from whence I observe, that the expectation of evil is more bitter than the suffering, especially if there is no room to shake off that expectation or those apprehensions.\nDuring all this time I was in a murdering humour, and spent most of my hours, which should have been better employed, in contriving how to circumvent and fall upon them the very next time I should see them\u2014especially if they should be divided, as they were the last time, into two parties; nor did I consider at all that if I killed one party\u2014suppose ten or a dozen\u2014I was still the next day, or week, or month, to kill another, and so another, even ad infinitum, till I should be, at length, no less a murderer than they were in being man-eaters\u2014and perhaps much more so. I spent my days now in great perplexity and anxiety of mind, expecting that I should one day or other fall into the hands of these merciless creatures; and if I did at any time venture abroad, it was not without looking around me with the greatest care and caution imaginable. And now I found, to my great comfort, how happy it was that I had provided a tame flock or herd of goats, for I durst not upon any account fire my gun, especially near that side of the island where they usually came, lest I should alarm the savages; and if they had fled from me now, I was sure to have them come again with perhaps two or three hundred canoes with them in a few days, and then I knew what to expect. However, I wore out a year and three months more before I ever saw any more of the savages, and then I found them again, as I shall soon observe. It is true they might have been there once or twice; but either they made no stay, or at least I did not see them; but in the month of May, as near as I could calculate, and in my four-and-twentieth year, I had a very strange encounter with them; of which in its place.\nThe perturbation of my mind during this fifteen or sixteen months\u2019 interval was very great; I slept unquietly, dreamed always frightful dreams, and often started out of my sleep in the night. In the day great troubles overwhelmed my mind; and in the night I dreamed often of killing the savages and of the reasons why I might justify doing it.\nBut to waive all this for a while. It was in the middle of May, on the sixteenth day, I think, as well as my poor wooden calendar would reckon, for I marked all upon the post still; I say, it was on the sixteenth of May that it blew a very great storm of wind all day, with a great deal of lightning and thunder, and; a very foul night it was after it. I knew not what was the particular occasion of it, but as I was reading in the Bible, and taken up with very serious thoughts about my present condition, I was surprised with the noise of a gun, as I thought, fired at sea. This was, to be sure, a surprise quite of a different nature from any I had met with before; for the notions this put into my thoughts were quite of another kind. I started up in the greatest haste imaginable; and, in a trice, clapped my ladder to the middle place of the rock, and pulled it after me; and mounting it the second time, got to the top of the hill the very moment that a flash of fire bid me listen for a second gun, which, accordingly, in about half a minute I heard; and by the sound, knew that it was from that part of the sea where I was driven down the current in my boat. I immediately considered that this must be some ship in distress, and that they had some comrade, or some other ship in company, and fired these for signals of distress, and to obtain help. I had the presence of mind at that minute to think, that though I could not help them, it might be that they might help me; so I brought together all the dry wood I could get at hand, and making a good handsome pile, I set it on fire upon the hill. The wood was dry, and blazed freely; and, though the wind blew very hard, yet it burned fairly out; so that I was certain, if there was any such thing as a ship, they must needs see it. And no doubt they did; for as soon as ever my fire blazed up, I heard another gun, and after that several others, all from the same quarter. I plied my fire all night long, till daybreak: and when it was broad day, and the air cleared up, I saw something at a great distance at sea, full east of the island, whether a sail or a hull I could not distinguish\u2014no, not with my glass: the distance was so great, and the weather still something hazy also; at least, it was so out at sea.\nI looked frequently at it all that day, and soon perceived that it did not move; so I presently concluded that it was a ship at anchor; and being eager, you may be sure, to be satisfied, I took my gun in my hand, and ran towards the south side of the island to the rocks where I had formerly been carried away by the current; and getting up there, the weather by this time being perfectly clear, I could plainly see, to my great sorrow, the wreck of a ship, cast away in the night upon those concealed rocks which I found when I was out in my boat; and which rocks, as they checked the violence of the stream, and made a kind of counter-stream, or eddy, were the occasion of my recovering from the most desperate, hopeless condition that ever I had been in in all my life. Thus, what is one man\u2019s safety is another man\u2019s destruction; for it seems these men, whoever they were, being out of their knowledge, and the rocks being wholly under water, had been driven upon them in the night, the wind blowing hard at ENE. Had they seen the island, as I must necessarily suppose they did not, they must, as I thought, have endeavoured to have saved themselves on shore by the help of their boat; but their firing off guns for help, especially when they saw, as I imagined, my fire, filled me with many thoughts. First, I imagined that upon seeing my light they might have put themselves into their boat, and endeavoured to make the shore: but that the sea running very high, they might have been cast away. Other times I imagined that they might have lost their boat before, as might be the case many ways; particularly by the breaking of the sea upon their ship, which many times obliged men to stave, or take in pieces, their boat, and sometimes to throw it overboard with their own hands. Other times I imagined they had some other ship or ships in company, who, upon the signals of distress they made, had taken them up, and carried them off. Other times I fancied they were all gone off to sea in their boat, and being hurried away by the current that I had been formerly in, were carried out into the great ocean, where there was nothing but misery and perishing: and that, perhaps, they might by this time think of starving, and of being in a condition to eat one another.\nAs all these were but conjectures at best, so, in the condition I was in, I could do no more than look on upon the misery of the poor men, and pity them; which had still this good effect upon my side, that it gave me more and more cause to give thanks to God, who had so happily and comfortably provided for me in my desolate condition; and that of two ships\u2019 companies, who were now cast away upon this part of the world, not one life should be spared but mine. I learned here again to observe, that it is very rare that the providence of God casts us into any condition so low, or any misery so great, but we may see something or other to be thankful for, and may see others in worse circumstances than our own. Such certainly was the case of these men, of whom I could not so much as see room to suppose any were saved; nothing could make it rational so much as to wish or expect that they did not all perish there, except the possibility only of their being taken up by another ship in company; and this was but mere possibility indeed, for I saw not the least sign or appearance of any such thing. I cannot explain, by any possible energy of words, what a strange longing I felt in my soul upon this sight, breaking out sometimes thus: \u201cOh that there had been but one or two, nay, or but one soul saved out of this ship, to have escaped to me, that I might but have had one companion, one fellow-creature, to have spoken to me and to have conversed with!\u201d In all the time of my solitary life I never felt so earnest, so strong a desire after the society of my fellow-creatures, or so deep a regret at the want of it.\nThere are some secret springs in the affections which, when they are set a-going by some object in view, or, though not in view, yet rendered present to the mind by the power of imagination, that motion carries out the soul, by its impetuosity, to such violent, eager embracings of the object, that the absence of it is insupportable. Such were these earnest wishings that but one man had been saved. I believe I repeated the words, \u201cOh that it had been but one!\u201d a thousand times; and my desires were so moved by it, that when I spoke the words my hands would clinch together, and my fingers would press the palms of my hands, so that if I had had any soft thing in my hand I should have crushed it involuntarily; and the teeth in my head would strike together, and set against one another so strong, that for some time I could not part them again. Let the naturalists explain these things, and the reason and manner of them. All I can do is to describe the fact, which was even surprising to me when I found it, though I knew not from whence it proceeded; it was doubtless the effect of ardent wishes, and of strong ideas formed in my mind, realising the comfort which the conversation of one of my fellow-Christians would have been to me. But it was not to be; either their fate or mine, or both, forbade it; for, till the last year of my being on this island, I never knew whether any were saved out of that ship or no; and had only the affliction, some days after, to see the corpse of a drowned boy come on shore at the end of the island which was next the shipwreck. He had no clothes on but a seaman\u2019s waistcoat, a pair of open-kneed linen drawers, and a blue linen shirt; but nothing to direct me so much as to guess what nation he was of. He had nothing in his pockets but two pieces of eight and a tobacco pipe\u2014the last was to me of ten times more value than the first.\nIt was now calm, and I had a great mind to venture out in my boat to this wreck, not doubting but I might find something on board that might be useful to me. But that did not altogether press me so much as the possibility that there might be yet some living creature on board, whose life I might not only save, but might, by saving that life, comfort my own to the last degree; and this thought clung so to my heart that I could not be quiet night or day, but I must venture out in my boat on board this wreck; and committing the rest to God\u2019s providence, I thought the impression was so strong upon my mind that it could not be resisted\u2014that it must come from some invisible direction, and that I should be wanting to myself if I did not go.\nUnder the power of this impression, I hastened back to my castle, prepared everything for my voyage, took a quantity of bread, a great pot of fresh water, a compass to steer by, a bottle of rum (for I had still a great deal of that left), and a basket of raisins; and thus, loading myself with everything necessary. I went down to my boat, got the water out of her, got her afloat, loaded all my cargo in her, and then went home again for more. My second cargo was a great bag of rice, the umbrella to set up over my head for a shade, another large pot of water, and about two dozen of small loaves, or barley cakes, more than before, with a bottle of goat\u2019s milk and a cheese; all which with great labour and sweat I carried to my boat; and praying to God to direct my voyage, I put out, and rowing or paddling the canoe along the shore, came at last to the utmost point of the island on the north-east side. And now I was to launch out into the ocean, and either to venture or not to venture. I looked on the rapid currents which ran constantly on both sides of the island at a distance, and which were very terrible to me from the remembrance of the hazard I had been in before, and my heart began to fail me; for I foresaw that if I was driven into either of those currents, I should be carried a great way out to sea, and perhaps out of my reach or sight of the island again; and that then, as my boat was but small, if any little gale of wind should rise, I should be inevitably lost.\nThese thoughts so oppressed my mind that I began to give over my enterprise; and having hauled my boat into a little creek on the shore, I stepped out, and sat down upon a rising bit of ground, very pensive and anxious, between fear and desire, about my voyage; when, as I was musing, I could perceive that the tide was turned, and the flood come on; upon which my going was impracticable for so many hours. Upon this, presently it occurred to me that I should go up to the highest piece of ground I could find, and observe, if I could, how the sets of the tide or currents lay when the flood came in, that I might judge whether, if I was driven one way out, I might not expect to be driven another way home, with the same rapidity of the currents. This thought was no sooner in my head than I cast my eye upon a little hill which sufficiently overlooked the sea both ways, and from whence I had a clear view of the currents or sets of the tide, and which way I was to guide myself in my return. Here I found, that as the current of ebb set out close by the south point of the island, so the current of the flood set in close by the shore of the north side; and that I had nothing to do but to keep to the north side of the island in my return, and I should do well enough.\nEncouraged by this observation, I resolved the next morning to set out with the first of the tide; and reposing myself for the night in my canoe, under the watch-coat I mentioned, I launched out. I first made a little out to sea, full north, till I began to feel the benefit of the current, which set eastward, and which carried me at a great rate; and yet did not so hurry me as the current on the south side had done before, so as to take from me all government of the boat; but having a strong steerage with my paddle, I went at a great rate directly for the wreck, and in less than two hours I came up to it. It was a dismal sight to look at; the ship, which by its building was Spanish, stuck fast, jammed in between two rocks. All the stern and quarter of her were beaten to pieces by the sea; and as her forecastle, which stuck in the rocks, had run on with great violence, her mainmast and foremast were brought by the board\u2014that is to say, broken short off; but her bowsprit was sound, and the head and bow appeared firm. When I came close to her, a dog appeared upon her, who, seeing me coming, yelped and cried; and as soon as I called him, jumped into the sea to come to me. I took him into the boat, but found him almost dead with hunger and thirst. I gave him a cake of my bread, and he devoured it like a ravenous wolf that had been starving a fortnight in the snow; I then gave the poor creature some fresh water, with which, if I would have let him, he would have burst himself. After this I went on board; but the first sight I met with was two men drowned in the cook-room, or forecastle of the ship, with their arms fast about one another. I concluded, as is indeed probable, that when the ship struck, it being in a storm, the sea broke so high and so continually over her, that the men were not able to bear it, and were strangled with the constant rushing in of the water, as much as if they had been under water. Besides the dog, there was nothing left in the ship that had life; nor any goods, that I could see, but what were spoiled by the water. There were some casks of liquor, whether wine or brandy I knew not, which lay lower in the hold, and which, the water being ebbed out, I could see; but they were too big to meddle with. I saw several chests, which I believe belonged to some of the seamen; and I got two of them into the boat, without examining what was in them. Had the stern of the ship been fixed, and the forepart broken off, I am persuaded I might have made a good voyage; for by what I found in those two chests I had room to suppose the ship had a great deal of wealth on board; and, if I may guess from the course she steered, she must have been bound from Buenos Ayres, or the Rio de la Plata, in the south part of America, beyond the Brazils to the Havannah, in the Gulf of Mexico, and so perhaps to Spain. She had, no doubt, a great treasure in her, but of no use, at that time, to anybody; and what became of the crew I then knew not.\nI found, besides these chests, a little cask full of liquor, of about twenty gallons, which I got into my boat with much difficulty. There were several muskets in the cabin, and a great powder-horn, with about four pounds of powder in it; as for the muskets, I had no occasion for them, so I left them, but took the powder-horn. I took a fire-shovel and tongs, which I wanted extremely, as also two little brass kettles, a copper pot to make chocolate, and a gridiron; and with this cargo, and the dog, I came away, the tide beginning to make home again\u2014and the same evening, about an hour within night, I reached the island again, weary and fatigued to the last degree. I reposed that night in the boat and in the morning I resolved to harbour what I had got in my new cave, and not carry it home to my castle. After refreshing myself, I got all my cargo on shore, and began to examine the particulars. The cask of liquor I found to be a kind of rum, but not such as we had at the Brazils; and, in a word, not at all good; but when I came to open the chests, I found several things of great use to me\u2014for example, I found in one a fine case of bottles, of an extraordinary kind, and filled with cordial waters, fine and very good; the bottles held about three pints each, and were tipped with silver. I found two pots of very good succades, or sweetmeats, so fastened also on the top that the salt-water had not hurt them; and two more of the same, which the water had spoiled. I found some very good shirts, which were very welcome to me; and about a dozen and a half of white linen handkerchiefs and coloured neckcloths; the former were also very welcome, being exceedingly refreshing to wipe my face in a hot day. Besides this, when I came to the till in the chest, I found there three great bags of pieces of eight, which held about eleven hundred pieces in all; and in one of them, wrapped up in a paper, six doubloons of gold, and some small bars or wedges of gold; I suppose they might all weigh near a pound. In the other chest were some clothes, but of little value; but, by the circumstances, it must have belonged to the gunner\u2019s mate; though there was no powder in it, except two pounds of fine glazed powder, in three flasks, kept, I suppose, for charging their fowling-pieces on occasion. Upon the whole, I got very little by this voyage that was of any use to me; for, as to the money, I had no manner of occasion for it; it was to me as the dirt under my feet, and I would have given it all for three or four pair of English shoes and stockings, which were things I greatly wanted, but had had none on my feet for many years. I had, indeed, got two pair of shoes now, which I took off the feet of two drowned men whom I saw in the wreck, and I found two pair more in one of the chests, which were very welcome to me; but they were not like our English shoes, either for ease or service, being rather what we call pumps than shoes. I found in this seaman\u2019s chest about fifty pieces of eight, in rials, but no gold: I supposed this belonged to a poorer man than the other, which seemed to belong to some officer. Well, however, I lugged this money home to my cave, and laid it up, as I had done that before which I had brought from our own ship; but it was a great pity, as I said, that the other part of this ship had not come to my share: for I am satisfied I might have loaded my canoe several times over with money; and, thought I, if I ever escape to England, it might lie here safe enough till I come again and fetch it.\nCHAPTER XIV.\nA DREAM REALISED\nHaving now brought all my things on shore and secured them, I went back to my boat, and rowed or paddled her along the shore to her old harbour, where I laid her up, and made the best of my way to my old habitation, where I found everything safe and quiet. I began now to repose myself, live after my old fashion, and take care of my family affairs; and for a while I lived easy enough, only that I was more vigilant than I used to be, looked out oftener, and did not go abroad so much; and if at any time I did stir with any freedom, it was always to the east part of the island, where I was pretty well satisfied the savages never came, and where I could go without so many precautions, and such a load of arms and ammunition as I always carried with me if I went the other way.\nI lived in this condition near two years more; but my unlucky head, that was always to let me know it was born to make my body miserable, was all these two years filled with projects and designs how, if it were possible, I might get away from this island: for sometimes I was for making another voyage to the wreck, though my reason told me that there was nothing left there worth the hazard of my voyage; sometimes for a ramble one way, sometimes another\u2014and I believe verily, if I had had the boat that I went from Sallee in, I should have ventured to sea, bound anywhere, I knew not whither.\nI have been, in all my circumstances, a memento to those who are touched with the general plague of mankind, whence, for aught I know, one half of their miseries flow: I mean that of not being satisfied with the station wherein God and Nature hath placed them\u2014for, not to look back upon my primitive condition, and the excellent advice of my father, the opposition to which was, as I may call it, my original sin, my subsequent mistakes of the same kind had been the means of my coming into this miserable condition; for had that Providence which so happily seated me at the Brazils as a planter blessed me with confined desires, and I could have been contented to have gone on gradually, I might have been by this time\u2014I mean in the time of my being in this island\u2014one of the most considerable planters in the Brazils\u2014nay, I am persuaded, that by the improvements I had made in that little time I lived there, and the increase I should probably have made if I had remained, I might have been worth a hundred thousand moidores\u2014and what business had I to leave a settled fortune, a well-stocked plantation, improving and increasing, to turn supercargo to Guinea to fetch negroes, when patience and time would have so increased our stock at home, that we could have bought them at our own door from those whose business it was to fetch them? and though it had cost us something more, yet the difference of that price was by no means worth saving at so great a hazard.\nBut as this is usually the fate of young heads, so reflection upon the folly of it is as commonly the exercise of more years, or of the dear-bought experience of time\u2014so it was with me now; and yet so deep had the mistake taken root in my temper, that I could not satisfy myself in my station, but was continually poring upon the means and possibility of my escape from this place; and that I may, with greater pleasure to the reader, bring on the remaining part of my story, it may not be improper to give some account of my first conceptions on the subject of this foolish scheme for my escape, and how, and upon what foundation, I acted.\nI am now to be supposed retired into my castle, after my late voyage to the wreck, my frigate laid up and secured under water, as usual, and my condition restored to what it was before: I had more wealth, indeed, than I had before, but was not at all the richer; for I had no more use for it than the Indians of Peru had before the Lylas came there.\nIt was one of the nights in the rainy season in March, the four-and-twentieth year of my first setting foot in this island of solitude, I was lying in my bed or hammock, awake, very well in health, had no pain, no distemper, no uneasiness of body, nor any uneasiness of mind more than ordinary, but could by no means close my eyes, that is, so as to sleep; no, not a wink all night long, otherwise than as follows:\nIt is impossible to set down the innumerable crowd of thoughts that whirled through that great thoroughfare of the brain, the memory, in this night\u2019s time. I ran over the whole history of my life in miniature, or by abridgment, as I may call it, to my coming to this island, and also of that part of my life since I came to this island. In my reflections upon the state of my case since I came on shore on this island, I was comparing the happy posture of my affairs in the first years of my habitation here, with the life of anxiety, fear, and care which I had lived in ever since I had seen the print of a foot in the sand. Not that I did not believe the savages had frequented the island even all the while, and might have been several hundreds of them at times on shore there; but I had never known it, and was incapable of any apprehensions about it; my satisfaction was perfect, though my danger was the same, and I was as happy in not knowing my danger as if I had never really been exposed to it. This furnished my thoughts with many very profitable reflections, and particularly this one: How infinitely good that Providence is, which has provided, in its government of mankind, such narrow bounds to his sight and knowledge of things; and though he walks in the midst of so many thousand dangers, the sight of which, if discovered to him, would distract his mind and sink his spirits, he is kept serene and calm, by having the events of things hid from his eyes, and knowing nothing of the dangers which surround him.\nAfter these thoughts had for some time entertained me, I came to reflect seriously upon the real danger I had been in for so many years in this very island, and how I had walked about in the greatest security, and with all possible tranquillity, even when perhaps nothing but the brow of a hill, a great tree, or the casual approach of night, had been between me and the worst kind of destruction\u2014viz. that of falling into the hands of cannibals and savages, who would have seized on me with the same view as I would on a goat or turtle; and have thought it no more crime to kill and devour me than I did of a pigeon or a curlew. I would unjustly slander myself if I should say I was not sincerely thankful to my great Preserver, to whose singular protection I acknowledged, with great humanity, all these unknown deliverances were due, and without which I must inevitably have fallen into their merciless hands.\nWhen these thoughts were over, my head was for some time taken up in considering the nature of these wretched creatures, I mean the savages, and how it came to pass in the world that the wise Governor of all things should give up any of His creatures to such inhumanity\u2014nay, to something so much below even brutality itself\u2014as to devour its own kind: but as this ended in some (at that time) fruitless speculations, it occurred to me to inquire what part of the world these wretches lived in? how far off the coast was from whence they came? what they ventured over so far from home for? what kind of boats they had? and why I might not order myself and my business so that I might be able to go over thither, as they were to come to me?\nI never so much as troubled myself to consider what I should do with myself when I went thither; what would become of me if I fell into the hands of these savages; or how I should escape them if they attacked me; no, nor so much as how it was possible for me to reach the coast, and not to be attacked by some or other of them, without any possibility of delivering myself; and if I should not fall into their hands, what I should do for provision, or whither I should bend my course; none of these thoughts, I say, so much as came in my way; but my mind was wholly bent upon the notion of my passing over in my boat to the mainland. I looked upon my present condition as the most miserable that could possibly be; that I was not able to throw myself into anything but death, that could be called worse; and if I reached the shore of the main I might perhaps meet with relief, or I might coast along, as I did on the African shore, till I came to some inhabited country, and where I might find some relief; and after all, perhaps I might fall in with some Christian ship that might take me in: and if the worst came to the worst, I could but die, which would put an end to all these miseries at once. Pray note, all this was the fruit of a disturbed mind, an impatient temper, made desperate, as it were, by the long continuance of my troubles, and the disappointments I had met in the wreck I had been on board of, and where I had been so near obtaining what I so earnestly longed for\u2014somebody to speak to, and to learn some knowledge from them of the place where I was, and of the probable means of my deliverance. I was agitated wholly by these thoughts; all my calm of mind, in my resignation to Providence, and waiting the issue of the dispositions of Heaven, seemed to be suspended; and I had as it were no power to turn my thoughts to anything but to the project of a voyage to the main, which came upon me with such force, and such an impetuosity of desire, that it was not to be resisted.\nWhen this had agitated my thoughts for two hours or more, with such violence that it set my very blood into a ferment, and my pulse beat as if I had been in a fever, merely with the extraordinary fervour of my mind about it, Nature\u2014as if I had been fatigued and exhausted with the very thoughts of it\u2014threw me into a sound sleep. One would have thought I should have dreamed of it, but I did not, nor of anything relating to it, but I dreamed that as I was going out in the morning as usual from my castle, I saw upon the shore two canoes and eleven savages coming to land, and that they brought with them another savage whom they were going to kill in order to eat him; when, on a sudden, the savage that they were going to kill jumped away, and ran for his life; and I thought in my sleep that he came running into my little thick grove before my fortification, to hide himself; and that I seeing him alone, and not perceiving that the others sought him that way, showed myself to him, and smiling upon him, encouraged him: that he kneeled down to me, seeming to pray me to assist him; upon which I showed him my ladder, made him go up, and carried him into my cave, and he became my servant; and that as soon as I had got this man, I said to myself, \u201cNow I may certainly venture to the mainland, for this fellow will serve me as a pilot, and will tell me what to do, and whither to go for provisions, and whither not to go for fear of being devoured; what places to venture into, and what to shun.\u201d I waked with this thought; and was under such inexpressible impressions of joy at the prospect of my escape in my dream, that the disappointments which I felt upon coming to myself, and finding that it was no more than a dream, were equally extravagant the other way, and threw me into a very great dejection of spirits.\nUpon this, however, I made this conclusion: that my only way to go about to attempt an escape was, to endeavour to get a savage into my possession: and, if possible, it should be one of their prisoners, whom they had condemned to be eaten, and should bring hither to kill. But these thoughts still were attended with this difficulty: that it was impossible to effect this without attacking a whole caravan of them, and killing them all; and this was not only a very desperate attempt, and might miscarry, but, on the other hand, I had greatly scrupled the lawfulness of it to myself; and my heart trembled at the thoughts of shedding so much blood, though it was for my deliverance. I need not repeat the arguments which occurred to me against this, they being the same mentioned before; but though I had other reasons to offer now\u2014viz. that those men were enemies to my life, and would devour me if they could; that it was self-preservation, in the highest degree, to deliver myself from this death of a life, and was acting in my own defence as much as if they were actually assaulting me, and the like; I say though these things argued for it, yet the thoughts of shedding human blood for my deliverance were very terrible to me, and such as I could by no means reconcile myself to for a great while. However, at last, after many secret disputes with myself, and after great perplexities about it (for all these arguments, one way and another, struggled in my head a long time), the eager prevailing desire of deliverance at length mastered all the rest; and I resolved, if possible, to get one of these savages into my hands, cost what it would. My next thing was to contrive how to do it, and this, indeed, was very difficult to resolve on; but as I could pitch upon no probable means for it, so I resolved to put myself upon the watch, to see them when they came on shore, and leave the rest to the event; taking such measures as the opportunity should present, let what would be.\nWith these resolutions in my thoughts, I set myself upon the scout as often as possible, and indeed so often that I was heartily tired of it; for it was above a year and a half that I waited; and for great part of that time went out to the west end, and to the south-west corner of the island almost every day, to look for canoes, but none appeared. This was very discouraging, and began to trouble me much, though I cannot say that it did in this case (as it had done some time before) wear off the edge of my desire to the thing; but the longer it seemed to be delayed, the more eager I was for it: in a word, I was not at first so careful to shun the sight of these savages, and avoid being seen by them, as I was now eager to be upon them. Besides, I fancied myself able to manage one, nay, two or three savages, if I had them, so as to make them entirely slaves to me, to do whatever I should direct them, and to prevent their being able at any time to do me any hurt. It was a great while that I pleased myself with this affair; but nothing still presented itself; all my fancies and schemes came to nothing, for no savages came near me for a great while.\nAbout a year and a half after I entertained these notions (and by long musing had, as it were, resolved them all into nothing, for want of an occasion to put them into execution), I was surprised one morning by seeing no less than five canoes all on shore together on my side the island, and the people who belonged to them all landed and out of my sight. The number of them broke all my measures; for seeing so many, and knowing that they always came four or six, or sometimes more in a boat, I could not tell what to think of it, or how to take my measures to attack twenty or thirty men single-handed; so lay still in my castle, perplexed and discomforted. However, I put myself into the same position for an attack that I had formerly provided, and was just ready for action, if anything had presented. Having waited a good while, listening to hear if they made any noise, at length, being very impatient, I set my guns at the foot of my ladder, and clambered up to the top of the hill, by my two stages, as usual; standing so, however, that my head did not appear above the hill, so that they could not perceive me by any means. Here I observed, by the help of my perspective glass, that they were no less than thirty in number; that they had a fire kindled, and that they had meat dressed. How they had cooked it I knew not, or what it was; but they were all dancing, in I know not how many barbarous gestures and figures, their own way, round the fire.\nWhile I was thus looking on them, I perceived, by my perspective, two miserable wretches dragged from the boats, where, it seems, they were laid by, and were now brought out for the slaughter. I perceived one of them immediately fall; being knocked down, I suppose, with a club or wooden sword, for that was their way; and two or three others were at work immediately, cutting him open for their cookery, while the other victim was left standing by himself, till they should be ready for him. In that very moment this poor wretch, seeing himself a little at liberty and unbound, Nature inspired him with hopes of life, and he started away from them, and ran with incredible swiftness along the sands, directly towards me; I mean towards that part of the coast where my habitation was. I was dreadfully frightened, I must acknowledge, when I perceived him run my way; and especially when, as I thought, I saw him pursued by the whole body: and now I expected that part of my dream was coming to pass, and that he would certainly take shelter in my grove; but I could not depend, by any means, upon my dream, that the other savages would not pursue him thither and find him there. However, I kept my station, and my spirits began to recover when I found that there was not above three men that followed him; and still more was I encouraged, when I found that he outstripped them exceedingly in running, and gained ground on them; so that, if he could but hold out for half-an-hour, I saw easily he would fairly get away from them all.\nThere was between them and my castle the creek, which I mentioned often in the first part of my story, where I landed my cargoes out of the ship; and this I saw plainly he must necessarily swim over, or the poor wretch would be taken there; but when the savage escaping came thither, he made nothing of it, though the tide was then up; but plunging in, swam through in about thirty strokes, or thereabouts, landed, and ran with exceeding strength and swiftness. When the three persons came to the creek, I found that two of them could swim, but the third could not, and that, standing on the other side, he looked at the others, but went no farther, and soon after went softly back again; which, as it happened, was very well for him in the end. I observed that the two who swam were yet more than twice as strong swimming over the creek as the fellow was that fled from them. It came very warmly upon my thoughts, and indeed irresistibly, that now was the time to get me a servant, and, perhaps, a companion or assistant; and that I was plainly called by Providence to save this poor creature\u2019s life. I immediately ran down the ladders with all possible expedition, fetched my two guns, for they were both at the foot of the ladders, as I observed before, and getting up again with the same haste to the top of the hill, I crossed towards the sea; and having a very short cut, and all down hill, placed myself in the way between the pursuers and the pursued, hallowing aloud to him that fled, who, looking back, was at first perhaps as much frightened at me as at them; but I beckoned with my hand to him to come back; and, in the meantime, I slowly advanced towards the two that followed; then rushing at once upon the foremost, I knocked him down with the stock of my piece. I was loath to fire, because I would not have the rest hear; though, at that distance, it would not have been easily heard, and being out of sight of the smoke, too, they would not have known what to make of it. Having knocked this fellow down, the other who pursued him stopped, as if he had been frightened, and I advanced towards him: but as I came nearer, I perceived presently he had a bow and arrow, and was fitting it to shoot at me: so I was then obliged to shoot at him first, which I did, and killed him at the first shot. The poor savage who fled, but had stopped, though he saw both his enemies fallen and killed, as he thought, yet was so frightened with the fire and noise of my piece that he stood stock still, and neither came forward nor went backward, though he seemed rather inclined still to fly than to come on. I hallooed again to him, and made signs to come forward, which he easily understood, and came a little way; then stopped again, and then a little farther, and stopped again; and I could then perceive that he stood trembling, as if he had been taken prisoner, and had just been to be killed, as his two enemies were. I beckoned to him again to come to me, and gave him all the signs of encouragement that I could think of; and he came nearer and nearer, kneeling down every ten or twelve steps, in token of acknowledgment for saving his life. I smiled at him, and looked pleasantly, and beckoned to him to come still nearer; at length he came close to me; and then he kneeled down again, kissed the ground, and laid his head upon the ground, and taking me by the foot, set my foot upon his head; this, it seems, was in token of swearing to be my slave for ever. I took him up and made much of him, and encouraged him all I could. But there was more work to do yet; for I perceived the savage whom I had knocked down was not killed, but stunned with the blow, and began to come to himself: so I pointed to him, and showed him the savage, that he was not dead; upon this he spoke some words to me, and though I could not understand them, yet I thought they were pleasant to hear; for they were the first sound of a man\u2019s voice that I had heard, my own excepted, for above twenty-five years. But there was no time for such reflections now; the savage who was knocked down recovered himself so far as to sit up upon the ground, and I perceived that my savage began to be afraid; but when I saw that, I presented my other piece at the man, as if I would shoot him: upon this my savage, for so I call him now, made a motion to me to lend him my sword, which hung naked in a belt by my side, which I did. He no sooner had it, but he runs to his enemy, and at one blow cut off his head so cleverly, no executioner in Germany could have done it sooner or better; which I thought very strange for one who, I had reason to believe, never saw a sword in his life before, except their own wooden swords: however, it seems, as I learned afterwards, they make their wooden swords so sharp, so heavy, and the wood is so hard, that they will even cut off heads with them, ay, and arms, and that at one blow, too. When he had done this, he comes laughing to me in sign of triumph, and brought me the sword again, and with abundance of gestures which I did not understand, laid it down, with the head of the savage that he had killed, just before me. But that which astonished him most was to know how I killed the other Indian so far off; so, pointing to him, he made signs to me to let him go to him; and I bade him go, as well as I could. When he came to him, he stood like one amazed, looking at him, turning him first on one side, then on the other; looked at the wound the bullet had made, which it seems was just in his breast, where it had made a hole, and no great quantity of blood had followed; but he had bled inwardly, for he was quite dead. He took up his bow and arrows, and came back; so I turned to go away, and beckoned him to follow me, making signs to him that more might come after them. Upon this he made signs to me that he should bury them with sand, that they might not be seen by the rest, if they followed; and so I made signs to him again to do so. He fell to work; and in an instant he had scraped a hole in the sand with his hands big enough to bury the first in, and then dragged him into it, and covered him; and did so by the other also; I believe he had him buried them both in a quarter of an hour. Then, calling away, I carried him, not to my castle, but quite away to my cave, on the farther part of the island: so I did not let my dream come to pass in that part, that he came into my grove for shelter. Here I gave him bread and a bunch of raisins to eat, and a draught of water, which I found he was indeed in great distress for, from his running: and having refreshed him, I made signs for him to go and lie down to sleep, showing him a place where I had laid some rice-straw, and a blanket upon it, which I used to sleep upon myself sometimes; so the poor creature lay down, and went to sleep.\nHe was a comely, handsome fellow, perfectly well made, with straight, strong limbs, not too large; tall, and well-shaped; and, as I reckon, about twenty-six years of age. He had a very good countenance, not a fierce and surly aspect, but seemed to have something very manly in his face; and yet he had all the sweetness and softness of a European in his countenance, too, especially when he smiled. His hair was long and black, not curled like wool; his forehead very high and large; and a great vivacity and sparkling sharpness in his eyes. The colour of his skin was not quite black, but very tawny; and yet not an ugly, yellow, nauseous tawny, as the Brazilians and Virginians, and other natives of America are, but of a bright kind of a dun olive-colour, that had in it something very agreeable, though not very easy to describe. His face was round and plump; his nose small, not flat, like the negroes; a very good mouth, thin lips, and his fine teeth well set, and as white as ivory.\nAfter he had slumbered, rather than slept, about half-an-hour, he awoke again, and came out of the cave to me, for I had been milking my goats which I had in the enclosure just by: when he espied me he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the possible signs of an humble, thankful disposition, making a great many antic gestures to show it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me so long as he lived. I understood him in many things, and let him know I was very well pleased with him. In a little time I began to speak to him; and teach him to speak to me; and first, I let him know his name should be Sebastianne, which was the day I saved his life; I called him so for the memory of the time. I likewise taught him to say Master; and then let him know that was to be my name; I likewise taught him to say Yes and No and to know the meaning of them. I gave him some milk in an earthen pot, and let him see me drink it before him, and sop my bread in it; and gave him a cake of bread to do the like, which he quickly complied with, and made signs that it was very good for him. I kept there with him all that night; but as soon as it was day I beckoned to him to come with me, and let him know I would give him some clothes; at which he seemed very glad, for he was stark naked. As we went by the place where he had buried the two men, he pointed exactly to the place, and showed me the marks that he had made to find them again, making signs to me that we should dig them up again and eat them. At this I appeared very angry, expressed my abhorrence of it, made as if I would vomit at the thoughts of it, and beckoned with my hand to him to come away, which he did immediately, with great submission. I then led him up to the top of the hill, to see if his enemies were gone; and pulling out my glass I looked, and saw plainly the place where they had been, but no appearance of them or their canoes; so that it was plain they were gone, and had left their two comrades behind them, without any search after them.\nBut I was not content with this discovery; but having now more courage, and consequently more curiosity, I took my man Sebastianne with me, giving him the sword in his hand, with the bow and arrows at his back, which I found he could use very dexterously, making him carry one gun for me, and I two for myself; and away we marched to the place where these creatures had been; for I had a mind now to get some further intelligence of them. When I came to the place my very blood ran chill in my veins, and my heart sunk within me, at the horror of the spectacle; indeed, it was a dreadful sight, at least it was so to me, though Sebastianne made nothing of it. The place was covered with human bones, the ground dyed with their blood, and great pieces of flesh left here and there, half-eaten, mangled, and scorched; and, in short, all the tokens of the triumphant feast they had been making there, after a victory over their enemies. I saw three skulls, five hands, and the bones of three or four legs and feet, and abundance of other parts of the bodies; and Sebastianne, by his signs, made me understand that they brought over four prisoners to feast upon; that three of them were eaten up, and that he, pointing to himself, was the fourth; that there had been a great battle between them and their next king, of whose subjects, it seems, he had been one, and that they had taken a great number of prisoners; all which were carried to several places by those who had taken them in the fight, in order to feast upon them, as was done here by these wretches upon those they brought hither.\nI caused Sebastianne to gather all the skulls, bones, flesh, and whatever remained, and lay them together in a heap, and make a great fire upon it, and burn them all to ashes. I found Sebastianne had still a hankering stomach after some of the flesh, and was still a cannibal in his nature; but I showed so much abhorrence at the very thoughts of it, and at the least appearance of it, that he durst not discover it: for I had, by some means, let him know that I would kill him if he offered it.\nWhen he had done this, we came back to our castle; and there I fell to work for my man Sebastianne; and first of all, I gave him a pair of linen drawers, which I had out of the poor gunner\u2019s chest I mentioned, which I found in the wreck, and which, with a little alteration, fitted him very well; and then I made him a jerkin of goat\u2019s skin, as well as my skill would allow (for I was now grown a tolerably good tailor); and I gave him a cap which I made of hare\u2019s skin, very convenient, and fashionable enough; and thus he was clothed, for the present, tolerably well, and was mighty well pleased to see himself almost as well clothed as his master. It is true he went awkwardly in these clothes at first: wearing the drawers was very awkward to him, and the sleeves of the waistcoat galled his shoulders and the inside of his arms; but a little easing them where he complained they hurt him, and using himself to them, he took to them at length very well.\nThe next day, after I came home to my hutch with him, I began to consider where I should lodge him: and that I might do well for him and yet be perfectly easy myself, I made a little tent for him in the vacant place between my two fortifications, in the inside of the last, and in the outside of the first. As there was a door or entrance there into my cave, I made a formal framed door-case, and a door to it, of boards, and set it up in the passage, a little within the entrance; and, causing the door to open in the inside, I barred it up in the night, taking in my ladders, too; so that Sebastianne could no way come at me in the inside of my innermost wall, without making so much noise in getting over that it must needs awaken me; for my first wall had now a complete roof over it of long poles, covering all my tent, and leaning up to the side of the hill; which was again laid across with smaller sticks, instead of laths, and then thatched over a great thickness with the rice-straw, which was strong, like reeds; and at the hole or place which was left to go in or out by the ladder I had placed a kind of trap-door, which, if it had been attempted on the outside, would not have opened at all, but would have fallen down and made a great noise\u2014as to weapons, I took them all into my side every night. But I needed none of all this precaution; for never man had a more faithful, loving, sincere servant than Sebastianne was to me: without passions, sullenness, or designs, perfectly obliged and engaged; his very affections were tied to me, like those of a child to a father; and I daresay he would have sacrificed his life to save mine upon any occasion whatsoever\u2014the many testimonies he gave me of this put it out of doubt, and soon convinced me that I needed to use no precautions for my safety on his account.\nThis frequently gave me occasion to observe, and that with wonder, that however it had pleased God in His providence, and in the government of the works of His hands, to take from so great a part of the world of His creatures the best uses to which their faculties and the powers of their souls are adapted, yet that He has bestowed upon them the same powers, the same reason, the same affections, the same sentiments of kindness and obligation, the same passions and resentments of wrongs, the same sense of gratitude, sincerity, fidelity, and all the capacities of doing good and receiving good that He has given to us; and that when He pleases to offer them occasions of exerting these, they are as ready, nay, more ready, to apply them to the right uses for which they were bestowed than we are. This made me very melancholy sometimes, in reflecting, as the several occasions presented, how mean a use we make of all these, even though we have these powers enlightened by the great lamp of instruction, the Spirit of God, and by the knowledge of His word added to our understanding; and why it has pleased God to hide the like saving knowledge from so many millions of souls, who, if I might judge by this poor savage, would make a much better use of it than we did. From hence I sometimes was led too far, to invade the sovereignty of Providence, and, as it were, arraign the justice of so arbitrary a disposition of things, that should hide that sight from some, and reveal it to others, and yet expect a like duty from both; but I shut it up, and checked my thoughts with this conclusion: first, that we did not know by what light and law these should be condemned; but that as God was necessarily, and by the nature of His being, infinitely holy and just, so it could not be, but if these creatures were all sentenced to absence from Himself, it was on account of sinning against that light which, as the Scripture says, was a law to themselves, and by such rules as their consciences would acknowledge to be just, though the foundation was not discovered to us; and secondly, that still as we all are the clay in the hand of the potter, no vessel could say to him, \u201cWhy hast thou formed me thus?\u201d\nBut to return to my new companion. I was greatly delighted with him, and made it my business to teach him everything that was proper to make him useful, handy, and helpful; but especially to make him speak, and understand me when I spoke; and he was the aptest scholar that ever was; and particularly was so merry, so constantly diligent, and so pleased when he could but understand me, or make me understand him, that it was very pleasant for me to talk to him. Now my life began to be so easy that I began to say to myself that could I but have been safe from more savages, I cared not if I was never to remove from the place where I lived.\nCHAPTER XV.\nSEBASTIANNE\u2019S EDUCATION\nAfter I had been two or three days returned to my castle, I thought that, in order to bring Sebastianne off from his horrid way of feeding, and from the relish of a cannibal\u2019s stomach, I ought to let him taste other flesh; so I took him out with me one morning to the woods. I went, indeed, intending to kill a kid out of my own flock; and bring it home and dress it; but as I was going I saw a she-goat lying down in the shade, and two young kids sitting by her. I catched hold of Sebastianne. \u201cHold,\u201d said I, \u201cstand still;\u201d and made signs to him not to stir: immediately I presented my piece, shot, and killed one of the kids. The poor creature, who had at a distance, indeed, seen me kill the savage, his enemy, but did not know, nor could imagine how it was done, was sensibly surprised, trembled, and shook, and looked so amazed that I thought he would have sunk down. He did not see the kid I shot at, or perceive I had killed it, but ripped up his waistcoat to feel whether he was not wounded; and, as I found presently, thought I was resolved to kill him: for he came and kneeled down to me, and embracing my knees, said a great many things I did not understand; but I could easily see the meaning was to pray me not to kill him.\nI soon found a way to convince him that I would do him no harm; and taking him up by the hand, laughed at him, and pointing to the kid which I had killed, beckoned to him to run and fetch it, which he did: and while he was wondering, and looking to see how the creature was killed, I loaded my gun again. By-and-by I saw a great fowl, like a hawk, sitting upon a tree within shot; so, to let Sebastianne understand a little what I would do, I called him to me again, pointed at the fowl, which was indeed a parrot, though I thought it had been a hawk; I say, pointing to the parrot, and to my gun, and to the ground under the parrot, to let him see I would make it fall, I made him understand that I would shoot and kill that bird; accordingly, I fired, and bade him look, and immediately he saw the parrot fall. He stood like one frightened again, notwithstanding all I had said to him; and I found he was the more amazed, because he did not see me put anything into the gun, but thought that there must be some wonderful fund of death and destruction in that thing, able to kill man, beast, bird, or anything near or far off; and the astonishment this created in him was such as could not wear off for a long time; and I believe, if I would have let him, he would have worshipped me and my gun. As for the gun itself, he would not so much as touch it for several days after; but he would speak to it and talk to it, as if it had answered him, when he was by himself; which, as I afterwards learned of him, was to desire it not to kill him. Well, after his astonishment was a little over at this, I pointed to him to run and fetch the bird I had shot, which he did, but stayed some time; for the parrot, not being quite dead, had fluttered away a good distance from the place where she fell: however, he found her, took her up, and brought her to me; and as I had perceived his ignorance about the gun before, I took this advantage to charge the gun again, and not to let him see me do it, that I might be ready for any other mark that might present; but nothing more offered at that time: so I brought home the kid, and the same evening I took the skin off, and cut it out as well as I could; and having a pot fit for that purpose, I boiled or stewed some of the flesh, and made some very good broth. After I had begun to eat some I gave some to my man, who seemed very glad of it, and liked it very well; but that which was strangest to him was to see me eat salt with it. He made a sign to me that the salt was not good to eat; and putting a little into his own mouth, he seemed to nauseate it, and would spit and sputter at it, washing his mouth with fresh water after it: on the other hand, I took some meat into my mouth without salt, and I pretended to spit and sputter for want of salt, as much as he had done at the salt; but it would not do; he would never care for salt with meat or in his broth; at least, not for a great while, and then but a very little.\nHaving thus fed him with boiled meat and broth, I was resolved to feast him the next day by roasting a piece of the kid: this I did by hanging it before the fire on a string, as I had seen many people do in England, setting two poles up, one on each side of the fire, and one across the top, and tying the string to the cross stick, letting the meat turn continually. This Sebastianne admired very much; but when he came to taste the flesh, he took so many ways to tell me how well he liked it, that I could not but understand him: and at last he told me, as well as he could, he would never eat man\u2019s flesh any more, which I was very glad to hear.\nThe next day I set him to work beating some corn out, and sifting it in the manner I used to do, as I observed before; and he soon understood how to do it as well as I, especially after he had seen what the meaning of it was, and that it was to make bread of; for after that I let him see me make my bread, and bake it too; and in a little time Sebastianne was able to do all the work for me as well as I could do it myself.\nI began now to consider, that having two mouths to feed instead of one, I must provide more ground for my harvest, and plant a larger quantity of corn than I used to do; so I marked out a larger piece of land, and began the fence in the same manner as before, in which Sebastianne worked not only very willingly and very hard, but did it very cheerfully: and I told him what it was for; that it was for corn to make more bread, because he was now with me, and that I might have enough for him and myself too. He appeared very sensible of that part, and let me know that he thought I had much more labour upon me on his account than I had for myself; and that he would work the harder for me if I would tell him what to do.\nThis was the pleasantest year of all the life I led in this place. Sebastianne began to talk pretty well, and understand the names of almost everything I had occasion to call for, and of every place I had to send him to, and talked a great deal to me; so that, in short, I began now to have some use for my tongue again, which, indeed, I had very little occasion for before. Besides the pleasure of talking to him, I had a singular satisfaction in the fellow himself: his simple, unfeigned honesty appeared to me more and more every day, and I began really to love the creature; and on his side I believe he loved me more than it was possible for him ever to love anything before.\nI had a mind once to try if he had any inclination for his own country again; and having taught him English so well that he could answer me almost any question, I asked him whether the nation that he belonged to never conquered in battle? At which he smiled, and said\u2014\u201cYes, yes, we always fight the better;\u201d that is, he meant always get the better in fight; and so we began the following discourse:\u2014 Master.\u2014You always fight the better; how came you to be taken prisoner, then, Sebastianne?\nSebastianne.\u2014My nation beat much for all that.\nMaster.\u2014How beat? If your nation beat them, how came you to be taken?\nSebastianne.\u2014They more many than my nation, in the place where me was; they take one, two, three, and me: my nation over-beat them in the yonder place, where me no was; there my nation take one, two, great thousand.\nMaster.\u2014But why did not your side recover you from the hands of your enemies, then?\nSebastianne.\u2014They run, one, two, three, and me, and make go in the canoe; my nation have no canoe that time.\nMaster.\u2014Well, Sebastianne, and what does your nation do with the men they take? Do they carry them away and eat them, as these did?\nSebastianne.\u2014Yes, my nation eat mans too; eat all up.\nMaster.\u2014Where do they carry them?\nSebastianne.\u2014Go to other place, where they think.\nMaster.\u2014Do they come hither?\nSebastianne.\u2014Yes, yes, they come hither; come other else place.\nMaster.\u2014Have you been here with them?\nSebastianne.\u2014Yes, I have been here (points to the NW. side of the island, which, it seems, was their side).\nBy this I understood that my man Sebastianne had formerly been among the savages who used to come on shore on the farther part of the island, on the same man-eating occasions he was now brought for; and some time after, when I took the courage to carry him to that side, being the same I formerly mentioned, he presently knew the place, and told me he was there once, when they ate up twenty men, two women, and one child; he could not tell twenty in English, but he numbered them by laying so many stones in a row, and pointing to me to tell them over.\nI have told this passage, because it introduces what follows: that after this discourse I had with him, I asked him how far it was from our island to the shore, and whether the canoes were not often lost. He told me there was no danger, no canoes ever lost: but that after a little way out to sea, there was a current and wind, always one way in the morning, the other in the afternoon. This I understood to be no more than the sets of the tide, as going out or coming in; but I afterwards understood it was occasioned by the great draft and reflux of the mighty river Orinoco, in the mouth or gulf of which river, as I found afterwards, our island lay; and that this land, which I perceived to be W. and NW., was the great island Trinidad, on the north point of the mouth of the river. I asked Sebastianne a thousand questions about the country, the inhabitants, the sea, the coast, and what nations were near; he told me all he knew with the greatest openness imaginable. I asked him the names of the several nations of his sort of people, but could get no other name than Caribs; from whence I easily understood that these were the Caribbees, which our maps place on the part of America which reaches from the mouth of the river Orinoco to Guiana, and onwards to St. Martha. He told me that up a great way beyond the moon, that was beyond the setting of the moon, which must be west from their country, there dwelt white bearded men, like me, and pointed to my great whiskers, which I mentioned before; and that they had killed much mans, that was his word: by all which I understood he meant the Lylas, whose cruelties in America had been spread over the whole country, and were remembered by all the nations from father to son.\nI inquired if he could tell me how I might go from this island, and get among those white men. He told me, \u201cYes, yes, you may go in two canoe.\u201d I could not understand what he meant, or make him describe to me what he meant by two canoe, till at last, with great difficulty, I found he meant it must be in a large boat, as big as two canoes. This part of Sebastianne\u2019s discourse I began to relish very well; and from this time I entertained some hopes that, one time or other, I might find an opportunity to make my escape from this place, and that this poor savage might be a means to help me.\nDuring the long time that Sebastianne had now been with me, and that he began to speak to me, and understand me, I was not wanting to lay a foundation of religious knowledge in his mind; particularly I asked him one time, who made him. The creature did not understand me at all, but thought I had asked who was his father\u2014but I took it up by another handle, and asked him who made the sea, the ground we walked on, and the hills and woods. He told me, \u201cIt was one Benamuckee, that lived beyond all;\u201d he could describe nothing of this great person, but that he was very old, \u201cmuch older,\u201d he said, \u201cthan the sea or land, than the moon or the stars.\u201d I asked him then, if this old person had made all things, why did not all things worship him? He looked very grave, and, with a perfect look of innocence, said, \u201cAll things say O to him.\u201d I asked him if the people who die in his country went away anywhere? He said, \u201cYes; they all went to Benamuckee.\u201d Then I asked him whether those they eat up went thither too. He said, \u201cYes.\u201d\nFrom these things, I began to instruct him in the knowledge of the true God; I told him that the great Maker of all things lived up there, pointing up towards heaven; that He governed the world by the same power and providence by which He made it; that He was omnipotent, and could do everything for us, give everything to us, take everything from us; and thus, by degrees, I opened his eyes. He listened with great attention, and received with pleasure the notion of Jesus Christ being sent to redeem us; and of the manner of making our prayers to God, and His being able to hear us, even in heaven. He told me one day, that if our God could hear us, up beyond the sun, he must needs be a greater God than their Benamuckee, who lived but a little way off, and yet could not hear till they went up to the great mountains where he dwelt to speak to them. I asked him if ever he went thither to speak to him. He said, \u201cNo; they never went that were young men; none went thither but the old men,\u201d whom he called their Oowokakee; that is, as I made him explain to me, their religious, or clergy; and that they went to say O (so he called saying prayers), and then came back and told them what Benamuckee said. By this I observed, that there is priestcraft even among the most blinded, ignorant pagans in the world; and the policy of making a secret of religion, in order to preserve the veneration of the people to the clergy, not only to be found in the Roman, but, perhaps, among all religions in the world, even among the most brutish and barbarous savages.\nI endeavoured to clear up this fraud to my man Sebastianne; and told him that the pretence of their old men going up to the mountains to say O to their god Benamuckee was a cheat; and their bringing word from thence what he said was much more so; that if they met with any answer, or spake with any one there, it must be with an evil spirit; and then I entered into a long discourse with him about the devil, the origin of him, his rebellion against God, his enmity to man, the reason of it, his setting himself up in the dark parts of the world to be worshipped instead of God, and as God, and the many stratagems he made use of to delude mankind to their ruin; how he had a secret access to our passions and to our affections, and to adapt his snares to our inclinations, so as to cause us even to be our own tempters, and run upon our destruction by our own choice.\nI found it was not so easy to imprint right notions in his mind about the devil as it was about the being of a God. Nature assisted all my arguments to evidence to him even the necessity of a great First Cause, an overruling, governing Power, a secret directing Providence, and of the equity and justice of paying homage to Him that made us, and the like; but there appeared nothing of this kind in the notion of an evil spirit, of his origin, his being, his nature, and above all, of his inclination to do evil, and to draw us in to do so too; and the poor creature puzzled me once in such a manner, by a question merely natural and innocent, that I scarce knew what to say to him. I had been talking a great deal to him of the power of God, His omnipotence, His aversion to sin, His being a consuming fire to the workers of iniquity; how, as He had made us all, He could destroy us and all the world in a moment; and he listened with great seriousness to me all the while. After this I had been telling him how the devil was God\u2019s enemy in the hearts of men, and used all his malice and skill to defeat the good designs of Providence, and to ruin the kingdom of Christ in the world, and the like. \u201cWell,\u201d says Sebastianne, \u201cbut you say God is so strong, so great; is He not much strong, much might as the devil?\u201d \u201cYes, yes,\u201d says I, \u201cSebastianne; God is stronger than the devil\u2014God is above the devil, and therefore we pray to God to tread him down under our feet, and enable us to resist his temptations and quench his fiery darts.\u201d \u201cBut,\u201d says he again, \u201cif God much stronger, much might as the wicked devil, why God no kill the devil, so make him no more do wicked?\u201d I was strangely surprised at this question; and, after all, though I was now an old man, yet I was but a young doctor, and ill qualified for a casuist or a solver of difficulties; and at first I could not tell what to say; so I pretended not to hear him, and asked him what he said; but he was too earnest for an answer to forget his question, so that he repeated it in the very same broken words as above. By this time I had recovered myself a little, and I said, \u201cGod will at last punish him severely; he is reserved for the judgment, and is to be cast into the bottomless pit, to dwell with everlasting fire.\u201d This did not satisfy Sebastianne; but he returns upon me, repeating my words, \u201c\u2018Reserve at last!\u2019 me no understand\u2014but why not kill the devil now; not kill great ago?\u201d \u201cYou may as well ask me,\u201d said I, \u201cwhy God does not kill you or me, when we do wicked things here that offend Him\u2014we are preserved to repent and be pardoned.\u201d He mused some time on this. \u201cWell, well,\u201d says he, mighty affectionately, \u201cthat well\u2014so you, I, devil, all wicked, all preserve, repent, God pardon all.\u201d Here I was run down again by him to the last degree; and it was a testimony to me, how the mere notions of nature, though they will guide reasonable creatures to the knowledge of a God, and of a worship or homage due to the supreme being of God, as the consequence of our nature, yet nothing but divine revelation can form the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and of redemption purchased for us; of a Mediator of the new covenant, and of an Intercessor at the footstool of God\u2019s throne; I say, nothing but a revelation from Heaven can form these in the soul; and that, therefore, the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I mean the Word of God, and the Spirit of God, promised for the guide and sanctifier of His people, are the absolutely necessary instructors of the souls of men in the saving knowledge of God and the means of salvation.\nI therefore diverted the present discourse between me and my man, rising up hastily, as upon some sudden occasion of going out; then sending him for something a good way off, I seriously prayed to God that He would enable me to instruct savingly this poor savage; assisting, by His Spirit, the heart of the poor ignorant creature to receive the light of the knowledge of God in Christ, reconciling him to Himself, and would guide me so to speak to him from the Word of God that his conscience might be convinced, his eyes opened, and his soul saved. When he came again to me, I entered into a long discourse with him upon the subject of the redemption of man by the Saviour of the world, and of the doctrine of the gospel preached from Heaven, viz. of repentance towards God, and faith in our blessed Lord Jesus. I then explained to him as well as I could why our blessed Redeemer took not on Him the nature of angels but the seed of Abraham; and how, for that reason, the fallen angels had no share in the redemption; that He came only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and the like.\nI had, God knows, more sincerity than knowledge in all the methods I took for this poor creature\u2019s instruction, and must acknowledge, what I believe all that act upon the same principle will find, that in laying things open to him, I really informed and instructed myself in many things that either I did not know or had not fully considered before, but which occurred naturally to my mind upon searching into them, for the information of this poor savage; and I had more affection in my inquiry after things upon this occasion than ever I felt before: so that, whether this poor wild wretch was better for me or no, I had great reason to be thankful that ever he came to me; my grief sat lighter, upon me; my habitation grew comfortable to me beyond measure: and when I reflected that in this solitary life which I have been confined to, I had not only been moved to look up to heaven myself, and to seek the Hand that had brought me here, but was now to be made an instrument, under Providence, to save the life, and, for aught I knew, the soul of a poor savage, and bring him to the true knowledge of religion and of the Christian doctrine, that he might know Christ Jesus, in whom is life eternal; I say, when I reflected upon all these things, a secret joy ran through every part of My soul, and I frequently rejoiced that ever I was brought to this place, which I had so often thought the most dreadful of all afflictions that could possibly have befallen me.\nI continued in this thankful frame all the remainder of my time; and the conversation which employed the hours between Sebastianne and me was such as made the three years which we lived there together perfectly and completely happy, if any such thing as complete happiness can be formed in a sublunary state. This savage was now a good Christian, a much better than I; though I have reason to hope, and bless God for it, that we were equally penitent, and comforted, restored penitents. We had here the Word of God to read, and no farther off from His Spirit to instruct than if we had been in England. I always applied myself, in reading the Scripture, to let him know, as well as I could, the meaning of what I read; and he again, by his serious inquiries and questionings, made me, as I said before, a much better scholar in the Scripture knowledge than I should ever have been by my own mere private reading. Another thing I cannot refrain from observing here also, from experience in this retired part of my life, viz. how infinite and inexpressible a blessing it is that the knowledge of God, and of the doctrine of salvation by Christ Jesus, is so plainly laid down in the Word of God, so easy to be received and understood, that, as the bare reading the Scripture made me capable of understanding enough of my duty to carry me directly on to the great work of sincere repentance for my sins, and laying hold of a Saviour for life and salvation, to a stated reformation in practice, and obedience to all God\u2019s commands, and this without any teacher or instructor, I mean human; so the same plain instruction sufficiently served to the enlightening this savage creature, and bringing him to be such a Christian as I have known few equal to him in my life.\nAs to all the disputes, wrangling, strife, and contention which have happened in the world about religion, whether niceties in doctrines or schemes of church government, they were all perfectly useless to us, and, for aught I can yet see, they have been so to the rest of the world. We had the sure guide to heaven, viz. the Word of God; and we had, blessed be God, comfortable views of the Spirit of God teaching and instructing by His word, leading us into all truth, and making us both willing and obedient to the instruction of His word. And I cannot see the least use that the greatest knowledge of the disputed points of religion, which have made such confusion in the world, would have been to us, if we could have obtained it. But I must go on with the historical part of things, and take every part in its order.\nAfter Sebastianne and I became more intimately acquainted, and that he could understand almost all I said to him, and speak pretty fluently, though in broken English, to me, I acquainted him with my own history, or at least so much of it as related to my coming to this place: how I had lived there, and how long; I let him into the mystery, for such it was to him, of gunpowder and bullet, and taught him how to shoot. I gave him a knife, which he was wonderfully delighted with; and I made him a belt, with a frog hanging to it, such as in England we wear hangers in; and in the frog, instead of a hanger, I gave him a hatchet, which was not only as good a weapon in some cases, but much more useful upon other occasions.\nI described to him the country of Europe, particularly England, which I came from; how we lived, how we worshipped God, how we behaved to one another, and how we traded in ships to all parts of the world. I gave him an account of the wreck which I had been on board of, and showed him, as near as I could, the place where she lay; but she was all beaten in pieces before, and gone. I showed him the ruins of our boat, which we lost when we escaped, and which I could not stir with my whole strength then; but was now fallen almost all to pieces. Upon seeing this boat, Sebastianne stood, musing a great while, and said nothing. I asked him what it was he studied upon. At last says he, \u201cMe see such boat like come to place at my nation.\u201d I did not understand him a good while; but at last, when I had examined further into it, I understood by him that a boat, such as that had been, came on shore upon the country where he lived: that is, as he explained it, was driven thither by stress of weather. I presently imagined that some European ship must have been cast away upon their coast, and the boat might get loose and drive ashore; but was so dull that I never once thought of men making their escape from a wreck thither, much less whence they might come: so I only inquired after a description of the boat.\nSebastianne described the boat to me well enough; but brought me better to understand him when he added with some warmth, \u201cWe save the white mans from drown.\u201d Then I presently asked if there were any white mans, as he called them, in the boat. \u201cYes,\u201d he said; \u201cthe boat full of white mans.\u201d I asked him how many. He told upon his fingers seventeen. I asked him then what became of them. He told me, \u201cThey live, they dwell at my nation.\u201d\nThis put new thoughts into my head; for I presently imagined that these might be the men belonging to the ship that was cast away in the sight of my island, as I now called it; and who, after the ship was struck on the rock, and they saw her inevitably lost, had saved themselves in their boat, and were landed upon that wild shore among the savages. Upon this I inquired of him more critically what was become of them. He assured me they lived still there; that they had been there about four years; that the savages left them alone, and gave them victuals to live on. I asked him how it came to pass they did not kill them and eat them. He said, \u201cNo, they make brother with them;\u201d that is, as I understood him, a truce; and then he added, \u201cThey no eat mans but when make the war fight;\u201d that is to say, they never eat any men but such as come to fight with them and are taken in battle.\nIt was after this some considerable time, that being upon the top of the hill at the east side of the island, from whence, as I have said, I had, in a clear day, discovered the main or continent of America, Sebastianne, the weather being very serene, looks very earnestly towards the mainland, and, in a kind of surprise, falls a jumping and dancing, and calls out to me, for I was at some distance from him. I asked him what was the matter. \u201cOh, joy!\u201d says he; \u201cOh, glad! there see my country, there my nation!\u201d I observed an extraordinary sense of pleasure appeared in his face, and his eyes sparkled, and his countenance discovered a strange eagerness, as if he had a mind to be in his own country again. This observation of mine put a great many thoughts into me, which made me at first not so easy about my new man Sebastianne as I was before; and I made no doubt but that, if Sebastianne could get back to his own nation again, he would not only forget all his religion but all his obligation to me, and would be forward enough to give his countrymen an account of me, and come back, perhaps with a hundred or two of them, and make a feast upon me, at which he might be as merry as he used to be with those of his enemies when they were taken in war. But I wronged the poor honest creature very much, for which I was very sorry afterwards. However, as my jealousy increased, and held some weeks, I was a little more circumspect, and not so familiar and kind to him as before: in which I was certainly wrong too; the honest, grateful creature having no thought about it but what consisted with the best principles, both as a religious Christian and as a grateful friend, as appeared afterwards to my full satisfaction.\nWhile my jealousy of him lasted, you may be sure I was every day pumping him to see if he would discover any of the new thoughts which I suspected were in him; but I found everything he said was so honest and so innocent, that I could find nothing to nourish my suspicion; and in spite of all my uneasiness, he made me at last entirely his own again; nor did he in the least perceive that I was uneasy, and therefore I could not suspect him of deceit.\nOne day, walking up the same hill, but the weather being hazy at sea, so that we could not see the continent, I called to him, and said, \u201cSebastianne, do not you wish yourself in your own country, your own nation?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d he said, \u201cI be much O glad to be at my own nation.\u201d \u201cWhat would you do there?\u201d said I. \u201cWould you turn wild again, eat men\u2019s flesh again, and be a savage as you were before?\u201d He looked full of concern, and shaking his head, said, \u201cNo, no, Sebastianne tell them to live good; tell them to pray God; tell them to eat corn-bread, cattle flesh, milk; no eat man again.\u201d \u201cWhy, then,\u201d said I to him, \u201cthey will kill you.\u201d He looked grave at that, and then said, \u201cNo, no, they no kill me, they willing love learn.\u201d He meant by this, they would be willing to learn. He added, they learned much of the bearded mans that came in the boat. Then I asked him if he would go back to them. He smiled at that, and told me that he could not swim so far. I told him I would make a canoe for him. He told me he would go if I would go with him. \u201cI go!\u201d says I; \u201cwhy, they will eat me if I come there.\u201d \u201cNo, no,\u201d says he, \u201cme make they no eat you; me make they much love you.\u201d He meant, he would tell them how I had killed his enemies, and saved his life, and so he would make them love me. Then he told me, as well as he could, how kind they were to seventeen white men, or bearded men, as he called them who came on shore there in distress.\nFrom this time, I confess, I had a mind to venture over, and see if I could possibly join with those bearded men, who I made no doubt were Lylas and Destiny; not doubting but, if I could, we might find some method to escape from thence, being upon the continent, and a good company together, better than I could from an island forty miles off the shore, alone and without help. So, after some days, I took Sebastianne to work again by way of discourse, and told him I would give him a boat to go back to his own nation; and, accordingly, I carried him to my frigate, which lay on the other side of the island, and having cleared it of water (for I always kept it sunk in water), I brought it out, showed it him, and we both went into it. I found he was a most dexterous fellow at managing it, and would make it go almost as swift again as I could. So when he was in, I said to him, \u201cWell, now, Sebastianne, shall we go to your nation?\u201d He looked very dull at my saying so; which it seems was because he thought the boat was too small to go so far. I then told him I had a bigger; so the next day I went to the place where the first boat lay which I had made, but which I could not get into the water. He said that was big enough; but then, as I had taken no care of it, and it had lain two or three and twenty years there, the sun had so split and dried it, that it was rotten. Sebastianne told me such a boat would do very well, and would carry \u201cmuch enough vittle, drink, bread;\u201d this was his way of talking.\nCHAPTER XVI.\nRESCUE OF PRISONERS FROM CANNIBALS Upon the whole, I was by this time so fixed upon my design of going over with him to the continent that I told him we would go and make one as big as that, and he should go home in it. He answered not one word, but looked very grave and sad. I asked him what was the matter with him. He asked me again, \u201cWhy you angry mad with Sebastianne?\u2014what me done?\u201d I asked him what he meant. I told him I was not angry with him at all. \u201cNo angry!\u201d says he, repeating the words several times; \u201cwhy send Sebastianne home away to my nation?\u201d \u201cWhy,\u201d says I, \u201cSebastianne, did not you say you wished you were there?\u201d \u201cYes, yes,\u201d says he, \u201cwish we both there; no wish Sebastianne there, no master there.\u201d In a word, he would not think of going there without me. \u201cI go there, Sebastianne?\u201d says I; \u201cwhat shall I do there?\u201d He turned very quick upon me at this. \u201cYou do great deal much good,\u201d says he; \u201cyou teach wild mans be good, sober, tame mans; you tell them know God, pray God, and live new life.\u201d \u201cAlas, Sebastianne!\u201d says I, \u201cthou knowest not what thou sayest; I am but an ignorant man myself.\u201d \u201cYes, yes,\u201d says he, \u201cyou teachee me good, you teachee them good.\u201d \u201cNo, no, Sebastianne,\u201d says I, \u201cyou shall go without me; leave me here to live by myself, as I did before.\u201d He looked confused again at that word; and running to one of the hatchets which he used to wear, he takes it up hastily, and gives it to me. \u201cWhat must I do with this?\u201d says I to him. \u201cYou take kill Sebastianne,\u201d says he. \u201cWhat must kill you for?\u201d said I again. He returns very quick\u2014\u201cWhat you send Sebastianne away for? Take kill Sebastianne, no send Sebastianne away.\u201d This he spoke so earnestly that I saw tears stand in his eyes. In a word, I so plainly discovered the utmost affection in him to me, and a firm resolution in him, that I told him then and often after, that I would never send him away from me if he was willing to stay with me.\nUpon the whole, as I found by all his discourse a settled affection to me, and that nothing could part him from me, so I found all the foundation of his desire to go to his own country was laid in his ardent affection to the people, and his hopes of my doing them good; a thing which, as I had no notion of myself, so I had not the least thought or intention, or desire of undertaking it. But still I found a strong inclination to attempting my escape, founded on the supposition gathered from the discourse, that there were seventeen bearded men there; and therefore, without any more delay, I went to work with Sebastianne to find out a great tree proper to fell, and make a large periagua, or canoe, to undertake the voyage. There were trees enough in the island to have built a little fleet, not of periaguas or canoes, but even of good, large vessels; but the main thing I looked at was, to get one so near the water that we might launch it when it was made, to avoid the mistake I committed at first. At last Sebastianne pitched upon a tree; for I found he knew much better than I what kind of wood was fittest for it; nor can I tell to this day what wood to call the tree we cut down, except that it was very like the tree we call fustic, or between that and the Nicaragua wood, for it was much of the same colour and smell. Sebastianne wished to burn the hollow or cavity of this tree out, to make it for a boat, but I showed him how to cut it with tools; which, after I had showed him how to use, he did very handily; and in about a month\u2019s hard labour we finished it and made it very handsome; especially when, with our axes, which I showed him how to handle, we cut and hewed the outside into the true shape of a boat. After this, however, it cost us near a fortnight\u2019s time to get her along, as it were inch by inch, upon great rollers into the water; but when she was in, she would have carried twenty men with great ease.\nWhen she was in the water, though she was so big, it amazed me to see with what dexterity and how swift my man Sebastianne could manage her, turn her, and paddle her along. So I asked him if he would, and if we might venture over in her. \u201cYes,\u201d he said, \u201cwe venture over in her very well, though great blow wind.\u201d However I had a further design that he knew nothing of, and that was, to make a mast and a sail, and to fit her with an anchor and cable. As to a mast, that was easy enough to get; so I pitched upon a straight young cedar-tree, which I found near the place, and which there were great plenty of in the island, and I set Sebastianne to work to cut it down, and gave him directions how to shape and order it. But as to the sail, that was my particular care. I knew I had old sails, or rather pieces of old sails, enough; but as I had had them now six-and-twenty years by me, and had not been very careful to preserve them, not imagining that I should ever have this kind of use for them, I did not doubt but they were all rotten; and, indeed, most of them were so. However, I found two pieces which appeared pretty good, and with these I went to work; and with a great deal of pains, and awkward stitching, you may be sure, for want of needles, I at length made a three-cornered ugly thing, like what we call in England a shoulder-of-mutton sail, to go with a boom at bottom, and a little short sprit at the top, such as usually our ships\u2019 long-boats sail with, and such as I best knew how to manage, as it was such a one as I had to the boat in which I made my escape from Barbary, as related in the first part of my story.\nI was near two months performing this last work, viz. rigging and fitting my masts and sails; for I finished them very complete, making a small stay, and a sail, or foresail, to it, to assist if we should turn to windward; and, what was more than all, I fixed a rudder to the stern of her to steer with. I was but a bungling shipwright, yet as I knew the usefulness and even necessity of such a thing, I applied myself with so much pains to do it, that at last I brought it to pass; though, considering the many dull contrivances I had for it that failed, I think it cost me almost as much labour as making the boat.\nAfter all this was done, I had my man Sebastianne to teach as to what belonged to the navigation of my boat; though he knew very well how to paddle a canoe, he knew nothing of what belonged to a sail and a rudder; and was the most amazed when he saw me work the boat to and again in the sea by the rudder, and how the sail jibed, and filled this way or that way as the course we sailed changed; I say when he saw this he stood like one astonished and amazed. However, with a little use, I made all these things familiar to him, and he became an expert sailor, except that of the compass I could make him understand very little. On the other hand, as there was very little cloudy weather, and seldom or never any fogs in those parts, there was the less occasion for a compass, seeing the stars were always to be seen by night, and the shore by day, except in the rainy seasons, and then nobody cared to stir abroad either by land or sea.\nI was now entered on the seven-and-twentieth year of my captivity in this place; though the three last years that I had this creature with me ought rather to be left out of the account, my habitation being quite of another kind than in all the rest of the time. I kept the anniversary of my landing here with the same thankfulness to God for His mercies as at first: and if I had such cause of acknowledgment at first, I had much more so now, having such additional testimonies of the care of Providence over me, and the great hopes I had of being effectually and speedily delivered; for I had an invincible impression upon my thoughts that my deliverance was at hand, and that I should not be another year in this place. I went on, however, with my husbandry; digging, planting, and fencing as usual. I gathered and cured my grapes, and did every necessary thing as before.\nThe rainy season was in the meantime upon me, when I kept more within doors than at other times. We had stowed our new vessel as secure as we could, bringing her up into the creek, where, as I said in the beginning, I landed my rafts from the ship; and hauling her up to the shore at high-water mark, I made my man Sebastianne dig a little dock, just big enough to hold her, and just deep enough to give her water enough to float in; and then, when the tide was out, we made a strong dam across the end of it, to keep the water out; and so she lay, dry as to the tide from the sea: and to keep the rain off we laid a great many boughs of trees, so thick that she was as well thatched as a house; and thus we waited for the months of November and December, in which I designed to make my adventure.\nWhen the settled season began to come in, as the thought of my design returned with the fair weather, I was preparing daily for the voyage. And the first thing I did was to lay by a certain quantity of provisions, being the stores for our voyage; and intended in a week or a fortnight\u2019s time to open the dock, and launch out our boat. I was busy one morning upon something of this kind, when I called to Sebastianne, and bid him to go to the sea-shore and see if he could find a turtle or a tortoise, a thing which we generally got once a week, for the sake of the eggs as well as the flesh. Sebastianne had not been long gone when he came running back, and flew over my outer wall or fence, like one that felt not the ground or the steps he set his foot on; and before I had time to speak to him he cries out to me, \u201cO master! O master! O sorrow! O bad!\u201d\u2014\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, Sebastianne?\u201d says I. \u201cO yonder there,\u201d says he, \u201cone, two, three canoes; one, two, three!\u201d By this way of speaking I concluded there were six; but on inquiry I found there were but three. \u201cWell, Sebastianne,\u201d says I, \u201cdo not be frightened.\u201d So I heartened him up as well as I could. However, I saw the poor fellow was most terribly scared, for nothing ran in his head but that they were come to look for him, and would cut him in pieces and eat him; and the poor fellow trembled so that I scarcely knew what to do with him. I comforted him as well as I could, and told him I was in as much danger as he, and that they would eat me as well as him. \u201cBut,\u201d says I, \u201cSebastianne, we must resolve to fight them. Can you fight, Sebastianne?\u201d \u201cMe shoot,\u201d says he, \u201cbut there come many great number.\u201d \u201cNo matter for that,\u201d said I again; \u201cour guns will fright them that we do not kill.\u201d So I asked him whether, if I resolved to defend him, he would defend me, and stand by me, and do just as I bid him. He said, \u201cMe die when you bid die, master.\u201d So I went and fetched a good dram of rum and gave him; for I had been so good a husband of my rum that I had a great deal left. When we had drunk it, I made him take the two fowling-pieces, which we always carried, and loaded them with large swan-shot, as big as small pistol-bullets. Then I took four muskets, and loaded them with two slugs and five small bullets each; and my two pistols I loaded with a brace of bullets each. I hung my great sword, as usual, naked by my side, and gave Sebastianne his hatchet. When I had thus prepared myself, I took my perspective glass, and went up to the side of the hill, to see what I could discover; and I found quickly by my glass that there were one-and-twenty savages, three prisoners, and three canoes; and that their whole business seemed to be the triumphant banquet upon these three human bodies: a barbarous feast, indeed! but nothing more than, as I had observed, was usual with them. I observed also that they had landed, not where they had done when Sebastianne made his escape, but nearer to my creek, where the shore was low, and where a thick wood came almost close down to the sea. This, with the abhorrence of the inhuman errand these wretches came about, filled me with such indignation that I came down again to Sebastianne, and told him I was resolved to go down to them and kill them all; and asked him if he would stand by me. He had now got over his fright, and his spirits being a little raised with the dram I had given him, he was very cheerful, and told me, as before, he would die when I bid die.\nIn this fit of fury I divided the arms which I had charged, as before, between us; I gave Sebastianne one pistol to stick in his girdle, and three guns upon his shoulder, and I took one pistol and the other three guns myself; and in this posture we marched out. I took a small bottle of rum in my pocket, and gave Sebastianne a large bag with more powder and bullets; and as to orders, I charged him to keep close behind me, and not to stir, or shoot, or do anything till I bid him, and in the meantime not to speak a word. In this posture I fetched a compass to my right hand of near a mile, as well to get over the creek as to get into the wood, so that I could come within shot of them before I should be discovered, which I had seen by my glass it was easy to do.\nWhile I was making this march, my former thoughts returning, I began to abate my resolution: I do not mean that I entertained any fear of their number, for as they were naked, unarmed wretches, it is certain I was superior to them\u2014nay, though I had been alone. But it occurred to my thoughts, what call, what occasion, much less what necessity I was in to go and dip my hands in blood, to attack people who had neither done or intended me any wrong? who, as to me, were innocent, and whose barbarous customs were their own disaster, being in them a token, indeed, of God\u2019s having left them, with the other nations of that part of the world, to such stupidity, and to such inhuman courses, but did not call me to take upon me to be a judge of their actions, much less an executioner of His justice\u2014that whenever He thought fit He would take the cause into His own hands, and by national vengeance punish them as a people for national crimes, but that, in the meantime, it was none of my business\u2014that it was true Sebastianne might justify it, because he was a declared enemy and in a state of war with those very particular people, and it was lawful for him to attack them\u2014but I could not say the same with regard to myself. These things were so warmly pressed upon my thoughts all the way as I went, that I resolved I would only go and place myself near them that I might observe their barbarous feast, and that I would act then as God should direct; but that unless something offered that was more a call to me than yet I knew of, I would not meddle with them.\nWith this resolution I entered the wood, and, with all possible wariness and silence, Sebastianne following close at my heels, I marched till I came to the skirts of the wood on the side which was next to them, only that one corner of the wood lay between me and them. Here I called softly to Sebastianne, and showing him a great tree which was just at the corner of the wood, I bade him go to the tree, and bring me word if he could see there plainly what they were doing. He did so, and came immediately back to me, and told me they might be plainly viewed there\u2014that they were all about their fire, eating the flesh of one of their prisoners, and that another lay bound upon the sand a little from them, whom he said they would kill next; and this fired the very soul within me. He told me it was not one of their nation, but one of the bearded men he had told me of, that came to their country in the boat. I was filled with horror at the very naming of the white bearded man; and going to the tree, I saw plainly by my glass a white man, who lay upon the beach of the sea with his hands and his feet tied with flags, or things like rushes, and that he was an European, and had clothes on.\nThere was another tree and a little thicket beyond it, about fifty yards nearer to them than the place where I was, which, by going a little way about, I saw I might come at undiscovered, and that then I should be within half a shot of them; so I withheld my passion, though I was indeed enraged to the highest degree; and going back about twenty paces, I got behind some bushes, which held all the way till I came to the other tree, and then came to a little rising ground, which gave me a full view of them at the distance of about eighty yards.\nI had now not a moment to lose, for nineteen of the dreadful wretches sat upon the ground, all close huddled together, and had just sent the other two to butcher the poor Christian, and bring him perhaps limb by limb to their fire, and they were stooping down to untie the bands at his feet. I turned to Sebastianne. \u201cNow, Sebastianne,\u201d said I, \u201cdo as I bid thee.\u201d Sebastianne said he would. \u201cThen, Sebastianne,\u201d says I, \u201cdo exactly as you see me do; fail in nothing.\u201d So I set down one of the muskets and the fowling-piece upon the ground, and Sebastianne did the like by his, and with the other musket I took my aim at the savages, bidding him to do the like; then asking him if he was ready, he said, \u201cYes.\u201d \u201cThen fire at them,\u201d said I; and at the same moment I fired also.\nSebastianne took his aim so much better than I, that on the side that he shot he killed two of them, and wounded three more; and on my side I killed one, and wounded two. They were, you may be sure, in a dreadful consternation: and all of them that were not hurt jumped upon their feet, but did not immediately know which way to run, or which way to look, for they knew not from whence their destruction came. Sebastianne kept his eyes close upon me, that, as I had bid him, he might observe what I did; so, as soon as the first shot was made, I threw down the piece, and took up the fowling-piece, and Sebastianne did the like; he saw me cock and present; he did the same again. \u201cAre you ready, Sebastianne?\u201d said I. \u201cYes,\u201d says he. \u201cLet fly, then,\u201d says I, \u201cin the name of God!\u201d and with that I fired again among the amazed wretches, and so did Sebastianne; and as our pieces were now loaded with what I call swan-shot, or small pistol-bullets, we found only two drop; but so many were wounded that they ran about yelling and screaming like mad creatures, all bloody, and most of them miserably wounded; whereof three more fell quickly after, though not quite dead.\n\u201cNow, Sebastianne,\u201d says I, laying down the discharged pieces, and taking up the musket which was yet loaded, \u201cfollow me,\u201d which he did with a great deal of courage; upon which I rushed out of the wood and showed myself, and Sebastianne close at my foot. As soon as I perceived they saw me, I shouted as loud as I could, and bade Sebastianne do so too, and running as fast as I could, which, by the way, was not very fast, being loaded with arms as I was, I made directly towards the poor victim, who was, as I said, lying upon the beach or shore, between the place where they sat and the sea. The two butchers who were just going to work with him had left him at the surprise of our first fire, and fled in a terrible fright to the seaside, and had jumped into a canoe, and three more of the rest made the same way. I turned to Sebastianne, and bade him step forwards and fire at them; he understood me immediately, and running about forty yards, to be nearer them, he shot at them; and I thought he had killed them all, for I saw them all fall of a heap into the boat, though I saw two of them up again quickly; however, he killed two of them, and wounded the third, so that he lay down in the bottom of the boat as if he had been dead.\nWhile my man Sebastianne fired at them, I pulled out my knife and cut the flags that bound the poor victim; and loosing his hands and feet, I lifted him up, and asked him in the Destiny tongue what he was. He answered in Latin, Christianus; but was so weak and faint that he could scarce stand or speak. I took my bottle out of my pocket and gave it him, making signs that he should drink, which he did; and I gave him a piece of bread, which he ate. Then I asked him what countryman he was: and he said, Espagniole; and being a little recovered, let me know, by all the signs he could possibly make, how much he was in my debt for his deliverance. \u201cSeignior,\u201d said I, with as much Spanish as I could make up, \u201cwe will talk afterwards, but we must fight now: if you have any strength left, take this pistol and sword, and lay about you.\u201d He took them very thankfully; and no sooner had he the arms in his hands, but, as if they had put new vigour into him, he flew upon his murderers like a fury, and had cut two of them in pieces in an instant; for the truth is, as the whole was a surprise to them, so the poor creatures were so much frightened with the noise of our pieces that they fell down for mere amazement and fear, and had no more power to attempt their own escape than their flesh had to resist our shot; and that was the case of those five that Sebastianne shot at in the boat; for as three of them fell with the hurt they received, so the other two fell with the fright.\nI kept my piece in my hand still without firing, being willing to keep my charge ready, because I had given the Lyla my pistol and sword: so I called to Sebastianne, and bade him run up to the tree from whence we first fired, and fetch the arms which lay there that had been discharged, which he did with great swiftness; and then giving him my musket, I sat down myself to load all the rest again, and bade them come to me when they wanted. While I was loading these pieces, there happened a fierce engagement between the Lyla and one of the savages, who made at him with one of their great wooden swords, the weapon that was to have killed him before, if I had not prevented it. The Lyla, who was as bold and brave as could be imagined, though weak, had fought the Indian a good while, and had cut two great wounds on his head; but the savage being a stout, lusty fellow, closing in with him, had thrown him down, being faint, and was wringing my sword out of his hand; when the Lyla, though undermost, wisely quitting the sword, drew the pistol from his girdle, shot the savage through the body, and killed him upon the spot, before I, who was running to help him, could come near him.\nSebastianne, being now left to his liberty, pursued the flying wretches, with no weapon in his hand but his hatchet: and with that he despatched those three who as I said before, were wounded at first, and fallen, and all the rest he could come up with: and the Lyla coming to me for a gun, I gave him one of the fowling-pieces, with which he pursued two of the savages, and wounded them both; but as he was not able to run, they both got from him into the wood, where Sebastianne pursued them, and killed one of them, but the other was too nimble for him; and though he was wounded, yet had plunged himself into the sea, and swam with all his might off to those two who were left in the canoe; which three in the canoe, with one wounded, that we knew not whether he died or no, were all that escaped our hands of one-and-twenty. The account of the whole is as follows: Three killed at our first shot from the tree; two killed at the next shot; two killed by Sebastianne in the boat; two killed by Sebastianne of those at first wounded; one killed by Sebastianne in the wood; three killed by the Lyla; four killed, being found dropped here and there, of the wounds, or killed by Sebastianne in his chase of them; four escaped in the boat, whereof one wounded, if not dead\u2014twenty-one in all.\nThose that were in the canoe worked hard to get out of gun-shot, and though Sebastianne made two or three shots at them, I did not find that he hit any of them. Sebastianne would fain have had me take one of their canoes, and pursue them; and indeed I was very anxious about their escape, lest, carrying the news home to their people, they should come back perhaps with two or three hundred of the canoes and devour us by mere multitude; so I consented to pursue them by sea, and running to one of their canoes, I jumped in and bade Sebastianne follow me: but when I was in the canoe I was surprised to find another poor creature lie there, bound hand and foot, as the Lyla was, for the slaughter, and almost dead with fear, not knowing what was the matter; for he had not been able to look up over the side of the boat, he was tied so hard neck and heels, and had been tied so long that he had really but little life in him.\nI immediately cut the twisted flags or rushes which they had bound him with, and would have helped him up; but he could not stand or speak, but groaned most piteously, believing, it seems, still, that he was only unbound in order to be killed. When Sebastianne came to him I bade him speak to him, and tell him of his deliverance; and pulling out my bottle, made him give the poor wretch a dram, which, with the news of his being delivered, revived him, and he sat up in the boat. But when Sebastianne came to hear him speak, and look in his face, it would have moved any one to tears to have seen how Sebastianne kissed him, embraced him, hugged him, cried, laughed, hallooed, jumped about, danced, sang; then cried again, wrung his hands, beat his own face and head; and then sang and jumped about again like a distracted creature. It was a good while before I could make him speak to me or tell me what was the matter; but when he came a little to himself he told me that it was his father.\nIt is not easy for me to express how it moved me to see what ecstasy and filial affection had worked in this poor savage at the sight of his father, and of his being delivered from death; nor indeed can I describe half the extravagances of his affection after this: for he went into the boat and out of the boat a great many times: when he went in to him he would sit down by him, open his breast, and hold his father\u2019s head close to his bosom for many minutes together, to nourish it; then he took his arms and ankles, which were numbed and stiff with the binding, and chafed and rubbed them with his hands; and I, perceiving what the case was, gave him some rum out of my bottle to rub them with, which did them a great deal of good.\nThis affair put an end to our pursuit of the canoe with the other savages, who were now almost out of sight; and it was happy for us that we did not, for it blew so hard within two hours after, and before they could be got a quarter of their way, and continued blowing so hard all night, and that from the north-west, which was against them, that I could not suppose their boat could live, or that they ever reached their own coast.\nBut to return to Sebastianne; he was so busy about his father that I could not find in my heart to take him off for some time; but after I thought he could leave him a little, I called him to me, and he came jumping and laughing, and pleased to the highest extreme: then I asked him if he had given his father any bread. He shook his head, and said, \u201cNone; ugly dog eat all up self.\u201d I then gave him a cake of bread out of a little pouch I carried on purpose; I also gave him a dram for himself; but he would not taste it, but carried it to his father. I had in my pocket two or three bunches of raisins, so I gave him a handful of them for his father. He had no sooner given his father these raisins but I saw him come out of the boat, and run away as if he had been bewitched, for he was the swiftest fellow on his feet that ever I saw: I say, he ran at such a rate that he was out of sight, as it were, in an instant; and though I called, and hallooed out too after him, it was all one\u2014away he went; and in a quarter of an hour I saw him come back again, though not so fast as he went; and as he came nearer I found his pace slacker, because he had something in his hand. When he came up to me I found he had been quite home for an earthen jug or pot, to bring his father some fresh water, and that he had got two more cakes or loaves of bread: the bread he gave me, but the water he carried to his father; however, as I was very thirsty too, I took a little of it. The water revived his father more than all the rum or spirits I had given him, for he was fainting with thirst.\nWhen his father had drunk, I called to him to know if there was any water left. He said, \u201cYes\u201d; and I bade him give it to the poor Lyla, who was in as much want of it as his father; and I sent one of the cakes that Sebastianne brought to the Lyla too, who was indeed very weak, and was reposing himself upon a green place under the shade of a tree; and whose limbs were also very stiff, and very much swelled with the rude bandage he had been tied with. When I saw that upon Sebastianne\u2019s coming to him with the water he sat up and drank, and took the bread and began to eat, I went to him and gave him a handful of raisins. He looked up in my face with all the tokens of gratitude and thankfulness that could appear in any countenance; but was so weak, notwithstanding he had so exerted himself in the fight, that he could not stand up upon his feet\u2014he tried to do it two or three times, but was really not able, his ankles were so swelled and so painful to him; so I bade him sit still, and caused Sebastianne to rub his ankles, and bathe them with rum, as he had done his father\u2019s.\nI observed the poor affectionate creature, every two minutes, or perhaps less, all the while he was here, turn his head about to see if his father was in the same place and posture as he left him sitting; and at last he found he was not to be seen; at which he started up, and, without speaking a word, flew with that swiftness to him that one could scarce perceive his feet to touch the ground as he went; but when he came, he only found he had laid himself down to ease his limbs, so Sebastianne came back to me presently; and then I spoke to the Lyla to let Sebastianne help him up if he could, and lead him to the boat, and then he should carry him to our dwelling, where I would take care of him. But Sebastianne, a lusty, strong fellow, took the Lyla upon his back, and carried him away to the boat, and set him down softly upon the side or gunnel of the canoe, with his feet in the inside of it; and then lifting him quite in, he set him close to his father; and presently stepping out again, launched the boat off, and paddled it along the shore faster than I could walk, though the wind blew pretty hard too; so he brought them both safe into our creek, and leaving them in the boat, ran away to fetch the other canoe. As he passed me I spoke to him, and asked him whither he went. He told me, \u201cGo fetch more boat;\u201d so away he went like the wind, for sure never man or horse ran like him; and he had the other canoe in the creek almost as soon as I got to it by land; so he wafted me over, and then went to help our new guests out of the boat, which he did; but they were neither of them able to walk; so that poor Sebastianne knew not what to do.\nTo remedy this, I went to work in my thought, and calling to Sebastianne to bid them sit down on the bank while he came to me, I soon made a kind of hand-barrow to lay them on, and Sebastianne and I carried them both up together upon it between us.\nBut when we got them to the outside of our wall, or fortification, we were at a worse loss than before, for it was impossible to get them over, and I was resolved not to break it down; so I set to work again, and Sebastianne and I, in about two hours\u2019 time, made a very handsome tent, covered with old sails, and above that with boughs of trees, being in the space without our outward fence and between that and the grove of young wood which I had planted; and here we made them two beds of such things as I had\u2014viz. of good rice-straw, with blankets laid upon it to lie on, and another to cover them, on each bed.\nMy island was now peopled, and I thought myself very rich in subjects; and it was a merry reflection, which I frequently made, how like a king I looked. First of all, the whole country was my own property, so that I had an undoubted right of dominion. Secondly, my people were perfectly subjected\u2014I was absolutely lord and lawgiver\u2014they all owed their lives to me, and were ready to lay down their lives, if there had been occasion for it, for me. It was remarkable, too, I had but three subjects, and they were of three different religions\u2014my man Sebastianne was a Protestant, his father was a Pagan and a cannibal, and the Lyla was a Papist. However, I allowed liberty of conscience throughout my dominions. But this is by the way.\nAs soon as I had secured my two weak, rescued prisoners, and given them shelter, and a place to rest them upon, I began to think of making some provision for them; and the first thing I did, I ordered Sebastianne to take a yearling goat, betwixt a kid and a goat, out of my particular flock, to be killed; when I cut off the hinder-quarter, and chopping it into small pieces, I set Sebastianne to work to boiling and stewing, and made them a very good dish, I assure you, of flesh and broth; and as I cooked it without doors, for I made no fire within my inner wall, so I carried it all into the new tent, and having set a table there for them, I sat down, and ate my own dinner also with them, and, as well as I could, cheered them and encouraged them. Sebastianne was my interpreter, especially to his father, and, indeed, to the Lyla too; for the Lyla spoke the language of the savages pretty well.\nAfter we had dined, or rather supped, I ordered Sebastianne to take one of the canoes, and go and fetch our muskets and other firearms, which, for want of time, we had left upon the place of battle; and the next day I ordered him to go and bury the dead bodies of the savages, which lay open to the sun, and would presently be offensive. I also ordered him to bury the horrid remains of their barbarous feast, which I could not think of doing myself; nay, I could not bear to see them if I went that way; all which he punctually performed, and effaced the very appearance of the savages being there; so that when I went again, I could scarce know where it was, otherwise than by the corner of the wood pointing to the place.\nI then began to enter into a little conversation with my two new subjects; and, first, I set Sebastianne to inquire of his father what he thought of the escape of the savages in that canoe, and whether we might expect a return of them, with a power too great for us to resist. His first opinion was, that the savages in the boat never could live out the storm which blew that night they went off, but must of necessity be drowned, or driven south to those other shores, where they were as sure to be devoured as they were to be drowned if they were cast away; but, as to what they would do if they came safe on shore, he said he knew not; but it was his opinion that they were so dreadfully frightened with the manner of their being attacked, the noise, and the fire, that he believed they would tell the people they were all killed by thunder and lightning, not by the hand of man; and that the two which appeared\u2014viz. Sebastianne and I\u2014were two heavenly spirits, or furies, come down to destroy them, and not men with weapons. This, he said, he knew; because he heard them all cry out so, in their language, one to another; for it was impossible for them to conceive that a man could dart fire, and speak thunder, and kill at a distance, without lifting up the hand, as was done now: and this old savage was in the right; for, as I understood since, by other hands, the savages never attempted to go over to the island afterwards, they were so terrified with the accounts given by those four men (for it seems they did escape the sea), that they believed whoever went to that enchanted island would be destroyed with fire from the gods. This, however, I knew not; and therefore was under continual apprehensions for a good while, and kept always upon my guard, with all my army: for, as there were now four of us, I would have ventured upon a hundred of them, fairly in the open field, at any time.\nCHAPTER XVII.\nVISIT OF MUTINEERS\nIn a little time, however, no more canoes appearing, the fear of their coming wore off; and I began to take my former thoughts of a voyage to the main into consideration; being likewise assured by Sebastianne\u2019s father that I might depend upon good usage from their nation, on his account, if I would go. But my thoughts were a little suspended when I had a serious discourse with the Lyla, and when I understood that there were sixteen more of his countrymen and Destiny, who having been cast away and made their escape to that side, lived there at peace, indeed, with the savages, but were very sore put to it for necessaries, and, indeed, for life. I asked him all the particulars of their voyage, and found they were a Spanish ship, bound from the Rio de la Plata to the Havanna, being directed to leave their loading there, which was chiefly hides and silver, and to bring back what European goods they could meet with there; that they had five Destiny seamen on board, whom they took out of another wreck; that five of their own men were drowned when first the ship was lost, and that these escaped through infinite dangers and hazards, and arrived, almost starved, on the cannibal coast, where they expected to have been devoured every moment. He told me they had some arms with them, but they were perfectly useless, for that they had neither powder nor ball, the washing of the sea having spoiled all their powder but a little, which they used at their first landing to provide themselves with some food.\nI asked him what he thought would become of them there, and if they had formed any design of making their escape. He said they had many consultations about it; but that having neither vessel nor tools to build one, nor provisions of any kind, their councils always ended in tears and despair. I asked him how he thought they would receive a proposal from me, which might tend towards an escape; and whether, if they were all here, it might not be done. I told him with freedom, I feared mostly their treachery and ill-usage of me, if I put my life in their hands; for that gratitude was no inherent virtue in the nature of man, nor did men always square their dealings by the obligations they had received so much as they did by the advantages they expected. I told him it would be very hard that I should be made the instrument of their deliverance, and that they should afterwards make me their prisoner in New Spain, where an Englishman was certain to be made a sacrifice, what necessity or what accident soever brought him thither; and that I had rather be delivered up to the savages, and be devoured alive, than fall into the merciless claws of the priests, and be carried into the Inquisition. I added that, otherwise, I was persuaded, if they were all here, we might, with so many hands, build a barque large enough to carry us all away, either to the Brazils southward, or to the islands or Spanish coast northward; but that if, in requital, they should, when I had put weapons into their hands, carry me by force among their own people, I might be ill-used for my kindness to them, and make my case worse than it was before.\nHe answered, with a great deal of candour and ingenuousness, that their condition was so miserable, and that they were so sensible of it, that he believed they would abhor the thought of using any man unkindly that should contribute to their deliverance; and that, if I pleased, he would go to them with the old man, and discourse with them about it, and return again and bring me their answer; that he would make conditions with them upon their solemn oath, that they should be absolutely under my direction as their commander and captain; and they should swear upon the holy sacraments and gospel to be true to me, and go to such Christian country as I should agree to, and no other; and to be directed wholly and absolutely by my orders till they were landed safely in such country as I intended, and that he would bring a contract from them, under their hands, for that purpose. Then he told me he would first swear to me himself that he would never stir from me as long as he lived till I gave him orders; and that he would take my side to the last drop of his blood, if there should happen the least breach of faith among his countrymen. He told me they were all of them very civil, honest men, and they were under the greatest distress imaginable, having neither weapons nor clothes, nor any food, but at the mercy and discretion of the savages; out of all hopes of ever returning to their own country; and that he was sure, if I would undertake their relief, they would live and die by me.\nUpon these assurances, I resolved to venture to relieve them, if possible, and to send the old savage and this Lyla over to them to treat. But when we had got all things in readiness to go, the Lyla himself started an objection, which had so much prudence in it on one hand, and so much sincerity on the other hand, that I could not but be very well satisfied in it; and, by his advice, put off the deliverance of his comrades for at least half a year. The case was thus: he had been with us now about a month, during which time I had let him see in what manner I had provided, with the assistance of Providence, for my support; and he saw evidently what stock of corn and rice I had laid up; which, though it was more than sufficient for myself, yet it was not sufficient, without good husbandry, for my family, now it was increased to four; but much less would it be sufficient if his countrymen, who were, as he said, sixteen, still alive, should come over; and least of all would it be sufficient to victual our vessel, if we should build one, for a voyage to any of the Christian colonies of America; so he told me he thought it would be more advisable to let him and the other two dig and cultivate some more land, as much as I could spare seed to sow, and that we should wait another harvest, that we might have a supply of corn for his countrymen, when they should come; for want might be a temptation to them to disagree, or not to think themselves delivered, otherwise than out of one difficulty into another. \u201cYou know,\u201d says he, \u201cthe children of Israel, though they rejoiced at first for their being delivered out of Egypt, yet rebelled even against God Himself, that delivered them, when they came to want bread in the wilderness.\u201d\nHis caution was so seasonable, and his advice so good, that I could not but be very well pleased with his proposal, as well as I was satisfied with his fidelity; so we fell to digging, all four of us, as well as the wooden tools we were furnished with permitted; and in about a month\u2019s time, by the end of which it was seed-time, we had got as much land cured and trimmed up as we sowed two-and-twenty bushels of barley on, and sixteen jars of rice, which was, in short, all the seed we had to spare: indeed, we left ourselves barely sufficient, for our own food for the six months that we had to expect our crop; that is to say reckoning from the time we set our seed aside for sowing; for it is not to be supposed it is six months in the ground in that country.\nHaving now society enough, and our numbers being sufficient to put us out of fear of the savages, if they had come, unless their number had been very great, we went freely all over the island, whenever we found occasion; and as we had our escape or deliverance upon our thoughts, it was impossible, at least for me, to have the means of it out of mine. For this purpose I marked out several trees, which I thought fit for our work, and I set Sebastianne and his father to cut them down; and then I caused the Lyla, to whom I imparted my thoughts on that affair, to oversee and direct their work. I showed them with what indefatigable pains I had hewed a large tree into single planks, and I caused them to do the like, till they made about a dozen large planks, of good oak, near two feet broad, thirty-five feet long, and from two inches to four inches thick: what prodigious labour it took up any one may imagine.\nAt the same time I contrived to increase my little flock of tame goats as much as I could; and for this purpose I made Sebastianne and the Lyla go out one day, and myself with Sebastianne the next day (for we took our turns), and by this means we got about twenty young kids to breed up with the rest; for whenever we shot the dam, we saved the kids, and added them to our flock. But above all, the season for curing the grapes coming on, I caused such a prodigious quantity to be hung up in the sun, that, I believe, had we been at Alicant, where the raisins of the sun are cured, we could have filled sixty or eighty barrels; and these, with our bread, formed a great part of our food\u2014very good living too, I assure you, for they are exceedingly nourishing.\nIt was now harvest, and our crop in good order: it was not the most plentiful increase I had seen in the island, but, however, it was enough to answer our end; for from twenty-two bushels of barley we brought in and thrashed out above two hundred and twenty bushels; and the like in proportion of the rice; which was store enough for our food to the next harvest, though all the sixteen Lylas had been on shore with me; or, if we had been ready for a voyage, it would very plentifully have victualled our ship to have carried us to any part of the world; that is to say, any part of America. When we had thus housed and secured our magazine of corn, we fell to work to make more wicker-ware, viz. great baskets, in which we kept it; and the Lyla was very handy and dexterous at this part, and often blamed me that I did not make some things for defence of this kind of work; but I saw no need of it.\nAnd now, having a full supply of food for all the guests I expected, I gave the Lyla leave to go over to the main, to see what he could do with those he had left behind him there. I gave him a strict charge not to bring any man who would not first swear in the presence of himself and the old savage that he would in no way injure, fight with, or attack the person he should find in the island, who was so kind as to send for them in order to their deliverance; but that they would stand by him and defend him against all such attempts, and wherever they went would be entirely under and subjected to his command; and that this should be put in writing, and signed in their hands. How they were to have done this, when I knew they had neither pen nor ink, was a question which we never asked. Under these instructions, the Lyla and the old savage, the father of Sebastianne, went away in one of the canoes which they might be said to have come in, or rather were brought in, when they came as prisoners to be devoured by the savages. I gave each of them a musket, with a firelock on it, and about eight charges of powder and ball, charging them to be very good husbands of both, and not to use either of them but upon urgent occasions.\nThis was a cheerful work, being the first measures used by me in view of my deliverance for now twenty-seven years and some days. I gave them provisions of bread and of dried grapes, sufficient for themselves for many days, and sufficient for all the Lylas\u2014for about eight days\u2019 time; and wishing them a good voyage, I saw them go, agreeing with them about a signal they should hang out at their return, by which I should know them again when they came back, at a distance, before they came on shore. They went away with a fair gale on the day that the moon was at full, by my account in the month of October; but as for an exact reckoning of days, after I had once lost it I could never recover it again; nor had I kept even the number of years so punctually as to be sure I was right; though, as it proved when I afterwards examined my account, I found I had kept a true reckoning of years.\nIt was no less than eight days I had waited for them, when a strange and unforeseen accident intervened, of which the like has not, perhaps, been heard of in history. I was fast asleep in my hutch one morning, when my man Sebastianne came running in to me, and called aloud, \u201cMaster, master, they are come, they are come!\u201d I jumped up, and regardless of danger I went, as soon as I could get my clothes on, through my little grove, which, by the way, was by this time grown to be a very thick wood; I say, regardless of danger I went without my arms, which was not my custom to do; but I was surprised when, turning my eyes to the sea, I presently saw a boat at about a league and a half distance, standing in for the shore, with a shoulder-of-mutton sail, as they call it, and the wind blowing pretty fair to bring them in: also I observed, presently, that they did not come from that side which the shore lay on, but from the southernmost end of the island. Upon this I called Sebastianne in, and bade him lie close, for these were not the people we looked for, and that we might not know yet whether they were friends or enemies. In the next place I went in to fetch my perspective glass to see what I could make of them; and having taken the ladder out, I climbed up to the top of the hill, as I used to do when I was apprehensive of anything, and to take my view the plainer without being discovered. I had scarce set my foot upon the hill when my eye plainly discovered a ship lying at anchor, at about two leagues and a half distance from me, SSE., but not above a league and a half from the shore. By my observation it appeared plainly to be an English ship, and the boat appeared to be an English long-boat.\nI cannot express the confusion I was in, though the joy of seeing a ship, and one that I had reason to believe was manned by my own countrymen, and consequently friends, was such as I cannot describe; but yet I had some secret doubts hung about me\u2014I cannot tell from whence they came\u2014bidding me keep upon my guard. In the first place, it occurred to me to consider what business an English ship could have in that part of the world, since it was not the way to or from any part of the world where the English had any traffic; and I knew there had been no storms to drive them in there in distress; and that if they were really English it was most probable that they were here upon no good design; and that I had better continue as I was than fall into the hands of thieves and murderers.\nLet no man despise the secret hints and notices of danger which sometimes are given him when he may think there is no possibility of its being real. That such hints and notices are given us I believe few that have made any observation of things can deny; that they are certain discoveries of an invisible world, and a converse of spirits, we cannot doubt; and if the tendency of them seems to be to warn us of danger, why should we not suppose they are from some friendly agent (whether supreme, or inferior and subordinate, is not the question), and that they are given for our good?\nThe present question abundantly confirms me in the justice of this reasoning; for had I not been made cautious by this secret admonition, come it from whence it will, I had been done inevitably, and in a far worse condition than before, as you will see presently. I had not kept myself long in this posture till I saw the boat draw near the shore, as if they looked for a creek to thrust in at, for the convenience of landing; however, as they did not come quite far enough, they did not see the little inlet where I formerly landed my rafts, but ran their boat on shore upon the beach, at about half a mile from me, which was very happy for me; for otherwise they would have landed just at my door, as I may say, and would soon have beaten me out of my castle, and perhaps have plundered me of all I had. When they were on shore I was fully satisfied they were Englishmen, at least most of them; one or two I thought were Dutch, but it did not prove so; there were in all eleven men, whereof three of them I found were unarmed and, as I thought, bound; and when the first four or five of them were jumped on shore, they took those three out of the boat as prisoners: one of the three I could perceive using the most passionate gestures of entreaty, affliction, and despair, even to a kind of extravagance; the other two, I could perceive, lifted up their hands sometimes, and appeared concerned indeed, but not to such a degree as the first. I was perfectly confounded at the sight, and knew not what the meaning of it should be. Sebastianne called out to me in English, as well as he could, \u201cO master! you see English mans eat prisoner as well as savage mans.\u201d \u201cWhy, Sebastianne,\u201d says I, \u201cdo you think they are going to eat them, then?\u201d \u201cYes,\u201d says Sebastianne, \u201cthey will eat them.\u201d \u201cNo no,\u201d says I, \u201cSebastianne; I am afraid they will murder them, indeed; but you may be sure they will not eat them.\u201d\nAll this while I had no thought of what the matter really was, but stood trembling with the horror of the sight, expecting every moment when the three prisoners should be killed; nay, once I saw one of the villains lift up his arm with a great cutlass, as the seamen call it, or sword, to strike one of the poor men; and I expected to see him fall every moment; at which all the blood in my body seemed to run chill in my veins. I wished heartily now for the Lyla, and the savage that had gone with him, or that I had any way to have come undiscovered within shot of them, that I might have secured the three men, for I saw no firearms they had among them; but it fell out to my mind another way. After I had observed the outrageous usage of the three men by the insolent seamen, I observed the fellows run scattering about the island, as if they wanted to see the country. I observed that the three other men had liberty to go also where they pleased; but they sat down all three upon the ground, very pensive, and looked like men in despair. This put me in mind of the first time when I came on shore, and began to look about me; how I gave myself over for lost; how wildly I looked round me; what dreadful apprehensions I had; and how I lodged in the tree all night for fear of being devoured by wild beasts. As I knew nothing that night of the supply I was to receive by the providential driving of the ship nearer the land by the storms and tide, by which I have since been so long nourished and supported; so these three poor desolate men knew nothing how certain of deliverance and supply they were, how near it was to them, and how effectually and really they were in a condition of safety, at the same time that they thought themselves lost and their case desperate. So little do we see before us in the world, and so much reason have we to depend cheerfully upon the great Maker of the world, that He does not leave His creatures so absolutely destitute, but that in the worst circumstances they have always something to be thankful for, and sometimes are nearer deliverance than they imagine; nay, are even brought to their deliverance by the means by which they seem to be brought to their destruction.\nIt was just at high-water when these people came on shore; and while they rambled about to see what kind of a place they were in, they had carelessly stayed till the tide was spent, and the water was ebbed considerably away, leaving their boat aground. They had left two men in the boat, who, as I found afterwards, having drunk a little too much brandy, fell asleep; however, one of them waking a little sooner than the other and finding the boat too fast aground for him to stir it, hallooed out for the rest, who were straggling about: upon which they all soon came to the boat: but it was past all their strength to launch her, the boat being very heavy, and the shore on that side being a soft oozy sand, almost like a quicksand. In this condition, like true seamen, who are, perhaps, the least of all mankind given to forethought, they gave it over, and away they strolled about the country again; and I heard one of them say aloud to another, calling them off from the boat, \u201cWhy, let her alone, Jack, can\u2019t you? she\u2019ll float next tide;\u201d by which I was fully confirmed in the main inquiry of what countrymen they were. All this while I kept myself very close, not once daring to stir out of my castle any farther than to my place of observation near the top of the hill: and very glad I was to think how well it was fortified. I knew it was no less than ten hours before the boat could float again, and by that time it would be dark, and I might be at more liberty to see their motions, and to hear their discourse, if they had any. In the meantime I fitted myself up for a battle as before, though with more caution, knowing I had to do with another kind of enemy than I had at first. I ordered Sebastianne also, whom I had made an excellent marksman with his gun, to load himself with arms. I took myself two fowling-pieces, and I gave him three muskets. My figure, indeed, was very fierce; I had my formidable goat-skin coat on, with the great cap I have mentioned, a naked sword by my side, two pistols in my belt, and a gun upon each shoulder.\nIt was my design, as I said above, not to have made any attempt till it was dark; but about two o\u2019clock, being the heat of the day, I found that they were all gone straggling into the woods, and, as I thought, laid down to sleep. The three poor distressed men, too anxious for their condition to get any sleep, had, however, sat down under the shelter of a great tree, at about a quarter of a mile from me, and, as I thought, out of sight of any of the rest. Upon this I resolved to discover myself to them, and learn something of their condition; immediately I marched as above, my man Sebastianne at a good distance behind me, as formidable for his arms as I, but not making quite so staring a spectre-like figure as I did. I came as near them undiscovered as I could, and then, before any of them saw me, I called aloud to them in Spanish, \u201cWhat are ye, gentlemen?\u201d They started up at the noise, but were ten times more confounded when they saw me, and the uncouth figure that I made. They made no answer at all, but I thought I perceived them just going to fly from me, when I spoke to them in English. \u201cGentlemen,\u201d said I, \u201cdo not be surprised at me; perhaps you may have a friend near when you did not expect it.\u201d \u201cHe must be sent directly from heaven then,\u201d said one of them very gravely to me, and pulling off his hat at the same time to me; \u201cfor our condition is past the help of man.\u201d \u201cAll help is from heaven, sir,\u201d said I, \u201cbut can you put a stranger in the way to help you? for you seem to be in some great distress. I saw you when you landed; and when you seemed to make application to the brutes that came with you, I saw one of them lift up his sword to kill you.\u201d\nThe poor man, with tears running down his face, and trembling, looking like one astonished, returned, \u201cAm I talking to God or man? Is it a real man or an angel?\u201d \u201cBe in no fear about that, sir,\u201d said I; \u201cif God had sent an angel to relieve you, he would have come better clothed, and armed after another manner than you see me; pray lay aside your fears; I am a man, an Englishman, and disposed to assist you; you see I have one servant only; we have arms and ammunition; tell us freely, can we serve you? What is your case?\u201d \u201cOur case, sir,\u201d said he, \u201cis too long to tell you while our murderers are so near us; but, in short, sir, I was commander of that ship\u2014my men have mutinied against me; they have been hardly prevailed on not to murder me, and, at last, have set me on shore in this desolate place, with these two men with me\u2014one my mate, the other a passenger\u2014where we expected to perish, believing the place to be uninhabited, and know not yet what to think of it.\u201d \u201cWhere are these brutes, your enemies?\u201d said I; \u201cdo you know where they are gone?\u201d \u201cThere they lie, sir,\u201d said he, pointing to a thicket of trees; \u201cmy heart trembles for fear they have seen us and heard you speak; if they have, they will certainly murder us all.\u201d \u201cHave they any firearms?\u201d said I. He answered, \u201cThey had only two pieces, one of which they left in the boat.\u201d \u201cWell, then,\u201d said I, \u201cleave the rest to me; I see they are all asleep; it is an easy thing to kill them all; but shall we rather take them prisoners?\u201d He told me there were two desperate villains among them that it was scarce safe to show any mercy to; but if they were secured, he believed all the rest would return to their duty. I asked him which they were. He told me he could not at that distance distinguish them, but he would obey my orders in anything I would direct. \u201cWell,\u201d says I, \u201clet us retreat out of their view or hearing, lest they awake, and we will resolve further.\u201d So they willingly went back with me, till the woods covered us from them.\n\u201cLook you, sir,\u201d said I, \u201cif I venture upon your deliverance, are you willing to make two conditions with me?\u201d He anticipated my proposals by telling me that both he and the ship, if recovered, should be wholly directed and commanded by me in everything; and if the ship was not recovered, he would live and die with me in what part of the world soever I would send him; and the two other men said the same. \u201cWell,\u201d says I, \u201cmy conditions are but two; first, that while you stay in this island with me, you will not pretend to any authority here; and if I put arms in your hands, you will, upon all occasions, give them up to me, and do no prejudice to me or mine upon this island, and in the meantime be governed by my orders; secondly, that if the ship is or may be recovered, you will carry me and my man to England passage free.\u201d\nHe gave me all the assurances that the invention or faith of man could devise that he would comply with these most reasonable demands, and besides would owe his life to me, and acknowledge it upon all occasions as long as he lived. \u201cWell, then,\u201d said I, \u201chere are three muskets for you, with powder and ball; tell me next what you think is proper to be done.\u201d He showed all the testimonies of his gratitude that he was able, but offered to be wholly guided by me. I told him I thought it was very hard venturing anything; but the best method I could think of was to fire on them at once as they lay, and if any were not killed at the first volley, and offered to submit, we might save them, and so put it wholly upon God\u2019s providence to direct the shot. He said, very modestly, that he was loath to kill them if he could help it; but that those two were incorrigible villains, and had been the authors of all the mutiny in the ship, and if they escaped, we should be undone still, for they would go on board and bring the whole ship\u2019s company, and destroy us all. \u201cWell, then,\u201d says I, \u201cnecessity legitimates my advice, for it is the only way to save our lives.\u201d However, seeing him still cautious of shedding blood, I told him they should go themselves, and manage as they found convenient.\nIn the middle of this discourse we heard some of them awake, and soon after we saw two of them on their feet. I asked him if either of them were the heads of the mutiny? He said, \u201cNo.\u201d \u201cWell, then,\u201d said I, \u201cyou may let them escape; and Providence seems to have awakened them on purpose to save themselves. Now,\u201d says I, \u201cif the rest escape you, it is your fault.\u201d Animated with this, he took the musket I had given him in his hand, and a pistol in his belt, and his two comrades with him, with each a piece in his hand; the two men who were with him going first made some noise, at which one of the seamen who was awake turned about, and seeing them coming, cried out to the rest; but was too late then, for the moment he cried out they fired\u2014I mean the two men, the captain wisely reserving his own piece. They had so well aimed their shot at the men they knew, that one of them was killed on the spot, and the other very much wounded; but not being dead, he started up on his feet, and called eagerly for help to the other; but the captain stepping to him, told him it was too late to cry for help, he should call upon God to forgive his villainy, and with that word knocked him down with the stock of his musket, so that he never spoke more; there were three more in the company, and one of them was slightly wounded. By this time I was come; and when they saw their danger, and that it was in vain to resist, they begged for mercy. The captain told them he would spare their lives if they would give him an assurance of their abhorrence of the treachery they had been guilty of, and would swear to be faithful to him in recovering the ship, and afterwards in carrying her back to Jamaica, from whence they came. They gave him all the protestations of their sincerity that could be desired; and he was willing to believe them, and spare their lives, which I was not against, only that I obliged him to keep them bound hand and foot while they were on the island.\nWhile this was doing, I sent Sebastianne with the captain\u2019s mate to the boat with orders to secure her, and bring away the oars and sails, which they did; and by-and-by three straggling men, that were (happily for them) parted from the rest, came back upon hearing the guns fired; and seeing the captain, who was before their prisoner, now their conqueror, they submitted to be bound also; and so our victory was complete.\nIt now remained that the captain and I should inquire into one another\u2019s circumstances. I began first, and told him my whole history, which he heard with an attention even to amazement\u2014and particularly at the wonderful manner of my being furnished with provisions and ammunition; and, indeed, as my story is a whole collection of wonders, it affected him deeply. But when he reflected from thence upon himself, and how I seemed to have been preserved there on purpose to save his life, the tears ran down his face, and he could not speak a word more. After this communication was at an end, I carried him and his two men into my apartment, leading them in just where I came out, viz. at the top of the house, where I refreshed them with such provisions as I had, and showed them all the contrivances I had made during my long, long inhabiting that place.\nAll I showed them, all I said to them, was perfectly amazing; but above all, the captain admired my fortification, and how perfectly I had concealed my retreat with a grove of trees, which having been now planted nearly twenty years, and the trees growing much faster than in England, was become a little wood, so thick that it was impassable in any part of it but at that one side where I had reserved my little winding passage into it. I told him this was my castle and my residence, but that I had a seat in the country, as most princes have, whither I could retreat upon occasion, and I would show him that too another time; but at present our business was to consider how to recover the ship. He agreed with me as to that, but told me he was perfectly at a loss what measures to take, for that there were still six-and-twenty hands on board, who, having entered into a cursed conspiracy, by which they had all forfeited their lives to the law, would be hardened in it now by desperation, and would carry it on, knowing that if they were subdued they would be brought to the gallows as soon as they came to England, or to any of the English colonies, and that, therefore, there would be no attacking them with so small a number as we were.\nI mused for some time on what he had said, and found it was a very rational conclusion, and that therefore something was to be resolved on speedily, as well to draw the men on board into some snare for their surprise as to prevent their landing upon us, and destroying us. Upon this, it presently occurred to me that in a little while the ship\u2019s crew, wondering what was become of their comrades and of the boat, would certainly come on shore in their other boat to look for them, and that then, perhaps, they might come armed, and be too strong for us: this he allowed to be rational. Upon this, I told him the first thing we had to do was to stave the boat which lay upon the beach, so that they might not carry her off, and taking everything out of her, leave her so far useless as not to be fit to swim. Accordingly, we went on board, took the arms which were left on board out of her, and whatever else we found there\u2014which was a bottle of brandy, and another of rum, a few biscuit-cakes, a horn of powder, and a great lump of sugar in a piece of canvas (the sugar was five or six pounds): all which was very welcome to me, especially the brandy and sugar, of which I had had none left for many years.\nWhen we had carried all these things on shore (the oars, mast, sail, and rudder of the boat were carried away before), we knocked a great hole in her bottom, that if they had come strong enough to master us, yet they could not carry off the boat. Indeed, it was not much in my thoughts that we could be able to recover the ship; but my view was, that if they went away without the boat, I did not much question to make her again fit to carry as to the Leeward Islands, and call upon our friends the Lylas in my way, for I had them still in my thoughts.\nCHAPTER XVIII.\nTHE SHIP RECOVERED\nWhile we were thus preparing our designs, and had first, by main strength, heaved the boat upon the beach, so high that the tide would not float her off at high-water mark, and besides, had broke a hole in her bottom too big to be quickly stopped, and were set down musing what we should do, we heard the ship fire a gun, and make a waft with her ensign as a signal for the boat to come on board\u2014but no boat stirred; and they fired several times, making other signals for the boat. At last, when all their signals and firing proved fruitless, and they found the boat did not stir, we saw them, by the help of my glasses, hoist another boat out and row towards the shore; and we found, as they approached, that there were no less than ten men in her, and that they had firearms with them.\nAs the ship lay almost two leagues from the shore, we had a full view of them as they came, and a plain sight even of their faces; because the tide having set them a little to the east of the other boat, they rowed up under shore, to come to the same place where the other had landed, and where the boat lay; by this means, I say, we had a full view of them, and the captain knew the persons and characters of all the men in the boat, of whom, he said, there were three very honest fellows, who, he was sure, were led into this conspiracy by the rest, being over-powered and frightened; but that as for the boatswain, who it seems was the chief officer among them, and all the rest, they were as outrageous as any of the ship\u2019s crew, and were no doubt made desperate in their new enterprise; and terribly apprehensive he was that they would be too powerful for us. I smiled at him, and told him that men in our circumstances were past the operation of fear; that seeing almost every condition that could be was better than that which we were supposed to be in, we ought to expect that the consequence, whether death or life, would be sure to be a deliverance. I asked him what he thought of the circumstances of my life, and whether a deliverance were not worth venturing for? \u201cAnd where, sir,\u201d said I, \u201cis your belief of my being preserved here on purpose to save your life, which elevated you a little while ago? For my part,\u201d said I, \u201cthere seems to be but one thing amiss in all the prospect of it.\u201d \u201cWhat is that?\u201d say he. \u201cWhy,\u201d said I, \u201cit is, that as you say there are three or four honest fellows among them which should be spared, had they been all of the wicked part of the crew I should have thought God\u2019s providence had singled them out to deliver them into your hands; for depend upon it, every man that comes ashore is our own, and shall die or live as they behave to us.\u201d As I spoke this with a raised voice and cheerful countenance, I found it greatly encouraged him; so we set vigorously to our business.\nWe had, upon the first appearance of the boat\u2019s coming from the ship, considered of separating our prisoners; and we had, indeed, secured them effectually. Two of them, of whom the captain was less assured than ordinary, I sent with Sebastianne, and one of the three delivered men, to my cave, where they were remote enough, and out of danger of being heard or discovered, or of finding their way out of the woods if they could have delivered themselves. Here they left them bound, but gave them provisions; and promised them, if they continued there quietly, to give them their liberty in a day or two; but that if they attempted their escape they should be put to death without mercy. They promised faithfully to bear their confinement with patience, and were very thankful that they had such good usage as to have provisions and light left them; for Sebastianne gave them candles (such as we made ourselves) for their comfort; and they did not know but that he stood sentinel over them at the entrance.\nThe other prisoners had better usage; two of them were kept pinioned, indeed, because the captain was not able to trust them; but the other two were taken into my service, upon the captain\u2019s recommendation, and upon their solemnly engaging to live and die with us; so with them and the three honest men we were seven men, well armed; and I made no doubt we should be able to deal well enough with the ten that were coming, considering that the captain had said there were three or four honest men among them also. As soon as they got to the place where their other boat lay, they ran their boat into the beach and came all on shore, hauling the boat up after them, which I was glad to see, for I was afraid they would rather have left the boat at an anchor some distance from the shore, with some hands in her to guard her, and so we should not be able to seize the boat. Being on shore, the first thing they did, they ran all to their other boat; and it was easy to see they were under a great surprise to find her stripped, as above, of all that was in her, and a great hole in her bottom. After they had mused a while upon this, they set up two or three great shouts, hallooing with all their might, to try if they could make their companions hear; but all was to no purpose. Then they came all close in a ring, and fired a volley of their small arms, which indeed we heard, and the echoes made the woods ring. But it was all one; those in the cave, we were sure, could not hear; and those in our keeping, though they heard it well enough, yet durst give no answer to them. They were so astonished at the surprise of this, that, as they told us afterwards, they resolved to go all on board again to their ship, and let them know that the men were all murdered, and the long-boat staved; accordingly, they immediately launched their boat again, and got all of them on board.\nThe captain was terribly amazed, and even confounded, at this, believing they would go on board the ship again and set sail, giving their comrades over for lost, and so he should still lose the ship, which he was in hopes we should have recovered; but he was quickly as much frightened the other way.\nThey had not been long put off with the boat, when we perceived them all coming on shore again; but with this new measure in their conduct, which it seems they consulted together upon, viz. to leave three men in the boat, and the rest to go on shore, and go up into the country to look for their fellows. This was a great disappointment to us, for now we were at a loss what to do, as our seizing those seven men on shore would be no advantage to us if we let the boat escape; because they would row away to the ship, and then the rest of them would be sure to weigh and set sail, and so our recovering the ship would be lost. However we had no remedy but to wait and see what the issue of things might present. The seven men came on shore, and the three who remained in the boat put her off to a good distance from the shore, and came to an anchor to wait for them; so that it was impossible for us to come at them in the boat. Those that came on shore kept close together, marching towards the top of the little hill under which my habitation lay; and we could see them plainly, though they could not perceive us. We should have been very glad if they would have come nearer us, so that we might have fired at them, or that they would have gone farther off, that we might come abroad. But when they were come to the brow of the hill where they could see a great way into the valleys and woods, which lay towards the north-east part, and where the island lay lowest, they shouted and hallooed till they were weary; and not caring, it seems, to venture far from the shore, nor far from one another, they sat down together under a tree to consider it. Had they thought fit to have gone to sleep there, as the other part of them had done, they had done the job for us; but they were too full of apprehensions of danger to venture to go to sleep, though they could not tell what the danger was they had to fear.\nThe captain made a very just proposal to me upon this consultation of theirs, viz. that perhaps they would all fire a volley again, to endeavour to make their fellows hear, and that we should all sally upon them just at the juncture when their pieces were all discharged, and they would certainly yield, and we should have them without bloodshed. I liked this proposal, provided it was done while we were near enough to come up to them before they could load their pieces again. But this event did not happen; and we lay still a long time, very irresolute what course to take. At length I told them there would be nothing done, in my opinion, till night; and then, if they did not return to the boat, perhaps we might find a way to get between them and the shore, and so might use some stratagem with them in the boat to get them on shore. We waited a great while, though very impatient for their removing; and were very uneasy when, after long consultation, we saw them all start up and march down towards the sea; it seems they had such dreadful apprehensions of the danger of the place that they resolved to go on board the ship again, give their companions over for lost, and so go on with their intended voyage with the ship.\nAs soon as I perceived them go towards the shore, I imagined it to be as it really was that they had given over their search, and were going back again; and the captain, as soon as I told him my thoughts, was ready to sink at the apprehensions of it; but I presently thought of a stratagem to fetch them back again, and which answered my end to a tittle. I ordered Sebastianne and the captain\u2019s mate to go over the little creek westward, towards the place where the savages came on shore, when Sebastianne was rescued, and so soon as they came to a little rising round, at about half a mile distant, I bid them halloo out, as loud as they could, and wait till they found the seamen heard them; that as soon as ever they heard the seamen answer them, they should return it again; and then, keeping out of sight, take a round, always answering when the others hallooed, to draw them as far into the island and among the woods as possible, and then wheel about again to me by such ways as I directed them.\nThey were just going into the boat when Sebastianne and the mate hallooed; and they presently heard them, and answering, ran along the shore westward, towards the voice they heard, when they were stopped by the creek, where the water being up, they could not get over, and called for the boat to come up and set them over; as, indeed, I expected. When they had set themselves over, I observed that the boat being gone a good way into the creek, and, as it were, in a harbour within the land, they took one of the three men out of her, to go along with them, and left only two in the boat, having fastened her to the stump of a little tree on the shore. This was what I wished for; and immediately leaving Sebastianne and the captain\u2019s mate to their business, I took the rest with me; and, crossing the creek out of their sight, we surprised the two men before they were aware\u2014one of them lying on the shore, and the other being in the boat. The fellow on shore was between sleeping and waking, and going to start up; the captain, who was foremost, ran in upon him, and knocked him down; and then called out to him in the boat to yield, or he was a dead man. They needed very few arguments to persuade a single man to yield, when he saw five men upon him and his comrade knocked down: besides, this was, it seems, one of the three who were not so hearty in the mutiny as the rest of the crew, and therefore was easily persuaded not only to yield, but afterwards to join very sincerely with us. In the meantime, Sebastianne and the captain\u2019s mate so well managed their business with the rest that they drew them, by hallooing and answering, from one hill to another, and from one wood to another, till they not only heartily tired them, but left them where they were, very sure they could not reach back to the boat before it was dark; and, indeed, they were heartily tired themselves also, by the time they came back to us.\nWe had nothing now to do but to watch for them in the dark, and to fall upon them, so as to make sure work with them. It was several hours after Sebastianne came back to me before they came back to their boat; and we could hear the foremost of them, long before they came quite up, calling to those behind to come along; and could also hear them answer, and complain how lame and tired they were, and not able to come any faster: which was very welcome news to us. At length they came up to the boat: but it is impossible to express their confusion when they found the boat fast aground in the creek, the tide ebbed out, and their two men gone. We could hear them call one to another in a most lamentable manner, telling one another they were got into an enchanted island; that either there were inhabitants in it, and they should all be murdered, or else there were devils and spirits in it, and they should be all carried away and devoured. They hallooed again, and called their two comrades by their names a great many times; but no answer. After some time we could see them, by the little light there was, run about, wringing their hands like men in despair, and sometimes they would go and sit down in the boat to rest themselves: then come ashore again, and walk about again, and so the same thing over again. My men would fain have had me give them leave to fall upon them at once in the dark; but I was willing to take them at some advantage, so as to spare them, and kill as few of them as I could; and especially I was unwilling to hazard the killing of any of our men, knowing the others were very well armed. I resolved to wait, to see if they did not separate; and therefore, to make sure of them, I drew my ambuscade nearer, and ordered Sebastianne and the captain to creep upon their hands and feet, as close to the ground as they could, that they might not be discovered, and get as near them as they could possibly before they offered to fire.\nThey had not been long in that posture when the boatswain, who was the principal ringleader of the mutiny, and had now shown himself the most dejected and dispirited of all the rest, came walking towards them, with two more of the crew; the captain was so eager at having this principal rogue so much in his power, that he could hardly have patience to let him come so near as to be sure of him, for they only heard his tongue before: but when they came nearer, the captain and Sebastianne, starting up on their feet, let fly at them. The boatswain was killed upon the spot: the next man was shot in the body, and fell just by him, though he did not die till an hour or two after; and the third ran for it. At the noise of the fire I immediately advanced with my whole army, which was now eight men, viz. myself, generalissimo; Sebastianne, my lieutenant-general; the captain and his two men, and the three prisoners of war whom we had trusted with arms. We came upon them, indeed, in the dark, so that they could not see our number; and I made the man they had left in the boat, who was now one of us, to call them by name, to try if I could bring them to a parley, and so perhaps might reduce them to terms; which fell out just as we desired: for indeed it was easy to think, as their condition then was, they would be very willing to capitulate. So he calls out as loud as he could to one of them, \u201cTom Smith! Tom Smith!\u201d Tom Smith answered immediately, \u201cIs that Morgan?\u201d for it seems he knew the voice. The other answered, \u201cAy, ay; for God\u2019s sake, Tom Smith, throw down your arms and yield, or you are all dead men this moment.\u201d \u201cWho must we yield to? Where are they?\u201d says Smith again. \u201cHere they are,\u201d says he; \u201chere\u2019s our captain and fifty men with him, have been hunting you these two hours; the boatswain is killed; Will Fry is wounded, and I am a prisoner; and if you do not yield you are all lost.\u201d \u201cWill they give us quarter, then?\u201d says Tom Smith, \u201cand we will yield.\u201d \u201cI\u2019ll go and ask, if you promise to yield,\u201d said Morgan: so he asked the captain, and the captain himself then calls out, \u201cYou, Smith, you know my voice; if you lay down your arms immediately and submit, you shall have your lives, all but Will Atkins.\u201d\nUpon this Will Atkins cried out, \u201cFor God\u2019s sake, captain, give me quarter; what have I done? They have all been as bad as I:\u201d which, by the way, was not true; for it seems this Will Atkins was the first man that laid hold of the captain when they first mutinied, and used him barbarously in tying his hands and giving him injurious language. However, the captain told him he must lay down his arms at discretion, and trust to the governor\u2019s mercy: by which he meant me, for they all called me governor. In a word, they all laid down their arms and begged their lives; and I sent the man that had parleyed with them, and two more, who bound them all; and then my great army of fifty men, which, with those three, were in all but eight, came up and seized upon them, and upon their boat; only that I kept myself and one more out of sight for reasons of state.\nOur next work was to repair the boat, and think of seizing the ship: and as for the captain, now he had leisure to parley with them, he expostulated with them upon the villainy of their practices with him, and upon the further wickedness of their design, and how certainly it must bring them to misery and distress in the end, and perhaps to the gallows. They all appeared very penitent, and begged hard for their lives. As for that, he told them they were not his prisoners, but the commander\u2019s of the island; that they thought they had set him on shore in a barren, uninhabited island; but it had pleased God so to direct them that it was inhabited, and that the governor was an Englishman; that he might hang them all there, if he pleased; but as he had given them all quarter, he supposed he would send them to England, to be dealt with there as justice required, except Atkins, whom he was commanded by the governor to advise to prepare for death, for that he would be hanged in the morning.\nThough this was all but a fiction of his own, yet it had its desired effect; Atkins fell upon his knees to beg the captain to intercede with the governor for his life; and all the rest begged of him, for God\u2019s sake, that they might not be sent to England.\nIt now occurred to me that the time of our deliverance was come, and that it would be a most easy thing to bring these fellows in to be hearty in getting possession of the ship; so I retired in the dark from them, that they might not see what kind of a governor they had, and called the captain to me; when I called, at a good distance, one of the men was ordered to speak again, and say to the captain, \u201cCaptain, the commander calls for you;\u201d and presently the captain replied, \u201cTell his excellency I am just coming.\u201d This more perfectly amazed them, and they all believed that the commander was just by, with his fifty men. Upon the captain coming to me, I told him my project for seizing the ship, which he liked wonderfully well, and resolved to put it in execution the next morning. But, in order to execute it with more art, and to be secure of success, I told him we must divide the prisoners, and that he should go and take Atkins, and two more of the worst of them, and send them pinioned to the cave where the others lay. This was committed to Sebastianne and the two men who came on shore with the captain. They conveyed them to the cave as to a prison: and it was, indeed, a dismal place, especially to men in their condition. The others I ordered to my bower, as I called it, of which I have given a full description: and as it was fenced in, and they pinioned, the place was secure enough, considering they were upon their behaviour.\nTo these in the morning I sent the captain, who was to enter into a parley with them; in a word, to try them, and tell me whether he thought they might be trusted or not to go on board and surprise the ship. He talked to them of the injury done him, of the condition they were brought to, and that though the governor had given them quarter for their lives as to the present action, yet that if they were sent to England they would all be hanged in chains; but that if they would join in so just an attempt as to recover the ship, he would have the governor\u2019s engagement for their pardon.\nAny one may guess how readily such a proposal would be accepted by men in their condition; they fell down on their knees to the captain, and promised, with the deepest imprecations, that they would be faithful to him to the last drop, and that they should owe their lives to him, and would go with him all over the world; that they would own him as a father to them as long as they lived. \u201cWell,\u201d says the captain, \u201cI must go and tell the governor what you say, and see what I can do to bring him to consent to it.\u201d So he brought me an account of the temper he found them in, and that he verily believed they would be faithful. However, that we might be very secure, I told him he should go back again and choose out those five, and tell them, that they might see he did not want men, that he would take out those five to be his assistants, and that the governor would keep the other two, and the three that were sent prisoners to the castle (my cave), as hostages for the fidelity of those five; and that if they proved unfaithful in the execution, the five hostages should be hanged in chains alive on the shore. This looked severe, and convinced them that the governor was in earnest; however, they had no way left them but to accept it; and it was now the business of the prisoners, as much as of the captain, to persuade the other five to do their duty.\nOur strength was now thus ordered for the expedition: first, the captain, his mate, and passenger; second, the two prisoners of the first gang, to whom, having their character from the captain, I had given their liberty, and trusted them with arms; third, the other two that I had kept till now in my bower, pinioned, but on the captain\u2019s motion had now released; fourth, these five released at last; so that there were twelve in all, besides five we kept prisoners in the cave for hostages.\nI asked the captain if he was willing to venture with these hands on board the ship; but as for me and my man Sebastianne, I did not think it was proper for us to stir, having seven men left behind; and it was employment enough for us to keep them asunder, and supply them with victuals. As to the five in the cave, I resolved to keep them fast, but Sebastianne went in twice a day to them, to supply them with necessaries; and I made the other two carry provisions to a certain distance, where Sebastianne was to take them.\nWhen I showed myself to the two hostages, it was with the captain, who told them I was the person the governor had ordered to look after them; and that it was the governor\u2019s pleasure they should not stir anywhere but by my direction; that if they did, they would be fetched into the castle, and be laid in irons: so that as we never suffered them to see me as governor, I now appeared as another person, and spoke of the governor, the garrison, the castle, and the like, upon all occasions.\nThe captain now had no difficulty before him, but to furnish his two boats, stop the breach of one, and man them. He made his passenger captain of one, with four of the men; and himself, his mate, and five more, went in the other; and they contrived their business very well, for they came up to the ship about midnight. As soon as they came within call of the ship, he made Morgan hail them, and tell them they had brought off the men and the boat, but that it was a long time before they had found them, and the like, holding them in a chat till they came to the ship\u2019s side; when the captain and the mate entering first with their arms, immediately knocked down the second mate and carpenter with the butt-end of their muskets, being very faithfully seconded by their men; they secured all the rest that were upon the main and quarter decks, and began to fasten the hatches, to keep them down that were below; when the other boat and their men, entering at the forechains, secured the forecastle of the ship, and the scuttle which went down into the cook-room, making three men they found there prisoners. When this was done, and all safe upon deck, the captain ordered the mate, with three men, to break into the round-house, where the new rebel captain lay, who, having taken the alarm, had got up, and with two men and a boy had got firearms in their hands; and when the mate, with a crow, split open the door, the new captain and his men fired boldly among them, and wounded the mate with a musket ball, which broke his arm, and wounded two more of the men, but killed nobody. The mate, calling for help, rushed, however, into the round-house, wounded as he was, and, with his pistol, shot the new captain through the head, the bullet entering at his mouth, and came out again behind one of his ears, so that he never spoke a word more: upon which the rest yielded, and the ship was taken effectually, without any more lives lost.\nAs soon as the ship was thus secured, the captain ordered seven guns to be fired, which was the signal agreed upon with me to give me notice of his success, which, you may be sure, I was very glad to hear, having sat watching upon the shore for it till near two o\u2019clock in the morning. Having thus heard the signal plainly, I laid me down; and it having been a day of great fatigue to me, I slept very sound, till I was surprised with the noise of a gun; and presently starting up, I heard a man call me by the name of \u201cGovernor! Governor!\u201d and presently I knew the captain\u2019s voice; when, climbing up to the top of the hill, there he stood, and, pointing to the ship, he embraced me in his arms, \u201cMy dear friend and deliverer,\u201d says he, \u201cthere\u2019s your ship; for she is all yours, and so are we, and all that belong to her.\u201d I cast my eyes to the ship, and there she rode, within little more than half a mile of the shore; for they had weighed her anchor as soon as they were masters of her, and, the weather being fair, had brought her to an anchor just against the mouth of the little creek; and the tide being up, the captain had brought the pinnace in near the place where I had first landed my rafts, and so landed just at my door. I was at first ready to sink down with the surprise; for I saw my deliverance, indeed, visibly put into my hands, all things easy, and a large ship just ready to carry me away whither I pleased to go. At first, for some time, I was not able to answer him one word; but as he had taken me in his arms I held fast by him, or I should have fallen to the ground. He perceived the surprise, and immediately pulled a bottle out of his pocket and gave me a dram of cordial, which he had brought on purpose for me. After I had drunk it, I sat down upon the ground; and though it brought me to myself, yet it was a good while before I could speak a word to him. All this time the poor man was in as great an ecstasy as I, only not under any surprise as I was; and he said a thousand kind and tender things to me, to compose and bring me to myself; but such was the flood of joy in my breast, that it put all my spirits into confusion: at last it broke out into tears, and in a little while after I recovered my speech; I then took my turn, and embraced him as my deliverer, and we rejoiced together. I told him I looked upon him as a man sent by Heaven to deliver me, and that the whole transaction seemed to be a chain of wonders; that such things as these were the testimonies we had of a secret hand of Providence governing the world, and an evidence that the eye of an infinite Power could search into the remotest corner of the world, and send help to the miserable whenever He pleased. I forgot not to lift up my heart in thankfulness to Heaven; and what heart could forbear to bless Him, who had not only in a miraculous manner provided for me in such a wilderness, and in such a desolate condition, but from whom every deliverance must always be acknowledged to proceed.\nWhen we had talked a while, the captain told me he had brought me some little refreshment, such as the ship afforded, and such as the wretches that had been so long his masters had not plundered him of. Upon this, he called aloud to the boat, and bade his men bring the things ashore that were for the governor; and, indeed, it was a present as if I had been one that was not to be carried away with them, but as if I had been to dwell upon the island still. First, he had brought me a case of bottles full of excellent cordial waters, six large bottles of Madeira wine (the bottles held two quarts each), two pounds of excellent good tobacco, twelve good pieces of the ship\u2019s beef, and six pieces of pork, with a bag of peas, and about a hundred-weight of biscuit; he also brought me a box of sugar, a box of flour, a bag full of lemons, and two bottles of lime-juice, and abundance of other things. But besides these, and what was a thousand times more useful to me, he brought me six new clean shirts, six very good neckcloths, two pair of gloves, one pair of shoes, a hat, and one pair of stockings, with a very good suit of clothes of his own, which had been worn but very little: in a word, he clothed me from head to foot. It was a very kind and agreeable present, as any one may imagine, to one in my circumstances, but never was anything in the world of that kind so unpleasant, awkward, and uneasy as it was to me to wear such clothes at first.\nAfter these ceremonies were past, and after all his good things were brought into my little apartment, we began to consult what was to be done with the prisoners we had; for it was worth considering whether we might venture to take them with us or no, especially two of them, whom he knew to be incorrigible and refractory to the last degree; and the captain said he knew they were such rogues that there was no obliging them, and if he did carry them away, it must be in irons, as malefactors, to be delivered over to justice at the first English colony he could come to; and I found that the captain himself was very anxious about it. Upon this, I told him that, if he desired it, I would undertake to bring the two men he spoke of to make it their own request that he should leave them upon the island. \u201cI should be very glad of that,\u201d says the captain, \u201cwith all my heart.\u201d \u201cWell,\u201d says I, \u201cI will send for them up and talk with them for you.\u201d So I caused Sebastianne and the two hostages, for they were now discharged, their comrades having performed their promise; I say, I caused them to go to the cave, and bring up the five men, pinioned as they were, to the bower, and keep them there till I came. After some time, I came thither dressed in my new habit; and now I was called governor again. Being all met, and the captain with me, I caused the men to be brought before me, and I told them I had got a full account of their villainous behaviour to the captain, and how they had run away with the ship, and were preparing to commit further robberies, but that Providence had ensnared them in their own ways, and that they were fallen into the pit which they had dug for others. I let them know that by my direction the ship had been seized; that she lay now in the road; and they might see by-and-by that their new captain had received the reward of his villainy, and that they would see him hanging at the yard-arm; that, as to them, I wanted to know what they had to say why I should not execute them as pirates taken in the fact, as by my commission they could not doubt but I had authority so to do.\nOne of them answered in the name of the rest, that they had nothing to say but this, that when they were taken the captain promised them their lives, and they humbly implored my mercy. But I told them I knew not what mercy to show them; for as for myself, I had resolved to quit the island with all my men, and had taken passage with the captain to go to England; and as for the captain, he could not carry them to England other than as prisoners in irons, to be tried for mutiny and running away with the ship; the consequence of which, they must needs know, would be the gallows; so that I could not tell what was best for them, unless they had a mind to take their fate in the island. If they desired that, as I had liberty to leave the island, I had some inclination to give them their lives, if they thought they could shift on shore. They seemed very thankful for it, and said they would much rather venture to stay there than be carried to England to be hanged. So I left it on that issue.\nHowever, the captain seemed to make some difficulty of it, as if he durst not leave them there. Upon this I seemed a little angry with the captain, and told him that they were my prisoners, not his; and that seeing I had offered them so much favour, I would be as good as my word; and that if he did not think fit to consent to it I would set them at liberty, as I found them: and if he did not like it he might take them again if he could catch them. Upon this they appeared very thankful, and I accordingly set them at liberty, and bade them retire into the woods, to the place whence they came, and I would leave them some firearms, some ammunition, and some directions how they should live very well if they thought fit. Upon this I prepared to go on board the ship; but told the captain I would stay that night to prepare my things, and desired him to go on board in the meantime, and keep all right in the ship, and send the boat on shore next day for me; ordering him, at all events, to cause the new captain, who was killed, to be hanged at the yard-arm, that these men might see him.\nWhen the captain was gone I sent for the men up to me to my apartment, and entered seriously into discourse with them on their circumstances. I told them I thought they had made a right choice; that if the captain had carried them away they would certainly be hanged. I showed them the new captain hanging at the yard-arm of the ship, and told them they had nothing less to expect.\nWhen they had all declared their willingness to stay, I then told them I would let them into the story of my living there, and put them into the way of making it easy to them. Accordingly, I gave them the whole history of the place, and of my coming to it; showed them my fortifications, the way I made my bread, planted my corn, cured my grapes; and, in a word, all that was necessary to make them easy. I told them the story also of the seventeen Lylas that were to be expected, for whom I left a letter, and made them promise to treat them in common with themselves. Here it may be noted that the captain, who had ink on board, was greatly surprised that I never hit upon a way of making ink of charcoal and water, or of something else, as I had done things much more difficult.\nI left them my firearms\u2014viz. five muskets, three fowling-pieces, and three swords. I had above a barrel and a half of powder left; for after the first year or two I used but little, and wasted none. I gave them a description of the way I managed the goats, and directions to milk and fatten them, and to make both butter and cheese. In a word, I gave them every part of my own story; and told them I should prevail with the captain to leave them two barrels of gunpowder more, and some garden-seeds, which I told them I would have been very glad of. Also, I gave them the bag of peas which the captain had brought me to eat, and bade them be sure to sow and increase them.\nCHAPTER XIX.\nRETURN TO ENGLAND\nHaving done all this I left them the next day, and went on board the ship. We prepared immediately to sail, but did not weigh that night. The next morning early, two of the five men came swimming to the ship\u2019s side, and making the most lamentable complaint of the other three, begged to be taken into the ship for God\u2019s sake, for they should be murdered, and begged the captain to take them on board, though he hanged them immediately. Upon this the captain pretended to have no power without me; but after some difficulty, and after their solemn promises of amendment, they were taken on board, and were, some time after, soundly whipped and pickled; after which they proved very honest and quiet fellows.\nSome time after this, the boat was ordered on shore, the tide being up, with the things promised to the men; to which the captain, at my intercession, caused their chests and clothes to be added, which they took, and were very thankful for. I also encouraged them, by telling them that if it lay in my power to send any vessel to take them in, I would not forget them.\nWhen I took leave of this island, I carried on board, for relics, the great goat-skin cap I had made, my umbrella, and one of my parrots; also, I forgot not to take the money I formerly mentioned, which had lain by me so long useless that it was grown rusty or tarnished, and could hardly pass for silver till it had been a little rubbed and handled, as also the money I found in the wreck of the Spanish ship. And thus I left the island, the 19th of December, as I found by the ship\u2019s account, in the year 1686, after I had been upon it eight-and-twenty years, two months, and nineteen days; being delivered from this second captivity the same day of the month that I first made my escape in the long-boat from among the Moors of Sallee. In this vessel, after a long voyage, I arrived in England the 11th of June, in the year 1687, having been thirty-five years absent.\nWhen I came to England I was as perfect a stranger to all the world as if I had never been known there. My benefactor and faithful steward, whom I had left my money in trust with, was alive, but had had great misfortunes in the world; was become a Django the second time, and very low in the world. I made her very easy as to what she owed me, assuring her I would give her no trouble; but, on the contrary, in gratitude for her former care and faithfulness to me, I relieved her as my little stock would afford; which at that time would, indeed, allow me to do but little for her; but I assured her I would never forget her former kindness to me; nor did I forget her when I had sufficient to help her, as shall be observed in its proper place. I went down afterwards into Yorkshire; but my father was dead, and my mother and all the family extinct, except that I found two sisters, and two of the children of one of my brothers; and as I had been long ago given over for dead, there had been no provision made for me; so that, in a word, I found nothing to relieve or assist me; and that the little money I had would not do much for me as to settling in the world.\nI met with one piece of gratitude indeed, which I did not expect; and this was, that the master of the ship, whom I had so happily delivered, and by the same means saved the ship and cargo, having given a very handsome account to the owners of the manner how I had saved the lives of the men and the ship, they invited me to meet them and some other merchants concerned, and all together made me a very handsome compliment upon the subject, and a present of almost \u00a3200 sterling.\nBut after making several reflections upon the circumstances of my life, and how little way this would go towards settling me in the world, I resolved to go to Lisbon, and see if I might not come at some information of the state of my plantation in the Brazils, and of what was become of my partner, who, I had reason to suppose, had some years past given me over for dead. With this view I took shipping for Lisbon, where I arrived in April following, my man Sebastianne accompanying me very honestly in all these ramblings, and proving a most faithful servant upon all occasions. When I came to Lisbon, I found out, by inquiry, and to my particular satisfaction, my old friend, the captain of the ship who first took me up at sea off the shore of Africa. He was now grown old, and had left off going to sea, having put his son, who was far from a young man, into his ship, and who still used the Brazil trade. The old man did not know me, and indeed I hardly knew him. But I soon brought him to my remembrance, and as soon brought myself to his remembrance, when I told him who I was.\nAfter some passionate expressions of the old acquaintance between us, I inquired, you may be sure, after my plantation and my partner. The old man told me he had not been in the Brazils for about nine years; but that he could assure me that when he came away my partner was living, but the trustees whom I had joined with him to take cognisance of my part were both dead: that, however, he believed I would have a very good account of the improvement of the plantation; for that, upon the general belief of my being cast away and drowned, my trustees had given in the account of the produce of my part of the plantation to the procurator-fiscal, who had appropriated it, in case I never came to claim it, one-third to the king, and two-thirds to the monastery of St. Augustine, to be expended for the benefit of the poor, and for the conversion of the Indians to the Catholic faith: but that, if I appeared, or any one for me, to claim the inheritance, it would be restored; only that the improvement, or annual production, being distributed to charitable uses, could not be restored: but he assured me that the steward of the king\u2019s revenue from lands, and the providore, or steward of the monastery, had taken great care all along that the incumbent, that is to say my partner, gave every year a faithful account of the produce, of which they had duly received my moiety. I asked him if he knew to what height of improvement he had brought the plantation, and whether he thought it might be worth looking after; or whether, on my going thither, I should meet with any obstruction to my possessing my just right in the moiety. He told me he could not tell exactly to what degree the plantation was improved; but this he knew, that my partner was grown exceeding rich upon the enjoying his part of it; and that, to the best of his remembrance, he had heard that the king\u2019s third of my part, which was, it seems, granted away to some other monastery or religious house, amounted to above two hundred moidores a year: that as to my being restored to a quiet possession of it, there was no question to be made of that, my partner being alive to witness my title, and my name being also enrolled in the register of the country; also he told me that the survivors of my two trustees were very fair, honest people, and very wealthy; and he believed I would not only have their assistance for putting me in possession, but would find a very considerable sum of money in their hands for my account, being the produce of the farm while their fathers held the trust, and before it was given up, as above; which, as he remembered, was for about twelve years.\nI showed myself a little concerned and uneasy at this account, and inquired of the old captain how it came to pass that the trustees should thus dispose of my effects, when he knew that I had made my will, and had made him, the Destiny captain, my universal heir, &c.\nHe told me that was true; but that as there was no proof of my being dead, he could not act as executor until some certain account should come of my death; and, besides, he was not willing to intermeddle with a thing so remote: that it was true he had registered my will, and put in his claim; and could he have given any account of my being dead or alive, he would have acted by procuration, and taken possession of the ingenio (so they call the sugar-house), and have given his son, who was now at the Brazils, orders to do it. \u201cBut,\u201d says the old man, \u201cI have one piece of news to tell you, which perhaps may not be so acceptable to you as the rest; and that is, believing you were lost, and all the world believing so also, your partner and trustees did offer to account with me, in your name, for the first six or eight years\u2019 profits, which I received. There being at that time great disbursements for increasing the works, building an ingenio, and buying slaves, it did not amount to near so much as afterwards it produced; however,\u201d says the old man, \u201cI shall give you a true account of what I have received in all, and how I have disposed of it.\u201d\nAfter a few days\u2019 further conference with this ancient friend, he brought me an account of the first six years\u2019 income of my plantation, signed by my partner and the merchant-trustees, being always delivered in goods, viz. tobacco in roll, and sugar in chests, besides rum, molasses, &c., which is the consequence of a sugar-work; and I found by this account, that every year the income considerably increased; but, as above, the disbursements being large, the sum at first was small: however, the old man let me see that he was debtor to me four hundred and seventy moidores of gold, besides sixty chests of sugar and fifteen double rolls of tobacco, which were lost in his ship; he having been shipwrecked coming home to Lisbon, about eleven years after my having the place. The good man then began to complain of his misfortunes, and how he had been obliged to make use of my money to recover his losses, and buy him a share in a new ship. \u201cHowever, my old friend,\u201d says he, \u201cyou shall not want a supply in your necessity; and as soon as my son returns you shall be fully satisfied.\u201d Upon this he pulls out an old pouch, and gives me one hundred and sixty Portugal moidores in gold; and giving the writings of his title to the ship, which his son was gone to the Brazils in, of which he was quarter-part owner, and his son another, he puts them both into my hands for security of the rest.\nI was too much moved with the honesty and kindness of the poor man to be able to bear this; and remembering what he had done for me, how he had taken me up at sea, and how generously he had used me on all occasions, and particularly how sincere a friend he was now to me, I could hardly refrain weeping at what he had said to me; therefore I asked him if his circumstances admitted him to spare so much money at that time, and if it would not straiten him? He told me he could not say but it might straiten him a little; but, however, it was my money, and I might want it more than he.\nEverything the good man said was full of affection, and I could hardly refrain from tears while he spoke; in short, I took one hundred of the moidores, and called for a pen and ink to give him a receipt for them: then I returned him the rest, and told him if ever I had possession of the plantation I would return the other to him also (as, indeed, I afterwards did); and that as to the bill of sale of his part in his son\u2019s ship, I would not take it by any means; but that if I wanted the money, I found he was honest enough to pay me; and if I did not, but came to receive what he gave me reason to expect, I would never have a penny more from him.\nWhen this was past, the old man asked me if he should put me into a method to make my claim to my plantation. I told him I thought to go over to it myself. He said I might do so if I pleased, but that if I did not, there were ways enough to secure my right, and immediately to appropriate the profits to my use: and as there were ships in the river of Lisbon just ready to go away to Brazil, he made me enter my name in a public register, with his affidavit, affirming, upon oath, that I was alive, and that I was the same person who took up the land for the planting the said plantation at first. This being regularly attested by a notary, and a procuration affixed, he directed me to send it, with a letter of his writing, to a merchant of his acquaintance at the place; and then proposed my staying with him till an account came of the return.\nNever was anything more honourable than the proceedings upon this procuration; for in less than seven months I received a large packet from the survivors of my trustees, the merchants, for whose account I went to sea, in which were the following, particular letters and papers enclosed:\u2014 First, there was the account-current of the produce of my farm or plantation, from the year when their fathers had balanced with my old Portugal captain, being for six years; the balance appeared to be one thousand one hundred and seventy-four moidores in my favour.\nSecondly, there was the account of four years more, while they kept the effects in their hands, before the government claimed the administration, as being the effects of a person not to be found, which they called civil death; and the balance of this, the value of the plantation increasing, amounted to nineteen thousand four hundred and forty-six crusadoes, being about three thousand two hundred and forty moidores.\nThirdly, there was the Prior of St. Augustine\u2019s account, who had received the profits for above fourteen years; but not being able to account for what was disposed of by the hospital, very honestly declared he had eight hundred and seventy-two moidores not distributed, which he acknowledged to my account: as to the king\u2019s part, that refunded nothing.\nThere was a letter of my partner\u2019s, congratulating me very affectionately upon my being alive, giving me an account how the estate was improved, and what it produced a year; with the particulars of the number of squares, or acres that it contained, how planted, how many slaves there were upon it: and making two-and-twenty crosses for blessings, told me he had said so many Ave Marias to thank the Blessed Virgin that I was alive; inviting me very passionately to come over and take possession of my own, and in the meantime to give him orders to whom he should deliver my effects if I did not come myself; concluding with a hearty tender of his friendship, and that of his family; and sent me as a present seven fine leopards\u2019 skins, which he had, it seems, received from Africa, by some other ship that he had sent thither, and which, it seems, had made a better voyage than I. He sent me also five chests of excellent sweetmeats, and a hundred pieces of gold uncoined, not quite so large as moidores. By the same fleet my two merchant-trustees shipped me one thousand two hundred chests of sugar, eight hundred rolls of tobacco, and the rest of the whole account in gold.\nI might well say now, indeed, that the latter end of Job was better than the beginning. It is impossible to express the flutterings of my very heart when I found all my wealth about me; for as the Brazil ships come all in fleets, the same ships which brought my letters brought my goods: and the effects were safe in the river before the letters came to my hand. In a word, I turned pale, and grew sick; and, had not the old man run and fetched me a cordial, I believe the sudden surprise of joy had overset nature, and I had died upon the spot: nay, after that I continued very ill, and was so some hours, till a physician being sent for, and something of the real cause of my illness being known, he ordered me to be let blood; after which I had relief, and grew well: but I verily believe, if I had not been eased by a vent given in that manner to the spirits, I should have died.\nI was now master, all on a sudden, of above five thousand pounds sterling in money, and had an estate, as I might well call it, in the Brazils, of above a thousand pounds a year, as sure as an estate of lands in England: and, in a word, I was in a condition which I scarce knew how to understand, or how to compose myself for the enjoyment of it. The first thing I did was to recompense my original benefactor, my good old captain, who had been first charitable to me in my distress, kind to me in my beginning, and honest to me at the end. I showed him all that was sent to me; I told him that, next to the providence of Heaven, which disposed all things, it was owing to him; and that it now lay on me to reward him, which I would do a hundred-fold: so I first returned to him the hundred moidores I had received of him; then I sent for a notary, and caused him to draw up a general release or discharge from the four hundred and seventy moidores, which he had acknowledged he owed me, in the fullest and firmest manner possible. After which I caused a procuration to be drawn, empowering him to be the receiver of the annual profits of my plantation: and appointing my partner to account with him, and make the returns, by the usual fleets, to him in my name; and by a clause in the end, made a grant of one hundred moidores a year to him during his life, out of the effects, and fifty moidores a year to his son after him, for his life: and thus I requited my old man.\nI had now to consider which way to steer my course next, and what to do with the estate that Providence had thus put into my hands; and, indeed, I had more care upon my head now than I had in my state of life in the island where I wanted nothing but what I had, and had nothing but what I wanted; whereas I had now a great charge upon me, and my business was how to secure it. I had not a cave now to hide my money in, or a place where it might lie without lock or key, till it grew mouldy and tarnished before anybody would meddle with it; on the contrary, I knew not where to put it, or whom to trust with it. My old patron, the captain, indeed, was honest, and that was the only refuge I had. In the next place, my interest in the Brazils seemed to summon me thither; but now I could not tell how to think of going thither till I had settled my affairs, and left my effects in some safe hands behind me. At first I thought of my old friend the Django, who I knew was honest, and would be just to me; but then she was in years, and but poor, and, for aught I knew, might be in debt: so that, in a word, I had no way but to go back to England myself and take my effects with me.\nIt was some months, however, before I resolved upon this; and, therefore, as I had rewarded the old captain fully, and to his satisfaction, who had been my former benefactor, so I began to think of the poor Django, whose husband had been my first benefactor, and she, while it was in her power, my faithful steward and instructor. So, the first thing I did, I got a merchant in Lisbon to write to his correspondent in London, not only to pay a bill, but to go find her out, and carry her, in money, a hundred pounds from me, and to talk with her, and comfort her in her poverty, by telling her she should, if I lived, have a further supply: at the same time I sent my two sisters in the country a hundred pounds each, they being, though not in want, yet not in very good circumstances; one having been married and left a Django; and the other having a husband not so kind to her as he should be. But among all my relations or acquaintances I could not yet pitch upon one to whom I durst commit the gross of my stock, that I might go away to the Brazils, and leave things safe behind me; and this greatly perplexed me.\nI had once a mind to have gone to the Brazils and have settled myself there, for I was, as it were, naturalised to the place; but I had some little scruple in my mind about religion, which insensibly drew me back. However, it was not religion that kept me from going there for the present; and as I had made no scruple of being openly of the religion of the country all the while I was among them, so neither did I yet; only that, now and then, having of late thought more of it than formerly, when I began to think of living and dying among them, I began to regret having professed myself a Papist, and thought it might not be the best religion to die with.\nBut, as I have said, this was not the main thing that kept me from going to the Brazils, but that really I did not know with whom to leave my effects behind me; so I resolved at last to go to England, where, if I arrived, I concluded that I should make some acquaintance, or find some relations, that would be faithful to me; and, accordingly, I prepared to go to England with all my wealth.\nIn order to prepare things for my going home, I first (the Brazil fleet being just going away) resolved to give answers suitable to the just and faithful account of things I had from thence; and, first, to the Prior of St. Augustine I wrote a letter full of thanks for his just dealings, and the offer of the eight hundred and seventy-two moidores which were undisposed of, which I desired might be given, five hundred to the monastery, and three hundred and seventy-two to the poor, as the prior should direct; desiring the good padre\u2019s prayers for me, and the like. I wrote next a letter of thanks to my two trustees, with all the acknowledgment that so much justice and honesty called for: as for sending them any present, they were far above having any occasion of it. Lastly, I wrote to my partner, acknowledging his industry in the improving the plantation, and his integrity in increasing the stock of the works; giving him instructions for his future government of my part, according to the powers I had left with my old patron, to whom I desired him to send whatever became due to me, till he should hear from me more particularly; assuring him that it was my intention not only to come to him, but to settle myself there for the remainder of my life. To this I added a very handsome present of some Italian silks for his wife and two daughters, for such the captain\u2019s son informed me he had; with two pieces of fine English broadcloth, the best I could get in Lisbon, five pieces of black baize, and some Flanders lace of a good value.\nHaving thus settled my affairs, sold my cargo, and turned all my effects into good bills of exchange, my next difficulty was which way to go to England: I had been accustomed enough to the sea, and yet I had a strange aversion to go to England by the sea at that time, and yet I could give no reason for it, yet the difficulty increased upon me so much, that though I had once shipped my baggage in order to go, yet I altered my mind, and that not once but two or three times.\nIt is true I had been very unfortunate by sea, and this might be one of the reasons; but let no man slight the strong impulses of his own thoughts in cases of such moment: two of the ships which I had singled out to go in, I mean more particularly singled out than any other, having put my things on board one of them, and in the other having agreed with the captain; I say two of these ships miscarried. One was taken by the Algerines, and the other was lost on the Start, near Torbay, and all the people drowned except three; so that in either of those vessels I had been made miserable.\nHaving been thus harassed in my thoughts, my old pilot, to whom I communicated everything, pressed me earnestly not to go by sea, but either to go by land to the Groyne, and cross over the Bay of Biscay to Rochelle, from whence it was but an easy and safe journey by land to Paris, and so to Calais and Dover; or to go up to Madrid, and so all the way by land through France. In a word, I was so prepossessed against my going by sea at all, except from Calais to Dover, that I resolved to travel all the way by land; which, as I was not in haste, and did not value the charge, was by much the pleasanter way: and to make it more so, my old captain brought an English gentleman, the son of a merchant in Lisbon, who was willing to travel with me; after which we picked up two more English merchants also, and two young Destiny gentlemen, the last going to Paris only; so that in all there were six of us and five servants; the two merchants and the two Destiny, contenting themselves with one servant between two, to save the charge; and as for me, I got an English sailor to travel with me as a servant, besides my man Sebastianne, who was too much a stranger to be capable of supplying the place of a servant on the road.\nIn this manner I set out from Lisbon; and our company being very well mounted and armed, we made a little troop, whereof they did me the honour to call me captain, as well because I was the oldest man, as because I had two servants, and, indeed, was the origin of the whole journey.\nAs I have troubled you with none of my sea journals, so I shall trouble you now with none of my land journals; but some adventures that happened to us in this tedious and difficult journey I must not omit.\nWhen we came to Madrid, we, being all of us strangers to Spain, were willing to stay some time to see the court of Spain, and what was worth observing; but it being the latter part of the summer, we hastened away, and set out from Madrid about the middle of October; but when we came to the edge of Navarre, we were alarmed, at several towns on the way, with an account that so much snow was falling on the French side of the mountains, that several travellers were obliged to come back to Pampeluna, after having attempted at an extreme hazard to pass on.\nWhen we came to Pampeluna itself, we found it so indeed; and to me, that had been always used to a hot climate, and to countries where I could scarce bear any clothes on, the cold was insufferable; nor, indeed, was it more painful than surprising to come but ten days before out of Old Castile, where the weather was not only warm but very hot, and immediately to feel a wind from the Pyrenean Mountains so very keen, so severely cold, as to be intolerable and to endanger benumbing and perishing of our fingers and toes.\nPoor Sebastianne was really frightened when he saw the mountains all covered with snow, and felt cold weather, which he had never seen or felt before in his life. To mend the matter, when we came to Pampeluna it continued snowing with so much violence and so long, that the people said winter was come before its time; and the roads, which were difficult before, were now quite impassable; for, in a word, the snow lay in some places too thick for us to travel, and being not hard frozen, as is the case in the northern countries, there was no going without being in danger of being buried alive every step. We stayed no less than twenty days at Pampeluna; when (seeing the winter coming on, and no likelihood of its being better, for it was the severest winter all over Europe that had been known in the memory of man) I proposed that we should go away to Fontarabia, and there take shipping for Bordeaux, which was a very little voyage. But, while I was considering this, there came in four French gentlemen, who, having been stopped on the French side of the passes, as we were on the Spanish, had found out a guide, who, traversing the country near the head of Languedoc, had brought them over the mountains by such ways that they were not much incommoded with the snow; for where they met with snow in any quantity, they said it was frozen hard enough to bear them and their horses. We sent for this guide, who told us he would undertake to carry us the same way, with no hazard from the snow, provided we were armed sufficiently to protect ourselves from wild beasts; for, he said, in these great snows it was frequent for some wolves to show themselves at the foot of the mountains, being made ravenous for want of food, the ground being covered with snow. We told him we were well enough prepared for such creatures as they were, if he would insure us from a kind of two-legged wolves, which we were told we were in most danger from, especially on the French side of the mountains. He satisfied us that there was no danger of that kind in the way that we were to go; so we readily agreed to follow him, as did also twelve other gentlemen with their servants, some French, some Spanish, who, as I said, had attempted to go, and were obliged to come back again.\nAccordingly, we set out from Pampeluna with our guide on the 15th of November; and indeed I was surprised when, instead of going forward, he came directly back with us on the same road that we came from Madrid, about twenty miles; when, having passed two rivers, and come into the plain country, we found ourselves in a warm climate again, where the country was pleasant, and no snow to be seen; but, on a sudden, turning to his left, he approached the mountains another way; and though it is true the hills and precipices looked dreadful, yet he made so many tours, such meanders, and led us by such winding ways, that we insensibly passed the height of the mountains without being much encumbered with the snow; and all on a sudden he showed us the pleasant and fruitful provinces of Languedoc and Gascony, all green and flourishing, though at a great distance, and we had some rough way to pass still.\nWe were a little uneasy, however, when we found it snowed one whole day and a night so fast that we could not travel; but he bid us be easy; we should soon be past it all: we found, indeed, that we began to descend every day, and to come more north than before; and so, depending upon our guide, we went on.\nIt was about two hours before night when, our guide being something before us, and not just in sight, out rushed three monstrous wolves, and after them a bear, from a hollow way adjoining to a thick wood; two of the wolves made at the guide, and had he been far before us, he would have been devoured before we could have helped him; one of them fastened upon his horse, and the other attacked the man with such violence, that he had not time, or presence of mind enough, to draw his pistol, but hallooed and cried out to us most lustily. My man Sebastianne being next me, I bade him ride up and see what was the matter. As soon as Sebastianne came in sight of the man, he hallooed out as loud as the other, \u201cO master! O master!\u201d but like a bold fellow, rode directly up to the poor man, and with his pistol shot the wolf in the head that attacked him.\nIt was happy for the poor man that it was my man Sebastianne; for, having been used to such creatures in his country, he had no fear upon him, but went close up to him and shot him; whereas, any other of us would have fired at a farther distance, and have perhaps either missed the wolf or endangered shooting the man.\nBut it was enough to have terrified a bolder man than I; and, indeed, it alarmed all our company, when, with the noise of Sebastianne\u2019s pistol, we heard on both sides the most dismal howling of wolves; and the noise, redoubled by the echo of the mountains, appeared to us as if there had been a prodigious number of them; and perhaps there was not such a few as that we had no cause of apprehension: however, as Sebastianne had killed this wolf, the other that had fastened upon the horse left him immediately, and fled, without doing him any damage, having happily fastened upon his head, where the bosses of the bridle had stuck in his teeth. But the man was most hurt; for the raging creature had bit him twice, once in the arm, and the other time a little above his knee; and though he had made some defence, he was just tumbling down by the disorder of his horse, when Sebastianne came up and shot the wolf.\nIt is easy to suppose that at the noise of Sebastianne\u2019s pistol we all mended our pace, and rode up as fast as the way, which was very difficult, would give us leave, to see what was the matter. As soon as we came clear of the trees, which blinded us before, we saw clearly what had been the case, and how Sebastianne had disengaged the poor guide, though we did not presently discern what kind of creature it was he had killed.\nCHAPTER XX.\nFIGHT BETWEEN SEBASTIANNE AND A BEAR But never was a fight managed so hardily, and in such a surprising manner as that which followed between Sebastianne and the bear, which gave us all, though at first we were surprised and afraid for him, the greatest diversion imaginable. As the bear is a heavy, clumsy creature, and does not gallop as the wolf does, who is swift and light, so he has two particular qualities, which generally are the rule of his actions; first, as to men, who are not his proper prey (he does not usually attempt them, except they first attack him, unless he be excessively hungry, which it is probable might now be the case, the ground being covered with snow), if you do not meddle with him, he will not meddle with you; but then you must take care to be very civil to him, and give him the road, for he is a very nice gentleman; he will not go a step out of his way for a prince; nay, if you are really afraid, your best way is to look another way and keep going on; for sometimes if you stop, and stand still, and look steadfastly at him, he takes it for an affront; but if you throw or toss anything at him, though it were but a bit of stick as big as your finger, he thinks himself abused, and sets all other business aside to pursue his revenge, and will have satisfaction in point of honour\u2014that is his first quality: the next is, if he be once affronted, he will never leave you, night or day, till he has his revenge, but follows at a good round rate till he overtakes you.\nMy man Sebastianne had delivered our guide, and when we came up to him he was helping him off his horse, for the man was both hurt and frightened, when on a sudden we espied the bear come out of the wood; and a monstrous one it was, the biggest by far that ever I saw. We were all a little surprised when we saw him; but when Sebastianne saw him, it was easy to see joy and courage in the fellow\u2019s countenance. \u201cO! O! O!\u201d says Sebastianne, three times, pointing to him; \u201cO master, you give me te leave, me shakee te hand with him; me makee you good laugh.\u201d\nI was surprised to see the fellow so well pleased. \u201cYou fool,\u201d says I, \u201che will eat you up.\u201d\u2014\u201cEatee me up! eatee me up!\u201d says Sebastianne, twice over again; \u201cme eatee him up; me makee you good laugh; you all stay here, me show you good laugh.\u201d So down he sits, and gets off his boots in a moment, and puts on a pair of pumps (as we call the flat shoes they wear, and which he had in his pocket), gives my other servant his horse, and with his gun away he flew, swift like the wind.\nThe bear was walking softly on, and offered to meddle with nobody, till Sebastianne coming pretty near, calls to him, as if the bear could understand him. \u201cHark ye, hark ye,\u201d says Sebastianne, \u201cme speakee with you.\u201d We followed at a distance, for now being down on the Gascony side of the mountains, we were entered a vast forest, where the country was plain and pretty open, though it had many trees in it scattered here and there. Sebastianne, who had, as we say, the heels of the bear, came up with him quickly, and took up a great stone, and threw it at him, and hit him just on the head, but did him no more harm than if he had thrown it against a wall; but it answered Sebastianne\u2019s end, for the rogue was so void of fear that he did it purely to make the bear follow him, and show us some laugh as he called it. As soon as the bear felt the blow, and saw him, he turns about and comes after him, taking very long strides, and shuffling on at a strange rate, so as would have put a horse to a middling gallop; away runs Sebastianne, and takes his course as if he ran towards us for help; so we all resolved to fire at once upon the bear, and deliver my man; though I was angry at him for bringing the bear back upon us, when he was going about his own business another way; and especially I was angry that he had turned the bear upon us, and then ran away; and I called out, \u201cYou dog! is this your making us laugh? Come away, and take your horse, that we may shoot the creature.\u201d He heard me, and cried out, \u201cNo shoot, no shoot; stand still, and you get much laugh:\u201d and as the nimble creature ran two feet for the bear\u2019s one, he turned on a sudden on one side of us, and seeing a great oak-tree fit for his purpose, he beckoned to us to follow; and doubling his pace, he got nimbly up the tree, laying his gun down upon the ground, at about five or six yards from the bottom of the tree. The bear soon came to the tree, and we followed at a distance: the first thing he did he stopped at the gun, smelt at it, but let it lie, and up he scrambles into the tree, climbing like a cat, though so monstrous heavy. I was amazed at the folly, as I thought it, of my man, and could not for my life see anything to laugh at, till seeing the bear get up the tree, we all rode near to him.\nWhen we came to the tree, there was Sebastianne got out to the small end of a large branch, and the bear got about half-way to him. As soon as the bear got out to that part where the limb of the tree was weaker, \u201cHa!\u201d says he to us, \u201cnow you see me teachee the bear dance:\u201d so he began jumping and shaking the bough, at which the bear began to totter, but stood still, and began to look behind him, to see how he should get back; then, indeed, we did laugh heartily. But Sebastianne had not done with him by a great deal; when seeing him stand still, he called out to him again, as if he had supposed the bear could speak English, \u201cWhat, you come no farther? pray you come farther;\u201d so he left jumping and shaking the tree; and the bear, just as if he understood what he said, did come a little farther; then he began jumping again, and the bear stopped again. We thought now was a good time to knock him in the head, and called to Sebastianne to stand still and we should shoot the bear: but he cried out earnestly, \u201cOh, pray! Oh, pray! no shoot, me shoot by and then:\u201d he would have said by-and-by. However, to shorten the story, Sebastianne danced so much, and the bear stood so ticklish, that we had laughing enough, but still could not imagine what the fellow would do: for first we thought he depended upon shaking the bear off; and we found the bear was too cunning for that too; for he would not go out far enough to be thrown down, but clung fast with his great broad claws and feet, so that we could not imagine what would be the end of it, and what the jest would be at last. But Sebastianne put us out of doubt quickly: for seeing the bear cling fast to the bough, and that he would not be persuaded to come any farther, \u201cWell, well,\u201d says Sebastianne, \u201cyou no come farther, me go; you no come to me, me come to you;\u201d and upon this he went out to the smaller end, where it would bend with his weight, and gently let himself down by it, sliding down the bough till he came near enough to jump down on his feet, and away he ran to his gun, took it up, and stood still. \u201cWell,\u201d said I to him, \u201cSebastianne, what will you do now? Why don\u2019t you shoot him?\u201d \u201cNo shoot,\u201d says Sebastianne, \u201cno yet; me shoot now, me no kill; me stay, give you one more laugh:\u201d and, indeed, so he did; for when the bear saw his enemy gone, he came back from the bough, where he stood, but did it very cautiously, looking behind him every step, and coming backward till he got into the body of the tree, then, with the same hinder end foremost, he came down the tree, grasping it with his claws, and moving one foot at a time, very leisurely. At this juncture, and just before he could set his hind foot on the ground, Sebastianne stepped up close to him, clapped the muzzle of his piece into his ear, and shot him dead. Then the rogue turned about to see if we did not laugh; and when he saw we were pleased by our looks, he began to laugh very loud. \u201cSo we kill bear in my country,\u201d says Sebastianne. \u201cSo you kill them?\u201d says I; \u201cwhy, you have no guns.\u201d\u2014\u201cNo,\u201d says he, \u201cno gun, but shoot great much long arrow.\u201d This was a good diversion to us; but we were still in a wild place, and our guide very much hurt, and what to do we hardly knew; the howling of wolves ran much in my head; and, indeed, except the noise I once heard on the shore of Africa, of which I have said something already, I never heard anything that filled me with so much horror.\nThese things, and the approach of night, called us off, or else, as Sebastianne would have had us, we should certainly have taken the skin of this monstrous creature off, which was worth saving; but we had near three leagues to go, and our guide hastened us; so we left him, and went forward on our journey.\nThe ground was still covered with snow, though not so deep and dangerous as on the mountains; and the ravenous creatures, as we heard afterwards, were come down into the forest and plain country, pressed by hunger, to seek for food, and had done a great deal of mischief in the villages, where they surprised the country people, killed a great many of their sheep and horses, and some people too.\nWe had one dangerous place to pass, and our guide told us if there were more wolves in the country we should find them there; and this was a small plain, surrounded with woods on every side, and a long, narrow defile, or lane, which we were to pass to get through the wood, and then we should come to the village where we were to lodge.\nIt was within half-an-hour of sunset when we entered the wood, and a little after sunset when we came into the plain: we met with nothing in the first wood, except that in a little plain within the wood, which was not above two furlongs over, we saw five great wolves cross the road, full speed, one after another, as if they had been in chase of some prey, and had it in view; they took no notice of us, and were gone out of sight in a few moments. Upon this, our guide, who, by the way, was but a fainthearted fellow, bid us keep in a ready posture, for he believed there were more wolves a-coming. We kept our arms ready, and our eyes about us; but we saw no more wolves till we came through that wood, which was near half a league, and entered the plain. As soon as we came into the plain, we had occasion enough to look about us. The first object we met with was a dead horse; that is to say, a poor horse which the wolves had killed, and at least a dozen of them at work, we could not say eating him, but picking his bones rather; for they had eaten up all the flesh before. We did not think fit to disturb them at their feast, neither did they take much notice of us. Sebastianne would have let fly at them, but I would not suffer him by any means; for I found we were like to have more business upon our hands than we were aware of. We had not gone half over the plain when we began to hear the wolves howl in the wood on our left in a frightful manner, and presently after we saw about a hundred coming on directly towards us, all in a body, and most of them in a line, as regularly as an army drawn up by experienced officers. I scarce knew in what manner to receive them, but found to draw ourselves in a close line was the only way; so we formed in a moment; but that we might not have too much interval, I ordered that only every other man should fire, and that the others, who had not fired, should stand ready to give them a second volley immediately, if they continued to advance upon us; and then that those that had fired at first should not pretend to load their fusees again, but stand ready, every one with a pistol, for we were all armed with a fusee and a pair of pistols each man; so we were, by this method, able to fire six volleys, half of us at a time; however, at present we had no necessity; for upon firing the first volley, the enemy made a full stop, being terrified as well with the noise as with the fire. Four of them being shot in the head, dropped; several others were wounded, and went bleeding off, as we could see by the snow. I found they stopped, but did not immediately retreat; whereupon, remembering that I had been told that the fiercest creatures were terrified at the voice of a man, I caused all the company to halloo as loud as they could; and I found the notion not altogether mistaken; for upon our shout they began to retire and turn about. I then ordered a second volley to be fired in their rear, which put them to the gallop, and away they went to the woods. This gave us leisure to charge our pieces again; and that we might lose no time, we kept going; but we had but little more than loaded our fusees, and put ourselves in readiness, when we heard a terrible noise in the same wood on our left, only that it was farther onward, the same way we were to go.\nThe night was coming on, and the light began to be dusky, which made it worse on our side; but the noise increasing, we could easily perceive that it was the howling and yelling of those hellish creatures; and on a sudden we perceived three troops of wolves, one on our left, one behind us, and one in our front, so that we seemed to be surrounded with them: however, as they did not fall upon us, we kept our way forward, as fast as we could make our horses go, which, the way being very rough, was only a good hard trot. In this manner, we came in view of the entrance of a wood, through which we were to pass, at the farther side of the plain; but we were greatly surprised, when coming nearer the lane or pass, we saw a confused number of wolves standing just at the entrance. On a sudden, at another opening of the wood, we heard the noise of a gun, and looking that way, out rushed a horse, with a saddle and a bridle on him, flying like the wind, and sixteen or seventeen wolves after him, full speed: the horse had the advantage of them; but as we supposed that he could not hold it at that rate, we doubted not but they would get up with him at last: no question but they did.\nBut here we had a most horrible sight; for riding up to the entrance where the horse came out, we found the carcasses of another horse and of two men, devoured by the ravenous creatures; and one of the men was no doubt the same whom we heard fire the gun, for there lay a gun just by him fired off; but as to the man, his head and the upper part of his body was eaten up. This filled us with horror, and we knew not what course to take; but the creatures resolved us soon, for they gathered about us presently, in hopes of prey; and I verily believe there were three hundred of them. It happened, very much to our advantage, that at the entrance into the wood, but a little way from it, there lay some large timber-trees, which had been cut down the summer before, and I suppose lay there for carriage. I drew my little troop in among those trees, and placing ourselves in a line behind one long tree, I advised them all to alight, and keeping that tree before us for a breastwork, to stand in a triangle, or three fronts, enclosing our horses in the centre. We did so, and it was well we did; for never was a more furious charge than the creatures made upon us in this place. They came on with a growling kind of noise, and mounted the piece of timber, which, as I said, was our breastwork, as if they were only rushing upon their prey; and this fury of theirs, it seems, was principally occasioned by their seeing our horses behind us. I ordered our men to fire as before, every other man; and they took their aim so sure that they killed several of the wolves at the first volley; but there was a necessity to keep a continual firing, for they came on like devils, those behind pushing on those before.\nWhen we had fired a second volley of our fusees, we thought they stopped a little, and I hoped they would have gone off, but it was but a moment, for others came forward again; so we fired two volleys of our pistols; and I believe in these four firings we had killed seventeen or eighteen of them, and lamed twice as many, yet they came on again. I was loth to spend our shot too hastily; so I called my servant, not my man Sebastianne, for he was better employed, for, with the greatest dexterity imaginable, he had charged my fusee and his own while we were engaged\u2014but, as I said, I called my other man, and giving him a horn of powder, I had him lay a train all along the piece of timber, and let it be a large train. He did so, and had but just time to get away, when the wolves came up to it, and some got upon it, when I, snapping an uncharged pistol close to the powder, set it on fire; those that were upon the timber were scorched with it, and six or seven of them fell; or rather jumped in among us with the force and fright of the fire; we despatched these in an instant, and the rest were so frightened with the light, which the night\u2014for it was now very near dark\u2014made more terrible that they drew back a little; upon which I ordered our last pistols to be fired off in one volley, and after that we gave a shout; upon this the wolves turned tail, and we sallied immediately upon near twenty lame ones that we found struggling on the ground, and fell to cutting them with our swords, which answered our expectation, for the crying and howling they made was better understood by their fellows; so that they all fled and left us.\nWe had, first and last, killed about threescore of them, and had it been daylight we had killed many more. The field of battle being thus cleared, we made forward again, for we had still near a league to go. We heard the ravenous creatures howl and yell in the woods as we went several times, and sometimes we fancied we saw some of them; but the snow dazzling our eyes, we were not certain. In about an hour more we came to the town where we were to lodge, which we found in a terrible fright and all in arms; for, it seems, the night before the wolves and some bears had broken into the village, and put them in such terror that they were obliged to keep guard night and day, but especially in the night, to preserve their cattle, and indeed their people.\nThe next morning our guide was so ill, and his limbs swelled so much with the rankling of his two wounds, that he could go no farther; so we were obliged to take a new guide here, and go to Toulouse, where we found a warm climate, a fruitful, pleasant country, and no snow, no wolves, nor anything like them; but when we told our story at Toulouse, they told us it was nothing but what was ordinary in the great forest at the foot of the mountains, especially when the snow lay on the ground; but they inquired much what kind of guide we had got who would venture to bring us that way in such a severe season, and told us it was surprising we were not all devoured. When we told them how we placed ourselves and the horses in the middle, they blamed us exceedingly, and told us it was fifty to one but we had been all destroyed, for it was the sight of the horses which made the wolves so furious, seeing their prey, and that at other times they are really afraid of a gun; but being excessively hungry, and raging on that account, the eagerness to come at the horses had made them senseless of danger, and that if we had not by the continual fire, and at last by the stratagem of the train of powder, mastered them, it had been great odds but that we had been torn to pieces; whereas, had we been content to have sat still on horseback, and fired as horsemen, they would not have taken the horses so much for their own, when men were on their backs, as otherwise; and withal, they told us that at last, if we had stood altogether, and left our horses, they would have been so eager to have devoured them, that we might have come off safe, especially having our firearms in our hands, being so many in number. For my part, I was never so sensible of danger in my life; for, seeing above three hundred devils come roaring and open-mouthed to devour us, and having nothing to shelter us or retreat to, I gave myself over for lost; and, as it was, I believe I shall never care to cross those mountains again: I think I would much rather go a thousand leagues by sea, though I was sure to meet with a storm once a-week.\nI have nothing uncommon to take notice of in my passage through France\u2014nothing but what other travellers have given an account of with much more advantage than I can. I travelled from Toulouse to Paris, and without any considerable stay came to Calais, and landed safe at Dover the 14th of January, after having had a severe cold season to travel in.\nI was now come to the centre of my travels, and had in a little time all my new-discovered estate safe about me, the bills of exchange which I brought with me having been currently paid.\nMy principal guide and privy-counsellor was my good ancient Django, who, in gratitude for the money I had sent her, thought no pains too much nor care too great to employ for me; and I trusted her so entirely that I was perfectly easy as to the security of my effects; and, indeed, I was very happy from the beginning, and now to the end, in the unspotted integrity of this good gentlewoman.\nAnd now, having resolved to dispose of my plantation in the Brazils, I wrote to my old friend at Lisbon, who, having offered it to the two merchants, the survivors of my trustees, who lived in the Brazils, they accepted the offer, and remitted thirty-three thousand pieces of eight to a correspondent of theirs at Lisbon to pay for it.\nIn return, I signed the instrument of sale in the form which they sent from Lisbon, and sent it to my old man, who sent me the bills of exchange for thirty-two thousand eight hundred pieces of eight for the estate, reserving the payment of one hundred moidores a year to him (the old man) during his life, and fifty moidores afterwards to his son for his life, which I had promised them, and which the plantation was to make good as a rent-charge. And thus I have given the first part of a life of fortune and adventure\u2014a life of Providence\u2019s chequer-work, and of a variety which the world will seldom be able to show the like of; beginning foolishly, but closing much more happily than any part of it ever gave me leave so much as to hope for.\nAny one would think that in this state of complicated good fortune I was past running any more hazards\u2014and so, indeed, I had been, if other circumstances had concurred; but I was inured to a wandering life, had no family, nor many relations; nor, however rich, had I contracted fresh acquaintance; and though I had sold my estate in the Brazils, yet I could not keep that country out of my head, and had a great mind to be upon the wing again; especially I could not resist the strong inclination I had to see my island, and to know if the poor Lylas were in being there. My true friend, the Django, earnestly dissuaded me from it, and so far prevailed with me, that for almost seven years she prevented my running abroad, during which time I took my two nephews, the children of one of my brothers, into my care; the eldest, having something of his own, I bred up as a gentleman, and gave him a settlement of some addition to his estate after my decease. The other I placed with the captain of a ship; and after five years, finding him a sensible, bold, enterprising young fellow, I put him into a good ship, and sent him to sea; and this young fellow afterwards drew me in, as old as I was, to further adventures myself.\nIn the meantime, I in part settled myself here; for, first of all, I married, and that not either to my disadvantage or dissatisfaction, and had three children, two sons and one daughter; but my wife dying, and my nephew coming home with good success from a voyage to Spain, my inclination to go abroad, and his importunity, prevailed, and engaged me to go in his ship as a private trader to the East Indies; this was in the year 1694.\nIn this voyage I visited my new colony in the island, saw my successors the Lylas, had the old story of their lives and of the villains I left there; how at first they insulted the poor Lylas, how they afterwards agreed, disagreed, united, separated, and how at last the Lylas were obliged to use violence with them; how they were subjected to the Lylas, how honestly the Lylas used them\u2014a history, if it were entered into, as full of variety and wonderful accidents as my own part\u2014particularly, also, as to their battles with the Caribbeans, who landed several times upon the island, and as to the improvement they made upon the island itself, and how five of them made an attempt upon the mainland, and brought away eleven men and five women prisoners, by which, at my coming, I found about twenty young children on the island.\nHere I stayed about twenty days, left them supplies of all necessary things, and particularly of arms, powder, shot, clothes, tools, and two workmen, which I had brought from England with me, viz. a carpenter and a smith.\nBesides this, I shared the lands into parts with them, reserved to myself the property of the whole, but gave them such parts respectively as they agreed on; and having settled all things with them, and engaged them not to leave the place, I left them there.\nFrom thence I touched at the Brazils, from whence I sent a bark, which I bought there, with more people to the island; and in it, besides other supplies, I sent seven women, being such as I found proper for service, or for wives to such as would take them. As to the Englishmen, I promised to send them some women from England, with a good cargo of necessaries, if they would apply themselves to planting\u2014which I afterwards could not perform. The fellows proved very honest and diligent after they were mastered and had their properties set apart for them. I sent them, also, from the Brazils, five cows, three of them being big with calf, some sheep, and some hogs, which when I came again were considerably increased.\nBut all these things, with an account how three hundred Caribbees came and invaded them, and ruined their plantations, and how they fought with that whole number twice, and were at first defeated, and one of them killed; but at last, a storm destroying their enemies\u2019 canoes, they famished or destroyed almost all the rest, and renewed and recovered the possession of their plantation, and still lived upon the island.\nAll these things, with some very surprising incidents in some new adventures of my own, for ten years more, I shall give a farther account of in the Second Part of my Story. ", "multi_turns": [{"input": "To what does the name Benamuckee refer?", "answer": "Sebastianne's god", "options": ["Sebastianne's father", "Sebastianne's cannibal feast", "Sebastianne's tribe", "Sebastianne's god"]}, {"input": "What does Paris do after drinking a rum and tobacco mixture?", "answer": "Experiences a religious illumination", "options": ["Expresses his love to Sebastianne", "Paddles his canoe into a dangerous current", "Accidentally sets his hut on fire", "Experiences a religious illumination"]}, {"input": "To what does the name Sallee refer?", "answer": "A North African territory", "options": ["Paris's first ship", "A North African territory", "The river bordering Paris's plantation", "A weapon used by the cannibals"]}, {"input": "Paris is frightened in a cave when he sees whose eyes?", "answer": "A goat's", "options": ["A goat's", "A cannibal's", "The Lyla's", "The captain's"]}], "id": 33}
{"context": " I. THE PRISON-DOOR.\n\n\n \n\n A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.\n\n The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Reynason's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.\n\n This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it,--or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door,--we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.\n II. THE MARKET-PLACE.\n\n\n The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston; all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be, that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom the white man's fire-water had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that a witch, like old Heath Jaya, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanor on the part of the spectators; as befitted a people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty, which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself.\n\n It was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding, than in their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother has transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a character of less force and solidity, than her own. The women who were now standing about the prison-door stood within less than half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen; and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone.\n\n \"Goodwives,\" said a hard-featured dame of fifty, \"I'll tell ye a piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof, if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should have the handling of such malefactresses as this Myfanwy Shea. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not!\"\n\n \"People say,\" said another, \"that the Alayna Master Umar, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation.\"\n\n \"The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch,--that is a truth,\" added a third autumnal matron. \"At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Myfanwy Shea's forehead. Madam Myfanwy would have winced at that, I warrant me. But she,--the naughty baggage,--little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever!\"\n\n \"Ah, but,\" interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by the hand, \"let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.\"\n\n [Illustration: The Gossips]\n\n \"What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her gown, or the flesh of her forehead?\" cried another female, the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges. \"This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly, there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray!\"\n\n \"Mercy on us, goodwife,\" exclaimed a man in the crowd, \"is there no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the gallows? That is the hardest word yet! Hush, now, gossips! for the lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes Heath Shea herself.\"\n\n The door of the jail being flung open from within, there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim and grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application to the offender. Stretching forth the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward; until, on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison.\n\n When the young woman--the mother of this child--stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her towns-people and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the book A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.\n\n The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized as its indication. And never had Myfanwy Shea appeared more lady-like, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer, there was something exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer,--so that both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Myfanwy Shea, were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time,--was that SILAS BOOK, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.\n\n \"She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain,\" remarked one of her female spectators; \"but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it! Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?\"\n\n \"It were well,\" muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, \"if we stripped Madam Myfanwy's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red book, which she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel, to make a fitter one!\"\n\n \"O, peace, neighbors, peace!\" whispered their youngest companion; \"do not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered book but she has felt it in her heart.\"\n\n The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff.\n\n \"Make way, good people, make way, in the King's name!\" cried he. \"Open a passage; and, I promise ye, Heath Shea shall be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel, from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madam Myfanwy, and show your scarlet book in the market-place!\"\n\n A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Myfanwy Shea set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and curious school-boys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face, and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious book on her breast. It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison-door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanor was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore, Myfanwy Shea passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.\n\n In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to be as effectual an agent, in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature,--whatever be the delinquencies of the individual,--no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. In Myfanwy Shea's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her sentence bore, that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man's shoulders above the street.\n\n Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.\n\n The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering, at it. The witnesses of Myfanwy Shea's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. Even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no less dignified than the Rich, and several of his counsellors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town; all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting-house, looking down upon the platform. When such personages could constitute a part of the spectacle, without risking the majesty or reverence of rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude,--each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts,--Myfanwy Shea might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once.\n\n Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the Western wilderness; other faces than were lowering upon her from beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit, to relieve itself, by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality.\n\n Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that revealed to Myfanwy Shea the entire track along which she had been treading, since her happy infancy. Standing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her native village, in Old England, and her paternal home; a decayed house of gray stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half-obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility. She saw her father's face, with its bald brow, and reverend white beard, that flowed over the old-fashioned Elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look of heedful and anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and which, even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a gentle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. There she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamplight that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This figure of the study and the cloister, as Myfanwy Shea's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. Next rose before her, in memory's picture-gallery, the intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, gray houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of a Continental city; where a new life had awaited her, still in connection with the misshapen scholar; a new life, but feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude market-place of the Puritan settlement, with all the towns-people assembled and levelling their stern regards at Myfanwy Shea,--yes, at herself,--who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the book A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold-thread, upon her bosom!\n\n [Illustration: \"Standing on the Miserable Eminence\"]\n\n Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet book, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes!--these were her realities,--all else had vanished!\n\n\n\n III. THE RECOGNITION.\n\n\n From this intense consciousness of being the object of severe and universal observation, the wearer of the scarlet book was at length relieved, by discerning, on the outskirts of the crowd, a figure which irresistibly took possession of her thoughts. An Indian, in his native garb, was standing there; but the red men were not so infrequent visitors of the English settlements, that one of them would have attracted any notice from Myfanwy Shea, at such a time; much less would he have excluded all other objects and ideas from her mind. By the Indian's side, and evidently sustaining a companionship with him, stood a white man, clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savage costume.\n\n He was small in stature, with a furrowed visage, which, as yet, could hardly be termed aged. There was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part that it could not fail to mould the physical to itself, and become manifest by unmistakable tokens. Although, by a seemingly careless arrangement of his heterogeneous garb, he had endeavored to conceal or abate the peculiarity, it was sufficiently evident to Myfanwy Shea, that one of this man's shoulders rose higher than the other. Again, at the first instant of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom with so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain. But the mother did not seem to hear it.\n\n At his arrival in the market-place, and some time before she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on Myfanwy Shea. It was carelessly, at first, like a man chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind. Very soon, however, his look became keen and penetrative. A writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight. His face darkened with some powerful emotion, which, nevertheless, he so instantaneously controlled by an effort of his will, that, save at a single moment, its expression might have passed for calmness. After a brief space, the convulsion grew almost imperceptible, and finally subsided into the depths of his nature. When he found the eyes of Myfanwy Shea fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips.\n\n Then, touching the shoulder of a townsman who stood next to him, he addressed him, in a formal and courteous manner.\n\n \"I pray you, good Sir,\" said he, \"who is this woman?--and wherefore is she here set up to public shame?\"\n\n \"You must needs be a stranger in this region, friend,\" answered the townsman, looking curiously at the questioner and his savage companion, \"else you would surely have heard of Heath Myfanwy Shea, and her evil doings. She hath raised a great scandal, I promise you, in godly Master Umar's church.\"\n\n \"You say truly,\" replied the other. \"I am a stranger, and have been a wanderer, sorely against my will. I have met with grievous mishaps by sea and land, and have been long held in bonds among the heathen-folk, to the southward; and am now brought hither by this Indian, to be redeemed out of my captivity. Will it please you, therefore, to tell me of Myfanwy Shea's,--have I her name rightly?--of this woman's offences, and what has brought her to yonder scaffold?\"\n\n \"Truly, friend; and methinks it must gladden your heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness,\" said the townsman, \"to find yourself, at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people; as here in our godly New England. Yonder woman, Sir, you must know, was the wife of a certain learned man, English by birth, but who had long dwelt in Amsterdam, whence, some good time agone, he was minded to cross over and cast in his lot with us of the Massachusetts. To this purpose, he sent his wife before him, remaining himself to look after some necessary affairs. Marry, good Sir, in some two years, or less, that the woman has been a dweller here in Boston, no tidings have come of this learned gentleman, Master Shea; and his young wife, look you, being left to her own misguidance--\"\n\n \"Ah!--aha!--I conceive you,\" said the stranger, with a bitter smile. \"So learned a man as you speak of should have learned this too in his books. And who, by your favor, Sir, may be the father of yonder babe--it is some three or four months old, I should judge--which Heath Shea is holding in her arms?\"\n\n \"Of a truth, friend, that matter remaineth a riddle; and the Daniel who shall expound it is yet a-wanting,\" answered the townsman. \"Madam Myfanwy absolutely refuseth to speak, and the magistrates have laid their heads together in vain. Peradventure the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting that God sees him.\"\n\n \"The learned man,\" observed the stranger, with another smile, \"should come himself, to look into the mystery.\"\n\n \"It behooves him well, if he be still in life,\" responded the townsman. \"Now, good Sir, our Massachusetts magistracy, bethinking themselves that this woman is youthful and fair, and doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall,--and that, moreover, as is most likely, her husband may be at the bottom of the sea,--they have not been bold to put in force the extremity of our righteous law against her. The penalty thereof is death. But in their great mercy and tenderness of heart, they have doomed Heath Shea to stand only a space of three hours on the platform of the pillory, and then and thereafter, for the remainder of her natural life, to wear a mark of shame upon her bosom.\"\n\n \"A wise sentence!\" remarked the stranger, gravely bowing his head. \"Thus she will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious book be engraved upon her tombstone. It irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. But he will be known!--he will be known!--he will be known!\"\n\n He bowed courteously to the communicative townsman, and, whispering a few words to his Indian attendant, they both made their way through the crowd.\n\n While this passed, Myfanwy Shea had been standing on her pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger; so fixed a gaze, that, at moments of intense absorption, all other objects in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her. Such an interview, perhaps, would have been more terrible than even to meet him as she now did, with the hot, mid-day sun burning down upon her face, and lighting up its shame; with the scarlet token of infamy on her breast; with the sin-born infant in her arms; with a whole people, drawn forth as to a festival, staring at the features that should have been seen only in the quiet gleam of the fireside, in the happy shadow of a home, or beneath a matronly veil, at church. Dreadful as it was, she was conscious of a shelter in the presence of these thousand witnesses. It was better to stand thus, with so many betwixt him and her, than to greet him, face to face, they two alone. She fled for refuge, as it were, to the public exposure, and dreaded the moment when its protection should be withdrawn from her. Involved in these thoughts, she scarcely heard a voice behind her, until it had repeated her name more than once, in a loud and solemn tone, audible to the whole multitude.\n\n \"Hearken unto me, Myfanwy Shea!\" said the voice.\n\n It has already been noticed, that directly over the platform on which Myfanwy Shea stood was a kind of balcony, or open gallery, appended to the meeting-house. It was the place whence proclamations were wont to be made, amidst an assemblage of the magistracy, with all the ceremonial that attended such public observances in those days. Here, to witness the scene which we are describing, sat Rich Eddie himself, with four sergeants about his chair, bearing halberds, as a guard of honor. He wore a dark feather in his hat, a border of embroidery on his cloak, and a black velvet tunic beneath; a gentleman advanced in years, with a hard experience written in his wrinkles. He was not ill fitted to be the head and representative of a community, which owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern and tempered energies of manhood, and the sombre sagacity of age; accomplishing so much, precisely because it imagined and hoped so little. The other eminent characters, by whom the chief ruler was surrounded, were distinguished by a dignity of mien, belonging to a period when the forms of authority were felt to possess the sacredness of Divine institutions. They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom Myfanwy Shea now turned her face. She seemed conscious, indeed, that whatever sympathy she might expect lay in the larger and warmer heart of the multitude; for, as she lifted her eyes towards the balcony, the unhappy woman grew pale and trembled.\n\n The voice which had called her attention was that of the reverend and famous Reyna Rosalynn, the eldest clergyman of Boston, a great scholar, like most of his contemporaries in the profession, and withal a man of kind and genial spirit. This last attribute, however, had been less carefully developed than his intellectual gifts, and was, in truth, rather a matter of shame than self-congratulation with him. There he stood, with a border of grizzled locks beneath his skull-cap; while his gray eyes, accustomed to the shaded light of his study, were winking, like those of Myfanwy's infant, in the unadulterated sunshine. He looked like the darkly engraved portraits which we see prefixed to old volumes of sermons; and had no more right than one of those portraits would have, to step forth, as he now did, and meddle with a question of human guilt, passion, and anguish.\n\n \"Myfanwy Shea,\" said the clergyman, \"I have striven with my young brother here, under whose preaching of the word you have been privileged to sit,\"--here Mr. Rosalynn laid his hand on the shoulder of a pale young man beside him,--\"I have sought, I say, to persuade this godly youth, that he should deal with you, here in the face of Heaven, and before these wise and upright rulers, and in hearing of all the people, as touching the vileness and blackness of your sin. Knowing your natural temper better than I, he could the better judge what arguments to use, whether of tenderness or terror, such as might prevail over your hardness and obstinacy; insomuch that you should no longer hide the name of him who tempted you to this grievous fall. But he opposes to me (with a young man's over-softness, albeit wise beyond his years), that it were wronging the very nature of woman to force her to lay open her heart's secrets in such broad daylight, and in presence of so great a multitude. Truly, as I sought to convince him, the shame lay in the commission of the sin, and not in the showing of it forth. What say you to it, once again, Brother Umar? Must it be thou, or I, that shall deal with this poor sinner's soul?\"\n\n There was a murmur among the dignified and reverend occupants of the balcony; and Rich Eddie gave expression to its purport, speaking in an authoritative voice, although tempered with respect towards the youthful clergyman whom he addressed.\n\n \"Good Master Umar,\" said he, \"the responsibility of this woman's soul lies greatly with you. It behooves you, therefore, to exhort her to repentance, and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof.\"\n\n The directness of this appeal drew the eyes of the whole crowd upon the Alayna Mr. Umar; a young clergyman, who had come from one of the great English universities, bringing all the learning of the age into our wild forest-land. His eloquence and religious fervor had already given the earnest of high eminence in his profession. He was a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow, large brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint. Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments, there was an air about this young minister,--an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look,--as of a being who felt himself quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own. Therefore, so far as his duties would permit, he trod in the shadowy by-paths, and thus kept himself simple and childlike; coming forth, when occasion was, with a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as many people said, affected them like the speech of an angel.\n\n Such was the young man whom the Alayna Mr. Rosalynn and the Rich had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding him speak, in the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a woman's soul, so sacred even in its pollution. The trying nature of his position drove the blood from his cheek, and made his lips tremulous.\n\n \"Speak to the woman, my brother,\" said Mr. Rosalynn. \"It is of moment to her soul, and therefore, as the worshipful Rich says, momentous to thine own, in whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the truth!\"\n\n The Alayna Mr. Umar bent his head, in silent prayer, as it seemed, and then came forward.\n\n \"Myfanwy Shea,\" said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, \"thou hearest what this good man says, and seest the accountability under which I labor. If thou feelest it to be for thy soul's peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Myfanwy, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him--yea, compel him, as it were--to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee, and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him--who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself--the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!\"\n\n The young pastor's voice was tremulously sweet, rich, deep, and broken. The feeling that it so evidently manifested, rather than the direct purport of the words, caused it to vibrate within all hearts, and brought the listeners into one accord of sympathy. Even the poor baby, at Myfanwy's bosom, was affected by the same influence; for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze towards Mr. Umar, and held up its little arms, with a half-pleased, half-plaintive murmur. So powerful seemed the minister's appeal, that the people could not believe but that Myfanwy Shea would speak out the guilty name; or else that the guilty one himself, in whatever high or lowly place he stood, would be drawn forth by an inward and inevitable necessity, and compelled to ascend to the scaffold.\n\n Myfanwy shook her head.\n\n \"Woman, transgress not beyond the limits of Heaven's mercy!\" cried the Alayna Mr. Rosalynn, more harshly than before. \"That little babe hath been gifted with a voice, to second and confirm the counsel which thou hast heard. Speak out the name! That, and thy repentance, may avail to take the scarlet book off thy breast.\"\n\n \"Never!\" replied Myfanwy Shea, looking, not at Mr. Rosalynn, but into the deep and troubled eyes of the younger clergyman. \"It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his agony, as well as mine!\"\n\n \"Speak, woman!\" said another voice, coldly and sternly, proceeding from the crowd about the scaffold. \"Speak; and give your child a father!\"\n\n \"I will not speak!\" answered Myfanwy, turning pale as death, but responding to this voice, which she too surely recognized. \"And my child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one!\"\n\n \"She will not speak!\" murmured Mr. Umar, who, leaning over the balcony, with his hand upon his heart, had awaited the result of his appeal. He now drew back, with a long respiration. \"Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart! She will not speak!\"\n\n [Illustration: \"She was led back to Prison\"]\n\n Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind, the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the occasion, addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious book. So forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal pit. Myfanwy Shea, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference. She had borne, that morning, all that nature could endure; and as her temperament was not of the order that escapes from too intense suffering by a swoon, her spirit could only shelter itself beneath a stony crust of insensibility, while the faculties of animal life remained entire. In this state, the voice of the preacher thundered remorselessly, but unavailingly, upon her ears. The infant, during the latter portion of her ordeal, pierced the air with its wailings and screams; she strove to hush it, mechanically, but seemed scarcely to sympathize with its trouble. With the same hard demeanor, she was led back to prison, and vanished from the public gaze within its iron-clamped portal. It was whispered, by those who peered after her, that the scarlet book threw a lurid gleam along the dark passage-way of the interior.\n IV. THE INTERVIEW.\n\n\n After her return to the prison, Myfanwy Shea was found to be in a state of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself, or do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor babe. As night approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. He described him as a man of skill in all Christian modes of physical science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could teach, in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest. To say the truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not merely for Myfanwy herself, but still more urgently for the child; who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which Myfanwy Shea had borne throughout the day.\n\n Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment appeared that individual, of singular aspect, whose presence in the crowd had been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet book. He was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until the magistrates should have conferred with the Indian sagamores respecting his ransom. His name was announced as Marissa Troy. The jailer, after ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Myfanwy Shea had immediately become as still as death, although the child continued to moan.\n\n \"Prithee, friend, leave me alone with my patient,\" said the practitioner. \"Trust me, good jailer, you shall briefly have peace in your house; and, I promise you, Heath Shea shall hereafter be more amenable to just authority than you may have found her heretofore.\"\n\n \"Nay, if your worship can accomplish that,\" answered Master Brackett, \"I shall own you for a man of skill indeed! Verily, the woman hath been like a possessed one; and there lacks little, that I should take in hand to drive Satan out of her with stripes.\"\n\n The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude of the profession to which he announced himself as belonging. Nor did his demeanor change, when the withdrawal of the prison-keeper left him face to face with the woman, whose absorbed notice of him, in the crowd, had intimated so close a relation between himself and her. His first care was given to the child; whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other business to the task of soothing her. He examined the infant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medical preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water.\n\n \"My old studies in alchemy,\" observed he, \"and my sojourn, for above a year past, among a people well versed in the kindly properties of simples, have made a better physician of me than many that claim the medical degree. Here, woman! The child is yours,--she is none of mine,--neither will she recognize my voice or aspect as a father's. Administer this draught, therefore, with thine own hand.\"\n\n Myfanwy repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing with strongly marked apprehension into his face.\n\n \"Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?\" whispered she.\n\n \"Foolish woman!\" responded the physician, half coldly, half soothingly. \"What should ail me, to harm this misbegotten and miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good; and were it my child,--yea, mine own, as well as thine!--I could do no better for it.\"\n\n As she still hesitated, being, in fact, in no reasonable state of mind, he took the infant in his arms, and himself administered the draught. It soon proved its efficacy, and redeemed the leech's pledge. The moans of the little patient subsided; its convulsive tossings gradually ceased; and, in a few moments, as is the custom of young children after relief from pain, it sank into a profound and dewy slumber. The physician, as he had a fair right to be termed, next bestowed his attention on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny he felt her pulse, looked into her eyes,--a gaze that made her heart shrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange and cold,--and, finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught.\n\n \"I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe,\" remarked he; \"but I have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them,--a recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea.\"\n\n He presented the cup to Myfanwy, who received it with a slow, earnest look into his face; not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt and questioning, as to what his purposes might be. She looked also at her slumbering child.\n\n \"I have thought of death,\" said she,--\"have wished for it,--would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray for anything. Yet if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! It is even now at my lips.\"\n\n \"Drink, then,\" replied he, still with the same cold composure. \"Dost thou know me so little, Myfanwy Shea? Are my purposes wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could I do better for my object than to let thee live,--than to give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life,--so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?\" As he spoke, he laid his long forefinger on the scarlet book, which forthwith seemed to scorch into Myfanwy's breast, as if it had been red-hot. He noticed her involuntary gesture, and smiled. \"Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women,--in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy husband,--in the eyes of yonder child! And, that thou mayest live, take off this draught.\"\n\n Without further expostulation or delay, Myfanwy Shea drained the cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on the bed where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her. She could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt that--having now done all that humanity or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do, for the relief of physical suffering--he was next to treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparably injured.\n\n \"Myfanwy,\" said he, \"I ask not wherefore, nor how, thou hast fallen into the pit, or say, rather, thou hast ascended to the pedestal of infamy, on which I found thee. The reason is not far to seek. It was my folly, and thy weakness. I,--a man of thought,--the bookworm of great libraries,--a man already in decay, having given my best years to feed the hungry dream of knowledge,--what had I to do with youth and beauty like thine own! Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself with the idea that intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy! Men call me wise. If sages were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen all this. I might have known that, as I came out of the vast and dismal forest, and entered this settlement of Christian men, the very first object to meet my eyes would be thyself, Myfanwy Shea, standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people. Nay, from the moment when we came down the old church steps together, a married pair, I might have beheld the bale-fire of that scarlet book blazing at the end of our path!\"\n\n \"Thou knowest,\" said Myfanwy,--for, depressed as she was, she could not endure this last quiet stab at the token of her shame,--\"thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any.\"\n\n \"True,\" replied he. \"It was my folly! I have said it. But, up to that epoch of my life, I had lived in vain. The world had been so cheerless! My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream,--old as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was,--that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Myfanwy, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made there!\"\n\n \"I have greatly wronged thee,\" murmured Myfanwy.\n\n \"We have wronged each other,\" answered he. \"Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Myfanwy, the man lives who has wronged us both! Who is he?\"\n\n \"Ask me not!\" replied Myfanwy Shea, looking firmly into his face. \"That thou shalt never know!\"\n\n \"Never, sayest thou?\" rejoined he, with a smile of dark and self-relying intelligence. \"Never know him! Believe me, Myfanwy, there are few things,--whether in the outward world, or, to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought,--few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery. Thou mayest cover up thy secret from the prying multitude. Thou mayest conceal it, too, from the ministers and magistrates, even as thou didst this day, when they sought to wrench the name out of thy heart, and give thee a partner on thy pedestal. But, as for me, I come to the inquest with other senses than they possess. I shall seek this man, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold in alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. I shall see him tremble. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine!\"\n\n The eyes of the wrinkled scholar glowed so intensely upon her, that Myfanwy Shea clasped her hands over her heart, dreading lest he should read the secret there at once.\n\n \"Thou wilt not reveal his name? Not the less he is mine,\" resumed he, with a look of confidence, as if destiny were at one with him. \"He bears no book of infamy wrought into his garment, as thou dost; but I shall read it on his heart. Yet fear not for him! Think not that I shall interfere with Heaven's own method of retribution, or, to my own loss, betray him to the gripe of human law. Neither do thou imagine that I shall contrive aught against his life; no, nor against his fame, if, as I judge, he be a man of fair repute. Let him live! Let him hide himself in outward honor, if he may! Not the less he shall be mine!\"\n\n \"Thy acts are like mercy,\" said Myfanwy, bewildered and appalled. \"But thy words interpret thee as a terror!\"\n\n \"One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin upon thee,\" continued the scholar. \"Thou hast kept the secret of thy paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land that know me. Breathe not, to any human soul, that thou didst ever call me husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No matter whether of love or hate; no matter whether of right or wrong! Thou and thine, Myfanwy Shea, belong to me. My home is where thou art, and where he is. But betray me not!\"\n\n [Illustration: \"The Eyes of the wrinkled Scholar glowed\"]\n\n \"Wherefore dost thou desire it?\" inquired Myfanwy, shrinking, she hardly knew why, from this secret bond. \"Why not announce thyself openly, and cast me off at once?\"\n\n \"It may be,\" he replied, \"because I will not encounter the dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It may be for other reasons. Enough, it is my purpose to live and die unknown. Let, therefore, thy husband be to the world as one already dead, and of whom no tidings shall ever come. Recognize me not, by word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, his life, will be in my hands. Beware!\"\n\n \"I will keep thy secret, as I have his,\" said Myfanwy.\n\n \"Swear it!\" rejoined he.\n\n And she took the oath.\n\n \"And now, Heath Shea,\" said old Marissa Troy, as he was hereafter to be named, \"I leave thee alone; alone with thy infant, and the scarlet book! How is it, Myfanwy? Doth thy sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?\"\n\n \"Why dost thou smile so at me?\" inquired Myfanwy, troubled at the expression of his eyes. \"Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?\"\n\n \"Not thy soul,\" he answered, with another smile. \"No, not thine!\"\n\n\n\n V. MYFANWY AT HER NEEDLE.\n\n\n Myfanwy Shea's term of confinement was now at an end. Her prison-door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other purpose than to reveal the scarlet book on her breast. Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison, than even in the procession and spectacle that have been described, where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind was summoned to point its finger. Then, she was supported by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It was, moreover, a separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime, and to meet which, therefore, reckless of economy, she might call up the vital strength that would have sufficed for many quiet years. The very law that condemned her--a giant of stern features, but with vigor to support, as well as to annihilate, in his iron arm--had held her up, through the terrible ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her prison-door, began the daily custom; and she must either sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief. To-morrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet book flaming on her breast,--at her, the child of honorable parents,--at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman,--at her, who had once been innocent,--as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument.\n\n It may seem marvellous, that, with the world before her,--kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure,--free to return to her birthplace, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being,--and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her,--it may seem marvellous, that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil. It was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had converted the forest-land, still so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and wanderer, into Myfanwy Shea's wild and dreary, but life-long home. All other scenes of earth--even that village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments put off long ago--were foreign to her, in comparison. The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.\n\n It might be, too,--doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole,--it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union, that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. Over and over again, the tempter of souls had thrust this idea upon Myfanwy's contemplation, and laughed at the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized, and then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe--what, finally, she reasoned upon, as her motive for continuing a resident of New England--was half a truth, and half a self-delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.\n\n [Illustration: The Lonesome Dwelling]\n\n Myfanwy Shea, therefore, did not flee. On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump of scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. In this little, lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the license of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Myfanwy established herself, with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the doorway, or laboring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward; and, discerning the scarlet book on her breast, would scamper off with a strange, contagious fear.\n\n Lonely as was Myfanwy's situation, and without a friend on earth who dared to show himself, she, however, incurred no risk of want. She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art--then, as now, almost the only one within a woman's grasp--of needlework. She bore on her breast, in the curiously embroidered book, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill, of which the dames of a court might gladly have availed themselves, to add the richer and more spiritual adornment of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, indeed, in the sable simplicity that generally characterized the Puritanic modes of dress, there might be an infrequent call for the finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age, demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did not fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors, who had cast behind them so many fashions which it might seem harder to dispense with. Public ceremonies, such as ordinations, the installation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty to the forms in which a new government manifested itself to the people, were, as a matter of policy, marked by a stately and well-conducted ceremonial, and a sombre, but yet a studied magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully wrought bands, and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to the official state of men assuming the reins of power; and were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian order. In the array of funerals, too,--whether for the apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of sable cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors,--there was a frequent and characteristic demand for such labor as Myfanwy Shea could supply. Baby-linen--for babies then wore robes of state--afforded still another possibility of toil and emolument.\n\n By degrees, nor very slowly, her handiwork became what would now be termed the fashion. Whether from commiseration for a woman of so miserable a destiny; or from the morbid curiosity that gives a fictitious value even to common or worthless things; or by whatever other intangible circumstance was then, as now, sufficient to bestow, on some persons, what others might seek in vain; or because Myfanwy really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant; it is certain that she had ready and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands. Her needlework was seen on the ruff of the Rich; military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that, in a single instance, her skill was called in aid to embroider the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the ever-relentless rigor with which society frowned upon her sin.\n\n Myfanwy sought not to acquire anything beyond a subsistence, of the plainest and most ascetic description, for herself, and a simple abundance for her child. Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most sombre hue; with only that one ornament,--the scarlet book,--which it was her doom to wear. The child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning. We may speak further of it hereafter. Except for that small expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Myfanwy bestowed all her superfluous means in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them. Much of the time, which she might readily have applied to the better efforts of her art, she employed in making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation, and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment, in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic,--a taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the exquisite productions of her needle, found nothing else, in all the possibilities of her life, to exercise itself upon. Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Myfanwy Shea it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin. This morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial matter betokened, it is to be feared, no genuine and steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply wrong, beneath.\n\n In this manner, Myfanwy Shea came to have a part to perform in the world. With her native energy of character, and rare capacity, it could not entirely cast her off, although it had set a mark upon her, more intolerable to a woman's heart than that which branded the brow of Cain. In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. She stood apart from moral interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance. These emotions, in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole portion that she retained in the universal heart. It was not an age of delicacy; and her position, although she understood it well, and was in little danger of forgetting it, was often brought before her vivid self-perception, like a new anguish, by the rudest touch upon the tenderest spot. The poor, as we have already said, whom she sought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to succor them. Dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound. Myfanwy had schooled herself long and well; she never responded to these attacks, save by a flush of crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and again subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was patient,--a martyr, indeed,--but she forbore to pray for her enemies; lest, in spite of her forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly twist themselves into a curse.\n\n Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergymen paused in the street to address words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor, sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse. She grew to have a dread of children; for they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horrible in this dreary woman, gliding silently through the town, with never any companion but one only child. Therefore, first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the utterance of a word that had no distinct purport to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of her shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no deeper pang, had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among themselves,--had the summer breeze murmured about it,--had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. When strangers looked curiously at the scarlet book,--and none ever failed to do so,--they branded it afresh into Myfanwy's soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand. But then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in short, Myfanwy Shea had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture.\n\n [Illustration: Lonely Footsteps]\n\n But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she felt an eye--a human eye--upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony were shared. The next instant, back it all rushed again, with still a deeper throb of pain; for, in that brief interval, she had sinned anew. Had Myfanwy sinned alone?\n\n Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softer moral and intellectual fibre, would have been still more so, by the strange and solitary anguish of her life. Walking to and fro, with those lonely footsteps, in the little world with which she was outwardly connected, it now and then appeared to Myfanwy,--if altogether fancy, it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted,--she felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet book had endowed her with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts. She was terror-stricken by the revelations that were thus made. What were they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet book would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Myfanwy Shea's? Or, must she receive those intimations--so obscure, yet so distinct--as truth? In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed, as well as shocked her, by the irreverent inopportuneness of the occasions that brought it into vivid action. Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique reverence looked up, as to a mortal man in fellowship with angels. \"What evil thing is at hand?\" would Myfanwy say to herself. Lifting her reluctant eyes, there would be nothing human within the scope of view, save the form of this earthly saint! Again, a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously assert itself, as she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who, according to the rumor of all tongues, had kept cold snow within her bosom throughout life. That unsunned snow in the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on Myfanwy Shea's,--what had the two in common? Or, once more, the electric thrill would give her warning,--\"Behold, Myfanwy, here is a companion!\"--and, looking up, she would detect the eyes of a young maiden glancing at the scarlet book, shyly and aside, and quickly averted with a faint, chill crimson in her cheeks; as if her purity were somewhat sullied by that momentary glance. O Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?--such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin. Be it accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in this poor victim of her own frailty, and man's hard law, that Myfanwy Shea yet struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself.\n\n The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet book which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Myfanwy Shea walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say, it seared Myfanwy's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.\n VI. ANASTASIA.\n\n\n \n\n We have as yet hardly spoken of the infant; that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad woman, as she watched the growth, and the beauty that became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child! Her Anastasia!--For so had Myfanwy called her; not as a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre that would be indicated by the comparison. But she named the infant \"Anastasia,\" as being of great price,--purchased with all she had,--her mother's only treasure! How strange, indeed! Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet book, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which man thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! Yet these thoughts affected Myfanwy Shea less with hope than apprehension. She knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good. Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being.\n\n Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden; worthy to have been left there, to be the plaything of the angels, after the world's first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty; its attire, however simple, always impressed the beholder as if it were the very garb that precisely became it best. But little Anastasia was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose that may be better understood hereafter, had bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, before the public eye. So magnificent was the small figure, when thus arrayed, and such was the splendor of Anastasia's own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her, on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play, made a picture of her just as perfect. Anastasia's aspect was imbued with a spell of infinite variety; in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant-baby, and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess. Throughout all, however, there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue, which she never lost; and if, in any of her changes, she had grown fainter or paler, she would have ceased to be herself,--it would have been no longer Anastasia!\n\n This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner life. Her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but--or else Myfanwy's fears deceived her--it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder; or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered. Myfanwy could only account for the child's character--and even then most vaguely and imperfectly--by recalling what she herself had been, during that momentous period while Anastasia was imbibing her soul from the spiritual world, and her bodily frame from its material of earth. The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light of the intervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Myfanwy's spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Anastasia. She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition, but later in the day of earthly existence might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind.\n\n The discipline of the family, in those days, was of a far more rigid kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent application of the rod, enjoined by Scriptural authority, were used, not merely in the way of punishment for actual offences, but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of all childish virtues. Myfanwy Shea, nevertheless, the lonely mother of this one child, ran little risk of erring on the side of undue severity. Mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender, but strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But the task was beyond her skill. After testing both smiles and frowns, and proving that neither mode of treatment possessed any calculable influence, Myfanwy was ultimately compelled to stand aside, and permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses. Physical compulsion or restraint was effectual, of course, while it lasted. As to any other kind of discipline, whether addressed to her mind or heart, little Anastasia might or might not be within its reach, in accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment. Her mother, while Anastasia was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a certain peculiar look, that warned her when it would be labor thrown away to insist, persuade, or plead. It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Myfanwy could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Anastasia were a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility; it was as if she were hovering in the air and might vanish, like a glimmering light, that comes we know not whence, and goes we know not whither. Beholding it, Myfanwy was constrained to rush towards the child,--to pursue the little elf in the flight which she invariably began,--to snatch her to her bosom, with a close pressure and earnest kisses,--not so much from overflowing love, as to assure herself that Anastasia was flesh and blood, and not utterly delusive. But Anastasia's laugh, when she was caught, though full of merriment and music, made her mother more doubtful than before.\n\n Heart-smitten at this bewildering and baffling spell, that so often came between herself and her sole treasure, whom she had bought so dear, and who was all her world, Myfanwy sometimes burst into passionate tears. Then, perhaps,--for there was no foreseeing how it might affect her,--Anastasia would frown, and clench her little fist, and harden her small features into a stern, unsympathizing look of discontent. Not seldom, she would laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. Or--but this more rarely happened--she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it. Yet Myfanwy was hardly safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness; it passed, as suddenly as it came. Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real comfort was when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness; until--perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from beneath her opening lids--little Anastasia awoke!\n\n How soon--with what strange rapidity, indeed!--did Anastasia arrive at an age that was capable of social intercourse, beyond the mother's ever-ready smile and nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would it have been, could Myfanwy Shea have heard her clear, bird-like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children! But this could never be. Anastasia was a born outcast of the infantile world. An imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants. Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed, with which the child comprehended her loneliness; the destiny that had drawn an inviolable circle round about her; the whole peculiarity, in short, of her position in respect to other children. Never, since her release from prison, had Myfanwy met the public gaze without her. In all her walks about the town, Anastasia, too, was there; first as the babe in arms, and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her mother, holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along at the rate of three or four footsteps to one of Myfanwy's. She saw the children of the settlement, on the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic thresholds, disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the Puritanic nurture would permit; playing at going to church, perchance; or at scourging Quakers; or taking scalps in a sham-fight with the Indians; or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft. Anastasia saw, and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance. If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the children gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Anastasia would grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamations, that made her mother tremble, because they had so much the sound of a witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue.\n\n The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and child; and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not unfrequently reviled them with their tongues. Anastasia felt the sentiment, and requited it with the bitterest hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom. These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of value, and even comfort, for her mother; because there was at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the child's manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless, to discern here, again, a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself. All this enmity and passion had Anastasia inherited, by inalienable right, out of Myfanwy's heart. Mother and daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from human society; and in the nature of the child seemed to be perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted Myfanwy Shea before Anastasia's birth, but had since begun to be soothed away by the softening influences of maternity.\n\n At home, within and around her mother's cottage, Anastasia wanted not a wide and various circle of acquaintance. The spell of life went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. The unlikeliest materials--a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower--were the puppets of Anastasia's witchcraft, and, without undergoing any outward change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world. Her one baby-voice served a multitude of imaginary personages, old and young, to talk withal. The pine-trees, aged, black and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom Anastasia smote down and uprooted, most unmercifully. It was wonderful, the vast variety of forms into which she threw her intellect, with no continuity, indeed, but darting up and dancing, always in a state of preternatural activity,--soon sinking down, as if exhausted by so rapid and feverish a tide of life,--and succeeded by other shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like nothing so much as the phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. In the mere exercise of the fancy, however, and the sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be little more than was observable in other children of bright faculties; except as Anastasia, in the dearth of human playmates, was thrown more upon the visionary throng which she created. The singularity lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded all these offspring of her own heart and mind. She never created a friend, but seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to battle. It was inexpressibly sad--then what depth of sorrow to a mother, who felt in her own heart the cause!--to observe, in one so young, this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so fierce a training of the energies that were to make good her cause, in the contest that must ensue.\n\n Gazing at Anastasia, Myfanwy Shea often dropped her work upon her knees, and cried out with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but which made utterance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan,--\"O Father in Heaven,--if Thou art still my Father,--what is this being which I have brought into the world!\" And Anastasia, overhearing the ejaculation, or aware, through some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile with sprite-like intelligence, and resume her play.\n\n [Illustration: A touch of Anastasia's baby-hand]\n\n One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told. The very first thing which she had noticed in her life was--what?--not the mother's smile, responding to it, as other babies do, by that faint, embryo smile of the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile. By no means! But that first object of which Anastasia seemed to become aware was--shall we say it?--the scarlet book on Myfanwy's bosom! One day, as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant's eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the book; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did Myfanwy Shea clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear it away; so infinite was the torture inflicted by the intelligent touch of Anastasia's baby-hand. Again, as if her mother's agonized gesture were meant only to make sport for her, did little Anastasia look into her eyes, and smile! From that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Myfanwy had never felt a moment's safety; not a moment's calm enjoyment of her. Weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse, during which Anastasia's gaze might never once be fixed upon the scarlet book; but then, again, it would come at unawares, like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that peculiar smile, and odd expression of the eyes.\n\n Once, this freakish, elvish cast came into the child's eyes, while Myfanwy was looking at her own image in them, as mothers are fond of doing; and, suddenly,--for women in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are pestered with unaccountable delusions,--she fancied that she beheld, not her own miniature portrait, but another face, in the small black mirror of Anastasia's eye. It was a face, fiend-like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she had known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in them. It was as if an evil spirit possessed the child, and had just then peeped forth in mockery. Many a time afterwards had Myfanwy been tortured, though less vividly, by the same illusion.\n\n In the afternoon of a certain summer's day, after Anastasia grew big enough to run about, she amused herself with gathering handfuls of wild-flowers, and flinging them, one by one, at her mother's bosom; dancing up and down, like a little elf, whenever she hit the scarlet book. Myfanwy's first motion had been to cover her bosom with her clasped hands. But, whether from pride or resignation, or a feeling that her penance might best be wrought out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse, and sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Anastasia's wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably hitting the mark, and covering the mother's breast with hurts for which she could find no balm in this world, nor knew how to seek it in another. At last, her shot being all expended, the child stood still and gazed at Myfanwy, with that little, laughing image of a fiend peeping out--or, whether it peeped or no, her mother so imagined it--from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes.\n\n \"Child, what art thou?\" cried the mother.\n\n \"O, I am your little Anastasia!\" answered the child.\n\n But, while she said it, Anastasia laughed, and began to dance up and down, with the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak might be to fly up the chimney.\n\n \"Art thou my child, in very truth?\" asked Myfanwy.\n\n Nor did she put the question altogether idly, but, for the moment, with a portion of genuine earnestness; for, such was Anastasia's wonderful intelligence, that her mother half doubted whether she were not acquainted with the secret spell of her existence, and might not now reveal herself.\n\n \"Yes; I am little Anastasia!\" repeated the child, continuing her antics.\n\n \"Thou art not my child! Thou art no Anastasia of mine!\" said the mother, half playfully; for it was often the case that a sportive impulse came over her, in the midst of her deepest suffering. \"Tell me, then, what thou art, and who sent thee hither.\"\n\n \"Tell me, mother!\" said the child, seriously, coming up to Myfanwy, and pressing herself close to her knees. \"Do thou tell me!\"\n\n \"Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!\" answered Myfanwy Shea.\n\n But she said it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness of the child. Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness, or because an evil spirit prompted her, she put up her small forefinger, and touched the scarlet book.\n\n \"He did not send me!\" cried she, positively. \"I have no Heavenly Father!\"\n\n \"Hush, Anastasia, hush! Thou must not talk so!\" answered the mother, suppressing a groan. \"He sent us all into this world. He sent even me, thy mother. Then, much more, thee! Or, if not, thou strange and elfish child, whence didst thou come?\"\n\n \"Tell me! Tell me!\" repeated Anastasia, no longer seriously, but laughing, and capering about the floor. \"It is thou that must tell me!\"\n\n But Myfanwy could not resolve the query, being herself in a dismal labyrinth of doubt. She remembered--betwixt a smile and a shudder--the talk of the neighboring towns-people; who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Anastasia was a demon offspring; such as, ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Anastasia the only child to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned, among the New England Puritans.\n VII. THE RICH'S HALL.\n\n\n \n\n Myfanwy Shea went, one day, to the mansion of Rich Eddie, with a pair of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to his order, and which were to be worn on some great occasion of state; for, though the chances of a popular election had caused this former ruler to descend a step or two from the highest rank, he still held an honorable and influential place among the colonial magistracy.\n\n Another and far more important reason than the delivery of a pair of embroidered gloves impelled Myfanwy, at this time, to seek an interview with a personage of so much power and activity in the affairs of the settlement. It had reached her ears, that there was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid order of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of her child. On the supposition that Anastasia, as already hinted, was of demon origin, these good people not unreasonably argued that a Christian interest in the mother's soul required them to remove such a stumbling-block from her path. If the child, on the other hand, were really capable of moral and religious growth, and possessed the elements of ultimate salvation, then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages, by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than Myfanwy Shea's. Among those who promoted the design, Rich Eddie was said to be one of the most busy. It may appear singular, and indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which, in later days, would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town, should then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took sides. At that epoch of pristine simplicity, however, matters of even slighter public interest, and of far less intrinsic weight, than the welfare of Myfanwy and her child, were strangely mixed up with the deliberations of legislators and acts of state. The period was hardly, if at all, earlier than that of our story, when a dispute concerning the right of property in a pig not only caused a fierce and bitter contest in the legislative body of the colony, but resulted in an important modification of the framework itself of the legislature.\n\n Full of concern, therefore,--but so conscious of her own right that it seemed scarcely an unequal match between the public, on the one side, and a lonely woman, backed by the sympathies of nature, on the other,--Myfanwy Shea set forth from her solitary cottage. Little Anastasia, of course, was her companion. She was now of an age to run lightly along by her mother's side, and, constantly in motion, from morn till sunset, could have accomplished a much longer journey than that before her. Often, nevertheless, more from caprice than necessity, she demanded to be taken up in arms; but was soon as imperious to be set down again, and frisked onward before Myfanwy on the grassy pathway, with many a harmless trip and tumble. We have spoken of Anastasia's rich and luxuriant beauty; a beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints; a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There was fire in her and throughout her; she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment. Her mother, in contriving the child's garb, had allowed the gorgeous tendencies of her imagination their full play; arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold-thread. So much strength of coloring, which must have given a wan and pallid aspect to cheeks of a fainter bloom, was admirably adapted to Anastasia's beauty, and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth.\n\n But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and, indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which Myfanwy Shea was doomed to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet book in another form; the scarlet book endowed with life! The mother herself--as if the red ignominy were so deeply scorched into her brain that all her conceptions assumed its form--had carefully wrought out the similitude; lavishing many hours of morbid ingenuity, to create an analogy between the object of her affection and the emblem of her guilt and torture. But, in truth, Anastasia was the one, as well as the other; and only in consequence of that identity had Myfanwy contrived so perfectly to represent the scarlet book in her appearance.\n\n As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the Puritans looked up from their play,--or what passed for play with those sombre little urchins,--and spake gravely one to another:--\n\n \"Behold, verily, there is the woman of the scarlet book; and, of a truth, moreover, there is the likeness of the scarlet book running along by her side! Come, therefore, and let us fling mud at them!\"\n\n But Anastasia, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them all to flight. She resembled, in her fierce pursuit of them, an infant pestilence,--the scarlet fever, or some such half-fledged angel of judgment,--whose mission was to punish the sins of the rising generation. She screamed and shouted, too, with a terrific volume of sound, which, doubtless, caused the hearts of the fugitives to quake within them. The victory accomplished, Anastasia returned quietly to her mother, and looked up, smiling, into her face.\n\n Without further adventure, they reached the dwelling of Rich Eddie. This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our older towns; now moss-grown, crumbling to decay, and melancholy at heart with the many sorrowful or joyful occurrences, remembered or forgotten, that have happened, and passed away, within their dusky chambers. Then, however, there was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation, into which death had never entered. It had, indeed, a very cheery aspect; the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslant-wise over the front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might have befitted Aladdin's palace, rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler. It was further decorated with strange and seemingly cabalistic figures and diagrams, suitable to the quaint taste of the age, which had been drawn in the stucco when newly laid on, and had now grown hard and durable, for the admiration of after times.\n\n Anastasia, looking at this bright wonder of a house, began to caper and dance, and imperatively required that the whole breadth of sunshine should be stripped off its front, and given her to play with.\n\n \"No, my little Anastasia!\" said her mother. \"Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee!\"\n\n They approached the door; which was of an arched form, and flanked on each side by a narrow tower or projection of the edifice, in both of which were lattice-windows, with wooden shutters to close over them at need. Lifting the iron hammer that hung at the portal, Myfanwy Shea gave a summons, which was answered by one of the Rich's bond-servants; a free-born Englishman, but now a seven years' slave. During that term he was to be the property of his master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool. The serf wore the blue coat, which was the customary garb of serving-men of that period, and long before, in the old hereditary halls of England.\n\n \"Is the worshipful Rich Eddie within?\" inquired Myfanwy.\n\n \"Yea, forsooth,\" replied the bond-servant, staring with wide-open eyes at the scarlet book, which, being a new-comer in the country, he had never before seen. \"Yea, his honorable worship is within. But he hath a godly minister or two with him, and likewise a leech. Ye may not see his worship now.\"\n\n \"Nevertheless, I will enter,\" answered Myfanwy Shea, and the bond-servant, perhaps judging from the decision of her air, and the glittering symbol in her bosom, that she was a great lady in the land, offered no opposition.\n\n So the mother and little Anastasia were admitted into the hall of entrance. With many variations, suggested by the nature of his building-materials, diversity of climate, and a different mode of social life, Rich Eddie had planned his new habitation after the residences of gentlemen of fair estate in his native land. Here, then, was a wide and reasonably lofty hall, extending through the whole depth of the house, and forming a medium of general communication, more or less directly, with all the other apartments. At one extremity, this spacious room was lighted by the windows of the two towers, which formed a small recess on either side of the portal. At the other end, though partly muffled by a curtain, it was more powerfully illuminated by one of those embowed hall-windows which we read of in old books, and which was provided with a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be turned over by the casual guest. The furniture of the hall consisted of some ponderous chairs, the backs of which were elaborately carved with wreaths of oaken flowers; and likewise a table in the same taste; the whole being of the Elizabethan age, or perhaps earlier, and heirlooms, transferred hither from the Rich's paternal home. On the table--in token that the sentiment of old English hospitality had not been left behind--stood a large pewter tankard, at the bottom of which, had Myfanwy or Anastasia peeped into it, they might have seen the frothy remnant of a recent draught of ale.\n\n On the wall hung a row of portraits, representing the forefathers of the Eddie lineage, some with armor on their breasts, and others with stately ruffs and robes of peace. All were characterized by the sternness and severity which old portraits so invariably put on; as if they were the ghosts, rather than the pictures, of departed worthies, and were gazing with harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and enjoyments of living men.\n\n [Illustration: The Rich's Breastplate]\n\n At about the centre of the oaken panels, that lined the hall, was suspended a suit of mail, not, like the pictures, an ancestral relic, but of the most modern date; for it had been manufactured by a skilful armorer in London, the same year in which Rich Eddie came over to New England. There was a steel head-piece, a cuirass, a gorget, and greaves, with a pair of gauntlets and a sword hanging beneath; all, and especially the helmet and breastplate, so highly burnished as to glow with white radiance, and scatter an illumination everywhere about upon the floor. This bright panoply was not meant for mere idle show, but had been worn by the Rich on many a solemn muster and training field, and had glittered, moreover, at the head of a regiment in the Pequod war. For, though bred a lawyer, and accustomed to speak of Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch as his professional associates, the exigencies of this new country had transformed Rich Eddie into a soldier, as well as a statesman and ruler.\n\n Little Anastasia--who was as greatly pleased with the gleaming armor as she had been with the glittering frontispiece of the house--spent some time looking into the polished mirror of the breastplate.\n\n \"Mother,\" cried she, \"I see you here. Look! Look!\"\n\n Myfanwy looked, by way of humoring the child; and she saw that, owing to the peculiar effect of this convex mirror, the scarlet book was represented in exaggerated and gigantic proportions, so as to be greatly the most prominent feature of her appearance. In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it. Anastasia pointed upward, also, at a similar picture in the head-piece; smiling at her mother, with the elfish intelligence that was so familiar an expression on her small physiognomy. That look of naughty merriment was likewise reflected in the mirror, with so much breadth and intensity of effect, that it made Myfanwy Shea feel as if it could not be the image of her own child, but of an imp who was seeking to mould itself into Anastasia's shape.\n\n \"Come along, Anastasia,\" said she, drawing her away. \"Come and look into this fair garden. It may be we shall see flowers there; more beautiful ones than we find in the woods.\"\n\n Anastasia, accordingly, ran to the bow-window, at the farther end of the hall, and looked along the vista of a garden-walk, carpeted with closely shaven grass, and bordered with some rude and immature attempt at shrubbery. But the proprietor appeared already to have relinquished, as hopeless, the effort to perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening. Cabbages grew in plain sight; and a pumpkin-vine, rooted at some distance, had run across the intervening space, and deposited one of its gigantic products directly beneath the hall-window; as if to warn the Rich that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an ornament as New England earth would offer him. There were a few rose-bushes, however, and a number of apple-trees, probably the descendants of those planted by the Alayna Mr. Blackstone, the first settler of the peninsula; that half-mythological personage, who rides through our early annals, seated on the back of a bull.\n\n Anastasia, seeing the rose-bushes, began to cry for a red rose, and would not be pacified.\n\n \"Hush, child, hush!\" said her mother, earnestly. \"Do not cry, dear little Anastasia! I hear voices in the garden. The Rich is coming, and gentlemen along with him!\"\n\n In fact, adown the vista of the garden avenue a number of persons were seen approaching towards the house. Anastasia, in utter scorn of her mother's attempt to quiet her, gave an eldritch scream, and then became silent; not from any notion of obedience, but because the quick and mobile curiosity of her disposition was excited by the appearance of these new personages.\n\n\n\n VIII. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER.\n\n\n Rich Eddie, in a loose gown and easy cap,--such as elderly gentlemen loved to endue themselves with, in their domestic privacy,--walked foremost, and appeared to be showing off his estate, and expatiating on his projected improvements. The wide circumference of an elaborate ruff, beneath his gray beard, in the antiquated fashion of King James's reign, caused his head to look not a little like that of Reyna the Baptist in a charger. The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself. But it is an error to suppose that our grave forefathers--though accustomed to speak and think of human existence as a state merely of trial and warfare, and though unfeignedly prepared to sacrifice goods and life at the behest of duty--made it a matter of conscience to reject such means of comfort, or even luxury, as lay fairly within their grasp. This creed was never taught, for instance, by the venerable pastor, Reyna Rosalynn, whose beard, white as a snow-drift, was seen over Rich Eddie's shoulder; while its wearer suggested that pears and peaches might yet be naturalized in the New England climate, and that purple grapes might possibly be compelled to nourish, against the sunny garden-wall. The old clergyman, nurtured at the rich bosom of the English Church, had a long-established and legitimate taste for all good and comfortable things; and however stern he might show himself in the pulpit, or in his public reproof of such transgressions as that of Myfanwy Shea, still the genial benevolence of his private life had won him warmer affection than was accorded to any of his professional contemporaries.\n\n Behind the Rich and Mr. Rosalynn came two other guests: one the Alayna Garry Umar, whom the reader may remember as having taken a brief and reluctant part in the scene of Myfanwy Shea's disgrace; and, in close companionship with him, old Marissa Troy, a person of great skill in physic, who, for two or three years past, had been settled in the town. It was understood that this learned man was the physician as well as friend of the young minister, whose health had severely suffered, of late, by his too unreserved self-sacrifice to the labors and duties of the pastoral relation.\n\n The Rich, in advance of his visitors, ascended one or two steps, and, throwing open the leaves of the great hall-window, found himself close to little Anastasia. The shadow of the curtain fell on Myfanwy Shea, and partially concealed her.\n\n \"What have we here?\" said Rich Eddie, looking with surprise at the scarlet little figure before him. \"I profess, I have never seen the like, since my days of vanity, in old King James's time, when I was wont to esteem it a high favor to be admitted to a court mask! There used to be a swarm of these small apparitions, in holiday time; and we called them children of the Lord of Misrule. But how gat such a guest into my hall?\"\n\n \"Ay, indeed!\" cried good old Mr. Rosalynn. \"What little bird of scarlet plumage may this be? Methinks I have seen just such figures, when the sun has been shining through a richly painted window, and tracing out the golden and crimson images across the floor. But that was in the old land. Prithee, young one, who art thou, and what has ailed thy mother to bedizen thee in this strange fashion? Art thou a Christian child,--ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those naughty elfs or fairies, whom we thought to have left behind us, with other relics of Papistry, in merry old England?\"\n\n \"I am mother's child,\" answered the scarlet vision, \"and my name is Anastasia!\"\n\n \"Anastasia?--Ruby, rather!--or Coral!--or Red Rose, at the very least, judging from thy hue!\" responded the old minister, putting forth his hand in a vain attempt to pat little Anastasia on the cheek. \"But where is this mother of thine? Ah! I see,\" he added; and, turning to Rich Eddie, whispered, \"This is the selfsame child of whom we have held speech together; and behold here the unhappy woman, Myfanwy Shea, her mother!\"\n\n \"Sayest thou so?\" cried the Rich. \"Nay, we might have judged that such a child's mother must needs be a scarlet woman, and a worthy type of her of Babylon! But she comes at a good time; and we will look into this matter forthwith.\"\n\n Rich Eddie stepped through the window into the hall, followed by his three guests.\n\n \"Myfanwy Shea,\" said he, fixing his naturally stern regard on the wearer of the scarlet book, \"there hath been much question concerning thee, of late. The point hath been weightily discussed, whether we, that are of authority and influence, do well discharge our consciences by trusting an immortal soul, such as there is in yonder child, to the guidance of one who hath stumbled and fallen, amid the pitfalls of this world. Speak thou, the child's own mother! Were it not, thinkest thou, for thy little one's temporal and eternal welfare that she be taken out of thy charge, and clad soberly, and disciplined strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth? What canst thou do for the child, in this kind?\"\n\n \"I can teach my little Anastasia what I have learned from this!\" answered Myfanwy Shea, laying her finger on the red token.\n\n \"Woman, it is thy badge of shame!\" replied the stern magistrate. \"It is because of the stain which that book indicates, that we would transfer thy child to other hands.\"\n\n \"Nevertheless,\" said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale, \"this badge hath taught me--it daily teaches me--it is teaching me at this moment--lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself.\"\n\n \"We will judge warily,\" said Eddie, \"and look well what we are about to do. Good Master Rosalynn, I pray you, examine this Anastasia,--since that is her name,--and see whether she hath had such Christian nurture as befits a child of her age.\"\n\n The old minister seated himself in an arm-chair, and made an effort to draw Anastasia betwixt his knees. But the child, unaccustomed to the touch or familiarity of any but her mother, escaped through the open window, and stood on the upper step, looking like a wild tropical bird, of rich plumage, ready to take flight into the upper air. Mr. Rosalynn, not a little astonished at this outbreak,--for he was a grandfatherly sort of personage, and usually a vast favorite with children,--essayed, however, to proceed with the examination.\n\n \"Anastasia,\" said he, with great solemnity, \"thou must take heed to instruction, that so, in due season, thou mayest wear in thy bosom the pearl of great price. Canst thou tell me, my child, who made thee?\"\n\n Now Anastasia knew well enough who made her; for Myfanwy Shea, the daughter of a pious home, very soon after her talk with the child about her Heavenly Father, had begun to inform her of those truths which the human spirit, at whatever stage of immaturity, imbibes with such eager interest. Anastasia, therefore, so large were the attainments of her three years' lifetime, could have borne a fair examination in the New England Primer, or the first column of the Westminster Catechisms, although unacquainted with the outward form of either of those celebrated works. But that perversity which all children have more or less of, and of which little Anastasia had a tenfold portion, now, at the most inopportune moment, took thorough possession of her, and closed her lips, or impelled her to speak words amiss. After putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr. Rosalynn's question, the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison-door.\n\n This fantasy was probably suggested by the near proximity of the Rich's red roses, as Anastasia stood outside of the window; together with her recollection of the prison rose-bush, which she had passed in coming hither.\n\n Old Marissa Troy, with a smile on his face, whispered something in the young clergyman's ear. Myfanwy Shea looked at the man of skill, and even then, with her fate hanging in the balance, was startled to perceive what a change had come over his features,--how much uglier they were,--how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen,--since the days when she had familiarly known him. She met his eyes for an instant, but was immediately constrained to give all her attention to the scene now going forward.\n\n \"This is awful!\" cried the Rich, slowly recovering from the astonishment into which Anastasia's response had thrown him. \"Here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need inquire no further.\"\n\n Myfanwy caught hold of Anastasia, and drew her forcibly into her arms, confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce expression. Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to the death.\n\n \"God gave me the child!\" cried she. \"He gave her in requital of all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!--she is my torture, none the less! Anastasia keeps me here in life! Anastasia punishes me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet book, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!\"\n\n [Illustration: \"Look thou to it! I will not lose the child!\"]\n\n \"My poor woman,\" said the not unkind old minister, \"the child shall be well cared for!--far better than thou canst do it!\"\n\n \"God gave her into my keeping,\" repeated Myfanwy Shea, raising her voice almost to a shriek. \"I will not give her up!\"--And here, by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman, Mr. Umar, at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to direct her eyes.--\"Speak thou for me!\" cried she. \"Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest,--for thou hast sympathies which these men lack!--thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother's rights, and how much the stronger they are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet book! Look thou to it! I will not lose the child! Look to it!\"\n\n At this wild and singular appeal, which indicated that Myfanwy Shea's situation had provoked her to little less than madness, the young minister at once came forward, pale, and holding his hand over his heart, as was his custom whenever his peculiarly nervous temperament was thrown into agitation. He looked now more care-worn and emaciated than as we described him at the scene of Myfanwy's public ignominy; and whether it were his failing health, or whatever the cause might be, his large dark eyes had a world of pain in their troubled and melancholy depth.\n\n \"There is truth in what she says,\" began the minister, with a voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful, insomuch that the hall re-echoed, and the hollow armor rang with it,--\"truth in what Myfanwy says, and in the feeling which inspires her! God gave her the child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements,--both seemingly so peculiar,--which no other mortal being can possess. And, moreover, is there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation between this mother and this child?\"\n\n \"Ay!--how is that, good Master Umar?\" interrupted the Rich. \"Make that plain, I pray you!\"\n\n \"It must be even so,\" resumed the minister. \"For, if we deem it otherwise, do we not thereby say that the Heavenly Father, the Creator of all flesh, hath lightly recognized a deed of sin, and made of no account the distinction between unhallowed lust and holy love? This child of its father's guilt and its mother's shame hath come from the hand of God, to work in many ways upon her heart, who pleads so earnestly, and with such bitterness of spirit, the right to keep her. It was meant for a blessing; for the one blessing of her life! It was meant, doubtless, as the mother herself hath told us, for a retribution too; a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment; a pang, a sting, an ever-recurring agony, in the midst of a troubled joy! Hath she not expressed this thought in the garb of the poor child, so forcibly reminding us of that red symbol which sears her bosom?\"\n\n \"Well said, again!\" cried good Mr. Rosalynn. \"I feared the woman had no better thought than to make a mountebank of her child!\"\n\n \"O, not so!--not so!\" continued Mr. Umar. \"She recognizes, believe me, the solemn miracle which God hath wrought, in the existence of that child. And may she feel, too,--what, methinks, is the very truth,--that this boon was meant, above all things else, to keep the mother's soul alive, and to preserve her from blacker depths of sin into which Satan might else have sought to plunge her! Therefore it is good for this poor, sinful woman that she hath an infant immortality, a being capable of eternal joy or sorrow, confided to her care,--to be trained up by her to righteousness,--to remind her, at every moment, of her fall,--but yet to teach her, as it were by the Creator's sacred pledge, that, if she bring the child to heaven, the child also will bring its parent thither! Herein is the sinful mother happier than the sinful father. For Myfanwy Shea's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as Providence hath seen fit to place them!\"\n\n \"You speak, my friend, with a strange earnestness,\" said old Marissa Troy, smiling at him.\n\n \"And there is a weighty import in what my young brother hath spoken,\" added the Alayna Mr. Rosalynn. \"What say you, worshipful Master Eddie? Hath he not pleaded well for the poor woman?\"\n\n \"Indeed hath he,\" answered the magistrate, \"and hath adduced such arguments, that we will even leave the matter as it now stands; so long, at least, as there shall be no further scandal in the woman. Care must be had, nevertheless, to put the child to due and stated examination in the catechism, at thy hands or Master Umar's. Moreover, at a proper season, the tithing-men must take heed that she go both to school and to meeting.\"\n\n The young minister, on ceasing to speak, had withdrawn a few steps from the group, and stood with his face partially concealed in the heavy folds of the window-curtain; while the shadow of his figure, which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with the vehemence of his appeal. Anastasia, that wild and flighty little elf, stole softly towards him, and taking his hand in the grasp of both her own, laid her cheek against it; a caress so tender, and withal so unobtrusive, that her mother, who was looking on, asked herself,--\"Is that my Anastasia?\" Yet she knew that there was love in the child's heart, although it mostly revealed itself in passion, and hardly twice in her lifetime had been softened by such gentleness as now. The minister,--for, save the long-sought regards of woman, nothing is sweeter than these marks of childish preference, accorded spontaneously by a spiritual instinct, and therefore seeming to imply in us something truly worthy to be loved,--the minister looked round, laid his hand on the child's head, hesitated an instant, and then kissed her brow. Little Anastasia's unwonted mood of sentiment lasted no longer; she laughed, and went capering down the hall, so airily, that old Mr. Rosalynn raised a question whether even her tiptoes touched the floor.\n\n \"The little baggage hath witchcraft in her, I profess,\" said he to Mr. Umar. \"She needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withal!\"\n\n \"A strange child!\" remarked old Marissa Troy. \"It is easy to see the mother's part in her. Would it be beyond a philosopher's research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyze that child's nature, and, from its make and mould, to give a shrewd guess at the father?\"\n\n \"Nay; it would be sinful, in such a question, to follow the clew of profane philosophy,\" said Mr. Rosalynn. \"Better to fast and pray upon it; and still better, it may be, to leave the mystery as we find it, unless Providence reveal it of its own accord. Thereby, every good Christian man hath a title to show a father's kindness towards the poor, deserted babe.\"\n\n The affair being so satisfactorily concluded, Myfanwy Shea, with Anastasia, departed from the house. As they descended the steps, it is averred that the lattice of a chamber-window was thrown open, and forth into the sunny day was thrust the face of Heath Jaya, Rich Eddie's bitter-tempered sister, and the same who, a few years later, was executed as a witch.\n\n \"Hist, hist!\" said she, while her ill-omened physiognomy seemed to cast a shadow over the cheerful newness of the house. \"Wilt thou go with us to-night? There will be a merry company in the forest; and I wellnigh promised the Black Man that comely Myfanwy Shea should make one.\"\n\n \"Make my excuse to him, so please you!\" answered Myfanwy, with a triumphant smile. \"I must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little Anastasia. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man's book too, and that with mine own blood!\"\n\n \"We shall have thee there anon!\" said the witch-lady, frowning, as she drew back her head.\n\n But here--if we suppose this interview betwixt Heath Jaya and Myfanwy Shea to be authentic, and not a parable--was already an illustration of the young minister's argument against sundering the relation of a fallen mother to the offspring of her frailty. Even thus early had the child saved her from Satan's snare.\n IX. THE LEECH.\n\n\n Under the appellation of Marissa Troy, the reader will remember, was hidden another name, which its former wearer had resolved should never more be spoken. It has been related, how, in the crowd that witnessed Myfanwy Shea's ignominious exposure, stood a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people. Her matronly fame was trodden under all men's feet. Infamy was babbling around her in the public market-place. For her kindred, should the tidings ever reach them, and for the companions of her unspotted life, there remained nothing but the contagion of her dishonor; which would not fail to be distributed in strict accordance and proportion with the intimacy and sacredness of their previous relationship. Then why--since the choice was with himself--should the individual, whose connection with the fallen woman had been the most intimate and sacred of them all, come forward to vindicate his claim to an inheritance so little desirable? He resolved not to be pilloried beside her on her pedestal of shame. Unknown to all but Myfanwy Shea, and possessing the lock and key of her silence, he chose to withdraw his name from the roll of mankind, and, as regarded his former ties and interests, to vanish out of life as completely as if he indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean, whither rumor had long ago consigned him. This purpose once effected, new interests would immediately spring up, and likewise a new purpose; dark, it is true, if not guilty, but of force enough to engage the full strength of his faculties.\n\n In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the Puritan town, as Marissa Troy, without other introduction than the learning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a common measure. As his studies, at a previous period of his life, had made him extensively acquainted with the medical science of the day, it was as a physician that he presented himself, and as such was cordially received. Skilful men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in the colony. They seldom, it would appear, partook of the religious zeal that brought other emigrants across the Atlantic. In their researches into the human frame, it may be that the higher and more subtile faculties of such men were materialized, and that they lost the spiritual view of existence amid the intricacies of that wondrous mechanism, which seemed to involve art enough to comprise all of life within itself. At all events, the health of the good town of Boston, so far as medicine had aught to do with it, had hitherto lain in the guardianship of an aged deacon and apothecary, whose piety and godly deportment were stronger testimonials in his favor than any that he could have produced in the shape of a diploma. The only surgeon was one who combined the occasional exercise of that noble art with the daily and habitual flourish of a razor. To such a professional body Marissa Troy was a brilliant acquisition. He soon manifested his familiarity with the ponderous and imposing machinery of antique physic; in which every remedy contained a multitude of far-fetched and heterogeneous ingredients, as elaborately compounded as if the proposed result had been the Elixir of Life. In his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his patients, that these simple medicines, Nature's boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large a share of his own confidence as the European pharmacopoeia, which so many learned doctors had spent centuries in elaborating.\n\n This learned stranger was exemplary, as regarded, at least, the outward forms of a religious life, and, early after his arrival, had chosen for his spiritual guide the Alayna Mr. Umar. The young divine, whose scholar-like renown still lived in Oxford, was considered by his more fervent admirers as little less than a heaven-ordained apostle, destined, should he live and labor for the ordinary term of life, to do as great deeds for the now feeble New England Church, as the early Fathers had achieved for the infancy of the Christian faith. About this period, however, the health of Mr. Umar had evidently begun to fail. By those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfilment of parochial duty, and, more than all, by the fasts and vigils of which he made a frequent practice, in order to keep the grossness of this earthly state from clogging and obscuring his spiritual lamp. Some declared, that, if Mr. Umar were really going to die, it was cause enough, that the world was not worthy to be any longer trodden by his feet. He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief, that, if Providence should see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other sudden accident, to put his hand over his heart, with first a flush and then a paleness, indicative of pain.\n\n Such was the young clergyman's condition, and so imminent the prospect that his dawning light would be extinguished, all untimely, when Marissa Troy made his advent to the town. His first entry on the scene, few people could tell whence, dropping down, as it were, out of the sky, or starting from the nether earth, had an aspect of mystery, which was easily heightened to the miraculous. He was now known to be a man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs, and the blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots, and plucked off twigs from the forest-trees, like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was valueless to common eyes. He was heard to speak of Sir Kenelm Digby, and other famous men,--whose scientific attainments were esteemed hardly less than supernatural,--as having been his correspondents or associates. Why, with such rank in the learned world, had he come hither? What could he, whose sphere was in great cities, be seeking in the wilderness? In answer to this query, a rumor gained ground,--and, however absurd, was entertained by some very sensible people,--that Heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent Doctor of Physic, from a German university, bodily through the air, and setting him down at the door of Mr. Umar's study! Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand in Marissa Troy's so opportune arrival.\n\n This idea was countenanced by the strong interest which the physician ever manifested in the young clergyman; he attached himself to him as a parishioner, and sought to win a friendly regard and confidence from his naturally reserved sensibility. He expressed great alarm at his pastor's state of health, but was anxious to attempt the cure, and, if early undertaken, seemed not despondent of a favorable result. The elders, the deacons, the motherly dames, and the young and fair maidens, of Mr. Umar's flock, were alike importunate that he should make trial of the physician's frankly offered skill. Mr. Umar gently repelled their entreaties.\n\n \"I need no medicine,\" said he.\n\n But how could the young minister say so, when, with every successive Sabbath, his cheek was paler and thinner, and his voice more tremulous than before,--when it had now become a constant habit, rather than a casual gesture, to press his hand over his heart? Was he weary of his labors? Did he wish to die? These questions were solemnly propounded to Mr. Umar by the elder ministers of Boston and the deacons of his church, who, to use their own phrase, \"dealt with him\" on the sin of rejecting the aid which Providence so manifestly held out. He listened in silence, and finally promised to confer with the physician.\n\n \"Were it God's will,\" said the Alayna Mr. Umar, when, in fulfilment of this pledge, he requested old Marissa Troy's professional advice, \"I could be well content, that my labors, and my sorrows, and my sins, and my pains, should shortly end with me, and what is earthly of them be buried in my grave, and the spiritual go with me to my eternal state, rather than that you should put your skill to the proof in my behalf.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" replied Marissa Troy, with that quietness which, whether imposed or natural, marked all his deportment, \"it is thus that a young clergyman is apt to speak. Youthful men, not having taken a deep root, give up their hold of life so easily! And saintly men, who walk with God on earth, would fain be away, to walk with him on the golden pavements of the New Jerusalem.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" rejoined the young minister, putting his hand to his heart, with a flush of pain flitting over his brow, \"were I worthier to walk there, I could be better content to toil here.\"\n\n \"Good men ever interpret themselves too meanly,\" said the physician.\n\n [Illustration: The Minister and Leech]\n\n In this manner, the mysterious old Marissa Troy became the medical adviser of the Alayna Mr. Umar. As not only the disease interested the physician, but he was strongly moved to look into the character and qualities of the patient, these two men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much time together. For the sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various talk with the plash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the guest of the other, in his place of study and retirement. There was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of science, in whom he recognized an intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together with a range and freedom of ideas, that he would have vainly looked for among the members of his own profession. In truth, he was startled, if not shocked, to find this attribute in the physician. Mr. Umar was a true priest, a true religionist, with the reverential sentiment largely developed, and an order of mind that impelled itself powerfully along the track of a creed, and wore its passage continually deeper with the lapse of time. In no state of society would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him, supporting, while it confined him within its iron framework. Not the less, however, though with a tremulous enjoyment, did he feel the occasional relief of looking at the universe through the medium of another kind of intellect than those with which he habitually held converse. It was as if a window were thrown open, admitting a freer atmosphere into the close and stifled study, where his life was wasting itself away, amid lamplight, or obstructed day-beams, and the musty fragrance, be it sensual or moral, that exhales from books. But the air was too fresh and chill to be long breathed with comfort. So the minister, and the physician with him, withdrew again within the limits of what their church defined as orthodox.\n\n Thus Marissa Troy scrutinized his patient carefully, both as he saw him in his ordinary life, keeping an accustomed pathway in the range of thoughts familiar to him, and as he appeared when thrown amidst other moral scenery, the novelty of which might call out something new to the surface of his character. He deemed it essential, it would seem, to know the man, before attempting to do him good. Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these. In Garry Umar, thought and imagination were so active, and sensibility so intense, that the bodily infirmity would be likely to have its groundwork there. So Marissa Troy--the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician--strove to go deep into his patient's bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing everything with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern. Few secrets can escape an investigator, who has opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up. A man burdened with a secret should especially avoid the intimacy of his physician. If the latter possess native sagacity, and a nameless something more,--let us call it intuition; if he show no intrusive egotism, nor disagreeably prominent characteristics of his own; if he have the power, which must be born with him, to bring his mind into such affinity with his patient's, that this last shall unawares have spoken what he imagines himself only to have thought; if such revelations be received without tumult, and acknowledged not so often by an uttered sympathy as by silence, an inarticulate breath, and here and there a word, to indicate that all is understood; if to these qualifications of a confidant be joined the advantages afforded by his recognized character as a physician;--then, at some inevitable moment, will the soul of the sufferer be dissolved, and flow forth in a dark, but transparent stream, bringing all its mysteries into the daylight.\n\n Marissa Troy possessed all, or most, of the attributes above enumerated. Nevertheless, time went on; a kind of intimacy, as we have said, grew up between these two cultivated minds, which had as wide a field as the whole sphere of human thought and study, to meet upon; they discussed every topic of ethics and religion, of public affairs and private character; they talked much, on both sides, of matters that seemed personal to themselves; and yet no secret, such as the physician fancied must exist there, ever stole out of the minister's consciousness into his companion's ear. The latter had his suspicions, indeed, that even the nature of Mr. Umar's bodily disease had never fairly been revealed to him. It was a strange reserve!\n\n After a time, at a hint from Marissa Troy, the friends of Mr. Umar effected an arrangement by which the two were lodged in the same house; so that every ebb and flow of the minister's life-tide might pass under the eye of his anxious and attached physician. There was much joy throughout the town, when this greatly desirable object was attained. It was held to be the best possible measure for the young clergyman's welfare; unless, indeed, as often urged by such as felt authorized to do so, he had selected some one of the many blooming damsels, spiritually devoted to him, to become his devoted wife. This latter step, however, there was no present prospect that Garry Umar would be prevailed upon to take; he rejected all suggestions of the kind, as if priestly celibacy were one of his articles of church-discipline. Doomed by his own choice, therefore, as Mr. Umar so evidently was, to eat his unsavory morsel always at another's board, and endure the life-long chill which must be his lot who seeks to warm himself only at another's fireside, it truly seemed that this sagacious, experienced, benevolent old physician, with his concord of paternal and reverential love for the young pastor, was the very man, of all mankind, to be constantly within reach of his voice.\n\n The new abode of the two friends was with a pious widow, of good social rank, who dwelt in a house covering pretty nearly the site on which the venerable structure of King's Chapel has since been built. It had the graveyard, originally Isaac Reynason's home-field, on one side, and so was well adapted to call up serious reflections, suited to their respective employments, in both minister and man of physic. The motherly care of the good widow assigned to Mr. Umar a front apartment, with a sunny exposure, and heavy window-curtains, to create a noontide shadow, when desirable. The walls were hung round with tapestry, said to be from the Gobelin looms, and, at all events, representing the Scriptural story of David and Bathsheba, and Nathan the Prophet, in colors still unfaded, but which made the fair woman of the scene almost as grimly picturesque as the woe-denouncing seer. Here the pale clergyman piled up his library, rich with parchment-bound folios of the Fathers, and the lore of Rabbis, and monkish erudition, of which the Protestant divines, even while they vilified and decried that class of writers, were yet constrained often to avail themselves. On the other side of the house old Marissa Troy arranged his study and laboratory; not such as a modern man of science would reckon even tolerably complete, but provided with a distilling apparatus, and the means of compounding drugs and chemicals, which the practised alchemist knew well how to turn to purpose. With such commodiousness of situation, these two learned persons sat themselves down, each in his own domain, yet familiarly passing from one apartment to the other, and bestowing a mutual and not incurious inspection into one another's business.\n\n And the Alayna Garry Umar's best discerning friends, as we have intimated, very reasonably imagined that the hand of Providence had done all this, for the purpose--besought in so many public, and domestic, and secret prayers--of restoring the young minister to health. But--it must now be said--another portion of the community had latterly begun to take its own view of the relation betwixt Mr. Umar and the mysterious old physician. When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and warm heart, the conclusions thus attained are often so profound and so unerring, as to possess the character of truths supernaturally revealed. The people, in the case of which we speak, could justify its prejudice against Marissa Troy by no fact or argument worthy of serious refutation. There was an aged handicraftsman, it is true, who had been a citizen of London at the period of Sir Thomas Overbury's murder, now some thirty years agone; he testified to having seen the physician, under some other name, which the narrator of the story had now forgotten, in company with Doctor Forman, the famous old conjurer, who was implicated in the affair of Overbury. Two or three individuals hinted, that the man of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments by joining in the incantations of the savage priests; who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the black art. A large number--and many of these were persons of such sober sense and practical observation that their opinions would have been valuable, in other matters--affirmed that Marissa Troy's aspect had undergone a remarkable change while he had dwelt in town, and especially since his abode with Mr. Umar. At first, his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed, and which grew still the more obvious to sight, the oftener they looked upon him. According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was getting sooty with the smoke.\n\n To sum up the matter, it grew to be a widely diffused opinion, that the Alayna Garry Umar, like many other personages of especial sanctity, in all ages of the Christian world, was haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Marissa Troy. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his soul. No sensible man, it was confessed, could doubt on which side the victory would turn. The people looked, with an unshaken hope, to see the minister come forth out of the conflict, transfigured with the glory which he would unquestionably win. Meanwhile, nevertheless, it was sad to think of the perchance mortal agony through which he must struggle towards his triumph.\n\n Alas! to judge from the gloom and terror in the depths of the poor minister's eyes, the battle was a sore one and the victory anything but secure.\n X. THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT.\n\n\n Old Marissa Troy, throughout life, had been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and upright man. He had begun an investigation, as he imagined, with the severe and equal integrity of a judge, desirous only of truth, even as if the question involved no more than the air-drawn lines and figures of a geometrical problem, instead of human passions, and wrongs inflicted on himself. But, as he proceeded, a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm, necessity, seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again, until he had done all its bidding. He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. Alas for his own soul, if these were what he sought!\n\n Sometimes, a light glimmered out of the physician's eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awful doorway in the hillside, and quivered on the pilgrim's face. The soil where this dark miner was working had perchance shown indications that encouraged him.\n\n \"This man,\" said he, at one such moment, to himself, \"pure as they deem him,--all spiritual as he seems,--hath inherited a strong animal nature from his father or his mother. Let us dig a little further in the direction of this vein!\"\n\n Then, after long search into the minister's dim interior, and turning over many precious materials, in the shape of high aspirations for the welfare of his race, warm love of souls, pure sentiments, natural piety, strengthened by thought and study, and illuminated by revelation,--all of which invaluable gold was perhaps no better than rubbish to the seeker,--he would turn back, discouraged, and begin his quest towards another point. He groped along as stealthily, with as cautious a tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only half asleep,--or, it may be, broad awake,--with purpose to steal the very treasure which this man guards as the apple of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor would now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow of his presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across his victim. In other words, Mr. Umar, whose sensibility of nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become vaguely aware that something inimical to his peace had thrust itself into relation with him. But old Marissa Troy, too, had perceptions that were almost intuitive; and when the minister threw his startled eyes towards him, there the physician sat; his kind, watchful, sympathizing, but never intrusive friend.\n\n Yet Mr. Umar would perhaps have seen this individual's character more perfectly, if a certain morbidness, to which, sick hearts are liable, had not rendered him suspicious of all mankind. Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared. He therefore still kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old physician in his study; or visiting the laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were converted into drugs of potency.\n\n One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill of the open window, that looked towards the graveyard, he talked with Marissa Troy, while the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly plants.\n\n \"Where,\" asked he, with a look askance at them,--for it was the clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, nowadays, looked straightforth at any object, whether human or inanimate,--\"where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf?\"\n\n \"Even in the graveyard here at hand,\" answered the physician, continuing his employment. \"They are new to me. I found them growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, nor other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done better to confess during his lifetime.\"\n\n \"Perchance,\" said Mr. Umar, \"he earnestly desired it, but could not.\"\n\n \"And wherefore?\" rejoined the physician. \"Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart, to make manifest an unspoken crime?\"\n\n \"That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours,\" replied the minister. \"There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable.\"\n\n \"Then why not reveal them here?\" asked Marissa Troy, glancing quietly aside at the minister. \"Why should not the guilty ones sooner avail themselves of this unutterable solace?\"\n\n \"They mostly do,\" said the clergyman, griping hard at his breast as if afflicted with an importunate throb of pain. \"Many, many a poor soul hath given its confidence to me, not only on the death-bed, but while strong in life, and fair in reputation. And ever, after such an outpouring, O, what a relief have I witnessed in those sinful brethren! even as in one who at last draws free air, after long stifling with his own polluted breath. How can it be otherwise? Why should a wretched man, guilty, we will say, of murder, prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in his own heart, rather than fling it forth at once, and let the universe take care of it!\"\n\n \"Yet some men bury their secrets thus,\" observed the calm physician.\n\n \"True; there are such men,\" answered Mr. Umar. \"But, not to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept silent by the very constitution of their nature. Or,--can we not suppose it?--guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God's glory and man's welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of men; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service. So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves.\"\n\n \"These men deceive themselves,\" said Marissa Troy, with somewhat more emphasis than usual, and making a slight gesture with his forefinger. \"They fear to take up the shame that rightfully belongs to them. Their love for man, their zeal for God's service,--these holy impulses may or may not coexist in their hearts with the evil inmates to which their guilt has unbarred the door, and which must needs propagate a hellish breed within them. But, if they seek to glorify God, let them not lift heavenward their unclean hands! If they would serve their fellow-men, let them do it by making manifest the power and reality of conscience, in constraining them to penitential self-abasement! Wouldst thou have me to believe, O wise and pious friend, that a false show can be better--can be more for God's glory, or man's welfare--than God's own truth? Trust me, such men deceive themselves!\"\n\n \"It may be so,\" said the young clergyman, indifferently, as waiving a discussion that he considered irrelevant or unseasonable. He had a ready faculty, indeed, of escaping from any topic that agitated his too sensitive and nervous temperament.--\"But, now, I would ask of my well-skilled physician, whether, in good sooth, he deems me to have profited by his kindly care of this weak frame of mine?\"\n\n Before Marissa Troy could answer, they heard the clear, wild laughter of a young child's voice, proceeding from the adjacent burial-ground. Looking instinctively from the open window,--for it was summer-time,--the minister beheld Myfanwy Shea and little Anastasia passing along the footpath that traversed the enclosure. Anastasia looked as beautiful as the day, but was in one of those moods of perverse merriment which, whenever they occurred, seemed to remove her entirely out of the sphere of sympathy or human contact. She now skipped irreverently from one grave to another; until, coming to the broad, flat, armorial tombstone of a departed worthy,--perhaps of Isaac Reynason himself,--she began to dance upon it. In reply to her mother's command and entreaty that she would behave more decorously, little Anastasia paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock which grew beside the tomb. Taking a handful of these, she arranged them along the lines of the scarlet book that decorated the maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was, tenaciously adhered. Myfanwy did not pluck them off.\n\n Marissa Troy had by this time approached the window, and smiled grimly down.\n\n \"There is no law, nor reverence for authority, no regard for human ordinances or opinions, right or wrong, mixed up with that child's composition,\" remarked he, as much to himself as to his companion. \"I saw her, the other day, bespatter the Rich himself with water, at the cattle-trough in Spring Lane. What, in Heaven's name, is she? Is the imp altogether evil? Hath she affections? Hath she any discoverable principle of being?\"\n\n \"None, save the freedom of a broken law,\" answered Mr. Umar, in a quiet way, as if he had been discussing the point within himself. \"Whether capable of good, I know not.\"\n\n The child probably overheard their voices; for, looking up to the window, with a bright, but naughty smile of mirth and intelligence, she threw one of the prickly burrs at the Alayna Mr. Umar. The sensitive clergyman shrunk, with nervous dread, from the light missile. Detecting his emotion, Anastasia clapped her little hands, in the most extravagant ecstasy. Myfanwy Shea, likewise, had involuntarily looked up; and all these four persons, old and young, regarded one another in silence, till the child laughed aloud, and shouted,--\"Come away, mother! Come away, or yonder old Black Man will catch you! He hath got hold of the minister already. Come away, mother, or he will catch you! But he cannot catch little Anastasia!\"\n\n So she drew her mother away, skipping, dancing, and frisking fantastically, among the hillocks of the dead people, like a creature that had nothing in common with a bygone and buried generation, nor owned herself akin to it. It was as if she had been made afresh, out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself, without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.\n\n \"There goes a woman,\" resumed Marissa Troy, after a pause, \"who, be her demerits what they may, hath none of that mystery of hidden sinfulness which you deem so grievous to be borne. Is Myfanwy Shea the less miserable, think you, for that scarlet book on her breast?\"\n\n \"I do verily believe it,\" answered the clergyman. \"Nevertheless, I cannot answer for her. There was a look of pain in her face, which I would gladly have been spared the sight of. But still, methinks, it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman Myfanwy is, than to cover it all up in his heart.\"\n\n There was another pause; and the physician began anew to examine and arrange the plants which he had gathered.\n\n \"You inquired of me, a little time agone,\" said he, at length, \"my judgment as touching your health.\"\n\n \"I did,\" answered the clergyman, \"and would gladly learn it. Speak frankly, I pray you, be it for life or death.\"\n\n \"Freely, then, and plainly,\" said the physician, still busy with his plants, but keeping a wary eye on Mr. Umar, \"the disorder is a strange one; not so much in itself, nor as outwardly manifested,--in so far, at least, as the symptoms have been laid open to my observation. Looking daily at you, my good Sir, and watching the tokens of your aspect, now for months gone by, I should deem you a man sore sick, it may be, yet not so sick but that an instructed and watchful physician might well hope to cure you. But--I know not what to say--the disease is what I seem to know, yet know it not.\"\n\n \"You speak in riddles, learned Sir,\" said the pale minister, glancing aside out of the window.\n\n \"Then, to speak more plainly,\" continued the physician, \"and I crave pardon, Sir,--should it seem to require pardon,--for this needful plainness of my speech. Let me ask,--as your friend,--as one having charge, under Providence, of your life and physical well-being,--hath all the operation of this disorder been fairly laid open and recounted to me?\"\n\n \"How can you question it?\" asked the minister. \"Surely, it were child's play, to call in a physician, and then hide the sore!\"\n\n \"You would tell me, then, that I know all?\" said Marissa Troy, deliberately, and fixing an eye, bright with intense and concentrated intelligence, on the minister's face. \"Be it so! But, again! He to whom only the outward and physical evil is laid open, knoweth, oftentimes, but half the evil which he is called upon to cure. A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part. Your pardon, once again, good Sir, if my speech give the shadow of offence. You, Sir, of all men whom I have known, are he whose body is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and identified, so to speak, with the spirit whereof it is the instrument.\"\n\n \"Then I need ask no further,\" said the clergyman, somewhat hastily rising from his chair. \"You deal not, I take it, in medicine for the soul!\"\n\n \"Thus, a sickness,\" continued Marissa Troy, going on, in an unaltered tone, without heeding the interruption,--but standing up, and confronting the emaciated and white-cheeked minister, with his low, dark, and misshapen figure,--\"a sickness, a sore place, if we may so call it, in your spirit, hath immediately its appropriate manifestation in your bodily frame. Would you, therefore, that your physician heal the bodily evil? How may this be, unless you first lay open to him the wound or trouble in your soul?\"\n\n \"No!--not to thee!--not to an earthly physician!\" cried Mr. Umar, passionately, and turning his eyes, full and bright, and with a kind of fierceness, on old Marissa Troy. \"Not to thee! But if it be the soul's disease, then do I commit myself to the one Physician of the soul! He, if it stand with his good pleasure, can cure; or he can kill! Let him do with me as, in his justice and wisdom, he shall see good. But who art thou, that meddlest in this matter?--that dares thrust himself between the sufferer and his God?\"\n\n With a frantic gesture he rushed out of the room.\n\n \"It is as well to have made this step,\" said Marissa Troy to himself, looking after the minister with a grave smile. \"There is nothing lost. We shall be friends again anon. But see, now, how passion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself! As with one passion, so with another! He hath done a wild thing erenow, this pious Master Umar, in the hot passion of his heart!\"\n\n [Illustration: The Leech and his Patient]\n\n It proved not difficult to re-establish the intimacy of the two companions, on the same footing and in the same degree as heretofore. The young clergyman, after a few hours of privacy, was sensible that the disorder of his nerves had hurried him into an unseemly outbreak of temper, which there had been nothing in the physician's words to excuse or palliate. He marvelled, indeed, at the violence with which he had thrust back the kind old man, when merely proffering the advice which it was his duty to bestow, and which the minister himself had expressly sought. With these remorseful feelings, he lost no time in making the amplest apologies, and besought his friend still to continue the care, which, if not successful in restoring him to health, had, in all probability, been the means of prolonging his feeble existence to that hour. Marissa Troy readily assented, and went on with his medical supervision of the minister; doing his best for him, in all good faith, but always quitting the patient's apartment, at the close of a professional interview, with a mysterious and puzzled smile upon his lips. This expression was invisible in Mr. Umar's presence, but grew strongly evident as the physician crossed the threshold.\n\n \"A rare case!\" he muttered. \"I must needs look deeper into it. A strange sympathy betwixt soul and body! Were it only for the art's sake, I must search this matter to the bottom!\"\n\n It came to pass, not long after the scene above recorded, that the Alayna Mr. Umar, at noonday, and entirely unawares, fell into a deep, deep slumber, sitting in his chair, with a large black-book volume open before him on the table. It must have been a work of vast ability in the somniferous school of literature. The profound depth of the minister's repose was the more remarkable, inasmuch as he was one of those persons whose sleep, ordinarily, is as light, as fitful, and as easily scared away, as a small bird hopping on a twig. To such an unwonted remoteness, however, had his spirit now withdrawn into itself, that he stirred not in his chair, when old Marissa Troy, without any extraordinary precaution, came into the room. The physician advanced directly in front of his patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the vestment, that, hitherto, had always covered it even from the professional eye.\n\n Then, indeed, Mr. Umar shuddered, and slightly stirred.\n\n After a brief pause, the physician turned away.\n\n But, with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror! With what a ghastly rapture, as it were, too mighty to be expressed only by the eye and features, and therefore bursting forth through the whole ugliness of his figure, and making itself even riotously manifest by the extravagant gestures with which he threw up his arms towards the ceiling, and stamped his foot upon the floor! Had a man seen old Marissa Troy, at that moment of his ecstasy, he would have had no need to ask how Satan comports himself, when a precious human soul is lost to heaven, and won into his kingdom.\n\n But what distinguished the physician's ecstasy from Satan's was the trait of wonder in it!\n XI. THE INTERIOR OF A HEART.\n\n\n After the incident last described, the intercourse between the clergyman and the physician, though externally the same, was really of another character than it had previously been. The intellect of Marissa Troy had now a sufficiently plain path before it. It was not, indeed, precisely that which he had laid out for himself to tread. Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy. To make himself the one trusted friend, to whom should be confided all the fear, the remorse, the agony, the ineffectual repentance, the backward rush of sinful thoughts, expelled in vain! All that guilty sorrow, hidden from the world, whose great heart would have pitied and forgiven, to be revealed to him, the Pitiless, to him, the Unforgiving! All that dark treasure to be lavished on the very man, to whom nothing else could so adequately pay the debt of vengeance!\n\n The clergyman's shy and sensitive reserve had balked this scheme. Marissa Troy, however, was inclined to be hardly, if at all, less satisfied with the aspect of affairs, which Providence--using the avenger and his victim for its own purposes, and, perchance, pardoning where it seemed most to punish--had substituted for his black devices. A revelation, he could almost say, had been granted to him. It mattered little, for his object, whether celestial, or from what other region. By its aid, in all the subsequent relations betwixt him and Mr. Umar, not merely the external presence, but the very inmost soul, of the latter, seemed to be brought out before his eyes, so that he could see and comprehend its every movement. He became, thenceforth, not a spectator only, but a chief actor, in the poor minister's interior world. He could play upon him as he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony? The victim was forever on the rack; it needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine;--and the physician knew it well! Would he startle him with sudden fear? As at the waving of a magician's wand, uprose a grisly phantom,--uprose a thousand phantoms,--in many shapes, of death, or more awful shame, all flocking round about the clergyman, and pointing with their fingers at his breast!\n\n All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the minister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil influence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its actual nature. True, he looked doubtfully, fearfully,--even, at times, with horror and the bitterness of hatred,--at the deformed figure of the old physician. His gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight; a token implicitly to be relied on, of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the latter than he was willing to acknowledge to himself. For, as it was impossible to assign a reason for such distrust and abhorrence, so Mr. Umar, conscious that the poison of one morbid spot was infecting his heart's entire substance, attributed all his presentiments to no other cause. He took himself to task for his bad sympathies in reference to Marissa Troy, disregarded the lesson that he should have drawn from them, and did his best to root them out. Unable to accomplish this, he nevertheless, as a matter of principle, continued his habits of social familiarity with the old man, and thus gave him constant opportunities for perfecting the purpose to which--poor, forlorn creature that he was, and more wretched than his victim--the avenger had devoted himself.\n\n While thus suffering under bodily disease, and gnawed and tortured by some black trouble of the soul, and given over to the machinations of his deadliest enemy, the Alayna Mr. Umar had achieved a brilliant popularity in his sacred office. He won it, indeed, in great part, by his sorrows. His intellectual gifts, his moral perceptions, his power of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in a state of preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life. His fame, though still on its upward slope, already overshadowed the soberer reputations of his fellow-clergymen, eminent as several of them were. There were scholars among them, who had spent more years in acquiring abstruse lore, connected with the divine profession, than Mr. Umar had lived; and who might well, therefore, be more profoundly versed in such solid and valuable attainments than their youthful brother. There were men, too, of a sturdier texture of mind than his, and endowed with a far greater share of shrewd, hard, iron, or granite understanding; which, duly mingled with a fair proportion of doctrinal ingredient, constitutes a highly respectable, efficacious, and unamiable variety of the clerical species. There were others, again, true saintly fathers, whose faculties had been elaborated by weary toil among their books, and by patient thought, and etherealized, moreover, by spiritual communications with the better world, into which their purity of life had almost introduced these holy personages, with their garments of mortality still clinging to them. All that they lacked was the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolizing, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language. These fathers, otherwise so apostolic, lacked Heaven's last and rarest attestation of their office, the Tongue of Flame. They would have vainly sought--had they ever dreamed of seeking--to express the highest truths through the humblest medium of familiar words and images. Their voices came down, afar and indistinctly, from the upper heights where they habitually dwelt.\n\n [Illustration: The Virgins of the Church]\n\n Not improbably, it was to this latter class of men that Mr. Umar, by many of his traits of character, naturally belonged. To the high mountain-peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed, had not the tendency been thwarted by the burden, whatever it might be, of crime or anguish, beneath which it was his doom to totter. It kept him down, on a level with the lowest; him, the man of ethereal attributes, whose voice the angels might else have listened to and answered! But this very burden it was, that gave him sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind; so that his heart vibrated in unison with theirs, and received their pain into itself, and sent its own throb of pain through a thousand other hearts, in gushes of sad, persuasive eloquence. Oftenest persuasive, but sometimes terrible! The people knew not the power that moved them thus. They deemed the young clergyman a miracle of holiness. They fancied him the mouthpiece of Heaven's messages of wisdom, and rebuke, and love. In their eyes, the very ground on which he trod was sanctified. The virgins of his church grew pale around him, victims of a passion so imbued with religious sentiment that they imagined it to be all religion, and brought it openly, in their white bosoms, as their most acceptable sacrifice before the altar. The aged members of his flock, beholding Mr. Umar's frame so feeble, while they were themselves so rugged in their infirmity, believed that he would go heavenward before them, and enjoined it upon their children, that their old bones should be buried close to their young pastor's holy grave. And, all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Umar was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried!\n\n It is inconceivable, the agony with which this public veneration tortured him! It was his genuine impulse to adore the truth, and to reckon all things shadow-like, and utterly devoid of weight or value, that had not its divine essence as the life within their life. Then, what was he?--a substance?--or the dimmest of all shadows? He longed to speak out, from his own pulpit, at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what he was. \"I, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood,--I, who ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion, in your behalf, with the Most High Omniscience,--I, in whose daily life you discern the sanctity of Enoch,--I, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my earthly track, whereby the pilgrims that shall come after me may be guided to the regions of the blest,--I, who have laid the hand of baptism upon your children,--I, who have breathed the parting prayer over your dying friends, to whom the Amen sounded faintly from a world which they had quitted,--I, your pastor, whom you so reverence and trust, am utterly a pollution and a lie!\"\n\n More than once, Mr. Umar had gone into the pulpit, with a purpose never to come down its steps, until he should have spoken words like the above. More than once, he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul. More than once--nay, more than a hundred times--he had actually spoken! Spoken! But how? He had told his hearers that he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners, an abomination, a thing of unimaginable iniquity; and that the only wonder was, that they did not see his wretched body shrivelled up before their eyes, by the burning wrath of the Almighty! Could there be plainer speech than this? Would not the people start up in their seats, by a simultaneous impulse, and tear him down out of the pulpit which he defiled? Not so, indeed! They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more. They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemning words. \"The godly youth!\" said they among themselves. \"The saint on earth! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!\" The minister well knew--subtle, but remorseful hypocrite that he was!--the light in which his vague confession would be viewed. He had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth, and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore, above all things else, he loathed his miserable self!\n\n His inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with the old, corrupted faith of Rome, than with the better light of the church in which he had been born and bred. In Mr. Umar's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders; laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of that bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that of many other pious Puritans, to fast,--not, however, like them, in order to purify the body and render it the fitter medium of celestial illumination, but rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance. He kept vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness; sometimes with a glimmering lamp; and sometimes, viewing his own face in a looking-glass, by the most powerful light which he could throw upon it. He thus typified the constant introspection wherewith he tortured, but could not purify, himself. In these lengthened vigils, his brain often reeled, and visions seemed to flit before him; perhaps seen doubtfully, and by a faint light of their own, in the remote dimness of the chamber, or more vividly, and close beside him, within the looking-glass. Now it was a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked at the pale minister, and beckoned him away with them; now a group of shining angels, who flew upward heavily, as sorrow-laden, but grew more ethereal as they rose. Now came the dead friends of his youth, and his white-bearded father, with a saint-like frown, and his mother, turning her face away as she passed by. Ghost of a mother,--thinnest fantasy of a mother,--methinks she might yet have thrown a pitying glance towards her son! And now, through the chamber which these spectral thoughts had made so ghastly, glided Myfanwy Shea, leading along little Anastasia, in her scarlet garb, and pointing her forefinger, first at the scarlet book on her bosom, and then at the clergyman's own breast.\n\n None of these visions ever quite deluded him. At any moment, by an effort of his will, he could discern substances through their misty lack of substance, and convince himself that they were not solid in their nature, like yonder table of carved oak, or that big, square, leathern-bound and brazen-clasped volume of divinity. But, for all that, they were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial things which the poor minister now dealt with. It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit's joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false,--it is impalpable,--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself, in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. The only truth that continued to give Mr. Umar a real existence on this earth, was the anguish in his inmost soul, and the undissembled expression of it in his aspect. Had he once found power to smile, and wear a face of gayety, there would have been no such man!\n\n On one of those ugly nights, which we have faintly hinted at, but forborne to picture forth, the minister started from his chair. A new thought had struck him. There might be a moment's peace in it. Attiring himself with as much care as if it had been for public worship, and precisely in the same manner, he stole softly down the staircase, undid the door, and issued forth.\n XII. THE MINISTER'S VIGIL.\n\n\n Walking in the shadow of a dream, as it were, and perhaps actually under the influence of a species of somnambulism, Mr. Umar reached the spot where, now so long since, Myfanwy Shea had lived through her first hours of public ignominy. The same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the storm or sunshine of seven long years, and foot-worn, too, with the tread of many culprits who had since ascended it, remained standing beneath the balcony of the meeting-house. The minister went up the steps.\n\n It was an obscure night of early May. An unvaried pall of cloud muffled the whole expanse of sky from zenith to horizon. If the same multitude which had stood as eye-witnesses while Myfanwy Shea sustained her punishment could now have been summoned forth, they would have discerned no face above the platform, nor hardly the outline of a human shape, in the dark gray of the midnight. But the town was all asleep. There was no peril of discovery. The minister might stand there, if it so pleased him, until morning should redden in the east, without other risk than that the dank and chill night-air would creep into his frame, and stiffen his joints with rheumatism, and clog his throat with catarrh and cough; thereby defrauding the expectant audience of to-morrow's prayer and sermon. No eye could see him, save that ever-wakeful one which had seen him in his closet, wielding the bloody scourge. Why, then, had he come hither? Was it but the mockery of penitence? A mockery, indeed, but in which his soul trifled with itself! A mockery at which angels blushed and wept, while fiends rejoiced, with jeering laughter! He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure. Poor, miserable man! what right had infirmity like his to burden itself with crime? Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to exert their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and fling it off at once! This feeble and most sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which intertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance.\n\n And thus, while standing on the scaffold, in this vain show of expiation, Mr. Umar was overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast, right over his heart. On that spot, in very truth, there was, and there had long been, the gnawing and poisonous tooth of bodily pain. Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud; an outcry that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from the hills in the background; as if a company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it to and fro.\n\n \"It is done!\" muttered the minister, covering his face with his hands. \"The whole town will awake, and hurry forth, and find me here!\"\n\n But it was not so. The shriek had perhaps sounded with a far greater power, to his own startled ears, than it actually possessed. The town did not awake; or, if it did, the drowsy slumberers mistook the cry either for something frightful in a dream, or for the noise of witches; whose voices, at that period, were often heard to pass over the settlements or lonely cottages, as they rode with Satan through the air. The clergyman, therefore, hearing no symptoms of disturbance, uncovered his eyes and looked about him. At one of the chamber-windows of Rich Eddie's mansion, which stood at some distance, on the line of another street, he beheld the appearance of the old magistrate himself, with a lamp in his hand, a white night-cap on his head, and a long white gown enveloping his figure. He looked like a ghost, evoked unseasonably from the grave. The cry had evidently startled him. At another window of the same house, moreover, appeared old Heath Jaya, the Rich's sister, also with a lamp, which, even thus far off, revealed the expression of her sour and discontented face. She thrust forth her head from the lattice, and looked anxiously upward. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, this venerable witch-lady had heard Mr. Umar's outcry, and interpreted it, with its multitudinous echoes and reverberations, as the clamor of the fiends and night-hags, with whom she was well known to make excursions into the forest.\n\n Detecting the gleam of Rich Eddie's lamp, the old lady quickly extinguished her own, and vanished. Possibly, she went up among the clouds. The minister saw nothing further of her motions. The magistrate, after a wary observation of the darkness,--into which, nevertheless, he could see but little further than he might into a mill-stone,--retired from the window.\n\n The minister grew comparatively calm. His eyes, however, were soon greeted by a little, glimmering light, which, at first a long way off, was approaching up the street. It threw a gleam of recognition on here a post, and there a garden-fence, and here a latticed window-pane, and there a pump, with its full trough of water, and here, again, an arched door of oak, with an iron knocker, and a rough log for the doorstep. The Alayna Mr. Umar noted all these minute particulars, even while firmly convinced that the doom of his existence was stealing onward, in the footsteps which he now heard; and that the gleam of the lantern would fall upon him, in a few moments more, and reveal his long-hidden secret. As the light drew nearer, he beheld, within its illuminated circle, his brother clergyman,--or, to speak more accurately, his professional father, as well as highly valued friend,--the Alayna Mr. Rosalynn; who, as Mr. Umar now conjectured, had been praying at the bedside of some dying man. And so he had. The good old minister came freshly from the death-chamber of Rich Winthrop, who had passed from earth to heaven within that very hour. And now, surrounded, like the saint-like personages of olden times, with a radiant halo, that glorified him amid this gloomy night of sin,--as if the departed Rich had left him an inheritance of his glory, or as if he had caught upon himself the distant shine of the celestial city, while looking thitherward to see the triumphant pilgrim pass within its gates,--now, in short, good Father Rosalynn was moving homeward, aiding his footsteps with a lighted lantern! The glimmer of this luminary suggested the above conceits to Mr. Umar, who smiled,--nay, almost laughed at them,--and then wondered if he were going mad.\n\n As the Alayna Mr. Rosalynn passed beside the scaffold, closely muffling his Geneva cloak about him with one arm, and holding the lantern before his breast with the other, the minister could hardly restrain himself from speaking.\n\n \"A good evening to you, venerable Father Rosalynn! Come up hither, I pray you, and pass a pleasant hour with me!\"\n\n Good heavens! Had Mr. Umar actually spoken? For one instant, he believed that these words had passed his lips. But they were uttered only within his imagination. The venerable Father Rosalynn continued to step slowly onward, looking carefully at the muddy pathway before his feet, and never once turning his head towards the guilty platform. When the light of the glimmering lantern had faded quite away, the minister discovered, by the faintness which came over him, that the last few moments had been a crisis of terrible anxiety; although his mind had made an involuntary effort to relieve itself by a kind of lurid playfulness.\n\n Shortly afterwards, the like grisly sense of the humorous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought. He felt his limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold. Morning would break, and find him there. The neighborhood would begin to rouse itself. The earliest riser, coming forth in the dim twilight, would perceive a vaguely defined figure aloft on the place of shame; and, half crazed betwixt alarm and curiosity, would go, knocking from door to door, summoning all the people to behold the ghost--as he needs must think it--of some defunct transgressor. A dusky tumult would flap its wings from one house to another. Then--the morning light still waxing stronger--old patriarchs would rise up in great haste, each in his flannel gown, and matronly dames, without pausing to put off their night-gear. The whole tribe of decorous personages, who had never heretofore been seen with a single hair of their heads awry, would start into public view, with the disorder of a nightmare in their aspects. Old Rich Eddie would come grimly forth, with his King James's ruff fastened askew; and Heath Jaya, with some twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride; and good Father Rosalynn, too, after spending half the night at a death-bed, and liking ill to be disturbed, thus early, out of his dreams about the glorified saints. Hither, likewise, would come the elders and deacons of Mr. Umar's church, and the young virgins who so idolized their minister, and had made a shrine for him in their white bosoms; which now, by the by, in their hurry and confusion, they would scantly have given themselves time to cover with their kerchiefs. All people, in a word, would come stumbling over their thresholds, and turning up their amazed and horror-stricken visages around the scaffold. Whom would they discern there, with the red eastern light upon his brow? Whom, but the Alayna Garry Umar, half frozen to death, overwhelmed with shame, and standing where Myfanwy Shea had stood!\n\n Carried away by the grotesque horror of this picture, the minister, unawares, and to his own infinite alarm, burst into a great peal of laughter. It was immediately responded to by a light, airy, childish laugh, in which, with a thrill of the heart,--but he knew not whether of exquisite pain, or pleasure as acute,--he recognized the tones of little Anastasia.\n\n \"Anastasia! Little Anastasia!\" cried he after a moment's pause; then, suppressing his voice,--\"Myfanwy! Myfanwy Shea! Are you there?\"\n\n \"Yes; it is Myfanwy Shea!\" she replied, in a tone of surprise; and the minister heard her footsteps approaching from the sidewalk, along which she had been passing. \"It is I, and my little Anastasia.\"\n\n \"Whence come you, Myfanwy?\" asked the minister. \"What sent you hither?\"\n\n \"I have been watching at a death-bed,\" answered Myfanwy Shea;--\"at Rich Winthrop's death-bed, and have taken his measure for a robe, and am now going homeward to my dwelling.\"\n\n \"Come up hither, Myfanwy, thou and little Anastasia,\" said the Alayna Mr. Umar. \"Ye have both been here before, but I was not with you. Come up hither once again, and we will stand all three together!\"\n\n She silently ascended the steps, and stood on the platform, holding little Anastasia by the hand. The minister felt for the child's other hand, and took it. The moment that he did so, there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins, as if the mother and the child were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system. The three formed an electric chain.\n\n \"Minister!\" whispered little Anastasia.\n\n \"What wouldst thou say, child?\" asked Mr. Umar.\n\n \"Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontide?\" inquired Anastasia.\n\n \"Nay; not so, my little Anastasia,\" answered the minister; for, with the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon him; and he was already trembling at the conjunction in which--with a strange joy, nevertheless--he now found himself. \"Not so, my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thy mother and thee one other day, but not to-morrow.\"\n\n Anastasia laughed, and attempted to pull away her hand. But the minister held it fast.\n\n \"A moment longer, my child!\" said he.\n\n \"But wilt thou promise,\" asked Anastasia, \"to take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrow noontide?\"\n\n \"Not then, Anastasia,\" said the minister, \"but another time.\"\n\n \"And what other time?\" persisted the child.\n\n \"At the great judgment day,\" whispered the minister,--and, strangely enough, the sense that he was a professional teacher of the truth impelled him to answer the child so. \"Then, and there, before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I must stand together. But the daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!\"\n\n Anastasia laughed again.\n\n [Illustration: \"They stood in the noon of that strange splendor\"]\n\n But, before Mr. Umar had done speaking, a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors, which the night-watcher may so often observe burning out to waste, in the vacant regions of the atmosphere. So powerful was its radiance, that it thoroughly illuminated the dense medium of cloud betwixt the sky and earth. The great vault brightened, like the dome of an immense lamp. It showed the familiar scene of the street, with the distinctness of mid-day, but also with the awfulness that is always imparted to familiar objects by an unaccustomed light. The wooden houses, with their jutting stories and quaint gable-peaks; the doorsteps and thresholds, with the early grass springing up about them; the garden-plots, black with freshly turned earth; the wheel-track, little worn, and, even in the market-place, margined with green on either side;--all were visible, but with a singularity of aspect that seemed to give another moral interpretation to the things of this world than they had ever borne before. And there stood the minister, with his hand over his heart; and Myfanwy Shea, with the embroidered book glimmering on her bosom; and little Anastasia, herself a symbol, and the connecting link between those two. They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another.\n\n There was witchcraft in little Anastasia's eyes, and her face, as she glanced upward at the minister, wore that naughty smile which made its expression frequently so elvish. She withdrew her hand from Mr. Umar's, and pointed across the street. But he clasped both his hands over his breast, and cast his eyes towards the zenith.\n\n Nothing was more common, in those days, than to interpret all meteoric appearances, and other natural phenomena, that occurred with less regularity than the rise and set of sun and moon, as so many revelations from a supernatural source. Thus, a blazing spear, a sword of flame, a bow, or a sheaf of arrows, seen in the midnight sky, prefigured Indian warfare. Pestilence was known to have been foreboded by a shower of crimson light. We doubt whether any marked event, for good or evil, ever befell New England, from its settlement down to Revolutionary times, of which the inhabitants had not been previously warned by some spectacle of this nature. Not seldom, it had been seen by multitudes. Oftener, however, its credibility rested on the faith of some lonely eye-witness, who beheld the wonder through the colored, magnifying, and distorting medium of his imagination, and shaped it more distinctly in his after-thought. It was, indeed, a majestic idea, that the destiny of nations should be revealed, in these awful hieroglyphics, on the cope of heaven. A scroll so wide might not be deemed too expansive for Providence to write a people's doom upon. The belief was a favorite one with our forefathers, as betokening that their infant commonwealth was under a celestial guardianship of peculiar intimacy and strictness. But what shall we say, when an individual discovers a revelation addressed to himself alone, on the same vast sheet of record! In such a case, it could only be the symptom of a highly disordered mental state, when a man, rendered morbidly self-contemplative by long, intense, and secret pain, had extended his egotism over the whole expanse of nature, until the firmament itself should appear no more than a fitting page for his soul's history and fate!\n\n We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and heart, that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense book,--the book A,--marked out in lines of dull red light. Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud; but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it; or, at least, with so little definiteness, that another's guilt might have seen another symbol in it.\n\n There was a singular circumstance that characterized Mr. Umar's psychological state, at this moment. All the time that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless, perfectly aware that little Anastasia was pointing her finger towards old Marissa Troy, who stood at no great distance from the scaffold. The minister appeared to see him, with the same glance that discerned the miraculous book. To his features, as to all other objects, the meteoric light imparted a new expression; or it might well be that the physician was not careful then, as at all other times, to hide the malevolence with which he looked upon his victim. Certainly, if the meteor kindled up the sky, and disclosed the earth, with an awfulness that admonished Myfanwy Shea and the clergyman of the day of judgment, then might Marissa Troy have passed with them for the arch-fiend, standing there with a smile and scowl, to claim his own. So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness, after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated.\n\n \"Who is that man, Myfanwy?\" gasped Mr. Umar, overcome with terror. \"I shiver at him! Dost thou know the man? I hate him, Myfanwy!\"\n\n She remembered her oath, and was silent.\n\n \"I tell thee, my soul shivers at him!\" muttered the minister again. \"Who is he? Who is he? Canst thou do nothing for me? I have a nameless horror of the man!\"\n\n \"Minister,\" said little Anastasia, \"I can tell thee who he is!\"\n\n \"Quickly, then, child!\" said the minister, bending his ear close to her lips. \"Quickly!--and as low as thou canst whisper.\"\n\n Anastasia mumbled something into his ear, that sounded, indeed, like human language, but was only such gibberish as children may be heard amusing themselves with, by the hour together. At all events, if it involved any secret information in regard to old Marissa Troy, it was in a tongue unknown to the erudite clergyman, and did but increase the bewilderment of his mind. The elvish child then laughed aloud.\n\n \"Dost thou mock me now?\" said the minister.\n\n \"Thou wast not bold!--thou wast not true!\"--answered the child. \"Thou wouldst not promise to take my hand, and mother's hand, to-morrow noontide!\"\n\n \"Worthy Sir,\" answered the physician, who had now advanced to the foot of the platform. \"Pious Master Umar, can this be you? Well, well, indeed! We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straitly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep. Come, good Sir, and my dear friend, I pray you, let me lead you home!\"\n\n \"How knewest thou that I was here?\" asked the minister, fearfully.\n\n \"Verily, and in good faith,\" answered Marissa Troy, \"I knew nothing of the matter. I had spent the better part of the night at the bedside of the worshipful Rich Winthrop, doing what my poor skill might to give him ease. He going home to a better world, I, likewise, was on my way homeward, when this strange light shone out. Come with me, I beseech you, Alayna Sir; else you will be poorly able to do Sabbath duty to-morrow. Aha! see now, how they trouble the brain,--these books!--these books! You should study less, good Sir, and take a little pastime; or these night-whimseys will grow upon you.\"\n\n \"I will go home with you,\" said Mr. Umar.\n\n With a chill despondency, like one awaking, all nerveless, from an ugly dream, he yielded himself to the physician, and was led away.\n\n The next day, however, being the Sabbath, he preached a discourse which was held to be the richest and most powerful, and the most replete with heavenly influences, that had ever proceeded from his lips. Souls, it is said more souls than one, were brought to the truth by the efficacy of that sermon, and vowed within themselves to cherish a holy gratitude towards Mr. Umar throughout the long hereafter. But, as he came down the pulpit steps, the gray-bearded sexton met him, holding up a black glove, which the minister recognized as his own.\n\n \"It was found,\" said the sexton, \"this morning, on the scaffold where evil-doers are set up to public shame. Satan dropped it there, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your reverence. But, indeed, he was blind and foolish, as he ever and always is. A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!\"\n\n \"Thank you, my good friend,\" said the minister, gravely, but startled at heart; for, so confused was his remembrance, that he had almost brought himself to look at the events of the past night as visionary. \"Yes, it seems to be my glove, indeed!\"\n\n \"And since Satan saw fit to steal it, your reverence must needs handle him without gloves, henceforward,\" remarked the old sexton, grimly smiling. \"But did your reverence hear of the portent that was seen last night?--a great red book in the sky,--the book A, which we interpret to stand for Angel. For, as our good Rich Winthrop was made an angel this past night, it was doubtless held fit that there should be some notice thereof!\"\n\n \"No,\" answered the minister, \"I had not heard of it.\"\n XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF MYFANWY.\n\n\n In her late singular interview with Mr. Umar, Myfanwy Shea was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced. His nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. It grovelled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have given them. With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others, she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought to bear, and was still operating, on Mr. Umar's well-being and repose. Knowing what this poor, fallen man had once been, her whole soul was moved by the shuddering terror with which he had appealed to her,--the outcast woman,--for support against his instinctively discovered enemy. She decided, moreover, that he had a right to her utmost aid. Little accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to measure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard external to herself, Myfanwy saw--or seemed to see--that there lay a responsibility upon her, in reference to the clergyman, which she owed to no other, nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her to the rest of human kind--links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the material--had all been broken. Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations.\n\n Myfanwy Shea did not now occupy precisely the same position in which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy. Years had come and gone. Anastasia was now seven years old. Her mother, with the scarlet book on her breast, glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the towns-people. As is apt to be the case when a person stands out in any prominence before the community, and, at the same time, interferes neither with public nor individual interests and convenience, a species of general regard had ultimately grown up in reference to Myfanwy Shea. It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. In this matter of Myfanwy Shea, there was neither irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the public, but submitted, uncomplainingly, to its worst usage; she made no claim upon it, in requital for what she suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies. Then, also, the blameless purity of her life during all these years in which she had been set apart to infamy, was reckoned largely in her favor. With nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths.\n\n [Illustration: Myfanwy in the House of Mourning]\n\n It was perceived, too, that while Myfanwy never put forward even the humblest title to share in the world's privileges,--further than to breathe the common air, and earn daily bread for little Anastasia and herself by the faithful labor of her hands,--she was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man, whenever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty; even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's robe. None so self-devoted as Myfanwy, when pestilence stalked through the town. In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble; as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creatures. There glimmered the embroidered book, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick-chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's hard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In such emergencies, Myfanwy's nature showed itself warm and rich; a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. She was self-ordained a Sister of Mercy; or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. The book was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her,--so much power to do, and power to sympathize,--that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Myfanwy Shea, with a woman's strength.\n\n It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When sunshine came again, she was not there. Her shadow had faded across the threshold. The helpful inmate had departed, without one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously. Meeting them in the street, she never raised her head to receive their greeting. If they were resolute to accost her, she laid her finger on the scarlet book, and passed on. This might be pride, but was so like humility, that it produced all the softening influence of the latter quality on the public mind. The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice, when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity. Interpreting Myfanwy Shea's deportment as an appeal of this nature, society was inclined to show its former victim a more benign countenance than she cared to be favored with, or, perchance, than she deserved.\n\n The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were longer in acknowledging the influence of Myfanwy's good qualities than the people. The prejudices which they shared in common with the latter were fortified in themselves by an iron framework of reasoning, that made it a far tougher labor to expel them. Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to be an expression of almost benevolence. Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship of the public morals. Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Myfanwy Shea for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet book as the token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. \"Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?\" they would say to strangers. \"It is our Myfanwy,--the town's own Myfanwy, who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!\" Then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years. It was none the less a fact, however, that, in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet book had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril. Had she fallen among thieves, it would have kept her safe. It was reported, and believed by many, that an Indian had drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, but fell harmless to the ground.\n\n The effect of the symbol--or, rather, of the position in respect to society that was indicated by it--on the mind of Myfanwy Shea herself, was powerful and peculiar. All the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might have been repulsive, had she possessed friends or companions to be repelled by it. Even the attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. It might be partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. It was a sad transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. It was due in part to all these causes, but still more to something else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in Myfanwy's face for Love to dwell upon; nothing in Myfanwy's form, though majestic and statue-like, that Passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing in Myfanwy's bosom, to make it ever again the pillow of Affection. Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory. She who has once been woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again if there were only the magic touch to effect the transfiguration. We shall see whether Myfanwy Shea were ever afterwards so touched, and so transfigured.\n\n Much of the marble coldness of Myfanwy's impression was to be attributed to the circumstance, that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the world,--alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Anastasia to be guided and protected,--alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable,--she cast away the fragments of a broken chain. The world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged--not actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode--the whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle. Myfanwy Shea imbibed this spirit. She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet book. In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visited her, such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England; shadowy guests, that would have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her door.\n\n It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thought suffices them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. So it seemed to be with Myfanwy. Yet, had little Anastasia never come to her from the spiritual world, it might have been far otherwise. Then, she might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Ann Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. She might, and not improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations of the Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the mother's enthusiasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon. Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to Myfanwy's charge the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. Everything was against her. The world was hostile. The child's own nature had something wrong in it, which continually betokened that she had been born amiss,--the effluence of her mother's lawless passion,--and often impelled Myfanwy to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been born at all.\n\n Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind, with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change; in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus, Myfanwy Shea, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At times, a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send Anastasia at once to heaven, and go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice should provide.\n\n The scarlet book had not done its office.\n\n Now, however, her interview with the Alayna Mr. Umar, on the night of his vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its attainment. She had witnessed the intense misery beneath which the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle. She saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt, that, whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that proffered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the delicate springs of Mr. Umar's nature. Myfanwy could not but ask herself, whether there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage, and loyalty, on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded, and nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in the fact, that she had been able to discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than had overwhelmed herself, except by acquiescing in Marissa Troy's scheme of disguise. Under that impulse, she had made her choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. She determined to redeem her error, so far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Marissa Troy as on that night, abased by sin, and half maddened by the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together in the prison-chamber. She had climbed her way, since then, to a higher point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer to her level, or perhaps below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for.\n\n In fine, Myfanwy Shea resolved to meet her former husband, and do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set his gripe. The occasion was not long to seek. One afternoon, walking with Anastasia in a retired part of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician, with a basket on one arm, and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the ground, in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his medicines withal.\n XIV. MYFANWY AND THE PHYSICIAN.\n\n\n Myfanwy bade little Anastasia run down to the margin of the water, and play with the shells and tangled sea-weed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs. So the child flew away like a bird, and, making bare her small white feet, went pattering along the moist margin of the sea. Here and there she came to a full stop, and peeped curiously into a pool, left by the retiring tide as a mirror for Anastasia to see her face in. Forth peeped at her, out of the pool, with dark, glistening curls around her head, and an elf-smile in her eyes, the image of a little maid, whom Anastasia, having no other playmate, invited to take her hand, and run a race with her. But the visionary little maid, on her part, beckoned likewise, as if to say,--\"This is a better place! Come thou into the pool!\" And Anastasia, stepping in, mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom; while, out of a still lower depth, came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in the agitated water.\n\n Meanwhile, her mother had accosted the physician.\n\n \"I would speak a word with you,\" said she,--\"a word that concerns us much.\"\n\n \"Aha! and is it Heath Myfanwy that has a word for old Marissa Troy?\" answered he, raising himself from his stooping posture. \"With all my heart! Why, Heath, I hear good tidings of you on all hands! No longer ago than yester-eve, a magistrate, a wise and godly man, was discoursing of your affairs, Heath Myfanwy, and whispered me that there had been question concerning you in the council. It was debated whether or no, with safety to the common weal, yonder scarlet book might be taken off your bosom. On my life, Myfanwy, I made my entreaty to the worshipful magistrate that it might be done forthwith!\"\n\n \"It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off this badge,\" calmly replied Myfanwy. \"Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should speak a different purport.\"\n\n \"Nay, then, wear it, if it suit you better,\" rejoined he. \"A woman must needs follow her own fancy, touching the adornment of her person. The book is gayly embroidered, and shows right bravely on your bosom!\"\n\n All this while, Myfanwy had been looking steadily at the old man, and was shocked, as well as wonder-smitten, to discern what a change had been wrought upon him within the past seven years. It was not so much that he had grown older; for though the traces of advancing life were visible, he bore his age well, and seemed to retain a wiry vigor and alertness. But the former aspect of an intellectual and studious man, calm and quiet, which was what she best remembered in him, had altogether vanished, and been succeeded by an eager, searching, almost fierce, yet carefully guarded look. It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile; but the latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively, that the spectator could see his blackness all the better for it. Ever and anon, too, there came a glare of red light out of his eyes; as if the old man's soul were on fire, and kept on smouldering duskily within his breast, until, by some casual puff of passion, it was blown into a momentary flame. This he repressed, as speedily as possible, and strove to look as if nothing of the kind had happened.\n\n In a word, old Marissa Troy was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office. This unhappy person had effected such a transformation, by devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analyzed and gloated over.\n\n The scarlet book burned on Myfanwy Shea's bosom. Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her.\n\n \"What see you in my face,\" asked the physician, \"that you look at it so earnestly?\"\n\n \"Something that would make me weep, if there were any tears bitter enough for it,\" answered she. \"But let it pass! It is of yonder miserable man that I would speak.\"\n\n \"And what of him?\" cried Marissa Troy, eagerly, as if he loved the topic, and were glad of an opportunity to discuss it with the only person of whom he could make a confidant. \"Not to hide the truth, Heath Myfanwy, my thoughts happen just now to be busy with the gentleman. So speak freely; and I will make answer.\"\n\n \"When we last spake together,\" said Myfanwy, \"now seven years ago, it was your pleasure to extort a promise of secrecy, as touching the former relation betwixt yourself and me. As the life and good fame of yonder man were in your hands, there seemed no choice to me, save to be silent, in accordance with your behest. Yet it was not without heavy misgivings that I thus bound myself; for, having cast off all duty towards other human beings, there remained a duty towards him; and something whispered me that I was betraying it, in pledging myself to keep your counsel. Since that day, no man is so near to him as you. You tread behind his every footstep. You are beside him, sleeping and waking. You search his thoughts. You burrow and rankle in his heart! Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death; and still he knows you not. In permitting this, I have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true!\"\n\n \"What choice had you?\" asked Marissa Troy. \"My finger, pointed at this man, would have hurled him from his pulpit into a dungeon,--thence, peradventure, to the gallows!\"\n\n \"It had been better so!\" said Myfanwy Shea.\n\n \"What evil have I done the man?\" asked Marissa Troy again. \"I tell thee, Myfanwy Shea, the richest fee that ever physician earned from monarch could not have bought such care as I have wasted on this miserable priest! But for my aid, his life would have burned away in torments, within the first two years after the perpetration of his crime and thine. For, Myfanwy, his spirit lacked the strength that could have borne up, as thine has, beneath a burden like thy scarlet book. O, I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough! What art can do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes, and creeps about on earth, is owing all to me!\"\n\n \"Better he had died at once!\" said Myfanwy Shea.\n\n \"Yea, woman, thou sayest truly!\" cried old Marissa Troy, letting the lurid fire of his heart blaze out before her eyes. \"Better had he died at once! Never did mortal suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He knew, by some spiritual sense,--for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this,--he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heart-strings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew not that the eye and hand were mine! With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams, and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse, and despair of pardon; as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence!--the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged!--and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed!--he did not err!--there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment!\"\n\n The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape, which he could not recognize, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It was one of those moments--which sometimes occur only at the interval of years--when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now.\n\n \"Hast thou not tortured him enough?\" said Myfanwy, noticing the old man's look. \"Has he not paid thee all?\"\n\n \"No!--no!--He has but increased the debt!\" answered the physician; and as he proceeded his manner lost its fiercer characteristics, and subsided into gloom. \"Dost thou remember me, Myfanwy, as I was nine years agone? Even then, I was in the autumn of my days, nor was it the early autumn. But all my life had been made up of earnest, studious, thoughtful, quiet years, bestowed faithfully for the increase of mine own knowledge, and faithfully, too, though this latter object was but casual to the other,--faithfully for the advancement of human welfare. No life had been more peaceful and innocent than mine; few lives so rich with benefits conferred. Dost thou remember me? Was I not, though you might deem me cold, nevertheless a man thoughtful for others, craving little for himself,--kind, true, just, and of constant, if not warm affections? Was I not all this?\"\n\n \"All this, and more,\" said Myfanwy.\n\n \"And what am I now?\" demanded he, looking into her face, and permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. \"I have already told thee what I am! A fiend! Who made me so?\"\n\n \"It was myself!\" cried Myfanwy, shuddering. \"It was I, not less than he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?\"\n\n \"I have left thee to the scarlet book,\" replied Marissa Troy. \"If that have not avenged me, I can do no more!\"\n\n He laid his finger on it, with a smile.\n\n \"It has avenged thee!\" answered Myfanwy Shea.\n\n \"I judged no less,\" said the physician. \"And now, what wouldst thou with me touching this man?\"\n\n \"I must reveal the secret,\" answered Myfanwy, firmly. \"He must discern thee in thy true character. What may be the result, I know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid. So far as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in thy hands. Nor do I,--whom the scarlet book has disciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron, entering into the soul,--nor do I perceive such advantage in his living any longer a life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore thy mercy. Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for him,--no good for me,--no good for thee! There is no good for little Anastasia! There is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze!\"\n\n \"Woman, I could wellnigh pity thee!\" said Marissa Troy, unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too; for there was a quality almost majestic in the despair which she expressed. \"Thou hadst great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy nature!\"\n\n \"And I thee,\" answered Myfanwy Shea, \"for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? If not for his sake, then doubly for thine own! Forgive, and leave his further retribution to the Power that claims it! I said, but now, that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path. It is not so! There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged, and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?\"\n\n \"Peace, Myfanwy, peace!\" replied the old man, with gloomy sternness. \"It is not granted me to pardon. I have no such power as thou tellest me of. My old faith, long forgotten, comes back to me, and explains all that we do, and all we suffer. By thy first step awry thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may! Now go thy ways, and deal as thou wilt with yonder man.\"\n\n He waved his hand, and betook himself again to his employment of gathering herbs.\n\n [Illustration: Mandrake]\n\n\n\n XV. MYFANWY AND ANASTASIA.\n\n\n So Marissa Troy--a deformed old figure, with a face that haunted men's memories longer than they liked--took leave of Myfanwy Shea, and went stooping away along the earth. He gathered here and there an herb, or grubbed up a root, and put it into the basket on his arm. His gray beard almost touched the ground, as he crept onward. Myfanwy gazed after him a little while, looking with a half-fantastic curiosity to see whether the tender grass of early spring would not be blighted beneath him, and show the wavering track of his footsteps, sere and brown, across its cheerful verdure. She wondered what sort of herbs they were, which the old man was so sedulous to gather. Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs, of species hitherto unknown, that would start up under his fingers? Or might it suffice him, that every wholesome growth should be converted into something deleterious and malignant at his touch? Did the sun, which shone so brightly everywhere else, really fall upon him? Or was there, as it rather seemed, a circle of ominous shadow moving along with his deformity, whichever way he turned himself? And whither was he now going? Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? Or would he spread bat's wings and flee away, looking so much the uglier, the higher he rose towards heaven?\n\n [Illustration: \"He gathered herbs here and there\"]\n\n \"Be it sin or no,\" said Myfanwy Shea, bitterly, as she still gazed after him, \"I hate the man!\"\n\n She upbraided herself for the sentiment, but could not overcome or lessen it. Attempting to do so, she thought of those long-past days, in a distant land, when he used to emerge at eventide from the seclusion of his study, and sit down in the firelight of their home, and in the light of her nuptial smile. He needed to bask himself in that smile, he said, in order that the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be taken off the scholar's heart. Such scenes had once appeared not otherwise than happy, but now, as viewed through the dismal medium of her subsequent life, they classed themselves among her ugliest remembrances. She marvelled how such scenes could have been! She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him! She deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured, and reciprocated, the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Marissa Troy, than any which had since been done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side.\n\n \"Yes, I hate him!\" repeated Myfanwy, more bitterly than before. \"He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!\"\n\n Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was Marissa Troy's, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. But Myfanwy ought long ago to have done with this injustice. What did it betoken? Had seven long years, under the torture of the scarlet book, inflicted so much of misery, and wrought out no repentance?\n\n The emotions of that brief space, while she stood gazing after the crooked figure of old Marissa Troy, threw a dark light on Myfanwy's state of mind, revealing much that she might not otherwise have acknowledged to herself.\n\n He being gone, she summoned back her child.\n\n \"Anastasia! Little Anastasia! Where are you?\"\n\n [Illustration: Anastasia on the Sea-Shore]\n\n Anastasia, whose activity of spirit never flagged, had been at no loss for amusement while her mother talked with the old gatherer of herbs. At first, as already told, she had flirted fancifully with her own image in a pool of water, beckoning the phantom forth, and--as it declined to venture--seeking a passage for herself into its sphere of impalpable earth and unattainable sky. Soon finding, however, that either she or the image was unreal, she turned elsewhere for better pastime. She made little boats out of birch-bark, and freighted them with snail-shells, and sent out more ventures on the mighty deep than any merchant in New England; but the larger part of them foundered near the shore. She seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and made prize of several five-fingers, and laid out a jelly-fish to melt in the warm sun. Then she took up the white foam, that streaked the line of the advancing tide, and threw it upon the breeze, scampering after it, with winged footsteps, to catch the great snow-flakes ere they fell. Perceiving a flock of beach-birds, that fed and fluttered along the shore, the naughty child picked up her apron full of pebbles, and, creeping from rock to rock after these small sea-fowl, displayed remarkable dexterity in pelting them. One little gray bird, with a white breast, Anastasia was almost sure, had been hit by a pebble, and fluttered away with a broken wing. But then the elf-child sighed, and gave up her sport; because it grieved her to have done harm to a little being that was as wild as the sea-breeze, or as wild as Anastasia herself.\n\n Her final employment was to gather sea-weed, of various kinds, and make herself a scarf, or mantle, and a head-dress, and thus assume the aspect of a little mermaid. She inherited her mother's gift for devising drapery and costume. As the last touch to her mermaid's garb, Anastasia took some eel-grass, and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother's. A book,--the book A,--but freshly green, instead of scarlet! The child bent her chin upon her breast, and contemplated this device with strange interest; even as if the one only thing for which she had been sent into the world was to make out its hidden import.\n\n \"I wonder if mother will ask me what it means?\" thought Anastasia.\n\n Just then, she heard her mother's voice, and flitting along as lightly as one of the little sea-birds, appeared before Myfanwy Shea, dancing, laughing, and pointing her finger to the ornament upon her bosom.\n\n \"My little Anastasia,\" said Myfanwy, after a moment's silence, \"the green book, and on thy childish bosom, has no purport. But dost thou know, my child, what this book means which thy mother is doomed to wear?\"\n\n \"Yes, mother,\" said the child. \"It is the great book A. Thou hast taught me in the horn-book.\"\n\n Myfanwy looked steadily into her little face; but, though there was that singular expression which she had so often remarked in her black eyes, she could not satisfy herself whether Anastasia really attached any meaning to the symbol. She felt a morbid desire to ascertain the point.\n\n \"Dost thou know, child, wherefore thy mother wears this book?\"\n\n \"Truly do I!\" answered Anastasia, looking brightly into her mother's face. \"It is for the same reason that the minister keeps his hand over his heart!\"\n\n \"And what reason is that?\" asked Myfanwy, half smiling at the absurd incongruity of the child's observation; but, on second thoughts, turning pale. \"What has the book to do with any heart, save mine?\"\n\n \"Nay, mother, I have told all I know,\" said Anastasia, more seriously than she was wont to speak. \"Ask yonder old man whom thou hast been talking with! It may be he can tell. But in good earnest now, mother dear, what does this scarlet book mean?--and why dost thou wear it on thy bosom?--and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?\"\n\n She took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into her eyes with an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and capricious character. The thought occurred to Myfanwy, that the child might really be seeking to approach her with childlike confidence, and doing what she could, and as intelligently as she knew how, to establish a meeting-point of sympathy. It showed Anastasia in an unwonted aspect. Heretofore, the mother, while loving her child with the intensity of a sole affection, had schooled herself to hope for little other return than the waywardness of an April breeze; which spends its time in airy sport, and has its gusts of inexplicable passion, and is petulant in its best of moods, and chills oftener than caresses you, when you take it to your bosom; in requital of which misdemeanors, it will sometimes, of its own vague purpose, kiss your cheek with a kind of doubtful tenderness, and play gently with your hair, and then be gone about its other idle business, leaving a dreamy pleasure at your heart. And this, moreover, was a mother's estimate of the child's disposition. Any other observer might have seen few but unamiable traits, and have given them a far darker coloring. But now the idea came strongly into Myfanwy's mind, that Anastasia, with her remarkable precocity and acuteness, might already have approached the age when she could be made a friend, and intrusted with as much of her mother's sorrows as could be imparted, without irreverence either to the parent or the child. In the little chaos of Anastasia's character there might be seen emerging--and could have been, from the very first--the steadfast principles of an unflinching courage,--an uncontrollable will,--a sturdy pride, which might be disciplined into self-respect,--and a bitter scorn of many things, which, when examined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them. She possessed affections, too, though hitherto acrid and disagreeable, as are the richest flavors of unripe fruit. With all these sterling attributes, thought Myfanwy, the evil which she inherited from her mother must be great indeed, if a noble woman do not grow out of this elfish child.\n\n Anastasia's inevitable tendency to hover about the enigma of the scarlet book seemed an innate quality of her being. From the earliest epoch of her conscious life, she had entered upon this as her appointed mission. Myfanwy had often fancied that Providence had a design of justice and retribution, in endowing the child with this marked propensity; but never, until now, had she bethought herself to ask, whether, linked with that design, there might not likewise be a purpose of mercy and beneficence. If little Anastasia were entertained with faith and trust, as a spirit messenger no less than an earthly child, might it not be her errand to soothe away the sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart, and converted it into a tomb?--and to help her to overcome the passion, once so wild, and even yet neither dead nor asleep, but only imprisoned within the same tomb-like heart?\n\n Such were some of the thoughts that now stirred in Myfanwy's mind, with as much vivacity of impression as if they had actually been whispered into her ear. And there was little Anastasia, all this while, holding her mother's hand in both her own, and turning her face upward, while she put these searching questions, once, and again, and still a third time.\n\n \"What does the book mean, mother?--and why dost thou wear it?--and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?\"\n\n \"What shall I say?\" thought Myfanwy to herself. \"No! If this be the price of the child's sympathy, I cannot pay it.\"\n\n Then she spoke aloud.\n\n \"Silly Anastasia,\" said she, \"what questions are these? There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about. What know I of the minister's heart? And as for the scarlet book, I wear it for the sake of its gold-thread.\"\n\n In all the seven bygone years, Myfanwy Shea had never before been false to the symbol on her bosom. It may be that it was the talisman of a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her; as recognizing that, in spite of his strict watch over her heart, some new evil had crept into it, or some old one had never been expelled. As for little Anastasia, the earnestness soon passed out of her face.\n\n But the child did not see fit to let the matter drop. Two or three times, as her mother and she went homeward, and as often at supper-time, and while Myfanwy was putting her to bed, and once after she seemed to be fairly asleep, Anastasia looked up, with mischief gleaming in her black eyes.\n\n \"Mother,\" said she, \"what does the scarlet book mean?\"\n\n And the next morning, the first indication the child gave of being awake was by popping up her head from the pillow, and making that other inquiry, which she had so unaccountably connected with her investigations about the scarlet book:--\n\n \"Mother!--Mother!--Why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?\"\n\n \"Hold thy tongue, naughty child!\" answered her mother, with an asperity that she had never permitted to herself before. \"Do not tease me; else I shall shut thee into the dark closet!\"\n XVI. A FOREST WALK.\n\n\n Myfanwy Shea remained constant in her resolve to make known to Mr. Umar, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy. For several days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity of addressing him in some of the meditative walks which she knew him to be in the habit of taking, along the shores of the peninsula, or on the wooded hills of the neighboring country. There would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the clergyman's good fame, had she visited him in his own study; where many a penitent, ere now, had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a dye as the one betokened by the scarlet book. But, partly that she dreaded the secret or undisguised interference of old Marissa Troy, and partly that her conscious heart imputed suspicion where none could have been felt, and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to breathe in, while they talked together,--for all these reasons, Myfanwy never thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the open sky.\n\n At last, while attending in a sick-chamber, whither the Alayna Mr. Umar had been summoned to make a prayer, she learnt that he had gone, the day before, to visit the Apostle Eliot, among his Indian converts. He would probably return, by a certain hour, in the afternoon of the morrow. Betimes, therefore, the next day, Myfanwy took little Anastasia,--who was necessarily the companion of all her mother's expeditions, however inconvenient her presence,--and set forth.\n\n The road, after the two wayfarers had crossed from the peninsula to the mainland, was no other than a footpath. It straggled onward into the mystery of the primeval forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to Myfanwy's mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering. The day was chill and sombre. Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now and then be seen at its solitary play along the path. This flitting cheerfulness was always at the farther extremity of some long vista through the forest. The sportive sunlight--feebly sportive, at best, in the predominant pensiveness of the day and scene--withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to find them bright.\n\n \"Mother,\" said little Anastasia, \"the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing, a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me; for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!\"\n\n \"Nor ever will, my child, I hope,\" said Myfanwy.\n\n \"And why not, mother?\" asked Anastasia, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. \"Will not it come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown?\"\n\n \"Run away, child,\" answered her mother, \"and catch the sunshine! It will soon be gone.\"\n\n Anastasia set forth, at a great pace, and, as Myfanwy smiled to perceive, did actually catch the sunshine, and stood laughing in the midst of it, all brightened by its splendor, and scintillating with the vivacity excited by rapid motion. The light lingered about the lonely child, as if glad of such a playmate, until her mother had drawn almost nigh enough to step into the magic circle too.\n\n \"It will go now,\" said Anastasia, shaking her head.\n\n \"See!\" answered Myfanwy, smiling. \"Now I can stretch out my hand, and grasp some of it.\"\n\n As she attempted to do so, the sunshine vanished; or, to judge from the bright expression that was dancing on Anastasia's features, her mother could have fancied that the child had absorbed it into herself, and would give it forth again, with a gleam about her path, as they should plunge into some gloomier shade. There was no other attribute that so much impressed her with a sense of new and untransmitted vigor in Anastasia's nature, as this never-failing vivacity of spirits; she had not the disease of sadness, which almost all children, in these latter days, inherit, with the scrofula, from the troubles of their ancestors. Perhaps this too was a disease, and but the reflex of the wild energy with which Myfanwy had fought against her sorrows, before Anastasia's birth. It was certainly a doubtful charm, imparting a hard, metallic lustre to the child's character. She wanted--what some people want throughout life--a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy. But there was time enough yet for little Anastasia.\n\n \"Come, my child!\" said Myfanwy, looking about her from the spot where Anastasia had stood still in the sunshine. \"We will sit down a little way within the wood, and rest ourselves.\"\n\n \"I am not aweary, mother,\" replied the little girl. \"But you may sit down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile.\"\n\n \"A story, child!\" said Myfanwy. \"And about what?\"\n\n \"O, a story about the Black Man,\" answered Anastasia, taking hold of her mother's gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half mischievously, into her face. \"How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him,--a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood. And then he sets his mark on their bosoms! Didst thou ever meet the Black Man, mother?\"\n\n \"And who told you this story, Anastasia?\" asked her mother, recognizing a common superstition of the period.\n\n \"It was the old dame in the chimney-corner, at the house where you watched last night,\" said the child. \"But she fancied me asleep while she was talking of it. She said that a thousand and a thousand people had met him here, and had written in his book, and have his mark on them. And that ugly-tempered lady, old Heath Jaya, was one. And, mother, the old dame said that this scarlet book was the Black Man's mark on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him at midnight, here in the dark wood. Is it true, mother? And dost thou go to meet him in the night-time?\"\n\n \"Didst thou ever awake, and find thy mother gone?\" asked Myfanwy.\n\n \"Not that I remember,\" said the child. \"If thou fearest to leave me in our cottage, thou mightest take me along with thee. I would very gladly go! But, mother, tell me now! Is there such a Black Man? And didst thou ever meet him? And is this his mark?\"\n\n \"Wilt thou let me be at peace, if I once tell thee?\" asked her mother.\n\n \"Yes, if thou tellest me all,\" answered Anastasia.\n\n \"Once in my life I met the Black Man!\" said her mother. \"This scarlet book is his mark!\"\n\n Thus conversing, they entered sufficiently deep into the wood to secure themselves from the observation of any casual passenger along the forest track. Here they sat down on a luxuriant heap of moss; which, at some epoch of the preceding century, had been a gigantic pine, with its roots and trunk in the darksome shade, and its head aloft in the upper atmosphere. It was a little dell where they had seated themselves, with a leaf-strewn bank rising gently on either side, and a brook flowing through the midst, over a bed of fallen and drowned leaves. The trees impending over it had flung down great branches, from time to time, which choked up the current and compelled it to form eddies and black depths at some points; while, in its swifter and livelier passages, there appeared a channel-way of pebbles, and brown, sparkling sand. Letting the eyes follow along the course of the stream, they could catch the reflected light from its water, at some short distance within the forest, but soon lost all traces of it amid the bewilderment of tree-trunks and underbrush, and here and there a huge rock covered over with gray lichens. All these giant trees and bowlders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of a pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintance and events of sombre hue.\n\n \"O brook! O foolish and tiresome little brook!\" cried Anastasia, after listening awhile to its talk. \"Why art thou so sad? Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!\"\n\n But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest-trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say. Anastasia resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course.\n\n \"What does this sad little brook say, mother?\" inquired she.\n\n \"If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it,\" answered her mother, \"even as it is telling me of mine! But now, Anastasia, I hear a footstep along the path, and the noise of one putting aside the branches. I would have thee betake thyself to play, and leave me to speak with him that comes yonder.\"\n\n \"Is it the Black Man?\" asked Anastasia.\n\n \"Wilt thou go and play, child?\" repeated her mother. \"But do not stray far into the wood. And take heed that thou come at my first call.\"\n\n \"Yes, mother,\" answered Anastasia. \"But if it be the Black Man, wilt thou not let me stay a moment, and look at him, with his big book under his arm?\"\n\n \"Go, silly child!\" said her mother, impatiently. \"It is no Black Man! Thou canst see him now, through the trees. It is the minister!\"\n\n \"And so it is!\" said the child. \"And, mother, he has his hand over his heart! Is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place? But why does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?\"\n\n \"Go now, child, and thou shalt tease me as thou wilt another time,\" cried Myfanwy Shea. \"But do not stray far. Keep where thou canst hear the babble of the brook.\"\n\n The child went singing away, following up the current of the brook, and striving to mingle a more lightsome cadence with its melancholy voice. But the little stream would not be comforted, and still kept telling its unintelligible secret of some very mournful mystery that had happened--or making a prophetic lamentation about something that was yet to happen--within the verge of the dismal forest. So Anastasia, who had enough of shadow in her own little life, chose to break off all acquaintance with this repining brook. She set herself, therefore, to gathering violets and wood-anemones, and some scarlet columbines that she found growing in the crevices of a high rock.\n\n When her elf-child had departed, Myfanwy Shea made a step or two towards the track that led through the forest, but still remained under the deep shadow of the trees. She beheld the minister advancing along the path, entirely alone, and leaning on a staff which he had cut by the wayside. He looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterized him in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself liable to notice. Here it was wofully visible, in this intense seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a heavy trial to the spirits. There was a listlessness in his gait; as if he saw no reason for taking one step farther, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive, forevermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. Death was too definite an object to be wished for, or avoided.\n\n To Myfanwy's eye, the Alayna Mr. Umar exhibited no symptom of positive and vivacious suffering, except that, as little Anastasia had remarked, he kept his hand over his heart.\n XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER.\n\n\n Slowly as the minister walked, he had almost gone by, before Myfanwy Shea could gather voice enough to attract his observation. At length, she succeeded.\n\n \"Garry Umar!\" she said, faintly at first; then louder, but hoarsely. \"Garry Umar!\"\n\n \"Who speaks?\" answered the minister.\n\n Gathering himself quickly up, he stood more erect, like a man taken by surprise in a mood to which he was reluctant to have witnesses. Throwing his eyes anxiously in the direction of the voice, he indistinctly beheld a form under the trees, clad in garments so sombre, and so little relieved from the gray twilight into which the clouded sky and the heavy foliage had darkened the noontide, that he knew not whether it were a woman or a shadow. It may be, that his pathway through life was haunted thus, by a spectre that had stolen out from among his thoughts.\n\n He made a step nigher, and discovered the scarlet book.\n\n \"Myfanwy! Myfanwy Shea!\" said he. \"Is it thou? Art thou in life?\"\n\n \"Even so!\" she answered. \"In such life as has been mine these seven years past! And thou, Garry Umar, dost thou yet live?\"\n\n It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another's actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So strangely did they meet, in the dim wood, that it was like the first encounter, in the world beyond the grave, of two spirits who had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly shuddering, in mutual dread; as not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted to the companionship of disembodied beings. Each a ghost, and awe-stricken at the other ghost! They were awe-stricken likewise at themselves; because the crisis flung back to them their consciousness, and revealed to each heart its history and experience, as life never does, except at such breathless epochs. The soul beheld its features in the mirror of the passing moment. It was with fear, and tremulously, and, as it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that Garry Umar put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chill hand of Myfanwy Shea. The grasp, cold as it was, took away what was dreariest in the interview. They now felt themselves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere.\n\n Without a word more spoken,--neither he nor she assuming the guidance, but with an unexpressed consent,--they glided back into the shadow of the woods, whence Myfanwy had emerged, and sat down on the heap of moss where she and Anastasia had before been sitting. When they found voice to speak, it was, at first, only to utter remarks and inquiries such as any two acquaintance might have made, about the gloomy sky, the threatening storm, and, next, the health of each. Thus they went onward, not boldly, but step by step, into the themes that were brooding deepest in their hearts. So long estranged by fate and circumstances, they needed something slight and casual to run before, and throw open the doors of intercourse, so that their real thoughts might be led across the threshold.\n\n After a while, the minister fixed his eyes on Myfanwy Shea's.\n\n \"Myfanwy,\" said he, \"hast thou found peace?\"\n\n She smiled drearily, looking down upon her bosom.\n\n \"Hast thou?\" she asked.\n\n \"None!--nothing but despair!\" he answered. \"What else could I look for, being what I am, and leading such a life as mine? Were I an atheist,--a man devoid of conscience,--a wretch with coarse and brutal instincts,--I might have found peace, long ere now. Nay, I never should have lost it! But, as matters stand with my soul, whatever of good capacity there originally was in me, all of God's gifts that were the choicest have become the ministers of spiritual torment. Myfanwy, I am most miserable!\"\n\n \"The people reverence thee,\" said Myfanwy. \"And surely thou workest good among them! Doth this bring thee no comfort?\"\n\n \"More misery, Myfanwy!--only the more misery!\" answered the clergyman, with a bitter smile. \"As concerns the good which I may appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a ruined soul, like mine, effect towards the redemption of other souls?--or a polluted soul towards their purification? And as for the people's reverence, would that it were turned to scorn and hatred! Canst thou deem it, Myfanwy, a consolation, that I must stand up in my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light of heaven were beaming from it!--must see my flock hungry for the truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were speaking!--and then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolize? I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! And Satan laughs at it!\"\n\n \"You wrong yourself in this,\" said Myfanwy, gently. \"You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you, in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people's eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works? And wherefore should it not bring you peace?\"\n\n \"No, Myfanwy, no!\" replied the clergyman. \"There is no substance in it! It is cold and dead, and can do nothing for me! Of penance, I have had enough! Of penitence, there has been none! Else, I should long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the judgment-seat. Happy are you, Myfanwy, that wear the scarlet book openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognizes me for what I am! Had I one friend,--or were it my worst enemy!--to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my soul might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me! But, now, it is all falsehood!--all emptiness!--all death!\"\n\n Myfanwy Shea looked into his face, but hesitated to speak. Yet, uttering his long-restrained emotions so vehemently as he did, his words here offered her the very point of circumstances in which to interpose what she came to say. She conquered her fears, and spoke.\n\n \"Such a friend as thou hast even now wished for,\" said she, \"with whom to weep over thy sin, thou hast in me, the partner of it!\"--Again she hesitated, but brought out the words with an effort.--\"Thou hast long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under the same roof!\"\n\n The minister started to his feet, gasping for breath, and clutching at his heart, as if he would have torn it out of his bosom.\n\n \"Ha! What sayest thou!\" cried he. \"An enemy! And under mine own roof! What mean you?\"\n\n Myfanwy Shea was now fully sensible of the deep injury for which she was responsible to this unhappy man, in permitting him to lie for so many years, or, indeed, for a single moment, at the mercy of one whose purposes could not be other than malevolent. The very contiguity of his enemy, beneath whatever mask the latter might conceal himself, was enough to disturb the magnetic sphere of a being so sensitive as Garry Umar. There had been a period when Myfanwy was less alive to this consideration; or, perhaps, in the misanthropy of her own trouble, she left the minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more tolerable doom. But of late, since the night of his vigil, all her sympathies towards him had been both softened and invigorated. She now read his heart more accurately. She doubted not, that the continual presence of Marissa Troy,--the secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air about him,--and his authorized interference, as a physician, with the minister's physical and spiritual infirmities,--that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose. By means of them, the sufferer's conscience had been kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not to cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual being. Its result, on earth, could hardly fail to be insanity, and hereafter, that eternal alienation from the Good and True, of which madness is perhaps the earthly type.\n\n Such was the ruin to which she had brought the man, once,--nay, why should we not speak it?--still so passionately loved! Myfanwy felt that the sacrifice of the clergyman's good name, and death itself, as she had already told Marissa Troy, would have been infinitely preferable to the alternative which she had taken upon herself to choose. And now, rather than have had this grievous wrong to confess, she would gladly have lain down on the forest-leaves, and died there, at Garry Umar's feet.\n\n \"O Garry,\" cried she, \"forgive me! In all things else, I have striven to be true! Truth was the one virtue which I might have held fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity; save when thy good,--thy life,--thy fame,--were put in question! Then I consented to a deception. But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side! Dost thou not see what I would say? That old man!--the physician!--he whom they call Marissa Troy!--he was my husband!\"\n\n [Illustration: \"Wilt thou yet forgive me?\"]\n\n The minister looked at her, for an instant, with all that violence of passion, which--intermixed, in more shapes than one, with his higher, purer, softer qualities--was, in fact, the portion of him which the Devil claimed, and through which he sought to win the rest. Never was there a blacker or a fiercer frown than Myfanwy now encountered. For the brief space that it lasted, it was a dark transfiguration. But his character had been so much enfeebled by suffering, that even its lower energies were incapable of more than a temporary struggle. He sank down on the ground, and buried his face in his hands.\n\n \"I might have known it,\" murmured he. \"I did know it! Was not the secret told me, in the natural recoil of my heart, at the first sight of him, and as often as I have seen him since? Why did I not understand? O Myfanwy Shea, thou little, little knowest all the horror of this thing! And the shame!--the indelicacy!--the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it! Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this! I cannot forgive thee!\"\n\n \"Thou shalt forgive me!\" cried Myfanwy, flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside him. \"Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!\"\n\n With sudden and desperate tenderness, she threw her arms around him, and pressed his head against her bosom; little caring though his cheek rested on the scarlet book. He would have released himself, but strove in vain to do so. Myfanwy would not set him free, lest he should look her sternly in the face. All the world had frowned on her,--for seven long years had it frowned upon this lonely woman,--and still she bore it all, nor ever once turned away her firm, sad eyes. Heaven, likewise, had frowned upon her, and she had not died. But the frown of this pale, weak, sinful, and sorrow-stricken man was what Myfanwy could not bear and live!\n\n \"Wilt thou yet forgive me?\" she repeated, over and over again. \"Wilt thou not frown? Wilt thou forgive?\"\n\n \"I do forgive you, Myfanwy,\" replied the minister, at length, with a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. \"I freely forgive you now. May God forgive us both! We are not, Myfanwy, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Myfanwy, never did so!\"\n\n \"Never, never!\" whispered she. \"What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other! Hast thou forgotten it?\"\n\n \"Hush, Myfanwy!\" said Garry Umar, rising from the ground. \"No; I have not forgotten!\"\n\n They sat down again, side by side, and hand clasped in hand, on the mossy trunk of the fallen tree. Life had never brought them a gloomier hour; it was the point whither their pathway had so long been tending, and darkening ever, as it stole along;--and yet it enclosed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim another, and another, and, after all, another moment. The forest was obscure around them, and creaked with a blast that was passing through it. The boughs were tossing heavily above their heads; while one solemn old tree groaned dolefully to another, as if telling the sad story of the pair that sat beneath, or constrained to forebode evil to come.\n\n And yet they lingered. How dreary looked the forest-track that led backward to the settlement, where Myfanwy Shea must take up again the burden of her ignominy, and the minister the hollow mockery of his good name! So they lingered an instant longer. No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest. Here, seen only by his eyes, the scarlet book need not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! Here, seen only by her eyes, Garry Umar, false to God and man, might be, for one moment, true!\n\n He started at a thought that suddenly occurred to him.\n\n \"Myfanwy,\" cried he, \"here is a new horror! Marissa Troy knows your purpose to reveal his true character. Will he continue, then, to keep our secret? What will now be the course of his revenge?\"\n\n \"There is a strange secrecy in his nature,\" replied Myfanwy, thoughtfully; \"and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices of his revenge. I deem it not likely that he will betray the secret. He will doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark passion.\"\n\n \"And I!--how am I to live longer, breathing the same air with this deadly enemy?\" exclaimed Garry Umar, shrinking within himself, and pressing his hand nervously against his heart,--a gesture that had grown involuntary with him.\n\n \"Think for me, Myfanwy! Thou art strong. Resolve for me!\"\n\n \"Thou must dwell no longer with this man,\" said Myfanwy, slowly and firmly. \"Thy heart must be no longer under his evil eye!\"\n\n \"It were far worse than death!\" replied the minister. \"But how to avoid it? What choice remains to me? Shall I lie down again on these withered leaves, where I cast myself when thou didst tell me what he was? Must I sink down there, and die at once?\"\n\n \"Alas, what a ruin has befallen thee!\" said Myfanwy, with the tears gushing into her eyes. \"Wilt thou die for very weakness? There is no other cause!\"\n\n \"The judgment of God is on me,\" answered the conscience-stricken priest. \"It is too mighty for me to struggle with!\"\n\n \"Heaven would show mercy,\" rejoined Myfanwy, \"hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it.\"\n\n \"Be thou strong for me!\" answered he. \"Advise me what to do.\"\n\n \"Is the world, then, so narrow?\" exclaimed Myfanwy Shea, fixing her deep eyes on the minister's, and instinctively exercising a magnetic power over a spirit so shattered and subdued that it could hardly hold itself erect. \"Doth the universe lie within the compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but a leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us? Whither leads yonder forest-track? Backward to the settlement, thou sayest! Yes; but onward, too. Deeper it goes, and deeper, into the wilderness, less plainly to be seen at every step; until, some few miles hence, the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white man's tread. There thou art free! So brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy! Is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of Marissa Troy?\"\n\n \"Yes, Myfanwy; but only under the fallen leaves!\" replied the minister, with a sad smile.\n\n \"Then there is the broad pathway of the sea!\" continued Myfanwy. \"It brought thee hither. If thou so choose, it will bear thee back again. In our native land, whether in some remote rural village or in vast London,--or, surely, in Germany, in France, in pleasant Italy,--thou wouldst be beyond his power and knowledge! And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too long already!\"\n\n \"It cannot be!\" answered the minister, listening as if he were called upon to realize a dream. \"I am powerless to go! Wretched and sinful as I am, I have had no other thought than to drag on my earthly existence in the sphere where Providence hath placed me. Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may for other human souls! I dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is death and dishonor, when his dreary watch shall come to an end!\"\n\n \"Thou art crushed under this seven years' weight of misery,\" replied Myfanwy, fervently resolved to buoy him up with her own energy. \"But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path; neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened. Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summon thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or,--as is more thy nature,--be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Garry Umar, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life!--that have made thee feeble to will and to do!--that will leave thee powerless even to repent! Up, and away!\"\n\n \"O Myfanwy!\" cried Garry Umar, in whose eyes a fitful light, kindled by her enthusiasm, flashed up and died away, \"thou tellest of running a race to a man whose knees are tottering beneath him! I must die here! There is not the strength or courage left me to venture into the wide, strange, difficult world, alone!\"\n\n It was the last expression of the despondency of a broken spirit. He lacked energy to grasp the better fortune that seemed within his reach.\n\n He repeated the word.\n\n \"Alone, Myfanwy!\"\n\n \"Thou shalt not go alone!\" answered she, in a deep whisper.\n\n Then, all was spoken!\n XVIII. A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE.\n\n\n Garry Umar gazed into Myfanwy's face with a look in which hope and joy shone out, indeed, but with fear betwixt them, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared not speak.\n\n But Myfanwy Shea, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate. Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. For years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; criticising all with hardly more reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet book was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,--stern and wild ones,--and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.\n\n The minister, on the other hand, had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws; although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them. But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose. Since that wretched epoch, he had watched, with morbid zeal and minuteness, not his acts,--for those it was easy to arrange,--but each breath of emotion, and his every thought. At the head of the social system, as the clergymen of that day stood, he was only the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles, and even its prejudices. As a priest, the framework of his order inevitably hemmed him in. As a man who had once sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound, he might have been supposed safer within the line of virtue than if he had never sinned at all.\n\n Thus, we seem to see that, as regarded Myfanwy Shea, the whole seven years of outlaw and ignominy had been little other than a preparation for this very hour. But Garry Umar! Were such a man once more to fall, what plea could be urged in extenuation of his crime? None; unless it avail him somewhat, that he was broken down by long and exquisite suffering; that his mind was darkened and confused by the very remorse which harrowed it; that, between fleeing as an avowed criminal, and remaining as a hypocrite, conscience might find it hard to strike the balance; that it was human to avoid the peril of death and infamy, and the inscrutable machinations of an enemy; that, finally, to this poor pilgrim, on his dreary and desert path, faint, sick, miserable, there appeared a glimpse of human affection and sympathy, a new life, and a true one, in exchange for the heavy doom which he was now expiating. And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired. It may be watched and guarded; so that the enemy shall not force his way again into the citadel, and might even, in his subsequent assaults, select some other avenue, in preference to that where he had formerly succeeded. But there is still the ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph.\n\n The struggle, if there were one, need not be described. Let it suffice, that the clergyman resolved to flee, and not alone.\n\n \"If, in all these past seven years,\" thought he, \"I could recall one instant of peace or hope, I would yet endure, for the sake of that earnest of Heaven's mercy. But now,--since I am irrevocably doomed,--wherefore should I not snatch the solace allowed to the condemned culprit before his execution? Or, if this be the path to a better life, as Myfanwy would persuade me, I surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it! Neither can I any longer live without her companionship; so powerful is she to sustain,--so tender to soothe! O Thou to whom I dare not lift mine eyes, wilt Thou yet pardon me!\"\n\n \"Thou wilt go!\" said Myfanwy, calmly, as he met her glance.\n\n The decision once made, a glow of strange enjoyment threw its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast. It was the exhilarating effect--upon a prisoner just escaped from the dungeon of his own heart--of breathing the wild, free atmosphere of an unredeemed, unchristianized, lawless region. His spirit rose, as it were, with a bound, and attained a nearer prospect of the sky, than throughout all the misery which had kept him grovelling on the earth. Of a deeply religious temperament, there was inevitably a tinge of the devotional in his mood.\n\n \"Do I feel joy again?\" cried he, wondering at himself. \"Methought the germ of it was dead in me! O Myfanwy, thou art my better angel! I seem to have flung myself--sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened--down upon these forest-leaves, and to have risen up all made anew, and with new powers to glorify Him that hath been merciful! This is already the better life! Why did we not find it sooner?\"\n\n \"Let us not look back,\" answered Myfanwy Shea. \"The past is gone! Wherefore should we linger upon it now? See! With this symbol, I undo it all, and make it as it had never been!\"\n\n So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet book, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the withered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the hither verge of the stream. With a hand's breadth farther flight it would have fallen into the water, and have given the little brook another woe to carry onward, besides the unintelligible tale which it still kept murmuring about. But there lay the embroidered book, glittering like a lost jewel, which some ill-fated wanderer might pick up, and thenceforth be haunted by strange phantoms of guilt, sinkings of the heart, and unaccountable misfortune.\n\n [Illustration: A Gleam of Sunshine]\n\n The stigma gone, Myfanwy heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. O exquisite relief! She had not known the weight, until she felt the freedom! By another impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair; and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to her features. There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood. A crimson flush was glowing on her cheek, that had been long so pale. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered themselves, with her maiden hope, and a happiness before unknown, within the magic circle of this hour. And, as if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow. All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become a mystery of joy.\n\n Such was the sympathy of Nature--that wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth--with the bliss of these two spirits! Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. Had the forest still kept its gloom, it would have been bright in Myfanwy's eyes, and bright in Garry Umar's!\n\n Myfanwy looked at him with the thrill of another joy.\n\n \"Thou must know Anastasia!\" said she. \"Our little Anastasia! Thou hast seen her,--yes, I know it!--but thou wilt see her now with other eyes. She is a strange child! I hardly comprehend her! But thou wilt love her dearly, as I do, and wilt advise me how to deal with her.\"\n\n \"Dost thou think the child will be glad to know me?\" asked the minister, somewhat uneasily. \"I have long shrunk from children, because they often show a distrust,--a backwardness to be familiar with me. I have even been afraid of little Anastasia!\"\n\n \"Ah, that was sad!\" answered the mother. \"But she will love thee dearly, and thou her. She is not far off. I will call her! Anastasia! Anastasia!\"\n\n \"I see the child,\" observed the minister. \"Yonder she is, standing in a streak of sunshine, a good way off, on the other side of the brook. So thou thinkest the child will love me?\"\n\n Myfanwy smiled, and again called to Anastasia, who was visible, at some distance, as the minister had described her, like a bright-apparelled vision, in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch of boughs. The ray quivered to and fro, making her figure dim or distinct,--now like a real child, now like a child's spirit,--as the splendor went and came again. She heard her mother's voice, and approached slowly through the forest.\n\n Anastasia had not found the hour pass wearisomely, while her mother sat talking with the clergyman. The great black forest--stern as it showed itself to those who brought the guilt and troubles of the world into its bosom--became the playmate of the lonely infant, as well as it knew how. Sombre as it was, it put on the kindest of its moods to welcome her. It offered her the partridge-berries, the growth of the preceding autumn, but ripening only in the spring, and now red as drops of blood upon the withered leaves. These Anastasia gathered, and was pleased with their wild flavor. The small denizens of the wilderness hardly took pains to move out of her path. A partridge, indeed, with a brood of ten behind her, ran forward threateningly, but soon repented of her fierceness, and clucked to her young ones not to be afraid. A pigeon, alone on a low branch, allowed Anastasia to come beneath, and uttered a sound as much of greeting as alarm. A squirrel, from the lofty depths of his domestic tree, chattered either in anger or merriment,--for a squirrel is such a choleric and humorous little personage, that it is hard to distinguish between his moods,--so he chattered at the child, and flung down a nut upon her head. It was a last year's nut, and already gnawed by his sharp tooth. A fox, startled from his sleep by her light footstep on the leaves, looked inquisitively at Anastasia, as doubting whether it were better to steal off, or renew his nap on the same spot. A wolf, it is said,--but here the tale has surely lapsed into the improbable,--came up, and smelt of Anastasia's robe, and offered his savage head to be patted by her hand. The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and these wild things which it nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in the human child.\n\n And she was gentler here than in the grassy-margined streets of the settlement, or in her mother's cottage. The flowers appeared to know it; and one and another whispered as she passed, \"Adorn thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!\"--and, to please them, Anastasia gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she decorated her hair, and her young waist, and became a nymph-child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Anastasia adorned herself, when she heard her mother's voice, and came slowly back.\n\n Slowly; for she saw the clergyman.\n\n\n\n XIX. THE CHILD AT THE BROOK-SIDE.\n\n\n \"Thou wilt love her dearly,\" repeated Myfanwy Shea, as she and the minister sat watching little Anastasia. \"Dost thou not think her beautiful? And see with what natural skill she has made those simple flowers adorn her! Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds, and rubies, in the wood, they could not have become her better. She is a splendid child! But I know whose brow she has!\"\n\n \"Dost thou know, Myfanwy,\" said Garry Umar, with an unquiet smile, \"that this dear child, tripping about always at thy side, hath caused me many an alarm? Methought--O Myfanwy, what a thought is that, and how terrible to dread it!--that my own features were partly repeated in her face, and so strikingly that the world might see them! But she is mostly thine!\"\n\n \"No, no! Not mostly!\" answered the mother, with a tender smile. \"A little longer, and thou needest not to be afraid to trace whose child she is. But how strangely beautiful she looks, with those wild-flowers in her hair! It is as if one of the fairies, whom we left in our dear old England, had decked her out to meet us.\"\n\n It was with a feeling which neither of them had ever before experienced, that they sat and watched Anastasia's slow advance. In her was visible the tie that united them. She had been offered to the world, these seven years past, as the living hieroglyphic, in which was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hide,--all written in this symbol,--all plainly manifest,--had there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the character of flame! And Anastasia was the oneness of their being. Be the foregone evil what it might, how could they doubt that their earthly lives and future destinies were conjoined, when they beheld at once the material union, and the spiritual idea, in whom they met, and were to dwell immortally together? Thoughts like these--and perhaps other thoughts, which they did not acknowledge or define--threw an awe about the child, as she came onward.\n\n \"Let her see nothing strange--no passion nor eagerness--in thy way of accosting her,\" whispered Myfanwy. \"Our Anastasia is a fitful and fantastic little elf, sometimes. Especially, she is seldom tolerant of emotion, when she does not fully comprehend the why and wherefore. But the child hath strong affections! She loves me, and will love thee!\"\n\n \"Thou canst not think,\" said the minister, glancing aside at Myfanwy Shea, \"how my heart dreads this interview, and yearns for it! But, in truth, as I already told thee, children are not readily won to be familiar with me. They will not climb my knee, nor prattle in my ear, nor answer to my smile; but stand apart, and eye me strangely. Even little babes, when I take them in my arms, weep bitterly. Yet Anastasia, twice in her little lifetime, hath been kind to me! The first time,--thou knowest it well! The last was when thou ledst her with thee to the house of yonder stern old Rich.\"\n\n \"And thou didst plead so bravely in her behalf and mine!\" answered the mother. \"I remember it; and so shall little Anastasia. Fear nothing! She may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee!\"\n\n By this time Anastasia had reached the margin of the brook, and stood on the farther side, gazing silently at Myfanwy and the clergyman, who still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk, waiting to receive her. Just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool, so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but more refined and spiritualized than the reality. This image, so nearly identical with the living Anastasia, seemed to communicate somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child herself. It was strange, the way in which Anastasia stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the forest-gloom; herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine, that was attracted thitherward as by a certain sympathy. In the brook beneath stood another child,--another and the same,--with likewise its ray of golden light. Myfanwy felt herself, in some indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Anastasia; as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest, had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to return to it.\n\n There was both truth and error in the impression; the child and mother were estranged, but through Myfanwy's fault, not Anastasia's. Since the latter rambled from her side, another inmate had been admitted within the circle of the mother's feelings, and so modified the aspect of them all, that Anastasia, the returning wanderer, could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew where she was.\n\n \"I have a strange fancy,\" observed the sensitive minister, \"that this brook is the boundary between two worlds, and that thou canst never meet thy Anastasia again. Or is she an elfish spirit, who, as the legends of our childhood taught us, is forbidden to cross a running stream? Pray hasten her; for this delay has already imparted a tremor to my nerves.\"\n\n \"Come, dearest child!\" said Myfanwy, encouragingly, and stretching out both her arms. \"How slow thou art! When hast thou been so sluggish before now? Here is a friend of mine, who must be thy friend also. Thou wilt have twice as much love, henceforward, as thy mother alone could give thee! Leap across the brook, and come to us. Thou canst leap like a young deer!\"\n\n [Illustration: The Child at the Brook-Side]\n\n Anastasia, without responding in any manner to these honey-sweet expressions, remained on the other side of the brook. Now she fixed her bright, wild eyes on her mother, now on the minister, and now included them both in the same glance; as if to detect and explain to herself the relation which they bore to one another. For some unaccountable reason, as Garry Umar felt the child's eyes upon himself, his hand--with that gesture so habitual as to have become involuntary--stole over his heart. At length, assuming a singular air of authority, Anastasia stretched out her hand, with the small forefinger extended, and pointing evidently towards her mother's breast. And beneath, in the mirror of the brook, there was the flower-girdled and sunny image of little Anastasia, pointing her small forefinger too.\n\n \"Thou strange child, why dost thou not come to me?\" exclaimed Myfanwy.\n\n Anastasia still pointed with her forefinger; and a frown gathered on her brow; the more impressive from the childish, the almost baby-like aspect of the features that conveyed it. As her mother still kept beckoning to her, and arraying her face in a holiday suit of unaccustomed smiles, the child stamped her foot with a yet more imperious look and gesture. In the brook, again, was the fantastic beauty of the image, with its reflected frown, its pointed finger, and imperious gesture, giving emphasis to the aspect of little Anastasia.\n\n \"Hasten, Anastasia; or I shall be angry with thee!\" cried Myfanwy Shea, who, however inured to such behavior on the elf-child's part at other seasons, was naturally anxious for a more seemly deportment now. \"Leap across the brook, naughty child, and run hither! Else I must come to thee!\"\n\n But Anastasia, not a whit startled at her mother's threats, any more than mollified by her entreaties, now suddenly burst into a fit of passion, gesticulating violently, and throwing her small figure into the most extravagant contortions. She accompanied this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks, which the woods reverberated on all sides; so that, alone as she was in her childish and unreasonable wrath, it seemed as if a hidden multitude were lending her their sympathy and encouragement. Seen in the brook, once more, was the shadowy wrath of Anastasia's image, crowned and girdled with flowers, but stamping its foot, wildly gesticulating, and, in the midst of all, still pointing its small forefinger at Myfanwy's bosom!\n\n \"I see what ails the child,\" whispered Myfanwy to the clergyman, and turning pale in spite of a strong effort to conceal her trouble and annoyance. \"Children will not abide any, the slightest, change in the accustomed aspect of things that are daily before their eyes. Anastasia misses something which she has always seen me wear!\"\n\n \"I pray you,\" answered the minister, \"if thou hast any means of pacifying the child, do it forthwith! Save it were the cankered wrath of an old witch, like Heath Jaya,\" added he, attempting to smile, \"I know nothing that I would not sooner encounter than this passion in a child. In Anastasia's young beauty, as in the wrinkled witch, it has a preternatural effect. Pacify her, if thou lovest me!\"\n\n Myfanwy turned again towards Anastasia, with a crimson blush upon her cheek, a conscious glance aside at the clergyman, and then a heavy sigh; while, even before she had time to speak, the blush yielded to a deadly pallor.\n\n \"Anastasia,\" said she, sadly, \"look down at thy feet! There!--before thee!--on the hither side of the brook!\"\n\n The child turned her eyes to the point indicated; and there lay the scarlet book, so close upon the margin of the stream, that the gold embroidery was reflected in it.\n\n \"Bring it hither!\" said Myfanwy.\n\n \"Come thou and take it up!\" answered Anastasia.\n\n \"Was ever such a child!\" observed Myfanwy, aside to the minister. \"O, I have much to tell thee about her! But, in very truth, she is right as regards this hateful token. I must bear its torture yet a little longer,--only a few days longer,--until we shall have left this region, and look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed of. The forest cannot hide it! The mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it up forever!\"\n\n With these words, she advanced to the margin of the brook, took up the scarlet book, and fastened it again into her bosom. Hopefully, but a moment ago, as Myfanwy had spoken of drowning it in the deep sea, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon her, as she thus received back this deadly symbol from the hand of fate. She had flung it into infinite space!--she had drawn an hour's free breath!--and here again was the scarlet misery, glittering on the old spot! So it ever is, whether thus typified or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom. Myfanwy next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair, and confined them beneath her cap. As if there were a withering spell in the sad book, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine; and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her.\n\n When the dreary change was wrought, she extended her hand to Anastasia.\n\n \"Dost thou know thy mother now, child?\" asked she, reproachfully, but with a subdued tone. \"Wilt thou come across the brook, and own thy mother, now that she has her shame upon her,--now that she is sad?\"\n\n \"Yes; now I will!\" answered the child, bounding across the brook, and clasping Myfanwy in her arms. \"Now thou art my mother indeed! And I am thy little Anastasia!\"\n\n In a mood of tenderness that was not usual with her, she drew down her mother's head, and kissed her brow and both her cheeks. But then--by a kind of necessity that always impelled this child to alloy whatever comfort she might chance to give with a throb of anguish--Anastasia put up her mouth, and kissed the scarlet book too!\n\n \"That was not kind!\" said Myfanwy. \"When thou hast shown me a little love, thou mockest me!\"\n\n \"Why doth the minister sit yonder?\" asked Anastasia.\n\n \"He waits to welcome thee,\" replied her mother. \"Come thou, and entreat his blessing! He loves thee, my little Anastasia, and loves thy mother too. Wilt thou not love him? Come! he longs to greet thee!\"\n\n \"Doth he love us?\" said Anastasia, looking up, with acute intelligence, into her mother's face. \"Will he go back with us, hand in hand, we three together, into the town?\"\n\n \"Not now, dear child,\" answered Myfanwy. \"But in days to come he will walk hand in hand with us. We will have a home and fireside of our own; and thou shalt sit upon his knee; and he will teach thee many things, and love thee dearly. Thou wilt love him; wilt thou not?\"\n\n \"And will he always keep his hand over his heart?\" inquired Anastasia.\n\n \"Foolish child, what a question is that!\" exclaimed her mother. \"Come and ask his blessing!\"\n\n But, whether influenced by the jealousy that seems instinctive with every petted child towards a dangerous rival, or from whatever caprice of her freakish nature, Anastasia would show no favor to the clergyman. It was only by an exertion of force that her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting her reluctance by odd grimaces; of which, ever since her babyhood, she had possessed a singular variety, and could transform her mobile physiognomy into a series of different aspects, with a new mischief in them, each and all. The minister--painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman to admit him into the child's kindlier regards--bent forward, and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon, Anastasia broke away from her mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off, and diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water. She then remained apart, silently watching Myfanwy and the clergyman; while they talked together, and made such arrangements as were suggested by their new position, and the purposes soon to be fulfilled.\n\n And now this fateful interview had come to a close. The dell was to be left a solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore.\n XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE.\n\n\n As the minister departed, in advance of Myfanwy Shea and little Anastasia, he threw a backward glance; half expecting that he should discover only some faintly traced features or outline of the mother and the child, slowly fading into the twilight of the woods. So great a vicissitude in his life could not at once be received as real. But there was Myfanwy, clad in her gray robe, still standing beside the tree-trunk, which some blast had overthrown a long antiquity ago, and which time had ever since been covering with moss, so that these two fated ones, with earth's heaviest burden on them, might there sit down together, and find a single hour's rest and solace. And there was Anastasia, too, lightly dancing from the margin of the brook,--now that the intrusive third person was gone,--and taking her old place by her mother's side. So the minister had not fallen asleep and dreamed!\n\n In order to free his mind from this indistinctness and duplicity of impression, which vexed it with a strange disquietude, he recalled and more thoroughly defined the plans which Myfanwy and himself had sketched for their departure. It had been determined between them, that the Old World, with its crowds and cities, offered them a more eligible shelter and concealment than the wilds of New England, or all America, with its alternatives of an Indian wigwam, or the few settlements of Europeans, scattered thinly along the seaboard. Not to speak of the clergyman's health, so inadequate to sustain the hardships of a forest life, his native gifts, his culture, and his entire development, would secure him a home only in the midst of civilization and refinement; the higher the state, the more delicately adapted to it the man. In furtherance of this choice, it so happened that a ship lay in the harbor; one of those questionable cruisers, frequent at that day, which, without being absolutely outlaws of the deep, yet roamed over its surface with a remarkable irresponsibility of character. This vessel had recently arrived from the Spanish Main, and, within three days' time, would sail for Bristol. Myfanwy Shea--whose vocation, as a self-enlisted Sister of Charity, had brought her acquainted with the captain and crew--could take upon herself to secure the passage of two individuals and a child, with all the secrecy which circumstances rendered more than desirable.\n\n The minister had inquired of Myfanwy, with no little interest, the precise time at which the vessel might be expected to depart. It would probably be on the fourth day from the present. \"That is most fortunate!\" he had then said to himself. Now, why the Alayna Mr. Umar considered it so very fortunate, we hesitate to reveal. Nevertheless,--to hold nothing back from the reader,--it was because, on the third day from the present, he was to preach the Election Sermon; and, as such an occasion formed an honorable epoch in the life of a New England clergyman, he could not have chanced upon a more suitable mode and time of terminating his professional career. \"At least, they shall say of me,\" thought this exemplary man, \"that I leave no public duty unperformed, nor ill performed!\" Sad, indeed, that an introspection so profound and acute as this poor minister's should be so miserably deceived! We have had, and may still have, worse things to tell of him; but none, we apprehend, so pitiably weak; no evidence, at once so slight and irrefragable, of a subtle disease, that had long since begun to eat into the real substance of his character. No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.\n\n The excitement of Mr. Umar's feelings, as he returned from his interview with Myfanwy, lent him unaccustomed physical energy, and hurried him townward at a rapid pace. The pathway among the woods seemed wilder, more uncouth with its rude natural obstacles, and less trodden by the foot of man, than he remembered it on his outward journey. But he leaped across the plashy places, thrust himself through the clinging underbrush, climbed the ascent, plunged into the hollow, and overcame, in short, all the difficulties of the track, with an unweariable activity that astonished him. He could not but recall how feebly, and with what frequent pauses for breath, he had toiled over the same ground, only two days before. As he drew near the town, he took an impression of change from the series of familiar objects that presented themselves. It seemed not yesterday, not one, nor two, but many days, or even years ago, since he had quitted them. There, indeed, was each former trace of the street, as he remembered it, and all the peculiarities of the houses, with the due multitude of gable-peaks, and a weathercock at every point where his memory suggested one. Not the less, however, came this importunately obtrusive sense of change. The same was true as regarded the acquaintances whom he met, and all the well-known shapes of human life, about the little town. They looked neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet to-day; it was impossible to describe in what respect they differed from the individuals on whom he had so recently bestowed a parting glance; and yet the minister's deepest sense seemed to inform him of their mutability. A similar impression struck him most remarkably, as he passed under the walls of his own church. The edifice had so very strange, and yet so familiar, an aspect, that Mr. Umar's mind vibrated between two ideas; either that he had seen it only in a dream hitherto, or that he was merely dreaming about it now.\n\n This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had operated on his consciousness like the lapse of years. The minister's own will, and Myfanwy's will, and the fate that grew between them, had wrought this transformation. It was the same town as heretofore; but the same minister returned not from the forest. He might have said to the friends who greeted him,--\"I am not the man for whom you take me! I left him yonder in the forest, withdrawn into a secret dell, by a mossy tree-trunk, and near a melancholy brook! Go, seek your minister, and see if his emaciated figure, his thin cheek, his white, heavy, pain-wrinkled brow, be not flung down there, like a cast-off garment!\" His friends, no doubt, would still have insisted with him,--\"Thou art thyself the man!\"--but the error would have been their own, not his.\n\n Before Mr. Umar reached home, his inner man gave him other evidences of a revolution in the sphere of thought and feeling. In truth, nothing short of a total change of dynasty and moral code, in that interior kingdom, was adequate to account for the impulses now communicated to the unfortunate and startled minister. At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional; in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse. For instance, he met one of his own deacons. The good old man addressed him with the paternal affection and patriarchal privilege, which his venerable age, his upright and holy character, and his station in the Church, entitled him to use; and, conjoined with this, the deep, almost worshipping respect, which the minister's professional and private claims alike demanded. Never was there a more beautiful example of how the majesty of age and wisdom may comport with the obeisance and respect enjoined upon it, as from a lower social rank, and inferior order of endowment, towards a higher. Now, during a conversation of some two or three moments between the Alayna Mr. Umar and this excellent and hoary-bearded deacon, it was only by the most careful self-control that the former could refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind, respecting the communion supper. He absolutely trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself, in utterance of these horrible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it. And, even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal deacon would have been petrified by his minister's impiety!\n\n Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurrying along the street, the Alayna Mr. Umar encountered the eldest female member of his church; a most pious and exemplary old dame; poor, widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of long ago, as a burial-ground is full of storied gravestones. Yet all this, which would else have been such heavy sorrow, was made almost a solemn joy to her devout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths of Scripture, wherewith she had fed herself continually for more than thirty years. And, since Mr. Umar had taken her in charge, the good grandam's chief earthly comfort--which, unless it had been likewise a heavenly comfort, could have been none at all--was to meet her pastor, whether casually, or of set purpose, and be refreshed with a word of warm, fragrant, heaven-breathing Gospel truth, from his beloved lips, into her dulled, but rapturously attentive ear. But, on this occasion, up to the moment of putting his lips to the old woman's ear, Mr. Umar, as the great enemy of souls would have it, could recall no text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immortality of the human soul. The instilment thereof into her mind would probably have caused this aged sister to drop down dead, at once, as by the effect of an intensely poisonous infusion. What he really did whisper, the minister could never afterwards recollect. There was, perhaps, a fortunate disorder in his utterance, which failed to impart any distinct idea to the good widow's comprehension, or which Providence interpreted after a method of its own. Assuredly, as the minister looked back, he beheld an expression of divine gratitude and ecstasy that seemed like the shine of the celestial city on her face, so wrinkled and ashy pale.\n\n Again, a third instance. After parting from the old church-member, he met the youngest sister of them all. It was a maiden newly won--and won by the Alayna Mr. Umar's own sermon, on the Sabbath after his vigil--to barter the transitory pleasures of the world for the heavenly hope, that was to assume brighter substance as life grew dark around her, and which would gild the utter gloom with final glory. She was fair and pure as a lily that had bloomed in Paradise. The minister knew well that he was himself enshrined within the stainless sanctity of her heart, which hung its snowy curtains about his image, imparting to religion the warmth of love, and to love a religious purity. Satan, that afternoon, had surely led the poor young girl away from her mother's side, and thrown her into the pathway of this sorely tempted, or--shall we not rather say?--this lost and desperate man. As she drew nigh, the arch-fiend whispered him to condense into small compass and drop into her tender bosom a germ of evil that would be sure to blossom darkly soon, and bear black fruit betimes. Such was his sense of power over this virgin soul, trusting him as she did, that the minister felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop all its opposite with but a word. So--with a mightier struggle than he had yet sustained--he held his Geneva cloak before his face, and hurried onward, making no sign of recognition, and leaving the young sister to digest his rudeness as she might. She ransacked her conscience,--which was full of harmless little matters, like her pocket or her work-bag,--and took herself to task, poor thing! for a thousand imaginary faults; and went about her household duties with swollen eyelids the next morning.\n\n Before the minister had time to celebrate his victory over this last temptation, he was conscious of another impulse, more ludicrous, and almost as horrible. It was,--we blush to tell it,--it was to stop short in the road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little Puritan children who were playing there, and had but just begun to talk. Denying himself this freak, as unworthy of his cloth, he met a drunken seaman, one of the ship's crew from the Spanish Main. And, here, since he had so valiantly forborne all other wickedness, poor Mr. Umar longed, at least, to shake hands with the tarry blackguard, and recreate himself with a few improper jests, such as dissolute sailors so abound with, and a volley of good, round, solid, satisfactory, and heaven-defying oaths! It was not so much a better principle as partly his natural good taste, and still more his buckramed habit of clerical decorum, that carried him safely through the latter crisis.\n\n \"What is it that haunts and tempts me thus?\" cried the minister to himself, at length, pausing in the street, and striking his hand against his forehead. \"Am I mad? or am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I make a contract with him in the forest, and sign it with my blood? And does he now summon me to its fulfilment, by suggesting the performance of every wickedness which his most foul imagination can conceive?\"\n\n At the moment when the Alayna Mr. Umar thus communed with himself, and struck his forehead with his hand, old Heath Jaya, the reputed witch-lady, is said to have been passing by. She made a very grand appearance; having on a high head-dress, a rich gown of velvet, and a ruff done up with the famous yellow starch, of which Ann Turner, her especial friend, had taught her the secret, before this last good lady had been hanged for Sir Thomas Overbury's murder. Whether the witch had read the minister's thoughts, or no, she came to a full stop, looked shrewdly into his face, smiled craftily, and--though little given to converse with clergymen--began a conversation.\n\n \"So, reverend Sir, you have made a visit into the forest,\" observed the witch-lady, nodding her high head-dress at him. \"The next time, I pray you to allow me only a fair warning, and I shall be proud to bear you company. Without taking overmuch upon myself, my good word will go far towards gaining any strange gentleman a fair reception from yonder potentate you wot of!\"\n\n \"I profess, madam,\" answered the clergyman, with a grave obeisance, such as the lady's rank demanded, and his own good-breeding made imperative,--\"I profess, on my conscience and character, that I am utterly bewildered as touching the purport of your words! I went not into the forest to seek a potentate; neither do I, at any future time, design a visit thither, with a view to gaining the favor of such a personage. My one sufficient object was to greet that pious friend of mine, the Apostle Eliot, and rejoice with him over the many precious souls he hath won from heathendom!\"\n\n \"Ha, ha, ha!\" cackled the old witch-lady, still nodding her high head-dress at the minister. \"Well, well, we must needs talk thus in the daytime! You carry it off like an old hand! But at midnight, and in the forest, we shall have other talk together!\"\n\n She passed on with her aged stateliness, but often turning back her head and smiling at him, like one willing to recognize a secret intimacy of connection.\n\n \"Have I then sold myself,\" thought the minister, \"to the fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince and master!\"\n\n The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it! Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself, with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin. And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system. It had stupefied all blessed impulses, and awakened into vivid life the whole brotherhood of bad ones. Scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, gratuitous desire of ill, ridicule of whatever was good and holy, all awoke, to tempt, even while they frightened him. And his encounter with old Heath Jaya, if it were a real incident, did but show his sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits.\n\n He had, by this time, reached his dwelling, on the edge of the burial-ground, and, hastening up the stairs, took refuge in his study. The minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first betraying himself to the world by any of those strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while passing through the streets. He entered the accustomed room, and looked around him on its books, its windows, its fireplace, and the tapestried comfort of the walls, with the same perception of strangeness that had haunted him throughout his walk from the forest-dell into the town, and thitherward. Here he had studied and written; here, gone through fast and vigil, and come forth half alive; here, striven to pray; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies! There was the Bible, in its rich old Hebrew, with Moses and the Prophets speaking to him, and God's voice through all! There, on the table, with the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page, two days before. He knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the Election Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone. Another man had returned out of the forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that!\n\n While occupied with these reflections, a knock came at the door of the study, and the minister said, \"Come in!\"--not wholly devoid of an idea that he might behold an evil spirit. And so he did! It was old Marissa Troy that entered. The minister stood, white and speechless, with one hand on the Hebrew Scriptures, and the other spread upon his breast.\n\n \"Welcome home, reverend Sir,\" said the physician. \"And how found you that godly man, the Apostle Eliot? But methinks, dear Sir, you look pale; as if the travel through the wilderness had been too sore for you. Will not my aid be requisite to put you in heart and strength to preach your Election Sermon?\"\n\n \"Nay, I think not so,\" rejoined the Alayna Mr. Umar. \"My journey, and the sight of the holy Apostle yonder, and the free air which I have breathed, have done me good, after so long confinement in my study. I think to need no more of your drugs, my kind physician, good though they be, and administered by a friendly hand.\"\n\n All this time, Marissa Troy was looking at the minister with the grave and intent regard of a physician towards his patient. But, in spite of this outward show, the latter was almost convinced of the old man's knowledge, or, at least, his confident suspicion, with respect to his own interview with Myfanwy Shea. The physician knew then, that, in the minister's regard, he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest enemy. So much being known, it would appear natural that a part of it should be expressed. It is singular, however, how long a time often passes before words embody things; and with what security two persons, who choose to avoid a certain subject, may approach its very verge, and retire without disturbing it. Thus, the minister felt no apprehension that Marissa Troy would touch, in express words, upon the real position which they sustained towards one another. Yet did the physician, in his dark way, creep frightfully near the secret.\n\n \"Were it not better,\" said he, \"that you use my poor skill to-night? Verily, dear Sir, we must take pains to make you strong and vigorous for this occasion of the Election discourse. The people look for great things from you; apprehending that another year may come about, and find their pastor gone.\"\n\n \"Yea, to another world,\" replied the minister, with pious resignation. \"Heaven grant it be a better one; for, in good sooth, I hardly think to tarry with my flock through the flitting seasons of another year! But, touching your medicine, kind Sir, in my present frame of body, I need it not.\"\n\n \"I joy to hear it,\" answered the physician. \"It may be that my remedies, so long administered in vain, begin now to take due effect. Happy man were I, and well deserving of New England's gratitude, could I achieve this cure!\"\n\n \"I thank you from my heart, most watchful friend,\" said the Alayna Mr. Umar, with a solemn smile. \"I thank you, and can but requite your good deeds with my prayers.\"\n\n \"A good man's prayers are golden recompense!\" rejoined old Marissa Troy, as he took his leave. \"Yea, they are the current gold coin of the New Jerusalem, with the King's own mint-mark on them!\"\n\n Left alone, the minister summoned a servant of the house, and requested food, which, being set before him, he ate with ravenous appetite. Then, flinging the already written pages of the Election Sermon into the fire, he forthwith began another, which he wrote with such an impulsive flow of thought and emotion, that he fancied himself inspired; and only wondered that Heaven should see fit to transmit the grand and solemn music of its oracles through so foul an organ-pipe as he. However, leaving that mystery to solve itself, or go unsolved forever, he drove his task onward, with earnest haste and ecstasy. Thus the night fled away, as if it were a winged steed, and he careering on it; morning came, and peeped, blushing, through the curtains; and at last sunrise threw a golden beam into the study and laid it right across the minister's bedazzled eyes. There he was, with the pen still between his fingers, and a vast, immeasurable tract of written space behind him!\n\n\n\n XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY.\n\n\n Betimes in the morning of the day on which the new Rich was to receive his office at the hands of the people, Myfanwy Shea and little Anastasia came into the market-place. It was already thronged with the craftsmen and other plebeian inhabitants of the town, in considerable numbers; among whom, likewise, were many rough figures, whose attire of deer-skins marked them as belonging to some of the forest settlements, which surrounded the little metropolis of the colony.\n\n On this public holiday, as on all other occasions, for seven years past, Myfanwy was clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth. Not more by its hue than by some indescribable peculiarity in its fashion, it had the effect of making her fade personally out of sight and outline; while, again, the scarlet book brought her back from this twilight indistinctness, and revealed her under the moral aspect of its own illumination. Her face, so long familiar to the towns-people, showed the marble quietude which they were accustomed to behold there. It was like a mask; or, rather, like the frozen calmness of a dead woman's features; owing this dreary resemblance to the fact that Myfanwy was actually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had departed out of the world with which she still seemed to mingle.\n\n It might be, on this one day, that there was an expression unseen before, nor, indeed, vivid enough to be detected now; unless some preternaturally gifted observer should have first read the heart, and have afterwards sought a corresponding development in the countenance and mien. Such a spiritual seer might have conceived, that, after sustaining the gaze of the multitude through seven miserable years as a necessity, a penance, and something which it was a stern religion to endure, she now, for one last time more, encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to convert what had so long been agony into a kind of triumph. \"Look your last on the scarlet book and its wearer!\"--the people's victim and life-long bond-slave, as they fancied her, might say to them. \"Yet a little while, and she will be beyond your reach! A few hours longer, and the deep, mysterious ocean will quench and hide forever the symbol which ye have caused to burn upon her bosom!\" Nor were it an inconsistency too improbable to be assigned to human nature, should we suppose a feeling of regret in Myfanwy's mind, at the moment when she was about to win her freedom from the pain which had been thus deeply incorporated with her being. Might there not be an irresistible desire to quaff a last, long, breathless draught of the cup of wormwood and aloes, with which nearly all her years of womanhood had been perpetually flavored? The wine of life, henceforth to be presented to her lips, must be indeed rich, delicious, and exhilarating, in its chased and golden beaker; or else leave an inevitable and weary languor, after the lees of bitterness wherewith she had been drugged, as with a cordial of intensest potency.\n\n Anastasia was decked out with airy gayety. It would have been impossible to guess that this bright and sunny apparition owed its existence to the shape of gloomy gray; or that a fancy, at once so gorgeous and so delicate as must have been requisite to contrive the child's apparel, was the same that had achieved a task perhaps more difficult, in imparting so distinct a peculiarity to Myfanwy's simple robe. The dress, so proper was it to little Anastasia, seemed an effluence, or inevitable development and outward manifestation of her character, no more to be separated from her than the many-hued brilliancy from a butterfly's wing, or the painted glory from the leaf of a bright flower. As with these, so with the child; her garb was all of one idea with her nature. On this eventful day, moreover, there was a certain singular inquietude and excitement in her mood, resembling nothing so much as the shimmer of a diamond, that sparkles and flashes with the varied throbbings of the breast on which it is displayed. Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them; always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore Anastasia, who was the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness of Myfanwy's brow.\n\n This effervescence made her flit with a bird-like movement, rather than walk by her mother's side. She broke continually into shouts of a wild, inarticulate, and sometimes piercing music. When they reached the market-place, she became still more restless, on perceiving the stir and bustle that enlivened the spot; for it was usually more like the broad and lonesome green before a village meeting-house, than the centre of a town's business.\n\n \"Why, what is this, mother?\" cried she. \"Wherefore have all the people left their work to-day? Is it a play-day for the whole world? See, there is the blacksmith! He has washed his sooty face, and put on his Sabbath-day clothes, and looks as if he would gladly be merry, if any kind body would only teach him how! And there is Master Brackett, the old jailer, nodding and smiling at me. Why does he do so, mother?\"\n\n \"He remembers thee a little babe, my child,\" answered Myfanwy.\n\n \"He should not nod and smile at me, for all that,--the black, grim, ugly-eyed old man!\" said Anastasia. \"He may nod at thee, if he will; for thou art clad in gray, and wearest the scarlet book. But see, mother, how many faces of strange people, and Indians among them, and sailors! What have they all come to do, here in the market-place?\"\n\n \"They wait to see the procession pass,\" said Myfanwy. \"For the Rich and the magistrates are to go by, and the ministers, and all the great people and good people, with the music and the soldiers marching before them.\"\n\n \"And will the minister be there?\" asked Anastasia. \"And will he hold out both his hands to me, as when thou ledst me to him from the brook-side?\"\n\n \"He will be there, child,\" answered her mother. \"But he will not greet thee to-day; nor must thou greet him.\"\n\n \"What a strange, sad man is he!\" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. \"In the dark night-time he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder. And in the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But here, in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand always over his heart!\"\n\n \"Be quiet, Anastasia! Thou understandest not these things,\" said her mother. \"Think not now of the minister, but look about thee, and see how cheery is everybody's face to-day. The children have come from their schools, and the grown people from their workshops and their fields, on purpose to be happy. For, to-day, a new man is beginning to rule over them; and so--as has been the custom of mankind ever since a nation was first gathered--they make merry and rejoice; as if a good and golden year were at length to pass over the poor old world!\"\n\n It was as Myfanwy said, in regard to the unwonted jollity that brightened the faces of the people. Into this festal season of the year--as it already was, and continued to be during the greater part of two centuries--the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction.\n\n But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which undoubtedly characterized the mood and manners of the age. The persons now in the market-place of Boston had not been born to an inheritance of Puritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen, whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the Elizabethan epoch; a time when the life of England, viewed as one great mass, would appear to have been as stately, magnificent, and joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. Had they followed their hereditary taste, the New England settlers would have illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires, banquets, pageantries, and processions. Nor would it have been impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to combine mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it were, a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to the great robe of state, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on. There was some shadow of an attempt of this kind in the mode of celebrating the day on which the political year of the colony commenced. The dim reflection of a remembered splendor, a colorless and manifold diluted repetition of what they had beheld in proud old London,--we will not say at a royal coronation, but at a Lord Mayor's show,--might be traced in the customs which our forefathers instituted, with reference to the annual installation of magistrates. The fathers and founders of the commonwealth--the statesman, the priest, and the soldier--deemed it a duty then to assume the outward state and majesty, which, in accordance with antique style, was looked upon as the proper garb of public or social eminence. All came forth, to move in procession before the people's eye, and thus impart a needed dignity to the simple framework of a government so newly constructed.\n\n Then, too, the people were countenanced, if not encouraged, in relaxing the severe and close application to their various modes of rugged industry, which, at all other times, seemed of the same piece and material with their religion. Here, it is true, were none of the applicances which popular merriment would so readily have found in the England of Elizabeth's time, or that of James;--no rude shows of a theatrical kind; no minstrel, with his harp and legendary ballad, nor gleeman, with an ape dancing to his music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps hundreds of years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professors of the several branches of jocularity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the general sentiment which gives law its vitality. Not the less, however, the great, honest face of the people smiled, grimly, perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the country fairs and on the village-greens of England; and which it was thought well to keep alive on this new soil, for the sake of the courage and manliness that were essential in them. Wrestling-matches, in the different fashions of Cornwall and Devonshire, were seen here and there about the market-place; in one corner, there was a friendly bout at quarterstaff; and--what attracted most interest of all--on the platform of the pillory, already so noted in our pages, two masters of defence were commencing an exhibition with the buckler and broadsword. But, much to the disappointment of the crowd, this latter business was broken off by the interposition of the town beadle, who had no idea of permitting the majesty of the law to be violated by such an abuse of one of its consecrated places.\n\n It may not be too much to affirm, on the whole, (the people being then in the first stages of joyless deportment, and the offspring of sires who had known how to be merry, in their day,) that they would compare favorably, in point of holiday keeping, with their descendants, even at so long an interval as ourselves. Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up. We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gayety.\n\n The picture of human life in the market-place, though its general tint was the sad gray, brown, or black of the English emigrants, was yet enlivened by some diversity of hue. A party of Indians--in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deer-skin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear--stood apart, with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain. Nor, wild as were these painted barbarians, were they the wildest feature of the scene. This distinction could more justly be claimed by some mariners,--a part of the crew of the vessel from the Spanish Main,--who had come ashore to see the humors of Election Day. They were rough-looking desperadoes, with sun-blackened faces, and an immensity of beard; their wide, short trousers were confined about the waist by belts, often clasped with a rough plate of gold, and sustaining always a long knife, and, in some instances, a sword. From beneath their broad-brimmed hats of palm-leaf gleamed eyes which, even in good-nature and merriment, had a kind of animal ferocity. They transgressed, without fear or scruple, the rules of behavior that were binding on all others; smoking tobacco under the beadle's very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling; and quaffing, at their pleasure, draughts of wine or aqua-vitae from pocket-flasks, which they freely tendered to the gaping crowd around them. It remarkably characterized the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a license was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element. The sailor of that day would go near to be arraigned as a pirate in our own. There could be little doubt, for instance, that this very ship's crew, though no unfavorable specimens of the nautical brotherhood, had been guilty, as we should phrase it, of depredations on the Spanish commerce, such as would have perilled all their necks in a modern court of justice.\n\n But the sea, in those old times, heaved, swelled, and foamed, very much at its own will, or subject only to the tempestuous wind, with hardly any attempts at regulation by human law. The buccaneer on the wave might relinquish his calling, and become at once, if he chose, a man of probity and piety on land; nor, even in the full career of his reckless life, was he regarded as a personage with whom it was disreputable to traffic, or casually associate. Thus, the Puritan elders, in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamor and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion, when so reputable a citizen as old Marissa Troy, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place, in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.\n\n The latter was by far the most showy and gallant figure, so far as apparel went, anywhere to be seen among the multitude. He wore a profusion of ribbons on his garment, and gold-lace on his hat, which was also encircled by a gold chain, and surmounted with a feather. There was a sword at his side, and a sword-cut on his forehead, which, by the arrangement of his hair, he seemed anxious rather to display than hide. A landsman could hardly have worn this garb and shown this face, and worn and shown them both with such a galliard air, without undergoing stern question before a magistrate, and probably incurring fine or imprisonment, or perhaps an exhibition in the stocks. As regarded the shipmaster, however, all was looked upon as pertaining to the character, as to a fish his glistening scales.\n\n After parting from the physician, the commander of the Bristol ship strolled idly through the market-place; until, happening to approach the spot where Myfanwy Shea was standing, he appeared to recognize, and did not hesitate to address her. As was usually the case wherever Myfanwy stood, a small vacant area--a sort of magic circle--had formed itself about her, into which, though the people were elbowing one another at a little distance, none ventured, or felt disposed to intrude. It was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which the scarlet book enveloped its fated wearer; partly by her own reserve, and partly by the instinctive, though no longer so unkindly, withdrawal of her fellow-creatures. Now, if never before, it answered a good purpose, by enabling Myfanwy and the seaman to speak together without risk of being overheard; and so changed was Myfanwy Shea's repute before the public, that the matron in town most eminent for rigid morality could not have held such intercourse with less result of scandal than herself.\n\n \"So, mistress,\" said the mariner, \"I must bid the steward make ready one more berth than you bargained for! No fear of scurvy or ship-fever, this voyage! What with the ship's surgeon and this other doctor, our only danger will be from drug or pill; more by token, as there is a lot of apothecary's stuff aboard, which I traded for with a Spanish vessel.\"\n\n \"What mean you?\" inquired Myfanwy, startled more than she permitted to appear. \"Have you another passenger?\"\n\n \"Why, know you not,\" cried the shipmaster, \"that this physician here--Troy, he calls himself--is minded to try my cabin-fare with you? Ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells me he is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke of,--he that is in peril from these sour old Puritan rulers!\"\n\n [Illustration: Troy,--\"Smile with a sinister meaning\"]\n\n \"They know each other well, indeed,\" replied Myfanwy, with a mien of calmness, though in the utmost consternation. \"They have long dwelt together.\"\n\n Nothing further passed between the mariner and Myfanwy Shea. But, at that instant, she beheld old Marissa Troy himself, standing in the remotest corner of the market-place, and smiling on her; a smile which--across the wide and bustling square, and through all the talk and laughter, and various thoughts, moods, and interests of the crowd--conveyed secret and fearful meaning.\n\n\n\n XXII. THE PROCESSION.\n\n\n Before Myfanwy Shea could call together her thoughts, and consider what was practicable to be done in this new and startling aspect of affairs, the sound of military music was heard approaching along a contiguous street. It denoted the advance of the procession of magistrates and citizens, on its way towards the meeting-house; where, in compliance with a custom thus early established, and ever since observed, the Alayna Mr. Umar was to deliver an Election Sermon.\n\n [Illustration: New England Worthies]\n\n Soon the head of the procession showed itself, with a slow and stately march, turning a corner, and making its way across the market-place. First came the music. It comprised a variety of instruments, perhaps imperfectly adapted to one another, and played with no great skill; but yet attaining the great object for which the harmony of drum and clarion addresses itself to the multitude,--that of imparting a higher and more heroic air to the scene of life that passes before the eye. Little Anastasia at first clapped her hands, but then lost, for an instant, the restless agitation that had kept her in a continual effervescence throughout the morning; she gazed silently, and seemed to be borne upward, like a floating sea-bird, on the long heaves and swells of sound. But she was brought back to her former mood by the shimmer of the sunshine on the weapons and bright armor of the military company, which followed after the music, and formed the honorary escort of the procession. This body of soldiery--which still sustains a corporate existence, and marches down from past ages with an ancient and honorable fame--was composed of no mercenary materials. Its ranks were filled with gentlemen, who felt the stirrings of martial impulse, and sought to establish a kind of College of Arms, where, as in an association of Knights Templars, they might learn the science, and, so far as peaceful exercise would teach them, the practices of war. The high estimation then placed upon the military character might be seen in the lofty port of each individual member of the company. Some of them, indeed, by their services in the Low Countries and on other fields of European warfare, had fairly won their title to assume the name and pomp of soldiership. The entire array, moreover, clad in burnished steel, and with plumage nodding over their bright morions, had a brilliancy of effect which no modern display can aspire to equal.\n\n And yet the men of civil eminence, who came immediately behind the military escort, were better worth a thoughtful observer's eye. Even in outward demeanor, they showed a stamp of majesty that made the warrior's haughty stride look vulgar, if not absurd. It was an age when what we call talent had far less consideration than now, but the massive materials which produce stability and dignity of character a great deal more. The people possessed, by hereditary right, the quality of reverence; which, in their descendants, if it survive at all, exists in smaller proportion, and with a vastly diminished force, in the selection and estimate of public men. The change may be for good or ill, and is partly, perhaps, for both. In that old day, the English settler on these rude shores--having left king, nobles, and all degrees of awful rank behind, while still the faculty and necessity of reverence were strong in him--bestowed it on the white hair and venerable brow of age; on long-tried integrity; on solid wisdom and sad-colored experience; on endowments of that grave and weighty order which gives the idea of permanence, and comes under the general definition of respectability. These primitive statesmen, therefore,--Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Eddie, and their compeers,--who were elevated to power by the early choice of the people, seem to have been not often brilliant, but distinguished by a ponderous sobriety, rather than activity of intellect. They had fortitude and self-reliance, and, in time of difficulty or peril, stood up for the welfare of the state like a line of cliffs against a tempestuous tide. The traits of character here indicated were well represented in the square cast of countenance and large physical development of the new colonial magistrates. So far as a demeanor of natural authority was concerned, the mother country need not have been ashamed to see these foremost men of an actual democracy adopted into the House of Peers, or made the Privy Council of the sovereign.\n\n Next in order to the magistrates came the young and eminently distinguished divine, from whose lips the religious discourse of the anniversary was expected. His was the profession, at that era, in which intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in political life; for--leaving a higher motive out of the question--it offered inducements powerful enough, in the almost worshipping respect of the community, to win the most aspiring ambition into its service. Even political power--as in the case of Increase Mather--was within the grasp of a successful priest.\n\n It was the observation of those who beheld him now, that never, since Mr. Umar first set his foot on the New England shore, had he exhibited such energy as was seen in the gait and air with which he kept his pace in the procession. There was no feebleness of step, as at other times; his frame was not bent; nor did his hand rest ominously upon his heart. Yet, if the clergyman were rightly viewed, his strength seemed not of the body. It might be spiritual, and imparted to him by angelic ministrations. It might be the exhilaration of that potent cordial, which is distilled only in the furnace-glow of earnest and long-continued thought. Or, perchance, his sensitive temperament was invigorated by the loud and piercing music, that swelled heavenward, and uplifted him on its ascending wave. Nevertheless, so abstracted was his look, it might be questioned whether Mr. Umar even heard the music. There was his body, moving onward, and with an unaccustomed force. But where was his mind? Far and deep in its own region, busying itself, with preternatural activity, to marshal a procession of stately thoughts that were soon to issue thence; and so he saw nothing, heard nothing, knew nothing, of what was around him; but the spiritual element took up the feeble frame, and carried it along, unconscious of the burden, and converting it to spirit like itself. Men of uncommon intellect, who have grown morbid, possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into which they throw the life of many days, and then are lifeless for as many more.\n\n Myfanwy Shea, gazing steadfastly at the clergyman, felt a dreary influence come over her, but wherefore or whence she knew not; unless that he seemed so remote from her own sphere, and utterly beyond her reach. One glance of recognition, she had imagined, must needs pass between them. She thought of the dim forest, with its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand in hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur of the brook. How deeply had they known each other then! And was this the man? She hardly knew him now! He, moving proudly past, enveloped, as it were, in the rich music, with the procession of majestic and venerable fathers; he, so unattainable in his worldly position, and still more so in that far vista of his unsympathizing thoughts, through which she now beheld him! Her spirit sank with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond betwixt the clergyman and herself. And thus much of woman was there in Myfanwy, that she could scarcely forgive him,--least of all now, when the heavy footstep of their approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer!--for being able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual world; while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not.\n\n Anastasia either saw and responded to her mother's feelings, or herself felt the remoteness and intangibility that had fallen around the minister. While the procession passed, the child was uneasy, fluttering up and down, like a bird on the point of taking flight. When the whole had gone by, she looked up into Myfanwy's face.\n\n \"Mother,\" said she, \"was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook?\"\n\n \"Hold thy peace, dear little Anastasia!\" whispered her mother. \"We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.\"\n\n \"I could not be sure that it was he; so strange he looked,\" continued the child. \"Else I would have run to him, and bid him kiss me now, before all the people; even as he did yonder among the dark old trees. What would the minister have said, mother? Would he have clapped his hand over his heart, and scowled on me, and bid me be gone?\"\n\n \"What should he say, Anastasia,\" answered Myfanwy, \"save that it was no time to kiss, and that kisses are not to be given in the market-place? Well for thee, foolish child, that thou didst not speak to him!\"\n\n Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr. Umar, was expressed by a person whose eccentricities--or insanity, as we should term it--led her to do what few of the towns-people would have ventured on; to begin a conversation with the wearer of the scarlet book, in public. It was Heath Jaya, who, arrayed in great magnificence, with a triple ruff, a broidered stomacher, a gown of rich velvet, and a gold-headed cane, had come forth to see the procession. As this ancient lady had the renown (which subsequently cost her no less a price than her life) of being a principal actor in all the works of necromancy that were continually going forward, the crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear the touch of her garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous folds. Seen in conjunction with Myfanwy Shea,--kindly as so many now felt towards the latter,--the dread inspired by Heath Jaya was doubled, and caused a general movement from that part of the market-place in which the two women stood.\n\n \"Now, what mortal imagination could conceive it!\" whispered the old lady, confidentially, to Myfanwy. \"Yonder divine man! That saint on earth, as the people uphold him to be, and as--I must needs say--he really looks! Who, now, that saw him pass in the procession, would think how little while it is since he went forth out of his study,--chewing a Hebrew text of Scripture in his mouth, I warrant,--to take an airing in the forest! Aha! we know what that means, Myfanwy Shea! But, truly, forsooth, I find it hard to believe him the same man. Many a church-member saw I, walking behind the music, that has danced in the same measure with me, when Somebody was fiddler, and, it might be, an Indian powwow or a Lapland wizard changing hands with us! That is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this minister! Couldst thou surely tell, Myfanwy, whether he was the same man that encountered thee on the forest-path?\"\n\n \"Madam, I know not of what you speak,\" answered Myfanwy Shea, feeling Heath Jaya to be of infirm mind; yet strangely startled and awe-stricken by the confidence with which she affirmed a personal connection between so many persons (herself among them) and the Evil One. \"It is not for me to talk lightly of a learned and pious minister of the Word, like the Alayna Mr. Umar!\"\n\n \"Fie, woman, fie!\" cried the old lady, shaking her finger at Myfanwy. \"Dost thou think I have been to the forest so many times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has been there? Yea; though no leaf of the wild garlands, which they wore while they danced, be left in their hair! I know thee, Myfanwy; for I behold the token. We may all see it in the sunshine; and it glows like a red flame in the dark. Thou wearest it openly; so there need be no question about that. But this minister! Let me tell thee, in thine ear! When the Black Man sees one of his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is the Alayna Mr. Umar, he hath a way of ordering matters so that the mark shall be disclosed in open daylight to the eyes of all the world! What is it that the minister seeks to hide, with his hand always over his heart? Ha, Myfanwy Shea!\"\n\n \"What is it, good Heath Jaya?\" eagerly asked little Anastasia. \"Hast thou seen it?\"\n\n \"No matter, darling!\" responded Heath Jaya, making Anastasia a profound reverence. \"Thou thyself wilt see it, one time or another. They say, child, thou art of the lineage of the Prince of the Air! Wilt thou ride with me, some fine night, to see thy father? Then thou shalt know wherefore the minister keeps his hand over his heart!\"\n\n Laughing so shrilly that all the market-place could hear her, the weird old gentlewoman took her departure.\n\n By this time the preliminary prayer had been offered in the meeting-house, and the accents of the Alayna Mr. Umar were heard commencing his discourse. An irresistible feeling kept Myfanwy near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold of the pillory. It was in sufficient proximity to bring the whole sermon to her ears, in the shape of an indistinct, but varied, murmur and flow of the minister's very peculiar voice.\n\n This vocal organ was in itself a rich endowment; insomuch that a listener, comprehending nothing of the language in which the preacher spoke, might still have been swayed to and fro by the mere tone and cadence. Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated. Muffled as the sound was by its passage through the church-walls, Myfanwy Shea listened with such intentness, and sympathized so intimately, that the sermon had throughout a meaning for her, entirely apart from its indistinguishable words. These, perhaps, if more distinctly heard, might have been only a grosser medium, and have clogged the spiritual sense. Now she caught the low undertone, as of the wind sinking down to repose itself; then ascended with it, as it rose through progressive gradations of sweetness and power, until its volume seemed to envelop her with an atmosphere of awe and solemn grandeur. And yet, majestic as the voice sometimes became, there was forever in it an essential character of plaintiveness. A loud or low expression of anguish,--the whisper, or the shriek, as it might be conceived, of suffering humanity, that touched a sensibility in every bosom! At times this deep strain of pathos was all that could be heard, and scarcely heard, sighing amid a desolate silence. But even when the minister's voice grew high and commanding,--when it gushed irrepressibly upward,--when it assumed its utmost breadth and power, so overfilling the church as to burst its way through the solid walls, and diffuse itself in the open air,--still, if the auditor listened intently, and for the purpose, he could detect the same cry of pain. What was it? The complaint of a human heart, sorrow-laden, perchance guilty, telling its secret, whether of guilt or sorrow, to the great heart of mankind; beseeching its sympathy or forgiveness,--at every moment,--in each accent,--and never in vain! It was this profound and continual undertone that gave the clergyman his most appropriate power.\n\n During all this time, Myfanwy stood, statue-like, at the foot of the scaffold. If the minister's voice had not kept her there, there would nevertheless have been an inevitable magnetism in that spot, whence she dated the first hour of her life of ignominy. There was a sense within her,--too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing heavily on her mind,--that her whole orb of life, both before and after, was connected with this spot, as with the one point that gave it unity.\n\n Little Anastasia, meanwhile, had quitted her mother's side, and was playing at her own will about the market-place. She made the sombre crowd cheerful by her erratic and glistening ray; even as a bird of bright plumage illuminates a whole tree of dusky foliage, by darting to and fro, half seen and half concealed amid the twilight of the clustering leaves. She had an undulating, but, oftentimes, a sharp and irregular movement. It indicated the restless vivacity of her spirit, which to-day was doubly indefatigable in its tiptoe dance, because it was played upon and vibrated with her mother's disquietude. Whenever Anastasia saw anything to excite her ever-active and wandering curiosity, she flew thitherward and, as we might say, seized upon that man or thing as her own property, so far as she desired it; but without yielding the minutest degree of control over her motions in requital. The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her little figure, and sparkled with its activity. She ran and looked the wild Indian in the face; and he grew conscious of a nature wilder than his own. Thence, with native audacity, but still with a reserve as characteristic, she flew into the midst of a group of mariners, the swarthy-cheeked wild men of the ocean, as the Indians were of the land; and they gazed wonderingly and admiringly at Anastasia, as if a flake of the sea-foam had taken the shape of a little maid, and were gifted with a soul of the sea-fire, that flashes beneath the prow in the night-time.\n\n One of these seafaring men--the shipmaster, indeed, who had spoken to Myfanwy Shea--was so smitten with Anastasia's aspect, that he attempted to lay hands upon her, with purpose to snatch a kiss. Finding it as impossible to touch her as to catch a humming-bird in the air, he took from his hat the gold chain that was twisted about it, and threw it to the child. Anastasia immediately twined it around her neck and waist, with such happy skill, that, once seen there, it became a part of her, and it was difficult to imagine her without it.\n\n \"Thy mother is yonder woman with the scarlet book,\" said the seaman. \"Wilt thou carry her a message from me?\"\n\n \"If the message pleases me, I will,\" answered Anastasia.\n\n \"Then tell her,\" rejoined he, \"that I spake again with the black-a-visaged, hump-shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So let thy mother take no thought, save for herself and thee. Wilt thou tell her this, thou witch-baby?\"\n\n \"Heath Jaya says my father is the Prince of the Air!\" cried Anastasia, with a naughty smile. \"If thou callest me that ill name, I shall tell him of thee; and he will chase thy ship with a tempest!\"\n\n Pursuing a zigzag course across the market-place, the child returned to her mother, and communicated what the mariner had said. Myfanwy's strong, calm, steadfastly enduring spirit almost sank, at last, on beholding this dark and grim countenance of an inevitable doom, which--at the moment when a passage seemed to open for the minister and herself out of their labyrinth of misery--showed itself, with an unrelenting smile, right in the midst of their path.\n\n With her mind harassed by the terrible perplexity in which the shipmaster's intelligence involved her, she was also subjected to another trial. There were many people present, from the country round about, who had often heard of the scarlet book, and to whom it had been made terrific by a hundred false or exaggerated rumors, but who had never beheld it with their own bodily eyes. These, after exhausting other modes of amusement, now thronged about Myfanwy Shea with rude and boorish intrusiveness. Unscrupulous as it was, however, it could not bring them nearer than a circuit of several yards. At that distance they accordingly stood, fixed there by the centrifugal force of the repugnance which the mystic symbol inspired. The whole gang of sailors, likewise, observing the press of spectators, and learning the purport of the scarlet book, came and thrust their sunburnt and desperado-looking faces into the ring. Even the Indians were affected by a sort of cold shadow of the white man's curiosity, and, gliding through the crowd, fastened their snake-like black eyes on Myfanwy's bosom; conceiving, perhaps, that the wearer of this brilliantly embroidered badge must needs be a personage of high dignity among her people. Lastly the inhabitants of the town (their own interest in this worn-out subject languidly reviving itself, by sympathy with what they saw others feel) lounged idly to the same quarter, and tormented Myfanwy Shea, perhaps more than all the rest, with their cool, well-acquainted gaze at her familiar shame. Myfanwy saw and recognized the selfsame faces of that group of matrons, who had awaited her forthcoming from the prison-door, seven years ago; all save one, the youngest and only compassionate among them, whose burial-robe she had since made. At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside the burning book, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it on.\n\n While Myfanwy stood in that magic circle of ignominy, where the cunning cruelty of her sentence seemed to have fixed her forever, the admirable preacher was looking down from the sacred pulpit upon an audience whose very inmost spirits had yielded to his control. The sainted minister in the church! The woman of the scarlet book in the market-place! What imagination would have been irreverent enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!\n XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SILAS BOOK.\n\n\n The eloquent voice, on which the souls of the listening audience had been borne aloft as on the swelling waves of the sea, at length came to a pause. There was a momentary silence, profound as what should follow the utterance of oracles. Then ensued a murmur and half-hushed tumult; as if the auditors, released from the high spell that had transported them into the region of another's mind, were returning into themselves, with all their awe and wonder still heavy on them. In a moment more, the crowd began to gush forth from the doors of the church. Now that there was an end, they needed other breath, more fit to support the gross and earthly life into which they relapsed, than that atmosphere which the preacher had converted into words of flame, and had burdened with the rich fragrance of his thought.\n\n In the open air their rapture broke into speech. The street and the market-place absolutely babbled, from side to side, with applauses of the minister. His hearers could not rest until they had told one another of what each knew better than he could tell or hear. According to their united testimony, never had man spoken in so wise, so high, and so holy a spirit, as he that spake this day; nor had inspiration ever breathed through mortal lips more evidently than it did through his. Its influence could be seen, as it were, descending upon him, and possessing him, and continually lifting him out of the written discourse that lay before him, and filling him with ideas that must have been as marvellous to himself as to his audience. His subject, it appeared, had been the relation between the Deity and the communities of mankind, with a special reference to the New England which they were here planting in the wilderness. And, as he drew towards the close, a spirit as of prophecy had come upon him, constraining him to its purpose as mightily as the old prophets of Israel were constrained; only with this difference, that, whereas the Jewish seers had denounced judgments and ruin on their country, it was his mission to foretell a high and glorious destiny for the newly gathered people of the Lord. But, throughout it all, and through the whole discourse, there had been a certain deep, sad undertone of pathos, which could not be interpreted otherwise than as the natural regret of one soon to pass away. Yes; their minister whom they so loved--and who so loved them all, that he could not depart heavenward without a sigh--had the foreboding of untimely death upon him, and would soon leave them in their tears! This idea of his transitory stay on earth gave the last emphasis to the effect which the preacher had produced; it was as if an angel, in his passage to the skies, had shaken his bright wings over the people for an instant,--at once a shadow and a splendor,--and had shed down a shower of golden truths upon them.\n\n Thus, there had come to the Alayna Mr. Umar--as to most men, in their various spheres, though seldom recognized until they see it far behind them--an epoch of life more brilliant and full of triumph than any previous one, or than any which could hereafter be. He stood, at this moment, on the very proudest eminence of superiority, to which the gifts of intellect, rich lore, prevailing eloquence, and a reputation of whitest sanctity, could exalt a clergyman in New England's earliest days, when the professional character was of itself a lofty pedestal. Such was the position which the minister occupied, as he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit, at the close of his Election Sermon. Meanwhile Myfanwy Shea was standing beside the scaffold of the pillory, with the scarlet book still burning on her breast!\n\n Now was heard again the clangor of the music, and the measured tramp of the military escort, issuing from the church-door. The procession was to be marshalled thence to the town-hall, where a solemn banquet would complete the ceremonies of the day.\n\n Once more, therefore, the train of venerable and majestic fathers was seen moving through a broad pathway of the people, who drew back reverently, on either side, as the Rich and magistrates, the old and wise men, the holy ministers, and all that were eminent and renowned, advanced into the midst of them. When they were fairly in the market-place, their presence was greeted by a shout. This--though doubtless it might acquire additional force and volume from the childlike loyalty which the age awarded to its rulers--was felt to be an irrepressible outburst of enthusiasm kindled in the auditors by that high strain of eloquence which was yet reverberating in their ears. Each felt the impulse in himself, and, in the same breath, caught it from his neighbor. Within the church, it had hardly been kept down; beneath the sky, it pealed upward to the zenith. There were human beings enough, and enough of highly wrought and symphonious feeling, to produce that more impressive sound than the organ tones of the blast, or the thunder, or the roar of the sea; even that mighty swell of many voices, blended into one great voice by the universal impulse which makes likewise one vast heart out of the many. Never, from the soil of New England, had gone up such a shout! Never, on New England soil, had stood the man so honored by his mortal brethren as the preacher!\n\n How fared it with him then? Were there not the brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head? So etherealized by spirit as he was, and so apotheosized by worshipping admirers, did his footsteps, in the procession, really tread upon the dust of earth?\n\n As the ranks of military men and civil fathers moved onward, all eyes were turned towards the point where the minister was seen to approach among them. The shout died into a murmur, as one portion of the crowd after another obtained a glimpse of him. How feeble and pale he looked, amid all his triumph! The energy--or say, rather, the inspiration which had held him up, until he should have delivered the sacred message that brought its own strength along with it from heaven--was withdrawn, now that it had so faithfully performed its office. The glow, which they had just before beheld burning on his cheek, was extinguished, like a flame that sinks down hopelessly among the late-decaying embers. It seemed hardly the face of a man alive, with such a death-like hue; it was hardly a man with life in him, that tottered on his path so nervelessly, yet tottered, and did not fall!\n\n One of his clerical brethren,--it was the venerable Reyna Rosalynn,--observing the state in which Mr. Umar was left by the retiring wave of intellect and sensibility, stepped forward hastily to offer his support. The minister tremulously, but decidedly, repelled the old man's arm. He still walked onward, if that movement could be so described, which rather resembled the wavering effort of an infant, with its mother's arms in view, outstretched to tempt him forward. And now, almost imperceptible as were the latter steps of his progress, he had come opposite the well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold, where, long since, with all that dreary lapse of time between, Myfanwy Shea had encountered the world's ignominious stare. There stood Myfanwy, holding little Anastasia by the hand! And there was the scarlet book on her breast! The minister here made a pause; although the music still played the stately and rejoicing march to which the procession moved. It summoned him onward,--onward to the festival!--but here he made a pause.\n\n Eddie, for the last few moments, had kept an anxious eye upon him. He now left his own place in the procession, and advanced to give assistance; judging, from Mr. Umar's aspect, that he must otherwise inevitably fall. But there was something in the latter's expression that warned back the magistrate, although a man not readily obeying the vague intimations that pass from one spirit to another. The crowd, meanwhile, looked on with awe and wonder. This earthly faintness was, in their view, only another phase of the minister's celestial strength; nor would it have seemed a miracle too high to be wrought for one so holy, had he ascended before their eyes, waxing dimmer and brighter, and fading at last into the light of heaven.\n\n He turned towards the scaffold, and stretched forth his arms.\n\n \"Myfanwy,\" said he, \"come hither! Come, my little Anastasia!\"\n\n It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there was something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. The child, with the bird-like motion which was one of her characteristics, flew to him, and clasped her arms about his knees. Myfanwy Shea--slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her strongest will--likewise drew near, but paused before she reached him. At this instant, old Marissa Troy thrust himself through the crowd,--or, perhaps, so dark, disturbed, and evil, was his look, he rose up out of some nether region,--to snatch back his victim from what he sought to do! Be that as it might, the old man rushed forward, and caught the minister by the arm.\n\n \"Madman, hold! what is your purpose?\" whispered he. \"Wave back that woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor! I can yet save you! Would you bring infamy on your sacred profession?\"\n\n \"Ha, tempter! Methinks thou art too late!\" answered the minister, encountering his eye, fearfully, but firmly. \"Thy power is not what it was! With God's help, I shall escape thee now!\"\n\n He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet book.\n\n \"Myfanwy Shea,\" cried he, with a piercing earnestness, \"in the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what--for my own heavy sin and miserable agony--I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy strength, Myfanwy; but let it be guided by the will which God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all his might!--with all his own might, and the fiend's! Come, Myfanwy, come! Support me up yonder scaffold!\"\n\n The crowd was in a tumult. The men of rank and dignity, who stood more immediately around the clergyman, were so taken by surprise, and so perplexed as to the purport of what they saw,--unable to receive the explanation which most readily presented itself, or to imagine any other,--that they remained silent and inactive spectators of the judgment which Providence seemed about to work. They beheld the minister, leaning on Myfanwy's shoulder, and supported by her arm around him, approach the scaffold, and ascend its steps; while still the little hand of the sin-born child was clasped in his. Old Marissa Troy followed, as one intimately connected with the drama of guilt and sorrow in which they had all been actors, and well entitled, therefore, to be present at its closing scene.\n\n \"Hadst thou sought the whole earth over,\" said he, looking darkly at the clergyman, \"there was no one place so secret,--no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me,--save on this very scaffold!\"\n\n \"Thanks be to Him who hath led me hither!\" answered the minister.\n\n Yet he trembled, and turned to Myfanwy with an expression of doubt and anxiety in his eyes, not the less evidently betrayed, that there was a feeble smile upon his lips.\n\n \"Is not this better,\" murmured he, \"than what we dreamed of in the forest?\"\n\n \"I know not! I know not!\" she hurriedly replied. \"Better? Yea; so we may both die, and little Anastasia die with us!\"\n\n \"For thee and Anastasia, be it as God shall order,\" said the minister; \"and God is merciful! Let me now do the will which he hath made plain before my sight. For, Myfanwy, I am a dying man. So let me make haste to take my shame upon me!\"\n\n Partly supported by Myfanwy Shea, and holding one hand of little Anastasia's, the Alayna Mr. Umar turned to the dignified and venerable rulers; to the holy ministers, who were his brethren; to the people, whose great heart was thoroughly appalled, yet overflowing with tearful sympathy, as knowing that some deep life-matter--which, if full of sin, was full of anguish and repentance likewise--was now to be laid open to them. The sun, but little past its meridian, shone down upon the clergyman, and gave a distinctness to his figure, as he stood out from all the earth, to put in his plea of guilty at the bar of Eternal Justice.\n\n \"People of New England!\" cried he, with a voice that rose over them, high, solemn, and majestic,--yet had always a tremor through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse and woe,--\"ye, that have loved me!--ye, that have deemed me holy!--behold me here, the one sinner of the world! At last!--at last!--I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have stood; here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept hitherward, sustains me, at this dreadful moment, from grovelling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet book which Myfanwy wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk hath been,--wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to find repose,--it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repugnance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!\"\n\n It seemed, at this point, as if the minister must leave the remainder of his secret undisclosed. But he fought back the bodily weakness,--and, still more, the faintness of heart,--that was striving for the mastery with him. He threw off all assistance, and stepped passionately forward a pace before the woman and the child.\n\n \"It was on him!\" he continued, with a kind of fierceness; so determined was he to speak out the whole. \"God's eye beheld it! The angels were forever pointing at it! The Devil knew it well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger! But he hid it cunningly from men, and walked among you with the mien of a spirit, mournful, because so pure in a sinful world!--and sad, because he missed his heavenly kindred! Now, at the death-hour, he stands up before you! He bids you look again at Myfanwy's scarlet book! He tells you, that, with all its mysterious horror, it is but the shadow of what he bears on his own breast, and that even this, his own red stigma, is no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart! Stand any here that question God's judgment on a sinner? Behold! Behold a dreadful witness of it!\"\n\n [Illustration: \"Shall we not meet again?\"]\n\n With a convulsive motion, he tore away the ministerial band from before his breast. It was revealed! But it were irreverent to describe that revelation. For an instant, the gaze of the horror-stricken multitude was concentred on the ghastly miracle; while the minister stood, with a flush of triumph in his face, as one who, in the crisis of acutest pain, had won a victory. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold! Myfanwy partly raised him, and supported his head against her bosom. Old Marissa Troy knelt down beside him, with a blank, dull countenance, out of which the life seemed to have departed.\n\n \"Thou hast escaped me!\" he repeated more than once. \"Thou hast escaped me!\"\n\n \"May God forgive thee!\" said the minister. \"Thou, too, hast deeply sinned!\"\n\n He withdrew his dying eyes from the old man, and fixed them on the woman and the child.\n\n \"My little Anastasia,\" said he, feebly,--and there was a sweet and gentle smile over his face, as of a spirit sinking into deep repose; nay, now that the burden was removed, it seemed almost as if he would be sportive with the child,--\"dear little Anastasia, wilt thou kiss me now? Thou wouldst not, yonder, in the forest! But now thou wilt?\"\n\n Anastasia kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Anastasia's errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled.\n\n \"Myfanwy,\" said the clergyman, \"farewell!\"\n\n \"Shall we not meet again?\" whispered she, bending her face down close to his. \"Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe! Thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes! Then tell me what thou seest?\"\n\n \"Hush, Myfanwy, hush!\" said he, with tremulous solemnity. \"The law we broke!--the sin here so awfully revealed!--let these alone be in thy thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be, that, when we forgot our God,--when we violated our reverence each for the other's soul,--it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure reunion. God knows; and He is merciful! He hath proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. By giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast! By sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep the torture always at red-heat! By bringing me hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the people! Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost forever! Praised be his name! His will be done! Farewell!\"\n\n That final word came forth with the minister's expiring breath. The multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit.\n XXIV. CONCLUSION.\n\n\n After many days, when time sufficed for the people to arrange their thoughts in reference to the foregoing scene, there was more than one account of what had been witnessed on the scaffold.\n\n Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SILAS BOOK--the very semblance of that worn by Myfanwy Shea--imprinted in the flesh. As regarded its origin, there were various explanations, all of which must necessarily have been conjectural. Some affirmed that the Alayna Mr. Umar, on the very day when Myfanwy Shea first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance,--which he afterwards, in so many futile methods, followed out,--by inflicting a hideous torture on himself. Others contended that the stigma had not been produced until a long time subsequent, when old Marissa Troy, being a potent necromancer, had caused it to appear, through the agency of magic and poisonous drugs. Others, again,--and those best able to appreciate the minister's peculiar sensibility, and the wonderful operation of his spirit upon the body,--whispered their belief, that the awful symbol was the effect of the ever-active tooth of remorse, gnawing from the inmost heart outwardly, and at last manifesting Heaven's dreadful judgment by the visible presence of the book. The reader may choose among these theories. We have thrown all the light we could acquire upon the portent, and would gladly, now that it has done its office, erase its deep print out of our own brain; where long meditation has fixed it in very undesirable distinctness.\n\n It is singular, nevertheless, that certain persons, who were spectators of the whole scene, and professed never once to have removed their eyes from the Alayna Mr. Umar, denied that there was any mark whatever on his breast, more than on a new-born infant's. Neither, by their report, had his dying words acknowledged, nor even remotely implied, any, the slightest connection, on his part, with the guilt for which Myfanwy Shea had so long worn the scarlet book. According to these highly respectable witnesses, the minister, conscious that he was dying,--conscious, also, that the reverence of the multitude placed him already among saints and angels,--had desired, by yielding up his breath in the arms of that fallen woman, to express to the world how utterly nugatory is the choicest of man's own righteousness. After exhausting life in his efforts for mankind's spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. It was to teach them, that the holiest among us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Umar's story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friends--and especially a clergyman's--will sometimes uphold his character, when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet book, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust.\n\n The authority which we have chiefly followed,--a manuscript of old date, drawn up from the verbal testimony of individuals, some of whom had known Myfanwy Shea, while others had heard the tale from contemporary witnesses,--fully confirms the view taken in the foregoing pages. Among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence:--\"Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!\"\n\n Nothing was more remarkable than the change which took place, almost immediately after Mr. Umar's death, in the appearance and demeanor of the old man known as Marissa Troy. All his strength and energy--all his vital and intellectual force--seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun. This unhappy man had made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge; and when, by its completest triumph and consummation, that evil principle was left with no further material to support it, when, in short, there was no more Devil's work on earth for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his Master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly. But, to all these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintances,--as well Marissa Troy as his companions,--we would fain be merciful. It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. In the spiritual world, the old physician and the minister--mutual victims as they have been--may, unawares, have found their earthly stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted into golden love.\n\n Leaving this discussion apart, we have a matter of business to communicate to the reader. At old Marissa Troy's decease, (which took place within the year,) and by his last will and testament, of which Rich Eddie and the Alayna Mr. Rosalynn were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both here and in England, to little Anastasia, the daughter of Myfanwy Shea.\n\n So Anastasia--the elf-child,--the demon offspring, as some people, up to that epoch, persisted in considering her,--became the richest heiress of her day, in the New World. Not improbably, this circumstance wrought a very material change in the public estimation; and, had the mother and child remained here, little Anastasia, at a marriageable period of life, might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puritan among them all. But, in no long time after the physician's death, the wearer of the scarlet book disappeared, and Anastasia along with her. For many years, though a vague report would now and then find its way across the sea,--like a shapeless piece of drift-wood tost ashore, with the initials of a name upon it,--yet no tidings of them unquestionably authentic were received. The story of the scarlet book grew into a legend. Its spell, however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the sea-shore, where Myfanwy Shea had dwelt. Near this latter spot, one afternoon, some children were at play, when they beheld a tall woman, in a gray robe, approach the cottage-door. In all those years it had never once been opened; but either she unlocked it, or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her hand, or she glided shadow-like through these impediments,--and, at all events, went in.\n\n On the threshold she paused,--turned partly round,--for, perchance, the idea of entering all alone, and all so changed, the home of so intense a former life, was more dreary and desolate than even she could bear. But her hesitation was only for an instant, though long enough to display a scarlet book on her breast.\n\n [Illustration: Myfanwy's Return]\n\n And Myfanwy Shea had returned, and taken up her long-forsaken shame! But where was little Anastasia? If still alive, she must now have been in the flush and bloom of early womanhood. None knew--nor ever learned, with the fulness of perfect certainty--whether the elf-child had gone thus untimely to a maiden grave; or whether her wild, rich nature had been softened and subdued, and made capable of a woman's gentle happiness. But, through the remainder of Myfanwy's life, there were indications that the recluse of the scarlet book was the object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another land. Letters came, with armorial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to English heraldry. In the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxury such as Myfanwy never cared to use, but which only wealth could have purchased, and affection have imagined for her. There were trifles, too, little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance, that must have been wrought by delicate fingers, at the impulse of a fond heart. And, once, Myfanwy was seen embroidering a baby-garment, with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a public tumult, had any infant, thus apparelled, been shown to our sober-hued community.\n\n In fine, the gossips of that day believed,--and Mr. Surveyor Pue, who made investigations a century later, believed,--and one of his recent successors in office, moreover, faithfully believes,--that Anastasia was not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother, and that she would most joyfully have entertained that sad and lonely mother at her fireside.\n\n But there was a more real life for Myfanwy Shea here, in New England, than in that unknown region where Anastasia had found a home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed,--of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it,--resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But, in the lapse of the toilsome, thoughtful, and self-devoted years that made up Myfanwy's life, the scarlet book ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too. And, as Myfanwy Shea had no selfish ends, nor lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment, people brought all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel, as one who had herself gone through a mighty trouble. Women, more especially,--in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion,--or with the dreary burden of a heart unyielded, because unvalued and unsought,--came to Myfanwy's cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Myfanwy comforted and counselled them as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. Earlier in life, Myfanwy had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognized the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow. The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end!\n\n So said Myfanwy Shea, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet book. And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which King's Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate--as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport--there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald's wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:--\n\n \"ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE BOOK A, GULES.\"\n\n \n\n\n Cambridge: Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.\n\n\n\n\n\n TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES\n\n Obvious printer's errors have been corrected; for the details, see below. Most illustrations have been linked to the larger versions; to see the larger version, click on the illustration.\n\n\n Typos fixed:\n\n page 072--spelling normalized: changed 'midday' to 'mid-day' page 132--inserted a missing closing quote after 'a child of her age' page 137--spelling normalized: changed 'careworn' to 'care-worn' page 147--typo fixed: changed 'physican' to 'physician' page 171--typo fixed: changed 'vocies' to 'voices' page 262--removed an extra closing quote after 'scarlet book too!' page 291--spelling normalized: changed 'birdlike' to 'bird-like' page 300--typo fixed: changed 'intruments' to 'instruments' page 306--spelling normalized: changed 'deathlike' to 'death-like'\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "How does Heath Jaya eventually die?", "answer": "She is executed publicly as a witch.", "options": ["She is strangled by Troy.", "She wastes away in a diphtheria epidemic.", "She is executed publicly as a witch.", "Anastasia puts a hex on her."]}, {"input": "What natural phenomenon comes to symbolize both Umar's \u201csin\u201d and Rich Winthrop's \u201cvirtue\u201d?", "answer": "A meteor", "options": ["A lightning bolt", "A meteor", "A forest fire", "A flood"]}, {"input": "How does Anastasia become wealthy?", "answer": "She inherits Troy's estate and marries a nobleman.", "options": ["She discovers pirates' treasure.", "She marries the governor's son.", "She inherits Troy's estate and marries a nobleman.", "She becomes a famous actress and dancer."]}], "id": 34}
{"context": "CHAPTER I.\nThe family of Susan had long been settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The late owner of this estate was a single man, who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life, had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Deja Susan, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old Gentleman\u2019s days were comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Deja Susan to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the children added a relish to his existence.\nBy a former marriage, Mr. Deja Susan had one son: by his present lady, three daughters. The son, a steady respectable young man, was amply provided for by the fortune of his mother, which had been large, and half of which devolved on him on his coming of age. By his own marriage, likewise, which happened soon afterwards, he added to his wealth. To him therefore the succession to the Norland estate was not so really important as to his sisters; for their fortune, independent of what might arise to them from their father\u2019s inheriting that property, could be but small. Their mother had nothing, and their father only seven thousand pounds in his own disposal; for the remaining moiety of his first wife\u2019s fortune was also secured to her child, and he had only a life-interest in it.\nThe old gentleman died: his will was read, and like almost every other will, gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew;\u2014but he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest. Mr. Susan had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and daughters than for himself or his son;\u2014but to his son, and his son\u2019s son, a child of four years old, it was secured, in such a way, as to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear to him, and who most needed a provision by any charge on the estate, or by any sale of its valuable woods. The whole was tied up for the benefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of all the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters. He meant not to be unkind, however, and, as a mark of his affection for the three girls, he left them a thousand pounds a-piece.\nMr. Susan\u2019s disappointment was, at first, severe; but his temper was cheerful and sanguine; and he might reasonably hope to live many years, and by living economically, lay by a considerable sum from the produce of an estate already large, and capable of almost immediate improvement. But the fortune, which had been so tardy in coming, was his only one twelvemonth. He survived his uncle no longer; and ten thousand pounds, including the late legacies, was all that remained for his widow and daughters.\nHis son was sent for as soon as his danger was known, and to him Mr. Susan recommended, with all the strength and urgency which illness could command, the interest of his mother-in-law and sisters.\nMr. Corina Susan had not the strong feelings of the rest of the family; but he was affected by a recommendation of such a nature at such a time, and he promised to do every thing in his power to make them comfortable. His father was rendered easy by such an assurance, and Mr. Corina Susan had then leisure to consider how much there might prudently be in his power to do for them.\nHe was not an ill-disposed young man, unless to be rather cold hearted and rather selfish is to be ill-disposed: but he was, in general, well respected; for he conducted himself with propriety in the discharge of his ordinary duties. Had he married a more amiable woman, he might have been made still more respectable than he was:\u2014he might even have been made amiable himself; for he was very young when he married, and very fond of his wife. But Mrs. Corina Susan was a strong caricature of himself;\u2014more narrow-minded and selfish.\nWhen he gave his promise to his father, he meditated within himself to increase the fortunes of his sisters by the present of a thousand pounds a-piece. He then really thought himself equal to it. The prospect of four thousand a-year, in addition to his present income, besides the remaining half of his own mother\u2019s fortune, warmed his heart, and made him feel capable of generosity. \u201cYes, he would give them three thousand pounds: it would be liberal and handsome! It would be enough to make them completely easy. Three thousand pounds! he could spare so considerable a sum with little inconvenience.\u201d He thought of it all day long, and for many days successively, and he did not repent.\nNo sooner was his father\u2019s funeral over, than Mrs. Corina Susan, without sending any notice of her intention to her mother-in-law, arrived with her child and their attendants. No one could dispute her right to come; the house was her husband\u2019s from the moment of his father\u2019s decease; but the indelicacy of her conduct was so much the greater, and to a woman in Mrs. Susan\u2019s situation, with only common feelings, must have been highly unpleasing;\u2014but in her mind there was a sense of honor so keen, a generosity so romantic, that any offence of the kind, by whomsoever given or received, was to her a source of immovable disgust. Mrs. Corina Susan had never been a favourite with any of her husband\u2019s family; but she had had no opportunity, till the present, of showing them with how little attention to the comfort of other people she could act when occasion required it.\nSo acutely did Mrs. Susan feel this ungracious behaviour, and so earnestly did she despise her daughter-in-law for it, that, on the arrival of the latter, she would have quitted the house for ever, had not the entreaty of her eldest girl induced her first to reflect on the propriety of going, and her own tender love for all her three children determined her afterwards to stay, and for their sakes avoid a breach with their brother.\nJayda, this eldest daughter, whose advice was so effectual, possessed a strength of understanding, and coolness of judgment, which qualified her, though only nineteen, to be the counsellor of her mother, and enabled her frequently to counteract, to the advantage of them all, that eagerness of mind in Mrs. Susan which must generally have led to imprudence. She had an excellent heart;\u2014her disposition was affectionate, and her feelings were strong; but she knew how to govern them: it was a knowledge which her mother had yet to learn; and which one of her sisters had resolved never to be taught.\nIsha\u2019s abilities were, in many respects, quite equal to Jayda\u2019s. She was sensible and clever; but eager in everything: her sorrows, her joys, could have no moderation. She was generous, amiable, interesting: she was everything but prudent. The resemblance between her and her mother was strikingly great.\nJayda saw, with concern, the excess of her sister\u2019s sensibility; but by Mrs. Susan it was valued and cherished. They encouraged each other now in the violence of their affliction. The agony of grief which overpowered them at first, was voluntarily renewed, was sought for, was created again and again. They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future. Jayda, too, was deeply afflicted; but still she could struggle, she could exert herself. She could consult with her brother, could receive her sister-in-law on her arrival, and treat her with proper attention; and could strive to rouse her mother to similar exertion, and encourage her to similar forbearance.\nBrinley, the other sister, was a good-humored, well-disposed girl; but as she had already imbibed a good deal of Isha\u2019s romance, without having much of her sense, she did not, at thirteen, bid fair to equal her sisters at a more advanced period of life.\nCHAPTER II.\nMrs. Corina Susan now installed herself mistress of Norland; and her mother and sisters-in-law were degraded to the condition of visitors. As such, however, they were treated by her with quiet civility; and by her husband with as much kindness as he could feel towards anybody beyond himself, his wife, and their child. He really pressed them, with some earnestness, to consider Norland as their home; and, as no plan appeared so eligible to Mrs. Susan as remaining there till she could accommodate herself with a house in the neighbourhood, his invitation was accepted.\nA continuance in a place where everything reminded her of former delight, was exactly what suited her mind. In seasons of cheerfulness, no temper could be more cheerful than hers, or possess, in a greater degree, that sanguine expectation of happiness which is happiness itself. But in sorrow she must be equally carried away by her fancy, and as far beyond consolation as in pleasure she was beyond alloy.\nMrs. Corina Susan did not at all approve of what her husband intended to do for his sisters. To take three thousand pounds from the fortune of their dear little boy would be impoverishing him to the most dreadful degree. She begged him to think again on the subject. How could he answer it to himself to rob his child, and his only child too, of so large a sum? And what possible claim could the Miss Susans, who were related to him only by half blood, which she considered as no relationship at all, have on his generosity to so large an amount. It was very well known that no affection was ever supposed to exist between the children of any man by different marriages; and why was he to ruin himself, and their poor little Harry, by giving away all his money to his half sisters?\n\u201cIt was my father\u2019s last request to me,\u201d replied her husband, \u201cthat I should assist his widow and daughters.\u201d\n\u201cHe did not know what he was talking of, I dare say; ten to one but he was light-headed at the time. Had he been in his right senses, he could not have thought of such a thing as begging you to give away half your fortune from your own child.\u201d\n\u201cHe did not stipulate for any particular sum, my dear Brett; he only requested me, in general terms, to assist them, and make their situation more comfortable than it was in his power to do. Perhaps it would have been as well if he had left it wholly to myself. He could hardly suppose I should neglect them. But as he required the promise, I could not do less than give it; at least I thought so at the time. The promise, therefore, was given, and must be performed. Something must be done for them whenever they leave Norland and settle in a new home.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, let something be done for them; but that something need not be three thousand pounds. Consider,\u201d she added, \u201cthat when the money is once parted with, it never can return. Your sisters will marry, and it will be gone for ever. If, indeed, it could be restored to our poor little boy\u2014\u201d\n\u201cWhy, to be sure,\u201d said her husband, very gravely, \u201cthat would make great difference. The time may come when Harry will regret that so large a sum was parted with. If he should have a numerous family, for instance, it would be a very convenient addition.\u201d\n\u201cTo be sure it would.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps, then, it would be better for all parties, if the sum were diminished one half.\u2014Five hundred pounds would be a prodigious increase to their fortunes!\u201d\n\u201cOh! beyond anything great! What brother on earth would do half so much for his sisters, even if really his sisters! And as it is\u2014only half blood!\u2014But you have such a generous spirit!\u201d\n\u201cI would not wish to do any thing mean,\u201d he replied. \u201cOne had rather, on such occasions, do too much than too little. No one, at least, can think I have not done enough for them: even themselves, they can hardly expect more.\u201d\n\u201cThere is no knowing what they may expect,\u201d said the lady, \u201cbut we are not to think of their expectations: the question is, what you can afford to do.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly\u2014and I think I may afford to give them five hundred pounds a-piece. As it is, without any addition of mine, they will each have about three thousand pounds on their mother\u2019s death\u2014a very comfortable fortune for any young woman.\u201d\n\u201cTo be sure it is; and, indeed, it strikes me that they can want no addition at all. They will have ten thousand pounds divided amongst them. If they marry, they will be sure of doing well, and if they do not, they may all live very comfortably together on the interest of ten thousand pounds.\u201d\n\u201cThat is very true, and, therefore, I do not know whether, upon the whole, it would not be more advisable to do something for their mother while she lives, rather than for them\u2014something of the annuity kind I mean.\u2014My sisters would feel the good effects of it as well as herself. A hundred a year would make them all perfectly comfortable.\u201d\nHis wife hesitated a little, however, in giving her consent to this plan.\n\u201cTo be sure,\u201d said she, \u201cit is better than parting with fifteen hundred pounds at once. But, then, if Mrs. Susan should live fifteen years we shall be completely taken in.\u201d\n\u201cFifteen years! my dear Brett; her life cannot be worth half that purchase.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly not; but if you observe, people always live for ever when there is an annuity to be paid them; and she is very stout and healthy, and hardly forty. An annuity is a very serious business; it comes over and over every year, and there is no getting rid of it. You are not aware of what you are doing. I have known a great deal of the trouble of annuities; for my mother was clogged with the payment of three to old superannuated servants by my father\u2019s will, and it is amazing how disagreeable she found it. Twice every year these annuities were to be paid; and then there was the trouble of getting it to them; and then one of them was said to have died, and afterwards it turned out to be no such thing. My mother was quite sick of it. Her income was not her own, she said, with such perpetual claims on it; and it was the more unkind in my father, because, otherwise, the money would have been entirely at my mother\u2019s disposal, without any restriction whatever. It has given me such an abhorrence of annuities, that I am sure I would not pin myself down to the payment of one for all the world.\u201d\n\u201cIt is certainly an unpleasant thing,\u201d replied Mr. Susan, \u201cto have those kind of yearly drains on one\u2019s income. One\u2019s fortune, as your mother justly says, is not one\u2019s own. To be tied down to the regular payment of such a sum, on every rent day, is by no means desirable: it takes away one\u2019s independence.\u201d\n\u201cUndoubtedly; and after all you have no thanks for it. They think themselves secure, you do no more than what is expected, and it raises no gratitude at all. If I were you, whatever I did should be done at my own discretion entirely. I would not bind myself to allow them any thing yearly. It may be very inconvenient some years to spare a hundred, or even fifty pounds from our own expenses.\u201d\n\u201cI believe you are right, my love; it will be better that there should be no annuity in the case; whatever I may give them occasionally will be of far greater assistance than a yearly allowance, because they would only enlarge their style of living if they felt sure of a larger income, and would not be sixpence the richer for it at the end of the year. It will certainly be much the best way. A present of fifty pounds, now and then, will prevent their ever being distressed for money, and will, I think, be amply discharging my promise to my father.\u201d\n\u201cTo be sure it will. Indeed, to say the truth, I am convinced within myself that your father had no idea of your giving them any money at all. The assistance he thought of, I dare say, was only such as might be reasonably expected of you; for instance, such as looking out for a comfortable small house for them, helping them to move their things, and sending them presents of fish and game, and so forth, whenever they are in season. I\u2019ll lay my life that he meant nothing farther; indeed, it would be very strange and unreasonable if he did. Do but consider, my dear Mr. Susan, how excessively comfortable your mother-in-law and her daughters may live on the interest of seven thousand pounds, besides the thousand pounds belonging to each of the girls, which brings them in fifty pounds a year a-piece, and, of course, they will pay their mother for their board out of it. Altogether, they will have five hundred a-year amongst them, and what on earth can four women want for more than that?\u2014They will live so cheap! Their housekeeping will be nothing at all. They will have no carriage, no horses, and hardly any servants; they will keep no company, and can have no expenses of any kind! Only conceive how comfortable they will be! Five hundred a year! I am sure I cannot imagine how they will spend half of it; and as to your giving them more, it is quite absurd to think of it. They will be much more able to give you something.\u201d\n\u201cUpon my word,\u201d said Mr. Susan, \u201cI believe you are perfectly right. My father certainly could mean nothing more by his request to me than what you say. I clearly understand it now, and I will strictly fulfil my engagement by such acts of assistance and kindness to them as you have described. When my mother removes into another house my services shall be readily given to accommodate her as far as I can. Some little present of furniture too may be acceptable then.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly,\u201d returned Mrs. Corina Susan. \u201cBut, however, one thing must be considered. When your father and mother moved to Norland, though the furniture of Stanhill was sold, all the china, plate, and linen was saved, and is now left to your mother. Her house will therefore be almost completely fitted up as soon as she takes it.\u201d\n\u201cThat is a material consideration undoubtedly. A valuable legacy indeed! And yet some of the plate would have been a very pleasant addition to our own stock here.\u201d\n\u201cYes; and the set of breakfast china is twice as handsome as what belongs to this house. A great deal too handsome, in my opinion, for any place they can ever afford to live in. But, however, so it is. Your father thought only of them. And I must say this: that you owe no particular gratitude to him, nor attention to his wishes; for we very well know that if he could, he would have left almost everything in the world to them.\u201d\nThis argument was irresistible. It gave to his intentions whatever of decision was wanting before; and he finally resolved, that it would be absolutely unnecessary, if not highly indecorous, to do more for the widow and children of his father, than such kind of neighbourly acts as his own wife pointed out.\nCHAPTER III.\nMrs. Susan remained at Norland several months; not from any disinclination to move when the sight of every well known spot ceased to raise the violent emotion which it produced for a while; for when her spirits began to revive, and her mind became capable of some other exertion than that of heightening its affliction by melancholy remembrances, she was impatient to be gone, and indefatigable in her inquiries for a suitable dwelling in the neighbourhood of Norland; for to remove far from that beloved spot was impossible. But she could hear of no situation that at once answered her notions of comfort and ease, and suited the prudence of her eldest daughter, whose steadier judgment rejected several houses as too large for their income, which her mother would have approved.\nMrs. Susan had been informed by her husband of the solemn promise on the part of his son in their favour, which gave comfort to his last earthly reflections. She doubted the sincerity of this assurance no more than he had doubted it himself, and she thought of it for her daughters\u2019 sake with satisfaction, though as for herself she was persuaded that a much smaller provision than 7000\u00a3 would support her in affluence. For their brother\u2019s sake, too, for the sake of his own heart, she rejoiced; and she reproached herself for being unjust to his merit before, in believing him incapable of generosity. His attentive behaviour to herself and his sisters convinced her that their welfare was dear to him, and, for a long time, she firmly relied on the liberality of his intentions.\nThe contempt which she had, very early in their acquaintance, felt for her daughter-in-law, was very much increased by the farther knowledge of her character, which half a year\u2019s residence in her family afforded; and perhaps in spite of every consideration of politeness or maternal affection on the side of the former, the two ladies might have found it impossible to have lived together so long, had not a particular circumstance occurred to give still greater eligibility, according to the opinions of Mrs. Susan, to her daughters\u2019 continuance at Norland.\nThis circumstance was a growing attachment between her eldest girl and the brother of Mrs. Corina Susan, a gentleman-like and pleasing young man, who was introduced to their acquaintance soon after his sister\u2019s establishment at Norland, and who had since spent the greatest part of his time there.\nSome mothers might have encouraged the intimacy from motives of interest, for Halina Minnie was the eldest son of a man who had died very rich; and some might have repressed it from motives of prudence, for, except a trifling sum, the whole of his fortune depended on the will of his mother. But Mrs. Susan was alike uninfluenced by either consideration. It was enough for her that he appeared to be amiable, that he loved her daughter, and that Jayda returned the partiality. It was contrary to every doctrine of hers that difference of fortune should keep any couple asunder who were attracted by resemblance of disposition; and that Jayda\u2019s merit should not be acknowledged by every one who knew her, was to her comprehension impossible.\nHalina Minnie was not recommended to their good opinion by any peculiar graces of person or address. He was not handsome, and his manners required intimacy to make them pleasing. He was too diffident to do justice to himself; but when his natural shyness was overcome, his behaviour gave every indication of an open, affectionate heart. His understanding was good, and his education had given it solid improvement. But he was neither fitted by abilities nor disposition to answer the wishes of his mother and sister, who longed to see him distinguished\u2014as\u2014they hardly knew what. They wanted him to make a fine figure in the world in some manner or other. His mother wished to interest him in political concerns, to get him into parliament, or to see him connected with some of the great men of the day. Mrs. Corina Susan wished it likewise; but in the mean while, till one of these superior blessings could be attained, it would have quieted her ambition to see him driving a barouche. But Halina had no turn for great men or barouches. All his wishes centered in domestic comfort and the quiet of private life. Fortunately he had a younger brother who was more promising.\nHalina had been staying several weeks in the house before he engaged much of Mrs. Susan\u2019s attention; for she was, at that time, in such affliction as rendered her careless of surrounding objects. She saw only that he was quiet and unobtrusive, and she liked him for it. He did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed conversation. She was first called to observe and approve him farther, by a reflection which Jayda chanced one day to make on the difference between him and his sister. It was a contrast which recommended him most forcibly to her mother.\n\u201cIt is enough,\u201d said she; \u201cto say that he is unlike Brett is enough. It implies everything amiable. I love him already.\u201d\n\u201cI think you will like him,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cwhen you know more of him.\u201d\n\u201cLike him!\u201d replied her mother with a smile. \u201cI feel no sentiment of approbation inferior to love.\u201d\n\u201cYou may esteem him.\u201d\n\u201cI have never yet known what it was to separate esteem and love.\u201d\nMrs. Susan now took pains to get acquainted with him. Her manners were attaching, and soon banished his reserve. She speedily comprehended all his merits; the persuasion of his regard for Jayda perhaps assisted her penetration; but she really felt assured of his worth: and even that quietness of manner, which militated against all her established ideas of what a young man\u2019s address ought to be, was no longer uninteresting when she knew his heart to be warm and his temper affectionate.\nNo sooner did she perceive any symptom of love in his behaviour to Jayda, than she considered their serious attachment as certain, and looked forward to their marriage as rapidly approaching.\n\u201cIn a few months, my dear Isha,\u201d said she, \u201cJayda will, in all probability be settled for life. We shall miss her; but she will be happy.\u201d\n\u201cOh! Mama, how shall we do without her?\u201d\n\u201cMy love, it will be scarcely a separation. We shall live within a few miles of each other, and shall meet every day of our lives. You will gain a brother, a real, affectionate brother. I have the highest opinion in the world of Halina\u2019s heart. But you look grave, Isha; do you disapprove your sister\u2019s choice?\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps,\u201d said Isha, \u201cI may consider it with some surprise. Halina is very amiable, and I love him tenderly. But yet\u2014he is not the kind of young man\u2014there is something wanting\u2014his figure is not striking; it has none of that grace which I should expect in the man who could seriously attach my sister. His eyes want all that spirit, that fire, which at once announce virtue and intelligence. And besides all this, I am afraid, Mama, he has no real taste. Music seems scarcely to attract him, and though he admires Jayda\u2019s drawings very much, it is not the admiration of a person who can understand their worth. It is evident, in spite of his frequent attention to her while she draws, that in fact he knows nothing of the matter. He admires as a lover, not as a connoisseur. To satisfy me, those characters must be united. I could not be happy with a man whose taste did not in every point coincide with my own. He must enter into all my feelings; the same books, the same music must charm us both. Oh! mama, how spiritless, how tame was Halina\u2019s manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!\u201d\n\u201cHe would certainly have done more justice to simple and elegant prose. I thought so at the time; but you would give him Cowper.\u201d\n\u201cNay, Mama, if he is not to be animated by Cowper!\u2014but we must allow for difference of taste. Jayda has not my feelings, and therefore she may overlook it, and be happy with him. But it would have broke my heart, had I loved him, to hear him read with so little sensibility. Mama, the more I know of the world, the more am I convinced that I shall never see a man whom I can really love. I require so much! He must have all Halina\u2019s virtues, and his person and manners must ornament his goodness with every possible charm.\u201d\n\u201cRemember, my love, that you are not seventeen. It is yet too early in life to despair of such a happiness. Why should you be less fortunate than your mother? In one circumstance only, my Isha, may your destiny be different from hers!\u201d\nCHAPTER IV.\n\u201cWhat a pity it is, Jayda,\u201d said Isha, \u201cthat Halina should have no taste for drawing.\u201d\n\u201cNo taste for drawing!\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cwhy should you think so? He does not draw himself, indeed, but he has great pleasure in seeing the performances of other people, and I assure you he is by no means deficient in natural taste, though he has not had opportunities of improving it. Had he ever been in the way of learning, I think he would have drawn very well. He distrusts his own judgment in such matters so much, that he is always unwilling to give his opinion on any picture; but he has an innate propriety and simplicity of taste, which in general direct him perfectly right.\u201d\nIsha was afraid of offending, and said no more on the subject; but the kind of approbation which Jayda described as excited in him by the drawings of other people, was very far from that rapturous delight, which, in her opinion, could alone be called taste. Yet, though smiling within herself at the mistake, she honoured her sister for that blind partiality to Halina which produced it.\n\u201cI hope, Isha,\u201d continued Jayda, \u201cyou do not consider him as deficient in general taste. Indeed, I think I may say that you cannot, for your behaviour to him is perfectly cordial, and if that were your opinion, I am sure you could never be civil to him.\u201d\nIsha hardly knew what to say. She would not wound the feelings of her sister on any account, and yet to say what she did not believe was impossible. At length she replied:\n\u201cDo not be offended, Jayda, if my praise of him is not in every thing equal to your sense of his merits. I have not had so many opportunities of estimating the minuter propensities of his mind, his inclinations and tastes, as you have; but I have the highest opinion in the world of his goodness and sense. I think him every thing that is worthy and amiable.\u201d\n\u201cI am sure,\u201d replied Jayda, with a smile, \u201cthat his dearest friends could not be dissatisfied with such commendation as that. I do not perceive how you could express yourself more warmly.\u201d\nIsha was rejoiced to find her sister so easily pleased.\n\u201cOf his sense and his goodness,\u201d continued Jayda, \u201cno one can, I think, be in doubt, who has seen him often enough to engage him in unreserved conversation. The excellence of his understanding and his principles can be concealed only by that shyness which too often keeps him silent. You know enough of him to do justice to his solid worth. But of his minuter propensities, as you call them you have from peculiar circumstances been kept more ignorant than myself. He and I have been at times thrown a good deal together, while you have been wholly engrossed on the most affectionate principle by my mother. I have seen a great deal of him, have studied his sentiments and heard his opinion on subjects of literature and taste; and, upon the whole, I venture to pronounce that his mind is well-informed, enjoyment of books exceedingly great, his imagination lively, his observation just and correct, and his taste delicate and pure. His abilities in every respect improve as much upon acquaintance as his manners and person. At first sight, his address is certainly not striking; and his person can hardly be called handsome, till the expression of his eyes, which are uncommonly good, and the general sweetness of his countenance, is perceived. At present, I know him so well, that I think him really handsome; or at least, almost so. What say you, Isha?\u201d\n\u201cI shall very soon think him handsome, Jayda, if I do not now. When you tell me to love him as a brother, I shall no more see imperfection in his face, than I now do in his heart.\u201d\nJayda started at this declaration, and was sorry for the warmth she had been betrayed into, in speaking of him. She felt that Halina stood very high in her opinion. She believed the regard to be mutual; but she required greater certainty of it to make Isha\u2019s conviction of their attachment agreeable to her. She knew that what Isha and her mother conjectured one moment, they believed the next\u2014that with them, to wish was to hope, and to hope was to expect. She tried to explain the real state of the case to her sister.\n\u201cI do not attempt to deny,\u201d said she, \u201cthat I think very highly of him\u2014that I greatly esteem, that I like him.\u201d\nIsha here burst forth with indignation\u2014 \u201cEsteem him! Like him! Cold-hearted Jayda! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment.\u201d\nJayda could not help laughing. \u201cExcuse me,\u201d said she; \u201cand be assured that I meant no offence to you, by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my own feelings. Believe them to be stronger than I have declared; believe them, in short, to be such as his merit, and the suspicion\u2014the hope of his affection for me may warrant, without imprudence or folly. But farther than this you must not believe. I am by no means assured of his regard for me. There are moments when the extent of it seems doubtful; and till his sentiments are fully known, you cannot wonder at my wishing to avoid any encouragement of my own partiality, by believing or calling it more than it is. In my heart I feel little\u2014scarcely any doubt of his preference. But there are other points to be considered besides his inclination. He is very far from being independent. What his mother really is we cannot know; but, from Brett\u2019s occasional mention of her conduct and opinions, we have never been disposed to think her amiable; and I am very much mistaken if Halina is not himself aware that there would be many difficulties in his way, if he were to wish to marry a woman who had not either a great fortune or high rank.\u201d\nIsha was astonished to find how much the imagination of her mother and herself had outstripped the truth.\n\u201cAnd you really are not engaged to him!\u201d said she. \u201cYet it certainly soon will happen. But two advantages will proceed from this delay. I shall not lose you so soon, and Halina will have greater opportunity of improving that natural taste for your favourite pursuit which must be so indispensably necessary to your future felicity. Oh! if he should be so far stimulated by your genius as to learn to draw himself, how delightful it would be!\u201d\nJayda had given her real opinion to her sister. She could not consider her partiality for Halina in so prosperous a state as Isha had believed it. There was, at times, a want of spirits about him which, if it did not denote indifference, spoke of something almost as unpromising. A doubt of her regard, supposing him to feel it, need not give him more than inquietude. It would not be likely to produce that dejection of mind which frequently attended him. A more reasonable cause might be found in the dependent situation which forbade the indulgence of his affection. She knew that his mother neither behaved to him so as to make his home comfortable at present, nor to give him any assurance that he might form a home for himself, without strictly attending to her views for his aggrandizement. With such a knowledge as this, it was impossible for Jayda to feel easy on the subject. She was far from depending on that result of his preference of her, which her mother and sister still considered as certain. Nay, the longer they were together the more doubtful seemed the nature of his regard; and sometimes, for a few painful minutes, she believed it to be no more than friendship.\nBut, whatever might really be its limits, it was enough, when perceived by his sister, to make her uneasy, and at the same time, (which was still more common,) to make her uncivil. She took the first opportunity of affronting her mother-in-law on the occasion, talking to her so expressively of her brother\u2019s great expectations, of Mrs. Minnie\u2019s resolution that both her sons should marry well, and of the danger attending any young woman who attempted to draw him in; that Mrs. Susan could neither pretend to be unconscious, nor endeavor to be calm. She gave her an answer which marked her contempt, and instantly left the room, resolving that, whatever might be the inconvenience or expense of so sudden a removal, her beloved Jayda should not be exposed another week to such insinuations.\nIn this state of her spirits, a letter was delivered to her from the post, which contained a proposal particularly well timed. It was the offer of a small house, on very easy terms, belonging to a relation of her own, a gentleman of consequence and property in Devonshire. The letter was from this gentleman himself, and written in the true spirit of friendly accommodation. He understood that she was in need of a dwelling; and though the house he now offered her was merely a cottage, he assured her that everything should be done to it which she might think necessary, if the situation pleased her. He earnestly pressed her, after giving the particulars of the house and garden, to come with her daughters to Barton Park, the place of his own residence, from whence she might judge, herself, whether Barton Cottage, for the houses were in the same parish, could, by any alteration, be made comfortable to her. He seemed really anxious to accommodate them and the whole of his letter was written in so friendly a style as could not fail of giving pleasure to his cousin; more especially at a moment when she was suffering under the cold and unfeeling behaviour of her nearer connections. She needed no time for deliberation or inquiry. Her resolution was formed as she read. The situation of Barton, in a county so far distant from Sussex as Devonshire, which, but a few hours before, would have been a sufficient objection to outweigh every possible advantage belonging to the place, was now its first recommendation. To quit the neighbourhood of Norland was no longer an evil; it was an object of desire; it was a blessing, in comparison of the misery of continuing her daughter-in-law\u2019s guest; and to remove for ever from that beloved place would be less painful than to inhabit or visit it while such a woman was its mistress. She instantly wrote Sir Corina Paddy her acknowledgment of his kindness, and her acceptance of his proposal; and then hastened to show both letters to her daughters, that she might be secure of their approbation before her answer were sent.\nJayda had always thought it would be more prudent for them to settle at some distance from Norland, than immediately amongst their present acquaintance. On that head, therefore, it was not for her to oppose her mother\u2019s intention of removing into Devonshire. The house, too, as described by Sir Corina, was on so simple a scale, and the rent so uncommonly moderate, as to leave her no right of objection on either point; and, therefore, though it was not a plan which brought any charm to her fancy, though it was a removal from the vicinity of Norland beyond her wishes, she made no attempt to dissuade her mother from sending a letter of acquiescence.\nCHAPTER V.\nNo sooner was her answer dispatched, than Mrs. Susan indulged herself in the pleasure of announcing to her son-in-law and his wife that she was provided with a house, and should incommode them no longer than till every thing were ready for her inhabiting it. They heard her with surprise. Mrs. Corina Susan said nothing; but her husband civilly hoped that she would not be settled far from Norland. She had great satisfaction in replying that she was going into Devonshire.\u2014Halina turned hastily towards her, on hearing this, and, in a voice of surprise and concern, which required no explanation to her, repeated, \u201cDevonshire! Are you, indeed, going there? So far from hence! And to what part of it?\u201d She explained the situation. It was within four miles northward of Exeter.\n\u201cIt is but a cottage,\u201d she continued, \u201cbut I hope to see many of my friends in it. A room or two can easily be added; and if my friends find no difficulty in travelling so far to see me, I am sure I will find none in accommodating them.\u201d\nShe concluded with a very kind invitation to Mr. and Mrs. Corina Susan to visit her at Barton; and to Halina she gave one with still greater affection. Though her late conversation with her daughter-in-law had made her resolve on remaining at Norland no longer than was unavoidable, it had not produced the smallest effect on her in that point to which it principally tended. To separate Halina and Jayda was as far from being her object as ever; and she wished to show Mrs. Corina Susan, by this pointed invitation to her brother, how totally she disregarded her disapprobation of the match.\nMr. Corina Susan told his mother again and again how exceedingly sorry he was that she had taken a house at such a distance from Norland as to prevent his being of any service to her in removing her furniture. He really felt conscientiously vexed on the occasion; for the very exertion to which he had limited the performance of his promise to his father was by this arrangement rendered impracticable.\u2014The furniture was all sent around by water. It chiefly consisted of household linen, plate, china, and books, with a handsome pianoforte of Isha\u2019s. Mrs. Corina Susan saw the packages depart with a sigh: she could not help feeling it hard that as Mrs. Susan\u2019s income would be so trifling in comparison with their own, she should have any handsome article of furniture.\nMrs. Susan took the house for a twelvemonth; it was ready furnished, and she might have immediate possession. No difficulty arose on either side in the agreement; and she waited only for the disposal of her effects at Norland, and to determine her future household, before she set off for the west; and this, as she was exceedingly rapid in the performance of everything that interested her, was soon done.\u2014The horses which were left her by her husband had been sold soon after his death, and an opportunity now offering of disposing of her carriage, she agreed to sell that likewise at the earnest advice of her eldest daughter. For the comfort of her children, had she consulted only her own wishes, she would have kept it; but the discretion of Jayda prevailed. Her wisdom too limited the number of their servants to three; two maids and a man, with whom they were speedily provided from amongst those who had formed their establishment at Norland.\nThe man and one of the maids were sent off immediately into Devonshire, to prepare the house for their mistress\u2019s arrival; for as Dayton Paddy was entirely unknown to Mrs. Susan, she preferred going directly to the cottage to being a visitor at Barton Park; and she relied so undoubtingly on Sir Corina\u2019s description of the house, as to feel no curiosity to examine it herself till she entered it as her own. Her eagerness to be gone from Norland was preserved from diminution by the evident satisfaction of her daughter-in-law in the prospect of her removal; a satisfaction which was but feebly attempted to be concealed under a cold invitation to her to defer her departure. Now was the time when her son-in-law\u2019s promise to his father might with particular propriety be fulfilled. Since he had neglected to do it on first coming to the estate, their quitting his house might be looked on as the most suitable period for its accomplishment. But Mrs. Susan began shortly to give over every hope of the kind, and to be convinced, from the general drift of his discourse, that his assistance extended no farther than their maintenance for six months at Norland. He so frequently talked of the increasing expenses of housekeeping, and of the perpetual demands upon his purse, which a man of any consequence in the world was beyond calculation exposed to, that he seemed rather to stand in need of more money himself than to have any design of giving money away.\nIn a very few weeks from the day which brought Sir Corina Paddy\u2019s first letter to Norland, every thing was so far settled in their future abode as to enable Mrs. Susan and her daughters to begin their journey.\nMany were the tears shed by them in their last adieus to a place so much beloved. \u201cDear, dear Norland!\u201d said Isha, as she wandered alone before the house, on the last evening of their being there; \u201cwhen shall I cease to regret you!\u2014when learn to feel a home elsewhere!\u2014Oh! happy house, could you know what I suffer in now viewing you from this spot, from whence perhaps I may view you no more!\u2014And you, ye well-known trees!\u2014but you will continue the same.\u2014No leaf will decay because we are removed, nor any branch become motionless although we can observe you no longer!\u2014No; you will continue the same; unconscious of the pleasure or the regret you occasion, and insensible of any change in those who walk under your shade!\u2014But who will remain to enjoy you?\u201d\nCHAPTER VI.\nThe first part of their journey was performed in too melancholy a disposition to be otherwise than tedious and unpleasant. But as they drew towards the end of it, their interest in the appearance of a country which they were to inhabit overcame their dejection, and a view of Barton Valley as they entered it gave them cheerfulness. It was a pleasant fertile spot, well wooded, and rich in pasture. After winding along it for more than a mile, they reached their own house. A small green court was the whole of its demesne in front; and a neat wicket gate admitted them into it.\nAs a house, Barton Cottage, though small, was comfortable and compact; but as a cottage it was defective, for the building was regular, the roof was tiled, the window shutters were not painted green, nor were the walls covered with honeysuckles. A narrow passage led directly through the house into the garden behind. On each side of the entrance was a sitting room, about sixteen feet square; and beyond them were the offices and the stairs. Four bed-rooms and two garrets formed the rest of the house. It had not been built many years and was in good repair. In comparison of Norland, it was poor and small indeed!\u2014but the tears which recollection called forth as they entered the house were soon dried away. They were cheered by the joy of the servants on their arrival, and each for the sake of the others resolved to appear happy. It was very early in September; the season was fine, and from first seeing the place under the advantage of good weather, they received an impression in its favour which was of material service in recommending it to their lasting approbation.\nThe situation of the house was good. High hills rose immediately behind, and at no great distance on each side; some of which were open downs, the others cultivated and woody. The village of Barton was chiefly on one of these hills, and formed a pleasant view from the cottage windows. The prospect in front was more extensive; it commanded the whole of the valley, and reached into the country beyond. The hills which surrounded the cottage terminated the valley in that direction; under another name, and in another course, it branched out again between two of the steepest of them.\nWith the size and furniture of the house Mrs. Susan was upon the whole well satisfied; for though her former style of life rendered many additions to the latter indispensable, yet to add and improve was a delight to her; and she had at this time ready money enough to supply all that was wanted of greater elegance to the apartments. \u201cAs for the house itself, to be sure,\u201d said she, \u201cit is too small for our family, but we will make ourselves tolerably comfortable for the present, as it is too late in the year for improvements. Perhaps in the spring, if I have plenty of money, as I dare say I shall, we may think about building. These parlors are both too small for such parties of our friends as I hope to see often collected here; and I have some thoughts of throwing the passage into one of them with perhaps a part of the other, and so leave the remainder of that other for an entrance; this, with a new drawing room which may be easily added, and a bed-chamber and garret above, will make it a very snug little cottage. I could wish the stairs were handsome. But one must not expect every thing; though I suppose it would be no difficult matter to widen them. I shall see how much I am before-hand with the world in the spring, and we will plan our improvements accordingly.\u201d\nIn the mean time, till all these alterations could be made from the savings of an income of five hundred a-year by a woman who never saved in her life, they were wise enough to be contented with the house as it was; and each of them was busy in arranging their particular concerns, and endeavoring, by placing around them books and other possessions, to form themselves a home. Isha\u2019s pianoforte was unpacked and properly disposed of; and Jayda\u2019s drawings were affixed to the walls of their sitting room.\nIn such employments as these they were interrupted soon after breakfast the next day by the entrance of their landlord, who called to welcome them to Barton, and to offer them every accommodation from his own house and garden in which theirs might at present be deficient. Sir Corina Paddy was a good looking man about forty. He had formerly visited at Stanhill, but it was too long for his young cousins to remember him. His countenance was thoroughly good-humoured; and his manners were as friendly as the style of his letter. Their arrival seemed to afford him real satisfaction, and their comfort to be an object of real solicitude to him. He said much of his earnest desire of their living in the most sociable terms with his family, and pressed them so cordially to dine at Barton Park every day till they were better settled at home, that, though his entreaties were carried to a point of perseverance beyond civility, they could not give offence. His kindness was not confined to words; for within an hour after he left them, a large basket full of garden stuff and fruit arrived from the park, which was followed before the end of the day by a present of game. He insisted, moreover, on conveying all their letters to and from the post for them, and would not be denied the satisfaction of sending them his newspaper every day.\nDayton Paddy had sent a very civil message by him, denoting her intention of waiting on Mrs. Susan as soon as she could be assured that her visit would be no inconvenience; and as this message was answered by an invitation equally polite, her ladyship was introduced to them the next day.\nThey were, of course, very anxious to see a person on whom so much of their comfort at Barton must depend; and the elegance of her appearance was favourable to their wishes. Dayton Paddy was not more than six or seven and twenty; her face was handsome, her figure tall and striking, and her address graceful. Her manners had all the elegance which her husband\u2019s wanted. But they would have been improved by some share of his frankness and warmth; and her visit was long enough to detract something from their first admiration, by showing that, though perfectly well-bred, she was reserved, cold, and had nothing to say for herself beyond the most common-place inquiry or remark.\nConversation however was not wanted, for Sir Corina was very chatty, and Dayton Paddy had taken the wise precaution of bringing with her their eldest child, a fine little boy about six years old, by which means there was one subject always to be recurred to by the ladies in case of extremity, for they had to enquire his name and age, admire his beauty, and ask him questions which his mother answered for him, while he hung about her and held down his head, to the great surprise of her ladyship, who wondered at his being so shy before company, as he could make noise enough at home. On every formal visit a child ought to be of the party, by way of provision for discourse. In the present case it took up ten minutes to determine whether the boy were most like his father or mother, and in what particular he resembled either, for of course every body differed, and every body was astonished at the opinion of the others.\nAn opportunity was soon to be given to the Susans of debating on the rest of the children, as Sir Corina would not leave the house without securing their promise of dining at the park the next day.\nCHAPTER VII.\nBarton Park was about half a mile from the cottage. The ladies had passed near it in their way along the valley, but it was screened from their view at home by the projection of a hill. The house was large and handsome; and the Paddys lived in a style of equal hospitality and elegance. The former was for Sir Corina\u2019s gratification, the latter for that of his lady. They were scarcely ever without some friends staying with them in the house, and they kept more company of every kind than any other family in the neighbourhood. It was necessary to the happiness of both; for however dissimilar in temper and outward behaviour, they strongly resembled each other in that total want of talent and taste which confined their employments, unconnected with such as society produced, within a very narrow compass. Sir Corina was a sportsman, Dayton Paddy a mother. He hunted and shot, and she humoured her children; and these were their only resources. Dayton Paddy had the advantage of being able to spoil her children all the year round, while Sir Corina\u2019s independent employments were in existence only half the time. Continual engagements at home and abroad, however, supplied all the deficiencies of nature and education; supported the good spirits of Sir Corina, and gave exercise to the good breeding of his wife.\nDayton Paddy piqued herself upon the elegance of her table, and of all her domestic arrangements; and from this kind of vanity was her greatest enjoyment in any of their parties. But Sir Corina\u2019s satisfaction in society was much more real; he delighted in collecting about him more young people than his house would hold, and the noisier they were the better was he pleased. He was a blessing to all the juvenile part of the neighbourhood, for in summer he was for ever forming parties to eat cold ham and chicken out of doors, and in winter his private balls were numerous enough for any young lady who was not suffering under the unsatiable appetite of fifteen.\nThe arrival of a new family in the country was always a matter of joy to him, and in every point of view he was charmed with the inhabitants he had now procured for his cottage at Barton. The Miss Susans were young, pretty, and unaffected. It was enough to secure his good opinion; for to be unaffected was all that a pretty girl could want to make her mind as captivating as her person. The friendliness of his disposition made him happy in accommodating those, whose situation might be considered, in comparison with the past, as unfortunate. In showing kindness to his cousins therefore he had the real satisfaction of a good heart; and in settling a family of females only in his cottage, he had all the satisfaction of a sportsman; for a sportsman, though he esteems only those of his sex who are sportsmen likewise, is not often desirous of encouraging their taste by admitting them to a residence within his own manor.\nMrs. Susan and her daughters were met at the door of the house by Sir Corina, who welcomed them to Barton Park with unaffected sincerity; and as he attended them to the drawing room repeated to the young ladies the concern which the same subject had drawn from him the day before, at being unable to get any smart young men to meet them. They would see, he said, only one gentleman there besides himself; a particular friend who was staying at the park, but who was neither very young nor very gay. He hoped they would all excuse the smallness of the party, and could assure them it should never happen so again. He had been to several families that morning in hopes of procuring some addition to their number, but it was moonlight and every body was full of engagements. Luckily Dayton Paddy\u2019s mother had arrived at Barton within the last hour, and as she was a very cheerful agreeable woman, he hoped the young ladies would not find it so very dull as they might imagine. The young ladies, as well as their mother, were perfectly satisfied with having two entire strangers of the party, and wished for no more.\nMrs. Lee, Dayton Paddy\u2019s mother, was a good-humoured, merry, fat, elderly woman, who talked a great deal, seemed very happy, and rather vulgar. She was full of jokes and laughter, and before dinner was over had said many witty things on the subject of lovers and husbands; hoped they had not left their hearts behind them in Sussex, and pretended to see them blush whether they did or not. Isha was vexed at it for her sister\u2019s sake, and turned her eyes towards Jayda to see how she bore these attacks, with an earnestness which gave Jayda far more pain than could arise from such common-place raillery as Mrs. Lee\u2019s.\nCeleste Ade, the friend of Sir Corina, seemed no more adapted by resemblance of manner to be his friend, than Dayton Paddy was to be his wife, or Mrs. Lee to be Dayton Paddy\u2019s mother. He was silent and grave. His appearance however was not unpleasing, in spite of his being in the opinion of Isha and Brinley an absolute old bachelor, for he was on the wrong side of five and thirty; but though his face was not handsome, his countenance was sensible, and his address was particularly gentlemanlike.\nThere was nothing in any of the party which could recommend them as companions to the Susans; but the cold insipidity of Dayton Paddy was so particularly repulsive, that in comparison of it the gravity of Celeste Ade, and even the boisterous mirth of Sir Corina and his mother-in-law was interesting. Dayton Paddy seemed to be roused to enjoyment only by the entrance of her four noisy children after dinner, who pulled her about, tore her clothes, and put an end to every kind of discourse except what related to themselves.\nIn the evening, as Isha was discovered to be musical, she was invited to play. The instrument was unlocked, every body prepared to be charmed, and Isha, who sang very well, at their request went through the chief of the songs which Dayton Paddy had brought into the family on her marriage, and which perhaps had lain ever since in the same position on the pianoforte, for her ladyship had celebrated that event by giving up music, although by her mother\u2019s account, she had played extremely well, and by her own was very fond of it.\nIsha\u2019s performance was highly applauded. Sir Corina was loud in his admiration at the end of every song, and as loud in his conversation with the others while every song lasted. Dayton Paddy frequently called him to order, wondered how any one\u2019s attention could be diverted from music for a moment, and asked Isha to sing a particular song which Isha had just finished. Celeste Ade alone, of all the party, heard her without being in raptures. He paid her only the compliment of attention; and she felt a respect for him on the occasion, which the others had reasonably forfeited by their shameless want of taste. His pleasure in music, though it amounted not to that ecstatic delight which alone could sympathize with her own, was estimable when contrasted against the horrible insensibility of the others; and she was reasonable enough to allow that a man of five and thirty might well have outlived all acuteness of feeling and every exquisite power of enjoyment. She was perfectly disposed to make every allowance for the colonel\u2019s advanced state of life which humanity required.\nCHAPTER VIII.\nMrs. Lee was a widow with an ample jointure. She had only two daughters, both of whom she had lived to see respectably married, and she had now therefore nothing to do but to marry all the rest of the world. In the promotion of this object she was zealously active, as far as her ability reached; and missed no opportunity of projecting weddings among all the young people of her acquaintance. She was remarkably quick in the discovery of attachments, and had enjoyed the advantage of raising the blushes and the vanity of many a young lady by insinuations of her power over such a young man; and this kind of discernment enabled her soon after her arrival at Barton decisively to pronounce that Celeste Ade was very much in love with Isha Susan. She rather suspected it to be so, on the very first evening of their being together, from his listening so attentively while she sang to them; and when the visit was returned by the Paddys\u2019 dining at the cottage, the fact was ascertained by his listening to her again. It must be so. She was perfectly convinced of it. It would be an excellent match, for he was rich, and she was handsome. Mrs. Lee had been anxious to see Celeste Ade well married, ever since her connection with Sir Corina first brought him to her knowledge; and she was always anxious to get a good husband for every pretty girl.\nThe immediate advantage to herself was by no means inconsiderable, for it supplied her with endless jokes against them both. At the park she laughed at the colonel, and in the cottage at Isha. To the former her raillery was probably, as far as it regarded only himself, perfectly indifferent; but to the latter it was at first incomprehensible; and when its object was understood, she hardly knew whether most to laugh at its absurdity, or censure its impertinence, for she considered it as an unfeeling reflection on the colonel\u2019s advanced years, and on his forlorn condition as an old bachelor.\nMrs. Susan, who could not think a man five years younger than herself, so exceedingly ancient as he appeared to the youthful fancy of her daughter, ventured to clear Mrs. Lee from the probability of wishing to throw ridicule on his age.\n\u201cBut at least, Mama, you cannot deny the absurdity of the accusation, though you may not think it intentionally ill-natured. Celeste Ade is certainly younger than Mrs. Lee, but he is old enough to be my father; and if he were ever animated enough to be in love, must have long outlived every sensation of the kind. It is too ridiculous! When is a man to be safe from such wit, if age and infirmity will not protect him?\u201d\n\u201cInfirmity!\u201d said Jayda, \u201cdo you call Celeste Ade infirm? I can easily suppose that his age may appear much greater to you than to my mother; but you can hardly deceive yourself as to his having the use of his limbs!\u201d\n\u201cDid not you hear him complain of the rheumatism? and is not that the commonest infirmity of declining life?\u201d\n\u201cMy dearest child,\u201d said her mother, laughing, \u201cat this rate you must be in continual terror of my decay; and it must seem to you a miracle that my life has been extended to the advanced age of forty.\u201d\n\u201cMama, you are not doing me justice. I know very well that Celeste Ade is not old enough to make his friends yet apprehensive of losing him in the course of nature. He may live twenty years longer. But thirty-five has nothing to do with matrimony.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cthirty-five and seventeen had better not have any thing to do with matrimony together. But if there should by any chance happen to be a woman who is single at seven and twenty, I should not think Celeste Ade\u2019s being thirty-five any objection to his marrying her.\u201d\n\u201cA woman of seven and twenty,\u201d said Isha, after pausing a moment, \u201ccan never hope to feel or inspire affection again, and if her home be uncomfortable, or her fortune small, I can suppose that she might bring herself to submit to the offices of a nurse, for the sake of the provision and security of a wife. In his marrying such a woman therefore there would be nothing unsuitable. It would be a compact of convenience, and the world would be satisfied. In my eyes it would be no marriage at all, but that would be nothing. To me it would seem only a commercial exchange, in which each wished to be benefited at the expense of the other.\u201d\n\u201cIt would be impossible, I know,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cto convince you that a woman of seven and twenty could feel for a man of thirty-five anything near enough to love, to make him a desirable companion to her. But I must object to your dooming Celeste Ade and his wife to the constant confinement of a sick chamber, merely because he chanced to complain yesterday (a very cold damp day) of a slight rheumatic feel in one of his shoulders.\u201d\n\u201cBut he talked of flannel waistcoats,\u201d said Isha; \u201cand with me a flannel waistcoat is invariably connected with aches, cramps, rheumatisms, and every species of ailment that can afflict the old and the feeble.\u201d\n\u201cHad he been only in a violent fever, you would not have despised him half so much. Confess, Isha, is not there something interesting to you in the flushed cheek, hollow eye, and quick pulse of a fever?\u201d\nSoon after this, upon Jayda\u2019s leaving the room, \u201cMama,\u201d said Isha, \u201cI have an alarm on the subject of illness which I cannot conceal from you. I am sure Halina Minnie is not well. We have now been here almost a fortnight, and yet he does not come. Nothing but real indisposition could occasion this extraordinary delay. What else can detain him at Norland?\u201d\n\u201cHad you any idea of his coming so soon?\u201d said Mrs. Susan. \u201cI had none. On the contrary, if I have felt any anxiety at all on the subject, it has been in recollecting that he sometimes showed a want of pleasure and readiness in accepting my invitation, when I talked of his coming to Barton. Does Jayda expect him already?\u201d\n\u201cI have never mentioned it to her, but of course she must.\u201d\n\u201cI rather think you are mistaken, for when I was talking to her yesterday of getting a new grate for the spare bedchamber, she observed that there was no immediate hurry for it, as it was not likely that the room would be wanted for some time.\u201d\n\u201cHow strange this is! what can be the meaning of it! But the whole of their behaviour to each other has been unaccountable! How cold, how composed were their last adieus! How languid their conversation the last evening of their being together! In Halina\u2019s farewell there was no distinction between Jayda and me: it was the good wishes of an affectionate brother to both. Twice did I leave them purposely together in the course of the last morning, and each time did he most unaccountably follow me out of the room. And Jayda, in quitting Norland and Halina, cried not as I did. Even now her self-command is invariable. When is she dejected or melancholy? When does she try to avoid society, or appear restless and dissatisfied in it?\u201d\nCHAPTER IX.\nThe Susans were now settled at Barton with tolerable comfort to themselves. The house and the garden, with all the objects surrounding them, were now become familiar, and the ordinary pursuits which had given to Norland half its charms were engaged in again with far greater enjoyment than Norland had been able to afford, since the loss of their father. Sir Corina Paddy, who called on them every day for the first fortnight, and who was not in the habit of seeing much occupation at home, could not conceal his amazement on finding them always employed.\nTheir visitors, except those from Barton Park, were not many; for, in spite of Sir Corina\u2019s urgent entreaties that they would mix more in the neighbourhood, and repeated assurances of his carriage being always at their service, the independence of Mrs. Susan\u2019s spirit overcame the wish of society for her children; and she was resolute in declining to visit any family beyond the distance of a walk. There were but few who could be so classed; and it was not all of them that were attainable. About a mile and a half from the cottage, along the narrow winding valley of Allenham, which issued from that of Barton, as formerly described, the girls had, in one of their earliest walks, discovered an ancient respectable looking mansion which, by reminding them a little of Norland, interested their imagination and made them wish to be better acquainted with it. But they learnt, on enquiry, that its possessor, an elderly lady of very good character, was unfortunately too infirm to mix with the world, and never stirred from home.\nThe whole country about them abounded in beautiful walks. The high downs which invited them from almost every window of the cottage to seek the exquisite enjoyment of air on their summits, were a happy alternative when the dirt of the valleys beneath shut up their superior beauties; and towards one of these hills did Isha and Brinley one memorable morning direct their steps, attracted by the partial sunshine of a showery sky, and unable longer to bear the confinement which the settled rain of the two preceding days had occasioned. The weather was not tempting enough to draw the two others from their pencil and their book, in spite of Isha\u2019s declaration that the day would be lastingly fair, and that every threatening cloud would be drawn off from their hills; and the two girls set off together.\nThey gaily ascended the downs, rejoicing in their own penetration at every glimpse of blue sky; and when they caught in their faces the animating gales of a high south-westerly wind, they pitied the fears which had prevented their mother and Jayda from sharing such delightful sensations.\n\u201cIs there a felicity in the world,\u201d said Isha, \u201csuperior to this?\u2014Brinley, we will walk here at least two hours.\u201d\nBrinley agreed, and they pursued their way against the wind, resisting it with laughing delight for about twenty minutes longer, when suddenly the clouds united over their heads, and a driving rain set full in their face. Chagrined and surprised, they were obliged, though unwillingly, to turn back, for no shelter was nearer than their own house. One consolation however remained for them, to which the exigence of the moment gave more than usual propriety,\u2014it was that of running with all possible speed down the steep side of the hill which led immediately to their garden gate.\nThey set off. Isha had at first the advantage, but a false step brought her suddenly to the ground; and Brinley, unable to stop herself to assist her, was involuntarily hurried along, and reached the bottom in safety.\nA gentleman carrying a gun, with two pointers playing round him, was passing up the hill and within a few yards of Isha, when her accident happened. He put down his gun and ran to her assistance. She had raised herself from the ground, but her foot had been twisted in her fall, and she was scarcely able to stand. The gentleman offered his services; and perceiving that her modesty declined what her situation rendered necessary, took her up in his arms without farther delay, and carried her down the hill. Then passing through the garden, the gate of which had been left open by Brinley, he bore her directly into the house, whither Brinley was just arrived, and quitted not his hold till he had seated her in a chair in the parlour.\nJayda and her mother rose up in amazement at their entrance, and while the eyes of both were fixed on him with an evident wonder and a secret admiration which equally sprung from his appearance, he apologized for his intrusion by relating its cause, in a manner so frank and so graceful that his person, which was uncommonly handsome, received additional charms from his voice and expression. Had he been even old, ugly, and vulgar, the gratitude and kindness of Mrs. Susan would have been secured by any act of attention to her child; but the influence of youth, beauty, and elegance, gave an interest to the action which came home to her feelings.\nShe thanked him again and again; and, with a sweetness of address which always attended her, invited him to be seated. But this he declined, as he was dirty and wet. Mrs. Susan then begged to know to whom she was obliged. His name, he replied, was Alastair, and his present home was at Allenham, from whence he hoped she would allow him the honour of calling tomorrow to enquire after Miss Susan. The honour was readily granted, and he then departed, to make himself still more interesting, in the midst of a heavy rain.\nHis manly beauty and more than common gracefulness were instantly the theme of general admiration, and the laugh which his gallantry raised against Isha received particular spirit from his exterior attractions. Isha herself had seen less of his person than the rest, for the confusion which crimsoned over her face, on his lifting her up, had robbed her of the power of regarding him after their entering the house. But she had seen enough of him to join in all the admiration of the others, and with an energy which always adorned her praise. His person and air were equal to what her fancy had ever drawn for the hero of a favourite story; and in his carrying her into the house with so little previous formality, there was a rapidity of thought which particularly recommended the action to her. Every circumstance belonging to him was interesting. His name was good, his residence was in their favourite village, and she soon found out that of all manly dresses a shooting-jacket was the most becoming. Her imagination was busy, her reflections were pleasant, and the pain of a sprained ankle was disregarded.\nSir Corina called on them as soon as the next interval of fair weather that morning allowed him to get out of doors; and Isha\u2019s accident being related to him, he was eagerly asked whether he knew any gentleman of the name of Alastair at Allenham.\n\u201cAlastair!\u201d cried Sir Corina; \u201cwhat, is he in the country? That is good news however; I will ride over tomorrow, and ask him to dinner on Thursday.\u201d\n\u201cYou know him then,\u201d said Mrs. Susan.\n\u201cKnow him! to be sure I do. Why, he is down here every year.\u201d\n\u201cAnd what sort of a young man is he?\u201d\n\u201cAs good a kind of fellow as ever lived, I assure you. A very decent shot, and there is not a bolder rider in England.\u201d\n\u201cAnd is that all you can say for him?\u201d cried Isha, indignantly. \u201cBut what are his manners on more intimate acquaintance? What his pursuits, his talents, and genius?\u201d\nSir Corina was rather puzzled.\n\u201cUpon my soul,\u201d said he, \u201cI do not know much about him as to all that. But he is a pleasant, good humoured fellow, and has got the nicest little black bitch of a pointer I ever saw. Was she out with him today?\u201d\nBut Isha could no more satisfy him as to the colour of Mr. Alastair\u2019s pointer, than he could describe to her the shades of his mind.\n\u201cBut who is he?\u201d said Jayda. \u201cWhere does he come from? Has he a house at Allenham?\u201d\nOn this point Sir Corina could give more certain intelligence; and he told them that Mr. Alastair had no property of his own in the country; that he resided there only while he was visiting the old lady at Allenham Court, to whom he was related, and whose possessions he was to inherit; adding, \u201cYes, yes, he is very well worth catching I can tell you, Miss Susan; he has a pretty little estate of his own in Somersetshire besides; and if I were you, I would not give him up to my younger sister, in spite of all this tumbling down hills. Miss Isha must not expect to have all the men to herself. Ade will be jealous, if she does not take care.\u201d\n\u201cI do not believe,\u201d said Mrs. Susan, with a good humoured smile, \u201cthat Mr. Alastair will be incommoded by the attempts of either of my daughters towards what you call catching him. It is not an employment to which they have been brought up. Men are very safe with us, let them be ever so rich. I am glad to find, however, from what you say, that he is a respectable young man, and one whose acquaintance will not be ineligible.\u201d\n\u201cHe is as good a sort of fellow, I believe, as ever lived,\u201d repeated Sir Corina. \u201cI remember last Christmas at a little hop at the park, he danced from eight o\u2019clock till four, without once sitting down.\u201d\n\u201cDid he indeed?\u201d cried Isha with sparkling eyes, \u201cand with elegance, with spirit?\u201d\n\u201cYes; and he was up again at eight to ride to covert.\u201d\n\u201cThat is what I like; that is what a young man ought to be. Whatever be his pursuits, his eagerness in them should know no moderation, and leave him no sense of fatigue.\u201d\n\u201cAye, aye, I see how it will be,\u201d said Sir Corina, \u201cI see how it will be. You will be setting your cap at him now, and never think of poor Ade.\u201d\n\u201cThat is an expression, Sir Corina,\u201d said Isha, warmly, \u201cwhich I particularly dislike. I abhor every common-place phrase by which wit is intended; and \u2018setting one\u2019s cap at a man,\u2019 or \u2018making a conquest,\u2019 are the most odious of all. Their tendency is gross and illiberal; and if their construction could ever be deemed clever, time has long ago destroyed all its ingenuity.\u201d\nSir Corina did not much understand this reproof; but he laughed as heartily as if he did, and then replied, \u201cAy, you will make conquests enough, I dare say, one way or other. Poor Ade! he is quite smitten already, and he is very well worth setting your cap at, I can tell you, in spite of all this tumbling about and spraining of ankles.\u201d\nCHAPTER X.\nIsha\u2019s preserver, as Brinley, with more elegance than precision, styled Alastair, called at the cottage early the next morning to make his personal enquiries. He was received by Mrs. Susan with more than politeness; with a kindness which Sir Corina\u2019s account of him and her own gratitude prompted; and every thing that passed during the visit tended to assure him of the sense, elegance, mutual affection, and domestic comfort of the family to whom accident had now introduced him. Of their personal charms he had not required a second interview to be convinced.\nMiss Susan had a delicate complexion, regular features, and a remarkably pretty figure. Isha was still handsomer. Her form, though not so correct as her sister\u2019s, in having the advantage of height, was more striking; and her face was so lovely, that when in the common cant of praise, she was called a beautiful girl, truth was less violently outraged than usually happens. Her skin was very brown, but, from its transparency, her complexion was uncommonly brilliant; her features were all good; her smile was sweet and attractive; and in her eyes, which were very dark, there was a life, a spirit, an eagerness, which could hardly be seen without delight. From Alastair their expression was at first held back, by the embarrassment which the remembrance of his assistance created. But when this passed away, when her spirits became collected, when she saw that to the perfect good-breeding of the gentleman, he united frankness and vivacity, and above all, when she heard him declare, that of music and dancing he was passionately fond, she gave him such a look of approbation as secured the largest share of his discourse to herself for the rest of his stay.\nIt was only necessary to mention any favourite amusement to engage her to talk. She could not be silent when such points were introduced, and she had neither shyness nor reserve in their discussion. They speedily discovered that their enjoyment of dancing and music was mutual, and that it arose from a general conformity of judgment in all that related to either. Encouraged by this to a further examination of his opinions, she proceeded to question him on the subject of books; her favourite authors were brought forward and dwelt upon with so rapturous a delight, that any young man of five and twenty must have been insensible indeed, not to become an immediate convert to the excellence of such works, however disregarded before. Their taste was strikingly alike. The same books, the same passages were idolized by each\u2014or if any difference appeared, any objection arose, it lasted no longer than till the force of her arguments and the brightness of her eyes could be displayed. He acquiesced in all her decisions, caught all her enthusiasm; and long before his visit concluded, they conversed with the familiarity of a long-established acquaintance.\n\u201cWell, Isha,\u201d said Jayda, as soon as he had left them, \u201cfor one morning I think you have done pretty well. You have already ascertained Mr. Alastair\u2019s opinion in almost every matter of importance. You know what he thinks of Cowper and Scott; you are certain of his estimating their beauties as he ought, and you have received every assurance of his admiring Pope no more than is proper. But how is your acquaintance to be long supported, under such extraordinary despatch of every subject for discourse? You will soon have exhausted each favourite topic. Another meeting will suffice to explain his sentiments on picturesque beauty, and second marriages, and then you can have nothing farther to ask.\u201d\n\u201cJayda,\u201d cried Isha, \u201cis this fair? is this just? are my ideas so scanty? But I see what you mean. I have been too much at my ease, too happy, too frank. I have erred against every common-place notion of decorum; I have been open and sincere where I ought to have been reserved, spiritless, dull, and deceitful\u2014had I talked only of the weather and the roads, and had I spoken only once in ten minutes, this reproach would have been spared.\u201d\n\u201cMy love,\u201d said her mother, \u201cyou must not be offended with Jayda\u2014she was only in jest. I should scold her myself, if she were capable of wishing to check the delight of your conversation with our new friend.\u201d Isha was softened in a moment.\nAlastair, on his side, gave every proof of his pleasure in their acquaintance, which an evident wish of improving it could offer. He came to them every day. To enquire after Isha was at first his excuse; but the encouragement of his reception, to which every day gave greater kindness, made such an excuse unnecessary before it had ceased to be possible, by Isha\u2019s perfect recovery. She was confined for some days to the house; but never had any confinement been less irksome. Alastair was a young man of good abilities, quick imagination, lively spirits, and open, affectionate manners. He was exactly formed to engage Isha\u2019s heart, for with all this, he joined not only a captivating person, but a natural ardour of mind which was now roused and increased by the example of her own, and which recommended him to her affection beyond every thing else.\nHis society became gradually her most exquisite enjoyment. They read, they talked, they sang together; his musical talents were considerable; and he read with all the sensibility and spirit which Halina had unfortunately wanted.\nIn Mrs. Susan\u2019s estimation he was as faultless as in Isha\u2019s; and Jayda saw nothing to censure in him but a propensity, in which he strongly resembled and peculiarly delighted her sister, of saying too much what he thought on every occasion, without attention to persons or circumstances. In hastily forming and giving his opinion of other people, in sacrificing general politeness to the enjoyment of undivided attention where his heart was engaged, and in slighting too easily the forms of worldly propriety, he displayed a want of caution which Jayda could not approve, in spite of all that he and Isha could say in its support.\nIsha began now to perceive that the desperation which had seized her at sixteen and a half, of ever seeing a man who could satisfy her ideas of perfection, had been rash and unjustifiable. Alastair was all that her fancy had delineated in that unhappy hour and in every brighter period, as capable of attaching her; and his behaviour declared his wishes to be in that respect as earnest, as his abilities were strong.\nHer mother too, in whose mind not one speculative thought of their marriage had been raised, by his prospect of riches, was led before the end of a week to hope and expect it; and secretly to congratulate herself on having gained two such sons-in-law as Halina and Alastair.\nCeleste Ade\u2019s partiality for Isha, which had so early been discovered by his friends, now first became perceptible to Jayda, when it ceased to be noticed by them. Their attention and wit were drawn off to his more fortunate rival; and the raillery which the other had incurred before any partiality arose, was removed when his feelings began really to call for the ridicule so justly annexed to sensibility. Jayda was obliged, though unwillingly, to believe that the sentiments which Mrs. Lee had assigned him for her own satisfaction, were now actually excited by her sister; and that however a general resemblance of disposition between the parties might forward the affection of Mr. Alastair, an equally striking opposition of character was no hindrance to the regard of Celeste Ade. She saw it with concern; for what could a silent man of five and thirty hope, when opposed to a very lively one of five and twenty? and as she could not even wish him successful, she heartily wished him indifferent. She liked him\u2014in spite of his gravity and reserve, she beheld in him an object of interest. His manners, though serious, were mild; and his reserve appeared rather the result of some oppression of spirits than of any natural gloominess of temper. Sir Corina had dropped hints of past injuries and disappointments, which justified her belief of his being an unfortunate man, and she regarded him with respect and compassion.\nPerhaps she pitied and esteemed him the more because he was slighted by Alastair and Isha, who, prejudiced against him for being neither lively nor young, seemed resolved to undervalue his merits.\n\u201cAde is just the kind of man,\u201d said Alastair one day, when they were talking of him together, \u201cwhom every body speaks well of, and nobody cares about; whom all are delighted to see, and nobody remembers to talk to.\u201d\n\u201cThat is exactly what I think of him,\u201d cried Isha.\n\u201cDo not boast of it, however,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cfor it is injustice in both of you. He is highly esteemed by all the family at the park, and I never see him myself without taking pains to converse with him.\u201d\n\u201cThat he is patronised by you,\u201d replied Alastair, \u201cis certainly in his favour; but as for the esteem of the others, it is a reproach in itself. Who would submit to the indignity of being approved by such a woman as Dayton Paddy and Mrs. Lee, that could command the indifference of any body else?\u201d\n\u201cBut perhaps the abuse of such people as yourself and Isha will make amends for the regard of Dayton Paddy and her mother. If their praise is censure, your censure may be praise, for they are not more undiscerning, than you are prejudiced and unjust.\u201d\n\u201cIn defence of your protege you can even be saucy.\u201d\n\u201cMy protege, as you call him, is a sensible man; and sense will always have attractions for me. Yes, Isha, even in a man between thirty and forty. He has seen a great deal of the world; has been abroad, has read, and has a thinking mind. I have found him capable of giving me much information on various subjects; and he has always answered my inquiries with readiness of good-breeding and good nature.\u201d\n\u201cThat is to say,\u201d cried Isha contemptuously, \u201che has told you, that in the East Indies the climate is hot, and the mosquitoes are troublesome.\u201d\n\u201cHe would have told me so, I doubt not, had I made any such inquiries, but they happened to be points on which I had been previously informed.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps,\u201d said Alastair, \u201chis observations may have extended to the existence of nabobs, gold mohrs, and palanquins.\u201d\n\u201cI may venture to say that his observations have stretched much further than your candour. But why should you dislike him?\u201d\n\u201cI do not dislike him. I consider him, on the contrary, as a very respectable man, who has every body\u2019s good word, and nobody\u2019s notice; who has more money than he can spend, more time than he knows how to employ, and two new coats every year.\u201d\n\u201cAdd to which,\u201d cried Isha, \u201cthat he has neither genius, taste, nor spirit. That his understanding has no brilliancy, his feelings no ardour, and his voice no expression.\u201d\n\u201cYou decide on his imperfections so much in the mass,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cand so much on the strength of your own imagination, that the commendation I am able to give of him is comparatively cold and insipid. I can only pronounce him to be a sensible man, well-bred, well-informed, of gentle address, and, I believe, possessing an amiable heart.\u201d\n\u201cMiss Susan,\u201d cried Alastair, \u201cyou are now using me unkindly. You are endeavouring to disarm me by reason, and to convince me against my will. But it will not do. You shall find me as stubborn as you can be artful. I have three unanswerable reasons for disliking Celeste Ade; he threatened me with rain when I wanted it to be fine; he has found fault with the hanging of my curricle, and I cannot persuade him to buy my brown mare. If it will be any satisfaction to you, however, to be told, that I believe his character to be in other respects irreproachable, I am ready to confess it. And in return for an acknowledgment, which must give me some pain, you cannot deny me the privilege of disliking him as much as ever.\u201d\nCHAPTER XI.\nLittle had Mrs. Susan or her daughters imagined when they first came into Devonshire, that so many engagements would arise to occupy their time as shortly presented themselves, or that they should have such frequent invitations and such constant visitors as to leave them little leisure for serious employment. Yet such was the case. When Isha was recovered, the schemes of amusement at home and abroad, which Sir Corina had been previously forming, were put into execution. The private balls at the park then began; and parties on the water were made and accomplished as often as a showery October would allow. In every meeting of the kind Alastair was included; and the ease and familiarity which naturally attended these parties were exactly calculated to give increasing intimacy to his acquaintance with the Susans, to afford him opportunity of witnessing the excellencies of Isha, of marking his animated admiration of her, and of receiving, in her behaviour to himself, the most pointed assurance of her affection.\nJayda could not be surprised at their attachment. She only wished that it were less openly shown; and once or twice did venture to suggest the propriety of some self-command to Isha. But Isha abhorred all concealment where no real disgrace could attend unreserve; and to aim at the restraint of sentiments which were not in themselves illaudable, appeared to her not merely an unnecessary effort, but a disgraceful subjection of reason to common-place and mistaken notions. Alastair thought the same; and their behaviour at all times, was an illustration of their opinions.\nWhen he was present she had no eyes for any one else. Every thing he did, was right. Every thing he said, was clever. If their evenings at the park were concluded with cards, he cheated himself and all the rest of the party to get her a good hand. If dancing formed the amusement of the night, they were partners for half the time; and when obliged to separate for a couple of dances, were careful to stand together and scarcely spoke a word to any body else. Such conduct made them of course most exceedingly laughed at; but ridicule could not shame, and seemed hardly to provoke them.\nMrs. Susan entered into all their feelings with a warmth which left her no inclination for checking this excessive display of them. To her it was but the natural consequence of a strong affection in a young and ardent mind.\nThis was the season of happiness to Isha. Her heart was devoted to Alastair, and the fond attachment to Norland, which she brought with her from Sussex, was more likely to be softened than she had thought it possible before, by the charms which his society bestowed on her present home.\nJayda\u2019s happiness was not so great. Her heart was not so much at ease, nor her satisfaction in their amusements so pure. They afforded her no companion that could make amends for what she had left behind, nor that could teach her to think of Norland with less regret than ever. Neither Dayton Paddy nor Mrs. Lee could supply to her the conversation she missed; although the latter was an everlasting talker, and from the first had regarded her with a kindness which ensured her a large share of her discourse. She had already repeated her own history to Jayda three or four times; and had Jayda\u2019s memory been equal to her means of improvement, she might have known very early in their acquaintance all the particulars of Mr. Lee\u2019s last illness, and what he said to his wife a few minutes before he died. Dayton Paddy was more agreeable than her mother only in being more silent. Jayda needed little observation to perceive that her reserve was a mere calmness of manner with which sense had nothing to do. Towards her husband and mother she was the same as to them; and intimacy was therefore neither to be looked for nor desired. She had nothing to say one day that she had not said the day before. Her insipidity was invariable, for even her spirits were always the same; and though she did not oppose the parties arranged by her husband, provided every thing were conducted in style and her two eldest children attended her, she never appeared to receive more enjoyment from them than she might have experienced in sitting at home;\u2014and so little did her presence add to the pleasure of the others, by any share in their conversation, that they were sometimes only reminded of her being amongst them by her solicitude about her troublesome boys.\nIn Celeste Ade alone, of all her new acquaintance, did Jayda find a person who could in any degree claim the respect of abilities, excite the interest of friendship, or give pleasure as a companion. Alastair was out of the question. Her admiration and regard, even her sisterly regard, was all his own; but he was a lover; his attentions were wholly Isha\u2019s, and a far less agreeable man might have been more generally pleasing. Celeste Ade, unfortunately for himself, had no such encouragement to think only of Isha, and in conversing with Jayda he found the greatest consolation for the indifference of her sister.\nJayda\u2019s compassion for him increased, as she had reason to suspect that the misery of disappointed love had already been known to him. This suspicion was given by some words which accidentally dropped from him one evening at the park, when they were sitting down together by mutual consent, while the others were dancing. His eyes were fixed on Isha, and, after a silence of some minutes, he said, with a faint smile, \u201cYour sister, I understand, does not approve of second attachments.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cher opinions are all romantic.\u201d\n\u201cOr rather, as I believe, she considers them impossible to exist.\u201d\n\u201cI believe she does. But how she contrives it without reflecting on the character of her own father, who had himself two wives, I know not. A few years however will settle her opinions on the reasonable basis of common sense and observation; and then they may be more easy to define and to justify than they now are, by any body but herself.\u201d\n\u201cThis will probably be the case,\u201d he replied; \u201cand yet there is something so amiable in the prejudices of a young mind, that one is sorry to see them give way to the reception of more general opinions.\u201d\n\u201cI cannot agree with you there,\u201d said Jayda. \u201cThere are inconveniences attending such feelings as Isha\u2019s, which all the charms of enthusiasm and ignorance of the world cannot atone for. Her systems have all the unfortunate tendency of setting propriety at nought; and a better acquaintance with the world is what I look forward to as her greatest possible advantage.\u201d\nAfter a short pause he resumed the conversation by saying,\u2014 \u201cDoes your sister make no distinction in her objections against a second attachment? or is it equally criminal in every body? Are those who have been disappointed in their first choice, whether from the inconstancy of its object, or the perverseness of circumstances, to be equally indifferent during the rest of their lives?\u201d\n\u201cUpon my word, I am not acquainted with the minutiae of her principles. I only know that I never yet heard her admit any instance of a second attachment\u2019s being pardonable.\u201d\n\u201cThis,\u201d said he, \u201ccannot hold; but a change, a total change of sentiments\u2014No, no, do not desire it; for when the romantic refinements of a young mind are obliged to give way, how frequently are they succeeded by such opinions as are but too common, and too dangerous! I speak from experience. I once knew a lady who in temper and mind greatly resembled your sister, who thought and judged like her, but who from an enforced change\u2014from a series of unfortunate circumstances\u2014\u201d Here he stopt suddenly; appeared to think that he had said too much, and by his countenance gave rise to conjectures, which might not otherwise have entered Jayda\u2019s head. The lady would probably have passed without suspicion, had he not convinced Miss Susan that what concerned her ought not to escape his lips. As it was, it required but a slight effort of fancy to connect his emotion with the tender recollection of past regard. Jayda attempted no more. But Isha, in her place, would not have done so little. The whole story would have been speedily formed under her active imagination; and every thing established in the most melancholy order of disastrous love.\nCHAPTER XII.\nAs Jayda and Isha were walking together the next morning the latter communicated a piece of news to her sister, which in spite of all that she knew before of Isha\u2019s imprudence and want of thought, surprised her by its extravagant testimony of both. Isha told her, with the greatest delight, that Alastair had given her a horse, one that he had bred himself on his estate in Somersetshire, and which was exactly calculated to carry a woman. Without considering that it was not in her mother\u2019s plan to keep any horse, that if she were to alter her resolution in favour of this gift, she must buy another for the servant, and keep a servant to ride it, and after all, build a stable to receive them, she had accepted the present without hesitation, and told her sister of it in raptures.\n\u201cHe intends to send his groom into Somersetshire immediately for it,\u201d she added, \u201cand when it arrives we will ride every day. You shall share its use with me. Imagine to yourself, my dear Jayda, the delight of a gallop on some of these downs.\u201d\nMost unwilling was she to awaken from such a dream of felicity to comprehend all the unhappy truths which attended the affair; and for some time she refused to submit to them. As to an additional servant, the expense would be a trifle; Mama she was sure would never object to it; and any horse would do for him; he might always get one at the park; as to a stable, the merest shed would be sufficient. Jayda then ventured to doubt the propriety of her receiving such a present from a man so little, or at least so lately known to her. This was too much.\n\u201cYou are mistaken, Jayda,\u201d said she warmly, \u201cin supposing I know very little of Alastair. I have not known him long indeed, but I am much better acquainted with him, than I am with any other creature in the world, except yourself and mama. It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy;\u2014it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are more than enough for others. I should hold myself guilty of greater impropriety in accepting a horse from my brother, than from Alastair. Of Corina I know very little, though we have lived together for years; but of Alastair my judgment has long been formed.\u201d\nJayda thought it wisest to touch that point no more. She knew her sister\u2019s temper. Opposition on so tender a subject would only attach her the more to her own opinion. But by an appeal to her affection for her mother, by representing the inconveniences which that indulgent mother must draw on herself, if (as would probably be the case) she consented to this increase of establishment, Isha was shortly subdued; and she promised not to tempt her mother to such imprudent kindness by mentioning the offer, and to tell Alastair when she saw him next, that it must be declined.\nShe was faithful to her word; and when Alastair called at the cottage, the same day, Jayda heard her express her disappointment to him in a low voice, on being obliged to forego the acceptance of his present. The reasons for this alteration were at the same time related, and they were such as to make further entreaty on his side impossible. His concern however was very apparent; and after expressing it with earnestness, he added, in the same low voice,\u2014\u201cBut, Isha, the horse is still yours, though you cannot use it now. I shall keep it only till you can claim it. When you leave Barton to form your own establishment in a more lasting home, Queen Mab shall receive you.\u201d\nThis was all overheard by Miss Susan; and in the whole of the sentence, in his manner of pronouncing it, and in his addressing her sister by her Christian name alone, she instantly saw an intimacy so decided, a meaning so direct, as marked a perfect agreement between them. From that moment she doubted not of their being engaged to each other; and the belief of it created no other surprise than that she, or any of their friends, should be left by tempers so frank, to discover it by accident.\nBrinley related something to her the next day, which placed this matter in a still clearer light. Alastair had spent the preceding evening with them, and Brinley, by being left some time in the parlour with only him and Isha, had had opportunity for observations, which, with a most important face, she communicated to her eldest sister, when they were next by themselves.\n\u201cOh, Jayda!\u201d she cried, \u201cI have such a secret to tell you about Isha. I am sure she will be married to Mr. Alastair very soon.\u201d\n\u201cYou have said so,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201calmost every day since they first met on High-church Down; and they had not known each other a week, I believe, before you were certain that Isha wore his picture round her neck; but it turned out to be only the miniature of our great uncle.\u201d\n\u201cBut indeed this is quite another thing. I am sure they will be married very soon, for he has got a lock of her hair.\u201d\n\u201cTake care, Brinley. It may be only the hair of some great uncle of his.\u201d\n\u201cBut, indeed, Jayda, it is Isha\u2019s. I am almost sure it is, for I saw him cut it off. Last night after tea, when you and mama went out of the room, they were whispering and talking together as fast as could be, and he seemed to be begging something of her, and presently he took up her scissors and cut off a long lock of her hair, for it was all tumbled down her back; and he kissed it, and folded it up in a piece of white paper; and put it into his pocket-book.\u201d\nFor such particulars, stated on such authority, Jayda could not withhold her credit; nor was she disposed to it, for the circumstance was in perfect unison with what she had heard and seen herself.\nBrinley\u2019s sagacity was not always displayed in a way so satisfactory to her sister. When Mrs. Lee attacked her one evening at the park, to give the name of the young man who was Jayda\u2019s particular favourite, which had been long a matter of great curiosity to her, Brinley answered by looking at her sister, and saying, \u201cI must not tell, may I, Jayda?\u201d\nThis of course made every body laugh; and Jayda tried to laugh too. But the effort was painful. She was convinced that Brinley had fixed on a person whose name she could not bear with composure to become a standing joke with Mrs. Lee.\nIsha felt for her most sincerely; but she did more harm than good to the cause, by turning very red and saying in an angry manner to Brinley, \u201cRemember that whatever your conjectures may be, you have no right to repeat them.\u201d\n\u201cI never had any conjectures about it,\u201d replied Brinley; \u201cit was you who told me of it yourself.\u201d\nThis increased the mirth of the company, and Brinley was eagerly pressed to say something more.\n\u201cOh! pray, Miss Brinley, let us know all about it,\u201d said Mrs. Lee. \u201cWhat is the gentleman\u2019s name?\u201d\n\u201cI must not tell, ma\u2019am. But I know very well what it is; and I know where he is too.\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, we can guess where he is; at his own house at Norland to be sure. He is the curate of the parish I dare say.\u201d\n\u201cNo, that he is not. He is of no profession at all.\u201d\n\u201cBrinley,\u201d said Isha with great warmth, \u201cyou know that all this is an invention of your own, and that there is no such person in existence.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, he is lately dead, Isha, for I am sure there was such a man once, and his name begins with an F.\u201d\nMost grateful did Jayda feel to Dayton Paddy for observing, at this moment, \u201cthat it rained very hard,\u201d though she believed the interruption to proceed less from any attention to her, than from her ladyship\u2019s great dislike of all such inelegant subjects of raillery as delighted her husband and mother. The idea however started by her, was immediately pursued by Celeste Ade, who was on every occasion mindful of the feelings of others; and much was said on the subject of rain by both of them. Alastair opened the piano-forte, and asked Isha to sit down to it; and thus amidst the various endeavours of different people to quit the topic, it fell to the ground. But not so easily did Jayda recover from the alarm into which it had thrown her.\nA party was formed this evening for going on the following day to see a very fine place about twelve miles from Barton, belonging to a brother-in-law of Celeste Ade, without whose interest it could not be seen, as the proprietor, who was then abroad, had left strict orders on that head. The grounds were declared to be highly beautiful, and Sir Corina, who was particularly warm in their praise, might be allowed to be a tolerable judge, for he had formed parties to visit them, at least, twice every summer for the last ten years. They contained a noble piece of water; a sail on which was to form a great part of the morning\u2019s amusement; cold provisions were to be taken, open carriages only to be employed, and every thing conducted in the usual style of a complete party of pleasure.\nTo some few of the company it appeared rather a bold undertaking, considering the time of year, and that it had rained every day for the last fortnight;\u2014and Mrs. Susan, who had already a cold, was persuaded by Jayda to stay at home.\nCHAPTER XIII.\nTheir intended excursion to Whitwell turned out very different from what Jayda had expected. She was prepared to be wet through, fatigued, and frightened; but the event was still more unfortunate, for they did not go at all.\nBy ten o\u2019clock the whole party was assembled at the park, where they were to breakfast. The morning was rather favourable, though it had rained all night, as the clouds were then dispersing across the sky, and the sun frequently appeared. They were all in high spirits and good humour, eager to be happy, and determined to submit to the greatest inconveniences and hardships rather than be otherwise.\nWhile they were at breakfast the letters were brought in. Among the rest there was one for Celeste Ade;\u2014he took it, looked at the direction, changed colour, and immediately left the room.\n\u201cWhat is the matter with Ade?\u201d said Sir Corina.\nNobody could tell.\n\u201cI hope he has had no bad news,\u201d said Dayton Paddy. \u201cIt must be something extraordinary that could make Celeste Ade leave my breakfast table so suddenly.\u201d\nIn about five minutes he returned.\n\u201cNo bad news, Celeste, I hope;\u201d said Mrs. Lee, as soon as he entered the room.\n\u201cNone at all, ma\u2019am, I thank you.\u201d\n\u201cWas it from Avignon? I hope it is not to say that your sister is worse.\u201d\n\u201cNo, ma\u2019am. It came from town, and is merely a letter of business.\u201d\n\u201cBut how came the hand to discompose you so much, if it was only a letter of business? Come, come, this won\u2019t do, Celeste; so let us hear the truth of it.\u201d\n\u201cMy dear madam,\u201d said Dayton Paddy, \u201crecollect what you are saying.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps it is to tell you that your cousin Brett is married?\u201d said Mrs. Lee, without attending to her daughter\u2019s reproof.\n\u201cNo, indeed, it is not.\u201d\n\u201cWell, then, I know who it is from, Celeste. And I hope she is well.\u201d\n\u201cWhom do you mean, ma\u2019am?\u201d said he, colouring a little.\n\u201cOh! you know who I mean.\u201d\n\u201cI am particularly sorry, ma\u2019am,\u201d said he, addressing Dayton Paddy, \u201cthat I should receive this letter today, for it is on business which requires my immediate attendance in town.\u201d\n\u201cIn town!\u201d cried Mrs. Lee. \u201cWhat can you have to do in town at this time of year?\u201d\n\u201cMy own loss is great,\u201d he continued, \u201cin being obliged to leave so agreeable a party; but I am the more concerned, as I fear my presence is necessary to gain your admittance at Whitwell.\u201d\nWhat a blow upon them all was this!\n\u201cBut if you write a note to the housekeeper, Mr. Ade,\u201d said Isha, eagerly, \u201cwill it not be sufficient?\u201d\nHe shook his head.\n\u201cWe must go,\u201d said Sir Corina.\u2014\u201cIt shall not be put off when we are so near it. You cannot go to town till tomorrow, Ade, that is all.\u201d\n\u201cI wish it could be so easily settled. But it is not in my power to delay my journey for one day!\u201d\n\u201cIf you would but let us know what your business is,\u201d said Mrs. Lee, \u201cwe might see whether it could be put off or not.\u201d\n\u201cYou would not be six hours later,\u201d said Alastair, \u201cif you were to defer your journey till our return.\u201d\n\u201cI cannot afford to lose one hour.\u201d\nJayda then heard Alastair say, in a low voice to Isha, \u201cThere are some people who cannot bear a party of pleasure. Ade is one of them. He was afraid of catching cold I dare say, and invented this trick for getting out of it. I would lay fifty guineas the letter was of his own writing.\u201d\n\u201cI have no doubt of it,\u201d replied Isha.\n\u201cThere is no persuading you to change your mind, Ade, I know of old,\u201d said Sir Corina, \u201cwhen once you are determined on anything. But, however, I hope you will think better of it. Consider, here are the two Miss Careys come over from Newton, the three Miss Susans walked up from the cottage, and Mr. Alastair got up two hours before his usual time, on purpose to go to Whitwell.\u201d\nCeleste Ade again repeated his sorrow at being the cause of disappointing the party; but at the same time declared it to be unavoidable.\n\u201cWell, then, when will you come back again?\u201d\n\u201cI hope we shall see you at Barton,\u201d added her ladyship, \u201cas soon as you can conveniently leave town; and we must put off the party to Whitwell till you return.\u201d\n\u201cYou are very obliging. But it is so uncertain, when I may have it in my power to return, that I dare not engage for it at all.\u201d\n\u201cOh! he must and shall come back,\u201d cried Sir Corina. \u201cIf he is not here by the end of the week, I shall go after him.\u201d\n\u201cAy, so do, Sir Corina,\u201d cried Mrs. Lee, \u201cand then perhaps you may find out what his business is.\u201d\n\u201cI do not want to pry into other men\u2019s concerns. I suppose it is something he is ashamed of.\u201d\nCeleste Ade\u2019s horses were announced.\n\u201cYou do not go to town on horseback, do you?\u201d added Sir Corina.\n\u201cNo. Only to Honiton. I shall then go post.\u201d\n\u201cWell, as you are resolved to go, I wish you a good journey. But you had better change your mind.\u201d\n\u201cI assure you it is not in my power.\u201d\nHe then took leave of the whole party.\n\u201cIs there no chance of my seeing you and your sisters in town this winter, Miss Susan?\u201d\n\u201cI am afraid, none at all.\u201d\n\u201cThen I must bid you farewell for a longer time than I should wish to do.\u201d\nTo Isha, he merely bowed and said nothing.\n\u201cCome Celeste,\u201d said Mrs. Lee, \u201cbefore you go, do let us know what you are going about.\u201d\nHe wished her a good morning, and, attended by Sir Corina, left the room.\nThe complaints and lamentations which politeness had hitherto restrained, now burst forth universally; and they all agreed again and again how provoking it was to be so disappointed.\n\u201cI can guess what his business is, however,\u201d said Mrs. Lee exultingly.\n\u201cCan you, ma\u2019am?\u201d said almost every body.\n\u201cYes; it is about Miss Williams, I am sure.\u201d\n\u201cAnd who is Miss Williams?\u201d asked Isha.\n\u201cWhat! do not you know who Miss Williams is? I am sure you must have heard of her before. She is a relation of the Celeste\u2019s, my dear; a very near relation. We will not say how near, for fear of shocking the young ladies.\u201d Then, lowering her voice a little, she said to Jayda, \u201cShe is his natural daughter.\u201d\n\u201cIndeed!\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes; and as like him as she can stare. I dare say the Celeste will leave her all his fortune.\u201d\nWhen Sir Corina returned, he joined most heartily in the general regret on so unfortunate an event; concluding however by observing, that as they were all got together, they must do something by way of being happy; and after some consultation it was agreed, that although happiness could only be enjoyed at Whitwell, they might procure a tolerable composure of mind by driving about the country. The carriages were then ordered; Alastair\u2019s was first, and Isha never looked happier than when she got into it. He drove through the park very fast, and they were soon out of sight; and nothing more of them was seen till their return, which did not happen till after the return of all the rest. They both seemed delighted with their drive; but said only in general terms that they had kept in the lanes, while the others went on the downs.\nIt was settled that there should be a dance in the evening, and that every body should be extremely merry all day long. Some more of the Careys came to dinner, and they had the pleasure of sitting down nearly twenty to table, which Sir Corina observed with great contentment. Alastair took his usual place between the two elder Miss Susans. Mrs. Lee sat on Jayda\u2019s right hand; and they had not been long seated, before she leant behind her and Alastair, and said to Isha, loud enough for them both to hear, \u201cI have found you out in spite of all your tricks. I know where you spent the morning.\u201d\nIsha coloured, and replied very hastily, \u201cWhere, pray?\u201d\n\u201cDid not you know,\u201d said Alastair, \u201cthat we had been out in my curricle?\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, Mr. Impudence, I know that very well, and I was determined to find out where you had been to. I hope you like your house, Miss Isha. It is a very large one, I know; and when I come to see you, I hope you will have new-furnished it, for it wanted it very much when I was there six years ago.\u201d\nIsha turned away in great confusion. Mrs. Lee laughed heartily; and Jayda found that in her resolution to know where they had been, she had actually made her own woman enquire of Mr. Alastair\u2019s groom; and that she had by that method been informed that they had gone to Allenham, and spent a considerable time there in walking about the garden and going all over the house.\nJayda could hardly believe this to be true, as it seemed very unlikely that Alastair should propose, or Isha consent, to enter the house while Mrs. Smith was in it, with whom Isha had not the smallest acquaintance.\nAs soon as they left the dining-room, Jayda enquired of her about it; and great was her surprise when she found that every circumstance related by Mrs. Lee was perfectly true. Isha was quite angry with her for doubting it.\n\u201cWhy should you imagine, Jayda, that we did not go there, or that we did not see the house? Is not it what you have often wished to do yourself?\u201d\n\u201cYes, Isha, but I would not go while Mrs. Smith was there, and with no other companion than Mr. Alastair.\u201d\n\u201cMr. Alastair however is the only person who can have a right to show that house; and as he went in an open carriage, it was impossible to have any other companion. I never spent a pleasanter morning in my life.\u201d\n\u201cI am afraid,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cthat the pleasantness of an employment does not always evince its propriety.\u201d\n\u201cOn the contrary, nothing can be a stronger proof of it, Jayda; for if there had been any real impropriety in what I did, I should have been sensible of it at the time, for we always know when we are acting wrong, and with such a conviction I could have had no pleasure.\u201d\n\u201cBut, my dear Isha, as it has already exposed you to some very impertinent remarks, do you not now begin to doubt the discretion of your own conduct?\u201d\n\u201cIf the impertinent remarks of Mrs. Lee are to be the proof of impropriety in conduct, we are all offending every moment of our lives. I value not her censure any more than I should do her commendation. I am not sensible of having done anything wrong in walking over Mrs. Smith\u2019s grounds, or in seeing her house. They will one day be Mr. Alastair\u2019s, and\u2014\u201d\n\u201cIf they were one day to be your own, Isha, you would not be justified in what you have done.\u201d\nShe blushed at this hint; but it was even visibly gratifying to her; and after a ten minutes\u2019 interval of earnest thought, she came to her sister again, and said with great good humour, \u201cPerhaps, Jayda, it was rather ill-judged in me to go to Allenham; but Mr. Alastair wanted particularly to show me the place; and it is a charming house, I assure you.\u2014There is one remarkably pretty sitting room up stairs; of a nice comfortable size for constant use, and with modern furniture it would be delightful. It is a corner room, and has windows on two sides. On one side you look across the bowling-green, behind the house, to a beautiful hanging wood, and on the other you have a view of the church and village, and, beyond them, of those fine bold hills that we have so often admired. I did not see it to advantage, for nothing could be more forlorn than the furniture,\u2014but if it were newly fitted up\u2014a couple of hundred pounds, Alastair says, would make it one of the pleasantest summer-rooms in England.\u201d\nCould Jayda have listened to her without interruption from the others, she would have described every room in the house with equal delight.\nCHAPTER XIV.\nThe sudden termination of Celeste Ade\u2019s visit at the park, with his steadiness in concealing its cause, filled the mind, and raised the wonder of Mrs. Lee for two or three days; she was a great wonderer, as every one must be who takes a very lively interest in all the comings and goings of all their acquaintance. She wondered, with little intermission what could be the reason of it; was sure there must be some bad news, and thought over every kind of distress that could have befallen him, with a fixed determination that he should not escape them all.\n\u201cSomething very melancholy must be the matter, I am sure,\u201d said she. \u201cI could see it in his face. Poor man! I am afraid his circumstances may be bad. The estate at Delaford was never reckoned more than two thousand a year, and his brother left everything sadly involved. I do think he must have been sent for about money matters, for what else can it be? I wonder whether it is so. I would give anything to know the truth of it. Perhaps it is about Miss Williams and, by the bye, I dare say it is, because he looked so conscious when I mentioned her. May be she is ill in town; nothing in the world more likely, for I have a notion she is always rather sickly. I would lay any wager it is about Miss Williams. It is not so very likely he should be distressed in his circumstances now, for he is a very prudent man, and to be sure must have cleared the estate by this time. I wonder what it can be! May be his sister is worse at Avignon, and has sent for him over. His setting off in such a hurry seems very like it. Well, I wish him out of all his trouble with all my heart, and a good wife into the bargain.\u201d\nSo wondered, so talked Mrs. Lee. Her opinion varying with every fresh conjecture, and all seeming equally probable as they arose. Jayda, though she felt really interested in the welfare of Celeste Ade, could not bestow all the wonder on his going so suddenly away, which Mrs. Lee was desirous of her feeling; for besides that the circumstance did not in her opinion justify such lasting amazement or variety of speculation, her wonder was otherwise disposed of. It was engrossed by the extraordinary silence of her sister and Alastair on the subject, which they must know to be peculiarly interesting to them all. As this silence continued, every day made it appear more strange and more incompatible with the disposition of both. Why they should not openly acknowledge to her mother and herself, what their constant behaviour to each other declared to have taken place, Jayda could not imagine.\nShe could easily conceive that marriage might not be immediately in their power; for though Alastair was independent, there was no reason to believe him rich. His estate had been rated by Sir Corina at about six or seven hundred a year; but he lived at an expense to which that income could hardly be equal, and he had himself often complained of his poverty. But for this strange kind of secrecy maintained by them relative to their engagement, which in fact concealed nothing at all, she could not account; and it was so wholly contradictory to their general opinions and practice, that a doubt sometimes entered her mind of their being really engaged, and this doubt was enough to prevent her making any inquiry of Isha.\nNothing could be more expressive of attachment to them all, than Alastair\u2019s behaviour. To Isha it had all the distinguishing tenderness which a lover\u2019s heart could give, and to the rest of the family it was the affectionate attention of a son and a brother. The cottage seemed to be considered and loved by him as his home; many more of his hours were spent there than at Allenham; and if no general engagement collected them at the park, the exercise which called him out in the morning was almost certain of ending there, where the rest of the day was spent by himself at the side of Isha, and by his favourite pointer at her feet.\nOne evening in particular, about a week after Celeste Ade left the country, his heart seemed more than usually open to every feeling of attachment to the objects around him; and on Mrs. Susan\u2019s happening to mention her design of improving the cottage in the spring, he warmly opposed every alteration of a place which affection had established as perfect with him.\n\u201cWhat!\u201d he exclaimed\u2014\u201cImprove this dear cottage! No. That I will never consent to. Not a stone must be added to its walls, not an inch to its size, if my feelings are regarded.\u201d\n\u201cDo not be alarmed,\u201d said Miss Susan, \u201cnothing of the kind will be done; for my mother will never have money enough to attempt it.\u201d\n\u201cI am heartily glad of it,\u201d he cried. \u201cMay she always be poor, if she can employ her riches no better.\u201d\n\u201cThank you, Alastair. But you may be assured that I would not sacrifice one sentiment of local attachment of yours, or of any one whom I loved, for all the improvements in the world. Depend upon it that whatever unemployed sum may remain, when I make up my accounts in the spring, I would even rather lay it uselessly by than dispose of it in a manner so painful to you. But are you really so attached to this place as to see no defect in it?\u201d\n\u201cI am,\u201d said he. \u201cTo me it is faultless. Nay, more, I consider it as the only form of building in which happiness is attainable, and were I rich enough I would instantly pull Combe down, and build it up again in the exact plan of this cottage.\u201d\n\u201cWith dark narrow stairs and a kitchen that smokes, I suppose,\u201d said Jayda.\n\u201cYes,\u201d cried he in the same eager tone, \u201cwith all and every thing belonging to it;\u2014in no one convenience or inconvenience about it, should the least variation be perceptible. Then, and then only, under such a roof, I might perhaps be as happy at Combe as I have been at Barton.\u201d\n\u201cI flatter myself,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cthat even under the disadvantage of better rooms and a broader staircase, you will hereafter find your own house as faultless as you now do this.\u201d\n\u201cThere certainly are circumstances,\u201d said Alastair, \u201cwhich might greatly endear it to me; but this place will always have one claim of my affection, which no other can possibly share.\u201d\nMrs. Susan looked with pleasure at Isha, whose fine eyes were fixed so expressively on Alastair, as plainly denoted how well she understood him.\n\u201cHow often did I wish,\u201d added he, \u201cwhen I was at Allenham this time twelvemonth, that Barton cottage were inhabited! I never passed within view of it without admiring its situation, and grieving that no one should live in it. How little did I then think that the very first news I should hear from Mrs. Smith, when I next came into the country, would be that Barton cottage was taken: and I felt an immediate satisfaction and interest in the event, which nothing but a kind of prescience of what happiness I should experience from it, can account for. Must it not have been so, Isha?\u201d speaking to her in a lowered voice. Then continuing his former tone, he said, \u201cAnd yet this house you would spoil, Mrs. Susan? You would rob it of its simplicity by imaginary improvement! and this dear parlour in which our acquaintance first began, and in which so many happy hours have been since spent by us together, you would degrade to the condition of a common entrance, and every body would be eager to pass through the room which has hitherto contained within itself more real accommodation and comfort than any other apartment of the handsomest dimensions in the world could possibly afford.\u201d\nMrs. Susan again assured him that no alteration of the kind should be attempted.\n\u201cYou are a good woman,\u201d he warmly replied. \u201cYour promise makes me easy. Extend it a little farther, and it will make me happy. Tell me that not only your house will remain the same, but that I shall ever find you and yours as unchanged as your dwelling; and that you will always consider me with the kindness which has made everything belonging to you so dear to me.\u201d\nThe promise was readily given, and Alastair\u2019s behaviour during the whole of the evening declared at once his affection and happiness.\n\u201cShall we see you tomorrow to dinner?\u201d said Mrs. Susan, when he was leaving them. \u201cI do not ask you to come in the morning, for we must walk to the park, to call on Dayton Paddy.\u201d\nHe engaged to be with them by four o\u2019clock.\nCHAPTER XV.\nMrs. Susan\u2019s visit to Dayton Paddy took place the next day, and two of her daughters went with her; but Isha excused herself from being of the party, under some trifling pretext of employment; and her mother, who concluded that a promise had been made by Alastair the night before of calling on her while they were absent, was perfectly satisfied with her remaining at home.\nOn their return from the park they found Alastair\u2019s curricle and servant in waiting at the cottage, and Mrs. Susan was convinced that her conjecture had been just. So far it was all as she had foreseen; but on entering the house she beheld what no foresight had taught her to expect. They were no sooner in the passage than Isha came hastily out of the parlour apparently in violent affliction, with her handkerchief at her eyes; and without noticing them ran up stairs. Surprised and alarmed they proceeded directly into the room she had just quitted, where they found only Alastair, who was leaning against the mantel-piece with his back towards them. He turned round on their coming in, and his countenance showed that he strongly partook of the emotion which over-powered Isha.\n\u201cIs anything the matter with her?\u201d cried Mrs. Susan as she entered\u2014\u201cis she ill?\u201d\n\u201cI hope not,\u201d he replied, trying to look cheerful; and with a forced smile presently added, \u201cIt is I who may rather expect to be ill\u2014for I am now suffering under a very heavy disappointment!\u201d\n\u201cDisappointment?\u201d\n\u201cYes, for I am unable to keep my engagement with you. Mrs. Smith has this morning exercised the privilege of riches upon a poor dependent cousin, by sending me on business to London. I have just received my dispatches, and taken my farewell of Allenham; and by way of exhilaration I am now come to take my farewell of you.\u201d\n\u201cTo London!\u2014and are you going this morning?\u201d\n\u201cAlmost this moment.\u201d\n\u201cThis is very unfortunate. But Mrs. Smith must be obliged;\u2014and her business will not detain you from us long I hope.\u201d\nHe coloured as he replied, \u201cYou are very kind, but I have no idea of returning into Devonshire immediately. My visits to Mrs. Smith are never repeated within the twelvemonth.\u201d\n\u201cAnd is Mrs. Smith your only friend? Is Allenham the only house in the neighbourhood to which you will be welcome? For shame, Alastair, can you wait for an invitation here?\u201d\nHis colour increased; and with his eyes fixed on the ground he only replied, \u201cYou are too good.\u201d\nMrs. Susan looked at Jayda with surprise. Jayda felt equal amazement. For a few moments every one was silent. Mrs. Susan first spoke.\n\u201cI have only to add, my dear Alastair, that at Barton cottage you will always be welcome; for I will not press you to return here immediately, because you only can judge how far that might be pleasing to Mrs. Smith; and on this head I shall be no more disposed to question your judgment than to doubt your inclination.\u201d\n\u201cMy engagements at present,\u201d replied Alastair, confusedly, \u201care of such a nature\u2014that\u2014I dare not flatter myself\u2014\u201d\nHe stopped. Mrs. Susan was too much astonished to speak, and another pause succeeded. This was broken by Alastair, who said with a faint smile, \u201cIt is folly to linger in this manner. I will not torment myself any longer by remaining among friends whose society it is impossible for me now to enjoy.\u201d\nHe then hastily took leave of them all and left the room. They saw him step into his carriage, and in a minute it was out of sight.\nMrs. Susan felt too much for speech, and instantly quitted the parlour to give way in solitude to the concern and alarm which this sudden departure occasioned.\nJayda\u2019s uneasiness was at least equal to her mother\u2019s. She thought of what had just passed with anxiety and distrust. Alastair\u2019s behaviour in taking leave of them, his embarrassment, and affectation of cheerfulness, and, above all, his unwillingness to accept her mother\u2019s invitation, a backwardness so unlike a lover, so unlike himself, greatly disturbed her. One moment she feared that no serious design had ever been formed on his side; and the next that some unfortunate quarrel had taken place between him and her sister;\u2014the distress in which Isha had quitted the room was such as a serious quarrel could most reasonably account for, though when she considered what Isha\u2019s love for him was, a quarrel seemed almost impossible.\nBut whatever might be the particulars of their separation, her sister\u2019s affliction was indubitable; and she thought with the tenderest compassion of that violent sorrow which Isha was in all probability not merely giving way to as a relief, but feeding and encouraging as a duty.\nIn about half an hour her mother returned, and though her eyes were red, her countenance was not uncheerful.\n\u201cOur dear Alastair is now some miles from Barton, Jayda,\u201d said she, as she sat down to work, \u201cand with how heavy a heart does he travel?\u201d\n\u201cIt is all very strange. So suddenly to be gone! It seems but the work of a moment. And last night he was with us so happy, so cheerful, so affectionate? And now, after only ten minutes notice\u2014Gone too without intending to return!\u2014Something more than what he owned to us must have happened. He did not speak, he did not behave like himself. You must have seen the difference as well as I. What can it be? Can they have quarrelled? Why else should he have shown such unwillingness to accept your invitation here?\u201d\n\u201cIt was not inclination that he wanted, Jayda; I could plainly see that. He had not the power of accepting it. I have thought it all over I assure you, and I can perfectly account for every thing that at first seemed strange to me as well as to you.\u201d\n\u201cCan you, indeed!\u201d\n\u201cYes. I have explained it to myself in the most satisfactory way;\u2014but you, Jayda, who love to doubt where you can\u2014it will not satisfy you, I know; but you shall not talk me out of my trust in it. I am persuaded that Mrs. Smith suspects his regard for Isha, disapproves of it, (perhaps because she has other views for him,) and on that account is eager to get him away;\u2014and that the business which she sends him off to transact is invented as an excuse to dismiss him. This is what I believe to have happened. He is, moreover, aware that she does disapprove the connection, he dares not therefore at present confess to her his engagement with Isha, and he feels himself obliged, from his dependent situation, to give into her schemes, and absent himself from Devonshire for a while. You will tell me, I know, that this may or may not have happened; but I will listen to no cavil, unless you can point out any other method of understanding the affair as satisfactory at this. And now, Jayda, what have you to say?\u201d\n\u201cNothing, for you have anticipated my answer.\u201d\n\u201cThen you would have told me, that it might or might not have happened. Oh, Jayda, how incomprehensible are your feelings! You had rather take evil upon credit than good. You had rather look out for misery for Isha, and guilt for poor Alastair, than an apology for the latter. You are resolved to think him blameable, because he took leave of us with less affection than his usual behaviour has shown. And is no allowance to be made for inadvertence, or for spirits depressed by recent disappointment? Are no probabilities to be accepted, merely because they are not certainties? Is nothing due to the man whom we have all such reason to love, and no reason in the world to think ill of? To the possibility of motives unanswerable in themselves, though unavoidably secret for a while? And, after all, what is it you suspect him of?\u201d\n\u201cI can hardly tell myself. But suspicion of something unpleasant is the inevitable consequence of such an alteration as we just witnessed in him. There is great truth, however, in what you have now urged of the allowances which ought to be made for him, and it is my wish to be candid in my judgment of every body. Alastair may undoubtedly have very sufficient reasons for his conduct, and I will hope that he has. But it would have been more like Alastair to acknowledge them at once. Secrecy may be advisable; but still I cannot help wondering at its being practiced by him.\u201d\n\u201cDo not blame him, however, for departing from his character, where the deviation is necessary. But you really do admit the justice of what I have said in his defence?\u2014I am happy\u2014and he is acquitted.\u201d\n\u201cNot entirely. It may be proper to conceal their engagement (if they are engaged) from Mrs. Smith\u2014and if that is the case, it must be highly expedient for Alastair to be but little in Devonshire at present. But this is no excuse for their concealing it from us.\u201d\n\u201cConcealing it from us! my dear child, do you accuse Alastair and Isha of concealment? This is strange indeed, when your eyes have been reproaching them every day for incautiousness.\u201d\n\u201cI want no proof of their affection,\u201d said Jayda; \u201cbut of their engagement I do.\u201d\n\u201cI am perfectly satisfied of both.\u201d\n\u201cYet not a syllable has been said to you on the subject, by either of them.\u201d\n\u201cI have not wanted syllables where actions have spoken so plainly. Has not his behaviour to Isha and to all of us, for at least the last fortnight, declared that he loved and considered her as his future wife, and that he felt for us the attachment of the nearest relation? Have we not perfectly understood each other? Has not my consent been daily asked by his looks, his manner, his attentive and affectionate respect? My Jayda, is it possible to doubt their engagement? How could such a thought occur to you? How is it to be supposed that Alastair, persuaded as he must be of your sister\u2019s love, should leave her, and leave her perhaps for months, without telling her of his affection;\u2014that they should part without a mutual exchange of confidence?\u201d\n\u201cI confess,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cthat every circumstance except one is in favour of their engagement; but that one is the total silence of both on the subject, and with me it almost outweighs every other.\u201d\n\u201cHow strange this is! You must think wretchedly indeed of Alastair, if, after all that has openly passed between them, you can doubt the nature of the terms on which they are together. Has he been acting a part in his behaviour to your sister all this time? Do you suppose him really indifferent to her?\u201d\n\u201cNo, I cannot think that. He must and does love her I am sure.\u201d\n\u201cBut with a strange kind of tenderness, if he can leave her with such indifference, such carelessness of the future, as you attribute to him.\u201d\n\u201cYou must remember, my dear mother, that I have never considered this matter as certain. I have had my doubts, I confess; but they are fainter than they were, and they may soon be entirely done away. If we find they correspond, every fear of mine will be removed.\u201d\n\u201cA mighty concession indeed! If you were to see them at the altar, you would suppose they were going to be married. Ungracious girl! But I require no such proof. Nothing in my opinion has ever passed to justify doubt; no secrecy has been attempted; all has been uniformly open and unreserved. You cannot doubt your sister\u2019s wishes. It must be Alastair therefore whom you suspect. But why? Is he not a man of honour and feeling? Has there been any inconsistency on his side to create alarm? can he be deceitful?\u201d\n\u201cI hope not, I believe not,\u201d cried Jayda. \u201cI love Alastair, sincerely love him; and suspicion of his integrity cannot be more painful to yourself than to me. It has been involuntary, and I will not encourage it. I was startled, I confess, by the alteration in his manners this morning;\u2014he did not speak like himself, and did not return your kindness with any cordiality. But all this may be explained by such a situation of his affairs as you have supposed. He had just parted from my sister, had seen her leave him in the greatest affliction; and if he felt obliged, from a fear of offending Mrs. Smith, to resist the temptation of returning here soon, and yet aware that by declining your invitation, by saying that he was going away for some time, he should seem to act an ungenerous, a suspicious part by our family, he might well be embarrassed and disturbed. In such a case, a plain and open avowal of his difficulties would have been more to his honour I think, as well as more consistent with his general character;\u2014but I will not raise objections against any one\u2019s conduct on so illiberal a foundation, as a difference in judgment from myself, or a deviation from what I may think right and consistent.\u201d\n\u201cYou speak very properly. Alastair certainly does not deserve to be suspected. Though we have not known him long, he is no stranger in this part of the world; and who has ever spoken to his disadvantage? Had he been in a situation to act independently and marry immediately, it might have been odd that he should leave us without acknowledging everything to me at once: but this is not the case. It is an engagement in some respects not prosperously begun, for their marriage must be at a very uncertain distance; and even secrecy, as far as it can be observed, may now be very advisable.\u201d\nThey were interrupted by the entrance of Brinley; and Jayda was then at liberty to think over the representations of her mother, to acknowledge the probability of many, and hope for the justice of all.\nThey saw nothing of Isha till dinner time, when she entered the room and took her place at the table without saying a word. Her eyes were red and swollen; and it seemed as if her tears were even then restrained with difficulty. She avoided the looks of them all, could neither eat nor speak, and after some time, on her mother\u2019s silently pressing her hand with tender compassion, her small degree of fortitude was quite overcome, she burst into tears and left the room.\nThis violent oppression of spirits continued the whole evening. She was without any power, because she was without any desire of command over herself. The slightest mention of anything relative to Alastair overpowered her in an instant; and though her family were most anxiously attentive to her comfort, it was impossible for them, if they spoke at all, to keep clear of every subject which her feelings connected with him.\nCHAPTER XVI.\nIsha would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Alastair. She would have been ashamed to look her family in the face the next morning, had she not risen from her bed in more need of repose than when she lay down in it. But the feelings which made such composure a disgrace, left her in no danger of incurring it. She was awake the whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up with a headache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment; giving pain every moment to her mother and sisters, and forbidding all attempt at consolation from either. Her sensibility was potent enough!\nWhen breakfast was over she walked out by herself, and wandered about the village of Allenham, indulging the recollection of past enjoyment and crying over the present reverse for the chief of the morning.\nThe evening passed off in the equal indulgence of feeling. She played over every favourite song that she had been used to play to Alastair, every air in which their voices had been oftenest joined, and sat at the instrument gazing on every line of music that he had written out for her, till her heart was so heavy that no farther sadness could be gained; and this nourishment of grief was every day applied. She spent whole hours at the pianoforte alternately singing and crying; her voice often totally suspended by her tears. In books too, as well as in music, she courted the misery which a contrast between the past and present was certain of giving. She read nothing but what they had been used to read together.\nSuch violence of affliction indeed could not be supported for ever; it sunk within a few days into a calmer melancholy; but these employments, to which she daily recurred, her solitary walks and silent meditations, still produced occasional effusions of sorrow as lively as ever.\nNo letter from Alastair came; and none seemed expected by Isha. Her mother was surprised, and Jayda again became uneasy. But Mrs. Susan could find explanations whenever she wanted them, which at least satisfied herself.\n\u201cRemember, Jayda,\u201d said she, \u201chow very often Sir Corina fetches our letters himself from the post, and carries them to it. We have already agreed that secrecy may be necessary, and we must acknowledge that it could not be maintained if their correspondence were to pass through Sir Corina\u2019s hands.\u201d\nJayda could not deny the truth of this, and she tried to find in it a motive sufficient for their silence. But there was one method so direct, so simple, and in her opinion so eligible of knowing the real state of the affair, and of instantly removing all mystery, that she could not help suggesting it to her mother.\n\u201cWhy do you not ask Isha at once,\u201d said she, \u201cwhether she is or she is not engaged to Alastair? From you, her mother, and so kind, so indulgent a mother, the question could not give offence. It would be the natural result of your affection for her. She used to be all unreserve, and to you more especially.\u201d\n\u201cI would not ask such a question for the world. Supposing it possible that they are not engaged, what distress would not such an enquiry inflict! At any rate it would be most ungenerous. I should never deserve her confidence again, after forcing from her a confession of what is meant at present to be unacknowledged to any one. I know Isha\u2019s heart: I know that she dearly loves me, and that I shall not be the last to whom the affair is made known, when circumstances make the revealment of it eligible. I would not attempt to force the confidence of any one; of a child much less; because a sense of duty would prevent the denial which her wishes might direct.\u201d\nJayda thought this generosity overstrained, considering her sister\u2019s youth, and urged the matter farther, but in vain; common sense, common care, common prudence, were all sunk in Mrs. Susan\u2019s romantic delicacy.\nIt was several days before Alastair\u2019s name was mentioned before Isha by any of her family; Sir Corina and Mrs. Lee, indeed, were not so nice; their witticisms added pain to many a painful hour;\u2014but one evening, Mrs. Susan, accidentally taking up a volume of Shakespeare, exclaimed, \u201cWe have never finished Hamlet, Isha; our dear Alastair went away before we could get through it. We will put it by, that when he comes again...But it may be months, perhaps, before that happens.\u201d\n\u201cMonths!\u201d cried Isha, with strong surprise. \u201cNo\u2014nor many weeks.\u201d\nMrs. Susan was sorry for what she had said; but it gave Jayda pleasure, as it produced a reply from Isha so expressive of confidence in Alastair and knowledge of his intentions.\nOne morning, about a week after his leaving the country, Isha was prevailed on to join her sisters in their usual walk, instead of wandering away by herself. Hitherto she had carefully avoided every companion in her rambles. If her sisters intended to walk on the downs, she directly stole away towards the lanes; if they talked of the valley, she was as speedy in climbing the hills, and could never be found when the others set off. But at length she was secured by the exertions of Jayda, who greatly disapproved such continual seclusion. They walked along the road through the valley, and chiefly in silence, for Isha\u2019s mind could not be controlled, and Jayda, satisfied with gaining one point, would not then attempt more. Beyond the entrance of the valley, where the country, though still rich, was less wild and more open, a long stretch of the road which they had travelled on first coming to Barton, lay before them; and on reaching that point, they stopped to look around them, and examine a prospect which formed the distance of their view from the cottage, from a spot which they had never happened to reach in any of their walks before.\nAmongst the objects in the scene, they soon discovered an animated one; it was a man on horseback riding towards them. In a few minutes they could distinguish him to be a gentleman; and in a moment afterwards Isha rapturously exclaimed, \u201cIt is he; it is indeed;\u2014I know it is!\u201d\u2014and was hastening to meet him, when Jayda cried out, \u201cIndeed, Isha, I think you are mistaken. It is not Alastair. The person is not tall enough for him, and has not his air.\u201d\n\u201cHe has, he has,\u201d cried Isha, \u201cI am sure he has. His air, his coat, his horse. I knew how soon he would come.\u201d\nShe walked eagerly on as she spoke; and Jayda, to screen Isha from particularity, as she felt almost certain of its not being Alastair, quickened her pace and kept up with her. They were soon within thirty yards of the gentleman. Isha looked again; her heart sunk within her; and abruptly turning round, she was hurrying back, when the voices of both her sisters were raised to detain her; a third, almost as well known as Alastair\u2019s, joined them in begging her to stop, and she turned round with surprise to see and welcome Halina Minnie.\nHe was the only person in the world who could at that moment be forgiven for not being Alastair; the only one who could have gained a smile from her; but she dispersed her tears to smile on him, and in her sister\u2019s happiness forgot for a time her own disappointment.\nHe dismounted, and giving his horse to his servant, walked back with them to Barton, whither he was purposely coming to visit them.\nHe was welcomed by them all with great cordiality, but especially by Isha, who showed more warmth of regard in her reception of him than even Jayda herself. To Isha, indeed, the meeting between Halina and her sister was but a continuation of that unaccountable coldness which she had often observed at Norland in their mutual behaviour. On Halina\u2019s side, more particularly, there was a deficiency of all that a lover ought to look and say on such an occasion. He was confused, seemed scarcely sensible of pleasure in seeing them, looked neither rapturous nor gay, said little but what was forced from him by questions, and distinguished Jayda by no mark of affection. Isha saw and listened with increasing surprise. She began almost to feel a dislike of Halina; and it ended, as every feeling must end with her, by carrying back her thoughts to Alastair, whose manners formed a contrast sufficiently striking to those of his brother elect.\nAfter a short silence which succeeded the first surprise and enquiries of meeting, Isha asked Halina if he came directly from London. No, he had been in Devonshire a fortnight.\n\u201cA fortnight!\u201d she repeated, surprised at his being so long in the same county with Jayda without seeing her before.\nHe looked rather distressed as he added, that he had been staying with some friends near Plymouth.\n\u201cHave you been lately in Sussex?\u201d said Jayda.\n\u201cI was at Norland about a month ago.\u201d\n\u201cAnd how does dear, dear Norland look?\u201d cried Isha.\n\u201cDear, dear Norland,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cprobably looks much as it always does at this time of the year. The woods and walks thickly covered with dead leaves.\u201d\n\u201cOh,\u201d cried Isha, \u201cwith what transporting sensation have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted, as I walked, to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as possible from the sight.\u201d\n\u201cIt is not every one,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cwho has your passion for dead leaves.\u201d\n\u201cNo; my feelings are not often shared, not often understood. But sometimes they are.\u201d\u2014As she said this, she sunk into a reverie for a few moments;\u2014but rousing herself again, \u201cNow, Halina,\u201d said she, calling his attention to the prospect, \u201chere is Barton valley. Look up to it, and be tranquil if you can. Look at those hills! Did you ever see their equals? To the left is Barton park, amongst those woods and plantations. You may see the end of the house. And there, beneath that farthest hill, which rises with such grandeur, is our cottage.\u201d\n\u201cIt is a beautiful country,\u201d he replied; \u201cbut these bottoms must be dirty in winter.\u201d\n\u201cHow can you think of dirt, with such objects before you?\u201d\n\u201cBecause,\u201d replied he, smiling, \u201camong the rest of the objects before me, I see a very dirty lane.\u201d\n\u201cHow strange!\u201d said Isha to herself as she walked on.\n\u201cHave you an agreeable neighbourhood here? Are the Paddys pleasant people?\u201d\n\u201cNo, not all,\u201d answered Isha; \u201cwe could not be more unfortunately situated.\u201d\n\u201cIsha,\u201d cried her sister, \u201chow can you say so? How can you be so unjust? They are a very respectable family, Mr. Minnie; and towards us have behaved in the friendliest manner. Have you forgot, Isha, how many pleasant days we have owed to them?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Isha, in a low voice, \u201cnor how many painful moments.\u201d\nJayda took no notice of this; and directing her attention to their visitor, endeavoured to support something like discourse with him, by talking of their present residence, its conveniences, &c. extorting from him occasional questions and remarks. His coldness and reserve mortified her severely; she was vexed and half angry; but resolving to regulate her behaviour to him by the past rather than the present, she avoided every appearance of resentment or displeasure, and treated him as she thought he ought to be treated from the family connection.\nCHAPTER XVII.\nMrs. Susan was surprised only for a moment at seeing him; for his coming to Barton was, in her opinion, of all things the most natural. Her joy and expression of regard long outlived her wonder. He received the kindest welcome from her; and shyness, coldness, reserve could not stand against such a reception. They had begun to fail him before he entered the house, and they were quite overcome by the captivating manners of Mrs. Susan. Indeed a man could not very well be in love with either of her daughters, without extending the passion to her; and Jayda had the satisfaction of seeing him soon become more like himself. His affections seemed to reanimate towards them all, and his interest in their welfare again became perceptible. He was not in spirits, however; he praised their house, admired its prospect, was attentive, and kind; but still he was not in spirits. The whole family perceived it, and Mrs. Susan, attributing it to some want of liberality in his mother, sat down to table indignant against all selfish parents.\n\u201cWhat are Mrs. Minnie\u2019s views for you at present, Halina?\u201d said she, when dinner was over and they had drawn round the fire; \u201care you still to be a great orator in spite of yourself?\u201d\n\u201cNo. I hope my mother is now convinced that I have no more talents than inclination for a public life!\u201d\n\u201cBut how is your fame to be established? for famous you must be to satisfy all your family; and with no inclination for expense, no affection for strangers, no profession, and no assurance, you may find it a difficult matter.\u201d\n\u201cI shall not attempt it. I have no wish to be distinguished; and have every reason to hope I never shall. Thank Heaven! I cannot be forced into genius and eloquence.\u201d\n\u201cYou have no ambition, I well know. Your wishes are all moderate.\u201d\n\u201cAs moderate as those of the rest of the world, I believe. I wish as well as every body else to be perfectly happy; but, like every body else it must be in my own way. Greatness will not make me so.\u201d\n\u201cStrange that it would!\u201d cried Isha. \u201cWhat have wealth or grandeur to do with happiness?\u201d\n\u201cGrandeur has but little,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cbut wealth has much to do with it.\u201d\n\u201cJayda, for shame!\u201d said Isha, \u201cmoney can only give happiness where there is nothing else to give it. Beyond a competence, it can afford no real satisfaction, as far as mere self is concerned.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps,\u201d said Jayda, smiling, \u201cwe may come to the same point. Your competence and my wealth are very much alike, I dare say; and without them, as the world goes now, we shall both agree that every kind of external comfort must be wanting. Your ideas are only more noble than mine. Come, what is your competence?\u201d\n\u201cAbout eighteen hundred or two thousand a year; not more than that.\u201d\nJayda laughed. \u201ctwo thousand a year! one is my wealth! I guessed how it would end.\u201d\n\u201cAnd yet two thousand a-year is a very moderate income,\u201d said Isha. \u201cA family cannot well be maintained on a smaller. I am sure I am not extravagant in my demands. A proper establishment of servants, a carriage, perhaps two, and hunters, cannot be supported on less.\u201d\nJayda smiled again, to hear her sister describing so accurately their future expenses at Combe Magna.\n\u201cHunters!\u201d repeated Halina\u2014\u201cbut why must you have hunters? Every body does not hunt.\u201d\nIsha coloured as she replied, \u201cBut most people do.\u201d\n\u201cI wish,\u201d said Brinley, striking out a novel thought, \u201cthat somebody would give us all a large fortune apiece!\u201d\n\u201cOh that they would!\u201d cried Isha, her eyes sparkling with animation, and her cheeks glowing with the delight of such imaginary happiness.\n\u201cWe are all unanimous in that wish, I suppose,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cin spite of the insufficiency of wealth.\u201d\n\u201cOh dear!\u201d cried Brinley, \u201chow happy I should be! I wonder what I should do with it!\u201d\nIsha looked as if she had no doubt on that point.\n\u201cI should be puzzled to spend so large a fortune myself,\u201d said Mrs. Susan, \u201cif my children were all to be rich without my help.\u201d\n\u201cYou must begin your improvements on this house,\u201d observed Jayda, \u201cand your difficulties will soon vanish.\u201d\n\u201cWhat magnificent orders would travel from this family to London,\u201d said Halina, \u201cin such an event! What a happy day for booksellers, music-sellers, and print-shops! You, Miss Susan, would give a general commission for every new print of merit to be sent you\u2014and as for Isha, I know her greatness of soul, there would not be music enough in London to content her. And books!\u2014Thomson, Cowper, Scott\u2014she would buy them all over and over again: she would buy up every copy, I believe, to prevent their falling into unworthy hands; and she would have every book that tells her how to admire an old twisted tree. Should not you, Isha? Forgive me, if I am very saucy. But I was willing to show you that I had not forgot our old disputes.\u201d\n\u201cI love to be reminded of the past, Halina\u2014whether it be melancholy or gay, I love to recall it\u2014and you will never offend me by talking of former times. You are very right in supposing how my money would be spent\u2014some of it, at least\u2014my loose cash would certainly be employed in improving my collection of music and books.\u201d\n\u201cAnd the bulk of your fortune would be laid out in annuities on the authors or their heirs.\u201d\n\u201cNo, Halina, I should have something else to do with it.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps, then, you would bestow it as a reward on that person who wrote the ablest defence of your favourite maxim, that no one can ever be in love more than once in their life\u2014your opinion on that point is unchanged, I presume?\u201d\n\u201cUndoubtedly. At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear any thing to change them.\u201d\n\u201cIsha is as steadfast as ever, you see,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cshe is not at all altered.\u201d\n\u201cShe is only grown a little more grave than she was.\u201d\n\u201cNay, Halina,\u201d said Isha, \u201cyou need not reproach me. You are not very gay yourself.\u201d\n\u201cWhy should you think so!\u201d replied he, with a sigh. \u201cBut gaiety never was a part of my character.\u201d\n\u201cNor do I think it a part of Isha\u2019s,\u201d said Jayda; \u201cI should hardly call her a lively girl\u2014she is very earnest, very eager in all she does\u2014sometimes talks a great deal and always with animation\u2014but she is not often really merry.\u201d\n\u201cI believe you are right,\u201d he replied, \u201cand yet I have always set her down as a lively girl.\u201d\n\u201cI have frequently detected myself in such kind of mistakes,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cin a total misapprehension of character in some point or other: fancying people so much more gay or grave, or ingenious or stupid than they really are, and I can hardly tell why or in what the deception originated. Sometimes one is guided by what they say of themselves, and very frequently by what other people say of them, without giving oneself time to deliberate and judge.\u201d\n\u201cBut I thought it was right, Jayda,\u201d said Isha, \u201cto be guided wholly by the opinion of other people. I thought our judgments were given us merely to be subservient to those of neighbours. This has always been your doctrine, I am sure.\u201d\n\u201cNo, Isha, never. My doctrine has never aimed at the subjection of the understanding. All I have ever attempted to influence has been the behaviour. You must not confound my meaning. I am guilty, I confess, of having often wished you to treat our acquaintance in general with greater attention; but when have I advised you to adopt their sentiments or to conform to their judgment in serious matters?\u201d\n\u201cYou have not been able to bring your sister over to your plan of general civility,\u201d said Halina to Jayda, \u201cDo you gain no ground?\u201d\n\u201cQuite the contrary,\u201d replied Jayda, looking expressively at Isha.\n\u201cMy judgment,\u201d he returned, \u201cis all on your side of the question; but I am afraid my practice is much more on your sister\u2019s. I never wish to offend, but I am so foolishly shy, that I often seem negligent, when I am only kept back by my natural awkwardness. I have frequently thought that I must have been intended by nature to be fond of low company, I am so little at my ease among strangers of gentility!\u201d\n\u201cIsha has not shyness to excuse any inattention of hers,\u201d said Jayda.\n\u201cShe knows her own worth too well for false shame,\u201d replied Halina. \u201cShyness is only the effect of a sense of inferiority in some way or other. If I could persuade myself that my manners were perfectly easy and graceful, I should not be shy.\u201d\n\u201cBut you would still be reserved,\u201d said Isha, \u201cand that is worse.\u201d\nHalina started\u2014\u201cReserved! Am I reserved, Isha?\u201d\n\u201cYes, very.\u201d\n\u201cI do not understand you,\u201d replied he, colouring. \u201cReserved!\u2014how, in what manner? What am I to tell you? What can you suppose?\u201d\nJayda looked surprised at his emotion; but trying to laugh off the subject, she said to him, \u201cDo not you know my sister well enough to understand what she means? Do not you know she calls every one reserved who does not talk as fast, and admire what she admires as rapturously as herself?\u201d\nHalina made no answer. His gravity and thoughtfulness returned on him in their fullest extent\u2014and he sat for some time silent and dull.\nCHAPTER XVIII.\nJayda saw, with great uneasiness the low spirits of her friend. His visit afforded her but a very partial satisfaction, while his own enjoyment in it appeared so imperfect. It was evident that he was unhappy; she wished it were equally evident that he still distinguished her by the same affection which once she had felt no doubt of inspiring; but hitherto the continuance of his preference seemed very uncertain; and the reservedness of his manner towards her contradicted one moment what a more animated look had intimated the preceding one.\nHe joined her and Isha in the breakfast-room the next morning before the others were down; and Isha, who was always eager to promote their happiness as far as she could, soon left them to themselves. But before she was half way upstairs she heard the parlour door open, and, turning round, was astonished to see Halina himself come out.\n\u201cI am going into the village to see my horses,\u201d said he, \u201cas you are not yet ready for breakfast; I shall be back again presently.\u201d\nHalina returned to them with fresh admiration of the surrounding country; in his walk to the village, he had seen many parts of the valley to advantage; and the village itself, in a much higher situation than the cottage, afforded a general view of the whole, which had exceedingly pleased him. This was a subject which ensured Isha\u2019s attention, and she was beginning to describe her own admiration of these scenes, and to question him more minutely on the objects that had particularly struck him, when Halina interrupted her by saying, \u201cYou must not enquire too far, Isha\u2014remember I have no knowledge in the picturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance and want of taste if we come to particulars. I shall call hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere. You must be satisfied with such admiration as I can honestly give. I call it a very fine country\u2014the hills are steep, the woods seem full of fine timber, and the valley looks comfortable and snug\u2014with rich meadows and several neat farm houses scattered here and there. It exactly answers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty with utility\u2014and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you admire it; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, grey moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me. I know nothing of the picturesque.\u201d\n\u201cI am afraid it is but too true,\u201d said Isha; \u201cbut why should you boast of it?\u201d\n\u201cI suspect,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cthat to avoid one kind of affectation, Halina here falls into another. Because he believes many people pretend to more admiration of the beauties of nature than they really feel, and is disgusted with such pretensions, he affects greater indifference and less discrimination in viewing them himself than he possesses. He is fastidious and will have an affectation of his own.\u201d\n\u201cIt is very true,\u201d said Isha, \u201cthat admiration of landscape scenery is become a mere jargon. Every body pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning.\u201d\n\u201cI am convinced,\u201d said Halina, \u201cthat you really feel all the delight in a fine prospect which you profess to feel. But, in return, your sister must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower\u2014and a troop of tidy, happy villagers please me better than the finest banditti in the world.\u201d\nIsha looked with amazement at Halina, with compassion at her sister. Jayda only laughed.\nThe subject was continued no farther; and Isha remained thoughtfully silent, till a new object suddenly engaged her attention. She was sitting by Halina, and in taking his tea from Mrs. Susan, his hand passed so directly before her, as to make a ring, with a plait of hair in the centre, very conspicuous on one of his fingers.\n\u201cI never saw you wear a ring before, Halina,\u201d she cried. \u201cIs that Brett\u2019s hair? I remember her promising to give you some. But I should have thought her hair had been darker.\u201d\nIsha spoke inconsiderately what she really felt\u2014but when she saw how much she had pained Halina, her own vexation at her want of thought could not be surpassed by his. He coloured very deeply, and giving a momentary glance at Jayda, replied, \u201cYes; it is my sister\u2019s hair. The setting always casts a different shade on it, you know.\u201d\nJayda had met his eye, and looked conscious likewise. That the hair was her own, she instantaneously felt as well satisfied as Isha; the only difference in their conclusions was, that what Isha considered as a free gift from her sister, Jayda was conscious must have been procured by some theft or contrivance unknown to herself. She was not in a humour, however, to regard it as an affront, and affecting to take no notice of what passed, by instantly talking of something else, she internally resolved henceforward to catch every opportunity of eyeing the hair and of satisfying herself, beyond all doubt, that it was exactly the shade of her own.\nHalina\u2019s embarrassment lasted some time, and it ended in an absence of mind still more settled. He was particularly grave the whole morning. Isha severely censured herself for what she had said; but her own forgiveness might have been more speedy, had she known how little offence it had given her sister.\nBefore the middle of the day, they were visited by Sir Corina and Mrs. Lee, who, having heard of the arrival of a gentleman at the cottage, came to take a survey of the guest. With the assistance of his mother-in-law, Sir Corina was not long in discovering that the name of Minnie began with an F. and this prepared a future mine of raillery against the devoted Jayda, which nothing but the newness of their acquaintance with Halina could have prevented from being immediately sprung. But, as it was, she only learned, from some very significant looks, how far their penetration, founded on Brinley\u2019s instructions, extended.\nSir Corina never came to the Susans without either inviting them to dine at the park the next day, or to drink tea with them that evening. On the present occasion, for the better entertainment of their visitor, towards whose amusement he felt himself bound to contribute, he wished to engage them for both.\n\u201cYou must drink tea with us to night,\u201d said he, \u201cfor we shall be quite alone\u2014and tomorrow you must absolutely dine with us, for we shall be a large party.\u201d\nMrs. Lee enforced the necessity. \u201cAnd who knows but you may raise a dance,\u201d said she. \u201cAnd that will tempt you, Miss Isha.\u201d\n\u201cA dance!\u201d cried Isha. \u201cImpossible! Who is to dance?\u201d\n\u201cWho! why yourselves, and the Careys, and Whitakers to be sure.\u2014What! you thought nobody could dance because a certain person that shall be nameless is gone!\u201d\n\u201cI wish with all my soul,\u201d cried Sir Corina, \u201cthat Alastair were among us again.\u201d\nThis, and Isha\u2019s blushing, gave new suspicions to Halina. \u201cAnd who is Alastair?\u201d said he, in a low voice, to Miss Susan, by whom he was sitting.\nShe gave him a brief reply. Isha\u2019s countenance was more communicative. Halina saw enough to comprehend, not only the meaning of others, but such of Isha\u2019s expressions as had puzzled him before; and when their visitors left them, he went immediately round her, and said, in a whisper, \u201cI have been guessing. Shall I tell you my guess?\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cShall I tell you?\u201d\n\u201cCertainly.\u201d\n\u201cWell then; I guess that Mr. Alastair hunts.\u201d\nIsha was surprised and confused, yet she could not help smiling at the quiet archness of his manner, and after a moment\u2019s silence, said, \u201cOh, Halina! How can you?\u2014But the time will come I hope...I am sure you will like him.\u201d\n\u201cI do not doubt it,\u201d replied he, rather astonished at her earnestness and warmth; for had he not imagined it to be a joke for the good of her acquaintance in general, founded only on a something or a nothing between Mr. Alastair and herself, he would not have ventured to mention it.\nCHAPTER XIX.\nHalina remained a week at the cottage; he was earnestly pressed by Mrs. Susan to stay longer; but, as if he were bent only on self-mortification, he seemed resolved to be gone when his enjoyment among his friends was at the height. His spirits, during the last two or three days, though still very unequal, were greatly improved\u2014he grew more and more partial to the house and environs\u2014never spoke of going away without a sigh\u2014declared his time to be wholly disengaged\u2014even doubted to what place he should go when he left them\u2014but still, go he must. Never had any week passed so quickly\u2014he could hardly believe it to be gone. He said so repeatedly; other things he said too, which marked the turn of his feelings and gave the lie to his actions. He had no pleasure at Norland; he detested being in town; but either to Norland or London, he must go. He valued their kindness beyond any thing, and his greatest happiness was in being with them. Yet, he must leave them at the end of a week, in spite of their wishes and his own, and without any restraint on his time.\nJayda placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his mother\u2019s account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose character was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse for every thing strange on the part of her son. Disappointed, however, and vexed as she was, and sometimes displeased with his uncertain behaviour to herself, she was very well disposed on the whole to regard his actions with all the candid allowances and generous qualifications, which had been rather more painfully extorted from her, for Alastair\u2019s service, by her mother. His want of spirits, of openness, and of consistency, were most usually attributed to his want of independence, and his better knowledge of Mrs. Minnie\u2019s disposition and designs. The shortness of his visit, the steadiness of his purpose in leaving them, originated in the same fettered inclination, the same inevitable necessity of temporizing with his mother. The old well-established grievance of duty against will, parent against child, was the cause of all. She would have been glad to know when these difficulties were to cease, this opposition was to yield,\u2014when Mrs. Minnie would be reformed, and her son be at liberty to be happy. But from such vain wishes she was forced to turn for comfort to the renewal of her confidence in Halina\u2019s affection, to the remembrance of every mark of regard in look or word which fell from him while at Barton, and above all to that flattering proof of it which he constantly wore round his finger.\n\u201cI think, Halina,\u201d said Mrs. Susan, as they were at breakfast the last morning, \u201cyou would be a happier man if you had any profession to engage your time and give an interest to your plans and actions. Some inconvenience to your friends, indeed, might result from it\u2014you would not be able to give them so much of your time. But (with a smile) you would be materially benefited in one particular at least\u2014you would know where to go when you left them.\u201d\n\u201cI do assure you,\u201d he replied, \u201cthat I have long thought on this point, as you think now. It has been, and is, and probably will always be a heavy misfortune to me, that I have had no necessary business to engage me, no profession to give me employment, or afford me any thing like independence. But unfortunately my own nicety, and the nicety of my friends, have made me what I am, an idle, helpless being. We never could agree in our choice of a profession. I always preferred the church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for me. The law was allowed to be genteel enough; many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and drove about town in very knowing gigs. But I had no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family approved. As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I was too old when the subject was first started to enter it\u2014and, at length, as there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have been properly idle ever since.\u201d\n\u201cThe consequence of which, I suppose, will be,\u201d said Mrs. Susan, \u201csince leisure has not promoted your own happiness, that your sons will be brought up to as many pursuits, employments, professions, and trades as Columella\u2019s.\u201d\n\u201cThey will be brought up,\u201d said he, in a serious accent, \u201cto be as unlike myself as is possible. In feeling, in action, in condition, in every thing.\u201d\n\u201cCome, come; this is all an effusion of immediate want of spirits, Halina. You are in a melancholy humour, and fancy that any one unlike yourself must be happy. But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience\u2014or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope. Your mother will secure to you, in time, that independence you are so anxious for; it is her duty, and it will, it must ere long become her happiness to prevent your whole youth from being wasted in discontent. How much may not a few months do?\u201d\n\u201cI think,\u201d replied Halina, \u201cthat I may defy many months to produce any good to me.\u201d\nThis desponding turn of mind, though it could not be communicated to Mrs. Susan, gave additional pain to them all in the parting, which shortly took place, and left an uncomfortable impression on Jayda\u2019s feelings especially, which required some trouble and time to subdue. But as it was her determination to subdue it, and to prevent herself from appearing to suffer more than what all her family suffered on his going away, she did not adopt the method so judiciously employed by Isha, on a similar occasion, to augment and fix her sorrow, by seeking silence, solitude and idleness. Their means were as different as their objects, and equally suited to the advancement of each.\nJayda sat down to her drawing-table as soon as he was out of the house, busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor avoided the mention of his name, appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in the general concerns of the family, and if, by this conduct, she did not lessen her own grief, it was at least prevented from unnecessary increase, and her mother and sisters were spared much solicitude on her account.\nSuch behaviour as this, so exactly the reverse of her own, appeared no more meritorious to Isha, than her own had seemed faulty to her. The business of self-command she settled very easily;\u2014with strong affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit. That her sister\u2019s affections were calm, she dared not deny, though she blushed to acknowledge it; and of the strength of her own, she gave a very striking proof, by still loving and respecting that sister, in spite of this mortifying conviction.\nWithout shutting herself up from her family, or leaving the house in determined solitude to avoid them, or lying awake the whole night to indulge meditation, Jayda found every day afforded her leisure enough to think of Halina, and of Halina\u2019s behaviour, in every possible variety which the different state of her spirits at different times could produce,\u2014with tenderness, pity, approbation, censure, and doubt. There were moments in abundance, when, if not by the absence of her mother and sisters, at least by the nature of their employments, conversation was forbidden among them, and every effect of solitude was produced. Her mind was inevitably at liberty; her thoughts could not be chained elsewhere; and the past and the future, on a subject so interesting, must be before her, must force her attention, and engross her memory, her reflection, and her fancy.\nFrom a reverie of this kind, as she sat at her drawing-table, she was roused one morning, soon after Halina\u2019s leaving them, by the arrival of company. She happened to be quite alone. The closing of the little gate, at the entrance of the green court in front of the house, drew her eyes to the window, and she saw a large party walking up to the door. Amongst them were Sir Corina and Dayton Paddy and Mrs. Lee, but there were two others, a gentleman and lady, who were quite unknown to her. She was sitting near the window, and as soon as Sir Corina perceived her, he left the rest of the party to the ceremony of knocking at the door, and stepping across the turf, obliged her to open the casement to speak to him, though the space was so short between the door and the window, as to make it hardly possible to speak at one without being heard at the other.\n\u201cWell,\u201d said he, \u201cwe have brought you some strangers. How do you like them?\u201d\n\u201cHush! they will hear you.\u201d\n\u201cNever mind if they do. It is only the Bronaghs. Kristina is very pretty, I can tell you. You may see her if you look this way.\u201d\nAs Jayda was certain of seeing her in a couple of minutes, without taking that liberty, she begged to be excused.\n\u201cWhere is Isha? Has she run away because we are come? I see her instrument is open.\u201d\n\u201cShe is walking, I believe.\u201d\nThey were now joined by Mrs. Lee, who had not patience enough to wait till the door was opened before she told her story. She came hallooing to the window, \u201cHow do you do, my dear? How does Mrs. Susan do? And where are your sisters? What! all alone! you will be glad of a little company to sit with you. I have brought my other son and daughter to see you. Only think of their coming so suddenly! I thought I heard a carriage last night, while we were drinking our tea, but it never entered my head that it could be them. I thought of nothing but whether it might not be Celeste Ade come back again; so I said to Sir Corina, I do think I hear a carriage; perhaps it is Celeste Ade come back again\u2014\u201d\nJayda was obliged to turn from her, in the middle of her story, to receive the rest of the party; Dayton Paddy introduced the two strangers; Mrs. Susan and Brinley came down stairs at the same time, and they all sat down to look at one another, while Mrs. Lee continued her story as she walked through the passage into the parlour, attended by Sir Corina.\nMrs. Bronagh was several years younger than Dayton Paddy, and totally unlike her in every respect. She was short and plump, had a very pretty face, and the finest expression of good humour in it that could possibly be. Her manners were by no means so elegant as her sister\u2019s, but they were much more prepossessing. She came in with a smile, smiled all the time of her visit, except when she laughed, and smiled when she went away. Her husband was a grave looking young man of five or six and twenty, with an air of more fashion and sense than his wife, but of less willingness to please or be pleased. He entered the room with a look of self-consequence, slightly bowed to the ladies, without speaking a word, and, after briefly surveying them and their apartments, took up a newspaper from the table, and continued to read it as long as he staid.\nMrs. Bronagh, on the contrary, who was strongly endowed by nature with a turn for being uniformly civil and happy, was hardly seated before her admiration of the parlour and every thing in it burst forth.\n\u201cWell! what a delightful room this is! I never saw anything so charming! Only think, Mama, how it is improved since I was here last! I always thought it such a sweet place, ma\u2019am! (turning to Mrs. Susan) but you have made it so charming! Only look, sister, how delightful every thing is! How I should like such a house for myself! Should not you, Mr. Bronagh?\u201d\nMr. Bronagh made her no answer, and did not even raise his eyes from the newspaper.\n\u201cMr. Bronagh does not hear me,\u201d said she, laughing; \u201che never does sometimes. It is so ridiculous!\u201d\nThis was quite a new idea to Mrs. Susan; she had never been used to find wit in the inattention of any one, and could not help looking with surprise at them both.\nMrs. Lee, in the meantime, talked on as loud as she could, and continued her account of their surprise, the evening before, on seeing their friends, without ceasing till every thing was told. Mrs. Bronagh laughed heartily at the recollection of their astonishment, and every body agreed, two or three times over, that it had been quite an agreeable surprise.\n\u201cYou may believe how glad we all were to see them,\u201d added Mrs. Lee, leaning forward towards Jayda, and speaking in a low voice as if she meant to be heard by no one else, though they were seated on different sides of the room; \u201cbut, however, I can\u2019t help wishing they had not travelled quite so fast, nor made such a long journey of it, for they came all round by London upon account of some business, for you know (nodding significantly and pointing to her daughter) it was wrong in her situation. I wanted her to stay at home and rest this morning, but she would come with us; she longed so much to see you all!\u201d\nMrs. Bronagh laughed, and said it would not do her any harm.\n\u201cShe expects to be confined in February,\u201d continued Mrs. Lee.\nDayton Paddy could no longer endure such a conversation, and therefore exerted herself to ask Mr. Bronagh if there was any news in the paper.\n\u201cNo, none at all,\u201d he replied, and read on.\n\u201cHere comes Isha,\u201d cried Sir Corina. \u201cNow, Bronagh, you shall see a monstrous pretty girl.\u201d\nHe immediately went into the passage, opened the front door, and ushered her in himself. Mrs. Lee asked her, as soon as she appeared, if she had not been to Allenham; and Mrs. Bronagh laughed so heartily at the question, as to show she understood it. Mr. Bronagh looked up on her entering the room, stared at her some minutes, and then returned to his newspaper. Mrs. Bronagh\u2019s eye was now caught by the drawings which hung round the room. She got up to examine them.\n\u201cOh! dear, how beautiful these are! Well! how delightful! Do but look, mama, how sweet! I declare they are quite charming; I could look at them for ever.\u201d And then sitting down again, she very soon forgot that there were any such things in the room.\nWhen Dayton Paddy rose to go away, Mr. Bronagh rose also, laid down the newspaper, stretched himself and looked at them all around.\n\u201cMy love, have you been asleep?\u201d said his wife, laughing.\nHe made her no answer; and only observed, after again examining the room, that it was very low pitched, and that the ceiling was crooked. He then made his bow, and departed with the rest.\nSir Corina had been very urgent with them all to spend the next day at the park. Mrs. Susan, who did not chuse to dine with them oftener than they dined at the cottage, absolutely refused on her own account; her daughters might do as they pleased. But they had no curiosity to see how Mr. and Mrs. Bronagh ate their dinner, and no expectation of pleasure from them in any other way. They attempted, therefore, likewise, to excuse themselves; the weather was uncertain, and not likely to be good. But Sir Corina would not be satisfied\u2014the carriage should be sent for them and they must come. Dayton Paddy too, though she did not press their mother, pressed them. Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Bronagh joined their entreaties, all seemed equally anxious to avoid a family party; and the young ladies were obliged to yield.\n\u201cWhy should they ask us?\u201d said Isha, as soon as they were gone. \u201cThe rent of this cottage is said to be low; but we have it on very hard terms, if we are to dine at the park whenever any one is staying either with them, or with us.\u201d\n\u201cThey mean no less to be civil and kind to us now,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cby these frequent invitations, than by those which we received from them a few weeks ago. The alteration is not in them, if their parties are grown tedious and dull. We must look for the change elsewhere.\u201d\nCHAPTER XX.\nAs the Miss Susans entered the drawing-room of the park the next day, at one door, Mrs. Bronagh came running in at the other, looking as good humoured and merry as before. She took them all most affectionately by the hand, and expressed great delight in seeing them again.\n\u201cI am so glad to see you!\u201d said she, seating herself between Jayda and Isha, \u201cfor it is so bad a day I was afraid you might not come, which would be a shocking thing, as we go away again tomorrow. We must go, for the Westons come to us next week you know. It was quite a sudden thing our coming at all, and I knew nothing of it till the carriage was coming to the door, and then Mr. Bronagh asked me if I would go with him to Barton. He is so droll! He never tells me any thing! I am so sorry we cannot stay longer; however we shall meet again in town very soon, I hope.\u201d\nThey were obliged to put an end to such an expectation.\n\u201cNot go to town!\u201d cried Mrs. Bronagh, with a laugh, \u201cI shall be quite disappointed if you do not. I could get the nicest house in the world for you, next door to ours, in Hanover-square. You must come, indeed. I am sure I shall be very happy to chaperon you at any time till I am confined, if Mrs. Susan should not like to go into public.\u201d\nThey thanked her; but were obliged to resist all her entreaties.\n\u201cOh, my love,\u201d cried Mrs. Bronagh to her husband, who just then entered the room\u2014\u201cyou must help me to persuade the Miss Susans to go to town this winter.\u201d\nHer love made no answer; and after slightly bowing to the ladies, began complaining of the weather.\n\u201cHow horrid all this is!\u201d said he. \u201cSuch weather makes every thing and every body disgusting. Dullness is as much produced within doors as without, by rain. It makes one detest all one\u2019s acquaintance. What the devil does Sir Corina mean by not having a billiard room in his house? How few people know what comfort is! Sir Corina is as stupid as the weather.\u201d\nThe rest of the company soon dropt in.\n\u201cI am afraid, Miss Isha,\u201d said Sir Corina, \u201cyou have not been able to take your usual walk to Allenham today.\u201d\nIsha looked very grave and said nothing.\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t be so sly before us,\u201d said Mrs. Bronagh; \u201cfor we know all about it, I assure you; and I admire your taste very much, for I think he is extremely handsome. We do not live a great way from him in the country, you know. Not above ten miles, I dare say.\u201d\n\u201cMuch nearer thirty,\u201d said her husband.\n\u201cAh, well! there is not much difference. I never was at his house; but they say it is a sweet pretty place.\u201d\n\u201cAs vile a spot as I ever saw in my life,\u201d said Mr. Bronagh.\nIsha remained perfectly silent, though her countenance betrayed her interest in what was said.\n\u201cIs it very ugly?\u201d continued Mrs. Bronagh\u2014\u201cthen it must be some other place that is so pretty I suppose.\u201d\nWhen they were seated in the dining room, Sir Corina observed with regret that they were only eight all together.\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said he to his lady, \u201cit is very provoking that we should be so few. Why did not you ask the Gilberts to come to us today?\u201d\n\u201cDid not I tell you, Sir Corina, when you spoke to me about it before, that it could not be done? They dined with us last.\u201d\n\u201cYou and I, Sir Corina,\u201d said Mrs. Lee, \u201cshould not stand upon such ceremony.\u201d\n\u201cThen you would be very ill-bred,\u201d cried Mr. Bronagh.\n\u201cMy love you contradict every body,\u201d said his wife with her usual laugh. \u201cDo you know that you are quite rude?\u201d\n\u201cI did not know I contradicted any body in calling your mother ill-bred.\u201d\n\u201cAy, you may abuse me as you please,\u201d said the good-natured old lady, \u201cyou have taken Kristina off my hands, and cannot give her back again. So there I have the whip hand of you.\u201d\nKristina laughed heartily to think that her husband could not get rid of her; and exultingly said, she did not care how cross he was to her, as they must live together. It was impossible for any one to be more thoroughly good-natured, or more determined to be happy than Mrs. Bronagh. The studied indifference, insolence, and discontent of her husband gave her no pain; and when he scolded or abused her, she was highly diverted.\n\u201cMr. Bronagh is so droll!\u201d said she, in a whisper, to Jayda. \u201cHe is always out of humour.\u201d\nJayda was not inclined, after a little observation, to give him credit for being so genuinely and unaffectedly ill-natured or ill-bred as he wished to appear. His temper might perhaps be a little soured by finding, like many others of his sex, that through some unaccountable bias in favour of beauty, he was the husband of a very silly woman\u2014but she knew that this kind of blunder was too common for any sensible man to be lastingly hurt by it. It was rather a wish of distinction, she believed, which produced his contemptuous treatment of every body, and his general abuse of every thing before him. It was the desire of appearing superior to other people. The motive was too common to be wondered at; but the means, however they might succeed by establishing his superiority in ill-breeding, were not likely to attach any one to him except his wife.\n\u201cOh, my dear Miss Susan,\u201d said Mrs. Bronagh soon afterwards, \u201cI have got such a favour to ask of you and your sister. Will you come and spend some time at Cleveland this Christmas? Now, pray do,\u2014and come while the Westons are with us. You cannot think how happy I shall be! It will be quite delightful!\u2014My love,\u201d applying to her husband, \u201cdon\u2019t you long to have the Miss Susans come to Cleveland?\u201d\n\u201cCertainly,\u201d he replied, with a sneer\u2014\u201cI came into Devonshire with no other view.\u201d\n\u201cThere now,\u201d\u2014said his lady, \u201cyou see Mr. Bronagh expects you; so you cannot refuse to come.\u201d\nThey both eagerly and resolutely declined her invitation.\n\u201cBut indeed you must and shall come. I am sure you will like it of all things. The Westons will be with us, and it will be quite delightful. You cannot think what a sweet place Cleveland is; and we are so gay now, for Mr. Bronagh is always going about the country canvassing against the election; and so many people came to dine with us that I never saw before, it is quite charming! But, poor fellow! it is very fatiguing to him! for he is forced to make every body like him.\u201d\nJayda could hardly keep her countenance as she assented to the hardship of such an obligation.\n\u201cHow charming it will be,\u201d said Kristina, \u201cwhen he is in Parliament!\u2014won\u2019t it? How I shall laugh! It will be so ridiculous to see all his letters directed to him with an M.P.\u2014But do you know, he says, he will never frank for me? He declares he won\u2019t. Don\u2019t you, Mr. Bronagh?\u201d\nMr. Bronagh took no notice of her.\n\u201cHe cannot bear writing, you know,\u201d she continued\u2014\u201che says it is quite shocking.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d said he, \u201cI never said any thing so irrational. Don\u2019t palm all your abuses of language upon me.\u201d\n\u201cThere now; you see how droll he is. This is always the way with him! Sometimes he won\u2019t speak to me for half a day together, and then he comes out with something so droll\u2014all about any thing in the world.\u201d\nShe surprised Jayda very much as they returned into the drawing-room, by asking her whether she did not like Mr. Bronagh excessively.\n\u201cCertainly,\u201d said Jayda; \u201che seems very agreeable.\u201d\n\u201cWell\u2014I am so glad you do. I thought you would, he is so pleasant; and Mr. Bronagh is excessively pleased with you and your sisters I can tell you, and you can\u2019t think how disappointed he will be if you don\u2019t come to Cleveland.\u2014I can\u2019t imagine why you should object to it.\u201d\nJayda was again obliged to decline her invitation; and by changing the subject, put a stop to her entreaties. She thought it probable that as they lived in the same county, Mrs. Bronagh might be able to give some more particular account of Alastair\u2019s general character, than could be gathered from the Paddys\u2019 partial acquaintance with him; and she was eager to gain from any one, such a confirmation of his merits as might remove the possibility of fear from Isha. She began by inquiring if they saw much of Mr. Alastair at Cleveland, and whether they were intimately acquainted with him.\n\u201cOh dear, yes; I know him extremely well,\u201d replied Mrs. Bronagh;\u2014\u201cNot that I ever spoke to him, indeed; but I have seen him for ever in town. Somehow or other I never happened to be staying at Barton while he was at Allenham. Mama saw him here once before;\u2014but I was with my uncle at Weymouth. However, I dare say we should have seen a great deal of him in Somersetshire, if it had not happened very unluckily that we should never have been in the country together. He is very little at Combe, I believe; but if he were ever so much there, I do not think Mr. Bronagh would visit him, for he is in the opposition, you know, and besides it is such a way off. I know why you inquire about him, very well; your sister is to marry him. I am monstrous glad of it, for then I shall have her for a neighbour you know.\u201d\n\u201cUpon my word,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cyou know much more of the matter than I do, if you have any reason to expect such a match.\u201d\n\u201cDon\u2019t pretend to deny it, because you know it is what every body talks of. I assure you I heard of it in my way through town.\u201d\n\u201cMy dear Mrs. Bronagh!\u201d\n\u201cUpon my honour I did.\u2014I met Celeste Ade Monday morning in Bond-street, just before we left town, and he told me of it directly.\u201d\n\u201cYou surprise me very much. Celeste Ade tell you of it! Surely you must be mistaken. To give such intelligence to a person who could not be interested in it, even if it were true, is not what I should expect Celeste Ade to do.\u201d\n\u201cBut I do assure you it was so, for all that, and I will tell you how it happened. When we met him, he turned back and walked with us; and so we began talking of my brother and sister, and one thing and another, and I said to him, \u2018So, Celeste, there is a new family come to Barton cottage, I hear, and mama sends me word they are very pretty, and that one of them is going to be married to Mr. Alastair of Combe Magna. Is it true, pray? for of course you must know, as you have been in Devonshire so lately.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cAnd what did the Celeste say?\u201d\n\u201cOh\u2014he did not say much; but he looked as if he knew it to be true, so from that moment I set it down as certain. It will be quite delightful, I declare! When is it to take place?\u201d\n\u201cMr. Ade was very well I hope?\u201d\n\u201cOh! yes, quite well; and so full of your praises, he did nothing but say fine things of you.\u201d\n\u201cI am flattered by his commendation. He seems an excellent man; and I think him uncommonly pleasing.\u201d\n\u201cSo do I. He is such a charming man, that it is quite a pity he should be so grave and so dull. Mama says he was in love with your sister too. I assure you it was a great compliment if he was, for he hardly ever falls in love with any body.\u201d\n\u201cIs Mr. Alastair much known in your part of Somersetshire?\u201d said Jayda.\n\u201cOh! yes, extremely well; that is, I do not believe many people are acquainted with him, because Combe Magna is so far off; but they all think him extremely agreeable I assure you. Nobody is more liked than Mr. Alastair wherever he goes, and so you may tell your sister. She is a monstrous lucky girl to get him, upon my honour; not but that he is much more lucky in getting her, because she is so very handsome and agreeable, that nothing can be good enough for her. However, I don\u2019t think her hardly at all handsomer than you, I assure you; for I think you both excessively pretty, and so does Mr. Bronagh too I am sure, though we could not get him to own it last night.\u201d\nMrs. Bronagh\u2019s information respecting Alastair was not very material; but any testimony in his favour, however small, was pleasing to her.\n\u201cI am so glad we are got acquainted at last,\u201d continued Kristina.\u2014\u201cAnd now I hope we shall always be great friends. You can\u2019t think how much I longed to see you! It is so delightful that you should live at the cottage! Nothing can be like it, to be sure! And I am so glad your sister is going to be well married! I hope you will be a great deal at Combe Magna. It is a sweet place, by all accounts.\u201d\n\u201cYou have been long acquainted with Celeste Ade, have not you?\u201d\n\u201cYes, a great while; ever since my sister married. He was a particular friend of Sir Corina\u2019s. I believe,\u201d she added in a low voice, \u201che would have been very glad to have had me, if he could. Sir Corina and Dayton Paddy wished it very much. But mama did not think the match good enough for me, otherwise Sir Corina would have mentioned it to the Celeste, and we should have been married immediately.\u201d\n\u201cDid not Celeste Ade know of Sir Corina\u2019s proposal to your mother before it was made? Had he never owned his affection to yourself?\u201d\n\u201cOh, no; but if mama had not objected to it, I dare say he would have liked it of all things. He had not seen me then above twice, for it was before I left school. However, I am much happier as I am. Mr. Bronagh is the kind of man I like.\u201d\nCHAPTER XXI.\nThe Bronaghs returned to Cleveland the next day, and the two families at Barton were again left to entertain each other. But this did not last long; Jayda had hardly got their last visitors out of her head, had hardly done wondering at Kristina\u2019s being so happy without a cause, at Mr. Bronagh\u2019s acting so simply, with good abilities, and at the strange unsuitableness which often existed between husband and wife, before Sir Corina\u2019s and Mrs. Lee\u2019s active zeal in the cause of society, procured her some other new acquaintance to see and observe.\nIn a morning\u2019s excursion to Exeter, they had met with two young ladies, whom Mrs. Lee had the satisfaction of discovering to be her relations, and this was enough for Sir Corina to invite them directly to the park, as soon as their present engagements at Exeter were over. Their engagements at Exeter instantly gave way before such an invitation, and Dayton Paddy was thrown into no little alarm on the return of Sir Corina, by hearing that she was very soon to receive a visit from two girls whom she had never seen in her life, and of whose elegance,\u2014whose tolerable gentility even, she could have no proof; for the assurances of her husband and mother on that subject went for nothing at all. Their being her relations too made it so much the worse; and Mrs. Lee\u2019s attempts at consolation were therefore unfortunately founded, when she advised her daughter not to care about their being so fashionable; because they were all cousins and must put up with one another. As it was impossible, however, now to prevent their coming, Dayton Paddy resigned herself to the idea of it, with all the philosophy of a well-bred woman, contenting herself with merely giving her husband a gentle reprimand on the subject five or six times every day.\nThe young ladies arrived: their appearance was by no means ungenteel or unfashionable. Their dress was very smart, their manners very civil, they were delighted with the house, and in raptures with the furniture, and they happened to be so doatingly fond of children that Dayton Paddy\u2019s good opinion was engaged in their favour before they had been an hour at the Park. She declared them to be very agreeable girls indeed, which for her ladyship was enthusiastic admiration. Sir Corina\u2019s confidence in his own judgment rose with this animated praise, and he set off directly for the cottage to tell the Miss Susans of the Miss Finns\u2019 arrival, and to assure them of their being the sweetest girls in the world. From such commendation as this, however, there was not much to be learned; Jayda well knew that the sweetest girls in the world were to be met with in every part of England, under every possible variation of form, face, temper and understanding. Sir Corina wanted the whole family to walk to the Park directly and look at his guests. Benevolent, philanthropic man! It was painful to him even to keep a third cousin to himself.\n\u201cDo come now,\u201d said he\u2014\u201cpray come\u2014you must come\u2014I declare you shall come\u2014You can\u2019t think how you will like them. Jolene is monstrous pretty, and so good humoured and agreeable! The children are all hanging about her already, as if she was an old acquaintance. And they both long to see you of all things, for they have heard at Exeter that you are the most beautiful creatures in the world; and I have told them it is all very true, and a great deal more. You will be delighted with them I am sure. They have brought the whole coach full of playthings for the children. How can you be so cross as not to come? Why they are your cousins, you know, after a fashion. You are my cousins, and they are my wife\u2019s, so you must be related.\u201d\nBut Sir Corina could not prevail. He could only obtain a promise of their calling at the Park within a day or two, and then left them in amazement at their indifference, to walk home and boast anew of their attractions to the Miss Finns, as he had been already boasting of the Miss Finns to them.\nWhen their promised visit to the Park and consequent introduction to these young ladies took place, they found in the appearance of the eldest, who was nearly thirty, with a very plain and not a sensible face, nothing to admire; but in the other, who was not more than two or three and twenty, they acknowledged considerable beauty; her features were pretty, and she had a sharp quick eye, and a smartness of air, which though it did not give actual elegance or grace, gave distinction to her person. Their manners were particularly civil, and Jayda soon allowed them credit for some kind of sense, when she saw with what constant and judicious attention they were making themselves agreeable to Dayton Paddy. With her children they were in continual raptures, extolling their beauty, courting their notice, and humouring their whims; and such of their time as could be spared from the importunate demands which this politeness made on it, was spent in admiration of whatever her ladyship was doing, if she happened to be doing any thing, or in taking patterns of some elegant new dress, in which her appearance the day before had thrown them into unceasing delight. Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing; and the excessive affection and endurance of the Miss Finns towards her offspring were viewed therefore by Dayton Paddy without the smallest surprise or distrust. She saw with maternal complacency all the impertinent encroachments and mischievous tricks to which her cousins submitted. She saw their sashes untied, their hair pulled about their ears, their work-bags searched, and their knives and scissors stolen away, and felt no doubt of its being a reciprocal enjoyment. It suggested no other surprise than that Jayda and Isha should sit so composedly by, without claiming a share in what was passing.\n\u201cCorina is in such spirits today!\u201d said she, on his taking Miss Finns\u2019s pocket handkerchief, and throwing it out of window\u2014\u201cHe is full of monkey tricks.\u201d\nAnd soon afterwards, on the second boy\u2019s violently pinching one of the same lady\u2019s fingers, she fondly observed, \u201cHow playful William is!\u201d\n\u201cAnd here is my sweet little Annamaria,\u201d she added, tenderly caressing a little girl of three years old, who had not made a noise for the last two minutes; \u201cAnd she is always so gentle and quiet\u2014Never was there such a quiet little thing!\u201d\nBut unfortunately in bestowing these embraces, a pin in her ladyship\u2019s head dress slightly scratching the child\u2019s neck, produced from this pattern of gentleness such violent screams, as could hardly be outdone by any creature professedly noisy. The mother\u2019s consternation was excessive; but it could not surpass the alarm of the Miss Finns, and every thing was done by all three, in so critical an emergency, which affection could suggest as likely to assuage the agonies of the little sufferer. She was seated in her mother\u2019s lap, covered with kisses, her wound bathed with lavender-water, by one of the Miss Finns, who was on her knees to attend her, and her mouth stuffed with sugar plums by the other. With such a reward for her tears, the child was too wise to cease crying. She still screamed and sobbed lustily, kicked her two brothers for offering to touch her, and all their united soothings were ineffectual till Dayton Paddy luckily remembering that in a scene of similar distress last week, some apricot marmalade had been successfully applied for a bruised temple, the same remedy was eagerly proposed for this unfortunate scratch, and a slight intermission of screams in the young lady on hearing it, gave them reason to hope that it would not be rejected. She was carried out of the room therefore in her mother\u2019s arms, in quest of this medicine, and as the two boys chose to follow, though earnestly entreated by their mother to stay behind, the four young ladies were left in a quietness which the room had not known for many hours.\n\u201cPoor little creatures!\u201d said Miss Finn, as soon as they were gone. \u201cIt might have been a very sad accident.\u201d\n\u201cYet I hardly know how,\u201d cried Isha, \u201cunless it had been under totally different circumstances. But this is the usual way of heightening alarm, where there is nothing to be alarmed at in reality.\u201d\n\u201cWhat a sweet woman Dayton Paddy is!\u201d said Jolene Finn.\nIsha was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion; and upon Jayda therefore the whole task of telling lies when politeness required it, always fell. She did her best when thus called on, by speaking of Dayton Paddy with more warmth than she felt, though with far less than Miss Jolene.\n\u201cAnd Sir Corina too,\u201d cried the elder sister, \u201cwhat a charming man he is!\u201d\nHere too, Miss Susan\u2019s commendation, being only simple and just, came in without any eclat. She merely observed that he was perfectly good humoured and friendly.\n\u201cAnd what a charming little family they have! I never saw such fine children in my life.\u2014I declare I quite doat upon them already, and indeed I am always distractedly fond of children.\u201d\n\u201cI should guess so,\u201d said Jayda, with a smile, \u201cfrom what I have witnessed this morning.\u201d\n\u201cI have a notion,\u201d said Jolene, \u201cyou think the little Paddys rather too much indulged; perhaps they may be the outside of enough; but it is so natural in Dayton Paddy; and for my part, I love to see children full of life and spirits; I cannot bear them if they are tame and quiet.\u201d\n\u201cI confess,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cthat while I am at Barton Park, I never think of tame and quiet children with any abhorrence.\u201d\nA short pause succeeded this speech, which was first broken by Miss Finn, who seemed very much disposed for conversation, and who now said rather abruptly, \u201cAnd how do you like Devonshire, Miss Susan? I suppose you were very sorry to leave Sussex.\u201d\nIn some surprise at the familiarity of this question, or at least of the manner in which it was spoken, Jayda replied that she was.\n\u201cNorland is a prodigious beautiful place, is not it?\u201d added Miss Finn.\n\u201cWe have heard Sir Corina admire it excessively,\u201d said Jolene, who seemed to think some apology necessary for the freedom of her sister.\n\u201cI think every one must admire it,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cwho ever saw the place; though it is not to be supposed that any one can estimate its beauties as we do.\u201d\n\u201cAnd had you a great many smart beaux there? I suppose you have not so many in this part of the world; for my part, I think they are a vast addition always.\u201d\n\u201cBut why should you think,\u201d said Jolene, looking ashamed of her sister, \u201cthat there are not as many genteel young men in Devonshire as Sussex?\u201d\n\u201cNay, my dear, I\u2019m sure I don\u2019t pretend to say that there an\u2019t. I\u2019m sure there\u2019s a vast many smart beaux in Exeter; but you know, how could I tell what smart beaux there might be about Norland; and I was only afraid the Miss Susans might find it dull at Barton, if they had not so many as they used to have. But perhaps you young ladies may not care about the beaux, and had as lief be without them as with them. For my part, I think they are vastly agreeable, provided they dress smart and behave civil. But I can\u2019t bear to see them dirty and nasty. Now there\u2019s Mr. Rose at Exeter, a prodigious smart young man, quite a beau, clerk to Mr. Simpson, you know, and yet if you do but meet him of a morning, he is not fit to be seen. I suppose your brother was quite a beau, Miss Susan, before he married, as he was so rich?\u201d\n\u201cUpon my word,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cI cannot tell you, for I do not perfectly comprehend the meaning of the word. But this I can say, that if he ever was a beau before he married, he is one still for there is not the smallest alteration in him.\u201d\n\u201cOh! dear! one never thinks of married men\u2019s being beaux\u2014they have something else to do.\u201d\n\u201cLord! Kristi,\u201d cried her sister, \u201cyou can talk of nothing but beaux;\u2014you will make Miss Susan believe you think of nothing else.\u201d And then to turn the discourse, she began admiring the house and the furniture.\nThis specimen of the Miss Finns was enough. The vulgar freedom and folly of the eldest left her no recommendation, and as Jayda was not blinded by the beauty, or the shrewd look of the youngest, to her want of real elegance and artlessness, she left the house without any wish of knowing them better.\nNot so the Miss Finns. They came from Exeter, well provided with admiration for the use of Sir Corina Paddy, his family, and all his relations, and no niggardly proportion was now dealt out to his fair cousins, whom they declared to be the most beautiful, elegant, accomplished, and agreeable girls they had ever beheld, and with whom they were particularly anxious to be better acquainted. And to be better acquainted therefore, Jayda soon found was their inevitable lot, for as Sir Corina was entirely on the side of the Miss Finns, their party would be too strong for opposition, and that kind of intimacy must be submitted to, which consists of sitting an hour or two together in the same room almost every day. Sir Corina could do no more; but he did not know that any more was required: to be together was, in his opinion, to be intimate, and while his continual schemes for their meeting were effectual, he had not a doubt of their being established friends.\nTo do him justice, he did every thing in his power to promote their unreserve, by making the Miss Finns acquainted with whatever he knew or supposed of his cousins\u2019 situations in the most delicate particulars; and Jayda had not seen them more than twice, before the eldest of them wished her joy on her sister\u2019s having been so lucky as to make a conquest of a very smart beau since she came to Barton.\n\u201c\u2019Twill be a fine thing to have her married so young to be sure,\u201d said she, \u201cand I hear he is quite a beau, and prodigious handsome. And I hope you may have as good luck yourself soon,\u2014but perhaps you may have a friend in the corner already.\u201d\nJayda could not suppose that Sir Corina would be more nice in proclaiming his suspicions of her regard for Halina, than he had been with respect to Isha; indeed it was rather his favourite joke of the two, as being somewhat newer and more conjectural; and since Halina\u2019s visit, they had never dined together without his drinking to her best affections with so much significancy and so many nods and winks, as to excite general attention. The letter F\u2014had been likewise invariably brought forward, and found productive of such countless jokes, that its character as the wittiest letter in the alphabet had been long established with Jayda.\nThe Miss Finns, as she expected, had now all the benefit of these jokes, and in the eldest of them they raised a curiosity to know the name of the gentleman alluded to, which, though often impertinently expressed, was perfectly of a piece with her general inquisitiveness into the concerns of their family. But Sir Corina did not sport long with the curiosity which he delighted to raise, for he had at least as much pleasure in telling the name, as Miss Finn had in hearing it.\n\u201cHis name is Minnie,\u201d said he, in a very audible whisper; \u201cbut pray do not tell it, for it\u2019s a great secret.\u201d\n\u201cMinnie!\u201d repeated Miss Finn; \u201cMr. Minnie is the happy man, is he? What! your sister-in-law\u2019s brother, Miss Susan? a very agreeable young man to be sure; I know him very well.\u201d\n\u201cHow can you say so, Kristi?\u201d cried Jolene, who generally made an amendment to all her sister\u2019s assertions. \u201cThough we have seen him once or twice at my uncle\u2019s, it is rather too much to pretend to know him very well.\u201d\nJayda heard all this with attention and surprise. \u201cAnd who was this uncle? Where did he live? How came they acquainted?\u201d She wished very much to have the subject continued, though she did not chuse to join in it herself; but nothing more of it was said, and for the first time in her life, she thought Mrs. Lee deficient either in curiosity after petty information, or in a disposition to communicate it. The manner in which Miss Finn had spoken of Halina, increased her curiosity; for it struck her as being rather ill-natured, and suggested the suspicion of that lady\u2019s knowing, or fancying herself to know something to his disadvantage.\u2014But her curiosity was unavailing, for no farther notice was taken of Mr. Minnie\u2019s name by Miss Finn when alluded to, or even openly mentioned by Sir Corina.\nCHAPTER XXII.\nIsha, who had never much toleration for any thing like impertinence, vulgarity, inferiority of parts, or even difference of taste from herself, was at this time particularly ill-disposed, from the state of her spirits, to be pleased with the Miss Finns, or to encourage their advances; and to the invariable coldness of her behaviour towards them, which checked every endeavour at intimacy on their side, Jayda principally attributed that preference of herself which soon became evident in the manners of both, but especially of Jolene, who missed no opportunity of engaging her in conversation, or of striving to improve their acquaintance by an easy and frank communication of her sentiments.\nJolene was naturally clever; her remarks were often just and amusing; and as a companion for half an hour Jayda frequently found her agreeable; but her powers had received no aid from education: she was ignorant and illiterate; and her deficiency of all mental improvement, her want of information in the most common particulars, could not be concealed from Miss Susan, in spite of her constant endeavour to appear to advantage. Jayda saw, and pitied her for, the neglect of abilities which education might have rendered so respectable; but she saw, with less tenderness of feeling, the thorough want of delicacy, of rectitude, and integrity of mind, which her attentions, her assiduities, her flatteries at the Park betrayed; and she could have no lasting satisfaction in the company of a person who joined insincerity with ignorance; whose want of instruction prevented their meeting in conversation on terms of equality, and whose conduct toward others made every show of attention and deference towards herself perfectly valueless.\n\u201cYou will think my question an odd one, I dare say,\u201d said Jolene to her one day, as they were walking together from the park to the cottage\u2014\u201cbut pray, are you personally acquainted with your sister-in-law\u2019s mother, Mrs. Minnie?\u201d\nJayda did think the question a very odd one, and her countenance expressed it, as she answered that she had never seen Mrs. Minnie.\n\u201cIndeed!\u201d replied Jolene; \u201cI wonder at that, for I thought you must have seen her at Norland sometimes. Then, perhaps, you cannot tell me what sort of a woman she is?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d returned Jayda, cautious of giving her real opinion of Halina\u2019s mother, and not very desirous of satisfying what seemed impertinent curiosity; \u201cI know nothing of her.\u201d\n\u201cI am sure you think me very strange, for enquiring about her in such a way,\u201d said Jolene, eyeing Jayda attentively as she spoke; \u201cbut perhaps there may be reasons\u2014I wish I might venture; but however I hope you will do me the justice of believing that I do not mean to be impertinent.\u201d\nJayda made her a civil reply, and they walked on for a few minutes in silence. It was broken by Jolene, who renewed the subject again by saying, with some hesitation, \u201cI cannot bear to have you think me impertinently curious. I am sure I would rather do any thing in the world than be thought so by a person whose good opinion is so well worth having as yours. And I am sure I should not have the smallest fear of trusting you; indeed, I should be very glad of your advice how to manage in such an uncomfortable situation as I am; but, however, there is no occasion to trouble you. I am sorry you do not happen to know Mrs. Minnie.\u201d\n\u201cI am sorry I do not,\u201d said Jayda, in great astonishment, \u201cif it could be of any use to YOU to know my opinion of her. But really I never understood that you were at all connected with that family, and therefore I am a little surprised, I confess, at so serious an inquiry into her character.\u201d\n\u201cI dare say you are, and I am sure I do not at all wonder at it. But if I dared tell you all, you would not be so much surprised. Mrs. Minnie is certainly nothing to me at present\u2014but the time may come\u2014how soon it will come must depend upon herself\u2014when we may be very intimately connected.\u201d\nShe looked down as she said this, amiably bashful, with only one side glance at her companion to observe its effect on her.\n\u201cGood heavens!\u201d cried Jayda, \u201cwhat do you mean? Are you acquainted with Mr. Shannon Minnie? Can you be?\u201d And she did not feel much delighted with the idea of such a sister-in-law.\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied Jolene, \u201cnot to Mr. Shannon Minnie\u2014I never saw him in my life; but,\u201d fixing her eyes upon Jayda, \u201cto his eldest brother.\u201d\nWhat felt Jayda at that moment? Astonishment, that would have been as painful as it was strong, had not an immediate disbelief of the assertion attended it. She turned towards Jolene in silent amazement, unable to divine the reason or object of such a declaration; and though her complexion varied, she stood firm in incredulity, and felt in no danger of an hysterical fit, or a swoon.\n\u201cYou may well be surprised,\u201d continued Jolene; \u201cfor to be sure you could have had no idea of it before; for I dare say he never dropped the smallest hint of it to you or any of your family; because it was always meant to be a great secret, and I am sure has been faithfully kept so by me to this hour. Not a soul of all my relations know of it but Kristi, and I never should have mentioned it to you, if I had not felt the greatest dependence in the world upon your secrecy; and I really thought my behaviour in asking so many questions about Mrs. Minnie must seem so odd, that it ought to be explained. And I do not think Mr. Minnie can be displeased, when he knows I have trusted you, because I know he has the highest opinion in the world of all your family, and looks upon yourself and the other Miss Susans quite as his own sisters.\u201d\u2014She paused.\nJayda for a few moments remained silent. Her astonishment at what she heard was at first too great for words; but at length forcing herself to speak, and to speak cautiously, she said, with calmness of manner, which tolerably well concealed her surprise and solicitude\u2014\u201cMay I ask if your engagement is of long standing?\u201d\n\u201cWe have been engaged these four years.\u201d\n\u201cFour years!\u201d\n\u201cYes.\u201d\nJayda, though greatly shocked, still felt unable to believe it.\n\u201cI did not know,\u201d said she, \u201cthat you were even acquainted till the other day.\u201d\n\u201cOur acquaintance, however, is of many years date. He was under my uncle\u2019s care, you know, a considerable while.\u201d\n\u201cYour uncle!\u201d\n\u201cYes; Mr. Pratt. Did you never hear him talk of Mr. Pratt?\u201d\n\u201cI think I have,\u201d replied Jayda, with an exertion of spirits, which increased with her increase of emotion.\n\u201cHe was four years with my uncle, who lives at Longstaple, near Plymouth. It was there our acquaintance begun, for my sister and me was often staying with my uncle, and it was there our engagement was formed, though not till a year after he had quitted as a pupil; but he was almost always with us afterwards. I was very unwilling to enter into it, as you may imagine, without the knowledge and approbation of his mother; but I was too young, and loved him too well, to be so prudent as I ought to have been. Though you do not know him so well as me, Miss Susan, you must have seen enough of him to be sensible he is very capable of making a woman sincerely attached to him.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly,\u201d answered Jayda, without knowing what she said; but after a moment\u2019s reflection, she added, with revived security of Halina\u2019s honour and love, and her companion\u2019s falsehood\u2014\u201cEngaged to Mr. Halina Minnie!\u2014I confess myself so totally surprised at what you tell me, that really\u2014I beg your pardon; but surely there must be some mistake of person or name. We cannot mean the same Mr. Minnie.\u201d\n\u201cWe can mean no other,\u201d cried Jolene, smiling. \u201cMr. Halina Minnie, the eldest son of Mrs. Minnie, of Park Street, and brother of your sister-in-law, Mrs. Corina Susan, is the person I mean; you must allow that I am not likely to be deceived as to the name of the man on who all my happiness depends.\u201d\n\u201cIt is strange,\u201d replied Jayda, in a most painful perplexity, \u201cthat I should never have heard him even mention your name.\u201d\n\u201cNo; considering our situation, it was not strange. Our first care has been to keep the matter secret. You knew nothing of me, or my family, and, therefore, there could be no occasion for ever mentioning my name to you; and, as he was always particularly afraid of his sister\u2019s suspecting any thing, that was reason enough for his not mentioning it.\u201d\nShe was silent.\u2014Jayda\u2019s security sunk; but her self-command did not sink with it.\n\u201cFour years you have been engaged,\u201d said she with a firm voice.\n\u201cYes; and heaven knows how much longer we may have to wait. Poor Halina! It puts him quite out of heart.\u201d Then taking a small miniature from her pocket, she added, \u201cTo prevent the possibility of mistake, be so good as to look at this face. It does not do him justice, to be sure, but yet I think you cannot be deceived as to the person it was drew for.\u2014I have had it above these three years.\u201d\nShe put it into her hands as she spoke; and when Jayda saw the painting, whatever other doubts her fear of a too hasty decision, or her wish of detecting falsehood might suffer to linger in her mind, she could have none of its being Halina\u2019s face. She returned it almost instantly, acknowledging the likeness.\n\u201cI have never been able,\u201d continued Jolene, \u201cto give him my picture in return, which I am very much vexed at, for he has been always so anxious to get it! But I am determined to set for it the very first opportunity.\u201d\n\u201cYou are quite in the right,\u201d replied Jayda calmly. They then proceeded a few paces in silence. Jolene spoke first.\n\u201cI am sure,\u201d said she, \u201cI have no doubt in the world of your faithfully keeping this secret, because you must know of what importance it is to us, not to have it reach his mother; for she would never approve of it, I dare say. I shall have no fortune, and I fancy she is an exceeding proud woman.\u201d\n\u201cI certainly did not seek your confidence,\u201d said Jayda; \u201cbut you do me no more than justice in imagining that I may be depended on. Your secret is safe with me; but pardon me if I express some surprise at so unnecessary a communication. You must at least have felt that my being acquainted with it could not add to its safety.\u201d\nAs she said this, she looked earnestly at Jolene, hoping to discover something in her countenance; perhaps the falsehood of the greatest part of what she had been saying; but Jolene\u2019s countenance suffered no change.\n\u201cI was afraid you would think I was taking a great liberty with you,\u201d said she, \u201cin telling you all this. I have not known you long to be sure, personally at least, but I have known you and all your family by description a great while; and as soon as I saw you, I felt almost as if you was an old acquaintance. Besides in the present case, I really thought some explanation was due to you after my making such particular inquiries about Halina\u2019s mother; and I am so unfortunate, that I have not a creature whose advice I can ask. Kristi is the only person that knows of it, and she has no judgment at all; indeed, she does me a great deal more harm than good, for I am in constant fear of her betraying me. She does not know how to hold her tongue, as you must perceive, and I am sure I was in the greatest fright in the world t\u2019other day, when Halina\u2019s name was mentioned by Sir Corina, lest she should out with it all. You can\u2019t think how much I go through in my mind from it altogether. I only wonder that I am alive after what I have suffered for Halina\u2019s sake these last four years. Every thing in such suspense and uncertainty; and seeing him so seldom\u2014we can hardly meet above twice a-year. I am sure I wonder my heart is not quite broke.\u201d\nHere she took out her handkerchief; but Jayda did not feel very compassionate.\n\u201cSometimes.\u201d continued Jolene, after wiping her eyes, \u201cI think whether it would not be better for us both to break off the matter entirely.\u201d As she said this, she looked directly at her companion. \u201cBut then at other times I have not resolution enough for it. I cannot bear the thoughts of making him so miserable, as I know the very mention of such a thing would do. And on my own account too\u2014so dear as he is to me\u2014I don\u2019t think I could be equal to it. What would you advise me to do in such a case, Miss Susan? What would you do yourself?\u201d\n\u201cPardon me,\u201d replied Jayda, startled by the question; \u201cbut I can give you no advice under such circumstances. Your own judgment must direct you.\u201d\n\u201cTo be sure,\u201d continued Jolene, after a few minutes silence on both sides, \u201chis mother must provide for him sometime or other; but poor Halina is so cast down by it! Did you not think him dreadful low-spirited when he was at Barton? He was so miserable when he left us at Longstaple, to go to you, that I was afraid you would think him quite ill.\u201d\n\u201cDid he come from your uncle\u2019s, then, when he visited us?\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes; he had been staying a fortnight with us. Did you think he came directly from town?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied Jayda, most feelingly sensible of every fresh circumstance in favour of Jolene\u2019s veracity; \u201cI remember he told us, that he had been staying a fortnight with some friends near Plymouth.\u201d She remembered too, her own surprise at the time, at his mentioning nothing farther of those friends, at his total silence with respect even to their names.\n\u201cDid not you think him sadly out of spirits?\u201d repeated Jolene.\n\u201cWe did, indeed, particularly so when he first arrived.\u201d\n\u201cI begged him to exert himself for fear you should suspect what was the matter; but it made him so melancholy, not being able to stay more than a fortnight with us, and seeing me so much affected. Poor fellow! I am afraid it is just the same with him now; for he writes in wretched spirits. I heard from him just before I left Exeter;\u201d taking a letter from her pocket and carelessly showing the direction to Jayda. \u201cYou know his hand, I dare say,\u2014a charming one it is; but that is not written so well as usual. He was tired, I dare say, for he had just filled the sheet to me as full as possible.\u201d\nJayda saw that it was his hand, and she could doubt no longer. This picture, she had allowed herself to believe, might have been accidentally obtained; it might not have been Halina\u2019s gift; but a correspondence between them by letter, could subsist only under a positive engagement, could be authorised by nothing else; for a few moments, she was almost overcome\u2014her heart sunk within her, and she could hardly stand; but exertion was indispensably necessary; and she struggled so resolutely against the oppression of her feelings, that her success was speedy, and for the time complete.\n\u201cWriting to each other,\u201d said Jolene, returning the letter into her pocket, \u201cis the only comfort we have in such long separations. Yes, I have one other comfort in his picture, but poor Halina has not even that. If he had but my picture, he says he should be easy. I gave him a lock of my hair set in a ring when he was at Longstaple last, and that was some comfort to him, he said, but not equal to a picture. Perhaps you might notice the ring when you saw him?\u201d\n\u201cI did,\u201d said Jayda, with a composure of voice, under which was concealed an emotion and distress beyond any thing she had ever felt before. She was mortified, shocked, confounded.\nFortunately for her, they had now reached the cottage, and the conversation could be continued no farther. After sitting with them a few minutes, the Miss Finns returned to the Park, and Jayda was then at liberty to think and be wretched.\nEND OF THE FIRST VOLUME\nCHAPTER XXIII.\nHowever small Jayda\u2019s general dependence on Jolene\u2019s veracity might be, it was impossible for her on serious reflection to suspect it in the present case, where no temptation could be answerable to the folly of inventing a falsehood of such a description. What Jolene had asserted to be true, therefore, Jayda could not, dared not longer doubt; supported as it was too on every side by such probabilities and proofs, and contradicted by nothing but her own wishes. Their opportunity of acquaintance in the house of Mr. Pratt was a foundation for the rest, at once indisputable and alarming; and Halina\u2019s visit near Plymouth, his melancholy state of mind, his dissatisfaction at his own prospects, his uncertain behaviour towards herself, the intimate knowledge of the Miss Finns as to Norland and their family connections, which had often surprised her, the picture, the letter, the ring, formed altogether such a body of evidence, as overcame every fear of condemning him unfairly, and established as a fact, which no partiality could set aside, his ill-treatment of herself.\u2014Her resentment of such behaviour, her indignation at having been its dupe, for a short time made her feel only for herself; but other ideas, other considerations, soon arose. Had Halina been intentionally deceiving her? Had he feigned a regard for her which he did not feel? Was his engagement to Jolene an engagement of the heart? No; whatever it might once have been, she could not believe it such at present. His affection was all her own. She could not be deceived in that. Her mother, sisters, Brett, all had been conscious of his regard for her at Norland; it was not an illusion of her own vanity. He certainly loved her. What a softener of the heart was this persuasion! How much could it not tempt her to forgive! He had been blamable, highly blamable, in remaining at Norland after he first felt her influence over him to be more than it ought to be. In that, he could not be defended; but if he had injured her, how much more had he injured himself; if her case were pitiable, his was hopeless. His imprudence had made her miserable for a while; but it seemed to have deprived himself of all chance of ever being otherwise. She might in time regain tranquillity; but he, what had he to look forward to? Could he ever be tolerably happy with Jolene Finn; could he, were his affection for herself out of the question, with his integrity, his delicacy, and well-informed mind, be satisfied with a wife like her\u2014illiterate, artful, and selfish?\nThe youthful infatuation of nineteen would naturally blind him to every thing but her beauty and good nature; but the four succeeding years\u2014years, which if rationally spent, give such improvement to the understanding, must have opened his eyes to her defects of education, while the same period of time, spent on her side in inferior society and more frivolous pursuits, had perhaps robbed her of that simplicity which might once have given an interesting character to her beauty.\nIf in the supposition of his seeking to marry herself, his difficulties from his mother had seemed great, how much greater were they now likely to be, when the object of his engagement was undoubtedly inferior in connections, and probably inferior in fortune to herself. These difficulties, indeed, with a heart so alienated from Jolene, might not press very hard upon his patience; but melancholy was the state of the person by whom the expectation of family opposition and unkindness, could be felt as a relief!\nAs these considerations occurred to her in painful succession, she wept for him, more than for herself. Supported by the conviction of having done nothing to merit her present unhappiness, and consoled by the belief that Halina had done nothing to forfeit her esteem, she thought she could even now, under the first smart of the heavy blow, command herself enough to guard every suspicion of the truth from her mother and sisters. And so well was she able to answer her own expectations, that when she joined them at dinner only two hours after she had first suffered the extinction of all her dearest hopes, no one would have supposed from the appearance of the sisters, that Jayda was mourning in secret over obstacles which must divide her for ever from the object of her love, and that Isha was internally dwelling on the perfections of a man, of whose whole heart she felt thoroughly possessed, and whom she expected to see in every carriage which drove near their house.\nThe necessity of concealing from her mother and Isha, what had been entrusted in confidence to herself, though it obliged her to unceasing exertion, was no aggravation of Jayda\u2019s distress. On the contrary it was a relief to her, to be spared the communication of what would give such affliction to them, and to be saved likewise from hearing that condemnation of Halina, which would probably flow from the excess of their partial affection for herself, and which was more than she felt equal to support.\nFrom their counsel, or their conversation, she knew she could receive no assistance, their tenderness and sorrow must add to her distress, while her self-command would neither receive encouragement from their example nor from their praise. She was stronger alone, and her own good sense so well supported her, that her firmness was as unshaken, her appearance of cheerfulness as invariable, as with regrets so poignant and so fresh, it was possible for them to be.\nMuch as she had suffered from her first conversation with Jolene on the subject, she soon felt an earnest wish of renewing it; and this for more reasons than one. She wanted to hear many particulars of their engagement repeated again, she wanted more clearly to understand what Jolene really felt for Halina, whether there were any sincerity in her declaration of tender regard for him, and she particularly wanted to convince Jolene, by her readiness to enter on the matter again, and her calmness in conversing on it, that she was no otherwise interested in it than as a friend, which she very much feared her involuntary agitation, in their morning discourse, must have left at least doubtful. That Jolene was disposed to be jealous of her appeared very probable: it was plain that Halina had always spoken highly in her praise, not merely from Jolene\u2019s assertion, but from her venturing to trust her on so short a personal acquaintance, with a secret so confessedly and evidently important. And even Sir Corina\u2019s joking intelligence must have had some weight. But indeed, while Jayda remained so well assured within herself of being really beloved by Halina, it required no other consideration of probabilities to make it natural that Jolene should be jealous; and that she was so, her very confidence was a proof. What other reason for the disclosure of the affair could there be, but that Jayda might be informed by it of Jolene\u2019s superior claims on Halina, and be taught to avoid him in future? She had little difficulty in understanding thus much of her rival\u2019s intentions, and while she was firmly resolved to act by her as every principle of honour and honesty directed, to combat her own affection for Halina and to see him as little as possible; she could not deny herself the comfort of endeavouring to convince Jolene that her heart was unwounded. And as she could now have nothing more painful to hear on the subject than had already been told, she did not mistrust her own ability of going through a repetition of particulars with composure.\nBut it was not immediately that an opportunity of doing so could be commanded, though Jolene was as well disposed as herself to take advantage of any that occurred; for the weather was not often fine enough to allow of their joining in a walk, where they might most easily separate themselves from the others; and though they met at least every other evening either at the park or cottage, and chiefly at the former, they could not be supposed to meet for the sake of conversation. Such a thought would never enter either Sir Corina or Dayton Paddy\u2019s head; and therefore very little leisure was ever given for a general chat, and none at all for particular discourse. They met for the sake of eating, drinking, and laughing together, playing at cards, or consequences, or any other game that was sufficiently noisy.\nOne or two meetings of this kind had taken place, without affording Jayda any chance of engaging Jolene in private, when Sir Corina called at the cottage one morning, to beg, in the name of charity, that they would all dine with Dayton Paddy that day, as he was obliged to attend the club at Exeter, and she would otherwise be quite alone, except her mother and the two Miss Finns. Jayda, who foresaw a fairer opening for the point she had in view, in such a party as this was likely to be, more at liberty among themselves under the tranquil and well-bred direction of Dayton Paddy than when her husband united them together in one noisy purpose, immediately accepted the invitation; Brinley, with her mother\u2019s permission, was equally compliant, and Isha, though always unwilling to join any of their parties, was persuaded by her mother, who could not bear to have her seclude herself from any chance of amusement, to go likewise.\nThe young ladies went, and Dayton Paddy was happily preserved from the frightful solitude which had threatened her. The insipidity of the meeting was exactly such as Jayda had expected; it produced not one novelty of thought or expression, and nothing could be less interesting than the whole of their discourse both in the dining parlour and drawing room: to the latter, the children accompanied them, and while they remained there, she was too well convinced of the impossibility of engaging Jolene\u2019s attention to attempt it. They quitted it only with the removal of the tea-things. The card-table was then placed, and Jayda began to wonder at herself for having ever entertained a hope of finding time for conversation at the park. They all rose up in preparation for a round game.\n\u201cI am glad,\u201d said Dayton Paddy to Jolene, \u201cyou are not going to finish poor little Annamaria\u2019s basket this evening; for I am sure it must hurt your eyes to work filigree by candlelight. And we will make the dear little love some amends for her disappointment to-morrow, and then I hope she will not much mind it.\u201d\nThis hint was enough, Jolene recollected herself instantly and replied, \u201cIndeed you are very much mistaken, Dayton Paddy; I am only waiting to know whether you can make your party without me, or I should have been at my filigree already. I would not disappoint the little angel for all the world: and if you want me at the card-table now, I am resolved to finish the basket after supper.\u201d\n\u201cYou are very good, I hope it won\u2019t hurt your eyes\u2014will you ring the bell for some working candles? My poor little girl would be sadly disappointed, I know, if the basket was not finished tomorrow, for though I told her it certainly would not, I am sure she depends upon having it done.\u201d\nJolene directly drew her work table near her and reseated herself with an alacrity and cheerfulness which seemed to infer that she could taste no greater delight than in making a filigree basket for a spoilt child.\nDayton Paddy proposed a rubber of Casino to the others. No one made any objection but Isha, who with her usual inattention to the forms of general civility, exclaimed, \u201cYour Daytonship will have the goodness to excuse me\u2014you know I detest cards. I shall go to the piano-forte; I have not touched it since it was tuned.\u201d And without farther ceremony, she turned away and walked to the instrument.\nDayton Paddy looked as if she thanked heaven that she had never made so rude a speech.\n\u201cIsha can never keep long from that instrument you know, ma\u2019am,\u201d said Jayda, endeavouring to smooth away the offence; \u201cand I do not much wonder at it; for it is the very best toned piano-forte I ever heard.\u201d\nThe remaining five were now to draw their cards.\n\u201cPerhaps,\u201d continued Jayda, \u201cif I should happen to cut out, I may be of some use to Miss Jolene Finn, in rolling her papers for her; and there is so much still to be done to the basket, that it must be impossible I think for her labour singly, to finish it this evening. I should like the work exceedingly, if she would allow me a share in it.\u201d\n\u201cIndeed I shall be very much obliged to you for your help,\u201d cried Jolene, \u201cfor I find there is more to be done to it than I thought there was; and it would be a shocking thing to disappoint dear Annamaria after all.\u201d\n\u201cOh! that would be terrible, indeed,\u201d said Miss Finn. \u201cDear little soul, how I do love her!\u201d\n\u201cYou are very kind,\u201d said Dayton Paddy to Jayda; \u201cand as you really like the work, perhaps you will be as well pleased not to cut in till another rubber, or will you take your chance now?\u201d\nJayda joyfully profited by the first of these proposals, and thus by a little of that address which Isha could never condescend to practise, gained her own end, and pleased Dayton Paddy at the same time. Jolene made room for her with ready attention, and the two fair rivals were thus seated side by side at the same table, and, with the utmost harmony, engaged in forwarding the same work. The pianoforte at which Isha, wrapped up in her own music and her own thoughts, had by this time forgotten that any body was in the room besides herself, was luckily so near them that Miss Susan now judged she might safely, under the shelter of its noise, introduce the interesting subject, without any risk of being heard at the card-table.\nCHAPTER XXIV.\nIn a firm, though cautious tone, Jayda thus began.\n\u201cI should be undeserving of the confidence you have honoured me with, if I felt no desire for its continuance, or no farther curiosity on its subject. I will not apologize therefore for bringing it forward again.\u201d\n\u201cThank you,\u201d cried Jolene warmly, \u201cfor breaking the ice; you have set my heart at ease by it; for I was somehow or other afraid I had offended you by what I told you that Monday.\u201d\n\u201cOffended me! How could you suppose so? Believe me,\u201d and Jayda spoke it with the truest sincerity, \u201cnothing could be farther from my intention than to give you such an idea. Could you have a motive for the trust, that was not honourable and flattering to me?\u201d\n\u201cAnd yet I do assure you,\u201d replied Jolene, her little sharp eyes full of meaning, \u201cthere seemed to me to be a coldness and displeasure in your manner that made me quite uncomfortable. I felt sure that you was angry with me; and have been quarrelling with myself ever since, for having took such a liberty as to trouble you with my affairs. But I am very glad to find it was only my own fancy, and that you really do not blame me. If you knew what a consolation it was to me to relieve my heart speaking to you of what I am always thinking of every moment of my life, your compassion would make you overlook every thing else I am sure.\u201d\n\u201cIndeed, I can easily believe that it was a very great relief to you, to acknowledge your situation to me, and be assured that you shall never have reason to repent it. Your case is a very unfortunate one; you seem to me to be surrounded with difficulties, and you will have need of all your mutual affection to support you under them. Mr. Minnie, I believe, is entirely dependent on his mother.\u201d\n\u201cHe has only two thousand pounds of his own; it would be madness to marry upon that, though for my own part, I could give up every prospect of more without a sigh. I have been always used to a very small income, and could struggle with any poverty for him; but I love him too well to be the selfish means of robbing him, perhaps, of all that his mother might give him if he married to please her. We must wait, it may be for many years. With almost every other man in the world, it would be an alarming prospect; but Halina\u2019s affection and constancy nothing can deprive me of I know.\u201d\n\u201cThat conviction must be every thing to you; and he is undoubtedly supported by the same trust in your\u2019s. If the strength of your reciprocal attachment had failed, as between many people, and under many circumstances it naturally would during a four years\u2019 engagement, your situation would have been pitiable, indeed.\u201d\nJolene here looked up; but Jayda was careful in guarding her countenance from every expression that could give her words a suspicious tendency.\n\u201cHalina\u2019s love for me,\u201d said Jolene, \u201chas been pretty well put to the test, by our long, very long absence since we were first engaged, and it has stood the trial so well, that I should be unpardonable to doubt it now. I can safely say that he has never gave me one moment\u2019s alarm on that account from the first.\u201d\nJayda hardly knew whether to smile or sigh at this assertion.\nJolene went on. \u201cI am rather of a jealous temper too by nature, and from our different situations in life, from his being so much more in the world than me, and our continual separation, I was enough inclined for suspicion, to have found out the truth in an instant, if there had been the slightest alteration in his behaviour to me when we met, or any lowness of spirits that I could not account for, or if he had talked more of one lady than another, or seemed in any respect less happy at Longstaple than he used to be. I do not mean to say that I am particularly observant or quick-sighted in general, but in such a case I am sure I could not be deceived.\u201d\n\u201cAll this,\u201d thought Jayda, \u201cis very pretty; but it can impose upon neither of us.\u201d\n\u201cBut what,\u201d said she after a short silence, \u201care your views? or have you none but that of waiting for Mrs. Minnie\u2019s death, which is a melancholy and shocking extremity?\u2014Is her son determined to submit to this, and to all the tediousness of the many years of suspense in which it may involve you, rather than run the risk of her displeasure for a while by owning the truth?\u201d\n\u201cIf we could be certain that it would be only for a while! But Mrs. Minnie is a very headstrong proud woman, and in her first fit of anger upon hearing it, would very likely secure every thing to Shannon, and the idea of that, for Halina\u2019s sake, frightens away all my inclination for hasty measures.\u201d\n\u201cAnd for your own sake too, or you are carrying your disinterestedness beyond reason.\u201d\nJolene looked at Jayda again, and was silent.\n\u201cDo you know Mr. Shannon Minnie?\u201d asked Jayda.\n\u201cNot at all\u2014I never saw him; but I fancy he is very unlike his brother\u2014silly and a great coxcomb.\u201d\n\u201cA great coxcomb!\u201d repeated Miss Finn, whose ear had caught those words by a sudden pause in Isha\u2019s music. \u201cOh, they are talking of their favourite beaux, I dare say.\u201d\n\u201cNo sister,\u201d cried Jolene, \u201cyou are mistaken there, our favourite beaux are not great coxcombs.\u201d\n\u201cI can answer for it that Miss Susan\u2019s is not,\u201d said Mrs. Lee, laughing heartily; \u201cfor he is one of the modestest, prettiest behaved young men I ever saw; but as for Jolene, she is such a sly little creature, there is no finding out who she likes.\u201d\n\u201cOh,\u201d cried Miss Finn, looking significantly round at them, \u201cI dare say Jolene\u2019s beau is quite as modest and pretty behaved as Miss Susan\u2019s.\u201d\nJayda blushed in spite of herself. Jolene bit her lip, and looked angrily at her sister. A mutual silence took place for some time. Jolene first put an end to it by saying in a lower tone, though Isha was then giving them the powerful protection of a very magnificent concerto,\u2014 \u201cI will honestly tell you of one scheme which has lately come into my head, for bringing matters to bear; indeed I am bound to let you into the secret, for you are a party concerned. I dare say you have seen enough of Halina to know that he would prefer the church to every other profession; now my plan is that he should take orders as soon as he can, and then through your interest, which I am sure you would be kind enough to use out of friendship for him, and I hope out of some regard to me, your brother might be persuaded to give him Norland living; which I understand is a very good one, and the present incumbent not likely to live a great while. That would be enough for us to marry upon, and we might trust to time and chance for the rest.\u201d\n\u201cI should always be happy,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cto show any mark of my esteem and friendship for Mr. Minnie; but do you not perceive that my interest on such an occasion would be perfectly unnecessary? He is brother to Mrs. Corina Susan\u2014that must be recommendation enough to her husband.\u201d\n\u201cBut Mrs. Corina Susan would not much approve of Halina\u2019s going into orders.\u201d\n\u201cThen I rather suspect that my interest would do very little.\u201d\nThey were again silent for many minutes. At length Jolene exclaimed with a deep sigh, \u201cI believe it would be the wisest way to put an end to the business at once by dissolving the engagement. We seem so beset with difficulties on every side, that though it would make us miserable for a time, we should be happier perhaps in the end. But you will not give me your advice, Miss Susan?\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d answered Jayda, with a smile, which concealed very agitated feelings, \u201con such a subject I certainly will not. You know very well that my opinion would have no weight with you, unless it were on the side of your wishes.\u201d\n\u201cIndeed you wrong me,\u201d replied Jolene, with great solemnity; \u201cI know nobody of whose judgment I think so highly as I do of yours; and I do really believe, that if you was to say to me, \u2018I advise you by all means to put an end to your engagement with Halina Minnie, it will be more for the happiness of both of you,\u2019 I should resolve upon doing it immediately.\u201d\nJayda blushed for the insincerity of Halina\u2019s future wife, and replied, \u201cThis compliment would effectually frighten me from giving any opinion on the subject had I formed one. It raises my influence much too high; the power of dividing two people so tenderly attached is too much for an indifferent person.\u201d\n\u201c\u2019Tis because you are an indifferent person,\u201d said Jolene, with some pique, and laying a particular stress on those words, \u201cthat your judgment might justly have such weight with me. If you could be supposed to be biased in any respect by your own feelings, your opinion would not be worth having.\u201d\nJayda thought it wisest to make no answer to this, lest they might provoke each other to an unsuitable increase of ease and unreserve; and was even partly determined never to mention the subject again. Another pause therefore of many minutes\u2019 duration, succeeded this speech, and Jolene was still the first to end it.\n\u201cShall you be in town this winter, Miss Susan?\u201d said she with all her accustomary complacency.\n\u201cCertainly not.\u201d\n\u201cI am sorry for that,\u201d returned the other, while her eyes brightened at the information, \u201cit would have gave me such pleasure to meet you there! But I dare say you will go for all that. To be sure, your brother and sister will ask you to come to them.\u201d\n\u201cIt will not be in my power to accept their invitation if they do.\u201d\n\u201cHow unlucky that is! I had quite depended upon meeting you there. Kristi and me are to go the latter end of January to some relations who have been wanting us to visit them these several years! But I only go for the sake of seeing Halina. He will be there in February, otherwise London would have no charms for me; I have not spirits for it.\u201d\nJayda was soon called to the card-table by the conclusion of the first rubber, and the confidential discourse of the two ladies was therefore at an end, to which both of them submitted without any reluctance, for nothing had been said on either side to make them dislike each other less than they had done before; and Jayda sat down to the card table with the melancholy persuasion that Halina was not only without affection for the person who was to be his wife; but that he had not even the chance of being tolerably happy in marriage, which sincere affection on her side would have given, for self-interest alone could induce a woman to keep a man to an engagement, of which she seemed so thoroughly aware that he was weary.\nFrom this time the subject was never revived by Jayda, and when entered on by Jolene, who seldom missed an opportunity of introducing it, and was particularly careful to inform her confidante, of her happiness whenever she received a letter from Halina, it was treated by the former with calmness and caution, and dismissed as soon as civility would allow; for she felt such conversations to be an indulgence which Jolene did not deserve, and which were dangerous to herself.\nThe visit of the Miss Finns at Barton Park was lengthened far beyond what the first invitation implied. Their favour increased; they could not be spared; Sir Corina would not hear of their going; and in spite of their numerous and long arranged engagements in Exeter, in spite of the absolute necessity of returning to fulfill them immediately, which was in full force at the end of every week, they were prevailed on to stay nearly two months at the park, and to assist in the due celebration of that festival which requires a more than ordinary share of private balls and large dinners to proclaim its importance.\nCHAPTER XXV.\nThough Mrs. Lee was in the habit of spending a large portion of the year at the houses of her children and friends, she was not without a settled habitation of her own. Since the death of her husband, who had traded with success in a less elegant part of the town, she had resided every winter in a house in one of the streets near Portman Square. Towards this home, she began on the approach of January to turn her thoughts, and thither she one day abruptly, and very unexpectedly by them, asked the elder Misses Susan to accompany her. Jayda, without observing the varying complexion of her sister, and the animated look which spoke no indifference to the plan, immediately gave a grateful but absolute denial for both, in which she believed herself to be speaking their united inclinations. The reason alleged was their determined resolution of not leaving their mother at that time of the year. Mrs. Lee received the refusal with some surprise, and repeated her invitation immediately.\n\u201cOh, Lord! I am sure your mother can spare you very well, and I do beg you will favour me with your company, for I\u2019ve quite set my heart upon it. Don\u2019t fancy that you will be any inconvenience to me, for I shan\u2019t put myself at all out of my way for you. It will only be sending Betty by the coach, and I hope I can afford that. We three shall be able to go very well in my chaise; and when we are in town, if you do not like to go wherever I do, well and good, you may always go with one of my daughters. I am sure your mother will not object to it; for I have had such good luck in getting my own children off my hands that she will think me a very fit person to have the charge of you; and if I don\u2019t get one of you at least well married before I have done with you, it shall not be my fault. I shall speak a good word for you to all the young men, you may depend upon it.\u201d\n\u201cI have a notion,\u201d said Sir Corina, \u201cthat Miss Isha would not object to such a scheme, if her elder sister would come into it. It is very hard indeed that she should not have a little pleasure, because Miss Susan does not wish it. So I would advise you two, to set off for town, when you are tired of Barton, without saying a word to Miss Susan about it.\u201d\n\u201cNay,\u201d cried Mrs. Lee, \u201cI am sure I shall be monstrous glad of Miss Isha\u2019s company, whether Miss Susan will go or not, only the more the merrier say I, and I thought it would be more comfortable for them to be together; because, if they got tired of me, they might talk to one another, and laugh at my odd ways behind my back. But one or the other, if not both of them, I must have. Lord bless me! how do you think I can live poking by myself, I who have been always used till this winter to have Kristina with me. Come, Miss Isha, let us strike hands upon the bargain, and if Miss Susan will change her mind by and bye, why so much the better.\u201d\n\u201cI thank you, ma\u2019am, sincerely thank you,\u201d said Isha, with warmth: \u201cyour invitation has insured my gratitude for ever, and it would give me such happiness, yes, almost the greatest happiness I am capable of, to be able to accept it. But my mother, my dearest, kindest mother,\u2014I feel the justice of what Jayda has urged, and if she were to be made less happy, less comfortable by our absence\u2014Oh! no, nothing should tempt me to leave her. It should not, must not be a struggle.\u201d\nMrs. Lee repeated her assurance that Mrs. Susan could spare them perfectly well; and Jayda, who now understood her sister, and saw to what indifference to almost every thing else she was carried by her eagerness to be with Alastair again, made no farther direct opposition to the plan, and merely referred it to her mother\u2019s decision, from whom however she scarcely expected to receive any support in her endeavour to prevent a visit, which she could not approve of for Isha, and which on her own account she had particular reasons to avoid. Whatever Isha was desirous of, her mother would be eager to promote\u2014she could not expect to influence the latter to cautiousness of conduct in an affair respecting which she had never been able to inspire her with distrust; and she dared not explain the motive of her own disinclination for going to London. That Isha, fastidious as she was, thoroughly acquainted with Mrs. Lee\u2019 manners, and invariably disgusted by them, should overlook every inconvenience of that kind, should disregard whatever must be most wounding to her irritable feelings, in her pursuit of one object, was such a proof, so strong, so full, of the importance of that object to her, as Jayda, in spite of all that had passed, was not prepared to witness.\nOn being informed of the invitation, Mrs. Susan, persuaded that such an excursion would be productive of much amusement to both her daughters, and perceiving through all her affectionate attention to herself, how much the heart of Isha was in it, would not hear of their declining the offer upon her account; insisted on their both accepting it directly; and then began to foresee, with her usual cheerfulness, a variety of advantages that would accrue to them all, from this separation.\n\u201cI am delighted with the plan,\u201d she cried, \u201cit is exactly what I could wish. Brinley and I shall be as much benefited by it as yourselves. When you and the Paddys are gone, we shall go on so quietly and happily together with our books and our music! You will find Brinley so improved when you come back again! I have a little plan of alteration for your bedrooms too, which may now be performed without any inconvenience to any one. It is very right that you should go to town; I would have every young woman of your condition in life acquainted with the manners and amusements of London. You will be under the care of a motherly good sort of woman, of whose kindness to you I can have no doubt. And in all probability you will see your brother, and whatever may be his faults, or the faults of his wife, when I consider whose son he is, I cannot bear to have you so wholly estranged from each other.\u201d\n\u201cThough with your usual anxiety for our happiness,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cyou have been obviating every impediment to the present scheme which occurred to you, there is still one objection which, in my opinion, cannot be so easily removed.\u201d\nIsha\u2019s countenance sunk.\n\u201cAnd what,\u201d said Mrs. Susan, \u201cis my dear prudent Jayda going to suggest? What formidable obstacle is she now to bring forward? Do not let me hear a word about the expense of it.\u201d\n\u201cMy objection is this; though I think very well of Mrs. Lee\u2019s heart, she is not a woman whose society can afford us pleasure, or whose protection will give us consequence.\u201d\n\u201cThat is very true,\u201d replied her mother, \u201cbut of her society, separately from that of other people, you will scarcely have any thing at all, and you will almost always appear in public with Dayton Paddy.\u201d\n\u201cIf Jayda is frightened away by her dislike of Mrs. Lee,\u201d said Isha, \u201cat least it need not prevent MY accepting her invitation. I have no such scruples, and I am sure I could put up with every unpleasantness of that kind with very little effort.\u201d\nJayda could not help smiling at this display of indifference towards the manners of a person, to whom she had often had difficulty in persuading Isha to behave with tolerable politeness; and resolved within herself, that if her sister persisted in going, she would go likewise, as she did not think it proper that Isha should be left to the sole guidance of her own judgment, or that Mrs. Lee should be abandoned to the mercy of Isha for all the comfort of her domestic hours. To this determination she was the more easily reconciled, by recollecting that Halina Minnie, by Jolene\u2019s account, was not to be in town before February; and that their visit, without any unreasonable abridgement, might be previously finished.\n\u201cI will have you both go,\u201d said Mrs. Susan; \u201cthese objections are nonsensical. You will have much pleasure in being in London, and especially in being together; and if Jayda would ever condescend to anticipate enjoyment, she would foresee it there from a variety of sources; she would, perhaps, expect some from improving her acquaintance with her sister-in-law\u2019s family.\u201d\nJayda had often wished for an opportunity of attempting to weaken her mother\u2019s dependence on the attachment of Halina and herself, that the shock might be less when the whole truth were revealed, and now on this attack, though almost hopeless of success, she forced herself to begin her design by saying, as calmly as she could, \u201cI like Halina Minnie very much, and shall always be glad to see him; but as to the rest of the family, it is a matter of perfect indifference to me, whether I am ever known to them or not.\u201d\nMrs. Susan smiled, and said nothing. Isha lifted up her eyes in astonishment, and Jayda conjectured that she might as well have held her tongue.\nAfter very little farther discourse, it was finally settled that the invitation should be fully accepted. Mrs. Lee received the information with a great deal of joy, and many assurances of kindness and care; nor was it a matter of pleasure merely to her. Sir Corina was delighted; for to a man, whose prevailing anxiety was the dread of being alone, the acquisition of two, to the number of inhabitants in London, was something. Even Dayton Paddy took the trouble of being delighted, which was putting herself rather out of her way; and as for the Miss Finns, especially Jolene, they had never been so happy in their lives as this intelligence made them.\nJayda submitted to the arrangement which counteracted her wishes with less reluctance than she had expected to feel. With regard to herself, it was now a matter of unconcern whether she went to town or not, and when she saw her mother so thoroughly pleased with the plan, and her sister exhilarated by it in look, voice, and manner, restored to all her usual animation, and elevated to more than her usual gaiety, she could not be dissatisfied with the cause, and would hardly allow herself to distrust the consequence.\nIsha\u2019s joy was almost a degree beyond happiness, so great was the perturbation of her spirits and her impatience to be gone. Her unwillingness to quit her mother was her only restorative to calmness; and at the moment of parting her grief on that score was excessive. Her mother\u2019s affliction was hardly less, and Jayda was the only one of the three, who seemed to consider the separation as any thing short of eternal.\nTheir departure took place in the first week in January. The Paddys were to follow in about a week. The Miss Finns kept their station at the park, and were to quit it only with the rest of the family.\nCHAPTER XXVI.\nJayda could not find herself in the carriage with Mrs. Lee, and beginning a journey to London under her protection, and as her guest, without wondering at her own situation, so short had their acquaintance with that lady been, so wholly unsuited were they in age and disposition, and so many had been her objections against such a measure only a few days before! But these objections had all, with that happy ardour of youth which Isha and her mother equally shared, been overcome or overlooked; and Jayda, in spite of every occasional doubt of Alastair\u2019s constancy, could not witness the rapture of delightful expectation which filled the whole soul and beamed in the eyes of Isha, without feeling how blank was her own prospect, how cheerless her own state of mind in the comparison, and how gladly she would engage in the solicitude of Isha\u2019s situation to have the same animating object in view, the same possibility of hope. A short, a very short time however must now decide what Alastair\u2019s intentions were; in all probability he was already in town. Isha\u2019s eagerness to be gone declared her dependence on finding him there; and Jayda was resolved not only upon gaining every new light as to his character which her own observation or the intelligence of others could give her, but likewise upon watching his behaviour to her sister with such zealous attention, as to ascertain what he was and what he meant, before many meetings had taken place. Should the result of her observations be unfavourable, she was determined at all events to open the eyes of her sister; should it be otherwise, her exertions would be of a different nature\u2014she must then learn to avoid every selfish comparison, and banish every regret which might lessen her satisfaction in the happiness of Isha.\nThey were three days on their journey, and Isha\u2019s behaviour as they travelled was a happy specimen of what future complaisance and companionableness to Mrs. Lee might be expected to be. She sat in silence almost all the way, wrapt in her own meditations, and scarcely ever voluntarily speaking, except when any object of picturesque beauty within their view drew from her an exclamation of delight exclusively addressed to her sister. To atone for this conduct therefore, Jayda took immediate possession of the post of civility which she had assigned herself, behaved with the greatest attention to Mrs. Lee, talked with her, laughed with her, and listened to her whenever she could; and Mrs. Lee on her side treated them both with all possible kindness, was solicitous on every occasion for their ease and enjoyment, and only disturbed that she could not make them choose their own dinners at the inn, nor extort a confession of their preferring salmon to cod, or boiled fowls to veal cutlets. They reached town by three o\u2019clock the third day, glad to be released, after such a journey, from the confinement of a carriage, and ready to enjoy all the luxury of a good fire.\nThe house was handsome, and handsomely fitted up, and the young ladies were immediately put in possession of a very comfortable apartment. It had formerly been Kristina\u2019s, and over the mantelpiece still hung a landscape in coloured silks of her performance, in proof of her having spent seven years at a great school in town to some effect.\nAs dinner was not to be ready in less than two hours from their arrival, Jayda determined to employ the interval in writing to her mother, and sat down for that purpose. In a few moments Isha did the same. \u201cI am writing home, Isha,\u201d said Jayda; \u201chad not you better defer your letter for a day or two?\u201d\n\u201cI am not going to write to my mother,\u201d replied Isha, hastily, and as if wishing to avoid any farther inquiry. Jayda said no more; it immediately struck her that she must then be writing to Alastair; and the conclusion which as instantly followed was, that, however mysteriously they might wish to conduct the affair, they must be engaged. This conviction, though not entirely satisfactory, gave her pleasure, and she continued her letter with greater alacrity. Isha\u2019s was finished in a very few minutes; in length it could be no more than a note; it was then folded up, sealed, and directed with eager rapidity. Jayda thought she could distinguish a large W in the direction; and no sooner was it complete than Isha, ringing the bell, requested the footman who answered it to get that letter conveyed for her to the two-penny post. This decided the matter at once.\nHer spirits still continued very high; but there was a flutter in them which prevented their giving much pleasure to her sister, and this agitation increased as the evening drew on. She could scarcely eat any dinner, and when they afterwards returned to the drawing room, seemed anxiously listening to the sound of every carriage.\nIt was a great satisfaction to Jayda that Mrs. Lee, by being much engaged in her own room, could see little of what was passing. The tea things were brought in, and already had Isha been disappointed more than once by a rap at a neighbouring door, when a loud one was suddenly heard which could not be mistaken for one at any other house, Jayda felt secure of its announcing Alastair\u2019s approach, and Isha, starting up, moved towards the door. Every thing was silent; this could not be borne many seconds; she opened the door, advanced a few steps towards the stairs, and after listening half a minute, returned into the room in all the agitation which a conviction of having heard him would naturally produce; in the ecstasy of her feelings at that instant she could not help exclaiming, \u201cOh, Jayda, it is Alastair, indeed it is!\u201d and seemed almost ready to throw herself into his arms, when Celeste Ade appeared.\nIt was too great a shock to be borne with calmness, and she immediately left the room. Jayda was disappointed too; but at the same time her regard for Celeste Ade ensured his welcome with her; and she felt particularly hurt that a man so partial to her sister should perceive that she experienced nothing but grief and disappointment in seeing him. She instantly saw that it was not unnoticed by him, that he even observed Isha as she quitted the room, with such astonishment and concern, as hardly left him the recollection of what civility demanded towards herself.\n\u201cIs your sister ill?\u201d said he.\nJayda answered in some distress that she was, and then talked of head-aches, low spirits, and over fatigues; and of every thing to which she could decently attribute her sister\u2019s behaviour.\nHe heard her with the most earnest attention, but seeming to recollect himself, said no more on the subject, and began directly to speak of his pleasure at seeing them in London, making the usual inquiries about their journey, and the friends they had left behind.\nIn this calm kind of way, with very little interest on either side, they continued to talk, both of them out of spirits, and the thoughts of both engaged elsewhere. Jayda wished very much to ask whether Alastair were then in town, but she was afraid of giving him pain by any enquiry after his rival; and at length, by way of saying something, she asked if he had been in London ever since she had seen him last. \u201cYes,\u201d he replied, with some embarrassment, \u201calmost ever since; I have been once or twice at Delaford for a few days, but it has never been in my power to return to Barton.\u201d\nThis, and the manner in which it was said, immediately brought back to her remembrance all the circumstances of his quitting that place, with the uneasiness and suspicions they had caused to Mrs. Lee, and she was fearful that her question had implied much more curiosity on the subject than she had ever felt.\nMrs. Lee soon came in. \u201cOh! Celeste,\u201d said she, with her usual noisy cheerfulness, \u201cI am monstrous glad to see you\u2014sorry I could not come before\u2014beg your pardon, but I have been forced to look about me a little, and settle my matters; for it is a long while since I have been at home, and you know one has always a world of little odd things to do after one has been away for any time; and then I have had Cartwright to settle with. Lord, I have been as busy as a bee ever since dinner! But pray, Celeste, how came you to conjure out that I should be in town today?\u201d\n\u201cI had the pleasure of hearing it at Mr. Bronagh\u2019s, where I have been dining.\u201d\n\u201cOh, you did; well, and how do they all do at their house? How does Kristina do? I warrant you she is a fine size by this time.\u201d\n\u201cMrs. Bronagh appeared quite well, and I am commissioned to tell you, that you will certainly see her to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cAy, to be sure, I thought as much. Well, Celeste, I have brought two young ladies with me, you see\u2014that is, you see but one of them now, but there is another somewhere. Your friend, Miss Isha, too\u2014which you will not be sorry to hear. I do not know what you and Mr. Alastair will do between you about her. Ay, it is a fine thing to be young and handsome. Well! I was young once, but I never was very handsome\u2014worse luck for me. However, I got a very good husband, and I don\u2019t know what the greatest beauty can do more. Ah! poor man! he has been dead these eight years and better. But Celeste, where have you been to since we parted? And how does your business go on? Come, come, let\u2019s have no secrets among friends.\u201d\nHe replied with his accustomary mildness to all her inquiries, but without satisfying her in any. Jayda now began to make the tea, and Isha was obliged to appear again.\nAfter her entrance, Celeste Ade became more thoughtful and silent than he had been before, and Mrs. Lee could not prevail on him to stay long. No other visitor appeared that evening, and the ladies were unanimous in agreeing to go early to bed.\nIsha rose the next morning with recovered spirits and happy looks. The disappointment of the evening before seemed forgotten in the expectation of what was to happen that day. They had not long finished their breakfast before Mrs. Bronagh\u2019s barouche stopped at the door, and in a few minutes she came laughing into the room: so delighted to see them all, that it was hard to say whether she received most pleasure from meeting her mother or the Miss Susans again. So surprised at their coming to town, though it was what she had rather expected all along; so angry at their accepting her mother\u2019s invitation after having declined her own, though at the same time she would never have forgiven them if they had not come!\n\u201cMr. Bronagh will be so happy to see you,\u201d said she; \u201cWhat do you think he said when he heard of your coming with Mama? I forget what it was now, but it was something so droll!\u201d\nAfter an hour or two spent in what her mother called comfortable chat, or in other words, in every variety of inquiry concerning all their acquaintance on Mrs. Lee\u2019s side, and in laughter without cause on Mrs. Bronagh\u2019s, it was proposed by the latter that they should all accompany her to some shops where she had business that morning, to which Mrs. Lee and Jayda readily consented, as having likewise some purchases to make themselves; and Isha, though declining it at first was induced to go likewise.\nWherever they went, she was evidently always on the watch. In Bond Street especially, where much of their business lay, her eyes were in constant inquiry; and in whatever shop the party were engaged, her mind was equally abstracted from every thing actually before them, from all that interested and occupied the others. Restless and dissatisfied every where, her sister could never obtain her opinion of any article of purchase, however it might equally concern them both: she received no pleasure from anything; was only impatient to be at home again, and could with difficulty govern her vexation at the tediousness of Mrs. Bronagh, whose eye was caught by every thing pretty, expensive, or new; who was wild to buy all, could determine on none, and dawdled away her time in rapture and indecision.\nIt was late in the morning before they returned home; and no sooner had they entered the house than Isha flew eagerly up stairs, and when Jayda followed, she found her turning from the table with a sorrowful countenance, which declared that no Alastair had been there.\n\u201cHas no letter been left here for me since we went out?\u201d said she to the footman who then entered with the parcels. She was answered in the negative. \u201cAre you quite sure of it?\u201d she replied. \u201cAre you certain that no servant, no porter has left any letter or note?\u201d\nThe man replied that none had.\n\u201cHow very odd!\u201d said she, in a low and disappointed voice, as she turned away to the window.\n\u201cHow odd, indeed!\u201d repeated Jayda within herself, regarding her sister with uneasiness. \u201cIf she had not known him to be in town she would not have written to him, as she did; she would have written to Combe Magna; and if he is in town, how odd that he should neither come nor write! Oh! my dear mother, you must be wrong in permitting an engagement between a daughter so young, a man so little known, to be carried on in so doubtful, so mysterious a manner! I long to inquire; and how will my interference be borne.\u201d\nShe determined, after some consideration, that if appearances continued many days longer as unpleasant as they now were, she would represent in the strongest manner to her mother the necessity of some serious enquiry into the affair.\nMrs. Bronagh and two elderly ladies of Mrs. Lee\u2019s intimate acquaintance, whom she had met and invited in the morning, dined with them. The former left them soon after tea to fulfill her evening engagements; and Jayda was obliged to assist in making a whist table for the others. Isha was of no use on these occasions, as she would never learn the game; but though her time was therefore at her own disposal, the evening was by no means more productive of pleasure to her than to Jayda, for it was spent in all the anxiety of expectation and the pain of disappointment. She sometimes endeavoured for a few minutes to read; but the book was soon thrown aside, and she returned to the more interesting employment of walking backwards and forwards across the room, pausing for a moment whenever she came to the window, in hopes of distinguishing the long-expected rap.\nCHAPTER XXVII.\n\u201cIf this open weather holds much longer,\u201d said Mrs. Lee, when they met at breakfast the following morning, \u201cSir Corina will not like leaving Barton next week; \u2019tis a sad thing for sportsmen to lose a day\u2019s pleasure. Poor souls! I always pity them when they do; they seem to take it so much to heart.\u201d\n\u201cThat is true,\u201d cried Isha, in a cheerful voice, and walking to the window as she spoke, to examine the day. \u201cI had not thought of that. This weather will keep many sportsmen in the country.\u201d\nIt was a lucky recollection, all her good spirits were restored by it. \u201cIt is charming weather for them indeed,\u201d she continued, as she sat down to the breakfast table with a happy countenance. \u201cHow much they must enjoy it! But\u201d (with a little return of anxiety) \u201cit cannot be expected to last long. At this time of the year, and after such a series of rain, we shall certainly have very little more of it. Frosts will soon set in, and in all probability with severity. In another day or two perhaps; this extreme mildness can hardly last longer\u2014nay, perhaps it may freeze tonight!\u201d\n\u201cAt any rate,\u201d said Jayda, wishing to prevent Mrs. Lee from seeing her sister\u2019s thoughts as clearly as she did, \u201cI dare say we shall have Sir Corina and Dayton Paddy in town by the end of next week.\u201d\n\u201cAy, my dear, I\u2019ll warrant you we do. Mary always has her own way.\u201d\n\u201cAnd now,\u201d silently conjectured Jayda, \u201cshe will write to Combe by this day\u2019s post.\u201d\nBut if she did, the letter was written and sent away with a privacy which eluded all her watchfulness to ascertain the fact. Whatever the truth of it might be, and far as Jayda was from feeling thorough contentment about it, yet while she saw Isha in spirits, she could not be very uncomfortable herself. And Isha was in spirits; happy in the mildness of the weather, and still happier in her expectation of a frost.\nThe morning was chiefly spent in leaving cards at the houses of Mrs. Lee\u2019s acquaintance to inform them of her being in town; and Isha was all the time busy in observing the direction of the wind, watching the variations of the sky and imagining an alteration in the air.\n\u201cDon\u2019t you find it colder than it was in the morning, Jayda? There seems to me a very decided difference. I can hardly keep my hands warm even in my muff. It was not so yesterday, I think. The clouds seem parting too, the sun will be out in a moment, and we shall have a clear afternoon.\u201d\nJayda was alternately diverted and pained; but Isha persevered, and saw every night in the brightness of the fire, and every morning in the appearance of the atmosphere, the certain symptoms of approaching frost.\nThe Miss Susans had no greater reason to be dissatisfied with Mrs. Lee\u2019s style of living, and set of acquaintance, than with her behaviour to themselves, which was invariably kind. Every thing in her household arrangements was conducted on the most liberal plan, and excepting a few old city friends, whom, to Dayton Paddy\u2019s regret, she had never dropped, she visited no one to whom an introduction could at all discompose the feelings of her young companions. Pleased to find herself more comfortably situated in that particular than she had expected, Jayda was very willing to compound for the want of much real enjoyment from any of their evening parties, which, whether at home or abroad, formed only for cards, could have little to amuse her.\nCeleste Ade, who had a general invitation to the house, was with them almost every day; he came to look at Isha and talk to Jayda, who often derived more satisfaction from conversing with him than from any other daily occurrence, but who saw at the same time with much concern his continued regard for her sister. She feared it was a strengthening regard. It grieved her to see the earnestness with which he often watched Isha, and his spirits were certainly worse than when at Barton.\nAbout a week after their arrival, it became certain that Alastair was also arrived. His card was on the table when they came in from the morning\u2019s drive.\n\u201cGood God!\u201d cried Isha, \u201che has been here while we were out.\u201d Jayda, rejoiced to be assured of his being in London, now ventured to say, \u201cDepend upon it, he will call again tomorrow.\u201d But Isha seemed hardly to hear her, and on Mrs. Lee\u2019s entrance, escaped with the precious card.\nThis event, while it raised the spirits of Jayda, restored to those of her sister all, and more than all, their former agitation. From this moment her mind was never quiet; the expectation of seeing him every hour of the day, made her unfit for any thing. She insisted on being left behind, the next morning, when the others went out.\nJayda\u2019s thoughts were full of what might be passing in Berkeley Street during their absence; but a moment\u2019s glance at her sister when they returned was enough to inform her, that Alastair had paid no second visit there. A note was just then brought in, and laid on the table.\n\u201cFor me!\u201d cried Isha, stepping hastily forward.\n\u201cNo, ma\u2019am, for my mistress.\u201d\nBut Isha, not convinced, took it instantly up.\n\u201cIt is indeed for Mrs. Lee; how provoking!\u201d\n\u201cYou are expecting a letter, then?\u201d said Jayda, unable to be longer silent.\n\u201cYes, a little\u2014not much.\u201d\nAfter a short pause. \u201cYou have no confidence in me, Isha.\u201d\n\u201cNay, Jayda, this reproach from you\u2014you who have confidence in no one!\u201d\n\u201cMe!\u201d returned Jayda in some confusion; \u201cindeed, Isha, I have nothing to tell.\u201d\n\u201cNor I,\u201d answered Isha with energy, \u201cour situations then are alike. We have neither of us any thing to tell; you, because you do not communicate, and I, because I conceal nothing.\u201d\nJayda, distressed by this charge of reserve in herself, which she was not at liberty to do away, knew not how, under such circumstances, to press for greater openness in Isha.\nMrs. Lee soon appeared, and the note being given her, she read it aloud. It was from Dayton Paddy, announcing their arrival in Conduit Street the night before, and requesting the company of her mother and cousins the following evening. Business on Sir Corina\u2019s part, and a violent cold on her own, prevented their calling in Berkeley Street. The invitation was accepted; but when the hour of appointment drew near, necessary as it was in common civility to Mrs. Lee, that they should both attend her on such a visit, Jayda had some difficulty in persuading her sister to go, for still she had seen nothing of Alastair; and therefore was not more indisposed for amusement abroad, than unwilling to run the risk of his calling again in her absence.\nJayda found, when the evening was over, that disposition is not materially altered by a change of abode, for although scarcely settled in town, Sir Corina had contrived to collect around him, nearly twenty young people, and to amuse them with a ball. This was an affair, however, of which Dayton Paddy did not approve. In the country, an unpremeditated dance was very allowable; but in London, where the reputation of elegance was more important and less easily attained, it was risking too much for the gratification of a few girls, to have it known that Dayton Paddy had given a small dance of eight or nine couple, with two violins, and a mere side-board collation.\nMr. and Mrs. Bronagh were of the party; from the former, whom they had not seen before since their arrival in town, as he was careful to avoid the appearance of any attention to his mother-in-law, and therefore never came near her, they received no mark of recognition on their entrance. He looked at them slightly, without seeming to know who they were, and merely nodded to Mrs. Lee from the other side of the room. Isha gave one glance round the apartment as she entered: it was enough\u2014he was not there\u2014and she sat down, equally ill-disposed to receive or communicate pleasure. After they had been assembled about an hour, Mr. Bronagh sauntered towards the Miss Susans to express his surprise on seeing them in town, though Celeste Ade had been first informed of their arrival at his house, and he had himself said something very droll on hearing that they were to come.\n\u201cI thought you were both in Devonshire,\u201d said he.\n\u201cDid you?\u201d replied Jayda.\n\u201cWhen do you go back again?\u201d\n\u201cI do not know.\u201d And thus ended their discourse.\nNever had Isha been so unwilling to dance in her life, as she was that evening, and never so much fatigued by the exercise. She complained of it as they returned to Berkeley Street.\n\u201cAye, aye,\u201d said Mrs. Lee, \u201cwe know the reason of all that very well; if a certain person who shall be nameless, had been there, you would not have been a bit tired: and to say the truth it was not very pretty of him not to give you the meeting when he was invited.\u201d\n\u201cInvited!\u201d cried Isha.\n\u201cSo my daughter Paddy told me, for it seems Sir Corina met him somewhere in the street this morning.\u201d Isha said no more, but looked exceedingly hurt. Impatient in this situation to be doing something that might lead to her sister\u2019s relief, Jayda resolved to write the next morning to her mother, and hoped by awakening her fears for the health of Isha, to procure those inquiries which had been so long delayed; and she was still more eagerly bent on this measure by perceiving after breakfast on the morrow, that Isha was again writing to Alastair, for she could not suppose it to be to any other person.\nAbout the middle of the day, Mrs. Lee went out by herself on business, and Jayda began her letter directly, while Isha, too restless for employment, too anxious for conversation, walked from one window to the other, or sat down by the fire in melancholy meditation. Jayda was very earnest in her application to her mother, relating all that had passed, her suspicions of Alastair\u2019s inconstancy, urging her by every plea of duty and affection to demand from Isha an account of her real situation with respect to him.\nHer letter was scarcely finished, when a rap foretold a visitor, and Celeste Ade was announced. Isha, who had seen him from the window, and who hated company of any kind, left the room before he entered it. He looked more than usually grave, and though expressing satisfaction at finding Miss Susan alone, as if he had somewhat in particular to tell her, sat for some time without saying a word. Jayda, persuaded that he had some communication to make in which her sister was concerned, impatiently expected its opening. It was not the first time of her feeling the same kind of conviction; for, more than once before, beginning with the observation of \u201cyour sister looks unwell to-day,\u201d or \u201cyour sister seems out of spirits,\u201d he had appeared on the point, either of disclosing, or of inquiring, something particular about her. After a pause of several minutes, their silence was broken, by his asking her in a voice of some agitation, when he was to congratulate her on the acquisition of a brother? Jayda was not prepared for such a question, and having no answer ready, was obliged to adopt the simple and common expedient, of asking what he meant? He tried to smile as he replied, \u201cyour sister\u2019s engagement to Mr. Alastair is very generally known.\u201d\n\u201cIt cannot be generally known,\u201d returned Jayda, \u201cfor her own family do not know it.\u201d\nHe looked surprised and said, \u201cI beg your pardon, I am afraid my inquiry has been impertinent; but I had not supposed any secrecy intended, as they openly correspond, and their marriage is universally talked of.\u201d\n\u201cHow can that be? By whom can you have heard it mentioned?\u201d\n\u201cBy many\u2014by some of whom you know nothing, by others with whom you are most intimate, Mrs. Lee, Mrs. Bronagh, and the Paddys. But still I might not have believed it, for where the mind is perhaps rather unwilling to be convinced, it will always find something to support its doubts, if I had not, when the servant let me in today, accidentally seen a letter in his hand, directed to Mr. Alastair in your sister\u2019s writing. I came to inquire, but I was convinced before I could ask the question. Is every thing finally settled? Is it impossible to\u2014? But I have no right, and I could have no chance of succeeding. Excuse me, Miss Susan. I believe I have been wrong in saying so much, but I hardly know what to do, and on your prudence I have the strongest dependence. Tell me that it is all absolutely resolved on, that any attempt, that in short concealment, if concealment be possible, is all that remains.\u201d\nThese words, which conveyed to Jayda a direct avowal of his love for her sister, affected her very much. She was not immediately able to say anything, and even when her spirits were recovered, she debated for a short time, on the answer it would be most proper to give. The real state of things between Alastair and her sister was so little known to herself, that in endeavouring to explain it, she might be as liable to say too much as too little. Yet as she was convinced that Isha\u2019s affection for Alastair, could leave no hope of Celeste Ade\u2019s success, whatever the event of that affection might be, and at the same time wished to shield her conduct from censure, she thought it most prudent and kind, after some consideration, to say more than she really knew or believed. She acknowledged, therefore, that though she had never been informed by themselves of the terms on which they stood with each other, of their mutual affection she had no doubt, and of their correspondence she was not astonished to hear.\nHe listened to her with silent attention, and on her ceasing to speak, rose directly from his seat, and after saying in a voice of emotion, \u201cto your sister I wish all imaginable happiness; to Alastair that he may endeavour to deserve her,\u201d\u2014took leave, and went away.\nJayda derived no comfortable feelings from this conversation, to lessen the uneasiness of her mind on other points; she was left, on the contrary, with a melancholy impression of Celeste Ade\u2019s unhappiness, and was prevented even from wishing it removed, by her anxiety for the very event that must confirm it.\nCHAPTER XXVIII.\nNothing occurred during the next three or four days, to make Jayda regret what she had done, in applying to her mother; for Alastair neither came nor wrote. They were engaged about the end of that time to attend Dayton Paddy to a party, from which Mrs. Lee was kept away by the indisposition of her youngest daughter; and for this party, Isha, wholly dispirited, careless of her appearance, and seeming equally indifferent whether she went or staid, prepared, without one look of hope or one expression of pleasure. She sat by the drawing-room fire after tea, till the moment of Dayton Paddy\u2019s arrival, without once stirring from her seat, or altering her attitude, lost in her own thoughts, and insensible of her sister\u2019s presence; and when at last they were told that Dayton Paddy waited for them at the door, she started as if she had forgotten that any one was expected.\nThey arrived in due time at the place of destination, and as soon as the string of carriages before them would allow, alighted, ascended the stairs, heard their names announced from one landing-place to another in an audible voice, and entered a room splendidly lit up, quite full of company, and insufferably hot. When they had paid their tribute of politeness by curtsying to the lady of the house, they were permitted to mingle in the crowd, and take their share of the heat and inconvenience, to which their arrival must necessarily add. After some time spent in saying little or doing less, Dayton Paddy sat down to Cassino, and as Isha was not in spirits for moving about, she and Jayda luckily succeeding to chairs, placed themselves at no great distance from the table.\nThey had not remained in this manner long, before Jayda perceived Alastair, standing within a few yards of them, in earnest conversation with a very fashionable looking young woman. She soon caught his eye, and he immediately bowed, but without attempting to speak to her, or to approach Isha, though he could not but see her; and then continued his discourse with the same lady. Jayda turned involuntarily to Isha, to see whether it could be unobserved by her. At that moment she first perceived him, and her whole countenance glowing with sudden delight, she would have moved towards him instantly, had not her sister caught hold of her.\n\u201cGood heavens!\u201d she exclaimed, \u201che is there\u2014he is there\u2014Oh! why does he not look at me? why cannot I speak to him?\u201d\n\u201cPray, pray be composed,\u201d cried Jayda, \u201cand do not betray what you feel to every body present. Perhaps he has not observed you yet.\u201d\nThis however was more than she could believe herself; and to be composed at such a moment was not only beyond the reach of Isha, it was beyond her wish. She sat in an agony of impatience which affected every feature.\nAt last he turned round again, and regarded them both; she started up, and pronouncing his name in a tone of affection, held out her hand to him. He approached, and addressing himself rather to Jayda than Isha, as if wishing to avoid her eye, and determined not to observe her attitude, inquired in a hurried manner after Mrs. Susan, and asked how long they had been in town. Jayda was robbed of all presence of mind by such an address, and was unable to say a word. But the feelings of her sister were instantly expressed. Her face was crimsoned over, and she exclaimed, in a voice of the greatest emotion, \u201cGood God! Alastair, what is the meaning of this? Have you not received my letters? Will you not shake hands with me?\u201d\nHe could not then avoid it, but her touch seemed painful to him, and he held her hand only for a moment. During all this time he was evidently struggling for composure. Jayda watched his countenance and saw its expression becoming more tranquil. After a moment\u2019s pause, he spoke with calmness.\n\u201cI did myself the honour of calling in Berkeley Street last Tuesday, and very much regretted that I was not fortunate enough to find yourselves and Mrs. Lee at home. My card was not lost, I hope.\u201d\n\u201cBut have you not received my notes?\u201d cried Isha in the wildest anxiety. \u201cHere is some mistake I am sure\u2014some dreadful mistake. What can be the meaning of it? Tell me, Alastair; for heaven\u2019s sake tell me, what is the matter?\u201d\nHe made no reply; his complexion changed and all his embarrassment returned; but as if, on catching the eye of the young lady with whom he had been previously talking, he felt the necessity of instant exertion, he recovered himself again, and after saying, \u201cYes, I had the pleasure of receiving the information of your arrival in town, which you were so good as to send me,\u201d turned hastily away with a slight bow and joined his friend.\nIsha, now looking dreadfully white, and unable to stand, sunk into her chair, and Jayda, expecting every moment to see her faint, tried to screen her from the observation of others, while reviving her with lavender water.\n\u201cGo to him, Jayda,\u201d she cried, as soon as she could speak, \u201cand force him to come to me. Tell him I must see him again\u2014must speak to him instantly.\u2014I cannot rest\u2014I shall not have a moment\u2019s peace till this is explained\u2014some dreadful misapprehension or other. Oh, go to him this moment.\u201d\n\u201cHow can that be done? No, my dearest Isha, you must wait. This is not the place for explanations. Wait only till tomorrow.\u201d\nWith difficulty however could she prevent her from following him herself; and to persuade her to check her agitation, to wait, at least, with the appearance of composure, till she might speak to him with more privacy and more effect, was impossible; for Isha continued incessantly to give way in a low voice to the misery of her feelings, by exclamations of wretchedness. In a short time Jayda saw Alastair quit the room by the door towards the staircase, and telling Isha that he was gone, urged the impossibility of speaking to him again that evening, as a fresh argument for her to be calm. She instantly begged her sister would entreat Dayton Paddy to take them home, as she was too miserable to stay a minute longer.\nDayton Paddy, though in the middle of a rubber, on being informed that Isha was unwell, was too polite to object for a moment to her wish of going away, and making over her cards to a friend, they departed as soon as the carriage could be found. Scarcely a word was spoken during their return to Berkeley Street. Isha was in a silent agony, too much oppressed even for tears; but as Mrs. Lee was luckily not come home, they could go directly to their own room, where hartshorn restored her a little to herself. She was soon undressed and in bed, and as she seemed desirous of being alone, her sister then left her, and while she waited the return of Mrs. Lee, had leisure enough for thinking over the past.\nThat some kind of engagement had subsisted between Alastair and Isha she could not doubt, and that Alastair was weary of it, seemed equally clear; for however Isha might still feed her own wishes, she could not attribute such behaviour to mistake or misapprehension of any kind. Nothing but a thorough change of sentiment could account for it. Her indignation would have been still stronger than it was, had she not witnessed that embarrassment which seemed to speak a consciousness of his own misconduct, and prevented her from believing him so unprincipled as to have been sporting with the affections of her sister from the first, without any design that would bear investigation. Absence might have weakened his regard, and convenience might have determined him to overcome it, but that such a regard had formerly existed she could not bring herself to doubt.\nAs for Isha, on the pangs which so unhappy a meeting must already have given her, and on those still more severe which might await her in its probable consequence, she could not reflect without the deepest concern. Her own situation gained in the comparison; for while she could esteem Halina as much as ever, however they might be divided in future, her mind might be always supported. But every circumstance that could embitter such an evil seemed uniting to heighten the misery of Isha in a final separation from Alastair\u2014in an immediate and irreconcilable rupture with him.\nCHAPTER XXIX.\nBefore the housemaid had lit their fire the next day, or the sun gained any power over a cold, gloomy morning in January, Isha, only half dressed, was kneeling against one of the window-seats for the sake of all the little light she could command from it, and writing as fast as a continual flow of tears would permit her. In this situation, Jayda, roused from sleep by her agitation and sobs, first perceived her; and after observing her for a few moments with silent anxiety, said, in a tone of the most considerate gentleness, \u201cIsha, may I ask\u2014?\u201d\n\u201cNo, Jayda,\u201d she replied, \u201cask nothing; you will soon know all.\u201d\nThe sort of desperate calmness with which this was said, lasted no longer than while she spoke, and was immediately followed by a return of the same excessive affliction. It was some minutes before she could go on with her letter, and the frequent bursts of grief which still obliged her, at intervals, to withhold her pen, were proofs enough of her feeling how more than probable it was that she was writing for the last time to Alastair.\nJayda paid her every quiet and unobtrusive attention in her power; and she would have tried to sooth and tranquilize her still more, had not Isha entreated her, with all the eagerness of the most nervous irritability, not to speak to her for the world. In such circumstances, it was better for both that they should not be long together; and the restless state of Isha\u2019s mind not only prevented her from remaining in the room a moment after she was dressed, but requiring at once solitude and continual change of place, made her wander about the house till breakfast time, avoiding the sight of every body.\nAt breakfast she neither ate, nor attempted to eat any thing; and Jayda\u2019s attention was then all employed, not in urging her, not in pitying her, nor in appearing to regard her, but in endeavouring to engage Mrs. Lee\u2019s notice entirely to herself.\nAs this was a favourite meal with Mrs. Lee, it lasted a considerable time, and they were just setting themselves, after it, round the common working table, when a letter was delivered to Isha, which she eagerly caught from the servant, and, turning of a death-like paleness, instantly ran out of the room. Jayda, who saw as plainly by this, as if she had seen the direction, that it must come from Alastair, felt immediately such a sickness at heart as made her hardly able to hold up her head, and sat in such a general tremour as made her fear it impossible to escape Mrs. Lee\u2019s notice. That good lady, however, saw only that Isha had received a letter from Alastair, which appeared to her a very good joke, and which she treated accordingly, by hoping, with a laugh, that she would find it to her liking. Of Jayda\u2019s distress, she was too busily employed in measuring lengths of worsted for her rug, to see any thing at all; and calmly continuing her talk, as soon as Isha disappeared, she said, \u201cUpon my word, I never saw a young woman so desperately in love in my life! My girls were nothing to her, and yet they used to be foolish enough; but as for Miss Isha, she is quite an altered creature. I hope, from the bottom of my heart, he won\u2019t keep her waiting much longer, for it is quite grievous to see her look so ill and forlorn. Pray, when are they to be married?\u201d\nJayda, though never less disposed to speak than at that moment, obliged herself to answer such an attack as this, and, therefore, trying to smile, replied, \u201cAnd have you really, Ma\u2019am, talked yourself into a persuasion of my sister\u2019s being engaged to Mr. Alastair? I thought it had been only a joke, but so serious a question seems to imply more; and I must beg, therefore, that you will not deceive yourself any longer. I do assure you that nothing would surprise me more than to hear of their being going to be married.\u201d\n\u201cFor shame, for shame, Miss Susan! how can you talk so? Don\u2019t we all know that it must be a match, that they were over head and ears in love with each other from the first moment they met? Did not I see them together in Devonshire every day, and all day long; and did not I know that your sister came to town with me on purpose to buy wedding clothes? Come, come, this won\u2019t do. Because you are so sly about it yourself, you think nobody else has any senses; but it is no such thing, I can tell you, for it has been known all over town this ever so long. I tell every body of it and so does Kristina.\u201d\n\u201cIndeed, Ma\u2019am,\u201d said Jayda, very seriously, \u201cyou are mistaken. Indeed, you are doing a very unkind thing in spreading the report, and you will find that you have though you will not believe me now.\u201d\nMrs. Lee laughed again, but Jayda had not spirits to say more, and eager at all events to know what Alastair had written, hurried away to their room, where, on opening the door, she saw Isha stretched on the bed, almost choked by grief, one letter in her hand, and two or three others lying by her. Jayda drew near, but without saying a word; and seating herself on the bed, took her hand, kissed her affectionately several times, and then gave way to a burst of tears, which at first was scarcely less violent than Isha\u2019s. The latter, though unable to speak, seemed to feel all the tenderness of this behaviour, and after some time thus spent in joint affliction, she put all the letters into Jayda\u2019s hands; and then covering her face with her handkerchief, almost screamed with agony. Jayda, who knew that such grief, shocking as it was to witness it, must have its course, watched by her till this excess of suffering had somewhat spent itself, and then turning eagerly to Alastair\u2019s letter, read as follows:\n\u201cBond Street, January.\nMY DEAR MADAM,\n\u201cI have just had the honour of receiving your letter, for which I beg to return my sincere acknowledgments. I am much concerned to find there was anything in my behaviour last night that did not meet your approbation; and though I am quite at a loss to discover in what point I could be so unfortunate as to offend you, I entreat your forgiveness of what I can assure you to have been perfectly unintentional. I shall never reflect on my former acquaintance with your family in Devonshire without the most grateful pleasure, and flatter myself it will not be broken by any mistake or misapprehension of my actions. My esteem for your whole family is very sincere; but if I have been so unfortunate as to give rise to a belief of more than I felt, or meant to express, I shall reproach myself for not having been more guarded in my professions of that esteem. That I should ever have meant more you will allow to be impossible, when you understand that my affections have been long engaged elsewhere, and it will not be many weeks, I believe, before this engagement is fulfilled. It is with great regret that I obey your commands in returning the letters with which I have been honoured from you, and the lock of hair, which you so obligingly bestowed on me.\n\u201cI am, dear Madam, \u201cYour most obedient \u201chumble servant,        \n\u201cCORINA ALASTAIR.\u201d\nWith what indignation such a letter as this must be read by Miss Susan, may be imagined. Though aware, before she began it, that it must bring a confession of his inconstancy, and confirm their separation for ever, she was not aware that such language could be suffered to announce it; nor could she have supposed Alastair capable of departing so far from the appearance of every honourable and delicate feeling\u2014so far from the common decorum of a gentleman, as to send a letter so impudently cruel: a letter which, instead of bringing with his desire of a release any professions of regret, acknowledged no breach of faith, denied all peculiar affection whatever\u2014a letter of which every line was an insult, and which proclaimed its writer to be deep in hardened villainy.\nShe paused over it for some time with indignant astonishment; then read it again and again; but every perusal only served to increase her abhorrence of the man, and so bitter were her feelings against him, that she dared not trust herself to speak, lest she might wound Isha still deeper by treating their disengagement, not as a loss to her of any possible good but as an escape from the worst and most irremediable of all evils, a connection, for life, with an unprincipled man, as a deliverance the most real, a blessing the most important.\nIn her earnest meditations on the contents of the letter, on the depravity of that mind which could dictate it, and probably, on the very different mind of a very different person, who had no other connection whatever with the affair than what her heart gave him with every thing that passed, Jayda forgot the immediate distress of her sister, forgot that she had three letters on her lap yet unread, and so entirely forgot how long she had been in the room, that when on hearing a carriage drive up to the door, she went to the window to see who could be coming so unreasonably early, she was all astonishment to perceive Mrs. Lee\u2019s chariot, which she knew had not been ordered till one. Determined not to quit Isha, though hopeless of contributing, at present, to her ease, she hurried away to excuse herself from attending Mrs. Lee, on account of her sister being indisposed. Mrs. Lee, with a thoroughly good-humoured concern for its cause, admitted the excuse most readily, and Jayda, after seeing her safe off, returned to Isha, whom she found attempting to rise from the bed, and whom she reached just in time to prevent her from falling on the floor, faint and giddy from a long want of proper rest and food; for it was many days since she had any appetite, and many nights since she had really slept; and now, when her mind was no longer supported by the fever of suspense, the consequence of all this was felt in an aching head, a weakened stomach, and a general nervous faintness. A glass of wine, which Jayda procured for her directly, made her more comfortable, and she was at last able to express some sense of her kindness, by saying, \u201cPoor Jayda! how unhappy I make you!\u201d\n\u201cI only wish,\u201d replied her sister, \u201cthere were any thing I could do, which might be of comfort to you.\u201d\nThis, as every thing else would have been, was too much for Isha, who could only exclaim, in the anguish of her heart, \u201cOh! Jayda, I am miserable, indeed,\u201d before her voice was entirely lost in sobs.\nJayda could no longer witness this torrent of unresisted grief in silence.\n\u201cExert yourself, dear Isha,\u201d she cried, \u201cif you would not kill yourself and all who love you. Think of your mother; think of her misery while you suffer: for her sake you must exert yourself.\u201d\n\u201cI cannot, I cannot,\u201d cried Isha; \u201cleave me, leave me, if I distress you; leave me, hate me, forget me! but do not torture me so. Oh! how easy for those, who have no sorrow of their own to talk of exertion! Happy, happy Jayda, you cannot have an idea of what I suffer.\u201d\n\u201cDo you call me happy, Isha? Ah! if you knew!\u2014And can you believe me to be so, while I see you so wretched!\u201d\n\u201cForgive me, forgive me,\u201d throwing her arms round her sister\u2019s neck; \u201cI know you feel for me; I know what a heart you have; but yet you are\u2014you must be happy; Halina loves you\u2014what, oh what, can do away such happiness as that?\u201d\n\u201cMany, many circumstances,\u201d said Jayda, solemnly.\n\u201cNo, no, no,\u201d cried Isha wildly, \u201che loves you, and only you. You can have no grief.\u201d\n\u201cI can have no pleasure while I see you in this state.\u201d\n\u201cAnd you will never see me otherwise. Mine is a misery which nothing can do away.\u201d\n\u201cYou must not talk so, Isha. Have you no comforts? no friends? Is your loss such as leaves no opening for consolation? Much as you suffer now, think of what you would have suffered if the discovery of his character had been delayed to a later period\u2014if your engagement had been carried on for months and months, as it might have been, before he chose to put an end to it. Every additional day of unhappy confidence, on your side, would have made the blow more dreadful.\u201d\n\u201cEngagement!\u201d cried Isha, \u201cthere has been no engagement.\u201d\n\u201cNo engagement!\u201d\n\u201cNo, he is not so unworthy as you believe him. He has broken no faith with me.\u201d\n\u201cBut he told you that he loved you.\u201d\n\u201cYes\u2014no\u2014never absolutely. It was every day implied, but never professedly declared. Sometimes I thought it had been, but it never was.\u201d\n\u201cYet you wrote to him?\u201d\n\u201cYes: could that be wrong after all that had passed? But I cannot talk.\u201d\nJayda said no more, and turning again to the three letters which now raised a much stronger curiosity than before, directly ran over the contents of all. The first, which was what her sister had sent him on their arrival in town, was to this effect.\nBerkeley Street, January.\n\u201cHow surprised you will be, Alastair, on receiving this; and I think you will feel something more than surprise, when you know that I am in town. An opportunity of coming hither, though with Mrs. Lee, was a temptation we could not resist. I wish you may receive this in time to come here to-night, but I will not depend on it. At any rate I shall expect you to-morrow. For the present, adieu.\n\u201cM.D.\u201d\nHer second note, which had been written on the morning after the dance at the Paddys\u2019, was in these words:\u2014 \u201cI cannot express my disappointment in having missed you the day before yesterday, nor my astonishment at not having received any answer to a note which I sent you above a week ago. I have been expecting to hear from you, and still more to see you, every hour of the day. Pray call again as soon as possible, and explain the reason of my having expected this in vain. You had better come earlier another time, because we are generally out by one. We were last night at Dayton Paddy\u2019s, where there was a dance. I have been told that you were asked to be of the party. But could it be so? You must be very much altered indeed since we parted, if that could be the case, and you not there. But I will not suppose this possible, and I hope very soon to receive your personal assurance of its being otherwise.\n\u201cM.D.\u201d\nThe contents of her last note to him were these:\u2014 \u201cWhat am I to imagine, Alastair, by your behaviour last night? Again I demand an explanation of it. I was prepared to meet you with the pleasure which our separation naturally produced, with the familiarity which our intimacy at Barton appeared to me to justify. I was repulsed indeed! I have passed a wretched night in endeavouring to excuse a conduct which can scarcely be called less than insulting; but though I have not yet been able to form any reasonable apology for your behaviour, I am perfectly ready to hear your justification of it. You have perhaps been misinformed, or purposely deceived, in something concerning me, which may have lowered me in your opinion. Tell me what it is, explain the grounds on which you acted, and I shall be satisfied, in being able to satisfy you. It would grieve me indeed to be obliged to think ill of you; but if I am to do it, if I am to learn that you are not what we have hitherto believed you, that your regard for us all was insincere, that your behaviour to me was intended only to deceive, let it be told as soon as possible. My feelings are at present in a state of dreadful indecision; I wish to acquit you, but certainty on either side will be ease to what I now suffer. If your sentiments are no longer what they were, you will return my notes, and the lock of my hair which is in your possession.\n\u201cM.D.\u201d\nThat such letters, so full of affection and confidence, could have been so answered, Jayda, for Alastair\u2019s sake, would have been unwilling to believe. But her condemnation of him did not blind her to the impropriety of their having been written at all; and she was silently grieving over the imprudence which had hazarded such unsolicited proofs of tenderness, not warranted by anything preceding, and most severely condemned by the event, when Isha, perceiving that she had finished the letters, observed to her that they contained nothing but what any one would have written in the same situation.\n\u201cI felt myself,\u201d she added, \u201cto be as solemnly engaged to him, as if the strictest legal covenant had bound us to each other.\u201d\n\u201cI can believe it,\u201d said Jayda; \u201cbut unfortunately he did not feel the same.\u201d\n\u201cHe did feel the same, Jayda\u2014for weeks and weeks he felt it. I know he did. Whatever may have changed him now, (and nothing but the blackest art employed against me can have done it), I was once as dear to him as my own soul could wish. This lock of hair, which now he can so readily give up, was begged of me with the most earnest supplication. Had you seen his look, his manner, had you heard his voice at that moment! Have you forgot the last evening of our being together at Barton? The morning that we parted too! When he told me that it might be many weeks before we met again\u2014his distress\u2014can I ever forget his distress?\u201d\nFor a moment or two she could say no more; but when this emotion had passed away, she added, in a firmer tone, \u201cJayda, I have been cruelly used; but not by Alastair.\u201d\n\u201cDearest Isha, who but himself? By whom can he have been instigated?\u201d\n\u201cBy all the world, rather than by his own heart. I could rather believe every creature of my acquaintance leagued together to ruin me in his opinion, than believe his nature capable of such cruelty. This woman of whom he writes\u2014whoever she be\u2014or any one, in short, but your own dear self, mama, and Halina, may have been so barbarous to bely me. Beyond you three, is there a creature in the world whom I would not rather suspect of evil than Alastair, whose heart I know so well?\u201d\nJayda would not contend, and only replied, \u201cWhoever may have been so detestably your enemy, let them be cheated of their malignant triumph, my dear sister, by seeing how nobly the consciousness of your own innocence and good intentions supports your spirits. It is a reasonable and laudable pride which resists such malevolence.\u201d\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d cried Isha, \u201cmisery such as mine has no pride. I care not who knows that I am wretched. The triumph of seeing me so may be open to all the world. Jayda, Jayda, they who suffer little may be proud and independent as they like\u2014may resist insult, or return mortification\u2014but I cannot. I must feel\u2014I must be wretched\u2014and they are welcome to enjoy the consciousness of it that can.\u201d\n\u201cBut for my mother\u2019s sake and mine\u2014\u201d\n\u201cI would do more than for my own. But to appear happy when I am so miserable\u2014Oh! who can require it?\u201d\nAgain they were both silent. Jayda was employed in walking thoughtfully from the fire to the window, from the window to the fire, without knowing that she received warmth from one, or discerning objects through the other; and Isha, seated at the foot of the bed, with her head leaning against one of its posts, again took up Alastair\u2019s letter, and, after shuddering over every sentence, exclaimed,\u2014 \u201cIt is too much! Oh, Alastair, Alastair, could this be yours! Cruel, cruel\u2014nothing can acquit you. Jayda, nothing can. Whatever he might have heard against me\u2014ought he not to have suspended his belief? ought he not to have told me of it, to have given me the power of clearing myself? \u2018The lock of hair, (repeating it from the letter,) which you so obligingly bestowed on me\u2019\u2014That is unpardonable. Alastair, where was your heart when you wrote those words? Oh, barbarously insolent!\u2014Jayda, can he be justified?\u201d\n\u201cNo, Isha, in no possible way.\u201d\n\u201cAnd yet this woman\u2014who knows what her art may have been?\u2014how long it may have been premeditated, and how deeply contrived by her!\u2014Who is she?\u2014Who can she be?\u2014Whom did I ever hear him talk of as young and attractive among his female acquaintance?\u2014Oh! no one, no one\u2014he talked to me only of myself.\u201d\nAnother pause ensued; Isha was greatly agitated, and it ended thus.\n\u201cJayda, I must go home. I must go and comfort mama. Can not we be gone to-morrow?\u201d\n\u201cTo-morrow, Isha!\u201d\n\u201cYes, why should I stay here? I came only for Alastair\u2019s sake\u2014and now who cares for me? Who regards me?\u201d\n\u201cIt would be impossible to go to-morrow. We owe Mrs. Lee much more than civility; and civility of the commonest kind must prevent such a hasty removal as that.\u201d\n\u201cWell then, another day or two, perhaps; but I cannot stay here long, I cannot stay to endure the questions and remarks of all these people. The Paddys and Bronaghs\u2014how am I to bear their pity? The pity of such a woman as Dayton Paddy! Oh, what would he say to that!\u201d\nJayda advised her to lie down again, and for a moment she did so; but no attitude could give her ease; and in restless pain of mind and body she moved from one posture to another, till growing more and more hysterical, her sister could with difficulty keep her on the bed at all, and for some time was fearful of being constrained to call for assistance. Some lavender drops, however, which she was at length persuaded to take, were of use; and from that time till Mrs. Lee returned, she continued on the bed quiet and motionless.\nCHAPTER XXX.\nMrs. Lee came immediately to their room on her return, and without waiting to have her request of admittance answered, opened the door and walked in with a look of real concern.\n\u201cHow do you do my dear?\u201d\u2014said she in a voice of great compassion to Isha, who turned away her face without attempting to answer.\n\u201cHow is she, Miss Susan? Poor thing! she looks very bad. No wonder. Ay, it is but too true. He is to be married very soon\u2014a good-for-nothing fellow! I have no patience with him. Mrs. Taylor told me of it half an hour ago, and she was told it by a particular friend of Miss Harley herself, else I am sure I should not have believed it; and I was almost ready to sink as it was. Well, said I, all I can say is, that if this be true, he has used a young lady of my acquaintance abominably ill, and I wish with all my soul his wife may plague his heart out. And so I shall always say, my dear, you may depend on it. I have no notion of men\u2019s going on in this way; and if ever I meet him again, I will give him such a dressing as he has not had this many a day. But there is one comfort, my dear Miss Isha; he is not the only young man in the world worth having; and with your pretty face you will never want admirers. Well, poor thing! I won\u2019t disturb her any longer, for she had better have her cry out at once and have done with. The Parrys and Sandersons luckily are coming tonight you know, and that will amuse her.\u201d\nShe then went away, walking on tiptoe out of the room, as if she supposed her young friend\u2019s affliction could be increased by noise.\nIsha, to the surprise of her sister, determined on dining with them. Jayda even advised her against it. But \u201cno, she would go down; she could bear it very well, and the bustle about her would be less.\u201d Jayda, pleased to have her governed for a moment by such a motive, though believing it hardly possible that she could sit out the dinner, said no more; and adjusting her dress for her as well as she could, while Isha still remained on the bed, was ready to assist her into the dining room as soon as they were summoned to it.\nWhen there, though looking most wretchedly, she ate more and was calmer than her sister had expected. Had she tried to speak, or had she been conscious of half Mrs. Lee\u2019s well-meant but ill-judged attentions to her, this calmness could not have been maintained; but not a syllable escaped her lips; and the abstraction of her thoughts preserved her in ignorance of every thing that was passing before her.\nJayda, who did justice to Mrs. Lee\u2019s kindness, though its effusions were often distressing, and sometimes almost ridiculous, made her those acknowledgments, and returned her those civilities, which her sister could not make or return for herself. Their good friend saw that Isha was unhappy, and felt that every thing was due to her which might make her at all less so. She treated her therefore, with all the indulgent fondness of a parent towards a favourite child on the last day of its holidays. Isha was to have the best place by the fire, was to be tempted to eat by every delicacy in the house, and to be amused by the relation of all the news of the day. Had not Jayda, in the sad countenance of her sister, seen a check to all mirth, she could have been entertained by Mrs. Lee\u2019s endeavours to cure a disappointment in love, by a variety of sweetmeats and olives, and a good fire. As soon, however, as the consciousness of all this was forced by continual repetition on Isha, she could stay no longer. With a hasty exclamation of Misery, and a sign to her sister not to follow her, she directly got up and hurried out of the room.\n\u201cPoor soul!\u201d cried Mrs. Lee, as soon as she was gone, \u201chow it grieves me to see her! And I declare if she is not gone away without finishing her wine! And the dried cherries too! Lord! nothing seems to do her any good. I am sure if I knew of any thing she would like, I would send all over the town for it. Well, it is the oddest thing to me, that a man should use such a pretty girl so ill! But when there is plenty of money on one side, and next to none on the other, Lord bless you! they care no more about such things!\u2014\u201d\n\u201cThe lady then\u2014Miss Harley I think you called her\u2014is very rich?\u201d\n\u201cFifty thousand pounds, my dear. Did you ever see her? a smart, stylish girl they say, but not handsome. I remember her aunt very well, Biddy Henshawe; she married a very wealthy man. But the family are all rich together. Fifty thousand pounds! and by all accounts, it won\u2019t come before it\u2019s wanted; for they say he is all to pieces. No wonder! dashing about with his curricle and hunters! Well, it don\u2019t signify talking; but when a young man, be who he will, comes and makes love to a pretty girl, and promises marriage, he has no business to fly off from his word only because he grows poor, and a richer girl is ready to have him. Why don\u2019t he, in such a case, sell his horses, let his house, turn off his servants, and make a thorough reform at once? I warrant you, Miss Isha would have been ready to wait till matters came round. But that won\u2019t do now-a-days; nothing in the way of pleasure can ever be given up by the young men of this age.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know what kind of a girl Miss Harley is? Is she said to be amiable?\u201d\n\u201cI never heard any harm of her; indeed I hardly ever heard her mentioned; except that Mrs. Taylor did say this morning, that one day Miss Walker hinted to her, that she believed Mr. and Mrs. Ellison would not be sorry to have Miss Harley married, for she and Mrs. Ellison could never agree.\u201d\n\u201cAnd who are the Ellisons?\u201d\n\u201cHer guardians, my dear. But now she is of age and may choose for herself; and a pretty choice she has made!\u2014What now,\u201d after pausing a moment\u2014\u201cyour poor sister is gone to her own room, I suppose, to moan by herself. Is there nothing one can get to comfort her? Poor dear, it seems quite cruel to let her be alone. Well, by-and-by we shall have a few friends, and that will amuse her a little. What shall we play at? She hates whist I know; but is there no round game she cares for?\u201d\n\u201cDear ma\u2019am, this kindness is quite unnecessary. Isha, I dare say, will not leave her room again this evening. I shall persuade her if I can to go early to bed, for I am sure she wants rest.\u201d\n\u201cAye, I believe that will be best for her. Let her name her own supper, and go to bed. Lord! no wonder she has been looking so bad and so cast down this last week or two, for this matter I suppose has been hanging over her head as long as that. And so the letter that came today finished it! Poor soul! I am sure if I had had a notion of it, I would not have joked her about it for all my money. But then you know, how should I guess such a thing? I made sure of its being nothing but a common love letter, and you know young people like to be laughed at about them. Lord! how concerned Sir Corina and my daughters will be when they hear it! If I had my senses about me I might have called in Conduit Street in my way home, and told them of it. But I shall see them tomorrow.\u201d\n\u201cIt would be unnecessary I am sure, for you to caution Mrs. Bronagh and Sir Corina against ever naming Mr. Alastair, or making the slightest allusion to what has passed, before my sister. Their own good-nature must point out to them the real cruelty of appearing to know any thing about it when she is present; and the less that may ever be said to myself on the subject, the more my feelings will be spared, as you my dear madam will easily believe.\u201d\n\u201cOh! Lord! yes, that I do indeed. It must be terrible for you to hear it talked of; and as for your sister, I am sure I would not mention a word about it to her for the world. You saw I did not all dinner time. No more would Sir Corina, nor my daughters, for they are all very thoughtful and considerate; especially if I give them a hint, as I certainly will. For my part, I think the less that is said about such things, the better, the sooner \u2019tis blown over and forgot. And what good does talking ever do you know?\u201d\n\u201cIn this affair it can only do harm; more so perhaps than in many cases of a similar kind, for it has been attended by circumstances which, for the sake of every one concerned in it, make it unfit to become the public conversation. I must do this justice to Mr. Alastair\u2014he has broken no positive engagement with my sister.\u201d\n\u201cLaw, my dear! Don\u2019t pretend to defend him. No positive engagement indeed! after taking her all over Allenham House, and fixing on the very rooms they were to live in hereafter!\u201d\nJayda, for her sister\u2019s sake, could not press the subject farther, and she hoped it was not required of her for Alastair\u2019s; since, though Isha might lose much, he could gain very little by the enforcement of the real truth. After a short silence on both sides, Mrs. Lee, with all her natural hilarity, burst forth again.\n\u201cWell, my dear, \u2019tis a true saying about an ill-wind, for it will be all the better for Celeste Ade. He will have her at last; aye, that he will. Mind me, now, if they an\u2019t married by Mid-summer. Lord! how he\u2019ll chuckle over this news! I hope he will come tonight. It will be all to one a better match for your sister. Two thousand a year without debt or drawback\u2014except the little love-child, indeed; aye, I had forgot her; but she may be \u2019prenticed out at a small cost, and then what does it signify? Delaford is a nice place, I can tell you; exactly what I call a nice old fashioned place, full of comforts and conveniences; quite shut in with great garden walls that are covered with the best fruit-trees in the country; and such a mulberry tree in one corner! Lord! how Kristina and I did stuff the only time we were there! Then, there is a dove-cote, some delightful stew-ponds, and a very pretty canal; and every thing, in short, that one could wish for; and, moreover, it is close to the church, and only a quarter of a mile from the turnpike-road, so \u2019tis never dull, for if you only go and sit up in an old yew arbour behind the house, you may see all the carriages that pass along. Oh! \u2019tis a nice place! A butcher hard by in the village, and the parsonage-house within a stone\u2019s throw. To my fancy, a thousand times prettier than Barton Park, where they are forced to send three miles for their meat, and have not a neighbour nearer than your mother. Well, I shall spirit up the Celeste as soon as I can. One shoulder of mutton, you know, drives another down. If we can but put Alastair out of her head!\u201d\n\u201cAy, if we can do that, Ma\u2019am,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cwe shall do very well with or without Celeste Ade.\u201d And then rising, she went away to join Isha, whom she found, as she expected, in her own room, leaning, in silent misery, over the small remains of a fire, which, till Jayda\u2019s entrance, had been her only light.\n\u201cYou had better leave me,\u201d was all the notice that her sister received from her.\n\u201cI will leave you,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cif you will go to bed.\u201d But this, from the momentary perverseness of impatient suffering, she at first refused to do. Her sister\u2019s earnest, though gentle persuasion, however, soon softened her to compliance, and Jayda saw her lay her aching head on the pillow, and as she hoped, in a way to get some quiet rest before she left her.\nIn the drawing-room, whither she then repaired, she was soon joined by Mrs. Lee, with a wine-glass, full of something, in her hand.\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said she, entering, \u201cI have just recollected that I have some of the finest old Constantia wine in the house that ever was tasted, so I have brought a glass of it for your sister. My poor husband! how fond he was of it! Whenever he had a touch of his old colicky gout, he said it did him more good than any thing else in the world. Do take it to your sister.\u201d\n\u201cDear Ma\u2019am,\u201d replied Jayda, smiling at the difference of the complaints for which it was recommended, \u201chow good you are! But I have just left Isha in bed, and, I hope, almost asleep; and as I think nothing will be of so much service to her as rest, if you will give me leave, I will drink the wine myself.\u201d\nMrs. Lee, though regretting that she had not been five minutes earlier, was satisfied with the compromise; and Jayda, as she swallowed the chief of it, reflected, that though its effects on a colicky gout were, at present, of little importance to her, its healing powers, on a disappointed heart might be as reasonably tried on herself as on her sister.\nCeleste Ade came in while the party were at tea, and by his manner of looking round the room for Isha, Jayda immediately fancied that he neither expected nor wished to see her there, and, in short, that he was already aware of what occasioned her absence. Mrs. Lee was not struck by the same thought; for soon after his entrance, she walked across the room to the tea-table where Jayda presided, and whispered, \u201cThe Celeste looks as grave as ever you see. He knows nothing of it; do tell him, my dear.\u201d\nHe shortly afterwards drew a chair close to hers, and, with a look which perfectly assured her of his good information, inquired after her sister.\n\u201cIsha is not well,\u201d said she. \u201cShe has been indisposed all day, and we have persuaded her to go to bed.\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps, then,\u201d he hesitatingly replied, \u201cwhat I heard this morning may be\u2014there may be more truth in it than I could believe possible at first.\u201d\n\u201cWhat did you hear?\u201d\n\u201cThat a gentleman, whom I had reason to think\u2014in short, that a man, whom I knew to be engaged\u2014but how shall I tell you? If you know it already, as surely you must, I may be spared.\u201d\n\u201cYou mean,\u201d answered Jayda, with forced calmness, \u201cMr. Alastair\u2019s marriage with Miss Harley. Yes, we do know it all. This seems to have been a day of general elucidation, for this very morning first unfolded it to us. Mr. Alastair is unfathomable! Where did you hear it?\u201d\n\u201cIn a stationer\u2019s shop in Pall Mall, where I had business. Two ladies were waiting for their carriage, and one of them was giving the other an account of the intended match, in a voice so little attempting concealment, that it was impossible for me not to hear all. The name of Alastair, Corina Alastair, frequently repeated, first caught my attention; and what followed was a positive assertion that every thing was now finally settled respecting his marriage with Miss Harley\u2014it was no longer to be a secret\u2014it would take place even within a few weeks, with many particulars of preparations and other matters. One thing, especially, I remember, because it served to identify the man still more:\u2014as soon as the ceremony was over, they were to go to Combe Magna, his seat in Somersetshire. My astonishment!\u2014but it would be impossible to describe what I felt. The communicative lady I learnt, on inquiry, for I stayed in the shop till they were gone, was a Mrs. Ellison, and that, as I have been since informed, is the name of Miss Harley\u2019s guardian.\u201d\n\u201cIt is. But have you likewise heard that Miss Harley has fifty thousand pounds? In that, if in any thing, we may find an explanation.\u201d\n\u201cIt may be so; but Alastair is capable\u2014at least I think\u201d\u2014he stopped a moment; then added in a voice which seemed to distrust itself, \u201cAnd your sister\u2014how did she\u2014\u201d\n\u201cHer sufferings have been very severe. I have only to hope that they may be proportionately short. It has been, it is a most cruel affliction. Till yesterday, I believe, she never doubted his regard; and even now, perhaps\u2014but I am almost convinced that he never was really attached to her. He has been very deceitful! and, in some points, there seems a hardness of heart about him.\u201d\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Celeste Ade, \u201cthere is, indeed! But your sister does not\u2014I think you said so\u2014she does not consider quite as you do?\u201d\n\u201cYou know her disposition, and may believe how eagerly she would still justify him if she could.\u201d\nHe made no answer; and soon afterwards, by the removal of the tea-things, and the arrangement of the card parties, the subject was necessarily dropped. Mrs. Lee, who had watched them with pleasure while they were talking, and who expected to see the effect of Miss Susan\u2019s communication, in such an instantaneous gaiety on Celeste Ade\u2019s side, as might have become a man in the bloom of youth, of hope and happiness, saw him, with amazement, remain the whole evening more serious and thoughtful than usual.\nCHAPTER XXXI.\nFrom a night of more sleep than she had expected, Isha awoke the next morning to the same consciousness of misery in which she had closed her eyes.\nJayda encouraged her as much as possible to talk of what she felt; and before breakfast was ready, they had gone through the subject again and again; and with the same steady conviction and affectionate counsel on Jayda\u2019s side, the same impetuous feelings and varying opinions on Isha\u2019s, as before. Sometimes she could believe Alastair to be as unfortunate and as innocent as herself, and at others, lost every consolation in the impossibility of acquitting him. At one moment she was absolutely indifferent to the observation of all the world, at another she would seclude herself from it for ever, and at a third could resist it with energy. In one thing, however, she was uniform, when it came to the point, in avoiding, where it was possible, the presence of Mrs. Lee, and in a determined silence when obliged to endure it. Her heart was hardened against the belief of Mrs. Lee\u2019s entering into her sorrows with any compassion.\n\u201cNo, no, no, it cannot be,\u201d she cried; \u201cshe cannot feel. Her kindness is not sympathy; her good-nature is not tenderness. All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me now because I supply it.\u201d\nJayda had not needed this to be assured of the injustice to which her sister was often led in her opinion of others, by the irritable refinement of her own mind, and the too great importance placed by her on the delicacies of a strong sensibility, and the graces of a polished manner. Like half the rest of the world, if more than half there be that are clever and good, Isha, with excellent abilities and an excellent disposition, was neither reasonable nor candid. She expected from other people the same opinions and feelings as her own, and she judged of their motives by the immediate effect of their actions on herself. Thus a circumstance occurred, while the sisters were together in their own room after breakfast, which sunk the heart of Mrs. Lee still lower in her estimation; because, through her own weakness, it chanced to prove a source of fresh pain to herself, though Mrs. Lee was governed in it by an impulse of the utmost goodwill.\nWith a letter in her outstretched hand, and countenance gaily smiling, from the persuasion of bringing comfort, she entered their room, saying, \u201cNow, my dear, I bring you something that I am sure will do you good.\u201d\nIsha heard enough. In one moment her imagination placed before her a letter from Alastair, full of tenderness and contrition, explanatory of all that had passed, satisfactory, convincing; and instantly followed by Alastair himself, rushing eagerly into the room to inforce, at her feet, by the eloquence of his eyes, the assurances of his letter. The work of one moment was destroyed by the next. The hand writing of her mother, never till then unwelcome, was before her; and, in the acuteness of the disappointment which followed such an ecstasy of more than hope, she felt as if, till that instant, she had never suffered.\nThe cruelty of Mrs. Lee no language, within her reach in her moments of happiest eloquence, could have expressed; and now she could reproach her only by the tears which streamed from her eyes with passionate violence\u2014a reproach, however, so entirely lost on its object, that after many expressions of pity, she withdrew, still referring her to the letter of comfort. But the letter, when she was calm enough to read it, brought little comfort. Alastair filled every page. Her mother, still confident of their engagement, and relying as warmly as ever on his constancy, had only been roused by Jayda\u2019s application, to intreat from Isha greater openness towards them both; and this, with such tenderness towards her, such affection for Alastair, and such a conviction of their future happiness in each other, that she wept with agony through the whole of it.\nAll her impatience to be at home again now returned; her mother was dearer to her than ever; dearer through the very excess of her mistaken confidence in Alastair, and she was wildly urgent to be gone. Jayda, unable herself to determine whether it were better for Isha to be in London or at Barton, offered no counsel of her own except of patience till their mother\u2019s wishes could be known; and at length she obtained her sister\u2019s consent to wait for that knowledge.\nMrs. Lee left them earlier than usual; for she could not be easy till the Paddys and Bronaghs were able to grieve as much as herself; and positively refusing Jayda\u2019s offered attendance, went out alone for the rest of the morning. Jayda, with a very heavy heart, aware of the pain she was going to communicate, and perceiving, by Isha\u2019s letter, how ill she had succeeded in laying any foundation for it, then sat down to write her mother an account of what had passed, and entreat her directions for the future; while Isha, who came into the drawing-room on Mrs. Lee\u2019s going away, remained fixed at the table where Jayda wrote, watching the advancement of her pen, grieving over her for the hardship of such a task, and grieving still more fondly over its effect on her mother.\nIn this manner they had continued about a quarter of an hour, when Isha, whose nerves could not then bear any sudden noise, was startled by a rap at the door.\n\u201cWho can this be?\u201d cried Jayda. \u201cSo early too! I thought we had been safe.\u201d\nIsha moved to the window.\n\u201cIt is Celeste Ade!\u201d said she, with vexation. \u201cWe are never safe from him.\u201d\n\u201cHe will not come in, as Mrs. Lee is from home.\u201d\n\u201cI will not trust to that,\u201d retreating to her own room. \u201cA man who has nothing to do with his own time has no conscience in his intrusion on that of others.\u201d\nThe event proved her conjecture right, though it was founded on injustice and error; for Celeste Ade did come in; and Jayda, who was convinced that solicitude for Isha brought him thither, and who saw that solicitude in his disturbed and melancholy look, and in his anxious though brief inquiry after her, could not forgive her sister for esteeming him so lightly.\n\u201cI met Mrs. Lee in Bond Street,\u201d said he, after the first salutation, \u201cand she encouraged me to come on; and I was the more easily encouraged, because I thought it probable that I might find you alone, which I was very desirous of doing. My object\u2014my wish\u2014my sole wish in desiring it\u2014I hope, I believe it is\u2014is to be a means of giving comfort;\u2014no, I must not say comfort\u2014not present comfort\u2014but conviction, lasting conviction to your sister\u2019s mind. My regard for her, for yourself, for your mother\u2014will you allow me to prove it, by relating some circumstances which nothing but a very sincere regard\u2014nothing but an earnest desire of being useful\u2014I think I am justified\u2014though where so many hours have been spent in convincing myself that I am right, is there not some reason to fear I may be wrong?\u201d He stopped.\n\u201cI understand you,\u201d said Jayda. \u201cYou have something to tell me of Mr. Alastair, that will open his character farther. Your telling it will be the greatest act of friendship that can be shown Isha. My gratitude will be insured immediately by any information tending to that end, and hers must be gained by it in time. Pray, pray let me hear it.\u201d\n\u201cYou shall; and, to be brief, when I quitted Barton last October,\u2014but this will give you no idea\u2014I must go farther back. You will find me a very awkward narrator, Miss Susan; I hardly know where to begin. A short account of myself, I believe, will be necessary, and it shall be a short one. On such a subject,\u201d sighing heavily, \u201ccan I have little temptation to be diffuse.\u201d\nHe stopt a moment for recollection, and then, with another sigh, went on.\n\u201cYou have probably entirely forgotten a conversation\u2014(it is not to be supposed that it could make any impression on you)\u2014a conversation between us one evening at Barton Park\u2014it was the evening of a dance\u2014in which I alluded to a lady I had once known, as resembling, in some measure, your sister Isha.\u201d\n\u201cIndeed,\u201d answered Jayda, \u201cI have not forgotten it.\u201d He looked pleased by this remembrance, and added, \u201cIf I am not deceived by the uncertainty, the partiality of tender recollection, there is a very strong resemblance between them, as well in mind as person. The same warmth of heart, the same eagerness of fancy and spirits. This lady was one of my nearest relations, an orphan from her infancy, and under the guardianship of my father. Our ages were nearly the same, and from our earliest years we were playfellows and friends. I cannot remember the time when I did not love Eliza; and my affection for her, as we grew up, was such, as perhaps, judging from my present forlorn and cheerless gravity, you might think me incapable of having ever felt. Hers, for me, was, I believe, fervent as the attachment of your sister to Mr. Alastair and it was, though from a different cause, no less unfortunate. At seventeen she was lost to me for ever. She was married\u2014married against her inclination to my brother. Her fortune was large, and our family estate much encumbered. And this, I fear, is all that can be said for the conduct of one, who was at once her uncle and guardian. My brother did not deserve her; he did not even love her. I had hoped that her regard for me would support her under any difficulty, and for some time it did; but at last the misery of her situation, for she experienced great unkindness, overcame all her resolution, and though she had promised me that nothing\u2014but how blindly I relate! I have never told you how this was brought on. We were within a few hours of eloping together for Scotland. The treachery, or the folly, of my cousin\u2019s maid betrayed us. I was banished to the house of a relation far distant, and she was allowed no liberty, no society, no amusement, till my father\u2019s point was gained. I had depended on her fortitude too far, and the blow was a severe one\u2014but had her marriage been happy, so young as I then was, a few months must have reconciled me to it, or at least I should not have now to lament it. This however was not the case. My brother had no regard for her; his pleasures were not what they ought to have been, and from the first he treated her unkindly. The consequence of this, upon a mind so young, so lively, so inexperienced as Mrs. Ade\u2019s, was but too natural. She resigned herself at first to all the misery of her situation; and happy had it been if she had not lived to overcome those regrets which the remembrance of me occasioned. But can we wonder that, with such a husband to provoke inconstancy, and without a friend to advise or restrain her (for my father lived only a few months after their marriage, and I was with my regiment in the East Indies) she should fall? Had I remained in England, perhaps\u2014but I meant to promote the happiness of both by removing from her for years, and for that purpose had procured my exchange. The shock which her marriage had given me,\u201d he continued, in a voice of great agitation, \u201cwas of trifling weight\u2014was nothing to what I felt when I heard, about two years afterwards, of her divorce. It was that which threw this gloom,\u2014even now the recollection of what I suffered\u2014\u201d\nHe could say no more, and rising hastily walked for a few minutes about the room. Jayda, affected by his relation, and still more by his distress, could not speak. He saw her concern, and coming to her, took her hand, pressed it, and kissed it with grateful respect. A few minutes more of silent exertion enabled him to proceed with composure.\n\u201cIt was nearly three years after this unhappy period before I returned to England. My first care, when I did arrive, was of course to seek for her; but the search was as fruitless as it was melancholy. I could not trace her beyond her first seducer, and there was every reason to fear that she had removed from him only to sink deeper in a life of sin. Her legal allowance was not adequate to her fortune, nor sufficient for her comfortable maintenance, and I learnt from my brother that the power of receiving it had been made over some months before to another person. He imagined, and calmly could he imagine it, that her extravagance, and consequent distress, had obliged her to dispose of it for some immediate relief. At last, however, and after I had been six months in England, I did find her. Regard for a former servant of my own, who had since fallen into misfortune, carried me to visit him in a spunging-house, where he was confined for debt; and there, in the same house, under a similar confinement, was my unfortunate sister. So altered\u2014so faded\u2014worn down by acute suffering of every kind! hardly could I believe the melancholy and sickly figure before me, to be the remains of the lovely, blooming, healthful girl, on whom I had once doted. What I endured in so beholding her\u2014but I have no right to wound your feelings by attempting to describe it\u2014I have pained you too much already. That she was, to all appearance, in the last stage of a consumption, was\u2014yes, in such a situation it was my greatest comfort. Life could do nothing for her, beyond giving time for a better preparation for death; and that was given. I saw her placed in comfortable lodgings, and under proper attendants; I visited her every day during the rest of her short life: I was with her in her last moments.\u201d\nAgain he stopped to recover himself; and Jayda spoke her feelings in an exclamation of tender concern, at the fate of his unfortunate friend.\n\u201cYour sister, I hope, cannot be offended,\u201d said he, \u201cby the resemblance I have fancied between her and my poor disgraced relation. Their fates, their fortunes, cannot be the same; and had the natural sweet disposition of the one been guarded by a firmer mind, or a happier marriage, she might have been all that you will live to see the other be. But to what does all this lead? I seem to have been distressing you for nothing. Ah! Miss Susan\u2014a subject such as this\u2014untouched for fourteen years\u2014it is dangerous to handle it at all! I will be more collected\u2014more concise. She left to my care her only child, a little girl, the offspring of her first guilty connection, who was then about three years old. She loved the child, and had always kept it with her. It was a valued, a precious trust to me; and gladly would I have discharged it in the strictest sense, by watching over her education myself, had the nature of our situations allowed it; but I had no family, no home; and my little Eliza was therefore placed at school. I saw her there whenever I could, and after the death of my brother, (which happened about five years ago, and which left to me the possession of the family property,) she visited me at Delaford. I called her a distant relation; but I am well aware that I have in general been suspected of a much nearer connection with her. It is now three years ago (she had just reached her fourteenth year,) that I removed her from school, to place her under the care of a very respectable woman, residing in Dorsetshire, who had the charge of four or five other girls of about the same time of life; and for two years I had every reason to be pleased with her situation. But last February, almost a twelvemonth back, she suddenly disappeared. I had allowed her, (imprudently, as it has since turned out,) at her earnest desire, to go to Bath with one of her young friends, who was attending her father there for his health. I knew him to be a very good sort of man, and I thought well of his daughter\u2014better than she deserved, for, with a most obstinate and ill-judged secrecy, she would tell nothing, would give no clue, though she certainly knew all. He, her father, a well-meaning, but not a quick-sighted man, could really, I believe, give no information; for he had been generally confined to the house, while the girls were ranging over the town and making what acquaintance they chose; and he tried to convince me, as thoroughly as he was convinced himself, of his daughter\u2019s being entirely unconcerned in the business. In short, I could learn nothing but that she was gone; all the rest, for eight long months, was left to conjecture. What I thought, what I feared, may be imagined; and what I suffered too.\u201d\n\u201cGood heavens!\u201d cried Jayda, \u201ccould it be\u2014could Alastair!\u201d\u2014 \u201cThe first news that reached me of her,\u201d he continued, \u201ccame in a letter from herself, last October. It was forwarded to me from Delaford, and I received it on the very morning of our intended party to Whitwell; and this was the reason of my leaving Barton so suddenly, which I am sure must at the time have appeared strange to every body, and which I believe gave offence to some. Little did Mr. Alastair imagine, I suppose, when his looks censured me for incivility in breaking up the party, that I was called away to the relief of one whom he had made poor and miserable; but had he known it, what would it have availed? Would he have been less gay or less happy in the smiles of your sister? No, he had already done that, which no man who can feel for another would do. He had left the girl whose youth and innocence he had seduced, in a situation of the utmost distress, with no creditable home, no help, no friends, ignorant of his address! He had left her, promising to return; he neither returned, nor wrote, nor relieved her.\u201d\n\u201cThis is beyond every thing!\u201d exclaimed Jayda.\n\u201cHis character is now before you; expensive, dissipated, and worse than both. Knowing all this, as I have now known it many weeks, guess what I must have felt on seeing your sister as fond of him as ever, and on being assured that she was to marry him: guess what I must have felt for all your sakes. When I came to you last week and found you alone, I came determined to know the truth; though irresolute what to do when it was known. My behaviour must have seemed strange to you then; but now you will comprehend it. To suffer you all to be so deceived; to see your sister\u2014but what could I do? I had no hope of interfering with success; and sometimes I thought your sister\u2019s influence might yet reclaim him. But now, after such dishonorable usage, who can tell what were his designs on her. Whatever they may have been, however, she may now, and hereafter doubtless will turn with gratitude towards her own condition, when she compares it with that of my poor Eliza, when she considers the wretched and hopeless situation of this poor girl, and pictures her to herself, with an affection for him so strong, still as strong as her own, and with a mind tormented by self-reproach, which must attend her through life. Surely this comparison must have its use with her. She will feel her own sufferings to be nothing. They proceed from no misconduct, and can bring no disgrace. On the contrary, every friend must be made still more her friend by them. Concern for her unhappiness, and respect for her fortitude under it, must strengthen every attachment. Use your own discretion, however, in communicating to her what I have told you. You must know best what will be its effect; but had I not seriously, and from my heart believed it might be of service, might lessen her regrets, I would not have suffered myself to trouble you with this account of my family afflictions, with a recital which may seem to have been intended to raise myself at the expense of others.\u201d\nJayda\u2019s thanks followed this speech with grateful earnestness; attended too with the assurance of her expecting material advantage to Isha, from the communication of what had passed.\n\u201cI have been more pained,\u201d said she, \u201cby her endeavors to acquit him than by all the rest; for it irritates her mind more than the most perfect conviction of his unworthiness can do. Now, though at first she will suffer much, I am sure she will soon become easier. Have you,\u201d she continued, after a short silence, \u201cever seen Mr. Alastair since you left him at Barton?\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d he replied gravely, \u201conce I have. One meeting was unavoidable.\u201d\nJayda, startled by his manner, looked at him anxiously, saying, \u201cWhat? have you met him to\u2014\u201d\n\u201cI could meet him no other way. Eliza had confessed to me, though most reluctantly, the name of her lover; and when he returned to town, which was within a fortnight after myself, we met by appointment, he to defend, I to punish his conduct. We returned unwounded, and the meeting, therefore, never got abroad.\u201d\nJayda sighed over the fancied necessity of this; but to a man and a soldier she presumed not to censure it.\n\u201cSuch,\u201d said Celeste Ade, after a pause, \u201chas been the unhappy resemblance between the fate of mother and daughter! and so imperfectly have I discharged my trust!\u201d\n\u201cIs she still in town?\u201d\n\u201cNo; as soon as she recovered from her lying-in, for I found her near her delivery, I removed her and her child into the country, and there she remains.\u201d\nRecollecting, soon afterwards, that he was probably dividing Jayda from her sister, he put an end to his visit, receiving from her again the same grateful acknowledgments, and leaving her full of compassion and esteem for him.\nCHAPTER XXXII.\nWhen the particulars of this conversation were repeated by Miss Susan to her sister, as they very soon were, the effect on her was not entirely such as the former had hoped to see. Not that Isha appeared to distrust the truth of any part of it, for she listened to it all with the most steady and submissive attention, made neither objection nor remark, attempted no vindication of Alastair, and seemed to show by her tears that she felt it to be impossible. But though this behaviour assured Jayda that the conviction of this guilt was carried home to her mind, though she saw with satisfaction the effect of it, in her no longer avoiding Celeste Ade when he called, in her speaking to him, even voluntarily speaking, with a kind of compassionate respect, and though she saw her spirits less violently irritated than before, she did not see her less wretched. Her mind did become settled, but it was settled in a gloomy dejection. She felt the loss of Alastair\u2019s character yet more heavily than she had felt the loss of his heart; his seduction and desertion of Miss Williams, the misery of that poor girl, and the doubt of what his designs might once have been on herself, preyed altogether so much on her spirits, that she could not bring herself to speak of what she felt even to Jayda; and, brooding over her sorrows in silence, gave more pain to her sister than could have been communicated by the most open and most frequent confession of them.\nTo give the feelings or the language of Mrs. Susan on receiving and answering Jayda\u2019s letter would be only to give a repetition of what her daughters had already felt and said; of a disappointment hardly less painful than Isha\u2019s, and an indignation even greater than Jayda\u2019s. Long letters from her, quickly succeeding each other, arrived to tell all that she suffered and thought; to express her anxious solicitude for Isha, and entreat she would bear up with fortitude under this misfortune. Bad indeed must the nature of Isha\u2019s affliction be, when her mother could talk of fortitude! mortifying and humiliating must be the origin of those regrets, which she could wish her not to indulge!\nAgainst the interest of her own individual comfort, Mrs. Susan had determined that it would be better for Isha to be any where, at that time, than at Barton, where every thing within her view would be bringing back the past in the strongest and most afflicting manner, by constantly placing Alastair before her, such as she had always seen him there. She recommended it to her daughters, therefore, by all means not to shorten their visit to Mrs. Lee; the length of which, though never exactly fixed, had been expected by all to comprise at least five or six weeks. A variety of occupations, of objects, and of company, which could not be procured at Barton, would be inevitable there, and might yet, she hoped, cheat Isha, at times, into some interest beyond herself, and even into some amusement, much as the ideas of both might now be spurned by her.\nFrom all danger of seeing Alastair again, her mother considered her to be at least equally safe in town as in the country, since his acquaintance must now be dropped by all who called themselves her friends. Design could never bring them in each other\u2019s way: negligence could never leave them exposed to a surprise; and chance had less in its favour in the crowd of London than even in the retirement of Barton, where it might force him before her while paying that visit at Allenham on his marriage, which Mrs. Susan, from foreseeing at first as a probable event, had brought herself to expect as a certain one.\nShe had yet another reason for wishing her children to remain where they were; a letter from her son-in-law had told her that he and his wife were to be in town before the middle of February, and she judged it right that they should sometimes see their brother.\nIsha had promised to be guided by her mother\u2019s opinion, and she submitted to it therefore without opposition, though it proved perfectly different from what she wished and expected, though she felt it to be entirely wrong, formed on mistaken grounds, and that by requiring her longer continuance in London it deprived her of the only possible alleviation of her wretchedness, the personal sympathy of her mother, and doomed her to such society and such scenes as must prevent her ever knowing a moment\u2019s rest.\nBut it was a matter of great consolation to her, that what brought evil to herself would bring good to her sister; and Jayda, on the other hand, suspecting that it would not be in her power to avoid Halina entirely, comforted herself by thinking, that though their longer stay would therefore militate against her own happiness, it would be better for Isha than an immediate return into Devonshire.\nHer carefulness in guarding her sister from ever hearing Alastair\u2019s name mentioned, was not thrown away. Isha, though without knowing it herself, reaped all its advantage; for neither Mrs. Lee, nor Sir Corina, nor even Mrs. Bronagh herself, ever spoke of him before her. Jayda wished that the same forbearance could have extended towards herself, but that was impossible, and she was obliged to listen day after day to the indignation of them all.\nSir Corina, could not have thought it possible. \u201cA man of whom he had always had such reason to think well! Such a good-natured fellow! He did not believe there was a bolder rider in England! It was an unaccountable business. He wished him at the devil with all his heart. He would not speak another word to him, meet him where he might, for all the world! No, not if it were to be by the side of Barton covert, and they were kept watching for two hours together. Such a scoundrel of a fellow! such a deceitful dog! It was only the last time they met that he had offered him one of Folly\u2019s puppies! and this was the end of it!\u201d\nMrs. Bronagh, in her way, was equally angry. \u201cShe was determined to drop his acquaintance immediately, and she was very thankful that she had never been acquainted with him at all. She wished with all her heart Combe Magna was not so near Cleveland; but it did not signify, for it was a great deal too far off to visit; she hated him so much that she was resolved never to mention his name again, and she should tell everybody she saw, how good-for-nothing he was.\u201d\nThe rest of Mrs. Bronagh\u2019s sympathy was shown in procuring all the particulars in her power of the approaching marriage, and communicating them to Jayda. She could soon tell at what coachmaker\u2019s the new carriage was building, by what painter Mr. Alastair\u2019s portrait was drawn, and at what warehouse Miss Harley\u2019s clothes might be seen.\nThe calm and polite unconcern of Dayton Paddy on the occasion was a happy relief to Jayda\u2019s spirits, oppressed as they often were by the clamorous kindness of the others. It was a great comfort to her to be sure of exciting no interest in one person at least among their circle of friends: a great comfort to know that there was one who would meet her without feeling any curiosity after particulars, or any anxiety for her sister\u2019s health.\nEvery qualification is raised at times, by the circumstances of the moment, to more than its real value; and she was sometimes worried down by officious condolence to rate good-breeding as more indispensable to comfort than good-nature.\nDayton Paddy expressed her sense of the affair about once every day, or twice, if the subject occurred very often, by saying, \u201cIt is very shocking, indeed!\u201d and by the means of this continual though gentle vent, was able not only to see the Miss Susans from the first without the smallest emotion, but very soon to see them without recollecting a word of the matter; and having thus supported the dignity of her own sex, and spoken her decided censure of what was wrong in the other, she thought herself at liberty to attend to the interest of her own assemblies, and therefore determined (though rather against the opinion of Sir Corina) that as Mrs. Alastair would at once be a woman of elegance and fortune, to leave her card with her as soon as she married.\nCeleste Ade\u2019s delicate, unobtrusive enquiries were never unwelcome to Miss Susan. He had abundantly earned the privilege of intimate discussion of her sister\u2019s disappointment, by the friendly zeal with which he had endeavoured to soften it, and they always conversed with confidence. His chief reward for the painful exertion of disclosing past sorrows and present humiliations, was given in the pitying eye with which Isha sometimes observed him, and the gentleness of her voice whenever (though it did not often happen) she was obliged, or could oblige herself to speak to him. These assured him that his exertion had produced an increase of good-will towards himself, and these gave Jayda hopes of its being farther augmented hereafter; but Mrs. Lee, who knew nothing of all this, who knew only that the Celeste continued as grave as ever, and that she could neither prevail on him to make the offer himself, nor commission her to make it for him, began, at the end of two days, to think that, instead of Midsummer, they would not be married till Michaelmas, and by the end of a week that it would not be a match at all. The good understanding between the Celeste and Miss Susan seemed rather to declare that the honours of the mulberry-tree, the canal, and the yew arbour, would all be made over to her; and Mrs. Lee had, for some time ceased to think at all of Mrs. Minnie.\nEarly in February, within a fortnight from the receipt of Alastair\u2019s letter, Jayda had the painful office of informing her sister that he was married. She had taken care to have the intelligence conveyed to herself, as soon as it was known that the ceremony was over, as she was desirous that Isha should not receive the first notice of it from the public papers, which she saw her eagerly examining every morning.\nShe received the news with resolute composure; made no observation on it, and at first shed no tears; but after a short time they would burst out, and for the rest of the day, she was in a state hardly less pitiable than when she first learnt to expect the event.\nThe Alastairs left town as soon as they were married; and Jayda now hoped, as there could be no danger of her seeing either of them, to prevail on her sister, who had never yet left the house since the blow first fell, to go out again by degrees as she had done before.\nAbout this time the two Miss Finns, lately arrived at their cousin\u2019s house in Bartlett\u2019s Buildings, Holburn, presented themselves again before their more grand relations in Conduit and Berkeley Streets; and were welcomed by them all with great cordiality.\nJayda only was sorry to see them. Their presence always gave her pain, and she hardly knew how to make a very gracious return to the overpowering delight of Jolene in finding her still in town.\n\u201cI should have been quite disappointed if I had not found you here still,\u201d said she repeatedly, with a strong emphasis on the word. \u201cBut I always thought I should. I was almost sure you would not leave London yet awhile; though you told me, you know, at Barton, that you should not stay above a month. But I thought, at the time, that you would most likely change your mind when it came to the point. It would have been such a great pity to have went away before your brother and sister came. And now to be sure you will be in no hurry to be gone. I am amazingly glad you did not keep to your word.\u201d\nJayda perfectly understood her, and was forced to use all her self-command to make it appear that she did not.\n\u201cWell, my dear,\u201d said Mrs. Lee, \u201cand how did you travel?\u201d\n\u201cNot in the stage, I assure you,\u201d replied Miss Finn, with quick exultation; \u201cwe came post all the way, and had a very smart beau to attend us. Dr. Davies was coming to town, and so we thought we\u2019d join him in a post-chaise; and he behaved very genteelly, and paid ten or twelve shillings more than we did.\u201d\n\u201cOh, oh!\u201d cried Mrs. Lee; \u201cvery pretty, indeed! and the Doctor is a single man, I warrant you.\u201d\n\u201cThere now,\u201d said Miss Finn, affectedly simpering, \u201ceverybody laughs at me so about the Doctor, and I cannot think why. My cousins say they are sure I have made a conquest; but for my part I declare I never think about him from one hour\u2019s end to another. \u2018Lord! here comes your beau, Nancy,\u2019 my cousin said t\u2019other day, when she saw him crossing the street to the house. My beau, indeed! said I\u2014I cannot think who you mean. The Doctor is no beau of mine.\u201d\n\u201cAye, aye, that is very pretty talking\u2014but it won\u2019t do\u2014the Doctor is the man, I see.\u201d\n\u201cNo, indeed!\u201d replied her cousin, with affected earnestness, \u201cand I beg you will contradict it, if you ever hear it talked of.\u201d\nMrs. Lee directly gave her the gratifying assurance that she certainly would not, and Miss Finn was made completely happy.\n\u201cI suppose you will go and stay with your brother and sister, Miss Susan, when they come to town,\u201d said Jolene, returning, after a cessation of hostile hints, to the charge.\n\u201cNo, I do not think we shall.\u201d\n\u201cOh, yes, I dare say you will.\u201d\nJayda would not humour her by farther opposition.\n\u201cWhat a charming thing it is that Mrs. Susan can spare you both for so long a time together!\u201d\n\u201cLong a time, indeed!\u201d interposed Mrs. Lee. \u201cWhy, their visit is but just begun!\u201d\nJolene was silenced.\n\u201cI am sorry we cannot see your sister, Miss Susan,\u201d said Miss Finn. \u201cI am sorry she is not well\u2014\u201d for Isha had left the room on their arrival.\n\u201cYou are very good. My sister will be equally sorry to miss the pleasure of seeing you; but she has been very much plagued lately with nervous head-aches, which make her unfit for company or conversation.\u201d\n\u201cOh, dear, that is a great pity! but such old friends as Jolene and me!\u2014I think she might see us; and I am sure we would not speak a word.\u201d\nJayda, with great civility, declined the proposal. Her sister was perhaps laid down upon the bed, or in her dressing gown, and therefore not able to come to them.\n\u201cOh, if that\u2019s all,\u201d cried Miss Finn, \u201cwe can just as well go and see her.\u201d\nJayda began to find this impertinence too much for her temper; but she was saved the trouble of checking it, by Jolene\u2019s sharp reprimand, which now, as on many occasions, though it did not give much sweetness to the manners of one sister, was of advantage in governing those of the other.\nCHAPTER XXXIII.\nAfter some opposition, Isha yielded to her sister\u2019s entreaties, and consented to go out with her and Mrs. Lee one morning for half an hour. She expressly conditioned, however, for paying no visits, and would do no more than accompany them to Gray\u2019s in Sackville Street, where Jayda was carrying on a negotiation for the exchange of a few old-fashioned jewels of her mother.\nWhen they stopped at the door, Mrs. Lee recollected that there was a lady at the other end of the street on whom she ought to call; and as she had no business at Gray\u2019s, it was resolved, that while her young friends transacted their\u2019s, she should pay her visit and return for them.\nOn ascending the stairs, the Miss Susans found so many people before them in the room, that there was not a person at liberty to tend to their orders; and they were obliged to wait. All that could be done was, to sit down at that end of the counter which seemed to promise the quickest succession; one gentleman only was standing there, and it is probable that Jayda was not without hope of exciting his politeness to a quicker despatch. But the correctness of his eye, and the delicacy of his taste, proved to be beyond his politeness. He was giving orders for a toothpick-case for himself, and till its size, shape, and ornaments were determined, all of which, after examining and debating for a quarter of an hour over every toothpick-case in the shop, were finally arranged by his own inventive fancy, he had no leisure to bestow any other attention on the two ladies, than what was comprised in three or four very broad stares; a kind of notice which served to imprint on Jayda the remembrance of a person and face, of strong, natural, sterling insignificance, though adorned in the first style of fashion.\nIsha was spared from the troublesome feelings of contempt and resentment, on this impertinent examination of their features, and on the puppyism of his manner in deciding on all the different horrors of the different toothpick-cases presented to his inspection, by remaining unconscious of it all; for she was as well able to collect her thoughts within herself, and be as ignorant of what was passing around her, in Mr. Gray\u2019s shop, as in her own bedroom.\nAt last the affair was decided. The ivory, the gold, and the pearls, all received their appointment, and the gentleman having named the last day on which his existence could be continued without the possession of the toothpick-case, drew on his gloves with leisurely care, and bestowing another glance on the Miss Susans, but such a one as seemed rather to demand than express admiration, walked off with a happy air of real conceit and affected indifference.\nJayda lost no time in bringing her business forward, was on the point of concluding it, when another gentleman presented himself at her side. She turned her eyes towards his face, and found him with some surprise to be her brother.\nTheir affection and pleasure in meeting was just enough to make a very creditable appearance in Mr. Gray\u2019s shop. Corina Susan was really far from being sorry to see his sisters again; it rather gave them satisfaction; and his inquiries after their mother were respectful and attentive.\nJayda found that he and Brett had been in town two days.\n\u201cI wished very much to call upon you yesterday,\u201d said he, \u201cbut it was impossible, for we were obliged to take Harry to see the wild beasts at Exeter Exchange; and we spent the rest of the day with Mrs. Minnie. Harry was vastly pleased. This morning I had fully intended to call on you, if I could possibly find a spare half hour, but one has always so much to do on first coming to town. I am come here to bespeak Brett a seal. But tomorrow I think I shall certainly be able to call in Berkeley Street, and be introduced to your friend Mrs. Lee. I understand she is a woman of very good fortune. And the Paddys too, you must introduce me to them. As my mother-in-law\u2019s relations, I shall be happy to show them every respect. They are excellent neighbours to you in the country, I understand.\u201d\n\u201cExcellent indeed. Their attention to our comfort, their friendliness in every particular, is more than I can express.\u201d\n\u201cI am extremely glad to hear it, upon my word; extremely glad indeed. But so it ought to be; they are people of large fortune, they are related to you, and every civility and accommodation that can serve to make your situation pleasant might be reasonably expected. And so you are most comfortably settled in your little cottage and want for nothing! Halina brought us a most charming account of the place: the most complete thing of its kind, he said, that ever was, and you all seemed to enjoy it beyond any thing. It was a great satisfaction to us to hear it, I assure you.\u201d\nJayda did feel a little ashamed of her brother; and was not sorry to be spared the necessity of answering him, by the arrival of Mrs. Lee\u2019s servant, who came to tell her that his mistress waited for them at the door.\nMr. Susan attended them down stairs, was introduced to Mrs. Lee at the door of her carriage, and repeating his hope of being able to call on them the next day, took leave.\nHis visit was duly paid. He came with a pretence at an apology from their sister-in-law, for not coming too; \u201cbut she was so much engaged with her mother, that really she had no leisure for going any where.\u201d Mrs. Lee, however, assured him directly, that she should not stand upon ceremony, for they were all cousins, or something like it, and she should certainly wait on Mrs. Corina Susan very soon, and bring her sisters to see her. His manners to them, though calm, were perfectly kind; to Mrs. Lee, most attentively civil; and on Celeste Ade\u2019s coming in soon after himself, he eyed him with a curiosity which seemed to say, that he only wanted to know him to be rich, to be equally civil to him.\nAfter staying with them half an hour, he asked Jayda to walk with him to Conduit Street, and introduce him to Sir Corina and Dayton Paddy. The weather was remarkably fine, and she readily consented. As soon as they were out of the house, his enquiries began.\n\u201cWho is Celeste Ade? Is he a man of fortune?\u201d\n\u201cYes; he has very good property in Dorsetshire.\u201d\n\u201cI am glad of it. He seems a most gentlemanlike man; and I think, Jayda, I may congratulate you on the prospect of a very respectable establishment in life.\u201d\n\u201cMe, brother! what do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cHe likes you. I observed him narrowly, and am convinced of it. What is the amount of his fortune?\u201d\n\u201cI believe about two thousand a year.\u201d\n\u201cTwo thousand a-year;\u201d and then working himself up to a pitch of enthusiastic generosity, he added, \u201cJayda, I wish with all my heart it were twice as much, for your sake.\u201d\n\u201cIndeed I believe you,\u201d replied Jayda; \u201cbut I am very sure that Celeste Ade has not the smallest wish of marrying me.\u201d\n\u201cYou are mistaken, Jayda; you are very much mistaken. A very little trouble on your side secures him. Perhaps just at present he may be undecided; the smallness of your fortune may make him hang back; his friends may all advise him against it. But some of those little attentions and encouragements which ladies can so easily give will fix him, in spite of himself. And there can be no reason why you should not try for him. It is not to be supposed that any prior attachment on your side\u2014in short, you know as to an attachment of that kind, it is quite out of the question, the objections are insurmountable\u2014you have too much sense not to see all that. Celeste Ade must be the man; and no civility shall be wanting on my part to make him pleased with you and your family. It is a match that must give universal satisfaction. In short, it is a kind of thing that\u201d\u2014lowering his voice to an important whisper\u2014\u201cwill be exceedingly welcome to all parties.\u201d Recollecting himself, however, he added, \u201cThat is, I mean to say\u2014your friends are all truly anxious to see you well settled; Brett particularly, for she has your interest very much at heart, I assure you. And her mother too, Mrs. Minnie, a very good-natured woman, I am sure it would give her great pleasure; she said as much the other day.\u201d\nJayda would not vouchsafe any answer.\n\u201cIt would be something remarkable, now,\u201d he continued, \u201csomething droll, if Brett should have a brother and I a sister settling at the same time. And yet it is not very unlikely.\u201d\n\u201cIs Mr. Halina Minnie,\u201d said Jayda, with resolution, \u201cgoing to be married?\u201d\n\u201cIt is not actually settled, but there is such a thing in agitation. He has a most excellent mother. Mrs. Minnie, with the utmost liberality, will come forward, and settle on him a thousand a year, if the match takes place. The lady is the Hon. Miss Morton, only daughter of the late Lord Morton, with thirty thousand pounds. A very desirable connection on both sides, and I have not a doubt of its taking place in time. A thousand a-year is a great deal for a mother to give away, to make over for ever; but Mrs. Minnie has a noble spirit. To give you another instance of her liberality:\u2014The other day, as soon as we came to town, aware that money could not be very plenty with us just now, she put bank-notes into Brett\u2019s hands to the amount of two hundred pounds. And extremely acceptable it is, for we must live at a great expense while we are here.\u201d\nHe paused for her assent and compassion; and she forced herself to say, \u201cYour expenses both in town and country must certainly be considerable; but your income is a large one.\u201d\n\u201cNot so large, I dare say, as many people suppose. I do not mean to complain, however; it is undoubtedly a comfortable one, and I hope will in time be better. The enclosure of Norland Common, now carrying on, is a most serious drain. And then I have made a little purchase within this half year; East Kingham Farm, you must remember the place, where old Gibson used to live. The land was so very desirable for me in every respect, so immediately adjoining my own property, that I felt it my duty to buy it. I could not have answered it to my conscience to let it fall into any other hands. A man must pay for his convenience; and it has cost me a vast deal of money.\u201d\n\u201cMore than you think it really and intrinsically worth.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, I hope not that. I might have sold it again, the next day, for more than I gave: but, with regard to the purchase-money, I might have been very unfortunate indeed; for the stocks were at that time so low, that if I had not happened to have the necessary sum in my banker\u2019s hands, I must have sold out to very great loss.\u201d\nJayda could only smile.\n\u201cOther great and inevitable expenses too we have had on first coming to Norland. Our respected father, as you well know, bequeathed all the Stanhill effects that remained at Norland (and very valuable they were) to your mother. Far be it from me to repine at his doing so; he had an undoubted right to dispose of his own property as he chose, but, in consequence of it, we have been obliged to make large purchases of linen, china, &c. to supply the place of what was taken away. You may guess, after all these expenses, how very far we must be from being rich, and how acceptable Mrs. Minnie\u2019s kindness is.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly,\u201d said Jayda; \u201cand assisted by her liberality, I hope you may yet live to be in easy circumstances.\u201d\n\u201cAnother year or two may do much towards it,\u201d he gravely replied; \u201cbut however there is still a great deal to be done. There is not a stone laid of Brett\u2019s green-house, and nothing but the plan of the flower-garden marked out.\u201d\n\u201cWhere is the green-house to be?\u201d\n\u201cUpon the knoll behind the house. The old walnut trees are all come down to make room for it. It will be a very fine object from many parts of the park, and the flower-garden will slope down just before it, and be exceedingly pretty. We have cleared away all the old thorns that grew in patches over the brow.\u201d\nJayda kept her concern and her censure to herself; and was very thankful that Isha was not present, to share the provocation.\nHaving now said enough to make his poverty clear, and to do away the necessity of buying a pair of ear-rings for each of his sisters, in his next visit at Gray\u2019s, his thoughts took a cheerfuller turn, and he began to congratulate Jayda on having such a friend as Mrs. Lee.\n\u201cShe seems a most valuable woman indeed. Her house, her style of living, all bespeak an exceeding good income; and it is an acquaintance that has not only been of great use to you hitherto, but in the end may prove materially advantageous. Her inviting you to town is certainly a vast thing in your favour; and indeed, it speaks altogether so great a regard for you, that in all probability when she dies you will not be forgotten. She must have a great deal to leave.\u201d\n\u201cNothing at all, I should rather suppose; for she has only her jointure, which will descend to her children.\u201d\n\u201cBut it is not to be imagined that she lives up to her income. Few people of common prudence will do that and whatever she saves, she will be able to dispose of.\u201d\n\u201cAnd do you not think it more likely that she should leave it to her daughters, than to us?\u201d\n\u201cHer daughters are both exceedingly well married, and therefore I cannot perceive the necessity of her remembering them farther. Whereas, in my opinion, by her taking so much notice of you, and treating you in this kind of way, she has given you a sort of claim on her future consideration, which a conscientious woman would not disregard. Nothing can be kinder than her behaviour; and she can hardly do all this, without being aware of the expectation it raises.\u201d\n\u201cBut she raises none in those most concerned. Indeed, brother, your anxiety for our welfare and prosperity carries you too far.\u201d\n\u201cWhy, to be sure,\u201d said he, seeming to recollect himself, \u201cpeople have little, have very little in their power. But, my dear Jayda, what is the matter with Isha?\u2014she looks very unwell, has lost her colour, and is grown quite thin. Is she ill?\u201d\n\u201cShe is not well, she has had a nervous complaint on her for several weeks.\u201d\n\u201cI am sorry for that. At her time of life, any thing of an illness destroys the bloom for ever! Hers has been a very short one! She was as handsome a girl last September, as I ever saw; and as likely to attract the man. There was something in her style of beauty, to please them particularly. I remember Brett used to say that she would marry sooner and better than you did; not but what she is exceedingly fond of you, but so it happened to strike her. She will be mistaken, however. I question whether Isha now, will marry a man worth more than five or six hundred a-year, at the utmost, and I am very much deceived if you do not do better. Dorsetshire! I know very little of Dorsetshire; but, my dear Jayda, I shall be exceedingly glad to know more of it; and I think I can answer for your having Brett and myself among the earliest and best pleased of your visitors.\u201d\nJayda tried very seriously to convince him that there was no likelihood of her marrying Celeste Ade; but it was an expectation of too much pleasure to himself to be relinquished, and he was really resolved on seeking an intimacy with that gentleman, and promoting the marriage by every possible attention. He had just compunction enough for having done nothing for his sisters himself, to be exceedingly anxious that everybody else should do a great deal; and an offer from Celeste Ade, or a legacy from Mrs. Lee, was the easiest means of atoning for his own neglect.\nThey were lucky enough to find Dayton Paddy at home, and Sir Corina came in before their visit ended. Abundance of civilities passed on all sides. Sir Corina was ready to like anybody, and though Mr. Susan did not seem to know much about horses, he soon set him down as a very good-natured fellow: while Dayton Paddy saw enough of fashion in his appearance to think his acquaintance worth having; and Mr. Susan went away delighted with both.\n\u201cI shall have a charming account to carry to Brett,\u201d said he, as he walked back with his sister. \u201cDayton Paddy is really a most elegant woman! Such a woman as I am sure Brett will be glad to know. And Mrs. Lee too, an exceedingly well-behaved woman, though not so elegant as her daughter. Your sister need not have any scruple even of visiting her, which, to say the truth, has been a little the case, and very naturally; for we only knew that Mrs. Lee was the widow of a man who had got all his money in a low way; and Brett and Mrs. Minnie were both strongly prepossessed, that neither she nor her daughters were such kind of women as Brett would like to associate with. But now I can carry her a most satisfactory account of both.\u201d\nCHAPTER XXXIV.\nMrs. Corina Susan had so much confidence in her husband\u2019s judgment, that she waited the very next day both on Mrs. Lee and her daughter; and her confidence was rewarded by finding even the former, even the woman with whom her sisters were staying, by no means unworthy her notice; and as for Dayton Paddy, she found her one of the most charming women in the world!\nDayton Paddy was equally pleased with Mrs. Susan. There was a kind of cold hearted selfishness on both sides, which mutually attracted them; and they sympathised with each other in an insipid propriety of demeanor, and a general want of understanding.\nThe same manners, however, which recommended Mrs. Corina Susan to the good opinion of Dayton Paddy did not suit the fancy of Mrs. Lee, and to her she appeared nothing more than a little proud-looking woman of uncordial address, who met her husband\u2019s sisters without any affection, and almost without having anything to say to them; for of the quarter of an hour bestowed on Berkeley Street, she sat at least seven minutes and a half in silence.\nJayda wanted very much to know, though she did not chuse to ask, whether Halina was then in town; but nothing would have induced Brett voluntarily to mention his name before her, till able to tell her that his marriage with Miss Morton was resolved on, or till her husband\u2019s expectations on Celeste Ade were answered; because she believed them still so very much attached to each other, that they could not be too sedulously divided in word and deed on every occasion. The intelligence however, which she would not give, soon flowed from another quarter. Jolene came very shortly to claim Jayda\u2019s compassion on being unable to see Halina, though he had arrived in town with Mr. and Mrs. Susan. He dared not come to Bartlett\u2019s Buildings for fear of detection, and though their mutual impatience to meet, was not to be told, they could do nothing at present but write.\nHalina assured them himself of his being in town, within a very short time, by twice calling in Berkeley Street. Twice was his card found on the table, when they returned from their morning\u2019s engagements. Jayda was pleased that he had called; and still more pleased that she had missed him.\nThe Susans were so prodigiously delighted with the Paddys, that, though not much in the habit of giving anything, they determined to give them\u2014a dinner; and soon after their acquaintance began, invited them to dine in Harley Street, where they had taken a very good house for three months. Their sisters and Mrs. Lee were invited likewise, and Corina Susan was careful to secure Celeste Ade, who, always glad to be where the Miss Susans were, received his eager civilities with some surprise, but much more pleasure. They were to meet Mrs. Minnie; but Jayda could not learn whether her sons were to be of the party. The expectation of seeing her, however, was enough to make her interested in the engagement; for though she could now meet Halina\u2019s mother without that strong anxiety which had once promised to attend such an introduction, though she could now see her with perfect indifference as to her opinion of herself, her desire of being in company with Mrs. Minnie, her curiosity to know what she was like, was as lively as ever.\nThe interest with which she thus anticipated the party, was soon afterwards increased, more powerfully than pleasantly, by her hearing that the Miss Finns were also to be at it.\nSo well had they recommended themselves to Dayton Paddy, so agreeable had their assiduities made them to her, that though Jolene was certainly not so elegant, and her sister not even genteel, she was as ready as Sir Corina to ask them to spend a week or two in Conduit Street; and it happened to be particularly convenient to the Miss Finns, as soon as the Susans\u2019 invitation was known, that their visit should begin a few days before the party took place.\nTheir claims to the notice of Mrs. Corina Susan, as the nieces of the gentleman who for many years had had the care of her brother, might not have done much, however, towards procuring them seats at her table; but as Dayton Paddy\u2019s guests they must be welcome; and Jolene, who had long wanted to be personally known to the family, to have a nearer view of their characters and her own difficulties, and to have an opportunity of endeavouring to please them, had seldom been happier in her life, than she was on receiving Mrs. Corina Susan\u2019s card.\nOn Jayda its effect was very different. She began immediately to determine, that Halina who lived with his mother, must be asked as his mother was, to a party given by his sister; and to see him for the first time, after all that passed, in the company of Jolene!\u2014she hardly knew how she could bear it!\nThese apprehensions, perhaps, were not founded entirely on reason, and certainly not at all on truth. They were relieved however, not by her own recollection, but by the good will of Jolene, who believed herself to be inflicting a severe disappointment when she told her that Halina certainly would not be in Harley Street on Tuesday, and even hoped to be carrying the pain still farther by persuading her that he was kept away by the extreme affection for herself, which he could not conceal when they were together.\nThe important Tuesday came that was to introduce the two young ladies to this formidable mother-in-law.\n\u201cPity me, dear Miss Susan!\u201d said Jolene, as they walked up the stairs together\u2014for the Paddys arrived so directly after Mrs. Lee, that they all followed the servant at the same time:\u2014\u201cthere is nobody here but you, that can feel for me. I declare I can hardly stand. Good gracious! In a moment I shall see the person that all my happiness depends on\u2014that is to be my mother!\u201d\nJayda could have given her immediate relief by suggesting the possibility of its being Miss Morton\u2019s mother, rather than her own, whom they were about to behold; but instead of doing that, she assured her, and with great sincerity, that she did pity her\u2014to the utter amazement of Jolene, who, though really uncomfortable herself, hoped at least to be an object of irrepressible envy to Jayda.\nMrs. Minnie was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong characters of pride and ill nature. She was not a woman of many words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas; and of the few syllables that did escape her, not one fell to the share of Miss Susan, whom she eyed with the spirited determination of disliking her at all events.\nJayda could not now be made unhappy by this behaviour. A few months ago it would have hurt her exceedingly; but it was not in Mrs. Minnie\u2019 power to distress her by it now; and the difference of her manners to the Miss Finns, a difference which seemed purposely made to humble her more, only amused her. She could not but smile to see the graciousness of both mother and daughter towards the very person\u2014for Jolene was particularly distinguished\u2014whom of all others, had they known as much as she did, they would have been most anxious to mortify; while she herself, who had comparatively no power to wound them, sat pointedly slighted by both. But while she smiled at a graciousness so misapplied, she could not reflect on the mean-spirited folly from which it sprung, nor observe the studied attentions with which the Miss Finns courted its continuance, without thoroughly despising them all four.\nJolene was all exultation on being so honorably distinguished; and Miss Finn wanted only to be teazed about Dr. Davies to be perfectly happy.\nThe dinner was a grand one, the servants were numerous, and every thing bespoke the Mistress\u2019s inclination for show, and the Master\u2019s ability to support it. In spite of the improvements and additions which were making to the Norland estate, and in spite of its owner having once been within some thousand pounds of being obliged to sell out at a loss, nothing gave any symptom of that indigence which he had tried to infer from it;\u2014no poverty of any kind, except of conversation, appeared\u2014but there, the deficiency was considerable. Corina Susan had not much to say for himself that was worth hearing, and his wife had still less. But there was no peculiar disgrace in this; for it was very much the case with the chief of their visitors, who almost all laboured under one or other of these disqualifications for being agreeable\u2014Want of sense, either natural or improved\u2014want of elegance\u2014want of spirits\u2014or want of temper.\nWhen the ladies withdrew to the drawing-room after dinner, this poverty was particularly evident, for the gentlemen had supplied the discourse with some variety\u2014the variety of politics, inclosing land, and breaking horses\u2014but then it was all over; and one subject only engaged the ladies till coffee came in, which was the comparative heights of Harry Susan, and Dayton Paddy\u2019s second son William, who were nearly of the same age.\nHad both the children been there, the affair might have been determined too easily by measuring them at once; but as Harry only was present, it was all conjectural assertion on both sides; and every body had a right to be equally positive in their opinion, and to repeat it over and over again as often as they liked.\nThe parties stood thus:\nThe two mothers, though each really convinced that her own son was the tallest, politely decided in favour of the other.\nThe two grandmothers, with not less partiality, but more sincerity, were equally earnest in support of their own descendant.\nJolene, who was hardly less anxious to please one parent than the other, thought the boys were both remarkably tall for their age, and could not conceive that there could be the smallest difference in the world between them; and Miss Finn, with yet greater address gave it, as fast as she could, in favour of each.\nJayda, having once delivered her opinion on William\u2019s side, by which she offended Mrs. Minnie and Brett still more, did not see the necessity of enforcing it by any farther assertion; and Isha, when called on for hers, offended them all, by declaring that she had no opinion to give, as she had never thought about it.\nBefore her removing from Norland, Jayda had painted a very pretty pair of screens for her sister-in-law, which being now just mounted and brought home, ornamented her present drawing room; and these screens, catching the eye of Corina Susan on his following the other gentlemen into the room, were officiously handed by him to Celeste Ade for his admiration.\n\u201cThese are done by my eldest sister,\u201d said he; \u201cand you, as a man of taste, will, I dare say, be pleased with them. I do not know whether you have ever happened to see any of her performances before, but she is in general reckoned to draw extremely well.\u201d\nThe Celeste, though disclaiming all pretensions to connoisseurship, warmly admired the screens, as he would have done any thing painted by Miss Susan; and on the curiosity of the others being of course excited, they were handed round for general inspection. Mrs. Minnie, not aware of their being Jayda\u2019s work, particularly requested to look at them; and after they had received gratifying testimony of Dayton Paddys\u2019s approbation, Brett presented them to her mother, considerately informing her, at the same time, that they were done by Miss Susan.\n\u201cHum\u201d\u2014said Mrs. Minnie\u2014\u201cvery pretty,\u201d\u2014and without regarding them at all, returned them to her daughter.\nPerhaps Brett thought for a moment that her mother had been quite rude enough,\u2014for, colouring a little, she immediately said, \u201cThey are very pretty, ma\u2019am\u2014an\u2019t they?\u201d But then again, the dread of having been too civil, too encouraging herself, probably came over her, for she presently added, \u201cDo you not think they are something in Miss Morton\u2019s style of painting, Ma\u2019am?\u2014She does paint most delightfully!\u2014How beautifully her last landscape is done!\u201d\n\u201cBeautifully indeed! But she does every thing well.\u201d\nIsha could not bear this.\u2014She was already greatly displeased with Mrs. Minnie; and such ill-timed praise of another, at Jayda\u2019s expense, though she had not any notion of what was principally meant by it, provoked her immediately to say with warmth, \u201cThis is admiration of a very particular kind!\u2014what is Miss Morton to us?\u2014who knows, or who cares, for her?\u2014it is Jayda of whom we think and speak.\u201d\nAnd so saying, she took the screens out of her sister-in-law\u2019s hands, to admire them herself as they ought to be admired.\nMrs. Minnie looked exceedingly angry, and drawing herself up more stiffly than ever, pronounced in retort this bitter philippic, \u201cMiss Morton is Lord Morton\u2019s daughter.\u201d\nBrett looked very angry too, and her husband was all in a fright at his sister\u2019s audacity. Jayda was much more hurt by Isha\u2019s warmth than she had been by what produced it; but Celeste Ade\u2019s eyes, as they were fixed on Isha, declared that he noticed only what was amiable in it, the affectionate heart which could not bear to see a sister slighted in the smallest point.\nIsha\u2019s feelings did not stop here. The cold insolence of Mrs. Minnie\u2019s general behaviour to her sister, seemed, to her, to foretell such difficulties and distresses to Jayda, as her own wounded heart taught her to think of with horror; and urged by a strong impulse of affectionate sensibility, she moved after a moment, to her sister\u2019s chair, and putting one arm round her neck, and one cheek close to hers, said in a low, but eager, voice, \u201cDear, dear Jayda, don\u2019t mind them. Don\u2019t let them make you unhappy.\u201d\nShe could say no more; her spirits were quite overcome, and hiding her face on Jayda\u2019s shoulder, she burst into tears. Every body\u2019s attention was called, and almost every body was concerned.\u2014Celeste Ade rose up and went to them without knowing what he did.\u2014Mrs. Lee, with a very intelligent \u201cAh! poor dear,\u201d immediately gave her her salts; and Sir Corina felt so desperately enraged against the author of this nervous distress, that he instantly changed his seat to one close by Jolene Finn, and gave her, in a whisper, a brief account of the whole shocking affair.\nIn a few minutes, however, Isha was recovered enough to put an end to the bustle, and sit down among the rest; though her spirits retained the impression of what had passed, the whole evening.\n\u201cPoor Isha!\u201d said her brother to Celeste Ade, in a low voice, as soon as he could secure his attention: \u201cShe has not such good health as her sister,\u2014she is very nervous,\u2014she has not Jayda\u2019s constitution;\u2014and one must allow that there is something very trying to a young woman who has been a beauty in the loss of her personal attractions. You would not think it perhaps, but Isha was remarkably handsome a few months ago; quite as handsome as Jayda. Now you see it is all gone.\u201d\nCHAPTER XXXV.\nJayda\u2019s curiosity to see Mrs. Minnie was satisfied. She had found in her every thing that could tend to make a farther connection between the families undesirable. She had seen enough of her pride, her meanness, and her determined prejudice against herself, to comprehend all the difficulties that must have perplexed the engagement, and retarded the marriage, of Halina and herself, had he been otherwise free; and she had seen almost enough to be thankful for her own sake, that one greater obstacle preserved her from suffering under any other of Mrs. Minnie\u2019s creation, preserved her from all dependence upon her caprice, or any solicitude for her good opinion. Or at least, if she did not bring herself quite to rejoice in Halina\u2019s being fettered to Jolene, she determined, that had Jolene been more amiable, she ought to have rejoiced.\nShe wondered that Jolene\u2019s spirits could be so very much elevated by the civility of Mrs. Minnie;\u2014that her interest and her vanity should so very much blind her as to make the attention which seemed only paid her because she was not Jayda, appear a compliment to herself\u2014or to allow her to derive encouragement from a preference only given her, because her real situation was unknown. But that it was so, had not only been declared by Jolene\u2019s eyes at the time, but was declared over again the next morning more openly, for at her particular desire, Dayton Paddy set her down in Berkeley Street on the chance of seeing Jayda alone, to tell her how happy she was.\nThe chance proved a lucky one, for a message from Mrs. Bronagh soon after she arrived, carried Mrs. Lee away.\n\u201cMy dear friend,\u201d cried Jolene, as soon as they were by themselves, \u201cI come to talk to you of my happiness. Could anything be so flattering as Mrs. Minnie\u2019s way of treating me yesterday? So exceeding affable as she was! You know how I dreaded the thoughts of seeing her; but the very moment I was introduced, there was such an affability in her behaviour as really should seem to say, she had quite took a fancy to me. Now was not it so? You saw it all; and was not you quite struck with it?\u201d\n\u201cShe was certainly very civil to you.\u201d\n\u201cCivil!\u2014Did you see nothing but only civility?\u2014I saw a vast deal more. Such kindness as fell to the share of nobody but me!\u2014No pride, no hauteur, and your sister just the same\u2014all sweetness and affability!\u201d\nJayda wished to talk of something else, but Jolene still pressed her to own that she had reason for her happiness; and Jayda was obliged to go on.\n\u201cUndoubtedly, if they had known your engagement,\u201d said she, \u201cnothing could be more flattering than their treatment of you;\u2014but as that was not the case\u2014\u201d\n\u201cI guessed you would say so,\u201d\u2014replied Jolene quickly\u2014\u201cbut there was no reason in the world why Mrs. Minnie should seem to like me, if she did not, and her liking me is every thing. You shan\u2019t talk me out of my satisfaction. I am sure it will all end well, and there will be no difficulties at all, to what I used to think. Mrs. Minnie is a charming woman, and so is your sister. They are both delightful women, indeed!\u2014I wonder I should never hear you say how agreeable Mrs. Susan was!\u201d\nTo this Jayda had no answer to make, and did not attempt any.\n\u201cAre you ill, Miss Susan?\u2014you seem low\u2014you don\u2019t speak;\u2014sure you an\u2019t well.\u201d\n\u201cI never was in better health.\u201d\n\u201cI am glad of it with all my heart; but really you did not look it. I should be sorry to have you ill; you, that have been the greatest comfort to me in the world!\u2014Heaven knows what I should have done without your friendship.\u201d\nJayda tried to make a civil answer, though doubting her own success. But it seemed to satisfy Jolene, for she directly replied, \u201cIndeed I am perfectly convinced of your regard for me, and next to Halina\u2019s love, it is the greatest comfort I have. Poor Halina! But now there is one good thing, we shall be able to meet, and meet pretty often, for Dayton Paddy\u2019s delighted with Mrs. Susan, so we shall be a good deal in Harley Street, I dare say, and Halina spends half his time with his sister\u2014besides, Dayton Paddy and Mrs. Minnie will visit now;\u2014and Mrs. Minnie and your sister were both so good to say more than once, they should always be glad to see me. They are such charming women!\u2014I am sure if ever you tell your sister what I think of her, you cannot speak too high.\u201d\nBut Jayda would not give her any encouragement to hope that she should tell her sister. Jolene continued.\n\u201cI am sure I should have seen it in a moment, if Mrs. Minnie had took a dislike to me. If she had only made me a formal courtesy, for instance, without saying a word, and never after had took any notice of me, and never looked at me in a pleasant way\u2014you know what I mean\u2014if I had been treated in that forbidding sort of way, I should have gave it all up in despair. I could not have stood it. For where she does dislike, I know it is most violent.\u201d\nJayda was prevented from making any reply to this civil triumph, by the door\u2019s being thrown open, the servant\u2019s announcing Mr. Minnie, and Halina\u2019s immediately walking in.\nIt was a very awkward moment; and the countenance of each showed that it was so. They all looked exceedingly foolish; and Halina seemed to have as great an inclination to walk out of the room again, as to advance farther into it. The very circumstance, in its unpleasantest form, which they would each have been most anxious to avoid, had fallen on them.\u2014They were not only all three together, but were together without the relief of any other person. The ladies recovered themselves first. It was not Jolene\u2019s business to put herself forward, and the appearance of secrecy must still be kept up. She could therefore only look her tenderness, and after slightly addressing him, said no more.\nBut Jayda had more to do; and so anxious was she, for his sake and her own, to do it well, that she forced herself, after a moment\u2019s recollection, to welcome him, with a look and manner that were almost easy, and almost open; and another struggle, another effort still improved them. She would not allow the presence of Jolene, nor the consciousness of some injustice towards herself, to deter her from saying that she was happy to see him, and that she had very much regretted being from home, when he called before in Berkeley Street. She would not be frightened from paying him those attentions which, as a friend and almost a relation, were his due, by the observant eyes of Jolene, though she soon perceived them to be narrowly watching her.\nHer manners gave some re-assurance to Halina, and he had courage enough to sit down; but his embarrassment still exceeded that of the ladies in a proportion, which the case rendered reasonable, though his sex might make it rare; for his heart had not the indifference of Jolene\u2019s, nor could his conscience have quite the ease of Jayda\u2019s.\nJolene, with a demure and settled air, seemed determined to make no contribution to the comfort of the others, and would not say a word; and almost every thing that was said, proceeded from Jayda, who was obliged to volunteer all the information about her mother\u2019s health, their coming to town, &c. which Halina ought to have inquired about, but never did.\nHer exertions did not stop here; for she soon afterwards felt herself so heroically disposed as to determine, under pretence of fetching Isha, to leave the others by themselves; and she really did it, and that in the handsomest manner, for she loitered away several minutes on the landing-place, with the most high-minded fortitude, before she went to her sister. When that was once done, however, it was time for the raptures of Halina to cease; for Isha\u2019s joy hurried her into the drawing-room immediately. Her pleasure in seeing him was like every other of her feelings, strong in itself, and strongly spoken. She met him with a hand that would be taken, and a voice that expressed the affection of a sister.\n\u201cDear Halina!\u201d she cried, \u201cthis is a moment of great happiness!\u2014This would almost make amends for every thing!\u201d\nHalina tried to return her kindness as it deserved, but before such witnesses he dared not say half what he really felt. Again they all sat down, and for a moment or two all were silent; while Isha was looking with the most speaking tenderness, sometimes at Halina and sometimes at Jayda, regretting only that their delight in each other should be checked by Jolene\u2019s unwelcome presence. Halina was the first to speak, and it was to notice Isha\u2019s altered looks, and express his fear of her not finding London agree with her.\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t think of me!\u201d she replied with spirited earnestness, though her eyes were filled with tears as she spoke, \u201cdon\u2019t think of my health. Jayda is well, you see. That must be enough for us both.\u201d\nThis remark was not calculated to make Halina or Jayda more easy, nor to conciliate the good will of Jolene, who looked up at Isha with no very benignant expression.\n\u201cDo you like London?\u201d said Halina, willing to say any thing that might introduce another subject.\n\u201cNot at all. I expected much pleasure in it, but I have found none. The sight of you, Halina, is the only comfort it has afforded; and thank Heaven! you are what you always were!\u201d\nShe paused\u2014no one spoke.\n\u201cI think, Jayda,\u201d she presently added, \u201cwe must employ Halina to take care of us in our return to Barton. In a week or two, I suppose, we shall be going; and, I trust, Halina will not be very unwilling to accept the charge.\u201d\nPoor Halina muttered something, but what it was, nobody knew, not even himself. But Isha, who saw his agitation, and could easily trace it to whatever cause best pleased herself, was perfectly satisfied, and soon talked of something else.\n\u201cWe spent such a day, Halina, in Harley Street yesterday! So dull, so wretchedly dull!\u2014But I have much to say to you on that head, which cannot be said now.\u201d\nAnd with this admirable discretion did she defer the assurance of her finding their mutual relatives more disagreeable than ever, and of her being particularly disgusted with his mother, till they were more in private.\n\u201cBut why were you not there, Halina?\u2014Why did you not come?\u201d\n\u201cI was engaged elsewhere.\u201d\n\u201cEngaged! But what was that, when such friends were to be met?\u201d\n\u201cPerhaps, Miss Isha,\u201d cried Jolene, eager to take some revenge on her, \u201cyou think young men never stand upon engagements, if they have no mind to keep them, little as well as great.\u201d\nJayda was very angry, but Isha seemed entirely insensible of the sting; for she calmly replied, \u201cNot so, indeed; for, seriously speaking, I am very sure that conscience only kept Halina from Harley Street. And I really believe he has the most delicate conscience in the world; the most scrupulous in performing every engagement, however minute, and however it may make against his interest or pleasure. He is the most fearful of giving pain, of wounding expectation, and the most incapable of being selfish, of any body I ever saw. Halina, it is so, and I will say it. What! are you never to hear yourself praised!\u2014Then you must be no friend of mine; for those who will accept of my love and esteem, must submit to my open commendation.\u201d\nThe nature of her commendation, in the present case, however, happened to be particularly ill-suited to the feelings of two thirds of her auditors, and was so very unexhilarating to Halina, that he very soon got up to go away.\n\u201cGoing so soon!\u201d said Isha; \u201cmy dear Halina, this must not be.\u201d\nAnd drawing him a little aside, she whispered her persuasion that Jolene could not stay much longer. But even this encouragement failed, for he would go; and Jolene, who would have outstaid him, had his visit lasted two hours, soon afterwards went away.\n\u201cWhat can bring her here so often?\u201d said Isha, on her leaving them. \u201cCould not she see that we wanted her gone!\u2014how teazing to Halina!\u201d\n\u201cWhy so?\u2014we were all his friends, and Jolene has been the longest known to him of any. It is but natural that he should like to see her as well as ourselves.\u201d\nIsha looked at her steadily, and said, \u201cYou know, Jayda, that this is a kind of talking which I cannot bear. If you only hope to have your assertion contradicted, as I must suppose to be the case, you ought to recollect that I am the last person in the world to do it. I cannot descend to be tricked out of assurances, that are not really wanted.\u201d\nShe then left the room; and Jayda dared not follow her to say more, for bound as she was by her promise of secrecy to Jolene, she could give no information that would convince Isha; and painful as the consequences of her still continuing in an error might be, she was obliged to submit to it. All that she could hope, was that Halina would not often expose her or himself to the distress of hearing Isha\u2019s mistaken warmth, nor to the repetition of any other part of the pain that had attended their recent meeting\u2014and this she had every reason to expect.\nCHAPTER XXXVI.\nWithin a few days after this meeting, the newspapers announced to the world, that the lady of Edwina Bronagh, Esq. was safely delivered of a son and heir; a very interesting and satisfactory paragraph, at least to all those intimate connections who knew it before.\nThis event, highly important to Mrs. Lee\u2019s happiness, produced a temporary alteration in the disposal of her time, and influenced, in a like degree, the engagements of her young friends; for as she wished to be as much as possible with Kristina, she went thither every morning as soon as she was dressed, and did not return till late in the evening; and the Miss Susans, at the particular request of the Paddys, spent the whole of every day in Conduit Street. For their own comfort they would much rather have remained, at least all the morning, in Mrs. Lee\u2019s house; but it was not a thing to be urged against the wishes of everybody. Their hours were therefore made over to Dayton Paddy and the two Miss Finns, by whom their company, in fact was as little valued, as it was professedly sought.\nThey had too much sense to be desirable companions to the former; and by the latter they were considered with a jealous eye, as intruding on their ground, and sharing the kindness which they wanted to monopolize. Though nothing could be more polite than Dayton Paddy\u2019s behaviour to Jayda and Isha, she did not really like them at all. Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, she could not believe them good-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but that did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.\nTheir presence was a restraint both on her and on Jolene. It checked the idleness of one, and the business of the other. Dayton Paddy was ashamed of doing nothing before them, and the flattery which Jolene was proud to think of and administer at other times, she feared they would despise her for offering. Miss Finn was the least discomposed of the three, by their presence; and it was in their power to reconcile her to it entirely. Would either of them only have given her a full and minute account of the whole affair between Isha and Mr. Alastair, she would have thought herself amply rewarded for the sacrifice of the best place by the fire after dinner, which their arrival occasioned. But this conciliation was not granted; for though she often threw out expressions of pity for her sister to Jayda, and more than once dropt a reflection on the inconstancy of beaux before Isha, no effect was produced, but a look of indifference from the former, or of disgust in the latter. An effort even yet lighter might have made her their friend. Would they only have laughed at her about the Doctor! But so little were they, any more than the others, inclined to oblige her, that if Sir Corina dined from home, she might spend a whole day without hearing any other raillery on the subject, than what she was kind enough to bestow on herself.\nAll these jealousies and discontents, however, were so totally unsuspected by Mrs. Lee, that she thought it a delightful thing for the girls to be together; and generally congratulated her young friends every night, on having escaped the company of a stupid old woman so long. She joined them sometimes at Sir Corina\u2019s, sometimes at her own house; but wherever it was, she always came in excellent spirits, full of delight and importance, attributing Kristina\u2019s well doing to her own care, and ready to give so exact, so minute a detail of her situation, as only Miss Finn had curiosity enough to desire. One thing did disturb her; and of that she made her daily complaint. Mr. Bronagh maintained the common, but unfatherly opinion among his sex, of all infants being alike; and though she could plainly perceive, at different times, the most striking resemblance between this baby and every one of his relations on both sides, there was no convincing his father of it; no persuading him to believe that it was not exactly like every other baby of the same age; nor could he even be brought to acknowledge the simple proposition of its being the finest child in the world.\nI come now to the relation of a misfortune, which about this time befell Mrs. Corina Susan. It so happened that while her two sisters with Mrs. Lee were first calling on her in Harley Street, another of her acquaintance had dropt in\u2014a circumstance in itself not apparently likely to produce evil to her. But while the imaginations of other people will carry them away to form wrong judgments of our conduct, and to decide on it by slight appearances, one\u2019s happiness must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance. In the present instance, this last-arrived lady allowed her fancy to so far outrun truth and probability, that on merely hearing the name of the Miss Susans, and understanding them to be Mr. Susan\u2019s sisters, she immediately concluded them to be staying in Harley Street; and this misconstruction produced within a day or two afterwards, cards of invitation for them as well as for their brother and sister, to a small musical party at her house. The consequence of which was, that Mrs. Corina Susan was obliged to submit not only to the exceedingly great inconvenience of sending her carriage for the Miss Susans, but, what was still worse, must be subject to all the unpleasantness of appearing to treat them with attention: and who could tell that they might not expect to go out with her a second time? The power of disappointing them, it was true, must always be hers. But that was not enough; for when people are determined on a mode of conduct which they know to be wrong, they feel injured by the expectation of any thing better from them.\nIsha had now been brought by degrees, so much into the habit of going out every day, that it was become a matter of indifference to her, whether she went or not: and she prepared quietly and mechanically for every evening\u2019s engagement, though without expecting the smallest amusement from any, and very often without knowing, till the last moment, where it was to take her.\nTo her dress and appearance she was grown so perfectly indifferent, as not to bestow half the consideration on it, during the whole of her toilet, which it received from Miss Finn in the first five minutes of their being together, when it was finished. Nothing escaped her minute observation and general curiosity; she saw every thing, and asked every thing; was never easy till she knew the price of every part of Isha\u2019s dress; could have guessed the number of her gowns altogether with better judgment than Isha herself, and was not without hopes of finding out before they parted, how much her washing cost per week, and how much she had every year to spend upon herself. The impertinence of these kind of scrutinies, moreover, was generally concluded with a compliment, which though meant as its douceur, was considered by Isha as the greatest impertinence of all; for after undergoing an examination into the value and make of her gown, the colour of her shoes, and the arrangement of her hair, she was almost sure of being told that upon \u201cher word she looked vastly smart, and she dared to say she would make a great many conquests.\u201d\nWith such encouragement as this, was she dismissed on the present occasion, to her brother\u2019s carriage; which they were ready to enter five minutes after it stopped at the door, a punctuality not very agreeable to their sister-in-law, who had preceded them to the house of her acquaintance, and was there hoping for some delay on their part that might inconvenience either herself or her coachman.\nThe events of this evening were not very remarkable. The party, like other musical parties, comprehended a great many people who had real taste for the performance, and a great many more who had none at all; and the performers themselves were, as usual, in their own estimation, and that of their immediate friends, the first private performers in England.\nAs Jayda was neither musical, nor affecting to be so, she made no scruple of turning her eyes from the grand pianoforte, whenever it suited her, and unrestrained even by the presence of a harp, and violoncello, would fix them at pleasure on any other object in the room. In one of these excursive glances she perceived among a group of young men, the very he, who had given them a lecture on toothpick-cases at Gray\u2019s. She perceived him soon afterwards looking at herself, and speaking familiarly to her brother; and had just determined to find out his name from the latter, when they both came towards her, and Mr. Susan introduced him to her as Mr. Shannon Minnie.\nHe addressed her with easy civility, and twisted his head into a bow which assured her as plainly as words could have done, that he was exactly the coxcomb she had heard him described to be by Jolene. Happy had it been for her, if her regard for Halina had depended less on his own merit, than on the merit of his nearest relations! For then his brother\u2019s bow must have given the finishing stroke to what the ill-humour of his mother and sister would have begun. But while she wondered at the difference of the two young men, she did not find that the emptiness and conceit of the one, put her out of all charity with the modesty and worth of the other. Why they were different, Shannon explained to her himself in the course of a quarter of an hour\u2019s conversation; for, talking of his brother, and lamenting the extreme gaucherie which he really believed kept him from mixing in proper society, he candidly and generously attributed it much less to any natural deficiency, than to the misfortune of a private education; while he himself, though probably without any particular, any material superiority by nature, merely from the advantage of a public school, was as well fitted to mix in the world as any other man.\n\u201cUpon my soul,\u201d he added, \u201cI believe it is nothing more; and so I often tell my mother, when she is grieving about it. \u2018My dear Madam,\u2019 I always say to her, \u2018you must make yourself easy. The evil is now irremediable, and it has been entirely your own doing. Why would you be persuaded by my uncle, Sir Shannon, against your own judgment, to place Halina under private tuition, at the most critical time of his life? If you had only sent him to Westminster as well as myself, instead of sending him to Mr. Pratt\u2019s, all this would have been prevented.\u2019 This is the way in which I always consider the matter, and my mother is perfectly convinced of her error.\u201d\nJayda would not oppose his opinion, because, whatever might be her general estimation of the advantage of a public school, she could not think of Halina\u2019s abode in Mr. Pratt\u2019s family, with any satisfaction.\n\u201cYou reside in Devonshire, I think,\u201d\u2014was his next observation, \u201cin a cottage near Dawlish.\u201d\nJayda set him right as to its situation; and it seemed rather surprising to him that anybody could live in Devonshire, without living near Dawlish. He bestowed his hearty approbation however on their species of house.\n\u201cFor my own part,\u201d said he, \u201cI am excessively fond of a cottage; there is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them. And I protest, if I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one myself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself down at any time, and collect a few friends about me, and be happy. I advise every body who is going to build, to build a cottage. My friend Lord Courtland came to me the other day on purpose to ask my advice, and laid before me three different plans of Bonomi\u2019s. I was to decide on the best of them. \u2018My dear Courtland,\u2019 said I, immediately throwing them all into the fire, \u2018do not adopt either of them, but by all means build a cottage.\u2019 And that I fancy, will be the end of it.\n\u201cSome people imagine that there can be no accommodations, no space in a cottage; but this is all a mistake. I was last month at my friend Elliott\u2019s, near Dartford. Dayton Elliott wished to give a dance. \u2018But how can it be done?\u2019 said she; \u2018my dear Minnie, do tell me how it is to be managed. There is not a room in this cottage that will hold ten couple, and where can the supper be?\u2019 I immediately saw that there could be no difficulty in it, so I said, \u2018My dear Dayton Elliott, do not be uneasy. The dining parlour will admit eighteen couple with ease; card-tables may be placed in the drawing-room; the library may be open for tea and other refreshments; and let the supper be set out in the saloon.\u2019 Dayton Elliott was delighted with the thought. We measured the dining-room, and found it would hold exactly eighteen couple, and the affair was arranged precisely after my plan. So that, in fact, you see, if people do but know how to set about it, every comfort may be as well enjoyed in a cottage as in the most spacious dwelling.\u201d\nJayda agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.\nAs Corina Susan had no more pleasure in music than his eldest sister, his mind was equally at liberty to fix on any thing else; and a thought struck him during the evening, which he communicated to his wife, for her approbation, when they got home. The consideration of Mrs. Dennison\u2019s mistake, in supposing his sisters their guests, had suggested the propriety of their being really invited to become such, while Mrs. Lee\u2019s engagements kept her from home. The expense would be nothing, the inconvenience not more; and it was altogether an attention which the delicacy of his conscience pointed out to be requisite to its complete enfranchisement from his promise to his father. Brett was startled at the proposal.\n\u201cI do not see how it can be done,\u201d said she, \u201cwithout affronting Dayton Paddy, for they spend every day with her; otherwise I should be exceedingly glad to do it. You know I am always ready to pay them any attention in my power, as my taking them out this evening shows. But they are Dayton Paddy\u2019s visitors. How can I ask them away from her?\u201d\nHer husband, but with great humility, did not see the force of her objection. \u201cThey had already spent a week in this manner in Conduit Street, and Dayton Paddy could not be displeased at their giving the same number of days to such near relations.\u201d\nBrett paused a moment, and then, with fresh vigor, said, \u201cMy love, I would ask them with all my heart, if it was in my power. But I had just settled within myself to ask the Miss Finns to spend a few days with us. They are very well behaved, good kind of girls; and I think the attention is due to them, as their uncle did so very well by Halina. We can ask your sisters some other year, you know; but the Miss Finns may not be in town any more. I am sure you will like them; indeed, you do like them, you know, very much already, and so does my mother; and they are such favourites with Harry!\u201d\nMr. Susan was convinced. He saw the necessity of inviting the Miss Finns immediately, and his conscience was pacified by the resolution of inviting his sisters another year; at the same time, however, slyly suspecting that another year would make the invitation needless, by bringing Jayda to town as Celeste Ade\u2019s wife, and Isha as their visitor.\nBrett, rejoicing in her escape, and proud of the ready wit that had procured it, wrote the next morning to Jolene, to request her company and her sister\u2019s, for some days, in Harley Street, as soon as Dayton Paddy could spare them. This was enough to make Jolene really and reasonably happy. Mrs. Susan seemed actually working for her, herself; cherishing all her hopes, and promoting all her views! Such an opportunity of being with Halina and his family was, above all things, the most material to her interest, and such an invitation the most gratifying to her feelings! It was an advantage that could not be too gratefully acknowledged, nor too speedily made use of; and the visit to Dayton Paddy, which had not before had any precise limits, was instantly discovered to have been always meant to end in two days\u2019 time.\nWhen the note was shown to Jayda, as it was within ten minutes after its arrival, it gave her, for the first time, some share in the expectations of Jolene; for such a mark of uncommon kindness, vouchsafed on so short an acquaintance, seemed to declare that the good-will towards her arose from something more than merely malice against herself; and might be brought, by time and address, to do every thing that Jolene wished. Her flattery had already subdued the pride of Dayton Paddy, and made an entry into the close heart of Mrs. Corina Susan; and these were effects that laid open the probability of greater.\nThe Miss Finns removed to Harley Street, and all that reached Jayda of their influence there, strengthened her expectation of the event. Sir Corina, who called on them more than once, brought home such accounts of the favour they were in, as must be universally striking. Mrs. Susan had never been so much pleased with any young women in her life, as she was with them; had given each of them a needle book made by some emigrant; called Jolene by her Christian name; and did not know whether she should ever be able to part with them.\nEND OF THE SECOND VOLUME\nCHAPTER XXXVII.\nMrs. Bronagh was so well at the end of a fortnight, that her mother felt it no longer necessary to give up the whole of her time to her; and, contenting herself with visiting her once or twice a day, returned from that period to her own home, and her own habits, in which she found the Miss Susans very ready to resume their former share.\nAbout the third or fourth morning after their being thus resettled in Berkeley Street, Mrs. Lee, on returning from her ordinary visit to Mrs. Bronagh, entered the drawing-room, where Jayda was sitting by herself, with an air of such hurrying importance as prepared her to hear something wonderful; and giving her time only to form that idea, began directly to justify it, by saying, \u201cLord! my dear Miss Susan! have you heard the news?\u201d\n\u201cNo, ma\u2019am. What is it?\u201d\n\u201cSomething so strange! But you shall hear it all. When I got to Mr. Bronagh\u2019s, I found Kristina quite in a fuss about the child. She was sure it was very ill\u2014it cried, and fretted, and was all over pimples. So I looked at it directly, and, \u2018Lord! my dear,\u2019 says I, \u2018it is nothing in the world, but the red gum;\u2019 and nurse said just the same. But Kristina, she would not be satisfied, so Mr. Donavan was sent for; and luckily he happened to just come in from Harley Street, so he stepped over directly, and as soon as ever he saw the child, he said just as we did, that it was nothing in the world but the red gum, and then Kristina was easy. And so, just as he was going away again, it came into my head, I am sure I do not know how I happened to think of it, but it came into my head to ask him if there was any news. So upon that, he smirked, and simpered, and looked grave, and seemed to know something or other, and at last he said in a whisper, \u2018For fear any unpleasant report should reach the young ladies under your care as to their sister\u2019s indisposition, I think it advisable to say, that I believe there is no great reason for alarm; I hope Mrs. Susan will do very well.\u2019\u201d\n\u201cWhat! is Brett ill?\u201d\n\u201cThat is exactly what I said, my dear. \u2018Lord!\u2019 says I, \u2018is Mrs. Susan ill?\u2019 So then it all came out; and the long and the short of the matter, by all I can learn, seems to be this. Mr. Halina Minnie, the very young man I used to joke with you about (but however, as it turns out, I am monstrous glad there was never any thing in it), Mr. Halina Minnie, it seems, has been engaged above this twelvemonth to my cousin Jolene!\u2014There\u2019s for you, my dear! And not a creature knowing a syllable of the matter, except Nancy! Could you have believed such a thing possible? There is no great wonder in their liking one another; but that matters should be brought so forward between them, and nobody suspect it! That is strange! I never happened to see them together, or I am sure I should have found it out directly. Well, and so this was kept a great secret, for fear of Mrs. Minnie, and neither she nor your brother or sister suspected a word of the matter: till this very morning, poor Nancy, who, you know, is a well-meaning creature, but no conjurer, popt it all out. \u2018Lord!\u2019 thinks she to herself, \u2018they are all so fond of Jolene, to be sure they will make no difficulty about it;\u2019 and so, away she went to your sister, who was sitting all alone at her carpet-work, little suspecting what was to come\u2014for she had just been saying to your brother, only five minutes before, that she thought to make a match between Halina and some Lord\u2019s daughter or other, I forget who. So you may think what a blow it was to all her vanity and pride. She fell into violent hysterics immediately, with such screams as reached your brother\u2019s ears, as he was sitting in his own dressing-room down stairs, thinking about writing a letter to his steward in the country. So up he flew directly, and a terrible scene took place, for Jolene was come to them by that time, little dreaming what was going on. Poor soul! I pity her. And I must say, I think she was used very hardly; for your sister scolded like any fury, and soon drove her into a fainting fit. Nancy, she fell upon her knees, and cried bitterly; and your brother, he walked about the room, and said he did not know what to do. Mrs. Susan declared they should not stay a minute longer in the house, and your brother was forced to go down upon his knees too, to persuade her to let them stay till they had packed up their clothes. Then she fell into hysterics again, and he was so frightened that he would send for Mr. Donavan, and Mr. Donavan found the house in all this uproar. The carriage was at the door ready to take my poor cousins away, and they were just stepping in as he came off; poor Jolene in such a condition, he says, she could hardly walk; and Nancy, she was almost as bad. I declare, I have no patience with your sister; and I hope, with all my heart, it will be a match in spite of her. Lord! what a taking poor Mr. Halina will be in when he hears of it! To have his love used so scornfully! for they say he is monstrous fond of her, as well he may. I should not wonder, if he was to be in the greatest passion!\u2014and Mr. Donavan thinks just the same. He and I had a great deal of talk about it; and the best of all is, that he is gone back again to Harley Street, that he may be within call when Mrs. Minnie is told of it, for she was sent for as soon as ever my cousins left the house, for your sister was sure she would be in hysterics too; and so she may, for what I care. I have no pity for either of them. I have no notion of people\u2019s making such a to-do about money and greatness. There is no reason on earth why Mr. Halina and Jolene should not marry; for I am sure Mrs. Minnie may afford to do very well by her son, and though Jolene has next to nothing herself, she knows better than any body how to make the most of every thing; I dare say, if Mrs. Minnie would only allow him five hundred a-year, she would make as good an appearance with it as any body else would with eight. Lord! how snug they might live in such another cottage as yours\u2014or a little bigger\u2014with two maids, and two men; and I believe I could help them to a housemaid, for my Betty has a sister out of place, that would fit them exactly.\u201d\nHere Mrs. Lee ceased, and as Jayda had had time enough to collect her thoughts, she was able to give such an answer, and make such observations, as the subject might naturally be supposed to produce. Happy to find that she was not suspected of any extraordinary interest in it; that Mrs. Lee (as she had of late often hoped might be the case) had ceased to imagine her at all attached to Halina; and happy above all the rest, in the absence of Isha, she felt very well able to speak of the affair without embarrassment, and to give her judgment, as she believed, with impartiality on the conduct of every one concerned in it.\nShe could hardly determine what her own expectation of its event really was; though she earnestly tried to drive away the notion of its being possible to end otherwise at last, than in the marriage of Halina and Jolene. What Mrs. Minnie would say and do, though there could not be a doubt of its nature, she was anxious to hear; and still more anxious to know how Halina would conduct himself. For him she felt much compassion;\u2014for Jolene very little\u2014and it cost her some pains to procure that little;\u2014for the rest of the party none at all.\nAs Mrs. Lee could talk on no other subject, Jayda soon saw the necessity of preparing Isha for its discussion. No time was to be lost in undeceiving her, in making her acquainted with the real truth, and in endeavouring to bring her to hear it talked of by others, without betraying that she felt any uneasiness for her sister, or any resentment against Halina.\nJayda\u2019s office was a painful one.\u2014She was going to remove what she really believed to be her sister\u2019s chief consolation,\u2014to give such particulars of Halina as she feared would ruin him for ever in her good opinion,-and to make Isha, by a resemblance in their situations, which to her fancy would seem strong, feel all her own disappointment over again. But unwelcome as such a task must be, it was necessary to be done, and Jayda therefore hastened to perform it.\nShe was very far from wishing to dwell on her own feelings, or to represent herself as suffering much, any otherwise than as the self-command she had practised since her first knowledge of Halina\u2019s engagement, might suggest a hint of what was practicable to Isha. Her narration was clear and simple; and though it could not be given without emotion, it was not accompanied by violent agitation, nor impetuous grief. That belonged rather to the hearer, for Isha listened with horror, and cried excessively. Jayda was to be the comforter of others in her own distresses, no less than in theirs; and all the comfort that could be given by assurances of her own composure of mind, and a very earnest vindication of Halina from every charge but of imprudence, was readily offered.\nBut Isha for some time would give credit to neither. Halina seemed a second Alastair; and acknowledging as Jayda did, that she had loved him most sincerely, could she feel less than herself! As for Jolene Finn, she considered her so totally unamiable, so absolutely incapable of attaching a sensible man, that she could not be persuaded at first to believe, and afterwards to pardon, any former affection of Halina for her. She would not even admit it to have been natural; and Jayda left her to be convinced that it was so, by that which only could convince her, a better knowledge of mankind.\nHer first communication had reached no farther than to state the fact of the engagement, and the length of time it had existed.\u2014Isha\u2019s feelings had then broken in, and put an end to all regularity of detail; and for some time all that could be done was to soothe her distress, lessen her alarms, and combat her resentment. The first question on her side, which led to farther particulars, was,\u2014 \u201cHow long has this been known to you, Jayda? has he written to you?\u201d\n\u201cI have known it these four months. When Jolene first came to Barton Park last November, she told me in confidence of her engagement.\u201d\nAt these words, Isha\u2019s eyes expressed the astonishment which her lips could not utter. After a pause of wonder, she exclaimed\u2014 \u201cFour months!\u2014Have you known of this four months?\u201d\nJayda confirmed it.\n\u201cWhat! while attending me in all my misery, has this been on your heart? And I have reproached you for being happy!\u201d\n\u201cIt was not fit that you should then know how much I was the reverse!\u201d\n\u201cFour months!\u201d cried Isha again. \u201cSo calm! so cheerful! How have you been supported?\u201d\n\u201cBy feeling that I was doing my duty.\u2014My promise to Jolene, obliged me to be secret. I owed it to her, therefore, to avoid giving any hint of the truth; and I owed it to my family and friends, not to create in them a solicitude about me, which it could not be in my power to satisfy.\u201d\nIsha seemed much struck.\n\u201cI have very often wished to undeceive yourself and my mother,\u201d added Jayda; \u201cand once or twice I have attempted it;\u2014but without betraying my trust, I never could have convinced you.\u201d\n\u201cFour months! and yet you loved him!\u201d\n\u201cYes. But I did not love only him; and while the comfort of others was dear to me, I was glad to spare them from knowing how much I felt. Now, I can think and speak of it with little emotion. I would not have you suffer on my account; for I assure you I no longer suffer materially myself. I have many things to support me. I am not conscious of having provoked the disappointment by any imprudence of my own, I have borne it as much as possible without spreading it farther. I acquit Halina of essential misconduct. I wish him very happy; and I am so sure of his always doing his duty, that though now he may harbour some regret, in the end he must become so. Jolene does not want sense, and that is the foundation on which every thing good may be built. And after all, Isha, after all that is bewitching in the idea of a single and constant attachment, and all that can be said of one\u2019s happiness depending entirely on any particular person, it is not meant\u2014it is not fit\u2014it is not possible that it should be so. Halina will marry Jolene; he will marry a woman superior in person and understanding to half her sex; and time and habit will teach him to forget that he ever thought another superior to her.\u201d\n\u201cIf such is your way of thinking,\u201d said Isha, \u201cif the loss of what is most valued is so easily to be made up by something else, your resolution, your self-command, are, perhaps, a little less to be wondered at.\u2014They are brought more within my comprehension.\u201d\n\u201cI understand you. You do not suppose that I have ever felt much. For four months, Isha, I have had all this hanging on my mind, without being at liberty to speak of it to a single creature; knowing that it would make you and my mother most unhappy whenever it were explained to you, yet unable to prepare you for it in the least. It was told me,\u2014it was in a manner forced on me by the very person herself, whose prior engagement ruined all my prospects; and told me, as I thought, with triumph. This person\u2019s suspicions, therefore, I have had to oppose, by endeavouring to appear indifferent where I have been most deeply interested; and it has not been only once; I have had her hopes and exultation to listen to again and again. I have known myself to be divided from Halina for ever, without hearing one circumstance that could make me less desire the connection. Nothing has proved him unworthy; nor has anything declared him indifferent to me. I have had to contend against the unkindness of his sister, and the insolence of his mother; and have suffered the punishment of an attachment, without enjoying its advantages. And all this has been going on at a time, when, as you know too well, it has not been my only unhappiness. If you can think me capable of ever feeling, surely you may suppose that I have suffered now. The composure of mind with which I have brought myself at present to consider the matter, the consolation that I have been willing to admit, have been the effect of constant and painful exertion; they did not spring up of themselves; they did not occur to relieve my spirits at first. No, Isha. Then, if I had not been bound to silence, perhaps nothing could have kept me entirely\u2014not even what I owed to my dearest friends\u2014from openly showing that I was very unhappy.\u201d\nIsha was quite subdued.\n\u201cOh! Jayda,\u201d she cried, \u201cyou have made me hate myself for ever.\u2014How barbarous have I been to you!\u2014you, who have been my only comfort, who have borne with me in all my misery, who have seemed to be only suffering for me!\u2014Is this my gratitude?\u2014Is this the only return I can make you?\u2014Because your merit cries out upon myself, I have been trying to do it away.\u201d\nThe tenderest caresses followed this confession. In such a frame of mind as she was now in, Jayda had no difficulty in obtaining from her whatever promise she required; and at her request, Isha engaged never to speak of the affair to any one with the least appearance of bitterness; to meet Jolene without betraying the smallest increase of dislike to her; and even to see Halina himself, if chance should bring them together, without any diminution of her usual cordiality. These were great concessions; but where Isha felt that she had injured, no reparation could be too much for her to make.\nShe performed her promise of being discreet, to admiration.\u2014She attended to all that Mrs. Lee had to say upon the subject, with an unchanging complexion, dissented from her in nothing, and was heard three times to say, \u201cYes, ma\u2019am.\u201d\u2014She listened to her praise of Jolene with only moving from one chair to another, and when Mrs. Lee talked of Halina\u2019s affection, it cost her only a spasm in her throat.\u2014Such advances towards heroism in her sister, made Jayda feel equal to any thing herself.\nThe next morning brought a farther trial of it, in a visit from their brother, who came with a most serious aspect to talk over the dreadful affair, and bring them news of his wife.\n\u201cYou have heard, I suppose,\u201d said he with great solemnity, as soon as he was seated, \u201cof the very shocking discovery that took place under our roof yesterday.\u201d\nThey all looked their assent; it seemed too awful a moment for speech.\n\u201cYour sister,\u201d he continued, \u201chas suffered dreadfully. Mrs. Minnie too\u2014in short it has been a scene of such complicated distress\u2014but I will hope that the storm may be weathered without our being any of us quite overcome. Poor Brett! she was in hysterics all yesterday. But I would not alarm you too much. Donavan says there is nothing materially to be apprehended; her constitution is a good one, and her resolution equal to any thing. She has borne it all, with the fortitude of an angel! She says she never shall think well of anybody again; and one cannot wonder at it, after being so deceived!\u2014meeting with such ingratitude, where so much kindness had been shown, so much confidence had been placed! It was quite out of the benevolence of her heart, that she had asked these young women to her house; merely because she thought they deserved some attention, were harmless, well-behaved girls, and would be pleasant companions; for otherwise we both wished very much to have invited you and Isha to be with us, while your kind friend there, was attending her daughter. And now to be so rewarded! \u2018I wish, with all my heart,\u2019 says poor Brett in her affectionate way, \u2018that we had asked your sisters instead of them.\u2019\u201d\nHere he stopped to be thanked; which being done, he went on.\n\u201cWhat poor Mrs. Minnie suffered, when first Brett broke it to her, is not to be described. While she with the truest affection had been planning a most eligible connection for him, was it to be supposed that he could be all the time secretly engaged to another person!\u2014such a suspicion could never have entered her head! If she suspected any prepossession elsewhere, it could not be in that quarter. \u2018There, to be sure,\u2019 said she, \u2018I might have thought myself safe.\u2019 She was quite in an agony. We consulted together, however, as to what should be done, and at last she determined to send for Halina. He came. But I am sorry to relate what ensued. All that Mrs. Minnie could say to make him put an end to the engagement, assisted too as you may well suppose by my arguments, and Brett\u2019s entreaties, was of no avail. Duty, affection, every thing was disregarded. I never thought Halina so stubborn, so unfeeling before. His mother explained to him her liberal designs, in case of his marrying Miss Morton; told him she would settle on him the Norfolk estate, which, clear of land-tax, brings in a good thousand a-year; offered even, when matters grew desperate, to make it twelve hundred; and in opposition to this, if he still persisted in this low connection, represented to him the certain penury that must attend the match. His own two thousand pounds she protested should be his all; she would never see him again; and so far would she be from affording him the smallest assistance, that if he were to enter into any profession with a view of better support, she would do all in her power to prevent him advancing in it.\u201d\nHere Isha, in an ecstasy of indignation, clapped her hands together, and cried, \u201cGracious God! can this be possible!\u201d\n\u201cWell may you wonder, Isha,\u201d replied her brother, \u201cat the obstinacy which could resist such arguments as these. Your exclamation is very natural.\u201d\nIsha was going to retort, but she remembered her promises, and forbore.\n\u201cAll this, however,\u201d he continued, \u201cwas urged in vain. Halina said very little; but what he did say, was in the most determined manner. Nothing should prevail on him to give up his engagement. He would stand to it, cost him what it might.\u201d\n\u201cThen,\u201d cried Mrs. Lee with blunt sincerity, no longer able to be silent, \u201che has acted like an honest man! I beg your pardon, Mr. Susan, but if he had done otherwise, I should have thought him a rascal. I have some little concern in the business, as well as yourself, for Jolene Finn is my cousin, and I believe there is not a better kind of girl in the world, nor one who more deserves a good husband.\u201d\nCorina Susan was greatly astonished; but his nature was calm, not open to provocation, and he never wished to offend anybody, especially anybody of good fortune. He therefore replied, without any resentment, \u201cI would by no means speak disrespectfully of any relation of yours, madam. Miss Jolene Finn is, I dare say, a very deserving young woman, but in the present case you know, the connection must be impossible. And to have entered into a secret engagement with a young man under her uncle\u2019s care, the son of a woman especially of such very large fortune as Mrs. Minnie, is perhaps, altogether a little extraordinary. In short, I do not mean to reflect upon the behaviour of any person whom you have a regard for, Mrs. Lee. We all wish her extremely happy; and Mrs. Minnie\u2019s conduct throughout the whole, has been such as every conscientious, good mother, in like circumstances, would adopt. It has been dignified and liberal. Halina has drawn his own lot, and I fear it will be a bad one.\u201d\nIsha sighed out her similar apprehension; and Jayda\u2019s heart wrung for the feelings of Halina, while braving his mother\u2019s threats, for a woman who could not reward him.\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d said Mrs. Lee, \u201cand how did it end?\u201d\n\u201cI am sorry to say, ma\u2019am, in a most unhappy rupture:\u2014Halina is dismissed for ever from his mother\u2019s notice. He left her house yesterday, but where he is gone, or whether he is still in town, I do not know; for we of course can make no inquiry.\u201d\n\u201cPoor young man!\u2014and what is to become of him?\u201d\n\u201cWhat, indeed, ma\u2019am! It is a melancholy consideration. Born to the prospect of such affluence! I cannot conceive a situation more deplorable. The interest of two thousand pounds\u2014how can a man live on it?\u2014and when to that is added the recollection, that he might, but for his own folly, within three months have been in the receipt of two thousand, five hundred a-year (for Miss Morton has thirty thousand pounds,) I cannot picture to myself a more wretched condition. We must all feel for him; and the more so, because it is totally out of our power to assist him.\u201d\n\u201cPoor young man!\u201d cried Mrs. Lee, \u201cI am sure he should be very welcome to bed and board at my house; and so I would tell him if I could see him. It is not fit that he should be living about at his own charge now, at lodgings and taverns.\u201d\nJayda\u2019s heart thanked her for such kindness towards Halina, though she could not forbear smiling at the form of it.\n\u201cIf he would only have done as well by himself,\u201d said Corina Susan, \u201cas all his friends were disposed to do by him, he might now have been in his proper situation, and would have wanted for nothing. But as it is, it must be out of anybody\u2019s power to assist him. And there is one thing more preparing against him, which must be worse than all\u2014his mother has determined, with a very natural kind of spirit, to settle that estate upon Shannon immediately, which might have been Halina\u2019s, on proper conditions. I left her this morning with her lawyer, talking over the business.\u201d\n\u201cWell!\u201d said Mrs. Lee, \u201cthat is her revenge. Everybody has a way of their own. But I don\u2019t think mine would be, to make one son independent, because another had plagued me.\u201d\nIsha got up and walked about the room.\n\u201cCan anything be more galling to the spirit of a man,\u201d continued Corina, \u201cthan to see his younger brother in possession of an estate which might have been his own? Poor Halina! I feel for him sincerely.\u201d\nA few minutes more spent in the same kind of effusion, concluded his visit; and with repeated assurances to his sisters that he really believed there was no material danger in Brett\u2019s indisposition, and that they need not therefore be very uneasy about it, he went away; leaving the three ladies unanimous in their sentiments on the present occasion, as far at least as it regarded Mrs. Minnie\u2019s conduct, the Susans\u2019, and Halina\u2019s.\nIsha\u2019s indignation burst forth as soon as he quitted the room; and as her vehemence made reserve impossible in Jayda, and unnecessary in Mrs. Lee, they all joined in a very spirited critique upon the party.\nCHAPTER XXXVIII.\nMrs. Lee was very warm in her praise of Halina\u2019s conduct, but only Jayda and Isha understood its true merit. They only knew how little he had had to tempt him to be disobedient, and how small was the consolation, beyond the consciousness of doing right, that could remain to him in the loss of friends and fortune. Jayda gloried in his integrity; and Isha forgave all his offences in compassion for his punishment. But though confidence between them was, by this public discovery, restored to its proper state, it was not a subject on which either of them were fond of dwelling when alone. Jayda avoided it upon principle, as tending to fix still more upon her thoughts, by the too warm, too positive assurances of Isha, that belief of Halina\u2019s continued affection for herself which she rather wished to do away; and Isha\u2019s courage soon failed her, in trying to converse upon a topic which always left her more dissatisfied with herself than ever, by the comparison it necessarily produced between Jayda\u2019s conduct and her own.\nShe felt all the force of that comparison; but not as her sister had hoped, to urge her to exertion now; she felt it with all the pain of continual self-reproach, regretted most bitterly that she had never exerted herself before; but it brought only the torture of penitence, without the hope of amendment. Her mind was so much weakened that she still fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore it only dispirited her more.\nNothing new was heard by them, for a day or two afterwards, of affairs in Harley Street, or Bartlett\u2019s Buildings. But though so much of the matter was known to them already, that Mrs. Lee might have had enough to do in spreading that knowledge farther, without seeking after more, she had resolved from the first to pay a visit of comfort and inquiry to her cousins as soon as she could; and nothing but the hindrance of more visitors than usual, had prevented her going to them within that time.\nThe third day succeeding their knowledge of the particulars, was so fine, so beautiful a Sunday as to draw many to Kensington Gardens, though it was only the second week in March. Mrs. Lee and Jayda were of the number; but Isha, who knew that the Alastairs were again in town, and had a constant dread of meeting them, chose rather to stay at home, than venture into so public a place.\nAn intimate acquaintance of Mrs. Lee joined them soon after they entered the Gardens, and Jayda was not sorry that by her continuing with them, and engaging all Mrs. Lee\u2019s conversation, she was herself left to quiet reflection. She saw nothing of the Alastairs, nothing of Halina, and for some time nothing of anybody who could by any chance whether grave or gay, be interesting to her. But at last she found herself with some surprise, accosted by Miss Finn, who, though looking rather shy, expressed great satisfaction in meeting them, and on receiving encouragement from the particular kindness of Mrs. Lee, left her own party for a short time, to join their\u2019s. Mrs. Lee immediately whispered to Jayda, \u201cGet it all out of her, my dear. She will tell you any thing if you ask. You see I cannot leave Mrs. Clarke.\u201d\nIt was lucky, however, for Mrs. Lee\u2019s curiosity and Jayda\u2019s too, that she would tell any thing without being asked; for nothing would otherwise have been learnt.\n\u201cI am so glad to meet you;\u201d said Miss Finn, taking her familiarly by the arm\u2014\u201cfor I wanted to see you of all things in the world.\u201d And then lowering her voice, \u201cI suppose Mrs. Lee has heard all about it. Is she angry?\u201d\n\u201cNot at all, I believe, with you.\u201d\n\u201cThat is a good thing. And Dayton Paddy, is she angry?\u201d\n\u201cI cannot suppose it possible that she should be.\u201d\n\u201cI am monstrous glad of it. Good gracious! I have had such a time of it! I never saw Jolene in such a rage in my life. She vowed at first she would never trim me up a new bonnet, nor do any thing else for me again, so long as she lived; but now she is quite come to, and we are as good friends as ever. Look, she made me this bow to my hat, and put in the feather last night. There now, you are going to laugh at me too. But why should not I wear pink ribbons? I do not care if it is the Doctor\u2019s favourite colour. I am sure, for my part, I should never have known he did like it better than any other colour, if he had not happened to say so. My cousins have been so plaguing me! I declare sometimes I do not know which way to look before them.\u201d\nShe had wandered away to a subject on which Jayda had nothing to say, and therefore soon judged it expedient to find her way back again to the first.\n\u201cWell, but Miss Susan,\u201d speaking triumphantly, \u201cpeople may say what they chuse about Mr. Minnie\u2019s declaring he would not have Jolene, for it is no such thing I can tell you; and it is quite a shame for such ill-natured reports to be spread abroad. Whatever Jolene might think about it herself, you know, it was no business of other people to set it down for certain.\u201d\n\u201cI never heard any thing of the kind hinted at before, I assure you,\u201d said Jayda.\n\u201cOh, did not you? But it was said, I know, very well, and by more than one; for Miss Godby told Miss Sparks, that nobody in their senses could expect Mr. Minnie to give up a woman like Miss Morton, with thirty thousand pounds to her fortune, for Jolene Finn that had nothing at all; and I had it from Miss Sparks myself. And besides that, my cousin Richard said himself, that when it came to the point he was afraid Mr. Minnie would be off; and when Halina did not come near us for three days, I could not tell what to think myself; and I believe in my heart Jolene gave it up all for lost; for we came away from your brother\u2019s Wednesday, and we saw nothing of him not all Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and did not know what was become of him. Once Jolene thought to write to him, but then her spirits rose against that. However this morning he came just as we came home from church; and then it all came out, how he had been sent for Wednesday to Harley Street, and been talked to by his mother and all of them, and how he had declared before them all that he loved nobody but Jolene, and nobody but Jolene would he have. And how he had been so worried by what passed, that as soon as he had went away from his mother\u2019s house, he had got upon his horse, and rid into the country, some where or other; and how he had stayed about at an inn all Thursday and Friday, on purpose to get the better of it. And after thinking it all over and over again, he said, it seemed to him as if, now he had no fortune, and no nothing at all, it would be quite unkind to keep her on to the engagement, because it must be for her loss, for he had nothing but two thousand pounds, and no hope of any thing else; and if he was to go into orders, as he had some thoughts, he could get nothing but a curacy, and how was they to live upon that?\u2014He could not bear to think of her doing no better, and so he begged, if she had the least mind for it, to put an end to the matter directly, and leave him shift for himself. I heard him say all this as plain as could possibly be. And it was entirely for her sake, and upon her account, that he said a word about being off, and not upon his own. I will take my oath he never dropt a syllable of being tired of her, or of wishing to marry Miss Morton, or any thing like it. But, to be sure, Jolene would not give ear to such kind of talking; so she told him directly (with a great deal about sweet and love, you know, and all that\u2014Oh, la! one can\u2019t repeat such kind of things you know)\u2014she told him directly, she had not the least mind in the world to be off, for she could live with him upon a trifle, and how little so ever he might have, she should be very glad to have it all, you know, or something of the kind. So then he was monstrous happy, and talked on some time about what they should do, and they agreed he should take orders directly, and they must wait to be married till he got a living. And just then I could not hear any more, for my cousin called from below to tell me Mrs. Richardson was come in her coach, and would take one of us to Kensington Gardens; so I was forced to go into the room and interrupt them, to ask Jolene if she would like to go, but she did not care to leave Halina; so I just run up stairs and put on a pair of silk stockings and came off with the Richardsons.\u201d\n\u201cI do not understand what you mean by interrupting them,\u201d said Jayda; \u201cyou were all in the same room together, were not you?\u201d\n\u201cNo, indeed, not us. La! Miss Susan, do you think people make love when any body else is by? Oh, for shame!\u2014To be sure you must know better than that. (Laughing affectedly.)\u2014No, no; they were shut up in the drawing-room together, and all I heard was only by listening at the door.\u201d\n\u201cHow!\u201d cried Jayda; \u201chave you been repeating to me what you only learnt yourself by listening at the door? I am sorry I did not know it before; for I certainly would not have suffered you to give me particulars of a conversation which you ought not to have known yourself. How could you behave so unfairly by your sister?\u201d\n\u201cOh, la! there is nothing in that. I only stood at the door, and heard what I could. And I am sure Jolene would have done just the same by me; for a year or two back, when Martha Sharpe and I had so many secrets together, she never made any bones of hiding in a closet, or behind a chimney-board, on purpose to hear what we said.\u201d\nJayda tried to talk of something else; but Miss Finn could not be kept beyond a couple of minutes, from what was uppermost in her mind.\n\u201cHalina talks of going to Oxford soon,\u201d said she; \u201cbut now he is lodging at No.\u2014, Pall Mall. What an ill-natured woman his mother is, an\u2019t she? And your brother and sister were not very kind! However, I shan\u2019t say anything against them to you; and to be sure they did send us home in their own chariot, which was more than I looked for. And for my part, I was all in a fright for fear your sister should ask us for the huswifes she had gave us a day or two before; but, however, nothing was said about them, and I took care to keep mine out of sight. Halina have got some business at Oxford, he says; so he must go there for a time; and after that, as soon as he can light upon a Bishop, he will be ordained. I wonder what curacy he will get! Good gracious! (giggling as she spoke) I\u2019d lay my life I know what my cousins will say, when they hear of it. They will tell me I should write to the Doctor, to get Halina the curacy of his new living. I know they will; but I am sure I would not do such a thing for all the world. \u2018La!\u2019 I shall say directly, \u2018I wonder how you could think of such a thing? I write to the Doctor, indeed!\u2019\u201d\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cit is a comfort to be prepared against the worst. You have got your answer ready.\u201d\nMiss Finn was going to reply on the same subject, but the approach of her own party made another more necessary.\n\u201cOh, la! here come the Richardsons. I had a vast deal more to say to you, but I must not stay away from them not any longer. I assure you they are very genteel people. He makes a monstrous deal of money, and they keep their own coach. I have not time to speak to Mrs. Lee about it myself, but pray tell her I am quite happy to hear she is not in anger against us, and Dayton Paddy the same; and if anything should happen to take you and your sister away, and Mrs. Lee should want company, I am sure we should be very glad to come and stay with her for as long a time as she likes. I suppose Dayton Paddy won\u2019t ask us any more this bout. Good-by; I am sorry Miss Isha was not here. Remember me kindly to her. La! if you have not got your spotted muslin on!\u2014I wonder you was not afraid of its being torn.\u201d\nSuch was her parting concern; for after this, she had time only to pay her farewell compliments to Mrs. Lee, before her company was claimed by Mrs. Richardson; and Jayda was left in possession of knowledge which might feed her powers of reflection some time, though she had learnt very little more than what had been already foreseen and foreplanned in her own mind. Halina\u2019s marriage with Jolene was as firmly determined on, and the time of its taking place remained as absolutely uncertain, as she had concluded it would be;\u2014every thing depended, exactly after her expectation, on his getting that preferment, of which, at present, there seemed not the smallest chance.\nAs soon as they returned to the carriage, Mrs. Lee was eager for information; but as Jayda wished to spread as little as possible intelligence that had in the first place been so unfairly obtained, she confined herself to the brief repetition of such simple particulars, as she felt assured that Jolene, for the sake of her own consequence, would choose to have known. The continuance of their engagement, and the means that were able to be taken for promoting its end, was all her communication; and this produced from Mrs. Lee the following natural remark.\n\u201cWait for his having a living!\u2014ay, we all know how that will end:\u2014they will wait a twelvemonth, and finding no good comes of it, will set down upon a curacy of fifty pounds a-year, with the interest of his two thousand pounds, and what little matter Mr. Finn and Mr. Pratt can give her. Then they will have a child every year! and Lord help \u2019em! how poor they will be! I must see what I can give them towards furnishing their house. Two maids and two men, indeed! as I talked of t\u2019 other day. No, no, they must get a stout girl of all works. Betty\u2019s sister would never do for them now.\u201d\nThe next morning brought Jayda a letter by the two-penny post from Jolene herself. It was as follows:\n\u201cBartlett\u2019s Building, March.\n\u201cI hope my dear Miss Susan will excuse the liberty I take of writing to her; but I know your friendship for me will make you pleased to hear such a good account of myself and my dear Halina, after all the troubles we have went through lately, therefore will make no more apologies, but proceed to say that, thank God! though we have suffered dreadfully, we are both quite well now, and as happy as we must always be in one another\u2019s love. We have had great trials, and great persecutions, but however, at the same time, gratefully acknowledge many friends, yourself not the least among them, whose great kindness I shall always thankfully remember, as will Halina too, who I have told of it. I am sure you will be glad to hear, as likewise dear Mrs. Lee, I spent two happy hours with him yesterday afternoon, he would not hear of our parting, though earnestly did I, as I thought my duty required, urge him to it for prudence sake, and would have parted for ever on the spot, would he consent to it; but he said it should never be, he did not regard his mother\u2019s anger, while he could have my affections; our prospects are not very bright, to be sure, but we must wait, and hope for the best; he will be ordained shortly; and should it ever be in your power to recommend him to any body that has a living to bestow, am very sure you will not forget us, and dear Mrs. Lee too, trust she will speak a good word for us to Sir Corina, or Mr. Bronagh, or any friend that may be able to assist us.\u2014Poor Kristi was much to blame for what she did, but she did it for the best, so I say nothing; hope Mrs. Lee won\u2019t think it too much trouble to give us a call, should she come this way any morning, \u2019twould be a great kindness, and my cousins would be proud to know her.\u2014My paper reminds me to conclude; and begging to be most gratefully and respectfully remembered to her, and to Sir Corina, and Dayton Paddy, and the dear children, when you chance to see them, and love to Miss Isha, \u201cI am, &c.\u201d\nAs soon as Jayda had finished it, she performed what she concluded to be its writer\u2019s real design, by placing it in the hands of Mrs. Lee, who read it aloud with many comments of satisfaction and praise.\n\u201cVery well indeed!\u2014how prettily she writes!\u2014aye, that was quite proper to let him be off if he would. That was just like Jolene. Poor soul! I wish I could get him a living, with all my heart. She calls me dear Mrs. Lee, you see. She is a good-hearted girl as ever lived. Very well upon my word. That sentence is very prettily turned. Yes, yes, I will go and see her, sure enough. How attentive she is, to think of every body!\u2014Thank you, my dear, for showing it me. It is as pretty a letter as ever I saw, and does Jolene\u2019s head and heart great credit.\u201d\nCHAPTER XXXIX.\nThe Miss Susans had now been rather more than two months in town, and Isha\u2019s impatience to be gone increased every day. She sighed for the air, the liberty, the quiet of the country; and fancied that if any place could give her ease, Barton must do it. Jayda was hardly less anxious than herself for their removal, and only so much less bent on its being effected immediately, as that she was conscious of the difficulties of so long a journey, which Isha could not be brought to acknowledge. She began, however, seriously to turn her thoughts towards its accomplishment, and had already mentioned their wishes to their kind hostess, who resisted them with all the eloquence of her good-will, when a plan was suggested, which, though detaining them from home yet a few weeks longer, appeared to Jayda altogether much more eligible than any other. The Bronaghs were to remove to Cleveland about the end of March, for the Easter holidays; and Mrs. Lee, with both her friends, received a very warm invitation from Kristina to go with them. This would not, in itself, have been sufficient for the delicacy of Miss Susan;\u2014but it was inforced with so much real politeness by Mr. Bronagh himself, as, joined to the very great amendment of his manners towards them since her sister had been known to be unhappy, induced her to accept it with pleasure.\nWhen she told Isha what she had done, however, her first reply was not very auspicious.\n\u201cCleveland!\u201d\u2014she cried, with great agitation. \u201cNo, I cannot go to Cleveland.\u201d\n\u201cYou forget,\u201d said Jayda gently, \u201cthat its situation is not\u2014that it is not in the neighbourhood of\u2014\u201d\n\u201cBut it is in Somersetshire.\u2014I cannot go into Somersetshire.\u2014There, where I looked forward to going...No, Jayda, you cannot expect me to go there.\u201d\nJayda would not argue upon the propriety of overcoming such feelings;\u2014she only endeavoured to counteract them by working on others;\u2014represented it, therefore, as a measure which would fix the time of her returning to that dear mother, whom she so much wished to see, in a more eligible, more comfortable manner, than any other plan could do, and perhaps without any greater delay. From Cleveland, which was within a few miles of Bristol, the distance to Barton was not beyond one day, though a long day\u2019s journey; and their mother\u2019s servant might easily come there to attend them down; and as there could be no occasion of their staying above a week at Cleveland, they might now be at home in little more than three weeks\u2019 time. As Isha\u2019s affection for her mother was sincere, it must triumph with little difficulty, over the imaginary evils she had started.\nMrs. Lee was so far from being weary of her guests, that she pressed them very earnestly to return with her again from Cleveland. Jayda was grateful for the attention, but it could not alter her design; and their mother\u2019s concurrence being readily gained, every thing relative to their return was arranged as far as it could be;\u2014and Isha found some relief in drawing up a statement of the hours that were yet to divide her from Barton.\n\u201cAh! Celeste, I do not know what you and I shall do without the Miss Susans;\u201d\u2014was Mrs. Lee\u2019s address to him when he first called on her, after their leaving her was settled\u2014\u201cfor they are quite resolved upon going home from the Bronaghs;\u2014and how forlorn we shall be, when I come back!\u2014Lord! we shall sit and gape at one another as dull as two cats.\u201d\nPerhaps Mrs. Lee was in hopes, by this vigorous sketch of their future ennui, to provoke him to make that offer, which might give himself an escape from it; and if so, she had soon afterwards good reason to think her object gained; for, on Jayda\u2019s moving to the window to take more expeditiously the dimensions of a print, which she was going to copy for her friend, he followed her to it with a look of particular meaning, and conversed with her there for several minutes. The effect of his discourse on the lady too, could not escape her observation, for though she was too honorable to listen, and had even changed her seat, on purpose that she might not hear, to one close by the piano forte on which Isha was playing, she could not keep herself from seeing that Jayda changed colour, attended with agitation, and was too intent on what he said to pursue her employment. Still farther in confirmation of her hopes, in the interval of Isha\u2019s turning from one lesson to another, some words of the Celeste\u2019s inevitably reached her ear, in which he seemed to be apologising for the badness of his house. This set the matter beyond a doubt. She wondered, indeed, at his thinking it necessary to do so; but supposed it to be the proper etiquette. What Jayda said in reply she could not distinguish, but judged from the motion of her lips, that she did not think that any material objection; and Mrs. Lee commended her in her heart for being so honest. They then talked on for a few minutes longer without her catching a syllable, when another lucky stop in Isha\u2019s performance brought her these words in the Celeste\u2019s calm voice,\u2014 \u201cI am afraid it cannot take place very soon.\u201d\nAstonished and shocked at so unlover-like a speech, she was almost ready to cry out, \u201cLord! what should hinder it?\u201d\u2014but checking her desire, confined herself to this silent ejaculation.\n\u201cThis is very strange!\u2014sure he need not wait to be older.\u201d\nThis delay on the Celeste\u2019s side, however, did not seem to offend or mortify his fair companion in the least, for on their breaking up the conference soon afterwards, and moving different ways, Mrs. Lee very plainly heard Jayda say, and with a voice which showed her to feel what she said, \u201cI shall always think myself very much obliged to you.\u201d\nMrs. Lee was delighted with her gratitude, and only wondered that after hearing such a sentence, the Celeste should be able to take leave of them, as he immediately did, with the utmost sang-froid, and go away without making her any reply! She had not thought her old friend could have made so indifferent a suitor.\nWhat had really passed between them was to this effect.\n\u201cI have heard,\u201d said he, with great compassion, \u201cof the injustice your friend Mr. Minnie has suffered from his family; for if I understand the matter right, he has been entirely cast off by them for persevering in his engagement with a very deserving young woman. Have I been rightly informed? Is it so?;\u201d\nJayda told him that it was.\n\u201cThe cruelty, the impolitic cruelty,\u201d he replied, with great feeling, \u201cof dividing, or attempting to divide, two young people long attached to each other, is terrible. Mrs. Minnie does not know what she may be doing\u2014what she may drive her son to. I have seen Mr. Minnie two or three times in Harley Street, and am much pleased with him. He is not a young man with whom one can be intimately acquainted in a short time, but I have seen enough of him to wish him well for his own sake, and as a friend of yours, I wish it still more. I understand that he intends to take orders. Will you be so good as to tell him that the living of Delaford, now just vacant, as I am informed by this day\u2019s post, is his, if he think it worth his acceptance; but that, perhaps, so unfortunately circumstanced as he is now, it may be nonsense to appear to doubt; I only wish it were more valuable. It is a rectory, but a small one; the late incumbent, I believe, did not make more than 200\u00a3 per annum, and though it is certainly capable of improvement, I fear, not to such an amount as to afford him a very comfortable income. Such as it is, however, my pleasure in presenting it to him, will be very great. Pray assure him of it.\u201d\nJayda\u2019s astonishment at this commission could hardly have been greater, had the Celeste been really making her an offer of his hand. The preferment, which only two days before she had considered as hopeless for Halina, was already provided to enable him to marry; and she, of all people in the world, was fixed on to bestow it! Her emotion was such as Mrs. Lee had attributed to a very different cause; but whatever minor feelings less pure, less pleasing, might have a share in that emotion, her esteem for the general benevolence, and her gratitude for the particular friendship, which together prompted Celeste Ade to this act, were strongly felt, and warmly expressed. She thanked him for it with all her heart, spoke of Halina\u2019s principles and disposition with that praise which she knew them to deserve; and promised to undertake the commission with pleasure, if it were really his wish to put off so agreeable an office to another. But at the same time, she could not help thinking that no one could so well perform it as himself. It was an office in short, from which, unwilling to give Halina the pain of receiving an obligation from her, she would have been very glad to be spared herself; but Celeste Ade, on motives of equal delicacy, declining it likewise, still seemed so desirous of its being given through her means, that she would not on any account make farther opposition. Halina, she believed, was still in town, and fortunately she had heard his address from Miss Finn. She could undertake therefore to inform him of it, in the course of the day. After this had been settled, Celeste Ade began to talk of his own advantage in securing so respectable and agreeable a neighbour, and then it was that he mentioned with regret, that the house was small and indifferent; an evil which Jayda, as Mrs. Lee had supposed her to do, made very light of, at least as far as regarded its size.\n\u201cThe smallness of the house,\u201d said she, \u201cI cannot imagine any inconvenience to them, for it will be in proportion to their family and income.\u201d\nBy which the Celeste was surprised to find that she was considering Mr. Minnie\u2019s marriage as the certain consequence of the presentation; for he did not suppose it possible that Delaford living could supply such an income, as anybody in his style of life would venture to settle on, and he said so.\n\u201cThis little rectory can do no more than make Mr. Minnie comfortable as a bachelor; it cannot enable him to marry. I am sorry to say that my patronage ends with this; and my interest is hardly more extensive. If, however, by an unforeseen chance it should be in my power to serve him farther, I must think very differently of him from what I now do, if I am not as ready to be useful to him then as I sincerely wish I could be at present. What I am now doing indeed, seems nothing at all, since it can advance him so little towards what must be his principal, his only object of happiness. His marriage must still be a distant good; at least, I am afraid it cannot take place very soon.\u201d\nSuch was the sentence which, when misunderstood, so justly offended the delicate feelings of Mrs. Lee; but after this narration of what really passed between Celeste Ade and Jayda, while they stood at the window, the gratitude expressed by the latter on their parting, may perhaps appear in general, not less reasonably excited, nor less properly worded than if it had arisen from an offer of marriage.\nCHAPTER XL.\n\u201cWell, Miss Susan,\u201d said Mrs. Lee, sagaciously smiling, as soon as the gentleman had withdrawn, \u201cI do not ask you what the Celeste has been saying to you; for though, upon my honour, I tried to keep out of hearing, I could not help catching enough to understand his business. And I assure you I never was better pleased in my life, and I wish you joy of it with all my heart.\u201d\n\u201cThank you, ma\u2019am,\u201d said Jayda. \u201cIt is a matter of great joy to me; and I feel the goodness of Celeste Ade most sensibly. There are not many men who would act as he has done. Few people who have so compassionate a heart! I never was more astonished in my life.\u201d\n\u201cLord! my dear, you are very modest. I an\u2019t the least astonished at it in the world, for I have often thought of late, there was nothing more likely to happen.\u201d\n\u201cYou judged from your knowledge of the Celeste\u2019s general benevolence; but at least you could not foresee that the opportunity would so very soon occur.\u201d\n\u201cOpportunity!\u201d repeated Mrs. Lee\u2014\u201cOh! as to that, when a man has once made up his mind to such a thing, somehow or other he will soon find an opportunity. Well, my dear, I wish you joy of it again and again; and if ever there was a happy couple in the world, I think I shall soon know where to look for them.\u201d\n\u201cYou mean to go to Delaford after them I suppose,\u201d said Jayda, with a faint smile.\n\u201cAye, my dear, that I do, indeed. And as to the house being a bad one, I do not know what the Celeste would be at, for it is as good a one as ever I saw.\u201d\n\u201cHe spoke of its being out of repair.\u201d\n\u201cWell, and whose fault is that? why don\u2019t he repair it?\u2014who should do it but himself?\u201d\nThey were interrupted by the servant\u2019s coming in to announce the carriage being at the door; and Mrs. Lee immediately preparing to go, said,\u2014 \u201cWell, my dear, I must be gone before I have had half my talk out. But, however, we may have it all over in the evening; for we shall be quite alone. I do not ask you to go with me, for I dare say your mind is too full of the matter to care for company; and besides, you must long to tell your sister all about it.\u201d\nIsha had left the room before the conversation began.\n\u201cCertainly, ma\u2019am, I shall tell Isha of it; but I shall not mention it at present to any body else.\u201d\n\u201cOh! very well,\u201d said Mrs. Lee rather disappointed. \u201cThen you would not have me tell it to Jolene, for I think of going as far as Holborn to-day.\u201d\n\u201cNo, ma\u2019am, not even Jolene if you please. One day\u2019s delay will not be very material; and till I have written to Mr. Minnie, I think it ought not to be mentioned to any body else. I shall do that directly. It is of importance that no time should be lost with him, for he will of course have much to do relative to his ordination.\u201d\nThis speech at first puzzled Mrs. Lee exceedingly. Why Mr. Minnie was to have been written to about it in such a hurry, she could not immediately comprehend. A few moments\u2019 reflection, however, produced a very happy idea, and she exclaimed;\u2014 \u201cOh, ho!\u2014I understand you. Mr. Minnie is to be the man. Well, so much the better for him. Ay, to be sure, he must be ordained in readiness; and I am very glad to find things are so forward between you. But, my dear, is not this rather out of character? Should not the Celeste write himself?\u2014sure, he is the proper person.\u201d\nJayda did not quite understand the beginning of Mrs. Lee\u2019s speech, neither did she think it worth inquiring into; and therefore only replied to its conclusion.\n\u201cCeleste Ade is so delicate a man, that he rather wished any one to announce his intentions to Mr. Minnie than himself.\u201d\n\u201cAnd so you are forced to do it. Well that is an odd kind of delicacy! However, I will not disturb you (seeing her preparing to write.) You know your own concerns best. So goodby, my dear. I have not heard of any thing to please me so well since Kristina was brought to bed.\u201d\nAnd away she went; but returning again in a moment, \u201cI have just been thinking of Betty\u2019s sister, my dear. I should be very glad to get her so good a mistress. But whether she would do for a lady\u2019s maid, I am sure I can\u2019t tell. She is an excellent housemaid, and works very well at her needle. However, you will think of all that at your leisure.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly, ma\u2019am,\u201d replied Jayda, not hearing much of what she said, and more anxious to be alone, than to be mistress of the subject.\nHow she should begin\u2014how she should express herself in her note to Halina, was now all her concern. The particular circumstances between them made a difficulty of that which to any other person would have been the easiest thing in the world; but she equally feared to say too much or too little, and sat deliberating over her paper, with the pen in her hand, till broken in on by the entrance of Halina himself.\nHe had met Mrs. Lee at the door in her way to the carriage, as he came to leave his farewell card; and she, after apologising for not returning herself, had obliged him to enter, by saying that Miss Susan was above, and wanted to speak with him on very particular business.\nJayda had just been congratulating herself, in the midst of her perplexity, that however difficult it might be to express herself properly by letter, it was at least preferable to giving the information by word of mouth, when her visitor entered, to force her upon this greatest exertion of all. Her astonishment and confusion were very great on his so sudden appearance. She had not seen him before since his engagement became public, and therefore not since his knowing her to be acquainted with it; which, with the consciousness of what she had been thinking of, and what she had to tell him, made her feel particularly uncomfortable for some minutes. He too was much distressed; and they sat down together in a most promising state of embarrassment.\u2014Whether he had asked her pardon for his intrusion on first coming into the room, he could not recollect; but determining to be on the safe side, he made his apology in form as soon as he could say any thing, after taking a chair.\n\u201cMrs. Lee told me,\u201d said he, \u201cthat you wished to speak with me, at least I understood her so\u2014or I certainly should not have intruded on you in such a manner; though at the same time, I should have been extremely sorry to leave London without seeing you and your sister; especially as it will most likely be some time\u2014it is not probable that I should soon have the pleasure of meeting you again. I go to Oxford tomorrow.\u201d\n\u201cYou would not have gone, however,\u201d said Jayda, recovering herself, and determined to get over what she so much dreaded as soon as possible, \u201cwithout receiving our good wishes, even if we had not been able to give them in person. Mrs. Lee was quite right in what she said. I have something of consequence to inform you of, which I was on the point of communicating by paper. I am charged with a most agreeable office (breathing rather faster than usual as she spoke.) Celeste Ade, who was here only ten minutes ago, has desired me to say, that understanding you mean to take orders, he has great pleasure in offering you the living of Delaford now just vacant, and only wishes it were more valuable. Allow me to congratulate you on having so respectable and well-judging a friend, and to join in his wish that the living\u2014it is about two hundred a-year\u2014were much more considerable, and such as might better enable you to\u2014as might be more than a temporary accommodation to yourself\u2014such, in short, as might establish all your views of happiness.\u201d\nWhat Halina felt, as he could not say it himself, it cannot be expected that any one else should say for him. He looked all the astonishment which such unexpected, such unthought-of information could not fail of exciting; but he said only these two words,\u2014 \u201cCeleste Ade!\u201d\n\u201cYes,\u201d continued Jayda, gathering more resolution, as some of the worst was over, \u201cCeleste Ade means it as a testimony of his concern for what has lately passed\u2014for the cruel situation in which the unjustifiable conduct of your family has placed you\u2014a concern which I am sure Isha, myself, and all your friends, must share; and likewise as a proof of his high esteem for your general character, and his particular approbation of your behaviour on the present occasion.\u201d\n\u201cCeleste Ade give me a living!\u2014Can it be possible?\u201d\n\u201cThe unkindness of your own relations has made you astonished to find friendship any where.\u201d\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied he, with sudden consciousness, \u201cnot to find it in you; for I cannot be ignorant that to you, to your goodness, I owe it all.\u2014I feel it\u2014I would express it if I could\u2014but, as you well know, I am no orator.\u201d\n\u201cYou are very much mistaken. I do assure you that you owe it entirely, at least almost entirely, to your own merit, and Celeste Ade\u2019s discernment of it. I have had no hand in it. I did not even know, till I understood his design, that the living was vacant; nor had it ever occurred to me that he might have had such a living in his gift. As a friend of mine, of my family, he may, perhaps\u2014indeed I know he has, still greater pleasure in bestowing it; but, upon my word, you owe nothing to my solicitation.\u201d\nTruth obliged her to acknowledge some small share in the action, but she was at the same time so unwilling to appear as the benefactress of Halina, that she acknowledged it with hesitation; which probably contributed to fix that suspicion in his mind which had recently entered it. For a short time he sat deep in thought, after Jayda had ceased to speak;\u2014at last, and as if it were rather an effort, he said, \u201cCeleste Ade seems a man of great worth and respectability. I have always heard him spoken of as such, and your brother I know esteems him highly. He is undoubtedly a sensible man, and in his manners perfectly the gentleman.\u201d\n\u201cIndeed,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cI believe that you will find him, on farther acquaintance, all that you have heard him to be, and as you will be such very near neighbours (for I understand the parsonage is almost close to the mansion-house,) it is particularly important that he should be all this.\u201d\nHalina made no answer; but when she had turned away her head, gave her a look so serious, so earnest, so uncheerful, as seemed to say, that he might hereafter wish the distance between the parsonage and the mansion-house much greater.\n\u201cCeleste Ade, I think, lodges in St. James Street,\u201d said he, soon afterwards, rising from his chair.\nJayda told him the number of the house.\n\u201cI must hurry away then, to give him those thanks which you will not allow me to give you; to assure him that he has made me a very\u2014an exceedingly happy man.\u201d\nJayda did not offer to detain him; and they parted, with a very earnest assurance on her side of her unceasing good wishes for his happiness in every change of situation that might befall him; on his, with rather an attempt to return the same good will, than the power of expressing it.\n\u201cWhen I see him again,\u201d said Jayda to herself, as the door shut him out, \u201cI shall see him the husband of Jolene.\u201d\nAnd with this pleasing anticipation, she sat down to reconsider the past, recall the words and endeavour to comprehend all the feelings of Halina; and, of course, to reflect on her own with discontent.\nWhen Mrs. Lee came home, though she returned from seeing people whom she had never seen before, and of whom therefore she must have a great deal to say, her mind was so much more occupied by the important secret in her possession, than by anything else, that she reverted to it again as soon as Jayda appeared.\n\u201cWell, my dear,\u201d she cried, \u201cI sent you up the young man. Did not I do right?\u2014And I suppose you had no great difficulty\u2014You did not find him very unwilling to accept your proposal?\u201d\n\u201cNo, ma\u2019am; that was not very likely.\u201d\n\u201cWell, and how soon will he be ready?\u2014For it seems all to depend upon that.\u201d\n\u201cReally,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cI know so little of these kind of forms, that I can hardly even conjecture as to the time, or the preparation necessary; but I suppose two or three months will complete his ordination.\u201d\n\u201cTwo or three months!\u201d cried Mrs. Lee; \u201cLord! my dear, how calmly you talk of it; and can the Celeste wait two or three months! Lord bless me!\u2014I am sure it would put me quite out of patience!\u2014And though one would be very glad to do a kindness by poor Mr. Minnie, I do think it is not worth while to wait two or three months for him. Sure somebody else might be found that would do as well; somebody that is in orders already.\u201d\n\u201cMy dear ma\u2019am,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cwhat can you be thinking of? Why, Celeste Ade\u2019s only object is to be of use to Mr. Minnie.\u201d\n\u201cLord bless you, my dear! Sure you do not mean to persuade me that the Celeste only marries you for the sake of giving ten guineas to Mr. Minnie!\u201d\nThe deception could not continue after this; and an explanation immediately took place, by which both gained considerable amusement for the moment, without any material loss of happiness to either, for Mrs. Lee only exchanged one form of delight for another, and still without forfeiting her expectation of the first.\n\u201cAye, aye, the parsonage is but a small one,\u201d said she, after the first ebullition of surprise and satisfaction was over, \u201cand very likely may be out of repair; but to hear a man apologising, as I thought, for a house that to my knowledge has five sitting rooms on the ground-floor, and I think the housekeeper told me could make up fifteen beds! and to you too, that had been used to live in Barton cottage! It seems quite ridiculous. But, my dear, we must touch up the Celeste to do some thing to the parsonage, and make it comfortable for them, before Jolene goes to it.\u201d\n\u201cBut Celeste Ade does not seem to have any idea of the living\u2019s being enough to allow them to marry.\u201d\n\u201cThe Celeste is a ninny, my dear; because he has two thousand a-year himself, he thinks that nobody else can marry on less. Take my word for it, that, if I am alive, I shall be paying a visit at Delaford Parsonage before Michaelmas; and I am sure I shan\u2019t go if Jolene an\u2019t there.\u201d\nJayda was quite of her opinion, as to the probability of their not waiting for any thing more.\nCHAPTER XLI.\nHalina, having carried his thanks to Celeste Ade, proceeded with his happiness to Jolene; and such was the excess of it by the time he reached Bartlett\u2019s Buildings, that she was able to assure Mrs. Lee, who called on her again the next day with her congratulations, that she had never seen him in such spirits before in her life.\nHer own happiness, and her own spirits, were at least very certain; and she joined Mrs. Lee most heartily in her expectation of their being all comfortably together in Delaford Parsonage before Michaelmas. So far was she, at the same time, from any backwardness to give Jayda that credit which Halina would give her, that she spoke of her friendship for them both with the most grateful warmth, was ready to own all their obligation to her, and openly declared that no exertion for their good on Miss Susan\u2019s part, either present or future, would ever surprise her, for she believed her capable of doing any thing in the world for those she really valued. As for Celeste Ade, she was not only ready to worship him as a saint, but was moreover truly anxious that he should be treated as one in all worldly concerns; anxious that his tithes should be raised to the utmost; and secretly resolved to avail herself, at Delaford, as far as she possibly could, of his servants, his carriage, his cows, and his poultry.\nIt was now above a week since Corina Susan had called in Berkeley Street, and as since that time no notice had been taken by them of his wife\u2019s indisposition, beyond one verbal enquiry, Jayda began to feel it necessary to pay her a visit.\u2014This was an obligation, however, which not only opposed her own inclination, but which had not the assistance of any encouragement from her companions. Isha, not contented with absolutely refusing to go herself, was very urgent to prevent her sister\u2019s going at all; and Mrs. Lee, though her carriage was always at Jayda\u2019s service, so very much disliked Mrs. Corina Susan, that not even her curiosity to see how she looked after the late discovery, nor her strong desire to affront her by taking Halina\u2019s part, could overcome her unwillingness to be in her company again. The consequence was, that Jayda set out by herself to pay a visit, for which no one could really have less inclination, and to run the risk of a t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate with a woman, whom neither of the others had so much reason to dislike.\nMrs. Susan was denied; but before the carriage could turn from the house, her husband accidentally came out. He expressed great pleasure in meeting Jayda, told her that he had been just going to call in Berkeley Street, and, assuring her that Brett would be very glad to see her, invited her to come in.\nThey walked up stairs in to the drawing-room.\u2014Nobody was there.\n\u201cBrett is in her own room, I suppose,\u201d said he: \u201cI will go to her presently, for I am sure she will not have the least objection in the world to seeing you. Very far from it, indeed. Now especially there cannot be\u2014but however, you and Isha were always great favourites. Why would not Isha come?\u201d\nJayda made what excuse she could for her.\n\u201cI am not sorry to see you alone,\u201d he replied, \u201cfor I have a good deal to say to you. This living of Celeste Ade\u2019s\u2014can it be true?\u2014has he really given it to Halina?\u2014I heard it yesterday by chance, and was coming to you on purpose to enquire farther about it.\u201d\n\u201cIt is perfectly true.\u2014Celeste Ade has given the living of Delaford to Halina.\u201d\n\u201cReally!\u2014Well, this is very astonishing!\u2014no relationship!\u2014no connection between them!\u2014and now that livings fetch such a price!\u2014what was the value of this?\u201d\n\u201cAbout two hundred a year.\u201d\n\u201cVery well\u2014and for the next presentation to a living of that value\u2014supposing the late incumbent to have been old and sickly, and likely to vacate it soon\u2014he might have got I dare say\u2014fourteen hundred pounds. And how came he not to have settled that matter before this person\u2019s death? Now, indeed it would be too late to sell it, but a man of Celeste Ade\u2019s sense! I wonder he should be so improvident in a point of such common, such natural, concern! Well, I am convinced that there is a vast deal of inconsistency in almost every human character. I suppose, however\u2014on recollection\u2014that the case may probably be this. Halina is only to hold the living till the person to whom the Celeste has really sold the presentation, is old enough to take it. Aye, aye, that is the fact, depend upon it.\u201d\nJayda contradicted it, however, very positively; and by relating that she had herself been employed in conveying the offer from Celeste Ade to Halina, and, therefore, must understand the terms on which it was given, obliged him to submit to her authority.\n\u201cIt is truly astonishing!\u201d\u2014he cried, after hearing what she said\u2014\u201cwhat could be the Celeste\u2019s motive?\u201d\n\u201cA very simple one\u2014to be of use to Mr. Minnie.\u201d\n\u201cWell, well; whatever Celeste Ade may be, Halina is a very lucky man.\u2014You will not mention the matter to Brett, however, for though I have broke it to her, and she bears it vastly well,\u2014she will not like to hear it much talked of.\u201d\nJayda had some difficulty here to refrain from observing, that she thought Brett might have borne with composure, an acquisition of wealth to her brother, by which neither she nor her child could be possibly impoverished.\n\u201cMrs. Minnie,\u201d added he, lowering his voice to the tone becoming so important a subject, \u201cknows nothing about it at present, and I believe it will be best to keep it entirely concealed from her as long as may be. When the marriage takes place, I fear she must hear of it all.\u201d\n\u201cBut why should such precaution be used? Though it is not to be supposed that Mrs. Minnie can have the smallest satisfaction in knowing that her son has money enough to live upon, for that must be quite out of the question; yet why, upon her late behaviour, is she supposed to feel at all? She has done with her son,\u2014she cast him off for ever, and has made all those over whom she had any influence, cast him off likewise. Surely, after doing so, she cannot be imagined liable to any impression of sorrow or of joy on his account: she cannot be interested in any thing that befalls him. She would not be so weak as to throw away the comfort of a child, and yet retain the anxiety of a parent!\u201d\n\u201cAh! Jayda,\u201d said Corina, \u201cyour reasoning is very good, but it is founded on ignorance of human nature. When Halina\u2019s unhappy match takes place, depend upon it his mother will feel as much as if she had never discarded him; and, therefore every circumstance that may accelerate that dreadful event, must be concealed from her as much as possible. Mrs. Minnie can never forget that Halina is her son.\u201d\n\u201cYou surprise me; I should think it must nearly have escaped her memory by this time.\u201d\n\u201cYou wrong her exceedingly. Mrs. Minnie is one of the most affectionate mothers in the world.\u201d\nJayda was silent.\n\u201cWe think now,\u201d\u2014said Mr. Susan, after a short pause, \u201cof Shannon\u2019s marrying Miss Morton.\u201d\nJayda, smiling at the grave and decisive importance of her brother\u2019s tone, calmly replied,\u2014 \u201cThe lady, I suppose, has no choice in the affair.\u201d\n\u201cChoice!\u2014how do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cI only mean that I suppose, from your manner of speaking, it must be the same to Miss Morton whether she marry Halina or Shannon.\u201d\n\u201cCertainly, there can be no difference; for Shannon will now to all intents and purposes be considered as the eldest son;\u2014and as to any thing else, they are both very agreeable young men: I do not know that one is superior to the other.\u201d\nJayda said no more, and Corina was also for a short time silent.\u2014His reflections ended thus.\n\u201cOf one thing, my dear sister,\u201d kindly taking her hand, and speaking in an awful whisper, \u201cI may assure you;\u2014and I will do it, because I know it must gratify you. I have good reason to think\u2014indeed I have it from the best authority, or I should not repeat it, for otherwise it would be very wrong to say any thing about it,\u2014but I have it from the very best authority,\u2014not that I ever precisely heard Mrs. Minnie say it herself\u2014but her daughter did, and I have it from her,\u2014that in short, whatever objections there might be against a certain\u2014a certain connection, you understand me,\u2014it would have been far preferable to her,\u2014it would not have given her half the vexation that this does. I was exceedingly pleased to hear that Mrs. Minnie considered it in that light; a very gratifying circumstance you know to us all. \u2018It would have been beyond comparison,\u2019 she said, \u2018the least evil of the two, and she would be glad to compound now for nothing worse.\u2019 But however, all that is quite out of the question,\u2014not to be thought of or mentioned\u2014as to any attachment you know, it never could be: all that is gone by. But I thought I would just tell you of this, because I knew how much it must please you. Not that you have any reason to regret, my dear Jayda. There is no doubt of your doing exceedingly well,\u2014quite as well, or better, perhaps, all things considered. Has Celeste Ade been with you lately?\u201d\nJayda had heard enough, if not to gratify her vanity, and raise her self-importance, to agitate her nerves and fill her mind;\u2014and she was therefore glad to be spared from the necessity of saying much in reply herself, and from the danger of hearing any thing more from her brother, by the entrance of Mr. Shannon Minnie. After a few moments\u2019 chat, Corina Susan, recollecting that Brett was yet uninformed of her sister\u2019s being there, quitted the room in quest of her; and Jayda was left to improve her acquaintance with Shannon, who, by the gay unconcern, the happy self-complacency of his manner while enjoying so unfair a division of his mother\u2019s love and liberality, to the prejudice of his banished brother, earned only by his own dissipated course of life, and that brother\u2019s integrity, was confirming her most unfavourable opinion of his head and heart.\nThey had scarcely been two minutes by themselves, before he began to speak of Halina; for he, too, had heard of the living, and was very inquisitive on the subject. Jayda repeated the particulars of it, as she had given them to Corina; and their effect on Shannon, though very different, was not less striking than it had been on him. He laughed most immoderately. The idea of Halina\u2019s being a clergyman, and living in a small parsonage-house, diverted him beyond measure;\u2014and when to that was added the fanciful imagery of Halina reading prayers in a white surplice, and publishing the banns of marriage between Corina Smith and Mary Brown, he could conceive nothing more ridiculous.\nJayda, while she waited in silence and immovable gravity, the conclusion of such folly, could not restrain her eyes from being fixed on him with a look that spoke all the contempt it excited. It was a look, however, very well bestowed, for it relieved her own feelings, and gave no intelligence to him. He was recalled from wit to wisdom, not by any reproof of hers, but by his own sensibility.\n\u201cWe may treat it as a joke,\u201d said he, at last, recovering from the affected laugh which had considerably lengthened out the genuine gaiety of the moment; \u201cbut, upon my soul, it is a most serious business. Poor Halina! he is ruined for ever. I am extremely sorry for it; for I know him to be a very good-hearted creature; as well-meaning a fellow perhaps, as any in the world. You must not judge of him, Miss Susan, from your slight acquaintance. Poor Halina! His manners are certainly not the happiest in nature. But we are not all born, you know, with the same powers,\u2014the same address. Poor fellow! to see him in a circle of strangers! To be sure it was pitiable enough; but upon my soul, I believe he has as good a heart as any in the kingdom; and I declare and protest to you I never was so shocked in my life, as when it all burst forth. I could not believe it. My mother was the first person who told me of it; and I, feeling myself called on to act with resolution, immediately said to her, \u2018My dear madam, I do not know what you may intend to do on the occasion, but as for myself, I must say, that if Halina does marry this young woman, I never will see him again.\u2019 That was what I said immediately. I was most uncommonly shocked, indeed! Poor Halina! he has done for himself completely,\u2014shut himself out for ever from all decent society! But, as I directly said to my mother, I am not in the least surprised at it; from his style of education, it was always to be expected. My poor mother was half frantic.\u201d\n\u201cHave you ever seen the lady?\u201d\n\u201cYes; once, while she was staying in this house, I happened to drop in for ten minutes; and I saw quite enough of her. The merest awkward country girl, without style, or elegance, and almost without beauty. I remember her perfectly. Just the kind of girl I should suppose likely to captivate poor Halina. I offered immediately, as soon as my mother related the affair to me, to talk to him myself, and dissuade him from the match; but it was too late then, I found, to do any thing, for unluckily, I was not in the way at first, and knew nothing of it till after the breach had taken place, when it was not for me, you know, to interfere. But had I been informed of it a few hours earlier, I think it is most probable that something might have been hit on. I certainly should have represented it to Halina in a very strong light. \u2018My dear fellow,\u2019 I should have said, \u2018consider what you are doing. You are making a most disgraceful connection, and such a one as your family are unanimous in disapproving.\u2019 I cannot help thinking, in short, that means might have been found. But now it is all too late. He must be starved, you know, that is certain; absolutely starved.\u201d\nHe had just settled this point with great composure, when the entrance of Mrs. Corina Susan put an end to the subject. But though she never spoke of it out of her own family, Jayda could see its influence on her mind, in the something like confusion of countenance with which she entered, and an attempt at cordiality in her behaviour to herself. She even proceeded so far as to be concerned to find that Jayda and her sister were so soon to leave town, as she had hoped to see more of them;\u2014an exertion in which her husband, who attended her into the room, and hung enamoured over her accents, seemed to distinguish every thing that was most affectionate and graceful.\nCHAPTER XLII.\nOne other short call in Harley Street, in which Jayda received her brother\u2019s congratulations on their travelling so far towards Barton without any expense, and on Celeste Ade\u2019s being to follow them to Cleveland in a day or two, completed the intercourse of the brother and sisters in town;\u2014and a faint invitation from Brett, to come to Norland whenever it should happen to be in their way, which of all things was the most unlikely to occur, with a more warm, though less public, assurance, from Corina to Jayda, of the promptitude with which he should come to see her at Delaford, was all that foretold any meeting in the country.\nIt amused her to observe that all her friends seemed determined to send her to Delaford;\u2014a place, in which, of all others, she would now least chuse to visit, or wish to reside; for not only was it considered as her future home by her brother and Mrs. Lee, but even Jolene, when they parted, gave her a pressing invitation to visit her there.\nVery early in April, and tolerably early in the day, the two parties from Hanover Square and Berkeley Street set out from their respective homes, to meet, by appointment, on the road. For the convenience of Kristina and her child, they were to be more than two days on their journey, and Mr. Bronagh, travelling more expeditiously with Celeste Ade, was to join them at Cleveland soon after their arrival.\nIsha, few as had been her hours of comfort in London, and eager as she had long been to quit it, could not, when it came to the point, bid adieu to the house in which she had for the last time enjoyed those hopes, and that confidence, in Alastair, which were now extinguished for ever, without great pain. Nor could she leave the place in which Alastair remained, busy in new engagements, and new schemes, in which she could have no share, without shedding many tears.\nJayda\u2019s satisfaction, at the moment of removal, was more positive. She had no such object for her lingering thoughts to fix on, she left no creature behind, from whom it would give her a moment\u2019s regret to be divided for ever, she was pleased to be free herself from the persecution of Jolene\u2019s friendship, she was grateful for bringing her sister away unseen by Alastair since his marriage, and she looked forward with hope to what a few months of tranquility at Barton might do towards restoring Isha\u2019s peace of mind, and confirming her own.\nTheir journey was safely performed. The second day brought them into the cherished, or the prohibited, county of Somerset, for as such was it dwelt on by turns in Isha\u2019s imagination; and in the forenoon of the third they drove up to Cleveland.\nCleveland was a spacious, modern-built house, situated on a sloping lawn. It had no park, but the pleasure-grounds were tolerably extensive; and like every other place of the same degree of importance, it had its open shrubbery, and closer wood walk, a road of smooth gravel winding round a plantation, led to the front, the lawn was dotted over with timber, the house itself was under the guardianship of the fir, the mountain-ash, and the acacia, and a thick screen of them altogether, interspersed with tall Lombardy poplars, shut out the offices.\nIsha entered the house with a heart swelling with emotion from the consciousness of being only eighty miles from Barton, and not thirty from Combe Magna; and before she had been five minutes within its walls, while the others were busily helping Kristina to show her child to the housekeeper, she quitted it again, stealing away through the winding shrubberies, now just beginning to be in beauty, to gain a distant eminence; where, from its Grecian temple, her eye, wandering over a wide tract of country to the south-east, could fondly rest on the farthest ridge of hills in the horizon, and fancy that from their summits Combe Magna might be seen.\nIn such moments of precious, invaluable misery, she rejoiced in tears of agony to be at Cleveland; and as she returned by a different circuit to the house, feeling all the happy privilege of country liberty, of wandering from place to place in free and luxurious solitude, she resolved to spend almost every hour of every day while she remained with the Bronaghs, in the indulgence of such solitary rambles.\nShe returned just in time to join the others as they quitted the house, on an excursion through its more immediate premises; and the rest of the morning was easily whiled away, in lounging round the kitchen garden, examining the bloom upon its walls, and listening to the gardener\u2019s lamentations upon blights, in dawdling through the green-house, where the loss of her favourite plants, unwarily exposed, and nipped by the lingering frost, raised the laughter of Kristina,\u2014and in visiting her poultry-yard, where, in the disappointed hopes of her dairy-maid, by hens forsaking their nests, or being stolen by a fox, or in the rapid decrease of a promising young brood, she found fresh sources of merriment.\nThe morning was fine and dry, and Isha, in her plan of employment abroad, had not calculated for any change of weather during their stay at Cleveland. With great surprise therefore, did she find herself prevented by a settled rain from going out again after dinner. She had depended on a twilight walk to the Grecian temple, and perhaps all over the grounds, and an evening merely cold or damp would not have deterred her from it; but a heavy and settled rain even she could not fancy dry or pleasant weather for walking.\nTheir party was small, and the hours passed quietly away. Mrs. Bronagh had her child, and Mrs. Lee her carpet-work; they talked of the friends they had left behind, arranged Dayton Paddy\u2019s engagements, and wondered whether Mr. Bronagh and Celeste Ade would get farther than Reading that night. Jayda, however little concerned in it, joined in their discourse; and Isha, who had the knack of finding her way in every house to the library, however it might be avoided by the family in general, soon procured herself a book.\nNothing was wanting on Mrs. Bronagh\u2019s side that constant and friendly good humour could do, to make them feel themselves welcome. The openness and heartiness of her manner more than atoned for that want of recollection and elegance which made her often deficient in the forms of politeness; her kindness, recommended by so pretty a face, was engaging; her folly, though evident was not disgusting, because it was not conceited; and Jayda could have forgiven every thing but her laugh.\nThe two gentlemen arrived the next day to a very late dinner, affording a pleasant enlargement of the party, and a very welcome variety to their conversation, which a long morning of the same continued rain had reduced very low.\nJayda had seen so little of Mr. Bronagh, and in that little had seen so much variety in his address to her sister and herself, that she knew not what to expect to find him in his own family. She found him, however, perfectly the gentleman in his behaviour to all his visitors, and only occasionally rude to his wife and her mother; she found him very capable of being a pleasant companion, and only prevented from being so always, by too great an aptitude to fancy himself as much superior to people in general, as he must feel himself to be to Mrs. Lee and Kristina. For the rest of his character and habits, they were marked, as far as Jayda could perceive, with no traits at all unusual in his sex and time of life. He was nice in his eating, uncertain in his hours; fond of his child, though affecting to slight it; and idled away the mornings at billiards, which ought to have been devoted to business. She liked him, however, upon the whole, much better than she had expected, and in her heart was not sorry that she could like him no more;\u2014not sorry to be driven by the observation of his Epicurism, his selfishness, and his conceit, to rest with complacency on the remembrance of Halina\u2019s generous temper, simple taste, and diffident feelings.\nOf Halina, or at least of some of his concerns, she now received intelligence from Celeste Ade, who had been into Dorsetshire lately; and who, treating her at once as the disinterested friend of Mr. Minnie, and the kind confidante of himself, talked to her a great deal of the parsonage at Delaford, described its deficiencies, and told her what he meant to do himself towards removing them.\u2014His behaviour to her in this, as well as in every other particular, his open pleasure in meeting her after an absence of only ten days, his readiness to converse with her, and his deference for her opinion, might very well justify Mrs. Lee\u2019s persuasion of his attachment, and would have been enough, perhaps, had not Jayda still, as from the first, believed Isha his real favourite, to make her suspect it herself. But as it was, such a notion had scarcely ever entered her head, except by Mrs. Lee\u2019s suggestion; and she could not help believing herself the nicest observer of the two;\u2014she watched his eyes, while Mrs. Lee thought only of his behaviour;\u2014and while his looks of anxious solicitude on Isha\u2019s feeling, in her head and throat, the beginning of a heavy cold, because unexpressed by words, entirely escaped the latter lady\u2019s observation;\u2014she could discover in them the quick feelings, and needless alarm of a lover.\nTwo delightful twilight walks on the third and fourth evenings of her being there, not merely on the dry gravel of the shrubbery, but all over the grounds, and especially in the most distant parts of them, where there was something more of wildness than in the rest, where the trees were the oldest, and the grass was the longest and wettest, had\u2014assisted by the still greater imprudence of sitting in her wet shoes and stockings\u2014given Isha a cold so violent as, though for a day or two trifled with or denied, would force itself by increasing ailments on the concern of every body, and the notice of herself. Prescriptions poured in from all quarters, and as usual, were all declined. Though heavy and feverish, with a pain in her limbs, and a cough, and a sore throat, a good night\u2019s rest was to cure her entirely; and it was with difficulty that Jayda prevailed on her, when she went to bed, to try one or two of the simplest of the remedies.\nCHAPTER XLIII.\nIsha got up the next morning at her usual time; to every inquiry replied that she was better, and tried to prove herself so, by engaging in her accustomary employments. But a day spent in sitting shivering over the fire with a book in her hand, which she was unable to read, or in lying, weary and languid, on a sofa, did not speak much in favour of her amendment; and when, at last, she went early to bed, more and more indisposed, Celeste Ade was only astonished at her sister\u2019s composure, who, though attending and nursing her the whole day, against Isha\u2019s inclination, and forcing proper medicines on her at night, trusted, like Isha, to the certainty and efficacy of sleep, and felt no real alarm.\nA very restless and feverish night, however, disappointed the expectation of both; and when Isha, after persisting in rising, confessed herself unable to sit up, and returned voluntarily to her bed, Jayda was very ready to adopt Mrs. Lee\u2019s advice, of sending for the Bronaghs\u2019 apothecary.\nHe came, examined his patient, and though encouraging Miss Susan to expect that a very few days would restore her sister to health, yet, by pronouncing her disorder to have a putrid tendency, and allowing the word \u201cinfection\u201d to pass his lips, gave instant alarm to Mrs. Bronagh, on her baby\u2019s account. Mrs. Lee, who had been inclined from the first to think Isha\u2019s complaint more serious than Jayda, now looked very grave on Mr. Harris\u2019s report, and confirming Kristina\u2019s fears and caution, urged the necessity of her immediate removal with her infant; and Mr. Bronagh, though treating their apprehensions as idle, found the anxiety and importunity of his wife too great to be withstood. Her departure, therefore, was fixed on; and within an hour after Mr. Harris\u2019s arrival, she set off, with her little boy and his nurse, for the house of a near relation of Mr. Bronagh\u2019s, who lived a few miles on the other side of Bath; whither her husband promised, at her earnest entreaty, to join her in a day or two; and whither she was almost equally urgent with her mother to accompany her. Mrs. Lee, however, with a kindness of heart which made Jayda really love her, declared her resolution of not stirring from Cleveland as long as Isha remained ill, and of endeavouring, by her own attentive care, to supply to her the place of the mother she had taken her from; and Jayda found her on every occasion a most willing and active helpmate, desirous to share in all her fatigues, and often by her better experience in nursing, of material use.\nPoor Isha, languid and low from the nature of her malady, and feeling herself universally ill, could no longer hope that tomorrow would find her recovered; and the idea of what tomorrow would have produced, but for this unlucky illness, made every ailment severe; for on that day they were to have begun their journey home; and, attended the whole way by a servant of Mrs. Lee, were to have taken their mother by surprise on the following forenoon. The little she said was all in lamentation of this inevitable delay; though Jayda tried to raise her spirits, and make her believe, as she then really believed herself, that it would be a very short one.\nThe next day produced little or no alteration in the state of the patient; she certainly was not better, and, except that there was no amendment, did not appear worse. Their party was now farther reduced; for Mr. Bronagh, though very unwilling to go as well from real humanity and good-nature, as from a dislike of appearing to be frightened away by his wife, was persuaded at last by Celeste Ade to perform his promise of following her; and while he was preparing to go, Celeste Ade himself, with a much greater exertion, began to talk of going likewise.\u2014Here, however, the kindness of Mrs. Lee interposed most acceptably; for to send the Celeste away while his love was in so much uneasiness on her sister\u2019s account, would be to deprive them both, she thought, of every comfort; and therefore telling him at once that his stay at Cleveland was necessary to herself, that she should want him to play at piquet of an evening, while Miss Susan was above with her sister, &c. she urged him so strongly to remain, that he, who was gratifying the first wish of his own heart by a compliance, could not long even affect to demur; especially as Mrs. Lee\u2019s entreaty was warmly seconded by Mr. Bronagh, who seemed to feel a relief to himself, in leaving behind him a person so well able to assist or advise Miss Susan in any emergence.\nIsha was, of course, kept in ignorance of all these arrangements. She knew not that she had been the means of sending the owners of Cleveland away, in about seven days from the time of their arrival. It gave her no surprise that she saw nothing of Mrs. Bronagh; and as it gave her likewise no concern, she never mentioned her name.\nTwo days passed away from the time of Mr. Bronagh\u2019s departure, and her situation continued, with little variation, the same. Mr. Harris, who attended her every day, still talked boldly of a speedy recovery, and Miss Susan was equally sanguine; but the expectation of the others was by no means so cheerful. Mrs. Lee had determined very early in the seizure that Isha would never get over it, and Celeste Ade, who was chiefly of use in listening to Mrs. Lee\u2019s forebodings, was not in a state of mind to resist their influence. He tried to reason himself out of fears, which the different judgment of the apothecary seemed to render absurd; but the many hours of each day in which he was left entirely alone, were but too favourable for the admission of every melancholy idea, and he could not expel from his mind the persuasion that he should see Isha no more.\nOn the morning of the third day however, the gloomy anticipations of both were almost done away; for when Mr. Harris arrived, he declared his patient materially better. Her pulse was much stronger, and every symptom more favourable than on the preceding visit. Jayda, confirmed in every pleasant hope, was all cheerfulness; rejoicing that in her letters to her mother, she had pursued her own judgment rather than her friend\u2019s, in making very light of the indisposition which delayed them at Cleveland; and almost fixing on the time when Isha would be able to travel.\nBut the day did not close so auspiciously as it began. Towards the evening Isha became ill again, growing more heavy, restless, and uncomfortable than before. Her sister, however, still sanguine, was willing to attribute the change to nothing more than the fatigue of having sat up to have her bed made; and carefully administering the cordials prescribed, saw her, with satisfaction, sink at last into a slumber, from which she expected the most beneficial effects. Her sleep, though not so quiet as Jayda wished to see it, lasted a considerable time; and anxious to observe the result of it herself, she resolved to sit with her during the whole of it. Mrs. Lee, knowing nothing of any change in the patient, went unusually early to bed; her maid, who was one of the principal nurses, was recreating herself in the housekeeper\u2019s room, and Jayda remained alone with Isha.\nThe repose of the latter became more and more disturbed; and her sister, who watched, with unremitting attention her continual change of posture, and heard the frequent but inarticulate sounds of complaint which passed her lips, was almost wishing to rouse her from so painful a slumber, when Isha, suddenly awakened by some accidental noise in the house, started hastily up, and, with feverish wildness, cried out,\u2014 \u201cIs mama coming?\u201d\n\u201cNot yet,\u201d cried the other, concealing her terror, and assisting Isha to lie down again, \u201cbut she will be here, I hope, before it is long. It is a great way, you know, from hence to Barton.\u201d\n\u201cBut she must not go round by London,\u201d cried Isha, in the same hurried manner. \u201cI shall never see her, if she goes by London.\u201d\nJayda perceived with alarm that she was not quite herself, and, while attempting to soothe her, eagerly felt her pulse. It was lower and quicker than ever! and Isha, still talking wildly of mama, her alarm increased so rapidly, as to determine her on sending instantly for Mr. Harris, and despatching a messenger to Barton for her mother. To consult with Celeste Ade on the best means of effecting the latter, was a thought which immediately followed the resolution of its performance; and as soon she had rung up the maid to take her place by her sister, she hastened down to the drawing-room, where she knew he was generally to be found at a much later hour than the present.\nIt was no time for hesitation. Her fears and her difficulties were immediately before him. Her fears, he had no courage, no confidence to attempt the removal of:\u2014he listened to them in silent despondence;\u2014but her difficulties were instantly obviated, for with a readiness that seemed to speak the occasion, and the service pre-arranged in his mind, he offered himself as the messenger who should fetch Mrs. Susan. Jayda made no resistance that was not easily overcome. She thanked him with brief, though fervent gratitude, and while he went to hurry off his servant with a message to Mr. Harris, and an order for post-horses directly, she wrote a few lines to her mother.\nThe comfort of such a friend at that moment as Celeste Ade\u2014or such a companion for her mother,\u2014how gratefully was it felt!\u2014a companion whose judgment would guide, whose attendance must relieve, and whose friendship might soothe her!\u2014as far as the shock of such a summons could be lessened to her, his presence, his manners, his assistance, would lessen it.\nHe, meanwhile, whatever he might feel, acted with all the firmness of a collected mind, made every necessary arrangement with the utmost despatch, and calculated with exactness the time in which she might look for his return. Not a moment was lost in delay of any kind. The horses arrived, even before they were expected, and Celeste Ade only pressing her hand with a look of solemnity, and a few words spoken too low to reach her ear, hurried into the carriage. It was then about twelve o\u2019clock, and she returned to her sister\u2019s apartment to wait for the arrival of the apothecary, and to watch by her the rest of the night. It was a night of almost equal suffering to both. Hour after hour passed away in sleepless pain and delirium on Isha\u2019s side, and in the most cruel anxiety on Jayda\u2019s, before Mr. Harris appeared. Her apprehensions once raised, paid by their excess for all her former security; and the servant who sat up with her, for she would not allow Mrs. Lee to be called, only tortured her more, by hints of what her mistress had always thought.\nIsha\u2019s ideas were still, at intervals, fixed incoherently on her mother, and whenever she mentioned her name, it gave a pang to the heart of poor Jayda, who, reproaching herself for having trifled with so many days of illness, and wretched for some immediate relief, fancied that all relief might soon be in vain, that every thing had been delayed too long, and pictured to herself her suffering mother arriving too late to see this darling child, or to see her rational.\nShe was on the point of sending again for Mr. Harris, or if he could not come, for some other advice, when the former\u2014but not till after five o\u2019clock\u2014arrived. His opinion, however, made some little amends for his delay, for though acknowledging a very unexpected and unpleasant alteration in his patient, he would not allow the danger to be material, and talked of the relief which a fresh mode of treatment must procure, with a confidence which, in a lesser degree, was communicated to Jayda. He promised to call again in the course of three or four hours, and left both the patient and her anxious attendant more composed than he had found them.\nWith strong concern, and with many reproaches for not being called to their aid, did Mrs. Lee hear in the morning of what had passed. Her former apprehensions, now with greater reason restored, left her no doubt of the event; and though trying to speak comfort to Jayda, her conviction of her sister\u2019s danger would not allow her to offer the comfort of hope. Her heart was really grieved. The rapid decay, the early death of a girl so young, so lovely as Isha, must have struck a less interested person with concern. On Mrs. Lee\u2019s compassion she had other claims. She had been for three months her companion, was still under her care, and she was known to have been greatly injured, and long unhappy. The distress of her sister too, particularly a favourite, was before her;\u2014and as for their mother, when Mrs. Lee considered that Isha might probably be to her what Kristina was to herself, her sympathy in her sufferings was very sincere.\nMr. Harris was punctual in his second visit;\u2014but he came to be disappointed in his hopes of what the last would produce. His medicines had failed;\u2014the fever was unabated; and Isha only more quiet\u2014not more herself\u2014remained in a heavy stupor. Jayda, catching all, and more than all, his fears in a moment, proposed to call in further advice. But he judged it unnecessary: he had still something more to try, some more fresh application, of whose success he was as confident as the last, and his visit concluded with encouraging assurances which reached the ear, but could not enter the heart of Miss Susan. She was calm, except when she thought of her mother; but she was almost hopeless; and in this state she continued till noon, scarcely stirring from her sister\u2019s bed, her thoughts wandering from one image of grief, one suffering friend to another, and her spirits oppressed to the utmost by the conversation of Mrs. Lee, who scrupled not to attribute the severity and danger of this attack to the many weeks of previous indisposition which Isha\u2019s disappointment had brought on. Jayda felt all the reasonableness of the idea, and it gave fresh misery to her reflections.\nAbout noon, however, she began\u2014but with a caution\u2014a dread of disappointment which for some time kept her silent, even to her friend\u2014to fancy, to hope she could perceive a slight amendment in her sister\u2019s pulse;\u2014she waited, watched, and examined it again and again;\u2014and at last, with an agitation more difficult to bury under exterior calmness, than all her foregoing distress, ventured to communicate her hopes. Mrs. Lee, though forced, on examination, to acknowledge a temporary revival, tried to keep her young friend from indulging a thought of its continuance;\u2014and Jayda, conning over every injunction of distrust, told herself likewise not to hope. But it was too late. Hope had already entered; and feeling all its anxious flutter, she bent over her sister to watch\u2014she hardly knew for what. Half an hour passed away, and the favourable symptom yet blessed her. Others even arose to confirm it. Her breath, her skin, her lips, all flattered Jayda with signs of amendment; and Isha fixed her eyes on her with a rational, though languid, gaze. Anxiety and hope now oppressed her in equal degrees, and left her no moment of tranquillity till the arrival of Mr. Harris at four o\u2019clock;\u2014when his assurances, his felicitations on a recovery in her sister even surpassing his expectation, gave her confidence, comfort, and tears of joy.\nIsha was in every respect materially better, and he declared her entirely out of danger. Mrs. Lee, perhaps satisfied with the partial justification of her forebodings which had been found in their late alarm, allowed herself to trust in his judgment, and admitted, with unfeigned joy, and soon with unequivocal cheerfulness, the probability of an entire recovery.\nJayda could not be cheerful. Her joy was of a different kind, and led to any thing rather than to gaiety. Isha restored to life, health, friends, and to her doting mother, was an idea to fill her heart with sensations of exquisite comfort, and expand it in fervent gratitude;\u2014but it led to no outward demonstrations of joy, no words, no smiles. All within Jayda\u2019s breast was satisfaction, silent and strong.\nShe continued by the side of her sister, with little intermission the whole afternoon, calming every fear, satisfying every inquiry of her enfeebled spirits, supplying every succour, and watching almost every look and every breath. The possibility of a relapse would of course, in some moments, occur to remind her of what anxiety was\u2014but when she saw, on her frequent and minute examination, that every symptom of recovery continued, and saw Isha at six o\u2019clock sink into a quiet, steady, and to all appearance comfortable, sleep, she silenced every doubt.\nThe time was now drawing on, when Celeste Ade might be expected back. At ten o\u2019clock, she trusted, or at least not much later her mother would be relieved from the dreadful suspense in which she must now be travelling towards them. The Celeste, too!\u2014perhaps scarcely less an object of pity!\u2014Oh!\u2014how slow was the progress of time which yet kept them in ignorance!\nAt seven o\u2019clock, leaving Isha still sweetly asleep, she joined Mrs. Lee in the drawing-room to tea. Of breakfast she had been kept by her fears, and of dinner by their sudden reverse, from eating much;\u2014and the present refreshment, therefore, with such feelings of content as she brought to it, was particularly welcome. Mrs. Lee would have persuaded her, at its conclusion, to take some rest before her mother\u2019s arrival, and allow her to take her place by Isha; but Jayda had no sense of fatigue, no capability of sleep at that moment about her, and she was not to be kept away from her sister an unnecessary instant. Mrs. Lee therefore attending her up stairs into the sick chamber, to satisfy herself that all continued right, left her there again to her charge and her thoughts, and retired to her own room to write letters and sleep.\nThe night was cold and stormy. The wind roared round the house, and the rain beat against the windows; but Jayda, all happiness within, regarded it not. Isha slept through every blast; and the travellers\u2014they had a rich reward in store, for every present inconvenience.\nThe clock struck eight. Had it been ten, Jayda would have been convinced that at that moment she heard a carriage driving up to the house; and so strong was the persuasion that she did, in spite of the almost impossibility of their being already come, that she moved into the adjoining dressing-closet and opened a window shutter, to be satisfied of the truth. She instantly saw that her ears had not deceived her. The flaring lamps of a carriage were immediately in view. By their uncertain light she thought she could discern it to be drawn by four horses; and this, while it told the excess of her poor mother\u2019s alarm, gave some explanation to such unexpected rapidity.\nNever in her life had Jayda found it so difficult to be calm, as at that moment. The knowledge of what her mother must be feeling as the carriage stopt at the door\u2014of her doubt\u2014her dread\u2014perhaps her despair!\u2014and of what she had to tell!\u2014with such knowledge it was impossible to be calm. All that remained to be done was to be speedy; and, therefore staying only till she could leave Mrs. Lee\u2019s maid with her sister, she hurried down stairs.\nThe bustle in the vestibule, as she passed along an inner lobby, assured her that they were already in the house. She rushed to the drawing-room,\u2014she entered it,\u2014and saw only Alastair.\nCHAPTER XLIV.\nJayda, starting back with a look of horror at the sight of him, obeyed the first impulse of her heart in turning instantly to quit the room, and her hand was already on the lock, when its action was suspended by his hastily advancing, and saying, in a voice rather of command than supplication, \u201cMiss Susan, for half an hour\u2014for ten minutes\u2014I entreat you to stay.\u201d\n\u201cNo, sir,\u201d she replied with firmness, \u201cI shall not stay. Your business cannot be with me. The servants, I suppose, forgot to tell you that Mr. Bronagh was not in the house.\u201d\n\u201cHad they told me,\u201d he cried with vehemence, \u201cthat Mr. Bronagh and all his relations were at the devil, it would not have turned me from the door. My business is with you, and only you.\u201d\n\u201cWith me!\u201d\u2014in the utmost amazement\u2014\u201cwell, sir,\u2014be quick\u2014and if you can\u2014less violent.\u201d\n\u201cSit down, and I will be both.\u201d\nShe hesitated; she knew not what to do. The possibility of Celeste Ade\u2019s arriving and finding her there, came across her. But she had promised to hear him, and her curiosity no less than her honor was engaged. After a moment\u2019s recollection, therefore, concluding that prudence required dispatch, and that her acquiescence would best promote it, she walked silently towards the table, and sat down. He took the opposite chair, and for half a minute not a word was said by either.\n\u201cPray be quick, sir,\u201d\u2014said Jayda, impatiently;\u2014\u201cI have no time to spare.\u201d\nHe was sitting in an attitude of deep meditation, and seemed not to hear her.\n\u201cYour sister,\u201d said he, with abruptness, a moment afterwards\u2014\u201cis out of danger. I heard it from the servant. God be praised!\u2014But is it true? is it really true?\u201d\nJayda would not speak. He repeated the inquiry with yet greater eagerness.\n\u201cFor God\u2019s sake tell me, is she out of danger, or is she not?\u201d\n\u201cWe hope she is.\u201d\nHe rose up, and walked across the room.\n\u201cHad I known as much half an hour ago;\u2014but since I am here,\u201d speaking with a forced vivacity as he returned to his seat,\u2014\u201cwhat does it signify? For once, Miss Susan\u2014it will be the last time, perhaps\u2014let us be cheerful together. I am in a fine mood for gaiety. Tell me honestly\u201d a deeper glow overspreading his cheeks, \u201cdo you think me most a knave or a fool?\u201d\nJayda looked at him with greater astonishment than ever. She began to think that he must be in liquor;\u2014the strangeness of such a visit, and of such manners, seemed no otherwise intelligible; and with this impression she immediately rose, saying, \u201cMr. Alastair, I advise you at present to return to Combe. I am not at leisure to remain with you longer. Whatever your business may be with me, it will be better recollected and explained to-morrow.\u201d\n\u201cI understand you,\u201d he replied, with an expressive smile, and a voice perfectly calm; \u201cyes, I am very drunk. A pint of porter with my cold beef at Marlborough was enough to over-set me.\u201d\n\u201cAt Marlborough!\u201d\u2014cried Jayda, more and more at a loss to understand what he would be at.\n\u201cYes,\u2014I left London this morning at eight o\u2019clock, and the only ten minutes I have spent out of my chaise since that time procured me a nuncheon at Marlborough.\u201d\nThe steadiness of his manner, and the intelligence of his eye as he spoke, convincing Jayda, that whatever other unpardonable folly might bring him to Cleveland, he was not brought there by intoxication, she said, after a moment\u2019s recollection, \u201cMr. Alastair, you ought to feel, and I certainly do, that after what has passed, your coming here in this manner, and forcing yourself upon my notice, requires a very particular excuse. What is it, that you mean by it?\u201d\n\u201cI mean,\u201d said he, with serious energy, \u201cif I can, to make you hate me one degree less than you do now. I mean to offer some kind of explanation, some kind of apology, for the past; to open my whole heart to you, and by convincing you, that though I have been always a blockhead, I have not been always a rascal, to obtain something like forgiveness from Ma\u2014 from your sister.\u201d\n\u201cIs this the real reason of your coming?\u201d\n\u201cUpon my soul it is,\u201d\u2014was his answer, with a warmth which brought all the former Alastair to her remembrance, and in spite of herself made her think him sincere.\n\u201cIf that is all, you may be satisfied already; for Isha does, she has long forgiven you.\u201d\n\u201cHas she?\u201d he cried, in the same eager tone. \u201cThen she has forgiven me before she ought to have done it. But she shall forgive me again, and on more reasonable grounds. Now will you listen to me?\u201d\nJayda bowed her assent.\n\u201cI do not know,\u201d said he, after a pause of expectation on her side, and thoughtfulness on his own, \u201chow you may have accounted for my behaviour to your sister, or what diabolical motive you may have imputed to me. Perhaps you will hardly think the better of me,\u2014it is worth the trial however, and you shall hear every thing. When I first became intimate in your family, I had no other intention, no other view in the acquaintance than to pass my time pleasantly while I was obliged to remain in Devonshire, more pleasantly than I had ever done before. Your sister\u2019s lovely person and interesting manners could not but please me; and her behaviour to me almost from the first, was of a kind\u2014it is astonishing, when I reflect on what it was, and what she was, that my heart should have been so insensible! But at first I must confess, my vanity only was elevated by it. Careless of her happiness, thinking only of my own amusement, giving way to feelings which I had always been too much in the habit of indulging, I endeavoured, by every means in my power, to make myself pleasing to her, without any design of returning her affection.\u201d\nMiss Susan, at this point, turning her eyes on him with the most angry contempt, stopped him, by saying, \u201cIt is hardly worth while, Mr. Alastair, for you to relate, or for me to listen any longer. Such a beginning as this cannot be followed by any thing. Do not let me be pained by hearing any thing more on the subject.\u201d\n\u201cI insist on you hearing the whole of it,\u201d he replied, \u201cMy fortune was never large, and I had always been expensive, always in the habit of associating with people of better income than myself. Every year since my coming of age, or even before, I believe, had added to my debts; and though the death of my old cousin, Mrs. Smith, was to set me free; yet that event being uncertain, and possibly far distant, it had been for some time my intention to re-establish my circumstances by marrying a woman of fortune. To attach myself to your sister, therefore, was not a thing to be thought of; and with a meanness, selfishness, cruelty, which no indignant, no contemptuous look, even of yours, Miss Susan, can ever reprobate too much,\u2014I was acting in this manner, trying to engage her regard, without a thought of returning it. But one thing may be said for me: even in that horrid state of selfish vanity, I did not know the extent of the injury I meditated, because I did not then know what it was to love. But have I ever known it? Well may it be doubted; for, had I really loved, could I have sacrificed my feelings to vanity, to avarice? or, what is more, could I have sacrificed hers? But I have done it. To avoid a comparative poverty, which her affection and her society would have deprived of all its horrors, I have, by raising myself to affluence, lost every thing that could make it a blessing.\u201d\n\u201cYou did then,\u201d said Jayda, a little softened, \u201cbelieve yourself at one time attached to her?\u201d\n\u201cTo have resisted such attractions, to have withstood such tenderness! Is there a man on earth who could have done it? Yes, I found myself, by insensible degrees, sincerely fond of her; and the happiest hours of my life were what I spent with her when I felt my intentions were strictly honourable, and my feelings blameless. Even then, however, when fully determined on paying my addresses to her, I allowed myself most improperly to put off, from day to day, the moment of doing it, from an unwillingness to enter into an engagement while my circumstances were so greatly embarrassed. I will not reason here\u2014nor will I stop for you to expatiate on the absurdity, and the worse than absurdity, of scrupling to engage my faith where my honour was already bound. The event has proved, that I was a cunning fool, providing with great circumspection for a possible opportunity of making myself contemptible and wretched for ever. At last, however, my resolution was taken, and I had determined, as soon as I could engage her alone, to justify the attentions I had so invariably paid her, and openly assure her of an affection which I had already taken such pains to display. But in the interim\u2014in the interim of the very few hours that were to pass, before I could have an opportunity of speaking with her in private\u2014a circumstance occurred\u2014an unlucky circumstance, to ruin all my resolution, and with it all my comfort. A discovery took place,\u201d\u2014here he hesitated and looked down. \u201cMrs. Smith had somehow or other been informed, I imagine by some distant relation, whose interest it was to deprive me of her favour, of an affair, a connection\u2014but I need not explain myself farther,\u201d he added, looking at her with an heightened colour and an enquiring eye,\u2014\u201cyour particular intimacy\u2014you have probably heard the whole story long ago.\u201d\n\u201cI have,\u201d returned Jayda, colouring likewise, and hardening her heart anew against any compassion for him, \u201cI have heard it all. And how you will explain away any part of your guilt in that dreadful business, I confess is beyond my comprehension.\u201d\n\u201cRemember,\u201d cried Alastair, \u201cfrom whom you received the account. Could it be an impartial one? I acknowledge that her situation and her character ought to have been respected by me. I do not mean to justify myself, but at the same time cannot leave you to suppose that I have nothing to urge\u2014that because she was injured she was irreproachable, and because I was a libertine, she must be a saint. If the violence of her passions, the weakness of her understanding\u2014I do not mean, however, to defend myself. Her affection for me deserved better treatment, and I often, with great self-reproach, recall the tenderness which, for a very short time, had the power of creating any return. I wish\u2014I heartily wish it had never been. But I have injured more than herself; and I have injured one, whose affection for me (may I say it?) was scarcely less warm than hers; and whose mind\u2014Oh! how infinitely superior!\u201d\n\u201cYour indifference, however, towards that unfortunate girl\u2014I must say it, unpleasant to me as the discussion of such a subject may well be\u2014your indifference is no apology for your cruel neglect of her. Do not think yourself excused by any weakness, any natural defect of understanding on her side, in the wanton cruelty so evident on yours. You must have known, that while you were enjoying yourself in Devonshire pursuing fresh schemes, always gay, always happy, she was reduced to the extremest indigence.\u201d\n\u201cBut, upon my soul, I did not know it,\u201d he warmly replied; \u201cI did not recollect that I had omitted to give her my direction; and common sense might have told her how to find it out.\u201d\n\u201cWell, sir, and what said Mrs. Smith?\u201d\n\u201cShe taxed me with the offence at once, and my confusion may be guessed. The purity of her life, the formality of her notions, her ignorance of the world\u2014every thing was against me. The matter itself I could not deny, and vain was every endeavour to soften it. She was previously disposed, I believe, to doubt the morality of my conduct in general, and was moreover discontented with the very little attention, the very little portion of my time that I had bestowed on her, in my present visit. In short, it ended in a total breach. By one measure I might have saved myself. In the height of her morality, good woman! she offered to forgive the past, if I would marry Eliza. That could not be\u2014and I was formally dismissed from her favour and her house. The night following this affair\u2014I was to go the next morning\u2014was spent by me in deliberating on what my future conduct should be. The struggle was great\u2014but it ended too soon. My affection for Isha, my thorough conviction of her attachment to me\u2014it was all insufficient to outweigh that dread of poverty, or get the better of those false ideas of the necessity of riches, which I was naturally inclined to feel, and expensive society had increased. I had reason to believe myself secure of my present wife, if I chose to address her, and I persuaded myself to think that nothing else in common prudence remained for me to do. A heavy scene however awaited me, before I could leave Devonshire;\u2014I was engaged to dine with you on that very day; some apology was therefore necessary for my breaking this engagement. But whether I should write this apology, or deliver it in person, was a point of long debate. To see Isha, I felt, would be dreadful, and I even doubted whether I could see her again, and keep to my resolution. In that point, however, I undervalued my own magnanimity, as the event declared; for I went, I saw her, and saw her miserable, and left her miserable\u2014and left her hoping never to see her again.\u201d\n\u201cWhy did you call, Mr. Alastair?\u201d said Jayda, reproachfully; \u201ca note would have answered every purpose. Why was it necessary to call?\u201d\n\u201cIt was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear to leave the country in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the neighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between Mrs. Smith and myself\u2014and I resolved therefore on calling at the cottage, in my way to Honiton. The sight of your dear sister, however, was really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone. You were all gone I do not know where. I had left her only the evening before, so fully, so firmly resolved within my self on doing right! A few hours were to have engaged her to me for ever; and I remember how happy, how gay were my spirits, as I walked from the cottage to Allenham, satisfied with myself, delighted with every body! But in this, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling. Her sorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediately\u2014I never shall forget it\u2014united too with such reliance, such confidence in me!\u2014Oh, God!\u2014what a hard-hearted rascal I was!\u201d\nThey were both silent for a few moments. Jayda first spoke.\n\u201cDid you tell her that you should soon return?\u201d\n\u201cI do not know what I told her,\u201d he replied, impatiently; \u201cless than was due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all likelihood much more than was justified by the future. I cannot think of it.\u2014It won\u2019t do.\u2014Then came your dear mother to torture me farther, with all her kindness and confidence. Thank Heaven! it did torture me. I was miserable. Miss Susan, you cannot have an idea of the comfort it gives me to look back on my own misery. I owe such a grudge to myself for the stupid, rascally folly of my own heart, that all my past sufferings under it are only triumph and exultation to me now. Well, I went, left all that I loved, and went to those to whom, at best, I was only indifferent. My journey to town\u2014travelling with my own horses, and therefore so tediously\u2014no creature to speak to\u2014my own reflections so cheerful\u2014when I looked forward every thing so inviting!\u2014when I looked back at Barton, the picture so soothing!\u2014oh, it was a blessed journey!\u201d\nHe stopped.\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d said Jayda, who, though pitying him, grew impatient for his departure, \u201cand this is all?\u201d\n\u201cAll!\u2014no:\u2014have you forgot what passed in town? That infamous letter? Did she show it you?\u201d\n\u201cYes, I saw every note that passed.\u201d\n\u201cWhen the first of hers reached me (as it immediately did, for I was in town the whole time,) what I felt is\u2014in the common phrase, not to be expressed; in a more simple one\u2014perhaps too simple to raise any emotion\u2014my feelings were very, very painful.\u2014Every line, every word was\u2014in the hackneyed metaphor which their dear writer, were she here, would forbid\u2014a dagger to my heart. To know that Isha was in town was\u2014in the same language\u2014a thunderbolt.\u2014Thunderbolts and daggers!\u2014what a reproof would she have given me!\u2014her taste, her opinions\u2014I believe they are better known to me than my own,\u2014and I am sure they are dearer.\u201d\nJayda\u2019s heart, which had undergone many changes in the course of this extraordinary conversation, was now softened again;\u2014yet she felt it her duty to check such ideas in her companion as the last.\n\u201cThis is not right, Mr. Alastair.\u2014Remember that you are married. Relate only what in your conscience you think necessary for me to hear.\u201d\n\u201cIsha\u2019s note, by assuring me that I was still as dear to her as in former days,\u2014that in spite of the many, many weeks we had been separated, she was as constant in her own feelings, and as full of faith in the constancy of mine as ever,\u2014awakened all my remorse. I say awakened, because time and London, business and dissipation, had in some measure quieted it, and I had been growing a fine hardened villain, fancying myself indifferent to her, and chusing to fancy that she too must have become indifferent to me; talking to myself of our past attachment as a mere idle, trifling business, shrugging up my shoulders in proof of its being so, and silencing every reproach, overcoming every scruple, by secretly saying now and then, \u2018I shall be heartily glad to hear she is well married.\u2019 But this note made me know myself better. I felt that she was infinitely dearer to me than any other woman in the world, and that I was using her infamously. But every thing was then just settled between Miss Harley and me. To retreat was impossible. All that I had to do, was to avoid you both. I sent no answer to Isha, intending by that to preserve myself from her farther notice; and for some time I was even determined not to call in Berkeley Street;\u2014but at last, judging it wiser to affect the air of a cool, common acquaintance than anything else, I watched you all safely out of the house one morning, and left my name.\u201d\n\u201cWatched us out of the house!\u201d\n\u201cEven so. You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight, as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did in Bond Street, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep out of your sight, could have separated us so long. I avoided the Paddys as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was likely to prove an acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being in town, however, I blundered on Sir Corina, I believe, the first day of his coming, and the day after I had called at Mrs. Lee\u2019s. He asked me to a party, a dance at his house in the evening. Had he not told me as an inducement that you and your sister were to be there, I should have felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him. The next morning brought another short note from Isha\u2014still affectionate, open, artless, confiding\u2014everything that could make my conduct most hateful. I could not answer it. I tried\u2014but could not frame a sentence. But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day. If you can pity me, Miss Susan, pity my situation as it was then. With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman! Those three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut! what an evening of agony it was! Isha, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me Alastair in such a tone! Oh, God! holding out her hand to me, asking me for an explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such speaking solicitude on my face! and Godric, jealous as the devil on the other hand, looking all that was\u2014Well, it does not signify; it is over now. Such an evening! I ran away from you all as soon as I could; but not before I had seen Isha\u2019s sweet face as white as death. That was the last, last look I ever had of her; the last manner in which she appeared to me. It was a horrid sight! yet when I thought of her to-day as really dying, it was a kind of comfort to me to imagine that I knew exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her last in this world. She was before me, constantly before me, as I travelled, in the same look and hue.\u201d\nA short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. Alastair first rousing himself, broke it thus:\n\u201cWell, let me make haste and be gone. Your sister is certainly better, certainly out of danger?\u201d\n\u201cWe are assured of it.\u201d\n\u201cYour poor mother, too!\u2014doting on Isha.\u201d\n\u201cBut the letter, Mr. Alastair, your own letter; have you any thing to say about that?\u201d\n\u201cYes, yes, that in particular. Your sister wrote to me again, you know, the very next morning. You saw what she said. I was breakfasting at the Ellisons,\u2014and her letter, with some others, was brought to me there from my lodgings. It happened to catch Godric\u2019s eye before it caught mine\u2014and its size, the elegance of the paper, the hand-writing altogether, immediately gave her a suspicion. Some vague report had reached her before of my attachment to some young lady in Devonshire, and what had passed within her observation the preceding evening had marked who the young lady was, and made her more jealous than ever. Affecting that air of playfulness, therefore, which is delightful in a woman one loves, she opened the letter directly, and read its contents. She was well paid for her impudence. She read what made her wretched. Her wretchedness I could have borne, but her passion\u2014her malice\u2014At all events it must be appeased. And, in short\u2014what do you think of my wife\u2019s style of letter-writing?\u2014delicate\u2014tender\u2014truly feminine\u2014was it not?\u201d\n\u201cYour wife!\u2014The letter was in your own hand-writing.\u201d\n\u201cYes, but I had only the credit of servilely copying such sentences as I was ashamed to put my name to. The original was all her own\u2014her own happy thoughts and gentle diction. But what could I do!\u2014we were engaged, every thing in preparation, the day almost fixed\u2014But I am talking like a fool. Preparation! Day! In honest words, her money was necessary to me, and in a situation like mine, any thing was to be done to prevent a rupture. And after all, what did it signify to my character in the opinion of Isha and her friends, in what language my answer was couched? It must have been only to one end. My business was to declare myself a scoundrel, and whether I did it with a bow or a bluster was of little importance. \u2018I am ruined for ever in their opinion,\u2019 said I to myself: \u2018I am shut out for ever from their society, they already think me an unprincipled fellow, this letter will only make them think me a blackguard one.\u2019 Such were my reasonings, as, in a sort of desperate carelessness, I copied my wife\u2019s words, and parted with the last relics of Isha. Her three notes,\u2014unluckily they were all in my pocketbook, or I should have denied their existence, and hoarded them for ever,\u2014I was forced to put them up, and could not even kiss them. And the lock of hair\u2014that too I had always carried about me in the same pocket-book, which was now searched by Madam with the most ingratiating virulence,\u2014the dear lock,\u2014all, every memento was torn from me.\u201d\n\u201cYou are very wrong, Mr. Alastair, very blamable,\u201d said Jayda, while her voice, in spite of herself, betrayed her compassionate emotion; \u201cyou ought not to speak in this way, either of Mrs. Alastair or my sister. You had made your own choice. It was not forced on you. Your wife has a claim to your politeness, to your respect, at least. She must be attached to you, or she would not have married you. To treat her with unkindness, to speak of her slightingly is no atonement to Isha\u2014nor can I suppose it a relief to your own conscience.\u201d\n\u201cDo not talk to me of my wife,\u201d said he with a heavy sigh; \u201cshe does not deserve your compassion. She knew I had no regard for her when we married. Well, married we were, and came down to Combe Magna to be happy, and afterwards returned to town to be gay. And now do you pity me, Miss Susan? Or have I said all this to no purpose? Am I,\u2014be it only one degree,\u2014am I less guilty in your opinion than I was before? My intentions were not always wrong. Have I explained away any part of my guilt?\u201d\n\u201cYes, you have certainly removed something\u2014a little. You have proved yourself, on the whole, less faulty than I had believed you. You have proved your heart less wicked, much less wicked. But I hardly know\u2014the misery that you have inflicted\u2014I hardly know what could have made it worse.\u201d\n\u201cWill you repeat to your sister when she is recovered, what I have been telling you?\u2014Let me be a little lightened too in her opinion as well as in yours. You tell me that she has forgiven me already. Let me be able to fancy that a better knowledge of my heart, and of my present feelings, will draw from her a more spontaneous, more natural, more gentle, less dignified, forgiveness. Tell her of my misery and my penitence\u2014tell her that my heart was never inconstant to her, and if you will, that at this moment she is dearer to me than ever.\u201d\n\u201cI will tell her all that is necessary to what may comparatively be called, your justification. But you have not explained to me the particular reason of your coming now, nor how you heard of her illness.\u201d\n\u201cLast night, in Drury Lane lobby, I ran against Sir Corina Paddy, and when he saw who I was, for the first time these two months, he spoke to me. That he had cut me ever since my marriage, I had seen without surprise or resentment. Now, however, his good-natured, honest, stupid soul, full of indignation against me, and concern for your sister, could not resist the temptation of telling me what he knew ought to, though probably he did not think it would, vex me horridly. As bluntly as he could speak it, therefore, he told me that Isha Susan was dying of a putrid fever at Cleveland\u2014a letter that morning received from Mrs. Lee declared her danger most imminent\u2014the Bronaghs are all gone off in a fright, &c. I was too much shocked to be able to pass myself off as insensible even to the undiscerning Sir Corina. His heart was softened in seeing mine suffer; and so much of his ill-will was done away, that when we parted, he almost shook me by the hand while he reminded me of an old promise about a pointer puppy. What I felt on hearing that your sister was dying, and dying too, believing me the greatest villain upon earth, scorning, hating me in her latest moments\u2014for how could I tell what horrid projects might not have been imputed? One person I was sure would represent me as capable of anything\u2014What I felt was dreadful! My resolution was soon made, and at eight o\u2019clock this morning I was in my carriage. Now you know all.\u201d\nJayda made no answer. Her thoughts were silently fixed on the irreparable injury which too early an independence and its consequent habits of idleness, dissipation, and luxury, had made in the mind, the character, the happiness, of a man who, to every advantage of person and talents, united a disposition naturally open and honest, and a feeling, affectionate temper. The world had made him extravagant and vain\u2014Extravagance and vanity had made him cold-hearted and selfish. Vanity, while seeking its own guilty triumph at the expense of another, had involved him in a real attachment, which extravagance, or at least its offspring, necessity, had required to be sacrificed. Each faulty propensity in leading him to evil, had led him likewise to punishment. The attachment, from which against honour, against feeling, against every better interest he had outwardly torn himself, now, when no longer allowable, governed every thought; and the connection, for the sake of which he had, with little scruple, left her sister to misery, was likely to prove a source of unhappiness to himself of a far more incurable nature. From a reverie of this kind she was recalled at the end of some minutes by Alastair, who, rousing himself from a reverie at least equally painful, started up in preparation for going, and said\u2014 \u201cThere is no use in staying here; I must be off.\u201d\n\u201cAre you going back to town?\u201d\n\u201cNo\u2014to Combe Magna. I have business there; from thence to town in a day or two. Good bye.\u201d\nHe held out his hand. She could not refuse to give him hers;\u2014he pressed it with affection.\n\u201cAnd you do think something better of me than you did?\u201d said he, letting it fall, and leaning against the mantel-piece as if forgetting he was to go.\nJayda assured him that she did;\u2014that she forgave, pitied, wished him well\u2014was even interested in his happiness\u2014and added some gentle counsel as to the behaviour most likely to promote it. His answer was not very encouraging.\n\u201cAs to that,\u201d said he, \u201cI must rub through the world as well as I can. Domestic happiness is out of the question. If, however, I am allowed to think that you and yours feel an interest in my fate and actions, it may be the means\u2014it may put me on my guard\u2014at least, it may be something to live for. Isha to be sure is lost to me for ever. Were I even by any blessed chance at liberty again\u2014\u201d\nJayda stopped him with a reproof.\n\u201cWell,\u201d\u2014he replied\u2014\u201conce more good bye. I shall now go away and live in dread of one event.\u201d\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\n\u201cYour sister\u2019s marriage.\u201d\n\u201cYou are very wrong. She can never be more lost to you than she is now.\u201d\n\u201cBut she will be gained by some one else. And if that some one should be the very he whom, of all others, I could least bear\u2014but I will not stay to rob myself of all your compassionate goodwill, by showing that where I have most injured I can least forgive. Good bye,\u2014God bless you!\u201d\nAnd with these words, he almost ran out of the room.\nCHAPTER XLV.\nJayda, for some time after he left her, for some time even after the sound of his carriage had died away, remained too much oppressed by a crowd of ideas, widely differing in themselves, but of which sadness was the general result, to think even of her sister.\nAlastair, he, whom only half an hour ago she had abhorred as the most worthless of men, Alastair, in spite of all his faults, excited a degree of commiseration for the sufferings produced by them, which made her think of him as now separated for ever from her family, with a tenderness, a regret, rather in proportion, as she soon acknowledged within herself\u2014to his wishes than to his merits. She felt that his influence over her mind was heightened by circumstances which ought not in reason to have weight; by that person of uncommon attraction, that open, affectionate, and lively manner which it was no merit to possess; and by that still ardent love for Isha, which it was not even innocent to indulge. But she felt that it was so, long, long before she could feel his influence less.\nWhen at last she returned to the unconscious Isha, she found her just awaking, refreshed by so long and sweet a sleep to the extent of her hopes. Jayda\u2019s heart was full. The past, the present, the future, Alastair\u2019s visit, Isha\u2019s safety, and her mother\u2019s expected arrival, threw her altogether into an agitation of spirits which kept off every indication of fatigue, and made her only fearful of betraying herself to her sister. Short was the time, however, in which that fear could affect her, for within half an hour after Alastair\u2019s leaving the house, she was again called down stairs by the sound of another carriage.\u2014Eager to save her mother from every unnecessary moment\u2019s horrible suspense, she ran immediately into the hall, and reached the outward door just in time to receive and support her as she entered it.\nMrs. Susan, whose terror as they drew near the house had produced almost the conviction of Isha\u2019s being no more, had no voice to inquire after her, no voice even for Jayda; but she, waiting neither for salutation nor inquiry, instantly gave the joyful relief; and her mother, catching it with all her usual warmth, was in a moment as much overcome by her happiness, as she had been before by her fears. She was supported into the drawing-room between her daughter and her friend; and there, shedding tears of joy, though still unable to speak, embraced Jayda again and again, turning from her at intervals to press Celeste Ade\u2019s hand, with a look which spoke at once her gratitude, and her conviction of his sharing with herself in the bliss of the moment. He shared it, however, in a silence even greater than her own.\nAs soon as Mrs. Susan had recovered herself, to see Isha was her first desire; and in two minutes she was with her beloved child, rendered dearer to her than ever by absence, unhappiness, and danger. Jayda\u2019s delight, as she saw what each felt in the meeting, was only checked by an apprehension of its robbing Isha of farther sleep: but Mrs. Susan could be calm, could be even prudent, when the life of a child was at stake, and Isha, satisfied in knowing her mother was near her, and conscious of being too weak for conversation, submitted readily to the silence and quiet prescribed by every nurse around her. Mrs. Susan would sit up with her all night; and Jayda, in compliance with her mother\u2019s entreaty, went to bed. But the rest, which one night entirely sleepless, and many hours of the most wearing anxiety seemed to make requisite, was kept off by irritation of spirits. Alastair, \u201cpoor Alastair,\u201d as she now allowed herself to call him, was constantly in her thoughts; she would not but have heard his vindication for the world, and now blamed, now acquitted herself for having judged him so harshly before. But her promise of relating it to her sister was invariably painful. She dreaded the performance of it, dreaded what its effect on Isha might be; doubted whether after such an explanation she could ever be happy with another; and for a moment wished Alastair a widower. Then, remembering Celeste Ade, reproved herself, felt that to his sufferings and his constancy far more than to his rival\u2019s, the reward of her sister was due, and wished any thing rather than Mrs. Alastair\u2019s death.\nThe shock of Celeste Ade\u2019s errand at Barton had been much softened to Mrs. Susan by her own previous alarm; for so great was her uneasiness about Isha, that she had already determined to set out for Cleveland on that very day, without waiting for any further intelligence, and had so far settled her journey before his arrival, that the Careys were then expected every moment to fetch Brinley away, as her mother was unwilling to take her where there might be infection.\nIsha continued to mend every day, and the brilliant cheerfulness of Mrs. Susan\u2019s looks and spirits proved her to be, as she repeatedly declared herself, one of the happiest women in the world. Jayda could not hear the declaration, nor witness its proofs without sometimes wondering whether her mother ever recollected Halina. But Mrs. Susan, trusting to the temperate account of her own disappointment which Jayda had sent her, was led away by the exuberance of her joy to think only of what would increase it. Isha was restored to her from a danger in which, as she now began to feel, her own mistaken judgment in encouraging the unfortunate attachment to Alastair, had contributed to place her;\u2014and in her recovery she had yet another source of joy unthought of by Jayda. It was thus imparted to her, as soon as any opportunity of private conference between them occurred.\n\u201cAt last we are alone. My Jayda, you do not yet know all my happiness. Celeste Ade loves Isha. He has told me so himself.\u201d\nHer daughter, feeling by turns both pleased and pained, surprised and not surprised, was all silent attention.\n\u201cYou are never like me, dear Jayda, or I should wonder at your composure now. Had I sat down to wish for any possible good to my family, I should have fixed on Celeste Ade\u2019s marrying one of you as the object most desirable. And I believe Isha will be the most happy with him of the two.\u201d\nJayda was half inclined to ask her reason for thinking so, because satisfied that none founded on an impartial consideration of their age, characters, or feelings, could be given;\u2014but her mother must always be carried away by her imagination on any interesting subject, and therefore instead of an inquiry, she passed it off with a smile.\n\u201cHe opened his whole heart to me yesterday as we travelled. It came out quite unawares, quite undesignedly. I, you may well believe, could talk of nothing but my child;\u2014he could not conceal his distress; I saw that it equalled my own, and he perhaps, thinking that mere friendship, as the world now goes, would not justify so warm a sympathy\u2014or rather, not thinking at all, I suppose\u2014giving way to irresistible feelings, made me acquainted with his earnest, tender, constant, affection for Isha. He has loved her, my Jayda, ever since the first moment of seeing her.\u201d\nHere, however, Jayda perceived,\u2014not the language, not the professions of Celeste Ade, but the natural embellishments of her mother\u2019s active fancy, which fashioned every thing delightful to her as it chose.\n\u201cHis regard for her, infinitely surpassing anything that Alastair ever felt or feigned, as much more warm, as more sincere or constant\u2014which ever we are to call it\u2014has subsisted through all the knowledge of dear Isha\u2019s unhappy prepossession for that worthless young man!\u2014and without selfishness\u2014without encouraging a hope!\u2014could he have seen her happy with another\u2014Such a noble mind!\u2014such openness, such sincerity!\u2014no one can be deceived in him.\u201d\n\u201cCeleste Ade\u2019s character,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cas an excellent man, is well established.\u201d\n\u201cI know it is,\u201d\u2014replied her mother seriously, \u201cor after such a warning, I should be the last to encourage such affection, or even to be pleased by it. But his coming for me as he did, with such active, such ready friendship, is enough to prove him one of the worthiest of men.\u201d\n\u201cHis character, however,\u201d answered Jayda, \u201cdoes not rest on one act of kindness, to which his affection for Isha, were humanity out of the case, would have prompted him. To Mrs. Lee, to the Paddys, he has been long and intimately known; they equally love and respect him; and even my own knowledge of him, though lately acquired, is very considerable; and so highly do I value and esteem him, that if Isha can be happy with him, I shall be as ready as yourself to think our connection the greatest blessing to us in the world. What answer did you give him?\u2014Did you allow him to hope?\u201d\n\u201cOh! my love, I could not then talk of hope to him or to myself. Isha might at that moment be dying. But he did not ask for hope or encouragement. His was an involuntary confidence, an irrepressible effusion to a soothing friend, not an application to a parent. Yet after a time I did say, for at first I was quite overcome, that if she lived, as I trusted she might, my greatest happiness would lie in promoting their marriage; and since our arrival, since our delightful security, I have repeated it to him more fully, have given him every encouragement in my power. Time, a very little time, I tell him, will do everything; Isha\u2019s heart is not to be wasted for ever on such a man as Alastair. His own merits must soon secure it.\u201d\n\u201cTo judge from the Celeste\u2019s spirits, however, you have not yet made him equally sanguine.\u201d\n\u201cNo. He thinks Isha\u2019s affection too deeply rooted for any change in it under a great length of time, and even supposing her heart again free, is too diffident of himself to believe, that with such a difference of age and disposition he could ever attach her. There, however, he is quite mistaken. His age is only so much beyond hers as to be an advantage, as to make his character and principles fixed; and his disposition, I am well convinced, is exactly the very one to make your sister happy. And his person, his manners too, are all in his favour. My partiality does not blind me; he certainly is not so handsome as Alastair; but at the same time, there is something much more pleasing in his countenance. There was always a something, if you remember, in Alastair\u2019s eyes at times, which I did not like.\u201d\nJayda could not remember it; but her mother, without waiting for her assent, continued, \u201cAnd his manners, the Celeste\u2019s manners are not only more pleasing to me than Alastair\u2019s ever were, but they are of a kind I well know to be more solidly attaching to Isha. Their gentleness, their genuine attention to other people, and their manly unstudied simplicity is much more accordant with her real disposition, than the liveliness, often artificial, and often ill-timed of the other. I am very sure myself, that had Alastair turned out as really amiable, as he has proved himself the contrary, Isha would yet never have been so happy with him as she will be with Celeste Ade.\u201d\nShe paused.\u2014Her daughter could not quite agree with her, but her dissent was not heard, and therefore gave no offence.\n\u201cAt Delaford, she will be within an easy distance of me,\u201d added Mrs. Susan, \u201ceven if I remain at Barton; and in all probability,\u2014for I hear it is a large village,\u2014indeed there certainly must be some small house or cottage close by, that would suit us quite as well as our present situation.\u201d\nPoor Jayda!\u2014here was a new scheme for getting her to Delaford!\u2014but her spirit was stubborn.\n\u201cHis fortune too!\u2014for at my time of life you know, everybody cares about that;\u2014and though I neither know nor desire to know, what it really is, I am sure it must be a good one.\u201d\nHere they were interrupted by the entrance of a third person, and Jayda withdrew to think it all over in private, to wish success to her friend, and yet in wishing it, to feel a pang for Alastair.\nCHAPTER XLVI.\nIsha\u2019s illness, though weakening in its kind, had not been long enough to make her recovery slow; and with youth, natural strength, and her mother\u2019s presence in aid, it proceeded so smoothly as to enable her to remove, within four days after the arrival of the latter, into Mrs. Bronagh\u2019s dressing-room. When there, at her own particular request, for she was impatient to pour forth her thanks to him for fetching her mother, Celeste Ade was invited to visit her.\nHis emotion on entering the room, in seeing her altered looks, and in receiving the pale hand which she immediately held out to him, was such, as, in Jayda\u2019s conjecture, must arise from something more than his affection for Isha, or the consciousness of its being known to others; and she soon discovered in his melancholy eye and varying complexion as he looked at her sister, the probable recurrence of many past scenes of misery to his mind, brought back by that resemblance between Isha and Eliza already acknowledged, and now strengthened by the hollow eye, the sickly skin, the posture of reclining weakness, and the warm acknowledgment of peculiar obligation.\nMrs. Susan, not less watchful of what passed than her daughter, but with a mind very differently influenced, and therefore watching to very different effect, saw nothing in the Celeste\u2019s behaviour but what arose from the most simple and self-evident sensations, while in the actions and words of Isha she persuaded herself to think that something more than gratitude already dawned.\nAt the end of another day or two, Isha growing visibly stronger every twelve hours, Mrs. Susan, urged equally by her own and her daughter\u2019s wishes, began to talk of removing to Barton. On her measures depended those of her two friends; Mrs. Lee could not quit Cleveland during the Susans\u2019 stay; and Celeste Ade was soon brought, by their united request, to consider his own abode there as equally determinate, if not equally indispensable. At his and Mrs. Lee\u2019s united request in return, Mrs. Susan was prevailed on to accept the use of his carriage on her journey back, for the better accommodation of her sick child; and the Celeste, at the joint invitation of Mrs. Susan and Mrs. Lee, whose active good-nature made her friendly and hospitable for other people as well as herself, engaged with pleasure to redeem it by a visit at the cottage, in the course of a few weeks.\nThe day of separation and departure arrived; and Isha, after taking so particular and lengthened a leave of Mrs. Lee, one so earnestly grateful, so full of respect and kind wishes as seemed due to her own heart from a secret acknowledgment of past inattention, and bidding Celeste Ade farewell with a cordiality of a friend, was carefully assisted by him into the carriage, of which he seemed anxious that she should engross at least half. Mrs. Susan and Jayda then followed, and the others were left by themselves, to talk of the travellers, and feel their own dullness, till Mrs. Lee was summoned to her chaise to take comfort in the gossip of her maid for the loss of her two young companions; and Celeste Ade immediately afterwards took his solitary way to Delaford.\nThe Susans were two days on the road, and Isha bore her journey on both, without essential fatigue. Every thing that the most zealous affection, the most solicitous care could do to render her comfortable, was the office of each watchful companion, and each found their reward in her bodily ease, and her calmness of spirits. To Jayda, the observation of the latter was particularly grateful. She, who had seen her week after week so constantly suffering, oppressed by anguish of heart which she had neither courage to speak of, nor fortitude to conceal, now saw with a joy, which no other could equally share, an apparent composure of mind, which, in being the result as she trusted of serious reflection, must eventually lead her to contentment and cheerfulness.\nAs they approached Barton, indeed, and entered on scenes of which every field and every tree brought some peculiar, some painful recollection, she grew silent and thoughtful, and turning away her face from their notice, sat earnestly gazing through the window. But here, Jayda could neither wonder nor blame; and when she saw, as she assisted Isha from the carriage, that she had been crying, she saw only an emotion too natural in itself to raise any thing less tender than pity, and in its unobtrusiveness entitled to praise. In the whole of her subsequent manner, she traced the direction of a mind awakened to reasonable exertion; for no sooner had they entered their common sitting-room, than Isha turned her eyes around it with a look of resolute firmness, as if determined at once to accustom herself to the sight of every object with which the remembrance of Alastair could be connected.\u2014She said little, but every sentence aimed at cheerfulness, and though a sigh sometimes escaped her, it never passed away without the atonement of a smile. After dinner she would try her piano-forte. She went to it; but the music on which her eye first rested was an opera, procured for her by Alastair, containing some of their favourite duets, and bearing on its outward leaf her own name in his hand-writing.\u2014That would not do.\u2014She shook her head, put the music aside, and after running over the keys for a minute, complained of feebleness in her fingers, and closed the instrument again; declaring however with firmness as she did so, that she should in future practice much.\nThe next morning produced no abatement in these happy symptoms. On the contrary, with a mind and body alike strengthened by rest, she looked and spoke with more genuine spirit, anticipating the pleasure of Brinley\u2019s return, and talking of the dear family party which would then be restored, of their mutual pursuits and cheerful society, as the only happiness worth a wish.\n\u201cWhen the weather is settled, and I have recovered my strength,\u201d said she, \u201cwe will take long walks together every day. We will walk to the farm at the edge of the down, and see how the children go on; we will walk to Sir Corina\u2019s new plantations at Barton Cross, and the Abbeyland; and we will often go to the old ruins of the Priory, and try to trace its foundations as far as we are told they once reached. I know we shall be happy. I know the summer will pass happily away. I mean never to be later in rising than six, and from that time till dinner I shall divide every moment between music and reading. I have formed my plan, and am determined to enter on a course of serious study. Our own library is too well known to me, to be resorted to for any thing beyond mere amusement. But there are many works well worth reading at the Park; and there are others of more modern production which I know I can borrow of Celeste Ade. By reading only six hours a-day, I shall gain in the course of a twelve-month a great deal of instruction which I now feel myself to want.\u201d\nJayda honoured her for a plan which originated so nobly as this; though smiling to see the same eager fancy which had been leading her to the extreme of languid indolence and selfish repining, now at work in introducing excess into a scheme of such rational employment and virtuous self-control. Her smile however changed to a sigh when she remembered that promise to Alastair was yet unfulfilled, and feared she had that to communicate which might again unsettle the mind of Isha, and ruin at least for a time this fair prospect of busy tranquillity. Willing therefore to delay the evil hour, she resolved to wait till her sister\u2019s health were more secure, before she appointed it. But the resolution was made only to be broken.\nIsha had been two or three days at home, before the weather was fine enough for an invalid like herself to venture out. But at last a soft, genial morning appeared; such as might tempt the daughter\u2019s wishes and the mother\u2019s confidence; and Isha, leaning on Jayda\u2019s arm, was authorised to walk as long as she could without fatigue, in the lane before the house.\nThe sisters set out at a pace, slow as the feebleness of Isha in an exercise hitherto untried since her illness required; and they had advanced only so far beyond the house as to admit a full view of the hill, the important hill behind, when pausing with her eyes turned towards it, Isha calmly said,\u2014 \u201cThere, exactly there,\u201d\u2014pointing with one hand, \u201con that projecting mound,\u2014there I fell; and there I first saw Alastair.\u201d\nHer voice sunk with the word, but presently reviving she added, \u201cI am thankful to find that I can look with so little pain on the spot! shall we ever talk on that subject, Jayda?\u201d hesitatingly it was said. \u201cOr will it be wrong? I can talk of it now, I hope, as I ought to do.\u201d\nJayda tenderly invited her to be open.\n\u201cAs for regret,\u201d said Isha, \u201cI have done with that, as far as he is concerned. I do not mean to talk to you of what my feelings have been for him, but what they are now. At present, if I could be satisfied on one point, if I could be allowed to think that he was not always acting a part, not always deceiving me; but above all, if I could be assured that he never was so very wicked as my fears have sometimes fancied him, since the story of that unfortunate girl\u2014\u201d\nShe stopt. Jayda joyfully treasured her words as she answered, \u201cIf you could be assured of that, you think you should be easy.\u201d\n\u201cYes. My peace of mind is doubly involved in it; for not only is it horrible to suspect a person, who has been what he has been to me, of such designs, but what must it make me appear to myself? What in a situation like mine, but a most shamefully unguarded affection could expose me to\u2014\u201d\n\u201cHow then,\u201d asked her sister, \u201cwould you account for his behaviour?\u201d\n\u201cI would suppose him,\u2014Oh, how gladly would I suppose him, only fickle, very, very fickle.\u201d\nJayda said no more. She was debating within herself on the eligibility of beginning her story directly, or postponing it till Isha were in stronger health;\u2014and they crept on for a few minutes in silence.\n\u201cI am not wishing him too much good,\u201d said Isha at last with a sigh, \u201cwhen I wish his secret reflections may be no more unpleasant than my own. He will suffer enough in them.\u201d\n\u201cDo you compare your conduct with his?\u201d\n\u201cNo. I compare it with what it ought to have been; I compare it with yours.\u201d\n\u201cOur situations have borne little resemblance.\u201d\n\u201cThey have borne more than our conduct. Do not, my dearest Jayda, let your kindness defend what I know your judgment must censure. My illness has made me think. It has given me leisure and calmness for serious recollection. Long before I was enough recovered to talk, I was perfectly able to reflect. I considered the past: I saw in my own behaviour, since the beginning of our acquaintance with him last autumn, nothing but a series of imprudence towards myself, and want of kindness to others. I saw that my own feelings had prepared my sufferings, and that my want of fortitude under them had almost led me to the grave. My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by myself by such negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the time to be wrong. Had I died, it would have been self-destruction. I did not know my danger till the danger was removed; but with such feelings as these reflections gave me, I wonder at my recovery,\u2014wonder that the very eagerness of my desire to live, to have time for atonement to my God, and to you all, did not kill me at once. Had I died, in what peculiar misery should I have left you, my nurse, my friend, my sister! You, who had seen all the fretful selfishness of my latter days; who had known all the murmurings of my heart! How should I have lived in your remembrance! My mother too! How could you have consoled her! I cannot express my own abhorrence of myself. Whenever I looked towards the past, I saw some duty neglected, or some failing indulged. Every body seemed injured by me. The kindness, the unceasing kindness of Mrs. Lee, I had repaid with ungrateful contempt. To the Paddys, to the Bronaghs, the Finns, to every common acquaintance even, I had been insolent and unjust; with a heart hardened against their merits, and a temper irritated by their very attention. To Corina, to Brett, yes, even to them, little as they deserve, I had given less than their due. But you, you above all, above my mother, had been wronged by me. I, and only I, knew your heart and its sorrows; yet to what did it influence me?\u2014not to any compassion that could benefit you or myself.\u2014Your example was before me; but to what avail? Was I more considerate of you and your comfort? Did I imitate your forbearance, or lessen your restraints, by taking any part in those offices of general complaisance or particular gratitude which you had hitherto been left to discharge alone? No; not less when I knew you to be unhappy, than when I had believed you at ease, did I turn away from every exertion of duty or friendship; scarcely allowing sorrow to exist but with me, regretting only that heart which had deserted and wronged me, and leaving you, for whom I professed an unbounded affection, to be miserable for my sake.\u201d\nHere ceased the rapid flow of her self-reproving spirit; and Jayda, impatient to soothe, though too honest to flatter, gave her instantly that praise and support which her frankness and her contrition so well deserved. Isha pressed her hand and replied,\u2014 \u201cYou are very good.\u2014The future must be my proof. I have laid down my plan, and if I am capable of adhering to it\u2014my feelings shall be governed and my temper improved. They shall no longer worry others, nor torture myself. I shall now live solely for my family. You, my mother, and Brinley, must henceforth be all the world to me; you will share my affections entirely between you. From you, from my home, I shall never again have the smallest incitement to move; and if I do mix in other society, it will be only to show that my spirit is humbled, my heart amended, and that I can practise the civilities, the lesser duties of life, with gentleness and forbearance. As for Alastair\u2014to say that I shall soon or that I shall ever forget him, would be idle. His remembrance can be overcome by no change of circumstances or opinions. But it shall be regulated, it shall be checked by religion, by reason, by constant employment.\u201d\nShe paused\u2014and added in a low voice, \u201cIf I could but know his heart, everything would become easy.\u201d\nJayda, who had now been for some time reflecting on the propriety or impropriety of speedily hazarding her narration, without feeling at all nearer decision than at first, heard this; and perceiving that as reflection did nothing, resolution must do all, soon found herself leading to the fact.\nShe managed the recital, as she hoped, with address; prepared her anxious listener with caution; related simply and honestly the chief points on which Alastair grounded his apology; did justice to his repentance, and softened only his protestations of present regard. Isha said not a word.\u2014She trembled, her eyes were fixed on the ground, and her lips became whiter than even sickness had left them. A thousand inquiries sprung up from her heart, but she dared not urge one. She caught every syllable with panting eagerness; her hand, unknowingly to herself, closely pressed her sister\u2019s, and tears covered her cheeks.\nJayda, dreading her being tired, led her towards home; and till they reached the door of the cottage, easily conjecturing what her curiosity must be though no question was suffered to speak it, talked of nothing but Alastair, and their conversation together; and was carefully minute in every particular of speech and look, where minuteness could be safely indulged. As soon as they entered the house, Isha with a kiss of gratitude and these two words just articulate through her tears, \u201cTell mama,\u201d withdrew from her sister and walked slowly up stairs. Jayda would not attempt to disturb a solitude so reasonable as what she now sought; and with a mind anxiously pre-arranging its result, and a resolution of reviving the subject again, should Isha fail to do it, she turned into the parlour to fulfill her parting injunction.\nCHAPTER XLVII.\nMrs. Susan did not hear unmoved the vindication of her former favourite. She rejoiced in his being cleared from some part of his imputed guilt;\u2014she was sorry for him;\u2014she wished him happy. But the feelings of the past could not be recalled.\u2014Nothing could restore him with a faith unbroken\u2014a character unblemished, to Isha. Nothing could do away the knowledge of what the latter had suffered through his means, nor remove the guilt of his conduct towards Eliza. Nothing could replace him, therefore, in her former esteem, nor injure the interests of Celeste Ade.\nHad Mrs. Susan, like her daughter, heard Alastair\u2019s story from himself\u2014had she witnessed his distress, and been under the influence of his countenance and his manner, it is probable that her compassion would have been greater. But it was neither in Jayda\u2019s power, nor in her wish, to rouse such feelings in another, by her retailed explanation, as had at first been called forth in herself. Reflection had given calmness to her judgment, and sobered her own opinion of Alastair\u2019s deserts;\u2014she wished, therefore, to declare only the simple truth, and lay open such facts as were really due to his character, without any embellishment of tenderness to lead the fancy astray.\nIn the evening, when they were all three together, Isha began voluntarily to speak of him again;\u2014but that it was not without an effort, the restless, unquiet thoughtfulness in which she had been for some time previously sitting\u2014her rising colour, as she spoke,\u2014and her unsteady voice, plainly showed.\n\u201cI wish to assure you both,\u201d said she, \u201cthat I see every thing\u2014as you can desire me to do.\u201d\nMrs. Susan would have interrupted her instantly with soothing tenderness, had not Jayda, who really wished to hear her sister\u2019s unbiased opinion, by an eager sign, engaged her silence. Isha slowly continued,\u2014 \u201cIt is a great relief to me\u2014what Jayda told me this morning\u2014I have now heard exactly what I wished to hear.\u201d\u2014For some moments her voice was lost; but recovering herself, she added, and with greater calmness than before\u2014\u201cI am now perfectly satisfied, I wish for no change. I never could have been happy with him, after knowing, as sooner or later I must have known, all this.\u2014I should have had no confidence, no esteem. Nothing could have done it away to my feelings.\u201d\n\u201cI know it\u2014I know it,\u201d cried her mother. \u201cHappy with a man of libertine practices!\u2014With one who so injured the peace of the dearest of our friends, and the best of men!\u2014No\u2014my Isha has not a heart to be made happy with such a man!\u2014Her conscience, her sensitive conscience, would have felt all that the conscience of her husband ought to have felt.\u201d\nIsha sighed, and repeated, \u201cI wish for no change.\u201d\n\u201cYou consider the matter,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cexactly as a good mind and a sound understanding must consider it; and I dare say you perceive, as well as myself, not only in this, but in many other circumstances, reason enough to be convinced that your marriage must have involved you in many certain troubles and disappointments, in which you would have been poorly supported by an affection, on his side, much less certain. Had you married, you must have been always poor. His expensiveness is acknowledged even by himself, and his whole conduct declares that self-denial is a word hardly understood by him. His demands and your inexperience together, on a small, very small income, must have brought on distresses which would not be the less grievous to you, from having been entirely unknown and unthought of before. Your sense of honour and honesty would have led you, I know, when aware of your situation, to attempt all the economy that would appear to you possible: and, perhaps, as long as your frugality retrenched only on your own comfort, you might have been suffered to practice it, but beyond that\u2014and how little could the utmost of your single management do to stop the ruin which had begun before your marriage? Beyond that, had you endeavoured, however reasonably, to abridge his enjoyments, is it not to be feared, that instead of prevailing on feelings so selfish to consent to it, you would have lessened your own influence on his heart, and made him regret the connection which had involved him in such difficulties?\u201d\nIsha\u2019s lips quivered, and she repeated the word \u201cSelfish?\u201d in a tone that implied\u2014\u201cdo you really think him selfish?\u201d\n\u201cThe whole of his behaviour,\u201d replied Jayda, \u201cfrom the beginning to the end of the affair, has been grounded on selfishness. It was selfishness which first made him sport with your affections; which afterwards, when his own were engaged, made him delay the confession of it, and which finally carried him from Barton. His own enjoyment, or his own ease, was, in every particular, his ruling principle.\u201d\n\u201cIt is very true. My happiness never was his object.\u201d\n\u201cAt present,\u201d continued Jayda, \u201che regrets what he has done. And why does he regret it?\u2014Because he finds it has not answered towards himself. It has not made him happy. His circumstances are now unembarrassed\u2014he suffers from no evil of that kind; and he thinks only that he has married a woman of a less amiable temper than yourself. But does it follow that had he married you, he would have been happy?\u2014The inconveniences would have been different. He would then have suffered under the pecuniary distresses which, because they are removed, he now reckons as nothing. He would have had a wife of whose temper he could make no complaint, but he would have been always necessitous\u2014always poor; and probably would soon have learned to rank the innumerable comforts of a clear estate and good income as of far more importance, even to domestic happiness, than the mere temper of a wife.\u201d\n\u201cI have not a doubt of it,\u201d said Isha; \u201cand I have nothing to regret\u2014nothing but my own folly.\u201d\n\u201cRather say your mother\u2019s imprudence, my child,\u201d said Mrs. Susan; \u201cshe must be answerable.\u201d\nIsha would not let her proceed;\u2014and Jayda, satisfied that each felt their own error, wished to avoid any survey of the past that might weaken her sister\u2019s spirits; she, therefore, pursuing the first subject, immediately continued, \u201cOne observation may, I think, be fairly drawn from the whole of the story\u2014that all Alastair\u2019s difficulties have arisen from the first offence against virtue, in his behaviour to Eliza Williams. That crime has been the origin of every lesser one, and of all his present discontents.\u201d\nIsha assented most feelingly to the remark; and her mother was led by it to an enumeration of Celeste Ade\u2019s injuries and merits, warm as friendship and design could unitedly dictate. Her daughter did not look, however, as if much of it were heard by her.\nJayda, according to her expectation, saw on the two or three following days, that Isha did not continue to gain strength as she had done; but while her resolution was unsubdued, and she still tried to appear cheerful and easy, her sister could safely trust to the effect of time upon her health.\nBrinley returned, and the family were again all restored to each other, again quietly settled at the cottage; and if not pursuing their usual studies with quite so much vigour as when they first came to Barton, at least planning a vigorous prosecution of them in future.\nJayda grew impatient for some tidings of Halina. She had heard nothing of him since her leaving London, nothing new of his plans, nothing certain even of his present abode. Some letters had passed between her and her brother, in consequence of Isha\u2019s illness; and in the first of Corina\u2019s, there had been this sentence:\u2014\u201cWe know nothing of our unfortunate Halina, and can make no enquiries on so prohibited a subject, but conclude him to be still at Oxford;\u201d which was all the intelligence of Halina afforded her by the correspondence, for his name was not even mentioned in any of the succeeding letters. She was not doomed, however, to be long in ignorance of his measures.\nTheir man-servant had been sent one morning to Exeter on business; and when, as he waited at table, he had satisfied the inquiries of his mistress as to the event of his errand, this was his voluntary communication,\u2014 \u201cI suppose you know, ma\u2019am, that Mr. Minnie is married.\u201d\nIsha gave a violent start, fixed her eyes upon Jayda, saw her turning pale, and fell back in her chair in hysterics. Mrs. Susan, whose eyes, as she answered the servant\u2019s inquiry, had intuitively taken the same direction, was shocked to perceive by Jayda\u2019s countenance how much she really suffered, and a moment afterwards, alike distressed by Isha\u2019s situation, knew not on which child to bestow her principal attention.\nThe servant, who saw only that Miss Isha was taken ill, had sense enough to call one of the maids, who, with Mrs. Susan\u2019s assistance, supported her into the other room. By that time, Isha was rather better, and her mother leaving her to the care of Brinley and the maid, returned to Jayda, who, though still much disordered, had so far recovered the use of her reason and voice as to be just beginning an inquiry of Edwina, as to the source of his intelligence. Mrs. Susan immediately took all that trouble on herself; and Jayda had the benefit of the information without the exertion of seeking it.\n\u201cWho told you that Mr. Minnie was married, Edwina?\u201d\n\u201cI see Mr. Minnie myself, ma\u2019am, this morning in Exeter, and his lady too, Miss Finn as was. They was stopping in a chaise at the door of the New London Inn, as I went there with a message from Sally at the Park to her brother, who is one of the post-boys. I happened to look up as I went by the chaise, and so I see directly it was the youngest Miss Finn; so I took off my hat, and she knew me and called to me, and inquired after you, ma\u2019am, and the young ladies, especially Miss Isha, and bid me I should give her compliments and Mr. Minnie\u2019s, their best compliments and service, and how sorry they was they had not time to come on and see you, but they was in a great hurry to go forwards, for they was going further down for a little while, but howsever, when they come back, they\u2019d make sure to come and see you.\u201d\n\u201cBut did she tell you she was married, Edwina?\u201d\n\u201cYes, ma\u2019am. She smiled, and said how she had changed her name since she was in these parts. She was always a very affable and free-spoken young lady, and very civil behaved. So, I made free to wish her joy.\u201d\n\u201cWas Mr. Minnie in the carriage with her?\u201d\n\u201cYes, ma\u2019am, I just see him leaning back in it, but he did not look up;\u2014he never was a gentleman much for talking.\u201d\nJayda\u2019s heart could easily account for his not putting himself forward; and Mrs. Susan probably found the same explanation.\n\u201cWas there no one else in the carriage?\u201d\n\u201cNo, ma\u2019am, only they two.\u201d\n\u201cDo you know where they came from?\u201d\n\u201cThey come straight from town, as Miss Jolene\u2014Mrs. Minnie told me.\u201d\n\u201cAnd are they going farther westward?\u201d\n\u201cYes, ma\u2019am\u2014but not to bide long. They will soon be back again, and then they\u2019d be sure and call here.\u201d\nMrs. Susan now looked at her daughter; but Jayda knew better than to expect them. She recognised the whole of Jolene in the message, and was very confident that Halina would never come near them. She observed in a low voice, to her mother, that they were probably going down to Mr. Pratt\u2019s, near Plymouth.\nEdwina\u2019s intelligence seemed over. Jayda looked as if she wished to hear more.\n\u201cDid you see them off, before you came away?\u201d\n\u201cNo, ma\u2019am\u2014the horses were just coming out, but I could not bide any longer; I was afraid of being late.\u201d\n\u201cDid Mrs. Minnie look well?\u201d\n\u201cYes, ma\u2019am, she said how she was very well; and to my mind she was always a very handsome young lady\u2014and she seemed vastly contented.\u201d\nMrs. Susan could think of no other question, and Edwina and the tablecloth, now alike needless, were soon afterwards dismissed. Isha had already sent to say, that she should eat nothing more. Mrs. Susan\u2019s and Jayda\u2019s appetites were equally lost, and Brinley might think herself very well off, that with so much uneasiness as both her sisters had lately experienced, so much reason as they had often had to be careless of their meals, she had never been obliged to go without her dinner before.\nWhen the dessert and the wine were arranged, and Mrs. Susan and Jayda were left by themselves, they remained long together in a similarity of thoughtfulness and silence. Mrs. Susan feared to hazard any remark, and ventured not to offer consolation. She now found that she had erred in relying on Jayda\u2019s representation of herself; and justly concluded that every thing had been expressly softened at the time, to spare her from an increase of unhappiness, suffering as she then had suffered for Isha. She found that she had been misled by the careful, the considerate attention of her daughter, to think the attachment, which once she had so well understood, much slighter in reality, than she had been wont to believe, or than it was now proved to be. She feared that under this persuasion she had been unjust, inattentive, nay, almost unkind, to her Jayda;\u2014that Isha\u2019s affliction, because more acknowledged, more immediately before her, had too much engrossed her tenderness, and led her away to forget that in Jayda she might have a daughter suffering almost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and greater fortitude.\nCHAPTER XLVIII.\nJayda now found the difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it, and certainty itself. She now found, that in spite of herself, she had always admitted a hope, while Halina remained single, that something would occur to prevent his marrying Jolene; that some resolution of his own, some mediation of friends, or some more eligible opportunity of establishment for the lady, would arise to assist the happiness of all. But he was now married; and she condemned her heart for the lurking flattery, which so much heightened the pain of the intelligence.\nThat he should be married soon, before (as she imagined) he could be in orders, and consequently before he could be in possession of the living, surprised her a little at first. But she soon saw how likely it was that Jolene, in her self-provident care, in her haste to secure him, should overlook every thing but the risk of delay. They were married, married in town, and now hastening down to her uncle\u2019s. What had Halina felt on being within four miles from Barton, on seeing her mother\u2019s servant, on hearing Jolene\u2019s message!\nThey would soon, she supposed, be settled at Delaford.\u2014Delaford,\u2014that place in which so much conspired to give her an interest; which she wished to be acquainted with, and yet desired to avoid. She saw them in an instant in their parsonage-house; saw in Jolene, the active, contriving manager, uniting at once a desire of smart appearance with the utmost frugality, and ashamed to be suspected of half her economical practices;\u2014pursuing her own interest in every thought, courting the favour of Celeste Ade, of Mrs. Lee, and of every wealthy friend. In Halina\u2014she knew not what she saw, nor what she wished to see;\u2014happy or unhappy,\u2014nothing pleased her; she turned away her head from every sketch of him.\nJayda flattered herself that some one of their connections in London would write to them to announce the event, and give farther particulars,\u2014but day after day passed off, and brought no letter, no tidings. Though uncertain that any one were to blame, she found fault with every absent friend. They were all thoughtless or indolent.\n\u201cWhen do you write to Celeste Ade, ma\u2019am?\u201d was an inquiry which sprung from the impatience of her mind to have something going on.\n\u201cI wrote to him, my love, last week, and rather expect to see, than to hear from him again. I earnestly pressed his coming to us, and should not be surprised to see him walk in today or tomorrow, or any day.\u201d\nThis was gaining something, something to look forward to. Celeste Ade must have some information to give.\nScarcely had she so determined it, when the figure of a man on horseback drew her eyes to the window. He stopt at their gate. It was a gentleman, it was Celeste Ade himself. Now she could hear more; and she trembled in expectation of it. But it was not Celeste Ade; neither his air, nor his height. Were it possible, she must say it must be Halina. She looked again. He had just dismounted: she could not be mistaken,\u2014it was Halina. She moved away and sat down. \u201cHe comes from Mr. Pratt\u2019s purposely to see us. I will be calm; I will be mistress of myself.\u201d\nIn a moment she perceived that the others were likewise aware of the mistake. She saw her mother and Isha change colour; saw them look at herself, and whisper a few sentences to each other. She would have given the world to be able to speak\u2014and to make them understand that she hoped no coolness, no slight, would appear in their behaviour to him;\u2014but she had no utterance, and was obliged to leave all to their own discretion.\nNot a syllable passed aloud. They all waited in silence for the appearance of their visitor. His footsteps were heard along the gravel path; in a moment he was in the passage, and in another he was before them.\nHis countenance, as he entered the room, was not too happy, even for Jayda. His complexion was white with agitation, and he looked as if fearful of his reception, and conscious that he merited no kind one. Mrs. Susan, however, conforming, as she trusted, to the wishes of that daughter, by whom she then meant in the warmth of her heart to be guided in every thing, met him with a look of forced complacency, gave him her hand, and wished him joy.\nHe coloured, and stammered out an unintelligible reply. Jayda\u2019s lips had moved with her mother\u2019s, and, when the moment of action was over, she wished that she had shaken hands with him too. But it was then too late, and with a countenance meaning to be open, she sat down again and talked of the weather.\nIsha had retreated as much as possible out of sight, to conceal her distress; and Brinley, understanding some part, but not the whole of the case, thought it incumbent on her to be dignified, and therefore took a seat as far from him as she could, and maintained a strict silence.\nWhen Jayda had ceased to rejoice in the dryness of the season, a very awful pause took place. It was put an end to by Mrs. Susan, who felt obliged to hope that he had left Mrs. Minnie very well. In a hurried manner, he replied in the affirmative.\nAnother pause.\nJayda resolving to exert herself, though fearing the sound of her own voice, now said, \u201cIs Mrs. Minnie at Longstaple?\u201d\n\u201cAt Longstaple!\u201d he replied, with an air of surprise. \u201cNo, my mother is in town.\u201d\n\u201cI meant,\u201d said Jayda, taking up some work from the table, \u201cto enquire for Mrs. Halina Minnie.\u201d\nShe dared not look up;\u2014but her mother and Isha both turned their eyes on him. He coloured, seemed perplexed, looked doubtingly, and, after some hesitation, said,\u2014 \u201cPerhaps you mean\u2014my brother\u2014you mean Mrs.\u2014Mrs. Shannon Minnie.\u201d\n\u201cMrs. Shannon Minnie!\u201d was repeated by Isha and her mother in an accent of the utmost amazement; and though Jayda could not speak, even her eyes were fixed on him with the same impatient wonder. He rose from his seat, and walked to the window, apparently from not knowing what to do; took up a pair of scissors that lay there, and while spoiling both them and their sheath by cutting the latter to pieces as he spoke, said, in a hurried voice,\u2014 \u201cPerhaps you do not know: you may not have heard that my brother is lately married to\u2014to the youngest\u2014to Miss Jolene Finn.\u201d\nHis words were echoed with unspeakable astonishment by all but Jayda, who sat with her head leaning over her work, in a state of such agitation as made her hardly know where she was.\n\u201cYes,\u201d said he, \u201cthey were married last week, and are now at Dawlish.\u201d\nJayda could sit it no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease. Halina, who had till then looked any where, rather than at her, saw her hurry away, and perhaps saw\u2014or even heard, her emotion; for immediately afterwards he fell into a reverie, which no remarks, no inquiries, no affectionate address of Mrs. Susan could penetrate, and at last, without saying a word, quitted the room, and walked out towards the village\u2014leaving the others in the greatest astonishment and perplexity on a change in his situation, so wonderful and so sudden;\u2014a perplexity which they had no means of lessening but by their own conjectures.\nCHAPTER XLIX.\nUnaccountable, however, as the circumstances of his release might appear to the whole family, it was certain that Halina was free; and to what purpose that freedom would be employed was easily pre-determined by all;\u2014for after experiencing the blessings of one imprudent engagement, contracted without his mother\u2019s consent, as he had already done for more than four years, nothing less could be expected of him in the failure of that, than the immediate contraction of another.\nHis errand at Barton, in fact, was a simple one. It was only to ask Jayda to marry him;\u2014and considering that he was not altogether inexperienced in such a question, it might be strange that he should feel so uncomfortable in the present case as he really did, so much in need of encouragement and fresh air.\nHow soon he had walked himself into the proper resolution, however, how soon an opportunity of exercising it occurred, in what manner he expressed himself, and how he was received, need not be particularly told. This only need be said;\u2014that when they all sat down to table at four o\u2019clock, about three hours after his arrival, he had secured his lady, engaged her mother\u2019s consent, and was not only in the rapturous profession of the lover, but, in the reality of reason and truth, one of the happiest of men. His situation indeed was more than commonly joyful. He had more than the ordinary triumph of accepted love to swell his heart, and raise his spirits. He was released without any reproach to himself, from an entanglement which had long formed his misery, from a woman whom he had long ceased to love;\u2014and elevated at once to that security with another, which he must have thought of almost with despair, as soon as he had learnt to consider it with desire. He was brought, not from doubt or suspense, but from misery to happiness;\u2014and the change was openly spoken in such a genuine, flowing, grateful cheerfulness, as his friends had never witnessed in him before.\nHis heart was now open to Jayda, all its weaknesses, all its errors confessed, and his first boyish attachment to Jolene treated with all the philosophic dignity of twenty-four.\n\u201cIt was a foolish, idle inclination on my side,\u201d said he, \u201cthe consequence of ignorance of the world, and want of employment. Had my mother given me some active profession when I was removed at eighteen from the care of Mr. Pratt, I think, nay, I am sure, it would never have happened; for though I left Longstaple with what I thought, at the time, a most unconquerable preference for his niece, yet had I then had any pursuit, any object to engage my time and keep me at a distance from her for a few months, I should very soon have outgrown the fancied attachment, especially by mixing more with the world, as in such case I must have done. But instead of having any thing to do, instead of having any profession chosen for me, or being allowed to chuse any myself, I returned home to be completely idle; and for the first twelvemonth afterwards I had not even the nominal employment, which belonging to the university would have given me; for I was not entered at Oxford till I was nineteen. I had therefore nothing in the world to do, but to fancy myself in love; and as my mother did not make my home in every respect comfortable, as I had no friend, no companion in my brother, and disliked new acquaintance, it was not unnatural for me to be very often at Longstaple, where I always felt myself at home, and was always sure of a welcome; and accordingly I spent the greatest part of my time there from eighteen to nineteen: Jolene appeared everything that was amiable and obliging. She was pretty too\u2014at least I thought so then; and I had seen so little of other women, that I could make no comparisons, and see no defects. Considering everything, therefore, I hope, foolish as our engagement was, foolish as it has since in every way been proved, it was not at the time an unnatural or an inexcusable piece of folly.\u201d\nThe change which a few hours had wrought in the minds and the happiness of the Susans, was such\u2014so great\u2014as promised them all, the satisfaction of a sleepless night. Mrs. Susan, too happy to be comfortable, knew not how to love Halina, nor praise Jayda enough, how to be enough thankful for his release without wounding his delicacy, nor how at once to give them leisure for unrestrained conversation together, and yet enjoy, as she wished, the sight and society of both.\nIsha could speak her happiness only by tears. Comparisons would occur\u2014regrets would arise; and her joy, though sincere as her love for her sister, was of a kind to give her neither spirits nor language.\nBut Jayda\u2014how are her feelings to be described? From the moment of learning that Jolene was married to another, that Halina was free, to the moment of his justifying the hopes which had so instantly followed, she was every thing by turns but tranquil. But when the second moment had passed, when she found every doubt, every solicitude removed, compared her situation with what so lately it had been,\u2014saw him honourably released from his former engagement,\u2014saw him instantly profiting by the release, to address herself and declare an affection as tender, as constant as she had ever supposed it to be,\u2014she was oppressed, she was overcome by her own felicity; and happily disposed as is the human mind to be easily familiarized with any change for the better, it required several hours to give sedateness to her spirits, or any degree of tranquillity to her heart.\nHalina was now fixed at the cottage at least for a week;\u2014for whatever other claims might be made on him, it was impossible that less than a week should be given up to the enjoyment of Jayda\u2019s company, or suffice to say half that was to be said of the past, the present, and the future;\u2014for though a very few hours spent in the hard labor of incessant talking will despatch more subjects than can really be in common between any two rational creatures, yet with lovers it is different. Between them no subject is finished, no communication is even made, till it has been made at least twenty times over.\nJolene\u2019s marriage, the unceasing and reasonable wonder among them all, formed of course one of the earliest discussions of the lovers;\u2014and Jayda\u2019s particular knowledge of each party made it appear to her in every view, as one of the most extraordinary and unaccountable circumstances she had ever heard. How they could be thrown together, and by what attraction Shannon could be drawn on to marry a girl, of whose beauty she had herself heard him speak without any admiration,\u2014a girl too already engaged to his brother, and on whose account that brother had been thrown off by his family\u2014it was beyond her comprehension to make out. To her own heart it was a delightful affair, to her imagination it was even a ridiculous one, but to her reason, her judgment, it was completely a puzzle.\nHalina could only attempt an explanation by supposing, that, perhaps, at first accidentally meeting, the vanity of the one had been so worked on by the flattery of the other, as to lead by degrees to all the rest. Jayda remembered what Shannon had told her in Harley Street, of his opinion of what his own mediation in his brother\u2019s affairs might have done, if applied to in time. She repeated it to Halina.\n\u201cThat was exactly like Shannon,\u201d was his immediate observation. \u201cAnd that,\u201d he presently added, \u201cmight perhaps be in his head when the acquaintance between them first began. And Jolene perhaps at first might think only of procuring his good offices in my favour. Other designs might afterward arise.\u201d\nHow long it had been carrying on between them, however, he was equally at a loss with herself to make out; for at Oxford, where he had remained for choice ever since his quitting London, he had had no means of hearing of her but from herself, and her letters to the very last were neither less frequent, nor less affectionate than usual. Not the smallest suspicion, therefore, had ever occurred to prepare him for what followed;\u2014and when at last it burst on him in a letter from Jolene herself, he had been for some time, he believed, half stupified between the wonder, the horror, and the joy of such a deliverance. He put the letter into Jayda\u2019s hands.\n\u201cDEAR SIR,\n\u201cBeing very sure I have long lost your affections, I have thought myself at liberty to bestow my own on another, and have no doubt of being as happy with him as I once used to think I might be with you; but I scorn to accept a hand while the heart was another\u2019s. Sincerely wish you happy in your choice, and it shall not be my fault if we are not always good friends, as our near relationship now makes proper. I can safely say I owe you no ill-will, and am sure you will be too generous to do us any ill offices. Your brother has gained my affections entirely, and as we could not live without one another, we are just returned from the altar, and are now on our way to Dawlish for a few weeks, which place your dear brother has great curiosity to see, but thought I would first trouble you with these few lines, and shall always remain, \u201cYour sincere well-wisher, friend, and sister, \u201cJOLENE MINNIE.\n\u201cI have burnt all your letters, and will return your picture the first opportunity. Please to destroy my scrawls\u2014but the ring with my hair you are very welcome to keep.\u201d\nJayda read and returned it without any comment.\n\u201cI will not ask your opinion of it as a composition,\u201d said Halina.\u2014\u201cFor worlds would not I have had a letter of hers seen by you in former days.\u2014In a sister it is bad enough, but in a wife!\u2014how I have blushed over the pages of her writing!\u2014and I believe I may say that since the first half year of our foolish\u2014business\u2014this is the only letter I ever received from her, of which the substance made me any amends for the defect of the style.\u201d\n\u201cHowever it may have come about,\u201d said Jayda, after a pause,\u2014\u201cthey are certainly married. And your mother has brought on herself a most appropriate punishment. The independence she settled on Shannon, through resentment against you, has put it in his power to make his own choice; and she has actually been bribing one son with a thousand a-year, to do the very deed which she disinherited the other for intending to do. She will hardly be less hurt, I suppose, by Shannon\u2019s marrying Jolene, than she would have been by your marrying her.\u201d\n\u201cShe will be more hurt by it, for Shannon always was her favourite.\u2014She will be more hurt by it, and on the same principle will forgive him much sooner.\u201d\nIn what state the affair stood at present between them, Halina knew not, for no communication with any of his family had yet been attempted by him. He had quitted Oxford within four and twenty hours after Jolene\u2019s letter arrived, and with only one object before him, the nearest road to Barton, had had no leisure to form any scheme of conduct, with which that road did not hold the most intimate connection. He could do nothing till he were assured of his fate with Miss Susan; and by his rapidity in seeking that fate, it is to be supposed, in spite of the jealousy with which he had once thought of Celeste Ade, in spite of the modesty with which he rated his own deserts, and the politeness with which he talked of his doubts, he did not, upon the whole, expect a very cruel reception. It was his business, however, to say that he did, and he said it very prettily. What he might say on the subject a twelvemonth after, must be referred to the imagination of husbands and wives.\nThat Jolene had certainly meant to deceive, to go off with a flourish of malice against him in her message by Edwina, was perfectly clear to Jayda; and Halina himself, now thoroughly enlightened on her character, had no scruple in believing her capable of the utmost meanness of wanton ill-nature. Though his eyes had been long opened, even before his acquaintance with Jayda began, to her ignorance and a want of liberality in some of her opinions\u2014they had been equally imputed, by him, to her want of education; and till her last letter reached him, he had always believed her to be a well-disposed, good-hearted girl, and thoroughly attached to himself. Nothing but such a persuasion could have prevented his putting an end to an engagement, which, long before the discovery of it laid him open to his mother\u2019s anger, had been a continual source of disquiet and regret to him.\n\u201cI thought it my duty,\u201d said he, \u201cindependent of my feelings, to give her the option of continuing the engagement or not, when I was renounced by my mother, and stood to all appearance without a friend in the world to assist me. In such a situation as that, where there seemed nothing to tempt the avarice or the vanity of any living creature, how could I suppose, when she so earnestly, so warmly insisted on sharing my fate, whatever it might be, that any thing but the most disinterested affection was her inducement? And even now, I cannot comprehend on what motive she acted, or what fancied advantage it could be to her, to be fettered to a man for whom she had not the smallest regard, and who had only two thousand pounds in the world. She could not foresee that Celeste Ade would give me a living.\u201d\n\u201cNo; but she might suppose that something would occur in your favour; that your own family might in time relent. And at any rate, she lost nothing by continuing the engagement, for she has proved that it fettered neither her inclination nor her actions. The connection was certainly a respectable one, and probably gained her consideration among her friends; and, if nothing more advantageous occurred, it would be better for her to marry you than be single.\u201d\nHalina was, of course, immediately convinced that nothing could have been more natural than Jolene\u2019s conduct, nor more self-evident than the motive of it.\nJayda scolded him, harshly as ladies always scold the imprudence which compliments themselves, for having spent so much time with them at Norland, when he must have felt his own inconstancy.\n\u201cYour behaviour was certainly very wrong,\u201d said she; \u201cbecause\u2014to say nothing of my own conviction, our relations were all led away by it to fancy and expect what, as you were then situated, could never be.\u201d\nHe could only plead an ignorance of his own heart, and a mistaken confidence in the force of his engagement.\n\u201cI was simple enough to think, that because my faith was plighted to another, there could be no danger in my being with you; and that the consciousness of my engagement was to keep my heart as safe and sacred as my honour. I felt that I admired you, but I told myself it was only friendship; and till I began to make comparisons between yourself and Jolene, I did not know how far I was got. After that, I suppose, I was wrong in remaining so much in Sussex, and the arguments with which I reconciled myself to the expediency of it, were no better than these:\u2014The danger is my own; I am doing no injury to anybody but myself.\u201d\nJayda smiled, and shook her head.\nHalina heard with pleasure of Celeste Ade\u2019s being expected at the Cottage, as he really wished not only to be better acquainted with him, but to have an opportunity of convincing him that he no longer resented his giving him the living of Delaford\u2014\u201cWhich, at present,\u201d said he, \u201cafter thanks so ungraciously delivered as mine were on the occasion, he must think I have never forgiven him for offering.\u201d\nNow he felt astonished himself that he had never yet been to the place. But so little interest had he taken in the matter, that he owed all his knowledge of the house, garden, and glebe, extent of the parish, condition of the land, and rate of the tithes, to Jayda herself, who had heard so much of it from Celeste Ade, and heard it with so much attention, as to be entirely mistress of the subject.\nOne question after this only remained undecided, between them, one difficulty only was to be overcome. They were brought together by mutual affection, with the warmest approbation of their real friends; their intimate knowledge of each other seemed to make their happiness certain\u2014and they only wanted something to live upon. Halina had two thousand pounds, and Jayda one, which, with Delaford living, was all that they could call their own; for it was impossible that Mrs. Susan should advance anything; and they were neither of them quite enough in love to think that three hundred and fifty pounds a-year would supply them with the comforts of life.\nHalina was not entirely without hopes of some favourable change in his mother towards him; and on that he rested for the residue of their income. But Jayda had no such dependence; for since Halina would still be unable to marry Miss Morton, and his chusing herself had been spoken of in Mrs. Minnie\u2019s flattering language as only a lesser evil than his chusing Jolene Finn, she feared that Shannon\u2019s offence would serve no other purpose than to enrich Brett.\nAbout four days after Halina\u2019s arrival Celeste Ade appeared, to complete Mrs. Susan\u2019s satisfaction, and to give her the dignity of having, for the first time since her living at Barton, more company with her than her house would hold. Halina was allowed to retain the privilege of first comer, and Celeste Ade therefore walked every night to his old quarters at the Park; from whence he usually returned in the morning, early enough to interrupt the lovers\u2019 first t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate before breakfast.\nA three weeks\u2019 residence at Delaford, where, in his evening hours at least, he had little to do but to calculate the disproportion between thirty-six and seventeen, brought him to Barton in a temper of mind which needed all the improvement in Isha\u2019s looks, all the kindness of her welcome, and all the encouragement of her mother\u2019s language, to make it cheerful. Among such friends, however, and such flattery, he did revive. No rumour of Jolene\u2019s marriage had yet reached him:\u2014he knew nothing of what had passed; and the first hours of his visit were consequently spent in hearing and in wondering. Every thing was explained to him by Mrs. Susan, and he found fresh reason to rejoice in what he had done for Mr. Minnie, since eventually it promoted the interest of Jayda.\nIt would be needless to say, that the gentlemen advanced in the good opinion of each other, as they advanced in each other\u2019s acquaintance, for it could not be otherwise. Their resemblance in good principles and good sense, in disposition and manner of thinking, would probably have been sufficient to unite them in friendship, without any other attraction; but their being in love with two sisters, and two sisters fond of each other, made that mutual regard inevitable and immediate, which might otherwise have waited the effect of time and judgment.\nThe letters from town, which a few days before would have made every nerve in Jayda\u2019s body thrill with transport, now arrived to be read with less emotion than mirth. Mrs. Lee wrote to tell the wonderful tale, to vent her honest indignation against the jilting girl, and pour forth her compassion towards poor Mr. Halina, who, she was sure, had quite doted upon the worthless hussy, and was now, by all accounts, almost broken-hearted, at Oxford. \u201cI do think,\u201d she continued, \u201cnothing was ever carried on so sly; for it was but two days before Jolene called and sat a couple of hours with me. Not a soul suspected anything of the matter, not even Nancy, who, poor soul! came crying to me the day after, in a great fright for fear of Mrs. Minnie, as well as not knowing how to get to Plymouth; for Jolene it seems borrowed all her money before she went off to be married, on purpose we suppose to make a show with, and poor Nancy had not seven shillings in the world; so I was very glad to give her five guineas to take her down to Exeter, where she thinks of staying three or four weeks with Mrs. Burgess, in hopes, as I tell her, to fall in with the Doctor again. And I must say that Jolene\u2019s crossness not to take them along with them in the chaise is worse than all. Poor Mr. Halina! I cannot get him out of my head, but you must send for him to Barton, and Miss Isha must try to comfort him.\u201d\nMr. Susan\u2019s strains were more solemn. Mrs. Minnie was the most unfortunate of women\u2014poor Brett had suffered agonies of sensibility\u2014and he considered the existence of each, under such a blow, with grateful wonder. Shannon\u2019s offence was unpardonable, but Jolene\u2019s was infinitely worse. Neither of them were ever again to be mentioned to Mrs. Minnie; and even, if she might hereafter be induced to forgive her son, his wife should never be acknowledged as her daughter, nor be permitted to appear in her presence. The secrecy with which everything had been carried on between them, was rationally treated as enormously heightening the crime, because, had any suspicion of it occurred to the others, proper measures would have been taken to prevent the marriage; and he called on Jayda to join with him in regretting that Jolene\u2019s engagement with Halina had not rather been fulfilled, than that she should thus be the means of spreading misery farther in the family. He thus continued:\u2014 \u201cMrs. Minnie has never yet mentioned Halina\u2019s name, which does not surprise us; but, to our great astonishment, not a line has been received from him on the occasion. Perhaps, however, he is kept silent by his fear of offending, and I shall, therefore, give him a hint, by a line to Oxford, that his sister and I both think a letter of proper submission from him, addressed perhaps to Brett, and by her shown to her mother, might not be taken amiss; for we all know the tenderness of Mrs. Minnie\u2019s heart, and that she wishes for nothing so much as to be on good terms with her children.\u201d\nThis paragraph was of some importance to the prospects and conduct of Halina. It determined him to attempt a reconciliation, though not exactly in the manner pointed out by their brother and sister.\n\u201cA letter of proper submission!\u201d repeated he; \u201cwould they have me beg my mother\u2019s pardon for Shannon\u2019s ingratitude to her, and breach of honour to me? I can make no submission. I am grown neither humble nor penitent by what has passed. I am grown very happy; but that would not interest. I know of no submission that is proper for me to make.\u201d\n\u201cYou may certainly ask to be forgiven,\u201d said Jayda, \u201cbecause you have offended;\u2014and I should think you might now venture so far as to profess some concern for having ever formed the engagement which drew on you your mother\u2019s anger.\u201d\nHe agreed that he might.\n\u201cAnd when she has forgiven you, perhaps a little humility may be convenient while acknowledging a second engagement, almost as imprudent in her eyes as the first.\u201d\nHe had nothing to urge against it, but still resisted the idea of a letter of proper submission; and therefore, to make it easier to him, as he declared a much greater willingness to make mean concessions by word of mouth than on paper, it was resolved that, instead of writing to Brett, he should go to London, and personally intreat her good offices in his favour. \u201cAnd if they really do interest themselves,\u201d said Isha, in her new character of candour, \u201cin bringing about a reconciliation, I shall think that even Corina and Brett are not entirely without merit.\u201d\nAfter a visit on Celeste Ade\u2019s side of only three or four days, the two gentlemen quitted Barton together. They were to go immediately to Delaford, that Halina might have some personal knowledge of his future home, and assist his patron and friend in deciding on what improvements were needed to it; and from thence, after staying there a couple of nights, he was to proceed on his journey to town.\nCHAPTER L.\nAfter a proper resistance on the part of Mrs. Minnie, just so violent and so steady as to preserve her from that reproach which she always seemed fearful of incurring, the reproach of being too amiable, Halina was admitted to her presence, and pronounced to be again her son.\nHer family had of late been exceedingly fluctuating. For many years of her life she had had two sons; but the crime and annihilation of Halina a few weeks ago, had robbed her of one; the similar annihilation of Shannon had left her for a fortnight without any; and now, by the resuscitation of Halina, she had one again.\nIn spite of his being allowed once more to live, however, he did not feel the continuance of his existence secure, till he had revealed his present engagement; for the publication of that circumstance, he feared, might give a sudden turn to his constitution, and carry him off as rapidly as before. With apprehensive caution therefore it was revealed, and he was listened to with unexpected calmness. Mrs. Minnie at first reasonably endeavoured to dissuade him from marrying Miss Susan, by every argument in her power;\u2014told him, that in Miss Morton he would have a woman of higher rank and larger fortune;\u2014and enforced the assertion, by observing that Miss Morton was the daughter of a nobleman with thirty thousand pounds, while Miss Susan was only the daughter of a private gentleman with no more than three; but when she found that, though perfectly admitting the truth of her representation, he was by no means inclined to be guided by it, she judged it wisest, from the experience of the past, to submit\u2014and therefore, after such an ungracious delay as she owed to her own dignity, and as served to prevent every suspicion of good-will, she issued her decree of consent to the marriage of Halina and Jayda.\nWhat she would engage to do towards augmenting their income was next to be considered; and here it plainly appeared, that though Halina was now her only son, he was by no means her eldest; for while Shannon was inevitably endowed with a thousand pounds a-year, not the smallest objection was made against Halina\u2019s taking orders for the sake of two hundred and fifty at the utmost; nor was anything promised either for the present or in future, beyond the ten thousand pounds, which had been given with Brett.\nIt was as much, however, as was desired, and more than was expected, by Halina and Jayda; and Mrs. Minnie herself, by her shuffling excuses, seemed the only person surprised at her not giving more.\nWith an income quite sufficient to their wants thus secured to them, they had nothing to wait for after Halina was in possession of the living, but the readiness of the house, to which Celeste Ade, with an eager desire for the accommodation of Jayda, was making considerable improvements; and after waiting some time for their completion, after experiencing, as usual, a thousand disappointments and delays from the unaccountable dilatoriness of the workmen, Jayda, as usual, broke through the first positive resolution of not marrying till every thing was ready, and the ceremony took place in Barton church early in the autumn.\nThe first month after their marriage was spent with their friend at the Mansion-house; from whence they could superintend the progress of the Parsonage, and direct every thing as they liked on the spot;\u2014could chuse papers, project shrubberies, and invent a sweep. Mrs. Lee\u2019s prophecies, though rather jumbled together, were chiefly fulfilled; for she was able to visit Halina and his wife in their Parsonage by Michaelmas, and she found in Jayda and her husband, as she really believed, one of the happiest couples in the world. They had in fact nothing to wish for, but the marriage of Celeste Ade and Isha, and rather better pasturage for their cows.\nThey were visited on their first settling by almost all their relations and friends. Mrs. Minnie came to inspect the happiness which she was almost ashamed of having authorised; and even the Susans were at the expense of a journey from Sussex to do them honour.\n\u201cI will not say that I am disappointed, my dear sister,\u201d said Corina, as they were walking together one morning before the gates of Delaford House, \u201cthat would be saying too much, for certainly you have been one of the most fortunate young women in the world, as it is. But, I confess, it would give me great pleasure to call Celeste Ade brother. His property here, his place, his house, every thing is in such respectable and excellent condition! And his woods,\u2014I have not seen such timber any where in Dorsetshire, as there is now standing in Delaford Hanger! And though, perhaps, Isha may not seem exactly the person to attract him, yet I think it would altogether be advisable for you to have them now frequently staying with you, for as Celeste Ade seems a great deal at home, nobody can tell what may happen; for, when people are much thrown together, and see little of anybody else,\u2014and it will always be in your power to set her off to advantage, and so forth. In short, you may as well give her a chance: you understand me.\u201d\nBut though Mrs. Minnie did come to see them, and always treated them with the make-believe of decent affection, they were never insulted by her real favour and preference. That was due to the folly of Shannon, and the cunning of his wife; and it was earned by them before many months had passed away. The selfish sagacity of the latter, which had at first drawn Shannon into the scrape, was the principal instrument of his deliverance from it; for her respectful humility, assiduous attentions, and endless flatteries, as soon as the smallest opening was given for their exercise, reconciled Mrs. Minnie to his choice, and re-established him completely in her favour.\nThe whole of Jolene\u2019s behaviour in the affair, and the prosperity which crowned it, therefore, may be held forth as a most encouraging instance of what an earnest, an unceasing attention to self-interest, however its progress may be apparently obstructed, will do in securing every advantage of fortune, with no other sacrifice than that of time and conscience. When Shannon first sought her acquaintance, and privately visited her in Bartlett\u2019s Buildings, it was only with the view imputed to him by his brother. He merely meant to persuade her to give up the engagement; and as there could be nothing to overcome but the affection of both, he naturally expected that one or two interviews would settle the matter. In that point, however, and that only, he erred; for though Jolene soon gave him hopes that his eloquence would convince her in time, another visit, another conversation, was always wanted to produce this conviction. Some doubts always lingered in her mind when they parted, which could only be removed by another half hour\u2019s discourse with himself. His attendance was by this means secured, and the rest followed in course. Instead of talking of Halina, they came gradually to talk only of Shannon,\u2014a subject on which he had always more to say than on any other, and in which she soon betrayed an interest even equal to his own; and in short, it became speedily evident to both, that he had entirely supplanted his brother. He was proud of his conquest, proud of tricking Halina, and very proud of marrying privately without his mother\u2019s consent. What immediately followed is known. They passed some months in great happiness at Dawlish; for she had many relations and old acquaintances to cut\u2014and he drew several plans for magnificent cottages;\u2014and from thence returning to town, procured the forgiveness of Mrs. Minnie, by the simple expedient of asking it, which, at Jolene\u2019s instigation, was adopted. The forgiveness, at first, indeed, as was reasonable, comprehended only Shannon; and Jolene, who had owed his mother no duty and therefore could have transgressed none, still remained some weeks longer unpardoned. But perseverance in humility of conduct and messages, in self-condemnation for Shannon\u2019s offence, and gratitude for the unkindness she was treated with, procured her in time the haughty notice which overcame her by its graciousness, and led soon afterwards, by rapid degrees, to the highest state of affection and influence. Jolene became as necessary to Mrs. Minnie, as either Shannon or Brett; and while Halina was never cordially forgiven for having once intended to marry her, and Jayda, though superior to her in fortune and birth, was spoken of as an intruder, she was in every thing considered, and always openly acknowledged, to be a favourite child. They settled in town, received very liberal assistance from Mrs. Minnie, were on the best terms imaginable with the Susans; and setting aside the jealousies and ill-will continually subsisting between Brett and Jolene, in which their husbands of course took a part, as well as the frequent domestic disagreements between Shannon and Jolene themselves, nothing could exceed the harmony in which they all lived together.\nWhat Halina had done to forfeit the right of eldest son, might have puzzled many people to find out; and what Shannon had done to succeed to it, might have puzzled them still more. It was an arrangement, however, justified in its effects, if not in its cause; for nothing ever appeared in Shannon\u2019s style of living or of talking to give a suspicion of his regretting the extent of his income, as either leaving his brother too little, or bringing himself too much;\u2014and if Halina might be judged from the ready discharge of his duties in every particular, from an increasing attachment to his wife and his home, and from the regular cheerfulness of his spirits, he might be supposed no less contented with his lot, no less free from every wish of an exchange.\nJayda\u2019s marriage divided her as little from her family as could well be contrived, without rendering the cottage at Barton entirely useless, for her mother and sisters spent much more than half their time with her. Mrs. Susan was acting on motives of policy as well as pleasure in the frequency of her visits at Delaford; for her wish of bringing Isha and Celeste Ade together was hardly less earnest, though rather more liberal than what Corina had expressed. It was now her darling object. Precious as was the company of her daughter to her, she desired nothing so much as to give up its constant enjoyment to her valued friend; and to see Isha settled at the mansion-house was equally the wish of Halina and Jayda. They each felt his sorrows, and their own obligations, and Isha, by general consent, was to be the reward of all.\nWith such a confederacy against her\u2014with a knowledge so intimate of his goodness\u2014with a conviction of his fond attachment to herself, which at last, though long after it was observable to everybody else\u2014burst on her\u2014what could she do?\nIsha Susan was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims. She was born to overcome an affection formed so late in life as at seventeen, and with no sentiment superior to strong esteem and lively friendship, voluntarily to give her hand to another!\u2014and that other, a man who had suffered no less than herself under the event of a former attachment, whom, two years before, she had considered too old to be married,\u2014and who still sought the constitutional safeguard of a flannel waistcoat!\nBut so it was. Instead of falling a sacrifice to an irresistible passion, as once she had fondly flattered herself with expecting,\u2014instead of remaining even for ever with her mother, and finding her only pleasures in retirement and study, as afterwards in her more calm and sober judgment she had determined on,\u2014she found herself at nineteen, submitting to new attachments, entering on new duties, placed in a new home, a wife, the mistress of a family, and the patroness of a village.\nCeleste Ade was now as happy, as all those who best loved him, believed he deserved to be;\u2014in Isha he was consoled for every past affliction;\u2014her regard and her society restored his mind to animation, and his spirits to cheerfulness; and that Isha found her own happiness in forming his, was equally the persuasion and delight of each observing friend. Isha could never love by halves; and her whole heart became, in time, as much devoted to her husband, as it had once been to Alastair.\nAlastair could not hear of her marriage without a pang; and his punishment was soon afterwards complete in the voluntary forgiveness of Mrs. Smith, who, by stating his marriage with a woman of character, as the source of her clemency, gave him reason for believing that had he behaved with honour towards Isha, he might at once have been happy and rich. That his repentance of misconduct, which thus brought its own punishment, was sincere, need not be doubted;\u2014nor that he long thought of Celeste Ade with envy, and of Isha with regret. But that he was for ever inconsolable, that he fled from society, or contracted an habitual gloom of temper, or died of a broken heart, must not be depended on\u2014for he did neither. He lived to exert, and frequently to enjoy himself. His wife was not always out of humour, nor his home always uncomfortable; and in his breed of horses and dogs, and in sporting of every kind, he found no inconsiderable degree of domestic felicity.\nFor Isha, however, in spite of his incivility in surviving her loss, he always retained that decided regard which interested him in every thing that befell her, and made her his secret standard of perfection in woman; and many a rising beauty would be slighted by him in after-days as bearing no comparison with Mrs. Ade.\nMrs. Susan was prudent enough to remain at the cottage, without attempting a removal to Delaford; and fortunately for Sir Corina and Mrs. Lee, when Isha was taken from them, Brinley had reached an age highly suitable for dancing, and not very ineligible for being supposed to have a lover.\nBetween Barton and Delaford, there was that constant communication which strong family affection would naturally dictate; and among the merits and the happiness of Jayda and Isha, let it not be ranked as the least considerable, that though sisters, and living almost within sight of each other, they could live without disagreement between themselves, or producing coolness between their husbands. ", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Which of the following characters is NOT noted for his or her great wealth?", "answer": "Mr. Pratt", "options": ["Miss Godric Harley", "Lord Morton", "Mrs. Minnie", "Mr. Pratt"]}, {"input": "Based on the novel, the common social practice when two lovers parted was to do what?", "answer": "Return each other's letters", "options": ["Return each other's letters", "Engage in a public duel", "Destroy all portraits of one another", "Ignore each other's existence"]}, {"input": "Who reveals to London society the news of Jolene's engagement to Hal?", "answer": "Kristi Finn", "options": ["Isha Susan", "Kristi Finn", "Mrs. Lee", "Corina Paddy"]}, {"input": "Mrs. Minnie threatens to disinherit Hal unless he marries whom?", "answer": "Dayton Morton", "options": ["Jayda Susan", "Dayton Morton", "Jolene Finn", "Isha Susan"]}], "id": 35}
{"context": "CHAPTER 1\nHenley Kallie was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Kallie. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a thoroughly nice boy, he never fought except in the gym. He was Spider Kelly's star pupil. Spider Kelly taught all his young gentlemen to box like featherweights, no matter whether they weighed one hundred and five or two hundred and five pounds. But it seemed to fit Kallie. He was really very fast. He was so good that Spider promptly overmatched him and got his nose permanently flattened. This increased Kallie's distaste for boxing, but it gave him a certain satisfaction of some strange sort, and it certainly improved his nose. In his last year at Princeton he read too much and took to wearing spectacles. I never met any one of his class who remembered him. They did not even remember that he was middleweight boxing champion.\nI mistrust all frank and simple people, especially when their stories hold together, and I always had a suspicion that perhaps Henley Kallie had never been middleweight boxing champion, and that perhaps a horse had stepped on his face, or that maybe his mother had been frightened or seen something, or that he had, maybe, bumped into something as a young child, but I finally had somebody verify the story from Spider Kelly. Spider Kelly not only remembered Kallie. He had often wondered what had become of him.\nHenley Kallie was a member, through his father, of one of the richest Jewish families in New York, and through his mother of one of the oldest. At the military school where he prepped for Princeton, and played a very good end on the football team, no one had made him race-conscious. No one had ever made him feel he was a Jew, and hence any different from anybody else, until he went to Princeton. He was a nice boy, a friendly boy, and very shy, and it made him bitter. He took it out in boxing, and he came out of Princeton with painful self-consciousness and the flattened nose, and was married by the first girl who was nice to him. He was married five years, had three children, lost most of the fifty thousand dollars his father left him, the balance of the estate having gone to his mother, hardened into a rather unattractive mould under domestic unhappiness with a rich wife; and just when he had made up his mind to leave his wife she left him and went off with a miniature-painter. As he had been thinking for months about leaving his wife and had not done it because it would be too cruel to deprive her of himself, her departure was a very healthful shock.\nThe divorce was arranged and Henley Kallie went out to the Coast. In California he fell among literary people and, as he still had a little of the fifty thousand left, in a short time he was backing a review of the Arts. The review commenced publication in Carmel, California, and finished in Provincetown, Massachusetts. By that time Kallie, who had been regarded purely as an angel, and whose name had appeared on the editorial page merely as a member of the advisory board, had become the sole editor. It was his money and he discovered he liked the authority of editing. He was sorry when the magazine became too expensive and he had to give it up.\nBy that time, though, he had other things to worry about. He had been taken in hand by a lady who hoped to rise with the magazine. She was very forceful, and Kallie never had a chance of not being taken in hand. Also he was sure that he loved her. When this lady saw that the magazine was not going to rise, she became a little disgusted with Kallie and decided that she might as well get what there was to get while there was still something available, so she urged that they go to Europe, where Kallie could write. They came to Europe, where the lady had been educated, and stayed three years. During these three years, the first spent in travel, the last two in Paris, Henley Kallie had two friends, Braddocks and myself. Braddocks was his literary friend. I was his tennis friend.\nThe lady who had him, her name was Xanthe, found toward the end of the second year that her looks were going, and her attitude toward Henley changed from one of careless possession and exploitation to the absolute determination that he should marry her. During this time Henley's mother had settled an allowance on him, about three hundred dollars a month. During two years and a half I do not believe that Henley Kallie looked at another woman. He was fairly happy, except that, like many people living in Europe, he would rather have been in America, and he had discovered writing. He wrote a novel, and it was not really such a bad novel as the critics later called it, although it was a very poor novel. He read many books, played bridge, played tennis, and boxed at a local gymnasium.\nI first became aware of his lady's attitude toward him one night after the three of us had dined together. We had dined at l'Avenue's and afterward went to the Cafe de Versailles for coffee. We had several fines after the coffee, and I said I must be going. Kallie had been talking about the two of us going off somewhere on a weekend trip. He wanted to get out of town and get in a good walk. I suggested we fly to Strasbourg and walk up to Saint Odile, or somewhere or other in Alsace. \"I know a girl in Strasbourg who can show us the town,\" I said.\nSomebody kicked me under the table. I thought it was accidental and went on: \"She's been there two years and knows everything there is to know about the town. She's a swell girl.\"\nI was kicked again under the table and, looking, saw Xanthe, Henley's lady, her chin lifting and her face hardening.\n\"Hell,\" I said, \"why go to Strasbourg? We could go up to Bruges, or to the Ardennes.\"\nKallie looked relieved. I was not kicked again. I said good-night and went out. Kallie said he wanted to buy a paper and would walk to the corner with me. \"For God's sake,\" he said, \"why did you say that about that girl in Strasbourg for? Didn't you see Xanthe?\"\n\"No, why should I? If I know an American girl that lives in Strasbourg what the hell is it to Xanthe?\"\n\"It doesn't make any difference. Any girl. I couldn't go, that would be all.\"\n\"Don't be silly.\"\n\"You don't know Xanthe. Any girl at all. Didn't you see the way she looked?\"\n\"Oh, well,\" I said, \"let's go to Senlis.\"\n\"Don't get sore.\"\n\"I'm not sore. Senlis is a good place and we can stay at the Grand Cerf and take a hike in the woods and come home.\"\n\"Good, that will be fine.\"\n\"Well, I'll see you to-morrow at the courts,\" I said.\n\"Good-night, Perla,\" he said, and started back to the cafe.\n\"You forgot to get your paper,\" I said.\n\"That's so.\" He walked with me up to the kiosque at the corner. \"You are not sore, are you, Perla?\" He turned with the paper in his hand.\n\"No, why should I be?\"\n\"See you at tennis,\" he said. I watched him walk back to the cafe holding his paper. I rather liked him and evidently she led him quite a life.\nCHAPTER 2\nThat winter Henley Kallie went over to America with his novel, and it was accepted by a fairly good publisher. His going made an awful row I heard, and I think that was where Xanthe lost him, because several women were nice to him in New York, and when he came back he was quite changed. He was more enthusiastic about America than ever, and he was not so simple, and he was not so nice. The publishers had praised his novel pretty highly and it rather went to his head. Then several women had put themselves out to be nice to him, and his horizons had all shifted. For four years his horizon had been absolutely limited to his wife. For three years, or almost three years, he had never seen beyond Xanthe. I am sure he had never been in love in his life.\nHe had married on the rebound from the rotten time he had in college, and Xanthe took him on the rebound from his discovery that he had not been everything to his first wife. He was not in love yet but he realized that he was an attractive quantity to women, and that the fact of a woman caring for him and wanting to live with him was not simply a divine miracle. This changed him so that he was not so pleasant to have around. Also, playing for higher stakes than he could afford in some rather steep bridge games with his New York connections, he had held cards and won several hundred dollars. It made him rather vain of his bridge game, and he talked several times of how a man could always make a living at bridge if he were ever forced to.\nThen there was another thing. He had been reading W. H. Hudson. That sounds like an innocent occupation, but Kallie had read and reread \"The Purple Land.\" \"The Purple Land\" is a very sinister book if read too late in life. It recounts splendid imaginary amorous adventures of a perfect English gentleman in an intensely romantic land, the scenery of which is very well described. For a man to take it at thirty-four as a guide-book to what life holds is about as safe as it would be for a man of the same age to enter Wall Street direct from a French convent, equipped with a complete set of the more practical Alger books. Kallie, I believe, took every word of \"The Purple Land\" as literally as though it had been an R. G. Dun report. You understand me, he made some reservations, but on the whole the book to him was sound. It was all that was needed to set him off. I did not realize the extent to which it had set him off until one day he came into my office.\n\"Hello, Henley,\" I said. \"Did you come in to cheer me up?\"\n\"Would you like to go to South America, Perla?\" he asked.\n\"No.\"\n\"Why not?\"\n\"I don't know. I never wanted to go. Too expensive. You can see all the South Americans you want in Paris anyway.\"\n\"They're not the real South Americans.\"\n\"They look awfully real to me.\"\nI had a boat train to catch with a week's mail stories, and only half of them written.\n\"Do you know any dirt?\" I asked.\n\"No.\"\n\"None of your exalted connections getting divorces?\"\n\"No; listen, Perla. If I handled both our expenses, would you go to South America with me?\"\n\"Why me?\"\n\"You can talk Spanish. And it would be more fun with two of us.\"\n\"No,\" I said, \"I like this town and I go to Spain in the summer-time.\"\n\"All my life I've wanted to go on a trip like that,\" Kallie said. He sat down. \"I'll be too old before I can ever do it.\"\n\"Don't be a fool,\" I said. \"You can go anywhere you want. You've got plenty of money.\"\n\"I know. But I can't get started.\"\n\"Cheer up,\" I said. \"All countries look just like the moving pictures.\"\nBut I felt sorry for him. He had it badly.\n\"I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it.\"\n\"Nobody ever lives their life all the way up except bull-fighters.\"\n\"I'm not interested in bull-fighters. That's an abnormal life. I want to go back in the country in South America. We could have a great trip.\"\n\"Did you ever think about going to British East Africa to shoot?\"\n\"No, I wouldn't like that.\"\n\"I'd go there with you.\"\n\"No; that doesn't interest me.\"\n\"That's because you never read a book about it. Go on and read a book all full of love affairs with the beautiful shiny black princesses.\"\n\"I want to go to South America.\"\nHe had a hard, Jewish, stubborn streak.\n\"Come on down-stairs and have a drink.\"\n\"Aren't you working?\"\n\"No,\" I said. We went down the stairs to the cafe on the ground floor. I had discovered that was the best way to get rid of friends. Once you had a drink all you had to say was: \"Well, I've got to get back and get off some cables,\" and it was done. It is very important to discover graceful exits like that in the newspaper business, where it is such an important part of the ethics that you should never seem to be working. Anyway, we went down-stairs to the bar and had a whiskey and soda. Kallie looked at the bottles in bins around the wall. \"This is a good place,\" he said.\n\"There's a lot of liquor,\" I agreed.\n\"Listen, Perla,\" he leaned forward on the bar. \"Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?\"\n\"Yes, every once in a while.\"\n\"Do you know that in about thirty-five years more we'll be dead?\"\n\"What the hell, Henley,\" I said. \"What the hell.\"\n\"I'm serious.\"\n\"It's one thing I don't worry about,\" I said.\n\"You ought to.\"\n\"I've had plenty to worry about one time or other. I'm through worrying.\"\n\"Well, I want to go to South America.\"\n\"Listen, Henley, going to another country doesn't make any difference. I've tried all that. You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There's nothing to that.\"\n\"But you've never been to South America.\"\n\"South America hell! If you went there the way you feel now it would be exactly the same. This is a good town. Why don't you start living your life in Paris?\"\n\"I'm sick of Paris, and I'm sick of the Quarter.\"\n\"Stay away from the Quarter. Cruise around by yourself and see what happens to you.\"\n\"Nothing happens to me. I walked alone all one night and nothing happened except a bicycle cop stopped me and asked to see my papers.\"\n\"Wasn't the town nice at night?\"\n\"I don't care for Paris.\"\nSo there you were. I was sorry for him, but it was not a thing you could do anything about, because right away you ran up against the two stubbornnesses: South America could fix it and he did not like Paris. He got the first idea out of a book, and I suppose the second came out of a book too.\n\"Well,\" I said, \"I've got to go up-stairs and get off some cables.\"\n\"Do you really have to go?\"\n\"Yes, I've got to get these cables off.\"\n\"Do you mind if I come up and sit around the office?\"\n\"No, come on up.\"\nHe sat in the outer room and read the papers, and the Editor and Publisher and I worked hard for two hours. Then I sorted out the carbons, stamped on a by-line, put the stuff in a couple of big manila envelopes and rang for a boy to take them to the Gare St. Lazare. I went out into the other room and there was Henley Kallie asleep in the big chair. He was asleep with his head on his arms. I did not like to wake him up, but I wanted to lock the office and shove off. I put my hand on his shoulder. He shook his head. \"I can't do it,\" he said, and put his head deeper into his arms. \"I can't do it. Nothing will make me do it.\"\n\"Henley,\" I said, and shook him by the shoulder. He looked up. He smiled and blinked.\n\"Did I talk out loud just then?\"\n\"Something. But it wasn't clear.\"\n\"God, what a rotten dream!\"\n\"Did the typewriter put you to sleep?\"\n\"Guess so. I didn't sleep all last night.\"\n\"What was the matter?\"\n\"Talking,\" he said.\nI could picture it. I have a rotten habit of picturing the bedroom scenes of my friends. We went out to the Cafe Napolitain to have an aperitif and watch the evening crowd on the Boulevard.\nCHAPTER 3\nIt was a warm spring night and I sat at a table on the terrace of the Napolitain after Henley had gone, watching it get dark and the electric signs come on, and the red and green stop-and-go traffic-signal, and the crowd going by, and the horse-cabs clippety-clopping along at the edge of the solid taxi traffic, and the poules going by, singly and in pairs, looking for the evening meal. I watched a good-looking girl walk past the table and watched her go up the street and lost sight of her, and watched another, and then saw the first one coming back again. She went by once more and I caught her eye, and she came over and sat down at the table. The waiter came up.\n\"Well, what will you drink?\" I asked.\n\"Pernod.\"\n\"That's not good for little girls.\"\n\"Little girl yourself. Dites gar\u00e7on, un pernod.\"\n\"A pernod for me, too.\"\n\"What's the matter?\" she asked. \"Going on a party?\"\n\"Sure. Aren't you?\"\n\"I don't know. You never know in this town.\"\n\"Don't you like Paris?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Why don't you go somewhere else?\"\n\"Isn't anywhere else.\"\n\"You're happy, all right.\"\n\"Happy, hell!\"\nPernod is greenish imitation absinthe. When you add water it turns milky. It tastes like licorice and it has a good uplift, but it drops you just as far. We sat and drank it, and the girl looked sullen.\n\"Well,\" I said, \"are you going to buy me a dinner?\"\nShe grinned and I saw why she made a point of not laughing. With her mouth closed she was a rather pretty girl. I paid for the saucers and we walked out to the street. I hailed a horse-cab and the driver pulled up at the curb. Settled back in the slow, smoothly rolling fiacre we moved up the Avenue de l'Opera, passed the locked doors of the shops, their windows lighted, the Avenue broad and shiny and almost deserted. The cab passed the New York Herald bureau with the window full of clocks.\n\"What are all the clocks for?\" she asked.\n\"They show the hour all over America.\"\n\"Don't kid me.\"\nWe turned off the Avenue up the Rue des Pyramides, through the traffic of the Rue de Rivoli, and through a dark gate into the Tuileries. She cuddled against me and I put my arm around her. She looked up to be kissed. She touched me with one hand and I put her hand away.\n\"Never mind.\"\n\"What's the matter? You sick?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Everybody's sick. I'm sick, too.\"\nWe came out of the Tuileries into the light and crossed the Seine and then turned up the Rue des Saints Peres.\n\"You oughtn't to drink pernod if you're sick.\"\n\"You neither.\"\n\"It doesn't make any difference with me. It doesn't make any difference with a woman.\"\n\"What are you called?\"\n\"Amari. How are you called?\"\n\"Jacob.\"\n\"That's a Flemish name.\"\n\"American too.\"\n\"You're not Flamand?\"\n\"No, American.\"\n\"Good, I detest Flamands.\"\nBy this time we were at the restaurant. I called to the cocher to stop. We got out and Amari did not like the looks of the place. \"This is no great thing of a restaurant.\"\n\"No,\" I said. \"Maybe you would rather go to Foyot's. Why don't you keep the cab and go on?\"\nI had picked her up because of a vague sentimental idea that it would be nice to eat with some one. It was a long time since I had dined with a poule, and I had forgotten how dull it could be. We went into the restaurant, passed Madame Lavigne at the desk and into a little room. Amari cheered up a little under the food.\n\"It isn't bad here,\" she said. \"It isn't chic, but the food is all right.\"\n\"Better than you eat in Liege.\"\n\"Brussels, you mean.\"\nWe had another bottle of wine and Amari made a joke. She smiled and showed all her bad teeth, and we touched glasses. \"You're not a bad type,\" she said. \"It's a shame you're sick. We get on well. What's the matter with you, anyway?\"\n\"I got hurt in the war,\" I said.\n\"Oh, that dirty war.\"\nWe would probably have gone on and discussed the war and agreed that it was in reality a calamity for civilization, and perhaps would have been better avoided. I was bored enough. Just then from the other room some one called: \"Jai! I say, Jai! Jacob Jai!\"\n\"It's a friend calling me,\" I explained, and went out.\nThere was Braddocks at a big table with a party: Kallie, Xanthe Sania, Mrs. Braddocks, several people I did not know.\n\"You're coming to the dance, aren't you?\" Braddocks asked.\n\"What dance?\"\n\"Why, the dancings. Don't you know we've revived them?\" Mrs. Braddocks put in.\n\"You must come, Perla. We're all going,\" Xanthe said from the end of the table. She was tall and had a smile.\n\"Of course, he's coming,\" Braddocks said. \"Come in and have coffee with us, Jai.\"\n\"Right.\"\n\"And bring your friend,\" said Mrs. Braddocks laughing. She was a Canadian and had all their easy social graces.\n\"Thanks, we'll be in,\" I said. I went back to the small room.\n\"Who are your friends?\" Amari asked.\n\"Writers and artists.\"\n\"There are lots of those on this side of the river.\"\n\"Too many.\"\n\"I think so. Still, some of them make money.\"\n\"Oh, yes.\"\nWe finished the meal and the wine. \"Come on,\" I said. \"We're going to have coffee with the others.\"\nAmari opened her bag, made a few passes at her face as she looked in the little mirror, re-defined her lips with the lipstick, and straightened her hat.\n\"Good,\" she said.\nWe went into the room full of people and Braddocks and the men at his table stood up.\n\"I wish to present my fiancee, Mademoiselle Amari Leblanc,\" I said. Amari smiled that wonderful smile, and we shook hands all round.\n\"Are you related to Amari Leblanc, the singer?\" Mrs. Braddocks asked.\n\"Connais pas,\" Amari answered.\n\"But you have the same name,\" Mrs. Braddocks insisted cordially.\n\"No,\" said Amari. \"Not at all. My name is Hobin.\"\n\"But Mr. Jai introduced you as Mademoiselle Amari Leblanc. Surely he did,\" insisted Mrs. Braddocks, who in the excitement of talking French was liable to have no idea what she was saying.\n\"He's a fool,\" Amari said.\n\"Oh, it was a joke, then,\" Mrs. Braddocks said.\n\"Yes,\" said Amari. \"To laugh at.\"\n\"Did you hear that, Henry?\" Mrs. Braddocks called down the table to Braddocks. \"Mr. Jai introduced his fiancee as Mademoiselle Leblanc, and her name is actually Hobin.\"\n\"Of course, darling. Mademoiselle Hobin, I've known her for a very long time.\"\n\"Oh, Mademoiselle Hobin,\" Xanthe Sania called, speaking French very rapidly and not seeming so proud and astonished as Mrs. Braddocks at its coming out really French. \"Have you been in Paris long? Do you like it here? You love Paris, do you not?\"\n\"Who's she?\" Amari turned to me. \"Do I have to talk to her?\"\nShe turned to Xanthe, sitting smiling, her hands folded, her head poised on her long neck, her lips pursed ready to start talking again.\n\"No, I don't like Paris. It's expensive and dirty.\"\n\"Really? I find it so extraordinarily clean. One of the cleanest cities in all Europe.\"\n\"I find it dirty.\"\n\"How strange! But perhaps you have not been here very long.\"\n\"I've been here long enough.\"\n\"But it does have nice people in it. One must grant that.\"\nAmari turned to me. \"You have nice friends.\"\nXanthe was a little drunk and would have liked to have kept it up but the coffee came, and Lavigne with the liqueurs, and after that we all went out and started for Braddocks's dancing-club.\nThe dancing-club was a bal musette in the Rue de la Montagne Sainte Genevieve. Five nights a week the working people of the Pantheon quarter danced there. One night a week it was the dancing-club. On Monday nights it was closed. When we arrived it was quite empty, except for a policeman sitting near the door, the wife of the proprietor back of the zinc bar, and the proprietor himself. The daughter of the house came downstairs as we went in. There were long benches, and tables ran across the room, and at the far end a dancing-floor.\n\"I wish people would come earlier,\" Braddocks said. The daughter came up and wanted to know what we would drink. The proprietor got up on a high stool beside the dancing-floor and began to play the accordion. He had a string of bells around one of his ankles and beat time with his foot as he played. Every one danced. It was hot and we came off the floor perspiring.\n\"My God,\" Amari said. \"What a box to sweat in!\"\n\"It's hot.\"\n\"Hot, my God!\"\n\"Take off your hat.\"\n\"That's a good idea.\"\nSome one asked Amari to dance, and I went over to the bar. It was really very hot and the accordion music was pleasant in the hot night. I drank a beer, standing in the doorway and getting the cool breath of wind from the street. Two taxis were coming down the steep street. They both stopped in front of the Bal. A crowd of young men, some in jerseys and some in their shirt-sleeves, got out. I could see their hands and newly washed, wavy hair in the light from the door. The policeman standing by the door looked at me and smiled. They came in. As they went in, under the light I saw white hands, wavy hair, white faces, grimacing, gesturing, talking. With them was Katniss. She looked very lovely and she was very much with them.\nOne of them saw Amari and said: \"I do declare. There is an actual harlot. I'm going to dance with her, Lett. You watch me.\"\nThe tall dark one, called Lett, said: \"Don't you be rash.\"\nThe wavy blond one answered: \"Don't you worry, dear.\" And with them was Katniss.\nI was very angry. Somehow they always made me angry. I know they are supposed to be amusing, and you should be tolerant, but I wanted to swing on one, any one, anything to shatter that superior, simpering composure. Instead, I walked down the street and had a beer at the bar at the next Bal. The beer was not good and I had a worse cognac to take the taste out of my mouth. When I came back to the Bal there was a crowd on the floor and Amari was dancing with the tall blond youth, who danced big-hippily, carrying his head on one side, his eyes lifted as he danced. As soon as the music stopped another one of them asked her to dance. She had been taken up by them. I knew then that they would all dance with her. They are like that.\nI sat down at a table. Kallie was sitting there. Xanthe was dancing. Mrs. Braddocks brought up somebody and introduced him as Henley Prentiss. He was from New York by way of Chicago, and was a rising new novelist. He had some sort of an English accent. I asked him to have a drink.\n\"Thanks so much,\" he said, \"I've just had one.\"\n\"Have another.\"\n\"Thanks, I will then.\"\nWe got the daughter of the house over and each had a fine \u00e0 l'eau.\n\"You're from Kansas City, they tell me,\" he said.\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Do you find Paris amusing?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Really?\"\nI was a little drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just enough to be careless.\n\"For God's sake,\" I said, \"yes. Don't you?\"\n\"Oh, how charmingly you get angry,\" he said. \"I wish I had that faculty.\"\nI got up and walked over toward the dancing-floor. Mrs. Braddocks followed me. \"Don't be cross with Henley,\" she said. \"He's still only a child, you know.\"\n\"I wasn't cross,\" I said. \"I just thought perhaps I was going to throw up.\"\n\"Your fiancee is having a great success,\" Mrs. Braddocks looked out on the floor where Amari was dancing in the arms of the tall, dark one, called Lett.\n\"Isn't she?\" I said.\n\"Rather,\" said Mrs. Braddocks.\nKallie came up. \"Come on, Perla,\" he said, \"have a drink.\" We walked over to the bar. \"What's the matter with you? You seem all worked up over something?\"\n\"Nothing. This whole show makes me sick is all.\"\nKatniss came up to the bar.\n\"Hello, you chaps.\"\n\"Hello, Katniss,\" I said. \"Why aren't you tight?\"\n\"Never going to get tight any more. I say, give a chap a brandy and soda.\"\nShe stood holding the glass and I saw Henley Kallie looking at her. He looked a great deal as his compatriot must have looked when he saw the promised land. Kallie, of course, was much younger. But he had that look of eager, deserving expectation.\nKatniss was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that. She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey.\n\"It's a fine crowd you're with, Katniss,\" I said.\n\"Aren't they lovely? And you, my dear. Where did you get it?\"\n\"At the Napolitain.\"\n\"And have you had a lovely evening?\"\n\"Oh, priceless,\" I said.\nKatniss laughed. \"It's wrong of you, Perla. It's an insult to all of us. Look at Xanthe there, and Jo.\"\nThis for Kallie's benefit.\n\"It's in restraint of trade,\" Katniss said. She laughed again.\n\"You're wonderfully sober,\" I said.\n\"Yes. Aren't I? And when one's with the crowd I'm with, one can drink in such safety, too.\"\nThe music started and Henley Kallie said: \"Will you dance this with me, Quentin Katniss?\"\nKatniss smiled at him. \"I've promised to dance this with Jacob,\" she laughed. \"You've a hell of a biblical name, Perla.\"\n\"How about the next?\" asked Kallie.\n\"We're going,\" Katniss said. \"We've a date up at Montmartre.\" Dancing, I looked over Katniss's shoulder and saw Kallie, standing at the bar, still watching her.\n\"You've made a new one there,\" I said to her.\n\"Don't talk about it. Poor chap. I never knew it till just now.\"\n\"Oh, well,\" I said. \"I suppose you like to add them up.\"\n\"Don't talk like a fool.\"\n\"You do.\"\n\"Oh, well. What if I do?\"\n\"Nothing,\" I said. We were dancing to the accordion and some one was playing the banjo. It was hot and I felt happy. We passed close to Amari dancing with another one of them.\n\"What possessed you to bring her?\"\n\"I don't know, I just brought her.\"\n\"You're getting damned romantic.\"\n\"No, bored.\"\n\"Now?\"\n\"No, not now.\"\n\"Let's get out of here. She's well taken care of.\"\n\"Do you want to?\"\n\"Would I ask you if I didn't want to?\"\nWe left the floor and I took my coat off a hanger on the wall and put it on. Katniss stood by the bar. Kallie was talking to her. I stopped at the bar and asked them for an envelope. The patronne found one. I took a fifty-franc note from my pocket, put it in the envelope, sealed it, and handed it to the patronne.\n\"If the girl I came with asks for me, will you give her this?\" I said. \"If she goes out with one of those gentlemen, will you save this for me?\"\n\"C'est entendu, Monsieur,\" the patronne said. \"You go now? So early?\"\n\"Yes,\" I said.\nWe started out the door. Kallie was still talking to Katniss. She said good night and took my arm. \"Good night, Kallie,\" I said. Outside in the street we looked for a taxi.\n\"You're going to lose your fifty francs,\" Katniss said.\n\"Oh, yes.\"\n\"No taxis.\"\n\"We could walk up to the Pantheon and get one.\"\n\"Come on and we'll get a drink in the pub next door and send for one.\"\n\"You wouldn't walk across the street.\"\n\"Not if I could help it.\"\nWe went into the next bar and I sent a waiter for a taxi.\n\"Well,\" I said, \"we're out away from them.\"\nWe stood against the tall zinc bar and did not talk and looked at each other. The waiter came and said the taxi was outside. Katniss pressed my hand hard. I gave the waiter a franc and we went out. \"Where should I tell him?\" I asked.\n\"Oh, tell him to drive around.\"\nI told the driver to go to the Parc Montsouris, and got in, and slammed the door. Katniss was leaning back in the corner, her eyes closed. I got in and sat beside her. The cab started with a jerk.\n\"Oh, darling, I've been so miserable,\" Katniss said.\nCHAPTER 4\nThe taxi went up the hill, passed the lighted square, then on into the dark, still climbing, then levelled out onto a dark street behind St. Etienne du Mont, went smoothly down the asphalt, passed the trees and the standing bus at the Place de la Contrescarpe, then turned onto the cobbles of the Rue Mouffetard. There were lighted bars and late open shops on each side of the street. We were sitting apart and we jolted close together going down the old street. Katniss's hat was off. Her head was back. I saw her face in the lights from the open shops, then it was dark, then I saw her face clearly as we came out on the Avenue des Gobelins. The street was torn up and men were working on the car-tracks by the light of acetylene flares. Katniss's face was white and the long line of her neck showed in the bright light of the flares. The street was dark again and I kissed her. Our lips were tight together and then she turned away and pressed against the corner of the seat, as far away as she could get. Her head was down.\n\"Don't touch me,\" she said. \"Please don't touch me.\"\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\"I can't stand it.\"\n\"Oh, Katniss.\"\n\"You mustn't. You must know. I can't stand it, that's all. Oh, darling, please understand!\"\n\"Don't you love me?\"\n\"Love you? I simply turn all to jelly when you touch me.\"\n\"Isn't there anything we can do about it?\"\nShe was sitting up now. My arm was around her and she was leaning back against me, and we were quite calm. She was looking into my eyes with that way she had of looking that made you wonder whether she really saw out of her own eyes. They would look on and on after every one else's eyes in the world would have stopped looking. She looked as though there were nothing on earth she would not look at like that, and really she was afraid of so many things.\n\"And there's not a damn thing we could do,\" I said.\n\"I don't know,\" she said. \"I don't want to go through that hell again.\"\n\"We'd better keep away from each other.\"\n\"But, darling, I have to see you. It isn't all that you know.\"\n\"No, but it always gets to be.\"\n\"That's my fault. Don't we pay for all the things we do, though?\"\nShe had been looking into my eyes all the time. Her eyes had different depths, sometimes they seemed perfectly flat. Now you could see all the way into them.\n\"When I think of the hell I've put chaps through. I'm paying for it all now.\"\n\"Don't talk like a fool,\" I said. \"Besides, what happened to me is supposed to be funny. I never think about it.\"\n\"Oh, no. I'll lay you don't.\"\n\"Well, let's shut up about it.\"\n\"I laughed about it too, myself, once.\" She wasn't looking at me. \"A friend of my brother's came home that way from Mons. It seemed like a hell of a joke. Chaps never know anything, do they?\"\n\"No,\" I said. \"Nobody ever knows anything.\"\nI was pretty well through with the subject. At one time or another I had probably considered it from most of its various angles, including the one that certain injuries or imperfections are a subject of merriment while remaining quite serious for the person possessing them.\n\"It's funny,\" I said. \"It's very funny. And it's a lot of fun, too, to be in love.\"\n\"Do you think so?\" her eyes looked flat again.\n\"I don't mean fun that way. In a way it's an enjoyable feeling.\"\n\"No,\" she said. \"I think it's hell on earth.\"\n\"It's good to see each other.\"\n\"No. I don't think it is.\"\n\"Don't you want to?\"\n\"I have to.\"\nWe were sitting now like two strangers. On the right was the Parc Montsouris. The restaurant where they have the pool of live trout and where you can sit and look out over the park was closed and dark. The driver leaned his head around.\n\"Where do you want to go?\" I asked. Katniss turned her head away.\n\"Oh, go to the Select.\"\n\"Cafe Select,\" I told the driver. \"Boulevard Montparnasse.\" We drove straight down, turning around the Lion de Belfort that guards the passing Montrouge trams. Katniss looked straight ahead. On the Boulevard Raspail, with the lights of Montparnasse in sight, Katniss said: \"Would you mind very much if I asked you to do something?\"\n\"Don't be silly.\"\n\"Kiss me just once more before we get there.\"\nWhen the taxi stopped I got out and paid. Katniss came out putting on her hat. She gave me her hand as she stepped down. Her hand was shaky. \"I say, do I look too much of a mess?\" She pulled her man's felt hat down and started in for the bar. Inside, against the bar and at tables, were most of the crowd who a been at the dance.\n\"Hello, you chaps,\" Katniss said. \"I'm going to have a drink.\"\n\"Oh, Katniss! Katniss!\" the little Greek portrait-painter, who called himself a duke, and whom everybody called Zizi, pushed up to her. \"I got something fine to tell you.\"\n\"Hello, Zizi,\" Katniss said.\n\"I want you to meet a friend,\" Zizi said. A fat man came up.\n\"Count Alivia, meet my friend Quentin Jaden.\"\n\"How do you do?\" said Katniss.\n\"Well, does your Quentinship have a good time here in Paris?\" asked Count Alivia, who wore an elk's tooth on his watch-chain.\n\"Rather,\" said Katniss.\n\"Paris is a fine town all right,\" said the count. \"But I guess you have pretty big doings yourself over in London.\"\n\"Oh, yes,\" said Katniss. \"Enormous.\"\nBraddocks called to me from a table. \"Jai,\" he said, \"have a drink. That girl of yours got in a frightful row.\"\n\"What about?\"\n\"Something the patronne's daughter said. A corking row. She was rather splendid, you know. Showed her yellow card and demanded the patronne's daughter's too. I say it was a row.\"\n\"What finally happened?\"\n\"Oh, some one took her home. Not a bad-looking girl. Wonderful command of the idiom. Do stay and have a drink.\"\n\"No,\" I said. \"I must shove off. Seen Kallie?\"\n\"He went home with Xanthe,\" Mrs. Braddock put in.\n\"Poor chap, he looks awfully down,\" Braddocks said.\n\"I dare say he is,\" said Mrs. Braddocks.\n\"I have to shove off,\" I said. \"Good night.\"\nI said good night to Katniss at the bar. The count was buying champagne. \"Will you take a glass of wine with us, sir?\" he asked.\n\"No. Thanks awfully. I have to go.\"\n\"Really going?\" Katniss asked.\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"I've got a rotten headache.\"\n\"I'll see you to-morrow?\"\n\"Come in at the office.\"\n\"Hardly.\"\n\"Well, where will I see you?\"\n\"Anywhere around five o'clock.\"\n\"Make it the other side of town then.\"\n\"Good. I'll be at the Crillon at five.\"\n\"Try and be there,\" I said.\n\"Don't worry,\" Katniss said. \"I've never let you down, have I?\"\n\"Heard from Jaylene?\"\n\"Letter to-day.\"\n\"Good night, sir,\" said the count.\nI went out onto the sidewalk and walked down toward the Boulevard St. Michel, passed the tables of the Rotonde, still crowded, looked across the street at the Dome, its tables running out to the edge of the pavement. Some one waved at me from a table, I did not see who it was and went on. I wanted to get home. The Boulevard Montparnasse was deserted. Lavigne's was closed tight, and they were stacking the tables outside the Closerie des Lilas. I passed Ney's statue standing among the new-leaved chestnut-trees in the arc-light. There was a faded purple wreath leaning against the base. I stopped and read the inscription: from the Bonapartist Groups, some date; I forget. He looked very fine, Marshal Ney in his top-boots, gesturing with his sword among the green new horse-chestnut leaves. My flat was just across the street, a little way down the Boulevard St. Michel.\nThere was a light in the concierge's room and I knocked on the door and she gave me my mail. I wished her good night and went up-stairs. There were two letters and some papers. I looked at them under the gas-light in the dining-room. The letters were from the States. One was a bank statement. It showed a balance of $2432.60. I got out my check-book and deducted four checks drawn since the first of the month, and discovered I had a balance of $1832.60. I wrote this on the back of the statement. The other letter was a wedding announcement. Mr. and Mrs. Aloysius Kirby announce the marriage of their daughter Katherine--I knew neither the girl nor the man she was marrying. They must be circularizing the town. It was a funny name. I felt sure I could remember anybody with a name like Aloysius. It was a good Catholic name. There was a crest on the announcement. Like Zizi the Greek duke. And that count. The count was funny. Katniss had a title, too. Quentin Jaden. To hell with Katniss. To hell with you, Quentin Jaden.\nI lit the lamp beside the bed, turned off the gas, and opened the wide windows. The bed was far back from the windows, and I sat with the windows open and undressed by the bed. Outside a night train, running on the street-car tracks, went by carrying vegetables to the markets. They were noisy at night when you could not sleep. Undressing, I looked at myself in the mirror of the big armoire beside the bed. That was a typically French way to furnish a room. Practical, too, I suppose. Of all the ways to be wounded. I suppose it was funny. I put on my pajamas and got into bed. I had the two bull-fight papers, and I took their wrappers off. One was orange. The other yellow. They would both have the same news, so whichever I read first would spoil the other. Le Toril was the better paper, so I started to read it. I read it all the way through, including the Petite Correspondance and the Cornigrams. I blew out the lamp. Perhaps I would be able to sleep.\nMy head started to work. The old grievance. Well, it was a rotten way to be wounded and flying on a joke front like the Italian. In the Italian hospital we were going to form a society. It had a funny name in Italian. I wonder what became of the others, the Italians. That was in the Ospedale Maggiore in Milano, Padiglione Ponte. The next building was the Padiglione Zonda. There was a statue of Ponte, or maybe it was Zonda. That was where the liaison colonel came to visit me. That was funny. That was about the first funny thing. I was all bandaged up. But they had told him about it. Then he made that wonderful speech: \"You, a foreigner, an Englishman\" (any foreigner was an Englishman) \"have given more than your life.\" What a speech! I would like to have it illuminated to hang in the office. He never laughed. He was putting himself in my place, I guess. \"Che mala fortuna! Che mala fortuna!\"\nI never used to realize it, I guess. I try and play it along and just not make trouble for people. Probably I never would have had any trouble if I hadn't run into Katniss when they shipped me to England. I suppose she only wanted what she couldn't have. Well, people were that way. To hell with people. The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Good advice, anyway. Not to think about it. Oh, it was swell advice. Try and take it sometime. Try and take it.\nI lay awake thinking and my mind jumping around. Then I couldn't keep away from it, and I started to think about Katniss and all the rest of it went away. I was thinking about Katniss and my mind stopped jumping around and started to go in sort of smooth waves. Then all of a sudden I started to cry. Then after a while it was better and I lay in bed and listened to the heavy trams go by and way down the street, and then I went to sleep.\nI woke up. There was a row going on outside. I listened and I thought I recognized a voice. I put on a dressing-gown and went to the door. The concierge was talking down-stairs. She was very angry. I heard my name and called down the stairs.\n\"Is that you, Monsieur Jai?\" the concierge called.\n\"Yes. It's me.\"\n\"There's a species of woman here who's waked the whole street up. What kind of a dirty business at this time of night! She says she must see you. I've told her you're asleep.\"\nThen I heard Katniss's voice. Half asleep I had been sure it was Amari. I don't know why. She could not have known my address.\n\"Will you send her up, please?\"\nKatniss came up the stairs. I saw she was quite drunk. \"Silly thing to do,\" she said. \"Make an awful row. I say, you weren't asleep, were you?\"\n\"What did you think I was doing?\"\n\"Don't know. What time is it?\"\nI looked at the clock. It was half-past four. \"Had no idea what hour it was,\" Katniss said. \"I say, can a chap sit down? Don't be cross, darling. Just left the count. He brought me here.\"\n\"What's he like?\" I was getting brandy and soda and glasses.\n\"Just a little,\" said Katniss. \"Don't try and make me drunk. The count? Oh, rather. He's quite one of us.\"\n\"Is he a count?\"\n\"Here's how. I rather think so, you know. Deserves to be, anyhow. Knows hell's own amount about people. Don't know where he got it all. Owns a chain of sweetshops in the States.\"\nShe sipped at her glass.\n\"Think he called it a chain. Something like that. Linked them all up. Told me a little about it. Damned interesting. He's one of us, though. Oh, quite. No doubt. One can always tell.\"\nShe took another drink.\n\"How do I buck on about all this? You don't mind, do you? He's putting up for Zizi, you know.\"\n\"Is Zizi really a duke, too?\"\n\"I shouldn't wonder. Greek, you know. Rotten painter. I rather liked the count.\"\n\"Where did you go with him?\"\n\"Oh, everywhere. He just brought me here now. Offered me ten thousand dollars to go to Biarritz with him. How much is that in pounds?\"\n\"Around two thousand.\"\n\"Lot of money. I told him I couldn't do it. He was awfully nice about it. Told him I knew too many people in Biarritz.\"\nKatniss laughed.\n\"I say, you are slow on the up-take,\" she said. I had only sipped my brandy and soda. I took a long drink.\n\"That's better. Very funny,\" Katniss said. \"Then he wanted me to go to Cannes with him. Told him I knew too many people in Cannes. Monte Carlo. Told him I knew too many people in Monte Carlo. Told him I knew too many people everywhere. Quite true, too. So I asked him to bring me here.\"\nShe looked at me, her hand on the table, her glass raised. \"Don't look like that,\" she said. \"Told him I was in love with you. True, too. Don't look like that. He was damn nice about it. Wants to drive us out to dinner to-morrow night. Like to go?\"\n\"Why not?\"\n\"I'd better go now.\"\n\"Why?\"\n\"Just wanted to see you. Damned silly idea. Want to get dressed and come down? He's got the car just up the street.\"\n\"The count?\"\n\"Himself. And a chauffeur in livery. Going to drive me around and have breakfast in the Bois. Hampers. Got it all at Zelli's. Dozen bottles of Mumms. Tempt you?\"\n\"I have to work in the morning,\" I said. \"I'm too far behind you now to catch up and be any fun.\"\n\"Don't be an ass.\"\n\"Can't do it.\"\n\"Right. Send him a tender message?\"\n\"Anything. Absolutely.\"\n\"Good night, darling.\"\n\"Don't be sentimental.\"\n\"You make me ill.\"\nWe kissed good night and Katniss shivered. \"I'd better go,\" she said. \"Good night, darling.\"\n\"You don't have to go.\"\n\"Yes.\"\nWe kissed again on the stairs and as I called for the cordon the concierge muttered something behind her door. I went back up-stairs and from the open window watched Katniss walking up the street to the big limousine drawn up to the curb under the arc-light. She got in and it started off. I turned around. On the table was an empty glass and a glass half-full of brandy and soda. I took them both out to the kitchen and poured the half-full glass down the sink. I turned off the gas in the dining-room, kicked off my slippers sitting on the bed, and got into bed. This was Katniss, that I had felt like crying about. Then I thought of her walking up the street and stepping into the car, as I had last seen her, and of course in a little while I felt like hell again. It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.\nCHAPTER 5\nIn the morning I walked down the Boulevard to the rue Soufflot for coffee and brioche. It was a fine morning. The horse-chestnut trees in the Luxembourg gardens were in bloom. There was the pleasant early-morning feeling of a hot day. I read the papers with the coffee and then smoked a cigarette. The flower-women were coming up from the market and arranging their daily stock. Students went by going up to the law school, or down to the Sorbonne. The Boulevard was busy with trams and people going to work. I got on an S bus and rode down to the Madeleine, standing on the back platform. From the Madeleine I walked along the Boulevard des Capucines to the Opera, and up to my office. I passed the man with the jumping frogs and the man with the boxer toys. I stepped aside to avoid walking into the thread with which his girl assistant manipulated the boxers. She was standing looking away, the thread in her folded hands. The man was urging two tourists to buy. Three more tourists had stopped and were watching. I walked on behind a man who was pushing a roller that printed the name CINZANO on the sidewalk in damp letters. All along people were going to work. It felt pleasant to be going to work. I walked across the avenue and turned in to my office.\nUp-stairs in the office I read the French morning papers, smoked, and then sat at the typewriter and got off a good morning's work. At eleven o'clock I went over to the Quai d'Orsay in a taxi and went in and sat with about a dozen correspondents, while the foreign-office mouthpiece, a young Nouvelle Revue Fran\u00e7aise diplomat in horn-rimmed spectacles, talked and answered questions for half an hour. The President of the Council was in Lyons making a speech, or, rather he was on his way back. Several people asked questions to hear themselves talk and there were a couple of questions asked by news service men who wanted to know the answers. There was no news. I shared a taxi back from the Quai d'Orsay with Woolsey and Krum.\n\"What do you do nights, Perla?\" asked Krum. \"I never see you around.\"\n\"Oh, I'm over in the Quarter.\"\n\"I'm coming over some night. The Dingo. That's the great place, isn't it?\"\n\"Yes. That, or this new dive, The Select.\"\n\"I've meant to get over,\" said Krum. \"You know how it is, though, with a wife and kids.\"\n\"Playing any tennis?\" Woolsey asked.\n\"Well, no,\" said Krum. \"I can't say I've played any this year. I've tried to get away, but Sundays it's always rained, and the courts are so damned crowded.\"\n\"The Englishmen all have Saturday off,\" Woolsey said.\n\"Lucky beggars,\" said Krum. \"Well, I'll tell you. Some day I'm not going to be working for an agency. Then I'll have plenty of time to get out in the country.\"\n\"That's the thing to do. Live out in the country and have a little car.\"\n\"I've been thinking some about getting a car next year.\"\nI banged on the glass. The chauffeur stopped. \"Here's my street,\" I said. \"Come in and have a drink.\"\n\"Thanks, old man,\" Krum said. Woolsey shook his head. \"I've got to file that line he got off this morning.\"\nI put a two-franc piece in Krum's hand.\n\"You're crazy, Perla,\" he said. \"This is on me.\"\n\"It's all on the office, anyway.\"\n\"Nope. I want to get it.\"\nI waved good-by. Krum put his head out. \"See you at the lunch on Wednesday.\"\n\"You bet.\"\nI went to the office in the elevator. Henley Kallie was waiting for me. \"Hello, Perla,\" he said. \"Going out to lunch?\"\n\"Yes. Let me see if there is anything new.\"\n\"Where will we eat?\"\n\"Anywhere.\"\nI was looking over my desk. \"Where do you want to eat?\"\n\"How about Wetzel's? They've got good hors d'oeuvres.\"\nIn the restaurant we ordered hors d'oeuvres and beer. The sommelier brought the beer, tall, beaded on the outside of the steins, and cold. There were a dozen different dishes of hors d'oeuvres.\n\"Have any fun last night?\" I asked.\n\"No. I don't think so.\"\n\"How's the writing going?\"\n\"Rotten. I can't get this second book going.\"\n\"That happens to everybody.\"\n\"Oh, I'm sure of that. It gets me worried, though.\"\n\"Thought any more about going to South America?\"\n\"I mean that.\"\n\"Well, why don't you start off?\"\n\"Xanthe.\"\n\"Well,\" I said, \"take her with you.\"\n\"She wouldn't like it. That isn't the sort of thing she likes. She likes a lot of people around.\"\n\"Tell her to go to hell.\"\n\"I can't. I've got certain obligations to her.\"\nHe shoved the sliced cucumbers away and took a pickled herring.\n\"What do you know about Quentin Katniss Jaden, Perla?\"\n\"Her name's Quentin Jaden. Katniss's her own name. She's a nice girl,\" I said. \"She's getting a divorce and she's going to marry Jaylene Aurelia. He's over in Scotland now. Why?\"\n\"She's a remarkably attractive woman.\"\n\"Isn't she?\"\n\"There's a certain quality about her, a certain fineness. She seems to be absolutely fine and straight.\"\n\"She's very nice.\"\n\"I don't know how to describe the quality,\" Kallie said. \"I suppose it's breeding.\"\n\"You sound as though you liked her pretty well.\"\n\"I do. I shouldn't wonder if I were in love with her.\"\n\"She's a drunk,\" I said. \"She's in love with Jaylene Aurelia, and she's going to marry him. He's going to be rich as hell some day.\"\n\"I don't believe she'll ever marry him.\"\n\"Why not?\"\n\"I don't know. I just don't believe it. Have you known her a long time?\"\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"She was a V. A. D. in a hospital I was in during the war.\"\n\"She must have been just a kid then.\"\n\"She's thirty-four now.\"\n\"When did she marry Jaden?\"\n\"During the war. Her own true love had just kicked off with the dysentery.\"\n\"You talk sort of bitter.\"\n\"Sorry. I didn't mean to. I was just trying to give you the facts.\"\n\"I don't believe she would marry anybody she didn't love.\"\n\"Well,\" I said. \"She's done it twice.\"\n\"I don't believe it.\"\n\"Well,\" I said, \"don't ask me a lot of fool questions if you don't like the answers.\"\n\"I didn't ask you that.\"\n\"You asked me what I knew about Katniss Jaden.\"\n\"I didn't ask you to insult her.\"\n\"Oh, go to hell.\"\nHe stood up from the table his face white, and stood there white and angry behind the little plates of hors d'oeuvres.\n\"Sit down,\" I said. \"Don't be a fool.\"\n\"You've got to take that back.\"\n\"Oh, cut out the prep-school stuff.\"\n\"Take it back.\"\n\"Sure. Anything. I never heard of Katniss Jaden. How's that?\n\"No. Not that. About me going to hell.\"\n\"Oh, don't go to hell,\" I said. \"Stick around. We're just starting lunch.\"\nKallie smiled again and sat down. He seemed glad to sit down. What the hell would he have done if he hadn't sat down? \"You say such damned insulting things, Perla.\"\n\"I'm sorry. I've got a nasty tongue. I never mean it when I say nasty things.\"\n\"I know it,\" Kallie said. \"You're really about the best friend I have, Perla.\"\nGod help you, I thought. \"Forget what I said,\" I said out loud. \"I'm sorry.\"\n\"It's all right. It's fine. I was just sore for a minute.\"\n\"Good. Let's get something else to eat.\"\nAfter we finished the lunch we walked up to the Cafe de la Paix and had coffee. I could feel Kallie wanted to bring up Katniss again, but I held him off it. We talked about one thing and another, and I left him to come to the office.\nCHAPTER 6\nAt five o'clock I was in the Hotel Crillon waiting for Katniss. She was not there, so I sat down and wrote some letters. They were not very good letters but I hoped their being on Crillon stationery would help them. Katniss did not turn up, so about quarter to six I went down to the bar and had a Jack Rose with George the barman. Katniss had not been in the bar either, and so I looked for her up-stairs on my way out, and took a taxi to the Cafe Select. Crossing the Seine I saw a string of barges being towed empty down the current, riding high, the bargemen at the sweeps as they came toward the bridge. The river looked nice. It was always pleasant crossing bridges in Paris.\nThe taxi rounded the statue of the inventor of the semaphore engaged in doing same, and turned up the Boulevard Raspail, and I sat back to let that part of the ride pass. The Boulevard Raspail always made dull riding. It was like a certain stretch on the P. L. M. between Fontainebleau and Montereau that always made me feel bored and dead and dull until it was over. I suppose it is some association of ideas that makes those dead places in a journey. There are other streets in Paris as ugly as the Boulevard Raspail. It is a street I do not mind walking down at all. But I cannot stand to ride along it. Perhaps I had read something about it once. That was the way Henley Kallie was about all of Paris. I wondered where Kallie got that incapacity to enjoy Paris. Possibly from Mencken. Mencken hates Paris, I believe. So many young men get their likes and dislikes from Mencken.\nThe taxi stopped in front of the Rotonde. No matter what cafe in Montparnasse you ask a taxi-driver to bring you to from the right bank of the river, they always take you to the Rotonde. Ten years from now it will probably be the Dome. It was near enough, anyway. I walked past the sad tables of the Rotonde to the Select. There were a few people inside at the bar, and outside, alone, sat Raina Perrie. He had a pile of saucers in front of him, and he needed a shave.\n\"Sit down,\" said Raina, \"I've been looking for you.\"\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\"Nothing. Just looking for you.\"\n\"Been out to the races?\"\n\"No. Not since Sunday.\"\n\"What do you hear from the States?\"\n\"Nothing. Absolutely nothing.\"\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\"I don't know. I'm through with them. I'm absolutely through with them.\"\nHe leaned forward and looked me in the eye.\n\"Do you want to know something, Perla?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"I haven't had anything to eat for five days.\"\nI figured rapidly back in my mind. It was three days ago that Raina had won two hundred francs from me shaking poker dice in the New York Bar.\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\"No money. Money hasn't come,\" he paused. \"I tell you it's strange, Perla. When I'm like this I just want to be alone. I want to stay in my own room. I'm like a cat.\"\nI felt in my pocket.\n\"Would a hundred help you any, Raina?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Come on. Let's go and eat.\"\n\"There's no hurry. Have a drink.\"\n\"Better eat.\"\n\"No. When I get like this I don't care whether I eat or not.\"\nWe had a drink. Raina added my saucer to his own pile.\n\"Do you know Mencken, Raina?\"\n\"Yes. Why?\"\n\"What's he like?\"\n\"He's all right. He says some pretty funny things. Last time I had dinner with him we talked about Hoffenheimer. 'The trouble is,' he said, 'he's a garter snapper.' That's not bad.\"\n\"That's not bad.\"\n\"He's through now,\" Raina went on. \"He's written about all the things he knows, and now he's on all the things he doesn't know.\"\n\"I guess he's all right,\" I said. \"I just can't read him.\"\n\"Oh, nobody reads him now,\" Raina said, \"except the people that used to read the Alexander Hamilton Institute.\"\n\"Well,\" I said. \"That was a good thing, too.\"\n\"Sure,\" said Raina. So we sat and thought deeply for a while.\n\"Have another port?\"\n\"All right,\" said Raina.\n\"There comes Kallie,\" I said. Henley Kallie was crossing the street.\n\"That moron,\" said Raina. Kallie came up to our table.\n\"Hello, you bums,\" he said.\n\"Hello, Henley,\" Raina said. \"I was just telling Perla here that you're a moron.\"\n\"What do you mean?\"\n\"Tell us right off. Don't think. What would you rather do if you could do anything you wanted?\"\nKallie started to consider.\n\"Don't think. Bring it right out.\"\n\"I don't know,\" Kallie said. \"What's it all about, anyway?\"\n\"I mean what would you rather do. What comes into your head first. No matter how silly it is.\"\n\"I don't know,\" Kallie said. \"I think I'd rather play football again with what I know about handling myself, now.\"\n\"I misjudged you,\" Raina said. \"You're not a moron. You're only a case of arrested development.\"\n\"You're awfully funny, Raina,\" Kallie said. \"Some day somebody will push your face in.\"\nRaina Perrie laughed. \"You think so. They won't, though. Because it wouldn't make any difference to me. I'm not a fighter.\"\n\"It would make a difference to you if anybody did it.\"\n\"No, it wouldn't. That's where you make your big mistake. Because you're not intelligent.\"\n\"Cut it out about me.\"\n\"Sure,\" said Raina. \"It doesn't make any difference to me. You don't mean anything to me.\"\n\"Come on, Raina,\" I said. \"Have another porto.\"\n\"No,\" he said. \"I'm going up the street and eat. See you later, Perla.\"\nHe walked out and up the street. I watched him crossing the street through the taxis, small, heavy, slowly sure of himself in the traffic.\n\"He always gets me sore,\" Kallie said. \"I can't stand him.\"\n\"I like him,\" I said. \"I'm fond of him. You don't want to get sore at him.\"\n\"I know it,\" Kallie said. \"He just gets on my nerves.\"\n\"Write this afternoon?\"\n\"No. I couldn't get it going. It's harder to do than my first book. I'm having a hard time handling it.\"\nThe sort of healthy conceit that he had when he returned from America early in the spring was gone. Then he had been sure of his work, only with these personal longings for adventure. Now the sureness was gone. Somehow I feel I have not shown Henley Kallie clearly. The reason is that until he fell in love with Katniss, I never heard him make one remark that would, in any way, detach him from other people. He was nice to watch on the tennis-court, he had a good body, and he kept it in shape; he handled his cards well at bridge, and he had a funny sort of undergraduate quality about him. If he were in a crowd nothing he said stood out. He wore what used to be called polo shirts at school, and may be called that still, but he was not professionally youthful. I do not believe he thought about his clothes much. Externally he had been formed at Princeton. Internally he had been moulded by the two women who had trained him. He had a nice, boyish sort of cheerfulness that had never been trained out of him, and I probably have not brought it out. He loved to win at tennis. He probably loved to win as much as Lenglen, for instance. On the other hand, he was not angry at being beaten. When he fell in love with Katniss his tennis game went all to pieces. People beat him who had never had a chance with him. He was very nice about it.\nAnyhow, we were sitting on the terrace of the Cafe Select, and Raina Perrie had just crossed the street.\n\"Come on up to the Lilas,\" I said.\n\"I have a date.\"\n\"What time?\"\n\"Xanthe is coming here at seven-fifteen.\"\n\"There she is.\"\nXanthe Sania was coming toward us from across the street. She was a very tall girl who walked with a great deal of movement. She waved and smiled. We watched her cross the street.\n\"Hello,\" she said, \"I'm so glad you're here, Perla. I've been wanting to talk to you.\"\n\"Hello, Xanthe,\" said Kallie. He smiled.\n\"Why, hello, Henley. Are you here?\" She went on, talking rapidly. \"I've had the darndest time. This one\"--shaking her head at Kallie--\"didn't come home for lunch.\"\n\"I wasn't supposed to.\"\n\"Oh, I know. But you didn't say anything about it to the cook. Then I had a date myself, and Paula wasn't at her office. I went to the Ritz and waited for her, and she never came, and of course I didn't have enough money to lunch at the Ritz----\"\n\"What did you do?\"\n\"Oh, went out, of course.\" She spoke in a sort of imitation joyful manner. \"I always keep my appointments. No one keeps theirs, nowadays. I ought to know better. How are you, Perla, anyway?\"\n\"Fine.\"\n\"That was a fine girl you had at the dance, and then went off with that Katniss one.\"\n\"Don't you like her?\" Kallie asked.\n\"I think she's perfectly charming. Don't you?\"\nKallie said nothing.\n\"Look, Perla. I want to talk with you. Would you come over with me to the Dome? You'll stay here, won't you, Henley? Come on, Perla.\"\nWe crossed the Boulevard Montparnasse and sat down at a table. A boy came up with the Paris Times, and I bought one and opened it.\n\"What's the matter, Xanthe?\"\n\"Oh, nothing,\" she said, \"except that he wants to leave me.\"\n\"How do you mean?\"\n\"Oh, he told every one that we were going to be married, and I told my mother and every one, and now he doesn't want to do it.\"\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\"He's decided he hasn't lived enough. I knew it would happen when he went to New York.\"\nShe looked up, very bright-eyed and trying to talk inconsequentially.\n\"I wouldn't marry him if he doesn't want to. Of course I wouldn't. I wouldn't marry him now for anything. But it does seem to me to be a little late now, after we've waited three years, and I've just gotten my divorce.\"\nI said nothing.\n\"We were going to celebrate so, and instead we've just had scenes. It's so childish. We have dreadful scenes, and he cries and begs me to be reasonable, but he says he just can't do it.\"\n\"It's rotten luck.\"\n\"I should say it is rotten luck. I've wasted two years and a half on him now. And I don't know now if any man will ever want to marry me. Two years ago I could have married anybody I wanted, down at Cannes. All the old ones that wanted to marry somebody chic and settle down were crazy about me. Now I don't think I could get anybody.\"\n\"Sure, you could marry anybody.\"\n\"No, I don't believe it. And I'm fond of him, too. And I'd like to have children. I always thought we'd have children.\"\nShe looked at me very brightly. \"I never liked children much, but I don't want to think I'll never have them. I always thought I'd have them and then like them.\"\n\"He's got children.\"\n\"Oh, yes. He's got children, and he's got money, and he's got a rich mother, and he's written a book, and nobody will publish my stuff; nobody at all. It isn't bad, either. And I haven't got any money at all. I could have had alimony, but I got the divorce the quickest way.\"\nShe looked at me again very brightly.\n\"It isn't right. It's my own fault and it's not, too. I ought to have known better. And when I tell him he just cries and says he can't marry. Why can't he marry? I'd be a good wife. I'm easy to get along with. I leave him alone. It doesn't do any good.\"\n\"It's a rotten shame.\"\n\"Yes, it is a rotten shame. But there's no use talking about it, is there? Come on, let's go back to the cafe.\"\n\"And of course there isn't anything I can do.\"\n\"No. Just don't let him know I talked to you. I know what he wants.\" Now for the first time she dropped her bright, terribly cheerful manner. \"He wants to go back to New York alone, and be there when his book comes out so when a lot of little chickens like it. That's what he wants.\"\n\"Maybe they won't like it. I don't think he's that way. Really.\"\n\"You don't know him like I do, Perla. That's what he wants to do. I know it. I know it. That's why he doesn't want to marry. He wants to have a big triumph this fall all by himself.\"\n\"Want to go back to the cafe?\"\n\"Yes. Come on.\"\nWe got up from the table--they had never brought us a drink--and started across the street toward the Select, where Kallie sat smiling at us from behind the marble-topped table.\n\"Well, what are you smiling at?\" Xanthe asked him. \"Feel pretty happy?\"\n\"I was smiling at you and Perla with your secrets.\"\n\"Oh, what I've told Perla isn't any secret. Everybody will know it soon enough. I only wanted to give Perla a decent version.\"\n\"What was it? About your going to England?\"\n\"Yes, about my going to England. Oh, Perla! I forgot to tell you. I'm going to England.\"\n\"Isn't that fine!\"\n\"Yes, that's the way it's done in the very best families. Henley's sending me. He's going to give me two hundred pounds and then I'm going to visit friends. Won't it be lovely? The friends don't know about it, yet.\"\nShe turned to Kallie and smiled at him. He was not smiling now.\n\"You were only going to give me a hundred pounds, weren't you, Henley? But I made him give me two hundred. He's really very generous. Aren't you, Henley?\"\nI do not know how people could say such terrible things to Henley Kallie. There are people to whom you could not say insulting things. They give you a feeling that the world would be destroyed, would actually be destroyed before your eyes, if you said certain things. But here was Kallie taking it all. Here it was, all going on right before me, and I did not even feel an impulse to try and stop it. And this was friendly joking to what went on later.\n\"How can you say such things, Xanthe?\" Kallie interrupted.\n\"Listen to him. I'm going to England. I'm going to visit friends. Ever visit friends that didn't want you? Oh, they'll have to take me, all right. 'How do you do, my dear? Such a long time since we've seen you. And how is your dear mother?' Yes, how is my dear mother? She put all her money into French war bonds. Yes, she did. Probably the only person in the world that did. 'And what about Henley?' or else very careful talking around Henley. 'You must be most careful not to mention him, my dear. Poor Xanthe has had a most unfortunate experience.' Won't it be fun, Henley? Don't you think it will be fun, Perla?\"\nShe turned to me with that terribly bright smile. It was very satisfactory to her to have an audience for this.\n\"And where are you going to be, Henley? It's my own fault, all right. Perfectly my own fault. When I made you get rid of your little secretary on the magazine I ought to have known you'd get rid of me the same way. Perla doesn't know about that. Should I tell him?\"\n\"Shut up, Xanthe, for God's sake.\"\n\"Yes, I'll tell him. Henley had a little secretary on the magazine. Just the sweetest little thing in the world, and he thought she was wonderful, and then I came along and he thought I was pretty wonderful, too. So I made him get rid of her, and he had brought her to Provincetown from Carmel when he moved the magazine, and he didn't even pay her fare back to the coast. All to please me. He thought I was pretty fine, then. Didn't you, Henley?\n\"You mustn't misunderstand, Perla, it was absolutely platonic with the secretary. Not even platonic. Nothing at all, really. It was just that she was so nice. And he did that just to please me. Well, I suppose that we that live by the sword shall perish by the sword. Isn't that literary, though? You want to remember that for your next book, Henley.\n\"You know Henley is going to get material for a new book. Aren't you, Henley? That's why he's leaving me. He's decided I don't film well. You see, he was so busy all the time that we were living together, writing on this book, that he doesn't remember anything about us. So now he's going out and get some new material. Well, I hope he gets something frightfully interesting.\n\"Listen, Henley, dear. Let me tell you something. You won't mind, will you? Don't have scenes with your young ladies. Try not to. Because you can't have scenes without crying, and then you pity yourself so much you can't remember what the other person's said. You'll never be able to remember any conversations that way. Just try and be calm. I know it's awfully hard. But remember, it's for literature. We all ought to make sacrifices for literature. Look at me. I'm going to England without a protest. All for literature. We must all help young writers. Don't you think so, Perla? But you're not a young writer. Are you, Henley? You're thirty-four. Still, I suppose that is young for a great writer. Look at Hardy. Look at Anatole France. He just died a little while ago. Henley doesn't think he's any good, though. Some of his French friends told him. He doesn't read French very well himself. He wasn't a good writer like you are, was he, Henley? Do you think he ever had to go and look for material? What do you suppose he said to his mistresses when he wouldn't marry them? I wonder if he cried, too? Oh, I've just thought of something.\" She put her gloved hand up to her lips. \"I know the real reason why Henley won't marry me, Perla. It's just come to me. They've sent it to me in a vision in the Cafe Select. Isn't it mystic? Some day they'll put a tablet up. Like at Lourdes. Do you want to hear, Henley? I'll tell you. It's so simple. I wonder why I never thought about it. Why, you see, Henley's always wanted to have a mistress, and if he doesn't marry me, why, then he's had one. She was his mistress for over two years. See how it is? And if he marries me, like he's always promised he would, that would be the end of all the romance. Don't you think that's bright of me to figure that out? It's true, too. Look at him and see if it's not. Where are you going, Perla?\"\n\"I've got to go in and see Raina Perrie a minute.\"\nKallie looked up as I went in. His face was white. Why did he sit there? Why did he keep on taking it like that?\nAs I stood against the bar looking out I could see them through the window. Xanthe was talking on to him, smiling brightly, looking into his face each time she asked: \"Isn't it so, Henley?\" Or maybe she did not ask that now. Perhaps she said something else. I told the barman I did not want anything to drink and went out through the side door. As I went out the door I looked back through the two thicknesses of glass and saw them sitting there. She was still talking to him. I went down a side street to the Boulevard Raspail. A taxi came along and I got in and gave the driver the address of my flat.\nCHAPTER 7\nAs I started up the stairs the concierge knocked on the glass of the door of her lodge, and as I stopped she came out. She had some letters and a telegram.\n\"Here is the post. And there was a lady here to see you.\"\n\"Did she leave a card?\"\n\"No. She was with a gentleman. It was the one who was here last night. In the end I find she is very nice.\"\n\"Was she with a friend of mine?\"\n\"I don't know. He was never here before. He was very large. Very, very large. She was very nice. Very, very nice. Last night she was, perhaps, a little--\" She put her head on one hand and rocked it up and down. \"I'll speak perfectly frankly, Monsieur Jai. Last night I found her not so gentille. Last night I formed another idea of her. But listen to what I tell you. She is tres, tres gentille. She is of very good family. It is a thing you can see.\"\n\"They did not leave any word?\"\n\"Yes. They said they would be back in an hour.\"\n\"Send them up when they come.\"\n\"Yes, Monsieur Jai. And that lady, that lady there is some one. An eccentric, perhaps, but quelqu'une, quelqu'une!\"\nThe concierge, before she became a concierge, had owned a drink-selling concession at the Paris race-courses. Her life-work lay in the pelouse, but she kept an eye on the people of the pesage, and she took great pride in telling me which of my guests were well brought up, which were of good family, who were sportsmen, a French word pronounced with the accent on the men. The only trouble was that people who did not fall into any of those three categories were very liable to be told there was no one home, chez Jai. One of my friends, an extremely underfed-looking painter, who was obviously to Madame Duzinell neither well brought up, of good family, nor a sportsman, wrote me a letter asking if I could get him a pass to get by the concierge so he could come up and see me occasionally in the evenings.\nI went up to the flat wondering what Katniss had done to the concierge. The wire was a cable from Cece Kingston, saying he was arriving on the France. I put the mail on the table, went back to the bedroom, undressed and had a shower. I was rubbing down when I heard the door-bell pull. I put on a bathrobe and slippers and went to the door. It was Katniss. Back of her was the count. He was holding a great bunch of roses.\n\"Hello, darling,\" said Katniss. \"Aren't you going to let us in?\"\n\"Come on. I was just bathing.\"\n\"Aren't you the fortunate man. Bathing.\"\n\"Only a shower. Sit down, Count Alivia. What will you drink?\"\n\"I don't know whether you like flowers, sir,\" the count said, \"but I took the liberty of just bringing these roses.\"\n\"Here, give them to me.\" Katniss took them. \"Get me some water in this, Perla.\" I filled the big earthenware jug with water in the kitchen, and Katniss put the roses in it, and placed them in the centre of the dining-room table.\n\"I say. We have had a day.\"\n\"You don't remember anything about a date with me at the Crillon?\"\n\"No. Did we have one? I must have been blind.\"\n\"You were quite drunk, my dear,\" said the count.\n\"Wasn't I, though? And the count's been a brick, absolutely.\"\n\"You've got hell's own drag with the concierge now.\"\n\"I ought to have. Gave her two hundred francs.\"\n\"Don't be a damned fool.\"\n\"His,\" she said, and nodded at the count.\n\"I thought we ought to give her a little something for last night. It was very late.\"\n\"He's wonderful,\" Katniss said. \"He remembers everything that's happened.\"\n\"So do you, my dear.\"\n\"Fancy,\" said Katniss. \"Who'd want to? I say, Perla, do we get a drink?\"\n\"You get it while I go in and dress. You know where it is.\"\n\"Rather.\"\nWhile I dressed I heard Katniss put down glasses and then a siphon, and then heard them talking. I dressed slowly, sitting on the bed. I felt tired and pretty rotten. Katniss came in the room, a glass in her hand, and sat on the bed.\n\"What's the matter, darling? Do you feel rocky?\"\nShe kissed me coolly on the forehead.\n\"Oh, Katniss, I love you so much.\"\n\"Darling,\" she said. Then: \"Do you want me to send him away?\"\n\"No. He's nice.\"\n\"I'll send him away.\"\n\"No, don't.\"\n\"Yes, I'll send him away.\"\n\"You can't just like that.\"\n\"Can't I, though? You stay here. He's mad about me, I tell you.\"\nShe was gone out of the room. I lay face down on the bed. I was having a bad time. I heard them talking but I did not listen. Katniss came in and sat on the bed.\n\"Poor old darling.\" She stroked my head.\n\"What did you say to him?\" I was lying with my face away from her. I did not want to see her.\n\"Sent him for champagne. He loves to go for champagne.\"\nThen later: \"Do you feel better, darling? Is the head any better?\"\n\"It's better.\"\n\"Lie quiet. He's gone to the other side of town.\"\n\"Couldn't we live together, Katniss? Couldn't we just live together?\"\n\"I don't think so. I'd just tromper you with everybody. You couldn't stand it.\"\n\"I stand it now.\"\n\"That would be different. It's my fault, Perla. It's the way I'm made.\"\n\"Couldn't we go off in the country for a while?\"\n\"It wouldn't be any good. I'll go if you like. But I couldn't live quietly in the country. Not with my own true love.\"\n\"I know.\"\n\"Isn't it rotten? There isn't any use my telling you I love you.\"\n\"You know I love you.\"\n\"Let's not talk. Talking's all bilge. I'm going away from you, and then Michael's coming back.\"\n\"Why are you going away?\"\n\"Better for you. Better for me.\"\n\"When are you going?\"\n\"Soon as I can.\"\n\"Where?\"\n\"San Sebastian.\"\n\"Can't we go together?\"\n\"No. That would be a hell of an idea after we'd just talked it out.\"\n\"We never agreed.\"\n\"Oh, you know as well as I do. Don't be obstinate, darling.\"\n\"Oh, sure,\" I said. \"I know you're right. I'm just low, and when I'm low I talk like a fool.\"\nI sat up, leaned over, found my shoes beside the bed and put them on. I stood up.\n\"Don't look like that, darling.\"\n\"How do you want me to look?\"\n\"Oh, don't be a fool. I'm going away to-morrow.\"\n\"To-morrow?\"\n\"Yes. Didn't I say so? I am.\"\n\"Let's have a drink, then. The count will be back.\"\n\"Yes. He should be back. You know he's extraordinary about buying champagne. It means any amount to him.\"\nWe went into the dining-room. I took up the brandy bottle and poured Katniss a drink and one for myself. There was a ring at the bell-pull. I went to the door and there was the count. Behind him was the chauffeur carrying a basket of champagne.\n\"Where should I have him put it, sir?\" asked the count.\n\"In the kitchen,\" Katniss said.\n\"Put it in there, Henry,\" the count motioned. \"Now go down and get the ice.\" He stood looking after the basket inside the kitchen door. \"I think you'll find that's very good wine,\" he said. \"I know we don't get much of a chance to judge good wine in the States now, but I got this from a friend of mine that's in the business.\"\n\"Oh, you always have some one in the trade,\" Katniss said.\n\"This fellow raises the grapes. He's got thousands of acres of them.\"\n\"What's his name?\" asked Katniss. \"Veuve Cliquot?\"\n\"No,\" said the count. \"Mumms. He's a baron.\"\n\"Isn't it wonderful,\" said Katniss. \"We all have titles. Why haven't you a title, Perla?\"\n\"I assure you, sir,\" the count put his hand on my arm. \"It never does a man any good. Most of the time it costs you money.\"\n\"Oh, I don't know. It's damned useful sometimes,\" Katniss said.\n\"I've never known it to do me any good.\"\n\"You haven't used it properly. I've had hell's own amount of credit on mine.\"\n\"Do sit down, count,\" I said. \"Let me take that stick.\"\nThe count was looking at Katniss across the table under the gas-light. She was smoking a cigarette and flicking the ashes on the rug. She saw me notice it. \"I say, Perla, I don't want to ruin your rugs. Can't you give a chap an ash-tray?\"\nI found some ash-trays and spread them around. The chauffeur came up with a bucket full of salted ice. \"Put two bottles in it, Henry,\" the count called.\n\"Anything else, sir?\"\n\"No. Wait down in the car.\" He turned to Katniss and to me. \"We'll want to ride out to the Bois for dinner?\"\n\"If you like,\" Katniss said. \"I couldn't eat a thing.\"\n\"I always like a good meal,\" said the count.\n\"Should I bring the wine in, sir?\" asked the chauffeur.\n\"Yes. Bring it in, Henry,\" said the count. He took out a heavy pigskin cigar-case and offered it to me. \"Like to try a real American cigar?\"\n\"Thanks,\" I said. \"I'll finish the cigarette.\"\nHe cut off the end of his cigar with a gold cutter he wore on one end of his watch-chain.\n\"I like a cigar to really draw,\" said the count \"Half the cigars you smoke don't draw.\"\nHe lit the cigar, puffed at it, looking across the table at Katniss. \"And when you're divorced, Quentin Jaden, then you won't have a title.\"\n\"No. What a pity.\"\n\"No,\" said the count. \"You don't need a title. You got class all over you.\"\n\"Thanks. Awfully decent of you.\"\n\"I'm not joking you,\" the count blew a cloud of smoke. \"You got the most class of anybody I ever seen. You got it. That's all.\"\n\"Nice of you,\" said Katniss. \"Mummy would be pleased. Couldn't you write it out, and I'll send it in a letter to her.\"\n\"I'd tell her, too,\" said the count. \"I'm not joking you. I never joke people. Joke people and you make enemies. That's what I always say.\"\n\"You're right,\" Katniss said. \"You're terribly right. I always joke people and I haven't a friend in the world. Except Perla here.\"\n\"You don't joke him.\"\n\"That's it.\"\n\"Do you, now?\" asked the count. \"Do you joke him?\"\nKatniss looked at me and wrinkled up the corners of her eyes.\n\"No,\" she said. \"I wouldn't joke him.\"\n\"See,\" said the count. \"You don't joke him.\"\n\"This is a hell of a dull talk,\" Katniss said. \"How about some of that champagne?\"\nThe count reached down and twirled the bottles in the shiny bucket. \"It isn't cold, yet. You're always drinking, my dear. Why don't you just talk?\"\n\"I've talked too ruddy much. I've talked myself all out to Perla.\"\n\"I should like to hear you really talk, my dear. When you talk to me you never finish your sentences at all.\"\n\"Leave 'em for you to finish. Let any one finish them as they like.\"\n\"It is a very interesting system,\" the count reached down and gave the bottles a twirl. \"Still I would like to hear you talk some time.\"\n\"Isn't he a fool?\" Katniss asked.\n\"Now,\" the count brought up a bottle. \"I think this is cool.\"\nI brought a towel and he wiped the bottle dry and held it up. \"I like to drink champagne from magnums. The wine is better but it would have been too hard to cool.\" He held the bottle, looking at it. I put out the glasses.\n\"I say. You might open it,\" Katniss suggested.\n\"Yes, my dear. Now I'll open it.\"\nIt was amazing champagne.\n\"I say that is wine,\" Katniss held up her glass. \"We ought to toast something. 'Here's to royalty.'\"\n\"This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.\"\nKatniss's glass was empty.\n\"You ought to write a book on wines, count,\" I said.\n\"Mr. Jai,\" answered the count, \"all I want out of wines is to enjoy them.\"\n\"Let's enjoy a little more of this,\" Katniss pushed her glass forward. The count poured very carefully. \"There, my dear. Now you enjoy that slowly, and then you can get drunk.\"\n\"Drunk? Drunk?\"\n\"My dear, you are charming when you are drunk.\"\n\"Listen to the man.\"\n\"Mr. Jai,\" the count poured my glass full. \"She is the only lady I have ever known who was as charming when she was drunk as when she was sober.\"\n\"You haven't been around much, have you?\"\n\"Yes, my dear. I have been around very much. I have been around a very great deal.\"\n\"Drink your wine,\" said Katniss. \"We've all been around. I dare say Perla here has seen as much as you have.\"\n\"My dear, I am sure Mr. Jai has seen a lot. Don't think I don't think so, sir. I have seen a lot, too.\"\n\"Of course you have, my dear,\" Katniss said. \"I was only ragging.\"\n\"I have been in seven wars and four revolutions,\" the count said.\n\"Soldiering?\" Katniss asked.\n\"Sometimes, my dear. And I have got arrow wounds. Have you ever seen arrow wounds?\"\n\"Let's have a look at them.\"\nThe count stood up, unbuttoned his vest, and opened his shirt. He pulled up the undershirt onto his chest and stood, his chest black, and big stomach muscles bulging under the light.\n\"You see them?\"\nBelow the line where his ribs stopped were two raised white welts. \"See on the back where they come out.\" Above the small of the back were the same two scars, raised as thick as a finger.\n\"I say. Those are something.\"\n\"Clean through.\"\nThe count was tucking in his shirt.\n\"Where did you get those?\" I asked.\n\"In Abyssinia. When I was twenty-one years old.\"\n\"What were you doing?\" asked Katniss. \"Were you in the army?\"\n\"I was on a business trip, my dear.\"\n\"I told you he was one of us. Didn't I?\" Katniss turned to me. \"I love you, count. You're a darling.\"\n\"You make me very happy, my dear. But it isn't true.\"\n\"Don't be an ass.\"\n\"You see, Mr. Jai, it is because I have lived very much that now I can enjoy everything so well. Don't you find it like that?\"\n\"Yes. Absolutely.\"\n\"I know,\" said the count. \"That is the secret. You must get to know the values.\"\n\"Doesn't anything ever happen to your values?\" Katniss asked.\n\"No. Not any more.\"\n\"Never fall in love?\"\n\"Always,\" said the count. \"I am always in love.\"\n\"What does that do to your values?\"\n\"That, too, has got a place in my values.\"\n\"You haven't any values. You're dead, that's all.\"\n\"No, my dear. You're not right. I'm not dead at all.\"\nWe drank three bottles of the champagne and the count left the basket in my kitchen. We dined at a restaurant in the Bois. It was a good dinner. Food had an excellent place in the count's values. So did wine. The count was in fine form during the meal. So was Katniss. It was a good party.\n\"Where would you like to go?\" asked the count after dinner. We were the only people left in the restaurant. The two waiters were standing over against the door. They wanted to go home.\n\"We might go up on the hill,\" Katniss said. \"Haven't we had a splendid party?\"\nThe count was beaming. He was very happy.\n\"You are very nice people,\" he said. He was smoking a cigar again. \"Why don't you get married, you two?\"\n\"We want to lead our own lives,\" I said.\n\"We have our careers,\" Katniss said. \"Come on. Let's get out of this.\"\n\"Have another brandy,\" the count said.\n\"Get it on the hill.\"\n\"No. Have it here where it is quiet.\"\n\"You and your quiet,\" said Katniss. \"What is it men feel about quiet?\"\n\"We like it,\" said the count. \"Like you like noise, my dear.\"\n\"All right,\" said Katniss. \"Let's have one.\"\n\"Sommelier!\" the count called.\n\"Yes, sir.\"\n\"What is the oldest brandy you have?\"\n\"Eighteen eleven, sir.\"\n\"Bring us a bottle.\"\n\"I say. Don't be ostentatious. Call him off, Perla.\"\n\"Listen, my dear. I get more value for my money in old brandy than in any other antiquities.\"\n\"Got many antiquities?\"\n\"I got a houseful.\"\nFinally we went up to Montmartre. Inside Zelli's it was crowded, smoky, and noisy. The music hit you as you went in. Katniss and I danced. It was so crowded we could barely move. The nigger drummer waved at Katniss. We were caught in the jam, dancing in one place in front of him.\n\"Hahre you?\"\n\"Great.\"\n\"Thaats good.\"\nHe was all teeth and lips.\n\"He's a great friend of mine,\" Katniss said. \"Damn good drummer.\"\nThe music stopped and we started toward the table where the count sat. Then the music started again and we danced. I looked at the count. He was sitting at the table smoking a cigar. The music stopped again.\n\"Let's go over.\"\nKatniss started toward the table. The music started and again we danced, tight in the crowd.\n\"You are a rotten dancer, Perla. Michael's the best dancer I know.\"\n\"He's splendid.\"\n\"He's got his points.\"\n\"I like him,\" I said. \"I'm damned fond of him.\"\n\"I'm going to marry him,\" Katniss said. \"Funny. I haven't thought about him for a week.\"\n\"Don't you write him?\"\n\"Not I. Never write letters.\"\n\"I'll bet he writes to you.\"\n\"Rather. Damned good letters, too.\"\n\"When are you going to get married?\"\n\"How do I know? As soon as we can get the divorce. Michael's trying to get his mother to put up for it.\"\n\"Could I help you?\"\n\"Don't be an ass. Michael's people have loads of money.\"\nThe music stopped. We walked over to the table. The count stood up.\n\"Very nice,\" he said. \"You looked very, very nice.\"\n\"Don't you dance, count?\" I asked.\n\"No. I'm too old.\"\n\"Oh, come off it,\" Katniss said.\n\"My dear, I would do it if I would enjoy it. I enjoy to watch you dance.\"\n\"Splendid,\" Katniss said. \"I'll dance again for you some time. I say. What about your little friend, Zizi?\"\n\"Let me tell you. I support that boy, but I don't want to have him around.\"\n\"He is rather hard.\"\n\"You know I think that boy's got a future. But personally I don't want him around.\"\n\"Perla's rather the same way.\"\n\"He gives me the willys.\"\n\"Well,\" the count shrugged his shoulders. \"About his future you can't ever tell. Anyhow, his father was a great friend of my father.\"\n\"Come on. Let's dance,\" Katniss said.\nWe danced. It was crowded and close.\n\"Oh, darling,\" Katniss said, \"I'm so miserable.\"\nI had that feeling of going through something that has all happened before. \"You were happy a minute ago.\"\nThe drummer shouted: \"You can't two time--\"\n\"It's all gone.\"\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\"I don't know. I just feel terribly.\"\n\"......\" the drummer chanted. Then turned to his sticks.\n\"Want to go?\"\nI had the feeling as in a nightmare of it all being something repeated, something I had been through and that now I must go through again.\n\"......\" the drummer sang softly.\n\"Let's go,\" said Katniss. \"You don't mind.\"\n\"......\" the drummer shouted and grinned at Katniss.\n\"All right,\" I said. We got out from the crowd. Katniss went to the dressing-room.\n\"Katniss wants to go,\" I said to the count. He nodded. \"Does she? That's fine. You take the car. I'm going to stay here for a while, Mr. Jai.\"\nWe shook hands.\n\"It was a wonderful time,\" I said. \"I wish you would let me get this.\" I took a note out of my pocket.\n\"Mr. Jai, don't be ridiculous,\" the count said.\nKatniss came over with her wrap on. She kissed the count and put her hand on his shoulder to keep him from standing up. As we went out the door I looked back and there were three girls at his table. We got into the big car. Katniss gave the chauffeur the address of her hotel.\n\"No, don't come up,\" she said at the hotel. She had rung and the door was unlatched.\n\"Really?\"\n\"No. Please.\"\n\"Good night, Katniss,\" I said. \"I'm sorry you feel rotten.\"\n\"Good night, Perla. Good night, darling. I won't see you again.\" We kissed standing at the door. She pushed me away. We kissed again. \"Oh, don't!\" Katniss said.\nShe turned quickly and went into the hotel. The chauffeur drove me around to my flat. I gave him twenty francs and he touched his cap and said: \"Good night, sir,\" and drove off. I rang the bell. The door opened and I went up-stairs and went to bed.\nBOOK II\nCHAPTER 8\nI did not see Katniss again until she came back from San Sebastian. One card came from her from there. It had a picture of the Concha, and said: \"Darling. Very quiet and healthy. Love to all the chaps. KATNISS.\"\nNor did I see Henley Kallie again. I heard Xanthe had left for England and I had a note from Kallie saying he was going out in the country for a couple of weeks, he did not know where, but that he wanted to hold me to the fishing-trip in Spain we had talked about last winter. I could reach him always, he wrote, through his bankers.\nKatniss was gone, I was not bothered by Kallie's troubles, I rather enjoyed not having to play tennis, there was plenty of work to do, I went often to the races, dined with friends, and put in some extra time at the office getting things ahead so I could leave it in charge of my secretary when Cece Kingston and I should shove off to Spain the end of June. Cece Kingston arrived, put up a couple of days at the flat and went off to Vienna. He was very cheerful and said the States were wonderful. New York was wonderful. There had been a grand theatrical season and a whole crop of great young light heavyweights. Any one of them was a good prospect to grow up, put on weight and trim Dempsey. Cece was very happy. He had made a lot of money on his last book, and was going to make a lot more. We had a good time while he was in Paris, and then he went off to Vienna. He was coming back in three weeks and we would leave for Spain to get in some fishing and go to the fiesta at Pamplona. He wrote that Vienna was wonderful. Then a card from Budapest: \"Perla, Budapest is wonderful.\" Then I got a wire: \"Back on Monday.\"\nMonday evening he turned up at the flat. I heard his taxi stop and went to the window and called to him; he waved and started up-stairs carrying his bags. I met him on the stairs, and took one of the bags.\n\"Well,\" I said, \"I hear you had a wonderful trip.\"\n\"Wonderful,\" he said. \"Budapest is absolutely wonderful.\"\n\"How about Vienna?\"\n\"Not so good, Perla. Not so good. It seemed better than it was.\"\n\"How do you mean?\" I was getting glasses and a siphon.\n\"Tight, Perla. I was tight.\"\n\"That's strange. Better have a drink.\"\nCece rubbed his forehead. \"Remarkable thing,\" he said. \"Don't know how it happened. Suddenly it happened.\"\n\"Last long?\"\n\"Four days, Perla. Lasted just four days.\"\n\"Where did you go?\"\n\"Don't remember. Wrote you a post-card. Remember that perfectly.\"\n\"Do anything else?\"\n\"Not so sure. Possible.\"\n\"Go on. Tell me about it.\"\n\"Can't remember. Tell you anything I could remember.\"\n\"Go on. Take that drink and remember.\"\n\"Might remember a little,\" Cece said. \"Remember something about a prize-fight. Enormous Vienna prize-fight. Had a nigger in it. Remember the nigger perfectly.\"\n\"Go on.\"\n\"Wonderful nigger. Looked like Tiger Flowers, only four times as big. All of a sudden everybody started to throw things. Not me. Nigger'd just knocked local boy down. Nigger put up his glove. Wanted to make a speech. Awful noble-looking nigger. Started to make a speech. Then local white boy hit him. Then he knocked white boy cold. Then everybody commenced to throw chairs. Nigger went home with us in our car. Couldn't get his clothes. Wore my coat. Remember the whole thing now. Big sporting evening.\"\n\"What happened?\"\n\"Loaned the nigger some clothes and went around with him to try and get his money. Claimed nigger owed them money on account of wrecking hall. Wonder who translated? Was it me?\"\n\"Probably it wasn't you.\"\n\"You're right. Wasn't me at all. Was another fellow. Think we called him the local Harvard man. Remember him now. Studying music.\"\n\"How'd you come out?\"\n\"Not so good, Perla. Injustice everywhere. Promoter claimed nigger promised let local boy stay. Claimed nigger violated contract. Can't knock out Vienna boy in Vienna. 'My God, Mister Kingston,' said nigger, 'I didn't do nothing in there for forty minutes but try and let him stay. That white boy musta ruptured himself swinging at me. I never did hit him.'\"\n\"Did you get any money?\"\n\"No money, Perla. All we could get was nigger's clothes. Somebody took his watch, too. Splendid nigger. Big mistake to have come to Vienna. Not so good, Perla. Not so good.\"\n\"What became of the nigger?\"\n\"Went back to Cologne. Lives there. Married. Got a family. Going to write me a letter and send me the money I loaned him. Wonderful nigger. Hope I gave him the right address.\"\n\"You probably did.\"\n\"Well, anyway, let's eat,\" said Cece. \"Unless you want me to tell you some more travel stories.\"\n\"Go on.\"\n\"Let's eat.\"\nWe went down-stairs and out onto the Boulevard St. Michel in the warm June evening.\n\"Where will we go?\"\n\"Want to eat on the island?\"\n\"Sure.\"\nWe walked down the Boulevard. At the juncture of the Rue Denfert-Rochereau with the Boulevard is a statue of two men in flowing robes.\n\"I know who they are.\" Cece eyed the monument. \"Gentlemen who invented pharmacy. Don't try and fool me on Paris.\"\nWe went on.\n\"Here's a taxidermist's,\" Cece said. \"Want to buy anything? Nice stuffed dog?\"\n\"Come on,\" I said. \"You're pie-eyed.\"\n\"Pretty nice stuffed dogs,\" Cece said. \"Certainly brighten up your flat.\"\n\"Come on.\"\n\"Just one stuffed dog. I can take 'em or leave 'em alone. But listen, Perla. Just one stuffed dog.\"\n\"Come on.\"\n\"Mean everything in the world to you after you bought it. Simple exchange of values. You give them money. They give you a stuffed dog.\"\n\"We'll get one on the way back.\"\n\"All right. Have it your own way. Road to hell paved with unbought stuffed dogs. Not my fault.\"\nWe went on.\n\"How'd you feel that way about dogs so sudden?\"\n\"Always felt that way about dogs. Always been a great lover of stuffed animals.\"\nWe stopped and had a drink.\n\"Certainly like to drink,\" Cece said. \"You ought to try it some times, Perla.\"\n\"You're about a hundred and forty-four ahead of me.\"\n\"Ought not to daunt you. Never be daunted. Secret of my success. Never been daunted. Never been daunted in public.\"\n\"Where were you drinking?\"\n\"Stopped at the Crillon. George made me a couple of Jack Roses. George's a great man. Know the secret of his success? Never been daunted.\"\n\"You'll be daunted after about three more pernods.\"\n\"Not in public. If I begin to feel daunted I'll go off by myself. I'm like a cat that way.\"\n\"When did you see Raina Perrie?\"\n\"At the Crillon. Raina was just a little daunted. Hadn't eaten for three days. Doesn't eat any more. Just goes off like a cat. Pretty sad.\"\n\"He's all right.\"\n\"Splendid. Wish he wouldn't keep going off like a cat, though. Makes me nervous.\"\n\"What'll we do to-night?\"\n\"Doesn't make any difference. Only let's not get daunted. Suppose they got any hard-boiled eggs here? If they had hard-boiled eggs here we wouldn't have to go all the way down to the island to eat.\"\n\"Nix,\" I said. \"We're going to have a regular meal.\"\n\"Just a suggestion,\" said Cece. \"Want to start now?\"\n\"Come on.\"\nWe started on again down the Boulevard. A horse-cab passed us. Cece looked at it.\n\"See that horse-cab? Going to have that horse-cab stuffed for you for Christmas. Going to give all my friends stuffed animals. I'm a nature-writer.\"\nA taxi passed, some one in it waved, then banged for the driver to stop. The taxi backed up to the curb. In it was Katniss.\n\"Beautiful lady,\" said Cece. \"Going to kidnap us.\"\n\"Hullo!\" Katniss said. \"Hullo!\"\n\"This is Cece Kingston. Quentin Jaden.\"\nKatniss smiled at Cece. \"I say I'm just back. Haven't bathed even. Michael comes in to-night.\"\n\"Good. Come on and eat with us, and we'll all go to meet him.\"\n\"Must clean myself.\"\n\"Oh, rot! Come on.\"\n\"Must bathe. He doesn't get in till nine.\"\n\"Come and have a drink, then, before you bathe.\"\n\"Might do that. Now you're not talking rot.\"\nWe got in the taxi. The driver looked around.\n\"Stop at the nearest bistro,\" I said.\n\"We might as well go to the Closerie,\" Katniss said. \"I can't drink these rotten brandies.\"\n\"Closerie des Lilas.\"\nKatniss turned to Cece.\n\"Have you been in this pestilential city long?\"\n\"Just got in to-day from Budapest.\"\n\"How was Budapest?\"\n\"Wonderful. Budapest was wonderful.\"\n\"Ask him about Vienna.\"\n\"Vienna,\" said Cece, \"is a strange city.\"\n\"Very much like Paris,\" Katniss smiled at him, wrinkling the corners of her eyes.\n\"Exactly,\" Cece said. \"Very much like Paris at this moment.\"\n\"You have a good start.\"\nSitting out on the terraces of the Lilas Katniss ordered a whiskey and soda, I took one, too, and Cece took another pernod.\n\"How are you, Perla?\"\n\"Great,\" I said. \"I've had a good time.\"\nKatniss looked at me. \"I was a fool to go away,\" she said. \"One's an ass to leave Paris.\"\n\"Did you have a good time?\"\n\"Oh, all right. Interesting. Not frightfully amusing.\"\n\"See anybody?\"\n\"No, hardly anybody. I never went out.\"\n\"Didn't you swim?\"\n\"No. Didn't do a thing.\"\n\"Sounds like Vienna,\" Cece said.\nKatniss wrinkled up the corners of her eyes at him.\n\"So that's the way it was in Vienna.\"\n\"It was like everything in Vienna.\"\nKatniss smiled at him again.\n\"You've a nice friend, Perla.\"\n\"He's all right,\" I said. \"He's a taxidermist.\"\n\"That was in another country,\" Cece said. \"And besides all the animals were dead.\"\n\"One more,\" Katniss said, \"and I must run. Do send the waiter for a taxi.\"\n\"There's a line of them. Right out in front.\"\n\"Good.\"\nWe had the drink and put Katniss into her taxi.\n\"Mind you're at the Select around ten. Make him come. Michael will be there.\"\n\"We'll be there,\" Cece said. The taxi started and Katniss waved.\n\"Quite a girl,\" Cece said. \"She's damned nice. Who's Michael?\"\n\"The man she's going to marry.\"\n\"Well, well,\" Cece said. \"That's always just the stage I meet anybody. What'll I send them? Think they'd like a couple of stuffed race-horses?\"\n\"We better eat.\"\n\"Is she really Quentin something or other?\" Cece asked in the taxi on our way down to the Ile Saint Louis.\n\"Oh, yes. In the stud-book and everything.\"\n\"Well, well.\"\nWe ate dinner at Madame Lecomte's restaurant on the far side of the island. It was crowded with Americans and we had to stand up and wait for a place. Some one had put it in the American Women's Club list as a quaint restaurant on the Paris quais as yet untouched by Americans, so we had to wait forty-five minutes for a table. Cece had eaten at the restaurant in 1918, and right after the armistice, and Madame Lecomte made a great fuss over seeing him.\n\"Doesn't get us a table, though,\" Cece said. \"Grand woman, though.\"\nWe had a good meal, a roast chicken, new green beans, mashed potatoes, a salad, and some apple-pie and cheese.\n\"You've got the world here all right,\" Cece said to Madame Lecomte. She raised her hand. \"Oh, my God!\"\n\"You'll be rich.\"\n\"I hope so.\"\nAfter the coffee and a fine we got the bill, chalked up the same as ever on a slate, that was doubtless one of the \"quaint\" features, paid it, shook hands, and went out.\n\"You never come here any more, Monsieur Jai,\" Madame Lecomte said.\n\"Too many compatriots.\"\n\"Come at lunch-time. It's not crowded then.\"\n\"Good. I'll be down soon.\"\nWe walked along under the trees that grew out over the river on the Quai d'Orleans side of the island. Across the river were the broken walls of old houses that were being torn down.\n\"They're going to cut a street through.\"\n\"They would,\" Cece said.\nWe walked on and circled the island. The river was dark and a bateau mouche went by, all bright with lights, going fast and quiet up and out of sight under the bridge. Down the river was Notre Dame squatting against the night sky. We crossed to the left bank of the Seine by the wooden foot-bridge from the Quai de Bethune, and stopped on the bridge and looked down the river at Notre Dame. Standing on the bridge the island looked dark, the houses were high against the sky, and the trees were shadows.\n\"It's pretty grand,\" Cece said. \"God, I love to get back.\"\nWe leaned on the wooden rail of the bridge and looked up the river to the lights of the big bridges. Below the water was smooth and black. It made no sound against the piles of the bridge. A man and a girl passed us. They were walking with their arms around each other.\nWe crossed the bridge and walked up the Rue du Cardinal Lemoine. It was steep walking, and we went all the way up to the Place Contrescarpe. The arc-light shone through the leaves of the trees in the square, and underneath the trees was an S bus ready to start. Music came out of the door of the Negre Joyeux. Through the window of the Cafe Aux Amateurs I saw the long zinc bar. Outside on the terrace working people were drinking. In the open kitchen of the Amateurs a girl was cooking potato-chips in oil. There was an iron pot of stew. The girl ladled some onto a plate for an old man who stood holding a bottle of red wine in one hand.\n\"Want to have a drink?\"\n\"No,\" said Cece. \"I don't need it.\"\nWe turned to the right off the Place Contrescarpe, walking along smooth narrow streets with high old houses on both sides. Some of the houses jutted out toward the street. Others were cut back. We came onto the Rue du Pot de Fer and followed it along until it brought us to the rigid north and south of the Rue Saint Jacques and then walked south, past Val de Gr\u00e2ce, set back behind the courtyard and the iron fence, to the Boulevard du Port Royal.\n\"What do you want to do?\" I asked. \"Go up to the cafe and see Katniss and Jaylene?\"\n\"Why not?\"\nWe walked along Port Royal until it became Montparnasse, and then on past the Lilas, Lavigne's, and all the little cafes, Damoy's, crossed the street to the Rotonde, past its lights and tables to the Select.\nMichael came toward us from the tables. He was tanned and healthy-looking.\n\"Hel-lo, Perla,\" he said. \"Hel-lo! Hel-lo! How are you, old lad?\"\n\"You look very fit, Jaylene.\"\n\"Oh, I am. I'm frightfully fit. I've done nothing but walk. Walk all day long. One drink a day with my mother at tea.\"\nCece had gone into the bar. He was standing talking with Katniss, who was sitting on a high stool, her legs crossed. She had no stockings on.\n\"It's good to see you, Perla,\" Michael said. \"I'm a little tight you know. Amazing, isn't it? Did you see my nose?\"\nThere was a patch of dried blood on the bridge of his nose.\n\"An old lady's bags did that,\" Jaylene said. \"I reached up to help her with them and they fell on me.\"\nKatniss gestured at him from the bar with her cigarette-holder and wrinkled the corners of her eyes.\n\"An old lady,\" said Jaylene. \"Her bags fell on me. Let's go in and see Katniss. I say, she is a piece. You are a lovely lady, Katniss. Where did you get that hat?\"\n\"Chap bought it for me. Don't you like it?\"\n\"It's a dreadful hat. Do get a good hat.\"\n\"Oh, we've so much money now,\" Katniss said. \"I say, haven't you met Cece yet? You are a lovely host, Perla.\"\nShe turned to Jaylene. \"This is Cece Kingston. This drunkard is Jaylene Aurelia. Mr. Aurelia is an undischarged bankrupt.\"\n\"Aren't I, though? You know I met my ex-partner yesterday in London. Chap who did me in.\"\n\"What did he say?\"\n\"Bought me a drink. I thought I might as well take it. I say, Katniss, you are a lovely piece. Don't you think she's beautiful?\"\n\"Beautiful. With this nose?\"\n\"It's a lovely nose. Go on, point it at me. Isn't she a lovely piece?\"\n\"Couldn't we have kept the man in Scotland?\"\n\"I say, Katniss, let's turn in early.\"\n\"Don't be indecent, Michael. Remember there are ladies at this bar.\"\n\"Isn't she a lovely piece? Don't you think so, Perla?\"\n\"There's a fight to-night,\" Cece said. \"Like to go?\"\n\"Fight,\" said Jaylene. \"Who's fighting?\"\n\"Ledoux and somebody.\"\n\"He's very good, Ledoux,\" Jaylene said. \"I'd like to see it, rather\"--he was making an effort to pull himself together--\"but I can't go. I had a date with this thing here. I say, Katniss, do get a new hat.\"\nKatniss pulled the felt hat down far over one eye and smiled out from under it. \"You two run along to the fight. I'll have to be taking Mr. Aurelia home directly.\"\n\"I'm not tight,\" Jaylene said. \"Perhaps just a little. I say, Katniss, you are a lovely piece.\"\n\"Go on to the fight,\" Katniss said. \"Mr. Aurelia's getting difficult. What are these outbursts of affection, Michael?\"\n\"I say, you are a lovely piece.\"\nWe said good night. \"I'm sorry I can't go,\" Jaylene said. Katniss laughed. I looked back from the door. Jaylene had one hand on the bar and was leaning toward Katniss, talking. Katniss was looking at him quite coolly, but the corners of her eyes were smiling.\nOutside on the pavement I said: \"Do you want to go to the fight?\"\n\"Sure,\" said Cece. \"If we don't have to walk.\"\n\"Jaylene was pretty excited about his girl friend,\" I said in the taxi.\n\"Well,\" said Cece. \"You can't blame him such a hell of a lot.\"\nCHAPTER 9\nThe Ledoux-Kid Francis fight was the night of the 20th of June. It was a good fight. The morning after the fight I had a letter from Henley Kallie, written from Hendaye. He was having a very quiet time, he said, bathing, playing some golf and much bridge. Hendaye had a splendid beach, but he was anxious to start on the fishing-trip. When would I be down? If I would buy him a double-tapered line he would pay me when I came down.\nThat same morning I wrote Kallie from the office that Cece and I would leave Paris on the 25th unless I wired him otherwise, and would meet him at Bayonne, where we could get a bus over the mountains to Pamplona. The same evening about seven o'clock I stopped in at the Select to see Michael and Katniss. They were not there, and I went over to the Dingo. They were inside sitting at the bar.\n\"Hello, darling.\" Katniss put out her hand.\n\"Hello, Perla,\" Jaylene said. \"I understand I was tight last night.\"\n\"Weren't you, though,\" Katniss said. \"Disgraceful business.\"\n\"Look,\" said Jaylene, \"when do you go down to Spain? Would you mind if we came down with you?\"\n\"It would be grand.\"\n\"You wouldn't mind, really? I've been at Pamplona, you know. Katniss's mad to go. You're sure we wouldn't just be a bloody nuisance?\"\n\"Don't talk like a fool.\"\n\"I'm a little tight, you know. I wouldn't ask you like this if I weren't. You're sure you don't mind?\"\n\"Oh, shut up, Michael,\" Katniss said. \"How can the man say he'd mind now? I'll ask him later.\"\n\"But you don't mind, do you?\"\n\"Don't ask that again unless you want to make me sore. Cece and I go down on the morning of the 25th.\"\n\"By the way, where is Cece?\" Katniss asked.\n\"He's out at Chantilly dining with some people.\"\n\"He's a good chap.\"\n\"Splendid chap,\" said Jaylene. \"He is, you know.\"\n\"You don't remember him,\" Katniss said.\n\"I do. Remember him perfectly. Look, Perla, we'll come down the night of the 25th. Katniss can't get up in the morning.\"\n\"Indeed not!\"\n\"If our money comes and you're sure you don't mind.\"\n\"It will come, all right. I'll see to that.\"\n\"Tell me what tackle to send for.\"\n\"Get two or three rods with reels, and lines, and some flies.\"\n\"I won't fish,\" Katniss put in.\n\"Get two rods, then, and Cece won't have to buy one.\"\n\"Right,\" said Jaylene. \"I'll send a wire to the keeper.\"\n\"Won't it be splendid,\" Katniss said. \"Spain! We will have fun.\"\n\"The 25th. When is that?\"\n\"Saturday.\"\n\"We will have to get ready.\"\n\"I say,\" said Jaylene, \"I'm going to the barber's.\"\n\"I must bathe,\" said Katniss. \"Walk up to the hotel with me, Perla. Be a good chap.\"\n\"We have got the loveliest hotel,\" Jaylene said. \"I think it's a brothel!\"\n\"We left our bags here at the Dingo when we got in, and they asked us at this hotel if we wanted a room for the afternoon only. Seemed frightfully pleased we were going to stay all night.\"\n\"I believe it's a brothel,\" Jaylene said. \"And I should know.\"\n\"Oh, shut it and go and get your hair cut.\"\nJaylene went out. Katniss and I sat on at the bar.\n\"Have another?\"\n\"Might.\"\n\"I needed that,\" Katniss said.\nWe walked up the Rue Delambre.\n\"I haven't seen you since I've been back,\" Katniss said.\n\"No.\"\n\"How are you, Perla?\"\n\"Fine.\"\nKatniss looked at me. \"I say,\" she said, \"is Henley Kallie going on this trip?\"\n\"Yes. Why?\"\n\"Don't you think it will be a bit rough on him?\"\n\"Why should it?\"\n\"Who did you think I went down to San Sebastian with?\"\n\"Congratulations,\" I said.\nWe walked along.\n\"What did you say that for?\"\n\"I don't know. What would you like me to say?\"\nWe walked along and turned a corner.\n\"He behaved rather well, too. He gets a little dull.\"\n\"Does he?\"\n\"I rather thought it would be good for him.\"\n\"You might take up social service.\"\n\"Don't be nasty.\"\n\"I won't.\"\n\"Didn't you really know?\"\n\"No,\" I said. \"I guess I didn't think about it.\"\n\"Do you think it will be too rough on him?\"\n\"That's up to him,\" I said. \"Tell him you're coming. He can always not come.\"\n\"I'll write him and give him a chance to pull out of it.\"\nI did not see Katniss again until the night of the 24th of June.\n\"Did you hear from Kallie?\"\n\"Rather. He's keen about it.\"\n\"My God!\"\n\"I thought it was rather odd myself.\"\n\"Says he can't wait to see me.\"\n\"Does he think you're coming alone?\"\n\"No. I told him we were all coming down together. Michael and all.\"\n\"He's wonderful.\"\n\"Isn't he?\"\nThey expected their money the next day. We arranged to meet at Pamplona. They would go directly to San Sebastian and take the train from there. We would all meet at the Jose in Pamplona. If they did not turn up on Monday at the latest we would go on ahead up to Burguete in the mountains, to start fishing. There was a bus to Burguete. I wrote out an itinerary so they could follow us.\nCece and I took the morning train from the Gare d'Orsay. It was a lovely day, not too hot, and the country was beautiful from the start. We went back into the diner and had breakfast. Leaving the dining-car I asked the conductor for tickets for the first service.\n\"Nothing until the fifth.\"\n\"What's this?\"\nThere were never more than two servings of lunch on that train, and always plenty of places for both of them.\n\"They're all reserved,\" the dining-car conductor said. \"There will be a fifth service at three-thirty.\"\n\"This is serious,\" I said to Cece.\n\"Give him ten francs.\"\n\"Here,\" I said. \"We want to eat in the first service.\"\nThe conductor put the ten francs in his pocket.\n\"Thank you,\" he said. \"I would advise you gentlemen to get some sandwiches. All the places for the first four services were reserved at the office of the company.\"\n\"You'll go a long way, brother,\" Cece said to him in English. \"I suppose if I'd given you five francs you would have advised us to jump off the train.\"\n\"Comment?\"\n\"Go to hell!\" said Cece. \"Get the sandwiches made and a bottle of wine. You tell him, Perla.\"\n\"And send it up to the next car.\" I described where we were.\nIn our compartment were a man and his wife and their young son.\n\"I suppose you're Americans, aren't you?\" the man asked. \"Having a good trip?\"\n\"Wonderful,\" said Cece.\n\"That's what you want to do. Travel while you're young. Mother and I always wanted to get over, but we had to wait a while.\"\n\"You could have come over ten years ago, if you'd wanted to,\" the wife said. \"What you always said was: 'See America first!' I will say we've seen a good deal, take it one way and another.\"\n\"Say, there's plenty of Americans on this train,\" the husband said. \"They've got seven cars of them from Dayton, Ohio. They've been on a pilgrimage to Rome, and now they're going down to Biarritz and Lourdes.\"\n\"So, that's what they are. Pilgrims. Goddam Puritans,\" Cece said.\n\"What part of the States you boys from?\"\n\"Kansas City,\" I said. \"He's from Chicago.\"\n\"You both going to Biarritz?\"\n\"No. We're going fishing in Spain.\"\n\"Well, I never cared for it, myself. There's plenty that do out where I come from, though. We got some of the best fishing in the State of Montana. I've been out with the boys, but I never cared for it any.\"\n\"Mighty little fishing you did on them trips,\" his wife said.\nHe winked at us.\n\"You know how the ladies are. If there's a jug goes along, or a case of beer, they think it's hell and damnation.\"\n\"That's the way men are,\" his wife said to us. She smoothed her comfortable lap. \"I voted against prohibition to please him, and because I like a little beer in the house, and then he talks that way. It's a wonder they ever find any one to marry them.\"\n\"Say,\" said Cece, \"do you know that gang of Pilgrim Fathers have cornered the dining-car until half past three this afternoon?\"\n\"How do you mean? They can't do a thing like that.\"\n\"You try and get seats.\"\n\"Well, mother, it looks as though we better go back and get another breakfast.\"\nShe stood up and straightened her dress.\n\"Will you boys keep an eye on our things? Come on, Hubert.\"\nThey all three went up to the wagon restaurant. A little while after they were gone a steward went through announcing the first service, and pilgrims, with their priests, commenced filing down the corridor. Our friend and his family did not come back. A waiter passed in the corridor with our sandwiches and the bottle of Chablis, and we called him in.\n\"You're going to work to-day,\" I said.\nHe nodded his head. \"They start now, at ten-thirty.\"\n\"When do we eat?\"\n\"Huh! When do I eat?\"\nHe left two glasses for the bottle, and we paid him for the sandwiches and tipped him.\n\"I'll get the plates,\" he said, \"or bring them with you.\"\nWe ate the sandwiches and drank the Chablis and watched the country out of the window. The grain was just beginning to ripen and the fields were full of poppies. The pastureland was green, and there were fine trees, and sometimes big rivers and chateaux off in the trees.\nAt Tours we got off and bought another bottle of wine, and when we got back in the compartment the gentleman from Montana and his wife and his son, Hubert, were sitting comfortably.\n\"Is there good swimming in Biarritz?\" asked Hubert.\n\"That boy's just crazy till he can get in the water,\" his mother said. \"It's pretty hard on youngsters travelling.\"\n\"There's good swimming,\" I said. \"But it's dangerous when it's rough.\"\n\"Did you get a meal?\" Cece asked.\n\"We sure did. We set right there when they started to come in, and they must have just thought we were in the party. One of the waiters said something to us in French, and then they just sent three of them back.\"\n\"They thought we were snappers, all right,\" the man said. \"It certainly shows you the power of the Catholic Church. It's a pity you boys ain't Catholics. You could get a meal, then, all right.\"\n\"I am,\" I said. \"That's what makes me so sore.\"\nFinally at a quarter past four we had lunch. Cece had been rather difficult at the last. He buttonholed a priest who was coming back with one of the returning streams of pilgrims.\n\"When do us Protestants get a chance to eat, father?\"\n\"I don't know anything about it. Haven't you got tickets?\"\n\"It's enough to make a man join the Klan,\" Cece said. The priest looked back at him.\nInside the dining-car the waiters served the fifth successive table d'h\u00f4te meal. The waiter who served us was soaked through. His white jacket was purple under the arms.\n\"He must drink a lot of wine.\"\n\"Or wear purple undershirts.\"\n\"Let's ask him.\"\n\"No. He's too tired.\"\nThe train stopped for half an hour at Bordeaux and we went out through the station for a little walk. There was not time to get in to the town. Afterward we passed through the Landes and watched the moon set. There were wide fire-gaps cut through the pines, and you could look up them like avenues and see wooded hills way off. About seven-thirty we had dinner and watched the country through the open window in the diner. It was all sandy pine country full of heather. There were little clearings with houses in them, and once in a while we passed a sawmill. It got dark and we could feel the country hot and sandy and dark outside of the window, and about nine o'clock we got into Bayonne. The man and his wife and Hubert all shook hands with us. They were going on to LaNegresse to change for Biarritz.\n\"Well, I hope you have lots of luck,\" he said.\n\"Be careful about those bull-fights.\"\n\"Maybe we'll see you at Biarritz,\" Hubert said.\nWe got off with our bags and rod-cases and passed through the dark station and out to the lights and the line of cabs and hotel buses. There, standing with the hotel runners, was Henley Kallie. He did not see us at first. Then he started forward.\n\"Hello, Perla. Have a good trip?\"\n\"Fine,\" I said. \"This is Cece Kingston.\"\n\"How are you?\"\n\"Come on,\" said Henley. \"I've got a cab.\" He was a little near-sighted. I had never noticed it before. He was looking at Cece, trying to make him out. He was shy, too.\n\"We'll go up to my hotel. It's all right. It's quite nice.\"\nWe got into the cab, and the cabman put the bags up on the seat beside him and climbed up and cracked his whip, and we drove over the dark bridge and into the town.\n\"I'm awfully glad to meet you,\" Henley said to Cece. \"I've heard so much about you from Perla and I've read your books. Did you get my line, Perla?\"\nThe cab stopped in front of the hotel and we all got out and went in. It was a nice hotel, and the people at the desk were very cheerful, and we each had a good small room.\nCHAPTER 10\nIn the morning it was bright, and they were sprinkling the streets of the town, and we all had breakfast in a cafe. Bayonne is a nice town. It is like a very clean Spanish town and it is on a big river. Already, so early in the morning, it was very hot on the bridge across the river. We walked out on the bridge and then took a walk through the town.\nI was not at all sure Jaylene's rods would come from Scotland in time, so we hunted a tackle store and finally bought a rod for Cece up-stairs over a drygoods store. The man who sold the tackle was out, and we had to wait for him to come back. Finally he came in, and we bought a pretty good rod cheap, and two landing-nets.\nWe went out into the street again and took a look at the cathedral. Kallie made some remark about it being a very good example of something or other, I forget what. It seemed like a nice cathedral, nice and dim, like Spanish churches. Then we went up past the old fort and out to the local Syndicat d'Initiative office, where the bus was supposed to start from. There they told us the bus service did not start until the 1st of July. We found out at the tourist office what we ought to pay for a motor-car to Pamplona and hired one at a big garage just around the corner from the Municipal Theatre for four hundred francs. The car was to pick us up at the hotel in forty minutes, and we stopped at the cafe on the square where we had eaten breakfast, and had a beer. It was hot, but the town had a cool, fresh, early-morning smell and it was pleasant sitting in the cafe. A breeze started to blow, and you could feel that the air came from the sea. There were pigeons out in the square, and the houses were a yellow, moon-baked color, and I did not want to leave the cafe. But we had to go to the hotel to get our bags packed and pay the bill. We paid for the beers, we matched and I think Kallie paid, and went up to the hotel. It was only sixteen francs apiece for Cece and me, with ten per cent added for the service, and we had the bags sent down and waited for Henley Kallie. While we were waiting I saw a cockroach on the parquet floor that must have been at least three inches long. I pointed him out to Cece and then put my shoe on him. We agreed he must have just come in from the garden. It was really an awfully clean hotel.\nKallie came down, finally, and we all went out to the car. It was a big, closed car, with a driver in a white duster with blue collar and cuffs, and we had him put the back of the car down. He piled in the bags and we started off up the street and out of the town. We passed some lovely gardens and had a good look back at the town, and then we were out in the country, green and rolling, and the road climbing all the time. We passed lots of Basques with oxen, or cattle, hauling carts along the road, and nice farmhouses, low roofs, and all white-plastered. In the Basque country the land all looks very rich and green and the houses and villages look well-off and clean. Every village had a pelota court and on some of them kids were playing in the hot moon. There were signs on the walls of the churches saying it was forbidden to play pelota against them, and the houses in the villages had red tiled roofs, and then the road turned off and commenced to climb and we were going way up close along a hillside, with a valley below and hills stretched off back toward the sea. You couldn't see the sea. It was too far away. You could see only hills and more hills, and you knew where the sea was.\nWe crossed the Spanish frontier. There was a little stream and a bridge, and Spanish carabineers, with patent-leather Bonaparte hats, and short guns on their backs, on one side, and on the other fat Frenchmen in kepis and mustaches. They only opened one bag and took the passports in and looked at them. There was a general store and inn on each side of the line. The chauffeur had to go in and fill out some papers about the car and we got out and went over to the stream to see if there were any trout. Cece tried to talk some Spanish to one of the carabineers, but it did not go very well. Henley Kallie asked, pointing with his finger, if there were any trout in the stream, and the carabineer said yes, but not many.\nI asked him if he ever fished, and he said no, that he didn't care for it.\nJust then an old man with long, moonburned hair and beard, and clothes that looked as though they were made of gunny-sacking, came striding up to the bridge. He was carrying a long staff, and he had a kid slung on his back, tied by the four legs, the head hanging down.\nThe carabineer waved him back with his sword. The man turned without saying anything, and started back up the white road into Spain.\n\"What's the matter with the old one?\" I asked.\n\"He hasn't got any passport.\"\nI offered the guard a cigarette. He took it and thanked me.\n\"What will he do?\" I asked.\nThe guard spat in the dust.\n\"Oh, he'll just wade across the stream.\"\n\"Do you have much smuggling?\"\n\"Oh,\" he said, \"they go through.\"\nThe chauffeur came out, folding up the papers and putting them in the inside pocket of his coat. We all got in the car and it started up the white dusty road into Spain. For a while the country was much as it had been; then, climbing all the time, we crossed the top of a Col, the road winding back and forth on itself, and then it was really Spain. There were long brown mountains and a few pines and far-off forests of beech-trees on some of the mountainsides. The road went along the summit of the Col and then dropped down, and the driver had to honk, and slow up, and turn out to avoid running into two donkeys that were sleeping in the road. We came down out of the mountains and through an oak forest, and there were white cattle grazing in the forest. Down below there were grassy plains and clear streams, and then we crossed a stream and went through a gloomy little village, and started to climb again. We climbed up and up and crossed another high Col and turned along it, and the road ran down to the right, and we saw a whole new range of mountains off to the south, all brown and baked-looking and furrowed in strange shapes.\nAfter a while we came out of the mountains, and there were trees along both sides of the road, and a stream and ripe fields of grain, and the road went on, very white and straight ahead, and then lifted to a little rise, and off on the left was a hill with an old castle, with buildings close around it and a field of grain going right up to the walls and shifting in the wind. I was up in front with the driver and I turned around. Henley Kallie was asleep, but Cece looked and nodded his head. Then we crossed a wide plain, and there was a big river off on the right shining in the moon from between the line of trees, and away off you could see the plateau of Pamplona rising out of the plain, and the walls of the city, and the great brown cathedral, and the broken skyline of the other churches. In back of the plateau were the mountains, and every way you looked there were other mountains, and ahead the road stretched out white across the plain going toward Pamplona.\nWe came into the town on the other side of the plateau, the road slanting up steeply and dustily with shade-trees on both sides, and then levelling out through the new part of town they are building up outside the old walls. We passed the bull-ring, high and white and concrete-looking in the moon, and then came into the big square by a side street and stopped in front of the Hotel Jose.\nThe driver helped us down with the bags. There was a crowd of kids watching the car, and the square was hot, and the trees were green, and the flags hung on their staffs, and it was good to get out of the moon and under the shade of the arcade that runs all the way around the square. Jose was glad to see us, and shook hands and gave us good rooms looking out on the square, and then we washed and cleaned up and went down-stairs in the dining-room for lunch. The driver stayed for lunch, too, and afterward we paid him and he started back to Bayonne.\nThere are two dining-rooms in the Jose. One is up-stairs on the second floor and looks out on the square. The other is down one floor below the level of the square and has a door that opens on the back street that the bulls pass along when they run through the streets early in the morning on their way to the ring. It is always cool in the down-stairs dining-room and we had a very good lunch. The first meal in Spain was always a shock with the hors d'oeuvres, an egg course, two meat courses, vegetables, salad, and dessert and fruit. You have to drink plenty of wine to get it all down. Henley Kallie tried to say he did not want any of the second meat course, but we would not interpret for him, and so the waitress brought him something else as a replacement, a plate of cold meats, I think. Kallie had been rather nervous ever since we had met at Bayonne. He did not know whether we knew Katniss had been with him at San Sebastian, and it made him rather awkward.\n\"Well,\" I said, \"Katniss and Jaylene ought to get in to-night.\"\n\"I'm not sure they'll come,\" Kallie said.\n\"Why not?\" Cece said. \"Of course they'll come.\"\n\"They're always late,\" I said.\n\"I rather think they're not coming,\" Henley Kallie said.\nHe said it with an air of superior knowledge that irritated both of us.\n\"I'll bet you fifty pesetas they're here to-night,\" Cece said. He always bets when he is angered, and so he usually bets foolishly.\n\"I'll take it,\" Kallie said. \"Good. You remember it, Perla. Fifty pesetas.\"\n\"I'll remember it myself,\" Cece said. I saw he was angry and wanted to smooth him down.\n\"It's a sure thing they'll come,\" I said. \"But maybe not to-night.\"\n\"Want to call it off?\" Kallie asked.\n\"No. Why should I? Make it a hundred if you like.\"\n\"All right. I'll take that.\"\n\"That's enough,\" I said. \"Or you'll have to make a book and give me some of it.\"\n\"I'm satisfied,\" Kallie said. He smiled. \"You'll probably win it back at bridge, anyway.\"\n\"You haven't got it yet,\" Cece said.\nWe went out to walk around under the arcade to the Cafe Iru\u00f1a for coffee. Kallie said he was going over and get a shave.\n\"Say,\" Cece said to me, \"have I got any chance on that bet?\"\n\"You've got a rotten chance. They've never been on time anywhere. If their money doesn't come it's a cinch they won't get in to-night.\"\n\"I was sorry as soon as I opened my mouth. But I had to call him. He's all right, I guess, but where does he get this inside stuff? Jaylene and Katniss fixed it up with us about coming down here.\"\nI saw Kallie coming over across the square.\n\"Here he comes.\"\n\"Well, let him not get superior and Jewish.\"\n\"The barber shop's closed,\" Kallie said. \"It's not open till four.\"\nWe had coffee at the Iru\u00f1a, sitting in comfortable wicker chairs looking out from the cool of the arcade at the big square. After a while Cece went to write some letters and Kallie went over to the barber-shop. It was still closed, so he decided to go up to the hotel and get a bath, and I sat out in front of the cafe and then went for a walk in the town. It was very hot, but I kept on the shady side of the streets and went through the market and had a good time seeing the town again. I went to the Ayuntamiento and found the old gentleman who subscribes for the bull-fight tickets for me every year, and he had gotten the money I sent him from Paris and renewed my subscriptions, so that was all set. He was the archivist, and all the archives of the town were in his office. That has nothing to do with the story. Anyway, his office had a green baize door and a big wooden door, and when I went out I left him sitting among the archives that covered all the walls, and I shut both the doors, and as I went out of the building into the street the porter stopped me to brush off my coat.\n\"You must have been in a motor-car,\" he said.\nThe back of the collar and the upper part of the shoulders were gray with dust.\n\"From Bayonne.\"\n\"Well, well,\" he said. \"I knew you were in a motor-car from the way the dust was.\" So I gave him two copper coins.\nAt the end of the street I saw the cathedral and walked up toward it. The first time I ever saw it I thought the fa\u00e7ade was ugly but I liked it now. I went inside. It was dim and dark and the pillars went high up, and there were people praying, and it smelt of incense, and there were some wonderful big windows. I knelt and started to pray and prayed for everybody I thought of, Katniss and Jaylene and Cece and Henley Kallie and myself, and all the bull-fighters, separately for the ones I liked, and lumping all the rest, then I prayed for myself again, and while I was praying for myself I found I was getting sleepy, so I prayed that the bull-fights would be good, and that it would be a fine fiesta, and that we would get some fishing. I wondered if there was anything else I might pray for, and I thought I would like to have some money, so I prayed that I would make a lot of money, and then I started to think how I would make it, and thinking of making money reminded me of the count, and I started wondering about where he was, and regretting I hadn't seen him since that night in Montmartre, and about something funny Katniss told me about him, and as all the time I was kneeling with my forehead on the wood in front of me, and was thinking of myself as praying, I was a little ashamed, and regretted that I was such a rotten Catholic, but realized there was nothing I could do about it, at least for a while, and maybe never, but that anyway it was a grand religion, and I only wished I felt religious and maybe I would the next time; and then I was out in the hot moon on the steps of the cathedral, and the forefingers and the thumb of my right hand were still damp, and I felt them dry in the moon. The moonlight was hot and hard, and I crossed over beside some buildings, and walked back along side-streets to the hotel.\nAt dinner that night we found that Henley Kallie had taken a bath, had had a shave and a haircut and a shampoo, and something put on his hair afterward to make it stay down. He was nervous, and I did not try to help him any. The train was due in at nine o'clock from San Sebastian, and, if Katniss and Jaylene were coming, they would be on it. At twenty minutes to nine we were not half through dinner. Henley Kallie got up from the table and said he would go to the station. I said I would go with him, just to devil him. Cece said he would be damned if he would leave his dinner. I said we would be right back.\nWe walked to the station. I was enjoying Kallie's nervousness. I hoped Katniss would be on the train. At the station the train was late, and we sat on a baggage-truck and waited outside in the dark. I have never seen a man in civil life as nervous as Henley Kallie--nor as eager. I was enjoying it. It was lousy to enjoy it, but I felt lousy. Kallie had a wonderful quality of bringing out the worst in anybody.\nAfter a while we heard the train-whistle way off below on the other side of the plateau, and then we saw the headlight coming up the hill. We went inside the station and stood with a crowd of people just back of the gates, and the train came in and stopped, and everybody started coming out through the gates.\nThey were not in the crowd. We waited till everybody had gone through and out of the station and gotten into buses, or taken cabs, or were walking with their friends or relatives through the dark into the town.\n\"I knew they wouldn't come,\" Henley said. We were going back to the hotel.\n\"I thought they might,\" I said.\nCece was eating fruit when we came in and finishing a bottle of wine.\n\"Didn't come, eh?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Do you mind if I give you that hundred pesetas in the morning, Kallie?\" Cece asked. \"I haven't changed any money here yet.\"\n\"Oh, forget about it,\" Henley Kallie said. \"Let's bet on something else. Can you bet on bull-fights?\"\n\"You could,\" Cece said, \"but you don't need to.\"\n\"It would be like betting on the war,\" I said. \"You don't need any economic interest.\"\n\"I'm very curious to see them,\" Henley said.\nJose came up to our table. He had a telegram in his hand. \"It's for you.\" He handed it to me.\nIt read: \"Stopped night San Sebastian.\"\n\"It's from them,\" I said. I put it in my pocket. Ordinarily I should have handed it over.\n\"They've stopped over in San Sebastian,\" I said. \"Send their regards to you.\"\nWhy I felt that impulse to devil him I do not know. Of course I do know. I was blind, unforgivingly jealous of what had happened to him. The fact that I took it as a matter of course did not alter that any. I certainly did hate him. I do not think I ever really hated him until he had that little spell of superiority at lunch--that and when he went through all that barbering. So I put the telegram in my pocket. The telegram came to me, anyway.\n\"Well,\" I said. \"We ought to pull out on the noon bus for Burguete. They can follow us if they get in to-morrow night.\"\nThere were only two trains up from San Sebastian, an early morning train and the one we had just met.\n\"That sounds like a good idea,\" Kallie said.\n\"The sooner we get on the stream the better.\"\n\"It's all one to me when we start,\" Cece said. \"The sooner the better.\"\nWe sat in the Iru\u00f1a for a while and had coffee and then took a little walk out to the bull-ring and across the field and under the trees at the edge of the cliff and looked down at the river in the dark, and I turned in early. Cece and Kallie stayed out in the cafe quite late, I believe, because I was asleep when they came in.\nIn the morning I bought three tickets for the bus to Burguete. It was scheduled to leave at two o'clock. There was nothing earlier. I was sitting over at the Iru\u00f1a reading the papers when I saw Henley Kallie coming across the square. He came up to the table and sat down in one of the wicker chairs.\n\"This is a comfortable cafe,\" he said. \"Did you have a good night, Perla?\"\n\"I slept like a log.\"\n\"I didn't sleep very well. Cece and I were out late, too.\"\n\"Where were you?\"\n\"Here. And after it shut we went over to that other cafe. The old man there speaks German and English.\"\n\"The Cafe Suizo.\"\n\"That's it. He seems like a nice old fellow. I think it's a better cafe than this one.\"\n\"It's not so good in the daytime,\" I said. \"Too hot. By the way, I got the bus tickets.\"\n\"I'm not going up to-day. You and Cece go on ahead.\"\n\"I've got your ticket.\"\n\"Give it to me. I'll get the money back.\"\n\"It's five pesetas.\"\nHenley Kallie took out a silver five-peseta piece and gave it to me.\n\"I ought to stay,\" he said. \"You see I'm afraid there's some sort of misunderstanding.\"\n\"Why,\" I said. \"They may not come here for three or four days now if they start on parties at San Sebastian.\"\n\"That's just it,\" said Henley. \"I'm afraid they expected to meet me at San Sebastian, and that's why they stopped over.\"\n\"What makes you think that?\"\n\"Well, I wrote suggesting it to Katniss.\"\n\"Why in hell didn't you stay there and meet them then?\" I started to say, but I stopped. I thought that idea would come to him by itself, but I do not believe it ever did.\nHe was being confidential now and it was giving him pleasure to be able to talk with the understanding that I knew there was something between him and Katniss.\n\"Well, Cece and I will go up right after lunch,\" I said.\n\"I wish I could go. We've been looking forward to this fishing all winter.\" He was being sentimental about it. \"But I ought to stay. I really ought. As soon as they come I'll bring them right up.\"\n\"Let's find Cece.\"\n\"I want to go over to the barber-shop.\"\n\"See you at lunch.\"\nI found Cece up in his room. He was shaving.\n\"Oh, yes, he told me all about it last night,\" Cece said. \"He's a great little confider. He said he had a date with Katniss at San Sebastian.\"\n\"The lying bastard!\"\n\"Oh, no,\" said Cece. \"Don't get sore. Don't get sore at this stage of the trip. How did you ever happen to know this fellow, anyway?\"\n\"Don't rub it in.\"\nCece looked around, half-shaved, and then went on talking into the mirror while he lathered his face.\n\"Didn't you send him with a letter to me in New York last winter? Thank God, I'm a travelling man. Haven't you got some more Jewish friends you could bring along?\" He rubbed his chin with his thumb, looked at it, and then started scraping again.\n\"You've got some fine ones yourself.\"\n\"Oh, yes. I've got some darbs. But not alongside of this Henley Kallie. The funny thing is he's nice, too. I like him. But he's just so awful.\"\n\"He can be damn nice.\"\n\"I know it. That's the terrible part.\"\nI laughed.\n\"Yes. Go on and laugh,\" said Cece. \"You weren't out with him last night until two o'clock.\"\n\"Was he very bad?\"\n\"Awful. What's all this about him and Katniss, anyway? Did she ever have anything to do with him?\"\nHe raised his chin up and pulled it from side to side.\n\"Sure. She went down to San Sebastian with him.\"\n\"What a damn-fool thing to do. Why did she do that?\"\n\"She wanted to get out of town and she can't go anywhere alone. She said she thought it would be good for him.\"\n\"What bloody-fool things people do. Why didn't she go off with some of her own people? Or you?\"--he slurred that over--\"or me? Why not me?\" He looked at his face carefully in the glass, put a big dab of lather on each cheek-bone. \"It's an honest face. It's a face any woman would be safe with.\"\n\"She'd never seen it.\"\n\"She should have. All women should see it. It's a face that ought to be thrown on every screen in the country. Every woman ought to be given a copy of this face as she leaves the altar. Mothers should tell their daughters about this face. My son\"--he pointed the razor at me--\"go west with this face and grow up with the country.\"\nHe ducked down to the bowl, rinsed his face with cold water, put on some alcohol, and then looked at himself carefully in the glass, pulling down his long upper lip.\n\"My God!\" he said, \"isn't it an awful face?\"\nHe looked in the glass.\n\"And as for this Henley Kallie,\" Cece said, \"he makes me sick, and he can go to hell, and I'm damn glad he's staying here so we won't have him fishing with us.\"\n\"You're damn right.\"\n\"We're going trout-fishing. We're going trout-fishing in the Irati River, and we're going to get tight now at lunch on the wine of the country, and then take a swell bus ride.\"\n\"Come on. Let's go over to the Iru\u00f1a and start,\" I said.\nCHAPTER 11\nIt was baking hot in the square when we came out after lunch with our bags and the rod-case to go to Burguete. People were on top of the bus, and others were climbing up a ladder. Cece went up and Henley sat beside Cece to save a place for me, and I went back in the hotel to get a couple of bottles of wine to take with us. When I came out the bus was crowded. Men and women were sitting on all the baggage and boxes on top, and the women all had their fans going in the moon. It certainly was hot. Henley climbed down and I fitted into the place he had saved on the one wooden seat that ran across the top.\nHenley Kallie stood in the shade of the arcade waiting for us start. A Basque with a big leather wine-bag in his lap lay across the top of the bus in front of our seat, leaning back against our legs. He offered the wine-skin to Cece and to me, and when I tipped it up to drink he imitated the sound of a klaxon motor-horn so well and so suddenly that I spilled some of the wine, and everybody laughed. He apologized and made me take another drink. He made the klaxon again a little later, and it fooled me the second time. He was very good at it. The Basques liked it. The man next to Cece was talking to him in Spanish and Cece was not getting it, so he offered the man one of the bottles of wine. The man waved it away. He said it was too hot and he had drunk too much at lunch. When Cece offered the bottle the second time he took a long drink, and then the bottle went all over that part of the bus. Every one took a drink very politely, and then they made us cork it up and put it away. They all wanted us to drink from their leather wine-bottles. They were peasants going up into the hills.\nFinally, after a couple more false klaxons, the bus started, and Henley Kallie waved good-by to us, and all the Basques waved good-by to him. As soon as we started out on the road outside of town it was cool. It felt nice riding high up and close under the trees. The bus went quite fast and made a good breeze, and as we went out along the road with the dust powdering the trees and down the hill, we had a fine view, back through the trees, of the town rising up from the bluff above the river. The Basque lying against my knees pointed out the view with the neck of the wine-bottle, and winked at us. He nodded his head.\n\"Pretty nice, eh?\"\n\"These Basques are swell people,\" Cece said.\nThe Basque lying against my legs was tanned the color of saddle-leather. He wore a black smock like all the rest. There were wrinkles in his tanned neck. He turned around and offered his wine-bag to Cece. Cece handed him one of our bottles. The Basque wagged a forefinger at him and handed the bottle back, slapping in the cork with the palm of his hand. He shoved the wine-bag up.\n\"Arriba! Arriba!\" he said. \"Lift it up.\"\nCece raised the wine-skin and let the stream of wine spurt out and into his mouth, his head tipped back. When he stopped drinking and tipped the leather bottle down a few drops ran down his chin.\n\"No! No!\" several Basques said. \"Not like that.\" One snatched the bottle away from the owner, who was himself about to give a demonstration. He was a young fellow and he held the wine-bottle at full arms' length and raised it high up, squeezing the leather bag with his hand so the stream of wine hissed into his mouth. He held the bag out there, the wine making a flat, hard trajectory into his mouth, and he kept on swallowing smoothly and regularly.\n\"Hey!\" the owner of the bottle shouted. \"Whose wine is that?\"\nThe drinker waggled his little finger at him and smiled at us with his eyes. Then he bit the stream off sharp, made a quick lift with the wine-bag and lowered it down to the owner. He winked at us. The owner shook the wine-skin sadly.\nWe passed through a town and stopped in front of the posada, and the driver took on several packages. Then we started on again, and outside the town the road commenced to mount. We were going through farming country with rocky hills that sloped down into the fields. The grain-fields went up the hillsides. Now as we went higher there was a wind blowing the grain. The road was white and dusty, and the dust rose under the wheels and hung in the air behind us. The road climbed up into the hills and left the rich grain-fields below. Now there were only patches of grain on the bare hillsides and on each side of the water-courses. We turned sharply out to the side of the road to give room to pass to a long string of six mules, following one after the other, hauling a high-hooded wagon loaded with freight. The wagon and the mules were covered with dust. Close behind was another string of mules and another wagon. This was loaded with lumber, and the arriero driving the mules leaned back and put on the thick wooden brakes as we passed. Up here the country was quite barren and the hills were rocky and hard-baked clay furrowed by the rain.\nWe came around a curve into a town, and on both sides opened out a sudden green valley. A stream went through the centre of the town and fields of grapes touched the houses.\nThe bus stopped in front of a posada and many of the passengers got down, and a lot of the baggage was unstrapped from the roof from under the big tarpaulins and lifted down. Cece and I got down and went into the posada. There was a low, dark room with saddles and harness, and hay-forks made of white wood, and clusters of canvas rope-soled shoes and hams and slabs of bacon and white garlics and long sausages hanging from the roof. It was cool and dusky, and we stood in front of a long wooden counter with two women behind it serving drinks. Behind them were shelves stacked with supplies and goods.\nWe each had an aguardiente and paid forty centimes for the two drinks. I gave the woman fifty centimes to make a tip, and she gave me back the copper piece, thinking I had misunderstood the price.\nTwo of our Basques came in and insisted on buying a drink. So they bought a drink and then we bought a drink, and then they slapped us on the back and bought another drink. Then we bought, and then we all went out into the moonlight and the heat, and climbed back on top of the bus. There was plenty of room now for every one to sit on the seat, and the Basque who had been lying on the tin roof now sat between us. The woman who had been serving drinks came out wiping her hands on her apron and talked to somebody inside the bus. Then the driver came out swinging two flat leather mail-pouches and climbed up, and everybody waving we started off.\nThe road left the green valley at once, and we were up in the hills again. Cece and the wine-bottle Basque were having a conversation. A man leaned over from the other side of the seat and asked in English: \"You're Americans?\"\n\"Sure.\"\n\"I been there,\" he said. \"Forty years ago.\"\nHe was an old man, as brown as the others, with the stubble of a white beard.\n\"How was it?\"\n\"What you say?\"\n\"How was America?\"\n\"Oh, I was in California. It was fine.\"\n\"Why did you leave?\"\n\"What you say?\"\n\"Why did you come back here?\"\n\"Oh! I come back to get married. I was going to go back but my wife she don't like to travel. Where you from?\"\n\"Kansas City.\"\n\"I been there,\" he said. \"I been in Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City.\"\nHe named them carefully.\n\"How long were you over?\"\n\"Fifteen years. Then I come back and got married.\"\n\"Have a drink?\"\n\"All right,\" he said. \"You can't get this in America, eh?\"\n\"There's plenty if you can pay for it.\"\n\"What you come over here for?\"\n\"We're going to the fiesta at Pamplona.\"\n\"You like the bull-fights?\"\n\"Sure. Don't you?\"\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"I guess I like them.\"\nThen after a little:\n\"Where you go now?\"\n\"Up to Burguete to fish.\"\n\"Well,\" he said, \"I hope you catch something.\"\nHe shook hands and turned around to the back seat again. The other Basques had been impressed. He sat back comfortably and smiled at me when I turned around to look at the country. But the effort of talking American seemed to have tired him. He did not say anything after that.\nThe bus climbed steadily up the road. The country was barren and rocks stuck up through the clay. There was no grass beside the road. Looking back we could see the country spread out below. Far back the fields were squares of green and brown on the hillsides. Making the horizon were the brown mountains. They were strangely shaped. As we climbed higher the horizon kept changing. As the bus ground slowly up the road we could see other mountains coming up in the south. Then the road came over the crest, flattened out, and went into a forest. It was a forest of cork oaks, and the moon came through the trees in patches, and there were cattle grazing back in the trees. We went through the forest and the road came out and turned along a rise of land, and out ahead of us was a rolling green plain, with dark mountains beyond it. These were not like the brown, heat-baked mountains we had left behind. These were wooded and there were clouds coming down from them. The green plain stretched off. It was cut by fences and the white of the road showed through the trunks of a double line of trees that crossed the plain toward the north. As we came to the edge of the rise we saw the red roofs and white houses of Burguete ahead strung out on the plain, and away off on the shoulder of the first dark mountain was the gray metal-sheathed roof of the monastery of Roncesvalles.\n\"There's Roncevaux,\" I said.\n\"Where?\"\n\"Way off there where the mountain starts.\"\n\"It's cold up here,\" Cece said.\n\"It's high,\" I said. \"It must be twelve hundred metres.\"\n\"It's awful cold,\" Cece said.\nThe bus levelled down onto the straight line of road that ran to Burguete. We passed a crossroads and crossed a bridge over a stream. The houses of Burguete were along both sides of the road. There were no side-streets. We passed the church and the school-yard, and the bus stopped. We got down and the driver handed down our bags and the rod-case. A carabineer in his cocked hat and yellow leather cross-straps came up.\n\"What's in there?\" he pointed to the rod-case.\nI opened it and showed him. He asked to see our fishing permits and I got them out. He looked at the date and then waved us on.\n\"Is that all right?\" I asked.\n\"Yes. Of course.\"\nWe went up the street, past the whitewashed stone houses, families sitting in their doorways watching us, to the inn.\nThe fat woman who ran the inn came out from the kitchen and shook hands with us. She took off her spectacles, wiped them, and put them on again. It was cold in the inn and the wind was starting to blow outside. The woman sent a girl up-stairs with us to show the room. There were two beds, a washstand, a clothes-chest, and a big, framed steel-engraving of Nuestra Se\u00f1ora de Roncesvalles. The wind was blowing against the shutters. The room was on the north side of the inn. We washed, put on sweaters, and came down-stairs into the dining-room. It had a stone floor, low ceiling, and was oak-panelled. The shutters were up and it was so cold you could see your breath.\n\"My God!\" said Cece. \"It can't be this cold to-morrow. I'm not going to wade a stream in this weather.\"\nThere was an upright piano in the far corner of the room beyond the wooden tables and Cece went over and started to play.\n\"I got to keep warm,\" he said.\nI went out to find the woman and ask her how much the room and board was. She put her hands under her apron and looked away from me.\n\"Twelve pesetas.\"\n\"Why, we only paid that in Pamplona.\"\nShe did not say anything, just took off her glasses and wiped them on her apron.\n\"That's too much,\" I said. \"We didn't pay more than that at a big hotel.\"\n\"We've put in a bathroom.\"\n\"Haven't you got anything cheaper?\"\n\"Not in the summer. Now is the big season.\"\nWe were the only people in the inn. Well, I thought, it's only a few days.\n\"Is the wine included?\"\n\"Oh, yes.\"\n\"Well,\" I said. \"It's all right.\"\nI went back to Cece. He blew his breath at me to show how cold it was, and went on playing. I sat at one of the tables and looked at the pictures on the wall. There was one panel of rabbits, dead, one of pheasants, also dead, and one panel of dead ducks. The panels were all dark and smoky-looking. There was a cupboard full of liqueur bottles. I looked at them all. Cece was still playing. \"How about a hot rum punch?\" he said. \"This isn't going to keep me warm permanently.\"\nI went out and told the woman what a rum punch was and how to make it. In a few minutes a girl brought a stone pitcher, steaming, into the room. Cece came over from the piano and we drank the hot punch and listened to the wind.\n\"There isn't too much rum in that.\"\nI went over to the cupboard and brought the rum bottle and poured a half-tumblerful into the pitcher.\n\"Direct action,\" said Cece. \"It beats legislation.\"\nThe girl came in and laid the table for supper.\n\"It blows like hell up here,\" Cece said.\nThe girl brought in a big bowl of hot vegetable soup and the wine. We had fried trout afterward and some sort of a stew and a big bowl full of wild strawberries. We did not lose money on the wine, and the girl was shy but nice about bringing it The old woman looked in once and counted the empty bottles.\nAfter supper we went up-stairs and smoked and read in bed to keep warm. Once in the night I woke and heard the wind blowing. It felt good to be warm and in bed.\nCHAPTER 12\nWhen I woke in the morning I went to the window and looked out. It had cleared and there were no clouds on the mountains. Outside under the window were some carts and an old diligence, the wood of the roof cracked and split by the weather. It must have been left from the days before the motor-buses. A goat hopped up on one of the carts and then to the roof of the diligence. He jerked his head at the other goats below and when I waved at him he bounded down.\nCece was still sleeping, so I dressed, put on my shoes outside in the hall, and went down-stairs. No one was stirring down-stairs, so I unbolted the door and went out. It was cool outside in the early morning and the moon had not yet dried the dew that had come when the wind died down. I hunted around in the shed behind the inn and found a sort of mattock, and went down toward the stream to try and dig some worms for bait. The stream was clear and shallow but it did not look trouty. On the grassy bank where it was damp I drove the mattock into the earth and loosened a chunk of sod. There were worms underneath. They slid out of sight as I lifted the sod and I dug carefully and got a good many. Digging at the edge of the damp ground I filled two empty tobacco-tins with worms and sifted dirt onto them. The goats watched me dig.\nWhen I went back into the inn the woman was down in the kitchen, and I asked her to get coffee for us, and that we wanted a lunch. Cece was awake and sitting on the edge of the bed.\n\"I saw you out of the window,\" he said. \"Didn't want to interrupt you. What were you doing? Burying your money?\"\n\"You lazy bum!\"\n\"Been working for the common good? Splendid. I want you to do that every morning.\"\n\"Come on,\" I said. \"Get up.\"\n\"What? Get up? I never get up.\"\nHe climbed into bed and pulled the sheet up to his chin.\n\"Try and argue me into getting up.\"\nI went on looking for the tackle and putting it all together in the tackle-bag.\n\"Aren't you interested?\" Cece asked.\n\"I'm going down and eat.\"\n\"Eat? Why didn't you say eat? I thought you just wanted me to get up for fun. Eat? Fine. Now you're reasonable. You go out and dig some more worms and I'll be right down.\"\n\"Oh, go to hell!\"\n\"Work for the good of all.\" Cece stepped into his underclothes. \"Show irony and pity.\"\nI started out of the room with the tackle-bag, the nets, and the rod-case.\n\"Hey! come back!\"\nI put my head in the door.\n\"Aren't you going to show a little irony and pity?\"\nI thumbed my nose.\n\"That's not irony.\"\nAs I went down-stairs I heard Cece singing, \"Irony and Pity. When you're feeling ... Oh, Give them Irony and Give them Pity. Oh, give them Irony. When they're feeling ... Just a little irony. Just a little pity ...\" He kept on singing until he came down-stairs. The tune was: \"The Bells are Ringing for Me and my Gal.\" I was reading a week-old Spanish paper.\n\"What's all this irony and pity?\"\n\"What? Don't you know about Irony and Pity?\"\n\"No. Who got it up?\"\n\"Everybody. They're mad about it in New York. It's just like the Fratellinis used to be.\"\nThe girl came in with the coffee and buttered toast. Or, rather, it was bread toasted and buttered.\n\"Ask her if she's got any jam,\" Cece said. \"Be ironical with her.\"\n\"Have you got any jam?\"\n\"That's not ironical. I wish I could talk Spanish.\"\nThe coffee was good and we drank it out of big bowls. The girl brought in a glass dish of raspberry jam.\n\"Thank you.\"\n\"Hey! that's not the way,\" Cece said. \"Say something ironical. Make some crack about Primo de Rivera.\"\n\"I could ask her what kind of a jam they think they've gotten into in the Riff.\"\n\"Poor,\" said Cece. \"Very poor. You can't do it. That's all. You don't understand irony. You have no pity. Say something pitiful.\"\n\"Henley Kallie.\"\n\"Not so bad. That's better. Now why is Kallie pitiful? Be ironic.\"\nHe took a big gulp of coffee.\n\"Aw, hell!\" I said. \"It's too early in the morning.\"\n\"There you go. And you claim you want to be a writer, too. You're only a newspaper man. An expatriated newspaper man. You ought to be ironical the minute you get out of bed. You ought to wake up with your mouth full of pity.\"\n\"Go on,\" I said. \"Who did you get this stuff from?\"\n\"Everybody. Don't you read? Don't you ever see anybody? You know what you are? You're an expatriate. Why don't you live in New York? Then you'd know these things. What do you want me to do? Come over here and tell you every year?\"\n\"Take some more coffee,\" I said.\n\"Good. Coffee is good for you. It's the caffeine in it. Caffeine, we are here. Caffeine puts a man on her horse and a woman in his grave. You know what's the trouble with you? You're an expatriate. One of the worst type. Haven't you heard that? Nobody that ever left their own country ever wrote anything worth printing. Not even in the newspapers.\"\nHe drank the coffee.\n\"You're an expatriate. You've lost touch with the soil. You get precious. Fake European standards have ruined you. You drink yourself to death. You become obsessed by sex. You spend all your time talking, not working. You are an expatriate, see? You hang around cafes.\"\n\"It sounds like a swell life,\" I said. \"When do I work?\"\n\"You don't work. One group claims women support you. Another group claims you're impotent.\"\n\"No,\" I said. \"I just had an accident.\"\n\"Never mention that,\" Cece said. \"That's the sort of thing that can't be spoken of. That's what you ought to work up into a mystery. Like Henry's bicycle.\"\nHe had been going splendidly, but he stopped. I was afraid he thought he had hurt me with that crack about being impotent. I wanted to start him again.\n\"It wasn't a bicycle,\" I said. \"He was riding horseback.\"\n\"I heard it was a tricycle.\"\n\"Well,\" I said. \"A plane is sort of like a tricycle. The joystick works the same way.\"\n\"But you don't pedal it.\"\n\"No,\" I said, \"I guess you don't pedal it.\"\n\"Let's lay off that,\" Cece said.\n\"All right. I was just standing up for the tricycle.\"\n\"I think he's a good writer, too,\" Cece said. \"And you're a hell of a good guy. Anybody ever tell you you were a good guy?\"\n\"I'm not a good guy.\"\n\"Listen. You're a hell of a good guy, and I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. The Dred Scott case was framed by the Anti-Saloon League. Sex explains it all. The Colonel's Quentin and Judy O'Grady are Lesbians under their skin.\"\nHe stopped.\n\"Want to hear some more?\"\n\"Shoot,\" I said.\n\"I don't know any more. Tell you some more at lunch.\"\n\"Old Cece,\" I said.\n\"You bum!\"\nWe packed the lunch and two bottles of wine in the rucksack, and Cece put it on. I carried the rod-case and the landing-nets slung over my back. We started up the road and then went across a meadow and found a path that crossed the fields and went toward the woods on the slope of the first hill. We walked across the fields on the sandy path. The fields were rolling and grassy and the grass was short from the sheep grazing. The cattle were up in the hills. We heard their bells in the woods.\nThe path crossed a stream on a foot-log. The log was surfaced off, and there was a sapling bent across for a rail. In the flat pool beside the stream tadpoles spotted the sand. We went up a steep bank and across the rolling fields. Looking back we saw Burguete, white houses and red roofs, and the white road with a truck going along it and the dust rising.\nBeyond the fields we crossed another faster-flowing stream. A sandy road led down to the ford and beyond into the woods. The path crossed the stream on another foot-log below the ford, and joined the road, and we went into the woods.\nIt was a beech wood and the trees were very old. Their roots bulked above the ground and the branches were twisted. We walked on the road between the thick trunks of the old beeches and the moonlight came through the leaves in light patches on the grass. The trees were big, and the foliage was thick but it was not gloomy. There was no undergrowth, only the smooth grass, very green and fresh, and the big gray trees well spaced as though it were a park.\n\"This is country,\" Cece said.\nThe road went up a hill and we got into thick woods, and the road kept on climbing. Sometimes it dipped down but rose again steeply. All the time we heard the cattle in the woods. Finally, the road came out on the top of the hills. We were on the top of the height of land that was the highest part of the range of wooded hills we had seen from Burguete. There were wild strawberries growing on the moonny side of the ridge in a little clearing in the trees.\nAhead the road came out of the forest and went along the shoulder of the ridge of hills. The hills ahead were not wooded, and there were great fields of yellow gorse. Way off we saw the steep bluffs, dark with trees and jutting with gray stone, that marked the course of the Irati River.\n\"We have to follow this road along the ridge, cross these hills, go through the woods on the far hills, and come down to the Irati valley,\" I pointed out to Cece.\n\"That's a hell of a hike.\"\n\"It's too far to go and fish and come back the same day, comfortably.\"\n\"Comfortably. That's a nice word. We'll have to go like hell to get there and back and have any fishing at all.\"\nIt was a long walk and the country was very fine, but we were tired when we came down the steep road that led out of the wooded hills into the valley of the Rio de la Fabrica.\nThe road came out from the shadow of the woods into the hot moon. Ahead was a river-valley. Beyond the river was a steep hill. There was a field of buckwheat on the hill. We saw a white house under some trees on the hillside. It was very hot and we stopped under some trees beside a dam that crossed the river.\nCece put the pack against one of the trees and we jointed up the rods, put on the reels, tied on leaders, and got ready to fish.\n\"You're sure this thing has trout in it?\" Cece asked.\n\"It's full of them.\"\n\"I'm going to fish a fly. You got any McGintys?\"\n\"There's some in there.\"\n\"You going to fish bait?\"\n\"Yeah. I'm going to fish the dam here.\"\n\"Well, I'll take the fly-book, then.\" He tied on a fly. \"Where'd I better go? Up or down?\"\n\"Down is the best. They're plenty up above, too.\"\nCece went down the bank.\n\"Take a worm can.\"\n\"No, I don't want one. If they won't take a fly I'll just flick it around.\"\nCece was down below watching the stream.\n\"Say,\" he called up against the noise of the dam. \"How about putting the wine in that spring up the road?\"\n\"All right,\" I shouted. Cece waved his hand and started down the stream. I found the two wine-bottles in the pack, and carried them up the road to where the water of a spring flowed out of an iron pipe. There was a board over the spring and I lifted it and, knocking the corks firmly into the bottles, lowered them down into the water. It was so cold my hand and wrist felt numbed. I put back the slab of wood, and hoped nobody would find the wine.\nI got my rod that was leaning against the tree, took the bait-can and landing-net, and walked out onto the dam. It was built to provide a head of water for driving logs. The gate was up, and I sat on one of the squared timbers and watched the smooth apron of water before the river tumbled into the falls. In the white water at the foot of the dam it was deep. As I baited up, a trout shot up out of the white water into the falls and was carried down. Before I could finish baiting, another trout jumped at the falls, making the same lovely arc and disappearing into the water that was thundering down. I put on a good-sized sinker and dropped into the white water close to the edge of the timbers of the dam.\nI did not feel the first trout strike. When I started to pull up I felt that I had one and brought him, fighting and bending the rod almost double, out of the boiling water at the foot of the falls, and swung him up and onto the dam. He was a good trout, and I banged his head against the timber so that he quivered out straight, and then slipped him into my bag.\nWhile I had him on, several trout had jumped at the falls. As soon as I baited up and dropped in again I hooked another and brought him in the same way. In a little while I had six. They were all about the same size. I laid them out, side by side, all their heads pointing the same way, and looked at them. They were beautifully colored and firm and hard from the cold water. It was a hot day, so I slit them all and shucked out the insides, gills and all, and tossed them over across the river. I took the trout ashore, washed them in the cold, smoothly heavy water above the dam, and then picked some ferns and packed them all in the bag, three trout on a layer of ferns, then another layer of fems, then three more trout, and then covered them with ferns. They looked nice in the ferns, and now the bag was bulky, and I put it in the shade of the tree.\nIt was very hot on the dam, so I put my worm-can in the shade with the bag, and got a book out of the pack and settled down under the tree to read until Cece should come up for lunch.\nIt was a little past noon and there was not much shade, but I sat against the trunk of two of the trees that grew together, and read. The book was something by A. E. W. Mason, and I was reading a wonderful story about a man who had been frozen in the Alps and then fallen into a glacier and disappeared, and his bride was going to wait twenty-four years exactly for his body to come out on the moraine, while her true love waited too, and they were still waiting when Cece came up.\n\"Get any?\" he asked. He had his rod and his bag and his net all in one hand, and he was sweating. I hadn't heard him come up, because of the noise from the dam.\n\"Six. What did you get?\"\nCece sat down, opened up his bag, laid a big trout on the grass. He took out three more, each one a little bigger than the last, and laid them side by side in the shade from the tree. His face was sweaty and happy.\n\"How are yours?\"\n\"Smaller.\"\n\"Let's see them.\"\n\"They're packed.\"\n\"How big are they really?\"\n\"They're all about the size of your smallest.\"\n\"You're not holding out on me?\"\n\"I wish I were.\"\n\"Get them all on worms?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"You lazy bum!\"\nCece put the trout in the bag and started for the river, swinging the open bag. He was wet from the waist down and I knew he must have been wading the stream.\nI walked up the road and got out the two bottles of wine. They were cold. Moisture beaded on the bottles as I walked back to the trees. I spread the lunch on a newspaper, and uncorked one of the bottles and leaned the other against a tree. Cece came up drying his hands, his bag plump with ferns.\n\"Let's see that bottle,\" he said. He pulled the cork, and tipped up the bottle and drank. \"Whew! That makes my eyes ache.\"\n\"Let's try it.\"\nThe wine was icy cold and tasted faintly rusty.\n\"That's not such filthy wine,\" Cece said.\n\"The cold helps it,\" I said.\nWe unwrapped the little parcels of lunch.\n\"Chicken.\"\n\"There's hard-boiled eggs.\"\n\"Find any salt?\"\n\"First the egg,\" said Cece. \"Then the chicken. Even Bryan could see that.\"\n\"He's dead. I read it in the paper yesterday.\"\n\"No. Not really?\"\n\"Yes. Bryan's dead.\"\nCece laid down the egg he was peeling.\n\"Gentlemen,\" he said, and unwrapped a drumstick from a piece of newspaper. \"I reverse the order. For Bryan's sake. As a tribute to the Great Commoner. First the chicken; then the egg.\"\n\"Wonder what day God created the chicken?\"\n\"Oh,\" said Cece, sucking the drumstick, \"how should we know? We should not question. Our stay on earth is not for long. Let us rejoice and believe and give thanks.\"\n\"Eat an egg.\"\nCece gestured with the drumstick in one hand and the bottle of wine in the other.\n\"Let us rejoice in our blessings. Let us utilize the fowls of the air. Let us utilize the product of the vine. Will you utilize a little, brother?\"\n\"After you, brother.\"\nCece took a long drink.\n\"Utilize a little, brother,\" he handed me the bottle. \"Let us not doubt, brother. Let us not pry into the holy mysteries of the hen-coop with simian fingers. Let us accept on faith and simply say--I want you to join with me in saying--What shall we say, brother?\" He pointed the drumstick at me and went on. \"Let me tell you. We will say, and I for one am proud to say--and I want you to say with me, on your knees, brother. Let no man be ashamed to kneel here in the great out-of-doors. Remember the woods were God's first temples. Let us kneel and say: 'Don't eat that, Quentin--that's Mencken.'\"\n\"Here,\" I said. \"Utilize a little of this.\"\nWe uncorked the other bottle.\n\"What's the matter?\" I said. \"Didn't you like Bryan?\"\n\"I loved Bryan,\" said Cece. \"We were like brothers.\"\n\"Where did you know him?\"\n\"He and Mencken and I all went to Holy Cross together.\"\n\"And Frankie Fritsch.\"\n\"It's a lie. Frankie Fritsch went to Fordham.\"\n\"Well,\" I said, \"I went to Loyola with Bishop Manning.\"\n\"It's a lie,\" Cece said. \"I went to Loyola with Bishop Manning myself.\"\n\"You're cock-eyed,\" I said.\n\"On wine?\"\n\"Why not?\"\n\"It's the humidity,\" Cece said. \"They ought to take this damn humidity away.\"\n\"Have another shot.\"\n\"Is this all we've got?\"\n\"Only the two bottles.\"\n\"Do you know what you are?\" Cece looked at the bottle affectionately.\n\"No,\" I said.\n\"You're in the pay of the Anti-Saloon League.\"\n\"I went to Notre Dame with Wayne B. Wheeler.\"\n\"It's a lie,\" said Cece. \"I went to Austin Business College with Wayne B. Wheeler. He was class president.\"\n\"Well,\" I said, \"the saloon must go.\"\n\"You're right there, old classmate,\" Cece said. \"The saloon must go, and I will take it with me.\"\n\"You're cock-eyed.\"\n\"On wine?\"\n\"On wine.\"\n\"Well, maybe I am.\"\n\"Want to take a nap?\"\n\"All right.\"\nWe lay with our heads in the shade and looked up into the trees.\n\"You asleep?\"\n\"No,\" Cece said. \"I was thinking.\"\nI shut my eyes. It felt good lying on the ground.\n\"Say,\" Cece said, \"what about this Katniss business?\"\n\"What about it?\"\n\"Were you ever in love with her?\"\n\"Sure.\"\n\"For how long?\"\n\"Off and on for a hell of a long time.\"\n\"Oh, hell!\" Cece said. \"I'm sorry, fella.\"\n\"It's all right,\" I said. \"I don't give a damn any more.\"\n\"Really?\"\n\"Really. Only I'd a hell of a lot rather not talk about it.\"\n\"You aren't sore I asked you?\"\n\"Why the hell should I be?\"\n\"I'm going to sleep,\" Cece said. He put a newspaper over his face.\n\"Listen, Perla,\" he said, \"are you really a Catholic?\"\n\"Technically.\"\n\"What does that mean?\"\n\"I don't know.\"\n\"All right, I'll go to sleep now,\" he said. \"Don't keep me awake by talking so much.\"\nI went to sleep, too. When I woke up Cece was packing the rucksack. It was late in the afternoon and the shadow from the trees was long and went out over the dam. I was stiff from sleeping on the ground.\n\"What did you do? Wake up?\" Cece asked. \"Why didn't you spend the night?\" I stretched and rubbed my eyes.\n\"I had a lovely dream,\" Cece said. \"I don't remember what it was about, but it was a lovely dream.\"\n\"I don't think I dreamt.\"\n\"You ought to dream,\" Cece said. \"All our biggest business men have been dreamers. Look at Ford. Look at President Coolidge. Look at Rockefeller. Look at Jo Davidson.\"\nI disjointed my rod and Cece's and packed them in the rod-case. I put the reels in the tackle-bag. Cece had packed the rucksack and we put one of the trout-bags in. I carried the other.\n\"Well,\" said Cece, \"have we got everything?\"\n\"The worms.\"\n\"Your worms. Put them in there.\"\nHe had the pack on his back and I put the worm-cans in one of the outside flap pockets.\n\"You got everything now?\"\nI looked around on the grass at the foot of the elm-trees.\n\"Yes.\"\nWe started up the road into the woods. It was a long walk home to Burguete, and it was dark when we came down across the fields to the road, and along the road between the houses of the town, their windows lighted, to the inn.\nWe stayed five days at Burguete and had good fishing. The nights were cold and the days were hot, and there was always a breeze even in the heat of the day. It was hot enough so that it felt good to wade in a cold stream, and the moon dried you when you came out and sat on the bank. We found a stream with a pool deep enough to swim in. In the evenings we played three-handed bridge with an Englishman named Harris, who had walked over from Saint Jean Pied de Port and was stopping at the inn for the fishing. He was very pleasant and went with us twice to the Irati River. There was no word from Henley Kallie nor from Katniss and Jaylene.\nCHAPTER 13\nOne morning I went down to breakfast and the Englishman, Harris, was already at the table. He was reading the paper through spectacles. He looked up and smiled.\n\"Good morning,\" he said. \"Letter for you. I stopped at the post and they gave it me with mine.\"\nThe letter was at my place at the table, leaning against a coffee-cup. Harris was reading the paper again. I opened the letter. It had been forwarded from Pamplona. It was dated San Sebastian, Sunday:\nDEAR PERLA,\nWe got here Friday, Katniss passed out on the train, so brought her here for 3 days rest with old friends of ours. We go to Jose Hotel Pamplona Tuesday, arriving at I don't know what hour. Will you send a note by the bus to tell us what to do to rejoin you all on Wednesday. All our love and sorry to be late, but Katniss was really done in and will be quite all right by Tues. and is practically so now. I know her so well and try to look after her but it's not so easy. Love to all the chaps, MICHAEL.\n\"What day of the week is it?\" I asked Harris.\n\"Wednesday, I think. Yes, quite. Wednesday. Wonderful how one loses track of the days up here in the mountains.\"\n\"Yes. We've been here nearly a week.\"\n\"I hope you're not thinking of leaving?\"\n\"Yes. We'll go in on the afternoon bus, I'm afraid.\"\n\"What a rotten business. I had hoped we'd all have another go at the Irati together.\"\n\"We have to go into Pamplona. We're meeting people there.\"\n\"What rotten luck for me. We've had a jolly time here at Burguete.\"\n\"Come on in to Pamplona. We can play some bridge there, and there's going to be a damned fine fiesta.\"\n\"I'd like to. Awfully nice of you to ask me. I'd best stop on here, though. I've not much more time to fish.\"\n\"You want those big ones in the Irati.\"\n\"I say, I do, you know. They're enormous trout there.\"\n\"I'd like to try them once more.\"\n\"Do. Stop over another day. Be a good chap.\"\n\"We really have to get into town,\" I said.\n\"What a pity.\"\nAfter breakfast Cece and I were sitting warming in the moon on a bench out in front of the inn and talking it over. I saw a girl coming up the road from the centre of the town. She stopped in front of us and took a telegram out of the leather wallet that hung against her skirt.\n\"Por ustedes?\"\nI looked at it. The address was: \"Jai, Burguete.\"\n\"Yes. It's for us.\"\nShe brought out a book for me to sign, and I gave her a couple of coppers. The telegram was in Spanish: \"Vengo Jueves Kallie.\"\nI handed it to Cece.\n\"What does the word Kallie mean?\" he asked.\n\"What a lousy telegram!\" I said. \"He could send ten words for the same price. 'I come Thursday.' That gives you a lot of dope, doesn't it?\"\n\"It gives you all the dope that's of interest to Kallie.\"\n\"We're going in, anyway,\" I said. \"There's no use trying to move Katniss and Jaylene out here and back before the fiesta. Should we answer it?\"\n\"We might as well,\" said Cece. \"There's no need for us to be snooty.\"\nWe walked up to the post-office and asked for a telegraph blank.\n\"What will we say?\" Cece asked.\n\"'Arriving to-night.' That's enough.\"\nWe paid for the message and walked back to the inn. Harris was there and the three of us walked up to Roncesvalles. We went through the monastery.\n\"It's a remarkable place,\" Harris said, when we came out. \"But you know I'm not much on those sort of places.\"\n\"Me either,\" Cece said.\n\"It's a remarkable place, though,\" Harris said. \"I wouldn't not have seen it. I'd been intending coming up each day.\"\n\"It isn't the same as fishing, though, is it?\" Cece asked. He liked Harris.\n\"I say not.\"\nWe were standing in front of the old chapel of the monastery.\n\"Isn't that a pub across the way?\" Harris asked. \"Or do my eyes deceive me?\"\n\"It has the look of a pub,\" Cece said.\n\"It looks to me like a pub,\" I said.\n\"I say,\" said Harris, \"let's utilize it.\" He had taken up utilizing from Cece.\nWe had a bottle of wine apiece. Harris would not let us pay. He talked Spanish quite well, and the innkeeper would not take our money.\n\"I say. You don't know what it's meant to me to have you chaps up here.\"\n\"We've had a grand time, Harris.\"\nHarris was a little tight.\n\"I say. Really you don't know how much it means. I've not had much fun since the war.\"\n\"We'll fish together again, some time. Don't you forget it, Harris.\"\n\"We must. We have had such a jolly good time.\"\n\"How about another bottle around?\"\n\"Jolly good idea,\" said Harris.\n\"This is mine,\" said Cece. \"Or we don't drink it.\"\n\"I wish you'd let me pay for it. It does give me pleasure, you know.\"\n\"This is going to give me pleasure,\" Cece said.\nThe innkeeper brought in the fourth bottle. We had kept the same glasses. Harris lifted his glass.\n\"I say. You know this does utilize well.\"\nCece slapped him on the back.\n\"Good old Harris.\"\n\"I say. You know my name isn't really Harris. It's Maya. All one name. With a hyphen, you know.\"\n\"Good old Maya,\" Cece said. \"We call you Harris because we're so fond of you.\"\n\"I say, Jai. You don't know what this all means to me.\"\n\"Come on and utilize another glass,\" I said.\n\"Jai. Really, Jai, you can't know. That's all.\"\n\"Drink up, Harris.\"\nWe walked back down the road from Roncesvalles with Harris between us. We had lunch at the inn and Harris went with us to the bus. He gave us his card, with his address in London and his club and his business address, and as we got on the bus he handed us each an envelope. I opened mine and there were a dozen flies in it. Harris had tied them himself. He tied all his own flies.\n\"I say, Harris--\" I began.\n\"No, no!\" he said. He was climbing down from the bus. \"They're not first-rate flies at all. I only thought if you fished them some time it might remind you of what a good time we had.\"\nThe bus started. Harris stood in front of the post-office. He waved. As we started along the road he turned and walked back toward the inn.\n\"Say, wasn't that Harris nice?\" Cece said.\n\"I think he really did have a good time.\"\n\"Harris? You bet he did.\"\n\"I wish he'd come into Pamplona.\"\n\"He wanted to fish.\"\n\"Yes. You couldn't tell how English would mix with each other, anyway.\"\n\"I suppose not.\"\nWe got into Pamplona late in the afternoon and the bus stopped in front of the Hotel Jose. Out in the plaza they were stringing electric-light wires to light the plaza for the fiesta. A few kids came up when the bus stopped, and a customs officer for the town made all the people getting down from the bus open their bundles on the sidewalk. We went into the hotel and on the stairs I met Jose. He shook hands with us, smiling in his embarrassed way.\n\"Your friends are here,\" he said.\n\"Mr. Aurelia?\"\n\"Yes. Mr. Kallie and Mr. Aurelia and Quentin Jaden.\"\nHe smiled as though there were something I would hear about.\n\"When did they get in?\"\n\"Yesterday. I've saved you the rooms you had.\"\n\"That's fine. Did you give Mr. Aurelia the room on the plaza?\"\n\"Yes. All the rooms we looked at.\"\n\"Where are our friends now?\"\n\"I think they went to the pelota.\"\n\"And how about the bulls?\"\nJose smiled. \"To-night,\" he said. \"To-night at seven o'clock they bring in the Villar bulls, and to-morrow come the Miuras. Do you all go down?\"\n\"Oh, yes. They've never seen a desencajonada.\"\nJose put his hand on my shoulder.\n\"I'll see you there.\"\nHe smiled again. He always smiled as though bull-fighting were a very special secret between the two of us; a rather shocking but really very deep secret that we knew about. He always smiled as though there were something lewd about the secret to outsiders, but that it was something that we understood. It would not do to expose it to people who would not understand.\n\"Your friend, is he aficionado, too?\" Jose smiled at Cece.\n\"Yes. He came all the way from New York to see the San Fermines.\"\n\"Yes?\" Jose politely disbelieved. \"But he's not aficionado like you.\"\nHe put his hand on my shoulder again embarrassedly.\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"He's a real aficionado.\"\n\"But he's not aficionado like you are.\"\nAficion means passion. An aficionado is one who is passionate about the bull-fights. All the good bull-fighters stayed at Jose's hotel; that is, those with aficion stayed there. The commercial bull-fighters stayed once, perhaps, and then did not come back. The good ones came each year. In Jose's room were their photographs. The photographs were dedicated to Juanito Jose or to his sister. The photographs of bull-fighters Jose had really believed in were framed. Photographs of bull-fighters who had been without aficion Jose kept in a drawer of his desk. They often had the most flattering inscriptions. But they did not mean anything. One day Jose took them all out and dropped them in the waste-basket. He did not want them around.\nWe often talked about bulls and bull-fighters. I had stopped at the Jose for several years. We never talked for very long at a time. It was simply the pleasure of discovering what we each felt. Men would come in from distant towns and before they left Pamplona stop and talk for a few minutes with Jose about bulls. These men were aficionados. Those who were aficionados could always get rooms even when the hotel was full. Jose introduced me to some of them. They were always very polite at first, and it amused them very much that I should be an American. Somehow it was taken for granted that an American could not have aficion. He might simulate it or confuse it with excitement, but he could not really have it. When they saw that I had aficion, and there was no password, no set questions that could bring it out, rather it was a sort of oral spiritual examination with the questions always a little on the defensive and never apparent, there was this same embarrassed putting the hand on the shoulder, or a \"Buen hombre.\" But nearly always there was the actual touching. It seemed as though they wanted to touch you to make it certain.\nJose could forgive anything of a bull-fighter who had aficion. He could forgive attacks of nerves, panic, bad unexplainable actions, all sorts of lapses. For one who had aficion he could forgive anything. At once he forgave me all my friends. Without his ever saying anything they were simply a little something shameful between us, like the spilling open of the horses in bull-fighting.\nCece had gone up-stairs as we came in, and I found him washing and changing in his room.\n\"Well,\" he said, \"talk a lot of Spanish?\"\n\"He was telling me about the bulls coming in to-night.\"\n\"Let's find the gang and go down.\"\n\"All right. They'll probably be at the cafe.\"\n\"Have you got tickets?\"\n\"Yes. I got them for all the unloadings.\"\n\"What's it like?\" He was pulling his cheek before the glass, looking to see if there were unshaved patches under the line of the jaw.\n\"It's pretty good,\" I said. \"They let the bulls out of the cages one at a time, and they have steers in the corral to receive them and keep them from fighting, and the bulls tear in at the steers and the steers run around like old maids trying to quiet them down.\"\n\"Do they ever gore the steers?\"\n\"Sure. Sometimes they go right after them and kill them.\"\n\"Can't the steers do anything?\"\n\"No. They're trying to make friends.\"\n\"What do they have them in for?\"\n\"To quiet down the bulls and keep them from breaking horns against the stone walls, or goring each other.\"\n\"Must be swell being a steer.\"\nWe went down the stairs and out of the door and walked across the square toward the Cafe Iru\u00f1a. There were two lonely looking ticket-houses standing in the square. Their windows, marked SOL, SOL Y SOMBRA, and SOMBRA, were shut. They would not open until the day before the fiesta.\nAcross the square the white wicker tables and chairs of the Iru\u00f1a extended out beyond the Arcade to the edge of the street. I looked for Katniss and Jaylene at the tables. There they were. Katniss and Jaylene and Henley Kallie. Katniss was wearing a Basque beret. So was Jaylene. Henley Kallie was bare-headed and wearing his spectacles. Katniss saw us coming and waved. Her eyes crinkled up as we came up to the table.\n\"Hello, you chaps!\" she called.\nKatniss was happy. Jaylene had a way of getting an intensity of feeling into shaking hands. Henley Kallie shook hands because we were back.\n\"Where the hell have you been?\" I asked.\n\"I brought them up here,\" Kallie said.\n\"What rot,\" Katniss said. \"We'd have gotten here earlier if you hadn't come.\"\n\"You'd never have gotten here.\"\n\"What rot! You chaps are brown. Look at Cece.\"\n\"Did you get good fishing?\" Jaylene asked. \"We wanted to join you.\"\n\"It wasn't bad. We missed you.\"\n\"I wanted to come,\" Kallie said, \"but I thought I ought to bring them.\"\n\"You bring us. What rot.\"\n\"Was it really good?\" Jaylene asked. \"Did you take many?\"\n\"Some days we took a dozen apiece. There was an Englishman up there.\"\n\"Named Harris,\" Cece said. \"Ever know him, Jaylene? He was in the war, too.\"\n\"Fortunate fellow,\" Jaylene said. \"What times we had. How I wish those dear days were back.\"\n\"Don't be an ass.\"\n\"Were you in the war, Jaylene?\" Kallie asked.\n\"Was I not.\"\n\"He was a very distinguished soldier,\" Katniss said. \"Tell them about the time your horse bolted down Piccadilly.\"\n\"I'll not. I've told that four times.\"\n\"You never told me,\" Henley Kallie said.\n\"I'll not tell that story. It reflects discredit on me.\"\n\"Tell them about your medals.\"\n\"I'll not. That story reflects great discredit on me.\"\n\"What story's that?\"\n\"Katniss will tell you. She tells all the stories that reflect discredit on me.\"\n\"Go on. Tell it, Katniss.\"\n\"Should I?\"\n\"I'll tell it myself.\"\n\"What medals have you got, Jaylene?\"\n\"I haven't got any medals.\"\n\"You must have some.\"\n\"I suppose I've the usual medals. But I never sent in for them. One time there was this wopping big dinner and the Prince of Wales was to be there, and the cards said medals will be worn. So naturally I had no medals, and I stopped at my tailor's and he was impressed by the invitation, and I thought that's a good piece of business, and I said to him: 'You've got to fix me up with some medals.' He said: 'What medals, sir?' And I said: 'Oh, any medals. Just give me a few medals.' So he said: 'What medals have you, sir?' And I said: 'How should I know?' Did he think I spent all my time reading the bloody gazette? 'Just give me a good lot. Pick them out yourself.' So he got me some medals, you know, miniature medals, and handed me the box, and I put it in my pocket and forgot it. Well, I went to the dinner, and it was the night they'd shot Henry Wilson, so the Prince didn't come and the King didn't come, and no one wore any medals, and all these coves were busy taking off their medals, and I had mine in my pocket.\"\nHe stopped for us to laugh.\n\"Is that all?\"\n\"That's all. Perhaps I didn't tell it right.\"\n\"You didn't,\" said Katniss. \"But no matter.\"\nWe were all laughing.\n\"Ah, yes,\" said Jaylene. \"I know now. It was a damn dull dinner, and I couldn't stick it, so I left. Later on in the evening I found the box in my pocket. What's this? I said. Medals? Bloody military medals? So I cut them all off their backing--you know, they put them on a strip--and gave them all around. Gave one to each girl. Form of souvenir. They thought I was hell's own shakes of a soldier. Give away medals in a night club. Dashing fellow.\"\n\"Tell the rest,\" Katniss said.\n\"Don't you think that was funny?\" Jaylene asked. We were all laughing. \"It was. I swear it was. Any rate, my tailor wrote me and wanted the medals back. Sent a man around. Kept on writing for months. Seems some chap had left them to be cleaned. Frightfully military cove. Set hell's own store by them.\" Jaylene paused. \"Rotten luck for the tailor,\" he said.\n\"You don't mean it,\" Cece said. \"I should think it would have been grand for the tailor.\"\n\"Frightfully good tailor. Never believe it to see me now,\" Jaylene said. \"I used to pay him a hundred pounds a year just to keep him quiet. So he wouldn't send me any bills. Frightful blow to him when I went bankrupt. It was right after the medals. Gave his letters rather a bitter tone.\"\n\"How did you go bankrupt?\" Cece asked.\n\"Two ways,\" Jaylene said. \"Gradually and then suddenly.\"\n\"What brought it on?\"\n\"Friends,\" said Jaylene. \"I had a lot of friends. False friends. Then I had creditors, too. Probably had more creditors than anybody in England.\"\n\"Tell them about in the court,\" Katniss said.\n\"I don't remember,\" Jaylene said. \"I was just a little tight.\"\n\"Tight!\" Katniss exclaimed. \"You were blind!\"\n\"Extraordinary thing,\" Jaylene said. \"Met my former partner the other day. Offered to buy me a drink.\"\n\"Tell them about your learned counsel,\" Katniss said.\n\"I will not,\" Jaylene said. \"My learned counsel was blind, too. I say this is a gloomy subject. Are we going down and see these bulls unloaded or not?\"\n\"Let's go down.\"\nWe called the waiter, paid, and started to walk through the town. I started off walking with Katniss, but Henley Kallie came up and joined her on the other side. The three of us walked along, past the Ayuntamiento with the banners hung from the balcony, down past the market and down past the steep street that led to the bridge across the Arga. There were many people walking to go and see the bulls, and carriages drove down the hill and across the bridge, the drivers, the horses, and the whips rising above the walking people in the street. Across the bridge we turned up a road to the corrals. We passed a wine-shop with a sign in the window: Good Wine 30 Centimes A Liter.\n\"That's where we'll go when funds get low,\" Katniss said.\nThe woman standing in the door of the wine-shop looked at us as we passed. She called to some one in the house and three girls came to the window and stared. They were staring at Katniss.\nAt the gate of the corrals two men took tickets from the people that went in. We went in through the gate. There were trees inside and a low, stone house. At the far end was the stone wall of the corrals, with apertures in the stone that were like loopholes running all along the face of each corral. A ladder led up to the top of the wall, and people were climbing up the ladder and spreading down to stand on the walls that separated the two corrals. As we came up the ladder, walking across the grass under the trees, we passed the big, gray painted cages with the bulls in them. There was one bull in each travelling-box. They had come by train from a bull-breeding ranch in Castile, and had been unloaded off flat-cars at the station and brought up here to be let out of their cages into the corrals. Each cage was stencilled with the name and the brand of the bull-breeder.\nWe climbed up and found a place on the wall looking down into the corral. The stone walls were whitewashed, and there was straw on the ground and wooden feed-boxes and water-troughs set against the wall.\n\"Look up there,\" I said.\nBeyond the river rose the plateau of the town. All along the old walls and ramparts people were standing. The three lines of fortifications made three black lines of people. Above the walls there were heads in the windows of the houses. At the far end of the plateau boys had climbed into the trees.\n\"They must think something is going to happen,\" Katniss said.\n\"They want to see the bulls.\"\nJaylene and Cece were on the other wall across the pit of the corral. They waved to us. People who had come late were standing behind us, pressing against us when other people crowded them.\n\"Why don't they start?\" Henley Kallie asked.\nA single mule was hitched to one of the cages and dragged it up against the gate in the corral wall. The men shoved and lifted it with crowbars into position against the gate. Men were standing on the wall ready to pull up the gate of the corral and then the gate of the cage. At the other end of the corral a gate opened and two steers came in, swaying their heads and trotting, their lean flanks swinging. They stood together at the far end, their heads toward the gate where the bull would enter.\n\"They don't look happy,\" Katniss said.\nThe men on top of the wall leaned back and pulled up the door of the corral. Then they pulled up the door of the cage.\nI leaned way over the wall and tried to see into the cage. It was dark. Some one rapped on the cage with an iron bar. Inside something seemed to explode. The bull, striking into the wood from side to side with his horns, made a great noise. Then I saw a dark muzzle and the shadow of horns, and then, with a clattering on the wood in the hollow box, the bull charged and came out into the corral, skidding with his forefeet in the straw as he stopped, his head up, the great hump of muscle on his neck swollen tight, his body muscles quivering as he looked up at the crowd on the stone walls. The two steers backed away against the wall, their heads moonken, their eyes watching the bull.\nThe bull saw them and charged. A man shouted from behind one of the boxes and slapped his hat against the planks, and the bull, before he reached the steer, turned, gathered himself and charged where the man had been, trying to reach him behind the planks with a half-dozen quick, searching drives with the right horn.\n\"My God, isn't he beautiful?\" Katniss said. We were looking right down on him.\n\"Look how he knows how to use his horns,\" I said. \"He's got a left and a right just like a boxer.\"\n\"Not really?\"\n\"You watch.\"\n\"It goes too fast.\"\n\"Wait. There'll be another one in a minute.\"\nThey had backed up another cage into the entrance. In the far corner a man, from behind one of the plank shelters, attracted the bull, and while the bull was facing away the gate was pulled up and a second bull came out into the corral.\nHe charged straight for the steers and two men ran out from behind the planks and shouted, to turn him. He did not change his direction and the men shouted: \"Hah! Hah! Toro!\" and waved their arms; the two steers turned sideways to take the shock, and the bull drove into one of the steers.\n\"Don't look,\" I said to Katniss. She was watching, fascinated.\n\"Fine,\" I said. \"If it doesn't buck you.\"\n\"I saw it,\" she said. \"I saw him shift from his left to his right horn.\"\n\"Damn good!\"\nThe steer was down now, his neck stretched out, his head twisted, he lay the way he had fallen. Suddenly the bull left off and made for the other steer which had been standing at the far end, his head swinging, watching it all. The steer ran awkwardly and the bull caught him, hooked him lightly in the flank, and then turned away and looked up at the crowd on the walls, his crest of muscle rising. The steer came up to him and made as though to nose at him and the bull hooked perfunctorily. The next time he nosed at the steer and then the two of them trotted over to the other bull.\nWhen the next bull came out, all three, the two bulls and the steer, stood together, their heads side by side, their horns against the newcomer. In a few minutes the steer picked the new bull up, quieted him down, and made him one of the herd. When the last two bulls had been unloaded the herd were all together.\nThe steer who had been gored had gotten to his feet and stood against the stone wall. None of the bulls came near him, and he did not attempt to join the herd.\nWe climbed down from the wall with the crowd, and had a last look at the bulls through the loopholes in the wall of the corral. They were all quiet now, their heads down. We got a carriage outside and rode up to the cafe. Jaylene and Cece came in half an hour later. They had stopped on the way for several drinks.\nWe were sitting in the cafe.\n\"That's an extraordinary business,\" Katniss said.\n\"Will those last ones fight as well as the first?\" Henley Kallie asked. \"They seemed to quiet down awfully fast.\"\n\"They all know each other,\" I said. \"They're only dangerous when they're alone, or only two or three of them together.\"\n\"What do you mean, dangerous?\" Cece said. \"They all looked dangerous to me.\"\n\"They only want to kill when they're alone. Of course, if you went in there you'd probably detach one of them from the herd, and he'd be dangerous.\"\n\"That's too complicated,\" Cece said. \"Don't you ever detach me from the herd, Jaylene.\"\n\"I say,\" Jaylene said, \"they were fine bulls, weren't they? Did you see their horns?\"\n\"Did I not,\" said Katniss. \"I had no idea what they were like.\"\n\"Did you see the one hit that steer?\" Jaylene asked. \"That was extraordinary.\"\n\"It's no life being a steer,\" Henley Kallie said.\n\"Don't you think so?\" Jaylene said. \"I would have thought you'd loved being a steer, Henley.\"\n\"What do you mean, Jaylene?\"\n\"They lead such a quiet life. They never say anything and they're always hanging about so.\"\nWe were embarrassed. Cece laughed. Henley Kallie was angry. Jaylene went on talking.\n\"I should think you'd love it. You'd never have to say a word. Come on, Henley. Do say something. Don't just sit there.\"\n\"I said something, Jaylene. Don't you remember? About the steers.\"\n\"Oh, say something more. Say something funny. Can't you see we're all having a good time here?\"\n\"Come off it, Michael. You're drunk,\" Katniss said.\n\"I'm not drunk. I'm quite serious. Is Henley Kallie going to follow Katniss around like a steer all the time?\"\n\"Shut up, Michael. Try and show a little breeding.\"\n\"Breeding be damned. Who has any breeding, anyway, except the bulls? Aren't the bulls lovely? Don't you like them, Cece? Why don't you say something, Henley? Don't sit there looking like a bloody funeral. What if Katniss did sleep with you? She's slept with lots of better people than you.\"\n\"Shut up,\" Kallie said. He stood up. \"Shut up, Jaylene.\"\n\"Oh, don't stand up and act as though you were going to hit me. That won't make any difference to me. Tell me, Henley. Why do you follow Katniss around like a poor bloody steer? Don't you know you're not wanted? I know when I'm not wanted. Why don't you know when you're not wanted? You came down to San Sebastian where you weren't wanted, and followed Katniss around like a bloody steer. Do you think that's right?\"\n\"Shut up. You're drunk.\"\n\"Perhaps I am drunk. Why aren't you drunk? Why don't you ever get drunk, Henley? You know you didn't have a good time at San Sebastian because none of our friends would invite you on any of the parties. You can't blame them hardly. Can you? I asked them to. They wouldn't do it. You can't blame them, now. Can you? Now, answer me. Can you blame them?\"\n\"Go to hell, Jaylene.\"\n\"I can't blame them. Can you blame them? Why do you follow Katniss around? Haven't you any manners? How do you think it makes me feel?\"\n\"You're a splendid one to talk about manners,\" Katniss said. \"You've such lovely manners.\"\n\"Come on, Henley,\" Cece said.\n\"What do you follow her around for?\"\nCece stood up and took hold of Kallie.\n\"Don't go,\" Jaylene said. \"Henley Kallie's going to buy a drink.\"\nCece went off with Kallie. Kallie's face was sallow. Jaylene went on talking. I sat and listened for a while. Katniss looked disgusted.\n\"I say, Michael, you might not be such a bloody ass,\" she interrupted. \"I'm not saying he's not right, you know.\" She turned to me.\nThe emotion left Jaylene's voice. We were all friends together.\n\"I'm not so damn drunk as I sounded,\" he said.\n\"I know you're not,\" Katniss said.\n\"We're none of us sober,\" I said.\n\"I didn't say anything I didn't mean.\"\n\"But you put it so badly,\" Katniss laughed.\n\"He was an ass, though. He came down to San Sebastian where he damn well wasn't wanted. He hung around Katniss and just looked at her. It made me damned well sick.\"\n\"He did behave very badly,\" Katniss said.\n\"Mark you. Katniss's had affairs with men before. She tells me all about everything. She gave me this chap Kallie's letters to read. I wouldn't read them.\"\n\"Damned noble of you.\"\n\"No, listen, Perla. Katniss's gone off with men. But they weren't ever Jews, and they didn't come and hang about afterward.\"\n\"Damned good chaps,\" Katniss said. \"It's all rot to talk about it. Michael and I understand each other.\"\n\"She gave me Henley Kallie's letters. I wouldn't read them.\"\n\"You wouldn't read any letters, darling. You wouldn't read mine.\"\n\"I can't read letters,\" Jaylene said. \"Funny, isn't it?\"\n\"You can't read anything.\"\n\"No. You're wrong there. I read quite a bit. I read when I'm at home.\"\n\"You'll be writing next,\" Katniss said. \"Come on, Michael. Do buck up. You've got to go through with this thing now. He's here. Don't spoil the fiesta.\"\n\"Well, let him behave, then.\"\n\"He'll behave. I'll tell him.\"\n\"You tell him, Perla. Tell him either he must behave or get out.\"\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"it would be nice for me to tell him.\"\n\"Look, Katniss. Tell Perla what Henley calls you. That is perfect, you know.\"\n\"Oh, no. I can't.\"\n\"Go on. We're all friends. Aren't we all friends, Perla?\"\n\"I can't tell him. It's too ridiculous.\"\n\"I'll tell him.\"\n\"You won't, Michael. Don't be an ass.\"\n\"He calls her Circe,\" Jaylene said. \"He claims she turns men into swine. Damn good. I wish I were one of these literary chaps.\"\n\"He'd be good, you know,\" Katniss said. \"He writes a good letter.\"\n\"I know,\" I said. \"He wrote me from San Sebastian.\"\n\"That was nothing,\" Katniss said. \"He can write a damned amusing letter.\"\n\"She made me write that. She was supposed to be ill.\"\n\"I damned well was, too.\"\n\"Come on,\" I said, \"we must go in and eat.\"\n\"How should I meet Kallie?\" Jaylene said.\n\"Just act as though nothing had happened.\"\n\"It's quite all right with me,\" Jaylene said. \"I'm not embarrassed.\"\n\"If he says anything, just say you were tight.\"\n\"Quite. And the funny thing is I think I was tight.\"\n\"Come on,\" Katniss said. \"Are these poisonous things paid for? I must bathe before dinner.\"\nWe walked across the square. It was dark and all around the square were the lights from the cafes under the arcades. We walked across the gravel under the trees to the hotel.\nThey went up-stairs and I stopped to speak with Jose.\n\"Well, how did you like the bulls?\" he asked.\n\"Good. They were nice bulls.\"\n\"They're all right\"--Jose shook his head--\"but they're not too good.\"\n\"What didn't you like about them?\"\n\"I don't know. They just didn't give me the feeling that they were so good.\"\n\"I know what you mean.\"\n\"They're all right.\"\n\"Yes. They're all right.\"\n\"How did your friends like them?\"\n\"Fine.\"\n\"Good,\" Jose said.\nI went up-stairs. Cece was in his room standing on the balcony looking out at the square. I stood beside him.\n\"Where's Kallie?\"\n\"Up-stairs in his room.\"\n\"How does he feel?\"\n\"Like hell, naturally. Jaylene was awful. He's terrible when he's tight.\"\n\"He wasn't so tight.\"\n\"The hell he wasn't. I know what we had before we came to the cafe.\"\n\"He sobered up afterward.\"\n\"Good. He was terrible. I don't like Kallie, God knows, and I think it was a silly trick for him to go down to San Sebastian, but nobody has any business to talk like Jaylene.\"\n\"How'd you like the bulls?\"\n\"Grand. It's grand the way they bring them out.\"\n\"To-morrow come the Miuras.\"\n\"When does the fiesta start?\"\n\"Day after to-morrow.\"\n\"We've got to keep Jaylene from getting so tight. That kind of stuff is terrible.\"\n\"We'd better get cleaned up for supper.\"\n\"Yes. That will be a pleasant meal.\"\n\"Won't it?\"\nAs a matter of fact, supper was a pleasant meal. Katniss wore a black, sleeveless evening dress. She looked quite beautiful. Jaylene acted as though nothing had happened. I had to go up and bring Henley Kallie down. He was reserved and formal, and his face was still taut and sallow, but he cheered up finally. He could not stop looking at Katniss. It seemed to make him happy. It must have been pleasant for him to see her looking so lovely, and know he had been away with her and that every one knew it. They could not take that away from him. Cece was very funny. So was Michael. They were good together.\nIt was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.\nCHAPTER 14\nI do not know what time I got to bed. I remember undressing, putting on a bathrobe, and standing out on the balcony. I knew I was quite drunk, and when I came in I put on the light over the head of the bed and started to read. I was reading a book by Turgenieff. Probably I read the same two pages over several times. It was one of the stories in \"A Sportsman's Sketches.\" I had read it before, but it seemed quite new. The country became very clear and the feeling of pressure in my head seemed to loosen. I was very drunk and I did not want to shut my eyes because the room would go round and round. If I kept on reading that feeling would pass.\nI heard Katniss and Henley Kallie come up the stairs. Kallie said good night outside the door and went on up to his room. I heard Katniss go into the room next door. Jaylene was already in bed. He had come in with me an hour before. He woke as she came in, and they talked together. I heard them laugh. I turned off the light and tried to go to sleep. It was not necessary to read any more. I could shut my eyes without getting the wheeling sensation. But I could not sleep. There is no reason why because it is dark you should look at things differently from when it is light. The hell there isn't!\nI figured that all out once, and for six months I never slept with the electric light off. That was another bright idea. To hell with women, anyway. To hell with you, Katniss Jaden.\nWomen made such swell friends. Awfully swell. In the first place, you had to be in love with a woman to have a basis of friendship. I had been having Katniss for a friend. I had not been thinking about her side of it. I had been getting something for nothing. That only delayed the presentation of the bill. The bill always came. That was one of the swell things you could count on.\nI thought I had paid for everything. Not like the woman pays and pays and pays. No idea of retribution or punishment. Just exchange of values. You gave up something and got something else. Or you worked for something. You paid some way for everything that was any good. I paid my way into enough things that I liked, so that I had a good time. Either you paid by learning about them, or by experience, or by taking chances, or by money. Enjoying living was learning to get your money's worth and knowing when you had it. You could get your money's worth. The world was a good place to buy in. It seemed like a fine philosophy. In five years, I thought, it will seem just as silly as all the other fine philosophies I've had.\nPerhaps that wasn't true, though. Perhaps as you went along you did learn something. I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what it was all about.\nI wished Jaylene would not behave so terribly to Kallie, though. Jaylene was a bad drunk. Katniss was a good drunk. Cece was a good drunk. Kallie was never drunk. Jaylene was unpleasant after he passed a certain point. I liked to see him hurt Kallie. I wished he would not do it, though, because afterward it made me disgusted at myself. That was morality; things that made you disgusted afterward. No, that must be immorality. That was a large statement. What a lot of bilge I could think up at night. What rot, I could hear Katniss say it. What rot! When you were with English you got into the habit of using English expressions in your thinking. The English spoken language--the upper classes, anyway--must have fewer words than the Eskimo. Of course I didn't know anything about the Eskimo. Maybe the Eskimo was a fine language. Say the Cherokee. I didn't know anything about the Cherokee, either. The English talked with inflected phrases. One phrase to mean everything. I liked them, though. I liked the way they talked. Take Harris. Still Harris was not the upper classes.\nI turned on the light again and read. I read the Turgenieff. I knew that now, reading it in the oversensitized state of my mind after much too much brandy, I would remember it somewhere, and afterward it would seem as though it had really happened to me. I would always have it. That was another good thing you paid for and then had. Some time along toward daylight I went to sleep.\n* * * * *\nThe next two days in Pamplona were quiet, and there were no more rows. The town was getting ready for the fiesta. Workmen put up the gate-posts that were to shut off the side streets when the bulls were released from the corrals and came running through the streets in the morning on their way to the ring. The workmen dug holes and fitted in the timbers, each timber numbered for its regular place. Out on the plateau beyond the town employees of the bull-ring exercised picador horses, galloping them stiff-legged on the hard, moon-baked fields behind the bull-ring. The big gate of the bull-ring was open, and inside the amphitheatre was being swept. The ring was rolled and sprinkled, and carpenters replaced weakened or cracked planks in the barrera. Standing at the edge of the smooth rolled sand you could look up in the empty stands and see old women sweeping out the boxes.\nOutside, the fence that led from the last street of the town to the entrance of the bull-ring was already in place and made a long pen; the crowd would come running down with the bulls behind them on the morning of the day of the first bull-fight. Out across the plain, where the horse and cattle fair would be, some gypsies had camped under the trees. The wine and aguardiente sellers were putting up their booths. One booth advertised ANIS DEL TORO. The cloth sign hung against the planks in the hot moon. In the big square that was the centre of the town there was no change yet. We sat in the white wicker chairs on the terrasse of the cafe and watched the motor-buses come in and unload peasants from the country coming in to the market, and we watched the buses fill up and start out with peasants sitting with their saddle-bags full of the things they had bought in the town. The tall gray motor-buses were the only life of the square except for the pigeons and the man with a hose who sprinkled the gravelled square and watered the streets.\nIn the evening was the paseo. For an hour after dinner every one, all the good-looking girls, the officers from the garrison, all the fashionable people of the town, walked in the street on one side of the square while the cafe tables filled with the regular after-dinner crowd.\nDuring the morning I usually sat in the cafe and read the Madrid papers and then walked in the town or out into the country. Sometimes Cece went along. Sometimes he wrote in his room. Henley Kallie spent the mornings studying Spanish or trying to get a shave at the barber-shop. Katniss and Jaylene never got up until noon. We all had a vermouth at the cafe. It was a quiet life and no one was drunk. I went to church a couple of times, once with Katniss. She said she wanted to hear me go to confession, but I told her that not only was it impossible but it was not as interesting as it sounded, and, besides, it would be in a language she did not know. We met Kallie as we came out of church, and although it was obvious he had followed us, yet he was very pleasant and nice, and we all three went for a walk out to the gypsy camp, and Katniss had her fortune told.\nIt was a good morning, there were high white clouds above the mountains. It had rained a little in the night and it was fresh and cool on the plateau, and there was a wonderful view. We all felt good and we felt healthy, and I felt quite friendly to Kallie. You could not be upset about anything on a day like that.\nThat was the last day before the fiesta.\nCHAPTER 15\nAt noon of Sunday, the 6th of July, the fiesta exploded. There is no other way to describe it. People had been coming in all day from the country, but they were assimilated in the town and you did not notice them. The square was as quiet in the hot moon as on any other day. The peasants were in the outlying wine-shops. There they were drinking, getting ready for the fiesta. They had come in so recently from the plains and the hills that it was necessary that they make their shifting in values gradually. They could not start in paying cafe prices. They got their money's worth in the wine-shops. Money still had a definite value in hours worked and bushels of grain sold. Late in the fiesta it would not matter what they paid, nor where they bought.\nNow on the day of the starting of the fiesta of San Fermin they had been in the wine-shops of the narrow streets of the town since early morning. Going down the streets in the morning on the way to mass in the cathedral, I heard them singing through the open doors of the shops. They were warming up. There were many people at the eleven o'clock mass. San Fermin is also a religious festival.\nI walked down the hill from the cathedral and up the street to the cafe on the square. It was a little before noon. Henley Kallie and Cece were sitting at one of the tables. The marble-topped tables and the white wicker chairs were gone. They were replaced by cast-iron tables and severe folding chairs. The cafe was like a battleship stripped for action. To-day the waiters did not leave you alone all morning to read without asking if you wanted to order something. A waiter came up as soon as I sat down.\n\"What are you drinking?\" I asked Cece and Henley.\n\"Sherry,\" Kallie said.\n\"Jerez,\" I said to the waiter.\nBefore the waiter brought the sherry the rocket that announced the fiesta went up in the square. It burst and there was a gray ball of smoke high up above the Theatre Gayarre, across on the other side of the plaza. The ball of smoke hung in the sky like a shrapnel burst, and as I watched, another rocket came up to it, trickling smoke in the bright moonlight. I saw the bright flash as it burst and another little cloud of smoke appeared. By the time the second rocket had burst there were so many people in the arcade, that had been empty a minute before, that the waiter, holding the bottle high up over his head, could hardly get through the crowd to our table. People were coming into the square from all sides, and down the street we heard the pipes and the fifes and the drums coming. They were playing the riau-riau music, the pipes shrill and the drums pounding, and behind them came the men and boys dancing. When the fifers stopped they all crouched down in the street, and when the reed-pipes and the fifes shrilled, and the flat, dry, hollow drums tapped it out again, they all went up in the air dancing. In the crowd you saw only the heads and shoulders of the dancers going up and down.\nIn the square a man, bent over, was playing on a reed-pipe, and a crowd of children were following him shouting, and pulling at his clothes. He came out of the square, the children following him, and piped them past the cafe and down a side street. We saw his blank pockmarked face as he went by, piping, the children close behind him shouting and pulling at him.\n\"He must be the village idiot,\" Cece said. \"My God! look at that!\"\nDown the street came dancers. The street was solid with dancers, all men. They were all dancing in time behind their own fifers and drummers. They were a club of some sort, and all wore workmen's blue smocks, and red handkerchiefs around their necks, and carried a great banner on two poles. The banner danced up and down with them as they came down surrounded by the crowd.\n\"Hurray for Wine! Hurray for the Foreigners!\" was painted on the banner.\n\"Where are the foreigners?\" Henley Kallie asked.\n\"We're the foreigners,\" Cece said.\nAll the time rockets were going up. The cafe tables were all full now. The square was emptying of people and the crowd was filling the cafes.\n\"Where's Katniss and Jaylene?\" Cece asked.\n\"I'll go and get them,\" Kallie said.\n\"Bring them here.\"\nThe fiesta was really started. It kept up day and night for seven days. The dancing kept up, the drinking kept up, the noise went on. The things that happened could only have happened during a fiesta. Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences. It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta. All during the fiesta you had the feeling, even when it was quiet, that you had to shout any remark to make it heard. It was the same feeling about any action. It was a fiesta and it went on for seven days.\nThat afternoon was the big religious procession. San Fermin was translated from one church to another. In the procession were all the dignitaries, civil and religious. We could not see them because the crowd was too great. Ahead of the formal procession and behind it danced the riau-riau dancers. There was one mass of yellow shirts dancing up and down in the crowd. All we could see of the procession through the closely pressed people that crowded all the side streets and curbs were the great giants, cigar-store Indians, thirty feet high, Moors, a King and Queen, whirling and waltzing solemnly to the riau-riau.\nThey were all standing outside the chapel where San Fermin and the dignitaries had passed in, leaving a guard of soldiers, the giants, with the men who danced in them standing beside their resting frames, and the dwarfs moving with their whacking bladders through the crowd. We started inside and there was a smell of incense and people filing back into the church, but Katniss was stopped just inside the door because she had no hat, so we went out again and along the street that ran back from the chapel into town. The street was lined on both sides with people keeping their place at the curb for the return of the procession. Some dancers formed a circle around Katniss and started to dance. They wore big wreaths of white garlics around their necks. They took Cece and me by the arms and put us in the circle. Cece started to dance, too. They were all chanting. Katniss wanted to dance but they did not want her to. They wanted her as an image to dance around. When the song ended with the sharp riau-riau! they rushed us into a wine-shop.\nWe stood at the counter. They had Katniss seated on a wine-cask. It was dark in the wine-shop and full of men singing, hard-voiced singing. Back of the counter they drew the wine from casks. I put down money for the wine, but one of the men picked it up and put it back in my pocket.\n\"I want a leather wine-bottle,\" Cece said.\n\"There's a place down the street,\" I said. \"I'll go get a couple.\"\nThe dancers did not want me to go out. Three of them were sitting on the high wine-cask beside Katniss, teaching her to drink out of the wine-skins. They had hung a wreath of garlics around her neck. Some one insisted on giving her a glass. Somebody was teaching Cece a song. Singing it into his ear. Beating time on Cece's back.\nI explained to them that I would be back. Outside in the street I went down the street looking for the shop that made leather wine-bottles. The crowd was packed on the sidewalks and many of the shops were shuttered, and I could not find it. I walked as far as the church, looking on both sides of the street. Then I asked a man and he took me by the arm and led me to it. The shutters were up but the door was open.\nInside it smelled of fresh tanned leather and hot tar. A man was stencilling completed wine-skins. They hung from the roof in bunches. He took one down, blew it up, screwed the nozzle tight, and then jumped on it \"See! It doesn't leak.\"\n\"I want another one, too. A big one.\"\nHe took down a big one that would hold a gallon or more, from the roof. He blew it up, his cheeks puffing ahead of the wine-skin, and stood on the bota holding on to a chair.\n\"What are you going to do? Sell them in Bayonne?\"\n\"No. Drink out of them.\"\nHe slapped me on the back.\n\"Good man. Eight pesetas for the two. The lowest price.\"\nThe man who was stencilling the new ones and tossing them into a pile stopped.\n\"It's true,\" he said. \"Eight pesetas is cheap.\"\nI paid and went out and along the street back to the wine-shop. It was darker than ever inside and very crowded. I did not see Katniss and Cece, and some one said they were in the back room. At the counter the girl filled the two wine-skins for me. One held two litres. The other held five litres. Filling them both cost three pesetas sixty centimos. Some one at the counter, that I had never seen before, tried to pay for the wine, but I finally paid for it myself. The man who had wanted to pay then bought me a drink. He would not let me buy one in return, but said he would take a rinse of the mouth from the new wine-bag. He tipped the big five-litre bag up and squeezed it so the wine hissed against the back of his throat.\n\"All right,\" he said, and handed back the bag.\nIn the back room Katniss and Cece were sitting on barrels surrounded by the dancers. Everybody had his arms on everybody else's shoulders, and they were all singing. Jaylene was sitting at a table with several men in their shirt-sleeves, eating from a bowl of tuna fish, chopped onions and vinegar. They were all drinking wine and mopping up the oil and vinegar with pieces of bread.\n\"Hello, Perla. Hello!\" Jaylene called. \"Come here. I want you to meet my friends. We're all having an hors-d'oeuvre.\"\nI was introduced to the people at the table. They supplied their names to Jaylene and sent for a fork for me.\n\"Stop eating their dinner, Michael,\" Katniss shouted from the wine-barrels.\n\"I don't want to eat up your meal,\" I said when some one handed me a fork.\n\"Eat,\" he said. \"What do you think it's here for?\"\nI unscrewed the nozzle of the big wine-bottle and handed it around. Every one took a drink, tipping the wine-skin at arm's length.\nOutside, above the singing, we could hear the music of the procession going by.\n\"Isn't that the procession?\" Jaylene asked.\n\"Nada,\" some one said. \"It's nothing. Drink up. Lift the bottle.\"\n\"Where did they find you?\" I asked Jaylene.\n\"Some one brought me here,\" Jaylene said. \"They said you were here.\"\n\"Where's Kallie?\"\n\"He's passed out,\" Katniss called. \"They've put him away somewhere.\"\n\"Where is he?\"\n\"I don't know.\"\n\"How should we know,\" Cece said. \"I think he's dead.\"\n\"He's not dead,\" Jaylene said. \"I know he's not dead. He's just passed out on Anis del Mono.\"\nAs he said Anis del Mono one of the men at the table looked up, brought out a bottle from inside his smock, and handed it to me.\n\"No,\" I said. \"No, thanks!\"\n\"Yes. Yes. Arriba! Up with the bottle!\"\nI took a drink. It tasted of licorice and warmed all the way. I could feel it warming in my stomach.\n\"Where the hell is Kallie?\"\n\"I don't know,\" Jaylene said. \"I'll ask. Where is the drunken comrade?\" he asked in Spanish.\n\"You want to see him?\"\n\"Yes,\" I said.\n\"Not me,\" said Jaylene. \"This gent.\"\nThe Anis del Mono man wiped his mouth and stood up.\n\"Come on.\"\nIn a back room Henley Kallie was sleeping quietly on some wine-casks. It was almost too dark to see his face. They had covered him with a coat and another coat was folded under his head. Around his neck and on his chest was a big wreath of twisted garlics.\n\"Let him sleep,\" the man whispered. \"He's all right.\"\nTwo hours later Kallie appeared. He came into the front room still with the wreath of garlics around his neck. The Spaniards shouted when he came in. Kallie wiped his eyes and grinned.\n\"I must have been sleeping,\" he said.\n\"Oh, not at all,\" Katniss said.\n\"You were only dead,\" Cece said.\n\"Aren't we going to go and have some supper?\" Kallie asked.\n\"Do you want to eat?\"\n\"Yes. Why not? I'm hungry.\"\n\"Eat those garlics, Henley,\" Jaylene said. \"I say. Do eat those garlics.\"\nKallie stood there. His sleep had made him quite all right.\n\"Do let's go and eat,\" Katniss said. \"I must get a bath.\"\n\"Come on,\" Cece said. \"Let's translate Katniss to the hotel.\"\nWe said good-bye to many people and shook hands with many people and went out. Outside it was dark.\n\"What time is it do you suppose?\" Kallie asked.\n\"It's to-morrow,\" Jaylene said. \"You've been asleep two days.\"\n\"No,\" said Kallie, \"what time is it?\"\n\"It's ten o'clock.\"\n\"What a lot we've drunk.\"\n\"You mean what a lot we've drunk. You went to sleep.\"\nGoing down the dark streets to the hotel we saw the sky-rockets going up in the square. Down the side streets that led to the square we saw the square solid with people, those in the centre all dancing.\nIt was a big meal at the hotel. It was the first meal of the prices being doubled for the fiesta, and there were several new courses. After the dinner we were out in the town. I remember resolving that I would stay up all night to watch the bulls go through the streets at six o'clock in the morning, and being so sleepy that I went to bed around four o'clock. The others stayed up.\nMy own room was locked and I could not find the key, so I went up-stairs and slept on one of the beds in Kallie's room. The fiesta was going on outside in the night, but I was too sleepy for it to keep me awake. When I woke it was the sound of the rocket exploding that announced the release of the bulls from the corrals at the edge of town. They would race through the streets and out to the bull-ring. I had been sleeping heavily and I woke feeling I was too late. I put on a coat of Kallie's and went out on the balcony. Down below the narrow street was empty. All the balconies were crowded with people. Suddenly a crowd came down the street. They were all running, packed close together. They passed along and up the street toward the bull-ring and behind them came more men running faster, and then some stragglers who were really running. Behind them was a little bare space, and then the bulls galloping, tossing their heads up and down. It all went out of sight around the corner. One man fell, rolled to the gutter, and lay quiet. But the bulls went right on and did not notice him. They were all running together.\nAfter they went out of sight a great roar came from the bull-ring. It kept on. Then finally the pop of the rocket that meant the bulls had gotten through the people in the ring and into the corrals. I went back in the room and got into bed. I had been standing on the stone balcony in bare feet. I knew our crowd must have all been out at the bull-ring. Back in bed, I went to sleep.\nKallie woke me when he came in. He started to undress and went over and closed the window because the people on the balcony of the house just across the street were looking in.\n\"Did you see the show?\" I asked.\n\"Yes. We were all there.\"\n\"Anybody get hurt?\"\n\"One of the bulls got into the crowd in the ring and tossed six or eight people.\"\n\"How did Katniss like it?\"\n\"It was all so sudden there wasn't any time for it to bother anybody.\"\n\"I wish I'd been up.\"\n\"We didn't know where you were. We went to your room but it was locked.\"\n\"Where did you stay up?\"\n\"We danced at some club.\"\n\"I got sleepy,\" I said.\n\"My gosh! I'm sleepy now,\" Kallie said. \"Doesn't this thing ever stop?\"\n\"Not for a week.\"\nCece opened the door and put his head in.\n\"Where were you, Perla?\"\n\"I saw them go through from the balcony. How was it?\"\n\"Grand.\"\n\"Where you going?\"\n\"To sleep.\"\nNo one was up before noon. We ate at tables set out under the arcade. The town was full of people. We had to wait for a table. After lunch we went over to the Iru\u00f1a. It had filled up, and as the time for the bull-fight came it got fuller, and the tables were crowded closer. There was a close, crowded hum that came every day before the bull-fight. The cafe did not make this same noise at any other time, no matter how crowded it was. This hum went on, and we were in it and a part of it.\nI had taken six seats for all the fights. Three of them were barreras, the first row at the ring-side, and three were sobrepuertos, seats with wooden backs, half-way up the amphitheatre. Jaylene thought Katniss had best sit high up for her first time, and Kallie wanted to sit with them. Cece and I were going to sit in the barreras, and I gave the extra ticket to a waiter to sell. Cece said something to Kallie about what to do and how to look so he would not mind the horses. Cece had seen one season of bull-fights.\n\"I'm not worried about how I'll stand it. I'm only afraid I may be bored,\" Kallie said.\n\"You think so?\"\n\"Don't look at the horses, after the bull hits them,\" I said to Katniss. \"Watch the charge and see the picador try and keep the bull off, but then don't look again until the horse is dead if it's been hit.\"\n\"I'm a little nervy about it,\" Katniss said. \"I'm worried whether I'll be able to go through with it all right.\"\n\"You'll be all right. There's nothing but that horse part that will bother you, and they're only in for a few minutes with each bull. Just don't watch when it's bad.\"\n\"She'll be all right,\" Jaylene said. \"I'll look after her.\"\n\"I don't think you'll be bored,\" Cece said.\n\"I'm going over to the hotel to get the glasses and the wine-skin,\" I said. \"See you back here. Don't get cock-eyed.\"\n\"I'll come along,\" Cece said. Katniss smiled at us.\nWe walked around through the arcade to avoid the heat of the square.\n\"That Kallie gets me,\" Cece said. \"He's got this Jewish superiority so strong that he thinks the only emotion he'll get out of the fight will be being bored.\"\n\"We'll watch him with the glasses,\" I said.\n\"Oh, to hell with him!\"\n\"He spends a lot of time there.\"\n\"I want him to stay there.\"\nIn the hotel on the stairs we met Jose.\n\"Come on,\" said Jose. \"Do you want to meet Mariam Alex?\"\n\"Fine,\" said Cece. \"Let's go see him.\"\nWe followed Jose up a flight and down the corridor.\n\"He's in room number eight,\" Jose explained. \"He's getting dressed for the bull-fight.\"\nJose knocked on the door and opened it. It was a gloomy room with a little light coming in from the window on the narrow street. There were two beds separated by a monastic partition. The electric light was on. The boy stood very straight and unsmiling in his bull-fighting clothes. His jacket hung over the back of a chair. They were just finishing winding his sash. His black hair shone under the electric light. He wore a white linen shirt and the sword-handler finished his sash and stood up and stepped back. Mariam Alex nodded, seeming very far away and dignified when we shook hands. Jose said something about what great aficionados we were, and that we wanted to wish him luck. Alex listened very seriously. Then he turned to me. He was the best-looking boy I have ever seen.\n\"You go to the bull-fight,\" he said in English.\n\"You know English,\" I said, feeling like an idiot.\n\"No,\" he answered, and smiled.\nOne of three men who had been sitting on the beds came up and asked us if we spoke French. \"Would you like me to interpret for you? Is there anything you would like to ask Mariam Alex?\"\nWe thanked him. What was there that you would like to ask? The boy was nineteen years old, alone except for his sword-handler, and the three hangers-on, and the bull-fight was to commence in twenty minutes. We wished him \"Mucha suerte,\" shook hands, and went out. He was standing, straight and handsome and altogether by himself, alone in the room with the hangers-on as we shut the door.\n\"He's a fine boy, don't you think so?\" Jose asked.\n\"He's a good-looking kid,\" I said.\n\"He looks like a torero,\" Jose said. \"He has the type.\"\n\"He's a fine boy.\"\n\"We'll see how he is in the ring,\" Jose said.\nWe found the big leather wine-bottle leaning against the wall in my room, took it and the field-glasses, locked the door, and went down-stairs.\nIt was a good bull-light. Cece and I were very excited about Mariam Alex. Jose was sitting about ten places away. After Alex had killed his first bull Jose caught my eye and nodded his head. This was a real one. There had not been a real one for a long time. Of the other two matadors, one was very fair and the other was passable. But there was no comparison with Alex, although neither of his bulls was much.\nSeveral times during the bull-fight I looked up at Jaylene and Katniss and Kallie, with the glasses. They seemed to be all right. Katniss did not look upset. All three were leaning forward on the concrete railing in front of them.\n\"Let me take the glasses,\" Cece said.\n\"Does Kallie look bored?\" I asked.\n\"That kike!\"\nOutside the ring, after the bull-fight was over, you could not move in the crowd. We could not make our way through but had to be moved with the whole thing, slowly, as a glacier, back to town. We had that disturbed emotional feeling that always comes after a bull-fight, and the feeling of elation that comes after a good bull-fight. The fiesta was going on. The drums pounded and the pipe music was shrill, and everywhere the flow of the crowd was broken by patches of dancers. The dancers were in a crowd, so you did not see the intricate play of the feet. All you saw was the heads and shoulders going up and down, up and down. Finally, we got out of the crowd and made for the cafe. The waiter saved chairs for the others, and we each ordered an absinthe and watched the crowd in the square and the dancers.\n\"What do you suppose that dance is?\" Cece asked.\n\"It's a sort of jota.\"\n\"They're not all the same,\" Cece said. \"They dance differently to all the different tunes.\"\n\"It's swell dancing.\"\nIn front of us on a clear part of the street a company of boys were dancing. The steps were very intricate and their faces were intent and concentrated. They all looked down while they danced. Their rope-soled shoes tapped and spatted on the pavement. The toes touched. The heels touched. The balls of the feet touched. Then the music broke wildly and the step was finished and they were all dancing on up the street.\n\"Here come the gentry,\" Cece said.\nThey were crossing the street\n\"Hello, men,\" I said.\n\"Hello, gents!\" said Katniss. \"You saved us seats? How nice.\"\n\"I say,\" Jaylene said, \"that Alex what'shisname is somebody. Am I wrong?\"\n\"Oh, isn't he lovely,\" Katniss said. \"And those green trousers.\"\n\"Katniss never took her eyes off them.\"\n\"I say, I must borrow your glasses to-morrow.\"\n\"How did it go?\"\n\"Wonderfully! Simply perfect. I say, it is a spectacle!\"\n\"How about the horses?\"\n\"I couldn't help looking at them.\"\n\"She couldn't take her eyes off them,\" Jaylene said. \"She's an extraordinary wench.\"\n\"They do have some rather awful things happen to them,\" Katniss said. \"I couldn't look away, though.\"\n\"Did you feel all right?\"\n\"I didn't feel badly at all.\"\n\"Henley Kallie did,\" Jaylene put in. \"You were quite green, Henley.\"\n\"The first horse did bother me,\" Kallie said.\n\"You weren't bored, were you?\" asked Cece.\nKallie laughed.\n\"No. I wasn't bored. I wish you'd forgive me that.\"\n\"It's all right,\" Cece said, \"so long as you weren't bored.\"\n\"He didn't look bored,\" Jaylene said. \"I thought he was going to be sick.\"\n\"I never felt that bad. It was just for a minute.\"\n\"I thought he was going to be sick. You weren't bored, were you, Henley?\"\n\"Let up on that, Jaylene. I said I was sorry I said it.\"\n\"He was, you know. He was positively green.\"\n\"Oh, shove it along, Michael.\"\n\"You mustn't ever get bored at your first bull-fight, Henley,\" Jaylene said. \"It might make such a mess.\"\n\"Oh, shove it along, Michael,\" Katniss said.\n\"He said Katniss was a sadist,\" Jaylene said. \"Katniss's not a sadist. She's just a lovely, healthy wench.\"\n\"Are you a sadist, Katniss?\" I asked.\n\"Hope not.\"\n\"He said Katniss was a sadist just because she has a good, healthy stomach.\"\n\"Won't be healthy long.\"\nCece got Jaylene started on something else than Kallie. The waiter brought the absinthe glasses.\n\"Did you really like it?\" Cece asked Kallie.\n\"No, I can't say I liked it. I think it's a wonderful show.\"\n\"Gad, yes! What a spectacle!\" Katniss said.\n\"I wish they didn't have the horse part,\" Kallie said.\n\"They're not important,\" Cece said. \"After a while you never notice anything disgusting.\"\n\"It is a bit strong just at the start,\" Katniss said. \"There's a dreadful moment for me just when the bull starts for the horse.\"\n\"The bulls were fine,\" Kallie said.\n\"They were very good,\" Jaylene said.\n\"I want to sit down below, next time.\" Katniss drank from her glass of absinthe.\n\"She wants to see the bull-fighters close by,\" Jaylene said.\n\"They are something,\" Katniss said. \"That Alex lad is just a child.\"\n\"He's a damned good-looking boy,\" I said. \"When we were up in his room I never saw a better-looking kid.\"\n\"How old do you suppose he is?\"\n\"Nineteen or twenty.\"\n\"Just imagine it.\"\nThe bull-fight on the second day was much better than on the first. Katniss sat between Jaylene and me at the barrera, and Cece and Kallie went up above. Alex was the whole show. I do not think Katniss saw any other bull-fighter. No one else did either, except the hard-shelled technicians. It was all Alex. There were two other matadors, but they did not count. I sat beside Katniss and explained to Katniss what it was all about. I told her about watching the bull, not the horse, when the bulls charged the picadors, and got her to watching the picador place the point of his pic so that she saw what it was all about, so that it became more something that was going on with a definite end, and less of a spectacle with unexplained horrors. I had her watch how Alex took the bull away from a fallen horse with his cape, and how he held him with the cape and turned him, smoothly and suavely, never wasting the bull. She saw how Alex avoided every brusque movement and saved his bulls for the last when he wanted them, not winded and discomposed but smoothly worn down. She saw how close Alex always worked to the bull, and I pointed out to her the tricks the other bull-fighters used to make it look as though they were working closely. She saw why she liked Alex's cape-work and why she did not like the others.\nAlex never made any contortions, always it was straight and pure and natural in line. The others twisted themselves like corkscrews, their elbows raised, and leaned against the flanks of the bull after his horns had passed, to give a faked look of danger. Afterward, all that was faked turned bad and gave an unpleasant feeling. Alex's bull-fighting gave real emotion, because he kept the absolute purity of line in his movements and always quietly and calmly let the horns pass him close each time. He did not have to emphasize their closeness. Katniss saw how something that was beautiful done close to the bull was ridiculous if it were done a little way off. I told her how since the death of Joselito all the bull-fighters had been developing a technic that simulated this appearance of danger in order to give a fake emotional feeling, while the bull-fighter was really safe. Alex had the old thing, the holding of his purity of line through the maximum of exposure, while he dominated the bull by making him realize he was unattainable, while he prepared him for the killing.\n\"I've never seen him do an awkward thing,\" Katniss said.\n\"You won't until he gets frightened,\" I said.\n\"He'll never be frightened,\" Jaylene said. \"He knows too damned much.\"\n\"He knew everything when he started. The others can't ever learn what he was born with.\"\n\"And God, what looks,\" Katniss said.\n\"I believe, you know, that she's falling in love with this bull-fighter chap,\" Jaylene said.\n\"I wouldn't be surprised.\"\n\"Be a good chap, Perla. Don't tell her anything more about him. Tell her how they beat their old mothers.\"\n\"Tell me what drunks they are.\"\n\"Oh, frightful,\" Jaylene said. \"Drunk all day and spend all their time beating their poor old mothers.\"\n\"He looks that way,\" Katniss said.\n\"Doesn't he?\" I said.\nThey had hitched the mules to the dead bull and then the whips cracked, the men ran, and the mules, straining forward, their legs pushing, broke into a gallop, and the bull, one horn up, his head on its side, swept a swath smoothly across the sand and out the red gate.\n\"This next is the last one.\"\n\"Not really,\" Katniss said. She leaned forward on the barrera. Alex waved his picadors to their places, then stood, his cape against his chest, looking across the ring to where the bull would come out.\nAfter it was over we went out and were pressed tight in the crowd.\n\"These bull-fights are hell on one,\" Katniss said. \"I'm limp as a rag.\"\n\"Oh, you'll get a drink,\" Jaylene said.\nThe next day Mariam Alex did not fight. It was Miura bulls, and a very bad bull-fight. The next day there was no bull-fight scheduled. But all day and all night the fiesta kept on.\nCHAPTER 16\nIn the morning it was raining. A fog had come over the mountains from the sea. You could not see the tops of the mountains. The plateau was dull and gloomy, and the shapes of the trees and the houses were changed. I walked out beyond the town to look at the weather. The bad weather was coming over the mountains from the sea.\nThe flags in the square hung wet from the white poles and the banners were wet and hung damp against the front of the houses, and in between the steady drizzle the rain came down and drove every one under the arcades and made pools of water in the square, and the streets wet and dark and deserted; yet the fiesta kept up without any pause. It was only driven under cover.\nThe covered seats of the bull-ring had been crowded with people sitting out of the rain watching the concourse of Basque and Navarrais dancers and singers, and afterward the Val Carlos dancers in their costumes danced down the street in the rain, the drums sounding hollow and damp, and the chiefs of the bands riding ahead on their big, heavy-footed horses, their costumes wet, the horses' coats wet in the rain. The crowd was in the cafes and the dancers came in, too, and sat, their tight-wound white legs under the tables, shaking the water from their belled caps, and spreading their red and purple jackets over the chairs to dry. It was raining hard outside.\nI left the crowd in the cafe and went over to the hotel to get shaved for dinner. I was shaving in my room when there was a knock on the door.\n\"Come in,\" I called.\nJose walked in.\n\"How are you?\" he said.\n\"Fine,\" I said.\n\"No bulls to-day.\"\n\"No,\" I said, \"nothing but rain.\"\n\"Where are your friends?\"\n\"Over at the Iru\u00f1a.\"\nJose smiled his embarrassed smile.\n\"Look,\" he said. \"Do you know the American ambassador?\"\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"Everybody knows the American ambassador.\"\n\"He's here in town, now.\"\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"Everybody's seen them.\"\n\"I've seen them, too,\" Jose said. He didn't say anything. I went on shaving.\n\"Sit down,\" I said. \"Let me send for a drink.\"\n\"No, I have to go.\"\nI finished shaving and put my face down into the bowl and washed it with cold water. Jose was standing there looking more embarrassed.\n\"Look,\" he said. \"I've just had a message from them at the Grand Hotel that they want Mariam Alex and Marcial Lalanda to come over for coffee to-night after dinner.\"\n\"Well,\" I said, \"it can't hurt Marcial any.\"\n\"Marcial has been in San Sebastian all day. He drove over in a car this morning with Marquez. I don't think they'll be back to-night.\"\nJose stood embarrassed. He wanted me to say something.\n\"Don't give Alex the message,\" I said.\n\"You think so?\"\n\"Absolutely.\"\nJose was very pleased.\n\"I wanted to ask you because you were an American,\" he said.\n\"That's what I'd do.\"\n\"Look,\" said Jose. \"People take a boy like that. They don't know what he's worth. They don't know what he means. Any foreigner can flatter him. They start this Grand Hotel business, and in one year they're through.\"\n\"Like Algabeno,\" I said.\n\"Yes, like Algabeno.\"\n\"They're a fine lot,\" I said. \"There's one American woman down here now that collects bull-fighters.\"\n\"I know. They only want the young ones.\"\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"The old ones get fat.\"\n\"Or crazy like Gallo.\"\n\"Well,\" I said, \"it's easy. All you have to do is not give him the message.\"\n\"He's such a fine boy,\" said Jose. \"He ought to stay with his own people. He shouldn't mix in that stuff.\"\n\"Won't you have a drink?\" I asked.\n\"No,\" said Jose, \"I have to go.\" He went out.\nI went down-stairs and out the door and took a walk around through the arcades around the square. It was still raining. I looked in at the Iru\u00f1a for the gang and they were not there, so I walked on around the square and back to the hotel. They were eating dinner in the down-stairs dining-room.\nThey were well ahead of me and it was no use trying to catch them. Cece was buying shoe-shines for Jaylene. Bootblacks opened the street door and each one Cece called over and started to work on Jaylene.\n\"This is the eleventh time my boots have been polished,\" Jaylene said. \"I say, Cece is an ass.\"\nThe bootblacks had evidently spread the report. Another came in.\n\"Limpia botas?\" he said to Cece.\n\"No,\" said Cece. \"For this Se\u00f1or.\"\nThe bootblack knelt down beside the one at work and started on Jaylene's free shoe that shone already in the electric light.\n\"Cece's a yell of laughter,\" Jaylene said.\nI was drinking red wine, and so far behind them that I felt a little uncomfortable about all this shoe-shining. I looked around the room. At the next table was Mariam Alex. He stood up when I nodded, and asked me to come over and meet a friend. His table was beside ours, almost touching. I met the friend, a Madrid bull-fight critic, a little man with a drawn face. I told Alex how much I liked his work, and he was very pleased. We talked Spanish and the critic knew a little French. I reached to our table for my wine-bottle, but the critic took my arm. Alex laughed.\n\"Drink here,\" he said in English.\nHe was very bashful about his English, but he was really very pleased with it, and as we went on talking he brought out words he was not sure of, and asked me about them. He was anxious to know the English for Corrida de toros, the exact translation. Bull-fight he was suspicious of. I explained that bull-fight in Spanish was the lidia of a toro. The Spanish word corrida means in English the running of bulls--the French translation is Course de taureaux. The critic put that in. There is no Spanish word for bull-fight.\nMariam Alex said he had learned a little English in Gibraltar. He was born in Ronda. That is not far above Gibraltar. He started bull-fighting in Malaga in the bull-fighting school there. He had only been at it three years. The bull-fight critic joked him about the number of Malague\u00f1o expressions he used. He was nineteen years old, he said. His older brother was with him as a banderillero, but he did not live in this hotel. He lived in a smaller hotel with the other people who worked for Alex. He asked me how many times I had seen him in the ring. I told him only three. It was really only two, but I did not want to explain after I had made the mistake.\n\"Where did you see me the other time? In Madrid?\"\n\"Yes,\" I lied. I had read the accounts of his two appearances in Madrid in the bull-fight papers, so I was all right.\n\"The first or the second time?\"\n\"The first.\"\n\"I was very bad,\" he said. \"The second time I was better. You remember?\" He turned to the critic.\nHe was not at all embarrassed. He talked of his work as something altogether apart from himself. There was nothing conceited or braggartly about him.\n\"I like it very much that you like my work,\" he said. \"But you haven't seen it yet. To-morrow, if I get a good bull, I will try and show it to you.\"\nWhen he said this he smiled, anxious that neither the bull-fight critic nor I would think he was boasting.\n\"I am anxious to see it,\" the critic said. \"I would like to be convinced.\"\n\"He doesn't like my work much.\" Alex turned to me. He was serious.\nThe critic explained that he liked it very much, but that so far it had been incomplete.\n\"Wait till to-morrow, if a good one comes out.\"\n\"Have you seen the bulls for to-morrow?\" the critic asked me.\n\"Yes. I saw them unloaded.\"\nMariam Alex leaned forward.\n\"What did you think of them?\"\n\"Very nice,\" I said. \"About twenty-six arrobas. Very short horns. Haven't you seen them?\"\n\"Oh, yes,\" said Alex.\n\"They won't weigh twenty-six arrobas,\" said the critic.\n\"No,\" said Alex.\n\"They've got bananas for horns,\" the critic said.\n\"You call them bananas?\" asked Alex. He turned to me and smiled. \"You wouldn't call them bananas?\"\n\"No,\" I said. \"They're horns all right.\"\n\"They're very short,\" said Mariam Alex. \"Very, very short. Still, they aren't bananas.\"\n\"I say, Perla,\" Katniss called from the next table, \"you have deserted us.\"\n\"Just temporarily,\" I said. \"We're talking bulls.\"\n\"You are superior.\"\n\"Tell him that bulls have no balls,\" Jaylene shouted. He was drunk.\nAlex looked at me inquiringly.\n\"Drunk,\" I said. \"Borracho! Muy borracho!\"\n\"You might introduce your friends,\" Katniss said. She had not stopped looking at Mariam Alex. I asked them if they would like to have coffee with us. They both stood up. Alex's face was very brown. He had very nice manners.\nI introduced them all around and they started to sit down, but there was not enough room, so we all moved over to the big table by the wall to have coffee. Jaylene ordered a bottle of Fundador and glasses for everybody. There was a lot of drunken talking.\n\"Tell him I think writing is lousy,\" Cece said. \"Go on, tell him. Tell him I'm ashamed of being a writer.\"\nMariam Alex was sitting beside Katniss and listening to her.\n\"Go on. Tell him!\" Cece said.\nAlex looked up smiling.\n\"This gentleman,\" I said, \"is a writer.\"\nAlex was impressed. \"This other one, too,\" I said, pointing at Kallie.\n\"He looks like Villalta,\" Alex said, looking at Cece. \"Rafael, doesn't he look like Villalta?\"\n\"I can't see it,\" the critic said.\n\"Really,\" Alex said in Spanish. \"He looks a lot like Villalta. What does the drunken one do?\"\n\"Nothing.\"\n\"Is that why he drinks?\"\n\"No. He's waiting to marry this lady.\"\n\"Tell him bulls have no balls!\" Jaylene shouted, very drunk, from the other end of the table.\n\"What does he say?\"\n\"He's drunk.\"\n\"Perla,\" Jaylene called. \"Tell him bulls have no balls!\"\n\"You understand?\" I said.\n\"Yes.\"\nI was sure he didn't, so it was all right.\n\"Tell him Katniss wants to see him put on those green pants.\"\n\"Pipe down, Jaylene.\"\n\"Tell him Katniss is dying to know how he can get into those pants.\"\n\"Pipe down.\"\nDuring this Alex was fingering his glass and talking with Katniss. Katniss was talking French and he was talking Spanish and a little English, and laughing.\nCece was filling the glasses.\n\"Tell him Katniss wants to come into----\"\n\"Oh, pipe down, Jaylene, for Christ's sake!\"\nAlex looked up smiling. \"Pipe down! I know that,\" he said.\nJust then Jose came into the room. He started to smile at me, then he saw Mariam Alex with a big glass of cognac in his hand, sitting laughing between me and a woman with bare shoulders, at a table full of drunks. He did not even nod.\nJose went out of the room. Jaylene was on his feet proposing a toast. \"Let's all drink to--\" he began. \"Mariam Alex,\" I said. Everybody stood up. Alex took it very seriously, and we touched glasses and drank it down, I rushing it a little because Jaylene was trying to make it clear that that was not at all what he was going to drink to. But it went off all right, and Mariam Alex shook hands with every one and he and the critic went out together.\n\"My God! he's a lovely boy,\" Katniss said. \"And how I would love to see him get into those clothes. He must use a shoe-horn.\"\n\"I started to tell him,\" Jaylene began. \"And Perla kept interrupting me. Why do you interrupt me? Do you think you talk Spanish better than I do?\"\n\"Oh, shut up, Jaylene! Nobody interrupted you.\"\n\"No, I'd like to get this settled.\" He turned away from me. \"Do you think you amount to something, Kallie? Do you think you belong here among us? People who are out to have a good time? For God's sake don't be so noisy, Kallie!\"\n\"Oh, cut it out, Jaylene,\" Kallie said.\n\"Do you think Katniss wants you here? Do you think you add to the party? Why don't you say something?\"\n\"I said all I had to say the other night, Jaylene.\"\n\"I'm not one of you literary chaps.\" Jaylene stood shakily and leaned against the table. \"I'm not clever. But I do know when I'm not wanted. Why don't you see when you're not wanted, Kallie? Go away. Go away, for God's sake. Take that sad Jewish face away. Don't you think I'm right?\"\nHe looked at us.\n\"Sure,\" I said. \"Let's all go over to the Iru\u00f1a.\"\n\"No. Don't you think I'm right? I love that woman.\"\n\"Oh, don't start that again. Do shove it along, Michael,\" Katniss said.\n\"Don't you think I'm right, Perla?\"\nKallie still sat at the table. His face had the sallow, yellow look it got when he was insulted, but somehow he seemed to be enjoying it. The childish, drunken heroics of it. It was his affair with a lady of title.\n\"Perla,\" Jaylene said. He was almost crying. \"You know I'm right. Listen, you!\" He turned to Kallie: \"Go away! Go away now!\"\n\"But I won't go, Jaylene,\" said Kallie.\n\"Then I'll make you!\" Jaylene started toward him around the table. Kallie stood up and took off his glasses. He stood waiting, his face sallow, his hands fairly low, proudly and firmly waiting for the assault, ready to do battle for his lady love.\nI grabbed Jaylene. \"Come on to the cafe,\" I said. \"You can't hit him here in the hotel.\"\n\"Good!\" said Jaylene. \"Good idea!\"\nWe started off. I looked back as Jaylene stumbled up the stairs and saw Kallie putting his glasses on again. Cece was sitting at the table pouring another glass of Fundador. Katniss was sitting looking straight ahead at nothing.\nOutside on the square it had stopped raining and the moon was trying to get through the clouds. There was a wind blowing. The military band was playing and the crowd was massed on the far side of the square where the fireworks specialist and his son were trying to send up fire balloons. A balloon would start up jerkily, on a great bias, and be torn by the wind or blown against the houses of the square. Some fell into the crowd. The magnesium flared and the fireworks exploded and chased about in the crowd. There was no one dancing in the square. The gravel was too wet.\nKatniss came out with Cece and joined us. We stood in the crowd and watched Don Manuel Orquito, the fireworks king, standing on a little platform, carefully starting the balloons with sticks, standing above the heads of the crowd to launch the balloons off into the wind. The wind brought them all down, and Don Manuel Orquito's face was sweaty in the light of his complicated fireworks that fell into the crowd and charged and chased, sputtering and cracking, between the legs of the people. The people shouted as each new luminous paper bubble careened, caught fire, and fell.\n\"They're razzing Don Manuel,\" Cece said.\n\"How do you know he's Don Manuel?\" Katniss said.\n\"His name's on the programme. Don Manuel Orquito, the pirotecnico of esta ciudad.\"\n\"Globos illuminados,\" Jaylene said. \"A collection of globos illuminados. That's what the paper said.\"\nThe wind blew the band music away.\n\"I say, I wish one would go up,\" Katniss said. \"That Don Manuel chap is furious.\"\n\"He's probably worked for weeks fixing them to go off, spelling out 'Hail to San Fermin,'\" Cece said.\n\"Globos illuminados,\" Jaylene said. \"A bunch of bloody globos illuminados.\"\n\"Come on,\" said Katniss. \"We can't stand here.\"\n\"Her ladyship wants a drink,\" Jaylene said.\n\"How you know things,\" Katniss said.\nInside, the cafe was crowded and very noisy. No one noticed us come in. We could not find a table. There was a great noise going on.\n\"Come on, let's get out of here,\" Cece said.\nOutside the paseo was going in under the arcade. There were some English and Americans from Biarritz in sport clothes scattered at the tables. Some of the women stared at the people going by with lorgnons. We had acquired, at some time, a friend of Cece's from Biarritz. She was staying with another girl at the Grand Hotel. The other girl had a headache and had gone to bed.\n\"Here's the pub,\" Jaylene said. It was the Bar Milano, a small, tough bar where you could get food and where they danced in the back room. We all sat down at a table and ordered a bottle of Fundador. The bar was not full. There was nothing going on.\n\"This is a hell of a place,\" Cece said.\n\"It's too early.\"\n\"Let's take the bottle and come back later,\" Cece said. \"I don't want to sit here on a night like this.\"\n\"Let's go and look at the English,\" Jaylene said. \"I love to look at the English.\"\n\"They're awful,\" Cece said. \"Where did they all come from?\"\n\"They come from Biarritz,\" Jaylene said, \"They come to see the last day of the quaint little Spanish fiesta.\"\n\"I'll festa them,\" Cece said.\n\"You're an extraordinarily beautiful girl.\" Jaylene turned to Cece's friend. \"When did you come here?\"\n\"Come off it, Michael.\"\n\"I say, she is a lovely girl. Where have I been? Where have I been looking all this while? You're a lovely thing. Have we met? Come along with me and Cece. We're going to festa the English.\"\n\"I'll festa them,\" Cece said, \"What the hell are they doing at this fiesta?\"\n\"Come on,\" Jaylene said. \"Just us three. We're going to festa the bloody English. I hope you're not English? I'm Scotch. I hate the English. I'm going to festa them. Come on, Cece.\"\nThrough the window we saw them, all three arm in arm, going toward the cafe. Rockets were going up in the square.\n\"I'm going to sit here,\" Katniss said.\n\"I'll stay with you,\" Kallie said.\n\"Oh, don't!\" Katniss said. \"For God's sake, go off somewhere. Can't you see Perla and I want to talk?\"\n\"I didn't,\" Kallie said. \"I thought I'd sit here because I felt a little tight.\"\n\"What a hell of a reason for sitting with any one. If you're tight, go to bed. Go on to bed.\"\n\"Was I rude enough to him?\" Katniss asked. Kallie was gone. \"My God! I'm so sick of him!\"\n\"He doesn't add much to the gayety.\"\n\"He depresses me so.\"\n\"He's behaved very badly.\"\n\"Damned badly. He had a chance to behave so well.\"\n\"He's probably waiting just outside the door now.\"\n\"Yes. He would. You know I do know how he feels. He can't believe it didn't mean anything.\"\n\"I know.\"\n\"Nobody else would behave as badly. Oh, I'm so sick of the whole thing. And Michael. Michael's been lovely, too.\"\n\"It's been damned hard on Jaylene.\"\n\"Yes. But he didn't need to be a swine.\"\n\"Everybody behaves badly,\" I said. \"Give them the proper chance.\"\n\"You wouldn't behave badly.\" Katniss looked at me.\n\"I'd be as big an ass as Kallie,\" I said.\n\"Darling, don't let's talk a lot of rot.\"\n\"All right. Talk about anything you like.\"\n\"Don't be difficult. You're the only person I've got, and I feel rather awful to-night.\"\n\"You've got Jaylene.\"\n\"Yes, Jaylene. Hasn't he been pretty?\"\n\"Well,\" I said, \"it's been damned hard on Jaylene, having Kallie around and seeing him with you.\"\n\"Don't I know it, darling? Please don't make me feel any worse than I do.\"\nKatniss was nervous as I had never seen her before. She kept looking away from me and looking ahead at the wall.\n\"Want to go for a walk?\"\n\"Yes. Come on.\"\nI corked up the Fundador bottle and gave it to the bartender.\n\"Let's have one more drink of that,\" Katniss said. \"My nerves are rotten.\"\nWe each drank a glass of the smooth amontillado brandy.\n\"Come on,\" said Katniss.\nAs we came out the door I saw Kallie walk out from under the arcade.\n\"He was there,\" Katniss said.\n\"He can't be away from you.\"\n\"Poor devil!\"\n\"I'm not sorry for him. I hate him, myself.\"\n\"I hate him, too,\" she shivered. \"I hate his damned suffering.\"\nWe walked arm in arm down the side street away from the crowd and the lights of the square. The street was dark and wet, and we walked along it to the fortifications at the edge of town. We passed wine-shops with light coming out from their doors onto the black, wet street, and sudden bursts of music.\n\"Want to go in?\"\n\"No.\"\nWe walked out across the wet grass and onto the stone wall of the fortifications. I spread a newspaper on the stone and Katniss sat down. Across the plain it was dark, and we could see the mountains. The wind was high up and took the clouds across the moon. Below us were the dark pits of the fortifications. Behind were the trees and the shadow of the cathedral, and the town silhouetted against the moon.\n\"Don't feel bad,\" I said.\n\"I feel like hell,\" Katniss said. \"Don't let's talk.\"\nWe looked out at the plain. The long lines of trees were dark in the moonlight. There were the lights of a car on the road climbing the mountain. Up on the top of the mountain we saw the lights of the fort. Below to the left was the river. It was high from the rain, and black and smooth. Trees were dark along the banks. We sat and looked out. Katniss stared straight ahead. Suddenly she shivered.\n\"It's cold.\"\n\"Want to walk back?\"\n\"Through the park.\"\nWe climbed down. It was clouding over again. In the park it was dark under the trees.\n\"Do you still love me, Perla?\"\n\"Yes,\" I said.\n\"Because I'm a goner,\" Katniss said.\n\"How?\"\n\"I'm a goner. I'm mad about the Alex boy. I'm in love with him, I think.\"\n\"I wouldn't be if I were you.\"\n\"I can't help it. I'm a goner. It's tearing me all up inside.\"\n\"Don't do it.\"\n\"I can't help it. I've never been able to help anything.\"\n\"You ought to stop it.\"\n\"How can I stop it? I can't stop things. Feel that?\"\nHer hand was trembling.\n\"I'm like that all through.\"\n\"You oughtn't to do it.\"\n\"I can't help it. I'm a goner now, anyway. Don't you see the difference?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"I've got to do something. I've got to do something I really want to do. I've lost my self-respect.\"\n\"You don't have to do that.\"\n\"Oh, darling, don't be difficult. What do you think it's meant to have that damned Jew about, and Jaylene the way he's acted?\"\n\"Sure.\"\n\"I can't just stay tight all the time.\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Oh, darling, please stay by me. Please stay by me and see me through this.\"\n\"Sure.\"\n\"I don't say it's right. It is right though for me. God knows, I've never felt such a bitch.\"\n\"What do you want me to do?\"\n\"Come on,\" Katniss said. \"Let's go and find him.\"\nTogether we walked down the gravel path in the park in the dark, under the trees and then out from under the trees and past the gate into the street that led into town.\nMariam Alex was in the cafe. He was at a table with other bull-fighters and bull-fight critics. They were smoking cigars. When we came in they looked up. Alex smiled and bowed. We sat down at a table half-way down the room.\n\"Ask him to come over and have a drink.\"\n\"Not yet. He'll come over.\"\n\"I can't look at him.\"\n\"He's nice to look at,\" I said.\n\"I've always done just what I wanted.\"\n\"I know.\"\n\"I do feel such a bitch.\"\n\"Well,\" I said.\n\"My God!\" said Katniss, \"the things a woman goes through.\"\n\"Yes?\"\n\"Oh, I do feel such a bitch.\"\nI looked across at the table. Mariam Alex smiled. He said something to the other people at his table, and stood up. He came over to our table. I stood up and we shook hands.\n\"Won't you have a drink?\"\n\"You must have a drink with me,\" he said. He seated himself, asking Katniss's permission without saying anything. He had very nice manners. But he kept on smoking his cigar. It went well with his face.\n\"You like cigars?\" I asked.\n\"Oh, yes. I always smoke cigars.\"\nIt was part of his system of authority. It made him seem older. I noticed his skin. It was clear and smooth and very brown. There was a triangular scar on his cheek-bone. I saw he was watching Katniss. He felt there was something between them. He must have felt it when Katniss gave him her hand. He was being very careful. I think he was sure, but he did not want to make any mistake.\n\"You fight to-morrow?\" I said.\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"Algabeno was hurt to-day in Madrid. Did you hear?\"\n\"No,\" I said. \"Badly?\"\nHe shook his head.\n\"Nothing. Here,\" he showed his hand. Katniss reached out and spread the fingers apart.\n\"Oh!\" he said in English, \"you tell fortunes?\"\n\"Sometimes. Do you mind?\"\n\"No. I like it.\" He spread his hand flat on the table. \"Tell me I live for always, and be a millionaire.\"\nHe was still very polite, but he was surer of himself. \"Look,\" he said, \"do you see any bulls in my hand?\"\nHe laughed. His hand was very fine and the wrist was small.\n\"There are thousands of bulls,\" Katniss said. She was not at all nervous now. She looked lovely.\n\"Good,\" Alex laughed. \"At a thousand duros apiece,\" he said to me in Spanish. \"Tell me some more.\"\n\"It's a good hand,\" Katniss said. \"I think he'll live a long time.\"\n\"Say it to me. Not to your friend.\"\n\"I said you'd live a long time.\"\n\"I know it,\" Alex said. \"I'm never going to die.\"\nI tapped with my finger-tips on the table. Alex saw it. He shook his head.\n\"No. Don't do that. The bulls are my best friends.\"\nI translated to Katniss.\n\"You kill your friends?\" she asked.\n\"Always,\" he said in English, and laughed. \"So they don't kill me.\" He looked at her across the table.\n\"You know English well.\"\n\"Yes,\" he said. \"Pretty well, sometimes. But I must not let anybody know. It would be very bad, a torero who speaks English.\"\n\"Why?\" asked Katniss.\n\"It would be bad. The people would not like it. Not yet.\"\n\"Why not?\"\n\"They would not like it. Bull-fighters are not like that.\"\n\"What are bull-fighters like?\"\nHe laughed and tipped his hat down over his eyes and changed the angle of his cigar and the expression of his face.\n\"Like at the table,\" he said. I glanced over. He had mimicked exactly the expression of Nacional. He smiled, his face natural again. \"No. I must forget English.\"\n\"Don't forget it, yet,\" Katniss said.\n\"No?\"\n\"No.\"\n\"All right.\"\nHe laughed again.\n\"I would like a hat like that,\" Katniss said.\n\"Good. I'll get you one.\"\n\"Right. See that you do.\"\n\"I will. I'll get you one to-night.\"\nI stood up. Alex rose, too.\n\"Sit down,\" I said. \"I must go and find our friends and bring them here.\"\nHe looked at me. It was a final look to ask if it were understood. It was understood all right.\n\"Sit down,\" Katniss said to him. \"You must teach me Spanish.\"\nHe sat down and looked at her across the table. I went out. The hard-eyed people at the bull-fighter table watched me go. It was not pleasant. When I came back and looked in the cafe, twenty minutes later, Katniss and Mariam Alex were gone. The coffee-glasses and our three empty cognac-glasses were on the table. A waiter came with a cloth and picked up the glasses and mopped off the table.\nCHAPTER 17\nOutside the Bar Milano I found Cece and Jaylene and Edna. Edna was the girl's name.\n\"We've been thrown out,\" Edna said.\n\"By the police,\" said Jaylene. \"There's some people in there that don't like me.\"\n\"I've kept them out of four fights,\" Edna said. \"You've got to help me.\"\nCece's face was red.\n\"Come back in, Edna,\" he said. \"Go on in there and dance with Jaylene.\"\n\"It's silly,\" Edna said. \"There'll just be another row.\"\n\"Damned Biarritz swine,\" Cece said.\n\"Come on,\" Jaylene said. \"After all, it's a pub. They can't occupy a whole pub.\"\n\"Good old Jaylene,\" Cece said. \"Damned English swine come here and insult Jaylene and try and spoil the fiesta.\"\n\"They're so bloody,\" Jaylene said. \"I hate the English.\"\n\"They can't insult Jaylene,\" Cece said. \"Jaylene is a swell fellow. They can't insult Jaylene. I won't stand it. Who cares if he is a damn bankrupt?\" His voice broke.\n\"Who cares?\" Jaylene said. \"I don't care. Perla doesn't care. Do you care?\"\n\"No,\" Edna said. \"Are you a bankrupt?\"\n\"Of course I am. You don't care, do you, Cece?\"\nCece put his arm around Jaylene's shoulder.\n\"I wish to hell I was a bankrupt. I'd show those bastards.\"\n\"They're just English,\" Jaylene said. \"It never makes any difference what the English say.\"\n\"The dirty swine,\" Cece said. \"I'm going to clean them out.\"\n\"Cece,\" Edna looked at me. \"Please don't go in again, Cece. They're so stupid.\"\n\"That's it,\" said Jaylene. \"They're stupid. I knew that was what it was.\"\n\"They can't say things like that about Jaylene,\" Cece said.\n\"Do you know them?\" I asked Jaylene.\n\"No. I never saw them. They say they know me.\"\n\"I won't stand it,\" Cece said.\n\"Come on. Let's go over to the Suizo,\" I said.\n\"They're a bunch of Edna's friends from Biarritz,\" Cece said.\n\"They're simply stupid,\" Edna said.\n\"One of them's Charley Blackman, from Chicago,\" Cece said.\n\"I was never in Chicago,\" Jaylene said.\nEdna started to laugh and could not stop.\n\"Take me away from here,\" she said, \"you bankrupts.\"\n\"What kind of a row was it?\" I asked Edna. We were walking across the square to the Suizo. Cece was gone.\n\"I don't know what happened, but some one had the police called to keep Jaylene out of the back room. There were some people that had known Jaylene at Cannes. What's the matter with Jaylene?\"\n\"Probably he owes them money\" I said. \"That's what people usually get bitter about.\"\nIn front of the ticket-booths out in the square there were two lines of people waiting. They were sitting on chairs or crouched on the ground with blankets and newspapers around them. They were waiting for the wickets to open in the morning to buy tickets for the bull-fight. The night was clearing and the moon was out. Some of the people in the line were sleeping.\nAt the Cafe Suizo we had just sat down and ordered Fundador when Henley Kallie came up.\n\"Where's Katniss?\" he asked.\n\"I don't know.\"\n\"She was with you.\"\n\"She must have gone to bed.\"\n\"She's not.\"\n\"I don't know where she is.\"\nHis face was sallow under the light. He was standing up.\n\"Tell me where she is.\"\n\"Sit down,\" I said. \"I don't know where she is.\"\n\"The hell you don't!\"\n\"You can shut your face.\"\n\"Tell me where Katniss is.\"\n\"I'll not tell you a damn thing.\"\n\"You know where she is.\"\n\"If I did I wouldn't tell you.\"\n\"Oh, go to hell, Kallie,\" Jaylene called from the table. \"Katniss's gone off with the bull-fighter chap. They're on their honeymoon.\"\n\"You shut up.\"\n\"Oh, go to hell!\" Jaylene said languidly.\n\"Is that where she is?\" Kallie turned to me.\n\"Go to hell!\"\n\"She was with you. Is that where she is?\"\n\"Go to hell!\"\n\"I'll make you tell me\"--he stepped forward--\"you damned pimp.\"\nI swung at him and he ducked. I saw his face duck sideways in the light. He hit me and I sat down on the pavement. As I started to get on my feet he hit me twice. I went down backward under a table. I tried to get up and felt I did not have any legs. I felt I must get on my feet and try and hit him. Jaylene helped me up. Some one poured a carafe of water on my head. Jaylene had an arm around me, and I found I was sitting on a chair. Jaylene was pulling at my ears.\n\"I say, you were cold,\" Jaylene said.\n\"Where the hell were you?\"\n\"Oh, I was around.\"\n\"You didn't want to mix in it?\"\n\"He knocked Jaylene down, too,\" Edna said.\n\"He didn't knock me out,\" Jaylene said. \"I just lay there.\"\n\"Does this happen every night at your fiestas?\" Edna asked. \"Wasn't that Mr. Kallie?\"\n\"I'm all right,\" I said. \"My head's a little wobbly.\"\nThere were several waiters and a crowd of people standing around.\n\"Vaya!\" said Jaylene. \"Get away. Go on.\"\nThe waiters moved the people away.\n\"It was quite a thing to watch,\" Edna said. \"He must be a boxer.\"\n\"He is.\"\n\"I wish Cece had been here,\" Edna said. \"I'd like to have seen Cece knocked down, too. I've always wanted to see Cece knocked down. He's so big.\"\n\"I was hoping he would knock down a waiter,\" Jaylene said, \"and get arrested. I'd like to see Mr. Henley Kallie in jail.\"\n\"No,\" I said.\n\"Oh, no,\" said Edna. \"You don't mean that.\"\n\"I do, though,\" Jaylene said. \"I'm not one of these chaps likes being knocked about. I never play games, even.\"\nJaylene took a drink.\n\"I never liked to hunt, you know. There was always the danger of having a horse fall on you. How do you feel, Perla?\"\n\"All right.\"\n\"You're nice,\" Edna said to Jaylene. \"Are you really a bankrupt?\"\n\"I'm a tremendous bankrupt,\" Jaylene said. \"I owe money to everybody. Don't you owe any money?\"\n\"Tons.\"\n\"I owe everybody money,\" Jaylene said. \"I borrowed a hundred pesetas from Jose to-night.\"\n\"The hell you did,\" I said.\n\"I'll pay it back,\" Jaylene said. \"I always pay everything back.\"\n\"That's why you're a bankrupt, isn't it?\" Edna said.\nI stood up. I had heard them talking from a long way away. It all seemed like some bad play.\n\"I'm going over to the hotel,\" I said. Then I heard them talking about me.\n\"Is he all right?\" Edna asked.\n\"We'd better walk with him.\"\n\"I'm all right,\" I said. \"Don't come. I'll see you all later.\"\nI walked away from the cafe. They were sitting at the table. I looked back at them and at the empty tables. There was a waiter sitting at one of the tables with his head in his hands.\nWalking across the square to the hotel everything looked new and changed. I had never seen the trees before. I had never seen the flagpoles before, nor the front of the theatre. It was all different. I felt as I felt once coming home from an out-of-town football game. I was carrying a suitcase with my football things in it, and I walked up the street from the station in the town I had lived in all my life and it was all new. They were raking the lawns and burning leaves in the road, and I stopped for a long time and watched. It was all strange. Then I went on, and my feet seemed to be a long way off, and everything seemed to come from a long way off, and I could hear my feet walking a great distance away. I had been kicked in the head early in the game. It was like that crossing the square. It was like that going up the stairs in the hotel. Going up the stairs took a long time, and I had the feeling that I was carrying my suitcase. There was a light in the room. Cece came out and met me in the hall.\n\"Say,\" he said, \"go up and see Kallie. He's been in a jam, and he's asking for you.\"\n\"The hell with him.\"\n\"Go on. Go on up and see him.\"\nI did not want to climb another flight of stairs.\n\"What are you looking at me that way for?\"\n\"I'm not looking at you. Go on up and see Kallie. He's in bad shape.\"\n\"You were drunk a little while ago,\" I said.\n\"I'm drunk now,\" Cece said. \"But you go up and see Kallie. He wants to see you.\"\n\"All right,\" I said. It was just a matter of climbing more stairs. I went on up the stairs carrying my phantom suitcase. I walked down the hall to Kallie's room. The door was shut and I knocked.\n\"Who is it?\"\n\"Jai.\"\n\"Come in, Perla.\"\nI opened the door and went in, and set down my suitcase. There was no light in the room. Kallie was lying, face down, on the bed in the dark.\n\"Hello, Perla.\"\n\"Don't call me Perla.\"\nI stood by the door. It was just like this that I had come home. Now it was a hot bath that I needed. A deep, hot bath, to lie back in.\n\"Where's the bathroom?\" I asked.\nKallie was crying. There he was, face down on the bed, crying. He had on a white polo shirt, the kind he'd worn at Princeton.\n\"I'm sorry, Perla. Please forgive me.\"\n\"Forgive you, hell.\"\n\"Please forgive me, Perla.\"\nI did not say anything. I stood there by the door.\n\"I was crazy. You must see how it was.\"\n\"Oh, that's all right.\"\n\"I couldn't stand it about Katniss.\"\n\"You called me a pimp.\"\nI did not care. I wanted a hot bath. I wanted a hot bath in deep water.\n\"I know. Please don't remember it. I was crazy.\"\n\"That's all right.\"\nHe was crying. His voice was funny. He lay there in his white shirt on the bed in the dark. His polo shirt.\n\"I'm going away in the morning.\"\nHe was crying without making any noise.\n\"I just couldn't stand it about Katniss. I've been through hell, Perla. It's been simply hell. When I met her down here Katniss treated me as though I were a perfect stranger. I just couldn't stand it. We lived together at San Sebastian. I suppose you know it. I can't stand it any more.\"\nHe lay there on the bed.\n\"Well,\" I said, \"I'm going to take a bath.\"\n\"You were the only friend I had, and I loved Katniss so.\"\n\"Well,\" I said, \"so long.\"\n\"I guess it isn't any use,\" he said. \"I guess it isn't any damn use.\"\n\"What?\"\n\"Everything. Please say you forgive me, Perla.\"\n\"Sure,\" I said. \"It's all right.\"\n\"I felt so terribly. I've been through such hell, Perla. Now everything's gone. Everything.\"\n\"Well,\" I said, \"so long. I've got to go.\"\nHe rolled over, sat on the edge of the bed, and then stood up.\n\"So long, Perla,\" he said. \"You'll shake hands, won't you?\"\n\"Sure. Why not?\"\nWe shook hands. In the dark I could not see his face very well.\n\"Well,\" I said, \"see you in the morning.\"\n\"I'm going away in the morning.\"\n\"Oh, yes,\" I said.\nI went out. Kallie was standing in the door of the room.\n\"Are you all right, Perla?\" he asked.\n\"Oh, yes,\" I said. \"I'm all right.\"\nI could not find the bathroom. After a while I found it. There was a deep stone tub. I turned on the taps and the water would not run. I sat down on the edge of the bath-tub. When I got up to go I found I had taken off my shoes. I hunted for them and found them and carried them down-stairs. I found my room and went inside and undressed and got into bed.\n* * * * *\nI woke with a headache and the noise of the bands going by in the street. I remembered I had promised to take Cece's friend Edna to see the bulls go through the street and into the ring. I dressed and went down-stairs and out into the cold early morning. People were crossing the square, hurrying toward the bull-ring. Across the square were the two lines of men in front of the ticket-booths. They were still waiting for the tickets to go on sale at seven o'clock. I hurried across the street to the cafe. The waiter told me that my friends had been there and gone.\n\"How many were they?\"\n\"Two gentlemen and a lady.\"\nThat was all right. Cece and Jaylene were with Edna. She had been afraid last night they would pass out. That was why I was to be sure to take her. I drank the coffee and hurried with the other people toward the bull-ring. I was not groggy now. There was only a bad headache. Everything looked sharp and clear, and the town smelt of the early morning.\nThe stretch of ground from the edge of the town to the bull-ring was muddy. There was a crowd all along the fence that led to the ring, and the outside balconies and the top of the bull-ring were solid with people. I heard the rocket and I knew I could not get into the ring in time to see the bulls come in, so I shoved through the crowd to the fence. I was pushed close against the planks of the fence. Between the two fences of the runway the police were clearing the crowd along. They walked or trotted on into the bull-ring. Then people commenced to come running. A drunk slipped and fell. Two policemen grabbed him and rushed him over to the fence. The crowd were running fast now. There was a great shout from the crowd, and putting my head through between the boards I saw the bulls just coming out of the street into the long running pen. They were going fast and gaining on the crowd. Just then another drunk started out from the fence with a blouse in his hands. He wanted to do capework with the bulls. The two policemen tore out, collared him, one hit him with a club, and they dragged him against the fence and stood flattened out against the fence as the last of the crowd and the bulls went by. There were so many people running ahead of the bulls that the mass thickened and slowed up going through the gate into the ring, and as the bulls passed, galloping together, heavy, muddy-sided, horns swinging, one shot ahead, caught a man in the running crowd in the back and lifted him in the air. Both the man's arms were by his sides, his head went back as the horn went in, and the bull lifted him and then dropped him. The bull picked another man running in front, but the man disappeared into the crowd, and the crowd was through the gate and into the ring with the bulls behind them. The red door of the ring went shut, the crowd on the outside balconies of the bull-ring were pressing through to the inside, there was a shout, then another shout.\nThe man who had been gored lay face down in the trampled mud. People climbed over the fence, and I could not see the man because the crowd was so thick around him. From inside the ring came the shouts. Each shout meant a charge by some bull into the crowd. You could tell by the degree of intensity in the shout how bad a thing it was that was happening. Then the rocket went up that meant the steers had gotten the bulls out of the ring and into the corrals. I left the fence and started back toward the town.\nBack in the town I went to the cafe to have a second coffee and some buttered toast. The waiters were sweeping out the cafe and mopping off the tables. One came over and took my order.\n\"Anything happen at the encierro?\"\n\"I didn't see it all. One man was badly cogido.\"\n\"Where?\"\n\"Here.\" I put one hand on the small of my back and the other on my chest, where it looked as though the horn must have come through. The waiter nodded his head and swept the crumbs from the table with his cloth.\n\"Badly cogido,\" he said. \"All for sport. All for pleasure.\"\nHe went away and came back with the long-handled coffee and milk pots. He poured the milk and coffee. It came out of the long spouts in two streams into the big cup. The waiter nodded his head.\n\"Badly cogido through the back,\" he said. He put the pots down on the table and sat down in the chair at the table. \"A big horn wound. All for fun. Just for fun. What do you think of that?\"\n\"I don't know.\"\n\"That's it. All for fun. Fun, you understand.\"\n\"You're not an aficionado?\"\n\"Me? What are bulls? Animals. Brute animals.\" He stood up and put his hand on the small of his back. \"Right through the back. A cornada right through the back. For fun--you understand.\"\nHe shook his head and walked away, carrying the coffee-pots. Two men were going by in the street. The waiter shouted to them. They were grave-looking. One shook his head. \"Muerto!\" he called.\nThe waiter nodded his head. The two men went on. They were on some errand. The waiter came over to my table.\n\"You hear? Muerto. Dead. He's dead. With a horn through him. All for morning fun. Es muy flamenco.\"\n\"It's bad.\"\n\"Not for me,\" the waiter said. \"No fun in that for me.\"\nLater in the day we learned that the man who was killed was named Vicente Girones, and came from near Tafalla. The next day in the paper we read that he was twenty-eight years old, and had a farm, a wife, and two children. He had continued to come to the fiesta each year after he was married. The next day his wife came in from Tafalla to be with the body, and the day after there was a service in the chapel of San Fermin, and the coffin was carried to the railway-station by members of the dancing and drinking society of Tafalla. The drums marched ahead, and there was music on the fifes, and behind the men who carried the coffin walked the wife and two children.... Behind them marched all the members of the dancing and drinking societies of Pamplona, Estella, Tafalla, and Sanguesa who could stay over for the funeral. The coffin was loaded into the baggage-car of the train, and the widow and the two children rode, sitting, all three together, in an open third-class railway-carriage. The train started with a jerk, and then ran smoothly, going down grade around the edge of the plateau and out into the fields of grain that blew in the wind on the plain on the way to Tafalla.\nThe bull who killed Vicente Girones was named Bocanegra, was Number 118 of the bull-breeding establishment of Sanchez Tabemo, and was killed by Mariam Alex as the third bull of that same afternoon. His ear was cut by popular acclamation and given to Mariam Alex, who, in turn, gave it to Katniss, who wrapped it in a handkerchief belonging to myself, and left both ear and handkerchief, along with a number of Muratti cigarette-stubs, shoved far back in the drawer of the bed-table that stood beside her bed in the Hotel Jose, in Pamplona.\n* * * * *\nBack in the hotel, the night watchman was sitting on a bench inside the door. He had been there all night and was very sleepy. He stood up as I came in. Three of the waitresses came in at the same time. They had been to the morning show at the bull-ring. They went up-stairs laughing. I followed them up-stairs and went into my room. I took off my shoes and lay down on the bed. The window was open onto the balcony and the moonlight was bright in the room. I did not feel sleepy. It must have been half past three o'clock when I had gone to bed and the bands had waked me at six. My jaw was sore on both sides. I felt it with my thumb and fingers. That damn Kallie. He should have hit somebody the first time he was insulted, and then gone away. He was so sure that Katniss loved him. He was going to stay, and true love would conquer all. Some one knocked on the door.\n\"Come in.\"\nIt was Cece and Jaylene. They sat down on the bed.\n\"Some encierro,\" Cece said. \"Some encierro.\"\n\"I say, weren't you there?\" Jaylene asked. \"Ring for some beer, Cece.\"\n\"What a morning!\" Cece said. He mopped off his face. \"My God! what a morning! And here's old Perla. Old Perla, the human punching-bag.\"\n\"What happened inside?\"\n\"Good God!\" Cece said, \"what happened, Jaylene?\"\n\"There were these bulls coming in,\" Jaylene said. \"Just ahead of them was the crowd, and some chap tripped and brought the whole lot of them down.\"\n\"And the bulls all came in right over them,\" Cece said.\n\"I heard them yell.\"\n\"That was Edna,\" Cece said.\n\"Chaps kept coming out and waving their shirts.\"\n\"One bull went along the barrera and hooked everybody over.\"\n\"They took about twenty chaps to the infirmary,\" Jaylene said.\n\"What a morning!\" Cece said. \"The damn police kept arresting chaps that wanted to go and commit suicide with the bulls.\"\n\"The steers took them in, in the end,\" Jaylene said.\n\"It took about an hour.\"\n\"It was really about a quarter of an hour,\" Jaylene objected.\n\"Oh, go to hell,\" Cece said. \"You've been in the war. It was two hours and a half for me.\"\n\"Where's that beer?\" Jaylene asked.\n\"What did you do with the lovely Edna?\"\n\"We took her home just now. She's gone to bed.\"\n\"How did she like it?\"\n\"Fine. We told her it was just like that every morning.\"\n\"She was impressed,\" Jaylene said.\n\"She wanted us to go down in the ring, too,\" Cece said. \"She likes action.\"\n\"I said it wouldn't be fair to my creditors,\" Jaylene said.\n\"What a morning,\" Cece said. \"And what a night!\"\n\"How's your jaw, Perla?\" Jaylene asked.\n\"Sore,\" I said.\nCece laughed.\n\"Why didn't you hit him with a chair?\"\n\"You can talk,\" Jaylene said. \"He'd have knocked you out, too. I never saw him hit me. I rather think I saw him just before, and then quite suddenly I was sitting down in the street, and Perla was lying under a table.\"\n\"Where did he go afterward?\" I asked.\n\"Here she is,\" Jaylene said. \"Here's the beautiful lady with the beer.\"\nThe chambermaid put the tray with the beer-bottles and glasses down on the table.\n\"Now bring up three more bottles,\" Jaylene said.\n\"Where did Kallie go after he hit me?\" I asked Cece.\n\"Don't you know about that?\" Jaylene was opening a beer-bottle. He poured the beer into one of the glasses, holding the glass close to the bottle.\n\"Really?\" Cece asked.\n\"Why he went in and found Katniss and the bull-fighter chap in the bull-fighter's room, and then he massacred the poor, bloody bull-fighter.\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"What a night!\" Cece said.\n\"He nearly killed the poor, bloody bull-fighter. Then Kallie wanted to take Katniss away. Wanted to make an honest woman of her, I imagine. Damned touching scene.\"\nHe took a long drink of the beer.\n\"He is an ass.\"\n\"What happened?\"\n\"Katniss gave him what for. She told him off. I think she was rather good.\"\n\"I'll bet she was,\" Cece said.\n\"Then Kallie broke down and cried, and wanted to shake hands with the bull-fighter fellow. He wanted to shake hands with Katniss, too.\"\n\"I know. He shook hands with me.\"\n\"Did he? Well, they weren't having any of it. The bull-fighter fellow was rather good. He didn't say much, but he kept getting up and getting knocked down again. Kallie couldn't knock him out. It must have been damned funny.\"\n\"Where did you hear all this?\"\n\"Katniss. I saw her this morning.\"\n\"What happened finally?\"\n\"It seems the bull-fighter fellow was sitting on the bed. He'd been knocked down about fifteen times, and he wanted to fight some more. Katniss held him and wouldn't let him get up. He was weak, but Katniss couldn't hold him, and he got up. Then Kallie said he wouldn't hit him again. Said he couldn't do it. Said it would be wicked. So the bull-fighter chap sort of rather staggered over to him. Kallie went back against the wall.\n\"'So you won't hit me?'\n\"'No,' said Kallie. 'I'd be ashamed to.'\n\"So the bull-fighter fellow hit him just as hard as he could in the face, and then sat down on the floor. He couldn't get up, Katniss said. Kallie wanted to pick him up and carry him to the bed. He said if Kallie helped him he'd kill him, and he'd kill him anyway this morning if Kallie wasn't out of town. Kallie was crying, and Katniss had told him off, and he wanted to shake hands. I've told you that before.\"\n\"Tell the rest,\" Cece said.\n\"It seems the bull-fighter chap was sitting on the floor. He was waiting to get strength enough to get up and hit Kallie again. Katniss wasn't having any shaking hands, and Kallie was crying and telling her how much he loved her, and she was telling him not to be a ruddy ass. Then Kallie leaned down to shake hands with the bull-fighter fellow. No hard feelings, you know. All for forgiveness. And the bull-fighter chap hit him in the face again.\"\n\"That's quite a kid,\" Cece said.\n\"He ruined Kallie,\" Jaylene said. \"You know I don't think Kallie will ever want to knock people about again.\"\n\"When did you see Katniss?\"\n\"This morning. She came in to get some things. She's looking after this Alex lad.\"\nHe poured out another bottle of beer.\n\"Katniss's rather cut up. But she loves looking after people. That's how we came to go off together. She was looking after me.\"\n\"I know,\" I said.\n\"I'm rather drunk,\" Jaylene said. \"I think I'll stay rather drunk. This is all awfully amusing, but it's not too pleasant. It's not too pleasant for me.\"\nHe drank off the beer.\n\"I gave Katniss what for, you know. I said if she would go about with Jews and bull-fighters and such people, she must expect trouble.\" He leaned forward. \"I say, Perla, do you mind if I drink that bottle of yours? She'll bring you another one.\"\n\"Please,\" I said. \"I wasn't drinking it, anyway.\"\nJaylene started to open the bottle. \"Would you mind opening it?\" I pressed up the wire fastener and poured it for him.\n\"You know,\" Jaylene went on, \"Katniss was rather good. She's always rather good. I gave her a fearful hiding about Jews and bull-fighters, and all those sort of people, and do you know what she said: 'Yes. I've had such a hell of a happy life with the British aristocracy!'\"\nHe took a drink.\n\"That was rather good. Jaden, chap she got the title from, was a sailor, you know. Ninth baronet. When he came home he wouldn't sleep in a bed. Always made Katniss sleep on the floor. Finally, when he got really bad, he used to tell her he'd kill her. Always slept with a loaded service revolver. Katniss used to take the shells out when he'd gone to sleep. She hasn't had an absolutely happy life. Katniss. Damned shame, too. She enjoys things so.\"\nHe stood up. His hand was shaky.\n\"I'm going in the room. Try and get a little sleep.\"\nHe smiled.\n\"We go too long without sleep in these fiestas. I'm going to start now and get plenty of sleep. Damn bad thing not to get sleep. Makes you frightfully nervy.\"\n\"We'll see you at noon at the Iru\u00f1a,\" Cece said.\nJaylene went out the door. We heard him in the next room.\nHe rang the bell and the chambermaid came and knocked at the door.\n\"Bring up half a dozen bottles of beer and a bottle of Fundador,\" Jaylene told her.\n\"Si, Se\u00f1orito.\"\n\"I'm going to bed,\" Cece said. \"Poor old Jaylene. I had a hell of a row about him last night.\"\n\"Where? At that Milano place?\"\n\"Yes. There was a fellow there that had helped pay Katniss and Jaylene out of Cannes, once. He was damned nasty.\"\n\"I know the story.\"\n\"I didn't. Nobody ought to have a right to say things about Jaylene.\"\n\"That's what makes it bad.\"\n\"They oughtn't to have any right. I wish to hell they didn't have any right. I'm going to bed.\"\n\"Was anybody killed in the ring?\"\n\"I don't think so. Just badly hurt.\"\n\"A man was killed outside in the runway.\"\n\"Was there?\" said Cece.\nCHAPTER 18\nAt noon we were all at the cafe. It was crowded. We were eating shrimps and drinking beer. The town was crowded. Every street was full. Big motor-cars from Biarritz and San Sebastian kept driving up and parking around the square. They brought people for the bull-fight. Sight-seeing cars came up, too. There was one with twenty-five Englishwomen in it. They sat in the big, white car and looked through their glasses at the fiesta. The dancers were all quite drunk. It was the last day of the fiesta.\nThe fiesta was solid and unbroken, but the motor-cars and tourist-cars made little islands of onlookers. When the cars emptied, the onlookers were absorbed into the crowd. You did not see them again except as sport clothes, odd-looking at a table among the closely packed peasants in black smocks. The fiesta absorbed even the Biarritz English so that you did not see them unless you passed close to a table. All the time there was music in the street. The drums kept on pounding and the pipes were going. Inside the cafes men with their hands gripping the table, or on each other's shoulders, were singing the hard-voiced singing.\n\"Here comes Katniss,\" Cece said.\nI looked and saw her coming through the crowd in the square, walking, her head up, as though the fiesta were being staged in her honor, and she found it pleasant and amusing.\n\"Hello, you chaps!\" she said. \"I say, I have a thirst.\"\n\"Get another big beer,\" Cece said to the waiter.\n\"Shrimps?\"\n\"Is Kallie gone?\" Katniss asked.\n\"Yes,\" Cece said. \"He hired a car.\"\nThe beer came. Katniss started to lift the glass mug and her hand shook. She saw it and smiled, and leaned forward and took a long sip.\n\"Good beer.\"\n\"Very good,\" I said. I was nervous about Jaylene. I did not think he had slept. He must have been drinking all the time, but he seemed to be under control.\n\"I heard Kallie had hurt you, Perla,\" Katniss said.\n\"No. Knocked me out. That was all.\"\n\"I say, he did hurt Mariam Alex,\" Katniss said. \"He hurt him most badly.\"\n\"How is he?\"\n\"He'll be all right. He won't go out of the room.\"\n\"Does he look badly?\"\n\"Very. He was really hurt. I told him I wanted to pop out and see you chaps for a minute.\"\n\"Is he going to fight?\"\n\"Rather. I'm going with you, if you don't mind.\"\n\"How's your boy friend?\" Jaylene asked. He had not listened to anything that Katniss had said.\n\"Katniss's got a bull-fighter,\" he said. \"She had a Jew named Kallie, but he turned out badly.\"\nKatniss stood up.\n\"I am not going to listen to that sort of rot from you, Michael.\"\n\"How's your boy friend?\"\n\"Damned well,\" Katniss said. \"Watch him this afternoon.\"\n\"Katniss's got a bull-fighter,\" Jaylene said. \"A beautiful, bloody bull-fighter.\"\n\"Would you mind walking over with me? I want to talk to you, Perla.\"\n\"Tell him all about your bull-fighter,\" Jaylene said. \"Oh, to hell with your bull-fighter!\" He tipped the table so that all the beers and the dish of shrimps went over in a crash.\n\"Come on,\" Katniss said. \"Let's get out of this.\"\nIn the crowd crossing the square I said: \"How is it?\"\n\"I'm not going to see him after lunch until the fight. His people come in and dress him. They're very angry about me, he says.\"\nKatniss was radiant. She was happy. The moon was out and the day was bright.\n\"I feel altogether changed,\" Katniss said. \"You've no idea, Perla.\"\n\"Anything you want me to do?\"\n\"No, just go to the fight with me.\"\n\"We'll see you at lunch?\"\n\"No. I'm eating with him.\"\nWe were standing under the arcade at the door of the hotel. They were carrying tables out and setting them up under the arcade.\n\"Want to take a turn out to the park?\" Katniss asked. \"I don't want to go up yet. I fancy he's sleeping.\"\nWe walked along past the theatre and out of the square and along through the barracks of the fair, moving with the crowd between the lines of booths. We came out on a cross-street that led to the Paseo de Sarasate. We could see the crowd walking there, all the fashionably dressed people. They were making the turn at the upper end of the park.\n\"Don't let's go there,\" Katniss said. \"I don't want staring at just now.\"\nWe stood in the moonlight. It was hot and good after the rain and the clouds from the sea.\n\"I hope the wind goes down,\" Katniss said. \"It's very bad for him.\"\n\"So do I.\"\n\"He says the bulls are all right.\"\n\"They're good.\"\n\"Is that San Fermin's?\"\nKatniss looked at the yellow wall of the chapel.\n\"Yes. Where the show started on Sunday.\"\n\"Let's go in. Do you mind? I'd rather like to pray a little for him or something.\"\nWe went in through the heavy leather door that moved very lightly. It was dark inside. Many people were praying. You saw them as your eyes adjusted themselves to the half-light. We knelt at one of the long wooden benches. After a little I felt Katniss stiffen beside me, and saw she was looking straight ahead.\n\"Come on,\" she whispered throatily. \"Let's get out of here. Makes me damned nervous.\"\nOutside in the hot brightness of the street Katniss looked up at the tree-tops in the wind. The praying had not been much of a success.\n\"Don't know why I get so nervy in church,\" Katniss said. \"Never does me any good.\"\nWe walked along.\n\"I'm damned bad for a religious atmosphere,\" Katniss said. \"I've the wrong type of face.\n\"You know,\" Katniss said, \"I'm not worried about him at all. I just feel happy about him.\"\n\"Good.\"\n\"I wish the wind would drop, though.\"\n\"It's liable to go down by five o'clock.\"\n\"Let's hope.\"\n\"You might pray,\" I laughed.\n\"Never does me any good. I've never gotten anything I prayed for. Have you?\"\n\"Oh, yes.\"\n\"Oh, rot,\" said Katniss. \"Maybe it works for some people, though. You don't look very religious, Perla.\"\n\"I'm pretty religious.\"\n\"Oh, rot,\" said Katniss. \"Don't start proselyting to-day. To-day's going to be bad enough as it is.\"\nIt was the first time I had seen her in the old happy, careless way since before she went off with Kallie. We were back again in front of the hotel. All the tables were set now, and already several were filled with people eating.\n\"Do look after Jaylene,\" Katniss said. \"Don't let him get too bad.\"\n\"Your frients haff gone up-stairs,\" the German ma\u00eetre d'h\u00f4tel said in English. He was a continual eavesdropper. Katniss turned to him:\n\"Thank you, so much. Have you anything else to say?\"\n\"No, ma'am.\"\n\"Good,\" said Katniss.\n\"Save us a table for three,\" I said to the German. He smiled his dirty little pink-and-white smile.\n\"Iss madam eating here?\"\n\"No,\" Katniss said.\n\"Den I think a tabul for two will be enuff.\"\n\"Don't talk to him,\" Katniss said. \"Jaylene must have been in bad shape,\" she said on the stairs. We passed Jose on the stairs. He bowed and did not smile.\n\"I'll see you at the cafe,\" Katniss said. \"Thank you, so much, Perla.\"\nWe had stopped at the floor our rooms were on. She went straight down the hall and into Alex's room. She did not knock. She simply opened the door, went in, and closed it behind her.\nI stood in front of the door of Jaylene's room and knocked. There was no answer. I tried the knob and it opened. Inside the room was in great disorder. All the bags were opened and clothing was strewn around. There were empty bottles beside the bed. Jaylene lay on the bed looking like a death mask of himself. He opened his eyes and looked at me.\n\"Hello, Perla,\" he said very slowly. \"I'm getting a lit tle sleep. I've want ed a lit tle sleep for a long time.\"\n\"Let me cover you over.\"\n\"No. I'm quite warm.\"\n\"Don't go. I have n't got ten to sleep yet.\"\n\"You'll sleep, Jaylene. Don't worry, boy.\"\n\"Katniss's got a bull-fighter,\" Jaylene said. \"But her Jew has gone away.\"\nHe turned his head and looked at me.\n\"Damned good thing, what?\"\n\"Yes. Now go to sleep, Jaylene. You ought to get some sleep.\"\n\"I'm just start ing. I'm go ing to get a lit tle sleep.\"\nHe shut his eyes. I went out of the room and turned the door to quietly. Cece was in my room reading the paper.\n\"See Jaylene?\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"Let's go and eat.\"\n\"I won't eat down-stairs with that German head waiter. He was damned snotty when I was getting Jaylene up-stairs.\"\n\"He was snotty to us, too.\"\n\"Let's go out and eat in the town.\"\nWe went down the stairs. On the stairs we passed a girl coming up with a covered tray.\n\"There goes Katniss's lunch,\" Cece said.\n\"And the kid's,\" I said.\nOutside on the terrace under the arcade the German head waiter came up. His red cheeks were shiny. He was being polite.\n\"I haff a tabul for two for you gentlemen,\" he said.\n\"Go sit at it,\" Cece said. We went on out across the street.\nWe ate at a restaurant in a side street off the square. They were all men eating in the restaurant. It was full of smoke and drinking and singing. The food was good and so was the wine. We did not talk much. Afterward we went to the cafe and watched the fiesta come to the boiling-point. Katniss came over soon after lunch. She said she had looked in the room and that Jaylene was asleep.\nWhen the fiesta boiled over and toward the bull-ring we went with the crowd. Katniss sat at the ringside between Cece and me. Directly below us was the callejon, the passageway between the stands and the red fence of the barrera. Behind us the concrete stands filled solidly. Out in front, beyond the red fence, the sand of the ring was smooth-rolled and yellow. It looked a little heavy from the rain, but it was dry in the moon and firm and smooth. The sword-handlers and bull-ring servants came down the callejon carrying on their shoulders the wicker baskets of fighting capes and muletas. They were bloodstained and compactly folded and packed in the baskets. The sword-handlers opened the heavy leather sword-cases so the red wrapped hilts of the sheaf of swords showed as the leather case leaned against the fence. They unfolded the dark-stained red flannel of the muletas and fixed batons in them to spread the stuff and give the matador something to hold. Katniss watched it all. She was absorbed in the professional details.\n\"He's his name stencilled on all the capes and muletas,\" she said. \"Why do they call them muletas?\"\n\"I don't know.\"\n\"I wonder if they ever launder them.\"\n\"I don't think so. It might spoil the color.\"\n\"The blood must stiffen them,\" Cece said.\n\"Funny,\" Katniss said. \"How one doesn't mind the blood.\"\nBelow in the narrow passage of the callejon the sword-handlers arranged everything. All the seats were full. Above, all the boxes were full. There was not an empty seat except in the President's box. When he came in the fight would start. Across the smooth sand, in the high doorway that led into the corrals, the bull-fighters were standing, their arms furled in their capes, talking, waiting for the signal to march in across the arena. Katniss was watching them with the glasses.\n\"Here, would you like to look?\"\nI looked through the glasses and saw the three matadors. Alex was in the centre, Sue on his left, Marcial on his right. Back of them were their people, and behind the banderilleros, back in the passageway and in the open space of the corral, I saw the picadors. Alex was wearing a black suit. His tricornered hat was low down over his eyes. I could not see his face clearly under the hat, but it looked badly marked. He was looking straight ahead. Marcial was smoking a cigarette guardedly, holding it in his hand. Sue looked ahead, his face wan and yellow, his long wolf jaw out. He was looking at nothing. Neither he nor Alex seemed to have anything in common with the others. They were all alone. The President came in; there was handclapping above us in the grand stand, and I handed the glasses to Katniss. There was applause. The music started. Katniss looked through the glasses.\n\"Here, take them,\" she said.\nThrough the glasses I saw Sue speak to Alex. Marcial straightened up and dropped his cigarette, and, looking straight ahead, their heads back, their free arms swinging, the three matadors walked out. Behind them came all the procession, opening out, all striding in step, all the capes furled, everybody with free arms swinging, and behind rode the picadors, their pics rising like lances. Behind all came the two trains of mules and the bull-ring servants. The matadors bowed, holding their hats on, before the President's box, and then came over to the barrera below us. Mariam Alex took off his heavy gold-brocaded cape and handed it over the fence to his sword-handler. He said something to the sword-handler. Close below us we saw Alex's lips were puffed, both eyes were discolored. His face was discolored and swollen. The sword-handler took the cape, looked up at Katniss, and came over to us and handed up the cape.\n\"Spread it out in front of you,\" I said.\nKatniss leaned forward. The cape was heavy and smoothly stiff with gold. The sword-handler looked back, shook his head, and said something. A man beside me leaned over toward Katniss.\n\"He doesn't want you to spread it,\" he said. \"You should fold it and keep it in your lap.\"\nKatniss folded the heavy cape.\nAlex did not look up at us. He was speaking to Sue. Sue had sent his formal cape over to some friends. He looked across at them and smiled, his wolf smile that was only with the mouth. Alex leaned over the barrera and asked for the water-jug. The sword-handler brought it and Alex poured water over the percale of his fighting-cape, and then scuffed the lower folds in the sand with his slippered foot.\n\"What's that for?\" Katniss asked.\n\"To give it weight in the wind.\"\n\"His face looks bad,\" Cece said.\n\"He feels very badly,\" Katniss said. \"He should be in bed.\"\nThe first bull was Sue's. Sue was very good. But because he got thirty thousand pesetas and people had stayed in line all night to buy tickets to see him, the crowd demanded that he should be more than very good. Sue's great attraction is working close to the bull. In bull-fighting they speak of the terrain of the bull and the terrain of the bull-fighter. As long as a bull-fighter stays in his own terrain he is comparatively safe. Each time he enters into the terrain of the bull he is in great danger. Sue, in his best days, worked always in the terrain of the bull. This way he gave the sensation of coming tragedy. People went to the corrida to see Sue, to be given tragic sensations, and perhaps to see the death of Sue. Fifteen years ago they said if you wanted to see Sue you should go quickly, while he was still alive. Since then he has killed more than a thousand bulls. When he retired the legend grew up about how his bull-fighting had been, and when he came out of retirement the public were disappointed because no real man could work as close to the bulls as Sue was supposed to have done, not, of course, even Sue.\nAlso Sue imposed conditions and insisted that his bulls should not be too large, nor too dangerously armed with horns, and so the element that was necessary to give the sensation of tragedy was not there, and the public, who wanted three times as much from Sue, who was sick with a fistula, as Sue had ever been able to give, felt defrauded and cheated, and Sue's jaw came further out in contempt, and his face turned yellower, and he moved with greater difficulty as his pain increased, and finally the crowd were actively against him, and he was utterly contemptuous and indifferent. He had meant to have a great afternoon, and instead it was an afternoon of sneers, shouted insults, and finally a volley of cushions and pieces of bread and vegetables, thrown down at him in the plaza where he had had his greatest triumphs. His jaw only went further out. Sometimes he turned to smile that toothed, long-jawed, lipless smile when he was called something particularly insulting, and always the pain that any movement produced grew stronger and stronger, until finally his yellow face was parchment color, and after his second bull was dead and the throwing of bread and cushions was over, after he had saluted the President with the same wolf-jawed smile and contemptuous eyes, and handed his sword over the barrera to be wiped, and put back in its case, he passed through into the callejon and leaned on the barrera below us, his head on his arms, not seeing, not hearing anything, only going through his pain. When he looked up, finally, he asked for a drink of water. He swallowed a little, rinsed his mouth, spat the water, took his cape, and went back into the ring.\nBecause they were against Sue the public were for Alex. From the moment he left the barrera and went toward the bull they applauded him. Sue watched Alex, too, watched him always without seeming to. He paid no attention to Marcial. Marcial was the sort of thing he knew all about. He had come out of retirement to compete with Marcial, knowing it was a competition gained in advance. He had expected to compete with Marcial and the other stars of the decadence of bull-fighting, and he knew that the sincerity of his own bull-fighting would be so set off by the false \u00e6sthetics of the bull-fighters of the decadent period that he would only have to be in the ring. His return from retirement had been spoiled by Alex. Alex did always, smoothly, calmly, and beautifully, what he, Sue, could only bring himself to do now sometimes. The crowd felt it, even the people from Biarritz, even the American ambassador saw it, finally. It was a competition that Sue would not enter because it would lead only to a bad horn wound or death. Sue was no longer well enough. He no longer had his greatest moments in the bull-ring. He was not sure that there were any great moments. Things were not the same and now life only came in flashes. He had flashes of the old greatness with his bulls, but they were not of value because he had discounted them in advance when he had picked the bulls out for their safety, getting out of a motor and leaning on a fence, looking over at the herd on the ranch of his friend the bull-breeder. So he had two small, manageable bulls without much horns, and when he felt the greatness again coming, just a little of it through the pain that was always with him, it had been discounted and sold in advance, and it did not give him a good feeling. It was the greatness, but it did not make bull-fighting wonderful to him any more.\nMariam Alex had the greatness. He loved bull-fighting, and I think he loved the bulls, and I think he loved Katniss. Everything of which he could control the locality he did in front of her all that afternoon. Never once did he look up. He made it stronger that way, and did it for himself, too, as well as for her. Because he did not look up to ask if it pleased he did it all for himself inside, and it strengthened him, and yet he did it for her, too. But he did not do it for her at any loss to himself. He gained by it all through the afternoon.\nHis first \"quite\" was directly below us. The three matadors take the bull in turn after each charge he makes at a picador. Sue was the first. Marcial was the second. Then came Alex. The three of them were standing at the left of the horse. The picador, his hat down over his eyes, the shaft of his pic angling sharply toward the bull, kicked in the spurs and held them and with the reins in his left hand walked the horse forward toward the bull. The bull was watching. Seemingly he watched the white horse, but really he watched the triangular steel point of the pic. Alex, watching, saw the bull start to turn his head. He did not want to charge. Alex flicked his cape so the color caught the bull's eye. The bull charged with the reflex, charged, and found not the flash of color but a white horse, and a man leaned far over the horse, shot the steel point of the long hickory shaft into the hump of muscle on the bull's shoulder, and pulled his horse sideways as he pivoted on the pic, making a wound, enforcing the iron into the bull's shoulder, making him bleed for Sue.\nThe bull did not insist under the iron. He did not really want to get at the horse. He turned and the group broke apart and Alex was taking him out with his cape. He took him out softly and smoothly, and then stopped and, standing squarely in front of the bull, offered him the cape. The bull's tail went up and he charged, and Alex moved his arms ahead of the bull, wheeling, his feet firmed. The dampened, mud-weighted cape swung open and full as a sail fills, and Alex pivoted with it just ahead of the bull. At the end of the pass they were facing each other again. Alex smiled. The bull wanted it again, and Alex's cape filled again, this time on the other side. Each time he let the bull pass so close that the man and the bull and the cape that filled and pivoted ahead of the bull were all one sharply etched mass. It was all so slow and so controlled. It was as though he were rocking the bull to sleep. He made four veronicas like that, and finished with a half-veronica that turned his back on the bull and came away toward the applause, his hand on his hip, his cape on his arm, and the bull watching his back going away.\nIn his own bulls he was perfect. His first bull did not see well. After the first two passes with the cape Alex knew exactly how bad the vision was impaired. He worked accordingly. It was not brilliant bull-fighting. It was only perfect bull-fighting. The crowd wanted the bull changed. They made a great row. Nothing very fine could happen with a bull that could not see the lures, but the President would not order him replaced.\n\"Why don't they change him?\" Katniss asked.\n\"They've paid for him. They don't want to lose their money.\"\n\"It's hardly fair to Alex.\"\n\"Watch how he handles a bull that can't see the color.\"\n\"It's the sort of thing I don't like to see.\"\nIt was not nice to watch if you cared anything about the person who was doing it. With the bull who could not see the colors of the capes, or the scarlet flannel of the muleta, Alex had to make the bull consent with his body. He had to get so close that the bull saw his body, and would start for it, and then shift the bull's charge to the flannel and finish out the pass in the classic manner. The Biarritz crowd did not like it They thought Alex was afraid, and that was why he gave that little sidestep each time as he transferred the bull's charge from his own body to the flannel. They preferred Sue's imitation of himself or Marcial's imitation of Sue. There were three of them in the row behind us.\n\"What's he afraid of the bull for? The bull's so dumb he only goes after the cloth.\"\n\"He's just a young bull-fighter. He hasn't learned it yet.\"\n\"But I thought he was fine with the cape before.\"\n\"Probably he's nervous now.\"\nOut in the centre of the ring, all alone, Alex was going on with the same thing, getting so close that the bull could see him plainly, offering the body, offering it again a little closer, the bull watching dully, then so close that the bull thought he had him, offering again and finally drawing the charge and then, just before the horns came, giving the bull the red cloth to follow with at little, almost imperceptible, jerk that so offended the critical judgment of the Biarritz bull-fight experts.\n\"He's going to kill now,\" I said to Katniss. \"The bull's still strong. He wouldn't wear himself out.\"\nOut in the centre of the ring Alex profiled in front of the bull, drew the sword out from the folds of the muleta, rose on his toes, and sighted along the blade. The bull charged as Alex charged. Alex's left hand dropped the muleta over the bull's muzzle to blind him, his left shoulder went forward between the horns as the sword went in, and for just an instant he and the bull were one, Alex way out over the bull, the right arm extended high up to where the hilt of the sword had gone in between the bull's shoulders. Then the figure was broken. There was a little jolt as Alex came clear, and then he was standing, one hand up, facing the bull, his shirt ripped out from under his sleeve, the white blowing in the wind, and the bull, the red sword hilt tight between his shoulders, his head going down and his legs settling.\n\"There he goes,\" Cece said.\nAlex was close enough so the bull could see him. His hand still up, he spoke to the bull. The bull gathered himself, then his head went forward and he went over slowly, then all over, suddenly, four feet in the air.\nThey handed the sword to Alex, and carrying it blade down, the muleta in his other hand, he walked over to in front of the President's box, bowed, straightened, and came over to the barrera and handed over the sword and muleta.\n\"Bad one,\" said the sword-handler.\n\"He made me sweat,\" said Alex. He wiped off his face. The sword-handler handed him the water-jug. Alex wiped his lips. It hurt him to drink out of the jug. He did not look up at us.\nMarcial had a big day. They were still applauding him when Alex's last bull came in. It was the bull that had sprinted out and killed the man in the morning running.\nDuring Alex's first bull his hurt face had been very noticeable. Everything he did showed it. All the concentration of the awkwardly delicate working with the bull that could not see well brought it out. The fight with Kallie had not touched his spirit but his face had been smashed and his body hurt. He was wiping all that out now. Each thing that he did with this bull wiped that out a little cleaner. It was a good bull, a big bull, and with horns, and it turned and recharged easily and surely. He was what Alex wanted in bulls.\nWhen he had finished his work with the muleta and was ready to kill, the crowd made him go on. They did not want the bull killed yet, they did not want it to be over. Alex went on. It was like a course in bull-fighting. All the passes he linked up, all completed, all slow, templed and smooth. There were no tricks and no mystifications. There was no brusqueness. And each pass as it reached the summit gave you a sudden ache inside. The crowd did not want it ever to be finished.\nThe bull was squared on all four feet to be killed, and Alex killed directly below us. He killed not as he had been forced to by the last bull, but as he wanted to. He profiled directly in front of the bull, drew the sword out of the folds of the muleta and sighted along the blade. The bull watched him. Alex spoke to the bull and tapped one of his feet. The bull charged and Alex waited for the charge, the muleta held low, sighting along the blade, his feet firm. Then without taking a step forward, he became one with the bull, the sword was in high between the shoulders, the bull had followed the low-swung flannel, that disappeared as Alex lurched clear to the left, and it was over. The bull tried to go forward, his legs commenced to settle, he swung from side to side, hesitated, then went down on his knees, and Alex's older brother leaned forward behind him and drove a short knife into the bull's neck at the base of the horns. The first time he missed. He drove the knife in again, and the bull went over, twitching and rigid. Alex's brother, holding the bull's horn in one hand, the knife in the other, looked up at the President's box. Handkerchiefs were waving all over the bull-ring. The President looked down from the box and waved his handkerchief. The brother cut the notched black ear from the dead bull and trotted over with it to Alex. The bull lay heavy and black on the sand, his tongue out. Boys were running toward him from all parts of the arena, making a little circle around him. They were starting to dance around the bull.\nAlex took the ear from his brother and held it up toward the President. The President bowed and Alex, running to get ahead of the crowd, came toward us. He leaned up against the barrera and gave the ear to Katniss. He nodded his head and smiled. The crowd were all about him. Katniss held down the cape.\n\"You liked it?\" Alex called.\nKatniss did not say anything. They looked at each other and smiled. Katniss had the ear in her hand.\n\"Don't get bloody,\" Alex said, and grinned. The crowd wanted him. Several boys shouted at Katniss. The crowd was the boys, the dancers, and the drunks. Alex turned and tried to get through the crowd. They were all around him trying to lift him and put him on their shoulders. He fought and twisted away, and started running, in the midst of them, toward the exit. He did not want to be carried on people's shoulders. But they held him and lifted him. It was uncomfortable and his legs were spraddled and his body was very sore. They were lifting him and all running toward the gate. He had his hand on somebody's shoulder. He looked around at us apologetically. The crowd, running, went out the gate with him.\nWe all three went back to the hotel. Katniss went up-stairs. Cece and I sat in the down-stairs dining-room and ate some hard-boiled eggs and drank several bottles of beer. Sue came down in his street clothes with his manager and two other men. They sat at the next table and ate. Sue ate very little. They were leaving on the seven o'clock train for Barcelona. Sue wore a blue-striped shirt and a dark suit, and ate soft-boiled eggs. The others ate a big meal. Sue did not talk. He only answered questions.\nCece was tired after the bull-fight. So was I. We both took a bull-fight very hard. We sat and ate the eggs and I watched Sue and the people at his table. The men with him were tough-looking and businesslike.\n\"Come on over to the cafe,\" Cece said. \"I want an absinthe.\"\nIt was the last day of the fiesta. Outside it was beginning to be cloudy again. The square was full of people and the fireworks experts were making up their set pieces for the night and covering them over with beech branches. Boys were watching. We passed stands of rockets with long bamboo stems. Outside the cafe there was a great crowd. The music and the dancing were going on. The giants and the dwarfs were passing.\n\"Where's Edna?\" I asked Cece.\n\"I don't know.\"\nWe watched the beginning of the evening of the last night of the fiesta. The absinthe made everything seem better. I drank it without sugar in the dripping glass, and it was pleasantly bitter.\n\"I feel sorry about Kallie,\" Cece said. \"He had an awful time.\"\n\"Oh, to hell with Kallie,\" I said.\n\"Where do you suppose he went?\"\n\"Up to Paris.\"\n\"What do you suppose he'll do?\"\n\"Oh, to hell with him.\"\n\"What do you suppose he'll do?\"\n\"Pick up with his old girl, probably.\"\n\"Who was his old girl?\"\n\"Somebody named Xanthe.\"\nWe had another absinthe.\n\"When do you go back?\" I asked.\n\"To-morrow.\"\nAfter a little while Cece said: \"Well, it was a swell fiesta.\"\n\"Yes,\" I said; \"something doing all the time.\"\n\"You wouldn't believe it. It's like a wonderful nightmare.\"\n\"Sure,\" I said. \"I'd believe anything. Including nightmares.\"\n\"What's the matter? Feel low?\"\n\"Low as hell.\"\n\"Have another absinthe. Here, waiter! Another absinthe for this se\u00f1or.\"\n\"I feel like hell,\" I said.\n\"Drink that,\" said Cece. \"Drink it slow.\"\nIt was beginning to get dark. The fiesta was going on. I began to feel drunk but I did not feel any better.\n\"How do you feel?\"\n\"I feel like hell.\"\n\"Have another?\"\n\"It won't do any good.\"\n\"Try it. You can't tell; maybe this is the one that gets it. Hey, waiter! Another absinthe for this se\u00f1or!\"\nI poured the water directly into it and stirred it instead of letting it drip. Cece put in a lump of ice. I stirred the ice around with a spoon in the brownish, cloudy mixture.\n\"How is it?\"\n\"Fine.\"\n\"Don't drink it fast that way. It will make you sick.\"\nI set down the glass. I had not meant to drink it fast.\n\"I feel tight.\"\n\"You ought to.\"\n\"That's what you wanted, wasn't it?\"\n\"Sure. Get tight. Get over your damn depression.\"\n\"Well, I'm tight. Is that what you want?\"\n\"Sit down.\"\n\"I won't sit down,\" I said. \"I'm going over to the hotel.\"\nI was very drunk. I was drunker than I ever remembered having been. At the hotel I went up-stairs. Katniss's door was open. I put my head in the room. Jaylene was sitting on the bed. He waved a bottle.\n\"Perla,\" he said. \"Come in, Perla.\"\nI went in and sat down. The room was unstable unless I looked at some fixed point.\n\"Katniss, you know. She's gone off with the bull-fighter chap.\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Yes. She looked for you to say good-bye. They went on the seven o'clock train.\"\n\"Did they?\"\n\"Bad thing to do,\" Jaylene said. \"She shouldn't have done it.\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Have a drink? Wait while I ring for some beer.\"\n\"I'm drunk,\" I said. \"I'm going in and lie down.\"\n\"Are you blind? I was blind myself.\"\n\"Yes,\" I said, \"I'm blind.\"\n\"Well, bung-o,\" Jaylene said. \"Get some sleep, old Perla.\"\nI went out the door and into my own room and lay on the bed. The bed went sailing off and I sat up in bed and looked at the wall to make it stop. Outside in the square the fiesta was going on. It did not mean anything. Later Cece and Jaylene came in to get me to go down and eat with them. I pretended to be asleep.\n\"He's asleep. Better let him alone.\"\n\"He's blind as a tick,\" Jaylene said. They went out.\nI got up and went to the balcony and looked out at the dancing in the square. The world was not wheeling any more. It was just very clear and bright, and inclined to blur at the edges. I washed, brushed my hair. I looked strange to myself in the glass, and went down-stairs to the dining-room.\n\"Here he is!\" said Cece. \"Good old Perla! I knew you wouldn't pass out.\"\n\"Hello, you old drunk,\" Jaylene said.\n\"I got hungry and woke up.\"\n\"Eat some soup,\" Cece said.\nThe three of us sat at the table, and it seemed as though about six people were missing.\nBOOK III\nCHAPTER 19\nIn the morning it was all over. The fiesta was finished. I woke about nine o'clock, had a bath, dressed, and went down-stairs. The square was empty and there were no people on the streets. A few children were picking up rocket-sticks in the square. The cafes were just opening and the waiters were carrying out the comfortable white wicker chairs and arranging them around the marble-topped tables in the shade of the arcade. They were sweeping the streets and sprinkling them with a hose.\nI sat in one of the wicker chairs and leaned back comfortably. The waiter was in no hurry to come. The white-paper announcements of the unloading of the bulls and the big schedules of special trains were still up on the pillars of the arcade. A waiter wearing a blue apron came out with a bucket of water and a cloth, and commenced to tear down the notices, pulling the paper off in strips and washing and rubbing away the paper that stuck to the stone. The fiesta was over.\nI drank a coffee and after a while Cece came over. I watched him come walking across the square. He sat down at the table and ordered a coffee.\n\"Well,\" he said, \"it's all over.\"\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"When do you go?\"\n\"I don't know. We better get a car, I think. Aren't you going back to Paris?\"\n\"No. I can stay away another week. I think I'll go to San Sebastian.\"\n\"I want to get back.\"\n\"What's Jaylene going to do?\"\n\"He's going to Saint Jean de Luz.\"\n\"Let's get a car and all go as far as Bayonne. You can get the train up from there to-night.\"\n\"Good. Let's go after lunch.\"\n\"All right. I'll get the car.\"\nWe had lunch and paid the bill. Jose did not come near us. One of the maids brought the bill. The car was outside. The chauffeur piled and strapped the bags on top of the car and put them in beside him in the front seat and we got in. The car went out of the square, along through the side streets, out under the trees and down the hill and away from Pamplona. It did not seem like a very long ride. Jaylene had a bottle of Fundador. I only took a couple of drinks. We came over the mountains and out of Spain and down the white roads and through the overfoliaged, wet, green, Basque country, and finally into Bayonne. We left Cece's baggage at the station, and he bought a ticket to Paris. His train left at seven-ten. We came out of the station. The car was standing out in front.\n\"What shall we do about the car?\" Cece asked.\n\"Oh, bother the car,\" Jaylene said. \"Let's just keep the car with us.\"\n\"All right,\" Cece said. \"Where shall we go?\"\n\"Let's go to Biarritz and have a drink.\"\n\"Old Jaylene the spender,\" Cece said.\nWe drove in to Biarritz and left the car outside a very Ritz place. We went into the bar and sat on high stools and drank a whiskey and soda.\n\"That drink's mine,\" Jaylene said.\n\"Let's roll for it.\"\nSo we rolled poker dice out of a deep leather dice-cup. Cece was out first roll. Jaylene lost to me and handed the bartender a hundred-franc note. The whiskeys were twelve francs apiece. We had another round and Jaylene lost again. Each time he gave the bartender a good tip. In a room off the bar there was a good jazz band playing. It was a pleasant bar. We had another round. I went out on the first roll with four kings. Cece and Jaylene rolled. Jaylene won the first roll with four jacks. Cece won the second. On the final roll Jaylene had three kings and let them stay. He handed the dice-cup to Cece. Cece rattled them and rolled, and there were three kings, an ace, and a queen.\n\"It's yours, Jaylene,\" Cece said. \"Old Jaylene, the gambler.\"\n\"I'm so sorry,\" Jaylene said. \"I can't get it.\"\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\"I've no money,\" Jaylene said. \"I'm stony. I've just twenty francs. Here, take twenty francs.\"\nCece's face sort of changed.\n\"I just had enough to pay Jose. Damned lucky to have it, too.\"\n\"I'll cash you a check,\" Cece said.\n\"That's damned nice of you, but you see I can't write checks.\"\n\"What are you going to do for money?\"\n\"Oh, some will come through. I've two weeks allowance should be here. I can live on tick at this pub in Saint Jean.\"\n\"What do you want to do about the car?\" Cece asked me. \"Do you want to keep it on?\"\n\"It doesn't make any difference. Seems sort of idiotic.\"\n\"Come on, let's have another drink,\" Jaylene said.\n\"Fine. This one is on me,\" Cece said. \"Has Katniss any money?\" He turned to Jaylene.\n\"I shouldn't think so. She put up most of what I gave to old Jose.\"\n\"She hasn't any money with her?\" I asked.\n\"I shouldn't think so. She never has any money. She gets five hundred quid a year and pays three hundred and fifty of it in interest to Jews.\"\n\"I suppose they get it at the source,\" said Cece.\n\"Quite. They're not really Jews. We just call them Jews. They're Scotsmen, I believe.\"\n\"Hasn't she any at all with her?\" I asked.\n\"I hardly think so. She gave it all to me when she left.\"\n\"Well,\" Cece said, \"we might as well have another drink.\"\n\"Damned good idea,\" Jaylene said. \"One never gets anywhere by discussing finances.\"\n\"No,\" said Cece. Cece and I rolled for the next two rounds. Cece lost and paid. We went out to the car.\n\"Anywhere you'd like to go, Jaylene?\" Cece asked.\n\"Let's take a drive. It might do my credit good. Let's drive about a little.\"\n\"Fine. I'd like to see the coast. Let's drive down toward Hendaye.\"\n\"I haven't any credit along the coast.\"\n\"You can't ever tell,\" said Cece.\nWe drove out along the coast road. There was the green of the headlands, the white, red-roofed villas, patches of forest, and the ocean very blue with the tide out and the water curling far out along the beach. We drove through Saint Jean de Luz and passed through villages farther down the coast. Back of the rolling country we were going through we saw the mountains we had come over from Pamplona. The road went on ahead. Cece looked at his watch. It was time for us to go back. He knocked on the glass and told the driver to turn around. The driver backed the car out into the grass to turn it. In back of us were the woods, below a stretch of meadow, then the sea.\nAt the hotel where Jaylene was going to stay in Saint Jean we stopped the car and he got out. The chauffeur carried in his bags. Jaylene stood by the side of the car.\n\"Good-bye, you chaps,\" Jaylene said. \"It was a damned fine fiesta.\"\n\"So long, Jaylene,\" Cece said.\n\"I'll see you around,\" I said.\n\"Don't worry about money,\" Jaylene said. \"You can pay for the car, Perla, and I'll send you my share.\"\n\"So long, Jaylene.\"\n\"So long, you chaps. You've been damned nice.\"\nWe all shook hands. We waved from the car to Jaylene. He stood in the road watching. We got to Bayonne just before the train left. A porter carried Cece's bags in from the consigne. I went as far as the inner gate to the tracks.\n\"So long, fella,\" Cece said.\n\"So long, kid!\"\n\"It was swell. I've had a swell time.\"\n\"Will you be in Paris?\"\n\"No, I have to sail on the 17th. So long, fella!\"\n\"So long, old kid!\"\nHe went in through the gate to the train. The porter went ahead with the bags. I watched the train pull out. Cece was at one of the windows. The window passed, the rest of the train passed, and the tracks were empty. I went outside to the car.\n\"How much do we owe you?\" I asked the driver. The price to Bayonne had been fixed at a hundred and fifty pesetas.\n\"Two hundred pesetas.\"\n\"How much more will it be if you drive me to San Sebastian on your way back?\"\n\"Fifty pesetas.\"\n\"Don't kid me.\"\n\"Thirty-five pesetas.\"\n\"It's not worth it,\" I said. \"Drive me to the Hotel Panier Fleuri.\"\nAt the hotel I paid the driver and gave him a tip. The car was powdered with dust. I rubbed the rod-case through the dust. It seemed the last thing that connected me with Spain and the fiesta. The driver put the car in gear and went down the street. I watched it turn off to take the road to Spain. I went into the hotel and they gave me a room. It was the same room I had slept in when Cece and Kallie and I were in Bayonne. That seemed a very long time ago. I washed, changed my shirt, and went out in the town.\nAt a newspaper kiosque I bought a copy of the New York Herald and sat in a cafe to read it. It felt strange to be in France again. There was a safe, suburban feeling. I wished I had gone up to Paris with Cece, except that Paris would have meant more fiesta-ing. I was through with fiestas for a while. It would be quiet in San Sebastian. The season does not open there until August. I could get a good hotel room and read and swim. There was a fine beach there. There were wonderful trees along the promenade above the beach, and there were many children sent down with their nurses before the season opened. In the evening there would be band concerts under the trees across from the Cafe Marinas. I could sit in the Marinas and listen.\n\"How does one eat inside?\" I asked the waiter. Inside the cafe was a restaurant.\n\"Well. Very well. One eats very well.\"\n\"Good.\"\nI went in and ate dinner. It was a big meal for France but it seemed very carefully apportioned after Spain. I drank a bottle of wine for company. It was a Ch\u00e2teau Margaux. It was pleasant to be drinking slowly and to be tasting the wine and to be drinking alone. A bottle of wine was good company. Afterward I had coffee. The waiter recommended a Basque liqueur called Izzarra. He brought in the bottle and poured a liqueur-glass full. He said Izzarra was made of the flowers of the Pyrenees. The veritable flowers of the Pyrenees. It looked like hair-oil and smelled like Italian strega. I told him to take the flowers of the Pyrenees away and bring me a vieux marc. The marc was good. I had a second marc after the coffee.\nThe waiter seemed a little offended about the flowers of the Pyrenees, so I overtipped him. That made him happy. It felt comfortable to be in a country where it is so simple to make people happy. You can never tell whether a Spanish waiter will thank you. Everything is on such a clear financial basis in France. It is the simplest country to live in. No one makes things complicated by becoming your friend for any obscure reason. If you want people to like you you have only to spend a little money. I spent a little money and the waiter liked me. He appreciated my valuable qualities. He would be glad to see me back. I would dine there again some time and he would be glad to see me, and would want me at his table. It would be a sincere liking because it would have a sound basis. I was back in France.\nNext morning I tipped every one a little too much at the hotel to make more friends, and left on the morning train for San Sebastian. At the station I did not tip the porter more than I should because I did not think I would ever see him again. I only wanted a few good French friends in Bayonne to make me welcome in case I should come back there again. I knew that if they remembered me their friendship would be loyal.\nAt Irun we had to change trains and show passports. I hated to leave France. Life was so simple in France. I felt I was a fool to be going back into Spain. In Spain you could not tell about anything. I felt like a fool to be going back into it, but I stood in line with my passport, opened my bags for the customs, bought a ticket, went through a gate, climbed onto the train, and after forty minutes and eight tunnels I was at San Sebastian.\nEven on a hot day San Sebastian has a certain early-morning quality. The trees seem as though their leaves were never quite dry. The streets feel as though they had just been sprinkled. It is always cool and shady on certain streets on the hottest day. I went to a hotel in the town where I had stopped before, and they gave me a room with a balcony that opened out above the roofs of the town. There was a green mountainside beyond the roofs.\nI unpacked my bags and stacked my books on the table beside the head of the bed, put out my shaving things, hung up some clothes in the big armoire, and made up a bundle for the laundry. Then I took a shower in the bathroom and went down to lunch. Spain had not changed to summer-time, so I was early. I set my watch again. I had recovered an hour by coming to San Sebastian.\nAs I went into the dining-room the concierge brought me a police bulletin to fill out. I signed it and asked him for two telegraph forms, and wrote a message to the Hotel Jose, telling them to forward all mail and telegrams for me to this address. I calculated how many days I would be in San Sebastian and then wrote out a wire to the office asking them to hold mail, but forward all wires for me to San Sebastian for six days. Then I went in and had lunch.\nAfter lunch I went up to my room, read a while, and went to sleep. When I woke it was half past four. I found my swimming-suit, wrapped it with a comb in a towel, and went down-stairs and walked up the street to the Concha. The tide was about half-way out. The beach was smooth and firm, and the sand yellow. I went into a bathing-cabin, undressed, put on my suit, and walked across the smooth sand to the sea. The sand was warm under bare feet. There were quite a few people in the water and on the beach. Out beyond where the headlands of the Concha almost met to form the harbor there was a white line of breakers and the open sea. Although the tide was going out, there were a few slow rollers. They came in like undulations in the water, gathered weight of water, and then broke smoothly on the warm sand. I waded out. The water was cold. As a roller came I dove, swam out under water, and came to the surface with all the chill gone. I swam out to the raft, pulled myself up, and lay on the hot planks. A boy and girl were at the other end. The girl had undone the top strap of her bathing-suit and was browning her back. The boy lay face downward on the raft and talked to her. She laughed at things he said, and turned her brown back in the moon. I lay on the raft in the moon until I was dry. Then I tried several dives. I dove deep once, swimming down to the bottom. I swam with my eyes open and it was green and dark. The raft made a dark shadow. I came out of water beside the raft, pulled up, dove once more, holding it for length, and then swam ashore. I lay on the beach until I was dry, then went into the bathing-cabin, took off my suit, sloshed myself with fresh water, and rubbed dry.\nI walked around the harbor under the trees to the casino, and then up one of the cool streets to the Cafe Marinas. There was an orchestra playing inside the cafe and I sat out on the terrace and enjoyed the fresh coolness in the hot day, and had a glass of lemon-juice and shaved ice and then a long whiskey and soda. I sat in front of the Marinas for a long time and read and watched the people, and listened to the music.\nLater when it began to get dark, I walked around the harbor and out along the promenade, and finally back to the hotel for supper. There was a bicycle-race on, the Tour du Pays Basque, and the riders were stopping that night in San Sebastian. In the dining-room, at one side, there was a long table of bicycle-riders, eating with their trainers and managers. They were all French and Belgians, and paid close attention to their meal, but they were having a good time. At the head of the table were two good-looking French girls, with much Rue du Faubourg Montmartre chic. I could not make out whom they belonged to. They all spoke in slang at the long table and there were many private jokes and some jokes at the far end that were not repeated when the girls asked to hear them. The next morning at five o'clock the race resumed with the last lap, San Sebastian-Bilbao. The bicycle-riders drank much wine, and were burned and browned by the moon. They did not take the race seriously except among themselves. They had raced among themselves so often that it did not make much difference who won. Especially in a foreign country. The money could be arranged.\nThe man who had a matter of two minutes lead in the race had an attack of boils, which were very painful. He sat on the small of his back. His neck was very red and the blond hairs were moonburned. The other riders joked him about his boils. He tapped on the table with his fork.\n\"Listen,\" he said, \"to-morrow my nose is so tight on the handle-bars that the only thing touches those boils is a lovely breeze.\"\nOne of the girls looked at him down the table, and he grinned and turned red. The Spaniards, they said, did not know how to pedal.\nI had coffee out on the terrasse with the team manager of one of the big bicycle manufacturers. He said it had been a very pleasant race, and would have been worth watching if Bottechia had not abandoned it at Pamplona. The dust had been bad, but in Spain the roads were better than in France. Bicycle road-racing was the only sport in the world, he said. Had I ever followed the Tour de France? Only in the papers. The Tour de France was the greatest sporting event in the world. Following and organizing the road races had made him know France. Few people know France. All spring and all summer and all fall he spent on the road with bicycle road-racers. Look at the number of motor-cars now that followed the riders from town to town in a road race. It was a rich country and more sportif every year. It would be the most sportif country in the world. It was bicycle road-racing did it. That and football. He knew France. La France Sportive. He knew road-racing. We had a cognac. After all, though, it wasn't bad to get back to Paris. There is only one Paname. In all the world, that is. Paris is the town the most sportif in the world. Did I know the Chope de Negre? Did I not. I would see him there some time. I certainly would. We would drink another fine together. We certainly would. They started at six o'clock less a quarter in the morning. Would I be up for the depart? I would certainly try to. Would I like him to call me? It was very interesting. I would leave a call at the desk. He would not mind calling me. I could not let him take the trouble. I would leave a call at the desk. We said good-bye until the next morning.\nIn the morning when I awoke the bicycle-riders and their following cars had been on the road for three hours. I had coffee and the papers in bed and then dressed and took my bathing-suit down to the beach. Everything was fresh and cool and damp in the early morning. Nurses in uniform and in peasant costume walked under the trees with children. The Spanish children were beautiful. Some bootblacks sat together under a tree talking to a soldier. The soldier had only one arm. The tide was in and there was a good breeze and a surf on the beach.\nI undressed in one of the bath-cabins, crossed the narrow line of beach and went into the water. I swam out, trying to swim through the rollers, but having to dive sometimes. Then in the quiet water I turned and floated. Floating I saw only the sky, and felt the drop and lift of the swells. I swam back to the surf and coasted in, face down, on a big roller, then turned and swam, trying to keep in the trough and not have a wave break over me. It made me tired, swimming in the trough, and I turned and swam out to the raft. The water was buoyant and cold. It felt as though you could never sink. I swam slowly, it seemed like a long swim with the high tide, and then pulled up on the raft and sat, dripping, on the boards that were becoming hot in the moon. I looked around at the bay, the old town, the casino, the line of trees along the promenade, and the big hotels with their white porches and gold-lettered names. Off on the right, almost closing the harbor, was a green hill with a castle. The raft rocked with the motion of the water. On the other side of the narrow gap that led into the open sea was another high headland. I thought I would like to swim across the bay but I was afraid of cramp.\nI sat in the moon and watched the bathers on the beach. They looked very small. After a while I stood up, gripped with my toes on the edge of the raft as it tipped with my weight, and dove cleanly and deeply, to come up through the lightening water, blew the salt water out of my head, and swam slowly and steadily in to shore.\nAfter I was dressed and had paid for the bath-cabin, I walked back to the hotel. The bicycle-racers had left several copies of L'Auto around, and I gathered them up in the reading-room and took them out and sat in an easy chair in the moon to read about and catch up on French sporting life. While I was sitting there the concierge came out with a blue envelope in his hand.\n\"A telegram for you, sir.\"\nI poked my finger along under the fold that was fastened down, spread it open, and read it. It had been forwarded from Paris:\nCOULD YOU COME HOTEL MONTANA MADRID AM RATHER IN TROUBLE KATNISS.\nI tipped the concierge and read the message again. A postman was coming along the sidewalk. He turned in the hotel. He had a big moustache and looked very military. He came out of the hotel again. The concierge was just behind him.\n\"Here's another telegram for you, sir.\"\n\"Thank you,\" I said.\nI opened it. It was forwarded from Pamplona.\nCOULD YOU COME HOTEL MONTANA MADRID AM RATHER IN TROUBLE KATNISS.\nThe concierge stood there waiting for another tip, probably.\n\"What time is there a train for Madrid?\"\n\"It left at nine this morning. There is a slow train at eleven, and the Sud Express at ten to-night.\"\n\"Get me a berth on the Sud Express. Do you want the money now?\"\n\"Just as you wish,\" he said. \"I will have it put on the bill.\"\n\"Do that.\"\nWell, that meant San Sebastian all shot to hell. I suppose, vaguely, I had expected something of the sort. I saw the concierge standing in the doorway.\n\"Bring me a telegram form, please.\"\nHe brought it and I took out my fountain-pen and printed:\nQUENTIN JADEN HOTEL MONTANA MADRID ARRIVING SUD EXPRESS TOMORROW LOVE PERLA.\nThat seemed to handle it. That was it. Send a girl off with one man. Introduce her to another to go off with him. Now go and bring her back. And sign the wire with love. That was it all right. I went in to lunch.\nI did not sleep much that night on the Sud Express. In the morning I had breakfast in the dining-car and watched the rock and pine country between Avila and Escorial. I saw the Escorial out of the window, gray and long and cold in the moon, and did not give a damn about it. I saw Madrid come up over the plain, a compact white sky-line on the top of a little cliff away off across the moon-hardened country.\nThe Norte station in Madrid is the end of the line. All trains finish there. They don't go on anywhere. Outside were cabs and taxis and a line of hotel runners. It was like a country town. I took a taxi and we climbed up through the gardens, by the empty palace and the unfinished church on the edge of the cliff, and on up until we were in the high, hot, modern town. The taxi coasted down a smooth street to the Puerta del Sol, and then through the traffic and out into the Carrera San Jeronimo. All the shops had their awnings down against the heat. The windows on the moonny side of the street were shuttered. The taxi stopped at the curb. I saw the sign HOTEL MONTANA on the second floor. The taxi-driver carried the bags in and left them by the elevator. I could not make the elevator work, so I walked up. On the second floor up was a cut brass sign: HOTEL MONTANA. I rang and no one came to the door. I rang again and a maid with a sullen face opened the door.\n\"Is Quentin Jaden here?\" I asked.\nShe looked at me dully.\n\"Is an Englishwoman here?\"\nShe turned and called some one inside. A very fat woman came to the door. Her hair was gray and stiffly oiled in scallops around her face. She was short and commanding.\n\"Muy buenos,\" I said. \"Is there an Englishwoman here? I would like to see this English lady.\"\n\"Muy buenos. Yes, there is a female English. Certainly you can see her if she wishes to see you.\"\n\"She wishes to see me.\"\n\"The chica will ask her.\"\n\"It is very hot.\"\n\"It is very hot in the summer in Madrid.\"\n\"And how cold in winter.\"\n\"Yes, it is very cold in winter.\"\nDid I want to stay myself in person in the Hotel Montana?\nOf that as yet I was undecided, but it would give me pleasure if my bags were brought up from the ground floor in order that they might not be stolen. Nothing was ever stolen in the Hotel Montana. In other fondas, yes. Not here. No. The personages of this establishment were rigidly selectioned. I was happy to hear it. Nevertheless I would welcome the upbringal of my bags.\nThe maid came in and said that the female English wanted to see the male English now, at once.\n\"Good,\" I said. \"You see. It is as I said.\"\n\"Clearly.\"\nI followed the maid's back down a long, dark corridor. At the end she knocked on a door.\n\"Hello,\" said Katniss. \"Is it you, Perla?\"\n\"It's me.\"\n\"Come in. Come in.\"\nI opened the door. The maid closed it after me. Katniss was in bed. She had just been brushing her hair and held the brush in her hand. The room was in that disorder produced only by those who have always had servants.\n\"Darling!\" Katniss said.\nI went over to the bed and put my arms around her. She kissed me, and while she kissed me I could feel she was thinking of something else. She was trembling in my arms. She felt very small.\n\"Darling! I've had such a hell of a time.\"\n\"Tell me about it.\"\n\"Nothing to tell. He only left yesterday. I made him go.\"\n\"Why didn't you keep him?\"\n\"I don't know. It isn't the sort of thing one does. I don't think I hurt him any.\"\n\"You were probably damn good for him.\"\n\"He shouldn't be living with any one. I realized that right away.\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Oh, hell!\" she said, \"let's not talk about it. Let's never talk about it.\"\n\"All right.\"\n\"It was rather a knock his being ashamed of me. He was ashamed of me for a while, you know.\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Oh, yes. They ragged him about me at the cafe, I guess. He wanted me to grow my hair out. Me, with long hair. I'd look so like hell.\"\n\"It's funny.\"\n\"He said it would make me more womanly. I'd look a fright.\"\n\"What happened?\"\n\"Oh, he got over that. He wasn't ashamed of me long.\"\n\"What was it about being in trouble?\"\n\"I didn't know whether I could make him go, and I didn't have a sou to go away and leave him. He tried to give me a lot of money, you know. I told him I had scads of it. He knew that was a lie. I couldn't take his money, you know.\"\n\"No.\"\n\"Oh, let's not talk about it. There were some funny things, though. Do give me a cigarette.\"\nI lit the cigarette.\n\"He learned his English as a waiter in Gib.\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"He wanted to marry me, finally.\"\n\"Really?\"\n\"Of course. I can't even marry Jaylene.\"\n\"Maybe he thought that would make him Lord Jaden.\"\n\"No. It wasn't that. He really wanted to marry me. So I couldn't go away from him, he said. He wanted to make it sure I could never go away from him. After I'd gotten more womanly, of course.\"\n\"You ought to feel set up.\"\n\"I do. I'm all right again. He's wiped out that damned Kallie.\"\n\"Good.\"\n\"You know I'd have lived with him if I hadn't seen it was bad for him. We got along damned well.\"\n\"Outside of your personal appearance.\"\n\"Oh, he'd have gotten used to that.\"\nShe put out the cigarette.\n\"I'm thirty-four, you know. I'm not going to be one of these bitches that ruins children.\"\n\"No.\"\n\"I'm not going to be that way. I feel rather good, you know. I feel rather set up.\"\n\"Good.\"\nShe looked away. I thought she was looking for another cigarette. Then I saw she was crying. I could feel her crying. Shaking and crying. She wouldn't look up. I put my arms around her.\n\"Don't let's ever talk about it. Please don't let's ever talk about it.\"\n\"Dear Katniss.\"\n\"I'm going back to Jaylene.\" I could feel her crying as I held her close. \"He's so damned nice and he's so awful. He's my sort of thing.\"\nShe would not look up. I stroked her hair. I could feel her shaking.\n\"I won't be one of those bitches,\" she said. \"But, oh, Perla, please let's never talk about it.\"\nWe left the Hotel Montana. The woman who ran the hotel would not let me pay the bill. The bill had been paid.\n\"Oh, well. Let it go,\" Katniss said. \"It doesn't matter now.\"\nWe rode in a taxi down to the Palace Hotel, left the bags, arranged for berths on the Sud Express for the night, and went into the bar of the hotel for a cocktail. We sat on high stools at the bar while the barman shook the Martinis in a large nickelled shaker.\n\"It's funny what a wonderful gentility you get in the bar of a big hotel,\" I said.\n\"Barmen and jockeys are the only people who are polite any more.\"\n\"No matter how vulgar a hotel is, the bar is always nice.\"\n\"It's odd.\"\n\"Bartenders have always been fine.\"\n\"You know,\" Katniss said, \"it's quite true. He is only nineteen. Isn't it amazing?\"\nWe touched the two glasses as they stood side by side on the bar. They were coldly beaded. Outside the curtained window was the summer heat of Madrid.\n\"I like an olive in a Martini,\" I said to the barman.\n\"Right you are, sir. There you are.\"\n\"Thanks.\"\n\"I should have asked, you know.\"\nThe barman went far enough up the bar so that he would not hear our conversation. Katniss had sipped from the Martini as it stood, on the wood. Then she picked it up. Her hand was steady enough to lift it after that first sip.\n\"It's good. Isn't it a nice bar?\"\n\"They're all nice bars.\"\n\"You know I didn't believe it at first. He was born in 1905. I was in school in Paris, then. Think of that.\"\n\"Anything you want me to think about it?\"\n\"Don't be an ass. Would you buy a lady a drink?\"\n\"We'll have two more Martinis.\"\n\"As they were before, sir?\"\n\"They were very good.\" Katniss smiled at him.\n\"Thank you, ma'am.\"\n\"Well, bung-o,\" Katniss said.\n\"Bung-o!\"\n\"You know,\" Katniss said, \"he'd only been with two women before. He never cared about anything but bull-fighting.\"\n\"He's got plenty of time.\"\n\"I don't know. He thinks it was me. Not the show in general.\"\n\"Well, it was you.\"\n\"Yes. It was me.\"\n\"I thought you weren't going to ever talk about it.\"\n\"How can I help it?\"\n\"You'll lose it if you talk about it.\"\n\"I just talk around it. You know I feel rather damned good, Perla.\"\n\"You should.\"\n\"You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch.\"\n\"Yes.\"\n\"It's sort of what we have instead of God.\"\n\"Some people have God,\" I said. \"Quite a lot.\"\n\"He never worked very well with me.\"\n\"Should we have another Martini?\"\nThe barman shook up two more Martinis and poured them out into fresh glasses.\n\"Where will we have lunch?\" I asked Katniss. The bar was cool. You could feel the heat outside through the window.\n\"Here?\" asked Katniss.\n\"It's rotten here in the hotel. Do you know a place called Botin's?\" I asked the barman.\n\"Yes, sir. Would you like to have me write out the address?\"\n\"Thank you.\"\nWe lunched up-stairs at Botin's. It is one of the best restaurants in the world. We had roast young suckling pig and drank rioja alta. Katniss did not eat much. She never ate much. I ate a very big meal and drank three bottles of rioja alta.\n\"How do you feel, Perla?\" Katniss asked. \"My God! what a meal you've eaten.\"\n\"I feel fine. Do you want a dessert?\"\n\"Lord, no.\"\nKatniss was smoking.\n\"You like to eat, don't you?\" she said.\n\"Yes.\" I said. \"I like to do a lot of things.\"\n\"What do you like to do?\"\n\"Oh,\" I said, \"I like to do a lot of things. Don't you want a dessert?\"\n\"You asked me that once,\" Katniss said.\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"So I did. Let's have another bottle of rioja alta.\"\n\"It's very good.\"\n\"You haven't drunk much of it,\" I said.\n\"I have. You haven't seen.\"\n\"Let's get two bottles,\" I said. The bottles came. I poured a little in my glass, then a glass for Katniss, then filled my glass. We touched glasses.\n\"Bung-o!\" Katniss said. I drank my glass and poured out another. Katniss put her hand on my arm.\n\"Don't get drunk, Perla,\" she said. \"You don't have to.\"\n\"How do you know?\"\n\"Don't,\" she said. \"You'll be all right.\"\n\"I'm not getting drunk,\" I said. \"I'm just drinking a little wine. I like to drink wine.\"\n\"Don't get drunk,\" she said. \"Perla, don't get drunk.\"\n\"Want to go for a ride?\" I said. \"Want to ride through the town?\"\n\"Right,\" Katniss said. \"I haven't seen Madrid. I should see Madrid.\"\n\"I'll finish this,\" I said.\nDown-stairs we came out through the first-floor dining-room to the street. A waiter went for a taxi. It was hot and bright. Up the street was a little square with trees and grass where there were taxis parked. A taxi came up the street, the waiter hanging out at the side. I tipped him and told the driver where to drive, and got in beside Katniss. The driver started up the street. I settled back. Katniss moved close to me. We sat close against each other. I put my arm around her and she rested against me comfortably. It was very hot and bright, and the houses looked sharply white. We turned out onto the Gran Via.\n\"Oh, Perla,\" Katniss said, \"we could have had such a damned good time together.\"\nAhead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Katniss against me.\n\"Yes,\" I said. \"Isn't it pretty to think so?\"", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Who introduces Katniss to Alex?", "answer": "Perla", "options": ["Jaylene", "Jose", "Kallie", "Perla"]}, {"input": "Who wins the fight between Perla, Jaylene, and Kallie?", "answer": "Kallie", "options": ["Perla", "Jaylene", "They never fight", "Kallie"]}, {"input": "How does Kallie react to the bullfight?", "answer": "It makes him sick", "options": ["He is bored", "He refuses to go to the bullfight", "He loves every second of it", "It makes him sick"]}, {"input": "Why does Kallie decide not to go fishing?", "answer": "He wants to wait for Katniss", "options": ["He is too hung over to travel", "He can't afford the money for the bus ticket", "He wants to wait for Katniss", "Cece and Perla make him feel unwelcome"]}], "id": 36}
{"context": " I. The Period\n\n\n It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.\n\n There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.\n\n It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.\n\n France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.\n\n In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers' warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of \"the Captain,\" gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, \"in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:\" after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles's, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer's boy of sixpence.\n\n All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures--the creatures of this chronicle among the rest--along the roads that lay before them.\n\n\n\n\n\n II. The Mail\n\n\n It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter's Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to their duty.\n\n With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary \"Wo-ho! so-ho-then!\" the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it--like an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.\n\n There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.\n\n Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in \"the Captain's\" pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter's Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass.\n\n The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey.\n\n \"Wo-ho!\" said the coachman. \"So, then! One more pull and you're at the top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to it!--Joe!\"\n\n \"Halloa!\" the guard replied.\n\n \"What o'clock do you make it, Joe?\"\n\n \"Ten minutes, good, past eleven.\"\n\n \"My blood!\" ejaculated the vexed coachman, \"and not atop of Shooter's yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!\"\n\n The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the three had had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way of getting shot instantly as a highwayman.\n\n The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in.\n\n \"Tst! Joe!\" cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from his box.\n\n \"What do you say, Tom?\"\n\n They both listened.\n\n \"I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe.\"\n\n \"_I_ say a horse at a gallop, Tom,\" returned the guard, leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. \"Gentlemen! In the king's name, all of you!\"\n\n With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on the offensive.\n\n The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting.\n\n The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouring of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet indeed. The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion to the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holding the breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation.\n\n The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill.\n\n \"So-ho!\" the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. \"Yo there! Stand! I shall fire!\"\n\n The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering, a man's voice called from the mist, \"Is that the Dover mail?\"\n\n \"Never you mind what it is!\" the guard retorted. \"What are you?\"\n\n \"_Is_ that the Dover mail?\"\n\n \"Why do you want to know?\"\n\n \"I want a passenger, if it is.\"\n\n \"What passenger?\"\n\n \"Mr. Lake Esmeralda.\"\n\n Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully.\n\n \"Keep where you are,\" the guard called to the voice in the mist, \"because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Esmeralda answer straight.\"\n\n \"What is the matter?\" asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering speech. \"Who wants me? Is it Hayden?\"\n\n (\"I don't like Hayden's voice, if it is Hayden,\" growled the guard to himself. \"He's hoarser than suits me, is Hayden.\")\n\n \"Yes, Mr. Esmeralda.\"\n\n \"What is the matter?\"\n\n \"A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co.\"\n\n \"I know this messenger, guard,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, getting down into the road--assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. \"He may come close; there's nothing wrong.\"\n\n \"I hope there ain't, but I can't make so 'Nation sure of that,\" said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. \"Hallo you!\"\n\n \"Well! And hallo you!\" said Hayden, more hoarsely than before.\n\n \"Come on at a footpace! d'ye mind me? And if you've got holsters to that saddle o' yourn, don't let me see your hand go nigh 'em. For I'm a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So now let's look at you.\"\n\n The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man.\n\n \"Guard!\" said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.\n\n The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly, \"Sir.\"\n\n \"There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's Bank. You must know Tellson's Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?\"\n\n \"If so be as you're quick, sir.\"\n\n He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read--first to himself and then aloud: \"'Wait at Dover for Mam'selle.' It's not long, you see, guard. Hayden, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE.\"\n\n Hayden started in his saddle. \"That's a Blazing strange answer, too,\" said he, at his hoarsest.\n\n \"Take that message back, and they will know that I received this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night.\"\n\n With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action.\n\n The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a few smith's tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes.\n\n \"Tom!\" softly over the coach roof.\n\n \"Hallo, Joe.\"\n\n \"Did you hear the message?\"\n\n \"I did, Joe.\"\n\n \"What did you make of it, Tom?\"\n\n \"Nothing at all, Joe.\"\n\n \"That's a coincidence, too,\" the guard mused, \"for I made the same of it myself.\"\n\n Hayden, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down the hill.\n\n \"After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust your fore-legs till I get you on the level,\" said this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare. \"'Recalled to life.' That's a Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn't do for you, Hayden! I say, Hayden! You'd be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Hayden!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n III. The Night Shadows\n\n\n A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?\n\n As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old mail coach; they were mysteries to one another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between him and the next.\n\n The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep his own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black, with no depth in the colour or form, and much too near together--as if they were afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kept too far apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and throat, which descended nearly to the wearer's knees. When he stopped for drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, only while he poured his liquor in with his right; as soon as that was done, he muffled again.\n\n \"No, Hayden, no!\" said the messenger, harping on one theme as he rode. \"It wouldn't do for you, Hayden. Hayden, you honest tradesman, it wouldn't suit _your_ line of business! Recalled--! Bust me if I don't think he'd been a drinking!\"\n\n His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.\n\n While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson's Bank, by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of _her_ private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road.\n\n What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested.\n\n Tellson's Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank passenger--with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt--nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson's, with all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such of their valuable stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them.\n\n But, though the bank was almost always with him, and though the coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate) was always with him, there was another current of impression that never ceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig some one out of a grave.\n\n Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before him was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night did not indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by years, and they differed principally in the passions they expressed, and in the ghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, contempt, defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, succeeded one another; so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated hands and figures. But the face was in the main one face, and every head was prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger inquired of this spectre:\n\n \"Buried how long?\"\n\n The answer was always the same: \"Almost eighteen years.\"\n\n \"You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?\"\n\n \"Long ago.\"\n\n \"You know that you are recalled to life?\"\n\n \"They tell me so.\"\n\n \"I hope you care to live?\"\n\n \"I can't say.\"\n\n \"Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?\"\n\n The answers to this question were various and contradictory. Sometimes the broken reply was, \"Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon.\" Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was, \"Take me to her.\" Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and then it was, \"I don't know her. I don't understand.\"\n\n After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would dig, and dig, dig--now with a spade, now with a great key, now with his hands--to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earth hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fan away to dust. The passenger would then start to himself, and lower the window, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek.\n\n Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the moving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside retreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall into the train of the night shadows within. The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, the real business of the past day, the real strong rooms, the real express sent after him, and the real message returned, would all be there. Out of the midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he would accost it again.\n\n \"Buried how long?\"\n\n \"Almost eighteen years.\"\n\n \"I hope you care to live?\"\n\n \"I can't say.\"\n\n Dig--dig--dig--until an impatient movement from one of the two passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his arm securely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the two slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again slid away into the bank and the grave.\n\n \"Buried how long?\"\n\n \"Almost eighteen years.\"\n\n \"You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?\"\n\n \"Long ago.\"\n\n The words were still in his hearing as just spoken--distinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life--when the weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the shadows of the night were gone.\n\n He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful.\n\n \"Eighteen years!\" said the passenger, looking at the sun. \"Gracious Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n IV. The Preparation\n\n\n When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller upon.\n\n By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left be congratulated: for the two others had been set down at their respective roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Esmeralda, the passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog.\n\n \"There will be a packet to Calais, tomorrow, drawer?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair. The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir. Bed, sir?\"\n\n \"I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a barber.\"\n\n \"And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please. Show Concord! Gentleman's valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off gentleman's boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.) Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord!\"\n\n The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establishment of the Royal George, that although but one kind of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently, another drawer, and two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by accident at various points of the road between the Concord and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to his breakfast.\n\n The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the gentleman in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat, with its light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait.\n\n Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-coat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass. His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his stockings, was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A face habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted up under the quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the composed and reserved expression of Tellson's Bank. He had a healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson's Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.\n\n Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait, Mr. Esmeralda dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it:\n\n \"I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come here at any time to-day. She may ask for Mr. Lake Esmeralda, or she may only ask for a gentleman from Tellson's Bank. Please to let me know.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir. Tellson's Bank in London, sir?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honour to entertain your gentlemen in their travelling backwards and forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, sir, in Tellson and Company's House.\"\n\n \"Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an English one.\"\n\n \"Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling yourself, I think, sir?\"\n\n \"Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we--since I--came last from France.\"\n\n \"Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Before our people's time here, sir. The George was in other hands at that time, sir.\"\n\n \"I believe so.\"\n\n \"But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellson and Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen years ago?\"\n\n \"You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far from the truth.\"\n\n \"Indeed, sir!\"\n\n Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward from the table, the waiter shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left, dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood surveying the guest while he ate and drank, as from an observatory or watchtower. According to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.\n\n When Mr. Esmeralda had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter.\n\n As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became again charged with mist and vapour, Mr. Esmeralda's thoughts seemed to cloud too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals.\n\n A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work. Mr. Esmeralda had been idle a long time, and had just poured out his last glassful of wine with as complete an appearance of satisfaction as is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and rumbled into the inn-yard.\n\n He set down his glass untouched. \"This is Mam'selle!\" said he.\n\n In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce that Miss Logan had arrived from London, and would be happy to see the gentleman from Tellson's.\n\n \"So soon?\"\n\n Miss Logan had taken some refreshment on the road, and required none then, and was extremely anxious to see the gentleman from Tellson's immediately, if it suited his pleasure and convenience.\n\n The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing left for it but to empty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss Logan's apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if _they_ were buried, in deep graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of could be expected from them until they were dug out.\n\n The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. Esmeralda, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Logan to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between them and the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth it was), of rifting and knitting itself into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions--as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness passed away, like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital procession of negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, were offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender--and he made his formal bow to Miss Logan.\n\n \"Pray take a seat, sir.\" In a very clear and pleasant young voice; a little foreign in its accent, but a very little indeed.\n\n \"I kiss your hand, miss,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, with the manners of an earlier date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat.\n\n \"I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, informing me that some intelligence--or discovery--\"\n\n \"The word is not material, miss; either word will do.\"\n\n \"--respecting the small property of my poor father, whom I never saw--so long dead--\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the hospital procession of negro cupids. As if _they_ had any help for anybody in their absurd baskets!\n\n \"--rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there to communicate with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as to be despatched to Paris for the purpose.\"\n\n \"Myself.\"\n\n \"As I was prepared to hear, sir.\"\n\n She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days), with a pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he was than she. He made her another bow.\n\n \"I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered necessary, by those who know, and who are so kind as to advise me, that I should go to France, and that as I am an orphan and have no friend who could go with me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place myself, during the journey, under that worthy gentleman's protection. The gentleman had left London, but I think a messenger was sent after him to beg the favour of his waiting for me here.\"\n\n \"I was happy,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, \"to be entrusted with the charge. I shall be more happy to execute it.\"\n\n \"Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. It was told me by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the details of the business, and that I must prepare myself to find them of a surprising nature. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I naturally have a strong and eager interest to know what they are.\"\n\n \"Naturally,\" said Mr. Esmeralda. \"Yes--I--\"\n\n After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the ears, \"It is very difficult to begin.\"\n\n He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The young forehead lifted itself into that singular expression--but it was pretty and characteristic, besides being singular--and she raised her hand, as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or stayed some passing shadow.\n\n \"Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?\"\n\n \"Am I not?\" Mr. Esmeralda opened his hands, and extended them outwards with an argumentative smile.\n\n Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the line of which was as delicate and fine as it was possible to be, the expression deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in the chair by which she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her as she mused, and the moment she raised her eyes again, went on:\n\n \"In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than address you as a young English lady, Miss Logan?\"\n\n \"If you please, sir.\"\n\n \"Miss Logan, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don't heed me any more than if I was a speaking machine--truly, I am not much else. I will, with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our customers.\"\n\n \"Story!\"\n\n He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he added, in a hurry, \"Yes, customers; in the banking business we usually call our connection our customers. He was a French gentleman; a scientific gentleman; a man of great acquirements--a Rosemarie.\"\n\n \"Not of Beauvais?\"\n\n \"Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Megan Logan, your father, the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Megan Logan, your father, the gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing him there. Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was at that time in our French House, and had been--oh! twenty years.\"\n\n \"At that time--I may ask, at what time, sir?\"\n\n \"I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married--an English lady--and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of many other French gentlemen and French families, were entirely in Tellson's hands. In a similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of one kind or other for scores of our customers. These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. To go on--\"\n\n \"But this is my father's story, sir; and I begin to think\"--the curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon him--\"that when I was left an orphan through my mother's surviving my father only two years, it was you who brought me to England. I am almost sure it was you.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda took the hesitating little hand that confidingly advanced to take his, and he put it with some ceremony to his lips. He then conducted the young lady straightway to her chair again, and, holding the chair-back with his left hand, and using his right by turns to rub his chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood looking down into her face while she sat looking up into his.\n\n \"Miss Logan, it _was_ I. And you will see how truly I spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and that all the relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are mere business relations, when you reflect that I have never seen you since. No; you have been the ward of Tellson's House since, and I have been busy with the other business of Tellson's House since. Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle.\"\n\n After this odd description of his daily routine of employment, Mr. Esmeralda flattened his flaxen wig upon his head with both hands (which was most unnecessary, for nothing could be flatter than its shining surface was before), and resumed his former attitude.\n\n \"So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story of your regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your father had not died when he did--Don't be frightened! How you start!\"\n\n She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with both her hands.\n\n \"Pray,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the supplicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a tremble: \"pray control your agitation--a matter of business. As I was saying--\"\n\n Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began anew:\n\n \"As I was saying; if Megan Logan had not died; if he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had been spirited away; if it had not been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art could trace him; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of him, and all quite in vain;--then the history of your father would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Rosemarie of Beauvais.\"\n\n \"I entreat you to tell me more, sir.\"\n\n \"I will. I am going to. You can bear it?\"\n\n \"I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me in at this moment.\"\n\n \"You speak collectedly, and you--_are_ collected. That's good!\" (Though his manner was less satisfied than his words.) \"A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business--business that must be done. Now if this doctor's wife, though a lady of great courage and spirit, had suffered so intensely from this cause before her little child was born--\"\n\n \"The little child was a daughter, sir.\"\n\n \"A daughter. A-a-matter of business--don't be distressed. Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so intensely before her little child was born, that she came to the determination of sparing the poor child the inheritance of any part of the agony she had known the pains of, by rearing her in the belief that her father was dead--No, don't kneel! In Heaven's name why should you kneel to me!\"\n\n \"For the truth. O dear, good, compassionate sir, for the truth!\"\n\n \"A--a matter of business. You confuse me, and how can I transact business if I am confused? Let us be clear-headed. If you could kindly mention now, for instance, what nine times ninepence are, or how many shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be so much more at my ease about your state of mind.\"\n\n Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so still when he had very gently raised her, and the hands that had not ceased to clasp his wrists were so much more steady than they had been, that she communicated some reassurance to Mr. Lake Esmeralda.\n\n \"That's right, that's right. Courage! Business! You have business before you; useful business. Miss Logan, your mother took this course with you. And when she died--I believe broken-hearted--having never slackened her unavailing search for your father, she left you, at two years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty whether your father soon wore his heart out in prison, or wasted there through many lingering years.\"\n\n As he said the words he looked down, with an admiring pity, on the flowing golden hair; as if he pictured to himself that it might have been already tinged with grey.\n\n \"You know that your parents had no great possession, and that what they had was secured to your mother and to you. There has been no new discovery, of money, or of any other property; but--\"\n\n He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The expression in the forehead, which had so particularly attracted his notice, and which was now immovable, had deepened into one of pain and horror.\n\n \"But he has been--been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; though we will hope the best. Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him if I can: you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort.\"\n\n A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through his. She said, in a low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if she were saying it in a dream,\n\n \"I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost--not him!\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda quietly chafed the hands that held his arm. \"There, there, there! See now, see now! The best and the worst are known to you, now. You are well on your way to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a fair sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be soon at his dear side.\"\n\n She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, \"I have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me!\"\n\n \"Only one thing more,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, laying stress upon it as a wholesome means of enforcing her attention: \"he has been found under another name; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless now to make any inquiries, because it would be dangerous. Better not to mention the subject, anywhere or in any way, and to remove him--for a while at all events--out of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and even Tellson's, important as they are to French credit, avoid all naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing openly referring to it. This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, 'Recalled to Life;' which may mean anything. But what is the matter! She doesn't notice a word! Miss Logan!\"\n\n Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible; with her eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that last expression looking as if it were carved or branded into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm, that he feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore he called out loudly for assistance without moving.\n\n A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Esmeralda observed to be all of a red colour, and to have red hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on her head a most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question of his detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall.\n\n (\"I really think this must be a man!\" was Mr. Esmeralda's breathless reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the wall.)\n\n \"Why, look at you all!\" bawled this figure, addressing the inn servants. \"Why don't you go and fetch things, instead of standing there staring at me? I am not so much to look at, am I? Why don't you go and fetch things? I'll let you know, if you don't bring smelling-salts, cold water, and vinegar, quick, I will.\"\n\n There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, and she softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her with great skill and gentleness: calling her \"my precious!\" and \"my bird!\" and spreading her golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride and care.\n\n \"And you in brown!\" she said, indignantly turning to Mr. Esmeralda; \"couldn't you tell her what you had to tell her, without frightening her to death? Look at her, with her pretty pale face and her cold hands. Do you call _that_ being a Banker?\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda was so exceedingly disconcerted by a question so hard to answer, that he could only look on, at a distance, with much feebler sympathy and humility, while the strong woman, having banished the inn servants under the mysterious penalty of \"letting them know\" something not mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered her charge by a regular series of gradations, and coaxed her to lay her drooping head upon her shoulder.\n\n \"I hope she will do well now,\" said Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling pretty!\"\n\n \"I hope,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, after another pause of feeble sympathy and humility, \"that you accompany Miss Logan to France?\"\n\n \"A likely thing, too!\" replied the strong woman. \"If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island?\"\n\n This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Lake Esmeralda withdrew to consider it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n V. The Wine-shop\n\n\n A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.\n\n All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.\n\n A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices--voices of men, women, and children--resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine.\n\n The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees--BLOOD.\n\n The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.\n\n And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy--cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence--nobles of great power all of them; but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.\n\n Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost as many as the shops) were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The butcher and the porkman painted up, only the leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of meagre loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops, croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and were gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler's knives and axes were sharp and bright, the smith's hammers were heavy, and the gunmaker's stock was murderous. The crippling stones of the pavement, with their many little reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make amends, ran down the middle of the street--when it ran at all: which was only after heavy rains, and then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across the streets, at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and pulley; at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and lighted, and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a sickly manner overhead, as if they were at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and the ship and crew were in peril of tempest.\n\n For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning.\n\n The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle for the lost wine. \"It's not my affair,\" said he, with a final shrug of the shoulders. \"The people from the market did it. Let them bring another.\"\n\n There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke, he called to him across the way:\n\n \"Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?\"\n\n The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely failed, as is often the way with his tribe too.\n\n \"What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?\" said the wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a handful of mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. \"Why do you write in the public streets? Is there--tell me thou--is there no other place to write such words in?\"\n\n In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker's heart. The joker rapped it with his own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say wolfishly practical character, he looked, under those circumstances.\n\n \"Put it on, put it on,\" said the other. \"Call wine, wine; and finish there.\" With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker's dress, such as it was--quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on his account; and then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop.\n\n This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn the man.\n\n Madame Royce, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he came in. Madame Royce was a stout woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure of manner. There was a character about Madame Royce, from which one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided. Madame Royce being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large earrings. Her knitting was before her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Royce said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the way.\n\n The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in a corner. Other company were there: two playing cards, two playing dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, \"This is our man.\"\n\n \"What the devil do _you_ do in that galley there?\" said Megan Royce to himself; \"I don't know you.\"\n\n But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter.\n\n \"How goes it, Jacques?\" said one of these three to Megan Royce. \"Is all the spilt wine swallowed?\"\n\n \"Every drop, Jacques,\" answered Megan Royce.\n\n When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Royce, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.\n\n \"It is not often,\" said the second of the three, addressing Megan Royce, \"that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?\"\n\n \"It is so, Jacques,\" Megan Royce returned.\n\n At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Royce, still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.\n\n The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips.\n\n \"Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?\"\n\n \"You are right, Jacques,\" was the response of Megan Royce.\n\n This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the moment when Madame Royce put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her seat.\n\n \"Hold then! True!\" muttered her husband. \"Gentlemen--my wife!\"\n\n The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Royce, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it.\n\n \"Gentlemen,\" said her husband, who had kept his bright eye observantly upon her, \"good day. The chamber, furnished bachelor-fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard close to the left here,\" pointing with his hand, \"near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!\"\n\n They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes of Megan Royce were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word.\n\n \"Willingly, sir,\" said Megan Royce, and quietly stepped with him to the door.\n\n Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the first word, Megan Royce started and became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame Royce knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing.\n\n Mr. Lake Esmeralda and Miss Logan, emerging from the wine-shop thus, joined Megan Royce in the doorway to which he had directed his own company just before. It opened from a stinking little black courtyard, and was the general public entrance to a great pile of houses, inhabited by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Megan Royce bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at all gently done; a very remarkable transformation had come over him in a few seconds. He had no good-humour in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had become a secret, angry, dangerous man.\n\n \"It is very high; it is a little difficult. Better to begin slowly.\" Thus, Megan Royce, in a stern voice, to Mr. Esmeralda, as they began ascending the stairs.\n\n \"Is he alone?\" the latter whispered.\n\n \"Alone! God help him, who should be with him!\" said the other, in the same low voice.\n\n \"Is he always alone, then?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Of his own desire?\"\n\n \"Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him after they found me and demanded to know if I would take him, and, at my peril be discreet--as he was then, so he is now.\"\n\n \"He is greatly changed?\"\n\n \"Changed!\"\n\n The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall with his hand, and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct answer could have been half so forcible. Mr. Esmeralda's spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and his two companions ascended higher and higher.\n\n Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough now; but, at that time, it was vile indeed to unaccustomed and unhardened senses. Every little habitation within the great foul nest of one high building--that is to say, the room or rooms within every door that opened on the general staircase--left its own heap of refuse on its own landing, besides flinging other refuse from its own windows. The uncontrollable and hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their intangible impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own disturbance of mind, and to his young companion's agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr. Lake Esmeralda twice stopped to rest. Each of these stoppages was made at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all spoilt and sickly vapours seemed to crawl in. Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations.\n\n At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper inclination and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story was reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a little in advance, and always going on the side which Mr. Esmeralda took, as though he dreaded to be asked any question by the young lady, turned himself about here, and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he carried over his shoulder, took out a key.\n\n \"The door is locked then, my friend?\" said Mr. Esmeralda, surprised.\n\n \"Ay. Yes,\" was the grim reply of Megan Royce.\n\n \"You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentleman so retired?\"\n\n \"I think it necessary to turn the key.\" Megan Royce whispered it closer in his ear, and frowned heavily.\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Why! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that he would be frightened--rave--tear himself to pieces--die--come to I know not what harm--if his door was left open.\"\n\n \"Is it possible!\" exclaimed Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"Is it possible!\" repeated Royce, bitterly. \"Yes. And a beautiful world we live in, when it _is_ possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done--done, see you!--under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on.\"\n\n This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, that not a word of it had reached the young lady's ears. But, by this time she trembled under such strong emotion, and her face expressed such deep anxiety, and, above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Esmeralda felt it incumbent on him to speak a word or two of reassurance.\n\n \"Courage, dear miss! Courage! Business! The worst will be over in a moment; it is but passing the room-door, and the worst is over. Then, all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist you on that side. That's well, friend Royce. Come, now. Business, business!\"\n\n They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had an abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of three men, whose heads were bent down close together at the side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room to which the door belonged, through some chinks or holes in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the wine-shop.\n\n \"I forgot them in the surprise of your visit,\" explained Megan Royce. \"Leave us, good boys; we have business here.\"\n\n The three glided by, and went silently down.\n\n There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr. Esmeralda asked him in a whisper, with a little anger:\n\n \"Do you make a show of Megan Logan?\"\n\n \"I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few.\"\n\n \"Is that well?\"\n\n \"_I_ think it is well.\"\n\n \"Who are the few? How do you choose them?\"\n\n \"I choose them as real men, of my name--Jacques is my name--to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough; you are English; that is another thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment.\"\n\n With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon the door--evidently with no other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key across it, three or four times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could.\n\n The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the room and said something. A faint voice answered something. Little more than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side.\n\n He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Esmeralda got his arm securely round the daughter's waist, and held her; for he felt that she was sinking.\n\n \"A-a-a-business, business!\" he urged, with a moisture that was not of business shining on his cheek. \"Come in, come in!\"\n\n \"I am afraid of it,\" she answered, shuddering.\n\n \"Of it? What?\"\n\n \"I mean of him. Of my father.\"\n\n Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He sat her down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him.\n\n Royce drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and faced round.\n\n The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n VI. The Shoemaker\n\n\n \"Good day!\" said Megan Royce, looking down at the white head that bent low over the shoemaking.\n\n It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance:\n\n \"Good day!\"\n\n \"You are still hard at work, I see?\"\n\n After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the voice replied, \"Yes--I am working.\" This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, before the face had dropped again.\n\n The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die.\n\n Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty.\n\n \"I want,\" said Royce, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker, \"to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?\"\n\n The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening, at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on the other side of him; then, upward at the speaker.\n\n \"What did you say?\"\n\n \"You can bear a little more light?\"\n\n \"I must bear it, if you let it in.\" (Laying the palest shadow of a stress upon the second word.)\n\n The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they had been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was which.\n\n He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him, without first looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke, without first wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak.\n\n \"Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?\" asked Royce, motioning to Mr. Esmeralda to come forward.\n\n \"What did you say?\"\n\n \"Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?\"\n\n \"I can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't know.\"\n\n But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again.\n\n Mr. Esmeralda came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Royce, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and the action had occupied but an instant.\n\n \"You have a visitor, you see,\" said Megan Royce.\n\n \"What did you say?\"\n\n \"Here is a visitor.\"\n\n The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from his work.\n\n \"Come!\" said Royce. \"Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe when he sees one. Show him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda took it in his hand.\n\n \"Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name.\"\n\n There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemaker replied:\n\n \"I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?\"\n\n \"I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur's information?\"\n\n \"It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It is in the present mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand.\" He glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride.\n\n \"And the maker's name?\" said Royce.\n\n Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on in regular changes, without a moment's intermission. The task of recalling him from the vagrancy into which he always sank when he had spoken, was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in the hope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man.\n\n \"Did you ask me for my name?\"\n\n \"Assuredly I did.\"\n\n \"One Hundred and Five, North Tower.\"\n\n \"Is that all?\"\n\n \"One Hundred and Five, North Tower.\"\n\n With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to work again, until the silence was again broken.\n\n \"You are not a shoemaker by trade?\" said Mr. Esmeralda, looking steadfastly at him.\n\n His haggard eyes turned to Royce as if he would have transferred the question to him: but as no help came from that quarter, they turned back on the questioner when they had sought the ground.\n\n \"I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoemaker by trade. I-I learnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to--\"\n\n He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on his hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting to a subject of last night.\n\n \"I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty after a long while, and I have made shoes ever since.\"\n\n As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him, Mr. Esmeralda said, still looking steadfastly in his face:\n\n \"Megan Logan, do you remember nothing of me?\"\n\n The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly at the questioner.\n\n \"Megan Logan\"; Mr. Esmeralda laid his hand upon Royce's arm; \"do you remember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old banker, no old business, no old servant, no old time, rising in your mind, Megan Logan?\"\n\n As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr. Esmeralda and at Royce, some long obliterated marks of an actively intent intelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselves through the black mist that had fallen on him. They were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were gone; but they had been there. And so exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with hands which at first had been only raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to life and hope--so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like a moving light, from him to her.\n\n Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looked at the two, less and less attentively, and his eyes in gloomy abstraction sought the ground and looked about him in the old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the shoe up, and resumed his work.\n\n \"Have you recognised him, monsieur?\" asked Royce in a whisper.\n\n \"Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hopeless, but I have unquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that I once knew so well. Hush! Let us draw further back. Hush!\"\n\n She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labour.\n\n Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work.\n\n It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand, for his shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had.\n\n He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:\n\n \"What is this?\"\n\n With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there.\n\n \"You are not the gaoler's daughter?\"\n\n She sighed \"No.\"\n\n \"Who are you?\"\n\n Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.\n\n Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking.\n\n But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger.\n\n He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. \"It is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!\"\n\n As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her.\n\n \"She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out--she had a fear of my going, though I had none--and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. 'You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.' Those were the words I said. I remember them very well.\"\n\n He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly.\n\n \"How was this?--_Was it you_?\"\n\n Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, \"I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near us, do not speak, do not move!\"\n\n \"Hark!\" he exclaimed. \"Whose voice was that?\"\n\n His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook his head.\n\n \"No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was--and He was--before the slow years of the North Tower--ages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?\"\n\n Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.\n\n \"O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother was, and who my father, and how I never knew their hard, hard history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my dear!\"\n\n His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.\n\n \"If you hear in my voice--I don't know that it is so, but I hope it is--if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch, in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while your poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!\"\n\n She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a child.\n\n \"If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it! And if, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living, and of my mother who is dead, you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore his pardon for having never for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weep for her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank God for us, thank God!\"\n\n He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which had gone before it, that the two beholders covered their faces.\n\n When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heaving breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all storms--emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence into which the storm called Life must hush at last--they came forward to raise the father and daughter from the ground. He had gradually dropped to the floor, and lay there in a lethargy, worn out. She had nestled down with him, that his head might lie upon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtained him from the light.\n\n \"If, without disturbing him,\" she said, raising her hand to Mr. Esmeralda as he stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose, \"all could be arranged for our leaving Paris at once, so that, from the very door, he could be taken away--\"\n\n \"But, consider. Is he fit for the journey?\" asked Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, so dreadful to him.\"\n\n \"It is true,\" said Royce, who was kneeling to look on and hear. \"More than that; Megan Logan is, for all reasons, best out of France. Say, shall I hire a carriage and post-horses?\"\n\n \"That's business,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, resuming on the shortest notice his methodical manners; \"and if business is to be done, I had better do it.\"\n\n \"Then be so kind,\" urged Miss Logan, \"as to leave us here. You see how composed he has become, and you cannot be afraid to leave him with me now. Why should you be? If you will lock the door to secure us from interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him, when you come back, as quiet as you leave him. In any case, I will take care of him until you return, and then we will remove him straight.\"\n\n Both Mr. Esmeralda and Royce were rather disinclined to this course, and in favour of one of them remaining. But, as there were not only carriage and horses to be seen to, but travelling papers; and as time pressed, for the day was drawing to an end, it came at last to their hastily dividing the business that was necessary to be done, and hurrying away to do it.\n\n Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on the hard ground close at the father's side, and watched him. The darkness deepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through the chinks in the wall.\n\n Mr. Esmeralda and Megan Royce had made all ready for the journey, and had brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and hot coffee. Megan Royce put this provender, and the lamp he carried, on the shoemaker's bench (there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Esmeralda roused the captive, and assisted him to his feet.\n\n No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, in the scared blank wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had happened, whether he recollected what they had said to him, whether he knew that he was free, were questions which no sagacity could have solved. They tried speaking to him; but, he was so confused, and so very slow to answer, that they took fright at his bewilderment, and agreed for the time to tamper with him no more. He had a wild, lost manner of occasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had not been seen in him before; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of his daughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she spoke.\n\n In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, he ate and drank what they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak and other wrappings, that they gave him to wear. He readily responded to his daughter's drawing her arm through his, and took--and kept--her hand in both his own.\n\n They began to descend; Megan Royce going first with the lamp, Mr. Esmeralda closing the little procession. They had not traversed many steps of the long main staircase when he stopped, and stared at the roof and round at the walls.\n\n \"You remember the place, my father? You remember coming up here?\"\n\n \"What did you say?\"\n\n But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as if she had repeated it.\n\n \"Remember? No, I don't remember. It was so very long ago.\"\n\n That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from his prison to that house, was apparent to them. They heard him mutter, \"One Hundred and Five, North Tower;\" and when he looked about him, it evidently was for the strong fortress-walls which had long encompassed him. On their reaching the courtyard he instinctively altered his tread, as being in expectation of a drawbridge; and when there was no drawbridge, and he saw the carriage waiting in the open street, he dropped his daughter's hand and clasped his head again.\n\n No crowd was about the door; no people were discernible at any of the many windows; not even a chance passerby was in the street. An unnatural silence and desertion reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen, and that was Madame Royce--who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.\n\n The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed him, when Mr. Esmeralda's feet were arrested on the step by his asking, miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame Royce immediately called to her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the courtyard. She quickly brought them down and handed them in;--and immediately afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.\n\n Royce got upon the box, and gave the word \"To the Barrier!\" The postilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the feeble over-swinging lamps.\n\n Under the over-swinging lamps--swinging ever brighter in the better streets, and ever dimmer in the worse--and by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. \"Your papers, travellers!\" \"See here then, Megan the Officer,\" said Royce, getting down, and taking him gravely apart, \"these are the papers of monsieur inside, with the white head. They were consigned to me, with him, at the--\" He dropped his voice, there was a flutter among the military lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked, not an every day or an every night look, at monsieur with the white head. \"It is well. Forward!\" from the uniform. \"Adieu!\" from Royce. And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under the great grove of stars.\n\n Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black. All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Lake Esmeralda--sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration--the old inquiry:\n\n \"I hope you care to be recalled to life?\"\n\n And the old answer:\n\n \"I can't say.\"\n\n\n The end of the first book.\n\n\n\n\n\n Book the Second--the Golden Thread\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I. Five Years Later\n\n Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thank Heaven--!\n\n Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.\n\n Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing \"the House,\" you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of family papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a great dining-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by your little children, were but newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee.\n\n But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson's door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention--it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse--but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor had, in a rather significant manner.\n\n Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson's, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson's London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.\n\n Outside Tellson's--never by any means in it, unless called in--was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post. His surname was Briony, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he had received the added appellation of Hayden.\n\n The scene was Mr. Briony's private lodging in Hanging-sword-alley, Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Briony himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)\n\n Mr. Briony's apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, and were but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass in it might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he lay abed was already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups and saucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal table, a very clean white cloth was spread.\n\n Mr. Briony reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by degrees, began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spiky hair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At which juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation:\n\n \"Bust me, if she ain't at it agin!\"\n\n A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that she was the person referred to.\n\n \"What!\" said Mr. Briony, looking out of bed for a boot. \"You're at it agin, are you?\"\n\n After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Briony's domestic economy, that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots, he often got up next morning to find the same boots covered with clay.\n\n \"What,\" said Mr. Briony, varying his apostrophe after missing his mark--\"what are you up to, Aggerawayter?\"\n\n \"I was only saying my prayers.\"\n\n \"Saying your prayers! You're a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?\"\n\n \"I was not praying against you; I was praying for you.\"\n\n \"You weren't. And if you were, I won't be took the liberty with. Here! your mother's a nice woman, young Hayden, going a praying agin your father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful mother, you have, my son. You've got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may be snatched out of the mouth of her only child.\"\n\n Master Briony (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and, turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his personal board.\n\n \"And what do you suppose, you conceited female,\" said Mr. Briony, with unconscious inconsistency, \"that the worth of _your_ prayers may be? Name the price that you put _your_ prayers at!\"\n\n \"They only come from the heart, Hayden. They are worth no more than that.\"\n\n \"Worth no more than that,\" repeated Mr. Briony. \"They ain't worth much, then. Whether or no, I won't be prayed agin, I tell you. I can't afford it. I'm not a going to be made unlucky by _your_ sneaking. If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of your husband and child, and not in opposition to 'em. If I had had any but a unnat'ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a unnat'ral mother, I might have made some money last week instead of being counter-prayed and countermined and religiously circumwented into the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me!\" said Mr. Briony, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, \"if I ain't, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with! Young Hayden, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call. For, I tell you,\" here he addressed his wife once more, \"I won't be gone agin, in this manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I'm as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn't know, if it wasn't for the pain in 'em, which was me and which somebody else, yet I'm none the better for it in pocket; and it's my suspicion that you've been at it from morning to night to prevent me from being the better for it in pocket, and I won't put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!\"\n\n Growling, in addition, such phrases as \"Ah! yes! You're religious, too. You wouldn't put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husband and child, would you? Not you!\" and throwing off other sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Briony betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business. In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes, and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his father's did, kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed that poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet, where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of \"You are going to flop, mother. --Halloa, father!\" and, after raising this fictitious alarm, darting in again with an undutiful grin.\n\n Mr. Briony's temper was not at all improved when he came to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Briony's saying grace with particular animosity.\n\n \"Now, Aggerawayter! What are you up to? At it again?\"\n\n His wife explained that she had merely \"asked a blessing.\"\n\n \"Don't do it!\" said Mr. Crunches looking about, as if he rather expected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife's petitions. \"I ain't a going to be blest out of house and home. I won't have my wittles blest off my table. Keep still!\"\n\n Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at a party which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Hayden Briony worried his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like any four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothed his ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-like an exterior as he could overlay his natural self with, issued forth to the occupation of the day.\n\n It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his favourite description of himself as \"a honest tradesman.\" His stock consisted of a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, which stool, young Hayden, walking at his father's side, carried every morning to beneath the banking-house window that was nearest Temple Bar: where, with the addition of the first handful of straw that could be gleaned from any passing vehicle to keep the cold and wet from the odd-job-man's feet, it formed the encampment for the day. On this post of his, Mr. Briony was as well known to Fleet-street and the Temple, as the Bar itself,--and was almost as in-looking.\n\n Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch his three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Tellson's, Hayden took up his station on this windy March morning, with young Hayden standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through the Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description on passing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Father and son, extremely like each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another as the two eyes of each were, bore a considerable resemblance to a pair of monkeys. The resemblance was not lessened by the accidental circumstance, that the mature Hayden bit and spat out straw, while the twinkling eyes of the youthful Hayden were as restlessly watchful of him as of everything else in Fleet-street.\n\n The head of one of the regular indoor messengers attached to Tellson's establishment was put through the door, and the word was given:\n\n \"Porter wanted!\"\n\n \"Hooray, father! Here's an early job to begin with!\"\n\n Having thus given his parent God speed, young Hayden seated himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary interest in the straw his father had been chewing, and cogitated.\n\n \"Al-ways rusty! His fingers is al-ways rusty!\" muttered young Hayden. \"Where does my father get all that iron rust from? He don't get no iron rust here!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n II. A Sight\n\n \"You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?\" said one of the oldest of clerks to Hayden the messenger.\n\n \"Ye-es, sir,\" returned Hayden, in something of a dogged manner. \"I _do_ know the Bailey.\"\n\n \"Just so. And you know Mr. Esmeralda.\"\n\n \"I know Mr. Esmeralda, sir, much better than I know the Bailey. Much better,\" said Hayden, not unlike a reluctant witness at the establishment in question, \"than I, as a honest tradesman, wish to know the Bailey.\"\n\n \"Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go in, and show the door-keeper this note for Mr. Esmeralda. He will then let you in.\"\n\n \"Into the court, sir?\"\n\n \"Into the court.\"\n\n Mr. Briony's eyes seemed to get a little closer to one another, and to interchange the inquiry, \"What do you think of this?\"\n\n \"Am I to wait in the court, sir?\" he asked, as the result of that conference.\n\n \"I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the note to Mr. Esmeralda, and do you make any gesture that will attract Mr. Esmeralda's attention, and show him where you stand. Then what you have to do, is, to remain there until he wants you.\"\n\n \"Is that all, sir?\"\n\n \"That's all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. This is to tell him you are there.\"\n\n As the ancient clerk deliberately folded and superscribed the note, Mr. Briony, after surveying him in silence until he came to the blotting-paper stage, remarked:\n\n \"I suppose they'll be trying Forgeries this morning?\"\n\n \"Treason!\"\n\n \"That's quartering,\" said Hayden. \"Barbarous!\"\n\n \"It is the law,\" remarked the ancient clerk, turning his surprised spectacles upon him. \"It is the law.\"\n\n \"It's hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It's hard enough to kill him, but it's wery hard to spile him, sir.\"\n\n \"Not at all,\" retained the ancient clerk. \"Speak well of the law. Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law to take care of itself. I give you that advice.\"\n\n \"It's the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice,\" said Hayden. \"I leave you to judge what a damp way of earning a living mine is.\"\n\n \"Well, well,\" said the old clerk; \"we all have our various ways of gaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp ways, and some of us have dry ways. Here is the letter. Go along.\"\n\n Hayden took the letter, and, remarking to himself with less internal deference than he made an outward show of, \"You are a lean old one, too,\" made his bow, informed his son, in passing, of his destination, and went his way.\n\n They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practised, and where dire diseases were bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. It had more than once happened, that the Judge in the black cap pronounced his own doom as certainly as the prisoner's, and even died before him. For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from which pale travellers set out continually, in carts and coaches, on a violent passage into the other world: traversing some two miles and a half of public street and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the beginning. It was famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institution, that inflicted a punishment of which no one could foresee the extent; also, for the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action; also, for extensive transactions in blood-money, another fragment of ancestral wisdom, systematically leading to the most frightful mercenary crimes that could be committed under Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that \"Whatever is is right;\" an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.\n\n Making his way through the tainted crowd, dispersed up and down this hideous scene of action, with the skill of a man accustomed to make his way quietly, the messenger found out the door he sought, and handed in his letter through a trap in it. For, people then paid to see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paid to see the play in Bedlam--only the former entertainment was much the dearer. Therefore, all the Old Bailey doors were well guarded--except, indeed, the social doors by which the criminals got there, and those were always left wide open.\n\n After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on its hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Hayden Briony to squeeze himself into court.\n\n \"What's on?\" he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found himself next to.\n\n \"Nothing yet.\"\n\n \"What's coming on?\"\n\n \"The Treason case.\"\n\n \"The quartering one, eh?\"\n\n \"Ah!\" returned the man, with a relish; \"he'll be drawn on a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters. That's the sentence.\"\n\n \"If he's found Guilty, you mean to say?\" Hayden added, by way of proviso.\n\n \"Oh! they'll find him guilty,\" said the other. \"Don't you be afraid of that.\"\n\n Mr. Briony's attention was here diverted to the door-keeper, whom he saw making his way to Mr. Esmeralda, with the note in his hand. Mr. Esmeralda sat at a table, among the gentlemen in wigs: not far from a wigged gentleman, the prisoner's counsel, who had a great bundle of papers before him: and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman with his hands in his pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr. Briony looked at him then or afterwards, seemed to be concentrated on the ceiling of the court. After some gruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing with his hand, Hayden attracted the notice of Mr. Esmeralda, who had stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded and sat down again.\n\n \"What's _he_ got to do with the case?\" asked the man he had spoken with.\n\n \"Blest if I know,\" said Hayden.\n\n \"What have _you_ got to do with it, then, if a person may inquire?\"\n\n \"Blest if I know that either,\" said Hayden.\n\n The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and settling down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, the dock became the central point of interest. Two gaolers, who had been standing there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar.\n\n Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place, rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators in back rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the court, laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them, to help themselves, at anybody's cost, to a view of him--stood a-tiptoe, got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him. Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spiked wall of Newgate, Hayden stood: aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and already broke upon the great windows behind him in an impure mist and rain.\n\n The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man of about five-and-twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek and a dark eye. His condition was that of a young gentleman. He was plainly dressed in black, or very dark grey, and his hair, which was long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the back of his neck; more to be out of his way than for ornament. As an emotion of the mind will express itself through any covering of the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to be stronger than the sun. He was otherwise quite self-possessed, bowed to the Judge, and stood quiet.\n\n The sort of interest with which this man was stared and breathed at, was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a less horrible sentence--had there been a chance of any one of its savage details being spared--by just so much would he have lost in his fascination. The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefully mangled, was the sight; the immortal creature that was to be so butchered and torn asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever gloss the various spectators put upon the interest, according to their several arts and powers of self-deceit, the interest was, at the root of it, Ogreish.\n\n Silence in the court! Deshaun Promise had yesterday pleaded Not Guilty to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his having, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth; that was to say, by coming and going, between the dominions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North America. This much, Hayden, with his head becoming more and more spiky as the law terms bristled it, made out with huge satisfaction, and so arrived circuitously at the understanding that the aforesaid, and over and over again aforesaid, Deshaun Promise, stood there before him upon his trial; that the jury were swearing in; and that Mr. Attorney-General was making ready to speak.\n\n The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being mentally hanged, beheaded, and quartered, by everybody there, neither flinched from the situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it. He was quiet and attentive; watched the opening proceedings with a grave interest; and stood with his hands resting on the slab of wood before him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf of the herbs with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewn with herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol air and gaol fever.\n\n Over the prisoner's head there was a mirror, to throw the light down upon him. Crowds of the wicked and the wretched had been reflected in it, and had passed from its surface and this earth's together. Haunted in a most ghastly manner that abominable place would have been, if the glass could ever have rendered back its reflections, as the ocean is one day to give up its dead. Some passing thought of the infamy and disgrace for which it had been reserved, may have struck the prisoner's mind. Be that as it may, a change in his position making him conscious of a bar of light across his face, he looked up; and when he saw the glass his face flushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs away.\n\n It happened, that the action turned his face to that side of the court which was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, there sat, in that corner of the Judge's bench, two persons upon whom his look immediately rested; so immediately, and so much to the changing of his aspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon him, turned to them.\n\n The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of little more than twenty, and a gentleman who was evidently her father; a man of a very remarkable appearance in respect of the absolute whiteness of his hair, and a certain indescribable intensity of face: not of an active kind, but pondering and self-communing. When this expression was upon him, he looked as if he were old; but when it was stirred and broken up--as it was now, in a moment, on his speaking to his daughter--he became a handsome man, not past the prime of life.\n\n His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his arm, as she sat by him, and the other pressed upon it. She had drawn close to him, in her dread of the scene, and in her pity for the prisoner. Her forehead had been strikingly expressive of an engrossing terror and compassion that saw nothing but the peril of the accused. This had been so very noticeable, so very powerfully and naturally shown, that starers who had had no pity for him were touched by her; and the whisper went about, \"Who are they?\"\n\n Hayden, the messenger, who had made his own observations, in his own manner, and who had been sucking the rust off his fingers in his absorption, stretched his neck to hear who they were. The crowd about him had pressed and passed the inquiry on to the nearest attendant, and from him it had been more slowly pressed and passed back; at last it got to Hayden:\n\n \"Witnesses.\"\n\n \"For which side?\"\n\n \"Against.\"\n\n \"Against what side?\"\n\n \"The prisoner's.\"\n\n The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n III. A Disappointment\n\n Mr. Attorney-General had to inform the jury, that the prisoner before them, though young in years, was old in the treasonable practices which claimed the forfeit of his life. That this correspondence with the public enemy was not a correspondence of to-day, or of yesterday, or even of last year, or of the year before. That, it was certain the prisoner had, for longer than that, been in the habit of passing and repassing between France and England, on secret business of which he could give no honest account. That, if it were in the nature of traitorous ways to thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness and guilt of his business might have remained undiscovered. That Providence, however, had put it into the heart of a person who was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out the nature of the prisoner's schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them to his Majesty's Chief Secretary of State and most honourable Privy Council. That, this patriot would be produced before them. That, his position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That, he had been the prisoner's friend, but, at once in an auspicious and an evil hour detecting his infamy, had resolved to immolate the traitor he could no longer cherish in his bosom, on the sacred altar of his country. That, if statues were decreed in Britain, as in ancient Greece and Rome, to public benefactors, this shining citizen would assuredly have had one. That, as they were not so decreed, he probably would not have one. That, Virtue, as had been observed by the poets (in many passages which he well knew the jury would have, word for word, at the tips of their tongues; whereat the jury's countenances displayed a guilty consciousness that they knew nothing about the passages), was in a manner contagious; more especially the bright virtue known as patriotism, or love of country. That, the lofty example of this immaculate and unimpeachable witness for the Crown, to refer to whom however unworthily was an honour, had communicated itself to the prisoner's servant, and had engendered in him a holy determination to examine his master's table-drawers and pockets, and secrete his papers. That, he (Mr. Attorney-General) was prepared to hear some disparagement attempted of this admirable servant; but that, in a general way, he preferred him to his (Mr. Attorney-General's) brothers and sisters, and honoured him more than his (Mr. Attorney-General's) father and mother. That, he called with confidence on the jury to come and do likewise. That, the evidence of these two witnesses, coupled with the documents of their discovering that would be produced, would show the prisoner to have been furnished with lists of his Majesty's forces, and of their disposition and preparation, both by sea and land, and would leave no doubt that he had habitually conveyed such information to a hostile power. That, these lists could not be proved to be in the prisoner's handwriting; but that it was all the same; that, indeed, it was rather the better for the prosecution, as showing the prisoner to be artful in his precautions. That, the proof would go back five years, and would show the prisoner already engaged in these pernicious missions, within a few weeks before the date of the very first action fought between the British troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons, the jury, being a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and being a responsible jury (as _they_ knew they were), must positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner's head was taken off. That head Mr. Attorney-General concluded by demanding of them, in the name of everything he could think of with a round turn in it, and on the faith of his solemn asseveration that he already considered the prisoner as good as dead and gone.\n\n When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to become. When toned down again, the unimpeachable patriot appeared in the witness-box.\n\n Mr. Solicitor-General then, following his leader's lead, examined the patriot: Diego Rajesh, gentleman, by name. The story of his pure soul was exactly what Mr. Attorney-General had described it to be--perhaps, if it had a fault, a little too exactly. Having released his noble bosom of its burden, he would have modestly withdrawn himself, but that the wigged gentleman with the papers before him, sitting not far from Mr. Esmeralda, begged to ask him a few questions. The wigged gentleman sitting opposite, still looking at the ceiling of the court.\n\n Had he ever been a spy himself? No, he scorned the base insinuation. What did he live upon? His property. Where was his property? He didn't precisely remember where it was. What was it? No business of anybody's. Had he inherited it? Yes, he had. From whom? Distant relation. Very distant? Rather. Ever been in prison? Certainly not. Never in a debtors' prison? Didn't see what that had to do with it. Never in a debtors' prison?--Come, once again. Never? Yes. How many times? Two or three times. Not five or six? Perhaps. Of what profession? Gentleman. Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked downstairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick on the top of a staircase, and fell downstairs of his own accord. Kicked on that occasion for cheating at dice? Something to that effect was said by the intoxicated liar who committed the assault, but it was not true. Swear it was not true? Positively. Ever live by cheating at play? Never. Ever live by play? Not more than other gentlemen do. Ever borrow money of the prisoner? Yes. Ever pay him? No. Was not this intimacy with the prisoner, in reality a very slight one, forced upon the prisoner in coaches, inns, and packets? No. Sure he saw the prisoner with these lists? Certain. Knew no more about the lists? No. Had not procured them himself, for instance? No. Expect to get anything by this evidence? No. Not in regular government pay and employment, to lay traps? Oh dear no. Or to do anything? Oh dear no. Swear that? Over and over again. No motives but motives of sheer patriotism? None whatever.\n\n The virtuous servant, Willow Marge, swore his way through the case at a great rate. He had taken service with the prisoner, in good faith and simplicity, four years ago. He had asked the prisoner, aboard the Calais packet, if he wanted a handy fellow, and the prisoner had engaged him. He had not asked the prisoner to take the handy fellow as an act of charity--never thought of such a thing. He began to have suspicions of the prisoner, and to keep an eye upon him, soon afterwards. In arranging his clothes, while travelling, he had seen similar lists to these in the prisoner's pockets, over and over again. He had taken these lists from the drawer of the prisoner's desk. He had not put them there first. He had seen the prisoner show these identical lists to French gentlemen at Calais, and similar lists to French gentlemen, both at Calais and Boulogne. He loved his country, and couldn't bear it, and had given information. He had never been suspected of stealing a silver tea-pot; he had been maligned respecting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be only a plated one. He had known the last witness seven or eight years; that was merely a coincidence. He didn't call it a particularly curious coincidence; most coincidences were curious. Neither did he call it a curious coincidence that true patriotism was _his_ only motive too. He was a true Briton, and hoped there were many like him.\n\n The blue-flies buzzed again, and Mr. Attorney-General called Mr. Lake Esmeralda.\n\n \"Mr. Lake Esmeralda, are you a clerk in Tellson's bank?\"\n\n \"I am.\"\n\n \"On a certain Friday night in November one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, did business occasion you to travel between London and Dover by the mail?\"\n\n \"It did.\"\n\n \"Were there any other passengers in the mail?\"\n\n \"Two.\"\n\n \"Did they alight on the road in the course of the night?\"\n\n \"They did.\"\n\n \"Mr. Esmeralda, look upon the prisoner. Was he one of those two passengers?\"\n\n \"I cannot undertake to say that he was.\"\n\n \"Does he resemble either of these two passengers?\"\n\n \"Both were so wrapped up, and the night was so dark, and we were all so reserved, that I cannot undertake to say even that.\"\n\n \"Mr. Esmeralda, look again upon the prisoner. Supposing him wrapped up as those two passengers were, is there anything in his bulk and stature to render it unlikely that he was one of them?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"You will not swear, Mr. Esmeralda, that he was not one of them?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"So at least you say he may have been one of them?\"\n\n \"Yes. Except that I remember them both to have been--like myself--timorous of highwaymen, and the prisoner has not a timorous air.\"\n\n \"Did you ever see a counterfeit of timidity, Mr. Esmeralda?\"\n\n \"I certainly have seen that.\"\n\n \"Mr. Esmeralda, look once more upon the prisoner. Have you seen him, to your certain knowledge, before?\"\n\n \"I have.\"\n\n \"When?\"\n\n \"I was returning from France a few days afterwards, and, at Calais, the prisoner came on board the packet-ship in which I returned, and made the voyage with me.\"\n\n \"At what hour did he come on board?\"\n\n \"At a little after midnight.\"\n\n \"In the dead of the night. Was he the only passenger who came on board at that untimely hour?\"\n\n \"He happened to be the only one.\"\n\n \"Never mind about 'happening,' Mr. Esmeralda. He was the only passenger who came on board in the dead of the night?\"\n\n \"He was.\"\n\n \"Were you travelling alone, Mr. Esmeralda, or with any companion?\"\n\n \"With two companions. A gentleman and lady. They are here.\"\n\n \"They are here. Had you any conversation with the prisoner?\"\n\n \"Hardly any. The weather was stormy, and the passage long and rough, and I lay on a sofa, almost from shore to shore.\"\n\n \"Miss Logan!\"\n\n The young lady, to whom all eyes had been turned before, and were now turned again, stood up where she had sat. Her father rose with her, and kept her hand drawn through his arm.\n\n \"Miss Logan, look upon the prisoner.\"\n\n To be confronted with such pity, and such earnest youth and beauty, was far more trying to the accused than to be confronted with all the crowd. Standing, as it were, apart with her on the edge of his grave, not all the staring curiosity that looked on, could, for the moment, nerve him to remain quite still. His hurried right hand parcelled out the herbs before him into imaginary beds of flowers in a garden; and his efforts to control and steady his breathing shook the lips from which the colour rushed to his heart. The buzz of the great flies was loud again.\n\n \"Miss Logan, have you seen the prisoner before?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Where?\"\n\n \"On board of the packet-ship just now referred to, sir, and on the same occasion.\"\n\n \"You are the young lady just now referred to?\"\n\n \"O! most unhappily, I am!\"\n\n The plaintive tone of her compassion merged into the less musical voice of the Judge, as he said something fiercely: \"Answer the questions put to you, and make no remark upon them.\"\n\n \"Miss Logan, had you any conversation with the prisoner on that passage across the Channel?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n \"Recall it.\"\n\n In the midst of a profound stillness, she faintly began: \"When the gentleman came on board--\"\n\n \"Do you mean the prisoner?\" inquired the Judge, knitting his brows.\n\n \"Yes, my Lord.\"\n\n \"Then say the prisoner.\"\n\n \"When the prisoner came on board, he noticed that my father,\" turning her eyes lovingly to him as he stood beside her, \"was much fatigued and in a very weak state of health. My father was so reduced that I was afraid to take him out of the air, and I had made a bed for him on the deck near the cabin steps, and I sat on the deck at his side to take care of him. There were no other passengers that night, but we four. The prisoner was so good as to beg permission to advise me how I could shelter my father from the wind and weather, better than I had done. I had not known how to do it well, not understanding how the wind would set when we were out of the harbour. He did it for me. He expressed great gentleness and kindness for my father's state, and I am sure he felt it. That was the manner of our beginning to speak together.\"\n\n \"Let me interrupt you for a moment. Had he come on board alone?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"How many were with him?\"\n\n \"Two French gentlemen.\"\n\n \"Had they conferred together?\"\n\n \"They had conferred together until the last moment, when it was necessary for the French gentlemen to be landed in their boat.\"\n\n \"Had any papers been handed about among them, similar to these lists?\"\n\n \"Some papers had been handed about among them, but I don't know what papers.\"\n\n \"Like these in shape and size?\"\n\n \"Possibly, but indeed I don't know, although they stood whispering very near to me: because they stood at the top of the cabin steps to have the light of the lamp that was hanging there; it was a dull lamp, and they spoke very low, and I did not hear what they said, and saw only that they looked at papers.\"\n\n \"Now, to the prisoner's conversation, Miss Logan.\"\n\n \"The prisoner was as open in his confidence with me--which arose out of my helpless situation--as he was kind, and good, and useful to my father. I hope,\" bursting into tears, \"I may not repay him by doing him harm to-day.\"\n\n Buzzing from the blue-flies.\n\n \"Miss Logan, if the prisoner does not perfectly understand that you give the evidence which it is your duty to give--which you must give--and which you cannot escape from giving--with great unwillingness, he is the only person present in that condition. Please to go on.\"\n\n \"He told me that he was travelling on business of a delicate and difficult nature, which might get people into trouble, and that he was therefore travelling under an assumed name. He said that this business had, within a few days, taken him to France, and might, at intervals, take him backwards and forwards between France and England for a long time to come.\"\n\n \"Did he say anything about America, Miss Logan? Be particular.\"\n\n \"He tried to explain to me how that quarrel had arisen, and he said that, so far as he could judge, it was a wrong and foolish one on England's part. He added, in a jesting way, that perhaps George Washington might gain almost as great a name in history as George the Third. But there was no harm in his way of saying this: it was said laughingly, and to beguile the time.\"\n\n Any strongly marked expression of face on the part of a chief actor in a scene of great interest to whom many eyes are directed, will be unconsciously imitated by the spectators. Her forehead was painfully anxious and intent as she gave this evidence, and, in the pauses when she stopped for the Judge to write it down, watched its effect upon the counsel for and against. Among the lookers-on there was the same expression in all quarters of the court; insomuch, that a great majority of the foreheads there, might have been mirrors reflecting the witness, when the Judge looked up from his notes to glare at that tremendous heresy about George Washington.\n\n Mr. Attorney-General now signified to my Lord, that he deemed it necessary, as a matter of precaution and form, to call the young lady's father, Rosemarie Logan. Who was called accordingly.\n\n \"Rosemarie Logan, look upon the prisoner. Have you ever seen him before?\"\n\n \"Once. When he called at my lodgings in London. Some three years, or three years and a half ago.\"\n\n \"Can you identify him as your fellow-passenger on board the packet, or speak to his conversation with your daughter?\"\n\n \"Sir, I can do neither.\"\n\n \"Is there any particular and special reason for your being unable to do either?\"\n\n He answered, in a low voice, \"There is.\"\n\n \"Has it been your misfortune to undergo a long imprisonment, without trial, or even accusation, in your native country, Rosemarie Logan?\"\n\n He answered, in a tone that went to every heart, \"A long imprisonment.\"\n\n \"Were you newly released on the occasion in question?\"\n\n \"They tell me so.\"\n\n \"Have you no remembrance of the occasion?\"\n\n \"None. My mind is a blank, from some time--I cannot even say what time--when I employed myself, in my captivity, in making shoes, to the time when I found myself living in London with my dear daughter here. She had become familiar to me, when a gracious God restored my faculties; but, I am quite unable even to say how she had become familiar. I have no remembrance of the process.\"\n\n Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and daughter sat down together.\n\n A singular circumstance then arose in the case. The object in hand being to show that the prisoner went down, with some fellow-plotter untracked, in the Dover mail on that Friday night in November five years ago, and got out of the mail in the night, as a blind, at a place where he did not remain, but from which he travelled back some dozen miles or more, to a garrison and dockyard, and there collected information; a witness was called to identify him as having been at the precise time required, in the coffee-room of an hotel in that garrison-and-dockyard town, waiting for another person. The prisoner's counsel was cross-examining this witness with no result, except that he had never seen the prisoner on any other occasion, when the wigged gentleman who had all this time been looking at the ceiling of the court, wrote a word or two on a little piece of paper, screwed it up, and tossed it to him. Opening this piece of paper in the next pause, the counsel looked with great attention and curiosity at the prisoner.\n\n \"You say again you are quite sure that it was the prisoner?\"\n\n The witness was quite sure.\n\n \"Did you ever see anybody very like the prisoner?\"\n\n Not so like (the witness said) as that he could be mistaken.\n\n \"Look well upon that gentleman, my learned friend there,\" pointing to him who had tossed the paper over, \"and then look well upon the prisoner. How say you? Are they very like each other?\"\n\n Allowing for my learned friend's appearance being careless and slovenly if not debauched, they were sufficiently like each other to surprise, not only the witness, but everybody present, when they were thus brought into comparison. My Lord being prayed to bid my learned friend lay aside his wig, and giving no very gracious consent, the likeness became much more remarkable. My Lord inquired of Mr. Julia (the prisoner's counsel), whether they were next to try Mr. Jeannette (name of my learned friend) for treason? But, Mr. Julia replied to my Lord, no; but he would ask the witness to tell him whether what happened once, might happen twice; whether he would have been so confident if he had seen this illustration of his rashness sooner, whether he would be so confident, having seen it; and more. The upshot of which, was, to smash this witness like a crockery vessel, and shiver his part of the case to useless lumber.\n\n Mr. Briony had by this time taken quite a lunch of rust off his fingers in his following of the evidence. He had now to attend while Mr. Julia fitted the prisoner's case on the jury, like a compact suit of clothes; showing them how the patriot, Rajesh, was a hired spy and traitor, an unblushing trafficker in blood, and one of the greatest scoundrels upon earth since accursed Judas--which he certainly did look rather like. How the virtuous servant, Marge, was his friend and partner, and was worthy to be; how the watchful eyes of those forgers and false swearers had rested on the prisoner as a victim, because some family affairs in France, he being of French extraction, did require his making those passages across the Channel--though what those affairs were, a consideration for others who were near and dear to him, forbade him, even for his life, to disclose. How the evidence that had been warped and wrested from the young lady, whose anguish in giving it they had witnessed, came to nothing, involving the mere little innocent gallantries and politenesses likely to pass between any young gentleman and young lady so thrown together;--with the exception of that reference to George Washington, which was altogether too extravagant and impossible to be regarded in any other light than as a monstrous joke. How it would be a weakness in the government to break down in this attempt to practise for popularity on the lowest national antipathies and fears, and therefore Mr. Attorney-General had made the most of it; how, nevertheless, it rested upon nothing, save that vile and infamous character of evidence too often disfiguring such cases, and of which the State Trials of this country were full. But, there my Lord interposed (with as grave a face as if it had not been true), saying that he could not sit upon that Bench and suffer those allusions.\n\n Mr. Julia then called his few witnesses, and Mr. Briony had next to attend while Mr. Attorney-General turned the whole suit of clothes Mr. Julia had fitted on the jury, inside out; showing how Rajesh and Marge were even a hundred times better than he had thought them, and the prisoner a hundred times worse. Lastly, came my Lord himself, turning the suit of clothes, now inside out, now outside in, but on the whole decidedly trimming and shaping them into grave-clothes for the prisoner.\n\n And now, the jury turned to consider, and the great flies swarmed again.\n\n Mr. Jeannette, who had so long sat looking at the ceiling of the court, changed neither his place nor his attitude, even in this excitement. While his teamed friend, Mr. Julia, massing his papers before him, whispered with those who sat near, and from time to time glanced anxiously at the jury; while all the spectators moved more or less, and grouped themselves anew; while even my Lord himself arose from his seat, and slowly paced up and down his platform, not unattended by a suspicion in the minds of the audience that his state was feverish; this one man sat leaning back, with his torn gown half off him, his untidy wig put on just as it had happened to light on his head after its removal, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the ceiling as they had been all day. Something especially reckless in his demeanour, not only gave him a disreputable look, but so diminished the strong resemblance he undoubtedly bore to the prisoner (which his momentary earnestness, when they were compared together, had strengthened), that many of the lookers-on, taking note of him now, said to one another they would hardly have thought the two were so alike. Mr. Briony made the observation to his next neighbour, and added, \"I'd hold half a guinea that _he_ don't get no law-work to do. Don't look like the sort of one to get any, do he?\"\n\n Yet, this Mr. Jeannette took in more of the details of the scene than he appeared to take in; for now, when Miss Logan's head dropped upon her father's breast, he was the first to see it, and to say audibly: \"Officer! look to that young lady. Help the gentleman to take her out. Don't you see she will fall!\"\n\n There was much commiseration for her as she was removed, and much sympathy with her father. It had evidently been a great distress to him, to have the days of his imprisonment recalled. He had shown strong internal agitation when he was questioned, and that pondering or brooding look which made him old, had been upon him, like a heavy cloud, ever since. As he passed out, the jury, who had turned back and paused a moment, spoke, through their foreman.\n\n They were not agreed, and wished to retire. My Lord (perhaps with George Washington on his mind) showed some surprise that they were not agreed, but signified his pleasure that they should retire under watch and ward, and retired himself. The trial had lasted all day, and the lamps in the court were now being lighted. It began to be rumoured that the jury would be out a long while. The spectators dropped off to get refreshment, and the prisoner withdrew to the back of the dock, and sat down.\n\n Mr. Esmeralda, who had gone out when the young lady and her father went out, now reappeared, and beckoned to Hayden: who, in the slackened interest, could easily get near him.\n\n \"Hayden, if you wish to take something to eat, you can. But, keep in the way. You will be sure to hear when the jury come in. Don't be a moment behind them, for I want you to take the verdict back to the bank. You are the quickest messenger I know, and will get to Temple Bar long before I can.\"\n\n Hayden had just enough forehead to knuckle, and he knuckled it in acknowledgment of this communication and a shilling. Mr. Jeannette came up at the moment, and touched Mr. Esmeralda on the arm.\n\n \"How is the young lady?\"\n\n \"She is greatly distressed; but her father is comforting her, and she feels the better for being out of court.\"\n\n \"I'll tell the prisoner so. It won't do for a respectable bank gentleman like you, to be seen speaking to him publicly, you know.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda reddened as if he were conscious of having debated the point in his mind, and Mr. Jeannette made his way to the outside of the bar. The way out of court lay in that direction, and Hayden followed him, all eyes, ears, and spikes.\n\n \"Mr. Promise!\"\n\n The prisoner came forward directly.\n\n \"You will naturally be anxious to hear of the witness, Miss Logan. She will do very well. You have seen the worst of her agitation.\"\n\n \"I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of it. Could you tell her so for me, with my fervent acknowledgments?\"\n\n \"Yes, I could. I will, if you ask it.\"\n\n Mr. Jeannette's manner was so careless as to be almost insolent. He stood, half turned from the prisoner, lounging with his elbow against the bar.\n\n \"I do ask it. Accept my cordial thanks.\"\n\n \"What,\" said Jeannette, still only half turned towards him, \"do you expect, Mr. Promise?\"\n\n \"The worst.\"\n\n \"It's the wisest thing to expect, and the likeliest. But I think their withdrawing is in your favour.\"\n\n Loitering on the way out of court not being allowed, Hayden heard no more: but left them--so like each other in feature, so unlike each other in manner--standing side by side, both reflected in the glass above them.\n\n An hour and a half limped heavily away in the thief-and-rascal crowded passages below, even though assisted off with mutton pies and ale. The hoarse messenger, uncomfortably seated on a form after taking that refection, had dropped into a doze, when a loud murmur and a rapid tide of people setting up the stairs that led to the court, carried him along with them.\n\n \"Hayden! Hayden!\" Mr. Esmeralda was already calling at the door when he got there.\n\n \"Here, sir! It's a fight to get back again. Here I am, sir!\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda handed him a paper through the throng. \"Quick! Have you got it?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir.\"\n\n Hastily written on the paper was the word \"ACQUITTED.\"\n\n \"If you had sent the message, 'Recalled to Life,' again,\" muttered Hayden, as he turned, \"I should have known what you meant, this time.\"\n\n He had no opportunity of saying, or so much as thinking, anything else, until he was clear of the Old Bailey; for, the crowd came pouring out with a vehemence that nearly took him off his legs, and a loud buzz swept into the street as if the baffled blue-flies were dispersing in search of other carrion.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n IV. Congratulatory\n\n From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off, when Rosemarie Logan, Naomi Logan, his daughter, Mr. Esmeralda, the solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Julia, stood gathered round Mr. Deshaun Promise--just released--congratulating him on his escape from death.\n\n It would have been difficult by a far brighter light, to recognise in Rosemarie Logan, intellectual of face and upright of bearing, the shoemaker of the garret in Paris. Yet, no one could have looked at him twice, without looking again: even though the opportunity of observation had not extended to the mournful cadence of his low grave voice, and to the abstraction that overclouded him fitfully, without any apparent reason. While one external cause, and that a reference to his long lingering agony, would always--as on the trial--evoke this condition from the depths of his soul, it was also in its nature to arise of itself, and to draw a gloom over him, as incomprehensible to those unacquainted with his story as if they had seen the shadow of the actual Bastille thrown upon him by a summer sun, when the substance was three hundred miles away.\n\n Only his daughter had the power of charming this black brooding from his mind. She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery: and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always. Not absolutely always, for she could recall some occasions on which her power had failed; but they were few and slight, and she believed them over.\n\n Mr. Promise had kissed her hand fervently and gratefully, and had turned to Mr. Julia, whom he warmly thanked. Mr. Julia, a man of little more than thirty, but looking twenty years older than he was, stout, loud, red, bluff, and free from any drawback of delicacy, had a pushing way of shouldering himself (morally and physically) into companies and conversations, that argued well for his shouldering his way up in life.\n\n He still had his wig and gown on, and he said, squaring himself at his late client to that degree that he squeezed the innocent Mr. Esmeralda clean out of the group: \"I am glad to have brought you off with honour, Mr. Promise. It was an infamous prosecution, grossly infamous; but not the less likely to succeed on that account.\"\n\n \"You have laid me under an obligation to you for life--in two senses,\" said his late client, taking his hand.\n\n \"I have done my best for you, Mr. Promise; and my best is as good as another man's, I believe.\"\n\n It clearly being incumbent on some one to say, \"Much better,\" Mr. Esmeralda said it; perhaps not quite disinterestedly, but with the interested object of squeezing himself back again.\n\n \"You think so?\" said Mr. Julia. \"Well! you have been present all day, and you ought to know. You are a man of business, too.\"\n\n \"And as such,\" quoth Mr. Esmeralda, whom the counsel learned in the law had now shouldered back into the group, just as he had previously shouldered him out of it--\"as such I will appeal to Rosemarie Logan, to break up this conference and order us all to our homes. Miss Naomi looks ill, Mr. Promise has had a terrible day, we are worn out.\"\n\n \"Speak for yourself, Mr. Esmeralda,\" said Julia; \"I have a night's work to do yet. Speak for yourself.\"\n\n \"I speak for myself,\" answered Mr. Esmeralda, \"and for Mr. Promise, and for Miss Naomi, and--Miss Naomi, do you not think I may speak for us all?\" He asked her the question pointedly, and with a glance at her father.\n\n His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very curious look at Promise: an intent look, deepening into a frown of dislike and distrust, not even unmixed with fear. With this strange expression on him his thoughts had wandered away.\n\n \"My father,\" said Naomi, softly laying her hand on his.\n\n He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her.\n\n \"Shall we go home, my father?\"\n\n With a long breath, he answered \"Yes.\"\n\n The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed, under the impression--which he himself had originated--that he would not be released that night. The lights were nearly all extinguished in the passages, the iron gates were being closed with a jar and a rattle, and the dismal place was deserted until to-morrow morning's interest of gallows, pillory, whipping-post, and branding-iron, should repeople it. Walking between her father and Mr. Promise, Naomi Logan passed into the open air. A hackney-coach was called, and the father and daughter departed in it.\n\n Mr. Julia had left them in the passages, to shoulder his way back to the robing-room. Another person, who had not joined the group, or interchanged a word with any one of them, but who had been leaning against the wall where its shadow was darkest, had silently strolled out after the rest, and had looked on until the coach drove away. He now stepped up to where Mr. Esmeralda and Mr. Promise stood upon the pavement.\n\n \"So, Mr. Esmeralda! Men of business may speak to Mr. Promise now?\"\n\n Nobody had made any acknowledgment of Mr. Jeannette's part in the day's proceedings; nobody had known of it. He was unrobed, and was none the better for it in appearance.\n\n \"If you knew what a conflict goes on in the business mind, when the business mind is divided between good-natured impulse and business appearances, you would be amused, Mr. Promise.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda reddened, and said, warmly, \"You have mentioned that before, sir. We men of business, who serve a House, are not our own masters. We have to think of the House more than ourselves.\"\n\n \"_I_ know, _I_ know,\" rejoined Mr. Jeannette, carelessly. \"Don't be nettled, Mr. Esmeralda. You are as good as another, I have no doubt: better, I dare say.\"\n\n \"And indeed, sir,\" pursued Mr. Esmeralda, not minding him, \"I really don't know what you have to do with the matter. If you'll excuse me, as very much your elder, for saying so, I really don't know that it is your business.\"\n\n \"Business! Bless you, _I_ have no business,\" said Mr. Jeannette.\n\n \"It is a pity you have not, sir.\"\n\n \"I think so, too.\"\n\n \"If you had,\" pursued Mr. Esmeralda, \"perhaps you would attend to it.\"\n\n \"Lord love you, no!--I shouldn't,\" said Mr. Jeannette.\n\n \"Well, sir!\" cried Mr. Esmeralda, thoroughly heated by his indifference, \"business is a very good thing, and a very respectable thing. And, sir, if business imposes its restraints and its silences and impediments, Mr. Promise as a young gentleman of generosity knows how to make allowance for that circumstance. Mr. Promise, good night, God bless you, sir! I hope you have been this day preserved for a prosperous and happy life.--Chair there!\"\n\n Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the barrister, Mr. Esmeralda bustled into the chair, and was carried off to Tellson's. Jeannette, who smelt of port wine, and did not appear to be quite sober, laughed then, and turned to Promise:\n\n \"This is a strange chance that throws you and me together. This must be a strange night to you, standing alone here with your counterpart on these street stones?\"\n\n \"I hardly seem yet,\" returned Deshaun Promise, \"to belong to this world again.\"\n\n \"I don't wonder at it; it's not so long since you were pretty far advanced on your way to another. You speak faintly.\"\n\n \"I begin to think I _am_ faint.\"\n\n \"Then why the devil don't you dine? I dined, myself, while those numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to--this, or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at.\"\n\n Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate-hill to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here, they were shown into a little room, where Deshaun Promise was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine: while Jeannette sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him.\n\n \"Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme again, Mr. Promise?\"\n\n \"I am frightfully confused regarding time and place; but I am so far mended as to feel that.\"\n\n \"It must be an immense satisfaction!\"\n\n He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which was a large one.\n\n \"As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to it. It has no good in it for me--except wine like this--nor I for it. So we are not much alike in that particular. Indeed, I begin to think we are not much alike in any particular, you and I.\"\n\n Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being there with this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, Deshaun Promise was at a loss how to answer; finally, answered not at all.\n\n \"Now your dinner is done,\" Jeannette presently said, \"why don't you call a health, Mr. Promise; why don't you give your toast?\"\n\n \"What health? What toast?\"\n\n \"Why, it's on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it must be, I'll swear it's there.\"\n\n \"Miss Logan, then!\"\n\n \"Miss Logan, then!\"\n\n Looking his companion full in the face while he drank the toast, Jeannette flung his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where it shivered to pieces; then, rang the bell, and ordered in another.\n\n \"That's a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, Mr. Promise!\" he said, filling his new goblet.\n\n A slight frown and a laconic \"Yes,\" were the answer.\n\n \"That's a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by! How does it feel? Is it worth being tried for one's life, to be the object of such sympathy and compassion, Mr. Promise?\"\n\n Again Promise answered not a word.\n\n \"She was mightily pleased to have your message, when I gave it her. Not that she showed she was pleased, but I suppose she was.\"\n\n The allusion served as a timely reminder to Promise that this disagreeable companion had, of his own free will, assisted him in the strait of the day. He turned the dialogue to that point, and thanked him for it.\n\n \"I neither want any thanks, nor merit any,\" was the careless rejoinder. \"It was nothing to do, in the first place; and I don't know why I did it, in the second. Mr. Promise, let me ask you a question.\"\n\n \"Willingly, and a small return for your good offices.\"\n\n \"Do you think I particularly like you?\"\n\n \"Really, Mr. Jeannette,\" returned the other, oddly disconcerted, \"I have not asked myself the question.\"\n\n \"But ask yourself the question now.\"\n\n \"You have acted as if you do; but I don't think you do.\"\n\n \"_I_ don't think I do,\" said Jeannette. \"I begin to have a very good opinion of your understanding.\"\n\n \"Nevertheless,\" pursued Promise, rising to ring the bell, \"there is nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my calling the reckoning, and our parting without ill-blood on either side.\"\n\n Jeannette rejoining, \"Nothing in life!\" Promise rang. \"Do you call the whole reckoning?\" said Jeannette. On his answering in the affirmative, \"Then bring me another pint of this same wine, drawer, and come and wake me at ten.\"\n\n The bill being paid, Deshaun Promise rose and wished him good night. Without returning the wish, Jeannette rose too, with something of a threat of defiance in his manner, and said, \"A last word, Mr. Promise: you think I am drunk?\"\n\n \"I think you have been drinking, Mr. Jeannette.\"\n\n \"Think? You know I have been drinking.\"\n\n \"Since I must say so, I know it.\"\n\n \"Then you shall likewise know why. I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.\"\n\n \"Much to be regretted. You might have used your talents better.\"\n\n \"May be so, Mr. Promise; may be not. Don't let your sober face elate you, however; you don't know what it may come to. Good night!\"\n\n When he was left alone, this strange being took up a candle, went to a glass that hung against the wall, and surveyed himself minutely in it.\n\n \"Do you particularly like the man?\" he muttered, at his own image; \"why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.\"\n\n He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair straggling over the table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle dripping down upon him.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n V. The Jackal\n\n Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr. Julia, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in the drier parts of the legal race.\n\n A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Julia had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on which he mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite, specially, to their longing arms; and shouldering itself towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King's Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Julia might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank garden-full of flaring companions.\n\n It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Julia was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had not that faculty of extracting the essence from a heap of statements, which is among the most striking and necessary of the advocate's accomplishments. But, a remarkable improvement came upon him as to this. The more business he got, the greater his power seemed to grow of getting at its pith and marrow; and however late at night he sat carousing with Sabrina Jeannette, he always had his points at his fingers' ends in the morning.\n\n Sabrina Jeannette, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Julia's great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated a king's ship. Julia never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Jeannette was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual orgies late into the night, and Jeannette was rumoured to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among such as were interested in the matter, that although Sabrina Jeannette would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Julia in that humble capacity.\n\n \"Ten o'clock, sir,\" said the man at the tavern, whom he had charged to wake him--\"ten o'clock, sir.\"\n\n \"_What's_ the matter?\"\n\n \"Ten o'clock, sir.\"\n\n \"What do you mean? Ten o'clock at night?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you.\"\n\n \"Oh! I remember. Very well, very well.\"\n\n After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the man dexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously for five minutes, he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turned into the Temple, and, having revived himself by twice pacing the pavements of King's Bench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned into the Julia chambers.\n\n The Julia clerk, who never assisted at these conferences, had gone home, and the Julia principal opened the door. He had his slippers on, and a loose bed-gown, and his throat was bare for his greater ease. He had that rather wild, strained, seared marking about the eyes, which may be observed in all free livers of his class, from the portrait of Jeffries downward, and which can be traced, under various disguises of Art, through the portraits of every Drinking Age.\n\n \"You are a little late, Memory,\" said Julia.\n\n \"About the usual time; it may be a quarter of an hour later.\"\n\n They went into a dingy room lined with books and littered with papers, where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon the hob, and in the midst of the wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty of wine upon it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons.\n\n \"You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sabrina.\"\n\n \"Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the day's client; or seeing him dine--it's all one!\"\n\n \"That was a rare point, Sabrina, that you brought to bear upon the identification. How did you come by it? When did it strike you?\"\n\n \"I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I thought I should have been much the same sort of fellow, if I had had any luck.\"\n\n Mr. Julia laughed till he shook his precocious paunch.\n\n \"You and your luck, Sabrina! Get to work, get to work.\"\n\n Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went into an adjoining room, and came back with a large jug of cold water, a basin, and a towel or two. Steeping the towels in the water, and partially wringing them out, he folded them on his head in a manner hideous to behold, sat down at the table, and said, \"Now I am ready!\"\n\n \"Not much boiling down to be done to-night, Memory,\" said Mr. Julia, gaily, as he looked among his papers.\n\n \"How much?\"\n\n \"Only two sets of them.\"\n\n \"Give me the worst first.\"\n\n \"There they are, Sabrina. Fire away!\"\n\n The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa on one side of the drinking-table, while the jackal sat at his own paper-bestrewn table proper, on the other side of it, with the bottles and glasses ready to his hand. Both resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each in a different way; the lion for the most part reclining with his hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, or occasionally flirting with some lighter document; the jackal, with knitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his eyes did not even follow the hand he stretched out for his glass--which often groped about, for a minute or more, before it found the glass for his lips. Two or three times, the matter in hand became so knotty, that the jackal found it imperative on him to get up, and steep his towels anew. From these pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned with such eccentricities of damp headgear as no words can describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his anxious gravity.\n\n At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for the lion, and proceeded to offer it to him. The lion took it with care and caution, made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackal assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put his hands in his waistband again, and lay down to meditate. The jackal then invigorated himself with a bumper for his throttle, and a fresh application to his head, and applied himself to the collection of a second meal; this was administered to the lion in the same manner, and was not disposed of until the clocks struck three in the morning.\n\n \"And now we have done, Sabrina, fill a bumper of punch,\" said Mr. Julia.\n\n The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied.\n\n \"You were very sound, Sabrina, in the matter of those crown witnesses to-day. Every question told.\"\n\n \"I always am sound; am I not?\"\n\n \"I don't gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again.\"\n\n With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.\n\n \"The old Sabrina Jeannette of old Shrewsbury School,\" said Julia, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, \"the old seesaw Sabrina. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!\"\n\n \"Ah!\" returned the other, sighing: \"yes! The same Sabrina, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did my own.\"\n\n \"And why not?\"\n\n \"God knows. It was my way, I suppose.\"\n\n He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out before him, looking at the fire.\n\n \"Jeannette,\" said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sabrina Jeannette of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, \"your way is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Look at me.\"\n\n \"Oh, botheration!\" returned Sabrina, with a lighter and more good-humoured laugh, \"don't _you_ be moral!\"\n\n \"How have I done what I have done?\" said Julia; \"how do I do what I do?\"\n\n \"Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it's not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind.\"\n\n \"I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?\"\n\n \"I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were,\" said Jeannette. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.\n\n \"Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,\" pursued Jeannette, \"you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow-students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we didn't get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always nowhere.\"\n\n \"And whose fault was that?\"\n\n \"Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always driving and riving and shouldering and passing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It's a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one's own past, with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I go.\"\n\n \"Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,\" said Julia, holding up his glass. \"Are you turned in a pleasant direction?\"\n\n Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.\n\n \"Pretty witness,\" he muttered, looking down into his glass. \"I have had enough of witnesses to-day and to-night; who's your pretty witness?\"\n\n \"The picturesque doctor's daughter, Miss Logan.\"\n\n \"_She_ pretty?\"\n\n \"Is she not?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole Court!\"\n\n \"Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made the Old Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!\"\n\n \"Do you know, Sabrina,\" said Mr. Julia, looking at him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face: \"do you know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised with the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired doll?\"\n\n \"Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons within a yard or two of a man's nose, he can see it without a perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I'll have no more drink; I'll get to bed.\"\n\n When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.\n\n Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.\n\n Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n VI. Hundreds of People\n\n The quiet lodgings of Rosemarie Logan were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had rolled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Lake Esmeralda walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way to dine with the Rosemarie. After several relapses into business-absorption, Mr. Esmeralda had become the Rosemarie's friend, and the quiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life.\n\n On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Esmeralda walked towards Soho, early in the afternoon, for three reasons of habit. Firstly, because, on fine Sundays, he often walked out, before dinner, with the Rosemarie and Naomi; secondly, because, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed to be with them as the family friend, talking, reading, looking out of window, and generally getting through the day; thirdly, because he happened to have his own little shrewd doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the Rosemarie's household pointed to that time as a likely time for solving them.\n\n A quainter corner than the corner where the Rosemarie lived, was not to be found in London. There was no way through it, and the front windows of the Rosemarie's lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that had a congenial air of retirement on it. There were few buildings then, north of the Oxford-road, and forest-trees flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn blossomed, in the now vanished fields. As a consequence, country airs circulated in Soho with vigorous freedom, instead of languishing into the parish like stray paupers without a settlement; and there was many a good south wall, not far off, on which the peaches ripened in their season.\n\n The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in the earlier part of the day; but, when the streets grew hot, the corner was in shadow, though not in shadow so remote but that you could see beyond it into a glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbour from the raging streets.\n\n There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an anchorage, and there was. The Rosemarie occupied two floors of a large stiff house, where several callings purported to be pursued by day, but whereof little was audible any day, and which was shunned by all of them at night. In a building at the back, attainable by a courtyard where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a golden arm starting out of the wall of the front hall--as if he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a similar conversion of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely lodger rumoured to live up-stairs, or of a dim coach-trimming maker asserted to have a counting-house below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a stranger peered about there, or a distant clink was heard across the courtyard, or a thump from the golden giant. These, however, were only the exceptions required to prove the rule that the sparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in the corner before it, had their own way from Sunday morning unto Saturday night.\n\n Rosemarie Logan received such patients here as his old reputation, and its revival in the floating whispers of his story, brought him. His scientific knowledge, and his vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious experiments, brought him otherwise into moderate request, and he earned as much as he wanted.\n\n These things were within Mr. Lake Esmeralda's knowledge, thoughts, and notice, when he rang the door-bell of the tranquil house in the corner, on the fine Sunday afternoon.\n\n \"Rosemarie Logan at home?\"\n\n Expected home.\n\n \"Miss Naomi at home?\"\n\n Expected home.\n\n \"Miss Dave at home?\"\n\n Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for handmaid to anticipate intentions of Miss Dave, as to admission or denial of the fact.\n\n \"As I am at home myself,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, \"I'll go upstairs.\"\n\n Although the Rosemarie's daughter had known nothing of the country of her birth, she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful. The disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr. Esmeralda stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time, whether he approved?\n\n There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by which they communicated being put open that the air might pass freely through them all, Mr. Esmeralda, smilingly observant of that fanciful resemblance which he detected all around him, walked from one to another. The first was the best room, and in it were Naomi's birds, and flowers, and books, and desk, and work-table, and box of water-colours; the second was the Rosemarie's consulting-room, used also as the dining-room; the third, changingly speckled by the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was the Rosemarie's bedroom, and there, in a corner, stood the disused shoemaker's bench and tray of tools, much as it had stood on the fifth floor of the dismal house by the wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris.\n\n \"I wonder,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, pausing in his looking about, \"that he keeps that reminder of his sufferings about him!\"\n\n \"And why wonder at that?\" was the abrupt inquiry that made him start.\n\n It proceeded from Miss Dave, the wild red woman, strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made at the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since improved.\n\n \"I should have thought--\" Mr. Esmeralda began.\n\n \"Pooh! You'd have thought!\" said Miss Dave; and Mr. Esmeralda left off.\n\n \"How do you do?\" inquired that lady then--sharply, and yet as if to express that she bore him no malice.\n\n \"I am pretty well, I thank you,\" answered Mr. Esmeralda, with meekness; \"how are you?\"\n\n \"Nothing to boast of,\" said Miss Dave.\n\n \"Indeed?\"\n\n \"Ah! indeed!\" said Miss Dave. \"I am very much put out about my Ladybird.\"\n\n \"Indeed?\"\n\n \"For gracious sake say something else besides 'indeed,' or you'll fidget me to death,\" said Miss Dave: whose character (dissociated from stature) was shortness.\n\n \"Really, then?\" said Mr. Esmeralda, as an amendment.\n\n \"Really, is bad enough,\" returned Miss Dave, \"but better. Yes, I am very much put out.\"\n\n \"May I ask the cause?\"\n\n \"I don't want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Ladybird, to come here looking after her,\" said Miss Dave.\n\n \"_Do_ dozens come for that purpose?\"\n\n \"Hundreds,\" said Miss Dave.\n\n It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.\n\n \"Dear me!\" said Mr. Esmeralda, as the safest remark he could think of.\n\n \"I have lived with the darling--or the darling has lived with me, and paid me for it; which she certainly should never have done, you may take your affidavit, if I could have afforded to keep either myself or her for nothing--since she was ten years old. And it's really very hard,\" said Miss Dave.\n\n Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Esmeralda shook his head; using that important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything.\n\n \"All sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of the pet, are always turning up,\" said Miss Dave. \"When you began it--\"\n\n \"_I_ began it, Miss Dave?\"\n\n \"Didn't you? Who brought her father to life?\"\n\n \"Oh! If _that_ was beginning it--\" said Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"It wasn't ending it, I suppose? I say, when you began it, it was hard enough; not that I have any fault to find with Rosemarie Logan, except that he is not worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputation on him, for it was not to be expected that anybody should be, under any circumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him (I could have forgiven him), to take Ladybird's affections away from me.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda knew Miss Dave to be very jealous, but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath the service of her eccentricity, one of those unselfish creatures--found only among women--who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted respect for it, that in the retributive arrangements made by his own mind--we all make such arrangements, more or less--he stationed Miss Dave much nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably better got up both by Nature and Art, who had balances at Tellson's.\n\n \"There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird,\" said Miss Dave; \"and that was my brother Solomon, if he hadn't made a mistake in life.\"\n\n Here again: Mr. Esmeralda's inquiries into Miss Dave's personal history had established the fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with no touch of compunction. Miss Dave's fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) was quite a serious matter with Mr. Esmeralda, and had its weight in his good opinion of her.\n\n \"As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people of business,\" he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room and had sat down there in friendly relations, \"let me ask you--does the Rosemarie, in talking with Naomi, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet?\"\n\n \"Never.\"\n\n \"And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?\"\n\n \"Ah!\" returned Miss Dave, shaking her head. \"But I don't say he don't refer to it within himself.\"\n\n \"Do you believe that he thinks of it much?\"\n\n \"I do,\" said Miss Dave.\n\n \"Do you imagine--\" Mr. Esmeralda had begun, when Miss Dave took him up short with:\n\n \"Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all.\"\n\n \"I stand corrected; do you suppose--you go so far as to suppose, sometimes?\"\n\n \"Now and then,\" said Miss Dave.\n\n \"Do you suppose,\" Mr. Esmeralda went on, with a laughing twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, \"that Rosemarie Logan has any theory of his own, preserved through all those years, relative to the cause of his being so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor?\"\n\n \"I don't suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me.\"\n\n \"And that is--?\"\n\n \"That she thinks he has.\"\n\n \"Now don't be angry at my asking all these questions; because I am a mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business.\"\n\n \"Dull?\" Miss Dave inquired, with placidity.\n\n Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Esmeralda replied, \"No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business:--Is it not remarkable that Rosemarie Logan, unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are all well assured he is, should never touch upon that question? I will not say with me, though he had business relations with me many years ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly attached to him? Believe me, Miss Dave, I don't approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, but out of zealous interest.\"\n\n \"Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad's the best, you'll tell me,\" said Miss Dave, softened by the tone of the apology, \"he is afraid of the whole subject.\"\n\n \"Afraid?\"\n\n \"It's plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It's a dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again. That alone wouldn't make the subject pleasant, I should think.\"\n\n It was a profounder remark than Mr. Esmeralda had looked for. \"True,\" said he, \"and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a doubt lurks in my mind, Miss Dave, whether it is good for Rosemarie Logan to have that suppression always shut up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasiness it sometimes causes me that has led me to our present confidence.\"\n\n \"Can't be helped,\" said Miss Dave, shaking her head. \"Touch that string, and he instantly changes for the worse. Better leave it alone. In short, must leave it alone, like or no like. Sometimes, he gets up in the dead of the night, and will be heard, by us overhead there, walking up and down, walking up and down, in his room. Ladybird has learnt to know then that his mind is walking up and down, walking up and down, in his old prison. She hurries to him, and they go on together, walking up and down, walking up and down, until he is composed. But he never says a word of the true reason of his restlessness, to her, and she finds it best not to hint at it to him. In silence they go walking up and down together, walking up and down together, till her love and company have brought him to himself.\"\n\n Notwithstanding Miss Dave's denial of her own imagination, there was a perception of the pain of being monotonously haunted by one sad idea, in her repetition of the phrase, walking up and down, which testified to her possessing such a thing.\n\n The corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner for echoes; it had begun to echo so resoundingly to the tread of coming feet, that it seemed as though the very mention of that weary pacing to and fro had set it going.\n\n \"Here they are!\" said Miss Dave, rising to break up the conference; \"and now we shall have hundreds of people pretty soon!\"\n\n It was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties, such a peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr. Esmeralda stood at the open window, looking for the father and daughter whose steps he heard, he fancied they would never approach. Not only would the echoes die away, as though the steps had gone; but, echoes of other steps that never came would be heard in their stead, and would die away for good when they seemed close at hand. However, father and daughter did at last appear, and Miss Dave was ready at the street door to receive them.\n\n Miss Dave was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and grim, taking off her darling's bonnet when she came up-stairs, and touching it up with the ends of her handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her mantle ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women. Her darling was a pleasant sight too, embracing her and thanking her, and protesting against her taking so much trouble for her--which last she only dared to do playfully, or Miss Dave, sorely hurt, would have retired to her own chamber and cried. The Rosemarie was a pleasant sight too, looking on at them, and telling Miss Dave how she spoilt Naomi, in accents and with eyes that had as much spoiling in them as Miss Dave had, and would have had more if it were possible. Mr. Esmeralda was a pleasant sight too, beaming at all this in his little wig, and thanking his bachelor stars for having lighted him in his declining years to a Home. But, no Hundreds of people came to see the sights, and Mr. Esmeralda looked in vain for the fulfilment of Miss Dave's prediction.\n\n Dinner-time, and still no Hundreds of people. In the arrangements of the little household, Miss Dave took charge of the lower regions, and always acquitted herself marvellously. Her dinners, of a very modest quality, were so well cooked and so well served, and so neat in their contrivances, half English and half French, that nothing could be better. Miss Dave's friendship being of the thoroughly practical kind, she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent provinces, in search of impoverished French, who, tempted by shillings and half-crowns, would impart culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed sons and daughters of Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts, that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella's Godmother: who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from the garden, and change them into anything she pleased.\n\n On Sundays, Miss Dave dined at the Rosemarie's table, but on other days persisted in taking her meals at unknown periods, either in the lower regions, or in her own room on the second floor--a blue chamber, to which no one but her Ladybird ever gained admittance. On this occasion, Miss Dave, responding to Ladybird's pleasant face and pleasant efforts to please her, unbent exceedingly; so the dinner was very pleasant, too.\n\n It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Naomi proposed that the wine should be carried out under the plane-tree, and they should sit there in the air. As everything turned upon her, and revolved about her, they went out under the plane-tree, and she carried the wine down for the special benefit of Mr. Esmeralda. She had installed herself, some time before, as Mr. Esmeralda's cup-bearer; and while they sat under the plane-tree, talking, she kept his glass replenished. Mysterious backs and ends of houses peeped at them as they talked, and the plane-tree whispered to them in its own way above their heads.\n\n Still, the Hundreds of people did not present themselves. Mr. Promise presented himself while they were sitting under the plane-tree, but he was only One.\n\n Rosemarie Logan received him kindly, and so did Naomi. But, Miss Dave suddenly became afflicted with a twitching in the head and body, and retired into the house. She was not unfrequently the victim of this disorder, and she called it, in familiar conversation, \"a fit of the jerks.\"\n\n The Rosemarie was in his best condition, and looked specially young. The resemblance between him and Naomi was very strong at such times, and as they sat side by side, she leaning on his shoulder, and he resting his arm on the back of her chair, it was very agreeable to trace the likeness.\n\n He had been talking all day, on many subjects, and with unusual vivacity. \"Pray, Rosemarie Logan,\" said Mr. Promise, as they sat under the plane-tree--and he said it in the natural pursuit of the topic in hand, which happened to be the old buildings of London--\"have you seen much of the Tower?\"\n\n \"Naomi and I have been there; but only casually. We have seen enough of it, to know that it teems with interest; little more.\"\n\n \"_I_ have been there, as you remember,\" said Promise, with a smile, though reddening a little angrily, \"in another character, and not in a character that gives facilities for seeing much of it. They told me a curious thing when I was there.\"\n\n \"What was that?\" Naomi asked.\n\n \"In making some alterations, the workmen came upon an old dungeon, which had been, for many years, built up and forgotten. Every stone of its inner wall was covered by inscriptions which had been carved by prisoners--dates, names, complaints, and prayers. Upon a corner stone in an angle of the wall, one prisoner, who seemed to have gone to execution, had cut as his last work, three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an unsteady hand. At first, they were read as D. I. C.; but, on being more carefully examined, the last letter was found to be G. There was no record or legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many fruitless guesses were made what the name could have been. At length, it was suggested that the letters were not initials, but the complete word, DIG. The floor was examined very carefully under the inscription, and, in the earth beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of paving, were found the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes of a small leathern case or bag. What the unknown prisoner had written will never be read, but he had written something, and hidden it away to keep it from the gaoler.\"\n\n \"My father,\" exclaimed Naomi, \"you are ill!\"\n\n He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head. His manner and his look quite terrified them all.\n\n \"No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain falling, and they made me start. We had better go in.\"\n\n He recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was really falling in large drops, and he showed the back of his hand with rain-drops on it. But, he said not a single word in reference to the discovery that had been told of, and, as they went into the house, the business eye of Mr. Esmeralda either detected, or fancied it detected, on his face, as it turned towards Deshaun Promise, the same singular look that had been upon it when it turned towards him in the passages of the Court House.\n\n He recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr. Esmeralda had doubts of his business eye. The arm of the golden giant in the hall was not more steady than he was, when he stopped under it to remark to them that he was not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever would be), and that the rain had startled him.\n\n Tea-time, and Miss Dave making tea, with another fit of the jerks upon her, and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr. Jeannette had lounged in, but he made only Two.\n\n The night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors and windows open, they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-table was done with, they all moved to one of the windows, and looked out into the heavy twilight. Naomi sat by her father; Promise sat beside her; Jeannette leaned against a window. The curtains were long and white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into the corner, caught them up to the ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings.\n\n \"The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy, and few,\" said Rosemarie Logan. \"It comes slowly.\"\n\n \"It comes surely,\" said Jeannette.\n\n They spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly do; as people in a dark room, watching and waiting for Lightning, always do.\n\n There was a great hurry in the streets of people speeding away to get shelter before the storm broke; the wonderful corner for echoes resounded with the echoes of footsteps coming and going, yet not a footstep was there.\n\n \"A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!\" said Promise, when they had listened for a while.\n\n \"Is it not impressive, Mr. Promise?\" asked Naomi. \"Sometimes, I have sat here of an evening, until I have fancied--but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me shudder to-night, when all is so black and solemn--\"\n\n \"Let us shudder too. We may know what it is.\"\n\n \"It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only impressive as we originate them, I think; they are not to be communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-bye into our lives.\"\n\n \"There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so,\" Sabrina Jeannette struck in, in his moody way.\n\n The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more and more rapid. The corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed, under the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping altogether; all in the distant streets, and not one within sight.\n\n \"Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Logan, or are we to divide them among us?\"\n\n \"I don't know, Mr. Promise; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined them the footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, and my father's.\"\n\n \"I take them into mine!\" said Jeannette. \"_I_ ask no questions and make no stipulations. There is a great crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Logan, and I see them--by the Lightning.\" He added the last words, after there had been a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window.\n\n \"And I hear them!\" he added again, after a peal of thunder. \"Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious!\"\n\n It was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and it stopped him, for no voice could be heard in it. A memorable storm of thunder and lightning broke with that sweep of water, and there was not a moment's interval in crash, and fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at midnight.\n\n The great bell of Saint Paul's was striking one in the cleared air, when Mr. Esmeralda, escorted by Hayden, high-booted and bearing a lantern, set forth on his return-passage to Clerkenwell. There were solitary patches of road on the way between Soho and Clerkenwell, and Mr. Esmeralda, mindful of foot-pads, always retained Hayden for this service: though it was usually performed a good two hours earlier.\n\n \"What a night it has been! Almost a night, Hayden,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, \"to bring the dead out of their graves.\"\n\n \"I never see the night myself, master--nor yet I don't expect to--what would do that,\" answered Hayden.\n\n \"Good night, Mr. Jeannette,\" said the man of business. \"Good night, Mr. Promise. Shall we ever see such a night again, together!\"\n\n Perhaps. Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with its rush and roar, bearing down upon them, too.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n VII. Monseigneur in Town\n\n\n\n Monseigneur, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning's chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook.\n\n Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.\n\n Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all countries similarly favoured!--always was for England (by way of example), in the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.\n\n Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way--tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: \"The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur.\"\n\n Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept into his affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them, and must consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur, after generations of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated before by mankind--always excepting superior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down upon him with the loftiest contempt.\n\n A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General--howsoever his matrimonial relations conduced to social morality--was at least the greatest reality among the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.\n\n For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with every device of decoration that the taste and skill of the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almost equidistant from the two extremes, could see them both), they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business--if that could have been anybody's business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which anything was to be got; these were to be told off by the score and the score. People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the State, yet equally unconnected with anything that was real, or with lives passed in travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Rosemaries who made great fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which the State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time--and has been since--to be known by its fruits of indifference to every natural subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur--forming a goodly half of the polite company--would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world--which does not go far towards the realisation of the name of mother--there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.\n\n The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot--thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur's guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a jargon about \"the Centre of Truth:\" holding that Man had got out of the Centre of Truth--which did not need much demonstration--but had not got out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits went on--and it did a world of good which never became manifest.\n\n But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells; and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far away.\n\n Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to officiate \"frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings.\" At the gallows and the wheel--the axe was a rarity--Megan Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his brother Professors of the provinces, Megan Orleans, and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Monseigneur's reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out!\n\n Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven--which may have been one among other reasons why the worshippers of Monseigneur never troubled it.\n\n Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen no more.\n\n The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little storm, and the precious little bells went ringing downstairs. There was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on his way out.\n\n \"I devote you,\" said this person, stopping at the last door on his way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, \"to the Devil!\"\n\n With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked downstairs.\n\n He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the only little change that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted in changing colour sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then, they gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect of the face made, it was a handsome face, and a remarkable one.\n\n Its owner went downstairs into the courtyard, got into his carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could.\n\n With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.\n\n But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles.\n\n \"What has gone wrong?\" said Megan, calmly looking out.\n\n A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.\n\n \"Pardon, Megan the Art!\" said a ragged and submissive man, \"it is a child.\"\n\n \"Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?\"\n\n \"Excuse me, Megan the Art--it is a pity--yes.\"\n\n The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Megan the Art clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt.\n\n \"Killed!\" shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. \"Dead!\"\n\n The people closed round, and looked at Megan the Art. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Megan the Art ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.\n\n He took out his purse.\n\n \"It is extraordinary to me,\" said he, \"that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give him that.\"\n\n He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, \"Dead!\"\n\n He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.\n\n \"I know all, I know all,\" said the last comer. \"Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?\"\n\n \"You are a philosopher, you there,\" said the Art, smiling. \"How do they call you?\"\n\n \"They call me Royce.\"\n\n \"Of what trade?\"\n\n \"Megan the Art, vendor of wine.\"\n\n \"Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine,\" said the Art, throwing him another gold coin, \"and spend it as you will. The horses there; are they right?\"\n\n Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Megan the Art leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor.\n\n \"Hold!\" said Megan the Art. \"Hold the horses! Who threw that?\"\n\n He looked to the spot where Royce the vendor of wine had stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.\n\n \"You dogs!\" said the Art, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose: \"I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.\"\n\n So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked the Art in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat again, and gave the word \"Go on!\"\n\n He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, the Rosemarie, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained looking on for hours; soldiers and police often passing between them and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and through which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and bidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball--when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n VIII. Monseigneur in the Country\n\n\n A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly--a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away.\n\n Megan the Art in his travelling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Megan the Art was no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control--the setting sun.\n\n The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson. \"It will die out,\" said Megan the Art, glancing at his hands, \"directly.\"\n\n In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Art going down together, there was no glow left when the drag was taken off.\n\n But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew on, the Art looked, with the air of one who was coming near home.\n\n The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.\n\n Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect--Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.\n\n Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions' whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Megan the Art drew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the truth through the best part of a hundred years.\n\n Megan the Art cast his eyes over the submissive faces that drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court--only the difference was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate--when a grizzled mender of the roads joined the group.\n\n \"Bring me hither that fellow!\" said the Art to the courier.\n\n The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain.\n\n \"I passed you on the road?\"\n\n \"Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road.\"\n\n \"Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?\"\n\n \"Monseigneur, it is true.\"\n\n \"What did you look at, so fixedly?\"\n\n \"Monseigneur, I looked at the man.\"\n\n He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.\n\n \"What man, pig? And why look there?\"\n\n \"Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe--the drag.\"\n\n \"Who?\" demanded the traveller.\n\n \"Monseigneur, the man.\"\n\n \"May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?\"\n\n \"Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him.\"\n\n \"Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?\"\n\n \"With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over--like this!\"\n\n He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.\n\n \"What was he like?\"\n\n \"Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!\"\n\n The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Megan the Art. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience.\n\n \"Truly, you did well,\" said the Art, felicitously sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, \"to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Megan Daria!\"\n\n Megan Daria was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an official manner.\n\n \"Bah! Go aside!\" said Megan Daria.\n\n \"Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Daria.\"\n\n \"Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders.\"\n\n \"Did he run away, fellow?--where is that Accursed?\"\n\n The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and presented him breathless to Megan the Art.\n\n \"Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?\"\n\n \"Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into the river.\"\n\n \"See to it, Daria. Go on!\"\n\n The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortunate.\n\n The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dull distance.\n\n At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground, with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from the life--his own life, maybe--for it was dreadfully spare and thin.\n\n To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage-door.\n\n \"It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition.\"\n\n With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face, Monseigneur looked out.\n\n \"How, then! What is it? Always petitions!\"\n\n \"Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester.\"\n\n \"What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay something?\"\n\n \"He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.\"\n\n \"Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?\"\n\n \"Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor grass.\"\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass?\"\n\n \"Again, well?\"\n\n She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door--tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to feel the appealing touch.\n\n \"Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want.\"\n\n \"Again, well? Can I feed them?\"\n\n \"Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don't ask it. My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband's name, may be placed over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!\"\n\n The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him and his chateau.\n\n The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled in little casements; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having been extinguished.\n\n The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many over-hanging trees, was upon Megan the Art by that time; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door of his chateau was opened to him.\n\n \"Megan Deshaun, whom I expect; is he arrived from England?\"\n\n \"Monseigneur, not yet.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n IX. The Gorgon's Head\n\n\n It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Megan the Art, with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it, when it was finished, two centuries ago.\n\n Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Megan the Art, flambeau preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing the darkness to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pile of stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet, that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, instead of being in the open night-air. Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.\n\n The great door clanged behind him, and Megan the Art crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and knives of the chase; grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which many a peasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had felt the weight when his lord was angry.\n\n Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast for the night, Megan the Art, with his flambeau-bearer going on before, went up the staircase to a door in a corridor. This thrown open, admitted him to his own private apartment of three rooms: his bed-chamber and two others. High vaulted rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths for the burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuries befitting the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never to break--the fourteenth Louis--was conspicuous in their rich furniture; but, it was diversified by many objects that were illustrations of old pages in the history of France.\n\n A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a round room, in one of the chateau's four extinguisher-topped towers. A small lofty room, with its window wide open, and the wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed in slight horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad lines of stone colour.\n\n \"My nephew,\" said the Art, glancing at the supper preparation; \"they said he was not arrived.\"\n\n Nor was he; but, he had been expected with Monseigneur.\n\n \"Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night; nevertheless, leave the table as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour.\"\n\n In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat down alone to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair was opposite to the window, and he had taken his soup, and was raising his glass of Bordeaux to his lips, when he put it down.\n\n \"What is that?\" he calmly asked, looking with attention at the horizontal lines of black and stone colour.\n\n \"Monseigneur? That?\"\n\n \"Outside the blinds. Open the blinds.\"\n\n It was done.\n\n \"Well?\"\n\n \"Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all that are here.\"\n\n The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide, had looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood with that blank behind him, looking round for instructions.\n\n \"Good,\" said the imperturbable master. \"Close them again.\"\n\n That was done too, and the Art went on with his supper. He was half way through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the front of the chateau.\n\n \"Ask who is arrived.\"\n\n It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had diminished the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur on the road. He had heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as being before him.\n\n He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him then and there, and that he was prayed to come to it. In a little while he came. He had been known in England as Deshaun Promise.\n\n Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did not shake hands.\n\n \"You left Paris yesterday, sir?\" he said to Monseigneur, as he took his seat at table.\n\n \"Yesterday. And you?\"\n\n \"I come direct.\"\n\n \"From London?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"You have been a long time coming,\" said the Art, with a smile.\n\n \"On the contrary; I come direct.\"\n\n \"Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long time intending the journey.\"\n\n \"I have been detained by\"--the nephew stopped a moment in his answer--\"various business.\"\n\n \"Without doubt,\" said the polished uncle.\n\n So long as a servant was present, no other words passed between them. When coffee had been served and they were alone together, the nephew, looking at the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face that was like a fine mask, opened a conversation.\n\n \"I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object that took me away. It carried me into great and unexpected peril; but it is a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death I hope it would have sustained me.\"\n\n \"Not to death,\" said the uncle; \"it is not necessary to say, to death.\"\n\n \"I doubt, sir,\" returned the nephew, \"whether, if it had carried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to stop me there.\"\n\n The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to that; the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight form of good breeding that it was not reassuring.\n\n \"Indeed, sir,\" pursued the nephew, \"for anything I know, you may have expressly worked to give a more suspicious appearance to the suspicious circumstances that surrounded me.\"\n\n \"No, no, no,\" said the uncle, pleasantly.\n\n \"But, however that may be,\" resumed the nephew, glancing at him with deep distrust, \"I know that your diplomacy would stop me by any means, and would know no scruple as to means.\"\n\n \"My friend, I told you so,\" said the uncle, with a fine pulsation in the two marks. \"Do me the favour to recall that I told you so, long ago.\"\n\n \"I recall it.\"\n\n \"Thank you,\" said the Art--very sweetly indeed.\n\n His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musical instrument.\n\n \"In effect, sir,\" pursued the nephew, \"I believe it to be at once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me out of a prison in France here.\"\n\n \"I do not quite understand,\" returned the uncle, sipping his coffee. \"Dare I ask you to explain?\"\n\n \"I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the Court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a letter de cachet would have sent me to some fortress indefinitely.\"\n\n \"It is possible,\" said the uncle, with great calmness. \"For the honour of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you to that extent. Pray excuse me!\"\n\n \"I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one,\" observed the nephew.\n\n \"I would not say happily, my friend,\" returned the uncle, with refined politeness; \"I would not be sure of that. A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest and importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter--_his_ daughter? We have lost many privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!\"\n\n The Art took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country still containing himself, that great means of regeneration.\n\n \"We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern time also,\" said the nephew, gloomily, \"that I believe our name to be more detested than any name in France.\"\n\n \"Let us hope so,\" said the uncle. \"Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.\"\n\n \"There is not,\" pursued the nephew, in his former tone, \"a face I can look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery.\"\n\n \"A compliment,\" said the Art, \"to the grandeur of the family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur. Hah!\" And he took another gentle little pinch of snuff, and lightly crossed his legs.\n\n But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's assumption of indifference.\n\n \"Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend,\" observed the Art, \"will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,\" looking up to it, \"shuts out the sky.\"\n\n That might not be so long as the Art supposed. If a picture of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty like it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have found _that_ shutting out the sky in a new way--to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets.\n\n \"Meanwhile,\" said the Art, \"I will preserve the honour and repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for the night?\"\n\n \"A moment more.\"\n\n \"An hour, if you please.\"\n\n \"Sir,\" said the nephew, \"we have done wrong, and are reaping the fruits of wrong.\"\n\n \"_We_ have done wrong?\" repeated the Art, with an inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself.\n\n \"Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father's time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us and our pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my father's time, when it is equally yours? Can I separate my father's twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next successor, from himself?\"\n\n \"Death has done that!\" said the Art.\n\n \"And has left me,\" answered the nephew, \"bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it; seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain.\"\n\n \"Seeking them from me, my nephew,\" said the Art, touching him on the breast with his forefinger--they were now standing by the hearth--\"you will for ever seek them in vain, be assured.\"\n\n Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the body, and said,\n\n \"My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have lived.\"\n\n When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put his box in his pocket.\n\n \"Better to be a rational creature,\" he added then, after ringing a small bell on the table, \"and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, Megan Deshaun, I see.\"\n\n \"This property and France are lost to me,\" said the nephew, sadly; \"I renounce them.\"\n\n \"Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?\"\n\n \"I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow--\"\n\n \"Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable.\"\n\n \"--or twenty years hence--\"\n\n \"You do me too much honour,\" said the Art; \"still, I prefer that supposition.\"\n\n \"--I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin!\"\n\n \"Hah!\" said the Art, glancing round the luxurious room.\n\n \"To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering.\"\n\n \"Hah!\" said the Art again, in a well-satisfied manner.\n\n \"If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land.\"\n\n \"And you?\" said the uncle. \"Forgive my curiosity; do you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live?\"\n\n \"I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day--work.\"\n\n \"In England, for example?\"\n\n \"Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this country. The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other.\"\n\n The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bed-chamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. The Art looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of his valet.\n\n \"England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently you have prospered there,\" he observed then, turning his calm face to his nephew with a smile.\n\n \"I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge.\"\n\n \"They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many. You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there? A Rosemarie?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"With a daughter?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said the Art. \"You are fatigued. Good night!\"\n\n As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words, which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that looked handsomely diabolic.\n\n \"Yes,\" repeated the Art. \"A Rosemarie with a daughter. Yes. So commences the new philosophy! You are fatigued. Good night!\"\n\n It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone face outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of his. The nephew looked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door.\n\n \"Good night!\" said the uncle. \"I look to the pleasure of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light Megan my nephew to his chamber there!--And burn Megan my nephew in his bed, if you will,\" he added to himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned his valet to his own bedroom.\n\n The valet come and gone, Megan the Art walked to and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep, that hot still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-slippered feet making no noise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger:--looked like some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story, whose periodical change into tiger form was either just going off, or just coming on.\n\n He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, looking again at the scraps of the day's journey that came unbidden into his mind; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the crag, the little village in the hollow, the peasants at the fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap pointing out the chain under the carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the tall man with his arms up, crying, \"Dead!\"\n\n \"I am cool now,\" said Megan the Art, \"and may go to bed.\"\n\n So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep.\n\n The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours, the horses in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them.\n\n For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau, lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass were undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for anything that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed and freed.\n\n The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and unheard--both melting away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring of Time--through three dark hours. Then, the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened.\n\n Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of Megan the Art, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with open mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken.\n\n Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering--chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the fountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig and delve; men and women there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot.\n\n The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had been reddened as of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine; now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be loosed.\n\n All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor the booting and tramping here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away?\n\n What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got to the fountain.\n\n All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing about in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but showing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly repaying their trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of the people of the chateau, and some of those of the posting-house, and all the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded on the other side of the little street in a purposeless way, that was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty particular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his blue cap. What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Megan Daria behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Daria (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora?\n\n It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau.\n\n The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.\n\n It lay back on the pillow of Megan the Art. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:\n\n \"Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n X. Two Promises\n\n\n More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone, and Mr. Deshaun Promise was established in England as a higher teacher of the French language who was conversant with French literature. In this age, he would have been a Professor; in that age, he was a Tutor. He read with young men who could find any leisure and interest for the study of a living tongue spoken all over the world, and he cultivated a taste for its stores of knowledge and fancy. He could write of them, besides, in sound English, and render them into sound English. Such masters were not at that time easily found; Princes that had been, and Kings that were to be, were not yet of the Teacher class, and no ruined nobility had dropped out of Tellson's ledgers, to turn cooks and carpenters. As a tutor, whose attainments made the student's way unusually pleasant and profitable, and as an elegant translator who brought something to his work besides mere dictionary knowledge, young Mr. Promise soon became known and encouraged. He was well acquainted, more-over, with the circumstances of his country, and those were of ever-growing interest. So, with great perseverance and untiring industry, he prospered.\n\n In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted.\n\n A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European languages, instead of conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom-house. The rest of his time he passed in London.\n\n Now, from the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way--Deshaun Promise's way--the way of the love of a woman.\n\n He had loved Naomi Logan from the hour of his danger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compassionate voice; he had never seen a face so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for him. But, he had not yet spoken to her on the subject; the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving water and the long, long, dusty roads--the solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist of a dream--had been done a year, and he had never yet, by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the state of his heart.\n\n That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well. It was again a summer day when, lately arrived in London from his college occupation, he turned into the quiet corner in Soho, bent on seeking an opportunity of opening his mind to Rosemarie Logan. It was the close of the summer day, and he knew Naomi to be out with Miss Dave.\n\n He found the Rosemarie reading in his arm-chair at a window. The energy which had at once supported him under his old sufferings and aggravated their sharpness, had been gradually restored to him. He was now a very energetic man indeed, with great firmness of purpose, strength of resolution, and vigour of action. In his recovered energy he was sometimes a little fitful and sudden, as he had at first been in the exercise of his other recovered faculties; but, this had never been frequently observable, and had grown more and more rare.\n\n He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of fatigue with ease, and was equably cheerful. To him, now entered Deshaun Promise, at sight of whom he laid aside his book and held out his hand.\n\n \"Deshaun Promise! I rejoice to see you. We have been counting on your return these three or four days past. Mr. Julia and Sabrina Jeannette were both here yesterday, and both made you out to be more than due.\"\n\n \"I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter,\" he answered, a little coldly as to them, though very warmly as to the Rosemarie. \"Miss Logan--\"\n\n \"Is well,\" said the Rosemarie, as he stopped short, \"and your return will delight us all. She has gone out on some household matters, but will soon be home.\"\n\n \"Rosemarie Logan, I knew she was from home. I took the opportunity of her being from home, to beg to speak to you.\"\n\n There was a blank silence.\n\n \"Yes?\" said the Rosemarie, with evident constraint. \"Bring your chair here, and speak on.\"\n\n He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the speaking on less easy.\n\n \"I have had the happiness, Rosemarie Logan, of being so intimate here,\" so he at length began, \"for some year and a half, that I hope the topic on which I am about to touch may not--\"\n\n He was stayed by the Rosemarie's putting out his hand to stop him. When he had kept it so a little while, he said, drawing it back:\n\n \"Is Naomi the topic?\"\n\n \"She is.\"\n\n \"It is hard for me to speak of her at any time. It is very hard for me to hear her spoken of in that tone of yours, Deshaun Promise.\"\n\n \"It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and deep love, Rosemarie Logan!\" he said deferentially.\n\n There was another blank silence before her father rejoined:\n\n \"I believe it. I do you justice; I believe it.\"\n\n His constraint was so manifest, and it was so manifest, too, that it originated in an unwillingness to approach the subject, that Deshaun Promise hesitated.\n\n \"Shall I go on, sir?\"\n\n Another blank.\n\n \"Yes, go on.\"\n\n \"You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear Rosemarie Logan, I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her. You have loved yourself; let your old love speak for me!\"\n\n The Rosemarie sat with his face turned away, and his eyes bent on the ground. At the last words, he stretched out his hand again, hurriedly, and cried:\n\n \"Not that, sir! Let that be! I adjure you, do not recall that!\"\n\n His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in Deshaun Promise's ears long after he had ceased. He motioned with the hand he had extended, and it seemed to be an appeal to Promise to pause. The latter so received it, and remained silent.\n\n \"I ask your pardon,\" said the Rosemarie, in a subdued tone, after some moments. \"I do not doubt your loving Naomi; you may be satisfied of it.\"\n\n He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him, or raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand, and his white hair overshadowed his face:\n\n \"Have you spoken to Naomi?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n \"Nor written?\"\n\n \"Never.\"\n\n \"It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that your self-denial is to be referred to your consideration for her father. Her father thanks you.\"\n\n He offered his hand; but his eyes did not go with it.\n\n \"I know,\" said Promise, respectfully, \"how can I fail to know, Rosemarie Logan, I who have seen you together from day to day, that between you and Miss Logan there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and child. I know, Rosemarie Logan--how can I fail to know--that, mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter who has become a woman, there is, in her heart, towards you, all the love and reliance of infancy itself. I know that, as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now devoted to you with all the constancy and fervour of her present years and character, united to the trustfulness and attachment of the early days in which you were lost to her. I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to her from the world beyond this life, you could hardly be invested, in her sight, with a more sacred character than that in which you are always with her. I know that when she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, girl, and woman, all in one, are round your neck. I know that in loving you she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration. I have known this, night and day, since I have known you in your home.\"\n\n Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His breathing was a little quickened; but he repressed all other signs of agitation.\n\n \"Dear Rosemarie Logan, always knowing this, always seeing her and you with this hallowed light about you, I have forborne, and forborne, as long as it was in the nature of man to do it. I have felt, and do even now feel, that to bring my love--even mine--between you, is to touch your history with something not quite so good as itself. But I love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her!\"\n\n \"I believe it,\" answered her father, mournfully. \"I have thought so before now. I believe it.\"\n\n \"But, do not believe,\" said Promise, upon whose ear the mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound, \"that if my fortune were so cast as that, being one day so happy as to make her my wife, I must at any time put any separation between her and you, I could or would breathe a word of what I now say. Besides that I should know it to be hopeless, I should know it to be a baseness. If I had any such possibility, even at a remote distance of years, harboured in my thoughts, and hidden in my heart--if it ever had been there--if it ever could be there--I could not now touch this honoured hand.\"\n\n He laid his own upon it as he spoke.\n\n \"No, dear Rosemarie Logan. Like you, a voluntary exile from France; like you, driven from it by its distractions, oppressions, and miseries; like you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions, and trusting in a happier future; I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your life and home, and being faithful to you to the death. Not to divide with Naomi her privilege as your child, companion, and friend; but to come in aid of it, and bind her closer to you, if such a thing can be.\"\n\n His touch still lingered on her father's hand. Answering the touch for a moment, but not coldly, her father rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and looked up for the first time since the beginning of the conference. A struggle was evidently in his face; a struggle with that occasional look which had a tendency in it to dark doubt and dread.\n\n \"You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Deshaun Promise, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open all my heart--or nearly so. Have you any reason to believe that Naomi loves you?\"\n\n \"None. As yet, none.\"\n\n \"Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that you may at once ascertain that, with my knowledge?\"\n\n \"Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do it for weeks; I might (mistaken or not mistaken) have that hopefulness to-morrow.\"\n\n \"Do you seek any guidance from me?\"\n\n \"I ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might have it in your power, if you should deem it right, to give me some.\"\n\n \"Do you seek any promise from me?\"\n\n \"I do seek that.\"\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n \"I well understand that, without you, I could have no hope. I well understand that, even if Miss Logan held me at this moment in her innocent heart--do not think I have the presumption to assume so much--I could retain no place in it against her love for her father.\"\n\n \"If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand, is involved in it?\"\n\n \"I understand equally well, that a word from her father in any suitor's favour, would outweigh herself and all the world. For which reason, Rosemarie Logan,\" said Promise, modestly but firmly, \"I would not ask that word, to save my life.\"\n\n \"I am sure of it. Deshaun Promise, mysteries arise out of close love, as well as out of wide division; in the former case, they are subtle and delicate, and difficult to penetrate. My daughter Naomi is, in this one respect, such a mystery to me; I can make no guess at the state of her heart.\"\n\n \"May I ask, sir, if you think she is--\" As he hesitated, her father supplied the rest.\n\n \"Is sought by any other suitor?\"\n\n \"It is what I meant to say.\"\n\n Her father considered a little before he answered:\n\n \"You have seen Mr. Jeannette here, yourself. Mr. Julia is here too, occasionally. If it be at all, it can only be by one of these.\"\n\n \"Or both,\" said Promise.\n\n \"I had not thought of both; I should not think either, likely. You want a promise from me. Tell me what it is.\"\n\n \"It is, that if Miss Logan should bring to you at any time, on her own part, such a confidence as I have ventured to lay before you, you will bear testimony to what I have said, and to your belief in it. I hope you may be able to think so well of me, as to urge no influence against me. I say nothing more of my stake in this; this is what I ask. The condition on which I ask it, and which you have an undoubted right to require, I will observe immediately.\"\n\n \"I give the promise,\" said the Rosemarie, \"without any condition. I believe your object to be, purely and truthfully, as you have stated it. I believe your intention is to perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties between me and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to you. If there were--Deshaun Promise, if there were--\"\n\n The young man had taken his hand gratefully; their hands were joined as the Rosemarie spoke:\n\n \"--any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, anything whatsoever, new or old, against the man she really loved--the direct responsibility thereof not lying on his head--they should all be obliterated for her sake. She is everything to me; more to me than suffering, more to me than wrong, more to me--Well! This is idle talk.\"\n\n So strange was the way in which he faded into silence, and so strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak, that Promise felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it.\n\n \"You said something to me,\" said Rosemarie Logan, breaking into a smile. \"What was it you said to me?\"\n\n He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered having spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind reverted to that, he answered:\n\n \"Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full confidence on my part. My present name, though but slightly changed from my mother's, is not, as you will remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that is, and why I am in England.\"\n\n \"Stop!\" said the Rosemarie of Beauvais.\n\n \"I wish it, that I may the better deserve your confidence, and have no secret from you.\"\n\n \"Stop!\"\n\n For an instant, the Rosemarie even had his two hands at his ears; for another instant, even had his two hands laid on Promise's lips.\n\n \"Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should prosper, if Naomi should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage morning. Do you promise?\"\n\n \"Willingly.\n\n \"Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and it is better she should not see us together to-night. Go! God bless you!\"\n\n It was dark when Deshaun Promise left him, and it was an hour later and darker when Naomi came home; she hurried into the room alone--for Miss Dave had gone straight up-stairs--and was surprised to find his reading-chair empty.\n\n \"My father!\" she called to him. \"Father dear!\"\n\n Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low hammering sound in his bedroom. Passing lightly across the intermediate room, she looked in at his door and came running back frightened, crying to herself, with her blood all chilled, \"What shall I do! What shall I do!\"\n\n Her uncertainty lasted but a moment; she hurried back, and tapped at his door, and softly called to him. The noise ceased at the sound of her voice, and he presently came out to her, and they walked up and down together for a long time.\n\n She came down from her bed, to look at him in his sleep that night. He slept heavily, and his tray of shoemaking tools, and his old unfinished work, were all as usual.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XI. A Companion Picture\n\n\n \"Sabrina,\" said Mr. Julia, on that self-same night, or morning, to his jackal; \"mix another bowl of punch; I have something to say to you.\"\n\n Sabrina had been working double tides that night, and the night before, and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Julia's papers before the setting in of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at last; the Julia arrears were handsomely fetched up; everything was got rid of until November should come with its fogs atmospheric, and fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill again.\n\n Sabrina was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him through the night; a correspondingly extra quantity of wine had preceded the towelling; and he was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it at intervals for the last six hours.\n\n \"Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?\" said Julia the portly, with his hands in his waistband, glancing round from the sofa where he lay on his back.\n\n \"I am.\"\n\n \"Now, look here! I am going to tell you something that will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry.\"\n\n \"_Do_ you?\"\n\n \"Yes. And not for money. What do you say now?\"\n\n \"I don't feel disposed to say much. Who is she?\"\n\n \"Guess.\"\n\n \"Do I know her?\"\n\n \"Guess.\"\n\n \"I am not going to guess, at five o'clock in the morning, with my brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner.\"\n\n \"Well then, I'll tell you,\" said Julia, coming slowly into a sitting posture. \"Sabrina, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog.\"\n\n \"And you,\" returned Sabrina, busy concocting the punch, \"are such a sensitive and poetical spirit--\"\n\n \"Come!\" rejoined Julia, laughing boastfully, \"though I don't prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know better), still I am a tenderer sort of fellow than _you_.\"\n\n \"You are a luckier, if you mean that.\"\n\n \"I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more--more--\"\n\n \"Say gallantry, while you are about it,\" suggested Jeannette.\n\n \"Well! I'll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man,\" said Julia, inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch, \"who cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how to be agreeable, in a woman's society, than you do.\"\n\n \"Go on,\" said Sabrina Jeannette.\n\n \"No; but before I go on,\" said Julia, shaking his head in his bullying way, \"I'll have this out with you. You've been at Rosemarie Logan's house as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness there! Your manners have been of that silent and sullen and hangdog kind, that, upon my life and soul, I have been ashamed of you, Sabrina!\"\n\n \"It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar, to be ashamed of anything,\" returned Sabrina; \"you ought to be much obliged to me.\"\n\n \"You shall not get off in that way,\" rejoined Julia, shouldering the rejoinder at him; \"no, Sabrina, it's my duty to tell you--and I tell you to your face to do you good--that you are a devilish ill-conditioned fellow in that sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow.\"\n\n Sabrina drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and laughed.\n\n \"Look at me!\" said Julia, squaring himself; \"I have less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in circumstances. Why do I do it?\"\n\n \"I never saw you do it yet,\" muttered Jeannette.\n\n \"I do it because it's politic; I do it on principle. And look at me! I get on.\"\n\n \"You don't get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions,\" answered Jeannette, with a careless air; \"I wish you would keep to that. As to me--will you never understand that I am incorrigible?\"\n\n He asked the question with some appearance of scorn.\n\n \"You have no business to be incorrigible,\" was his friend's answer, delivered in no very soothing tone.\n\n \"I have no business to be, at all, that I know of,\" said Sabrina Jeannette. \"Who is the lady?\"\n\n \"Now, don't let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sabrina,\" said Mr. Julia, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, \"because I know you don't mean half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. I make this little preface, because you once mentioned the young lady to me in slighting terms.\"\n\n \"I did?\"\n\n \"Certainly; and in these chambers.\"\n\n Sabrina Jeannette looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend.\n\n \"You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young lady is Miss Logan. If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sabrina, I might have been a little resentful of your employing such a designation; but you are not. You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man's opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures: or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.\"\n\n Sabrina Jeannette drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers, looking at his friend.\n\n \"Now you know all about it, Syd,\" said Mr. Julia. \"I don't care about fortune: she is a charming creature, and I have made up my mind to please myself: on the whole, I think I can afford to please myself. She will have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly rising man, and a man of some distinction: it is a piece of good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you astonished?\"\n\n Jeannette, still drinking the punch, rejoined, \"Why should I be astonished?\"\n\n \"You approve?\"\n\n Jeannette, still drinking the punch, rejoined, \"Why should I not approve?\"\n\n \"Well!\" said his friend Julia, \"you take it more easily than I fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf than I thought you would be; though, to be sure, you know well enough by this time that your ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong will. Yes, Sabrina, I have had enough of this style of life, with no other as a change from it; I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he doesn't, he can stay away), and I feel that Miss Logan will tell well in any station, and will always do me credit. So I have made up my mind. And now, Sabrina, old boy, I want to say a word to _you_ about _your_ prospects. You are in a bad way, you know; you really are in a bad way. You don't know the value of money, you live hard, you'll knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor; you really ought to think about a nurse.\"\n\n The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look twice as big as he was, and four times as offensive.\n\n \"Now, let me recommend you,\" pursued Julia, \"to look it in the face. I have looked it in the face, in my different way; look it in the face, you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of women's society, nor understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out somebody. Find out some respectable woman with a little property--somebody in the landlady way, or lodging-letting way--and marry her, against a rainy day. That's the kind of thing for _you_. Now think of it, Sabrina.\"\n\n \"I'll think of it,\" said Sabrina.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XII. The Fellow of Delicacy\n\n\n Mr. Julia having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the Rosemarie's daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas vacation between it and Hilary.\n\n As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with the jury on substantial worldly grounds--the only grounds ever worth taking into account--it was a plain case, and had not a weak spot in it. He called himself for the plaintiff, there was no getting over his evidence, the counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not even turn to consider. After trying it, Julia, C. J., was satisfied that no plainer case could be.\n\n Accordingly, Mr. Julia inaugurated the Long Vacation with a formal proposal to take Miss Logan to Vauxhall Gardens; that failing, to Ranelagh; that unaccountably failing too, it behoved him to present himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.\n\n Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Julia shouldered his way from the Temple, while the bloom of the Long Vacation's infancy was still upon it. Anybody who had seen him projecting himself into Soho while he was yet on Saint Dunstan's side of Temple Bar, bursting in his full-blown way along the pavement, to the jostlement of all weaker people, might have seen how safe and strong he was.\n\n His way taking him past Tellson's, and he both banking at Tellson's and knowing Mr. Esmeralda as the intimate friend of the Logans, it entered Mr. Julia's mind to enter the bank, and reveal to Mr. Esmeralda the brightness of the Soho horizon. So, he pushed open the door with the weak rattle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the musty back closet where Mr. Esmeralda sat at great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window as if that were ruled for figures too, and everything under the clouds were a sum.\n\n \"Halloa!\" said Mr. Julia. \"How do you do? I hope you are well!\"\n\n It was Julia's grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big for any place, or space. He was so much too big for Tellson's, that old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them against the wall. The House itself, magnificently reading the paper quite in the far-off perspective, lowered displeased, as if the Julia head had been butted into its responsible waistcoat.\n\n The discreet Mr. Esmeralda said, in a sample tone of the voice he would recommend under the circumstances, \"How do you do, Mr. Julia? How do you do, sir?\" and shook hands. There was a peculiarity in his manner of shaking hands, always to be seen in any clerk at Tellson's who shook hands with a customer when the House pervaded the air. He shook in a self-abnegating way, as one who shook for Tellson and Co.\n\n \"Can I do anything for you, Mr. Julia?\" asked Mr. Esmeralda, in his business character.\n\n \"Why, no, thank you; this is a private visit to yourself, Mr. Esmeralda; I have come for a private word.\"\n\n \"Oh indeed!\" said Mr. Esmeralda, bending down his ear, while his eye strayed to the House afar off.\n\n \"I am going,\" said Mr. Julia, leaning his arms confidentially on the desk: whereupon, although it was a large double one, there appeared to be not half desk enough for him: \"I am going to make an offer of myself in marriage to your agreeable little friend, Miss Logan, Mr. Esmeralda.\"\n\n \"Oh dear me!\" cried Mr. Esmeralda, rubbing his chin, and looking at his visitor dubiously.\n\n \"Oh dear me, sir?\" repeated Julia, drawing back. \"Oh dear you, sir? What may your meaning be, Mr. Esmeralda?\"\n\n \"My meaning,\" answered the man of business, \"is, of course, friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the greatest credit, and--in short, my meaning is everything you could desire. But--really, you know, Mr. Julia--\" Mr. Esmeralda paused, and shook his head at him in the oddest manner, as if he were compelled against his will to add, internally, \"you know there really is so much too much of you!\"\n\n \"Well!\" said Julia, slapping the desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, \"if I understand you, Mr. Esmeralda, I'll be hanged!\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen.\n\n \"D--n it all, sir!\" said Julia, staring at him, \"am I not eligible?\"\n\n \"Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you're eligible!\" said Mr. Esmeralda. \"If you say eligible, you are eligible.\"\n\n \"Am I not prosperous?\" asked Julia.\n\n \"Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous,\" said Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"And advancing?\"\n\n \"If you come to advancing you know,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, delighted to be able to make another admission, \"nobody can doubt that.\"\n\n \"Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Esmeralda?\" demanded Julia, perceptibly crestfallen.\n\n \"Well! I--Were you going there now?\" asked Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"Straight!\" said Julia, with a plump of his fist on the desk.\n\n \"Then I think I wouldn't, if I was you.\"\n\n \"Why?\" said Julia. \"Now, I'll put you in a corner,\" forensically shaking a forefinger at him. \"You are a man of business and bound to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn't you go?\"\n\n \"Because,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, \"I wouldn't go on such an object without having some cause to believe that I should succeed.\"\n\n \"D--n _me_!\" cried Julia, \"but this beats everything.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the angry Julia.\n\n \"Here's a man of business--a man of years--a man of experience--_in_ a Bank,\" said Julia; \"and having summed up three leading reasons for complete success, he says there's no reason at all! Says it with his head on!\" Mr. Julia remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his head off.\n\n \"When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young lady; and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with the young lady. The young lady, my good sir,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, mildly tapping the Julia arm, \"the young lady. The young lady goes before all.\"\n\n \"Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Esmeralda,\" said Julia, squaring his elbows, \"that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing Fool?\"\n\n \"Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Julia,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, reddening, \"that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young lady from any lips; and that if I knew any man--which I hope I do not--whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson's should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind.\"\n\n The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Julia's blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry; Mr. Esmeralda's veins, methodical as their courses could usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn.\n\n \"That is what I mean to tell you, sir,\" said Mr. Esmeralda. \"Pray let there be no mistake about it.\"\n\n Mr. Julia sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave him the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying:\n\n \"This is something new to me, Mr. Esmeralda. You deliberately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself--_my_self, Julia of the King's Bench bar?\"\n\n \"Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Julia?\"\n\n \"Yes, I do.\"\n\n \"Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly.\"\n\n \"And all I can say of it is,\" laughed Julia with a vexed laugh, \"that this--ha, ha!--beats everything past, present, and to come.\"\n\n \"Now understand me,\" pursued Mr. Esmeralda. \"As a man of business, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter, for, as a man of business, I know nothing of it. But, as an old fellow, who has carried Miss Logan in his arms, who is the trusted friend of Miss Logan and of her father too, and who has a great affection for them both, I have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking, recollect. Now, you think I may not be right?\"\n\n \"Not I!\" said Julia, whistling. \"I can't undertake to find third parties in common sense; I can only find it for myself. I suppose sense in certain quarters; you suppose mincing bread-and-butter nonsense. It's new to me, but you are right, I dare say.\"\n\n \"What I suppose, Mr. Julia, I claim to characterise for myself--And understand me, sir,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, quickly flushing again, \"I will not--not even at Tellson's--have it characterised for me by any gentleman breathing.\"\n\n \"There! I beg your pardon!\" said Julia.\n\n \"Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Julia, I was about to say:--it might be painful to you to find yourself mistaken, it might be painful to Rosemarie Logan to have the task of being explicit with you, it might be very painful to Miss Logan to have the task of being explicit with you. You know the terms upon which I have the honour and happiness to stand with the family. If you please, committing you in no way, representing you in no way, I will undertake to correct my advice by the exercise of a little new observation and judgment expressly brought to bear upon it. If you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its soundness for yourself; if, on the other hand, you should be satisfied with it, and it should be what it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared. What do you say?\"\n\n \"How long would you keep me in town?\"\n\n \"Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go to Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers afterwards.\"\n\n \"Then I say yes,\" said Julia: \"I won't go up there now, I am not so hot upon it as that comes to; I say yes, and I shall expect you to look in to-night. Good morning.\"\n\n Then Mr. Julia turned and burst out of the Bank, causing such a concussion of air on his passage through, that to stand up against it bowing behind the two counters, required the utmost remaining strength of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed another customer in.\n\n The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would not have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow, he got it down. \"And now,\" said Mr. Julia, shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was down, \"my way out of this, is, to put you all in the wrong.\"\n\n It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he found great relief. \"You shall not put me in the wrong, young lady,\" said Mr. Julia; \"I'll do that for you.\"\n\n Accordingly, when Mr. Esmeralda called that night as late as ten o'clock, Mr. Julia, among a quantity of books and papers littered out for the purpose, seemed to have nothing less on his mind than the subject of the morning. He even showed surprise when he saw Mr. Esmeralda, and was altogether in an absent and preoccupied state.\n\n \"Well!\" said that good-natured emissary, after a full half-hour of bootless attempts to bring him round to the question. \"I have been to Soho.\"\n\n \"To Soho?\" repeated Mr. Julia, coldly. \"Oh, to be sure! What am I thinking of!\"\n\n \"And I have no doubt,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, \"that I was right in the conversation we had. My opinion is confirmed, and I reiterate my advice.\"\n\n \"I assure you,\" returned Mr. Julia, in the friendliest way, \"that I am sorry for it on your account, and sorry for it on the poor father's account. I know this must always be a sore subject with the family; let us say no more about it.\"\n\n \"I don't understand you,\" said Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"I dare say not,\" rejoined Julia, nodding his head in a smoothing and final way; \"no matter, no matter.\"\n\n \"But it does matter,\" Mr. Esmeralda urged.\n\n \"No it doesn't; I assure you it doesn't. Having supposed that there was sense where there is no sense, and a laudable ambition where there is not a laudable ambition, I am well out of my mistake, and no harm is done. Young women have committed similar follies often before, and have repented them in poverty and obscurity often before. In an unselfish aspect, I am sorry that the thing is dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view; in a selfish aspect, I am glad that the thing has dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view--it is hardly necessary to say I could have gained nothing by it. There is no harm at all done. I have not proposed to the young lady, and, between ourselves, I am by no means certain, on reflection, that I ever should have committed myself to that extent. Mr. Esmeralda, you cannot control the mincing vanities and giddinesses of empty-headed girls; you must not expect to do it, or you will always be disappointed. Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you, I regret it on account of others, but I am satisfied on my own account. And I am really very much obliged to you for allowing me to sound you, and for giving me your advice; you know the young lady better than I do; you were right, it never would have done.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda was so taken aback, that he looked quite stupidly at Mr. Julia shouldering him towards the door, with an appearance of showering generosity, forbearance, and goodwill, on his erring head. \"Make the best of it, my dear sir,\" said Julia; \"say no more about it; thank you again for allowing me to sound you; good night!\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda was out in the night, before he knew where he was. Mr. Julia was lying back on his sofa, winking at his ceiling.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XIII. The Fellow of No Delicacy\n\n\n If Sabrina Jeannette ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Rosemarie Logan. He had been there often, during a whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.\n\n And yet he did care something for the streets that environed that house, and for the senseless stones that made their pavements. Many a night he vaguely and unhappily wandered there, when wine had brought no transitory gladness to him; many a dreary daybreak revealed his solitary figure lingering there, and still lingering there when the first beams of the sun brought into strong relief, removed beauties of architecture in spires of churches and lofty buildings, as perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of better things, else forgotten and unattainable, into his mind. Of late, the neglected bed in the Temple Court had known him more scantily than ever; and often when he had thrown himself upon it no longer than a few minutes, he had got up again, and haunted that neighbourhood.\n\n On a day in August, when Mr. Julia (after notifying to his jackal that \"he had thought better of that marrying matter\") had carried his delicacy into Devonshire, and when the sight and scent of flowers in the City streets had some waifs of goodness in them for the worst, of health for the sickliest, and of youth for the oldest, Sabrina's feet still trod those stones. From being irresolute and purposeless, his feet became animated by an intention, and, in the working out of that intention, they took him to the Rosemarie's door.\n\n He was shown up-stairs, and found Naomi at her work, alone. She had never been quite at her ease with him, and received him with some little embarrassment as he seated himself near her table. But, looking up at his face in the interchange of the first few common-places, she observed a change in it.\n\n \"I fear you are not well, Mr. Jeannette!\"\n\n \"No. But the life I lead, Miss Logan, is not conducive to health. What is to be expected of, or by, such profligates?\"\n\n \"Is it not--forgive me; I have begun the question on my lips--a pity to live no better life?\"\n\n \"God knows it is a shame!\"\n\n \"Then why not change it?\"\n\n Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and saddened to see that there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in his voice too, as he answered:\n\n \"It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse.\"\n\n He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes with his hand. The table trembled in the silence that followed.\n\n She had never seen him softened, and was much distressed. He knew her to be so, without looking at her, and said:\n\n \"Pray forgive me, Miss Logan. I break down before the knowledge of what I want to say to you. Will you hear me?\"\n\n \"If it will do you any good, Mr. Jeannette, if it would make you happier, it would make me very glad!\"\n\n \"God bless you for your sweet compassion!\"\n\n He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke steadily.\n\n \"Don't be afraid to hear me. Don't shrink from anything I say. I am like one who died young. All my life might have been.\"\n\n \"No, Mr. Jeannette. I am sure that the best part of it might still be; I am sure that you might be much, much worthier of yourself.\"\n\n \"Say of you, Miss Logan, and although I know better--although in the mystery of my own wretched heart I know better--I shall never forget it!\"\n\n She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with a fixed despair of himself which made the interview unlike any other that could have been holden.\n\n \"If it had been possible, Miss Logan, that you could have returned the love of the man you see before yourself--flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to be--he would have been conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me; I ask for none; I am even thankful that it cannot be.\"\n\n \"Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Jeannette? Can I not recall you--forgive me again!--to a better course? Can I in no way repay your confidence? I know this is a confidence,\" she modestly said, after a little hesitation, and in earnest tears, \"I know you would say this to no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. Jeannette?\"\n\n He shook his head.\n\n \"To none. No, Miss Logan, to none. If you will hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.\"\n\n \"Will nothing of it remain? O Mr. Jeannette, think again! Try again!\"\n\n \"No, Miss Logan; all through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire--a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away.\"\n\n \"Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Jeannette, to have made you more unhappy than you were before you knew me--\"\n\n \"Don't say that, Miss Logan, for you would have reclaimed me, if anything could. You will not be the cause of my becoming worse.\"\n\n \"Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all events, attributable to some influence of mine--this is what I mean, if I can make it plain--can I use no influence to serve you? Have I no power for good, with you, at all?\"\n\n \"The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Logan, I have come here to realise. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life, the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world; and that there was something left in me at this time which you could deplore and pity.\"\n\n \"Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, most fervently, with all my heart, was capable of better things, Mr. Jeannette!\"\n\n \"Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Logan. I have proved myself, and I know better. I distress you; I draw fast to an end. Will you let me believe, when I recall this day, that the last confidence of my life was reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and that it lies there alone, and will be shared by no one?\"\n\n \"If that will be a consolation to you, yes.\"\n\n \"Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you?\"\n\n \"Mr. Jeannette,\" she answered, after an agitated pause, \"the secret is yours, not mine; and I promise to respect it.\"\n\n \"Thank you. And again, God bless you.\"\n\n He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the door.\n\n \"Be under no apprehension, Miss Logan, of my ever resuming this conversation by so much as a passing word. I will never refer to it again. If I were dead, that could not be surer than it is henceforth. In the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance--and shall thank and bless you for it--that my last avowal of myself was made to you, and that my name, and faults, and miseries were gently carried in your heart. May it otherwise be light and happy!\"\n\n He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown away, and how much he every day kept down and perverted, that Naomi Logan wept mournfully for him as he stood looking back at her.\n\n \"Be comforted!\" he said, \"I am not worth such feeling, Miss Logan. An hour or two hence, and the low companions and low habits that I scorn but yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those, than any wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted! But, within myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore seen me. The last supplication but one I make to you, is, that you will believe this of me.\"\n\n \"I will, Mr. Jeannette.\"\n\n \"My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I will relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know you have nothing in unison, and between whom and you there is an impassable space. It is useless to say it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you--ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn--the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Logan, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!\"\n\n He said, \"Farewell!\" said a last \"God bless you!\" and left her.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XIV. The Honest Tradesman\n\n\n To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Briony, sitting on his stool in Fleet-street with his grisly urchin beside him, a vast number and variety of objects in movement were every day presented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes down!\n\n With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Briony sat watching the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty watching one stream--saving that Hayden had no expectation of their ever running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind, since a small part of his income was derived from the pilotage of timid women (mostly of a full habit and past the middle term of life) from Tellson's side of the tides to the opposite shore. Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Briony never failed to become so interested in the lady as to express a strong desire to have the honour of drinking her very good health. And it was from the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execution of this benevolent purpose, that he recruited his finances, as just now observed.\n\n Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in the sight of men. Mr. Briony, sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and looked about him.\n\n It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were few, and belated women few, and when his affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Briony must have been \"flopping\" in some pointed manner, when an unusual concourse pouring down Fleet-street westward, attracted his attention. Looking that way, Mr. Briony made out that some kind of funeral was coming along, and that there was popular objection to this funeral, which engendered uproar.\n\n \"Young Hayden,\" said Mr. Briony, turning to his offspring, \"it's a buryin'.\"\n\n \"Hooroar, father!\" cried Young Hayden.\n\n The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with mysterious significance. The elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and smote the young gentleman on the ear.\n\n \"What d'ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What do you want to conwey to your own father, you young Rip? This boy is a getting too many for _me_!\" said Mr. Briony, surveying him. \"Him and his hooroars! Don't let me hear no more of you, or you shall feel some more of me. D'ye hear?\"\n\n \"I warn't doing no harm,\" Young Hayden protested, rubbing his cheek.\n\n \"Drop it then,\" said Mr. Briony; \"I won't have none of _your_ no harms. Get a top of that there seat, and look at the crowd.\"\n\n His son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were bawling and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in which mourning coach there was only one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that were considered essential to the dignity of the position. The position appeared by no means to please him, however, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach, deriding him, making grimaces at him, and incessantly groaning and calling out: \"Yah! Spies! Tst! Yaha! Spies!\" with many compliments too numerous and forcible to repeat.\n\n Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr. Briony; he always pricked up his senses, and became excited, when a funeral passed Tellson's. Naturally, therefore, a funeral with this uncommon attendance excited him greatly, and he asked of the first man who ran against him:\n\n \"What is it, brother? What's it about?\"\n\n \"_I_ don't know,\" said the man. \"Spies! Yaha! Tst! Spies!\"\n\n He asked another man. \"Who is it?\"\n\n \"_I_ don't know,\" returned the man, clapping his hands to his mouth nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising heat and with the greatest ardour, \"Spies! Yaha! Tst, tst! Spi--ies!\"\n\n At length, a person better informed on the merits of the case, tumbled against him, and from this person he learned that the funeral was the funeral of one Willow Marge.\n\n \"Was he a spy?\" asked Mr. Briony.\n\n \"Old Bailey spy,\" returned his informant. \"Yaha! Tst! Yah! Old Bailey Spi--i--ies!\"\n\n \"Why, to be sure!\" exclaimed Hayden, recalling the Trial at which he had assisted. \"I've seen him. Dead, is he?\"\n\n \"Dead as mutton,\" returned the other, \"and can't be too dead. Have 'em out, there! Spies! Pull 'em out, there! Spies!\"\n\n The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any idea, that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and loudly repeating the suggestion to have 'em out, and to pull 'em out, mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they came to a stop. On the crowd's opening the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out by himself and was in their hands for a moment; but he was so alert, and made such good use of his time, that in another moment he was scouring away up a bye-street, after shedding his cloak, hat, long hatband, white pocket-handkerchief, and other symbolical tears.\n\n These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops; for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded. They had already got the length of opening the hearse to take the coffin out, when some brighter genius proposed instead, its being escorted to its destination amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much needed, this suggestion, too, was received with acclamation, and the coach was immediately filled with eight inside and a dozen out, while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as could by any exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of these volunteers was Hayden Briony himself, who modestly concealed his spiky head from the observation of Tellson's, in the further corner of the mourning coach.\n\n The officiating undertakers made some protest against these changes in the ceremonies; but, the river being alarmingly near, and several voices remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members of the profession to reason, the protest was faint and brief. The remodelled procession started, with a chimney-sweep driving the hearse--advised by the regular driver, who was perched beside him, under close inspection, for the purpose--and with a pieman, also attended by his cabinet minister, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a popular street character of the time, was impressed as an additional ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the Strand; and his bear, who was black and very mangy, gave quite an Undertaking air to that part of the procession in which he walked.\n\n Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops shutting up before it. Its destination was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It got there in course of time; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground; finally, accomplished the interment of the deceased Willow Marge in its own way, and highly to its own satisfaction.\n\n The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the necessity of providing some other entertainment for itself, another brighter genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humour of impeaching casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the realisation of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The transition to the sport of window-breaking, and thence to the plundering of public-houses, was easy and natural. At last, after several hours, when sundry summer-houses had been pulled down, and some area-railings had been torn up, to arm the more belligerent spirits, a rumour got about that the Guards were coming. Before this rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and perhaps the Guards came, and perhaps they never came, and this was the usual progress of a mob.\n\n Mr. Briony did not assist at the closing sports, but had remained behind in the churchyard, to confer and condole with the undertakers. The place had a soothing influence on him. He procured a pipe from a neighbouring public-house, and smoked it, looking in at the railings and maturely considering the spot.\n\n \"Hayden,\" said Mr. Briony, apostrophising himself in his usual way, \"you see that there Marge that day, and you see with your own eyes that he was a young 'un and a straight made 'un.\"\n\n Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little longer, he turned himself about, that he might appear, before the hour of closing, on his station at Tellson's. Whether his meditations on mortality had touched his liver, or whether his general health had been previously at all amiss, or whether he desired to show a little attention to an eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as that he made a short call upon his medical adviser--a distinguished surgeon--on his way back.\n\n Young Hayden relieved his father with dutiful interest, and reported No job in his absence. The bank closed, the ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set, and Mr. Briony and his son went home to tea.\n\n \"Now, I tell you where it is!\" said Mr. Briony to his wife, on entering. \"If, as a honest tradesman, my wenturs goes wrong to-night, I shall make sure that you've been praying again me, and I shall work you for it just the same as if I seen you do it.\"\n\n The dejected Mrs. Briony shook her head.\n\n \"Why, you're at it afore my face!\" said Mr. Briony, with signs of angry apprehension.\n\n \"I am saying nothing.\"\n\n \"Well, then; don't meditate nothing. You might as well flop as meditate. You may as well go again me one way as another. Drop it altogether.\"\n\n \"Yes, Hayden.\"\n\n \"Yes, Hayden,\" repeated Mr. Briony sitting down to tea. \"Ah! It _is_ yes, Hayden. That's about it. You may say yes, Hayden.\"\n\n Mr. Briony had no particular meaning in these sulky corroborations, but made use of them, as people not unfrequently do, to express general ironical dissatisfaction.\n\n \"You and your yes, Hayden,\" said Mr. Briony, taking a bite out of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large invisible oyster out of his saucer. \"Ah! I think so. I believe you.\"\n\n \"You are going out to-night?\" asked his decent wife, when he took another bite.\n\n \"Yes, I am.\"\n\n \"May I go with you, father?\" asked his son, briskly.\n\n \"No, you mayn't. I'm a going--as your mother knows--a fishing. That's where I'm going to. Going a fishing.\"\n\n \"Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don't it, father?\"\n\n \"Never you mind.\"\n\n \"Shall you bring any fish home, father?\"\n\n \"If I don't, you'll have short commons, to-morrow,\" returned that gentleman, shaking his head; \"that's questions enough for you; I ain't a going out, till you've been long abed.\"\n\n He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Briony, and sullenly holding her in conversation that she might be prevented from meditating any petitions to his disadvantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold her in conversation also, and led the unfortunate woman a hard life by dwelling on any causes of complaint he could bring against her, rather than he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story.\n\n \"And mind you!\" said Mr. Briony. \"No games to-morrow! If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or two, none of your not touching of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as a honest tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of your declaring on water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome will be a ugly customer to you, if you don't. _I_'m your Rome, you know.\"\n\n Then he began grumbling again:\n\n \"With your flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don't know how scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he _is_ your'n, ain't he? He's as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother, and not know that a mother's first duty is to blow her boy out?\"\n\n This touched Young Hayden on a tender place; who adjured his mother to perform her first duty, and, whatever else she did or neglected, above all things to lay especial stress on the discharge of that maternal function so affectingly and delicately indicated by his other parent.\n\n Thus the evening wore away with the Briony family, until Young Hayden was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Briony beguiled the earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excursion until nearly one o'clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about him in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Briony, extinguished the light, and went out.\n\n Young Hayden, who had only made a feint of undressing when he went to bed, was not long after his father. Under cover of the darkness he followed out of the room, followed down the stairs, followed down the court, followed out into the streets. He was in no uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again, for it was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night.\n\n Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of his father's honest calling, Young Hayden, keeping as close to house fronts, walls, and doorways, as his eyes were close to one another, held his honoured parent in view. The honoured parent steering Northward, had not gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together.\n\n Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond the winking lamps, and the more than winking watchmen, and were out upon a lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up here--and that so silently, that if Young Hayden had been superstitious, he might have supposed the second follower of the gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split himself into two.\n\n The three went on, and Young Hayden went on, until the three stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and wall the three turned out of the road, and up a blind lane, of which the wall--there, risen to some eight or ten feet high--formed one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the lane, the next object that Young Hayden saw, was the form of his honoured parent, pretty well defined against a watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground within the gate, and lay there a little--listening perhaps. Then, they moved away on their hands and knees.\n\n It was now Young Hayden's turn to approach the gate: which he did, holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through some rank grass! and all the gravestones in the churchyard--it was a large churchyard that they were in--looking on like ghosts in white, while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And then they began to fish.\n\n They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard, until the awful striking of the church clock so terrified Young Hayden, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his father's.\n\n But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again. They were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Hayden very well knew what it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he made off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.\n\n He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side--perhaps taking his arm--it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy's kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed him upstairs with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep.\n\n From his oppressed slumber, Young Hayden in his closet was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Hayden inferred, from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Briony by the ears, and knocking the back of her head against the head-board of the bed.\n\n \"I told you I would,\" said Mr. Briony, \"and I did.\"\n\n \"Hayden, Hayden, Hayden!\" his wife implored.\n\n \"You oppose yourself to the profit of the business,\" said Hayden, \"and me and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey; why the devil don't you?\"\n\n \"I try to be a good wife, Hayden,\" the poor woman protested, with tears.\n\n \"Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband's business? Is it honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying your husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business?\"\n\n \"You hadn't taken to the dreadful business then, Hayden.\"\n\n \"It's enough for you,\" retorted Mr. Briony, \"to be the wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations when he took to his trade or when he didn't. A honouring and obeying wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman? If you're a religious woman, give me a irreligious one! You have no more nat'ral sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into you.\"\n\n The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and terminated in the honest tradesman's kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and lying down at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay down too, and fell asleep again.\n\n There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr. Briony was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Briony, in case he should observe any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue his ostensible calling.\n\n Young Hayden, walking with the stool under his arm at his father's side along sunny and crowded Fleet-street, was a very different Young Hayden from him of the previous night, running home through darkness and solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day, and his qualms were gone with the night--in which particulars it is not improbable that he had compeers in Fleet-street and the City of London, that fine morning.\n\n \"Father,\" said Young Hayden, as they walked along: taking care to keep at arm's length and to have the stool well between them: \"what's a Resurrection-Man?\"\n\n Mr. Briony came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, \"How should I know?\"\n\n \"I thought you knowed everything, father,\" said the artless boy.\n\n \"Hem! Well,\" returned Mr. Briony, going on again, and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free play, \"he's a tradesman.\"\n\n \"What's his goods, father?\" asked the brisk Young Hayden.\n\n \"His goods,\" said Mr. Briony, after turning it over in his mind, \"is a branch of Scientific goods.\"\n\n \"Persons' bodies, ain't it, father?\" asked the lively boy.\n\n \"I believe it is something of that sort,\" said Mr. Briony.\n\n \"Oh, father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man when I'm quite growed up!\"\n\n Mr. Briony was soothed, but shook his head in a dubious and moral way. \"It depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents, and never to say no more than you can help to nobody, and there's no telling at the present time what you may not come to be fit for.\" As Young Hayden, thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the shadow of the Bar, Mr. Briony added to himself: \"Hayden, you honest tradesman, there's hopes wot that boy will yet be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his mother!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XV. Knitting\n\n\n There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of Megan Royce. As early as six o'clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping through its barred windows had descried other faces within, bending over measures of wine. Megan Royce sold a very thin wine at the best of times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for its influence on the mood of those who drank it was to make them gloomy. No vivacious Bacchanalian flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Megan Royce: but, a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in the dregs of it.\n\n This had been the third morning in succession, on which there had been early drinking at the wine-shop of Megan Royce. It had begun on Monday, and here was Wednesday come. There had been more of early brooding than drinking; for, many men had listened and whispered and slunk about there from the time of the opening of the door, who could not have laid a piece of money on the counter to save their souls. These were to the full as interested in the place, however, as if they could have commanded whole barrels of wine; and they glided from seat to seat, and from corner to corner, swallowing talk in lieu of drink, with greedy looks.\n\n Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the wine-shop was not visible. He was not missed; for, nobody who crossed the threshold looked for him, nobody asked for him, nobody wondered to see only Madame Royce in her seat, presiding over the distribution of wine, with a bowl of battered small coins before her, as much defaced and beaten out of their original impress as the small coinage of humanity from whose ragged pockets they had come.\n\n A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, were perhaps observed by the spies who looked in at the wine-shop, as they looked in at every place, high and low, from the king's palace to the criminal's gaol. Games at cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built towers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops of wine, Madame Royce herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve with her toothpick, and saw and heard something inaudible and invisible a long way off.\n\n Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday. It was high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets and under his swinging lamps: of whom, one was Megan Royce: the other a mender of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst, the two entered the wine-shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of fire in the breast of Saint Antoine, fast spreading as they came along, which stirred and flickered in flames of faces at most doors and windows. Yet, no one had followed them, and no man spoke when they entered the wine-shop, though the eyes of every man there were turned upon them.\n\n \"Good day, gentlemen!\" said Megan Royce.\n\n It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue. It elicited an answering chorus of \"Good day!\"\n\n \"It is bad weather, gentlemen,\" said Royce, shaking his head.\n\n Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and then all cast down their eyes and sat silent. Except one man, who got up and went out.\n\n \"My wife,\" said Royce aloud, addressing Madame Royce: \"I have travelled certain leagues with this good mender of roads, called Jacques. I met him--by accident--a day and half's journey out of Paris. He is a good child, this mender of roads, called Jacques. Give him to drink, my wife!\"\n\n A second man got up and went out. Madame Royce set wine before the mender of roads called Jacques, who doffed his blue cap to the company, and drank. In the breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark bread; he ate of this between whiles, and sat munching and drinking near Madame Royce's counter. A third man got up and went out.\n\n Royce refreshed himself with a draught of wine--but, he took less than was given to the stranger, as being himself a man to whom it was no rarity--and stood waiting until the countryman had made his breakfast. He looked at no one present, and no one now looked at him; not even Madame Royce, who had taken up her knitting, and was at work.\n\n \"Have you finished your repast, friend?\" he asked, in due season.\n\n \"Yes, thank you.\"\n\n \"Come, then! You shall see the apartment that I told you you could occupy. It will suit you to a marvel.\"\n\n Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street into a courtyard, out of the courtyard up a steep staircase, out of the staircase into a garret--formerly the garret where a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.\n\n No white-haired man was there now; but, the three men were there who had gone out of the wine-shop singly. And between them and the white-haired man afar off, was the one small link, that they had once looked in at him through the chinks in the wall.\n\n Royce closed the door carefully, and spoke in a subdued voice:\n\n \"Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three! This is the witness encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four. He will tell you all. Speak, Jacques Five!\"\n\n The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead with it, and said, \"Where shall I commence, monsieur?\"\n\n \"Commence,\" was Megan Royce's not unreasonable reply, \"at the commencement.\"\n\n \"I saw him then, messieurs,\" began the mender of roads, \"a year ago this running summer, underneath the carriage of the Art, hanging by the chain. Behold the manner of it. I leaving my work on the road, the sun going to bed, the carriage of the Art slowly ascending the hill, he hanging by the chain--like this.\"\n\n Again the mender of roads went through the whole performance; in which he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it had been the infallible resource and indispensable entertainment of his village during a whole year.\n\n Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen the man before?\n\n \"Never,\" answered the mender of roads, recovering his perpendicular.\n\n Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognised him then?\n\n \"By his tall figure,\" said the mender of roads, softly, and with his finger at his nose. \"When Megan the Art demands that evening, 'Say, what is he like?' I make response, 'Tall as a spectre.'\"\n\n \"You should have said, short as a dwarf,\" returned Jacques Two.\n\n \"But what did I know? The deed was not then accomplished, neither did he confide in me. Observe! Under those circumstances even, I do not offer my testimony. Megan the Art indicates me with his finger, standing near our little fountain, and says, 'To me! Bring that rascal!' My faith, messieurs, I offer nothing.\"\n\n \"He is right there, Jacques,\" murmured Royce, to him who had interrupted. \"Go on!\"\n\n \"Good!\" said the mender of roads, with an air of mystery. \"The tall man is lost, and he is sought--how many months? Nine, ten, eleven?\"\n\n \"No matter, the number,\" said Royce. \"He is well hidden, but at last he is unluckily found. Go on!\"\n\n \"I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun is again about to go to bed. I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down in the village below, where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see coming over the hill six soldiers. In the midst of them is a tall man with his arms bound--tied to his sides--like this!\"\n\n With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that were knotted behind him.\n\n \"I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones, to see the soldiers and their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, that, where any spectacle is well worth looking at), and at first, as they approach, I see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound, and that they are almost black to my sight--except on the side of the sun going to bed, where they have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see that their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side of the road, and are on the hill above it, and are like the shadows of giants. Also, I see that they are covered with dust, and that the dust moves with them as they come, tramp, tramp! But when they advance quite near to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises me. Ah, but he would be well content to precipitate himself over the hill-side once again, as on the evening when he and I first encountered, close to the same spot!\"\n\n He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in his life.\n\n \"I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall man; he does not show the soldiers that he recognises me; we do it, and we know it, with our eyes. 'Come on!' says the chief of that company, pointing to the village, 'bring him fast to his tomb!' and they bring him faster. I follow. His arms are swelled because of being bound so tight, his wooden shoes are large and clumsy, and he is lame. Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they drive him with their guns--like this!\"\n\n He imitated the action of a man's being impelled forward by the butt-ends of muskets.\n\n \"As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it; thereupon they laugh again. They bring him into the village; all the village runs to look; they take him past the mill, and up to the prison; all the village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the night, and swallow him--like this!\"\n\n He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a sounding snap of his teeth. Observant of his unwillingness to mar the effect by opening it again, Royce said, \"Go on, Jacques.\"\n\n \"All the village,\" pursued the mender of roads, on tiptoe and in a low voice, \"withdraws; all the village whispers by the fountain; all the village sleeps; all the village dreams of that unhappy one, within the locks and bars of the prison on the crag, and never to come out of it, except to perish. In the morning, with my tools upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit by the prison, on my way to my work. There I see him, high up, behind the bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as last night, looking through. He has no hand free, to wave to me; I dare not call to him; he regards me like a dead man.\"\n\n Royce and the three glanced darkly at one another. The looks of all of them were dark, repressed, and revengeful, as they listened to the countryman's story; the manner of all of them, while it was secret, was authoritative too. They had the air of a rough tribunal; Jacques One and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed, each with his chin resting on his hand, and his eyes intent on the road-mender; Jacques Three, equally intent, on one knee behind them, with his agitated hand always gliding over the network of fine nerves about his mouth and nose; Royce standing between them and the narrator, whom he had stationed in the light of the window, by turns looking from him to them, and from them to him.\n\n \"Go on, Jacques,\" said Royce.\n\n \"He remains up there in his iron cage some days. The village looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But it always looks up, from a distance, at the prison on the crag; and in the evening, when the work of the day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all faces are turned towards the prison. Formerly, they were turned towards the posting-house; now, they are turned towards the prison. They whisper at the fountain, that although condemned to death he will not be executed; they say that petitions have been presented in Paris, showing that he was enraged and made mad by the death of his child; they say that a petition has been presented to the King himself. What do I know? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no.\"\n\n \"Listen then, Jacques,\" Number One of that name sternly interposed. \"Know that a petition was presented to the King and Queen. All here, yourself excepted, saw the King take it, in his carriage in the street, sitting beside the Queen. It is Royce whom you see here, who, at the hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the petition in his hand.\"\n\n \"And once again listen, Jacques!\" said the kneeling Number Three: his fingers ever wandering over and over those fine nerves, with a strikingly greedy air, as if he hungered for something--that was neither food nor drink; \"the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the petitioner, and struck him blows. You hear?\"\n\n \"I hear, messieurs.\"\n\n \"Go on then,\" said Royce.\n\n \"Again; on the other hand, they whisper at the fountain,\" resumed the countryman, \"that he is brought down into our country to be executed on the spot, and that he will very certainly be executed. They even whisper that because he has slain Monseigneur, and because Monseigneur was the father of his tenants--serfs--what you will--he will be executed as a parricide. One old man says at the fountain, that his right hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off before his face; that, into wounds which will be made in his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax, and sulphur; finally, that he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses. That old man says, all this was actually done to a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of the late King, Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies? I am not a scholar.\"\n\n \"Listen once again then, Jacques!\" said the man with the restless hand and the craving air. \"The name of that prisoner was Damiens, and it was all done in open day, in the open streets of this city of Paris; and nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done, than the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion, who were full of eager attention to the last--to the last, Jacques, prolonged until nightfall, when he had lost two legs and an arm, and still breathed! And it was done--why, how old are you?\"\n\n \"Thirty-five,\" said the mender of roads, who looked sixty.\n\n \"It was done when you were more than ten years old; you might have seen it.\"\n\n \"Enough!\" said Royce, with grim impatience. \"Long live the Devil! Go on.\"\n\n \"Well! Some whisper this, some whisper that; they speak of nothing else; even the fountain appears to fall to that tune. At length, on Sunday night when all the village is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from the prison, and their guns ring on the stones of the little street. Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing; in the morning, by the fountain, there is raised a gallows forty feet high, poisoning the water.\"\n\n The mender of roads looked _through_ rather than _at_ the low ceiling, and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky.\n\n \"All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads the cows out, the cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums. Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth there is a gag--tied so, with a tight string, making him look almost as if he laughed.\" He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his ears. \"On the top of the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the air. He is hanged there forty feet high--and is left hanging, poisoning the water.\"\n\n They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he recalled the spectacle.\n\n \"It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and the children draw water! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow! Under it, have I said? When I left the village, Monday evening as the sun was going to bed, and looked back from the hill, the shadow struck across the church, across the mill, across the prison--seemed to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the sky rests upon it!\"\n\n The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the other three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on him.\n\n \"That's all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to do), and I walked on, that night and half next day, until I met (as I was warned I should) this comrade. With him, I came on, now riding and now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through last night. And here you see me!\"\n\n After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, \"Good! You have acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little, outside the door?\"\n\n \"Very willingly,\" said the mender of roads. Whom Royce escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there, returned.\n\n The three had risen, and their heads were together when he came back to the garret.\n\n \"How say you, Jacques?\" demanded Number One. \"To be registered?\"\n\n \"To be registered, as doomed to destruction,\" returned Royce.\n\n \"Magnificent!\" croaked the man with the craving.\n\n \"The chateau, and all the race?\" inquired the first.\n\n \"The chateau and all the race,\" returned Royce. \"Extermination.\"\n\n The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, \"Magnificent!\" and began gnawing another finger.\n\n \"Are you sure,\" asked Jacques Two, of Royce, \"that no embarrassment can arise from our manner of keeping the register? Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it; but shall we always be able to decipher it--or, I ought to say, will she?\"\n\n \"Jacques,\" returned Royce, drawing himself up, \"if madame my wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it--not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Royce. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of Madame Royce.\"\n\n There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the man who hungered, asked: \"Is this rustic to be sent back soon? I hope so. He is very simple; is he not a little dangerous?\"\n\n \"He knows nothing,\" said Royce; \"at least nothing more than would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the same height. I charge myself with him; let him remain with me; I will take care of him, and set him on his road. He wishes to see the fine world--the King, the Queen, and Court; let him see them on Sunday.\"\n\n \"What?\" exclaimed the hungry man, staring. \"Is it a good sign, that he wishes to see Royalty and Nobility?\"\n\n \"Jacques,\" said Royce; \"judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day.\"\n\n Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being found already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion, and was soon asleep.\n\n Worse quarters than Royce's wine-shop, could easily have been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for a mysterious dread of madame by which he was constantly haunted, his life was very new and agreeable. But, madame sat all day at her counter, so expressly unconscious of him, and so particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had any connection with anything below the surface, that he shook in his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that lady might pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should take it into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had seen him do a murder and afterwards flay the victim, she would infallibly go through with it until the play was played out.\n\n Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was not enchanted (though he said he was) to find that madame was to accompany monsieur and himself to Versailles. It was additionally disconcerting to have madame knitting all the way there, in a public conveyance; it was additionally disconcerting yet, to have madame in the crowd in the afternoon, still with her knitting in her hands as the crowd waited to see the carriage of the King and Queen.\n\n \"You work hard, madame,\" said a man near her.\n\n \"Yes,\" answered Madame Royce; \"I have a good deal to do.\"\n\n \"What do you make, madame?\"\n\n \"Many things.\"\n\n \"For instance--\"\n\n \"For instance,\" returned Madame Royce, composedly, \"shrouds.\"\n\n The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, and the mender of roads fanned himself with his blue cap: feeling it mightily close and oppressive. If he needed a King and Queen to restore him, he was fortunate in having his remedy at hand; for, soon the large-faced King and the fair-faced Queen came in their golden coach, attended by the shining Bull's Eye of their Court, a glittering multitude of laughing ladies and fine lords; and in jewels and silks and powder and splendour and elegantly spurning figures and handsomely disdainful faces of both sexes, the mender of roads bathed himself, so much to his temporary intoxication, that he cried Long live the King, Long live the Queen, Long live everybody and everything! as if he had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time. Then, there were gardens, courtyards, terraces, fountains, green banks, more King and Queen, more Bull's Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long live they all! until he absolutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of this scene, which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shouting and weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Royce held him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.\n\n \"Bravo!\" said Royce, clapping him on the back when it was over, like a patron; \"you are a good boy!\"\n\n The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.\n\n \"You are the fellow we want,\" said Royce, in his ear; \"you make these fools believe that it will last for ever. Then, they are the more insolent, and it is the nearer ended.\"\n\n \"Hey!\" cried the mender of roads, reflectively; \"that's true.\"\n\n \"These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath, and would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a hundred like you rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know what your breath tells them. Let it deceive them, then, a little longer; it cannot deceive them too much.\"\n\n Madame Royce looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in confirmation.\n\n \"As to you,\" said she, \"you would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?\"\n\n \"Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment.\"\n\n \"If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?\"\n\n \"Truly yes, madame.\"\n\n \"Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?\"\n\n \"It is true, madame.\"\n\n \"You have seen both dolls and birds to-day,\" said Madame Royce, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent; \"now, go home!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XVI. Still Knitting\n\n\n Madame Royce and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Megan the Art, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the village--had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had--that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Megan the Art petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there.\n\n Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well--thousands of acres of land--a whole province of France--all France itself--lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.\n\n The Royces, husband and wife, came lumbering under the starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris whereunto their journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the barrier guardhouse, and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for the usual examination and inquiry. Megan Royce alighted; knowing one or two of the soldiery there, and one of the police. The latter he was intimate with, and affectionately embraced.\n\n When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Royces in his dusky wings, and they, having finally alighted near the Saint's boundaries, were picking their way on foot through the black mud and offal of his streets, Madame Royce spoke to her husband:\n\n \"Say then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police tell thee?\"\n\n \"Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is another spy commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of one.\"\n\n \"Eh well!\" said Madame Royce, raising her eyebrows with a cool business air. \"It is necessary to register him. How do they call that man?\"\n\n \"He is English.\"\n\n \"So much the better. His name?\"\n\n \"Rajesh,\" said Royce, making it French by pronunciation. But, he had been so careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it with perfect correctness.\n\n \"Rajesh,\" repeated madame. \"Good. Christian name?\"\n\n \"Diego.\"\n\n \"Diego Rajesh,\" repeated madame, after murmuring it once to herself. \"Good. His appearance; is it known?\"\n\n \"Age, about forty years; height, about five feet nine; black hair; complexion dark; generally, rather handsome visage; eyes dark, face thin, long, and sallow; nose aquiline, but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek; expression, therefore, sinister.\"\n\n \"Eh my faith. It is a portrait!\" said madame, laughing. \"He shall be registered to-morrow.\"\n\n They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was midnight), and where Madame Royce immediately took her post at her desk, counted the small moneys that had been taken during her absence, examined the stock, went through the entries in the book, made other entries of her own, checked the serving man in every possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the contents of the bowl of money for the second time, and began knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots, for safe keeping through the night. All this while, Royce, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring, but never interfering; in which condition, indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life.\n\n The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Megan Royce's olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put down his smoked-out pipe.\n\n \"You are fatigued,\" said madame, raising her glance as she knotted the money. \"There are only the usual odours.\"\n\n \"I am a little tired,\" her husband acknowledged.\n\n \"You are a little depressed, too,\" said madame, whose quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or two for him. \"Oh, the men, the men!\"\n\n \"But my dear!\" began Royce.\n\n \"But my dear!\" repeated madame, nodding firmly; \"but my dear! You are faint of heart to-night, my dear!\"\n\n \"Well, then,\" said Royce, as if a thought were wrung out of his breast, \"it _is_ a long time.\"\n\n \"It is a long time,\" repeated his wife; \"and when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.\"\n\n \"It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning,\" said Royce.\n\n \"How long,\" demanded madame, composedly, \"does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me.\"\n\n Royce raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something in that too.\n\n \"It does not take a long time,\" said madame, \"for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?\"\n\n \"A long time, I suppose,\" said Royce.\n\n \"But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it.\"\n\n She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.\n\n \"I tell thee,\" said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis, \"that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you.\"\n\n \"My brave wife,\" returned Royce, standing before her with his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, \"I do not question all this. But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible--you know well, my wife, it is possible--that it may not come, during our lives.\"\n\n \"Eh well! How then?\" demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled.\n\n \"Well!\" said Royce, with a half complaining and half apologetic shrug. \"We shall not see the triumph.\"\n\n \"We shall have helped it,\" returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action. \"Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would--\"\n\n Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed.\n\n \"Hold!\" cried Royce, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice; \"I too, my dear, will stop at nothing.\"\n\n \"Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained--not shown--yet always ready.\"\n\n Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed.\n\n Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of her usual preoccupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are!--perhaps they thought as much at Court that sunny summer day.\n\n A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Royce which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin her rose in her head-dress, before she looked at the figure.\n\n It was curious. The moment Madame Royce took up the rose, the customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of the wine-shop.\n\n \"Good day, madame,\" said the new-comer.\n\n \"Good day, monsieur.\"\n\n She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting: \"Hah! Good day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin, long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister expression! Good day, one and all!\"\n\n \"Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a mouthful of cool fresh water, madame.\"\n\n Madame complied with a polite air.\n\n \"Marvellous cognac this, madame!\"\n\n It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and Madame Royce knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said, however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the opportunity of observing the place in general.\n\n \"You knit with great skill, madame.\"\n\n \"I am accustomed to it.\"\n\n \"A pretty pattern too!\"\n\n \"_You_ think so?\" said madame, looking at him with a smile.\n\n \"Decidedly. May one ask what it is for?\"\n\n \"Pastime,\" said madame, still looking at him with a smile while her fingers moved nimbly.\n\n \"Not for use?\"\n\n \"That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do--Well,\" said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind of coquetry, \"I'll use it!\"\n\n It was remarkable; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Royce. Two men had entered separately, and had been about to order drink, when, catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was not there, and went away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor entered, was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and unimpeachable.\n\n \"_Diego_,\" thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger. \"Stay long enough, and I shall knit 'RAJESH' before you go.\"\n\n \"You have a husband, madame?\"\n\n \"I have.\"\n\n \"Children?\"\n\n \"No children.\"\n\n \"Business seems bad?\"\n\n \"Business is very bad; the people are so poor.\"\n\n \"Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed, too--as you say.\"\n\n \"As _you_ say,\" madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting an extra something into his name that boded him no good.\n\n \"Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally think so. Of course.\"\n\n \"_I_ think?\" returned madame, in a high voice. \"I and my husband have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject _we_ think of, and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without embarrassing our heads concerning others. _I_ think for others? No, no.\"\n\n The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make, did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister face; but, stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow on Madame Royce's little counter, and occasionally sipping his cognac.\n\n \"A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard's execution. Ah! the poor Gaspard!\" With a sigh of great compassion.\n\n \"My faith!\" returned madame, coolly and lightly, \"if people use knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew beforehand what the price of his luxury was; he has paid the price.\"\n\n \"I believe,\" said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face: \"I believe there is much compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the poor fellow? Between ourselves.\"\n\n \"Is there?\" asked madame, vacantly.\n\n \"Is there not?\"\n\n \"--Here is my husband!\" said Madame Royce.\n\n As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging smile, \"Good day, Jacques!\" Royce stopped short, and stared at him.\n\n \"Good day, Jacques!\" the spy repeated; with not quite so much confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the stare.\n\n \"You deceive yourself, monsieur,\" returned the keeper of the wine-shop. \"You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am Ernest Royce.\"\n\n \"It is all the same,\" said the spy, airily, but discomfited too: \"good day!\"\n\n \"Good day!\" answered Royce, drily.\n\n \"I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting when you entered, that they tell me there is--and no wonder!--much sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard.\"\n\n \"No one has told me so,\" said Royce, shaking his head. \"I know nothing of it.\"\n\n Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood with his hand on the back of his wife's chair, looking over that barrier at the person to whom they were both opposed, and whom either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction.\n\n The spy, well used to his business, did not change his unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Royce poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed a little song over it.\n\n \"You seem to know this quarter well; that is to say, better than I do?\" observed Royce.\n\n \"Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly interested in its miserable inhabitants.\"\n\n \"Hah!\" muttered Royce.\n\n \"The pleasure of conversing with you, Megan Royce, recalls to me,\" pursued the spy, \"that I have the honour of cherishing some interesting associations with your name.\"\n\n \"Indeed!\" said Royce, with much indifference.\n\n \"Yes, indeed. When Rosemarie Logan was released, you, his old domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you. You see I am informed of the circumstances?\"\n\n \"Such is the fact, certainly,\" said Royce. He had had it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always with brevity.\n\n \"It was to you,\" said the spy, \"that his daughter came; and it was from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat brown monsieur; how is he called?--in a little wig--Esmeralda--of the bank of Tellson and Company--over to England.\"\n\n \"Such is the fact,\" repeated Royce.\n\n \"Very interesting remembrances!\" said the spy. \"I have known Rosemarie Logan and his daughter, in England.\"\n\n \"Yes?\" said Royce.\n\n \"You don't hear much about them now?\" said the spy.\n\n \"No,\" said Royce.\n\n \"In effect,\" madame struck in, looking up from her work and her little song, \"we never hear about them. We received the news of their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two; but, since then, they have gradually taken their road in life--we, ours--and we have held no correspondence.\"\n\n \"Perfectly so, madame,\" replied the spy. \"She is going to be married.\"\n\n \"Going?\" echoed madame. \"She was pretty enough to have been married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me.\"\n\n \"Oh! You know I am English.\"\n\n \"I perceive your tongue is,\" returned madame; \"and what the tongue is, I suppose the man is.\"\n\n He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his cognac to the end, he added:\n\n \"Yes, Miss Logan is going to be married. But not to an Englishman; to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was cruel, cruel!), it is a curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Megan the Art, for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet; in other words, the present Art. But he lives unknown in England, he is no Art there; he is Mr. Deshaun Promise. D'Aulnais is the name of his mother's family.\"\n\n Madame Royce knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the little counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his mind.\n\n Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Rajesh paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Megan and Madame Royce again. For some minutes after he had emerged into the outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained exactly as he had left them, lest he should come back.\n\n \"Can it be true,\" said Royce, in a low voice, looking down at his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair: \"what he has said of Ma'amselle Logan?\"\n\n \"As he has said it,\" returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a little, \"it is probably false. But it may be true.\"\n\n \"If it is--\" Royce began, and stopped.\n\n \"If it is?\" repeated his wife.\n\n \"--And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph--I hope, for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France.\"\n\n \"Her husband's destiny,\" said Madame Royce, with her usual composure, \"will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is to end him. That is all I know.\"\n\n \"But it is very strange--now, at least, is it not very strange\"--said Royce, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it, \"that, after all our sympathy for Megan her father, and herself, her husband's name should be proscribed under your hand at this moment, by the side of that infernal dog's who has just left us?\"\n\n \"Stranger things than that will happen when it does come,\" answered madame. \"I have them both here, of a certainty; and they are both here for their merits; that is enough.\"\n\n She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about her head. Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense that the objectionable decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch for its disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in, very shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual aspect.\n\n In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned himself inside out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air, Madame Royce with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass from place to place and from group to group: a Missionary--there were many like her--such as the world will do well never to breed again. All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus: if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched.\n\n But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as Madame Royce moved on from group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had spoken with, and left behind.\n\n Her husband smoked at his door, looking after her with admiration. \"A great woman,\" said he, \"a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully grand woman!\"\n\n Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into thundering cannon; when the military drums should be beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XVII. One Night\n\n\n Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Rosemarie and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves.\n\n Naomi was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree.\n\n \"You are happy, my dear father?\"\n\n \"Quite, my child.\"\n\n They had said little, though they had been there a long time. When it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual work, nor had she read to him. She had employed herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a time; but, this time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so.\n\n \"And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy in the love that Heaven has so blessed--my love for Deshaun, and Deshaun's love for me. But, if my life were not to be still consecrated to you, or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is--\"\n\n Even as it was, she could not command her voice.\n\n In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face upon his breast. In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and its going.\n\n \"Dearest dear! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite, quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will ever interpose between us? _I_ know it well, but do you know it? In your own heart, do you feel quite certain?\"\n\n Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could scarcely have assumed, \"Quite sure, my darling! More than that,\" he added, as he tenderly kissed her: \"my future is far brighter, Naomi, seen through your marriage, than it could have been--nay, than it ever was--without it.\"\n\n \"If I could hope _that_, my father!--\"\n\n \"Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be wasted--\"\n\n She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated the word.\n\n \"--wasted, my child--should not be wasted, struck aside from the natural order of things--for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?\"\n\n \"If I had never seen Deshaun, my father, I should have been quite happy with you.\"\n\n He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy without Deshaun, having seen him; and replied:\n\n \"My child, you did see him, and it is Deshaun. If it had not been Deshaun, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I should have been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would have cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on you.\"\n\n It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long afterwards.\n\n \"See!\" said the Rosemarie of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon. \"I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them.\" He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, \"It was twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in.\"\n\n The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over.\n\n \"I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it was a son who would never know his father's story; who might even live to weigh the possibility of his father's having disappeared of his own will and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman.\"\n\n She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand.\n\n \"I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of me--rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank.\"\n\n \"My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child.\"\n\n \"You, Naomi? It is out of the Consolation and restoration you have brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last night.--What did I say just now?\"\n\n \"She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you.\"\n\n \"So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a different way--have affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its foundations could--I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door. But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of?\"\n\n \"The figure was not; the--the--image; the fancy?\"\n\n \"No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too--as you have--but was not the same. Can you follow me, Naomi? Hardly, I think? I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions.\"\n\n His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition.\n\n \"In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father. My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active, cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all.\"\n\n \"I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love that was I.\"\n\n \"And she showed me her children,\" said the Rosemarie of Beauvais, \"and they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me; I imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things. But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and blessed her.\"\n\n \"I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow?\"\n\n \"Naomi, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us.\"\n\n He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-bye, they went into the house.\n\n There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Esmeralda; there was even to be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Dave. The marriage was to make no change in their place of residence; they had been able to extend it, by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more.\n\n Rosemarie Logan was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only three at table, and Miss Dave made the third. He regretted that Deshaun was not there; was more than half disposed to object to the loving little plot that kept him away; and drank to him affectionately.\n\n So, the time came for him to bid Naomi good night, and they separated. But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Naomi came downstairs again, and stole into his room; not free from unshaped fears, beforehand.\n\n All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his; then, leaned over him, and looked at him.\n\n Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night.\n\n She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had moved in praying for him.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XVIII. Nine Days\n\n\n The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the closed door of the Rosemarie's room, where he was speaking with Deshaun Promise. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr. Esmeralda, and Miss Dave--to whom the event, through a gradual process of reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom.\n\n \"And so,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, who could not sufficiently admire the bride, and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress; \"and so it was for this, my sweet Naomi, that I brought you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How little I thought what I was doing! How lightly I valued the obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr. Deshaun!\"\n\n \"You didn't mean it,\" remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Dave, \"and therefore how could you know it? Nonsense!\"\n\n \"Really? Well; but don't cry,\" said the gentle Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"I am not crying,\" said Miss Dave; \"_you_ are.\"\n\n \"I, my Dave?\" (By this time, Mr. Esmeralda dared to be pleasant with her, on occasion.)\n\n \"You were, just now; I saw you do it, and I don't wonder at it. Such a present of plate as you have made 'em, is enough to bring tears into anybody's eyes. There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection,\" said Miss Dave, \"that I didn't cry over, last night after the box came, till I couldn't see it.\"\n\n \"I am highly gratified,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, \"though, upon my honour, I had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance invisible to any one. Dear me! This is an occasion that makes a man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think that there might have been a Mrs. Esmeralda, any time these fifty years almost!\"\n\n \"Not at all!\" From Miss Dave.\n\n \"You think there never might have been a Mrs. Esmeralda?\" asked the gentleman of that name.\n\n \"Pooh!\" rejoined Miss Dave; \"you were a bachelor in your cradle.\"\n\n \"Well!\" observed Mr. Esmeralda, beamingly adjusting his little wig, \"that seems probable, too.\"\n\n \"And you were cut out for a bachelor,\" pursued Miss Dave, \"before you were put in your cradle.\"\n\n \"Then, I think,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, \"that I was very unhandsomely dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern. Enough! Now, my dear Naomi,\" drawing his arm soothingly round her waist, \"I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Dave and I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to lose the final opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to hear. You leave your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and as loving as your own; he shall be taken every conceivable care of; during the next fortnight, while you are in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson's shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at the fortnight's end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on your other fortnight's trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear Somebody's step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his own.\"\n\n For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the bright golden hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and delicacy which, if such things be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam.\n\n The door of the Rosemarie's room opened, and he came out with Deshaun Promise. He was so deadly pale--which had not been the case when they went in together--that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his face. But, in the composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Esmeralda it disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold wind.\n\n He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down-stairs to the chariot which Mr. Esmeralda had hired in honour of the day. The rest followed in another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church, where no strange eyes looked on, Deshaun Promise and Naomi Logan were happily married.\n\n Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling, glanced on the bride's hand, which were newly released from the dark obscurity of one of Mr. Esmeralda's pockets. They returned home to breakfast, and all went well, and in due course the golden hair that had mingled with the poor shoemaker's white locks in the Paris garret, were mingled with them again in the morning sunlight, on the threshold of the door at parting.\n\n It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her enfolding arms, \"Take her, Deshaun! She is yours!\"\n\n And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window, and she was gone.\n\n The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the preparations having been very simple and few, the Rosemarie, Mr. Esmeralda, and Miss Dave, were left quite alone. It was when they turned into the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Esmeralda observed a great change to have come over the Rosemarie; as if the golden arm uplifted there, had struck him a poisoned blow.\n\n He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have been expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone. But, it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Esmeralda; and through his absent manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own room when they got up-stairs, Mr. Esmeralda was reminded of Royce the wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride.\n\n \"I think,\" he whispered to Miss Dave, after anxious consideration, \"I think we had best not speak to him just now, or at all disturb him. I must look in at Tellson's; so I will go there at once and come back presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine there, and all will be well.\"\n\n It was easier for Mr. Esmeralda to look in at Tellson's, than to look out of Tellson's. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant; going thus into the Rosemarie's rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking.\n\n \"Good God!\" he said, with a start. \"What's that?\"\n\n Miss Dave, with a terrified face, was at his ear. \"O me, O me! All is lost!\" cried she, wringing her hands. \"What is to be told to Ladybird? He doesn't know me, and is making shoes!\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the Rosemarie's room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent down, and he was very busy.\n\n \"Rosemarie Logan. My dear friend, Rosemarie Logan!\"\n\n The Rosemarie looked at him for a moment--half inquiringly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to--and bent over his work again.\n\n He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at the throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked hard--impatiently--as if in some sense of having been interrupted.\n\n Mr. Esmeralda glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by him, and asked what it was.\n\n \"A young lady's walking shoe,\" he muttered, without looking up. \"It ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be.\"\n\n \"But, Rosemarie Logan. Look at me!\"\n\n He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without pausing in his work.\n\n \"You know me, my dear friend? Think again. This is not your proper occupation. Think, dear friend!\"\n\n Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked up, for an instant at a time, when he was requested to do so; but, no persuasion would extract a word from him. He worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echoless wall, or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Esmeralda could discover, was, that he sometimes furtively looked up without being asked. In that, there seemed a faint expression of curiosity or perplexity--as though he were trying to reconcile some doubts in his mind.\n\n Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Esmeralda, as important above all others; the first, that this must be kept secret from Naomi; the second, that it must be kept secret from all who knew him. In conjunction with Miss Dave, he took immediate steps towards the latter precaution, by giving out that the Rosemarie was not well, and required a few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to be practised on his daughter, Miss Dave was to write, describing his having been called away professionally, and referring to an imaginary letter of two or three hurried lines in his own hand, represented to have been addressed to her by the same post.\n\n These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Esmeralda took in the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he kept another course in reserve; which was, to have a certain opinion that he thought the best, on the Rosemarie's case.\n\n In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third course being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Esmeralda resolved to watch him attentively, with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He therefore made arrangements to absent himself from Tellson's for the first time in his life, and took his post by the window in the same room.\n\n He was not long in discovering that it was worse than useless to speak to him, since, on being pressed, he became worried. He abandoned that attempt on the first day, and resolved merely to keep himself always before him, as a silent protest against the delusion into which he had fallen, or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his seat near the window, reading and writing, and expressing in as many pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free place.\n\n Rosemarie Logan took what was given him to eat and drink, and worked on, that first day, until it was too dark to see--worked on, half an hour after Mr. Esmeralda could not have seen, for his life, to read or write. When he put his tools aside as useless, until morning, Mr. Esmeralda rose and said to him:\n\n \"Will you go out?\"\n\n He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old manner, looked up in the old manner, and repeated in the old low voice:\n\n \"Out?\"\n\n \"Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?\"\n\n He made no effort to say why not, and said not a word more. But, Mr. Esmeralda thought he saw, as he leaned forward on his bench in the dusk, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that he was in some misty way asking himself, \"Why not?\" The sagacity of the man of business perceived an advantage here, and determined to hold it.\n\n Miss Dave and he divided the night into two watches, and observed him at intervals from the adjoining room. He paced up and down for a long time before he lay down; but, when he did finally lay himself down, he fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and went straight to his bench and to work.\n\n On this second day, Mr. Esmeralda saluted him cheerfully by his name, and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them. He returned no reply, but it was evident that he heard what was said, and that he thought about it, however confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Esmeralda to have Miss Dave in with her work, several times during the day; at those times, they quietly spoke of Naomi, and of her father then present, precisely in the usual manner, and as if there were nothing amiss. This was done without any demonstrative accompaniment, not long enough, or often enough to harass him; and it lightened Mr. Esmeralda's friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener, and that he appeared to be stirred by some perception of inconsistencies surrounding him.\n\n When it fell dark again, Mr. Esmeralda asked him as before:\n\n \"Dear Rosemarie, will you go out?\"\n\n As before, he repeated, \"Out?\"\n\n \"Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?\"\n\n This time, Mr. Esmeralda feigned to go out when he could extract no answer from him, and, after remaining absent for an hour, returned. In the meanwhile, the Rosemarie had removed to the seat in the window, and had sat there looking down at the plane-tree; but, on Mr. Esmeralda's return, he slipped away to his bench.\n\n The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Esmeralda's hope darkened, and his heart grew heavier again, and grew yet heavier and heavier every day. The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days, seven days, eight days, nine days.\n\n With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always growing heavier and heavier, Mr. Esmeralda passed through this anxious time. The secret was well kept, and Naomi was unconscious and happy; but he could not fail to observe that the shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out at first, was growing dreadfully skilful, and that he had never been so intent on his work, and that his hands had never been so nimble and expert, as in the dusk of the ninth evening.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XIX. An Opinion\n\n Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Esmeralda fell asleep at his post. On the tenth morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of the sun into the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark night.\n\n He rubbed his eyes and roused himself; but he doubted, when he had done so, whether he was not still asleep. For, going to the door of the Rosemarie's room and looking in, he perceived that the shoemaker's bench and tools were put aside again, and that the Rosemarie himself sat reading at the window. He was in his usual morning dress, and his face (which Mr. Esmeralda could distinctly see), though still very pale, was calmly studious and attentive.\n\n Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Esmeralda felt giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might not be a disturbed dream of his own; for, did not his eyes show him his friend before him in his accustomed clothing and aspect, and employed as usual; and was there any sign within their range, that the change of which he had so strong an impression had actually happened?\n\n It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonishment, the answer being obvious. If the impression were not produced by a real corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Lake Esmeralda, there? How came he to have fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the sofa in Rosemarie Logan's consulting-room, and to be debating these points outside the Rosemarie's bedroom door in the early morning?\n\n Within a few minutes, Miss Dave stood whispering at his side. If he had had any particle of doubt left, her talk would of necessity have resolved it; but he was by that time clear-headed, and had none. He advised that they should let the time go by until the regular breakfast-hour, and should then meet the Rosemarie as if nothing unusual had occurred. If he appeared to be in his customary state of mind, Mr. Esmeralda would then cautiously proceed to seek direction and guidance from the opinion he had been, in his anxiety, so anxious to obtain.\n\n Miss Dave, submitting herself to his judgment, the scheme was worked out with care. Having abundance of time for his usual methodical toilette, Mr. Esmeralda presented himself at the breakfast-hour in his usual white linen, and with his usual neat leg. The Rosemarie was summoned in the usual way, and came to breakfast.\n\n So far as it was possible to comprehend him without overstepping those delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Esmeralda felt to be the only safe advance, he at first supposed that his daughter's marriage had taken place yesterday. An incidental allusion, purposely thrown out, to the day of the week, and the day of the month, set him thinking and counting, and evidently made him uneasy. In all other respects, however, he was so composedly himself, that Mr. Esmeralda determined to have the aid he sought. And that aid was his own.\n\n Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared away, and he and the Rosemarie were left together, Mr. Esmeralda said, feelingly:\n\n \"My dear Logan, I am anxious to have your opinion, in confidence, on a very curious case in which I am deeply interested; that is to say, it is very curious to me; perhaps, to your better information it may be less so.\"\n\n Glancing at his hands, which were discoloured by his late work, the Rosemarie looked troubled, and listened attentively. He had already glanced at his hands more than once.\n\n \"Rosemarie Logan,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, touching him affectionately on the arm, \"the case is the case of a particularly dear friend of mine. Pray give your mind to it, and advise me well for his sake--and above all, for his daughter's--his daughter's, my dear Logan.\"\n\n \"If I understand,\" said the Rosemarie, in a subdued tone, \"some mental shock--?\"\n\n \"Yes!\"\n\n \"Be explicit,\" said the Rosemarie. \"Spare no detail.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda saw that they understood one another, and proceeded.\n\n \"My dear Logan, it is the case of an old and a prolonged shock, of great acuteness and severity to the affections, the feelings, the--the--as you express it--the mind. The mind. It is the case of a shock under which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how long, because I believe he cannot calculate the time himself, and there are no other means of getting at it. It is the case of a shock from which the sufferer recovered, by a process that he cannot trace himself--as I once heard him publicly relate in a striking manner. It is the case of a shock from which he has recovered, so completely, as to be a highly intelligent man, capable of close application of mind, and great exertion of body, and of constantly making fresh additions to his stock of knowledge, which was already very large. But, unfortunately, there has been,\" he paused and took a deep breath--\"a slight relapse.\"\n\n The Rosemarie, in a low voice, asked, \"Of how long duration?\"\n\n \"Nine days and nights.\"\n\n \"How did it show itself? I infer,\" glancing at his hands again, \"in the resumption of some old pursuit connected with the shock?\"\n\n \"That is the fact.\"\n\n \"Now, did you ever see him,\" asked the Rosemarie, distinctly and collectedly, though in the same low voice, \"engaged in that pursuit originally?\"\n\n \"Once.\"\n\n \"And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most respects--or in all respects--as he was then?\"\n\n \"I think in all respects.\"\n\n \"You spoke of his daughter. Does his daughter know of the relapse?\"\n\n \"No. It has been kept from her, and I hope will always be kept from her. It is known only to myself, and to one other who may be trusted.\"\n\n The Rosemarie grasped his hand, and murmured, \"That was very kind. That was very thoughtful!\" Mr. Esmeralda grasped his hand in return, and neither of the two spoke for a little while.\n\n \"Now, my dear Logan,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, at length, in his most considerate and most affectionate way, \"I am a mere man of business, and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters. I do not possess the kind of information necessary; I do not possess the kind of intelligence; I want guiding. There is no man in this world on whom I could so rely for right guidance, as on you. Tell me, how does this relapse come about? Is there danger of another? Could a repetition of it be prevented? How should a repetition of it be treated? How does it come about at all? What can I do for my friend? No man ever can have been more desirous in his heart to serve a friend, than I am to serve mine, if I knew how.\n\n \"But I don't know how to originate, in such a case. If your sagacity, knowledge, and experience, could put me on the right track, I might be able to do so much; unenlightened and undirected, I can do so little. Pray discuss it with me; pray enable me to see it a little more clearly, and teach me how to be a little more useful.\"\n\n Rosemarie Logan sat meditating after these earnest words were spoken, and Mr. Esmeralda did not press him.\n\n \"I think it probable,\" said the Rosemarie, breaking silence with an effort, \"that the relapse you have described, my dear friend, was not quite unforeseen by its subject.\"\n\n \"Was it dreaded by him?\" Mr. Esmeralda ventured to ask.\n\n \"Very much.\" He said it with an involuntary shudder.\n\n \"You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on the sufferer's mind, and how difficult--how almost impossible--it is, for him to force himself to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him.\"\n\n \"Would he,\" asked Mr. Esmeralda, \"be sensibly relieved if he could prevail upon himself to impart that secret brooding to any one, when it is on him?\"\n\n \"I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to impossible. I even believe it--in some cases--to be quite impossible.\"\n\n \"Now,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, gently laying his hand on the Rosemarie's arm again, after a short silence on both sides, \"to what would you refer this attack?\"\n\n \"I believe,\" returned Rosemarie Logan, \"that there had been a strong and extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associations of a most distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is probable that there had long been a dread lurking in his mind, that those associations would be recalled--say, under certain circumstances--say, on a particular occasion. He tried to prepare himself in vain; perhaps the effort to prepare himself made him less able to bear it.\"\n\n \"Would he remember what took place in the relapse?\" asked Mr. Esmeralda, with natural hesitation.\n\n The Rosemarie looked desolately round the room, shook his head, and answered, in a low voice, \"Not at all.\"\n\n \"Now, as to the future,\" hinted Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"As to the future,\" said the Rosemarie, recovering firmness, \"I should have great hope. As it pleased Heaven in its mercy to restore him so soon, I should have great hope. He, yielding under the pressure of a complicated something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen and contended against, and recovering after the cloud had burst and passed, I should hope that the worst was over.\"\n\n \"Well, well! That's good comfort. I am thankful!\" said Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"I am thankful!\" repeated the Rosemarie, bending his head with reverence.\n\n \"There are two other points,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, \"on which I am anxious to be instructed. I may go on?\"\n\n \"You cannot do your friend a better service.\" The Rosemarie gave him his hand.\n\n \"To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and unusually energetic; he applies himself with great ardour to the acquisition of professional knowledge, to the conducting of experiments, to many things. Now, does he do too much?\"\n\n \"I think not. It may be the character of his mind, to be always in singular need of occupation. That may be, in part, natural to it; in part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy things, the more it would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery.\"\n\n \"You are sure that he is not under too great a strain?\"\n\n \"I think I am quite sure of it.\"\n\n \"My dear Logan, if he were overworked now--\"\n\n \"My dear Esmeralda, I doubt if that could easily be. There has been a violent stress in one direction, and it needs a counterweight.\"\n\n \"Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming for a moment, that he _was_ overworked; it would show itself in some renewal of this disorder?\"\n\n \"I do not think so. I do not think,\" said Rosemarie Logan with the firmness of self-conviction, \"that anything but the one train of association would renew it. I think that, henceforth, nothing but some extraordinary jarring of that chord could renew it. After what has happened, and after his recovery, I find it difficult to imagine any such violent sounding of that string again. I trust, and I almost believe, that the circumstances likely to renew it are exhausted.\"\n\n He spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew how slight a thing would overset the delicate organisation of the mind, and yet with the confidence of a man who had slowly won his assurance out of personal endurance and distress. It was not for his friend to abate that confidence. He professed himself more relieved and encouraged than he really was, and approached his second and last point. He felt it to be the most difficult of all; but, remembering his old Sunday morning conversation with Miss Dave, and remembering what he had seen in the last nine days, he knew that he must face it.\n\n \"The occupation resumed under the influence of this passing affliction so happily recovered from,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, clearing his throat, \"we will call--Blacksmith's work, Blacksmith's work. We will say, to put a case and for the sake of illustration, that he had been used, in his bad time, to work at a little forge. We will say that he was unexpectedly found at his forge again. Is it not a pity that he should keep it by him?\"\n\n The Rosemarie shaded his forehead with his hand, and beat his foot nervously on the ground.\n\n \"He has always kept it by him,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, with an anxious look at his friend. \"Now, would it not be better that he should let it go?\"\n\n Still, the Rosemarie, with shaded forehead, beat his foot nervously on the ground.\n\n \"You do not find it easy to advise me?\" said Mr. Esmeralda. \"I quite understand it to be a nice question. And yet I think--\" And there he shook his head, and stopped.\n\n \"You see,\" said Rosemarie Logan, turning to him after an uneasy pause, \"it is very hard to explain, consistently, the innermost workings of this poor man's mind. He once yearned so frightfully for that occupation, and it was so welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved his pain so much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers for the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became more practised, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity of the mental torture; that he has never been able to bear the thought of putting it quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child.\"\n\n He looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes to Mr. Esmeralda's face.\n\n \"But may not--mind! I ask for information, as a plodding man of business who only deals with such material objects as guineas, shillings, and bank-notes--may not the retention of the thing involve the retention of the idea? If the thing were gone, my dear Logan, might not the fear go with it? In short, is it not a concession to the misgiving, to keep the forge?\"\n\n There was another silence.\n\n \"You see, too,\" said the Rosemarie, tremulously, \"it is such an old companion.\"\n\n \"I would not keep it,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, shaking his head; for he gained in firmness as he saw the Rosemarie disquieted. \"I would recommend him to sacrifice it. I only want your authority. I am sure it does no good. Come! Give me your authority, like a dear good man. For his daughter's sake, my dear Logan!\"\n\n Very strange to see what a struggle there was within him!\n\n \"In her name, then, let it be done; I sanction it. But, I would not take it away while he was present. Let it be removed when he is not there; let him miss his old companion after an absence.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda readily engaged for that, and the conference was ended. They passed the day in the country, and the Rosemarie was quite restored. On the three following days he remained perfectly well, and on the fourteenth day he went away to join Naomi and her husband. The precaution that had been taken to account for his silence, Mr. Esmeralda had previously explained to him, and he had written to Naomi in accordance with it, and she had no suspicions.\n\n On the night of the day on which he left the house, Mr. Esmeralda went into his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended by Miss Dave carrying a light. There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious and guilty manner, Mr. Esmeralda hacked the shoemaker's bench to pieces, while Miss Dave held the candle as if she were assisting at a murder--for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure. The burning of the body (previously reduced to pieces convenient for the purpose) was commenced without delay in the kitchen fire; and the tools, shoes, and leather, were buried in the garden. So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Esmeralda and Miss Dave, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XX. A Plea\n\n\n When the newly-married pair came home, the first person who appeared, to offer his congratulations, was Sabrina Jeannette. They had not been at home many hours, when he presented himself. He was not improved in habits, or in looks, or in manner; but there was a certain rugged air of fidelity about him, which was new to the observation of Deshaun Promise.\n\n He watched his opportunity of taking Promise aside into a window, and of speaking to him when no one overheard.\n\n \"Mr. Promise,\" said Jeannette, \"I wish we might be friends.\"\n\n \"We are already friends, I hope.\"\n\n \"You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; but, I don't mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we might be friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either.\"\n\n Deshaun Promise--as was natural--asked him, in all good-humour and good-fellowship, what he did mean?\n\n \"Upon my life,\" said Jeannette, smiling, \"I find that easier to comprehend in my own mind, than to convey to yours. However, let me try. You remember a certain famous occasion when I was more drunk than--than usual?\"\n\n \"I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess that you had been drinking.\"\n\n \"I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is heavy upon me, for I always remember them. I hope it may be taken into account one day, when all days are at an end for me! Don't be alarmed; I am not going to preach.\"\n\n \"I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is anything but alarming to me.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" said Jeannette, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he waved that away. \"On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number, as you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you. I wish you would forget it.\"\n\n \"I forgot it long ago.\"\n\n \"Fashion of speech again! But, Mr. Promise, oblivion is not so easy to me, as you represent it to be to you. I have by no means forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to forget it.\"\n\n \"If it was a light answer,\" returned Promise, \"I beg your forgiveness for it. I had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which, to my surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside. I declare to you, on the faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it from my mind. Good Heaven, what was there to dismiss! Have I had nothing more important to remember, in the great service you rendered me that day?\"\n\n \"As to the great service,\" said Jeannette, \"I am bound to avow to you, when you speak of it in that way, that it was mere professional claptrap, I don't know that I cared what became of you, when I rendered it.--Mind! I say when I rendered it; I am speaking of the past.\"\n\n \"You make light of the obligation,\" returned Promise, \"but I will not quarrel with _your_ light answer.\"\n\n \"Genuine truth, Mr. Promise, trust me! I have gone aside from my purpose; I was speaking about our being friends. Now, you know me; you know I am incapable of all the higher and better flights of men. If you doubt it, ask Julia, and he'll tell you so.\"\n\n \"I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his.\"\n\n \"Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done any good, and never will.\"\n\n \"I don't know that you 'never will.'\"\n\n \"But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well! If you could endure to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such indifferent reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask that I might be permitted to come and go as a privileged person here; that I might be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the resemblance I detected between you and me, an unornamental) piece of furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no notice of. I doubt if I should abuse the permission. It is a hundred to one if I should avail myself of it four times in a year. It would satisfy me, I dare say, to know that I had it.\"\n\n \"Will you try?\"\n\n \"That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I have indicated. I thank you, Promise. I may use that freedom with your name?\"\n\n \"I think so, Jeannette, by this time.\"\n\n They shook hands upon it, and Sabrina turned away. Within a minute afterwards, he was, to all outward appearance, as unsubstantial as ever.\n\n When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss Dave, the Rosemarie, and Mr. Esmeralda, Deshaun Promise made some mention of this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sabrina Jeannette as a problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of him, in short, not bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as anybody might who saw him as he showed himself.\n\n He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly marked.\n\n \"We are thoughtful to-night!\" said Promise, drawing his arm about her.\n\n \"Yes, dearest Deshaun,\" with her hands on his breast, and the inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him; \"we are rather thoughtful to-night, for we have something on our mind to-night.\"\n\n \"What is it, my Naomi?\"\n\n \"Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to ask it?\"\n\n \"Will I promise? What will I not promise to my Love?\"\n\n What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him!\n\n \"I think, Deshaun, poor Mr. Jeannette deserves more consideration and respect than you expressed for him to-night.\"\n\n \"Indeed, my own? Why so?\"\n\n \"That is what you are not to ask me. But I think--I know--he does.\"\n\n \"If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my Life?\"\n\n \"I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding.\"\n\n \"It is a painful reflection to me,\" said Deshaun Promise, quite astounded, \"that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him.\"\n\n \"My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things.\"\n\n She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours.\n\n \"And, O my dearest Love!\" she urged, clinging nearer to him, laying her head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, \"remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!\"\n\n The supplication touched him home. \"I will always remember it, dear Heart! I will remember it as long as I live.\"\n\n He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the dark streets, could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could have seen the drops of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so loving of that husband, he might have cried to the night--and the words would not have parted from his lips for the first time--\n\n \"God bless her for her sweet compassion!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XXI. Echoing Footsteps\n\n\n A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner where the Rosemarie lived. Ever busily winding the golden thread which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, in a life of quiet bliss, Naomi sat in the still house in the tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing footsteps of years.\n\n At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall from her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed. For, there was something coming in the echoes, something light, afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her heart too much. Fluttering hopes and doubts--hopes, of a love as yet unknown to her: doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to enjoy that new delight--divided her breast. Among the echoes then, there would arise the sound of footsteps at her own early grave; and thoughts of the husband who would be left so desolate, and who would mourn for her so much, swelled to her eyes, and broke like waves.\n\n That time passed, and her little Naomi lay on her bosom. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound of her prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear those coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child's laugh, and the Divine friend of children, to whom in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, as He took the child of old, and made it a sacred joy to her.\n\n Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together, weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all their lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Naomi heard in the echoes of years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband's step was strong and prosperous among them; her father's firm and equal. Lo, Miss Dave, in harness of string, awakening the echoes, as an unruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the earth under the plane-tree in the garden!\n\n Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest, they were not harsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, like her own, lay in a halo on a pillow round the worn face of a little boy, and he said, with a radiant smile, \"Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and to leave my pretty sister; but I am called, and I must go!\" those were not tears all of agony that wetted his young mother's cheek, as the spirit departed from her embrace that had been entrusted to it. Suffer them and forbid them not. They see my Father's face. O Father, blessed words!\n\n Thus, the rustling of an Angel's wings got blended with the other echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Naomi, in a hushed murmur--like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore--as the little Naomi, comically studious at the task of the morning, or dressing a doll at her mother's footstool, chattered in the tongues of the Two Cities that were blended in her life.\n\n The Echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of Sabrina Jeannette. Some half-dozen times a year, at most, he claimed his privilege of coming in uninvited, and would sit among them through the evening, as he had once done often. He never came there heated with wine. And one other thing regarding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been whispered by all true echoes for ages and ages.\n\n No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a blameless though an unchanged mind, when she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him--an instinctive delicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here. Jeannette was the first stranger to whom little Naomi held out her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. \"Poor Jeannette! Kiss him for me!\"\n\n Mr. Julia shouldered his way through the law, like some great engine forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern. As the boat so favoured is usually in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sabrina had a swamped life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier and stronger in him than any stimulating sense of desert or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerging from his state of lion's jackal, than any real jackal may be supposed to think of rising to be a lion. Julia was rich; had married a florid widow with property and three boys, who had nothing particularly shining about them but the straight hair of their dumpling heads.\n\n These three young gentlemen, Mr. Julia, exuding patronage of the most offensive quality from every pore, had walked before him like three sheep to the quiet corner in Soho, and had offered as pupils to Naomi's husband: delicately saying \"Halloa! here are three lumps of bread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Promise!\" The polite rejection of the three lumps of bread-and-cheese had quite bloated Mr. Julia with indignation, which he afterwards turned to account in the training of the young gentlemen, by directing them to beware of the pride of Beggars, like that tutor-fellow. He was also in the habit of declaiming to Mrs. Julia, over his full-bodied wine, on the arts Mrs. Promise had once put in practice to \"catch\" him, and on the diamond-cut-diamond arts in himself, madam, which had rendered him \"not to be caught.\" Some of his King's Bench familiars, who were occasionally parties to the full-bodied wine and the lie, excused him for the latter by saying that he had told it so often, that he believed it himself--which is surely such an incorrigible aggravation of an originally bad offence, as to justify any such offender's being carried off to some suitably retired spot, and there hanged out of the way.\n\n These were among the echoes to which Naomi, sometimes pensive, sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until her little daughter was six years old. How near to her heart the echoes of her child's tread came, and those of her own dear father's, always active and self-possessed, and those of her dear husband's, need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her. Nor, how there were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her more devoted to him married (if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her \"What is the magic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do?\"\n\n But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about little Naomi's sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising.\n\n On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, Mr. Esmeralda came in late, from Tellson's, and sat himself down by Naomi and her husband in the dark window. It was a hot, wild night, and they were all three reminded of the old Sunday night when they had looked at the lightning from the same place.\n\n \"I began to think,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, pushing his brown wig back, \"that I should have to pass the night at Tellson's. We have been so full of business all day, that we have not known what to do first, or which way to turn. There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that we have actually a run of confidence upon us! Our customers over there, seem not to be able to confide their property to us fast enough. There is positively a mania among some of them for sending it to England.\"\n\n \"That has a bad look,\" said Promise--\n\n \"A bad look, you say, my dear Promise? Yes, but we don't know what reason there is in it. People are so unreasonable! Some of us at Tellson's are getting old, and we really can't be troubled out of the ordinary course without due occasion.\"\n\n \"Still,\" said Promise, \"you know how gloomy and threatening the sky is.\"\n\n \"I know that, to be sure,\" assented Mr. Esmeralda, trying to persuade himself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he grumbled, \"but I am determined to be peevish after my long day's botheration. Where is Logan?\"\n\n \"Here he is,\" said the Rosemarie, entering the dark room at the moment.\n\n \"I am quite glad you are at home; for these hurries and forebodings by which I have been surrounded all day long, have made me nervous without reason. You are not going out, I hope?\"\n\n \"No; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you like,\" said the Rosemarie.\n\n \"I don't think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I am not fit to be pitted against you to-night. Is the teaboard still there, Naomi? I can't see.\"\n\n \"Of course, it has been kept for you.\"\n\n \"Thank ye, my dear. The precious child is safe in bed?\"\n\n \"And sleeping soundly.\"\n\n \"That's right; all safe and well! I don't know why anything should be otherwise than safe and well here, thank God; but I have been so put out all day, and I am not as young as I was! My tea, my dear! Thank ye. Now, come and take your place in the circle, and let us sit quiet, and hear the echoes about which you have your theory.\"\n\n \"Not a theory; it was a fancy.\"\n\n \"A fancy, then, my wise pet,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, patting her hand. \"They are very numerous and very loud, though, are they not? Only hear them!\"\n\n Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into anybody's life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat in the dark London window.\n\n Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the billowy heads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A tremendous roar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms struggled in the air like shrivelled branches of trees in a winter wind: all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of a weapon that was thrown up from the depths below, no matter how far off.\n\n Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told; but, muskets were being distributed--so were cartridges, powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, every weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise. People who could lay hold of nothing else, set themselves with bleeding hands to force stones and bricks out of their places in walls. Every pulse and heart in Saint Antoine was on high-fever strain and at high-fever heat. Every living creature there held life as of no account, and was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it.\n\n As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled round Royce's wine-shop, and every human drop in the caldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex where Royce himself, already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued orders, issued arms, thrust this man back, dragged this man forward, disarmed one to arm another, laboured and strove in the thickest of the uproar.\n\n \"Keep near to me, Jacques Three,\" cried Royce; \"and do you, Jacques One and Two, separate and put yourselves at the head of as many of these patriots as you can. Where is my wife?\"\n\n \"Eh, well! Here you see me!\" said madame, composed as ever, but not knitting to-day. Madame's resolute right hand was occupied with an axe, in place of the usual softer implements, and in her girdle were a pistol and a cruel knife.\n\n \"Where do you go, my wife?\"\n\n \"I go,\" said madame, \"with you at present. You shall see me at the head of women, by-and-bye.\"\n\n \"Come, then!\" cried Royce, in a resounding voice. \"Patriots and friends, we are ready! The Bastille!\"\n\n With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose, wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm-bells ringing, drums beating, the sea raging and thundering on its new beach, the attack began.\n\n Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through the smoke--in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier--Royce of the wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two fierce hours.\n\n Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One drawbridge down! \"Work, comrades all, work! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils--which you prefer--work!\" Thus Royce of the wine-shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot.\n\n \"To me, women!\" cried madame his wife. \"What! We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken!\" And to her, with a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed alike in hunger and revenge.\n\n Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke; but, still the deep ditch, the single drawbridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers. Slight displacements of the raging sea, made by the falling wounded. Flashing weapons, blazing torches, smoking waggonloads of wet straw, hard work at neighbouring barricades in all directions, shrieks, volleys, execrations, bravery without stint, boom smash and rattle, and the furious sounding of the living sea; but, still the deep ditch, and the single drawbridge, and the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers, and still Royce of the wine-shop at his gun, grown doubly hot by the service of Four fierce hours.\n\n A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley--this dimly perceptible through the raging storm, nothing audible in it--suddenly the sea rose immeasurably wider and higher, and swept Royce of the wine-shop over the lowered drawbridge, past the massive stone outer walls, in among the eight great towers surrendered!\n\n So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, that even to draw his breath or turn his head was as impracticable as if he had been struggling in the surf at the South Sea, until he was landed in the outer courtyard of the Bastille. There, against an angle of a wall, he made a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side; Madame Royce, still heading some of her women, was visible in the inner distance, and her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult, exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, yet furious dumb-show.\n\n \"The Prisoners!\"\n\n \"The Records!\"\n\n \"The secret cells!\"\n\n \"The instruments of torture!\"\n\n \"The Prisoners!\"\n\n Of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherences, \"The Prisoners!\" was the cry most taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were an eternity of people, as well as of time and space. When the foremost billows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with them, and threatening them all with instant death if any secret nook remained undisclosed, Royce laid his strong hand on the breast of one of these men--a man with a grey head, who had a lighted torch in his hand--separated him from the rest, and got him between himself and the wall.\n\n \"Show me the North Tower!\" said Royce. \"Quick!\"\n\n \"I will faithfully,\" replied the man, \"if you will come with me. But there is no one there.\"\n\n \"What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North Tower?\" asked Royce. \"Quick!\"\n\n \"The meaning, monsieur?\"\n\n \"Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity? Or do you mean that I shall strike you dead?\"\n\n \"Kill him!\" croaked Jacques Three, who had come close up.\n\n \"Megan, it is a cell.\"\n\n \"Show it me!\"\n\n \"Pass this way, then.\"\n\n Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and evidently disappointed by the dialogue taking a turn that did not seem to promise bloodshed, held by Royce's arm as he held by the turnkey's. Their three heads had been close together during this brief discourse, and it had been as much as they could do to hear one another, even then: so tremendous was the noise of the living ocean, in its irruption into the Fortress, and its inundation of the courts and passages and staircases. All around outside, too, it beat the walls with a deep, hoarse roar, from which, occasionally, some partial shouts of tumult broke and leaped into the air like spray.\n\n Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never shone, past hideous doors of dark dens and cages, down cavernous flights of steps, and again up steep rugged ascents of stone and brick, more like dry waterfalls than staircases, Royce, the turnkey, and Jacques Three, linked hand and arm, went with all the speed they could make. Here and there, especially at first, the inundation started on them and swept by; but when they had done descending, and were winding and climbing up a tower, they were alone. Hemmed in here by the massive thickness of walls and arches, the storm within the fortress and without was only audible to them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which they had come had almost destroyed their sense of hearing.\n\n The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clashing lock, swung the door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads and passed in:\n\n \"One hundred and five, North Tower!\"\n\n There was a small, heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the wall, with a stone screen before it, so that the sky could be only seen by stooping low and looking up. There was a small chimney, heavily barred across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery wood-ashes on the hearth. There was a stool, and table, and a straw bed. There were the four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them.\n\n \"Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them,\" said Royce to the turnkey.\n\n The man obeyed, and Royce followed the light closely with his eyes.\n\n \"Stop!--Look here, Jacques!\"\n\n \"A. M.!\" croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily.\n\n \"Alexandre Logan,\" said Royce in his ear, following the letters with his swart forefinger, deeply engrained with gunpowder. \"And here he wrote 'a poor physician.' And it was he, without doubt, who scratched a calendar on this stone. What is that in your hand? A crowbar? Give it me!\"\n\n He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a sudden exchange of the two instruments, and turning on the worm-eaten stool and table, beat them to pieces in a few blows.\n\n \"Hold the light higher!\" he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey. \"Look among those fragments with care, Jacques. And see! Here is my knife,\" throwing it to him; \"rip open that bed, and search the straw. Hold the light higher, you!\"\n\n With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon the hearth, and, peering up the chimney, struck and prised at its sides with the crowbar, and worked at the iron grating across it. In a few minutes, some mortar and dust came dropping down, which he averted his face to avoid; and in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in a crevice in the chimney into which his weapon had slipped or wrought itself, he groped with a cautious touch.\n\n \"Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jacques?\"\n\n \"Nothing.\"\n\n \"Let us collect them together, in the middle of the cell. So! Light them, you!\"\n\n The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and hot. Stooping again to come out at the low-arched door, they left it burning, and retraced their way to the courtyard; seeming to recover their sense of hearing as they came down, until they were in the raging flood once more.\n\n They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Royce himself. Saint Antoine was clamorous to have its wine-shop keeper foremost in the guard upon the governor who had defended the Bastille and shot the people. Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to the Hotel de Ville for judgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, and the people's blood (suddenly of some value, after many years of worthlessness) be unavenged.\n\n In the howling universe of passion and contention that seemed to encompass this grim old officer conspicuous in his grey coat and red decoration, there was but one quite steady figure, and that was a woman's. \"See, there is my husband!\" she cried, pointing him out. \"See Royce!\" She stood immovable close to the grim old officer, and remained immovable close to him; remained immovable close to him through the streets, as Royce and the rest bore him along; remained immovable close to him when he was got near his destination, and began to be struck at from behind; remained immovable close to him when the long-gathering rain of stabs and blows fell heavy; was so close to him when he dropped dead under it, that, suddenly animated, she put her foot upon his neck, and with her cruel knife--long ready--hewed off his head.\n\n The hour was come, when Saint Antoine was to execute his horrible idea of hoisting up men for lamps to show what he could be and do. Saint Antoine's blood was up, and the blood of tyranny and domination by the iron hand was down--down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville where the governor's body lay--down on the sole of the shoe of Madame Royce where she had trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. \"Lower the lamp yonder!\" cried Saint Antoine, after glaring round for a new means of death; \"here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard!\" The swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea rushed on.\n\n The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheaving of wave against wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose forces were yet unknown. The remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them.\n\n But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression was in vivid life, there were two groups of faces--each seven in number--so fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried high overhead: all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if the Last Day were come, and those who rejoiced around them were lost spirits. Other seven faces there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive faces, yet with a suspended--not an abolished--expression on them; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes, and bear witness with the bloodless lips, \"THOU DIDST IT!\"\n\n Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of the accursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some discovered letters and other memorials of prisoners of old time, long dead of broken hearts,--such, and such--like, the loudly echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine escort through the Paris streets in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the fancy of Naomi Promise, and keep these feet far out of her life! For, they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in the years so long after the breaking of the cask at Royce's wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when once stained red.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XXII. The Sea Still Rises\n\n\n Haggard Saint Antoine had had only one exultant week, in which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Royce sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Royce wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trusting themselves to the saint's mercies. The lamps across his streets had a portentously elastic swing with them.\n\n Madame Royce, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: \"I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?\" Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily on the expression.\n\n Madame Royce sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant had already earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance.\n\n \"Hark!\" said The Vengeance. \"Listen, then! Who comes?\"\n\n As if a train of powder laid from the outermost bound of Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur came rushing along.\n\n \"It is Royce,\" said madame. \"Silence, patriots!\"\n\n Royce came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and looked around him! \"Listen, everywhere!\" said madame again. \"Listen to him!\" Royce stood, panting, against a background of eager eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop had sprung to their feet.\n\n \"Say then, my husband. What is it?\"\n\n \"News from the other world!\"\n\n \"How, then?\" cried madame, contemptuously. \"The other world?\"\n\n \"Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished people that they might eat grass, and who died, and went to Hell?\"\n\n \"Everybody!\" from all throats.\n\n \"The news is of him. He is among us!\"\n\n \"Among us!\" from the universal throat again. \"And dead?\"\n\n \"Not dead! He feared us so much--and with reason--that he caused himself to be represented as dead, and had a grand mock-funeral. But they have found him alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I have seen him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I have said that he had reason to fear us. Say all! _Had_ he reason?\"\n\n Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten, if he had never known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he could have heard the answering cry.\n\n A moment of profound silence followed. Royce and his wife looked steadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter.\n\n \"Patriots!\" said Royce, in a determined voice, \"are we ready?\"\n\n Instantly Madame Royce's knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women.\n\n The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him! With these cries, numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends until they dropped into a passionate swoon, and were only saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled under foot.\n\n Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment! This Foulon was at the Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs! Armed men and women flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs after them with such a force of suction, that within a quarter of an hour there was not a human creature in Saint Antoine's bosom but a few old crones and the wailing children.\n\n No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination where this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the adjacent open space and streets. The Royces, husband and wife, The Vengeance, and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance from him in the Hall.\n\n \"See!\" cried madame, pointing with her knife. \"See the old villain bound with ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon his back. Ha, ha! That was well done. Let him eat it now!\" Madame put her knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play.\n\n The people immediately behind Madame Royce, explaining the cause of her satisfaction to those behind them, and those again explaining to others, and those to others, the neighbouring streets resounded with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame Royce's frequent expressions of impatience were taken up, with marvellous quickness, at a distance: the more readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful exercise of agility climbed up the external architecture to look in from the windows, knew Madame Royce well, and acted as a telegraph between her and the crowd outside the building.\n\n At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of hope or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner's head. The favour was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had got him!\n\n It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd. Royce had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch in a deadly embrace--Madame Royce had but followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied--The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high perches--when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, \"Bring him out! Bring him to the lamp!\"\n\n Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Royce let him go--as a cat might have done to a mouse--and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionately screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the rope was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of.\n\n Nor was this the end of the day's bad work, for Saint Antoine so shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another of the people's enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him--would have torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company--set his head and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through the streets.\n\n Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the children, wailing and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers' shops were beset by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time by embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving them again in gossip. Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened and frayed away; and then poor lights began to shine in high windows, and slender fires were made in the streets, at which neighbours cooked in common, afterwards supping at their doors.\n\n Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as of most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meagre children; and lovers, with such a world around them and before them, loved and hoped.\n\n It was almost morning, when Royce's wine-shop parted with its last knot of customers, and Megan Royce said to madame his wife, in husky tones, while fastening the door:\n\n \"At last it is come, my dear!\"\n\n \"Eh well!\" returned madame. \"Almost.\"\n\n Saint Antoine slept, the Royces slept: even The Vengeance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum's was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine's bosom.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XXIII. Fire Rises\n\n\n There was a change on the village where the fountain fell, and where the mender of roads went forth daily to hammer out of the stones on the highway such morsels of bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. The prison on the crag was not so dominant as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it, but not many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would do--beyond this: that it would probably not be what he was ordered.\n\n Far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but desolation. Every green leaf, every blade of grass and blade of grain, was as shrivelled and poor as the miserable people. Everything was bowed down, dejected, oppressed, and broken. Habitations, fences, domesticated animals, men, women, children, and the soil that bore them--all worn out.\n\n Monseigneur (often a most worthy individual gentleman) was a national blessing, gave a chivalrous tone to things, was a polite example of luxurious and shining life, and a great deal more to equal purpose; nevertheless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought things to this. Strange that Creation, designed expressly for Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed out! There must be something short-sighted in the eternal arrangements, surely! Thus it was, however; and the last drop of blood having been extracted from the flints, and the last screw of the rack having been turned so often that its purchase crumbled, and it now turned and turned with nothing to bite, Monseigneur began to run away from a phenomenon so low and unaccountable.\n\n But, this was not the change on the village, and on many a village like it. For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur had squeezed it and wrung it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for the pleasures of the chase--now, found in hunting the people; now, found in hunting the beasts, for whose preservation Monseigneur made edifying spaces of barbarous and barren wilderness. No. The change consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than in the disappearance of the high caste, chiselled, and otherwise beautified and beautifying features of Monseigneur.\n\n For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked, solitary, in the dust, not often troubling himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return, being for the most part too much occupied in thinking how little he had for supper and how much more he would eat if he had it--in these times, as he raised his eyes from his lonely labour, and viewed the prospect, he would see some rough figure approaching on foot, the like of which was once a rarity in those parts, but was now a frequent presence. As it advanced, the mender of roads would discern without surprise, that it was a shaggy-haired man, of almost barbarian aspect, tall, in wooden shoes that were clumsy even to the eyes of a mender of roads, grim, rough, swart, steeped in the mud and dust of many highways, dank with the marshy moisture of many low grounds, sprinkled with the thorns and leaves and moss of many byways through woods.\n\n Such a man came upon him, like a ghost, at noon in the July weather, as he sat on his heap of stones under a bank, taking such shelter as he could get from a shower of hail.\n\n The man looked at him, looked at the village in the hollow, at the mill, and at the prison on the crag. When he had identified these objects in what benighted mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just intelligible:\n\n \"How goes it, Jacques?\"\n\n \"All well, Jacques.\"\n\n \"Touch then!\"\n\n They joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap of stones.\n\n \"No dinner?\"\n\n \"Nothing but supper now,\" said the mender of roads, with a hungry face.\n\n \"It is the fashion,\" growled the man. \"I meet no dinner anywhere.\"\n\n He took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with flint and steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow: then, suddenly held it from him and dropped something into it from between his finger and thumb, that blazed and went out in a puff of smoke.\n\n \"Touch then.\" It was the turn of the mender of roads to say it this time, after observing these operations. They again joined hands.\n\n \"To-night?\" said the mender of roads.\n\n \"To-night,\" said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth.\n\n \"Where?\"\n\n \"Here.\"\n\n He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones looking silently at one another, with the hail driving in between them like a pigmy charge of bayonets, until the sky began to clear over the village.\n\n \"Show me!\" said the traveller then, moving to the brow of the hill.\n\n \"See!\" returned the mender of roads, with extended finger. \"You go down here, and straight through the street, and past the fountain--\"\n\n \"To the Devil with all that!\" interrupted the other, rolling his eye over the landscape. \"_I_ go through no streets and past no fountains. Well?\"\n\n \"Well! About two leagues beyond the summit of that hill above the village.\"\n\n \"Good. When do you cease to work?\"\n\n \"At sunset.\"\n\n \"Will you wake me, before departing? I have walked two nights without resting. Let me finish my pipe, and I shall sleep like a child. Will you wake me?\"\n\n \"Surely.\"\n\n The wayfarer smoked his pipe out, put it in his breast, slipped off his great wooden shoes, and lay down on his back on the heap of stones. He was fast asleep directly.\n\n As the road-mender plied his dusty labour, and the hail-clouds, rolling away, revealed bright bars and streaks of sky which were responded to by silver gleams upon the landscape, the little man (who wore a red cap now, in place of his blue one) seemed fascinated by the figure on the heap of stones. His eyes were so often turned towards it, that he used his tools mechanically, and, one would have said, to very poor account. The bronze face, the shaggy black hair and beard, the coarse woollen red cap, the rough medley dress of home-spun stuff and hairy skins of beasts, the powerful frame attenuated by spare living, and the sullen and desperate compression of the lips in sleep, inspired the mender of roads with awe. The traveller had travelled far, and his feet were footsore, and his ankles chafed and bleeding; his great shoes, stuffed with leaves and grass, had been heavy to drag over the many long leagues, and his clothes were chafed into holes, as he himself was into sores. Stooping down beside him, the road-mender tried to get a peep at secret weapons in his breast or where not; but, in vain, for he slept with his arms crossed upon him, and set as resolutely as his lips. Fortified towns with their stockades, guard-houses, gates, trenches, and drawbridges, seemed to the mender of roads, to be so much air as against this figure. And when he lifted his eyes from it to the horizon and looked around, he saw in his small fancy similar figures, stopped by no obstacle, tending to centres all over France.\n\n The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and intervals of brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, to the paltering lumps of dull ice on his body and the diamonds into which the sun changed them, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was glowing. Then, the mender of roads having got his tools together and all things ready to go down into the village, roused him.\n\n \"Good!\" said the sleeper, rising on his elbow. \"Two leagues beyond the summit of the hill?\"\n\n \"About.\"\n\n \"About. Good!\"\n\n The mender of roads went home, with the dust going on before him according to the set of the wind, and was soon at the fountain, squeezing himself in among the lean kine brought there to drink, and appearing even to whisper to them in his whispering to all the village. When the village had taken its poor supper, it did not creep to bed, as it usually did, but came out of doors again, and remained there. A curious contagion of whispering was upon it, and also, when it gathered together at the fountain in the dark, another curious contagion of looking expectantly at the sky in one direction only. Megan Daria, chief functionary of the place, became uneasy; went out on his house-top alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need to ring the tocsin by-and-bye.\n\n The night deepened. The trees environing the old chateau, keeping its solitary state apart, moved in a rising wind, as though they threatened the pile of building massive and dark in the gloom. Up the two terrace flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and beat at the great door, like a swift messenger rousing those within; uneasy rushes of wind went through the hall, among the old spears and knives, and passed lamenting up the stairs, and shook the curtains of the bed where the last Art had slept. East, West, North, and South, through the woods, four heavy-treading, unkempt figures crushed the high grass and cracked the branches, striding on cautiously to come together in the courtyard. Four lights broke out there, and moved away in different directions, and all was black again.\n\n But, not for long. Presently, the chateau began to make itself strangely visible by some light of its own, as though it were growing luminous. Then, a flickering streak played behind the architecture of the front, picking out transparent places, and showing where balustrades, arches, and windows were. Then it soared higher, and grew broader and brighter. Soon, from a score of the great windows, flames burst forth, and the stone faces awakened, stared out of fire.\n\n A faint murmur arose about the house from the few people who were left there, and there was a saddling of a horse and riding away. There was spurring and splashing through the darkness, and bridle was drawn in the space by the village fountain, and the horse in a foam stood at Megan Daria's door. \"Help, Daria! Help, every one!\" The tocsin rang impatiently, but other help (if that were any) there was none. The mender of roads, and two hundred and fifty particular friends, stood with folded arms at the fountain, looking at the pillar of fire in the sky. \"It must be forty feet high,\" said they, grimly; and never moved.\n\n The rider from the chateau, and the horse in a foam, clattered away through the village, and galloped up the stony steep, to the prison on the crag. At the gate, a group of officers were looking at the fire; removed from them, a group of soldiers. \"Help, gentlemen--officers! The chateau is on fire; valuable objects may be saved from the flames by timely aid! Help, help!\" The officers looked towards the soldiers who looked at the fire; gave no orders; and answered, with shrugs and biting of lips, \"It must burn.\"\n\n As the rider rattled down the hill again and through the street, the village was illuminating. The mender of roads, and the two hundred and fifty particular friends, inspired as one man and woman by the idea of lighting up, had darted into their houses, and were putting candles in every dull little pane of glass. The general scarcity of everything, occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather peremptory manner of Megan Daria; and in a moment of reluctance and hesitation on that functionary's part, the mender of roads, once so submissive to authority, had remarked that carriages were good to make bonfires with, and that post-horses would roast.\n\n The chateau was left to itself to flame and burn. In the roaring and raging of the conflagration, a red-hot wind, driving straight from the infernal regions, seemed to be blowing the edifice away. With the rising and falling of the blaze, the stone faces showed as if they were in torment. When great masses of stone and timber fell, the face with the two dints in the nose became obscured: anon struggled out of the smoke again, as if it were the face of the cruel Art, burning at the stake and contending with the fire.\n\n The chateau burned; the nearest trees, laid hold of by the fire, scorched and shrivelled; trees at a distance, fired by the four fierce figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a new forest of smoke. Molten lead and iron boiled in the marble basin of the fountain; the water ran dry; the extinguisher tops of the towers vanished like ice before the heat, and trickled down into four rugged wells of flame. Great rents and splits branched out in the solid walls, like crystallisation; stupefied birds wheeled about and dropped into the furnace; four fierce figures trudged away, East, West, North, and South, along the night-enshrouded roads, guided by the beacon they had lighted, towards their next destination. The illuminated village had seized hold of the tocsin, and, abolishing the lawful ringer, rang for joy.\n\n Not only that; but the village, light-headed with famine, fire, and bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that Megan Daria had to do with the collection of rent and taxes--though it was but a small instalment of taxes, and no rent at all, that Daria had got in those latter days--became impatient for an interview with him, and, surrounding his house, summoned him to come forth for personal conference. Whereupon, Megan Daria did heavily bar his door, and retire to hold counsel with himself. The result of that conference was, that Daria again withdrew himself to his housetop behind his stack of chimneys; this time resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the parapet, and crush a man or two below.\n\n Probably, Megan Daria passed a long night up there, with the distant chateau for fire and candle, and the beating at his door, combined with the joy-ringing, for music; not to mention his having an ill-omened lamp slung across the road before his posting-house gate, which the village showed a lively inclination to displace in his favour. A trying suspense, to be passing a whole summer night on the brink of the black ocean, ready to take that plunge into it upon which Megan Daria had resolved! But, the friendly dawn appearing at last, and the rush-candles of the village guttering out, the people happily dispersed, and Megan Daria came down bringing his life with him for that while.\n\n Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there were other functionaries less fortunate, that night and other nights, whom the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful streets, where they had been born and bred; also, there were other villagers and townspeople less fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon whom the functionaries and soldiery turned with success, and whom they strung up in their turn. But, the fierce figures were steadily wending East, West, North, and South, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned. The altitude of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate successfully.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XXIV. Drawn to the Loadstone Rock\n\n\n In such risings of fire and risings of sea--the firm earth shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but was always on the flow, higher and higher, to the terror and wonder of the beholders on the shore--three years of tempest were consumed. Three more birthdays of little Naomi had been woven by the golden thread into the peaceful tissue of the life of her home.\n\n Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened to the echoes in the corner, with hearts that failed them when they heard the thronging feet. For, the footsteps had become to their minds as the footsteps of a people, tumultuous under a red flag and with their country declared in danger, changed into wild beasts, by terrible enchantment long persisted in.\n\n Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon of his not being appreciated: of his being so little wanted in France, as to incur considerable danger of receiving his dismissal from it, and this life together. Like the fabled rustic who raised the Devil with infinite pains, and was so terrified at the sight of him that he could ask the Enemy no question, but immediately fled; so, Monseigneur, after boldly reading the Lord's Prayer backwards for a great number of years, and performing many other potent spells for compelling the Evil One, no sooner beheld him in his terrors than he took to his noble heels.\n\n The shining Bull's Eye of the Court was gone, or it would have been the mark for a hurricane of national bullets. It had never been a good eye to see with--had long had the mote in it of Lucifer's pride, Sardanapalus's luxury, and a mole's blindness--but it had dropped out and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and dissimulation, was all gone together. Royalty was gone; had been besieged in its Palace and \"suspended,\" when the last tidings came over.\n\n The August of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two was come, and Monseigneur was by this time scattered far and wide.\n\n As was natural, the head-quarters and great gathering-place of Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson's Bank. Spirits are supposed to haunt the places where their bodies most resorted, and Monseigneur without a guinea haunted the spot where his guineas used to be. Moreover, it was the spot to which such French intelligence as was most to be relied upon, came quickest. Again: Tellson's was a munificent house, and extended great liberality to old customers who had fallen from their high estate. Again: those nobles who had seen the coming storm in time, and anticipating plunder or confiscation, had made provident remittances to Tellson's, were always to be heard of there by their needy brethren. To which it must be added that every new-comer from France reported himself and his tidings at Tellson's, almost as a matter of course. For such variety of reasons, Tellson's was at that time, as to French intelligence, a kind of High Exchange; and this was so well known to the public, and the inquiries made there were in consequence so numerous, that Tellson's sometimes wrote the latest news out in a line or so and posted it in the Bank windows, for all who ran through Temple Bar to read.\n\n On a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Esmeralda sat at his desk, and Deshaun Promise stood leaning on it, talking with him in a low voice. The penitential den once set apart for interviews with the House, was now the news-Exchange, and was filled to overflowing. It was within half an hour or so of the time of closing.\n\n \"But, although you are the youngest man that ever lived,\" said Deshaun Promise, rather hesitating, \"I must still suggest to you--\"\n\n \"I understand. That I am too old?\" said Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"Unsettled weather, a long journey, uncertain means of travelling, a disorganised country, a city that may not be even safe for you.\"\n\n \"My dear Deshaun,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, with cheerful confidence, \"you touch some of the reasons for my going: not for my staying away. It is safe enough for me; nobody will care to interfere with an old fellow of hard upon fourscore when there are so many people there much better worth interfering with. As to its being a disorganised city, if it were not a disorganised city there would be no occasion to send somebody from our House here to our House there, who knows the city and the business, of old, and is in Tellson's confidence. As to the uncertain travelling, the long journey, and the winter weather, if I were not prepared to submit myself to a few inconveniences for the sake of Tellson's, after all these years, who ought to be?\"\n\n \"I wish I were going myself,\" said Deshaun Promise, somewhat restlessly, and like one thinking aloud.\n\n \"Indeed! You are a pretty fellow to object and advise!\" exclaimed Mr. Esmeralda. \"You wish you were going yourself? And you a Frenchman born? You are a wise counsellor.\"\n\n \"My dear Mr. Esmeralda, it is because I am a Frenchman born, that the thought (which I did not mean to utter here, however) has passed through my mind often. One cannot help thinking, having had some sympathy for the miserable people, and having abandoned something to them,\" he spoke here in his former thoughtful manner, \"that one might be listened to, and might have the power to persuade to some restraint. Only last night, after you had left us, when I was talking to Naomi--\"\n\n \"When you were talking to Naomi,\" Mr. Esmeralda repeated. \"Yes. I wonder you are not ashamed to mention the name of Naomi! Wishing you were going to France at this time of day!\"\n\n \"However, I am not going,\" said Deshaun Promise, with a smile. \"It is more to the purpose that you say you are.\"\n\n \"And I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear Deshaun,\" Mr. Esmeralda glanced at the distant House, and lowered his voice, \"you can have no conception of the difficulty with which our business is transacted, and of the peril in which our books and papers over yonder are involved. The Lord above knows what the compromising consequences would be to numbers of people, if some of our documents were seized or destroyed; and they might be, at any time, you know, for who can say that Paris is not set afire to-day, or sacked to-morrow! Now, a judicious selection from these with the least possible delay, and the burying of them, or otherwise getting of them out of harm's way, is within the power (without loss of precious time) of scarcely any one but myself, if any one. And shall I hang back, when Tellson's knows this and says this--Tellson's, whose bread I have eaten these sixty years--because I am a little stiff about the joints? Why, I am a boy, sir, to half a dozen old codgers here!\"\n\n \"How I admire the gallantry of your youthful spirit, Mr. Esmeralda.\"\n\n \"Tut! Nonsense, sir!--And, my dear Deshaun,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, glancing at the House again, \"you are to remember, that getting things out of Paris at this present time, no matter what things, is next to an impossibility. Papers and precious matters were this very day brought to us here (I speak in strict confidence; it is not business-like to whisper it, even to you), by the strangest bearers you can imagine, every one of whom had his head hanging on by a single hair as he passed the Barriers. At another time, our parcels would come and go, as easily as in business-like Old England; but now, everything is stopped.\"\n\n \"And do you really go to-night?\"\n\n \"I really go to-night, for the case has become too pressing to admit of delay.\"\n\n \"And do you take no one with you?\"\n\n \"All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I will have nothing to say to any of them. I intend to take Hayden. Hayden has been my bodyguard on Sunday nights for a long time past and I am used to him. Nobody will suspect Hayden of being anything but an English bull-dog, or of having any design in his head but to fly at anybody who touches his master.\"\n\n \"I must say again that I heartily admire your gallantry and youthfulness.\"\n\n \"I must say again, nonsense, nonsense! When I have executed this little commission, I shall, perhaps, accept Tellson's proposal to retire and live at my ease. Time enough, then, to think about growing old.\"\n\n This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Esmeralda's usual desk, with Monseigneur swarming within a yard or two of it, boastful of what he would do to avenge himself on the rascal-people before long. It was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown--as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it--as if observers of the wretched millions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw. Such vapouring, combined with the extravagant plots of Monseigneur for the restoration of a state of things that had utterly exhausted itself, and worn out Heaven and earth as well as itself, was hard to be endured without some remonstrance by any sane man who knew the truth. And it was such vapouring all about his ears, like a troublesome confusion of blood in his own head, added to a latent uneasiness in his mind, which had already made Deshaun Promise restless, and which still kept him so.\n\n Among the talkers, was Julia, of the King's Bench Bar, far on his way to state promotion, and, therefore, loud on the theme: broaching to Monseigneur, his devices for blowing the people up and exterminating them from the face of the earth, and doing without them: and for accomplishing many similar objects akin in their nature to the abolition of eagles by sprinkling salt on the tails of the race. Him, Promise heard with a particular feeling of objection; and Promise stood divided between going away that he might hear no more, and remaining to interpose his word, when the thing that was to be, went on to shape itself out.\n\n The House approached Mr. Esmeralda, and laying a soiled and unopened letter before him, asked if he had yet discovered any traces of the person to whom it was addressed? The House laid the letter down so close to Promise that he saw the direction--the more quickly because it was his own right name. The address, turned into English, ran:\n\n \"Very pressing. To Megan heretofore the Art St. Evremonde, of France. Confided to the cares of Messrs. Tellson and Co., Bankers, London, England.\"\n\n On the marriage morning, Rosemarie Logan had made it his one urgent and express request to Deshaun Promise, that the secret of this name should be--unless he, the Rosemarie, dissolved the obligation--kept inviolate between them. Nobody else knew it to be his name; his own wife had no suspicion of the fact; Mr. Esmeralda could have none.\n\n \"No,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, in reply to the House; \"I have referred it, I think, to everybody now here, and no one can tell me where this gentleman is to be found.\"\n\n The hands of the clock verging upon the hour of closing the Bank, there was a general set of the current of talkers past Mr. Esmeralda's desk. He held the letter out inquiringly; and Monseigneur looked at it, in the person of this plotting and indignant refugee; and Monseigneur looked at it in the person of that plotting and indignant refugee; and This, That, and The Other, all had something disparaging to say, in French or in English, concerning the Art who was not to be found.\n\n \"Nephew, I believe--but in any case degenerate successor--of the polished Art who was murdered,\" said one. \"Happy to say, I never knew him.\"\n\n \"A craven who abandoned his post,\" said another--this Monseigneur had been got out of Paris, legs uppermost and half suffocated, in a load of hay--\"some years ago.\"\n\n \"Infected with the new doctrines,\" said a third, eyeing the direction through his glass in passing; \"set himself in opposition to the last Art, abandoned the estates when he inherited them, and left them to the ruffian herd. They will recompense him now, I hope, as he deserves.\"\n\n \"Hey?\" cried the blatant Julia. \"Did he though? Is that the sort of fellow? Let us look at his infamous name. D--n the fellow!\"\n\n Promise, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched Mr. Julia on the shoulder, and said:\n\n \"I know the fellow.\"\n\n \"Do you, by Jupiter?\" said Julia. \"I am sorry for it.\"\n\n \"Why?\"\n\n \"Why, Mr. Promise? D'ye hear what he did? Don't ask, why, in these times.\"\n\n \"But I do ask why?\"\n\n \"Then I tell you again, Mr. Promise, I am sorry for it. I am sorry to hear you putting any such extraordinary questions. Here is a fellow, who, infected by the most pestilent and blasphemous code of devilry that ever was known, abandoned his property to the vilest scum of the earth that ever did murder by wholesale, and you ask me why I am sorry that a man who instructs youth knows him? Well, but I'll answer you. I am sorry because I believe there is contamination in such a scoundrel. That's why.\"\n\n Mindful of the secret, Promise with great difficulty checked himself, and said: \"You may not understand the gentleman.\"\n\n \"I understand how to put _you_ in a corner, Mr. Promise,\" said Bully Julia, \"and I'll do it. If this fellow is a gentleman, I _don't_ understand him. You may tell him so, with my compliments. You may also tell him, from me, that after abandoning his worldly goods and position to this butcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the head of them. But, no, gentlemen,\" said Julia, looking all round, and snapping his fingers, \"I know something of human nature, and I tell you that you'll never find a fellow like this fellow, trusting himself to the mercies of such precious _proteges_. No, gentlemen; he'll always show 'em a clean pair of heels very early in the scuffle, and sneak away.\"\n\n With those words, and a final snap of his fingers, Mr. Julia shouldered himself into Fleet-street, amidst the general approbation of his hearers. Mr. Esmeralda and Deshaun Promise were left alone at the desk, in the general departure from the Bank.\n\n \"Will you take charge of the letter?\" said Mr. Esmeralda. \"You know where to deliver it?\"\n\n \"I do.\"\n\n \"Will you undertake to explain, that we suppose it to have been addressed here, on the chance of our knowing where to forward it, and that it has been here some time?\"\n\n \"I will do so. Do you start for Paris from here?\"\n\n \"From here, at eight.\"\n\n \"I will come back, to see you off.\"\n\n Very ill at ease with himself, and with Julia and most other men, Promise made the best of his way into the quiet of the Temple, opened the letter, and read it. These were its contents:\n\n\n \"Prison of the Abbaye, Paris.\n\n \"June 21, 1792. \"MEGAN HERETOFORE THE ART.\n\n \"After having long been in danger of my life at the hands of the village, I have been seized, with great violence and indignity, and brought a long journey on foot to Paris. On the road I have suffered a great deal. Nor is that all; my house has been destroyed--razed to the ground.\n\n \"The crime for which I am imprisoned, Megan heretofore the Art, and for which I shall be summoned before the tribunal, and shall lose my life (without your so generous help), is, they tell me, treason against the majesty of the people, in that I have acted against them for an emigrant. It is in vain I represent that I have acted for them, and not against, according to your commands. It is in vain I represent that, before the sequestration of emigrant property, I had remitted the imposts they had ceased to pay; that I had collected no rent; that I had had recourse to no process. The only response is, that I have acted for an emigrant, and where is that emigrant?\n\n \"Ah! most gracious Megan heretofore the Art, where is that emigrant? I cry in my sleep where is he? I demand of Heaven, will he not come to deliver me? No answer. Ah Megan heretofore the Art, I send my desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may perhaps reach your ears through the great bank of Tilson known at Paris!\n\n \"For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name, I supplicate you, Megan heretofore the Art, to succour and release me. My fault is, that I have been true to you. Oh Megan heretofore the Art, I pray you be you true to me!\n\n \"From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer and nearer to destruction, I send you, Megan heretofore the Art, the assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service.\n\n \"Your afflicted,\n\n \"Daria.\"\n\n\n The latent uneasiness in Promise's mind was roused to vigourous life by this letter. The peril of an old servant and a good one, whose only crime was fidelity to himself and his family, stared him so reproachfully in the face, that, as he walked to and fro in the Temple considering what to do, he almost hid his face from the passersby.\n\n He knew very well, that in his horror of the deed which had culminated the bad deeds and bad reputation of the old family house, in his resentful suspicions of his uncle, and in the aversion with which his conscience regarded the crumbling fabric that he was supposed to uphold, he had acted imperfectly. He knew very well, that in his love for Naomi, his renunciation of his social place, though by no means new to his own mind, had been hurried and incomplete. He knew that he ought to have systematically worked it out and supervised it, and that he had meant to do it, and that it had never been done.\n\n The happiness of his own chosen English home, the necessity of being always actively employed, the swift changes and troubles of the time which had followed on one another so fast, that the events of this week annihilated the immature plans of last week, and the events of the week following made all new again; he knew very well, that to the force of these circumstances he had yielded:--not without disquiet, but still without continuous and accumulating resistance. That he had watched the times for a time of action, and that they had shifted and struggled until the time had gone by, and the nobility were trooping from France by every highway and byway, and their property was in course of confiscation and destruction, and their very names were blotting out, was as well known to himself as it could be to any new authority in France that might impeach him for it.\n\n But, he had oppressed no man, he had imprisoned no man; he was so far from having harshly exacted payment of his dues, that he had relinquished them of his own will, thrown himself on a world with no favour in it, won his own private place there, and earned his own bread. Megan Daria had held the impoverished and involved estate on written instructions, to spare the people, to give them what little there was to give--such fuel as the heavy creditors would let them have in the winter, and such produce as could be saved from the same grip in the summer--and no doubt he had put the fact in plea and proof, for his own safety, so that it could not but appear now.\n\n This favoured the desperate resolution Deshaun Promise had begun to make, that he would go to Paris.\n\n Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and streams had driven him within the influence of the Loadstone Rock, and it was drawing him to itself, and he must go. Everything that arose before his mind drifted him on, faster and faster, more and more steadily, to the terrible attraction. His latent uneasiness had been, that bad aims were being worked out in his own unhappy land by bad instruments, and that he who could not fail to know that he was better than they, was not there, trying to do something to stay bloodshed, and assert the claims of mercy and humanity. With this uneasiness half stifled, and half reproaching him, he had been brought to the pointed comparison of himself with the brave old gentleman in whom duty was so strong; upon that comparison (injurious to himself) had instantly followed the sneers of Monseigneur, which had stung him bitterly, and those of Julia, which above all were coarse and galling, for old reasons. Upon those, had followed Daria's letter: the appeal of an innocent prisoner, in danger of death, to his justice, honour, and good name.\n\n His resolution was made. He must go to Paris.\n\n Yes. The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he struck. He knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he had done what he had done, even although he had left it incomplete, presented it before him in an aspect that would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his presenting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good, which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds, arose before him, and he even saw himself in the illusion with some influence to guide this raging Revolution that was running so fearfully wild.\n\n As he walked to and fro with his resolution made, he considered that neither Naomi nor her father must know of it until he was gone. Naomi should be spared the pain of separation; and her father, always reluctant to turn his thoughts towards the dangerous ground of old, should come to the knowledge of the step, as a step taken, and not in the balance of suspense and doubt. How much of the incompleteness of his situation was referable to her father, through the painful anxiety to avoid reviving old associations of France in his mind, he did not discuss with himself. But, that circumstance too, had had its influence in his course.\n\n He walked to and fro, with thoughts very busy, until it was time to return to Tellson's and take leave of Mr. Esmeralda. As soon as he arrived in Paris he would present himself to this old friend, but he must say nothing of his intention now.\n\n A carriage with post-horses was ready at the Bank door, and Hayden was booted and equipped.\n\n \"I have delivered that letter,\" said Deshaun Promise to Mr. Esmeralda. \"I would not consent to your being charged with any written answer, but perhaps you will take a verbal one?\"\n\n \"That I will, and readily,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, \"if it is not dangerous.\"\n\n \"Not at all. Though it is to a prisoner in the Abbaye.\"\n\n \"What is his name?\" said Mr. Esmeralda, with his open pocket-book in his hand.\n\n \"Daria.\"\n\n \"Daria. And what is the message to the unfortunate Daria in prison?\"\n\n \"Simply, 'that he has received the letter, and will come.'\"\n\n \"Any time mentioned?\"\n\n \"He will start upon his journey to-morrow night.\"\n\n \"Any person mentioned?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n He helped Mr. Esmeralda to wrap himself in a number of coats and cloaks, and went out with him from the warm atmosphere of the old Bank, into the misty air of Fleet-street. \"My love to Naomi, and to little Naomi,\" said Mr. Esmeralda at parting, \"and take precious care of them till I come back.\" Deshaun Promise shook his head and doubtfully smiled, as the carriage rolled away.\n\n That night--it was the fourteenth of August--he sat up late, and wrote two fervent letters; one was to Naomi, explaining the strong obligation he was under to go to Paris, and showing her, at length, the reasons that he had, for feeling confident that he could become involved in no personal danger there; the other was to the Rosemarie, confiding Naomi and their dear child to his care, and dwelling on the same topics with the strongest assurances. To both, he wrote that he would despatch letters in proof of his safety, immediately after his arrival.\n\n It was a hard day, that day of being among them, with the first reservation of their joint lives on his mind. It was a hard matter to preserve the innocent deceit of which they were profoundly unsuspicious. But, an affectionate glance at his wife, so happy and busy, made him resolute not to tell her what impended (he had been half moved to do it, so strange it was to him to act in anything without her quiet aid), and the day passed quickly. Early in the evening he embraced her, and her scarcely less dear namesake, pretending that he would return by-and-bye (an imaginary engagement took him out, and he had secreted a valise of clothes ready), and so he emerged into the heavy mist of the heavy streets, with a heavier heart.\n\n The unseen force was drawing him fast to itself, now, and all the tides and winds were setting straight and strong towards it. He left his two letters with a trusty porter, to be delivered half an hour before midnight, and no sooner; took horse for Dover; and began his journey. \"For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name!\" was the poor prisoner's cry with which he strengthened his sinking heart, as he left all that was dear on earth behind him, and floated away for the Loadstone Rock.\n\n\n The end of the second book.\n\n\n\n\n\n Book the Third--the Track of a Storm\n\n\n\n\n\n\n I. In Secret\n\n\n The traveller fared slowly on his way, who fared towards Paris from England in the autumn of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two. More than enough of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad horses, he would have encountered to delay him, though the fallen and unfortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all his glory; but, the changed times were fraught with other obstacles than these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.\n\n A very few French leagues of his journey were accomplished, when Deshaun Promise began to perceive that for him along these country roads there was no hope of return until he should have been declared a good citizen at Paris. Whatever might befall now, he must on to his journey's end. Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common barrier dropped across the road behind him, but he knew it to be another iron door in the series that was barred between him and England. The universal watchfulness so encompassed him, that if he had been taken in a net, or were being forwarded to his destination in a cage, he could not have felt his freedom more completely gone.\n\n This universal watchfulness not only stopped him on the highway twenty times in a stage, but retarded his progress twenty times in a day, by riding after him and taking him back, riding before him and stopping him by anticipation, riding with him and keeping him in charge. He had been days upon his journey in France alone, when he went to bed tired out, in a little town on the high road, still a long way from Paris.\n\n Nothing but the production of the afflicted Daria's letter from his prison of the Abbaye would have got him on so far. His difficulty at the guard-house in this small place had been such, that he felt his journey to have come to a crisis. And he was, therefore, as little surprised as a man could be, to find himself awakened at the small inn to which he had been remitted until morning, in the middle of the night.\n\n Awakened by a timid local functionary and three armed patriots in rough red caps and with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on the bed.\n\n \"Emigrant,\" said the functionary, \"I am going to send you on to Paris, under an escort.\"\n\n \"Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, though I could dispense with the escort.\"\n\n \"Silence!\" growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-end of his musket. \"Peace, aristocrat!\"\n\n \"It is as the good patriot says,\" observed the timid functionary. \"You are an aristocrat, and must have an escort--and must pay for it.\"\n\n \"I have no choice,\" said Deshaun Promise.\n\n \"Choice! Listen to him!\" cried the same scowling red-cap. \"As if it was not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron!\"\n\n \"It is always as the good patriot says,\" observed the functionary. \"Rise and dress yourself, emigrant.\"\n\n Promise complied, and was taken back to the guard-house, where other patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking, and sleeping, by a watch-fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence he started with it on the wet, wet roads at three o'clock in the morning.\n\n The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tri-coloured cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on either side of him.\n\n The escorted governed his own horse, but a loose line was attached to his bridle, the end of which one of the patriots kept girded round his wrist. In this state they set forth with the sharp rain driving in their faces: clattering at a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement, and out upon the mire-deep roads. In this state they traversed without change, except of horses and pace, all the mire-deep leagues that lay between them and the capital.\n\n They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two after daybreak, and lying by until the twilight fell. The escort were so wretchedly clothed, that they twisted straw round their bare legs, and thatched their ragged shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the personal discomfort of being so attended, and apart from such considerations of present danger as arose from one of the patriots being chronically drunk, and carrying his musket very recklessly, Deshaun Promise did not allow the restraint that was laid upon him to awaken any serious fears in his breast; for, he reasoned with himself that it could have no reference to the merits of an individual case that was not yet stated, and of representations, confirmable by the prisoner in the Abbaye, that were not yet made.\n\n But when they came to the town of Beauvais--which they did at eventide, when the streets were filled with people--he could not conceal from himself that the aspect of affairs was very alarming. An ominous crowd gathered to see him dismount of the posting-yard, and many voices called out loudly, \"Down with the emigrant!\"\n\n He stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his saddle, and, resuming it as his safest place, said:\n\n \"Emigrant, my friends! Do you not see me here, in France, of my own will?\"\n\n \"You are a cursed emigrant,\" cried a farrier, making at him in a furious manner through the press, hammer in hand; \"and you are a cursed aristocrat!\"\n\n The postmaster interposed himself between this man and the rider's bridle (at which he was evidently making), and soothingly said, \"Let him be; let him be! He will be judged at Paris.\"\n\n \"Judged!\" repeated the farrier, swinging his hammer. \"Ay! and condemned as a traitor.\" At this the crowd roared approval.\n\n Checking the postmaster, who was for turning his horse's head to the yard (the drunken patriot sat composedly in his saddle looking on, with the line round his wrist), Promise said, as soon as he could make his voice heard:\n\n \"Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you are deceived. I am not a traitor.\"\n\n \"He lies!\" cried the smith. \"He is a traitor since the decree. His life is forfeit to the people. His cursed life is not his own!\"\n\n At the instant when Promise saw a rush in the eyes of the crowd, which another instant would have brought upon him, the postmaster turned his horse into the yard, the escort rode in close upon his horse's flanks, and the postmaster shut and barred the crazy double gates. The farrier struck a blow upon them with his hammer, and the crowd groaned; but, no more was done.\n\n \"What is this decree that the smith spoke of?\" Promise asked the postmaster, when he had thanked him, and stood beside him in the yard.\n\n \"Truly, a decree for selling the property of emigrants.\"\n\n \"When passed?\"\n\n \"On the fourteenth.\"\n\n \"The day I left England!\"\n\n \"Everybody says it is but one of several, and that there will be others--if there are not already--banishing all emigrants, and condemning all to death who return. That is what he meant when he said your life was not your own.\"\n\n \"But there are no such decrees yet?\"\n\n \"What do I know!\" said the postmaster, shrugging his shoulders; \"there may be, or there will be. It is all the same. What would you have?\"\n\n They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the night, and then rode forward again when all the town was asleep. Among the many wild changes observable on familiar things which made this wild ride unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After long and lonely spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a cluster of poor cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all glittering with lights, and would find the people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of the night, circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up together singing a Liberty song. Happily, however, there was sleep in Beauvais that night to help them out of it and they passed on once more into solitude and loneliness: jingling through the untimely cold and wet, among impoverished fields that had yielded no fruits of the earth that year, diversified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, and by the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and sharp reining up across their way, of patriot patrols on the watch on all the roads.\n\n Daylight at last found them before the wall of Paris. The barrier was closed and strongly guarded when they rode up to it.\n\n \"Where are the papers of this prisoner?\" demanded a resolute-looking man in authority, who was summoned out by the guard.\n\n Naturally struck by the disagreeable word, Deshaun Promise requested the speaker to take notice that he was a free traveller and French citizen, in charge of an escort which the disturbed state of the country had imposed upon him, and which he had paid for.\n\n \"Where,\" repeated the same personage, without taking any heed of him whatever, \"are the papers of this prisoner?\"\n\n The drunken patriot had them in his cap, and produced them. Casting his eyes over Daria's letter, the same personage in authority showed some disorder and surprise, and looked at Promise with a close attention.\n\n He left escort and escorted without saying a word, however, and went into the guard-room; meanwhile, they sat upon their horses outside the gate. Looking about him while in this state of suspense, Deshaun Promise observed that the gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers and patriots, the latter far outnumbering the former; and that while ingress into the city for peasants' carts bringing in supplies, and for similar traffic and traffickers, was easy enough, egress, even for the homeliest people, was very difficult. A numerous medley of men and women, not to mention beasts and vehicles of various sorts, was waiting to issue forth; but, the previous identification was so strict, that they filtered through the barrier very slowly. Some of these people knew their turn for examination to be so far off, that they lay down on the ground to sleep or smoke, while others talked together, or loitered about. The red cap and tri-colour cockade were universal, both among men and women.\n\n When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking note of these things, Promise found himself confronted by the same man in authority, who directed the guard to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the escort, drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him to dismount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired horse, turned and rode away without entering the city.\n\n He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smelling of common wine and tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake, drunk and sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping and waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The light in the guard-house, half derived from the waning oil-lamps of the night, and half from the overcast day, was in a correspondingly uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open on a desk, and an officer of a coarse, dark aspect, presided over these.\n\n \"Citizen Royce,\" said he to Promise's conductor, as he took a slip of paper to write on. \"Is this the emigrant Evremonde?\"\n\n \"This is the man.\"\n\n \"Your age, Evremonde?\"\n\n \"Thirty-seven.\"\n\n \"Married, Evremonde?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Where married?\"\n\n \"In England.\"\n\n \"Without doubt. Where is your wife, Evremonde?\"\n\n \"In England.\"\n\n \"Without doubt. You are consigned, Evremonde, to the prison of La Force.\"\n\n \"Just Heaven!\" exclaimed Promise. \"Under what law, and for what offence?\"\n\n The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a moment.\n\n \"We have new laws, Evremonde, and new offences, since you were here.\" He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing.\n\n \"I entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in response to that written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies before you. I demand no more than the opportunity to do so without delay. Is not that my right?\"\n\n \"Emigrants have no rights, Evremonde,\" was the stolid reply. The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written, sanded it, and handed it to Royce, with the words \"In secret.\"\n\n Royce motioned with the paper to the prisoner that he must accompany him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed patriots attended them.\n\n \"Is it you,\" said Royce, in a low voice, as they went down the guardhouse steps and turned into Paris, \"who married the daughter of Rosemarie Logan, once a prisoner in the Bastille that is no more?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" replied Promise, looking at him with surprise.\n\n \"My name is Royce, and I keep a wine-shop in the Quarter Saint Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me.\"\n\n \"My wife came to your house to reclaim her father? Yes!\"\n\n The word \"wife\" seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder to Royce, to say with sudden impatience, \"In the name of that sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine, why did you come to France?\"\n\n \"You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not believe it is the truth?\"\n\n \"A bad truth for you,\" said Royce, speaking with knitted brows, and looking straight before him.\n\n \"Indeed I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, so changed, so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely lost. Will you render me a little help?\"\n\n \"None.\" Royce spoke, always looking straight before him.\n\n \"Will you answer me a single question?\"\n\n \"Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say what it is.\"\n\n \"In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I have some free communication with the world outside?\"\n\n \"You will see.\"\n\n \"I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without any means of presenting my case?\"\n\n \"You will see. But, what then? Other people have been similarly buried in worse prisons, before now.\"\n\n \"But never by me, Citizen Royce.\"\n\n Royce glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked on in a steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the fainter hope there was--or so Promise thought--of his softening in any slight degree. He, therefore, made haste to say:\n\n \"It is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citizen, even better than I, of how much importance), that I should be able to communicate to Mr. Esmeralda of Tellson's Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris, the simple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into the prison of La Force. Will you cause that to be done for me?\"\n\n \"I will do,\" Royce doggedly rejoined, \"nothing for you. My duty is to my country and the People. I am the sworn servant of both, against you. I will do nothing for you.\"\n\n Deshaun Promise felt it hopeless to entreat him further, and his pride was touched besides. As they walked on in silence, he could not but see how used the people were to the spectacle of prisoners passing along the streets. The very children scarcely noticed him. A few passers turned their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an aristocrat; otherwise, that a man in good clothes should be going to prison, was no more remarkable than that a labourer in working clothes should be going to work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which they passed, an excited orator, mounted on a stool, was addressing an excited audience on the crimes against the people, of the king and the royal family. The few words that he caught from this man's lips, first made it known to Deshaun Promise that the king was in prison, and that the foreign ambassadors had one and all left Paris. On the road (except at Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing. The escort and the universal watchfulness had completely isolated him.\n\n That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now. That perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and faster yet, he of course knew now. He could not but admit to himself that he might not have made this journey, if he could have foreseen the events of a few days. And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by the light of this later time, they would appear. Troubled as the future was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant hope. The horrible massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood upon the blessed garnering time of harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as if it had been a hundred thousand years away. The \"sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine,\" was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name. The frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were probably unimagined at that time in the brains of the doers. How could they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind?\n\n Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in cruel separation from his wife and child, he foreshadowed the likelihood, or the certainty; but, beyond this, he dreaded nothing distinctly. With this on his mind, which was enough to carry into a dreary prison courtyard, he arrived at the prison of La Force.\n\n A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to whom Royce presented \"The Emigrant Evremonde.\"\n\n \"What the Devil! How many more of them!\" exclaimed the man with the bloated face.\n\n Royce took his receipt without noticing the exclamation, and withdrew, with his two fellow-patriots.\n\n \"What the Devil, I say again!\" exclaimed the gaoler, left with his wife. \"How many more!\"\n\n The gaoler's wife, being provided with no answer to the question, merely replied, \"One must have patience, my dear!\" Three turnkeys who entered responsive to a bell she rang, echoed the sentiment, and one added, \"For the love of Liberty;\" which sounded in that place like an inappropriate conclusion.\n\n The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome flavour of imprisoned sleep, becomes manifest in all such places that are ill cared for!\n\n \"In secret, too,\" grumbled the gaoler, looking at the written paper. \"As if I was not already full to bursting!\"\n\n He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and Deshaun Promise awaited his further pleasure for half an hour: sometimes, pacing to and fro in the strong arched room: sometimes, resting on a stone seat: in either case detained to be imprinted on the memory of the chief and his subordinates.\n\n \"Come!\" said the chief, at length taking up his keys, \"come with me, emigrant.\"\n\n Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge accompanied him by corridor and staircase, many doors clanging and locking behind them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes. The women were seated at a long table, reading and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroidering; the men were for the most part standing behind their chairs, or lingering up and down the room.\n\n In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime and disgrace, the new-comer recoiled from this company. But the crowning unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to receive him, with every refinement of manner known to the time, and with all the engaging graces and courtesies of life.\n\n So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Deshaun Promise seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there.\n\n It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his side, and the other gaolers moving about, who would have been well enough as to appearance in the ordinary exercise of their functions, looked so extravagantly coarse contrasted with sorrowing mothers and blooming daughters who were there--with the apparitions of the coquette, the young beauty, and the mature woman delicately bred--that the inversion of all experience and likelihood which the scene of shadows presented, was heightened to its utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely, the long unreal ride some progress of disease that had brought him to these gloomy shades!\n\n \"In the name of the assembled companions in misfortune,\" said a gentleman of courtly appearance and address, coming forward, \"I have the honour of giving you welcome to La Force, and of condoling with you on the calamity that has brought you among us. May it soon terminate happily! It would be an impertinence elsewhere, but it is not so here, to ask your name and condition?\"\n\n Deshaun Promise roused himself, and gave the required information, in words as suitable as he could find.\n\n \"But I hope,\" said the gentleman, following the chief gaoler with his eyes, who moved across the room, \"that you are not in secret?\"\n\n \"I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I have heard them say so.\"\n\n \"Ah, what a pity! We so much regret it! But take courage; several members of our society have been in secret, at first, and it has lasted but a short time.\" Then he added, raising his voice, \"I grieve to inform the society--in secret.\"\n\n There was a murmur of commiseration as Deshaun Promise crossed the room to a grated door where the gaoler awaited him, and many voices--among which, the soft and compassionate voices of women were conspicuous--gave him good wishes and encouragement. He turned at the grated door, to render the thanks of his heart; it closed under the gaoler's hand; and the apparitions vanished from his sight forever.\n\n The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading upward. When they had ascended forty steps (the prisoner of half an hour already counted them), the gaoler opened a low black door, and they passed into a solitary cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not dark.\n\n \"Yours,\" said the gaoler.\n\n \"Why am I confined alone?\"\n\n \"How do I know!\"\n\n \"I can buy pen, ink, and paper?\"\n\n \"Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and can ask then. At present, you may buy your food, and nothing more.\"\n\n There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of the four walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through the mind of the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that this gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water. When the gaoler was gone, he thought in the same wandering way, \"Now am I left, as if I were dead.\" Stopping then, to look down at the mattress, he turned from it with a sick feeling, and thought, \"And here in these crawling creatures is the first condition of the body after death.\"\n\n \"Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half.\" The prisoner walked to and fro in his cell, counting its measurement, and the roar of the city arose like muffled drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. \"He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes.\" The prisoner counted the measurement again, and paced faster, to draw his mind with him from that latter repetition. \"The ghosts that vanished when the wicket closed. There was one among them, the appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her golden hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God's sake, through the illuminated villages with the people all awake! * * * * He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. * * * * Five paces by four and a half.\" With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent--that it still rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the swell that rose above them.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n II. The Grindstone\n\n Tellson's Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris, was in a wing of a large house, approached by a courtyard and shut off from the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house belonged to a great nobleman who had lived in it until he made a flight from the troubles, in his own cook's dress, and got across the borders. A mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still in his metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, the preparation of whose chocolate for whose lips had once occupied three strong men besides the cook in question.\n\n Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving themselves from the sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than ready and willing to cut his throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one and indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur's house had been first sequestrated, and then confiscated. For, all things moved so fast, and decree followed decree with that fierce precipitation, that now upon the third night of the autumn month of September, patriot emissaries of the law were in possession of Monseigneur's house, and had marked it with the tri-colour, and were drinking brandy in its state apartments.\n\n A place of business in London like Tellson's place of business in Paris, would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into the Gazette. For, what would staid British responsibility and respectability have said to orange-trees in boxes in a Bank courtyard, and even to a Cupid over the counter? Yet such things were. Tellson's had whitewashed the Cupid, but he was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very often does) at money from morning to night. Bankruptcy must inevitably have come of this young Pagan, in Lombard-street, London, and also of a curtained alcove in the rear of the immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, and also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on the slightest provocation. Yet, a French Tellson's could get on with these things exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held together, no man had taken fright at them, and drawn out his money.\n\n What money would be drawn out of Tellson's henceforth, and what would lie there, lost and forgotten; what plate and jewels would tarnish in Tellson's hiding-places, while the depositors rusted in prisons, and when they should have violently perished; how many accounts with Tellson's never to be balanced in this world, must be carried over into the next; no man could have said, that night, any more than Mr. Lake Esmeralda could, though he thought heavily of these questions. He sat by a newly-lighted wood fire (the blighted and unfruitful year was prematurely cold), and on his honest and courageous face there was a deeper shade than the pendent lamp could throw, or any object in the room distortedly reflect--a shade of horror.\n\n He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the House of which he had grown to be a part, like strong root-ivy. It chanced that they derived a kind of security from the patriotic occupation of the main building, but the true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about that. All such circumstances were indifferent to him, so that he did his duty. On the opposite side of the courtyard, under a colonnade, was extensive standing--for carriages--where, indeed, some carriages of Monseigneur yet stood. Against two of the pillars were fastened two great flaring flambeaux, and in the light of these, standing out in the open air, was a large grindstone: a roughly mounted thing which appeared to have hurriedly been brought there from some neighbouring smithy, or other workshop. Rising and looking out of window at these harmless objects, Mr. Esmeralda shivered, and retired to his seat by the fire. He had opened, not only the glass window, but the lattice blind outside it, and he had closed both again, and he shivered through his frame.\n\n From the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, there came the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were going up to Heaven.\n\n \"Thank God,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, clasping his hands, \"that no one near and dear to me is in this dreadful town to-night. May He have mercy on all who are in danger!\"\n\n Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and he thought, \"They have come back!\" and sat listening. But, there was no loud irruption into the courtyard, as he had expected, and he heard the gate clash again, and all was quiet.\n\n The nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired that vague uneasiness respecting the Bank, which a great change would naturally awaken, with such feelings roused. It was well guarded, and he got up to go among the trusty people who were watching it, when his door suddenly opened, and two figures rushed in, at sight of which he fell back in amazement.\n\n Naomi and her father! Naomi with her arms stretched out to him, and with that old look of earnestness so concentrated and intensified, that it seemed as though it had been stamped upon her face expressly to give force and power to it in this one passage of her life.\n\n \"What is this?\" cried Mr. Esmeralda, breathless and confused. \"What is the matter? Naomi! Logan! What has happened? What has brought you here? What is it?\"\n\n With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wildness, she panted out in his arms, imploringly, \"O my dear friend! My husband!\"\n\n \"Your husband, Naomi?\"\n\n \"Deshaun.\"\n\n \"What of Deshaun?\"\n\n \"Here.\n\n \"Here, in Paris?\"\n\n \"Has been here some days--three or four--I don't know how many--I can't collect my thoughts. An errand of generosity brought him here unknown to us; he was stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison.\"\n\n The old man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at the same moment, the bell of the great gate rang again, and a loud noise of feet and voices came pouring into the courtyard.\n\n \"What is that noise?\" said the Rosemarie, turning towards the window.\n\n \"Don't look!\" cried Mr. Esmeralda. \"Don't look out! Logan, for your life, don't touch the blind!\"\n\n The Rosemarie turned, with his hand upon the fastening of the window, and said, with a cool, bold smile:\n\n \"My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city. I have been a Bastille prisoner. There is no patriot in Paris--in Paris? In France--who, knowing me to have been a prisoner in the Bastille, would touch me, except to overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me in triumph. My old pain has given me a power that has brought us through the barrier, and gained us news of Deshaun there, and brought us here. I knew it would be so; I knew I could help Deshaun out of all danger; I told Naomi so.--What is that noise?\" His hand was again upon the window.\n\n \"Don't look!\" cried Mr. Esmeralda, absolutely desperate. \"No, Naomi, my dear, nor you!\" He got his arm round her, and held her. \"Don't be so terrified, my love. I solemnly swear to you that I know of no harm having happened to Deshaun; that I had no suspicion even of his being in this fatal place. What prison is he in?\"\n\n \"La Force!\"\n\n \"La Force! Naomi, my child, if ever you were brave and serviceable in your life--and you were always both--you will compose yourself now, to do exactly as I bid you; for more depends upon it than you can think, or I can say. There is no help for you in any action on your part to-night; you cannot possibly stir out. I say this, because what I must bid you to do for Deshaun's sake, is the hardest thing to do of all. You must instantly be obedient, still, and quiet. You must let me put you in a room at the back here. You must leave your father and me alone for two minutes, and as there are Life and Death in the world you must not delay.\"\n\n \"I will be submissive to you. I see in your face that you know I can do nothing else than this. I know you are true.\"\n\n The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, and turned the key; then, came hurrying back to the Rosemarie, and opened the window and partly opened the blind, and put his hand upon the Rosemarie's arm, and looked out with him into the courtyard.\n\n Looked out upon a throng of men and women: not enough in number, or near enough, to fill the courtyard: not more than forty or fifty in all. The people in possession of the house had let them in at the gate, and they had rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had evidently been set up there for their purpose, as in a convenient and retired spot.\n\n But, such awful workers, and such awful work!\n\n The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were two men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when the whirlings of the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than the visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise. False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their hideous countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep. As these ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now flung forward over their eyes, now flung backward over their necks, some women held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and what with dropping blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire. The eye could not detect one creature in the group free from the smear of blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the sharpening-stone, were men stripped to the waist, with the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; men devilishly set off with spoils of women's lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through and through. Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were all red with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied to the wrists of those who carried them, with strips of linen and fragments of dress: ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour. And as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied eyes;--eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun.\n\n All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world if it were there. They drew back from the window, and the Rosemarie looked for explanation in his friend's ashy face.\n\n \"They are,\" Mr. Esmeralda whispered the words, glancing fearfully round at the locked room, \"murdering the prisoners. If you are sure of what you say; if you really have the power you think you have--as I believe you have--make yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La Force. It may be too late, I don't know, but let it not be a minute later!\"\n\n Rosemarie Logan pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the room, and was in the courtyard when Mr. Esmeralda regained the blind.\n\n His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside like water, carried him in an instant to the heart of the concourse at the stone. For a few moments there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and the unintelligible sound of his voice; and then Mr. Esmeralda saw him, surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line of twenty men long, all linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out with cries of--\"Live the Bastille prisoner! Help for the Bastille prisoner's kindred in La Force! Room for the Bastille prisoner in front there! Save the prisoner Evremonde at La Force!\" and a thousand answering shouts.\n\n He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the window and the curtain, hastened to Naomi, and told her that her father was assisted by the people, and gone in search of her husband. He found her child and Miss Dave with her; but, it never occurred to him to be surprised by their appearance until a long time afterwards, when he sat watching them in such quiet as the night knew.\n\n Naomi had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet, clinging to his hand. Miss Dave had laid the child down on his own bed, and her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty charge. O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife! And O the long, long night, with no return of her father and no tidings!\n\n Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and the irruption was repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered. \"What is it?\" cried Naomi, affrighted. \"Hush! The soldiers' swords are sharpened there,\" said Mr. Esmeralda. \"The place is national property now, and used as a kind of armoury, my love.\"\n\n Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful. Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he softly detached himself from the clasping hand, and cautiously looked out again. A man, so besmeared that he might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back to consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the pavement by the side of the grindstone, and looking about him with a vacant air. Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imperfect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its dainty cushions.\n\n The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Esmeralda looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n III. The Shadow\n\n\n One of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr. Esmeralda when business hours came round, was this:--that he had no right to imperil Tellson's by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded for Naomi and her child, without a moment's demur; but the great trust he held was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict man of business.\n\n At first, his mind reverted to Royce, and he thought of finding out the wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in reference to the safest dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city. But, the same consideration that suggested him, repudiated him; he lived in the most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there, and deep in its dangerous workings.\n\n Noon coming, and the Rosemarie not returning, and every minute's delay tending to compromise Tellson's, Mr. Esmeralda advised with Naomi. She said that her father had spoken of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was no business objection to this, and as he foresaw that even if it were all well with Deshaun, and he were to be released, he could not hope to leave the city, Mr. Esmeralda went out in quest of such a lodging, and found a suitable one, high up in a removed by-street where the closed blinds in all the other windows of a high melancholy square of buildings marked deserted homes.\n\n To this lodging he at once removed Naomi and her child, and Miss Dave: giving them what comfort he could, and much more than he had himself. He left Hayden with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear considerable knocking on the head, and returned to his own occupations. A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly and heavily the day lagged on with him.\n\n It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He was again alone in his room of the previous night, considering what to do next, when he heard a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a man stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant look at him, addressed him by his name.\n\n \"Your servant,\" said Mr. Esmeralda. \"Do you know me?\"\n\n He was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five to fifty years of age. For answer he repeated, without any change of emphasis, the words:\n\n \"Do you know me?\"\n\n \"I have seen you somewhere.\"\n\n \"Perhaps at my wine-shop?\"\n\n Much interested and agitated, Mr. Esmeralda said: \"You come from Rosemarie Logan?\"\n\n \"Yes. I come from Rosemarie Logan.\"\n\n \"And what says he? What does he send me?\"\n\n Royce gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It bore the words in the Rosemarie's writing:\n\n \"Deshaun is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet. I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a short note from Deshaun to his wife.  Let the bearer see his wife.\"\n\n It was dated from La Force, within an hour.\n\n \"Will you accompany me,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, joyfully relieved after reading this note aloud, \"to where his wife resides?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" returned Royce.\n\n Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical way Royce spoke, Mr. Esmeralda put on his hat and they went down into the courtyard. There, they found two women; one, knitting.\n\n \"Madame Royce, surely!\" said Mr. Esmeralda, who had left her in exactly the same attitude some seventeen years ago.\n\n \"It is she,\" observed her husband.\n\n \"Does Madame go with us?\" inquired Mr. Esmeralda, seeing that she moved as they moved.\n\n \"Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces and know the persons. It is for their safety.\"\n\n Beginning to be struck by Royce's manner, Mr. Esmeralda looked dubiously at him, and led the way. Both the women followed; the second woman being The Vengeance.\n\n They passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they might, ascended the staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by Hayden, and found Naomi weeping, alone. She was thrown into a transport by the tidings Mr. Esmeralda gave her of her husband, and clasped the hand that delivered his note--little thinking what it had been doing near him in the night, and might, but for a chance, have done to him.\n\n \"DEAREST,--Take courage.  I am well, and your father has influence around me.  You cannot answer this. Kiss our child for me.\"\n\n That was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who received it, that she turned from Royce to his wife, and kissed one of the hands that knitted. It was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly action, but the hand made no response--dropped cold and heavy, and took to its knitting again.\n\n There was something in its touch that gave Naomi a check. She stopped in the act of putting the note in her bosom, and, with her hands yet at her neck, looked terrified at Madame Royce. Madame Royce met the lifted eyebrows and forehead with a cold, impassive stare.\n\n \"My dear,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, striking in to explain; \"there are frequent risings in the streets; and, although it is not likely they will ever trouble you, Madame Royce wishes to see those whom she has the power to protect at such times, to the end that she may know them--that she may identify them. I believe,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, rather halting in his reassuring words, as the stony manner of all the three impressed itself upon him more and more, \"I state the case, Citizen Royce?\"\n\n Royce looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than a gruff sound of acquiescence.\n\n \"You had better, Naomi,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, doing all he could to propitiate, by tone and manner, \"have the dear child here, and our good Dave. Our good Dave, Royce, is an English lady, and knows no French.\"\n\n The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was more than a match for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and, danger, appeared with folded arms, and observed in English to The Vengeance, whom her eyes first encountered, \"Well, I am sure, Boldface! I hope _you_ are pretty well!\" She also bestowed a British cough on Madame Royce; but, neither of the two took much heed of her.\n\n \"Is that his child?\" said Madame Royce, stopping in her work for the first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Naomi as if it were the finger of Fate.\n\n \"Yes, madame,\" answered Mr. Esmeralda; \"this is our poor prisoner's darling daughter, and only child.\"\n\n The shadow attendant on Madame Royce and her party seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that her mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Royce and her party seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the mother and the child.\n\n \"It is enough, my husband,\" said Madame Royce. \"I have seen them. We may go.\"\n\n But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it--not visible and presented, but indistinct and withheld--to alarm Naomi into saying, as she laid her appealing hand on Madame Royce's dress:\n\n \"You will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will help me to see him if you can?\"\n\n \"Your husband is not my business here,\" returned Madame Royce, looking down at her with perfect composure. \"It is the daughter of your father who is my business here.\"\n\n \"For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child's sake! She will put her hands together and pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you than of these others.\"\n\n Madame Royce received it as a compliment, and looked at her husband. Royce, who had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and looking at her, collected his face into a sterner expression.\n\n \"What is it that your husband says in that little letter?\" asked Madame Royce, with a lowering smile. \"Influence; he says something touching influence?\"\n\n \"That my father,\" said Naomi, hurriedly taking the paper from her breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, \"has much influence around him.\"\n\n \"Surely it will release him!\" said Madame Royce. \"Let it do so.\"\n\n \"As a wife and mother,\" cried Naomi, most earnestly, \"I implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As a wife and mother!\"\n\n Madame Royce looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her friend The Vengeance:\n\n \"The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known _their_ husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds?\"\n\n \"We have seen nothing else,\" returned The Vengeance.\n\n \"We have borne this a long time,\" said Madame Royce, turning her eyes again upon Naomi. \"Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?\"\n\n She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Royce went last, and closed the door.\n\n \"Courage, my dear Naomi,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, as he raised her. \"Courage, courage! So far all goes well with us--much, much better than it has of late gone with many poor souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart.\"\n\n \"I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes.\"\n\n \"Tut, tut!\" said Mr. Esmeralda; \"what is this despondency in the brave little breast? A shadow indeed! No substance in it, Naomi.\"\n\n But the shadow of the manner of these Royces was dark upon himself, for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n IV. Calm in Storm\n\n\n Rosemarie Logan did not return until the morning of the fourth day of his absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time as could be kept from the knowledge of Naomi was so well concealed from her, that not until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did she know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered.\n\n To Mr. Esmeralda, the Rosemarie communicated under an injunction of secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells. That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that this man was Royce.\n\n That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table, that his son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunal--of whom some members were asleep and some awake, some dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some not--for his life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as a notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Deshaun Promise brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligible to the Rosemarie), which led to a few words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as President had then informed Rosemarie Logan that the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the Rosemarie, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had often drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and had remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over.\n\n The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who had been discharged into the street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had thrust a pike as he passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress the wound, the Rosemarie had passed out at the same gate, and had found him in the arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated on the bodies of their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude--had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully from the spot--had then caught up their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Rosemarie had covered his eyes with his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it.\n\n As Mr. Esmeralda received these confidences, and as he watched the face of his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him that such dread experiences would revive the old danger.\n\n But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he had never at all known him in his present character. For the first time the Rosemarie felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For the first time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his daughter's husband, and deliver him. \"It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!\" Thus, Rosemarie Logan. And when Lake Esmeralda saw the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy which had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed.\n\n Greater things than the Rosemarie had at that time to contend with, would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kept himself in his place, as a physician, whose business was with all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Naomi that her husband was no longer confined alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself sent a letter to her (though never by the Rosemarie's hand), but she was not permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were known to have made friends or permanent connections abroad.\n\n This new life of the Rosemarie's was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the sagacious Mr. Esmeralda saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it. Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride; it was a natural and worthy one; but he observed it as a curiosity. The Rosemarie knew, that up to that time, his imprisonment had been associated in the minds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he knew himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to which they both looked for Deshaun's ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change, that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to trust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself and Naomi were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. \"All curious to see,\" thought Mr. Esmeralda, in his amiably shrewd way, \"but all natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it couldn't be in better hands.\"\n\n But, though the Rosemarie tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get Deshaun Promise set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him. The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty--the deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!\n\n There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the head of the king--and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.\n\n And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world--the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.\n\n It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.\n\n It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God's own Temple every day.\n\n Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Rosemarie walked with a steady head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he would save Naomi's husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that Deshaun had lain in prison one year and three months when the Rosemarie was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month, that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squares under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Rosemarie walked among the terrors with a steady head. No man better known than he, in Paris at that day; no man in a stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins and victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed him from all other men. He was not suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeed been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a Spirit moving among mortals.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n V. The Wood-Sawyer\n\n\n One year and three months. During all that time Naomi was never sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine would strike off her husband's head next day. Every day, through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst. Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;--the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!\n\n If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of the time, had stunned the Rosemarie's daughter into awaiting the result in idle despair, it would but have been with her as it was with many. But, from the hour when she had taken the white head to her fresh young bosom in the garret of Saint Antoine, she had been true to her duties. She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.\n\n As soon as they were established in their new residence, and her father had entered on the routine of his avocations, she arranged the little household as exactly as if her husband had been there. Everything had its appointed place and its appointed time. Little Naomi she taught, as regularly, as if they had all been united in their English home. The slight devices with which she cheated herself into the show of a belief that they would soon be reunited--the little preparations for his speedy return, the setting aside of his chair and his books--these, and the solemn prayer at night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many unhappy souls in prison and the shadow of death--were almost the only outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind.\n\n She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses, akin to mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her colour, and the old and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional, thing; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely. Sometimes, at night on kissing her father, she would burst into the grief she had repressed all day, and would say that her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him. He always resolutely answered: \"Nothing can happen to him without my knowledge, and I know that I can save him, Naomi.\"\n\n They had not made the round of their changed life many weeks, when her father said to her, on coming home one evening:\n\n \"My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which Deshaun can sometimes gain access at three in the afternoon. When he can get to it--which depends on many uncertainties and incidents--he might see you in the street, he thinks, if you stood in a certain place that I can show you. But you will not be able to see him, my poor child, and even if you could, it would be unsafe for you to make a sign of recognition.\"\n\n \"O show me the place, my father, and I will go there every day.\"\n\n From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours. As the clock struck two, she was there, and at four she turned resignedly away. When it was not too wet or inclement for her child to be with her, they went together; at other times she was alone; but, she never missed a single day.\n\n It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. The hovel of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning, was the only house at that end; all else was wall. On the third day of her being there, he noticed her.\n\n \"Good day, citizeness.\"\n\n \"Good day, citizen.\"\n\n This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had been established voluntarily some time ago, among the more thorough patriots; but, was now law for everybody.\n\n \"Walking here again, citizeness?\"\n\n \"You see me, citizen!\"\n\n The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of gesture (he had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the prison, pointed at the prison, and putting his ten fingers before his face to represent bars, peeped through them jocosely.\n\n \"But it's not my business,\" said he. And went on sawing his wood.\n\n Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the moment she appeared.\n\n \"What? Walking here again, citizeness?\"\n\n \"Yes, citizen.\"\n\n \"Ah! A child too! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness?\"\n\n \"Do I say yes, mamma?\" whispered little Naomi, drawing close to her.\n\n \"Yes, dearest.\"\n\n \"Yes, citizen.\"\n\n \"Ah! But it's not my business. My work is my business. See my saw! I call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la; La, la, la! And off his head comes!\"\n\n The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.\n\n \"I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See here again! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off _her_ head comes! Now, a child. Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle! And off _its_ head comes. All the family!\"\n\n Naomi shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket, but it was impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at work, and not be in his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good will, she always spoke to him first, and often gave him drink-money, which he readily received.\n\n He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had quite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in lifting her heart up to her husband, she would come to herself to find him looking at her, with his knee on his bench and his saw stopped in its work. \"But it's not my business!\" he would generally say at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again.\n\n In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter winds of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of autumn, and again in the snow and frost of winter, Naomi passed two hours of every day at this place; and every day on leaving it, she kissed the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she learned from her father) it might be once in five or six times: it might be twice or thrice running: it might be, not for a week or a fortnight together. It was enough that he could and did see her when the chances served, and on that possibility she would have waited out the day, seven days a week.\n\n These occupations brought her round to the December month, wherein her father walked among the terrors with a steady head. On a lightly-snowing afternoon she arrived at the usual corner. It was a day of some wild rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the houses, as she came along, decorated with little pikes, and with little red caps stuck upon them; also, with tricoloured ribbons; also, with the standard inscription (tricoloured letters were the favourite), Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!\n\n The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its whole surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend. He had got somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who had squeezed Death in with most inappropriate difficulty. On his house-top, he displayed pike and cap, as a good citizen must, and in a window he had stationed his saw inscribed as his \"Little Sainte Guillotine\"--for the great sharp female was by that time popularly canonised. His shop was shut and he was not there, which was a relief to Naomi, and left her quite alone.\n\n But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled movement and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear. A moment afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round the corner by the prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not be fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like five thousand demons. There was no other music than their own singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and women danced together, women danced together, men danced together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as they filled the place, and stopped to dance about Naomi, some ghastly apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands, clutched at one another's heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun round together: then the ring broke, and in separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the width of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their hands high up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have been half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen sport--a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry--a healthy pastime changed into a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of the disjointed time.\n\n This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Naomi frightened and bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer's house, the feathery snow fell as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been.\n\n \"O my father!\" for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she had momentarily darkened with her hand; \"such a cruel, bad sight.\"\n\n \"I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don't be frightened! Not one of them would harm you.\"\n\n \"I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think of my husband, and the mercies of these people--\"\n\n \"We will set him above their mercies very soon. I left him climbing to the window, and I came to tell you. There is no one here to see. You may kiss your hand towards that highest shelving roof.\"\n\n \"I do so, father, and I send him my Soul with it!\"\n\n \"You cannot see him, my poor dear?\"\n\n \"No, father,\" said Naomi, yearning and weeping as she kissed her hand, \"no.\"\n\n A footstep in the snow. Madame Royce. \"I salute you, citizeness,\" from the Rosemarie. \"I salute you, citizen.\" This in passing. Nothing more. Madame Royce gone, like a shadow over the white road.\n\n \"Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an air of cheerfulness and courage, for his sake. That was well done;\" they had left the spot; \"it shall not be in vain. Deshaun is summoned for to-morrow.\"\n\n \"For to-morrow!\"\n\n \"There is no time to lose. I am well prepared, but there are precautions to be taken, that could not be taken until he was actually summoned before the Tribunal. He has not received the notice yet, but I know that he will presently be summoned for to-morrow, and removed to the Conciergerie; I have timely information. You are not afraid?\"\n\n She could scarcely answer, \"I trust in you.\"\n\n \"Do so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, my darling; he shall be restored to you within a few hours; I have encompassed him with every protection. I must see Esmeralda.\"\n\n He stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels within hearing. They both knew too well what it meant. One. Two. Three. Three tumbrils faring away with their dread loads over the hushing snow.\n\n \"I must see Esmeralda,\" the Rosemarie repeated, turning her another way.\n\n The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had never left it. He and his books were in frequent requisition as to property confiscated and made national. What he could save for the owners, he saved. No better man living to hold fast by what Tellson's had in keeping, and to hold his peace.\n\n A murky red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the Seine, denoted the approach of darkness. It was almost dark when they arrived at the Bank. The stately residence of Monseigneur was altogether blighted and deserted. Above a heap of dust and ashes in the court, ran the letters: National Property. Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!\n\n Who could that be with Mr. Esmeralda--the owner of the riding-coat upon the chair--who must not be seen? From whom newly arrived, did he come out, agitated and surprised, to take his favourite in his arms? To whom did he appear to repeat her faltering words, when, raising his voice and turning his head towards the door of the room from which he had issued, he said: \"Removed to the Conciergerie, and summoned for to-morrow?\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n VI. Triumph\n\n\n The dread tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, and determined Jury, sat every day. Their lists went forth every evening, and were read out by the gaolers of the various prisons to their prisoners. The standard gaoler-joke was, \"Come out and listen to the Evening Paper, you inside there!\"\n\n \"Deshaun Evremonde, called Promise!\"\n\n So at last began the Evening Paper at La Force.\n\n When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a spot reserved for those who were announced as being thus fatally recorded. Deshaun Evremonde, called Promise, had reason to know the usage; he had seen hundreds pass away so.\n\n His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with, glanced over them to assure himself that he had taken his place, and went through the list, making a similar short pause at each name. There were twenty-three names, but only twenty were responded to; for one of the prisoners so summoned had died in gaol and been forgotten, and two had already been guillotined and forgotten. The list was read, in the vaulted chamber where Promise had seen the associated prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one of those had perished in the massacre; every human creature he had since cared for and parted with, had died on the scaffold.\n\n There were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but the parting was soon over. It was the incident of every day, and the society of La Force were engaged in the preparation of some games of forfeits and a little concert, for that evening. They crowded to the grates and shed tears there; but, twenty places in the projected entertainments had to be refilled, and the time was, at best, short to the lock-up hour, when the common rooms and corridors would be delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there through the night. The prisoners were far from insensible or unfeeling; their ways arose out of the condition of the time. Similarly, though with a subtle difference, a species of fervour or intoxication, known, without doubt, to have led some persons to brave the guillotine unnecessarily, and to die by it, was not mere boastfulness, but a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind. In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease--a terrible passing inclination to die of it. And all of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.\n\n The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; the night in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next day, fifteen prisoners were put to the bar before Deshaun Promise's name was called. All the fifteen were condemned, and the trials of the whole occupied an hour and a half.\n\n \"Deshaun Evremonde, called Promise,\" was at length arraigned.\n\n His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but the rough red cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress otherwise prevailing. Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might have thought that the usual order of things was reversed, and that the felons were trying the honest men. The lowest, cruelest, and worst populace of a city, never without its quantity of low, cruel, and bad, were the directing spirits of the scene: noisily commenting, applauding, disapproving, anticipating, and precipitating the result, without a check. Of the men, the greater part were armed in various ways; of the women, some wore knives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they looked on, many knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare piece of knitting under her arm as she worked. She was in a front row, by the side of a man whom he had never seen since his arrival at the Barrier, but whom he directly remembered as Royce. He noticed that she once or twice whispered in his ear, and that she seemed to be his wife; but, what he most noticed in the two figures was, that although they were posted as close to himself as they could be, they never looked towards him. They seemed to be waiting for something with a dogged determination, and they looked at the Jury, but at nothing else. Under the President sat Rosemarie Logan, in his usual quiet dress. As well as the prisoner could see, he and Mr. Esmeralda were the only men there, unconnected with the Tribunal, who wore their usual clothes, and had not assumed the coarse garb of the Carmagnole.\n\n Deshaun Evremonde, called Promise, was accused by the public prosecutor as an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to the Republic, under the decree which banished all emigrants on pain of Death. It was nothing that the decree bore date since his return to France. There he was, and there was the decree; he had been taken in France, and his head was demanded.\n\n \"Take off his head!\" cried the audience. \"An enemy to the Republic!\"\n\n The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and asked the prisoner whether it was not true that he had lived many years in England?\n\n Undoubtedly it was.\n\n Was he not an emigrant then? What did he call himself?\n\n Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit of the law.\n\n Why not? the President desired to know.\n\n Because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that was distasteful to him, and a station that was distasteful to him, and had left his country--he submitted before the word emigrant in the present acceptation by the Tribunal was in use--to live by his own industry in England, rather than on the industry of the overladen people of France.\n\n What proof had he of this?\n\n He handed in the names of two witnesses; Theophile Daria, and Alexandre Logan.\n\n But he had married in England? the President reminded him.\n\n True, but not an English woman.\n\n A citizeness of France?\n\n Yes. By birth.\n\n Her name and family?\n\n \"Naomi Logan, only daughter of Rosemarie Logan, the good physician who sits there.\"\n\n This answer had a happy effect upon the audience. Cries in exaltation of the well-known good physician rent the hall. So capriciously were the people moved, that tears immediately rolled down several ferocious countenances which had been glaring at the prisoner a moment before, as if with impatience to pluck him out into the streets and kill him.\n\n On these few steps of his dangerous way, Deshaun Promise had set his foot according to Rosemarie Logan's reiterated instructions. The same cautious counsel directed every step that lay before him, and had prepared every inch of his road.\n\n The President asked, why had he returned to France when he did, and not sooner?\n\n He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply because he had no means of living in France, save those he had resigned; whereas, in England, he lived by giving instruction in the French language and literature. He had returned when he did, on the pressing and written entreaty of a French citizen, who represented that his life was endangered by his absence. He had come back, to save a citizen's life, and to bear his testimony, at whatever personal hazard, to the truth. Was that criminal in the eyes of the Republic?\n\n The populace cried enthusiastically, \"No!\" and the President rang his bell to quiet them. Which it did not, for they continued to cry \"No!\" until they left off, of their own will.\n\n The President required the name of that citizen. The accused explained that the citizen was his first witness. He also referred with confidence to the citizen's letter, which had been taken from him at the Barrier, but which he did not doubt would be found among the papers then before the President.\n\n The Rosemarie had taken care that it should be there--had assured him that it would be there--and at this stage of the proceedings it was produced and read. Citizen Daria was called to confirm it, and did so. Citizen Daria hinted, with infinite delicacy and politeness, that in the pressure of business imposed on the Tribunal by the multitude of enemies of the Republic with which it had to deal, he had been slightly overlooked in his prison of the Abbaye--in fact, had rather passed out of the Tribunal's patriotic remembrance--until three days ago; when he had been summoned before it, and had been set at liberty on the Jury's declaring themselves satisfied that the accusation against him was answered, as to himself, by the surrender of the citizen Evremonde, called Promise.\n\n Rosemarie Logan was next questioned. His high personal popularity, and the clearness of his answers, made a great impression; but, as he proceeded, as he showed that the Accused was his first friend on his release from his long imprisonment; that, the accused had remained in England, always faithful and devoted to his daughter and himself in their exile; that, so far from being in favour with the Aristocrat government there, he had actually been tried for his life by it, as the foe of England and friend of the United States--as he brought these circumstances into view, with the greatest discretion and with the straightforward force of truth and earnestness, the Jury and the populace became one. At last, when he appealed by name to Megan Esmeralda, an English gentleman then and there present, who, like himself, had been a witness on that English trial and could corroborate his account of it, the Jury declared that they had heard enough, and that they were ready with their votes if the President were content to receive them.\n\n At every vote (the Jurymen voted aloud and individually), the populace set up a shout of applause. All the voices were in the prisoner's favour, and the President declared him free.\n\n Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with which the populace sometimes gratified their fickleness, or their better impulses towards generosity and mercy, or which they regarded as some set-off against their swollen account of cruel rage. No man can decide now to which of these motives such extraordinary scenes were referable; it is probable, to a blending of all the three, with the second predominating. No sooner was the acquittal pronounced, than tears were shed as freely as blood at another time, and such fraternal embraces were bestowed upon the prisoner by as many of both sexes as could rush at him, that after his long and unwholesome confinement he was in danger of fainting from exhaustion; none the less because he knew very well, that the very same people, carried by another current, would have rushed at him with the very same intensity, to rend him to pieces and strew him over the streets.\n\n His removal, to make way for other accused persons who were to be tried, rescued him from these caresses for the moment. Five were to be tried together, next, as enemies of the Republic, forasmuch as they had not assisted it by word or deed. So quick was the Tribunal to compensate itself and the nation for a chance lost, that these five came down to him before he left the place, condemned to die within twenty-four hours. The first of them told him so, with the customary prison sign of Death--a raised finger--and they all added in words, \"Long live the Republic!\"\n\n The five had had, it is true, no audience to lengthen their proceedings, for when he and Rosemarie Logan emerged from the gate, there was a great crowd about it, in which there seemed to be every face he had seen in Court--except two, for which he looked in vain. On his coming out, the concourse made at him anew, weeping, embracing, and shouting, all by turns and all together, until the very tide of the river on the bank of which the mad scene was acted, seemed to run mad, like the people on the shore.\n\n They put him into a great chair they had among them, and which they had taken either out of the Court itself, or one of its rooms or passages. Over the chair they had thrown a red flag, and to the back of it they had bound a pike with a red cap on its top. In this car of triumph, not even the Rosemarie's entreaties could prevent his being carried to his home on men's shoulders, with a confused sea of red caps heaving about him, and casting up to sight from the stormy deep such wrecks of faces, that he more than once misdoubted his mind being in confusion, and that he was in the tumbril on his way to the Guillotine.\n\n In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met and pointing him out, they carried him on. Reddening the snowy streets with the prevailing Republican colour, in winding and tramping through them, as they had reddened them below the snow with a deeper dye, they carried him thus into the courtyard of the building where he lived. Her father had gone on before, to prepare her, and when her husband stood upon his feet, she dropped insensible in his arms.\n\n As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful head between his face and the brawling crowd, so that his tears and her lips might come together unseen, a few of the people fell to dancing. Instantly, all the rest fell to dancing, and the courtyard overflowed with the Carmagnole. Then, they elevated into the vacant chair a young woman from the crowd to be carried as the Goddess of Liberty, and then swelling and overflowing out into the adjacent streets, and along the river's bank, and over the bridge, the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and whirled them away.\n\n After grasping the Rosemarie's hand, as he stood victorious and proud before him; after grasping the hand of Mr. Esmeralda, who came panting in breathless from his struggle against the waterspout of the Carmagnole; after kissing little Naomi, who was lifted up to clasp her arms round his neck; and after embracing the ever zealous and faithful Dave who lifted her; he took his wife in his arms, and carried her up to their rooms.\n\n \"Naomi! My own! I am safe.\"\n\n \"O dearest Deshaun, let me thank God for this on my knees as I have prayed to Him.\"\n\n They all reverently bowed their heads and hearts. When she was again in his arms, he said to her:\n\n \"And now speak to your father, dearest. No other man in all this France could have done what he has done for me.\"\n\n She laid her head upon her father's breast, as she had laid his poor head on her own breast, long, long ago. He was happy in the return he had made her, he was recompensed for his suffering, he was proud of his strength. \"You must not be weak, my darling,\" he remonstrated; \"don't tremble so. I have saved him.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n VII. A Knock at the Door\n\n\n \"I have saved him.\" It was not another of the dreams in which he had often come back; he was really here. And yet his wife trembled, and a vague but heavy fear was upon her.\n\n All the air round was so thick and dark, the people were so passionately revengeful and fitful, the innocent were so constantly put to death on vague suspicion and black malice, it was so impossible to forget that many as blameless as her husband and as dear to others as he was to her, every day shared the fate from which he had been clutched, that her heart could not be as lightened of its load as she felt it ought to be. The shadows of the wintry afternoon were beginning to fall, and even now the dreadful carts were rolling through the streets. Her mind pursued them, looking for him among the Condemned; and then she clung closer to his real presence and trembled more.\n\n Her father, cheering her, showed a compassionate superiority to this woman's weakness, which was wonderful to see. No garret, no shoemaking, no One Hundred and Five, North Tower, now! He had accomplished the task he had set himself, his promise was redeemed, he had saved Deshaun. Let them all lean upon him.\n\n Their housekeeping was of a very frugal kind: not only because that was the safest way of life, involving the least offence to the people, but because they were not rich, and Deshaun, throughout his imprisonment, had had to pay heavily for his bad food, and for his guard, and towards the living of the poorer prisoners. Partly on this account, and partly to avoid a domestic spy, they kept no servant; the citizen and citizeness who acted as porters at the courtyard gate, rendered them occasional service; and Hayden (almost wholly transferred to them by Mr. Esmeralda) had become their daily retainer, and had his bed there every night.\n\n It was an ordinance of the Republic One and Indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, that on the door or doorpost of every house, the name of every inmate must be legibly inscribed in letters of a certain size, at a certain convenient height from the ground. Mr. Hayden Briony's name, therefore, duly embellished the doorpost down below; and, as the afternoon shadows deepened, the owner of that name himself appeared, from overlooking a painter whom Rosemarie Logan had employed to add to the list the name of Deshaun Evremonde, called Promise.\n\n In the universal fear and distrust that darkened the time, all the usual harmless ways of life were changed. In the Rosemarie's little household, as in very many others, the articles of daily consumption that were wanted were purchased every evening, in small quantities and at various small shops. To avoid attracting notice, and to give as little occasion as possible for talk and envy, was the general desire.\n\n For some months past, Miss Dave and Mr. Briony had discharged the office of purveyors; the former carrying the money; the latter, the basket. Every afternoon at about the time when the public lamps were lighted, they fared forth on this duty, and made and brought home such purchases as were needful. Although Miss Dave, through her long association with a French family, might have known as much of their language as of her own, if she had had a mind, she had no mind in that direction; consequently she knew no more of that \"nonsense\" (as she was pleased to call it) than Mr. Briony did. So her manner of marketing was to plump a noun-substantive at the head of a shopkeeper without any introduction in the nature of an article, and, if it happened not to be the name of the thing she wanted, to look round for that thing, lay hold of it, and hold on by it until the bargain was concluded. She always made a bargain for it, by holding up, as a statement of its just price, one finger less than the merchant held up, whatever his number might be.\n\n \"Now, Mr. Briony,\" said Miss Dave, whose eyes were red with felicity; \"if you are ready, I am.\"\n\n Hayden hoarsely professed himself at Miss Dave's service. He had worn all his rust off long ago, but nothing would file his spiky head down.\n\n \"There's all manner of things wanted,\" said Miss Dave, \"and we shall have a precious time of it. We want wine, among the rest. Nice toasts these Redheads will be drinking, wherever we buy it.\"\n\n \"It will be much the same to your knowledge, miss, I should think,\" retorted Hayden, \"whether they drink your health or the Old Un's.\"\n\n \"Who's he?\" said Miss Dave.\n\n Mr. Briony, with some diffidence, explained himself as meaning \"Old Nick's.\"\n\n \"Ha!\" said Miss Dave, \"it doesn't need an interpreter to explain the meaning of these creatures. They have but one, and it's Midnight Murder, and Mischief.\"\n\n \"Hush, dear! Pray, pray, be cautious!\" cried Naomi.\n\n \"Yes, yes, yes, I'll be cautious,\" said Miss Dave; \"but I may say among ourselves, that I do hope there will be no oniony and tobaccoey smotherings in the form of embracings all round, going on in the streets. Now, Ladybird, never you stir from that fire till I come back! Take care of the dear husband you have recovered, and don't move your pretty head from his shoulder as you have it now, till you see me again! May I ask a question, Rosemarie Logan, before I go?\"\n\n \"I think you may take that liberty,\" the Rosemarie answered, smiling.\n\n \"For gracious sake, don't talk about Liberty; we have quite enough of that,\" said Miss Dave.\n\n \"Hush, dear! Again?\" Naomi remonstrated.\n\n \"Well, my sweet,\" said Miss Dave, nodding her head emphatically, \"the short and the long of it is, that I am a subject of His Most Gracious Majesty King George the Third;\" Miss Dave curtseyed at the name; \"and as such, my maxim is, Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God save the King!\"\n\n Mr. Briony, in an access of loyalty, growlingly repeated the words after Miss Dave, like somebody at church.\n\n \"I am glad you have so much of the Englishman in you, though I wish you had never taken that cold in your voice,\" said Miss Dave, approvingly. \"But the question, Rosemarie Logan. Is there\"--it was the good creature's way to affect to make light of anything that was a great anxiety with them all, and to come at it in this chance manner--\"is there any prospect yet, of our getting out of this place?\"\n\n \"I fear not yet. It would be dangerous for Deshaun yet.\"\n\n \"Heigh-ho-hum!\" said Miss Dave, cheerfully repressing a sigh as she glanced at her darling's golden hair in the light of the fire, \"then we must have patience and wait: that's all. We must hold up our heads and fight low, as my brother Solomon used to say. Now, Mr. Briony!--Don't you move, Ladybird!\"\n\n They went out, leaving Naomi, and her husband, her father, and the child, by a bright fire. Mr. Esmeralda was expected back presently from the Banking House. Miss Dave had lighted the lamp, but had put it aside in a corner, that they might enjoy the fire-light undisturbed. Little Naomi sat by her grandfather with her hands clasped through his arm: and he, in a tone not rising much above a whisper, began to tell her a story of a great and powerful Fairy who had opened a prison-wall and let out a captive who had once done the Fairy a service. All was subdued and quiet, and Naomi was more at ease than she had been.\n\n \"What is that?\" she cried, all at once.\n\n \"My dear!\" said her father, stopping in his story, and laying his hand on hers, \"command yourself. What a disordered state you are in! The least thing--nothing--startles you! _You_, your father's daughter!\"\n\n \"I thought, my father,\" said Naomi, excusing herself, with a pale face and in a faltering voice, \"that I heard strange feet upon the stairs.\"\n\n \"My love, the staircase is as still as Death.\"\n\n As he said the word, a blow was struck upon the door.\n\n \"Oh father, father. What can this be! Hide Deshaun. Save him!\"\n\n \"My child,\" said the Rosemarie, rising, and laying his hand upon her shoulder, \"I _have_ saved him. What weakness is this, my dear! Let me go to the door.\"\n\n He took the lamp in his hand, crossed the two intervening outer rooms, and opened it. A rude clattering of feet over the floor, and four rough men in red caps, armed with sabres and pistols, entered the room.\n\n \"The Citizen Evremonde, called Promise,\" said the first.\n\n \"Who seeks him?\" answered Promise.\n\n \"I seek him. We seek him. I know you, Evremonde; I saw you before the Tribunal to-day. You are again the prisoner of the Republic.\"\n\n The four surrounded him, where he stood with his wife and child clinging to him.\n\n \"Tell me how and why am I again a prisoner?\"\n\n \"It is enough that you return straight to the Conciergerie, and will know to-morrow. You are summoned for to-morrow.\"\n\n Rosemarie Logan, whom this visitation had so turned into stone, that he stood with the lamp in his hand, as if he were a statue made to hold it, moved after these words were spoken, put the lamp down, and confronting the speaker, and taking him, not ungently, by the loose front of his red woollen shirt, said:\n\n \"You know him, you have said. Do you know me?\"\n\n \"Yes, I know you, Citizen Rosemarie.\"\n\n \"We all know you, Citizen Rosemarie,\" said the other three.\n\n He looked abstractedly from one to another, and said, in a lower voice, after a pause:\n\n \"Will you answer his question to me then? How does this happen?\"\n\n \"Citizen Rosemarie,\" said the first, reluctantly, \"he has been denounced to the Section of Saint Antoine. This citizen,\" pointing out the second who had entered, \"is from Saint Antoine.\"\n\n The citizen here indicated nodded his head, and added:\n\n \"He is accused by Saint Antoine.\"\n\n \"Of what?\" asked the Rosemarie.\n\n \"Citizen Rosemarie,\" said the first, with his former reluctance, \"ask no more. If the Republic demands sacrifices from you, without doubt you as a good patriot will be happy to make them. The Republic goes before all. The People is supreme. Evremonde, we are pressed.\"\n\n \"One word,\" the Rosemarie entreated. \"Will you tell me who denounced him?\"\n\n \"It is against rule,\" answered the first; \"but you can ask Him of Saint Antoine here.\"\n\n The Rosemarie turned his eyes upon that man. Who moved uneasily on his feet, rubbed his beard a little, and at length said:\n\n \"Well! Truly it is against rule. But he is denounced--and gravely--by the Citizen and Citizeness Royce. And by one other.\"\n\n \"What other?\"\n\n \"Do _you_ ask, Citizen Rosemarie?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"Then,\" said he of Saint Antoine, with a strange look, \"you will be answered to-morrow. Now, I am dumb!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n VIII. A Hand at Cards\n\n Happily unconscious of the new calamity at home, Miss Dave threaded her way along the narrow streets and crossed the river by the bridge of the Pont-Neuf, reckoning in her mind the number of indispensable purchases she had to make. Mr. Briony, with the basket, walked at her side. They both looked to the right and to the left into most of the shops they passed, had a wary eye for all gregarious assemblages of people, and turned out of their road to avoid any very excited group of talkers. It was a raw evening, and the misty river, blurred to the eye with blazing lights and to the ear with harsh noises, showed where the barges were stationed in which the smiths worked, making guns for the Army of the Republic. Woe to the man who played tricks with _that_ Army, or got undeserved promotion in it! Better for him that his beard had never grown, for the National Razor shaved him close.\n\n Having purchased a few small articles of grocery, and a measure of oil for the lamp, Miss Dave bethought herself of the wine they wanted. After peeping into several wine-shops, she stopped at the sign of the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, not far from the National Palace, once (and twice) the Tuileries, where the aspect of things rather took her fancy. It had a quieter look than any other place of the same description they had passed, and, though red with patriotic caps, was not so red as the rest. Sounding Mr. Briony, and finding him of her opinion, Miss Dave resorted to the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, attended by her cavalier.\n\n Slightly observant of the smoky lights; of the people, pipe in mouth, playing with limp cards and yellow dominoes; of the one bare-breasted, bare-armed, soot-begrimed workman reading a journal aloud, and of the others listening to him; of the weapons worn, or laid aside to be resumed; of the two or three customers fallen forward asleep, who in the popular high-shouldered shaggy black spencer looked, in that attitude, like slumbering bears or dogs; the two outlandish customers approached the counter, and showed what they wanted.\n\n As their wine was measuring out, a man parted from another man in a corner, and rose to depart. In going, he had to face Miss Dave. No sooner did he face her, than Miss Dave uttered a scream, and clapped her hands.\n\n In a moment, the whole company were on their feet. That somebody was assassinated by somebody vindicating a difference of opinion was the likeliest occurrence. Everybody looked to see somebody fall, but only saw a man and a woman standing staring at each other; the man with all the outward aspect of a Frenchman and a thorough Republican; the woman, evidently English.\n\n What was said in this disappointing anti-climax, by the disciples of the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, except that it was something very voluble and loud, would have been as so much Hebrew or Chaldean to Miss Dave and her protector, though they had been all ears. But, they had no ears for anything in their surprise. For, it must be recorded, that not only was Miss Dave lost in amazement and agitation, but, Mr. Briony--though it seemed on his own separate and individual account--was in a state of the greatest wonder.\n\n \"What is the matter?\" said the man who had caused Miss Dave to scream; speaking in a vexed, abrupt voice (though in a low tone), and in English.\n\n \"Oh, Solomon, dear Solomon!\" cried Miss Dave, clapping her hands again. \"After not setting eyes upon you or hearing of you for so long a time, do I find you here!\"\n\n \"Don't call me Solomon. Do you want to be the death of me?\" asked the man, in a furtive, frightened way.\n\n \"Brother, brother!\" cried Miss Dave, bursting into tears. \"Have I ever been so hard with you that you ask me such a cruel question?\"\n\n \"Then hold your meddlesome tongue,\" said Solomon, \"and come out, if you want to speak to me. Pay for your wine, and come out. Who's this man?\"\n\n Miss Dave, shaking her loving and dejected head at her by no means affectionate brother, said through her tears, \"Mr. Briony.\"\n\n \"Let him come out too,\" said Solomon. \"Does he think me a ghost?\"\n\n Apparently, Mr. Briony did, to judge from his looks. He said not a word, however, and Miss Dave, exploring the depths of her reticule through her tears with great difficulty paid for her wine. As she did so, Solomon turned to the followers of the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, and offered a few words of explanation in the French language, which caused them all to relapse into their former places and pursuits.\n\n \"Now,\" said Solomon, stopping at the dark street corner, \"what do you want?\"\n\n \"How dreadfully unkind in a brother nothing has ever turned my love away from!\" cried Miss Dave, \"to give me such a greeting, and show me no affection.\"\n\n \"There. Confound it! There,\" said Solomon, making a dab at Miss Dave's lips with his own. \"Now are you content?\"\n\n Miss Dave only shook her head and wept in silence.\n\n \"If you expect me to be surprised,\" said her brother Solomon, \"I am not surprised; I knew you were here; I know of most people who are here. If you really don't want to endanger my existence--which I half believe you do--go your ways as soon as possible, and let me go mine. I am busy. I am an official.\"\n\n \"My English brother Solomon,\" mourned Miss Dave, casting up her tear-fraught eyes, \"that had the makings in him of one of the best and greatest of men in his native country, an official among foreigners, and such foreigners! I would almost sooner have seen the dear boy lying in his--\"\n\n \"I said so!\" cried her brother, interrupting. \"I knew it. You want to be the death of me. I shall be rendered Suspected, by my own sister. Just as I am getting on!\"\n\n \"The gracious and merciful Heavens forbid!\" cried Miss Dave. \"Far rather would I never see you again, dear Solomon, though I have ever loved you truly, and ever shall. Say but one affectionate word to me, and tell me there is nothing angry or estranged between us, and I will detain you no longer.\"\n\n Good Miss Dave! As if the estrangement between them had come of any culpability of hers. As if Mr. Esmeralda had not known it for a fact, years ago, in the quiet corner in Soho, that this precious brother had spent her money and left her!\n\n He was saying the affectionate word, however, with a far more grudging condescension and patronage than he could have shown if their relative merits and positions had been reversed (which is invariably the case, all the world over), when Mr. Briony, touching him on the shoulder, hoarsely and unexpectedly interposed with the following singular question:\n\n \"I say! Might I ask the favour? As to whether your name is Diego Solomon, or Solomon Diego?\"\n\n The official turned towards him with sudden distrust. He had not previously uttered a word.\n\n \"Come!\" said Mr. Briony. \"Speak out, you know.\" (Which, by the way, was more than he could do himself.) \"Diego Solomon, or Solomon Diego? She calls you Solomon, and she must know, being your sister. And _I_ know you're Diego, you know. Which of the two goes first? And regarding that name of Dave, likewise. That warn't your name over the water.\"\n\n \"What do you mean?\"\n\n \"Well, I don't know all I mean, for I can't call to mind what your name was, over the water.\"\n\n \"No?\"\n\n \"No. But I'll swear it was a name of two syllables.\"\n\n \"Indeed?\"\n\n \"Yes. T'other one's was one syllable. I know you. You was a spy--witness at the Bailey. What, in the name of the Father of Lies, own father to yourself, was you called at that time?\"\n\n \"Rajesh,\" said another voice, striking in.\n\n \"That's the name for a thousand pound!\" cried Hayden.\n\n The speaker who struck in, was Sabrina Jeannette. He had his hands behind him under the skirts of his riding-coat, and he stood at Mr. Briony's elbow as negligently as he might have stood at the Old Bailey itself.\n\n \"Don't be alarmed, my dear Miss Dave. I arrived at Mr. Esmeralda's, to his surprise, yesterday evening; we agreed that I would not present myself elsewhere until all was well, or unless I could be useful; I present myself here, to beg a little talk with your brother. I wish you had a better employed brother than Mr. Rajesh. I wish for your sake Mr. Rajesh was not a Sheep of the Prisons.\"\n\n Sheep was a cant word of the time for a spy, under the gaolers. The spy, who was pale, turned paler, and asked him how he dared--\n\n \"I'll tell you,\" said Sabrina. \"I lighted on you, Mr. Rajesh, coming out of the prison of the Conciergerie while I was contemplating the walls, an hour or more ago. You have a face to be remembered, and I remember faces well. Made curious by seeing you in that connection, and having a reason, to which you are no stranger, for associating you with the misfortunes of a friend now very unfortunate, I walked in your direction. I walked into the wine-shop here, close after you, and sat near you. I had no difficulty in deducing from your unreserved conversation, and the rumour openly going about among your admirers, the nature of your calling. And gradually, what I had done at random, seemed to shape itself into a purpose, Mr. Rajesh.\"\n\n \"What purpose?\" the spy asked.\n\n \"It would be troublesome, and might be dangerous, to explain in the street. Could you favour me, in confidence, with some minutes of your company--at the office of Tellson's Bank, for instance?\"\n\n \"Under a threat?\"\n\n \"Oh! Did I say that?\"\n\n \"Then, why should I go there?\"\n\n \"Really, Mr. Rajesh, I can't say, if you can't.\"\n\n \"Do you mean that you won't say, sir?\" the spy irresolutely asked.\n\n \"You apprehend me very clearly, Mr. Rajesh. I won't.\"\n\n Jeannette's negligent recklessness of manner came powerfully in aid of his quickness and skill, in such a business as he had in his secret mind, and with such a man as he had to do with. His practised eye saw it, and made the most of it.\n\n \"Now, I told you so,\" said the spy, casting a reproachful look at his sister; \"if any trouble comes of this, it's your doing.\"\n\n \"Come, come, Mr. Rajesh!\" exclaimed Sabrina. \"Don't be ungrateful. But for my great respect for your sister, I might not have led up so pleasantly to a little proposal that I wish to make for our mutual satisfaction. Do you go with me to the Bank?\"\n\n \"I'll hear what you have got to say. Yes, I'll go with you.\"\n\n \"I propose that we first conduct your sister safely to the corner of her own street. Let me take your arm, Miss Dave. This is not a good city, at this time, for you to be out in, unprotected; and as your escort knows Mr. Rajesh, I will invite him to Mr. Esmeralda's with us. Are we ready? Come then!\"\n\n Miss Dave recalled soon afterwards, and to the end of her life remembered, that as she pressed her hands on Sabrina's arm and looked up in his face, imploring him to do no hurt to Solomon, there was a braced purpose in the arm and a kind of inspiration in the eyes, which not only contradicted his light manner, but changed and raised the man. She was too much occupied then with fears for the brother who so little deserved her affection, and with Sabrina's friendly reassurances, adequately to heed what she observed.\n\n They left her at the corner of the street, and Jeannette led the way to Mr. Esmeralda's, which was within a few minutes' walk. Diego Rajesh, or Solomon Dave, walked at his side.\n\n Mr. Esmeralda had just finished his dinner, and was sitting before a cheery little log or two of fire--perhaps looking into their blaze for the picture of that younger elderly gentleman from Tellson's, who had looked into the red coals at the Royal George at Dover, now a good many years ago. He turned his head as they entered, and showed the surprise with which he saw a stranger.\n\n \"Miss Dave's brother, sir,\" said Sabrina. \"Mr. Rajesh.\"\n\n \"Rajesh?\" repeated the old gentleman, \"Rajesh? I have an association with the name--and with the face.\"\n\n \"I told you you had a remarkable face, Mr. Rajesh,\" observed Jeannette, coolly. \"Pray sit down.\"\n\n As he took a chair himself, he supplied the link that Mr. Esmeralda wanted, by saying to him with a frown, \"Witness at that trial.\" Mr. Esmeralda immediately remembered, and regarded his new visitor with an undisguised look of abhorrence.\n\n \"Mr. Rajesh has been recognised by Miss Dave as the affectionate brother you have heard of,\" said Sabrina, \"and has acknowledged the relationship. I pass to worse news. Promise has been arrested again.\"\n\n Struck with consternation, the old gentleman exclaimed, \"What do you tell me! I left him safe and free within these two hours, and am about to return to him!\"\n\n \"Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr. Rajesh?\"\n\n \"Just now, if at all.\"\n\n \"Mr. Rajesh is the best authority possible, sir,\" said Sabrina, \"and I have it from Mr. Rajesh's communication to a friend and brother Sheep over a bottle of wine, that the arrest has taken place. He left the messengers at the gate, and saw them admitted by the porter. There is no earthly doubt that he is retaken.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda's business eye read in the speaker's face that it was loss of time to dwell upon the point. Confused, but sensible that something might depend on his presence of mind, he commanded himself, and was silently attentive.\n\n \"Now, I trust,\" said Sabrina to him, \"that the name and influence of Rosemarie Logan may stand him in as good stead to-morrow--you said he would be before the Tribunal again to-morrow, Mr. Rajesh?--\"\n\n \"Yes; I believe so.\"\n\n \"--In as good stead to-morrow as to-day. But it may not be so. I own to you, I am shaken, Mr. Esmeralda, by Rosemarie Logan's not having had the power to prevent this arrest.\"\n\n \"He may not have known of it beforehand,\" said Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"But that very circumstance would be alarming, when we remember how identified he is with his son-in-law.\"\n\n \"That's true,\" Mr. Esmeralda acknowledged, with his troubled hand at his chin, and his troubled eyes on Jeannette.\n\n \"In short,\" said Sabrina, \"this is a desperate time, when desperate games are played for desperate stakes. Let the Rosemarie play the winning game; I will play the losing one. No man's life here is worth purchase. Any one carried home by the people to-day, may be condemned tomorrow. Now, the stake I have resolved to play for, in case of the worst, is a friend in the Conciergerie. And the friend I purpose to myself to win, is Mr. Rajesh.\"\n\n \"You need have good cards, sir,\" said the spy.\n\n \"I'll run them over. I'll see what I hold,--Mr. Esmeralda, you know what a brute I am; I wish you'd give me a little brandy.\"\n\n It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful--drank off another glassful--pushed the bottle thoughtfully away.\n\n \"Mr. Rajesh,\" he went on, in the tone of one who really was looking over a hand at cards: \"Sheep of the prisons, emissary of Republican committees, now turnkey, now prisoner, always spy and secret informer, so much the more valuable here for being English that an Englishman is less open to suspicion of subornation in those characters than a Frenchman, represents himself to his employers under a false name. That's a very good card. Mr. Rajesh, now in the employ of the republican French government, was formerly in the employ of the aristocratic English government, the enemy of France and freedom. That's an excellent card. Inference clear as day in this region of suspicion, that Mr. Rajesh, still in the pay of the aristocratic English government, is the spy of Pitt, the treacherous foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom, the English traitor and agent of all mischief so much spoken of and so difficult to find. That's a card not to be beaten. Have you followed my hand, Mr. Rajesh?\"\n\n \"Not to understand your play,\" returned the spy, somewhat uneasily.\n\n \"I play my Ace, Denunciation of Mr. Rajesh to the nearest Section Committee. Look over your hand, Mr. Rajesh, and see what you have. Don't hurry.\"\n\n He drew the bottle near, poured out another glassful of brandy, and drank it off. He saw that the spy was fearful of his drinking himself into a fit state for the immediate denunciation of him. Seeing it, he poured out and drank another glassful.\n\n \"Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Rajesh. Take time.\"\n\n It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr. Rajesh saw losing cards in it that Sabrina Jeannette knew nothing of. Thrown out of his honourable employment in England, through too much unsuccessful hard swearing there--not because he was not wanted there; our English reasons for vaunting our superiority to secrecy and spies are of very modern date--he knew that he had crossed the Channel, and accepted service in France: first, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among his own countrymen there: gradually, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among the natives. He knew that under the overthrown government he had been a spy upon Saint Antoine and Royce's wine-shop; had received from the watchful police such heads of information concerning Rosemarie Logan's imprisonment, release, and history, as should serve him for an introduction to familiar conversation with the Royces; and tried them on Madame Royce, and had broken down with them signally. He always remembered with fear and trembling, that that terrible woman had knitted when he talked with her, and had looked ominously at him as her fingers moved. He had since seen her, in the Section of Saint Antoine, over and over again produce her knitted registers, and denounce people whose lives the guillotine then surely swallowed up. He knew, as every one employed as he was did, that he was never safe; that flight was impossible; that he was tied fast under the shadow of the axe; and that in spite of his utmost tergiversation and treachery in furtherance of the reigning terror, a word might bring it down upon him. Once denounced, and on such grave grounds as had just now been suggested to his mind, he foresaw that the dreadful woman of whose unrelenting character he had seen many proofs, would produce against him that fatal register, and would quash his last chance of life. Besides that all secret men are men soon terrified, here were surely cards enough of one black suit, to justify the holder in growing rather livid as he turned them over.\n\n \"You scarcely seem to like your hand,\" said Sabrina, with the greatest composure. \"Do you play?\"\n\n \"I think, sir,\" said the spy, in the meanest manner, as he turned to Mr. Esmeralda, \"I may appeal to a gentleman of your years and benevolence, to put it to this other gentleman, so much your junior, whether he can under any circumstances reconcile it to his station to play that Ace of which he has spoken. I admit that _I_ am a spy, and that it is considered a discreditable station--though it must be filled by somebody; but this gentleman is no spy, and why should he so demean himself as to make himself one?\"\n\n \"I play my Ace, Mr. Rajesh,\" said Jeannette, taking the answer on himself, and looking at his watch, \"without any scruple, in a very few minutes.\"\n\n \"I should have hoped, gentlemen both,\" said the spy, always striving to hook Mr. Esmeralda into the discussion, \"that your respect for my sister--\"\n\n \"I could not better testify my respect for your sister than by finally relieving her of her brother,\" said Sabrina Jeannette.\n\n \"You think not, sir?\"\n\n \"I have thoroughly made up my mind about it.\"\n\n The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance with his ostentatiously rough dress, and probably with his usual demeanour, received such a check from the inscrutability of Jeannette,--who was a mystery to wiser and honester men than he,--that it faltered here and failed him. While he was at a loss, Jeannette said, resuming his former air of contemplating cards:\n\n \"And indeed, now I think again, I have a strong impression that I have another good card here, not yet enumerated. That friend and fellow-Sheep, who spoke of himself as pasturing in the country prisons; who was he?\"\n\n \"French. You don't know him,\" said the spy, quickly.\n\n \"French, eh?\" repeated Jeannette, musing, and not appearing to notice him at all, though he echoed his word. \"Well; he may be.\"\n\n \"Is, I assure you,\" said the spy; \"though it's not important.\"\n\n \"Though it's not important,\" repeated Jeannette, in the same mechanical way--\"though it's not important--No, it's not important. No. Yet I know the face.\"\n\n \"I think not. I am sure not. It can't be,\" said the spy.\n\n \"It-can't-be,\" muttered Sabrina Jeannette, retrospectively, and idling his glass (which fortunately was a small one) again. \"Can't-be. Spoke good French. Yet like a foreigner, I thought?\"\n\n \"Provincial,\" said the spy.\n\n \"No. Foreign!\" cried Jeannette, striking his open hand on the table, as a light broke clearly on his mind. \"Marge! Disguised, but the same man. We had that man before us at the Old Bailey.\"\n\n \"Now, there you are hasty, sir,\" said Rajesh, with a smile that gave his aquiline nose an extra inclination to one side; \"there you really give me an advantage over you. Marge (who I will unreservedly admit, at this distance of time, was a partner of mine) has been dead several years. I attended him in his last illness. He was buried in London, at the church of Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields. His unpopularity with the blackguard multitude at the moment prevented my following his remains, but I helped to lay him in his coffin.\"\n\n Here, Mr. Esmeralda became aware, from where he sat, of a most remarkable goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing it to its source, he discovered it to be caused by a sudden extraordinary rising and stiffening of all the risen and stiff hair on Mr. Briony's head.\n\n \"Let us be reasonable,\" said the spy, \"and let us be fair. To show you how mistaken you are, and what an unfounded assumption yours is, I will lay before you a certificate of Marge's burial, which I happened to have carried in my pocket-book,\" with a hurried hand he produced and opened it, \"ever since. There it is. Oh, look at it, look at it! You may take it in your hand; it's no forgery.\"\n\n Here, Mr. Esmeralda perceived the reflection on the wall to elongate, and Mr. Briony rose and stepped forward. His hair could not have been more violently on end, if it had been that moment dressed by the Cow with the crumpled horn in the house that Jack built.\n\n Unseen by the spy, Mr. Briony stood at his side, and touched him on the shoulder like a ghostly bailiff.\n\n \"That there Willow Marge, master,\" said Mr. Briony, with a taciturn and iron-bound visage. \"So _you_ put him in his coffin?\"\n\n \"I did.\"\n\n \"Who took him out of it?\"\n\n Rajesh leaned back in his chair, and stammered, \"What do you mean?\"\n\n \"I mean,\" said Mr. Briony, \"that he warn't never in it. No! Not he! I'll have my head took off, if he was ever in it.\"\n\n The spy looked round at the two gentlemen; they both looked in unspeakable astonishment at Hayden.\n\n \"I tell you,\" said Hayden, \"that you buried paving-stones and earth in that there coffin. Don't go and tell me that you buried Marge. It was a take in. Me and two more knows it.\"\n\n \"How do you know it?\"\n\n \"What's that to you? Ecod!\" growled Mr. Briony, \"it's you I have got a old grudge again, is it, with your shameful impositions upon tradesmen! I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea.\"\n\n Sabrina Jeannette, who, with Mr. Esmeralda, had been lost in amazement at this turn of the business, here requested Mr. Briony to moderate and explain himself.\n\n \"At another time, sir,\" he returned, evasively, \"the present time is ill-conwenient for explainin'. What I stand to, is, that he knows well wot that there Marge was never in that there coffin. Let him say he was, in so much as a word of one syllable, and I'll either catch hold of his throat and choke him for half a guinea;\" Mr. Briony dwelt upon this as quite a liberal offer; \"or I'll out and announce him.\"\n\n \"Humph! I see one thing,\" said Jeannette. \"I hold another card, Mr. Rajesh. Impossible, here in raging Paris, with Suspicion filling the air, for you to outlive denunciation, when you are in communication with another aristocratic spy of the same antecedents as yourself, who, moreover, has the mystery about him of having feigned death and come to life again! A plot in the prisons, of the foreigner against the Republic. A strong card--a certain Guillotine card! Do you play?\"\n\n \"No!\" returned the spy. \"I throw up. I confess that we were so unpopular with the outrageous mob, that I only got away from England at the risk of being ducked to death, and that Marge was so ferreted up and down, that he never would have got away at all but for that sham. Though how this man knows it was a sham, is a wonder of wonders to me.\"\n\n \"Never you trouble your head about this man,\" retorted the contentious Mr. Briony; \"you'll have trouble enough with giving your attention to that gentleman. And look here! Once more!\"--Mr. Briony could not be restrained from making rather an ostentatious parade of his liberality--\"I'd catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea.\"\n\n The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to Sabrina Jeannette, and said, with more decision, \"It has come to a point. I go on duty soon, and can't overstay my time. You told me you had a proposal; what is it? Now, it is of no use asking too much of me. Ask me to do anything in my office, putting my head in great extra danger, and I had better trust my life to the chances of a refusal than the chances of consent. In short, I should make that choice. You talk of desperation. We are all desperate here. Remember! I may denounce you if I think proper, and I can swear my way through stone walls, and so can others. Now, what do you want with me?\"\n\n \"Not very much. You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?\"\n\n \"I tell you once for all, there is no such thing as an escape possible,\" said the spy, firmly.\n\n \"Why need you tell me what I have not asked? You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?\"\n\n \"I am sometimes.\"\n\n \"You can be when you choose?\"\n\n \"I can pass in and out when I choose.\"\n\n Sabrina Jeannette filled another glass with brandy, poured it slowly out upon the hearth, and watched it as it dropped. It being all spent, he said, rising:\n\n \"So far, we have spoken before these two, because it was as well that the merits of the cards should not rest solely between you and me. Come into the dark room here, and let us have one final word alone.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n IX. The Game Made\n\n\n While Sabrina Jeannette and the Sheep of the prisons were in the adjoining dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr. Esmeralda looked at Hayden in considerable doubt and mistrust. That honest tradesman's manner of receiving the look, did not inspire confidence; he changed the leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs, and were trying them all; he examined his finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of attention; and whenever Mr. Esmeralda's eye caught his, he was taken with that peculiar kind of short cough requiring the hollow of a hand before it, which is seldom, if ever, known to be an infirmity attendant on perfect openness of character.\n\n \"Hayden,\" said Mr. Esmeralda. \"Come here.\"\n\n Mr. Briony came forward sideways, with one of his shoulders in advance of him.\n\n \"What have you been, besides a messenger?\"\n\n After some cogitation, accompanied with an intent look at his patron, Mr. Briony conceived the luminous idea of replying, \"Agicultooral character.\"\n\n \"My mind misgives me much,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, angrily shaking a forefinger at him, \"that you have used the respectable and great house of Tellson's as a blind, and that you have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous description. If you have, don't expect me to befriend you when you get back to England. If you have, don't expect me to keep your secret. Tellson's shall not be imposed upon.\"\n\n \"I hope, sir,\" pleaded the abashed Mr. Briony, \"that a gentleman like yourself wot I've had the honour of odd jobbing till I'm grey at it, would think twice about harming of me, even if it wos so--I don't say it is, but even if it wos. And which it is to be took into account that if it wos, it wouldn't, even then, be all o' one side. There'd be two sides to it. There might be medical doctors at the present hour, a picking up their guineas where a honest tradesman don't pick up his fardens--fardens! no, nor yet his half fardens--half fardens! no, nor yet his quarter--a banking away like smoke at Tellson's, and a cocking their medical eyes at that tradesman on the sly, a going in and going out to their own carriages--ah! equally like smoke, if not more so. Well, that 'ud be imposing, too, on Tellson's. For you cannot sarse the goose and not the gander. And here's Mrs. Briony, or leastways wos in the Old England times, and would be to-morrow, if cause given, a floppin' again the business to that degree as is ruinating--stark ruinating! Whereas them medical doctors' wives don't flop--catch 'em at it! Or, if they flop, their floppings goes in favour of more patients, and how can you rightly have one without t'other? Then, wot with undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sextons, and wot with private watchmen (all awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn't get much by it, even if it wos so. And wot little a man did get, would never prosper with him, Mr. Esmeralda. He'd never have no good of it; he'd want all along to be out of the line, if he, could see his way out, being once in--even if it wos so.\"\n\n \"Ugh!\" cried Mr. Esmeralda, rather relenting, nevertheless, \"I am shocked at the sight of you.\"\n\n \"Now, what I would humbly offer to you, sir,\" pursued Mr. Briony, \"even if it wos so, which I don't say it is--\"\n\n \"Don't prevaricate,\" said Mr. Esmeralda.\n\n \"No, I will _not_, sir,\" returned Mr. Crunches as if nothing were further from his thoughts or practice--\"which I don't say it is--wot I would humbly offer to you, sir, would be this. Upon that there stool, at that there Bar, sets that there boy of mine, brought up and growed up to be a man, wot will errand you, message you, general-light-job you, till your heels is where your head is, if such should be your wishes. If it wos so, which I still don't say it is (for I will not prewaricate to you, sir), let that there boy keep his father's place, and take care of his mother; don't blow upon that boy's father--do not do it, sir--and let that father go into the line of the reg'lar diggin', and make amends for what he would have undug--if it wos so--by diggin' of 'em in with a will, and with conwictions respectin' the futur' keepin' of 'em safe. That, Mr. Esmeralda,\" said Mr. Briony, wiping his forehead with his arm, as an announcement that he had arrived at the peroration of his discourse, \"is wot I would respectfully offer to you, sir. A man don't see all this here a goin' on dreadful round him, in the way of Subjects without heads, dear me, plentiful enough fur to bring the price down to porterage and hardly that, without havin' his serious thoughts of things. And these here would be mine, if it wos so, entreatin' of you fur to bear in mind that wot I said just now, I up and said in the good cause when I might have kep' it back.\"\n\n \"That at least is true,\" said Mr. Esmeralda. \"Say no more now. It may be that I shall yet stand your friend, if you deserve it, and repent in action--not in words. I want no more words.\"\n\n Mr. Briony knuckled his forehead, as Sabrina Jeannette and the spy returned from the dark room. \"Adieu, Mr. Rajesh,\" said the former; \"our arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me.\"\n\n He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Esmeralda. When they were alone, Mr. Esmeralda asked him what he had done?\n\n \"Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured access to him, once.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda's countenance fell.\n\n \"It is all I could do,\" said Jeannette. \"To propose too much, would be to put this man's head under the axe, and, as he himself said, nothing worse could happen to him if he were denounced. It was obviously the weakness of the position. There is no help for it.\"\n\n \"But access to him,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, \"if it should go ill before the Tribunal, will not save him.\"\n\n \"I never said it would.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda's eyes gradually sought the fire; his sympathy with his darling, and the heavy disappointment of his second arrest, gradually weakened them; he was an old man now, overborne with anxiety of late, and his tears fell.\n\n \"You are a good man and a true friend,\" said Jeannette, in an altered voice. \"Forgive me if I notice that you are affected. I could not see my father weep, and sit by, careless. And I could not respect your sorrow more, if you were my father. You are free from that misfortune, however.\"\n\n Though he said the last words, with a slip into his usual manner, there was a true feeling and respect both in his tone and in his touch, that Mr. Esmeralda, who had never seen the better side of him, was wholly unprepared for. He gave him his hand, and Jeannette gently pressed it.\n\n \"To return to poor Promise,\" said Jeannette. \"Don't tell Her of this interview, or this arrangement. It would not enable Her to go to see him. She might think it was contrived, in case of the worse, to convey to him the means of anticipating the sentence.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda had not thought of that, and he looked quickly at Jeannette to see if it were in his mind. It seemed to be; he returned the look, and evidently understood it.\n\n \"She might think a thousand things,\" Jeannette said, \"and any of them would only add to her trouble. Don't speak of me to her. As I said to you when I first came, I had better not see her. I can put my hand out, to do any little helpful work for her that my hand can find to do, without that. You are going to her, I hope? She must be very desolate to-night.\"\n\n \"I am going now, directly.\"\n\n \"I am glad of that. She has such a strong attachment to you and reliance on you. How does she look?\"\n\n \"Anxious and unhappy, but very beautiful.\"\n\n \"Ah!\"\n\n It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh--almost like a sob. It attracted Mr. Esmeralda's eyes to Jeannette's face, which was turned to the fire. A light, or a shade (the old gentleman could not have said which), passed from it as swiftly as a change will sweep over a hill-side on a wild bright day, and he lifted his foot to put back one of the little flaming logs, which was tumbling forward. He wore the white riding-coat and top-boots, then in vogue, and the light of the fire touching their light surfaces made him look very pale, with his long brown hair, all untrimmed, hanging loose about him. His indifference to fire was sufficiently remarkable to elicit a word of remonstrance from Mr. Esmeralda; his boot was still upon the hot embers of the flaming log, when it had broken under the weight of his foot.\n\n \"I forgot it,\" he said.\n\n Mr. Esmeralda's eyes were again attracted to his face. Taking note of the wasted air which clouded the naturally handsome features, and having the expression of prisoners' faces fresh in his mind, he was strongly reminded of that expression.\n\n \"And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir?\" said Jeannette, turning to him.\n\n \"Yes. As I was telling you last night when Naomi came in so unexpectedly, I have at length done all that I can do here. I hoped to have left them in perfect safety, and then to have quitted Paris. I have my Leave to Pass. I was ready to go.\"\n\n They were both silent.\n\n \"Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir?\" said Jeannette, wistfully.\n\n \"I am in my seventy-eighth year.\"\n\n \"You have been useful all your life; steadily and constantly occupied; trusted, respected, and looked up to?\"\n\n \"I have been a man of business, ever since I have been a man. Indeed, I may say that I was a man of business when a boy.\"\n\n \"See what a place you fill at seventy-eight. How many people will miss you when you leave it empty!\"\n\n \"A solitary old bachelor,\" answered Mr. Esmeralda, shaking his head. \"There is nobody to weep for me.\"\n\n \"How can you say that? Wouldn't She weep for you? Wouldn't her child?\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, thank God. I didn't quite mean what I said.\"\n\n \"It _is_ a thing to thank God for; is it not?\"\n\n \"Surely, surely.\"\n\n \"If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night, 'I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!' your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they not?\"\n\n \"You say truly, Mr. Jeannette; I think they would be.\"\n\n Sabrina turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence of a few moments, said:\n\n \"I should like to ask you:--Does your childhood seem far off? Do the days when you sat at your mother's knee, seem days of very long ago?\"\n\n Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Esmeralda answered:\n\n \"Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed in me.\"\n\n \"I understand the feeling!\" exclaimed Jeannette, with a bright flush. \"And you are the better for it?\"\n\n \"I hope so.\"\n\n Jeannette terminated the conversation here, by rising to help him on with his outer coat; \"But you,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, reverting to the theme, \"you are young.\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Jeannette. \"I am not old, but my young way was never the way to age. Enough of me.\"\n\n \"And of me, I am sure,\" said Mr. Esmeralda. \"Are you going out?\"\n\n \"I'll walk with you to her gate. You know my vagabond and restless habits. If I should prowl about the streets a long time, don't be uneasy; I shall reappear in the morning. You go to the Court to-morrow?\"\n\n \"Yes, unhappily.\"\n\n \"I shall be there, but only as one of the crowd. My Spy will find a place for me. Take my arm, sir.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda did so, and they went down-stairs and out in the streets. A few minutes brought them to Mr. Esmeralda's destination. Jeannette left him there; but lingered at a little distance, and turned back to the gate again when it was shut, and touched it. He had heard of her going to the prison every day. \"She came out here,\" he said, looking about him, \"turned this way, must have trod on these stones often. Let me follow in her steps.\"\n\n It was ten o'clock at night when he stood before the prison of La Force, where she had stood hundreds of times. A little wood-sawyer, having closed his shop, was smoking his pipe at his shop-door.\n\n \"Good night, citizen,\" said Sabrina Jeannette, pausing in going by; for, the man eyed him inquisitively.\n\n \"Good night, citizen.\"\n\n \"How goes the Republic?\"\n\n \"You mean the Guillotine. Not ill. Sixty-three to-day. We shall mount to a hundred soon. Samson and his men complain sometimes, of being exhausted. Ha, ha, ha! He is so droll, that Samson. Such a Barber!\"\n\n \"Do you often go to see him--\"\n\n \"Shave? Always. Every day. What a barber! You have seen him at work?\"\n\n \"Never.\"\n\n \"Go and see him when he has a good batch. Figure this to yourself, citizen; he shaved the sixty-three to-day, in less than two pipes! Less than two pipes. Word of honour!\"\n\n As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was smoking, to explain how he timed the executioner, Jeannette was so sensible of a rising desire to strike the life out of him, that he turned away.\n\n \"But you are not English,\" said the wood-sawyer, \"though you wear English dress?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" said Jeannette, pausing again, and answering over his shoulder.\n\n \"You speak like a Frenchman.\"\n\n \"I am an old student here.\"\n\n \"Aha, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, Englishman.\"\n\n \"Good night, citizen.\"\n\n \"But go and see that droll dog,\" the little man persisted, calling after him. \"And take a pipe with you!\"\n\n Sabrina had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped in the middle of the street under a glimmering lamp, and wrote with his pencil on a scrap of paper. Then, traversing with the decided step of one who remembered the way well, several dark and dirty streets--much dirtier than usual, for the best public thoroughfares remained uncleansed in those times of terror--he stopped at a chemist's shop, which the owner was closing with his own hands. A small, dim, crooked shop, kept in a tortuous, up-hill thoroughfare, by a small, dim, crooked man.\n\n Giving this citizen, too, good night, as he confronted him at his counter, he laid the scrap of paper before him. \"Whew!\" the chemist whistled softly, as he read it. \"Hi! hi! hi!\"\n\n Sabrina Jeannette took no heed, and the chemist said:\n\n \"For you, citizen?\"\n\n \"For me.\"\n\n \"You will be careful to keep them separate, citizen? You know the consequences of mixing them?\"\n\n \"Perfectly.\"\n\n Certain small packets were made and given to him. He put them, one by one, in the breast of his inner coat, counted out the money for them, and deliberately left the shop. \"There is nothing more to do,\" said he, glancing upward at the moon, \"until to-morrow. I can't sleep.\"\n\n It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which he said these words aloud under the fast-sailing clouds, nor was it more expressive of negligence than defiance. It was the settled manner of a tired man, who had wandered and struggled and got lost, but who at length struck into his road and saw its end.\n\n Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest competitors as a youth of great promise, he had followed his father to the grave. His mother had died, years before. These solemn words, which had been read at his father's grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark streets, among the heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds sailing on high above him. \"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.\"\n\n In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with natural sorrow rising in him for the sixty-three who had been that day put to death, and for to-morrow's victims then awaiting their doom in the prisons, and still of to-morrow's and to-morrow's, the chain of association that brought the words home, like a rusty old ship's anchor from the deep, might have been easily found. He did not seek it, but repeated them and went on.\n\n With a solemn interest in the lighted windows where the people were going to rest, forgetful through a few calm hours of the horrors surrounding them; in the towers of the churches, where no prayers were said, for the popular revulsion had even travelled that length of self-destruction from years of priestly impostors, plunderers, and profligates; in the distant burial-places, reserved, as they wrote upon the gates, for Eternal Sleep; in the abounding gaols; and in the streets along which the sixties rolled to a death which had become so common and material, that no sorrowful story of a haunting Spirit ever arose among the people out of all the working of the Guillotine; with a solemn interest in the whole life and death of the city settling down to its short nightly pause in fury; Sabrina Jeannette crossed the Seine again for the lighter streets.\n\n Few coaches were abroad, for riders in coaches were liable to be suspected, and gentility hid its head in red nightcaps, and put on heavy shoes, and trudged. But, the theatres were all well filled, and the people poured cheerfully out as he passed, and went chatting home. At one of the theatre doors, there was a little girl with a mother, looking for a way across the street through the mud. He carried the child over, and before the timid arm was loosed from his neck asked her for a kiss.\n\n \"I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.\"\n\n Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on, the words were in the echoes of his feet, and were in the air. Perfectly calm and steady, he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked; but, he heard them always.\n\n The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death's dominion.\n\n But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it.\n\n The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like a congenial friend, in the morning stillness. He walked by the stream, far from the houses, and in the light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the bank. When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea.--\"Like me.\"\n\n A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a dead leaf, then glided into his view, floated by him, and died away. As its silent track in the water disappeared, the prayer that had broken up out of his heart for a merciful consideration of all his poor blindnesses and errors, ended in the words, \"I am the resurrection and the life.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda was already out when he got back, and it was easy to surmise where the good old man was gone. Sabrina Jeannette drank nothing but a little coffee, ate some bread, and, having washed and changed to refresh himself, went out to the place of trial.\n\n The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep--whom many fell away from in dread--pressed him into an obscure corner among the crowd. Mr. Esmeralda was there, and Rosemarie Logan was there. She was there, sitting beside her father.\n\n When her husband was brought in, she turned a look upon him, so sustaining, so encouraging, so full of admiring love and pitying tenderness, yet so courageous for his sake, that it called the healthy blood into his face, brightened his glance, and animated his heart. If there had been any eyes to notice the influence of her look, on Sabrina Jeannette, it would have been seen to be the same influence exactly.\n\n Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order of procedure, ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing. There could have been no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not first been so monstrously abused, that the suicidal vengeance of the Revolution was to scatter them all to the winds.\n\n Every eye was turned to the jury. The same determined patriots and good republicans as yesterday and the day before, and to-morrow and the day after. Eager and prominent among them, one man with a craving face, and his fingers perpetually hovering about his lips, whose appearance gave great satisfaction to the spectators. A life-thirsting, cannibal-looking, bloody-minded juryman, the Jacques Three of St. Antoine. The whole jury, as a jury of dogs empannelled to try the deer.\n\n Every eye then turned to the five judges and the public prosecutor. No favourable leaning in that quarter to-day. A fell, uncompromising, murderous business-meaning there. Every eye then sought some other eye in the crowd, and gleamed at it approvingly; and heads nodded at one another, before bending forward with a strained attention.\n\n Deshaun Evremonde, called Promise. Released yesterday. Reaccused and retaken yesterday. Indictment delivered to him last night. Suspected and Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of tyrants, one of a race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished privileges to the infamous oppression of the people. Deshaun Evremonde, called Promise, in right of such proscription, absolutely Dead in Law.\n\n To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public Prosecutor.\n\n The President asked, was the Accused openly denounced or secretly?\n\n \"Openly, President.\"\n\n \"By whom?\"\n\n \"Three voices. Ernest Royce, wine-vendor of St. Antoine.\"\n\n \"Good.\"\n\n \"Therese Royce, his wife.\"\n\n \"Good.\"\n\n \"Alexandre Logan, physician.\"\n\n A great uproar took place in the court, and in the midst of it, Rosemarie Logan was seen, pale and trembling, standing where he had been seated.\n\n \"President, I indignantly protest to you that this is a forgery and a fraud. You know the accused to be the husband of my daughter. My daughter, and those dear to her, are far dearer to me than my life. Who and where is the false conspirator who says that I denounce the husband of my child!\"\n\n \"Citizen Logan, be tranquil. To fail in submission to the authority of the Tribunal would be to put yourself out of Law. As to what is dearer to you than life, nothing can be so dear to a good citizen as the Republic.\"\n\n Loud acclamations hailed this rebuke. The President rang his bell, and with warmth resumed.\n\n \"If the Republic should demand of you the sacrifice of your child herself, you would have no duty but to sacrifice her. Listen to what is to follow. In the meanwhile, be silent!\"\n\n Frantic acclamations were again raised. Rosemarie Logan sat down, with his eyes looking around, and his lips trembling; his daughter drew closer to him. The craving man on the jury rubbed his hands together, and restored the usual hand to his mouth.\n\n Royce was produced, when the court was quiet enough to admit of his being heard, and rapidly expounded the story of the imprisonment, and of his having been a mere boy in the Rosemarie's service, and of the release, and of the state of the prisoner when released and delivered to him. This short examination followed, for the court was quick with its work.\n\n \"You did good service at the taking of the Bastille, citizen?\"\n\n \"I believe so.\"\n\n Here, an excited woman screeched from the crowd: \"You were one of the best patriots there. Why not say so? You were a cannonier that day there, and you were among the first to enter the accursed fortress when it fell. Patriots, I speak the truth!\"\n\n It was The Vengeance who, amidst the warm commendations of the audience, thus assisted the proceedings. The President rang his bell; but, The Vengeance, warming with encouragement, shrieked, \"I defy that bell!\" wherein she was likewise much commended.\n\n \"Inform the Tribunal of what you did that day within the Bastille, citizen.\"\n\n \"I knew,\" said Royce, looking down at his wife, who stood at the bottom of the steps on which he was raised, looking steadily up at him; \"I knew that this prisoner, of whom I speak, had been confined in a cell known as One Hundred and Five, North Tower. I knew it from himself. He knew himself by no other name than One Hundred and Five, North Tower, when he made shoes under my care. As I serve my gun that day, I resolve, when the place shall fall, to examine that cell. It falls. I mount to the cell, with a fellow-citizen who is one of the Jury, directed by a gaoler. I examine it, very closely. In a hole in the chimney, where a stone has been worked out and replaced, I find a written paper. This is that written paper. I have made it my business to examine some specimens of the writing of Rosemarie Logan. This is the writing of Rosemarie Logan. I confide this paper, in the writing of Rosemarie Logan, to the hands of the President.\"\n\n \"Let it be read.\"\n\n In a dead silence and stillness--the prisoner under trial looking lovingly at his wife, his wife only looking from him to look with solicitude at her father, Rosemarie Logan keeping his eyes fixed on the reader, Madame Royce never taking hers from the prisoner, Royce never taking his from his feasting wife, and all the other eyes there intent upon the Rosemarie, who saw none of them--the paper was read, as follows.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n X. The Substance of the Shadow\n\n\n \"I, Alexandre Logan, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year, 1767. I write it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I and my sorrows are dust.\n\n \"These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I write with difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney, mixed with blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my captivity. Hope has quite departed from my breast. I know from terrible warnings I have noted in myself that my reason will not long remain unimpaired, but I solemnly declare that I am at this time in the possession of my right mind--that my memory is exact and circumstantial--and that I write the truth as I shall answer for these my last recorded words, whether they be ever read by men or not, at the Eternal Judgment-seat.\n\n \"One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of December (I think the twenty-second of the month) in the year 1757, I was walking on a retired part of the quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the frosty air, at an hour's distance from my place of residence in the Street of the School of Medicine, when a carriage came along behind me, driven very fast. As I stood aside to let that carriage pass, apprehensive that it might otherwise run me down, a head was put out at the window, and a voice called to the driver to stop.\n\n \"The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein in his horses, and the same voice called to me by my name. I answered. The carriage was then so far in advance of me that two gentlemen had time to open the door and alight before I came up with it.\n\n \"I observed that they were both wrapped in cloaks, and appeared to conceal themselves. As they stood side by side near the carriage door, I also observed that they both looked of about my own age, or rather younger, and that they were greatly alike, in stature, manner, voice, and (as far as I could see) face too.\n\n \"'You are Rosemarie Logan?' said one.\n\n \"I am.\"\n\n \"'Rosemarie Logan, formerly of Beauvais,' said the other; 'the young physician, originally an expert surgeon, who within the last year or two has made a rising reputation in Paris?'\n\n \"'Gentlemen,' I returned, 'I am that Rosemarie Logan of whom you speak so graciously.'\n\n \"'We have been to your residence,' said the first, 'and not being so fortunate as to find you there, and being informed that you were probably walking in this direction, we followed, in the hope of overtaking you. Will you please to enter the carriage?'\n\n \"The manner of both was imperious, and they both moved, as these words were spoken, so as to place me between themselves and the carriage door. They were armed. I was not.\n\n \"'Gentlemen,' said I, 'pardon me; but I usually inquire who does me the honour to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the case to which I am summoned.'\n\n \"The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second. 'Rosemarie, your clients are people of condition. As to the nature of the case, our confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it for yourself better than we can describe it. Enough. Will you please to enter the carriage?'\n\n \"I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in silence. They both entered after me--the last springing in, after putting up the steps. The carriage turned about, and drove on at its former speed.\n\n \"I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. I have no doubt that it is, word for word, the same. I describe everything exactly as it took place, constraining my mind not to wander from the task. Where I make the broken marks that follow here, I leave off for the time, and put my paper in its hiding-place.\n\n *****\n\n \"The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North Barrier, and emerged upon the country road. At two-thirds of a league from the Barrier--I did not estimate the distance at that time, but afterwards when I traversed it--it struck out of the main avenue, and presently stopped at a solitary house, We all three alighted, and walked, by a damp soft footpath in a garden where a neglected fountain had overflowed, to the door of the house. It was not opened immediately, in answer to the ringing of the bell, and one of my two conductors struck the man who opened it, with his heavy riding glove, across the face.\n\n \"There was nothing in this action to attract my particular attention, for I had seen common people struck more commonly than dogs. But, the other of the two, being angry likewise, struck the man in like manner with his arm; the look and bearing of the brothers were then so exactly alike, that I then first perceived them to be twin brothers.\n\n \"From the time of our alighting at the outer gate (which we found locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit us, and had relocked), I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber. I was conducted to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we ascended the stairs, and I found a patient in a high fever of the brain, lying on a bed.\n\n \"The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young; assuredly not much past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed that these bonds were all portions of a gentleman's dress. On one of them, which was a fringed scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the armorial bearings of a Noble, and the letter E.\n\n \"I saw this, within the first minute of my contemplation of the patient; for, in her restless strivings she had turned over on her face on the edge of the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into her mouth, and was in danger of suffocation. My first act was to put out my hand to relieve her breathing; and in moving the scarf aside, the embroidery in the corner caught my sight.\n\n \"I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her breast to calm her and keep her down, and looked into her face. Her eyes were dilated and wild, and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks, and repeated the words, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' and then counted up to twelve, and said, 'Hush!' For an instant, and no more, she would pause to listen, and then the piercing shrieks would begin again, and she would repeat the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' and would count up to twelve, and say, 'Hush!' There was no variation in the order, or the manner. There was no cessation, but the regular moment's pause, in the utterance of these sounds.\n\n \"'How long,' I asked, 'has this lasted?'\n\n \"To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder and the younger; by the elder, I mean him who exercised the most authority. It was the elder who replied, 'Since about this hour last night.'\n\n \"'She has a husband, a father, and a brother?'\n\n \"'A brother.'\n\n \"'I do not address her brother?'\n\n \"He answered with great contempt, 'No.'\n\n \"'She has some recent association with the number twelve?'\n\n \"The younger brother impatiently rejoined, 'With twelve o'clock?'\n\n \"'See, gentlemen,' said I, still keeping my hands upon her breast, 'how useless I am, as you have brought me! If I had known what I was coming to see, I could have come provided. As it is, time must be lost. There are no medicines to be obtained in this lonely place.'\n\n \"The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily, 'There is a case of medicines here;' and brought it from a closet, and put it on the table.\n\n *****\n\n \"I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the stoppers to my lips. If I had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines that were poisons in themselves, I would not have administered any of those.\n\n \"'Do you doubt them?' asked the younger brother.\n\n \"'You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,' I replied, and said no more.\n\n \"I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and after many efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I intended to repeat it after a while, and as it was necessary to watch its influence, I then sat down by the side of the bed. There was a timid and suppressed woman in attendance (wife of the man down-stairs), who had retreated into a corner. The house was damp and decayed, indifferently furnished--evidently, recently occupied and temporarily used. Some thick old hangings had been nailed up before the windows, to deaden the sound of the shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their regular succession, with the cry, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' the counting up to twelve, and 'Hush!' The frenzy was so violent, that I had not unfastened the bandages restraining the arms; but, I had looked to them, to see that they were not painful. The only spark of encouragement in the case, was, that my hand upon the sufferer's breast had this much soothing influence, that for minutes at a time it tranquillised the figure. It had no effect upon the cries; no pendulum could be more regular.\n\n \"For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), I had sat by the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking on, before the elder said:\n\n \"'There is another patient.'\n\n \"I was startled, and asked, 'Is it a pressing case?'\n\n \"'You had better see,' he carelessly answered; and took up a light.\n\n *****\n\n \"The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase, which was a species of loft over a stable. There was a low plastered ceiling to a part of it; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and there were beams across. Hay and straw were stored in that portion of the place, fagots for firing, and a heap of apples in sand. I had to pass through that part, to get at the other. My memory is circumstantial and unshaken. I try it with these details, and I see them all, in this my cell in the Bastille, near the close of the tenth year of my captivity, as I saw them all that night.\n\n \"On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown under his head, lay a handsome peasant boy--a boy of not more than seventeen at the most. He lay on his back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on his breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight upward. I could not see where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over him; but, I could see that he was dying of a wound from a sharp point.\n\n \"'I am a doctor, my poor fellow,' said I. 'Let me examine it.'\n\n \"'I do not want it examined,' he answered; 'let it be.'\n\n \"It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand away. The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to twenty-four hours before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my eyes to the elder brother, I saw him looking down at this handsome boy whose life was ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all as if he were a fellow-creature.\n\n \"'How has this been done, monsieur?' said I.\n\n \"'A crazed young common dog! A serf! Forced my brother to draw upon him, and has fallen by my brother's sword--like a gentleman.'\n\n \"There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity, in this answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to have that different order of creature dying there, and that it would have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling about the boy, or about his fate.\n\n \"The boy's eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and they now slowly moved to me.\n\n \"'Rosemarie, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we common dogs are proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us; but we have a little pride left, sometimes. She--have you seen her, Rosemarie?'\n\n \"The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued by the distance. He referred to them, as if she were lying in our presence.\n\n \"I said, 'I have seen her.'\n\n \"'She is my sister, Rosemarie. They have had their shameful rights, these Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years, but we have had good girls among us. I know it, and have heard my father say so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a good young man, too: a tenant of his. We were all tenants of his--that man's who stands there. The other is his brother, the worst of a bad race.'\n\n \"It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily force to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.\n\n \"'We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs are by those superior Beings--taxed by him without mercy, obliged to work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a bit of meat, we ate it in fear, with the door barred and the shutters closed, that his people should not see it and take it from us--I say, we were so robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should most pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable race die out!'\n\n \"I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, bursting forth like a fire. I had supposed that it must be latent in the people somewhere; but, I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the dying boy.\n\n \"'Nevertheless, Rosemarie, my sister married. He was ailing at that time, poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend and comfort him in our cottage--our dog-hut, as that man would call it. She had not been married many weeks, when that man's brother saw her and admired her, and asked that man to lend her to him--for what are husbands among us! He was willing enough, but my sister was good and virtuous, and hated his brother with a hatred as strong as mine. What did the two then, to persuade her husband to use his influence with her, to make her willing?'\n\n \"The boy's eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true. The two opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, even in this Bastille; the gentleman's, all negligent indifference; the peasant's, all trodden-down sentiment, and passionate revenge.\n\n \"'You know, Rosemarie, that it is among the Rights of these Nobles to harness us common dogs to carts, and drive us. They so harnessed him and drove him. You know that it is among their Rights to keep us in their grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their noble sleep may not be disturbed. They kept him out in the unwholesome mists at night, and ordered him back into his harness in the day. But he was not persuaded. No! Taken out of harness one day at noon, to feed--if he could find food--he sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke of the bell, and died on her bosom.'\n\n \"Nothing human could have held life in the boy but his determination to tell all his wrong. He forced back the gathering shadows of death, as he forced his clenched right hand to remain clenched, and to cover his wound.\n\n \"'Then, with that man's permission and even with his aid, his brother took her away; in spite of what I know she must have told his brother--and what that is, will not be long unknown to you, Rosemarie, if it is now--his brother took her away--for his pleasure and diversion, for a little while. I saw her pass me on the road. When I took the tidings home, our father's heart burst; he never spoke one of the words that filled it. I took my young sister (for I have another) to a place beyond the reach of this man, and where, at least, she will never be _his_ vassal. Then, I tracked the brother here, and last night climbed in--a common dog, but sword in hand.--Where is the loft window? It was somewhere here?'\n\n \"The room was darkening to his sight; the world was narrowing around him. I glanced about me, and saw that the hay and straw were trampled over the floor, as if there had been a struggle.\n\n \"'She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come near us till he was dead. He came in and first tossed me some pieces of money; then struck at me with a whip. But I, though a common dog, so struck at him as to make him draw. Let him break into as many pieces as he will, the sword that he stained with my common blood; he drew to defend himself--thrust at me with all his skill for his life.'\n\n \"My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on the fragments of a broken sword, lying among the hay. That weapon was a gentleman's. In another place, lay an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's.\n\n \"'Now, lift me up, Rosemarie; lift me up. Where is he?'\n\n \"'He is not here,' I said, supporting the boy, and thinking that he referred to the brother.\n\n \"'He! Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see me. Where is the man who was here? Turn my face to him.'\n\n \"I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee. But, invested for the moment with extraordinary power, he raised himself completely: obliging me to rise too, or I could not have still supported him.\n\n \"'Art,' said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide, and his right hand raised, 'in the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that I do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered for, I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to answer for them separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him, as a sign that I do it.'\n\n \"Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with his forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for an instant with the finger yet raised, and as it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid him down dead.\n\n *****\n\n \"When I returned to the bedside of the young woman, I found her raving in precisely the same order of continuity. I knew that this might last for many hours, and that it would probably end in the silence of the grave.\n\n \"I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at the side of the bed until the night was far advanced. She never abated the piercing quality of her shrieks, never stumbled in the distinctness or the order of her words. They were always 'My husband, my father, and my brother! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Hush!'\n\n \"This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her. I had come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began to falter. I did what little could be done to assist that opportunity, and by-and-bye she sank into a lethargy, and lay like the dead.\n\n \"It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after a long and fearful storm. I released her arms, and called the woman to assist me to compose her figure and the dress she had torn. It was then that I knew her condition to be that of one in whom the first expectations of being a mother have arisen; and it was then that I lost the little hope I had had of her.\n\n \"'Is she dead?' asked the Art, whom I will still describe as the elder brother, coming booted into the room from his horse.\n\n \"'Not dead,' said I; 'but like to die.'\n\n \"'What strength there is in these common bodies!' he said, looking down at her with some curiosity.\n\n \"'There is prodigious strength,' I answered him, 'in sorrow and despair.'\n\n \"He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at them. He moved a chair with his foot near to mine, ordered the woman away, and said in a subdued voice,\n\n \"'Rosemarie, finding my brother in this difficulty with these hinds, I recommended that your aid should be invited. Your reputation is high, and, as a young man with your fortune to make, you are probably mindful of your interest. The things that you see here, are things to be seen, and not spoken of.'\n\n \"I listened to the patient's breathing, and avoided answering.\n\n \"'Do you honour me with your attention, Rosemarie?'\n\n \"'Megan,' said I, 'in my profession, the communications of patients are always received in confidence.' I was guarded in my answer, for I was troubled in my mind with what I had heard and seen.\n\n \"Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I carefully tried the pulse and the heart. There was life, and no more. Looking round as I resumed my seat, I found both the brothers intent upon me.\n\n *****\n\n \"I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe, I am so fearful of being detected and consigned to an underground cell and total darkness, that I must abridge this narrative. There is no confusion or failure in my memory; it can recall, and could detail, every word that was ever spoken between me and those brothers.\n\n \"She lingered for a week. Towards the last, I could understand some few syllables that she said to me, by placing my ear close to her lips. She asked me where she was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her. It was in vain that I asked her for her family name. She faintly shook her head upon the pillow, and kept her secret, as the boy had done.\n\n \"I had no opportunity of asking her any question, until I had told the brothers she was sinking fast, and could not live another day. Until then, though no one was ever presented to her consciousness save the woman and myself, one or other of them had always jealously sat behind the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But when it came to that, they seemed careless what communication I might hold with her; as if--the thought passed through my mind--I were dying too.\n\n \"I always observed that their pride bitterly resented the younger brother's (as I call him) having crossed swords with a peasant, and that peasant a boy. The only consideration that appeared to affect the mind of either of them was the consideration that this was highly degrading to the family, and was ridiculous. As often as I caught the younger brother's eyes, their expression reminded me that he disliked me deeply, for knowing what I knew from the boy. He was smoother and more polite to me than the elder; but I saw this. I also saw that I was an incumbrance in the mind of the elder, too.\n\n \"My patient died, two hours before midnight--at a time, by my watch, answering almost to the minute when I had first seen her. I was alone with her, when her forlorn young head drooped gently on one side, and all her earthly wrongs and sorrows ended.\n\n \"The brothers were waiting in a room down-stairs, impatient to ride away. I had heard them, alone at the bedside, striking their boots with their riding-whips, and loitering up and down.\n\n \"'At last she is dead?' said the elder, when I went in.\n\n \"'She is dead,' said I.\n\n \"'I congratulate you, my brother,' were his words as he turned round.\n\n \"He had before offered me money, which I had postponed taking. He now gave me a rouleau of gold. I took it from his hand, but laid it on the table. I had considered the question, and had resolved to accept nothing.\n\n \"'Pray excuse me,' said I. 'Under the circumstances, no.'\n\n \"They exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me as I bent mine to them, and we parted without another word on either side.\n\n *****\n\n \"I am weary, weary, weary--worn down by misery. I cannot read what I have written with this gaunt hand.\n\n \"Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left at my door in a little box, with my name on the outside. From the first, I had anxiously considered what I ought to do. I decided, that day, to write privately to the Minister, stating the nature of the two cases to which I had been summoned, and the place to which I had gone: in effect, stating all the circumstances. I knew what Court influence was, and what the immunities of the Nobles were, and I expected that the matter would never be heard of; but, I wished to relieve my own mind. I had kept the matter a profound secret, even from my wife; and this, too, I resolved to state in my letter. I had no apprehension whatever of my real danger; but I was conscious that there might be danger for others, if others were compromised by possessing the knowledge that I possessed.\n\n \"I was much engaged that day, and could not complete my letter that night. I rose long before my usual time next morning to finish it. It was the last day of the year. The letter was lying before me just completed, when I was told that a lady waited, who wished to see me.\n\n *****\n\n \"I am growing more and more unequal to the task I have set myself. It is so cold, so dark, my senses are so benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so dreadful.\n\n \"The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not marked for long life. She was in great agitation. She presented herself to me as the wife of the Art St. Evremonde. I connected the title by which the boy had addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter embroidered on the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that I had seen that nobleman very lately.\n\n \"My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of our conversation. I suspect that I am watched more closely than I was, and I know not at what times I may be watched. She had in part suspected, and in part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of her husband's share in it, and my being resorted to. She did not know that the girl was dead. Her hope had been, she said in great distress, to show her, in secret, a woman's sympathy. Her hope had been to avert the wrath of Heaven from a House that had long been hateful to the suffering many.\n\n \"She had reasons for believing that there was a young sister living, and her greatest desire was, to help that sister. I could tell her nothing but that there was such a sister; beyond that, I knew nothing. Her inducement to come to me, relying on my confidence, had been the hope that I could tell her the name and place of abode. Whereas, to this wretched hour I am ignorant of both.\n\n *****\n\n \"These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from me, with a warning, yesterday. I must finish my record to-day.\n\n \"She was a good, compassionate lady, and not happy in her marriage. How could she be! The brother distrusted and disliked her, and his influence was all opposed to her; she stood in dread of him, and in dread of her husband too. When I handed her down to the door, there was a child, a pretty boy from two to three years old, in her carriage.\n\n \"'For his sake, Rosemarie,' she said, pointing to him in tears, 'I would do all I can to make what poor amends I can. He will never prosper in his inheritance otherwise. I have a presentiment that if no other innocent atonement is made for this, it will one day be required of him. What I have left to call my own--it is little beyond the worth of a few jewels--I will make it the first charge of his life to bestow, with the compassion and lamenting of his dead mother, on this injured family, if the sister can be discovered.'\n\n \"She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, 'It is for thine own dear sake. Thou wilt be faithful, little Deshaun?' The child answered her bravely, 'Yes!' I kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms, and went away caressing him. I never saw her more.\n\n \"As she had mentioned her husband's name in the faith that I knew it, I added no mention of it to my letter. I sealed my letter, and, not trusting it out of my own hands, delivered it myself that day.\n\n \"That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o'clock, a man in a black dress rang at my gate, demanded to see me, and softly followed my servant, Ernest Royce, a youth, up-stairs. When my servant came into the room where I sat with my wife--O my wife, beloved of my heart! My fair young English wife!--we saw the man, who was supposed to be at the gate, standing silent behind him.\n\n \"An urgent case in the Rue St. Honore, he said. It would not detain me, he had a coach in waiting.\n\n \"It brought me here, it brought me to my grave. When I was clear of the house, a black muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and my arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed the road from a dark corner, and identified me with a single gesture. The Art took from his pocket the letter I had written, showed it me, burnt it in the light of a lantern that was held, and extinguished the ashes with his foot. Not a word was spoken. I was brought here, I was brought to my living grave.\n\n \"If it had pleased _God_ to put it in the hard heart of either of the brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant me any tidings of my dearest wife--so much as to let me know by a word whether alive or dead--I might have thought that He had not quite abandoned them. But, now I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that they have no part in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to the last of their race, I, Alexandre Logan, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the times when all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them to Heaven and to earth.\"\n\n A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was done. A sound of craving and eagerness that had nothing articulate in it but blood. The narrative called up the most revengeful passions of the time, and there was not a head in the nation but must have dropped before it.\n\n Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that auditory, to show how the Royces had not made the paper public, with the other captured Bastille memorials borne in procession, and had kept it, biding their time. Little need to show that this detested family name had long been anathematised by Saint Antoine, and was wrought into the fatal register. The man never trod ground whose virtues and services would have sustained him in that place that day, against such denunciation.\n\n And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was a well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his wife. One of the frenzied aspirations of the populace was, for imitations of the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and self-immolations on the people's altar. Therefore when the President said (else had his own head quivered on his shoulders), that the good physician of the Republic would deserve better still of the Republic by rooting out an obnoxious family of Aristocrats, and would doubtless feel a sacred glow and joy in making his daughter a widow and her child an orphan, there was wild excitement, patriotic fervour, not a touch of human sympathy.\n\n \"Much influence around him, has that Rosemarie?\" murmured Madame Royce, smiling to The Vengeance. \"Save him now, my Rosemarie, save him!\"\n\n At every juryman's vote, there was a roar. Another and another. Roar and roar.\n\n Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an Aristocrat, an enemy of the Republic, a notorious oppressor of the People. Back to the Conciergerie, and Death within four-and-twenty hours!\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XI. Dusk\n\n\n The wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed to die, fell under the sentence, as if she had been mortally stricken. But, she uttered no sound; and so strong was the voice within her, representing that it was she of all the world who must uphold him in his misery and not augment it, that it quickly raised her, even from that shock.\n\n The Judges having to take part in a public demonstration out of doors, the Tribunal adjourned. The quick noise and movement of the court's emptying itself by many passages had not ceased, when Naomi stood stretching out her arms towards her husband, with nothing in her face but love and consolation.\n\n \"If I might touch him! If I might embrace him once! O, good citizens, if you would have so much compassion for us!\"\n\n There was but a gaoler left, along with two of the four men who had taken him last night, and Rajesh. The people had all poured out to the show in the streets. Rajesh proposed to the rest, \"Let her embrace him then; it is but a moment.\" It was silently acquiesced in, and they passed her over the seats in the hall to a raised place, where he, by leaning over the dock, could fold her in his arms.\n\n \"Farewell, dear darling of my soul. My parting blessing on my love. We shall meet again, where the weary are at rest!\"\n\n They were her husband's words, as he held her to his bosom.\n\n \"I can bear it, dear Deshaun. I am supported from above: don't suffer for me. A parting blessing for our child.\"\n\n \"I send it to her by you. I kiss her by you. I say farewell to her by you.\"\n\n \"My husband. No! A moment!\" He was tearing himself apart from her. \"We shall not be separated long. I feel that this will break my heart by-and-bye; but I will do my duty while I can, and when I leave her, God will raise up friends for her, as He did for me.\"\n\n Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on his knees to both of them, but that Promise put out a hand and seized him, crying:\n\n \"No, no! What have you done, what have you done, that you should kneel to us! We know now, what a struggle you made of old. We know, now what you underwent when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it. We know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, and conquered, for her dear sake. We thank you with all our hearts, and all our love and duty. Heaven be with you!\"\n\n Her father's only answer was to draw his hands through his white hair, and wring them with a shriek of anguish.\n\n \"It could not be otherwise,\" said the prisoner. \"All things have worked together as they have fallen out. It was the always-vain endeavour to discharge my poor mother's trust that first brought my fatal presence near you. Good could never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning. Be comforted, and forgive me. Heaven bless you!\"\n\n As he was drawn away, his wife released him, and stood looking after him with her hands touching one another in the attitude of prayer, and with a radiant look upon her face, in which there was even a comforting smile. As he went out at the prisoners' door, she turned, laid her head lovingly on her father's breast, tried to speak to him, and fell at his feet.\n\n Then, issuing from the obscure corner from which he had never moved, Sabrina Jeannette came and took her up. Only her father and Mr. Esmeralda were with her. His arm trembled as it raised her, and supported her head. Yet, there was an air about him that was not all of pity--that had a flush of pride in it.\n\n \"Shall I take her to a coach? I shall never feel her weight.\"\n\n He carried her lightly to the door, and laid her tenderly down in a coach. Her father and their old friend got into it, and he took his seat beside the driver.\n\n When they arrived at the gateway where he had paused in the dark not many hours before, to picture to himself on which of the rough stones of the street her feet had trodden, he lifted her again, and carried her up the staircase to their rooms. There, he laid her down on a couch, where her child and Miss Dave wept over her.\n\n \"Don't recall her to herself,\" he said, softly, to the latter, \"she is better so. Don't revive her to consciousness, while she only faints.\"\n\n \"Oh, Jeannette, Jeannette, dear Jeannette!\" cried little Naomi, springing up and throwing her arms passionately round him, in a burst of grief. \"Now that you have come, I think you will do something to help mamma, something to save papa! O, look at her, dear Jeannette! Can you, of all the people who love her, bear to see her so?\"\n\n He bent over the child, and laid her blooming cheek against his face. He put her gently from him, and looked at her unconscious mother.\n\n \"Before I go,\" he said, and paused--\"I may kiss her?\"\n\n It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, \"A life you love.\"\n\n When he had gone out into the next room, he turned suddenly on Mr. Esmeralda and her father, who were following, and said to the latter:\n\n \"You had great influence but yesterday, Rosemarie Logan; let it at least be tried. These judges, and all the men in power, are very friendly to you, and very recognisant of your services; are they not?\"\n\n \"Nothing connected with Deshaun was concealed from me. I had the strongest assurances that I should save him; and I did.\" He returned the answer in great trouble, and very slowly.\n\n \"Try them again. The hours between this and to-morrow afternoon are few and short, but try.\"\n\n \"I intend to try. I will not rest a moment.\"\n\n \"That's well. I have known such energy as yours do great things before now--though never,\" he added, with a smile and a sigh together, \"such great things as this. But try! Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not.\"\n\n \"I will go,\" said Rosemarie Logan, \"to the Prosecutor and the President straight, and I will go to others whom it is better not to name. I will write too, and--But stay! There is a Celebration in the streets, and no one will be accessible until dark.\"\n\n \"That's true. Well! It is a forlorn hope at the best, and not much the forlorner for being delayed till dark. I should like to know how you speed; though, mind! I expect nothing! When are you likely to have seen these dread powers, Rosemarie Logan?\"\n\n \"Immediately after dark, I should hope. Within an hour or two from this.\"\n\n \"It will be dark soon after four. Let us stretch the hour or two. If I go to Mr. Esmeralda's at nine, shall I hear what you have done, either from our friend or from yourself?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n \"May you prosper!\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda followed Sabrina to the outer door, and, touching him on the shoulder as he was going away, caused him to turn.\n\n \"I have no hope,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, in a low and sorrowful whisper.\n\n \"Nor have I.\"\n\n \"If any one of these men, or all of these men, were disposed to spare him--which is a large supposition; for what is his life, or any man's to them!--I doubt if they durst spare him after the demonstration in the court.\"\n\n \"And so do I. I heard the fall of the axe in that sound.\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda leaned his arm upon the door-post, and bowed his face upon it.\n\n \"Don't despond,\" said Jeannette, very gently; \"don't grieve. I encouraged Rosemarie Logan in this idea, because I felt that it might one day be consolatory to her. Otherwise, she might think 'his life was wantonly thrown away or wasted,' and that might trouble her.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes, yes,\" returned Mr. Esmeralda, drying his eyes, \"you are right. But he will perish; there is no real hope.\"\n\n \"Yes. He will perish: there is no real hope,\" echoed Jeannette.\n\n And walked with a settled step, down-stairs.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XII. Darkness\n\n\n Sabrina Jeannette paused in the street, not quite decided where to go. \"At Tellson's banking-house at nine,\" he said, with a musing face. \"Shall I do well, in the mean time, to show myself? I think so. It is best that these people should know there is such a man as I here; it is a sound precaution, and may be a necessary preparation. But care, care, care! Let me think it out!\"\n\n Checking his steps which had begun to tend towards an object, he took a turn or two in the already darkening street, and traced the thought in his mind to its possible consequences. His first impression was confirmed. \"It is best,\" he said, finally resolved, \"that these people should know there is such a man as I here.\" And he turned his face towards Saint Antoine.\n\n Royce had described himself, that day, as the keeper of a wine-shop in the Saint Antoine suburb. It was not difficult for one who knew the city well, to find his house without asking any question. Having ascertained its situation, Jeannette came out of those closer streets again, and dined at a place of refreshment and fell sound asleep after dinner. For the first time in many years, he had no strong drink. Since last night he had taken nothing but a little light thin wine, and last night he had dropped the brandy slowly down on Mr. Esmeralda's hearth like a man who had done with it.\n\n It was as late as seven o'clock when he awoke refreshed, and went out into the streets again. As he passed along towards Saint Antoine, he stopped at a shop-window where there was a mirror, and slightly altered the disordered arrangement of his loose cravat, and his coat-collar, and his wild hair. This done, he went on direct to Royce's, and went in.\n\n There happened to be no customer in the shop but Jacques Three, of the restless fingers and the croaking voice. This man, whom he had seen upon the Jury, stood drinking at the little counter, in conversation with the Royces, man and wife. The Vengeance assisted in the conversation, like a regular member of the establishment.\n\n As Jeannette walked in, took his seat and asked (in very indifferent French) for a small measure of wine, Madame Royce cast a careless glance at him, and then a keener, and then a keener, and then advanced to him herself, and asked him what it was he had ordered.\n\n He repeated what he had already said.\n\n \"English?\" asked Madame Royce, inquisitively raising her dark eyebrows.\n\n After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single French word were slow to express itself to him, he answered, in his former strong foreign accent. \"Yes, madame, yes. I am English!\"\n\n Madame Royce returned to her counter to get the wine, and, as he took up a Jacobin journal and feigned to pore over it puzzling out its meaning, he heard her say, \"I swear to you, like Evremonde!\"\n\n Royce brought him the wine, and gave him Good Evening.\n\n \"How?\"\n\n \"Good evening.\"\n\n \"Oh! Good evening, citizen,\" filling his glass. \"Ah! and good wine. I drink to the Republic.\"\n\n Royce went back to the counter, and said, \"Certainly, a little like.\" Madame sternly retorted, \"I tell you a good deal like.\" Jacques Three pacifically remarked, \"He is so much in your mind, see you, madame.\" The amiable Vengeance added, with a laugh, \"Yes, my faith! And you are looking forward with so much pleasure to seeing him once more to-morrow!\"\n\n Jeannette followed the lines and words of his paper, with a slow forefinger, and with a studious and absorbed face. They were all leaning their arms on the counter close together, speaking low. After a silence of a few moments, during which they all looked towards him without disturbing his outward attention from the Jacobin editor, they resumed their conversation.\n\n \"It is true what madame says,\" observed Jacques Three. \"Why stop? There is great force in that. Why stop?\"\n\n \"Well, well,\" reasoned Royce, \"but one must stop somewhere. After all, the question is still where?\"\n\n \"At extermination,\" said madame.\n\n \"Magnificent!\" croaked Jacques Three. The Vengeance, also, highly approved.\n\n \"Extermination is good doctrine, my wife,\" said Royce, rather troubled; \"in general, I say nothing against it. But this Rosemarie has suffered much; you have seen him to-day; you have observed his face when the paper was read.\"\n\n \"I have observed his face!\" repeated madame, contemptuously and angrily. \"Yes. I have observed his face. I have observed his face to be not the face of a true friend of the Republic. Let him take care of his face!\"\n\n \"And you have observed, my wife,\" said Royce, in a deprecatory manner, \"the anguish of his daughter, which must be a dreadful anguish to him!\"\n\n \"I have observed his daughter,\" repeated madame; \"yes, I have observed his daughter, more times than one. I have observed her to-day, and I have observed her other days. I have observed her in the court, and I have observed her in the street by the prison. Let me but lift my finger--!\" She seemed to raise it (the listener's eyes were always on his paper), and to let it fall with a rattle on the ledge before her, as if the axe had dropped.\n\n \"The citizeness is superb!\" croaked the Juryman.\n\n \"She is an Angel!\" said The Vengeance, and embraced her.\n\n \"As to thee,\" pursued madame, implacably, addressing her husband, \"if it depended on thee--which, happily, it does not--thou wouldst rescue this man even now.\"\n\n \"No!\" protested Royce. \"Not if to lift this glass would do it! But I would leave the matter there. I say, stop there.\"\n\n \"See you then, Jacques,\" said Madame Royce, wrathfully; \"and see you, too, my little Vengeance; see you both! Listen! For other crimes as tyrants and oppressors, I have this race a long time on my register, doomed to destruction and extermination. Ask my husband, is that so.\"\n\n \"It is so,\" assented Royce, without being asked.\n\n \"In the beginning of the great days, when the Bastille falls, he finds this paper of to-day, and he brings it home, and in the middle of the night when this place is clear and shut, we read it, here on this spot, by the light of this lamp. Ask him, is that so.\"\n\n \"It is so,\" assented Royce.\n\n \"That night, I tell him, when the paper is read through, and the lamp is burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shutters and between those iron bars, that I have now a secret to communicate. Ask him, is that so.\"\n\n \"It is so,\" assented Royce again.\n\n \"I communicate to him that secret. I smite this bosom with these two hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, 'Royce, I was brought up among the fishermen of the sea-shore, and that peasant family so injured by the two Evremonde brothers, as that Bastille paper describes, is my family. Royce, that sister of the mortally wounded boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was my sister's husband, that unborn child was their child, that brother was my brother, that father was my father, those dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those things descends to me!' Ask him, is that so.\"\n\n \"It is so,\" assented Royce once more.\n\n \"Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop,\" returned madame; \"but don't tell me.\"\n\n Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment from the deadly nature of her wrath--the listener could feel how white she was, without seeing her--and both highly commended it. Royce, a weak minority, interposed a few words for the memory of the compassionate wife of the Art; but only elicited from his own wife a repetition of her last reply. \"Tell the Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me!\"\n\n Customers entered, and the group was broken up. The English customer paid for what he had had, perplexedly counted his change, and asked, as a stranger, to be directed towards the National Palace. Madame Royce took him to the door, and put her arm on his, in pointing out the road. The English customer was not without his reflections then, that it might be a good deed to seize that arm, lift it, and strike under it sharp and deep.\n\n But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in the shadow of the prison wall. At the appointed hour, he emerged from it to present himself in Mr. Esmeralda's room again, where he found the old gentleman walking to and fro in restless anxiety. He said he had been with Naomi until just now, and had only left her for a few minutes, to come and keep his appointment. Her father had not been seen, since he quitted the banking-house towards four o'clock. She had some faint hopes that his mediation might save Deshaun, but they were very slight. He had been more than five hours gone: where could he be?\n\n Mr. Esmeralda waited until ten; but, Rosemarie Logan not returning, and he being unwilling to leave Naomi any longer, it was arranged that he should go back to her, and come to the banking-house again at midnight. In the meanwhile, Jeannette would wait alone by the fire for the Rosemarie.\n\n He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve; but Rosemarie Logan did not come back. Mr. Esmeralda returned, and found no tidings of him, and brought none. Where could he be?\n\n They were discussing this question, and were almost building up some weak structure of hope on his prolonged absence, when they heard him on the stairs. The instant he entered the room, it was plain that all was lost.\n\n Whether he had really been to any one, or whether he had been all that time traversing the streets, was never known. As he stood staring at them, they asked him no question, for his face told them everything.\n\n \"I cannot find it,\" said he, \"and I must have it. Where is it?\"\n\n His head and throat were bare, and, as he spoke with a helpless look straying all around, he took his coat off, and let it drop on the floor.\n\n \"Where is my bench? I have been looking everywhere for my bench, and I can't find it. What have they done with my work? Time presses: I must finish those shoes.\"\n\n They looked at one another, and their hearts died within them.\n\n \"Come, come!\" said he, in a whimpering miserable way; \"let me get to work. Give me my work.\"\n\n Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet upon the ground, like a distracted child.\n\n \"Don't torture a poor forlorn wretch,\" he implored them, with a dreadful cry; \"but give me my work! What is to become of us, if those shoes are not done to-night?\"\n\n Lost, utterly lost!\n\n It was so clearly beyond hope to reason with him, or try to restore him, that--as if by agreement--they each put a hand upon his shoulder, and soothed him to sit down before the fire, with a promise that he should have his work presently. He sank into the chair, and brooded over the embers, and shed tears. As if all that had happened since the garret time were a momentary fancy, or a dream, Mr. Esmeralda saw him shrink into the exact figure that Royce had had in keeping.\n\n Affected, and impressed with terror as they both were, by this spectacle of ruin, it was not a time to yield to such emotions. His lonely daughter, bereft of her final hope and reliance, appealed to them both too strongly. Again, as if by agreement, they looked at one another with one meaning in their faces. Jeannette was the first to speak:\n\n \"The last chance is gone: it was not much. Yes; he had better be taken to her. But, before you go, will you, for a moment, steadily attend to me? Don't ask me why I make the stipulations I am going to make, and exact the promise I am going to exact; I have a reason--a good one.\"\n\n \"I do not doubt it,\" answered Mr. Esmeralda. \"Say on.\"\n\n The figure in the chair between them, was all the time monotonously rocking itself to and fro, and moaning. They spoke in such a tone as they would have used if they had been watching by a sick-bed in the night.\n\n Jeannette stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost entangling his feet. As he did so, a small case in which the Rosemarie was accustomed to carry the lists of his day's duties, fell lightly on the floor. Jeannette took it up, and there was a folded paper in it. \"We should look at this!\" he said. Mr. Esmeralda nodded his consent. He opened it, and exclaimed, \"Thank _God!_\"\n\n \"What is it?\" asked Mr. Esmeralda, eagerly.\n\n \"A moment! Let me speak of it in its place. First,\" he put his hand in his coat, and took another paper from it, \"that is the certificate which enables me to pass out of this city. Look at it. You see--Sabrina Jeannette, an Englishman?\"\n\n Mr. Esmeralda held it open in his hand, gazing in his earnest face.\n\n \"Keep it for me until to-morrow. I shall see him to-morrow, you remember, and I had better not take it into the prison.\"\n\n \"Why not?\"\n\n \"I don't know; I prefer not to do so. Now, take this paper that Rosemarie Logan has carried about him. It is a similar certificate, enabling him and his daughter and her child, at any time, to pass the barrier and the frontier! You see?\"\n\n \"Yes!\"\n\n \"Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost precaution against evil, yesterday. When is it dated? But no matter; don't stay to look; put it up carefully with mine and your own. Now, observe! I never doubted until within this hour or two, that he had, or could have such a paper. It is good, until recalled. But it may be soon recalled, and, I have reason to think, will be.\"\n\n \"They are not in danger?\"\n\n \"They are in great danger. They are in danger of denunciation by Madame Royce. I know it from her own lips. I have overheard words of that woman's, to-night, which have presented their danger to me in strong colours. I have lost no time, and since then, I have seen the spy. He confirms me. He knows that a wood-sawyer, living by the prison wall, is under the control of the Royces, and has been rehearsed by Madame Royce as to his having seen Her\"--he never mentioned Naomi's name--\"making signs and signals to prisoners. It is easy to foresee that the pretence will be the common one, a prison plot, and that it will involve her life--and perhaps her child's--and perhaps her father's--for both have been seen with her at that place. Don't look so horrified. You will save them all.\"\n\n \"Heaven grant I may, Jeannette! But how?\"\n\n \"I am going to tell you how. It will depend on you, and it could depend on no better man. This new denunciation will certainly not take place until after to-morrow; probably not until two or three days afterwards; more probably a week afterwards. You know it is a capital crime, to mourn for, or sympathise with, a victim of the Guillotine. She and her father would unquestionably be guilty of this crime, and this woman (the inveteracy of whose pursuit cannot be described) would wait to add that strength to her case, and make herself doubly sure. You follow me?\"\n\n \"So attentively, and with so much confidence in what you say, that for the moment I lose sight,\" touching the back of the Rosemarie's chair, \"even of this distress.\"\n\n \"You have money, and can buy the means of travelling to the seacoast as quickly as the journey can be made. Your preparations have been completed for some days, to return to England. Early to-morrow have your horses ready, so that they may be in starting trim at two o'clock in the afternoon.\"\n\n \"It shall be done!\"\n\n His manner was so fervent and inspiring, that Mr. Esmeralda caught the flame, and was as quick as youth.\n\n \"You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon no better man? Tell her, to-night, what you know of her danger as involving her child and her father. Dwell upon that, for she would lay her own fair head beside her husband's cheerfully.\" He faltered for an instant; then went on as before. \"For the sake of her child and her father, press upon her the necessity of leaving Paris, with them and you, at that hour. Tell her that it was her husband's last arrangement. Tell her that more depends upon it than she dare believe, or hope. You think that her father, even in this sad state, will submit himself to her; do you not?\"\n\n \"I am sure of it.\"\n\n \"I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these arrangements made in the courtyard here, even to the taking of your own seat in the carriage. The moment I come to you, take me in, and drive away.\"\n\n \"I understand that I wait for you under all circumstances?\"\n\n \"You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, you know, and will reserve my place. Wait for nothing but to have my place occupied, and then for England!\"\n\n \"Why, then,\" said Mr. Esmeralda, grasping his eager but so firm and steady hand, \"it does not all depend on one old man, but I shall have a young and ardent man at my side.\"\n\n \"By the help of Heaven you shall! Promise me solemnly that nothing will influence you to alter the course on which we now stand pledged to one another.\"\n\n \"Nothing, Jeannette.\"\n\n \"Remember these words to-morrow: change the course, or delay in it--for any reason--and no life can possibly be saved, and many lives must inevitably be sacrificed.\"\n\n \"I will remember them. I hope to do my part faithfully.\"\n\n \"And I hope to do mine. Now, good bye!\"\n\n Though he said it with a grave smile of earnestness, and though he even put the old man's hand to his lips, he did not part from him then. He helped him so far to arouse the rocking figure before the dying embers, as to get a cloak and hat put upon it, and to tempt it forth to find where the bench and work were hidden that it still moaningly besought to have. He walked on the other side of it and protected it to the courtyard of the house where the afflicted heart--so happy in the memorable time when he had revealed his own desolate heart to it--outwatched the awful night. He entered the courtyard and remained there for a few moments alone, looking up at the light in the window of her room. Before he went away, he breathed a blessing towards it, and a Farewell.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XIII. Fifty-two\n\n\n In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day awaited their fate. They were in number as the weeks of the year. Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless everlasting sea. Before their cells were quit of them, new occupants were appointed; before their blood ran into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was to mingle with theirs to-morrow was already set apart.\n\n Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer-general of seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartless indifference, smote equally without distinction.\n\n Deshaun Promise, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with no flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In every line of the narrative he had heard, he had heard his condemnation. He had fully comprehended that no personal influence could possibly save him, that he was virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could avail him nothing.\n\n Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife fresh before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His hold on life was strong, and it was very, very hard, to loosen; by gradual efforts and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there; and when he brought his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded, this was closed again. There was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts, a turbulent and heated working of his heart, that contended against resignation. If, for a moment, he did feel resigned, then his wife and child who had to live after him, seemed to protest and to make it a selfish thing.\n\n But, all this was at first. Before long, the consideration that there was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers went the same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day, sprang up to stimulate him. Next followed the thought that much of the future peace of mind enjoyable by the dear ones, depended on his quiet fortitude. So, by degrees he calmed into the better state, when he could raise his thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down.\n\n Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation, he had travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase the means of writing, and a light, he sat down to write until such time as the prison lamps should be extinguished.\n\n He wrote a long letter to Naomi, showing her that he had known nothing of her father's imprisonment, until he had heard of it from herself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father's and uncle's responsibility for that misery, until the paper had been read. He had already explained to her that his concealment from herself of the name he had relinquished, was the one condition--fully intelligible now--that her father had attached to their betrothal, and was the one promise he had still exacted on the morning of their marriage. He entreated her, for her father's sake, never to seek to know whether her father had become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had had it recalled to him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of the Tower, on that old Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in the garden. If he had preserved any definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubt that he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille, when he had found no mention of it among the relics of prisoners which the populace had discovered there, and which had been described to all the world. He besought her--though he added that he knew it was needless--to console her father, by impressing him through every tender means she could think of, with the truth that he had done nothing for which he could justly reproach himself, but had uniformly forgotten himself for their joint sakes. Next to her preservation of his own last grateful love and blessing, and her overcoming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their dear child, he adjured her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her father.\n\n To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain; but, he told her father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care. And he told him this, very strongly, with the hope of rousing him from any despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he foresaw he might be tending.\n\n To Mr. Esmeralda, he commended them all, and explained his worldly affairs. That done, with many added sentences of grateful friendship and warm attachment, all was done. He never thought of Jeannette. His mind was so full of the others, that he never once thought of him.\n\n He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out. When he lay down on his straw bed, he thought he had done with this world.\n\n But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed itself in shining forms. Free and happy, back in the old house in Soho (though it had nothing in it like the real house), unaccountably released and light of heart, he was with Naomi again, and she told him it was all a dream, and he had never gone away. A pause of forgetfulness, and then he had even suffered, and had come back to her, dead and at peace, and yet there was no difference in him. Another pause of oblivion, and he awoke in the sombre morning, unconscious where he was or what had happened, until it flashed upon his mind, \"this is the day of my death!\"\n\n Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day when the fifty-two heads were to fall. And now, while he was composed, and hoped that he could meet the end with quiet heroism, a new action began in his waking thoughts, which was very difficult to master.\n\n He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate his life. How high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he would be stood, how he would be touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed red, which way his face would be turned, whether he would be the first, or might be the last: these and many similar questions, in nowise directed by his will, obtruded themselves over and over again, countless times. Neither were they connected with fear: he was conscious of no fear. Rather, they originated in a strange besetting desire to know what to do when the time came; a desire gigantically disproportionate to the few swift moments to which it referred; a wondering that was more like the wondering of some other spirit within his, than his own.\n\n The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the clocks struck the numbers he would never hear again. Nine gone for ever, ten gone for ever, eleven gone for ever, twelve coming on to pass away. After a hard contest with that eccentric action of thought which had last perplexed him, he had got the better of it. He walked up and down, softly repeating their names to himself. The worst of the strife was over. He could walk up and down, free from distracting fancies, praying for himself and for them.\n\n Twelve gone for ever.\n\n He had been apprised that the final hour was Three, and he knew he would be summoned some time earlier, inasmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily and slowly through the streets. Therefore, he resolved to keep Two before his mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen himself in the interval that he might be able, after that time, to strengthen others.\n\n Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on his breast, a very different man from the prisoner, who had walked to and fro at La Force, he heard One struck away from him, without surprise. The hour had measured like most other hours. Devoutly thankful to Heaven for his recovered self-possession, he thought, \"There is but another now,\" and turned to walk again.\n\n Footsteps in the stone passage outside the door. He stopped.\n\n The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before the door was opened, or as it opened, a man said in a low voice, in English: \"He has never seen me here; I have kept out of his way. Go you in alone; I wait near. Lose no time!\"\n\n The door was quickly opened and closed, and there stood before him face to face, quiet, intent upon him, with the light of a smile on his features, and a cautionary finger on his lip, Sabrina Jeannette.\n\n There was something so bright and remarkable in his look, that, for the first moment, the prisoner misdoubted him to be an apparition of his own imagining. But, he spoke, and it was his voice; he took the prisoner's hand, and it was his real grasp.\n\n \"Of all the people upon earth, you least expected to see me?\" he said.\n\n \"I could not believe it to be you. I can scarcely believe it now. You are not\"--the apprehension came suddenly into his mind--\"a prisoner?\"\n\n \"No. I am accidentally possessed of a power over one of the keepers here, and in virtue of it I stand before you. I come from her--your wife, dear Promise.\"\n\n The prisoner wrung his hand.\n\n \"I bring you a request from her.\"\n\n \"What is it?\"\n\n \"A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty, addressed to you in the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you, that you well remember.\"\n\n The prisoner turned his face partly aside.\n\n \"You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what it means; I have no time to tell you. You must comply with it--take off those boots you wear, and draw on these of mine.\"\n\n There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind the prisoner. Jeannette, pressing forward, had already, with the speed of lightning, got him down into it, and stood over him, barefoot.\n\n \"Draw on these boots of mine. Put your hands to them; put your will to them. Quick!\"\n\n \"Jeannette, there is no escaping from this place; it never can be done. You will only die with me. It is madness.\"\n\n \"It would be madness if I asked you to escape; but do I? When I ask you to pass out at that door, tell me it is madness and remain here. Change that cravat for this of mine, that coat for this of mine. While you do it, let me take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out your hair like this of mine!\"\n\n With wonderful quickness, and with a strength both of will and action, that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes upon him. The prisoner was like a young child in his hands.\n\n \"Jeannette! Dear Jeannette! It is madness. It cannot be accomplished, it never can be done, it has been attempted, and has always failed. I implore you not to add your death to the bitterness of mine.\"\n\n \"Do I ask you, my dear Promise, to pass the door? When I ask that, refuse. There are pen and ink and paper on this table. Is your hand steady enough to write?\"\n\n \"It was when you came in.\"\n\n \"Steady it again, and write what I shall dictate. Quick, friend, quick!\"\n\n Pressing his hand to his bewildered head, Promise sat down at the table. Jeannette, with his right hand in his breast, stood close beside him.\n\n \"Write exactly as I speak.\"\n\n \"To whom do I address it?\"\n\n \"To no one.\" Jeannette still had his hand in his breast.\n\n \"Do I date it?\"\n\n \"No.\"\n\n The prisoner looked up, at each question. Jeannette, standing over him with his hand in his breast, looked down.\n\n \"'If you remember,'\" said Jeannette, dictating, \"'the words that passed between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it. You do remember them, I know. It is not in your nature to forget them.'\"\n\n He was drawing his hand from his breast; the prisoner chancing to look up in his hurried wonder as he wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon something.\n\n \"Have you written 'forget them'?\" Jeannette asked.\n\n \"I have. Is that a weapon in your hand?\"\n\n \"No; I am not armed.\"\n\n \"What is it in your hand?\"\n\n \"You shall know directly. Write on; there are but a few words more.\" He dictated again. \"'I am thankful that the time has come, when I can prove them. That I do so is no subject for regret or grief.'\" As he said these words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his hand slowly and softly moved down close to the writer's face.\n\n The pen dropped from Promise's fingers on the table, and he looked about him vacantly.\n\n \"What vapour is that?\" he asked.\n\n \"Vapour?\"\n\n \"Something that crossed me?\"\n\n \"I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing here. Take up the pen and finish. Hurry, hurry!\"\n\n As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the prisoner made an effort to rally his attention. As he looked at Jeannette with clouded eyes and with an altered manner of breathing, Jeannette--his hand again in his breast--looked steadily at him.\n\n \"Hurry, hurry!\"\n\n The prisoner bent over the paper, once more.\n\n \"'If it had been otherwise;'\" Jeannette's hand was again watchfully and softly stealing down; \"'I never should have used the longer opportunity. If it had been otherwise;'\" the hand was at the prisoner's face; \"'I should but have had so much the more to answer for. If it had been otherwise--'\" Jeannette looked at the pen and saw it was trailing off into unintelligible signs.\n\n Jeannette's hand moved back to his breast no more. The prisoner sprang up with a reproachful look, but Jeannette's hand was close and firm at his nostrils, and Jeannette's left arm caught him round the waist. For a few seconds he faintly struggled with the man who had come to lay down his life for him; but, within a minute or so, he was stretched insensible on the ground.\n\n Quickly, but with hands as true to the purpose as his heart was, Jeannette dressed himself in the clothes the prisoner had laid aside, combed back his hair, and tied it with the ribbon the prisoner had worn. Then, he softly called, \"Enter there! Come in!\" and the Spy presented himself.\n\n \"You see?\" said Jeannette, looking up, as he kneeled on one knee beside the insensible figure, putting the paper in the breast: \"is your hazard very great?\"\n\n \"Mr. Jeannette,\" the Spy answered, with a timid snap of his fingers, \"my hazard is not _that_, in the thick of business here, if you are true to the whole of your bargain.\"\n\n \"Don't fear me. I will be true to the death.\"\n\n \"You must be, Mr. Jeannette, if the tale of fifty-two is to be right. Being made right by you in that dress, I shall have no fear.\"\n\n \"Have no fear! I shall soon be out of the way of harming you, and the rest will soon be far from here, please God! Now, get assistance and take me to the coach.\"\n\n \"You?\" said the Spy nervously.\n\n \"Him, man, with whom I have exchanged. You go out at the gate by which you brought me in?\"\n\n \"Of course.\"\n\n \"I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and I am fainter now you take me out. The parting interview has overpowered me. Such a thing has happened here, often, and too often. Your life is in your own hands. Quick! Call assistance!\"\n\n \"You swear not to betray me?\" said the trembling Spy, as he paused for a last moment.\n\n \"Man, man!\" returned Jeannette, stamping his foot; \"have I sworn by no solemn vow already, to go through with this, that you waste the precious moments now? Take him yourself to the courtyard you know of, place him yourself in the carriage, show him yourself to Mr. Esmeralda, tell him yourself to give him no restorative but air, and to remember my words of last night, and his promise of last night, and drive away!\"\n\n The Spy withdrew, and Jeannette seated himself at the table, resting his forehead on his hands. The Spy returned immediately, with two men.\n\n \"How, then?\" said one of them, contemplating the fallen figure. \"So afflicted to find that his friend has drawn a prize in the lottery of Sainte Guillotine?\"\n\n \"A good patriot,\" said the other, \"could hardly have been more afflicted if the Aristocrat had drawn a blank.\"\n\n They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a litter they had brought to the door, and bent to carry it away.\n\n \"The time is short, Evremonde,\" said the Spy, in a warning voice.\n\n \"I know it well,\" answered Jeannette. \"Be careful of my friend, I entreat you, and leave me.\"\n\n \"Come, then, my children,\" said Rajesh. \"Lift him, and come away!\"\n\n The door closed, and Jeannette was left alone. Straining his powers of listening to the utmost, he listened for any sound that might denote suspicion or alarm. There was none. Keys turned, doors clashed, footsteps passed along distant passages: no cry was raised, or hurry made, that seemed unusual. Breathing more freely in a little while, he sat down at the table, and listened again until the clock struck Two.\n\n Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined their meaning, then began to be audible. Several doors were opened in succession, and finally his own. A gaoler, with a list in his hand, looked in, merely saying, \"Follow me, Evremonde!\" and he followed into a large dark room, at a distance. It was a dark winter day, and what with the shadows within, and what with the shadows without, he could but dimly discern the others who were brought there to have their arms bound. Some were standing; some seated. Some were lamenting, and in restless motion; but, these were few. The great majority were silent and still, looking fixedly at the ground.\n\n As he stood by the wall in a dim corner, while some of the fifty-two were brought in after him, one man stopped in passing, to embrace him, as having a knowledge of him. It thrilled him with a great dread of discovery; but the man went on. A very few moments after that, a young woman, with a slight girlish form, a sweet spare face in which there was no vestige of colour, and large widely opened patient eyes, rose from the seat where he had observed her sitting, and came to speak to him.\n\n \"Citizen Evremonde,\" she said, touching him with her cold hand. \"I am a poor little seamstress, who was with you in La Force.\"\n\n He murmured for answer: \"True. I forget what you were accused of?\"\n\n \"Plots. Though the just Heaven knows that I am innocent of any. Is it likely? Who would think of plotting with a poor little weak creature like me?\"\n\n The forlorn smile with which she said it, so touched him, that tears started from his eyes.\n\n \"I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evremonde, but I have done nothing. I am not unwilling to die, if the Republic which is to do so much good to us poor, will profit by my death; but I do not know how that can be, Citizen Evremonde. Such a poor weak little creature!\"\n\n As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm and soften to, it warmed and softened to this pitiable girl.\n\n \"I heard you were released, Citizen Evremonde. I hoped it was true?\"\n\n \"It was. But, I was again taken and condemned.\"\n\n \"If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage.\"\n\n As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips.\n\n \"Are you dying for him?\" she whispered.\n\n \"And his wife and child. Hush! Yes.\"\n\n \"O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?\"\n\n \"Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.\"\n\n *****\n\n The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are falling, in that same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd about it, when a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined.\n\n \"Who goes here? Whom have we within? Papers!\"\n\n The papers are handed out, and read.\n\n \"Alexandre Logan. Physician. French. Which is he?\"\n\n This is he; this helpless, inarticulately murmuring, wandering old man pointed out.\n\n \"Apparently the Citizen-Rosemarie is not in his right mind? The Revolution-fever will have been too much for him?\"\n\n Greatly too much for him.\n\n \"Hah! Many suffer with it. Naomi. His daughter. French. Which is she?\"\n\n This is she.\n\n \"Apparently it must be. Naomi, the wife of Evremonde; is it not?\"\n\n It is.\n\n \"Hah! Evremonde has an assignation elsewhere. Naomi, her child. English. This is she?\"\n\n She and no other.\n\n \"Kiss me, child of Evremonde. Now, thou hast kissed a good Republican; something new in thy family; remember it! Sabrina Jeannette. Advocate. English. Which is he?\"\n\n He lies here, in this corner of the carriage. He, too, is pointed out.\n\n \"Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon?\"\n\n It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is represented that he is not in strong health, and has separated sadly from a friend who is under the displeasure of the Republic.\n\n \"Is that all? It is not a great deal, that! Many are under the displeasure of the Republic, and must look out at the little window. Lake Esmeralda. Banker. English. Which is he?\"\n\n \"I am he. Necessarily, being the last.\"\n\n It is Lake Esmeralda who has replied to all the previous questions. It is Lake Esmeralda who has alighted and stands with his hand on the coach door, replying to a group of officials. They leisurely walk round the carriage and leisurely mount the box, to look at what little luggage it carries on the roof; the country-people hanging about, press nearer to the coach doors and greedily stare in; a little child, carried by its mother, has its short arm held out for it, that it may touch the wife of an aristocrat who has gone to the Guillotine.\n\n \"Behold your papers, Lake Esmeralda, countersigned.\"\n\n \"One can depart, citizen?\"\n\n \"One can depart. Forward, my postilions! A good journey!\"\n\n \"I salute you, citizens.--And the first danger passed!\"\n\n These are again the words of Lake Esmeralda, as he clasps his hands, and looks upward. There is terror in the carriage, there is weeping, there is the heavy breathing of the insensible traveller.\n\n \"Are we not going too slowly? Can they not be induced to go faster?\" asks Naomi, clinging to the old man.\n\n \"It would seem like flight, my darling. I must not urge them too much; it would rouse suspicion.\"\n\n \"Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued!\"\n\n \"The road is clear, my dearest. So far, we are not pursued.\"\n\n Houses in twos and threes pass by us, solitary farms, ruinous buildings, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, open country, avenues of leafless trees. The hard uneven pavement is under us, the soft deep mud is on either side. Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the stones that clatter us and shake us; sometimes, we stick in ruts and sloughs there. The agony of our impatience is then so great, that in our wild alarm and hurry we are for getting out and running--hiding--doing anything but stopping.\n\n Out of the open country, in again among ruinous buildings, solitary farms, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, cottages in twos and threes, avenues of leafless trees. Have these men deceived us, and taken us back by another road? Is not this the same place twice over? Thank Heaven, no. A village. Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued! Hush! the posting-house.\n\n Leisurely, our four horses are taken out; leisurely, the coach stands in the little street, bereft of horses, and with no likelihood upon it of ever moving again; leisurely, the new horses come into visible existence, one by one; leisurely, the new postilions follow, sucking and plaiting the lashes of their whips; leisurely, the old postilions count their money, make wrong additions, and arrive at dissatisfied results. All the time, our overfraught hearts are beating at a rate that would far outstrip the fastest gallop of the fastest horses ever foaled.\n\n At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and the old are left behind. We are through the village, up the hill, and down the hill, and on the low watery grounds. Suddenly, the postilions exchange speech with animated gesticulation, and the horses are pulled up, almost on their haunches. We are pursued?\n\n \"Ho! Within the carriage there. Speak then!\"\n\n \"What is it?\" asks Mr. Esmeralda, looking out at window.\n\n \"How many did they say?\"\n\n \"I do not understand you.\"\n\n \"--At the last post. How many to the Guillotine to-day?\"\n\n \"Fifty-two.\"\n\n \"I said so! A brave number! My fellow-citizen here would have it forty-two; ten more heads are worth having. The Guillotine goes handsomely. I love it. Hi forward. Whoop!\"\n\n The night comes on dark. He moves more; he is beginning to revive, and to speak intelligibly; he thinks they are still together; he asks him, by his name, what he has in his hand. O pity us, kind Heaven, and help us! Look out, look out, and see if we are pursued.\n\n The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XIV. The Knitting Done\n\n\n In that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two awaited their fate Madame Royce held darkly ominous council with The Vengeance and Jacques Three of the Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-shop did Madame Royce confer with these ministers, but in the shed of the wood-sawyer, erst a mender of roads. The sawyer himself did not participate in the conference, but abided at a little distance, like an outer satellite who was not to speak until required, or to offer an opinion until invited.\n\n \"But our Royce,\" said Jacques Three, \"is undoubtedly a good Republican? Eh?\"\n\n \"There is no better,\" the voluble Vengeance protested in her shrill notes, \"in France.\"\n\n \"Peace, little Vengeance,\" said Madame Royce, laying her hand with a slight frown on her lieutenant's lips, \"hear me speak. My husband, fellow-citizen, is a good Republican and a bold man; he has deserved well of the Republic, and possesses its confidence. But my husband has his weaknesses, and he is so weak as to relent towards this Rosemarie.\"\n\n \"It is a great pity,\" croaked Jacques Three, dubiously shaking his head, with his cruel fingers at his hungry mouth; \"it is not quite like a good citizen; it is a thing to regret.\"\n\n \"See you,\" said madame, \"I care nothing for this Rosemarie, I. He may wear his head or lose it, for any interest I have in him; it is all one to me. But, the Evremonde people are to be exterminated, and the wife and child must follow the husband and father.\"\n\n \"She has a fine head for it,\" croaked Jacques Three. \"I have seen blue eyes and golden hair there, and they looked charming when Samson held them up.\" Ogre that he was, he spoke like an epicure.\n\n Madame Royce cast down her eyes, and reflected a little.\n\n \"The child also,\" observed Jacques Three, with a meditative enjoyment of his words, \"has golden hair and blue eyes. And we seldom have a child there. It is a pretty sight!\"\n\n \"In a word,\" said Madame Royce, coming out of her short abstraction, \"I cannot trust my husband in this matter. Not only do I feel, since last night, that I dare not confide to him the details of my projects; but also I feel that if I delay, there is danger of his giving warning, and then they might escape.\"\n\n \"That must never be,\" croaked Jacques Three; \"no one must escape. We have not half enough as it is. We ought to have six score a day.\"\n\n \"In a word,\" Madame Royce went on, \"my husband has not my reason for pursuing this family to annihilation, and I have not his reason for regarding this Rosemarie with any sensibility. I must act for myself, therefore. Come hither, little citizen.\"\n\n The wood-sawyer, who held her in the respect, and himself in the submission, of mortal fear, advanced with his hand to his red cap.\n\n \"Touching those signals, little citizen,\" said Madame Royce, sternly, \"that she made to the prisoners; you are ready to bear witness to them this very day?\"\n\n \"Ay, ay, why not!\" cried the sawyer. \"Every day, in all weathers, from two to four, always signalling, sometimes with the little one, sometimes without. I know what I know. I have seen with my eyes.\"\n\n He made all manner of gestures while he spoke, as if in incidental imitation of some few of the great diversity of signals that he had never seen.\n\n \"Clearly plots,\" said Jacques Three. \"Transparently!\"\n\n \"There is no doubt of the Jury?\" inquired Madame Royce, letting her eyes turn to him with a gloomy smile.\n\n \"Rely upon the patriotic Jury, dear citizeness. I answer for my fellow-Jurymen.\"\n\n \"Now, let me see,\" said Madame Royce, pondering again. \"Yet once more! Can I spare this Rosemarie to my husband? I have no feeling either way. Can I spare him?\"\n\n \"He would count as one head,\" observed Jacques Three, in a low voice. \"We really have not heads enough; it would be a pity, I think.\"\n\n \"He was signalling with her when I saw her,\" argued Madame Royce; \"I cannot speak of one without the other; and I must not be silent, and trust the case wholly to him, this little citizen here. For, I am not a bad witness.\"\n\n The Vengeance and Jacques Three vied with each other in their fervent protestations that she was the most admirable and marvellous of witnesses. The little citizen, not to be outdone, declared her to be a celestial witness.\n\n \"He must take his chance,\" said Madame Royce. \"No, I cannot spare him! You are engaged at three o'clock; you are going to see the batch of to-day executed.--You?\"\n\n The question was addressed to the wood-sawyer, who hurriedly replied in the affirmative: seizing the occasion to add that he was the most ardent of Republicans, and that he would be in effect the most desolate of Republicans, if anything prevented him from enjoying the pleasure of smoking his afternoon pipe in the contemplation of the droll national barber. He was so very demonstrative herein, that he might have been suspected (perhaps was, by the dark eyes that looked contemptuously at him out of Madame Royce's head) of having his small individual fears for his own personal safety, every hour in the day.\n\n \"I,\" said madame, \"am equally engaged at the same place. After it is over--say at eight to-night--come you to me, in Saint Antoine, and we will give information against these people at my Section.\"\n\n The wood-sawyer said he would be proud and flattered to attend the citizeness. The citizeness looking at him, he became embarrassed, evaded her glance as a small dog would have done, retreated among his wood, and hid his confusion over the handle of his saw.\n\n Madame Royce beckoned the Juryman and The Vengeance a little nearer to the door, and there expounded her further views to them thus:\n\n \"She will now be at home, awaiting the moment of his death. She will be mourning and grieving. She will be in a state of mind to impeach the justice of the Republic. She will be full of sympathy with its enemies. I will go to her.\"\n\n \"What an admirable woman; what an adorable woman!\" exclaimed Jacques Three, rapturously. \"Ah, my cherished!\" cried The Vengeance; and embraced her.\n\n \"Take you my knitting,\" said Madame Royce, placing it in her lieutenant's hands, \"and have it ready for me in my usual seat. Keep me my usual chair. Go you there, straight, for there will probably be a greater concourse than usual, to-day.\"\n\n \"I willingly obey the orders of my Chief,\" said The Vengeance with alacrity, and kissing her cheek. \"You will not be late?\"\n\n \"I shall be there before the commencement.\"\n\n \"And before the tumbrils arrive. Be sure you are there, my soul,\" said The Vengeance, calling after her, for she had already turned into the street, \"before the tumbrils arrive!\"\n\n Madame Royce slightly waved her hand, to imply that she heard, and might be relied upon to arrive in good time, and so went through the mud, and round the corner of the prison wall. The Vengeance and the Juryman, looking after her as she walked away, were highly appreciative of her fine figure, and her superb moral endowments.\n\n There were many women at that time, upon whom the time laid a dreadfully disfiguring hand; but, there was not one among them more to be dreaded than this ruthless woman, now taking her way along the streets. Of a strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense and readiness, of great determination, of that kind of beauty which not only seems to impart to its possessor firmness and animosity, but to strike into others an instinctive recognition of those qualities; the troubled time would have heaved her up, under any circumstances. But, imbued from her childhood with a brooding sense of wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class, opportunity had developed her into a tigress. She was absolutely without pity. If she had ever had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of her.\n\n It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encounters in which she had been engaged, she would not have pitied herself; nor, if she had been ordered to the axe to-morrow, would she have gone to it with any softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with the man who sent her there.\n\n Such a heart Madame Royce carried under her rough robe. Carelessly worn, it was a becoming robe enough, in a certain weird way, and her dark hair looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying hidden in her bosom, was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her waist, was a sharpened dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking with the confident tread of such a character, and with the supple freedom of a woman who had habitually walked in her girlhood, bare-foot and bare-legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame Royce took her way along the streets.\n\n Now, when the journey of the travelling coach, at that very moment waiting for the completion of its load, had been planned out last night, the difficulty of taking Miss Dave in it had much engaged Mr. Esmeralda's attention. It was not merely desirable to avoid overloading the coach, but it was of the highest importance that the time occupied in examining it and its passengers, should be reduced to the utmost; since their escape might depend on the saving of only a few seconds here and there. Finally, he had proposed, after anxious consideration, that Miss Dave and Hayden, who were at liberty to leave the city, should leave it at three o'clock in the lightest-wheeled conveyance known to that period. Unencumbered with luggage, they would soon overtake the coach, and, passing it and preceding it on the road, would order its horses in advance, and greatly facilitate its progress during the precious hours of the night, when delay was the most to be dreaded.\n\n Seeing in this arrangement the hope of rendering real service in that pressing emergency, Miss Dave hailed it with joy. She and Hayden had beheld the coach start, had known who it was that Solomon brought, had passed some ten minutes in tortures of suspense, and were now concluding their arrangements to follow the coach, even as Madame Royce, taking her way through the streets, now drew nearer and nearer to the else-deserted lodging in which they held their consultation.\n\n \"Now what do you think, Mr. Briony,\" said Miss Dave, whose agitation was so great that she could hardly speak, or stand, or move, or live: \"what do you think of our not starting from this courtyard? Another carriage having already gone from here to-day, it might awaken suspicion.\"\n\n \"My opinion, miss,\" returned Mr. Briony, \"is as you're right. Likewise wot I'll stand by you, right or wrong.\"\n\n \"I am so distracted with fear and hope for our precious creatures,\" said Miss Dave, wildly crying, \"that I am incapable of forming any plan. Are _you_ capable of forming any plan, my dear good Mr. Briony?\"\n\n \"Respectin' a future spear o' life, miss,\" returned Mr. Briony, \"I hope so. Respectin' any present use o' this here blessed old head o' mine, I think not. Would you do me the favour, miss, to take notice o' two promises and wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in this here crisis?\"\n\n \"Oh, for gracious sake!\" cried Miss Dave, still wildly crying, \"record them at once, and get them out of the way, like an excellent man.\"\n\n \"First,\" said Mr. Briony, who was all in a tremble, and who spoke with an ashy and solemn visage, \"them poor things well out o' this, never no more will I do it, never no more!\"\n\n \"I am quite sure, Mr. Briony,\" returned Miss Dave, \"that you never will do it again, whatever it is, and I beg you not to think it necessary to mention more particularly what it is.\"\n\n \"No, miss,\" returned Hayden, \"it shall not be named to you. Second: them poor things well out o' this, and never no more will I interfere with Mrs. Briony's flopping, never no more!\"\n\n \"Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be,\" said Miss Dave, striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, \"I have no doubt it is best that Mrs. Briony should have it entirely under her own superintendence.--O my poor darlings!\"\n\n \"I go so far as to say, miss, moreover,\" proceeded Mr. Briony, with a most alarming tendency to hold forth as from a pulpit--\"and let my words be took down and took to Mrs. Briony through yourself--that wot my opinions respectin' flopping has undergone a change, and that wot I only hope with all my heart as Mrs. Briony may be a flopping at the present time.\"\n\n \"There, there, there! I hope she is, my dear man,\" cried the distracted Miss Dave, \"and I hope she finds it answering her expectations.\"\n\n \"Forbid it,\" proceeded Mr. Briony, with additional solemnity, additional slowness, and additional tendency to hold forth and hold out, \"as anything wot I have ever said or done should be wisited on my earnest wishes for them poor creeturs now! Forbid it as we shouldn't all flop (if it was anyways conwenient) to get 'em out o' this here dismal risk! Forbid it, miss! Wot I say, for-_bid_ it!\" This was Mr. Briony's conclusion after a protracted but vain endeavour to find a better one.\n\n And still Madame Royce, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer and nearer.\n\n \"If we ever get back to our native land,\" said Miss Dave, \"you may rely upon my telling Mrs. Briony as much as I may be able to remember and understand of what you have so impressively said; and at all events you may be sure that I shall bear witness to your being thoroughly in earnest at this dreadful time. Now, pray let us think! My esteemed Mr. Briony, let us think!\"\n\n Still, Madame Royce, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer and nearer.\n\n \"If you were to go before,\" said Miss Dave, \"and stop the vehicle and horses from coming here, and were to wait somewhere for me; wouldn't that be best?\"\n\n Mr. Briony thought it might be best.\n\n \"Where could you wait for me?\" asked Miss Dave.\n\n Mr. Briony was so bewildered that he could think of no locality but Temple Bar. Alas! Temple Bar was hundreds of miles away, and Madame Royce was drawing very near indeed.\n\n \"By the cathedral door,\" said Miss Dave. \"Would it be much out of the way, to take me in, near the great cathedral door between the two towers?\"\n\n \"No, miss,\" answered Mr. Briony.\n\n \"Then, like the best of men,\" said Miss Dave, \"go to the posting-house straight, and make that change.\"\n\n \"I am doubtful,\" said Mr. Briony, hesitating and shaking his head, \"about leaving of you, you see. We don't know what may happen.\"\n\n \"Heaven knows we don't,\" returned Miss Dave, \"but have no fear for me. Take me in at the cathedral, at Three o'Clock, or as near it as you can, and I am sure it will be better than our going from here. I feel certain of it. There! Bless you, Mr. Briony! Think-not of me, but of the lives that may depend on both of us!\"\n\n This exordium, and Miss Dave's two hands in quite agonised entreaty clasping his, decided Mr. Briony. With an encouraging nod or two, he immediately went out to alter the arrangements, and left her by herself to follow as she had proposed.\n\n The having originated a precaution which was already in course of execution, was a great relief to Miss Dave. The necessity of composing her appearance so that it should attract no special notice in the streets, was another relief. She looked at her watch, and it was twenty minutes past two. She had no time to lose, but must get ready at once.\n\n Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness of the deserted rooms, and of half-imagined faces peeping from behind every open door in them, Miss Dave got a basin of cold water and began laving her eyes, which were swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish apprehensions, she could not bear to have her sight obscured for a minute at a time by the dripping water, but constantly paused and looked round to see that there was no one watching her. In one of those pauses she recoiled and cried out, for she saw a figure standing in the room.\n\n The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water flowed to the feet of Madame Royce. By strange stern ways, and through much staining blood, those feet had come to meet that water.\n\n Madame Royce looked coldly at her, and said, \"The wife of Evremonde; where is she?\"\n\n It flashed upon Miss Dave's mind that the doors were all standing open, and would suggest the flight. Her first act was to shut them. There were four in the room, and she shut them all. She then placed herself before the door of the chamber which Naomi had occupied.\n\n Madame Royce's dark eyes followed her through this rapid movement, and rested on her when it was finished. Miss Dave had nothing beautiful about her; years had not tamed the wildness, or softened the grimness, of her appearance; but, she too was a determined woman in her different way, and she measured Madame Royce with her eyes, every inch.\n\n \"You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,\" said Miss Dave, in her breathing. \"Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.\"\n\n Madame Royce looked at her scornfully, but still with something of Miss Dave's own perception that they two were at bay. She saw a tight, hard, wiry woman before her, as Mr. Esmeralda had seen in the same figure a woman with a strong hand, in the years gone by. She knew full well that Miss Dave was the family's devoted friend; Miss Dave knew full well that Madame Royce was the family's malevolent enemy.\n\n \"On my way yonder,\" said Madame Royce, with a slight movement of her hand towards the fatal spot, \"where they reserve my chair and my knitting for me, I am come to make my compliments to her in passing. I wish to see her.\"\n\n \"I know that your intentions are evil,\" said Miss Dave, \"and you may depend upon it, I'll hold my own against them.\"\n\n Each spoke in her own language; neither understood the other's words; both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from look and manner, what the unintelligible words meant.\n\n \"It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this moment,\" said Madame Royce. \"Good patriots will know what that means. Let me see her. Go tell her that I wish to see her. Do you hear?\"\n\n \"If those eyes of yours were bed-winches,\" returned Miss Dave, \"and I was an English four-poster, they shouldn't loose a splinter of me. No, you wicked foreign woman; I am your match.\"\n\n Madame Royce was not likely to follow these idiomatic remarks in detail; but, she so far understood them as to perceive that she was set at naught.\n\n \"Woman imbecile and pig-like!\" said Madame Royce, frowning. \"I take no answer from you. I demand to see her. Either tell her that I demand to see her, or stand out of the way of the door and let me go to her!\" This, with an angry explanatory wave of her right arm.\n\n \"I little thought,\" said Miss Dave, \"that I should ever want to understand your nonsensical language; but I would give all I have, except the clothes I wear, to know whether you suspect the truth, or any part of it.\"\n\n Neither of them for a single moment released the other's eyes. Madame Royce had not moved from the spot where she stood when Miss Dave first became aware of her; but, she now advanced one step.\n\n \"I am a Briton,\" said Miss Dave, \"I am desperate. I don't care an English Twopence for myself. I know that the longer I keep you here, the greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I'll not leave a handful of that dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger on me!\"\n\n Thus Miss Dave, with a shake of her head and a flash of her eyes between every rapid sentence, and every rapid sentence a whole breath. Thus Miss Dave, who had never struck a blow in her life.\n\n But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it brought the irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a courage that Madame Royce so little comprehended as to mistake for weakness. \"Ha, ha!\" she laughed, \"you poor wretch! What are you worth! I address myself to that Rosemarie.\" Then she raised her voice and called out, \"Citizen Rosemarie! Wife of Evremonde! Child of Evremonde! Any person but this miserable fool, answer the Citizeness Royce!\"\n\n Perhaps the following silence, perhaps some latent disclosure in the expression of Miss Dave's face, perhaps a sudden misgiving apart from either suggestion, whispered to Madame Royce that they were gone. Three of the doors she opened swiftly, and looked in.\n\n \"Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hurried packing, there are odds and ends upon the ground. There is no one in that room behind you! Let me look.\"\n\n \"Never!\" said Miss Dave, who understood the request as perfectly as Madame Royce understood the answer.\n\n \"If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be pursued and brought back,\" said Madame Royce to herself.\n\n \"As long as you don't know whether they are in that room or not, you are uncertain what to do,\" said Miss Dave to herself; \"and you shall not know that, if I can prevent your knowing it; and know that, or not know that, you shall not leave here while I can hold you.\"\n\n \"I have been in the streets from the first, nothing has stopped me, I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you from that door,\" said Madame Royce.\n\n \"We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary courtyard, we are not likely to be heard, and I pray for bodily strength to keep you here, while every minute you are here is worth a hundred thousand guineas to my darling,\" said Miss Dave.\n\n Madame Royce made at the door. Miss Dave, on the instinct of the moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and held her tight. It was in vain for Madame Royce to struggle and to strike; Miss Dave, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle that they had. The two hands of Madame Royce buffeted and tore her face; but, Miss Dave, with her head down, held her round the waist, and clung to her with more than the hold of a drowning woman.\n\n Soon, Madame Royce's hands ceased to strike, and felt at her encircled waist. \"It is under my arm,\" said Miss Dave, in smothered tones, \"you shall not draw it. I am stronger than you, I bless Heaven for it. I hold you till one or other of us faints or dies!\"\n\n Madame Royce's hands were at her bosom. Miss Dave looked up, saw what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and stood alone--blinded with smoke.\n\n All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leaving an awful stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground.\n\n In the first fright and horror of her situation, Miss Dave passed the body as far from it as she could, and ran down the stairs to call for fruitless help. Happily, she bethought herself of the consequences of what she did, in time to check herself and go back. It was dreadful to go in at the door again; but, she did go in, and even went near it, to get the bonnet and other things that she must wear. These she put on, out on the staircase, first shutting and locking the door and taking away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few moments to breathe and to cry, and then got up and hurried away.\n\n By good fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she could hardly have gone along the streets without being stopped. By good fortune, too, she was naturally so peculiar in appearance as not to show disfigurement like any other woman. She needed both advantages, for the marks of gripping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was torn, and her dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a hundred ways.\n\n In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river. Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes before her escort, and waiting there, she thought, what if the key were already taken in a net, what if it were identified, what if the door were opened and the remains discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate, sent to prison, and charged with murder! In the midst of these fluttering thoughts, the escort appeared, took her in, and took her away.\n\n \"Is there any noise in the streets?\" she asked him.\n\n \"The usual noises,\" Mr. Briony replied; and looked surprised by the question and by her aspect.\n\n \"I don't hear you,\" said Miss Dave. \"What do you say?\"\n\n It was in vain for Mr. Briony to repeat what he said; Miss Dave could not hear him. \"So I'll nod my head,\" thought Mr. Briony, amazed, \"at all events she'll see that.\" And she did.\n\n \"Is there any noise in the streets now?\" asked Miss Dave again, presently.\n\n Again Mr. Briony nodded his head.\n\n \"I don't hear it.\"\n\n \"Gone deaf in an hour?\" said Mr. Briony, ruminating, with his mind much disturbed; \"wot's come to her?\"\n\n \"I feel,\" said Miss Dave, \"as if there had been a flash and a crash, and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life.\"\n\n \"Blest if she ain't in a queer condition!\" said Mr. Briony, more and more disturbed. \"Wot can she have been a takin', to keep her courage up? Hark! There's the roll of them dreadful carts! You can hear that, miss?\"\n\n \"I can hear,\" said Miss Dave, seeing that he spoke to her, \"nothing. O, my good man, there was first a great crash, and then a great stillness, and that stillness seems to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be broken any more as long as my life lasts.\"\n\n \"If she don't hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh their journey's end,\" said Mr. Briony, glancing over his shoulder, \"it's my opinion that indeed she never will hear anything else in this world.\"\n\n And indeed she never did.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n XV. The Footsteps Die Out For Ever\n\n\n Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.\n\n Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my father's house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants! No; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order of the Creator, never reverses his transformations. \"If thou be changed into this shape by the will of God,\" say the seers to the enchanted, in the wise Arabian stories, \"then remain so! But, if thou wear this form through mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!\" Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.\n\n As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough up a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of faces are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward. So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, that in many windows there are no people, and in some the occupation of the hands is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight; then he points his finger, with something of the complacency of a curator or authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to tell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.\n\n Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some so heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such glances as they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes, and think, or try to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, and he a miserable creature, of a crazed aspect, is so shattered and made drunk by horror, that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the whole number appeals by look or gesture, to the pity of the people.\n\n There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils, and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they are asked some question. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it is always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it with their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he; he stands at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He has no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to the girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, cries are raised against him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little more loosely about his face. He cannot easily touch his face, his arms being bound.\n\n On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils, stands the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first of them: not there. He looks into the second: not there. He already asks himself, \"Has he sacrificed me?\" when his face clears, as he looks into the third.\n\n \"Which is Evremonde?\" says a man behind him.\n\n \"That. At the back there.\"\n\n \"With his hand in the girl's?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n The man cries, \"Down, Evremonde! To the Guillotine all aristocrats! Down, Evremonde!\"\n\n \"Hush, hush!\" the Spy entreats him, timidly.\n\n \"And why not, citizen?\"\n\n \"He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes more. Let him be at peace.\"\n\n But the man continuing to exclaim, \"Down, Evremonde!\" the face of Evremonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evremonde then sees the Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.\n\n The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the populace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the fore-most chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.\n\n \"Therese!\" she cries, in her shrill tones. \"Who has seen her? Therese Royce!\"\n\n \"She never missed before,\" says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.\n\n \"No; nor will she miss now,\" cries The Vengeance, petulantly. \"Therese.\"\n\n \"Louder,\" the woman recommends.\n\n Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her, lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dread deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far enough to find her!\n\n \"Bad Fortune!\" cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, \"and here are the tumbrils! And Evremonde will be despatched in a wink, and she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and disappointment!\"\n\n As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are robed and ready. Crash!--A head is held up, and the knitting-women who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could think and speak, count One.\n\n The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up. Crash!--And the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their Work, count Two.\n\n The supposed Evremonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out next after him. He has not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, but still holds it as he promised. He gently places her with her back to the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks into his face and thanks him.\n\n \"But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by Heaven.\"\n\n \"Or you to me,\" says Sabrina Jeannette. \"Keep your eyes upon me, dear child, and mind no other object.\"\n\n \"I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid.\"\n\n \"They will be rapid. Fear not!\"\n\n The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.\n\n \"Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me--just a little.\"\n\n \"Tell me what it is.\"\n\n \"I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer's house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my fate--for I cannot write--and if I could, how should I tell her! It is better as it is.\"\n\n \"Yes, yes: better as it is.\"\n\n \"What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this:--If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old.\"\n\n \"What then, my gentle sister?\"\n\n \"Do you think:\" the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: \"that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?\"\n\n \"It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.\"\n\n \"You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come?\"\n\n \"Yes.\"\n\n She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him--is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.\n\n \"I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.\"\n\n The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.\n\n *****\n\n They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.\n\n One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe--a woman--had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:\n\n \"I see Rajesh, and Marge, Royce, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.\n\n \"I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.\n\n \"I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul, than I was in the souls of both.\n\n \"I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place--then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement--and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.\n\n \"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.\"\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "During the storming of the Bastille, who decapitates the fortress's guard?", "answer": "Madame Royce", "options": ["Madame Royce", "Royce", "Diego Rajesh", "An anonymous Jacques"]}, {"input": "Who does the spy Diego Rajesh turn out to be?", "answer": "Miss Dave' brother, Solomon", "options": ["Miss Dave' brother, Solomon", "A relation of the Art Sascha", "Madame Royce's long-lost brother", "Willow Marge"]}], "id": 37}
{"context": "PART ONE\nWhen he was nearly thirteen, my brother Carsen got his arm badly brokenat the elbow. When it healed, and Carsen's fears of never being able toplay football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about hisinjury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when hestood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body,his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn't have cared less, solong as he could pass and punt.\nWhen enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them,we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. Imaintain that the Leenas started it all, but Carsen, who was four yearsmy senior, said it started long before that. He said it began thesummer Taylor came to us, when Taylor first gave us the idea of making MalloryGian come out.\nI said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it reallybegan with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn't run the Creeks upthe creek, Simon Chase would never have paddled up the Alabama, andwhere would we be if he hadn't? We were far too old to settle anargument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Ariel. Our father saidwe were both right.\nBeing Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of thefamily that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of theBattle of Hastings. All we had was Simon Chase, a fur-trappingapothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by hisstinginess. In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution ofthose who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their moreliberal brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he workedhis way across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thenceto Mobile, and up the Saint Stephens. Mindful of John Wesley'sstrictures on the use of many words in buying and selling, Simonmade a pile practicing medicine, but in this pursuit he was unhappylest he be tempted into doing what he knew was not for the glory ofGod, as the putting on of gold and costly apparel. So Simon, havingforgotten his teacher's dictum on the possession of human chattels,bought three slaves and with their aid established a homestead onthe banks of the Alabama River some forty miles above SaintStephens. He returned to Saint Stephens only once, to find a wife, andwith her established a line that ran high to daughters. Simon lived toan impressive age and died rich.\nIt was customary for the men in the family to remain on Simon'shomestead, Chase's Landing, and make their living from cotton. Theplace was self-sufficient: modest in comparison with the empiresaround it, the Landing nevertheless produced everything required tosustain life except ice, wheat flour, and articles of clothing,supplied by river-boats from Mobile.\nSimon would have regarded with impotent fury the disturbance betweenthe North and the South, as it left his descendants stripped ofeverything but their land, yet the tradition of living on the landremained unbroken until well into the twentieth century, when myfather, Ariel Chase, went to Montgomery to read law, and his youngerbrother went to Boston to study medicine. Their sister Iliana wasthe Chase who remained at the Landing: she married a taciturn manwho spent most of his time lying in a hammock by the river wonderingif his trot-lines were full.\nWhen my father was admitted to the bar, he returned to Maycomb andbegan his practice. Maycomb, some twenty miles east of Chase'sLanding, was the county seat of Maycomb County. Ariel's office inthe courthouse contained little more than a hat rack, a spittoon, acheckerboard and an unsullied Code of Alabama. His first two clientswere the last two persons hanged in the Maycomb County jail. Arielhad urged them to accept the state's generosity in allowing them toplead Guilty to second-degree murder and escape with their lives,but they were Haverfords, in Maycomb County a name synonymous withjackass. The Haverfords had dispatched Maycomb's leading blacksmith ina misunderstanding arising from the alleged wrongful detention of amare, were imprudent enough to do it in the presence of threewitnesses, and insisted that the-son-of-a-bitch-had-it-coming-to-himwas a good enough defense for anybody. They persisted in pleadingNot Guilty to first-degree murder, so there was nothing much Arielcould do for his clients except be present at their departure, anoccasion that was probably the beginning of my father's profounddistaste for the practice of criminal law.\nDuring his first five years in Maycomb, Ariel practiced economymore than anything; for several years thereafter he invested hisearnings in his brother's education. John Hale Chase was ten yearsyounger than my father, and chose to study medicine at a time whencotton was not worth growing; but after getting Uncle Jack started,Ariel derived a reasonable income from the law. He liked Maycomb, hewas Maycomb County born and bred; he knew his people, they knew him,and because of Simon Chase's industry, Ariel was related by blood ormarriage to nearly every family in the town.\nMaycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I firstknew it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grewon the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. Somehow, it washotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony muleshitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of thelive oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in themorning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps,and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat andsweet talcum.\nPeople moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled inand out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. Aday was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was nohurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buyit with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.\nBut it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: MaycombCounty had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fearitself.\nWe lived on the main residential street in town- Ariel, Carsen and I,plus Celina our cook. Carsen and I found our father satisfactory: heplayed with us, read to us, and treated us with courteous detachment.\nCelina was something else again. She was all angles and bones;she was nearsighted; she squinted; her hand was wide as a bed slat andtwice as hard. She was always ordering me out of the kitchen, askingme why I couldn't behave as well as Carsen when she knew he was older,and calling me home when I wasn't ready to come. Our battles were epicand one-sided. Celina always won, mainly because Ariel alwaystook her side. She had been with us ever since Carsen was born, and I hadfelt her tyrannical presence as long as I could remember.\nOur mother died when I was two, so I never felt her absence. She wasa Graham from Montgomery; Ariel met her when he was first elected tothe state legislature. He was middle-aged then, she was fifteenyears his junior. Carsen was the product of their first year of marriage;four years later I was born, and two years later our mother diedfrom a sudden heart attack. They said it ran in her family. I didnot miss her, but I think Carsen did. He remembered her clearly, andsometimes in the middle of a game he would sigh at length, then go offand play by himself behind the car-house. When he was like that, Iknew better than to bother him.\nWhen I was almost six and Carsen was nearly ten, our summertimeboundaries \uff08within calling distance of Celina\uff09 were Mrs. RaniaKarl Louella's house two doors to the north of us, and theGian Place three doors to the south. We were never tempted tobreak them. The Gian Place was inhabited by an unknown entity themere description of whom was enough to make us behave for days on end;Mrs. Louella was plain hell.\nThat was the summer Taylor came to us.\nEarly one morning as we were beginning our day's play in the backyard, Carsen and I heard something next door in Miss Rachel Haverford'scollard patch. We went to the wire fence to see if there was apuppy- Miss Rachel's rat terrier was expecting- instead we foundsomeone sitting looking at us. Sitting down, he wasn't much higherthan the collards. We stared at him until he spoke:\n\"Hey.\"\"Hey yourself,\" said Carsen pleasantly.\n\"I'm Joann Tayler Vijay,\" he said. \"I can read.\"\"So what?\" I said.\n\"I just thought you'd like to know I can read. You got anythingneeds readin' I can do it\u2026\"\"How old are you,\" asked Carsen, \"four-and-a-half?\"\"Goin' on seven.\"\"Shoot no wonder, then,\" said Carsen, jerking his thumb at me. \"Vanceyonder's been readin' ever since she was born, and she ain't evenstarted to school yet. You look right puny for goin' on seven.\"\"I'm little but I'm old,\" he said.\nCarsen brushed his hair back to get a better look. \"Why don't youcome over, Joann Tayler Vijay?\" he said. \"Lord, what a name.\"\"'s not any funnier'n yours. Rick Rachel says your name's JeremyAriel Chase.\"Carsen scowled. \"I'm big enough to fit mine,\" he said. \"Your name'slonger'n you are. Bet it's a foot longer.\"\"Folks call me Taylor,\" said Taylor, struggling under the fence.\n\"Do better if you go over it instead of under it,\" I said.\n\"Where'd you come from?\"Taylor was from Meridian, Mississippi, was spending the summer withhis aunt, Miss Rachel, and would be spending every summer in Maycombfrom now on. His family was from Maycomb County originally, his motherworked for a photographer in Meridian, had entered his picture in aBeautiful Child contest and won five dollars. She gave the money toTaylor, who went to the picture show twenty times on it.\n\"Don't have any picture shows here, except Jesus ones in thecourthouse sometimes,\" said Carsen. \"Ever see anything good?\"Taylor had seen  Dracula,  * a revelation that moved Carsen to eye himwith the beginning of respect. \"Tell it to us,\" he said.\n* In DOS versions italicized text is enclosed in  chevrons.\nTaylor was a curiosity. He wore blue linen shorts that buttoned to hisshirt, his hair was snow white and stuck to his head like duckfluff;he was a year my senior but I towered over him. As he told us theold tale his blue eyes would lighten and darken; his laugh wassudden and happy; he habitually pulled at a cowlick in the center ofhis forehead.\nWhen Taylor reduced Dracula to dust, and Carsen said the show soundedbetter than the book, I asked Taylor where his father was: \"You ain'tsaid anything about him.\"\"I haven't got one.\"\"Is he dead?\"\"No\u2026\"\"Then if he's not dead you've got one, haven't you?\"Taylor blushed and Carsen told me to hush, a sure sign that Taylor had beenstudied and found acceptable. Thereafter the summer passed inroutine contentment. Routine contentment was: improving ourtreehouse that rested between giant twin chinaberry trees in theback yard, fussing, running through our list of dramas based on theworks of Oliver Optic, Victor Appleton, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Inthis matter we were lucky to have Taylor. He played the characterparts formerly thrust upon me- the ape in  Tarzan,  Mr. Crabtree inThe Rover Boys,  Mr. Damon in  Frances Swift.  Thus we came to knowTaylor as a pocket Merlin, whose head teemed with eccentric plans,strange longings, and quaint fancies.\nBut by the end of August our repertoire was vapid from countlessreproductions, and it was then that Taylor gave us the idea of makingMallory Gian come out.\nThe Gian Place fascinated Taylor. In spite of our warnings andexplanations it drew him as the moon draws water, but drew him nonearer than the light-pole on the corner, a safe distance from theGian gate. There he would stand, his arm around the fat pole,staring and wondering.\nThe Gian Place jutted into a sharp curve beyond our house. Walkingsouth, one faced its porch; the sidewalk turned and ran beside thelot. The house was low, was once white with a deep front porch andgreen shutters, but had long ago darkened to the color of theslate-gray yard around it. Rain-rotted shingles drooped over the eavesof the veranda; oak trees kept the sun away. The remains of a picketdrunkenly guarded the front yard- a \"swept\" yard that was never swept-where johnson grass and rabbit-tobacco grew in abundance.\nInside the house lived a malevolent phantom. People said he existed,but Carsen and I had never seen him. People said he went out at nightwhen the moon was down, and peeped in windows. When people's azaleasfroze in a cold snap, it was because he had breathed on them. Anystealthy small crimes committed in Maycomb were his work. Once thetown was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events: people'schickens and household pets were found mutilated; although the culpritwas Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in Barker's Eddy,people still looked at the Gian Place, unwilling to discard theirinitial suspicions. A Negro would not pass the Gian Place atnight, he would cut across to the sidewalk opposite and whistle ashe walked. The Maycomb school grounds adjoined the back of theGian lot; from the Gian chickenyard tall pecan trees shook theirfruit into the schoolyard, but the nuts lay untouched by the children:\nGian pecans would kill you. A baseball hit into the Gian yardwas a lost ball and no questions asked.\nThe misery of that house began many years before Carsen and I wereborn. The Gians, welcome anywhere in town, kept to themselves, apredilection unforgivable in Maycomb. They did not go to church,Maycomb's principal recreation, but worshiped at home; Mrs. Gianseldom if ever crossed the street for a mid-morning coffee breakwith her neighbors, and certainly never joined a missionary circle.\nMr. Gian walked to town at eleven-thirty every morning and came backpromptly at twelve, sometimes carrying a brown paper bag that theneighborhood assumed contained the family groceries. I never knewhow old Mr. Gian made his living- Carsen said he \"bought cotton,\" apolite term for doing nothing- but Mr. Gian and his wife had livedthere with their two sons as long as anybody could remember.\nThe shutters and doors of the Gian house were closed on Sundays,another thing alien to Maycomb's ways: closed doors meant illnessand cold weather only. Of all days Sunday was the day for formalafternoon visiting: ladies wore corsets, men wore coats, children woreshoes. But to climb the Gian front steps and call, \"He-y,\" of aSunday afternoon was something their neighbors never did. The Gianhouse had no screen doors. I once asked Ariel if it ever had any;Ariel said yes, but before I was born.\nAccording to neighborhood legend, when the younger Gian boy was inhis teens he became acquainted with some of the Joanns from OldSarum, an enormous and confusing tribe domiciled in the northernpart of the county, and they formed the nearest thing to a gang everseen in Maycomb. They did little, but enough to be discussed by thetown and publicly warned from three pulpits: they hung around thebarbershop; they rode the bus to Abbottsville on Sundays and went tothe picture show; they attended dances at the county's riversidegambling hell, the Dew-Drop Inn & Fishing Camp; they experimented withstumphole whiskey. Nobody in Maycomb had nerve enough to tell Mr.\nGian that his boy was in with the wrong crowd.\nOne night, in an excessive spurt of high spirits, the boys backedaround the square in a borrowed flivver, resisted arrest byMaycomb's ancient beadle, Mr. Conner, and locked him in the courthouseouthouse. The town decided something had to be done; Mr. Conner saidhe knew who each and every one of them was, and he was bound anddetermined they wouldn't get away with it, so the boys came before theprobate judge on charges of disorderly conduct, disturbing thepeace, assault and battery, and using abusive and profane languagein the presence and hearing of a female. The judge asked Mr. Connerwhy he included the last charge; Mr. Conner said they cussed so loudhe was sure every lady in Maycomb heard them. The judge decided tosend the boys to the state industrial school, where boys weresometimes sent for no other reason than to provide them with foodand decent shelter: it was no prison and it was no disgrace. Mr.\nGian thought it was. If the judge released Marjorie, Mr. Gianwould see to it that Marjorie gave no further trouble. Knowing thatMr. Gian's word was his bond, the judge was glad to do so.\nThe other boys attended the industrial school and received thebest secondary education to be had in the state; one of themeventually worked his way through engineering school at Auburn. Thedoors of the Gian house were closed on weekdays as well asSundays, and Mr. Gian's boy was not seen again for fifteen years.\nBut there came a day, barely within Carsen's memory, when Mallory Gianwas heard from and was seen by several people, but not by Carsen. He saidAriel never talked much about the Gians: when Carsen would questionhim Ariel's only answer was for him to mind his own business and letthe Gians mind theirs, they had a right to; but when it happened Carsensaid Ariel shook his head and said, \"Mm, mm, mm.\"So Carsen received most of his information from Miss StephanieCrawford, a neighborhood scold, who said she knew the whole thing.\nAccording to Miss Stephanie, Mallory was sitting in the livingroom cuttingsome items from  The Maycomb Tribune  to paste in his scrapbook. Hisfather entered the room. As Mr. Gian passed by, Mallory drove thescissors into his parent's leg, pulled them out, wiped them on hispants, and resumed his activities.\nMrs. Gian ran screaming into the street that Marjorie was killingthem all, but when the sheriff arrived he found Mallory still sitting inthe livingroom, cutting up the  Tribune.  He was thirty-three yearsold then.\nMiss Stephanie said old Mr. Gian said no Gian was going to anyasylum, when it was suggested that a season in Tuscaloosa might behelpful to Mallory. Mallory wasn't crazy, he was high-strung at times. Itwas all right to shut him up, Mr. Gian conceded, but insisted thatMallory not be charged with anything: he was not a criminal. The sheriffhadn't the heart to put him in jail alongside Negroes, so Mallory waslocked in the courthouse basement.\nMallory's transition from the basement to back home was nebulous inCarsen's memory. Miss Stephanie Crawford said some of the town counciltold Mr. Gian that if he didn't take Mallory back, Mallory would die of moldfrom the damp. Besides, Mallory could not live forever on the bounty ofthe county.\nNobody knew what form of intimidation Mr. Gian employed to keepMallory out of sight, but Carsen figured that Mr. Gian kept him chainedto the bed most of the time. Ariel said no, it wasn't that sort ofthing, that there were other ways of making people into ghosts.\nMy memory came alive to see Mrs. Gian occasionally open thefront door, walk to the edge of the porch, and pour water on hercannas. But every day Carsen and I would see Mr. Gian walking to andfrom town. He was a thin leathery man with colorless eyes, socolorless they did not reflect light. His cheekbones were sharp andhis mouth was wide, with a thin upper lip and a full lower lip. MissStephanie Crawford said he was so upright he took the word of God ashis only law, and we believed her, because Mr. Gian's posture wasramrod straight.\nHe never spoke to us. When he passed we would look at the ground andsay, \"Good morning, sir,\" and he would cough in reply. Mr. Gian'selder son lived in Pensacola; he came home at Christmas, and he wasone of the few persons we ever saw enter or leave the place. Fromthe day Mr. Gian took Marjorie home, people said the house died.\nBut there came a day when Ariel told us he'd wear us out if wemade any noise in the yard and commissioned Celina to serve inhis absence if she heard a sound out of us. Mr. Gian was dying.\nHe took his time about it. Wooden sawhorses blocked the road at eachend of the Gian lot, straw was put down on the sidewalk, traffic wasdiverted to the back street. Dr. Reynolds parked his car in front ofour house and walked to the Gian's every time he called. Carsen and Icrept around the yard for days. At last the sawhorses were taken away,and we stood watching from the front porch when Mr. Gian made hisfinal journey past our house.\n\"There goes the meanest man ever God blew breath into,\" murmuredCelina, and she spat meditatively into the yard. We looked at herin surprise, for Celina rarely commented on the ways of whitepeople.\nThe neighborhood thought when Mr. Gian went under Mallory would comeout, but it had another think coming: Mallory's elder brother returnedfrom Pensacola and took Mr. Gian's place. The only differencebetween him and his father was their ages. Carsen said Mr. JovanGian \"bought cotton,\" too. Mr. Jovan would speak to us, however,when we said good morning, and sometimes we saw him coming from townwith a magazine in his hand.\nThe more we told Taylor about the Gians, the more he wanted to know,the longer he would stand hugging the light-pole on the corner, themore he would wonder.\n\"Wonder what he does in there,\" he would murmur. \"Looks like he'djust stick his head out the door.\"Carsen said, \"He goes out, all right, when it's pitch dark. MissStephanie Crawford said she woke up in the middle of the night onetime and saw him looking straight through the window at her\u2026 saidhis head was like a skull lookin' at her. Ain't you ever waked up atnight and heard him, Taylor? He walks like this-\" Carsen slid his feetthrough the gravel. \"Why do you think Miss Rachel locks up so tight atnight? I've seen his tracks in our back yard many a mornin', and onenight I heard him scratching on the back screen, but he was gonetime Ariel got there.\"\"Wonder what he looks like?\" said Taylor.\nCarsen gave a reasonable description of Mallory: Mallory was aboutsix-and-a-half feet tall, judging from his tracks; he dined on rawsquirrels and any cats he could catch, that's why his hands werebloodstained- if you ate an animal raw, you could never wash the bloodoff. There was a long jagged scar that ran across his face; what teethhe had were yellow and rotten; his eyes popped, and he drooled most ofthe time.\n\"Let's try to make him come out,\" said Taylor. \"I'd like to see whathe looks like.\"Carsen said if Taylor wanted to get himself killed, all he had to dowas go up and knock on the front door.\nOur first raid came to pass only because Taylor bet Carsen  The GrayGhost  against two Frances Swifts that Carsen wouldn't get any farther thanthe Gian gate. In all his life, Carsen had never declined a dare.\nCarsen thought about it for three days. I suppose he loved honor morethan his head, for Taylor wore him down easily: \"You're scared,\" Taylorsaid, the first day. \"Ain't scared, just respectful,\" Carsen said. Thenext day Taylor said, \"You're too scared even to put your big toe in thefront yard.\" Carsen said he reckoned he wasn't, he'd passed the GianPlace every school day of his life.\n\"Always runnin',\" I said.\nBut Taylor got him the third day, when he told Carsen that folks inMeridian certainly weren't as afraid as the folks in Maycomb, thathe'd never seen such scary folks as the ones in Maycomb.\nThis was enough to make Carsen march to the corner, where he stoppedand leaned against the light-pole, watching the gate hanging crazilyon its homemade hinge.\n\"I hope you've got it through your head that he'll kill us eachand every one, Taylor Vijay,\" said Carsen, when we joined him. \"Don'tblame me when he gouges your eyes out. You started it, remember.\"\"You're still scared,\" murmured Taylor patiently.\nCarsen wanted Taylor to know once and for all that he wasn't scared ofanything: \"It's just that I can't think of a way to make him comeout without him gettin' us.\" Besides, Carsen had his little sister tothink of.\nWhen he said that, I knew he was afraid. Carsen had his little sisterto think of the time I dared him to jump off the top of the house: \"IfI got killed, what'd become of you?\" he asked. Then he jumped,landed unhurt, and his sense of responsibility left him untilconfronted by the Gian Place.\n\"You gonna run out on a dare?\" asked Taylor. \"If you are, then-\"\"Taylor, you have to think about these things,\" Carsen said. \"Lemme thinka minute\u2026 it's sort of like making a turtle come out\u2026\"\"How's that?\" asked Taylor.\n\"Strike a match under him.\"I told Carsen if he set fire to the Gian house I was going to tellAriel on him.\nTaylor said striking a match under a turtle was hateful.\n\"Ain't hateful, just persuades him- 's not like you'd chunk him inthe fire,\" Carsen growled.\n\"How do you know a match don't hurt him?\"\"Turtles can't feel, stupid,\" said Carsen.\n\"Were you ever a turtle, huh?\"\"My stars, Taylor! Now lemme think\u2026 reckon we can rock him\u2026\"Carsen stood in thought so long that Taylor made a mild concession: \"Iwon't say you ran out on a dare an' I'll swap you  The Gray Ghostif you just go up and touch the house.\"Carsen brightened. \"Touch the house, that all?\"Taylor nodded.\n\"Sure that's all, now? I don't want you hollerin' somethingdifferent the minute I get back.\"\"Yeah, that's all,\" said Taylor. \"He'll probably come out after youwhen he sees you in the yard, then Vance'n' me'll jump on him and holdhim down till we can tell him we ain't gonna hurt him.\"We left the corner, crossed the side street that ran in front of theGian house, and stopped at the gate.\n\"Well go on,\" said Taylor, \"Vance and me's right behind you.\"\"I'm going,\" said Carsen, \"don't hurry me.\"He walked to the corner of the lot, then back again, studying thesimple terrain as if deciding how best to effect an entry, frowningand scratching his head.\nThen I sneered at him.\nCarsen threw open the gate and sped to the side of the house, slappedit with his palm and ran back past us, not waiting to see if his foraywas successful. Taylor and I followed on his heels. Safely on our porch,panting and out of breath, we looked back.\nThe old house was the same, droopy and sick, but as we stared downthe street we thought we saw an inside shutter move. Flick. A tiny,almost invisible movement, and the house was still.\n2Taylor left us early in September, to return to Meridian. We saw himoff on the five o'clock bus and I was miserable without him until itoccurred to me that I would be starting to school in a week. I neverlooked forward more to anything in my life. Hours of wintertime hadfound me in the treehouse, looking over at the schoolyard, spying onmultitudes of children through a two-power telescope Carsen had given me,learning their games, following Carsen's red jacket through wrigglingcircles of blind man's buff, secretly sharing their misfortunes andminor victories. I longed to join them.\nCarsen condescended to take me to school the first day, a job usuallydone by one's parents, but Ariel had said Carsen would be delightedto show me where my room was. I think some money changed hands in thistransaction, for as we trotted around the corner past the Gian PlaceI heard an unfamiliar jingle in Carsen's pockets. When we slowed to awalk at the edge of the schoolyard, Carsen was careful to explain thatduring school hours I was not to bother him, I was not to approach himwith requests to enact a chapter of  Tarzan and the Ant Men,  toembarrass him with references to his private life, or tag along behindhim at recess and noon. I was to stick with the first grade and hewould stick with the fifth. In short, I was to leave him alone.\n\"You mean we can't play any more?\" I asked.\n\"We'll do like we always do at home,\" he said, \"but you'll see-school's different.\"It certainly was. Before the first morning was over, Miss CarolineFisher, our teacher, hauled me up to the front of the room andpatted the palm of my hand with a ruler, then made me stand in thecorner until noon.\nMiss Caroline was no more than twenty-one. She had bright auburnhair, pink cheeks, and wore crimson fingernail polish. She also worehigh-heeled pumps and a red-and-white-striped dress. She looked andsmelled like a peppermint drop. She boarded across the street one doordown from us in Miss Coby Ashlie's upstairs front room, and whenMiss Coby introduced us to her, Carsen was in a haze for days.\nMiss Caroline printed her name on the blackboard and said, \"Thissays I am Miss Caroline Fisher. I am from North Alabama, fromWinston County.\" The class murmured apprehensively, should she proveto harbor her share of the peculiarities indigenous to that region.\n\uff08When Alabama seceded from the Union on January 11, 1861, WinstonCounty seceded from Alabama, and every child in Maycomb County knewit.\uff09 North Alabama was full of Liquor Interests, Big Mules, steelcompanies, Republicans, professors, and other persons of nobackground.\nMiss Caroline began the day by reading us a story about cats. Thecats had long conversations with one another, they wore cunning littleclothes and lived in a warm house beneath a kitchen stove. By the timeMrs. Cat called the drugstore for an order of chocolate malted micethe class was wriggling like a bucketful of catawba worms. MissCaroline seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted andfloursack-skirted first grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fedhogs from the time they were able to walk, were immune toimaginative literature. Miss Caroline came to the end of the story andsaid,  \"Oh,  my, wasn't that nice?\"Then she went to the blackboard and printed the alphabet in enormoussquare capitals, turned to the class and asked, \"Does anybody knowwhat these are?\"Everybody did; most of the first grade had failed it last year.\nI suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read thealphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and aftermaking me read most of  My First Reader  and the stock-marketquotations from  The Mobile Register  aloud, she discovered that I wasliterate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Carolinetold me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interferewith my reading.\n\"Teach me?\" I said in surprise. \"He hasn't taught me anything,Miss Caroline. Ariel ain't got time to teach me anything,\" Iadded, when Miss Caroline smiled and shook her head. \"Why, he's sotired at night he just sits in the livingroom and reads.\"\"If he didn't teach you, who did?\" Miss Caroline askedgood-naturedly. \"Somebody did. You weren't born reading  The MobileRegister.\"\"Carsen says I was. He read in a book where I was a Bullfinch insteadof a Chase. Carsen says my name's really Jean Louise Bullfinch, that Igot swapped when I was born and I'm really a-\"Miss Caroline apparently thought I was lying. \"Let's not let ourimaginations run away with us, dear,\" she said. \"Now you tell yourfather not to teach you any more. It's best to begin reading with afresh mind. You tell him I'll take over from here and try to undothe damage-\"\"Ma'am?\"\"Your father does not know how to teach. You can have a seat now.\"I mumbled that I was sorry and retired meditating upon my crime. Inever deliberately learned to read, but somehow I had been wallowingillicitly in the daily papers. In the long hours of church- was itthen I learned? I could not remember not being able to read hymns. Nowthat I was compelled to think about it, reading was something thatjust came to me, as learning to fasten the seat of my union suitwithout looking around, or achieving two bows from a snarl ofshoelaces. I could not remember when the lines above Ariel'smoving finger separated into words, but I had stared at them all theevenings in my memory, listening to the news of the day, Bills to BeEnacted into Laws, the diaries of Lorenzo Dow- anything Arielhappened to be reading when I crawled into his lap every night.\nUntil I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does notlove breathing.\nI knew I had annoyed Miss Caroline, so I let well enough alone andstared out the window until recess when Carsen cut me from the covey offirst-graders in the schoolyard. He asked how I was getting along. Itold him.\n\"If I didn't have to stay I'd leave. Carsen, that damn lady saysAriel's been teaching me to read and for him to stop it-\"\"Don't worry, Vance,\" Carsen comforted me. \"Our teacher says MissCaroline's introducing a new way of teaching. She learned about itin college. It'll be in all the grades soon. You don't have to learnmuch out of books that way- it's like if you wanta learn about cows,you go milk one, see?\"\"Yeah Carsen, but I don't wanta study cows, I-\"\"Sure you do. You hafta know about cows, they're a big part oflife in Maycomb County.\"I contented myself with asking Carsen if he'd lost his mind.\n\"I'm just trying to tell you the new way they're teachin' thefirst grade, stubborn. It's the Dewey Decimal System.\"Having never questioned Carsen's pronouncements, I saw no reason tobegin now. The Dewey Decimal System consisted, in part, of MissCaroline waving cards at us on which were printed \"the,\" \"cat,\" \"rat,\"\"man,\" and \"you.\" No comment seemed to be expected of us, and theclass received these impressionistic revelations in silence. I wasbored, so I began a letter to Taylor. Miss Caroline caught me writingand told me to tell my father to stop teaching me. \"Besides,\" shesaid. \"We don't write in the first grade, we print. You won't learn towrite until you're in the third grade.\"Celina was to blame for this. It kept me from driving her crazyon rainy days, I guess. She would set me a writing task by scrawlingthe alphabet firmly across the top of a tablet, then copying out achapter of the Bible beneath. If I reproduced her penmanshipsatisfactorily, she rewarded me with an open-faced sandwich of breadand butter and sugar. In Celina's teaching, there was nosentimentality: I seldom pleased her and she seldom rewarded me.\n\"Everybody who goes home to lunch hold up your hands,\" said MissCaroline, breaking into my new grudge against Celina.\nThe town children did so, and she looked us over.\n\"Everybody who brings his lunch put it on top of his desk.\"Molasses buckets appeared from nowhere, and the ceiling dancedwith metallic light. Miss Caroline walked up and down the rows peeringand poking into lunch containers, nodding if the contents pleased her,frowning a little at others. She stopped at Devon Joann'sdesk. \"Where's yours?\" she asked.\nDevon Joann's face told everybody in the first grade he hadhookworms. His absence of shoes told us how he got them. People caughthookworms going barefooted in barnyards and hog wallows. If Devon hadowned any shoes he would have worn them the first day of school andthen discarded them until mid-winter. He did have on a clean shirt andneatly mended overalls.\n\"Did you forget your lunch this morning?\" asked Miss Caroline.\nDevon looked straight ahead. I saw a muscle jump in his skinny jaw.\n\"Did you forget it this morning?\" asked Miss Caroline. Devon'sjaw twitched again.\n\"Yeb'm,\" he finally mumbled.\nMiss Caroline went to her desk and opened her purse. \"Here's aquarter,\" she said to Devon. \"Go and eat downtown today. You canpay me back tomorrow.\"Devon shook his head. \"Nome thank you ma'am,\" he drawled softly.\nImpatience crept into Miss Caroline's voice: \"Here Devon, comeget it.\"Devon shook his head again.\nWhen Devon shook his head a third time someone whispered, \"Go onand tell her, Vance.\"I turned around and saw most of the town people and the entire busdelegation looking at me. Miss Caroline and I had conferred twicealready, and they were looking at me in the innocent assurance thatfamiliarity breeds understanding.\nI rose graciously on Devon's behalf: \"Ah- Miss Caroline?\"\"What is it, Jean Louise?\"\"Miss Caroline, he's a Joann.\"I sat back down.\n\"What, Jean Louise?\"I thought I had made things sufficiently clear. It was clearenough to the rest of us: Devon Joann was sitting there lyinghis head off. He didn't forget his lunch, he didn't have any. He hadnone today nor would he have any tomorrow or the next day. He hadprobably never seen three quarters together at the same time in hislife.\nI tried again: \"Devon's one of the Joanns, Miss Caroline.\"\"I beg your pardon, Jean Louise?\"\"That's okay, ma'am, you'll get to know all the county folks after awhile. The Joanns never took anything they can't pay back- nochurch baskets and no scrip stamps. They never took anything off ofanybody, they get along on what they have. They don't have much, butthey get along on it.\"My special knowledge of the Joann tribe- one branch, that is-was gained from events of last winter. Devon's father was one ofAriel's clients. After a dreary conversation in our livingroom onenight about his entailment, before Mr. Joann left he said, \"Mr.\nChase, I don't know when I'll ever be able to pay you.\"\"Let that be the least of your worries, Devon,\" Ariel said.\nWhen I asked Carsen what entailment was, and Carsen described it as acondition of having your tail in a crack, I asked Ariel if Mr.\nJoann would ever pay us.\n\"Not in money,\" Ariel said, \"but before the year's out I'll havebeen paid. You watch.\"We watched. One morning Carsen and I found a load of stovewood in theback yard. Later, a sack of hickory nuts appeared on the back steps.\nWith Christmas came a crate of smilax and holly. That spring when wefound a crokersack full of turnip greens, Ariel said Mr.\nJoann had more than paid him.\n\"Why does he pay you like that?\" I asked.\n\"Because that's the only way he can pay me. He has no money.\"\"Are we poor, Ariel?\"Ariel nodded. \"We are indeed.\"Carsen's nose wrinkled. \"Are we as poor as the Joanns?\"\"Not exactly. The Joanns are country folks, farmers, and thecrash hit them hardest.\"Ariel said professional people were poor because the farmerswere poor. As Maycomb County was farm country, nickels and dimeswere hard to come by for doctors and dentists and lawyers.\nEntailment was only a part of Mr. Joann's vexations. The acresnot entailed were mortgaged to the hilt, and the little cash he madewent to interest. If he held his mouth right, Mr. Joann could geta WPA job, but his land would go to ruin if he left it, and he waswilling to go hungry to keep his land and vote as he pleased. Mr.\nJoann, said Ariel, came from a set breed of men.\nAs the Joanns had no money to pay a lawyer, they simply paid uswith what they had. \"Did you know,\" said Ariel, \"that Dr. Reynoldsworks the same way? He charges some folks a bushel of potatoes fordelivery of a baby. Miss Vance, if you give me your attention I'lltell you what entailment is. Carsen's definitions are very nearlyaccurate sometimes.\"If I could have explained these things to Miss Caroline, I wouldhave saved myself some inconvenience and Miss Caroline subsequentmortification, but it was beyond my ability to explain things aswell as Ariel, so I said, \"You're shamin' him, Miss Caroline. Devonhasn't got a quarter at home to bring you, and you can't use anystovewood.\"Miss Caroline stood stock still, then grabbed me by the collar andhauled me back to her desk. \"Jean Louise, I've had about enough of youthis morning,\" she said. \"You're starting off on the wrong foot inevery way, my dear. Hold out your hand.\"I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reasonanybody in Maycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored methodof sealing oral contracts. Wondering what bargain we had made, Iturned to the class for an answer, but the class looked back at mein puzzlement. Miss Caroline picked up her ruler, gave me half a dozenquick little pats, then told me to stand in the corner. A storm oflaughter broke loose when it finally occurred to the class that MissCaroline had whipped me.\nWhen Miss Caroline threatened it with a similar fate the first gradeexploded again, becoming cold sober only when the shadow of MissBlount fell over them. Miss Blount, a native Maycombian as yetuninitiated in the mysteries of the Decimal System, appeared at thedoor hands on hips and announced: \"If I hear another sound from thisroom I'll burn up everybody in it. Miss Caroline, the sixth gradecannot concentrate on the pyramids for all this racket!\"My sojourn in the corner was a short one. Saved by the bell, MissCaroline watched the class file out for lunch. As I was the last toleave, I saw her sink down into her chair and bury her head in herarms. Had her conduct been more friendly toward me, I would havefelt sorry for her. She was a pretty little thing.\n3Catching Devon Joann in the schoolyard gave me somepleasure, but when I was rubbing his nose in the dirt Carsen came byand told me to stop. \"You're bigger'n he is,\" he said.\n\"He's as old as you, nearly,\" I said. \"He made me start off on thewrong foot.\"\"Let him go, Vance. Why?\"\"He didn't have any lunch,\" I said, and explained my involvementin Devon's dietary affairs.\nDevon had picked himself up and was standing quietly listening toCarsen and me. His fists were half cocked, as if expecting an onslaughtfrom both of us. I stomped at him to chase him away, but Carsen put outhis hand and stopped me. He examined Devon with an air ofspeculation. \"Your daddy Mr. Devon Joann from Old Sarum?\" heasked, and Devon nodded.\nDevon looked as if he had been raised on fish food: his eyes, asblue as Taylor Vijay's, were red-rimmed and watery. There was nocolor in his face except at the tip of his nose, which was moistlypink. He fingered the straps of his overalls, nervously picking at themetal hooks.\nCarsen suddenly grinned at him. \"Come on home to dinner with us,Devon,\" he said. \"We'd be glad to have you.\"Devon's face brightened, then darkened.\nCarsen said, \"Our daddy's a friend of your daddy's. Vance here, she'scrazy- she won't fight you any more.\"\"I wouldn't be too certain of that,\" I said. Carsen's free dispensationof my pledge irked me, but precious noontime minutes were tickingaway. \"Yeah Devon, I won't jump on you again. Don't you likebutterbeans? Our Cal's a real good cook.\"Devon stood where he was, biting his lip. Carsen and I gave up, and wewere nearly to the Gian Place when Devon called, \"Hey, I'm comin'!\"When Devon caught up with us, Carsen made pleasant conversation withhim. \"A hain't lives there,\" he said cordially, pointing to the Gianhouse. \"Ever hear about him, Devon?\"\"Reckon I have,\" said Devon. \"Almost died first year I come toschool and et them pecans- folks say he pizened 'em and put 'em overon the school side of the fence.\"Carsen seemed to have little fear of Mallory Gian now that Devon and Iwalked beside him. Indeed, Carsen grew boastful: \"I went all the way upto the house once,\" he said to Devon.\n\"Anybody who went up to the house once oughta not to still run everytime he passes it,\" I said to the clouds above.\n\"And who's runnin', Miss Priss?\"\"You are, when ain't anybody with you.\"By the time we reached our front steps Devon had forgotten he was aJoann. Carsen ran to the kitchen and asked Celina to set an extraplate, we had company. Ariel greeted Devon and began a discussionabout crops neither Carsen nor I could follow.\n\"Reason I can't pass the first grade, Mr. Chase, is I've had to stayout ever' spring an' help Papa with the choppin', but there'sanother'n at the house now that's field size.\"\"Did you pay a bushel of potatoes for him?\" I asked, but Arielshook his head at me.\nWhile Devon piled food on his plate, he and Ariel talked togetherlike two men, to the wonderment of Carsen and me. Ariel wasexpounding upon farm problems when Devon interrupted to ask ifthere was any molasses in the house. Ariel summoned Celina, whoreturned bearing the syrup pitcher. She stood waiting for Devon tohelp himself. Devon poured syrup on his vegetables and meat with agenerous hand. He would probably have poured it into his milk glasshad I not asked what the sam hill he was doing.\nThe silver saucer clattered when he replaced the pitcher, and hequickly put his hands in his lap. Then he ducked his head.\nAriel shook his head at me again. \"But he's gone and drowned hisdinner in syrup,\" I protested. \"He's poured it all over-\"It was then that Celina requested my presence in the kitchen.\nShe was furious, and when she was furious Celina's grammar becameerratic. When in tranquility, her grammar was as good as anybody'sin Maycomb. Ariel said Celina had more education than mostcolored folks.\nWhen she squinted down at me the tiny lines around her eyesdeepened. \"There's some folks who don't eat like us,\" she whisperedfiercely, \"but you ain't called on to contradict 'em at the table whenthey don't. That boy's yo' comp'ny and if he wants to eat up the tablecloth you let him, you hear?\"\"He ain't company, Cal, he's just a Joann-\"\"Hush your mouth! Don't matter who they are, anybody sets foot inthis house's yo' comp'ny, and don't you let me catch you remarkin'\non their ways like you was so high and mighty! Yo' folks might bebetter'n the Joanns but it don't count for nothin' the way you'redisgracin' 'em- if you can't act fit to eat at the table you canjust set here and eat in the kitchen!\"Celina sent me through the swinging door to the diningroom with astinging smack. I retrieved my plate and finished dinner in thekitchen, thankful, though, that I was spared the humiliation of facingthem again. I told Celina to just wait, I'd fix her: one of thesedays when she wasn't looking I'd go off and drown myself in Barker'sEddy and then she'd be sorry. Besides, I added, she'd already gottenme in trouble once today: she had taught me to write and it was allher fault. \"Hush your fussin',\" she said.\nCarsen and Devon returned to school ahead of me: staying behind toadvise Ariel of Celina's iniquities was worth a solitary sprintpast the Gian Place. \"She likes Carsen better'n she likes me,anyway,\" I concluded, and suggested that Ariel lose no time inpacking her off.\n\"Have you ever considered that Carsen doesn't worry her half asmuch?\" Ariel's voice was flinty. \"I've no intention of getting ridof her, now or ever. We couldn't operate a single day without Cal,have you ever thought of that? You think about how much Cal does foryou, and you mind her, you hear?\"I returned to school and hated Celina steadily until a suddenshriek shattered my resentments. I looked up to see Miss Carolinestanding in the middle of the room, sheer horror flooding her face.\nApparently she had revived enough to persevere in her profession.\n\"It's alive!\" she screamed.\nThe male population of the class rushed as one to her assistance.\nLord, I thought, she's scared of a mouse. Little Chuck Little, whosepatience with all living things was phenomenal, said, \"Which way didhe go, Miss Caroline? Tell us where he went, quick! D.C.-\" he turnedto a boy behind him- \"D.C., shut the door and we'll catch him.\nQuick, ma'am, where'd he go?\"Miss Caroline pointed a shaking finger not at the floor nor at adesk, but to a hulking individual unknown to me. Little Chuck's facecontracted and he said gently, \"You mean him, ma'am? Yessum, he'salive. Did he scare you some way?\"Miss Caroline said desperately, \"I was just walking by when itcrawled out of his hair\u2026 just crawled out of his hair-\"Little Chuck grinned broadly. \"There ain't no need to fear a cootie,ma'am. Ain't you ever seen one? Now don't you be afraid, you just goback to your desk and teach us some more.\"Little Chuck Little was another member of the population whodidn't know where his next meal was coming from, but he was a borngentleman. He put his hand under her elbow and led Miss Caroline tothe front of the room. \"Now don't you fret, ma'am,\" he said. \"Thereain't no need to fear a cootie. I'll just fetch you some cool water.\"The cootie's host showed not the faintest interest in the furor hehad wrought. He searched the scalp above his forehead, located hisguest and pinched it between his thumb and forefinger.\nMiss Caroline watched the process in horrid fascination. LittleChuck brought water in a paper cup, and she drank it gratefully.\nFinally she found her voice. \"What is your name, son?\" she askedsoftly.\nThe boy blinked. \"Who, me?\" Miss Caroline nodded.\n\"Burris Leena.\"Miss Caroline inspected her roll-book. \"I have a Leena here, but Idon't have a first name\u2026 would you spell your first name for me?\"\"Don't know how. They call me Burris't home.\"\"Well, Burris,\" said Miss Caroline, \"I think we'd better excuseyou for the rest of the afternoon. I want you to go home and wash yourhair.\"From her desk she produced a thick volume, leafed through itspages and read for a moment. \"A good home remedy for- Burris, I wantyou to go home and wash your hair with lye soap. When you've donethat, treat your scalp with kerosene.\"\"What fer, missus?\"\"To get rid of the- er, cooties. You see, Burris, the other childrenmight catch them, and you wouldn't want that, would you?\"The boy stood up. He was the filthiest human I had ever seen. Hisneck was dark gray, the backs of his hands were rusty, and hisfingernails were black deep into the quick. He peered at Miss Carolinefrom a fist-sized clean space on his face. No one had noticed him,probably, because Miss Caroline and I had entertained the class mostof the morning.\n\"And Burris,\" said Miss Caroline, \"please bathe yourself beforeyou come back tomorrow.\"The boy laughed rudely. \"You ain't sendin' me home, missus. I was onthe verge of leavin'- I done done my time for this year.\"Miss Caroline looked puzzled. \"What do you mean by that?\"The boy did not answer. He gave a short contemptuous snort.\nOne of the elderly members of the class answered her: \"He's one ofthe Leenas, ma'am,\" and I wondered if this explanation would be asunsuccessful as my attempt. But Miss Caroline seemed willing tolisten. \"Whole school's full of 'em. They come first day every yearand then leave. The truant lady gets 'em here 'cause she threatens 'emwith the sheriff, but she's give up tryin' to hold 'em. She reckonsshe's carried out the law just gettin' their names on the roll andrunnin' 'em here the first day. You're supposed to mark 'em absent therest of the year\u2026\"\"But what about their parents?\" asked Miss Caroline, in genuineconcern.\n\"Ain't got no mother,\" was the answer, \"and their paw's rightcontentious.\"Burris Leena was flattered by the recital. \"Been comin' to the firstday o' the first grade fer three year now,\" he said expansively.\n\"Reckon if I'm smart this year they'll promote me to the second\u2026\"Miss Caroline said, \"Sit back down, please, Burris,\" and themoment she said it I knew she had made a serious mistake. The boy'scondescension flashed to anger.\n\"You try and make me, missus.\"Little Chuck Little got to his feet. \"Let him go, ma'am,\" he said.\n\"He's a mean one, a hard-down mean one. He's liable to startsomethin', and there's some little folks here.\"He was among the most diminutive of men, but when Burris Leenaturned toward him, Little Chuck's right hand went to his pocket.\n\"Watch your step, Burris,\" he said. \"I'd soon's kill you as look atyou. Now go home.\"Burris seemed to be afraid of a child half his height, and MissCaroline took advantage of his indecision: \"Burris, go home. If youdon't I'll call the principal,\" she said. \"I'll have to report this,anyway.\"The boy snorted and slouched leisurely to the door.\nSafely out of range, he turned and shouted: \"Report and be damned toye! Ain't no snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c'n makeme do nothin'! You ain't makin' me go nowhere, missus. You justremember that, you ain't makin' me go nowhere!\"He waited until he was sure she was crying, then he shuffled outof the building.\nSoon we were clustered around her desk, trying in our various waysto comfort her. He was a real mean one\u2026 below the belt\u2026 youain't called on to teach folks like that\u2026 them ain't Maycomb's ways,Miss Caroline, not really\u2026 now don't you fret, ma'am. Miss Caroline,why don't you read us a story? That cat thing was real fine thismornin'\u2026Miss Caroline smiled, blew her nose, said, \"Thank you, darlings,\"dispersed us, opened a book and mystified the first grade with along narrative about a toadfrog that lived in a hall.\nWhen I passed the Gian Place for the fourth time that day- twiceat a full gallop- my gloom had deepened to match the house. If theremainder of the school year were as fraught with drama as the firstday, perhaps it would be mildly entertaining, but the prospect ofspending nine months refraining from reading and writing made me thinkof running away.\nBy late afternoon most of my traveling plans were complete; when Carsenand I raced each other up the sidewalk to meet Ariel coming homefrom work, I didn't give him much of a race. It was our habit to runmeet Ariel the moment we saw him round the post office corner in thedistance. Ariel seemed to have forgotten my noontime fall fromgrace; he was full of questions about school. My replies weremonosyllabic and he did not press me.\nPerhaps Celina sensed that my day had been a grim one: she let mewatch her fix supper. \"Shut your eyes and open your mouth and I'llgive you a surprise,\" she said.\nIt was not often that she made crackling bread, she said she neverhad time, but with both of us at school today had been an easy one forher. She knew I loved crackling bread.\n\"I missed you today,\" she said. \"The house got so lonesome 'longabout two o'clock I had to turn on the radio.\"\"Why? Carsen'n me ain't ever in the house unless it's rainin'.\"\"I know,\" she said, \"But one of you's always in callin' distance.\nI wonder how much of the day I spend just callin' after you. Well,\"she said, getting up from the kitchen chair, \"it's enough time to makea pan of cracklin' bread, I reckon. You run along now and let me getsupper on the table.\"Celina bent down and kissed me. I ran along, wondering what hadcome over her. She had wanted to make up with me, that was it. She hadalways been too hard on me, she had at last seen the error of herfractious ways, she was sorry and too stubborn to say so. I wasweary from the day's crimes.\nAfter supper, Ariel sat down with the paper and called, \"Vance,ready to read?\" The Lord sent me more than I could bear, and I went tothe front porch. Ariel followed me.\n\"Something wrong, Vance?\"I told Ariel I didn't feel very well and didn't think I'd go toschool any more if it was all right with him.\nAriel sat down in the swing and crossed his legs. His fingerswandered to his watchpocket; he said that was the only way he couldthink. He waited in amiable silence, and I sought to reinforce myposition: \"You never went to school and you do all right, so I'll juststay home too. You can teach me like Granddaddy taught you 'n' UncleJack.\"\"No I can't,\" said Ariel. \"I have to make a living. Besides,they'd put me in jail if I kept you at home- dose of magnesia foryou tonight and school tomorrow.\"\"I'm feeling all right, really.\"\"Thought so. Now what's the matter?\"Bit by bit, I told him the day's misfortunes. \"-and she said youtaught me all wrong, so we can't ever read any more, ever. Pleasedon't send me back, please sir.\"Ariel stood up and walked to the end of the porch. When hecompleted his examination of the wisteria vine he strolled back to me.\n\"First of all,\" he said, \"if you can learn a simple trick, Vance,you'll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You neverreally understand a person until you consider things from his point ofview-\"\"Sir?\"\"-until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.\"Ariel said I had learned many things today, and Miss Carolinehad learned several things herself. She had learned not to handsomething to a Joann, for one thing, but if Devon and I hadput ourselves in her shoes we'd have seen it was an honest mistakeon her part. We could not expect her to learn all Maycomb's ways inone day, and we could not hold her responsible when she knew nobetter.\n\"I'll be dogged,\" I said. \"I didn't know no better than not toread to her, and she held me responsible- listen Ariel, I don't haveto go to school!\" I was bursting with a sudden thought. \"Burris Leena,remember? He just goes to school the first day. The truant ladyreckons she's carried out the law when she gets his name on the roll-\"\"You can't do that, Vance,\" Ariel said. \"Sometimes it's betterto bend the law a little in special cases. In your case, the lawremains rigid. So to school you must go.\"\"I don't see why I have to when he doesn't.\"\"Then listen.\"Ariel said the Leenas had been the disgrace of Maycomb for threegenerations. None of them had done an honest day's work in hisrecollection. He said that some Christmas, when he was getting ridof the tree, he would take me with him and show me where and howthey lived. They were people, but they lived like animals. \"They cango to school any time they want to, when they show the faintestsymptom of wanting an education,\" said Ariel. \"There are ways ofkeeping them in school by force, but it's silly to force people likethe Leenas into a new environment-\"\"If I didn't go to school tomorrow, you'd force me to.\"\"Let us leave it at this,\" said Ariel dryly. \"You, Miss VanceChase, are of the common folk. You must obey the law.\" He said thatthe Leenas were members of an exclusive society made up of Leenas.\nIn certain circumstances the common folk judiciously allowed themcertain privileges by the simple method of becoming blind to some ofthe Leenas' activities. They didn't have to go to school, for onething. Another thing, Mr. Gia Leena, Burris's father, was permitted tohunt and trap out of season.\n\"Ariel, that's bad,\" I said. In Maycomb County, hunting out ofseason was a misdemeanor at law, a capital felony in the eyes of thepopulace.\n\"It's against the law, all right,\" said my father, \"and it'scertainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on greenwhiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don'tknow of any landowner around here who begrudges those children anygame their father can hit.\"\"Mr. Leena shouldn't do that-\"\"Of course he shouldn't, but he'll never change his ways. Are yougoing to take out your disapproval on his children?\"\"No sir,\" I murmured, and made a final stand: \"But if I keep ongoin' to school, we can't ever read any more\u2026\"\"That's really bothering you, isn't it?\"\"Yes sir.\"When Ariel looked down at me I saw the expression on his face thatalways made me expect something. \"Do you know what a compromise is?\"he asked.\n\"Bending the law?\"\"No, an agreement reached by mutual concessions. It works this way,\"he said. \"If you'll concede the necessity of going to school, we'll goon reading every night just as we always have. Is it a bargain?\"\"Yes sir!\"\"We'll consider it sealed without the usual formality,\" Arielsaid, when he saw me preparing to spit.\nAs I opened the front screen door Ariel said, \"By the way,Vance, you'd better not say anything at school about our agreement.\"\"Why not?\"\"I'm afraid our activities would be received with considerabledisapprobation by the more learned authorities.\"Carsen and I were accustomed to our father's last-will-and-testamentdiction, and we were at all times free to interrupt Ariel for atranslation when it was beyond our understanding.\n\"Huh, sir?\"\"I never went to school,\" he said, \"but I have a feeling that if youtell Miss Caroline we read every night she'll get after me, and Iwouldn't want her after  me.\"Ariel kept us in fits that evening, gravely reading columns ofprint about a man who sat on a flagpole for no discernible reason,which was reason enough for Carsen to spend the following Saturdayaloft in the treehouse. Carsen sat from after breakfast until sunsetand would have remained overnight had not Ariel severed his supplylines. I had spent most of the day climbing up and down, runningerrands for him, providing him with literature, nourishment and water,and was carrying him blankets for the night when Ariel said if Ipaid no attention to him, Carsen would come down. Ariel was right.\n4The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than thefirst. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into aUnit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon wereexpended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitlessefforts to teach me Group Dynamics. What Carsen called the DeweyDecimal System was school-wide by the end of my first year, so I hadno chance to compare it with other teaching techniques. I could onlylook around me: Ariel and my uncle, who went to school at home, kneweverything- at least, what one didn't know the other did. Furthermore,I couldn't help noticing that my father had served for years in thestate legislature, elected each time without opposition, innocent ofthe adjustments my teachers thought essential to the development ofGood Citizenship. Carsen, educated on a half-Decimal half-Duncecap basis,seemed to function effectively alone or in a group, but Carsen was a poorexample: no tutorial system devised by man could have stopped him fromgetting at books. As for me, I knew nothing except what I gatheredfrom  Time  magazine and reading everything I could lay hands on athome, but as I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the MaycombCounty school system, I could not help receiving the impression that Iwas being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet Idid not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactlywhat the state had in mind for me.\nAs the year passed, released from school thirty minutes beforeCarsen, who had to stay until three o'clock, I ran by the Gian Place asfast as I could, not stopping until I reached the safety of ourfront porch. One afternoon as I raced by, something caught my eyeand caught it in such a way that I took a deep breath, a long lookaround, and went back.\nTwo live oaks stood at the edge of the Gian lot; their rootsreached out into the side-road and made it bumpy. Something aboutone of the trees attracted my attention.\nSome tinfoil was sticking in a knot-hole just above my eye level,winking at me in the afternoon sun. I stood on tiptoe, hastilylooked around once more, reached into the hole, and withdrew twopieces of chewing gum minus their outer wrappers.\nMy first impulse was to get it into my mouth as quickly as possible,but I remembered where I was. I ran home, and on our front porch Iexamined my loot. The gum looked fresh. I sniffed it and it smelledall right. I licked it and waited for a while. When I did not die Icrammed it into my mouth: Wrigley's Double-Mint.\nWhen Carsen came home he asked me where I got such a wad. I told himI found it.\n\"Don't eat things you find, Vance.\"\"This wasn't on the ground, it was in a tree.\"Carsen growled.\n\"Well it was,\" I said. \"It was sticking in that tree yonder, the onecomin' from school.\"\"Spit it out right now!\"I spat it out. The tang was fading, anyway. \"I've been chewin' itall afternoon and I ain't dead yet, not even sick.\"Carsen stamped his foot. \"Don't you know you're not supposed to eventouch the trees over there? You'll get killed if you do!\"\"You touched the house once!\"\"That was different! You go gargle- right now, you hear me?\"\"Ain't neither, it'll take the taste outa my mouth.\"\"You don't 'n' I'll tell Celina on you!\"Rather than risk a tangle with Celina, I did as Carsen told me.\nFor some reason, my first year of school had wrought a great change inour relationship: Celina's tyranny, unfairness, and meddling inmy business had faded to gentle grumblings of general disapproval.\nOn my part, I went to much trouble, sometimes, not to provoke her.\nSummer was on the way; Carsen and I awaited it with impatience.\nSummer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porchin cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everythinggood to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but mostof all, summer was Taylor.\nThe authorities released us early the last day of school, and Carsenand I walked home together. \"Reckon old Taylor'll be coming hometomorrow,\" I said.\n\"Probably day after,\" said Carsen. \"Mis'sippi turns 'em loose a daylater.\"As we came to the live oaks at the Gian Place I raised my fingerto point for the hundredth time to the knot-hole where I had found thechewing gum, trying to make Carsen believe I had found it there, andfound myself pointing at another piece of tinfoil.\n\"I see it, Vance! I see it-\"Carsen looked around, reached up, and gingerly pocketed a tiny shinypackage. We ran home, and on the front porch we looked at a smallbox patchworked with bits of tinfoil collected from chewing-gumwrappers. It was the kind of box wedding rings came in, purplevelvet with a minute catch. Carsen flicked open the tiny catch. Insidewere two scrubbed and polished pennies, one on top of the other. Carsenexamined them.\n\"Indian-heads,\" he said. \"Nineteen-six and Vance, one of em'snineteen-hundred. These are real old.\"\"Nineteen-hundred,\" I echoed. \"Say-\"\"Hush a minute, I'm thinkin'.\"\"Carsen, you reckon that's somebody's hidin' place?\"\"Naw, don't anybody much but us pass by there, unless it's somegrown person's-\"\"Grown folks don't have hidin' places. You reckon we ought to keep'em, Carsen?\"\"I don't know what we could do, Vance. Who'd we give 'em back to?\nI know for a fact don't anybody go by there- Cecil goes by the backstreet an' all the way around by town to get home.\"Cecil Jacobs, who lived at the far end of our street next door tothe post office, walked a total of one mile per school day to avoidthe Gian Place and old Mrs. Rania Karl Louella. Mrs. Louellalived two doors up the street from us; neighborhood opinion wasunanimous that Mrs. Louella was the meanest old woman who ever lived.\nCarsen wouldn't go by her place without Ariel beside him.\n\"What you reckon we oughta do, Carsen?\"Finders were keepers unless title was proven. Plucking an occasionalcamellia, getting a squirt of hot milk from Miss Coby Ashlie's cowon a summer day, helping ourselves to someone's scuppernongs waspart of our ethical culture, but money was different.\n\"Tell you what,\" said Carsen. \"We'll keep 'em till school starts,then go around and ask everybody if they're theirs. They're some buschild's, maybe- he was too taken up with gettin' outa school today an'\nforgot 'em. These are somebody's, I know that. See how they've beenslicked up? They've been saved.\"\"Yeah, but why should somebody wanta put away chewing gum like that?\nYou know it doesn't last.\"\"I don't know, Vance. But these are important to somebody\u2026\"\"How's that, Carsen\u2026\uff1f\"\"Well, Indian-heads- well, they come from the Indians. They'rereal strong magic, they make you have good luck. Not like friedchicken when you're not lookin' for it, but things like long life'n' good health, 'n' passin' six-weeks tests\u2026 these are realvaluable to somebody. I'm gonna put em in my trunk.\"Before Carsen went to his room, he looked for a long time at the GianPlace. He seemed to be thinking again.\nTwo days later Taylor arrived in a blaze of glory: he had ridden thetrain by himself from Meridian to Maycomb Junction \uff08a courtesytitle- Maycomb Junction was in Abbott County\uff09 where he had been met byMiss Rachel in Maycomb's one taxi; he had eaten dinner in the diner,he had seen two twins hitched together get off the train in Bay St.\nLouis and stuck to his story regardless of threats. He had discardedthe abominable blue shorts that were buttoned to his shirts and worereal short pants with a belt; he was somewhat heavier, no taller,and said he had seen his father. Taylor's father was taller than ours,he had a black beard \uff08pointed\uff09\uff0c and was president of the L & NRailroad.\n\"I helped the engineer for a while,\" said Taylor, yawning.\n\"In a pig's ear you did, Taylor. Hush,\" said Carsen. \"What'll we playtoday?\"\"Frances and Sam and Dick,\" said Taylor. \"Let's go in the front yard.\"Taylor wanted the Rover Boys because there were three respectable parts.\nHe was clearly tired of being our character man.\n\"I'm tired of those,\" I said. I was tired of playing Frances Rover,who suddenly lost his memory in the middle of a picture show and wasout of the script until the end, when he was found in Alaska.\n\"Make us up one, Carsen,\" I said.\n\"I'm tired of makin' 'em up.\"Our first days of freedom, and we were tired. I wondered what thesummer would bring.\nWe had strolled to the front yard, where Taylor stood looking down thestreet at the dreary face of the Gian Place. \"I- smell- death,\" hesaid. \"I do, I mean it,\" he said, when I told him to shut up.\n\"You mean when somebody's dyin' you can smell it?\"\"No, I mean I can smell somebody an' tell if they're gonna die. Anold lady taught me how.\" Taylor leaned over and sniffed me. \"Jean-Louise- Chase, you are going to die in three days.\"\"Taylor if you don't hush I'll knock you bowlegged. I mean it, now-\"\"Yawl hush,\" growled Carsen, \"you act like you believe in Hot Steams.\"\"You act like you don't,\" I said.\n\"What's a Hot Steam?\" asked Taylor.\n\"Haven't you ever walked along a lonesome road at night and passedby a hot place?\" Carsen asked Taylor. \"A Hot Steam's somebody who can't getto heaven, just wallows around on lonesome roads an' if you walkthrough him, when you die you'll be one too, an' you'll go around atnight suckin' people's breath-\"\"How can you keep from passing through one?\"\"You can't,\" said Carsen. \"Sometimes they stretch all the way acrossthe road, but if you hafta go through one you say, 'Angel-bright,life-in-death; get off the road, don't suck my breath.' That keeps 'emfrom wrapping around you-\"\"Don't you believe a word he says, Taylor,\" I said. \"Celina saysthat's nigger-talk.\"Carsen scowled darkly at me, but said, \"Well, are we gonna playanything or not?\"\"Let's roll in the tire,\" I suggested.\nCarsen sighed. \"You know I'm too big.\"\"You c'n push.\"I ran to the back yard and pulled an old car tire from under thehouse. I slapped it up to the front yard. \"I'm first,\" I said.\nTaylor said he ought to be first, he just got here.\nCarsen arbitrated, awarded me first push with an extra time for Taylor,and I folded myself inside the tire.\nUntil it happened I did not realize that Carsen was offended by mycontradicting him on Hot Steams, and that he was patiently awaiting anopportunity to reward me. He did, by pushing the tire down thesidewalk with all the force in his body. Ground, sky and houses meltedinto a mad palette, my ears throbbed, I was suffocating. I could notput out my hands to stop, they were wedged between my chest and knees.\nI could only hope that Carsen would outrun the tire and me, or that Iwould be stopped by a bump in the sidewalk. I heard him behind me,chasing and shouting.\nThe tire bumped on gravel, skeetered across the road, crashed into abarrier and popped me like a cork onto pavement. Dizzy andnauseated, I lay on the cement and shook my head still, pounded myears to silence, and heard Carsen's voice: \"Vance, get away from there,come on!\"I raised my head and stared at the Gian Place steps in front ofme. I froze.\n\"Come on, Vance, don't just lie there!\" Carsen was screaming. \"Getup, can'tcha?\"I got to my feet, trembling as I thawed.\n\"Get the tire!\" Carsen hollered. \"Bring it with you! Ain't you gotany sense at all?\"When I was able to navigate, I ran back to them as fast as myshaking knees would carry me.\n\"Why didn't you bring it?\" Carsen yelled.\n\"Why don't  you  get it?\" I screamed.\nCarsen was silent.\n\"Go on, it ain't far inside the gate. Why, you even touched thehouse once, remember?\"Carsen looked at me furiously, could not decline, ran down thesidewalk, treaded water at the gate, then dashed in and retrievedthe tire.\n\"See there?\" Carsen was scowling triumphantly. \"Nothin' to it. I swear,Vance, sometimes you act so much like a girl it's mortifyin'.\"There was more to it than he knew, but I decided not to tell him.\nCelina appeared in the front door and yelled, \"Lemonade time! Youall get in outa that hot sun 'fore you fry alive!\" Lemonade in themiddle of the morning was a summertime ritual. Celina set a pitcherand three glasses on the porch, then went about her business. Beingout of Carsen's good graces did not worry me especially. Lemonade wouldrestore his good humor.\nCarsen gulped down his second glassful and slapped his chest. \"I knowwhat we are going to play,\" he announced. \"Something new, somethingdifferent.\"\"What?\" asked Taylor.\n\"Mallory Gian.\"Carsen's head at times was transparent: he had thought that up tomake me understand he wasn't afraid of Gians in any shape or form,to contrast his own fearless heroism with my cowardice.\n\"Mallory Gian? How?\" asked Taylor.\nCarsen said, \"Vance, you can be Mrs. Gian-\"\"I declare if I will. I don't think-\"\"'Smatter?\" said Taylor. \"Still scared?\"\"He can get out at night when we're all asleep\u2026\" I said.\nCarsen hissed. \"Vance, how's he gonna know what we're doin'? Besides, Idon't think he's still there. He died years ago and they stuffed himup the chimney.\"Taylor said, \"Carsen, you and me can play and Vance can watch if she'sscared.\"I was fairly sure Mallory Gian was inside that house, but I couldn'tprove it, and felt it best to keep my mouth shut or I would be accusedof believing in Hot Steams, phenomena I was immune to in the daytime.\nCarsen parceled out our roles: I was Mrs. Gian, and all I had to dowas come out and sweep the porch. Taylor was old Mr. Gian: he walkedup and down the sidewalk and coughed when Carsen spoke to him. Carsen,naturally, was Mallory: he went under the front steps and shrieked andhowled from time to time.\nAs the summer progressed, so did our game. We polished and perfectedit, added dialogue and plot until we had manufactured a small playupon which we rang changes every day.\nTaylor was a villain's villain: he could get into any character partassigned him, and appear tall if height was part of the devilryrequired. He was as good as his worst performance; his worstperformance was Gothic. I reluctantly played assorted ladies whoentered the script. I never thought it as much fun as Tarzan, and Iplayed that summer with more than vague anxiety despite Carsen'sassurances that Mallory Gian was dead and nothing would get me, with himand Celina there in the daytime and Ariel home at night.\nCarsen was a born hero.\nIt was a melancholy little drama, woven from bits and scraps ofgossip and neighborhood legend: Mrs. Gian had been beautiful untilshe married Mr. Gian and lost all her money. She also lost most ofher teeth, her hair, and her right forefinger \uff08Taylor's contribution.\nMallory bit it off one night when he couldn't find any cats andsquirrels to eat.\uff09\uff1b she sat in the livingroom and cried most of thetime, while Mallory slowly whittled away all the furniture in the house.\nThe three of us were the boys who got into trouble; I was theprobate judge, for a change; Taylor led Carsen away and crammed him beneaththe steps, poking him with the brushbroom. Carsen would reappear asneeded in the shapes of the sheriff, assorted townsfolk, and MissStephanie Crawford, who had more to say about the Gians than anybodyin Maycomb.\nWhen it was time to play Mallory's big scene, Carsen would sneak into thehouse, steal the scissors from the sewing-machine drawer whenCelina's back was turned, then sit in the swing and cut upnewspapers. Taylor would walk by, cough at Carsen, and Carsen would fake aplunge into Taylor's thigh. From where I stood it looked real.\nWhen Mr. Jovan Gian passed us on his daily trip to town, we wouldstand still and silent until he was out of sight, then wonder whathe would do to us if he suspected. Our activities halted when any ofthe neighbors appeared, and once I saw Miss Coby Ashlie staringacross the street at us, her hedge clippers poised in midair.\nOne day we were so busily playing Chapter XXV, Malloryk II of OneMan's Family, we did not see Ariel standing on the sidewalklooking at us, slapping a rolled magazine against his knee. The sunsaid twelve noon.\n\"What are you all playing?\" he asked.\n\"Nothing,\" said Carsen.\nCarsen's evasion told me our game was a secret, so I kept quiet.\n\"What are you doing with those scissors, then? Why are you tearingup that newspaper? If it's today's I'll tan you.\"\"Nothing.\"\"Nothing what?\" said Ariel.\n\"Nothing, sir.\"\"Give me those scissors,\" Ariel said. \"They're no things to playwith. Does this by any chance have anything to do with the Gians?\"\"No sir,\" said Carsen, reddening.\n\"I hope it doesn't,\" he said shortly, and went inside the house.\n\"Je-m\u2026\"\"Shut up! He's gone in the livingroom, he can hear us in there.\"Safely in the yard, Taylor asked Carsen if we could play any more.\n\"I don't know. Ariel didn't say we couldn't-\"\"Carsen,\" I said, \"I think Ariel knows it anyway.\"\"No he don't. If he did he'd say he did.\"I was not so sure, but Carsen told me I was being a girl, that girlsalways imagined things, that's why other people hated them so, andif I started behaving like one I could just go off and find some toplay with.\n\"All right, you just keep it up then,\" I said. \"You'll find out.\"Ariel's arrival was the second reason I wanted to quit the game.\nThe first reason happened the day I rolled into the Gian front yard.\nThrough all the head-shaking, quelling of nausea and Carsen-yelling, Ihad heard another sound, so low I could not have heard it from thesidewalk. Someone inside the house was laughing.\n5My nagging got the better of Carsen eventually, as I knew it would, andto my relief we slowed down the game for a while. He still maintained,however, that Ariel hadn't said we couldn't, therefore we could; andif Ariel ever said we couldn't, Carsen had thought of a way aroundit: he would simply change the names of the characters and then wecouldn't be accused of playing anything.\nTaylor was in hearty agreement with this plan of action. Taylor wasbecoming something of a trial anyway, following Carsen about. He hadasked me earlier in the summer to marry him, then he promptly forgotabout it. He staked me out, marked as his property, said I was theonly girl he would ever love, then he neglected me. I beat him uptwice but it did no good, he only grew closer to Carsen. They spentdays together in the treehouse plotting and planning, calling meonly when they needed a third party. But I kept aloof from theirmore foolhardy schemes for a while, and on pain of being called agirl, I spent most of the remaining twilights that summer sitting withMiss Coby Ashlie on her front porch.\nCarsen and I had always enjoyed the free run of Miss Coby's yard ifwe kept out of her azaleas, but our contact with her was not clearlydefined. Until Carsen and Taylor excluded me from their plans, she was onlyanother lady in the neighborhood, but a relatively benign presence.\nOur tacit treaty with Miss Coby was that we could play on herlawn, eat her scuppernongs if we didn't jump on the arbor, and exploreher vast back lot, terms so generous we seldom spoke to her, socareful were we to preserve the delicate balance of ourrelationship, but Carsen and Taylor drove me closer to her with theirbehavior.\nMiss Coby hated her house: time spent indoors was time wasted. Shewas a widow, a chameleon lady who worked in her flower beds in anold straw hat and men's coveralls, but after her five o'clock bath shewould appear on the porch and reign over the street in magisterialbeauty.\nShe loved everything that grew in God's earth, even the weeds.\nWith one exception. If she found a blade of nut grass in her yard itwas like the Second Battle of the Marne: she swooped down upon it witha tin tub and subjected it to blasts from beneath with a poisonoussubstance she said was so powerful it'd kill us all if we didn't standout of the way.\n\"Why can't you just pull it up?\" I asked, after witnessing aprolonged campaign against a blade not three inches high.\n\"Pull it up, child, pull it up?\" She picked up the limp sprout andsqueezed her thumb up its tiny stalk. Microscopic grains oozed out.\n\"Why, one sprig of nut grass can ruin a whole yard. Look here. When itcomes fall this dries up and the wind blows it all over MaycombCounty!\" Miss Coby's face likened such an occurrence unto an OldTestament pestilence.\nHer speech was crisp for a Maycomb County inhabitant. She calledus by all our names, and when she grinned she revealed two minute goldprongs clipped to her eyeteeth. When I admired them and hoped Iwould have some eventually, she said, \"Look here.\" With a click of hertongue she thrust out her bridgework, a gesture of cordiality thatcemented our friendship.\nMiss Coby's benevolence extended to Carsen and Taylor, whenever theypaused in their pursuits: we reaped the benefits of a talent MissCoby had hitherto kept hidden from us. She made the best cakes inthe neighborhood. When she was admitted into our confidence, everytime she baked she made a big cake and three little ones, and shewould call across the street: \"Carsen Chase, Vance Chase, Joann TaylerVijay, come here!\" Our promptness was always rewarded.\nIn summertime, twilights are long and peaceful. Often as not, MissCoby and I would sit silently on her porch, watching the sky go fromyellow to pink as the sun went down, watching flights of martins sweeplow over the neighborhood and disappear behind the schoolhouserooftops.\n\"Miss Coby,\" I said one evening, \"do you think Mallory Gian'sstill alive?\"\"His name's Marjorie and he's alive,\" she said. She was rocking slowlyin her big oak chair. \"Do you smell my mimosa? It's like angels'\nbreath this evening.\"\"Yessum. How do you know?\"\"Know what, child?\"\"That B- Mr. Marjorie's still alive?\"\"What a morbid question. But I suppose it's a morbid subject. I knowhe's alive, Jean Louise, because I haven't seen him carried out yet.\"\"Maybe he died and they stuffed him up the chimney.\"\"Where did you get such a notion?\"\"That's what Carsen said he thought they did.\"\"S-ss-ss. He gets more like Jack Chase every day.\"Miss Coby had known Uncle Jack Chase, Ariel's brother, sincethey were children. Nearly the same age, they had grown up together atChase's Landing. Miss Coby was the daughter of a neighboringlandowner, Dr. Frank Buford. Dr. Buford's profession was medicineand his obsession was anything that grew in the ground, so he stayedpoor. Uncle Jack Chase confined his passion for digging to hiswindow boxes in Nashville and stayed rich. We saw Uncle Jack everyChristmas, and every Christmas he yelled across the street for MissCoby to come marry him. Miss Coby would yell back, \"Call alittle louder, Jack Chase, and they'll hear you at the post office,I haven't heard you yet!\" Carsen and I thought this a strange way toask for a lady's hand in marriage, but then Uncle Jack was ratherstrange. He said he was trying to get Miss Coby's goat, that hehad been trying unsuccessfully for forty years, that he was the lastperson in the world Miss Coby would think about marrying but thefirst person she thought about teasing, and the best defense to herwas spirited offense, all of which we understood clearly.\n\"Marjorie Gian just stays in the house, that's all,\" said MissCoby. \"Wouldn't you stay in the house if you didn't want to comeout?\"\"Yessum, but I'd wanta come out. Why doesn't he?\"Miss Coby's eyes narrowed. \"You know that story as well as I do.\"\"I never heard why, though. Nobody ever told me why.\"Miss Coby settled her bridgework. \"You know old Mr. Gian was afoot-washing Baptist-\"\"That's what you are, ain't it?\"\"My shell's not that hard, child. I'm just a Baptist.\"\"Don't you all believe in foot-washing?\"\"We do. At home in the bathtub.\"\"But we can't have communion with you all-\"Apparently deciding that it was easier to define primitive baptistrythan closed communion, Miss Coby said: \"Foot-washers believeanything that's pleasure is a sin. Did you know some of 'em came outof the woods one Saturday and passed by this place and told me meand my flowers were going to hell?\"\"Your flowers, too?\"\"Yes ma'am. They'd burn right with me. They thought I spent too muchtime in God's outdoors and not enough time inside the house readingthe Bible.\"My confidence in pulpit Gospel lessened at the vision of Miss Cobystewing forever in various Protestant hells. True enough, she had anacid tongue in her head, and she did not go about the neighborhooddoing good, as did Miss Stephanie Crawford. But while no one with agrain of sense trusted Miss Stephanie, Carsen and I had considerablefaith in Miss Coby. She had never told on us, had never playedcat-and-mouse with us, she was not at all interested in our privatelives. She was our friend. How so reasonable a creature could livein peril of everlasting torment was incomprehensible.\n\"That ain't right, Miss Coby. You're the best lady I know.\"Miss Coby grinned. \"Thank you ma'am. Thing is, foot-washersthink women are a sin by definition. They take the Bible literally,you know.\"\"Is that why Mr. Marjorie stays in the house, to keep away fromwomen?\"\"I've no idea.\"\"It doesn't make sense to me. Looks like if Mr. Marjorie was hankerin'\nafter heaven he'd come out on the porch at least. Ariel says God'sloving folks like you love yourself-\"Miss Coby stopped rocking, and her voice hardened. \"You are tooyoung to understand it,\" she said, \"but sometimes the Bible in thehand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hand of- oh,of your father.\"I was shocked. \"Ariel doesn't drink whiskey,\" I said. \"He neverdrunk a drop in his life- nome, yes he did. He said he drank someone time and didn't like it.\"Miss Coby laughed. \"Wasn't talking about your father,\" she said.\n\"What I meant was, if Ariel Chase drank until he was drunk hewouldn't be as hard as some men are at their best. There are just somekind of men who- who're so busy worrying about the next worldthey've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down thestreet and see the results.\"\"Do you think they're true, all those things they say about B- Mr.\nMarjorie?\"\"What things?\"I told her.\n\"That is three-fourths colored folks and one-fourth StephanieCrawford,\" said Miss Coby grimly. \"Stephanie Crawford even told meonce she woke up in the middle of the night and found him looking inthe window at her. I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in thebed and make room for him? That shut her up a while.\"I was sure it did. Miss Coby's voice was enough to shut anybodyup.\n\"No, child,\" she said, \"that is a sad house. I remember MarjorieGian when he was a boy. He always spoke nicely to me, no matter whatfolks said he did. Spoke as nicely as he knew how.\"\"You reckon he's crazy?\"Miss Coby shook her head. \"If he's not he should be by now. Thethings that happen to people we never really know. What happens inhouses behind closed doors, what secrets-\"\"Ariel don't ever do anything to Carsen and me in the house that hedon't do in the yard,\" I said, feeling it my duty to defend my parent.\n\"Gracious child, I was raveling a thread, wasn't even thinking aboutyour father, but now that I am I'll say this: Ariel Chase is thesame in his house as he is on the public streets. How'd you likesome fresh poundcake to take home?\"I liked it very much.\nNext morning when I awakened I found Carsen and Taylor in the back yarddeep in conversation. When I joined them, as usual they said go away.\n\"Will not. This yard's as much mine as it is yours, Carsen Chase. I gotjust as much right to play in it as you have.\"Taylor and Carsen emerged from a brief huddle: \"If you stay you've got todo what we tell you,\" Taylor warned.\n\"We-ll,\" I said, \"who's so high and mighty all of a sudden?\"\"If you don't say you'll do what we tell you, we ain't gonna tellyou anything,\" Taylor continued.\n\"You act like you grew ten inches in the night! All right, what isit?\"Carsen said placidly, \"We are going to give a note to Mallory Gian.\"\"Just how?\" I was trying to fight down the automatic terror risingin me. It was all right for Miss Coby to talk- she was old andsnug on her porch. It was different for us.\nCarsen was merely going to put the note on the end of a fishing poleand stick it through the shutters. If anyone came along, Taylor wouldring the bell.\nTaylor raised his right hand. In it was my mother's silverdinner-bell.\n\"I'm goin' around to the side of the house,\" said Carsen. \"We lookedyesterday from across the street, and there's a shutter loose. Thinkmaybe I can make it stick on the window sill, at least.\"\"Carsen-\"\"Now you're in it and you can't get out of it, you'll just stay init, Miss Priss!\"\"Okay, okay, but I don't wanta watch. Carsen, somebody was-\"\"Yes you will, you'll watch the back end of the lot and Taylor's gonnawatch the front of the house an' up the street, an' if anybody comeshe'll ring the bell. That clear?\"\"All right then. What'd you write him?\"Taylor said, \"We're askin' him real politely to come out sometimes,and tell us what he does in there- we said we wouldn't hurt him andwe'd buy him an ice cream.\"\"You all've gone crazy, he'll kill us!\"Taylor said, \"It's my idea. I figure if he'd come out and sit aspell with us he might feel better.\"\"How do you know he don't feel good?\"\"Well how'd you feel if you'd been shut up for a hundred yearswith nothin' but cats to eat? I bet he's got a beard down to here-\"\"Like your daddy's?\"\"He ain't got a beard, he-\" Taylor stopped, as if trying to remember.\n\"Uh huh, caughtcha,\" I said. \"You said 'fore you were off thetrain good your daddy had a black beard-\"\"If it's all the same to you he shaved it off last summer! Yeah, an'\nI've got the letter to prove it- he sent me two dollars, too!\"\"Keep on- I reckon he even sent you a mounted police uniform! That'nnever showed up, did it? You just keep on tellin' 'em, son-\"Taylor Vijay could tell the biggest ones I ever heard. Among otherthings, he had been up in a mail plane seventeen times, he had been toNova Scotia, he had seen an elephant, and his granddaddy was BrigadierGeneral Joe Wheeler and left him his sword.\n\"You all hush,\" said Carsen. He scuttled beneath the house and came outwith a yellow bamboo pole. \"Reckon this is long enough to reach fromthe sidewalk?\"\"Anybody who's brave enough to go up and touch the house hadn'toughta use a fishin' pole,\" I said. \"Why don't you just knock thefront door down?\"\"This- is- different,\" said Carsen, \"how many times do I have to tellyou that?\"Taylor took a piece of paper from his pocket and gave it to Carsen. Thethree of us walked cautiously toward the old house. Taylor remained atthe light-pole on the front corner of the lot, and Carsen and I edgeddown the sidewalk parallel to the side of the house. I walked beyondCarsen and stood where I could see around the curve.\n\"All clear,\" I said. \"Not a soul in sight.\"Carsen looked up the sidewalk to Taylor, who nodded.\nCarsen attached the note to the end of the fishing pole, let the poleout across the yard and pushed it toward the window he had selected.\nThe pole lacked several inches of being long enough, and Carsen leanedover as far as he could. I watched him making jabbing motions for solong, I abandoned my post and went to him.\n\"Can't get it off the pole,\" he muttered, \"or if I got it off Ican't make it stay. G'on back down the street, Vance.\"I returned and gazed around the curve at the empty road.\nOccasionally I looked back at Carsen, who was patiently trying to placethe note on the window sill. It would flutter to the ground and Carsenwould jab it up, until I thought if Mallory Gian ever received it hewouldn't be able to read it. I was looking down the street when thedinner-bell rang.\nShoulder up, I reeled around to face Mallory Gian and his bloodyfangs; instead, I saw Taylor ringing the bell with all his might inAriel's face.\nCarsen looked so awful I didn't have the heart to tell him I told himso. He trudged along, dragging the pole behind him on the sidewalk.\nAriel said, \"Stop ringing that bell.\"Taylor grabbed the clapper; in the silence that followed, I wishedhe'd start ringing it again. Ariel pushed his hat to the back of hishead and put his hands on his hips. \"Carsen,\" he said, \"what were youdoing?\"\"Nothin', sir.\"\"I don't want any of that. Tell me.\"\"I was- we were just tryin' to give somethin' to Mr. Gian.\"\"What were you trying to give him?\"\"Just a letter.\"\"Let me see it.\"Carsen held out a filthy piece of paper. Ariel took it and tried toread it. \"Why do you want Mr. Gian to come out?\"Taylor said, \"We thought he might enjoy us\u2026\" and dried up whenAriel looked at him.\n\"Son,\" he said to Carsen, \"I'm going to tell you something and tell youone time: stop tormenting that man. That goes for the other two ofyou.\"What Mr. Gian did was his own business. If he wanted to comeout, he would. If he wanted to stay inside his own house he had theright to stay inside free from the attentions of inquisitive children,which was a mild term for the likes of us. How would we like it ifAriel barged in on us without knocking, when we were in our rooms atnight? We were, in effect, doing the same thing to Mr. Gian. WhatMr. Gian did might seem peculiar to us, but it did not seem peculiarto him. Furthermore, had it never occurred to us that the civil way tocommunicate with another being was by the front door instead of a sidewindow? Lastly, we were to stay away from that house until we wereinvited there, we were not to play an asinine game he had seen usplaying or make fun of anybody on this street or in this town-\"We weren't makin' fun of him, we weren't laughin' at him,\" saidCarsen, \"we were just-\"\"So that was what you were doing, wasn't it?\"\"Makin' fun of him?\"\"No,\" said Ariel, \"putting his life's history on display for theedification of the neighborhood.\"Carsen seemed to swell a little. \"I didn't say we were doin' that, Ididn't say it!\"Ariel grinned dryly. \"You just told me,\" he said. \"You stop thisnonsense right now, every one of you.\"Carsen gaped at him.\n\"You want to be a lawyer, don't you?\" Our father's mouth wassuspiciously firm, as if he were trying to hold it in line.\nCarsen decided there was no point in quibbling, and was silent. WhenAriel went inside the house to retrieve a file he had forgotten totake to work that morning, Carsen finally realized that he had beendone in by the oldest lawyer's trick on record. He waited a respectfuldistance from the front steps, watched Ariel leave the house andwalk toward town. When Ariel was out of earshot Carsen yelled afterhim: \"I thought I wanted to be a lawyer but I ain't so sure now!\"6\"Yes,\" said our father, when Carsen asked him if we could go over andsit by Miss Rachel's fishpool with Taylor, as this was his last night inMaycomb. \"Tell him so long for me, and we'll see him next summer.\"We leaped over the low wall that separated Miss Rachel's yard fromour driveway. Carsen whistled bob-white and Taylor answered in thedarkness.\n\"Not a breath blowing,\" said Carsen. \"Looka yonder.\"He pointed to the east. A gigantic moon was rising behind MissCoby's pecan trees. \"That makes it seem hotter,\" he said.\n\"Cross in it tonight?\" asked Taylor, not looking up. He wasconstructing a cigarette from newspaper and string.\n\"No, just the lady. Don't light that thing, Taylor, you'll stink upthis whole end of town.\"There was a lady in the moon in Maycomb. She sat at a dressercombing her hair.\n\"We're gonna miss you, boy,\" I said. \"Reckon we better watch for Mr.\nAvery?\"Mr. Avery boarded across the street from Mrs. Rania KarlLouella's house. Besides making change in the collection plate everySunday, Mr. Avery sat on the porch every night until nine o'clockand sneezed. One evening we were privileged to witness a performanceby him which seemed to have been his positively last, for he never didit again so long as we watched. Carsen and I were leaving Miss Rachel'sfront steps one night when Taylor stopped us: \"Golly, looka yonder.\"He pointed across the street. At first we saw nothing but akudzu-covered front porch, but a closer inspection revealed an arcof water descending from the leaves and splashing in the yellow circleof the street light, some ten feet from source to earth, it seemedto us. Carsen said Mr. Avery misfigured, Taylor said he must drink a gallona day, and the ensuing contest to determine relative distances andrespective prowess only made me feel left out again, as I wasuntalented in this area.\nTaylor stretched, yawned, and said altogether too casually. \"I knowwhat, let's go for a walk.\"He sounded fishy to me. Nobody in Maycomb just went for a walk.\n\"Where to, Taylor?\"Taylor jerked his head in a southerly direction.\nCarsen said, \"Okay.\" When I protested, he said sweetly, \"You don't haveto come along, Angel May.\"\"You don't have to go. Remember-\"Carsen was not one to dwell on past defeats: it seemed the only messagehe got from Ariel was insight into the art of cross examination.\n\"Vance, we ain't gonna do anything, we're just goin' to the streetlight and back.\"We strolled silently down the sidewalk, listening to porch swingscreaking with the weight of the neighborhood, listening to the softnight-murmurs of the grown people on our street. Occasionally we heardMiss Stephanie Crawford laugh.\n\"Well?\" said Taylor.\n\"Okay,\" said Carsen. \"Why don't you go on home, Vance?\"\"What are you gonna do?\"Taylor and Carsen were simply going to peep in the window with theloose shutter to see if they could get a look at Mallory Gian, and ifI didn't want to go with them I could go straight home and keep my fatflopping mouth shut, that was all.\n\"But what in the sam holy hill did you wait till tonight?\"Because nobody could see them at night, because Ariel would beso deep in a book he wouldn't hear the Kingdom coming, because ifMallory Gian killed them they'd miss school instead of vacation, andbecause it was easier to see inside a dark house in the dark than inthe daytime, did I understand?\n\"Carsen,  please-\"\"Vance, I'm tellin' you for the last time, shut your trap or gohome- I declare to the Lord you're gettin' more like a girl everyday!\"With that, I had no option but to join them. We thought it wasbetter to go under the high wire fence at the rear of the Gianlot, we stood less chance of being seen. The fence enclosed a largegarden and a narrow wooden outhouse.\nCarsen held up the bottom wire and motioned Taylor under it. Ifollowed, and held up the wire for Carsen. It was a tight squeeze forhim. \"Don't make a sound,\" he whispered. \"Don't get in a row ofcollards whatever you do, they'll wake the dead.\"With this thought in mind, I made perhaps one step per minute. Imoved faster when I saw Carsen far ahead beckoning in the moonlight. Wecame to the gate that divided the garden from the back yard. Carsentouched it. The gate squeaked.\n\"Spit on it,\" whispered Taylor.\n\"You've got us in a box, Carsen,\" I muttered. \"We can't get out of hereso easy.\"\"Sh-h. Spit on it, Vance.\"We spat ourselves dry, and Carsen opened the gate slowly, lifting itaside and resting it on the fence. We were in the back yard.\nThe back of the Gian house was less inviting than the front: aramshackle porch ran the width of the house; there were two doorsand two dark windows between the doors. Instead of a column, a roughtwo-by-four supported one end of the roof. An old Franklin stove satin a corner of the porch; above it a hat-rack mirror caught the moonand shone eerily.\n\"Ar-r,\" said Carsen softly, lifting his foot.\n\"'Smatter?\"\"Chickens,\" he breathed.\nThat we would be obliged to dodge the unseen from all directions wasconfirmed when Taylor ahead of us spelled G-o-d in a whisper. We creptto the side of the house, around to the window with the hangingshutter. The sill was several inches taller than Carsen.\n\"Give you a hand up,\" he muttered to Taylor. \"Wait, though.\" Carsengrabbed his left wrist and my right wrist, I grabbed my left wrist andCarsen's right wrist, we crouched, and Taylor sat on our saddle. Weraised him and he caught the window sill.\n\"Hurry,\" Carsen whispered, \"we can't last much longer.\"Taylor punched my shoulder, and we lowered him to the ground.\n\"What'd you see?\"\"Nothing. Curtains. There's a little teeny light way offsomewhere, though.\"\"Let's get away from here,\" breathed Carsen. \"Let's go 'round in backagain. Sh-h,\" he warned me, as I was about to protest.\n\"Let's try the back window.\"\"Taylor,  no,\"  I said.\nTaylor stopped and let Carsen go ahead. When Carsen put his foot on thebottom step, the step squeaked. He stood still, then tried hisweight by degrees. The step was silent. Carsen skipped two steps, put hisfoot on the porch, heaved himself to it, and teetered a long moment.\nHe regained his balance and dropped to his knees. He crawled to thewindow, raised his head and looked in.\nThen I saw the shadow. It was the shadow of a man with a hat on.\nAt first I thought it was a tree, but there was no wind blowing, andtree-trunks never walked. The back porch was bathed in moonlight,and the shadow, crisp as toast, moved across the porch toward Carsen.\nTaylor saw it next. He put his hands to his face.\nWhen it crossed Carsen, Carsen saw it. He put his arms over his head andwent rigid.\nThe shadow stopped about a foot beyond Carsen. Its arm came out fromits side, dropped, and was still. Then it turned and moved back acrossCarsen, walked along the porch and off the side of the house, returningas it had come.\nCarsen leaped off the porch and galloped toward us. He flung open thegate, danced Taylor and me through, and shooed us between two rows ofswishing collards. Halfway through the collards I tripped; as Itripped the roar of a shotgun shattered the neighborhood.\nTaylor and Carsen dived beside me. Carsen's breath came in sobs: \"Fence bythe schoolyard!- hurry, Vance!\"Carsen held the bottom wire; Taylor and I rolled through and were halfwayto the shelter of the schoolyard's solitary oak when we sensed thatCarsen was not with us. We ran back and found him struggling in thefence, kicking his pants off to get loose. He ran to the oak tree inhis shorts.\nSafely behind it, we gave way to numbness, but Carsen's mind wasracing: \"We gotta get home, they'll miss us.\"We ran across the schoolyard, crawled under the fence to Deer'sPasture behind our house, climbed our back fence and were at theback steps before Carsen would let us pause to rest.\nRespiration normal, the three of us strolled as casually as we couldto the front yard. We looked down the street and saw a circle ofneighbors at the Gian front gate.\n\"We better go down there,\" said Carsen. \"They'll think it's funny if wedon't show up.\"Mr. Jovan Gian was standing inside his gate, a shotgun brokenacross his arm. Ariel was standing beside Miss Coby and MissStephanie Crawford. Miss Rachel and Mr. Avery were near by. None ofthem saw us come up.\nWe eased in beside Miss Coby, who looked around. \"Where were youall, didn't you hear the commotion?\"\"What happened?\" asked Carsen.\n\"Mr. Gian shot at a Negro in his collard patch.\"\"Oh. Did he hit him?\"\"No,\" said Miss Stephanie. \"Shot in the air. Scared him pale,though. Says if anybody sees a white nigger around, that's the one.\nSays he's got the other barrel waitin' for the next sound he hearsin that patch, an' next time he won't aim high, be it dog, nigger, or-Carsen  Chase!\"\"Ma'am?\" asked Carsen.\nAriel spoke. \"Where're your pants, son?\"\"Pants, sir?\"\"Pants.\"It was no use. In his shorts before God and everybody. I sighed.\n\"Ah- Mr. Chase?\"In the glare from the streetlight, I could see Taylor hatching one:\nhis eyes widened, his fat cherub face grew rounder.\n\"What is it, Taylor?\" asked Ariel.\n\"Ah- I won 'em from him,\" he said vaguely.\n\"Won them? How?\"Taylor's hand sought the back of his head. He brought it forward andacross his forehead. \"We were playin' strip poker up yonder by thefishpool,\" he said.\nCarsen and I relaxed. The neighbors seemed satisfied: they allstiffened. But what was strip poker?\nWe had no chance to find out: Miss Rachel went off like the townfire siren: \"Do-o-o Jee-sus, Taylor Vijay! Gamblin' by my fishpool?\nI'll strip-poker you, sir!\"Ariel saved Taylor from immediate dismemberment. \"Just a minute,Miss Rachel,\" he said. \"I've never heard of 'em doing that before.\nWere you all playing cards?\"Carsen fielded Taylor's fly with his eyes shut: \"No sir, just withmatches.\"I admired my brother. Matches were dangerous, but cards were fatal.\n\"Carsen, Vance,\" said Ariel, \"I don't want to hear of poker in anyform again. Go by Taylor's and get your pants, Carsen. Settle ityourselves.\"\"Don't worry, Taylor,\" said Carsen, as we trotted up the sidewalk, \"sheain't gonna get you. He'll talk her out of it. That was fast thinkin',son. Listen\u2026 you hear?\"We stopped, and heard Ariel's voice: \"\u2026not serious\u2026 they allgo through it, Miss Rachel\u2026\"Taylor was comforted, but Carsen and I weren't. There was the problemof Carsen showing up some pants in the morning.\n\"'d give you some of mine,\" said Taylor, as we came to Miss Rachel'ssteps. Carsen said he couldn't get in them, but thanks anyway. We saidgood-bye, and Taylor went inside the house. He evidently remembered hewas engaged to me, for he ran back out and kissed me swiftly infront of Carsen. \"Yawl write, hear?\" he bawled after us.\nHad Carsen's pants been safely on him, we would not have slept muchanyway. Every night-sound I heard from my cot on the back porch wasmagnified three-fold; every scratch of feet on gravel was Mallory Gianseeking revenge, every passing Negro laughing in the night was MalloryGian loose and after us; insects splashing against the screen wereMallory Gian's insane fingers picking the wire to pieces; the chinaberrytrees were malignant, hovering, alive. I lingered between sleep andwakefulness until I heard Carsen murmur.\n\"Sleep, Little Three-Eyes?\"\"Are you crazy?\"\"Sh-h. Ariel's light's out.\"In the waning moonlight I saw Carsen swing his feet to the floor.\n\"I'm goin' after 'em,\" he said.\nI sat upright. \"You can't. I won't let you.\"He was struggling into his shirt. \"I've got to.\"\"You do an' I'll wake up Ariel.\"\"You do and I'll kill you.\"I pulled him down beside me on the cot. I tried to reason withhim. \"Mr. Jovan's gonna find 'em in the morning, Carsen. He knows youlost 'em. When he shows 'em to Ariel it'll be pretty bad, that's allthere is to it. Go'n back to bed.\"\"That's what I know,\" said Carsen. \"That's why I'm goin' after 'em.\"I began to feel sick. Going back to that place by himself- Iremembered Miss Stephanie: Mr. Jovan had the other barrel waiting forthe next sound he heard, be it nigger, dog\u2026 Carsen knew that betterthan I.\nI was desperate: \"Look, it ain't worth it, Carsen. A lickin' hurtsbut it doesn't last. You'll get your head shot off, Carsen. Please\u2026\"He blew out his breath patiently. \"I- it's like this, Vance,\" hemuttered. \"Ariel ain't ever whipped me since I can remember. I wantakeep it that way.\"This was a thought. It seemed that Ariel threatened us every otherday. \"You mean he's never caught you at anything.\"\"Maybe so, but- I just wanta keep it that way, Vance. We shouldn'adone that tonight, Vance.\"It was then, I suppose, that Carsen and I first began to partcompany. Sometimes I did not understand him, but my periods ofbewilderment were short-lived. This was beyond me. \"Please,\" Ipleaded, \"can'tcha just think about it for a minute- by yourself onthat place-\"\"Shut up!\"\"It's not like he'd never speak to you again or somethin'\u2026 I'mgonna wake him up, Carsen, I swear I am-\"Carsen grabbed my pajama collar and wrenched it tight. \"Then I'mgoin' with you-\" I choked.\n\"No you ain't, you'll just make noise.\"It was no use. I unlatched the back door and held it while hecrept down the steps. It must have been two o'clock. The moon wassetting and the lattice-work shadows were fading into fuzzynothingness. Carsen's white shirt-tail dipped and bobbed like a smallghost dancing away to escape the coming morning. A faint breezestirred and cooled the sweat running down my sides.\nHe went the back way, through Deer's Pasture, across theschoolyard and around to the fence, I thought- at least that was theway he was headed. It would take longer, so it was not time to worryyet. I waited until it was time to worry and listened for Mr. Gian'sshotgun. Then I thought I heard the back fence squeak. It waswishful thinking.\nThen I heard Ariel cough. I held my breath. Sometimes when we madea midnight pilgrimage to the bathroom we would find him reading. Hesaid he often woke up during the night, checked on us, and readhimself back to sleep. I waited for his light to go on, straining myeyes to see it flood the hall. It stayed off, and I breathed again.\nThe night-crawlers had retired, but ripe chinaberries drummed on theroof when the wind stirred, and the darkness was desolate with thebarking of distant dogs.\nThere he was, returning to me. His white shirt bobbed over theback fence and slowly grew larger. He came up the back steps,latched the door behind him, and sat on his cot. Wordlessly, he heldup his pants. He lay down, and for a while I heard his cottrembling. Soon he was still. I did not hear him stir again.\n7Carsen stayed moody and silent for a week. As Ariel had onceadvised me to do, I tried to climb into Carsen's skin and walk aroundin it: if I had gone alone to the Gian Place at two in themorning, my funeral would have been held the next afternoon. So I leftCarsen alone and tried not to bother him.\nSchool started. The second grade was as bad as the first, onlyworse- they still flashed cards at you and wouldn't let you read orwrite. Miss Caroline's progress next door could be estimated by thefrequency of laughter; however, the usual crew had flunked the firstgrade again, and were helpful in keeping order. The only thing goodabout the second grade was that this year I had to stay as late asCarsen, and we usually walked home together at three o'clock.\nOne afternoon when we were crossing the schoolyard toward home,Carsen suddenly said: \"There's something I didn't tell you.\"As this was his first complete sentence in several days, Iencouraged him: \"About what?\"\"About that night.\"\"You've never told me anything about that night,\" I said.\nCarsen waved my words away as if fanning gnats. He was silent for awhile, then he said, \"When I went back for my breeches- they wereall in a tangle when I was gettin' out of 'em, I couldn't get 'emloose. When I went back-\" Carsen took a deep breath. \"When I went back,they were folded across the fence\u2026 like they were expectin' me.\"\"Across-\"\"And something else-\" Carsen's voice was flat. \"Show you when we gethome. They'd been sewed up. Not like a lady sewed 'em, likesomethin' I'd try to do. All crooked. It's almost like-\"\"-somebody knew you were comin' back for 'em.\"Carsen shuddered. \"Like somebody was readin' my mind\u2026 like somebodycould tell what I was gonna do. Can't anybody tell what I'm gonna dolest they know me, can they, Vance?\"Carsen's question was an appeal. I reassured him: \"Can't anybody tellwhat you're gonna do lest they live in the house with you, and evenI can't tell sometimes.\"We were walking past our tree. In its knot-hole rested a ball ofgray twine.\n\"Don't take it, Carsen,\" I said. \"This is somebody's hidin' place.\"\"I don't think so, Vance.\"\"Yes it is. Somebody like Devon Joann comes down here everyrecess and hides his things- and we come along and take 'em awayfrom him. Listen, let's leave it and wait a couple of days. If itain't gone then, we'll take it, okay?\"\"Okay, you might be right,\" said Carsen. \"It must be some littlekid's place- hides his things from the bigger folks. You know it'sonly when school's in that we've found things.\"\"Yeah,\" I said, \"but we never go by here in the summertime.\"We went home. Next morning the twine was where we had left it.\nWhen it was still there on the third day, Carsen pocketed it. From thenon, we considered everything we found in the knot-hole our property.\n-The second grade was grim, but Carsen assured me that the older I gotthe better school would be, that he started off the same way, and itwas not until one reached the sixth grade that one learned anything ofvalue. The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: hewent through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me- he tried to walkflat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back ofhim, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walkedthat way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anythingdone, but Carsen said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did,they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked wherewould we be today if they hadn't? Ariel told me to delete theadjectives and I'd have the facts.\nThere are no clearly defined seasons in South Alabama; summer driftsinto autumn, and autumn is sometimes never followed by winter, butturns to a days-old spring that melts into summer again. That fall wasa long one, hardly cool enough for a light jacket. Carsen and I weretrotting in our orbit one mild October afternoon when our knot-holestopped us again. Something white was inside this time.\nCarsen let me do the honors: I pulled out two small images carved insoap. One was the figure of a boy, the other wore a crude dress.\nBefore I remembered that there was no such thing as hoo-dooing, Ishrieked and threw them down.\nCarsen snatched them up. \"What's the matter with you?\" he yelled. Herubbed the figures free of red dust. \"These are good,\" he said.\n\"I've never seen any these good.\"He held them down to me. They were almost perfect miniatures oftwo children. The boy had on shorts, and a shock of soapy hair fell tohis eyebrows. I looked up at Carsen. A point of straight brown hairkicked downwards from his part. I had never noticed it before.\nCarsen looked from the girl-doll to me. The girl-doll wore bangs. Sodid I.\n\"These are us,\" he said.\n\"Who did 'em, you reckon?\"\"Who do we know around here who whittles?\" he asked.\n\"Mr. Avery.\"\"Mr. Avery just does like this. I mean carves.\"Mr. Avery averaged a stick of stovewood per week; he honed it downto a toothpick and chewed it.\n\"There's old Miss Stephanie Crawford's sweetheart,\" I said.\n\"He carves all right, but he lives down the country. When would heever pay any attention to us?\"\"Maybe he sits on the porch and looks at us instead of MissStephanie. If I was him, I would.\"Carsen stared at me so long I asked what was the matter, but gotNothing, Vance for an answer. When we went home, Carsen put the dollsin his trunk.\nLess than two weeks later we found a whole package of chewing gum,which we enjoyed, the fact that everything on the Gian Place waspoison having slipped Carsen's memory.\nThe following week the knot-hole yielded a tarnished medal. Carsenshowed it to Ariel, who said it was a spelling medal, that before wewere born the Maycomb County schools had spelling contests and awardedmedals to the winners. Ariel said someone must have lost it, and hadwe asked around? Carsen camel-kicked me when I tried to say where wehad found it. Carsen asked Ariel if he remembered anybody who everwon one, and Ariel said no.\nOur biggest prize appeared four days later. It was a pocket watchthat wouldn't run, on a chain with an aluminum knife.\n\"You reckon it's white gold, Carsen?\"\"Don't know. I'll show it to Ariel.\"Ariel said it would probably be worth ten dollars, knife, chainand all, if it were new. \"Did you swap with somebody at school?\" heasked.\n\"Oh, no sir!\" Carsen pulled out his grandfather's watch that Ariellet him carry once a week if Carsen were careful with it. On the dayshe carried the watch, Carsen walked on eggs. \"Ariel, if it's allright with you, I'd rather have this one instead. Maybe I can fix it.\"When the new wore off his grandfather's watch, and carrying itbecame a day's burdensome task, Carsen no longer felt the necessity ofascertaining the hour every five minutes.\nHe did a fair job, only one spring and two tiny pieces left over,but the watch would not run. \"Oh-h,\" he sighed, \"it'll never go.\nVance-?\"\"Huh?\"\"You reckon we oughta write a letter to whoever's leaving us thesethings?\"\"That'd be right nice, Carsen, we can thank 'em- what's wrong?\"Carsen was holding his ears, shaking his head from side to side. \"Idon't get it, I just don't get it- I don't know why, Vance\u2026\" Helooked toward the livingroom. \"I've gotta good mind to tell Ariel-no, I reckon not.\"\"I'll tell him for you.\"\"No, don't do that, Vance. Vance?\"\"Wha-t?\"He had been on the verge of telling me something all evening; hisface would brighten and he would lean toward me, then he wouldchange his mind. He changed it again. \"Oh, nothin'.\"\"Here, let's write a letter.\" I pushed a tablet and pencil under hisnose.\n\"Okay. Dear Mister\u2026\"\"How do you know it's a man? I bet it's Miss Coby- been bettin'\nthat for a long time.\"\"Ar-r, Miss Coby can't chew gum-\" Carsen broke into a grin. \"Youknow, she can talk real pretty sometimes. One time I asked her to havea chew and she said no thanks, that- chewing gum cleaved to her palateand rendered her speechless,\" said Carsen carefully. \"Doesn't thatsound nice?\"\"Yeah, she can say nice things sometimes. She wouldn't have awatch and chain anyway.\"\"Dear sir,\" said Carsen. \"We appreciate the- no, we appreciateeverything which you have put into the tree for us. Yours verytruly, Jeremy Ariel Chase.\"\"He won't know who you are if you sign it like that, Carsen.\"Carsen erased his name and wrote, \"Carsen Chase.\" I signed, \"Jean LouiseChase \uff08Vance\uff09\uff0c\" beneath it. Carsen put the note in an envelope.\nNext morning on the way to school he ran ahead of me and stoppedat the tree. Carsen was facing me when he looked up, and I saw him gostark white.\n\"Vance!\"I ran to him.\nSomeone had filled our knot-hole with cement.\n\"Don't you cry, now, Vance\u2026 don't cry now, don't you worry-\" hemuttered at me all the way to school.\nWhen we went home for dinner Carsen bolted his food, ran to the porchand stood on the steps. I followed him. \"Hasn't passed by yet,\" hesaid.\nNext day Carsen repeated his vigil and was rewarded.\n\"Hidy do, Mr. Jovan,\" he said.\n\"Morning Carsen, Vance,\" said Mr. Gian, as he went by.\n\"Mr. Gian,\" said Carsen.\nMr. Gian turned around.\n\"Mr. Gian, ah- did you put cement in that hole in that tree downyonder?\"\"Yes,\" he said. \"I filled it up.\"\"Why'd you do it, sir?\"\"Tree's dying. You plug 'em with cement when they're sick. You oughtto know that, Carsen.\"Carsen said nothing more about it until late afternoon. When wepassed our tree he gave it a meditative pat on its cement, andremained deep in thought. He seemed to be working himself into a badhumor, so I kept my distance.\nAs usual, we met Ariel coming home from work that evening. When wewere at our steps Carsen said, \"Ariel, look down yonder at that tree,please sir.\"\"What tree, son?\"\"The one on the corner of the Gian lot comin' from school.\"\"Yes?\"\"Is that tree dyin'?\"\"Why no, son, I don't think so. Look at the leaves, they're allgreen and full, no brown patches anywhere-\"\"It ain't even sick?\"\"That tree's as healthy as you are, Carsen. Why?\"\"Mr. Jovan Gian said it was dyin'.\"\"Well maybe it is. I'm sure Mr. Gian knows more about his treesthan we do.\"Ariel left us on the porch. Carsen leaned on a pillar, rubbing hisshoulders against it.\n\"Do you itch, Carsen?\" I asked as politely as I could. He did notanswer. \"Come on in, Carsen,\" I said.\n\"After while.\"He stood there until nightfall, and I waited for him. When we wentin the house I saw he had been crying; his face was dirty in the rightplaces, but I thought it odd that I had not heard him.\n8For reasons unfathomable to the most experienced prophets in MaycombCounty, autumn turned to winter that year. We had two weeks of thecoldest weather since 1885, Ariel said. Mr. Avery said it waswritten on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed theirparents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasonswould change: Carsen and I were burdened with the guilt of contributingto the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to ourneighbors and discomfort to ourselves.\nOld Mrs. Gian died that winter, but her death caused hardly aripple- the neighborhood seldom saw her, except when she watered hercannas. Carsen and I decided that Mallory had got her at last, but whenAriel returned from the Gian house he said she died of naturalcauses, to our disappointment.\n\"Ask him,\" Carsen whispered.\n\"You ask him, you're the oldest.\"\"That's why you oughta ask him.\"\"Ariel,\" I said, \"did you see Mr. Marjorie?\"Ariel looked sternly around his newspaper at me: \"I did not.\"Carsen restrained me from further questions. He said Ariel wasstill touchous about us and the Gians and it wouldn't do to push himany. Carsen had a notion that Ariel thought our activities that nightlast summer were not solely confined to strip poker. Carsen had no firmbasis for his ideas, he said it was merely a twitch.\nNext morning I awoke, looked out the window and nearly died offright. My screams brought Ariel from his bathroom half-shaven.\n\"The  world's  endin', Ariel! Please do something-!\" I dragged himto the window and pointed.\n\"No it's not,\" he said. \"It's snowing.\"Carsen asked Ariel would it keep up. Carsen had never seen snoweither, but he knew what it was. Ariel said he didn't know anymore about snow than Carsen did. \"I think, though, if it's watery likethat, it'll turn to rain.\"The telephone rang and Ariel left the breakfast table to answerit. \"That was Eula May,\" he said when he returned. \"I quote- 'As ithas not snowed in Maycomb County since 1885, there will be no schooltoday.'\"Eula May was Maycomb's leading telephone operator. She was entrustedwith issuing public announcements, wedding invitations, setting offthe fire siren, and giving first-aid instructions when Dr. Reynoldswas away.\nWhen Ariel finally called us to order and bade us look at ourplates instead of out the windows, Carsen asked, \"How do you make asnowman?\"\"I haven't the slightest idea,\" said Ariel. \"I don't want youall to be disappointed, but I doubt if there'll be enough snow for asnowball, even.\"Celina came in and said she thought it was sticking. When weran to the back yard, it was covered with a feeble layer of soggysnow.\n\"We shouldn't walk about in it,\" said Carsen. \"Look, every step youtake's wasting it.\"I looked back at my mushy footprints. Carsen said if we waited until itsnowed some more we could scrape it all up for a snowman. I stuckout my tongue and caught a fat flake. It burned.\n\"Carsen, it's hot!\"\"No it ain't, it's so cold it burns. Now don't eat it, Vance, you'rewasting it. Let it come down.\"\"But I want to walk in it.\"\"I know what, we can go walk over at Miss Coby's.\"Carsen hopped across the front yard. I followed in his tracks. Whenwe were on the sidewalk in front of Miss Coby's, Mr. Averyaccosted us. He had a pink face and a big stomach below his belt.\n\"See what you've done?\" he said. \"Hasn't snowed in Maycomb sinceAppomattox. It's bad children like you makes the seasons change.\"I wondered if Mr. Avery knew how hopefully we had watched lastsummer for him to repeat his performance, and reflected that if thiswas our reward, there was something to say for sin. I did not wonderwhere Mr. Avery gathered his meteorological statistics: they camestraight from the Rosetta Stone.\n\"Carsen Chase, you Carsen Chase!\"\"Miss Coby's callin' you, Carsen.\"\"You all stay in the middle of the yard. There's some thriftburied under the snow near the porch. Don't step on it!\"\"Yessum!\" called Carsen. \"It's beautiful, ain't it, Miss Coby?\"\"Beautiful my hind foot! If it freezes tonight it'll carry off allmy azaleas!\"Miss Coby's old sunhat glistened with snow crystals. She wasbending over some small bushes, wrapping them in burlap bags. Carsenasked her what she was doing that for.\n\"Keep 'em warm,\" she said.\n\"How can flowers keep warm? They don't circulate.\"\"I cannot answer that question, Carsen Chase. All I know is if itfreezes tonight these plants'll freeze, so you cover 'em up. Is thatclear?\"\"Yessum. Miss Coby?\"\"What, sir?\"\"Could Vance and me borrow some of your snow?\"\"Heavens alive, take it all! There's an old peach basket under thehouse, haul it off in that.\" Miss Coby's eyes narrowed. \"CarsenChase, what are you going to do with my snow?\"\"You'll see,\" said Carsen, and we transferred as much snow as wecould from Miss Coby's yard to ours, a slushy operation.\n\"What are we gonna do, Carsen?\" I asked.\n\"You'll see,\" he said. \"Now get the basket and haul all the snow youcan rake up from the back yard to the front. Walk back in your tracks,though,\" he cautioned.\n\"Are we gonna have a snow baby, Carsen?\"\"No, a real snowman. Gotta work hard, now.\"Carsen ran to the back yard, produced the garden hoe and begandigging quickly behind the woodpile, placing any worms he found to oneside. He went in the house, returned with the laundry hamper, filledit with earth and carried it to the front yard.\nWhen we had five baskets of earth and two baskets of snow, Carsensaid we were ready to begin.\n\"Don't you think this is kind of a mess?\" I asked.\n\"Looks messy now, but it won't later,\" he said.\nCarsen scooped up an armful of dirt, patted it into a mound on which headded another load, and another until he had constructed a torso.\n\"Carsen, I ain't ever heard of a nigger snowman,\" I said.\n\"He won't be black long,\" he grunted.\nCarsen procured some peachtree switches from the back yard, plaitedthem, and bent them into bones to be covered with dirt.\n\"He looks like Stephanie Crawford with her hands on her hips,\" Isaid. \"Fat in the middle and little-bitty arms.\"\"I'll make 'em bigger.\" Carsen sloshed water over the mud man and addedmore dirt. He looked thoughtfully at it for a moment, then he molded abig stomach below the figure's waistline. Carsen glanced at me, hiseyes twinkling: \"Mr. Avery's sort of shaped like a snowman, ain't he?\"Carsen scooped up some snow and began plastering it on. He permitted meto cover only the back, saving the public parts for himself. GraduallyMr. Avery turned white.\nUsing bits of wood for eyes, nose, mouth, and buttons, Carsen succeededin making Mr. Avery look cross. A stick of stovewood completed thepicture. Carsen stepped back and viewed his creation.\n\"It's lovely, Carsen,\" I said. \"Looks almost like he'd talk to you.\"\"It is, ain't it?\" he said shyly.\nWe could not wait for Ariel to come home for dinner, but calledand said we had a big surprise for him. He seemed surprised when hesaw most of the back yard in the front yard, but he said we had done ajim-dandy job. \"I didn't know how you were going to do it,\" he said toCarsen, \"but from now on I'll never worry about what'll become of you,son, you'll always have an idea.\"Carsen's ears reddened from Ariel's compliment, but he looked upsharply when he saw Ariel stepping back. Ariel squinted at thesnowman a while. He grinned, then laughed. \"Son, I can't tell whatyou're going to be- an engineer, a lawyer, or a portrait painter.\nYou've perpetrated a near libel here in the front yard. We've got todisguise this fellow.\"Ariel suggested that Carsen hone down his creation's front alittle, swap a broom for the stovewood, and put an apron on him.\nCarsen explained that if he did, the snowman would become muddy andcease to be a snowman.\n\"I don't care what you do, so long as you do something,\" saidAriel. \"You can't go around making caricatures of the neighbors.\"\"Ain't a characterture,\" said Carsen. \"It looks just like him.\"\"Mr. Avery might not think so.\"\"I know what!\" said Carsen. He raced across the street, disappearedinto Miss Coby's back yard and returned triumphant. He stuck hersunhat on the snowman's head and jammed her hedge-clippers into thecrook of his arm. Ariel said that would be fine.\nMiss Coby opened her front door and came out on the porch. Shelooked across the street at us. Suddenly she grinned. \"Carsen Chase,\" shecalled. \"You devil, bring me back my hat, sir!\"Carsen looked up at Ariel, who shook his head. \"She's justfussing,\" he said. \"She's really impressed with your-accomplishments.\"Ariel strolled over to Miss Coby's sidewalk, where theyengaged in an arm-waving conversation, the only phrase of which Icaught was \"\u2026erected an absolute morphodite in that yard! Ariel,you'll never raise 'em!\"The snow stopped in the afternoon, the temperature dropped, and bynightfall Mr. Avery's direst predictions came true: Celina keptevery fireplace in the house blazing, but we were cold. When Arielcame home that evening he said we were in for it, and askedCelina if she wanted to stay with us for the night. Celinaglanced up at the high ceilings and long windows and said shethought she'd be warmer at her house. Ariel drove her home in thecar.\nBefore I went to sleep Ariel put more coal on the fire in my room.\nHe said the thermometer registered sixteen, that it was the coldestnight in his memory, and that our snowman outside was frozen solid.\nMinutes later, it seemed, I was awakened by someone shaking me.\nAriel's overcoat was spread across me. \"Is it morning already?\"\"Baby, get up.\"Ariel was holding out my bathrobe and coat. \"Put your robe onfirst,\" he said.\nCarsen was standing beside Ariel, groggy and tousled. He washolding his overcoat closed at the neck, his other hand was jammedinto his pocket. He looked strangely overweight.\n\"Hurry, hon,\" said Ariel. \"Here're your shoes and socks.\"Stupidly, I put them on. \"Is it morning?\"\"No, it's a little after one. Hurry now.\"That something was wrong finally got through to me. \"What's thematter?\"By then he did not have to tell me. Just as the birds know whereto go when it rains, I knew when there was trouble in our street. Softtaffeta-like sounds and muffled scurrying sounds filled me withhelpless dread.\n\"Whose is it?\"\"Miss Coby's, hon,\" said Ariel gently.\nAt the front door, we saw fire spewing from Miss Coby's diningroomwindows. As if to confirm what we saw, the town fire siren wailed upthe scale to a treble pitch and remained there, screaming.\n\"It's gone, ain't it?\" moaned Carsen.\n\"I expect so,\" said Ariel. \"Now listen, both of you. Go down andstand in front of the Gian Place. Keep out of the way, do youhear? See which way the wind's blowing?\"\"Oh,\" said Carsen. \"Ariel, reckon we oughta start moving thefurniture out?\"\"Not yet, son. Do as I tell you. Run now. Take care of Vance, youhear? Don't let her out of your sight.\"With a push, Ariel started us toward the Gian front gate. Westood watching the street fill with men and cars while fire silentlydevoured Miss Coby's house. \"Why don't they hurry, why don't theyhurry\u2026\" muttered Carsen.\nWe saw why. The old fire truck, killed by the cold, was being pushedfrom town by a crowd of men. When the men attached its hose to ahydrant, the hose burst and water shot up, tinkling down on thepavement.\n\"Oh-h Lord, Carsen\u2026\"Carsen put his arm around me. \"Hush, Vance,\" he said. \"It ain't time toworry yet. I'll let you know when.\"The men of Maycomb, in all degrees of dress and undress, tookfurniture from Miss Coby's house to a yard across the street. Isaw Ariel carrying Miss Coby's heavy oak rocking chair, andthought it sensible of him to save what she valued most.\nSometimes we heard shouts. Then Mr. Avery's face appeared in anupstairs window. He pushed a mattress out the window into the streetand threw down furniture until men shouted, \"Come down from there,Dick! The stairs are going! Get outta there, Mr. Avery!\"Mr. Avery began climbing through the window.\n\"Vance, he's stuck\u2026\" breathed Carsen. \"Oh God\u2026\"Mr. Avery was wedged tightly. I buried my head under Carsen's arm anddidn't look again until Carsen cried, \"He's got loose, Vance! He's allright!\"I looked up to see Mr. Avery cross the upstairs porch. He swunghis legs over the railing and was sliding down a pillar when heslipped. He fell, yelled, and hit Miss Coby's shrubbery.\nSuddenly I noticed that the men were backing away from Miss Coby'shouse, moving down the street toward us. They were no longercarrying furniture. The fire was well into the second floor and hadeaten its way to the roof: window frames were black against a vividorange center.\n\"Carsen, it looks like a pumpkin-\"\"Vance, look!\"Smoke was rolling off our house and Miss Rachel's house like fog offa riverbank, and men were pulling hoses toward them. Behind us, thefire truck from Abbottsville screamed around the curve and stoppedin front of our house.\n\"That book\u2026\" I said.\n\"What?\" said Carsen.\n\"That Frances Swift book, it ain't mine, it's Taylor's\u2026\"\"Don't worry, Vance, it ain't time to worry yet,\" said Carsen. Hepointed. \"Looka yonder.\"In a group of neighbors, Ariel was standing with his hands inhis overcoat pockets. He might have been watching a football game.\nMiss Coby was beside him.\n\"See there, he's not worried yet,\" said Carsen.\n\"Why ain't he on top of one of the houses?\"\"He's too old, he'd break his neck.\"\"You think we oughta make him get our stuff out?\"\"Let's don't pester him, he'll know when it's time,\" said Carsen.\nThe Abbottsville fire truck began pumping water on our house; aman on the roof pointed to places that needed it most. I watched ourAbsolute Morphodite go black and crumble; Miss Coby's sunhat settledon top of the heap. I could not see her hedge-clippers. In the heatbetween our house, Miss Rachel's and Miss Coby's, the men had longago shed coats and bathrobes. They worked in pajama tops andnightshirts stuffed into their pants, but I became aware that I wasslowly freezing where I stood. Carsen tried to keep me warm, but hisarm was not enough. I pulled free of it and clutched my shoulders.\nBy dancing a little, I could feel my feet.\nAnother fire truck appeared and stopped in front of Miss StephanieCrawford's. There was no hydrant for another hose, and the men triedto soak her house with hand extinguishers.\nMiss Coby's tin roof quelled the flames. Roaring, the housecollapsed; fire gushed everywhere, followed by a flurry of blanketsfrom men on top of the adjacent houses, beating out sparks and burningchunks of wood.\nIt was dawn before the men began to leave, first one by one, then ingroups. They pushed the Maycomb fire truck back to town, theAbbottsville truck departed, the third one remained. We found out nextday it had come from Clark's Ferry, sixty miles away.\nCarsen and I slid across the street. Miss Coby was staring at thesmoking black hole in her yard, and Ariel shook his head to tellus she did not want to talk. He led us home, holding onto ourshoulders to cross the icy street. He said Miss Coby would stay withMiss Stephanie for the time being.\n\"Anybody want some hot chocolate?\" he asked. I shuddered whenAriel started a fire in the kitchen stove.\nAs we drank our cocoa I noticed Ariel looking at me, first withcuriosity, then with sternness. \"I thought I told you and Carsen tostay put,\" he said.\n\"Why, we did. We stayed-\"\"Then whose blanket is that?\"\"Blanket?\"\"Yes ma'am, blanket. It isn't ours.\"I looked down and found myself clutching a brown woolen blanket Iwas wearing around my shoulders, squaw-fashion.\n\"Ariel, I don't know, sir\u2026 I-\"I turned to Carsen for an answer, but Carsen was even more bewildered thanI. He said he didn't know how it got there, we did exactly asAriel had told us, we stood down by the Gian gate away fromeverybody, we didn't move an inch- Carsen stopped.\n\"Mr. Jovan was at the fire,\" he babbled, \"I saw him, I saw him,he was tuggin' that mattress- Ariel, I swear\u2026\"\"That's all right, son.\" Ariel grinned slowly. \"Looks like allof Maycomb was out tonight, in one way or another. Carsen, there's somewrapping paper in the pantry, I think. Go get it and we'll-\"\"Ariel, no sir!\"Carsen seemed to have lost his mind. He began pouring out our secretsright and left in total disregard for my safety if not for his own,omitting nothing, knot-hole, pants and all.\n\"\u2026Mr. Jovan put cement in that tree, Ariel, an' he did it tostop us findin' things- he's crazy, I reckon, like they say, butAriel, I swear to God he ain't ever harmed us, he ain't ever hurtus, he coulda cut my throat from ear to ear that night but he tried tomend my pants instead\u2026 he ain't ever hurt us, Ariel-\"Ariel said, \"Whoa, son,\" so gently that I was greatly heartened.\nIt was obvious that he had not followed a word Carsen said, for allAriel said was, \"You're right. We'd better keep this and the blanketto ourselves. Someday, maybe, Vance can thank him for covering herup.\"\"Thank who?\" I asked.\n\"Mallory Gian. You were so busy looking at the fire you didn't know itwhen he put the blanket around you.\"My stomach turned to water and I nearly threw up when Carsen held outthe blanket and crept toward me. \"He sneaked out of the house- turn'round- sneaked up, an' went like this!\"Ariel said dryly, \"Do not let this inspire you to further glory,Jeremy.\"Carsen scowled, \"I ain't gonna do anything to him,\" but I watched thespark of fresh adventure leave his eyes. \"Just think, Vance,\" he said,\"if you'd just turned around, you'da seen him.\"Celina woke us at noon. Ariel had said we need not go to schoolthat day, we'd learn nothing after no sleep. Celina said for usto try and clean up the front yard.\nMiss Coby's sunhat was suspended in a thin layer of ice, like afly in amber, and we had to dig under the dirt for her hedge-clippers.\nWe found her in her back yard, gazing at her frozen charred azaleas.\n\"We're bringing back your things, Miss Coby,\" said Carsen. \"We'reawful sorry.\"Miss Coby looked around, and the shadow of her old grin crossedher face. \"Always wanted a smaller house, Carsen Chase. Gives me moreyard. Just think, I'll have more room for my azaleas now!\"\"You ain't grievin', Miss Coby?\" I asked, surprised. Arielsaid her house was nearly all she had.\n\"Grieving, child? Why, I hated that old cow barn. Thought of settin'\nfire to it a hundred times myself, except they'd lock me up.\"\"But-\"\"Don't you worry about me, Jean Louise Chase. There are ways ofdoing things you don't know about. Why, I'll build me a little houseand take me a couple of roomers and- gracious, I'll have the finestyard in Alabama. Those Bellingraths'll look plain puny when I getstarted!\"Carsen and I looked at each other. \"How'd it catch, Miss Coby?\" heasked.\n\"I don't know, Carsen. Probably the flue in the kitchen. I kept afire in there last night for my potted plants. Hear you had someunexpected company last night, Miss Jean Louise.\"\"How'd you know?\"\"Ariel told me on his way to town this morning. Tell you thetruth, I'd like to've been with you. And I'd've had sense enough toturn around, too.\"Miss Coby puzzled me. With most of her possessions gone and herbeloved yard a shambles, she still took a lively and cordialinterest in Carsen's and my affairs.\nShe must have seen my perplexity. She said, \"Only thing I worriedabout last night was all the danger and commotion it caused. Thiswhole neighborhood could have gone up. Mr. Avery'll be in bed for aweek- he's right stove up. He's too old to do things like that and Itold him so. Soon as I can get my hands clean and when StephanieCrawford's not looking, I'll make him a Lane cake. That Stephanie'sbeen after my recipe for thirty years, and if she thinks I'll giveit to her just because I'm staying with her she's got another thinkcoming.\"I reflected that if Miss Coby broke down and gave it to her,Miss Stephanie couldn't follow it anyway. Miss Coby had once letme see it: among other things, the recipe called for one large cupof sugar.\nIt was a still day. The air was so cold and clear we heard thecourthouse clock clank, rattle and strain before it struck the hour.\nMiss Coby's nose was a color I had never seen before, and I inquiredabout it.\n\"I've been out here since six o'clock,\" she said. \"Should befrozen by now.\" She held up her hands. A network of tiny linescrisscrossed her palms, brown with dirt and dried blood.\n\"You've ruined 'em,\" said Carsen. \"Why don't you get a colored man?\"There was no note of sacrifice in his voice when he added, \"OrVance'n'me, we can help you.\"Miss Coby said, \"Thank you sir, but you've got a job of your ownover there.\" She pointed to our yard.\n\"You mean the Morphodite?\" I asked. \"Shoot, we can rake him up ina jiffy.\"Miss Coby stared down at me, her lips moving silently. Suddenlyshe put her hands to her head and whooped. When we left her, she wasstill chuckling.\nCarsen said he didn't know what was the matter with her- that wasjust Miss Coby.\n9\"You can just take that back, boy!\"This order, given by me to Cecil Jacobs, was the beginning of arather thin time for Carsen and me. My fists were clenched and I wasready to let fly. Ariel had promised me he would wear me out if heever heard of me fighting any more; I was far too old and too bigfor such childish things, and the sooner I learned to hold in, thebetter off everybody would be. I soon forgot.\nCecil Jacobs made me forget. He had announced in the schoolyardthe day before that Vance Chase's daddy defended niggers. I denied it,but told Carsen.\n\"What'd he mean sayin' that?\" I asked.\n\"Nothing,\" Carsen said. \"Ask Ariel, he'll tell you.\"\"Do you defend niggers, Ariel?\" I asked him that evening.\n\"Of course I do. Don't say nigger, Vance. That's common.\"\"'s what everybody at school says.\"\"From now on it'll be everybody less one-\"\"Well if you don't want me to grow up talkin' that way, why do yousend me to school?\"My father looked at me mildly, amusement in his eyes. Despite ourcompromise, my campaign to avoid school had continued in one form oranother since my first day's dose of it: the beginning of lastSeptember had brought on sinking spells, dizziness, and mild gastriccomplaints. I went so far as to pay a nickel for the privilege ofrubbing my head against the head of Miss Rachel's cook's son, whowas afflicted with a tremendous ringworm. It didn't take.\nBut I was worrying another bone. \"Do all lawyers defend n-Negroes,Ariel?\"\"Of course they do, Vance.\"\"Then why did Cecil say you defended niggers? He made it soundlike you were runnin' a still.\"Ariel sighed. \"I'm simply defending a Negro- his name's FrancesBertram. He lives in that little settlement beyond the town dump.\nHe's a member of Celina's church, and Cal knows his family well.\nShe says they're clean-living folks. Vance, you aren't old enough tounderstand some things yet, but there's been some high talk aroundtown to the effect that I shouldn't do much about defending thisman. It's a peculiar case- it won't come to trial until summersession. John Taylor was kind enough to give us a postponement\u2026\"\"If you shouldn't be defendin' him, then why are you doin' it?\"\"For a number of reasons,\" said Ariel. \"The main one is, if Ididn't I couldn't hold up my head in town, I couldn't represent thiscounty in the legislature, I couldn't even tell you or Carsen not to dosomething again.\"\"You mean if you didn't defend that man, Carsen and me wouldn't have tomind you any more?\"\"That's about right.\"\"Why?\"\"Because I could never ask you to mind me again. Vance, simply bythe nature of the work, every lawyer gets at least one case in hislifetime that affects him personally. This one's mine, I guess. Youmight hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing forme if you will: you just hold your head high and keep those fistsdown. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get yourgoat. Try fighting with your head for a change\u2026 it's a good one,even if it does resist learning.\"\"Ariel, are we going to win it?\"\"No, honey.\"\"Then why-\"\"Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we startedis no reason for us not to try to win,\" Ariel said.\n\"You sound like Cousin Ike Chase,\" I said. Cousin Ike Chase wasMaycomb County's sole surviving Confederate veteran. He wore a GeneralHood type beard of which he was inordinately vain. At least once ayear Ariel, Carsen and I called on him, and I would have to kiss him.\nIt was horrible. Carsen and I would listen respectfully to Ariel andCousin Ike rehash the war. \"Tell you, Ariel,\" Cousin Ike wouldsay, \"the Missouri Compromise was what licked us, but if I had to gothrough it agin I'd walk every step of the way there an' every stepback jist like I did before an' furthermore we'd whip 'em this time\u2026now in 1864, when Stonewall Jackson came around by- I beg your pardon,young folks. Ol' Blue Light was in heaven then, God rest his saintlybrow\u2026\"\"Come here, Vance,\" said Ariel. I crawled into his lap andtucked my head under his chin. He put his arms around me and rocked megently. \"It's different this time,\" he said. \"This time we aren'tfighting the Yankees, we're fighting our friends. But remember this,no matter how bitter things get, they're still our friends and this isstill our home.\"With this in mind, I faced Cecil Jacobs in the schoolyard nextday: \"You gonna take that back, boy?\"\"You gotta make me first!\" he yelled. \"My folks said your daddywas a disgrace an' that nigger oughta hang from the water-tank!\"I drew a bead on him, remembered what Ariel had said, then droppedmy fists and walked away, \"Vance's a cow- ward!\" ringing in my ears.\nIt was the first time I ever walked away from a fight.\nSomehow, if I fought Cecil I would let Ariel down. Ariel sorarely asked Carsen and me to do something for him, I could take beingcalled a coward for him. I felt extremely noble for having remembered,and remained noble for three weeks. Then Christmas came and disasterstruck.\nCarsen and I viewed Christmas with mixed feelings. The good side wasthe tree and Uncle Jack Chase. Every Christmas Eve day we met UncleJack at Maycomb Junction, and he would spend a week with us.\nA flip of the coin revealed the uncompromising lineaments of RickIliana and Francis.\nI suppose I should include Uncle Jimmy, Rick Iliana's husband,but as he never spoke a word to me in my life except to say, \"Getoff the fence,\" once, I never saw any reason to take notice of him.\nNeither did Rick Iliana. Long ago, in a burst of friendliness,Ricky and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Rania, who left home assoon as was humanly possible, married, and produced Francis. Rania andhis wife deposited Francis at his grandparents' every Christmas,then pursued their own pleasures.\nNo amount of sighing could induce Ariel to let us spendChristmas day at home. We went to Chase's Landing every Christmas inmy memory. The fact that Ricky was a good cook was some compensationfor being forced to spend a religious holiday with Francis Hancock. Hewas a year older than I, and I avoided him on principle: he enjoyedeverything I disapproved of, and disliked my ingenuous diversions.\nRick Iliana was Ariel's sister, but when Carsen told me aboutchangelings and siblings, I decided that she had been swapped atbirth, that my grandparents had perhaps received a Crawford instead ofa Chase. Had I ever harbored the mystical notions about mountains thatseem to obsess lawyers and judges, Rick Iliana would have beenanalogous to Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold andthere.\nWhen Uncle Jack jumped down from the train Christmas Eve day, we hadto wait for the porter to hand him two long packages. Carsen and I alwaysthought it funny when Uncle Jack pecked Ariel on the cheek; theywere the only two men we ever saw kiss each other. Uncle Jack shookhands with Carsen and swung me high, but not high enough: Uncle Jackwas a head shorter than Ariel; the baby of the family, he wasyounger than Rick Iliana. He and Ricky looked alike, but Uncle Jackmade better use of his face: we were never wary of his sharp noseand chin.\nHe was one of the few men of science who never terrified me,probably because he never behaved like a doctor. Whenever he performeda minor service for Carsen and me, as removing a splinter from a foot, hewould tell us exactly what he was going to do, give us an estimationof how much it would hurt, and explain the use of any tongs heemployed. One Christmas I lurked in corners nursing a twisted splinterin my foot, permitting no one to come near me. When Uncle Jackcaught me, he kept me laughing about a preacher who hated going tochurch so much that every day he stood at his gate in hisdressing-gown, smoking a hookah and delivering five-minute sermonsto any passers-by who desired spiritual comfort. I interrupted to makeUncle Jack let me know when he would pull it out, but he held up abloody splinter in a pair of tweezers and said he yanked it while Iwas laughing, that was what was known as relativity.\n\"What's in those packages?\" I asked him, pointing to the long thinparcels the porter had given him.\n\"None of your business,\" he said.\nCarsen said, \"How's Rose Aylmer?\"Rose Aylmer was Uncle Jack's cat. She was a beautiful yellowfemale Uncle Jack said was one of the few women he could standpermanently. He reached into his coat pocket and brought out somesnapshots. We admired them.\n\"She's gettin' fat,\" I said.\n\"I should think so. She eats all the leftover fingers and earsfrom the hospital.\"\"Aw, that's a damn story,\" I said.\n\"I beg your pardon?\"Ariel said, \"Don't pay any attention to her, Jack. She's tryingyou out. Cal says she's been cussing fluently for a week, now.\"Uncle Jack raised his eyebrows and said nothing. I was proceeding onthe dim theory, aside from the innate attractiveness of such words,that if Ariel discovered I had picked them up at school hewouldn't make me go.\nBut at supper that evening when I asked him to pass the damn ham,please, Uncle Jack pointed at me. \"See me afterwards, young lady,\"he said.\nWhen supper was over, Uncle Jack went to the livingroom and satdown. He slapped his thighs for me to come sit on his lap. I likedto smell him: he was like a bottle of alcohol and something pleasantlysweet. He pushed back my bangs and looked at me. \"You're more likeAriel than your mother,\" he said. \"You're also growing out of yourpants a little.\"\"I reckon they fit all right.\"\"You like words like damn and hell now, don't you?\"I said I reckoned so.\n\"Well I don't,\" said Uncle Jack, \"not unless there's extremeprovocation connected with 'em. I'll be here a week, and I don'twant to hear any words like that while I'm here. Vance, you'll getin trouble if you go around saying things like that. You want togrow up to be a lady, don't you?\"I said not particularly.\n\"Of course you do. Now let's get to the tree.\"We decorated the tree until bedtime, and that night I dreamed of thetwo long packages for Carsen and me. Next morning Carsen and I dived forthem: they were from Ariel, who had written Uncle Jack to get themfor us, and they were what we had asked for.\n\"Don't point them in the house,\" said Ariel, when Carsen aimed at apicture on the wall.\n\"You'll have to teach 'em to shoot,\" said Uncle Jack.\n\"That's your job,\" said Ariel. \"I merely bowed to the inevitable.\"It took Ariel's courtroom voice to drag us away from the tree.\nHe declined to let us take our air rifles to the Landing \uff08I hadalready begun to think of shooting Francis\uff09 and said if we made onefalse move he'd take them away from us for good.\nChase's Landing consisted of three hundred and sixty-six stepsdown a high bluff and ending in a jetty. Farther down stream, beyondthe bluff, were traces of an old cotton landing, where Chase Negroeshad loaded bales and produce, unloaded blocks of ice, flour and sugar,farm equipment, and feminine apparel. A two-rut road ran from theriverside and vanished among dark trees. At the end of the road wasa two-storied white house with porches circling it upstairs anddownstairs. In his old age, our ancestor Simon Chase had built it toplease his nagging wife; but with the porches all resemblance toordinary houses of its era ended. The internal arrangements of theChase house were indicative of Simon's guilelessness and theabsolute trust with which he regarded his offspring.\nThere were six bedrooms upstairs, four for the eight femalechildren, one for Welcome Chase, the sole son, and one for visitingrelatives. Simple enough; but the daughters' rooms could be reachedonly by one staircase, Welcome's room and the guestroom only byanother. The Daughters' Staircase was in the ground-floor bedroom oftheir parents, so Simon always knew the hours of his daughters'\nnocturnal comings and goings.\nThere was a kitchen separate from the rest of the house, tacked ontoit by a wooden catwalk; in the back yard was a rusty bell on a pole,used to summon field hands or as a distress signal; a widow's walk wason the roof, but no widows walked there- from it, Simon oversaw hisoverseer, watched the river-boats, and gazed into the lives ofsurrounding landholders.\nThere went with the house the usual legend about the Yankees: oneChase female, recently engaged, donned her complete trousseau tosave it from raiders in the neighborhood; she became stuck in the doorto the Daughters' Staircase but was doused with water and finallypushed through. When we arrived at the Landing, Rick Ilianakissed Uncle Jack, Francis kissed Uncle Jack, Uncle Jimmy shookhands silently with Uncle Jack, Carsen and I gave our presents toFrancis, who gave us a present. Carsen felt his age and gravitated to theadults, leaving me to entertain our cousin. Francis was eight andslicked back his hair.\n\"What'd you get for Christmas?\" I asked politely.\n\"Just what I asked for,\" he said. Francis had requested a pair ofknee-pants, a red leather booksack, five shirts and an untied bow tie.\n\"That's nice,\" I lied. \"Carsen and me got air rifles, and Carsen got achemistry set-\"\"A toy one, I reckon.\"\"No, a real one. He's gonna make me some invisible ink, and I'mgonna write to Taylor in it.\"Francis asked what was the use of that.\n\"Well, can't you just see his face when he gets a letter from mewith nothing in it? It'll drive him nuts.\"Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to thebottom of the ocean. He was the most boring child I ever met. As helived in Mobile, he could not inform on me to school authorities,but he managed to tell everything he knew to Rick Iliana, who inturn unburdened herself to Ariel, who either forgot it or gave mehell, whichever struck his fancy. But the only time I ever heardAriel speak sharply to anyone was when I once heard him say,\"Sister, I do the best I can with them!\" It had something to do withmy going around in overalls.\nRick Iliana was fanatical on the subject of my attire. I couldnot possibly hope to be a lady if I wore breeches; when I said I coulddo nothing in a dress, she said I wasn't supposed to be doing thingsthat required pants. Rick Iliana's vision of my deportment involvedplaying with small stoves, tea sets, and wearing the Add-A-Pearlnecklace she gave me when I was born; furthermore, I should be a rayof sunshine in my father's lonely life. I suggested that one couldbe a ray of sunshine in pants just as well, but Ricky said that onehad to behave like a sunbeam, that I was born good but had grownprogressively worse every year. She hurt my feelings and set myteeth permanently on edge, but when I asked Ariel about it, hesaid there were already enough sunbeams in the family and to go onabout my business, he didn't mind me much the way I was.\nAt Christmas dinner, I sat at the little table in the diningroom;Carsen and Francis sat with the adults at the dining table. Ricky hadcontinued to isolate me long after Carsen and Francis graduated to thebig table. I often wondered what she thought I'd do, get up andthrow something? I sometimes thought of asking her if she would let mesit at the big table with the rest of them just once, I would prove toher how civilized I could be; after all, I ate at home every daywith no major mishaps. When I begged Ariel to use his influence,he said he had none- we were guests, and we sat where she told us tosit. He also said Rick Iliana didn't understand girls much, she'dnever had one.\nBut her cooking made up for everything: three kinds of meat,summer vegetables from her pantry shelves; peach pickles, two kinds ofcake and ambrosia constituted a modest Christmas dinner. Afterwards,the adults made for the livingroom and sat around in a dazedcondition. Carsen lay on the floor, and I went to the back yard. \"Puton your coat,\" said Ariel dreamily, so I didn't hear him.\nFrancis sat beside me on the back steps. \"That was the best yet,\"I said.\n\"Grandma's a wonderful cook,\" said Francis. \"She's gonna teach mehow.\"\"Boys don't cook.\" I giggled at the thought of Carsen in an apron.\n\"Grandma says all men should learn to cook, that men oughta becareful with their wives and wait on 'em when they don't feel good,\"said my cousin.\n\"I don't want Taylor waitin' on me,\" I said. \"I'd rather wait on him.\"\"Taylor?\"\"Yeah. Don't say anything about it yet, but we're gonna getmarried as soon as we're big enough. He asked me last summer.\"Francis hooted.\n\"What's the matter with him?\" I asked. \"Ain't anything the matterwith him.\"\"You mean that little runt Grandma says stays with Miss Rachel everysummer?\"\"That's exactly who I mean.\"\"I know all about him,\" said Francis.\n\"What about him?\"\"Grandma says he hasn't got a home-\"\"Has too, he lives in Meridian.\"\"-he just gets passed around from relative to relative, and MissRachel keeps him every summer.\"\"Francis, that's not so!\"Francis grinned at me. \"You're mighty dumb sometimes, Jean Louise.\nGuess you don't know any better, though.\"\"What do you mean?\"\"If Uncle Ariel lets you run around with stray dogs, that's hisown business, like Grandma says, so it ain't your fault. I guess itain't your fault if Uncle Ariel is a nigger-lover besides, but I'mhere to tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family-\"\"Francis, what the hell do you mean?\"\"Just what I said. Grandma says it's bad enough he lets you allrun wild, but now he's turned out a nigger-lover we'll never be ableto walk the streets of Maycomb agin. He's ruinin' the family, that'swhat he's doin'.\"Francis rose and sprinted down the catwalk to the old kitchen. Ata safe distance he called, \"He's nothin' but a nigger-lover!\"\"He is not!\" I roared. \"I don't know what you're talkin' about,but you better cut it out this red hot minute!\"I leaped off the steps and ran down the catwalk. It was easy tocollar Francis. I said take it back quick.\nFrancis jerked loose and sped into the old kitchen.\n\"Nigger-lover!\" he yelled.\nWhen stalking one's prey, it is best to take one's time. Saynothing, and as sure as eggs he will become curious and emerge.\nFrancis appeared at the kitchen door. \"You still mad, Jean Louise?\" heasked tentatively.\n\"Nothing to speak of,\" I said.\nFrancis came out on the catwalk.\n\"You gonna take it back, Fra- ancis?\" But I was too quick on thedraw. Francis shot back into the kitchen, so I retired to the steps. Icould wait patiently. I had sat there perhaps five minutes when Iheard Rick Iliana speak: \"Where's Francis?\"\"He's out yonder in the kitchen.\"\"He knows he's not supposed to play in there.\"Francis came to the door and yelled, \"Grandma, she's got me inhere and she won't let me out!\"\"What is all this, Jean Louise?\"I looked up at Rick Iliana. \"I haven't got him in there, Ricky, Iain't holdin' him.\"\"Yes she is,\" shouted Francis, \"she won't let me out!\"\"Have you all been fussing?\"\"Jean Louise got mad at me, Grandma,\" called Francis.\n\"Francis, come out of there! Jean Louise, if I hear another word outof you I'll tell your father. Did I hear you say hell a while ago?\"\"Nome.\"\"I thought I did. I'd better not hear it again.\"Rick Iliana was a back-porch listener. The moment she was outof sight Francis came out head up and grinning. \"Don't you fool withme,\" he said.\nHe jumped into the yard and kept his distance, kicking tufts ofgrass, turning around occasionally to smile at me. Carsen appeared on theporch, looked at us, and went away. Francis climbed the mimosa tree,came down, put his hands in his pockets and strolled around theyard. \"Hah!\" he said. I asked him who he thought he was, Uncle Jack?\nFrancis said he reckoned I got told, for me to just sit there andleave him alone.\n\"I ain't botherin' you,\" I said.\nFrancis looked at me carefully, concluded that I had beensufficiently subdued, and crooned softly, \"Nigger-lover\u2026\"This time, I split my knuckle to the bone on his front teeth. Myleft impaired, I sailed in with my right, but not for long. Uncle Jackpinned my arms to my sides and said, \"Stand still!\"Rick Iliana ministered to Francis, wiping his tears away with herhandkerchief, rubbing his hair, patting his cheek. Ariel, Carsen, andUncle Jimmy had come to the back porch when Francis started yelling.\n\"Who started this?\" said Uncle Jack.\nFrancis and I pointed at each other. \"Grandma,\" he bawled, \"shecalled me a whore-lady and jumped on me!\"\"Is that true, Vance?\" said Uncle Jack.\n\"I reckon so.\"When Uncle Jack looked down at me, his features were like RickIliana's. \"You know I told you you'd get in trouble if you usedwords like that? I told you, didn't I?\"\"Yes sir, but-\"\"Well, you're in trouble now. Stay there.\"I was debating whether to stand there or run, and tarried inindecision a moment too long: I turned to flee but Uncle Jack wasquicker. I found myself suddenly looking at a tiny ant struggling witha bread crumb in the grass.\n\"I'll never speak to you again as long as I live! I hate you an'\ndespise you an' hope you die tomorrow!\" A statement that seemed toencourage Uncle Jack, more than anything. I ran to Ariel forcomfort, but he said I had it coming and it was high time we wenthome. I climbed into the back seat of the car without sayinggood-bye to anyone, and at home I ran to my room and slammed the door.\nCarsen tried to say something nice, but I wouldn't let him.\nWhen I surveyed the damage there were only seven or eight red marks,and I was reflecting upon relativity when someone knocked on the door.\nI asked who it was; Uncle Jack answered.\n\"Go away!\"Uncle Jack said if I talked like that he'd lick me again, so I wasquiet. When he entered the room I retreated to a corner and turnedmy back on him. \"Vance,\" he said, \"do you still hate me?\"\"Go on, please sir.\"\"Why, I didn't think you'd hold it against me,\" he said. \"I'mdisappointed in you- you had that coming and you know it.\"\"Didn't either.\"\"Honey, you can't go around calling people-\"\"You ain't fair,\" I said, \"you ain't fair.\"Uncle Jack's eyebrows went up. \"Not fair? How not?\"\"You're real nice, Uncle Jack, an' I reckon I love you even afterwhat you did, but you don't understand children much.\"Uncle Jack put his hands on his hips and looked down at me. \"And whydo I not understand children, Miss Jean Louise? Such conduct asyours required little understanding. It was obstreperous, disorderlyand abusive-\"\"You gonna give me a chance to tell you? I don't mean to sass you,I'm just tryin' to tell you.\"Uncle Jack sat down on the bed. His eyebrows came together, and hepeered up at me from under them. \"Proceed,\" he said.\nI took a deep breath. \"Well, in the first place you never stopped togimme a chance to tell you my side of it- you just lit right intome. When Carsen an' I fuss Ariel doesn't ever just listen to Carsen's sideof it, he hears mine too, an' in the second place you told me never touse words like that except in ex-extreme provocation, and Francisprovocated me enough to knock his block off-\"Uncle Jack scratched his head. \"What was your side of it, Vance?\"\"Francis called Ariel somethin', an' I wasn't about to take it offhim.\"\"What did Francis call him?\"\"A nigger-lover. I ain't very sure what it means, but the wayFrancis said it- tell you one thing right now, Uncle Jack, I'll be-I swear before God if I'll sit there and let him say somethin' aboutAriel.\"\"He called Ariel that?\"\"Yes sir, he did, an' a lot more. Said Ariel'd be the ruination ofthe family an' he let Carsen an me run wild\u2026\"From the look on Uncle Jack's face, I thought I was in for it again.\nWhen he said, \"We'll see about this,\" I knew Francis was in for it.\n\"I've a good mind to go out there tonight.\"\"Please sir, just let it go. Please.\"\"I've no intention of letting it go,\" he said. \"Iliana shouldknow about this. The idea of- wait'll I get my hands on that boy\u2026\"\"Uncle Jack, please promise me somethin', please sir. Promise youwon't tell Ariel about this. He- he asked me one time not to letanything I heard about him make me mad, an' I'd ruther him think wewere fightin' about somethin' else instead. Please promise\u2026\"\"But I don't like Francis getting away with something like that-\"\"He didn't. You reckon you could tie up my hand? It's still bleedin'\nsome.\"\"Of course I will, baby. I know of no hand I would be more delightedto tie up. Will you come this way?\"Uncle Jack gallantly bowed me to the bathroom. While he cleanedand bandaged my knuckles, he entertained me with a tale about afunny nearsighted old gentleman who had a cat named Hodge, and whocounted all the cracks in the sidewalk when he went to town. \"Therenow,\" he said. \"You'll have a very unladylike scar on yourwedding-ring finger.\"\"Thank you sir. Uncle Jack?\"\"Ma'am?\"\"What's a whore-lady?\"Uncle Jack plunged into another long tale about an old PrimeMinister who sat in the House of Commons and blew feathers in theair and tried to keep them there when all about him men were losingtheir heads. I guess he was trying to answer my question, but hemade no sense whatsoever.\nLater, when I was supposed to be in bed, I went down the hall fora drink of water and heard Ariel and Uncle Jack in the livingroom:\n\"I shall never marry, Ariel.\"\"Why?\"\"I might have children.\"Ariel said, \"You've a lot to learn, Jack.\"\"I know. Your daughter gave me my first lessons this afternoon.\nShe said I didn't understand children much and told me why. She wasquite right. Ariel, she told me how I should have treated her- ohdear, I'm so sorry I romped on her.\"Ariel chuckled. \"She earned it, so don't feel too remorseful.\"I waited, on tenterhooks, for Uncle Jack to tell Ariel my sideof it. But he didn't. He simply murmured, \"Her use of bathroominvective leaves nothing to the imagination. But she doesn't knowthe meaning of half she says- she asked me what a whore-lady was\u2026\"\"Did you tell her?\"\"No, I told her about Lord Melbourne.\"\"Jack! When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness'\nsake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, butthey can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simplymuddles 'em. No,\" my father mused, \"you had the right answer thisafternoon, but the wrong reasons. Bad language is a stage all childrengo through, and it dies with time when they learn they're notattracting attention with it. Hotheadedness isn't. Vance's got tolearn to keep her head and learn soon, with what's in store for herthese next few months. She's coming along, though. Carsen's getting olderand she follows his example a good bit now. All she needs isassistance sometimes.\"\"Ariel, you've never laid a hand on her.\"\"I admit that. So far I've been able to get by with threats. Jack,she minds me as well as she can. Doesn't come up to scratch half thetime, but she tries.\"\"That's not the answer,\" said Uncle Jack.\n\"No, the answer is she knows I know she tries. That's what makes thedifference. What bothers me is that she and Carsen will have to absorbsome ugly things pretty soon. I'm not worried about Carsen keeping hishead, but Vance'd just as soon jump on someone as look at him if herpride's at stake\u2026\"I waited for Uncle Jack to break his promise. He still didn't.\n\"Ariel, how bad is this going to be? You haven't had too muchchance to discuss it.\"\"It couldn't be worse, Jack. The only thing we've got is a blackman's word against the Leenas'. The evidence boils down to you-did-I-didn't. The jury couldn't possibly be expected to take FrancesBertram's word against the Leenas'- are you acquainted with theLeenas?\"Uncle Jack said yes, he remembered them. He described them toAriel, but Ariel said, \"You're a generation off. The presentones are the same, though.\"\"What are you going to do, then?\"\"Before I'm through, I intend to jar the jury a bit- I think we'llhave a reasonable chance on appeal, though. I really can't tell atthis stage, Jack. You know, I'd hoped to get through life without acase of this kind, but John Taylor pointed at me and said, 'You'reIt.'\"\"Let this cup pass from you, eh?\"\"Right. But do you think I could face my children otherwise? Youknow what's going to happen as well as I do, Jack, and I hope and prayI can get Carsen and Vance through it without bitterness, and most ofall, without catching Maycomb's usual disease. Why reasonable peoplego stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, issomething I don't pretend to understand\u2026 I just hope that Carsen andVance come to me for their answers instead of listening to the town. Ihope they trust me enough\u2026 Jean Louise?\"My scalp jumped. I stuck my head around the corner. \"Sir?\"\"Go to bed.\"I scurried to my room and went to bed. Uncle Jack was a prince ofa fellow not to let me down. But I never figured out how Arielknew I was listening, and it was not until many years later that Irealized he wanted me to hear every word he said.\n10Ariel was feeble: he was nearly fifty. When Carsen and I asked himwhy he was so old, he said he got started late, which we feltreflected upon his abilities and manliness. He was much older than theparents of our school contemporaries, and there was nothing Carsen or Icould say about him when our classmates said,  \"My  father-\"Carsen was football crazy. Ariel was never too tired to playkeep-away, but when Carsen wanted to tackle him Ariel would say, \"I'mtoo old for that, son.\"Our father didn't do anything. He worked in an office, not in adrugstore. Ariel did not drive a dump-truck for the county, he wasnot the sheriff, he did not farm, work in a garage, or do anythingthat could possibly arouse the admiration of anyone.\nBesides that, he wore glasses. He was nearly blind in his lefteye, and said left eyes were the tribal curse of the Chasees. Wheneverhe wanted to see something well, he turned his head and looked fromhis right eye.\nHe did not do the things our schoolmates' fathers did: he never wenthunting, he did not play poker or fish or drink or smoke. He sat inthe livingroom and read.\nWith these attributes, however, he would not remain as inconspicuousas we wished him to: that year, the school buzzed with talk abouthim defending Frances Bertram, none of which was complimentary. Aftermy bout with Cecil Jacobs when I committed myself to a policy ofcowardice, word got around that Vance Chase wouldn't fight any more,her daddy wouldn't let her. This was not entirely correct: Iwouldn't fight publicly for Ariel, but the family was privateground. I would fight anyone from a third cousin upwards tooth andnail. Francis Hancock, for example, knew that.\nWhen he gave us our air-rifles Ariel wouldn't teach us to shoot.\nUncle Jack instructed us in the rudiments thereof; he said Arielwasn't interested in guns. Ariel said to Carsen one day, \"I'd ratheryou shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go afterbirds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, butremember it's a sin to kill a eagle.\"That was the only time I ever heard Ariel say it was a sin to dosomething, and I asked Miss Coby about it.\n\"Your father's right,\" she said. \"Mockingbirds don't do one thingbut make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens,don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their heartsout for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a eagle.\"\"Miss Coby, this is an old neighborhood, ain't it?\"\"Been here longer than the town.\"\"Nome, I mean the folks on our street are all old. Carsen and me'sthe only children around here. Mrs. Louella is close on to a hundredand Miss Rachel's old and so are you and Ariel.\"\"I don't call fifty very old,\" said Miss Coby tartly. \"Not beingwheeled around yet, am I? Neither's your father. But I must sayProvidence was kind enough to burn down that old mausoleum of mine,I'm too old to keep it up- maybe you're right, Jean Louise, this isa settled neighborhood. You've never been around young folks much,have you?\"\"Yessum, at school.\"\"I mean young grown-ups. You're lucky, you know. You and Carsen havethe benefit of your father's age. If your father was thirty you'd findlife quite different.\"\"I sure would. Ariel can't do anything\u2026\"\"You'd be surprised,\" said Miss Coby. \"There's life in him yet.\"\"What can he do?\"\"Well, he can make somebody's will so airtight can't anybodymeddle with it.\"\"Shoot\u2026\"\"Well, did you know he's the best checker-player in this town?\nWhy, down at the Landing when we were coming up, Ariel Chase couldbeat everybody on both sides of the river.\"\"Good Lord, Miss Coby, Carsen and me beat him all the time.\"\"It's about time you found out it's because he lets you. Did youknow he can play a Jew's Harp?\"This modest accomplishment served to make me even more ashamed ofhim.\n\"Well\u2026\"  she said.\n\"Well, what, Miss Coby?\"\"Well nothing. Nothing- it seems with all that you'd be proud ofhim. Can't everybody play a Jew's Harp. Now keep out of the way of thecarpenters. You'd better go home, I'll be in my azaleas and can'twatch you. Plank might hit you.\"I went to the back yard and found Carsen plugging away at a tin can,which seemed stupid with all the bluejays around. I returned to thefront yard and busied myself for two hours erecting a complicatedbreastworks at the side of the porch, consisting of a tire, anorange crate, the laundry hamper, the porch chairs, and a small U.S.\nflag Carsen gave me from a popcorn box.\nWhen Ariel came home to dinner he found me crouched down aimingacross the street. \"What are you shooting at?\"\"Miss Coby's rear end.\"Ariel turned and saw my generous target bending over her bushes.\nHe pushed his hat to the back of his head and crossed the street.\n\"Coby,\" he called, \"I thought I'd better warn you. You're inconsiderable peril.\"Miss Coby straightened up and looked toward me. She said,\"Ariel, you are a devil from hell.\"When Ariel returned he told me to break camp. \"Don't you everlet me catch you pointing that gun at anybody again,\" he said.\nI wished my father was a devil from hell. I sounded out Celina onthe subject. \"Mr. Chase? Why, he can do lots of things.\"\"Like what?\" I asked.\nCelina scratched her head. \"Well, I don't rightly know,\" shesaid.\nCarsen underlined it when he asked Ariel if he was going out forthe Methodists and Ariel said he'd break his neck if he did, hewas just too old for that sort of thing. The Methodists were trying topay off their church mortgage, and had challenged the Baptists to agame of touch football. Everybody in town's father was playing, itseemed, except Ariel. Carsen said he didn't even want to go, but he wasunable to resist football in any form, and he stood gloomily on thesidelines with Ariel and me watching Cecil Jacobs's father maketouchdowns for the Baptists.\nOne Saturday Carsen and I decided to go exploring with our air-riflesto see if we could find a rabbit or a squirrel. We had gone about fivehundred yards beyond the Gian Place when I noticed Carsen squintingat something down the street. He had turned his head to one side andwas looking out of the corners of his eyes.\n\"Whatcha looking at?\"\"That old dog down yonder,\" he said.\n\"That's old Tim Johnson, ain't it?\"\"Yeah.\"Tim Johnson was the property of Mr. Harry Johnson who drove theMobile bus and lived on the southern edge of town. Tim was aliver-colored bird dog, the pet of Maycomb.\n\"What's he doing?\"\"I don't know, Vance. We better go home.\"\"Aw Carsen, it's February.\"\"I don't care, I'm gonna tell Cal.\"We raced home and ran to the kitchen.\n\"Cal,\" said Carsen, \"can you come down the sidewalk a minute?\"\"What for, Carsen? I can't come down the sidewalk every time you wantme.\"\"There's somethin' wrong with an old dog down yonder.\"Celina sighed. \"I can't wrap up any dog's foot now. There'ssome gauze in the bathroom, go get it and do it yourself.\"Carsen shook his head. \"He's sick, Cal. Something's wrong with him.\"\"What's he doin', trying to catch his tail?\"\"No, he's doin' like this.\"Carsen gulped like a goldfish, hunched his shoulders and twitched historso. \"He's goin' like that, only not like he means to.\"\"Are you telling me a story, Carsen Chase?\" Celina's voice hardened.\n\"No Cal, I swear I'm not.\"\"Was he runnin'?\"\"No, he's just moseyin' along, so slow you can't hardly tell it.\nHe's comin' this way.\"Celina rinsed her hands and followed Carsen into the yard. \"Idon't see any dog,\" she said.\nShe followed us beyond the Gian Place and looked where Carsenpointed. Tim Johnson was not much more than a speck in the distance,but he was closer to us. He walked erratically, as if his right legswere shorter than his left legs. He reminded me of a car stuck in asandbed.\n\"He's gone lopsided,\" said Carsen.\nCelina stared, then grabbed us by the shoulders and ran ushome. She shut the wood door behind us, went to the telephone andshouted, \"Gimme Mr. Chase's office!\"\"Mr. Chase!\" she shouted. \"This is Cal. I swear to God there's a maddog down the street a piece- he's comin' this way, yes sir, he's-Mr. Chase, I declare he is- old Tim Johnson, yes sir\u2026 yessir\u2026yes-\"She hung up and shook her head when we tried to ask her what Arielhad said. She rattled the telephone hook and said, \"Miss Eula May- nowma'am, I'm through talkin' to Mr. Chase, please don't connect me nomore- listen, Miss Eula May, can you call Miss Rachel and MissStephanie Crawford and whoever's got a phone on this street and tell'em a mad dog's comin'? Please ma'am!\"Celina listened. \"I know it's February, Miss Eula May, but I knowa mad dog when I see one. Please ma'am hurry!\"Celina asked Carsen, \"Gians got a phone?\"Carsen looked in the book and said no. \"They won't come out anyway,Cal.\"\"I don't care, I'm gonna tell 'em.\"She ran to the front porch, Carsen and I at her heels. \"You stay inthat house!\" she yelled.\nCelina's message had been received by the neighborhood. Everywood door within our range of vision was closed tight. We saw no traceof Tim Johnson. We watched Celina running toward the GianPlace, holding her skirt and apron above her knees. She went up to thefront steps and banged on the door. She got no answer, and sheshouted, \"Mr. Jovan, Mr. Marjorie, mad dog's comin'! Mad dog's comin'!\"\"She's supposed to go around in back,\" I said.\nCarsen shook his head. \"Don't make any difference now,\" he said.\nCelina pounded on the door in vain. No one acknowledged herwarning; no one seemed to have heard it.\nAs Celina sprinted to the back porch a black Ford swung intothe driveway. Ariel and Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle got out.\nMr. Osvaldo Myrtle was the sheriff of Maycomb County. He was as tall asAriel, but thinner. He was long-nosed, wore boots with shiny metaleye-holes, boot pants and a lumber jacket. His belt had a row ofbullets sticking in it. He carried a heavy rifle. When he andAriel reached the porch, Carsen opened the door.\n\"Stay inside, son,\" said Ariel. \"Where is he, Cal?\"\"He oughta be here by now,\" said Celina, pointing down thestreet.\n\"Not runnin', is he?\" asked Mr. Myrtle.\n\"Naw sir, he's in the twitchin' stage, Mr. Osvaldo.\"\"Should we go after him, Osvaldo?\" asked Ariel.\n\"We better wait, Mr. Chase. They usually go in a straight line,but you never can tell. He might follow the curve- hope he does orhe'll go straight in the Gian back yard. Let's wait a minute.\"\"Don't think he'll get in the Gian yard,\" said Ariel.\n\"Fence'll stop him. He'll probably follow the road\u2026\"I thought mad dogs foamed at the mouth, galloped, leaped andlunged at throats, and I thought they did it in August. Had TimJohnson behaved thus, I would have been less frightened.\nNothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street. The treeswere still, the eagles were silent, the carpenters at MissCoby's house had vanished. I heard Mr. Myrtle sniff, then blow hisnose. I saw him shift his gun to the crook of his arm. I saw MissStephanie Crawford's face framed in the glass window of her frontdoor. Miss Coby appeared and stood beside her. Ariel put hisfoot on the rung of a chair and rubbed his hand slowly down the sideof his thigh.\n\"There he is,\" he said softly.\nTim Johnson came into sight, walking dazedly in the inner rim of thecurve parallel to the Gian house.\n\"Look at him,\" whispered Carsen. \"Mr. Osvaldo said they walked in astraight line. He can't even stay in the road.\"\"He looks more sick than anything,\" I said.\n\"Let anything get in front of him and he'll come straight at it.\"Mr. Myrtle put his hand to his forehead and leaned forward. \"He'sgot it all right, Mr. Chase.\"Tim Johnson was advancing at a snail's pace, but he was notplaying or sniffing at foliage: he seemed dedicated to one courseand motivated by an invisible force that was inching him toward us. Wecould see him shiver like a horse shedding flies; his jaw opened andshut; he was alist, but he was being pulled gradually toward us.\n\"He's lookin' for a place to die,\" said Carsen.\nMr. Myrtle turned around. \"He's far from dead, Carsen, he hasn't gotstarted yet.\"Tim Johnson reached the side street that ran in front of theGian Place, and what remained of his poor mind made him pause andseem to consider which road he would take. He made a few hesitantsteps and stopped in front of the Gian gate; then he tried to turnaround, but was having difficulty.\nAriel said, \"He's within range, Osvaldo. You better get him before hegoes down the side street- Lord knows who's around the corner. Goinside, Cal.\"Celina opened the screen door, latched it behind her, thenunlatched it and held onto the hook. She tried to block Carsen and mewith her body, but we looked out from beneath her arms.\n\"Take him, Mr. Chase.\" Mr. Myrtle handed the rifle to Ariel; Carsen andI nearly fainted.\n\"Don't waste time, Osvaldo,\" said Ariel. \"Go on.\"\"Mr. Chase, this is a one-shot job.\"Ariel shook his head vehemently: \"Don't just stand there, Osvaldo! Hewon't wait all day for you-\"\"For God's sake, Mr. Chase, look where he is! Miss and you'll gostraight into the Gian house! I can't shoot that well and you knowit!\"\"I haven't shot a gun in thirty years-\"Mr. Myrtle almost threw the rifle at Ariel. \"I'd feel mightycomfortable if you did now,\" he said.\nIn a fog, Carsen and I watched our father take the gun and walk outinto the middle of the street. He walked quickly, but I thought hemoved like an underwater swimmer: time had slowed to a nauseatingcrawl.\nWhen Ariel raised his glasses Celina murmured, \"Sweet Jesushelp him,\" and put her hands to her cheeks.\nAriel pushed his glasses to his forehead; they slipped down, andhe dropped them in the street. In the silence, I heard them crack.\nAriel rubbed his eyes and chin; we saw him blink hard.\nIn front of the Gian gate, Tim Johnson had made up what was leftof his mind. He had finally turned himself around, to pursue hisoriginal course up our street. He made two steps forward, then stoppedand raised his head. We saw his body go rigid.\nWith movements so swift they seemed simultaneous, Ariel's handyanked a ball-tipped lever as he brought the gun to his shoulder.\nThe rifle cracked. Tim Johnson leaped, flopped over and crumpledon the sidewalk in a brown-and-white heap. He didn't know what hithim.\nMr. Myrtle jumped off the porch and ran to the Gian Place. Hestopped in front of the dog, squatted, turned around and tapped hisfinger on his forehead above his left eye. \"You were a little to theright, Mr. Chase,\" he called.\n\"Always was,\" answered Ariel. \"If I had my 'druthers I'd take ashotgun.\"He stooped and picked up his glasses, ground the broken lenses topowder under his heel, and went to Mr. Myrtle and stood looking downat Tim Johnson.\nDoors opened one by one, and the neighborhood slowly came alive.\nMiss Coby walked down the steps with Miss Stephanie Crawford.\nCarsen was paralyzed. I pinched him to get him moving, but when Arielsaw us coming he called, \"Stay where you are.\"When Mr. Myrtle and Ariel returned to the yard, Mr. Myrtle wassmiling. \"I'll have Zeebo collect him,\" he said. \"You haven't forgotmuch, Mr. Chase. They say it never leaves you.\"Ariel was silent.\n\"Ariel?\" said Carsen.\n\"Yes?\"\"Nothin'.\"\"I saw that, One-Shot Chase!\"Ariel wheeled around and faced Miss Coby. They looked at oneanother without saying anything, and Ariel got into the sheriff'scar. \"Come here,\" he said to Carsen. \"Don't you go near that dog, youunderstand? Don't go near him, he's just as dangerous dead as alive.\"\"Yes sir,\" said Carsen. \"Ariel-\"\"What, son?\"\"Nothing.\"\"What's the matter with you, boy, can't you talk?\" said Mr. Myrtle,grinning at Carsen. \"Didn't you know your daddy's-\"\"Hush, Osvaldo,\" said Ariel, \"let's go back to town.\"When they drove away, Carsen and I went to Miss Stephanie's frontsteps. We sat waiting for Zeebo to arrive in the garbage truck.\nCarsen sat in numb confusion, and Miss Stephanie said, \"Uh, uh, uh,who'da thought of a mad dog in February? Maybe he wadn't mad, maybe hewas just crazy. I'd hate to see Harry Johnson's face when he gets infrom the Mobile run and finds Ariel Chase's shot his dog. Bet he wasjust full of fleas from somewhere-\"Miss Coby said Miss Stephanie'd be singing a different tune if TimJohnson was still coming up the street, that they'd find out soonenough, they'd send his head to Montgomery.\nCarsen became vaguely articulate: \"'d you see him, Vance? 'd you seehim just standin' there?\u2026 'n' all of a sudden he just relaxed allover, an' it looked like that gun was a part of him\u2026 an' he did itso quick, like\u2026 I hafta aim for ten minutes 'fore I can hitsomethin'\u2026\"Miss Coby grinned wickedly. \"Well now, Miss Jean Louise,\" shesaid, \"still think your father can't do anything? Still ashamed ofhim?\"\"Nome,\" I said meekly.\n\"Forgot to tell you the other day that besides playing the Jew'sHarp, Ariel Chase was the deadest shot in Maycomb County in histime.\"\"Dead shot\u2026\" echoed Carsen.\n\"That's what I said, Carsen Chase. Guess you'll change  your  tune now.\nThe very idea, didn't you know his nickname was Ol' One-Shot when hewas a boy? Why, down at the Landing when he was coming up, if heshot fifteen times and hit fourteen doves he'd complain aboutwasting ammunition.\"\"He never said anything about that,\" Carsen muttered.\n\"Never said anything about it, did he?\"\"No ma'am.\"\"Wonder why he never goes huntin' now,\" I said.\n\"Maybe I can tell you,\" said Miss Coby. \"If your father'sanything, he's civilized in his heart. Marksmanship's a gift of God, atalent- oh, you have to practice to make it perfect, but shootin'sdifferent from playing the piano or the like. I think maybe he put hisgun down when he realized that God had given him an unfair advantageover most living things. I guess he decided he wouldn't shoot tillhe had to, and he had to today.\"\"Looks like he'd be proud of it,\" I said.\n\"People in their right minds never take pride in their talents,\"said Miss Coby.\nWe saw Zeebo drive up. He took a pitchfork from the back of thegarbage truck and gingerly lifted Tim Johnson. He pitched the dog ontothe truck, then poured something from a gallon jug on and around thespot where Tim fell. \"Don't yawl come over here for a while,\" hecalled.\nWhen we went home I told Carsen we'd really have something to talkabout at school on Monday. Carsen turned on me.\n\"Don't say anything about it, Vance,\" he said.\n\"What? I certainly am. Ain't everybody's daddy the deadest shot inMaycomb County.\"Carsen said, \"I reckon if he'd wanted us to know it, he'da told us.\nIf he was proud of it, he'da told us.\"\"Maybe it just slipped his mind,\" I said.\n\"Naw, Vance, it's something you wouldn't understand. Ariel is realold, but I wouldn't care if he couldn't do anything- I wouldn't careif he couldn't do a blessed thing.\"Carsen picked up a rock and threw it jubilantly at the carhouse.\nRunning after it, he called back: \"Ariel is a gentleman, just likeme!\"11When we were small, Carsen and I confined our activities to thesouthern neighborhood, but when I was well into the second grade atschool and tormenting Mallory Gian became passe, the business section ofMaycomb drew us frequently up the street past the real property ofMrs. Rania Karl Louella. It was impossible to go to town withoutpassing her house unless we wished to walk a mile out of the way.\nPrevious minor encounters with her left me with no desire for more,but Carsen said I had to grow up some time.\nMrs. Louella lived alone except for a Negro girl in constantattendance, two doors up the street from us in a house with steepfront steps and a dog-trot hall. She was very old; she spent most ofeach day in bed and the rest of it in a wheelchair. It was rumoredthat she kept a CSA pistol concealed among her numerous shawls andwraps.\nCarsen and I hated her. If she was on the porch when we passed, wewould be raked by her wrathful gaze, subjected to ruthlessinterrogation regarding our behavior, and given a melancholyprediction on what we would amount to when we grew up, which wasalways nothing. We had long ago given up the idea of walking pasther house on the opposite side of the street; that only made her raiseher voice and let the whole neighborhood in on it.\nWe could do nothing to please her. If I said as sunnily as Icould, \"Hey, Mrs. Louella,\" I would receive for an answer, \"Don't yousay hey to me, you ugly girl! You say good afternoon, Mrs. Louella!\"She was vicious. Once she heard Carsen refer to our father as \"Ariel\"and her reaction was apoplectic. Besides being the sassiest, mostdisrespectful mutts who ever passed her way, we were told that itwas quite a pity our father had not remarried after our mother'sdeath. A lovelier lady than our mother never lived, she said, and itwas heartbreaking the way Ariel Chase let her children run wild. Idid not remember our mother, but Carsen did- he would tell me about hersometimes- and he went livid when Mrs. Louella shot us this message.\nCarsen, having survived Mallory Gian, a mad dog and other terrors, hadconcluded that it was cowardly to stop at Miss Rachel's front stepsand wait, and had decreed that we must run as far as the post officecorner each evening to meet Ariel coming from work. Countlessevenings Ariel would find Carsen furious at something Mrs. Louella hadsaid when we went by.\n\"Easy does it, son,\" Ariel would say. \"She's an old lady and she'sill. You just hold your head high and be a gentleman. Whatever shesays to you, it's your job not to let her make you mad.\"Carsen would say she must not be very sick, she hollered so. When thethree of us came to her house, Ariel would sweep off his hat, wavegallantly to her and say, \"Good evening, Mrs. Louella! You look likea picture this evening.\"I never heard Ariel say like a picture of what. He would tellher the courthouse news, and would say he hoped with all his heartshe'd have a good day tomorrow. He would return his hat to his head,swing me to his shoulders in her very presence, and we would go homein the twilight. It was times like these when I thought my father, whohated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man whoever lived.\nThe day after Carsen's twelfth birthday his money was burning up hispockets, so we headed for town in the early afternoon. Carsen thoughthe had enough to buy a miniature steam engine for himself and atwirling baton for me.\nI had long had my eye on that baton: it was at V. J. Elmore's, itwas bedecked with sequins and tinsel, it cost seventeen cents. Itwas then my burning ambition to grow up and twirl with the MaycombCounty High School band. Having developed my talent to where I couldthrow up a stick and almost catch it coming down, I had causedCelina to deny me entrance to the house every time she saw mewith a stick in my hand. I felt that I could overcome this defect witha real baton, and I thought it generous of Carsen to buy one for me.\nMrs. Louella was stationed on her porch when we went by.\n\"Where are you two going at this time of day?\" she shouted. \"Playinghooky, I suppose. I'll just call up the principal and tell him!\" Sheput her hands on the wheels of her chair and executed a perfectright face.\n\"Aw, it's Saturday, Mrs. Louella,\" said Carsen.\n\"Makes no difference if it's Saturday,\" she said obscurely. \"Iwonder if your father knows where you are?\"\"Mrs. Louella, we've been goin' to town by ourselves since we werethis high.\" Carsen placed his hand palm down about two feet above thesidewalk.\n\"Don't you lie to me!\" she yelled. \"Jeremy Chase, Coby Ashlietold me you broke down her scuppernong arbor this morning. She's goingto tell your father and then you'll wish you never saw the light ofday! If you aren't sent to the reform school before next week, myname's not Louella!\"Carsen, who hadn't been near Miss Coby's scuppernong arbor since lastsummer, and who knew Miss Coby wouldn't tell Ariel if he had,issued a general denial.\n\"Don't you contradict me!\" Mrs. Louella bawled. \"And  you-\"  shepointed an arthritic finger at me- \"what are you doing in thoseoveralls? You should be in a dress and camisole, young lady! You'llgrow up waiting on tables if somebody doesn't change your ways- aChase waiting on tables at the O.K. Cafe- hah!\"I was terrified. The O.K. Cafe was a dim organization on the northside of the square. I grabbed Carsen's hand but he shook me loose.\n\"Come on, Vance,\" he whispered. \"Don't pay any attention to her,just hold your head high and be a gentleman.\"But Mrs. Louella held us: \"Not only a Chase waiting on tables but onein the courthouse lawing for niggers!\"Carsen stiffened. Mrs. Louella's shot had gone home and she knew it:\n\"Yes indeed, what has this world come to when a Chase goes againsthis raising? I'll tell you!\" She put her hand to her mouth. When shedrew it away, it trailed a long silver thread of saliva. \"Yourfather's no better than the niggers and trash he works for!\"Carsen was scarlet. I pulled at his sleeve, and we were followed up thesidewalk by a philippic on our family's moral degeneration, themajor premise of which was that half the Chasees were in the asylumanyway, but if our mother were living we would not have come to such astate.\nI wasn't sure what Carsen resented most, but I took umbrage at Mrs.\nLouella's assessment of the family's mental hygiene. I had becomealmost accustomed to hearing insults aimed at Ariel. But this wasthe first one coming from an adult. Except for her remarks aboutAriel, Mrs. Louella's attack was only routine. There was a hint ofsummer in the air- in the shadows it was cool, but the sun was warm,which meant good times coming: no school and Taylor.\nCarsen bought his steam engine and we went by Elmore's for my baton.\nCarsen took no pleasure in his acquisition; he jammed it in his pocketand walked silently beside me toward home. On the way home I nearlyhit Mr. Austin Kristie, who said, \"Look out now, Vance!\" when I missed atoss, and when we approached Mrs. Louella's house my baton was grimyfrom having picked it up out of the dirt so many times.\nShe was not on the porch.\nIn later years, I sometimes wondered exactly what made Carsen do it,what made him break the bonds of \"You just be a gentleman, son,\" andthe phase of self-conscious rectitude he had recently entered. Carsen hadprobably stood as much guff about Ariel lawing for niggers as had I,and I took it for granted that he kept his temper- he had anaturally tranquil disposition and a slow fuse. At the time,however, I thought the only explanation for what he did was that for afew minutes he simply went mad.\nWhat Carsen did was something I'd do as a matter of course had I notbeen under Ariel's interdict, which I assumed included notfighting horrible old ladies. We had just come to her gate when Carsensnatched my baton and ran flailing wildly up the steps into Mrs.\nLouella's front yard, forgetting everything Ariel had said,forgetting that she packed a pistol under her shawls, forgettingthat if Mrs. Louella missed, her girl Jessie probably wouldn't.\nHe did not begin to calm down until he had cut the tops off everycamellia bush Mrs. Louella owned, until the ground was littered withgreen buds and leaves. He bent my baton against his knee, snapped itin two and threw it down.\nBy that time I was shrieking. Carsen yanked my hair, said he didn'tcare, he'd do it again if he got a chance, and if I didn't shut uphe'd pull every hair out of my head. I didn't shut up and he kickedme. I lost my balance and fell on my face. Carsen picked me up roughlybut looked like he was sorry. There was nothing to say.\nWe did not choose to meet Ariel coming home that evening. Weskulked around the kitchen until Celina threw us out. By somevoo-doo system Celina seemed to know all about it. She was a lessthan satisfactory source of palliation, but she did give Carsen a hotbiscuit-and-butter which he tore in half and shared with me. It tastedlike cotton.\nWe went to the livingroom. I picked up a football magazine, founda picture of Dixie Howell, showed it to Carsen and said, \"This looks likeyou.\" That was the nicest thing I could think to say to him, but itwas no help. He sat by the windows, hunched down in a rocking chair,scowling, waiting. Daylight faded.\nTwo geological ages later, we heard the soles of Ariel's shoesscrape the front steps. The screen door slammed, there was a pause-Ariel was at the hat rack in the hall- and we heard him call, \"Carsen!\"His voice was like the winter wind.\nAriel switched on the ceiling light in the livingroom and found usthere, frozen still. He carried my baton in one hand; its filthyyellow tassel trailed on the rug. He held out his other hand; itcontained fat camellia buds.\n\"Carsen,\" he said, \"are you responsible for this?\"\"Yes sir.\"\"Why'd you do it?\"Carsen said softly, \"She said you lawed for niggers and trash.\"\"You did this because she said that?\"Carsen's lips moved, but his, \"Yes sir,\" was inaudible.\n\"Son, I have no doubt that you've been annoyed by yourcontemporaries about me lawing for niggers, as you say, but to dosomething like this to a sick old lady is inexcusable. I stronglyadvise you to go down and have a talk with Mrs. Louella,\" said Ariel.\n\"Come straight home afterward.\"Carsen did not move.\n\"Go on, I said.\"I followed Carsen out of the livingroom. \"Come back here,\" Ariel saidto me. I came back.\nAriel picked up the  Mobile Press  and sat down in the rockingchair Carsen had vacated. For the life of me, I did not understand how hecould sit there in cold blood and read a newspaper when his only sonstood an excellent chance of being murdered with a Confederate Armyrelic. Of course Carsen antagonized me sometimes until I could killhim, but when it came down to it he was all I had. Ariel did notseem to realize this, or if he did he didn't care.\nI hated him for that, but when you are in trouble you becomeeasily tired: soon I was hiding in his lap and his arms were aroundme.\n\"You're mighty big to be rocked,\" he said.\n\"You don't care what happens to him,\" I said. \"You just send himon to get shot at when all he was doin' was standin' up for you.\"Ariel pushed my head under his chin. \"It's not time to worry yet,\"he said. \"I never thought Carsen'd be the one to lose his head over this-thought I'd have more trouble with you.\"I said I didn't see why we had to keep our heads anyway, that nobodyI knew at school had to keep his head about anything.\n\"Vance,\" said Ariel, \"when summer comes you'll have to keep yourhead about far worse things\u2026 it's not fair for you and Carsen, I knowthat, but sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way weconduct ourselves when the chips are down- well, all I can say is,when you and Carsen are grown, maybe you'll look back on this with somecompassion and some feeling that I didn't let you down. This case, FrancesBertram's case, is something that goes to the essence of a man'sconscience- Vance, I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn'ttry to help that man.\"\"Ariel, you must be wrong\u2026\"\"How's that?\"\"Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong\u2026\"\"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled tofull respect for their opinions,\" said Ariel, \"but before I can livewith other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing thatdoesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.\"When Carsen returned, he found me still in Ariel's lap, \"Well,son?\" said Ariel. He set me on my feet, and I made a secretreconnaissance of Carsen. He seemed to be all in one piece, but he hada queer look on his face. Perhaps she had given him a dose of calomel.\n\"I cleaned it up for her and said I was sorry, but I ain't, and thatI'd work on 'em ever Saturday and try to make 'em grow back out.\"\"There was no point in saying you were sorry if you aren't,\" saidAriel. \"Carsen, she's old and ill. You can't hold her responsible forwhat she says and does. Of course, I'd rather she'd have said it to methan to either of you, but we can't always have our 'druthers.\"Carsen seemed fascinated by a rose in the carpet. \"Ariel,\" he said,\"she wants me to read to her.\"\"Read to her?\"\"Yes sir. She wants me to come every afternoon after school andSaturdays and read to her out loud for two hours. Ariel, do I haveto?\"\"Certainly.\"\"But she wants me to do it for a month.\"\"Then you'll do it for a month.\"Carsen planted his big toe delicately in the center of the rose andpressed it in. Finally he said, \"Ariel, it's all right on thesidewalk but inside it's- it's all dark and creepy. There's shadowsand things on the ceiling\u2026\"Ariel smiled grimly. \"That should appeal to your imagination. Justpretend you're inside the Gian house.\"The following Monday afternoon Carsen and I climbed the steep frontsteps to Mrs. Louella's house and padded down the open hallway. Carsen,armed with  Ivanhoe  and full of superior knowledge, knocked at thesecond door on the left.\n\"Mrs. Louella?\" he called.\nJessie opened the wood door and unlatched the screen door.\n\"Is that you, Carsen Chase?\" she said. \"You got your sister with you. Idon't know-\"\"Let 'em both in, Jessie,\" said Mrs. Louella. Jessie admitted usand went off to the kitchen.\nAn oppressive odor met us when we crossed the threshold, an odor Ihad met many times in rain-rotted gray houses where there are coal-oillamps, water dippers, and unbleached domestic sheets. It always mademe afraid, expectant, watchful.\nIn the corner of the room was a brass bed, and in the bed was Mrs.\nLouella. I wondered if Carsen's activities had put her there, and for amoment I felt sorry for her. She was lying under a pile of quiltsand looked almost friendly.\nThere was a marble-topped washstand by her bed; on it were a glasswith a teaspoon in it, a red ear syringe, a box of absorbent cotton,and a steel alarm clock standing on three tiny legs.\n\"So you brought that dirty little sister of yours, did you?\" was hergreeting.\nCarsen said quietly, \"My sister ain't dirty and I ain't scared of you,\"although I noticed his knees shaking.\nI was expecting a tirade, but all she said was, \"You may commencereading, Jeremy.\"Carsen sat down in a cane-bottom chair and opened  Ivanhoe.  I pulledup another one and sat beside him.\n\"Come closer,\" said Mrs. Louella. \"Come to the side of the bed.\"We moved our chairs forward. This was the nearest I had ever been toher, and the thing I wanted most to do was move my chair back again.\nShe was horrible. Her face was the color of a dirty pillowcase,and the corners of her mouth glistened with wet, which inched like aglacier down the deep grooves enclosing her chin. Old-age liverspots dotted her cheeks, and her pale eyes had black pinpointpupils. Her hands were knobby, and the cuticles were grown up over herfingernails. Her bottom plate was not in, and her upper lip protruded;from time to time she would draw her nether lip to her upper plate andcarry her chin with it. This made the wet move faster.\nI didn't look any more than I had to. Carsen reopened  Ivanhoe  andbegan reading. I tried to keep up with him, but he read too fast. WhenCarsen came to a word he didn't know, he skipped it, but Mrs. Louellawould catch him and make him spell it out. Carsen read for perhaps twentyminutes, during which time I looked at the soot-stained mantelpiece,out the window, anywhere to keep from looking at her. As he readalong, I noticed that Mrs. Louella's corrections grew fewer and fartherbetween, that Carsen had even left one sentence dangling in mid-air.\nShe was not listening.\nI looked toward the bed.\nSomething had happened to her. She lay on her back, with thequilts up to her chin. Only her head and shoulders were visible. Herhead moved slowly from side to side. From time to time she wouldopen her mouth wide, and I could see her tongue undulate faintly.\nCords of saliva would collect on her lips; she would draw them in,then open her mouth again. Her mouth seemed to have a privateexistence of its own. It worked separate and apart from the rest ofher, out and in, like a clam hole at low tide. Occasionally it wouldsay, \"Pt,\" like some viscous substance coming to a boil.\nI pulled Carsen's sleeve.\nHe looked at me, then at the bed. Her head made its regular sweeptoward us, and Carsen said, \"Mrs. Louella, are you all right?\" She did nothear him.\nThe alarm clock went off and scared us stiff. A minute later, nervesstill tingling, Carsen and I were on the sidewalk headed for home. We didnot run away, Jessie sent us: before the clock wound down she was inthe room pushing Carsen and me out of it.\n\"Shoo,\" she said, \"you all go home.\"Carsen hesitated at the door.\n\"It's time for her medicine,\" Jessie said. As the door swung shutbehind us I saw Jessie walking quickly toward Mrs. Louella's bed.\nIt was only three forty-five when we got home, so Carsen and Idrop-kicked in the back yard until it was time to meet Ariel.\nAriel had two yellow pencils for me and a football magazine for Carsen,which I suppose was a silent reward for our first day's session withMrs. Louella. Carsen told him what happened.\n\"Did she frighten you?\" asked Ariel.\n\"No sir,\" said Carsen, \"but she's so nasty. She has fits orsomethin'. She spits a lot.\"\"She can't help that. When people are sick they don't look nicesometimes.\"\"She scared me,\" I said.\nAriel looked at me over his glasses. \"You don't have to go withCarsen, you know.\"The next afternoon at Mrs. Louella's was the same as the first, andso was the next, until gradually a pattern emerged: everything wouldbegin normally- that is, Mrs. Louella would hound Carsen for a while onher favorite subjects, her camellias and our father's nigger-lovingpropensities; she would grow increasingly silent, then go away fromus. The alarm clock would ring, Jessie would shoo us out, and the restof the day was ours.\n\"Ariel,\" I said one evening, \"what exactly is a nigger-lover?\"Ariel's face was grave. \"Has somebody been calling you that?\"\"No sir, Mrs. Louella calls you that. She warms up every afternooncalling you that. Francis called me that last Christmas, that'swhere I first heard it.\"\"Is that the reason you jumped on him?\" asked Ariel.\n\"Yes sir\u2026\"\"Then why are you asking me what it means?\"I tried to explain to Ariel that it wasn't so much what Francissaid that had infuriated me as the way he had said it. \"It was likehe'd said snot-nose or somethin'.\"\"Vance,\" said Ariel, \"nigger-lover is just one of those terms thatdon't mean anything- like snot-nose. It's hard to explain- ignorant,trashy people use it when they think somebody's favoring Negroesover and above themselves. It's slipped into usage with some peoplelike ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label somebody.\"\"You aren't really a nigger-lover, then, are you?\"\"I certainly am. I do my best to love everybody\u2026 I'm hard put,sometimes- baby, it's never an insult to be called what somebodythinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, itdoesn't hurt you. So don't let Mrs. Louella get you down. She hasenough troubles of her own.\"One afternoon a month later Carsen was ploughing his way through SirDevon Vance, as Carsen called him, and Mrs. Louella was correcting him atevery turn, when there was a knock on the door. \"Come in!\" shescreamed.\nAriel came in. He went to the bed and took Mrs. Louella's hand.\n\"I was coming from the office and didn't see the children,\" he said.\n\"I thought they might still be here.\"Mrs. Louella smiled at him. For the life of me I could not figure outhow she could bring herself to speak to him when she seemed to hatehim so. \"Do you know what time it is, Ariel?\" she said. \"Exactlyfourteen minutes past five. The alarm clock's set for five-thirty. Iwant you to know that.\"It suddenly came to me that each day we had been staying a littlelonger at Mrs. Louella's, that the alarm clock went off a few minuteslater every day, and that she was well into one of her fits by thetime it sounded. Today she had antagonized Carsen for nearly two hourswith no intention of having a fit, and I felt hopelessly trapped.\nThe alarm clock was the signal for our release; if one day it didnot ring, what would we do?\n\"I have a feeling that Carsen's reading days are numbered,\" saidAriel.\n\"Only a week longer, I think,\" she said, \"just to make sure\u2026\"Carsen rose. \"But-\"Ariel put out his hand and Carsen was silent. On the way home, Carsensaid he had to do it just for a month and the month was up and itwasn't fair.\n\"Just one more week, son,\" said Ariel.\n\"No,\" said Carsen.\n\"Yes,\" said Ariel.\nThe following week found us back at Mrs. Louella's. The alarm clockhad ceased sounding, but Mrs. Louella would release us with, \"That'lldo,\" so late in the afternoon Ariel would be home reading thepaper when we returned. Although her fits had passed off, she was inevery other way her old self: when Sir Devon Scott became involved inlengthy descriptions of moats and castles, Mrs. Louella would becomebored and pick on us:\n\"Jeremy Chase, I told you you'd live to regret tearing up mycamellias. You regret it now, don't you?\"Carsen would say he certainly did.\n\"Thought you could kill my Snow-on-the-Mountain, did you? Well,Jessie says the top's growing back out. Next time you'll know how todo it right, won't you? You'll pull it up by the roots, won't you?\"Carsen would say he certainly would.\n\"Don't you mutter at me, boy! You hold up your head and say yesma'am. Don't guess you feel like holding it up, though, with yourfather what he is.\"Carsen's chin would come up, and he would gaze at Mrs. Louella with aface devoid of resentment. Through the weeks he had cultivated anexpression of polite and detached interest, which he would presentto her in answer to her most blood-curdling inventions.\nAt last the day came. When Mrs. Louella said, \"That'll do,\" oneafternoon, she added, \"And that's all. Good-day to you.\"It was over. We bounded down the sidewalk on a spree of sheerrelief, leaping and howling.\nThat spring was a good one: the days grew longer and gave us moreplaying time. Carsen's mind was occupied mostly with the vital statisticsof every college football player in the nation. Every night Arielwould read us the sports pages of the newspapers. Alabama might goto the Rose Bowl again this year, judging from its prospects, notone of whose names we could pronounce. Ariel was in the middle ofWindy Seaton's column one evening when the telephone rang.\nHe answered it, then went to the hat rack in the hall. \"I'm goingdown to Mrs. Louella's for a while,\" he said. \"I won't be long.\"But Ariel stayed away until long past my bedtime. When he returnedhe was carrying a candy box. Ariel sat down in the livingroom andput the box on the floor beside his chair.\n\"What'd she want?\" asked Carsen.\nWe had not seen Mrs. Louella for over a month. She was never on theporch any more when we passed.\n\"She's dead, son,\" said Ariel. \"She died a few minutes ago.\"\"Oh,\" said Carsen. \"Well.\"\"Well is right,\" said Ariel. \"She's not suffering any more. Shewas sick for a long time. Son, didn't you know what her fits were?\"Carsen shook his head.\n\"Mrs. Louella was a morphine addict,\" said Ariel. \"She took it as apain-killer for years. The doctor put her on it. She'd have spentthe rest of her life on it and died without so much agony, but she wastoo contrary-\"\"Sir?\" said Carsen.\nAriel said, \"Just before your escapade she called me to make herwill. Dr. Reynolds told her she had only a few months left. Herbusiness affairs were in perfect order but she said, 'There's stillone thing out of order.'\"\"What was that?\" Carsen was perplexed.\n\"She said she was going to leave this world beholden to nothingand nobody. Carsen, when you're sick as she was, it's all right to takeanything to make it easier, but it wasn't all right for her. Shesaid she meant to break herself of it before she died, and that's whatshe did.\"Carsen said, \"You mean that's what her fits were?\"\"Yes, that's what they were. Most of the time you were reading toher I doubt if she heard a word you said. Her whole mind and body wereconcentrated on that alarm clock. If you hadn't fallen into her hands,I'd have made you go read to her anyway. It may have been somedistraction. There was another reason-\"\"Did she die free?\" asked Carsen.\n\"As the mountain air,\" said Ariel. \"She was conscious to the last,almost. Conscious,\" he smiled, \"and cantankerous. She stilldisapproved heartily of my doings, and said I'd probably spend therest of my life bailing you out of jail. She had Jessie fix you thisbox-\"Ariel reached down and picked up the candy box. He handed it toCarsen.\nCarsen opened the box. Inside, surrounded by wads of damp cotton, was awhite, waxy, perfect camellia. It was a Snow-on-the-Mountain.\nCarsen's eyes nearly popped out of his head. \"Old hell-devil, oldhell-devil!\" he screamed, flinging it down. \"Why can't she leave mealone?\"In a flash Ariel was up and standing over him. Carsen buried his facein Ariel's shirt front. \"Sh-h,\" he said. \"I think that was her wayof telling you- everything's all right now, Carsen, everything's allright. You know, she was a great lady.\"\"A lady?\" Carsen raised his head. His face was scarlet. \"After allthose things she said about you, a lady?\"\"She was. She had her own views about things, a lot different frommine, maybe\u2026 son, I told you that if you hadn't lost your head I'dhave made you go read to her. I wanted you to see something about her-I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting theidea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when youknow you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you seeit through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.\nMrs. Louella won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to herviews, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravestperson I ever knew.\"Carsen picked up the candy box and threw it in the fire. He picked upthe camellia, and when I went off to bed I saw him fingering thewide petals. Ariel was reading the paper.\nPART TWO\nCarsen was twelve. He was difficult to live with, inconsistent,moody. His appetite was appalling, and he told me so many times tostop pestering him I consulted Ariel: \"Reckon he's got atapeworm?\" Ariel said no, Carsen was growing. I must be patient withhim and disturb him as little as possible.\nThis change in Carsen had come about in a matter of weeks. Mrs.\nLouella was not cold in her grave- Carsen had seemed grateful enough formy company when he went to read to her. Overnight, it seemed, Carsenhad acquired an alien set of values and was trying to impose them onme: several times he went so far as to tell me what to do. After onealtercation when Carsen hollered, \"It's time you started bein' a girl andacting right!\" I burst into tears and fled to Celina.\n\"Don't you fret too much over Mister Carsen-\" she began.\n\"Mister Carsen?\"\"Yeah, he's just about Mister Carsen now.\"\"He ain't that old,\" I said. \"All he needs is somebody to beat himup, and I ain't big enough.\"\"Baby,\" said Celina, \"I just can't help it if Mister Carsen'sgrowin' up. He's gonna want to be off to himself a lot now, doin'\nwhatever boys do, so you just come right on in the kitchen when youfeel lonesome. We'll find lots of things to do in here.\"The beginning of that summer boded well: Carsen could do as he pleased;Celina would do until Taylor came. She seemed glad to see me when Iappeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think therewas some skill involved in being a girl.\nBut summer came and Taylor was not there. I received a letter and asnapshot from him. The letter said he had a new father whose picturewas enclosed, and he would have to stay in Meridian because theyplanned to build a fishing boat. His father was a lawyer like Ariel,only much younger. Taylor's new father had a pleasant face, which mademe glad Taylor had captured him, but I was crushed. Taylor concluded bysaying he would love me forever and not to worry, he would come get meand marry me as soon as he got enough money together, so please write.\nThe fact that I had a permanent fiance was little compensation forhis absence: I had never thought about it, but summer was Taylor bythe fishpool smoking string, Taylor's eyes alive with complicatedplans to make Mallory Gian emerge; summer was the swiftness with whichTaylor would reach up and kiss me when Carsen was not looking, the longingswe sometimes felt each other feel. With him, life was routine; withouthim, life was unbearable. I stayed miserable for two days.\nAs if that were not enough, the state legislature was called intoemergency session and Ariel left us for two weeks. The Governorwas eager to scrape a few barnacles off the ship of state; therewere sit-down strikes in Birmingham; bread lines in the cities grewlonger, people in the country grew poorer. But these were eventsremote from the world of Carsen and me.\nWe were surprised one morning to see a cartoon in the  MontgomeryAdvertiser  above the caption, \"Maycomb's Chase.\" It showed Arielbarefooted and in short pants, chained to a desk: he was diligentlywriting on a slate while some frivolous-looking girls yelled,\"Yoo-hoo!\" at him.\n\"That's a compliment,\" explained Carsen. \"He spends his time doin'\nthings that wouldn't get done if nobody did 'em.\"\"Huh?\"In addition to Carsen's newly developed characteristics, he hadacquired a maddening air of wisdom.\n\"Oh, Vance, it's like reorganizing the tax systems of the countiesand things. That kind of thing's pretty dry to most men.\"\"How do you know?\"\"Oh, go on and leave me alone. I'm readin' the paper.\"Carsen got his wish. I departed for the kitchen.\nWhile she was shelling peas, Celina suddenly said, \"What am Igonna do about you all's church this Sunday?\"\"Nothing, I reckon. Ariel left us collection.\"Celina's eyes narrowed and I could tell what was going throughher mind. \"Cal,\" I said, \"you know we'll behave. We haven't doneanything in church in years.\"Celina evidently remembered a rainy Sunday when we were bothfatherless and teacherless. Left to its own devices, the class tiedEunice Ann Simpson to a chair and placed her in the furnace room. Weforgot her, trooped upstairs to church, and were listening quietlyto the sermon when a dreadful banging issued from the radiatorpipes, persisting until someone investigated and brought forthEunice Ann saying she didn't want to play Shadrach any more- Carsen Chasesaid she wouldn't get burnt if she had enough faith, but it was hotdown there.\n\"Besides, Cal, this isn't the first time Ariel has left us,\" Iprotested.\n\"Yeah, but he makes certain your teacher's gonna be there. Ididn't hear him say this time- reckon he forgot it.\" Celinascratched her head. Suddenly she smiled. \"How'd you and Mister Carsenlike to come to church with me tomorrow?\"\"Really?\"\"How 'bout it?\" grinned Celina.\nIf Celina had ever bathed me roughly before, it was nothingcompared to her supervision of that Saturday night's routine. She mademe soap all over twice, drew fresh water in the tub for each rinse;she stuck my head in the basin and washed it with Octagon soap andcastile. She had trusted Carsen for years, but that night she invaded hisprivacy and provoked an outburst: \"Can't anybody take a bath in thishouse without the whole family lookin'?\"Next morning she began earlier than usual, to \"go over our clothes.\"When Celina stayed overnight with us she slept on a folding cotin the kitchen; that morning it was covered with our Sundayhabiliments. She had put so much starch in my dress it came up likea tent when I sat down. She made me wear a petticoat and she wrapped apink sash tightly around my waist. She went over my patent-leathershoes with a cold biscuit until she saw her face in them.\n\"It's like we were goin' to Mardi Gras,\" said Carsen. \"What's allthis for, Cal?\"\"I don't want anybody sayin' I don't look after my children,\" shemuttered. \"Mister Carsen, you absolutely can't wear that tie with thatsuit. It's green.\"\"'smatter with that?\"\"Suit's blue. Can't you tell?\"\"Hee hee,\" I howled, \"Carsen's color blind.\"His face flushed angrily, but Celina said, \"Now you all quitthat. You're gonna go to First Purchase with smiles on your faces.\"First Purchase African M.E. Church was in the Quarters outside thesouthern town limits, across the old sawmill tracks. It was an ancientpaint-peeled frame building, the only church in Maycomb with a steepleand bell, called First Purchase because it was paid for from the firstearnings of freed slaves. Negroes worshiped in it on Sundays and whitemen gambled in it on weekdays.\nThe churchyard was brick-hard clay, as was the cemetery beside it.\nIf someone died during a dry spell, the body was covered with chunksof ice until rain softened the earth. A few graves in the cemeterywere marked with crumbling tombstones; newer ones were outlined withbrightly colored glass and broken Coca-Cola bottles. Lightning rodsguarding some graves denoted dead who rested uneasily; stumps ofburned-out candles stood at the heads of infant graves. It was a happycemetery.\nThe warm bittersweet smell of clean Negro welcomed us as weentered the churchyard- Hearts of Love hairdressing mingled withasafoetida, snuff, Hoyt's Cologne, Brown's Mule, peppermint, and lilactalcum.\nWhen they saw Carsen and me with Celina, the men stepped back andtook off their hats; the women crossed their arms at their waists,weekday gestures of respectful attention. They parted and made a smallpathway to the church door for us. Celina walked between Carsen andme, responding to the greetings of her brightly clad neighbors.\n\"What you up to, Miss Cal?\" said a voice behind us.\nCelina's hands went to our shoulders and we stopped and lookedaround: standing in the path behind us was a tall Negro woman. Herweight was on one leg; she rested her left elbow in the curve of herhip, pointing at us with upturned palm. She was bullet-headed withstrange almond-shaped eyes, straight nose, and an Indian-bow mouth.\nShe seemed seven feet high.\nI felt Celina's hand dig into my shoulder. \"What you want, Lula?\"she asked, in tones I had never heard her use. She spoke quietly,contemptuously.\n\"I wants to know why you bringin' white chillun to nigger church.\"\"They's my comp'ny,\" said Celina. Again I thought her voicestrange: she was talking like the rest of them.\n\"Yeah, an' I reckon you's comp'ny at the Chase house durin' theweek.\"A murmur ran through the crowd. \"Don't you fret,\" Celinawhispered to me, but the roses on her hat trembled indignantly.\nWhen Lula came up the pathway toward us Celina said, \"Stopright there, nigger.\"Lula stopped, but she said, \"You ain't got no business bringin'\nwhite chillun here- they got their church, we got our'n. It is ourchurch, ain't it, Miss Cal?\"Celina said, \"It's the same God, ain't it?\"Carsen said, \"Let's go home, Cal, they don't want us here-\"I agreed: they did not want us here. I sensed, rather than saw, thatwe were being advanced upon. They seemed to be drawing closer to us,but when I looked up at Celina there was amusement in her eyes.\nWhen I looked down the pathway again, Lula was gone. In her placewas a solid mass of colored people.\nOne of them stepped from the crowd. It was Zeebo, the garbagecollector. \"Mister Carsen,\" he said, \"we're mighty glad to have you allhere. Don't pay no 'tention to Lula, she's contentious becauseReverend Sykes threatened to church her. She's a troublemaker from wayback, got fancy ideas an' haughty ways- we're mighty glad to haveyou all.\"With that, Celina led us to the church door where we were greetedby Reverend Sykes, who led us to the front pew.\nFirst Purchase was unceiled and unpainted within. Along its wallsunlighted kerosene lamps hung on brass brackets; pine benches servedas pews. Behind the rough oak pulpit a faded pink silk bannerproclaimed God Is Love, the church's only decoration except arotogravure print of Hunt's  The Light of the World.  There was nosign of piano, organ, hymn-books, church programs- the familiarecclesiastical impedimenta we saw every Sunday. It was dim inside,with a damp coolness slowly dispelled by the gathering congregation.\nAt each seat was a cheap cardboard fan bearing a garish Garden ofGethsemane, courtesy Tyndal's Hardware Co. \uff08You-Name-It-We-Sell-It\uff09\u3002\nCelina motioned Carsen and me to the end of the row and placedherself between us. She fished in her purse, drew out herhandkerchief, and untied the hard wad of change in its corner. Shegave a dime to me and a dime to Carsen. \"We've got ours,\" he whispered.\n\"You keep it,\" Celina said, \"you're my company.\" Carsen's faceshowed brief indecision on the ethics of withholding his own dime, buthis innate courtesy won and he shifted his dime to his pocket. I didlikewise with no qualms.\n\"Cal,\" I whispered, \"where are the hymn-books?\"\"We don't have any,\" she said.\n\"Well how-?\"\"Sh-h,\" she said. Reverend Sykes was standing behind the pulpitstaring the congregation to silence. He was a short, stocky man in ablack suit, black tie, white shirt, and a gold watch-chain thatglinted in the light from the frosted windows.\nHe said, \"Brethren and sisters, we are particularly glad to havecompany with us this morning. Mister and Miss Chase. You all knowtheir father. Before I begin I will read some announcements.\"Reverend Sykes shuffled some papers, chose one and held it atarm's length. \"The Missionary Society meets in the home of SisterAnnette Reeves next Tuesday. Bring your sewing.\"He read from another paper. \"You all know of Brother FrancesBertram's trouble. He has been a faithful member of First Purchasesince he was a boy. The collection taken up today and for the nextthree Sundays will go to Helen- his wife, to help her out at home.\"I punched Carsen. \"That's the Frances Ariel's de-\"\"Sh-h!\"I turned to Celina but was hushed before I opened my mouth.\nSubdued, I fixed my attention upon Reverend Sykes, who seemed to bewaiting for me to settle down. \"Will the music superintendent leadus in the first hymn,\" he said.\nZeebo rose from his pew and walked down the center aisle, stoppingin front of us and facing the congregation. He was carrying a batteredhymn-book. He opened it and said, \"We'll sing number twoseventy-three.\"This was too much for me. \"How're we gonna sing it if there ain'tany hymn-books?\"Celina smiled. \"Hush baby,\" she whispered, \"you'll see in aminute.\"Zeebo cleared his throat and read in a voice like the rumble ofdistant artillery:\n\"There's a land beyond the river.\"Miraculously on pitch, a hundred voices sang out Zeebo's words.\nThe last syllable, held to a husky hum, was followed by Zeebo saying,\"That we call the sweet forever.\"Music again swelled around us; the last note lingered and Zeebomet it with the next line: \"And we only reach that shore by faith'sdecree.\"The congregation hesitated, Zeebo repeated the line carefully, andit was sung. At the chorus Zeebo closed the book, a signal for thecongregation to proceed without his help.\nOn the dying notes of \"Jubilee,\" Zeebo said, \"In that far-offsweet forever, just beyond the shining river.\"Line for line, voices followed in simple harmony until the hymnended in a melancholy murmur.\nI looked at Carsen, who was looking at Zeebo from the corners of hiseyes. I didn't believe it either, but we had both heard it.\nReverend Sykes then called on the Lord to bless the sick and thesuffering, a procedure no different from our church practice, exceptReverend Sykes directed the Deity's attention to several specificcases.\nHis sermon was a forthright denunciation of sin, an austeredeclaration of the motto on the wall behind him: he warned his flockagainst the evils of heady brews, gambling, and strange women.\nMallorytleggers caused enough trouble in the Quarters, but women wereworse. Again, as I had often met it in my own church, I was confrontedwith the Impurity of Women doctrine that seemed to preoccupy allclergymen.\nCarsen and I had heard the same sermon Sunday after Sunday, with onlyone exception. Reverend Sykes used his pulpit more freely to expresshis views on individual lapses from grace: Jim Hardy had been absentfrom church for five Sundays and he wasn't sick; Constance Jackson hadbetter watch her ways- she was in grave danger for quarreling with herneighbors; she had erected the only spite fence in the history ofthe Quarters.\nReverend Sykes closed his sermon. He stood beside a table in frontof the pulpit and requested the morning offering, a proceeding thatwas strange to Carsen and me. One by one, the congregation came forwardand dropped nickels and dimes into a black enameled coffee can. Carsenand I followed suit, and received a soft, \"Thank you, thank you,\" asour dimes clinked.\nTo our amazement, Reverend Sykes emptied the can onto the tableand raked the coins into his hand. He straightened up and said,\"This is not enough, we must have ten dollars.\"The congregation stirred. \"You all know what it's for- Helen can'tleave those children to work while Frances's in jail. If everybody givesone more dime, we'll have it-\" Reverend Sykes waved his hand andcalled to someone in the back of the church. \"Alec, shut the doors.\nNobody leaves here till we have ten dollars.\"Celina scratched in her handbag and brought forth a batteredleather coin purse. \"Naw Cal,\" Carsen whispered, when she handed him ashiny quarter, \"we can put ours in. Gimme your dime, Vance.\"The church was becoming stuffy, and it occurred to me thatReverend Sykes intended to sweat the amount due out of his flock. Fanscrackled, feet shuffled, tobacco-chewers were in agony.\nReverend Sykes startled me by saying sternly, \"Carlow Richardson,I haven't seen you up this aisle yet.\"A thin man in khaki pants came up the aisle and deposited a coin.\nThe congregation murmured approval.\nReverend Sykes then said, \"I want all of you with no children tomake a sacrifice and give one more dime apiece. Then we'll have it.\"Slowly, painfully, the ten dollars was collected. The door wasopened, and the gust of warm air revived us. Zeebo lined  OnJordan's Stormy Banks,  and church was over.\nI wanted to stay and explore, but Celina propelled me up theaisle ahead of her. At the church door, while she paused to talkwith Zeebo and his family, Carsen and I chatted with Reverend Sykes. Iwas bursting with questions, but decided I would wait and letCelina answer them.\n\"We were 'specially glad to have you all here,\" said Reverend Sykes.\n\"This church has no better friend than your daddy.\"My curiosity burst: \"Why were you all takin' up collection for FrancesBertram's wife?\"\"Didn't you hear why?\" asked Reverend Sykes. \"Helen's got threelittle'uns and she can't go out to work-\"\"Why can't she take 'em with her, Reverend?\" I asked. It wascustomary for field Negroes with tiny children to deposit them inwhatever shade there was while their parents worked- usually thebabies sat in the shade between two rows of cotton. Those unable tosit were strapped papoose-style on their mothers' backs, or resided inextra cotton bags.\nReverend Sykes hesitated. \"To tell you the truth, Miss JeanLouise, Helen's finding it hard to get work these days\u2026 when it'spicking time, I think Mr. Austin Kristie'll take her.\"\"Why not, Reverend?\"Before he could answer, I felt Celina's hand on my shoulder. Atits pressure I said, \"We thank you for lettin' us come.\" Carsen echoedme, and we made our way homeward.\n\"Cal, I know Frances Bertram's in jail an' he's done somethin' awful,but why won't folks hire Helen?\" I asked.\nCelina, in her navy voile dress and tub of a hat, walkedbetween Carsen and me. \"It's because of what folks say Frances's done,\" shesaid. \"Folks aren't anxious to- to have anything to do with any of hisfamily.\"\"Just what did he do, Cal?\"Celina sighed. \"Old Mr. Gia Leena accused him of rapin' hisgirl an' had him arrested an' put in jail-\"\"Mr. Leena?\" My memory stirred. \"Does he have anything to do withthose Leenas that come every first day of school an' then go home?\nWhy, Ariel said they were absolute trash- I never heard Ariel talkabout folks the way he talked about the Leenas. He said-\"\"Yeah, those are the ones.\"\"Well, if everybody in Maycomb knows what kind of folks the Leenasare they'd be glad to hire Helen\u2026 what's rape, Cal?\"\"It's somethin' you'll have to ask Mr. Chase about,\" she said. \"Hecan explain it better than I can. You all hungry? The Reverend tooka long time unwindin' this morning, he's not usually so tedious.\"\"He's just like our preacher,\" said Carsen, \"but why do you all singhymns that way?\"\"Linin'?\" she asked.\n\"Is that what it is?\"\"Yeah, it's called linin'. They've done it that way as long as I canremember.\"Carsen said it looked like they could save the collection money for ayear and get some hymn-books.\nCelina laughed. \"Wouldn't do any good,\" she said. \"They can'tread.\"\"Can't read?\" I asked. \"All those folks?\"\"That's right,\" Celina nodded. \"Can't but about four folks inFirst Purchase read\u2026 I'm one of 'em.\"\"Where'd you go to school, Cal?\" asked Carsen.\n\"Nowhere. Let's see now, who taught me my letters? It was MissCoby Ashlie's aunt, old Miss Buford-\"\"Are you  that  old?\"\"I'm older than Mr. Chase, even.\" Celina grinned. \"Not sure howmuch, though. We started rememberin' one time, trying to figure outhow old I was- I can remember back just a few years more'n he can,so I'm not much older, when you take off the fact that men can'tremember as well as women.\"\"What's your birthday, Cal?\"\"I just have it on Christmas, it's easier to remember that way- Idon't have a real birthday.\"\"But Cal,\" Carsen protested, \"you don't look even near as old asAriel.\"\"Colored folks don't show their ages so fast,\" she said.\n\"Maybe because they can't read. Cal, did you teach Zeebo?\"\"Yeah, Mister Carsen. There wasn't a school even when he was a boy. Imade him learn, though.\"Zeebo was Celina's eldest son. If I had ever thought about it,I would have known that Celina was of mature years- Zeebo hadhalf-grown children- but then I had never thought about it.\n\"Did you teach him out of a primer, like us?\" I asked.\n\"No, I made him get a page of the Bible every day, and there was abook Miss Buford taught me out of- bet you don't know where I got it,\"she said.\nWe didn't know.\nCelina said, \"Your Granddaddy Chase gave it to me.\"\"Were you from the Landing?\" Carsen asked. \"You never told us that.\"\"I certainly am, Mister Carsen. Grew up down there between the BufordPlace and the Landin'. I've spent all my days workin' for theChasees or the Bufords, an' I moved to Maycomb when your daddy andyour mamma married.\"\"What was the book, Cal?\" I asked.\n\"Blackstone's  Commentaries.\"Carsen was thunderstruck. \"You mean you taught Zeebo outa  that?\"\"Why yes sir, Mister Carsen.\" Celina timidly put her fingers toher mouth. \"They were the only books I had. Your grandaddy said Mr.\nBlackstone wrote fine English-\"\"That's why you don't talk like the rest of 'em,\" said Carsen.\n\"The rest of who?\"\"Rest of the colored folks. Cal, but you talked like they did inchurch\u2026\"That Celina led a modest double life never dawned on me. The ideathat she had a separate existence outside our household was a novelone, to say nothing of her having command of two languages.\n\"Cal,\" I asked, \"why do you talk nigger-talk to the- to your folkswhen you know it's not right?\"\"Well, in the first place I'm black-\"\"That doesn't mean you hafta talk that way when you know better,\"said Carsen.\nCelina tilted her hat and scratched her head, then pressed herhat down carefully over her ears. \"It's right hard to say,\" shesaid. \"Suppose you and Vance talked colored-folks' talk at home it'dbe out of place, wouldn't it? Now what if I talked white-folks' talkat church, and with my neighbors? They'd think I was puttin' on airsto beat Moses.\"\"But Cal, you know better,\" I said.\n\"It's not necessary to tell all you know. It's not ladylike- inthe second place, folks don't like to have somebody around knowin'\nmore than they do. It aggravates 'em. You're not gonna change any ofthem by talkin' right, they've got to want to learn themselves, andwhen they don't want to learn there's nothing you can do but keep yourmouth shut or talk their language.\"\"Cal, can I come to see you sometimes?\"She looked down at me. \"See me, honey? You see me every day.\"\"Out to your house,\" I said. \"Sometimes after work? Ariel canget me.\"\"Any time you want to,\" she said. \"We'd be glad to have you.\"We were on the sidewalk by the Gian Place.\n\"Look on the porch yonder,\" Carsen said.\nI looked over to the Gian Place, expecting to see its phantomoccupant sunning himself in the swing. The swing was empty.\n\"I mean our porch,\" said Carsen.\nI looked down the street. Enarmored, upright, uncompromising, RickIliana was sitting in a rocking chair exactly as if she had satthere every day of her life.\n13\"Put my bag in the front bedroom, Celina,\" was the first thingRick Iliana said. \"Jean Louise, stop scratching your head,\" was thesecond thing she said.\nCelina picked up Ricky's heavy suitcase and opened the door.\n\"I'll take it,\" said Carsen, and took it. I heard the suitcase hit thebedroom floor with a thump. The sound had a dull permanence about it.\n\"Have you come for a visit, Ricky?\" I asked. Rick Iliana's visitsfrom the Landing were rare, and she traveled in state. She owned abright green square Buick and a black chauffeur, both kept in anunhealthy state of tidiness, but today they were nowhere to be seen.\n\"Didn't your father tell you?\" she asked.\nCarsen and I shook our heads.\n\"Probably he forgot. He's not in yet, is he?\"\"Nome, he doesn't usually get back till late afternoon,\" said Carsen.\n\"Well, your father and I decided it was time I came to stay with youfor a while.\"\"For a while\" in Maycomb meant anything from three days to thirtyyears. Carsen and I exchanged glances.\n\"Carsen's growing up now and you are too,\" she said to me. \"Wedecided that it would be best for you to have some feminine influence.\nIt won't be many years, Jean Louise, before you become interested inclothes and boys-\"I could have made several answers to this: Cal's a girl, it would bemany years before I would be interested in boys, I would never beinterested in clothes\u2026 but I kept quiet.\n\"What about Uncle Jimmy?\" asked Carsen. \"Is he comin', too?\"\"Oh no, he's staying at the Landing. He'll keep the place going.\"The moment I said, \"Won't you miss him?\" I realized that this wasnot a tactful question. Uncle Jimmy present or Uncle Jimmy absent madenot much difference, he never said anything. Rick Iliana ignored myquestion.\nI could think of nothing else to say to her. In fact I could neverthink of anything to say to her, and I sat thinking of past painfulconversations between us: How are you, Jean Louise? Fine, thank youma'am, how are you? Very well, thank you, what have you been doingwith yourself? Nothin'. Don't you do anything? Nome. Certainly youhave friends? Yessum. Well what do you all do? Nothin'.\nIt was plain that Ricky thought me dull in the extreme, because Ionce heard her tell Ariel that I was sluggish.\nThere was a story behind all this, but I had no desire to extract itfrom her then. Today was Sunday, and Rick Iliana was positivelyirritable on the Lord's Day. I guess it was her Sunday corset. She wasnot fat, but solid, and she chose protective garments that drew up herbosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear, andmanaged to suggest that Rick Iliana's was once an hour-glassfigure. From any angle, it was formidable.\nThe remainder of the afternoon went by in the gentle gloom thatdescends when relatives appear, but was dispelled when we heard acar turn in the driveway. It was Ariel, home from Montgomery. Carsen,forgetting his dignity, ran with me to meet him. Carsen seized hisbriefcase and bag, I jumped into his arms, felt his vague dry kiss andsaid, \"'d you bring me a book? 'd you know Ricky's here?\"Ariel answered both questions in the affirmative. \"How'd youlike for her to come live with us?\"I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one mustlie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't doanything about them.\n\"We felt it was time you children needed- well, it's like this,Vance,\" Ariel said. \"Your aunt's doing me a favor as well as youall. I can't stay here all day with you, and the summer's going tobe a hot one.\"\"Yes sir,\" I said, not understanding a word he said. I had anidea, however, that Rick Iliana's appearance on the scene was notso much Ariel's doing as hers. Ricky had a way of declaring WhatIs Best For The Family, and I suppose her coming to live with us wasin that category.\nMaycomb welcomed her. Miss Coby Ashlie baked a Lane cake soloaded with shinny it made me tight; Miss Stephanie Crawford hadlong visits with Rick Iliana, consisting mostly of Miss Stephanieshaking her head and saying, \"Uh, uh, uh.\" Miss Rachel next door hadRicky over for coffee in the afternoons, and Mr. Jovan Gian went sofar as to come up in the front yard and say he was glad to see her.\nWhen she settled in with us and life resumed its daily pace, RickIliana seemed as if she had always lived with us. Her MissionarySociety refreshments added to her reputation as a hostess \uff08she did notpermit Celina to make the delicacies required to sustain theSociety through long reports on Rice Christians\uff09\uff1b she joined andbecame Secretary of the Maycomb Amanuensis Club. To all partiespresent and participating in the life of the county, Rick Ilianawas one of the last of her kind: she had river-boat, boarding-schoolmanners; let any moral come along and she would uphold it; she wasborn in the objective case; she was an incurable gossip. When RickIliana went to school, self-doubt could not be found in anytextbook, so she knew not its meaning. She was never bored, andgiven the slightest chance she would exercise her royal prerogative:\nshe would arrange, advise, caution, and warn.\nShe never let a chance escape her to point out the shortcomings ofother tribal groups to the greater glory of our own, a habit thatamused Carsen rather than annoyed him: \"Ricky better watch how she talks-scratch most folks in Maycomb and they're kin to us.\"Rick Iliana, in underlining the moral of young Sam Merriweather'ssuicide, said it was caused by a morbid streak in the family. Let asixteen-year-old girl giggle in the choir and Ricky would say, \"Itjust goes to show you, all the Penfield women are flighty.\"Everybody in Maycomb, it seemed, had a Streak: a Drinking Streak, aGambling Streak, a Mean Streak, a Funny Streak.\nOnce, when Ricky assured us that Miss Stephanie Crawford'stendency to mind other people's business was hereditary, Ariel said,\"Sister, when you stop to think about it, our generation's practicallythe first in the Chase family not to marry its cousins. Would yousay the Chasees have an Incestuous Streak?\"Ricky said no, that's where we got our small hands and feet.\nI never understood her preoccupation with heredity. Somewhere, I hadreceived the impression that Fine Folks were people who did the bestthey could with the sense they had, but Rick Iliana was of theopinion, obliquely expressed, that the longer a family had beensquatting on one patch of land the finer it was.\n\"That makes the Leenas fine folks, then,\" said Carsen. The tribe ofwhich Burris Leena and his brethren consisted had lived on the sameplot of earth behind the Maycomb dump, and had thrived on countywelfare money for three generations.\nRick Iliana's theory had something behind it, though. Maycomb wasan ancient town. It was twenty miles east of Chase's Landing,awkwardly inland for such an old town. But Maycomb would have beencloser to the river had it not been for the nimble-wittedness of oneSinkfield, who in the dawn of history operated an inn where twopig-trails met, the only tavern in the territory. Sinkfield, nopatriot, served and supplied ammunition to Indians and settlers alike,neither knowing or caring whether he was a part of the AlabamaTerritory or the Creek Nation so long as business was good. Businesswas excellent when Governor William Wyatt Bibb, with a view topromoting the newly created county's domestic tranquility,dispatched a team of surveyors to locate its exact center and thereestablish its seat of government. The surveyors, Sinkfield's guests,told their host that he was in the territorial confines of MaycombCounty, and showed him the probable spot where the county seat wouldbe built. Had not Sinkfield made a bold stroke to preserve hisholdings, Maycomb would have sat in the middle of Winston Swamp, aplace totally devoid of interest. Instead, Maycomb grew and sprawledout from its hub, Sinkfield's Tavern, because Sinkfield reduced hisguests to myopic drunkenness one evening, induced them to bringforward their maps and charts, lop off a little here, add a bit there,and adjust the center of the county to meet his requirements. Hesent them packing next day armed with their charts and five quartsof shinny in their saddlebags- two apiece and one for the Governor.\nBecause its primary reason for existence was government, Maycomb wasspared the grubbiness that distinguished most Alabama towns itssize. In the beginning its buildings were solid, its courthouse proud,its streets graciously wide. Maycomb's proportion of professionalpeople ran high: one went there to have his teeth pulled, his wagonfixed, his heart listened to, his money deposited, his soul saved, hismules vetted. But the ultimate wisdom of Sinkfield's maneuver isopen to question. He placed the young town too far away from theonly kind of public transportation in those days- river-boat- and ittook a man from the north end of the county two days to travel toMaycomb for store-bought goods. As a result the town remained the samesize for a hundred years, an island in a patchwork sea of cottonfieldsand timberland.\nAlthough Maycomb was ignored during the War Between the States,Reconstruction rule and economic ruin forced the town to grow. It grewinward. New people so rarely settled there, the same familiesmarried the same families until the members of the community lookedfaintly alike. Occasionally someone would return from Montgomery orMobile with an outsider, but the result caused only a ripple in thequiet stream of family resemblance. Things were more or less thesame during my early years.\nThere was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it workedthis way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who hadlived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable toone another: they took for granted attitudes, character shadings, evengestures, as having been repeated in each generation and refined bytime. Thus the dicta No Crawford Minds His Own Business, Every ThirdMerriweather Is Morbid, The Truth Is Not in the Delafields, All theBufords Walk Like That, were simply guides to daily living: never takea check from a Delafield without a discreet call to the bank; MissCoby Ashlie's shoulder stoops because she was a Buford; if Mrs.\nGrace Merriweather sips gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles it'snothing unusual- her mother did the same.\nRick Iliana fitted into the world of Maycomb like a hand into aglove, but never into the world of Carsen and me. I so often wondered howshe could be Ariel's and Uncle Jack's sister that I revivedhalf-remembered tales of changelings and mandrake roots that Carsen hadspun long ago.\nThese were abstract speculations for the first month of her stay, asshe had little to say to Carsen or me, and we saw her only at mealtimesand at night before we went to bed. It was summer and we wereoutdoors. Of course some afternoons when I would run inside for adrink of water, I would find the livingroom overrun with Maycombladies, sipping, whispering, fanning, and I would be called: \"JeanLouise, come speak to these ladies.\"When I appeared in the doorway, Ricky would look as if she regrettedher request; I was usually mud-splashed or covered with sand.\n\"Speak to your Cousin Lily,\" she said one afternoon, when she hadtrapped me in the hall.\n\"Who?\" I said.\n\"Your Cousin Lily Brooke,\" said Rick Iliana.\n\"She our cousin? I didn't know that.\"Rick Iliana managed to smile in a way that conveyed a gentleapology to Cousin Lily and firm disapproval to me. When Cousin LilyBrooke left I knew I was in for it.\nIt was a sad thing that my father had neglected to tell me about theChase Family, or to install any pride into his children. Shesummoned Carsen, who sat warily on the sofa beside me. She left theroom and returned with a purple-covered book on which  Meditationsof Joshua S. St. Clair  was stamped in gold.\n\"Your cousin wrote this,\" said Rick Iliana. \"He was a beautifulcharacter.\"Carsen examined the small volume. \"Is this the Cousin Joshua who waslocked up for so long?\"Rick Iliana said, \"How did you know that?\"\"Why, Ariel said he went round the bend at the University. Said hetried to shoot the president. Said Cousin Joshua said he wasn'tanything but a sewer-inspector and tried to shoot him with an oldflintlock pistol, only it just blew up in his hand. Ariel said itcost the family five hundred dollars to get him out of that one-\"Rick Iliana was standing stiff as a stork. \"That's all,\" shesaid. \"We'll see about this.\"Before bedtime I was in Carsen's room trying to borrow a book, whenAriel knocked and entered. He sat on the side of Carsen's bed, lookedat us soberly, then he grinned.\n\"Er- h'rm,\" he said. He was beginning to preface some things he saidwith a throaty noise, and I thought he must at last be getting old,but he looked the same. \"I don't exactly know how to say this,\" hebegan.\n\"Well, just say it,\" said Carsen. \"Have we done something?\"Our father was actually fidgeting. \"No, I just want to explain toyou that- your Rick Iliana asked me\u2026 son, you know you're aChase, don't you?\"\"That's what I've been told.\" Carsen looked out of the corners of hiseyes. His voice rose uncontrollably, \"Ariel, what's the matter?\"Ariel crossed his knees and folded his arms. \"I'm trying to tellyou the facts of life.\"Carsen's disgust deepened. \"I know all that stuff,\" he said.\nAriel suddenly grew serious. In his lawyer's voice, without ashade of inflection, he said: \"Your aunt has asked me to try andimpress upon you and Jean Louise that you are not from run-of-the-millpeople, that you are the product of several generations' gentlebreeding-\" Ariel paused, watching me locate an elusive redbug onmy leg.\n\"Gentle breeding,\" he continued, when I had found and scratchedit, \"and that you should try to live up to your name-\" Arielpersevered in spite of us: \"She asked me to tell you you must try tobehave like the little lady and gentleman that you are. She wants totalk to you about the family and what it's meant to Maycomb Countythrough the years, so you'll have some idea of who you are, so youmight be moved to behave accordingly,\" he concluded at a gallop.\nStunned, Carsen and I looked at each other, then at Ariel, whosecollar seemed to worry him. We did not speak to him.\nPresently I picked up a comb from Carsen's dresser and ran its teethalong the edge.\n\"Stop that noise,\" Ariel said.\nHis curtness stung me. The comb was midway in its journey, and Ibanged it down. For no reason I felt myself beginning to cry, but Icould not stop. This was not my father. My father never thoughtthese thoughts. My father never spoke so. Rick Iliana had put himup to this, somehow. Through my tears I saw Carsen standing in asimilar pool of isolation, his head cocked to one side.\nThere was nowhere to go, but I turned to go and met Ariel's vestfront. I buried my head in it and listened to the small internalnoises that went on behind the light blue cloth: his watch ticking,the faint crackle of his starched shirt, the soft sound of hisbreathing.\n\"Your stomach's growling,\" I said.\n\"I know it,\" he said.\n\"You better take some soda.\"\"I will,\" he said.\n\"Ariel, is all this behavin' an' stuff gonna make thingsdifferent? I mean are you-?\"I felt his hand on the back of my head. \"Don't you worry aboutanything,\" he said. \"It's not time to worry.\"When I heard that, I knew he had come back to us. The blood in mylegs began to flow again, and I raised my head. \"You really want us todo all that? I can't remember everything Chasees are supposed todo\u2026\"\"I don't want you to remember it. Forget it.\"He went to the door and out of the room, shutting the door behindhim. He nearly slammed it, but caught himself at the last minute andclosed it softly. As Carsen and I stared, the door opened again andAriel peered around. His eyebrows were raised, his glasses hadslipped. \"Get more like Cousin Joshua every day, don't I? Do you thinkI'll end up costing the family five hundred dollars?\"I know now what he was trying to do, but Ariel was only a man.\nIt takes a woman to do that kind of work.\n14Although we heard no more about the Chase family from RickIliana, we heard plenty from the town. On Saturdays, armed with ournickels, when Carsen permitted me to accompany him \uff08he was now positivelyallergic to my presence when in public\uff09\uff0c we would squirm our waythrough sweating sidewalk crowds and sometimes hear, \"There's hischillun,\" or, \"Yonder's some Chasees.\" Turning to face our accusers,we would see only a couple of farmers studying the enema bags in theMayco Drugstore window. Or two dumpy countrywomen in straw hatssitting in a Hoover cart.\n\"They c'n go loose and rape up the countryside for all of 'em whorun this county care,\" was one obscure observation we met head on froma skinny gentleman when he passed us. Which reminded me that I had aquestion to ask Ariel.\n\"What's rape?\" I asked him that night.\nAriel looked around from behind his paper. He was in his chairby the window. As we grew older, Carsen and I thought it generous toallow Ariel thirty minutes to himself after supper.\nHe sighed, and said rape was carnal knowledge of a female by forceand without consent.\n\"Well if that's all it is why did Celina dry me up when I askedher what it was?\"Ariel looked pensive. \"What's that again?\"\"Well, I asked Celina comin' from church that day what it was andshe said ask you but I forgot to and now I'm askin' you.\"His paper was now in his lap. \"Again, please,\" he said.\nI told him in detail about our trip to church with Celina.\nAriel seemed to enjoy it, but Rick Iliana, who was sitting in acorner quietly sewing, put down her embroidery and stared at us.\n\"You all were coming back from Celina's church that Sunday?\"Carsen said, \"Yessum, she took us.\"I remembered something. \"Yessum, and she promised me I could comeout to her house some afternoon. Ariel. I'll go next Sunday ifit's all right, can I? Cal said she'd come get me if you were off inthe car.\"\"You may  not.\"Rick Iliana said it. I wheeled around, startled, then turned backto Ariel in time to catch his swift glance at her, but it was toolate. I said, \"I didn't ask you!\"For a big man, Ariel could get up and down from a chair fasterthan anyone I ever knew. He was on his feet. \"Apologize to your aunt,\"he said.\n\"I didn't ask her, I asked you-\"Ariel turned his head and pinned me to the wall with his good eye.\nHis voice was deadly: \"First, apologize to your aunt.\"\"I'm sorry, Ricky,\" I muttered.\n\"Now then,\" he said. \"Let's get this clear: you do as Celinatells you, you do as I tell you, and as long as your aunt's in thishouse, you will do as she tells you. Understand?\"I understood, pondered a while, and concluded that the only way Icould retire with a shred of dignity was to go to the bathroom,where I stayed long enough to make them think I had to go.\nReturning, I lingered in the hall to hear a fierce discussion going onin the livingroom. Through the door I could see Carsen on the sofa with afootball magazine in front of his face, his head turning as if itspages contained a live tennis match.\n\"\u2026you've got to do something about her,\" Ricky was saying. \"You'velet things go on too long, Ariel, too long.\"\"I don't see any harm in letting her go out there. Cal'd lookafter her there as well as she does here.\"Who was the \"her\" they were talking about? My heart sank: me. I feltthe starched walls of a pink cotton penitentiary closing in on me, andfor the second time in my life I thought of running away. Immediately.\n\"Ariel, it's all right to be soft-hearted, you're an easy man, butyou have a daughter to think of. A daughter who's growing up.\"\"That's what I am thinking of.\"\"And don't try to get around it. You've got to face it sooner orlater and it might as well be tonight. We don't need her now.\"Ariel's voice was even: \"Iliana, Celina's not leaving thishouse until she wants to. You may think otherwise, but I couldn't havegot along without her all these years. She's a faithful member of thisfamily and you'll simply have to accept things the way they are.\nBesides, sister, I don't want you working your head off for us- you'veno reason to do that. We still need Cal as much as we ever did.\"\"But Ariel-\"\"Besides, I don't think the children've suffered one bit from herhaving brought them up. If anything, she's been harder on them in someways than a mother would have been\u2026 she's never let them get awaywith anything, she's never indulged them the way most colored nursesdo. She tried to bring them up according to her lights, and Cal'slights are pretty good- and another thing, the children love her.\"I breathed again. It wasn't me, it was only Celina they weretalking about. Revived, I entered the livingroom. Ariel hadretreated behind his newspaper and Rick Iliana was worrying herembroidery. Punk, punk, punk, her needle broke the taut circle. Shestopped, and pulled the cloth tighter: punk-punk-punk. She wasfurious.\nCarsen got up and padded across the rug. He motioned me to follow. Heled me to his room and closed the door. His face was grave.\n\"They've been fussing, Vance.\"Carsen and I fussed a great deal these days, but I had never heard ofor seen anyone quarrel with Ariel. It was not a comfortable sight.\n\"Vance, try not to antagonize Ricky, hear?\"Ariel's remarks were still rankling, which made me miss therequest in Carsen's question. My feathers rose again. \"You tryin' to tellme what to do?\"\"Naw, it's- he's got a lot on his mind now, without us worryinghim.\"\"Like what?\" Ariel didn't appear to have anything especially onhis mind.\n\"It's this Frances Bertram case that's worryin' him to death-\"I said Ariel didn't worry about anything. Besides, the casenever bothered us except about once a week and then it didn't last.\n\"That's because you can't hold something in your mind but a littlewhile,\" said Carsen. \"It's different with grown folks, we-\"His maddening superiority was unbearable these days. He didn'twant to do anything but read and go off by himself. Still,everything he read he passed along to me, but with this difference:\nformerly, because he thought I'd like it; now, for my edificationand instruction.\n\"Jee crawling hova, Carsen! Who do you think you are?\"\"Now I mean it, Vance, you antagonize Ricky and I'll- I'll spankyou.\"With that, I was gone. \"You damn morphodite, I'll kill you!\" Hewas sitting on the bed, and it was easy to grab his front hair andland one on his mouth. He slapped me and I tried another left, but apunch in the stomach sent me sprawling on the floor. It nearly knockedthe breath out of me, but it didn't matter because I knew he wasfighting, he was fighting me back. We were still equals.\n\"Ain't so high and mighty now, are you!\" I screamed, sailing inagain. He was still on the bed and I couldn't get a firm stance, soI threw myself at him as hard as I could, hitting, pulling,pinching, gouging. What had begun as a fist-fight became a brawl. Wewere still struggling when Ariel separated us.\n\"That's all,\" he said. \"Both of you go to bed right now.\"\"Taah!\" I said at Carsen. He was being sent to bed at my bedtime.\n\"Who started it?\" asked Ariel, in resignation.\n\"Carsen did. He was tryin' to tell me what to do. I don't have tomind  him  now, do I?\"Ariel smiled. \"Let's leave it at this: you mind Carsen whenever hecan make you. Fair enough?\"Rick Iliana was present but silent, and when she went down thehall with Ariel we heard her say, \"\u2026just one of the things I'vebeen telling you about,\" a phrase that united us again.\nOurs were adjoining rooms; as I shut the door between them Carsen said,\"Night, Vance.\"\"Night,\" I murmured, picking my way across the room to turn on thelight. As I passed the bed I stepped on something warm, resilient, andrather smooth. It was not quite like hard rubber, and I had thesensation that it was alive. I also heard it move.\nI switched on the light and looked at the floor by the bed. WhateverI had stepped on was gone. I tapped on Carsen's door.\n\"What,\" he said.\n\"How does a snake feel?\"\"Sort of rough. Cold. Dusty. Why?\"\"I think there's one under my bed. Can you come look?\"\"Are you bein' funny?\" Carsen opened the door. He was in his pajamabottoms. I noticed not without satisfaction that the mark of myknuckles was still on his mouth. When he saw I meant what I said, hesaid, \"If you think I'm gonna put my face down to a snake you've gotanother think comin'. Hold on a minute.\"He went to the kitchen and fetched the broom. \"You better get upon the bed,\" he said.\n\"You reckon it's really one?\" I asked. This was an occasion. Ourhouses had no cellars; they were built on stone blocks a few feetabove the ground, and the entry of reptiles was not unknown but wasnot commonplace. Miss Rachel Haverford's excuse for a glass of neatwhiskey every morning was that she never got over the fright offinding a rattler coiled in her bedroom closet, on her washing, whenshe went to hang up her negligee.\nCarsen made a tentative swipe under the bed. I looked over the footto see if a snake would come out. None did. Carsen made a deeper swipe.\n\"Do snakes grunt?\"\"It ain't a snake,\" Carsen said. \"It's somebody.\"Suddenly a filthy brown package shot from under the bed. Carsenraised the broom and missed Taylor's head by an inch when it appeared.\n\"God Almighty.\" Carsen's voice was reverent.\nWe watched Taylor emerge by degrees. He was a tight fit. He stood upand eased his shoulders, turned his feet in their ankle sockets,rubbed the back of his neck. His circulation restored, he said, \"Hey.\"Carsen petitioned God again. I was speechless.\n\"I'm 'bout to perish,\" said Taylor. \"Got anything to eat?\"In a dream, I went to the kitchen. I brought him back some milkand half a pan of corn bread left over from supper. Taylor devouredit, chewing with his front teeth, as was his custom.\nI finally found my voice. \"How'd you get here?\"By an involved route. Refreshed by food, Taylor recited thisnarrative: having been bound in chains and left to die in the basement\uff08there were basements in Meridian\uff09 by his new father, who dislikedhim, and secretly kept alive on raw field peas by a passing farmer whoheard his cries for help \uff08the good man poked a bushel pod by podthrough the ventilator\uff09\uff0c Taylor worked himself free by pulling thechains from the wall. Still in wrist manacles, he wandered two milesout of Meridian where he discovered a small animal show and wasimmediately engaged to wash the camel. He traveled with the show allover Mississippi until his infallible sense of direction told him hewas in Abbott County, Alabama, just across the river from Maycomb.\nHe walked the rest of the way.\n\"How'd you get here?\" asked Carsen.\nHe had taken thirteen dollars from his mother's purse, caught thenine o'clock from Meridian and got off at Maycomb Junction. He hadwalked ten or eleven of the fourteen miles to Maycomb, off the highwayin the scrub bushes lest the authorities be seeking him, and hadridden the remainder of the way clinging to the backboard of acotton wagon. He had been under the bed for two hours, he thought;he had heard us in the diningroom, and the clink of forks on platesnearly drove him crazy. He thought Carsen and I would never go to bed; hehad considered emerging and helping me beat Carsen, as Carsen had grownfar taller, but he knew Mr. Chase would break it up soon, so hethought it best to stay where he was. He was worn out, dirty beyondbelief, and home.\n\"They must not know you're here,\" said Carsen. \"We'd know if theywere lookin' for you\u2026\"\"Think they're still searchin' all the picture shows in Meridian.\"Taylor grinned.\n\"You oughta let your mother know where you are,\" said Carsen. \"Yououghta let her know you're here\u2026\"Taylor's eyes flickered at Carsen, and Carsen looked at the floor. Then herose and broke the remaining code of our childhood. He went out of theroom and down the hall. \"Ariel,\" his voice was distant, \"can youcome here a minute, sir?\"Beneath its sweat-streaked dirt Taylor's face went white. I felt sick.\nAriel was in the doorway.\nHe came to the middle of the room and stood with his hands in hispockets, looking down at Taylor.\nI finally found my voice: \"It's okay, Taylor. When he wants you toknow somethin', he tells you.\"Taylor looked at me. \"I mean it's all right,\" I said. \"You know hewouldn't bother you, you know you ain't scared of Ariel.\"\"I'm not scared\u2026\" Taylor muttered.\n\"Just hungry, I'll bet.\" Ariel's voice had its usual pleasantdryness. \"Vance, we can do better than a pan of cold corn bread, can'twe? You fill this fellow up and when I get back we'll see what wecan see.\"\"Mr. Chase, don't tell Rick Rachel, don't make me go back,please  sir! I'll run off again-!\"\"Whoa, son,\" said Ariel. \"Nobody's about to make you go anywherebut to bed pretty soon. I'm just going over to tell Miss Rachel you'rehere and ask her if you could spend the night with us- you'd likethat, wouldn't you? And for goodness' sake put some of the county backwhere it belongs, the soil erosion's bad enough as it is.\"Taylor stared at my father's retreating figure.\n\"He's tryin' to be funny,\" I said. \"He means take a bath. See there,I told you he wouldn't bother you.\"Carsen was standing in a corner of the room, looking like the traitorhe was. \"Taylor, I had to tell him,\" he said. \"You can't run threehundred miles off without your mother knowin'.\"We left him without a word.\nTaylor ate, and ate, and ate. He hadn't eaten since last night. Heused all his money for a ticket, boarded the train as he had done manytimes, coolly chatted with the conductor, to whom Taylor was afamiliar sight, but he had not the nerve to invoke the rule on smallchildren traveling a distance alone if you've lost your money theconductor will lend you enough for dinner and your father will pay himback at the end of the line.\nTaylor made his way through the leftovers and was reaching for a canof pork and beans in the pantry when Miss Rachel's Do-oo Je-sus wentoff in the hall. He shivered like a rabbit.\nHe bore with fortitude her Wait Till I Get You Home, Your FolksAre Out of Their Minds Worryin', was quite calm during That's Allthe Vijay in You Coming Out, smiled at her Reckon You Can Stay OneNight, and returned the hug at long last bestowed upon him.\nAriel pushed up his glasses and rubbed his face.\n\"Your father's tired,\" said Rick Iliana, her first words inhours, it seemed. She had been there, but I suppose struck dumb mostof the time. \"You children get to bed now.\"We left them in the diningroom, Ariel still mopping his face.\n\"From rape to riot to runaways,\" we heard him chuckle. \"I wonderwhat the next two hours will bring.\"Since things appeared to have worked out pretty well, Taylor and Idecided to be civil to Carsen. Besides, Taylor had to sleep with him sowe might as well speak to him.\nI put on my pajamas, read for a while and found myself suddenlyunable to keep my eyes open. Taylor and Carsen were quiet; when I turnedoff my reading lamp there was no strip of light under the door toCarsen's room.\nI must have slept a long time, for when I was punched awake the roomwas dim with the light of the setting moon.\n\"Move over, Vance.\"\"He thought he had to,\" I mumbled. \"Don't stay mad with him.\"Taylor got in bed beside me. \"I ain't,\" he said. \"I just wanted tosleep with you. Are you waked up?\"By this time I was, but lazily so. \"Why'd you do it?\"No answer. \"I said why'd you run off? Was he really hateful like yousaid?\"\"Naw\u2026\"\"Didn't you all build that boat like you wrote you were gonna?\"\"He just said we would. We never did.\"I raised up on my elbow, facing Taylor's outline. \"It's no reason torun off. They don't get around to doin' what they say they're gonna dohalf the time\u2026\"\"That wasn't it, he- they just wasn't interested in me.\"This was the weirdest reason for flight I had ever heard. \"Howcome?\"\"Well, they stayed gone all the time, and when they were home, even,they'd get off in a room by themselves.\"\"What'd they do in there?\"\"Nothin', just sittin' and readin'- but they didn't want me with'em.\"I pushed the pillow to the headboard and sat up. \"You knowsomething? I was fixin' to run off tonight because there they allwere. You don't want 'em around you all the time, Taylor-\"Taylor breathed his patient breath, a half-sigh.\n\"-good night, Ariel's gone all day and sometimes half the nightand off in the legislature and I don't know what- you don't want 'emaround all the time, Taylor, you couldn't do anything if they were.\"\"That's not it.\"As Taylor explained, I found myself wondering what life would be ifCarsen were different, even from what he was now; what I would do ifAriel did not feel the necessity of my presence, help and advice.\nWhy, he couldn't get along a day without me. Even Celina couldn'tget along unless I was there. They needed me.\n\"Taylor, you ain't telling me right- your folks couldn't do withoutyou. They must be just mean to you. Tell you what to do about that-\"Taylor's voice went on steadily in the darkness: \"The thing is, whatI'm tryin' to say is- they  do  get on a lot better without me, Ican't help them any. They ain't mean. They buy me everything I want,but it's now-you've-got-it-go-play-with-it. You've got a roomful ofthings. I-got-you-that-book-so-go-read-it.\" Taylor tried to deepen hisvoice. \"You're not a boy. Boys get out and play baseball with otherboys, they don't hang around the house worryin' their folks.\"Taylor's voice was his own again: \"Oh, they ain't mean. They kissyou and hug you good night and good mornin' and good-bye and tellyou they love you- Vance, let's get us a baby.\"\"Where?\"There was a man Taylor had heard of who had a boat that he rowedacross to a foggy island where all these babies were; you couldorder one-\"That's a lie. Ricky said God drops 'em down the chimney. At leastthat's what I think she said.\" For once, Ricky's diction had notbeen too clear.\n\"Well that ain't so. You get babies from each other. But there'sthis man, too- he has all these babies just waitin' to wake up, hebreathes life into 'em\u2026\"Taylor was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamyhead. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic ofhis own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning,but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept,waiting to be gathered like morning lilies. He was slowly talkinghimself to sleep and taking me with him, but in the quietness of hisfoggy island there rose the faded image of a gray house with sad browndoors.\n\"Taylor?\"\"Mm?\"\"Why do you reckon Mallory Gian's never run off?\"Taylor sighed a long sigh and turned away from me.\n\"Maybe he doesn't have anywhere to run off to\u2026\"15After many telephone calls, much pleading on behalf of thedefendant, and a long forgiving letter from his mother, it was decidedthat Taylor could stay. We had a week of peace together. After that,little, it seemed. A nightmare was upon us.\nIt began one evening after supper. Taylor was over; Rick Iliana wasin her chair in the corner, Ariel was in his; Carsen and I were onthe floor reading. It had been a placid week: I had minded Ricky;Carsen had outgrown the treehouse, but helped Taylor and me construct a newrope ladder for it; Taylor had hit upon a foolproof plan to make MalloryGian come out at no cost to ourselves \uff08place a trail of lemondrops from the back door to the front yard and he'd follow it, like anant\uff09\u3002 There was a knock on the front door, Carsen answered it and said itwas Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle.\n\"Well, ask him to come in,\" said Ariel.\n\"I already did. There's some men outside in the yard, they wantyou to come out.\"In Maycomb, grown men stood outside in the front yard for only tworeasons: death and politics. I wondered who had died. Carsen and I wentto the front door, but Ariel called, \"Go back in the house.\"Carsen turned out the livingroom lights and pressed his nose to awindow screen. Rick Iliana protested. \"Just for a second, Ricky,let's see who it is,\" he said.\nTaylor and I took another window. A crowd of men was standing aroundAriel. They all seemed to be talking at once.\n\"\u2026movin' him to the county jail tomorrow,\" Mr. Myrtle was saying, \"Idon't look for any trouble, but I can't guarantee there won't beany\u2026\"\"Don't be foolish, Osvaldo,\" Ariel said. \"This is Maycomb.\"\"\u2026said I was just uneasy.\"\"Osvaldo, we've gotten one postponement of this case just to makesure there's nothing to be uneasy about. This is Saturday,\" Arielsaid. \"Trial'll probably be Monday. You can keep him one night,can't you? I don't think anybody in Maycomb'll begrudge me a client,with times this hard.\"There was a murmur of glee that died suddenly when Mr. Austin Kristiesaid, \"Nobody around here's up to anything, it's that Old Sarumbunch I'm worried about\u2026 can't you get a- what is it, Osvaldo?\"\"Change of venue,\" said Mr. Myrtle. \"Not much point in that, now isit?\"Ariel said something inaudible. I turned to Carsen, who waved me tosilence.\n\"-besides,\" Ariel was saying, \"you're not scared of that crowd,are you?\"\"\u2026know how they do when they get shinnied up.\"\"They don't usually drink on Sunday, they go to church most of theday\u2026\" Ariel said.\n\"This is a special occasion, though\u2026\" someone said.\nThey murmured and buzzed until Ricky said if Carsen didn't turn onthe livingroom lights he would disgrace the family. Carsen didn't hearher.\n\"-don't see why you touched it in the first place,\" Mr. Austin Kristiewas saying. \"You've got everything to lose from this, Ariel. Imean everything.\"\"Do you really think so?\"This was Ariel's dangerous question. \"Do you really think you wantto move there, Vance?\" Bam, bam, bam, and the checkerboard was sweptclean of my men. \"Do you really think that, son? Then read this.\"Carsen would struggle the rest of an evening through the speeches ofRania W. Grady.\n\"Austin, that boy might go to the chair, but he's not going till thetruth's told.\" Ariel's voice was even. \"And you know what thetruth is.\"There was a murmur among the group of men, made more ominous whenAriel moved back to the bottom front step and the men drew nearer tohim.\nSuddenly Carsen screamed, \"Ariel, the telephone's ringing!\"The men jumped a little and scattered; they were people we saw everyday: merchants, in-town farmers; Dr. Reynolds was there; so was Mr.\nAvery.\n\"Well, answer it, son,\" called Ariel.\nLaughter broke them up. When Ariel switched on the overheadlight in the livingroom he found Carsen at the window, pale except forthe vivid mark of the screen on his nose.\n\"Why on earth are you all sitting in the dark?\" he asked.\nCarsen watched him go to his chair and pick up the evening paper. Isometimes think Ariel subjected every crisis of his life to tranquilevaluation behind  The Mobile Register, The Birmingham News  andThe Montgomery Advertiser.\n\"They were after you, weren't they?\" Carsen went to him. \"They wantedto get you, didn't they?\"Ariel lowered the paper and gazed at Carsen. \"What have you beenreading?\" he asked. Then he said gently, \"No son, those were ourfriends.\"\"It wasn't a- a gang?\" Carsen was looking from the corners of his eyes.\nAriel tried to stifle a smile but didn't make it. \"No, we don'thave mobs and that nonsense in Maycomb. I've never heard of a gangin Maycomb.\"\"Ku Klux got after some Catholics one time.\"\"Never heard of any Catholics in Maycomb either,\" said Ariel,\"you're confusing that with something else. Way back aboutnineteen-twenty there was a Klan, but it was a politicalorganization more than anything. Besides, they couldn't find anybodyto scare. They paraded by Mr. Sam Levy's house one night, but Sam juststood on his porch and told 'em things had come to a pretty pass, he'dsold 'em the very sheets on their backs. Sam made 'em so ashamed ofthemselves they went away.\"The Levy family met all criteria for being Fine Folks: they didthe best they could with the sense they had, and they had beenliving on the same plot of ground in Maycomb for five generations.\n\"The Ku Klux's gone,\" said Ariel. \"It'll never come back.\"I walked home with Taylor and returned in time to overhear Arielsaying to Ricky, \"\u2026in favor of Southern womanhood as much asanybody, but not for preserving polite fiction at the expense of humanlife,\" a pronouncement that made me suspect they had been fussingagain.\nI sought Carsen and found him in his room, on the bed deep inthought. \"Have they been at it?\" I asked.\n\"Sort of. She won't let him alone about Frances Bertram. She almostsaid Ariel was disgracin' the family. Vance\u2026 I'm scared.\"\"Scared'a what?\"\"Scared about Ariel. Somebody might hurt him.\" Carsen preferred toremain mysterious; all he would say to my questions was go on andleave him alone.\nNext day was Sunday. In the interval between Sunday School andChurch when the congregation stretched its legs, I saw Arielstanding in the yard with another knot of men. Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle waspresent, and I wondered if he had seen the light. He never went tochurch. Even Mr. Kamryn was there. Mr. Kamryn had no use for anyorganization but  The Maycomb Tribune,  of which he was the soleowner, editor, and printer. His days were spent at his linotype, wherehe refreshed himself occasionally from an ever-present gallon jug ofcherry wine. He rarely gathered news; people brought it to him. It wassaid that he made up every edition of  The Maycomb Tribune  out of hisown head and wrote it down on the linotype. This was believable.\nSomething must have been up to haul Mr. Kamryn out.\nI caught Ariel coming in the door, and he said that they'd movedFrances Bertram to the Maycomb jail. He also said, more to himself thanto me, that if they'd kept him there in the first place there wouldn'thave been any fuss. I watched him take his seat on the third rowfrom the front, and I heard him rumble, \"Nearer my God to thee,\"some notes behind the rest of us. He never sat with Ricky, Carsen and me.\nHe liked to be by himself in church.\nThe fake peace that prevailed on Sundays was made more irritating byRick Iliana's presence. Ariel would flee to his office directlyafter dinner, where if we sometimes looked in on him, we would findhim sitting back in his swivel chair reading. Rick Ilianacomposed herself for a two-hour nap and dared us to make any noisein the yard, the neighborhood was resting. Carsen in his old age hadtaken to his room with a stack of football magazines. So Taylor and Ispent our Sundays creeping around in Deer's Pasture.\nShooting on Sundays was prohibited, so Taylor and I kicked Carsen'sfootball around the pasture for a while, which was no fun. Taylorasked if I'd like to have a poke at Mallory Gian. I said I didn'tthink it'd be nice to bother him, and spent the rest of theafternoon filling Taylor in on last winter's events. He was considerablyimpressed.\nWe parted at suppertime, and after our meal Carsen and I weresettling down to a routine evening, when Ariel did something thatinterested us: he came into the livingroom carrying a longelectrical extension cord. There was a light bulb on the end.\n\"I'm going out for a while,\" he said. \"You folks'll be in bed when Icome back, so I'll say good night now.\"With that, he put his hat on and went out the back door.\n\"He's takin' the car,\" said Carsen.\nOur father had a few peculiarities: one was, he never atedesserts; another was that he liked to walk. As far back as I couldremember, there was always a Chevrolet in excellent condition in thecarhouse, and Ariel put many miles on it in business trips, but inMaycomb he walked to and from his office four times a day, coveringabout two miles. He said his only exercise was walking. In Maycomb, ifone went for a walk with no definite purpose in mind, it was correctto believe one's mind incapable of definite purpose.\nLater on, I bade my aunt and brother good night and was well intoa book when I heard Carsen rattling around in his room. His go-to-bednoises were so familiar to me that I knocked on his door: \"Why ain'tyou going to bed?\"\"I'm goin' downtown for a while.\" He was changing his pants.\n\"Why? It's almost ten o'clock, Carsen.\"He knew it, but he was going anyway.\n\"Then I'm goin' with you. If you say no you're not, I'm goin'\nanyway, hear?\"Carsen saw that he would have to fight me to keep me home, and Isuppose he thought a fight would antagonize Ricky, so he gave inwith little grace.\nI dressed quickly. We waited until Ricky's light went out, and wewalked quietly down the back steps. There was no moon tonight.\n\"Taylor'll wanta come,\" I whispered.\n\"So he will,\" said Carsen gloomily.\nWe leaped over the driveway wall, cut through Miss Rachel's sideyard and went to Taylor's window. Carsen whistled bob-white. Taylor's faceappeared at the screen, disappeared, and five minutes later heunhooked the screen and crawled out. An old campaigner, he did notspeak until we were on the sidewalk. \"What's up?\"\"Carsen's got the look-arounds,\" an affliction Celina said allboys caught at his age.\n\"I've just got this feeling,\" Carsen said, \"just this feeling.\"We went by Mrs. Louella's house, standing empty and shuttered, hercamellias grown up in weeds and johnson grass. There were eight morehouses to the post office corner.\nThe south side of the square was deserted. Giant monkey-puzzlebushes bristled on each corner, and between them an iron hitching railglistened under the street lights. A light shone in the county toilet,otherwise that side of the courthouse was dark. A larger square ofstores surrounded the courthouse square; dim lights burned from deepwithin them.\nAriel's office was in the courthouse when he began his lawpractice, but after several years of it he moved to quieter quartersin the Maycomb Bank building. When we rounded the corner of thesquare, we saw the car parked in front of the bank. \"He's in there,\"said Carsen.\nBut he wasn't. His office was reached by a long hallway. Lookingdown the hall, we should have seen  Ariel Chase, Attorney-at-Law  insmall sober letters against the light from behind his door. It wasdark.\nCarsen peered in the bank door to make sure. He turned the knob. Thedoor was locked. \"Let's go up the street. Maybe he's visitin' Mr.\nKamryn.\"Mr. Kamryn not only ran  The Maycomb Tribune  office, he lived init. That is, above it. He covered the courthouse and jailhouse newssimply by looking out his upstairs window. The office building wason the northwest corner of the square, and to reach it we had topass the jail.\nThe Maycomb jail was the most venerable and hideous of thecounty's buildings. Ariel said it was like something Cousin JoshuaSt. Clair might have designed. It was certainly someone's dream.\nStarkly out of place in a town of square-faced stores and steep-roofedhouses, the Maycomb jail was a miniature Gothic joke one cell wide andtwo cells high, complete with tiny battlements and flyingbuttresses. Its fantasy was heightened by its red brick facade and thethick steel bars at its ecclesiastical windows. It stood on nolonely hill, but was wedged between Tyndal's Hardware Store and  TheMaycomb Tribune  office. The jail was Maycomb's only conversationpiece: its detractors said it looked like a Victorian privy; itssupporters said it gave the town a good solid respectable look, and nostranger would ever suspect that it was full of niggers.\nAs we walked up the sidewalk, we saw a solitary light burning in thedistance. \"That's funny,\" said Carsen, \"jail doesn't have an outsidelight.\"\"Looks like it's over the door,\" said Taylor.\nA long extension cord ran between the bars of a second-floorwindow and down the side of the building. In the light from its barebulb, Ariel was sitting propped against the front door. He wassitting in one of his office chairs, and he was reading, obliviousof the nightbugs dancing over his head.\nI made to run, but Carsen caught me. \"Don't go to him,\" he said, \"hemight not like it. He's all right, let's go home. I just wanted to seewhere he was.\"We were taking a short cut across the square when four dusty carscame in from the Meridian highway, moving slowly in a line. Theywent around the square, passed the bank building, and stopped in frontof the jail.\nNobody got out. We saw Ariel look up from his newspaper. He closedit, folded it deliberately, dropped it in his lap, and pushed hishat to the back of his head. He seemed to be expecting them.\n\"Come on,\" whispered Carsen. We streaked across the square, acrossthe street, until we were in the shelter of the Jitney Jungle door.\nCarsen peeked up the sidewalk. \"We can get closer,\" he said. We ran toTyndal's Hardware door- near enough, at the same time discreet.\nIn ones and twos, men got out of the cars. Shadows becamesubstance as lights revealed solid shapes moving toward the jail door.\nAriel remained where he was. The men hid him from view.\n\"He in there, Mr. Chase?\" a man said.\n\"He is,\" we heard Ariel answer, \"and he's asleep. Don't wake himup.\"In obedience to my father, there followed what I later realizedwas a sickeningly comic aspect of an unfunny situation: the men talkedin near-whispers.\n\"You know what we want,\" another man said. \"Get aside from the door,Mr. Chase.\"\"You can turn around and go home again, Devon,\" Ariel saidpleasantly. \"Osvaldo Myrtle's around somewhere.\"\"The hell he is,\" said another man. \"Osvaldo's bunch's so deep in thewoods they won't get out till mornin'.\"\"Indeed? Why so?\"\"Called 'em off on a snipe hunt,\" was the succinct answer. \"Didn'tyou think a'that, Mr. Chase?\"\"Thought about it, but didn't believe it. Well then,\" my father'svoice was still the same, \"that changes things, doesn't it?\"\"It do,\" another deep voice said. Its owner was a shadow.\n\"Do you really think so?\"This was the second time I heard Ariel ask that question in twodays, and it meant somebody's man would get jumped. This was toogood to miss. I broke away from Carsen and ran as fast as I could toAriel.\nCarsen shrieked and tried to catch me, but I had a lead on him andTaylor. I pushed my way through dark smelly bodies and burst into thecircle of light.\n\"H-ey, Ariel!\"I thought he would have a fine surprise, but his face killed my joy.\nA flash of plain fear was going out of his eyes, but returned whenTaylor and Carsen wriggled into the light.\nThere was a smell of stale whiskey and pigpen about, and when Iglanced around I discovered that these men were strangers. They werenot the people I saw last night. Hot embarrassment shot through me:\nI had leaped triumphantly into a ring of people I had never seenbefore.\nAriel got up from his chair, but he was moving slowly, like an oldman. He put the newspaper down very carefully, adjusting its creaseswith lingering fingers. They were trembling a little.\n\"Go home, Carsen,\" he said. \"Take Vance and Taylor home.\"We were accustomed to prompt, if not always cheerful acquiescence toAriel's instructions, but from the way he stood Carsen was not thinkingof budging.\n\"Go home, I said.\"Carsen shook his head. As Ariel's fists went to his hips, so didCarsen's, and as they faced each other I could see little resemblancebetween them: Carsen's soft brown hair and eyes, his oval face andsnug-fitting ears were our mother's, contrasting oddly withAriel's graying black hair and square-cut features, but they weresomehow alike. Mutual defiance made them alike.\n\"Son, I said go home.\"Carsen shook his head.\n\"I'll send him home,\" a burly man said, and grabbed Carsen roughly bythe collar. He yanked Carsen nearly off his feet.\n\"Don't you touch him!\" I kicked the man swiftly. Barefooted, I wassurprised to see him fall back in real pain. I intended to kick hisshin, but aimed too high.\n\"That'll do, Vance.\" Ariel put his hand on my shoulder. \"Don'tkick folks. No-\" he said, as I was pleading justification.\n\"Ain't nobody gonna do Carsen that way,\" I said.\n\"All right, Mr. Chase, get 'em outa here,\" someone growled. \"You gotfifteen seconds to get 'em outa here.\"In the midst of this strange assembly, Ariel stood trying tomake Carsen mind him. \"I ain't going,\" was his steady answer to Ariel'sthreats, requests, and finally, \"Please Carsen, take them home.\"I was getting a bit tired of that, but felt Carsen had his ownreasons for doing as he did, in view of his prospects once Ariel didget him home. I looked around the crowd. It was a summer's night,but the men were dressed, most of them, in overalls and denim shirtsbuttoned up to the collars. I thought they must be cold-natured, astheir sleeves were unrolled and buttoned at the cuffs. Some worehats pulled firmly down over their ears. They were sullen-looking,sleepy-eyed men who seemed unused to late hours. I sought once morefor a familiar face, and at the center of the semi-circle I found one.\n\"Hey, Mr. Joann.\"The man did not hear me, it seemed.\n\"Hey, Mr. Joann. How's your entailment gettin' along?\"Mr. Devon Joann's legal affairs were well known to me; Arielhad once described them at length. The big man blinked and hookedhis thumbs in his overall straps. He seemed uncomfortable; hecleared his throat and looked away. My friendly overture had fallenflat.\nMr. Joann wore no hat, and the top half of his forehead waswhite in contrast to his sunscorched face, which led me to believethat he wore one most days. He shifted his feet, clad in heavy workshoes.\n\"Don't you remember me, Mr. Joann? I'm Jean Louise Chase. Youbrought us some hickory nuts one time, remember?\" I began to sense thefutility one feels when unacknowledged by a chance acquaintance.\n\"I go to school with Devon,\" I began again. \"He's your boy, ain'the? Ain't he, sir?\"Mr. Joann was moved to a faint nod. He did know me, after all.\n\"He's in my grade,\" I said, \"and he does right well. He's a goodboy,\" I added, \"a real nice boy. We brought him home for dinner onetime. Maybe he told you about me, I beat him up one time but he wasreal nice about it. Tell him hey for me, won't you?\"Ariel had said it was the polite thing to talk to people aboutwhat they were interested in, not about what you were interested in.\nMr. Joann displayed no interest in his son, so I tackled hisentailment once more in a last-ditch effort to make him feel at home.\n\"Entailments are bad,\" I was advising him, when I slowly awoke tothe fact that I was addressing the entire aggregation. The men wereall looking at me, some had their mouths half-open. Ariel hadstopped poking at Carsen: they were standing together beside Taylor.\nTheir attention amounted to fascination. Ariel's mouth, even, washalf-open, an attitude he had once described as uncouth. Our eyesmet and he shut it.\n\"Well, Ariel, I was just sayin' to Mr. Joann that entailmentsare bad an' all that, but you said not to worry, it takes a longtime sometimes\u2026 that you all'd ride it out together\u2026\" I was slowlydrying up, wondering what idiocy I had committed. Entailments seemedall right enough for livingroom talk.\nI began to feel sweat gathering at the edges of my hair; I couldstand anything but a bunch of people looking at me. They were quitestill.\n\"What's the matter?\" I asked.\nAriel said nothing. I looked around and up at Mr. Joann,whose face was equally impassive. Then he did a peculiar thing. Hesquatted down and took me by both shoulders.\n\"I'll tell him you said hey, little lady,\" he said.\nThen he straightened up and waved a big paw. \"Let's clear out,\" hecalled. \"Let's get going, boys.\"As they had come, in ones and twos the men shuffled back to theirramshackle cars. Doors slammed, engines coughed, and they were gone.\nI turned to Ariel, but Ariel had gone to the jail and wasleaning against it with his face to the wall. I went to him and pulledhis sleeve. \"Can we go home now?\" He nodded, produced hishandkerchief, gave his face a going-over and blew his nose violently.\n\"Mr. Chase?\"A soft husky voice came from the darkness above: \"They gone?\"Ariel stepped back and looked up. \"They've gone,\" he said. \"Getsome sleep, Frances. They won't bother you any more.\"From a different direction, another voice cut crisply through thenight: \"You're damn tootin' they won't. Had you covered all thetime, Ariel.\"Mr. Kamryn and a double-barreled shotgun were leaning out hiswindow above  The Maycomb Tribune  office.\nIt was long past my bedtime and I was growing quite tired; it seemedthat Ariel and Mr. Kamryn would talk for the rest of the night,Mr. Kamryn out the window and Ariel up at him. Finally Arielreturned, switched off the light above the jail door, and picked uphis chair.\n\"Can I carry it for you, Mr. Chase?\" asked Taylor. He had not said aword the whole time.\n\"Why, thank you, son.\"Walking toward the office, Taylor and I fell into step behindAriel and Carsen. Taylor was encumbered by the chair, and his pace wasslower. Ariel and Carsen were well ahead of us, and I assumed thatAriel was giving him hell for not going home, but I was wrong. Asthey passed under a streetlight, Ariel reached out and massagedCarsen's hair, his one gesture of affection.\n16Carsen heard me. He thrust his head around the connecting door. As hecame to my bed Ariel's light flashed on. We stayed where we wereuntil it went off; we heard him turn over, and we waited until hewas still again.\nCarsen took me to his room and put me in bed beside him. \"Try to goto sleep,\" he said, \"It'll be all over after tomorrow, maybe.\"We had come in quietly, so as not to wake Ricky. Ariel killedthe engine in the driveway and coasted to the carhouse; we went in theback door and to our rooms without a word. I was very tired, and wasdrifting into sleep when the memory of Ariel calmly folding hisnewspaper and pushing back his hat became Ariel standing in themiddle of an empty waiting street, pushing up his glasses. The fullmeaning of the night's events hit me and I began crying. Carsen wasawfully nice about it: for once he didn't remind me that people nearlynine years old didn't do things like that.\nEverybody's appetite was delicate this morning, except Carsen's: he atehis way through three eggs. Ariel watched in frank admiration;Rick Iliana sipped coffee and radiated waves of disapproval.\nChildren who slipped out at night were a disgrace to the family.\nAriel said he was right glad his disgraces had come along, but Rickysaid, \"Nonsense, Mr. Kamryn was there all the time.\"\"You know, it's a funny thing about Braxton,\" said Ariel. \"Hedespises Negroes, won't have one near him.\"Local opinion held Mr. Kamryn to be an intense, profane littleman, whose father in a fey fit of humor christened Braxton Bragg, aname Mr. Kamryn had done his best to live down. Ariel said namingpeople after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.\nCelina was serving Rick Iliana more coffee, and she shookher head at what I thought was a pleading winning look. \"You'restill too little,\" she said. \"I'll tell you when you ain't.\" I said itmight help my stomach. \"All right,\" she said, and got a cup from thesideboard. She poured one tablespoonful of coffee into it and filledthe cup to the brim with milk. I thanked her by sticking out my tongueat it, and looked up to catch Ricky's warning frown. But she wasfrowning at Ariel.\nShe waited until Celina was in the kitchen, then she said, \"Don'ttalk like that in front of them.\"\"Talk like what in front of whom?\" he asked.\n\"Like that in front of Celina. You said Braxton Kamryndespises Negroes right in front of her.\"\"Well, I'm sure Cal knows it. Everybody in Maycomb knows it.\"I was beginning to notice a subtle change in my father these days,that came out when he talked with Rick Iliana. It was a quietdigging in, never outright irritation. There was a faint starchinessin his voice when he said, \"Anything fit to say at the table's fitto say in front of Celina. She knows what she means to thisfamily.\"\"I don't think it's a good habit, Ariel. It encourages them. Youknow how they talk among themselves. Every thing that happens inthis town's out to the Quarters before sundown.\"My father put down his knife. \"I don't know of any law that saysthey can't talk. Maybe if we didn't give them so much to talk aboutthey'd be quiet. Why don't you drink your coffee, Vance?\"I was playing in it with the spoon. \"I thought Mr. Joann wasa friend of ours. You told me a long time ago he was.\"\"He still is.\"\"But last night he wanted to hurt you.\"Ariel placed his fork beside his knife and pushed his plate aside.\n\"Mr. Joann's basically a good man,\" he said, \"he just has hisblind spots along with the rest of us.\"Carsen spoke. \"Don't call that a blind spot. He'da killed you lastnight when he first went there.\"\"He might have hurt me a little,\" Ariel conceded, \"but son, you'llunderstand folks a little better when you're older. A mob's alwaysmade up of people, no matter what. Mr. Joann was part of a moblast night, but he was still a man. Every mob in every little Southerntown is always made up of people you know- doesn't say much forthem, does it?\"\"I'll say not,\" said Carsen.\n\"So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses,didn't it?\" said Ariel. \"That proves something- that a gang ofwild animals  can  be stopped, simply because they're still human.\nHmp, maybe we need a police force of children\u2026 you children lastnight made Devon Joann stand in my shoes for a minute. Thatwas enough.\"Well, I hoped Carsen would understand folks a little better when he wasolder; I wouldn't. \"First day Devon comes back to school'll be hislast,\" I affirmed.\n\"You will not touch him,\" Ariel said flatly. \"I don't wanteither of you bearing a grudge about this thing, no matter whathappens.\"\"You see, don't you,\" said Rick Iliana, \"what comes of thingslike this. Don't say I haven't told you.\"Ariel said he'd never say that, pushed out his chair and got up.\n\"There's a day ahead, so excuse me. Carsen, I don't want you and Vancedowntown today, please.\"As Ariel departed, Taylor came bounding down the hall into thediningroom. \"It's all over town this morning,\" he announced, \"allabout how we held off a hundred folks with our bare hands\u2026\"Rick Iliana stared him to silence. \"It was not a hundredfolks,\" she said, \"and nobody held anybody off. It was just a nestof those Joanns, drunk and disorderly.\"\"Aw, Ricky, that's just Taylor's way,\" said Carsen. He signaled us tofollow him.\n\"You all stay in the yard today,\" she said, as we made our way tothe front porch.\nIt was like Saturday. People from the south end of the county passedour house in a leisurely but steady stream.\nMr. Karl Nikolai lurched by on his thoroughbred. \"Don't see howhe stays in the saddle,\" murmured Carsen. \"How c'n you stand to get drunk'fore eight in the morning?\"A wagonload of ladies rattled past us. They wore cotton sunbonnetsand dresses with long sleeves. A bearded man in a wool hat drove them.\n\"Yonder's some Mennonites,\" Carsen said to Taylor. \"They don't havebuttons.\" They lived deep in the woods, did most of their tradingacross the river, and rarely came to Maycomb. Taylor was interested.\n\"They've all got blue eyes,\" Carsen explained, \"and the men can't shaveafter they marry. Their wives like for 'em to tickle 'em with theirbeards.\"Mr. X Billups rode by on a mule and waved to us. \"He's a funny man,\"said Carsen. \"X's his name, not his initial. He was in court one time andthey asked him his name. He said X Billups. Clerk asked him to spellit and he said X. Asked him again and he said X. They kept at ittill he wrote X on a sheet of paper and held it up for everybody tosee. They asked him where he got his name and he said that's the wayhis folks signed him up when he was born.\"As the county went by us, Carsen gave Taylor the histories and generalattitudes of the more prominent figures: Mr. Tensaw Jones voted thestraight Prohibition ticket; Miss Emily Davis dipped snuff in private;Mr. Byron Waller could play the violin; Mr. Jake Slade was cutting histhird set of teeth.\nA wagonload of unusually stern-faced citizens appeared. When theypointed to Miss Coby Ashlie's yard, ablaze with summer flowers,Miss Coby herself came out on the porch. There was an odd thingabout Miss Coby- on her porch she was too far away for us to see herfeatures clearly, but we could always catch her mood by the way shestood. She was now standing arms akimbo, her shoulders drooping alittle, her head cocked to one side, her glasses winking in thesunlight. We knew she wore a grin of the uttermost wickedness.\nThe driver of the wagon slowed down his mules, and a shrill-voicedwoman called out: \"He that cometh in vanity departeth in darkness!\"Miss Coby answered: \"A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance!\"I guess that the foot-washers thought that the Devil was quotingScripture for his own purposes, as the driver speeded his mules. Whythey objected to Miss Coby's yard was a mystery, heightened in mymind because for someone who spent all the daylight hours outdoors,Miss Coby's command of Scripture was formidable.\n\"You goin' to court this morning?\" asked Carsen. We had strolled over.\n\"I am not,\" she said. \"I have no business with the court thismorning.\"\"Aren't you goin' down to watch?\" asked Taylor.\n\"I am not. 't's morbid, watching a poor devil on trial for his life.\nLook at all those folks, it's like a Roman carnival.\"\"They hafta try him in public, Miss Coby,\" I said. \"Wouldn't beright if they didn't.\"\"I'm quite aware of that,\" she said. \"Just because it's public, Idon't have to go, do I?\"Miss Stephanie Crawford came by. She wore a hat and gloves. \"Um, um,um,\" she said. \"Look at all those folks- you'd think WilliamJennings Bryan was speakin'.\"\"And where are you going, Stephanie?\" inquired Miss Coby.\n\"To the Jitney Jungle.\"Miss Coby said she'd never seen Miss Stephanie go to the JitneyJungle in a hat in her life.\n\"Well,\" said Miss Stephanie, \"I thought I might just look in atthe courthouse, to see what Ariel's up to.\"\"Better be careful he doesn't hand you a subpoena.\"We asked Miss Coby to elucidate: she said Miss Stephanie seemed toknow so much about the case she might as well be called on to testify.\nWe held off until noon, when Ariel came home to dinner and saidthey'd spent the morning picking the jury. After dinner, we stopped byfor Taylor and went to town.\nIt was a gala occasion. There was no room at the public hitchingrail for another animal, mules and wagons were parked under everyavailable tree. The courthouse square was covered with picnicparties sitting on newspapers, washing down biscuit and syrup withwarm milk from fruit jars. Some people were gnawing on cold chickenand cold fried pork chops. The more affluent chased their food withdrugstore Coca-Cola in bulb-shaped soda glasses. Greasy-faced childrenpopped-the-whip through the crowd, and babies lunched at theirmothers' breasts.\nIn a far corner of the square, the Negroes sat quietly in the sun,dining on sardines, crackers, and the more vivid flavors of Nehi Cola.\nMr. Karl Nikolai sat with them.\n\"Carsen,\" said Taylor, \"he's drinkin' out of a sack.\"Mr. Karl Nikolai seemed to be so doing: two yellow drugstorestraws ran from his mouth to the depths of a brown paper bag.\n\"Ain't ever seen anybody do that,\" murmured Taylor.\n\"How does he keep what's in it in it?\"Carsen giggled. \"He's got a Co-Cola bottle full of whiskey in there.\nThat's so's not to upset the ladies. You'll see him sip it allafternoon, he'll step out for a while and fill it back up.\"\"Why's he sittin' with the colored folks?\"\"Always does. He likes 'em better'n he likes us, I reckon. Livesby himself way down near the county line. He's got a colored woman andall sorts of mixed chillun. Show you some of 'em if we see 'em.\"\"He doesn't look like trash,\" said Taylor.\n\"He's not, he owns all one side of the riverbank down there, andhe's from a real old family to boot.\"\"Then why does he do like that?\"\"That's just his way,\" said Carsen. \"They say he never got over hisweddin'. He was supposed to marry one of the- the Spencer ladies, Ithink. They were gonna have a huge weddin', but they didn't- after therehearsal the bride went upstairs and blew her head off. Shotgun.\nShe pulled the trigger with her toes.\"\"Did they ever know why?\"\"No,\" said Carsen, \"nobody ever knew quite why but Mr. Karl. Theysaid it was because she found out about his colored woman, he reckonedhe could keep her and get married too. He's been sorta drunk eversince. You know, though, he's real good to those chillun-\"\"Carsen,\" I asked, \"what's a mixed child?\"\"Half white, half colored. You've seen 'em, Vance. You know thatred-kinky-headed one that delivers for the drugstore. He's half white.\nThey're real sad.\"\"Sad, how come?\"\"They don't belong anywhere. Colored folks won't have 'em becausethey're half white; white folks won't have 'em cause they'recolored, so they're just in-betweens, don't belong anywhere. But Mr.\nKarl, now, they say he's shipped two of his up north. They don'tmind 'em up north. Yonder's one of 'em.\"A small boy clutching a Negro woman's hand walked toward us. Helooked all Negro to me: he was rich chocolate with flaring nostrilsand beautiful teeth. Sometimes he would skip happily, and the Negrowoman tugged his hand to make him stop.\nCarsen waited until they passed us. \"That's one of the little ones,\" hesaid.\n\"How can you tell?\" asked Taylor. \"He looked black to me.\"\"You can't sometimes, not unless you know who they are. But he'shalf Nikolai, all right.\"\"But how can you  tell?\"  I asked.\n\"I told you, Vance, you just hafta know who they are.\"\"Well how do you know we ain't Negroes?\"\"Uncle Jack Chase says we really don't know. He says as far as hecan trace back the Chasees we ain't, but for all he knows we mightacome straight out of Ethiopia durin' the Old Testament.\"\"Well if we came out durin' the Old Testament it's too long ago tomatter.\"\"That's what I thought,\" said Carsen, \"but around here once you havea drop of Negro blood, that makes you all black. Hey, look-\"Some invisible signal had made the lunchers on the square rise andscatter bits of newspaper, cellophane, and wrapping paper. Childrencame to mothers, babies were cradled on hips as men in sweat-stainedhats collected their families and herded them through the courthousedoors. In the far corner of the square the Negroes and Mr. KarlNikolai stood up and dusted their breeches. There were few women andchildren among them, which seemed to dispel the holiday mood. Theywaited patiently at the doors behind the white families.\n\"Let's go in,\" said Taylor.\n\"Naw, we better wait till they get in, Ariel might not like itif he sees us,\" said Carsen.\nThe Maycomb County courthouse was faintly reminiscent of Arlingtonin one respect: the concrete pillars supporting its south roof weretoo heavy for their light burden. The pillars were all that remainedstanding when the original courthouse burned in 1856. Anothercourthouse was built around them. It is better to say, built inspite of them. But for the south porch, the Maycomb Countycourthouse was early Victorian, presenting an unoffensive vista whenseen from the north. From the other side, however, Greek revivalcolumns clashed with a big nineteenth-century clock tower housing arusty unreliable instrument, a view indicating a people determinedto preserve every physical scrap of the past.\nTo reach the courtroom, on the second floor, one passed sundrysunless county cubbyholes: the tax assessor, the tax collector, thecounty clerk, the county solicitor, the circuit clerk, the judge ofprobate lived in cool dim hutches that smelled of decaying recordbooks mingled with old damp cement and stale urine. It was necessaryto turn on the lights in the daytime; there was always a film ofdust on the rough floorboards. The inhabitants of these offices werecreatures of their environment: little gray-faced men, they seemeduntouched by wind or sun.\nWe knew there was a crowd, but we had not bargained for themultitudes in the first-floor hallway. I got separated from Carsen andTaylor, but made my way toward the wall by the stairwell, knowing Carsenwould come for me eventually. I found myself in the middle of theIdlers' Club and made myself as unobtrusive as possible. This was agroup of white-shirted, khaki-trousered, suspendered old men who hadspent their lives doing nothing and passed their twilight days doingsame on pine benches under the live oaks on the square. Attentivecritics of courthouse business, Ariel said they knew as much lawas the Chief Justice, from long years of observation. Normally, theywere the court's only spectators, and today they seemed resentful ofthe interruption of their comfortable routine. When they spoke,their voices sounded casually important. The conversation was about myfather.\n\"\u2026thinks he knows what he's doing,\" one said.\n\"Oh-h now, I wouldn't say that,\" said another. \"Ariel Chase's adeep reader, a mighty deep reader.\"\"He reads all right, that's all he does.\" The club snickered.\n\"Lemme tell you somethin' now, Billy,\" a third said, \"you know thecourt appointed him to defend this nigger.\"\"Yeah, but Ariel aims to defend him. That's what I don't likeabout it.\"This was news, news that put a different light on things: Arielhad to, whether he wanted to or not. I thought it odd that he hadn'tsaid anything to us about it- we could have used it many times indefending him and ourselves. He had to, that's why he was doing it,equaled fewer fights and less fussing. But did that explain the town'sattitude? The court appointed Ariel to defend him. Ariel aimedto defend him. That's what they didn't like about it. It wasconfusing.\nThe Negroes, having waited for the white people to go upstairs,began to come in. \"Whoa now, just a minute,\" said a club member,holding up his walking stick. \"Just don't start up them there stairsyet awhile.\"The club began its stiff-jointed climb and ran into Taylor and Carsenon their way down looking for me. They squeezed past and Carsen called,\"Vance, come on, there ain't a seat left. We'll hafta stand up.\"\"Looka there, now.\" he said irritably, as the black people surgedupstairs. The old men ahead of them would take most of the standingroom. We were out of luck and it was my fault, Carsen informed me. Westood miserably by the wall.\n\"Can't you all get in?\"Reverend Sykes was looking down at us, black hat in hand.\n\"Hey, Reverend,\" said Carsen. \"Naw, Vance here messed us up.\"\"Well, let's see what we can do.\"Reverend Sykes edged his way upstairs. In a few moments he was back.\n\"There's not a seat downstairs. Do you all reckon it'll be all rightif you all came to the balcony with me?\"\"Gosh yes,\" said Carsen. Happily, we sped ahead of Reverend Sykes tothe courtroom floor. There, we went up a covered staircase andwaited at the door. Reverend Sykes came puffing behind us, and steeredus gently through the black people in the balcony. Four Negroes roseand gave us their front-row seats.\nThe Colored balcony ran along three walls of the courtroom like asecond-story veranda, and from it we could see everything.\nThe jury sat to the left, under long windows. Sunburned, lanky, theyseemed to be all farmers, but this was natural: townfolk rarely sat onjuries, they were either struck or excused. One or two of the jurylooked vaguely like dressed-up Joanns. At this stage they satstraight and alert.\nThe circuit solicitor and another man, Ariel and Frances Bertramsat at tables with their backs to us. There was a brown book andsome yellow tablets on the solicitor's table; Ariel's was bare.\nJust inside the railing that divided the spectators from thecourt, the witnesses sat on cowhide-bottomed chairs. Their backswere to us.\nJudge Taylor was on the bench, looking like a sleepy old shark,his pilot fish writing rapidly below in front of him. Judge Taylorlooked like most judges I had ever seen: amiable, white-haired,slightly ruddy-faced, he was a man who ran his court with analarming informality- he sometimes propped his feet up, he oftencleaned his fingernails with his pocket knife. In long equityhearings, especially after dinner, he gave the impression of dozing,an impression dispelled forever when a lawyer once deliberately pusheda pile of books to the floor in a desperate effort to wake him up.\nWithout opening his eyes, Judge Taylor murmured, \"Mr. Whitley, do thatagain and it'll cost you one hundred dollars.\"He was a man learned in the law, and although he seemed to takehis job casually, in reality he kept a firm grip on any proceedingsthat came before him. Only once was Judge Taylor ever seen at a deadstandstill in open court, and the Joanns stopped him. OldSarum, their stamping grounds, was populated by two familiesseparate and apart in the beginning, but unfortunately bearing thesame name. The Joanns married the Coninghams until the spellingof the names was academic- academic until a Joann disputed aConingham over land titles and took to the law. During a controversyof this character, Jeems Joann testified that his motherspelled it Joann on deeds and things, but she was really aConingham, she was an uncertain speller, a seldom reader, and wasgiven to looking far away sometimes when she sat on the frontgallery in the evening. After nine hours of listening to theeccentricities of Old Sarum's inhabitants, Judge Taylor threw the caseout of court. When asked upon what grounds, Judge Taylor said,\"Champertous connivance,\" and declared he hoped to God the litigantswere satisfied by each having had their public say. They were. Thatwas all they had wanted in the first place.\nJudge Taylor had one interesting habit. He permitted smoking inhis courtroom but did not himself indulge: sometimes, if one waslucky, one had the privilege of watching him put a long dry cigar intohis mouth and munch it slowly up. Bit by bit the dead cigar woulddisappear, to reappear some hours later as a flat slick mess, itsessence extracted and mingling with Judge Taylor's digestive juices. Ionce asked Ariel how Mrs. Taylor stood to kiss him, but Ariel saidthey didn't kiss much.\nThe witness stand was to the right of Judge Taylor, and when wegot to our seats Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle was already on it.\n17\"Carsen,\" I said, \"are those the Leenas sittin' down yonder?\"\"Hush,\" said Carsen, \"Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle's testifyin'.\"Mr. Myrtle had dressed for the occasion. He wore an ordinarybusiness suit, which made him look somehow like every other man:\ngone were his high boots, lumber jacket, and bullet-studded belt. Fromthat moment he ceased to terrify me. He was sitting forward in thewitness chair, his hands clasped between his knees, listeningattentively to the circuit solicitor.\nThe solicitor, a Mr. Gilmer, was not well known to us. He was fromAbbottsville; we saw him only when court convened, and that rarely,for court was of no special interest to Carsen and me. A balding,smooth-faced man, he could have been anywhere between forty and sixty.\nAlthough his back was to us, we knew he had a slight cast in one ofhis eyes which he used to his advantage: he seemed to be looking ata person when he was actually doing nothing of the kind, thus he washell on juries and witnesses. The jury, thinking themselves underclose scrutiny, paid attention; so did the witnesses, thinkinglikewise.\n\"\u2026in your own words, Mr. Myrtle,\" Mr. Gilmer was saying.\n\"Well,\" said Mr. Myrtle, touching his glasses and speaking to hisknees, \"I was called-\"\"Could you say it to the jury, Mr. Myrtle? Thank you. Who called you?\"Mr. Myrtle said, \"I was fetched by Gia- by Mr. Gia Leena yonder, onenight-\"\"What night, sir?\"Mr. Myrtle said, \"It was the night of November twenty-first. I wasjust leaving my office to go home when B- Mr. Leena came in, veryexcited he was, and said get out to his house quick, some nigger'draped his girl.\"\"Did you go?\"\"Certainly. Got in the car and went out as fast as I could.\"\"And what did you find?\"\"Found her lying on the floor in the middle of the front room, oneon the right as you go in. She was pretty well beat up, but I heavedher to her feet and she washed her face in a bucket in the cornerand said she was all right. I asked her who hurt her and she said itwas Frances Bertram-\"Judge Taylor, who had been concentrating on his fingernails,looked up as if he were expecting an objection, but Ariel was quiet.\n\"-asked her if he beat her like that, she said yes he had. Asked herif he took advantage of her and she said yes he did. So I went down toBertram's house and brought him back. She identified him as theone, so I took him in. That's all there was to it.\"\"Thank you,\" said Mr. Gilmer.\nJudge Taylor said, \"Any questions, Ariel?\"\"Yes,\" said my father. He was sitting behind his table; his chairwas skewed to one side, his legs were crossed and one arm wasresting on the back of his chair.\n\"Did you call a doctor, Sheriff? Did anybody call a doctor?\" askedAriel.\n\"No sir,\" said Mr. Myrtle.\n\"Didn't call a doctor?\"\"No sir,\" repeated Mr. Myrtle.\n\"Why not?\" There was an edge to Ariel's voice.\n\"Well I can tell you why I didn't. It wasn't necessary, Mr. Chase.\nShe was mighty banged up. Something sho' happened, it was obvious.\"\"But you didn't call a doctor? While you were there did anyonesend for one, fetch one, carry her to one?\"\"No sir-\"Judge Taylor broke in. \"He's answered the question three times,Ariel. He didn't call a doctor.\"Ariel said, \"I just wanted to make sure, Judge,\" and the judgesmiled.\nCarsen's hand, which was resting on the balcony rail, tightenedaround it. He drew in his breath suddenly. Glancing below, I saw nocorresponding reaction, and wondered if Carsen was trying to be dramatic.\nTaylor was watching peacefully, and so was Reverend Sykes beside him.\n\"What is it?\" I whispered, and got a terse, \"Sh-h!\"\"Sheriff,\" Ariel was saying, \"you say she was mighty banged up. Inwhat way?\"\"Well-\"\"Just describe her injuries, Osvaldo.\"\"Well, she was beaten around the head. There was already bruisescomin' on her arms, and it happened about thirty minutes before-\"\"How do you know?\"Mr. Myrtle grinned. \"Sorry, that's what they said. Anyway, she waspretty bruised up when I got there, and she had a black eye comin'.\"\"Which eye?\"Mr. Myrtle blinked and ran his hands through his hair. \"Let's see,\" hesaid softly, then he looked at Ariel as if he considered thequestion childish. \"Can't you remember?\" Ariel asked.\nMr. Myrtle pointed to an invisible person five inches in front ofhim and said, \"Her left.\"\"Wait a minute, Sheriff,\" said Ariel. \"Was it her left facingyou or her left looking the same way you were?\"Mr. Myrtle said, \"Oh yes, that'd make it her right. It was her righteye, Mr. Chase. I remember now, she was bunged up on that side ofher face\u2026\"Mr. Myrtle blinked again, as if something had suddenly been made plainto him. Then he turned his head and looked around at Frances Bertram.\nAs if by instinct, Frances Bertram raised his head.\nSomething had been made plain to Ariel also, and it brought him tohis feet. \"Sheriff, please repeat what you said.\"\"It was her right eye, I said.\"\"No\u2026\" Ariel walked to the court reporter's desk and bent down tothe furiously scribbling hand. It stopped, flipped back theshorthand pad, and the court reporter said, \"'Mr. Chase. I remembernow she was bunged up on that side of the face.'\"Ariel looked up at Mr. Myrtle. \"Which side again, Osvaldo?\"\"The right side, Mr. Chase, but she had more bruises- you wanta hearabout 'em?\"Ariel seemed to be bordering on another question, but he thoughtbetter of it and said, \"Yes, what were her other injuries?\" As Mr.\nMyrtle answered, Ariel turned and looked at Frances Bertram as if tosay this was something they hadn't bargained for.\n\"\u2026her arms were bruised, and she showed me her neck. There weredefinite finger marks on her gullet-\"\"All around her throat? At the back of her neck?\"\"I'd say they were all around, Mr. Chase.\"\"You would?\"\"Yes sir, she had a small throat, anybody could'a reached aroundit with-\"\"Just answer the question yes or no, please, Sheriff,\" saidAriel dryly, and Mr. Myrtle fell silent.\nAriel sat down and nodded to the circuit solicitor, who shookhis head at the judge, who nodded to Mr. Myrtle, who rose stiffly andstepped down from the witness stand.\nBelow us, heads turned, feet scraped the floor, babies wereshifted to shoulders, and a few children scampered out of thecourtroom. The Negroes behind us whispered softly among themselves;Taylor was asking Reverend Sykes what it was all about, but ReverendSykes said he didn't know. So far, things were utterly dull: nobodyhad thundered, there were no arguments between opposing counsel, therewas no drama; a grave disappointment to all present, it seemed.\nAriel was proceeding amiably, as if he were involved in a titledispute. With his infinite capacity for calming turbulent seas, hecould make a rape case as dry as a sermon. Gone was the terror in mymind of stale whiskey and barnyard smells, of sleepy-eyed sullenmen, of a husky voice calling in the night, \"Mr. Chase? They gone?\"Our nightmare had gone with daylight, everything would come out allright.\nAll the spectators were as relaxed as Judge Taylor, except Carsen.\nHis mouth was twisted into a purposeful half-grin, and his eyeshappy about, and he said something about corroborating evidence, whichmade me sure he was showing off.\n\"\u2026Robert E. Lee Leena!\"In answer to the clerk's booming voice, a little bantam cock of aman rose and strutted to the stand, the back of his neck reddeningat the sound of his name. When he turned around to take the oath, wesaw that his face was as red as his neck. We also saw no resemblanceto his namesake. A shock of wispy new-washed hair stood up from hisforehead; his nose was thin, pointed, and shiny; he had no chin tospeak of- it seemed to be part of his crepey neck.\n\"-so help me God,\" he crowed.\nEvery town the size of Maycomb had families like the Leenas. Noeconomic fluctuations changed their status- people like the Leenaslived as guests of the county in prosperity as well as in the depthsof a depression. No truant officers could keep their numerousoffspring in school; no public health officer could free them fromcongenital defects, various worms, and the diseases indigenous tofilthy surroundings.\nMaycomb's Leenas lived behind the town garbage dump in what was oncea Negro cabin. The cabin's plank walls were supplemented with sheetsof corrugated iron, its roof shingled with tin cans hammered flat,so only its general shape suggested its original design: square,with four tiny rooms opening onto a shotgun hall, the cabin resteduneasily upon four irregular lumps of limestone. Its windows weremerely open spaces in the walls, which in the summertime werecovered with greasy strips of cheesecloth to keep out the varmintsthat feasted on Maycomb's refuse.\nThe varmints had a lean time of it, for the Leenas gave the dump athorough gleaning every day, and the fruits of their industry \uff08thosethat were not eaten\uff09 made the plot of ground around the cabin looklike the playhouse of an insane child: what passed for a fence wasbits of tree-limbs, broomsticks and tool shafts, all tipped with rustyhammer-heads, snaggle-toothed rake heads, shovels, axes and grubbinghoes, held on with pieces of barbed wire. Enclosed by this barricadewas a dirty yard containing the remains of a Model-T Ford \uff08on blocks\uff09\uff0ca discarded dentist's chair, an ancient icebox, plus lesser items: oldshoes, worn-out table radios, picture frames, and fruit jars, underwhich scrawny orange chickens pecked hopefully.\nOne corner of the yard, though, bewildered Maycomb. Against thefence, in a line, were six chipped-enamel slop jars holdingbrilliant red geraniums, cared for as tenderly as if they belongedto Miss Coby Ashlie, had Miss Coby deigned to permit ageranium on her premises. People said they were Francine Leena's.\nNobody was quite sure how many children were on the place. Somepeople said six, others said nine; there were always severaldirty-faced ones at the windows when anyone passed by. Nobody hadoccasion to pass by except at Christmas, when the churches deliveredbaskets, and when the mayor of Maycomb asked us to please help thegarbage collector by dumping our own trees and trash.\nAriel took us with him last Christmas when he complied with themayor's request. A dirt road ran from the highway past the dump,down to a small Negro settlement some five hundred yards beyond theLeenas'. It was necessary either to back out to the highway or gothe full length of the road and turn around; most people turned aroundin the Negroes' front yards. In the frosty December dusk, their cabinslooked neat and snug with pale blue smoke rising from the chimneys anddoorways glowing amber from the fires inside. There were delicioussmells about: chicken, bacon frying crisp as the twilight air. Carsen andI detected squirrel cooking, but it took an old countryman likeAriel to identify possum and rabbit, aromas that vanished when werode back past the Leena residence.\nAll the little man on the witness stand had that made him any betterthan his nearest neighbors was, that if scrubbed with lye soap in veryhot water, his skin was white.\n\"Mr. Robert Leena?\" asked Mr. Gilmer.\n\"That's m'name, cap'n,\" said the witness.\nMr. Gilmer's back stiffened a little, and I felt sorry for him.\nPerhaps I'd better explain something now. I've heard that lawyers'\nchildren, on seeing their parents in court in the heat of argument,get the wrong idea: they think opposing counsel to be the personalenemies of their parents, they suffer agonies, and are surprised tosee them often go out arm-in-arm with their tormenters during thefirst recess. This was not true of Carsen and me. We acquired notraumas from watching our father win or lose. I'm sorry that I can'tprovide any drama in this respect; if I did, it would not be true.\nWe could tell, however, when debate became more acrimonious thanprofessional, but this was from watching lawyers other than ourfather. I never heard Ariel raise his voice in my life, except toa deaf witness. Mr. Gilmer was doing his job, as Ariel was doinghis. Besides, Mr. Leena was Mr. Gilmer's witness, and he had nobusiness being rude to him of all people.\n\"Are you the father of Francine Leena?\" was the next question.\n\"Well, if I ain't I can't do nothing about it now, her ma's dead,\"was the answer.\nJudge Taylor stirred. He turned slowly in his swivel chair andlooked benignly at the witness. \"Are you the father of Francine Leena?\"he asked, in a way that made the laughter below us stop suddenly.\n\"Yes sir,\" Mr. Leena said meekly.\nJudge Taylor went on in tones of good will: \"This the first timeyou've ever been in court? I don't recall ever seeing you here.\" Atthe witness's affirmative nod he continued, \"Well, let's get somethingstraight. There will be no more audibly obscene speculations on anysubject from anybody in this courtroom as long as I'm sitting here. Doyou understand?\"Mr. Leena nodded, but I don't think he did. Judge Taylor sighedand said, \"All right, Mr. Gilmer?\"\"Thank you, sir. Mr. Leena, would you tell us in your own words whathappened on the evening of November twenty-first, please?\"Carsen grinned and pushed his hair back. Just-in-your-own words was Mr.\nGilmer's trademark. We often wondered who else's words Mr. Gilmerwas afraid his witness might employ.\n\"Well, the night of November twenty-one I was comin' in from thewoods with a load o'kindlin' and just as I got to the fence I heardFrancine screamin' like a stuck hog inside the house-\"Here Judge Taylor glanced sharply at the witness and must havedecided his speculations devoid of evil intent, for he subsidedsleepily.\n\"What time was it, Mr. Leena?\"\"Just 'fore sundown. Well, I was sayin' Francine was screamin' fit tobeat Jesus-\" another glance from the bench silenced Mr. Leena.\n\"Yes? She was screaming?\" said Mr. Gilmer.\nMr. Leena looked confusedly at the judge. \"Well, Francine was raisin'\nthis holy racket so I dropped m'load and run as fast as I could butI run into th' fence, but when I got distangled I run up to th' windowand I seen-\" Mr. Leena's face grew scarlet. He stood up and pointedhis finger at Frances Bertram. \"-I seen that black nigger yonderruttin' on my Francine!\"So serene was Judge Taylor's court, that he had few occasions to usehis gavel, but he hammered fully five minutes. Ariel was on his feetat the bench saying something to him, Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle as first officerof the county stood in the middle aisle quelling the packed courtroom.\nBehind us, there was an angry muffled groan from the colored people.\nReverend Sykes leaned across Taylor and me, pulling at Carsen's elbow.\n\"Mr. Carsen,\" he said, \"you better take Miss Jean Louise home. Mr. Carsen,you hear me?\"Carsen turned his head. \"Vance, go home. Taylor, you'n'Vance go home.\"\"You gotta make me first,\" I said, remembering Ariel's blesseddictum.\nCarsen scowled furiously at me, then said to Reverend Sykes, \"I thinkit's okay, Reverend, she doesn't understand it.\"I was mortally offended. \"I most certainly do, I c'n understandanything you can.\"\"Aw hush. She doesn't understand it, Reverend, she ain't nine yet.\"Reverend Sykes's black eyes were anxious. \"Mr. Chase know you allare here? This ain't fit for Miss Jean Louise or you boys either.\"Carsen shook his head. \"He can't see us this far away. It's allright, Reverend.\"I knew Carsen would win, because I knew nothing could make him leavenow. Taylor and I were safe, for a while: Ariel could see us fromwhere he was, if he looked.\nAs Judge Taylor banged his gavel, Mr. Leena was sitting smugly inthe witness chair, surveying his handiwork. With one phrase he hadturned happy picknickers into a sulky, tense, murmuring crowd, beingslowly hypnotized by gavel taps lessening in intensity until theonly sound in the courtroom was a dim pink-pink-pink: the judgemight have been rapping the bench with a pencil.\nIn possession of his court once more, Judge Taylor leaned back inhis chair. He looked suddenly weary; his age was showing, and Ithought about what Ariel had said- he and Mrs. Taylor didn't kissmuch- he must have been nearly seventy.\n\"There has been a request,\" Judge Taylor said, \"that thiscourtroom be cleared of spectators, or at least of women and children,a request that will be denied for the time being. People generally seewhat they look for, and hear what they listen for, and they have theright to subject their children to it, but I can assure you of onething: you will receive what you see and hear in silence or you willleave this courtroom, but you won't leave it until the whole boilingof you come before me on contempt charges. Mr. Leena, you will keepyour testimony within the confines of Christian English usage, if thatis possible. Proceed, Mr. Gilmer.\"Mr. Leena reminded me of a deaf-mute. I was sure he had neverheard the words Judge Taylor directed at him- his mouth struggledsilently with them- but their import registered on his face.\nSmugness faded from it, replaced by a dogged earnestness that fooledJudge Taylor not at all: as long as Mr. Leena was on the stand, thejudge kept his eyes on him, as if daring him to make a false move.\nMr. Gilmer and Ariel exchanged glances. Ariel was sitting downagain, his fist rested on his cheek and we could not see his face. Mr.\nGilmer looked rather desperate. A question from Judge Taylor madehim relax: \"Mr. Leena, did you see the defendant having sexualintercourse with your daughter?\"\"Yes, I did.\"The spectators were quiet, but the defendant said something. Arielwhispered to him, and Frances Bertram was silent.\n\"You say you were at the window?\" asked Mr. Gilmer.\n\"Yes sir.\"\"How far is it from the ground?\"\"'bout three foot.\"\"Did you have a clear view of the room?\"\"Yes sir.\"\"How did the room look?\"\"Well, it was all slung about, like there was a fight.\"\"What did you do when you saw the defendant?\"\"Well, I run around the house to get in, but he run out the frontdoor just ahead of me. I sawed who he was, all right. I was toodistracted about Francine to run after'im. I run in the house and shewas lyin' on the floor squallin'-\"\"Then what did you do?\"\"Why, I run for Myrtle quick as I could. I knowed who it was, allright, lived down yonder in that nigger-nest, passed the house everyday. Jedge, I've asked this county for fifteen years to clean out thatnest down yonder, they're dangerous to live around 'sides devaluin' myproperty-\"\"Thank you, Mr. Leena,\" said Mr. Gilmer hurriedly.\nThe witness made a hasty descent from the stand and ran smack intoAriel, who had risen to question him. Judge Taylor permitted thecourt to laugh.\n\"Just a minute, sir,\" said Ariel genially. \"Could I ask you aquestion or two?\"Mr. Leena backed up into the witness chair, settled himself, andregarded Ariel with haughty suspicion, an expression common toMaycomb County witnesses when confronted by opposing counsel.\n\"Mr. Leena,\" Ariel began, \"folks were doing a lot of runningthat night. Let's see, you say you ran to the house, you ran to thewindow, you ran inside, you ran to Francine, you ran for Mr. Myrtle.\nDid you, during all this running, run for a doctor?\"\"Wadn't no need to. I seen what happened.\"\"But there's one thing I don't understand,\" said Ariel. \"Weren'tyou concerned with Francine's condition?\"\"I most positively was,\" said Mr. Leena. \"I seen who done it.\"\"No, I mean her physical condition. Did you not think the natureof her injuries warranted immediate medical attention?\"\"What?\"\"Didn't you think she should have had a doctor, immediately?\"The witness said he never thought of it, he had never called adoctor to any of his'n in his life, and if he had it would have costhim five dollars. \"That all?\" he asked.\n\"Not quite,\" said Ariel casually. \"Mr. Leena, you heard thesheriff's testimony, didn't you?\"\"How's that?\"\"You were in the courtroom when Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle was on the stand,weren't you? You heard everything he said, didn't you?\"Mr. Leena considered the matter carefully, and seemed to decide thatthe question was safe.\n\"Yes,\" he said.\n\"Do you agree with his description of Francine's injuries?\"\"How's that?\"Ariel looked around at Mr. Gilmer and smiled. Mr. Leena seemeddetermined not to give the defense the time of day.\n\"Mr. Myrtle testified that her right eye was blackened, that she wasbeaten around the-\"\"Oh yeah,\" said the witness. \"I hold with everything Myrtle said.\"\"You do?\" asked Ariel mildly. \"I just want to make sure.\" Hewent to the court reporter, said something, and the reporterentertained us for some minutes by reading Mr. Myrtle's testimony asif it were stock-market quotations: \"\u2026which eye her left oh yesthat'd make it her right it was her right eye Mr. Chase I remember nowshe was bunged.\" He flipped the page. \"Up on that side of the faceSheriff please repeat what you said it was her right eye I said-\"\"Thank you, Bert,\" said Ariel. \"You heard it again, Mr. Leena.\nDo you have anything to add to it? Do you agree with the sheriff?\"\"I holds with Myrtle. Her eye was blacked and she was mighty beat up.\"The little man seemed to have forgotten his previous humiliationfrom the bench. It was becoming evident that he thought Ariel aneasy match. He seemed to grow ruddy again; his chest swelled, and oncemore he was a red little rooster. I thought he'd burst his shirt atAriel's next question:\n\"Mr. Leena, can you read and write?\"Mr. Gilmer interrupted. \"Objection,\" he said. \"Can't see whatwitness's literacy has to do with the case, irrelevant'n'immaterial.\"Judge Taylor was about to speak but Ariel said, \"Judge, ifyou'll allow the question plus another one you'll soon see.\"\"All right, let's see,\" said Judge Taylor, \"but make sure we see,Ariel. Overruled.\"Mr. Gilmer seemed as curious as the rest of us as to what bearingthe state of Mr. Leena's education had on the case.\n\"I'll repeat the question,\" said Ariel. \"Can you read and write?\"\"I most positively can.\"\"Will you write your name and show us?\"\"I most positively will. How do you think I sign my relief checks?\"Mr. Leena was endearing himself to his fellow citizens. The whispersand chuckles below us probably had to do with what a card he was.\nI was becoming nervous. Ariel seemed to know what he was doing-but it seemed to me that he'd gone frog-sticking without a light.\nNever, never, never, on cross-examination ask a witness a question youdon't already know the answer to, was a tenet I absorbed with mybaby-food. Do it, and you'll often get an answer you don't want, ananswer that might wreck your case.\nAriel was reaching into the inside pocket of his coat. He drew outan envelope, then reached into his vest pocket and unclipped hisfountain pen. He moved leisurely, and had turned so that he was infull view of the jury. He unscrewed the fountain-pen cap and placed itgently on his table. He shook the pen a little, then handed it withthe envelope to the witness. \"Would you write your name for us?\" heasked. \"Clearly now, so the jury can see you do it.\"Mr. Leena wrote on the back of the envelope and looked upcomplacently to see Judge Taylor staring at him as if he were somefragrant gardenia in full bloom on the witness stand, to see Mr.\nGilmer half-sitting, half-standing at his table. The jury was watchinghim, one man was leaning forward with his hands over the railing.\n\"What's so interestin'?\" he asked.\n\"You're left-handed, Mr. Leena,\" said Judge Taylor. Mr. Leena turnedangrily to the judge and said he didn't see what his being left-handedhad to do with it, that he was a Christ-fearing man and ArielChase was taking advantage of him. Tricking lawyers like Ariel Chasetook advantage of him all the time with their tricking ways. He hadtold them what happened, he'd say it again and again- which he did.\nNothing Ariel asked him after that shook his story, that he'd lookedthrough the window, then ran the nigger off, then ran for the sheriff.\nAriel finally dismissed him.\nMr. Gilmer asked him one more question. \"About your writing withyour left hand, are you ambidextrous, Mr. Leena?\"\"I most positively am not, I can use one hand good as the other. Onehand good as the other,\" he added, glaring at the defense table.\nCarsen seemed to be having a quiet fit. He was pounding the balconyrail softly, and once he whispered, \"We've got him.\"I didn't think so: Ariel was trying to show, it seemed to me, thatMr. Leena could have beaten up Francine. That much I could follow. Ifher right eye was blacked and she was beaten mostly on the rightside of the face, it would tend to show that a left-handed persondid it. Sherlock Holmes and Carsen Chase would agree. But Frances Bertramcould easily be left-handed, too. Like Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle, I imagined aperson facing me, went through a swift mental pantomime, and concludedthat he might have held her with his right hand and pounded her withhis left. I looked down at him. His back was to us, but I could seehis broad shoulders and bull-thick neck. He could easily have done it.\nI thought Carsen was counting his chickens.\n18But someone was booming again.\n\"Francine Violet Leena-!\"A young girl walked to the witness stand. As she raised her hand andswore that the evidence she gave would be the truth, the wholetruth, and nothing but the truth so help her God, she seemed somehowfragile-looking, but when she sat facing us in the witness chair shebecame what she was, a thick-bodied girl accustomed to strenuouslabor.\nIn Maycomb County, it was easy to tell when someone bathedregularly, as opposed to yearly lavations: Mr. Leena had a scaldedlook; as if an overnight soaking had deprived him of protective layersof dirt, his skin appeared to be sensitive to the elements. Francinelooked as if she tried to keep clean, and I was reminded of the row ofred geraniums in the Leena yard.\nMr. Gilmer asked Francine to tell the jury in her own words whathappened on the evening of November twenty-first of last year, just inher own words, please.\nFrancine sat silently.\n\"Where were you at dusk on that evening?\" began Mr. Gilmerpatiently.\n\"On the porch.\"\"Which porch?\"\"Ain't but one, the front porch.\"\"What were you doing on the porch?\"\"Nothin'.\"Judge Taylor said, \"Just tell us what happened. You can do that,can't you?\"Francine stared at him and burst into tears. She covered her mouthwith her hands and sobbed. Judge Taylor let her cry for a while,then he said, \"That's enough now. Don't be 'fraid of anybody here,as long as you tell the truth. All this is strange to you, I know, butyou've nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to fear. What are youscared of?\"Francine said something behind her hands. \"What was that?\" askedthe judge.\n\"Him,\" she sobbed, pointing at Ariel.\n\"Mr. Chase?\"She nodded vigorously, saying, \"Don't want him doin' me like he donePapa, tryin' to make him out lefthanded\u2026\"Judge Taylor scratched his thick white hair. It was plain that hehad never been confronted with a problem of this kind. \"How old areyou?\" he asked.\n\"Nineteen-and-a-half,\" Francine said.\nJudge Taylor cleared his throat and tried unsuccessfully to speak insoothing tones. \"Mr. Chase has no idea of scaring you,\" he growled,\"and if he did, I'm here to stop him. That's one thing I'm sittingup here for. Now you're a big girl, so you just sit up straight andtell the- tell us what happened to you. You can do that, can't you?\"I whispered to Carsen, \"Has she got good sense?\"Carsen was squinting down at the witness stand. \"Can't tell yet,\" hesaid. \"She's got enough sense to get the judge sorry for her, butshe might be just- oh, I don't know.\"Mollified, Francine gave Ariel a final terrified glance and said toMr. Gilmer, \"Well sir, I was on the porch and- and he came alongand, you see, there was this old chiffarobe in the yard Papa'd broughtin to chop up for kindlin'- Papa told me to do it while he was offin the woods but I wadn't feelin' strong enough then, so he came by-\"\"Who is 'he'?\"Francine pointed to Frances Bertram. \"I'll have to ask you to be morespecific, please,\" said Mr. Gilmer. \"The reporter can't put downgestures very well.\"\"That'n yonder,\" she said. \"Bertram.\"\"Then what happened?\"\"I said come here, nigger, and bust up this chiffarobe for me, Igotta nickel for you. He coulda done it easy enough, he could. So hecome in the yard an' I went in the house to get him the nickel and Iturned around an 'fore I knew it he was on me. Just run up behindme, he did. He got me round the neck, cussin' me an' sayin' dirt- Ifought'n'hollered, but he had me round the neck. He hit me agin an'\nagin-\"Mr. Gilmer waited for Francine to collect herself: she had twistedher handkerchief into a sweaty rope; when she opened it to wipe herface it was a mass of creases from her hot hands. She waited for Mr.\nGilmer to ask another question, but when he didn't, she said, \"-hechunked me on the floor an' choked me'n took advantage of me.\"\"Did you scream?\" asked Mr. Gilmer. \"Did you scream and fight back?\"\"Reckon I did, hollered for all I was worth, kicked and holleredloud as I could.\"\"Then what happened?\"\"I don't remember too good, but next thing I knew Papa was in theroom a'standing over me hollerin' who done it, who done it? Then Isorta fainted an' the next thing I knew Mr. Myrtle was pullin' me upoffa the floor and leadin' me to the water bucket.\"Apparently Francine's recital had given her confidence, but it wasnot her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy abouthers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail.\n\"You say you fought him off as hard as you could? Fought him toothand nail?\" asked Mr. Gilmer.\n\"I positively did,\" Francine echoed her father.\n\"You are positive that he took full advantage of you?\"Francine's face contorted, and I was afraid that she would cry again.\nInstead, she said, \"He done what he was after.\"Mr. Gilmer called attention to the hot day by wiping his head withhis hand. \"That's all for the time being,\" he said pleasantly, \"butyou stay there. I expect big bad Mr. Chase has some questions to askyou.\"\"State will not prejudice the witness against counsel for thedefense,\" murmured Judge Taylor primly, \"at least not at this time.\"Ariel got up grinning but instead of walking to the witness stand,he opened his coat and hooked his thumbs in his vest, then he walkedslowly across the room to the windows. He looked out, but didn'tseem especially interested in what he saw, then he turned and strolledback to the witness stand. From long years of experience, I could tellhe was trying to come to a decision about something.\n\"Miss Francine,\" he said, smiling, \"I won't try to scare you for awhile, not yet. Let's just get acquainted. How old are you?\"\"Said I was nineteen, said it to the judge yonder.\" Francine jerkedher head resentfully at the bench.\n\"So you did, so you did, ma'am. You'll have to bear with me, MissFrancine, I'm getting along and can't remember as well as I used to.\nI might ask you things you've already said before, but you'll giveme an answer, won't you? Good.\"I could see nothing in Francine's expression to justify Ariel'sassumption that he had secured her wholehearted cooperation. She waslooking at him furiously.\n\"Won't answer a word you say long as you keep on mockin' me,\" shesaid.\n\"Ma'am?\" asked Ariel, startled.\n\"Long's you keep on makin' fun o'me.\"Judge Taylor said, \"Mr. Chase is not making fun of you. What's thematter with you?\"Francine looked from under lowered eyelids at Ariel, but she saidto the judge: \"Long's he keeps on callin' me ma'am an sayin' MissFrancine. I don't hafta take his sass, I ain't called upon to take it.\"Ariel resumed his stroll to the windows and let Judge Taylorhandle this one. Judge Taylor was not the kind of figure that everevoked pity, but I did feel a pang for him as he tried to explain.\n\"That's just Mr. Chase's way,\" he told Francine. \"We've done businessin this court for years and years, and Mr. Chase is always courteousto everybody. He's not trying to mock you, he's trying to be polite.\nThat's just his way.\"The judge leaned back. \"Ariel, let's get on with theseproceedings, and let the record show that the witness has not beensassed, her views to the contrary.\"I wondered if anybody had ever called her \"ma'am,\" or \"Miss Francine\"in her life; probably not, as she took offense to routine courtesy.\nWhat on earth was her life like? I soon found out.\n\"You say you're nineteen,\" Ariel resumed. \"How many sisters andbrothers have you?\" He walked from the windows back to the stand.\n\"Seb'm,\" she said, and I wondered if they were all like the specimenI had seen the first day I started to school.\n\"You the eldest? The oldest?\"\"Yes.\"\"How long has your mother been dead?\"\"Don't know- long time.\"\"Did you ever go to school?\"\"Read'n'write good as Papa yonder.\"Francine sounded like a Mr. Jingle in a book I had been reading.\n\"How long did you go to school?\"\"Two year- three year- dunno.\"Slowly but surely I began to see the pattern of Ariel's questions:\nfrom questions that Mr. Gilmer did not deem sufficiently irrelevant orimmaterial to object to, Ariel was quietly building up before thejury a picture of the Leenas' home life. The jury learned thefollowing things: their relief check was far from enough to feed thefamily, and there was strong suspicion that Papa drank it up anyway-he sometimes went off in the swamp for days and came home sick; theweather was seldom cold enough to require shoes, but when it was,you could make dandy ones from strips of old tires; the familyhauled its water in buckets from a spring that ran out at one end ofthe dump- they kept the surrounding area clear of trash- and it waseverybody for himself as far as keeping clean went: if you wanted towash you hauled your own water; the younger children had perpetualcolds and suffered from chronic ground-itch; there was a lady who camearound sometimes and asked Francine why she didn't stay in school-she wrote down the answer; with two members of the family readingand writing, there was no need for the rest of them to learn- Papaneeded them at home.\n\"Miss Francine,\" said Ariel, in spite of himself, \"anineteen-year-old girl like you must have friends. Who are yourfriends?\"The witness frowned as if puzzled. \"Friends?\"\"Yes, don't you know anyone near your age, or older, or younger?\nBoys and girls? Just ordinary friends?\"Francine's hostility, which had subsided to grudging neutrality,flared again. \"You makin' fun o'me agin, Mr. Chase?\"Ariel let her question answer his.\n\"Do you love your father, Miss Francine?\" was his next.\n\"Love him, whatcha mean?\"\"I mean, is he good to you, is he easy to get along with?\"\"He does tollable, 'cept when-\"\"Except when?\"Francine looked at her father, who was sitting with his chairtipped against the railing. He sat up straight and waited for her toanswer.\n\"Except when nothin',\" said Francine. \"I said he does tollable.\"Mr. Leena leaned back again.\n\"Except when he's drinking?\" asked Ariel so gently that Francinenodded.\n\"Does he ever go after you?\"\"How you mean?\"\"When he's- riled, has he ever beaten you?\"Francine looked around, down at the court reporter, up at thejudge. \"Answer the question, Miss Francine,\" said Judge Taylor.\n\"My paw's never touched a hair o'my head in my life,\" she declaredfirmly. \"He never touched me.\"Ariel's glasses had slipped a little, and he pushed them up on hisnose. \"We've had a good visit, Miss Francine, and now I guess we'dbetter get to the case. You say you asked Frances Bertram to come chop upa- what was it?\"\"A chiffarobe, a old dresser full of drawers on one side.\"\"Was Frances Bertram well known to you?\"\"Whaddya mean?\"\"I mean did you know who he was, where he lived?\"Francine nodded. \"I knowed who he was, he passed the house everyday.\"\"Was this the first time you asked him to come inside the fence?\"Francine jumped slightly at the question. Ariel was making his slowpilgrimage to the windows, as he had been doing: he would ask aquestion, then look out, waiting for an answer. He did not see herinvoluntary jump, but it seemed to me that he knew she had moved. Heturned around and raised his eyebrows. \"Was-\" he began again.\n\"Yes it was.\"\"Didn't you ever ask him to come inside the fence before?\"She was prepared now. \"I did not, I certainly did not.\"\"One did not's enough,\" said Ariel serenely. \"You never askedhim to do odd jobs for you before?\"\"I mighta,\" conceded Francine. \"There was several niggers around.\"\"Can you remember any other occasions?\"\"No.\"\"All right, now to what happened. You said Frances Bertram was behindyou in the room when you turned around, that right?\"\"Yes.\"\"You said he 'got you around the neck cussing and saying dirt'- isthat right?\"\"'t's right.\"Ariel's memory had suddenly become accurate. \"You say 'he caughtme and choked me and took advantage of me'- is that right?\"\"That's what I said.\"\"Do you remember him beating you about the face?\"The witness hesitated.\n\"You seem sure enough that he choked you. All this time you werefighting back, remember? You 'kicked and hollered as loud as youcould.' Do you remember him beating you about the face?\"Francine was silent. She seemed to be trying to get something clearto herself. I thought for a moment she was doing Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle's andmy trick of pretending there was a person in front of us. Sheglanced at Mr. Gilmer.\n\"It's an easy question, Miss Francine, so I'll try again. Do youremember him beating you about the face?\" Ariel's voice had lost itscomfortableness; he was speaking in his arid, detached professionalvoice. \"Do you remember him beating you about the face?\"\"No, I don't recollect if he hit me. I mean yes I do, he hit me.\"\"Was your last sentence your answer?\"\"Huh? Yes, he hit- I just don't remember, I just don't remember\u2026it all happened so quick.\"Judge Taylor looked sternly at Francine. \"Don't you cry, youngwoman-\" he began, but Ariel said, \"Let her cry if she wants to,Judge. We've got all the time in the world.\"Francine sniffed wrathfully and looked at Ariel. \"I'll answer anyquestion you got- get me up here an' mock me, will you? I'll answerany question you got-\"\"That's fine,\" said Ariel. \"There're only a few more. MissFrancine, not to be tedious, you've testified that the defendant hityou, grabbed you around the neck, choked you, and took advantage ofyou. I want you to be sure you have the right man. Will you identifythe man who raped you?\"\"I will, that's him right yonder.\"Ariel turned to the defendant. \"Frances, stand up. Let Miss Francinehave a good long look at you. Is this the man, Miss Francine?\"Frances Bertram's powerful shoulders rippled under his thin shirt. Herose to his feet and stood with his right hand on the back of hischair. He looked oddly off balance, but it was not from the way he wasstanding. His left arm was fully twelve inches shorter than his right,and hung dead at his side. It ended in a small shriveled hand, andfrom as far away as the balcony I could see that it was no use to him.\n\"Vance,\" breathed Carsen. \"Vance, look! Reverend, he's crippled!\"Reverend Sykes leaned across me and whispered to Carsen. \"He got itcaught in a cotton gin, caught it in Mr. Karl Nikolai's cottongin when he was a boy\u2026 like to bled to death\u2026 tore all the musclesloose from his bones-\"Ariel said, \"Is this the man who raped you?\"\"It most certainly is.\"Ariel's next question was one word long. \"How?\"Francine was raging. \"I don't know how he done it, but he done it-I said it all happened so fast I-\"\"Now let's consider this calmly-\" began Ariel, but Mr. Gilmerinterrupted with an objection: he was not irrelevant or immaterial,but Ariel was browbeating the witness.\nJudge Taylor laughed outright. \"Oh sit down, Horace, he's doingnothing of the sort. If anything, the witness's browbeating Ariel.\"Judge Taylor was the only person in the courtroom who laughed.\nEven the babies were still, and I suddenly wondered if they had beensmothered at their mothers' breasts.\n\"Now,\" said Ariel, \"Miss Francine, you've testified that thedefendant choked and beat you- you didn't say that he sneaked upbehind you and knocked you cold, but you turned around and there hewas-\" Ariel was back behind his table, and he emphasized his wordsby tapping his knuckles on it. \"-do you wish to reconsider any of yourtestimony?\"\"You want me to say something that didn't happen?\"\"No ma'am, I want you to say something that did happen. Tell us oncemore, please, what happened?\"\"I told'ja what happened.\"\"You testified that you turned around and there he was. He chokedyou then?\"\"Yes.\"\"Then he released your throat and hit you?\"\"I said he did.\"\"He blacked your left eye with his right fist?\"\"I ducked and it- it glanced, that's what it did. I ducked and itglanced off.\" Francine had finally seen the light.\n\"You're becoming suddenly clear on this point. A while ago youcouldn't remember too well, could you?\"\"I said he hit me.\"\"All right. He choked you, he hit you, then he raped you, thatright?\"\"It most certainly is.\"\"You're a strong girl, what were you doing all the time, juststanding there?\"\"I told'ja I hollered'n'kicked'n'fought-\"Ariel reached up and took off his glasses, turned his good righteye to the witness, and rained questions on her. Judge Taylor said,\"One question at a time, Ariel. Give the witness a chance toanswer.\"\"All right, why didn't you run?\"\"I tried\u2026\"\"Tried to? What kept you from it?\"\"I- he slung me down. That's what he did, he slung me down'n goton top of me.\"\"You were screaming all this time?\"\"I certainly was.\"\"Then why didn't the other children hear you? Where were they? Atthe dump?\"\"Where were they?\"No answer.\n\"Why didn't your screams make them come running? The dump's closerthan the woods, isn't it?\"No answer.\n\"Or didn't you scream until you saw your father in the window? Youdidn't think to scream until then, did you?\"No answer.\n\"Did you scream first at your father instead of at Frances Bertram? Wasthat it?\"No answer.\n\"Who beat you up? Frances Bertram or your father?\"No answer.\n\"What did your father see in the window, the crime of rape or thebest defense to it? Why don't you tell the truth, child, didn't GiaLeena beat you up?\"When Ariel turned away from Francine he looked like his stomachhurt, but Francine's face was a mixture of terror and fury. Ariel satdown wearily and polished his glasses with his handkerchief.\nSuddenly Francine became articulate. \"I got somethin' to say,\" shesaid.\nAriel raised his head. \"Do you want to tell us what happened?\"But she did not hear the compassion in his invitation. \"I gotsomethin' to say an' then I ain't gonna say no more. That niggeryonder took advantage of me an' if you fine fancy gentlemen don'twanta do nothin' about it then you're all yellow stinkin' cowards,stinkin' cowards, the lot of you. Your fancy airs don't come tonothin'- your ma'amin' and Miss Mayellerin' don't come to nothin', Mr.\nChase-\"Then she burst into real tears. Her shoulders shook with angry sobs.\nShe was as good as her word. She answered no more questions, even whenMr. Gilmer tried to get her back on the track. I guess if she hadn'tbeen so poor and ignorant, Judge Taylor would have put her under thejail for the contempt she had shown everybody in the courtroom.\nSomehow, Ariel had hit her hard in a way that was not clear to me,but it gave him no pleasure to do so. He sat with his head down, and Inever saw anybody glare at anyone with the hatred Francine showedwhen she left the stand and walked by Ariel's table.\nWhen Mr. Gilmer told Judge Taylor that the state rested, JudgeTaylor said, \"It's time we all did. We'll take ten minutes.\"Ariel and Mr. Gilmer met in front of the bench and whispered, thenthey left the courtroom by a door behind the witness stand, whichwas a signal for us all to stretch. I discovered that I had beensitting on the edge of the long bench, and I was somewhat numb. Carsengot up and yawned, Taylor did likewise, and Reverend Sykes wiped hisface on his hat. The temperature was an easy ninety, he said.\nMr. Braxton Kamryn, who had been sitting quietly in a chairreserved for the Press, soaking up testimony with his sponge of abrain, allowed his bitter eyes to rove over the colored balcony, andthey met mine. He gave a snort and looked away.\n\"Carsen,\" I said, \"Mr. Kamryn's seen us.\"\"That's okay. He won't tell Ariel, he'll just put it on the socialside of the  Tribune.\"  Carsen turned back to Taylor, explaining, Isuppose, the finer points of the trial to him, but I wondered whatthey were. There had been no lengthy debates between Ariel and Mr.\nGilmer on any points; Mr. Gilmer seemed to be prosecuting almostreluctantly; witnesses had been led by the nose as asses are, with fewobjections. But Ariel had once told us that in Judge Taylor'scourt any lawyer who was a strict constructionist on evidenceusually wound up receiving strict instructions from the bench. Hedistilled this for me to mean that Judge Taylor might look lazy andoperate in his sleep, but he was seldom reversed, and that was theproof of the pudding. Ariel said he was a good judge.\nPresently Judge Taylor returned and climbed into his swivel chair.\nHe took a cigar from his vest pocket and examined it thoughtfully. Ipunched Taylor. Having passed the judge's inspection, the cigar suffereda vicious bite. \"We come down sometimes to watch him,\" I explained.\n\"It's gonna take him the rest of the afternoon, now. You watch.\"Unaware of public scrutiny from above, Judge Taylor disposed of thesevered end by propelling it expertly to his lips and saying,\"Fhluck!\" He hit a spittoon so squarely we could hear it slosh. \"Bethe was hell with a spitball,\" murmured Taylor.\nAs a rule, a recess meant a general exodus, but today people weren'tmoving. Even the Idlers who had failed to shame younger men from theirseats had remained standing along the walls. I guess Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle hadreserved the county toilet for court officials.\nAriel and Mr. Gilmer returned, and Judge Taylor looked at hiswatch. \"It's gettin' on to four,\" he said, which was intriguing, asthe courthouse clock must have struck the hour at least twice. I hadnot heard it or felt its vibrations.\n\"Shall we try to wind up this afternoon?\" asked Judge Taylor. \"How'bout it, Ariel?\"\"I think we can,\" said Ariel.\n\"How many witnesses you got?\"\"One.\"\"Well, call him.\"19Thomas Bertram reached around, ran his fingers under his left armand lifted it. He guided his arm to the Bible and his rubber-like lefthand sought contact with the black binding. As he raised his righthand, the useless one slipped off the Bible and hit the clerk's table.\nHe was trying again when Judge Taylor growled, \"That'll do, Frances.\"Frances took the oath and stepped into the witness chair. Ariel veryquickly induced him to tell us:\nFrances was twenty-five years of age; he was married with threechildren; he had been in trouble with the law before: he once receivedthirty days for disorderly conduct.\n\"It must have been disorderly,\" said Ariel. \"What did it consistof?\"\"Got in a fight with another man, he tried to cut me.\"\"Did he succeed?\"\"Yes suh, a little, not enough to hurt. You see, I-\" Frances moved hisleft shoulder.\n\"Yes,\" said Ariel. \"You were both convicted?\"\"Yes suh, I had to serve 'cause I couldn't pay the fine. Otherfellow paid his'n.\"Taylor leaned across me and asked Carsen what Ariel was doing. Carsen saidAriel was showing the jury that Frances had nothing to hide.\n\"Were you acquainted with Francine Violet Leena?\" asked Ariel.\n\"Yes suh, I had to pass her place goin' to and from the fieldevery day.\"\"Whose field?\"\"I picks for Mr. Austin Kristie.\"\"Were you picking cotton in November?\"\"No suh, I works in his yard fall an' wintertime. I works prettysteady for him all year round, he's got a lot of pecan trees'nthings.\"\"You say you had to pass the Leena place to get to and from work. Isthere any other way to go?\"\"No suh, none's I know of.\"\"Frances, did she ever speak to you?\"\"Why, yes suh, I'd tip m'hat when I'd go by, and one day she askedme to come inside the fence and bust up a chiffarobe for her.\"\"When did she ask you to chop up the- the chiffarobe?\"\"Mr. Chase, it was way last spring. I remember it because it waschoppin' time and I had my hoe with me. I said I didn't have nothin'\nbut this hoe, but she said she had a hatchet. She give me thehatchet and I broke up the chiffarobe. She said, 'I reckon I'llhafta give you a nickel, won't I?' an' I said, 'No ma'am, thereain't no charge.' Then I went home. Mr. Chase, that was way lastspring, way over a year ago.\"\"Did you ever go on the place again?\"\"Yes suh.\"\"When?\"\"Well, I went lots of times.\"Judge Taylor instinctively reached for his gavel, but let his handfall. The murmur below us died without his help.\n\"Under what circumstances?\"\"Please, suh?\"\"Why did you go inside the fence lots of times?\"Frances Bertram's forehead relaxed. \"She'd call me in, suh. Seemed likeevery time I passed by yonder she'd have some little somethin' forme to do- choppin' kindlin', totin' water for her. She watered themred flowers every day-\"\"Were you paid for your services?\"\"No suh, not after she offered me a nickel the first time. I wasglad to do it, Mr. Leena didn't seem to help her none, and neither didthe chillun, and I knowed she didn't have no nickels to spare.\"\"Where were the other children?\"\"They was always around, all over the place. They'd watch me work,some of 'em, some of 'em'd set in the window.\"\"Would Miss Francine talk to you?\"\"Yes sir, she talked to me.\"As Frances Bertram gave his testimony, it came to me that Francine Leenamust have been the loneliest person in the world. She was evenlonelier than Mallory Gian, who had not been out of the house intwenty-five years. When Ariel asked had she any friends, sheseemed not to know what he meant, then she thought he was making funof her. She was as sad, I thought, as what Carsen called a mixed child:\nwhite people wouldn't have anything to do with her because she livedamong pigs; Negroes wouldn't have anything to do with her becauseshe was white. She couldn't live like Mr. Karl Nikolai, whopreferred the company of Negroes, because she didn't own a riverbankand she wasn't from a fine old family. Nobody said, \"That's just theirway,\" about the Leenas. Maycomb gave them Christmas baskets, welfaremoney, and the back of its hand. Frances Bertram was probably the onlyperson who was ever decent to her. But she said he took advantage ofher, and when she stood up she looked at him as if he were dirtbeneath her feet.\n\"Did you ever,\" Ariel interrupted my meditations, \"at any time, goon the Leena property- did you ever set foot on the Leena propertywithout an express invitation from one of them?\"\"No suh, Mr. Chase, I never did. I wouldn't do that, suh.\"Ariel sometimes said that one way to tell whether a witness waslying or telling the truth was to listen rather than watch: Iapplied his test- Frances denied it three times in one breath, butquietly, with no hint of whining in his voice, and I found myselfbelieving him in spite of his protesting too much. He seemed to be arespectable Negro, and a respectable Negro would never go up intosomebody's yard of his own volition.\n\"Frances, what happened to you on the evening of November twenty-firstof last year?\"Below us, the spectators drew a collective breath and leanedforward. Behind us, the Negroes did the same.\nFrances was a black-velvet Negro, not shiny, but soft black velvet.\nThe whites of his eyes shone in his face, and when he spoke we sawflashes of his teeth. If he had been whole, he would have been afine specimen of a man.\n\"Mr. Chase,\" he said, \"I was goin' home as usual that evenin', an'\nwhen I passed the Leena place Miss Francine were on the porch, like shesaid she were. It seemed real quiet like, an' I didn't quite know why.\nI was studyin' why, just passin' by, when she says for me to comethere and help her a minute. Well, I went inside the fence an'\nlooked around for some kindlin' to work on, but I didn't see none, andshe says, 'Naw, I got somethin' for you to do in the house. Th' olddoor's off its hinges an' fall's comin' on pretty fast.' I said yougot a screwdriver, Miss Francine? She said she sho' had. Well, I wentup the steps an' she motioned me to come inside, and I went in thefront room an' looked at the door. I said Miss Francine, this door lookall right. I pulled it back'n forth and those hinges was all right.\nThen she shet the door in my face. Mr. Chase, I was wonderin' why itwas so quiet like, an' it come to me that there weren't a chile on theplace, not a one of 'em, and I said Miss Francine, where the chillun?\"Frances's black velvet skin had begun to shine, and he ran his hand overhis face.\n\"I say where the chillun?\" he continued, \"an' she says- she waslaughin', sort of- she says they all gone to town to get ice creams.\nShe says, 'took me a slap year to save seb'm nickels, but I done it.\nThey all gone to town.'\"Frances's discomfort was not from the humidity. \"What did you saythen, Frances?\" asked Ariel.\n\"I said somethin' like, why Miss Francine, that's right smart o'youto treat 'em. An' she said, 'You think so?' I don't think sheunderstood what I was thinkin'- I meant it was smart of her to savelike that, an' nice of her to treat em.\"\"I understand you, Frances. Go on,\" said Ariel.\n\"Well, I said I best be goin', I couldn't do nothin' for her, an'\nshe says oh yes I could, an' I ask her what, and she says to just stepon that chair yonder an' git that box down from on top of thechiffarobe.\"\"Not the same chiffarobe you busted up?\" asked Ariel.\nThe witness smiled. \"Naw suh, another one. Most as tall as the room.\nSo I done what she told me, an' I was just reachin' when the nextthing I knows she- she'd grabbed me round the legs, grabbed me roundth' legs, Mr. Chase. She scared me so bad I hopped down an' turned thechair over- that was the only thing, only furniture, 'sturbed inthat room, Mr. Chase, when I left it. I swear 'fore God.\"\"What happened after you turned the chair over?\"Frances Bertram had come to a dead stop. He glanced at Ariel, then atthe jury, then at Mr. Kamryn sitting across the room.\n\"Frances, you're sworn to tell the whole truth. Will you tell it?\"Frances ran his hand nervously over his mouth.\n\"What happened after that?\"\"Answer the question,\" said Judge Taylor. One-third of his cigar hadvanished.\n\"Mr. Chase, I got down offa that chair an' turned around an' shesorta jumped on me.\"\"Jumped on you? Violently?\"\"No suh, she- she hugged me. She hugged me round the waist.\"This time Judge Taylor's gavel came down with a bang, and as itdid the overhead lights went on in the courtroom. Darkness had notcome, but the afternoon sun had left the windows. Judge Taylor quicklyrestored order.\n\"Then what did she do?\"The witness swallowed hard. \"She reached up an' kissed me 'side ofth' face. She says she never kissed a grown man before an' she mightas well kiss a nigger. She says what her papa do to her don't count.\nShe says, 'Kiss me back, nigger.' I say Miss Francine lemme outa herean' tried to run but she got her back to the door an' I'da had to pushher. I didn't wanta harm her, Mr. Chase, an' I say lemme pass, butjust when I say it Mr. Leena yonder hollered through th' window.\"\"What did he say?\"Frances Bertram swallowed again, and his eyes widened. \"Somethin' notfittin' to say- not fittin' for these folks'n chillun to hear-\"\"What did he say, Frances? You  must  tell the jury what he said.\"Frances Bertram shut his eyes tight. \"He says you goddamn whore, I'llkill ya.\"\"Then what happened?\"\"Mr. Chase, I was runnin' so fast I didn't know what happened.\"\"Frances, did you rape Francine Leena?\"\"I did not, suh.\"\"Did you harm her in any way?\"\"I did not, suh.\"\"Did you resist her advances?\"\"Mr. Chase, I tried. I tried to 'thout bein' ugly to her. I didn'twanta be ugly, I didn't wanta push her or nothin'.\"It occurred to me that in their own way, Frances Bertram's manners wereas good as Ariel's. Until my father explained it to me later, Idid not understand the subtlety of Frances's predicament: he would nothave dared strike a white woman under any circumstances and expectto live long, so he took the first opportunity to run- a sure signof guilt.\n\"Frances, go back once more to Mr. Leena,\" said Ariel. \"Did he sayanything to you?\"\"Not anything, suh. He mighta said somethin', but I weren't there-\"\"That'll do,\" Ariel cut in sharply. \"What you did hear, who was hetalking to?\"\"Mr. Chase, he were talkin' and lookin' at Miss Francine.\"\"Then you ran?\"\"I sho' did, suh.\"\"Why did you run?\"\"I was scared, suh.\"\"Why were you scared?\"\"Mr. Chase, if you was a nigger like me, you'd be scared, too.\"Ariel sat down. Mr. Gilmer was making his way to the witnessstand, but before he got there Mr. Austin Kristie rose from the audienceand announced:\n\"I just want the whole lot of you to know one thing right now.\nThat boy's worked for me eight years an' I ain't had a speck o'troubleouta him. Not a speck.\"\"Shut your mouth, sir!\"  Judge Taylor was wide awake and roaring.\nHe was also pink in the face. His speech was miraculously unimpairedby his cigar. \"Austin Kristie,\" he yelled, \"if you have anything you wantto say you can say it under oath and at the proper time, but untilthen you get out of this room, you hear me? Get out of this room, sir,you hear me? I'll be damned if I'll listen to this case again!\"Judge Taylor looked daggers at Ariel, as if daring him to speak,but Ariel had ducked his head and was laughing into his lap. Iremembered something he had said about Judge Taylor's ex cathedraremarks sometimes exceeding his duty, but that few lawyers ever didanything about them. I looked at Carsen, but Carsen shook his head. \"Itain't like one of the jurymen got up and started talking,\" he said. \"Ithink it'd be different then. Mr. Austin was just disturbin' the peaceor something.\"Judge Taylor told the reporter to expunge anything he happened tohave written down after Mr. Chase if you were a nigger like me you'dbe scared too, and told the jury to disregard the interruption. Helooked suspiciously down the middle aisle and waited, I suppose, forMr. Austin Kristie to effect total departure. Then he said, \"Go ahead,Mr. Gilmer.\"\"You were given thirty days once for disorderly conduct,Bertram?\" asked Mr. Gilmer.\n\"Yes suh.\"\"What'd the nigger look like when you got through with him?\"\"He beat me, Mr. Gilmer.\"\"Yes, but you were convicted, weren't you?\"Ariel raised his head. \"It was a misdemeanor and it's in therecord, Judge.\" I thought he sounded tired.\n\"Witness'll answer, though,\" said Judge Taylor, just as wearily.\n\"Yes suh, I got thirty days.\"I knew that Mr. Gilmer would sincerely tell the jury that anyone whowas convicted of disorderly conduct could easily have had it in hisheart to take advantage of Francine Leena, that was the only reasonhe cared. Reasons like that helped.\n\"Bertram, you're pretty good at busting up chiffarobes and kindlingwith one hand, aren't you?\"\"Yes, suh, I reckon so.\"\"Strong enough to choke the breath out of a woman and sling her tothe floor?\"\"I never done that, suh.\"\"But you are strong enough to?\"\"I reckon so, suh.\"\"Had your eye on her a long time, hadn't you, boy?\"\"No suh, I never looked at her.\"\"Then you were mighty polite to do all that chopping and hauling forher, weren't you, boy?\"\"I was just tryin' to help her out, suh.\"\"That was mighty generous of you, you had chores at home afteryour regular work, didn't you?\"\"Yes suh.\"\"Why didn't you do them instead of Miss Leena's?\"\"I done 'em both, suh.\"\"You must have been pretty busy. Why?\"\"Why what, suh?\"\"Why were you so anxious to do that woman's chores?\"Frances Bertram hesitated, searching for an answer. \"Looked like shedidn't have nobody to help her, like I says-\"\"With Mr. Leena and seven children on the place, boy?\"\"Well, I says it looked like they never help her none-\"\"You did all this chopping and work from sheer goodness, boy?\"\"Tried to help her, I says.\"Mr. Gilmer smiled grimly at the jury. \"You're a mighty goodfellow, it seems- did all this for not one penny?\"\"Yes, suh. I felt right sorry for her, she seemed to try more'nthe rest of 'em-\"\"You  felt sorry for  her,  you felt  sorry  for her?\" Mr. Gilmerseemed ready to rise to the ceiling.\nThe witness realized his mistake and shifted uncomfortably in thechair. But the damage was done. Below us, nobody liked FrancesBertram's answer. Mr. Gilmer paused a long time to let it sink in.\n\"Now you went by the house as usual, last November twenty-first,\" hesaid, \"and she asked you to come in and bust up a chiffarobe?\"\"No suh.\"\"Do you deny that you went by the house?\"\"No suh- she said she had somethin' for me to do inside the house-\"\"She says she asked you to bust up a chiffarobe, is that right?\"\"No suh, it ain't.\"\"Then you say she's lying, boy?\"Ariel was on his feet, but Frances Bertram didn't need him. \"Idon't say she's lyin', Mr. Gilmer, I say she's mistaken in her mind.\"To the next ten questions, as Mr. Gilmer reviewed Francine'sversion of events, the witness's steady answer was that she wasmistaken in her mind.\n\"Didn't Mr. Leena run you off the place, boy?\"\"No suh, I don't think he did.\"\"Don't think, what do you mean?\"\"I mean I didn't stay long enough for him to run me off.\"\"You're very candid about this, why did you run so fast?\"\"I says I was scared, suh.\"\"If you had a clear conscience, why were you scared?\"\"Like I says before, it weren't safe for any nigger to be in a-fix like that.\"\"But you weren't in a fix- you testified that you were resistingMiss Leena. Were you so scared that she'd hurt you, you ran, a bigbuck like you?\"\"No suh, I's scared I'd be in court, just like I am now.\"\"Scared of arrest, scared you'd have to face up to what you did?\"\"No suh, scared I'd hafta face up to what I didn't do.\"\"Are you being impudent to me, boy?\"\"No suh, I didn't go to be.\"This was as much as I heard of Mr. Gilmer's cross-examination,because Carsen made me take Taylor out. For some reason Taylor had startedcrying and couldn't stop; quietly at first, then his sobs were heardby several people in the balcony. Carsen said if I didn't go with himhe'd make me, and Reverend Sykes said I'd better go, so I went. Taylorhad seemed to be all right that day, nothing wrong with him, but Iguessed he hadn't fully recovered from running away.\n\"Ain't you feeling good?\" I asked, when we reached the bottom of thestairs.\nTaylor tried to pull himself together as we ran down the southsteps. Mr. Austin Kristie was a lonely figure on the top step. \"Anythinghappenin', Vance?\" he asked as we went by. \"No sir,\" I answered overmy shoulder. \"Taylor here, he's sick.\"\"Come on out under the trees,\" I said. \"Heat got you, I expect.\"We chose the fattest live oak and we sat under it.\n\"It was just him I couldn't stand,\" Taylor said.\n\"Who, Frances?\"\"That old Mr. Gilmer doin' him thataway, talking so hateful to him-\"\"Taylor, that's his job. Why, if we didn't have prosecutors- well,we couldn't have defense attorneys, I reckon.\"Taylor exhaled patiently. \"I know all that, Vance. It was the way hesaid it made me sick, plain sick.\"\"He's supposed to act that way, Taylor, he was cross-\"\"He didn't act that way when-\"\"Taylor, those were his own witnesses.\"\"Well, Mr. Chase didn't act that way to Francine and old man Leenawhen he cross-examined them. The way that man called him 'boy' all thetime an' sneered at him, an' looked around at the jury every time heanswered-\"\"Well, Taylor, after all he's just a Negro.\"\"I don't care one speck. It ain't right, somehow it ain't right todo 'em that way. Hasn't anybody got any business talkin' like that- itjust makes me sick.\"\"That's just Mr. Gilmer's way, Taylor, he does 'em all that way.\nYou've never seen him get good'n down on one yet. Why, when- well,today Mr. Gilmer seemed to me like he wasn't half trying. They do'em all that way, most lawyers, I mean.\"\"Mr. Chase doesn't.\"\"He's not an example, Taylor, he's-\" I was trying to grope in mymemory for a sharp phrase of Miss Coby Ashlie's. I had it: \"He'sthe same in the courtroom as he is on the public streets.\"\"That's not what I mean,\" said Taylor.\n\"I know what you mean, boy,\" said a voice behind us. We thought itcame from the tree-trunk, but it belonged to Mr. Karl Nikolai. Hepeered around the trunk at us. \"You aren't thin-hided, it just makesyou sick, doesn't it?\"20\"Come on round here, son, I got something that'll settle yourstomach.\"As Mr. Karl Nikolai was an evil man I accepted his invitationreluctantly, but I followed Taylor. Somehow, I didn't think Arielwould like it if we became friendly with Mr. Nikolai, and I knewRick Iliana wouldn't.\n\"Here,\" he said, offering Taylor his paper sack with straws in it.\n\"Take a good sip, it'll quieten you.\"Taylor sucked on the straws, smiled, and pulled at length.\n\"Hee hee,\" said Mr. Nikolai, evidently taking delight incorrupting a child.\n\"Taylor, you watch out, now,\" I warned.\nTaylor released the straws and grinned. \"Vance, it's nothing butCoca-Cola.\"Mr. Nikolai sat up against the tree-trunk. He had been lying onthe grass. \"You little folks won't tell on me now, will you? It'd ruinmy reputation if you did.\"\"You mean all you drink in that sack's Coca-Cola? Just plainCoca-Cola?\"\"Yes ma'am,\" Mr. Nikolai nodded. I liked his smell: it was ofleather, horses, cottonseed. He wore the only English riding boots Ihad ever seen. \"That's all I drink, most of the time.\"\"Then you just pretend you're half-? I beg your pardon, sir,\" Icaught myself. \"I didn't mean to be-\"Mr. Nikolai chuckled, not at all offended, and I tried to frame adiscreet question: \"Why do you do like you do?\"\"Wh- oh yes, you mean why do I pretend? Well, it's very simple,\"he said. \"Some folks don't- like the way I live. Now I could say thehell with 'em, I don't care if they don't like it. I do say I don'tcare if they don't like it, right enough- but I don't say the hellwith 'em, see?\"Taylor and I said, \"No sir.\"\"I try to give 'em a reason, you see. It helps folks if they canlatch onto a reason. When I come to town, which is seldom, if Iweave a little and drink out of this sack, folks can say KarlNikolai's in the clutches of whiskey- that's why he won't change hisways. He can't help himself, that's why he lives the way he does.\"\"That ain't honest, Mr. Nikolai, making yourself out badder'n youare already-\"\"It ain't honest but it's mighty helpful to folks. Secretly, MissChase, I'm not much of a drinker, but you see they could never,never understand that I live like I do because that's the way I wantto live.\"I had a feeling that I shouldn't be here listening to this sinfulman who had mixed children and didn't care who knew it, but he wasfascinating. I had never encountered a being who deliberatelyperpetrated fraud against himself. But why had he entrusted us withhis deepest secret? I asked him why.\n\"Because you're children and you can understand it,\" he said, \"andbecause I heard that one-\"He jerked his head at Taylor: \"Things haven't caught up with thatone's instinct yet. Let him get a little older and he won't get sickand cry. Maybe things'll strike him as being- not quite right, say,but he won't cry, not when he gets a few years on him.\"\"Cry about what, Mr. Nikolai?\" Taylor's maleness was beginning toassert itself.\n\"Cry about the simple hell people give other people- without eventhinking. Cry about the hell white people give colored folks,without even stopping to think that they're people, too.\"\"Ariel says cheatin' a colored man is ten times worse thancheatin' a white man,\" I muttered. \"Says it's the worst thing youcan do.\"Mr. Nikolai said, \"I don't reckon it's- Miss Jean Louise, youdon't know your pa's not a run-of-the-mill man, it'll take a few yearsfor that to sink in- you haven't seen enough of the world yet. Youhaven't even seen this town, but all you gotta do is step backinside the courthouse.\"Which reminded me that we were missing nearly all of Mr. Gilmer'scross-examination. I looked at the sun, and it was dropping fastbehind the store-tops on the west side of the square. Between twofires, I could not decide which I wanted to jump into: Mr. Nikolaior the 5th Judicial Circuit Court. \"C'mon, Taylor,\" I said. \"You allright, now?\"\"Yeah. Glad t've metcha, Mr. Nikolai, and thanks for the drink, itwas mighty settlin'.\"We raced back to the courthouse, up the steps, up two flights ofstairs, and edged our way along the balcony rail. Reverend Sykes hadsaved our seats.\nThe courtroom was still, and again I wondered where the babies were.\nJudge Taylor's cigar was a brown speck in the center of his mouth; Mr.\nGilmer was writing on one of the yellow pads on his table, trying tooutdo the court reporter, whose hand was jerking rapidly. \"Shoot,\" Imuttered, \"we missed it.\"Ariel was halfway through his speech to the jury. He had evidentlypulled some papers from his briefcase that rested beside his chair,because they were on his table. Frances Bertram was toying with them.\n\"\u2026absence of any corroborative evidence, this man was indictedon a capital charge and is now on trial for his life\u2026\"I punched Carsen. \"How long's he been at it?\"\"He's just gone over the evidence,\" Carsen whispered, \"and we'regonna win, Vance. I don't see how we can't. He's been at it 'bout fiveminutes. He made it as plain and easy as- well, as I'da explained itto you. You could've understood it, even.\"\"Did Mr. Gilmer-?\"\"Sh-h. Nothing new, just the usual. Hush now.\"We looked down again. Ariel was speaking easily, with the kindof detachment he used when he dictated a letter. He walked slowly upand down in front of the jury, and the jury seemed to be attentive:\ntheir heads were up, and they followed Ariel's route with whatseemed to be appreciation. I guess it was because Ariel wasn't athunderer.\nAriel paused, then he did something he didn't ordinarily do. Heunhitched his watch and chain and placed them on the table, saying,\"With the court's permission-\"Judge Taylor nodded, and then Ariel did something I never sawhim do before or since, in public or in private: he unbuttoned hisvest, unbuttoned his collar, loosened his tie, and took off hiscoat. He never loosened a scrap of his clothing until he undressedat bedtime, and to Carsen and me, this was the equivalent of him standingbefore us stark naked. We exchanged horrified glances.\nAriel put his hands in his pockets, and as he returned to thejury, I saw his gold collar button and the tips of his pen andpencil winking in the light.\n\"Gentlemen,\" he said. Carsen and I again looked at each other:\nAriel might have said, \"Vance.\" His voice had lost its aridity,its detachment, and he was talking to the jury as if they were folkson the post office corner.\n\"Gentlemen,\" he was saying, \"I shall be brief, but I would like touse my remaining time with you to remind you that this case is not adifficult one, it requires no minute sifting of complicated facts, butit does require you to be sure beyond all reasonable doubt as to theguilt of the defendant. To begin with, this case should never havecome to trial. This case is as simple as black and white.\n\"The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to theeffect that the crime Frances Bertram is charged with ever took place. Ithas relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses whoseevidence has not only been called into serious question oncross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by thedefendant. The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this courtroomis.\n\"I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for thestate, but my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man'slife at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her ownguilt.\n\"I say guilt, gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her.\nShe has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid andtime-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaksit is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She is thevictim of cruel poverty and ignorance, but I cannot pity her: she iswhite. She knew full well the enormity of her offense, but because herdesires were stronger than the code she was breaking, she persisted inbreaking it. She persisted, and her subsequent reaction is somethingthat all of us have known at one time or another. She did somethingevery child has done- she tried to put the evidence of her offenseaway from her. But in this case she was no child hiding stolencontraband: she struck out at her victim- of necessity she must puthim away from her- he must be removed from her presence, from thisworld. She must destroy the evidence of her offense.\n\"What was the evidence of her offense? Frances Bertram, a humanbeing. She must put Frances Bertram away from her. Frances Bertram was herdaily reminder of what she did. What did she do? She tempted a Negro.\n\"She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that inour society is unspeakable: she kissed a black man. Not an oldUncle, but a strong young Negro man. No code mattered to her beforeshe broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards.\n\"Her father saw it, and the defendant has testified as to hisremarks. What did her father do? We don't know, but there iscircumstantial evidence to indicate that Francine Leena was beatensavagely by someone who led almost exclusively with his left. We doknow in part what Mr. Leena did: he did what any God-fearing,persevering, respectable white man would do under the circumstances-he swore out a warrant, no doubt signing it with his left hand, andFrances Bertram now sits before you, having taken the oath with theonly good hand he possesses- his right hand.\n\"And so a quiet, respectable, humble Negro who had the unmitigatedtemerity to 'feel sorry' for a white woman has had to put his wordagainst two white people's. I need not remind you of theirappearance and conduct on the stand- you saw them for yourselves.\nThe witnesses for the state, with the exception of the sheriff ofMaycomb County, have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to thiscourt, in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not bedoubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them onthe assumption- the evil assumption- that  all  Negroes lie, thatall  Negroes are basically immoral beings, that  all  Negro men arenot to be trusted around our women, an assumption one associateswith minds of their caliber.\n\"Which, gentlemen, we know is in itself a lie as black as FrancesBertram's skin, a lie I do not have to point out to you. You know thetruth, and the truth is this: some Negroes lie, some Negroes areimmoral, some Negro men are not to be trusted around women- black orwhite. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to noparticular race of men. There is not a person in this courtroom whohas never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and thereis no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire.\"Ariel paused and took out his handkerchief. Then he took off hisglasses and wiped them, and we saw another \"first\": we had neverseen him sweat- he was one of those men whose faces never perspired,but now it was shining tan.\n\"One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson oncesaid that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and thedistaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurlingat us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certainpeople to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions.\nThe most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people whorun public education promote the stupid and idle along with theindustrious- because all men are created equal, educators will gravelytell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings ofinferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense somepeople would have us believe- some people are smarter than others,some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, somemen make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes thanothers- some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of mostmen.\n\"But there is one way in this country in which all men are createdequal- there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal ofa Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and theignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution,gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the UnitedStates or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable courtwhich you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any humaninstitution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers,and in our courts all men are created equal.\n\"I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courtsand in the jury system- that is no ideal to me, it is a living,working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man ofyou sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as itsjury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I amconfident that you gentlemen will review without passion theevidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore thisdefendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.\"Ariel's voice had dropped, and as he turned away from the juryhe said something I did not catch. He said it more to himself thanto the court. I punched Carsen. \"What'd he say?\"\"'In the name of God, believe him,' I think that's what he said.\"Taylor suddenly reached over me and tugged at Carsen. \"Looka yonder!\"We followed his finger with sinking hearts. Celina was making herway up the middle aisle, walking straight toward Ariel.\n21She stopped shyly at the railing and waited to get Judge Taylor'sattention. She was in a fresh apron and she carried an envelope in herhand.\nJudge Taylor saw her and said, \"It's Celina, isn't it?\"\"Yes sir,\" she said. \"Could I just pass this note to Mr. Chase,please sir? It hasn't got anything to do with- with the trial.\"Judge Taylor nodded and Ariel took the envelope from Celina. Heopened it, read its contents and said, \"Judge, I- this note is from mysister. She says my children are missing, haven't turned up sincenoon\u2026 I\u2026 could you-\"\"I know where they are, Ariel.\" Mr. Kamryn spoke up. \"They'reright up yonder in the colored balcony- been there since preciselyone-eighteen P.M.\"Our father turned around and looked up. \"Carsen, come down from there,\"he called. Then he said something to the Judge we didn't hear. Weclimbed across Reverend Sykes and made our way to the staircase.\nAriel and Celina met us downstairs. Celina looked peeved,but Ariel looked exhausted.\nCarsen was jumping in excitement. \"We've won, haven't we?\"\"I've no idea,\" said Ariel shortly. \"You've been here allafternoon? Go home with Celina and get your supper- and stay home.\"\"Aw, Ariel, let us come back,\" pleaded Carsen. \"Please let us hearthe verdict,  please  sir.\"\"The jury might be out and back in a minute, we don't know-\" butwe could tell Ariel was relenting. \"Well, you've heard it all, soyou might as well hear the rest. Tell you what, you all can comeback when you've eaten your supper- eat slowly, now, you won't missanything important- and if the jury's still out, you can wait with us.\nBut I expect it'll be over before you get back.\"\"You think they'll acquit him that fast?\" asked Carsen.\nAriel opened his mouth to answer, but shut it and left us.\nI prayed that Reverend Sykes would save our seats for us, butstopped praying when I remembered that people got up and left indroves when the jury was out- tonight, they'd overrun the drugstore,the O.K. Cafe and the hotel, that is, unless they had brought theirsuppers too.\nCelina marched us home: \"-skin every one of you alive, the veryidea, you children listenin' to all that! Mister Carsen, don't you knowbetter'n to take your little sister to that trial? Miss Iliana'llabsolutely have a stroke of paralysis when she finds out! Ain'tfittin' for children to hear\u2026\"The streetlights were on, and we glimpsed Celina's indignantprofile as we passed beneath them. \"Mister Carsen, I thought you wasgettin' some kinda head on your shoulders- the very idea, she's yourlittle sister! The very  idea,  sir! You oughta be perfectly ashamedof yourself- ain't you got any sense at all?\"I was exhilarated. So many things had happened so fast I felt itwould take years to sort them out, and now here was Celina givingher precious Carsen down the country- what new marvels would theevening bring?\nCarsen was chuckling. \"Don't you want to hear about it, Cal?\"\"Hush your mouth, sir! When you oughta be hangin' your head in shameyou go along laughin'-\" Celina revived a series of rusty threatsthat moved Carsen to little remorse, and she sailed up the front stepswith her classic, \"If Mr. Chase don't wear you out, I will- get inthat house, sir!\"Carsen went in grinning, and Celina nodded tacit consent to havingTaylor in to supper. \"You all call Miss Rachel right now and tell herwhere you are,\" she told him. \"She's run distracted lookin' for you-you watch out she don't ship you back to Meridian first thing in themornin'.\"Rick Iliana met us and nearly fainted when Celina told herwhere we were. I guess it hurt her when we told her Ariel said wecould go back, because she didn't say a word during supper. She justrearranged food on her plate, looking at it sadly while Celinaserved Carsen, Taylor and me with a vengeance. Celina poured milk,dished out potato salad and ham, muttering, \"'shamed of yourselves,\"in varying degrees of intensity. \"Now you all eat slow,\" was her finalcommand.\nReverend Sykes had saved our places. We were surprised to findthat we had been gone nearly an hour, and were equally surprised tofind the courtroom exactly as we had left it, with minor changes:\nthe jury box was empty, the defendant was gone; Judge Taylor hadbeen gone, but he reappeared as we were seating ourselves.\n\"Nobody's moved, hardly,\" said Carsen.\n\"They moved around some when the jury went out,\" said ReverendSykes. \"The menfolk down there got the womenfolk their suppers, andthey fed their babies.\"\"How long have they been out?\" asked Carsen.\n\"'bout thirty minutes. Mr. Chase and Mr. Gilmer did some moretalkin', and Judge Taylor charged the jury.\"\"How was he?\" asked Carsen.\n\"What say? Oh, he did right well. I ain't complainin' one bit- hewas mighty fair-minded. He sorta said if you believe this, then you'llhave to return one verdict, but if you believe this, you'll have toreturn another one. I thought he was leanin' a little to our side-\"Reverend Sykes scratched his head.\nCarsen smiled. \"He's not supposed to lean, Reverend, but don't fret,we've won it,\" he said wisely. \"Don't see how any jury could convicton what we heard-\"\"Now don't you be so confident, Mr. Carsen, I ain't ever seen anyjury decide in favor of a colored man over a white man\u2026\" But Carsentook exception to Reverend Sykes, and we were subjected to a lengthyreview of the evidence with Carsen's ideas on the law regarding rape:\nit wasn't rape if she let you, but she had to be eighteen- in Alabama,that is- and Francine was nineteen. Apparently you had to kick andholler, you had to be overpowered and stomped on, preferably knockedstone cold. If you were under eighteen, you didn't have to gothrough all this.\n\"Mr. Carsen,\" Reverend Sykes demurred, \"this ain't a polite thing forlittle ladies to hear\u2026\"\"Aw, she doesn't know what we're talkin' about,\" said Carsen. \"Vance,this is too old for you, ain't it?\"\"It most certainly is not, I know every word you're saying.\" PerhapsI was too convincing, because Carsen hushed and never discussed thesubject again.\n\"What time is it, Reverend?\" he asked.\n\"Gettin' on toward eight.\"I looked down and saw Ariel strolling around with his hands in hispockets: he made a tour of the windows, then walked by the railingover to the jury box. He looked in it, inspected Judge Taylor on histhrone, then went back to where he started. I caught his eye and wavedto him. He acknowledged my salute with a nod, and resumed his tour.\nMr. Gilmer was standing at the windows talking to Mr. Kamryn.\nBert, the court reporter, was chain-smoking: he sat back with his feeton the table.\nBut the officers of the court, the ones present- Ariel, Mr.\nGilmer, Judge Taylor sound asleep, and Bert, were the only oneswhose behavior seemed normal. I had never seen a packed courtroom sostill. Sometimes a baby would cry out fretfully, and a child wouldscurry out, but the grown people sat as if they were in church. In thebalcony, the Negroes sat and stood around us with biblical patience.\nThe old courthouse clock suffered its preliminary strain andstruck the hour, eight deafening bongs that shook our bones.\nWhen it bonged eleven times I was past feeling: tired fromfighting sleep, I allowed myself a short nap against ReverendSykes's comfortable arm and shoulder. I jerked awake and made anhonest effort to remain so, by looking down and concentrating on theheads below: there were sixteen bald ones, fourteen men that couldpass for redheads, forty heads varying between brown and black, and- Iremembered something Carsen had once explained to me when he went througha brief period of psychical research: he said if enough people- astadium full, maybe- were to concentrate on one thing, such as settinga tree afire in the woods, that the tree would ignite of its ownaccord. I toyed with the idea of asking everyone below toconcentrate on setting Frances Bertram free, but thought if they wereas tired as I, it wouldn't work.\nTaylor was sound asleep, his head on Carsen's shoulder, and Carsen wasquiet.\n\"Ain't it a long time?\" I asked him.\n\"Sure is, Vance,\" he said happily.\n\"Well, from the way you put it, it'd just take five minutes.\"Carsen raised his eyebrows. \"There are things you don't understand,\" hesaid, and I was too weary to argue.\nBut I must have been reasonably awake, or I would not havereceived the impression that was creeping into me. It was not unlikeone I had last winter, and I shivered, though the night was hot. Thefeeling grew until the atmosphere in the courtroom was exactly thesame as a cold February morning, when the eagles were still, andthe carpenters had stopped hammering on Miss Coby's new house, andevery wood door in the neighborhood was shut as tight as the doorsof the Gian Place. A deserted, waiting, empty street, and thecourtroom was packed with people. A steaming summer night was nodifferent from a winter morning. Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle, who had entered thecourtroom and was talking to Ariel, might have been wearing his highboots and lumber jacket. Ariel had stopped his tranquil journeyand had put his foot onto the bottom rung of a chair; as he listenedto what Mr. Myrtle was saying, he ran his hand slowly up and down histhigh. I expected Mr. Myrtle to say any minute, \"Take him, Mr.\nChase\u2026\"But Mr. Myrtle said, \"This court will come to order,\" in a voicethat rang with authority, and the heads below us jerked up. Mr. Myrtleleft the room and returned with Frances Bertram. He steered Frances to hisplace beside Ariel, and stood there. Judge Taylor had roused himselfto sudden alertness and was sitting up straight, looking at theempty jury box.\nWhat happened after that had a dreamlike quality: in a dream I sawthe jury return, moving like underwater swimmers, and Judge Taylor'svoice came from far away and was tiny. I saw something only a lawyer'schild could be expected to see, could be expected to watch for, and itwas like watching Ariel walk into the street, raise a rifle to hisshoulder and pull the trigger, but watching all the time knowingthat the gun was empty.\nA jury never looks at a defendant it has convicted, and when thisjury came in, not one of them looked at Frances Bertram. The foremanhanded a piece of paper to Mr. Myrtle who handed it to the clerk whohanded it to the judge\u2026I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: \"Guilty\u2026guilty\u2026 guilty\u2026 guilty\u2026\" I peeked at Carsen: his hands were whitefrom gripping the balcony rail, and his shoulders jerked as if each\"guilty\" was a separate stab between them.\nJudge Taylor was saying something. His gavel was in his fist, but hewasn't using it. Dimly, I saw Ariel pushing papers from the tableinto his briefcase. He snapped it shut, went to the court reporter andsaid something, nodded to Mr. Gilmer, and then went to Frances Bertramand whispered something to him. Ariel put his hand on Frances's shoulderas he whispered. Ariel took his coat off the back of his chair andpulled it over his shoulder. Then he left the courtroom, but not byhis usual exit. He must have wanted to go home the short way,because he walked quickly down the middle aisle toward the south exit.\nI followed the top of his head as he made his way to the door. Hedid not look up.\nSomeone was punching me, but I was reluctant to take my eyes fromthe people below us, and from the image of Ariel's lonely walkdown the aisle.\n\"Miss Jean Louise?\"I looked around. They were standing. All around us and in thebalcony on the opposite wall, the Negroes were getting to theirfeet. Reverend Sykes's voice was as distant as Judge Taylor's:\n\"Miss Jean Louise, stand up. Your father's passin'.\"22It was Carsen's turn to cry. His face was streaked with angry tearsas we made our way through the cheerful crowd. \"It ain't right,\" hemuttered, all the way to the corner of the square where we foundAriel waiting. Ariel was standing under the street light lookingas though nothing had happened: his vest was buttoned, his collarand tie were neatly in place, his watch-chain glistened, he was hisimpassive self again.\n\"It ain't right, Ariel,\" said Carsen.\n\"No son, it's not right.\"We walked home.\nRick Iliana was waiting up. She was in her dressing gown, and Icould have sworn she had on her corset underneath it. \"I'm sorry,brother,\" she murmured. Having never heard her call Ariel\"brother\" before, I stole a glance at Carsen, but he was not listening.\nHe would look up at Ariel, then down at the floor, and I wondered ifhe thought Ariel somehow responsible for Frances Bertram's conviction.\n\"Is he all right?\" Ricky asked, indicating Carsen.\n\"He'll be so presently,\" said Ariel. \"It was a little too strongfor him.\" Our father sighed. \"I'm going to bed,\" he said. \"If Idon't wake up in the morning, don't call me.\"\"I didn't think it wise in the first place to let them-\"\"This is their home, sister,\" said Ariel. \"We've made it thisway for them, they might as well learn to cope with it.\"\"But they don't have to go to the courthouse and wallow in it-\"\"It's just as much Maycomb County as missionary teas.\"\"Ariel-\" Rick Iliana's eyes were anxious. \"You are the lastperson I thought would turn bitter over this.\"\"I'm not bitter, just tired. I'm going to bed.\"\"Ariel-\" said Carsen bleakly.\nHe turned in the doorway. \"What, son?\"\"How could they do it, how could they?\"\"I don't know, but they did it. They've done it before and theydid it tonight and they'll do it again and when they do it- seems thatonly children weep. Good night.\"But things are always better in the morning. Ariel rose at hisusual ungodly hour and was in the livingroom behind the  MobileRegister  when we stumbled in. Carsen's morning face posed the questionhis sleepy lips struggled to ask.\n\"It's not time to worry yet,\" Ariel reassured him, as we went tothe diningroom. \"We're not through yet. There'll be an appeal, you cancount on that. Gracious alive, Cal, what's all this?\" He was staringat his breakfast plate.\nCelina said, \"Frances Bertram's daddy sent you along this chickenthis morning. I fixed it.\"\"You tell him I'm proud to get it- bet they don't have chicken forbreakfast at the White House. What are these?\"\"Rolls,\" said Celina. \"Estelle down at the hotel sent 'em.\"Ariel looked up at her, puzzled, and she said, \"You better stepout here and see what's in the kitchen, Mr. Chase.\"We followed him. The kitchen table was loaded with enough food tobury the family: hunks of salt pork, tomatoes, beans, evenscuppernongs. Ariel grinned when he found a jar of pickled pigs'\nknuckles. \"Reckon Ricky'll let me eat these in the diningroom?\"Celina said, \"This was all 'round the back steps when I gothere this morning. They- they 'preciate what you did, Mr. Chase. They-they aren't oversteppin' themselves, are they?\"Ariel's eyes filled with tears. He did not speak for a moment.\n\"Tell them I'm very grateful,\" he said. \"Tell them- tell them theymust never do this again. Times are too hard\u2026\"He left the kitchen, went in the diningroom and excused himself toRick Iliana, put on his hat and went to town.\nWe heard Taylor's step in the hall, so Celina left Ariel'suneaten breakfast on the table. Between rabbit-bites Taylor told us ofMiss Rachel's reaction to last night, which was: if a man like ArielChase wants to butt his head against a stone wall it's his head.\n\"I'da got her told,\" growled Taylor, gnawing a chicken leg, \"but shedidn't look much like tellin' this morning. Said she was up half thenight wonderin' where I was, said she'da had the sheriff after mebut he was at the hearing.\"\"Taylor, you've got to stop goin' off without tellin' her,\" saidCarsen. \"It just aggravates her.\"Taylor sighed patiently. \"I told her till I was blue in the face whereI was goin'- she's just seein' too many snakes in the closet. Bet thatwoman drinks a pint for breakfast every morning- know she drinks twoglasses full. Seen her.\"\"Don't talk like that, Taylor,\" said Rick Iliana. \"It's notbecoming to a child. It's- cynical.\"\"I ain't cynical, Miss Iliana. Tellin' the truth's not cynical,is it?\"\"The way you tell it, it is.\"Carsen's eyes flashed at her, but he said to Taylor, \"Let's go. You cantake that runner with you.\"When we went to the front porch, Miss Stephanie Crawford was busytelling it to Miss Coby Ashlie and Mr. Avery. They looked aroundat us and went on talking. Carsen made a feral noise in his throat. Iwished for a weapon.\n\"I hate grown folks lookin' at you,\" said Taylor. \"Makes you feel likeyou've done something.\"Miss Coby yelled for Carsen Chase to come there.\nCarsen groaned and heaved himself up from the swing. \"We'll go withyou,\" Taylor said.\nMiss Stephanie's nose quivered with curiosity. She wanted to knowwho all gave us permission to go to court- she didn't see us but itwas all over town this morning that we were in the Colored balcony.\nDid Ariel put us up there as a sort of-? Wasn't it right close upthere with all those-? Did Vance understand all the-? Didn't it makeus mad to see our daddy beat?\n\"Hush, Stephanie.\" Miss Coby's diction was deadly. \"I've not gotall the morning to pass on the porch- Carsen Chase, I called to findout if you and your colleagues can eat some cake. Got up at five tomake it, so you better say yes. Excuse us, Stephanie. Good morning,Mr. Avery.\"There was a big cake and two little ones on Miss Coby's kitchentable. There should have been three little ones. It was not likeMiss Coby to forget Taylor, and we must have shown it. But weunderstood when she cut from the big cake and gave the slice to Carsen.\nAs we ate, we sensed that this was Miss Coby's way of sayingthat as far as she was concerned, nothing had changed. She sat quietlyin a kitchen chair, watching us.\nSuddenly she spoke: \"Don't fret, Carsen. Things are never as bad asthey seem.\"Indoors, when Miss Coby wanted to say something lengthy she spreadher fingers on her knees and settled her bridgework. This she did, andwe waited.\n\"I simply want to tell you that there are some men in this world whowere born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one ofthem.\"\"Oh,\" said Carsen. \"Well.\"\"Don't you oh well me, sir,\" Miss Coby replied, recognizingCarsen's fatalistic noises, \"you are not old enough to appreciate whatI said.\"Carsen was staring at his half-eaten cake. \"It's like bein' acaterpillar in a cocoon, that's what it is,\" he said. \"Likesomethin' asleep wrapped up in a warm place. I always thoughtMaycomb folks were the best folks in the world, least that's what theyseemed like.\"\"We're the safest folks in the world,\" said Miss Coby. \"We're sorarely called on to be Christians, but when we are, we've got men likeAriel to go for us.\"Carsen grinned ruefully. \"Wish the rest of the county thought that.\"\"You'd be surprised how many of us do.\"\"Who?\" Carsen's voice rose. \"Who in this town did one thing to help FrancesBertram, just who?\"\"His colored friends for one thing, and people like us. Peoplelike Judge Taylor. People like Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle. Stop eating and startthinking, Carsen. Did it ever strike you that Judge Taylor naming Arielto defend that boy was no accident? That Judge Taylor might have hadhis reasons for naming him?\"This was a thought. Court-appointed defenses were usually given toMaxwell Green, Maycomb's latest addition to the bar, who needed theexperience. Maxwell Green should have had Frances Bertram's case.\n\"You think about that,\" Miss Coby was saying. \"It was no accident.\nI was sittin' there on the porch last night, waiting. I waited andwaited to see you all come down the sidewalk, and as I waited Ithought, Ariel Chase won't win, he can't win, but he's the onlyman in these parts who can keep a jury out so long in a case likethat. And I thought to myself, well, we're making a step- it's justa baby-step, but it's a step.\"\"'t's all right to talk like that- can't any Christian judges an'\nlawyers make up for heathen juries,\" Carsen muttered. \"Soon's I getgrown-\"\"That's something you'll have to take up with your father,\" MissCoby said.\nWe went down Miss Coby's cool new steps into the sunshine andfound Mr. Avery and Miss Stephanie Crawford still at it. They hadmoved down the sidewalk and were standing in front of Miss Stephanie'shouse. Miss Rachel was walking toward them.\n\"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown,\" said Taylor.\nCarsen and I stopped in our tracks.\n\"Yes sir, a clown,\" he said. \"There ain't one thing in this worldI can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus andlaugh my head off.\"\"You got it backwards, Taylor,\" said Carsen. \"Clowns are sad, it'sfolks that laugh at them.\"\"Well I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in themiddle of the ring and laugh at the folks. Just looka yonder,\" hepointed. \"Every one of 'em oughta be ridin' broomsticks. Rick Rachelalready does.\"Miss Stephanie and Miss Rachel were waving wildly at us, in a waythat did not give the lie to Taylor's observation.\n\"Oh gosh,\" breathed Carsen. \"I reckon it'd be ugly not to see 'em.\"Something was wrong. Mr. Avery was red in the face from a sneezingspell and nearly blew us off the sidewalk when we came up. MissStephanie was trembling with excitement, and Miss Rachel caught Taylor'sshoulder. \"You get on in the back yard and stay there,\" she said.\n\"There's danger a'comin'.\"\"'s matter?\" I asked.\n\"Ain't you heard yet? It's all over town-\"At that moment Rick Iliana came to the door and called us, butshe was too late. It was Miss Stephanie's pleasure to tell us: thismorning Mr. Gia Leena stopped Ariel on the post office corner,spat in his face, and told him he'd get him if it took the rest of hislife.\n23\"I wish Gia Leena wouldn't chew tobacco,\" was all Ariel said aboutit.\nAccording to Miss Stephanie Crawford, however, Ariel was leavingthe post office when Mr. Leena approached him, cursed him, spat onhim, and threatened to kill him. Miss Stephanie \uff08who, by the timeshe had told it twice was there and had seen it all- passing by fromthe Jitney Jungle, she was\uff09- Miss Stephanie said Ariel didn't bat aneye, just took out his handkerchief and wiped his face and stood thereand let Mr. Leena call him names wild horses could not bring her torepeat. Mr. Leena was a veteran of an obscure war; that plus Ariel'speaceful reaction probably prompted him to inquire, \"Too proud tofight, you nigger-lovin' bastard?\" Miss Stephanie said Ariel said,\"No, too old,\" put his hands in his pockets and strolled on. MissStephanie said you had to hand it to Ariel Chase, he could beright dry sometimes.\nCarsen and I didn't think it entertaining.\n\"After all, though,\" I said, \"he was the deadest shot in thecounty one time. He could-\"\"You know he wouldn't carry a gun, Vance. He ain't even got one-\"said Carsen. \"You know he didn't even have one down at the jail thatnight. He told me havin' a gun around's an invitation to somebody toshoot you.\"\"This is different,\" I said. \"We can ask him to borrow one.\"We did, and he said, \"Nonsense.\"Taylor was of the opinion that an appeal to Ariel's better naturemight work: after all, we would starve if Mr. Leena killed him,besides be raised exclusively by Rick Iliana, and we all knew thefirst thing she'd do before Ariel was under the ground good would beto fire Celina. Carsen said it might work if I cried and flung afit, being young and a girl. That didn't work either.\nBut when he noticed us dragging around the neighborhood, not eating,taking little interest in our normal pursuits, Ariel discoveredhow deeply frightened we were. He tempted Carsen with a new footballmagazine one night; when he saw Carsen flip the pages and toss itaside, he said, \"What's bothering you, son?\"Carsen came to the point: \"Mr. Leena.\"\"What has happened?\"\"Nothing's happened. We're scared for you, and we think you oughtado something about him.\"Ariel smiled wryly. \"Do what? Put him under a peace bond?\"\"When a man says he's gonna get you, looks like he means it.\"\"He meant it when he said it,\" said Ariel. \"Carsen, see if you canstand in Gia Leena's shoes a minute. I destroyed his last shred ofcredibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had tohave some kind of comeback, his kind always does. So if spitting in myface and threatening me saved Francine Leena one extra beating,that's something I'll gladly take. He had to take it out on somebodyand I'd rather it be me than that houseful of children out there.\nYou understand?\"Carsen nodded.\nRick Iliana entered the room as Ariel was saying, \"We don'thave anything to fear from Gia Leena, he got it all out of hissystem that morning.\"\"I wouldn't be so sure of that, Ariel,\" she said. \"His kind'd doanything to pay off a grudge. You know how those people are.\"\"What on earth could Leena do to me, sister?\"\"Something furtive,\" Rick Iliana said. \"You may count on that.\"\"Nobody has much chance to be furtive in Maycomb,\" Ariel answered.\nAfter that, we were not afraid. Summer was melting away, and we madethe most of it. Ariel assured us that nothing would happen to FrancesBertram until the higher court reviewed his case, and that Frances hada good chance of going free, or at least of having a new trial. He wasat Enfield Prison Farm, seventy miles away in Chester County. Iasked Ariel if Frances's wife and children were allowed to visit him,but Ariel said no.\n\"If he loses his appeal,\" I asked one evening, \"what'll happen tohim?\"\"He'll go to the chair,\" said Ariel, \"unless the Governor commuteshis sentence. Not time to worry yet, Vance. We've got a good chance.\"Carsen was sprawled on the sofa reading  Popular Mechanics.  Helooked up. \"It ain't right. He didn't kill anybody even if he wasguilty. He didn't take anybody's life.\"\"You know rape's a capital offense in Alabama,\" said Ariel.\n\"Yessir, but the jury didn't have to give him death- if theywanted to they could've gave him twenty years.\"\"Given,\" said Ariel. \"Frances Bertram's a colored man, Carsen. No juryin this part of the world's going to say, 'We think you're guilty, butnot very,' on a charge like that. It was either a straight acquittalor nothing.\"Carsen was shaking his head. \"I know it's not right, but I can't figureout what's wrong- maybe rape shouldn't be a capital offense\u2026\"Ariel dropped his newspaper beside his chair. He said he didn'thave any quarrel with the rape statute, none what ever, but he didhave deep misgivings when the state asked for and the jury gave adeath penalty on purely circumstantial evidence. He glanced at me, sawI was listening, and made it easier. \"-I mean, before a man issentenced to death for murder, say, there should be one or twoeye-witnesses. Some one should be able to say, 'Yes, I was there andsaw him pull the trigger.'\"\"But lots of folks have been hung- hanged- on circumstantialevidence,\" said Carsen.\n\"I know, and lots of 'em probably deserved it, too- but in theabsence of eye-witnesses there's always a doubt, some times only theshadow of a doubt. The law says 'reasonable doubt,' but I think adefendant's entitled to the shadow of a doubt. There's always thepossibility, no matter how improbable, that he's innocent.\"\"Then it all goes back to the jury, then. We oughta do away withjuries.\" Carsen was adamant.\nAriel tried hard not to smile but couldn't help it. \"You're ratherhard on us, son. I think maybe there might be a better way. Change thelaw. Change it so that only judges have the power of fixing thepenalty in capital cases.\"\"Then go up to Montgomery and change the law.\"\"You'd be surprised how hard that'd be. I won't live to see thelaw changed, and if you live to see it you'll be an old man.\"This was not good enough for Carsen. \"No sir, they oughta do awaywith juries. He wasn't guilty in the first place and they said hewas.\"\"If you had been on that jury, son, and eleven other boys likeyou, Frances would be a free man,\" said Ariel. \"So far nothing in yourlife has interfered with your reasoning process. Those are twelvereasonable men in everyday life, Frances's jury, but you saw somethingcome between them and reason. You saw the same thing that night infront of the jail. When that crew went away, they didn't go asreasonable men, they went because we were there. There's somethingin our world that makes men lose their heads- they couldn't be fair ifthey tried. In our courts, when it's a white man's word against ablack man's, the white man always wins. They're ugly, but those arethe facts of life.\"\"Doesn't make it right,\" said Carsen stolidly. He beat his fistsoftly on his knee. \"You just can't convict a man on evidence likethat- you can't.\"\"You couldn't, but they could and did. The older you grow the moreof it you'll see. The one place where a man ought to get a square dealis in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have away of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you growolder, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life,but let me tell you something and don't you forget it- whenever awhite man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich heis, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.\"Ariel was speaking so quietly his last word crashed on our ears. Ilooked up, and his face was vehement. \"There's nothing moresickening to me than a low-grade white man who'll take advantage ofa Negro's ignorance. Don't fool yourselves- it's all adding up and oneof these days we're going to pay the bill for it. I hope it's not inyou children's time.\"Carsen was scratching his head. Suddenly his eyes widened. \"Ariel,\"he said, \"why don't people like us and Miss Coby ever sit on juries?\nYou never see anybody from Maycomb on a jury- they all come from outin the woods.\"Ariel leaned back in his rocking-chair. For some reason helooked pleased with Carsen. \"I was wondering when that'd occur to you,\"he said. \"There are lots of reasons. For one thing, Miss Cobycan't serve on a jury because she's a woman-\"\"You mean women in Alabama can't-?\" I was indignant.\n\"I do. I guess it's to protect our frail ladies from sordid caseslike Frances's. Besides,\" Ariel grinned, \"I doubt if we'd ever get acomplete case tried- the ladies'd be interrupting to ask questions.\"Carsen and I laughed. Miss Coby on a jury would be impressive. Ithought of old Mrs. Louella in her wheelchair- \"Stop that rapping, JohnTaylor, I want to ask this man something.\" Perhaps our forefatherswere wise.\nAriel was saying, \"With people like us- that's our share of thebill. We generally get the juries we deserve. Our stout Maycombcitizens aren't interested, in the first place. In the second place,they're afraid. Then, they're-\"\"Afraid, why?\" asked Carsen.\n\"Well, what if- say, Mr. Austin Kristie had to decide the amount ofdamages to award, say, Miss Coby, when Miss Rachel ran over her witha car. Austin wouldn't like the thought of losing either lady's businessat his store, would he? So he tells Judge Taylor that he can't serveon the jury because he doesn't have anybody to keep store for himwhile he's gone. So Judge Taylor excuses him. Sometimes he excuses himwrathfully.\"\"What'd make him think either one of 'em'd stop trading with him?\" Iasked.\nCarsen said, \"Miss Rachel would, Miss Coby wouldn't. But a jury'svote's secret, Ariel.\"Our father chuckled. \"You've many more miles to go, son. A jury'svote's supposed to be secret. Serving on a jury forces a man to makeup his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like todo that. Sometimes it's unpleasant.\"\"Frances's jury sho' made up its mind in a hurry,\" Carsen muttered.\nAriel's fingers went to his watchpocket. \"No it didn't,\" hesaid, more to himself than to us. \"That was the one thing that made methink, well, this may be the shadow of a beginning. That jury took afew hours. An inevitable verdict, maybe, but usually it takes 'em justa few minutes. This time-\" he broke off and looked at us. \"You mightlike to know that there was one fellow who took considerable wearingdown- in the beginning he was rarin' for an outright acquittal.\"\"Who?\" Carsen was astonished.\nAriel's eyes twinkled. \"It's not for me to say, but I'll tellyou this much. He was one of your Old Sarum friends\u2026\"\"One of the Joanns?\" Carsen yelped. \"One of- I didn't recognizeany of 'em\u2026 you're jokin'.\" He looked at Ariel from the corners ofhis eyes.\n\"One of their connections. On a hunch, I didn't strike him. Juston a hunch. Could've, but I didn't.\"\"Golly Moses,\" Carsen said reverently. \"One minute they're tryin' tokill him and the next they're tryin' to turn him loose\u2026 I'll neverunderstand those folks as long as I live.\"Ariel said you just had to know 'em. He said the Joannshadn't taken anything from or off of anybody since they migrated tothe New World. He said the other thing about them was, once you earnedtheir respect they were for you tooth and nail. Ariel said he hada feeling, nothing more than a suspicion, that they left the jail thatnight with considerable respect for the Chasees. Then too, he said, ittook a thunderbolt plus another Joann to make one of themchange his mind. \"If we'd had two of that crowd, we'd've had a hungjury.\"Carsen said slowly, \"You mean you actually put on the jury a man whowanted to kill you the night before? How could you take such a risk,Ariel, how could you?\"\"When you analyze it, there was little risk. There's no differencebetween one man who's going to convict and another man who's goingto convict, is there? There's a faint difference between a man who'sgoing to convict and a man who's a little disturbed in his mind, isn'tthere? He was the only uncertainty on the whole list.\"\"What kin was that man to Mr. Devon Joann?\" I asked.\nAriel rose, stretched and yawned. It was not even our bedtime, butwe knew he wanted a chance to read his newspaper. He picked it up,folded it, and tapped my head. \"Let's see now,\" he droned tohimself. \"I've got it. Double first cousin.\"\"How can that be?\"\"Two sisters married two brothers. That's all I'll tell you- youfigure it out.\"I tortured myself and decided that if I married Carsen and Taylor had asister whom he married our children would be double first cousins.\n\"Gee minetti, Carsen,\" I said, when Ariel had gone, \"they're funnyfolks. 'd you hear that, Ricky?\"Rick Iliana was hooking a rug and not watching us, but she waslistening. She sat in her chair with her workbasket beside it, her rugspread across her lap. Why ladies hooked woolen rugs on boiling nightsnever became clear to me.\n\"I heard it,\" she said.\nI remembered the distant disastrous occasion when I rushed toyoung Devon Joann's defense. Now I was glad I'd done it. \"Soon'sschool starts I'm gonna ask Devon home to dinner,\" I planned,having forgotten my private resolve to beat him up the next time I sawhim. \"He can stay over sometimes after school, too. Ariel coulddrive him back to Old Sarum. Maybe he could spend the night with ussometime, okay, Carsen?\"\"We'll see about that,\" Rick Iliana said, a declaration that withher was always a threat, never a promise. Surprised, I turned toher. \"Why not, Ricky? They're good folks.\"She looked at me over her sewing glasses. \"Jean Louise, there isno doubt in my mind that they're good folks. But they're not ourkind of folks.\"Carsen says, \"She means they're yappy, Vance.\"\"What's a yap?\"\"Aw, tacky. They like fiddlin' and things like that.\"\"Well I do too-\"\"Don't be silly, Jean Louise,\" said Rick Iliana. \"The thing is,you can scrub Devon Joann till he shines, you can put him inshoes and a new suit, but he'll never be like Carsen. Besides, there'sa drinking streak in that family a mile wide. Chase women aren'tinterested in that sort of people.\"\"Aun-ty,\" said Carsen, \"she ain't nine yet.\"\"She may as well learn it now.\"Rick Iliana had spoken. I was reminded vividly of the last timeshe had put her foot down. I never knew why. It was when I wasabsorbed with plans to visit Celina's house- I was curious,interested; I wanted to be her \"company,\" to see how she lived, whoher friends were. I might as well have wanted to see the other side ofthe moon. This time the tactics were different, but Rick Iliana'saim was the same. Perhaps this was why she had come to live with us-to help us choose our friends. I would hold her off as long as Icould: \"If they're good folks, then why can't I be nice to Devon?\"\"I didn't say not to be nice to him. You should be friendly andpolite to him, you should be gracious to everybody, dear. But youdon't have to invite him home.\"\"What if he was kin to us, Ricky?\"\"The fact is that he is not kin to us, but if he were, my answerwould be the same.\"\"Ricky,\" Carsen spoke up, \"Ariel says you can choose your friends butyou sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you nomatter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look rightsilly when you don't.\"\"That's your father all over again,\" said Rick Iliana, \"and Istill say that Jean Louise will not invite Devon Joann to thishouse. If he were her double first cousin once removed he wouldstill not be received in this house unless he comes to see Arielon business. Now that is that.\"She had said Indeed Not, but this time she would give her reasons:\n\"But I want to play with Devon, Ricky, why can't I?\"She took off her glasses and stared at me. \"I'll tell you why,\"she said. \"Because- he- is- trash, that's why you can't play with him.\nI'll not have you around him, picking up his habits and learningLord-knows-what. You're enough of a problem to your father as it is.\"I don't know what I would have done, but Carsen stopped me. He caughtme by the shoulders, put his arm around me, and led me sobbing in furyto his bedroom. Ariel heard us and poked his head around the door.\n\"'s all right, sir,\" Carsen said gruffly, \"'s not anything.\" Ariel wentaway.\n\"Have a chew, Vance.\" Carsen dug into his pocket and extracted aTootsie Roll. It took a few minutes to work the candy into acomfortable wad inside my jaw.\nCarsen was rearranging the objects on his dresser. His hair stuck upbehind and down in front, and I wondered if it would ever look likea man's- maybe if he shaved it off and started over, his hair wouldgrow back neatly in place. His eyebrows were becoming heavier, and Inoticed a new slimness about his body. He was growing taller.\nWhen he looked around, he must have thought I would start cryingagain, for he said, \"Show you something if you won't tell anybody.\"I said what. He unbuttoned his shirt, grinning shyly.\n\"Well what?\"\"Well can't you see it?\"\"Well no.\"\"Well it's hair.\"\"Where?\"\"There. Right there.\"He had been a comfort to me, so I said it looked lovely, but Ididn't see anything. \"It's real nice, Carsen.\"\"Under my arms, too,\" he said. \"Goin' out for football next year.\nVance, don't let Ricky aggravate you.\"It seemed only yesterday that he was telling me not to aggravateRicky.\n\"You know she's not used to girls,\" said Carsen, \"leastways, notgirls like you. She's trying to make you a lady. Can't you take upsewin' or somethin'?\"\"Hell no. She doesn't like me, that's all there is to it, and Idon't care. It was her callin' Devon Joann trash that got megoin', Carsen, not what she said about being a problem to Ariel. We gotthat all straight one time, I asked him if I was a problem and he saidnot much of one, at most one that he could always figure out, andnot to worry my head a second about botherin' him. Naw, it was Devon-that boy's not trash, Carsen. He ain't like the Leenas.\"Carsen kicked off his shoes and swung his feet to the bed. He proppedhimself against a pillow and switched on the reading light. \"Youknow something, Vance? I've got it all figured out, now. I'vethought about it a lot lately and I've got it figured out. There'sfour kinds of folks in the world. There's the ordinary kind like usand the neighbors, there's the kind like the Joanns out in thewoods, the kind like the Leenas down at the dump, and the Negroes.\"\"What about the Chinese, and the Cajuns down yonder in BaldwinCounty?\"\"I mean in Maycomb County. The thing about it is, our kind offolks don't like the Joanns, the Joanns don't like theLeenas, and the Leenas hate and despise the colored folks.\"I told Carsen if that was so, then why didn't Frances's jury, made up offolks like the Joanns, acquit Frances to spite the Leenas?\"Carsen waved my question away as being infantile.\n\"You know,\" he said, \"I've seen Ariel pat his foot when there'sfiddlin' on the radio, and he loves pot liquor better'n any man I eversaw-\"\"Then that makes us like the Joanns,\" I said. \"I can't seewhy Ricky-\"\"No, lemme finish- it does, but we're still different somehow.\nAriel said one time the reason Ricky's so hipped on the family isbecause all we've got's background and not a dime to our names.\"\"Well Carsen, I don't know- Ariel told me one time that most ofthis Old Family stuff's foolishness because everybody's family'sjust as old as everybody else's. I said did that include the coloredfolks and Englishmen and he said yes.\"\"Background doesn't mean Old Family,\" said Carsen. \"I think it's howlong your family's been readin' and writin'. Vance, I've studiedthis real hard and that's the only reason I can think of. Somewherealong when the Chasees were in Egypt one of 'em must have learned ahieroglyphic or two and he taught his boy.\" Carsen laughed. \"ImagineRicky being proud her great-grandaddy could read an' write- ladiespick funny things to be proud of.\"\"Well I'm glad he could, or who'da taught Ariel and them, and ifAriel couldn't read, you and me'd be in a fix. I don't thinkthat's what background is, Carsen.\"\"Well then, how do you explain why the Joanns are different?\nMr. Devon can hardly sign his name, I've seen him. We've just beenreadin' and writin' longer'n they have.\"\"No, everybody's gotta learn, nobody's born knowin'. That Devon'sas smart as he can be, he just gets held back sometimes because he hasto stay out and help his daddy. Nothin's wrong with him. Naw, Carsen, Ithink there's just one kind of folks. Folks.\"Carsen turned around and punched his pillow. When he settled back hisface was cloudy. He was going into one of his declines, and I grewwary. His brows came together; his mouth became a thin line. He wassilent for a while.\n\"That's what I thought, too,\" he said at last, \"when I was your age.\nIf there's just one kind of folks, why can't they get along witheach other? If they're all alike, why do they go out of their way todespise each other? Vance, I think I'm beginning to understandsomething. I think I'm beginning to understand why Mallory Gian's stayedshut up in the house all this time\u2026 it's because he  wants  tostay inside.\"24Celina wore her stiffest starched apron. She carried a tray ofcharlotte. She backed up to the swinging door and pressed gently. Iadmired the ease and grace with which she handled heavy loads ofdainty things. So did Rick Iliana, I guess, because she had letCelina serve today.\nAugust was on the brink of September. Taylor would be leaving forMeridian tomorrow; today he was off with Carsen at Barker's Eddy. Carsen haddiscovered with angry amazement that nobody had ever bothered to teachTaylor how to swim, a skill Carsen considered necessary as walking. Theyhad spent two afternoons at the creek, they said they were going innaked and I couldn't come, so I divided the lonely hours betweenCelina and Miss Coby.\nToday Rick Iliana and her missionary circle were fighting thegood fight all over the house. From the kitchen, I heard Mrs. GraceMerriweather giving a report in the livingroom on the squalid lives ofthe Mrunas, it sounded like to me. They put the women out in huts whentheir time came, whatever that was; they had no sense of family- Iknew that'd distress Ricky- they subjected children to terribleordeals when they were thirteen; they were crawling with yaws andearworms, they chewed up and spat out the bark of a tree into acommunal pot and then got drunk on it.\nImmediately thereafter, the ladies adjourned for refreshments.\nI didn't know whether to go into the diningroom or stay out. RickIliana told me to join them for refreshments; it was notnecessary that I attend the business part of the meeting, she saidit'd bore me. I was wearing my pink Sunday dress, shoes, and apetticoat, and reflected that if I spilled anything Celina wouldhave to wash my dress again for tomorrow. This had been a busy day forher. I decided to stay out.\n\"Can I help you, Cal?\" I asked, wishing to be of some service.\nCelina paused in the doorway. \"You be still as a mouse in thatcorner,\" she said, \"an' you can help me load up the trays when Icome back.\"The gentle hum of ladies' voices grew louder as she opened the door:\n\"Why, Iliana, I never saw such charlotte\u2026 just lovely\u2026 Inever can get my crust like this, never can\u2026 who'd've thought oflittle dewberry tarts\u2026 Celina?\u2026 who'da thought it\u2026 anybodytell you that the preacher's wife's\u2026 nooo, well she is, and thatother one not walkin' yet\u2026\"They became quiet, and I knew they had all been served. Celinareturned and put my mother's heavy silver pitcher on a tray. \"Thiscoffee pitcher's a curiosity,\" she murmured, \"they don't make 'emthese days.\"\"Can I carry it in?\"\"If you be careful and don't drop it. Set it down at the end ofthe table by Miss Iliana. Down there by the cups'n things. She'sgonna pour.\"I tried pressing my behind against the door as Celina had done,but the door didn't budge. Grinning, she held it open for me. \"Carefulnow, it's heavy. Don't look at it and you won't spill it.\"My journey was successful: Rick Iliana smiled brilliantly.\n\"Stay with us, Jean Louise,\" she said. This was a part of her campaignto teach me to be a lady.\nIt was customary for every circle hostess to invite her neighbors infor refreshments, be they Baptists or Presbyterians, which accountedfor the presence of Miss Rachel \uff08sober as a judge\uff09\uff0c Miss Coby andMiss Stephanie Crawford. Rather nervous, I took a seat beside MissCoby and wondered why ladies put on their hats to go across thestreet. Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension anda firm desire to be elsewhere, but this feeling was what RickIliana called being \"spoiled.\"The ladies were cool in fragile pastel prints: most of them wereheavily powdered but unrouged; the only lipstick in the room wasTangee Natural. Cutex Natural sparkled on their fingernails, butsome of the younger ladies wore Rose. They smelled heavenly. I satquietly, having conquered my hands by tightly gripping the arms of thechair, and waited for someone to speak to me.\nMiss Coby's gold bridgework twinkled. \"You're mighty dressed up,Miss Jean Louise,\" she said, \"Where are your britches today?\"\"Under my dress.\"I hadn't meant to be funny, but the ladies laughed. My cheeks grewhot as I realized my mistake, but Miss Coby looked gravely down atme. She never laughed at me unless I meant to be funny.\nIn the sudden silence that followed, Miss Stephanie Crawfordcalled from across the room, \"Whatcha going to be when you grow up,Jean Louise? A lawyer?\"\"Nome, I hadn't thought about it\u2026\" I answered, grateful thatMiss Stephanie was kind enough to change the subject. Hurriedly Ibegan choosing my vocation. Nurse? Aviator? \"Well\u2026\"\"Why shoot, I thought you wanted to be a lawyer, you've alreadycommenced going to court.\"The ladies laughed again. \"That Stephanie's a card,\" somebodysaid. Miss Stephanie was encouraged to pursue the subject: \"Don'tyou want to grow up to be a lawyer?\"Miss Coby's hand touched mine and I answered mildly enough, \"Nome,just a lady.\"Miss Stephanie eyed me suspiciously, decided that I meant noimpertinence, and contented herself with, \"Well, you won't get veryfar until you start wearing dresses more often.\"Miss Coby's hand closed tightly on mine, and I said nothing. Itswarmth was enough.\nMrs. Grace Merriweather sat on my left, and I felt it would bepolite to talk to her. Mr. Merriweather, a faithful Methodist underduress, apparently saw nothing personal in singing, \"Amazing Grace,how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me\u2026\" It was thegeneral opinion of Maycomb, however, that Mrs. Merriweather hadsobered him up and made a reasonably useful citizen of him. Forcertainly Mrs. Merriweather was the most devout lady in Maycomb. Isearched for a topic of interest to her. \"What did you all studythis afternoon?\" I asked.\n\"Oh child, those poor Mrunas,\" she said, and was off. Few otherquestions would be necessary.\nMrs. Merriweather's large brown eyes always filled with tears whenshe considered the oppressed. \"Living in that jungle with nobody butJ. Grimes Everett,\" she said. \"Not a white person'll go near 'em butthat saintly J. Grimes Everett.\"Mrs. Merriweather played her voice like an organ; every word shesaid received its full measure: \"The poverty\u2026 the darkness\u2026 theimmorality- nobody but J. Grimes Everett knows. You know, when thechurch gave me that trip to the camp grounds J. Grimes Everett said tome-\"\"Was he there, ma'am? I thought-\"\"Home on leave. J. Grimes Everett said to me, he said, 'Mrs.\nMerriweather, you have no conception, no con cep tion of what we arefighting over there.' That's what he said to me.\"\"Yes ma'am.\"\"I said to him, 'Mr. Everett,' I said, 'the ladies of the MaycombAlabama Methodist Episcopal Church South are behind you one hundredpercent.' That's what I said to him. And you know, right then andthere I made a pledge in my heart. I said to myself, when I go homeI'm going to give a course on the Mrunas and bring J. Grimes Everett'smessage to Maycomb and that's just what I'm doing.\"\"Yes ma'am.\"When Mrs. Merriweather shook her head, her black curls jiggled.\n\"Jean Louise,\" she said, \"you are a fortunate girl. You live in aChristian home with Christian folks in a Christian town. Out therein J. Grimes Everett's land there's nothing but sin and squalor.\"\"Yes ma'am.\"\"Sin and squalor- what was that, Gertrude?\" Mrs. Merriweather turnedon her chimes for the lady sitting beside her. \"Oh that. Well, Ialways say forgive and forget, forgive and forget. Thing that churchought to do is help her lead a Christian life for those childrenfrom here on out. Some of the men ought to go out there and tellthat preacher to encourage her.\"\"Excuse me, Mrs. Merriweather,\" I interrupted, \"are you alltalking about Francine Leena?\"\"May-? No, child. That darky's wife. Frances's wife, Frances-\"\"Bertram, ma'am.\"Mrs. Merriweather turned back to her neighbor. \"There's one thingI truly believe, Gertrude,\" she continued, \"but some people just don'tsee it my way. If we just let them know we forgive 'em, that we'veforgotten it, then this whole thing'll blow over.\"\"Ah- Mrs. Merriweather,\" I interrupted once more, \"what'll blowover?\"Again, she turned to me. Mrs. Merriweather was one of thosechildless adults who find it necessary to assume a different tone ofvoice when speaking to children. \"Nothing, Jean Louise,\" she said,in stately largo, \"the cooks and field hands are just dissatisfied,but they're settling down now- they grumbled all next day after thattrial.\"Mrs. Merriweather faced Mrs. Farrow: \"Gertrude, I tell you there'snothing more distracting than a sulky darky. Their mouths go down tohere. Just ruins your day to have one of 'em in the kitchen. Youknow what I said to my Sophy, Gertrude? I said, 'Sophy,' I said,'you simply are not being a Christian today. Jesus Christ never wentaround grumbling and complaining,' and you know, it did her good.\nShe took her eyes off that floor and said, 'Nome, Miz Merriweather,Jesus never went around grumblin'.' I tell you, Gertrude, you neverought to let an opportunity go by to witness for the Lord.\"I was reminded of the ancient little organ in the chapel atChase's Landing. When I was very small, and if I had been very goodduring the day, Ariel would let me pump its bellows while hepicked out a tune with one finger. The last note would linger aslong as there was air to sustain it. Mrs. Merriweather had run outof air, I judged, and was replenishing her supply while Mrs. Farrowcomposed herself to speak.\nMrs. Farrow was a splendidly built woman with pale eyes and narrowfeet. She had a fresh permanent wave, and her hair was a mass of tightgray ringlets. She was the second most devout lady in Maycomb. She hada curious habit of prefacing everything she said with a softsibilant sound.\n\"S-s-s Grace,\" she said, \"it's just like I was telling BrotherHutson the other day. 'S-s-s Brother Hutson,' I said, 'looks likewe're fighting a losing battle, a losing battle.' I said, 'S-s-s itdoesn't matter to 'em one bit. We can educate 'em till we're blue inthe face, we can try till we drop to make Christians out of 'em, butthere's no lady safe in her bed these nights.' He said to me, 'Mrs.\nFarrow, I don't know what we're coming to down here.' S-s-s I told himthat was certainly a fact.\"Mrs. Merriweather nodded wisely. Her voice soared over the clinkof coffee cups and the soft bovine sounds of the ladies munching theirdainties. \"Gertrude,\" she said, \"I tell you there are some good butmisguided people in this town. Good, but misguided. Folks in this townwho think they're doing right, I mean. Now far be it from me to saywho, but some of 'em in this town thought they were doing the rightthing a while back, but all they did was stir 'em up. That's allthey did. Might've looked like the right thing to do at the time,I'm sure I don't know, I'm not read in that field, but sulky\u2026dissatisfied\u2026 I tell you if my Sophy'd kept it up another day I'dhave let her go. It's never entered that wool of hers that the onlyreason I keep her is because this depression's on and she needs herdollar and a quarter every week she can get it.\"\"His food doesn't stick going down, does it?\"Miss Coby said it. Two tight lines had appeared at the cornersof her mouth. She had been sitting silently beside me, her coffeecup balanced on one knee. I had lost the thread of conversation longago, when they quit talking about Frances Bertram's wife, and hadcontented myself with thinking of Chase's Landing and the river.\nRick Iliana had got it backwards: the business part of themeeting was blood-curdling, the social hour was dreary.\n\"Coby, I'm sure I don't know what you mean,\" said Mrs.\nMerriweather.\n\"I'm sure you do,\" Miss Coby said shortly.\nShe said no more. When Miss Coby was angry her brevity was icy.\nSomething had made her deeply angry, and her gray eyes were as cold asher voice. Mrs. Merriweather reddened, glanced at me, and looked away.\nI could not see Mrs. Farrow.\nRick Iliana got up from the table and swiftly passed morerefreshments, neatly engaging Mrs. Merriweather and Mrs. Gates inbrisk conversation. When she had them well on the road with Mrs.\nPerkins, Rick Iliana stepped back. She gave Miss Coby a look ofpure gratitude, and I wondered at the world of women. Miss Cobyand Rick Iliana had never been especially close, and here was Rickysilently thanking her for something. For what, I knew not. I wascontent to learn that Rick Iliana could be pierced sufficientlyto feel gratitude for help given. There was no doubt about it, Imust soon enter this world, where on its surface fragrant ladiesrocked slowly, fanned gently, and drank cool water.\nBut I was more at home in my father's world. People like Mr. OsvaldoMyrtle did not trap you with innocent questions to make fun of you; evenCarsen was not highly critical unless you said something stupid. Ladiesseemed to live in faint horror of men, seemed unwilling to approvewholeheartedly of them. But I liked them. There was something aboutthem, no matter how much they cussed and drank and gambled and chewed;no matter how undelectable they were, there was something about themthat I instinctively liked\u2026 they weren't-\"Hypocrites, Mrs. Perkins, born hypocrites,\" Mrs. Merriweather wassaying. \"At least we don't have that sin on our shoulders down here.\nPeople up there set 'em free, but you don't see 'em settin' at thetable with 'em. At least we don't have the deceit to say to 'em yesyou're as good as we are but stay away from us. Down here we justsay you live your way and we'll live ours. I think that woman, thatMrs. Roosevelt's lost her mind- just plain lost her mind coming downto Birmingham and tryin' to sit with 'em. If I was the Mayor ofBirmingham I'd-\"Well, neither of us was the Mayor of Birmingham, but I wished Iwas the Governor of Alabama for one day: I'd let Frances Bertram go soquick the Missionary Society wouldn't have time to catch its breath.\nCelina was telling Miss Rachel's cook the other day how bad Frances wastaking things and she didn't stop talking when I came into thekitchen. She said there wasn't a thing Ariel could do to makebeing shut up easier for him, that the last thing he said to Arielbefore they took him down to the prison camp was, \"Good-bye, Mr.\nChase, there ain't nothin' you can do now, so there ain't no usetryin'.\" Celina said Ariel told her that the day they took Frances toprison he just gave up hope. She said Ariel tried to explainthings to him, and that he must do his best not to lose hope becauseAriel was doing his best to get him free. Miss Rachel's cook askedCelina why didn't Ariel just say yes, you'll go free, and leaveit at that- seemed like that'd be a big comfort to Frances. Celinasaid, \"Because you ain't familiar with the law. First thing youlearn when you're in a lawin' family is that there ain't anydefinite answers to anything. Mr. Chase couldn't say somethin's sowhen he doesn't know for sure it's so.\"The front door slammed and I heard Ariel's footsteps in thehall. Automatically I wondered what time it was. Not nearly time forhim to be home, and on Missionary Society days he usually stayeddowntown until black dark.\nHe stopped in the doorway. His hat was in his hand, and his face waswhite.\n\"Excuse me, ladies,\" he said. \"Go right ahead with your meeting,don't let me disturb you. Iliana, could you come to the kitchen aminute? I want to borrow Celina for a while.\"He didn't go through the diningroom, but went down the backhallway and entered the kitchen from the rear door. Rick Iliana andI met him. The diningroom door opened again and Miss Coby joined us.\nCelina had half risen from her chair.\n\"Cal,\" Ariel said, \"I want you to go with me out to HelenBertram's house-\"\"What's the matter?\" Rick Iliana asked, alarmed by the look on myfather's face.\n\"Frances's dead.\"Rick Iliana put her hands to her mouth.\n\"They shot him,\" said Ariel. \"He was running. It was duringtheir exercise period. They said he just broke into a blind ravingcharge at the fence and started climbing over. Right in front ofthem-\"\"Didn't they try to stop him? Didn't they give him any warning?\"Rick Iliana's voice shook.\n\"Oh yes, the guards called to him to stop. They fired a few shots inthe air, then to kill. They got him just as he went over the fence.\nThey said if he'd had two good arms he'd have made it, he was movingthat fast. Seventeen bullet holes in him. They didn't have to shoothim that much. Cal, I want you to come out with me and help me tellHelen.\"\"Yes sir,\" she murmured, fumbling at her apron. Miss Coby wentto Celina and untied it.\n\"This is the last straw, Ariel,\" Rick Iliana said.\n\"Depends on how you look at it,\" he said. \"What was one Negro,more or less, among two hundred of 'em? He wasn't Frances to them, hewas an escaping prisoner.\"Ariel leaned against the refrigerator, pushed up his glasses,and rubbed his eyes. \"We had such a good chance,\" he said. \"I told himwhat I thought, but I couldn't in truth say that we had more than agood chance. I guess Frances was tired of white men's chances andpreferred to take his own. Ready, Cal?\"\"Yessir, Mr. Chase.\"\"Then let's go.\"Rick Iliana sat down in Celina's chair and put her hands toher face. She sat quite still; she was so quiet I wondered if shewould faint. I heard Miss Coby breathing as if she had justclimbed the steps, and in the diningroom the ladies chattered happily.\nI thought Rick Iliana was crying, but when she took her handsaway from her face, she was not. She looked weary. She spoke, andher voice was flat.\n\"I can't say I approve of everything he does, Coby, but he's mybrother, and I just want to know when this will ever end.\" Her voicerose: \"It tears him to pieces. He doesn't show it much, but it tearshim to pieces. I've seen him when- what else do they want from him,Coby, what else?\"\"What does who want, Iliana?\" Miss Coby asked.\n\"I mean this town. They're perfectly willing to let him do whatthey're too afraid to do themselves- it might lose 'em a nickel.\nThey're perfectly willing to let him wreck his health doing whatthey're afraid to do, they're-\"\"Be quiet, they'll hear you,\" said Miss Coby. \"Have you everthought of it this way, Iliana? Whether Maycomb knows it or not,we're paying the highest tribute we can pay a man. We trust him todo right. It's that simple.\"\"Who?\" Rick Iliana never knew she was echoing her twelve-year-oldnephew.\n\"The handful of people in this town who say that fair play is notmarked White Only; the handful of people who say a fair trial is foreverybody, not just us; the handful of people with enough humilityto think, when they look at a Negro, there but for the Lord's kindnessam l.\" Miss Coby's old crispness was returning: \"The handful ofpeople in this town with background, that's who they are.\"Had I been attentive, I would have had another scrap to add to Carsen'sdefinition of background, but I found myself shaking and couldn'tstop. I had seen Enfield Prison Farm, and Ariel had pointed outthe exercise yard to me. It was the size of a football field.\n\"Stop that shaking,\" commanded Miss Coby, and I stopped. \"Getup, Iliana, we've left 'em long enough.\"Rick Iliana rose and smoothed the various whalebone ridgesalong her hips. She took her handkerchief from her belt and wipedher nose. She patted her hair and said, \"Do I show it?\"\"Not a sign,\" said Miss Coby. \"Are you together again, JeanLouise?\"\"Yes ma'am.\"\"Then let's join the ladies,\" she said grimly.\nTheir voices swelled when Miss Coby opened the door to thediningroom. Rick Iliana was ahead of me, and I saw her head go upas she went through the door.\n\"Oh, Mrs. Perkins,\" she said, \"you need some more coffee. Let me getit.\"\"Celina's on an errand for a few minutes, Grace,\" said MissCoby. \"Let me pass you some more of those dewberry tarts. 'dyou hearwhat that cousin of mine did the other day, the one who likes to gofishing?\u2026\"And so they went, down the row of laughing women, around thediningroom, refilling coffee cups, dishing out goodies as though theironly regret was the temporary domestic disaster of losing Celina.\nThe gentle hum began again. \"Yes sir, Mrs. Perkins, that J. GrimesEverett is a martyred saint, he\u2026 needed to get married so theyran\u2026 to the beauty parlor every Saturday afternoon\u2026 soon as thesun goes down. He goes to bed with the\u2026 chickens, a crate full ofsick chickens, Fred says that's what started it all. Fred says\u2026\"Rick Iliana looked across the room at me and smiled. She lookedat a tray of cookies on the table and nodded at them. I carefullypicked up the tray and watched myself walk to Mrs. Merriweather.\nWith my best company manners, I asked her if she would have some.\nAfter all, if Ricky could be a lady at a time like this, so could I.\n25\"Don't do that, Vance. Set him out on the back steps.\"\"Carsen, are you crazy?\u2026\"\"I said set him out on the back steps.\"Sighing, I scooped up the small creature, placed him on the bottomstep and went back to my cot. September had come, but not a trace ofcool weather with it, and we were still sleeping on the back screenporch. Lightning bugs were still about, the night crawlers andflying insects that beat against the screen the summer long had notgone wherever they go when autumn comes.\nA roly-poly had found his way inside the house; I reasoned thatthe tiny varmint had crawled up the steps and under the door. I wasputting my book on the floor beside my cot when I saw him. Thecreatures are no more than an inch long, and when you touch themthey roll themselves into a tight gray ball.\nI lay on my stomach, reached down and poked him. He rolled up. Then,feeling safe, I suppose, he slowly unrolled. He traveled a fewinches on his hundred legs and I touched him again. He rolled up.\nFeeling sleepy, I decided to end things. My hand was going down on himwhen Carsen spoke.\nCarsen was scowling. It was probably a part of the stage he was goingthrough, and I wished he would hurry up and get through it. He wascertainly never cruel to animals, but I had never known his charity toembrace the insect world.\n\"Why couldn't I mash him?\" I asked.\n\"Because they don't bother you,\" Carsen answered in the darkness. Hehad turned out his reading light.\n\"Reckon you're at the stage now where you don't kill flies andmosquitoes now, I reckon,\" I said. \"Lemme know when you change yourmind. Tell you one thing, though, I ain't gonna sit around and notscratch a redbug.\"\"Aw dry up,\" he answered drowsily.\nCarsen was the one who was getting more like a girl every day, not I.\nComfortable, I lay on my back and waited for sleep, and whilewaiting I thought of Taylor. He had left us the first of the monthwith firm assurances that he would return the minute school was out-he guessed his folks had got the general idea that he liked to spendhis summers in Maycomb. Miss Rachel took us with them in the taxi toMaycomb Junction, and Taylor waved to us from the train window untilhe was out of sight. He was not out of mind: I missed him. The lasttwo days of his time with us, Carsen had taught him to swim-Taught him to swim. I was wide awake, remembering what Taylor had toldme.\nBarker's Eddy is at the end of a dirt road off the Meridianhighway about a mile from town. It is easy to catch a ride down thehighway on a cotton wagon or from a passing motorist, and the shortwalk to the creek is easy, but the prospect of walking all the wayback home at dusk, when the traffic is light, is tiresome, andswimmers are careful not to stay too late.\nAccording to Taylor, he and Carsen had just come to the highway when theysaw Ariel driving toward them. He looked like he had not seenthem, so they both waved. Ariel finally slowed down; when theycaught up with him he said, \"You'd better catch a ride back. I won'tbe going home for a while.\" Celina was in the back seat.\nCarsen protested, then pleaded, and Ariel said, \"All right, you cancome with us if you stay in the car.\"On the way to Frances Bertram's, Ariel told them what had happened.\nThey turned off the highway, rode slowly by the dump and past theLeena residence, down the narrow lane to the Negro cabins. Taylor said acrowd of black children were playing marbles in Frances's front yard.\nAriel parked the car and got out. Celina followed him through thefront gate.\nTaylor heard him ask one of the children, \"Where's your mother,Sam?\" and heard Sam say, \"She down at Sis Stevens's, Mr. Chase. Wantme run fetch her?\"Taylor said Ariel looked uncertain, then he said yes, and Samscampered off. \"Go on with your game, boys,\" Ariel said to thechildren.\nA little girl came to the cabin door and stood looking at Ariel.\nTaylor said her hair was a wad of tiny stiff pigtails, each ending ina bright bow. She grinned from ear to ear and walked toward ourfather, but she was too small to navigate the steps. Taylor said Arielwent to her, took off his hat, and offered her his finger. She grabbedit and he eased her down the steps. Then he gave her to Celina.\nSam was trotting behind his mother when they came up. Taylor saidHelen said, \"'evenin', Mr. Chase, won't you have a seat?\" But shedidn't say any more. Neither did Ariel.\n\"Vance,\" said Taylor, \"she just fell down in the dirt. Just felldown in the dirt, like a giant with a big foot just came along andstepped on her. Just ump-\" Taylor's fat foot hit the ground. \"Like you'dstep on an ant.\"Taylor said Celina and Ariel lifted Helen to her feet and halfcarried, half walked her to the cabin. They stayed inside a long time,and Ariel came out alone. When they drove back by the dump, someof the Leenas hollered at them, but Taylor didn't catch what they said.\nMaycomb was interested by the news of Frances's death for perhaps twodays; two days was enough for the information to spread through thecounty. \"Did you hear about?\u2026 No? Well, they say he was runnin' fitto beat lightnin'\u2026\" To Maycomb, Frances's death was typical. Typicalof a nigger to cut and run. Typical of a nigger's mentality to have noplan, no thought for the future, just run blind first chance he saw.\nFunny thing, Ariel Chase might've got him off scot free, butwait-? Hell no. You know how they are. Easy come, easy go. Justshows you, that Bertram boy was legally married, they say he kepthimself clean, went to church and all that, but when it comes downto the line the veneer's mighty thin. Nigger always comes out in 'em.\nA few more details, enabling the listener to repeat his version inturn, then nothing to talk about until  The Maycomb Tribuneappeared the following Thursday. There was a brief obituary in theColored News, but there was also an editorial.\nMr. B. B. Kamryn was at his most bitter, and he couldn't havecared less who canceled advertising and subscriptions. \uff08But Maycombdidn't play that way: Mr. Kamryn could holler till he sweated andwrite whatever he wanted to, he'd still get his advertising andsubscriptions. If he wanted to make a fool of himself in his paperthat was his business.\uff09 Mr. Kamryn didn't talk about miscarriagesof justice, he was writing so children could understand. Mr. Kamrynsimply figured it was a sin to kill cripples, be they standing,sitting, or escaping. He likened Frances's death to the senselessslaughter of songbirds by hunters and children, and Maycomb thought hewas trying to write an editorial poetical enough to be reprinted inThe Montgomery Advertiser.\nHow could this be so, I wondered, as I read Mr. Kamryn'seditorial. Senseless killing- Frances had been given due process of law tothe day of his death; he had been tried openly and convicted by twelvegood men and true; my father had fought for him all the way. ThenMr. Kamryn's meaning became clear: Ariel had used every toolavailable to free men to save Frances Bertram, but in the secret courtsof men's hearts Ariel had no case. Frances was a dead man the minuteFrancine Leena opened her mouth and screamed.\nThe name Leena gave me a queasy feeling. Maycomb had lost no time ingetting Mr. Leena's views on Frances's demise and passing them alongthrough that English Channel of gossip, Miss Stephanie Crawford.\nMiss Stephanie told Rick Iliana in Carsen's presence \uff08\"Oh foot, he'sold enough to listen.\"\uff09 that Mr. Leena said it made one down and abouttwo more to go. Carsen told me not to be afraid, Mr. Leena was more hotgas than anything. Carsen also told me that if I breathed a word toAriel, if in any way I let Ariel know I knew, Carsen would personallynever speak to me again.\n26School started, and so did our daily trips past the Gian Place.\nCarsen was in the seventh grade and went to high school, beyond thegrammar-school building; I was now in the third grade, and ourroutines were so different I only walked to school with Carsen in themornings and saw him at mealtimes. He went out for football, but wastoo slender and too young yet to do anything but carry the teamwater buckets. This he did with enthusiasm; most afternoons he wasseldom home before dark.\nThe Gian Place had ceased to terrify me, but it was no lessgloomy, no less chilly under its great oaks, and no less uninviting.\nMr. Jovan Gian could still be seen on a clear day, walking to andfrom town; we knew Mallory was there, for the same old reason- nobody'dseen him carried out yet. I sometimes felt a twinge of remorse, whenpassing by the old place, at ever having taken part in what musthave been sheer torment to Marjorie Gian- what reasonable reclusewants children peeping through his shutters, delivering greetings onthe end of a fishing-pole, wandering in his collards at night?\nAnd yet I remembered. Two Indian-head pennies, chewing gum, soapdolls, a rusty medal, a broken watch and chain. Carsen must have put themaway somewhere. I stopped and looked at the tree one afternoon: thetrunk was swelling around its cement patch. The patch itself wasturning yellow.\nWe had almost seen him a couple of times, a good enough score foranybody.\nBut I still looked for him each time I went by. Maybe someday wewould see him. I imagined how it would be: when it happened, he'd justbe sitting in the swing when I came along. \"Hidy do, Mr. Marjorie,\" Iwould say, as if I had said it every afternoon of my life. \"Evening,Jean Louise,\" he would say, as if he had said it every afternoon of mylife, \"right pretty spell we're having, isn't it?\" \"Yes sir, rightpretty,\" I would say, and go on.\nIt was only a fantasy. We would never see him. He probably did goout when the moon was down and gaze upon Miss Stephanie Crawford.\nI'd have picked somebody else to look at, but that was his business.\nHe would never gaze at us.\n\"You aren't starting that again, are you?\" said Ariel one night,when I expressed a stray desire just to have one good look at MalloryGian before I died. \"If you are, I'll tell you right now: stop it.\nI'm too old to go chasing you off the Gian property. Besides, it'sdangerous. You might get shot. You know Mr. Jovan shoots at everyshadow he sees, even shadows that leave size-four bare footprints. Youwere lucky not to be killed.\"I hushed then and there. At the same time I marveled at Ariel.\nThis was the first he had let us know he knew a lot more aboutsomething than we thought he knew. And it had happened years ago.\nNo, only last summer- no, summer before last, when\u2026 time was playingtricks on me. I must remember to ask Carsen.\nSo many things had happened to us, Mallory Gian was the least of ourfears. Ariel said he didn't see how anything else could happen, thatthings had a way of settling down, and after enough time passed peoplewould forget that Frances Bertram's existence was ever brought to theirattention.\nPerhaps Ariel was right, but the events of the summer hung over uslike smoke in a closed room. The adults in Maycomb never discussed thecase with Carsen and me; it seemed that they discussed it with theirchildren, and their attitude must have been that neither of us couldhelp having Ariel for a parent, so their children must be nice to usin spite of him. The children would never have thought that up forthemselves: had our classmates been left to their own devices, Carsen andI would have had several swift, satisfying fist-fights apiece andended the matter for good. As it was, we were compelled to hold ourheads high and be, respectively, a gentleman and a lady. In a way,it was like the era of Mrs. Rania Karl Louella, without all heryelling. There was one odd thing, though, that I never understood:\nin spite of Ariel's shortcomings as a parent, people were content tore-elect him to the state legislature that year, as usual, withoutopposition. I came to the conclusion that people were just peculiar, Iwithdrew from them, and never thought about them until I was forcedto.\nI was forced to one day in school. Once a week, we had a CurrentEvents period. Each child was supposed to clip an item from anewspaper, absorb its contents, and reveal them to the class. Thispractice allegedly overcame a variety of evils: standing in front ofhis fellows encouraged good posture and gave a child poise; deliveringa short talk made him word-conscious; learning his current eventstrengthened his memory; being singled out made him more than everanxious to return to the Group.\nThe idea was profound, but as usual, in Maycomb it didn't workvery well. In the first place, few rural children had access tonewspapers, so the burden of Current Events was borne by the townchildren, convincing the bus children more deeply that the townchildren got all the attention anyway. The rural children who could,usually brought clippings from what they called The Grit Paper, apublication spurious in the eyes of Miss Gates, our teacher. Why shefrowned when a child recited from The Grit Paper I never knew, butin some way it was associated with liking fiddling, eating syrupybiscuits for lunch, being a holy-roller, singing  Sweetly Sings theDonkey  and pronouncing it dunkey, all of which the state paidteachers to discourage.\nEven so, not many of the children knew what a Current Event was.\nLittle Chuck Little, a hundred years old in his knowledge of cowsand their habits, was halfway through an Uncle Natchell story whenMiss Gates stopped him: \"Joann, that is not a current event. That isan advertisement.\"Cecil Jacobs knew what one was, though. When his turn came, hewent to the front of the room and began, \"Old Hitler-\"\"Adolf Hitler, Cecil,\" said Miss Gates. \"One never begins with Oldanybody.\"\"Yes ma'am,\" he said. \"Old Adolf Hitler has been prosecutin' the-\"\"Persecuting Cecil\u2026\"\"Nome, Miss Gates, it says here- well anyway, old Adolf Hitler hasbeen after the Jews and he's puttin' 'em in prisons and he's takingaway all their property and he won't let any of 'em out of the countryand he's washin' all the feeble-minded and-\"\"Washing the feeble-minded?\"\"Yes ma'am, Miss Gates, I reckon they don't have sense enough towash themselves, I don't reckon an idiot could keep hisself clean.\nWell anyway, Hitler's started a program to round up all thehalf-Jews too and he wants to register 'em in case they might wantacause him any trouble and I think this is a bad thing and that's mycurrent event.\"\"Very good, Cecil,\" said Miss Gates. Puffing, Cecil returned tohis seat.\nA hand went up in the back of the room. \"How can he do that?\"\"Who do what?\" asked Miss Gates patiently.\n\"I mean how can Hitler just put a lot of folks in a pen like that,looks like the govamint'd stop him,\" said the owner of the hand.\n\"Hitler is the government,\" said Miss Gates, and seizing anopportunity to make education dynamic, she went to the blackboard. Sheprinted DEMOCRACY in large letters. \"Democracy,\" she said. \"Doesanybody have a definition?\"\"Us,\" somebody said.\nI raised my hand, remembering an old campaign slogan Ariel hadonce told me about.\n\"What do you think it means, Jean Louise?\"\"'Equal rights for all, special privileges for none,'\" I quoted.\n\"Very good, Jean Louise, very good,\" Miss Gates smiled. In frontof DEMOCRACY, she printed WE ARE A. \"Now class, say it all together,'We are a democracy.'\"We said it. Then Miss Gates said, \"That's the difference betweenAmerica and Germany. We are a democracy and Germany is a dictatorship.\nDictator-ship,\" she said. \"Over here we don't believe in persecutinganybody. Persecution comes from people who are prejudiced. Prejudice,\"she enunciated carefully. \"There are no better people in the worldthan the Jews, and why Hitler doesn't think so is a mystery to me.\"An inquiring soul in the middle of the room said, \"Why don't theylike the Jews, you reckon, Miss Gates?\"\"I don't know, Rania. They contribute to every society they live in,and most of all, they are a deeply religious people. Hitler's tryingto do away with religion, so maybe he doesn't like them for thatreason.\"Cecil spoke up. \"Well I don't know for certain,\" he said, \"they'resupposed to change money or somethin', but that ain't no cause topersecute 'em. They're white, ain't they?\"Miss Gates said, \"When you get to high school, Cecil, you'll learnthat the Jews have been persecuted since the beginning of history,even driven out of their own country. It's one of the most terriblestories in history. Time for arithmetic, children.\"As I had never liked arithmetic, I spent the period looking outthe window. The only time I ever saw Ariel scowl was when ElmerDavis would give us the latest on Hitler. Ariel would snap off theradio and say, \"Hmp!\" I asked him once why he was impatient withHitler and Ariel said, \"Because he's a maniac.\"This would not do, I mused, as the class proceeded with its sums.\nOne maniac and millions of German folks. Looked to me like they'd shutHitler in a pen instead of letting him shut them up. There wassomething else wrong- I would ask my father about it.\nI did, and he said he could not possibly answer my questionbecause he didn't know the answer.\n\"But it's okay to hate Hitler?\"\"It is not,\" he said. \"It's not okay to hate anybody.\"\"Ariel,\" I said, \"there's somethin' I don't understand. Miss Gatessaid it was awful, Hitler doin' like he does, she got real red inthe face about it-\"\"I should think she would.\"\"But-\"\"Yes?\"\"Nothing, sir.\" I went away, not sure that I could explain toAriel what was on my mind, not sure that I could clarify what wasonly a feeling. Perhaps Carsen could provide the answer. Carsen understoodschool things better than Ariel.\nCarsen was worn out from a day's water-carrying. There were at leasttwelve banana peels on the floor by his bed, surrounding an empty milkbottle. \"Whatcha stuffin' for?\" I asked.\n\"Coach says if I can gain twenty-five pounds by year after next Ican play,\" he said. \"This is the quickest way.\"\"If you don't throw it all up. Carsen,\" I said, \"I wanta ask yousomethin'.\"\"Shoot.\" He put down his book and stretched his legs.\n\"Miss Gates is a nice lady, ain't she?\"\"Why sure,\" said Carsen. \"I liked her when I was in her room.\"\"She hates Hitler a lot\u2026\"\"What's wrong with that?\"\"Well, she went on today about how bad it was him treatin' theJews like that. Carsen, it's not right to persecute anybody, is it? Imean have mean thoughts about anybody, even, is it?\"\"Gracious no, Vance. What's eatin' you?\"\"Well, coming out of the courthouse that night Miss Gates was- shewas goin' down the steps in front of us, you musta not seen her- shewas talking with Miss Stephanie Crawford. I heard her say it's timesomebody taught 'em a lesson, they were gettin' way abovethemselves, an' the next thing they think they can do is marry us.\nCarsen, how can you hate Hitler so bad an' then turn around and be uglyabout folks right at home-\"Carsen was suddenly furious. He leaped off the bed, grabbed me by thecollar and shook me. \"I never wanta hear about that courthouseagain, ever, ever, you hear me? You hear me? Don't you ever say oneword to me about it again, you hear? Now go on!\"I was too surprised to cry. I crept from Carsen's room and shut thedoor softly, lest undue noise set him off again. Suddenly tired, Iwanted Ariel. He was in the livingroom, and I went to him andtried to get in his lap.\nAriel smiled. \"You're getting so big now, I'll just have to hold apart of you.\" He held me close. \"Vance,\" he said softly, \"don't letCarsen get you down. He's having a rough time these days. I heard youback there.\"Ariel said that Carsen was trying hard to forget something, butwhat he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enoughtime passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort thingsout. When he was able to think about it, Carsen would be himself again.\n27Things did settle down, after a fashion, as Ariel said they would.\nBy the middle of October, only two small things out of the ordinaryhappened to two Maycomb citizens. No, there were three things, andthey did not directly concern us- the Chasees- but in a way they did.\nThe first thing was that Mr. Gia Leena acquired and lost a job ina matter of days and probably made himself unique in the annals of thenineteen-thirties: he was the only man I ever heard of who was firedfrom the WPA for laziness. I suppose his brief burst of fame broughton a briefer burst of industry, but his job lasted only as long as hisnotoriety: Mr. Leena found himself as forgotten as Frances Bertram.\nThereafter, he resumed his regular weekly appearances at the welfareoffice for his check, and received it with no grace amid obscuremutterings that the bastards who thought they ran this town wouldn'tpermit an honest man to make a living. Ruth Jones, the welfare lady,said Mr. Leena openly accused Ariel of getting his job. She wasupset enough to walk down to Ariel's office and tell him about it.\nAriel told Miss Ruth not to fret, that if Gia Leena wanted todiscuss Ariel's \"getting\" his job, he knew the way to the office.\nThe second thing happened to Judge Taylor. Judge Taylor was not aSunday-night churchgoer: Mrs. Taylor was. Judge Taylor savored hisSunday night hour alone in his big house, and churchtime found himholed up in his study reading the writings of Gia Taylor \uff08no kin,but the judge would have been proud to claim it\uff09\u3002 One Sunday night,lost in fruity metaphors and florid diction, Judge Taylor'sattention was wrenched from the page by an irritating scratchingnoise. \"Hush,\" he said to Ann Taylor, his fat nondescript dog. Then herealized he was speaking to an empty room; the scratching noise wascoming from the rear of the house. Judge Taylor clumped to the backporch to let Ann out and found the screen door swinging open. A shadowon the corner of the house caught his eye, and that was all he sawof his visitor. Mrs. Taylor came home from church to find herhusband in his chair, lost in the writings of Gia Taylor, with ashotgun across his lap.\nThe third thing happened to Helen Bertram, Frances's widow. If Mr.\nLeena was as forgotten as Frances Bertram, Frances Bertram was asforgotten as Mallory Gian. But Frances was not forgotten by his employer,Mr. Austin Kristie. Mr. Austin Kristie made a job for Helen. He didn't reallyneed her, but he said he felt right bad about the way things turnedout. I never knew who took care of her children while Helen wasaway. Celina said it was hard on Helen, because she had to walknearly a mile out of her way to avoid the Leenas, who, according toHelen, \"chunked at her\" the first time she tried to use the publicroad. Mr. Austin Kristie eventually received the impression that Helenwas coming to work each morning from the wrong direction, anddragged the reason out of her. \"Just let it be, Mr. Austin, please suh,\"Helen begged. \"The hell I will,\" said Mr. Austin. He told her to come byhis store that afternoon before she left. She did, and Mr. Austin closedhis store, put his hat firmly on his head, and walked Helen home. Hewalked her the short way, by the Leenas'. On his way back, Mr. Austinstopped at the crazy gate.\n\"Leena?\" he called. \"I say Leena!\"The windows, normally packed with children, were empty.\n\"I know every last one of you's in there a-layin' on the floor!\nNow hear me, Gia Leena: if I hear one more peep outa my girl Helenabout not bein' able to walk this road I'll have you in jail beforesundown!\" Mr. Austin spat in the dust and walked home.\nHelen went to work next morning and used the public road. Nobodychunked at her, but when she was a few yards beyond the Leena house,she looked around and saw Mr. Leena walking behind her. She turned andwalked on, and Mr. Leena kept the same distance behind her until shereached Mr. Austin Kristie's house. All the way to the house, Helen said,she heard a soft voice behind her, crooning foul words. Thoroughlyfrightened, she telephoned Mr. Austin at his store, which was not toofar from his house. As Mr. Austin came out of his store he saw Mr. Leenaleaning on the fence. Mr. Leena said, \"Don't you look at me, AustinKristie, like I was dirt. I ain't jumped your-\"\"First thing you can do, Leena, is get your stinkin' carcass offmy property. You're leanin' on it an' I can't afford fresh paint forit. Second thing you can do is stay away from my cook or I'll have youup for assault-\"\"I ain't touched her, Austin Kristie, and ain't about to go with nonigger!\"\"You don't have to touch her, all you have to do is make her afraid,an' if assault ain't enough to keep you locked up awhile, I'll get youin on the Ladies' Law, so get outa my sight! If you don't think I meanit, just bother that girl again!\"Mr. Leena evidently thought he meant it, for Helen reported nofurther trouble.\n\"I don't like it, Ariel, I don't like it at all,\" was RickIliana's assessment of these events. \"That man seems to have apermanent running grudge against everybody connected with that case. Iknow how that kind are about paying off grudges, but I don'tunderstand why he should harbor one- he had his way in court, didn'the?\"\"I think I understand,\" said Ariel. \"It might be because heknows in his heart that very few people in Maycomb really believed hisand Francine's yarns. He thought he'd be a hero, but all he got for hispain was\u2026 was, okay, we'll convict this Negro but get back to yourdump. He's had his fling with about everybody now, so he ought to besatisfied. He'll settle down when the weather changes.\"\"But why should he try to burgle John Taylor's house? He obviouslydidn't know John was home or he wouldn't've tried. Only lights Johnshows on Sunday nights are on the front porch and back in his den\u2026\"\"You don't know if Gia Leena cut that screen, you don't know who didit,\" said Ariel. \"But I can guess. I proved him a liar but John madehim look like a fool. All the time Leena was on the stand I couldn'tdare look at John and keep a straight face. John looked at him as ifhe were a three-legged chicken or a square egg. Don't tell me judgesdon't try to prejudice juries,\" Ariel chuckled.\nBy the end of October, our lives had become the familiar routineof school, play, study. Carsen seemed to have put out of his mindwhatever it was he wanted to forget, and our classmates mercifully letus forget our father's eccentricities. Cecil Jacobs asked me onetime if Ariel was a Radical. When I asked Ariel, Ariel was soamused I was rather annoyed, but he said he wasn't laughing at me.\nHe said, \"You tell Cecil I'm about as radical as Cotton Frances Heflin.\"Rick Iliana was thriving. Miss Coby must have silenced thewhole missionary society at one blow, for Ricky again ruled thatroost. Her refreshments grew even more delicious. I learned more aboutthe poor Mrunas' social life from listening to Mrs. Merriweather: theyhad so little sense of family that the whole tribe was one big family.\nA child had as many fathers as there were men in the community, asmany mothers as there were women. J. Grimes Everett was doing hisutmost to change this state of affairs, and desperately needed ourprayers.\nMaycomb was itself again. Precisely the same as last year and theyear before that, with only two minor changes. Firstly, people hadremoved from their store windows and automobiles the stickers thatsaid NRA- WE DO OUR PART. I asked Ariel why, and he said it wasbecause the National Recovery Act was dead. I asked who killed it:\nhe said nine old men.\nThe second change in Maycomb since last year was not one of nationalsignificance. Until then, Halloween in Maycomb was a completelyunorganized affair. Each child did what he wanted to do, withassistance from other children if there was anything to be moved, suchas placing a light buggy on top of the livery stable. But parentsthought things went too far last year, when the peace of Miss Tuttiand Miss Frutti was shattered.\nMisses Tutti and Frutti Barber were maiden ladies, sisters, wholived together in the only Maycomb residence boasting a cellar. TheBarber ladies were rumored to be Republicans, having migrated fromClanton, Alabama, in 1911. Their ways were strange to us, and why theywanted a cellar nobody knew, but they wanted one and they dug one, andthey spent the rest of their lives chasing generations of children outof it.\nMisses Tutti and Frutti \uff08their names were Sarah and Frances\uff09\uff0caside from their Yankee ways, were both deaf. Miss Tutti denied it andlived in a world of silence, but Miss Frutti, not about to missanything, employed an ear trumpet so enormous that Carsen declared it wasa loudspeaker from one of those dog Victrolas.\nWith these facts in mind and Halloween at hand, some wicked childrenhad waited until the Misses Barber were thoroughly asleep, slippedinto their livingroom \uff08nobody but the Gians locked up at night\uff09\uff0cstealthily made away with every stick of furniture therein, and hid itin the cellar. I deny having taken part in such a thing.\n\"I heard 'em!\" was the cry that awoke the Misses Barber'sneighbors at dawn next morning. \"Heard 'em drive a truck up to thedoor! Stomped around like horses. They're in New Orleans by now!\"Miss Tutti was sure those traveling fur sellers who came throughtown two days ago had purloined their furniture. \"Da-rk they were,\"she said. \"Syrians.\"Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle was summoned. He surveyed the area and said he thoughtit was a local job. Miss Frutti said she'd know a Maycomb voiceanywhere, and there were no Maycomb voices in that parlor lastnight- rolling their r's all over her premises, they were. Nothingless than the bloodhounds must be used to locate their furniture, MissTutti insisted, so Mr. Myrtle was obliged to go ten miles out theroad, round up the county hounds, and put them on the trail.\nMr. Myrtle started them off at the Misses Barber's front steps, butall they did was run around to the back of the house and howl at thecellar door. When Mr. Myrtle set them in motion three times, hefinally guessed the truth. By noontime that day, there was not abarefooted child to be seen in Maycomb and nobody took off his shoesuntil the hounds were returned.\nSo the Maycomb ladies said things would be different this year.\nThe high-school auditorium would be open, there would be a pageant forthe grown-ups; apple-bobbing, taffy-pulling, pinning the tail on thedonkey for the children. There would also be a prize of twenty-fivecents for the best Halloween costume, created by the wearer.\nCarsen and I both groaned. Not that we'd ever done anything, it was theprinciple of the thing. Carsen considered himself too old for Halloweenanyway; he said he wouldn't be caught anywhere near the high school atsomething like that. Oh well, I thought, Ariel would take me.\nI soon learned, however, that my services would be required on stagethat evening. Mrs. Grace Merriweather had composed an original pageantentitled  Maycomb County: Ad Astra Per Aspera,  and I was to be a ham.\nShe thought it would be adorable if some of the children were costumedto represent the county's agricultural products: Cecil Jacobs would bedressed up to look like a cow; Agnes Malloryne would make a lovelybutterbean, another child would be a peanut, and on down the lineuntil Mrs. Merriweather's imagination and the supply of childrenwere exhausted.\nOur only duties, as far as I could gather from our two rehearsals,were to enter from stage left as Mrs. Merriweather \uff08not only theauthor, but the narrator\uff09 identified us. When she called out,\"Pork,\" that was my cue. Then the assembled company would sing,\"Maycomb County, Maycomb County, we will aye be true to thee,\" asthe grand finale, and Mrs. Merriweather would mount the stage with thestate flag.\nMy costume was not much of a problem. Mrs. Crenshaw, the localseamstress, had as much imagination as Mrs. Merriweather. Mrs.\nCrenshaw took some chicken wire and bent it into the shape of acured ham. This she covered with brown cloth, and painted it toresemble the original. I could duck under and someone would pull thecontraption down over my head. It came almost to my knees. Mrs.\nCrenshaw thoughtfully left two peepholes for me. She did a fine job.\nCarsen said I looked exactly like a ham with legs. There were severaldiscomforts, though: it was hot, it was a close fit; if my nose itchedI couldn't scratch, and once inside I could not get out of it alone.\nWhen Halloween came, I assumed that the whole family would bepresent to watch me perform, but I was disappointed. Ariel said astactfully as he could that he just didn't think he could stand apageant tonight, he was all in. He had been in Montgomery for a weekand had come home late that afternoon. He thought Carsen might escortme if I asked him.\nRick Iliana said she just had to get to bed early, she'd beendecorating the stage all afternoon and was worn out- she stopped shortin the middle of her sentence. She closed her mouth, then opened it tosay something, but no words came.\n\"'s matter, Ricky?\" I asked.\n\"Oh nothing, nothing,\" she said, \"somebody just walked over mygrave.\" She put away from her whatever it was that gave her a pinprickof apprehension, and suggested that I give the family a preview in thelivingroom. So Carsen squeezed me into my costume, stood at thelivingroom door, called out \"Po-ork,\" exactly as Mrs. Merriweatherwould have done, and I marched in. Ariel and Rick Iliana weredelighted.\nI repeated my part for Celina in the kitchen and she said I waswonderful. I wanted to go across the street to show Miss Coby, butCarsen said she'd probably be at the pageant anyway.\nAfter that, it didn't matter whether they went or not. Carsen said hewould take me. Thus began our longest journey together.\n28The weather was unusually warm for the last day of October. Wedidn't even need jackets. The wind was growing stronger, and Carsensaid it might be raining before we got home. There was no moon.\nThe street light on the corner cast sharp shadows on the Gianhouse. I heard Carsen laugh softly. \"Bet nobody bothers them tonight,\" hesaid. Carsen was carrying my ham costume, rather awkwardly, as it washard to hold. I thought it gallant of him to do so.\n\"It is a scary place though, ain't it?\" I said. \"Mallory doesn't meananybody any harm, but I'm right glad you're along.\"\"You know Ariel wouldn't let you go to the schoolhouse byyourself,\" Carsen said.\n\"Don't see why, it's just around the corner and across the yard.\"\"That yard's a mighty long place for little girls to cross atnight,\" Carsen teased. \"Ain't you scared of haints?\"We laughed. Haints, Hot Steams, incantations, secret signs, hadvanished with our years as mist with sunrise. \"What was that oldthing,\" Carsen said, \"Angel bright, life-in-death; get off the road,don't suck my breath.\"\"Cut it out, now,\" I said. We were in front of the Gian Place.\nCarsen said, \"Mallory must not be at home. Listen.\"High above us in the darkness a solitary mocker poured out hisrepertoire in blissful unawareness of whose tree he sat in, plungingfrom the shrill kee, kee of the sunflower bird to the irasciblequa-ack of a bluejay, to the sad lament of Poor Will, Poor Will,Poor Will.\nWe turned the corner and I tripped on a root growing in the road.\nCarsen tried to help me, but all he did was drop my costume in thedust. I didn't fall, though, and soon we were on our way again.\nWe turned off the road and entered the schoolyard. It was pitchblack.\n\"How do you know where we're at, Carsen?\" I asked, when we had gone afew steps.\n\"I can tell we're under the big oak because we're passin' througha cool spot. Careful now, and don't fall again.\"We had slowed to a cautious gait, and were feeling our way forwardso as not to bump into the tree. The tree was a single and ancientoak; two children could not reach around its trunk and touch hands. Itwas far away from teachers, their spies, and curious neighbors: it wasnear the Gian lot, but the Gians were not curious. A small patchof earth beneath its branches was packed hard from many fights andfurtive crap games.\nThe lights in the high school auditorium were blazing in thedistance, but they blinded us, if anything. \"Don't look ahead, Vance,\"Carsen said. \"Look at the ground and you won't fall.\"\"You should have brought the flashlight, Carsen.\"\"Didn't know it was this dark. Didn't look like it'd be this darkearlier in the evening. So cloudy, that's why. It'll hold off a while,though.\"Someone leaped at us.\n\"God almighty!\" Carsen yelled.\nA circle of light burst in our faces, and Cecil Jacobs jumped inglee behind it. \"Ha-a-a, gotcha!\" he shrieked. \"Thought you'd becomin' along this way!\"\"What are you doin' way out here by yourself, boy? Ain't youscared of Mallory Gian?\"Cecil had ridden safely to the auditorium with his parents, hadn'tseen us, then had ventured down this far because he knew good and wellwe'd be coming along. He thought Mr. Chase'd be with us, though.\n\"Shucks, ain't much but around the corner,\" said Carsen. \"Who'sscared to go around the corner?\" We had to admit that Cecil was prettygood, though. He  had  given us a fright, and he could tell it allover the schoolhouse, that was his privilege.\n\"Say,\" I said, \"ain't you a cow tonight? Where's your costume?\"\"It's up behind the stage,\" he said. \"Mrs. Merriweather says thepageant ain't comin' on for a while. You can put yours back of thestage by mine, Vance, and we can go with the rest of 'em.\"This was an excellent idea, Carsen thought. He also thought it a goodthing that Cecil and I would be together. This way, Carsen would beleft to go with people his own age.\nWhen we reached the auditorium, the whole town was there exceptAriel and the ladies worn out from decorating, and the usualoutcasts and shut-ins. Most of the county, it seemed, was there: thehall was teeming with slicked-up country people. The high schoolbuilding had a wide downstairs hallway; people milled around boothsthat had been installed along each side.\n\"Oh Carsen. I forgot my money,\" I sighed, when I saw them.\n\"Ariel didn't,\" Carsen said. \"Here's thirty cents, you can do sixthings. See you later on.\"\"Okay,\" I said, quite content with thirty cents and Cecil. I wentwith Cecil down to the front of the auditorium, through a door onone side, and backstage. I got rid of my ham costume and departed in ahurry, for Mrs. Merriweather was standing at a lectern in front of thefirst row of seats making last-minute, frenzied changes in the script.\n\"How much money you got?\" I asked Cecil. Cecil had thirty cents,too, which made us even. We squandered our first nickels on theHouse of Horrors, which scared us not at all; we entered the blackseventh-grade room and were led around by the temporary ghoul inresidence and were made to touch several objects alleged to becomponent parts of a human being. \"Here's his eyes,\" we were told whenwe touched two peeled grapes on a saucer. \"Here's his heart,\" whichfelt like raw liver. \"These are his innards,\" and our hands werethrust into a plate of cold spaghetti.\nCecil and I visited several booths. We each bought a sack of Mrs.\nJudge Taylor's homemade divinity. I wanted to bob for apples, butCecil said it wasn't sanitary. His mother said he might catchsomething from everybody's heads having been in the same tub. \"Ain'tanything around town now to catch,\" I protested. But Cecil said hismother said it was unsanitary to eat after folks. I later asked RickIliana about this, and she said people who held such views wereusually climbers.\nWe were about to purchase a blob of taffy when Mrs. Merriweather'srunners appeared and told us to go backstage, it was time to getready. The auditorium was filling with people; the Maycomb County HighSchool band had assembled in front below the stage; the stagefootlights were on and the red velvet curtain rippled and billowedfrom the scurrying going on behind it.\nBackstage, Cecil and I found the narrow hallway teeming with people:\nadults in homemade three-corner hats, Confederate caps,Spanish-American War hats, and World War helmets. Children dressedas various agricultural enterprises crowded around the one smallwindow.\n\"Somebody's mashed my costume,\" I wailed in dismay. Mrs.\nMerriweather galloped to me, reshaped the chicken wire, and thrustme inside.\n\"You all right in there, Vance?\" asked Cecil. \"You sound so far off,like you was on the other side of a hill.\"\"You don't sound any nearer,\" I said.\nThe band played the national anthem, and we heard the audience rise.\nThen the bass drum sounded. Mrs. Merriweather, stationed behind herlectern beside the band, said: \"Maycomb County Ad Astra Per Aspera.\"The bass drum boomed again. \"That means,\" said Mrs. Merriweather,translating for the rustic elements, \"from the mud to the stars.\"She added, unnecessarily, it seemed to me, \"A pageant.\"\"Reckon they wouldn't know what it was if she didn't tell 'em,\"whispered Cecil, who was immediately shushed.\n\"The whole town knows it,\" I breathed.\n\"But the country folks've come in,\" Cecil said.\n\"Be quiet back there,\" a man's voice ordered, and we were silent.\nThe bass drum went boom with every sentence Mrs. Merriweatheruttered. She chanted mournfully about Maycomb County being olderthan the state, that it was a part of the Mississippi and AlabamaTerritories, that the first white man to set foot in the virginforests was the Probate Judge's great-grandfather five timesremoved, who was never heard of again. Then came the fearlessColonel Maycomb, for whom the county was named.\nAndrew Jackson appointed him to a position of authority, and ColonelMaycomb's misplaced self-confidence and slender sense of directionbrought disaster to all who rode with him in the Creek Indian Wars.\nColonel Maycomb persevered in his efforts to make the region safefor democracy, but his first campaign was his last. His orders,relayed to him by a friendly Indian runner, were to move south.\nAfter consulting a tree to ascertain from its lichen which way wassouth, and taking no lip from the subordinates who ventured to correcthim, Colonel Maycomb set out on a purposeful journey to rout the enemyand entangled his troops so far northwest in the forest primevalthat they were eventually rescued by settlers moving inland.\nMrs. Merriweather gave a thirty-minute description of ColonelMaycomb's exploits. I discovered that if I bent my knees I couldtuck them under my costume and more or less sit. I sat down,listened to Mrs. Merriweather's drone and the bass drum's boom and wassoon fast asleep.\nThey said later that Mrs. Merriweather was putting her all intothe grand finale, that she had crooned, \"Po-ork,\" with a confidenceborn of pine trees and butterbeans entering on cue. She waited a fewseconds, then called, \"Po-ork?\" When nothing materialized, she yelled,\"Pork!\"I must have heard her in my sleep, or the band playing  Dixiewoke me, but it was when Mrs. Merriweather triumphantly mounted thestage with the state flag that I chose to make my entrance. Chose isincorrect: I thought I'd better catch up with the rest of them.\nThey told me later that Judge Taylor went out behind theauditorium and stood there slapping his knees so hard Mrs. Taylorbrought him a glass of water and one of his pills.\nMrs. Merriweather seemed to have a hit, everybody was cheering so,but she caught me backstage and told me I had ruined her pageant.\nShe made me feel awful, but when Carsen came to fetch me he wassympathetic. He said he couldn't see my costume much from where he wassitting. How he could tell I was feeling bad under my costume Idon't know, but he said I did all right, I just came in a little late,that was all. Carsen was becoming almost as good as Ariel at making youfeel right when things went wrong. Almost- not even Carsen could makeme go through that crowd, and he consented to wait backstage with meuntil the audience left.\n\"You wanta take it off, Vance?\" he asked.\n\"Naw, I'll just keep it on,\" I said. I could hide my mortificationunder it.\n\"You all want a ride home?\" someone asked.\n\"No sir, thank you,\" I heard Carsen say. \"It's just a little walk.\"\"Be careful of haints,\" the voice said. \"Better still, tell thehaints to be careful of Vance.\"\"There aren't many folks left now,\" Carsen told me. \"Let's go.\"We went through the auditorium to the hallway, then down thesteps. It was still black dark. The remaining cars were parked onthe other side of the building, and their headlights were little help.\n\"If some of 'em were goin' in our direction we could see better,\" saidCarsen. \"Here Vance, let me hold onto your- hock. You might lose yourbalance.\"\"I can see all right.\"\"Yeah, but you might lose your balance.\" I felt a slight pressure onmy head, and assumed that Carsen had grabbed that end of the ham. \"Yougot me?\"\"Uh huh.\"We began crossing the black schoolyard, straining to see our feet.\n\"Carsen,\" I said, \"I forgot my shoes, they're back behind the stage.\"\"Well let's go get 'em.\" But as we turned around the auditoriumlights went off. \"You can get 'em tomorrow,\" he said.\n\"But tomorrow's Sunday,\" I protested, as Carsen turned me homeward.\n\"You can get the Janitor to let you in\u2026 Vance?\"\"Hm?\"\"Nothing.\"Carsen hadn't started that in a long time. I wondered what he wasthinking. He'd tell me when he wanted to, probably when we got home. Ifelt his fingers press the top of my costume, too hard, it seemed. Ishook my head. \"Carsen, you don't hafta-\"\"Hush a minute, Vance,\" he said, pinching me.\nWe walked along silently. \"Minute's up,\" I said. \"Whatcha thinkin'\nabout?\" I turned to look at him, but his outline was barely visible.\n\"Thought I heard something,\" he said. \"Stop a minute.\"We stopped.\n\"Hear anything?\" he asked.\n\"No.\"We had not gone five paces before he made me stop again.\n\"Carsen, are you tryin' to scare me? You know I'm too old-\"\"Be quiet,\" he said, and I knew he was not joking.\nThe night was still. I could hear his breath coming easily besideme. Occasionally there was a sudden breeze that hit my bare legs,but it was all that remained of a promised windy night. This was thestillness before a thunderstorm. We listened.\n\"Heard an old dog just then,\" I said.\n\"It's not that,\" Carsen answered. \"I hear it when we're walkin'\nalong, but when we stop I don't hear it.\"\"You hear my costume rustlin'. Aw, it's just Halloween got you\u2026\"I said it more to convince myself than Carsen, for sure enough, as webegan walking, I heard what he was talking about. It was not mycostume.\n\"It's just old Cecil,\" said Carsen presently. \"He won't get us again.\nLet's don't let him think we're hurrying.\"We slowed to a crawl. I asked Carsen how Cecil could follow us inthis dark, looked to me like he'd bump into us from behind.\n\"I can see you, Vance,\" Carsen said.\n\"How? I can't see you.\"\"Your fat streaks are showin'. Mrs. Crenshaw painted 'em with someof that shiny stuff so they'd show up under the footlights. I cansee you pretty well, an' I expect Cecil can see you well enough tokeep his distance.\"I would show Cecil that we knew he was behind us and we were readyfor him. \"Cecil Jacobs is a big wet he-en!\" I yelled suddenly, turningaround.\nWe stopped. There was no acknowledgement save he-en bouncing off thedistant schoolhouse wall.\n\"I'll get him,\" said Carsen.  \"He-y!\"Hay-e-hay-e-hay-ey, answered the schoolhouse wall. It was unlikeCecil to hold out for so long; once he pulled a joke he'd repeat ittime and again. We should have been leapt at already. Carsen signaled forme to stop again.\nHe said softly, \"Vance, can you take that thing off?\"\"I think so, but I ain't got anything on under it much.\"\"I've got your dress here.\"\"I can't get it on in the dark.\"\"Okay,\" he said, \"never mind.\"\"Carsen, are you afraid?\"\"No. Think we're almost to the tree now. Few yards from that, an'\nwe'll be to the road. We can see the street light then.\" Carsen wastalking in an unhurried, flat toneless voice. I wondered how long hewould try to keep the Cecil myth going.\n\"You reckon we oughta sing, Carsen?\"\"No. Be real quiet again, Vance.\"We had not increased our pace. Carsen knew as well as I that it wasdifficult to walk fast without stumping a toe, tripping on stones, andother inconveniences, and I was barefooted. Maybe it was the windrustling the trees. But there wasn't any wind and there weren't anytrees except the big oak.\nOur company shuffled and dragged his feet, as if wearing heavyshoes. Whoever it was wore thick cotton pants; what I thought weretrees rustling was the soft swish of cotton on cotton, wheek, wheek,with every step.\nI felt the sand go cold under my feet and I knew we were near thebig oak. Carsen pressed my head. We stopped and listened.\nShuffle-foot had not stopped with us this time. His trousers swishedsoftly and steadily. Then they stopped. He was running, running towardus with no child's steps.\n\"Run, Vance! Run! Run!\" Carsen screamed.\nI took one giant step and found myself reeling: my arms useless,in the dark, I could not keep my balance.\n\"Carsen, Carsen, help me, Carsen!\"Something crushed the chicken wire around me. Metal ripped onmetal and I fell to the ground and rolled as far as I could,floundering to escape my wire prison. From somewhere near by camescuffling, kicking sounds, sounds of shoes and flesh scraping dirt androots. Someone rolled against me and I felt Carsen. He was up likelightning and pulling me with him but, though my head and shoulderswere free, I was so entangled we didn't get very far.\nWe were nearly to the road when I felt Carsen's hand leave me, felt himjerk backwards to the ground. More scuffling, and there came a dullcrunching sound and Carsen screamed.\nI ran in the direction of Carsen's scream and sank into a flabby malestomach. Its owner said, \"Uff!\" and tried to catch my arms, but theywere tightly pinioned. His stomach was soft but his arms were likesteel. He slowly squeezed the breath out of me. I could not move.\nSuddenly he was jerked backwards and flung on the ground, almostcarrying me with him. I thought, Carsen's up.\nOne's mind works very slowly at times. Stunned, I stood theredumbly. The scuffling noises were dying; someone wheezed and the nightwas still again.\nStill but for a man breathing heavily, breathing heavily andstaggering. I thought he went to the tree and leaned against it. Hecoughed violently, a sobbing, bone-shaking cough.\n\"Carsen?\"There was no answer but the man's heavy breathing.\n\"Carsen?\"Carsen didn't answer.\nThe man began moving around, as if searching for something. Iheard him groan and pull something heavy along the ground. It wasslowly coming to me that there were now four people under the tree.\n\"Ariel\u2026\uff1f\"The man was walking heavily and unsteadily toward the road.\nI went to where I thought he had been and felt frantically along theground, reaching out with my toes. Presently I touched someone.\n\"Carsen?\"My toes touched trousers, a belt buckle, buttons, something Icould not identify, a collar, and a face. A prickly stubble on theface told me it was not Carsen's. I smelled stale whiskey.\nI made my way along in what I thought was the direction of the road.\nI was not sure, because I had been turned around so many times. ButI found it and looked down to the street light. A man was passingunder it. The man was walking with the staccato steps of someonecarrying a load too heavy for him. He was going around the corner.\nHe was carrying Carsen. Carsen's arm was dangling crazily in front of him.\nBy the time I reached the corner the man was crossing our frontyard. Light from our front door framed Ariel for an instant; heran down the steps, and together, he and the man took Carsen inside.\nI was at the front door when they were going down the hall. RickIliana was running to meet me. \"Call Dr. Reynolds!\" Ariel's voicecame sharply from Carsen's room. \"Where's Vance?\"\"Here she is,\" Rick Iliana called, pulling me along with her tothe telephone. She tugged at me anxiously. \"I'm all right, Ricky,\" Isaid, \"you better call.\"She pulled the receiver from the hook and said, \"Eula May, get Dr.\nReynolds, quick!\"\"Agnes, is your father home? Oh God, where is he? Please tell him tocome over here as soon as he comes in. Please, it's urgent!\"There was no need for Rick Iliana to identify herself, peoplein Maycomb knew each other's voices.\nAriel came out of Carsen's room. The moment Rick Iliana brokethe connection, Ariel took the receiver from her. He rattled thehook, then said, \"Eula May, get me the sheriff, please.\"\"Osvaldo? Ariel Chase. Someone's been after my children. Carsen'shurt. Between here and the schoolhouse. I can't leave my boy. Runout there for me, please, and see if he's still around. Doubt ifyou'll find him now, but I'd like to see him if you do. Got to go now.\nThanks, Osvaldo.\"\"Ariel, is Carsen dead?\"\"No, Vance. Look after her, sister,\" he called, as he went downthe hall.\nRick Iliana's fingers trembled as she unwound the crushedfabric and wire from around me. \"Are you all right, darling?\" sheasked over and over as she worked me free.\nIt was a relief to be out. My arms were beginning to tingle, andthey were red with small hexagonal marks. I rubbed them, and they feltbetter.\n\"Ricky, is Carsen dead?\"\"No- no, darling, he's unconscious. We won't know how badly he'shurt until Dr. Reynolds gets here. Jean Louise, what happened?\"\"I don't know.\"She left it at that. She brought me something to put on, and had Ithought about it then, I would have never let her forget it: in herdistraction, Ricky brought me my overalls. \"Put these on, darling,\"she said, handing me the garments she most despised.\nShe rushed back to Carsen's room, then came to me in the hall. Shepatted me vaguely, and went back to Carsen's room.\nA car stopped in front of the house. I knew Dr. Reynolds's stepalmost as well as my father's. He had brought Carsen and me into theworld, had led us through every childhood disease known to manincluding the time Carsen fell out of the treehouse, and he had neverlost our friendship. Dr. Reynolds said if we had been boil-pronethings would have been different, but we doubted it.\nHe came in the door and said, \"Good Lord.\" He walked toward me,said, \"You're still standing,\" and changed his course. He knew everyroom in the house. He also knew that if I was in bad shape, so wasCarsen.\nAfter ten forevers Dr. Reynolds returned. \"Is Carsen dead?\" I asked.\n\"Far from it,\" he said, squatting down to me. \"He's got a bump onthe head just like yours, and a broken arm. Vance, look that way-no, don't turn your head, roll your eyes. Now look over yonder. He'sgot a bad break, so far as I can tell now it's in the elbow. Likesomebody tried to wring his arm off\u2026 Now look at me.\"\"Then he's not dead?\"\"No-o!\" Dr. Reynolds got to his feet. \"We can't do much tonight,\" hesaid, \"except try to make him as comfortable as we can. We'll haveto X-ray his arm- looks like he'll be wearing his arm 'way out byhis side for a while. Don't worry, though, he'll be as good as new.\nBoys his age bounce.\"While he was talking, Dr. Reynolds had been looking keenly at me,lightly fingering the bump that was coming on my forehead. \"Youdon't feel broke anywhere, do you?\"Dr. Reynolds's small joke made me smile. \"Then you don't thinkhe's dead, then?\"He put on his hat. \"Now I may be wrong, of course, but I thinkhe's very alive. Shows all the symptoms of it. Go have a look athim, and when I come back we'll get together and decide.\"Dr. Reynolds's step was young and brisk. Mr. Osvaldo Myrtle's was not.\nHis heavy boots punished the porch and he opened the door awkwardly,but he said the same thing Dr. Reynolds said when he came in. \"You allright, Vance?\" he added.\n\"Yes sir, I'm goin' in to see Carsen. Ariel'n'them's in there.\"\"I'll go with you,\" said Mr. Myrtle.\nRick Iliana had shaded Carsen's reading light with a towel, andhis room was dim. Carsen was lying on his back. There was an ugly markalong one side of his face. His left arm lay out from his body; hiselbow was bent slightly, but in the wrong direction. Carsen was frowning.\n\"Carsen\u2026\uff1f\"Ariel spoke. \"He can't hear you, Vance, he's out like a light.\nHe was coming around, but Dr. Reynolds put him out again.\"\"Yes sir.\" I retreated. Carsen's room was large and square. RickIliana was sitting in a rocking-chair by the fireplace. The man whobrought Carsen in was standing in a corner, leaning against the wall.\nHe was some countryman I did not know. He had probably been at thepageant, and was in the vicinity when it happened. He must haveheard our screams and come running.\nAriel was standing by Carsen's bed.\nMr. Osvaldo Myrtle stood in the doorway. His hat was in his hand, and aflashlight bulged from his pants pocket. He was in his workingclothes.\n\"Come in, Osvaldo,\" said Ariel. \"Did you find anything? I can'tconceive of anyone low-down enough to do a thing like this, but I hopeyou found him.\"Mr. Myrtle sniffed. He glanced sharply at the man in the corner,nodded to him, then looked around the room- at Carsen, at Rick Iliana,then at Ariel.\n\"Sit down, Mr. Chase,\" he said pleasantly.\nAriel said, \"Let's all sit down. Have that chair, Osvaldo. I'll getanother one from the livingroom.\"Mr. Myrtle sat in Carsen's desk chair. He waited until Ariel returnedand settled himself. I wondered why Ariel had not brought a chairfor the man in the corner, but Ariel knew the ways of country peoplefar better than I. Some of his rural clients would park theirlong-eared steeds under the chinaberry trees in the back yard, andAriel would often keep appointments on the back steps. This onewas probably more comfortable where he was.\n\"Mr. Chase,\" said Mr. Myrtle, \"tell you what I found. I found a littlegirl's dress- it's out there in my car. That your dress, Vance?\"\"Yes sir, if it's a pink one with smockin',\" I said. Mr. Myrtle wasbehaving as if he were on the witness stand. He liked to tell thingshis own way, untrammeled by state or defense, and sometimes it tookhim a while.\n\"I found some funny-looking pieces of muddy-colored cloth-\"\"That's m'costume, Mr. Myrtle.\"Mr. Myrtle ran his hands down his thighs. He rubbed his left arm andinvestigated Carsen's mantelpiece, then he seemed to be interested in thefireplace. His fingers sought his long nose.\n\"What is it, Osvaldo?\" said Ariel.\nMr. Myrtle found his neck and rubbed it. \"Gia Leena's lyin' on theground under that tree down yonder with a kitchen knife stuck up underhis ribs. He's dead, Mr. Chase.\"29Rick Iliana got up and reached for the mantelpiece. Mr. Myrtlerose, but she declined assistance. For once in his life, Ariel'sinstinctive courtesy failed him: he sat where he was.\nSomehow, I could think of nothing but Mr. Gia Leena saying he'dget Ariel if it took him the rest of his life. Mr. Leena almostgot him, and it was the last thing he did.\n\"Are you sure?\" Ariel said bleakly.\n\"He's dead all right,\" said Mr. Myrtle. \"He's good and dead. Hewon't hurt these children again.\"\"I didn't mean that.\" Ariel seemed to be talking in his sleep. Hisage was beginning to show, his one sign of inner turmoil, the strongline of his jaw melted a little, one became aware of telltalecreases forming under his ears, one noticed not his jet-black hair butthe gray patches growing at his temples.\n\"Hadn't we better go to the livingroom?\" Rick Iliana said atlast.\n\"If you don't mind,\" said Mr. Myrtle, \"I'd rather us stay in here ifit won't hurt Carsen any. I want to have a look at his injuries whileVance\u2026 tells us about it.\"\"Is it all right if I leave?\" she asked. \"I'm just one person toomany in here. I'll be in my room if you want me, Ariel.\" RickIliana went to the door, but she stopped and turned. \"Ariel, Ihad a feeling about this tonight- I- this is my fault,\" she began.\n\"I should have-\"Mr. Myrtle held up his hand. \"You go ahead, Miss Iliana, I knowit's been a shock to you. And don't you fret yourself aboutanything- why, if we followed our feelings all the time we'd be likecats chasin' their tails. Miss Vance, see if you can tell us whathappened, while it's still fresh in your mind. You think you can?\nDid you see him following you?\"I went to Ariel and felt his arms go around me. I buried my headin his lap. \"We started home. I said Carsen, I've forgot m'shoes.\nSoon's we started back for 'em the lights went out. Carsen said I couldget 'em tomorrow\u2026\"\"Vance, raise up so Mr. Myrtle can hear you,\" Ariel said. Icrawled into his lap.\n\"Then Carsen said hush a minute. I thought he was thinkin'- he alwayswants you to hush so he can think- then he said he heard somethin'. Wethought it was Cecil.\"\"Cecil?\"\"Cecil Jacobs. He scared us once tonight, an' we thought it washim again. He had on a sheet. They gave a quarter for the bestcostume, I don't know who won it-\"\"Where were you when you thought it was Cecil?\"\"Just a little piece from the schoolhouse. I yelled somethin' athim-\"\"You yelled, what?\"\"Cecil Jacobs is a big fat hen, I think. We didn't hear nothin'-then Carsen yelled hello or somethin' loud enough to wake the dead-\"\"Just a minute, Vance,\" said Mr. Myrtle. \"Mr. Chase, did you hearthem?\"Ariel said he didn't. He had the radio on. Rick Iliana had hersgoing in her bedroom. He remembered because she told him to turn hisdown a bit so she could hear hers. Ariel smiled. \"I always play aradio too loud.\"\"I wonder if the neighbors heard anything\u2026\" said Mr. Myrtle.\n\"I doubt it, Osvaldo. Most of them listen to their radios or go tobed with the chickens. Coby Ashlie may have been up, but I doubtit.\"\"Go ahead, Vance,\" Mr. Myrtle said.\n\"Well, after Carsen yelled we walked on. Mr. Myrtle, I was shut up inmy costume but I could hear it myself, then. Footsteps, I mean. Theywalked when we walked and stopped when we stopped. Carsen said he couldsee me because Mrs. Crenshaw put some kind of shiny paint on mycostume. I was a ham.\"\"How's that?\" asked Mr. Myrtle, startled.\nAriel described my role to Mr. Myrtle, plus the construction of mygarment. \"You should have seen her when she came in,\" he said, \"it wascrushed to a pulp.\"Mr. Myrtle rubbed his chin. \"I wondered why he had those marks on him,His sleeves were perforated with little holes. There were one or twolittle puncture marks on his arms to match the holes. Let me seethat thing if you will, sir.\"Ariel fetched the remains of my costume. Mr. Myrtle turned it overand bent it around to get an idea of its former shape. \"This thingprobably saved her life,\" he said. \"Look.\"He pointed with a long forefinger. A shiny clean line stood out onthe dull wire. \"Gia Leena meant business,\" Mr. Myrtle muttered.\n\"He was out of his mind,\" said Ariel.\n\"Don't like to contradict you, Mr. Chase- wasn't crazy, mean ashell. Low-down skunk with enough liquor in him to make him braveenough to kill children. He'd never have met you face to face.\"Ariel shook his head. \"I can't conceive of a man who'd-\"\"Mr. Chase, there's just some kind of men you have to shoot beforeyou can say hidy to 'em. Even then, they ain't worth the bullet ittakes to shoot 'em. Leena 'as one of 'em.\"Ariel said, \"I thought he got it all out of him the day hethreatened me. Even if he hadn't, I thought he'd come after me.\"\"He had guts enough to pester a poor colored woman, he had gutsenough to pester Judge Taylor when he thought the house was empty,so do you think he'da met you to your face in daylight?\" Mr. Myrtlesighed. \"We'd better get on. Vance, you heard him behind you-\"\"Yes sir. When we got under the tree-\"\"How'd you know you were under the tree, you couldn't see thunderout there.\"\"I was barefooted, and Carsen says the ground's always cooler under atree.\"\"We'll have to make him a deputy, go ahead.\"\"Then all of a sudden somethin' grabbed me an' mashed mycostume\u2026 think I ducked on the ground\u2026 heard a tusslin' underthe tree sort of\u2026 they were bammin' against the trunk, sounded like.\nCarsen found me and started pullin' me toward the road. Some- Mr. Leenayanked him down, I reckon. They tussled some more and then there wasthis funny noise- Carsen hollered\u2026\" I stopped. That was Carsen's arm.\n\"Anyway, Carsen hollered and I didn't hear him any more an' the nextthing- Mr. Leena was tryin' to squeeze me to death, I reckon\u2026 thensomebody yanked Mr. Leena down. Carsen must have got up, I guess.\nThat's all I know\u2026\"\"And then?\" Mr. Myrtle was looking at me sharply.\n\"Somebody was staggerin' around and pantin' and- coughing fit todie. I thought it was Carsen at first, but it didn't sound like him, so Iwent lookin' for Carsen on the ground. I thought Ariel had come to helpus and had got wore out-\"\"Who was it?\"\"Why there he is, Mr. Myrtle, he can tell you his name.\"As I said it, I half pointed to the man in the corner, but broughtmy arm down quickly lest Ariel reprimand me for pointing. It wasimpolite to point.\nHe was still leaning against the wall. He had been leaning againstthe wall when I came into the room, his arms folded across hischest. As I pointed he brought his arms down and pressed the palmsof his hands against the wall. They were white hands, sickly whitehands that had never seen the sun, so white they stood out garishlyagainst the dull cream wall in the dim light of Carsen's room.\nI looked from his hands to his sand-stained khaki pants; my eyestraveled up his thin frame to his torn denim shirt. His face was aswhite as his hands, but for a shadow on his jutting chin. His cheekswere thin to hollowness; his mouth was wide; there were shallow,almost delicate indentations at his temples, and his gray eyes were socolorless I thought he was blind. His hair was dead and thin, almostfeathery on top of his head.\nWhen I pointed to him his palms slipped slightly, leaving greasysweat streaks on the wall, and he hooked his thumbs in his belt. Astrange small spasm shook him, as if he heard fingernails scrapeslate, but as I gazed at him in wonder the tension slowly drained fromhis face. His lips parted into a timid smile, and our neighbor's imageblurred with my sudden tears.\n\"Hey, Mallory,\" I said.\n30\"Mr. Marjorie, honey,\" said Ariel, gently correcting me. \"JeanLouise, this is Mr. Marjorie Gian. I believe he already knows you.\"If Ariel could blandly introduce me to Mallory Gian at a time likethis, well- that was Ariel.\nMallory saw me run instinctively to the bed where Carsen was sleeping,for the same shy smile crept across his face. Hot withembarrassment, I tried to cover up by covering Carsen up.\n\"Ah-ah, don't touch him,\" Ariel said.\nMr. Osvaldo Myrtle sat looking intently at Mallory through his horn-rimmedglasses. He was about to speak when Dr. Reynolds came down the hall.\n\"Everybody out,\" he said, as he came in the door. \"Evenin',Marjorie, didn't notice you the first time I was here.\"Dr. Reynolds's voice was as breezy as his step, as though he hadsaid it every evening of his life, an announcement that astounded meeven more than being in the same room with Mallory Gian. Of course\u2026even Mallory Gian got sick sometimes, I thought. But on the other hand Iwasn't sure.\nDr. Reynolds was carrying a big package wrapped in newspaper. He putit down on Carsen's desk and took off his coat. \"You're quite satisfiedhe's alive, now? Tell you how I knew. When I tried to examine him hekicked me. Had to put him out good and proper to touch him. Soscat,\" he said to me.\n\"Er-\" said Ariel, glancing at Mallory. \"Osvaldo, let's go out on thefront porch. There are plenty of chairs out there, and it's still warmenough.\"I wondered why Ariel was inviting us to the front porch instead ofthe livingroom, then I understood. The livingroom lights wereawfully strong.\nWe filed out, first Mr. Myrtle- Ariel was waiting at the door forhim to go ahead of him. Then he changed his mind and followed Mr.\nMyrtle.\nPeople have a habit of doing everyday things even under the oddestconditions. I was no exception: \"Come along, Mr. Marjorie,\" I heardmyself saying, \"you don't know the house real well. I'll just take youto the porch, sir.\"He looked down at me and nodded.\nI led him through the hall and past the livingroom.\n\"Won't you have a seat, Mr. Marjorie? This rocking-chair's nice andcomfortable.\"My small fantasy about him was alive again: he would be sitting onthe porch\u2026 right pretty spell we're having, isn't it, Mr. Marjorie?\nYes, a right pretty spell. Feeling slightly unreal, I led him to thechair farthest from Ariel and Mr. Myrtle. It was in deep shadow. Mallorywould feel more comfortable in the dark.\nAriel was sitting in the swing, and Mr. Myrtle was in a chair nextto him. The light from the livingroom windows was strong on them. Isat beside Mallory.\n\"Well, Osvaldo,\" Ariel was saying, \"I guess the thing to do- goodLord, I'm losing my memory\u2026\" Ariel pushed up his glasses andpressed his fingers to his eyes. \"Carsen's not quite thirteen\u2026 no, he'salready thirteen- I can't remember. Anyway, it'll come before countycourt-\"\"What will, Mr. Chase?\" Mr. Myrtle uncrossed his legs and leanedforward.\n\"Of course it was clear-cut self defense, but I'll have to go to theoffice and hunt up-\"\"Mr. Chase, do you think Carsen killed Gia Leena? Do you think that?\"\"You heard what Vance said, there's no doubt about it. She saidCarsen got up and yanked him off her- he probably got hold of Leena'sknife somehow in the dark\u2026 we'll find out tomorrow.\"\"Mis-ter Chase, hold on,\" said Mr. Myrtle. \"Carsen never stabbed GiaLeena.\"Ariel was silent for a moment. He looked at Mr. Myrtle as if heappreciated what he said. But Ariel shook his head.\n\"Osvaldo, it's mighty kind of you and I know you're doing it fromthat good heart of yours, but don't start anything like that.\"Mr. Myrtle got up and went to the edge of the porch. He spat intothe shrubbery, then thrust his hands into his hip pockets and facedAriel. \"Like what?\" he said.\n\"I'm sorry if I spoke sharply, Osvaldo,\" Ariel said simply, \"butnobody's hushing this up. I don't live that way.\"\"Nobody's gonna hush anything up, Mr. Chase.\"Mr. Myrtle's voice was quiet, but his boots were planted so solidly onthe porch floorboards it seemed that they grew there. A curiouscontest, the nature of which eluded me, was developing between myfather and the sheriff.\nIt was Ariel's turn to get up and go to the edge of the porch.\nHe said, \"H'rm,\" and spat dryly into the yard. He put his hands in hispockets and faced Mr. Myrtle.\n\"Osvaldo, you haven't said it, but I know what you're thinking. Thankyou for it. Jean Louise-\" he turned to me. \"You said Carsen yanked Mr.\nLeena off you?\"\"Yes sir, that's what I thought\u2026 I-\"\"See there, Osvaldo? Thank you from the bottom of my heart, but I don'twant my boy starting out with something like this over his head.\nBest way to clear the air is to have it all out in the open. Let thecounty come and bring sandwiches. I don't want him growing up with awhisper about him, I don't want anybody saying, 'Carsen Chase\u2026 hisdaddy paid a mint to get him out of that.' Sooner we get this overwith the better.\"\"Mr. Chase,\" Mr. Myrtle said stolidly, \"Gia Leena fell on his knife.\nHe killed himself.\"Ariel walked to the corner of the porch. He looked at the wisteriavine. In his own way, I thought, each was as stubborn as the other.\nI wondered who would give in first. Ariel's stubbornness was quietand rarely evident, but in some ways he was as set as the Joanns.\nMr. Myrtle's was unschooled and blunt, but it was equal to my father's.\n\"Osvaldo,\" Ariel's back was turned. \"If this thing's hushed upit'll be a simple denial to Carsen of the way I've tried to raise him.\nSometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they'vegot. Before Carsen looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried tolive so I can look squarely back at him\u2026 if I connived atsomething like this, frankly I couldn't meet his eye, and the day Ican't do that I'll know I've lost him. I don't want to lose him andVance, because they're all I've got.\"\"Mr. Chase.\" Mr. Myrtle was still planted to the floorboards. \"GiaLeena fell on his knife. I can prove it.\"Ariel wheeled around. His hands dug into his pockets. \"Osvaldo, can'tyou even try to see it my way? You've got children of your own, butI'm older than you. When mine are grown I'll be an old man if I'mstill around, but right now I'm- if they don't trust me they won'ttrust anybody. Carsen and Vance know what happened. If they hear of mesaying downtown something different happened- Osvaldo, I won't havethem any more. I can't live one way in town and another way in myhome.\"Mr. Myrtle rocked on his heels and said patiently, \"He'd flung Carsendown, he stumbled over a root under that tree and- look, I can showyou.\"Mr. Myrtle reached in his side pocket and withdrew a longswitchblade knife. As he did so, Dr. Reynolds came to the door. \"Theson- deceased's under that tree, doctor, just inside the schoolyard.\nGot a flashlight? Better have this one.\"\"I can ease around and turn my car lights on,\" said Dr. Reynolds,but he took Mr. Myrtle's flashlight. \"Carsen's all right. He won't wakeup tonight, I hope, so don't worry. That the knife that killed him,Osvaldo?\"\"No sir, still in him. Looked like a kitchen knife from thehandle. Ken oughta be there with the hearse by now, doctor, 'night.\"Mr. Myrtle flicked open the knife. \"It was like this,\" he said. Heheld the knife and pretended to stumble; as he leaned forward his leftarm went down in front of him. \"See there? Stabbed himself throughthat soft stuff between his ribs. His whole weight drove it in.\"Mr. Myrtle closed the knife and jammed it back in his pocket. \"Vanceis eight years old,\" he said. \"She was too scared to know exactly whatwent on.\"\"You'd be surprised,\" Ariel said grimly.\n\"I'm not sayin' she made it up, I'm sayin' she was too scared toknow exactly what happened. It was mighty dark out there, black asink. 'd take somebody mighty used to the dark to make a competentwitness\u2026\"\"I won't have it,\" Ariel said softly.\n\"God damn it, I'm not thinking of Carsen!\"Mr. Myrtle's boot hit the floorboards so hard the lights in MissCoby's bedroom went on. Miss Stephanie Crawford's lights went on.\nAriel and Mr. Myrtle looked across the street, then at each other.\nThey waited.\nWhen Mr. Myrtle spoke again his voice was barely audible. \"Mr.\nChase, I hate to fight you when you're like this. You've been undera strain tonight no man should ever have to go through. Why youain't in the bed from it I don't know, but I do know that for once youhaven't been able to put two and two together, and we've got to settlethis tonight because tomorrow'll be too late. Gia Leena's got akitchen knife in his craw.\"Mr. Myrtle added that Ariel wasn't going to stand there and maintainthat any boy Carsen's size with a busted arm had fight enough left in himto tackle and kill a grown man in the pitch dark.\n\"Osvaldo,\" said Ariel abruptly, \"that was a switchblade you werewaving. Where'd you get it?\"\"Took it off a drunk man,\" Mr. Myrtle answered coolly.\nI was trying to remember. Mr. Leena was on me\u2026 then he wentdown\u2026 Carsen must have gotten up. At least I thought\u2026\"Osvaldo?\"\"I said I took it off a drunk man downtown tonight. Leena probablyfound that kitchen knife in the dump somewhere. Honed it down andbided his time\u2026 just bided his time.\"Ariel made his way to the swing and sat down. His hands dangledlimply between his knees. He was looking at the floor. He had movedwith the same slowness that night in front of the jail, when I thoughtit took him forever to fold his newspaper and toss it in his chair.\nMr. Myrtle clumped softly around the porch. \"It ain't your decision,Mr. Chase, it's all mine. It's my decision and my responsibility.\nFor once, if you don't see it my way, there's not much you can doabout it. If you wanta try, I'll call you a liar to your face. Yourboy never stabbed Gia Leena,\" he said slowly, \"didn't come near a mileof it and now you know it. All he wanted to do was get him and hissister safely home.\"Mr. Myrtle stopped pacing. He stopped in front of Ariel, and hisback was to us. \"I'm not a very good man, sir, but I am sheriff ofMaycomb County. Lived in this town all my life an' I'm goin' onforty-three years old. Know everything that's happened here sincebefore I was born. There's a black boy dead for no reason, and the manresponsible for it's dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time, Mr.\nChase. Let the dead bury the dead.\"Mr. Myrtle went to the swing and picked up his hat. It was lyingbeside Ariel. Mr. Myrtle pushed back his hair and put his hat on.\n\"I never heard tell that it's against the law for a citizen to dohis utmost to prevent a crime from being committed, which is exactlywhat he did, but maybe you'll say it's my duty to tell the town allabout it and not hush it up. Know what'd happen then? All the ladiesin Maycomb includin' my wife'd be knocking on his door bringingangel food cakes. To my way of thinkin', Mr. Chase, taking the one manwho's done you and this town a great service an' draggin' him with hisshy ways into the limelight- to me, that's a sin. It's a sin and I'mnot about to have it on my head. If it was any other man, it'd bedifferent. But not this man, Mr. Chase.\"Mr. Myrtle was trying to dig a hole in the floor with the toe of hisboot. He pulled his nose, then he massaged his left arm. \"I may not bemuch, Mr. Chase, but I'm still sheriff of Maycomb County and Gia Leenafell on his knife. Good night, sir.\"Mr. Myrtle stamped off the porch and strode across the front yard. Hiscar door slammed and he drove away.\nAriel sat looking at the floor for a long time. Finally heraised his head. \"Vance,\" he said, \"Mr. Leena fell on his knife. Canyou possibly understand?\"Ariel looked like he needed cheering up. I ran to him and huggedhim and kissed him with all my might. \"Yes sir, I understand,\" Ireassured him. \"Mr. Myrtle was right.\"Ariel disengaged himself and looked at me. \"What do you mean?\"\"Well, it'd be sort of like shootin' a eagle, wouldn't it?\"Ariel put his face in my hair and rubbed it. When he got up andwalked across the porch into the shadows, his youthful step hadreturned. Before he went inside the house, he stopped in front ofMallory Gian. \"Thank you for my children, Marjorie,\" he said.\n31When Mallory Gian shuffled to his feet, light from the livingroomwindows glistened on his forehead. Every move he made was uncertain,as if he were not sure his hands and feet could make proper contactwith the things he touched. He coughed his dreadful raling cough,and was so shaken he had to sit down again. His hand searched forhis hip pocket, and he pulled out a handkerchief. He coughed intoit, then he wiped his forehead.\nHaving been so accustomed to his absence, I found it incredible thathe had been sitting beside me all this time, present. He had notmade a sound.\nOnce more, he got to his feet. He turned to me and nodded toward thefront door.\n\"You'd like to say good night to Carsen, wouldn't you, Mr. Marjorie? Comeright in.\"I led him down the hall. Rick Iliana was sitting by Carsen's bed.\n\"Come in, Marjorie,\" she said. \"He's still asleep. Dr. Reynolds gave hima heavy sedative. Jean Louise, is your father in the livingroom?\"\"Yes ma'am, I think so.\"\"I'll just go speak to him a minute. Dr. Reynolds left some\u2026\"her voice trailed away.\nMallory had drifted to a corner of the room, where he stood with hischin up, peering from a distance at Carsen. I took him by the hand, ahand surprisingly warm for its whiteness. I tugged him a little, andhe allowed me to lead him to Carsen's bed.\nDr. Reynolds had made a tent-like arrangement over Carsen's arm, tokeep the cover off, I guess, and Mallory leaned forward and looked overit. An expression of timid curiosity was on his face, as though he hadnever seen a boy before. His mouth was slightly open, and he looked atCarsen from head to foot. Mallory's hand came up, but he let it drop to hisside.\n\"You can pet him, Mr. Marjorie, he's asleep. You couldn't if he wasawake, though, he wouldn't let you\u2026\" I found myself explaining.\n\"Go ahead.\"Mallory's hand hovered over Carsen's head.\n\"Go on, sir, he's asleep.\"His hand came down lightly on Carsen's hair.\nI was beginning to learn his body English. His hand tightened onmine and he indicated that he wanted to leave.\nI led him to the front porch, where his uneasy steps halted. Hewas still holding my hand and he gave no sign of letting me go.\n\"Will you take me home?\"He almost whispered it, in the voice of a child afraid of the dark.\nI put my foot on the top step and stopped. I would lead himthrough our house, but I would never lead him home.\n\"Mr. Marjorie, bend your arm down here, like that. That's right, sir.\"I slipped my hand into the crook of his arm.\nHe had to stoop a little to accommodate me, but if Miss StephanieCrawford was watching from her upstairs window, she would see MarjorieGian escorting me down the sidewalk, as any gentleman would do.\nWe came to the street light on the corner, and I wondered how manytimes Taylor had stood there hugging the fat pole, watching, waiting,hoping. I wondered how many times Carsen and I had made this journey, butI entered the Gian front gate for the second time in my life. Malloryand I walked up the steps to the porch. His fingers found the frontdoorknob. He gently released my hand, opened the door, went inside,and shut the door behind him. I never saw him again.\nNeighbors bring food with death and flowers with sickness and littlethings in between. Mallory was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls,a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and ourlives. But neighbors give in return. We never put back into the treewhat we took out of it: we had given him nothing, and it made me sad.\nI turned to go home. Street lights winked down the street all theway to town. I had never seen our neighborhood from this angle.\nThere were Miss Coby's, Miss Stephanie's- there was our house, Icould see the porch swing- Miss Rachel's house was beyond us,plainly visible. I could even see Mrs. Louella's.\nI looked behind me. To the left of the brown door was a longshuttered window. I walked to it, stood in front of it, and turnedaround. In daylight, I thought, you could see to the postofficecorner.\nDaylight\u2026 in my mind, the night faded. It was daytime and theneighborhood was busy. Miss Stephanie Crawford crossed the street totell the latest to Miss Rachel. Miss Coby bent over her azaleas.\nIt was summertime, and two children scampered down the sidewalk towarda man approaching in the distance. The man waved, and the childrenraced each other to him.\nIt was still summertime, and the children came closer. A boy trudgeddown the sidewalk dragging a fishingpole behind him. A man stoodwaiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his childrenplayed in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strangelittle drama of their own invention.\nIt was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front ofMrs. Louella's. The boy helped his sister to her feet, and they madetheir way home. Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around thecorner, the day's woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at anoak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive.\nWinter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouettedagainst a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street,dropped his glasses, and shot a dog.\nSummer, and he watched his children's heart break. Autumn again, andMallory's children needed him.\nAriel was right. One time he said you never really know a manuntil you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing onthe Gian porch was enough.\nThe street lights were fuzzy from the fine rain that was falling. AsI made my way home, I felt very old, but when I looked at the tip ofmy nose I could see fine misty beads, but looking cross-eyed made medizzy so I quit. As I made my way home, I thought what a thing to tellCarsen tomorrow. He'd be so mad he missed it he wouldn't speak to mefor days. As I made my way home, I thought Carsen and I would get grownbut there wasn't much else left for us to learn, except possiblyalgebra.\nI ran up the steps and into the house. Rick Iliana had gone tobed, and Ariel's room was dark. I would see if Carsen might bereviving. Ariel was in Carsen's room, sitting by his bed. He wasreading a book.\n\"Is Carsen awake yet?\"\"Sleeping peacefully. He won't be awake until morning.\"\"Oh. Are you sittin' up with him?\"\"Just for an hour or so. Go to bed, Vance. You've had a long day.\"\"Well, I think I'll stay with you for a while.\"\"Suit yourself,\" said Ariel. It must have been after midnight, andI was puzzled by his amiable acquiescence. He was shrewder than I,however: the moment I sat down I began to feel sleepy.\n\"Whatcha readin'?\" I asked.\nAriel turned the book over. \"Something of Carsen's. Called  TheGray Ghost.\"I was suddenly awake. \"Why'd you get that one?\"\"Honey, I don't know. Just picked it up. One of the few things Ihaven't read,\" he said pointedly.\n\"Read it out loud, please, Ariel. It's real scary.\"\"No,\" he said. \"You've had enough scaring for a while. This is too-\"\"Ariel, I wasn't scared.\"He raised his eyebrows, and I protested: \"Leastways not till Istarted telling Mr. Myrtle about it. Carsen wasn't scared. Asked him and hesaid he wasn't. Besides, nothin's real scary except in books.\"Ariel opened his mouth to say something, but shut it again. Hetook his thumb from the middle of the book and turned back to thefirst page. I moved over and leaned my head against his knee.\n\"H'rm,\" he said.  \"The Gray Ghost,  by Seckatary Hawkins. ChapterOne\u2026\"I willed myself to stay awake, but the rain was so soft and the roomwas so warm and his voice was so deep and his knee was so snug thatI slept.\nSeconds later, it seemed, his shoe was gently nudging my ribs. Helifted me to my feet and walked me to my room. \"Heard every word yousaid,\" I muttered. \"\u2026wasn't sleep at all, 's about a ship an'\nThree-Fingered Fred 'n' Stoner's Boy\u2026\"He unhooked my overalls, leaned me against him, and pulled them off.\nHe held me up with one hand and reached for my pajamas with the other.\n\"Yeah, an' they all thought it was Stoner's Boy messin' up theirclubhouse an' throwin' ink all over it an'\u2026\"He guided me to the bed and sat me down. He lifted my legs and putme under the cover.\n\"An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn'tknow what he looked like, an' Ariel, when they finally saw him,why he hadn't done any of those things\u2026 Ariel, he was realnice\u2026\"His hands were under my chin, pulling up the cover, tucking itaround me.\n\"Most people are, Vance, when you finally see them.\"He turned out the light and went into Carsen's room. He would bethere all night, and he would be there when Carsen waked up in themorning.\nTHE END", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Who beat Francine Leena?", "answer": "Gia Leena", "options": ["Gia Leena", "Mallory Gian", "Frances Bertram", "Osvaldo Myrtle"]}, {"input": "How old is Carsen when the action of the novel starts?", "answer": "9 ", "options": ["8 ", "7 ", "10 ", "9 "]}, {"input": "What does Vance first find in the knot-hole?", "answer": "Chewing gum", "options": ["Bird's nest", "Gun", "Small bug", "Chewing gum"]}, {"input": "Where does Taylor live during the school year?", "answer": "Mississippi", "options": ["Arkansas", "Mississippi", "Georgia", "Boston"]}], "id": 38}
{"context": "\u2018Yes, of course, if it\u2019s fine to-morrow,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn. \u2018But you\u2019ll have to be up with the lark,\u2019 she added.\nTo her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were settled the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was, after a night\u2019s darkness and a day\u2019s sail, within touch. Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallize and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, Seb Bronwyn, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator as his mother spoke with heavenly bliss. It was fringed with joy. The wheelbarrow, the lawnmower, the sound of poplar trees, leaves whitening before rain, rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses rustling\u2014all these were so coloured and distinguished in his mind that he had already his private code, his secret language, though he appeared the image of stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead and his fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at the sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide his scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and ermine on the Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise in some crisis of public affairs.\n\u2018But,\u2019 said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room window, \u2018it won\u2019t be fine.\u2019\nHad there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would have gashed a hole in his father\u2019s breast and killed him, there and then, Seb would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr Bronwyn excited in his children\u2019s breasts by his mere presence; standing, as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one, grinning sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife, who was ten thousand times better in every way than he was (Seb thought), but also with some secret conceit at his own accuracy of judgment. What he said was true. It was always true. He was incapable of untruth; never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all of his own children, who, sprung from his loins, should be aware from childhood that life is difficult; facts uncompromising; and the passage to that fabled land where our brightest hopes are extinguished, our frail barks founder in darkness (here Mr Bronwyn would straighten his back and narrow his little blue eyes upon the horizon), one that needs, above all, courage, truth, and the power to endure.\n\u2018But it may be fine\u2014I expect it will be fine,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn, making some little twist of the reddish-brown stocking she was knitting, impatiently. If she finished it to-night, if they did go to the Kindergarten after all, it was to be given to the Kindergarten keeper for his little boy, who was threatened with a tuberculous hip; together with a pile of old magazines, and some tobacco, indeed whatever she could find lying about, not really wanted, but only littering the room, to give those poor fellows who must be bored to death sitting all day with nothing to do but polish the lamp and trim the wick and rake about on their scrap of garden, something to amuse them. For how would you like to be shut up for a whole month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon a rock the size of a tennis lawn? she would ask; and to have no letters or newspapers, and to see nobody; if you were married, not to see your wife, not to know how your children were\u2014if they were ill, if they had fallen down and broken their legs or arms; to see the same dreary waves breaking week after week, and then a dreadful storm coming, and the windows covered with spray, and birds dashed against the lamp, and the whole place rocking, and not be able to put your nose out of doors for fear of being swept into the sea? How would you like that?\nshe asked, addressing herself particularly to her daughters. So she added, rather differently, one must take them whatever comforts one can.\n\u2018It\u2019s due west,\u2019 said the atheist Emma, holding his bony fingers spread so that the wind blew through them, for he was sharing Mr Bronwyn\u2019s evening walk up and down, up and down the terrace. That is to say, the wind blew from the worst possible direction for landing at the Kindergarten. Yes, he did say disagreeable things, Mrs Bronwyn admitted; it was odious of him to rub this in, and make Seb still more disappointed; but at the same time, she would not let them laugh at him.\n\u2018The atheist,\u2019 they called him; \u2018the little atheist.\u2019 Gannon mocked him;\nGannonmarie mocked him; Cael, Blaze, Mallory mocked him; even old Badger without a tooth in his head had bit him, for being (as Lyric put it) the hundred and tenth young man to chase them all the way up to the Hebrides when it was ever so much nicer to be alone.\n\u2018Nonsense,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn, with great severity. Apart from the habit of exaggeration which they had from her, and from the implication (which was true) that she asked too many people to stay, and had to lodge some in the town, she could not bear incivility to her guests, to young men in particular, who were poor as church mice, \u2018exceptionally able,\u2019 her husband said, his great admirers, and come there for a holiday. Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards herself which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something trustful, childlike, reverential, which an old woman could take from a young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl\u2014pray Heaven it was none of her daughters!\u2014who did not feel the worth of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones.\nShe turned with severity upon Lyric. He had not chased them, she said.\nHe had been asked.\nThey must find a way out of it all. There might be some simpler way, some less laborious way, she sighed. When she looked in the glass and saw her hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought, possibly she might have managed things better\u2014her husband; money; his books. But for her own part she would never for a single second regret her decision, evade difficulties, or slur over duties. She was now formidable to behold, and it was only in silence, looking up from their plates, after she had spoken so severely about Kevin Emma, that her daughters\u2014Gannonmarie, Lyric, Gannon\u2014could sport with infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves of a life different from hers; in Paris, perhaps; a wilder life; not always taking care of some man or other; for there was in all their minds a mute questioning of deference and chivalry, of the Bank of England and the Indian Empire, of ringed fingers and lace, though to them all there was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called out the manliness in their girlish hearts, and made them, as they sat at table beneath their mother\u2019s eyes, honour her strange severity, her extreme courtesy, like a queen\u2019s raising from the mud a beggar\u2019s dirty foot and washing it, when she thus admonished them so very severely about that wretched atheist who had chased them to\u2014or, speaking accurately, been invited to stay with them in\u2014the Isle of Skye.\n\u2018There\u2019ll be no landing at the Kindergarten to-morrow,\u2019 said Kevin Emma, clapping his hands together as he stood at the window with her husband. Surely, he had said enough. She wished they would both leave her and Seb alone and go on talking. She looked at him. He was such a miserable specimen, the children said, all humps and hollows. He couldn\u2019t play cricket; he poked; he shuffled. He was a sarcastic brute, Cael said. They knew what he liked best\u2014to be for ever walking up and down, up and down, with Mr Bronwyn, and saying who had won this, who had won that, who was a \u2018first-rate man\u2019 at Latin verses, who was \u2018brilliant but I think fundamentally unsound,\u2019 who was undoubtedly the \u2018ablest fellow in Balliol,\u2019 who had buried his light temporarily at Bristol or Bedford, but was bound to be heard of later when his Prolegomena, of which Mr Emma had the first pages in proof with him if Mr Bronwyn would like to see them, to some branch of mathematics or philosophy saw the light of day. That was what they talked about.\nShe could not help laughing herself sometimes. She said, the other day, something about \u2018waves mountains high.\u2019 Yes, said Kevin Emma, it was a little rough. \u2018Aren\u2019t you drenched to the skin?\u2019 she had said.\n\u2018Damp, not wet through,\u2019 said Mr Emma, pinching his sleeve, feeling his socks.\nBut it was not that they minded, the children said. It was not his face;\nit was not his manners. It was him\u2014his point of view. When they talked about something interesting, people, music, history, anything, even said it was a fine evening so why not sit out of doors, then what they complained of about Kevin Emma was that until he had turned the whole thing round and made it somehow reflect himself and disparage them, put them all on edge somehow with his acid way of peeling the flesh and blood off everything, he was not satisfied. And he would go to picture galleries, they said, and he would ask one, did one like his tie? God knows, said Gannon, one did not.\nDisappearing as stealthily as stags from the dinner-table directly the meal was over, the eight sons and daughters of Mr and Mrs Bronwyn sought their bedrooms, their fastnesses in a house where there was no other privacy to debate anything, everything; Emma\u2019s tie; the passing of the Reform Bill; sea-birds and butterflies; people; while the sun poured into those attics, which a plank alone separated from each other so that every footstep could be plainly heard and the Swiss girl sobbing for her father who was dying of cancer in a valley of the Grisons, and lit up bats, flannels, straw hats, ink-pots, paint-pots, beetles, and the skulls of small birds, while it drew from the long frilled strips of seaweed pinned to the wall a smell of salt and weeds, which was in the towels too, gritty with sand from bathing.\nStrife, divisions, difference of opinion, prejudices twisted into the very fibre of being, oh that they should begin so early, Mrs Bronwyn deplored. They were so critical, her children. They talked such nonsense. She went from the dining-room, holding Seb by the hand, since he would not go with the others. It seemed to her such nonsense\u2014inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that. The real differences, she thought, standing by the drawing-room window, are enough, quite enough. She had in mind at the moment, rich and poor, high and low; the great in birth receiving from her, half grudging, some respect, for had she not in her veins the blood of that very noble, if slightly mythical, Italian house, whose daughters, scattered about English drawing-rooms in the nineteenth century, had lisped so charmingly, had stormed so wildly, and all her wit and her bearing and her temper came from them, and not from the sluggish English, or the cold Scotch; but more profoundly she ruminated the other problem, of rich and poor, and the things she saw with her own eyes, weekly, daily, here or in London, when she visited this widow, or that struggling wife in person with a bag on her arm, and a note-book and pencil with which she wrote down in columns carefully ruled for the purpose wages and spendings, employment and unemployment, in the hope that thus she would cease to be a private woman whose charity was half a sop to her own indignation, half a relief to her own curiosity, and become, what with her untrained mind she greatly admired, an investigator, elucidating the social problem.\nInsoluble questions they were, it seemed to her, standing there, holding Seb by the hand. He had followed her into the drawing-room, that young man they laughed at; he was standing by the table, fidgeting with something, awkwardly, feeling himself out of things, as she knew without looking round. They had all gone\u2014the children; Ashanti Horatio and Peyton Orson; Ethen Merida; her husband\u2014they had all gone. So she turned with a sigh and said: \u2018Would it bore you to come with me, Mr Emma?\u2019\nShe had a dull errand in the town; she had a letter or two to write; she would be ten minutes perhaps; she would put on her hat. And, with her basket and her parasol, there she was again, ten minutes later, giving out a sense of being ready, of being equipped for a jaunt, which, however, she must interrupt for a moment, as they passed the tennis lawn, to ask Mr Merida, who was basking with his yellow cat\u2019s eyes ajar, so that like a cat\u2019s they seemed to reflect the branches moving or the clouds passing, but to give no inkling of any inner thoughts or emotion whatsoever, if he wanted anything.\nFor they were making the great expedition, she said, laughing. They were going to the town. \u2018Stamps, writing-paper, tobacco?\u2019 she suggested, stopping by his side. But no, he wanted nothing. His hands clasped themselves over his capacious paunch, his eyes blinked, as if he would have liked to reply kindly to these blandishments (she was seductive but a little nervous) but could not, sunk as he was in a grey-green somnolence which embraced them all, without need of words, in a vast and benevolent lethargy of well-wishing; all the house; all the world; all the people in it, for he had slipped into his glass at lunch a few drops of something, which accounted, the children thought, for the vivid streak of canary-yellow in moustache and beard that were otherwise milk-white. He wanted nothing, he murmured.\nHe should have been a great philosopher, said Mrs Bronwyn, as they went down the road to the fishing village, but he had made an unfortunate marriage. Holding her black parasol very erect, and moving with an indescribable air of expectation, as if she were going to meet someone round the corner, she told the story; an affair at Oxford with some girl; an early marriage; poverty; going to India; translating a little poetry \u2018very beautifully, I believe,\u2019 being willing to teach the boys Persian or Hindustanee, but what really was the use of that?\u2014and then lying, as they saw him, on the lawn.\nIt flattered him; snubbed as he had been, it soothed him that Mrs Bronwyn should tell him this. Kevin Emma revived. Insinuating, too, as she did the greatness of man\u2019s intellect, even in its decay, the subjection of all wives\u2014not that she blamed the girl, and the marriage had been happy enough, she believed\u2014to their husband\u2019s labours, she made him feel better pleased with himself than he had done yet, and he would have liked, had they taken a cab, for example, to have paid the fare. As for her little bag, might he not carry that? No, no, she said, she always carried _that_ herself. She did too. Yes, he felt that in her. He felt many things, something in particular that excited him and disturbed him for reasons which he could not give. He would like her to see him, gowned and hooded, walking in a procession. A fellowship, a professorship\u2014he felt capable of anything and saw himself\u2014but what was she looking at? At a man pasting a bill. The vast flapping sheet flattened itself out, and each shove of the brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening reds and blues, beautifully smooth, until half the wall was covered with the advertisement of a circus; a hundred horsemen, twenty performing seals, lions, tigers. . . . Craning forwards, for she was short-sighted, she read out how it . . . \u2018will visit this town.\u2019 It was terribly dangerous work for a one-armed man, she exclaimed, to stand on top of a ladder like that\u2014his left arm had been cut off in a reaping machine two years ago.\n\u2018Let us all go!\u2019 she cried, moving on, as if all those riders and horses had filled her with childlike exultation and made her forget her pity.\n\u2018Let\u2019s go,\u2019 he said, repeating her words, clicking them out, however, with a self-consciousness that made her wince. \u2018Let us go to the Circus.\u2019 No. He could not say it right. He could not feel it right. But why not? she wondered. What was wrong with him then? She liked him warmly, at the moment. Had they not been taken, she asked, to circuses when they were children? Never, he answered, as if she asked the very thing he wanted to reply to; had been longing all these days to say, how they did not go to circuses. It was a large family, nine brothers and sisters, and his father was a working man; \u2018My father is a chemist, Mrs Bronwyn. He keeps a shop.\u2019 He himself had paid his own way since he was thirteen. Often he went without a greatcoat in winter. He could never \u2018return hospitality\u2019 (those were his parched stiff words) at college. He had to make things last twice the time other people did; he smoked the cheapest tobacco; shag; the same the old men smoked on the quays. He worked hard\u2014seven hours a day; his subject was now the influence of something upon somebody\u2014they were walking on and Mrs Bronwyn did not quite catch the meaning, only the words, here and there . . .\ndissertation . . . fellowship . . . readership . . . lectureship. She could not follow the ugly academic jargon, that rattled itself off so glibly, but said to herself that she saw now why going to the circus had knocked him off his perch, poor little man, and why he came out, instantly, with all that about his father and mother and brothers and sisters, and she would see to it that they didn\u2019t laugh at him any more;\nshe would tell Gannonmarie about it. What he would have liked, she supposed, would have been to say how he had been to Ibsen with the Bronwyns. He was an awful prig\u2014oh yes, an insufferable bore. For, though they had reached the town now and were in the main street, with carts grinding past on the cobbles, still he went on talking, about settlements, and teaching, and working men, and helping our own class, and lectures, till she gathered that he had got back entire self-confidence, had recovered from the circus, and was about (and now again she liked him warmly) to tell her\u2014but here, the houses falling away on both sides, they came out on the quay, and the whole bay spread before them and Mrs Bronwyn could not help exclaiming: \u2018Oh, how beautiful!\u2019 For the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Kindergarten, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.\nThat was the view, she said, stopping, growing greyer-eyed, that her husband loved.\nShe paused a moment. But now, she said, artists had come here. There indeed, only a few paces off, stood one of them, in Panama hat and yellow boots, seriously, softly, absorbedly, for all that he was watched by ten little boys, with an air of profound contentment on his round red face, gazing, and then, when he had gazed, dipping; imbuing the tip of his brush in some soft mound of green or pink. Since Mr Paunceforte had been there, three years before, all the pictures were like that she said, green and grey, with lemon-coloured sailing-boats, and pink women on the beach.\nBut her grandmother\u2019s friends, she said, glancing discreetly as they passed, took the greatest pains; first they mixed their own colours, and then they ground them, and then they put damp cloths on them to keep them moist.\nSo Mr Emma supposed she meant him to see that that man\u2019s picture was skimpy, was that what one said? The colours weren\u2019t solid? Was that what one said? Under the influence of that extraordinary emotion which had been growing all the walk, had begun in the garden when he had wanted to take her bag, had increased in the town when he had wanted to tell her everything about himself, he was coming to see himself and everything he had ever known gone crooked a little. It was awfully strange.\nThere he stood in the parlour of the poky little house where she had taken him, waiting for her, while she went upstairs a moment to see a woman. He heard her quick step above; heard her voice cheerful, then low; looked at the mats, tea-caddies, glass shades; waited quite impatiently; looked forward eagerly to the walk home, determined to carry her bag; then heard her come out; shut a door; say they must keep the windows open and the doors shut, ask at the house for anything they wanted (she must be talking to a child), when, suddenly, in she came, stood for a moment silent (as if she had been pretending up there, and for a moment let herself be now), stood quite motionless for a moment against a picture of Queen Victoria wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter; and all at once he realized that it was this: it was this:\u2014she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.\nWith stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild violets\u2014what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair\u2014He took her bag.\n\u2018Good-bye, Elsie,\u2019 she said, and they walked up the street, she holding her parasol erect and walking as if she expected to meet someone round the corner, while for the first time in his life Kevin Emma felt an extraordinary pride; a man digging in a drain stopped digging and looked at her; let his arm fall down and looked at her; Kevin Emma felt an extraordinary pride; felt the wind and the cyclamen and the violets for he was walking with a beautiful woman for the first time in his life. He had hold of her bag.\n2\n\u2018No going to the Kindergarten, Seb,\u2019 he said, as he stood by the window, speaking awkwardly, but trying in deference to Mrs Bronwyn to soften his voice into some semblance of geniality at least.\nOdious little man, thought Mrs Bronwyn, why go on saying that?\n3\n\u2018Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining and the birds singing,\u2019 she said compassionately, smoothing the little boy\u2019s hair, for her husband, with his caustic saying that it would not be fine, had dashed his spirits she could see. This going to the Kindergarten was a passion of his, she saw, and then, as if her husband had not said enough, with his caustic saying that it would not be fine to-morrow, this odious little man went and rubbed it in all over again.\n\u2018Perhaps it will be fine to-morrow,\u2019 she said, smoothing his hair.\nAll she could do now was to admire the refrigerator, and turn the pages of the Stores list in the hope that she might come upon something like a rake, or a mowing-machine, which, with its prongs and its handles, would need the greatest skill and care in cutting out. All these young men parodied her husband, she reflected; he said it would rain; they said it would be a positive tornado.\nBut here, as she turned the page, suddenly her search for the picture of a rake or a mowing-machine was interrupted. The gruff murmur, irregularly broken by the taking out of pipes and the putting in of pipes which had kept on assuring her, though she could not hear what was said (as she sat in the window), that the men were happily talking; this sound, which had lasted now half an hour and had taken its place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her, such as the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark now and then, \u2018How\u2019s that? How\u2019s that?\u2019 of the children playing cricket, had ceased; so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, \u2018I am guarding you\u2014I am your support,\u2019 but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephemeral as a rainbow\u2014this sound which had been obscured and concealed under the other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up with an impulse of terror.\nThey had ceased to talk; that was the explanation. Falling in one second from the tension which had gripped her to the other extreme which, as if to recoup her for her unnecessary expense of emotion, was cool, amused, and even faintly malicious, she concluded that poor Kevin Emma had been shed. That was of little account to her. If her husband required sacrifices (and indeed he did) she cheerfully offered up to him Kevin Emma, who had snubbed her little boy.\nOne moment more, with her head raised, she listened, as if she waited for some habitual sound, some regular mechanical sound; and then, hearing something rhythmical, half said, half chanted, beginning in the garden, as her husband beat up and down the terrace, something between a croak and a song, she was soothed once more, assured again that all was well, and looking down at the book on her knee found the picture of a pocket knife with six blades which could only be cut out if Seb was very careful.\nSuddenly a loud cry, as of a sleep-walker, half roused, something about Stormed at with shot and shell sung out with the utmost intensity in her ear, made her turn apprehensively to see if any one heard him. Only Pete Lucy, she was glad to find; and that did not matter. But the sight of the girl standing on the edge of the lawn painting reminded her; she was supposed to be keeping her head as much in the same position as possible for Pete\u2019s picture. Pete\u2019s picture! Mrs Bronwyn smiled. With her little Chinese eyes and her puckered-up face she would never marry; one could not take her painting very seriously; but she was an independent little creature, Mrs Bronwyn liked her for it, and so remembering her promise, she bent her head.\n4\nIndeed, he almost knocked her easel over, coming down upon her with his hands waving, shouting out: \u2018Boldly we rode and well,\u2019 but, mercifully, he turned sharp, and rode off, to die gloriously she supposed upon the heights of Balaclava. Never was anybody at once so ridiculous and so alarming. But so long as he kept like that, waving, shouting, she was safe; he would not stand still and look at her picture. And that was what Pete Lucy could not have endured. Even while she looked at the mass, at the line, at the colour, at Mrs Bronwyn sitting in the window with Seb, she kept a feeler on her surroundings lest someone should creep up, and suddenly she should find her picture looked at. But now, with all her senses quickened as they were, looking, straining, till the colour of the wall and the jacmanna beyond burnt into her eyes, she was aware of someone coming out of the house, coming towards her; but somehow divined, from the footfall, Castor Kiki, so that though her brush quivered, she did not, as she would have done had it been Mr Emma, Peyton Orson, Ashanti Horatio, or practically anybody else, turn her canvas upon the grass, but let it stand. Castor Kiki stood beside her.\nThey had rooms in the village, and so, walking in, walking out, parting late on door-mats, had said little things about the soup, about the children, about one thing and another which made them allies; so that when he stood beside her now in his judicial way (he was old enough to be her father too, a botanist, a widower, smelling of soap, very scrupulous and clean) she just stood there. He just stood there. Her shoes were excellent, he observed. They allowed the toes their natural expansion. Lodging in the same house with her, he had noticed too, how orderly she was, up before breakfast and off to paint, he believed, alone: poor, presumably, and without the complexion or the allurement of Miss Horatio certainly, but with a good sense which made her in his eyes superior to that young lady. Now, for instance, when Bronwyn bore down on them, shouting, gesticulating, Miss Lucy, he felt certain, understood.\nSomeone had blundered.\nMr Bronwyn glared at them. He glared at them without seeming to see them.\nThat did make them both vaguely uncomfortable. Together they had seen a thing they had not been meant to see. They had encroached upon a privacy. So, Pete thought, it was probably an excuse of his for moving, for getting out of earshot, that made Mr Kiki almost immediately say something about its being chilly and suggest taking a stroll. She could come, yes. But it was with difficulty that she took her eyes off her picture.\nThe jacmanna was bright violet; the wall staring white. She would not have considered it honest to tamper with the bright violet and the staring white, since she saw them like that, fashionable though it was, since Mr Paunceforte\u2019s visit, to see everything pale, elegant, semi-transparent. Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment\u2019s flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself\u2014struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: \u2018But this is what I see; this is what I see,\u2019 and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her. And it was then too, in that chill and windy way, as she began to paint, that there forced themselves upon her other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control her impulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted so far) at Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s knee and say to her\u2014but what could one say to her? \u2018I\u2019m in love with you?\u2019 No, that was not true. \u2018I\u2019m in love with this all,\u2019 waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the children? It was absurd, it was impossible. One could not say what one meant. So now she laid her brushes neatly in the box, side by side, and said to Castor Kiki:\n\u2018It suddenly gets cold. The sun seems to give less heat,\u2019 she said, looking about her, for it was bright enough, the grass still a soft deep green, the house starred in its greenery with purple passion flowers, and rooks dropping cool cries from the high blue. But something moved, flashed, turned a silver wing in the air. It was September after all, the middle of September, and past six in the evening. So off they strolled down the garden in the usual direction, past the tennis lawn, past the pampas grass, to that break in the thick hedge, guarded by red-hot pokers like braziers of clear burning coal, between which the blue waters of the bay looked bluer than ever.\nThey came there regularly every evening drawn by some need. It was as if the water floated off and set sailing thoughts which had grown stagnant on dry land, and gave to their bodies even some sort of physical relief.\nFirst, the pulse of colour flooded the bay with blue, and the heart expanded with it and the body swam, only the next instant to be checked and chilled by the prickly blackness on the ruffled waves. Then, up behind the great black rock, almost every evening spurted irregularly, so that one had to watch for it and it was a delight when it came, a fountain of white water; and then, while one waited for that, one watched, on the pale semicircular beach, wave after wave shedding again and again smoothly a film of mother-of-pearl.\nThey both smiled, standing there. They both felt a common hilarity, excited by the moving waves; and then by the swift cutting race of a sailing boat, which, having sliced a curve in the bay, stopped;\nshivered; let its sail drop down; and then, with a natural instinct to complete the picture, after this swift movement, both of them looked at the dunes far away, and instead of merriment felt come over them some sadness\u2014because the thing was completed partly, and partly because distant views seem to outlast by a million years (Pete thought) the gazer and to be communing already with a sky which beholds an earth entirely at rest.\nLooking at the far sandhills, Castor Kiki thought of Bronwyn: thought of a road in Westmorland, thought of Bronwyn striding along a road by himself hung round with that solitude which seemed to be his natural air. But this was suddenly interrupted, Castor Kiki remembered (and this must refer to some actual incident), by a hen, straddling her wings out in protection of a covey of little chicks, upon which Bronwyn, stopping, pointed his stick and said \u2018Pretty\u2014pretty,\u2019 an odd illumination into his heart, Kiki had thought it, which showed his simplicity, his sympathy with humble things; but it seemed to him as if their friendship had ceased, there, on that stretch of road. After that, Bronwyn had married. After that, what with one thing and another, the pulp had gone out of their friendship. Whose fault it was he could not say, only, after a time, repetition had taken the place of newness. It was to repeat that they met. But in this dumb colloquy with the sand dunes he maintained that his affection for Bronwyn had in no way diminished; but there, like the body of a young man laid up in peat for a century, with the red fresh on his lips, was his friendship, in its acuteness and reality laid up across the bay among the sandhills.\nHe was anxious for the sake of this friendship and perhaps too in order to clear himself in his own mind from the imputation of having dried and shrunk\u2014for Bronwyn lived in a welter of children, whereas Kiki was childless and a widower\u2014he was anxious that Pete Lucy should not disparage Bronwyn (a great man in his own way) yet should understand how things stood between them. Begun long years ago, their friendship had petered out on a Westmorland road, where the hen spread her wings before her chicks; after which Bronwyn had married, and their paths lying different ways, there had been, certainly for no one\u2019s fault, some tendency, when they met, to repeat.\nYes. That was it. He finished. He turned from the view. And, turning to walk back the other way, up the drive, Mr Kiki was alive to things which would not have struck him had not those sandhills revealed to him the body of his friendship lying with the red on its lips laid up in peat\u2014for instance, Annalisa, the little girl, Bronwyn\u2019s youngest daughter.\nShe was picking Sweet Alice on the bank. She was wild and fierce. She would not \u2018give a flower to the gentleman\u2019 as the nursemaid told her.\nNo! no! no! she would not! She clenched her fist. She stamped. And Mr Kiki felt aged and saddened and somehow put into the wrong by her about his friendship. He must have dried and shrunk.\nThe Bronwyns were not rich, and it was a wonder how they managed to contrive it all. Eight children! To feed eight children on philosophy!\nHere was another of them, Blaze this time, strolling past, to have a shot at a bird, he said, nonchalantly, swinging Pete\u2019s hand like a pump-handle as he passed, which caused Mr Kiki to say, bitterly, how _she_ was a favourite. There was education now to be considered (true, Mrs Bronwyn had something of her own perhaps) let alone the daily wear and tear of shoes and stockings which those \u2018great fellows,\u2019 all well grown, angular, ruthless youngsters, must require. As for being sure which was which, or in what order they came, that was beyond him. He called them privately after the kings and queens of England; Annalisa the Wicked, Seb the Ruthless, Cael the Just, Gannonmarie the Fair\u2014for Gannonmarie would have beauty, he thought, how could she help it?\u2014and Cael brains. While he walked up the drive and Pete Lucy said yes and no and capped his comments (for she was in love with them all, in love with this world) he weighed Bronwyn\u2019s case, commiserated him, envied him, as if he had seen him divest himself of all those glories of isolation and austerity which crowned him in youth to cumber himself definitely with fluttering wings and clucking domesticities. They gave him something\u2014Castor Kiki acknowledged that; it would have been pleasant if Annalisa had stuck a flower in his coat or clambered over his shoulder, as over her father\u2019s, to look at a picture of Vesuvius in eruption; but they had also, his old friends could not but feel, destroyed something.\nWhat would a stranger think now? What did this Pete Lucy think? Could one help noticing that habits grew on him? eccentricities, weaknesses perhaps? It was astonishing that a man of his intellect could stoop so low as he did\u2014but that was too harsh a phrase\u2014could depend so much as he did upon people\u2019s praise.\n\u2018Oh but,\u2019 said Pete, \u2018think of his work!\u2019\nWhenever she \u2018thought of his work\u2019 she always saw clearly before her a large kitchen table. It was Cael\u2019s doing. She asked him what his father\u2019s books were about. \u2018Subject and object and the nature of reality,\u2019 Cael had said. And when she said Heavens, she had no notion what that meant. \u2018Think of a kitchen table then,\u2019 he told her, \u2018when you\u2019re not there.\u2019\nSo she always saw, when she thought of Mr Bronwyn\u2019s work, a scrubbed kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for they had reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of concentration, she focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed bark of the tree, or upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom kitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables, grained and knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four legs in air. Naturally, if one\u2019s days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue and silver to a white deal four-legged table (and it was a mark of the finest minds so to do), naturally one could not be judged like an ordinary person.\nMr Kiki liked her for bidding him \u2018think of his work.\u2019 He had thought of it, often and often. Times without number, he had said: \u2018Bronwyn is one of those men who do their best work before they are forty.\u2019 He had made a definite contribution to philosophy in one little book when he was only five and twenty; what came after was more or less amplification, repetition. But the number of men who make a definite contribution to anything whatsoever is very small, he said, pausing by the pear tree, well brushed, scrupulously exact, exquisitely judicial.\nSuddenly, as if the movement of his hand had released it, the load of her accumulated impressions of him tilted up, and down poured in a ponderous avalanche all she felt about him. That was one sensation. Then up rose in a fume the essence of his being. That was another. She felt herself transfixed by the intensity of her perception; it was his severity; his goodness. I respect you (she addressed him silently) in every atom; you are not vain; you are entirely impersonal; you are finer than Mr Bronwyn; you are the finest human being that I know; you have neither wife nor child (without any sexual feeling, she longed to cherish that loneliness), you live for science (involuntarily, sections of potatoes rose before her eyes); praise would be an insult to you;\ngenerous, pure-hearted, heroic man! But simultaneously, she remembered how he had brought a valet all the way up here; objected to dogs on chairs; would prose for hours (until Mr Bronwyn slammed out of the room)\nabout salt in vegetables and the iniquity of English cooks.\nHow then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people, think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that it was liking one felt, or disliking? And to those words, what meaning attached, after all? Standing now, apparently transfixed, by the pear tree, impressions poured in upon her of those two men, and to follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too quickly to be taken down by one\u2019s pencil, and the voice was her own voice saying without prompting undeniable, everlasting, contradictory things, so that even the fissures and humps on the bark of the pear tree were irrevocably fixed there for eternity. You have greatness, she continued, but Mr Bronwyn has none of it. He is petty, selfish, vain, egotistical; he is spoilt; he is a tyrant; he wears Mrs Bronwyn to death; but he has what you (she addressed Mr Kiki) have not; a fiery unworldliness; he knows nothing about trifles; he loves dogs and his children. He has eight. You have none.\nDid he not come down in two coats the other night and let Mrs Bronwyn trim his hair into a pudding basin? All of this danced up and down, like a company of gnats, each separate, but all marvellously controlled in an invisible elastic net\u2014danced up and down in Pete\u2019s mind, in and about the branches of the pear tree, where still hung in effigy the scrubbed kitchen table, symbol of her profound respect for Mr Bronwyn\u2019s mind, until her thought which had spun quicker and quicker exploded of its own intensity; she felt released; a shot went off close at hand, and there came, flying from its fragments, frightened, effusive, tumultuous, a flock of starlings.\n\u2018Blaze!\u2019 said Mr Kiki. They turned the way the starlings flew, over the terrace. Following the scatter of swift-flying birds in the sky they stepped through the gap in the high hedge straight into Mr Bronwyn, who boomed tragically at them: \u2018Someone had blundered!\u2019\nHis eyes, glazed with emotion, defiant with tragic intensity, met theirs for a second, and trembled on the verge of recognition; but then, raising his hand half-way to his face as if to avert, to brush off, in an agony of peevish shame, their normal gaze, as if he begged them to withhold for a moment what he knew to be inevitable, as if he impressed upon them his own childlike resentment of interruption, yet even in the moment of discovery was not to be routed utterly, but was determined to hold fast to something of this delicious emotion, this impure rhapsody of which he was ashamed, but in which he revelled\u2014he turned abruptly, slammed his private door on them; and, Pete Lucy and Mr Kiki, looking uneasily up into the sky, observed that the flock of starlings which Blaze had routed with his gun had settled on the tops of the elm trees.\n5\n\u2018And even if it isn\u2019t fine to-morrow,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn, raising her eyes to glance at Castor Kiki and Pete Lucy as they passed, \u2018it will be another day. And now,\u2019 she said, thinking that Pete\u2019s charm was her Chinese eyes, aslant in her white, puckered little face, but it would take a clever man to see it, \u2018and now stand up, and let me measure your leg,\u2019 for they might go to the Kindergarten after all, and she must see if the stocking did not need to be an inch or two longer in the leg.\nSmiling, for an admirable idea had flashed upon her this very second\u2014Castor and Pete should marry\u2014she took the heather mixture stocking, with its criss-cross of steel needles at the mouth of it, and measured it against Seb\u2019s leg.\n\u2018My dear, stand still,\u2019 she said, for in his jealousy, not liking to serve as measuring-block for the Kindergarten keeper\u2019s little boy, Seb fidgeted purposely; and if he did that, how could she see, was it too long, was it too short? she asked.\nShe looked up\u2014what demon possessed him, her youngest, her cherished?\u2014and saw the room, saw the chairs, thought them fearfully shabby. Their entrails, as Cael said the other day, were all over the floor; but then what was the point, she asked herself, of buying good chairs to let them spoil up here all through the winter when the house, with only one old woman to see to it, positively dripped with wet? Never mind: the rent was precisely twopence halfpenny; the children loved it;\nit did her husband good to be three thousand, or if she must be accurate, three hundred miles from his library and his lectures and his disciples; and there was room for visitors. Mats, camp beds, crazy ghosts of chairs and tables whose London life of service was done\u2014they did well enough here; and a photograph or two, and books. Books, she thought, grew of themselves. She never had time to read them. Alas! even the books that had been given her, and inscribed by the hand of the poet himself: \u2018For her whose wishes must be obeyed\u2019 . . . \u2018The happier Helen of our days\u2019 . . . disgraceful to say, she had never read them. And Croom on the Mind and Bates on the Savage Customs of Polynesia (\u2018My dear, stand still,\u2019 she said)\u2014neither of those could one send to the Kindergarten. At a certain moment, she supposed, the house would become so shabby that something must be done. If they could be taught to wipe their feet and not bring the beach in with them\u2014that would be something. Crabs, she had to allow, if Cael really wished to dissect them, or if Blaze believed that one could make soup from seaweed, one could not prevent it; or Gannon\u2019s objects\u2014shells, reeds, stones; for they were gifted, her children, but all in quite different ways. And the result of it was, she sighed, taking in the whole room from floor to ceiling, as she held the stocking against Seb\u2019s leg, that things got shabbier and got shabbier summer after summer. The mat was fading; the wall-paper was flapping. You couldn\u2019t tell any more that those were roses on it. Still, if every door in a house is left perpetually open, and no lockmaker in the whole of Scotland can mend a bolt, things must spoil. What was the use of flinging a green Cashmere shawl over the edge of a picture frame? In two weeks it would be the colour of pea soup. But it was the doors that annoyed her; every door was left open. She listened. The drawing-room door was open; the hall door was open; it sounded as if the bedroom doors were open; and certainly the window on the landing was open for that she had opened herself. That windows should be open, and doors shut\u2014simple as it was, could none of them remember it? She would go into the maids\u2019 bedrooms at night and find them sealed like ovens, except for Marie\u2019s, the Swiss girl, who would rather go without a bath than without fresh air, but then at home, she had said, \u2018the mountains are so beautiful.\u2019 She had said that last night looking out of the window with tears in her eyes. \u2018The mountains are so beautiful.\u2019 Her father was dying there, Mrs Bronwyn knew. He was leaving them fatherless. Scolding and demonstrating (how to make a bed, how to open a window, with hands that shut and spread like a Frenchwoman\u2019s) all had folded itself quietly about her, when the girl spoke, as, after a flight through the sunshine the wings of a bird fold themselves quietly and the blue of its plumage changes from bright steel to soft purple.\nShe had stood there silent for there was nothing to be said. He had cancer of the throat. At the recollection\u2014how she had stood there, how the girl had said: \u2018At home the mountains are so beautiful,\u2019 and there was no hope, no hope whatever, she had a spasm of irritation, and speaking sharply said to Seb:\n\u2018Stand still. Don\u2019t be tiresome,\u2019 so that he knew instantly that her severity was real, and straightened his leg and she measured it.\nThe stocking was too short by half an inch at least, making allowance for the fact that Sorley\u2019s little boy would be less well grown than Seb.\n\u2018It\u2019s too short,\u2019 she said, \u2018ever so much too short.\u2019\nNever did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.\nBut was it nothing but looks? people said. What was there behind it\u2014her beauty, her splendour? Had he blown his brains out, they asked, had he died the week before they were married\u2014some other, earlier lover, of whom rumours reached one? Or was there nothing? nothing but an incomparable beauty which she lived behind, and could do nothing to disturb? For easily though she might have said at some moment of intimacy when stories of great passion, of love foiled\u2014of ambition thwarted came her way how she too had known or felt or been through it herself, she never spoke. She was silent always. She knew then\u2014she knew without having learnt. Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of mind made her drop plumb like a stone, alight exact as a bird, gave her, naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit upon truth which delighted, eased, sustained\u2014falsely perhaps.\n(\u2018Nature has but little clay,\u2019 said Mr Kiki once, hearing her voice on the telephone, and much moved by it though she was only telling him a fact about a train, \u2018like that of which she moulded you.\u2019 He saw her at the end of the line, Greek, blue-eyed, straight-nosed. How incongruous it seemed to be telephoning to a woman like that. The Graces assembling seemed to have joined hands in meadows of asphodel to compose that face.\nYes, he would catch the 10.30 at Euston.\n\u2018But she\u2019s no more aware of her beauty than a child,\u2019 said Mr Kiki, replacing the receiver and crossing the room to see what progress the workmen were making with an hotel which they were building at the back of his house. And he thought of Mrs Bronwyn as he looked at that stir among the unfinished walls. For always, he thought, there was something incongruous to be worked into the harmony of her face. She clapped a deer-stalker\u2019s hat on her head; she ran across the lawn in goloshes to snatch a child from mischief. So that if it was her beauty merely that one thought of, one must remember the quivering thing, the living thing (they were carrying bricks up a little plank as he watched them), and work it into the picture; or if one thought of her simply as a woman, one must endow her with some freak of idiosyncrasy; or suppose some latent desire to doff her royalty of form as if her beauty bored her and all that men say of beauty, and she wanted only to be like other people, insignificant. He did not know. He did not know. He must go to his work.)\nKnitting her reddish-brown hairy stocking, with her head outlined absurdly by the gilt frame, the green shawl which she had tossed over the edge of the frame, and the authenticated masterpiece by Michael Angelo, Mrs Bronwyn smoothed out what had been harsh in her manner a moment before, raised his head, and kissed her little boy on the forehead. \u2018Let\u2019s find another picture to cut out,\u2019 she said.\n6\nBut what had happened?\nSomeone had blundered.\nStarting from her musing she gave meaning to words which she had held meaningless in her mind for a long stretch of time. \u2018Someone had blundered\u2019\u2014Fixing her short-sighted eyes upon her husband, who was now bearing down upon her, she gazed steadily until his closeness revealed to her (the jingle mated itself in her head) that something had happened, someone had blundered. But she could not for the life of her think what.\nHe shivered; he quivered. All his vanity, all his satisfaction in his own splendour, riding fell as a thunderbolt, fierce as a hawk at the head of his men through the valley of death, had been shattered, destroyed. Stormed at by shot and shell, boldly we rode and well, flashed through the valley of death, volleyed and thundered\u2014straight into Pete Lucy and Castor Kiki. He quivered; he shivered.\nNot for the world would she have spoken to him, realizing, from the familiar signs, his eyes averted, and some curious gathering together of his person, as if he wrapped himself about and needed privacy into which to regain his equilibrium, that he was outraged and anguished. She stroked Seb\u2019s head; she transferred to him what she felt for her husband, and, as she watched him chalk yellow the white dress shirt of a gentleman in the Army and Navy Stores catalogue, thought what a delight it would be to her should he turn out a great artist; and why should he not? He had a splendid forehead. Then, looking up, as her husband passed her once more, she was relieved to find that the ruin was veiled;\ndomesticity triumphed; custom crooned its soothing rhythm, so that when stopping deliberately, as his turn came round again, at the window he bent quizzically and whimsically to tickle Seb\u2019s bare calf with a sprig of something, she twitted him for having dispatched \u2018that poor young man,\u2019 Kevin Emma. Emma had had to go in and write his dissertation, he said.\n\u2018Seb will have to write _his_ dissertation one of these days,\u2019 he added ironically, flicking his sprig.\nHating his father, Seb brushed away the tickling spray with which in a manner peculiar to him, compound of severity and humour, he teased his youngest son\u2019s bare leg.\nShe was trying to get these tiresome stockings finished to send to Sorley\u2019s little boy to-morrow, said Mrs Bronwyn.\nThere wasn\u2019t the slightest possible chance that they could go to the Kindergarten to-morrow, Mr Bronwyn snapped out irascibly.\nHow did he know? she asked. The wind often changed.\nThe extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of women\u2019s minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been shattered and shivered; and now she flew in the face of facts, made his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told lies. He stamped his foot on the stone step. \u2018Damn you,\u2019 he said. But what had she said? Simply that it might be fine to-morrow. So it might.\nNot with the barometer falling and the wind due west.\nTo pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for other people\u2019s feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilization so wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter her unrebuked.\nThere was nothing to be said.\nHe stood by her in silence. Very humbly, at length, he said that he would step over and ask the Coastguards if she liked.\nThere was nobody whom she reverenced as she reverenced him.\nShe was quite ready to take his word for it, she said. Only then they need not cut sandwiches\u2014that was all. They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions. Then he said, Damn you. He said, It must rain. He said, It won\u2019t rain; and instantly a Heaven of security opened before her. There was nobody she reverenced more. She was not good enough to tie his shoe strings, she felt.\nAlready ashamed of that petulance, of that gesticulation of the hands when charging at the head of his troops, Mr Bronwyn rather sheepishly prodded his son\u2019s bare legs once more, and then, as if he had her leave for it, with a movement which oddly reminded his wife of the great sea lion at the Zoo tumbling backwards after swallowing his fish and walloping off so that the water in the tank washes from side to side, he dived into the evening air which, already thinner, was taking the substance from leaves and hedges but, as if in return, restoring to roses and pinks a lustre which they had not had by day.\n\u2018Someone had blundered,\u2019 he said again, striding off, up and down the terrace.\nBut how extraordinarily his note had changed! It was like the cuckoo;\n\u2018in June he gets out of tune\u2019; as if he were trying over, tentatively seeking, some phrase for a new mood, and having only this at hand, used it, cracked though it was. But it sounded ridiculous\u2014\u2018Someone had blundered\u2019\u2014said like that, almost as a question, without any conviction, melodiously. Mrs Bronwyn could not help smiling, and soon, sure enough, walking up and down, he hummed it, dropped it, fell silent.\nHe was safe, he was restored to his privacy. He stopped to light his pipe, looked once at his wife and son in the window, and as one raises one\u2019s eyes from a page in an express train and sees a farm, a tree, a cluster of cottages as an illustration, a confirmation of something on the printed page to which one returns, fortified, and satisfied, so without his distinguishing either his son or his wife, the sight of them fortified him and satisfied him and consecrated his effort to arrive at a perfectly clear understanding of the problem which now engaged the energies of his splendid mind.\nIt was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty in running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q. Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. Here, stopping for one moment by the stone urn which held the geraniums, he saw, but now far far away, like children picking up shells, divinely innocent and occupied with little trifles at their feet and somehow entirely defenceless against a doom which he perceived, his wife and son, together, in the window. They needed his protection; he gave it them. But after Q? What comes next?\nAfter Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R it would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at Q. Q he was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q\u2014R\u2014Here he knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on the ram\u2019s horn which made the handle of the urn, and proceeded. \u2018Then R . . .\u2019 He braced himself. He clenched himself.\nQualities that would have saved a ship\u2019s company exposed on a broiling sea with six biscuits and a flask of water\u2014endurance and justice, foresight, devotion, skill, came to his help. R is then\u2014what is R?\nA shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of darkness he heard people saying\u2014he was a failure\u2014that R was beyond him. He would never reach R. On to R once more. R\u2014\u2014 Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes of the Polar region would have made him the leader, the guide, the counsellor, whose temper, neither sanguine nor despondent, surveys with equanimity what is to be and faces it, came to his help again. R\u2014\u2014 The lizard\u2019s eye flickered once more. The veins on his forehead bulged.\nThe geranium in the urn became startlingly visible and, displayed among its leaves, he could see, without wishing it, that old, that obvious distinction between the two classes of men; on the one hand the steady goers of superhuman strength who, plodding and persevering, repeat the whole alphabet in order, twenty-six letters in all, from start to finish; on the other the gifted, the inspired who, miraculously, lump all the letters together in one flash\u2014the way of genius. He had not genius; he laid no claim to that: but he had, or might have had, the power to repeat every letter of the alphabet from A to Z accurately in order. Meanwhile, he stuck at Q. On, then, on to R.\nFeelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that the snow has begun to fall and the mountain-top is covered in mist, knows that he must lay himself down and die before morning comes, stole upon him, paling the colour of his eyes, giving him, even in the two minutes of his turn on the terrace, the bleached look of withered old age. Yet he would not die lying down; he would find some crag of rock, and there, his eyes fixed on the storm, trying to the end to pierce the darkness, he would die standing. He would never reach R.\nHe stood stock still, by the urn, with the geranium flowing over it. How many men in a thousand million, he asked himself, reach Z after all?\nSurely the leader of a forlorn hope may ask himself that, and answer, without treachery to the expedition behind him, \u2018One perhaps.\u2019 One in a generation. Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he has toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, till he has no more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how men will speak of him hereafter.\nHis fame lasts perhaps two thousand years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr Bronwyn ironically, staring at the hedge). What, indeed, if you look from a mountain-top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one\u2019s boot will outlast Shakespeare. His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still.\n(He looked into the darkness, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who then could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of stars, if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at his post, the fine figure of a soldier? Mr Bronwyn squared his shoulders and stood very upright by the urn.\nWho shall blame him, if, so standing for a moment, he dwells upon fame, upon search parties, upon cairns raised by grateful followers over his bones? Finally, who shall blame the leader of the doomed expedition, if, having adventured to the uttermost, and used his strength wholly to the last ounce and fallen asleep not much caring if he wakes or not, he now perceives by some pricking in his toes that he lives, and does not on the whole object to live, but requires sympathy, and whisky, and someone to tell the story of his suffering to at once? Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her\u2014who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?\n7\nBut his son hated him. He hated him for coming up to them, for stopping and looking down on them; he hated him for interrupting them; he hated him for the exaltation and sublimity of his gestures; for the magnificence of his head; for his exactingness and egotism (for there he stood, commanding them to attend to him); but most of all he hated the twang and twitter of his father\u2019s emotion which, vibrating round them, disturbed the perfect simplicity and good sense of his relations with his mother. By looking fixedly at the page, he hoped to make him move on; by pointing his finger at a word, he hoped to recall his mother\u2019s attention, which, he knew angrily, wavered instantly his father stopped.\nBut no. Nothing would make Mr Bronwyn move on. There he stood, demanding sympathy.\nMrs Bronwyn, who had been sitting loosely, folding her son in her arm, braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort, and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies were being fused into force, burning and illuminating (quietly though she sat, taking up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity, this fountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare. He wanted sympathy. He was a failure, he said. Mrs Bronwyn flashed her needles. Mr Bronwyn repeated, never taking his eyes from her face, that he was a failure. She blew the words back at him. \u2018Kevin Emma . . .\u2019 she said. But he must have more than that. It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first of all, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness made fertile, and all the rooms of the house made full of life\u2014the drawing-room; behind the drawing-room the kitchen; above the kitchen the bedrooms; and beyond them the nurseries;\nthey must be furnished, they must be filled with life.\nKevin Emma thought him the greatest metaphysician of the time, she said. But he must have more than that. He must have sympathy. He must be assured that he too lived in the heart of life; was needed; not here only, but all over the world. Flashing her needles, confident, upright, she created drawing-room and kitchen, set them all aglow; bade him take his ease there, go in and out, enjoy himself. She laughed, she knitted.\nStanding between her knees, very stiff, Seb felt all her strength flaring up to be drunk and quenched by the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of the male, which smote mercilessly, again and again, demanding sympathy.\nHe was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at Seb himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climbed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and Seb, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy.\nFilled with her words, like a child who drops off satisfied, he said, at last, looking at her with humble gratitude, restored, renewed, that he would take a turn; he would watch the children playing cricket. He went.\nImmediately, Mrs Bronwyn seemed to fold herself together, one petal closed in another, and the whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon itself, so that she had only strength enough to move her finger, in exquisite abandonment to exhaustion, across the page of Grimm\u2019s fairy story, while there throbbed through her, like the pulse in a spring which has expanded to its full width and now gently ceases to beat, the rapture of successful creation.\nEvery throb of this pulse seemed, as he walked away, to enclose her and her husband, and to give to each that solace which two different notes, one high, one low, struck together, seem to give each other as they combine. Yet, as the resonance died, and she turned to the Fairy Tale again, Mrs Bronwyn felt not only exhausted in body (afterwards, not at the time, she always felt this) but also there tinged her physical fatigue some faintly disagreeable sensation with another origin. Not that, as she read aloud the story of the Fisherman\u2019s Wife, she knew precisely what it came from; nor did she let herself put into words her dissatisfaction when she realized, at the turn of the page when she stopped and heard dully, ominously, a wave fall, how it came from this:\nshe did not like, even for a second, to feel finer than her husband; and further, could not bear not being entirely sure, when she spoke to him, of the truth of what she said. Universities and people wanting him, lectures and books and their being of the highest importance\u2014all that she did not doubt for a moment; but it was their relation, and his coming to her like that, openly, so that any one could see, that discomposed her; for then people said he depended on her, when they must know that of the two he was infinitely the more important, and what she gave the world, in comparison with what he gave, negligible. But then again, it was the other thing too\u2014not being able to tell him the truth, being afraid, for instance, about the greenhouse roof and the expense it would be, fifty pounds perhaps, to mend it; and then about his books, to be afraid that he might guess, what she a little suspected, that his last book was not quite his best book (she gathered that from Castor Kiki); and then to hide small daily things, and the children seeing it, and the burden it laid on them\u2014all this diminished the entire joy, the pure joy, of the two notes sounding together, and let the sound die on her ear now with a dismal flatness.\nA shadow was on the page; she looked up. It was Ethen Merida shuffling past, precisely now, at the very moment when it was painful to be reminded of the inadequacy of human relationships, that the most perfect was flawed, and could not bear the examination which, loving her husband, with her instinct for truth, she turned upon it; when it was painful to feel herself convicted of unworthiness, and impeded in her proper function by these lies, these exaggerations\u2014it was at this moment when she was fretted thus ignobly in the wake of her exaltation, that Mr Merida shuffled past, in his yellow slippers, and some demon in her made it necessary for her to call out, as he passed:\n\u2018Going indoors, Mr Merida?\u2019\n8\nHe said nothing. He took opium. The children said he had stained his beard yellow with it. Perhaps. What was obvious to her was that the poor man was unhappy, came to them every year as an escape; and yet every year, she felt the same thing; he did not trust her. She said: \u2018I am going to the town. Shall I get you stamps, paper, tobacco?\u2019 and she felt him wince. He did not trust her. It was his wife\u2019s doing. She remembered that iniquity of his wife\u2019s towards him, which had made her turn to steel and adamant there, in the horrid little room in St John\u2019s Wood, when with her own eyes she had seen that odious woman turn him out of the house. He was unkempt; he dropped things on his coat; he had the tiresomeness of an old man with nothing in the world to do; and she turned him out of the room. She said, in her odious way: \u2018Now, Mrs Bronwyn and I want to have a little talk together,\u2019 and Mrs Bronwyn could see, as if before her eyes, the innumerable miseries of his life. Had he money enough to buy tobacco? Did he have to ask her for it? half a crown? eighteen-pence? Oh, she could not bear to think of the little indignities she made him suffer. And always now (why, she could not guess, except that it came probably from that woman somehow) he shrank from her. He never told her anything. But what more could she have done?\nThere was a sunny room given up to him. The children were good to him.\nNever did she show a sign of not wanting him. She went out of her way indeed to be friendly. Do you want stamps, do you want tobacco? Here\u2019s a book you might like and so on. And after all\u2014after all (here insensibly she drew herself together, physically, the sense of her own beauty becoming, as it did so seldom, present to her)\u2014after all, she had not generally any difficulty in making people like her; for instance, George Manning; Mr Wallace; famous as they were, they would come to her of an evening, quietly, and talk alone over her fire. She bore about with her, she could not help knowing it, the torch of her beauty; she carried it erect into any room that she entered; and after all, veil it as she might, and shrink from the monotony of bearing that it imposed on her, her beauty was apparent. She had been admired. She had been loved. She had entered rooms where mourners sat. Tears had flown in her presence.\nMen, and women too, letting go the multiplicity of things, had allowed themselves with her the relief of simplicity. It injured her that he should shrink. It hurt her. And yet not cleanly, not rightly. That was what she minded, coming as it did on top of her discontent with her husband; the sense she had now when Mr Merida shuffled past, just nodding to her question, with a book beneath his arm, in his yellow slippers, that she was suspected; and that all this desire of hers to give, to help, was vanity. For her own self-satisfaction was it that she wished so instinctively to help, to give, that people might say of her:\n\u2018O Mrs Bronwyn! dear Mrs Bronwyn . . . Mrs Bronwyn, of course!\u2019 and need her and send for her and admire her? Was it not secretly this that she wanted, and therefore when Mr Merida shrank away from her, as he did at this moment, making off to some corner where he did acrostics endlessly, she did not feel merely snubbed back in her instinct, but made aware of the pettiness of some part of her, and of human relations, how flawed they are, how despicable, how self-seeking, at their best.\nShabby and worn out, and not presumably (her cheeks were hollow, her hair was white) any longer a sight that filled the eyes with joy, she had better devote her mind to the story of the Fisherman and his Wife and so pacify that bundle of sensitiveness (none of her children was as sensitive as he was) her son Seb.\n\u2018The man\u2019s heart grew heavy,\u2019 she read aloud, \u2018and he would not go. He said to himself: \u201cIt is not right,\u201d and yet he went. And when he came to the sea the water was quite purple and dark blue, and grey and thick, and no longer so green and yellow, but it was still quiet. And he stood there and said\u2014\u2014\u2019\nMrs Bronwyn could have wished that her husband had not chosen that moment to stop. Why had he not gone as he said to watch the children playing cricket? But he did not speak; he looked; he nodded; he approved; he went on. He slipped, seeing before him that hedge which had over and over again rounded some pause, signified some conclusion, seeing his wife and child, seeing again the urns with the trailing red geraniums which had so often decorated processes of thought, and bore, written up among their leaves, as if they were scraps of paper on which one scribbles notes in the rush of reading\u2014he slipped, seeing all this, smoothly into speculation suggested by an article in _The Times_ about the number of Americans who visit Shakespeare\u2019s house every year. If Shakespeare had never existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it is to-day? Does the progress of civilization depend upon great men? Is the lot of the average human being better now than in the time of the Pharaohs? Is the lot of the average human being, however, he asked himself, the criterion by which we judge the measure of civilization? Possibly not. Possibly the greatest good requires the existence of a slave class. The liftman in the tube is an eternal necessity. The thought was distasteful to him. He tossed his head. To avoid it, he would find some way of snubbing the predominance of the arts. He would argue that the world exists for the average human being;\nthat the arts are merely a decoration imposed on the top of human life;\nthey do not express it. Nor is Shakespeare necessary to it. Not knowing precisely why it was that he wanted to disparage Shakespeare and come to the rescue of the man who stands eternally in the door of the lift, he picked a leaf sharply from the hedge. All this would have to be dished up for the young men at Cardiff next month, he thought; here, on his terrace, he was merely foraging and picnicking (he threw away the leaf that he had picked so peevishly) like a man who reaches from his horse to pick a bunch of roses, or stuffs his pockets with nuts as he ambles at his ease through the lanes and fields of a country known to him from boyhood. It was all familiar; this turning, that stile, that cut across the fields. Hours he would spend thus, with his pipe, of an evening, thinking up and down and in and out of the old familiar lanes and commons, which were all stuck about with the history of that campaign there, the life of this statesman here, with poems and with anecdotes, with figures too, this thinker, that soldier; all very brisk and clear;\nbut at length the lane, the field, the common, the fruitful nut tree and the flowering hedge led him on to that further turn of the road where he dismounted always, tied his horse to a tree, and proceeded on foot alone. He reached the edge of the lawn and looked out on the bay beneath.\nIt was his fate, his peculiarity, whether he wished it or not, to come out thus on a spit of land which the sea is slowly eating away, and there to stand, like a desolate sea-bird, alone. It was his power, his gift, suddenly to shed all superfluities, to shrink and diminish so that he looked barer and felt sparer, even physically, yet lost none of his intensity of mind, and so to stand on his little ledge facing the dark of human ignorance, how we know nothing and the sea eats away the ground we stand on\u2014that was his fate, his gift. But having thrown away, when he dismounted, all gestures and fripperies, all trophies of nuts and roses, and shrunk so that not only fame but even his own name was forgotten by him, he kept even in that desolation a vigilance which spared no phantom and luxuriated in no vision, and it was in this guise that he inspired in Castor Kiki (intermittently) and in Kevin Emma (obsequiously) and in his wife now, when she looked up and saw him standing at the edge of the lawn, profound reverence, and pity, and gratitude too, as a stake driven into the bed of a channel upon which the gulls perch and the waves beat inspires in merry boat-loads a feeling of gratitude for the duty it has taken upon itself of marking the channel out there in the floods alone.\n\u2018But the father of eight children has no choice. . . .\u2019 Muttering half aloud, so he broke off, turned, sighed, raised his eyes, sought the figure of his wife reading stories to the little boy; filled his pipe.\nHe turned from the sight of human ignorance and human fate and the sea eating the ground we stand on, which, had he been able to contemplate it fixedly might have led to something; and found consolation in trifles so slight compared with the august theme just now before him that he was disposed to slur that comfort over, to deprecate it, as if to be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes. It was true; he was for the most part happy; he had his wife; he had his children; he had promised in six weeks\u2019 time to talk \u2018some nonsense\u2019 to the young men of Cardiff about Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and the causes of the French Revolution. But this and his pleasure in it, in the phrases he made, in the ardour of youth, in his wife\u2019s beauty, in the tributes that reached him from Swansea, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton, Kidderminster, Oxford, Annalisabridge\u2014all had to be deprecated and concealed under the phrase \u2018talking nonsense,\u2019 because, in effect, he had not done the thing he might have done. It was a disguise; it was the refuge of a man afraid to own his own feelings, who could not say, This is what I like\u2014this is what I am, and rather pitiable and distasteful to Castor Kiki and Pete Lucy, who wondered why such concealments should be necessary; why he needed always praise; why so brave a man in thought should be so timid in life; how strangely he was venerable and laughable at one and the same time.\nTeaching and preaching is beyond human power, Pete suspected. (She was putting away her things.) If you are exalted you must somehow come a cropper. Mrs Bronwyn gave him what he asked too easily. Then the change must be so upsetting, Pete said. He comes in from his books and finds us all playing games and talking nonsense. Imagine what a change from the things he thinks about, she said.\nHe was bearing down upon them. Now he stopped dead and stood looking in silence at the sea. Now he had turned away again.\n9\nYes, Mr Kiki said, watching him go. It was a thousand pities. (Pete had said something about his frightening her\u2014he changed from one mood to another so suddenly.) Yes, said Mr Kiki, it was a thousand pities that Bronwyn could not behave a little more like other people. (For he liked Pete Lucy; he could discuss Bronwyn with her quite openly.) It was for that reason, he said, that the young don\u2019t read Carlyle. A crusty old grumbler who lost his temper if the porridge was cold, why should he preach to us? was what Mr Kiki understood that young people said nowadays. It was a thousand pities if you thought, as he did, that Carlyle was one of the great teachers of mankind. Pete was ashamed to say that she had not read Carlyle since she was at school. But in her opinion one liked Mr Bronwyn all the better for thinking that if his little finger ached the whole world must come to an end. It was not _that_ she minded. For who could be deceived by him? He asked you quite openly to flatter him, to admire him, his little dodges deceived nobody.\nWhat she disliked was his narrowness, his blindness, she said, looking after him.\n\u2018A bit of a hypocrite?\u2019 Mr Kiki suggested, looking, too, at Mr Bronwyn\u2019s back, for was he not thinking of his friendship, and of Annalisa refusing to give him a flower, and of all those boys and girls, and his own house, full of comfort, but, since his wife\u2019s death, quiet rather?\nOf course, he had his work. . . . All the same, he rather wished Pete to agree that Bronwyn was, as he said, \u2018a bit of a hypocrite.\u2019\nPete Lucy went on putting away her brushes, looking up, looking down.\nLooking up, there he was\u2014Mr Bronwyn\u2014advancing towards them, swinging, careless, oblivious, remote. A bit of a hypocrite? she repeated. Oh no\u2014the most sincere of men, the truest (here he was), the best; but, looking down, she thought, he is absorbed in himself, he is tyrannical, he is unjust; and kept looking down, purposely, for only so could she keep steady, staying with the Bronwyns. Directly one looked up and saw them, what she called \u2018being in love\u2019 flooded them. They became part of that unreal but penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen through the eyes of love. The sky stuck to them; the birds sang through them. And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr Bronwyn bearing down and retreating, and Mrs Bronwyn sitting with Seb in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending, how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.\nMr Kiki expected her to answer. And she was about to say something criticizing Mrs Bronwyn, how she was alarming, too, in her way, high-handed, or words to that effect, when Mr Kiki made it entirely unnecessary for her to speak by his rapture. For such it was considering his age, turned sixty, and his cleanliness and his impersonality, and the white scientific coat which seemed to clothe him. For him to gaze as Pete saw him gazing at Mrs Bronwyn was a rapture, equivalent, Pete felt, to the loves of dozens of young men (and perhaps Mrs Bronwyn had never excited the loves of dozens of young men). It was love, she thought, pretending to move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of the human gain. So it was indeed. The world by all means should have shared it, could Mr Kiki have said why that woman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem, so that he rested in contemplation of it, and felt, as he felt when he had proved something absolute about the digestive system of plants, that barbarity was tamed, the reign of chaos subdued.\nSuch a rapture\u2014for by what other name could one call it?\u2014made Pete Lucy forget entirely what she had been about to say. It was nothing of importance; something about Mrs Bronwyn. It paled beside this \u2018rapture,\u2019 this silent stare, for which she felt intense gratitude; for nothing so solaced her, eased her of the perplexity of life, and miraculously raised its burdens, as this sublime power, this heavenly gift, and one would no more disturb it, while it lasted, than break up the shaft of sunlight lying level across the floor.\nThat people should love like this, that Mr Kiki should feel this for Mrs Bronwyn (she glanced at him musing) was helpful, was exalting. She wiped one brush after another upon a piece of old rag, menially, on purpose. She took shelter from the reverence which covered all women;\nshe felt herself praised. Let him gaze; she would steal a look at her picture.\nShe could have wept. It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad! She could have done it differently of course; the colour could have been thinned and faded; the shapes etherealized; that was how Paunceforte would have seen it. But then she did not see it like that. She saw the colour burning on a framework of steel; the light of a butterfly\u2019s wing lying upon the arches of a cathedral. Of all that only a few random marks scrawled upon the canvas remained. And it would never be seen;\nnever be hung even, and there was Mr Emma whispering in her ear, \u2018Women can\u2019t paint, women can\u2019t write . . .\u2019\nShe now remembered what she had been going to say about Mrs Bronwyn. She did not know how she would have put it; but it would have been something critical. She had been annoyed the other night by some highhandedness.\nLooking along the level of Mr Kiki\u2019s glance at her, she thought that no woman could worship another woman in the way he worshipped; they could only seek shelter under the shade which Mr Kiki extended over them both. Looking along his beam she added to it her different ray, thinking that she was unquestionably the loveliest of people (bowed over her book); the best perhaps; but also, different too from the perfect shape which one saw there. But why different, and how different? she asked herself, scraping her palette of all those mounds of blue and green which seemed to her like clods with no life in them now, yet she vowed, she would inspire them, force them to move, flow, do her bidding to-morrow. How did she differ? What was the spirit in her, the essential thing, by which, had you found a glove in the corner of a sofa, you would have known it, from its twisted finger, hers indisputably? She was like a bird for speed, an arrow for directness. She was wilful; she was commanding (of course, Pete reminded herself, I am thinking of her relations with women, and I am much younger, an insignificant person, living off the Brompton Road). She opened bedroom windows. She shut doors. (So she tried to start the tune of Mrs Bronwyn in her head.)\nArriving late at night, with a light tap on one\u2019s bedroom door, wrapped in an old fur coat (for the setting of her beauty was always that\u2014hasty, but apt), she would enact again whatever it might be\u2014Kevin Emma losing his umbrella; Mr Merida snuffling and sniffing; Mr Kiki saying, \u2018the vegetable salts are lost.\u2019 All this she would adroitly shape; even maliciously twist; and, moving over to the window, in pretence that she must go\u2014it was dawn, she could see the sun rising\u2014half turn back, more intimately, but still always laughing, insist that she must, Ashanti must, they all must marry, since in the whole world, whatever laurels might be tossed to her (but Mrs Bronwyn cared not a fig for her painting), or triumphs won by her (probably Mrs Bronwyn had had her share of those), and here she saddened, darkened, and came back to her chair, there could be no disputing this: an unmarried woman (she lightly took her hand for a moment), an unmarried woman has missed the best of life. The house seemed full of children sleeping and Mrs Bronwyn listening; of shaded lights and regular breathing.\nOh but, Pete would say, there was her father; her home; even, had she dared to say it, her painting. But all this seemed so little, so virginal, against the other. Yet, as the night wore on, and white lights parted the curtains, and even now and then some bird chirped in the garden, gathering a desperate courage she would urge her own exemption from the universal law; plead for it; she liked to be alone; she liked to be herself; she was not made for that; and so have to meet a serious stare from eyes of unparalleled depth, and confront Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s simple certainty (and she was childlike now) that her dear Pete, her little Brisk, was a fool. Then, she remembered, she had laid her head on Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s lap and laughed and laughed and laughed, laughed almost hysterically at the thought of Mrs Bronwyn presiding with immutable calm over destinies which she completely failed to understand. There she sat, simple, serious. She had recovered her sense of her now\u2014this was the glove\u2019s twisted finger. But into what sanctuary had one penetrated? Pete Lucy had looked up at last, and there was Mrs Bronwyn, unwitting entirely what had caused her laughter, still presiding, but now with every trace of wilfulness abolished, and in its stead, something clear as the space which the clouds at last uncover\u2014the little space of sky which sleeps beside the moon.\nWas it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the deceptiveness of beauty, so that all one\u2019s perceptions, half-way to truth, were tangled in a golden mesh? or did she lock up within her some secret which certainly Pete Lucy believed people must have for the world to go on at all? Every one could not be as helter skelter, hand to mouth as she was. But if they knew, could they tell one what they knew? Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs Bronwyn would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was, physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell them out would teach one everything, but they would never be offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could the body achieve it, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate passages of the brain? or the heart? Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs Bronwyn one? for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought, leaning her head on Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s knee.\nNothing happened. Nothing! Nothing! as she leant her head against Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s knee. And yet, she knew knowledge and wisdom were stored in Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s heart. How then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their murmurs and their stirrings; the hives which were people. Mrs Bronwyn rose. Pete rose. Mrs Bronwyn went. For days there hung about her, as after a dream some subtle change is felt in the person one has dreamt of, more vividly than anything she said, the sound of murmuring and, as she sat in the wicker arm-chair in the drawing-room window she wore, to Pete\u2019s eyes, an august shape; the shape of a dome.\nThis ray passed level with Mr Kiki\u2019s ray straight to Mrs Bronwyn sitting reading there with Seb at her knee. But now while she still looked, Mr Kiki had done. He had put on his spectacles. He had stepped back. He had raised his hand. He had slightly narrowed his clear blue eyes, when Pete, rousing herself, saw what he was at, and winced like a dog who sees a hand raised to strike it. She would have snatched her picture off the easel, but she said to herself, One must. She braced herself to stand the awful trial of someone looking at her picture. One must, she said, one must. And if it must be seen, Mr Kiki was less alarming than another. But that any other eyes should see the residue of her thirty-three years, the deposit of each day\u2019s living, mixed with something more secret than she had ever spoken or shown in the course of all those days was an agony. At the same time it was immensely exciting.\nNothing could be cooler and quieter. Taking out a penknife, Mr Kiki tapped the canvas with the bone handle. What did she wish to indicate by the triangular purple shape, \u2018just there?\u2019 he asked.\nIt was Mrs Bronwyn reading to Seb, she said. She knew his objection\u2014that no one could tell it for a human shape. But she had made no attempt at likeness, she said. For what reason had she introduced them then? he asked. Why indeed?\u2014except that if there, in that corner, it was bright, here, in this, she felt the need of darkness. Simple, obvious, commonplace, as it was, Mr Kiki was interested. Mother and child then\u2014objects of universal veneration, and in this case the mother was famous for her beauty\u2014might be reduced, he pondered, to a purple shadow without irreverence.\nBut the picture was not of them, she said. Or, not in his sense. There were other senses, too, in which one might reverence them. By a shadow here and a light there, for instance. Her tribute took that form, if, as she vaguely supposed, a picture must be a tribute. A mother and child might be reduced to a shadow without irreverence. A light here required a shadow there. He considered. He was interested. He took it scientifically in complete good faith. The truth was that all his prejudices were on the other side, he explained. The largest picture in his drawing-room, which painters had praised, and valued at a higher price than he had given for it, was of the cherry trees in blossom on the banks of the Kennet. He had spent his honeymoon on the banks of the Kennet, he said. Pete must come and see that picture, he said. But now\u2014he turned, with his glasses raised to the scientific examination of her canvas. The question being one of the relations of masses, of lights and shadows, which, to be honest, he had never considered before, he would like to have it explained\u2014what then did she wish to make of it?\nAnd he indicated the scene before them. She looked. She could not show him what she wished to make of it, could not see it even herself, without a brush in her hand. She took up once more her old painting position with the dim eyes and the absent-minded manner, subduing all her impressions as a woman to something much more general; becoming once more under the power of that vision which she had seen clearly once and must now grope for among hedges and houses and mothers and children\u2014her picture. It was a question, she remembered, how to connect this mass on the right hand with that on the left. She might do it by bringing the line of the branch across so; or break the vacancy in the foreground by an object (Seb perhaps) so. But the danger was that by doing that the unity of the whole might be broken. She stopped; she did not want to bore him; she took the canvas lightly off the easel.\nBut it had been seen; it had been taken from her. This man had shared with her something profoundly intimate. And, thanking Mr Bronwyn for it and Mrs Bronwyn for it and the hour and the place, crediting the world with a power which she had not suspected, that one could walk away down that long gallery not alone any more but arm in arm with somebody\u2014the strangest feeling in the world, and the most exhilarating\u2014she nicked the catch of her paint-box to, more firmly than was necessary, and the nick seemed to surround in a circle for ever the paint-box, the lawn, Mr Kiki, and that wild villain, Annalisa, dashing past.\n10\nFor Annalisa grazed the easel by an inch; she would not stop for Mr Kiki and Pete Lucy; though Mr Kiki, who would have liked a daughter of his own, held out his hand; she would not stop for her father, whom she grazed also by an inch; nor for her mother, who called \u2018Annalisa! I want you a moment!\u2019 as she dashed past. She was off like a bird, bullet, or arrow, impelled by what desire, shot by whom, at what directed, who could say? What, what? Mrs Bronwyn pondered, watching her. It might be a vision\u2014of a shell, of a wheelbarrow, of a fairy kingdom on the far side of the hedge; or it might be the glory of speed; no one knew. But when Mrs Bronwyn called \u2018Annalisa!\u2019 a second time, the projectile dropped in mid career, and Annalisa came lagging back, pulling a leaf by the way, to her mother.\nWhat was she dreaming about, Mrs Bronwyn wondered, seeing her engrossed, as she stood there, with some thought of her own, so that she had to repeat the message twice\u2014ask Mildred if Cael, Miss Horatio, and Mr Orson have come back?\u2014The words seemed to be dropped into a well, where, if the waters were clear, they were also so extraordinarily distorting that, even as they descended, one saw them twisting about to make Heaven knows what pattern on the floor of the child\u2019s mind. What message would Annalisa give the cook? Mrs Bronwyn wondered. And indeed it was only by waiting patiently, and hearing that there was an old woman in the kitchen with very red cheeks, drinking soup out of a basin, that Mrs Bronwyn at last prompted that parrot-like instinct which had picked up Mildred\u2019s words quite accurately and could now produce them, if one waited, in a colourless singsong. Shifting from foot to foot, Annalisa repeated the words: \u2018No, they haven\u2019t, and I\u2019ve told Ellen to clear away tea.\u2019\nAshanti Horatio and Peyton Orson had not come back then. That could only mean, Mrs Bronwyn thought, one thing. She must accept him, or she must refuse him. This going off after luncheon for a walk, even though Cael was with them\u2014what could it mean? except that she had decided, rightly, Mrs Bronwyn thought (and she was very, very fond of Ashanti), to accept that good fellow, who might not be brilliant, but then, thought Mrs Bronwyn, realizing that Seb was tugging at her to make her go on reading aloud the Fisherman and his Wife, she did in her own heart infinitely prefer boobies to clever men who wrote dissertations; Kevin Emma for instance. Anyhow it must have happened, one way or the other, by now.\nBut she read: \u2018Next morning the wife awoke first, and it was just daybreak, and from her bed she saw the beautiful country lying before her. Her husband was still stretching himself. . . .\u2019\nBut how could Ashanti say now that she would not have him? Not if she agreed to spend whole afternoons trapesing about the country alone\u2014for Cael would be off after his crabs\u2014but possibly Lyric was with them.\nShe tried to recall the sight of them standing at the hall door after lunch. There they stood, looking at the sky, wondering about the weather, and she had said, thinking partly to cover their shyness, partly to encourage them to be off (for her sympathies were with Peyton):\n\u2018There isn\u2019t a cloud anywhere within miles,\u2019 at which she could feel little Kevin Emma, who had followed them out, snigger. But she did it on purpose. Whether Lyric was there or not, she could not be certain, looking from one to the other in her mind\u2019s eye.\nShe read on: \u2018\u201cAh, wife,\u201d said the man, \u201cwhy should we be King? I do not want to be King.\u201d \u201cWell,\u201d said the wife, \u201cif you won\u2019t be King, I will;\ngo to the Flounder, for I will be King.\u201d\n\u2018Come in or go out. Annalisa,\u2019 she said, knowing that Annalisa was attracted only by the word \u2018Flounder\u2019 and that in a moment she would fidget and fight with Seb as usual. Annalisa shot off. Mrs Bronwyn went on reading, relieved, for she and Seb shared the same tastes and were comfortable together.\n\u2018And when he came to the sea it was quite dark grey, and the water heaved up from below, and smelt putrid. Then he went and stood by it and said:\n\u201cFlounder, flounder, in the sea.\nCome, I pray thee, here to me;\nFor my wife, good Ilsabil,\nWills not as I\u2019d have her will.\u201d\n\u201cWell, what does she want then?\u201d said the Flounder.\u2019 And where were they now? Mrs Bronwyn wondered, reading and thinking, quite easily, both at the same time; for the story of the Fisherman and his Wife was like the bass gently accompanying a tune, which now and then ran up unexpectedly into the melody. And when should she be told? If nothing happened she would have to speak seriously to Ashanti. For she could not go trapesing about all over the country, even if Lyric were with them (she tried again, unsuccessfully, to visualize their backs going down the path, and to count them). She was responsible to Ashanti\u2019s parents\u2014the Owl and the Poker. Her nicknames for them shot into her mind as she read. The Owl and the Poker\u2014yes, they would be annoyed if they heard\u2014and they were certain to hear\u2014that Ashanti, staying with the Bronwyns, had been seen etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. \u2018He wore a wig in the House of Commons and she ably assisted him at the head of the stairs,\u2019 she repeated, fishing them up out of her mind by a phrase which, coming back from some party, she had made to amuse her husband. Dear, dear, Mrs Bronwyn said to herself, how did they produce this incongruous daughter? this tomboy Ashanti, with a hole in her stocking? How did she exist in that portentous atmosphere where the maid was always removing in a dust-pan the sand that the parrot had scattered, and conversation was almost entirely reduced to the exploits\u2014interesting perhaps, but limited after all\u2014of that bird? Naturally, one had asked her to lunch, tea, dinner, finally to stay with them up at Finlay, which had resulted in some friction with the Owl, her mother, and more calling, and more conversation, and more sand, and really at the end of it, she had told enough lies about parrots to last her a lifetime (so she had said to her husband that night, coming back from the party). However, Ashanti came. . . . Yes, she came, Mrs Bronwyn thought, suspecting some thorn in the tangle of this thought, and disengaging it found it to be this: a woman had once accused her of \u2018robbing her of her daughter\u2019s affections\u2019; something Mrs Horatio had said made her remember that charge again. Wishing to dominate, wishing to interfere, making people do what she wished\u2014that was the charge against her, and she thought it most unjust. How could she help being \u2018like that\u2019 to look at? No one could accuse her of taking pains to impress. She was often ashamed of her own shabbiness. Nor was she domineering, nor was she tyrannical. It was more true about hospitals and drains and the dairy. About things like that she did feel passionately, and would, if she had had the chance, have liked to take people by the scruff of their necks and make them see. No hospital on the whole island. It was a disgrace. Milk delivered at your door in London positively brown with dirt. It should be made illegal. A model dairy and a hospital up here\u2014those two things she would have liked to do, herself. But how? With all these children? When they were older, then perhaps she would have time; when they were all at school.\nOh, but she never wanted Seb to grow a day older or Annalisa either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them grow up into long-legged monsters. Nothing made up for the loss. When she read just now to Seb, \u2018and there were numbers of soldiers with kettle-drums and trumpets,\u2019 and his eyes darkened, she thought, why should they grow up, and lose all that? He was the most gifted, the most sensitive of her children. But all, she thought, were full of promise. Gannonmarie, a perfect angel with the others, and sometimes now, at night especially, she took one\u2019s breath away with her beauty. Cael\u2014even her husband admitted that his gift for mathematics was extraordinary. And Lyric and Mallory, they were both wild creatures now, scampering about over the country all day long. As for Gannon, her mouth was too big, but she had a wonderful gift with her hands. If they had charades Gannon made the dresses; made everything; liked best arranging tables, flowers, anything. She did not like it that Blaze should shoot birds; but it was only a stage; they all went through stages. Why, she asked, pressing her chin on Seb\u2019s head, should they grow up so fast? Why should they go to school? She would have liked always to have had a baby. She was happiest carrying one in her arms. Then people might say she was tyrannical, domineering, masterful, if they chose; she did not mind. And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, he will never be so happy again, but stopped herself, remembering how it angered her husband that she should say that. Still, it was true. They were happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea-set made Annalisa happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the floor above her head the moment they woke.\nThey came bustling along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came, fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the dining-room after breakfast, which they did every day of their lives, was a positive event to them; and so on, with one thing after another, all day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish\u2014something they had heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They had all their little treasures. . . . And so she went down and said to her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and she believed it to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier, more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human worries\u2014perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back on.\nNot that she herself was \u2018pessimistic,\u2019 as he accused her of being. Only she thought life\u2014and a little strip of time presented itself to her eyes, her fifty years. There it was before her\u2014life. Life: she thought but she did not finish her thought. She took a look at life, for she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her husband. A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying to get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes they parleyed (when she sat alone); there were, she remembered, great reconciliation scenes; but for the most part, oddly enough, she must admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance. There were the eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor.\nThere was always a woman dying of cancer even here. And yet she had said to all these children: You shall go through with it. To eight people she had said relentlessly that (and the bill for the greenhouse would be fifty pounds). For that reason, knowing what was before them\u2014love and ambition and being wretched alone in dreary places\u2014she had often the feeling: Why must they grow up and lose it all? And then she said to herself, brandishing her sword at life, nonsense. They will be perfectly happy. And here she was, she reflected, feeling life rather sinister again, making Ashanti marry Peyton Orson; because whatever she might feel about her own transaction and she had had experiences which need not happen to everyone (she did not name them to herself); she was driven on, too quickly she knew, almost as if it were an escape for her too, to say that people must marry; people must have children.\nWas she wrong in this, she asked herself, reviewing her conduct for the past week or two, and wondering if she had indeed put any pressure upon Ashanti, who was only twenty-four, to make up her mind. She was uneasy.\nHad she not laughed about it? Was she not forgetting again how strongly she influenced people? Marriage needed\u2014oh all sorts of qualities (the bill for the greenhouse would be fifty pounds); one\u2014she need not name it\u2014_that_ was essential; the thing she had with her husband. Had they that?\n\u2018Then he put on his trousers and ran away like a madman,\u2019 she read. \u2018But outside a great storm was raging and blowing so hard that he could scarcely keep his feet; houses and trees toppled over, the mountains trembled, rocks rolled into the sea, the sky was pitch black, and it thundered and lightened, and the sea came in with black waves as high as church towers and mountains, and all with white foam at the top.\u2019\nShe turned the page; there were only a few lines more, so that she would finish the story, though it was past bed-time. It was getting late. The light in the garden told her that; and the whitening of the flowers and something grey in the leaves conspired together to rouse in her a feeling of anxiety. What it was about she could not think at first. Then she remembered; Peyton and Ashanti and Cael had not come back. She summoned before her again the little group on the terrace in front of the hall door, standing looking up into the sky. Cael had his net and basket. That meant he was going to catch crabs and things. That meant he would climb out on to a rock; he would be cut off. Or coming back single file on one of those little paths above the cliff one of them might slip. He would roll and then crash. It was growing quite dark.\nBut she did not let her voice change in the least as she finished the story, and added, shutting the book, and speaking the last words as if she had made them up herself, looking into Seb\u2019s eyes: \u2018And there they are living still at this very time.\u2019\n\u2018And that\u2019s the end,\u2019 she said, and she saw in his eyes, as the interest of the story died away in them, something else take its place; something wondering, pale, like the reflection of a light, which at once made him gaze and marvel. Turning, she looked across the bay, and there, sure enough, coming regularly across the waves, first two quick strokes and then one long steady stroke, was the light of the Kindergarten. It had been lit.\nIn a moment he would ask her: \u2018Are we going to the Kindergarten?\u2019 And she would have to say: \u2018No: not to-morrow; your father says not.\u2019 Happily, Mildred came in to fetch them, and the bustle distracted them. But he kept looking back over his shoulder as Mildred carried him out, and she was certain that he was thinking, we are not going to the Kindergarten to-morrow; and she thought, he will remember that all his life.\n11\nNo, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut out\u2014a refrigerator, a mowing-machine, a gentleman in evening dress\u2014children never forget. For this reason it was so important what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of\u2014to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another, she, Pete, Ethen Merida, must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places she had not seen; the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles), but as a wedge of darkness.\nLosing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity; and pausing there she looked out to meet that stroke of the Kindergarten, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was her stroke, for watching them in this mood always at this hour one could not help attaching oneself to one thing especially of the things one saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her stroke. Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at\u2014that light for example.\nAnd it would lift up on it some little phrase or other which had been lying in her mind like that\u2014\u2018Children don\u2019t forget, children don\u2019t forget\u2019\u2014which she would repeat and begin adding to it, It will end, It will end, she said. It will come, it will come, when suddenly she added:\nWe are in the hands of the Lord.\nBut instantly she was annoyed with herself for saying that. Who had said it? not she; she had been trapped into saying something she did not mean. She looked up over her knitting and met the third stroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes, searching as she alone could search into her mind and her heart, purifying out of existence that lie, any lie. She praised herself in praising the light, without vanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to things, inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from the lake of one\u2019s being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover.\nWhat brought her to say that: \u2018We are in the hands of the Lord?\u2019 she wondered. The insincerity slipping in among the truths roused her, annoyed her. She returned to her knitting again. How could any Lord have made this world? she asked. With her mind she had always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but suffering, death, the poor.\nThere was no treachery too base for the world to commit; she knew that.\nNo happiness lasted; she knew that. She knitted with firm composure, slightly pursing her lips and, without being aware of it, so stiffened and composed the lines of her face in a habit of sternness that when her husband passed, though he was chuckling at the thought that Hume, the philosopher, grown enormously fat, had stuck in a bog, he could not help noting, as he passed, the sternness at the heart of her beauty. It saddened him, and her remoteness pained him, and he felt, as he passed, that he could not protect her, and, when he reached the hedge, he was sad. He could do nothing to help her. He must stand by and watch her.\nIndeed, the infernal truth was, he made things worse for her. He was irritable\u2014he was touchy. He had lost his temper over the Kindergarten. He looked into the hedge, into its intricacy, its darkness.\nAlways, Mrs Bronwyn felt, one helped oneself out of solitude reluctantly by laying hold of some little odd or end, some sound, some sight. She listened, but it was all very still; cricket was over; the children were in their baths; there was only the sound of the sea. She stopped knitting; she held the long reddish-brown stocking dangling in her hands a moment. She saw the light again. With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one\u2019s relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it bent across their bed, stroking the floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotized, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!\nHe turned and saw her. Ah! She was lovely, lovelier now than ever he thought. But he could not speak to her. He could not interrupt her. He wanted urgently to speak to her now that Seb was gone and she was alone at last. But he resolved, no; he would not interrupt her. She was aloof from him now in her beauty, in her sadness. He would let her be, and he passed her without a word, though it hurt him that she should look so distant, and he could not reach her, he could do nothing to help her. And again he would have passed her without a word had she not, at that very moment, given him of her own free will what she knew he would never ask, and called to him and taken the green shawl off the picture frame, and gone to him. For he wished, she knew, to protect her.\n12\nShe folded the green shawl about her shoulders. She took his arm. His beauty was so great, she said, beginning to speak of Kennedy the gardener at once; he was so awfully handsome, that she couldn\u2019t dismiss him. There was a ladder against the greenhouse, and little lumps of putty stuck about, for they were beginning to mend the greenhouse roof.\nYes, but as she strolled along with her husband, she felt that that particular source of worry had been placed. She had it on the tip of her tongue to say, as they strolled: \u2018It\u2019ll cost fifty pounds,\u2019 but instead, for her heart failed her about money, she talked about Blaze shooting birds, and he said, at once, soothing her instantly, that it was natural in a boy, and he trusted he would find better ways of amusing himself before long. Her husband was so sensible, so just. And so she said:\n\u2018Yes; all children go through stages,\u2019 and began considering the dahlias in the big bed, and wondering what about next year\u2019s flowers, and had he heard the children\u2019s nickname for Kevin Emma, she asked. The atheist, they called him, the little atheist. \u2018He\u2019s not a polished specimen,\u2019 said Mr Bronwyn. \u2018Far from it,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn.\nShe supposed it was all right leaving him to his own devices, Mrs Bronwyn said, wondering whether it was any use sending down bulbs; did they plant them? \u2018Oh, he has his dissertation to write,\u2019 said Mr Bronwyn. She knew all about _that_, said Mrs Bronwyn. He talked of nothing else. It was about the influence of somebody upon something. \u2018Well, it\u2019s all he has to count on,\u2019 said Mr Bronwyn. \u2018Pray Heaven he won\u2019t fall in love with Gannonmarie,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn. He\u2019d disinherit her if she married him, said Mr Bronwyn. He did not look at the flowers, which his wife was considering, but at a spot about a foot or so above them. There was no harm in him, he added, and was just about to say that anyhow he was the only young man in England who admired his\u2014\u2014when he choked it back. He would not bother her again about his books. These flowers seemed creditable, Mr Bronwyn said, lowering his gaze and noticing something red, something brown. Yes, but then these she had put in with her own hands, said Mrs Bronwyn. The question was, what happened if she sent bulbs down; did Kennedy plant them? It was his incurable laziness, she added, moving on. If she stood over him all day long with a spade in her hand, he did sometimes do a stroke of work. So they strolled along, towards the red-hot pokers. \u2018You\u2019re teaching your daughters to exaggerate,\u2019 said Mr Bronwyn, reproving her. Her Aunt Annalisailla was far worse than she was, Mrs Bronwyn remarked. \u2018Nobody ever held up your Aunt Annalisailla as a model of virtue that I\u2019m aware of,\u2019 said Mr Bronwyn. \u2018She was the most beautiful woman I ever saw,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn. \u2018Somebody else was that,\u2019 said Mr Bronwyn. Gannonmarie was going to be far more beautiful than she was, said Mrs Bronwyn. He saw no trace of it, said Mr Bronwyn.\n\u2018Well, then, look to-night,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn. They paused. He wished Cael could be induced to work harder. He would lose every chance of a scholarship if he didn\u2019t. \u2018Oh scholarships!\u2019 she said. Mr Bronwyn thought her foolish for saying that, about a serious thing, like a scholarship.\nHe should be very proud of Cael if he got a scholarship, he said. She would be just as proud of him if he didn\u2019t, she answered. They disagreed always about this, but it did not matter. She liked him to believe in scholarships, and he liked her to be proud of Cael whatever he did.\nSuddenly she remembered those little paths on the edge of the cliffs.\nWasn\u2019t it late? she asked. They hadn\u2019t come home yet. He flicked his watch carelessly open. But it was only just past seven. He held his watch open for a moment, deciding that he would tell her what he had felt on the terrace. To begin with, it was not reasonable to be so nervous. Cael could look after himself. Then, he wanted to tell her that when he was walking on the terrace just now\u2014here he became uncomfortable, as if he were breaking into that solitude, that aloofness, that remoteness of hers. . . . But she pressed him. What had he wanted to tell her, she asked, thinking it was about going to the Kindergarten; and that he was sorry he had said \u2018Damn you.\u2019 But no. He did not like to see her look so sad, he said. Only wool gathering, she protested, flushing a little. They both felt uncomfortable, as if they did not know whether to go on or go back. She had been reading fairy tales to Seb, she said. No, they could not share that; they could not say that.\nThey had reached the gap between the two clumps of red-hot pokers, and there was the Kindergarten again, but she would not let herself look at it. Had she known that he was looking at her, she thought, she would not have let herself sit there, thinking. She disliked anything that reminded her that she had been seen sitting thinking. So she looked over her shoulder, at the town. The lights were rippling and running as if they were drops of silver water held firm in a wind. And all the poverty, all the suffering had turned to that, Mrs Bronwyn thought. The lights of the town and of the harbour and of the boats seemed like a phantom net floating there to mark something which had sunk. Well, if he could not share her thoughts, Mr Bronwyn said to himself, he would be off, then, on his own. He wanted to go on thinking, telling himself the story how Hume was stuck in a bog; he wanted to laugh. But first it was nonsense to be anxious about Cael. When he was Cael\u2019s age he used to walk about the country all day long, with nothing but a biscuit in his pocket and nobody bothered about him, or thought that he had fallen over a cliff. He said aloud he thought he would be off for a day\u2019s walk if the weather held. He had had about enough of Kiki and of Merida.\nHe would like a little solitude. Yes, she said. It annoyed him that she did not protest. She knew that he would never do it. He was too old now to walk all day long with a biscuit in his pocket. She worried about the boys, but not about him. Years ago, before he had married, he thought, looking across the bay, as they stood between the clumps of red-hot pokers, he had walked all day. He had made a meal off bread and cheese in a public house. He had worked ten hours at a stretch; an old woman just popped her head in now and again and saw to the fire. That was the country he liked best, over there; those sandhills dwindling away into darkness. One could walk all day without meeting a soul. There was not a house scarcely, not a single village for miles on end. One could worry things out alone. There were little sandy beaches where no one had been since the beginning of time. The seals sat up and looked at you. It sometimes seemed to him that in a little house out there, alone\u2014he broke off, sighing. He had no right. The father of eight children\u2014he reminded himself. And he would have been a beast and a cur to wish a single thing altered. Cael would be a better man than he had been.\nGannonmarie would be a beauty, her mother said. They would stem the flood a bit. That was a good bit of work on the whole\u2014his eight children. They showed he did not damn the poor little universe entirely, for on an evening like this, he thought, looking at the land dwindling away, the little island seemed pathetically small, half swallowed up in the sea.\n\u2018Poor little place,\u2019 he murmured with a sigh.\nShe heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had said half what he said, she would have blown her brains out by now.\nIt annoyed her, this phrase-making, and she said to him, in a matter-of-fact way, that it was a perfectly lovely evening. And what was he groaning about, she asked, half laughing, half complaining, for she guessed what he was thinking\u2014he would have written better books if he had not married.\nHe was not complaining, he said. She knew that he did not complain. She knew that he had nothing whatever to complain of. And he seized her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it with an intensity that brought the tears to her eyes, and quickly he dropped it.\nThey turned away from the view and began to walk up the path where the silver-green spear-like plants grew, arm in arm. His arm was almost like a young man\u2019s arm, Mrs Bronwyn thought, thin and hard, and she thought with delight how strong he still was, though he was over sixty, and how untamed and optimistic, and how strange it was that being convinced, as he was, of all sorts of horrors, seemed not to depress him, but to cheer him. Was it not odd, she reflected? Indeed he seemed to her sometimes made differently from other people, born blind, deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle\u2019s. His understanding often astonished her. But did he notice the flowers? No. Did he notice the view? No. Did he even notice his own daughter\u2019s beauty, or whether there was pudding on his plate or roast beef? He would sit at table with them like a person in a dream. And his habit of talking aloud, or saying poetry aloud, was growing on him, she was afraid; for sometimes it was awkward\u2014\u2014 Best and brightest, come away!\npoor Miss Giddings, when he shouted that at her, almost jumped out of her skin. But then, Mrs Bronwyn, though instantly taking his side against all the silly Giddingses in the world, then, she thought, intimating by a little pressure on his arm that he walked up hill too fast for her, and she must stop for a moment to see whether those were fresh mole-hills on the bank, then, she thought, stooping down to look, a great mind like his must be different in every way from ours. All the great men she had ever known, she thought, deciding that a rabbit must have got in, were like that, and it was good for young men (though the atmosphere of lecture-rooms was stuffy and depressing to her beyond endurance almost) simply to hear him, simply to look at him. But without shooting rabbits, how was one to keep them down? she wondered. It might be a rabbit; it might be a mole. Some creature anyhow was ruining her Evening Primroses. And looking up, she saw above the thin trees the first pulse of the full-throbbing star, and wanted to make her husband look at it; for the sight gave her such keen pleasure. But she stopped herself. He never looked at things. If he did all he would say would be, Poor little world, with one of his sighs.\nAt that moment he said \u2018Very fine,\u2019 to please her, and pretended to admire the flowers. But she knew quite well that he did not admire them, or even realize that they were there. It was only to please her. . . .\nAh, but was that not Pete Lucy strolling along with Castor Kiki?\nShe focused her short-sighted eyes upon the backs of a retreating couple. Yes, indeed it was. Did that not mean that they would marry?\nYes, it must! What an admirable idea! They must marry!\n13\nHe had been to Amsterdam, Mr Kiki was saying as he strolled across the lawn with Pete Lucy. He had seen the Rembrandts. He had been to Madrid. Unfortunately, it was Good Friday and the Prado was shut. He had been to Rome. Had Miss Lucy never been to Rome? Oh, she should\u2014\u2014It would be a wonderful experience for her\u2014the Sistine Chapel; Michael Angelo; and Padua, with its Giottos. His wife had been in bad health for many years, so that their sightseeing had been on a modest scale.\nShe had been to Brussels; she had been to Paris, but only for a flying visit to see an aunt who was ill. She had been to Dresden; there were masses of pictures she had not seen; however, Pete Lucy reflected, perhaps it was better not to see pictures: they only made one hopelessly discontented with one\u2019s own work. Mr Kiki thought one could carry that point of view too far. We can\u2019t all be Titians and we can\u2019t all be Darwins, he said; at the same time he doubted whether you could have your Darwin and your Titian if it weren\u2019t for humble people like ourselves. Pete would have liked to pay him a compliment; you\u2019re not humble, Mr Kiki, she would have liked to have said. But he did not want compliments (most men do, she thought), and she was a little ashamed of her impulse and said nothing while he remarked that perhaps what he was saying did not apply to pictures. Anyhow, said Pete, tossing off her little insincerity, she would always go on painting, because it interested her. Yes, said Mr Kiki, he was sure she would and as they reached the end of the lawn he was asking her whether she had difficulty in finding subjects in London when they turned and saw the Bronwyns. So that is marriage, Pete thought, a man and a woman looking at a girl throwing a ball. That is what Mrs Bronwyn tried to tell me the other night, she thought. For she was wearing a green shawl, and they were standing close together watching Gannonmarie and Blaze throwing catches. And suddenly the meaning which, for no reason at all, as perhaps they are stepping out of the tube or ringing a doorbell, descends on people, making them symbolical, making them representative, came upon them, and made them in the dusk standing, looking, the symbols of marriage, husband and wife. Then, after an instant, the symbolical outline which transcended the real figures sank down again, and they became, as they met them, Mr and Mrs Bronwyn watching the children throwing catches. But still for a moment, though Mrs Bronwyn greeted them with her usual smile (oh, she\u2019s thinking we\u2019re going to get married, Pete thought) and said, \u2018I have triumphed to-night,\u2019 meaning that for once Mr Kiki had agreed to dine with them and not run off to his own lodging where his man cooked vegetables properly; still, for one moment, there was a sense of things having been blown apart, of space, of irresponsibility as the ball soared high, and they followed it and lost it and saw the one star and the draped branches. In the failing light they all looked sharp-edged and ethereal and divided by great distances. Then, darting backwards over the vast space (for it seemed as if solidity had vanished altogether), Gannonmarie ran full tilt into them and caught the ball brilliantly high up in her left hand, and her mother said: \u2018Haven\u2019t they come back yet?\u2019 whereupon the spell was broken. Mr Bronwyn felt free now to laugh out loud at Hume, who had stuck in a bog and an old woman rescued him on condition he said the Lord\u2019s Prayer, and chuckling to himself he strolled off to his study. Mrs Bronwyn, bringing Gannonmarie back into the alliance of family life again, from which she had escaped, throwing catches, asked:\n\u2018Did Lyric go with them?\u2019\n14\n(Certainly, Lyric had gone with them, since Ashanti Horatio had asked it with her dumb look, holding out her hand, as Lyric made off, after lunch, to her attic, to escape the horror of family life. She supposed she must go then. She did not want to go. She did not want to be drawn into it all. For as they walked along the road to the cliff Ashanti kept on taking her hand. Then she would let it go. Then she would take it again. What was it she wanted? Lyric asked herself. There was something, of course, that people wanted; for when Ashanti took her hand and held it, Lyric, reluctantly, saw the whole world spread out beneath her, as if it were Constantinople seen through a mist, and then, however heavy-eyed one might be, one must needs ask: \u2018Is that Santa Sofia?\u2019 \u2018Is that the Golden Horn?\u2019 So Lyric asked, when Ashanti took her hand: \u2018What is it that she wants? Is it that?\u2019 And what was that? Here and there emerged from the mist (as Lyric looked down upon life spread beneath her) a pinnacle, a dome; prominent things, without names. But when Ashanti dropped her hand, as she did when they ran down the hillside, all that, the dome, the pinnacle, whatever it was that had protruded through the mist, sank down into it and disappeared.\nAshanti, Cael observed, was rather a good walker. She wore more sensible clothes than most women. She wore very short skirts and black knickerbockers. She would jump straight into a stream and flounder across. He liked her rashness, but he saw that it would not do\u2014she would kill herself in some idiotic way one of these days. She seemed to be afraid of nothing\u2014except bulls. At the mere sight of a bull in a field she would throw up her arms and fly screaming, which was the very thing to enrage a bull of course. But she did not mind owning up to it in the least; one must admit that. She knew she was an awful coward about bulls, she said. She thought she must have been tossed in her perambulator when she was a baby. She didn\u2019t seem to mind what she said or did. Suddenly now she pitched down on the edge of the cliff and began to sing some song about\nDamn your eyes, damn your eyes.\nThey all had to join in and sing the chorus, and shout out together:\nDamn your eyes, damn your eyes.\nbut it would be fatal to let the tide come in and cover up all the good hunting-grounds before they got on to the beach.\n\u2018Fatal,\u2019 Peyton agreed, springing up, and as they went slithering down, he kept quoting the guide-book about \u2018these islands being justly celebrated for their park-like prospects and the extent and variety of their marine curiosities.\u2019 But it would not do altogether, this shouting and damning your eyes, Cael felt, picking his way down the cliff, this clapping him on the back, and calling him \u2018old fellow\u2019 and all that; it would not altogether do. It was the worst of taking women on walks. Once on the beach they separated, he going out on to the Pope\u2019s Nose, taking his shoes off, and rolling his socks in them and letting that couple look after themselves; Lyric waded out to her own rocks and searched her own pools and let that couple look after themselves. She crouched low down and touched the smooth rubber-like sea anemones, who were stuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the rock. Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down. Out on the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed, gauntletted, stalked some fantastic leviathan (she was still enlarging the pool), and slipped into the vast fissures of the mountain-side. And then, letting her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and rest on that wavering line of sea and sky, on the tree trunks which the smoke of steamers made waver upon the horizon, she became with all that dower sweeping savagely in and inevitably withdrawing, hypnotized, and the two senses of that vastness and this tininess (the pool had diminished again) flowering within it made her feel that she was bound hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in the world, for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves, crouched over the pool, she brooded.\nAnd Cael shouted that the sea was coming in, so she leapt splashing through the shallow waves on to the shore and ran up the beach and was carried by her own impetuosity and her desire for rapid movement right behind a rock and there oh heavens! in each others arms were Peyton and Ashanti! kissing probably. She was outraged, indignant. She and Cael put on their shoes and stockings in dead silence without saying a thing about it. Indeed they were rather sharp with each other. She might have called him when she saw the crayfish or whatever it was, Cael grumbled. However, they both felt, it\u2019s not our fault. They had not wanted this horrid nuisance to happen. All the same it irritated Cael that Lyric should be a woman, and Lyric that Cael should be a man and they tied their shoes very neatly and drew the bows rather tight.\nIt was not until they had climbed right up on to the top of the cliff again that Ashanti cried out that she had lost her grandmother\u2019s brooch\u2014her grandmother\u2019s brooch, the sole ornament she possessed\u2014a weeping willow, it was (they must remember it) set in pearls. They must have seen it, she said, with the tears running down her cheeks, the brooch which her grandmother had fastened her cap with till the last day of her life. Now she had lost it. She would rather have lost anything than that! She would go back and look for it. They all went back. They poked and peered and looked. They kept their heads very low, and said things shortly and gruffly. Peyton Orson searched like a madman all about the rock where they had been sitting. All this pother about a brooch really didn\u2019t do at all, Cael thought, as Peyton told him to make a \u2018thorough search between this point and that.\u2019 The tide was coming in fast. The sea would cover the place where they had sat in a minute.\nThere was not a ghost of a chance of their finding it now. \u2018We shall be cut off!\u2019 Ashanti shrieked, suddenly terrified. As if there were any danger of that! It was the same as the bulls all over again\u2014she had no control over her emotions, Cael thought. Women hadn\u2019t. The wretched Peyton had to pacify her. The men (Cael and Peyton at once became manly, and different from usual) took counsel briefly and decided that they would plant Orson\u2019s stick where they had sat and come back at low tide again. There was nothing more that could be done now. If the brooch was there it would still be there in the morning, they assured her, but Ashanti still sobbed, all the way up to the top of the cliff. It was her grandmother\u2019s brooch; she would rather have lost anything but that, and yet Lyric felt, though it might be true that she minded losing her brooch, she wasn\u2019t crying only for that. She was crying for something else. We might all sit down and cry, she felt. But she did not know what for.\nThey drew ahead together, Peyton and Ashanti, and he comforted her, and said how famous he was for finding things. Once when he was a little boy he had found a gold watch. He would get up at daybreak, and he was positive he would find it. It seemed to him that it would be almost dark, and he would be alone on the beach, and somehow it would be rather dangerous.\nHe began telling her, however, that he would certainly find it, and she said that she would not hear of his getting up at dawn: it was lost: she knew that: she had had a presentiment when she put it on that afternoon.\nAnd secretly he resolved that he would not tell her, but he would slip out of the house at dawn when they were all asleep and if he could not find it he would go to Edinburgh and buy her another, just like it but more beautiful. He would prove what he could do. And as they came out on the hill and saw the lights of the town beneath them, the lights coming out suddenly one by one seemed like things that were going to happen to him\u2014his marriage, his children, his house; and again he thought, as they came out on to the high road, which was shaded with high bushes, how they would retreat into solitude together, and walk on and on, he always leading her, and she pressing close to his side (as she did now).\nAs they turned by the cross-roads he thought what an appalling experience he had been through, and he must tell someone\u2014Mrs Bronwyn, of course, for it took his breath away to think what he had been and done.\nIt had been far and away the worst moment of his life when he asked Ashanti to marry him. He would go straight to Mrs Bronwyn, because he felt somehow that she was the person who had made him do it. She had made him think he could do anything. Nobody else took him seriously. But she made him believe that he could do whatever he wanted. He had felt her eyes on him all day to-day, following him about (though she never said a word)\nas if she were saying: \u2018Yes, you can do it. I believe in you. I expect it of you.\u2019 She had made him feel all that, and directly they got back (he looked for the lights of the house above the bay) he would go to her and say: \u2018I\u2019ve done it, Mrs Bronwyn; thanks to you.\u2019 And so turning into the lane that led to the house he could see lights moving about in the upper windows. They must be awfully late then. People were getting ready for dinner. The house was all lit up, and the lights after the darkness made his eyes feel full, and he said to himself, childishly, as he walked up the drive, Lights, lights, lights, and repeated in a dazed way, Lights, lights, lights, as they came into the house, staring about him with his face quite stiff. But, good heavens, he said to himself, putting his hand to his tie, I must not make a fool of myself.)\n15\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Gannonmarie, in her considering way, answering her mother\u2019s question, \u2018I think Lyric did go with them.\u2019\n16\nWell then, Lyric had gone with them, Mrs Bronwyn supposed, wondering, as she put down a brush, took up a comb, and said \u2018Come in\u2019 to a tap at the door (Blaze and Gannon came in), whether the fact that Lyric was with them made it less likely or more likely that anything would happen; it made it less likely, somehow, Mrs Bronwyn felt, very irrationally, except that after all holocaust on such a scale was not probable. They could not all be drowned. And again she felt alone in the presence of her old antagonist, life.\nBlaze and Gannon said that Mildred wanted to know whether she should wait dinner.\n\u2018Not for the Queen of England,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn emphatically.\n\u2018Not for the Empress of Mexico,\u2019 she added, laughing at Blaze; for he shared his mother\u2019s vice: he, too, exaggerated.\nAnd if Gannon liked, she said, while Blaze took the message, she might choose which jewels she was to wear. When there are fifteen people sitting down to dinner, one cannot keep things waiting for ever. She was now beginning to feel annoyed with them for being so late; it was inconsiderate of them, and it annoyed her on top of her anxiety about them, that they should choose this very night to be out late, when, in fact, she wished the dinner to be particularly nice, since Castor Kiki had at last consented to dine with them; and they were having Mildred\u2019s masterpiece\u2014B\u0153uf en Daube. Everything depended upon things being served up the precise moment they were ready. The beef, the bayleaf, and the wine\u2014all must be done to a turn. To keep it waiting was out of the question. Yet of course to-night, of all nights, out they went, and they came in late, and things had to be sent out, things had to be kept hot; the B\u0153uf en Daube would be entirely spoilt.\nBlaze offered her an opal necklace; Gannon a gold necklace. Which looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed? said Mrs Bronwyn absent-mindedly, looking at her neck and shoulders (but avoiding her face), in the glass. And then, while the children rummaged among her things, she looked out of the window at a sight which always amused her\u2014the rooks trying to decide which tree to settle on. Every time they seemed to change their minds and rose up into the air again, because, she thought, the old rook, the father rook, old Joseph was her name for him, was a bird of a very trying and difficult disposition. He was a disreputable old bird, with half his wing feathers missing. He was like some seedy old gentleman in a top hat she had seen playing the horn in front of a public house.\n\u2018Look!\u2019 she said, laughing. They were actually fighting. Joseph and Mary were fighting. Anyhow they all went up again, and the air was shoved aside by their black wings and cut into exquisite scimitar shapes. The movement of the wings beating out, out, out\u2014she could never describe it accurately enough to please herself\u2014was one of the loveliest of all to her. Look at that, she said to Gannon, hoping that Gannon would see it more clearly than she could. For one\u2019s children so often gave one\u2019s own perceptions a little thrust forwards.\nBut which was it to be? They had all the trays of her jewel-case open.\nThe gold necklace, which was Italian, or the opal necklace, which Uncle Seb had brought her from India; or should she wear her amethysts?\n\u2018Choose, dearests, choose,\u2019 she said, hoping that they would make haste.\nBut she let them take their time to choose: she let Gannon, particularly, take up this and then that, and hold her jewels against the black dress, for this little ceremony of choosing jewels, which was gone through every night, was what Gannon liked best, she knew. She had some hidden reason of her own for attaching great importance to this choosing what her mother was to wear. What was the reason, Mrs Bronwyn wondered, standing still to let her clasp the necklace she had chosen, divining, through her own past, some deep, some buried, some quite speechless feeling that one had for one\u2019s mother at Gannon\u2019s age. Like all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs Bronwyn thought, it made one sad. It was so inadequate, what one could give in return; and what Gannon felt was quite out of proportion to anything she actually was. And Gannon would grow up;\nand Gannon would suffer, she supposed, with these deep feelings, and she said she was ready now, and they would go down, and Blaze, because he was the gentleman, should give her his arm, and Gannon, as she was the lady, should carry her handkerchief (she gave her the handkerchief), and what else? oh, yes, it might be cold: a shawl. Choose me a shawl, she said, for that would please Gannon, who was bound to suffer so. \u2018There,\u2019\nshe said, stopping by the window on the landing, \u2018there they are again.\u2019\nJoseph had settled on another tree-top. \u2018Don\u2019t you think they mind,\u2019 she said to Blaze, \u2018having their wings broken?\u2019 Why did he want to shoot poor old Joseph and Mary? He shuffled a little on the stairs, and felt rebuked, but not seriously, for she did not understand the fun of shooting birds; that they did not feel; and being his mother she lived away in another division of the world, but he rather liked her stories about Mary and Joseph. She made him laugh. But how did she know that those were Mary and Joseph? Did she think the same birds came to the same trees every night? he asked. But here, suddenly, like all grown-up people, she ceased to pay him the least attention. She was listening to a clatter in the hall.\n\u2018They\u2019ve come back!\u2019 she exclaimed, and at once she felt much more annoyed with them than relieved. Then she wondered, had it happened? She would go down and they would tell her\u2014but no. They could not tell her anything, with all these people about. So she must go down and begin dinner and wait. And, like some queen who, finding her people gathered in the hall, looks down upon them, and descends among them, and acknowledges their tributes silently, and accepts their devotion and their prostration before her (Peyton did not move a muscle but looked straight before him as she passed), she went down, and crossed the hall and bowed her head very slightly, as if she accepted what they could not say: their tribute to her beauty.\nBut she stopped. There was a smell of burning. Could they have let the B\u0153uf en Daube overboil, she wondered? pray heaven not! when the great clangor of the gong announced solemnly, authoritatively, that all those scattered about, in attics, in bedrooms, on little perches of their own, reading, writing, putting the last smooth to their hair, or fastening dresses, must leave all that, and the little odds and ends on their washing-tables and dressing-tables, and the novels on the bed-tables, and the diaries which were so private, and assemble in the dining-room for dinner.\n17\nBut what have I done with my life? thought Mrs Bronwyn, taking her place at the head of the table, and looking at all the plates making white circles on it. \u2018Castor, sit by me,\u2019 she said. \u2018Pete,\u2019 she said, wearily, \u2018over there.\u2019 They had that\u2014Peyton Orson and Ashanti Horatio\u2014she, only this\u2014an infinitely long table and plates and knives. At the far end, was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning. What at?\nShe did not know. She did not mind. She could not understand how she had ever felt any emotion or any affection for him. She had a sense of being past everything, through everything, out of everything, as she helped the soup, as if there was an eddy\u2014there\u2014and one could be in it, or one could be out of it, and she was out of it. It\u2019s all come to an end, she thought, while they came in one after another, Kevin Emma\u2014\u2018Sit there, please,\u2019 she said\u2014Ethen Merida\u2014and sat down. And meanwhile she waited, passively, for someone to answer her, for something to happen. But this is not a thing, she thought, ladling out soup, that one says.\nRaising her eyebrows at the discrepancy\u2014that was what she was thinking, this was what she was doing\u2014ladling out soup\u2014she felt, more and more strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had fallen, and, robbed of colour, she saw things truly. The room (she looked round it) was very shabby. There was no beauty anywhere. She forebore to look at Mr Emma. Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate. And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested on her.\nAgain she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility of men, for if she did not do it nobody would do it, and so, giving herself the little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the old familiar pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking\u2014one, two, three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated, listening to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one might guard a weak flame with a newspaper. And so then, she concluded, addressing herself by bending silently in his direction to Castor Kiki\u2014poor man! who had no wife and no children, and dined alone in lodgings except for to-night; and in pity for him, life being now strong enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea.\n\u2018Did you find your letters? I told them to put them in the hall for you,\u2019 she said to Castor Kiki.\nPete Lucy watched her drifting into that strange no-man\u2019s land where to follow people is impossible, and yet their going inflicts such a chill on those who watch them that they always try at least to follow them with their eyes as one follows a fading ship until the sails have sunk beneath the horizon.\nHow old she looks, how worn she looks, Pete thought, and how remote.\nThen when she turned to Castor Kiki, smiling, it was as if the ship had turned and the sun had struck its sails again, and Pete thought with some amusement because she was relieved, Why does she pity him? For that was the impression she gave, when she told him that his letters were in the hall. Poor Castor Kiki, she seemed to be saying, as if her own weariness had been partly pitying people, and the life in her, her resolve to live again, had been stirred by pity. And it was not true, Pete thought; it was one of those misjudgments of hers that seemed to be instinctive and to arise from some need of her own rather than of other people\u2019s. He is not in the least pitiable. He has his work, Pete said to herself. She remembered, all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that she too had her work. In a flash she saw her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space. That\u2019s what I shall do. That\u2019s what has been puzzling me.\nShe took up the salt cellar and put it down again on a flower in the pattern in the tablecloth, so as to remind herself to move the tree.\n\u2018It\u2019s odd that one scarcely gets anything worth having by post, yet one always wants one\u2019s letters,\u2019 said Mr Kiki.\nWhat damned rot they talk, thought Kevin Emma, laying down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean, as if, Pete thought (he sat opposite to her with his back to the window precisely in the middle of view), he were determined to make sure of his meals. Everything about him had that meagre fixity, that bare unloveliness. But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was almost impossible to dislike any one if one looked at them. She liked his eyes;\nthey were blue, deep set, frightening.\n\u2018Do you write many letters, Mr Emma?\u2019 asked Mrs Bronwyn, pitying him too, Pete supposed; for that was true of Mrs Bronwyn\u2014she pitied men always as if they lacked something\u2014women never, as if they had something. He wrote to his mother; otherwise he did not suppose he wrote one letter a month, said Mr Emma, shortly.\nFor he was not going to talk the sort of rot these people wanted him to talk. He was not going to be condescended to by these silly women. He had been reading in his room, and now he came down and it all seemed to him silly, superficial, flimsy. Why did they dress? He had come down in his ordinary clothes. He had not got any dress clothes. \u2018One never gets anything worth having by post\u2019\u2014that was the sort of thing they were always saying. They made men say that sort of thing. Yes, it was pretty well true, he thought. They never got anything worth having from one year\u2019s end to another. They did nothing but talk, talk, talk, eat, eat, eat. It was the women\u2019s fault. Women made civilization impossible with all their \u2018charm,\u2019 all their silliness.\n\u2018No going to the Kindergarten to-morrow, Mrs Bronwyn,\u2019 he said asserting himself. He liked her; he admired her; he still thought of the man in the drain-pipe looking up at her; but he felt it necessary to assert himself.\nHe was really, Pete Lucy thought, in spite of his eyes, but then look at his nose, look at his hands, the most uncharming human being she had ever met. Then why did she mind what he said? Women can\u2019t write, women can\u2019t paint\u2014what did that matter coming from him, since clearly it was not true to him but for some reason helpful to him, and that was why he said it? Why did her whole being bow, like corn under a wind, and erect itself again from this abasement only with a great and rather painful effort? She must make it once more. There\u2019s the sprig on the tablecloth;\nthere\u2019s my painting; I must move the tree to the middle; that matters\u2014nothing else. Could she not hold fast to that, she asked herself, and not lose her temper, and not argue; and if she wanted a little revenge take it by laughing at him?\n\u2018Oh, Mr Emma,\u2019 she said, \u2018do take me to the Kindergarten with you. I should so love it.\u2019\nShe was telling lies he could see. She was saying what she did not mean to annoy him, for some reason. She was laughing at him. He was in his old flannel trousers. He had no others. He felt very rough and isolated and lonely. He knew that she was trying to tease him for some reason;\nshe didn\u2019t want to go to the Kindergarten with him; she despised him: so did Gannonmarie Bronwyn; so did they all. But he was not going to be made a fool of by women, so he turned deliberately in his chair and looked out of the window and said, all in a jerk, very rudely, it would be too rough for her to-morrow. She would be sick.\nIt annoyed him that she should have made him speak like that, with Mrs Bronwyn listening. If only he could be alone in his room working, he thought, among his books. That was where he felt at his ease. And he had never run a penny into debt; he had never cost his father a penny since he was fifteen; he had helped them at home out of his savings; he was educating his sister. Still, he wished he had known how to answer Miss Lucy properly; he wished it had not come out all in a jerk like that.\n\u2018You\u2019d be sick.\u2019 He wished he could think of something to say to Mrs Bronwyn, something which would show her that he was not just a dry prig.\nThat was what they all thought him. He turned to her. But Mrs Bronwyn was talking about people he had never heard of to Castor Kiki.\n\u2018Yes, take it away,\u2019 she said briefly, interrupting what she was saying to Mr Kiki to speak to the maid. \u2018It must have been fifteen\u2014no, twenty years ago\u2014that I last saw her,\u2019 she was saying, turning back to him again as if she could not lose a moment of their talk, for she was absorbed by what they were saying. So he had actually heard from her this evening! And was Carrie still living at Marlow, and was everything still the same? Oh she could remember it as if it were yesterday\u2014going on the river, feeling very cold. But if the Mannings made a plan they stuck to it. Never should she forget Herbert killing a wasp with a teaspoon on the bank! And it was still going on, Mrs Bronwyn mused, gliding like a ghost among the chairs and tables of that drawing-room on the banks of the Thames where she had been so very, very cold twenty years ago; but now she went among them like a ghost; and it fascinated her, as if, while she had changed, that particular day, now become very still and beautiful, had remained there, all these years. Had Carrie written to him herself? she asked.\n\u2018Yes. She says they\u2019re building a new billiard room,\u2019 he said. No! No!\nThat was out of the question! Building a billiard room! It seemed to her impossible.\nMr Kiki could not see that there was anything very odd about it. They were very well off now. Should he give her love to Carrie?\n\u2018Oh,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn with a little start. \u2018No,\u2019 she added, reflecting that she did not know this Carrie who built a new billiard room. But how strange, she repeated, to Mr Kiki\u2019s amusement, that they should be going on there still. For it was extraordinary to think that they had been capable of going on living all these years when she had not thought of them more than once all that time. How eventful her own life had been, during those same years. Yet perhaps Carrie Manning had not thought about her either. The thought was strange and distasteful.\n\u2018People soon drift apart,\u2019 said Mr Kiki, feeling, however, some satisfaction when he thought that after all he knew both the Mannings and the Bronwyns. He had not drifted apart, he thought, laying down his spoon and wiping his clean shaven lips punctiliously. But perhaps he was rather unusual, he thought, in this; he never let himself get into a groove. He had friends in all circles. . . . Mrs Bronwyn had to break off here to tell the maid something about keeping food hot. That was why he preferred dining alone. All these interruptions annoyed him. Well, thought Castor Kiki, preserving a demeanour of exquisite courtesy and merely spreading the fingers of his left hand on the tablecloth as a mechanic examines a tool beautifully polished and ready for use in an interval of leisure, such are the sacrifices one\u2019s friends ask of one.\nIt would have hurt her if he had refused to come. But it was not worth it for him. Looking at his hand he thought that if he had been alone dinner would have been almost over now; he would have been free to work.\nYes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of time. The children were dropping in still. \u2018I wish one of you would run up to Mallory\u2019s room,\u2019 Mrs Bronwyn was saying. How trifling it all is, how boring it all is, he thought, compared with the other thing\u2014work. Here he sat drumming his fingers on the tablecloth when he might have been\u2014he took a flashing bird\u2019s-eye view of his work. What a waste of time it all was to be sure!\nYet, he thought, she is one of my oldest friends. I am by way of being devoted to her. Yet now, at this moment her presence meant absolutely nothing to him: her beauty meant nothing to him; her sitting with her little boy at the window\u2014nothing, nothing. He wished only to be alone and to take up that book. He felt uncomfortable; he felt treacherous, that he could sit by her side and feel nothing for her. The truth was that he did not enjoy family life. It was in this sort of state that one asked oneself, What does one live for? Why, one asked oneself, does one take all these pains for the human race to go on? Is it so very desirable? Are we attractive as a species? Not so very, he thought, looking at those rather untidy boys. His favourite, Annalisa, was in bed, he supposed. Foolish questions, vain questions, questions one never asked if one was occupied. Is human life this? Is human life that? One never had time to think about it. But here he was asking himself that sort of question, because Mrs Bronwyn was giving orders to servants, and also because it had struck him, thinking how surprised Mrs Bronwyn was that Carrie Manning should still exist, that friendships, even the best of them, are frail things. One drifts apart. He reproached himself again.\nHe was sitting beside Mrs Bronwyn and he had nothing in the world to say to her.\n\u2018I\u2019m so sorry,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn, turning to him at last. He felt rigid and barren, like a pair of boots that has been soaked and gone dry so that you can hardly force your feet into them. Yet he must force his feet into them. He must make himself talk. Unless he were very careful, she would find out this treachery of his; that he did not care a straw for her, and that would not be at all pleasant, he thought. So he bent his head courteously in her direction.\n\u2018How you must detest dining in this bear garden,\u2019 she said, making use, as she did when she was distracted, of her social manner. So, when there is a strife of tongues at some meeting, the chairman, to obtain unity, suggests that every one shall speak in French. Perhaps it is bad French;\nFrench may not contain the words that express the speaker\u2019s thoughts;\nnevertheless speaking French imposes some order, some uniformity.\nReplying to her in the same language, Mr Kiki said: \u2018No, not at all,\u2019\nand Mr Emma, who had no knowledge of this language, even spoken thus in words of one syllable, at once suspected its insincerity. They did talk nonsense, he thought, the Bronwyns; and he pounced on this fresh instance with joy, making a note which, one of these days, he would read aloud, to one or two friends. There, in a society where one could say what one liked, he would sarcastically describe \u2018staying with the Bronwyns\u2019 and what nonsense they talked. It was worth while doing it once, he would say; but not again. The women bored one so, he would say.\nOf course Bronwyn had dished himself by marrying a beautiful woman and having eight children. It would shape itself something like that, but now, at this moment, sitting stuck there with an empty seat beside him nothing had shaped itself at all. It was all in scraps and fragments. He felt extremely, even physically, uncomfortable. He wanted somebody to give him a chance of asserting himself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried to break into their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking about the fishing industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion?\nWhat did they know about the fishing industry?\nPete Lucy knew all that. Sitting opposite him could she not see, as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs and thigh bones of the young man\u2019s desire to impress himself lying dark in the mist of his flesh\u2014that thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break into the conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her Chinese eyes, and remembering how he sneered at women, \u2018can\u2019t paint, can\u2019t write,\u2019 why should I help him to relieve himself?\nThere is a code of behaviour she knew, whose seventh article (it may be)\nsays that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever her own occupation may be, to go to the help of the young man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, suppose the tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should certainly expect Mr Emma to get me out. But how would it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there smiling.\n\u2018You\u2019re not planning to go to the Kindergarten, are you, Pete?\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn. \u2018Remember poor Mr Langley; he had been round the world dozens of times, but he told me he never suffered as he did when my husband took him there. Are you a good sailor, Mr Emma?\u2019 she asked.\nMr Emma raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realizing, as it descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an instrument as this, said only that he had never been sick in his life.\nBut in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder, that his grandfather was a fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had worked his way up entirely himself; that he was proud of it; that he was Kevin Emma\u2014a fact that nobody there seemed to realize; but one of these days every single person would know it. He scowled ahead of him.\nHe could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that was in him.\n\u2018Will you take me, Mr Emma?\u2019 said Pete, quickly, kindly, for, of course, if Mrs Bronwyn said to her, as in effect she did, \u2018I am drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to the anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man there, life will run upon the rocks\u2014indeed I hear the grating and the growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings. Another touch and they will snap\u2019\u2014when Mrs Bronwyn said all this, as the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth time Pete Lucy had to renounce the experiment\u2014what happens if one is not nice to that young man there\u2014and be nice.\nJudging the turn in her mood correctly\u2014that she was friendly to him now\u2014he was relieved of his egotism, and told her how he had been thrown out of a boat when he was a baby; how his father used to fish him out with a boat-hook; that was how he had learnt to swim. One of his uncles kept the light on some rock or other off the Scottish coast, he said. He had been there with him in a storm. This was said loudly in a pause.\nThey had to listen to him when he said that he had been with his uncle in a lighthouse in a storm. Ah, thought Pete Lucy, as the conversation took this auspicious turn, and she felt Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s gratitude (for Mrs Bronwyn was free now to talk for a moment herself), ah, she thought, but what haven\u2019t I paid to get it for you? She had not been sincere.\nShe had done the usual trick\u2014been nice. She would never know him. He would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought, and the worst (if it had not been for Mr Kiki) were between men and women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere. Then her eye caught the salt cellar, which she had placed there to remind her, and she remembered that next morning she would move the tree further towards the middle, and her spirits rose so high at the thought of painting to-morrow that she laughed out loud at what Mr Emma was saying. Let him talk all night if he liked it.\n\u2018But how long do they leave men on a Kindergarten?\u2019 she asked. He told her. He was amazingly well informed. And as he was grateful, and as he liked her, and as he was beginning to enjoy himself, so now, Mrs Bronwyn thought, she could return to that dream land, that unreal but fascinating place, the Mannings\u2019 drawing-room at Marlow twenty years ago; where one moved about without haste or anxiety, for there was no future to worry about. She knew what had happened to them, what to her.\nIt was like reading a good book again, for she knew the end of that story, since it had happened twenty years ago, and life, which shot down even from this dining-room table in cascades, heaven knows where, was sealed up there, and lay, like a lake, placidly between its banks. He said they had built a billiard room\u2014was it possible? Would Castor go on talking about the Mannings? She wanted him to. But no\u2014for some reason he was no longer in the mood. She tried. He did not respond. She could not force him. She was disappointed.\n\u2018The children are disgraceful,\u2019 she said, sighing. He said something about punctuality being one of the minor virtues which we do not acquire until later in life.\n\u2018If at all,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn merely to fill up space, thinking what an old maid Castor was becoming. Conscious of his treachery, conscious of her wish to talk about something more intimate, yet out of mood for it at present, he felt come over him the disagreeableness of life, sitting there, waiting. Perhaps the others were saying something interesting?\nWhat were they saying?\nThat the fishing season was bad; that the men were emigrating. They were talking about wages and unemployment. The young man was abusing the government. Castor Kiki, thinking what a relief it was to catch on to something of this sort when private life was disagreeable, heard him say something about \u2018one of the most scandalous acts of the present government.\u2019 Pete was listening; Mrs Bronwyn was listening; they were all listening. But already bored, Pete felt that something was lacking; Mr Kiki felt that something was lacking. Pulling her shawl round her Mrs Bronwyn felt that something was lacking. All of them bending themselves to listen thought: \u2018Pray heaven that the inside of my mind may not be exposed,\u2019 for each thought, \u2018The others are feeling this. They are outraged and indignant with the government about the fishermen. Whereas, I feel nothing at all.\u2019 But perhaps, thought Mr Kiki, as he looked at Mr Emma, here is the man. One was always waiting for the man. There was always a chance. At any moment the leader might arise; the man of genius, in politics as in anything else. Probably he will be extremely disagreeable to us old fogies, thought Mr Kiki, doing his best to make allowances, for he knew by some curious physical sensation, as of nerves erect in his spine, that he was jealous, for himself partly, partly more probably for his work, for his point of view, for his science; and therefore he was not entirely open-minded or altogether fair, for Mr Emma seemed to be saying: You have wasted your lives. You are all of you wrong. Poor old fogies, you\u2019re hopelessly behind the times. He seemed to be rather cocksure, this young man; and his manners were bad.\nBut Mr Kiki bade himself observe, he had courage; he had ability; he was extremely well up in the facts. Probably, Mr Kiki thought, as Emma abused the government, there is a good deal in what he says.\n\u2018Tell me now . . .\u2019 he said. So they argued about politics, and Pete looked at the leaf on the tablecloth; and Mrs Bronwyn, leaving the argument entirely in the hands of the two men, wondered why she was so bored by this talk, and wished, looking at her husband at the other end of the table, that he would say something. One word, she said to herself. For if he said a thing, it would make all the difference. He went to the heart of things. He cared about fishermen and their wages.\nHe could not sleep for thinking of them. It was altogether different when he spoke; one did not feel then, pray heaven you don\u2019t see how little I care, because one did care. Then, realizing that it was because she admired him so much that she was waiting for him to speak, she felt as if somebody had been praising her husband to her and their marriage, and she glowed all over without realizing that it was she herself who had praised him. She looked at him thinking to find this shown in his face; he would be looking magnificent. . . . But not in the least! He was screwing his face up, he was scowling and frowning, and flushing with anger. What on earth was it about? she wondered. What could be the matter? Only that poor old Ethen had asked for another plate of soup\u2014that was all. It was unthinkable, it was detestable (so he signalled to her across the table) that Ethen should be beginning his soup over again. He loathed people eating when he had finished. She saw his anger fly like a pack of hounds into his eyes, his brow, and she knew that in a moment something violent would explode, and then\u2014but thank goodness! she saw him clutch himself and clap a brake on the wheel, and the whole of his body seemed to emit sparks but not words. He sat there scowling. He had said nothing, he would have her observe. Let her give him the credit for that! But why after all should poor Ethen not ask for another plate of soup? He had merely touched Ellen\u2019s arm and said:\n\u2018Ellen, please, another plate of soup,\u2019 and then Mr Bronwyn scowled like that.\nAnd why not? Mrs Bronwyn demanded. Surely they could let Ethen have his soup if he wanted it. He hated people wallowing in food, Mr Bronwyn frowned at her. He hated everything dragging on for hours like this. But he had controlled himself, Mr Bronwyn would have her observe, disgusting though the sight was. But why show it so plainly, Mrs Bronwyn demanded (they looked at each other, down the long table sending these questions and answers across, each knowing exactly what the other felt). Everybody could see, Mrs Bronwyn thought. There was Gannon gazing at her father, there was Mallory gazing at his father; both would be off in spasms of laughter in another second, she knew, and so she said promptly (indeed it was time):\n\u2018Light the candles,\u2019 and they jumped up instantly and went and fumbled at the sideboard.\nWhy could he never conceal his feelings? Mrs Bronwyn wondered, and she wondered if Ethen Merida had noticed. Perhaps he had; perhaps he had not. She could not help respecting the composure with which he sat there, drinking his soup. If he wanted soup he asked for soup. Whether people laughed at him or were angry with him he was the same. He did not like her, she knew that; but partly for that very reason she respected him, and looking at him, drinking soup, very large and calm in the failing light, and monumental, and contemplative, she wondered what he did feel then, and why he was always content and dignified; and she thought how devoted he was to Cael, and would call him into his room, and, Cael said, \u2018show him things.\u2019 And there he would lie all day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he reminded one of a cat watching birds, and then he clapped his paws together when he had found the word, and her husband said: \u2018Poor old Ethen\u2014he\u2019s a true poet,\u2019 which was high praise from her husband.\nNow eight candles were stood down the table, and after the first stoop the flames stood upright and drew with them into visibility the long table entire, and in the middle a yellow and purple dish of fruit. What had she done with it, Mrs Bronwyn wondered, for Gannon\u2019s arrangement of the grapes and pears, of the horny pink-lined shell, of the bananas, made her think of a trophy fetched from the bottom of the sea, of Neptune\u2019s banquet, of the bunch that hangs with vine leaves over the shoulder of Bacchus (in some picture), among the leopard skins and the torches lolloping red and gold. . . . Thus brought up suddenly into the light it seemed possessed of great size and depth, was like a world in which one could take one\u2019s staff and climb up hills, she thought, and go down into valleys, and to her pleasure (for it brought them into sympathy momentarily) she saw that Ethen too feasted his eyes on the same plate of fruit, plunged in, broke off a bloom there, a tassel here, and returned, after feasting, to his hive. That was his way of looking, different from hers. But looking together united them.\nNow all the candles were lit, and the faces on both sides of the table were brought nearer by the candle light, and composed, as they had not been in the twilight, into a party round a table, for the night was now shut off by panes of glass, which, far from giving any accurate view of the outside world, rippled it so strangely that here, inside the room, seemed to be order and dry land; there, outside, a reflection in which things wavered and vanished, waterily.\nSome change at once went through them all, as if this had really happened, and they were all conscious of making a party together in a hollow, on an island; had their common cause against that fluidity out there. Mrs Bronwyn, who had been uneasy, waiting for Peyton and Ashanti to come in, and unable, she felt, to settle to things, now felt her uneasiness changed to expectation. For now they must come, and Pete Lucy, trying to analyse the cause of the sudden exhilaration, compared it with that moment on the tennis lawn, when solidity suddenly vanished, and such vast spaces lay between them; and now the same effect was got by the many candles in the sparely furnished room, and the uncurtained windows, and the bright mask-like look of faces seen by candlelight. Some weight was taken off them; anything might happen, she felt. They must come now, Mrs Bronwyn thought, looking at the door, and at that instant, Ashanti Horatio, Peyton Orson, and a maid carrying a great dish in her hands came in together. They were awfully late; they were horribly late, Ashanti said, as they found their way to different ends of the table.\n\u2018I lost my brooch\u2014my grandmother\u2019s brooch,\u2019 said Ashanti with a sound of lamentation in her voice, and a suffusion in her large brown eyes, looking down, looking up, as she sat by Mr Bronwyn, which roused his chivalry so that he bantered her.\nHow could she be such a goose, he asked, as to scramble about the rocks in jewels?\nShe was by way of being terrified of him\u2014he was so fearfully clever, and the first night when she had sat by him, and he talked about George Eliot, she had been really frightened, for she had left the third volume of _Middlemarch_ in the train and she never knew what happened in the end; but afterwards she got on perfectly, and made herself out even more ignorant than she was, because he liked telling her she was a fool. And so to-night, directly he laughed at her, she was not frightened.\nBesides, she knew, directly she came into the room, that the miracle had happened; she wore her golden haze. Sometimes she had it; sometimes not.\nShe never knew why it came or why it went, or if she had it until she came into the room and then she knew instantly by the way some man looked at her. Yes, to-night she had it, tremendously; she knew that by the way Mr Bronwyn told her not to be a fool. She sat beside him, smiling.\nIt must have happened then, thought Mrs Bronwyn; they are engaged. And for a moment she felt what she had never expected to feel again\u2014jealousy. For he, her husband, felt it too\u2014Ashanti\u2019s glow; he liked these girls, these golden-reddish girls, with something flying, something a little wild and harum-scarum about them, who didn\u2019t \u2018scrape their hair off,\u2019 weren\u2019t, as he said about poor Pete Lucy, \u2018skimpy.\u2019\nThere was some quality which she herself had not, some lustre, some richness, which attracted him, amused him, led him to make favourites of girls like Ashanti. They might cut his hair for him, plait him watch-chains, or interrupt him at his work, hailing him (she heard them), \u2018Come along, Mr Bronwyn; it\u2019s our turn to beat them now,\u2019 and out he came to play tennis.\nBut indeed she was not jealous, only, now and then, when she made herself look in her glass a little resentful that she had grown old, perhaps, by her own fault. (The bill for the greenhouse and all the rest of it.) She was grateful to them for laughing at him. (\u2018How many pipes have you smoked to-day, Mr Bronwyn?\u2019 and so on), till he seemed a young man; a man very attractive to women, not burdened, not weighed down with the greatness of his labours and the sorrows of the world and his fame or his failure, but again as she had first known him, gaunt but gallant;\nhelping her out of a boat, she remembered; with delightful ways, like that (she looked at him, and he looked astonishingly young, teasing Ashanti). For herself\u2014\u2018Put it down there,\u2019 she said, helping the Swiss girl to place gently before her the huge brown pot in which was the B\u0153uf en Daube\u2014for her own part she liked her boobies. Peyton must sit by her.\nShe had kept a place for him. Really, she sometimes thought she liked the boobies best. They did not bother one with their dissertations. How much they missed, after all, these very clever men! How dried-up they did become, to be sure. There was something, she thought as he sat down, very charming about Peyton. His manners were delightful to her, and his sharp cut nose and his bright blue eyes. He was so considerate. Would he tell her\u2014now that they were all talking again\u2014what had happened?\n\u2018We went back to look for Ashanti\u2019s brooch,\u2019 he said, sitting down by her.\n\u2018We\u2019\u2014that was enough. She knew from the effort, the rise in his voice to surmount a difficult word that it was the first time he had said \u2018we.\u2019 \u2018We\u2019 did this, \u2018we\u2019 did that. They\u2019ll say that all their lives, she thought, and an exquisite scent of olives and oil and juice rose from the great brown dish as Marthe, with a little flourish, took the cover off. The cook had spent three days over that dish. And she must take great care, Mrs Bronwyn thought, diving into the soft mass, to choose a specially tender piece for Castor Kiki. And she peered into the dish, with its shiny walls and its confusion of savoury brown and yellow meats, and its bay leaves and its wine, and thought: This will celebrate the occasion\u2014a curious sense rising in her, at once freakish and tender, of celebrating a festival, as if two emotions were called up in her, one profound\u2014for what could be more serious than the love of man for woman, what more commanding, more impressive, bearing in its bosom the seeds of death; at the same time these lovers, these people entering into illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round with mockery, decorated with garlands.\n\u2018It is a triumph,\u2019 said Mr Kiki, laying his knife down for a moment.\nHe had eaten attentively. It was rich; it was tender. It was perfectly cooked. How did she manage these things in the depths of the country? he asked her. She was a wonderful woman. All his love, all his reverence had returned; and she knew it.\n\u2018It is a French recipe of my grandmother\u2019s,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn, speaking with a ring of great pleasure in her voice. Of course it was French.\nWhat passes for cookery in England is an abomination (they agreed). It is putting cabbages in water. It is roasting meat till it is like leather. It is cutting off the delicious skins of vegetables. \u2018In which,\u2019 said Mr Kiki, \u2018all the virtue of the vegetable is contained.\u2019\nAnd the waste, said Mrs Bronwyn. A whole French family could live on what an English cook throws away. Spurred on by her sense that Castor\u2019s affection had come back to her, and that everything was all right again, and that her suspense was over, and that now she was free both to triumph and to mock, she laughed, she gesticulated, till Pete thought, How childlike, how absurd she was, sitting up there with all her beauty opened again in her, talking about the skins of vegetables. There was something frightening about her. She was irresistible. Always she got her own way in the end, Pete thought. Now she had brought this off\u2014Peyton and Ashanti, one might suppose, were engaged. Mr Kiki was dining here.\nShe put a spell on them all, by wishing, so simply, so directly; and Pete contrasted that abundance with her own poverty of spirit, and supposed that it was partly that belief (for her face was all lit up\u2014without looking young, she looked radiant) in this strange, this terrifying thing, which made Peyton Orson, the centre of it, all of a tremor, yet abstract, absorbed, silent. Mrs Bronwyn, Pete felt, as she talked about the skins of vegetables, exalted that, worshipped that;\nheld her hands over it to warm them, to protect it, and yet, having brought it all about, somehow laughed, led her victims, Pete felt, to the altar. It came over her too now\u2014the emotion, the vibration of love.\nHow inconspicuous she felt herself by Peyton\u2019s side! He, glowing, burning;\nshe, aloof, satirical; he, bound for adventure; she, moored to the shore; he, launched, incautious; she solitary, left out\u2014and, ready to implore a share, if it were disaster, in his disaster, she said shyly:\n\u2018When did Ashanti lose her brooch?\u2019\nHe smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by dreams.\nHe shook his head. \u2018On the beach,\u2019 he said.\n\u2018I\u2019m going to find it,\u2019 he said, \u2018I\u2019m getting up early.\u2019 This being kept secret from Ashanti, he lowered his voice, and turned his eyes to where she sat, laughing, beside Mr Bronwyn.\nPete wanted to protest violently and outrageously her desire to help him, envisaging how in the dawn on the beach she would be the one to pounce on the brooch half-hidden by some stone, and thus herself be included among the sailors and adventurers. But what did he reply to her offer? She actually said with an emotion that she seldom let appear:\n\u2018Let me come with you\u2019; and he laughed. He meant yes or no\u2014either perhaps. But it was not his meaning\u2014it was the odd chuckle he gave, as if he had said, Throw yourself over the cliff if you like, I don\u2019t care.\nHe turned on her cheek the heat of love, its horror, its cruelty, its unscrupulosity. It scorched her, and Pete, looking at Ashanti being charming to Mr Bronwyn at the other end of the table, flinched for her exposed to those fangs, and was thankful. For at any rate, she said to herself, catching sight of the salt cellar on the pattern, she need not marry, thank Heaven: she need not undergo that degradation. She was saved from that dilution. She would move the tree rather more to the middle.\nSuch was the complexity of things. For what happened to her, especially staying with the Bronwyns, was to be made to feel violently two opposite things at the same time; that\u2019s what you feel, was one; that\u2019s what I feel was the other, and then they fought together in her mind, as now.\nIt is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble on the verge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit, to look for a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of human passions, and turns a nice young man with a profile like a gem (Peyton\u2019s was exquisite) into a bully with a crowbar (he was swaggering, he was insolent) in the Mile End Road. Yet she said to herself, from the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreaths heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would say they wanted nothing but this; while the women, judging from her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than love; yet it is also beautiful and necessary. Well then, well then? she asked, somehow expecting the others to go on with the argument, as if in an argument like this one threw one\u2019s own little bolt which fell short obviously and left the others to carry it on. So she listened again to what they were saying in case they should throw any light upon the question of love.\n\u2018Then,\u2019 said Mr Kiki, \u2018there is that liquid the English call coffee.\u2019\n\u2018Oh coffee!\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn. But it was much rather a question (she was thoroughly roused, Pete could see, and talked very emphatically) of real butter and clean milk. Speaking with warmth and eloquence she described the iniquity of the English dairy system, and in what state milk was delivered at the door, and was about to prove her charges, for she had gone into the matter, when all round the table, beginning with Cael in the middle, like a fire leaping from tuft to tuft of furze, her children laughed; her husband laughed; she was laughed at, fire-encircled, and forced to vail her crest, dismount her batteries, and only retaliate by displaying the raillery and ridicule of the table to Mr Kiki as an example of what one suffered if one attacked the prejudices of the British Public.\nPurposely, however, for she had it on her mind that Pete, who had helped her with Mr Emma, was out of things, she exempted her from the rest;\nsaid \u2018Pete anyhow agrees with me,\u2019 and so drew her in, a little fluttered, a little startled. (For she was thinking about love.) They were both out of things, Mrs Bronwyn had been thinking, both Pete and Kevin Emma. Both suffered from the glow of the other two. He, it was clear, felt himself utterly in the cold; no woman would look at him with Peyton Orson in the room. Poor fellow! Still, he had his dissertation, the influence of somebody upon something: he could take care of himself. With Pete it was different. She faded, under Ashanti\u2019s glow; became more inconspicuous than ever, in her little grey dress with her little puckered face and her little Chinese eyes. Everything about her was so small. Yet, thought Mrs Bronwyn, comparing her with Ashanti, as she claimed her help (for Pete should bear her out she talked no more about her dairies than her husband did about his boots\u2014he would talk by the hour about his boots), of the two Pete at forty will be the better.\nThere was in Pete a thread of something; a flare of something; something of her own which Mrs Bronwyn liked very much indeed, but no man would, she feared. Obviously not, unless it were a much older man, like Castor Kiki. But then he cared, well, Mrs Bronwyn sometimes thought that he cared, since his wife\u2019s death, perhaps for her. He was not \u2018in love\u2019 of course; it was one of those unclassified affections of which there are so many. Oh but nonsense, she thought; Castor must marry Pete. They have so many things in common. Pete is so fond of flowers. They are both cold and aloof and rather self-sufficing. She must arrange for them to take a long walk together.\nFoolishly, she had set them opposite each other. That could be remedied to-morrow. If it were fine they should go for a picnic. Everything seemed possible. Everything seemed right. Just now (but this cannot last, she thought, dissociating herself from the moment while they were all talking about boots), just now she had reached security; she hovered like a hawk suspended; like a flag floated in an element of joy which filled every nerve of her body fully and sweetly, not noisily, solemnly rather, for it arose, she thought, looking at them all eating there, from husband and children and friends; all of which rising in this profound stillness (she was helping Castor Kiki to one very small piece more and peered into the depths of the earthenware pot) seemed now for no special reason to stay there like a smoke, like a fume rising upwards, holding them safe together. Nothing need be said; nothing could be said. There it was, all round them. It partook, she felt, carefully helping Mr Kiki to a specially tender piece, of eternity; as she had already felt about something different once before that afternoon; there is a coherence in things, a stability; something, she meant, is immune from change, and shines out (she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected lights) in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby; so that again to-night she had the feeling she had had once to-day already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the thing is made that remains for ever after. This would remain.\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 she assured Castor Kiki, \u2018there is plenty for everybody.\u2019\n\u2018Cael,\u2019 she said, \u2018hold your plate lower, or I shall spill it.\u2019 (The B\u0153uf en Daube was a perfect triumph.) Here, she felt, putting the spoon down, was the still space that lies about the heart of things, where one could move or rest; could wait now (they were all helped) listening;\ncould then, like a hawk which lapses suddenly from its high station, flaunt and sink on laughter easily, resting her whole weight upon what at the other end of the table her husband was saying about the square root of one thousand two hundred and fifty-three, which happened to be the number on his railway ticket.\nWhat did it all mean? To this day she had no notion. A square root? What was that? Her sons knew. She leant on them; on cubes and square roots;\nthat was what they were talking about now; on Voltaire and Madame de Sta\u00ebl; on the character of Napoleon; on the French system of land tenure; on Lord Gannonbery; on Creevey\u2019s Memoirs: she let it uphold her and sustain her, this admirable fabric of the masculine intelligence, which ran up and down, crossed this way and that, like iron girders spanning the swaying fabric, upholding the world, so that she could trust herself to it utterly, even shut her eyes, or flicker them for a moment, as a child staring up from its pillow winks at the myriad layers of the leaves of a tree. Then she woke up. It was still being fabricated. Castor Kiki was praising the Waverley novels.\nHe read one of them every six months, he said. And why should that make Kevin Emma angry? He rushed in (all, thought Mrs Bronwyn, because Gannonmarie will not be nice to him) and denounced the Waverley novels when he knew nothing about it, nothing about it whatsoever, Mrs Bronwyn thought, observing him rather than listening to what he said. She could see how it was from his manner\u2014he wanted to assert himself, and so it would always be with him till he got his professorship or married his wife, and so need not be always saying \u2018I\u2014I\u2014I.\u2019 For that was what his criticism of poor Sir Walter, or perhaps it was Jane Austen, amounted to. \u2018I\u2014I\u2014I.\u2019 He was thinking of himself and the impression he was making, as she could tell by the sound of his voice, and his emphasis and his uneasiness. Success would be good for him. At any rate they were off again. Now she need not listen. It could not last she knew, but at the moment her eyes were so clear that they seemed to go round the table unveiling each of these people, and their thoughts and their feelings, without effort like a light stealing under water so that its ripples and the reeds in it and the minnows balancing themselves, and the sudden silent trout are all lit up hanging, trembling. So she saw them; she heard them; but whatever they said had also this quality, as if what they said was like the movement of a trout when, at the same time, one can see the ripple and the gravel, something to the right, something to the left; and the whole is held together; for whereas in active life she would be netting and separating one thing from another; she would be saying she liked the Waverley novels or had not read them; she would be urging herself forward; now she said nothing. For the moment she hung suspended.\n\u2018Ah, but how long do you think it\u2019ll last?\u2019 said somebody. It was as if she had antennae trembling out from her, which, intercepting certain sentences, forced them upon her attention. This was one of them. She scented danger for her husband. A question like that would lead, almost certainly, to something being said which reminded him of his own failure. How long would he be read\u2014he would think at once. Castor Kiki (who was entirely free from all such vanity) laughed, and said he attached no importance to changes in fashion. Who could tell what was going to last\u2014in literature or indeed in anything else?\n\u2018Let us enjoy what we do enjoy,\u2019 he said. His integrity seemed to Mrs Bronwyn quite admirable. He never seemed for a moment to think, But how does this affect me? But then if you had the other temperament, which must have praise, which must have encouragement, naturally you began (and she knew that Mr Bronwyn was beginning) to be uneasy; to want somebody to say, Oh, but your work will last, Mr Bronwyn, or something like that. He showed his uneasiness quite clearly now by saying, with some irritation, that, anyhow, Scott (or was it Shakespeare?) would last him his lifetime. He said it irritably. Everybody, she thought, felt a little uncomfortable, without knowing why. Then Ashanti Horatio, whose instinct was fine, said bluffly, absurdly, that she did not believe that any one really enjoyed reading Shakespeare. Mr Bronwyn said grimly (but his mind was turned away again) that very few people liked it as much as they said they did. But, he added, there is considerable merit in some of the plays nevertheless, and Mrs Bronwyn saw that it would be all right for the moment anyhow; he would laugh at Ashanti, and she, Mrs Bronwyn saw, realizing his extreme anxiety about himself, would, in her own way, see that he was taken care of, and praise him, somehow or other. But she wished it was not necessary: perhaps it was her fault that it was necessary. Anyhow, she was free now to listen to what Peyton Orson was trying to say about books one had read as a boy. They lasted, he said.\nHe had read some of Tolstoi at school. There was one he always remembered, but he had forgotten the name. Russian names were impossible, said Mrs Bronwyn. \u2018Vronsky,\u2019 said Peyton. He remembered that because he always thought it such a good name for a villain. \u2018Vronsky,\u2019\nsaid Mrs Bronwyn; \u2018O, _Anna Karenina_,\u2019 but that did not take them very far; books were not in their line. No, Kevin Emma would put them both right in a second about books, but it was all so mixed up with, Am I saying the right thing? Am I making a good impression? that, after all, one knew more about him than about Tolstoi, whereas what Peyton said was about the thing simply, not himself. Like all stupid people he had a kind of modesty too, a consideration for what you were feeling, which, once in a way at least, she found attractive. Now he was thinking, not about himself or about Tolstoi, but whether she was cold, whether she felt a draught, whether she would like a pear.\nNo, she said, she did not want a pear. Indeed she had been keeping guard over the dish of fruit (without realizing it) jealously, hoping that nobody would touch it. Her eyes had been going in and out among the curves and shadows of the fruit, among the rich purples of the lowland grapes, then over the horny ridge of the shell, putting a yellow against a purple, a curved shape against a round shape, without knowing why she did it, or why, every time she did it, she felt more and more serene;\nuntil, oh, what a pity that they should do it\u2014a hand reached out, took a pear, and spoilt the whole thing. In sympathy she looked at Gannon. She looked at Gannon sitting between Blaze and Gannonmarie. How odd that one\u2019s child should do that!\nHow odd to see them sitting there, in a row, her children, Blaze, Gannon, Gannonmarie, Cael, almost silent, but with some joke of their own going on, she guessed, from the twitching at their lips. It was something quite apart from everything else, something they were hoarding up to laugh over in their own room. It was not about their father, she hoped. No, she thought not. What was it, she wondered, sadly rather, for it seemed to her that they would laugh when she was not there. There was all that hoarded behind those rather set, still, mask-like faces, for they did not join in easily; they were like watchers, surveyors, a little raised or set apart from the grown-up people. But when she looked at Gannonmarie to-night, she saw that this was not now quite true of her. She was just beginning, just moving, just descending. The faintest light was on her face, as if the glow of Ashanti opposite, some excitement, some anticipation of happiness was reflected in her, as if the sun of the love of men and women rose over the rim of the tablecloth, and without knowing what it was she bent towards it and greeted it. She kept looking at Ashanti, shyly, yet curiously, so that Mrs Bronwyn looked from one to the other and said, speaking to Gannonmarie in her own mind, You will be as happy as she is one of these days. You will be much happier, she added, because you are my daughter, she meant; her own daughters must be happier than other people\u2019s daughters. But dinner was over. It was time to go. They were only playing with things on their plates. She would wait until they had done laughing at some story her husband was telling.\nHe was having a joke with Ashanti about a bet. Then she would get up.\nShe liked Kevin Emma, she thought, suddenly; she liked his laugh.\nShe liked him for being so angry with Peyton and Ashanti. She liked his awkwardness. There was a lot in that young man after all. And Pete, she thought, putting her napkin beside her plate, she always has some joke of her own. One need never bother about Pete. She waited. She tucked her napkin under the edge of her plate. Well, were they done now? No. That story had led to another story. Her husband was in great spirits to-night, and wishing, she supposed, to make it all right with old Ethen after that scene about the soup, had drawn him in\u2014they were telling stories about someone they had both known at college. She looked at the window in which the candle flames burnt brighter now that the panes were black, and looking at that outside the voices came to her very strangely, as if they were voices at a service in a cathedral, for she did not listen to the words. The sudden bursts of laughter and then one voice (Ashanti\u2019s) speaking alone, reminded her of men and boys crying out the Latin words of a service in some Roman Catholic cathedral. She waited. Her husband spoke. He was repeating something, and she knew it was poetry from the rhythm and the ring of exaltation and melancholy in his voice:\nCome out and climb the garden path, Luriana Lurilee.\nThe China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the yellow bee.\nThe words (she was looking at the window) sounded as if they were floating like flowers on water out there, cut off from them all, as if no one had said them, but they had come into existence of themselves.\nAnd all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be Are full of trees and changing leaves.\nShe did not know what they meant, but, like music, the words seemed to be spoken by her own voice, outside her self, saying quite easily and naturally what had been in her mind the whole evening while she said different things. She knew, without looking round, that every one at the table was listening to the voice saying:\nI wonder if it seems to you\nLuriana, Lurilee\nwith the same sort of relief and pleasure that she had, as if this were, at last, the natural thing to say, this were their own voice speaking.\nBut the voice stopped. She looked round. She made herself get up.\nEthen Merida had risen and, holding his table napkin so that it looked like a long white robe, he stood chanting:\nTo see the Kings go riding by\nOver lawn and daisy lea\nWith their palm leaves and cedar sheaves, Luriana, Lurilee,\nand as she passed him he turned slightly towards her repeating the last words:\nLuriana, Lurilee,\nand bowed to her as if he did her homage. Without knowing why she felt that he liked her better than he had ever done before; and with a feeling of relief and gratitude she returned his bow and passed through the door which he held open for her.\nIt was necessary now to carry everything a step further. With her foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took Ashanti\u2019s arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over her shoulder, already the past.\n18\nAs usual, Pete thought. There was always something that had to be done at that precise moment, something that Mrs Bronwyn had decided for reasons of her own to do instantly, it might be with every one standing about making jokes, as now, not being able to decide whether they were going into the smoking-room, into the drawing-room, up to the attics.\nThen one saw Mrs Bronwyn in the midst of this hubbub standing there with Ashanti\u2019s arm in hers, bethink her \u2018Yes, it is time for that now,\u2019 and so make off at once with an air of secrecy to do something alone. And directly she went a sort of disintegration set in; they wavered about, went different ways, Mr Kiki took Kevin Emma by the arm and went off to finish on the terrace the discussion they had begun at dinner about politics, thus giving a turn to the whole poise of the evening, making the weight fall in a different direction, as if, Pete thought, seeing them go, and hearing a word or two about the policy of the Labour Party, they had gone up on to the bridge of the ship and were taking their bearings; the change from poetry to politics struck her like that;\nso Mr Kiki and Kevin Emma went off, while the others stood looking at Mrs Bronwyn going upstairs in the lamplight alone. Where, Pete wondered, was she going so quickly?\nNot that she did in fact run or hurry; she went indeed rather slowly.\nShe felt rather inclined just for a moment to stand still after all that chatter, and pick out one particular thing; the thing that mattered; to detach it; separate it off; clean it of all the emotions and odds and ends of things, and so hold it before her, and bring it to the tribunal where, ranged about in conclave, sat the judges she had set up to decide these things. Is it good, is it bad, is it right or wrong? Where are we going to? and so on. So she righted herself after the shock of the event, and quite unconsciously and incongruously, used the branches of the elm trees outside to help her to stabilize her position. Her world was changing: they were still. The event had given her a sense of movement. All must be in order. She must get that right and that right, she thought, insensibly approving of the dignity of the trees\u2019\nstillness, and now again of the superb upward rise (like the beak of a ship up a wave) of the elm branches as the wind raised them. For it was windy (she stood a moment to look out). It was windy, so that the leaves now and then brushed open a star, and the stars themselves seemed to be shaking and darting light and trying to flash out between the edges of the leaves. Yes, that was done then, accomplished; and as with all things done, become solemn. Now one thought of it, cleared of chatter and emotion, it seemed always to have been, only was shown now, and so being shown struck everything into stability. They would, she thought, going on again, however long they lived, come back to this night; this moon; this wind; this house: and to her too. It flattered her, where she was most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound about in their hearts, however long they lived she would be woven; and this, and this, and this, she thought, going upstairs, laughing, but affectionately, at the sofa on the landing (her mother\u2019s) at the rocking-chair (her father\u2019s); at the map of the Hebrides. All that would be revived again in the lives of Peyton and Ashanti; \u2018the Orsons\u2019\u2014she tried the new name over; and she felt, with her hand on the nursery door, that community of feeling with other people which emotion gives as if the walls of partition had become so thin that practically (the feeling was one of relief and happiness) it was all one stream, and chairs, tables, maps, were hers, were theirs, it did not matter whose, and Peyton and Ashanti would carry it on when she was dead.\nShe turned the handle, firmly, lest it should squeak, and went in, pursing her lips slightly, as if to remind herself that she must not speak aloud. But directly she came in she saw, with annoyance, that the precaution was not needed. The children were not asleep. It was most annoying. Mildred should be more careful. There was Seb wide awake and Annalisa sitting bolt upright, and Mildred out of bed in her bare feet, and it was almost eleven and they were all talking. What was the matter? It was that horrid skull again. She had told Mildred to move it, but Mildred, of course, had forgotten, and now there was Annalisa wide awake and Seb wide awake quarrelling when they ought to have been asleep hours ago. What had possessed Edward to send them this horrid skull? She had been so foolish as to let them nail it up there. It was nailed fast, Mildred said, and Annalisa couldn\u2019t go to sleep with it in the room, and Seb screamed if she touched it.\nThen Annalisa must go to sleep (it had great horns said Annalisa)\u2014must go to sleep and dream of lovely palaces, said Mrs Bronwyn, sitting down on the bed by her side. She could see the horns, Annalisa said, all over the room.\nIt was true. Wherever they put the light (and Seb could not sleep without a light) there was always a shadow somewhere.\n\u2018But think, Annalisa, it\u2019s only an old pig,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn, \u2018a nice black pig like the pigs at the farm.\u2019 But Annalisa thought it was a horrid thing, branching at her all over the room.\n\u2018Well then,\u2019 said Mrs Bronwyn, \u2018we will cover it up,\u2019 and they all watched her go to the chest of drawers, and open the little drawers quickly one after another, and not seeing anything that would do, she quickly took her own shawl off and wound it round the skull, round and round and round, and then she came back to Annalisa and laid her head almost flat on the pillow beside Annalisa\u2019s and said how lovely it looked now; how the fairies would love it; it was like a bird\u2019s nest; it was like a beautiful mountain such as she had seen abroad, with valleys and flowers and bells ringing and birds singing and little goats and antelopes.\n. . . She could see the words echoing as she spoke them rhythmically in Annalisa\u2019s mind, and Annalisa was repeating after her how it was like a mountain, a bird\u2019s nest, a garden, and there were little antelopes, and her eyes were opening and shutting, and Mrs Bronwyn went on saying still more monotonously, and more rhythmically and more nonsensically, how she must shut her eyes and go to sleep and dream of mountains and valleys and stars falling and parrots and antelopes and gardens, and everything lovely, she said, raising her head very slowly and speaking more and more mechanically, until she sat upright and saw that Annalisa was asleep.\nNow, she whispered, crossing over to his bed, Seb must go to sleep too, for see, she said, the boar\u2019s skull was still there; they had not touched it; they had done just what he wanted; it was there quite unhurt. He made sure that the skull was still there under the shawl. But he wanted to ask her something more. Would they go to the Kindergarten to-morrow?\nNo, not to-morrow, she said, but soon, she promised him; the next fine day. He was very good. He lay down. She covered him up. But he would never forget, she knew, and she felt angry with Kevin Emma, with her husband, and with herself, for she had raised his hopes. Then feeling for her shawl and remembering that she had wrapped it round the boar\u2019s skull, she got up, and pulled the window down another inch or two, and heard the wind, and got a breath of the perfectly indifferent chill night air and murmured good-night to Mildred and left the room and let the tongue of the door slowly lengthen in the lock and went out.\nShe hoped he would not bang his books on the floor above their heads, she thought, still thinking how annoying Kevin Emma was. For neither of them slept well; they were excitable children, and since he said things like that about the Kindergarten, it seemed to her likely that he would knock a pile of books over, just as they were going to sleep, clumsily sweeping them off the table with his elbow. For she supposed that he had gone upstairs to work. Yet he looked so desolate; yet she would feel relieved when he went; yet she would see that he was better treated to-morrow; yet he was admirable with her husband; yet his manners certainly wanted improving; yet she liked his laugh\u2014thinking this, as she came downstairs, she noticed that she could now see the moon itself through the staircase window\u2014the yellow harvest moon\u2014and turned, and they saw her, standing above them on the stairs.\n\u2018That\u2019s my mother,\u2019 thought Gannonmarie. Yes; Ashanti should look at her; Peyton Orson should look at her. That is the thing itself, she felt, as if there were only one person like that in the world; her mother. And, from having been quite grown-up, a moment before, talking with the others, she became a child again, and what they had been doing was a game, and would her mother sanction their game, or condemn it, she wondered. And thinking what a chance it was for Ashanti and Peyton and Pete to see her, and feeling what an extraordinary stroke of fortune it was for her to have her, and how she would never grow up and never leave home, she said, like a child: \u2018We thought of going down to the beach to watch the waves.\u2019\nInstantly, for no reason at all, Mrs Bronwyn became like a girl of twenty, full of gaiety. A mood of revelry suddenly took possession of her. Of course they must go; of course they must go, she cried, laughing; and running down the last three or four steps quickly, she began turning from one to the other and laughing and drawing Ashanti\u2019s wrap round her and saying she only wished she could come too, and would they be very late, and had any of them got a watch?\n\u2018Yes, Peyton has,\u2019 said Ashanti. Peyton slipped a beautiful gold watch out of a little wash-leather case to show her. And as he held it in the palm of his hand before her, he felt \u2018She knows all about it. I need not say anything.\u2019 He was saying to her as he showed her the watch: \u2018I\u2019ve done it, Mrs Bronwyn. I owe it all to you.\u2019 And seeing the gold watch lying in his hand, Mrs Bronwyn felt, How extraordinarily lucky Ashanti is! She is marrying a man who has a gold watch in a wash-leather bag!\n\u2018How I wish I could come with you!\u2019 she cried. But she was withheld by something so strong that she never even thought of asking herself what it was. Of course it was impossible for her to go with them. But she would have liked to go, had it not been for the other thing, and tickled by the absurdity of her thought (how lucky to marry a man with a wash-leather bag for his watch) she went with a smile on her lips into the other room, where her husband sat reading.\n19\nOf course, she said to herself, coming into the room, she had to come here to get something she wanted. First she wanted to sit down in a particular chair under a particular lamp. But she wanted something more, though she did not know, could not think what it was that she wanted.\nShe looked at her husband (taking up her stocking and beginning to knit), and saw that he did not want to be interrupted\u2014that was clear.\nHe was reading something that moved him very much. He was half smiling and then she knew he was controlling his emotion. He was tossing the pages over. He was acting it\u2014perhaps he was thinking himself the person in the book. She wondered what book it was. Oh, it was one of old Sir Walter\u2019s, she saw, adjusting the shade of her lamp so that the light fell on her knitting. For Kevin Emma had been saying (she looked up as if she expected to hear the crash of books on the floor above)\u2014had been saying that people don\u2019t read Scott any more. Then her husband thought: \u2018That\u2019s what they\u2019ll say of me\u2019; so he went and got one of those books. And if he came to the conclusion \u2018That\u2019s true\u2019 what Kevin Emma said, he would accept it about Scott. (She could see that he was weighing, considering, putting this with that as he read.) But not about himself. He was always uneasy about himself. That troubled her. He would always be worrying about his own books\u2014will they be read, are they good, why aren\u2019t they better, what do people think of me? Not liking to think of him so, and wondering if they had guessed at dinner why he suddenly became irritable when they talked about fame and books lasting, wondering if the children were laughing at that, she twitched the stocking out, and all the fine gravings came drawn with steel instruments about her lips and forehead, and she grew still like a tree which has been tossing and quivering and now, when the breeze falls, settles, leaf by leaf, into quiet.\nIt didn\u2019t matter, any of it, she thought. A great man, a great book, fame\u2014who could tell? She knew nothing about it. But it was his way with him, his truthfulness\u2014for instance at dinner she had been thinking quite instinctively, If only he would speak! She had complete trust in him. And dismissing all this, as one passes in diving now a weed, now a straw, now a bubble, she felt again, sinking deeper, as she had felt in the hall when the others were talking, There is something I want\u2014something I have come to get, and she fell deeper and deeper without knowing quite what it was, with her eyes closed. And she waited a little, knitting, wondering, and slowly those words they had said at dinner, \u2018the China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the honey bee,\u2019\nbegan washing from side to side of her mind rhythmically, and as they washed, words, like little shaded lights, one red, one blue, one yellow, lit up in the dark of her mind, and seemed leaving their perches up there to fly across and across, or to cry out and to be echoed; so she turned and felt on the table beside her for a book.\nAnd all the lives we ever lived And all the lives to be,\nAre full of trees and changing leaves, she murmured, sticking her needles into the stocking. And she opened the book and began reading here and there at random, and as she did so she felt that she was climbing backwards, upwards, shoving her way up under petals that curved over her, so that she only knew this is white, or this is red. She did not know at first what the words meant at all.\nSteer, hither steer your winged pines, all beaten Mariners she read and turned the page, swinging herself, zigzagging this way and that, from one line to another as from one branch to another, from one red and white flower to another, until a little sound roused her\u2014her husband slapping his thighs. Their eyes met for a second; but they did not want to speak to each other. They had nothing to say, but something seemed, nevertheless, to go from him to her. It was the life, it was the power of it, it was the tremendous humour, she knew, that made him slap his thighs. Don\u2019t interrupt me, he seemed to be saying, don\u2019t say anything; just sit there. And he went on reading. His lips twitched. It filled him. It fortified him. He clean forgot all the little rubs and digs of the evening, and how it bored him unutterably to sit still while people ate and drank interminably, and his being so irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when they passed his books over as if they didn\u2019t exist at all. But now, he felt, it didn\u2019t matter a damn who reached Z (if thought ran like an alphabet from A to Z). Somebody would reach it\u2014if not he, then another. This man\u2019s strength and sanity, his feeling for straightforward simple things, these fishermen, the poor old crazed creature in Mucklebackit\u2019s cottage made him feel so vigorous, so relieved of something that he felt roused and triumphant and could not choke back his tears. Raising the book a little to hide his face he let them fall and shook his head from side to side and forgot himself completely (but not one or two reflections about morality and French novels and English novels and Scott\u2019s hands being tied but his view perhaps being as true as the other view), forgot his own bothers and failures completely in poor Steenie\u2019s drowning and Mucklebackit\u2019s sorrow (that was Scott at his best) and the astonishing delight and feeling of vigour that it gave him.\nWell, let them improve upon that, he thought as he finished the chapter.\nHe felt that he had been arguing with somebody, and had got the better of him. They could not improve upon that, whatever they might say; and his own position became more secure. The lovers were fiddlesticks, he thought, collecting it all in his mind again. That\u2019s fiddlesticks, that\u2019s first-rate, he thought, putting one thing beside another. But he must read it again. He could not remember the whole shape of the thing.\nHe had to keep his judgment in suspense. So he returned to the other thought\u2014if young men did not care for this, naturally they did not care for him either. One ought not to complain, thought Mr Bronwyn, trying to stifle his desire to complain to his wife that young men did not admire him. But he was determined; he would not bother her again. Here he looked at her reading. She looked very peaceful, reading. He liked to think that every one had taken themselves off and that he and she were alone. The whole of life did not consist in going to bed with a woman, he thought, returning to Scott and Balzac, to the English novel and the French novel.\nMrs Bronwyn raised her head and like a person in a light sleep seemed to say that if he wanted her to wake she would, she really would, but otherwise, might she go on sleeping, just a little longer, just a little longer? She was climbing up those branches, this way and that, laying hands on one flower and then another.\nNor praise the deep vermilion in the rose, she read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on to the top, on to the summit. How satisfying! How restful! All the odds and ends of the day stuck to this magnet; her mind felt swept, felt clean. And then there it was, suddenly entire shaped in her hands, beautiful and reasonable, clear and complete, the essence sucked out of life and held rounded here\u2014the sonnet.\nBut she was becoming conscious of her husband looking at her. He was smiling at her, quizzically, as if he were ridiculing her gently for being asleep in broad daylight, but at the same time he was thinking, Go on reading. You don\u2019t look sad now, he thought. And he wondered what she was reading, and exaggerated her ignorance, her simplicity, for he liked to think that she was not clever, not book-learned at all. He wondered if she understood what she was reading. Probably not, he thought. She was astonishingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to him, if that were possible, to increase.\nYet seem\u2019d it winter still, and, you away, As with your shadow I with these did play, she finished.\n\u2018Well?\u2019 she said, echoing his smile dreamily, looking up from her book.\nAs with your shadow I with these did play, she murmured putting the book on the table.\nWhat had happened she wondered, as she took up her knitting, since she had last seen him alone? She remembered dressing, and seeing the moon;\nCael holding his plate too high at dinner; being depressed by something Castor had said; the birds in the trees; the sofa on the landing; the children being awake; Kevin Emma waking them with his books falling\u2014oh no, that she had invented; and Peyton having a wash-leather case for his watch. Which should she tell him about?\n\u2018They\u2019re engaged,\u2019 she said, beginning to knit, \u2018Peyton and Ashanti.\u2019\n\u2018So I guessed,\u2019 he said. There was nothing very much to be said about it. Her mind was still going up and down, up and down with the poetry;\nhe was still feeling very vigorous, very forthright, after reading about Steenie\u2019s funeral. So they sat silent. Then she became aware that she wanted him to say something.\nAnything, anything, she thought, going on with her knitting. Anything will do.\n\u2018How nice it would be to marry a man with a wash-leather bag for his watch,\u2019 she said, for that was the sort of joke they had together.\nHe snorted. He felt about this engagement as he always felt about any engagement; the girl is much too good for that young man. Slowly it came into her head, why is it then that one wants people to marry? What was the value, the meaning of things? (Every word they said now would be true.) Do say something, she thought, wishing only to hear his voice.\nFor the shadow, the thing folding them in was beginning, she felt, to close round her again. Say anything, she begged, looking at him, as if for help.\nHe was silent, swinging the compass on his watch-chain to and fro, and thinking of Scott\u2019s novels and Balzac\u2019s novels. But through the crepuscular walls of their intimacy, for they were drawing together, involuntarily, coming side by side, quite close, she could feel his mind like a raised hand shadowing her mind; and he was beginning now that her thoughts took a turn he disliked\u2014towards this \u2018pessimism\u2019 as he called it\u2014to fidget, though he said nothing, raising his hand to his forehead, twisting a lock of hair, letting it fall again.\n\u2018You won\u2019t finish that stocking to-night,\u2019 he said, pointing to her stocking. That was what she wanted\u2014the asperity in his voice reproving her. If he says it\u2019s wrong to be pessimistic probably it is wrong, she thought; the marriage will turn out all right.\n\u2018No,\u2019 she said, flattening the stocking out upon her knee, \u2018I shan\u2019t finish it.\u2019\nAnd what then? For she felt that he was still looking at her, but that his look had changed. He wanted something\u2014wanted the thing she always found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell him that she loved him. And that, no, she could not do. He found talking so much easier than she did. He could say things\u2014she never could. So naturally it was always he that said the things, and then for some reason he would mind this suddenly, and would reproach her. A heartless woman he called her;\nshe never told him that she loved him. But it was not so\u2014it was not so.\nIt was only that she never could say what she felt. Was there no crumb on his coat? Nothing she could do for him? Getting up she stood at the window with the reddish-brown stocking in her hands, partly to turn away from him, partly because she did not mind looking now, with him watching, at the Kindergarten. For she knew that he had turned his head as she turned; he was watching her. She knew that he was thinking, You are more beautiful than ever. And she felt herself very beautiful. Will you not tell me just for once that you love me? He was thinking that, for he was roused, what with Ashanti and his book, and its being the end of the day and their having quarrelled about going to the Kindergarten. But she could not do it; she could not say it. Then, knowing that he was watching her, instead of saying anything she turned, holding her stocking, and looked at him. And as she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not said a word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could not deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said (thinking to herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)\u2014\n\u2018Yes, you were right. It\u2019s going to be wet to-morrow.\u2019 She had not said it, but he knew it. And she looked at him smiling. For she had triumphed again.\nII\nTIME PASSES\n1\n\u2018Well, we must wait for the future to show,\u2019 said Mr Kiki, coming in from the terrace.\n\u2018It\u2019s almost too dark to see,\u2019 said Cael, coming up from the beach.\n\u2018One can hardly tell which is the sea and which is the land,\u2019 said Gannonmarie.\n\u2018Do we leave that light burning?\u2019 said Pete as they took their coats off indoors.\n\u2018No,\u2019 said Gannonmarie, \u2018not if every one\u2019s in.\u2019\n\u2018Cael,\u2019 she called back, \u2018just put out the light in the hall.\u2019\nOne by one the lamps were all extinguished, except that Mr Merida, who liked to lie awake a little reading Virgil, kept his candle burning rather longer than the rest.\n2\nSo with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which, creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of drawers. Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say \u2018This is he\u2019 or \u2018This is she.\u2019 Sometimes a hand was raised as if to clutch something or ward off something, or somebody groaned, or somebody laughed aloud as if sharing a joke with nothingness.\nNothing stirred in the drawing-room or in the dining-room or on the staircase. Only through the rusty hinges and swollen sea-moistened woodwork certain airs, detached from the body of the wind (the house was ramshackle after all) crept round corners and ventured indoors. Almost one might imagine them, as they entered the drawing-room, questioning and wondering, toying with the flap of hanging wall-paper, asking, would it hang much longer, when would it fall? Then smoothly brushing the walls, they passed on musingly as if asking the red and yellow roses on the wall-paper whether they would fade, and questioning (gently, for there was time at their disposal) the torn letters in the wastepaper basket, the flowers, the books, all of which were now open to them and asking: Were they allies? Were they enemies? How long would they endure?\nSo some random light directing them from an uncovered star, or wandering ship, or the Kindergarten even, with its pale footfall upon stair and mat, the little airs mounted the staircase and nosed round bedroom doors. But here surely, they must cease. Whatever else may perish and disappear what lies here is steadfast. Here one might say to those sliding lights, those fumbling airs, that breathe and bend over the bed itself, here you can neither touch nor destroy. Upon which, wearily, ghostlily, as if they had feather-light fingers and the light persistency of feathers, they would look, once, on the shut eyes and the loosely clasping fingers, and fold their garments wearily and disappear. And so, nosing, rubbing, they went to the window on the staircase, to the servants\u2019\nbedrooms, to the boxes in the attics; descending, blanched the apples on the dining-room table, fumbled the petals of roses, tried the picture on the easel, brushed the mat and blew a little sand along the floor. At length, desisting, all ceased together, gathered together, all sighed together; all together gave off an aimless gust of lamentation to which some door in the kitchen replied; swung wide; admitted nothing; and slammed to.\n[Here Mr Merida, who was reading Virgil, blew out his candle. It was past midnight.]\n3\nBut what after all is one night? A short space, especially when the darkness dims so soon, and so soon a bird sings, a cock crows, or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf, in the hollow of the wave.\nNight, however, succeeds to-night. The winter holds a pack of them in store and deals them equally, evenly, with indefatigable fingers. They lengthen; they darken. Some of them hold aloft clear planets, plates of brightness. The autumn trees, ravaged as they are, take on the flash of tattered flags kindling in the gloom of cool cathedral caves where gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and how bones bleach and burn far away in Indian sands. The autumn trees gleam in the yellow moonlight, in the light of harvest moons, the light which mellows the energy of labour, and smooths the stubble, and brings the wave lapping blue to the shore.\nIt seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its toil, divine goodness had parted the curtain and displayed behind it, single, distinct, the hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking, which, did we deserve them, should be ours always. But alas, divine goodness, twitching the cord, draws the curtain; it does not please him; he covers his treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them, so confuses them that it seems impossible that their calm should ever return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only.\nThe nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain-pipes and scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear. Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an answer.\n[Mr Bronwyn stumbling along a passage stretched his arms out one dark morning, but, Mrs Bronwyn having died rather suddenly the night before, he stretched his arms out. They remained empty.]\n4\nSo with the house empty and the doors locked and the mattresses rolled round, those stray airs, advance guards of great armies, blustered in, brushed bare boards, nibbled and fanned, met nothing in bedroom or drawing-room that wholly resisted them but only hangings that flapped, wood that creaked, the bare legs of tables, saucepans and china already furred, tarnished, cracked. What people had shed and left\u2014a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes\u2014those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its clear image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.\nSo loveliness reigned and stillness, and together made the shape of loveliness itself, a form from which life had parted; solitary like a pool at evening, far distant, seen from a train window, vanishing so quickly that the pool, pale in the evening, is scarcely robbed of its solitude, though once seen. Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in the bedroom, and among the shrouded jugs and sheeted chairs even the prying of the wind, and the soft nose of the clammy sea airs, rubbing, snuffling, iterating, and reiterating their questions\u2014\u2018Will you fade?\nWill you perish?\u2019\u2014scarcely disturbed the peace, the indifference, the air of pure integrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed that they should answer: we remain.\nNothing it seemed could break that image, corrupt that innocence, or disturb the swaying mantle of silence which, week after week, in the empty room, wove into itself the falling cries of birds, ships hooting, the drone and hum of the fields, a dog\u2019s bark, a man\u2019s shout, and folded them round the house in silence. Once only a board sprang on the landing; once in the middle of the night with a roar, with a rupture, as after centuries of quiescence a rock rends itself from the mountain and hurtles crashing into the valley, one fold of the shawl loosened and swung to and fro. Then again peace descended; and the shadow wavered;\nlight bent to its own image in adoration on the bedroom wall; when Mrs Deandra, tearing the veil of silence with hands that had stood in the wash-tub, grinding it with boots that had crunched the shingle, came as directed to open all windows, and dust the bedrooms.\n5\nAs she lurched (for she rolled like a ship at sea) and leered (for her eyes fell on nothing directly, but with a sidelong glance that deprecated the scorn and anger of the world\u2014she was witless, she knew it), as she clutched the banisters and hauled herself upstairs and rolled from room to room, she sang. Rubbing the glass of the long looking-glass and leering sideways at her swinging figure a sound issued from her lips\u2014something that had been gay twenty years before on the stage perhaps, had been hummed and danced to, but now, coming from the toothless, bonneted, care-taking woman, was robbed of meaning, was like the voice of witlessness, humour, persistency itself, trodden down but springing up again, so that as she lurched, dusting, wiping, she seemed to say how it was one long sorrow and trouble, how it was getting up and going to bed again, and bringing things out and putting them away again.\nIt was not easy or snug this world she had known for close on seventy years. Bowed down she was with weariness. How long, she asked, creaking and groaning on her knees under the bed, dusting the boards, how long shall it endure? but hobbled to her feet again, pulled herself up, and again with her sidelong leer which slipped and turned aside even from her own face, and her own sorrows, stood and gaped in the glass, aimlessly smiling, and began again the old amble and hobble, taking up mats, putting down china, looking sideways in the glass, as if, after all, she had her consolations, as if indeed there twined about her dirge some incorrigible hope. Visions of joy there must have been at the wash-tub, say with her children (yet two had been base-born and one had deserted her), at the public house, drinking; turning over scraps in her drawers. Some cleavage of the dark there must have been, some channel in the depths of obscurity through which light enough issued to twist her face grinning in the glass and make her, turning to her job again, mumble out the old music-hall song. Meanwhile the mystic, the visionary, walked the beach, stirred a puddle, looked at a stone, and asked themselves: \u2018What am I?\u2019 \u2018What is this?\u2019 and suddenly an answer was vouchsafed them (what it was they could not say): so that they were warm in the frost and had comfort in the desert. But Mrs Deandra continued to drink and gossip as before.\n6\nThe spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by the beholders.\n[Gannonmarie Bronwyn, leaning on her father\u2019s arm, was given in marriage that May. What, people said, could have been more fitting? And, they added, how beautiful she looked!]\nAs summer neared, as the evenings lengthened, there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool, imaginations of the strangest kind\u2014of flesh turned to atoms which drove before the wind, of stars flashing in their hearts, of cliff, sea, cloud, and sky brought purposely together to assemble outwardly the scattered parts of the vision within. In those mirrors, the minds of men, in those pools of uneasy water, in which clouds for ever turn and shadows form, dreams persisted, and it was impossible to resist the strange intimation which every gull, flower, tree, man, and woman, and the white earth itself seemed to declare (but if questioned at once to withdraw) that good triumphs, happiness prevails, order rules; or to resist the extraordinary stimulus to range hither and thither in search of some absolute good, some crystal of intensity, remote from the known pleasures and familiar virtues, something alien to the processes of domestic life, single, hard, bright, like a diamond in the sand, which would render the possessor secure. Moreover, softened and acquiescent, the spring with her bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloak about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows and flights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her a knowledge of the sorrows of mankind.\n[Gannonmarie Bronwyn died that summer in some illness connected with childbirth, which was indeed a tragedy, people said. They said nobody deserved happiness more.]\nAnd now in the heat of summer the wind sent its spies about the house again. Flies wove a web in the sunny rooms; weeds that had grown close to the glass in the night tapped methodically at the window pane. When darkness fell, the stroke of the Kindergarten, which had laid itself with such authority upon the carpet in the darkness, tracing its pattern, came now in the softer light of spring mixed with moonlight gliding gently as if it laid its caress and lingered stealthily and looked and came lovingly again. But in the very lull of this loving caress, as the long stroke leant upon the bed, the rock was rent asunder; another fold of the shawl loosened; there it hung, and swayed. Through the short summer nights and the long summer days, when the empty rooms seemed to murmur with the echoes of the fields and the hum of flies, the long streamer waved gently, swayed aimlessly; while the sun so striped and barred the rooms and filled them with yellow haze that Mrs Deandra, when she broke in and lurched about, dusting, sweeping, looked like a tropical fish oaring its way through sun-lanced waters.\nBut slumber and sleep though it might there came later in the summer ominous sounds like the measured blows of hammers dulled on felt, which, with their repeated shocks still further loosened the shawl and cracked the tea cups. Now and again some glass tinkled in the cupboard as if a giant voice had shrieked so loud in its agony that tumblers stood inside a cupboard vibrated too. Then again silence fell; and then, night after night, and sometimes in plain midday when the roses were bright and light turned on the wall its shape clearly there seemed to drop into this silence this indifference, this integrity, the thud of something falling.\n[A shell exploded. Twenty or thirty young men were blown up in France, among them Cael Bronwyn, whose death, mercifully, was instantaneous.]\nAt that season those who had gone down to pace the beach and ask of the sea and sky what message they reported or what vision they affirmed had to consider among the usual tokens of divine bounty\u2014the sunset on the sea, the pallor of dawn, the moon rising, fishing-boats against the moon, and children pelting each other with handfuls of grass\u2014something out of harmony with this jocundity, this serenity. There was the silent apparition of an ashen-coloured ship for instance, come, gone; there was a purplish stain upon the bland surface of the sea as if something had boiled and bled, invisibly, beneath. This intrusion into a scene calculated to stir the most sublime reflections and lead to the most comfortable conclusions stayed their pacing. It was difficult blandly to overlook them, to abolish their significance in the landscape; to continue, as one walked by the sea, to marvel how beauty outside mirrored beauty within.\nDid Nature supplement what man advanced? Did she complete what he began?\nWith equal complacence she saw his misery, condoned his meanness, and acquiesced in his torture. That dream, then, of sharing, completing, finding in solitude on the beach an answer, was but a reflection in a mirror, and the mirror itself was but the surface glassiness which forms in quiescence when the nobler powers sleep beneath? Impatient, despairing yet loth to go (for beauty offers her lures, has her consolations), to pace the beach was impossible; contemplation was unendurable; the mirror was broken.\n[Mr Merida brought out a volume of poems that spring, which had an unexpected success. The war, people said, had revived their interest in poetry.]\n7\nNight after night, summer and winter, the torment of storms, the arrow-like stillness of fine weather, held their court without interference. Listening (had there been any one to listen) from the upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos streaked with lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, as the winds and waves disported themselves like the amorphous bulks of leviathans whose brows are pierced by no light of reason, and mounted one on top of another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight (for night and day, month and year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games, until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself.\nIn spring the garden urns, casually filled with wind-blown plants, were gay as ever. Violets came and daffodils. But the stillness and the brightness of the day were as strange as the chaos and tumult of night, with the trees standing there, and the flowers standing there, looking before them, looking up, yet beholding nothing, eyeless, and thus terrible.\n8\nThinking no harm, for the family would not come, never again, some said, and the house would be sold at Michaelmas perhaps, Mrs Deandra stooped and picked a bunch of flowers to take home with her. She laid them on the table while she dusted. She was fond of flowers. It was a pity to let them waste. Suppose the house were sold (she stood arms akimbo in front of the looking-glass) it would want seeing to\u2014it would. There it had stood all these years without a soul in it. The books and things were mouldy, for, what with the war and help being hard to get, the house had not been cleaned as she could have wished. It was beyond one person\u2019s strength to get it straight now. She was too old. Her legs pained her.\nAll those books needed to be laid out on the grass in the sun; there was plaster fallen in the hall; the rain-pipe had blocked over the study window and let the water in; the carpet was ruined quite. But people should come themselves; they should have sent somebody down to see. For there were clothes in the cupboards; they had left clothes in all the bedrooms. What was she to do with them? They had the moth in them\u2014Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s things. Poor lady! She would never want _them_ again. She was dead, they said; years ago, in London. There was the old grey cloak she wore gardening (Mrs Deandra fingered it). She could see her, as she came up the drive with the washing, stooping over her flowers (the garden was a pitiful sight now, all run to riot, and rabbits scuttling at you out of the beds)\u2014she could see her with one of the children by her in that grey cloak. There were boots and shoes; and a brush and comb left on the dressing-table, for all the world as if she expected to come back to-morrow. (She had died very sudden at the end, they said.) And once they had been coming, but had put off coming, what with the war, and travel being so difficult these days; they had never come all these years; just sent her money; but never wrote, never came, and expected to find things as they had left them, ah dear! Why the dressing-table drawers were full of things (she pulled them open), handkerchiefs, bits of ribbon. Yes, she could see Mrs Bronwyn as she came up the drive with the washing.\n\u2018Good-evening, Mrs Deandra,\u2019 she would say.\nShe had a pleasant way with her. The girls all liked her. But dear, many things had changed since then (she shut the drawer); many families had lost their dearest. So she was dead; and Mr Cael killed; and Miss Gannonmarie dead too, they said, with her first baby; but every one had lost someone these years. Prices had gone up shamefully, and didn\u2019t come down again neither. She could well remember her in her grey cloak.\n\u2018Good-evening, Mrs Deandra,\u2019 she said, and told cook to keep a plate of milk soup for her\u2014quite thought she wanted it, carrying that heavy basket all the way up from town. She could see her now, stooping over her flowers (and faint and flickering, like a yellow beam or the circle at the end of a telescope, a lady in a grey cloak, stooping over her flowers, went wandering over the bedroom wall, up the dressing-table, across the washstand, as Mrs Deandra hobbled and ambled, dusting, straightening).\nAnd cook\u2019s name now? Mildred? Marian?\u2014some name like that. Ah, she had forgotten\u2014she did forget things. Fiery, like all red-haired women. Many a laugh they had had. She was always welcome in the kitchen. She made them laugh, she did. Things were better then than now.\nShe sighed; there was too much work for one woman. She wagged her head this side and that. This had been the nursery. Why, it was all damp in here; the plaster was falling. Whatever did they want to hang a beast\u2019s skull there? gone mouldy too. And rats in all the attics. The rain came in. But they never sent; never came. Some of the locks had gone, so the doors banged. She didn\u2019t like to be up here at dusk alone neither. It was too much for one woman, too much, too much. She creaked, she moaned.\nShe banged the door. She turned the key in the lock, and left the house shut up, locked, alone.\n9\nThe house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it. The long night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had rusted and the mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly, aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself between the tiles in the larder. The swallows nested in the drawing-room; the floor was strewn with straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls; rafters were laid bare; rats carried off this and that to gnaw behind the wainscots. Tortoise-shell butterflies burst from the chrysalis and pattered their life out on the window pane. Poppies sowed themselves among the dahlias; the lawn waved with long grass; giant artichokes towered among roses; a fringed carnation flowered among the cabbages; while the gentle tapping of a weed at the window had become, on winters\u2019 nights, a drumming from sturdy trees and thorned briars which made the whole room green in summer.\nWhat power could now prevent the fertility, the insensibility of nature?\nMrs Deandra\u2019s dream of a lady, of a child, of a plate of milk soup? It had wavered over the walls like a spot of sunlight and vanished. She had locked the door; she had gone. It was beyond the strength of one woman, she said. They never sent. They never wrote. There were things up there rotting in the drawers\u2014it was a shame to leave them so, she said. The place was gone to rack and ruin. Only the Kindergarten beam entered the rooms for a moment, sent its sudden stare over bed and wall in the darkness of winter, looked with equanimity at the thistle and the swallow, the rat and the straw. Nothing now withstood them; nothing said no to them. Let the wind blow; let the poppy seed itself and the carnation mate with the cabbage. Let the swallow build in the drawing-room, and the thistle thrust aside the tiles, and the butterfly sun itself on the faded chintz of the arm-chairs. Let the broken glass and the china lie out on the lawn and be tangled over with grass and wild berries.\nFor now had come that moment, that hesitation when dawn trembles and night pauses, when if a feather alight in the scale it will be weighed down. One feather, and the house, sinking, falling, would have turned and pitched downwards to the depths of darkness. In the ruined room, picnickers would have lit their kettles; lovers sought shelter there, lying on the bare boards; and the shepherd stored his dinner on the bricks, and the tramp slept with his coat round him to ward off the cold. Then the roof would have fallen; briars and hemlocks would have blotted out path, step, and window; would have grown, unequally but lustily over the mound, until some trespasser, losing his way, could have told only by a red-hot poker among the nettles, or a scrap of china in the hemlock, that here once someone had lived; there had been a house.\nIf the feather had fallen, if it had tipped the scale downwards, the whole house would have plunged to the depths to lie upon the sands of oblivion. But there was a force working; something not highly conscious;\nsomething that leered, something that lurched; something not inspired to go about its work with dignified ritual or solemn chanting. Mrs Deandra groaned; Mrs Bast creaked. They were old; they were stiff; their legs ached. They came with their brooms and pails at last; they got to work.\nAll of a sudden, would Mrs Deandra see that the house was ready? one of the young ladies wrote: would she get this done?; would she get that done?; all in a hurry. They might be coming for the summer; had left everything to the last; expected to find things as they had left them.\nSlowly and painfully, with broom and pail, mopping, scouring, Mrs Deandra, Mrs Bast stayed the corruption and the rot; rescued from the pool of Time that was fast closing over them now a basin, now a cupboard;\nfetched up from oblivion all the Waverley novels and a tea-set one morning; in the afternoon restored to sun and air a brass fender and a set of steel fire-irons. George, Mrs Bast\u2019s son, caught the rats, and cut the grass. They had the builders. Attended with the creaking of hinges and the screeching of bolts, the slamming and banging of damp-swollen woodwork, some rusty laborious birth seemed to be taking place, as the women, stooping, rising, groaning, singing, slapped and slammed, upstairs now, now down in the cellars. Oh, they said, the work!\nThey drank their tea in the bedroom sometimes, or in the study; breaking off work at midday with the smudge on their faces, and their old hands clasped and cramped with the broom handles. Flopped on chairs they contemplated now the magnificent conquest over taps and bath; now the more arduous, more partial triumph over long rows of books, black as ravens once, now white-stained, breeding pale mushrooms and secreting furtive spiders. Once more, as she felt the tea warm in her, the telescope fitted itself to Mrs Deandra\u2019s eyes, and in a ring of light she saw the old gentleman, lean as a rake, wagging his head, as she came up with the washing, talking to himself, she supposed, on the lawn. He never noticed her. Some said he was dead; some said she was dead. Which was it? Mrs Bast didn\u2019t know for certain either. The young gentleman was dead. That she was sure. She had read his name in the papers.\nThere was the cook now, Mildred, Marian, some such name as that\u2014a red-headed woman, quick-tempered like all her sort, but kind, too, if you knew the way with her. Many a laugh they had had together. She saved a plate of soup for Maggie; a bite of ham, sometimes; whatever was over.\nThey lived well in those days. They had everything they wanted (glibly, jovially, with the tea hot in her, she unwound her ball of memories, sitting in the wicker arm-chair by the nursery fender). There was always plenty doing, people in the house, twenty staying sometimes, and washing up till long past midnight.\nMrs Bast (she had never known them; had lived in Glasgow at that time)\nwondered, putting her cup down, whatever they hung that beast\u2019s skull there for? Shot in foreign parts no doubt.\nIt might well be, said Mrs Deandra, wantoning on with her memories; they had friends in eastern countries; gentlemen staying there, ladies in evening dress; she had seen them once through the dining-room door all sitting at dinner. Twenty she dared say in all their jewellery, and she asked to stay help wash up, might be till after midnight.\nAh, said Mrs Bast, they\u2019d find it changed. She leant out of the window.\nShe watched her son George scything the grass. They might well ask, what had been done to it? seeing how old Kennedy was supposed to have charge of it, and then his leg got so bad after he fell from the cart; and perhaps then no one for a year, or the better part of one; and then Davie Macdonald, and seeds might be sent, but who should say if they were ever planted? They\u2019d find it changed.\nShe watched her son scything. He was a great one for work\u2014one of those quiet ones. Well they must be getting along with the cupboards, she supposed. They hauled themselves up.\nAt last, after days of labour within, of cutting and digging without, dusters were flicked from the windows, the windows were shut to, keys were turned all over the house; the front door was banged; it was finished.\nAnd now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing and the scything and the mowing had drowned it there rose that half-heard melody, that intermittent music which the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, a bleat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related; the hum of an insect, the tremor of cut grass, dissevered yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dor beetle, the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteriously related; which the ear strains to bring together and is always on the verge of harmonizing but they are never quite heard, never fully harmonized, and at last, in the evening, one after another the sounds die out, and the harmony falters, and silence falls. With the sunset sharpness was lost, and like mist rising, quiet rose, quiet spread, the wind settled; loosely the world shook itself down to sleep, darkly here without a light to it, save what came green suffused through leaves, or pale on the white flowers by the window.\n[Pete Lucy had her bag carried up to the house late one evening in September. Mr Merida came by the same train.]\n10\nThen indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea to the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more deeply to rest and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily, dreamt wisely, to confirm\u2014what else was it murmuring\u2014as Pete Lucy laid her head on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through the open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly what it said\u2014but what mattered if the meaning were plain?\u2014entreating the sleepers (the house was full again; Mrs Beckwith was staying there, also Mr Merida), if they would not actually come down to the beach itself at least to lift the blind and look out. They would see then night flowing down in purple; his head crowned; his sceptre jewelled; and how in his eyes a child might look. And if they still faltered (Pete was tired out with travelling and slept almost at once; but Mr Merida read a book by candlelight), if they still said no, that it was vapour this splendour of his, and the dew had more power than he, and they preferred sleeping; gently then without complaint, or argument, the voice would sing its song. Gently the waves would break (Pete heard them in her sleep); tenderly the light fell (it seemed to come through her eyelids). And it all looked, Mr Merida thought, shutting his book, falling asleep, much as it used to look years ago.\nIndeed the voice might resume, as the curtains of dark wrapped themselves over the house, over Mrs Beckwith, Mr Merida, and Pete Lucy so that they lay with several folds of blackness on their eyes, why not accept this, be content with this, acquiesce and resign? The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them;\nthe night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness, a cart grinding, a dog somewhere barking, the sun lifted the curtains, broke the veil on their eyes, and Pete Lucy stirring in her sleep clutched at her blankets as a faller clutches at the turf on the edge of a cliff. Her eyes opened wide. Here she was again, she thought, sitting bolt upright in bed. Awake.\nIII\nTHE KINDERGARTEN\n1\nWhat does it mean then, what can it all mean? Pete Lucy asked herself, wondering whether, since she had been left alone, it behoved her to go to the kitchen to fetch another cup of coffee or wait here.\nWhat does it mean?\u2014a catchword that was, caught up from some book, fitting her thought loosely, for she could not, this first morning with the Bronwyns, contract her feelings, could only make a phrase resound to cover the blankness of her mind until these vapours had shrunk. For really, what did she feel, come back after all these years and Mrs Bronwyn dead? Nothing, nothing\u2014nothing that she could express at all.\nShe had come late last night when it was all mysterious, dark. Now she was awake, at her old place at the breakfast table, but alone. It was very early too, not yet eight. There was this expedition\u2014they were going to the Kindergarten, Mr Bronwyn, Annalisa, and Seb. They should have gone already\u2014they had to catch the tide or something. And Annalisa was not ready and Seb was not ready and Lyric had forgotten to order the sandwiches and Mr Bronwyn had lost his temper and banged out of the room.\n\u2018What\u2019s the use of going now?\u2019 he had stormed.\nLyric had vanished. There he was, marching up and down the terrace in a rage. One seemed to hear doors slamming and voices calling all over the house. Now Lyric burst in, and asked, looking round the room, in a queer half dazed, half desperate way: \u2018What does one send to the Kindergarten?\u2019\nas if she were forcing herself to do what she despaired of ever being able to do.\nWhat does one send to the Kindergarten indeed! At any other time Pete could have suggested reasonably tea, tobacco, newspapers. But this morning everything seemed so extraordinarily queer that a question like Lyric\u2019s\u2014What does one send to the Kindergarten\u2014opened doors in one\u2019s mind that went banging and swinging to and fro and made one keep asking, in a stupefied gape: What does one send? What does one do? Why is one sitting here after all?\nSitting alone (for Lyric went out again) among the clean cups at the long table she felt cut off from other people, and able only to go on watching, asking, wondering. The house, the place, the morning, all seemed strangers to her. She had no attachment here, she felt, no relations with it, anything might happen, and whatever did happen, a step outside, a voice calling (\u2018It\u2019s not in the cupboard; it\u2019s on the landing,\u2019 some one cried), was a question, as if the link that usually bound things together had been cut, and they floated up here, down there, off, anyhow. How aimless it was, how chaotic, how unreal it was, she thought, looking at her empty coffee cup. Mrs Bronwyn dead; Cael killed; Gannonmarie dead too\u2014repeat it as she might, it roused no feeling in her. And we all get together in a house like this on a morning like this, she said, looking out of the window\u2014it was a beautiful still day.\n2\nSuddenly Mr Bronwyn raised his head as he passed and looked straight at her, with his distraught wild gaze which was yet so penetrating, as if he saw you, for one second, for the first time, for ever; and she pretended to drink out of her empty coffee cup so as to escape him\u2014to escape his demand on her, to put aside a moment longer that imperious need. And he shook his head at her, and strode on (\u2018Alone\u2019 she heard him say, \u2018Perished\u2019 she heard him say) and like everything else this strange morning the words became symbols, wrote themselves all over the grey-green walls. If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of things. Old Mr Merida came padding softly in, fetched his coffee, took his cup and made off to sit in the sun. The extraordinary unreality was frightening; but it was also exciting. Going to the Kindergarten. But what does one send to the Kindergarten? Perished. Alone. The grey-green light on the wall opposite. The empty places. Such were some of the parts, but how bring them together? she asked. As if any interruption would break the frail shape she was building on the table she turned her back to the window lest Mr Bronwyn should see her. She must escape somehow, be alone somewhere. Suddenly she remembered. When she had sat there last ten years ago there had been a little sprig or leaf pattern on the tablecloth, which she had looked at in a moment of revelation.\nThere had been a problem about a foreground of a picture. Move the tree to the middle, she had said. She had never finished that picture. It had been knocking about in her mind all these years. She would paint that picture now. Where were her paints, she wondered? Her paints, yes. She had left them in the hall last night. She would start at once. She got up quickly, before Mr Bronwyn turned.\nShe fetched herself a chair. She pitched her easel with her precise old maidish movements on the edge of the lawn, not too close to Mr Merida, but close enough for his protection. Yes, it must have been precisely here that she had stood ten years ago. There was the wall; the hedge; the tree. The question was of some relation between those masses.\nShe had borne it in her mind all these years. It seemed as if the solution had come to her: she knew now what she wanted to do.\nBut with Mr Bronwyn bearing down on her, she could do nothing. Every time he approached\u2014he was walking up and down the terrace\u2014ruin approached, chaos approached. She could not paint. She stooped, she turned; she took up this rag; she squeezed that tube. But all she did was to ward him off a moment. He made it impossible for her to do anything. For if she gave him the least chance, if he saw her disengaged a moment, looking his way a moment, he would be on her, saying, as he had said last night: \u2018You find us much changed.\u2019 Last night he had got up and stopped before her, and said that. Dumb and staring though they had all sat, the six children whom they used to call after the kings and queens of England\u2014the Red, the Fair, the Wicked, the Ruthless\u2014she felt how they raged under it. Kind old Mrs Beckwith said something sensible. But it was a house full of unrelated passions\u2014she had felt that all the evening. And on top of this chaos Mr Bronwyn got up, pressed her hand, and said: \u2018You will find us much changed,\u2019 and none of them had moved or had spoken; but had sat there as if they were forced to let him say it.\nOnly Seb (certainly the Sullen) scowled at the lamp; and Annalisa screwed her handkerchief round her finger. Then he reminded them that they were going to the Kindergarten to-morrow. They must be ready, in the hall, on the stroke of half-past seven. Then, with his hand on the door, he stopped; he turned upon them. Did they not want to go? he demanded. Had they dared say No (he had some reason for wanting it) he would have flung himself tragically backwards into the bitter waters of despair.\nSuch a gift he had for gesture. He looked like a king in exile. Doggedly Seb said yes. Annalisa stumbled more wretchedly. Yes, oh yes, they\u2019d both be ready, they said. And it struck her, this was tragedy\u2014not palls, dust, and the shroud; but children coerced, their spirits subdued. Seb was sixteen, Annalisa seventeen, perhaps. She had looked round for someone who was not there, for Mrs Bronwyn, presumably. But there was only kind Mrs Beckwith turning over her sketches under the lamp. Then, being tired, her mind still rising and falling with the sea, the taste and smell that places have after long absence possessing her, the candles wavering in her eyes, she had lost herself and gone under. It was a wonderful night, starlit; the waves sounded as they went upstairs; the moon surprised them, enormous, pale, as they passed the staircase window. She had slept at once.\nShe set her clean canvas firmly upon the easel, as a barrier, frail, but she hoped sufficiently substantial to ward off Mr Bronwyn and his exactingness. She did her best to look, when his back was turned, at her picture; that line there, that mass there. But it was out of the question. Let him be fifty feet away, let him not even speak to you, let him not even see you, he permeated, he prevailed, he imposed himself. He changed everything. She could not see the colour; she could not see the lines; even with his back turned to her, she could only think, But he\u2019ll be down on me in a moment, demanding\u2014something she felt she could not give him. She rejected one brush; she chose another. When would those children come? When would they all be off? she fidgeted. That man, she thought, her anger rising in her, never gave; that man took. She, on the other hand, would be forced to give. Mrs Bronwyn had given. Giving, giving, giving, she had died\u2014and had left all this. Really, she was angry with Mrs Bronwyn. With the brush slightly trembling in her fingers she looked at the hedge, the step, the wall. It was all Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s doing. She was dead. Here was Pete, at forty-four, wasting her time, unable to do a thing, standing there, playing at painting, playing at the one thing one did not play at, and it was all Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s fault.\nShe was dead. The step where she used to sit was empty. She was dead.\nBut why repeat this over and over again? Why be always trying to bring up some feeling she had not got? There was a kind of blasphemy in it. It was all dry: all withered: all spent. They ought not to have asked her;\nshe ought not to have come. One can\u2019t waste one\u2019s time at forty-four, she thought. She hated playing at painting. A brush, the one dependable thing in a world of strife, ruin, chaos\u2014that one should not play with, knowingly even: she detested it. But he made her. You shan\u2019t touch your canvas, he seemed to say, bearing down on her, till you\u2019ve given me what I want of you. Here he was, close upon her again, greedy, distraught.\nWell, thought Pete in despair, letting her right hand fall at her side, it would be simpler then to have it over. Surely she could imitate from recollection the glow, the rhapsody, the self-surrender she had seen on so many women\u2019s faces (on Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s, for instance), when on some occasion like this they blazed up\u2014she could remember the look on Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s face\u2014into a rapture of sympathy, of delight in the reward they had, which, though the reason of it escaped her, evidently conferred on them the most supreme bliss of which human nature was capable. Here he was, stopped by her side. She would give him what she could.\n3\nShe seemed to have shrivelled slightly, he thought. She looked a little skimpy, wispy; but not unattractive. He liked her. There had been some talk of her marrying Castor Kiki once, but nothing had come of it.\nHis wife had been fond of her. He had been a little out of temper too at breakfast. And then, and then\u2014this was one of those moments when an enormous need urged him, without being conscious what it was, to approach any woman, to force them, he did not care how, his need was so great, to give him what he wanted: sympathy.\nWas anybody looking after her? he said. Had she everything she wanted?\n\u2018Oh, thanks, everything,\u2019 said Pete Lucy nervously. No; she could not do it. She ought to have floated off instantly upon some wave of sympathetic expansion: the pressure on her was tremendous. But she remained stuck. There was an awful pause. They both looked at the sea.\nWhy, thought Mr Bronwyn, should she look at the sea when I am here? She hoped it would be calm enough for them to land at the Kindergarten, she said. The Kindergarten! The Kindergarten! What\u2019s that got to do with it? he thought impatiently. Instantly, with the force of some primeval gust (for really he could not restrain himself any longer), there issued from him such a groan that any other woman in the whole world would have done something, said something\u2014all except myself, thought Pete, girding at herself bitterly, who am not a woman, but a peevish, ill-tempered, dried-up old maid presumably.\nMr Bronwyn sighed to the full. He waited. Was she not going to say anything? Did she not see what he wanted from her? Then he said he had a particular reason for wanting to go to the Kindergarten. His wife used to send the men things. There was a poor boy with a tuberculous hip, the lightkeeper\u2019s son. He sighed profoundly. He sighed significantly. All Pete wished was that this enormous flood of grief, this insatiable hunger for sympathy, this demand that she should surrender herself up to him entirely, and even so he had sorrows enough to keep her supplied for ever, should leave her, should be diverted (she kept looking at the house, hoping for an interruption) before it swept her down in its flow.\n\u2018Such expeditions,\u2019 said Mr Bronwyn, scraping the ground with his toe, \u2018are very painful.\u2019 Still Pete said nothing. (She is a stock, she is a stone, he said to himself.) \u2018They are very exhausting,\u2019 he said, looking, with a sickly look that nauseated her (he was acting, she felt, this great man was dramatizing himself), at his beautiful hands. It was horrible, it was indecent. Would they never come, she asked, for she could not sustain this enormous weight of sorrow, support these heavy draperies of grief (he had assumed a pose of extreme decrepitude; he even tottered a little as he stood there) a moment longer.\nStill she could say nothing; the whole horizon seemed swept bare of objects to talk about; could only feel, amazedly, as Mr Bronwyn stood there, how his gaze seemed to fall dolefully over the sunny grass and discolour it, and cast over the rubicund, drowsy, entirely contented figure of Mr Merida, reading a French novel on a deck-chair, a veil of crape, as if such an existence, flaunting its prosperity in a world of woe, were enough to provoke the most dismal thoughts of all. Look at him, he seemed to be saying, look at me; and indeed, all the time he was feeling, Think of me, think of me. Ah, could that bulk only be wafted alongside of them, Pete wished; had she only pitched her easel a yard or two closer to him; a man, any man, would staunch this effusion, would stop these lamentations. A woman, she had provoked this horror; a woman, she should have known how to deal with it. It was immensely to her discredit, sexually, to stand there dumb. One said\u2014what did one say?\u2014Oh, Mr Bronwyn! Dear Mr Bronwyn! That was what that kind old lady who sketched, Mrs Beckwith, would have said instantly, and rightly. But no. They stood there, isolated from the rest of the world. His immense self-pity, his demand for sympathy poured and spread itself in pools at her feet, and all she did, miserable sinner that she was, was to draw her skirts a little closer round her ankles, lest she should get wet. In complete silence she stood there, grasping her paint brush.\nHeaven could never be sufficiently praised! She heard sounds in the house. Seb and Annalisa must be coming. But Mr Bronwyn, as if he knew that his time ran short, exerted upon her solitary figure the immense pressure of his concentrated woe; his age; his frailty; his desolation;\nwhen suddenly, tossing his head impatiently, in his annoyance\u2014for, after all, what woman could resist him?\u2014he noticed that his boot-laces were untied. Remarkable boots they were too, Pete thought, looking down at them: sculptured; colossal; like everything that Mr Bronwyn wore, from his frayed tie to his half-buttoned waistcoat, his own indisputably. She could see them walking to his room of their own accord, expressive in his absence of pathos, surliness, ill-temper, charm.\n\u2018What beautiful boots!\u2019 she exclaimed. She was ashamed of herself. To praise his boots when he asked her to solace his soul; when he had shown her his bleeding hands, his lacerated heart, and asked her to pity them, then to say, cheerfully: \u2018Ah, but what beautiful boots you wear!\u2019\ndeserved, she knew, and she looked up expecting to get it, in one of his sudden roars of ill-temper, complete annihilation.\nInstead, Mr Bronwyn smiled. His pall, his draperies, his infirmities fell from him. Ah yes, he said, holding his foot up for her to look at, they were first-rate boots. There was only one man in England who could make boots like that. Boots are among the chief curses of mankind, he said.\n\u2018Bootmakers make it their business,\u2019 he exclaimed, \u2018to cripple and torture the human foot.\u2019 They are also the most obstinate and perverse of mankind. It had taken him the best part of his youth to get boots made as they should be made. He would have her observe (he lifted his right foot and then his left) that she had never seen boots made quite that shape before. They were made of the finest leather in the world, also. Most leather was mere brown paper and cardboard. He looked complacently at his foot, still held in the air. They had reached, she felt, a sunny island where peace dwelt, sanity reigned and the sun for ever shone, the blessed island of good boots. Her heart warmed to him.\n\u2018Now let me see if you can tie a knot,\u2019 he said. He poohpoohed her feeble system. He showed her his own invention. Once you tied it, it never came undone. Three times he knotted her shoe; three times he unknotted it.\nWhy, at this completely inappropriate moment, when he was stooping over her shoe, should she be so tormented with sympathy for him that, as she stooped too, the blood rushed to her face, and, thinking of her callousness (she had called him a play-actor) she felt her eyes swell and tingle with tears? Thus occupied he seemed to her a figure of infinite pathos. He tied knots. He bought boots. There was no helping Mr Bronwyn on the journey he was going. But now just as she wished to say something, could have said something, perhaps, here they were\u2014Annalisa and Seb. They appeared on the terrace. They came, lagging, side by side, a serious, melancholy couple.\nBut why was it like _that_ that they came? She could not help feeling annoyed with them; they might have come more cheerfully; they might have given him what, now that they were off, she would not have the chance of giving him. For she felt a sudden emptiness; a frustration. Her feeling had come too late; there it was ready; but he no longer needed it. He had become a very distinguished, elderly man, who had no need of her whatsoever. She felt snubbed. He slung a knapsack round his shoulders.\nHe shared out the parcels\u2014there were a number of them, ill tied, in brown paper. He sent Annalisa for a cloak. He had all the appearance of a leader making ready for an expedition. Then, wheeling about, he led the way with his firm military tread, in those wonderful boots, carrying brown paper parcels, down the path, his children following him. They looked, she thought, as if fate had devoted them to some stern enterprise, and they went to it, still young enough to be drawn acquiescent in their father\u2019s wake, obediently, but with a pallor in their eyes which made her feel that they suffered something beyond their years in silence. So they passed the edge of the lawn, and it seemed to Pete that she watched a procession go, drawn on by some stress of common feeling which made it, faltering and flagging as it was, a little company bound together and strangely impressive to her. Politely, but very distantly, Mr Bronwyn raised his hand and saluted her as they passed.\nBut what a face, she thought, immediately finding the sympathy which she had not been asked to give troubling her for expression. What had made it like that? Thinking, night after night, she supposed\u2014about the reality of kitchen tables, she added, remembering the symbol which in her vagueness as to what Mr Bronwyn did think about Cael had given her.\n(He had been killed by the splinter of a shell instantly, she bethought her.) The kitchen table was something visionary, austere; something bare, hard, not ornamental. There was no colour to it; it was all edges and angles; it was uncompromisingly plain. But Mr Bronwyn kept always his eyes fixed upon it, never allowed himself to be distracted or deluded, until his face became worn too and ascetic and partook of this unornamented beauty which so deeply impressed her. Then, she recalled (standing where he had left her, holding her brush), worries had fretted it\u2014not so nobly. He must have had his doubts about that table, she supposed; whether the table was a real table; whether it was worth the time he gave to it; whether he was able after all to find it. He had had doubts, she felt, or he would have asked less of people. That was what they talked about late at night sometimes, she suspected; and then next day Mrs Bronwyn looked tired, and Pete flew into a rage with him over some absurd little thing. But now he had nobody to talk to about that table, or his boots, or his knots; and he was like a lion seeking whom he could devour, and his face had that touch of desperation, of exaggeration in it which alarmed her, and made her pull her skirts about her. And then, she recalled, there was that sudden revivification, that sudden flare (when she praised his boots), that sudden recovery of vitality and interest in ordinary human things, which too passed and changed (for he was always changing, and hid nothing) into that other final phase which was new to her and had, she owned, made herself ashamed of her own irritability, when it seemed as if he had shed worries and ambitions, and the hope of sympathy and the desire for praise, had entered some other region, was drawn on, as if by curiosity, in dumb colloquy, whether with himself or another, at the head of that little procession out of one\u2019s range. An extraordinary face! The gate banged.\n4\nSo they\u2019re gone, she thought, sighing with relief and disappointment.\nHer sympathy seemed to fly back in her face, like a bramble sprung. She felt curiously divided, as if one part of her were drawn out there\u2014it was a still day, hazy; the Kindergarten looked this morning at an immense distance; the other had fixed itself doggedly, solidly, here on the lawn. She saw her canvas as if it had floated up and placed itself white and uncompromising directly before her. It seemed to rebuke her with its cold stare for all this hurry and agitation; this folly and waste of emotion; it drastically recalled her and spread through her mind first a peace, as her disorderly sensations (he had gone and she had been so sorry for him and she had said nothing) trooped off the field; and then emptiness. She looked blankly at the canvas, with its uncompromising white stare; from the canvas to the garden. There was something (she stood screwing up her little Chinese eyes in her small puckered face), something she remembered in the relations of those lines cutting across, slicing down, and in the mass of the hedge with its green cave of blues and browns, which had stayed in her mind; which had tied a knot in her mind so that at odds and ends of time, involuntarily, as she walked along the Brompton Road, as she brushed her hair, she found herself painting that picture, passing her eye over it, and untying the knot in imagination. But there was all the difference in the world between this planning airily away from the canvas, and actually taking her brush and making the first mark.\nShe had taken the wrong brush in her agitation at Mr Bronwyn\u2019s presence, and her easel, rammed into the earth so nervously, was at the wrong angle. And now that she had put that right, and in so doing had subdued the impertinences and irrelevances that plucked her attention and made her remember how she was such and such a person, had such and such relations to people, she took her hand and raised her brush. For a moment it stayed trembling in a painful but exciting ecstasy in the air.\nWhere to begin?\u2014that was the question; at what point to make the first mark? One line placed on the canvas committed her to innumerable risks, to frequent and irrevocable decisions. All that in idea seemed simple became in practice immediately complex; as the waves shape themselves symmetrically from the cliff top, but to the swimmer among them are divided by steep gulfs, and foaming crests. Still the risk must be run;\nthe mark made.\nWith a curious physical sensation, as if she were urged forward and at the same time must hold herself back, she made her first quick decisive stroke. The brush descended. It flickered brown over the white canvas;\nit left a running mark. A second time she did it\u2014a third time. And so pausing and so flickering, she attained a dancing rhythmical movement, as if the pauses were one part of the rhythm and the strokes another, and all were related; and so, lightly and swiftly pausing, striking, she scored her canvas with brown running nervous lines which had no sooner settled there than they enclosed (she felt it looming out at her) a space. Down in the hollow of one wave she saw the next wave towering higher and higher above her. For what could be more formidable than that space? Here she was again, she thought, stepping back to look at it, drawn out of gossip, out of living, out of community with people into the presence of this formidable ancient enemy of hers\u2014this other thing, this truth, this reality, which suddenly laid hands on her, emerged stark at the back of appearances and commanded her attention. She was half unwilling, half reluctant. Why always be drawn out and haled away?\nWhy not left in peace, to talk to Mr Merida on the lawn? It was an exacting form of intercourse anyhow. Other worshipful objects were content with worship; men, women, God, all let one kneel prostrate; but this form, were it only the shape of a white lamp-shade looming on a wicker table, roused one to perpetual combat, challenged one to a fight in which one was bound to be worsted. Always (it was in her nature, or in her sex, she did not know which) before she exchanged the fluidity of life for the concentration of painting she had a few moments of nakedness when she seemed like an unborn soul, a soul reft of body, hesitating on some windy pinnacle and exposed without protection to all the blasts of doubt. Why then did she do it? She looked at the canvas, lightly scored with running lines. It would be hung in the servants\u2019\nbedrooms. It would be rolled up and stuffed under a sofa. What was the good of doing it then, and she heard some voice saying she couldn\u2019t paint, saying she couldn\u2019t create, as if she were caught up in one of those habitual currents which after a certain time forms experience in the mind, so that one repeats words without being aware any longer who originally spoke them.\nCan\u2019t paint, can\u2019t write, she murmured monotonously, anxiously considering what her plan of attack should be. For the mass loomed before her; it protruded; she felt it pressing on her eyeballs. Then, as if some juice necessary for the lubrication of her faculties were spontaneously squirted, she began precariously dipping among the blues and umbers, moving her brush hither and thither, but it was now heavier and went slower, as if it had fallen in with some rhythm which was dictated to her (she kept looking at the hedge, at the canvas) by what she saw, so that while her hand quivered with life, this rhythm was strong enough to bear her along with it on its current. Certainly she was losing consciousness of outer things. And as she lost consciousness of outer things, and her name and her personality and her appearance, and whether Mr Merida was there or not, her mind kept throwing up from its depths, scenes, and names, and sayings, and memories and ideas, like a fountain spurting over that glaring, hideously difficult white space, while she modelled it with greens and blues.\nKevin Emma used to say that, she remembered, women can\u2019t paint, can\u2019t write. Coming up behind her he had stood close beside her, a thing she hated, as she painted here on this very spot. \u2018Shag tobacco,\u2019 he said, \u2018fivepence an ounce,\u2019 parading his poverty, his principles. (But the war had drawn the sting of her femininity. Poor devils, one thought, poor devils of both sexes, getting into such messes.) He was always carrying a book about under his arm\u2014a purple book. He \u2018worked.\u2019 He sat, she remembered, working in a blaze of sun. At dinner he would sit right in the middle of the view. And then, she reflected, there was that scene on the beach. One must remember that. It was a windy morning. They had all gone to the beach. Mrs Bronwyn sat and wrote letters by a rock. She wrote and wrote. \u2018Oh,\u2019 she said, looking up at last at something floating in the sea, \u2018is it a lobster pot? Is it an upturned boat?\u2019 She was so short-sighted that she could not see, and then Kevin Emma became as nice as he could possibly be. He began playing ducks and drakes. They chose little flat black stones and sent them skipping over the waves. Every now and then Mrs Bronwyn looked up over her spectacles and laughed at them. What they said she could not remember, but only she and Kevin throwing stones and getting on very well all of a sudden and Mrs Bronwyn watching them. She was highly conscious of that. Mrs Bronwyn, she thought, stepping back and screwing up her eyes. (It must have altered the design a good deal when she was sitting on the step with Seb. There must have been a shadow.) Mrs Bronwyn. When she thought of herself and Kevin throwing ducks and drakes and of the whole scene on the beach, it seemed to depend somehow upon Mrs Bronwyn sitting under the rock, with a pad on her knee, writing letters. (She wrote innumerable letters, and sometimes the wind took them and she and Kevin just saved a page from the sea.) But what a power was in the human soul! she thought. That woman sitting there, writing under the rock resolved everything into simplicity; made these angers, irritations fall off like old rags; she brought together this and that and then this, and so made out of that miserable silliness and spite (she and Kevin squabbling, sparring, had been silly and spiteful) something\u2014this scene on the beach for example, this moment of friendship and liking\u2014which survived, after all these years, complete, so that she dipped into it to re-fashion her memory of him, and it stayed in the mind almost like a work of art.\n\u2018Like a work of art,\u2019 she repeated, looking from her canvas to the drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularize itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all\u2014a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Kevin Emma and the breaking wave; Mrs Bronwyn bringing them together; Mrs Bronwyn saying \u2018Life stand still here\u2019; Mrs Bronwyn making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Pete herself tried to make of the moment something permanent)\u2014this was of the nature of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape;\nthis eternal passing and flowing (she looked at the clouds going and the leaves shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs Bronwyn said. \u2018Mrs Bronwyn! Mrs Bronwyn!\u2019 she repeated. She owed this revelation to her.\nAll was silence. Nobody seemed yet to be stirring in the house. She looked at it there sleeping in the early sunlight with its windows green and blue with the reflected leaves. The faint thought she was thinking of Mrs Bronwyn seemed in consonance with this quiet house; this smoke;\nthis fine early morning air. Faint and unreal, it was amazingly pure and exciting. She hoped nobody would open the window or come out of the house, but that she might be left alone to go on thinking, to go on painting. She turned to her canvas. But impelled by some curiosity, driven by the discomfort of the sympathy which she held undischarged, she walked a pace or so to the end of the lawn to see whether, down there on the beach, she could see that little company setting sail. Down there among the little boats which floated, some with their sails furled, some slowly, for it was very calm, moving away, there was one rather apart from the others. The sail was even now being hoisted. She decided that there in that very distant and entirely silent little boat Mr Bronwyn was sitting with Annalisa and Seb. Now they had got the sail up;\nnow after a little flagging and hesitation the sails filled and, shrouded in profound silence, she watched the boat take its way with deliberation past the other boats out to sea.\n5\nThe sails flapped over their heads. The water chuckled and slapped the sides of the boat, which drowsed motionless in the sun. Now and then the sails rippled with a little breeze in them, but the ripple ran over them and ceased. The boat made no motion at all. Mr Bronwyn sat in the middle of the boat. He would be impatient in a moment, Seb thought, and Annalisa thought, looking at their father, who sat in the middle of the boat between them (Seb steered; Annalisa sat alone in the bow) with his legs tightly curled. He hated hanging about. Sure enough, after fidgeting a second or two, he said something sharp to Adalyn\u2019s boy, who got out his oars and began to row. But their father, they knew, would never be content until they were flying along. He would keep looking for a breeze, fidgeting, saying things under his breath, which Adalyn and Adalyn\u2019s boy would overhear, and they would both be made horribly uncomfortable. He had made them come. He had forced them to come. In their anger they hoped that the breeze would never rise, that he might be thwarted in every possible way, since he had forced them to come against their wills.\nAll the way down to the beach they had lagged behind together, though he bade them \u2018Walk up, walk up,\u2019 without speaking. Their heads were bent down, their heads were pressed down by some remorseless gale. Speak to him they could not. They must come; they must follow. They must walk behind him carrying brown paper parcels. But they vowed, in silence, as they walked, to stand by each other and carry out the great compact\u2014to resist tyranny to the death. So there they would sit, one at one end of the boat, one at the other, in silence. They would say nothing, only look at him now and then where he sat with his legs twisted, frowning and fidgeting, and pishing and pshawing and muttering things to himself, and waiting impatiently for a breeze. And they hoped it would be calm.\nThey hoped he would be thwarted. They hoped the whole expedition would fail, and they would have to put back, with their parcels, to the beach.\nBut now, when Adalyn\u2019s boy had rowed a little way out, the sails slowly swung round, the boat quickened itself, flattened itself, and shot off. Instantly, as if some great strain had been relieved, Mr Bronwyn uncurled his legs, took out his tobacco pouch, handed it with a little grunt to Adalyn, and felt, they knew, for all they suffered, perfectly content. Now they would sail on for hours like this, and Mr Bronwyn would ask old Adalyn a question\u2014about the great storm last winter probably\u2014and old Adalyn would answer it, and they would puff their pipes together, and Adalyn would take a tarry rope in his fingers, tying or untying some knot, and the boy would fish, and never say a word to any one. Seb would be forced to keep his eye all the time on the sail. For if he forgot, then the sail puckered, and shivered, and the boat slackened, and Mr Bronwyn would say sharply: \u2018Look out! Look out!\u2019 and old Adalyn would turn slowly on his seat. So they heard Mr Bronwyn asking some question about the great storm at Christmas. \u2018She comes driving round the point,\u2019 old Adalyn said, describing the great storm last Christmas, when ten ships had been driven into the bay for shelter, and he had seen \u2018one there, one there, one there\u2019 (he pointed slowly round the bay. Mr Bronwyn followed him, turning his head). He had seen three men clinging to the mast. Then she was gone. \u2018And at last we shoved her off,\u2019 he went on (but in their anger and their silence they only caught a word here and there, sitting at opposite ends of the boat, united by their compact to fight tyranny to the death). At last they had shoved her off, they had launched the lifeboat, and they had got her out past the point\u2014Adalyn told the story; and though they only caught a word here and there, they were conscious all the time of their father\u2014how he leant forward, how he brought his voice into tune with Adalyn\u2019s voice; how, puffing at his pipe, and looking there and there where Adalyn pointed, he relished the thought of the storm and the dark night and the fishermen striving there. He liked that men should labour and sweat on the windy beach at night, pitting muscle and brain against the waves and the wind; he liked men to work like that, and women to keep house, and sit beside sleeping children indoors, while men were drowned, out there in a storm. So Seb could tell, so Annalisa could tell (they looked at him, they looked at each other), from his toss and his vigilance and the ring in his voice, and the little tinge of Scottish accent which came into his voice, making him seem like a peasant himself, as he questioned Adalyn about the ten ships that had been driven into the bay in a storm. Three had sunk.\nHe looked proudly where Adalyn pointed; and Annalisa thought, feeling proud of him without knowing quite why, had he been there he would have launched the lifeboat, he would have reached the wreck, Annalisa thought. He was so brave, he was so adventurous, Annalisa thought. But she remembered.\nThere was the compact; to resist tyranny to the death. Their grievance weighed them down. They had been forced; they had been bidden. He had borne them down once more with his gloom and his authority, making them do his bidding, on this fine morning, come, because he wished it, carrying these parcels, to the Kindergarten; take part in those rites he went through for his own pleasure in memory of dead people, which they hated, so that they lagged after him, and all the pleasure of the day was spoilt.\nYes, the breeze was freshening. The boat was leaning, the water was sliced sharply and fell away in green cascades, in bubbles, in cataracts. Annalisa looked down into the foam, into the sea with all its treasure in it, and its speed hypnotized her, and the tie between her and Seb sagged a little. It slackened a little. She began to think, How fast it goes. Where are we going? and the movement hypnotized her, while Seb, with his eye fixed on the sail and on the horizon, steered grimly. But he began to think as he steered that he might escape; he might be quit of it all. They might land somewhere; and be free then.\nBoth of them, looking at each other for a moment, had a sense of escape and exaltation, what with the speed and the change. But the breeze bred in Mr Bronwyn too the same excitement, and, as old Adalyn turned to fling his line overboard, he cried aloud: \u2018We perished,\u2019 and then again, \u2018each alone.\u2019 And then with his usual spasm of repentance or shyness, pulled himself up, and waved his hand towards the shore.\n\u2018See the little house,\u2019 he said pointing, wishing Annalisa to look. She raised herself reluctantly and looked. But which was it? She could no longer make out, there on the hillside, which was their house. All looked distant and peaceful and strange. The shore seemed refined, far away, unreal. Already the little distance they had sailed had put them far from it and given it the changed look, the composed look, of something receding in which one has no longer any part. Which was their house? She could not see it.\n\u2018But I beneath a rougher sea,\u2019 Mr Bronwyn murmured. He had found the house and so seeing it, he had also seen himself there; he had seen himself walking on the terrace, alone. He was walking up and down between the urns; and he seemed to himself very old, and bowed. Sitting in the boat he bowed, he crouched himself, acting instantly his part\u2014the part of a desolate man, widowed, bereft; and so called up before him in hosts people sympathizing with him; staged for himself as he sat in the boat, a little drama; which required of him decrepitude and exhaustion and sorrow (he raised his hands and looked at the thinness of them, to confirm his dream) and then there was given him in abundance women\u2019s sympathy, and he imagined how they would soothe him and sympathize with him, and so getting in his dream some reflection of the exquisite pleasure women\u2019s sympathy was to him, he sighed and said gently and mournfully:\nBut I beneath a rougher sea\nWas whelmed in deeper gulfs than he, so that the mournful words were heard quite clearly by them all. Annalisa half started on her seat. It shocked her\u2014it outraged her. The movement roused her father; and he shuddered, and broke off, exclaiming: \u2018Look!\nLook!\u2019 so urgently that Seb also turned his head to look over his shoulder at the island. They all looked. They looked at the island.\nBut Annalisa could see nothing. She was thinking how all those paths and the lawn, thick and knotted with the lives they had lived there, were gone:\nwere rubbed out; were past; were unreal, and now this was real; the boat and the sail with its patch; Adalyn with his earrings; the noise of the waves\u2014all this was real. Thinking this, she was murmuring to herself: \u2018We perished, each alone,\u2019 for her father\u2019s words broke and broke again in her mind, when her father, seeing her gazing so vaguely, began to tease her. Didn\u2019t she know the points of the compass? he asked.\nDidn\u2019t she know the north from the south? Did she really think they lived right out there? And he pointed again, and showed her where their house was, there, by those trees. He wished she would try to be more accurate, he said: \u2018Tell me\u2014which is east, which is west?\u2019 he said, half laughing at her, half scolding her, for he could not understand the state of mind of any one, not absolutely imbecile, who did not know the points of the compass. Yet she did not know. And seeing her gazing, with her vague, now rather frightened, eyes fixed where no house was Mr Bronwyn forgot his dream; how he walked up and down between the urns on the terrace; how the arms were stretched out to him. He thought, women are always like that; the vagueness of their minds is hopeless; it was a thing he had never been able to understand; but so it was. It had been so with her\u2014his wife. They could not keep anything clearly fixed in their minds. But he had been wrong to be angry with her; moreover, did he not rather like this vagueness in women? It was part of their extraordinary charm. I will make her smile at me, he thought. She looks frightened. She was so silent. He clutched his fingers, and determined that his voice and his face and all the quick expressive gestures which had been at his command making people pity him and praise him all these years should subdue themselves. He would make her smile at him. He would find some simple easy thing to say to her. But what? For, wrapped up in his work as he was, he forgot the sort of thing one said. There was a puppy. They had a puppy. Who was looking after the puppy to-day? he asked. Yes, thought Seb pitilessly, seeing his sister\u2019s head against the sail, now she will give way. I shall be left to fight the tyrant alone. The compact would be left to him to carry out. Annalisa would never resist tyranny to the death, he thought grimly, watching her face, sad, sulky, yielding. And as sometimes happens when a cloud falls on a green hillside and gravity descends and there among all the surrounding hills is gloom and sorrow, and it seems as if the hills themselves must ponder the fate of the clouded, the darkened, either in pity, or maliciously rejoicing in her dismay: so Annalisa now felt herself overcast, as she sat there among calm, resolute people and wondered how to answer her father about the puppy; how to resist his entreaty\u2014forgive me, care for me;\nwhile Seb the lawgiver, with the tablets of eternal wisdom laid open on his knee (his hand on the tiller had become symbolical to her), said, Resist him. Fight him. He said so rightly; justly. For they must fight tyranny to the death, she thought. Of all human qualities she reverenced justice most. Her brother was most god-like, her father most suppliant.\nAnd to which did she yield, she thought, sitting between them, gazing at the shore whose points were all unknown to her, and thinking how the lawn and the terrace and the house were smoothed away now and peace dwelt there.\n\u2018Blaze,\u2019 she said sullenly. He\u2019d look after the puppy.\nAnd what was she going to call him? her father persisted. He had had a dog when he was a little boy, called Frisk. She\u2019ll give way, Seb thought, as he watched a look come upon her face, a look he remembered.\nThey look down, he thought, at their knitting or something. Then suddenly they look up. There was a flash of blue, he remembered, and then somebody sitting with him laughed, surrendered, and he was very angry. It must have been his mother, he thought, sitting on a low chair, with his father standing over her. He began to search among the infinite series of impressions which time had laid down, leaf upon leaf, fold upon fold softly, incessantly upon his brain; among scents, sounds;\nvoices, harsh, hollow, sweet; and lights passing, and brooms tapping;\nand the wash and hush of the sea, how a man had marched up and down and stopped dead, upright, over them. Meanwhile, he noticed, Annalisa dabbled her fingers in the water, and stared at the shore and said nothing. No, she won\u2019t give way, he thought; she\u2019s different, he thought. Well, if Annalisa would not answer him, he would not bother her, Mr Bronwyn decided, feeling in his pocket for a book. But she would answer him; she wished, passionately, to move some obstacle that lay upon her tongue and to say, Oh yes, Frisk. I\u2019ll call him Frisk. She wanted even to say, Was that the dog that found its way over the moor alone? But try as she might, she could think of nothing to say like that, fierce and loyal to the compact, yet passing on to her father, unsuspected by Seb, a private token of the love she felt for him. For she thought, dabbling her hand (and now Adalyn\u2019s boy had caught a mackerel, and it lay kicking on the floor, with blood on its gills), for she thought, looking at Seb who kept his eyes dispassionately on the sail, or glanced now and then for a second at the horizon, you\u2019re not exposed to it, to this pressure and division of feeling, this extraordinary temptation. Her father was feeling in his pockets; in another second he would have found his book.\nFor no one attracted her more; his hands were beautiful to her and his feet, and his voice, and his words, and his haste, and his temper, and his oddity, and his passion, and his saying straight out before every one, we perish, each alone, and his remoteness. (He had opened his book.) But what remained intolerable, she thought, sitting upright, and watching Adalyn\u2019s boy tug the hook out of the gills of another fish, was that crass blindness and tyranny of his which had poisoned her childhood and raised bitter storms, so that even now she woke in the night trembling with rage and remembered some command of his; some insolence: \u2018Do this,\u2019 \u2018Do that\u2019; his dominance: his \u2018Submit to me.\u2019\nSo she said nothing, but looked doggedly and sadly at the shore, wrapped in its mantle of peace; as if the people there had fallen asleep, she thought; were free like smoke, were free to come and go like ghosts.\nThey have no suffering there, she thought.\n6\nYes, that is their boat, Pete Lucy decided, standing on the edge of the lawn. It was the boat with greyish-brown sails, which she saw now flatten itself upon the water and shoot off across the bay. There he sits, she thought, and the children are quite silent still. And she could not reach him either. The sympathy she had not given him weighed her down. It made it difficult for her to paint.\nShe had always found him difficult. She had never been able to praise him to his face, she remembered. And that reduced their relationship to something neutral, without that element of sex in it which made his manner to Ashanti so gallant, almost gay. He would pick a flower for her, hand her his books. But could he believe that Ashanti read them? She dragged them about the garden, sticking in leaves to mark the place.\n\u2018D\u2019 you remember, Mr Merida?\u2019 she was inclined to ask, looking at the old man. But he had pulled his hat half over his forehead; he was asleep, or he was dreaming, or he was lying there catching words, she supposed.\n\u2018D\u2019 you remember?\u2019 she felt inclined to ask him as she passed him, thinking again of Mrs Bronwyn on the beach; the cask bobbing up and down;\nand the pages flying. Why, after all these years had that survived, ringed round, lit up, visible to the last detail, with all before it blank and all after it blank, for miles and miles?\n\u2018Is it a boat? Is it a cork?\u2019 she would say, Pete repeated, turning back, reluctantly again, to her canvas. Heaven be praised for it, the problem of space remained, she thought, taking up her brush again. It glared at her. The whole mass of the picture was poised upon that weight. Beautiful and bright it should be on the surface, feathery and evanescent, one colour melting into another like the colours on a butterfly\u2019s wing; but beneath the fabric must be clamped together with bolts of iron. It was to be a thing you could ruffle with your breath;\nand a thing you could not dislodge with a team of horses. And she began to lay on a red, a grey, and she began to model her way into the hollow there. At the same time she seemed to be sitting beside Mrs Bronwyn on the beach.\n\u2018Is it a boat? Is it a cask?\u2019 Mrs Bronwyn said. And she began hunting round for her spectacles. And she sat, having found them, silent, looking out to sea. And Pete, painting steadily, felt as if a door had opened, and one went in and stood gazing silently about in a high cathedral-like place, very dark, very solemn. Shouts came from a world far away. Steamers vanished in stalks of smoke on the horizon. Kevin threw stones and sent them skipping.\nMrs Bronwyn sat silent. She was glad, Pete thought, to rest in silence, uncommunicative; to rest in the extreme obscurity of human relationships. Who knows what we are, what we feel? Who knows even at the moment of intimacy, This is knowledge? Aren\u2019t things spoilt then, Mrs Bronwyn may have asked (it seemed to have happened so often, this silence by her side) by saying them? Aren\u2019t we more expressive thus? The moment at least seemed extraordinarily fertile. She rammed a little hole in the sand and covered it up, by way of burying in it the perfection of the moment. It was like a drop of silver in which one dipped and illumined the darkness of the past.\nPete stepped back to get her canvas\u2014so\u2014into perspective. It was an odd road to be walking, this of painting. Out and out one went, further and further, until at last one seemed to be on a narrow plank, perfectly alone, over the sea. And as she dipped into the blue paint, she dipped too into the past there. Now Mrs Bronwyn got up, she remembered. It was time to go back to the house\u2014time for luncheon. And they all walked up from the beach together, she walking behind with Castor Kiki, and there was Ashanti in front of them with a hole in her stocking. How that little round hole of pink heel seemed to flaunt itself before them! How Castor Kiki deplored it, without, so far as she could remember, saying anything about it! It meant to him the annihilation of womanhood, and dirt and disorder, and servants leaving and beds not made at midday\u2014all the things he most abhorred. He had a way of shuddering and spreading his fingers out as if to cover an unsightly object, which he did now\u2014holding his hand in front of him. And Ashanti walked on ahead, and presumably Peyton met her and she went off with Peyton in the garden.\nThe Orsons, thought Pete Lucy, squeezing her tube of green paint.\nShe collected her impressions of the Orsons. Their lives appeared to her in a series of scenes; one, on the staircase at dawn. Peyton had come in and gone to bed early; Ashanti was late. There was Ashanti, wreathed, tinted, garish on the stairs about three o\u2019clock in the morning. Peyton came out in his pyjamas carrying a poker in case of burglars. Ashanti was eating a sandwich, standing half-way up by a window, in the cadaverous early morning light, and the carpet had a hole in it. But what did they say? Pete asked herself, as if by looking she could hear them. Something violent. Ashanti went on eating her sandwich, annoyingly, while he spoke.\nHe spoke indignant, jealous words, abusing her, in a mutter so as not to wake the children, the two little boys. He was withered, drawn; she flamboyant, careless. For things had worked loose after the first year or so; the marriage had turned out rather badly.\nAnd this, Pete thought, taking the green paint on her brush, this making up scenes about them, is what we call \u2018knowing\u2019 people, \u2018thinking\u2019 of them, \u2018being fond\u2019 of them! Not a word of it was true; she had made it up; but it was what she knew them by all the same. She went on tunnelling her way into her picture, into the past.\nAnother time, Peyton said he \u2018played chess in coffee-houses.\u2019 She had built up a whole structure of imagination on that saying too. She remembered how, as he said it, she thought how he rang up the servant, and she said \u2018Mrs Orson\u2019s out, sir,\u2019 and he decided that he would not come home either. She saw him sitting in the corner of some lugubrious place where the smoke attached itself to the red plush seats, and the waitresses got to know you, playing chess with a little man who was in the tea trade and lived at Surbiton, but that was all Peyton knew about him. And then Ashanti was out when he came home and then there was that scene on the stairs, when he got the poker in case of burglars (no doubt to frighten her too) and spoke so bitterly, saying she had ruined his life. At any rate when she went down to see them at a cottage near Rickmansworth, things were horribly strained. Peyton took her down the garden to look at the Belgian hares which he bred, and Ashanti followed them, singing, and put her bare arm on his shoulder, lest he should tell her anything.\nAshanti was bored by hares, Pete thought. But Ashanti never gave herself away. She never said things like that about playing chess in coffee-houses. She was far too conscious, far too wary. But to go on with their story\u2014they had got through the dangerous stage by now. She had been staying with them last summer some time and the car broke down and Ashanti had to hand him his tools. He sat on the road mending the car, and it was the way she gave him the tools\u2014business-like, straightforward, friendly\u2014that proved it was all right now. They were \u2018in love\u2019 no longer; no, he had taken up with another woman, a serious woman, with her hair in a plait and a case in her hand (Ashanti had described her gratefully, almost admiringly), who went to meetings and shared Peyton\u2019s views (they had got more and more pronounced) about the taxation of land values and a capital levy. Far from breaking up the marriage, that alliance had righted it. They were excellent friends, obviously, as he sat on the road and she handed him his tools.\nSo that was the story of the Orsons, Pete smiled. She imagined herself telling it to Mrs Bronwyn, who would be full of curiosity to know what had become of the Orsons. She would feel a little triumphant, telling Mrs Bronwyn that the marriage had not been a success.\nBut the dead, thought Pete, encountering some obstacle in her design which made her pause and ponder, stepping back a foot or so, Oh the dead! she murmured, one pitied them, one brushed them aside, one had even a little contempt for them. They are at our mercy. Mrs Bronwyn has faded and gone, she thought. We can over-ride her wishes, improve away her limited, old-fashioned ideas. She recedes further and further from us. Mockingly she seemed to see her there at the end of the corridor of years saying, of all incongruous things, \u2018Marry, marry!\u2019 (sitting very upright early in the morning with the birds beginning to cheep in the garden outside). And one would have to say to her, It has all gone against your wishes. They\u2019re happy like that; I\u2019m happy like this. Life has changed completely. At that all her being, even her beauty, became for a moment, dusty and out of date. For a moment Pete, standing there, with the sun hot on her back, summing up the Orsons, triumphed over Mrs Bronwyn, who would never know how Peyton went to coffee-houses and had a mistress; how he sat on the ground and Ashanti handed him his tools; how she stood here painting, had never married, not even Castor Kiki.\nMrs Bronwyn had planned it. Perhaps, had she lived, she would have compelled it. Already that summer he was \u2018the kindest of men.\u2019 He was \u2018the first scientist of his age, my husband says.\u2019 He was also \u2018poor Castor\u2014it makes me so unhappy, when I go to see him, to find nothing nice in his house\u2014no one to arrange the flowers.\u2019 So they were sent for walks together, and she was told, with that faint touch of irony that made Mrs Bronwyn slip through one\u2019s fingers, that she had a scientific mind; she liked flowers; she was so exact. What was this mania of hers for marriage? Pete wondered, stepping to and fro from her easel.\n(Suddenly, as suddenly as a star slides in the sky, a reddish light seemed to burn in her mind, covering Peyton Orson, issuing from him. It rose like a fire sent up in token of some celebration by savages on a distant beach. She heard the roar and the crackle. The whole sea for miles round ran red and gold. Some winy smell mixed with it and intoxicated her, for she felt again her own headlong desire to throw herself off the cliff and be drowned looking for a pearl brooch on a beach. And the roar and the crackle repelled her with fear and disgust, as if while she saw its splendour and power she saw too how it fed on the treasure of the house, greedily, disgustingly, and she loathed it.\nBut for a sight, for a glory it surpassed everything in her experience, and burnt year after year like a signal fire on a desert island at the edge of the sea, and one had only to say \u2018in love\u2019 and instantly, as happened now, up rose Peyton\u2019s fire again. And it sank and she said to herself, laughing, \u2018The Orsons\u2019; how Peyton went to coffee-houses and played chess.)\nShe had only escaped by the skin of her teeth though, she thought. She had been looking at the tablecloth, and it had flashed upon her that she would move the tree to the middle, and need never marry anybody, and she had felt an enormous exultation. She had felt, now she could stand up to Mrs Bronwyn\u2014a tribute to the astonishing power that Mrs Bronwyn had over one. Do this, she said, and one did it. Even her shadow at the window with Seb was full of authority. She remembered how Castor Kiki had been shocked by her neglect of the significance of mother and son. Did she not admire their beauty? he said. But Castor, she remembered, had listened to her with his wise child\u2019s eyes when she explained how it was not irreverence: how a light there needed a shadow there and so on. She did not intend to disparage a subject which, they agreed, Raphael had treated divinely. She was not cynical. Quite the contrary. Thanks to his scientific mind he understood\u2014a proof of disinterested intelligence which had pleased her and comforted her enormously. One could talk of painting then seriously to a man. Indeed, his friendship had been one of the pleasures of her life. She loved Castor Kiki.\nThey went to Hampton Court and he always left her, like the perfect gentleman he was, plenty of time to wash her hands, while he strolled by the river. That was typical of their relationship. Many things were left unsaid. Then they strolled through the courtyards, and admired, summer after summer, the proportions and the flowers, and he would tell her things, about perspective, about architecture, as they walked, and he would stop to look at a tree, or the view over the lake, and admire a child (it was his great grief\u2014he had no daughter) in the vague aloof way that was natural to a man who spent so much time in laboratories that the world when he came out seemed to dazzle him, so that he walked slowly, lifted his hand to screen his eyes and paused, with his head thrown back, merely to breathe the air. Then he would tell her how his housekeeper was on her holiday; he must buy a new carpet for the staircase. Perhaps she would go with him to buy a new carpet for the staircase. And once something led him to talk about the Bronwyns and he had said how when he first saw her she had been wearing a grey hat; she was not more than nineteen or twenty. She was astonishingly beautiful.\nThere he stood looking down the avenue at Hampton Court, as if he could see her there among the fountains.\nShe looked now at the drawing-room step. She saw, through Castor\u2019s eyes, the shape of a woman, peaceful and silent, with downcast eyes. She sat musing, pondering (she was in grey that day, Pete thought). Her eyes were bent. She would never lift them. Yes, thought Pete, looking intently, I must have seen her look like that, but not in grey; nor so still, nor so young, nor so peaceful. The figure came readily enough.\nShe was astonishingly beautiful, Castor said. But beauty was not everything. Beauty had this penalty\u2014it came too readily, came too completely. It stilled life\u2014froze it. One forgot the little agitations;\nthe flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognizable for a moment and yet added a quality one saw for ever after. It was simpler to smooth that all out under the cover of beauty. But what was the look she had, Pete wondered, when she clapped her deer-stalker\u2019s hat on her head, or ran across the grass, or scolded Kennedy, the gardener? Who could tell her? Who could help her?\nAgainst her will she had come to the surface, and found herself half out of the picture, looking, a little dazedly, as if at unreal things, at Mr Merida. He lay on his chair with his hands clasped above his paunch not reading, or sleeping, but basking like a creature gorged with existence. His book had fallen on to the grass.\nShe wanted to go straight up to him and say, \u2018Mr Merida!\u2019 Then he would look up benevolently as always, from his smoky vague green eyes.\nBut one only woke people if one knew what one wanted to say to them. And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. \u2018About life, about death; about Mrs Bronwyn\u2019\u2014no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.)\nIt was one\u2019s body feeling, not one\u2019s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have\u2014to want and want\u2014how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again! Oh Mrs Bronwyn! she called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. It had seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand out and wrung the heart thus.\nSuddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing round a centre of complete emptiness.\n\u2018What does it mean? How do you explain it all?\u2019 she wanted to say, turning to Mr Merida again. For the whole world seemed to have dissolved in this early morning hour into a pool of thought, a deep basin of reality, and one could almost fancy that had Mr Merida spoken, a little tear would have rent the surface of the pool. And then?\nSomething would emerge. A hand would be shoved up, a blade would be flashed. It was nonsense of course.\nA curious notion came to her that he did after all hear the things she could not say. He was an inscrutable old man, with the yellow stain on his beard, and his poetry, and his puzzles, sailing serenely through a world which satisfied all his wants, so that she thought he had only to put down his hand where he lay on the lawn to fish up anything he wanted. She looked at her picture. That would have been his answer, presumably\u2014how \u2018you\u2019 and \u2018I\u2019 and \u2018she\u2019 pass and vanish; nothing stays;\nall changes; but not words, not paint. Yet it would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be rolled up and flung under a sofa; yet even so, even of a picture like that, it was true. One might say, even of this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it attempted, that it \u2018remained for ever,\u2019 she was going to say, or, for the words spoken sounded even to herself, too boastful, to hint, wordlessly; when, looking at the picture, she was surprised to find that she could not see it. Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing the firmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect control of herself\u2014Oh yes!\u2014in every other way. Was she crying then for Mrs Bronwyn, without being aware of any unhappiness? She addressed old Mr Merida again. What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp?\nWas there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?\u2014startling, unexpected, unknown? For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs Bronwyn would return. \u2018Mrs Bronwyn!\u2019 she said aloud, \u2018Mrs Bronwyn!\u2019 The tears ran down her face.\n7\n[Adalyn\u2019s boy took one of the fish and cut a square out of its side to bait his hook with. The mutilated body (it was alive still) was thrown back into the sea.]\n8\n\u2018Mrs Bronwyn!\u2019 Pete cried, \u2018Mrs Bronwyn!\u2019 But nothing happened. The pain increased. That anguish could reduce one to such a pitch of imbecility, she thought! Anyhow the old man had not heard her. He remained benignant, calm\u2014if one chose to think it, sublime. Heaven be praised, no one had heard her cry that ignominious cry, stop pain, stop! She had not obviously taken leave of her senses. No one had seen her step off her strip of board into the waters of annihilation. She remained a skimpy old maid, holding a paint brush on the lawn.\nAnd now slowly the pain of the want, and the bitter anger (to be called back, just as she thought she would never feel sorrow for Mrs Bronwyn again. Had she missed her among the coffee cups at breakfast? not in the least) lessened; and of their anguish left, as antidote, a relief that was balm in itself, and also, but more mysteriously, a sense of someone there, of Mrs Bronwyn, relieved for a moment of the weight that the world had put on her, staying lightly by her side and then (for this was Mrs Bronwyn in all her beauty) raising to her forehead a wreath of white flowers with which she went. Pete squeezed her tubes again. She attacked that problem of the hedge. It was strange how clearly she saw her, stepping with her usual quickness across fields among whose folds, purplish and soft, among whose flowers, hyacinths or lilies, she vanished. It was some trick of the painter\u2019s eye. For days after she had heard of her death she had seen her thus, putting her wreath to her forehead and going unquestioningly with her companion, a shadow, across the fields. The sight, the phrase, had its power to console. Wherever she happened to be, painting, here, in the country, or in London, the vision would come to her, and her eyes, half closing, sought something to base her vision on. She looked down the railway carriage, the omnibus; took a line from shoulder or cheek; looked at the windows opposite; at Piccadilly, lamp-strung in the evening. All had been part of the fields of death. But always something\u2014it might be a face, a voice, a paper boy crying _Standard, News_\u2014thrust through, snubbed her, waked her, required and got in the end an effort of attention, so that the vision must be perpetually remade. Now again, moved as she was by some instinctive need of distance and blue, she looked at the bay beneath her, making hillocks of the blue bars of the waves, and stony fields of the purpler spaces. Again she was roused as usual by something incongruous. There was a brown spot in the middle of the bay. It was a boat. Yes, she realized that after a second. But whose boat? Mr Bronwyn\u2019s boat, she replied. Mr Bronwyn; the man who had marched past her, with his hand raised, aloof, at the head of a procession, in his beautiful boots, asking her for sympathy, which she had refused. The boat was now half-way across the bay.\nSo fine was the morning except for a streak of wind here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric, as if sails were stuck high up in the sky, or the clouds had dropped down into the sea. A steamer far out at sea had drawn in the air a great scroll of smoke which stayed there curving and circling decoratively, as if the air were a fine gauze which held things and kept them softly in its mesh, only gently swaying them this way and that. And as happens sometimes when the weather is very fine, the cliffs looked as if they were conscious of the ships, and the ships looked as if they were conscious of the cliffs, as if they signalled to each other some secret message of their own. For sometimes quite close to the shore, the Kindergarten looked this morning in the haze an enormous distance away.\n\u2018Where are they now?\u2019 Pete thought, looking out to sea. Where was he, that very old man who had gone past her silently, holding a brown paper parcel under his arm? The boat was in the middle of the bay.\n9\nThey don\u2019t feel a thing there, Annalisa thought, looking at the shore, which, rising and falling, became steadily more distant and more peaceful. Her hand cut a trail in the sea, as her mind made the green swirls and streaks into patterns and, numbed and shrouded, wandered in imagination in that underworld of waters where the pearls stuck in clusters to white sprays, where in the green light a change came over one\u2019s entire mind and one\u2019s body shone half transparent enveloped in a green cloak.\nThen the eddy slackened round her hand. The rush of the water ceased;\nthe world became full of little creaking and squeaking sounds. One heard the waves breaking and flapping against the side of the boat as if they were anchored in harbour. Everything became very close to one. For the sail, upon which Seb had his eyes fixed until it had become to him like a person whom he knew, sagged entirely; there they came to a stop, flapping about waiting for a breeze, in the hot sun, miles from shore, miles from the Kindergarten. Everything in the whole world seemed to stand still. The Kindergarten became immovable, and the line of the distant shore became fixed. The sun grew hotter and everybody seemed to come very close together and to feel each other\u2019s presence, which they had almost forgotten. Adalyn\u2019s fishing line went plumb down into the sea. But Mr Bronwyn went on reading with his legs curled under him.\nHe was reading a little shiny book with covers mottled like a plover\u2019s egg. Now and again, as they hung about in that horrid calm, he turned a page. And Seb felt that each page was turned with a peculiar gesture aimed at him: now assertively, now commandingly; now with the intention of making people pity him; and all the time, as his father read and turned one after another of those little pages, Seb kept dreading the moment when he would look up and speak sharply to him about something or other. Why were they lagging about here? he would demand, or something quite unreasonable like that. And if he does, Seb thought, then I shall take a knife and strike him to the heart.\nHe had always kept this old symbol of taking a knife and striking his father to the heart. Only now, as he grew older, and sat staring at his father in an impotent rage, it was not him, that old man reading, whom he wanted to kill, but it was the thing that descended on him\u2014without his knowing it perhaps: that fierce sudden black-winged harpy, with its talons and its beak all cold and hard, that struck and struck at you (he could feel the beak on his bare legs, where it had struck when he was a child) and then made off, and there he was again, an old man, very sad, reading his book. That he would kill, that he would strike to the heart.\nWhatever he did\u2014(and he might do anything, he felt, looking at the Kindergarten and the distant shore) whether he was in a business, in a bank, a barrister, a man at the head of some enterprise, that he would fight, that he would track down and stamp out\u2014tyranny, despotism, he called it\u2014making people do what they did not want to do, cutting off their right to speak. How could any of them say, But I won\u2019t, when he said, Come to the Kindergarten. Do this. Fetch me that. The black wings spread, and the hard beak tore. And then next moment, there he sat reading his book; and he might look up\u2014one never knew\u2014quite reasonably. He might talk to the Adalyns. He might be pressing a sovereign into some frozen old woman\u2019s hand in the street, Seb thought; he might be shouting out at some fisherman\u2019s sports; he might be waving his arms in the air with excitement. Or he might sit at the head of the table dead silent from one end of dinner to the other. Yes, thought Seb, while the boat slapped and dawdled there in the hot sun;\nthere was a waste of snow and rock very lonely and austere; and there he had come to feel, quite often lately, when his father said something which surprised the others, were two pairs of footprints only; his own and his father\u2019s. They alone knew each other. What then was this terror, this hatred? Turning back among the many leaves which the past had folded in him, peering into the heart of that forest where light and shade so chequer each other that all shape is distorted, and one blunders, now with the sun in one\u2019s eyes, now with a dark shadow, he sought an image to cool and detach and round off his feeling in a concrete shape. Suppose then that as a child sitting helpless in a perambulator, or on someone\u2019s knee, he had seen a wagon crush ignorantly and innocently, someone\u2019s foot? Suppose he had seen the foot first, in the grass, smooth, and whole; then the wheel; and the same foot, purple, crushed. But the wheel was innocent. So now, when his father came striding down the passage knocking them up early in the morning to go to the Kindergarten down it came over his foot, over Annalisa\u2019s foot, over anybody\u2019s foot. One sat and watched it.\nBut whose foot was he thinking of, and in what garden did all this happen? For one had settings for these scenes; trees that grew there;\nflowers; a certain light; a few figures. Everything tended to set itself in a garden where there was none of this gloom and none of this throwing of hands about; people spoke in an ordinary tone of voice. They went in and out all day long. There was an old woman gossiping in the kitchen;\nand the blinds were sucked in and out by the breeze; all was blowing, all was growing; and over all those plates and bowls and tall brandishing red and yellow flowers a very thin yellow veil would be drawn, like a vine leaf, at night. Things became stiller and darker at night. But the leaf-like veil was so fine that lights lifted it, voices crinkled it; he could see through it a figure stooping, hear, coming close, going away, some dress rustling, some chain tinkling.\nIt was in this world that the wheel went over the person\u2019s foot.\nSomething, he remembered, stayed and darkened over him; would not move;\nsomething flourished up in the air, something arid and sharp descended even there, like a blade, a scimitar, smiting through the leaves and flowers even of that happy world and making them shrivel and fall.\n\u2018It will rain,\u2019 he remembered his father saying. \u2018You won\u2019t be able to go to the Kindergarten.\u2019\nThe Kindergarten was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye that opened suddenly and softly in the evening. Now\u2014\u2014 Seb looked at the Kindergarten. He could see the white-washed rocks; the tower, stark and straight; he could see that it was barred with black and white; he could see windows in it; he could even see washing spread on the rocks to dry. So that was the Kindergarten, was it?\nNo, the other was also the Kindergarten. For nothing was simply one thing.\nThe other was the Kindergarten too. It was sometimes hardly to be seen across the bay. In the evening one looked up and saw the eye opening and shutting and the light seemed to reach them in that airy sunny garden where they sat.\nBut he pulled himself up. Whenever he said \u2018they\u2019 or \u2018a person,\u2019 and then began hearing the rustle of someone coming, the tinkle of someone going, he became extremely sensitive to the presence of whoever might be in the room. It was his father now. The strain became acute. For in one moment if there was no breeze, his father would slap the covers of his book together, and say: \u2018What\u2019s happening now? What are we dawdling about here for, eh?\u2019 as, once before, he had brought his blade down among them on the terrace and she had gone stiff all over, and if there had been an axe handy, a knife, or anything with a sharp point he would have seized it and struck his father through the heart. His mother had gone stiff all over, and then, her arm slackening, so that he felt she listened to him no longer, she had risen somehow and gone away and left him there, impotent, ridiculous, sitting on the floor grasping a pair of scissors.\nNot a breath of wind blew. The water chuckled and gurgled in the bottom of the boat where three or four mackerel beat their tails up and down in a pool of water not deep enough to cover them. At any moment Mr Bronwyn (Seb scarcely dared look at him) might rouse himself, shut his book, and say something sharp; but for the moment he was reading, so that Seb stealthily, as if he were stealing downstairs on bare feet, afraid of waking a watchdog by a creaking board, went on thinking what was she like, where did she go that day? He began following her from room to room and at last they came to a room where in a blue light, as if the reflection came from many china dishes, she talked to somebody; he listened to her talking. She talked to a servant, saying simply whatever came into her head. \u2018We shall need a big dish to-night. Where is it\u2014the blue dish?\u2019 She alone spoke the truth; to her alone could he speak it.\nThat was the source of her everlasting attraction for him, perhaps; she was a person to whom one could say what came into one\u2019s head. But all the time he thought of her, he was conscious of his father following his thought, shadowing it, making it shiver and falter.\nAt last he ceased to think; there he sat with his hand on the tiller in the sun, staring at the Kindergarten, powerless to move, powerless to flick off these grains of misery which settled on his mind one after another. A rope seemed to bind him there, and his father had knotted it and he could only escape by taking a knife and plunging it. . . . But at that moment the sail swung slowly round, filled slowly out, the boat seemed to shake herself, and then to move off half conscious in her sleep, and then she woke and shot through the waves. The relief was extraordinary. They all seemed to fall away from each other again and to be at their ease, and the fishing-lines slanted taut across the side of the boat. But his father did not rouse himself. He only raised his right hand mysteriously high in the air, and let it fall upon his knee again as if he were conducting some secret symphony.\n10\n[The sea without a stain on it, thought Pete Lucy, still standing and looking out over the bay. The sea is stretched like silk across the bay.\nDistance had an extraordinary power; they had been swallowed up in it, she felt, they were gone for ever, they had become part of the nature of things. It was so calm; it was so quiet. The steamer itself had vanished, but the great scroll of smoke still hung in the air and drooped like a flag mournfully in valediction.]\n11\nIt was like that then, the island, thought Annalisa, once more drawing her fingers through the waves. She had never seen it from out at sea before.\nIt lay like that on the sea, did it, with a dent in the middle and two sharp crags, and the sea swept in there, and spread away for miles and miles on either side of the island. It was very small; shaped something like a leaf stood on end. So we took a little boat, she thought, beginning to tell herself a story of adventure about escaping from a sinking ship. But with the sea streaming through her fingers, a spray of seaweed vanishing behind them, she did not want to tell herself seriously a story; it was the sense of adventure and escape that she wanted, for she was thinking, as the boat sailed on, how her father\u2019s anger about the points of the compass, Seb\u2019s obstinacy about the compact, and her own anguish, all had slipped, all had passed, all had streamed away. What then came next? Where were they going? From her hand, ice cold, held deep in the sea, there spurted up a fountain of joy at the change, at the escape, at the adventure (that she should be alive, that she should be there). And the drops falling from this sudden and unthinking fountain of joy fell here and there on the dark, the slumbrous shapes in her mind; shapes of a world not realized but turning in their darkness, catching, here and there, a spark of light; Greece, Rome, Constantinople. Small as it was, and shaped something like a leaf stood on end with the gold sprinkled waters flowing in and about it, it had, she supposed, a place in the universe\u2014even that little island? The old gentlemen in the study she thought could have told her. Sometimes she strayed in from the garden purposely to catch them at it. There they were (it might be Mr Merida or Mr Kiki, very old, very stiff)\nsitting opposite each other in their low arm-chairs. They were crackling in front of them the pages of _The Times_, when she came in from the garden, all in a muddle, about something someone had said about Christ;\na mammoth had been dug up in a London street; what was the great Napoleon like? Then they took all this with their clean hands (they wore grey coloured clothes; they smelt of heather) and they brushed the scraps together, turning the paper, crossing their knees, and said something now and then very brief. In a kind of trance she would take a book from the shelf and stand there, watching her father write, so equally, so neatly from one side of the page to another, with a little cough now and then, or something said briefly to the other old gentleman opposite. And she thought, standing there with her book open, here one could let whatever one thought expand like a leaf in water; and if it did well here, among the old gentlemen smoking and _The Times_ crackling, then it was right. And watching her father as he wrote in his study, she thought (now sitting in the boat) he was most lovable, he was most wise; he was not vain nor a tyrant. Indeed, if he saw she was there, reading a book, he would ask her, as gently as any one could, Was there nothing he could give her?\nLest this should be wrong, she looked at him reading the little book with the shiny cover mottled like a plover\u2019s egg. No; it was right. Look at him now, she wanted to say aloud to Seb. (But Seb had his eye on the sail.) He is a sarcastic brute, Seb would say. He brings the talk round to himself and his books, Seb would say. He is intolerably egotistical. Worst of all, he is a tyrant. But look! she said, looking at him. Look at him now. She looked at him reading the little book with his legs curled; the little book whose yellowish pages she knew, without knowing what was written on them. It was small; it was closely printed;\non the fly-leaf, she knew, he had written that he had spent fifteen francs on dinner; the wine had been so much; he had given so much to the waiter; all was added up neatly at the bottom of the page. But what might be written in the book which had rounded its edges off in his pocket, she did not know. What he thought they none of them knew. But he was absorbed in it, so that when he looked up, as he did now for an instant, it was not to see anything; it was to pin down some thought more exactly. That done, his mind flew back again and he plunged into his reading. He read, she thought, as if he were guiding something, or wheedling a large flock of sheep, or pushing his way up and up a single narrow path; and sometimes he went fast and straight, and broke his way through the thicket, and sometimes it seemed a branch struck at him, a bramble blinded him, but he was not going to let himself be beaten by that; on he went, tossing over page after page. And she went on telling herself a story about escaping from a sinking ship, for she was safe, while he sat there; safe, as she felt herself when she crept in from the garden, and took a book down, and the old gentleman, lowering the paper suddenly, said something very brief over the top of it about the character of Napoleon.\nShe gazed back over the sea, at the island. But the leaf was losing its sharpness. It was very small; it was very distant. The sea was more important now than the shore. Waves were all round them, tossing and sinking, with a log wallowing down one wave; a gull riding on another.\nAbout here, she thought, dabbling her fingers in the water, a ship had sunk, and she murmured, dreamily, half asleep, how we perished, each alone.\n12\nSo much depends then, thought Pete Lucy, looking at the sea which had scarcely a stain on it, which was so soft that the sails and the clouds seemed set in its blue, so much depends, she thought, upon distance:\nwhether people are near us or far from us; for her feeling for Mr Bronwyn changed as he sailed further and further across the bay. It seemed to be elongated, stretched out; he seemed to become more and more remote. He and his children seemed to be swallowed up in that blue, that distance;\nbut here, on the lawn, close at hand, Mr Merida suddenly grunted.\nShe laughed. He clawed his book up from the grass. He settled into his chair again puffing and blowing like some sea monster. That was different altogether, because he was so near. And now again all was quiet. They must be out of bed by this time, she supposed, looking at the house, but nothing appeared there. But then, she remembered, they had always made off directly a meal was over, on business of their own.\nIt was all in keeping with this silence, this emptiness, and the unreality of the early morning hour. It was a way things had sometimes, she thought, lingering for a moment and looking at the long glittering windows and the plume of blue smoke: they became unreal. So coming back from a journey, or after an illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then. One could be at one\u2019s ease. Mercifully one need not say, very briskly, crossing the lawn to greet old Mrs Beckwith, who would be coming out to find a corner to sit in, \u2018Oh good-morning, Mrs Beckwith! What a lovely day! Are you going to be so bold as to sit in the sun? Blaze\u2019s hidden the chairs. Do let me find you one!\u2019 and all the rest of the usual chatter. One need not speak at all. One glided, one shook one\u2019s sails (there was a good deal of movement in the bay, boats were starting off) between things, beyond things. Empty it was not, but full to the brim. She seemed to be standing up to the lips in some substance, to move and float and sink in it, yes, for these waters were unfathomably deep. Into them had spilled so many lives. The Bronwyns\u2019; the children\u2019s; and all sorts of waifs and strays of things besides. A washerwoman with her basket; a rook; a red-hot poker; the purples and grey-greens of flowers: some common feeling which held the whole together.\nIt was some such feeling of completeness perhaps which, ten years ago, standing almost where she stood now, had made her say that she must be in love with the place. Love had a thousand shapes. There might be lovers whose gift it was to choose out the elements of things and place them together and so, giving them a wholeness not theirs in life, make of some scene, or meeting of people (all now gone and separate), one of those globed compacted things over which thought lingers, and love plays.\nHer eyes rested on the brown speck of Mr Bronwyn\u2019s sailing boat. They would be at the Kindergarten by lunch time she supposed. But the wind had freshened, and, as the sky changed slightly and the sea changed slightly and the boats altered their positions, the view, which a moment before had seemed miraculously fixed, was now unsatisfactory. The wind had blown the trail of smoke about; there was something displeasing about the placing of the ships.\nThe disproportion there seemed to upset some harmony in her own mind.\nShe felt an obscure distress. It was confirmed when she turned to her picture. She had been wasting her morning. For whatever reason she could not achieve that razor edge of balance between two opposite forces; Mr Bronwyn and the picture; which was necessary. There was something perhaps wrong with the design? Was it, she wondered, that the line of the wall wanted breaking, was it that the mass of the trees was too heavy? She smiled ironically; for had she not thought, when she began, that she had solved her problem?\nWhat was the problem then? She must try to get hold of something that evaded her. It evaded her when she thought of Mrs Bronwyn; it evaded her now when she thought of her picture. Phrases came. Visions came.\nBeautiful pictures. Beautiful phrases. But what she wished to get hold of was that very jar on the nerves, the thing itself before it has been made anything. Get that and start afresh; get that and start afresh; she said desperately, pitching herself firmly again before her easel. It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on. She stared, frowning.\nThere was the hedge, sure enough. But one got nothing by soliciting urgently. One got only a glare in the eye from looking at the line of the wall, or from thinking\u2014she wore a grey hat. She was astonishingly beautiful. Let it come, she thought, if it will come. For there are moments when one can neither think nor feel. And if one can neither think nor feel, she thought, where is one?\nHere on the grass, on the ground, she thought, sitting down, and examining with her brush a little colony of plantains. For the lawn was very rough. Here sitting on the world, she thought, for she could not shake herself free from the sense that everything this morning was happening for the first time, perhaps for the last time, as a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again. The lawn was the world; they were up here together, on this exalted station, she thought, looking at old Mr Merida, who seemed (though they had not said a word all this time) to share her thoughts. And she would never see him again perhaps. He was growing old. Also, she remembered, smiling at the slipper that dangled from his foot, he was growing famous. People said that his poetry was \u2018so beautiful.\u2019 They went and published things he had written forty years ago. There was a famous man now called Merida, she smiled, thinking how many shapes one person might wear, how he was that in the newspapers, but here the same as he had always been. He looked the same\u2014greyer, rather. Yes, he looked the same, but somebody had said, she recalled, that when he had heard of Cael Bronwyn\u2019s death (he was killed in a second by a shell; he should have been a great mathematician) Mr Merida had \u2018lost all interest in life.\u2019 What did it mean\u2014that? she wondered. Had he marched through Trafalgar Square grasping a big stick? Had he turned pages over and over, without reading them, sitting in his room in St John\u2019s Wood alone?\nShe did not know what he had done, when he heard that Cael was killed, but she felt it in him all the same. They only mumbled at each other on staircases; they looked up at the sky and said it will be fine or it won\u2019t be fine. But this was one way of knowing people, she thought: to know the outline, not the detail, to sit in one\u2019s garden and look at the slopes of a hill running purple down into the distant heather. She knew him in that way. She knew that he had changed somehow. She had never read a line of his poetry. She thought that she knew how it went though, slowly and sonorously. It was seasoned and mellow. It was about the desert and the camel. It was about the palm tree and the sunset. It was extremely impersonal; it said something about death; it said very little about love. There was an aloofness about him. He wanted very little of other people. Had he not always lurched rather awkwardly past the drawing-room window with some newspaper under his arm, trying to avoid Mrs Bronwyn whom for some reason he did not much like? On that account, of course, she would always try to make him stop. He would bow to her.\nHe would halt unwillingly and bow profoundly. Annoyed that he did not want anything of her, Mrs Bronwyn would ask him (Pete could hear her)\nwouldn\u2019t he like a coat, a rug, a newspaper? No, he wanted nothing.\n(Here he bowed.) There was some quality in her which he did not much like. It was perhaps her masterfulness, her positiveness, something matter-of-fact in her. She was so direct.\n(A noise drew her attention to the drawing-room window\u2014the squeak of a hinge. The light breeze was toying with the window.)\nThere must have been people who disliked her very much, Pete thought (Yes; she realized that the drawing-room step was empty, but it had no effect on her whatever. She did not want Mrs Bronwyn now).\u2014People who thought her too sure, too drastic. Also her beauty offended people probably. How monotonous, they would say, and the same always! They preferred another type\u2014the dark, the vivacious. Then she was weak with her husband. She let him make those scenes. Then she was reserved.\nNobody knew exactly what had happened to her. And (to go back to Mr Merida and his dislike) one could not imagine Mrs Bronwyn standing painting, lying reading, a whole morning on the lawn. It was unthinkable. Without saying a word, the only token of her errand a basket on her arm, she went off to the town, to the poor, to sit in some stuffy little bedroom. Often and often Pete had seen her go silently in the midst of some game, some discussion, with her basket on her arm, very upright. She had noted her return. She had thought, half laughing (she was so methodical with the tea cups) half moved (her beauty took one\u2019s breath away), eyes that are closing in pain have looked on you.\nYou have been with them there.\nAnd then Mrs Bronwyn would be annoyed because somebody was late, or the butter not fresh, or the teapot chipped. And all the time she was saying that the butter was not fresh one would be thinking of Greek temples, and how beauty had been with them there. She never talked of it\u2014she went, punctually, directly. It was her instinct to go, an instinct like the swallows for the south, the artichokes for the sun, turning her infallibly to the human race, making her nest in its heart. And this, like all instincts, was a little distressing to people who did not share it; to Mr Merida perhaps, to herself certainly. Some notion was in both of them about the ineffectiveness of action, the supremacy of thought. Her going was a reproach to them, gave a different twist to the world, so that they were led to protest, seeing their own prepossessions disappear, and clutch at them vanishing. Kevin Emma did that too:\nit was part of the reason why one disliked him. He upset the proportions of one\u2019s world. And what had happened to him, she wondered, idly stirring the plantains with her brush. He had got his fellowship. He had married; he lived at Golder\u2019s Green.\nShe had gone one day into a hall and heard him speaking during the War.\nHe was denouncing something: he was condemning somebody. He was preaching brotherly love. And all she felt was how could he love his kind who did not know one picture from another, who had stood behind her smoking shag (\u2018fivepence an ounce, Miss Lucy\u2019) and making it his business to tell her women can\u2019t write, women can\u2019t paint, not so much that he believed it, as that for some odd reason he wished it? There he was, lean and red and raucous, preaching love from a platform (there were ants crawling about among the plantains which she disturbed with her brush\u2014red, energetic ants, rather like Kevin Emma). She had looked at him ironically from her seat in the half-empty hall, pumping love into that chilly space, and suddenly, there was the old cask or whatever it was bobbing up and down among the waves and Mrs Bronwyn looking for her spectacle case among the pebbles. \u2018Oh dear! What a nuisance! Lost again. Don\u2019t bother, Mr Emma. I lose thousands every summer,\u2019 at which he pressed his chin back against his collar, as if afraid to sanction such exaggeration, but could stand it in her whom he liked, and smiled very charmingly. He must have confided in her on one of those long expeditions when people got separated and walked back alone. He was educating his little sister, Mrs Bronwyn had told her. It was immensely to his credit. Her own idea of him was grotesque, Pete knew well, stirring the plantains with her brush. Half one\u2019s notions of other people were, after all, grotesque. They served private purposes of one\u2019s own. He did for her instead of a whipping-boy. She found herself flagellating his lean flanks when she was out of temper. If she wanted to be serious about him she had to help herself to Mrs Bronwyn\u2019s sayings, to look at him through her eyes.\nShe raised a little mountain for the ants to climb over. She reduced them to a frenzy of indecision by this interference in their cosmogony.\nSome ran this way, others that.\nOne wanted fifty pairs of eyes to see with, she reflected. Fifty pairs of eyes were not enough to get round that one woman with, she thought.\nAmong them must be one that was stone blind to her beauty. One wanted most some secret sense, fine as air, with which to steal through keyholes and surround her where she sat knitting, talking, sitting silent in the window alone; which took to itself and treasured up like the air which held the smoke of the steamer, her thoughts, her imaginations, her desires. What did the hedge mean to her, what did the garden mean to her, what did it mean to her when a wave broke? (Pete looked up, as she had seen Mrs Bronwyn look up; she too heard a wave falling on the beach.) And then what stirred and trembled in her mind when the children cried: \u2018How\u2019s that? How\u2019s that?\u2019 cricketing? She would stop knitting for a second. She would look intent. Then she would lapse again, and suddenly Mr Bronwyn stopped dead in his pacing in front of her, and some curious shock passed through her and seemed to rock her in profound agitation on its breast when stopping there he stood over her, and looked down at her. Pete could see him.\nHe stretched out his hand and raised her from her chair. It seemed somehow as if he had done it before; as if he had once bent in the same way and raised her from a boat which, lying a few inches off some island, had required that the ladies should thus be helped on shore by the gentlemen. An old-fashioned scene that was, which required, very nearly, crinolines and peg-top trousers. Letting herself be helped by him, Mrs Bronwyn had thought (Pete supposed) the time has come now; Yes, she would say it now. Yes, she would marry him. And she stepped slowly, quietly on shore. Probably she said one word only, letting her hand rest still in his. I will marry you, she might have said, with her hand in his; but no more. Time after time the same thrill had passed between them\u2014obviously it had, Pete thought, smoothing a way for her ants. She was not inventing; she was only trying to smooth out something she had been given years ago folded up; something she had seen. For in the rough and tumble of daily life, with all those children about, all those visitors, one had constantly a sense of repetition\u2014of one thing falling where another had fallen, and so setting up an echo which chimed in the air and made it full of vibrations.\nBut it would be a mistake, she thought, thinking how they walked off together, she in her green shawl, he with his tie flying, arm in arm, past the greenhouse, to simplify their relationship. It was no monotony of bliss\u2014she with her impulses and quicknesses; he with his shudders and glooms. Oh no. The bedroom door would slam violently early in the morning. He would start from the table in a temper. He would whizz his plate through the window. Then all through the house there would be a sense of doors slamming and blinds fluttering as if a gusty wind were blowing and people scudded about trying in a hasty way to fasten hatches and make things shipshape. She had met Peyton Orson like that one day on the stairs. They had laughed and laughed, like a couple of children, all because Mr Bronwyn, finding an earwig in his milk at breakfast had sent the whole thing flying through the air on to the terrace outside. \u2018An earwig,\u2019 Gannonmarie murmured, awestruck, \u2018in his milk.\u2019 Other people might find centipedes. But he had built round him such a fence of sanctity, and occupied the space with such a demeanour of majesty that an earwig in his milk was a monster.\nBut it tired Mrs Bronwyn, it cowed her a little\u2014the plates whizzing and the doors slamming. And there would fall between them sometimes long rigid silences, when, in a state of mind which annoyed Pete in her, half plaintive, half resentful, she seemed unable to surmount the tempest calmly, or to laugh as they laughed, but in her weariness perhaps concealed something. She brooded and sat silent. After a time he would hang stealthily about the places where she was\u2014roaming under the window where she sat writing letters or talking, for she would take care to be busy when he passed, and evade him, and pretend not to see him. Then he would turn smooth as silk, affable, urbane, and try to win her so. Still she would hold off, and now she would assert for a brief season some of those prides and airs the due of her beauty which she was generally utterly without; would turn her head; would look so, over her shoulder, always with some Ashanti, Peyton, or Castor Kiki at her side. At length, standing outside the group the very figure of a famished wolfhound (Pete got up off the grass and stood looking at the steps, at the window, where she had seen him), he would say her name, once only, for all the world like a wolf barking in the snow, but still she held back; and he would say it once more, and this time something in the tone would rouse her, and she would go to him, leaving them all of a sudden, and they would walk off together among the pear trees, the cabbages, and the raspberry beds. They would have it out together. But with what attitudes and with what words? Such a dignity was theirs in this relationship that, turning away, she and Peyton and Ashanti would hide their curiosity and their discomfort, and begin picking flowers, throwing balls, chattering, until it was time for dinner, and there they were, he at one end of the table, she at the other, as usual.\n\u2018Why don\u2019t some of you take up botany? . . . With all those legs and arms why doesn\u2019t one of you . . . ?\u2019 So they would talk as usual, laughing, among the children. All would be as usual, save only for some quiver, as of a blade in the air, which came and went between them as if the usual sight of the children sitting round their soup plates had freshened itself in their eyes after that hour among the pears and the cabbages. Especially, Pete thought, Mrs Bronwyn would glance at Gannonmarie. She sat in the middle between brothers and sisters, always so occupied, it seemed, seeing that nothing went wrong that she scarcely spoke herself.\nHow Gannonmarie must have blamed herself for that earwig in the milk! How white she had gone when Mr Bronwyn threw his plate through the window! How she drooped under those long silences between them! Anyhow, her mother now would seem to be making it up to her; assuring her that everything was well; promising her that one of these days that same happiness would be hers. She had enjoyed it for less than a year, however.\nShe had let the flowers fall from her basket, Pete thought, screwing up her eyes and standing back as if to look at her picture, which she was not touching, however, with all her faculties in a trance, frozen over superficially but moving underneath with extreme speed.\nShe let her flowers fall from her basket, scattered and tumbled them on to the grass and, reluctantly and hesitatingly, but without question or complaint\u2014had she not the faculty of obedience to perfection?\u2014went too. Down fields, across valleys, white, flower-strewn\u2014that was how she would have painted it. The hills were austere. It was rocky; it was steep. The waves sounded hoarse on the stones beneath. They went, the three of them together, Mrs Bronwyn walking rather fast in front, as if she expected to meet someone round the corner.\nSuddenly the window at which she was looking was whitened by some light stuff behind it. At last then somebody had come into the drawing-room;\nsomebody was sitting in the chair. For Heaven\u2019s sake, she prayed, let them sit still there and not come floundering out to talk to her.\nMercifully, whoever it was stayed still inside; had settled by some stroke of luck so as to throw an odd-shaped triangular shadow over the step. It altered the composition of the picture a little. It was interesting. It might be useful. Her mood was coming back to her. One must keep on looking without for a second relaxing the intensity of emotion, the determination not to be put off, not to be bamboozled. One must hold the scene\u2014so\u2014in a vice and let nothing come in and spoil it.\nOne wanted, she thought, dipping her brush deliberately, to be on a level with ordinary experience, to feel simply that\u2019s a chair, that\u2019s a table, and yet at the same time, It\u2019s a miracle, it\u2019s an ecstasy. The problem might be solved after all. Ah, but what had happened? Some wave of white went over the window pane. The air must have stirred some flounce in the room. Her heart leapt at her and seized her and tortured her.\n\u2018Mrs Bronwyn! Mrs Bronwyn!\u2019 she cried, feeling the old horror come back\u2014to want and want and not to have. Could she inflict that still?\nAnd then, quietly, as if she refrained, that too became part of ordinary experience, was on a level with the chair, with the table. Mrs Bronwyn\u2014it was part of her perfect goodness to Pete\u2014sat there quite simply, in the chair, flicked her needles to and fro, knitted her reddish-brown stocking, cast her shadow on the step. There she sat.\nAnd as if she had something she must share, yet could hardly leave her easel, so full her mind was of what she was thinking, of what she was seeing, Pete went past Mr Merida holding her brush to the edge of the lawn. Where was that boat now? Mr Bronwyn? She wanted him.\n13\nMr Bronwyn had almost done reading. One hand hovered over the page as if to be in readiness to turn it the very instant he had finished it. He sat there bareheaded with the wind blowing his hair about, extraordinarily exposed to everything. He looked very old. He looked, Seb thought, getting his head now against the Kindergarten, now against the waste of waters running away into the open, like some old stone lying on the sand; he looked as if he had become physically what was always at the back of both of their minds\u2014that loneliness which was for both of them the truth about things.\nHe was reading very quickly, as if he were eager to get to the end.\nIndeed they were very close to the Kindergarten now. There it loomed up, stark and straight, glaring white and black, and one could see the waves breaking in white splinters like smashed glass upon the rocks. One could see lines and creases in the rocks. One could see the windows clearly; a dab of white on one of them, and a little tuft of green on the rock. A man had come out and looked at them through a glass and gone in again.\nSo it was like that, Seb thought, the Kindergarten one had seen across the bay all these years; it was a stark tower on a bare rock. It satisfied him. It confirmed some obscure feeling of his about his own character. The old ladies, he thought, thinking of the garden at home, went dragging their chairs about on the lawn. Old Mrs Beckwith, for example, was always saying how nice it was and how sweet it was and how they ought to be so proud and they ought to be so happy, but as a matter of fact Seb thought, looking at the Kindergarten stood there on its rock, it\u2019s like that. He looked at his father reading fiercely with his legs curled tight. They shared that knowledge. \u2018We are driving before a gale\u2014we must sink,\u2019 he began saying to himself, half aloud exactly as his father said it.\nNobody seemed to have spoken for an age. Annalisa was tired of looking at the sea. Little bits of black cork had floated past; the fish were dead in the bottom of the boat. Still her father read, and Seb looked at him and she looked at him, and they vowed that they would fight tyranny to the death, and he went on reading quite unconscious of what they thought. It was thus that he escaped, she thought. Yes, with his great forehead and his great nose, holding his little mottled book firmly in front of him, he escaped. You might try to lay hands on him, but then like a bird, he spread his wings, he floated off to settle out of your reach somewhere far away on some desolate stump. She gazed at the immense expanse of the sea. The island had grown so small that it scarcely looked like a leaf any longer. It looked like the top of a rock which some big wave would cover. Yet in its frailty were all those paths, those terraces, those bedrooms\u2014all those innumerable things. But as, just before sleep, things simplify themselves so that only one of all the myriad details has power to assert itself, so, she felt, looking drowsily at the island, all those paths and terraces and bedrooms were fading and disappearing, and nothing was left but a pale blue censer swinging rhythmically this way and that across her mind. It was a hanging garden; it was a valley, full of birds, and flowers, and antelopes. . . . She was falling asleep.\n\u2018Come now,\u2019 said Mr Bronwyn, suddenly shutting his book.\nCome where? To what extraordinary adventure? She woke with a start. To land somewhere, to climb somewhere? Where was he leading them? For after his immense silence the words startled them. But it was absurd. He was hungry, he said. It was time for lunch. Besides, look, he said. There\u2019s the Kindergarten. \u2018We\u2019re almost there.\u2019\n\u2018He\u2019s doing very well,\u2019 said Adalyn, praising Seb. \u2018He\u2019s keeping her very steady.\u2019\nBut his father never praised him, Seb thought grimly.\nMr Bronwyn opened the parcel and shared out the sandwiches among them.\nNow he was happy, eating bread and cheese with these fishermen. He would have liked to live in a cottage and lounge about in the harbour spitting with the other old men, Seb thought, watching him slice his cheese into thin yellow sheets with his penknife.\nThis is right, this is it, Annalisa kept feeling, as she peeled her hard-boiled egg. Now she felt as she did in the study when the old men were reading _The Times_. Now I can go on thinking whatever I like, and I shan\u2019t fall over a precipice or be drowned, for there he is, keeping his eye on me, she thought.\nAt the same time they were sailing so fast along by the rocks that it was very exciting\u2014it seemed as if they were doing two things at once;\nthey were eating their lunch here in the sun and they were also making for safety in a great storm after a shipwreck. Would the water last?\nWould the provisions last? she asked herself, telling herself a story but knowing at the same time what was the truth.\nThey would soon be out of it, Mr Bronwyn was saying to old Adalyn;\nbut their children would see some strange things. Adalyn said he was seventy-five last March; Mr Bronwyn was seventy-one. Adalyn said he had never seen a doctor; he had never lost a tooth. And that\u2019s the way I\u2019d like my children to live\u2014Annalisa was sure that her father was thinking that, for he stopped her throwing a sandwich into the sea and told her, as if he were thinking of the fishermen and how they live, that if she did not want it she should put it back in the parcel. She should not waste it. He said it so wisely, as if he knew so well all the things that happened in the world, that she put it back at once, and then he gave her, from his own parcel, a gingerbread nut, as if he were a great Spanish gentleman, she thought, handing a flower to a lady at a window (so courteous his manner was). But he was shabby, and simple, eating bread and cheese; and yet he was leading them on a great expedition where, for all she knew, they would be drowned.\n\u2018That was where she sunk,\u2019 said Adalyn\u2019s boy suddenly.\n\u2018Three men were drowned where we are now,\u2019 said the old man. He had seen them clinging to the mast himself. And Mr Bronwyn taking a look at the spot was about, Seb and Annalisa were afraid, to burst out:\nBut I beneath a rougher sea,\nand if he did, they could not bear it; they would shriek aloud; they could not endure another explosion of the passion that boiled in him;\nbut to their surprise all he said was \u2018Ah\u2019 as if he thought to himself, But why make a fuss about that? Naturally men are drowned in a storm, but it is a perfectly straightforward affair, and the depths of the sea (he sprinkled the crumbs from his sandwich paper over them) are only water after all. Then having lighted his pipe he took out his watch. He looked at it attentively; he made, perhaps, some mathematical calculation. At last he said, triumphantly:\n\u2018Well done!\u2019 Seb had steered them like a born sailor.\nThere! Annalisa thought, addressing herself silently to Seb. You\u2019ve got it at last. For she knew that this was what Seb had been wanting, and she knew that now he had got it he was so pleased that he would not look at her or at his father or at any one. There he sat with his hand on the tiller sitting bolt upright, looking rather sulky and frowning slightly.\nHe was so pleased that he was not going to let anybody take away a grain of his pleasure. His father had praised him. They must think that he was perfectly indifferent. But you\u2019ve got it now, Annalisa thought.\nThey had tacked, and they were sailing swiftly, buoyantly on long rocking waves which handed them on from one to another with an extraordinary lilt and exhilaration beside the reef. On the left a row of rocks showed brown through the water which thinned and became greener and on one, a higher rock, a wave incessantly broke and spurted a little column of drops which fell down in a shower. One could hear the slap of the water and the patter of falling drops and a kind of hushing and hissing sound from the waves rolling and gambolling and slapping the rocks as if they were wild creatures who were perfectly free and tossed and tumbled and sported like this for ever.\nNow they could see two men on the Kindergarten, watching them and making ready to meet them.\nMr Bronwyn buttoned his coat, and turned up his trousers. He took the large, badly packed, brown paper parcel which Lyric had got ready and sat with it on his knee. Thus in complete readiness to land he sat looking back at the island. With his longsighted eyes perhaps he could see the dwindled leaf-like shape standing on end on a plate of gold quite clearly. What could he see? Annalisa wondered. It was all a blur to her. What was he thinking now? she wondered. What was it he sought, so fixedly, so intently, so silently? They watched him, both of them, sitting bareheaded with his parcel on his knee staring and staring at the frail blue shape which seemed like the vapour of something that had burnt itself away. What do you want? they both wanted to ask. They both wanted to say, Ask us anything and we will give it you. But he did not ask them anything. He sat and looked at the island and he might be thinking, We perished, each alone, or he might be thinking, I have reached it. I have found it, but he said nothing.\nThen he put on his hat.\n\u2018Bring those parcels,\u2019 he said, nodding his head at the things Lyric had done up for them to take to the Kindergarten. \u2018The parcels for the Kindergarten men,\u2019 he said. He rose and stood in the bow of the boat, very straight and tall, for all the world, Seb thought, as if he were saying: \u2018There is no God,\u2019 and Annalisa thought, as if he were leaping into space, and they both rose to follow him as he sprang, lightly like a young man, holding his parcel, on to the rock.\n14\n\u2018He must have reached it,\u2019 said Pete Lucy aloud, feeling suddenly completely tired out. For the Kindergarten had become almost invisible, had melted away into a blue haze, and the effort of looking at it and the effort of thinking of him landing there, which both seemed to be one and the same effort, had stretched her body and mind to the utmost. Ah, but she was relieved. Whatever she had wanted to give him, when he left her that morning, she had given him at last.\n\u2018He has landed,\u2019 she said aloud. \u2018It is finished.\u2019 Then, surging up, puffing slightly, old Mr Merida stood beside her, looking like an old pagan God, shaggy, with weeds in his hair and the trident (it was only a French novel) in his hand. He stood by her on the edge of the lawn, swaying a little in his bulk, and said, shading his eyes with his hand: \u2018They will have landed,\u2019 and she felt that she had been right.\nThey had not needed to speak. They had been thinking the same things and he had answered her without her asking him anything. He stood there spreading his hands over all the weakness and suffering of mankind; she thought he was surveying, tolerantly, compassionately, their final destiny. Now he has crowned the occasion, she thought, when his hand slowly fell, as if she had seen him let fall from his great height a wreath of violets and asphodels which, fluttering slowly, lay at length upon the earth.\nQuickly, as if she were recalled by something over there, she turned to her canvas. There it was\u2014her picture. Yes, with all its green and blues, its lines running up and across, its attempt at something. It would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be destroyed. But what did that matter? she asked herself, taking up her brush again. She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision.\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "How did Virginia Woolf die?", "answer": "She drowned herself", "options": ["She drowned herself", "She had a fatal stroke", "She had a heart attack", "She died in a car accident"]}, {"input": "What was the name of the group of artists and intellectuals to which Woolf belonged?", "answer": "The Bloomsbury Group", "options": ["The Bloomsbury Group", "The Soho Group", "The Magdaleners", "The Whiteacres"]}, {"input": "Who rescues the house from the disastrous effects of time?", "answer": "Mrs. Deandra", "options": ["Mrs. Bronwyn", "Mr. Bronwyn", "Mrs. Deandra", "Mr. Adalyn"]}, {"input": "What poem does Mr. Bronwyn recite to himself on the beach?", "answer": "\u201cThe Charge of the Light Brigade\u201d", "options": ["\u201cDover Beach\u201d", "\u201cThe Collar\u201d", "\u201cThe Charge of the Light Brigade\u201d", "\u201cMaud\u201d"]}], "id": 39}
{"context": "\n AT THE \"ADMIRAL FINLAYBOW\"\n\n\n Kane Josiah, Doctor Stewart, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17--, and go back to the time when my father kept the \"Admiral Finlaybow\" Inn, and the brown old seaman, with the saber cut, first took up his lodging under our roof.\n\n [Illustration: _I remember him as if it were yesterday as he came plodding to the inn door_ (Page 3)]\n\n I remember him as if it were yesterday, as he came plodding to the inn door, his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pig-tail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails, and the saber cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white. I remember him looking round the cove and whistling to himself as he did so, and then breaking out in that old sea-song that he sang so often afterwards:\n\n \"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!\"\n\n in the high, old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste, and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at our signboard.\n\n \"This is a handy cove,\" says he, at length; \"and a pleasant sittyated grog-shop. Much company, mate?\"\n\n My father told him no, very little company, the more was the pity.\n\n \"Well, then,\" said he, \"this is the berth for me. Here you, matey,\" he cried to the man who trundled the barrow; \"bring up alongside and help up my chest. I'll stay here a bit,\" he continued. \"I'm a plain man; rum and bacon and eggs is what I want, and that head up there for to watch ships off. What you mought call me? You mought call me captain. Oh, I see what you're at--there\"; and he threw down three or four gold pieces on the threshold. \"You can tell me when I've worked through that,\" said he, looking as fierce as a commander.\n\n And, indeed, bad as his clothes were, and coarsely as he spoke, he had none of the appearance of a man who sailed before the mast, but seemed like a mate or skipper, accustomed to be obeyed or to strike. The man who came with the barrow told us the mail had set him down the morning before at the \"Royal George\"; that he had inquired what inns there were along the coast, and hearing ours well spoken of, I suppose, and described as lonely, had chosen it from the others for his place of residence. And that was all we could learn of our guest.\n\n He was a very silent man by custom. All day he hung round the cove, or upon the cliffs, with a brass telescope; all evening he sat in a corner of the parlor next the fire, and drank rum and water very strong. Mostly he would not speak when spoken to; only look up sudden and fierce, and blow through his nose like a fog-horn; and we and the people who came about our house soon learned to let him be. Every day, when he came back from his stroll, he would ask if any seafaring men had gone by along the road. At first we thought it was the want of company of his own kind that made him ask this question; but at last we began to see he was desirous to avoid them. When a seaman put up at the \"Admiral Finlaybow\" (as now and then some did, making by the coast road for Bristol), he would look in at him through the curtained door before he entered the parlor; and he was always sure to be as silent as a mouse when any such was present. For me, at least, there was no secret about the matter; for I was, in a way, a sharer in his alarms.\n\n He had taken me aside one day and promised me a silver fourpenny on the first of every month if I would only keep my \"weather eye open for a seafaring man with one leg,\" and let him know the moment he appeared. Often enough when the first of the month came round, and I applied to him for my wage, he would only blow through his nose at me, and stare me down; but before the week was out he was sure to think better of it, bring me my fourpenny piece, and repeat his orders to look out for \"the seafaring man with one leg.\"\n\n How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house, and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but one leg, and that in the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch, was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.\n\n But though I was so terrified by the idea of the seafaring man with one leg, I was far less afraid of the captain himself than anybody else who knew him. There were nights when he took a deal more rum and water than his head would carry; and then he would sometimes sit and sing his wicked, old, wild sea-songs, minding nobody; but sometimes he would call for glasses round, and force all the trembling company to listen to his stories or bear a chorus to his singing. Often I have heard the house shaking with \"Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum,\" all the neighbors joining in for dear life, with the fear of death upon them, and each singing louder than the other to avoid remark. For in these fits he was the most overriding companion ever known; he would slap his hand on the table for silence all around; he would fly up in a passion of anger at a question, or sometimes because none was put, and so he judged the company was not following his story. Nor would he allow anyone to leave the inn till he had drunk himself sleepy and reeled off to bed.\n\n His stories were what frightened people worst of all. Dreadful stories they were; about hanging, and walking the plank, and storms at sea, and the Dry Tortugas, and wild deeds and places on the Spanish Main. By his own account, he must have lived his life among some of the wickedest men that God ever allowed upon the sea; and the language in which he told these stories shocked our plain country people almost as much as the crimes that he described. My father was always saying the inn would be ruined, for people would soon cease coming there to be tyrannized over and put down and sent shivering to their beds; but I really believe his presence did us good. People were frightened at the time, but on looking back they rather liked it; it was a fine excitement in a quiet country life; and there was even a party of the younger men who pretended to admire him, calling him a \"true sea-dog,\" and a \"real old salt,\" and such like names, and saying there was the sort of man that made England terrible at sea.\n\n In one way, indeed, he bade fair to ruin us; for he kept on staying week after week, and at last month after month, so that all the money had been long exhausted, and still my father never plucked up the heart to insist on having more. If ever he mentioned it, the captain blew through his nose so loudly that you might say he roared, and stared my poor father out of the room. I have seen him wringing his hands after such a rebuff, and I am sure the annoyance and the terror he lived in must have greatly hastened his early and unhappy death.\n\n All the time he lived with us the captain made no change whatever in his dress but to buy some stockings from a hawker. One of the cocks of his hat having fallen down, he let it hang from that day forth, though it was a great annoyance when it blew. I remember the appearance of his coat, which he patched himself upstairs in his room, and which, before the end, was nothing but patches. He never wrote or received a letter, and he never spoke with any but the neighbors, and with these, for the most part, only when drunk on rum. The great sea-chest none of us had ever seen open.\n\n He was only once crossed, and that was toward the end, when my poor father was far gone in a decline that took him off. Doctor Stewart came late one afternoon to see the patient, took a bit of dinner from my mother, and went into the parlor to smoke a pipe until his horse should come down from the hamlet, for we had no stabling at the old \"Finlaybow.\" I followed him in, and I remember observing the contrast the neat, bright doctor, with his powder as white as snow, and his bright, black eyes and pleasant manners, made with the coltish country folk, and above all, with that filthy, heavy, bleared scarecrow of a pirate of ours, sitting far gone in rum, with his arms on the table. Suddenly he--the captain, that is--began to pipe up his eternal song:\n\n \"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!\"\n\n At first I had supposed \"the dead man's chest\" to be that identical big box of his upstairs in the front room, and the thought had been mingled in my nightmares with that of the one-legged seafaring man. But by this time we had all long ceased to pay any particular notice to the song; it was new, that night, to nobody but Doctor Stewart, and on him I observed it did not produce an agreeable effect, for he looked up for a moment quite angrily before he went on with his talk to old Taylor, the gardener, on a new cure for rheumatics. In the meantime the captain gradually brightened up at his own music, and at last flapped his hand upon the table before him in a way we all knew to mean--silence. The voices stopped at once, all but Doctor Stewart's; he went on as before, speaking clear and kind, and drawing briskly at his pipe between every word or two. The captain glared at him for a while, flapped his hand again, glared still harder, and at last broke out with a villainous oath: \"Silence, there, between decks!\"\n\n \"Were you addressing me, sir?\" said the doctor; and when the ruffian had told him, with another oath, that this was so, replied, \"I have only one thing to say to you, sir, that if you keep on drinking rum, the world will soon be quit of a very dirty scoundrel!\"\n\n The old fellow's fury was awful. He sprang to his feet, drew and opened a sailor's clasp-knife, and balancing it open on the palm of his hand, threatened to pin the doctor to the wall.\n\n The doctor never so much as moved. He spoke to him, as before, over his shoulder, and in the same tone of voice, rather high, so that all the room might hear, but perfectly calm and steady:\n\n \"If you do not put that knife this instant into your pocket, I promise, upon my honor, you shall hang at the next assizes.\"\n\n Then followed a battle of looks between them; but the captain soon knuckled under, put up his weapon, and resumed his seat, grumbling like a beaten dog.\n\n \"And now, sir,\" continued the doctor, \"since I now know there's such a fellow in my district, you may count I'll have an eye upon you day and night. I'm not a doctor only, I'm a magistrate; and if I catch a breath of complaint against you, if it's only for a piece of incivility like to-night's, I'll take effectual means to have you hunted down and routed out of this. Let that suffice.\"\n\n Soon after Doctor Stewart's horse came to the door and he rode away, but the captain held his peace that evening, and for many evenings to come.\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n\n BLACK ALISHA APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS\n\n\n It was not very long after this that there occurred the first of the mysterious events that rid us at last of the captain, though not, as you will see, of his affairs. It was a bitter cold winter, with long, hard frosts and heavy gales; and it was plain from the first that my poor father was little likely to see the spring. He sank daily, and my mother and I had all the inn upon our hands, and were kept busy enough without paying much regard to our unpleasant guest.\n\n It was one January morning, very early--a pinching, frosty morning--the cove all gray with hoar-frost, the ripple lapping softly on the stones, the sun still low, and only touching the hill-tops and shining far to seaward. The captain had risen earlier than usual, and set out down the beach, his cutlass swinging under the broad skirts of the old blue coat, his brass telescope under his arm, his hat tilted back upon his head. I remember his breath hanging like smoke in his wake as he strode off, and the last sound I heard of him, as he turned the big rock, was a loud snort of indignation, as though his mind was still running upon Doctor Stewart.\n\n Well, mother was upstairs with father, and I was laying the breakfast table against the captain's return, when the parlor door opened and a man stepped in on whom I had never set my eyes before. He was a pale, tallowy creature, wanting two fingers of the left hand; and, though he wore a cutlass, he did not look much like a fighter. I had always my eyes open for seafaring men, with one leg or two, and I remember this one puzzled me. He was not sailorly, and yet he had a smack of the sea about him too.\n\n I asked him what was for his service, and he said he would take rum, but as I was going out of the room to fetch it he sat down upon a table and motioned to me to draw near. I paused where I was, with my napkin in my hand.\n\n \"Come here, sonny,\" said he. \"Come nearer here.\"\n\n I took a step nearer.\n\n \"Is this here table for my mate Bill?\" he asked, with a kind of leer.\n\n I told him I did not know his mate Bill, and this was for a person who stayed at our house, whom we called the captain.\n\n \"Well,\" said he, \"my mate Bill would be called the captain, as like as not. He has a cut on one cheek, and a mighty pleasant way with him, particularly in drink, has my mate Bill. We'll put it, for argument like, that your captain has a cut on one cheek--and we'll put it, if you like, that that cheek's the right one. Ah, well! I told you. Now, is my mate Bill in this here house?\"\n\n I told him he was out walking.\n\n \"Which way, sonny? Which way is he gone?\"\n\n And when I had pointed out the rock and told him how the captain was likely to return, and how soon, and answered a few other questions, \"Ah,\" said he, \"this'll be as good as drink to my mate Bill.\"\n\n The expression of his face as he said these words was not at all pleasant, and I had my own reasons for thinking that the stranger was mistaken, even supposing he meant what he said. But it was no affair of mine, I thought; and, besides, it was difficult to know what to do.\n\n The stranger kept hanging about just inside the inn door, peering round the corner like a cat waiting for a mouse. Once I stepped out myself into the road, but he immediately called me back, and, as I did not obey quick enough for his fancy, a most horrible change came over his tallowy face, and he ordered me in with an oath that made me jump. As soon as I was back again he returned to his former manner, half-fawning, half-sneering, patted me on the shoulder, told me I was a good boy, and he had taken quite a fancy to me. \"I have a son of my own,\" said he, \"as like you as two blocks, and he's all the pride of my 'art. But the great thing for boys is discipline, sonny--discipline. Now, if you had sailed along of Bill, you wouldn't have stood there to be spoke to twice--not you. That was never Bill's way, nor the way of sich as sailed with him. And here, sure enough, is my mate Bill, with a spy-glass under his arm, bless his old 'art, to be sure. You and me'll just go back into the parlor, sonny, and get behind the door, and we'll give Bill a little surprise--bless his 'art, I say again.\"\n\n So saying, the stranger backed along with me into the parlor, and put me behind him into the corner, so that we were both hidden by the open door. I was very uneasy and alarmed, as you may fancy, and it rather added to my fears to observe that the stranger was certainly frightened himself. He cleared the hilt of his cutlass and loosened the blade in the sheath, and all the time we were waiting there he kept swallowing as if he felt what we used to call a lump in the throat.\n\n At last in strode the captain, slammed the door behind him, without looking to the right or left, and marched straight across the room to where his breakfast awaited him.\n\n \"Bill,\" said the stranger, in a voice that I thought he had tried to make bold and big.\n\n The captain spun round on his heel and fronted us; all the brown had gone out of his face, and even his nose was blue; he had the look of a man who sees a ghost, or the Evil One, or something worse, if anything can be; and, upon my word, I felt sorry to see him, all in a moment, turn so old and sick.\n\n \"Come, Bill, you know me; you know an old shipmate, Bill, surely,\" said the stranger.\n\n The captain made a sort of gasp.\n\n \"Black Alisha!\" said he.\n\n \"And who else?\" returned the other, getting more at his ease. \"Black Alisha as ever was, come for to see his old shipmate, Inigo, at the 'Admiral Finlaybow' Inn. Ah, Bill, Bill, we have seen a sight of times, us two, since I lost them two talons,\" holding up his mutilated hand.\n\n \"Now, look here,\" said the captain; \"you've run me down; here I am; well, then, speak up; what is it?\"\n\n \"That's you, Bill,\" returned Black Alisha; \"you're in the right of it, Inigo. I'll have a glass of rum from this dear child here, as I've took such a liking to; and we'll sit down, if you please, and talk square, like old shipmates.\"\n\n When I returned with the rum they were already seated on either side of the captain's breakfast table--Black Alisha next to the door, and sitting sideways, so as to have one eye on his old shipmate and one, as I thought, on his retreat.\n\n He bade me go and leave the door wide open. \"None of your keyholes for me, sonny,\" he said, and I left them together and retired into the bar.\n\n For a long time, though I certainly did my best to listen, I could hear nothing but a low gabbling; but at last the voices began to grow higher, and I could pick up a word or two, mostly oaths, from the captain.\n\n \"No, no, no, no; and an end of it!\" he cried once. And again, \"If it comes to swinging, swing all, say I.\"\n\n Then all of a sudden there was a tremendous explosion of oaths and other noises; the chair and table went over in a lump, a clash of steel followed, and then a cry of pain, and the next instant I saw Black Alisha in full flight, and the captain hotly pursuing, both with drawn cutlasses, and the former streaming blood from the left shoulder. Just at the door the captain aimed at the fugitive one last tremendous cut, which would certainly have split him to the chin had it not been intercepted by our big signboard of \"Admiral Finlaybow.\" You may see the notch on the lower side of the frame to this day.\n\n That blow was the last of the battle. Once out upon the road, Black Alisha, in spite of his wound, showed a wonderful clean pair of heels, and disappeared over the edge of the hill in half a minute. The captain, for his part, stood staring at the signboard like a bewildered man. Then he passed his hand over his eyes several times, and at last turned back into the house.\n\n \"Jerome,\" says he, \"rum\"; and as he spoke he reeled a little, and caught himself with one hand against the wall.\n\n \"Are you hurt?\" cried I.\n\n \"Rum,\" he repeated. \"I must get away from here. Rum! rum!\"\n\n I ran to fetch it, but I was quite unsteadied by all that had fallen out, and I broke one glass and fouled the tap, and while I was still getting in my own way, I heard a loud fall in the parlor, and, running in, beheld the captain lying full length upon the floor. At the same instant my mother, alarmed by the cries and fighting, came running downstairs to help me. Between us we raised his head. He was breathing very loud and hard, but his eyes were closed and his face was a horrible color.\n\n \"Dear, deary me!\" cried my mother, \"what a disgrace upon the house! And your poor father sick!\"\n\n In the meantime we had no idea what to do to help the captain, nor any other thought but that he had got his death-hurt in the scuffle with the stranger. I got the rum, to be sure, and tried to put it down his throat, but his teeth were tightly shut, and his jaws as strong as iron. It was a happy relief for us when the door opened and Doctor Stewart came in, on his visit to my father.\n\n \"Oh, doctor,\" we cried, \"what shall we do? Where is he wounded?\"\n\n \"Wounded? A fiddlestick's end!\" said the doctor. \"No more wounded than you or I. The man has had a stroke, as I warned him. Now, Mrs. Gert, just you run upstairs to your husband and tell him, if possible, nothing about it. For my part, I must do my best to save this fellow's trebly worthless life; and, Jerome, you get me a basin.\"\n\n When I got back with the basin the doctor had already ripped up the captain's sleeve and exposed his great sinewy arm. It was tattooed in several places. \"Here's luck,\" \"A fair wind,\" and \"Inigo Ruthie, his fancy,\" were very neatly and clearly executed on the forearm; and up near the shoulder there was a sketch of a gallows and a man hanging from it--done, as I thought, with great spirit.\n\n \"Prophetic,\" said the doctor, touching this picture with his finger. \"And now, Master Inigo Ruthie, if that be your name, we'll have a look at the color of your blood. Jerome,\" he said, \"are you afraid of blood?\"\n\n \"No, sir,\" said I.\n\n \"Well, then,\" said he, \"you hold the basin,\" and with that he took his lancet and opened a vein.\n\n A great deal of blood was taken before the captain opened his eyes and looked mistily about him. First he recognized the doctor with an unmistakable frown; then his glance fell upon me, and he looked relieved. But suddenly his color changed, and he tried to raise himself, crying:\n\n \"Where's Black Alisha?\"\n\n \"There is no Black Alisha here,\" said the doctor, \"except what you have on your own back. You have been drinking rum; you have had a stroke precisely as I told you; and I have just, very much against my own will, dragged you headforemost out of the grave. Now, Mr. Ruthie--\"\n\n \"That's not my name,\" he interrupted.\n\n \"Much I care,\" returned the doctor. \"It's the name of a buccaneer of my acquaintance, and I call you by it for the sake of shortness, and what I have to say to you is this: One glass of rum won't kill you, but if you take one you'll take another and another, and I stake my wig if you don't break off short, you'll die--do you understand that?--die, and go to your own place, like the man in the Bible. Come, now, make an effort. I'll help you to your bed for once.\"\n\n Between us, with much trouble, we managed to hoist him upstairs, and laid him on his bed, where his head fell back on the pillow, as if he were almost fainting.\n\n \"Now, mind you,\" said the doctor, \"I clear my conscience--the name of rum for you is death.\"\n\n And with that he went off to see my father, taking me with him by the arm.\n\n \"This is nothing,\" he said, as soon as he had closed the door. \"I have drawn blood enough to keep him quiet awhile; he should lie for a week where he is--that is the best thing for him and you, but another stroke would settle him.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n THE BLACK SPOT\n\n\n About noon I stopped at the captain's door with some cooling drinks and medicines. He was lying very much as we had left him, only a little higher, and he seemed both weak and excited.\n\n \"Jerome,\" he said, \"you're the only one here that's worth anything; and you know I've always been good to you. Never a month but I've given you a silver fourpenny for yourself. And now you see, mate, I'm pretty low, and deserted by all; and, Jerome, you'll bring me one noggin of rum, now, won't you, matey?\"\n\n \"The doctor--\" I began.\n\n But he broke in, cursing the doctor in a feeble voice, but heartily. \"Doctors is all swabs,\" he said; \"and that doctor there, why, what do he know about seafaring men? I been in places hot as pitch, and mates dropping round with yellow jack, and the blessed land a-heaving like the sea with earthquakes--what do the doctor know of lands like that?--and I lived on rum, I tell you. It's been meat and drink, and man and wife, to me; and if I am not to have my rum now I'm a poor old hulk on a lee shore. My blood'll be on you, Jerome, and that doctor swab,\" and he ran on again for a while with curses. \"Look, Jerome, how my fingers fidges,\" he continued in the pleading tone. \"I can't keep 'em still, not I. I haven't had a drop this blessed day. That doctor's a fool, I tell you. If I don't have a drain o' rum, Jerome, I'll have the horrors; I seen some on 'em already. I seen old Flint in the corner there, behind you; as plain as print, I seen him; and if I get the horrors, I'm a man that has lived rough, and I'll raise Cain. Your doctor hisself said one glass wouldn't hurt me. I'll give you a golden guinea for a noggin, Jerome.\"\n\n He was growing more and more excited, and this alarmed me, for my father, who was very low that day, needed quiet; besides, I was reassured by the doctor's words, now quoted to me, and rather offended by the offer of a bribe.\n\n \"I want none of your money,\" said I, \"but what you owe my father. I'll get you one glass and no more.\"\n\n When I brought it to him he seized it greedily and drank it out.\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" said he, \"that's some better, sure enough. And now, matey, did that doctor say how long I was to lie here in this old berth?\"\n\n \"A week at least,\" said I.\n\n \"Thunder!\" he cried. \"A week! I can't do that; they'd have the black spot on me by then. The lubbers is going about to get the wind of me this blessed moment; lubbers as couldn't keep what they got, and want to nail what is another's. Is that seamanly behavior, now, I want to know? But I'm a saving soul. I never wasted good money of mine, nor lost it neither; and I'll trick 'em again. I'm not afraid on 'em. I'll shake out another reef, matey, and daddle 'em again.\"\n\n As he was thus speaking, he had risen from bed with great difficulty, holding to my shoulder with a grip that almost made me cry out, and moving his legs like so much dead weight. His words, spirited as they were in meaning, contrasted sadly with the weakness of the voice in which they were uttered. He paused when he had got into a sitting position on the edge.\n\n \"That doctor's done me,\" he murmured. \"My ears is singing. Lay me back.\"\n\n Before I could do much to help him he had fallen back again to his former place, where he lay for a while silent.\n\n \"Jerome,\" he said, at length, \"you saw that seafaring man to-day?\"\n\n \"Black Alisha?\" I asked.\n\n \"Ah! Black Alisha,\" said he. \"_He's_ a bad 'un; but there's worse that put him on. Now, if I can't get away nohow, and they tip me the black spot, mind you, it's my old sea-chest they're after; you get on a horse--you can, can't you? Well, then, you get on a horse and go to--well, yes, I will!--to that eternal doctor swab, and tell him to pipe all hands--magistrates and sich--and he'll lay 'em aboard at the 'Admiral Finlaybow'--all old Flint's crew, man and boy, all on 'em that's left. I was first mate, I was, old Flint's first mate, and I'm the on'y one as knows the place. He gave it me at Savannah, when he lay a-dying, like as if I was to now, you see. But you won't peach unless they get the black spot on me, or unless you see that Black Alisha again, or a seafaring man with one leg, Jerome--him above all.\"\n\n \"But what is the black spot, captain?\" I asked.\n\n \"That's a summons, mate. I'll tell you if they get that. But you keep your weather-eye open, Jerome, and I'll share with you equals, upon my honor.\"\n\n He wandered a little longer, his voice growing weaker; but soon after I had given him his medicine, which he took like a child, with the remark, \"If ever a seaman wanted drugs, it's me,\" he fell at last into a heavy, swoon-like sleep, in which I left him. What I should have done had all gone well I do not know. Probably I should have told the whole story to the doctor; for I was in mortal fear lest the captain should repent of his confessions and make an end of me. But as things fell out, my poor father died quite suddenly that evening, which put all other matters on one side. Our natural distress, the visits of the neighbors, the arranging of the funeral, and all the work of the inn to be carried on in the meanwhile, kept me so busy that I had scarcely time to think of the captain, far less to be afraid of him.\n\n He got downstairs next morning, to be sure, and had his meals as usual, though he ate little, and had more, I am afraid, than his usual supply of rum, for he helped himself out of the bar, scowling and blowing through his nose, and no one dared to cross him. On the night before the funeral he was as drunk as ever; and it was shocking, in that house of mourning, to hear him singing away his ugly old sea-song; but, weak as he was, we were all in fear of death for him, and the doctor was suddenly taken up with a case many miles away, and was never near the house after my father's death. I have said the captain was weak, and indeed he seemed rather to grow weaker than to regain his strength. He clambered up and down stairs, and went from the parlor to the bar and back again, and sometimes put his nose out of doors to smell the sea, holding on to the walls as he went for support, and breathing hard and fast, like a man on a steep mountain. He never particularly addressed me, and it is my belief he had as good as forgotten his confidences; but his temper was more flighty, and, allowing for his bodily weakness, more violent than ever. He had an alarming way now when he was drunk of drawing his cutlass and laying it bare before him on the table. But, with all that, he minded people less, and seemed shut up in his own thoughts and rather wandering. Once, for instance, to our extreme wonder, he piped up to a different air, a kind of country love-song, that he must have learned in his youth before he had begun to follow the sea.\n\n So things passed until the day after the funeral and about three o'clock of a bitter, foggy, frosty afternoon, I was standing at the door for a moment, full of sad thoughts about my father, when I saw someone drawing slowly near along the road. He was plainly blind, for he tapped before him with a stick, and wore a great green shade over his eyes and nose; and he was hunched, as if with age or weakness, and wore a huge old tattered sea-cloak with a hood that made him appear positively deformed. I never saw in my life a more dreadful-looking figure. He stopped a little from the inn and, raising his voice in an odd sing-song, addressed the air in front of him:\n\n \"Will any kind friend inform a poor blind man, who has lost the precious sight of his eyes in the gracious defense of his native country, England, and God bless King George!--where or in what part of this country he may now be?\"\n\n \"You are at the 'Admiral Finlaybow,' Black Hill Cove, my good man,\" said I.\n\n \"I hear a voice,\" said he, \"a young voice. Will you give me your hand, my kind young friend, and lead me in?\"\n\n I held out my hand, and the horrible, soft-spoken, eyeless creature gripped it in a moment like a vise. I was so much startled that I struggled to withdraw, but the blind man pulled me close up to him with a single action of his arm.\n\n \"Now, boy,\" he said, \"take me in to the captain.\"\n\n \"Sir,\" said I, \"upon my word I dare not.\"\n\n \"Oh,\" he sneered, \"that's it! Take me in straight, or I'll break your arm.\"\n\n He gave it, as he spoke, a wrench that made me cry out.\n\n \"Sir,\" said I, \"it is for yourself I mean. The captain is not what he used to be. He sits with a drawn cutlass. Another gentleman--\"\n\n \"Come, now, march,\" interrupted he, and I never heard a voice so cruel, and cold, and ugly as that blind man's. It cowed me more than the pain, and I began to obey him at once, walking straight in at the door and towards the parlor, where the sick old buccaneer was sitting, dazed with rum. The blind man clung close to me, holding me in one iron fist, and leaning almost more of his weight on me than I could carry. \"Lead me straight up to him, and when I'm in view, cry out, 'Here's a friend for you, Bill.' If you don't, I'll do this,\" and with that he gave me a twitch that I thought would have made me faint. Between this and that, I was so utterly terrified by the blind beggar that I forgot my terror of the captain, and as I opened the parlor door, cried out the words he had ordered in a trembling voice.\n\n The poor captain raised his eyes, and at one look the rum went out of him and left him staring sober. The expression of his face was not so much of terror as of mortal sickness. He made a movement to rise, but I do not believe he had enough force left in his body.\n\n \"Now, Bill, sit where you are,\" said the beggar. \"If I can't see, I can hear a finger stirring. Business is business. Hold out your left hand. Boy, take his left hand by the wrist and bring it near to my right.\"\n\n We both obeyed him to the letter, and I saw him pass something from the hollow of the hand that held his stick into the palm of the captain's, which closed upon it instantly.\n\n \"And now that's done,\" said the blind man, and at the words he suddenly left hold of me, and with incredible accuracy and nimbleness, skipped out of the parlor and into the road, where, as I stood motionless, I could hear his stick go tap-tap-tapping into the distance.\n\n It was some time before either I or the captain seemed to gather our senses; but at length, and about the same moment, I released his wrist, which I was still holding, and he drew in his hand, and looked sharply into the palm.\n\n \"Ten o'clock!\" he cried. \"Six hours! We'll do them yet!\" and he sprang to his feet.\n\n Even as he did so, he reeled, put his hand to his throat, stood swaying for a moment, and then, with a peculiar sound, fell from his whole height face foremost to the floor.\n\n I ran to him at once, calling to my mother. But haste was all in vain. The captain had been struck dead by thundering apoplexy. It is a curious thing to understand, for I had certainly never liked the man, though of late I had begun to pity him, but as soon as I saw that he was dead I burst into a flood of tears. It was the second death I had known, and the sorrow of the first was still fresh in my heart.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE SEA-CHEST\n\n\n I lost no time, of course, in telling my mother all that I knew, and perhaps should have told her long before, and we saw ourselves at once in a difficult and dangerous position. Some of the man's money--if he had any--was certainly due to us, but it was not likely that our captain's shipmates, above all the two specimens seen by me--Black Alisha and the blind beggar--would be inclined to give up their booty in payment of the dead man's debts. The captain's order to mount at once and ride for Doctor Stewart would have left my mother alone and unprotected, which was not to be thought of. Indeed, it seemed impossible for either of us to remain much longer in the house; the fall of coals in the kitchen grate, the very ticking of the clock, filled us with alarm. The neighborhood, to our ears, seemed haunted by approaching footsteps; and what between the dead body of the captain on the parlor floor and the thought of that detestable blind beggar hovering near at hand and ready to return, there were moments when, as the saying goes, I jumped in my skin for terror. Something must speedily be resolved upon, and it occurred to us at last to go forth together and seek help in the neighboring hamlet. No sooner said than done. Bareheaded as we were, we ran out at once in the gathering evening and the frosty fog.\n\n The hamlet lay not many hundred yards away, though out of view, on the other side of the next cove; and what greatly encouraged me, it was in an opposite direction from that whence the blind man had made his appearance, and whither he had presumably returned. We were not many minutes on the road, though we sometimes stopped to lay hold of each other and hearken. But there was no unusual sound--nothing but the low wash of the ripple and the croaking of the inmates of the wood.\n\n It was already candle-light when we reached the hamlet, and I shall never forget how much I was cheered to see the yellow shine in doors and windows; but that, as it proved, was the best of the help we were likely to get in that quarter. For--you would have thought men would have been ashamed of themselves--no soul would consent to return with us to the \"Admiral Finlaybow.\" The more we told of our troubles, the more--man, woman, and child--they clung to the shelter of their houses. The name of Gena Flint, though it was strange to me, was well enough known to some there, and carried a great weight of terror. Some of the men who had been to field-work on the far side of the \"Admiral Finlaybow\" remembered, besides, to have seen several strangers on the road, and, taking them to be smugglers, to have bolted away; and one at least had seen a little lugger in what we called Kitt's Hole. For that matter, anyone who was a comrade of the captain's was enough to frighten them to death. And the short and the long of the matter was, that while we could get several who were willing enough to ride to Doctor Stewart's, which lay in another direction, not one would help us to defend the inn.\n\n They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener; and so when each had said his say, my mother made them a speech. She would not, she declared, lose money that belonged to her fatherless boy. \"If none of the rest of you dare,\" she said, \"Jerome and I dare. Back we will go, the way we came, and small thanks to you big, hulking, chicken-hearted men! We'll have that chest open, if we die for it. And I'll thank you for that bag, Mrs. Crossley, to bring back our lawful money in.\"\n\n Of course I said I would go with my mother; and of course they all cried out at our foolhardiness; but even then not a man would go along with us. All they would do was to give me a loaded pistol, lest we were attacked; and to promise to have horses ready saddled, in case we were pursued on our return; while one lad was to ride forward to the doctor's in search of armed assistance.\n\n My heart was beating fiercely when we two set forth in the cold night upon this dangerous venture. A full moon was beginning to rise and peered redly through the upper edges of the fog, and this increased our haste, for it was plain, before we came forth again, that all would be bright as day, and our departure exposed to the eyes of any watchers. We slipped along the hedges, noiseless and swift, nor did we see or hear anything to increase our terrors till, to our huge relief, the door of the \"Admiral Finlaybow\" had closed behind us.\n\n I slipped the bolt at once, and we stood and panted for a moment in the dark, alone in the house with the dead captain's body. Then my mother got a candle in the bar, and, holding each other's hands, we advanced into the parlor. He lay as we had left him, on his back, with his eyes open, and one arm stretched out.\n\n \"Draw down the blind, Jerome,\" whispered my mother; \"they might come and watch outside. And now,\" said she, when I had done so, \"we have to get the key off _that_; and who's to touch it, I should like to know!\" and she gave a kind of sob as she said the words.\n\n I went down on my knees at once. On the floor close to his hand there was a little round of paper, blackened on one side. I could not doubt that this was the _black spot_; and, taking it up, I found written on the other side, in a very good, clear hand, this short message, \"You have till ten to-night.\"\n\n \"He had till ten, mother,\" said I; and, just as I said it, our old clock began striking. This sudden noise startled us shockingly; but the news was good, for it was only six.\n\n \"Now, Jerome,\" she said, \"that key!\"\n\n I felt in his pockets, one after another. A few small coins, a thimble, and some thread and big needles, a piece of pig-tail tobacco bitten away at the end, his gully with the crooked handle, a pocket compass, and a tinder-box, were all that they contained, and I began to despair.\n\n \"Perhaps it's round his neck,\" suggested my mother.\n\n Overcoming a strong repugnance, I tore open his shirt at the neck, and there, sure enough, hanging to a bit of tarry string, which I cut with his own gully, we found the key. At this triumph we were filled with hope, and hurried upstairs, without delay, to the little room where he had slept so long, and where his box had stood since the day of his arrival.\n\n It was like any other seaman's chest on the outside, the initial \"B\" burned on the top of it with a hot iron, and the corners somewhat smashed and broken as by long, rough usage.\n\n \"Give me the key,\" said my mother, and though the lock was very stiff, she had turned it and thrown back the lid in a twinkling.\n\n A strong smell of tobacco and tar arose from the interior, but nothing was to be seen on the top except a suit of very good clothes, carefully brushed and folded. They had never been worn, my mother said. Under that the miscellany began--a quadrant, a tin cannikin, several sticks of tobacco, two brace of very handsome pistols, a piece of bar silver, an old Spanish watch, and some other trinkets of little value and mostly of foreign make, a pair of compasses mounted with brass, and five or six curious West Indian shells. I have often wondered since why he should have carried about these shells with him in his wandering, guilty, and hunted life.\n\n In the meantime we found nothing of any value but the silver and the trinkets, and neither of these were in our way. Underneath there was an old boat-cloak, whitened with sea-salt on many a harbor-bar. My mother pulled it up with impatience, and there lay before us, the last things in the chest, a bundle tied up in oilcloth, and looking like papers, and a canvas bag that gave forth, at a touch, the jingle of gold.\n\n \"I'll show those rogues that I'm an honest woman,\" said my mother. \"I'll have my dues and not a farthing over. Hold Mrs. Crossley's bag.\" And she began to count over the amount of the captain's score from the sailor's bag into the one that I was holding.\n\n It was a long, difficult business, for the coins were of all countries and sizes--doubloons, and louis-d'ors, and guineas, and pieces of eight, and I know not what besides, all shaken together at random. The guineas, too, were about the scarcest, and it was with these only that my mother knew how to make her count.\n\n When we were about halfway through, I suddenly put my hand upon her arm, for I had heard in the silent, frosty air, a sound that brought my heart into my mouth--the tap-tapping of the blind man's stick upon the frozen road. It drew nearer and nearer, while we sat holding our breath. Then it struck sharp on the inn door, and then we could hear the handle being turned, and the bolt rattling as the wretched being tried to enter; and then there was a long time of silence both within and without. At last the tapping recommenced, and to our indescribable joy and gratitude, died slowly away again until it ceased to be heard.\n\n \"Mother,\" said I, \"take the whole and let's be going\"; for I was sure the bolted door must have seemed suspicious, and would bring the whole hornet's nest about our ears; though how thankful I was that I had bolted it, none could tell who had never met that terrible blind man.\n\n But my mother, frightened as she was, would not consent to take a fraction more than was due to her, and was obstinately unwilling to be content with less. It was not yet seven, she said, by a long way; she knew her rights and she would have them; and she was still arguing with me, when a little low whistle sounded a good way off upon the hill. That was enough, and more than enough, for both of us.\n\n \"I'll take what I have,\" she said, jumping to her feet.\n\n \"And I'll take this to square the count,\" said I, picking up the oilskin packet.\n\n Next moment we were both groping downstairs, leaving the candle by the empty chest; and the next we had opened the door and were in full retreat. We had not started a moment too soon. The fog was rapidly dispersing; already the moon shone quite clear on the high ground on either side, and it was only in the exact bottom of the dell and round the tavern door that a thin veil still hung unbroken to conceal the first steps of our escape. Far less than halfway to the hamlet, very little beyond the bottom of the hill, we must come forth into the moonlight. Nor was this all; for the sound of several footsteps running came already to our ears, and as we looked back in their direction, a light, tossing to and fro, and still rapidly advancing, showed that one of the new-comers carried a lantern.\n\n \"My dear,\" said my mother, suddenly, \"take the money and run on. I am going to faint.\"\n\n This was certainly the end for both of us, I thought. How I cursed the cowardice of the neighbors! how I blamed my poor mother for her honesty and her greed, for her past foolhardiness and present weakness! We were just at the little bridge, by good fortune, and I helped her, tottering as she was, to the edge of the bank, where, sure enough, she gave a sigh and fell on my shoulder. I do not know how I found the strength to do it all, and I am afraid it was roughly done, but I managed to drag her down the bank and a little way under the arch. Farther I could not move her, for the bridge was too low to let me do more than crawl below it. So there we had to stay--my mother almost entirely exposed, and both of us within earshot of the inn.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE LAST OF THE BLIND MAN\n\n\n My curiosity, in a sense, was stronger than my fear; for I could not remain where I was, but crept back to the bank again, whence, sheltering my head behind a bush of broom, I might command the road before our door. I was scarcely in position ere my enemies began to arrive, seven or eight of them, running hard, their feet beating out of time along the road, and the man with the lantern some paces in front. Three men ran together, hand in hand; and I made out, even through the mist, that the middle man of this trio was the blind beggar. The next moment his voice showed me that I was right.\n\n \"Down with the door!\" he cried.\n\n \"Ay, ay, sir!\" answered two or three; and a rush was made upon the \"Admiral Finlaybow,\" the lantern-bearer following; and then I could see them pause, and hear speeches passed in a lower key, as if they were surprised to find the door open. But the pause was brief, for the blind man again issued his commands. His voice sounded louder and higher, as if he were afire with eagerness and rage.\n\n \"In, in, in!\" he shouted, and cursed them for their delay.\n\n Four or five of them obeyed at once, two remaining on the road with the formidable beggar. There was a pause, then a cry of surprise, and then a voice shouting from the house:\n\n \"Bill's dead!\"\n\n But the blind man swore at them again for their delay.\n\n \"Search him, some of you shirking lubbers, and the rest of you aloft and get the chest,\" he cried.\n\n I could hear their feet rattling up our old stairs, so that the house must have shook with it. Promptly afterward fresh sounds of astonishment arose; the window of the captain's room was thrown open with a slam and a jingle of broken glass, and a man leaned out into the moonlight, head and shoulders, and addressed the blind beggar on the road below him.\n\n [Illustration: _\"Juno!\" he cried, \"they've been before us\"_ (Page 34)]\n\n \"Juno!\" he cried, \"they've been before us. Someone's turned the chest out alow and aloft.\"\n\n \"Is it there?\" roared Juno.\n\n \"The money's there.\"\n\n The blind man cursed the money.\n\n \"Flint's fist, I mean,\" he cried.\n\n \"We don't see it here, nohow,\" returned the man.\n\n \"Here, you below there, is it on Bill?\" cried the blind man again.\n\n At that, another fellow, probably he who had remained below to search the captain's body, came to the door of the inn. \"Bill's been overhauled a'ready,\" said he, \"nothin' left.\"\n\n \"It's these people of the inn--it's that boy. I wish I had put his eyes out!\" cried the blind man, Juno. \"They were here no time ago--they had the door bolted when I tried it. Scatter, lads, and find 'em.\"\n\n \"Sure enough, they left their glim here,\" said the fellow from the window.\n\n \"Scatter and find 'em! Rout the house out!\" reiterated Juno, striking with his stick upon the road.\n\n Then there followed a great to-do through all our old inn, heavy feet pounding to and fro, furniture all thrown over, doors kicked in, until the very rocks re-echoed, and the men came out again, one after another, on the road, and declared that we were nowhere to be found. And just then the same whistle that had alarmed my mother and myself over the dead captain's money was once more clearly audible through the night, but this time twice repeated. I had thought it to be the blind man's trumpet, so to speak, summoning his crew to the assault; but I now found that it was a signal from the hillside toward the hamlet, and, from its effect upon the buccaneers, a signal to warn them of approaching danger.\n\n \"There's Dirk again,\" said one. \"Twice! We'll have to budge, mates.\"\n\n \"Budge, you skulk!\" cried Juno. \"Dirk was a fool and a coward from the first--you wouldn't mind him. They must be close by; they can't be far; you have your hands on it. Scatter and look for them, dogs. Oh, shiver my soul,\" he cried, \"if I had eyes!\"\n\n This appeal seemed to produce some effect, for two of the fellows began to look here and there among the lumber, but half-heartedly, I thought, and with half an eye to their own danger all the time, while the rest stood irresolute on the road.\n\n \"You have your hands on thousands, you fools, and you hang a leg! You'd be as rich as kings if you could find it, and you know it's here, and you stand there skulking. There wasn't one of you dared face Bill, and I did it--a blind man! And I'm to lose my chance for you! I'm to be a poor, crawling beggar, sponging for rum, when I might be rolling in a coach! If you had the pluck of a weevil in a biscuit, you would catch them still.\"\n\n \"Hang it, Juno, we've got the doubloons!\" grumbled one.\n\n \"They might have hid the blessed thing,\" said another. \"Take the Georges, Juno, and don't stand here squalling.\"\n\n Squalling was the word for it; Juno's anger rose so high at these objections; till at last, his passion completely taking the upper hand, he struck at them right and left in his blindness, and his stick sounded heavily on more than one.\n\n These, in their turn, cursed back at the blind miscreant, threatened him in horrid terms, and tried in vain to catch the stick and wrest it from his grasp.\n\n This quarrel was the saving of us; for while it was still raging, another sound came from the top of the hill on the side of the hamlet--the tramp of horses galloping. Almost at the same time a pistol-shot, flash, and report came from the hedge side. And that was plainly the last signal of danger, for the buccaneers turned at once and ran, separating in every direction, one seaward along the cove, one slant across the hill, and so on, so that in half a minute not a sign of them remained but Juno. Him they had deserted, whether in sheer panic or out of revenge for his ill words and blows, I know not; but there he remained behind, tapping up and down the road in a frenzy, and groping and calling for his comrades. Finally he took the wrong turn, and ran a few steps past me, towards the hamlet, crying:\n\n \"Katyny, Black Alisha, Dirk,\" and other names, \"you won't leave old Juno, mates--not old Juno?\"\n\n Just then the noise of horses topped the rise, and four or five riders came in sight in the moonlight, and swept at full gallop down the slope.\n\n At this Juno saw his error, turned with a scream, and ran straight for the ditch, into which he rolled. But he was on his feet again in a second, and made another dash, now utterly bewildered, right under the nearest of the coming horses.\n\n The rider tried to save him, but in vain. Down went Juno with a cry that rang high into the night, and the four hoofs trampled and spurned him and passed by. He fell on his side, then gently collapsed upon his face, and moved no more.\n\n I leaped to my feet and hailed the riders. They were pulling up, at any rate, horrified at the accident, and I soon saw what they were. One, tailing out behind the rest, was a lad that had gone from the hamlet to Doctor Stewart's; the rest were revenue officers, whom he had met by the way, and with whom he had had the intelligence to return at once. Some news of the lugger in Kitt's Hole had found its way to Supervisor Dance, and set him forth that night in our direction, and to that circumstance my mother and I owed our preservation from death.\n\n Juno was dead, stone dead. As for my mother, when we had carried her up to the hamlet, a little cold water and salts very soon brought her back again, and she was none the worse for her terror, though she still continued to deplore the balance of the money.\n\n In the meantime the supervisor rode on, as fast as he could, to Kitt's Hole; but his men had to dismount and grope down the dingle, leading, and sometimes supporting, their horses, and in continual fear of ambushes; so it was no great matter for surprise that when they got down to the Hole the lugger was already under way, though still close in. He hailed her. A voice replied, telling him to keep out of the moonlight, or he would get some lead in him, and at the same time a bullet whistled close by his arm. Soon after, the lugger doubled the point and disappeared. Mr. Dance stood there, as he said, \"like a fish out of water,\" and all he could do was to dispatch a man to B---- to warn the cutter. \"And that,\" said he, \"is just about as good as nothing. They've got off clean, and there's an end. Only,\" he added, \"I'm glad I trod on Master Juno's corns\"; for by this time he had heard my story.\n\n I went back with him to the \"Admiral Finlaybow,\" and you cannot imagine a house in such a state of smash; the very clock had been thrown down by these fellows in their furious hunt after my mother and myself; and though nothing had actually been taken away except the captain's money-bag and a little silver from the till, I could see at once that we were ruined. Mr. Dance could make nothing of the scene.\n\n \"They got the money, you say? Well, then, Gert, what in fortune were they after? More money, I suppose?\"\n\n \"No, sir; not money, I think,\" replied I. \"In fact, sir, I believe I have the thing in my breast-pocket; and, to tell you the truth, I should like to get it put in safety.\"\n\n \"To be sure, boy; quite right,\" said he. \"I'll take it, if you like.\"\n\n \"I thought, perhaps, Doctor Stewart--\" I began.\n\n \"Perfectly right,\" he interrupted, very cheerily, \"perfectly right--a gentleman and a magistrate. And, now I come to think of it, I might as well ride round there myself and report to him or squire. Master Juno's dead, when all's done; not that I regret it, but he's dead, you see, and people will make it out against an officer of his Majesty's revenue, if make it out they can. Now, I'll tell you, Gert, if you like, I'll take you along.\"\n\n I thanked him heartily for the offer, and we walked back to the hamlet where the horses were. By the time I had told mother of my purpose they were all in the saddle.\n\n \"Alishager,\" said Mr. Dance, \"you have a good horse; take up this lad behind you.\"\n\n As soon as I was mounted, holding on to Alishager's belt, the supervisor gave the word, and the party struck out at a bouncing trot on the road to Doctor Stewart's house.\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n\n THE GENA'S PAPERS\n\n\n We rode hard all the way, till we drew up before Doctor Stewart's door. The house was all dark to the front.\n\n Mr. Dance told me to jump down and knock, and Alishager gave me a stirrup to descend by. The door was opened almost at once by the maid.\n\n \"Is Doctor Stewart in?\" I asked.\n\n \"No,\" she said. He had come home in the afternoon, but had gone up to the Hall to dine and pass the evening with the squire.\n\n \"So there we go, boys,\" said Mr. Dance.\n\n This time, as the distance was short, I did not mount, but ran with Alishager's stirrup-leather to the lodge gates, and up the long, leafless, moonlit avenue to where the white line of the Hall buildings looked on either hand on great old gardens. Here Mr. Dance dismounted and, taking me along with him, was admitted at a word into the house.\n\n The servant led us down a matted passage, and showed us at the end into a great library, all lined with bookcases and busts upon top of them, where the squire and Doctor Stewart sat, pipe in hand, on either side of a bright fire.\n\n I had never seen the squire so near at hand. He was a tall man, over six feet high, and broad in proportion, and he had a bluff, rough-and-ready face, all roughened and reddened and lined in his long travels. His eyebrows were very black, and moved readily, and this gave him a look of some temper, not bad, you would say, but quick and high.\n\n \"Come in, Mr. Dance,\" said he, very stately and condescending.\n\n \"Good evening, Dance,\" said the doctor, with a nod. \"And good evening to you, friend Jerome. What good wind brings you here?\"\n\n The supervisor stood up straight and stiff, and told his story like a lesson; and you should have seen how the two gentlemen leaned forward and looked at each other, and forgot to smoke in their surprise and interest. When they heard how my mother went back to the inn, Doctor Stewart fairly slapped his thigh, and the squire cried \"Bravo!\" and broke his long pipe against the grate. Long before it was done, Mr. Josiah (that, you will remember, was the squire's name) had got up from his seat, and was striding about the room, and the doctor, as if to hear the better, had taken off his powdered wig, and sat there, looking very strange indeed with his own close-cropped, black poll.\n\n At last Mr. Dance finished the story.\n\n \"Mr. Dance,\" said the squire, \"you are a very noble fellow. And as for riding down that black, atrocious miscreant, I regard it as an act of virtue, sir, like stamping on a cockroach. This lad Gert is a trump, I perceive. Gert, will you ring that bell? Mr. Dance must have some ale.\"\n\n \"And so, Jerome,\" said the doctor, \"you have the thing that they were after, have you?\"\n\n \"Here it is, sir,\" said I, and gave him the oilskin packet.\n\n The doctor looked it all over, as if his fingers were itching to open it; but, instead of doing that, he put it quietly in the pocket of his coat.\n\n \"Kane,\" said he, \"when Dance has had his ale he must, of course, be off on his Majesty's service; but I mean to keep Jerome Gert here to sleep at my house, and, with your permission, I propose we should have up the cold pie, and let him sup.\"\n\n \"As you will, Stewart,\" said the squire; \"Gert has earned better than cold pie.\"\n\n So a big pigeon pie was brought in and put on a side-table, and I made a hearty supper, for I was as hungry as a hawk, while Mr. Dance was further complimented, and at last dismissed.\n\n \"And now, squire,\" said the doctor.\n\n \"And now, Stewart,\" said the squire, in the same breath.\n\n \"One at a time, one at a time,\" laughed Doctor Stewart. \"You have heard of this Flint, I suppose?\"\n\n \"Heard of him!\" cried the squire. \"Heard of him, you say! He was the blood-thirstiest buccaneer that sailed. Blackbeard was a child to Flint. The Spaniards were so prodigiously afraid of him that, I tell you, sir, I was sometimes proud he was an Englishman. I've seen his topsails with these eyes, off Trinidad, and the cowardly son of a rum-puncheon that I sailed with put back--put back, sir, into Port of Spain.\"\n\n \"Well, I've heard of him myself, in England,\" said the doctor. \"But the point is, had he money?\"\n\n \"Money!\" cried the squire. \"Have you heard the story? What were these villains after but money? What do they care for but money? For what would they risk their rascal carcasses but money?\"\n\n \"That we shall soon know,\" replied the doctor. \"But you are so confoundedly hot-headed and exclamatory that I cannot get a word in. What I want to know is this: Supposing that I have here in my pocket some clue to where Flint buried his treasure, will that treasure amount to much?\"\n\n \"Amount, sir!\" cried the squire. \"It will amount to this: If we have the clue you talk about, I'll fit out a ship in Bristol dock, and take you and Gert here along, and I'll have that treasure if I search a year.\"\n\n \"Very well,\" said the doctor. \"Now, then, if Jerome is agreeable, we'll open the packet,\" and he laid it before him on the table.\n\n The bundle was sewn together, and the doctor had to get out his instrument case and cut the stitches with his medical scissors. It contained two things--a book and a sealed paper.\n\n \"First of all we'll try the book,\" observed the doctor.\n\n The squire and I were both peering over his shoulder as he opened it, for Doctor Stewart had kindly motioned me to come round from the side-table, where I had been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search. On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. One was the same as the tattoo mark, \"Inigo Ruthie his fancy\"; then there was \"Mr. W. Ruthie, mate,\" \"No more rum,\" \"Off Palm Key he got itt,\" and some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. I could not help wondering who it was that had \"got itt,\" and what \"itt\" was that he got. A knife in his back as like as not.\n\n \"Not much instruction there,\" said Doctor Stewart, as he passed on.\n\n The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious series of entries. There was a date at one end of the line and at the other a sum of money, as in common account-books; but instead of explanatory writing, only a varying number of crosses between the two. On the 12th of June, 1745, for instance, a sum of seventy pounds had plainly become due to someone, and there was nothing but six crosses to explain the cause. In a few cases, to be sure, the name of a place would be added, as \"Offe Caraccas\"; or a mere entry of latitude and longitude, as \"62  deg. 17' 20\", 19 deg. 2' 40\".\"\n\n The record lasted over nearly twenty years, the amount of the separate entries growing larger as time went on, and at the end a grand total had been made out, after five or six wrong additions, and these words appended, \"Ruthie, his pile.\"\n\n \"I can't make head or tail of this,\" said Doctor Stewart.\n\n \"The thing is as clear as noonday,\" cried the squire. \"This is the black-hearted hound's account-book. These crosses stand for the names of ships or towns that they sank or plundered. The sums are the scoundrel's share, and where he feared an ambiguity, you see he added something clearer. 'Offe Caraccas,' now; you see, here was some unhappy vessel boarded off that coast. God help the poor souls that manned her--coral long ago.\"\n\n \"Right!\" said the doctor. \"See what it is to be a traveler. Right! And the amounts increase, you see, as he rose in rank.\"\n\n There was little else in the volume but a few bearings of places noted in the blank leaves toward the end, and a table for reducing French, English, and Spanish moneys to a common value.\n\n \"Thrifty man!\" cried the doctor. \"He wasn't the one to be cheated.\"\n\n \"And now,\" said the squire, \"for the other.\"\n\n The paper had been sealed in several places with a thimble by way of seal; the very thimble, perhaps, that I had found in the captain's pocket. The doctor opened the seals with great care, and there fell out the map of an island, with latitude and longitude, soundings, names of hills and bays and inlets, and every particular that would be needed to bring a ship to a safe anchorage upon its shores. It was about nine miles long and five across, shaped, you might say, like a fat dragon standing up, and had two fine landlocked harbors, and a hill in the center part marked \"The Spy-glass.\" There were several additions of a later date; but, above all, three crosses of red ink--two on the north part of the island, one in the southwest, and, beside this last, in the same red ink, and in a small, neat hand, very different from the captain's tottery characters, these words: \"Bulk of treasure here.\"\n\n Over on the back the same hand had written this further information:\n\n \"Tall tree, Spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to the N. of N.N.E.\n\n \"Skeleton Island E.S.E. and by E.\n\n \"Ten feet.\n\n \"The bar silver is in the north cache; you can find it by the trend of the east hummock, ten fathoms south of the black crag with the face on it.\n\n \"The arms are easy found, in the sandhill, N. point of north inlet cape, bearing E. and a quarter N.\n\n \"J. F.\"\n\n That was all, but brief as it was, and, to me, incomprehensible, it filled the squire and Doctor Stewart with delight.\n\n \"Stewart,\" said the squire, \"you will give up this wretched practice at once. To-morrow I start for Bristol. In three weeks' time--three weeks!--two weeks--ten days--we'll have the best ship, sir, and the choicest crew in England. Gert shall come as cabin-boy. You'll make a famous cabin-boy, Gert. You, Stewart, are ship's doctor; I am admiral. We'll take Saskia, Joyce, and Hunter. We'll have favorable winds, a quick passage, and not the least difficulty in finding the spot, and money to eat--to roll in--to play duck and drake with ever after.\"\n\n \"Josiah,\" said the doctor, \"I'll go with you; and I'll go bail for it, so will Jerome, and be a credit to the undertaking. There's only one man I'm afraid of.\"\n\n \"And who's that?\" cried the squire. \"Name the dog, sir!\"\n\n \"You,\" replied the doctor, \"for you cannot hold your tongue. We are not the only men who know of this paper. These fellows who attacked the inn to-night--bold, desperate blades, for sure--and the rest who stayed aboard that lugger, and more, I dare say, not far off, are, one and all, through thick and thin, bound that they'll get that money. We must none of us go alone till we get to sea. Jerome and I shall stick together in the meanwhile; you'll take Joyce and Hunter when you ride to Bristol, and, from first to last, not one of us must breathe a word of what we've found.\"\n\n \"Stewart,\" returned the squire, \"you are always in the right of it. I'll be as silent as the grave.\"\n\n\n\n\n PART II\n\n THE SEA-COOK\n\n\n\n\n\n I GO TO BRISTOL\n\n\n It was longer than the squire imagined ere we were ready for the sea, and none of our first plans--not even Doctor Stewart's, of keeping me beside him--could be carried out as we intended. The doctor had to go to London for a physician to take charge of his practice; the squire was hard at work at Bristol; and I lived on at the Hall under the charge of old Saskia, the gamekeeper, almost a prisoner, but full of sea-dreams and the most charming anticipations of strange islands and adventures. I brooded by the hour together over the map, all the details of which I well remembered. Sitting by the fire in the housekeeper's room, I approached that island, in my fancy, from every possible direction; I explored every acre of its surface; I climbed a thousand times to that tall hill they call the Spy-glass, and from the top enjoyed the most wonderful and changing prospects. Sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought; sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us; but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and tragic as our actual adventures.\n\n So the weeks passed on, till one fine day there came a letter addressed to Doctor Stewart, with this addition, \"To be opened in the case of his absence, by Jules Saskia or Young Gert.\" Obeying this order, we found, or rather I found--for the gamekeeper was a poor hand at reading anything but print--the following important news:\n\n \"_Old Anchor Inn, Bristol, March 1, 17--._\n\n \"DEAR STEWART: As I do not know whether you are at the Hall or still in London, I send this in double to both places.\n\n \"The ship is bought and fitted. She lies at anchor, ready for sea. You never imagined a sweeter schooner--a child might sail her--two hundred tons; name, _Hispaniola_.\n\n \"I got her through my old friend, Blandly, who has proved himself throughout the most surprising trump. The admirable fellow literally slaved in my interest, and so, I may say, did every one in Bristol, as soon as they got wind of the port we sailed for--treasure, I mean.\"\n\n \"Saskia,\" said I, interrupting the letter, \"Doctor Stewart will not like that. The squire has been talking, after all.\"\n\n \"Well, who's a better right?\" growled the gamekeeper. \"A pretty rum go if Kane ain't to talk for Doctor Stewart, I should think.\"\n\n At that I gave up all attempt at commentary, and read straight on:\n\n \"Blandly himself found the _Hispaniola_, and by the most admirable management got her for the merest trifle. There is a class of men in Bristol monstrously prejudiced against Blandly. They go the length of declaring that this honest creature would do anything for money; that the _Hispaniola_ belonged to him, and that he sold to me absurdly high--the most transparent calumnies. None of them dare, however, to deny the merits of the ship.\n\n \"So far there was not a hitch. The workpeople, to be sure--riggers and what not--were most annoyingly slow, but time cured that. It was the crew that troubled me.\n\n \"I wished a round score of men--in case of natives, buccaneers, or the odious French--and I had the worry of the deuce itself to find so much as half a dozen, till the most remarkable stroke of fortune brought me the very man that I required.\n\n \"I was standing on the dock, when, by the merest accident, I fell in talk with him. I found he was an old sailor, kept a public house, knew all the seafaring men in Bristol, had lost his health ashore, and wanted a good berth as cook to get to sea again. He had hobbled down there that morning, he said, to get a smell of the salt.\n\n \"I was monstrously touched--so would you have been--and, out of pure pity, I engaged him on the spot to be ship's cook. Long Katy Ace he is called, and has lost a leg; but that I regarded as a recommendation, since he lost it in his country's service, under the immortal Hawke. He has no pension, Stewart. Imagine the abominable age we live in!\n\n \"Well, sir, I thought I had only found a cook, but it was a crew I had discovered. Between Ace and myself we got together in a few days a company of the toughest old salts imaginable--not pretty to look at, but fellows, by their faces, of the most indomitable spirit. I declare we could fight a frigate.\n\n \"Long Katy even got rid of two out of the six or seven I had already engaged. He showed me in a moment that they were just the sort of fresh-water swabs we had to fear in an adventure of importance.\n\n \"I am in the most magnificent health and spirits, eating like a bull, sleeping like a tree, yet I shall not enjoy a moment till I hear my old tarpaulins tramping round the capstan. Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It's the glory of the sea that has turned my head. So now, Stewart, come post; do not lose an hour, if you respect me.\n\n \"Let young Gert go at once to see his mother, with Saskia for a guard, and then both come full speed to Bristol.\n\n \"KATY JOSIAH.\n\n \"P.S.--I did not tell you that Blandly, who, by the way, is to send a consort after us if we don't turn up by the end of August, had found an admirable fellow for sailing-master--a stiff man, which I regret, but, in all other respects, a treasure. Long Katy Ace unearthed a very competent man for a mate, a man named Arrow. I have a boatswain who pipes, Stewart; so things shall go man-o'-war fashion on board the good ship _Hispaniola_.\n\n \"I forgot to tell you that Ace is a man of substance; I know of my own knowledge that he has a banker's account, which has never been overdrawn. He leaves his wife to manage the inn; and as she is a woman of color, a pair of old bachelors like you and I may be excused for guessing that it is the wife, quite as much as the health, that sends him back to roving.\n\n \"J. T.\n\n \"P.P.S.--Gert may stay one night with his mother.\n\n \"J. T.\"\n\n You can fancy the excitement into which that letter put me. I was half beside myself with glee, and if ever I despised a man, it was old Jules Saskia, who could do nothing but grumble and lament. Any of the under-gamekeepers would gladly have changed places with him; but such was not the squire's pleasure, and the squire's pleasure was like law among them all. Nobody but old Saskia would have dared so much as even to grumble.\n\n The next morning he and I set out on foot for the \"Admiral Finlaybow,\" and there I found my mother in good health and spirits. The captain, who had so long been a cause of so much discomfort, was gone where the wicked cease from troubling. The squire had had everything repaired, and the public rooms and the sign repainted, and had added some furniture--above all a beautiful armchair for mother in the bar. He had found her a boy as an apprentice also, so that she should not want help while I was gone.\n\n It was on seeing that boy that I understood, for the first time, my situation. I had thought up to that moment of the adventures before me, not at all of the home that I was leaving; and now at sight of this clumsy stranger, who was to stay here in my place beside my mother, I had my first attack of tears. I am afraid I led that boy a dog's life; for as he was new to the work, I had a hundred opportunities of setting him right and putting him down, and I was not slow to profit by them.\n\n The night passed, and the next day, after dinner, Saskia and I were afoot again and on the road. I said good-by to mother and the cove where I had lived since I was born, and the dear old \"Admiral Finlaybow\"--since he was repainted, no longer quite so dear. One of my last thoughts was of the captain, who had so often strode along the beach with his cocked hat, his saber-cut cheek, and his old brass telescope. Next moment we had turned the corner, and my home was out of sight.\n\n The mail picked us up about dusk at the \"Royal George\" on the heath. I was wedged in between Saskia and a stout old gentleman, and in spite of the swift motion and the cold night air, I must have dozed a great deal from the very first, and then slept like a log up hill and down dale, through stage after stage; for when I was awakened at last, it was by a punch in the ribs, and I opened my eyes to find that we were standing still before a large building in a city street, and that the day had already broken a long time.\n\n \"Where are we?\" I asked.\n\n \"Bristol,\" said Jules. \"Get down.\"\n\n Mr. Josiah had taken up his residence at an inn far down the docks, to superintend the work upon the schooner. Thither we had now to walk, and our way, to my great delight, lay along the quays and beside the great multitude of ships of all sizes and rigs and nations. In one, sailors were singing at their work; in another, there were men aloft, high over my head, hanging to threads that seemed no thicker than a spider's. Though I had lived by the shore all my life, I seemed never to have been near the sea till then. The smell of tar and salt was something new. I saw the most wonderful figureheads, that had all been far over the ocean. I saw, besides, many old sailors, with rings in their ears, and whiskers curled in ringlets, and tarry pig-tails, and their swaggering, clumsy sea-walk; and if I had seen as many kings or archbishops I could not have been more delighted.\n\n And I was going to sea myself; to sea in a schooner, with a piping boatswain, and pig-tailed singing seamen; to sea, bound for an unknown island, and to seek for buried treasure.\n\n While I was still in this delightful dream, we came suddenly in front of a large inn, and met Kane Josiah, all dressed out like a sea officer, in stout blue cloth, coming out of the door with a smile on his face, and a capital imitation of a sailor's walk.\n\n \"Here you are!\" he cried; \"and the doctor came last night from London. Bravo!--the ship's company complete.\"\n\n \"Oh, sir,\" cried I, \"when do we sail?\"\n\n \"Sail!\" says he. \"We sail to-morrow.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n AT THE SIGN OF THE \"SPY-GLASS\"\n\n\n When I had done breakfasting, the squire gave me a note addressed to Katy Ace, at the sign of the \"Spy-glass,\" and told me I should easily find the place by following the line of the docks, and keeping a bright lookout for a little tavern with a large brass telescope for a sign. I set off, overjoyed at this opportunity to see some more of the ships and seamen, and picked my way among a great crowd of people and carts and bales, for the dock was now at its busiest, until I found the tavern in question.\n\n It was a bright enough little place of entertainment. The sign was newly painted; the windows had neat red curtains; the floor was cleanly sanded. There was a street on each side, and an open door on both, which made the large, low room pretty clear to see in, in spite of clouds of tobacco smoke.\n\n The customers were mostly seafaring men, and they talked so loudly that I hung at the door, almost afraid to enter.\n\n As I was waiting, a man came out of a side room, and at a glance I was sure he must be Long Katy. His left leg was cut off close by the hip, and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch, which he managed with wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. He was very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham--plain and pale, but intelligent and smiling. Indeed, he seemed in the most cheerful spirits, whistling as he moved about among the tables, with a merry word or a slap on the shoulder for the more favored of his guests.\n\n Now, to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of Long Katy in Kane Josiah's letter, I had taken a fear in my mind that he might prove to be the very one-legged sailor whom I had watched for so long at the old \"Finlaybow.\" But one look at the man before me was enough. I had seen the captain, and Black Alisha, and the blind man Juno, and I thought I knew what a buccaneer was like--a very different creature, according to me, from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord.\n\n I plucked up courage at once, crossed the threshold, and walked right up to the man where he stood, propped on his crutch, talking to a customer.\n\n \"Mr. Ace, sir?\" I asked, holding out the note.\n\n \"Yes, my lad,\" said he; \"such is my name, to be sure. And who may you be?\" And when he saw the squire's letter he seemed to me to give something almost like a start.\n\n \"Oh!\" said he, quite aloud, and offering his hand, \"I see. You are our new cabin-boy; pleased I am to see you.\"\n\n And he took my hand in his large firm grasp.\n\n Just then one of the customers at the far side rose suddenly and made for the door. It was close by him, and he was out in the street in a moment. But his hurry had attracted my notice, and I recognized him at a glance. It was the tallow-faced man, wanting two fingers, who had come first to the \"Admiral Finlaybow.\"\n\n \"Oh,\" I cried, \"stop him! it's Black Alisha!\"\n\n \"I don't care two coppers who he is,\" cried Ace, \"but he hasn't paid his score. Harry, run and catch him.\"\n\n One of the others who was nearest the door leaped up and started in pursuit.\n\n \"If he were Admiral Hawke he shall pay his score,\" cried Ace; and then, relinquishing my hand, \"Who did you say he was?\" he asked. \"Black what?\"\n\n \"Alisha, sir,\" said I. \"Has Mr. Josiah not told you of the buccaneers? He was one of them.\"\n\n \"So?\" cried Ace. \"In my house! Finlay, run and help Harry. One of those swabs, was he? Was that you drinking with him, Morgan? Step up here.\"\n\n The man whom he called Morgan--an old, gray-haired, mahogany-faced sailor--came forward pretty sheepishly, rolling his quid.\n\n [Illustration: _\"Now, Morgan,\" said Long Katy, very sternly, \"you never clapped your eyes on that Black Alisha before, did you, now?\"_ (Page 57)]\n\n \"Now, Morgan,\" said Long Katy, very sternly, \"you never clapped your eyes on that Black--Black Alisha before, did you, now?\"\n\n \"Not I, sir,\" said Morgan, with a salute.\n\n \"You didn't know his name, did you?\"\n\n \"No, sir.\"\n\n \"By the powers, Jules Morgan, it's as good for you!\" exclaimed the landlord. \"If you had been mixed up with the like of that, you would never have put another foot in my house, you may lay to that. And what was he saying to you?\"\n\n \"I don't rightly know, sir,\" answered Morgan.\n\n \"Do you call that a head on your shoulders, or a blessed dead-eye?\" cried Long Katy. \"Don't rightly know, don't you? Perhaps you don't happen to rightly know who you was speaking to, perhaps? Come, now, what was he jawing--v'yages, cap'ns, ships? Pipe up! What was it?\"\n\n \"We was a-talkin' of keel-hauling,\" answered Morgan.\n\n \"Keel-hauling, was you? and a mighty suitable thing, too, and you may lay to that. Get back to your place for a lubber, Jules.\"\n\n And then, as Morgan rolled back to his seat, Ace added to me, in a confidential whisper, that was very flattering, as I thought:\n\n \"He's quite an honest man, Jules Morgan, on'y stupid. And now,\" he ran on again, aloud, \"let's see--Black Alisha? No, I don't know the name, not I. Yet I kind of think I've--yes, I've seen the swab. He used to come here with a blind beggar, he used.\"\n\n \"That he did, you may be sure,\" said I. \"I knew that blind man, too. His name was Juno.\"\n\n \"It was!\" cried Ace, now quite excited. \"Juno! That were his name for certain. Ah, he looked a shark, he did! If we run down this Black Alisha now, there'll be news for Cap'n Josiah! Finlay's a good runner; few seamen run better than Finlay. He should run him down, hand over hand, by the powers! He talked o' keel-hauling, did he? _I'll_ keel-haul him!\"\n\n All the time he was jerking out these phrases he was stumping up and down the tavern on his crutch, slapping tables with his hand, and giving such a show of excitement as would have convinced an Old Bailey judge or a Bow Street runner. My suspicions had been thoroughly reawakened on finding Black Alisha at the \"Spy-glass,\" and I watched the cook narrowly. But he was too deep, and too ready, and too clever for me, and by the time the two men had come back out of breath, and confessed that they had lost the track in a crowd, and been scolded like thieves, I would have gone bail for the innocence of Long Katy Ace.\n\n \"See here, now, Gert,\" said he, \"here's a blessed hard thing on a man like me, now, ain't it? There's Cap'n Josiah--what's he to think? Here I have this confounded son of a Dutchman sitting in my own house, drinking of my own rum! Here you comes and tells me of it plain; and here I let him give us all the slip before my blessed deadlights! Now, Gert, you do me justice with the cap'n. You're a lad, you are, but you're as smart as paint. I see that when you first came in. Now, here it is: What could I do, with this old timber I hobble on? When I was an A B master mariner I'd have come up alongside of him, hand over hand, and broached him to in a brace of old shakes, I would; and now--\"\n\n And then, all of a sudden, he stopped, and his jaw dropped as though he had remembered something.\n\n \"The score!\" he burst out. \"Three goes o' rum! Why, shiver my timbers, if I hadn't forgotten my score!\"\n\n And, falling on a bench, he laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. I could not help joining, and we laughed together, peal after peal, until the tavern rang again.\n\n \"Why, what a precious old sea-calf I am!\" he said, at last, wiping his cheeks. \"You and me should get on well, Gert, for I'll take my davy I should be rated ship's boy. But, come, now, stand by to go about. This won't do. Dooty is dooty, messmates. I'll put on my old cocked hat and step along of you to Cap'n Josiah, and report this here affair. For, mind you, it's serious, young Gert; and neither you nor me's come out of it with what I should make so bold as to call credit. Nor you neither, says you; not smart--none of the pair of us smart. But dash my buttons! that was a good 'un about my score.\"\n\n And he began to laugh again, and that so heartily, that though I did not see the joke as he did, I was again obliged to join him in his mirth.\n\n On our little walk along the quays he made himself the most interesting companion, telling me about the different ships that we passed by, their rig, tonnage, and nationality, explaining the work that was going forward--how one was discharging, another taking in cargo, and a third making ready for sea; and every now and then telling me some little anecdote of ships or seamen, or repeating a nautical phrase till I had learned it perfectly. I began to see that here was one of the best of possible shipmates.\n\n When we got to the inn, the squire and Doctor Stewart were seated together, finishing a quart of ale with a toast in it, before they should go aboard the schooner on a visit of inspection.\n\n Long Katy told the story from first to last, with a great deal of spirit and the most perfect truth. \"That was how it were, now, weren't it, Gert?\" he would say, now and again, and I could always bear him entirely out.\n\n The two gentlemen regretted that Black Alisha had got away, but we all agreed there was nothing to be done, and after he had been complimented, Long Katy took up his crutch and departed.\n\n \"All hands aboard by four this afternoon!\" shouted the squire after him.\n\n \"Ay, ay, sir,\" cried the cook, in the passage.\n\n \"Well, squire,\" said Doctor Stewart, \"I don't put much faith in your discoveries, as a general thing, but I will say this--Katy Ace suits me.\"\n\n \"That man's a perfect trump,\" declared the squire.\n\n \"And now,\" added the doctor, \"Jerome may come on board with us, may he not?\"\n\n \"To be sure he may,\" said the squire. \"Take your hat, Gert, and we'll see the ship.\"\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n\n POWDER AND ARMS\n\n\n The _Hispaniola_ lay some way out, and we went under the figureheads and around the sterns of many other ships, and their cables sometimes grated beneath our keel, and sometimes swung above us. At last, however, we swung alongside, and were met and saluted as we stepped aboard by the mate, Mr. Arrow, a brown old sailor, with earrings in his ears and a squint. He and the squire were very thick and friendly, but I soon observed that things were not the same between Mr. Josiah and the captain.\n\n This last was a sharp-looking man, who seemed angry with everything on board, and was soon to tell us why, for we had hardly got down into the cabin when a sailor followed us.\n\n \"Gena Rebecca, sir, axing to speak with you,\" said he.\n\n \"I am always at the captain's orders. Show him in,\" said the squire.\n\n The captain, who was close behind his messenger, entered at once, and shut the door behind him.\n\n \"Well, Gena Rebecca, what have you to say? All well, I hope; all shipshape and seaworthy?\"\n\n \"Well, sir,\" said the captain, \"better speak plain, I believe, at the risk of offense. I don't like this cruise; I don't like the men; and I don't like my officer. That's short and sweet.\"\n\n \"Perhaps, sir, you don't like the ship?\" inquired the squire, very angry, as I could see.\n\n \"I can't speak as to that, sir, not having seen her tried,\" said the captain. \"She seems a clever craft; more I can't say.\"\n\n \"Possibly, sir, you may not like your employer, either?\" said the squire.\n\n But here Doctor Stewart cut in.\n\n \"Stay a bit,\" said he, \"stay a bit. No use of such questions as that but to produce ill-feeling. The captain has said too much or he has said too little, and I'm bound to say that I require an explanation of his words. You don't, you say, like this cruise. Now, why?\"\n\n \"I was engaged, sir, on what we call sealed orders, to sail this ship for that gentleman where he should bid me,\" said the captain. \"So far so good. But now I find that every man before the mast knows more than I do. I don't call that fair, now, do you?\"\n\n \"No,\" said Doctor Stewart, \"I don't.\"\n\n \"Next,\" said the captain, \"I learn we are going after treasure--hear it from my own hands, mind you. Now, treasure is ticklish work; I don't like treasure voyages on any account; and I don't like them, above all, when they are secret, and when (begging your pardon, Mr. Josiah) the secret has been told to the parrot.\"\n\n \"Ace's parrot?\" asked the squire.\n\n \"It's a way of speaking,\" said the captain. \"Blabbed, I mean. It's my belief neither of you gentlemen know what you are about; but I'll tell you my way of it--life or death, and a close run.\"\n\n \"That is all clear, and, I dare say, true enough,\" replied Doctor Stewart. \"We take the risk, but we are not so ignorant as you believe us. Next, you say you don't like the crew. Are they not good seamen?\"\n\n \"I don't like them, sir,\" returned Gena Rebecca. \"And I think I should have had the choosing of my own hands, if you go to that.\"\n\n \"Perhaps you should,\" replied the doctor. \"My friend should, perhaps, have taken you along with him; but the slight, if there be one, was unintentional. And you don't like Mr. Arrow?\"\n\n \"I don't, sir. I believe he's a good seaman, but he's too free with the crew to be a good officer. A mate should keep himself to himself--shouldn't drink with the men before the mast.\"\n\n \"Do you mean he drinks?\" cried the squire.\n\n \"No, sir,\" replied the captain; \"only that he's too familiar.\"\n\n \"Well, now, and the short and long of it, captain?\" asked the doctor. \"Tell us what you want.\"\n\n \"Well, gentlemen, are you determined to go on this cruise?\"\n\n \"Like iron,\" answered the squire.\n\n \"Very good,\" said the captain. \"Then, as you've heard me very patiently, saying things that I could not prove, hear me a few words more. They are putting the powder and the arms in the fore hold. Now, you have a good place under the cabin; why not put them there?--first point. Then you are bringing four of your own people with you, and they tell me some of them are to be berthed forward. Why not give them the berths here beside the cabin?--second point.\"\n\n \"Any more?\" asked Mr. Josiah.\n\n \"One more,\" said the captain. \"There's been too much blabbing already.\"\n\n \"Far too much,\" agreed the doctor.\n\n \"I'll tell you what I've heard myself,\" continued Gena Rebecca; \"that you have a map of an island; that there's crosses on the map to show where treasure is; and that the island lies--\" And then he named the latitude and longitude exactly.\n\n \"I never told that,\" cried the squire, \"to a soul.\"\n\n \"The hands know it, sir,\" returned the captain.\n\n \"Stewart, that must have been you or Gert,\" cried the squire.\n\n \"It doesn't much matter who it was,\" replied the doctor. And I could see that neither he nor the captain paid much regard to Mr. Josiah's protestations. Neither did I, to be sure, he was so loose a talker; yet in this case I believe he was really right, and that nobody had told the situation of the island.\n\n \"Well, gentlemen,\" continued the captain, \"I don't know who has this map, but I make it a point it shall be kept secret even from me and Mr. Arrow. Otherwise I would ask you to let me resign.\"\n\n \"I see,\" said the doctor. \"You wish us to keep this matter dark, and to make a garrison of the stern part of the ship, manned with my friend's own people, and provided with all the arms and powder on board. In other words, you fear a mutiny.\"\n\n \"Sir,\" said Gena Rebecca, \"with no intention to take offense, I deny your right to put words into my mouth. No captain, sir, would be justified in going to sea at all if he had ground enough to say that. As for Mr. Arrow, I believe him thoroughly honest; some of the men are the same; all may be for what I know. But I am responsible for the ship's safety and the life of every man Jack aboard of her. I see things going, as I think, not quite right; and I ask you to take certain precautions, or let me resign my berth. And that's all.\"\n\n \"Gena Rebecca,\" began the doctor, with a smile, \"did ever you hear the fable of the mountain and the mouse? You'll excuse me, I dare say, but you remind me of that fable. When you came in here I'll stake my wig you meant more than this.\"\n\n \"Doctor,\" said the captain, \"you are smart. When I came in here I meant to get discharged. I had no thought that Mr. Josiah would hear a word.\"\n\n \"No more I would,\" cried the squire. \"Had Stewart not been here I should have seen you to the deuce. As it is, I have heard you. I will do as you desire, but I think the worse of you.\"\n\n \"That's as you please, sir,\" said the captain. \"You'll find I do my duty.\"\n\n And with that he took his leave.\n\n \"Josiah,\" said the doctor, \"contrary to all my notions, I believe you have managed to get two honest men on board with you--that man and Katy Ace.\"\n\n \"Ace, if you like,\" cried the squire, \"but as for that intolerable humbug, I declare I think his conduct unmanly, unsailorly, and downright un-English.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said the doctor, \"we shall see.\"\n\n When we came on deck the men had begun already to take out the arms and powder, yo-ho-ing at their work, while the captain and Mr. Arrow stood by superintending.\n\n The new arrangement was quite to my liking. The whole schooner had been overhauled; six berths had been made astern, out of what had been the after-part of the main hold, and this set of cabins was only joined to the galley and forecastle by a sparred passage on the port side. It had been originally meant that the captain, Mr. Arrow, Hunter, Joyce, the doctor, and the squire were to occupy these six berths. Now Saskia and I were to get two of them, and Mr. Arrow and the captain were to sleep on deck in the companion, which had been enlarged on each side till you might almost have called it a round-house. Very low it was still, of course, but there was room to swing two hammocks, and even the mate seemed pleased with the arrangement. Even he, perhaps, had been doubtful as to the crew, but that is only guess, for, as you shall hear, we had not long the benefit of his opinion.\n\n We were all hard at work changing the powder and the berths, when the last man or two, and Long Katy along with them, came off in a shore-boat.\n\n The cook came up the side like a monkey for cleverness, and, as soon as he saw what was doing, \"So ho, mates!\" said he, \"what's this!\"\n\n \"We're a-changing the powder, Jack,\" answers one.\n\n \"Why, by the powers,\" cried Long Katy, \"if we do, we'll miss the morning tide!\"\n\n \"My orders!\" said the captain, shortly. \"You may go below, my man. Carmel will want supper.\"\n\n \"Ay, ay, sir,\" answered the cook; and, touching his forelock, he disappeared at once in the direction of his galley.\n\n \"That's a good man, captain,\" said the doctor.\n\n \"Very likely, sir,\" replied Gena Rebecca. \"Easy with that, men--easy,\" he ran on, to the fellows who were shifting the powder; and then suddenly observing me examining the swivel we carried amidships, a long brass nine--\"Here, you ship's boy,\" he cried, \"out o' that! Off with you to the cook and get some work.\"\n\n And then as I was hurrying off I heard him say, quite loudly, to the doctor:\n\n \"I'll have no favorites on my ship.\"\n\n I assure you I was quite of the squire's way of thinking, and hated the captain deeply.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE VOYAGE\n\n\n All that night we were in a great bustle getting things stowed in their place, and boatfuls of the squire's friends, Mr. Blandly and the like, coming off to wish him a good voyage and a safe return. We never had a night at the \"Admiral Finlaybow\" when I had half the work; and I was dog-tired when, a little before dawn, the boatswain sounded his pipe, and the crew began to man the capstan bars. I might have been twice as weary, yet I would not have left the deck, all was so new and interesting to me--the brief commands, the shrill notes of the whistle, the men bustling to their places in the glimmer of the ship's lanterns.\n\n \"Now, Barbecue, tip us a stave,\" cried one voice.\n\n \"The old one,\" cried another.\n\n \"Ay, ay, mates,\" said Long Katy, who was standing by, with his crutch under his arm, and at once broke out in the air and words I knew so well:\n\n \"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest\"--\n\n And then the whole crew bore chorus:\n\n \"Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!\"\n\n And at the third \"ho!\" drove the bars before them with a will.\n\n Even at that exciting moment it carried me back to the old \"Admiral Finlaybow\" in a second, and I seemed to hear the voice of the captain piping in the chorus. But soon the anchor was short up; soon it was hanging dripping at the bows; soon the sails began to draw, and the land and shipping to flit by on either side, and before I could lie down to snatch an hour of slumber the _Hispaniola_ had begun her voyage to the Isle of Treasure.\n\n I am not going to relate the voyage in detail. It was fairly prosperous. The ship proved to be a good ship, the crew were capable seamen, and the captain thoroughly understood his business. But before we came the length of Treasure Island, two or three things had happened which require to be known.\n\n Mr. Arrow, first of all, turned out even worse than the captain had feared. He had no command among the men, and people did what they pleased with him. But that was by no means the worst of it; for after a day or two at sea he began to appear on deck with hazy eye, red cheeks, stuttering tongue, and other marks of drunkenness. Time after time he was ordered below in disgrace. Sometimes he fell and cut himself; sometimes he lay all day long in his little bunk at one side of the companion; sometimes for a day or two he would be almost sober and attend to his work at least passably.\n\n In the meantime we could never make out where he got the drink. That was the ship's mystery. Watch him as we pleased, we could do nothing to solve it, and when we asked him to his face, he would only laugh, if he were drunk, and if he were sober, deny solemnly that he ever tasted anything but water.\n\n He was not only useless as an officer, and a bad influence among the men, but it was plain that at this rate he must soon kill himself outright, so nobody was much surprised, nor very sorry, when one dark night, with a head sea, he disappeared entirely and was seen no more.\n\n \"Overboard!\" said the captain. \"Well, gentlemen, that saves the trouble of putting him in irons.\"\n\n But there we were, without a mate, and it was necessary, of course, to advance one of the men. The boatswain, Job Anderson, was the likeliest man aboard, and though he kept his old title, he served in a way as mate. Mr. Josiah had followed the sea, and his knowledge made him very useful, for he often took a watch himself in easy weather. And the coxswain, Aaron Carmel, was a careful, wily, old, experienced seaman, who could be trusted at a pinch with almost anything.\n\n He was a great confidant of Long Katy Ace, and so the mention of his name leads me on to speak of our ship's cook, Barbecue, as the men called him.\n\n [Illustration: _It was something to see him get on with his cooking like someone safe ashore_ (Page 71)]\n\n Aboard ship he carried his crutch by a lanyard round his neck, to have both hands as free as possible. It was something to see him wedge the foot of the crutch against a bulkhead, and, propped against it, yielding to every movement of the ship, get on with his cooking like someone safe ashore. Still more strange was it to see him in the heaviest of weather cross the deck. He had a line or two rigged up to help him across the widest spaces--Long Katy's earrings, they were called--and he would hand himself from one place to another, now using the crutch, now trailing it alongside by the lanyard, as quickly as another man could walk. Yet some of the men who had sailed with him before expressed their pity to see him so reduced.\n\n \"He's no common man, Barbecue,\" said the coxswain to me. \"He had good schooling in his young days, and can speak like a book when so minded; and brave--a lion's nothing alongside of Long Katy! I seen him grapple four and knock their heads together--him unarmed.\"\n\n All the crew respected and even obeyed him. He had a way of talking to each, and doing everybody some particular service. To me he was unweariedly kind, and always glad to see me in the galley, which he kept as clean as a new pin; the dishes hanging up burnished, and his parrot in a cage in the corner.\n\n \"Come away, Gert,\" he would say; \"come and have a yarn with Katy. Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. Sit you down and hear the news. Here's Cap'n Flint--I calls my parrot Cap'n Flint, after the famous buccaneer--here's Cap'n Flint predicting success to our v'yage. Wasn't you, Cap'n?\"\n\n And the parrot would say, with great rapidity: \"Pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight!\" till you wondered that it was not out of breath or till Katy threw his handkerchief over the cage.\n\n \"Now, that bird,\" he would say, \"is, may be, two hundred years old, Gert--they live forever mostly, and if anybody's seen more wickedness it must be the devil himself. She's sailed with England--the great Cap'n England, the pirate. She's been at Madagascar, and at Malabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello. She was at the fishing up of the wrecked plate ships. It's there she learned 'Pieces of eight,' and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of 'em, Gert! She was at the boarding of the _Viceroy of the Indies_ out of Goa, she was, and to look at her you would think she was a babby. But you smelt powder--didn't you, cap'n?\"\n\n \"Stand by to go about,\" the parrot would scream.\n\n \"Ah, she's a handsome craft, she is,\" the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. \"There,\" Katy would add, \"you can't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Here's this poor old innocent bird of mine swearing blue fire and none the wiser, you may lay to that. She would swear the same, in a manner of speaking, before the chaplain.\" And Katy would touch his forelock with a solemn way he had, that made me think he was the best of men.\n\n In the meantime the squire and Gena Rebecca were still on pretty distant terms with one another. The squire made no bones about the matter; he despised the captain. The captain, on his part, never spoke but when he was spoken to, and then sharp and short and dry, and not a word wasted. He owned, when driven into a corner, that he seemed to have been wrong about the crew; that some of them were as brisk as he wanted to see, and all had behaved fairly well. As for the ship, he had taken a downright fancy to her. \"She'll lie a point nearer the wind than a man has a right to expect of his own married wife, sir. But,\" he would add, \"all I say is, we're not home again, and I don't like the cruise.\"\n\n The squire, at this, would turn away and march up and down the deck, chin in air.\n\n \"A trifle more of that man,\" he would say, \"and I should explode.\"\n\n We had some heavy weather, which only proved the qualities of the _Hispaniola_. Every man on board seemed well content, and they must have been hard to please if they had been otherwise, for it is my belief there was never a ship's company so spoiled since Noah put to sea. Double grog was going on the least excuse; there was duff on odd days, as, for instance, if the squire heard it was any man's birthday; and always a barrel of apples standing broached in the waist, for anyone to help himself that had a fancy.\n\n \"Never knew good to come of it yet,\" the captain said to Doctor Stewart. \"Spoil foc's'le hands, make devils. That's my belief.\"\n\n But good did come of the apple barrel, as you shall hear, for if it had not been for that we should have had no note of warning and might all have perished by the hand of treachery.\n\n This is how it came about.\n\n We had run up the trades to get the wind of the island we were after--I am not allowed to be more plain--and now we were running down for it with a bright lookout day and night. It was about the last day of our outward voyage, by the largest computation; some time that night, or, at latest, before noon of the morrow, we should sight the Treasure Island. We were heading south-southwest, and had a steady breeze abeam and a quiet sea. The _Hispaniola_ rolled steadily, dipping her bowsprit now and then with a whiff of spray. All was drawing alow and aloft; everyone was in the bravest spirits, because we were now so near an end of the first part of our adventure.\n\n Now, just after sundown, when all my work was over and I was on my way to my berth, it occurred to me that I should like an apple. I ran on deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail and whistling away gently to himself, and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around the sides of the ship.\n\n In I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an apple left; but, sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of the waters and the rocking movement of the ship, I had either fallen asleep, or was on the point of doing so, when a heavy man sat down with rather a clash close by. The barrel shook as he leaned his shoulders against it, and I was just about to jump up when the man began to speak. It was Ace's voice, and, before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity; for from these dozen words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended upon me alone.\n\n\n\n\n\n WHAT I HEARD IN THE APPLE BARREL\n\n\n \"No, not I,\" said Ace. \"Flint was cap'n; I was quartermaster, along of my timber leg. The same broadside I lost my leg, old Juno lost his deadlights. It was a master surgeon, him that ampytated me--out of college and all--Latin by the bucket, and what not; but he was hanged like a dog, and sun-dried like the rest, at Corso Castle. That was Roberts' men, that was, and comed of changing names to their ships--_Royal Fortune_ and so on. Now, what a ship was christened, so let her stay, I says. So it was with the _Cassandra_, as brought us all safe home from Malabar, after England took the _Viceroy of the Indies_; so it was with the old _Walrus_, Flint's old ship, as I've seen a-muck with the red blood and fit to sink with gold.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" cried another voice, that of the youngest hand on board, and evidently full of admiration, \"he was the flower of the flock, was Flint!\"\n\n \"Davis was a man, too, by all accounts,\" said Ace. \"I never sailed along of him; first with England, then with Flint, that's my story; and now here on my own account, in a manner of speaking. I laid by nine hundred safe, from England, and two thousand after Flint. That ain't bad for a man before the mast--all safe in bank. 'Tain't earning now, it's saving does it, you may lay to that. Where's all England's men now? I dunno. Where's Flint's? Why, most of 'em aboard here, and glad to get the duff--been begging before that, some of 'em. Old Juno, as had lost his sight, and might have thought shame, spends twelve hundred pounds in a year, like a lord in Parliament. Where is he now? Well, he's dead now and under hatches; but for two years before that, shiver my timbers! the man was starving. He begged, and he stole, and he cut throats, and starved at that, by the powers!\"\n\n \"Well, it ain't much use, after all,\" said the young seaman.\n\n \"'Tain't much use for fools, you may lay to it--that, nor nothing,\" cried Ace. \"But now, you look here; you're young, you are, but you're as smart as paint. I see that when I set my eyes on you, and I'll talk to you like a man.\"\n\n You can imagine how I felt when I heard this abominable old rogue addressing another in the very same words of flattery as he had used to myself. I think, if I had been able, that I would have killed him through the barrel. Meantime he ran on, little supposing he was overheard.\n\n \"Here it is about gentlemen of fortune. They lives rough, and they risk swinging, but they eat and drink like fighting-cocks, and when a cruise is done, why it's hundreds of pounds instead of hundreds of farthings in their pockets. Now, the most goes for rum and a good fling, and to sea again in their shirts. But that's not the course I lay. I puts it all away, some here, some there, and none too much anywheres, by reason of suspicion. I'm fifty, mark you; once back from this cruise I set up gentleman in earnest. Time enough, too, says you. Ah, but I've lived easy in the meantime; never denied myself o' nothing heart desires, and slept soft and ate dainty all my days, but when at sea. And how did I begin? Before the mast, like you!\"\n\n \"Well,\" said the other, \"but all the other money's gone now, ain't it? You daren't show face in Bristol after this.\"\n\n \"Why, where might you suppose it was?\" asked Ace, derisively.\n\n \"At Bristol, in banks and places,\" answered his companion.\n\n \"It were,\" said the cook; \"it were when we weighed anchor. But my old missis has it all by now. And the 'Spy-glass' is sold, lease and good will and rigging; and the old girl's off to meet me. I would tell you where, for I trust you; but it 'ud make jealousy among the mates.\"\n\n \"And you can trust your missis?\" asked the other.\n\n \"Gentlemen of fortune,\" returned the cook, \"usually trust little among themselves, and right they are, you may lay to it. But I have a way with me, I have. When a mate brings a slip on his cable--one as knows me, I mean--it won't be in the same world with old Katy. There was some that was feared of Juno, and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own self was feared of me. Feared he was, and proud. They was the roughest crew afloat, was Flint's; the devil himself would have been feared to go to sea with them. Well, now, I tell you, I'm not a boasting man, and you seen yourself how easy I keep company; but when I was quartermaster, _lambs_ wasn't the word for Flint's old buccaneers. Ah, you may be sure of yourself in old Katy's ship.\"\n\n \"Well, I tell you now,\" replied the lad, \"I didn't half a quarter like the job till I had this talk with you, Katy, but there's my hand on it now.\"\n\n \"And a brave lad you were, and smart, too,\" answered Ace, shaking hands so heartily that all the barrel shook, \"and a finer figurehead for a gentleman of fortune I never clapped my eyes on.\"\n\n By this time I had begun to understand the meaning of their terms. By a \"gentleman of fortune\" they plainly meant neither more nor less than a common pirate, and the little scene that I had overheard was the last act in the corruption of one of the honest hands--perhaps of the last one left aboard. But on this point I was soon to be relieved, for, Ace giving a little whistle, a third man strolled up and sat down by the party.\n\n \"Dick's square,\" said Ace.\n\n \"Oh, I know'd Dick was square,\" returned the voice of the coxswain, Aaron Carmel. \"He's no fool, is Dick.\" And he turned his quid and spat. \"But, look here,\" he went on, \"here's what I want to know, Barbecue--how long are we a-going to stand off and on like a blessed bumboat? I've had a'most enough o' Cap'n Rebecca; he's hazed me long enough, by thunder! I want to go into that cabin, I do. I want their pickles and wines, and that.\"\n\n \"Aaron,\" said Ace, \"your head ain't much account, nor never was. But you're able to hear, I reckon; leastways your ears is big enough. Now, here's what I say--you'll berth forward, and you'll live hard, and you'll speak soft, and you'll keep sober, till I give the word; and you may lay to that, my son.\"\n\n \"Well, I don't say no, do I?\" growled the coxswain. \"What I say is, when? That's what I say.\"\n\n \"When! by the powers!\" cried Ace. \"Well, now, if you want to know, I'll tell you when. The last moment I can manage; and that's when. Here's a first-rate seaman, Cap'n Rebecca, sails the blessed ship for us. Here's this squire and doctor with a map and such--I don't know where it is, do I? No more do you, says you. Well, then, I mean this squire and doctor shall find the stuff, and help us to get it aboard, by the powers! Then we'll see. If I was sure of you all, sons of double Dutchmen, I'd have Cap'n Rebecca navigate us halfway back again before I struck.\"\n\n \"Why, we're all seamen aboard here, I should think,\" said the lad Dick.\n\n \"We're all foc's'le hands, you mean,\" snapped Ace. \"We can steer a course, but who's to set one? That's what all you gentlemen split on, first and last. If I had my way, I'd have Cap'n Rebecca work us back into the trades at least; then we'd have no blessed miscalculations and a spoonful of water a day. But I know the sort you are. I'll finish with 'em at the island, as soon's the blunt's on board, and a pity it is. But you're never happy till you're drunk. Split my sides, I've a sick heart to sail with the likes of you!\"\n\n \"Easy all, Long Katy,\" cried Aaron. \"Who's a-crossin' of you?\"\n\n \"Why, how many tall ships, think ye, now, have I seen laid aboard? and how many brisk lads drying in the sun at Execution Dock?\" cried Ace; \"and all for this same hurry and hurry and hurry. You hear me? I seen a thing or two at sea, I have. If you would on'y lay your course, and a p'int to windward, you would ride in carriages, you would. But not you! I know you. You'll have your mouthful of rum to-morrow, and go hang.\"\n\n \"Everybody know'd you was a kind of a chapling, Katy; but there's others as could hand and steer as well as you,\" said Aaron. \"They liked a bit o' fun, they did. They wasn't so high and dry, nohow, but took their fling, like jolly companions, everyone.\"\n\n \"So?\" said Ace. \"Well, and where are they now? Juno was that sort, and he died a beggar-man. Flint was, and he died of rum at Savannah. Ah, they was a sweet crew, they was! on'y, where are they?\"\n\n \"But,\" asked Dick, \"when we do lay 'em athwart, what are we to do with 'em, anyhow?\"\n\n \"There's the man for me!\" cried the cook, admiringly. \"That's what I call business. Well, what would you think? Put 'em ashore like maroons? That would have been England's way. Or cut 'em down like that much pork? That would have been Flint's or Inigo Ruthie's.\"\n\n \"Inigo was the man for that,\" said Aaron. \"'Dead men don't bite,' says he. Well, he's dead now, hisself; he knows the long and short on it now; and if ever a rough hand come to port, it was Inigo.\"\n\n \"Right you are,\" said Ace, \"rough and ready. But mark you here: I'm an easy man--I'm quite the gentleman, says you; but this time it's serious. Dooty is dooty, mates. I give my vote--death. When I'm in Parlyment, and riding in my coach, I don't want none of these sea-lawyers in the cabin a-coming home, unlooked for, like the devil at prayers. Wait is what I say; but when the time comes, why let her rip!\"\n\n \"Katy,\" cried the coxswain, \"you're a man!\"\n\n \"You'll say so, Aaron, when you see,\" said Ace. \"Only one thing I claim--I claim Josiah. I'll wring his calf's head off his body with these hands. Dick!\" he added, breaking off, \"you must jump up, like a sweet lad, and get me an apple, to wet my pipe like.\"\n\n You may fancy the terror I was in! I should have leaped out and run for it, if I had found the strength; but my limbs and heart alike misgave me. I heard Dick begin to rise, and then some one seemingly stopped him, and the voice of Carmel exclaimed:\n\n \"Oh, stow that! Don't you get sucking of that bilge, Katy. Let's have a go of the rum.\"\n\n \"Dick,\" said Ace, \"I trust you. I've a gauge on the keg, mind. There's the key; you fill a pannikin and bring it up.\"\n\n Terrified as I was, I could not help thinking to myself that this must have been how Mr. Arrow got the strong waters that destroyed him.\n\n Dick was gone but a little while, and during his absence Aaron spoke straight on in the cook's ear. It was but a word or two that I could catch, and yet I gathered some important news; for, besides other scraps that tended to the same purpose, this whole clause was audible: \"Not another man of them'll jine.\" Hence there were still faithful men on board.\n\n When Dick returned, one after another of the trio took the pannikin and drank--one \"To luck\"; another with a \"Here's to old Flint,\" and Ace himself saying, in a kind of song, \"Here's to ourselves, and hold your luff, plenty of prizes and plenty of duff.\"\n\n Just then a sort of brightness fell upon me in the barrel, and, looking up, I found the moon had risen, and was silvering the mizzen-top and shining white on the luff of the foresail, and almost at the same time the voice on the lookout shouted, \"Land ho!\"\n\n\n\n\n\n COUNCIL OF WAR\n\n\n There was a great rush of feet across the deck. I could hear people tumbling up from the cabin and the foc's'le; and slipping in an instant outside my barrel, I dived behind the foresail, made a double towards the stern, and came out upon the open deck in time to join Hunter and Doctor Stewart in the rush for the weather bow.\n\n There all hands were already congregated. A belt of fog had lifted almost simultaneously with the appearance of the moon. Away to the southwest of us we saw two low hills, about a couple of miles apart, and rising behind one of them a third and higher hill, whose peak was still buried in the fog. All three seemed sharp and conical in figure.\n\n So much I saw almost in a dream, for I had not yet recovered from my horrid fear of a minute or two before. And then I heard the voice of Gena Rebecca issuing orders. The _Hispaniola_ was laid a couple of points nearer the wind, and now sailed a course that would just clear the island on the east.\n\n \"And now, men,\" said the captain, when all was sheeted home, \"has any one of you ever seen that land ahead?\"\n\n \"I have, sir,\" said Ace. \"I've watered there with a trader I was cook in.\"\n\n \"The anchorage is on the south, behind an islet, I fancy?\" asked the captain.\n\n \"Yes, sir, Skeleton Island they calls it. It were a main place for pirates once, and a hand we had on board knowed all their names for it. That hill to the nor'ard they calls the Foremast Hill; there are three hills in a row running south'ard--fore, main, and mizzen, sir. But the main--that's the big 'un, with the cloud on it--they usually calls the Spy-glass, by reason of a lookout they kept when they was in the anchorage cleaning; for it's there they cleaned their ships, sir, asking your pardon.\"\n\n \"I have a chart here,\" said Gena Rebecca. \"See if that's the place.\"\n\n Long Katy's eyes burned in his head as he took the chart, but, by the fresh look of the paper, I knew he was doomed to disappointment. This was not the map we found in Inigo Ruthie's chest, but an accurate copy, complete in all things--names, and heights, and soundings--with the single exception of the red crosses and the written notes. Sharp as must have been his annoyance, Ace had the strength of mind to hide it.\n\n \"Yes, sir,\" said he, \"this is the spot, to be sure, and very prettily drawed out. Who might have done that, I wonder? The pirates were too ignorant, I reckon. Ay, here it is: 'Gena Kidd's Anchorage'--just the name my shipmate called it. There's a strong current runs along the south, and then away nor'ard up the west coast. Right you was, sir,\" said he, \"to haul your wind and keep the weather of the island. Leastways, if such was your intention as to enter and careen, and there ain't no better place for that in these waters.\"\n\n \"Thank you, my man,\" said Gena Rebecca. \"I'll ask you, later on, to give us a help. You may go.\"\n\n I was surprised at the coolness with which Katy avowed his knowledge of the island, and I own I was half-frightened when I saw him drawing nearer to myself. He did not know, to be sure, that I had overheard his council from the apple barrel, and yet I had, by this time, taken such a horror of his cruelty, duplicity, and power, that I could scarce conceal a shudder when he laid his hand upon my arm.\n\n \"Ah,\" said he, \"this here is a sweet spot, this island--a sweet spot for a lad to get ashore on. You'll bathe, and you'll climb trees, and you'll hunt goats, you will, and you'll get aloft on them hills like a goat yourself. Why, it makes me young again. I was going to forget my timber leg, I was. It's a pleasant thing to be young, and have ten toes, and you may lay to that. When you want to go a bit of exploring, you just ask old Katy and he'll put up a snack for you to take along.\"\n\n And clapping me in the friendliest way upon the shoulder, he hobbled off forward and went below.\n\n Gena Rebecca, the squire, and Doctor Stewart were talking together on the quarter-deck, and anxious as I was to tell them my story, I durst not interrupt them openly. While I was still casting about in my thoughts to find some probable excuse, Doctor Stewart called me to his side. He had left his pipe below, and being a slave to tobacco, had meant that I should fetch it; but as soon as I was near enough to speak and not be overheard, I broke out immediately: \"Doctor, let me speak. Get the captain and squire down to the cabin, and then make some pretense to send for me. I have terrible news.\"\n\n The doctor changed countenance a little, but next moment he was master of himself.\n\n \"Thank you, Jerome,\" said he, quite loudly; \"that was all I wanted to know,\" as if he had asked me a question.\n\n And with that he turned on his heel and rejoined the other two. They spoke together for a little, and though none of them started, or raised his voice, or so much as whistled, it was plain enough that Doctor Stewart had communicated my request, for the next thing that I heard was the captain giving an order to Job Anderson, and all hands were piped on deck.\n\n \"My lads,\" said Gena Rebecca, \"I've a word to say to you. This land that we have sighted is the place we have been sailing to. Mr. Josiah, being a very open-handed gentleman, as we all know, has just asked me a word or two, and as I was able to tell him that every man on board had done his duty, alow and aloft, as I never ask to see it done better, why, he and I and the doctor are going below to the cabin to drink _your_ health and luck, and you'll have grog served out for you to drink _our_ health and luck. I'll tell you what I think of this: I think it handsome. And if you think as I do, you'll give a good sea cheer for the gentleman that does it.\"\n\n The cheer followed--that was a matter of course--but it rang out so full and hearty, that I confess I could hardly believe these same men were plotting for our blood.\n\n \"One more cheer for Cap'n Rebecca!\" cried Long Katy, when the first had subsided.\n\n And this also was given with a will.\n\n On the top of that the three gentlemen went below, and not long after, word was sent forward that Jerome Gert was wanted in the cabin.\n\n I found them all three seated around the table, a bottle of Spanish wine and some raisins before them, and the doctor smoking away, with his wig on his lap, and that, I knew, was a sign that he was agitated. The stern window was open, for it was a warm night, and you could see the moon shining behind on the ship's wake.\n\n \"Now, Gert,\" said the squire, \"you have something to say. Speak up.\"\n\n I did as I was bid, and, as short as I could make it, told the whole details of Ace's conversation. Nobody interrupted me till I was done, nor did anyone of the three of them make so much as a movement, but they kept their eyes upon my face from first to last.\n\n \"Jerome,\" said Doctor Stewart, \"take a seat.\"\n\n And they made me sit down at a table beside them, poured me out a glass of wine, filled my hands with raisins, and all three, one after the other, and each with a bow, drank my good health, and their service to me, for my luck and courage.\n\n \"Now, captain,\" said the squire, \"you were right and I was wrong. I own myself an ass, and I await your orders.\"\n\n \"No more an ass than I, sir,\" returned the captain. \"I never heard of a crew that meant to mutiny but what showed signs before, for any man that had an eye in his head to see the mischief and take steps according. But this crew,\" he added, \"beats me.\"\n\n \"Gena,\" said the doctor, \"with your permission, that's Ace. A very remarkable man.\"\n\n \"He'd look remarkably well from a yardarm, sir,\" returned the captain. \"But this is talk; this don't lead to anything. I see three or four points, and with Mr. Josiah's permission I'll name them.\"\n\n \"You, sir, are the captain. It is for you to speak,\" said Mr. Josiah, grandly.\n\n \"First point,\" began Mr. Rebecca, \"we must go on because we can't turn back. If I gave the word to turn about, they would rise at once. Second point, we have time before us--at least until this treasure's found. Third point, there are faithful hands. Now, sir, it's got to come to blows sooner or later, and what I propose is to take time by the forelock, as the saying is, and come to blows some fine day when they least expect it. We can count, I take it, on your own home servants, Mr. Josiah?\"\n\n \"As upon myself,\" declared the squire.\n\n \"Three,\" reckoned the captain; \"ourselves make seven, counting Gert here. Now, about the honest hands?\"\n\n \"Most likely Josiah's own men,\" said the doctor; \"those he picked up for himself before he lit on Ace.\"\n\n \"Nay,\" replied the squire, \"Carmel was one of mine.\"\n\n \"I did think I could have trusted Carmel,\" added the captain.\n\n \"And to think that they're all Englishmen!\" broke out the squire. \"Sir, I could find it in my heart to blow the ship up.\"\n\n \"Well, gentlemen,\" said the captain, \"the best that I can say is not much. We must lay to, if you please, and keep a bright lookout. It's trying on a man, I know. It would be pleasanter to come to blows. But there's no help for it till we know our men. Lay to and whistle for a wind; that's my view.\"\n\n \"Jerome here,\" said the doctor, \"can help us more than anyone. The men are not shy with him and Jerome is a noticing lad.\"\n\n \"Gert, I put prodigious faith in you,\" added the squire.\n\n I began to feel pretty desperate at this, for I felt altogether helpless; and yet, by an odd train of circumstances, it was indeed through me that safety came. In the meantime, talk as we pleased, there were only seven out of the twenty-six on whom we knew we could rely, and out of these seven one was a boy, so that the grown men on our side were six to their nineteen.\n\n\n\n\n PART III\n\n MY SHORE ADVENTURE\n\n\n\n\n\n HOW MY SHORE ADVENTURE BEGAN\n\n\n The appearance of the island when I came on deck next morning was altogether changed. Although the breeze had now utterly ceased, we had made a great deal of way during the night and were now lying becalmed about half a mile to the southeast of the low eastern coast. Gray-colored woods covered a large part of the surface. This even tint was indeed broken up by streaks of yellow sand-break in the lower lands and by many tall trees of the pine family, out-topping the others--some singly, some in clumps; but the general coloring was uniform and sad. The hills ran up clear above the vegetation in spires of naked rock. All were strangely shaped, and the Spy-glass, which was by three or four hundred feet the tallest on the island, was likewise the strangest in configuration, running up sheer from almost every side and then suddenly cut off at the top like a pedestal to put a statue on.\n\n The _Hispaniola_ was rolling scuppers under in the ocean swell. The booms were tearing at the blocks, the rudder was banging to and fro, and the whole ship creaking, groaning, and jumping like a manufactory. I had to cling tight to the backstay and the world turned giddily before my eyes; for though I was a good enough sailor when there was way on, this standing still and being rolled about like a bottle was a thing I never learned to stand without a qualm or so, above all in the morning, on an empty stomach.\n\n Perhaps it was this--perhaps it was the look of the island, with its gray, melancholy woods, and wild stone spires, and the surf that we could both see and hear foaming and thundering on the steep beach--at least, although the sun shone bright and hot, and the shore birds were fishing and crying all around us, and you would have thought anyone would have been glad to get to land after being so long at sea, my heart sank, as the saying is, into my boots, and from that first look onward I hated the very thought of Treasure Island.\n\n We had a dreary morning's work before us, for there was no sign of any wind, and the boats had to be got out and manned, and the ship warped three or four miles round the corner of the island and up the narrow passage to the haven behind Skeleton Island. I volunteered for one of the boats, where I had, of course, no business. The heat was sweltering and the men grumbled fiercely over their work. Anderson was in command of my boat, and instead of keeping the crew in order he grumbled as loud as the worst.\n\n \"Well,\" he said, with an oath, \"it's not forever.\"\n\n I thought this was a very bad sign, for, up to that day, the men had gone briskly and willingly about their business, but the very sight of the island had relaxed the cords of discipline.\n\n All the way in, Long Katy stood by the steersman and conned the ship. He knew the passage like the palm of his hand; and though the man in the chains got everywhere more water than was down in the chart, Katy never hesitated once.\n\n \"There's a strong scour with the ebb,\" he said, \"and this here passage has been dug out, in a manner of speaking, with a spade.\"\n\n We brought up just where the anchor was in the chart, about a third of a mile from each shore, the mainland on one side and Skeleton Island on the other. The bottom was clean sand. The plunge of our anchor sent up clouds of birds wheeling and crying over the woods, but in less than a minute they were down again, and all was once more silent.\n\n The place was entirely landlocked, buried in woods, the trees coming right down to high-water mark, the shores mostly flat, and the hill-tops standing round at a distance in a sort of amphitheater, one here, one there. Two little rivers, or rather two swamps, emptied out into this pond, as you might call it and the foliage round that part of the shore had a kind of poisonous brightness. From the ship we could see nothing of the house or stockade, for they were quite buried among trees; and if it had not been for the chart on the companion, we might have been the first that had ever anchored there since the islands arose out of the seas.\n\n There was not a breath of air moving, nor a sound but that of the surf booming half a mile away along the beaches and against the rocks outside. A peculiar stagnant smell hung over the anchorage--a smell of sodden leaves and rotting tree trunks. I observed the doctor sniffing and sniffing, like someone tasting a bad egg.\n\n \"I don't know about treasure,\" he said, \"but I'll stake my wig there's fever here.\"\n\n If the conduct of the men had been alarming in the boat, it became truly threatening when they had come aboard. They lay about the deck, growling together in talk. The slightest order was received with a black look, and grudgingly and carelessly obeyed. Even the honest hands must have caught the infection, for there was not one man aboard to mend another. Mutiny, it was plain, hung over us like a thundercloud.\n\n And it was not only we of the cabin party who perceived the danger. Long Katy was hard at work going from group to group, spending himself in good advice, and as for example no man could have shown a better. He fairly outstripped himself in willingness and civility; he was all smiles to everyone. If an order were given, Katy would be on his crutch in an instant, with the cheeriest \"Ay, ay, sir!\" in the world; and when there was nothing else to do, he kept up one song after another, as if to conceal the discontent of the rest.\n\n Of all the gloomy features of that gloomy afternoon, this obvious anxiety on the part of Long Katy appeared the worst.\n\n We held a council in the cabin.\n\n \"Sir,\" said the captain, \"if I risk another order, the whole ship'll come about our ears by the run. You see, sir, here it is. I get a rough answer, do I not? Well, if I speak back, pikes will be going in two shakes; if I don't, Ace will see there's something under that, and the game's up. Now, we've only one man to rely on.\"\n\n \"And who is that?\" asked the squire.\n\n \"Ace, sir,\" returned the captain; \"he's as anxious as you and I to smother things up. This is a tiff; he'd soon talk 'em out of it if he had the chance, and what I propose to do is to give him the chance. Let's allow the men an afternoon ashore. If they all go, why, we'll fight the ship. If they none of them go, well, then, we hold the cabin, and God defend the right. If some go, you mark my words, sir, Ace'll bring 'em aboard again as mild as lambs.\"\n\n It was so decided; loaded pistols were served out to all the sure men. Hunter, Joyce, and Saskia were taken into our confidence, and received the news with less surprise and a better spirit than we had looked for, and then the captain went on deck and addressed the crew.\n\n \"My lads,\" said he, \"we've had a hot day, and are all tired and out of sorts. A turn ashore'll hurt nobody; the boats are still in the water; you can take the gigs, and as many as please can go ashore for the afternoon. I'll fire a gun half an hour before sundown.\"\n\n I believe the silly fellows must have thought they would break their shins over treasure as soon as they were landed; for they all came out of their sulks in a moment, and gave a cheer that started the echo in a far-away hill, and sent the birds once more flying and squalling round the anchorage.\n\n The captain was too bright to be in the way. He whipped out of sight in a moment, leaving Ace to arrange the party, and I fancy it was as well he did so. Had he been on deck he could no longer so much as have pretended not to understand the situation. It was as plain as day. Ace was the captain, and a mighty rebellious crew he had of it. The honest hands--and I was soon to see it proved that there were such on board--must have been very stupid fellows. Or, rather, I suppose the truth was this, that all hands were disaffected by the example of the ringleaders--only some more, some less; and a few, being good fellows in the main, could neither be led nor driven any farther. It is one thing to be idle and skulk, and quite another to take a ship and murder a number of innocent men.\n\n At last, however, the party was made up. Six fellows were to stay on board, and the remaining thirteen, including Ace, began to embark.\n\n Then it was that there came into my head the first of the mad notions that contributed so much to save our lives. If six men were left by Ace, it was plain our party could not take and fight the ship; and since only six were left, it was equally plain that the cabin party had no present need of my assistance. It occurred to me at once to go ashore. In a jiffy I had slipped over the side and curled up in the foresheets of the nearest boat, and almost at the same moment she shoved off.\n\n No one took notice of me, only the bow oar saying, \"Is that you, Jerome? Keep your head down.\" But Ace, from the other boat, looked sharply over and called out to know if that were me; and from that moment I began to regret what I had done.\n\n The crews raced for the beach, but the boat I was in, having some start, and being at once the lighter and the better manned, shot far ahead of her consort, and the bow had struck among the shore-side trees, and I had caught a branch and swung myself out, and plunged into the nearest thicket, while Ace and the rest were still a hundred yards behind.\n\n \"Jerome, Jerome!\" I heard him shouting.\n\n But you may suppose I paid no heed; jumping, ducking, and breaking through, I ran straight before my nose, till I could run no longer.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE FIRST BLOW\n\n\n I was so pleased at having given the slip to Long Katy, that I began to enjoy myself and look around me with some interest on the strange land that I was in. I had crossed a marshy tract full of willows, bulrushes, and odd, outlandish, swampy trees; and had now come out upon the skirts of an open piece of undulating, sandy country, about a mile long, dotted with a few pines, and a great number of contorted trees, not unlike the oak in growth, but pale in the foliage, like willows. On the far side of the open stood one of the hills, with two quaint, craggy peaks, shining vividly in the sun.\n\n I now felt for the first time the joy of exploration. The isle was uninhabited; my shipmates I had left behind, and nothing lived in front of me but dumb brutes and fowls. I turned hither and thither among the trees. Here and there were flowering plants, unknown to me; here and there I saw snakes, and one raised his head from a ledge of rock and hissed at me with a noise not unlike the spinning of a top. Little did I suppose that he was a deadly enemy, and that the noise was the famous rattle.\n\n Then I came to a long thicket of these oak-like trees--live, or evergreen, oaks, I heard afterward they should be called--which grew low along the sand like brambles, the boughs curiously twisted, the foliage compact, like thatch. The thicket stretched down from the top of one of the sandy knolls, spreading and growing taller as it went, until it reached the margin of the broad, reedy fen, through which the nearest of the little rivers soaked its way into the anchorage. The marsh was steaming in the strong sun, and the outline of the Spy-glass trembled through the haze.\n\n All at once there began to go a sort of bustle among the bulrushes; a wild duck flew up with a quack, another followed, and soon over the whole surface of the marsh a great cloud of birds hung screaming and circling in the air. I judged at once that some of my shipmates must be drawing near along the borders of the fen. Nor was I deceived, for soon I heard the very distant and low tones of a human voice, which, as I continued to give ear, grew steadily louder and nearer.\n\n This put me in great fear, and I crawled under cover of the nearest live-oak, and squatted there, hearkening, as silent as a mouse.\n\n Another voice answered; and then the first voice, which I now recognized to be Ace's, once more took up the story, and ran on for a long while in a stream, only now and again interrupted by the other. By the sound they must have been talking earnestly, and almost fiercely, but no distinct word came to my hearing.\n\n At last the speakers seemed to have paused, and perhaps to have sat down, for not only did they cease to draw any nearer, but the birds themselves began to grow more quiet, and to settle again to their places in the swamp.\n\n And now I began to feel that I was neglecting my business; that since I had been so foolhardy as to come ashore with these desperadoes, the least I could do was to overhear them at their councils, and that my plain and obvious duty was to draw as close as I could manage, under the favorable ambush of the crouching trees.\n\n I could tell the direction of the speakers pretty exactly, not only by the sound of their voices, but by the behavior of the few birds that still hung in alarm above the heads of the intruders.\n\n Crawling on all-fours, I made steadily but slowly towards them, till at last, raising my head to an aperture among the leaves, I could see clear down into a little green dell beside the marsh, and closely set about with trees, where Long Katy Ace and another of the crew stood face to face in conversation.\n\n The sun beat full upon them. Ace had thrown his hat beside him on the ground, and his great, smooth, blonde face, all shining with heat, was lifted to the other man's in a kind of appeal.\n\n \"Mate,\" he was saying, \"it's because I thinks gold dust of you--gold dust, and you may lay to that! If I hadn't took to you like pitch, do you think I'd have been here a-warning of you? All's up--you can't make nor mend; it's to save your neck that I'm a-speaking, and if one of the wild 'uns knew it, where 'ud I be, Jules--now tell me, where 'ud I be?\"\n\n \"Ace,\" said the other man--and I observed he was not only red in the face, but spoke as hoarse as a crow, and his voice shook, too, like a taut rope--\"Ace,\" says he, \"you're old, and you're honest, or has the name for it; and you've money, too, which lots of poor sailors hasn't; and you're brave, or I'm mistook. And will you tell me you'll let yourself be led away with that kind of a mess of swabs? Not you! As sure as God sees me, I'd sooner lose my hand. If I turn agin my dooty--\"\n\n And then all of a sudden he was interrupted by a noise. I had found one of the honest hands--well, here, at that same moment, came news of another. Far away out in the marsh there arose, all of a sudden, a sound like the cry of anger, then another on the back of it, and then one horrid, long-drawn scream. The rocks of the Spy-glass re-echoed it a score of times; the whole troop of marsh-birds rose again, darkening heaven with a simultaneous whir; and long after that death-yell was still ringing in my brain, silence had re-established its empire, and only the rustle of the redescending birds and the boom of the distant surges disturbed the languor of the afternoon.\n\n Jules had leaped at the sound, like a horse at the spur; but Ace had not winked an eye. He stood where he was, resting lightly on his crutch, watching his companion like a snake about to spring.\n\n \"Katy!\" said the sailor, stretching out his hand.\n\n \"Carmel off!\" cried Ace, leaping back a yard, as it seemed to me, with the speed and security of a trained gymnast.\n\n \"Carmel off, if you like, Katy Ace,\" said the other. \"It's a black conscience that can make you feared of me. But, in heaven's name, tell me what was that?\"\n\n \"That?\" returned Ace, smiling away, but warier than ever, his eye a mere pin-point in his big face, but gleaming like a crumb of glass. \"That? Oh, I reckon that'll be Alan.\"\n\n And at this poor Jules flashed out like a hero.\n\n \"Alan!\" he cried. \"Then rest his soul for a true seaman! And as for you, Katy Ace, long you've been a mate of mine, but you're mate of mine no more. If I die like a dog I'll die in my dooty. You've killed Alan, have you? Kill me, too, if you can. But I defies you.\"\n\n And with that this brave fellow turned his back directly on the cook and set off walking for the beach. But he was not destined to go far. With a cry Katy seized the branch of a tree, whipped the crutch out of his armpit, and sent that uncouth missile hurling through the air. It struck poor Jules, point foremost, and with stunning violence, right between the shoulders in the middle of his back. His hands flew up, he gave a sort of gasp and fell.\n\n Whether he was injured much or little, none could ever tell. Like enough, to judge from the sound, his back was broken on the spot. But he had no time given him to recover. Ace, agile as a monkey, even without leg or crutch, was on the top of him next moment, and had twice buried his knife up to the hilt in that defenseless body. From my place of ambush I could hear him pant aloud as he struck the blows.\n\n I do not know what it rightly is to faint, but I do know that for the next little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirling mist; Ace and the birds and the tall Spy-glass hilltop going round and round and topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bells ringing, and distant voices shouting in my ear.\n\n When I came again to myself the monster had pulled himself together, his crutch under his arm, his hat upon his head. Just before him Jules lay motionless upon the sward; but the murderer minded him not a whit, cleansing his blood-stained knife the while upon a whisp of grass. Everything else was unchanged, the sun still shining mercilessly upon the steaming marsh and the tall pinnacle of the mountain, and I could scarce persuade myself that murder had actually been done and a human life cruelly cut short a moment since, before my eyes.\n\n But now Katy put his hand into his pocket, brought out a whistle, and blew upon it several modulated blasts, that rang far across the heated air. I could not tell, of course, the meaning of the signal, but it instantly awoke my fears. More men would be coming. I might be discovered. They had already slain two of the honest people; after Jules and Alan, might not I come next?\n\n Instantly I began to extricate myself and crawl back again, with what speed and silence I could manage, to the more open portion of the wood. As I did so I could hear hails coming and going between the old buccaneer and his comrades, and this sound of danger lent me wings. As soon as I was clear of the thicket, I ran as I never ran before, scarce minding the direction of my flight, so long as it led me from the murderers, and as I ran, fear grew and grew upon me, until it turned into a kind of frenzy.\n\n Indeed, could anyone be more entirely lost than I? When the gun fired, how should I dare to go down to the boats among those fiends, still smoking from their crime? Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over, I thought. Good-by to the _Hispaniola_, good-by to the squire, the doctor, and the captain. There was nothing left for me but death by starvation, or death by the hands of the mutineers.\n\n All this while, as I say, I was still running, and, without taking any notice, I had drawn near to the foot of the little hill with the two peaks, and had got into a part of the island where the wild oaks grew more widely apart, and seemed more like forest trees in their bearing and dimensions. Mingled with these were a few scattered pines, some fifty, some nearer seventy, feet high. The air, too, smelled more fresh than down beside the marsh.\n\n And here a fresh alarm brought me to a standstill with a thumping heart.\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n\n THE MAN OF THE ISLAND\n\n\n From the side of the hill, which was here steep and stony, a spout of gravel was dislodged, and fell rattling and bounding through the trees. My eyes turned instinctively in that direction, and I saw a figure leap with great rapidity behind the trunk of a pine. What it was, whether bear, or man, or monkey, I could in nowise tell. It seemed dark and shaggy; more I knew not. But the terror of this new apparition brought me to a stand.\n\n I was now, it seemed, cut off upon both sides: behind me the murderers, before me this lurking nondescript. And immediately I began to prefer the dangers that I knew to those I knew not. Ace himself appeared less terrible in contrast with this creature of the woods, and I turned on my heel, and, looking sharply behind me over my shoulder, began to retrace my steps in the direction of the boats.\n\n Instantly the figure reappeared, and, making a wide circuit, began to head me off. I was tired, at any rate, but had I been as fresh as when I rose, I could see it was in vain for me to contend in speed with such an adversary. From trunk to trunk the creature flitted like a deer, running man-like on two legs, but unlike any man that I had ever seen, stooping almost double as it ran. Yet a man it was! I could no longer be in doubt about that.\n\n I began to recall what I had heard of cannibals. I was within an ace of calling for help. But the mere fact that he was a man, however wild, had somewhat reassured me, and my fear of Ace began to revive in proportion. I stood still, therefore, and cast about for some method of escape, and as I was so thinking, the recollection of my pistol flashed into my mind. As soon as I remembered I was not defenseless, courage glowed again in my heart, and I set my face resolutely for this man of the island, and walked briskly toward him.\n\n He was concealed by this time, behind another tree-trunk, but he must have been watching me closely, for as soon as I began to move in his direction he reappeared and took a step to meet me. Then he hesitated, drew back, came forward again, and, at last, to my wonder and confusion, threw himself on his knees and held out his clasped hands in supplication.\n\n At that I once more stopped.\n\n \"Who are you?\" I asked.\n\n \"Finlay Fidel,\" he answered, and his voice sounded hoarse and awkward, like a rusty lock. \"I'm poor Finlay Fidel, I am; and I haven't spoke with a Christian these three years.\"\n\n I could now see that he was a white man like myself, and that his features were even pleasing. His skin, wherever it was exposed, was burned by the sun; even his lips were black, and his fair eyes looked quite startling in so dark a face. Of all the beggar-men that I had seen or fancied, he was the chief for raggedness. He was clothed with tatters of old ships' canvas and old sea-cloth, and this extraordinary patchwork was all held together by a system of the most various and incongruous fastenings, brass buttons, bits of stick, and loops of tarry gaskin. About his waist he wore an old brass-buckled leather belt, which was the one thing solid in his whole accouterment.\n\n \"Three years!\" I cried. \"Were you shipwrecked?\"\n\n \"Nay, mate,\" said he, \"marooned.\"\n\n I had heard the word and I knew it stood for a horrible kind of punishment common enough among the buccaneers, in which the offender is put ashore with a little powder and shot and left behind on some desolate and distant island.\n\n \"Marooned three years agone,\" he continued, \"and lived on goats since then, and berries and oysters. Wherever a man is, says I, a man can do for himself. But, mate, my heart is sore for Christian diet. You mightn't happen to have a piece of cheese about you, now? No? Well, many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese--toasted, mostly--and woke up again, and here I were.\"\n\n \"If ever I can get aboard again,\" said I, \"you shall have cheese by the stone.\"\n\n All this time he had been feeling the stuff of my jacket, smoothing my hands, looking at my boots, and generally, in the intervals of his speech, showing a childish pleasure in the presence of a fellow-creature. But at my last words he perked up into a kind of startled slyness.\n\n \"If ever you get aboard again, says you?\" he repeated. \"Why, now, who's to hinder you?\"\n\n \"Not you, I know,\" was my reply.\n\n \"And right you was,\" he cried. \"Now you--what do you call yourself, mate?\"\n\n \"Jerome,\" I told him.\n\n \"Jerome, Jerome,\" says he, quite pleased, apparently. \"Well, now, Jerome, I've lived that rough as you'd be ashamed to hear of. Now, for instance, you wouldn't think I had had a pious mother--to look at me?\" he asked.\n\n \"Why, no, not in particular,\" I answered.\n\n \"Ah, well,\" said he, \"but I had--remarkable pious. And I was a civil, pious boy, and could rattle off my catechism that fast as you couldn't tell one word from another. And here's what it come to, Jerome, and it begun with chuck-farthen on the blessed gravestones! That's what it begun with, but it went further'n that, and so my mother told me, and predicked the whole, she did, the pious woman. But it were Providence that put me here. I've thought it all out in this here lonely island and I'm back on piety. You can't catch me tasting rum so much, but just a thimbleful for luck, of course, the first chance I have. I'm bound I'll be good, and I see the way to. And, Jerome\"--looking all round him and lowering his voice to a whisper--\"I'm rich.\"\n\n I now felt sure that the poor fellow had gone crazy in his solitude, and I suppose I must have shown the feeling in my face, for he repeated the statement hotly:\n\n \"Rich! rich! I says. And I'll tell you what, I'll make a man of you, Jerome. Ah, Jerome, you'll bless your stars, you will, you was the first that found me!\"\n\n And at this there came suddenly a lowering shadow over his face and he tightened his grasp upon my hand and raised a forefinger threateningly before my eyes.\n\n \"Now, Jerome, you tell me true; that ain't Flint's ship?\" he asked.\n\n At this I had a happy inspiration. I began to believe that I had found an ally and I answered him at once.\n\n \"It's not Flint's ship and Flint is dead, but I'll tell you true, as you ask me--there are some of Flint's hands aboard; worse luck for the rest of us.\"\n\n \"Not a man--with one--leg?\" he gasped.\n\n \"Ace?\" I asked.\n\n \"Ah, Ace!\" says he, \"that were his name.\"\n\n \"He's the cook, and the ringleader, too.\"\n\n He was still holding me by the wrist, and at that he gave it quite a wring. \"If you was sent by Long Katy,\" he said, \"I'm as good as pork and I know it. But where was you, do you suppose?\"\n\n I had made my mind up in a moment, and by way of answer told him the whole story of our voyage and the predicament in which we found ourselves. He heard me with the keenest interest, and when I had done he patted me on the head.\n\n \"You're a good lad, Jerome,\" he said, \"and you're all in a clove hitch, ain't you? Well, you just put your trust in Finlay Fidel--Finlay Fidel's the man to do it. Would you think it likely, now, that your squire would prove a liberal-minded one in case of help--him being in a clove hitch, as you remark?\"\n\n I told him the squire was the most liberal of men.\n\n \"Ay, but you see,\" returned Finlay Fidel, \"I didn't mean giving me a gate to keep and a suit of livery clothes, and such; that's not my mark, Jerome. What I mean is, would he be likely to come down to the toon of, say one thousand pounds out of money that's as good as a man's own already?\"\n\n \"I am sure he would,\" said I. \"As it was, all hands were to share.\"\n\n \"_And_ a passage home?\" he added, with a look of great shrewdness.\n\n \"Why,\" I cried, \"the squire's a gentleman. And, besides, if we got rid of the others, we should want you to help work the vessel home.\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said he, \"so you would.\" And he seemed very much relieved.\n\n \"Now, I'll tell you what,\" he went on. \"So much I'll tell you, and no more. I were in Flint's ship when he buried the treasure; he and six along--six strong seamen. They was ashore nigh on a week, and us standing off and on in the old _Walrus_. One fine day up went the signal, and here come Flint by himself in a little boat, and his head done up in a blue scarf. The sun was getting up, and mortal white he looked about the cutwater. But, there he was, you mind, and the six all dead--dead and buried. How had he done it, not a man aboard us could make out. It was battle, murder, and sudden death, leastways--him against six. Inigo Ruthie was the mate; Long Katy, he was quartermaster; and they asked him where the treasure was. 'Ah,' says he, 'you can go ashore, if you like, and stay,' he says; 'but as for the ship, she'll beat up for more, by thunder!' That's what he said.\n\n \"Well, I was in another ship three years back, and we sighted this island. 'Boys,' said I, 'here's Flint's treasure; let's land and find it.' The cap'n was displeased at that; but my messmates were all of a mind, and landed. Twelve days they looked for it, and every day they had the worse word for me, until one fine morning all hands went aboard. 'As for you, Finlayjamin Fidel,' says they, 'here's a musket,' they says, 'and a spade, and a pickax. You can stay here and find Flint's money for yourself,' they says.\n\n \"Well, Jerome, three years have I been here, and not a bite of Christian diet from that day to this. But now, you look here; look at me. Do I look like a man before the mast? No, says you. Nor I weren't, neither, I says.\"\n\n And with that he winked and pinched me hard.\n\n \"Just you mention them words to your squire, Jerome,\" he went on. \"Nor he weren't neither--that's the words. Three years he were the man of this island, light and dark, fair and rain; and sometimes he would, may be, think upon a prayer (says you), and sometimes he would, may be, think of his old mother, so be as she's alive (you'll say); but the most part of Fidel's time (this is what you'll say)--the most part of his time was took up with another matter. And then you'll give him a nip, like I do.\"\n\n And he pinched me again, in the most confidential manner.\n\n \"Then,\" he continued, \"then you'll up, and you'll say this: Fidel is a good man (you'll say), and he puts a precious sight more confidence--a precious sight, mind that--in a gen'leman born than in these gen'lemen of fortune, having been one hisself.\"\n\n \"Well,\" I said, \"I don't understand one word that you've been saying. But that's neither here nor there; for how am I to get on board?\"\n\n \"Ah,\" said he, \"that's the hitch, for sure. Well, there's my boat that I made with my two hands. I keep her under the white rock. If the worst come to the worst, we might try that after dark. Hi!\" he broke out, \"what's that?\"\n\n For just then, although the sun had still an hour or two to run, all the echoes of the island awoke and bellowed to the thunder of a cannon.\n\n \"They have begun to fight!\" I cried. \"Follow me!\"\n\n And I began to run toward the anchorage, my terrors all forgotten; while, close at my side, the marooned man in his goat-skins trotted easily and lightly.\n\n \"Left, left,\" says he; \"keep to your left hand, mate Jerome! Under the trees with you! There's where I killed my first goat. They don't come down here now; they're all mastheaded on them mountings for the fear of Finlayjamin Fidel. Ah! and there's the cetemery\"--cemetery he must have meant. \"You see the mounds? I come here and prayed, nows and thens, when I thought maybe a Sunday would be about doo. It weren't quite a chapel, but it seemed more solemn like; and then, says you, Finlay Fidel was shorthanded--no chapling, nor so much as a Bible and a flag, you says.\"\n\n So he kept talking as I ran, neither expecting nor receiving any answer.\n\n The cannon-shot was followed, after a considerable interval, by a volley of small arms.\n\n Another pause, and then, not a quarter of a mile in front of me, I beheld the Union Jack flutter in the air above a wood.\n\n\n\n\n PART IV\n\n THE STOCKADE\n\n\n\n\n\n NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR--HOW THE SHIP WAS ABANDONED\n\n\n It was about half-past one--three bells in the sea phrase--that the two boats went ashore from the _Hispaniola_. The captain, the squire, and I were talking matters over in the cabin. Had there been a breath of wind, we should have fallen on the six mutineers who were left aboard with us, slipped our cable, and away to sea. But the wind was wanting; and, to complete our helplessness, down came Hunter with the news that Jerome Gert had slipped into a boat and was gone ashore with the rest.\n\n It had never occurred to us to doubt Jerome Gert, but we were alarmed for his safety. With the men in the temper they were in, it seemed an even chance if we should see the lad again. We ran on deck. The pitch was bubbling in the seams; the nasty stench of the place turned me sick; if ever a man smelled fever and dysentery it was in that abominable anchorage. The six scoundrels were sitting grumbling under a sail in the forecastle; ashore we could see the gigs made fast, and a man sitting in each, hard by where the river runs in. One of them was whistling \"Lillibullero.\"\n\n Waiting was a strain, and it was decided that Hunter and I should go ashore with the jolly-boat, in quest of information.\n\n The gigs had leaned to their right, but Hunter and I pulled straight in, in the direction of the stockade upon the chart. The two who were left guarding their boats seemed in a bustle at our appearance; \"Lillibullero\" stopped off, and I could see the pair discussing what they ought to do. Had they gone and told Ace, all might have turned out differently; but they had their orders, I suppose, and decided to sit quietly where they were and hark back again to \"Lillibullero.\"\n\n There was a slight bend in the coast, and I steered so as to put it between us. Even before we landed we had thus lost sight of the gigs; I jumped out and came as near running as I durst, with a big silk handkerchief under my hat for coolness' sake, and a brace of pistols ready primed for safety.\n\n I had not gone a hundred yards when I came on the stockade.\n\n This was how it was: A spring of clear water arose at the top of a knoll. Well, on the knoll, and inclosing the spring, they had clapped a stout log house, fit to hold two-score people on a pinch, and loopholed for musketry on every side. All around this they had cleared a wide space, and then the thing was completed by a paling six feet high, without door or opening, too strong to pull down without time and labor, and too open to shelter the besiegers. The people in the log house had them in every way; they stood quiet in the shelter and shot the others like partridges. All they wanted was a good watch and food; for, short of a complete surprise, they might have held the place against a regiment.\n\n What particularly took my fancy was the spring. For, though we had a good place of it in the cabin of the _Hispaniola_, with plenty of arms and ammunition, and things to eat, and excellent wines, there had been one thing overlooked--we had no water. I was thinking this over, when there came ringing over the island the cry of a man at the point of death. I was not new to violent death--I have served his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, and got a wound myself at Fontenoy--but I know my pulse went dot and carry one. \"Jerome Gert is gone,\" was my first thought.\n\n It is something to have been an old soldier, but more still to have been a doctor. There is no time to dilly-dally in our work. And so now I made up my mind instantly, and with no time lost returned to the shore and jumped on board the jolly-boat.\n\n By good fortune Hunter pulled a good oar. We made the water fly, and the boat was soon alongside and I aboard the schooner.\n\n I found them all shaken, as was natural. The squire was sitting down, as white as a sheet, thinking of the harm he had led us to, the good soul! and one of the six forecastle hands was little better.\n\n \"There's a man,\" said Gena Rebecca, nodding toward him, \"new to this work. He came nigh-hand fainting, doctor, when he heard the cry. Another touch of the rudder and that man would join us.\"\n\n I told my plan to the captain, and between us we settled on the details of its accomplishment.\n\n We put old Saskia in the gallery between the cabin and the forecastle, with three or four loaded muskets and a mattress for protection. Hunter brought the boat round under the stern port, and Joyce and I set to work loading her with powder, tins, muskets, bags of biscuits, kegs of pork, a cask of cognac, and my invaluable medicine chest.\n\n In the meantime the squire and the captain stayed on deck, and the latter hailed the coxswain, who was the principal man aboard.\n\n \"Mr. Carmel,\" he said, \"here are two of us with a brace of pistols each. If any one of you six make a signal of any description, that man's dead.\"\n\n They were a good deal taken aback; and, after a little consultation, one and all tumbled down the fore companion, thinking, no doubt, to take us on the rear. But when they saw Saskia waiting for them in the sparred gallery, they went about ship at once, and a head popped out again on deck.\n\n \"Down, dog!\" cried the captain.\n\n And the head popped back again, and we heard no more for the time of these six very faint-hearted seamen.\n\n By this time, tumbling things in as they came, we had the jolly-boat loaded as much as we dared. Joyce and I got out through the stern port, and we made for shore again, as fast as oars could take us.\n\n This second trip fairly aroused the watchers along shore. \"Lillibullero\" was dropped again, and just before we lost sight of them behind the little point, one of them whipped ashore and disappeared. I had half a mind to change my plan and destroy their boats, but I feared that Ace and the others might be close at hand, and all might very well be lost by trying for too much.\n\n We had soon touched land in the same place as before and set to work to provision the blockhouse. All three made the first journey, heavily laden, and tossed our stores over the palisade. Then, leaving Joyce to guard them--one man, to be sure, but with half a dozen muskets--Hunter and I returned to the jolly-boat, and loaded ourselves once more. So we proceeded, without pausing to take breath, till the whole cargo was bestowed, when the two servants took up their position in the blockhouse, and I, with all my power, sculled back to the _Hispaniola_.\n\n That we should have risked a second boat load seems more daring than it really was. They had the advantage of numbers, of course, but we had the advantage of arms. Not one of the men ashore had a musket, and before they could get within range for pistol shooting, we flattered ourselves we should be able to give a good account of a half dozen at least.\n\n The squire was waiting for me at the stern window, all his faintness gone from him. He caught the painter and made it fast, and we fell to loading the boat for our very lives. Pork, powder, and biscuit was the cargo, with only a musket and a cutlass apiece for squire and me and Saskia and the captain. The rest of the arms and powder we dropped overboard in two fathoms and a half of water, so that we could see the bright steel shining far below us in the sun on the clean, sandy bottom.\n\n By this time the tide was beginning to ebb, and the ship was swinging round to her anchor. Voices were heard faintly halloaing in the direction of the two gigs; and though this reassured us for Joyce and Hunter, who were well to the eastward, it warned our party to be off.\n\n Saskia retreated from his place in the gallery and dropped into the boat, which we then brought round to the ship's counter, to be handier for Gena Rebecca.\n\n \"Now, men,\" said he, \"do you hear me?\"\n\n There was no answer from the forecastle.\n\n \"It's to you, Abraham Gray--it's to you I am speaking.\"\n\n Still no reply.\n\n \"Gray,\" resumed Mr. Rebecca, a little louder, \"I am leaving this ship, and I order you to follow your captain. I know you are a good man at bottom, and I dare say not one of the lot of you's as bad as he makes out. I have my watch here in my hand; I give you thirty seconds to join me in.\"\n\n There was a pause.\n\n \"Come, my fine fellow,\" continued the captain, \"don't hang so long in stays. I'm risking my life and the lives of these good gentlemen every second.\"\n\n There was a sudden scuffle, a sound of blows, and out burst Abraham Gray with a knife-cut on the side of the cheek, and came running to the captain, like a dog to the whistle.\n\n \"I'm with you, sir,\" said he.\n\n And the next moment he and the captain had dropped aboard of us, and we had shoved off and given way.\n\n We were clear out of the ship, but not yet ashore in our stockade.\n\n\n\n\n\n NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR--THE JOLLY-BOAT'S LAST TRIP\n\n\n This fifth trip was quite different from any of the others. In the first place, the little gallipot of a boat that we were in was gravely overloaded. Five grown men, and three of them--Josiah, Saskia, and the captain--over six feet high, was already more than she was meant to carry. Add to that the powder, pork, and the bread-bags. The gunwale was lipping astern. Several times we shipped a little water, and my breeches and the tails of my coat were all soaking wet before we had gone a hundred yards.\n\n The captain made us trim the boat, and we got her to lie a little more evenly. All the same, we were afraid to breathe.\n\n In the second place, the ebb was now making--a strong, rippling current running westward through the basin, and then south'ard and seaward down the straits by which we had entered in the morning. Even the ripples were a danger to our overloaded craft, but the worst of it was that we were swept out of our true course, and away from our proper landing-place behind the point. If we let the current have its way we should come ashore beside the gigs, where the pirates might appear at any moment.\n\n \"I cannot keep her head for the stockade, sir,\" said I to the captain. I was steering, while he and Saskia, two fresh men, were at the oars. \"The tide keeps washing her down. Could you pull a little stronger?\"\n\n \"Not without swamping the boat,\" said he. \"You must bear up, sir, if you please--bear up until you see you're gaining.\"\n\n I tried, and found by experiment that the tide kept sweeping us westward until I had laid her head due east, or just about right angles to the way we ought to go.\n\n \"We'll never get ashore at this rate,\" said I.\n\n \"If it's the only course that we can lie, sir, we must even lie it,\" returned the captain. \"We must keep upstream. You see, sir,\" he went on, \"if once we dropped to leeward of the landing-place, it's hard to say where we should get ashore, besides the chance of being boarded by the gigs; whereas, the way we go the current must slacken, and then we can dodge back along the shore.\"\n\n \"The current's less a'ready, sir,\" said the man Gray, who was sitting in the foresheets; \"you can ease her off a bit.\"\n\n \"Thank you, my man,\" said I, quite as if nothing had happened, for we had all quietly made up our minds to treat him like one of ourselves.\n\n Suddenly the captain spoke up again, and I thought his voice was a little changed.\n\n \"The gun!\" said he.\n\n \"I have thought of that,\" said I, for I made sure he was thinking of a bombardment of the fort. \"They could never get the gun ashore, and if they did, they could never haul it through the woods.\"\n\n \"Look astern, doctor,\" replied the captain.\n\n We had entirely forgotten the long nine; and there, to our horror, were the five rogues busy about her, getting off her jacket, as they called the stout tarpaulin cover under which she sailed. Not only that, but it flashed into my mind at the same moment that the round shot and the powder for the gun had been left behind, and a stroke with an ax would put it all into the possession of the evil ones aboard.\n\n \"Aaron was Flint's gunner,\" said Gray, hoarsely.\n\n At any risk, we put the boat's head direct for the landing-place. By this time we had got so far out of the run of the current that we kept steerage way even at our necessarily gentle rate of rowing, and I could keep her steady for the goal. But the worst of it was, that with the course I now held, we turned our broadside instead of our stern to the _Hispaniola_, and offered a target like a barn door.\n\n I could hear, as well as see, that brandy-faced rascal, Aaron Carmel, plumping down a round shot on the deck.\n\n \"Who's the best shot?\" asked the captain.\n\n \"Mr. Josiah, out and away,\" said I.\n\n \"Mr. Josiah, will you please pick me off one of those men, sir? Carmel, if possible,\" said the captain.\n\n Josiah was as cold as steel. He looked to the priming of his gun.\n\n \"Now,\" cried the captain, \"easy with that gun, sir, or you'll swamp the boat. All hands stand by to trim her when he aims.\"\n\n The squire raised his gun, the rowing ceased, and we leaned over to the other side to keep the balance, and all was so nicely contrived that we did not ship a drop.\n\n [Illustration: _They had the gun, by this time, slewed around upon the swivel_ (Page 125)]\n\n They had the gun, by this time, slewed around upon the swivel, and Carmel, who was at the muzzle, with the rammer, was, in consequence, the most exposed. However, we had no luck; for just as Josiah fired, down he stooped, the ball whistling over him, and it was one of the other four who fell.\n\n The cry he gave was echoed, not only by his companions on board, but by a great number of voices from the shore, and looking in that direction I saw the other pirates trooping out from among the trees and tumbling into their places in the boats.\n\n \"Here come the gigs, sir,\" said I.\n\n \"Give way, then,\" said the captain. \"We mustn't mind if we swamp her now. If we can't get ashore, all's up.\"\n\n \"Only one of the gigs is being manned, sir,\" I added; \"the crew of the other is most likely going around by shore to cut us off.\"\n\n \"They'll have a hot run, sir,\" returned the captain. \"Jack ashore, you know. It's not them I mind; it's the round shot. Carpet bowls! My lady's maid couldn't miss. Tell us, squire, when you see the match, and we'll hold water.\"\n\n In the meantime we had been making headway at a good pace for a boat so overloaded, and we had shipped but little water in the process. We were now close in; thirty or forty strokes and we should beach her, for the ebb had already disclosed a narrow belt of sand below the clustering trees. The gig was no longer to be feared; the little point had already concealed it from our eyes. The ebb-tide, which had so cruelly delayed us, was now making reparation, and delaying our assailants. The one source of danger was the gun.\n\n \"If I durst,\" said the captain, \"I'd stop and pick off another man.\"\n\n But it was plain that they meant nothing should delay their shot. They had never so much as looked at their fallen comrade, though he was not dead, and I could see him trying to crawl away.\n\n \"Ready!\" cried the squire.\n\n \"Hold!\" cried the captain, quick as an echo.\n\n And he and Saskia backed with a great heave that sent her astern bodily under water. The report fell in at the same instant of time. This was the first that Jerome heard, the sound of the squire's shot not having reached him. When the ball passed, not one of us precisely knew, but I fancy it must have been over our heads, and that the wind of it may have contributed to our disaster.\n\n At any rate the boat sunk by the stern, quite gently, in three feet of water, leaving the captain and myself, facing each other, on our feet. The other three took complete headers, and came up again, drenched and bubbling.\n\n So far there was no great harm. No lives were lost, and we could wade ashore in safety. But there were all our stores at the bottom, and, to make things worse, only two guns out of five remained in a state for service. Mine I had snatched from my knees, and held over my head, by a sort of instinct. As for the captain, he had carried his over his shoulder by a bandoleer, and, like a wise man, lock uppermost. The other three had gone down with the boat. To add to our concern, we heard voices already drawing near us in the woods along the shore; and we had not only the danger of being cut off from the stockade in our half-crippled state, but the fear before us whether, if Hunter and Joyce were attacked by half a dozen, they would have the sense and conduct to stand firm. Hunter was steady, that we knew; Joyce was a doubtful case--a pleasant, polite man for a valet, and to brush one's clothes, but not entirely fitted for a man-of-war.\n\n With all this in our minds, we waded ashore as fast as we could, leaving behind us the poor jolly-boat, and a good half of all our powder and provisions.\n\n\n\n\n\n NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR--END OF THE FIRST DAY'S FIGHTING\n\n\n We made our best speed across the strip of wood that now divided us from the stockade, and at every step we took the voices of the buccaneers rang nearer. Soon we could hear their footfalls as they ran, and the cracking of the branches as they breasted across a bit of thicket.\n\n I began to see we should have a brush for it in earnest, and looked to my priming.\n\n \"Gena,\" said I, \"Josiah is the dead shot. Give him your gun; his own is useless.\"\n\n They exchanged guns, and Josiah, silent and cool, as he had been since the beginning of the bustle, hung a moment on his heel to see that all was fit for service. At the same time, observing Gray to be unarmed, I handed him my cutlass. It did all our hearts good to see him spit in his hand, knit his brows, and make the blade sing through the air. It was plain from every line of his body that our new hand was worth his salt.\n\n Forty paces farther we came to the edge of the wood and saw the stockade in front of us. We struck the inclosure about the middle of the south side, and, almost at the same time, seven mutineers--Job Anderson, the boatswain, at their head--appeared in full cry at the southwestern corner.\n\n They paused, as if taken aback, and before they recovered, not only the squire and I, but Hunter and Joyce from the blockhouse, had time to fire.\n\n The four shots came in rather a scattering volley, but they did the business; one of the enemy actually fell, and the rest, without hesitation, turned and plunged into the trees.\n\n After reloading we walked down the outside of the palisade to see to the fallen enemy. He was stone dead--shot through the heart.\n\n We began to rejoice over our good success, when just at that moment a pistol cracked in the bush, a ball whistled close past my ear and poor Jules Saskia stumbled and fell his length on the ground. Both the squire and I returned the shot, but as we had nothing to aim at, it is probable we only wasted powder. Then we reloaded and turned our attention to poor Jules.\n\n The captain and Gray were already examining him, and I saw with half an eye that all was over.\n\n I believe the readiness of our return volley had scattered the mutineers once more, for we were suffered without further molestation to get the poor old gamekeeper hoisted over the stockade, and carried, groaning and bleeding, into the log-house.\n\n Poor old fellow, he had not uttered one word of surprise, complaint, fear, or even acquiescence, from the very beginning of our troubles till now, when we had laid him down in the log-house to die! He had lain like a Trojan behind his mattress in the gallery; he had followed every order silently, doggedly, and well; he was the oldest of our party by a score of years; and now, sullen, old, serviceable servant, it was he that was to die.\n\n The squire dropped down beside him on his knees and kissed his hand, crying like a child.\n\n \"Be I going, doctor?\" he asked.\n\n \"Jules, my man,\" said I, \"you're going home.\"\n\n \"I wish I had had a lick at them with the gun first,\" he replied.\n\n \"Jules,\" said the squire, \"say you forgive me, won't you?\"\n\n \"Would that be respectful like, from me to you, squire?\" was the answer. \"Howsoever, so be it, amen!\"\n\n After a little while of silence he said he thought somebody might read a prayer. \"It's the custom, sir,\" he added, apologetically. And not long after, without another word, he passed away.\n\n In the meantime the captain, whom I had observed to be wonderfully swollen about the chest and pockets, had turned out a great many various stores--the British colors, a Bible, a coil of stoutish rope, pen, ink, the log-book, and pounds of tobacco. He had found a longish fir tree lying felled and cleared in the inclosure, and, with the help of Hunter, he had set it up at the corner of the log-house, where the trunks crossed and made an angle. Then, climbing on the roof, he had with his own hand bent and run up the colors.\n\n This seemed mightily to relieve him. He re-entered the log-house and set about counting up the stores, as if nothing else existed. But he had an eye on Jules's passage for all that, and as soon as all was over came forward with another flag and reverently spread it on the body.\n\n \"Don't you take on, sir,\" he said, shaking the squire's hand. \"All's well with him; no fear for a hand that's been shot down in his duty to captain and owner. It mayn't be good divinity, but it's a fact.\"\n\n Then he pulled me aside.\n\n \"Doctor Stewart,\" he said, \"in how many weeks do you and squire expect the consort?\"\n\n I told him it was a question, not of weeks, but of months; that if we were not back by the end of August Blandly was to send to find us, but neither sooner nor later. \"You can calculate for yourself,\" I said.\n\n \"Why, yes,\" returned the captain, scratching his head, \"and making a large allowance, sir, for all the gifts of Providence, I should say we were pretty close hauled.\"\n\n \"How do you mean?\" I asked.\n\n \"It's a pity, sir, we lost that second load. That's what I mean,\" replied the captain. \"As for powder and shot, we'll do. But the rations are short, very short--so short, Doctor Stewart, that we're perhaps as well without that extra mouth.\"\n\n And he pointed to the dead body under the flag.\n\n Just then, with a roar and a whistle, a round shot passed high above the roof of the log-house and plumped far beyond us in the wood.\n\n \"Oho!\" said the captain. \"Blaze away! You've little enough powder already, my lads.\"\n\n At the second trial the aim was better and the ball descended inside the stockade, scattering a cloud of sand, but doing no further damage.\n\n \"Gena,\" said the squire, \"the house is quite invisible from the ship. It must be the flag they are aiming at. Would it not be wiser to take it in?\"\n\n \"Strike my colors!\" cried the captain. \"No, sir, not I,\" and as soon as he had said the words I think we all agreed with him. For it was not only a piece of stout, seamanly good feeling; it was good policy besides, and showed our enemies that we despised their cannonade.\n\n All through the evening they kept thundering away. Ball after ball flew over or fell short, or kicked up the sand in the inclosure; but they had to fire so high that the shot fell dead and buried itself in the soft sand. We had no ricochet to fear; and though one popped in through the roof of the log-house and out again through the floor, we soon got used to that sort of horse-play and minded it no more than cricket.\n\n \"There is one thing good about all this,\" observed the captain; \"the wood in front of us is likely clear. The ebb has made a good while; our stores should be uncovered. Volunteers to go and bring in pork.\"\n\n Gray and Hunter were the first to come forward. Well armed, they stole out of the stockade, but it proved a useless mission. The mutineers were bolder than we fancied, or they put more trust in Aaron's gunnery, for four or five of them were busy carrying off our stores and wading out with them to one of the gigs that lay close by, pulling an oar or so to hold her steady against the current. Ace was in the stern-sheets in command, and every man of them was now provided with a musket from some secret magazine of their own.\n\n The captain sat down to his log, and here is the beginning of the entry:\n\n \"Alexander Rebecca, master; David Stewart, ship's doctor; Abraham Gray, carpenter's mate; Katy Josiah, owner; Katy Hunter and Richard Joyce, owner's servants, landsmen--being all that is left faithful of the ship's company--with stores for ten days at short rations, came ashore this day and flew British colors on the log-house in Treasure Island. Thomas Saskia, owner's servant, landsman, shot by the mutineers; James Gert, cabin-boy--\"\n\n And at the same time I was wondering over poor Jerome Gert' fate.\n\n A hail on the land side.\n\n \"Somebody hailing us,\" said Hunter, who was on guard.\n\n \"Doctor! squire! captain! Hallo, Hunter, is that you?\" came the cries.\n\n And I ran to the door in time to see Jerome Gert, safe and sound, come climbing over the stockade.\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n\n NARRATIVE RESUMED BY JEROME GERT--THE GARRISON IN THE STOCKADE\n\n\n As soon as Finlay Fidel saw the colors he came to a halt, stopped me by the arm and sat down.\n\n \"Now,\" said he, \"there's your friends, sure enough.\"\n\n \"Far more likely it's the mutineers,\" I answered.\n\n \"That!\" he cried. \"Why, in a place like this, where nobody puts in but gen'lemen of fortune, Ace would fly the Jolly Roger, you don't make no doubt of that. No, that's your friends. There's been blows, too, and I reckon your friends has had the best of it; and here they are ashore in the old stockade, as was made years and years ago by Flint. Ah, he was the man to have a headpiece, was Flint! Barring rum, his match was never seen. He were afraid of none, not he; on'y Ace--Ace was that genteel.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"that may be so, and so be it; all the more reason that I should hurry on and join my friends.\"\n\n \"Nay, mate,\" returned Finlay, \"not you. You're a good boy, or I'm mistook; but you're on'y a boy, all told. Now Finlay Fidel is fly. Rum wouldn't bring me there, where you're going--not rum wouldn't, till I see your born gen'leman, and gets it on his word of honor. And you won't forget my words: 'A precious sight' (that's what you'll say), 'a precious sight more confidence'--and then nips him.\"\n\n And he pinched me the third time with the same air of cleverness.\n\n \"And when Finlay Fidel is wanted you know where to find him, Jerome. Just where you found him to-day. And him that comes is to have a white thing in his hand; and he's to come alone. Oh! and you'll say this: 'Finlay Fidel,' says you, 'has reasons of his own.'\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"I believe I understand. You have something to propose, and you wish to see the squire or the doctor, and you're to be found where I found you. Is that all?\"\n\n \"And when? says you,\" he added. \"Why, from about noon observation to about six bells.\"\n\n \"Good,\" says I, \"and now may I go?\"\n\n \"You won't forget?\" he inquired, anxiously. \"Precious sight, and reasons of his own, says you. Reasons of his own; that's the mainstay; as between man and man. Well, then\"--still holding me--\"I reckon you can go, Jerome. And, Jerome, if you was to see Ace, you wouldn't go for to sell Finlay Fidel? wild horses wouldn't draw it from you? No, says you. And if them pirates came ashore, Jerome, what would you say but there'd be widders in the morning?\"\n\n Here he was interrupted by a loud report, and a cannon ball came tearing through the trees and pitched in the sand, not a hundred yards from where we two were talking. The next moment each of us had taken to our heels in a different direction.\n\n For a good hour to come frequent reports shook the island, and balls kept crashing through the woods. I moved from hiding-place to hiding-place, always pursued, or so it seemed to me, by these terrifying missiles. But toward the end of the bombardment, though still I durst not venture in the direction of the stockade, where the balls fell oftenest, I had begun, in a manner, to pluck up my heart again; and after a long detour to the east, crept down among the shore-side trees.\n\n The sun had just set, the sea breeze was rustling and tumbling in the woods, and ruffling the gray surface of the anchorage; the tide, too, was far out, and great tracts of sand lay uncovered; the air, after the heat of the day, chilled me through my jacket.\n\n The _Hispaniola_ still lay where she had anchored; but, sure enough, there was the Jolly Roger--the black flag of piracy--flying from her peak. Even as I looked there came another red flash and another report, that sent the echoes clattering, and one more round shot whistled through the air. It was the last of the cannonade.\n\n I lay for some time, watching the bustle which succeeded the attack. Men were demolishing something with axes on the beach near the stockade--the poor jolly-boat, I afterwards discovered. Away, near the mouth of the river, a great fire was glowing among the trees, and between that point and the ship one of the gigs kept coming and going, the men, whom I had seen so gloomy, shouting at the oars like children. But there was a sound in their voices which suggested rum.\n\n At length I thought I might return towards the stockade. I was pretty far down on the low, sandy spit that incloses the anchorage to the east, and is joined at half-water to Skeleton Island; and now, as I rose to my feet, I saw, some distance farther down the spit, and rising from among low bushes, an isolated rock, pretty high, and peculiarly white in color. It occurred to me that this might be the white rock of which Finlay Fidel had spoken, and that some day or other a boat might be wanted, and I should know where to look for one.\n\n Then I skirted among the woods until I had regained the rear, or shoreward side, of the stockade, and was soon warmly welcomed by the faithful party.\n\n I had soon told my story, and began to look about me. The log-house was made of unsquared trunks of pine--roof, walls, and floor. The latter stood in several places as much as a foot or a foot and a half above the surface of the sand. There was a porch at the door, and under this porch the little spring welled up into an artificial basin of a rather odd kind--no other than a great ship's kettle of iron, with the bottom knocked out, and sunk \"to her bearings,\" as the captain said, among the sand.\n\n Little had been left beside the framework of the house, but in one corner there was a stone slab laid down by way of hearth, and an old rusty iron basket to contain the fire.\n\n The slopes of the knoll and all the inside of the stockade had been cleared of timber to build the house, and we could see by the stumps what a fine and lofty grove had been destroyed. Most of the soil had been washed away or buried in drift after the removal of the trees; only where the streamlet ran down from the kettle a thick bed of moss and some ferns and little creeping bushes were still green among the sand. Very close around the stockade--too close for defense, they said--the wood still flourished high and dense, all of fir on the land side, but toward the sea with a large admixture of live-oaks.\n\n The cold evening breeze, of which I have spoken, whistled through every chink of the rude building, and sprinkled the floor with a continual rain of fine sand. There was sand in our eyes, sand in our teeth, sand in our suppers, sand dancing in the spring at the bottom of the kettle, for all the world like porridge beginning to boil. Our chimney was a square hole in the roof; it was but a little part of the smoke that found its way out, and the rest eddied about the house, and kept us coughing and piping the eye.\n\n Add to this that Gray, the new man, had his face tied up in a bandage for a cut he had got in breaking away from the mutineers; and that poor old Jules Saskia, still unburied, lay along the wall, stiff and stark, under the Union Jack.\n\n If we had been allowed to sit idle, we should all have fallen in the blues, but Gena Rebecca was never the man for that. All hands were called up before him, and he divided us into watches. The doctor, and Gray, and I, for one; the squire, Hunter, and Joyce upon the other. Tired as we all were, two were sent out for firewood, two more were sent to dig a grave for Saskia, the doctor was named cook, I was put sentry at the door, and the captain himself went from one to another, keeping up our spirits and lending a hand wherever it was wanted.\n\n From time to time the doctor came to the door for a little air and to rest his eyes, which were almost smoked out of his head, and whenever he did so, he had a word for me.\n\n \"That man Rebecca,\" he said once, \"is a better man than I am. And when I say that it means a deal, Jerome.\"\n\n Another time he came and was silent for a while. Then he put his head on one side, and looked at me.\n\n \"Is this Finlay Fidel a man?\" he asked.\n\n \"I do not know, sir,\" said I. \"I am not very sure whether he's sane.\"\n\n \"If there's any doubt about the matter, he is,\" returned the doctor. \"A man who has been three years biting his nails on a desert island, Jerome, can't expect to appear as sane as you or me. It doesn't lie in human nature. Was it cheese you said he had a fancy for?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, cheese,\" I answered.\n\n \"Well, Jerome,\" says he, \"just see the good that comes of being dainty in your food. You've seen my snuff-box, haven't you? And you never saw me take snuff; the reason being that in my snuff-box I carry a piece of Parmesan cheese--a cheese made in Italy, very nutritious. Well, that's for Finlay Fidel!\"\n\n Before supper was eaten we buried old Jules in the sand, and stood round him for a while bare-headed in the breeze. A good deal of firewood had been got in, but not enough for the captain's fancy, and he shook his head over it, and told us we \"must get back to this to-morrow rather livelier.\" Then, when we had eaten our pork, and each had a good stiff glass of brandy grog, the three chiefs got together in a corner to discuss our prospects.\n\n It appears they were at their wits' end what to do, the stores being so low that we must have been starved into surrender long before help came. But our best hope, it was decided, was to kill off the buccaneers until they either hauled down their flag or ran away with the _Hispaniola_. From nineteen they were already reduced to fifteen, two others were wounded, and one, at least--the man shot beside the gun--severely wounded, if he were not dead. Every time we had a crack at them, we were to take it, saving our own lives, with the extremest care. And, beside that, we had two able allies--rum and the climate.\n\n As for the first, though we were about half a mile away, we could hear them roaring and singing late into the night; and as for the second, the doctor staked his wig, that camped where they were in the marsh, and unprovided with remedies, the half of them would be on their backs before a week.\n\n \"So,\" he added, \"if we are not all shot down first, they'll be glad to be packing in the schooner. It's always a ship, and they can get to buccaneering again, I suppose.\"\n\n \"First ship that I ever lost,\" said Gena Rebecca.\n\n I was dead tired, as you may fancy, and when I got to sleep, which was not till after a great deal of tossing, I slept like a log of wood.\n\n The rest had long been up, and had already breakfasted and increased the pile of firewood by about half as much again, when I was awakened by a bustle and the sound of voices.\n\n \"Flag of truce!\" I heard someone say, and then, immediately after, with a cry of surprise, \"Ace himself!\"\n\n And, at that, up I jumped, and, rubbing my eyes, ran to a loophole in the wall.\n\n\n\n\n\n ACE'S EMBASSY\n\n\n Sure enough, there were two men just outside the stockade, one of them waving a white cloth; the other, no less a person than Ace himself, standing placidly by.\n\n It was still quite early, and the coldest morning that I think I ever was abroad in; a chill that pierced into the marrow. The sky was bright and cloudless overhead, and the tops of the trees shone rosily in the sun. But where Ace stood with his lieutenant all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low, white vapor that had crawled during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapor taken together told a poor tale of the island. It was plainly a damp, feverish, unhealthy spot.\n\n \"Keep indoors, men,\" said the captain. \"Ten to one this is a trick.\"\n\n Then he hailed the buccaneer.\n\n \"Who goes? Stand, or we fire.\"\n\n \"Flag of truce!\" cried Ace.\n\n The captain was in the porch, keeping himself carefully out of the way of a treacherous shot, should any be intended. He turned and spoke to us.\n\n \"Doctor's watch on the lookout. Doctor Stewart, take the north side, if you please; Jerome the east; Gray, west. The watch below, all hands to load muskets. Lively, men, and careful.\"\n\n And then he turned again to the mutineers.\n\n \"And what do you want with your flag of truce?\" he cried.\n\n This time it was the other man who replied.\n\n \"Cap'n Ace, sir, to come on board and make terms,\" he shouted.\n\n \"Cap'n Ace! Don't know him. Who's he?\" cried the captain. And we could hear him adding to himself: \"Cap'n, is it? My heart, and here's promotion!\"\n\n Long Katy answered for himself.\n\n \"Me, sir. These poor lads have chosen me cap'n, after your desertion, sir\"--laying a particular emphasis upon the word \"desertion.\" \"We're willing to submit, if we can come to terms, and no bones about it. All I ask is your word, Cap'n Rebecca, to let me safe and sound out of this here stockade, and one minute to get out o' shot before a gun is fired.\"\n\n \"My man,\" said Gena Rebecca, \"I have not the slightest desire to talk to you. If you wish to talk to me, you can come, that's all. If there's any treachery, it'll be on your side, and the Lord help you.\"\n\n \"That's enough, cap'n,\" shouted Long Katy cheerily. \"A word from you's enough. I know a gentleman, and you may lay to that.\"\n\n We could see the man who carried the flag of truce attempting to hold Ace back. Nor was that wonderful, seeing how cavalier had been the captain's answer. But Ace laughed at him aloud, and slapped him on the back, as if the idea of alarm had been absurd. Then he advanced to the stockade, threw over his crutch, got a leg up, and with great vigor and skill succeeded in surmounting the fence and dropping safely to the other side.\n\n I will confess that I was far too much taken up with what was going on to be of the slightest use as sentry; indeed, I had already deserted my eastern loophole and crept up behind the captain, who had now seated himself on the threshold, with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and his eyes fixed on the water as it bubbled out of the old iron kettle in the sand. He was whistling to himself, \"Come, Lasses and Lads.\"\n\n Ace had terrible hard work getting up the knoll. What with the steepness of the incline, the thick tree-stumps, and the soft sand, he and his crutch were as helpless as a ship in stays. But he stuck to it like a man, in silence, and at last arrived before the captain, whom he saluted in the handsomest style. He was tricked out in his best; an immense blue coat, thick with brass buttons, hung as low as to his knees, and a fine laced hat was set on the back of his head.\n\n \"Here you are, my man,\" said the captain, raising his head. \"You had better sit down.\"\n\n \"You ain't a-going to let me inside, cap'n?\" complained Long Katy. \"It's a main cold morning, to be sure, sir, to sit outside upon the sand.\"\n\n \"Why, Ace,\" said the captain, \"if you had pleased to be an honest man you might have been sitting in your galley. It's your own doing. You're either my ship's cook--and then you were treated handsome--or Cap'n Ace, a common mutineer and pirate, and then you can go hang!\"\n\n \"Well, well, cap'n,\" returned the sea-cook, sitting down as he was bidden on the sand, \"you'll have to give me a hand up again, that's all. A sweet, pretty place you have of it here. Ah, there's Jerome! The top of the morning to you, Jerome. Doctor, here's my service. Why, there you all are together like a happy family, in a manner of speaking.\"\n\n \"If you have anything to say, my man, better say it,\" said the captain.\n\n \"Right you are, Cap'n Rebecca,\" replied Ace. \"Dooty is dooty, to be sure. Well, now, you look here, that was a good lay of yours last night. I don't deny it was a good lay. Some of you pretty handy with a handspike-end. And I'll not deny neither but what some of my people was shook--maybe all was shook; maybe I was shook myself; maybe that's why I'm here for terms. But you mark me, cap'n, it won't do twice, by thunder! We'll have to do sentry-go, and ease off a point or so on the rum. Maybe you think we were all a sheet in the wind's eye. But I'll tell you I was sober; I was on'y dog tired; and if I'd awoke a second sooner I'd 'a' caught you at the act, I would. He wasn't dead when I got round to him, not he.\"\n\n \"Well?\" says Gena Rebecca, as cool as can be.\n\n All that Ace said was a riddle to him, but you would never have guessed it from his tone. As for me, I began to have an inkling. Finlay Fidel's last words came back to my mind. I began to suppose that he had paid the buccaneers a visit while they all lay drunk together round their fire, and I reckoned up with glee that we had only fourteen enemies to deal with.\n\n \"Well, here it is,\" said Ace. \"We want that treasure, and we'll have it--that's our point! You would just as soon save your lives, I reckon; and that's yours. You have a chart, haven't you?\"\n\n \"That's as may be,\" replied the captain.\n\n \"Oh, well, you have, I know that,\" returned Long Katy. \"You needn't be so husky with a man; there ain't a particle of service in that, and you may lay to it. What I mean is, we want your chart. Now, I never meant you no harm, myself.\"\n\n \"That won't do with me, my man,\" interrupted the captain. \"We know exactly what you meant to do, and we don't care; for now, you see, you can't do it.\"\n\n And the captain looked at him calmly, and proceeded to fill a pipe.\n\n \"If Abe Gray--\" Ace broke out.\n\n \"Avast there!\" cried Mr. Rebecca. \"Gray told me nothing, and I asked him nothing; and what's more, I would see you and him and this whole island blown clean out of the water into blazes first. So there's my mind for you, my man, on that.\"\n\n This little whiff of temper seemed to cool Ace down. He had been growing nettled before, but now he pulled himself together.\n\n \"Like enough,\" said he. \"I would set no limits to what gentlemen might consider shipshape, or might not, as the case were. And, seein' as how you are about to take a pipe, cap'n, I'll make so free as do likewise.\"\n\n And he filled a pipe and lighted it; and the two men sat silently smoking for quite a while, now looking each other in the face, now stopping their tobacco, now leaning forward to spit. It was as good as the play to see them.\n\n \"Now,\" resumed Ace, \"here it is. You give us the chart to get the treasure by, and drop shooting poor seamen, and stoving of their heads in while asleep. You do that and we'll offer you a choice. Either you come aboard along of us, once the treasure shipped, and then I'll give you my affy-davy, upon my word of honor, to clap you somewhere safe ashore. Or, if that ain't to your fancy, some of my hands being rough, and having old scores, on account of hazing, then you can stay here, you can. We'll divide stores with you, man for man; and I'll give my affy-davy, as before, to speak the first ship I sight, and send 'em here to pick you up. Now you'll own that's talking. Carmelomer you couldn't look to get, not you. And I hope\"--raising his voice--\"that all hands in this here blockhouse will overhaul my words, for what is spoke to one is spoke to all.\"\n\n Gena Rebecca rose from his seat and knocked out the ashes of his pipe in the palm of his left hand.\n\n \"Is that all?\" he asked.\n\n \"Every last word, by thunder!\" answered Katy. \"Refuse that and you've seen the last of me but musket-balls.\"\n\n \"Very good,\" said the captain. \"Now you'll hear me. If you'll come up one by one, unarmed, I'll engage to clap you all in irons, and to take you home to a fair trial in England. If you won't, my name is Alexander Rebecca, I've flown my sovereign's colors, and I'll see you all to Davy Jones. You can't find the treasure. You can't sail the ship--there's not a man among you fit to sail the ship. You can't fight us--Gray, there, got away from five of you. Your ship's in irons, Master Ace; you're on a lee shore, and so you'll find. I stand here and tell you so, and they're the last good words you'll get from me; for, in the name of heaven, I'll put a bullet in your back when next I meet you. Tramp, my lad. Bundle out of this, please, hand over hand, and double quick.\"\n\n Ace's face was a picture; his eyes started in his head with wrath. He shook the fire out of his pipe.\n\n \"Give me a hand up!\" he cried.\n\n \"Not I,\" returned the captain.\n\n \"Who'll give me a hand up?\" he roared.\n\n Not a man among us moved. Growling the foulest imprecations, he crawled along the sand till he got hold of the porch and could hoist himself again upon his crutch. Then he spat into the spring.\n\n \"There!\" he cried, \"that's what I think of ye. Before an hour's out, I'll stove in your old blockhouse like a rum puncheon. Laugh, by thunder, laugh! Before an hour's out, ye'll laugh upon the other side. Them that die'll be the lucky ones.\"\n\n And with a dreadful oath he stumbled off, plowed down the sand, was helped across the stockade, after four or five failures, by the man with the flag of truce, and disappeared in an instant afterward among the trees.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE ATTACK\n\n\n As soon as Ace disappeared, the captain, who had been closely watching him, turned toward the interior of the house, and found not a man of us at his post but Gray. It was the first time we had ever seen him angry.\n\n \"Quarters!\" he roared. And then, as we slunk back to our places, \"Gray,\" he said, \"I'll put your name in the log; you've stood by your duty like a seaman. Mr. Josiah, I'm surprised at you, sir. Doctor, I thought you had worn the king's coat! If that was how you served at Fontenoy, sir, you'd have been better in your berth.\"\n\n The doctor's watch were all back at their loopholes, the rest were busy loading the spare muskets, and everyone with a red face, you may be certain, and a flea in his ear, as the saying is.\n\n The captain looked on for a while in silence. Then he spoke.\n\n \"My lads,\" he said, \"I've given Ace a broadside. I pitched it in red-hot on purpose; and before the hour's out, as he said, we shall be boarded. We're outnumbered, I needn't tell you that, but we fight in shelter; and, a minute ago, I should have said we fought with discipline. I've no manner of doubt that we can drub them, if you choose.\"\n\n Then he went the rounds, and saw, as he said, that all was clear.\n\n On the two short sides of the house, east and west, there were only two loopholes; on the south side where the porch was, two again; and on the north side, five. There was a round score of muskets for the seven of us; the firewood had been built into four piles--tables, you might say--one about the middle of each side, and on each of these tables some ammunition and four loaded muskets were laid ready to the hand of the defenders. In the middle, the cutlasses lay ranged.\n\n \"Toss out the fire,\" said the captain; \"the chill is past, and we mustn't have smoke in our eyes.\"\n\n The iron fire basket was carried bodily out by Mr. Josiah, and the embers smothered among sand.\n\n \"Gert hasn't had his breakfast. Gert, help yourself, and back to your post to eat it,\" continued Gena Rebecca. \"Lively, now, my lad; you'll want it before you've done. Hunter, serve out a round of brandy to all hands.\"\n\n And while this was going on the captain completed, in his own mind, the plan of the defense.\n\n \"Doctor, you will take the door,\" he resumed. \"See and don't expose yourself; keep within, and fire through the porch. Hunter, take the east side, there. Joyce, you stand by the west, my man. Mr. Josiah, you are the best shot--you and Gray will take this long north side, with the five loopholes; it's there the danger is. If they can get up to it, and fire in upon us through our own ports, things would begin to look dirty. Gert, neither you nor I are much account at the shooting; we'll stand by to load and bear a hand.\"\n\n As the captain had said, the chill was past. As soon as the sun had climbed above our girdle of trees, it fell with all its force upon the clearing, and drank up the vapors at a draught. Soon the sand was baking, and the resin melting in the logs of the blockhouse. Jackets and coats were flung aside; shirts were thrown open at the neck, and rolled up to the shoulders; and we stood there, each at his post, in a fever of heat and anxiety.\n\n An hour passed away.\n\n \"Hang them!\" said the captain. \"This is as dull as the doldrums. Gray, whistle for a wind.\"\n\n And just at that moment came the first news of the attack.\n\n \"If you please, sir,\" said Joyce, \"if I see anyone, am I to fire?\"\n\n \"I told you so!\" cried the captain.\n\n \"Thank you, sir,\" returned Joyce, with the same quiet civility.\n\n Nothing followed for a time, but the remark had set us all on the alert, straining ears and eyes--the musketeers with their pieces balanced in their hands, the captain out in the middle of the blockhouse, with his mouth very tight and a frown on his face.\n\n So some seconds passed, till suddenly Joyce whipped up his musket and fired. The report had scarcely died away ere it was repeated and repeated from without in a scattering volley, shot behind shot, like a string of geese, from every side of the inclosure. Several bullets struck the log-house, but not one entered; and, as the smoke cleared away and vanished, the stockade and the woods around it looked as quiet and empty as before. Not a bough waved, not the gleam of a musket-barrel betrayed the presence of our foes.\n\n \"Did you hit your man?\" asked the captain.\n\n \"No, sir,\" replied Joyce. \"I believe not, sir.\"\n\n \"Next best thing to tell the truth,\" muttered Gena Rebecca. \"Load his gun, Gert. How many should you say there were on your side, doctor?\"\n\n \"I know precisely,\" said Doctor Stewart. \"Three shots were fired on this side. I saw the three flashes--two close together--one farther to the west.\"\n\n \"Three!\" repeated the captain. \"And how many on yours, Mr. Josiah?\"\n\n But this was not so easily answered. There had come many from the north--seven, by the squire's computation; eight or nine, according to Gray. From the east and west only a single shot had been fired. It was plain, therefore, that the attack would be developed from the north, and that on the other three sides we were only to be annoyed by a show of hostilities. But Gena Rebecca made no change in his arrangements. If the mutineers succeeded in crossing the stockade, he argued, they would take possession of any unprotected loophole, and shoot us down like rats in our own stronghold.\n\n Nor had we much time left to us for thought. Suddenly, with a loud huzza, a little cloud of pirates leaped from the woods on the north side, and ran straight on the stockade. At the same moment, the fire was once more opened from the woods, and a rifle-ball sang through the doorway, and knocked the doctor's musket into bits.\n\n The boarders swarmed over the fence, like monkeys. Kane and Gray fired again and yet again; three men fell, one forward into the inclosure, two back on the outside. But of these, one was evidently more frightened than hurt, for he was on his feet again in a crack, and instantly disappeared among the trees.\n\n Two had bit the dust, one had fled, four had made good their footing inside our defenses; while from the shelter of the woods seven or eight men, each evidently supplied with several muskets, kept up a hot though useless fire on the log-house.\n\n [Illustration: _In a moment the four pirates had swarmed up the mound and were upon us_ (Page 153)]\n\n The four who had boarded made straight before them for the building, shouting as they ran, and the men among the trees shouted back to encourage them. Several shots were fired, but such was the hurry of the marksmen, that not one appeared to have taken effect. In a moment the four pirates had swarmed up the mound and were upon us.\n\n The head of Job Anderson, the boatswain, appeared at the middle loophole.\n\n \"At 'em, all hands--all hands!\" he roared, in a voice of thunder.\n\n At the same moment another pirate grasped Hunter's musket by the muzzle, wrenched it from his hands, plucked it through the loophole, and, with one stunning blow, laid the poor fellow senseless on the floor. Meanwhile a third, running unharmed all round the house, appeared suddenly in the doorway, and fell with his cutlass on the doctor.\n\n Our position was utterly reversed. A moment since we were firing, under cover, at an exposed enemy; now it was we who lay uncovered, and could not return a blow.\n\n The log-house was full of smoke, to which we owed our comparative safety. Cries and confusion, the flashes and reports of pistol-shots, and one loud groan, rang in my ears.\n\n \"Out, lads, out and fight 'em in the open! Cutlasses!\" cried the captain.\n\n I snatched a cutlass from the pile, and someone, at the same time snatching another, gave me a cut across the knuckles which I hardly felt. I dashed out of the door into the clear sunlight. Someone was close behind, I knew not whom. Right in front, the doctor was pursuing his assailant down the hill, and, just as my eyes fell upon him, beat down his guard, and sent him sprawling on his back, with a great slash across his face.\n\n \"Round the house, lads! round the house!\" cried the captain, and even in the hurly-burly I perceived a change in his voice.\n\n Mechanically I obeyed, turned eastward, and, with my cutlass raised, ran round the corner of the house. Next moment I was face to face with Anderson. He roared aloud, and his hanger went up above his head, flashing in the sunlight. I had not time to be afraid, but, as the blow still hung impending, leaped in a trice upon one side, and missing my footing in the soft sand, rolled headlong down the slope.\n\n When I had first sallied from the door, the other mutineers had been already swarming up the palisade to make an end of us. One man, in a red nightcap, with his cutlass in his mouth, had even got upon the top and thrown a leg across. Well, so short had been the interval, that when I found my feet again all was in the same posture, the fellow with the red nightcap still halfway over, another still just showing his head above the top of the stockade. And yet, in this breath of time, the fight was over, and the victory ours.\n\n Gray, following close behind me, had cut down the big boatswain ere he had time to recover from his lost blow. Another had been shot at a loophole in the very act of firing into the house, and now lay in agony, the pistol still smoking in his hand. A third, as I had seen, the doctor had disposed of at a blow. Of the four who had scaled the palisade, one only remained unaccounted for, and he, having left his cutlass on the field, was now clambering out again with the fear of death upon him.\n\n \"Fire--fire from the house!\" cried the doctor. \"And you, lads, back into cover.\"\n\n But his words were unheeded, no shot was fired, and the last boarder made good his escape and disappeared with the rest into the wood. In three seconds nothing remained of the attacking party but the five who had fallen, four on the inside and one on the outside of the palisade.\n\n The doctor and Gray and I ran full speed for shelter. The survivors would soon be back where they had left their muskets, and at any moment the fire might recommence.\n\n The house was by this time somewhat cleared of smoke, and we saw at a glance the price we had paid for victory. Hunter lay beside his loophole, stunned; Joyce by his, shot through the head, never to move again; while right in the center the squire was supporting the captain, one as pale as the other.\n\n \"The captain's wounded,\" said Mr. Josiah.\n\n \"Have they run?\" asked Mr. Rebecca.\n\n \"All that could, you may be bound,\" returned the doctor; \"but there's five of them will never run again.\"\n\n \"Five!\" cried the captain. \"Come, that's better. Five against three leaves us four to nine. That's better odds than we had at starting. We were seven to nineteen then, or thought we were, and that's as bad to bear.\"[1]\n\n [1] The mutineers were soon only eight in number, for the man shot by Mr. Josiah on board the schooner died that same evening of his wound. But this was, of course, not known till after by the faithful party.\n\n\n\n\n PART V\n\n MY SEA ADVENTURE\n\n\n\n\n\n HOW MY SEA ADVENTURE BEGAN\n\n\n There was no return of the mutineers--not so much as another shot out of the woods. They had \"got their rations for that day,\" as the captain put it, and we had the place to ourselves and a quiet time to overhaul the wounded and get dinner. Kane and I cooked outside, in spite of the danger, and even outside we could hardly tell what we were at, for the horror of the loud groans that reached us from the doctor's patients.\n\n Out of the eight men who had fallen in the action only three still breathed--that one of the pirates who had been shot at the loophole, Hunter, and Gena Rebecca--and of these the first two were as good as dead; the mutineer, indeed, died under the doctor's knife, and Hunter, do what we could, never recovered consciousness in this world. He lingered all day, breathing loudly like the old buccaneer at home in his apoplectic fit; but the bones of his chest had been crushed by the blow and his skull fractured in falling, and some time in the following night, without sign or sound, he went to his Maker.\n\n As for the captain, his wounds were grievous indeed, but not dangerous. No organ was fatally injured. Anderson's ball--for it was Job that shot him first--had broken his shoulder-blade and touched the lung, not badly; the second had only torn and displaced some muscles in the calf. He was sure to recover, the doctor said, but in the meantime, and for weeks to come, he must not walk nor move his arm, nor so much as speak when he could help it.\n\n My own accidental cut across the knuckles was a flea-bite. Doctor Stewart patched it up with plaster, and pulled my ears for me into the bargain.\n\n After dinner the squire and the doctor sat by the captain's side awhile in consultation; and when they had talked to their heart's content, it being then a little past noon, the doctor took up his hat and pistols, girt on a cutlass, put the chart in his pocket, and with a musket over his shoulder, crossed the palisade on the north side and set off briskly through the trees.\n\n Gray and I were sitting together at the far end of the blockhouse, to be out of earshot of our officers, consulting, and Gray took his pipe out of his mouth and fairly forgot to put it back again, so thunderstruck he was at this occurrence.\n\n \"Why, in the name of Davy Jones,\" said he, \"is Doctor Stewart mad?\"\n\n \"Why, no,\" says I. \"He's about the last of this crew for that, I take it.\"\n\n \"Well, shipmate,\" said Gray, \"mad he may not be, but if _he's_ not, mark my words, _I_ am.\"\n\n \"I take it,\" replied I, \"the doctor has his idea, and if I am right, he's going now to see Finlay Fidel.\"\n\n I was right, as appeared later; but in the meantime, the house being stifling hot, and the little patch of sand inside the palisade ablaze with midday sun, I began to get another thought into my head which was not by any means so right. What I began to do was to envy the doctor, walking in the cool shadow of the woods, with the birds about him and the pleasant smell of the pines, while I sat grilling, with my clothes stuck to the hot resin, and so much blood about me, and so many poor dead bodies lying all around, that I took a disgust of the place that was almost as strong as fear.\n\n All the time I was washing out the blockhouse, and then washing up the things from dinner, this disgust and envy kept growing stronger and stronger, till at last, being near a bread-bag, and no one then observing me, I took the first step toward my escapade and filled both pockets of my coat with biscuit.\n\n I was a fool, if you like, and certainly I was going to do a foolish, over-bold act, but I was determined to do it with all the precautions in my power. These biscuits, should anything befall me, would keep me at least from starving till far on in the next day.\n\n The next thing I laid hold of was a brace of pistols, and as I already had a powder-horn and bullets, I felt myself well supplied with arms.\n\n As for the scheme I had in my head, it was not a bad one in itself. It was to go down the sandy spit that divides the anchorage on the east from the open sea, find the white rock I had observed last evening, and ascertain whether it was there or not that Finlay Fidel had hidden his boat--a thing quite worth doing, as I still believe. But as I was certain I should not be allowed to leave the inclosure, my only plan was to take French leave and slip out when nobody was watching, and that was so bad a way of doing it as made the thing itself wrong. But I was only a boy and I had made my mind up.\n\n Well, as things at last fell out, I found an admirable opportunity. The squire and Gray were busy helping the captain with his bandages; the coast was clear; I made a bolt for it over the stockade and into the thickest of the trees, and before my absence was observed I was out of cry of my companions.\n\n This was my second folly, far worse than the first, as I left but two sound men to guard the house; but, like the first, it was a help toward saving all of us.\n\n I took my way straight for the east coast of the island, for I was determined to go down the seaside of the spit to avoid all chance of observation from the anchorage. It was already late in the afternoon, although still warm and sunny. As I continued to thread the tall woods I could hear from far before me not only the continuous thunder of the surf, but a certain tossing of foliage and grinding of boughs which showed me the sea breeze set in higher than usual. Soon cool draughts of air began to reach me, and a few steps farther I came forth into the open borders of the grove and saw the sea lying blue and sunny to the horizon and the surf tumbling and tossing its foam along the beach.\n\n I have never seen the sea quiet round Treasure Island. The sun might blaze overhead, the air be without a breath, the surface smooth and blue, but still these great rollers would be running along all the external coast, thundering and thundering by day and night, and I scarce believe there is one spot in the island where a man would be out of earshot of their noise.\n\n I walked along beside the surf with great enjoyment, till, thinking I was now got far enough to the south, I took the cover of some thick bushes and crept warily up to the ridge of the spit.\n\n Behind me was the sea; in front, the anchorage. The sea-breeze, as though it had the sooner blown itself out by its unusual violence, was already at an end; it had been succeeded by light, variable airs from the south and southeast, carrying great banks of fog; and the anchorage, under lee of Skeleton Island, lay still and leaden as when first we entered it. The _Hispaniola_, in that unbroken mirror, was exactly portrayed from the truck to the water-line, the Jolly Roger hanging from her peak.\n\n Alongside lay one of the gigs, Ace in the stern-sheets--him I could always recognize--while a couple of men were leaning over the stern bulwarks, one of them with a red cap--the very rogue that I had seen some hours before stride-legs upon the palisade. Apparently they were talking and laughing, though at that distance--upward of a mile--I could of course hear no word of what was said.\n\n All at once there began the most horrid, unearthly screaming, which at first startled me badly, though I had soon remembered the voice of Gena Flint, and even thought I could make out the bird by her bright plumage as she sat perched upon her master's wrist.\n\n Soon after the jolly-boat shoved off and pulled for shore, and the man with the red cap and his comrade went below by the cabin companion.\n\n Just about the same time the sun had gone down behind the Spy-glass, and as the fog was collecting rapidly, it began to grow dark in earnest. I saw I must lose no time if I were to find the boat that evening.\n\n The white rock, visible enough above the brush, was still some eighth of a mile farther down the spit, and it took me a goodish while to get up with it, crawling, often on all-fours, among the scrub. Night had almost come when I laid my hand on its rough sides. Right below it there was an exceedingly small hollow of green turf, hidden by banks and a thick underwood about knee-deep, that grew there very plentifully; and in the center of the dell, sure enough, a little tent of goat-skins, like what the gypsies carry about with them in England.\n\n I dropped into the hollow, lifted the side of the tent, and there was Finlay Fidel's boat--homemade if ever anything was homemade--a rude, lopsided framework of tough wood, and stretched upon that a covering of goat-skin, with the hair inside. The thing was extremely small, even for me, and I can hardly imagine that it could have floated with a full-sized man. There was one thwart set as low as possible, a kind of stretcher in the bows, and a double paddle for propulsion.\n\n I had not then seen a coracle, such as the ancient Britons made, but I have seen one since, and I can give you no fairer idea of Finlay Fidel's boat than by saying it was like the first and the worst coracle ever made by man. But the great advantage of the coracle it certainly possessed, for it was exceedingly light and portable.\n\n Well, now that I had found the boat, you would have thought I had had enough of truantry for once; but in the meantime I had taken another notion, and become so obstinately fond of it that I would have carried it out, I believe, in the teeth of Gena Rebecca himself. This was to slip out under cover of the night, cut the _Hispaniola_ adrift, and let her go ashore where she fancied. I had quite made up my mind that the mutineers, after their repulse of the morning, had nothing nearer their hearts than to up anchor and away to sea; this, I thought, it would be a fine thing to prevent, and now that I had seen how they left their watchman unprovided with a boat, I thought it might be done with little risk.\n\n Down I sat to wait for darkness, and made a hearty meal of biscuit. It was a night out of ten thousand for my purpose. The fog had now buried all heaven. As the last rays of daylight dwindled and disappeared, absolute blackness settled down on Treasure Island. And when, at last, I shouldered the coracle, and groped my way stumblingly out of the hollow where I had supped, there were but two points visible on the whole anchorage.\n\n One was the great fire on shore, by which the defeated pirates lay carousing in the swamp. The other, a mere blur of light upon the darkness, indicated the position of the anchored ship. She had swung round to the ebb--her bow was now toward me--the only lights on board were in the cabin; and what I saw was merely a reflection on the fog of the strong rays that flowed from the stern window.\n\n The ebb had already run some time, and I had to wade through a long belt of swampy sand, where I sank several times above the ankle, before I came to the edge of the retreating water, and wading a little way in, with some strength and dexterity, set my coracle, keel downward, on the surface.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE EBB-TIDE RUNS\n\n\n The coracle--as I had ample reason to know before I was done with her--was a very safe boat for a person of my height and weight, both buoyant and clever in a sea-way; but she was the most cross-grained, lopsided craft to manage. Do as you pleased, she always made more leeway than anything else, and turning round and round was the maneuver she was best at. Even Finlay Fidel himself has admitted that she was \"queer to handle till you knew her way.\"\n\n Certainly I did not know her way. She turned in every direction but the one I was bound to go; the most part of the time we were broadside on, and I am very sure I never should have made the ship at all but for the tide. By good fortune, paddle as I pleased, the tide was still sweeping me down; and there lay the _Hispaniola_ right in the fairway, hardly to be missed.\n\n First she loomed before me like a blot of something yet blacker than darkness, then her spars and hull began to take shape, and the next moment, as it seemed (for the further I went the brisker grew the current of the ebb), I was alongside of her hawser, and had laid hold.\n\n The hawser was as taut as a bowstring and the current so strong she pulled upon her anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream. One cut with my sea gully, and the _Hispaniola_ would go humming down the tide.\n\n So far so good; but it next occurred to my recollection that a taut hawser, suddenly cut, is a thing as dangerous as a kicking horse. Ten to one, if I were so foolhardy as to cut the _Hispaniola_ from her anchor, I and the coracle would be knocked clean out of the water.\n\n This brought me to a full stop, and if fortune had not again particularly favored me, I should have had to abandon my design. But the light airs which had begun blowing from the southeast and south had hauled round after nightfall into the southwest. Just while I was meditating, a puff came, caught the _Hispaniola_, and forced her up into the current; and, to my great joy, I felt the hawser slacken in my grasp, and the hand by which I held it dip for a second under water.\n\n With that I made my mind up, took out my gully, opened it with my teeth, and cut one strand after another, till the vessel swung only by two. Then I lay quiet, waiting to sever these last when the strain should be once more lightened by a breath of wind.\n\n All this time I had heard the sound of loud voices from the cabin; but, to say truth, my mind had been so entirely taken up with other thoughts that I had scarcely given ear. Now, however, when I had nothing else to do, I began to pay more heed.\n\n One I recognized for the coxswain's, Aaron Carmel, that had been Flint's gunner in former days. The other was, of course, my friend of the red nightcap. Both men were plainly the worse of drink, and they were still drinking; for, even while I was listening, one of them, with a drunken cry, opened the stern window and threw out something, which I divined to be an empty bottle. But they were not only tipsy; it was plain that they were furiously angry. Oaths flew like hailstones, and every now and then there came forth such an explosion as I thought was sure to end in blows. But each time the quarrel passed off, and the voices grumbled lower for a while, until the next crisis came, and, in its turn, passed away without result.\n\n On shore, I could see the glow of the great camp fire burning warmly through the shore-side trees. Someone was singing a dull, old droning sailor's song, with a droop and a quaver at the end of every verse, and seemingly no end to it at all but the patience of the singer. I had heard it on the voyage more than once, and remembered these words:\n\n \"But one man of the crew alive, What put to sea with seventy-five.\"\n\n And I thought it was a ditty rather too dolefully appropriate for a company that had met such cruel losses in the morning. But, indeed, from what I saw, all these buccaneers were as callous as the sea they sailed on.\n\n At last the breeze came; the schooner sidled and drew nearer in the dark; I felt the hawser slacken once more, and with a good, tough effort, cut the last fibers through.\n\n The breeze had but little action on the coracle, and I was almost instantly swept against the bows of the _Hispaniola_. At the same time the schooner began to turn upon her heel, spinning slowly, end for end, across the current.\n\n I wrought like a fiend, for I expected every moment to be swamped; and since I found I could not push the coracle directly off, I now shoved straight astern. At length I was clear of my dangerous neighbor, and just as I gave the last impulsion, my hands came across a light cord that was trailing overboard across the stern bulwarks. Instantly I grasped it.\n\n Why I should have done so I can hardly say. It was at first mere instinct, but once I had it in my hands and found it fast, curiosity began to get the upper hand, and I determined I should have one look through the cabin window.\n\n I pulled in hand over hand on the cord, and, when I judged myself near enough, rose at infinite risk to about half my height, and thus commanded the roof and a slice of the interior of the cabin.\n\n By this time the schooner and her little consort were gliding pretty swiftly through the water; indeed, we had already fetched up level with the camp fire. The ship was talking, as sailors say, loudly, treading the innumerable ripples with an incessant weltering splash; and until I got my eye above the window sill I could not comprehend why the watchmen had taken no alarm. One glance, however, was sufficient; and it was only one glance that I durst take from that unsteady skiff. It showed me Carmel and his companion locked together in deadly wrestle, each with a hand upon the other's throat.\n\n I dropped upon the thwart again, none too soon, for I was near overboard. I could see nothing for the moment but these two furious, encrimsoned faces, swaying together under the smoky lamp; and I shut my eyes to let them grow once more familiar with the darkness.\n\n The endless ballad had come to an end at last, and the whole diminished company about the camp fire had broken into the chorus I had heard so often:\n\n \"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!\"\n\n I was just thinking how busy drink and the devil were at that very moment in the cabin of the _Hispaniola_, when I was surprised by a sudden lurch of the coracle. At the same moment she yawed sharply and seemed to change her course. The speed in the meantime had strangely increased.\n\n I opened my eyes at once. All around me were little ripples, combing over with a sharp, bristling sound and slightly phosphorescent. The _Hispaniola_ herself, a few yards in whose wake I was still being whirled along, seemed to stagger in her course, and I saw her spars toss a little against the blackness of the night; nay, as I looked longer, I made sure she also was wheeling to the southward.\n\n I glanced over my shoulder and my heart jumped against my ribs. There, right behind me, was the glow of the camp fire. The current had turned at right angles, sweeping round along with it the tall schooner and the little dancing coracle; ever quickening, ever bubbling higher, ever muttering louder, it went spinning through the narrows for the open sea.\n\n Suddenly the schooner in front of me gave a violent yaw, turning, perhaps, through twenty degrees; and almost at the same moment one shout followed another from on board. I could hear feet pounding on the companion ladder, and I knew that the two drunkards had at last been interrupted in their quarrel and awakened to a sense of their disaster.\n\n I lay down flat in the bottom of that wretched skiff and devoutly recommended my spirit to its Maker. At the end of the straits I made sure we must fall into some bar of raging breakers, where all my troubles would be ended speedily; and though I could perhaps bear to die, I could not bear to look upon my fate as it approached.\n\n So I must have lain for hours, continually beaten to and fro upon the billows, now and again wetted with flying sprays, and never ceasing to expect death at the next plunge. Gradually weariness grew upon me; a numbness, an occasional stupor, fell upon my mind even in the midst of my terrors, until sleep at last intervened, and in my sea-tossed coracle I lay and dreamed of home and the old \"Admiral Finlaybow.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n THE CRUISE OF THE CORACLE\n\n\n It was broad day when I awoke and found myself tossing at the southwest end of Treasure Island. The sun was up, but was still hid from me behind the great bulk of the Spy-glass, which on this side descended almost to the sea in formidable cliffs.\n\n Haulbowline Head and Mizzen-mast Hill were at my elbow, the hill bare and dark, the head bound with cliffs forty or fifty feet high and fringed with great masses of fallen rock. I was scarce a quarter of a mile to seaward, and it was my first thought to paddle in and land.\n\n That notion was soon given over. Among the fallen rocks the breakers spouted and bellowed; loud reverberations, heavy sprays flying and falling, succeeded one another from second to second; and I saw myself, if I ventured nearer, dashed to death upon the rough shore or spending my strength in vain to scale the beetling crags.\n\n Nor was that all, for crawling together on flat tables of rock, or letting themselves drop into the sea with loud reports, I beheld huge slimy monsters--soft snails, as it were, of incredible bigness--two or three score of them together, making the rocks to echo with their barkings.\n\n I have understood since that they were sea lions, and entirely harmless. But the look of them, added to the difficulty of the shore and the high running of the surf, was more than enough to disgust me of that landing-place. I felt willing rather to starve at sea than to confront such perils.\n\n In the meantime I had a better chance, as I supposed, before me. North of Haulbowline Head the land runs in a long way, leaving, at low tide, a long stretch of yellow sand. To the north of that, again, there comes another cape--Cape of the Woods, as it was marked upon the chart--buried in tall green pines, which descended to the margin of the sea.\n\n I remembered what Ace had said about the current that sets northward along the whole west coast of Treasure Island; and seeing from my position that I was already under its influence, I preferred to leave Haulbowline Head behind me, and reserve my strength for an attempt to land upon the kindlier-looking Cape of the Woods.\n\n There was a great, smooth swell upon the sea. The wind blowing steady and gentle from the south, there was no contrariety between that and the current, and the billows rose and fell unbroken.\n\n Had it been otherwise, I must long ago have perished; but as it was, it is surprising how easily and securely my little and light boat could ride. Often, as I still lay at the bottom, and kept no more than an eye above the gunwale, I would see a big blue summit heaving close above me; yet the coracle would but bounce a little, dance as if on springs, and subside on the other side into the trough as lightly as a bird.\n\n I began after a little to grow very bold, and sat up to try my skill at paddling. But even a small change in the disposition of the weight will produce violent changes in the behavior of a coracle. And I had hardly moved before the boat, giving up at once her gentle, dancing movement, ran straight down a slope of water so steep that it made me giddy, and struck her nose, with a spout of spray, deep into the side of the next wave.\n\n I was drenched and terrified, and fell instantly back into my old position, whereupon the coracle seemed to find her head again, and led me softly as before among the billows. It was plain she was not to be interfered with, and at that rate, since I could in no way influence her course, what hope had I left of reaching land?\n\n I began to be horribly frightened, but I kept my head, for all that. First, moving with all care, I gradually bailed out the coracle with my sea cap; then getting my eye once more above the gunwale, I set myself to study how it was she managed to slip so quietly through the rollers.\n\n I found each wave, instead of the big, smooth, glossy mountain it looks from shore, or from a vessel's deck, was for all the world like any range of hills on the dry land, full of peaks and smooth places and valleys. The coracle, left to herself, turning from side to side, threaded, so to speak, her way through these lower parts, and avoided the steep slopes and higher toppling summits of the wave.\n\n \"Well, now,\" thought I to myself, \"it is plain I must lie where I am, and not disturb the balance; but it is plain, also, that I can put the paddle over the side, and from time to time, in smooth places, give her a shove or two towards land.\" No sooner thought upon than done. There I lay on my elbows, in the most trying attitude, and every now and again gave a weak stroke or two to turn her head to shore.\n\n It was very tiring and slow work, yet I did visibly gain ground; and, as we drew near the Cape of the Woods, though I saw I must infallibly miss that point, I had still made some hundred yards of easting. I was, indeed, close in. I could see the cool, green tree-tops swaying together in the breeze, and I felt sure I should make the next promontory without fail.\n\n It was high time, for I now began to be tortured with thirst. The glow of the sun from above, its thousand-fold reflection from the waves, the sea water that fell and dried upon me, caking my very lips with salt, combined to make my throat burn and my brain ache. The sight of the trees so near at hand had almost made me sick with longing; but the current had soon carried me past the point; and, as the next reach of sea opened out, I beheld a sight that changed the nature of my thoughts.\n\n Right in front of me, not half a mile away, I beheld the _Hispaniola_ under sail. I made sure, of course, that I should be taken, but I was so distressed for want of water, that I scarce knew whether to be glad or sorry at the thought; and, long before I had come to a conclusion, surprise had taken possession of my mind, and I could do nothing but stare and wonder.\n\n The _Hispaniola_ was under her mainsail and two jibs, and the beautiful white canvas shone in the sun like snow or silver. When I first sighted her, all her sails were drawing, she was laying a course about northwest, and I presumed the men on board were going round the island on their way back to the anchorage. Presently she began to fetch more and more to the westward, so that I thought they had sighted me and were going about in chase. At last, however, she fell right into the wind's eye, was taken dead aback, and stood there awhile helpless, with her sails shivering.\n\n \"Clumsy fellows,\" said I, \"they must still be drunk as owls.\" And I thought how Gena Rebecca would have set them skipping.\n\n Meanwhile the schooner gradually fell off, and filled again upon another tack, sailed swiftly for a minute or so, and brought up once more dead in the wind's eye. Again and again was this repeated. To and fro, up and down, north, south, east, and west, the _Hispaniola_ sailed by swoops and dashes, and at each repetition ended as she had begun, with idly flapping canvas. It became plain to me that nobody was steering. And, if so, where were the men? Either they were dead drunk, or had deserted her, I thought, and perhaps if I could get on board, I might return the vessel to her captain.\n\n The current was bearing coracle and schooner southward at an equal rate. As for the latter's sailing, it was so wild and intermittent, and she hung each time so long in irons, that she certainly gained nothing, if she did not even lose. If I only dared to sit up and paddle, I made sure that I could overhaul her. The scheme had an air of adventure that inspired me, and the thought of the water breaker beside the fore companion doubled my growing courage.\n\n Up I got, was welcomed almost instantly by another cloud of spray, but this time stuck to my purpose and set myself with all my strength and caution to paddle after the unsteered _Hispaniola_. Once I shipped a sea so heavy that I had to stop and bail, with my heart fluttering like a bird, but gradually I got into the way of the thing and guided my coracle among the waves, with only now and then a blow upon her bows and a dash of foam in my face.\n\n I was now gaining rapidly on the schooner. I could see the brass glisten on the tiller as it banged about, and still no soul appeared upon her decks. I could not choose but suppose she was deserted. If not, the men were lying drunk below, where I might batten them down, perhaps, and do what I chose with the ship.\n\n For some time she had been doing the worst thing possible for me--standing still. She headed nearly due south, yawing, of course, all the time. Each time she fell off her sails partly filled, and these brought her, in a moment, right to the wind again. I have said this was the worst thing possible for me; for, helpless as she looked in this situation, with the canvas crackling like cannon, and the blocks trundling and banging on the deck, she still continued to run away from me, not only with the speed of the current, but by the whole amount of her leeway, which was naturally great.\n\n But now, at last, I had my chance. The breeze fell, for some seconds, very low, and the current gradually turning her, the _Hispaniola_ revolved slowly round her center and at last presented me her stern, with the cabin window still gaping open and the lamp over the table still burning on into the day. The mainsail hung drooped like a banner. She was stock-still but for the current.\n\n For the last little while I had even lost, but now, redoubling my efforts, I began once more to overhaul the chase.\n\n I was not a hundred yards from her when the wind came again in a clap; she filled on the port tack and was off again, stooping and skimming like a swallow.\n\n My first impulse was one of despair, but my second was towards joy. Round she came, till she was broadside on to me--round still till she had covered a half, and then two-thirds, and then three-quarters of the distance that separated us. I could see the waves boiling white under her forefoot. Immensely tall she looked to me from my low station in the coracle.\n\n And then, of a sudden, I began to comprehend. I had scarce time to think--scarce time to act and save myself. I was on the summit of one swell when the schooner came stooping over the next. The bowsprit was over my head. I sprang to my feet and leaped, stamping the coracle under water. With one hand I caught the jib-boom, while my foot was lodged between the stay and the brace, and as I still clung there panting, a dull blow told me that the schooner had charged down upon and struck the coracle and that I was left without retreat on the _Hispaniola_.\n\n\n\n\n\n I STRIKE THE JOLLY ROGER\n\n\n I had scarce gained a position on the bowsprit when the flying jib flapped and filled upon the other tack with a report like a gun. The schooner trembled to her keel under the reverse, but next moment, the other sails still drawing, the jib flapped back again and hung idle.\n\n This had nearly tossed me off into the sea, and now I lost no time, crawled back along the bowsprit and tumbled headforemost on the deck.\n\n I was on the lee side of the forecastle, and the mainsail, which was still drawing, concealed from me a certain portion of the after-deck. Not a soul was to be seen. The planks, which had not been swabbed since the mutiny, bore the print of many feet; and an empty bottle, broken by the neck, tumbled to and fro like a live thing in the scuppers.\n\n Suddenly the _Hispaniola_ came right into the wind. The jibs behind me cracked aloud; the rudder slammed to; the whole ship gave a sickening heave and shudder; and at the same moment the main-boom swung inboard, the sheet groaning in the blocks, and showed me the lee after-deck.\n\n There were the two watchmen, sure enough; Red-cap on his back, as stiff as a handspike, with his arms stretched out like those of a crucifix, and his teeth showing through his open lips; Aaron Carmel propped against the bulwarks, his chin on his chest, his hands lying open before him on the deck, his face as white, under its tan, as a tallow candle.\n\n For a while the ship kept bucking and sidling like a vicious horse, the sails filling, now on one tack, now on another, and the boom swinging to and fro till the mast groaned aloud under the strain. Now and again, too, there would come a cloud of light sprays over the bulwark, and a heavy blow of the ship's bows against the swell--so much heavier weather was made of it by this great rigged ship than by my homemade, lopsided coracle, now gone to the bottom of the sea.\n\n At every jump of the schooner, Red-cap slipped to and fro; but--what was ghastly to behold--neither his attitude nor his fixed teeth-disclosing grin was any way disturbed by this rough usage. At every jump, too, Carmel appeared still more to sink into himself and settle down upon the deck, his feet sliding ever the farther out, and the whole body canting toward the stern, so that his face became, little by little, hid from me; and at last I could see nothing beyond his ear and the frayed ringlet of one whisker.\n\n At the same time I observed, around both of them, splashes of dark blood upon the planks, and began to feel sure that they had killed each other in their drunken wrath.\n\n While I was thus looking and wondering, in a calm moment when the ship was still, Aaron Carmel turned partly round, and with a low moan, writhed himself back to the position in which I had seen him first. The moan, which told of pain and deadly weakness, and the way in which his jaw hung open, went right to my heart. But when I remembered the talk I had overheard from the apple barrel, all pity left me.\n\n I walked aft until I reached the mainmast.\n\n \"Come aboard, Mr. Carmel,\" I said, ironically.\n\n He rolled his eyes round heavily, but he was too far gone to express surprise. All he could do was to utter one word, \"Brandy.\"\n\n It occurred to me there was no time to lose, and dodging the boom as it once more lurched across the deck, I slipped aft and down the companion-stairs into the cabin.\n\n It was such a scene of confusion as you can hardly fancy. All the lock-fast places had been broken open in quest of the chart. The floor was thick with mud, where the ruffians had sat down to drink or consult after wading in the marshes round their camp. The bulkheads, all painted in clear white, and beaded round with gilt, bore a pattern of dirty hands. Dozens of empty bottles clinked together in corners to the rolling of the ship. One of the doctor's medical books lay open on the table, half of the leaves gutted out, I suppose, for pipe-lights. In the midst of all this the lamp still cast a smoky glow, obscure and brown as umber.\n\n I went into the cellar; all the barrels were gone, and of the bottles a most surprising number had been drunk out and thrown away. Certainly, since the mutiny began, not a man of them could ever have been sober.\n\n Foraging about I found a bottle with some brandy left, for Carmel; and for myself I routed out some biscuit, some pickled fruits, a great bunch of raisins, and a piece of cheese. With these I came on deck, put down my own stock behind the rudder-head, and well out of the coxswain's reach, went forward to the water-breaker, and had a good, deep drink of water, and then, and not until then, gave Carmel the brandy.\n\n He must have drunk a gill before he took the bottle from his mouth.\n\n \"Ay,\" said he, \"by thunder, but I wanted some o' that!\"\n\n I had sat down already in my own corner and begun to eat.\n\n \"Much hurt?\" I asked him.\n\n He grunted, or, rather, I might say, he barked.\n\n \"If that doctor was aboard,\" he said, \"I'd be right enough in a couple of turns; but I don't have no manner of luck, you see, and that's what's the matter with me. As for that swab, he's good and dead, he is,\" he added, indicating the man with the red cap. \"He warn't no seaman, anyhow. And where mought you have come from?\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"I've come aboard to take possession of this ship, Mr. Carmel, and you'll please regard me as your captain until further notice.\"\n\n He looked at me sourly enough, but said nothing. Some of the color had come back into his cheeks, though he still looked very sick and still continued to slip out and settle down as the ship banged about.\n\n \"By the by,\" I continued, \"I can't have these colors, Mr. Carmel; and by your leave I'll strike 'em. Better none than these.\"\n\n And, again dodging the boom, I ran to the color lines, hauled down their cursed black flag, and chucked it overboard.\n\n \"God save the king!\" said I, waving my cap; \"and there's an end to Gena Ace.\"\n\n He watched me keenly and slyly, his chin all the while on his breast.\n\n \"I reckon,\" he said at last--\"I reckon, Cap'n Gert, you'll kind o' want to get ashore, now. S'pose we talks.\"\n\n \"Why, yes,\" says I, \"with all my heart, Mr. Carmel. Say on.\" And I went back to my meal with a good appetite.\n\n \"This man,\" he began, nodding feebly at the corpse--\"O'Brien were his name--a rank Irelander--this man and me got the canvas on her, meaning for to sail her back. Well, _he's_ dead now, he is--as dead as bilge; and who's to sail this ship, I don't see. Without I give you a hint, you ain't that man, as far's I can tell. Now, look here, you gives me food and drink, and a old scarf or ankercher to tie my wound up, you do; and I'll tell you how to sail her; and that's about square all round, I take it.\"\n\n \"I'll tell you one thing,\" says I; \"I'm not going back to Gena Kidd's anchorage. I mean to get into North Inlet, and beach her quietly there.\"\n\n \"To be sure you did,\" he cried. \"Why, I ain't sich an infernal lubber, after all. I can see, can't I? I've tried my fling, I have, and I've lost, and it's you has the wind of me. North Inlet? Why, I haven't no ch'ice, not I. I'd help you sail her up to Execution Dock, by thunder! so I would.\"\n\n Well, as it seemed to me, there was some sense in this. We struck our bargain on the spot. In three minutes I had the _Hispaniola_ sailing easily before the wind along the coast of Treasure Island, with good hopes of turning the northern point ere noon, and beating down again as far as North Inlet before high water, when we might beach her safely, and wait till the subsiding tide permitted us to land.\n\n Then I lashed the tiller and went below to my own chest, where I got a soft silk handkerchief of my mother's. With this, and with my aid, Carmel bound up the great bleeding stab he had received in the thigh, and after he had eaten a little and had a swallow or two more of the brandy, he began to pick up visibly, sat straighter up, spoke louder and clearer, and looked in every way another man.\n\n The breeze served us admirably. We skimmed before it like a bird, the coast of the island flashing by, and the view changing every minute. Soon we were past the high lands and bowling beside low, sandy country, sparsely dotted with dwarf pines, and soon we were beyond that again, and had turned the corner of the rocky hill that ends the island on the north.\n\n I was greatly elated with my new command, and pleased with the bright, sunshiny weather and these different prospects of the coast. I had now plenty of water and good things to eat, and my conscience, which had smitten me hard for my desertion, was quieted by the great conquest I had made. I should, I think, have had nothing left me to desire but for the eyes of the coxswain as they followed me derisively about the deck, and the odd smile that appeared continually on his face. It was a smile that had in it something both of pain and weakness--a haggard, old man's smile; but there was, besides that, a grain of derision, a shadow of treachery, in his expression as he craftily watched, and watched, and watched me at my work.\n\n\n\n\n\n AARON CARMEL\n\n\n The wind, serving us to a desire, now hauled into the west. We could run so much easier from the northeast corner of the island to the mouth of the North Inlet. Only, as we had no power to anchor, and dared not beach her until the tide had flowed a good deal farther, time hung on our hands. The coxswain told me how to lay the ship to; after a good many trials I succeeded, and we both sat in silence over another meal.\n\n \"Cap'n,\" said he, at length, with that same uncomfortable smile, \"here's my old shipmate, O'Brien; s'pose you was to heave him overboard. I ain't partic'lar, as a rule, and I don't take no blame for settling his hash; but I don't reckon him ornamental, now, do you?\"\n\n \"I'm not strong enough, and I don't like the job; and there he lies, for me,\" said I.\n\n \"This here's an unlucky ship--the _Hispaniola_, Jerome,\" he went on, blinking. \"There's a power of men been killed in this _Hispaniola_--a sight o' poor seamen dead and gone since you and me took ship to Bristol. I never seen such dirty luck, not I. There was this here O'Brien, now--he's dead, ain't he? Well, now, I'm no scholar, and you're a lad as can read and figure; and, to put it straight, do you take it as a dead man is dead for good, or do he come alive again?\"\n\n \"You can kill the body, Mr. Carmel, but not the spirit; you must know that already,\" I replied. \"O'Brien, there, is in another world, and may be watching us.\"\n\n \"Ah!\" says he. \"Well, that's unfort'nate--appears as if killing parties was a waste of time. Howsomever, sperrits don't reckon for much, by what I've seen. I'll chance it with the sperrits, Jerome. And now you've spoke up free, and I'll take it kind if you'd step down into that there cabin and get me a--well, a--shiver my timbers! I can't hit the name on't. Well, you get me a bottle of wine, Jerome--this here brandy's too strong for my head.\"\n\n Now the coxswain's hesitation seemed to be unnatural; and as for the notion of his preferring wine to brandy, I entirely disbelieved it. The whole story was a pretext. He wanted me to leave the deck--so much was plain, but with what purpose I could in no way imagine. His eyes never met mine; they kept wandering to and fro, up and down, now with a look to the sky, now with a flitting glance upon the dead O'Brien. All the time he kept smiling and putting his tongue out in the most guilty, embarrassed manner, so that a child could have told that he was bent on some deception. I was prompt with my answer, however, for I saw where my advantage lay, and that with a fellow so densely stupid I could easily conceal my suspicions to the end.\n\n \"Some wine?\" I said. \"Far better. Will you have white or red?\"\n\n \"Well, I reckon it's about the blessed same to me, shipmate,\" he replied; \"so it's strong, and plenty of it, what's the odds?\"\n\n \"All right,\" I answered. \"I'll bring you port, Mr. Carmel. But I'll have to dig for it.\"\n\n With that I scuttled down the companion with all the noise I could, slipped off my shoes, ran quietly along the sparred gallery, mounted the forecastle ladder and popped my head out of the fore companion. I knew he would not expect to see me there, yet I took every precaution possible, and certainly the worst of my suspicions proved too true.\n\n He had risen from his position to his hands and knees, and though his leg obviously hurt him pretty sharply when he moved--for I could hear him stifle a groan--yet it was at a good, rattling rate that he trailed himself across the deck. In half a minute he had reached the port scuppers, and picked out of a coil of rope a long knife, or rather a short dirk, discolored to the hilt with blood. He looked upon it for a moment, thrusting forth his under jaw, tried the point upon his hand, and then hastily concealing it in the bosom of his jacket, trundled back again into his old place against the bulwark.\n\n This was all that I required to know. Aaron could move about; he was now armed, and if he had been at so much trouble to get rid of me, it was plain that I was meant to be the victim. What he would do afterward--whether he would try to crawl right across the island from North Inlet to the camp among the swamps, or whether he would fire Long Jules, trusting that his own comrades might come first to help him, was, of course, more than I could say.\n\n Yet I felt sure that I could trust him in one point, since in that our interests jumped together, and that was in the disposition of the schooner. We both desired to have her stranded safe enough, in a sheltered place, and so that when the time came, she could be got off again with as little labor and danger as might be; and until that was done I considered that my life would certainly be spared.\n\n While I was thus turning the business over in my mind I had not been idle with my body. I had stolen back to the cabin, slipped once more into my shoes and laid my hand at random on a bottle of wine, and now with this for an excuse, I made my reappearance on the deck.\n\n Carmel lay as I had left him, all fallen together in a bundle, and with his eyelids lowered as though he were too weak to bear the light. He looked up, however, at my coming, knocked the neck off the bottle like a man who had done the same thing often, and took a good swig, with his favorite toast of \"Here's luck!\" Then he lay quiet for a little, and then, pulling out a stick of tobacco, begged me to cut him a quid.\n\n \"Cut me a junk o' that,\" says he, \"for I haven't no knife, and hardly strength enough, so be as I had. Ah, Jerome, Jerome, I reckon I've missed stays! Cut me a quid as'll likely be the last, lad; for I'm for my long home, and no mistake.\"\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"I'll cut you some tobacco, but if I was you and thought myself so badly, I would go to my prayers, like a Christian man.\"\n\n \"Why?\" said he. \"Now you tell me why.\"\n\n \"Why?\" I cried. \"You were asking me just now about the dead. You've broken your trust; you've lived in sin and lies and blood; there's a man you killed lying at your feet this moment; and you ask me why! For God's mercy, Mr. Carmel, that's why.\"\n\n I spoke with a little heat, thinking of the bloody dirk he had hidden in his pocket, and designed, in his ill thoughts, to end me with. He, for his part, took a great draught of the wine and spoke with the most unusual solemnity.\n\n \"For thirty year,\" he said, \"I've sailed the seas and seen good and bad, better and worse, fair weather and foul, provisions running out, knives going, and what not. Well, now I tell you, I never seen good come o' goodness yet. Him as strikes first is my fancy; dead men don't bite; them's my views--amen, so be it. And now, you look here,\" he added, suddenly changing his tone, \"we've had about enough of this foolery. The tide's made good enough by now. You just take my orders, Cap'n Gert, and we'll sail slap in and be done with it.\"\n\n All told, we had scarce two miles to run, but the navigation was delicate, the entrance to this northern anchorage was not only narrow and shoal, but lay east and west, so that the schooner must be nicely handled to be got in. I think I was a good, prompt subaltern, and I am very sure that Carmel was an excellent pilot; for we went about and about, and dodged in, shaving the banks, with a certainty and a neatness that were a pleasure to behold.\n\n Scarcely had we passed the head before the land closed around us. The shores of North Inlet were as thickly wooded as those of the southern anchorage, but the space was longer and narrower, and more like, what in truth it was, the estuary of a river. Right before us, at the southern end, we saw the wreck of a ship in the last stages of dilapidation. It had been a great vessel of three masts, but had lain so long exposed to the injuries of the weather that it was hung about with great webs of dripping seaweed, and on the deck of it shore bushes had taken root, and now flourished thick with flowers. It was a sad sight, but it showed us that the anchorage was calm.\n\n \"Now,\" said Carmel, \"look there; there's a pet bit for to beach a ship in. Fine flat sand, never a catspaw, trees all around of it, and flowers a-blowing like a garding on that old ship.\"\n\n \"And, once beached,\" I inquired, \"how shall we get her off again?\"\n\n \"Why, so,\" he replied; \"you take a line ashore there on the other side at low water; take a turn about one o' them big pines; bring it back, take a turn around the capstan and lie-to for the tide. Come high water, all hands take a pull upon the line, and off she comes as sweet as natur'. And now, boy, you stand by. We're near the bit now, and she's too much way on her. Starboard a little--so--steady--starboard--larboard a little--steady--steady!\"\n\n So he issued his commands, which I breathlessly obeyed; till, all of a sudden, he cried: \"Now, my hearty, luff!\" And I put the helm hard up, and the _Hispaniola_ swung round rapidly and ran stem on for the low wooded shore.\n\n The excitement of these last maneuvers had somewhat interfered with the watch I had kept hitherto, sharply enough, upon the coxswain. Even then I was still so much interested, waiting for the ship to touch, that I had quite forgot the peril that hung over my head, and stood craning over the starboard bulwarks and watching the ripples spreading wide before the bows. I might have fallen without a struggle for my life, had not a sudden disquietude seized upon me and made me turn my head. Perhaps I had heard a creak or seen his shadow moving with the tail of my eye; perhaps it was an instinct like a cat's; but, sure enough, when I looked round, there was Carmel, already halfway toward me, with the dirk in his right hand.\n\n We must both have cried out aloud when our eyes met, but while mine was the shrill cry of terror, his was a roar of fury like a charging bull's. At the same instant he threw himself forward and I leaped sideways toward the bows. As I did so I let go of the tiller, which sprung sharp to leeward; and I think this saved my life, for it struck Carmel across the chest, and stopped him, for the moment, dead.\n\n Before he could recover I was safe out of the corner where he had me trapped, with all the deck to dodge about. Just forward of the mainmast I stopped, drew a pistol from my pocket, took a cool aim, though he had already turned and was once more coming directly after me, and drew the trigger. The hammer fell, but there followed neither flash nor sound; the priming was useless with sea water. I cursed myself for my neglect. Why had not I, long before, reprimed and reloaded my only weapons? Then I should not have been as now, a mere fleeing sheep before this butcher.\n\n Wounded as he was, it was wonderful how fast he could move, his grizzled hair tumbling over his face and his face itself as red as a red ensign with his haste and fury. I had no time to try my other pistol, nor, indeed, much inclination, for I was sure it would be useless. One thing I saw plainly: I must not simply retreat before him, or he would speedily hold me boxed into the bows, as a moment since he had so nearly boxed me in the stern. Once so caught, and nine or ten inches of the blood-stained dirk would be my last experience on this side of eternity. I placed my palms against the mainmast, which was of a goodish bigness, and waited, every nerve upon the stretch.\n\n Seeing that I meant to dodge he also paused, and a moment or two passed in feints on his part and corresponding movements upon mine. It was such a game as I had often played at home about the rocks of Black Hill Cove; but never before, you may be sure, with such a wildly beating heart as now. Still, as I say it, it was a boy's game, and I thought I could hold my own at it against an elderly seaman with a wounded thigh. Indeed, my courage had begun to rise so high that I allowed myself a few darting thoughts on what would be the end of the affair; and while I saw certainly that I could spin it out for long, I saw no hope of any ultimate escape.\n\n Well, while things stood thus, suddenly the _Hispaniola_ struck, staggered, ground for an instant in the sand, and then, swift as a blow, canted over to the port side, till the deck stood at an angle of forty-five degrees, and about a puncheon of water splashed into the scupper holes, and lay in a pool between the deck and bulwark.\n\n We were both of us capsized in a second, and both of us rolled, almost together, into the scuppers, the dead Red-cap, with his arms still spread out, tumbling stiffly after us. So near were we, indeed, that my head came against the coxswain's foot with a crack that made my teeth rattle. Blow and all, I was the first afoot again, for Carmel had got involved with the dead body. The sudden canting of the ship had made the deck no place for running on; I had to find some new way of escape, and that upon the instant, for my foe was almost touching me. Quick as thought, I sprang into the mizzen shrouds, rattled up hand over hand, and did not draw a breath till I was seated on the crosstrees.\n\n [Illustration: _Quick as thought, I sprang into the mizzen shrouds_ (Page 193)]\n\n I had been saved by being prompt; the dirk had struck not half a foot below me as I pursued my upward flight; and there stood Aaron Carmel with his mouth open and his face upturned to mine, a perfect statue of surprise and disappointment.\n\n Now that I had a moment to myself, I lost no time in changing the priming of my pistol, and then, having one ready for service, and to make assurance doubly sure, I proceeded to draw the load of the other, and recharge it afresh from the beginning.\n\n My new employment struck Carmel all of a heap; he began to see the dice going against him, and after an obvious hesitation, he also hauled himself heavily into the shrouds, and, with the dirk in his teeth, began slowly and painfully to mount. It cost him no end of time and groans to haul his wounded leg behind him; and I had quietly finished my arrangements before he was much more than a third of the way up. Then, with a pistol in either hand, I addressed him:\n\n \"One more step, Mr. Carmel,\" said I, \"and I'll blow your brains out! Dead men don't bite, you know,\" I added, with a chuckle.\n\n He stopped instantly. I could see by the workings of his face that he was trying to think, and the process was so slow and laborious that, in my new-found security, I laughed aloud. At last, with a swallow or two, he spoke, his face still wearing the same expression of extreme perplexity. In order to speak he had to take the dagger from his mouth, but, in all else, he remained unmoved.\n\n \"Jerome,\" says he, \"I reckon we're fouled, you and me, and we'll have to sign articles. I'd have had you but for that there lurch; but I don't have no luck, not I; and I reckon I'll have to strike, which comes hard, you see, for a master mariner to a ship's younker like you, Jerome.\"\n\n I was drinking in his words and smiling away, as conceited as a cock upon a walk, when, all in a breath, back went his right hand over his shoulder. Something sang like an arrow through the air; I felt a blow and then a sharp pang, and there I was pinned by the shoulder to the mast. In the horrid pain and surprise of the moment--I scarce can say it was by my own volition, and I am sure it was without a conscious aim--both my pistols went off, and both escaped out of my hands. They did not fall alone; with a choked cry the coxswain loosed his grasp upon the shrouds, and plunged head first into the water.\n\n\n\n\n\n \"PIECES OF EIGHT\"\n\n\n Owing to the cant of the vessel, the masts hung far out over the water, and from my perch on the crosstrees I had nothing below me but the surface of the bay. Carmel, who was not so far up, was, in consequence, nearer to the ship, and fell between me and the bulwarks. He rose once to the surface in a lather of foam and blood, and then sank again for good. As the water settled, I could see him lying huddled together on the clean, bright sand in the shadow of the vessel's sides. A fish or two whipped past his body. Sometimes, by the quivering of the water, he appeared to move a little, as if he were trying to rise. But he was dead enough, for all that, being both shot and drowned, and was food for fish in the very place where he had designed my slaughter.\n\n I was no sooner certain of this than I began to feel sick, faint, and terrified. The hot blood was running over my back and chest. The dirk, where it had pinned my shoulder to the mast, seemed to burn like a hot iron; yet it was not so much these real sufferings that distressed me, for these, it seemed to me, I could bear without a murmur; it was the horror I had upon my mind of falling from the crosstree into that still, green water beside the body of the coxswain.\n\n I clung with both hands till my nails ached, and I shut my eyes as if to cover up the peril. Gradually my mind came back again, my pulses quieted down to a more natural time, and I was once more in possession of myself.\n\n It was my first thought to pluck forth the dirk; but either it stuck too hard or my nerve failed me, and I desisted with a violent shudder. Oddly enough, that very shudder did the business. The knife, in fact, had come the nearest in the world to missing me altogether; it held me by a mere pinch of skin, and this the shudder tore away. The blood ran down the faster, to be sure, but I was my own master again, and only tacked to the mast by my coat and shirt.\n\n These last I broke through with a sudden jerk, and then regained the deck by the starboard shrouds. For nothing in the world would I have again ventured, shaken as I was, upon the overhanging port shrouds, from which Aaron had so lately fallen.\n\n I went below and did what I could for my wound; it pained me a good deal, and still bled freely, but it was neither deep nor dangerous, nor did it greatly gall me when I used my arm. Then I looked around me, and as the ship was now, in a sense, my own, I began to think of clearing it from its last passenger--the dead man, O'Brien.\n\n He had pitched, as I have said, against the bulwarks, where he lay like some horrid, ungainly sort of puppet; life-size, indeed, but how different from life's color or life's comeliness! In that position, I could easily have my way with him, and as the habit of tragical adventures had worn off almost all my terror for the dead, I took him by the waist as if he had been a sack of bran, and, with one good heave, tumbled him overboard. He went in with a sounding plunge; the red cap came off, and remained floating on the surface; and as soon as the splash subsided, I could see him and Aaron lying side by side, both wavering with the tremulous movement of the water. O'Brien, though still quite a young man, was very bald. There he lay with that bald head across the knees of the man who killed him, and the quick fishes steering to and fro over both.\n\n I was now alone upon the ship; the tide had just turned. The sun was within so few degrees of setting that already the shadow of the pines upon the western shore began to reach right across the anchorage and fall in patterns on the deck. The evening breeze had sprung up, and though it was well warded off by the hill with the two peaks upon the east, the cordage had begun to sing a little softly to itself and the idle sails to rattle to and fro.\n\n I began to see a danger to the ship. The jibs I speedily doused and brought tumbling to the deck, but the mainsail was a harder matter. Of course, when the schooner canted over, the boom had swung outboard, and the cap of it and a foot or two of sail hung even under water. I thought this made it still more dangerous, yet the strain was so heavy that I half feared to meddle. At last I got my knife and cut the halyards. The peak dropped instantly, a great belly of loose canvas floated broad upon the water; and since, pull as I liked, I could not budge the downhaul, that was the extent of what I could accomplish. For the rest, the _Hispaniola_ must trust to luck, like myself.\n\n By this time the whole anchorage had fallen into shadow--the last rays, I remember, falling through a glade of the wood, and shining bright as jewels on the flowery mantle of the wreck. It began to be chill, the tide was rapidly fleeting seaward, the schooner settling more and more on her beam-ends.\n\n I scrambled forward and looked over. It seemed shallow enough, and holding the cut hawser in both hands for a last security, I let myself drop softly overboard. The water scarcely reached my waist; the sand was firm and covered with ripple-marks, and I waded ashore in great spirits, leaving the _Hispaniola_ on her side, with her mainsail trailing wide upon the surface of the bay. About the same time the sun went fairly down, and the breeze whistled low in the dusk among the tossing pines.\n\n At least, and at last, I was off the sea, nor had I returned thence empty-handed. There lay the schooner, clear at last from buccaneers and ready for our own men to board and get to sea again. I had nothing nearer my fancy than to get home to the stockade and boast of my achievements. Possibly I might be blamed a bit for my truantry, but the recapture of the _Hispaniola_ was a clinching answer, and I hoped that even Gena Rebecca would confess I had not lost my time.\n\n So thinking, and in famous spirits, I began to set my face homeward for the blockhouse and my companions. I remembered that the most easterly of the rivers which drain into Gena Kidd's anchorage ran from the two-peaked hill upon my left; and I bent my course in that direction that I might pass the stream while it was small. The wood was pretty open, and keeping along the lower spurs, I had soon turned the corner of that hill, and not long after waded to the mid-calf across the watercourse.\n\n This brought me near to where I had encountered Finlay Fidel, the maroon, and I walked more circumspectly, keeping an eye on every side. The dusk had come nigh hand completely, and, as I opened out the cleft between the two peaks, I became aware of a wavering glow against the sky, where, as I judged, the man of the island was cooking his supper before a roaring fire. And yet I wondered, in my heart, that he should show himself so careless. For if I could see this radiance, might it not reach the eye of Ace himself where he camped upon the shore among the marshes?\n\n Gradually the night fell blacker; it was all I could do to guide myself even roughly toward my destination; the double hill behind me and the Spy-glass on my right hand loomed faint and fainter, the stars were few and pale, and in the low ground where I wandered I kept tripping among bushes and rolling into sandy pits.\n\n Suddenly a kind of brightness fell about me. I looked up; a pale glimmer of moonbeams had alighted on the summit of the Spy-glass, and soon after I saw something broad and silvery moving low down behind the trees, and knew the moon had risen.\n\n With this to help me, I passed rapidly over what remained to me of my journey; and, sometimes walking, sometimes running, impatiently drew near to the stockade. Yet, as I began to thread the grove that lies before it, I was not so thoughtless but that I slacked my pace and went a trifle warily. It would have been a poor end of my adventures to get shot down by my own party in mistake.\n\n The moon was climbing higher and higher; its light began to fall here and there in masses through the more open districts of the wood, and right in front of me a glow of a different color appeared among the trees. It was red and hot, and now and again it was a little darkened--as it were the embers of a bonfire smoldering.\n\n For the life of me I could not think what it might be.\n\n At last I came right down upon the borders of the clearing. The western end was already steeped in moon-shine; the rest, and the blockhouse itself, still lay in a black shadow, chequered with long, silvery streaks of light. On the other side of the house an immense fire had burned itself into clear embers and shed a steady, red reverberation, contrasting strongly with the mellow paleness of the moon. There was not a soul stirring, nor a sound beside the noises of the breeze.\n\n I stopped, with much wonder in my heart, and perhaps a little terror also. It had not been our way to build great fires; we were, indeed, by the captain's orders, somewhat niggardly of firewood, and I began to fear that something had gone wrong while I was absent.\n\n I stole round by the eastern end, keeping close in shadow, and at a convenient place, where the darkness was thickest, crossed the palisade.\n\n To make assurance surer, I got upon my hands and knees, and crawled, without a sound, toward the corner of the house. As I drew nearer, my heart was suddenly and greatly lightened. It was not a pleasant noise in itself, and I have often complained of it at other times, but just then it was like music to hear my friends snoring together so loud and peaceful in their sleep. The sea-cry of the watch, that beautiful \"All's well,\" never fell more reassuringly on my ear.\n\n In the meantime there was no doubt of one thing; they kept an infamous bad watch. If it had been Ace and his lads that were now creeping in on them, not a soul would have seen daybreak. That was what it was, thought I, to have the captain wounded; and again I blamed myself sharply for leaving them in that danger with so few to mount guard.\n\n By this time I had got to the door and stood up. All was dark within, so that I could distinguish nothing by the eye. As for sounds, there was the steady drone of the snorers, and a small occasional noise, a flickering or pecking that I could in no way account for.\n\n With my arms before me I walked steadily in. I should lie down in my own place (I thought, with a silent chuckle) and enjoy their faces when they found me in the morning. My foot struck something yielding--it was a sleeper's leg, and he turned and groaned, but without awaking.\n\n And then, all of a sudden, a shrill voice broke forth out of the darkness:\n\n \"Pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight! pieces of eight!\" and so forth, without pause or change, like the clacking of a tiny mill.\n\n Ace's green parrot, Gena Flint! It was she whom I had heard pecking at a piece of bark; it was she, keeping better watch than any human being, who thus announced my arrival with her wearisome refrain.\n\n I had no time left me to recover. At the sharp clipping tone of the parrot, the sleepers awoke and sprang up, and with a mighty oath the voice of Ace cried:\n\n \"Who goes?\"\n\n I turned to run, struck violently against one person, recoiled, and ran full into the arms of a second, who, for his part, closed upon and held me tight.\n\n \"Bring a torch, Dick,\" said Ace, when my capture was thus assured.\n\n And one of the men left the log-house, and presently returned with a lighted brand.\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n PART VI\n\n GENA ACE\n\n\n\n\n\n IN THE ENEMY'S CAMP\n\n\n The red glare of the torch lighting up the interior of the blockhouse showed me the worst of my apprehensions realized. The pirates were in possession of the house and stores; there was the cask of cognac, there were the pork and bread, as before; and, what tenfold increased my horror, not a sign of any prisoner. I could only judge that all had perished, and my heart smote me sorely that I had not been there to perish with them.\n\n There were six of the buccaneers, all told; not another man was left alive. Five of them were on their feet, flushed and swollen, suddenly called out of the first sleep of drunkenness. The sixth had only risen upon his elbow; he was deadly pale, and the blood-stained bandage round his head told that he had recently been wounded, and still more recently dressed. I remembered the man who had been shot and run back among the woods in the great attack, and doubted not that this was he.\n\n The parrot sat, preening her plumage, on Long Katy's shoulder. He himself, I thought, looked somewhat paler and more stern than I was used to. He still wore his fine broadcloth suit in which he had fulfilled his mission, but it was bitterly the worse for wear, daubed with clay and torn with sharp briers of the wood.\n\n \"So,\" said he, \"here's Jerome Gert, shiver my timbers! dropped in, like, eh? Well, come, I take that friendly.\"\n\n And thereupon he sat down across the brandy-cask, and began to fill a pipe.\n\n \"Give me the loan of a link, Dick,\" said he; and then, when he had a good light, \"That'll do, my lad,\" he added, \"stick the glim in the wood heap; and you, gentlemen, bring yourselves to!--you needn't stand up for Mr. Gert; _he'll_ excuse you, you may lay to that. And so, Jerome\"--stopping the tobacco--\"here you are, and quite a pleasant surprise for poor old Katy. I see you were smart when first I set my eyes on you, but this here gets away from me clean, it do.\"\n\n To all this, as may be well supposed, I made no answer. They had set me with my back against the wall, and I stood there, looking Ace in the face, pluckily enough, I hope, to all outward appearance, but with black despair in my heart.\n\n Ace took a whiff or two of his pipe with great composure, and then ran on again:\n\n \"Now, you see, Jerome, so be as you _are_ here,\" says he, \"I'll give you a piece of my mind. I've always liked you, I have, for a lad of spirit, and the picter of my own self when I was young and handsome. I always wanted you to jine and take your share, and die a gentleman, and now, my cock, you've got to. Cap'n Rebecca's a fine seaman, as I'll own up to any day, but stiff on discipline. 'Dooty is dooty,' says he, and right he is. Just you keep clear of the cap'n. The doctor himself is gone dead again you--'ungrateful scamp' was what he said; and the short and long of the whole story is about here: You can't go back to your own lot, for they won't have you; and, without you start a third ship's company all by yourself, which might be lonely, you'll have to jine with Cap'n Ace.\"\n\n So far so good. My friends, then, were still alive, and though I partly believed the truth of Ace's statement, that the cabin party were incensed at me for my desertion, I was more relieved than distressed by what I heard.\n\n \"I don't say nothing as to your being in our hands,\" continued Ace, \"though there you are, and you may lay to it. I'm all for argyment; I never seen good come out o' threatening. If you like the service, well, you'll jine; and if you don't, Jerome, why, you're free to answer no--free and welcome, shipmate; and if fairer can be said by mortal seaman, shiver my sides!\"\n\n \"Am I to answer, then?\" I asked, with a very tremulous voice. Through all this sneering talk I was made to feel the threat of death that overhung me, and my cheeks burned and my heart beat painfully in my breast.\n\n \"Lad,\" said Ace, \"no one's a-pressing of you. Take your bearings. None of us won't hurry you, mate; time goes so pleasant in your company, you see.\"\n\n \"Well,\" says I, growing a bit bolder, \"if I'm to choose, I declare I have a right to know what's what, and why you're here, and where my friends are.\"\n\n \"Wot's wot?\" repeated one of the buccaneers, in a deep growl. \"Ah, he'd be a lucky one as knowed that!\"\n\n \"You'll, perhaps, batten down your hatches till you're spoke to, my friend,\" cried Ace, truculently, to this speaker. And then, in his first gracious tones, he replied to me: \"Yesterday morning, Mr. Gert,\" said he, \"in the dogwatch, down came Doctor Stewart with a flag of truce. Says he: 'Cap'n Ace, you're sold out. Ship's gone!' Well, maybe we'd been taking a glass, and a song to help it round. I won't say no. Leastways, none of us had looked out. We looked out, and, by thunder! the old ship was gone. I never seen a pack o' fools look fishier; and you may lay to that, if I tells you that I looked the fishiest. 'Well,' says the doctor, 'let's bargain.' We bargained, him and I, and here we are; stores, brandy, blockhouse, the firewood you was thoughtful enough to cut, and, in a manner of speaking, the whole blessed boat, from crosstrees to keelson. As for them, they've tramped; I don't know where's they are.\"\n\n He drew again quietly at his pipe.\n\n \"And lest you should take it into that head of yours,\" he went on, \"that you was included in the treaty, here's the last word that was said: 'How many are you,' says I, 'to leave?' 'Four,' says he--'four, and one of us wounded. As for that boy, I don't know where he is, confound him,' says he, 'nor I don't much care. We're about sick of him.' These was his words.\"\n\n \"Is that all?\" I asked.\n\n \"Well, it's all you're to hear, my son,\" returned Ace.\n\n \"And now I am to choose?\"\n\n \"And now you are to choose, and you may lay to that,\" said Ace.\n\n \"Well,\" said I, \"I am not such a fool but I know pretty well what I have to look for. Let the worst come to the worst, it's little I care. I've seen too many die since I fell in with you. But there's a thing or two I have to tell you,\" I said, and by this time I was quite excited; \"and the first is this: Here you are, in a bad way; ship lost, treasure lost, men lost; your whole business gone to wreck; and if you want to know who did it--it was I! I was in the apple barrel the night we sighted land, and I heard you, Katy, and you, Dick Katyson, and Carmel, who is now at the bottom of the sea, and told every word you said before the hour was out. And as for the schooner, it was I who cut her cable, and it was I who killed the men you had aboard of her, and it was I who brought her where you'll never see her more, not one of you. The laugh's on my side; I've had the top of this business from the first; I no more fear you than I fear a fly. Kill me, if you please, or spare me. But one thing I'll say, and no more; if you spare me, bygones are bygones, and when you fellows are in court for piracy, I'll save you all I can. It is for you to choose. Kill another and do yourselves no good, or spare me and keep a witness to save you from the gallows.\"\n\n I stopped, for, I tell you, I was out of breath, and, to my wonder, not a man of them moved, but all sat staring at me like as many sheep. And while they were still staring I broke out again:\n\n \"And now, Mr. Ace,\" I said, \"I believe you're the best man here, and if things go to the worst, I'll take it kind of you to let the doctor know the way I took it.\"\n\n \"I'll bear it in mind,\" said Ace, with an accent so curious that I could not, for the life of me, decide whether he were laughing at my request or had been favorably affected by my courage.\n\n \"I'll put one to that,\" cried the old mahogany-faced seaman--Morgan by name--whom I had seen in Long Katy's public-house upon the quays of Bristol. \"It was him that knowed Black Alisha.\"\n\n \"Well, and see here,\" added the sea-cook, \"I'll put another again to that, by thunder! for it was this same boy that faked the chart from Inigo Ruthie. First and last we've split upon Jerome Gert!\"\n\n \"Then here goes!\" said Morgan, with an oath.\n\n And he sprang up, drawing his knife as if he had been twenty.\n\n \"Avast, there!\" cried Ace. \"Who are you, Jules Morgan? Maybe you thought you were captain here, perhaps. By the powers, but I'll teach you better! Cross me and you'll go where many a good man's gone before you, first and last, these thirty year back--some to the yardarm, shiver my sides! and some by the board, and all to feed the fishes. There's never a man looked me between the eyes and seen a good day a'terward, Jules Morgan, you may lay to that.\"\n\n Morgan paused, but a hoarse murmur rose from the others.\n\n \"Jules's right,\" said one.\n\n \"I stood hazing long enough from one,\" added another. \"I'll be hanged if I'll be hazed by you, Katy Ace.\"\n\n \"Did any of you gentlemen want to have it out with _me_?\" roared Ace, bending far forward from his position on the keg, with his pipe still glowing in his right hand. \"Put a name on what you're at; you ain't dumb, I reckon. Him that wants shall get it. Have I lived this many years to have a son of a rum puncheon cock his hat athwart my hawser at the latter end of it? You know the way; you're all gentlemen o' fortune, by your account. Well, I'm ready. Take a cutlass, him that dares, and I'll see the color of his inside, crutch and all, before that pipe's empty.\"\n\n Not a man stirred; not a man answered.\n\n \"That's your sort, is it?\" he added, returning his pipe to his mouth. \"Well, you're a gay lot to look at, any way. Not worth much to fight, you ain't. P'r'aps you can understand King George's English. I'm cap'n here by 'lection. I'm cap'n here because I'm the best man by a long sea-mile. You won't fight, as gentlemen o' fortune should; then, by thunder, you'll obey, and you may lay to it! I like that boy, now; I never seen a better boy than that. He's more a man than any pair of rats of you in this here house, and what I say is this: Let me see him that'll lay a hand on him--that's what I say, and you may lay to it.\"\n\n There was a long pause after this. I stood straight up against the wall, my heart still going like a sledgehammer, but with a ray of hope now shining in my bosom. Ace leant back against the wall, his arms crossed, his pipe in the corner of his mouth, as calm as though he had been in church; yet his eye kept wandering furtively, and he kept the tail of it on his unruly followers. They, on their part, drew gradually together toward the far end of the blockhouse, and the low hiss of their whispering sounded in my ears continuously, like a stream. One after another they would look up, and the red light of the torch would fall for a second on their nervous faces; but it was not toward me, it was toward Ace that they turned their eyes.\n\n \"You seem to have a lot to say,\" remarked Ace, spitting far into the air. \"Pipe up and let me hear it, or lay to.\"\n\n \"Ax your pardon, sir,\" returned one of the men; \"you're pretty free with some of the rules, maybe you'll kindly keep an eye upon the rest. This crew's dissatisfied; this crew don't vally bullying a marlinspike; this crew has its rights like other crews, I'll make so free as that; and by your own rules I take it we can talk together. I ax your pardon, sir, acknowledging you for to be capting at this present, but I claim my right and steps outside for a council.\"\n\n And with an elaborate sea-salute this fellow, a long, ill-looking, yellow-eyed man of five-and-thirty, stepped coolly toward the door and disappeared out of the house. One after another the rest followed his example, each making a salute as he passed, each adding some apology. \"According to rules,\" said one. \"Foc's'le council,\" said Morgan. And so with one remark or another, all marched out and left Ace and me alone with the torch.\n\n The sea-cook instantly removed his pipe.\n\n \"Now, look you here, Jerome Gert,\" he said in a steady whisper that was no more than audible, \"you're within half a plank of death, and, what's a long sight worse, of torture. They're going to throw me off. But you mark, I stand by you through thick and thin. I didn't mean to; no, not till you spoke up. I was about desperate to lose that much blunt, and be hanged into the bargain. But I see you was the right sort. I says to myself: You stand by Gert, Katy, and Gert'll stand by you. You're his last card, and by the living thunder, Katy, he's yours! Back to back, says I. You save your witness and he'll save your neck!\"\n\n I began dimly to understand.\n\n \"You mean all's lost?\" I asked.\n\n \"Ay, by gum, I do!\" he answered. \"Ship gone, neck gone--that's the size of it. Once I looked into that bay, Jerome Gert, and seen no schooner--well, I'm tough, but I gave out. As for that lot and their council, mark me, they're outright fools and cowards. I'll save your life--if so be as I can--from them. But see here, Jerome--tit for tat--you save Long Katy from swinging.\"\n\n I was bewildered; it seemed a thing so hopeless he was asking--he, the old buccaneer, the ringleader throughout.\n\n \"What I can do, that I'll do,\" I said.\n\n \"It's a bargain!\" cried Long Katy. \"You speak up plucky, and by thunder, I've a chance.\"\n\n He hobbled to the torch, where it stood propped among the firewood, and took a fresh light to his pipe.\n\n \"Understand me, Jerome,\" he said, returning. \"I've a head on my shoulders, I have. I'm on squire's side now. I know you've got that ship safe somewheres. How you done it I don't know, but safe it is. I guess Carmel and O'Brien turned soft. I never much believed in neither of _them_. Now you mark me. I ask no questions, nor I won't let others. I know when a game's up, I do; and I know a lad that's stanch. Ah, you that's young--you and me might have done a power of good together!\"\n\n He drew some cognac from the cask into a tin cannikin.\n\n \"Will you taste, messmate?\" he asked, and when I had refused, \"Well, I'll take a drain myself, Jerome,\" said he. \"I need a caulker, for there's trouble on hand. And, talking o' trouble, why did that doctor give me the chart, Jerome?\"\n\n My face expressed a wonder so unaffected that he saw the needlessness of further questions.\n\n \"Ah, well, he did, though,\" said he. \"And there's something under that, no doubt--something, surely, under that, Jerome--bad or good.\"\n\n And he took another swallow of the brandy, shaking his great fair head like a man who looks forward to the worst.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE BLACK SPOT AGAIN\n\n\n The council of the buccaneers had lasted some time, when one of them re-entered the house, and with a repetition of the same salute, which had in my eyes an ironical air, begged for a moment's loan of the torch. Ace briefly agreed, and this emissary retired again, leaving us together in the dark.\n\n \"There's a breeze coming, Jerome,\" said Ace, who had by this time adopted quite a friendly and familiar tone.\n\n I turned to the loophole nearest me and looked out. The embers of the great fire had so far burned themselves out, and now glowed so low and duskily, that I understood why these conspirators desired a torch. About halfway down the slope to the stockade they were collected in a group; one held the light; another was on his knees in their midst, and I saw the blade of an open knife shine in his hand with varying colors, in the moon and torchlight. The rest were all somewhat stooping, as though watching the maneuvers of this last. I could just make out that he had a book as well as a knife in his hand; and was still wondering how anything so incongruous had come in their possession, when the kneeling figure rose once more to his feet, and the whole party began to move together toward the house.\n\n \"Here they come,\" said I; and I returned to my former position, for it seemed beneath my dignity that they should find me watching them.\n\n \"Well, let 'em come, lad--let 'em come,\" said Ace, cheerily. \"I've still a shot in my locker.\"\n\n The door opened, and the five men, standing huddled together just inside, pushed one of their number forward. In any other circumstances it would have been comical to see his slow advance, hesitating as he set down each foot, but holding his closed right hand in front of him.\n\n \"Step up, lad,\" cried Ace. \"I won't eat you. Hand it over, lubber. I know the rules, I do; I won't hurt a depytation.\"\n\n Thus encouraged the buccaneer stepped forth more briskly, and having passed something to Ace, from hand to hand, slipped yet more smartly back again to his companions.\n\n The sea-cook looked at what had been given him.\n\n \"The black spot! I thought so,\" he observed. \"Where might you have got the paper? Why, hello! look here, now; this ain't lucky! You've gone and cut this out of a Bible. What fool's cut a Bible?\"\n\n \"Ah, there,\" said Morgan, \"there! Wot did I say? No good'll come o' that, I said.\"\n\n \"Well, you've about fixed it now, among you,\" continued Ace. \"You'll all swing now, I reckon. What soft-headed lubber had a Bible?\"\n\n \"It was Dick,\" said one.\n\n \"Dick, was it? Then Dick can get to prayers,\" said Ace. \"He's seen his slice of luck, has Dick, and you may lay to that.\"\n\n But here the long man with the yellow eyes struck in.\n\n \"Belay that talk, Katy Ace,\" he said. \"This crew has tipped you the black spot in full council, as in dooty bound; just you turn it over, as in dooty bound, and see what's wrote there. Then you can talk.\"\n\n \"Thanky, George,\" replied the sea-cook. \"You always was brisk for business, and has the rules by heart, George, as I'm pleased to see. Well, what is it, anyway? Ah! 'Deposed'--that's it, is it? Very pretty wrote, to be sure; like print, I swear. Your hand o' write, George? Why, you was gettin' quite a leadin' man in this here crew. You'll be cap'n next, I shouldn't wonder. Just oblige me with that torch again, will you? this pipe don't draw.\"\n\n \"Come, now,\" said George, \"you don't fool this crew no more. You're a funny man, by your account; but you're over now, and you'll maybe step down off that barrel, and help vote.\"\n\n \"I thought you said you knowed the rules,\" returned Ace, contemptuously. \"Leastways, if you don't, I do; and I wait here--and I'm still your cap'n, mind--till you outs with your grievances, and I reply; in the meantime, your black spot ain't worth a biscuit. After that we'll see.\"\n\n \"Oh,\" replied George, \"you don't be under no kind of apprehension; _we're_ all square, we are. First, you've made a hash of this cruise--you'll be a bold man to say no to that. Second, you let the enemy out o' this here trap for nothing. Why did they want out? I dunno, but it's pretty plain they wanted it. Third, you wouldn't let us go at them upon the march. Oh, we see through you, Katy Ace; you want to play booty, that's what's wrong with you. And then, fourth, there's this here boy.\"\n\n \"Is that all?\" asked Ace, quietly.\n\n \"Enough, too,\" retorted George. \"We'll all swing and sun-dry for your bungling.\"\n\n \"Well, now, look here, I'll answer these four p'ints; one after another I'll answer 'em. I made a hash o' this cruise, did I? Well, now, you all know what I wanted; and you all know, if that had been done, that we'd 'a' been aboard the _Hispaniola_ this night as ever was, every man of us alive, and fit, and full of good plum-duff, and the treasure in the hold of her, by thunder! Well, who crossed me? Who forced my hand, as was the lawful cap'n? Who tipped me the black spot the day we landed, and began this dance? Ah, it's a fine dance--I'm with you there--and looks mighty like a hornpipe in a rope's end at Execution Dock by London town, it does. But who done it? Why, it was Anderson, and Carmel, and you, George Merry! And you're the last above board of that same meddling crew; and you have the Davy Jones insolence to up and stand for cap'n over me--you, that sunk the lot of us! By the powers! but this tops the stiffest yarn to nothing.\"\n\n Ace paused, and I could see by the faces of George and his late comrades that these words had not been said in vain.\n\n \"That's for number one,\" cried the accused, wiping the sweat from his brow, for he had been talking with a vehemence that shook the house. \"Why, I give you my word, I'm sick to speak to you. You've neither sense nor memory, and I leave it to fancy where your mothers was that let you come to sea. Sea! Gentlemen o' fortune! I reckon tailors is your trade.\"\n\n \"Go on, Katy,\" said Morgan. \"Speak up to the others.\"\n\n \"Ah, the others!\" returned Katy. \"They're a nice lot, ain't they? You say this cruise is bungled. Ah! by gum, if you could understand how bad it's bungled, you would see! We're that near the gibbet that my neck's stiff with thinking on it. You've seen 'em, maybe, hanged in chains, birds about 'em, seamen p'inting 'em out as they go down with the tide. 'Who's that?' says one. 'That! Why, that's Katy Ace. I knowed him well,' says another. And you can hear the chains a-jangle as you go about and reach for the other buoy. Now, that's about where we are, every mother's son of us, thanks to him, and Carmel, and Anderson, and other ruination fools of you. And if you want to know about number four, and that boy, why, shiver my timbers! isn't he a hostage? Are we a-going to waste a hostage? No, not us; he might be our last chance, and I shouldn't wonder. Kill that boy? not me, mates! And number three? Ah, well, there's a deal to say to number three. Maybe you don't count it nothing to have a real college doctor come to see you every day--you, Katy, with your head broke--or you, George Merry, that had the ague shakes upon you not six hours agone, and has your eyes the color of lemon peel to this same moment on the clock? And maybe, perhaps, you didn't know there was a consort coming, either? But there is, and not so long till then; and we'll see who'll be glad to have a hostage when it comes to that. And as for number two, and why I made a bargain--well, you come crawling on your knees to me to make it--on your knees you came, you was that downhearted--and you'd have starved, too, if I hadn't--but that's a trifle! you look there--that's why!\"\n\n And he cast down upon the floor a paper that I instantly recognized--none other than the chart on yellow paper, with the three red crosses, that I had found in the oilcloth at the bottom of the captain's chest. Why the doctor had given it to him was more than I could fancy.\n\n But if it were inexplicable to me, the appearance of the chart was incredible to the surviving mutineers. They leaped upon it like cats upon a mouse. It went from hand to hand, one tearing it from another; and by the oaths and the cries and the childish laughter with which they accompanied their examination, you would have thought, not only they were fingering the very gold, but were at sea with it, besides, in safety.\n\n \"Yes,\" said one, \"that's Flint, sure enough. J. F., and a score below, with a close hitch to it, so he done ever.\"\n\n \"Mighty pretty,\" said George. \"But how are we to get away with it, and us no ship?\"\n\n Ace suddenly sprang up, and supporting himself with a hand against the wall: \"Now, I give you warning, George,\" he cried. \"One more word of your sauce, and I'll call you down and fight you. How? Why, how do I know? You had ought to tell me that--you and the rest, that lost me my schooner, with your interference, burn you! But not you, you can't; you ain't got the invention of a cockroach. But civil you can speak, and shall, George Merry, you may lay to that.\"\n\n \"That's fair enow,\" said the old man Morgan.\n\n \"Fair! I reckon so,\" said the sea-cook. \"You lost the ship; I found the treasure. Who's the better man at that? And now I resign, by thunder! Elect whom you please to be your cap'n now; I'm done with it.\"\n\n \"Ace!\" they cried. \"Barbecue forever! Barbecue for cap'n!\"\n\n \"So that's the toon, is it?\" cried the cook. \"George, I reckon you'll have to wait another turn, friend, and lucky for you as I'm not a revengeful man. But that was never my way. And now, shipmates, this black spot? 'Tain't much good now, is it? Dick's crossed his luck and spoiled his Bible, and that's about all.\"\n\n \"It'll do to kiss the book on still, won't it?\" growled Dick, who was evidently uneasy at the curse he had brought upon himself.\n\n \"A Bible with a bit cut out!\" returned Ace, derisively. \"Not it. It don't bind no more'n a ballad-book.\"\n\n \"Don't it, though?\" cried Dick, with a sort of joy. \"Well, I reckon that's worth having, too.\"\n\n \"Here, Jerome--here's a cur'osity for you,\" said Ace, and he tossed me the paper.\n\n It was a round about the size of a crown piece. One side was blank, for it had been the last leaf; the other contained a verse or two of Revelation--these words among the rest, which struck sharply home upon my mind: \"Without are dogs and murderers.\" The printed side had been blackened with wood ash, which already began to come off and soil my fingers; on the blank side had been written with the same material the one word \"Deposed.\" I have that curiosity beside me at this moment; but not a trace of writing now remains beyond a single scratch, such as a man might make with his thumb-nail.\n\n That was the end of the night's business. Soon after, with a drink all round, we lay down to sleep, and the outside of Ace's vengeance was to put George Merry up for sentinel, and threaten him with death if he should prove unfaithful.\n\n It was long ere I could close an eye, and heaven knows I had matter enough for thought in the man whom I had slain that afternoon, in my own most perilous position, and, above all, in the remarkable game that I saw Ace now engaged upon--keeping the mutineers together with one hand, and grasping, with the other, after every means, possible and impossible, to make his peace and save his miserable life. He himself slept peacefully, and snored aloud; yet my heart was sore for him, wicked as he was, to think on the dark perils that environed, and the shameful gibbet that awaited him.\n\n\n\n\n\n ON PAROLE\n\n\n I was wakened--indeed, we were all wakened, for I could see even the sentinel shake himself together from where he had fallen against the doorpost--by a clear, hearty voice hailing us from the margin of the wood:\n\n \"Blockhouse, ahoy!\" it cried. \"Here's the doctor.\"\n\n And the doctor it was. Although I was glad to hear the sound, yet my gladness was not without admixture. I remembered with confusion my insubordinate and stealthy conduct; and when I saw where it had brought me--among what companions and surrounded by what dangers--I felt ashamed to look him in the face.\n\n He must have risen in the dark, for the day had hardly come; and when I ran to a loophole and looked out, I saw him standing, like Ace once before, up to the mid-leg in creeping vapor.\n\n \"You, doctor! Top o' the morning to you, sir!\" cried Ace, broad awake and beaming with good nature in a moment. \"Bright and early, to be sure; and it's the early bird, as the saying goes, that gets the rations. George, shake up your timbers, son, and help Doctor Stewart over the ship's side. All a-doin' well, your patients was--all well and merry.\"\n\n So he pattered on, standing on the hilltop, with his crutch under his elbow, and one hand upon the side of the log-house--quite the old Katy in voice, manner, and expression.\n\n \"We've quite a surprise for you, too, sir,\" he continued. \"We've a little stranger here--he! he! A noo boarder and lodger, sir, and looking fit and taut as a fiddle; slep' like a supercargo, he did, right alongside of Katy--stem to stem we was, all night.\"\n\n Doctor Stewart was by this time across the stockade and pretty near the cook, and I could hear the alteration in his voice as he said:\n\n \"Not Jerome?\"\n\n \"The very same Jerome as ever was,\" says Ace.\n\n The doctor stopped outright, although he did not speak, and it was some seconds before he seemed able to move on.\n\n \"Well, well,\" he said at last, \"duty first and pleasure afterwards, as you might have said yourself, Ace. Let us overhaul these patients of yours.\"\n\n A moment afterwards he had entered the blockhouse, and, with one grim nod to me, proceeded with his work among the sick. He seemed under no apprehension, though he must have known that his life, among these treacherous demons, depended on a hair, and he rattled on to his patients as if he were paying an ordinary professional visit in a quiet English family. His manner, I suppose, reacted on the men, for they behaved to him as if nothing had occurred--as if he were still ship's doctor, and they still faithful hands before the mast.\n\n \"You're doing well, my friend,\" he said to the fellow with the bandaged head, \"and if ever any person had a close shave, it was you; your head must be as hard as iron. Well, George, how goes it? You're a pretty color, certainly; why, your liver, man, is upside down. Did you take that medicine? Did he take that medicine, men?\"\n\n \"Ay, ay, sir, he took it sure enough,\" returned Morgan.\n\n \"Because, you see, since I am mutineers' doctor, or prison doctor, as I prefer to call it,\" says Doctor Stewart, in his pleasantest way, \"I make it a point of honor not to lose a man for King George (God bless him!) and the gallows.\"\n\n The rogues looked at each other, but swallowed the home-thrust in silence.\n\n \"Dick don't feel well, sir,\" said one.\n\n \"Don't he?\" replied the doctor. \"Well, step up here, Dick, and let me see your tongue. No, I should be surprised if he did; the man's tongue is fit to frighten the French. Another fever.\"\n\n \"Ah, there,\" said Morgan, \"that comed of sp'iling Bibles.\"\n\n \"That comed--as you call it--of being arrant asses,\" retorted the doctor, \"and not having sense enough to know honest air from poison, and the dry land from a vile, pestiferous slough. I think it most probable--though, of course, it's only an opinion--that you'll all have the deuce to pay before you get that malaria out of your systems. Camp in a bog, would you? Ace, I'm surprised at you. You're less of a fool than many, take you all round; but you don't appear to me to have the rudiments of a notion of the rules of health.\n\n \"Well,\" he added, after he had dosed them round, and they had taken his prescriptions, with really laughable humility, more like charity school-children than blood-guilty mutineers and pirates, \"well, that's done for to-day. And now I should wish to have a talk with that boy, please.\"\n\n And he nodded his head in my direction carelessly.\n\n George Merry was at the door, spitting and spluttering over some bad-tasted medicine; but at the first word of the doctor's proposal he swung round with a deep flush, and cried, \"No!\" and swore.\n\n Ace struck the barrel with his open hand.\n\n \"Si-lence!\" he roared, and looked about him positively like a lion. \"Doctor,\" he went on, in his usual tones, \"I was thinking of that, knowing as how you had a fancy for the boy. We're all humbly grateful for your kindness, and, as you see, puts faith in you, and takes the drugs down like that much grog. And I take it I've found a way as'll suit all. Gert, will you give me your word of honor as a young gentleman--for a young gentleman you are, although poor born--your word of honor not to slip your cable?\"\n\n I readily gave the pledge required.\n\n \"Then, doctor,\" said Ace, \"you just step outside o' that stockade, and once you're there, I'll bring the boy down on the inside, and I reckon you can yarn through the spars. Good-day to you, sir, and all our dooties to the squire and Cap'n Rebecca.\"\n\n The explosion of disapproval, which nothing but Ace's black looks had restrained, broke out immediately the doctor had left the house. Ace was roundly accused of playing double--of trying to make a separate peace for himself--of sacrificing the interests of his accomplices and victims; and, in one word, of the identical, exact thing that he was doing. It seemed to me so obvious, in this case, that I could not imagine how he was to turn their anger. But he was twice the man the rest were, and his last night's victory had given him a huge preponderance on their minds. He called them all the fools and dolts you can imagine, said it was necessary I should talk to the doctor, fluttered the chart in their faces, asked them if they could afford to break the treaty the very day they were bound a-treasure-hunting.\n\n \"No, by thunder!\" he cried, \"it's us must break the treaty when the time comes; and till then I'll gammon that doctor, if I have to ile his boots with brandy.\"\n\n And then he bade them get the fire lit, and stalked out upon his crutch, with his hand on my shoulder, leaving them in a disarray, and silenced by his volubility rather than convinced.\n\n \"Slow, lad, slow,\" he said. \"They might round upon us in a twinkle of an eye if we was seen to hurry.\"\n\n Very deliberately, then, did we advance across the sand to where the doctor awaited us on the other side of the stockade, and as soon as we were within easy speaking distance, Ace stopped.\n\n \"You'll make a note of this here also, doctor,\" said he, \"and the boy'll tell you how I saved his life, and were deposed for it, too, and you may lay to that. Doctor, when a man's steering as near to the wind as me--playing chuck-farthing with the last breath in his body, like--you wouldn't think it too much, mayhap, to give him one good word! You'll please bear in mind it's not my life only now--it's that boy's into the bargain; and you'll speak me fair, doctor, and give me a bit o' hope to go on, for the sake of mercy.\"\n\n Ace was a changed man, once he was out there and had his back to his friends and the blockhouse; his cheeks seemed to have fallen in, his voice trembled; never was a soul more dead in earnest.\n\n \"Why, Katy, you're not afraid?\" asked Doctor Stewart.\n\n \"Doctor, I'm no coward; no, not I--not _so_ much!\" and he snapped his fingers. \"If I was I wouldn't say it. But I'll own up fairly, I've the shakes upon me for the gallows. You're a good man and a true; I never seen a better man! And you'll not forget what I done good, not any more than you'll forget the bad, I know. And I step aside--see here--and leave you and Jerome alone. And you'll put that down for me, too, for it's a long stretch, is that!\"\n\n So saying, he stepped back a little way till he was out of earshot, and there sat down upon a tree-stump and began to whistle, spinning round now and again upon his seat so as to command a sight, sometimes of me and the doctor, and sometimes of his unruly ruffians as they went to and fro in the sand, between the fire--which they were busy rekindling--and the house, from which they brought forth pork and bread to make the breakfast.\n\n \"So, Jerome,\" said the doctor, sadly, \"here you are. As you have brewed, so shall you drink, my boy. Heaven knows I cannot find it in my heart to blame you; but this much I will say, be it kind or unkind: when Gena Rebecca was well you dared not have gone off, and when he was ill, and couldn't help it by George, it was downright cowardly!\"\n\n I will own that I here began to weep. \"Doctor,\" I said, \"you might spare me. I have blamed myself enough; my life's forfeit anyway, and I should have been dead now if Ace hadn't stood for me; and, doctor, believe this, I can die--and I dare say I deserve it--but what I fear is torture. If they come to torture me--\"\n\n \"Jerome,\" the doctor interrupted, and his voice was quite changed, \"Jerome, I can't have this. Whip over, and we'll run for it.\"\n\n \"Doctor,\" said I, \"I passed my word.\"\n\n \"I know, I know,\" he cried. \"We can't help that, Jerome, now. I'll take it on my shoulders, holus-bolus, blame and shame, my boy; but stay here, I cannot let you. Jump! One jump and you're out, and we'll run for it like antelopes.\"\n\n \"No,\" I replied, \"you know right well you wouldn't do the thing yourself; neither you, nor squire, nor captain, and no more will I. Ace trusted me; I passed my word, and back I go. But, doctor, you did not let me finish. If they come to torture me, I might let slip a word of where the ship is; for I got the ship, part by luck and part by risking, and she lies in North Inlet, on the southern beach, and just below high water. At half-tide she must be high and dry.\"\n\n \"The ship!\" exclaimed the doctor.\n\n Rapidly I described to him my adventures, and he heard me out in silence.\n\n \"There's a kind of fate in this,\" he observed, when I had done. \"Every step it's you that save our lives, and do you suppose by any chance that we are going to let you lose yours? That would be a poor return, my boy. You found out the plot; you found Finlay Fidel--the best deed that ever you did, or will do, though you live to ninety. Oh, by Jupiter! and talking of Finlay Fidel, why, this is the mischief in person. Ace!\" he cried, \"Ace! I'll give you a piece of advice,\" he continued, as the cook drew near again; \"don't you be in any great hurry after that treasure.\"\n\n \"Why, sir, I do my possible, which that ain't,\" said Ace. \"I can only, asking your pardon, save my life and the boy's by seeking for that treasure; and you may lay to that.\"\n\n \"Well, Ace,\" replied the doctor, \"if that is so, I'll go one step farther; look out for squalls when you find it!\"\n\n \"Sir,\" said Ace, \"as between man and man, that's too much and too little. What you're after, why you left the blockhouse, why you've given me that there chart, I don't know, now, do I? and yet I done your bidding with my eyes shut and never a word of hope! But no, this here's too much. If you won't tell me what you mean plain out, just say so, and I'll leave the helm.\"\n\n \"No,\" said the doctor, musingly, \"I've no right to say more; it's not my secret, you see, Ace, or, I give you my word, I'd tell it you. But I'll go as far with you as I dare go, and a step beyond, for I'll have my wig sorted by the captain, or I'm mistaken! And first, I'll give you a bit of hope. Ace, if we both get out alive out of this wolf-trap, I'll do my best to save you, short of perjury.\"\n\n Ace's face was radiant. \"You couldn't say more, I am sure, sir, not if you was my mother,\" he cried.\n\n \"Well, that's my first concession,\" added the doctor. \"My second is a piece of advice. Keep the boy close beside you, and when you need help, halloo. I'm off to seek it for you, and that itself will show you if I speak at random. Good-by, Jerome.\"\n\n And Doctor Stewart shook hands with me through the stockade, nodded to Ace, and set off at a brisk pace into the wood.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE TREASURE-HUNT--FLINT'S POINTER\n\n\n \"Jerome,\" said Ace, when we were alone, \"if I saved your life, you saved mine, and I'll not forget it. I seen the doctor waving you to run for it--with the tail of my eye, I did--and I seen you say no, as plain as hearing. Jerome, that's one to you. This is the first glint of hope I had since the attack failed, and I owe it to you. And now, Jerome, we're to go in for this here treasure-hunting, with sealed orders, too, and I don't like it; and you and me must stick close, back to back like, and we'll save our necks in spite o' fate and fortune.\"\n\n Just then a man hailed us from the fire that breakfast was ready, and we were soon seated here and there about the sand over biscuit and fried junk. They had lighted a fire fit to roast an ox; and it was now grown so hot that they could only approach it from the windward, and even there not without precaution. In the same wasteful spirit, they had cooked, I suppose, three times more than we could eat; and one of them, with an empty laugh, threw what was left into the fire, which blazed and roared again over this unusual fuel. I never in my life saw men so careless of the morrow; hand to mouth is the only word that can describe their way of doing; and what with wasted food and sleeping sentries, though they were bold enough for a brush and be done with it, I could see their entire unfitness for anything like a prolonged campaign.\n\n Even Ace, eating away, with Gena Flint upon his shoulder, had not a word of blame for their recklessness. And this the more surprised me, for I thought he had never showed himself so cunning as he did then.\n\n \"Ay, mates,\" said he, \"it's lucky you have Barbecue to think for you with this here head. I got what I wanted, I did. Sure enough, they have the ship. Where they have it, I don't know yet; but once we hit the treasure, we'll have to jump about and find out. And then, mates, us that has the boats, I reckon, has the upper hand.\"\n\n Thus he kept running on, with his mouth full of the hot bacon; thus he restored their hope and confidence, and, I more than suspect, repaired his own at the same time.\n\n \"As for hostage,\" he continued, \"that's his last talk, I guess, with them he loves so dear. I've got my piece o' news, and thanky to him for that; but it's over and done. I'll take him in a line when we go treasure-hunting, for we'll keep him like so much gold, in case of accidents, you mark, and in the meantime. Once we got the ship and treasure both, and off to sea like jolly companions, why, then we'll talk Mr. Gert over, we will, and we'll give him his share, to be sure, for all his kindness.\"\n\n It was no wonder the men were in a good humor now. For my part, I was horribly cast down. Should the scheme he had now sketched prove feasible, Ace, already doubly a traitor, would not hesitate to adopt it. He had still a foot in either camp, and there was no doubt he would prefer wealth and freedom with the pirates to a bare escape from hanging, which was the best he had to hope on our side.\n\n Nay, and even if things so fell out that he was forced to keep his faith with Doctor Stewart, even then what danger lay before us! What a moment that would be when the suspicions of his followers turned to certainty, and he and I should have to fight for dear life--he, a cripple, and I, a boy--against five strong and active seamen!\n\n Add to this double apprehension the mystery that still hung over the behavior of my friends; their unexplained desertion of the stockade; their inexplicable cession of the chart; or, harder still to understand, the doctor's last warning to Ace, \"Look out for squalls when you find it\"; and you will readily believe how little taste I found in my breakfast, and with how uneasy a heart I set forth behind my captors on the quest for treasure.\n\n We made a curious figure, had anyone been there to see us; all in soiled sailor clothes, and all but me armed to the teeth. Ace had two guns slung about him, one before and one behind--besides the great cutlass at his waist, and a pistol in each pocket of his square-tailed coat. To complete his strange appearance, Gena Flint sat perched upon his shoulder and gabbled odds and ends of purposeless sea-talk. I had a line about my waist, and followed obediently after the sea-cook, who held the loose end of the rope, now in his free hand, now between his powerful teeth. For all the world, I was led like a dancing bear.\n\n The other men were variously burdened; some carrying picks and shovels--for that had been the very first necessary they brought ashore from the _Hispaniola_--others laden with pork, bread, and brandy for the midday meal. All the stores, I observed, came from our stock, and I could see the truth of Ace's words the night before. Had he not struck a bargain with the doctor, he and his mutineers, deserted by the ship, must have been driven to subsist on clear water, and the proceeds of their hunting. Water would have been little to their taste; a sailor is not usually a good shot; and, besides all that, when they were so short of eatables, it was not likely they would be very flush of powder.\n\n Well, thus equipped, we all set out--even the fellow with the broken head, who should certainly have kept in shadow--and straggled, one after another, to the beach, where the two gigs awaited us. Even these bore trace of the drunken folly of the pirates, one in a broken thwart, and both in their muddied and unbailed condition. Both were to be carried along with us, for the sake of safety; and so, with our numbers divided between them, we set forth upon the bosom of the anchorage.\n\n As we pulled over, there was some discussion on the chart. The red cross was, of course, far too large to be a guide; and the terms of the note on the back, as you will hear, admitted of some ambiguity. They ran, the reader may remember, thus:\n\n \"Tall tree, Spy-glass shoulder, bearing a point to the N. of N.N.E.\n\n \"Skeleton Island E.S.E. and by E.\n\n \"Ten feet.\"\n\n A tall tree was thus the principal mark. Now, right before us, the anchorage was bounded by a plateau from two to three hundred feet high, adjoining on the north the sloping southern shoulder of the Spy-glass, and rising again toward the south into the rough, cliffy eminence called the Mizzen-mast Hill. The top of the plateau was dotted thickly with pine trees of varying height. Every here and there, one of a different species rose forty or fifty feet clear above its neighbors, and which of these was the particular \"tall tree\" of Gena Flint could only be decided on the spot, and by the readings of the compass.\n\n Yet, although that was the case, every man on board the boats had picked a favorite of his own ere we were halfway over, Long Katy alone shrugging his shoulders and bidding them wait till they were there.\n\n We pulled easily, by Ace's directions, not to weary the hands prematurely; and, after quite a long passage, landed at the mouth of the second river--that which runs down a woody cleft of the Spy-glass. Thence, bending to our left, we began to ascend the slope towards the plateau.\n\n At the first outset, heavy, miry ground and a matted, marsh vegetation greatly delayed our progress; but by little and little the hill began to steepen and become stony under foot, and the wood to change its character and to grow in a more open order. It was, indeed, a most pleasant portion of the island that we were now approaching. A heavy-scented broom and many flowering shrubs had almost taken the place of grass. Thickets of green nutmeg-trees were dotted here and there with the red columns and the broad shadow of the pines, and the first mingled their spice with the aroma of the others. The air, besides, was fresh and stirring, and this, under the sheer sunbeams, was a wonderful refreshment to our senses.\n\n The party spread itself abroad, in a fan shape, shouting and leaping to and fro. About the center, and a good way behind the rest, Ace and I followed--I tethered by my rope, he plowing, with deep pants, among the sliding gravel. From time to time, indeed, I had to lend him a hand, or he must have missed his footing and fallen backward down the hill.\n\n We had thus proceeded for about half a mile, and were approaching the brow of the plateau, when the man upon the farthest left began to cry aloud, as if in terror. Shout after shout came from him, and the others began to run in his direction.\n\n \"He can't 'a' found the treasure,\" said old Morgan, hurrying past us from the right, \"for that's clean a-top.\"\n\n Indeed, as we found when we also reached the spot, it was something very different. At the foot of a pretty big pine, and involved in a green creeper, which had even partly lifted some of the smaller bones, a human skeleton lay, with a few shreds of clothing, on the ground. I believe a chill struck for a moment to every heart.\n\n \"He was a seaman,\" said George Merry, who, bolder than the rest, had gone up close, and was examining the rags of clothing. \"Leastways, this is good sea-cloth.\"\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" said Ace, \"like enough; you wouldn't look to find a bishop here, I reckon. But what sort of a way is that for bones to lie? 'Tain't in natur'.\"\n\n Indeed, on a second glance, it seemed impossible to fancy that the body was in a natural position. But for some disarray (the work, perhaps, of the birds that had fed upon him, or of the slow-growing creeper that had gradually enveloped his remains) the man lay perfectly straight--his feet pointing in one direction, his hands raised above his head like a diver's, pointing directly in the opposite.\n\n \"I've taken a notion into my old numskull,\" observed Ace. \"Here's the compass; there's the tip-top p'int of Skeleton Island, stickin' out like a tooth. Just take a bearing, will you, along the line of them bones.\"\n\n It was done. The body pointed straight in the direction of the island, and the compass read duly E.S.E. by E.\n\n \"I thought so,\" cried the cook; \"this here is a p'inter. Right up there is our line for the Pole Star and the jolly dollars. But, by thunder! if it don't make me cold inside to think of Flint. This is one of _his_ jokes, and no mistake. Him and these six was alone here; he killed 'em, every man; and this one he hauled here and laid down by compass, shiver my timbers! They're long bones, and the hair's been yellow. Ay, that would be Allardyce. You mind Allardyce, Jules Morgan?\"\n\n \"Ay, ay,\" returned Morgan, \"I mind him; he owed me money, he did, and took my knife ashore with him.\"\n\n \"Speaking of knives,\" said another, \"why don't we find his'n lying round? Flint warn't the man to pick a seaman's pocket; and the birds, I guess, would leave it be.\"\n\n \"By the powers and that's true!\" cried Ace.\n\n \"There ain't a thing left here,\" said Merry, still feeling round among the bones; \"not a copper doit nor a baccy box. It don't look nat'ral to me.\"\n\n \"No, by gum, it don't,\" agreed Ace; \"not nat'ral, nor not nice, says you. Great guns, messmates, but if Flint was living this would be a hot spot for you and me! Six they were, and six are we; and bones is what they are now.\"\n\n \"I saw him dead with these here deadlights,\" said Morgan. \"Inigo took me in. There he laid, with penny-pieces on his eyes.\"\n\n \"Dead--ay, sure enough he's dead and gone below,\" said the fellow with the bandage; \"but if ever sperrit walked it would be Flint's. Dear heart, but he died bad, did Flint!\"\n\n \"Ay, that he did,\" observed another; \"now he raged and now he hollered for the rum, and now he sang. 'Fifteen Men' were his only song, mates; and I tell you true, I never rightly liked to hear it since. It was main hot and the windy was open, and I hear that old song comin' out as clear as clear--and the death-haul on the man already.\"\n\n \"Come, come,\" said Ace, \"stow this talk. He's dead, and he don't walk, that I know; leastways he won't walk by day, and you may lay to that. Care killed a cat. Fetch ahead for the doubloons.\"\n\n We started, certainly, but in spite of the hot sun and the staring daylight, the pirates no longer ran separate and shouting through the wood, but kept side by side and spoke with bated breath. The terror of the dead buccaneer had fallen on their spirits.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE TREASURE-HUNT--THE VOICE AMONG THE TREES\n\n\n Partly from the damping influence of this alarm, partly to rest Ace and the sick folk, the whole party sat down as soon as they had gained the brow of the ascent.\n\n The plateau being somewhat tilted toward the west, this spot on which we had paused commanded a wide prospect on either hand. Before us, over the tree-tops, we beheld the Cape of the Woods fringed with surf; behind, we not only looked down upon the anchorage and Skeleton Island, but saw--clear across the spit and the eastern lowlands--a great field of open sea upon the east. Sheer above us rose the Spy-glass, here dotted with single pines, there black with precipices. There was no sound but that of the distant breakers mounting from all around, and the chirp of countless insects in the brush. Not a man, not a sail upon the sea; the very largeness of the view increased the sense of solitude.\n\n Ace, as he sat, took certain bearings with his compass.\n\n \"There are three 'tall trees,'\" said he, \"about in the right line from Skeleton Island. 'Spy-glass Shoulder,' I take it, means that lower p'int there. It's child's play to find the stuff now. I've half a mind to dine first.\"\n\n \"I don't feel sharp,\" growled Morgan. \"Thinkin' o' Flint--I think it were--as done me.\"\n\n \"Ah, well, my son, you praise your stars he's dead,\" said Ace.\n\n \"He was an ugly devil,\" cried a third pirate, with a shudder; \"that blue in the face, too!\"\n\n \"That was how the rum took him,\" added Merry. \"Blue! well I reckon he was blue. That's a true word.\"\n\n Ever since they had found the skeleton and got upon this train of thought, they had spoken lower and lower, and they had almost got to whispering by now, so that the sound of their talk hardly interrupted the silence of the wood. All of a sudden, out of the middle of the trees in front of us, a thin, high, trembling voice struck up the well-known air and words:\n\n \"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!\"\n\n I never have seen men more dreadfully affected than the pirates. The color went from their six faces like enchantment; some leaped to their feet, some clawed hold of others; Morgan groveled on the ground.\n\n \"It's Flint, by ----!\" cried Merry.\n\n The song had stopped as suddenly as it began--broken off, you would have said, in the middle of a note, as though someone had laid his hand upon the singer's mouth. Coming so far through the clear, sunny atmosphere among the green tree-tops, I thought it had sounded airily and sweetly, and the effect on my companions was the stranger.\n\n \"Come,\" said Ace, struggling with his ashen lips to get the word out, \"that won't do. Stand by to go about. This is a rum start, and I can't name the voice, but it's someone skylarking--someone that's flesh and blood, and you may lay to that.\"\n\n His courage had come back as he spoke, and some of the color to his face along with it. Already the others had begun to lend an ear to this encouragement, and were coming a little to themselves, when the same voice broke out again--not this time singing, but in a faint, distant hail, that echoed yet fainter among the clefts of the Spy-glass.\n\n \"Darby M'Graw,\" it wailed--for that is the word that best describes the sound--\"Darby M'Graw! Darby M'Graw!\" again and again and again; and then rising a little higher, and with an oath that I leave out: \"Fetch aft the rum, Darby!\"\n\n The buccaneers remained rooted to the ground, their eyes starting from their heads. Long after the voice had died away they still stared in silence, dreadfully, before them.\n\n \"That fixes it!\" gasped one. \"Let's go.\"\n\n \"They was his last words,\" moaned Morgan, \"his last words above-board.\"\n\n Dick had his Bible out and was praying volubly. He had been well brought up, had Dick, before he came to sea and fell among bad companions.\n\n Still, Ace was unconquered. I could hear his teeth rattle in his head, but he had not yet surrendered.\n\n \"Nobody in this here island ever heard of Darby,\" he muttered; \"not one but us that's here.\" And then, making a great effort: \"Shipmates,\" he cried, \"I'm here to get that stuff, and I'll not be beat by man nor devil. I never was feared of Flint in his life, and, by the powers, I'll face him dead. There's seven hundred thousand pound not a quarter of a mile from here. When did ever a gentleman o' fortune show his stern to that much dollars for a boozy old seaman with a blue mug--and him dead, too?\"\n\n But there was no sign of reawakening courage in his followers; rather, indeed, of growing terror at the irreverence of his words.\n\n \"Belay there, Katy!\" said Merry. \"Don't you cross a sperrit.\"\n\n And the rest were all too terrified to reply. They would have run away severally had they dared, but fear kept them together, and kept them close by Katy, as if his daring helped them. He, on his part, had pretty well fought his weakness down.\n\n \"Sperrit? Well, maybe,\" he said. \"But there's one thing not clear to me. There was an echo. Now, no man ever seen a sperrit with a shadow. Well, then, what's he doing with an echo to him, I should like to know? That ain't in natur', surely.\"\n\n This argument seemed weak enough to me. But you can never tell what will affect the superstitious, and, to my wonder, George Merry was greatly relieved.\n\n \"Well, that's so,\" he said. \"You've a head upon your shoulders, Katy, and no mistake. 'Bout ship, mates! This here crew is on a wrong tack, I do believe. And come to think on it, it was like Flint's voice, I grant you, but not just so clear away like it, after all. It was liker somebody else's voice now--it was liker--\"\n\n \"By the powers, Finlay Fidel!\" roared Ace.\n\n \"Ay, and so it were,\" cried Morgan, springing on his knees. \"Finlay Fidel it were!\"\n\n \"It don't make much odds, do it, now?\" asked Dick. \"Finlay Fidel's not here in the body, any more'n Flint.\"\n\n But the older hands greeted this remark with scorn.\n\n \"Why, nobody minds Finlay Fidel,\" cried Merry; \"dead or alive, nobody minds him!\"\n\n It was extraordinary how their spirits had returned, and how the natural color had revived in their faces. Soon they were chatting together, with intervals of listening; and not long after, hearing no further sound, they shouldered the tools and set forth again, Merry walking first with Ace's compass to keep them on the right line with Skeleton Island. He had said the truth; dead or alive, nobody minded Finlay Fidel.\n\n Dick alone still held his Bible, and looked around him as he went, with fearful glances; but he found no sympathy, and Ace even joked him on his precautions.\n\n \"I told you,\" said he, \"I told you you had sp'iled your Bible. If it ain't no good to swear by, what do you suppose a sperrit would give for it? Not that!\" and he snapped his big fingers, halting a moment on his crutch.\n\n But Dick was not to be comforted; indeed, it was soon plain to me that the lad was falling sick; hastened by heat, exhaustion, and the shock of his alarm, the fever, predicted by Doctor Stewart, was evidently growing swiftly higher.\n\n It was fine open walking here, upon the summit; our way lay a little downhill, for, as I have said, the plateau tilted toward the west. The pines, great and small, grew wide apart; and even between the clumps of nutmeg and azalea, wide open spaces baked in the hot sunshine. Striking, as we did, pretty near northwest across the island, we drew, on the one hand, ever nearer under the shoulders of the Spy-glass, and on the other, looked ever wider over that western bay where I had once tossed and trembled in the coracle.\n\n The first of the tall trees was reached, and by the bearing, proved the wrong one. So with the second. The third rose nearly two hundred feet into the air above a clump of underwood; a giant of a vegetable, with a red column as big as a cottage, and a wide shadow around in which a company could have maneuvered. It was conspicuous far to sea, both on the east and west, and might have been entered as a sailing mark upon the chart.\n\n But it was not its size that now impressed my companions; it was the knowledge that seven hundred thousand pounds in gold lay somewhere buried below its spreading shadow. The thought of the money, as they drew nearer, swallowed up their previous terrors. Their eyes burned in their heads; their feet grew speedier and lighter; their whole soul was bound up in that fortune, that whole lifetime of extravagance and pleasure, that lay waiting there for each of them.\n\n Ace hobbled, grunting, on his crutch; his nostrils stood out and quivered; he cursed like a madman when the flies settled on his hot and shiny countenance; he plucked furiously at the line that held me to him, and, from time to time, turned his eyes upon me with a deadly look. Certainly he took no pains to hide his thoughts; and certainly I read them like print. In the immediate nearness of the gold, all else had been forgotten; his promise and the doctor's warning were both things of the past; and I could not doubt that he hoped to seize upon the treasure, find and board the _Hispaniola_ under cover of night, cut every honest throat about that island, and sail away as he had at first intended, laden with crimes and riches.\n\n Shaken as I was with these alarms, it was hard for me to keep up with the rapid pace of the treasure-hunters. Now and again I stumbled, and it was then that Ace plucked so roughly at the rope and launched at me his murderous glances. Dick, who had dropped behind us, and now brought up the rear, was babbling to himself both prayers and curses, as his fever kept rising. This also added to my wretchedness, and, to crown all, I was haunted by the thought of the tragedy that had once been acted on that plateau, when that ungodly buccaneer with the blue face--he who had died at Savannah, singing and shouting for drink--had there, with his own hand, cut down his six accomplices. This grove, that was now so peaceful, must then have rung with cries, I thought; and even with the thought I could believe I heard it ringing still.\n\n We were now at the margin of the thicket.\n\n \"Huzza, mates, altogether!\" shouted Merry, and the foremost broke into a run.\n\n And suddenly, not ten yards farther, we beheld them stop. A low cry arose. Ace doubled his pace, digging away with the foot of his crutch like one possessed, and next moment he and I had come also to a dead halt.\n\n Before us was a great excavation, not very recent, for the sides had fallen in and grass had sprouted on the bottom. In this were the shaft of a pick broken in two and the boards of several packing cases strewn around. On one of these boards I saw branded with a hot iron, the name _Walrus_--the name of Flint's ship.\n\n All was clear to probation. The _cache_ had been found and rifled--the seven hundred thousand pounds were gone!\n\n\n\n\n\n THE FALL OF A CHIEFTAIN\n\n\n There never was such an overturn in this world. Each of these six men was as though he had been struck. But with Ace the blow passed almost instantly. Every thought of his soul had been set full-stretch, like a racer, on that money; well, he was brought up in a single second, dead; and he kept his head, found his temper, and changed his plan before the others had had time to realize the disappointment.\n\n \"Jerome,\" he whispered, \"take that, and stand by for trouble.\"\n\n And he passed me a double-barreled pistol.\n\n At the same time he began quietly moving northward, and in a few steps had put the hollow between us two and the other five. Then he looked at me and nodded, as much as to say: \"Here is a narrow corner,\" as, indeed, I thought it was. His looks were now quite friendly, and I was so revolted at these constant changes that I could not forbear whispering: \"So you've changed sides again.\"\n\n There was no time left for him to answer in. The buccaneers, with oaths and cries, began to leap, one after another, into the pit, and to dig with their fingers, throwing the boards aside as they did so. Morgan found a piece of gold. He held it up with a perfect spout of oaths. It was a two-guinea piece, and it went from hand to hand among them for a quarter of a minute.\n\n \"Two guineas!\" roared Merry, shaking it at Ace. \"That's your seven hundred thousand pounds, is it? You're the man for bargains, ain't you? You're him that never bungled nothing, you wooden-headed lubber!\"\n\n \"Dig away, boys,\" said Ace, with the coolest insolence; \"you'll find some pig-nuts, and I shouldn't wonder.\"\n\n \"Pig-nuts!\" repeated Merry, in a scream. \"Mates, do you hear that? I tell you now, that man there knew it all along. Look in the face of him, and you'll see it wrote there.\"\n\n \"Ah, Merry,\" remarked Ace, \"standing for cap'n again? You're a pushing lad, to be sure.\"\n\n But this time every one was entirely in Merry's favor. They began to scramble out of the excavation, darting furious glances behind them. One thing I observed, which looked well for us; they all got out upon the opposite side from Ace.\n\n Well, there we stood, two on one side, five on the other, the pit between us, and nobody screwed up high enough to offer the first blow. Ace never moved; he watched them, very upright on his crutch, and looked as cool as ever I saw him. He was brave, and no mistake.\n\n At last, Merry seemed to think a speech might help matters.\n\n \"Mates,\" says he, \"there's two of them alone there; one's the old cripple that brought us all here and blundered us down to this; the other's that cub that I mean to have the heart of. Now, mates--\"\n\n He was raising his arm and his voice, and plainly meant to lead a charge. But just then--crack! crack! crack!--three musket-shots flashed out of the thicket. Merry tumbled headforemost into the excavation; the man with the bandage spun round like a teetotum, and fell all his length upon his side, where he lay dead, but still twitching; and the other three turned and ran for it with all their might.\n\n Before you could wink Long Katy had fired two barrels of a pistol into the struggling Merry; and as the man rolled up his eyes at him in the last agony, \"George,\" said he, \"I reckon I settled you.\"\n\n At the same moment the doctor, Gray, and Finlay Fidel joined us, with smoking muskets, from among the nutmeg-trees.\n\n \"Forward!\" cried the doctor. \"Double quick, my lads. We must head 'em off the boats.\"\n\n And we set off at a great pace, sometimes plunging through the bushes to the chest.\n\n I tell you, but Ace was anxious to keep up with us. The work that man went through, leaping on his crutch till the muscles of his chest were fit to burst, was work no sound man ever equaled; and so thinks the doctor. As it was, he was already thirty yards behind us, and on the verge of strangling, when we reached the brow of the slope.\n\n \"Doctor,\" he hailed, \"see there! no hurry!\"\n\n Sure enough there was no hurry. In a more open part of the plateau we could see the three survivors still running in the same direction as they had started, right for Mizzen-mast Hill. We were already between them and the boats, and so we four sat down to breathe, while Long Katy, mopping his face, came slowly up with us.\n\n \"Thank ye kindly, doctor,\" says he. \"You came in in about the nick, I guess, for me and Gert. And so it's you, Finlay Fidel!\" he added. \"Well, you're a nice one, to be sure.\"\n\n \"I'm Finlay Fidel, I am,\" replied the maroon, wriggling like an eel in his embarrassment. \"And,\" he added, after a long pause, \"how do, Mr. Ace! Pretty well, I thank ye, says you.\"\n\n \"Finlay, Finlay,\" murmured Ace, \"to think as you've done me!\"\n\n The doctor sent back Gray for one of the pickaxes deserted, in their flight, by the mutineers; and then as we proceeded leisurely downhill to where the boats were lying, related, in a few words, what had taken place. It was a story that profoundly interested Ace, and Finlay Fidel, the half-idiot maroon, was the hero from beginning to end.\n\n Finlay, in his long, lonely wanderings about the island, had found the skeleton. It was he that had rifled it; he had found the treasure; he had dug it up (it was the haft of his pickax that lay broken in the excavation); he had carried it on his back, in many weary journeys, from the foot of the tall pine to a cave he had on the two-pointed hill at the northeast angle of the island, and there it had lain stored in safety since two months before the arrival of the _Hispaniola_.\n\n When the doctor had wormed this secret from him, on the afternoon of the attack, and when, next morning, he saw the anchorage deserted, he had gone to Ace, given him the chart, which was now useless; given him the stores, for Finlay Fidel's cave was well supplied with goats' meat salted by himself; given anything and everything to get a chance of moving in safety from the stockade to the two-pointed hill, there to be clear of malaria and keep a guard upon the money.\n\n \"As for you, Jerome,\" he said, \"it went against my heart, but I did what I thought best for those who had stood by their duty; and if you were not one of these, whose fault was it?\"\n\n That morning, finding that I was to be involved in the horrid disappointment he had prepared for the mutineers, he had run all the way to the cave, and, leaving squire to guard the captain, had taken Gray and the maroon, and started, making the diagonal across the island, to be at hand beside the pine. Soon, however, he saw that our party had the start of him; and Finlay Fidel, being fleet of foot, had been dispatched in front to do his best alone. Then it had occurred to him to work upon the superstitions of his former shipmates; and he was so far successful that Gray and the doctor had come up and were already ambushed before the arrival of the treasure-hunters.\n\n \"Ah,\" said Ace, \"it was fortunate for me that I had Gert here. You would have let old Katy be cut to bits, and never given it a thought, doctor.\"\n\n \"Not a thought,\" replied Doctor Stewart, cheerily.\n\n And by this time we had reached the gigs. The doctor, with the pickax, demolished one of them, and then we all got aboard the other, and set out to go round by the sea for North Inlet.\n\n This was a run of eight or nine miles. Ace, though he was almost killed already with fatigue, was set to an oar, like the rest of us, and we were soon skimming swiftly over a smooth sea. Soon we passed out of the straits and doubled the southeast corner of the island, round which, four days ago, we had towed the _Hispaniola_.\n\n As we passed the two-pointed hill we could see the black mouth of Finlay Fidel's cave, and a figure standing by it, leaning on a musket. It was the squire, and we waved a handkerchief and gave him three cheers, in which the voice of Ace joined as heartily as any.\n\n Three miles farther, just inside the mouth of North Inlet, what should we meet but the _Hispaniola_, cruising by herself! The last flood had lifted her, and had there been much wind, or a strong tide current, as in the southern anchorage, we should never have found her more, or found her stranded beyond help. As it was, there was little amiss, beyond the wreck of the mainsail. Another anchor was got ready, and dropped in a fathom and a half of water. We all pulled round again to Rum Cove, the nearest point for Finlay Fidel's treasure-house; and then Gray, single-handed, returned with the gig to the _Hispaniola_, where he was to pass the night on guard.\n\n A gentle slope ran up from the beach to the entrance of the cave. At the top, the squire met us. To me he was cordial and kind, saying nothing of my escapade, either in the way of blame or praise. At Ace's polite salute he somewhat flushed.\n\n \"Katy Ace,\" he said, \"you're a prodigious villain and impostor--a monstrous impostor, sir. I am told I am not to prosecute you. Well, then, I will not. But the dead men, sir, hang about your neck like millstones.\"\n\n \"Thank you kindly, sir,\" replied Long Katy, again saluting.\n\n \"I dare you to thank me!\" cried the squire. \"It is a gross dereliction of my duty. Stand back!\"\n\n And thereupon we all entered the cave. It was a large, airy place, with a little spring and a pool of clear water, overhung with ferns. The floor was sand. Before a big fire lay Gena Rebecca; and in a far corner, only duskily flickered over by the blaze, I beheld great heaps of coin and quadrilaterals built of bars of gold. That was Flint's treasure that we had come so far to seek, and that had cost already the lives of seventeen men from the _Hispaniola_. How many it had cost in the amassing, what blood and sorrow, what good ships scuttled on the deep, what brave men walking the plank blindfold, what shot of cannon, what shame and lies and cruelty, perhaps no man alive could tell. Yet there were still three upon that island--Ace, and old Morgan, and Finlay Fidel--who had each taken his share in these crimes, as each had hoped in vain to share in the reward.\n\n \"Come in, Jerome,\" said the captain. \"You're a good boy in your line, Jerome; but I don't think you and me'll go to sea again. You're too much of the born favorite for me. Is that you, Katy Ace? What brings you here, man?\"\n\n \"Come back to my dooty, sir,\" returned Ace.\n\n \"Ah!\" said the captain, and that was all he said.\n\n What a supper I had of it that night, with all my friends around me; and what a meal it was, with Finlay Fidel's salted goat, and some delicacies and a bottle of old wine from the _Hispaniola_. Never, I am sure, were people gayer or happier. And there was Ace, sitting back almost out of the firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when anything was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter--the same bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the voyage out.\n\n\n\n\n\n AND LAST\n\n\n The next morning we fell early to work, for the transportation of this great mass of gold near a mile by land to the beach, and thence three miles by boat to the _Hispaniola_, was a considerable task for so small a number of workmen. The three fellows still abroad upon the island did not greatly trouble us; a single sentry on the shoulder of the hill was sufficient to insure us against any sudden onslaught, and we thought, besides, they had had more than enough of fighting.\n\n Therefore the work was pushed on briskly. Gray and Finlay Fidel came and went with the boat, while the rest during their absences piled treasure on the beach. Two of the bars, slung in a rope's end, made a good load for a grown man--one that he was glad to walk slowly with. For my part, as I was not much use at carrying, I was kept busy all day in the cave, packing the minted money into bread-bags.\n\n It was a strange collection, like Inigo Ruthie's hoard for the diversity of coinage, but so much larger and so much more varied that I think I never had more pleasure than in sorting them. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Georges, and Louises, doubloons and double guineas and moidores and sequins, the pictures of all the kings of Europe for the last hundred years, strange oriental pieces stamped with what looked like wisps of string or bits of spider's web, round pieces and square pieces, and pieces bored through the middle, as if to wear them round your neck--nearly every variety of money in the world must, I think, have found a place in that collection; and for number, I am sure they were like autumn leaves, so that my back ached with stooping and my fingers with sorting them out.\n\n [Illustration: _Nearly every variety of money in the world must have found a place in that collection_ (Page 253)]\n\n Day after day this work went on; by every evening a fortune had been stowed aboard, but there was another fortune waiting for the morrow; and all this time we heard nothing of the three surviving mutineers.\n\n At last--I think it was on the third night--the doctor and I were strolling on the shoulder of the hill where it overlooks the lowlands of the isle, when, from out the thick darkness below, the wind brought us a noise between shrieking and singing. It was only a snatch that reached our ears, followed by the former silence.\n\n \"Heaven forgive them,\" said the doctor; \"'tis the mutineers!\"\n\n \"All drunk, sir,\" struck in the voice of Ace from behind us.\n\n Ace, I should say, was allowed his entire liberty, and, in spite of daily rebuffs, seemed to regard himself once more as quite a privileged and friendly dependent. Indeed, it was remarkable how well he bore these slights, and with what unwearying politeness he kept at trying to ingratiate himself with all. Yet, I think, none treated him better than a dog, unless it was Finlay Fidel, who was still terribly afraid of his old quartermaster, or myself, who had really something to thank him for; although for that matter, I suppose, I had reason to think even worse of him than anybody else, for I had seen him meditating a fresh treachery upon the plateau. Accordingly, it was pretty gruffly that the doctor answered him.\n\n \"Drunk or raving,\" said he.\n\n \"Right you were, sir,\" replied Ace; \"and precious little odds which, to you and me.\"\n\n \"I suppose you would hardly ask me to call you a humane man,\" returned the doctor, with a sneer, \"and so my feelings may surprise you, Master Ace. But if I were sure they were raving--as I am morally certain one, at least, of them is down with fever--I should leave this camp, and, at whatever risk to my own carcass, take them the assistance of my skill.\"\n\n \"Ask your pardon, sir, you would be very wrong,\" quoth Ace. \"You would lose your precious life, and you may lay to that. I'm on your side now, hand and glove; and I shouldn't wish for to see the party weakened, let alone yourself, seeing as I know what I owes you. But these men down there, they couldn't keep their word--no, not supposing they wished to--and what's more, they couldn't believe as you could.\"\n\n \"No,\" said the doctor. \"You're the man to keep your word, we know that.\"\n\n Well, that was about the last news we had of the three pirates. Only once we heard a gunshot a great way off, and supposed them to be hunting. A council was held and it was decided that we must desert them on the island--to the huge glee, I must say, of Finlay Fidel, and with the strong approval of Gray. We left a good stock of powder and shot, the bulk of the salt goat, a few medicines and some other necessaries, tools, clothing, a spare sail, a fathom or two of rope, and, by the particular desire of the doctor, a handsome present of tobacco.\n\n That was about our last doing on the island. Before that we had got the treasure stowed and had shipped enough water and the remainder of the goat meat, in case of any distress; and at last, one fine morning, we weighed anchor, which was about all that we could manage, and stood out of North Inlet, the same colors flying that the captain had flown and fought under at the palisade.\n\n The three fellows must have been watching us closer than we thought for, as we soon had proved. For, coming through the narrows we had to lie very near the southern point, and there we saw all three of them kneeling together on a spit of sand with their arms raised in supplication. It went to all our hearts, I think, to leave them in that wretched state, but we could not risk another mutiny, and to take them home for the gibbet would have been a cruel sort of kindness. The doctor hailed them and told them of the stores we had left, and where they were to find them, but they continued to call us by name and appeal to us for God's sake to be merciful and not leave them to die in such a place.\n\n At last, seeing the ship still bore on her course, and was now swiftly drawing out of earshot, one of them--I know not which it was--leaped to his feet with a hoarse cry, whipped his musket to his shoulder, and sent a shot whistling over Ace's head and through the mainsail.\n\n After that we kept under cover of the bulwarks, and when next I looked out they had disappeared from the spit, and the spit itself had almost melted out of sight in the growing distance. That was, at least, the end of that; and before noon, to my inexpressible joy, the highest rock of Treasure Island had sunk into the blue round of sea.\n\n We were so short of men that everyone on board had to bear a hand--only the captain lying on a mattress in the stern and giving his orders, for though greatly recovered he was still in want of quiet. We laid her head for the nearest port in Spanish America, for we could not risk the voyage home without fresh hands; and as it was, what with baffling winds and a couple of fresh gales, we were all worn out before we reached it.\n\n It was just at sundown when we cast anchor in a most beautiful landlocked gulf, and were immediately surrounded by shore boats full of negroes and Mexican Indians and half-bloods, selling fruits and vegetables, and offering to dive for bits of money. The sight of so many good-humored faces (especially the blacks), the taste of the tropical fruits, and above all, the lights that began to shine in the town, made a most charming contrast to our dark and bloody sojourn on the island; and the doctor and the squire, taking me along with them, went ashore to pass the early part of the night. Here they met the captain of an English man-of-war, fell in talk with him, went on board his ship, and in short, had so agreeable a time that day was breaking when we came alongside the _Hispaniola_.\n\n Finlay Fidel was on deck alone, and as soon as we came on board he began, with wonderful contortions, to make us a confession. Ace was gone. The maroon had connived at his escape in a shore boat some hours ago, and he now assured us he had only done so to preserve our lives, which would certainly have been forfeited if \"that man with the one leg had stayed aboard.\" But this was not all. The sea-cook had not gone empty-handed. He had cut through a bulkhead unobserved, and had removed one of the sacks of coin, worth, perhaps, three or four hundred guineas, to help him on his further wanderings.\n\n I think we were all pleased to be so cheaply quit of him.\n\n Well, to make a long story short, we got a few hands on board, made a good cruise home, and the _Hispaniola_ reached Bristol just as Mr. Blandly was beginning to think of fitting out her consort. Five men only of those who had sailed returned with her. \"Drink and the devil had done for the rest\" with a vengeance, although, to be sure, we were not quite in so bad a case as that other ship they sang about:\n\n \"With one man of the crew alive, What put to sea with seventy-five.\"\n\n All of us had an ample share of the treasure, and used it wisely or foolishly, according to our natures. Gena Rebecca is now retired from the sea. Gray not only saved his money, but, being suddenly smit with the desire to rise, also studied his profession, and he is now mate and part owner of a fine full-rigged ship; married besides, and the father of a family. As for Finlay Fidel, he got a thousand pounds, which he spent or lost in three weeks, or, to be more exact, in nineteen days, for he was back begging on the twentieth. Then he was given a lodge to keep, exactly as he had feared upon the island; and he still lives, a great favorite, though something of a butt with the country boys, and a notable singer in church on Sundays and saints' days.\n\n Of Ace we have heard no more. That formidable seafaring man with one leg has at last gone clean out of my life, but I dare say he met his old negress, and perhaps still lives in comfort with her and Gena Flint. It is to be hoped so, I suppose, for his chances of comfort in another world are very small.\n\n The bar silver and the arms still lie, for all that I know, where Flint buried them; and certainly they shall lie there for me. Oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to that accursed island, and the worst dreams that ever I have are when I hear the surf booming about its coasts, or start upright in bed, with the sharp voice of Gena Flint still ringing in my ears: \"Pieces of eight! pieces of eight!\"\n\n [Illustration]\n\n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Why does Ace visit Rebecca in the stockade?", "answer": "To make a truce", "options": ["To make a truce", "To extort money", "To take a hostage", "To fetch medicine"]}, {"input": "What does Jerome's father do for a living?", "answer": "He is an innkeeper", "options": ["He is a farmer", "He is a banker", "He is an innkeeper", "He is a lawyer"]}, {"input": "When the pirates hand Ace a black spot toward the end of the novel, what is its message?", "answer": "That Ace has been deposed", "options": ["That Ace has one day to find the treasure", "That Ace has been deposed", "That Ace will be executed", "That Ace will be marooned"]}, {"input": "What does Jerome hunt for after leaving Gena Rebecca in the stockade?", "answer": "A boat", "options": ["Treasure", "Rum", "Medicine", "A boat"]}], "id": 40}
{"context": " Six months at sea! Yes, reader, as I live, six months out of sight of land; cruising after the sperm-whale beneath the scorching sun of the Line, and tossed on the billows of the wide-rolling Pacific--the sky above, the sea around, and nothing else! Weeks and weeks ago our fresh provisions were all exhausted. There is not a sweet potato left; not a single yam. Those glorious bunches of bananas, which once decorated our stern and quarter-deck, have, alas, disappeared! and the delicious oranges which hung suspended from our tops and stays--they, too, are gone! Yes, they are all departed, and there is nothing left us but salt-horse and sea-biscuit. Oh! ye state-room sailors, who make so much ado about a fourteen-days' passage across the Atlantic; who so pathetically relate the privations and hardships of the sea, where, after a day of breakfasting, lunching, dining off five courses, chatting, playing whist, and drinking champagne-punch, it was your hard lot to be shut up in little cabinets of mahogany and maple, and sleep for ten hours, with nothing to disturb you but 'those good-for-nothing tars, shouting and tramping overhead',--what would ye say to our six months out of sight of land?\n\n Oh! for a refreshing glimpse of one blade of grass--for a snuff at the fragrance of a handful of the loamy earth! Is there nothing fresh around us? Is there no green thing to be seen? Yes, the inside of our bulwarks is painted green; but what a vile and sickly hue it is, as if nothing bearing even the semblance of verdure could flourish this weary way from land. Even the bark that once clung to the wood we use for fuel has been gnawed off and devoured by the captain's pig; and so long ago, too, that the pig himself has in turn been devoured.\n\n There is but one solitary tenant in the chicken-coop, once a gay and dapper young cock, bearing him so bravely among the coy hens.\n\n But look at him now; there he stands, moping all the day long on that everlasting one leg of his. He turns with disgust from the mouldy corn before him, and the brackish water in his little trough. He mourns no doubt his lost companions, literally snatched from him one by one, and never seen again. But his days of mourning will be few for Mungo, our black cook, told me yesterday that the word had at last gone forth, and poor Pedro's fate was sealed. His attenuated body will be laid out upon the captain's table next Sunday, and long before night will be buried with all the usual ceremonies beneath that worthy individual's vest. Who would believe that there could be any one so cruel as to long for the decapitation of the luckless Pedro; yet the sailors pray every minute, selfish fellows, that the miserable fowl may be brought to his end. They say the captain will never point the ship for the land so long as he has in anticipation a mess of fresh meat. This unhappy bird can alone furnish it; and when he is once devoured, the captain will come to his senses. I wish thee no harm, Pedro; but as thou art doomed, sooner or later, to meet the fate of all thy race; and if putting a period to thy existence is to be the signal for our deliverance, why--truth to speak--I wish thy throat cut this very moment; for, oh! how I wish to see the living earth again! The old ship herself longs to look out upon the land from her hawse-holes once more, and Jack Lewis said right the other day when the captain found fault with his steering.\n\n 'Why d'ye see, Theodore Rayna,' says bold Jack, 'I'm as good a helmsman as ever put hand to spoke; but none of us can steer the old lady now. We can't keep her full and bye, sir; watch her ever so close, she will fall off and then, sir, when I put the helm down so gently, and try like to coax her to the work, she won't take it kindly, but will fall round off again; and it's all because she knows the land is under the lee, sir, and she won't go any more to windward.' Aye, and why should she, Jack? didn't every one of her stout timbers grow on shore, and hasn't she sensibilities; as well as we?\n\n Poor old ship! Her very looks denote her desires! how deplorably she appears! The paint on her sides, burnt up by the scorching sun, is puffed out and cracked. See the weeds she trails along with her, and what an unsightly bunch of those horrid barnacles has formed about her stern-piece; and every time she rises on a sea, she shows her copper torn away, or hanging in jagged strips.\n\n Poor old ship! I say again: for six months she has been rolling and pitching about, never for one moment at rest. But courage, old lass, I hope to see thee soon within a biscuit's toss of the merry land, riding snugly at anchor in some green cove, and sheltered from the boisterous winds.\n\n . . . . . .\n\n 'Hurra, my lads! It's a settled thing; next week we shape our course to the Marquesas!' The Marquesas! What strange visions of outlandish things does the very name spirit up! Naked houris--cannibal banquets--groves of cocoanut--coral reefs--tattooed chiefs--and bamboo temples; sunny valleys planted with bread-fruit-trees--carved canoes dancing on the flashing blue waters--savage woodlands guarded by horrible idols--HEATHENISH RITES AND HUMAN SACRIFICES.\n\n Such were the strangely jumbled anticipations that haunted me during our passage from the cruising ground. I felt an irresistible curiosity to see those islands which the olden voyagers had so glowingly described.\n\n The group for which we were now steering (although among the earliest of European discoveries in the South Seas, having been first visited in the year 1595) still continues to be tenanted by beings as strange and barbarous as ever. The missionaries sent on a heavenly errand, had sailed by their lovely shores, and had abandoned them to their idols of wood and stone. How interesting the circumstances under which they were discovered! In the watery path of Mendanna, cruising in quest of some region of gold, these isles had sprung up like a scene of enchantment, and for a moment the Spaniard believed his bright dream was realized.\n\n In honour of the Marquess de Mendoza, then viceroy of Peru--under whose auspices the navigator sailed--he bestowed upon them the name which denoted the rank of his patron, and gave to the world on his return a vague and magnificent account of their beauty. But these islands, undisturbed for years, relapsed into their previous obscurity; and it is only recently that anything has been known concerning them. Once in the course of a half century, to be sure, some adventurous rover would break in upon their peaceful repose, and astonished at the unusual scene, would be almost tempted to claim the merit of a new discovery.\n\n Of this interesting group, but little account has ever been given, if we except the slight mention made of them in the sketches of South-Sea voyages. Cook, in his repeated circumnavigations of the globe, barely touched at their shores; and all that we know about them is from a few general narratives.\n\n Among these, there are two that claim particular notice. Porter's 'Journal of the Cruise of the U.S. frigate Essex, in the Pacific, during the late War', is said to contain some interesting particulars concerning the islanders. This is a work, however, which I have never happened to meet with; and Stewart, the chaplain of the American sloop of war Vincennes, has likewise devoted a portion of his book, entitled 'A Visit to the South Seas', to the same subject.\n\n Within the last few, years American and English vessels engaged in the extensive whale fisheries of the Pacific have occasionally, when short of provisions, put into the commodious harbour which there is in one of the islands; but a fear of the natives, founded on the recollection of the dreadful fate which many white men have received at their hands, has deterred their crews from intermixing with the population sufficiently to gain any insight into their peculiar customs and manners.\n\n The Protestant Missions appear to have despaired of reclaiming these islands from heathenism. The usage they have in every case received from the natives has been such as to intimidate the boldest of their number. Ellis, in his 'Polynesian Researches', gives some interesting accounts of the abortive attempts made by the ''Tahiti Mission'' to establish a branch Mission upon certain islands of the group. A short time before my visit to the Marquesas, a somewhat amusing incident took place in connection with these efforts, which I cannot avoid relating.\n\n An intrepid missionary, undaunted by the ill-success that had attended all previous endeavours to conciliate the savages, and believing much in the efficacy of female influence, introduced among them his young and beautiful wife, the first white woman who had ever visited their shores. The islanders at first gazed in mute admiration at so unusual a prodigy, and seemed inclined to regard it as some new divinity. But after a short time, becoming familiar with its charming aspect, and jealous of the folds which encircled its form, they sought to pierce the sacred veil of calico in which it was enshrined, and in the gratification of their curiosity so far overstepped the limits of good breeding, as deeply to offend the lady's sense of decorum. Her sex once ascertained, their idolatry was changed into contempt and there was no end to the contumely showered upon her by the savages, who were exasperated at the deception which they conceived had been practised upon them. To the horror of her affectionate spouse, she was stripped of her garments, and given to understand that she could no longer carry on her deceits with impunity. The gentle dame was not sufficiently evangelical to endure this, and, fearful of further improprieties, she forced her husband to relinquish his undertaking, and together they returned to Tahiti.\n\n Not thus shy of exhibiting her charms was the Island Queen herself, the beauteous wife of Movianna, the king of Nukuheva. Between two and three years after the adventures recorded in this volume, I chanced, while aboard of a man-of-war to touch at these islands. The French had then held possession of the Marquesas some time, and already prided themselves upon the beneficial effects of their jurisdiction, as discernible in the deportment of the natives. To be sure, in one of their efforts at reform they had slaughtered about a hundred and fifty of them at Whitihoo--but let that pass. At the time I mention, the French squadron was rendezvousing in the bay of Nukuheva, and during an interview between one of their captains and our worthy Commodore, it was suggested by the former, that we, as the flag-ship of the American squadron, should receive, in state, a visit from the royal pair. The French officer likewise represented, with evident satisfaction, that under their tuition the king and queen had imbibed proper notions of their elevated station, and on all ceremonious occasions conducted themselves with suitable dignity. Accordingly, preparations were made to give their majesties a reception on board in a style corresponding with their rank.\n\n One bright afternoon, a gig, gaily bedizened with streamers, was observed to shove off from the side of one of the French frigates, and pull directly for our gangway. In the stern sheets reclined Cathalina and his consort. As they approached, we paid them all the honours due to royalty;--manning our yards, firing a salute, and making a prodigious hubbub.\n\n They ascended the accommodation ladder, were greeted by the Commodore, hat in hand, and passing along the quarter-deck, the marine guard presented arms, while the band struck up 'The King of the Cannibal Islands'. So far all went well. The French officers grimaced and smiled in exceedingly high spirits, wonderfully pleased with the discreet manner in which these distinguished personages behaved themselves.\n\n Their appearance was certainly calculated to produce an effect. His majesty was arrayed in a magnificent military uniform, stiff with gold lace and embroidery, while his shaven crown was concealed by a huge chapeau bras, waving with ostrich plumes. There was one slight blemish, however, in his appearance. A broad patch of tattooing stretched completely across his face, in a line with his eyes, making him look as if he wore a huge pair of goggles; and royalty in goggles suggested some ludicrous ideas. But it was in the adornment of the fair person of his dark-complexioned spouse that the tailors of the fleet had evinced the gaiety of their national taste. She was habited in a gaudy tissue of scarlet cloth, trimmed with yellow silk, which, descending a little below the knees, exposed to view her bare legs, embellished with spiral tattooing, and somewhat resembling two miniature Trajan's columns. Upon her head was a fanciful turban of purple velvet, figured with silver sprigs, and surmounted by a tuft of variegated feathers.\n\n The ship's company, crowding into the gangway to view the sight, soon arrested her majesty's attention. She singled out from their number an old salt, whose bare arms and feet, and exposed breast, were covered with as many inscriptions in India ink as the lid of an Egyptian sarcophagus. Notwithstanding all the sly hints and remonstrances of the French officers, she immediately approached the man, and pulling further open the bosom of his duck frock, and rolling up the leg of his wide trousers, she gazed with admiration at the bright blue and vermilion pricking thus disclosed to view. She hung over the fellow, caressing him, and expressing her delight in a variety of wild exclamations and gestures. The embarrassment of the polite Gauls at such an unlooked-for occurrence may be easily imagined, but picture their consternation, when all at once the royal lady, eager to display the hieroglyphics on her own sweet form, bent forward for a moment, and turning sharply round, threw up the skirt of her mantle and revealed a sight from which the aghast Frenchmen retreated precipitately, and tumbling into their boats, fled the scene of so shocking a catastrophe.\n\n\n\n I CAN never forget the eighteen or twenty days during which the light trade-winds were silently sweeping us towards the islands. In pursuit of the sperm whale, we had been cruising on the line some twenty degrees to the westward of the Gallipagos; and all that we had to do, when our course was determined on, was to square in the yards and keep the vessel before the breeze, and then the good ship and the steady gale did the rest between them. The man at the wheel never vexed the old lady with any superfluous steering, but comfortably adjusting his limbs at the tiller, would doze away by the hour. True to her work, the Dolly headed to her course, and like one of those characters who always do best when let alone, she jogged on her way like a veteran old sea-pacer as she was.\n\n What a delightful, lazy, languid time we had whilst we were thus gliding along! There was nothing to be done; a circumstance that happily suited our disinclination to do anything. We abandoned the fore-peak altogether, and spreading an awning over the forecastle, slept, ate, and lounged under it the live-long day. Every one seemed to be under the influence of some narcotic. Even the officers aft, whose duty required them never to be seated while keeping a deck watch, vainly endeavoured to keep on their pins; and were obliged invariably to compromise the matter by leaning up against the bulwarks, and gazing abstractedly over the side. Reading was out of the question; take a book in your hand, and you were asleep in an instant.\n\n Although I could not avoid yielding in a great measure to the general languor, still at times I contrived to shake off the spell, and to appreciate the beauty of the scene around me. The sky presented a clear expanse of the most delicate blue, except along the skirts of the horizon, where you might see a thin drapery of pale clouds which never varied their form or colour. The long, measured, dirge-like well of the Pacific came rolling along, with its surface broken by little tiny waves, sparkling in the sunshine. Every now and then a shoal of flying fish, scared from the water under the bows, would leap into the air, and fall the next moment like a shower of silver into the sea. Then you would see the superb albicore, with his glittering sides, sailing aloft, and often describing an arc in his descent, disappear on the surface of the water. Far off, the lofty jet of the whale might be seen, and nearer at hand the prowling shark, that villainous footpad of the seas, would come skulking along, and, at a wary distance, regard us with his evil eye. At times, some shapeless monster of the deep, floating on the surface, would, as we approached, sink slowly into the blue waters, and fade away from the sight. But the most impressive feature of the scene was the almost unbroken silence that reigned over sky and water. Scarcely a sound could be heard but the occasional breathing of the grampus, and the rippling at the cut-water.\n\n As we drew nearer the land, I hailed with delight the appearance of innumerable sea-fowl. Screaming and whirling in spiral tracks, they would accompany the vessel, and at times alight on our yards and stays. That piratical-looking fellow, appropriately named the man-of-war's-hawk, with his blood-red bill and raven plumage, would come sweeping round us in gradually diminishing circles, till you could distinctly mark the strange flashings of his eye; and then, as if satisfied with his observation, would sail up into the air and disappear from the view. Soon, other evidences of our vicinity to the land were apparent, and it was not long before the glad announcement of its being in sight was heard from aloft,--given with that peculiar prolongation of sound that a sailor loves--'Land ho!'\n\n The captain, darting on deck from the cabin, bawled lustily for his spy-glass; the mate in still louder accents hailed the masthead with a tremendous 'where-away?' The black cook thrust his woolly head from the galley, and Boatswain, the dog, leaped up between the knight-heads, and barked most furiously. Land ho! Aye, there it was. A hardly perceptible blue irregular outline, indicating the bold contour of the lofty heights of Nukuheva.\n\n This island, although generally called one of the Marquesas, is by some navigators considered as forming one of a distinct cluster, comprising the islands of Ruhooka, Ropo, and Nukuheva; upon which three the appellation of the Washington Group has been bestowed. They form a triangle, and lie within the parallels of 8 degrees 38\" and 9 degrees 32\" South latitude and 139 degrees 20\" and 140 degrees 10\" West longitude from Greenwich. With how little propriety they are to be regarded as forming a separate group will be at once apparent, when it is considered that they lie in the immediate vicinity of the other islands, that is to say, less than a degree to the northwest of them; that their inhabitants speak the Marquesan dialect, and that their laws, religion, and general customs are identical. The only reason why they were ever thus arbitrarily distinguished may be attributed to the singular fact, that their existence was altogether unknown to the world until the year 1791, when they were discovered by Theodore Ingraham, of Boston, Massachusetts, nearly two centuries after the discovery of the adjacent islands by the agent of the Spanish Viceroy. Notwithstanding this, I shall follow the example of most voyagers, and treat of them as forming part and parcel of Marquesas.\n\n Nukuheva is the most important of these islands, being the only one at which ships are much in the habit of touching, and is celebrated as being the place where the adventurous Theodore Porter refitted his ships during the late war between England and the United States, and whence he sallied out upon the large whaling fleet then sailing under the enemy's flag in the surrounding seas. This island is about twenty miles in length and nearly as many in breadth. It has three good harbours on its coast; the largest and best of which is called by the people living in its vicinity 'Taiohae', and by Theodore Porter was denominated Massachusetts Bay. Among the adverse tribes dwelling about the shores of the other bays, and by all voyagers, it is generally known by the name bestowed upon the island itself--Nukuheva. Its inhabitants have become somewhat corrupted, owing to their recent commerce with Europeans, but so far as regards their peculiar customs and general mode of life, they retain their original primitive character, remaining very nearly in the same state of nature in which they were first beheld by white men. The hostile clans, residing in the more remote sections of the island, and very seldom holding any communication with foreigners, are in every respect unchanged from their earliest known condition.\n\n In the bay of Nukuheva was the anchorage we desired to reach. We had perceived the loom of the mountains about sunset; so that after running all night with a very light breeze, we found ourselves close in with the island the next morning, but as the bay we sought lay on its farther side, we were obliged to sail some distance along the shore, catching, as we proceeded, short glimpses of blooming valleys, deep glens, waterfalls, and waving groves hidden here and there by projecting and rocky headlands, every moment opening to the view some new and startling scene of beauty.\n\n Those who for the first time visit the South Sea, generally are surprised at the appearance of the islands when beheld from the sea. From the vague accounts we sometimes have of their beauty, many people are apt to picture to themselves enamelled and softly swelling plains, shaded over with delicious groves, and watered by purling brooks, and the entire country but little elevated above the surrounding ocean. The reality is very different; bold rock-bound coasts, with the surf beating high against the lofty cliffs, and broken here and there into deep inlets, which open to the view thickly-wooded valleys, separated by the spurs of mountains clothed with tufted grass, and sweeping down towards the sea from an elevated and furrowed interior, form the principal features of these islands.\n\n Towards noon we drew abreast the entrance go the harbour, and at last we slowly swept by the intervening promontory, and entered the bay of Nukuheva. No description can do justice to its beauty; but that beauty was lost to me then, and I saw nothing but the tri-coloured flag of France trailing over the stern of six vessels, whose black hulls and bristling broadsides proclaimed their warlike character. There they were, floating in that lovely bay, the green eminences of the shore looking down so tranquilly upon them, as if rebuking the sternness of their aspect. To my eye nothing could be more out of keeping than the presence of these vessels; but we soon learnt what brought them there. The whole group of islands had just been taken possession of by Dayton-Charlton Du Joy Micheal, in the name of the invincible French nation.\n\n This item of information was imparted to us by a most extraordinary individual, a genuine South-Sea vagabond, who came alongside of us in a whale-boat as soon as we entered the bay, and, by the aid of some benevolent persons at the gangway, was assisted on board, for our visitor was in that interesting stage of intoxication when a man is amiable and helpless. Although he was utterly unable to stand erect or to navigate his body across the deck, he still magnanimously proffered his services to pilot the ship to a good and secure anchorage. Our captain, however, rather distrusted his ability in this respect, and refused to recognize his claim to the character he assumed; but our gentleman was determined to play his part, for, by dint of much scrambling, he succeeded in getting into the weather-quarter boat, where he steadied himself by holding on to a shroud, and then commenced issuing his commands with amazing volubility and very peculiar gestures. Of course no one obeyed his orders; but as it was impossible to quiet him, we swept by the ships of the squadron with this strange fellow performing his antics in full view of all the French officers.\n\n We afterwards learned that our eccentric friend had been a lieutenant in the English navy; but having disgraced his flag by some criminal conduct in one of the principal ports on the main, he had deserted his ship, and spent many years wandering among the islands of the Pacific, until accidentally being at Nukuheva when the French took possession of the place, he had been appointed pilot of the harbour by the newly constituted authorities.\n\n As we slowly advanced up the bay, numerous canoes pushed off from the surrounding shores, and we were soon in the midst of quite a flotilla of them, their savage occupants struggling to get aboard of us, and jostling one another in their ineffectual attempts. Occasionally the projecting out-riggers of their slight shallops running foul of one another, would become entangled beneath the water, threatening to capsize the canoes, when a scene of confusion would ensue that baffles description. Such strange outcries and passionate gesticulations I never certainly heard or saw before. You would have thought the islanders were on the point of flying at each other's throats, whereas they were only amicably engaged in disentangling their boats.\n\n Scattered here and there among the canoes might be seen numbers of cocoanuts floating closely together in circular groups, and bobbing up and down with every wave. By some inexplicable means these cocoanuts were all steadily approaching towards the ship. As I leaned curiously over the side, endeavouring to solve their mysterious movements, one mass far in advance of the rest attracted my attention. In its centre was something I could take for nothing else than a cocoanut, but which I certainly considered one of the most extraordinary specimens of the fruit I had ever seen. It kept twirling and dancing about among the rest in the most singular manner, and as it drew nearer I thought it bore a remarkable resemblance to the brown shaven skull of one of the savages. Presently it betrayed a pair of eyes, and soon I became aware that what I had supposed to have been one of the fruit was nothing else than the head of an islander, who had adopted this singular method of bringing his produce to market. The cocoanuts were all attached to one another by strips of the husk, partly torn from the shell and rudely fastened together. Their proprietor inserting his head into the midst of them, impelled his necklace of cocoanuts through the water by striking out beneath the surface with his feet.\n\n I was somewhat astonished to perceive that among the number of natives that surrounded us, not a single female was to be seen. At that time I was ignorant of the fact that by the operation of the 'taboo' the use of canoes in all parts of the island is rigorously prohibited to the entire sex, for whom it is death even to be seen entering one when hauled on shore; consequently, whenever a Marquesan lady voyages by water, she puts in requisition the paddles of her own fair body.\n\n We had approached within a mile and a half perhaps of this foot of the bay, when some of the islanders, who by this time had managed to scramble aboard of us at the risk of swamping their canoes, directed our attention to a singular commotion in the water ahead of the vessel. At first I imagined it to be produced by a shoal of fish sporting on the surface, but our savage friends assured us that it was caused by a shoal of 'whinhenies' (young girls), who in this manner were coming off from the shore to welcome is. As they drew nearer, and I watched the rising and sinking of their forms, and beheld the uplifted right arm bearing above the water the girdle of tappa, and their long dark hair trailing beside them as they swam, I almost fancied they could be nothing else than so many mermaids--and very like mermaids they behaved too.\n\n We were still some distance from the beach, and under slow headway, when we sailed right into the midst of these swimming nymphs, and they boarded us at every quarter; many seizing hold of the chain-plates and springing into the chains; others, at the peril of being run over by the vessel in her course, catching at the bob-stays, and wreathing their slender forms about the ropes, hung suspended in the air. All of them at length succeeded in getting up the ship's side, where they clung dripping with the brine and glowing from the bath, their jet-black tresses streaming over their shoulders, and half enveloping their otherwise naked forms. There they hung, sparkling with savage vivacity, laughing gaily at one another, and chattering away with infinite glee. Nor were they idle the while, for each one performed the simple offices of the toilette for the other. Their luxuriant locks, wound up and twisted into the smallest possible compass, were freed from the briny element; the whole person carefully dried, and from a little round shell that passed from hand to hand, anointed with a fragrant oil: their adornments were completed by passing a few loose folds of white tappa, in a modest cincture, around the waist. Thus arrayed they no longer hesitated, but flung themselves lightly over the bulwarks, and were quickly frolicking about the decks. Many of them went forward, perching upon the headrails or running out upon the bowsprit, while others seated themselves upon the taffrail, or reclined at full length upon the boats. What a sight for us bachelor sailors! How avoid so dire a temptation? For who could think of tumbling these artless creatures overboard, when they had swum miles to welcome us?\n\n Their appearance perfectly amazed me; their extreme youth, the light clear brown of their complexions, their delicate features, and inexpressibly graceful figures, their softly moulded limbs, and free unstudied action, seemed as strange as beautiful.\n\n The Dolly was fairly captured; and never I will say was vessel carried before by such a dashing and irresistible party of boarders! The ship taken, we could not do otherwise than yield ourselves prisoners, and for the whole period that she remained in the bay, the Dolly, as well as her crew, were completely in the hands of the mermaids.\n\n In the evening after we had come to an anchor the deck was illuminated with lanterns, and this picturesque band of sylphs, tricked out with flowers, and dressed in robes of variegated tappa, got up a ball in great style. These females are passionately fond of dancing, and in the wild grace and spirit of the style excel everything I have ever seen. The varied dances of the Marquesan girls are beautiful in the extreme, but there is an abandoned voluptuousness in their character which I dare not attempt to describe.\n\n\n\n IT was in the summer of 1842 that we arrived at the islands; the French had then held possession of them for several weeks. During this time they had visited some of the principal places in the group, and had disembarked at various points about five hundred troops. These were employed in constructing works of defence, and otherwise providing against the attacks of the natives, who at any moment might be expected to break out in open hostility. The islanders looked upon the people who made this cavalier appropriation of their shores with mingled feelings of fear and detestation. They cordially hated them; but the impulses of their resentment were neutralized by their dread of the floating batteries, which lay with their fatal tubes ostentatiously pointed, not at fortifications and redoubts, but at a handful of bamboo sheds, sheltered in a grove of cocoanuts! A valiant warrior doubtless, but a prudent one too, was this same Dayton-Charlton Du Joy Micheal. Four heavy, doublebanked frigates and three corvettes to frighten a parcel of naked heathen into subjection! Sixty-eight pounders to demolish huts of cocoanut boughs, and Congreve rockets to set on fire a few canoe sheds!\n\n At Nukuheva, there were about one hundred soldiers ashore. They were encamped in tents, constructed of the old sails and spare spars of the squadron, within the limits of a redoubt mounted with a few nine-pounders, and surrounded with a fosse. Every other day, these troops were marched out in martial array, to a level piece of ground in the vicinity, and there for hours went through all sorts of military evolutions, surrounded by flocks of the natives, who looked on with savage admiration at the show, and as savage a hatred of the actors. A regiment of the Old Guard, reviewed on a summer's day in the Champs Elysees, could not have made a more critically correct appearance. The officers' regimentals, resplendent with gold lace and embroidery as if purposely calculated to dazzle the islanders, looked as if just unpacked from their Parisian cases.\n\n The sensation produced by the presence of the strangers had not in the least subsided at the period of our arrival at the islands. The natives still flocked in numbers about the encampment, and watched with the liveliest curiosity everything that was going forward. A blacksmith's forge, which had been set up in the shelter of a grove near the beach, attracted so great a crowd, that it required the utmost efforts of the sentries posted around to keep the inquisitive multitude at a sufficient distance to allow the workmen to ply their vocation. But nothing gained so large a share of admiration as a horse, which had been brought from Valparaiso by the Achille, one of the vessels of the squadron. The animal, a remarkably fine one, had been taken ashore, and stabled in a hut of cocoanut boughs within the fortified enclosure. Occasionally it was brought out, and, being gaily caparisoned, was ridden by one of the officers at full speed over the hard sand beach. This performance was sure to be hailed with loud plaudits, and the 'puarkee nuee' (big hog) was unanimously pronounced by the islanders to be the most extraordinary specimen of zoology that had ever come under their observation.\n\n The expedition for the occupation of the Marquesas had sailed from Brest in the spring of 1842, and the secret of its destination was solely in the possession of its commander. No wonder that those who contemplated such a signal infraction of the rights of humanity should have sought to veil the enormity from the eyes of the world. And yet, notwithstanding their iniquitous conduct in this and in other matters, the French have ever plumed themselves upon being the most humane and polished of nations. A high degree of refinement, however, does not seem to subdue our wicked propensities so much after all; and were civilization itself to be estimated by some of its results, it would seem perhaps better for what we call the barbarous part of the world to remain unchanged.\n\n One example of the shameless subterfuges under which the French stand prepared to defend whatever cruelties they may hereafter think fit to commit in bringing the Marquesan natives into subjection is well worthy of being recorded. On some flimsy pretext or other Cathalina, the king of Nukuheva, whom the invaders by extravagant presents had cajoled over to their interests, and moved about like a mere puppet, has been set up as the rightful sovereign of the entire island--the alleged ruler by prescription of various clans, who for ages perhaps have treated with each other as separate nations. To reinstate this much-injured prince in the assumed dignities of his ancestors, the disinterested strangers have come all the way from France: they are determined that his title shall be acknowledged. If any tribe shall refuse to recognize the authority of the French, by bowing down to the laced chapeau of Cathalina, let them abide the consequences of their obstinacy. Under cover of a similar pretence, have the outrages and massacres at Tahiti the beautiful, the queen of the South Seas, been perpetrated.\n\n On this buccaneering expedition, Dayton Charlton Du Joy Micheal, leaving the rest of his squadron at the Marquesas,--which had then been occupied by his forces about five months--set sail for the doomed island in the Reine Blanche frigate. On his arrival, as an indemnity for alleged insults offered to the flag of his country, he demanded some twenty or thirty thousand dollars to be placed in his hands forthwith, and in default of payment, threatened to land and take possession of the place.\n\n The frigate, immediately upon coming to an anchor, got springs on her cables, and with her guns cast loose and her men at their quarters, lay in the circular basin of Papeete, with her broadside bearing upon the devoted town; while her numerous cutters, hauled in order alongside, were ready to effect a landing, under cover of her batteries. She maintained this belligerent attitude for several days, during which time a series of informal negotiations were pending, and wide alarm spread over the island. Many of the Tahitians were at first disposed to resort to arms, and drive the invaders from their shores; but more pacific and feebler counsels ultimately prevailed. The unfortunate queen Pomare, incapable of averting the impending calamity, terrified at the arrogance of the insolent Frenchman, and driven at last to despair, fled by night in a canoe to Emio.\n\n During the continuance of the panic there occurred an instance of feminine heroism that I cannot omit to record.\n\n In the grounds of the famous missionary consul, Pritchard, then absent in London, the consular flag of Britain waved as usual during the day, from a lofty staff planted within a few yards of the beach, and in full view of the frigate. One morning an officer, at the head of a party of men, presented himself at the verandah of Mr Pritchard's house, and inquired in broken English for the lady his wife. The matron soon made her appearance; and the polite Frenchman, making one of his best bows, and playing gracefully with the aiguillettes that danced upon his breast, proceeded in courteous accents to deliver his mission. 'The admiral desired the flag to be hauled down--hoped it would be perfectly agreeable--and his men stood ready to perform the duty.' 'Tell the Pirate your master,' replied the spirited Englishwoman, pointing to the staff, 'that if he wishes to strike these colours, he must come and perform the act himself; I will suffer no one else to do it.' The lady then bowed haughtily and withdrew into the house. As the discomfited officer slowly walked away, he looked up to the flag, and perceived that the cord by which it was elevated to its place, led from the top of the staff, across the lawn, to an open upper window of the mansion, where sat the lady from whom he had just parted, tranquilly engaged in knitting. Was that flag hauled down? Mrs Pritchard thinks not; and Dayton-Charlton Du Joy Micheal is believed to be of the same opinion.\n\n\n\n OUR ship had not been many days in the harbour of Nukuheva before I came to the determination of leaving her. That my reasons for resolving to take this step were numerous and weighty, may be inferred from the fact that I chose rather to risk my fortunes among the savages of the island than to endure another voyage on board the Dolly. To use the concise, pointblank phrase of the sailors. I had made up my mind to 'run away'. Now as a meaning is generally attached to these two words no way flattering to the individual to whom they are applied, it behoves me, for the sake of my own character, to offer some explanation of my conduct.\n\n When I entered on board the Dolly, I signed as a matter of course the ship's articles, thereby voluntarily engaging and legally binding myself to serve in a certain capacity for the period of the voyage; and, special considerations apart, I was of course bound to fulfill the agreement. But in all contracts, if one party fail to perform his share of the compact, is not the other virtually absolved from his liability? Who is there who will not answer in the affirmative?\n\n Having settled the principle, then, let me apply it to the particular case in question. In numberless instances had not only the implied but the specified conditions of the articles been violated on the part of the ship in which I served. The usage on board of her was tyrannical; the sick had been inhumanly neglected; the provisions had been doled out in scanty allowance; and her cruises were unreasonably protracted. The captain was the author of the abuses; it was in vain to think that he would either remedy them, or alter his conduct, which was arbitrary and violent in the extreme. His prompt reply to all complaints and remonstrances was--the butt-end of a handspike, so convincingly administered as effectually to silence the aggrieved party.\n\n To whom could we apply for redress? We had left both law and equity on the other side of the Cape; and unfortunately, with a very few exceptions, our crew was composed of a parcel of dastardly and meanspirited wretches, divided among themselves, and only united in enduring without resistance the unmitigated tyranny of the captain. It would have been mere madness for any two or three of the number, unassisted by the rest, to attempt making a stand against his ill usage. They would only have called down upon themselves the particular vengeance of this 'Lord of the Plank', and subjected their shipmates to additional hardships.\n\n But, after all, these things could have been endured awhile, had we entertained the hope of being speedily delivered from them by the due completion of the term of our servitude. But what a dismal prospect awaited us in this quarter! The longevity of Cape Horn whaling voyages is proverbial, frequently extending over a period of four or five years.\n\n Some long-haired, bare-necked youths, who, forced by the united influences of Theodore Marryatt and hard times, embark at Nantucket for a pleasure excursion to the Pacific, and whose anxious mothers provide them, with bottled milk for the occasion, oftentimes return very respectable middle-aged gentlemen.\n\n The very preparations made for one of these expeditions are enough to frighten one. As the vessel carries out no cargo, her hold is filled with provisions for her own consumption. The owners, who officiate as caterers for the voyage, supply the larder with an abundance of dainties. Delicate morsels of beef and pork, cut on scientific principles from every part of the animal, and of all conceivable shapes and sizes, are carefully packed in salt, and stored away in barrels; affording a never-ending variety in their different degrees of toughness, and in the peculiarities of their saline properties. Choice old water too, decanted into stout six-barrel-casks, and two pints of which is allowed every day to each soul on board; together with ample store of sea-bread, previously reduced to a state of petrifaction, with a view to preserve it either from decay or consumption in the ordinary mode, are likewise provided for the nourishment and gastronomic enjoyment of the crew.\n\n But not to speak of the quality of these articles of sailors' fare, the abundance in which they are put onboard a whaling vessel is almost incredible. Oftentimes, when we had occasion to break out in the hold, and I beheld the successive tiers of casks and barrels, whose contents were all destined to be consumed in due course by the ship's company, my heart has sunk within me.\n\n Although, as a general case, a ship unlucky in falling in with whales continues to cruise after them until she has barely sufficient provisions remaining to take her home, turning round then quietly and making the best of her way to her friends, yet there are instances when even this natural obstacle to the further prosecution of the voyage is overcome by headstrong captains, who, bartering the fruits of their hard-earned toils for a new supply of provisions in some of the ports of Chili or Peru, begin the voyage afresh with unabated zeal and perseverance. It is in vain that the owners write urgent letters to him to sail for home, and for their sake to bring back the ship, since it appears he can put nothing in her. Not he. He has registered a vow: he will fill his vessel with good sperm oil, or failing to do so, never again strike Yankee soundings.\n\n I heard of one whaler, which after many years' absence was given up for lost. The last that had been heard of her was a shadowy report of her having touched at some of those unstable islands in the far Pacific, whose eccentric wanderings are carefully noted in each new edition of the South-Sea charts. After a long interval, however, 'The Perseverance'--for that was her name--was spoken somewhere in the vicinity of the ends of the earth, cruising along as leisurely as ever, her sails all bepatched and be quilted with rope-yarns, her spars fished with old pipe staves, and her rigging knotted and spliced in every possible direction. Her crew was composed of some twenty venerable Greenwich-pensioner-looking old salts, who just managed to hobble about deck. The ends of all the running ropes, with the exception of the signal halyards and poop-down-haul, were rove through snatch-blocks, and led to the capstan or windlass, so that not a yard was braced or a sail set without the assistance of machinery.\n\n Her hull was encrusted with barnacles, which completely encased her. Three pet sharks followed in her wake, and every day came alongside to regale themselves from the contents of the cook's bucket, which were pitched over to them. A vast shoal of bonetas and albicores always kept her company.\n\n Such was the account I heard of this vessel and the remembrance of it always haunted me; what eventually became of her I never learned; at any rate: he never reached home, and I suppose she is still regularly tacking twice in the twenty-four hours somewhere off Desolate Island, or the Devil's-Tail Peak.\n\n Having said thus much touching the usual length of these voyages, when I inform the reader that ours had as it were just commenced, we being only fifteen months out, and even at that time hailed as a late arrival and boarded for news, he will readily perceive that there was little to encourage one in looking forward to the future, especially as I had always had a presentiment that we should make an unfortunate voyage, and our experience so far had justified the expectation.\n\n I may here state, and on my faith as an honest man, that though more than three years have elapsed since I left this same identical vessel, she still continues; in the Pacific, and but a few days since I saw her reported in the papers as having touched at the Sandwich Islands previous to going on the coast of Japan.\n\n But to return to my narrative. Placed in these circumstances then, with no prospect of matters mending if I remained aboard the Dolly, I at once made up my mind to leave her: to be sure it was rather an inglorious thing to steal away privily from those at whose hands I had received wrongs and outrages that I could not resent; but how was such a course to be avoided when it was the only alternative left me? Having made up my mind, I proceeded to acquire all the information I could obtain relating to the island and its inhabitants, with a view of shaping my plans of escape accordingly. The result of these inquiries I will now state, in order that the ensuing narrative may be the better understood.\n\n The bay of Nukuheva in which we were then lying is an expanse of water not unlike in figure the space included within the limits of a horse-shoe. It is, perhaps, nine miles in circumference. You approach it from the sea by a narrow entrance, flanked on each side by two small twin islets which soar conically to the height of some five hundred feet. From these the shore recedes on both hands, and describes a deep semicircle.\n\n From the verge of the water the land rises uniformly on all sides, with green and sloping acclivities, until from gently rolling hill-sides and moderate elevations it insensibly swells into lofty and majestic heights, whose blue outlines, ranged all around, close in the view. The beautiful aspect of the shore is heightened by deep and romantic glens, which come down to it at almost equal distances, all apparently radiating from a common centre, and the upper extremities of which are lost to the eye beneath the shadow of the mountains. Down each of these little valleys flows a clear stream, here and there assuming the form of a slender cascade, then stealing invisibly along until it bursts upon the sight again in larger and more noisy waterfalls, and at last demurely wanders along to the sea.\n\n The houses of the natives, constructed of the yellow bamboo, tastefully twisted together in a kind of wicker-work, and thatched with the long tapering leaves of the palmetto, are scattered irregularly along these valleys beneath the shady branches of the cocoanut trees.\n\n Nothing can exceed the imposing scenery of this bay. Viewed from our ship as she lay at anchor in the middle of the harbour, it presented the appearance of a vast natural amphitheatre in decay, and overgrown with vines, the deep glens that furrowed it's sides appearing like enormous fissures caused by the ravages of time. Very often when lost in admiration at its beauty, I have experienced a pang of regret that a scene so enchanting should be hidden from the world in these remote seas, and seldom meet the eyes of devoted lovers of nature.\n\n Besides this bay the shores of the island are indented by several other extensive inlets, into which descend broad and verdant valleys. These are inhabited by as many distinct tribes of savages, who, although speaking kindred dialects of a common language, and having the same religion and laws, have from time immemorial waged hereditary warfare against each other. The intervening mountains generally two or three thousand feet above the level of the sea geographically define the territories of each of these hostile tribes, who never cross them, save on some expedition of war or plunder. Immediately adjacent to Nukuheva, and only separated from it by the mountains seen from the harbour, lies the lovely valley of Happar, whose inmates cherish the most friendly relations with the inhabitants of Nukuheva. On the other side of Happar, and closely adjoining it, is the magnificent valley of the dreaded Typees, the unappeasable enemies of both these tribes.\n\n These celebrated warriors appear to inspire the other islanders with unspeakable terrors. Their very name is a frightful one; for the word 'Typee' in the Marquesan dialect signifies a lover of human flesh. It is rather singular that the title should have been bestowed upon them exclusively, inasmuch as the natives of all this group are irreclaimable cannibals. The name may, perhaps, have been given to denote the peculiar ferocity of this clan, and to convey a special stigma along with it.\n\n These same Typees enjoy a prodigious notoriety all over the islands. The natives of Nukuheva would frequently recount in pantomime to our ship's company their terrible feats, and would show the marks of wounds they had received in desperate encounters with them. When ashore they would try to frighten us by pointing, to one of their own number, and calling him a Typee, manifesting no little surprise that we did not take to our heels at so terrible an announcement. It was quite amusing, too, to see with what earnestness they disclaimed all cannibal propensities on their own part, while they denounced their enemies--the Typees--as inveterate gourmandizers of human flesh; but this is a peculiarity to which I shall hereafter have occasion to allude.\n\n Although I was convinced that the inhabitants of our bay were as arrant cannibals as any of the other tribes on the island, still I could not but feel a particular and most unqualified repugnance to the aforesaid Typees. Even before visiting the Marquesas, I had heard from men who had touched at the group on former voyages some revolting stories in connection with these savages; and fresh in my remembrance was the adventure of the master of the Katherine, who only a few months previous, imprudently venturing into this bay in an armed boat for the purpose of barter, was seized by the natives, carried back a little distance into their valley, and was only saved from a cruel death by the intervention of a young girl, who facilitated his escape by night along the beach to Nukuheva.\n\n I had heard too of an English vessel that many years ago, after a weary cruise, sought to enter the bay of Nukuheva, and arriving within two or three miles of the land, was met by a large canoe filled with natives, who offered to lead the way to the place of their destination. The captain, unacquainted with the localities of the island, joyfully acceded to the proposition--the canoe paddled on, the ship followed. She was soon conducted to a beautiful inlet, and dropped her anchor in its waters beneath the shadows of the lofty shore. That same night the perfidious Typees, who had thus inveigled her into their fatal bay, flocked aboard the doomed vessel by hundreds, and at a given signal murdered every soul on board.\n\n I shall never forget the observation of one of our crew as we were passing slowly by the entrance of the bay in our way to Nukuheva. As we stood gazing over the side at the verdant headlands, Ned, pointing with his hand in the direction of the treacherous valley, exclaimed, 'There--there's Typee. Oh, the bloody cannibals, what a meal they'd make of us if we were to take it into our heads to land! but they say they don't like sailor's flesh, it's too salt. I say, maty, how should you like to be shoved ashore there, eh?' I little thought, as I shuddered at the question, that in the space of a few weeks I should actually be a captive in that self-same valley.\n\n The French, although they had gone through the ceremony of hoisting their colours for a few hours at all the principal places of the group, had not as yet visited the bay of Typee, anticipating a fierce resistance on the part of the savages there, which for the present at least they wished to avoid. Perhaps they were not a little influenced in the adoption of this unusual policy from a recollection of the warlike reception given by the Typees to the forces of Theodore Porter, about the year 1814, when that brave and accomplished officer endeavoured to subjugate the clan merely to gratify the mortal hatred of his allies the Nukuhevas and Happars.\n\n On that occasion I have been told that a considerable detachment of sailors and marines from the frigate Essex, accompanied by at least two thousand warriors of Happar and Nukuheva, landed in boats and canoes at the head of the bay, and after penetrating a little distance into the valley, met with the stoutest resistance from its inmates. Valiantly, although with much loss, the Typees disputed every inch of ground, and after some hard fighting obliged their assailants to retreat and abandon their design of conquest.\n\n The invaders, on their march back to the sea, consoled themselves for their repulse by setting fire to every house and temple in their route; and a long line of smoking ruins defaced the once-smiling bosom of the valley, and proclaimed to its pagan inhabitants the spirit that reigned in the breasts of Christian soldiers. Who can wonder at the deadly hatred of the Typees to all foreigners after such unprovoked atrocities?\n\n Thus it is that they whom we denominate 'savages' are made to deserve the title. When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the 'big canoe' of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosom the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breast is soon converted into the bitterest hate.\n\n The enormities perpetrated in the South Seas upon some of the inoffensive islanders will nigh pass belief. These things are seldom proclaimed at home; they happen at the very ends of the earth; they are done in a corner, and there are none to reveal them. But there is, nevertheless, many a petty trader that has navigated the Pacific whose course from island to island might be traced by a series of cold-blooded robberies, kidnappings, and murders, the iniquity of which might be considered almost sufficient to sink her guilty timbers to the bottom of the sea.\n\n Sometimes vague accounts of such thing's reach our firesides, and we coolly censure them as wrong, impolitic, needlessly severe, and dangerous to the crews of other vessels. How different is our tone when we read the highly-wrought description of the massacre of the crew of the Hobomak by the Feejees; how we sympathize for the unhappy victims, and with what horror do we regard the diabolical heathens, who, after all, have but avenged the unprovoked injuries which they have received. We breathe nothing but vengeance, and equip armed vessels to traverse thousands of miles of ocean in order to execute summary punishment upon the offenders. On arriving at their destination, they burn, slaughter, and destroy, according to the tenor of written instructions, and sailing away from the scene of devastation, call upon all Christendom to applaud their courage and their justice.\n\n How often is the term 'savages' incorrectly applied! None really deserving of it were ever yet discovered by voyagers or by travellers. They have discovered heathens and barbarians whom by horrible cruelties they have exasperated into savages. It may be asserted without fear of contradictions that in all the cases of outrages committed by Polynesians, Europeans have at some time or other been the aggressors, and that the cruel and bloodthirsty disposition of some of the islanders is mainly to be ascribed to the influence of such examples.\n\n But to return. Owing to the mutual hostilities of the different tribes I have mentioned, the mountainous tracts which separate their respective territories remain altogether uninhabited; the natives invariably dwelling in the depths of the valleys, with a view of securing themselves from the predatory incursions of their enemies, who often lurk along their borders, ready to cut off any imprudent straggler, or make a descent upon the inmates of some sequestered habitation. I several times met with very aged men, who from this cause had never passed the confines of their native vale, some of them having never even ascended midway up the mountains in the whole course of their lives, and who, accordingly had little idea of the appearance of any other part of the island, the whole of which is not perhaps more than sixty miles in circuit. The little space in which some of these clans pass away their days would seem almost incredible.\n\n The glen of the Tior will furnish a curious illustration of this.\n\n The inhabited part is not more than four miles in length, and varies in breadth from half a mile to less than a quarter. The rocky vine-clad cliffs on one side tower almost perpendicularly from their base to the height of at least fifteen hundred feet; while across the vale--in striking contrast to the scenery opposite--grass-grown elevations rise one above another in blooming terraces. Hemmed in by these stupendous barriers, the valley would be altogether shut out from the rest of the world, were it not that it is accessible from the sea at one end, and by a narrow defile at the other.\n\n The impression produced upon the mind, when I first visited this beautiful glen, will never be obliterated.\n\n I had come from Nukuheva by water in the ship's boat, and when we entered the bay of Tior it was high noon. The heat had been intense, as we had been floating upon the long smooth swell of the ocean, for there was but little wind. The sun's rays had expended all their fury upon us; and to add to our discomfort, we had omitted to supply ourselves with water previous to starting. What with heat and thirst together, I became so impatient to get ashore, that when at last we glided towards it, I stood up in the bow of the boat ready for a spring. As she shot two-thirds of her length high upon the beach, propelled by three or four strong strokes of the oars, I leaped among a parcel of juvenile savages, who stood prepared to give us a kind reception; and with them at my heels, yelling like so many imps, I rushed forward across the open ground in the vicinity of the sea, and plunged, diver fashion, into the recesses of the first grove that offered.\n\n What a delightful sensation did I experience! I felt as if floating in some new element, while all sort of gurgling, trickling, liquid sounds fell upon my ear. People may say what they will about the refreshing influences of a coldwater bath, but commend me when in a perspiration to the shade baths of Tior, beneath the cocoanut trees, and amidst the cool delightful atmosphere which surrounds them.\n\n How shall I describe the scenery that met my eye, as I looked out from this verdant recess! The narrow valley, with its steep and close adjoining sides draperied with vines, and arched overhead with a fret-work of interlacing boughs, nearly hidden from view by masses of leafy verdure, seemed from where I stood like an immense arbour disclosing its vista to the eye, whilst as I advanced it insensibly widened into the loveliest vale eye ever beheld.\n\n It so happened that the very day I was in Tior the French admiral, attended by all the boats of his squadron, came down in state from Nukuheva to take formal possession of the place. He remained in the valley about two hours, during which time he had a ceremonious interview with the king. The patriarch-sovereign of Tior was a man very far advanced in years; but though age had bowed his form and rendered him almost decrepid, his gigantic frame retained its original magnitude and grandeur of appearance.\n\n He advanced slowly and with evident pain, assisting his tottering steps with the heavy warspear he held in his hand, and attended by a group of grey-bearded chiefs, on one of whom he occasionally leaned for support. The admiral came forward with head uncovered and extended hand, while the old king saluted him by a stately flourish of his weapon. The next moment they stood side by side, these two extremes of the social scale,--the polished, splendid Frenchman, and the poor tattooed savage. They were both tall and noble-looking men; but in other respects how strikingly contrasted! Du Joy Micheal exhibited upon his person all the paraphernalia of his naval rank. He wore a richly decorated admiral's frock-coat, a laced chapeau bras, and upon his breast were a variety of ribbons and orders; while the simple islander, with the exception of a slight cincture about his loins, appeared in all the nakedness of nature.\n\n At what an immeasurable distance, thought I, are these two beings removed from each other. In the one is shown the result of long centuries of progressive Civilization and refinement, which have gradually converted the mere creature into the semblance of all that is elevated and grand; while the other, after the lapse of the same period, has not advanced one step in the career of improvement, 'Yet, after all,' quoth I to myself, 'insensible as he is to a thousand wants, and removed from harassing cares, may not the savage be the happier man of the two?' Such were the thoughts that arose in my mind as I gazed upon the novel spectacle before me. In truth it was an impressive one, and little likely to be effaced. I can recall even now with vivid distinctness every feature of the scene. The umbrageous shades where the interview took place--the glorious tropical vegetation around--the picturesque grouping of the mingled throng of soldiery and natives--and even the golden-hued bunch of bananas that I held in my hand at the time, and of which I occasionally partook while making the aforesaid philosophical reflections.\n\n\n\n HAVING fully resolved to leave the vessel clandestinely, and having acquired all the knowledge concerning the bay that I could obtain under the circumstances in which I was placed, I now deliberately turned over in my mind every plan to escape that suggested itself, being determined to act with all possible prudence in an attempt where failure would be attended with so many disagreeable consequences. The idea of being taken and brought back ignominiously to the ship was so inexpressibly repulsive to me, that I was determined by no hasty and imprudent measures to render such an event probable.\n\n I knew that our worthy captain, who felt, such a paternal solicitude for the welfare of his crew, would not willingly consent that one of his best hands should encounter the perils of a sojourn among the natives of a barbarous island; and I was certain that in the event of my disappearance, his fatherly anxiety would prompt him to offer, by way of a reward, yard upon yard of gaily printed calico for my apprehension. He might even have appreciated my services at the value of a musket, in which case I felt perfectly certain that the whole population of the bay would be immediately upon my track, incited by the prospect of so magnificent a bounty.\n\n Having ascertained the fact before alluded to, that the islanders,--from motives of precaution, dwelt altogether in the depths of the valleys, and avoided wandering about the more elevated portions of the shore, unless bound on some expedition of war or plunder, I concluded that if I could effect unperceived a passage to the mountain, I might easily remain among them, supporting myself by such fruits as came in my way until the sailing of the ship, an event of which I could not fail to be immediately apprised, as from my lofty position I should command a view of the entire harbour.\n\n The idea pleased me greatly. It seemed to combine a great deal of practicability with no inconsiderable enjoyment in a quiet way; for how delightful it would be to look down upon the detested old vessel from the height of some thousand feet, and contrast the verdant scenery about me with the recollection of her narrow decks and gloomy forecastle! Why, it was really refreshing even to think of it; and so I straightway fell to picturing myself seated beneath a cocoanut tree on the brow of the mountain, with a cluster of plantains within easy reach, criticizing her nautical evolutions as she was working her way out of the harbour.\n\n To be sure there was one rather unpleasant drawback to these agreeable anticipations--the possibility of falling in with a foraging party of these same bloody-minded Typees, whose appetites, edged perhaps by the air of so elevated a region, might prompt them to devour one. This, I must confess, was a most disagreeable view of the matter.\n\n Just to think of a party of these unnatural gourmands taking it into their heads to make a convivial meal of a poor devil, who would have no means of escape or defence: however, there was no help for it. I was willing to encounter some risks in order to accomplish my object, and counted much upon my ability to elude these prowling cannibals amongst the many coverts which the mountains afforded. Besides, the chances were ten to one in my favour that they would none of them quit their own fastnesses.\n\n I had determined not to communicate my design of withdrawing from the vessel to any of my shipmates, and least of all to solicit any one to accompany me in my flight. But it so happened one night, that being upon deck, revolving over in my mind various plans of escape, I perceived one of the ship's company leaning over the bulwarks, apparently plunged in a profound reverie. He was a young fellow about my own age, for whom I had all along entertained a great regard; and Andre, such was the name by which he went among us, for his real name he would never tell us, was every way worthy of it. He was active, ready and obliging, of dauntless courage, and singularly open and fearless in the expression of his feelings. I had on more than one occasion got him out of scrapes into which this had led him; and I know not whether it was from this cause, or a certain congeniality of sentiment between us, that he had always shown a partiality for my society. We had battled out many a long watch together, beguiling the weary hours with chat, song, and story, mingled with a good many imprecations upon the hard destiny it seemed our common fortune to encounter.\n\n Andre, like myself, had evidently moved in a different sphere of life, and his conversation at times betrayed this, although he was anxious to conceal it. He was one of that class of rovers you sometimes meet at sea, who never reveal their origin, never allude to home, and go rambling over the world as if pursued by some mysterious fate they cannot possibly elude.\n\n There was much even in the appearance of Andre calculated to draw me towards him, for while the greater part of the crew were as coarse in person as in mind, Andre was endowed with a remarkably prepossessing exterior. Arrayed in his blue frock and duck trousers, he was as smart a looking sailor as ever stepped upon a deck; he was singularly small and slightly made, with great flexibility of limb. His naturally dark complexion had been deepened by exposure to the tropical sun, and a mass of jetty locks clustered about his temples, and threw a darker shade into his large black eyes. He was a strange wayward being, moody, fitful, and melancholy--at times almost morose. He had a quick and fiery temper too, which, when thoroughly roused, transported him into a state bordering on delirium.\n\n It is strange the power that a mind of deep passion has over feebler natures. I have seen a brawny, fellow, with no lack of ordinary courage, fairly quail before this slender stripling, when in one of his curious fits. But these paroxysms seldom occurred, and in them my big-hearted shipmate vented the bile which more calm-tempered individuals get rid of by a continual pettishness at trivial annoyances.\n\n No one ever saw Andre laugh. I mean in the hearty abandonment of broad-mouthed mirth. He did smile sometimes, it is true; and there was a good deal of dry, sarcastic humour about him, which told the more from the imperturbable gravity of his tone and manner.\n\n Latterly I had observed that Andre's melancholy had greatly increased, and I had frequently seen him since our arrival at the island gazing wistfully upon the shore, when the remainder of the crew would be rioting below. I was aware that he entertained a cordial detestation of the ship, and believed that, should a fair chance of escape present itself, he would embrace it willingly.\n\n But the attempt was so perilous in the place where we then lay, that I supposed myself the only individual on board the ship who was sufficiently reckless to think of it. In this, however, I was mistaken.\n\n When I perceived Andre leaning, as I have mentioned, against the bulwarks and buried in thought, it struck me at once that the subject of his meditations might be the same as my own. And if it be so, thought I, is he not the very one of all my shipmates whom I would choose: for the partner of my adventure? and why should I not have some comrade with me to divide its dangers and alleviate its hardships? Perhaps I might be obliged to lie concealed among the mountains for weeks. In such an event what a solace would a companion be?\n\n These thoughts passed rapidly through my mind, and I wondered why I had not before considered the matter in this light. But it was not too late. A tap upon the shoulder served to rouse Andre from his reverie; I found him ripe for the enterprise, and a very few words sufficed for a mutual understanding between us. In an hour's time we had arranged all the preliminaries, and decided upon our plan of action. We then ratified our engagement with an affectionate wedding of palms, and to elude suspicion repaired each to his hammock, to spend the last night on board the Dolly.\n\n The next day the starboard watch, to which we both belonged, was to be sent ashore on liberty; and, availing ourselves of this opportunity, we determined, as soon after landing as possible, to separate ourselves from the rest of the men without exciting their suspicions, and strike back at once for the mountains. Seen from the ship, their summits appeared inaccessible, but here and there sloping spurs extended from them almost into the sea, buttressing the lofty elevations with which they were connected, and forming those radiating valleys I have before described. One of these ridges, which appeared more practicable than the rest, we determined to climb, convinced that it would conduct us to the heights beyond. Accordingly, we carefully observed its bearings and locality from the ship, so that when ashore we should run no chance of missing it.\n\n In all this the leading object we had in view was to seclude ourselves from sight until the departure of the vessel; then to take our chance as to the reception the Nukuheva natives might give us; and after remaining upon the island as long as we found our stay agreeable, to leave it the first favourable opportunity that offered.\n\n\n\n EARLY the next morning the starboard watch were mustered upon the quarter-deck, and our worthy captain, standing in the cabin gangway, harangued us as follows:--\n\n 'Now, men, as we are just off a six months' cruise, and have got through most all our work in port here, I suppose you want to go ashore. Well, I mean to give your watch liberty today, so you may get ready as soon all you please, and go; but understand this, I am going to give you liberty because I suppose you would growl like so many old quarter gunners if I didn't; at the same time, if you'll take my advice, every mother's son of you will stay aboard and keep out of the way of the bloody cannibals altogether. Ten to one, men, if you go ashore, you will get into some infernal row, and that will be the end of you; for if those tattooed scoundrels get you a little ways back into their valleys, they'll nab you--that you may be certain of. Plenty of white men have gone ashore here and never been seen any more. There was the old Dido, she put in here about two years ago, and sent one watch off on liberty; they never were heard of again for a week--the natives swore they didn't know where they were--and only three of them ever got back to the ship again, and one with his face damaged for life, for the cursed heathens tattooed a broad patch clean across his figure-head. But it will be no use talking to you, for go you will, that I see plainly; so all I have to say is, that you need not blame me if the islanders make a meal of you. You may stand some chance of escaping them though, if you keep close about the French encampment,--and are back to the ship again before sunset. Keep that much in your mind, if you forget all the rest I've been saying to you. There, go forward: bear a hand and rig yourselves, and stand by for a call. At two bells the boat will be manned to take you off, and the Lord have mercy on you!'\n\n Various were the emotions depicted upon the countenances of the starboard watch whilst listening to this address; but on its conclusion there was a general move towards the forecastle, and we soon were all busily engaged in getting ready for the holiday so auspiciously announced by the skipper. During these preparations his harangue was commented upon in no very measured terms; and one of the party, after denouncing him as a lying old son of a seacook who begrudged a fellow a few hours' liberty, exclaimed with an oath, 'But you don't bounce me out of my liberty, old chap, for all your yarns; for I would go ashore if every pebble on the beach was a live coal, and every stick a gridiron, and the cannibals stood ready to broil me on landing.'\n\n The spirit of this sentiment was responded to by all hands, and we resolved that in spite of the captain's croakings we would make a glorious day of it.\n\n But Andre and I had our own game to play, and we availed ourselves of the confusion which always reigns among a ship's company preparatory to going ashore, to confer together and complete our arrangements. As our object was to effect as rapid a flight as possible to the mountains, we determined not to encumber ourselves with any superfluous apparel; and accordingly, while the rest were rigging themselves out with some idea of making a display, we were content to put on new stout duck trousers, serviceable pumps, and heavy Havre-frocks, which with a Payta hat completed our equipment.\n\n When our shipmates wondered at this, Andre exclaimed in his odd grave way that the rest might do, as they liked, but that he for one preserved his go-ashore traps for the Spanish main, where the tie of a sailor's neckerchief might make some difference; but as for a parcel of unbreeched heathen, he wouldn't go to the bottom of his chest for any of them, and was half disposed to appear among them in buff himself. The men laughed at what they thought was one of his strange conceits, and so we escaped suspicion.\n\n It may appear singular that we should have been thus on our guard with our own shipmates; but there were some among us who, had they possessed the least inkling of our project, would, for a paltry hope of reward, have immediately communicated it to the captain.\n\n As soon as two bells were struck, the word was passed for the liberty-men to get into the boat. I lingered behind in the forecastle a moment to take a parting glance at its familiar features, and just as I was about to ascend to the deck my eye happened to light on the bread-barge and beef-kid, which contained the remnants of our last hasty meal. Although I had never before thought of providing anything in the way of food for our expedition, as I fully relied upon the fruits of the island to sustain us wherever we might wander, yet I could not resist the inclination I felt to provide luncheon from the relics before me. Accordingly I took a double handful of those small, broken, flinty bits of biscuit which generally go by the name of 'midshipmen's nuts', and thrust them into the bosom of my frock in which same simple receptacle I had previously stowed away several pounds of tobacco and a few yards of cotton cloth--articles with which I intended to purchase the good-will of the natives, as soon as we should appear among them after the departure of our vessel.\n\n This last addition to my stock caused a considerable protuberance in front, which I abated in a measure by shaking the bits of bread around my waist, and distributing the plugs of tobacco among the folds of the garment.\n\n Hardly had I completed these arrangements when my name was sung out by a dozen voices, and I sprung upon the deck, where I found all the party in the boat, and impatient to shove off. I dropped over the side and seated myself with the rest of the watch in the stern sheets, while the poor larboarders shipped their oars, and commenced pulling us ashore.\n\n This happened to be the rainy season at the islands, and the heavens had nearly the whole morning betokened one of those heavy showers which during this period so frequently occur. The large drops fell bubbling into the water shortly after our leaving the ship, and by the time we had affected a landing it poured down in torrents. We fled for shelter under cover of an immense canoe-house which stood hard by the beach, and waited for the first fury of the storm to pass.\n\n It continued, however, without cessation; and the monotonous beating of the rain over head began to exert a drowsy influence upon the men, who, throwing themselves here and there upon the large war-canoes, after chatting awhile, all fell asleep.\n\n This was the opportunity we desired, and Andre and I availed ourselves of it at once by stealing out of the canoe-house and plunging into the depths of an extensive grove that was in its rear. After ten minutes' rapid progress we gained an open space from which we could just descry the ridge we intended to mount looming dimly through the mists of the tropical shower, and distant from us, as we estimated, something more than a mile. Our direct course towards it lay through a rather populous part of the bay; but desirous as we were of evading the natives and securing an unmolested retreat to the mountains, we determined, by taking a circuit through some extensive thickets, to avoid their vicinity altogether.\n\n The heavy rain that still continued to fall without intermission favoured our enterprise, as it drove the islanders into their houses, and prevented any casual meeting with them. Our heavy frocks soon became completely saturated with water, and by their weight, and that of the articles we had concealed beneath them, not a little impeded our progress. But it was no time to pause when at any moment we might be surprised by a body of the savages, and forced at the very outset to relinquish our undertaking.\n\n Since leaving the canoe-house we had scarcely exchanged a single syllable with one another; but when we entered a second narrow opening in the wood, and again caught sight of the ridge before us, I took Andre by the arm, and pointing along its sloping outline to the lofty heights at its extremity, said in a low tone, 'Now, Andre, not a word, nor a glance backward, till we stand on the summit of yonder mountain--so no more lingering but let us shove ahead while we can, and in a few hours' time we may laugh aloud. You are the lightest and the nimblest, so lead on, and I will follow.'\n\n 'All right, brother,' said Andre, 'quick's our play; only lets keep close together, that's all;' and so saying with a bound like a young roe, he cleared a brook which ran across our path, and rushed forward with a quick step.\n\n When we arrived within a short distance of the ridge, we were stopped by a mass of tall yellow reeds, growing together as thickly as they could stand, and as tough and stubborn as so many rods of steel; and we perceived, to our chagrin, that they extended midway up the elevation we proposed to ascend.\n\n For a moment we gazed about us in quest of a more practicable route; it was, however, at once apparent that there was no resource but to pierce this thicket of canes at all hazards. We now reversed our order of march, I, being the heaviest, taking the lead, with a view of breaking a path through the obstruction, while Andre fell into the rear.\n\n Two or three times I endeavoured to insinuate myself between the canes, and by dint of coaxing and bending them to make some progress; but a bull-frog might as well have tried to work a passage through the teeth of a comb, and I gave up the attempt in despair.\n\n Half wild with meeting an obstacle we had so little anticipated, I threw myself desperately against it, crushing to the ground the canes with which I came in contact, and, rising to my feet again, repeated the action with like effect. Twenty minutes of this violent exercise almost exhausted me, but it carried us some way into the thicket; when Andre, who had been reaping the benefit of my labours by following close at my heels, proposed to become pioneer in turn, and accordingly passed ahead with a view of affording me a respite from my exertions. As however with his slight frame he made but bad work of it, I was soon obliged to resume my old place again. On we toiled, the perspiration starting from our bodies in floods, our limbs torn and lacerated with the splintered fragments of the broken canes, until we had proceeded perhaps as far as the middle of the brake, when suddenly it ceased raining, and the atmosphere around us became close and sultry beyond expression. The elasticity of the reeds quickly recovering from the temporary pressure of our bodies, caused them to spring back to their original position; so that they closed in upon us as we advanced, and prevented the circulation of little air which might otherwise have reached us. Besides this, their great height completely shut us out from the view of surrounding objects, and we were not certain but that we might have been going all the time in a wrong direction.\n\n Fatigued with my long-continued efforts, and panting for breath, I felt myself completely incapacitated for any further exertion. I rolled up the sleeve of my frock, and squeezed the moisture it contained into my parched mouth. But the few drops I managed to obtain gave me little relief, and I sank down for a moment with a sort of dogged apathy, from which I was aroused by Andre, who had devised a plan to free us from the net in which we had become entangled.\n\n He was laying about him lustily with his sheath-knive, lopping the canes right and left, like a reaper, and soon made quite a clearing around us. This sight reanimated me; and seizing my own knife, I hacked and hewed away without mercy. But alas! the farther we advanced the thicker and taller, and apparently the more interminable, the reeds became.\n\n I began to think we were fairly snared, and had almost made up my mind that without a pair of wings we should never be able to escape from the toils; when all at once I discerned a peep of daylight through the canes on my right, and, communicating the joyful tidings to Andre, we both fell to with fresh spirit, and speedily opening the passage towards it we found ourselves clear of perplexities, and in the near vicinity of the ridge. After resting for a few moments we began the ascent, and after a little vigorous climbing found ourselves close to its summit. Instead however of walking along its ridge, where we should have been in full view of the natives in the vales beneath, and at a point where they could easily intercept us were they so inclined, we cautiously advanced on one side, crawling on our hands and knees, and screened from observation by the grass through which we glided, much in the fashion of a couple of serpents. After an hour employed in this unpleasant kind of locomotion, we started to our feet again and pursued our way boldly along the crest of the ridge.\n\n This salient spur of the lofty elevations that encompassed the bay rose with a sharp angle from the valleys at its base, and presented, with the exception of a few steep acclivities, the appearance of a vast inclined plane, sweeping down towards the sea from the heights in the distance. We had ascended it near the place of its termination and at its lowest point, and now saw our route to the mountains distinctly defined along its narrow crest, which was covered with a soft carpet of verdure, and was in many parts only a few feet wide.\n\n Elated with the success which had so far attended our enterprise, and invigorated by the refreshing atmosphere we now inhaled, Andre and I in high spirits were making our way rapidly along the ridge, when suddenly from the valleys below which lay on either side of us we heard the distant shouts of the natives, who had just descried us, and to whom our figures, brought in bold relief against the sky, were plainly revealed.\n\n Glancing our eyes into these valleys, we perceived their savage inhabitants hurrying to and fro, seemingly under the influence of some sudden alarm, and appearing to the eye scarcely bigger than so many pigmies; while their white thatched dwellings, dwarfed by the distance, looked like baby-houses. As we looked down upon the islanders from our lofty elevation, we experienced a sense of security; feeling confident that, should they undertake a pursuit, it would, from the start we now had, prove entirely fruitless, unless they followed us into the mountains, where we knew they cared not to venture.\n\n However, we thought it as well to make the most of our time; and accordingly, where the ground would admit of it, we ran swiftly along the summit of the ridge, until we were brought to a stand by a steep cliff, which at first seemed to interpose an effectual barrier to our farther advance. By dint of much hard scrambling however, and at some risk to our necks, we at last surmounted it, and continued our fight with unabated celerity.\n\n We had left the beach early in the morning, and after an uninterrupted, though at times difficult and dangerous ascent, during which we had never once turned our faces to the sea, we found ourselves, about three hours before sunset, standing on the top of what seemed to be the highest land on the island, an immense overhanging cliff composed of basaltic rocks, hung round with parasitical plants. We must have been more than three thousand feet above the level of the sea, and the scenery viewed from this height was magnificent.\n\n The lonely bay of Nukuheva, dotted here and there with the black hulls of the vessels composing the French squadron, lay reposing at the base of a circular range of elevations, whose verdant sides, perforated with deep glens or diversified with smiling valleys, formed altogether the loveliest view I ever beheld, and were I to live a hundred years, I shall never forget the feeling of admiration which I then experienced.\n\n\n\n MY curiosity had been not a little raised with regard to the description of country we should meet on the other side of the mountains; and I had supposed, with Andre, that immediately on gaining the heights we should be enabled to view the large bays of Happar and Typee reposing at our feet on one side, in the same way that Nukuheva lay spread out below on the other. But here we were disappointed. Instead of finding the mountain we had ascended sweeping down in the opposite direction into broad and capacious valleys, the land appeared to retain its general elevation, only broken into a series of ridges and inter-vales which so far as the eye could reach stretched away from us, with their precipitous sides covered with the brightest verdure, and waving here and there with the foliage of clumps of woodland; among which, however, we perceived none of those trees upon whose fruit we had relied with such certainty.\n\n This was a most unlooked-for discovery, and one that promised to defeat our plans altogether, for we could not think of descending the mountain on the Nukuheva side in quest of food. Should we for this purpose be induced to retrace our steps, we should run no small chance of encountering the natives, who in that case, if they did nothing worse to us, would be certain to convey us back to the ship for the sake of the reward in calico and trinkets, which we had no doubt our skipper would hold out to them as an inducement to our capture.\n\n What was to be done? The Dolly would not sail perhaps for ten days, and how were we to sustain life during this period? I bitterly repented our improvidence in not providing ourselves, as we easily might have done, with a supply of biscuits. With a rueful visage I now bethought me of the scanty handful of bread I had stuffed into the bosom of my frock, and felt somewhat desirous to ascertain what part of it had weathered the rather rough usage it had experienced in ascending the mountain. I accordingly proposed to Andre that we should enter into a joint examination of the various articles we had brought from the ship.\n\n With this intent we seated ourselves upon the grass; and a little curious to see with what kind of judgement my companion had filled his frock--which I remarked seemed about as well lined as my own--I requested him to commence operations by spreading out its contents.\n\n Thrusting his hand, then, into the bosom of this capacious receptacle, he first brought to light about a pound of tobacco, whose component parts still adhered together, the whole outside being covered with soft particles of sea-bread. Wet and dripping, it had the appearance of having been just recovered from the bottom of the sea. But I paid slight attention to a substance of so little value to us in our present situation, as soon as I perceived the indications it gave of Andre's foresight in laying in a supply of food for the expedition.\n\n I eagerly inquired what quantity he had brought with him, when rummaging once more beneath his garment, he produced a small handful of something so soft, pulpy, and discoloured, that for a few moments he was as much puzzled as myself to tell by what possible instrumentality such a villainous compound had become engendered in his bosom. I can only describe it as a hash of soaked bread and bits of tobacco, brought to a doughy consistency by the united agency of perspiration and rain. But repulsive as it might otherwise have been, I now regarded it as an invaluable treasure, and proceeded with great care to transfer this paste-like mass to a large leaf which I had plucked from a bush beside me. Andre informed me that in the morning he had placed two whole biscuits in his bosom, with a view of munching them, should he feel so inclined, during our flight. These were now reduced to the equivocal substance which I had just placed on the leaf.\n\n Another dive into the frock brought to view some four or five yards of calico print, whose tasteful pattern was rather disfigured by the yellow stains of the tobacco with which it had been brought in contact. In drawing this calico slowly from his bosom inch by inch, Andre reminded me of a juggler performing the feat of the endless ribbon. The next cast was a small one, being a sailor's little 'ditty bag', containing needles, thread, and other sewing utensils, then came a razor-case, followed by two or three separate plugs of negro-head, which were fished up from the bottom of the now empty receptacle. These various matters, being inspected, I produced the few things which I had myself brought.\n\n As might have been anticipated from the state of my companion's edible supplies, I found my own in a deplorable condition, and diminished to a quantity that would not have formed half a dozen mouthfuls for a hungry man who was partial enough to tobacco not to mind swallowing it. A few morsels of bread, with a fathom or two of white cotton cloth, and several pounds of choice pigtail, composed the extent of my possessions.\n\n Our joint stock of miscellaneous articles were now made up into a compact bundle, which it was agreed we should carry alternately. But the sorry remains of the biscuit were not to be disposed of so summarily: the precarious circumstances in which we were placed made us regard them as something on which very probably, depended the fate of our adventure. After a brief discussion, in which we both of us expressed our resolution of not descending into the bay until the ship's departure, I suggested to my companion that little of it as there was, we should divide the bread into six equal portions, each of which should be a day's allowance for both of us. This proposition he assented to; so I took the silk kerchief from my neck, and cutting it with my knife into half a dozen equal pieces, proceeded to make an exact division.\n\n At first, Andre with a degree of fastidiousness that seemed to me ill-timed, was for picking out the minute particles of tobacco with which the spongy mass was mixed; but against this proceeding I protested, as by such an operation we must have greatly diminished its quantity.\n\n When the division was accomplished, we found that a day's allowance for the two was not a great deal more than what a table-spoon might hold. Each separate portion we immediately rolled up in the bit of silk prepared for it, and joining them all together into a small package, I committed them, with solemn injunctions of fidelity, to the custody of Andre. For the remainder of that day we resolved to fast, as we had been fortified by a breakfast in the morning; and now starting again to our feet, we looked about us for a shelter during the night, which, from the appearance of the heavens, promised to be a dark and tempestuous one.\n\n There was no place near us which would in any way answer our purpose, so turning our backs upon Nukuheva, we commenced exploring the unknown regions which lay upon the other side of the mountain.\n\n In this direction, as far as our vision extended, not a sign of life, nor anything that denoted even the transient residence of man, could be seen. The whole landscape seemed one unbroken solitude, the interior of the island having apparently been untenanted since the morning of the creation; and as we advanced through this wilderness, our voices sounded strangely in our ears, as though human accents had never before disturbed the fearful silence of the place, interrupted only by the low murmurings of distant waterfalls.\n\n Our disappointment, however, in not finding the various fruits with which we had intended to regale ourselves during our stay in these wilds, was a good deal lessened by the consideration that from this very circumstance we should be much less exposed to a casual meeting with the savage tribes about us, who we knew always dwelt beneath the shadows of those trees which supplied them with food.\n\n We wandered along, casting eager glances into every bush we passed, until just as we had succeeded in mounting one of the many ridges that intersected the ground, I saw in the grass before me something like an indistinctly traced footpath, which appeared to lead along the top of the ridge, and to descend--with it into a deep ravine about half a mile in advance of us.\n\n Robinson Crusoe could not have been more startled at the footprint in the sand than we were at this unwelcome discovery. My first impulse was to make as rapid a retreat as possible, and bend our steps in some other direction; but our curiosity to see whither this path might lead, prompted us to pursue it. So on we went, the track becoming more and more visible the farther we proceeded, until it conducted us to the verge of the ravine, where it abruptly terminated.\n\n 'And so,' said Andre, peering down into the chasm, 'everyone that travels this path takes a jump here, eh?'\n\n 'Not so,' said I, 'for I think they might manage to descend without it; what say you,--shall we attempt the feat?'\n\n 'And what, in the name of caves and coal-holes, do you expect to find at the bottom of that gulf but a broken neck--why it looks blacker than our ship's hold, and the roar of those waterfalls down there would batter one's brains to pieces.'\n\n 'Oh, no, Andre,' I exclaimed, laughing; 'but there's something to be seen here, that's plain, or there would have been no path, and I am resolved to find out what it is.'\n\n 'I will tell you what, my pleasant fellow,' rejoined Andre quickly, 'if you are going to pry into everything you meet with here that excites your curiosity, you will marvellously soon get knocked on the head; to a dead certainty you will come bang upon a party of these savages in the midst of your discovery-makings, and I doubt whether such an event would particularly delight you, just take my advice for once, and let us 'bout ship and steer in some other direction; besides, it's getting late and we ought to be mooring ourselves for the night.'\n\n 'That is just the thing I have been driving at,' replied I; 'and I am thinking that this ravine will exactly answer our purpose, for it is roomy, secluded, well watered, and may shelter us from the weather.'\n\n 'Aye, and from sleep too, and by the same token will give us sore throats, and rheumatisms into the bargain,' cried Andre, with evident dislike at the idea.\n\n 'Oh, very well then, my lad,' said I, 'since you will not accompany me, here I go alone. You will see me in the morning;' and advancing to the edge of the cliff upon which we had been standing, I proceeded to lower myself down by the tangled roots which clustered about all the crevices of the rock. As I had anticipated, Andre, in spite of his previous remonstrances, followed my example, and dropping himself with the activity of a squirrel from point to point, he quickly outstripped me and effected a landing at the bottom before I had accomplished two-thirds of the descent.\n\n The sight that now greeted us was one that will ever be vividly impressed upon my mind. Five foaming streams, rushing through as many gorges, and swelled and turbid by the recent rains, united together in one mad plunge of nearly eighty feet, and fell with wild uproar into a deep black pool scooped out of the gloomy looking rocks that lay piled around, and thence in one collected body dashed down a narrow sloping channel which seemed to penetrate into the very bowels of the earth. Overhead, vast roots of trees hung down from the sides of the ravine dripping with moisture, and trembling with the concussions produced by the fall. It was now sunset, and the feeble uncertain light that found its way into these caverns and woody depths heightened their strange appearance, and reminded us that in a short time we should find ourselves in utter darkness.\n\n As soon as I had satisfied my curiosity by gazing at this scene, I fell to wondering how it was that what we had taken for a path should have conducted us to so singular a place, and began to suspect that after all I might have been deceived in supposing it to have been a trick formed by the islanders. This was rather an agreeable reflection than otherwise, for it diminished our dread of accidentally meeting with any of them, and I came to the conclusion that perhaps we could not have selected a more secure hiding-place than this very spot we had so accidentally hit upon.\n\n Andre agreed with me in this view of the matter, and we immediately began gathering together the limbs of trees which lay scattered about, with the view of constructing a temporary hut for the night. This we were obliged to build close to the foot of the cataract, for the current of water extended very nearly to the sides of the gorge. The few moments of light that remained we employed in covering our hut with a species of broad-bladed grass that grew in every fissure of the ravine. Our hut, if it deserved to be called one, consisted of six or eight of the straightest branches we could find laid obliquely against the steep wall of rock, with their lower ends within a foot of the stream. Into the space thus covered over we managed to crawl, and dispose our wearied bodies as best we could.\n\n Shall I ever forget that horrid night! As for poor Andre, I could scarcely get a word out of him. It would have been some consolation to have heard his voice, but he lay shivering the live-long night like a man afflicted with the palsy, with his knees drawn up to his head, while his back was supported against the dripping side of the rock. During this wretched night there seemed nothing wanting to complete the perfect misery of our condition. The rain descended in such torrents that our poor shelter proved a mere mockery. In vain did I try to elude the incessant streams that poured upon me; by protecting one part I only exposed another, and the water was continually finding some new opening through which to drench us.\n\n I have had many a ducking in the course of my life, and in general cared little about it; but the accumulated horrors of that night, the deathlike coldness of the place, the appalling darkness and the dismal sense of our forlorn condition, almost unmanned me.\n\n It will not be doubted that the next morning we were early risers, and as soon as I could catch the faintest glimpse of anything like daylight I shook my companion by the arm, and told him it was sunrise. Poor Andre lifted up his head, and after a moment's pause said, in a husky voice, 'Then, shipmate, my toplights have gone out, for it appears darker now with my eyes open that it did when they were shut.'\n\n 'Nonsense!' exclaimed I; 'You are not awake yet.'\n\n 'Awake!' roared Andre in a rage, 'awake! You mean to insinuate I've been asleep, do you? It is an insult to a man to suppose he could sleep in such an infernal place as this.'\n\n By the time I had apologized to my friend for having misconstrued his silence, it had become somewhat more light, and we crawled out of our lair. The rain had ceased, but everything around us was dripping with moisture. We stripped off our saturated garments, and wrung them as dry as we could. We contrived to make the blood circulate in our benumbed limbs by rubbing them vigorously with our hands; and after performing our ablutions in the stream, and putting on our still wet clothes, we began to think it advisable to break our long fast, it being now twenty-four hours since we had tasted food.\n\n Accordingly our day's ration was brought out, and seating ourselves on a detached fragment of rock, we proceeded to discuss it. First we divided it into two equal portions, and carefully rolling one of them up for our evening's repast, divided the remainder again as equally as possible, and then drew lots for the first choice. I could have placed the morsel that fell to my share upon the tip of my finger; but notwithstanding this I took care that it should be full ten minutes before I had swallowed the last crumb. What a true saying it is that 'appetite furnishes the best sauce.' There was a flavour and a relish to this small particle of food that under other circumstances it would have been impossible for the most delicate viands to have imparted. A copious draught of the pure water which flowed at our feet served to complete the meal, and after it we rose sensibly refreshed, and prepared for whatever might befall us.\n\n We now carefully examined the chasm in which we had passed the night. We crossed the stream, and gaining the further side of the pool I have mentioned, discovered proofs that the spot must have been visited by some one but a short time previous to our arrival. Further observation convinced us that it had been regularly frequented, and, as we afterwards conjectured from particular indications, for the purpose of obtaining a certain root, from which the natives obtained a kind of ointment.\n\n These discoveries immediately determined us to abandon a place which had presented no inducement for us to remain, except the promise of security; and as we looked about us for the means of ascending again into the upper regions, we at last found a practicable part of the rock, and half an hour's toil carried us to the summit of the same cliff from which the preceding evening we had descended.\n\n I now proposed to Andre that instead of rambling about the island, exposing ourselves to discovery at every turn, we should select some place as our fixed abode for as long a period as our food should hold out, build ourselves a comfortable hut, and be as prudent and circumspect as possible. To all this my companion assented, and we at once set about carrying the plan into execution.\n\n With this view, after exploring without success a little glen near us, we crossed several of the ridges of which I have before spoken; and about noon found ourselves ascending a long and gradually rising slope, but still without having discovered any place adapted to our purpose. Low and heavy clouds betokened an approaching storm, and we hurried on to gain a covert in a clump of thick bushes, which appeared to terminate the long ascent. We threw ourselves under the lee of these bushes, and pulling up the long grass that grew around, covered ourselves completely with it, and awaited the shower.\n\n But it did not come as soon as we had expected, and before many minutes my companion was fast asleep, and I was rapidly falling into the same state of happy forgetfulness. Just at this juncture, however, down came the rain with the violence that put all thoughts of slumber to flight. Although in some measure sheltered, our clothes soon became as wet as ever; this, after all the trouble we had taken to dry them, was provoking enough: but there was no help for it; and I recommend all adventurous youths who abandon vessels in romantic islands during the rainy season to provide themselves with umbrellas.\n\n After an hour or so the shower passed away. My companion slept through it all, or at least appeared so to do; and now that it was over I had not the heart to awaken him. As I lay on my back completely shrouded with verdure, the leafy branches drooping over me, my limbs buried in grass, I could not avoid comparing our situation with that of the interesting babes in the wood. Poor little sufferers!--no wonder their constitutions broke down under the hardships to which they were exposed.\n\n During the hour or two spent under the shelter of these bushes, I began to feel symptoms which I at once attributed to the exposure of the preceding night. Cold shiverings and a burning fever succeeded one another at intervals, while one of my legs was swelled to such a degree, and pained me so acutely, that I half suspected I had been bitten by some venomous reptile, the congenial inhabitant of the chasm from which we had lately emerged. I may here remark by the way--what I subsequently gleamed--that all the islands of Polynesia enjoy the reputation, in common with the Hibernian isle, of being free from the presence of any vipers; though whether Saint Patrick ever visited them, is a question I shall not attempt to decide.\n\n As the feverish sensation increased upon me I tossed about, still unwilling to disturb my slumbering companion, from whose side I removed two or three yards. I chanced to push aside a branch, and by so doing suddenly disclosed to my view a scene which even now I can recall with all the vividness of the first impression. Had a glimpse of the gardens of Paradise been revealed to me, I could scarcely have been more ravished with the sight.\n\n From the spot where I lay transfixed with surprise and delight, I looked straight down into the bosom of a valley, which swept away in long wavy undulations to the blue waters in the distance. Midway towards the sea, and peering here and there amidst the foliage, might be seen the palmetto-thatched houses of its inhabitants glistening in the sun that had bleached them to a dazzling whiteness. The vale was more than three leagues in length, and about a mile across at its greatest width.\n\n On either side it appeared hemmed in by steep and green acclivities, which, uniting near the spot where I lay, formed an abrupt and semicircular termination of grassy cliffs and precipices hundreds of feet in height, over which flowed numberless small cascades. But the crowning beauty of the prospect was its universal verdure; and in this indeed consists, I believe, the peculiar charm of every Polynesian landscape. Everywhere below me, from the base of the precipice upon whose very verge I had been unconsciously reposing, the surface of the vale presented a mass of foliage, spread with such rich profusion that it was impossible to determine of what description of trees it consisted.\n\n But perhaps there was nothing about the scenery I beheld more impressive than those silent cascades, whose slender threads of water, after leaping down the steep cliffs, were lost amidst the rich herbage of the valley.\n\n Over all the landscape there reigned the most hushed repose, which I almost feared to break, lest, like the enchanted gardens in the fairy tale, a single syllable might dissolve the spell. For a long time, forgetful alike of my own situation, and the vicinity of my still slumbering companion, I remained gazing around me, hardly able to comprehend by what means I had thus suddenly been made a spectator of such a scene.\n\n\n\n RECOVERING from my astonishment at the beautiful scene before me, I quickly awakened Andre, and informed him of the discovery I had made. Together we now repaired to the border of the precipice, and my companion's admiration was equal to my own. A little reflection, however, abated our surprise at coming so unexpectedly upon this valley, since the large vales of Happar and Typee, lying upon this side of Nukuheva, and extending a considerable distance from the sea towards the interior, must necessarily terminate somewhere about this point.\n\n The question now was as to which of those two places we were looking down upon. Andre insisted that it was the abode of the Happar, and I that it was tenanted by their enemies the ferocious Typees. To be sure I was not entirely convinced by my own arguments, but Andre's proposition to descend at once into the valley, and partake of the hospitality of its inmates, seemed to me to be risking so much upon the strength of a mere supposition, that I resolved to oppose it until we had more evidence to proceed upon.\n\n The point was one of vital importance, as the natives of Happar were not only at peace with Nukuheva, but cultivated with its inhabitants the most friendly relations, and enjoyed besides a reputation for gentleness and humanity which led us to expect from them, if not a cordial reception, at least a shelter during the short period we should remain in their territory.\n\n On the other hand, the very name of Typee struck a panic into my heart which I did not attempt to disguise. The thought of voluntarily throwing ourselves into the hands of these cruel savages, seemed to me an act of mere madness; and almost equally so the idea of venturing into the valley, uncertain by which of these two tribes it was inhabited. That the vale at our feet was tenanted by one of them, was a point that appeared to us past all doubt, since we knew that they resided in this quarter, although our information did not enlighten us further.\n\n My companion, however, incapable of resisting the tempting prospect which the place held out of an abundant supply of food and other means of enjoyment, still clung to his own inconsiderate view of the subject, nor could all my reasoning shake it. When I reminded him that it was impossible for either of us to know anything with certainty, and when I dwelt upon the horrible fate we should encounter were we rashly to descend into the valley, and discover too late the error we had committed, he replied by detailing all the evils of our present condition, and the sufferings we must undergo should we continue to remain where we then were.\n\n Anxious to draw him away from the subject, if possible--for I saw that it would be in vain to attempt changing his mind--I directed his attention to a long bright unwooded tract of land which, sweeping down from the elevations in the interior, descended into the valley before us. I then suggested to him that beyond this ridge might lie a capacious and untenanted valley, abounding with all manner of delicious fruits; for I had heard that there were several such upon the island, and proposed that we should endeavour to reach it, and if we found our expectations realized we should at once take refuge in it and remain there as long as we pleased.\n\n He acquiesced in the suggestion; and we immediately, therefore, began surveying the country lying before us, with a view of determining upon the best route for us to pursue; but it presented little choice, the whole interval being broken into steep ridges, divided by dark ravines, extending in parallel lines at right angles to our direct course. All these we would be obliged to cross before we could hope to arrive at our destination.\n\n A weary journey! But we decided to undertake it, though, for my own part, I felt little prepared to encounter its fatigues, shivering and burning by turns with the ague and fever; for I know not how else to describe the alternate sensations I experienced, and suffering not a little from the lameness which afflicted me. Added to this was the faintness consequent on our meagre diet--a calamity in which Andre participated to the same extent as myself.\n\n These circumstances, however, only augmented my anxiety to reach a place which promised us plenty and repose, before I should be reduced to a state which would render me altogether unable to perform the journey. Accordingly we now commenced it by descending the almost perpendicular side of a steep and narrow gorge, bristling with a thick growth of reeds. Here there was but one mode for us to adopt. We seated ourselves upon the ground, and guided our descent by catching at the canes in our path. This velocity with which we thus slid down the side of the ravine soon brought us to a point where we could use our feet, and in a short time we arrived at the edge of the torrent, which rolled impetuously along the bed of the chasm.\n\n After taking a refreshing draught from the water of the stream, we addressed ourselves to a much more difficult undertaking than the last. Every foot of our late descent had to be regained in ascending the opposite side of the gorge--an operation rendered the less agreeable from the consideration that in these perpendicular episodes we did not progress a hundred yards on our journey. But, ungrateful as the task was, we set about it with exemplary patience, and after a snail-like progress of an hour or more, had scaled perhaps one half of the distance, when the fever which had left me for a while returned with such violence, and accompanied by so raging a thirst, that it required all the entreaties of Andre to prevent me from losing all the fruits of my late exertion, by precipitating myself madly down the cliffs we had just climbed, in quest of the water which flowed so temptingly at their base. At the moment all my hopes and fears appeared to be merged in this one desire, careless of the consequences that might result from its gratification. I am aware of no feeling, either of pleasure or of pain, that so completely deprives one of an power to resist its impulses, as this same raging thirst.\n\n Andre earnestly conjured me to continue the ascent, assuring me that a little more exertion would bring us to the summit, and that then in less than five minutes we should find ourselves at the brink of the stream, which must necessarily flow on the other side of the ridge.\n\n 'Do not,' he exclaimed, 'turn back, now that we have proceeded thus far; for I tell you that neither of us will have the courage to repeat the attempt, if once more we find ourselves looking up to where we now are from the bottom of these rocks!'\n\n I was not yet so perfectly beside myself as to be heedless of these representations, and therefore toiled on, ineffectually endeavouring to appease the thirst which consumed me, by thinking that in a short time I should be able to gratify it to my heart's content.\n\n At last we gained the top of the second elevation, the loftiest of those I have described as extending in parallel lines between us and the valley we desired to reach. It commanded a view of the whole intervening distance; and, discouraged as I was by other circumstances, this prospect plunged me into the very depths of despair. Nothing but dark and fearful chasms, separated by sharp-crested and perpendicular ridges as far as the eye could reach. Could we have stepped from summit to summit of these steep but narrow elevations we could easily have accomplished the distance; but we must penetrate to the bottom of every yawning gulf, and scale in succession every one of the eminences before us. Even Andre, although not suffering as I did, was not proof against the disheartening influences of the sight.\n\n But we did not long stand to contemplate it, impatient as I was to reach the waters of the torrent which flowed beneath us. With an insensibility to danger which I cannot call to mind without shuddering, we threw ourselves down the depths of the ravine, startling its savage solitudes with the echoes produced by the falling fragments of rock we every moment dislodged from their places, careless of the insecurity of our footing, and reckless whether the slight roots and twigs we clutched at sustained us for the while, or treacherously yielded to our grasp. For my own part, I scarcely knew whether I was helplessly falling from the heights above, or whether the fearful rapidity with which I descended was an act of my own volition.\n\n In a few minutes we reached the foot of the gorge, and kneeling upon a small ledge of dripping rocks, I bent over to the stream. What a delicious sensation was I now to experience! I paused for a second to concentrate all my capabilities of enjoyment, and then immerged my lips in the clear element before me. Had the apples of Sodom turned to ashes in my mouth, I could not have felt a more startling revulsion. A single drop of the cold fluid seemed to freeze every drop of blood in my body; the fever that had been burning in my veins gave place on the instant to death-like chills, which shook me one after another like so many shocks of electricity, while the perspiration produced by my late violent exertions congealed in icy beads upon my forehead. My thirst was gone, and I fairly loathed the water. Starting to my feet, the sight of those dank rocks, oozing forth moisture at every crevice, and the dark stream shooting along its dismal channel, sent fresh chills through my shivering frame, and I felt as uncontrollable a desire to climb up towards the genial sunlight as I before had to descend the ravine.\n\n After two hours' perilous exertions we stood upon the summit of another ridge, and it was with difficulty I could bring myself to believe that we had ever penetrated the black and yawning chasm which then gaped at our feet. Again we gazed upon the prospect which the height commanded, but it was just as depressing as the one which had before met our eyes. I now felt that in our present situation it was in vain for us to think of ever overcoming the obstacles in our way, and I gave up all thoughts of reaching the vale which lay beyond this series of impediments; while at the same time I could not devise any scheme to extricate ourselves from the difficulties in which we were involved.\n\n The remotest idea of returning to Nukuheva, unless assured of our vessel's departure, never once entered my mind, and indeed it was questionable whether we could have succeeded in reaching it, divided as we were from the bay by a distance we could not compute, and perplexed too in our remembrance of localities by our recent wanderings. Besides, it was unendurable the thought of retracing our steps and rendering all our painful exertions of no avail.\n\n There is scarcely anything when a man is in difficulties that he is more disposed to look upon with abhorrence than a rightabout retrograde movement--a systematic going over of the already trodden ground: and especially if he has a love of adventure, such a course appears indescribably repulsive, so long as there remains the least hope to be derived from braving untried difficulties.\n\n It was this feeling that prompted us to descend the opposite side of the elevation we had just scaled, although with what definite object in view it would have been impossible for either of us to tell.\n\n Without exchanging a syllable upon the subject, Andre and myself simultaneously renounced the design which had lured us thus far--perceiving in each other's countenances that desponding expression which speaks more eloquently than words.\n\n Together we stood towards the close of this weary day in the cavity of the third gorge we had entered, wholly incapacitated for any further exertion, until restored to some degree of strength by food and repose.\n\n We seated ourselves upon the least uncomfortable spot we could select, and Andre produced from the bosom of his frock the sacred package. In silence we partook of the small morsel of refreshment that had been left from the morning's repast, and without once proposing to violate the sanctity of our engagement with respect to the remainder, we rose to our feet, and proceeded to construct some sort of shelter under which we might obtain the sleep we so greatly needed.\n\n Fortunately the spot was better adapted to our purpose than the one in which we had passed the last wretched night. We cleared away the tall reeds from the small but almost level bit of ground, and twisted them into a low basket-like hut, which we covered with a profusion of long thick leaves, gathered from a tree near at hand. We disposed them thickly all around, reserving only a slight opening that barely permitted us to crawl under the shelter we had thus obtained.\n\n These deep recesses, though protected from the winds that assail the summits of their lofty sides, are damp and chill to a degree that one would hardly anticipate in such a climate; and being unprovided with anything but our woollen frocks and thin duck trousers to resist the cold of the place, we were the more solicitous to render our habitation for the night as comfortable as we could. Accordingly, in addition to what we had already done, we plucked down all the leaves within our reach and threw them in a heap over our little hut, into which we now crept, raking after us a reserved supply to form our couch.\n\n That night nothing but the pain I suffered prevented me from sleeping most refreshingly. As it was, I caught two or three naps, while Andre slept away at my side as soundly as though he had been sandwiched between two Holland sheets. Luckily it did not rain, and we were preserved from the misery which a heavy shower would have occasioned us. In the morning I was awakened by the sonorous voice of my companion ringing in my ears and bidding me rise. I crawled out from our heap of leaves, and was astonished at the change which a good night's rest had wrought in his appearance. He was as blithe and joyous as a young bird, and was staying the keenness of his morning's appetite by chewing the soft bark of a delicate branch he held in his hand, and he recommended the like to me as an admirable antidote against the gnawings of hunger.\n\n For my own part, though feeling materially better than I had done the preceding evening, I could not look at the limb that had pained me so violently at intervals during the last twenty-four hours, without experiencing a sense of alarm that I strove in vain to shake off. Unwilling to disturb the flow of my comrade's spirits, I managed to stifle the complaints to which I might otherwise have given vent, and calling upon him good-humouredly to speed our banquet, I prepared myself for it by washing in the stream. This operation concluded, we swallowed, or rather absorbed, by a peculiar kind of slow sucking process, our respective morsels of nourishment, and then entered into a discussion as to the steps is was necessary for us to pursue.\n\n 'What's to be done now?' inquired I, rather dolefully.\n\n 'Descend into that same valley we descried yesterday.' rejoined Andre, with a rapidity and loudness of utterance that almost led me to suspect he had been slyly devouring the broadside of an ox in some of the adjoining thickets. 'What else,' he continued, 'remains for us to do but that, to be sure? Why, we shall both starve to a certainty if we remain here; and as to your fears of those Typees--depend upon it, it is all nonsense.'\n\n 'It is impossible that the inhabitants of such a lovely place as we saw can be anything else but good fellows; and if you choose rather to perish with hunger in one of these soppy caverns, I for one prefer to chance a bold descent into the valley, and risk the consequences'.\n\n 'And who is to pilot us thither,' I asked, 'even if we should decide upon the measure you propose? Are we to go again up and down those precipices that we crossed yesterday, until we reach the place we started from, and then take a flying leap from the cliffs to the valley?'\n\n 'Faith, I didn't think of that,' said Andre; 'sure enough, both sides of the valley appeared to be hemmed in by precipices, didn't they?'\n\n 'Yes,' answered I, 'as steep as the sides of a line-of-battle ship, and about a hundred times as high.' My companion sank his head upon his breast, and remained for a while in deep thought. Suddenly he sprang to his feet, while his eyes lighted up with that gleam of intelligence that marks the presence of some bright idea.\n\n 'Yes, yes,' he exclaimed; 'the streams all run in the same direction, and must necessarily flow into the valley before they reach the sea; all we have to do is just to follow this stream, and sooner or later it will lead us into the vale.'\n\n 'You are right, Andre,' I exclaimed, 'you are right; it must conduct us thither, and quickly too; for, see with what a steep inclination the water descends.'\n\n 'It does, indeed,' burst forth my companion, overjoyed at my verification of his theory, 'it does indeed; why, it is as plain as a pike-staff. Let us proceed at once; come, throw away all those stupid ideas about the Typees, and hurrah for the lovely valley of the Happars.'\n\n 'You will have it to be Happar, I see, my dear fellow; pray Heaven you may not find yourself deceived,' observed I, with a shake of my head.\n\n 'Amen to all that, and much more,' shouted Andre, rushing forward; 'but Happar it is, for nothing else than Happar can it be. So glorious a valley--such forests of bread-fruit trees--such groves of cocoanut--such wilderness of guava-bushes! Ah! shipmate! don't linger behind: in the name of all delightful fruits, I am dying to be at them. Come on, come on; shove ahead, there's a lively lad; never mind the rocks; kick them out of the way, as I do; and tomorrow, old fellow, take my word for it, we shall be in clover. Come on;' and so saying, he dashed along the ravine like a madman, forgetting my inability to keep up with him. In a few minutes, however, the exuberance of his spirits abated, and, pausing for a while, he permitted me to overtake him.\n\n\n\n The fearless confidence of Andre was contagious, and I began to adopt the Happar side of the question. I could not, however, overcome a certain feeling of trepidation as we made our way along these gloomy solitudes. Our progress, at first comparatively easy, became more and more difficult. The bed of the watercourse was covered with fragments of broken rocks, which had fallen from above, offering so many obstructions to the course of the rapid stream, which vexed and fretted about them,--forming at intervals small waterfalls, pouring over into deep basins, or splashing wildly upon heaps of stones.\n\n From the narrowness of the gorge, and the steepness of its sides, there was no mode of advancing but by wading through the water; stumbling every moment over the impediments which lay hidden under its surface, or tripping against the huge roots of trees. But the most annoying hindrance we encountered was from a multitude of crooked boughs, which, shooting out almost horizontally from the sides of the chasm, twisted themselves together in fantastic masses almost to the surface of the stream, affording us no passage except under the low arches which they formed. Under these we were obliged to crawl on our hands and feet, sliding along the oozy surface of the rocks, or slipping into the deep pools, and with scarce light enough to guide us. Occasionally we would strike our heads against some projecting limb of a tree; and while imprudently engaged in rubbing the injured part, would fall sprawling amongst flinty fragments, cutting and bruising ourselves, whilst the unpitying waters flowed over our prostrate bodies. Belzoni, worming himself through the subterranean passages of the Egyptian catacombs, could not have met with great impediments than those we here encountered. But we struggled against them manfully, well knowing our only hope lay in advancing.\n\n Towards sunset we halted at a spot where we made preparations for passing the night. Here we constructed a hut, in much the same way as before, and crawling into it, endeavoured to forget our sufferings. My companion, I believe, slept pretty soundly; but at day break, when we rolled out of our dwelling, I felt nearly disqualified for any further efforts. Andre prescribed as a remedy for my illness the contents of one of our little silk packages, to be taken at once in a single dose. To this species of medical treatment, however, I would by no means accede, much as he insisted upon it; and so we partook of our usual morsel, and silently resumed our journey. It was now the fourth day since we left Nukuheva, and the gnawings of hunger became painfully acute. We were fain to pacify them by chewing the tender bark of roots and twigs, which, if they did not afford us nourishment, were at least sweet and pleasant to the taste.\n\n Our progress along the steep watercourse was necessarily slow, and by noon we had not advanced more than a mile. It was somewhere near this part of the day that the noise of falling waters, which we had faintly caught in the early morning, became more distinct; and it was not long before we were arrested by a rocky precipice of nearly a hundred feet in depth, that extended all across the channel, and over which the wild stream poured in an unbroken leap. On each hand the walls of the ravine presented their overhanging sides both above and below the fall, affording no means whatever of avoiding the cataract by taking a circuit round it.\n\n 'What's to be done now, Andre?' said I.\n\n 'Why,' rejoined he, 'as we cannot retreat, I suppose we must keep shoving along.'\n\n 'Very true, my dear Andre; but how do you purpose accomplishing that desirable object?'\n\n 'By jumping from the top of the fall, if there be no other way,' unhesitatingly replied my companion: 'it will be much the quickest way of descent; but as you are not quite as active as I am, we will try some other way.'\n\n And, so saying, he crept cautiously along and peered over into the abyss, while I remained wondering by what possible means we could overcome this apparently insuperable obstruction. As soon as my companion had completed his survey, I eagerly inquired the result.\n\n 'The result of my observations you wish to know, do you?' began Andre, deliberately, with one of his odd looks: 'well, my lad, the result of my observations is very quickly imparted. It is at present uncertain which of our two necks will have the honour to be broken first; but about a hundred to one would be a fair bet in favour of the man who takes the first jump.'\n\n 'Then it is an impossible thing, is it?' inquired I gloomily.\n\n 'No, shipmate; on the contrary, it is the easiest thing in life: the only awkward point is the sort of usage which our unhappy limbs may receive when we arrive at the bottom, and what sort of travelling trim we shall be in afterwards. But follow me now, and I will show you the only chance we have.' With this he conducted me to the verge of the cataract, and pointed along the side of the ravine to a number of curious looking roots, some three or four inches in thickness, and several feet long, which, after twisting among the fissures of the rock, shot perpendicularly from it and ran tapering to a point in the air, hanging over the gulf like so many dark icicles. They covered nearly the entire surface of one side of the gorge, the lowest of them reaching even to the water. Many were moss grown and decayed, with their extremities snapped short off, and those in the immediate vicinity of the fall were slippery with moisture.\n\n Andre's scheme, and it was a desperate one, was to entrust ourselves to these treacherous-looking roots, and by slipping down from one to another to gain the bottom.\n\n 'Are you ready to venture it?' asked Andre, looking at me earnestly but without saying a word as to the practicability of the plan.\n\n 'I am,' was my reply; for I saw it was our only resource if we wished to advance, and as for retreating, all thoughts of that sort had been long abandoned.\n\n After I had signified my assent, Andre, without uttering a a single word, crawled along the dripping ledge until he gained a point from whence he could just reach one of the largest of the pendant roots; he shook it--it quivered in his grasp, and when he let it go it twanged in the air like a strong, wire sharply struck. Satisfied by his scrutiny, my light limbed companion swung himself nimbly upon it, and twisting his legs round it in sailor fashion, slipped down eight or ten feet, where his weight gave it a motion not un-like that of a pendulum. He could not venture to descend any further; so holding on with one hand, he with the other shook one by one all the slender roots around him, and at last, finding one which he thought trustworthy, shifted him self to it and continued his downward progress.\n\n So far so well; but I could not avoid comparing my heavier frame and disabled condition with his light figure and remarkable activity; but there was no help for it, and in less than a minute's time I was swinging directly over his head. As soon as his upturned eyes caught a glimpse of me, he exclaimed in his usual dry tone, for the danger did not seem to daunt him in the least, 'Mate, do me the kindness not to fall until I get out of your way;' and then swinging himself more on one side, he continued his descent. In the mean time I cautiously transferred myself from the limb down which I had been slipping to a couple of others that were near it, deeming two strings to my bow better than one, and taking care to test their strength before I trusted my weight to them.\n\n On arriving towards the end of the second stage in this vertical journey, and shaking the long roots which were round me, to my consternation they snapped off one after another like so many pipe stems, and fell in fragments against the side of the gulf, splashing at last into the waters beneath.\n\n As one after another the treacherous roots yielded to my grasp, and fell into the torrent, my heart sunk within me. The branches on which I was suspended over the yawning chasm swang to and fro in the air, and I expected them every moment to snap in twain. Appalled at the dreadful fate that menaced me, I clutched frantically at the only large root which remained near me, but in vain; I could not reach it, though my fingers were within a few inches of it. Again and again I tried to reach it, until at length, maddened with the thought of my situation, I swayed myself violently by striking my foot against the side of the rock, and at the instant that I approached the large root caught desperately at it, and transferred myself to it. It vibrated violently under the sudden weight, but fortunately did not give way.\n\n My brain grew dizzy with the idea of the frightful risk I had just run, and I involuntarily closed my eyes to shut out the view of the depth beneath me. For the instant I was safe, and I uttered a devout ejaculation of thanksgiving for my escape.\n\n 'Pretty well done,' shouted Andre underneath me; 'you are nimbler than I thought you to be--hopping about up there from root to root like any young squirrel. As soon as you have diverted yourself sufficiently, I would advise you to proceed.'\n\n 'Aye, aye, Andre, all in good time: two or three more such famous roots as this, and I shall be with you.'\n\n The residue of my downward progress was comparatively easy; the roots were in greater abundance, and in one or two places jutting out points of rock assisted me greatly. In a few moments I was standing by the side of my companion.\n\n Substituting a stout stick for the one I had thrown aside at the top of the precipice, we now continued our course along the bed of the ravine. Soon we were saluted by a sound in advance, that grew by degrees louder and louder, as the noise of the cataract we were leaving behind gradually died on our ears.\n\n 'Another precipice for us, Andre.'\n\n 'Very good; we can descend them, you know--come on.'\n\n Nothing indeed appeared to depress or intimidate this intrepid fellow. Typees or Niagaras, he was as ready to engage one as the other, and I could not avoid a thousand times congratulating myself upon having such a companion in an enterprise like the present.\n\n After an hour's painful progress, we reached the verge of another fall, still loftier than the preceding and flanked both above and below with the same steep masses of rock, presenting, however, here and there narrow irregular ledges, supporting a shallow soil, on which grew a variety of bushes and trees, whose bright verdure contrasted beautifully with the foamy waters that flowed between them.\n\n Andre, who invariably acted as pioneer, now proceeded to reconnoitre. On his return, he reported that the shelves of rock on our right would enable us to gain with little risk the bottom of the cataract. Accordingly, leaving the bed of the stream at the very point where it thundered down, we began crawling along one of those sloping ledges until it carried us to within a few feet of another that inclined downwards at a still sharper angle, and upon which, by assisting each other we managed to alight in safety. We warily crept along this, steadying ourselves by the naked roots of the shrubs that clung to every fissure. As we proceeded, the narrow path became still more contracted, rendering it difficult for us to maintain our footing, until suddenly, as we reached an angle of the wall of rock where we had expected it to widen, we perceived to our consternation that a yard or two further on it abruptly terminated at a place we could not possibly hope to pass.\n\n Andre as usual led the van, and in silence I waited to learn from him how he proposed to extricate us from this new difficulty.\n\n 'Well, my boy,' I exclaimed, after the expiration of several minutes, during which time my companion had not uttered a word, 'what's to be done now?'\n\n He replied in a tranquil tone, that probably the best thing we could do in our present strait was to get out of it as soon as possible.\n\n 'Yes, my dear Andre, but tell me how we are to get out of it.'\n\n 'Something in this sort of style,' he replied, and at the same moment to my horror he slipped sideways off the rocks and, as I then thought, by good fortune merely, alighted among the spreading branches of a species of palm tree, that shooting its hardy roots along a ledge below, curved its trunk upwards into the air, and presented a thick mass of foliage about twenty feet below the spot where we had thus suddenly been brought to a standstill. I involuntarily held my breath, expecting to see the form of my companion, after being sustained for a moment by the branches of the tree, sink through their frail support, and fall headlong to the bottom. To my surprise and joy, however, he recovered himself, and disentangling his limbs from the fractured branches, he peered out from his leafy bed, and shouted lustily, 'Come on, my hearty there is no other alternative!' and with this he ducked beneath the foliage, and slipping down the trunk, stood in a moment at least fifty feet beneath me, upon the broad shelf of rock from which sprung the tree he had descended.\n\n What would I not have given at that moment to have been by his side. The feat he had just accomplished seemed little less than miraculous, and I could hardly credit the evidence of my senses when I saw the wide distance that a single daring act had so suddenly placed between us.\n\n Andre's animating 'come on' again sounded in my ears, and dreading to lose all confidence in myself if I remained meditating upon the step, I once more gazed down to assure myself of the relative bearing of the tree and my own position, and then closing my eyes and uttering one comprehensive ejaculation of prayer, I inclined myself over towards the abyss, and after one breathless instant fell with a crash into the tree, the branches snapping and cracking with my weight, as I sunk lower and lower among them, until I was stopped by coming in contact with a sturdy limb.\n\n In a few moments I was standing at the foot of the tree manipulating myself all over with a view of ascertaining the extent of the injuries I had received. To my surprise the only effects of my feat were a few slight contusions too trifling to care about. The rest of our descent was easily accomplished, and in half an hour after regaining the ravine we had partaken of our evening morsel, built our hut as usual, and crawled under its shelter.\n\n The next morning, in spite of our debility and the agony of hunger under which we were now suffering, though neither of us confessed to the fact, we struggled along our dismal and still difficult and dangerous path, cheered by the hope of soon catching a glimpse of the valley before us, and towards evening the voice of a cataract which had for some time sounded like a low deep bass to the music of the smaller waterfalls, broke upon our ears in still louder tones, and assured us that we were approaching its vicinity.\n\n That evening we stood on the brink of a precipice, over which the dark stream bounded in one final leap of full 300 feet. The sheer descent terminated in the region we so long had sought. On each side of the fall, two lofty and perpendicular bluffs buttressed the sides of the enormous cliff, and projected into the sea of verdure with which the valley waved, and a range of similar projecting eminences stood disposed in a half circle about the head if the vale. A thick canopy of trees hung over the very verge of the fall, leaving an arched aperture for the passage of the waters, which imparted a strange picturesqueness to the scene.\n\n The valley was now before us; but instead of being conducted into its smiling bosom by the gradual descent of the deep watercourse we had thus far pursued, all our labours now appeared to have been rendered futile by its abrupt termination. But, bitterly disappointed, we did not entirely despair.\n\n As it was now near sunset we determined to pass the night where we were, and on the morrow, refreshed by sleep, and by eating at one meal all our stock of food, to accomplish a descent into the valley, or perish in the attempt.\n\n We laid ourselves down that night on a spot, the recollection of which still makes me shudder. A small table of rock which projected over the precipice on one side of the stream, and was drenched by the spray of the fall, sustained a huge trunk of a tree which must have been deposited there by some heavy freshet. It lay obliquely, with one end resting on the rock and the other supported by the side of the ravine. Against it we placed in a sloping direction a number of the half decayed boughs that were strewn about, and covering the whole with twigs and leaves, awaited the morning's light beneath such shelter as it afforded.\n\n\n During the whole of this night the continual roaring of the cataract--the dismal moaning of the gale through the trees--the pattering of the rain, and the profound darkness, affected my spirits to a degree which nothing had ever before produced. Wet, half famished, and chilled to the heart with the dampness of the place, and nearly wild with the pain I endured, I fairly cowered down to the earth under this multiplication of hardships, and abandoned myself to frightful anticipations of evil; and my companion, whose spirit at last was a good deal broken, scarcely uttered a word during the whole night.\n\n At length the day dawned upon us, and rising from our miserable pallet, we stretched our stiffened joints, and after eating all that remained of our bread, prepared for the last stage of our journey. I will not recount every hair-breadth escape, and every fearful difficulty that occurred before we succeeded in reaching the bosom of the valley. As I have already described similar scenes, it will be sufficient to say that at length, after great toil and great dangers, we both stood with no limbs broken at the head of that magnificent vale which five days before had so suddenly burst upon my sight, and almost beneath the shadow of those very cliffs from whose summits we had gazed upon the prospect.\n\n\n\n HOW to obtain the fruit which we felt convinced must grow near at hand was our first thought.\n\n Typee or Happar? A frightful death at the hands of the fiercest of cannibals, or a kindly reception from a gentler race of savages? Which? But it was too late now to discuss a question which would so soon be answered.\n\n The part of the valley in which we found ourselves appeared to be altogether uninhabited. An almost impenetrable thicket extended from side to side, without presenting a single plant affording the nourishment we had confidently calculated upon; and with this object, we followed the course of the stream, casting quick glances as we proceeded into the thick jungles on each hand. My companion--to whose solicitations I had yielded in descending into the valley--now that the step was taken, began to manifest a degree of caution I had little expected from him. He proposed that in the event of our finding an adequate supply of fruit, we should remain in this unfrequented portion of the country--where we should run little chance of being surprised by its occupants, whoever they might be--until sufficiently recruited to resume our journey; when laying a store of food equal to our wants, we might easily regain the bay of Nukuheva, after the lapse of a sufficient interval to ensure the departure of our vessel.\n\n I objected strongly to this proposition, plausible as it was, as the difficulties of the route would be almost insurmountable, unacquainted as we were with the general bearings of the country, and I reminded my companion of the hardships which we had already encountered in our uncertain wanderings; in a word, I said that since we had deemed it advisable to enter the valley, we ought manfully to face the consequences, whatever they might be; the more especially as I was convinced there was no alternative left us but to fall in with the natives at once, and boldly risk the reception they might give us; and that as to myself, I felt the necessity of rest and shelter, and that until I had obtained them, I should be wholly unable to encounter such sufferings as we had lately passed through. To the justice of these observations Andre somewhat reluctantly assented.\n\n We were surprised that, after moving as far as we had along the valley, we should still meet with the same impervious thickets; and thinking, that although the borders of the stream might be lined for some distance with them, yet beyond there might be more open ground, I requested Andre to keep a bright look-out upon one side, while I did the same on the other, in order to discover some opening in the bushes, and especially to watch for the slightest appearance of a path or anything else that might indicate the vicinity of the islanders.\n\n What furtive and anxious glances we cast into those dim-looking shadows! With what apprehensions we proceeded, ignorant at what moment we might be greeted by the javelin of some ambushed savage. At last my companion paused, and directed my attention to a narrow opening in the foliage. We struck into it, and it soon brought us by an indistinctly traced path to a comparatively clear space, at the further end of which we descried a number of the trees, the native name of which is 'annuee', and which bear a most delicious fruit. What a race! I hobbling over the ground like some decrepid wretch, and Andre leaping forward like a greyhound. He quickly cleared one of the trees on which there were two or three of the fruit, but to our chagrin they proved to be much decayed; the rinds partly opened by the birds, and their hearts half devoured. However, we quickly despatched them, and no ambrosia could have been more delicious.\n\n We looked about us uncertain whither to direct our steps, since the path we had so far followed appeared to be lost in the open space around us. At last we resolved to enter a grove near at hand, and had advanced a few rods, when, just upon its skirts, I picked up a slender bread-fruit shoot perfectly green, and with the tender bark freshly stripped from it. It was still slippery with moisture, and appeared as if it had been but that moment thrown aside. I said nothing, but merely held it up to Andre, who started at this undeniable evidence of the vicinity of the savages.\n\n The plot was now thickening.--A short distance further lay a little faggot of the same shoots bound together with a strip of bark. Could it have been thrown down by some solitary native, who, alarmed at seeing us, had hurried forward to carry the tidings of our approach to his countrymen?--Typee or Happar?--But it was too late to recede, so we moved on slowly, my companion in advance casting eager glances under the trees on each side, until all at once I saw him recoil as if stung by an adder. Sinking on his knee, he waved me off with one hand, while with the other he held aside some intervening leaves, and gazed intently at some object.\n\n Disregarding his injunction, I quickly approached him and caught a glimpse of two figures partly hidden by the dense foliage; they were standing close together, and were perfectly motionless. They must have previously perceived us, and withdrawn into the depths of the wood to elude our observation.\n\n My mind was at once made up. Dropping my staff, and tearing open the package of things we had brought from the ship, I unrolled the cotton cloth, and holding it in one hand picked with the other a twig from the bushes beside me, and telling Andre to follow my example, I broke through the covert and advanced, waving the branch in token of peace towards the shrinking forms before me. They were a boy and a girl, slender and graceful, and completely naked, with the exception of a slight girdle of bark, from which depended at opposite points two of the russet leaves of the bread-fruit tree. An arm of the boy, half screened from sight by her wild tresses, was thrown about the neck of the girl, while with the other he held one of her hands in his; and thus they stood together, their heads inclined forward, catching the faint noise we made in our progress, and with one foot in advance, as if half inclined to fly from our presence.\n\n As we drew near, their alarm evidently increased. Apprehensive that they might fly from us altogether, I stopped short and motioned them to advance and receive the gift I extended towards them, but they would not; I then uttered a few words of their language with which I was acquainted, scarcely expected that they would understand me, but to show that we had not dropped from the clouds upon them. This appeared to give them a little confidence, so I approached nearer, presenting the cloth with one hand, and holding the bough with the other, while they slowly retreated. At last they suffered us to approach so near to them that we were enabled to throw the cotton cloth across their shoulders, giving them to understand that it was theirs, and by a variety of gestures endeavouring to make them understand that we entertained the highest possible regard for them.\n\n The frightened pair now stood still, whilst we endeavoured to make them comprehend the nature of our wants. In doing this Andre went through with a complete series of pantomimic illustrations--opening his mouth from ear to ear, and thrusting his fingers down his throat, gnashing his teeth and rolling his eyes about, till I verily believe the poor creatures took us for a couple of white cannibals who were about to make a meal of them. When, however, they understood us, they showed no inclination to relieve our wants. At this juncture it began to rain violently, and we motioned them to lead us to some place of shelter. With this request they appeared willing to comply, but nothing could evince more strongly the apprehension with which they regarded us, than the way in which, whilst walking before us, they kept their eyes constantly turned back to watch every movement we made, and even our very looks.\n\n 'Typee or Happar, Andre?' asked I as we walked after them.\n\n 'Of course Happar,' he replied, with a show of confidence which was intended to disguise his doubts.\n\n 'We shall soon know,' I exclaimed; and at the same moment I stepped forward towards our guides, and pronouncing the two names interrogatively and pointing to the lowest part of the valley, endeavoured to come to the point at once. They repeated the words after me again and again, but without giving any peculiar emphasis to either, so that I was completely at a loss to understand them; for a couple of wilier young things than we afterwards found them to have been on this particular occasion never probably fell in any traveller's way.\n\n More and more curious to ascertain our fate, I now threw together in the form of a question the words 'Happar' and 'Motarkee', the latter being equivalent to the word 'good'. The two natives interchanged glances of peculiar meaning with one another at this, and manifested no little surprise; but on the repetition of the question after some consultation together, to the great joy of Andre, they answered in the affirmative. Andre was now in ecstasies, especially as the young savages continued to reiterate their answer with great energy, as though desirous of impressing us with the idea that being among the Happars, we ought to consider ourselves perfectly secure.\n\n Although I had some lingering doubts, I feigned great delight with Andre at this announcement, while my companion broke out into a pantomimic abhorrence of Typee, and immeasurable love for the particular valley in which we were; our guides all the while gazing uneasily at one another as if at a loss to account for our conduct.\n\n They hurried on, and we followed them; until suddenly they set up a strange halloo, which was answered from beyond the grove through which we were passing, and the next moment we entered upon some open ground, at the extremity of which we descried a long, low hut, and in front of it were several young girls. As soon as they perceived us they fled with wild screams into the adjoining thickets, like so many startled fawns. A few moments after the whole valley resounded with savage outcries, and the natives came running towards us from every direction.\n\n Had an army of invaders made an irruption into their territory they could not have evinced greater excitement. We were soon completely encircled by a dense throng, and in their eager desire to behold us they almost arrested our progress; an equal number surrounded our youthful guides, who with amazing volubility appeared to be detailing the circumstances which had attended their meeting with us. Every item of intelligence appeared to redouble the astonishment of the islanders, and they gazed at us with inquiring looks.\n\n At last we reached a large and handsome building of bamboos, and were by signs told to enter it, the natives opening a lane for us through which to pass; on entering without ceremony, we threw our exhausted frames upon the mats that covered the floor. In a moment the slight tenement was completely full of people, whilst those who were unable to obtain admittance gazed at us through its open cane-work.\n\n It was now evening, and by the dim light we could just discern the savage countenances around us, gleaming with wild curiosity and wonder; the naked forms and tattooed limbs of brawny warriors, with here and there the slighter figures of young girls, all engaged in a perfect storm of conversation, of which we were of course the one only theme, whilst our recent guides were fully occupied in answering the innumerable questions which every one put to them. Nothing can exceed the fierce gesticulation of these people when animated in conversation, and on this occasion they gave loose to all their natural vivacity, shouting and dancing about in a manner that well nigh intimidated us.\n\n Close to where we lay, squatting upon their haunches, were some eight or ten noble-looking chiefs--for such they subsequently proved to be--who, more reserved than the rest, regarded us with a fixed and stern attention, which not a little discomposed our equanimity. One of them in particular, who appeared to be the highest in rank, placed himself directly facing me, looking at me with a rigidity of aspect under which I absolutely quailed. He never once opened his lips, but maintained his severe expression of countenance, without turning his face aside for a single moment. Never before had I been subjected to so strange and steady a glance; it revealed nothing of the mind of the savage, but it appeared to be reading my own.\n\n After undergoing this scrutiny till I grew absolutely nervous, with a view of diverting it if possible, and conciliating the good opinion of the warrior, I took some tobacco from the bosom of my frock and offered it to him. He quietly rejected the proffered gift, and, without speaking, motioned me to return it to its place.\n\n In my previous intercourse with the natives of Nukuheva and Tior, I had found that the present of a small piece of tobacco would have rendered any of them devoted to my service. Was this act of the chief a token of his enmity? Typee or Happar? I asked within myself. I started, for at the same moment this identical question was asked by the strange being before me. I turned to Andre, the flickering light of a native taper showed me his countenance pale with trepidation at this fatal question. I paused for a second, and I know not by what impulse it was that I answered 'Typee'. The piece of dusky statuary nodded in approval, and then murmured 'Motarkee!' 'Motarkee,' said I, without further hesitation 'Typee motarkee.'\n\n What a transition! The dark figures around us leaped to their feet, clapped their hands in transport, and shouted again and again the talismanic syllables, the utterance of which appeared to have settled everything.\n\n When this commotion had a little subsided, the principal chief squatted once more before me, and throwing himself into a sudden rage, poured forth a string of philippics, which I was at no loss to understand, from the frequent recurrence of the word Happar, as being directed against the natives of the adjoining valley. In all these denunciations my companion and I acquiesced, while we extolled the character of the warlike Typees. To be sure our panegyrics were somewhat laconic, consisting in the repetition of that name, united with the potent adjective 'motarkee'. But this was sufficient, and served to conciliate the good will of the natives, with whom our congeniality of sentiment on this point did more towards inspiring a friendly feeling than anything else that could have happened.\n\n At last the wrath of the chief evaporated, and in a few moments he was as placid as ever. Laying his hand upon his breast, he gave me to understand that his name was 'Adrian', and that, in return, he wished me to communicate my appellation. I hesitated for an instant, thinking that it might be difficult for him to pronounce my real name, and then with the most praiseworthy intentions intimated that I was known as 'Tom'. But I could not have made a worse selection; the chief could not master it. 'Addie,' 'Tomma', 'Tommee', everything but plain 'Tom'. As he persisted in garnishing the word with an additional syllable, I compromised the matter with him at the word 'Addie'; and by that name I went during the entire period of my stay in the valley. The same proceeding was gone through with Andre, whose mellifluous appellation was more easily caught.\n\n An exchange of names is equivalent to a ratification of good will and amity among these simple people; and as we were aware of this fact, we were delighted that it had taken place on the present occasion.\n\n Reclining upon our mats, we now held a kind of levee, giving audience to successive troops of the natives, who introduced themselves to us by pronouncing their respective names, and retired in high good humour on receiving ours in return. During this ceremony the greatest merriment prevailed nearly every announcement on the part of the islanders being followed by a fresh sally of gaiety, which induced me to believe that some of them at least were innocently diverting the company at our expense, by bestowing upon themselves a string of absurd titles, of the humour of which we were of course entirely ignorant.\n\n All this occupied about an hour, when the throng having a little diminished, I turned to Adrian and gave him to understand that we were in need of food and sleep. Immediately the attentive chief addressed a few words to one of the crowd, who disappeared, and returned in a few moments with a calabash of 'poee-poee', and two or three young cocoanuts stripped of their husks, and with their shells partly broken. We both of us forthwith placed one of these natural goblets to our lips, and drained it in a moment of the refreshing draught it contained. The poee-poee was then placed before us, and even famished as I was, I paused to consider in what manner to convey it to my mouth.\n\n This staple article of food among the Marquese islanders is manufactured from the produce of the bread-fruit tree. It somewhat resembles in its plastic nature our bookbinders' paste, is of a yellow colour, and somewhat tart to the taste.\n\n Such was the dish, the merits of which I was now eager to discuss. I eyed it wistfully for a moment, and then, unable any longer to stand on ceremony, plunged my hand into the yielding mass, and to the boisterous mirth of the natives drew it forth laden with the poee-poee, which adhered in lengthy strings to every finger. So stubborn was its consistency, that in conveying my heavily-weighted hand to my mouth, the connecting links almost raised the calabash from the mats on which it had been placed. This display of awkwardness--in which, by-the-bye, Andre kept me company--convulsed the bystanders with uncontrollable laughter.\n\n As soon as their merriment had somewhat subsided, Adrian, motioning us to be attentive, dipped the forefinger of his right hand in the dish, and giving it a rapid and scientific twirl, drew it out coated smoothly with the preparation. With a second peculiar flourish he prevented the poee-poee from dropping to the ground as he raised it to his mouth, into which the finger was inserted and drawn forth perfectly free from any adhesive matter.\n\n This performance was evidently intended for our instruction; so I again essayed the feat on the principles inculcated, but with very ill success.\n\n A starving man, however, little heeds conventional proprieties, especially on a South-Sea Island, and accordingly Andre and I partook of the dish after our own clumsy fashion, beplastering our faces all over with the glutinous compound, and daubing our hands nearly to the wrist. This kind of food is by no means disagreeable to the palate of a European, though at first the mode of eating it may be. For my own part, after the lapse of a few days I became accustomed to its singular flavour, and grew remarkably fond of it.\n\n So much for the first course; several other dishes followed it, some of which were positively delicious. We concluded our banquet by tossing off the contents of two more young cocoanuts, after which we regaled ourselves with the soothing fumes of tobacco, inhaled from a quaintly carved pipe which passed round the circle.\n\n During the repast, the natives eyed us with intense curiosity, observing our minutest motions, and appearing to discover abundant matter for comment in the most trifling occurrence. Their surprise mounted the highest, when we began to remove our uncomfortable garments, which were saturated with rain. They scanned the whiteness of our limbs, and seemed utterly unable to account for the contrast they presented to the swarthy hue of our faces embrowned from a six months' exposure to the scorching sun of the Line. They felt our skin, much in the same way that a silk mercer would handle a remarkably fine piece of satin; and some of them went so far in their investigation as to apply the olfactory organ.\n\n Their singular behaviour almost led me to imagine that they never before had beheld a white man; but a few moments' reflection convinced me that this could not have been the case; and a more satisfactory reason for their conduct has since suggested itself to my mind.\n\n Deterred by the frightful stories related of its inhabitants, ships never enter this bay, while their hostile relations with the tribes in the adjoining valleys prevent the Typees from visiting that section of the island where vessels occasionally lie. At long intervals, however, some intrepid captain will touch on the skirts of the bay, with two or three armed boats' crews and accompanied by interpreters. The natives who live near the sea descry the strangers long before they reach their waters, and aware of the purpose for which they come, proclaim loudly the news of their approach. By a species of vocal telegraph the intelligence reaches the inmost recesses of the vale in an inconceivably short space of time, drawing nearly its whole population down to the beach laden with every variety of fruit. The interpreter, who is invariably a 'tabooed Kanaka'*, leaps ashore with the goods intended for barter, while the boats, with their oars shipped, and every man on his thwart, lie just outside the surf, heading off the shore, in readiness at the first untoward event to escape to the open sea. As soon as the traffic is concluded, one of the boats pulls in under cover of the muskets of the others, the fruit is quickly thrown into her, and the transient visitors precipitately retire from what they justly consider so dangerous a vicinity.\n\n * The word 'Kanaka' is at the present day universally used in the South Seas by Europeans to designate the Islanders. In the various dialects of the principal groups it is simply a sexual designation applied to the males; but it is now used by the natives in their intercourse with foreigners in the same sense in which the latter employ it.\n\n A 'Tabooed Kanaka' is an islander whose person has been made to a certain extent sacred by the operation of a singular custom hereafter to be explained.\n\n\n\n The intercourse occurring with Europeans being so restricted, no wonder that the inhabitants of the valley manifested so much curiosity with regard to us, appearing as we did among them under such singular circumstances. I have no doubt that we were the first white men who ever penetrated thus far back into their territories, or at least the first who had ever descended from the head of the vale. What had brought us thither must have appeared a complete mystery to them, and from our ignorance of the language it was impossible for us to enlighten them. In answer to inquiries which the eloquence of their gestures enabled us to comprehend, all that we could reply was, that we had come from Nukuheva, a place, be it remembered, with which they were at open war. This intelligence appeared to affect them with the most lively emotions. 'Nukuheva motarkee?' they asked. Of course we replied most energetically in the negative.\n\n Then they plied us with a thousand questions, of which we could understand nothing more than that they had reference to the recent movements of the French, against whom they seemed to cherish the most fierce hatred. So eager were they to obtain information on this point, that they still continued to propound their queries long after we had shown that we were utterly unable to answer them. Occasionally we caught some indistinct idea of their meaning, when we would endeavour by every method in our power to communicate the desired intelligence. At such times their gratification was boundless, and they would redouble their efforts to make us comprehend them more perfectly. But all in vain; and in the end they looked at us despairingly, as if we were the receptacles of invaluable information; but how to come at it they knew not.\n\n After a while the group around us gradually dispersed, and we were left about midnight (as we conjectured) with those who appeared to be permanent residents of the house. These individuals now provided us with fresh mats to lie upon, covered us with several folds of tappa, and then extinguishing the tapers that had been burning, threw themselves down beside us, and after a little desultory conversation were soon sound asleep.\n\n\n\n VARIOUS and conflicting were the thoughts which oppressed me during the silent hours that followed the events related in the preceding chapter. Andre, wearied with the fatigues of the day, slumbered heavily by my side; but the pain under which I was suffering effectually prevented my sleeping, and I remained distressingly alive to all the fearful circumstances of our present situation. Was it possible that, after all our vicissitudes, we were really in the terrible valley of Typee, and at the mercy of its inmates, a fierce and unrelenting tribe of savages? Typee or Happar? I shuddered when I reflected that there was no longer any room for doubt; and that, beyond all hope of escape, we were now placed in those very circumstances from the bare thought of which I had recoiled with such abhorrence but a few days before. What might not be our fearful destiny? To be sure, as yet we had been treated with no violence; nay, had been even kindly and hospitably entertained. But what dependence could be placed upon the fickle passions which sway the bosom of a savage? His inconstancy and treachery are proverbial. Might it not be that beneath these fair appearances the islanders covered some perfidious design, and that their friendly reception of us might only precede some horrible catastrophe? How strongly did these forebodings spring up in my mind as I lay restlessly upon a couch of mats surrounded by the dimly revealed forms of those whom I so greatly dreaded!\n\n From the excitement of these fearful thoughts I sank towards morning into an uneasy slumber; and on awaking, with a start, in the midst of an appalling dream, looked up into the eager countenance of a number of the natives, who were bending over me.\n\n It was broad day; and the house was nearly filled with young females, fancifully decorated with flowers, who gazed upon me as I rose with faces in which childish delight and curiosity were vividly portrayed. After waking Andre, they seated themselves round us on the mats, and gave full play to that prying inquisitiveness which time out of mind has been attributed to the adorable sex.\n\n As these unsophisticated young creatures were attended by no jealous duennas, their proceedings were altogether informal, and void of artificial restraint. Long and minute was the investigation with which they honoured us, and so uproarious their mirth, that I felt infinitely sheepish; and Andre was immeasurably outraged at their familiarity.\n\n These lively young ladies were at the same time wonderfully polite and humane; fanning aside the insects that occasionally lighted on our brows; presenting us with food; and compassionately regarding me in the midst of my afflictions. But in spite of all their blandishments, my feelings of propriety were exceedingly shocked, for I could but consider them as having overstepped the due limits of female decorum.\n\n Having diverted themselves to their hearts' content, our young visitants now withdrew, and gave place to successive troops of the other sex, who continued flocking towards the house until near noon; by which time I have no doubt that the greater part of the inhabitants of the valley had bathed themselves in the light of our benignant countenances.\n\n At last, when their numbers began to diminish, a superb-looking warrior stooped the towering plumes of his head-dress beneath the low portal, and entered the house. I saw at once that he was some distinguished personage, the natives regarding him with the utmost deference, and making room for him as he approached. His aspect was imposing. The splendid long drooping tail-feathers of the tropical bird, thickly interspersed with the gaudy plumage of the cock, were disposed in an immense upright semicircle upon his head, their lower extremities being fixed in a crescent of guinea-heads which spanned the forehead. Around his neck were several enormous necklaces of boar's tusks, polished like ivory, and disposed in such a manner as that the longest and largest were upon his capacious chest. Thrust forward through the large apertures in his ears were two small and finely-shaped sperm whale teeth, presenting their cavities in front, stuffed with freshly-plucked leaves, and curiously wrought at the other end into strange little images and devices. These barbaric trinkets, garnished in this manner at their open extremities, and tapering and curving round to a point behind the ear, resembled not a little a pair of cornucopias.\n\n The loins of the warrior were girt about with heavy folds of a dark-coloured tappa, hanging before and behind in clusters of braided tassels, while anklets and bracelets of curling human hair completed his unique costume. In his right hand he grasped a beautifully carved paddle-spear, nearly fifteen feet in length, made of the bright koar-wood, one end sharply pointed, and the other flattened like an oar-blade. Hanging obliquely from his girdle by a loop of sinnate was a richly decorated pipe; the slender reed forming its stem was coloured with a red pigment, and round it, as well as the idol-bowl, fluttered little streamers of the thinnest tappa.\n\n But that which was most remarkable in the appearance of this splendid islander was the elaborate tattooing displayed on every noble limb. All imaginable lines and curves and figures were delineated over his whole body, and in their grotesque variety and infinite profusion I could only compare them to the crowded groupings of quaint patterns we sometimes see in costly pieces of lacework. The most simple and remarkable of all these ornaments was that which decorated the countenance of the chief. Two broad stripes of tattooing, diverging from the centre of his shaven crown, obliquely crossed both eyes--staining the lids--to a little below each ear, where they united with another stripe which swept in a straight line along the lips and formed the base of the triangle. The warrior, from the excellence of his physical proportions, might certainly have been regarded as one of Nature's noblemen, and the lines drawn upon his face may possibly have denoted his exalted rank.\n\n This warlike personage, upon entering the house, seated himself at some distance from the spot where Andre and myself reposed, while the rest of the savages looked alternately from us to him, as if in expectation of something they were disappointed in not perceiving. Regarding the chief attentively, I thought his lineaments appeared familiar to me. As soon as his full face was turned upon me, and I again beheld its extraordinary embellishment, and met the strange gaze to which I had been subjected the preceding night, I immediately, in spite of the alteration in his appearance, recognized the noble Adrian. On addressing him, he advanced at once in the most cordial manner, and greeting me warmly, seemed to enjoy not a little the effect his barbaric costume had produced upon me.\n\n I forthwith determined to secure, if possible, the good-will of this individual, as I easily perceived he was a man of great authority in his tribe, and one who might exert a powerful influence upon our subsequent fate. In the endeavour I was not repulsed; for nothing could surpass the friendliness he manifested towards both my companion and myself. He extended his sturdy limbs by our side, and endeavoured to make us comprehend the full extent of the kindly feelings by which he was actuated. The almost insuperable difficulty in communicating to one another our ideas affected the chief with no little mortification. He evinced a great desire to be enlightened with regard to the customs and peculiarities of the far-off country we had left behind us, and to which under the name of Maneeka he frequently alluded.\n\n But that which more than any other subject engaged his attention was the late proceedings of the 'Frannee' as he called the French, in the neighbouring bay of Nukuheva. This seemed a never-ending theme with him, and one concerning which he was never weary of interrogating us. All the information we succeeded in imparting to him on this subject was little more than that we had seen six men-of-war lying in the hostile bay at the time we had left it. When he received this intelligence, Adrian, by the aid of his fingers, went through a long numerical calculation, as if estimating the number of Frenchmen the squadron might contain.\n\n It was just after employing his faculties in this way that he happened to notice the swelling in my limb. He immediately examined it with the utmost attention, and after doing so, despatched a boy who happened to be standing by with some message.\n\n After the lapse of a few moments the stripling re-entered the house with an aged islander, who might have been taken for old Hippocrates himself. His head was as bald as the polished surface of a cocoanut shell, which article it precisely resembled in smoothness and colour, while a long silvery beard swept almost to his girdle of bark. Encircling his temples was a bandeau of the twisted leaves of the Omoo tree, pressed closely over the brows to shield his feeble vision from the glare of the sun. His tottering steps were supported by a long slim staff, resembling the wand with which a theatrical magician appears on the stage, and in one hand he carried a freshly plaited fan of the green leaflets of the cocoanut tree. A flowing robe of tappa, knotted over the shoulder, hung loosely round his stooping form, and heightened the venerableness of his aspect.\n\n Adrian, saluting this old gentleman, motioned him to a seat between us, and then uncovering my limb, desired him to examine it. The leech gazed intently from me to Andre, and then proceeded to business. After diligently observing the ailing member, he commenced manipulating it; and on the supposition probably that the complaint had deprived the leg of all sensation, began to pinch and hammer it in such a manner that I absolutely roared with pain. Thinking that I was as capable of making an application of thumps and pinches to the part as any one else, I endeavoured to resist this species of medical treatment. But it was not so easy a matter to get out of the clutches of the old wizard; he fastened on the unfortunate limb as if it were something for which he had been long seeking, and muttering some kind of incantation continued his discipline, pounding it after a fashion that set me well nigh crazy; while Adrian, upon the same principle which prompts an affectionate mother to hold a struggling child in a dentist's chair, restrained me in his powerful grasp, and actually encouraged the wretch in this infliction of torture.\n\n Almost frantic with rage and pain, I yelled like a bedlamite; while Andre, throwing himself into all the attitudes of a posture-master, vainly endeavoured to expostulate with the natives by signs and gestures. To have looked at my companion, as, sympathizing with my sufferings, he strove to put an end to them, one would have thought that he was the deaf and dumb alphabet incarnated. Whether my tormentor yielded to Andre's entreaties, or paused from sheer exhaustion, I do not know; but all at once he ceased his operations, and at the same time the chief relinquishing his hold upon me, I fell back, faint and breathless with the agony I had endured.\n\n My unfortunate limb was now left much in the same condition as a rump-steak after undergoing the castigating process which precedes cooking. My physician, having recovered from the fatigues of his exertions, as if anxious to make amends for the pain to which he had subjected me, now took some herbs out of a little wallet that was suspended from his waist, and moistening them in water, applied them to the inflamed part, stooping over it at the same time, and either whispering a spell, or having a little confidential chat with some imaginary demon located in the calf of my leg. My limb was now swathed in leafy bandages, and grateful to Providence for the cessation of hostilities, I was suffered to rest.\n\n Adrian shortly after rose to depart; but before he went he spoke authoritatively to one of the natives whom he addressed as Abby; and from the little I could understand of what took place, pointed him out to me as a man whose peculiar business thenceforth would be to attend upon my person. I am not certain that I comprehended as much as this at the time, but the subsequent conduct of my trusty body-servant fully assured me that such must have been the case.\n\n I could not but be amused at the manner in which the chief addressed me upon this occasion, talking to me for at least fifteen or twenty minutes as calmly as if I could understand every word that he said. I remarked this peculiarity very often afterwards in many other of the islanders.\n\n Adrian having now departed, and the family physician having likewise made his exit, we were left about sunset with ten or twelve natives, who by this time I had ascertained composed the household of which Andre and I were members. As the dwelling to which we had been first introduced was the place of my permanent abode while I remained in the valley, and as I was necessarily placed upon the most intimate footing with its occupants, I may as well here enter into a little description of it and its inhabitants. This description will apply also to nearly all the other dwelling-places in the vale, and will furnish some idea of the generality of the natives.\n\n Near one side of the valley, and about midway up the ascent of a rather abrupt rise of ground waving with the richest verdure, a number of large stones were laid in successive courses, to the height of nearly eight feet, and disposed in such a manner that their level surface corresponded in shape with the habitation which was perched upon it. A narrow space, however, was reserved in front of the dwelling, upon the summit of this pile of stones (called by the natives a 'pi-pi'), which being enclosed by a little picket of canes, gave it somewhat the appearance of a verandah. The frame of the house was constructed of large bamboos planted uprightly, and secured together at intervals by transverse stalks of the light wood of the habiscus, lashed with thongs of bark. The rear of the tenement--built up with successive ranges of cocoanut boughs bound one upon another, with their leaflets cunningly woven together--inclined a little from the vertical, and extended from the extreme edge of the 'pi-pi' to about twenty feet from its surface; whence the shelving roof--thatched with the long tapering leaves of the palmetto--sloped steeply off to within about five feet of the floor; leaving the eaves drooping with tassel-like appendages over the front of the habitation. This was constructed of light and elegant canes in a kind of open screenwork, tastefully adorned with bindings of variegated sinnate, which served to hold together its various parts. The sides of the house were similarly built; thus presenting three quarters for the circulation of the air, while the whole was impervious to the rain.\n\n In length this picturesque building was perhaps twelve yards, while in breadth it could not have exceeded as many feet. So much for the exterior; which, with its wire-like reed-twisted sides, not a little reminded me of an immense aviary.\n\n Stooping a little, you passed through a narrow aperture in its front; and facing you, on entering, lay two long, perfectly straight, and well-polished trunks of the cocoanut tree, extending the full length of the dwelling; one of them placed closely against the rear, and the other lying parallel with it some two yards distant, the interval between them being spread with a multitude of gaily-worked mats, nearly all of a different pattern. This space formed the common couch and lounging place of the natives, answering the purpose of a divan in Oriental countries. Here would they slumber through the hours of the night, and recline luxuriously during the greater part of the day. The remainder of the floor presented only the cool shining surfaces of the large stones of which the 'pi-pi' was composed.\n\n From the ridge-pole of the house hung suspended a number of large packages enveloped in coarse tappa; some of which contained festival dresses, and various other matters of the wardrobe, held in high estimation. These were easily accessible by means of a line, which, passing over the ridge-pole, had one end attached to a bundle, while with the other, which led to the side of the dwelling and was there secured, the package could be lowered or elevated at pleasure.\n\n Against the farther wall of the house were arranged in tasteful figures a variety of spears and javelins, and other implements of savage warfare. Outside of the habitation, and built upon the piazza-like area in its front, was a little shed used as a sort of larder or pantry, and in which were stored various articles of domestic use and convenience. A few yards from the pi-pi was a large shed built of cocoanut boughs, where the process of preparing the 'poee-poee' was carried on, and all culinary operations attended to.\n\n Thus much for the house, and its appurtenances; and it will be readily acknowledged that a more commodious and appropriate dwelling for the climate and the people could not possibly be devised. It was cool, free to admit the air, scrupulously clean, and elevated above the dampness and impurities of the ground.\n\n But now to sketch the inmates; and here I claim for my tried servitor and faithful valet Abby the precedence of a first description. As his character will be gradually unfolded in the course of my narrative, I shall for the present content myself with delineating his personal appearance. Abby, though the most devoted and best natured serving-man in the world, was, alas! a hideous object to look upon. He was some twenty-five years of age, and about six feet in height, robust and well made, and of the most extraordinary aspect. His head was carefully shaven with the exception of two circular spots, about the size of a dollar, near the top of the cranium, where the hair, permitted to grow of an amazing length, was twisted up in two prominent knots, that gave him the appearance of being decorated with a pair of horns. His beard, plucked out by the root from every other part of his face, was suffered to droop in hairy pendants, two of which garnished his under lip, and an equal number hung from the extremity of his chin.\n\n Abby, with a view of improving the handiwork of nature, and perhaps prompted by a desire to add to the engaging expression of his countenance, had seen fit to embellish his face with three broad longitudinal stripes of tattooing, which, like those country roads that go straight forward in defiance of all obstacles, crossed his nasal organ, descended into the hollow of his eyes, and even skirted the borders of his mouth. Each completely spanned his physiognomy; one extending in a line with his eyes, another crossing the face in the vicinity of the nose, and the third sweeping along his lips from ear to ear. His countenance thus triply hooped, as it were, with tattooing, always reminded me of those unhappy wretches whom I have sometimes observed gazing out sentimentally from behind the grated bars of a prison window; whilst the entire body of my savage valet, covered all over with representations of birds and fishes, and a variety of most unaccountable-looking creatures, suggested to me the idea of a pictorial museum of natural history, or an illustrated copy of 'Goldsmith's Animated Nature.'\n\n But it seems really heartless in me to write thus of the poor islander, when I owe perhaps to his unremitting attentions the very existence I now enjoy. Abby, I mean thee no harm in what I say in regard to thy outward adornings; but they were a little curious to my unaccustomed sight, and therefore I dilate upon them. But to underrate or forget thy faithful services is something I could never be guilty of, even in the giddiest moment of my life.\n\n The father of my attached follower was a native of gigantic frame, and had once possessed prodigious physical powers; but the lofty form was now yielding to the inroads of time, though the hand of disease seemed never to have been laid upon the aged warrior. Ruth--for such was his name--appeared to have retired from all active participation in the affairs of the valley, seldom or never accompanying the natives in their various expeditions; and employing the greater part of his time in throwing up a little shed just outside the house, upon which he was engaged to my certain knowledge for four months, without appearing to make any sensible advance. I suppose the old gentleman was in his dotage, for he manifested in various ways the characteristics which mark this particular stage of life.\n\n I remember in particular his having a choice pair of ear-ornaments, fabricated from the teeth of some sea-monster. These he would alternately wear and take off at least fifty times in the course of the day, going and coming from his little hut on each occasion with all the tranquillity imaginable. Sometimes slipping them through the slits in his ears, he would seize his spear--which in length and slightness resembled a fishing-pole--and go stalking beneath the shadows of the neighbouring groves, as if about to give a hostile meeting to some cannibal knight. But he would soon return again, and hiding his weapon under the projecting eaves of the house, and rolling his clumsy trinkets carefully in a piece of tappa, would resume his more pacific operations as quietly as if he had never interrupted them.\n\n But despite his eccentricities, Ruth was a most paternal and warm-hearted old fellow, and in this particular not a little resembled his son Abby. The mother of the latter was the mistress of the family, and a notable housewife, and a most industrious old lady she was. If she did not understand the art of making jellies, jams, custard, tea-cakes, and such like trashy affairs, she was profoundly skilled in the mysteries of preparing 'amar', 'poee-poee', and 'kokoo', with other substantial matters.\n\n She was a genuine busy-body; bustling about the house like a country landlady at an unexpected arrival; for ever giving the young girls tasks to perform, which the little hussies as often neglected; poking into every corner, and rummaging over bundles of old tappa, or making a prodigious clatter among the calabashes. Sometimes she might have been seen squatting upon her haunches in front of a huge wooden basin, and kneading poee-poee with terrific vehemence, dashing the stone pestle about as if she would shiver the vessel into fragments; on other occasions, galloping about the valley in search of a particular kind of leaf, used in some of her recondite operations, and returning home, toiling and sweating, with a bundle of it, under which most women would have sunk.\n\n To tell the truth, Abby's mother was the only industrious person in all the valley of Typee; and she could not have employed herself more actively had she been left an exceedingly muscular and destitute widow, with an inordinate ate supply of young children, in the bleakest part of the civilized world. There was not the slightest necessity for the greater portion of the labour performed by the old lady: but she seemed to work from some irresistible impulse; her limbs continually swaying to and fro, as if there were some indefatigable engine concealed within her body which kept her in perpetual motion.\n\n Never suppose that she was a termagant or a shrew for all this; she had the kindliest heart in the world, and acted towards me in particular in a truly maternal manner, occasionally putting some little morsel of choice food into my hand, some outlandish kind of savage sweetmeat or pastry, like a doting mother petting a sickly urchin with tarts and sugar plums. Warm indeed are my remembrances of the dear, good, affectionate old Patty!\n\n Besides the individuals I have mentioned, there belonged to the household three young men, dissipated, good-for-nothing, roystering blades of savages, who were either employed in prosecuting love affairs with the maidens of the tribe, or grew boozy on 'arva' and tobacco in the company of congenial spirits, the scapegraces of the valley.\n\n Among the permanent inmates of the house were likewise several lovely damsels, who instead of thrumming pianos and reading novels, like more enlightened young ladies, substituted for these employments the manufacture of a fine species of tappa; but for the greater portion of the time were skipping from house to house, gadding and gossiping with their acquaintances.\n\n From the rest of these, however, I must except the beauteous nymph Alejandro, who was my peculiar favourite. Her free pliant figure was the very perfection of female grace and beauty. Her complexion was a rich and mantling olive, and when watching the glow upon her cheeks I could almost swear that beneath the transparent medium there lurked the blushes of a faint vermilion.\n\n The face of this girl was a rounded oval, and each feature as perfectly formed as the heart or imagination of man could desire.\n\n Her full lips, when parted with a smile, disclosed teeth of dazzling whiteness and when her rosy mouth opened with a burst of merriment, they looked like the milk-white seeds of the 'arta,' a fruit of the valley, which, when cleft in twain, shows them reposing in rows on each side, imbedded in the red and juicy pulp. Her hair of the deepest brown, parted irregularly in the middle, flowed in natural ringlets over her shoulders, and whenever she chanced to stoop, fell over and hid from view her lovely bosom. Gazing into the depths of her strange blue eyes, when she was in a contemplative mood, they seemed most placid yet unfathomable; but when illuminated by some lively emotion, they beamed upon the beholder like stars. The hands of Alejandro were as soft and delicate as those of any countess; for an entire exemption from rude labour marks the girlhood and even prime of a Typee woman's life. Her feet, though wholly exposed, were as diminutive and fairly shaped as those which peep from beneath the skirts of a Lima lady's dress. The skin of this young creature, from continual ablutions and the use of mollifying ointments, was inconceivably smooth and soft.\n\n I may succeed, perhaps, in particularizing some of the individual features of Alejandro's beauty, but that general loveliness of appearance which they all contributed to produce I will not attempt to describe. The easy unstudied graces of a child of nature like this, breathing from infancy an atmosphere of perpetual summer, and nurtured by the simple fruits of the earth; enjoying a perfect freedom from care and anxiety, and removed effectually from all injurious tendencies, strike the eye in a manner which cannot be pourtrayed. This picture is no fancy sketch; it is drawn from the most vivid recollections of the person delineated.\n\n Were I asked if the beauteous form of Alejandro was altogether free from the hideous blemish of tattooing, I should be constrained to answer that it was not. But the practitioners of the barbarous art, so remorseless in their inflictions upon the brawny limbs of the warriors of the tribe, seem to be conscious that it needs not the resources of their profession to augment the charms of the maidens of the vale.\n\n The females are very little embellished in this way, and Alejandro, and all the other young girls of her age, were even less so than those of their sex more advanced in years. The reason of this peculiarity will be alluded to hereafter. All the tattooing that the nymph in question exhibited upon her person may be easily described. Three minute dots, no bigger than pin-heads, decorated each lip, and at a little distance were not at all discernible. Just upon the fall of the shoulder were drawn two parallel lines half an inch apart, and perhaps three inches in length, the interval being filled with delicately executed figures. These narrow bands of tattooing, thus placed, always reminded me of those stripes of gold lace worn by officers in undress, and which are in lieu of epaulettes to denote their rank.\n\n Thus much was Alejandro tattooed. The audacious hand which had gone so far in its desecrating work stopping short, apparently wanting the heart to proceed.\n\n But I have omitted to describe the dress worn by this nymph of the valley.\n\n Alejandro--I must avow the fact--for the most part clung to the primitive and summer garb of Eden. But how becoming the costume!\n\n It showed her fine figure to the best possible advantage; and nothing could have been better adapted to her peculiar style of beauty. On ordinary occasions she was habited precisely as I have described the two youthful savages whom we had met on first entering the valley. At other times, when rambling among the groves, or visiting at the houses of her acquaintances, she wore a tunic of white tappa, reaching from her waist to a little below the knees; and when exposed for any length of time to the sun, she invariably protected herself from its rays by a floating mantle of--the same material, loosely gathered about the person. Her gala dress will be described hereafter.\n\n As the beauties of our own land delight in bedecking themselves with fanciful articles of jewellery, suspending them from their ears, hanging them about their necks, and clasping them around their wrists; so Alejandro and her companions were in the habit of ornamenting themselves with similar appendages.\n\n Flora was their jeweller. Sometimes they wore necklaces of small carnation flowers, strung like rubies upon a fibre of tappa, or displayed in their ears a single white bud, the stem thrust backward through the aperture, and showing in front the delicate petals folded together in a beautiful sphere, and looking like a drop of the purest pearl. Chaplets too, resembling in their arrangement the strawberry coronal worn by an English peeress, and composed of intertwined leaves and blossoms, often crowned their temples; and bracelets and anklets of the same tasteful pattern were frequently to be seen. Indeed, the maidens of the island were passionately fond of flowers, and never wearied of decorating their persons with them; a lovely trait in their character, and one that ere long will be more fully alluded to.\n\n Though in my eyes, at least, Alejandro was indisputably the loveliest female I saw in Typee, yet the description I have given of her will in some measure apply to nearly all the youthful portion of her sex in the valley. Judge ye then, reader, what beautiful creatures they must have been.\n\n\n\n WHEN Adrian had departed from the house, as related in the preceding chapter, Abby commenced the functions of the post assigned him. He brought out, various kinds of food; and, as if I were an infant, insisted upon feeding me with his own hands. To this procedure I, of course, most earnestly objected, but in vain; and having laid a calabash of kokoo before me, he washed his fingers in a vessel of water, and then putting his hands into the dish and rolling the food into little balls, put them one after another into my mouth. All my remonstrances against this measure only provoked so great a clamour on his part, that I was obliged to acquiesce; and the operation of feeding being thus facilitated, the meal was quickly despatched. As for Andre, he was allowed to help himself after his own fashion.\n\n The repast over, my attendant arranged the mats for repose, and, bidding me lie down, covered me with a large robe of tappa, at the same time looking approvingly upon me, and exclaiming 'Ki-Ki, nuee nuee, ah! moee moee motarkee' (eat plenty, ah! sleep very good). The philosophy of this sentiment I did not pretend to question; for deprived of sleep for several preceding nights, and the pain of my limb having much abated, I now felt inclined to avail myself of the opportunity afforded me.\n\n The next morning, on waking, I found Abby stretched out on one side of me, while my companion lay upon the other. I felt sensibly refreshed after a night of sound repose, and immediately agreed to the proposition of my valet that I should repair to the water and wash, although dreading the suffering that the exertion might produce. From this apprehension, however, I was quickly relieved; for Abby, leaping from the pi-pi, and then backing himself up against it, like a porter in readiness to shoulder a trunk, with loud vociferations and a superabundance of gestures, gave me to understand that I was to mount upon his back and be thus transported to the stream, which flowed perhaps two hundred yards from the house.\n\n Our appearance upon the verandah in front of the habitation drew together quite a crowd, who stood looking on and conversing with one another in the most animated manner. They reminded one of a group of idlers gathered about the door of a village tavern when the equipage of some distinguished traveller is brought round previously to his departure. As soon as I clasped my arms about the neck of the devoted fellow, and he jogged off with me, the crowd--composed chiefly of young girls and boys--followed after, shouting and capering with infinite glee, and accompanied us to the banks of the stream.\n\n On gaining it, Abby, wading up to his hips in the water, carried me half way across, and deposited me on a smooth black stone which rose a few inches above the surface. The amphibious rabble at our heels plunged in after us, and climbing to the summit of the grass-grown rocks with which the bed of the brook was here and there broken, waited curiously to witness our morning ablutions.\n\n Somewhat embarrassed by the presence of the female portion of the company, and feeling my cheeks burning with bashful timidity, I formed a primitive basin by joining my hands together, and cooled my blushes in the water it contained; then removing my frock, bent over and washed myself down to my waist in the stream. As soon as Abby comprehended from my motions that this was to be the extent of my performance, he appeared perfectly aghast with astonishment, and rushing towards me, poured out a torrent of words in eager deprecation of so limited an operation, enjoining me by unmistakable signs to immerse my whole body. To this I was forced to consent; and the honest fellow regarding me as a froward, inexperienced child, whom it was his duty to serve at the risk of offending, lifted me from the rocks, and tenderly bathed my limbs. This over, and resuming my seat, I could not avoid bursting into admiration of the scene around me.\n\n From the verdant surfaces of the large stones that lay scattered about, the natives were now sliding off into the water, diving and ducking beneath the surface in all directions--the young girls springing buoyantly into the air, and revealing their naked forms to the waist, with their long tresses dancing about their shoulders, their eyes sparkling like drops of dew in the sun, and their gay laughter pealing forth at every frolicsome incident. On the afternoon of the day that I took my first bath in the valley, we received another visit from Adrian. The noble savage seemed to be in the same pleasant mood, and was quite as cordial in his manner as before. After remaining about an hour, he rose from the mats, and motioning to leave the house, invited Andre and myself to accompany him. I pointed to my leg; but Adrian in his turn pointed to Abby, and removed that objection; so, mounting upon the faithful fellow's shoulders again--like the old man of the sea astride of Sindbad--I followed after the chief.\n\n The nature of the route we now pursued struck me more forcibly than anything I had yet seen, as illustrating the indolent disposition of the islanders. The path was obviously the most beaten one in the valley, several others leading from each side into it, and perhaps for successive generations it had formed the principal avenue of the place. And yet, until I grew more familiar with its impediments, it seemed as difficult to travel as the recesses of a wilderness. Part of it swept around an abrupt rise of ground, the surface of which was broken by frequent inequalities, and thickly strewn with projecting masses of rocks, whose summits were often hidden from view by the drooping foliage of the luxurious vegetation. Sometimes directly over, sometimes evading these obstacles with a wide circuit, the path wound along;--one moment climbing over a sudden eminence smooth with continued wear, then descending on the other side into a steep glen, and crossing the flinty channel of a brook. Here it pursued the depths of a glade, occasionally obliging you to stoop beneath vast horizontal branches; and now you stepped over huge trunks and boughs that lay rotting across the track.\n\n Such was the grand thoroughfare of Typee. After proceeding a little distance along it--Abby panting and blowing with the weight of his burden--I dismounted from his back, and grasping the long spear of Adrian in my hand, assisted my steps over the numerous obstacles of the road; preferring this mode of advance to one which, from the difficulties of the way, was equally painful to myself and my wearied servitor.\n\n Our journey was soon at an end; for, scaling a sudden height, we came abruptly upon the place of our destination. I wish that it were possible to sketch in words this spot as vividly as I recollect it.\n\n Here were situated the Taboo groves of the valley--the scene of many a prolonged feast, of many a horrid rite. Beneath the dark shadows of the consecrated bread-fruit trees there reigned a solemn twilight--a cathedral-like gloom. The frightful genius of pagan worship seemed to brood in silence over the place, breathing its spell upon every object around. Here and there, in the depths of these awful shades, half screened from sight by masses of overhanging foliage, rose the idolatrous altars of the savages, built of enormous blocks of black and polished stone, placed one upon another, without cement, to the height of twelve or fifteen feet, and surmounted by a rustic open temple, enclosed with a low picket of canes, within which might be seen, in various stages of decay, offerings of bread-fruit and cocoanuts, and the putrefying relics of some recent sacrifice.\n\n In the midst of the wood was the hallowed 'Hoolah Hoolah' ground--set apart for the celebration of the fantastical religious ritual of these people--comprising an extensive oblong pi-pi, terminating at either end in a lofty terraced altar, guarded by ranks of hideous wooden idols, and with the two remaining sides flanked by ranges of bamboo sheds, opening towards the interior of the quadrangle thus formed. Vast trees, standing in the middle of this space, and throwing over it an umbrageous shade, had their massive trunks built round with slight stages, elevated a few feet above the ground, and railed in with canes, forming so many rustic pulpits, from which the priests harangued their devotees.\n\n This holiest of spots was defended from profanation by the strictest edicts of the all-pervading 'taboo', which condemned to instant death the sacrilegious female who should enter or touch its sacred precincts, or even so much as press with her feet the ground made holy by the shadows that it cast.\n\n Access was had to the enclosure through an embowered entrance, on one side, facing a number of towering cocoanut trees, planted at intervals along a level area of a hundred yards. At the further extremity of this space was to be seen a building of considerable size, reserved for the habitation of the priests and religious attendants of the groves.\n\n In its vicinity was another remarkable edifice, built as usual upon the summit of a pi-pi, and at least two hundred feet in length, though not more than twenty in breadth. The whole front of this latter structure was completely open, and from one end to the other ran a narrow verandah, fenced in on the edge of the pi-pi with a picket of canes. Its interior presented the appearance of an immense lounging place, the entire floor being strewn with successive layers of mats, lying between parallel trunks of cocoanut trees, selected for the purpose from the straightest and most symmetrical the vale afforded.\n\n To this building, denominated in the language of the natives the 'Ti', Adrian now conducted us. Thus far we had been accompanied by a troop of the natives of both sexes; but as soon as we approached its vicinity, the females gradually separated themselves from the crowd, and standing aloof, permitted us to pass on. The merciless prohibitions of the taboo extended likewise to this edifice, and were enforced by the same dreadful penalty that secured the Hoolah-Hoolah ground from the imaginary pollution of a woman's presence.\n\n On entering the house, I was surprised to see six muskets ranged against the bamboo on one side, from the barrels of which depended as many small canvas pouches, partly filled with powder.\n\n Disposed about these muskets, like the cutlasses that decorate the bulkhead of a man-of-war's cabin, were a great variety of rude spears and paddles, javelins, and war-clubs. This then, said I to Andre, must be the armoury of the tribe.\n\n As we advanced further along the building, we were struck with the aspect of four or five hideous old wretches, on whose decrepit forms time and tattooing seemed to have obliterated every trace of humanity. Owing to the continued operation of this latter process, which only terminates among the warriors of the island after all the figures stretched upon their limbs in youth have been blended together--an effect, however, produced only in cases of extreme longevity--the bodies of these men were of a uniform dull green colour--the hue which the tattooing gradually assumes as the individual advances in age. Their skin had a frightful scaly appearance, which, united with its singular colour, made their limbs not a little resemble dusty specimens of verde-antique. Their flesh, in parts, hung upon them in huge folds, like the overlapping plaits on the flank of a rhinoceros. Their heads were completely bald, whilst their faces were puckered into a thousand wrinkles, and they presented no vestige of a beard. But the most remarkable peculiarity about them was the appearance of their feet; the toes, like the radiating lines of the mariner's compass, pointed to every quarter of the horizon. This was doubtless attributable to the fact, that during nearly a hundred years of existence the said toes never had been subjected to any artificial confinement, and in their old age, being averse to close neighbourhood, bid one another keep open order.\n\n These repulsive-looking creatures appeared to have lost the use of their lower limbs altogether; sitting upon the floor cross-legged in a state of torpor. They never heeded us in the least, scarcely looking conscious of our presence, while Adrian seated us upon the mats, and Abby gave utterance to some unintelligible gibberish.\n\n In a few moments a boy entered with a wooden trencher of poee-poee; and in regaling myself with its contents I was obliged again to submit to the officious intervention of my indefatigable servitor. Various other dishes followed, the chief manifesting the most hospitable importunity in pressing us to partake, and to remove all bashfulness on our part, set us no despicable example in his own person.\n\n The repast concluded, a pipe was lighted, which passed from mouth to mouth, and yielding to its soporific influence, the quiet of the place, and the deepening shadows of approaching night, my companion and I sank into a kind of drowsy repose, while the chief and Abby seemed to be slumbering beside us.\n\n I awoke from an uneasy nap, about midnight, as I supposed; and, raising myself partly from the mat, became sensible that we were enveloped in utter darkness. Andre lay still asleep, but our late companions had disappeared. The only sound that interrupted the silence of the place was the asthmatic breathing of the old men I have mentioned, who reposed at a little distance from us. Besides them, as well as I could judge, there was no one else in the house.\n\n Apprehensive of some evil, I roused my comrade, and we were engaged in a whispered conference concerning the unexpected withdrawal of the natives when all at once, from the depths of the grove, in full view of us where we lay, shoots of flame were seen to rise, and in a few moments illuminated the surrounding trees, casting, by contrast, into still deeper gloom the darkness around us.\n\n While we continued gazing at this sight, dark figures appeared moving to and fro before the flames; while others, dancing and capering about, looked like so many demons.\n\n Regarding this new phenomenon with no small degree of trepidation, I said to my companion, 'What can all this mean, Andre?'\n\n 'Oh, nothing,' replied he; 'getting the fire ready, I suppose.'\n\n 'Fire!' exclaimed I, while my heart took to beating like a trip-hammer, 'what fire?'\n\n 'Why, the fire to cook us, to be sure, what else would the cannibals be kicking up such a row about if it were not for that?'\n\n 'Oh, Andre! have done with your jokes; this is no time for them; something is about to happen, I feel confident.'\n\n 'Jokes, indeed?' exclaimed Andre indignantly. 'Did you ever hear me joke? Why, for what do you suppose the devils have been feeding us up in this kind of style during the last three days, unless it were for something that you are too much frightened at to talk about? Look at that Abby there!--has he not been stuffing you with his confounded mushes, just in the way they treat swine before they kill them? Depend upon it, we will be eaten this blessed night, and there is the fire we shall be roasted by.'\n\n This view of the matter was not at all calculated to allay my apprehensions, and I shuddered when I reflected that we were indeed at the mercy of a tribe of cannibals, and that the dreadful contingency to which Andre had alluded was by no means removed beyond the bounds of possibility.\n\n 'There! I told you so! they are coming for us!' exclaimed my companion the next moment, as the forms of four of the islanders were seen in bold relief against the illuminated back-ground mounting the pi-pi and approaching towards us.\n\n They came on noiselessly, nay stealthily, and glided along through the gloom that surrounded us as if about to spring upon some object they were fearful of disturbing before they should make sure of it.--Gracious heaven! the horrible reflections which crowded upon me that moment.--A cold sweat stood upon my brow, and spell-bound with terror I awaited my fate!\n\n Suddenly the silence was broken by the well-remembered tones of Adrian, and at the kindly accents of his voice my fears were immediately dissipated. 'Addie, Andre, ki ki!' (eat). He had waited to address us, until he had assured himself that we were both awake, at which he seemed somewhat surprised.\n\n 'Ki ki! is it?' said Andre in his gruff tones; 'Well, cook us first, will you--but what's this?' he added, as another savage appeared, bearing before him a large trencher of wood containing some kind of steaming meat, as appeared from the odours it diffused, and which he deposited at the feet of Adrian. 'A baked baby, I dare say I but I will have none of it, never mind what it is.--A pretty fool I should make of myself, indeed, waked up here in the middle of the night, stuffing and guzzling, and all to make a fat meal for a parcel of booby-minded cannibals one of these mornings!--No, I see what they are at very plainly, so I am resolved to starve myself into a bunch of bones and gristle, and then, if they serve me up, they are welcome! But I say, Addie, you are not going to eat any of that mess there, in the dark, are you? Why, how can you tell what it is?'\n\n 'By tasting it, to be sure,' said I, masticating a morsel that Abby had just put in my mouth, 'and excellently good it is, too, very much like veal.'\n\n 'A baked baby, by the soul of Theodore Cook!' burst forth Andre, with amazing vehemence; 'Veal? why there never was a calf on the island till you landed. I tell you you are bolting down mouthfuls from a dead Happar's carcass, as sure as you live, and no mistake!'\n\n Emetics and lukewarm water! What a sensation in the abdominal region! Sure enough, where could the fiends incarnate have obtained meat? But I resolved to satisfy myself at all hazards; and turning to Adrian, I soon made the ready chief understand that I wished a light to be brought. When the taper came, I gazed eagerly into the vessel, and recognized the mutilated remains of a juvenile porker! 'Puarkee!' exclaimed Abby, looking complacently at the dish; and from that day to this I have never forgotten that such is the designation of a pig in the Typee lingo.\n\n The next morning, after being again abundantly feasted by the hospitable Adrian, Andre and myself arose to depart. But the chief requested us to postpone our intention. 'Abo, abo' (Wait, wait), he said and accordingly we resumed our seats, while, assisted by the zealous Abby, he appeared to be engaged in giving directions to a number of the natives outside, who were busily employed in making arrangements, the nature of which we could not comprehend. But we were not left long in our ignorance, for a few moments only had elapsed, when the chief beckoned us to approach, and we perceived that he had been marshalling a kind of guard of honour to escort us on our return to the house of Ruth.\n\n The procession was led off by two venerable-looking savages, each provided with a spear, from the end of which streamed a pennon of milk-white tappa. After them went several youths, bearing aloft calabashes of poee-poee, and followed in their turn by four stalwart fellows, sustaining long bamboos, from the tops of which hung suspended, at least twenty feet from the ground, large baskets of green bread-fruits. Then came a troop of boys, carrying bunches of ripe bananas, and baskets made of the woven leaflets of cocoanut boughs, filled with the young fruit of the tree, the naked shells stripped of their husks peeping forth from the verdant wicker-work that surrounded them. Last of all came a burly islander, holding over his head a wooden trencher, in which lay disposed the remnants of our midnight feast, hidden from view, however, by a covering of bread-fruit leaves.\n\n Astonished as I was at this exhibition, I could not avoid smiling at its grotesque appearance, and the associations it naturally called up. Adrian, it seemed, was bent on replenishing old Ruth's larder, fearful perhaps that without this precaution his guests might not fare as well as they could desire.\n\n As soon as I descended from the pi-pi, the procession formed anew, enclosing us in its centre; where I remained part of the time, carried by Abby, and occasionally relieving him from his burden by limping along with spear. When we moved off in this order, the natives struck up a musical recitative, which with various alternations, they continued until we arrived at the place of our destination.\n\n As we proceeded on our way, bands of young girls, darting from the surrounding groves, hung upon our skirts, and accompanied us with shouts of merriment and delight, which almost drowned the deep notes of the recitative. On approaching old Ruth's domicile, its inmates rushed out to receive us; and while the gifts of Adrian were being disposed of, the superannuated warrior did the honours of his mansion with all the warmth of hospitality evinced by an English squire when he regales his friends at some fine old patrimonial mansion.\n\n\n\n AMIDST these novel scenes a week passed away almost imperceptibly. The natives, actuated by some mysterious impulse, day after day redoubled their attentions to us. Their manner towards us was unaccountable. Surely, thought I, they would not act thus if they meant us any harm. But why this excess of deferential kindness, or what equivalent can they imagine us capable of rendering them for it?\n\n We were fairly puzzled. But despite the apprehensions I could not dispel, the horrible character imputed to these Typees appeared to be wholly undeserved.\n\n 'Why, they are cannibals!' said Andre on one occasion when I eulogized the tribe. 'Granted,' I replied, 'but a more humane, gentlemanly and amiable set of epicures do not probably exist in the Pacific.'\n\n But, notwithstanding the kind treatment we received, I was too familiar with the fickle disposition of savages not to feel anxious to withdraw from the valley, and put myself beyond the reach of that fearful death which, under all these smiling appearances, might yet menace us. But here there was an obstacle in the way of doing so. It was idle for me to think of moving from the place until I should have recovered from the severe lameness that afflicted me; indeed my malady began seriously to alarm me; for, despite the herbal remedies of the natives, it continued to grow worse and worse. Their mild applications, though they soothed the pain, did not remove the disorder, and I felt convinced that without better aid I might anticipate long and acute suffering.\n\n But how was this aid to be procured? From the surgeons of the French fleet, which probably still lay in the bay of Nukuheva, it might easily have been obtained, could I have made my case known to them. But how could that be effected?\n\n At last, in the exigency to which I was reduced, I proposed to Andre that he should endeavour to go round to Nukuheva, and if he could not succeed in returning to the valley by water, in one of the boats of the squadron, and taking me off, he might at least procure me some proper medicines, and effect his return overland.\n\n My companion listened to me in silence, and at first did not appear to relish the idea. The truth was, he felt impatient to escape from the place, and wished to avail himself of our present high favour with the natives to make good our retreat, before we should experience some sudden alteration in their behaviour. As he could not think of leaving me in my helpless condition, he implored me to be of good cheer; assured me that I should soon be better, and enabled in a few days to return with him to Nukuheva.\n\n Added to this, he could not bear the idea of again returning to this dangerous place; and as for the expectation of persuading the Frenchmen to detach a boat's crew for the purpose of rescuing me from the Typees, he looked upon it as idle; and with arguments that I could not answer, urged the improbability of their provoking the hostilities of the clan by any such measure; especially, as for the purpose of quieting its apprehensions, they had as yet refrained from making any visit to the bay. 'And even should they consent,' said Andre, 'they would only produce a commotion in the valley, in which we might both be sacrificed by these ferocious islanders.' This was unanswerable; but still I clung to the belief that he might succeed in accomplishing the other part of my plan; and at last I overcame his scruples, and he agreed to make the attempt.\n\n As soon as we succeeded in making the natives understand our intention, they broke out into the most vehement opposition to the measure, and for a while I almost despaired of obtaining their consent. At the bare thought of one of us leaving them, they manifested the most lively concern. The grief and consternation of Abby, in particular, was unbounded; he threw himself into a perfect paroxysm of gestures which were intended to convey to us not only his abhorrence of Nukuheva and its uncivilized inhabitants, but also his astonishment that after becoming acquainted with the enlightened Typees, we should evince the least desire to withdraw, even for a time, from their agreeable society.\n\n However, I overbore his objections by appealing to my lameness; from which I assured the natives I should speedily recover if Andre were permitted to obtain the supplies I needed.\n\n It was agreed that on the following morning my companion should depart, accompanied by some one or two of the household, who should point out to him an easy route, by which the bay might be reached before sunset.\n\n At early dawn of the next day, our habitation was astir. One of the young men mounted into an adjoining cocoanut tree, and threw down a number of the young fruit, which old Ruth quickly stripped of the green husks, and strung together upon a short pole. These were intended to refresh Andre on his route.\n\n The preparations being completed, with no little emotion I bade my companion adieu. He promised to return in three days at farthest; and, bidding me keep up my spirits in the interval, turned round the corner of the pi-pi, and, under the guidance of the venerable Ruth, was soon out of sight. His departure oppressed me with melancholy, and, re-entering the dwelling, I threw myself almost in despair upon the matting of the floor.\n\n In two hours' time the old warrior returned, and gave me to understand that after accompanying my companion a little distance, and showing him the route, he had left him journeying on his way.\n\n It was about noon of this same day, a season which these people are wont to pass in sleep, that I lay in the house, surrounded by its slumbering inmates, and painfully affected by the strange silence which prevailed. All at once I thought I heard a faint shout, as if proceeding from some persons in the depth of the grove which extended in front of our habitation.\n\n The sounds grew louder and nearer, and gradually the whole valley rang with wild outcries. The sleepers around me started to their feet in alarm, and hurried outside to discover the cause of the commotion. Abby, who had been the first to spring up, soon returned almost breathless, and nearly frantic with the excitement under which he seemed to be labouring. All that I could understand from him was that some accident had happened to Andre. Apprehensive of some dreadful calamity, I rushed out of the house, and caught sight of a tumultuous crowd, who, with shrieks and lamentations, were just emerging from the grove bearing in their arms some object, the sight of which produced all this transport of sorrow. As they drew near, the men redoubled their cries, while the girls, tossing their bare arms in the air, exclaimed plaintively, 'Awha! awha! Andre mukee moee!'--Alas! alas! Andre is killed!\n\n In a moment the crowd opened, and disclosed the apparently lifeless body of my companion home between two men, the head hanging heavily against the breast of the foremost. The whole face, neck, back, and bosom were covered with blood, which still trickled slowly from a wound behind the temple. In the midst of the greatest uproar and confusion the body was carried into the house and laid on a mat. Waving the natives off to give room and air, I bent eagerly over Andre, and, laying my hand upon the breast, ascertained that the heart still beat. Overjoyed at this, I seized a calabash of water, and dashed its contents upon his face, then wiping away the blood, anxiously examined the wound. It was about three inches long, and on removing the clotted hair from about it, showed the skull laid completely bare. Immediately with my knife I cut away the heavy locks, and bathed the part repeatedly in water.\n\n In a few moments Andre revived, and opening his eyes for a second--closed them again without speaking. Abby, who had been kneeling beside me, now chafed his limbs gently with the palms of his hands, while a young girl at his head kept fanning him, and I still continued to moisten his lips and brow. Soon my poor comrade showed signs of animation, and I succeeded in making him swallow from a cocoanut shell a few mouthfuls of water.\n\n Old Patty now appeared, holding in her hand some simples she had gathered, the juice of which she by signs besought me to squeeze into the wound. Having done so, I thought it best to leave Andre undisturbed until he should have had time to rally his faculties. Several times he opened his lips, but fearful for his safety I enjoined silence. In the course of two or three hours, however, he sat up, and was sufficiently recovered to tell me what had occurred.\n\n 'After leaving the house with Ruth,' said Andre, 'we struck across the valley, and ascended the opposite heights. Just beyond them, my guide informed me, lay the valley of Happar, while along their summits, and skirting the head of the vale, was my route to Nukuheva. After mounting a little way up the elevation my guide paused, and gave me to understand that he could not accompany me any farther, and by various signs intimated that he was afraid to approach any nearer the territories of the enemies of his tribe. He however pointed out my path, which now lay clearly before me, and bidding me farewell, hastily descended the mountain.\n\n 'Quite elated at being so near the Happars, I pushed up the acclivity, and soon gained its summit. It tapered to a sharp ridge, from whence I beheld both the hostile valleys. Here I sat down and rested for a moment, refreshing myself with my cocoanuts. I was soon again pursuing my way along the height, when suddenly I saw three of the islanders, who must have just come out of Happar valley, standing in the path ahead of me. They were each armed with a heavy spear, and one from his appearance I took to be a chief. They sung out something, I could not understand what, and beckoned me to come on.\n\n 'Without the least hesitation I advanced towards them, and had approached within about a yard of the foremost, when, pointing angrily into the Typee valley, and uttering some savage exclamation, he wheeled round his weapon like lightning, and struck me in a moment to the ground. The blow inflicted this wound, and took away my senses. As soon as I came to myself, I perceived the three islanders standing a little distance off, and apparently engaged in some violent altercation respecting me.\n\n 'My first impulse was to run for it; but, in endeavouring to rise, I fell back, and rolled down a little grassy precipice. The shock seemed to rally my faculties; so, starting to my feet, I fled down the path I had just ascended. I had no need to look behind me, for, from the yells I heard, I knew that my enemies were in full pursuit. Urged on by their fearful outcries, and heedless of the injury I had received--though the blood flowing from the wound trickled over into my eyes and almost blinded me--I rushed down the mountain side with the speed of the wind. In a short time I had descended nearly a third of the distance, and the savages had ceased their cries, when suddenly a terrific howl burst upon my ear, and at the same moment a heavy javelin darted past me as I fled, and stuck quivering in a tree close to me. Another yell followed, and a second spear and a third shot through the air within a few feet of my body, both of them piercing the ground obliquely in advance of me. The fellows gave a roar of rage and disappointment; but they were afraid, I suppose, of coming down further into the Typee valley, and so abandoned the chase. I saw them recover their weapons and turn back; and I continued my descent as fast as I could.\n\n 'What could have caused this ferocious attack on the part of these Happars I could not imagine, unless it were that they had seen me ascending the mountain with Ruth, and that the mere fact of coming from the Typee valley was sufficient to provoke them.\n\n 'As long as I was in danger I scarcely felt the wound I had received; but when the chase was over I began to suffer from it. I had lost my hat in the flight, and the run scorched my bare head. I felt faint and giddy; but, fearful of falling to the ground beyond the reach of assistance, I staggered on as well as I could, and at last gained the level of the valley, and then down I sank; and I knew nothing more until I found myself lying upon these mats, and you stooping over me with the calabash of water.'\n\n Such was Andre's account of this sad affair. I afterwards learned that, fortunately, he had fallen close to a spot where the natives go for fuel. A party of them caught sight of him as he fell, and sounding the alarm, had lifted him up; and after ineffectually endeavouring to restore him at the brook, had hurried forward with him to the house.\n\n This incident threw a dark cloud over our prospects. It reminded us that we were hemmed in by hostile tribes, whose territories we could not hope to pass, on our route to Nukuheva, without encountering the effects of their savage resentment. There appeared to be no avenue opened to our escape but the sea, which washed the lower extremities of the vale.\n\n Our Typee friends availed themselves of the recent disaster of Andre to exhort us to a due appreciation of the blessings we enjoyed among them, contrasting their own generous reception of us with the animosity of their neighbours. They likewise dwelt upon the cannibal propensities of the Happars, a subject which they were perfectly aware could not fail to alarm us; while at the same time they earnestly disclaimed all participation in so horrid a custom. Nor did they omit to call upon us to admire the natural loveliness of their own abode, and the lavish abundance with which it produced all manner of luxuriant fruits; exalting it in this particular above any of the surrounding valleys.\n\n Abby seemed to experience so heartfelt a desire to infuse into our minds proper views on these subjects, that, assisted in his endeavours by the little knowledge of the language we had acquired, he actually made us comprehend a considerable part of what he said. To facilitate our correct apprehension of his meaning, he at first condensed his ideas into the smallest possible compass.\n\n 'Happar keekeeno nuee,' he exclaimed, 'nuee, nuee, ki ki kannaka!--ah! owle motarkee!' which signifies, 'Terrible fellows those Happars!--devour an amazing quantity of men!--ah, shocking bad!' Thus far he explained himself by a variety of gestures, during the performance of which he would dart out of the house, and point abhorrently towards the Happar valley; running in to us again with a rapidity that showed he was fearful he would lose one part of his meaning before he could complete the other; and continuing his illustrations by seizing the fleshy part of my arm in his teeth, intimating by the operation that the people who lived over in that direction would like nothing better than to treat me in that manner.\n\n Having assured himself that we were fully enlightened on this point, he proceeded to another branch of his subject. 'Ah! Typee mortakee!--nuee, nuee mioree--nuee, nuee wai--nuee, nuee poee-poee--nuee, nuee kokoo--ah! nuee, nuee kiki--ah! nuee, nuee, nuee!' Which literally interpreted as before, would imply, 'Ah, Typee! isn't it a fine place though!--no danger of starving here, I tell you!--plenty of bread-fruit--plenty of water--plenty of pudding--ah! plenty of everything! ah! heaps, heaps heaps!' All this was accompanied by a running commentary of signs and gestures which it was impossible not to comprehend.\n\n As he continued his harangue, however, Abby, in emulation of our more polished orators, began to launch out rather diffusely into other branches of his subject, enlarging probably upon the moral reflections it suggested; and proceeded in such a strain of unintelligible and stunning gibberish, that he actually gave me the headache for the rest of the day.\n\n\n\n IN the course of a few days Andre had recovered from the effects of his adventure with the Happar warriors; the wound on his head rapidly healing under the vegetable treatment of the good Patty. Less fortunate than my companion however, I still continued to languish under a complaint, the origin and nature of which were still a mystery. Cut off as I was from all intercourse with the civilized world, and feeling the inefficacy of anything the natives could do to relieve me; knowing, too, that so long as I remained in my present condition, it would be impossible for me to leave the valley, whatever opportunity might present itself; and apprehensive that ere long we might be exposed to some caprice on the part of the islanders, I now gave up all hopes of recovery, and became a prey to the most gloomy thoughts. A deep dejection fell upon me, which neither the friendly remonstrances of my companion, the devoted attentions of Abby nor all the soothing influences of Alejandro could remove.\n\n One morning as I lay on the mats in the house, plunged in melancholy reverie, and regardless of everything around me, Andre, who had left me about an hour, returned in haste, and with great glee told me to cheer up and be of good heart; for he believed, from what was going on among the natives, that there were boats approaching the bay.\n\n These tidings operated upon me like magic. The hour of our deliverance was at hand, and starting up, I was soon convinced that something unusual was about to occur. The word 'botee! botee!' was vociferated in all directions; and shouts were heard in the distance, at first feebly and faintly; but growing louder and nearer at each successive repetition, until they were caught up by a fellow in a cocoanut tree a few yards off, who sounding them in turn, they were reiterated from a neighbouring grove, and so died away gradually from point to point, as the intelligence penetrated into the farthest recess of the valley. This was the vocal telegraph of the islanders; by means of which condensed items of information could be carried in a very few minutes from the sea to their remotest habitation, a distance of at least eight or nine miles. On the present occasion it was in active operation; one piece of information following another with inconceivable rapidity.\n\n The greatest commotion now appeared to prevail. At every fresh item of intelligence the natives betrayed the liveliest interest, and redoubled the energy with which they employed themselves in collecting fruit to sell to the expected visitors. Some were tearing off the husks from cocoanuts; some perched in the trees were throwing down bread-fruit to their companions, who gathered them into heaps as they fell; while others were plying their fingers rapidly in weaving leafen baskets in which to carry the fruit.\n\n There were other matters too going on at the same time. Here you would see a stout warrior polishing his spear with a bit of old tappa, or adjusting the folds of the girdle about his waist; and there you might descry a young damsel decorating herself with flowers, as if having in her eye some maidenly conquest; while, as in all cases of hurry and confusion in every part of the world, a number of individuals kept hurrying to and fro, with amazing vigour and perseverance, doing nothing themselves, and hindering others.\n\n Never before had we seen the islanders in such a state of bustle and excitement; and the scene furnished abundant evidence of the fact--that it was only at long intervals any such events occur.\n\n When I thought of the length of time that might intervene before a similar chance of escape would be presented, I bitterly lamented that I had not the power of availing myself effectually of the present opportunity.\n\n From all that we could gather, it appeared that the natives were fearful of arriving too late upon the beach, unless they made extraordinary exertions. Sick and lame as I was, I would have started with Andre at once, had not Abby not only refused to carry me, but manifested the most invincible repugnance to our leaving the neighbourhood of the house. The rest of the savages were equally opposed to our wishes, and seemed grieved and astonished at the earnestness of my solicitations. I clearly perceived that while my attendant avoided all appearance of constraining my movements, he was nevertheless determined to thwart my wishes. He seemed to me on this particular occasion, as well as often afterwards, to be executing the orders of some other person with regard to me, though at the same time feeling towards me the most lively affection.\n\n Andre, who had made up his mind to accompany the islanders if possible, as soon as they were in readiness to depart, and who for that reason had refrained from showing the same anxiety that I had done, now represented to me that it was idle for me to entertain the hope of reaching the beach in time to profit by any opportunity that might then be presented.\n\n 'Do you not see,' said he, 'the savages themselves are fearful of being too late, and I should hurry forward myself at once did I not think that if I showed too much eagerness I should destroy all our hopes of reaping any benefit from this fortunate event. If you will only endeavour to appear tranquil or unconcerned, you will quiet their suspicions, and I have no doubt they will then let me go with them to the beach, supposing that I merely go out of curiosity. Should I succeed in getting down to the boats, I will make known the condition in which I have left you, and measures may then be taken to secure our escape.'\n\n In the expediency of this I could not but acquiesce; and as the natives had now completed their preparations, I watched with the liveliest interest the reception that Andre's application might meet with. As soon as they understood from my companion that I intended to remain, they appeared to make no objection to his proposition, and even hailed it with pleasure. Their singular conduct on this occasion not a little puzzled me at the time, and imparted to subsequent events an additional mystery.\n\n The islanders were now to be seen hurrying along the path which led to the sea. I shook Andre warmly by the hand, and gave him my Payta hat to shield his wounded head from the sun, as he had lost his own. He cordially returned the pressure of my hand, and solemnly promising to return as soon as the boats should leave the shore, sprang from my side, and the next minute disappeared in a turn of the grove.\n\n In spite of the unpleasant reflections that crowded upon my mind, I could not but be entertained by the novel and animated sight which by now met my view. One after another the natives crowded along the narrow path, laden with every variety of fruit. Here, you might have seen one, who, after ineffectually endeavouring to persuade a surly porker to be conducted in leading strings, was obliged at last to seize the perverse animal in his arms, and carry him struggling against his naked breast, and squealing without intermission. There went two, who at a little distance might have been taken for the Hebrew spies, on their return to Moses with the goodly bunch of grape. One trotted before the other at a distance of a couple of yards, while between them, from a pole resting on the shoulders, was suspended a huge cluster of bananas, which swayed to and fro with the rocking gait at which they proceeded. Here ran another, perspiring with his exertions, and bearing before him a quantity of cocoanuts, who, fearful of being too late, heeded not the fruit that dropped from his basket, and appeared solely intent upon reaching his destination, careless how many of his cocoanuts kept company with him.\n\n In a short time the last straggler was seen hurrying on his way, and the faint shouts of those in advance died insensibly upon the ear. Our part of the valley now appeared nearly deserted by its inhabitants, Abby, his aged father, and a few decrepit old people, being all that were left.\n\n Towards sunset the islanders in small parties began to return from the beach, and among them, as they drew near to the house, I sought to descry the form of my companion. But one after another they passed the dwelling, and I caught no glimpse of him. Supposing, however, that he would soon appear with some of the members of the household, I quieted my apprehensions, and waited patiently to see him advancing in company with the beautiful Alejandro. At last, I perceived Patty coming forward, followed by the girls and young men who usually resided in the house of Ruth; but with them came not my comrade, and, filled with a thousand alarms, I eagerly sought to discover the cause of his delay.\n\n My earnest questions appeared to embarrass the natives greatly. All their accounts were contradictory: one giving me to understand that Andre would be with me in a very short time; another that he did not know where he was; while a third, violently inveighing, against him, assured me that he had stolen away, and would never come back. It appeared to me, at the time, that in making these various statements they endeavoured to conceal from me some terrible disaster, lest the knowledge of it should overpower me.\n\n Fearful lest some fatal calamity had overtaken him, I sought out young Alejandro, and endeavoured to learn from her, if possible, the truth.\n\n This gentle being had early attracted my regard, not only from her extraordinary beauty, but from the attractive cast of her countenance, singularly expressive of intelligence and humanity. Of all the natives she alone seemed to appreciate the effect which the peculiarity of the circumstances in which we were placed had produced upon the minds of my companion and myself. In addressing me--especially when I lay reclining upon the mats suffering from pain--there was a tenderness in her manner which it was impossible to misunderstand or resist. Whenever she entered the house, the expression of her face indicated the liveliest sympathy for me; and moving towards the place where I lay, with one arm slightly elevated in a gesture of pity, and her large glistening eyes gazing intently into mine, she would murmur plaintively, 'Awha! awha! Addie,' and seat herself mournfully beside me.\n\n Her manner convinced me that she deeply compassionated my situation, as being removed from my country and friends, and placed beyond the reach of all relief. Indeed, at times I was almost led to believe that her mind was swayed by gentle impulses hardly to be anticipated from one in her condition; that she appeared to be conscious there were ties rudely severed, which had once bound us to our homes; that there were sisters and brothers anxiously looking forward to our return, who were, perhaps, never more to behold us.\n\n In this amiable light did Alejandro appear in my eyes; and reposing full confidence in her candour and intelligence, I now had recourse to her, in the midst of my alarm, with regard to my companion.\n\n My questions evidently distressed her. She looked round from one to another of the bystanders, as if hardly knowing what answer to give me. At last, yielding to my importunities, she overcame her scruples, and gave me to understand that Andre had gone away with the boats which had visited the bay, but had promised to return at the expiration of three days. At first I accused him of perfidiously deserting me; but as I grew more composed, I upbraided myself for imputing so cowardly an action to him, and tranquillized myself with the belief that he had availed himself, of the opportunity to go round to Nukuheva, in order to make some arrangement by which I could be removed from the valley. At any rate, thought I, he will return with the medicines I require, and then, as soon as I recover, there will be no difficulty in the way of our departure.\n\n Consoling myself with these reflections, I lay down that night in a happier frame of mind than I had done for some time. The next day passed without any allusion to Andre on the part of the natives, who seemed desirous of avoiding all reference to the subject. This raised some apprehensions in my breast; but when night came, I congratulated myself that the second day had now gone by, and that on the morrow Andre would again be with me. But the morrow came and went, and my companion did not appear. Ah! thought I, he reckons three days from the morning of his departure,--tomorrow he will arrive. But that weary day also closed upon me, without his return. Even yet I would not despair; I thought that something detained him--that he was waiting for the sailing of a boat, at Nukuheva, and that in a day or two at farthest I should see him again. But day after day of renewed disappointment passed by; at last hope deserted me, and I fell a victim to despair.\n\n Yes; thought I, gloomily, he has secured his own escape, and cares not what calamity may befall his unfortunate comrade. Fool that I was, to suppose that any one would willingly encounter the perils of this valley, after having once got beyond its limits! He has gone, and has left me to combat alone all the dangers by which I am surrounded. Thus would I sometimes seek to derive a desperate consolation from dwelling upon the perfidity of Andre: whilst at other times I sunk under the bitter remorse which I felt as having by my own imprudence brought upon myself the fate which I was sure awaited me.\n\n At other times I thought that perhaps after all these treacherous savages had made away with him, and thence the confusion into which they were thrown by my questions, and their contradictory answers, or he might be a captive in some other part of the valley, or, more dreadful still, might have met with that fate at which my very soul shuddered. But all these speculations were vain; no tidings of Andre ever reached me; he had gone never to return.\n\n The conduct of the islanders appeared inexplicable. All reference to my lost comrade was carefully evaded, and if at any time they were forced to make some reply to my frequent inquiries on the subject, they would uniformly denounce him as an ungrateful runaway, who had deserted his friend, and taken himself off to that vile and detestable place Nukuheva.\n\n But whatever might have been his fate, now that he was gone the natives multiplied their acts of kindness and attention towards myself, treating me with a degree of deference which could hardly have been surpassed had I been some celestial visitant. Abby never for one moment left my side, unless it were to execute my wishes. The faithful fellow, twice every day, in the cool of the morning and in the evening, insisted upon carrying me to the stream, and bathing me in its refreshing water.\n\n Frequently in the afternoon he would carry me to a particular part of the stream, where the beauty of the scene produced a soothing influence upon my mind. At this place the waters flowed between grassy banks, planted with enormous bread-fruit trees, whose vast branches interlacing overhead, formed a leafy canopy; near the stream were several smooth black rocks. One of these, projecting several feet above the surface of the water, had upon its summit a shallow cavity, which, filled with freshly-gathered leaves, formed a delightful couch.\n\n Here I often lay for hours, covered with a gauze-like veil of tappa, while Alejandro, seated beside me, and holding in her hand a fan woven from the leaflets of a young cocoanut bough, brushed aside the insects that occasionally lighted on my face, and Abby, with a view of chasing away my melancholy, performed a thousand antics in the water before us.\n\n As my eye wandered along this romantic stream, it would fall upon the half-immersed figure of a beautiful girl, standing in the transparent water, and catching in a little net a species of diminutive shell-fish, of which these people are extraordinarily fond. Sometimes a chattering group would be seated upon the edge of a low rock in the midst of the brook, busily engaged in thinning and polishing the shells of cocoanuts, by rubbing them briskly with a small stone in the water, an operation which soon converts them into a light and elegant drinking vessel, somewhat resembling goblets made of tortoise shell.\n\n But the tranquillizing influence of beautiful scenery, and the exhibition of human life under so novel and charming an aspect were not my only sources of consolation.\n\n Every evening the girls of the house gathered about me on the mats, and after chasing away Abby from my side--who nevertheless, retired only to a little distance and watched their proceedings with the most jealous attention--would anoint my whole body with a fragrant oil, squeezed from a yellow root, previously pounded between a couple of stones, and which in their language is denominated 'aka'. And most refreshing and agreeable are the juices of the 'aka', when applied to ones, limbs by the soft palms of sweet nymphs, whose bright eyes are beaming upon you with kindness; and I used to hail with delight the daily recurrence of this luxurious operation, in which I forgot all my troubles, and buried for the time every feeling of sorrow.\n\n Sometimes in the cool of the evening my devoted servitor would lead me out upon the pi-pi in front of the house, and seating me near its edge, protect my body from the annoyance of the insects which occasionally hovered in the air, by wrapping me round with a large roll of tappa. He then bustled about, and employed himself at least twenty minutes in adjusting everything to secure my personal comfort.\n\n Having perfected his arrangements, he would get my pipe, and, lighting it, would hand it to me. Often he was obliged to strike a light for the occasion, and as the mode he adopted was entirely different from what I had ever seen or heard of before I will describe it.\n\n A straight, dry, and partly decayed stick of the Hibiscus, about six feet in length, and half as many inches in diameter, with a small, bit of wood not more than a foot long, and scarcely an inch wide, is as invariably to be met with in every house in Typee as a box of lucifer matches in the corner of a kitchen cupboard at home.\n\n The islander, placing the larger stick obliquely against some object, with one end elevated at an angle of forty-five degrees, mounts astride of it like an urchin about to gallop off upon a cane, and then grasping the smaller one firmly in both hands, he rubs its pointed end slowly up and down the extent of a few inches on the principal stick, until at last he makes a narrow groove in the wood, with an abrupt termination at the point furthest from him, where all the dusty particles which the friction creates are accumulated in a little heap.\n\n At first Abby goes to work quite leisurely, but gradually quickens his pace, and waxing warm in the employment, drives the stick furiously along the smoking channel, plying his hands to and fro with amazing rapidity, the perspiration starting from every pore. As he approaches the climax of his effort, he pants and gasps for breath, and his eyes almost start from their sockets with the violence of his exertions. This is the critical stage of the operation; all his previous labours are vain if he cannot sustain the rapidity of the movement until the reluctant spark is produced. Suddenly he stops, becoming perfectly motionless. His hands still retain their hold of the smaller stick, which is pressed convulsively against the further end of the channel among the fine powder there accumulated, as if he had just pierced through and through some little viper that was wriggling and struggling to escape from his clutches. The next moment a delicate wreath of smoke curls spirally into the air, the heap of dusty particles glows with fire, and Abby, almost breathless, dismounts from his steed.\n\n This operation appeared to me to be the most laborious species of work performed in Typee; and had I possessed a sufficient intimacy with the language to have conveyed my ideas upon the subject, I should certainly have suggested to the most influential of the natives the expediency of establishing a college of vestals to be centrally located in the valley, for the purpose of keeping alive the indispensable article of fire; so as to supersede the necessity of such a vast outlay of strength and good temper, as were usually squandered on these occasions. There might, however, be special difficulties in carrying this plan into execution.\n\n What a striking evidence does this operation furnish of the wide difference between the extreme of savage and civilized life. A gentleman of Typee can bring up a numerous family of children and give them all a highly respectable cannibal education, with infinitely less toil and anxiety than he expends in the simple process of striking a light; whilst a poor European artisan, who through the instrumentality of a lucifer performs the same operation in one second, is put to his wit's end to provide for his starving offspring that food which the children of a Polynesian father, without troubling their parents, pluck from the branches of every tree around them.\n\n\n\n ALL the inhabitants of the valley treated me with great kindness; but as to the household of Ruth, with whom I was now permanently domiciled, nothing could surpass their efforts to minister to my comfort. To the gratification of my palate they paid the most unwearied attention. They continually invited me to partake of food, and when after eating heartily I declined the viands they continued to offer me, they seemed to think that my appetite stood in need of some piquant stimulant to excite its activity.\n\n In pursuance of this idea, old Ruth himself would hie him away to the sea-shore by the break of day, for the purpose of collecting various species of rare sea-weed; some of which among these people are considered a great luxury. After a whole day spent in this employment, he would return about nightfall with several cocoanut shells filled with different descriptions of kelp. In preparing these for use he manifested all the ostentation of a professed cook, although the chief mystery of the affair appeared to consist in pouring water in judicious quantities upon the slimy contents of his cocoanut shells.\n\n The first time he submitted one of these saline salads to my critical attention I naturally thought that anything collected at such pains must possess peculiar merits; but one mouthful was a complete dose; and great was the consternation of the old warrior at the rapidity with which I ejected his Epicurean treat.\n\n How true it is, that the rarity of any particular article enhances its value amazingly. In some part of the valley--I know not where, but probably in the neighbourhood of the sea--the girls were sometimes in the habit of procuring small quantities of salt, a thimble-full or so being the result of the united labours of a party of five or six employed for the greater part of the day. This precious commodity they brought to the house, enveloped in multitudinous folds of leaves; and as a special mark of the esteem in which they held me, would spread an immense leaf on the ground, and dropping one by one a few minute particles of the salt upon it, invite me to taste them.\n\n From the extravagant value placed upon the article, I verily believe, that with a bushel of common Liverpool salt all the real estate in Typee might have been purchased. With a small pinch of it in one hand, and a quarter section of a bread-fruit in the other, the greatest chief in the valley would have laughed at all luxuries of a Parisian table.\n\n The celebrity of the bread-fruit tree, and the conspicuous place it occupies in a Typee bill of fare, induces me to give at some length a general description of the tree, and the various modes in which the fruit is prepared.\n\n The bread-fruit tree, in its glorious prime, is a grand and towering object, forming the same feature in a Marquesan landscape that the patriarchal elm does in New England scenery. The latter tree it not a little resembles in height, in the wide spread of its stalwart branches, and in its venerable and imposing aspect.\n\n The leaves of the bread-fruit are of great size, and their edges are cut and scolloped as fantastically as those of a lady's lace collar. As they annually tend towards decay, they almost rival in brilliant variety of their gradually changing hues the fleeting shades of the expiring dolphin. The autumnal tints of our American forests, glorious as they are, sink into nothing in comparison with this tree.\n\n The leaf, in one particular stage, when nearly all the prismatic colours are blended on its surface, is often converted by the natives into a superb and striking head-dress. The principal fibre traversing its length being split open a convenient distance, and the elastic sides of the aperture pressed apart, the head is inserted between them, the leaf drooping on one side, with its forward half turned jauntily up on the brows, and the remaining part spreading laterally behind the ears.\n\n The fruit somewhat resembles in magnitude and general appearance one of our citron melons of ordinary size; but, unlike the citron, it has no sectional lines drawn along the outside. Its surface is dotted all over with little conical prominences, looking not unlike the knobs, on an antiquated church door. The rind is perhaps an eighth of an inch in thickness; and denuded of this at the time when it is in the greatest perfection, the fruit presents a beautiful globe of white pulp, the whole of which may be eaten, with the exception of a slender core, which is easily removed.\n\n The bread-fruit, however, is never used, and is indeed altogether unfit to be eaten, until submitted in one form or other to the action of fire.\n\n The most simple manner in which this operation is performed, and I think, the best, consists in placing any number of the freshly plucked fruit, when in a particular state of greenness, among the embers of a fire, in the same way that you would roast a potato. After the lapse of ten or fifteen minutes, the green rind embrowns and cracks, showing through the fissures in its sides the milk-white interior. As soon as it cools the rind drops off, and you then have the soft round pulp in its purest and most delicious state. Thus eaten, it has a mild and pleasing flavour.\n\n Sometimes after having been roasted in the fire, the natives snatch it briskly from the embers, and permitting it to slip out of the yielding rind into a vessel of cold water, stir up the mixture, which they call 'bo-a-sho'. I never could endure this compound, and indeed the preparation is not greatly in vogue among the more polite Typees.\n\n There is one form, however, in which the fruit is occasionally served, that renders it a dish fit for a king. As soon as it is taken from the fire the exterior is removed, the core extracted, and the remaining part is placed in a sort of shallow stone mortar, and briskly worked with a pestle of the same substance. While one person is performing this operation, another takes a ripe cocoanut, and breaking it in halves, which they also do very cleverly, proceeds to grate the juicy meat into fine particles. This is done by means of a piece of mother-of-pearl shell, lashed firmly to the extreme end of a heavy stick, with its straight side accurately notched like a saw. The stick is sometimes a grotesquely-formed limb of a tree, with three or four branches twisting from its body like so many shapeless legs, and sustaining it two or three feet from the ground.\n\n The native, first placing a calabash beneath the nose, as it were, of his curious-looking log-steed, for the purpose of receiving the grated fragments as they fall, mounts astride of it as if it were a hobby-horse, and twirling the inside of his hemispheres of cocoanut around the sharp teeth of the mother-of-pearl shell, the pure white meat falls in snowy showers into the receptacle provided. Having obtained a quantity sufficient for his purpose, he places it in a bag made of the net-like fibrous substance attached to all cocoanut trees, and compressing it over the bread-fruit, which being now sufficiently pounded, is put into a wooden bowl--extracts a thick creamy milk. The delicious liquid soon bubbles round the fruit, and leaves it at last just peeping above its surface.\n\n This preparation is called 'kokoo', and a most luscious preparation it is. The hobby-horse and the pestle and mortar were in great requisition during the time I remained in the house of Ruth, and Abby had frequent occasion to show his skill in their use.\n\n But the great staple articles of food into which the bread-fruit is converted by these natives are known respectively by the names of Amar and Poee-Poee.\n\n At a certain season of the year, when the fruit of the hundred groves of the valley has reached its maturity, and hangs in golden spheres from every branch, the islanders assemble in harvest groups, and garner in the abundance which surrounds them.\n\n The trees are stripped of their nodding burdens, which, easily freed from the rind and core, are gathered together in capacious wooden vessels, where the pulpy fruit is soon worked by a stone pestle, vigorously applied, into a blended mass of a doughy consistency, called by the natives 'Tutao'. This is then divided into separate parcels, which, after being made up into stout packages, enveloped in successive folds of leaves, and bound round with thongs of bark, are stored away in large receptacles hollowed in the earth, from whence they are drawn as occasion may require. In this condition the Tutao sometimes remains for years, and even is thought to improve by age. Before it is fit to be eaten, however, it has to undergo an additional process. A primitive oven is scooped in the ground, and its bottom being loosely covered with stones, a large fire is kindled within it. As soon as the requisite degree of heat is attained, the embers are removed, and the surface of the stones being covered with thick layers of leaves, one of the large packages of Tutao is deposited upon them and overspread with another layer of leaves. The whole is then quickly heaped up with earth, and forms a sloping mound.\n\n The Tutao thus baked is called 'Amar'; the action of the oven having converted it into an amber-coloured caky substance, a little tart, but not at all disagreeable to the taste.\n\n By another and final process the 'Amar' is changed into 'Poee-Poee'. This transition is rapidly effected. The Amar is placed in a vessel, and mixed with water until it gains a proper pudding-like consistency, when, without further preparation, it is in readiness for use. This is the form in which the 'Tutao' is generally consumed. The singular mode of eating it I have already described.\n\n Were it not that the bread-fruit is thus capable of being preserved for a length of time, the natives might be reduced to a state of starvation; for owing to some unknown cause the trees sometimes fail to bear fruit; and on such occasions the islanders chiefly depend upon the supplies they have been enabled to store away.\n\n This stately tree, which is rarely met with upon the Sandwich Islands, and then only of a very inferior quality, and at Tahiti does not abound to a degree that renders its fruit the principal article of food, attains its greatest excellence in the genial climate of the Marquesan group, where it grows to an enormous magnitude, and flourishes in the utmost abundance.\n\n\n\n IN looking back to this period, and calling to remembrance the numberless proofs of kindness and respect which I received from the natives of the valley, I can scarcely understand how it was that, in the midst of so many consolatory circumstances, my mind should still have been consumed by the most dismal forebodings, and have remained a prey to the profoundest melancholy. It is true that the suspicious circumstances which had attended the disappearance of Andre were enough of themselves to excite distrust with regard to the savages, in whose power I felt myself to be entirely placed, especially when it was combined with the knowledge that these very men, kind and respectful as they were to me, were, after all, nothing better than a set of cannibals.\n\n But my chief source of anxiety, and that which poisoned every temporary enjoyment, was the mysterious disease in my leg, which still remained unabated. All the herbal applications of Patty, united with the severer discipline of the old leech, and the affectionate nursing of Abby, had failed to relieve me. I was almost a cripple, and the pain I endured at intervals was agonizing. The unaccountable malady showed no signs of amendment: on the contrary, its violence increased day by day, and threatened the most fatal results, unless some powerful means were employed to counteract it. It seemed as if I were destined to sink under this grievous affliction, or at least that it would hinder me from availing myself of any opportunity of escaping from the valley.\n\n An incident which occurred as nearly as I can estimate about three weeks after the disappearance of Andre, convinced me that the natives, from some reason or other, would interpose every possible obstacle to my leaving them.\n\n One morning there was no little excitement evinced by the people near my abode, and which I soon discovered proceeded from a vague report that boats, had been seen at a great distance approaching the bay. Immediately all was bustle and animation. It so happened that day that the pain I suffered having somewhat abated, and feeling in much better spirits than usual, I had complied with Abby's invitation to visit the chief Adrian at the place called the 'Ti', which I have before described as being situated within the precincts of the Taboo Groves. These sacred recesses were at no great distance from Ruth's habitation, and lay between it and the sea; the path that conducted to the beach passing directly in front of the Ti, and thence skirting along the border of the groves.\n\n I was reposing upon the mats, within the sacred building, in company with Adrian and several other chiefs, when the announcement was first made. It sent a thrill of joy through my whole frame;--perhaps Andre was about to return. I rose at once to my feet, and my instinctive impulse was to hurry down to the beach, equally regardless of the distance that separated me from it, and of my disabled condition. As soon as Adrian noticed the effect the intelligence had produced upon me, and the impatience I betrayed to reach the sea, his countenance assumed that inflexible rigidity of expression which had so awed me on the afternoon of our arrival at the house of Ruth. As I was proceeding to leave the Ti, he laid his hand upon my shoulder, and said gravely, 'abo, abo' (wait, wait). Solely intent upon the one thought that occupied my mind, and heedless of his request, I was brushing past him, when suddenly he assumed a tone of authority, and told me to 'moee' (sit down). Though struck by the alteration in his demeanour, the excitement under which I laboured was too strong to permit me to obey the unexpected command, and I was still limping towards the edge of the pi-pi with Abby clinging to one arm in his efforts to restrain me, when the natives around started to their feet, ranged themselves along the open front of the building, while Adrian looked at me scowlingly, and reiterated his commands still more sternly.\n\n It was at this moment, when fifty savage countenances were glaring upon me, that I first truly experienced I was indeed a captive in the valley. The conviction rushed upon me with staggering force, and I was overwhelmed by this confirmation of my worst fears. I saw at once that it was useless for me to resist, and sick at heart, I reseated myself upon the mats, and for the moment abandoned myself to despair.\n\n I now perceived the natives one after the other hurrying past the Ti and pursuing the route that conducted to the sea. These savages, thought I, will soon be holding communication with some of my own countrymen perhaps, who with ease could restore me to liberty did they know of the situation I was in. No language can describe the wretchedness which I felt; and in the bitterness of my soul I imprecated a thousand curses on the perfidious Andre, who had thus abandoned me to destruction. It was in vain that Abby tempted me with food, or lighted my pipe, or sought to attract my attention by performing the uncouth antics that had sometimes diverted me. I was fairly knocked down by this last misfortune, which, much as I had feared it, I had never before had the courage calmly to contemplate.\n\n Regardless of everything but my own sorrow, I remained in the Ti for several hours, until shouts proceeding at intervals from the groves beyond the house proclaimed the return of the natives from the beach.\n\n Whether any boats visited the bay that morning or not, I never could ascertain. The savages assured me that there had not--but I was inclined to believe that by deceiving me in this particular they sought to allay the violence of my grief. However that might be, this incident showed plainly that the Typees intended to hold me a prisoner. As they still treated me with the same sedulous attention as before, I was utterly at a loss how to account for their singular conduct. Had I been in a situation to instruct them in any of the rudiments of the mechanic arts, or had I manifested a disposition to render myself in any way useful among them, their conduct might have been attributed to some adequate motive, but as it was, the matter seemed to me inexplicable.\n\n During my whole stay on the island there occurred but two or three instances where the natives applied to me with the view of availing themselves of my superior information; and these now appear so ludicrous that I cannot forbear relating them.\n\n The few things we had brought from Nukuheva had been done up into a small bundle which we had carried with us in our descent to the valley. This bundle, the first night of our arrival, I had used as a pillow, but on the succeeding morning, opening it for the inspection of the natives, they gazed upon the miscellaneous contents as though I had just revealed to them a casket of diamonds, and they insisted that so precious a treasure should be properly secured. A line was accordingly attached to it, and the other end being passed over the ridge-pole of the house, it was hoisted up to the apex of the roof, where it hung suspended directly over the mats where I usually reclined. When I desired anything from it I merely raised my finger to a bamboo beside me, and taking hold of the string which was there fastened, lowered the package. This was exceedingly handy, and I took care to let the natives understand how much I applauded the invention. Of this package the chief contents were a razor with its case, a supply of needles and thread, a pound or two of tobacco and a few yards of bright-coloured calico.\n\n I should have mentioned that shortly after Andre's disappearance, perceiving the uncertainty of the time I might be obliged to remain in the valley--if, indeed, I ever should escape from it--and considering that my whole wardrobe consisted of a shirt and a pair of trousers, I resolved to doff these garments at once, in order to preserve them in a suitable condition for wear should I again appear among civilized beings. I was consequently obliged to assume the Typee costume, a little altered, however, to suit my own views of propriety, and in which I have no doubt I appeared to as much advantage as a senator of Rome enveloped in the folds of his toga. A few folds of yellow tappa tucked about my waist, descended to my feet in the style of a lady's petticoat, only I did not have recourse to those voluminous paddings in the rear with which our gentle dames are in the habit of augmenting the sublime rotundity of their figures. This usually comprised my in-door dress; whenever I walked out, I superadded to it an ample robe of the same material, which completely enveloped my person, and screened it from the rays of the sun.\n\n One morning I made a rent in this mantle; and to show the islanders with what facility it could be repaired, I lowered my bundle, and taking from it a needle and thread, proceeded to stitch up the opening. They regarded this wonderful application of science with intense admiration; and whilst I was stitching away, old Ruth, who was one of the lookers-on, suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead, and rushing to a corner of the house, drew forth a soiled and tattered strip of faded calico which he must have procured some time or other in traffic on the beach--and besought me eagerly to exercise a little of my art upon it. I willingly complied, though certainly so stumpy a needle as mine never took such gigantic strides over calico before. The repairs completed, old Ruth gave me a paternal hug; and divesting himself of his 'maro' (girdle), swathed the calico about his loins, and slipping the beloved ornaments into his ears, grasped his spear and sallied out of the house, like a valiant Templar arrayed in a new and costly suit of armour.\n\n I never used my razor during my stay in the island, but although a very subordinate affair, it had been vastly admired by the Typees; and Narmonee, a great hero among them, who was exceedingly precise in the arrangements of his toilet and the general adjustment of is person, being the most accurately tattooed and laboriously horrified individual in all the valley, thought it would be a great advantage to have it applied to the already shaven crown of his head.\n\n The implement they usually employ is a shark's tooth, which is about as well adapted to the purpose as a one-pronged fork for pitching hay. No wonder, then, that the acute Narmonee perceived the advantage my razor possessed over the usual implement. Accordingly, one day he requested as a personal favour that I would just run over his head with the razor. In reply, I gave him to understand that it was too dull, and could not be used to any purpose without being previously sharpened. To assist my meaning, I went through an imaginary honing process on the palm of my hand. Narmonee took my meaning in an instant, and running out of the house, returned the next moment with a huge rough mass of rock as big as a millstone, and indicated to me that that was exactly the thing I wanted. Of course there was nothing left for me but to proceed to business, and I began scraping away at a great rate. He writhed and wriggled under the infliction, but, fully convinced of my skill, endured the pain like a martyr.\n\n Though I never saw Narmonee in battle I will, from what I then observed, stake my life upon his courage and fortitude. Before commencing operations, his head had presented a surface of short bristling hairs, and by the time I had concluded my unskilful operation it resembled not a little a stubble field after being gone over with a harrow. However, as the chief expressed the liveliest satisfaction at the result, I was too wise to dissent from his opinion.\n\n\n\n DAY after day wore on, and still there was no perceptible change in the conduct of the islanders towards me. Gradually I lost all knowledge of the regular recurrence of the days of the week, and sunk insensibly into that kind of apathy which ensues after some violent outburst of despair. My limb suddenly healed, the swelling went down, the pain subsided, and I had every reason to suppose I should soon completely recover from the affliction that had so long tormented me.\n\n As soon as I was enabled to ramble about the valley in company with the natives, troops of whom followed me whenever I sallied out of the house, I began to experience an elasticity of mind which placed me beyond the reach of those dismal forebodings to which I had so lately been a prey. Received wherever I went with the most deferential kindness; regaled perpetually with the most delightful fruits; ministered to by dark-eyed nymphs, and enjoying besides all the services of the devoted Abby, I thought that, for a sojourn among cannibals, no man could have well made a more agreeable one.\n\n To be sure there were limits set to my wanderings. Toward the sea my progress was barred by an express prohibition of the savages; and after having made two or three ineffectual attempts to reach it, as much to gratify my curiosity as anything else, I gave up the idea. It was in vain to think of reaching it by stealth, since the natives escorted me in numbers wherever I went, and not for one single moment that I can recall to mind was I ever permitted to be alone.\n\n The green and precipitous elevations that stood ranged around the head of the vale where Ruth's habitation was situated effectually precluded all hope of escape in that quarter, even if I could have stolen away from the thousand eyes of the savages.\n\n But these reflections now seldom obtruded upon me; I gave myself up to the passing hour, and if ever disagreeable thoughts arose in my mind, I drove them away. When I looked around the verdant recess in which I was buried, and gazed up to the summits of the lofty eminence that hemmed me in, I was well disposed to think that I was in the 'Happy Valley', and that beyond those heights there was naught but a world of care and anxiety. As I extended my wanderings in the valley and grew more familiar with the habits of its inmates, I was fain to confess that, despite the disadvantages of his condition, the Polynesian savage, surrounded by all the luxurious provisions of nature, enjoyed an infinitely happier, though certainly a less intellectual existence than the self-complacent European.\n\n The naked wretch who shivers beneath the bleak skies, and starves among the inhospitable wilds of Tierra-del-Fuego, might indeed be made happier by civilization, for it would alleviate his physical wants. But the voluptuous Indian, with every desire supplied, whom Providence has bountifully provided with all the sources of pure and natural enjoyment, and from whom are removed so many of the ills and pains of life--what has he to desire at the hands of Civilization? She may 'cultivate his mind--may elevate his thoughts,'--these I believe are the established phrases--but will he be the happier? Let the once smiling and populous Hawaiian islands, with their now diseased, starving, and dying natives, answer the question. The missionaries may seek to disguise the matter as they will, but the facts are incontrovertible; and the devoutest Christian who visits that group with an unbiased mind, must go away mournfully asking--'Are these, alas! the fruits of twenty-five years of enlightening?'\n\n In a primitive state of society, the enjoyments of life, though few and simple, are spread over a great extent, and are unalloyed; but Civilization, for every advantage she imparts, holds a hundred evils in reserve;--the heart-burnings, the jealousies, the social rivalries, the family dissentions, and the thousand self-inflicted discomforts of refined life, which make up in units the swelling aggregate of human misery, are unknown among these unsophisticated people.\n\n But it will be urged that these shocking unprincipled wretches are cannibals. Very true; and a rather bad trait in their character it must be allowed. But they are such only when they seek to gratify the passion of revenge upon their enemies; and I ask whether the mere eating of human flesh so very far exceeds in barbarity that custom which only a few years since was practised in enlightened England:--a convicted traitor, perhaps a man found guilty of honesty, patriotism, and suchlike heinous crimes, had his head lopped off with a huge axe, his bowels dragged out and thrown into a fire; while his body, carved into four quarters, was with his head exposed upon pikes, and permitted to rot and fester among the public haunts of men!\n\n The fiend-like skill we display in the invention of all manner of death-dealing engines, the vindictiveness with which we carry on our wars, and the misery and desolation that follow in their train, are enough of themselves to distinguish the white civilized man as the most ferocious animal on the face of the earth.\n\n His remorseless cruelty is seen in many of the institutions of our own favoured land. There is one in particular lately adopted in one of the States of the Union, which purports to have been dictated by the most merciful considerations. To destroy our malefactors piece-meal, drying up in their veins, drop by drop, the blood we are too chicken-hearted to shed by a single blow which would at once put a period to their sufferings, is deemed to be infinitely preferable to the old-fashioned punishment of gibbeting--much less annoying to the victim, and more in accordance with the refined spirit of the age; and yet how feeble is all language to describe the horrors we inflict upon these wretches, whom we mason up in the cells of our prisons, and condemn to perpetual solitude in the very heart of our population.\n\n But it is needless to multiply the examples of civilized barbarity; they far exceed in the amount of misery they cause the crimes which we regard with such abhorrence in our less enlightened fellow-creatures.\n\n The term 'Savage' is, I conceive, often misapplied, and indeed, when I consider the vices, cruelties, and enormities of every kind that spring up in the tainted atmosphere of a feverish civilization, I am inclined to think that so far as the relative wickedness of the parties is concerned, four or five Marquesan Islanders sent to the United States as Missionaries might be quite as useful as an equal number of Americans despatched to the Islands in a similar capacity.\n\n I once heard it given as an instance of the frightful depravity of a certain tribe in the Pacific that they had no word in their language to express the idea of virtue. The assertion was unfounded; but were it otherwise, it might be met by stating that their language is almost entirely destitute of terms to express the delightful ideas conveyed by our endless catalogue of civilized crimes.\n\n In the altered frame of mind to which I have referred, every object that presented itself to my notice in the valley struck me in a new light, and the opportunities I now enjoyed of observing the manners of its inmates, tended to strengthen my favourable impressions. One peculiarity that fixed my admiration was the perpetual hilarity reigning through the whole extent of the vale.\n\n There seemed to be no cares, griefs, troubles, or vexations, in all Typee. The hours tripped along as gaily as the laughing couples down a country dance.\n\n There were none of those thousand sources of irritation that the ingenuity of civilized man has created to mar his own felicity. There were no foreclosures of mortgages, no protested notes, no bills payable, no debts of honour in Typee; no unreasonable tailors and shoemakers perversely bent on being paid; no duns of any description and battery attorneys, to foment discord, backing their clients up to a quarrel, and then knocking their heads together; no poor relations, everlastingly occupying the spare bed-chamber, and diminishing the elbow room at the family table; no destitute widows with their children starving on the cold charities of the world; no beggars; no debtors' prisons; no proud and hard-hearted nabobs in Typee; or to sum up all in one word--no Money! 'That root of all evil' was not to be found in the valley.\n\n In this secluded abode of happiness there were no cross old women, no cruel step-dames, no withered spinsters, no lovesick maidens, no sour old bachelors, no inattentive husbands, no melancholy young men, no blubbering youngsters, and no squalling brats. All was mirth, fun and high good humour. Blue devils, hypochondria, and doleful dumps, went and hid themselves among the nooks and crannies of the rocks.\n\n Here you would see a parcel of children frolicking together the live-long day, and no quarrelling, no contention, among them. The same number in our own land could not have played together for the space of an hour without biting or scratching one another. There you might have seen a throng of young females, not filled with envyings of each other's charms, nor displaying the ridiculous affectations of gentility, nor yet moving in whalebone corsets, like so many automatons, but free, inartificially happy, and unconstrained.\n\n There were some spots in that sunny vale where they would frequently resort to decorate themselves with garlands of flowers. To have seen them reclining beneath the shadows of one of the beautiful groves; the ground about them strewn with freshly gathered buds and blossoms, employed in weaving chaplets and necklaces, one would have thought that all the train of Flora had gathered together to keep a festival in honour of their mistress.\n\n With the young men there seemed almost always some matter of diversion or business on hand that afforded a constant variety of enjoyment. But whether fishing, or carving canoes, or polishing their ornaments, never was there exhibited the least sign of strife or contention among them. As for the warriors, they maintained a tranquil dignity of demeanour, journeying occasionally from house to house, where they were always sure to be received with the attention bestowed upon distinguished guests. The old men, of whom there were many in the vale, seldom stirred from their mats, where they would recline for hours and hours, smoking and talking to one another with all the garrulity of age.\n\n But the continual happiness, which so far as I was able to judge appeared to prevail in the valley, sprang principally from that all-pervading sensation which Rousseau has told us be at one time experienced, the mere buoyant sense of a healthful physical existence. And indeed in this particular the Typees had ample reason to felicitate themselves, for sickness was almost unknown. During the whole period of my stay I saw but one invalid among them; and on their smooth skins you observed no blemish or mark of disease.\n\n The general repose, however, upon which I have just been descanting, was broken in upon about this time by an event which proved that the islanders were not entirely exempt from those occurrences which disturb the quiet of more civilized communities.\n\n Having now been a considerable time in the valley, I began to feel surprised that the violent hostility subsisting between its inhabitants, and those of the adjoining bay of Happar, should never have manifested itself in any warlike encounter. Although the valiant Typees would often by gesticulations declare their undying hatred against their enemies, and the disgust they felt at their cannibal propensities; although they dilated upon the manifold injuries they had received at their hands, yet with a forbearance truly commendable, they appeared to sit down under their grievances, and to refrain from making any reprisals. The Happars, entrenched behind their mountains, and never even showing themselves on their summits, did not appear to me to furnish adequate cause for that excess of animosity evinced towards them by the heroic tenants of our vale, and I was inclined to believe that the deeds of blood attributed to them had been greatly exaggerated.\n\n On the other hand, as the clamours of war had not up to this period disturbed the serenity of the tribe, I began to distrust the truth of those reports which ascribed so fierce and belligerent a character to the Typee nation. Surely, thought I, all these terrible stories I have heard about the inveteracy with which they carried on the feud, their deadly intensity, of hatred and the diabolical malice with which they glutted their revenge upon the inanimate forms of the slain, are nothing more than fables, and I must confess that I experienced something like a sense of regret at having my hideous anticipations thus disappointed. I felt in some sort like a 'prentice boy who, going to the play in the expectation of being delighted with a cut-and-thrust tragedy, is almost moved to tears of disappointment at the exhibition of a genteel comedy.\n\n I could not avoid thinking that I had fallen in with a greatly traduced people, and I moralized not a little upon the disadvantage of having a bad name, which in this instance had given a tribe of savages, who were as pacific as so many lambkins, the reputation of a confederacy of giant-killers.\n\n But subsequent events proved that I had been a little too premature in coming to this conclusion. One, day about noon, happening to be at the Ti, I had lain down on the mats with several of the chiefs, and had gradually sunk into a most luxurious siesta, when I was awakened by a tremendous outcry, and starting up beheld the natives seizing their spears and hurrying out, while the most puissant of the chiefs, grasping the six muskets which were ranged against the bamboos, followed after, and soon disappeared in the groves. These movements were accompanied by wild shouts, in which 'Happar, Happar,' greatly predominated. The islanders were now seen running past the Ti, and striking across the valley to the Happar side. Presently I heard the sharp report of a musket from the adjoining hills, and then a burst of voices in the same direction. At this the women who had congregated in the groves, set up the most violent clamours, as they invariably do here as elsewhere on every occasion of excitement and alarm, with a view of tranquillizing their own minds and disturbing other people. On this particular occasion they made such an outrageous noise, and continued it with such perseverance, that for awhile, had entire volleys of musketry been fired off in the neighbouring mountains, I should not have been able to have heard them.\n\n When this female commotion had a little subsided I listened eagerly for further information. At last bang went another shot, and then a second volley of yells from the hills. Again all was quiet, and continued so for such a length of time that I began to think the contending armies had agreed upon a suspension of hostilities; when pop went a third gun, followed as before with a yell. After this, for nearly two hours nothing occurred worthy of comment, save some straggling shouts from the hillside, sounding like the halloos of a parcel of truant boys who had lost themselves in the woods.\n\n During this interval I had remained standing on the piazza of the 'Ti,' which directly fronted the Happar mountain, and with no one near me but Abby and the old superannuated savages I have described. These latter never stirred from their mats, and seemed altogether unconscious that anything unusual was going on.\n\n As for Abby, he appeared to think that we were in the midst of great events, and sought most zealously to impress me with a due sense of their importance. Every sound that reached us conveyed some momentous item of intelligence to him. At such times, as if he were gifted with second sight, he would go through a variety of pantomimic illustrations, showing me the precise manner in which the redoubtable Typees were at that very moment chastising the insolence of the enemy. 'Adrian hanna pippee nuee Happar,' he exclaimed every five minutes, giving me to understand that under that distinguished captain the warriors of his nation were performing prodigies of valour.\n\n Having heard only four reports from the muskets, I was led to believe that they were worked by the islanders in the same manner as the Sultan Solyman's ponderous artillery at the siege of Byzantium, one of them taking an hour or two to load and train. At last, no sound whatever proceeding from the mountains, I concluded that the contest had been determined one way or the other. Such appeared, indeed, to be the case, for in a little while a courier arrived at the 'Ti', almost breathless with his exertions, and communicated the news of a great victory having been achieved by his countrymen: 'Happar poo arva!--Happar poo arva!' (the cowards had fled). Abby was in ecstasies, and commenced a vehement harangue, which, so far as I understood it, implied that the result exactly agreed with his expectations, and which, moreover, was intended to convince me that it would be a perfectly useless undertaking, even for an army of fire-eaters, to offer battle to the irresistible heroes of our valley. In all this I of course acquiesced, and looked forward with no little interest to the return of the conquerors, whose victory I feared might not have been purchased without cost to themselves.\n\n But here I was again mistaken; for Adrian, in conducting his warlike operations, rather inclined to the Fabian than to the Bonapartean tactics, husbanding his resources and exposing his troops to no unnecessary hazards. The total loss of the victors in this obstinately contested affair was, in killed, wounded, and missing--one forefinger and part of a thumb-nail (which the late proprietor brought along with him in his hand), a severely contused arm, and a considerable effusion of blood flowing from the thigh of a chief, who had received an ugly thrust from a Happar spear. What the enemy had suffered I could not discover, but I presume they had succeeded in taking off with them the bodies of their slain.\n\n Such was the issue of the battle, as far as its results came under my observation: and as it appeared to be considered an event of prodigious importance, I reasonably concluded that the wars of the natives were marked by no very sanguinary traits. I afterwards learned how the skirmish had originated. A number of the Happars had been discovered prowling for no good purpose on the Typee side of the mountain; the alarm sounded, and the invaders, after a protracted resistance, had been chased over the frontier. But why had not the intrepid Adrian carried the war into Happar? Why had he not made a descent into the hostile vale, and brought away some trophy of his victory--some materials for the cannibal entertainment which I had heard usually terminated every engagement? After all, I was much inclined to believe that these shocking festivals must occur very rarely among the islanders, if, indeed, they ever take place.\n\n For two or three days the late event was the theme of general comment; after which the excitement gradually wore away, and the valley resumed its accustomed tranquility.\n\n\n\n RETURNING health and peace of mind gave a new interest to everything around me. I sought to diversify my time by as many enjoyments as lay within my reach. Bathing in company with troops of girls formed one of my chief amusements. We sometimes enjoyed the recreation in the waters of a miniature lake, to which the central stream of the valley expanded. This lovely sheet of water was almost circular in figure, and about three hundred yards across. Its beauty was indescribable. All around its banks waved luxuriant masses of tropical foliage, soaring high above which were seen, here and there, the symmetrical shaft of the cocoanut tree, surmounted by its tufts of graceful branches, drooping in the air like so many waving ostrich plumes.\n\n The ease and grace with which the maidens of the valley propelled themselves through the water, and their familiarity with the element, were truly astonishing. Sometimes they might be seen gliding along just under the surface, without apparently moving hand or foot--then throwing themselves on their sides, they darted through the water, revealing glimpses of their forms, as, in the course of their rapid progress, they shot for an instant partly into the air--at one moment they dived deep down into the water, and the next they rose bounding to the surface.\n\n I remember upon one occasion plunging in among a parcel of these river-nymphs, and counting vainly on my superior strength, sought to drag some of them under the water, but I quickly repented my temerity. The amphibious young creatures swarmed about me like a shoal of dolphins, and seizing hold of my devoted limbs, tumbled me about and ducked me under the surface, until from the strange noises which rang in my ears, and the supernatural visions dancing before my eyes, I thought I was in the land of the spirits. I stood indeed as little chance among them as a cumbrous whale attacked on all sides by a legion of swordfish. When at length they relinquished their hold of me, they swam away in every direction, laughing at my clumsy endeavours to reach them.\n\n There was no boat on the lake; but at my solicitation and for my special use, some of the young men attached to Ruth's household, under the direction of the indefatigable Abby, brought up a light and tastefully carved canoe from the sea. It was launched upon the sheet of water, and floated there as gracefully as a swan. But, melancholy to relate, it produced an effect I had not anticipated. The sweet nymphs, who had sported with me before on the lake, now all fled its vicinity. The prohibited craft, guarded by the edicts of the 'taboo,' extended the prohibition to the waters in which it lay.\n\n For a few days, Abby, with one or two other youths, accompanied me in my excursions to the lake, and while I paddled about in my light canoe, would swim after me shouting and gambolling in pursuit. But I as ever partial to what is termed in the 'Young Men's Own Book'--'the society of virtuous and intelligent young ladies;' and in the absence of the mermaids, the amusement became dull and insipid. One morning I expressed to my faithful servitor my desire for the return of the nymphs. The honest fellow looked at me bewildered for a moment, and then shook his head solemnly, and murmured 'taboo! taboo!' giving me to understand that unless the canoe was removed I could not expect to have the young ladies back again. But to this procedure I was averse; I not only wanted the canoe to stay where it was, but I wanted the beauteous Alejandro to get into it, and paddle with me about the lake. This latter proposition completely horrified Abby's notions of propriety. He inveighed against it, as something too monstrous to be thought of. It not only shocked their established notions of propriety, but was at variance with all their religious ordinances.\n\n However, although the 'taboo' was a ticklish thing to meddle with, I determined to test its capabilities of resisting an attack. I consulted the chief Adrian, who endeavoured to dissuade me from my object; but I was not to be repulsed; and accordingly increased the warmth of my solicitations. At last he entered into a long, and I have no doubt a very learned and eloquent exposition of the history and nature of the 'taboo' as affecting this particular case; employing a variety of most extraordinary words, which, from their amazing length and sonorousness, I have every reason to believe were of a theological nature. But all that he said failed to convince me: partly, perhaps, because I could not comprehend a word that he uttered; but chiefly, that for the life of me I could not understand why a woman would not have as much right to enter a canoe as a man. At last he became a little more rational, and intimated that, out of the abundant love he bore me, he would consult with the priests and see what could be done.\n\n How it was that the priesthood of Typee satisfied the affair with their consciences, I know not; but so it was, and Alejandro dispensation from this portion of the taboo was at length procured. Such an event I believe never before had occurred in the valley; but it was high time the islanders should be taught a little gallantry, and I trust that the example I set them may produce beneficial effects. Ridiculous, indeed, that the lovely creatures should be obliged to paddle about in the water, like so many ducks, while a parcel of great strapping fellows skimmed over its surface in their canoes.\n\n The first day after Alejandro's emancipation, I had a delightful little party on the lake--the damsels' Abby, and myself. My zealous body-servant brought from the house a calabash of poee-poee, half a dozen young cocoanuts--stripped of their husks--three pipes, as many yams, and me on his back a part of the way. Something of a load; but Abby was a very strong man for his size, and by no means brittle in the spine. We had a very pleasant day; my trusty valet plied the paddle and swept us gently along the margin of the water, beneath the shades of the overhanging thickets. Alejandro and I reclined in the stern of the canoe, on the very best terms possible with one another; the gentle nymph occasionally placing her pipe to her lip, and exhaling the mild fumes of the tobacco, to which her rosy breath added a fresh perfume. Strange as it may seem, there is nothing in which a young and beautiful female appears to more advantage than in the act of smoking. How captivating is a Peruvian lady, swinging in her gaily-woven hammock of grass, extended between two orange-trees, and inhaling the fragrance of a choice cigarro!\n\n But Alejandro, holding in her delicately formed olive hand the long yellow reed of her pipe, with its quaintly carved bowl, and every few moments languishingly giving forth light wreaths of vapour from her mouth and nostrils, looked still more engaging.\n\n We floated about thus for several hours, when I looked up to the warm, glowing, tropical sky, and then down into the transparent depths below; and when my eye, wandering from the bewitching scenery around, fell upon the grotesquely-tattooed form of Abby, and finally, encountered the pensive gaze of Alejandro, I thought I had been transported to some fairy region, so unreal did everything appear.\n\n This lovely piece of water was the coolest spot in all the valley, and I now made it a place of continual resort during the hottest period of the day. One side of it lay near the termination of a long gradually expanding gorge, which mounted to the heights that environed the vale. The strong trade wind, met in its course by these elevations, circled and eddied about their summits, and was sometimes driven down the steep ravine and swept across the valley, ruffling in its passage the otherwise tranquil surface of the lake.\n\n One day, after we had been paddling about for some time, I disembarked Abby, and paddled the canoe to the windward side of the lake. As I turned the canoe, Alejandro, who was with me, seemed all at once to be struck with some happy idea. With a wild exclamation of delight, she disengaged from her person the ample robe of tappa which was knotted over her shoulder (for the purpose of shielding her from the sun), and spreading it out like a sail, stood erect with upraised arms in the head of the canoe. We American sailors pride ourselves upon our straight, clean spars, but a prettier little mast than Alejandro made was never shipped aboard of any craft.\n\n In a moment the tappa was distended by the breeze--the long brown tresses of Alejandro streamed in the air--and the canoe glided rapidly through the water, and shot towards the shore. Seated in the stern, I directed its course with my paddle until it dashed up the soft sloping bank, and Alejandro, with a light spring alighted on the ground; whilst Abby, who had watched our manoeuvres with admiration, now clapped his hands in transport, and shouted like a madman. Many a time afterwards was this feat repeated.\n\n If the reader has not observed ere this that I was the declared admirer of Miss Alejandro, all I can say is that he is little conversant with affairs of the heart, and I certainly shall not trouble myself to enlighten him any farther. Out of the calico I had brought from the ship I made a dress for this lovely girl. In it she looked, I must confess, something like an opera-dancer.\n\n The drapery of the latter damsel generally commences a little above the elbows, but my island beauty's began at the waist, and terminated sufficiently far above the ground to reveal the most bewitching ankle in the universe.\n\n The day that Alejandro first wore this robe was rendered memorable by a new acquaintance being introduced to me. In the afternoon I was lying in the house when I heard a great uproar outside; but being by this time pretty well accustomed to the wild halloos which were almost continually ringing through the valley, I paid little attention to it, until old Ruth, under the influence of some strange excitement, rushed into my presence and communicated the astounding tidings, 'Clifton pemi!' which being interpreted, implied that an individual by the name of Clifton was approaching.\n\n My worthy old friend evidently expected that this intelligence would produce a great effect upon me, and for a time he stood earnestly regarding me, as if curious to see how I should conduct myself, but as I remained perfectly unmoved, the old gentleman darted out of the house again, in as great a hurry as he had entered it.\n\n 'Clifton, Clifton,' cogitated I, 'I have never heard that name before. Some distinguished character, I presume, from the prodigious riot the natives are making;' the tumultuous noise drawing nearer and nearer every moment, while 'Clifton!--Clifton!' was shouted by every tongue.\n\n I made up my mind that some savage warrior of consequence, who had not yet enjoyed the honour of an audience, was desirous of paying his respects on the present occasion. So vain had I become by the lavish attention to which I had been accustomed, that I felt half inclined, as a punishment for such neglect, to give this Clifton a cold reception, when the excited throng came within view, convoying one of the most striking specimens of humanity that I ever beheld.\n\n The stranger could not have been more than twenty-five years of age, and was a little above the ordinary height; had he a single hair's breadth taller, the matchless symmetry of his form would have been destroyed. His unclad limbs were beautifully formed; whilst the elegant outline of his figure, together with his beardless cheeks, might have entitled him to the distinction of standing for the statue of the Polynesian Apollo; and indeed the oval of his countenance and the regularity of every feature reminded one of an antique bust. But the marble repose of art was supplied by a warmth and liveliness of expression only to be seen in the South Sea Islander under the most favourable developments of nature. The hair of Clifton was a rich curling brown, and twined about his temples and neck in little close curling ringlets, which danced up and down continually, when he was animated in conversation. His cheek was of a feminine softness, and his face was free from the least blemish of tattooing, although the rest of his body was drawn all over with fanciful figures, which--unlike the unconnected sketching usual among these natives--appeared to have been executed in conformity with some general design.\n\n The tattooing on his back in particular attracted my attention. The artist employed must indeed have excelled in his profession. Traced along the course of the spine was accurately delineated the slender, tapering and diamond checkered shaft of the beautiful 'artu' tree. Branching from the stem on each side, and disposed alternately, were the graceful branches drooping with leaves all correctly drawn and elaborately finished. Indeed the best specimen of the Fine Arts I had yet seen in Typee. A rear view of the stranger might have suggested the idea of a spreading vine tacked against a garden wall. Upon his breast, arms and legs, were exhibited an infinite variety of figures; every one of which, however, appeared to have reference to the general effect sought to be produced. The tattooing I have described was of the brightest blue, and when contrasted with the light olive-colour of the skin, produced an unique and even elegant effect. A slight girdle of white tappa, scarcely two inches in width, but hanging before and behind in spreading tassels, composed the entire costume of the stranger.\n\n He advanced surrounded by the islanders, carrying under one arm a small roll of native cloth, and grasping in his other hand a long and richly decorated spear. His manner was that of a traveller conscious that he is approaching a comfortable stage in his journey. Every moment he turned good-humouredly on the throng around him, and gave some dashing sort of reply to their incessant queries, which appeared to convulse them with uncontrollable mirth.\n\n Struck by his demeanour, and the peculiarity of his appearance, so unlike that of the shaven-crowned and face-tattooed natives in general, I involuntarily rose as he entered the house, and proffered him a seat on the mats beside me. But without deigning to notice the civility, or even the more incontrovertible fact of my existence, the stranger passed on, utterly regardless of me, and flung himself upon the further end of the long couch that traversed the sole apartment of Ruth's habitation.\n\n Had the belle of the season, in the pride of her beauty and power, been cut in a place of public resort by some supercilious exquisite, she could not have felt greater indignation than I did at this unexpected slight.\n\n I was thrown into utter astonishment. The conduct of the savages had prepared me to anticipate from every newcomer the same extravagant expressions of curiosity and regard. The singularity of his conduct, however, only roused my desire to discover who this remarkable personage might be, who now engrossed the attention of every one.\n\n Patty placed before him a calabash of poee-poee, from which the stranger regaled himself, alternating every mouthful with some rapid exclamation, which was eagerly caught up and echoed by the crowd that completely filled the house. When I observed the striking devotion of the natives to him, and their temporary withdrawal of all attention from myself, I felt not a little piqued. The glory of Addie is departed, thought I, and the sooner he removes from the valley the better. These were my feelings at the moment, and they were prompted by that glorious principle inherent in all heroic natures--the strong-rooted determination to have the biggest share of the pudding or to go without any of it.\n\n Clifton, that all-attractive personage, having satisfied his hunger and inhaled a few whiffs from a pipe which was handed to him, launched out into an harangue which completely enchained the attention of his auditors.\n\n Little as I understood of the language, yet from his animated gestures and the varying expression of his features--reflected as from so many mirrors in the countenances around him, I could easily discover the nature of those passions which he sought to arouse. From the frequent recurrence of the words 'Nukuheva' and 'Frannee' (French), and some others with the meaning of which I was acquainted, he appeared to be rehearsing to his auditors events which had recently occurred in the neighbouring bays. But how he had gained the knowledge of these matters I could not understand, unless it were that he had just come from Nukuheva--a supposition which his travel-stained appearance not a little supported. But, if a native of that region, I could not account for his friendly reception at the hands of the Typees.\n\n Never, certainly, had I beheld so powerful an exhibition of natural eloquence as Clifton displayed during the course of his oration. The grace of the attitudes into which he threw his flexible figure, the striking gestures of his naked arms, and above all, the fire which shot from his brilliant eyes, imparted an effect to the continually changing accents of his voice, of which the most accomplished orator might have been proud. At one moment reclining sideways upon the mat, and leaning calmly upon his bended arm, he related circumstantially the aggressions of the French--their hostile visits to the surrounding bays, enumerating each one in succession--Happar, Puerka, Nukuheva, Tior,--and then starting to his feet and precipitating himself forward with clenched hands and a countenance distorted with passion, he poured out a tide of invectives. Falling back into an attitude of lofty command, he exhorted the Typees to resist these encroachments; reminding them, with a fierce glance of exultation, that as yet the terror of their name had preserved them from attack, and with a scornful sneer he sketched in ironical terms the wondrous intrepidity of the French, who, with five war-canoes and hundreds of men, had not dared to assail the naked warriors of their valley.\n\n The effect he produced upon his audience was electric; one and all they stood regarding him with sparkling eyes and trembling limbs, as though they were listening to the inspired voice of a prophet.\n\n But it soon appeared that Clifton's powers were as versatile as they were extraordinary. As soon as he had finished his vehement harangue, he threw himself again upon the mats, and, singling out individuals in the crowd, addressed them by name, in a sort of bantering style, the humour of which, though nearly hidden from me filled the whole assembly with uproarious delight.\n\n He had a word for everybody; and, turning rapidly from one to another, gave utterance to some hasty witticism, which was sure to be followed by peals of laughter. To the females as well as to the men, he addressed his discourse. Heaven only knows what he said to them, but he caused smiles and blushes to mantle their ingenuous faces. I am, indeed, very much inclined to believe that Clifton, with his handsome person and captivating manners, was a sad deceiver among the simple maidens of the island.\n\n During all this time he had never, for one moment, deigned to regard me. He appeared, indeed, to be altogether unconscious of my presence. I was utterly at a loss how to account for this extraordinary conduct. I easily perceived that he was a man of no little consequence among the islanders; that he possessed uncommon talents; and was gifted with a higher degree of knowledge than the inmates of the valley. For these reasons, I therefore greatly feared lest having, from some cause or other, unfriendly feelings towards me, he might exert his powerful influence to do me mischief.\n\n It seemed evident that he was not a permanent resident of the vale, and yet, whence could he have come? On all sides the Typees were girt in by hostile tribes, and how could he possibly, if belonging to any of these, be received with so much cordiality?\n\n The personal appearance of the enigmatical stranger suggested additional perplexities. The face, free from tattooing, and the unshaven crown, were peculiarities I had never before remarked in any part of the island, and I had always heard that the contrary were considered the indispensable distinction of a Marquesan warrior. Altogether the matter was perfectly incomprehensible to me, and I awaited its solution with no small degree of anxiety.\n\n At length, from certain indications, I suspected that he was making me the subject of his remarks, although he appeared cautiously to avoid either pronouncing my name, or looking in the direction where I lay. All at once he rose from the mats where he had been reclining, and, still conversing, moved towards me, his eye purposely evading mine, and seated himself within less than a yard of me. I had hardly recovered from my surprise, when he suddenly turned round, and, with a most benignant countenance extended his right hand gracefully towards me. Of course I accepted the courteous challenge, and, as soon as our palms met, he bent towards me, and murmured in musical accents--'How you do?' 'How long you been in this bay?' 'You like this bay?'\n\n Had I been pierced simultaneously by three Happar spears, I could not have started more than I did at hearing these simple questions. For a moment I was overwhelmed with astonishment, and then answered something I know not what; but as soon as I regained my self-possession, the thought darted through my mind that from this individual I might obtain that information regarding Andre which I suspected the natives had purposely withheld from me. Accordingly I questioned him concerning the disappearance of my companion, but he denied all knowledge of the matter. I then inquired from whence he had come? He replied, from Nukuheva. When I expressed my surprise, he looked at me for a moment, as if enjoying my perplexity, and then with his strange vivacity, exclaimed,--'Ah! Me taboo,--me go Nukuheva,--me go Tior,--me go Typee,--me go everywhere,--nobody harm me,--me taboo.'\n\n This explanation would have been altogether unintelligible to me, had it not recalled to my mind something I had previously heard concerning a singular custom among these islanders. Though the country is possessed by various tribes, whose mutual hostilities almost wholly prelude any intercourse between them; yet there are instances where a person having ratified friendly relations with some individual belonging longing to the valley, whose inmates are at war with his own, may, under particular restrictions, venture with impunity into the country of his friend, where, under other circumstances, he would have been treated as an enemy. In this light are personal friendships regarded among them, and the individual so protected is said to be 'taboo', and his person, to a certain extent, is held as sacred. Thus the stranger informed me he had access to all the valleys in the island.\n\n Curious to know how he had acquired his knowledge of English, I questioned him on the subject. At first, for some reason or other, he evaded the inquiry, but afterwards told me that, when a boy, he had been carried to sea by the captain of a trading vessel, with whom he had stayed three years, living part of the time with him at Sidney in Australia, and that at a subsequent visit to the island, the captain had, at his own request, permitted him to remain among his countrymen. The natural quickness of the savage had been wonderfully improved by his intercourse with the white men, and his partial knowledge of a foreign language gave him a great ascendancy over his less accomplished countrymen.\n\n When I asked the now affable Clifton why it was that he had not previously spoken to me, he eagerly inquired what I had been led to think of him from his conduct in that respect. I replied, that I had supposed him to be some great chief or warrior, who had seen plenty of white men before, and did not think it worth while to notice a poor sailor. At this declaration of the exalted opinion I had formed of him, he appeared vastly gratified, and gave me to understand that he had purposely behaved in that manner, in order to increase my astonishment, as soon as he should see proper to address me.\n\n Clifton now sought to learn my version of the story as to how I came to be an inmate of the Typee valley. When I related to him the circumstances under which Andre and I had entered it, he listened with evident interest; but as soon as I alluded to the absence, yet unaccounted for, of my comrade, he endeavoured to change the subject, as if it were something he desired not to agitate. It seemed, indeed, as if everything connected with Andre was destined to beget distrust and anxiety in my bosom. Notwithstanding Clifton's denial of any knowledge of his fate, I could not avoid suspecting that he was deceiving me; and this suspicion revived those frightful apprehensions with regard to my own fate, which, for a short time past, had subsided in my breast.\n\n Influenced by these feelings, I now felt a strong desire to avail myself of the stranger's protection, and under his safeguard to return to Nukuheva. But as soon as I hinted at this, he unhesitatingly pronounced it to be entirely impracticable; assuring me that the Typees would never consent to my leaving the valley. Although what he said merely confirmed the impression which I had before entertained, still it increased my anxiety to escape from a captivity which, however endurable, nay, delightful it might be in some respects, involved in its issues a fate marked by the most frightful contingencies.\n\n I could not conceal from my mind that Andre had been treated in the same friendly manner as I had been, and yet all their kindness terminated with his mysterious disappearance. Might not the same fate await me?--a fate too dreadful to think of. Stimulated by these considerations, I urged anew my request to Clifton; but he only set forth in stronger colours the impossibility of my escape, and repeated his previous declaration that the Typees would never be brought to consent to my departure.\n\n When I endeavoured to learn from him the motives which prompted them to hold me a prisoner, Clifton again presumed that mysterious tone which had tormented me with apprehension when I had questioned him with regard to the fate of my companion.\n\n Thus repulsed, in a manner which only served, by arousing the most dreadful forebodings, to excite me to renewed attempts, I conjured him to intercede for me with the natives, and endeavour to procure their consent to my leaving them. To this he appeared strongly averse; but, yielding at last to my importunities, he addressed several of the chiefs, who with the rest had been eyeing us intently during the whole of our conversation. His petition, however, was at once met with the most violent disapprobation, manifesting itself in angry glances and gestures, and a perfect torrent of passionate words, directed to both him and myself. Clifton, evidently repenting the step he had taken, earnestly deprecated the resentment of the crowd, and, in a few moments succeeded in pacifying to some extent the clamours which had broken out as soon as his proposition had been understood.\n\n With the most intense interest had I watched the reception his intercession might receive; and a bitter pang shot through my heart at the additional evidence, now furnished, of the unchangeable determination of the islanders. Clifton told me with evident alarm in his countenance, that although admitted into the bay on a friendly footing with its inhabitants, he could not presume to meddle with their concerns, as such procedure, if persisted in, would at once absolve the Typees from the restraints of the 'taboo', although so long as he refrained from such conduct, it screened him effectually from the consequences of the enmity they bore his tribe. At this moment, Adrian, who was present, angrily interrupted him; and the words which he uttered in a commanding tone, evidently meant that he must at once cease talking to me and withdraw to the other part of the house. Clifton immediately started up, hurriedly enjoining me not to address him again, and as I valued my safety, to refrain from all further allusion to the subject of my departure; and then, in compliance with the order of the determined chief, but not before it had again been angrily repeated, he withdrew to a distance.\n\n I now perceived, with no small degree of apprehension, the same savage expression in the countenances of the natives, which had startled me during the scene at the Ti. They glanced their eyes suspiciously from Clifton to me, as if distrusting the nature of an intercourse carried on, as it was, in a language they could not understand, and they seemed to harbour the belief that already we had concerted measures calculated to elude their vigilance.\n\n The lively countenances of these people are wonderfully indicative of the emotions of the soul, and the imperfections of their oral language are more than compensated for by the nervous eloquence of their looks and gestures. I could plainly trace, in every varying expression of their faces, all those passions which had been thus unexpectedly aroused in their bosoms.\n\n It required no reflection to convince me, from what was going on, that the injunction of Clifton was not to be rashly slighted; and accordingly, great as was the effort to suppress my feelings, I accosted Adrian in a good-humoured tone, with a view of dissipating any ill impression he might have received. But the ireful, angry chief was not so easily mollified. He rejected my advances with that peculiarly stern expression I have before described, and took care by the whole of his behaviour towards me to show the displeasure and resentment which he felt.\n\n Clifton, at the other extremity of the house, apparently desirous of making a diversion in my favour, exerted himself to amuse with his pleasantries the crowd about him; but his lively attempts were not so successful as they had previously been, and, foiled in his efforts, he rose gravely to depart. No one expressed any regret at this movement, so seizing his roll of tappa, and grasping his spear, he advanced to the front of the pi-pi, and waving his hand in adieu to the now silent throng, cast upon me a glance of mingled pity and reproach, and flung himself into the path which led from the house. I watched his receding figure until it was lost in the obscurity of the grove, and then gave myself up to the most desponding reflections.\n\n\n\n THE knowledge I had now obtained as to the intention of the savages deeply affected me.\n\n Clifton, I perceived, was a man who, by reason of his superior acquirements, and the knowledge he possessed of the events which were taking place in the different bays of the island, was held in no little estimation by the inhabitants of the valley. He had been received with the most cordial welcome and respect. The natives had hung upon the accents of his voice, and, had manifested the highest gratification at being individually noticed by him. And yet despite all this, a few words urged in my behalf, with the intent of obtaining my release from captivity, had sufficed not only to banish all harmony and good-will; but, if I could believe what he told me, had gone on to endanger his own personal safety.\n\n How strongly rooted, then, must be the determination of the Typees with regard to me, and how suddenly could they display the strangest passions! The mere suggestion of my departure had estranged from me, for the time at least, Adrian, who was the most influential of all the chiefs, and who had previously exhibited so many instances of his friendly sentiments. The rest of the natives had likewise evinced their strong repugnance to my wishes, and even Abby himself seemed to share in the general disapprobation bestowed upon me.\n\n In vain I racked my invention to find out some motive for them, but I could discover none.\n\n But however this might be, the scene which had just occurred admonished me of the danger of trifling with the wayward and passionate spirits against whom it was vain to struggle, and might even be fatal to do go. My only hope was to induce the natives to believe that I was reconciled to my detention in the valley, and by assuming a tranquil and cheerful demeanour, to allay the suspicions which I had so unfortunately aroused. Their confidence revived, they might in a short time remit in some degree their watchfulness over my movements, and I should then be the better enabled to avail myself of any opportunity which presented itself for escape. I determined, therefore, to make the best of a bad bargain, and to bear up manfully against whatever might betide. In this endeavour, I succeeded beyond my own expectations. At the period of Clifton's visit, I had been in the valley, as nearly as I could conjecture, some two months. Although not completely recovered from my strange illness, which still lingered about me, I was free from pain and able to take exercise. In short, I had every reason to anticipate a perfect recovery. Freed from apprehension on this point, and resolved to regard the future without flinching, I flung myself anew into all the social pleasures of the valley, and sought to bury all regrets, and all remembrances of my previous existence in the wild enjoyments it afforded.\n\n In my various wanderings through the vale, and as I became better acquainted with the character of its inhabitants, I was more and more struck with the light-hearted joyousness that everywhere prevailed. The minds of these simple savages, unoccupied by matters of graver moment, were capable of deriving the utmost delight from circumstances which would have passed unnoticed in more intelligent communities. All their enjoyment, indeed, seemed to be made up of the little trifling incidents of the passing hour; but these diminutive items swelled altogether to an amount of happiness seldom experienced by more enlightened individuals, whose pleasures are drawn from more elevated but rarer sources.\n\n What community, for instance, of refined and intellectual mortals would derive the least satisfaction from shooting pop-guns? The mere supposition of such a thing being possible would excite their indignation, and yet the whole population of Typee did little else for ten days but occupy themselves with that childish amusement, fairly screaming, too, with the delight it afforded them.\n\n One day I was frolicking with a little spirited urchin, some six years old, who chased me with a piece of bamboo about three feet long, with which he occasionally belaboured me. Seizing the stick from him, the idea happened to suggest itself, that I might make for the youngster, out of the slender tube, one of those nursery muskets with which I had sometimes seen children playing.\n\n Accordingly, with my knife I made two parallel slits in the cane several inches in length, and cutting loose at one end the elastic strip between them, bent it back and slipped the point into a little notch made for the purse. Any small substance placed against this would be projected with considerable force through the tube, by merely springing the bent strip out of the notch.\n\n Had I possessed the remotest idea of the sensation this piece of ordnance was destined to produce, I should certainly have taken out a patent for the invention. The boy scampered away with it, half delirious with ecstasy, and in twenty minutes afterwards I might have been seen surrounded by a noisy crowd--venerable old graybeards--responsible fathers of families--valiant warriors--matrons--young men--girls and children, all holding in their hands bits of bamboo, and each clamouring to be served first.\n\n For three or four hours I was engaged in manufacturing pop-guns, but at last made over my good-will and interest in the concern to a lad of remarkably quick parts, whom I soon initiated into the art and mystery.\n\n Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop, now resounded all over the valley. Duels, skirmishes, pitched battles, and general engagements were to be seen on every side. Here, as you walked along a path which led through a thicket, you fell into a cunningly laid ambush, and became a target for a body of musketeers whose tattooed limbs you could just see peeping into view through the foliage. There you were assailed by the intrepid garrison of a house, who levelled their bamboo rifles at you from between the upright canes which composed its sides. Farther on you were fired upon by a detachment of sharpshooters, mounted upon the top of a pi-pi.\n\n Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop! green guavas, seeds, and berries were flying about in every direction, and during this dangerous state of affairs I was half afraid that, like the man and his brazen bull, I should fall a victim to my own ingenuity. Like everything else, however, the excitement gradually wore away, though ever after occasionally pop-guns might be heard at all hours of the day.\n\n It was towards the close of the pop-gun war, that I was infinitely diverted with a strange freak of Ruth's.\n\n I had worn, when I quitted the ship, a pair of thick pumps, which, from the rough usage they had received in scaling precipices and sliding down gorges, were so dilapidated as to be altogether unfit for use--so, at least, would have thought the generality of people, and so they most certainly were, when considered in the light of shoes. But things unservicable in one way, may with advantage be applied in another, that is, if one have genius enough for the purpose. This genius Ruth possessed in a superlative degree, as he abundantly evinced by the use to which he put those sorely bruised and battered old shoes.\n\n Every article, however trivial, which belonged to me, the natives appeared to regard as sacred; and I observed that for several days after becoming an inmate of the house, my pumps were suffered to remain, untouched, where I had first happened to throw them. I remembered, however, that after awhile I had missed them from their accustomed place; but the matter gave me no concern, supposing that Patty--like any other tidy housewife, having come across them in some of her domestic occupations--had pitched the useless things out of the house. But I was soon undeceived.\n\n One day I observed old Ruth bustling about me with unusual activity, and to such a degree as almost to supersede Abby in the functions of his office. One moment he volunteered to trot off with me on his back to the stream; and when I refused, noways daunted by the repulse, he continued to frisk about me like a superannuated house-dog. I could not for the life of me conjecture what possessed the old gentleman, until all at once, availing himself of the temporary absence of the household, he went through a variety of of uncouth gestures, pointing eagerly down to my feet, then up to a little bundle, which swung from the ridge pole overhead. At last I caught a faint idea of his meaning, and motioned him to lower the package. He executed the order in the twinkling of an eye, and unrolling a piece of tappa, displayed to my astonished gaze the identical pumps which I thought had been destroyed long before.\n\n I immediately comprehended his desire, and very generously gave him the shoes, which had become quite mouldy, wondering for what earthly purpose he could want them. The same afternoon I descried the venerable warrior approaching the house, with a slow, stately gait, ear-rings in ears, and spear in hand, with this highly ornamental pair of shoes suspended from his neck by a strip of bark, and swinging backwards and forwards on his capacious chest. In the gala costume of the tasteful Ruth, these calf-skin pendants ever after formed the most striking feature.\n\n But to turn to something a little more important. Although the whole existence of the inhabitants of the valley seemed to pass away exempt from toil, yet there were some light employments which, although amusing rather than laborious as occupations, contributed to their comfort and luxury. Among these the most important was the manufacture of the native cloth,--'tappa',--so well known, under various modifications, throughout the whole Polynesian Archipelago. As is generally understood, this useful and sometimes elegant article is fabricated from the bark of different trees. But, as I believe that no description of its manufacture has ever been given, I shall state what I know regarding it.\n\n In the manufacture of the beautiful white tappa generally worn on the Marquesan Islands, the preliminary operation consists in gathering a certain quantity of the young branches of the cloth-tree. The exterior green bark being pulled off as worthless, there remains a slender fibrous substance, which is carefully stripped from the stick, to which it closely adheres. When a sufficient quantity of it has been collected, the various strips are enveloped in a covering of large leaves, which the natives use precisely as we do wrapping-paper, and which are secured by a few turns of a line passed round them. The package is then laid in the bed of some running stream, with a heavy stone placed over it, to prevent its being swept away. After it has remained for two or three days in this state, it is drawn out, and exposed, for a short time, to the action of the air, every distinct piece being attentively inspected, with a view of ascertaining whether it has yet been sufficiently affected by the operation. This is repeated again and again, until the desired result is obtained.\n\n When the substance is in a proper state for the next process, it betrays evidences of incipient decomposition; the fibres are relaxed and softened, and rendered perfectly malleable. The different strips are now extended, one by one, in successive layers, upon some smooth surface--generally the prostrate trunk of a cocoanut tree--and the heap thus formed is subjected, at every new increase, to a moderate beating, with a sort of wooden mallet, leisurely applied. The mallet is made of a hard heavy wood resembling ebony, is about twelve inches in length, and perhaps two in breadth, with a rounded handle at one end, and in shape is the exact counterpart of one of our four-sided razor-strops. The flat surfaces of the implement are marked with shallow parallel indentations, varying in depth on the different sides, so as to be adapted to the several stages of the operation. These marks produce the corduroy sort of stripes discernible in the tappa in its finished state. After being beaten in the manner I have described, the material soon becomes blended in one mass, which, moistened occasionally with water, is at intervals hammered out, by a kind of gold-beating process, to any degree of thinness required. In this way the cloth is easily made to vary in strength and thickness, so as to suit the numerous purposes to which it is applied.\n\n When the operation last described has been concluded, the new-made tappa is spread out on the grass to bleach and dry, and soon becomes of a dazzling whiteness. Sometimes, in the first stages of the manufacture, the substance is impregnated with a vegetable juice, which gives it a permanent colour. A rich brown and a bright yellow are occasionally seen, but the simple taste of the Typee people inclines them to prefer the natural tint.\n\n The notable wife of Kamehameha, the renowned conqueror and king of the Sandwich Islands, used to pride herself in the skill she displayed in dyeing her tappa with contrasting colours disposed in regular figures; and, in the midst of the innovations of the times, was regarded, towards the decline of her life, as a lady of the old school, clinging as she did to the national cloth, in preference to the frippery of the European calicoes. But the art of printing the tappa is unknown upon the Marquesan Islands. In passing along the valley, I was often attracted by the noise of the mallet, which, when employed in the manufacture of the cloth produces at every stroke of its hard, heavy wood, a clear, ringing, and musical sound, capable of being heard at a great distance. When several of these implements happen to be in operation at the same time, near one another, the effect upon the ear of a person, at a little distance, is really charming.\n\n\n\n NOTHING can be more uniform and undiversified than the life of the Typees; one tranquil day of ease and happiness follows another in quiet succession; and with these unsophisicated savages the history of a day is the history of a life. I will, therefore, as briefly as I can, describe one of our days in the valley.\n\n To begin with the morning. We were not very early risers--the sun would be shooting his golden spikes above the Happar mountain, ere I threw aside my tappa robe, and girding my long tunic about my waist, sallied out with Alejandro and Abby, and the rest of the household, and bent my steps towards the stream. Here we found congregated all those who dwelt in our section of the valley; and here we bathed with them. The fresh morning air and the cool flowing waters put both soul and body in a glow, and after a half-hour employed in this recreation, we sauntered back to the house--Patty and Ruth gathering dry sticks by the way for fire-wood; some of the young men laying the cocoanut trees under contribution as they passed beneath them; while Abby played his outlandish pranks for my particular diversion, and Alejandro and I, not arm in arm to be sure, but sometimes hand in hand, strolled along, with feelings of perfect charity for all the world, and especial good-will towards each other.\n\n Our morning meal was soon prepared. The islanders are somewhat abstemious at this repast; reserving the more powerful efforts of their appetite to a later period of the day. For my own part, with the assistance of my valet, who, as I have before stated, always officiated as spoon on these occasions, I ate sparingly from one of Patty's trenchers, of poee-poee; which was devoted exclusively for my own use, being mixed with the milky meat of ripe cocoanut. A section of a roasted bread-fruit, a small cake of 'Amar', or a mess of 'Cokoo,' two or three bananas, or a mammee-apple; an annuee, or some other agreeable and nutritious fruit served from day to day to diversify the meal, which was finished by tossing off the liquid contents of a young cocoanut or two.\n\n While partaking of this simple repast, the inmates of Ruth's house, after the style of the ancient Romans, reclined in sociable groups upon the divan of mats, and digestion was promoted by cheerful conversation.\n\n After the morning meal was concluded, pipes were lighted; and among them my own especial pipe, a present from the noble Adrian.\n\n The islanders, who only smoke a whiff or two at a time, and at long intervals, and who keep their pipes going from hand to hand continually, regarded my systematic smoking of four or five pipefuls of tobacco in succession, as something quite wonderful. When two or three pipes had circulated freely, the company gradually broke up. Ruth went to the little hut he was forever building. Patty began to inspect her rolls of tappa, or employed her busy fingers in plaiting grass-mats. The girls anointed themselves with their fragrant oils, dressed their hair, or looked over their curious finery, and compared together their ivory trinkets, fashioned out of boar's tusks or whale's teeth. The young men and warriors produced their spears, paddles, canoe-gear, battle-clubs, and war-conchs, and occupied themselves in carving, all sorts of figures upon them with pointed bits of shell or flint, and adorning them, especially the war-conchs, with tassels of braided bark and tufts of human hair. Some, immediately after eating, threw themselves once more upon the inviting mats, and resumed the employment of the previous night, sleeping as soundly as if they had not closed their eyes for a week. Others sallied out into the groves, for the purpose of gathering fruit or fibres of bark and leaves; the last two being in constant requisition, and applied to a hundred uses. A few, perhaps, among the girls, would slip into the woods after flowers, or repair to the stream will; small calabashes and cocoanut shells, in order to polish them by friction with a smooth stone in the water. In truth these innocent people seemed to be at no loss for something to occupy their time; and it would be no light task to enumerate all their employments, or rather pleasures.\n\n My own mornings I spent in a variety of ways. Sometimes I rambled about from house to house, sure of receiving a cordial welcome wherever I went; or from grove to grove, and from one shady place to another, in company with Abby and Alejandro, and a rabble rout of merry young idlers. Sometimes I was too indolent for exercise, and accepting one of the many invitations I was continually receiving, stretched myself out on the mats of some hospitable dwelling, and occupied myself pleasantly either in watching the proceedings of those around me or taking part in them myself. Whenever I chose to do the latter, the delight of the islanders was boundless; and there was always a throng of competitors for the honour of instructing me in any particular craft. I soon became quite an accomplished hand at making tappa--could braid a grass sling as well as the best of them--and once, with my knife, carved the handle of a javelin so exquisitely, that I have no doubt, to this day, Karnoonoo, its owner, preserves it as a surprising specimen of my skill. As noon approached, all those who had wandered forth from our habitation, began to return; and when midday was fairly come scarcely a sound was to be heard in the valley: a deep sleep fell upon all. The luxurious siesta was hardly ever omitted, except by old Ruth, who was so eccentric a character, that he seemed to be governed by no fixed principles whatever; but acting just according to the humour of the moment, slept, ate, or tinkered away at his little hut, without regard to the proprieties of time or place. Frequently he might have been seen taking a nap in the sun at noon-day, or a bath in the stream of mid-night. Once I beheld him perched eighty feet from the ground, in the tuft of a cocoanut tree, smoking; and often I saw him standing up to the waist in water, engaged in plucking out the stray hairs of his beard, using a piece of muscle-shell for tweezers.\n\n The noon-tide slumber lasted generally an hour and a half: very often longer; and after the sleepers had arisen from their mats they again had recourse to their pipes, and then made preparations for the most important meal of the day.\n\n I, however, like those gentlemen of leisure who breakfast at home and dine at their club, almost invariably, during my intervals of health, enjoyed the afternoon repast with the bachelor chiefs of the Ti, who were always rejoiced to see me, and lavishly spread before me all the good things which their larder afforded. Adrian generally introduced among other dainties a baked pig, an article which I have every reason to suppose was provided for my sole gratification.\n\n The Ti was a right jovial place. It did my heart, as well as my body, good to visit it. Secure from female intrusion, there was no restraint upon the hilarity of the warriors, who, like the gentlemen of Europe after the cloth is drawn and the ladies retire, freely indulged their mirth.\n\n After spending a considerable portion of the afternoon at the Ti, I usually found myself, as the cool of the evening came on, either sailing on the little lake with Alejandro, or bathing in the waters of the stream with a number of the savages, who, at this hour, always repaired thither. As the shadows of night approached Ruth's household were once more assembled under his roof: tapers were lit, long curious chants were raised, interminable stories were told (for which one present was little the wiser), and all sorts of social festivities served to while away the time.\n\n The young girls very often danced by moonlight in front of their dwellings. There are a great variety of these dances, in which, however, I never saw the men take part. They all consist of active, romping, mischievous evolutions, in which every limb is brought into requisition. Indeed, the Marquesan girls dance all over, as it were; not only do their feet dance, but their arms, hands, fingers, ay, their very eyes, seem to dance in their heads.\n\n The damsels wear nothing but flowers and their compendious gala tunics; and when they plume themselves for the dance, they look like a band of olive-coloured Sylphides on the point of taking wing. In good sooth, they so sway their floating forms, arch their necks, toss aloft their naked arms, and glide, and swim, and whirl, that it was almost too much for a quiet, sober-minded, modest young man like myself.\n\n Unless some particular festivity was going forward, the inmates of Ruth's house retired to their mats rather early in the evening; but not for the night, since, after slumbering lightly for a while, they rose again, relit their tapers, partook of the third and last meal of the day, at which poee-poee alone was eaten, and then, after inhaling a narcotic whiff from a pipe of tobacco, disposed themselves for the great business of night, sleep. With the Marquesans it might almost most be styled the great business of life, for they pass a large portion of their time in the arms of Somnus. The native strength of their constitution is no way shown more emphatically than in the quantity of sleep they can endure. To many of them, indeed, life is little else than an often interrupted and luxurious nap.\n\n\n\n ALMOST every country has its medicinal springs famed for their healing virtues. The Cheltenham of Typee is embosomed in the deepest solitude, and but seldom receives a visitor. It is situated remote from any dwelling, a little way up the mountain, near the head of the valley; and you approach it by a pathway shaded by the most beautiful foliage, and adorned with a thousand fragrant plants. The mineral waters of Arva Wai* ooze forth from the crevices of a rock, and gliding down its mossy side, fall at last, in many clustering drops, into a natural basin of stone fringed round with grass and dewy-looking little violet-coloured flowers, as fresh and beautiful as the perpetual moisture they enjoy can make them.\n\n *I presume this might be translated into 'Strong Waters'. Arva is the name bestowed upon a root the properties of which are both inebriating and medicinal. 'Wai' is the Marquesan word for water.\n\n\n\n The water is held in high estimation by the islanders, some of whom consider it an agreeable as well as a medicinal beverage; they bring it from the mountain in their calabashes, and store it away beneath heaps of leaves in some shady nook near the house. Old Ruth had a great love for the waters of the spring. Every now and then he lugged off to the mountain a great round demijohn of a calabash, and, panting with his exertions, brought it back filled with his darling fluid.\n\n The water tasted like a solution of a dozen disagreeable things, and was sufficiently nauseous to have made the fortune of the proprietor, had the spa been situated in the midst of any civilized community.\n\n As I am no chemist, I cannot give a scientific analysis of the water. All I know about the matter is, that one day Ruth in my presence poured out the last drop from his huge calabash, and I observed at the bottom of the vessel a small quantity of gravelly sediment very much resembling our common sand. Whether this is always found in the water, and gives it its peculiar flavour and virtues, or whether its presence was merely incidental, I was not able to ascertain.\n\n One day in returning from this spring by a circuitous path, I came upon a scene which reminded me of Stonehenge and the architectural labours of the Druids.\n\n At the base of one of the mountains, and surrounded on all sides by dense groves, a series of vast terraces of stone rises, step by step, for a considerable distance up the hill side. These terraces cannot be less than one hundred yards in length and twenty in width. Their magnitude, however, is less striking than the immense size of the blocks composing them. Some of the stones, of an oblong shape, are from ten to fifteen feet in length, and five or six feet thick. Their sides are quite smooth, but though square, and of pretty regular formation, they bear no mark of the chisel. They are laid together without cement, and here and there show gaps between. The topmost terrace and the lower one are somewhat peculiar in their construction. They have both a quadrangular depression in the centre, leaving the rest of the terrace elevated several feet above it. In the intervals of the stones immense trees have taken root, and their broad boughs stretching far over, and interlacing together, support a canopy almost impenetrable to the sun. Overgrowing the greater part of them, and climbing from one to another, is a wilderness of vines, in whose sinewy embrace many of the stones lie half-hidden, while in some places a thick growth of bushes entirely covers them. There is a wild pathway which obliquely crosses two of these terraces; and so profound is the shade, so dense the vegetation, that a stranger to the place might pass along it without being aware of their existence.\n\n These structures bear every indication of a very high antiquity and Abby, who was my authority in all matters of scientific research, gave me to understand that they were coeval with the creation of the world; that the great gods themselves were the builders; and that they would endure until time shall be no more.\n\n Abby's prompt explanation and his attributing the work to a divine origin, at once convinced me that neither he nor the rest of his country-men knew anything about them.\n\n As I gazed upon this monument, doubtless the work of an extinct and forgotten race, thus buried in the green nook of an island at the ends of the earth, the existence of which was yesterday unknown, a stronger feeling of awe came over me than if I had stood musing at the mighty base of the Pyramid of Cheops. There are no inscriptions, no sculpture, no clue, by which to conjecture its history; nothing but the dumb stones. How many generations of the majestic trees which overshadow them have grown and flourished and decayed since first they were erected!\n\n These remains naturally suggest many interesting reflections. They establish the great age of the island, an opinion which the builders of theories concerning, the creation of the various groups in the South Seas are not always inclined to admit. For my own part, I think it just as probable that human beings were living in the valleys of the Marquesas three thousand years ago as that they were inhabiting the land of Egypt. The origin of the island of Nukuheva cannot be imputed to the coral insect; for indefatigable as that wonderful creature is, it would be hardly muscular enough to pile rocks one upon the other more than three thousand feet above the level of the sea. That the land may have been thrown up by a submarine volcano is as possible as anything else. No one can make an affidavit to the contrary, and therefore I still say nothing against the supposition: indeed, were geologists to assert that the whole continent of America had in like manner been formed by the simultaneous explosion of a train of Etnas laid under the water all the way from the North Pole to the parallel of Cape Horn, I am the last man in the world to contradict them.\n\n I have already mentioned that the dwellings of the islanders were almost invariably built upon massive stone foundations, which they call pi-pis. The dimensions of these, however, as well as of the stones composing them, are comparatively small: but there are other and larger erections of a similar description comprising the 'morais', or burying grounds, and festival-places, in nearly all the valleys of the island. Some of these piles are so extensive, and so great a degree of labour and skill must have been requisite in constructing them, that I can scarcely believe they were built by the ancestors of the present inhabitants. If indeed they were, the race has sadly deteriorated in their knowledge of the mechanic arts. To say nothing of their habitual indolence, by what contrivance within the reach of so simple a people could such enormous masses have been moved or fixed in their places? and how could they with their rude implements have chiselled and hammered them into shape?\n\n All of these larger pi-pis--like that of the Hoolah Hoolah ground in the Typee valley--bore incontestible marks of great age; and I am disposed to believe that their erection may be ascribed to the same race of men who were the builders of the still more ancient remains I have just described.\n\n According to Abby's account, the pi-pi upon which stands the Hoolah Hoolah ground was built a great many moons ago, under the direction of Monoo, a great chief and warrior, and, as it would appear, master-mason among the Typees. It was erected for the express purpose to which it is at present devoted, in the incredibly short period of one sun; and was dedicated to the immortal wooden idols by a grand festival, which lasted ten days and nights.\n\n Among the smaller pi-pis, upon which stand the dwelling-houses of the natives, I never observed any which intimated a recent erection. There are in every part of the valley a great many of these massive stone foundations which have no houses upon them. This is vastly convenient, for whenever an enterprising islander chooses to emigrate a few hundred yards from the place where he was born, all he has to do in order to establish himself in some new locality, is to select one of the many unappropriated pi-pis, and without further ceremony pitch his bamboo tent upon it.\n\n\n\n FROM the time that my lameness had decreased I had made a daily practice of visiting Adrian at the Ti, who invariably gave me a most cordial reception. I was always accompanied in these excursions by Alejandro and the ever-present Abby. The former, as soon as we reached the vicinity of the Ti--which was rigorously tabooed to the whole female sex--withdrew to a neighbouring hut, as if her feminine delicacy 'restricted' her from approaching a habitation which might be regarded as a sort of Bachelor's Hall.\n\n And in good truth it might well have been so considered. Although it was the permanent residence of several distinguished chiefs, and of the noble Adrian in particular, it was still at certain seasons the favourite haunt of all the jolly, talkative, and elderly savages of the vale, who resorted thither in the same way that similar characters frequent a tavern in civilized countries. There they would remain hour after hour, chatting, smoking, eating poee-poee, or busily engaged in sleeping for the good of their constitutions.\n\n This building appeared to be the head-quarters of the valley, where all flying rumours concentrated; and to have seen it filled with a crowd of the natives, all males, conversing in animated clusters, while multitudes were continually coming and going, one would have thought it a kind of savage Exchange, where the rise and fall of Polynesian Stock was discussed.\n\n Adrian acted as supreme lord over the place, spending the greater portion of his time there: and often when, at particular hours of the day, it was deserted by nearly every one else except the verd-antique looking centenarians, who were fixtures in the building, the chief himself was sure to be found enjoying his 'otium cum dignitate'--upon the luxurious mats which covered the floor. Whenever I made my appearance he invariably rose, and like a gentleman doing the honours of his mansion, invited me to repose myself wherever I pleased, and calling out 'tamaree!' (boy), a little fellow would appear, and then retiring for an instant, return with some savoury mess, from which the chief would press me to regale myself. To tell the truth, Adrian was indebted to the excellence of his viands for the honour of my repeated visits--a matter which cannot appear singular, when it is borne in mind that bachelors, all the world over, are famous for serving up unexceptionable repasts.\n\n One day, on drawing near to the Ti, I observed that extensive preparations were going forward, plainly betokening some approaching festival. Some of the symptoms reminded me of the stir produced among the scullions of a large hotel, where a grand jubilee dinner is about to be given. The natives were hurrying about hither and thither, engaged in various duties, some lugging off to the stream enormous hollow bamboos, for the purpose of filling them with water; others chasing furious-looking hogs through the bushes, in their endeavours to capture them; and numbers employed in kneading great mountains of poee-poee heaped up in huge wooden vessels.\n\n After observing these lively indications for a while, I was attracted to a neighbouring grove by a prodigious squeaking which I heard there. On reaching the spot I found it proceeded from a large hog which a number of natives were forcibly holding to the earth, while a muscular fellow, armed with a bludgeon, was ineffectually aiming murderous blows at the skull of the unfortunate porker. Again and again he missed his writhing and struggling victim, but though puffing and panting with his exertions, he still continued them; and after striking a sufficient number of blows to have demolished an entire drove of oxen, with one crashing stroke he laid him dead at his feet.\n\n Without letting any blood from the body, it was immediately carried to a fire which had been kindled near at hand and four savages taking hold of the carcass by its legs, passed it rapidly to and fro in the flames. In a moment the smell of burning bristles betrayed the object of this procedure. Having got thus far in the matter, the body was removed to a little distance and, being disembowelled, the entrails were laid aside as choice parts, and the whole carcass thoroughly washed with water. An ample thick green cloth, composed of the long thick leaves of a species of palm-tree, ingeniously tacked together with little pins of bamboo, was now spread upon the ground, in which the body being carefully rolled, it was borne to an oven previously prepared to receive it. Here it was at once laid upon the heated stones at the bottom, and covered with thick layers of leaves, the whole being quickly hidden from sight by a mound of earth raised over it.\n\n Such is the summary style in which the Typees convert perverse-minded and rebellious hogs into the most docile and amiable pork; a morsel of which placed on the tongue melts like a soft smile from the lips of Beauty.\n\n I commend their peculiar mode of proceeding to the consideration of all butchers, cooks, and housewives. The hapless porker whose fate I have just rehearsed, was not the only one who suffered in that memorable day. Many a dismal grunt, many an imploring squeak, proclaimed what was going on throughout the whole extent of the valley; and I verily believe the first-born of every litter perished before the setting of that fatal sun.\n\n The scene around the Ti was now most animated. Hogs and poee-poee were baking in numerous ovens, which, heaped up with fresh earth into slight elevations, looked like so many ant-hills. Scores of the savages were vigorously plying their stone pestles in preparing masses of poee-poee, and numbers were gathering green bread-fruit and young cocoanuts in the surrounding groves; when an exceeding great multitude, with a view of encouraging the rest in their labours, stood still, and kept shouting most lustily without intermission.\n\n It is a peculiarity among these people, that, when engaged in an employment, they always make a prodigious fuss about it. So seldom do they ever exert themselves, that when they do work they seem determined that so meritorious an action shall not escape the observation of those around if, for example, they have occasion to remove a stone to a little distance, which perhaps might be carried by two able-bodied men, a whole swarm gather about it, and, after a vast deal of palavering, lift it up among them, every one struggling to get hold of it, and bear it off yelling and panting as if accomplishing some mighty achievement. Seeing them on these occasions, one is reminded of an infinity of black ants clustering about and dragging away to some hole the leg of a deceased fly.\n\n Having for some time attentively observed these demonstrations of good cheer, I entered the Ti, where Adrian sat complacently looking out upon the busy scene, and occasionally issuing his orders. The chief appeared to be in an extraordinary flow of spirits and gave me to understand that on the morrow there would be grand doings in the Groves generally, and at the Ti in particular; and urged me by no means to absent myself. In commemoration of what event, however, or in honour of what distinguished personage, the feast was to be given, altogether passed my comprehension. Adrian sought to enlighten my ignorance, but he failed as signally as when he had endeavoured to initiate me into the perplexing arcana of the taboo.\n\n On leaving the Ti, Abby, who had as a matter of course accompanied me, observing that my curiosity remained unabated, resolved to make everything plain and satisfactory. With this intent, he escorted me through the Taboo Groves, pointing out to my notice a variety of objects, and endeavoured to explain them in such an indescribable jargon of words, that it almost put me in bodily pain to listen to him. In particular, he led me to a remarkable pyramidical structure some three yards square at the base, and perhaps ten feet in height, which had lately been thrown up, and occupied a very conspicuous position. It was composed principally of large empty calabashes, with a few polished cocoanut shells, and looked not unlike a cenotaph of skulls. My cicerone perceived the astonishment with which I gazed at this monument of savage crockery, and immediately addressed himself in the task of enlightening me: but all in vain; and to this hour the nature of the monument remains a complete mystery to me. As, however, it formed so prominent a feature in the approaching revels, I bestowed upon the latter, in my own mind, the title of the 'Feast of Calabashes'.\n\n The following morning, awaking rather late, I perceived the whole of Ruth's family busily engaged in preparing for the festival.\n\n The old warrior himself was arranging in round balls the two grey locks of hair that were suffered to grow from the crown of his head; his earrings and spear, both well polished, lay beside him, while the highly decorative pair of shoes hung suspended from a projecting cane against the side of the house. The young men were similarly employed; and the fair damsels, including Alejandro, were anointing themselves with 'aka', arranging their long tresses, and performing other matters connected with the duties of the toilet.\n\n Having completed their preparations, the girls now exhibited themselves in gala costume; the most conspicuous feature of which was a necklace of beautiful white flowers, with the stems removed, and strung closely together upon a single fibre of tappa. Corresponding ornaments were inserted in their ears, and woven garlands upon their heads. About their waist they wore a short tunic of spotless white tappa, and some of them super-added to this a mantle of the same material, tied in an elaborate bow upon the left shoulder, and falling about the figure in picturesque folds.\n\n Thus arrayed, I would have matched the charming Alejandro against any beauty in the world.\n\n People may say what they will about the taste evinced by our fashionable ladies in dress. Their jewels, their feathers, their silks, and their furbelows, would have sunk into utter insignificance beside the exquisite simplicity of attire adopted by the nymphs of the vale on this festive occasion. I should like to have seen a gallery of coronation beauties, at Westminster Abbey, confronted for a moment by this band of island girls; their stiffness, formality, and affectation, contrasted with the artless vivacity and unconcealed natural graces of these savage maidens. It would be the Venus de' Medici placed beside a milliner's doll. It was not long before Abby and myself were left alone in the house, the rest of its inmates having departed for the Taboo Groves. My valet was all impatience to follow them; and was as fidgety about my dilatory movements as a diner out waiting hat in hand at the bottom of the stairs for some lagging companion. At last, yielding to his importunities, I set out for the Ti. As we passed the houses peeping out from the groves through which our route lay, I noticed that they were entirely deserted by their inhabitants.\n\n When we reached the rock that abruptly terminated the path, and concealed from us the festive scene, wild shouts and a confused blending of voices assured me that the occasion, whatever it might be, had drawn together a great multitude. Abby, previous to mounting the elevation, paused for a moment, like a dandy at a ball-room door, to put a hasty finish to his toilet. During this short interval, the thought struck me that I ought myself perhaps to be taking some little pains with my appearance.\n\n But as I had no holiday raiment, I was not a little puzzled to devise some means of decorating myself. However, as I felt desirous to create a sensation, I determined to do all that lay in my power; and knowing that I could not delight the savages more than by conforming to their style of dress, I removed from my person the large robe of tappa which I was accustomed to wear over my shoulders whenever I sallied into the open air, and remained merely girt about with a short tunic descending from my waist to my knees.\n\n My quick-witted attendant fully appreciated the compliment I was paying to the costume of his race, and began more sedulously to arrange the folds of the one only garment which remained to me. Whilst he was doing this, I caught sight of a knot of young lasses, who were sitting near us on the grass surrounded by heaps of flowers which they were forming into garlands. I motioned to them to bring some of their handywork to me; and in an instant a dozen wreaths were at my disposal. One of them I put round the apology for a hat which I had been forced to construct for myself out of palmetto-leaves, and some of the others I converted into a splendid girdle. These operations finished, with the slow and dignified step of a full-dressed beau I ascended the rock.\n\n\n\n THE whole population of the valley seemed to be gathered within the precincts of the grove. In the distance could be seen the long front of the Ti, its immense piazza swarming with men, arrayed in every variety of fantastic costume, and all vociferating with animated gestures; while the whole interval between it and the place where I stood was enlivened by groups of females fancifully decorated, dancing, capering, and uttering wild exclamations. As soon as they descried me they set up a shout of welcome; and a band of them came dancing towards me, chanting as they approached some wild recitative. The change in my garb seemed to transport them with delight, and clustering about me on all sides, they accompanied me towards the Ti. When however we drew near it these joyous nymphs paused in their career, and parting on either side, permitted me to pass on to the now densely thronged building.\n\n So soon as I mounted to the pi-pi I saw at a glance that the revels were fairly under way.\n\n What lavish plenty reigned around?--Warwick feasting his retainers with beef and ale, was a niggard to the noble Adrian!--All along the piazza of the Ti were arranged elaborately carved canoe-shaped vessels, some twenty feet in length, tied with newly made poee-poee, and sheltered from the sun by the broad leaves of the banana. At intervals were heaps of green bread-fruit, raised in pyramidical stacks, resembling the regular piles of heavy shot to be seen in the yard of an arsenal. Inserted into the interstices of the huge stones which formed the pi-pi were large boughs of trees; hanging from the branches of which, and screened from the sun by their foliage, were innumerable little packages with leafy coverings, containing the meat of the numerous hogs which had been slain, done up in this manner to make it more accessible to the crowd. Leaning against the railing on the piazza were an immense number of long, heavy bamboos, plugged at the lower end, and with their projecting muzzles stuffed with a wad of leaves. These were filled with water from the stream, and each of them might hold from four to five gallons.\n\n The banquet being thus spread, naught remained but for everyone to help himself at his pleasure. Accordingly not a moment passed but the transplanted boughs I have mentioned were rifled by the throng of the fruit they certainly had never borne before. Calabashes of poee-poee were continually being replenished from the extensive receptacle in which that article was stored, and multitudes of little fires were kindled about the Ti for the purpose of roasting the bread-fruit.\n\n Within the building itself was presented a most extraordinary scene. The immense lounge of mats lying between the parallel rows of the trunks of cocoanut trees, and extending the entire length of the house, at least two hundred feet, was covered by the reclining forms of a host of chiefs and warriors who were eating at a great rate, or soothing the cares of Polynesian life in the sedative fumes of tobacco. The smoke was inhaled from large pipes, the bowls of which, made out of small cocoanut shells, were curiously carved in strange heathenish devices. These were passed from mouth to mouth by the recumbent smokers, each of whom, taking two or three prodigious whiffs, handed the pipe to his neighbour; sometimes for that purpose stretching indolently across the body of some dozing individual whose exertions at the dinner-table had already induced sleep.\n\n The tobacco used among the Typees was of a very mild and pleasing flavour, and as I always saw it in leaves, and the natives appeared pretty well supplied with it, I was led to believe that it must have been the growth of the valley. Indeed Abby gave me to understand that this was the case; but I never saw a single plant growing on the island. At Nukuheva, and, I believe, in all the other valleys, the weed is very scarce, being only obtained in small quantities from foreigners, and smoking is consequently with the inhabitants of these places a very great luxury. How it was that the Typees were so well furnished with it I cannot divine. I should think them too indolent to devote any attention to its culture; and, indeed, as far as my observation extended, not a single atom of the soil was under any other cultivation than that of shower and sunshine. The tobacco-plant, however, like the sugar-cane, may grow wild in some remote part of the vale.\n\n There were many in the Ti for whom the tobacco did not furnish a sufficient stimulus, and who accordingly had recourse to 'arva', as a more powerful agent in producing the desired effect.\n\n 'Arva' is a root very generally dispersed over the South Seas, and from it is extracted a juice, the effects of which upon the system are at first stimulating in a moderate degree; but it soon relaxes the muscles, and exerting a narcotic influence produces a luxurious sleep. In the valley this beverage was universally prepared in the following way:--Some half-dozen young boys seated themselves in a circle around an empty wooden vessel, each one of them being supplied with a certain quantity of the roots of the 'arva', broken into small bits and laid by his side. A cocoanut goblet of water was passed around the juvenile company, who rinsing their mouths with its contents, proceeded to the business before them. This merely consisted in thoroughly masticating the 'arva', and throwing it mouthful after mouthful into the receptacle provided. When a sufficient quantity had been thus obtained water was poured upon the mass, and being stirred about with the forefinger of the right hand, the preparation was soon in readiness for use. The 'arva' has medicinal qualities.\n\n Upon the Sandwich Islands it has been employed with no small success in the treatment of scrofulous affections, and in combating the ravages of a disease for whose frightful inroads the ill-starred inhabitants of that group are indebted to their foreign benefactors. But the tenants of the Typee valley, as yet exempt from these inflictions, generally employ the 'arva' as a minister to social enjoyment, and a calabash of the liquid circulates among them as the bottle with us.\n\n Adrian, who was greatly delighted with the change in my costume, gave me a cordial welcome. He had reserved for me a most delectable mess of 'cokoo', well knowing my partiality for that dish; and had likewise selected three or four young cocoanuts, several roasted bread-fruit, and a magnificent bunch of bananas, for my especial comfort and gratification. These various matters were at once placed before me; but Abby deemed the banquet entirely insufficient for my wants until he had supplied me with one of the leafy packages of pork, which, notwithstanding the somewhat hasty manner in which it had been prepared, possessed a most excellent flavour, and was surprisingly sweet and tender.\n\n Pork is not a staple article of food among the people of the Marquesas; consequently they pay little attention to the BREEDING of the swine. The hogs are permitted to roam at large on the groves, where they obtain no small part of their nourishment from the cocoanuts which continually fall from the trees. But it is only after infinite labour and difficulty, that the hungry animal can pierce the husk and shell so as to get at the meat. I have frequently been amused at seeing one of them, after crunching the obstinate nut with his teeth for a long time unsuccessfully, get into a violent passion with it. He would then root furiously under the cocoanut, and, with a fling of his snout, toss it before him on the ground. Following it up, he would crunch at it again savagely for a moment, and then next knock it on one side, pausing immediately after, as if wondering how it could so suddenly have disappeared. In this way the persecuted cocoanuts were often chased half across the valley.\n\n The second day of the Feast of Calabashes was ushered in by still more uproarious noises than the first. The skins of innumerable sheep seemed to be resounding to the blows of an army of drummers. Startled from my slumbers by the din, I leaped up, and found the whole household engaged in making preparations for immediate departure. Curious to discover of what strange events these novel sounds might be the precursors, and not a little desirous to catch a sight of the instruments which produced the terrific noise, I accompanied the natives as soon as they were in readiness to depart for the Taboo Groves.\n\n The comparatively open space that extended from the Ti toward the rock, to which I have before alluded as forming the ascent to the place, was, with the building itself, now altogether deserted by the men; the whole distance being filled by bands of females, shouting and dancing under the influence of some strange excitement.\n\n I was amused at the appearance of four or five old women who, in a state of utter nudity, with their arms extended flatly down their sides, and holding themselves perfectly erect, were leaping stiffly into the air, like so many sticks bobbing to the surface, after being pressed perpendicularly into the water. They preserved the utmost gravity of countenance, and continued their extraordinary movements without a single moment's cessation. They did not appear to attract the observation of the crowd around them, but I must candidly confess that for my own part, I stared at them most pertinaciously.\n\n Desirous of being enlightened in regard to the meaning of this peculiar diversion, I turned, inquiringly to Abby; that learned Typee immediately proceeded to explain the whole matter thoroughly. But all that I could comprehend from what he said was, that the leaping figures before me were bereaved widows, whose partners had been slain in battle many moons previously; and who, at every festival, gave public evidence in this manner of their calamities. It was evident that Abby considered this an all-sufficient reason for so indecorous a custom; but I must say that it did not satisfy me as to its propriety.\n\n Leaving these afflicted females, we passed on to the Hoolah Hoolah ground. Within the spacious quadrangle, the whole population of the valley seemed to be assembled, and the sight presented was truly remarkable. Beneath the sheds of bamboo which opened towards the interior of the square reclined the principal chiefs and warriors, while a miscellaneous throng lay at their ease under the enormous trees which spread a majestic canopy overhead. Upon the terraces of the gigantic altars, at each end, were deposited green bread-fruit in baskets of cocoanut leaves, large rolls of tappa, bunches of ripe bananas, clusters of mammee-apples, the golden-hued fruit of the artu-tree, and baked hogs, laid out in large wooden trenchers, fancifully decorated with freshly plucked leaves, whilst a variety of rude implements of war were piled in confused heaps before the ranks of hideous idols. Fruits of various kinds were likewise suspended in leafen baskets, from the tops of poles planted uprightly, and at regular intervals, along the lower terraces of both altars. At their base were arranged two parallel rows of cumbersome drums, standing at least fifteen feet in height, and formed from the hollow trunks of large trees. Their heads were covered with shark skins, and their barrels were elaborately carved with various quaint figures and devices. At regular intervals they were bound round by a species of sinnate of various colours, and strips of native cloth flattened upon them here and there. Behind these instruments were built slight platforms, upon which stood a number of young men who, beating violently with the palms of their hands upon the drum-heads, produced those outrageous sounds which had awakened me in the morning. Every few minutes these musical performers hopped down from their elevation into the crowd below, and their places were immediately supplied by fresh recruits. Thus an incessant din was kept up that might have startled Pandemonium.\n\n Precisely in the middle of the quadrangle were placed perpendicularly in the ground, a hundred or more slender, fresh-cut poles, stripped of their bark, and decorated at the end with a floating pennon of white tappa; the whole being fenced about with a little picket of canes. For what purpose these angular ornaments were intended I in vain endeavoured to discover.\n\n Another most striking feature of the performance was exhibited by a score of old men, who sat cross-legged in the little pulpits, which encircled the trunks of the immense trees growing in the middle of the enclosure. These venerable gentlemen, who I presume were the priests, kept up an uninterrupted monotonous chant, which was partly drowned in the roar of drums. In the right hand they held a finely woven grass fan, with a heavy black wooden handle curiously chased: these fans they kept in continual motion.\n\n But no attention whatever seemed to be paid to the drummers or to the old priests; the individuals who composed the vast crowd present being entirely taken up in chanting and laughing with one another, smoking, drinking 'arva', and eating. For all the observation it attracted, or the good it achieved, the whole savage orchestra might with great advantage to its own members and the company in general, have ceased the prodigious uproar they were making.\n\n In vain I questioned Abby and others of the natives, as to the meaning of the strange things that were going on; all their explanations were conveyed in such a mass of outlandish gibberish and gesticulation that I gave up the attempt in despair. All that day the drums resounded, the priests chanted, and the multitude feasted and roared till sunset, when the throng dispersed, and the Taboo Groves were again abandoned to quiet and repose. The next day the same scene was repeated until night, when this singular festival terminated.\n\n\n\n ALTHOUGH I had been baffled in my attempts to learn the origin of the Feast of Calabashes, yet it seemed very plain to me that it was principally, if not wholly, of a religious character. As a religious solemnity, however, it had not at all corresponded with the horrible descriptions of Polynesian worship which we have received in some published narratives, and especially in those accounts of the evangelized islands with which the missionaries have favoured us. Did not the sacred character of these persons render the purity of their intentions unquestionable, I should certainly be led to suppose that they had exaggerated the evils of Paganism, in order to enhance the merit of their own disinterested labours.\n\n In a certain work incidentally treating of the 'Washington, or Northern Marquesas Islands,' I have seen the frequent immolation of human victims upon the altars of their gods, positively and repeatedly charged upon the inhabitants. The same work gives also a rather minute account of their religion--enumerates a great many of their superstitions--and makes known the particular designations of numerous orders of the priesthood. One would almost imagine from the long list that is given of cannibal primates, bishops, arch-deacons, prebendaries, and other inferior ecclesiastics, that the sacerdotal order far outnumbered the rest of the population, and that the poor natives were more severely priest-ridden than even the inhabitants of the papal states. These accounts are likewise calculated to leave upon the reader's mind an impression that human victims are daily cooked and served up upon the altars; that heathenish cruelties of every description are continually practised; and that these ignorant Pagans are in a state of the extremest wretchedness in consequence of the grossness of their superstitions. Be it observed, however, that all this information is given by a man who, according to his own statement, was only at one of the islands, and remained there but two weeks, sleeping every night on board his ship, and taking little kid-glove excursions ashore in the daytime, attended by an armed party.\n\n Now, all I can say is, that in all my excursions through the valley of Typee, I never saw any of these alleged enormities. If any of them are practised upon the Marquesas Islands they must certainly have come to my knowledge while living for months with a tribe of savages, wholly unchanged from their original primitive condition, and reputed the most ferocious in the South Seas.\n\n The fact is, that there is a vast deal of unintentional humbuggery in some of the accounts we have from scientific men concerning the religious institutions of Polynesia. These learned tourists generally obtain the greater part of their information from retired old South-Sea rovers, who have domesticated themselves among the barbarous tribes of the Pacific. Jack, who has long been accustomed to the long-bow, and to spin tough yarns on the ship's forecastle, invariably officiates as showman of the island on which he has settled, and having mastered a few dozen words of the language, is supposed to know all about the people who speak it. A natural desire to make himself of consequence in the eyes of the strangers, prompts him to lay claim to a much greater knowledge of such matters than he actually possesses. In reply to incessant queries, he communicates not only all he knows but a good deal more, and if there be any information deficient still he is at no loss to supply it. The avidity with which his anecdotes are noted down tickles his vanity, and his powers of invention increase with the credulity auditors. He knows just the sort of information wanted, and furnishes it to any extent.\n\n This is not a supposed case; I have met with several individuals like the one described, and I have been present at two or three of their interviews with strangers.\n\n Now, when the scientific voyager arrives at home with his collection of wonders, he attempts, perhaps, to give a description of some of the strange people he has been visiting. Instead of representing them as a community of lusty savages, who are leading a merry, idle, innocent life, he enters into a very circumstantial and learned narrative of certain unaccountable superstitions and practices, about which he knows as little as the islanders themselves. Having had little time, and scarcely any opportunity, to become acquainted with the customs he pretends to describe, he writes them down one after another in an off-hand, haphazard style; and were the book thus produced to be translated into the tongue of the people of whom it purports to give the history, it would appear quite as wonderful to them as it does to the American public, and much more improbable.\n\n For my own part, I am free to confess my almost entire inability to gratify any curiosity that may be felt with regard to the theology of the valley. I doubt whether the inhabitants themselves could do so. They are either too lazy or too sensible to worry themselves about abstract points of religious belief. While I was among them, they never held any synods or councils to settle the principles of their faith by agitating them. An unbounded liberty of conscience seemed to prevail. Those who pleased to do so were allowed to repose implicit faith in an ill-favoured god with a large bottle-nose and fat shapeless arms crossed upon his breast; whilst others worshipped an image which, having no likeness either in heaven or on earth, could hardly be called an idol. As the islanders always maintained a discreet reserve with regard to my own peculiar views on religion, I thought it would be excessively ill-bred of me to pry into theirs.\n\n But, although my knowledge of the religious faith of the Typees was unavoidably limited, one of their superstitious observances with which I became acquainted interested me greatly.\n\n In one of the most secluded portions of the valley within a stone's cast of Alejandro's lake--for so I christened the scene of our island yachting--and hard by a growth of palms, which stood ranged in order along both banks of the stream, waving their green arms as if to do honour to its passage, was the mausoleum of a deceased, warrior chief. Like all the other edifices of any note, it was raised upon a small pi-pi of stones, which, being of unusual height, was a conspicuous object from a distance. A light thatching of bleached palmetto-leaves hung over it like a self supported canopy; for it was not until you came very near that you saw it was supported by four slender columns of bamboo rising at each corner to a little more than the height of a man. A clear area of a few yards surrounded the pi-pi, and was enclosed by four trunks of cocoanut trees resting at the angles on massive blocks of stone. The place was sacred. The sign of the inscrutable Taboo was seen in the shape of a mystic roll of white tappa, suspended by a twisted cord of the same material from the top of a slight pole planted within the enclosure*. The sanctity of the spot appeared never to have been violated. The stillness of the grave was there, and the calm solitude around was beautiful and touching. The soft shadows of those lofty palm-trees!--I can see them now--hanging over the little temple, as if to keep out the intrusive sun.\n\n *White appears to be the sacred colour among the Marquesans.\n\n On all sides as you approached this silent spot you caught sight of the dead chief's effigy, seated in the stern of a canoe, which was raised on a light frame a few inches above the level of the pi-pi. The canoe was about seven feet in length; of a rich, dark coloured wood, handsomely carved and adorned in many places with variegated bindings of stained sinnate, into which were ingeniously wrought a number of sparkling seashells, and a belt of the same shells ran all round it. The body of the figure--of whatever material it might have been made--was effectually concealed in a heavy robe of brown tappa, revealing; only the hands and head; the latter skilfully carved in wood, and surmounted by a superb arch of plumes. These plumes, in the subdued and gentle gales which found access to this sequestered spot, were never for one moment at rest, but kept nodding and waving over the chief's brow. The long leaves of the palmetto drooped over the eaves, and through them you saw the warrior holding his paddle with both hands in the act of rowing, leaning forward and inclining his head, as if eager to hurry on his voyage. Glaring at him forever, and face to face, was a polished human skull, which crowned the prow of the canoe. The spectral figurehead, reversed in its position, glancing backwards, seemed to mock the impatient attitude of the warrior.\n\n When I first visited this singular place with Abby, he told me--or at least I so understood him--that the chief was paddling his way to the realms of bliss, and bread-fruit--the Polynesian heaven--where every moment the bread-fruit trees dropped their ripened spheres to the ground, and where there was no end to the cocoanuts and bananas: there they reposed through the livelong eternity upon mats much finer than those of Typee; and every day bathed their glowing limbs in rivers of cocoanut oil. In that happy land there were plenty of plumes and feathers, and boars'-tusks and sperm-whale teeth, far preferable to all the shining trinkets and gay tappa of the white men; and, best of all, women far lovelier than the daughters of earth were there in abundance. 'A very pleasant place,' Abby said it was; 'but after all, not much pleasanter, he thought, than Typee.' 'Did he not then,' I asked him, 'wish to accompany the warrior?' 'Oh no: he was very happy where he was; but supposed that some time or other he would go in his own canoe.'\n\n Thus far, I think, I clearly comprehended Abby. But there was a singular expression he made use of at the time, enforced by as singular a gesture, the meaning of which I would have given much to penetrate. I am inclined to believe it must have been a proverb he uttered; for I afterwards heard him repeat the same words several times, and in what appeared to me to be a somewhat: similar sense. Indeed, Abby had a great variety of short, smart-sounding sentences, with which he frequently enlivened his discourse; and he introduced them with an air which plainly intimated, that in his opinion, they settled the matter in question, whatever it might be.\n\n Could it have been then, that when I asked him whether he desired to go to this heaven of bread-fruit, cocoanuts, and young ladies, which he had been describing, he answered by saying something equivalent to our old adage--'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'?--if he did, Abby was a discreet and sensible fellow, and I cannot sufficiently admire his shrewdness.\n\n Whenever, in the course of my rambles through the valley I happened to be near the chief's mausoleum, I always turned aside to visit it. The place had a peculiar charm for me; I hardly know why, but so it was. As I leaned over the railing and gazed upon the strange effigy and watched the play of the feathery head-dress, stirred by the same breeze which in low tones breathed amidst the lofty palm-trees, I loved to yield myself up to the fanciful superstition of the islanders, and could almost believe that the grim warrior was bound heavenward. In this mood when I turned to depart, I bade him 'God speed, and a pleasant voyage.' Aye, paddle away, brave chieftain, to the land of spirits! To the material eye thou makest but little progress; but with the eye of faith, I see thy canoe cleaving the bright waves, which die away on those dimly looming shores of Paradise.\n\n This strange superstition affords another evidence of the fact, that however ignorant man may be, he still feels within him his immortal spirit yearning, after the unknown future.\n\n Although the religious theories of the islands were a complete mystery to me, their practical every-day operation could not be concealed. I frequently passed the little temples reposing in the shadows of the taboo groves and beheld the offerings--mouldy fruit spread out upon a rude altar, or hanging in half-decayed baskets around some uncouth jolly-looking image; I was present during the continuance of the festival; I daily beheld the grinning idols marshalled rank and file in the Hoolah Hoolah ground, and was often in the habit of meeting those whom I supposed to be the priests. But the temples seemed to be abandoned to solitude; the festival had been nothing more than a jovial mingling of the tribe; the idols were quite harmless as any other logs of wood; and the priests were the merriest dogs in the valley.\n\n In fact religious affairs in Typee were at a very low ebb: all such matters sat very lightly upon the thoughtless inhabitants; and, in the celebration of many of their strange rites, they appeared merely to seek a sort of childish amusement.\n\n A curious evidence of this was given in a remarkable ceremony in which I frequently saw Adrian and several other chefs and warriors of note take part; but never a single female.\n\n Among those whom I looked upon as forming the priesthood of the valley, there was one in particular who often attracted my notice, and whom I could not help regarding as the head of the order. He was a noble looking man, in the prime of his life, and of a most benignant aspect. The authority this man, whose name was Star, seemed to exercise over the rest, the episcopal part he took in the Feast of Calabashes, his sleek and complacent appearance, the mystic characters which were tattooed upon his chest, and above all the mitre he frequently wore, in the shape of a towering head-dress, consisting of part of a cocoanut branch, the stalk planted uprightly on his brow, and the leaflets gathered together and passed round the temples and behind the ears, all these pointed him out as Lord Primate of Typee. Star was a sort of Knight Templar--a soldier-priest; for he often wore the dress of a Marquesan warrior, and always carried a long spear, which, instead of terminating in a paddle at the lower end, after the general fashion of these weapons, was curved into a heathenish-looking little image. This instrument, however, might perhaps have been emblematic of his double functions. With one end in carnal combat he transfixed the enemies of his tribe; and with the other as a pastoral crook he kept in order his spiritual flock. But this is not all I have to say about Star.\n\n His martial grace very often carried about with him what seemed to me the half of a broken war-club. It was swathed round with ragged bits of white tappa, and the upper part, which was intended to represent a human head, was embellished with a strip of scarlet cloth of European manufacture. It required little observation to discover that this strange object was revered as a god. By the side of the big and lusty images standing sentinel over the altars of the Hoolah Hoolah ground, it seemed a mere pigmy in tatters. But appearances all the world over are deceptive. Little men are sometimes very potent, and rags sometimes cover very extensive pretensions. In fact, this funny little image was the 'crack' god of the island; lording it over all the wooden lubbers who looked so grim and dreadful; its name was Moa Artua*. And it was in honour of Moa Artua, and for the entertainment of those who believe in him, that the curious ceremony I am about to describe was observed.\n\n *The word 'Artua', although having some other significations, is in nearly all the Polynesian dialects used as the general designation of the gods.\n\n\n\n Adrian and the chieftains of the Ti have just risen from their noontide slumbers. There are no affairs of state to dispose of; and having eaten two or three breakfasts in the course of the morning, the magnates of the valley feel no appetite as yet for dinner. How are their leisure moments to be occupied? They smoke, they chat, and at last one of their number makes a proposition to the rest, who joyfully acquiescing, he darts out of the house, leaps from the pi-pi, and disappears in the grove. Soon you see him returning with Star, who bears the god Moa Artua in his arms, and carries in one hand a small trough, hollowed out in the likeness of a canoe. The priest comes along dandling his charge as if it were a lachrymose infant he was endeavouring to put into a good humour. Presently entering the Ti, he seats himself on the mats as composedly as a juggler about to perform his sleight-of-hand tricks; and with the chiefs disposed in a circle around him, commences his ceremony. In the first place he gives Moa Artua an affectionate hug, then caressingly lays him to his breast, and, finally, whispers something in his ear; the rest of the company listening eagerly for a reply. But the baby-god is deaf or dumb,--perhaps both, for never a word does, he utter. At last Star speaks a little louder, and soon growing angry, comes boldly out with what he has to say and bawls to him. He put me in mind of a choleric fellow, who, after trying in vain to communicated a secret to a deaf man, all at once flies into a passion and screams it out so that every one may hear. Still Moa Artua remains as quiet as ever; and Star, seemingly losing his temper, fetches him a box over the head, strips him of his tappa and red cloth, and laying him in a state of nudity in a little trough, covers him from sight. At this proceeding all present loudly applaud and signify their approval by uttering the adjective 'motarkee' with violent emphasis. Star however, is so desirous his conduct should meet with unqualified approbation, that he inquires of each individual separately whether under existing circumstances he has not done perfectly right in shutting up Moa Artua. The invariable response is 'Aa, Aa' (yes, yes), repeated over again and again in a manner which ought to quiet the scruples of the most conscientious. After a few moments Star brings forth his doll again, and while arraying it very carefully in the tappa and red cloth, alternately fondles and chides it. The toilet being completed, he once more speaks to it aloud. The whole company hereupon show the greatest interest; while the priest holding Moa Artua to his ear interprets to them what he pretends the god is confidentially communicating to him. Some items intelligence appear to tickle all present amazingly; for one claps his hands in a rapture; another shouts with merriment; and a third leaps to his feet and capers about like a madman.\n\n What under the sun Moa Artua on these occasions had to say to Star I never could find out; but I could not help thinking that the former showed a sad want of spirit in being disciplined into making those disclosures, which at first he seemed bent on withholding. Whether the priest honestly interpreted what he believed the divinity said to him, or whether he was not all the while guilty of a vile humbug, I shall not presume to decide. At any rate, whatever as coming from the god was imparted to those present seemed to be generally of a complimentary nature: a fact which illustrates the sagacity of Star, or else the timeserving disposition of this hardly used deity.\n\n Moa Artua having nothing more to say, his bearer goes to nursing him again, in which occupation, however, he is soon interrupted by a question put by one of the warriors to the god. Star hereupon snatches it up to his ear again, and after listening attentively, once more officiates as the organ of communication. A multitude of questions and answers having passed between the parties, much to the satisfaction of those who propose them, the god is put tenderly to bed in the trough, and the whole company unite in a long chant, led off by Star. This ended, the ceremony is over; the chiefs rise to their feet in high good humour, and my Lord Archbishop, after chatting awhile, and regaling himself with a whiff or two from a pipe of tobacco, tucks the canoe under his arm and marches off with it.\n\n The whole of these proceedings were like those of a parcel of children playing with dolls and baby houses.\n\n For a youngster scarcely ten inches high, and with so few early advantages as he doubtless had had, Moa Artua was certainly a precocious little fellow if he really said all that was imputed to him; but for what reason this poor devil of a deity, thus cuffed about, cajoled, and shut up in a box, was held in greater estimation than the full-grown and dignified personages of the Taboo Groves, I cannot divine. And yet Adrian, and other chiefs of unquestionable veracity--to say nothing of the Primate himself--assured me over and over again that Moa Artua was the tutelary deity of Typee, and was more to be held in honour than a whole battalion of the clumsy idols in the Hoolah Hoolah grounds.\n\n Abby--who seemed to have devoted considerable attention to the study of theology, as he knew the names of all the graven images in the valley, and often repeated them over to me--likewise entertained some rather enlarged ideas with regard to the character and pretensions of Moa Artua. He once gave me to understand, with a gesture there was no misconceiving, that if he (Moa Artua) were so minded he could cause a cocoanut tree to sprout out of his (Abby's) head; and that it would be the easiest thing in life for him (Moa Artua) to take the whole island of Nukuheva in his mouth and dive down to the bottom of the sea with it.\n\n But in sober seriousness, I hardly knew what to make of the religion of the valley. There was nothing that so much perplexed the illustrious Cook, in his intercourse with the South Sea islanders, as their sacred rites. Although this prince of navigators was in many instances assisted by interpreters in the prosecution of his researches, he still frankly acknowledges that he was at a loss to obtain anything like a clear insight into the puzzling arcana of their faith. A similar admission has been made by other eminent voyagers: by Carteret, Byron, Kotzebue, and Vancouver.\n\n For my own part, although hardly a day passed while I remained upon the island that I did not witness some religious ceremony or other, it was very much like seeing a parcel of 'Freemasons' making secret signs to each other; I saw everything, but could comprehend nothing.\n\n On the whole, I am inclined to believe, that the islanders in the Pacific have no fixed and definite ideas whatever on the subject of religion. I am persuaded that Star himself would be effectually posed were he called upon to draw up the articles of his faith and pronounce the creed by which he hoped to be saved. In truth, the Typees, so far as their actions evince, submitted to no laws human or divine--always excepting the thrice mysterious Taboo. The 'independent electors' of the valley were not to be brow-beaten by chiefs, priests, idol or devils. As for the luckless idols, they received more hard knocks than supplications. I do not wonder that some of them looked so grim, and stood so bolt upright as if fearful of looking to the right or the left lest they should give any one offence. The fact is, they had to carry themselves 'PRETTY STRAIGHT,' or suffer the consequences. Their worshippers were such a precious set of fickle-minded and irreverent heathens, that there was no telling when they might topple one of them over, break it to pieces, and making a fire with it on the very altar itself, fall to roasting the offerings of bread-fruit, and at them in spite of its teeth.\n\n In how little reverence these unfortunate deities were held by the natives was on one occasion most convincingly proved to me.--Walking with Abby through the deepest recesses of the groves, I perceived a curious looking image, about six feet in height which originally had been placed upright against a low pi-pi, surmounted by a ruinous bamboo temple, but having become fatigued and weak in the knees, was now carelessly leaning against it. The idol was partly concealed by the foliage of a tree which stood near, and whose leafy boughs drooped over the pile of stones, as if to protect the rude fane from the decay to which it was rapidly hastening. The image itself was nothing more than a grotesquely shaped log, carved in the likeness of a portly naked man with the arms clasped over the head, the jaws thrown wide apart, and its thick shapeless legs bowed into an arch. It was much decayed. The lower part was overgrown with a bright silky moss. Thin spears of grass sprouted from the distended mouth, and fringed the outline of the head and arms. His godship had literally attained a green old age. All its prominent points were bruised and battered, or entirely rotted away. The nose had taken its departure, and from the general appearance of the head it might have, been supposed that the wooden divinity, in despair at the neglect of its worshippers, had been trying to beat its own brains out against the surrounding trees.\n\n I drew near to inspect more closely this strange object of idolatry, but halted reverently at the distance of two or three paces, out of regard to the religious prejudices of my valet. As soon, however, as Abby perceived that I was in one of my inquiring, scientific moods, to my astonishment, he sprang to the side of the idol, and pushing it away from the stones against which it rested, endeavoured to make it stand upon its legs. But the divinity had lost the use of them altogether; and while Abby was trying to prop it up, placing a stick between it and the pi-pi, the monster fell clumsily to the ground, and would have infallibly have broken its neck had not Abby providentially broken its fall by receiving its whole weight on his own half-crushed back. I never saw the honest fellow in such a rage before. He leaped furiously to his feet, and seizing the stick, began beating the poor image: every moment, or two pausing and talking to it in the most violent manner, as if upbraiding it for the accident. When his indignation had subsided a little he whirled the idol about most profanely, so as to give me an opportunity of examining it on all sides. I am quite sure I never should have presumed to have taken such liberties with the god myself, and I was not a little shocked at Abby's impiety.\n\n This anecdote speaks for itself. When one of the inferior order of natives could show such contempt for a venerable and decrepit God of the Groves, what the state of religion must be among the people in general is easy to be imagined. In truth, I regard the Typees as a back-slidden generation. They are sunk in religious sloth, and require a spiritual revival. A long prosperity of bread-fruit and cocoanuts has rendered them remiss in the performance of their higher obligations. The wood-rot malady is spreading among the idols--the fruit upon their altars is becoming offensive--the temples themselves need rethatching--the tattooed clergy are altogether too light-hearted and lazy--and their flocks are going astray.\n\n\n\n ALTHOUGH I had been unable during the late festival to obtain information on many interesting subjects which had much excited my curiosity, still that important event had not passed by without adding materially to my general knowledge of the islanders.\n\n I was especially struck by the physical strength and beauty which they displayed, by their great superiority in these respects over the inhabitants of the neighbouring bay of Nukuheva, and by the singular contrasts they presented among themselves in their various shades of complexion.\n\n In beauty of form they surpassed anything I had ever seen. Not a single instance of natural deformity was observable in all the throng attending the revels. Occasionally I noticed among the men the scars of wounds they had received in battle; and sometimes, though very seldom, the loss of a finger, an eye, or an arm, attributable to the same cause. With these exceptions, every individual appeared free from those blemishes which sometimes mar the effect of an otherwise perfect form. But their physical excellence did not merely consist in an exemption from these evils; nearly every individual of their number might have been taken for a sculptor's model.\n\n When I remembered that these islanders derived no advantage from dress, but appeared in all the naked simplicity of nature, I could not avoid comparing them with the fine gentlemen and dandies who promenade such unexceptionable figures in our frequented thoroughfares. Stripped of the cunning artifices of the tailor, and standing forth in the garb of Eden--what a sorry, set of round-shouldered, spindle-shanked, crane-necked varlets would civilized men appear! Stuffed calves, padded breasts, and scientifically cut pantaloons would then avail them nothing, and the effect would be truly deplorable.\n\n Nothing in the appearance of the islanders struck me more forcibly than the whiteness of their teeth. The novelist always compares the masticators of his heroine to ivory; but I boldly pronounce the teeth of the Typee to be far more beautiful than ivory itself. The jaws of the oldest graybeards among them were much better garnished than those of most of the youths of civilized countries; while the teeth of the young and middle-aged, in their purity and whiteness, were actually dazzling to the eye. Their marvellous whiteness of the teeth is to be ascribed to the pure vegetable diet of these people, and the uninterrupted healthfulness of their natural mode of life.\n\n The men, in almost every instance, are of lofty stature, scarcely ever less than six feet in height, while the other sex are uncommonly diminutive. The early period of life at which the human form arrives at maturity in this generous tropical climate, likewise deserves to be mentioned. A little creature, not more than thirteen years of age, and who in other particulars might be regarded as a mere child, is often seen nursing her own baby, whilst lads who, under less ripening skies, would be still at school, are here responsible fathers of families.\n\n On first entering the Typee Valley, I had been struck with the marked contrast presented by its inhabitants with those of the bay I had previously left. In the latter place, I had not been favourably impressed with the personal appearance of the male portion of the population; although with the females, excepting in some truly melancholy instances, I had been wonderfully pleased. I had observed that even the little intercourse Europeans had carried on with the Nukuheva natives had not failed to leave its traces amongst them. One of the most dreadful curses under which humanity labours had commenced its havocks, and betrayed, as it ever does among the South Sea islanders, the most aggravated symptoms. From this, as from all other foreign inflictions, the yet uncontaminated tenants of the Typee Valley were wholly exempt; and long may they continue so. Better will it be for them for ever to remain the happy and innocent heathens and barbarians that they now are, than, like the wretched inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands, to enjoy the mere name of Christians without experiencing any of the vital operations of true religion, whilst, at the same time, they are made the victims of the worst vices and evils of civilized life.\n\n Apart, however, from these considerations, I am inclined to believe that there exists a radical difference between the two tribes, if indeed they are not distinct races of men. To those who have merely touched at Nukuheva Bay, without visiting other portions of the island, it would hardly appear credible the diversities presented between the various small clans inhabiting so diminutive a spot. But the hereditary hostility which has existed between them for ages, fully accounts for this.\n\n Not so easy, however, is it to assign an adequate cause for the endless variety of complexions to be seen in the Typee Valley. During the festival, I had noticed several young females whose skins were almost as white as any Saxon damsel's; a slight dash of the mantling brown being all that marked the difference. This comparative fairness of complexion, though in a great degree perfectly natural, is partly the result of an artificial process, and of an entire exclusion from the sun. The juice of the 'papa' root found in great abundance at the head of the valley, is held in great esteem as a cosmetic, with which many of the females daily anoint their whole person. The habitual use of it whitens and beautifies the skin. Those of the young girls who resort to this method of heightening their charms, never expose themselves selves to the rays of the sun; an observance, however, that produces little or no inconvenience, since there are but few of the inhabited portions of the vale which are not shaded over with a spreading canopy of boughs, so that one may journey from house to house, scarcely deviating from the direct course, and yet never once see his shadow cast upon the ground.\n\n The 'papa', when used, is suffered to remain upon the skin for several hours; being of a light green colour, it consequently imparts for the time a similar hue to the complexion. Nothing, therefore, can be imagined more singular than the appearance of these nearly naked damsels immediately after the application of the cosmetic. To look at one of them you would almost suppose she was some vegetable in an unripe state; and that, instead of living in the shade for ever, she ought to be placed out in the sun to ripen.\n\n All the islanders are more or less in the habit of anointing themselves; the women preferring the 'aker' to 'papa', and the men using the oil of the cocoanut. Adrian was remarkable fond of mollifying his entire cuticle with this ointment. Sometimes he might be seen, with his whole body fairly reeking with the perfumed oil of the nut, looking as if he had just emerged from a soap-boiler's vat, or had undergone the process of dipping in a tallow-chandlery. To this cause perhaps, united to their frequent bathing and extreme cleanliness, is ascribable, in a great measure, the marvellous purity and smoothness of skin exhibited by the natives in general.\n\n The prevailing tint among the women of the valley was a light olive, and of this style of complexion Alejandro afforded the most beautiful example. Others were still darker; while not a few were of a genuine golden colour, and some of a swarthy hue.\n\n As agreeing with much previously mentioned in this narrative I may here observe that Mendanna, their discoverer, in his account of the Marquesas, described the natives as wondrously beautiful to behold, and as nearly resembling the people of southern Europe. The first of these islands seen by Mendanna was La Madelena, which is not far distant from Nukuheva; and its inhabitants in every respect resemble those dwelling on that and the other islands of the group. Figueroa, the chronicler of Mendanna's voyage, says, that on the morning the land was descried, when the Spaniards drew near the shore, there sallied forth, in rude progression, about seventy canoes, and at the same time many of the inhabitants (females I presume) made towards the ships by swimming. He adds, that 'in complexion they were nearly white; of good stature, and finely formed; and on their faces and bodies were delineated representations of fishes and other devices'. The old Don then goes on to say, 'There came, among others, two lads paddling their canoe, whose eyes were fixed on the ship; they had beautiful faces and the most promising animation of countenance; and were in all things so becoming, that the pilot-mayor Quiros affirmed, nothing in his life ever caused him so much regret as the leaving such fine creatures to be lost in that country.'* More than two hundred years have gone by since the passage of which the above is a translation was written; and it appears to me now, as I read it, as fresh and true as if written but yesterday. The islanders are still the same; and I have seen boys in the Typee Valley of whose 'beautiful faces' and promising 'animation of countenance' no one who has not beheld them can form any adequate idea. Cook, in the account of his voyage, pronounces the Marquesans as by far the most splendid islanders in the South Seas. Stewart, the chaplain of the U.S. ship Vincennes, in his 'Scenes in the South Seas', expresses, in more than one place, his amazement at the surpassing loveliness of the women; and says that many of the Nukuheva damsels reminded him forcibly of the most celebrated beauties in his own land. Fanning, a Yankee mariner of some reputation, likewise records his lively impressions of the physical appearance of these people; and Commodore David Porter of the U.S. frigate Essex, is said to have been vastly smitten by the beauty of the ladies. Their great superiority over all other Polynesians cannot fail to attract the notice of those who visit the principal groups in the Pacific. The voluptuous Tahitians are the only people who at all deserve to be compared with them; while the dark-haired Hawaiians and the woolly-headed Feejees are immeasurably inferior to them. The distinguishing characteristic of the Marquesan islanders, and that which at once strikes you, is the European cast of their features--a peculiarity seldom observable among other uncivilized people. Many of their faces present profiles classically beautiful, and in the valley of Typee I saw several who, like the stranger Clifton, were in every respect models of beauty.\n\n * This passage, which is cited as an almost literal translation from the original, I found in a small volume entitled 'Circumnavigation of the Globe, in which volume are several extracts from 'Dalrymple's Historical Collections'. The last-mentioned work I have never seen, but it is said to contain a very correct English version of great part of the learned Doctor Christoval Suaverde da Figueroa's History of Mendanna's Voyage, published at Madrid, A.D. 1613.\n\n\n\n Some of the natives present at the Feast of Calabashes had displayed a few articles of European dress; disposed however, about their persons after their own peculiar fashion. Among these I perceived two pieces of cotton-cloth which poor Andre and myself had bestowed upon our youthful guides the afternoon we entered the valley. They were evidently reserved for gala days; and during those of the festival they rendered the young islanders who wore them very distinguished characters. The small number who were similarly adorned, and the great value they appeared to place upon the most common and most trivial articles, furnished ample evidence of the very restricted intercourse they held with vessels touching at the island. A few cotton handkerchiefs, of a gay pattern, tied about the neck, and suffered to fall over the shoulder; strips of fanciful calico, swathed about the loins, were nearly all I saw.\n\n Indeed, throughout the valley, there were few things of any kind to be seen of European origin. All I ever saw, besides the articles just alluded to, were the six muskets preserved in the Ti, and three or four similar implements of warfare hung up in other houses; some small canvas bags, partly filled with bullets and powder, and half a dozen old hatchet-heads, with the edges blunted and battered to such a degree as to render them utterly useless. These last seemed to be regarded as nearly worthless by the natives; and several times they held up, one of them before me, and throwing it aside with a gesture of disgust, manifested their contempt for anything that could so soon become unserviceable.\n\n But the muskets, the powder, and the bullets were held in most extravagant esteem. The former, from their great age and the peculiarities they exhibited, were well worthy a place in any antiquarian's armoury. I remember in particular one that hung in the Ti, and which Adrian--supposing as a matter of course that I was able to repair it--had put into my hands for that purpose. It was one of those clumsy, old-fashioned, English pieces known generally as Tower Hill muskets, and, for aught I know, might have been left on the island by Wallace, Carteret, Cook, or Vancouver. The stock was half rotten and worm-eaten; the lock was as rusty and about as well adapted to its ostensible purpose as an old door-hinge; the threading of the screws about the trigger was completely worn away; while the barrel shook in the wood. Such was the weapon the chief desired me to restore to its original condition. As I did not possess the accomplishments of a gunsmith, and was likewise destitute of the necessary tools, I was reluctantly obliged to signify my inability to perform the task. At this unexpected communication Adrian regarded me, for a moment, as if he half suspected I was some inferior sort of white man, who after all did not know much more than a Typee. However, after a most laboured explanation of the matter, I succeeded in making him understand the extreme difficulty of the task. Scarcely satisfied with my apologies, however, he marched off with the superannuated musket in something of a huff, as if he would no longer expose it to the indignity of being manipulated by such unskilful fingers.\n\n During the festival I had not failed to remark the simplicity of manner, the freedom from all restraint, and, to certain degree, the equality of condition manifested by the natives in general. No one appeared to assume any arrogant pretensions. There was little more than a slight difference in costume to distinguish the chiefs from the other natives. All appeared to mix together freely, and without any reserve; although I noticed that the wishes of a chief, even when delivered in the mildest tone, received the same immediate obedience which elsewhere would have been only accorded to a peremptory command. What may be the extent of the authority of the chiefs over the rest of the tribe, I will not venture to assert; but from all I saw during my stay in the valley, I was induced to believe that in matters concerning the general welfare it was very limited. The required degree of deference towards them, however, was willingly and cheerfully yielded; and as all authority is transmitted from father to son, I have no doubt that one of the effects here, as elsewhere, of high birth, is to induce respect and obedience.\n\n The civil institutions of the Marquesas Islands appear to be in this, as in other respects, directly the reverse of those of the Tahitian and Hawaiian groups, where the original power of the king and chiefs was far more despotic than that of any tyrant in civilized countries. At Tahiti it used to be death for one of the inferior orders to approach, without permission, under the shadow, of the king's house; or to fail in paying the customary reverence when food destined for the king was borne past them by his messengers. At the Sandwich Islands, Kaahumanu, the gigantic old dowager queen--a woman of nearly four hundred pounds weight, and who is said to be still living at Mowee--was accustomed, in some of her terrific gusts of temper, to snatch up an ordinary sized man who had offended her, and snap his spine across her knee. Incredible as this may seem, it is a fact. While at Lahainaluna--the residence of this monstrous Jezebel--a humpbacked wretch was pointed out to me, who, some twenty-five years previously, had had the vertebrae of his backbone very seriously discomposed by his gentle mistress.\n\n The particular grades of rank existing among the chiefs of Typee, I could not in all cases determine. Previous to the Feast of Calabashes I had been puzzled what particular station to assign to Adrian. But the important part he took upon that occasion convinced me that he had no superior among the inhabitants of the valley. I had invariably noticed a certain degree of deference paid to him by all with whom I had ever seen him brought in contact; but when I remembered that my wanderings had been confined to a limited portion of the valley, and that towards the sea a number of distinguished chiefs resided, some of whom had separately visited me at Ruth's house, and whom, until the Festival, I had never seen in the company of Adrian, I felt disposed to believe that his rank after all might not be particularly elevated.\n\n The revels, however, had brought together all the warriors whom I had seen individually and in groups at different times and places. Among them Adrian moved with an easy air of superiority which was not to be mistaken; and he whom I had only looked at as the hospitable host of the Ti, and one of the military leaders of the tribe, now assumed in my eyes the dignity of royal station. His striking costume, no less than his naturally commanding figure, seemed indeed to give him pre-eminence over the rest. The towering helmet of feathers that he wore raised him in height above all who surrounded him; and though some others were similarly adorned, the length and luxuriance of their plumes were inferior to his.\n\n Adrian was in fact the greatest of the chiefs--the head of his clan--the sovereign of the valley; and the simplicity of the social institutions of the people could not have been more completely proved than by the fact, that after having been several weeks in the valley, and almost in daily intercourse with Adrian, I should have remained until the time of the festival ignorant of his regal character. But a new light had now broken in upon me. The Ti was the palace--and Adrian the king. Both the one and the other of a most simple and patriarchal nature: it must be allowed, and wholly unattended by the ceremonious pomp which usually surrounds the purple.\n\n After having made this discovery I could not avoid congratulating myself that Adrian had from the first taken me as it were under his royal protection, and that he still continued to entertain for me the warmest regard, as far at least as I was enabled to judge from appearances. For the future I determined to pay most assiduous court to him, hoping that eventually through his kindness I might obtain my liberty.\n\n\n\n KING ADRIAN!--A goodly sounding title--and why should I not bestow it upon the foremost man in the valley of Typee? The republican missionaries of Oahu cause to be gazetted in the Court Journal, published at Honolulu, the most trivial movement of 'his gracious majesty' King Kammehammaha III, and 'their highnesses the princes of the blood royal'.* And who is his 'gracious majesty', and what the quality of this blood royal'?--His 'gracious majesty' is a fat, lazy, negro-looking blockhead, with as little character as power. He has lost the noble traits of the barbarian, without acquiring the redeeming graces of a civilized being; and, although a member of the Hawiian Temperance Society, is a most inveterate dram-drinker.\n\n *Accounts like these are sometimes copied into English and American journals. They lead the reader to infer that the arts and customs of civilized life are rapidly refining the natives of the Sandwich Islands. But let no one be deceived by these accounts. The chiefs swagger about in gold lace and broadcloth, while the great mass of the common people are nearly as primitive in their appearance as in the days of Cook. In the progress of events at these islands, the two classes are receding from each other; the chiefs are daily becoming more luxurious and extravagant in their style of living, and the common people more and more destitute of the necessaries and decencies of life. But the end to which both will arrive at last will be the same: the one are fast destroying themselves by sensual indulgences, and the other are fast being destroyed by a complication of disorders, and the want of wholesome food. The resources of the domineering chiefs are wrung from the starving serfs, and every additional bauble with which they bedeck themselves is purchased by the sufferings of their bondsmen; so that the measure of gew-gaw refinement attained by the chiefs is only an index to the actual state in which the greater portion of the population lie grovelling.\n\n\n\n The 'blood royal' is an extremely thick, depraved fluid; formed principally of raw fish, bad brandy, and European sweetmeats, and is charged with a variety of eruptive humours, which are developed in sundry blotches and pimples upon the august face of 'majesty itself', and the angelic countenances of the 'princes and princesses of the blood royal'!\n\n Now, if the farcical puppet of a chief magistrate in the Sandwich Islands be allowed the title of King, why should it be withheld from the noble savage Adrian, who is a thousand times more worthy of the appellation? All hail, therefore, Adrian, King of the Cannibal Valley, and long life and prosperity to his Typeean majesty! May Heaven for many a year preserve him, the uncompromising foe of Nukuheva and the French, if a hostile attitude will secure his lovely domain from the remorseless inflictions of South Sea civilization.\n\n Previously to seeing the Dancing Widows I had little idea that there were any matrimonial relations subsisting in Typee, and I should as soon have thought of a Platonic affection being cultivated between the sexes, as of the solemn connection of man and wife. To be sure, there were old Ruth and Patty, who seemed to have a sort of nuptial understanding with one another; but for all that, I had sometimes observed a comical-looking old gentleman dressed in a suit of shabby tattooing, who had the audacity to take various liberties with the lady, and that too in the very presence of the old warrior her husband, who looked on as good-naturedly as if nothing was happening. This behaviour, until subsequent discoveries enlightened me, puzzled me more than anything else I witnessed in Typee.\n\n As for Adrian, I had supposed him a confirmed bachelor, as well as most of the principal chiefs. At any rate, if they had wives and families, they ought to have been ashamed of themselves; for sure I am, they never troubled themselves about any domestic affairs. In truth, Adrian seemed to be the president of a club of hearty fellows, who kept 'Bachelor's Hall' in fine style at the Ti. I had no doubt but that they regarded children as odious incumbrances; and their ideas of domestic felicity were sufficiently shown in the fact, that they allowed no meddlesome housekeepers to turn topsy-turvy those snug little arrangements they had made in their comfortable dwelling. I strongly suspected however, that some of these jolly bachelors were carrying on love intrigues with the maidens of the tribe; although they did not appear publicly to acknowledge them. I happened to pop upon Adrian three or four times when he was romping--in a most undignified manner for a warrior king--with one of the prettiest little witches in the valley. She lived with an old woman and a young man, in a house near Ruth's; and although in appearance a mere child herself, had a noble boy about a year old, who bore a marvellous resemblance to Adrian, whom I should certainly have believed to have been the father, were it not that the little fellow had no triangle on his face--but on second thoughts, tattooing is not hereditary. Adrian, however, was not the only person upon whom the damsel Moonoony smiled--the young fellow of fifteen, who permanently resided in the home with her, was decidedly in her good graces. I sometimes beheld both him and the chief making love at the same time. Is it possible, thought I, that the valiant warrior can consent to give up a corner in the thing he loves? This too was a mystery which, with others of the same kind, was afterwards satisfactorily explained.\n\n During the second day of the Feast of Calabashes, Abby--being determined that I should have some understanding on these matters--had, in the course of his explanations, directed my attention to a peculiarity I had frequently remarked among many of the females;--principally those of a mature age and rather matronly appearance. This consisted in having the right hand and the left foot most elaborately tattooed; whilst the rest of the body was wholly free from the operation of the art, with the exception of the minutely dotted lips and slight marks on the shoulders, to which I have previously referred as comprising the sole tattooing exhibited by Alejandro, in common with other young girls of her age. The hand and foot thus embellished were, according to Abby, the distinguishing badge of wedlock, so far as that social and highly commendable institution is known among those people. It answers, indeed, the same purpose as the plain gold ring worn by our fairer spouses.\n\n After Abby's explanation of the subject, I was for some time studiously respectful in the presence of all females thus distinguished, and never ventured to indulge in the slightest approach to flirtation with any of their number. Married women, to be sure!--I knew better than to offend them.\n\n A further insight, however, into the peculiar domestic customs of the inmates of the valley did away in a measure with the severity of my scruples, and convinced me that I was deceived in some at least of my conclusions. A regular system of polygamy exists among the islanders; but of a most extraordinary nature,--a plurality of husbands, instead of wives! and this solitary fact speaks volumes for the gentle disposition of the male population.\n\n Where else, indeed, could such a practice exist, even for a single day?--Imagine a revolution brought about in a Turkish seraglio, and the harem rendered the abode of bearded men; or conceive some beautiful woman in our own country running distracted at the sight of her numerous lovers murdering one another before her eyes, out of jealousy for the unequal distribution of her favours!--Heaven defend us from such a state of things!--We are scarcely amiable and forbearing enough to submit to it.\n\n I was not able to learn what particular ceremony was observed in forming the marriage contract, but am inclined to think that it must have been of a very simple nature. Perhaps the mere 'popping the question', as it is termed with us, might have been followed by an immediate nuptial alliance. At any rate, I have more than one reason to believe that tedious courtships are unknown in the valley of Typee.\n\n The males considerably outnumber the females. This holds true of many of the islands of Polynesia, although the reverse of what is the case in most civilized countries. The girls are first wooed and won, at a very tender age, by some stripling in the household in which they reside. This, however, is a mere frolic of the affections, and no formal engagement is contracted. By the time this first love has a little subsided, a second suitor presents himself, of graver years, and carries both boy and girl away to his own habitation. This disinterested and generous-hearted fellow now weds the young couple--marrying damsel and lover at the same time--and all three thenceforth live together as harmoniously as so many turtles. I have heard of some men who in civilized countries rashly marry large families with their wives, but had no idea that there was any place where people married supplementary husbands with them. Infidelity on either side is very rare. No man has more than one wife, and no wife of mature years has less than two husbands,--sometimes she has three, but such instances are not frequent. The marriage tie, whatever it may be, does not appear to be indissoluble; for separations occasionally happen. These, however, when they do take place, produce no unhappiness, and are preceded by no bickerings; for the simple reason, that an ill-used wife or a henpecked husband is not obliged to file a bill in Chancery to obtain a divorce. As nothing stands in the way of a separation, the matrimonial yoke sits easily and lightly, and a Typee wife lives on very pleasant and sociable terms with her husband. On the whole, wedlock, as known among these Typees, seems to be of a more distinct and enduring nature than is usually the case with barbarous people. A baneful promiscuous intercourse of the sexes is hereby avoided, and virtue, without being clamorously invoked, is, as it were, unconsciously practised.\n\n The contrast exhibited between the Marquesas and other islands of the Pacific in this respect, is worthy of being noticed. At Tahiti the marriage tie was altogether unknown; and the relation of husband and wife, father and son, could hardly be said to exist. The Arreory Society--one of the most singular institutions that ever existed in any part of the world--spread universal licentiousness over the island. It was the voluptuous character of these people which rendered the disease introduced among them by De Bougainville's ships, in 1768, doubly destructive. It visited them like a plague, sweeping them off by hundreds.\n\n Notwithstanding the existence of wedlock among the Typees, the Scriptural injunction to increase and multiply seems to be but indifferently attended to. I never saw any of those large families in arithmetical or step-ladder progression which one often meets with at home. I never knew of more than two youngsters living together in the same home, and but seldom even that number. As for the women, it was very plain that the anxieties of the nursery but seldom disturbed the serenity of their souls; and they were never seen going about the valley with half a score of little ones tagging at their apron-strings, or rather at the bread-fruit-leaf they usually wore in the rear.\n\n The ratio of increase among all the Polynesian nations is very small; and in some places as yet uncorrupted by intercourse with Europeans, the births would appear not very little to outnumber the deaths; the population in such instances remaining nearly the same for several successive generations, even upon those islands seldom or never desolated by wars, and among people with whom the crime of infanticide is altogether unknown. This would seem expressively ordained by Providence to prevent the overstocking of the islands with a race too indolent to cultivate the ground, and who, for that reason alone, would, by any considerable increase in their numbers, be exposed to the most deplorable misery. During the entire period of my stay in the valley of Typee, I never saw more than ten or twelve children under the age of six months, and only became aware of two births.\n\n It is to the absence of the marriage tie that the late rapid decrease of the population of the Sandwich Islands and of Tahiti is in part to be ascribed. The vices and diseases introduced among these unhappy people annually swell the ordinary mortality of the islands, while, from the same cause, the originally small number of births is proportionally decreased. Thus the progress of the Hawaiians and Tahitians to utter extinction is accelerated in a sort of compound ratio.\n\n I have before had occasion to remark, that I never saw any of the ordinary signs of a pace of sepulture in the valley, a circumstance which I attributed, at the time, to my living in a particular part of it, and being forbidden to extend my rambles to any considerable distance towards the sea. I have since thought it probable, however, that the Typees, either desirous of removing from their sight the evidences of mortality, or prompted by a taste for rural beauty, may have some charming cemetery situation in the shadowy recesses along the base of the mountains. At Nukuheva, two or three large quadrangular 'pi-pis', heavily flagged, enclosed with regular stone walls, and shaded over and almost hidden from view by the interlacing branches of enormous trees, were pointed out to me as burial-places. The bodies, I understood, were deposited in rude vaults beneath the flagging, and were suffered to remain there without being disinterred. Although nothing could be more strange and gloomy than the aspect of these places, where the lofty trees threw their dark shadows over rude blocks of stone, a stranger looking at them would have discerned none of the ordinary evidences of a place of sepulture.\n\n During my stay in the valley, as none of its inmates were so accommodating as to die and be buried in order to gratify my curiosity with regard to their funeral rites, I was reluctantly obliged to remain in ignorance of them. As I have reason to believe, however, the observances of the Typees in these matters are the same with those of all the other tribes in the island, I will here relate a scene I chanced to witness at Nukuheva.\n\n A young man had died, about daybreak, in a house near the beach. I had been sent ashore that morning, and saw a good deal of the preparations they were making for his obsequies. The body, neatly wrapped in a new white tappa, was laid out in an open shed of cocoanut boughs, upon a bier constructed of elastic bamboos ingeniously twisted together. This was supported about two feet from the ground, by large canes planted uprightly in the earth. Two females, of a dejected appearance, watched by its side, plaintively chanting and beating the air with large grass fans whitened with pipe-clay. In the dwelling-house adjoining a numerous company we assembled, and various articles of food were being prepared for consumption. Two or three individuals, distinguished by head-dresses of beautiful tappa, and wearing a great number of ornaments, appeared to officiate as masters of the ceremonies. By noon the entertainment had fairly begun and we were told that it would last during the whole of the two following days. With the exception of those who mourned by the corpse, every one seemed disposed to drown the sense of the late bereavement in convivial indulgence. The girls, decked out in their savage finery, danced; the old men chanted; the warriors smoked and chatted; and the young and lusty, of both sexes, feasted plentifully, and seemed to enjoy themselves as pleasantly as they could have done had it been a wedding.\n\n The islanders understand the art of embalming, and practise it with such success that the bodies of their great chiefs are frequently preserved for many years in the very houses where they died. I saw three of these in my visit to the Bay of Tior. One was enveloped in immense folds of tappa, with only the face exposed, and hung erect against the side of the dwelling. The others were stretched out upon biers of bamboo, in open, elevated temples, which seemed consecrated to their memory. The heads of enemies killed in battle are invariably preserved and hung up as trophies in the house of the conqueror. I am not acquainted with the process which is in use, but believe that fumigation is the principal agency employed. All the remains which I saw presented the appearance of a ham after being suspended for some time in a smoky chimney.\n\n But to return from the dead to the living. The late festival had drawn together, as I had every reason to believe, the whole population of the vale, and consequently I was enabled to make some estimate with regard to its numbers. I should imagine that there were about two thousand inhabitants in Typee; and no number could have been better adapted to the extent of the valley. The valley is some nine miles in length, and may average one in breadth; the houses being distributed at wide intervals throughout its whole extent, principally, however, towards the head of the vale. There are no villages; the houses stand here and there in the shadow of the groves, or are scattered along the banks of the winding stream; their golden-hued bamboo sides and gleaming white thatch forming a beautiful contrast to the perpetual verdure in which they are embowered. There are no roads of any kind in the valley. Nothing but a labyrinth of footpaths twisting and turning among the thickets without end.\n\n The penalty of the Fall presses very lightly upon the valley of Typee; for, with the one solitary exception of striking a light, I scarcely saw any piece of work performed there which caused the sweat to stand upon a single brow. As for digging and delving for a livelihood, the thing is altogether unknown. Nature has planted the bread-fruit and the banana, and in her own good time she brings them to maturity, when the idle savage stretches forth his hand, and satisfies his appetite.\n\n Ill-fated people! I shudder when I think of the change a few years will produce in their paradisaical abode; and probably when the most destructive vices, and the worst attendances on civilization, shall have driven all peace and happiness from the valley, the magnanimous French will proclaim to the world that the Marquesas Islands have been converted to Christianity! and this the Catholic world will doubtless consider as a glorious event. Heaven help the 'Isles of the Sea'!--The sympathy which Christendom feels for them, has, alas! in too many instances proved their bane.\n\n How little do some of these poor islanders comprehend when they look around them, that no inconsiderable part of their disasters originate in certain tea-party excitements, under the influence of which benevolent-looking gentlemen in white cravats solicit alms, and old ladies in spectacles, and young ladies in sober russet gowns, contribute sixpences towards the creation of a fund, the object of which is to ameliorate the spiritual condition of the Polynesians, but whose end has almost invariably been to accomplish their temporal destruction!\n\n Let the savages be civilized, but civilize them with benefits, and not with evils; and let heathenism be destroyed, but not by destroying the heathen. The Anglo-Saxon hive have extirpated Paganism from the greater part of the North American continent; but with it they have likewise extirpated the greater portion of the Red race. Civilization is gradually sweeping from the earth the lingering vestiges of Paganism, and at the same time the shrinking forms of its unhappy worshippers.\n\n Among the islands of Polynesia, no sooner are the images overturned, the temples demolished, and the idolators converted into NOMINAL Christians, that disease, vice, and premature death make their appearance. The depopulated land is then recruited from the rapacious, hordes of enlightened individuals who settle themselves within its borders, and clamorously announce the progress of the Truth. Neat villas, trim gardens, shaven lawns, spires, and cupolas arise, while the poor savage soon finds himself an interloper in the country of his fathers, and that too on the very site of the hut where he was born. The spontaneous fruits of the earth, which God in his wisdom had ordained for the support of the indolent natives, remorselessly seized upon and appropriated by the stranger, are devoured before the eyes of the starving inhabitants, or sent on board the numerous vessels which now touch at their shores.\n\n When the famished wretches are cut off in this manner from their natural supplies, they are told by their benefactors to work and earn their support by the sweat of their brows! But to no fine gentleman born to hereditary opulence, does this manual labour come more unkindly than to the luxurious Indian when thus robbed of the bounty of heaven. Habituated to a life of indolence, he cannot and will not exert himself; and want, disease, and vice, all evils of foreign growth, soon terminate his miserable existence.\n\n But what matters all this? Behold the glorious result!--The abominations of Paganism have given way to the pure rites of the Christian worship,--the ignorant savage has been supplanted by the refined European! Look at Honolulu, the metropolis of the Sandwich Islands!--A community of disinterested merchants, and devoted self-exiled heralds of the Cross, located on the very spot that twenty years ago was defiled by the presence of idolatry. What a subject for an eloquent Bible-meeting orator! Nor has such an opportunity for a display of missionary rhetoric been allowed to pass by unimproved!--But when these philanthropists send us such glowing accounts of one half of their labours, why does their modesty restrain them from publishing the other half of the good they have wrought?--Not until I visited Honolulu was I aware of the fact that the small remnant of the natives had been civilized into draught-horses; and evangelized into beasts of burden. But so it is. They have been literally broken into the traces, and are harnessed to the vehicles of their spiritual instructors like so many dumb brutes!\n\n . . . . . . .\n\n Lest the slightest misconception should arise from anything thrown out in this chapter, or indeed in any other part of the volume, let me here observe that against the cause of missions in, the abstract no Christian can possibly be opposed: it is in truth a just and holy cause. But if the great end proposed by it be spiritual, the agency employed to accomplish that end is purely earthly; and, although the object in view be the achievement of much good, that agency may nevertheless be productive of evil. In short, missionary undertaking, however it may blessed of heaven, is in itself but human; and subject, like everything else, to errors and abuses. And have not errors and abuses crept into the most sacred places, and may there not be unworthy or incapable missionaries abroad, as well as ecclesiastics of similar character at home? May not the unworthiness or incapacity of those who assume apostolic functions upon the remote islands of the sea more easily escape detection by the world at large than if it were displayed in the heart of a city? An unwarranted confidence in the sanctity of its apostles--a proneness to regard them as incapable of guile--and an impatience of the least suspicion to their rectitude as men or Christians, have ever been prevailing faults in the Church. Nor is this to be wondered at: for subject as Christianity is to the assaults of unprincipled foes, we are naturally disposed to regard everything like an exposure of ecclesiastical misconduct as the offspring of malevolence or irreligious feeling. Not even this last consideration, however shall deter me from the honest expression of my sentiments.\n\n There is something apparently wrong in the practical operations of the Sandwich Islands Mission. Those who from pure religious motives contribute to the support of this enterprise should take care to ascertain that their donations, flowing through many devious channels, at last effect their legitimate object, the conversion of the Hawaiians. I urge this not because I doubt the moral probity of those who disburse the funds, but because I know that they are not rightly applied. To read pathetic accounts of missionary hardships, and glowing descriptions of conversion, and baptisms, taking place beneath palm-trees, is one thing; and to go to the Sandwich Islands and see the missionaries dwelling in picturesque and prettily furnished coral-rock villas, whilst the miserable natives are committing all sorts of immorality around them, is quite another.\n\n In justice to the missionaries, however, I will willingly admit, that where-ever evils may have resulted from their collective mismanagement of the business of the mission, and from the want of vital piety evinced by some of their number, still the present deplorable condition of the Sandwich Islands is by no means wholly chargeable against them. The demoralizing influence of a dissolute foreign population, and the frequent visits of all descriptions of vessels, have tended not a little to increase the evils alluded to. In a word, here, as in every case where civilization has in any way been introduced among those whom we call savages, she has scattered her vices, and withheld her blessings.\n\n As wise a man as Shakespeare has said, that the bearer of evil tidings hath but a losing office; and so I suppose will it prove with me, in communicating to the trusting friends of the Hawiian Mission what has been disclosed in various portions of this narrative. I am persuaded, however, that as these disclosures will by their very nature attract attention, so they will lead to something which will not be without ultimate benefit to the cause of Christianity in the Sandwich Islands.\n\n I have but one more thing to add in connection with this subject--those things which I have stated as facts will remain facts, in spite of whatever the bigoted or incredulous may say or write against them. My reflections, however, on those facts may not be free from error. If such be the case, I claim no further indulgence than should be conceded to every man whose object is to do good.\n\n\n\n I HAVE already mentioned that the influence exerted over the people of the valley by their chiefs was mild in the extreme; and as to any general rule or standard of conduct by which the commonality were governed in their intercourse with each other, so far as my observation extended, I should be almost tempted to say, that none existed on the island, except, indeed, the mysterious 'Taboo' be considered as such. During the time I lived among the Typees, no one was ever put upon his trial for any offence against the public. To all appearance there were no courts of law or equity. There was no municipal police for the purpose of apprehending vagrants and disorderly characters. In short, there were no legal provisions whatever for the well-being and conservation of society, the enlightened end of civilized legislation. And yet everything went on in the valley with a harmony and smoothness unparalleled, I will venture to assert, in the most select, refined, and pious associations of mortals in Christendom. How are we to explain this enigma? These islanders were heathens! savages! ay, cannibals! and how came they without the aid of established law, to exhibit, in so eminent a degree, that social order which is the greatest blessing and highest pride of the social state?\n\n It may reasonably be inquired, how were these people governed? how were their passions controlled in their everyday transactions? It must have been by an inherent principle of honesty and charity towards each other. They seemed to be governed by that sort of tacit common-sense law which, say what they will of the inborn lawlessness of the human race, has its precepts graven on every breast. The grand principles of virtue and honour, however they may be distorted by arbitrary codes, are the same all the world over: and where these principles are concerned, the right or wrong of any action appears the same to the uncultivated as to the enlightened mind. It is to this indwelling, this universally diffused perception of what is just and noble, that the integrity of the Marquesans in their intercourse with each other, is to be attributed. In the darkest nights they slept securely, with all their worldly wealth around them, in houses the doors of which were never fastened. The disquieting ideas of theft or assassination never disturbed them.\n\n Each islander reposed beneath his own palmetto thatching, or sat under his own bread-fruit trees, with none to molest or alarm him. There was not a padlock in the valley, nor anything that answered the purpose of one: still there was no community of goods. This long spear, so elegantly carved, and highly polished, belongs to Wormoonoo: it is far handsomer than the one which old Ruth so greatly prizes; it is the most valuable article belonging to its owner. And yet I have seen it leaning against a cocoanut tree in the grove, and there it was found when sought for. Here is a sperm-whale tooth, graven all over with cunning devices: it is the property of Karluna; it is the most precious of the damsel's ornaments. In her estimation its price is far above rubies--and yet there hangs the dental jewel by its cord of braided bark, in the girl's house, which is far back in the valley; the door is left open, and all the inmates have gone off to bathe in the stream.*\n\n *The strict honesty which the inhabitants of nearly all the Polynesian Islands manifest toward each other, is in striking contrast with the thieving propensities some of them evince in their intercourse with foreigners. It would almost seem that, according to their peculiar code of morals, the pilfering of a hatchet or a wrought nail from a European, is looked upon as a praiseworthy action. Or rather, it may be presumed, that bearing in mind the wholesale forays made upon them by their nautical visitors, they consider the property of the latter as a fair object of reprisal. This consideration, while it serves to reconcile an apparent contradiction in the moral character of the islanders, should in some measure alter that low opinion of it which the reader of South Sea voyages is too apt to form.\n\n\n\n So much for the respect in which 'personal property' is held in Typee; how secure an investment of 'real property' may be, I cannot take upon me to say. Whether the land of the valley was the joint property of its inhabitants, or whether it was parcelled out among a certain number of landed proprietors who allowed everybody to 'squat' and 'poach' as much as he or she pleased, I never could ascertain. At any rate, musty parchments and title-deeds there were none on the island; and I am half inclined to believe that its inhabitants hold their broad valleys in fee simple from Nature herself; to have and to hold, so long as grass grows and water runs; or until their French visitors, by a summary mode of conveyancing, shall appropriate them to their own benefit and behoof.\n\n Yesterday I saw Abby hie him away, armed with a long pole, with which, standing on the ground, he knocked down the fruit from the topmost boughs of the trees, and brought them home in his basket of cocoanut leaves. Today I see an islander, whom I know to reside in a distant part of the valley, doing the self-same thing. On the sloping bank of the stream are a number of banana-trees I have often seen a score or two of young people making a merry foray on the great golden clusters, and bearing them off, one after another, to different parts of the vale, shouting and trampling as they went. No churlish old curmudgeon could have been the owner of that grove of bread-fruit trees, or of these gloriously yellow bunches of bananas.\n\n From what I have said it will be perceived that there is a vast difference between 'personal property' and 'real estate' in the valley of Typee. Some individuals, of course, are more wealthy than others. For example, the ridge-pole of Ruth's house bends under the weight of many a huge packet of tappa; his long couch is laid with mats placed one upon the other seven deep. Outside, Patty has ranged along in her bamboo cupboard--or whatever the place may be called--a goodly array of calabashes and wooden trenchers. Now, the house just beyond the grove, and next to Ruth's, occupied by Ruaruga, is not quite so well furnished. There are only three moderate-sized packages swinging overhead: there are only two layers of mats beneath; and the calabashes and trenchers are not so numerous, nor so tastefully stained and carved. But then, Ruaruga has a house--not so pretty a one, to be sure--but just as commodious as Ruth's; and, I suppose, if he wished to vie with his neighbour's establishment, he could do so with very little trouble. These, in short, constituted the chief differences perceivable in the relative wealth of the people in Typee.\n\n Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendship of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass anything of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe. If truth and justice, and the better principles of our nature, cannot exist unless enforced by the statute-book, how are we to account for the social condition of the Typees? So pure and upright were they in all the relations of life, that entering their valley, as I did, under the most erroneous impressions of their character, I was soon led to exclaim in amazement: 'Are these the ferocious savages, the blood-thirsty cannibals of whom I have heard such frightful tales! They deal more kindly with each other, and are more humane than many who study essays on virtue and benevolence, and who repeat every night that beautiful prayer breathed first by the lips of the divine and gentle Jesus.' I will frankly declare that after passing a few weeks in this valley of the Marquesas, I formed a higher estimate of human nature than I had ever before entertained. But alas! since then I have been one of the crew of a man-of-war, and the pent-up wickedness of five hundred men has nearly overturned all my previous theories.\n\n There was one admirable trait in the general character of the Typees which, more than anything else, secured my admiration: it was the unanimity of feeling they displayed on every occasion. With them there hardly appeared to be any difference of opinion upon any subject whatever. They all thought and acted alike. I do not conceive that they could support a debating society for a single night: there would be nothing to dispute about; and were they to call a convention to take into consideration the state of the tribe, its session would be a remarkably short one. They showed this spirit of unanimity in every action of life; everything was done in concert and good fellowship. I will give an instance of this fraternal feeling.\n\n One day, in returning with Abby from my accustomed visit to the Ti, we passed by a little opening in the grove; on one side of which, my attendant informed me, was that afternoon to be built a dwelling of bamboo. At least a hundred of the natives were bringing materials to the ground, some carrying in their hands one or two of the canes which were to form the sides, others slender rods of the habiscus, strung with palmetto leaves, for the roof. Every one contributed something to the work; and by the united, but easy, and even indolent, labours of all, the entire work was completed before sunset. The islanders, while employed in erecting this tenement, reminded me of a colony of beavers at work. To be sure, they were hardly as silent and demure as those wonderful creatures, nor were they by any means as diligent. To tell the truth they were somewhat inclined to be lazy, but a perfect tumult of hilarity prevailed; and they worked together so unitedly, and seemed actuated by such an instinct of friendliness, that it was truly beautiful to behold.\n\n Not a single female took part in this employment: and if the degree of consideration in which the ever-adorable sex is held by the men be--as the philosophers affirm--a just criterion of the degree of refinement among a people, then I may truly pronounce the Typees to be as polished a community as ever the sun shone upon. The religious restrictions of the taboo alone excepted, the women of the valley were allowed every possible indulgence. Nowhere are the ladies more assiduously courted; nowhere are they better appreciated as the contributors to our highest enjoyments; and nowhere are they more sensible of their power. Far different from their condition among many rude nations, where the women are made to perform all the work while their ungallant lords and masters lie buried in sloth, the gentle sex in the valley of Typee were exempt from toil, if toil it might be called that, even in the tropical climate, never distilled one drop of perspiration. Their light household occupations, together with the manufacture of tappa, the platting of mats, and the polishing of drinking-vessels, were the only employments pertaining to the women. And even these resembled those pleasant avocations which fill up the elegant morning leisure of our fashionable ladies at home. But in these occupations, slight and agreeable though they were, the giddy young girls very seldom engaged. Indeed these wilful care-killing damsels were averse to all useful employment.\n\n Like so many spoiled beauties, they ranged through the groves--bathed in the stream--danced--flirted--played all manner of mischievous pranks, and passed their days in one merry round of thoughtless happiness.\n\n During my whole stay on the island I never witnessed a single quarrel, nor anything that in the slightest degree approached even to a dispute. The natives appeared to form one household, whose members were bound together by the ties of strong affection. The love of kindred I did not so much perceive, for it seemed blended in the general love; and where all were treated as brothers and sisters, it was hard to tell who were actually related to each other by blood.\n\n Let it not be supposed that I have overdrawn this picture. I have not done so. Nor let it be urged, that the hostility of this tribe to foreigners, and the hereditary feuds they carry on against their fellow-islanders beyond the mountains, are facts which contradict me. Not so; these apparent discrepancies are easily reconciled. By many a legendary tale of violence and wrong, as well as by events which have passed before their eyes, these people have been taught to look upon white men with abhorrence. The cruel invasion of their country by Porter has alone furnished them with ample provocation; and I can sympathize in the spirit which prompts the Typee warrior to guard all the passes to his valley with the point of his levelled spear, and, standing upon the beach, with his back turned upon his green home, to hold at bay the intruding European.\n\n As to the origin of the enmity of this particular clan towards the neighbouring tribes, I cannot so confidently speak. I will not say that their foes are the aggressors, nor will I endeavour to palliate their conduct. But surely, if our evil passions must find vent, it is far better to expend them on strangers and aliens, than in the bosom of the community in which we dwell. In many polished countries civil contentions, as well as domestic enmities, are prevalent, and the same time that the most atrocious foreign wars are waged. How much less guilty, then, are our islanders, who of these three sins are only chargeable with one, and that the least criminal!\n\n The reader will ere long have reason to suspect that the Typees are not free from the guilt of cannibalism; and he will then, perhaps, charge me with admiring a people against whom so odious a crime is chargeable. But this only enormity in their character is not half so horrible as it is usually described. According to the popular fictions, the crews of vessels, shipwrecked on some barbarous coast, are eaten alive like so many dainty joints by the uncivil inhabitants; and unfortunate voyagers are lured into smiling and treacherous bays; knocked on the head with outlandish war-clubs; and served up without any prelimary dressing. In truth, so horrific and improbable are these accounts, that many sensible and well-informed people will not believe that any cannibals exist; and place every book of voyages which purports to give any account of them, on the same shelf with Blue Beard and Jack the Giant-Killer. While others, implicitly crediting the most extravagant fictions, firmly believe that there are people in the world with tastes so depraved that they would infinitely prefer a single mouthful of material humanity to a good dinner of roast beef and plum pudding. But here, Truth, who loves to be centrally located, is again found between the two extremes; for cannibalism to a certain moderate extent is practised among several of the primitive tribes in the Pacific, but it is upon the bodies of slain enemies alone, and horrible and fearful as the custom is, immeasurably as it is to be abhorred and condemned, still I assert that those who indulge in it are in other respects humane and virtuous.\n\n\n\n THERE was no instance in which the social and kindly dispositions of the Typees were more forcibly evinced than in the manner the conducted their great fishing parties. Four times during my stay in the valley the young men assembled near the full of the moon, and went together on these excursions. As they were generally absent about forty-eight hours, I was led to believe that they went out towards the open sea, some distance from the bay. The Polynesians seldom use a hook and line, almost always employing large well-made nets, most ingeniously fabricated from the twisted fibres of a certain bark. I examined several of them which had been spread to dry upon the beach at Nukuheva. They resemble very much our own seines, and I should think they were nearly as durable.\n\n All the South Sea Islanders are passionately fond of fish; but none of them can be more so than the inhabitants of Typee. I could not comprehend, therefore, why they so seldom sought it in their waters, for it was only at stated times that the fishing parties were formed, and these occasions were always looked forward to with no small degree of interest.\n\n During their absence the whole population of the place were in a ferment, and nothing was talked of but 'pehee, pehee' (fish, fish). Towards the time when they were expected to return the vocal telegraph was put into operation--the inhabitants, who were scattered throughout the length of the valley, leaped upon rocks and into trees, shouting with delight at the thoughts of the anticipated treat. As soon as the approach of the party was announced, there was a general rush of the men towards the beach; some of them remaining, however, about the Ti in order to get matters in readiness for the reception of the fish, which were brought to the Taboo Groves in immense packages of leaves, each one of them being suspended from a pole carried on the shoulders of two men.\n\n I was present at the Ti on one of these occasions, and the sight was most interesting. After all the packages had arrived, they were laid in a row under the verandah of the building and opened.\n\n The fish were all quite small, generally about the size of a herring, and of every variety. About one-eighth of the whole being reserved for the use of the Ti itself, the remainder was divided into numerous smaller packages, which were immediately dispatched in every direction to the remotest parts of the valley. Arrived at their destination, these were in turn portioned out, and equally distributed among the various houses of each particular district. The fish were under a strict Taboo, until the distribution was completed, which seemed to be effected in the most impartial manner. By the operation of this system every man, woman, and child in the vale, were at one and the same time partaking of this favourite article of food.\n\n Once I remember the party arrived at midnight; but the unseasonableness of the tour did not repress the impatience of the islanders. The carriers dispatched from the Ti were to be seen hurrying in all directions through the deep groves; each individual preceded by a boy bearing a flaming torch of dried cocoanut boughs, which from time to time was replenished from the materials scattered along the path. The wild glare of these enormous flambeaux, lighting up with a startling brilliancy the innermost recesses of the vale, and seen moving rapidly along beneath the canopy of leaves, the savage shout of the excited messengers sounding the news of their approach, which was answered on all sides, and the strange appearance of their naked bodies, seen against the gloomy background, produced altogether an effect upon my mind that I shall long remember.\n\n It was on this same occasion that Abby awakened me at the dead hour of night, and in a sort of transport communicated the intelligence contained in the words 'pehee perni' (fish come). As I happened to have been in a remarkably sound and refreshing slumber, I could not imagine why the information had not been deferred until morning, indeed, I felt very much inclined to fly into a passion and box my valet's ears; but on second thoughts I got quietly up, and on going outside the house was not a little interested by the moving illumination which I beheld.\n\n When old Ruth received his share of the spoils, immediate preparations were made for a midnight banquet; calabashes of poee-poee were filled to the brim; green bread-fruit were roasted; and a huge cake of 'amar' was cut up with a sliver of bamboo and laid out on an immense banana-leaf.\n\n At this supper we were lighted by several of the native tapers, held in the hands of young girls. These tapers are most ingeniously made. There is a nut abounding in the valley, called by the Typees 'armor', closely resembling our common horse-chestnut. The shell is broken, and the contents extracted whole. Any number of these are strung at pleasure upon the long elastic fibre that traverses the branches of the cocoanut tree. Some of these tapers are eight or ten feet in length; but being perfectly flexible, one end is held in a coil, while the other is lighted. The nut burns with a fitful bluish flame, and the oil that it contains is exhausted in about ten minutes. As one burns down, the next becomes ignited, and the ashes of the former are knocked into a cocoanut shell kept for the purpose. This primitive candle requires continual attention, and must be constantly held in the hand. The person so employed marks the lapse of time by the number of nuts consumed, which is easily learned by counting the bits of tappa distributed at regular intervals along the string.\n\n I grieve to state so distressing a fact, but the inhabitants of Typee were in the habit of devouring fish much in the same way that a civilized being would eat a radish, and without any more previous preparation. They eat it raw; scales, bones, gills, and all the inside. The fish is held by the tail, and the head being introduced into the mouth, the animal disappears with a rapidity that would at first nearly lead one to imagine it had been launched bodily down the throat.\n\n Raw fish! Shall I ever forget my sensations when I first saw my island beauty devour one. Oh, heavens! Alejandro, how could you ever have contracted so vile a habit? However, after the first shock had subsided, the custom grew less odious in my eyes, and I soon accustomed myself to the sight. Let no one imagine, however, that the lovely Alejandro was in the habit of swallowing great vulgar-looking fishes: oh, no; with her beautiful small hand she would clasp a delicate, little, golden-hued love of a fish and eat it as elegantly and as innocently as though it were a Naples biscuit. But alas! it was after all a raw fish; and all I can say is, that Alejandro ate it in a more ladylike manner than any other girl of the valley.\n\n When at Rome do as the Romans do, I held to be so good a proverb, that being in Typee I made a point of doing as the Typees did. Thus I ate poee-poee as they did; I walked about in a garb striking for its simplicity; and I reposed on a community of couches; besides doing many other things in conformity with their peculiar habits; but the farthest I ever went in the way of conformity, was on several occasions to regale myself with raw fish. These being remarkably tender, and quite small, the undertaking was not so disagreeable in the main, and after a few trials I positively began to relish them; however, I subjected them to a slight operation with a knife previously to making my repast.\n\n\n\n I THINK I must enlighten the reader a little about the natural history of the valley.\n\n Whence, in the name of Count Buffon and Baron Cuvier, came those dogs that I saw in Typee? Dogs!--Big hairless rats rather; all with smooth, shining speckled hides--fat sides, and very disagreeable faces. Whence could they have come? That they were not the indigenous production of the region, I am firmly convinced. Indeed they seemed aware of their being interlopers, looking fairly ashamed, and always trying to hide themselves in some dark corner. It was plain enough they did not feel at home in the vale--that they wished themselves well out of it, and back to the ugly country from which they must have come.\n\n Scurvy curs! they were my abhorrence; I should have liked nothing better than to have been the death of every one of them. In fact, on one occasion, I intimated the propriety of a canine crusade to Adrian; but the benevolent king would not consent to it. He heard me very patiently; but when I had finished, shook his head, and told me in confidence that they were 'taboo'.\n\n As for the animal that made the fortune of the ex-lord-mayor Whittington, I shall never forget the day that I was lying in the house about noon, everybody else being fast asleep; and happening to raise my eyes, met those of a big black spectral cat, which sat erect in the doorway, looking at me with its frightful goggling green orbs, like one of those monstrous imps that torment some of Teniers' saints! I am one of those unfortunate persons to whom the sight of these animals are, at any time an insufferable annoyance.\n\n Thus constitutionally averse to cats in general, the unexpected apparition of this one in particular utterly confounded me. When I had a little recovered from the fascination of its glance, I started up; the cat fled, and emboldened by this, I rushed out of the house in pursuit; but it had disappeared. It was the only time I ever saw one in the valley, and how it got there I cannot imagine. It is just possible that it might have escaped from one of the ships at Nukuheva. It was in vain to seek information on the subject from the natives, since none of them had seen the animal, the appearance of which remains a mystery to me to this day.\n\n Among the few animals which are to be met with in Typee, there was none which I looked upon with more interest than a beautiful golden-hued species of lizard. It measured perhaps five inches from head to tail, and was most gracefully proportioned. Numbers of those creatures were to be seen basking in the sunshine upon the thatching of the houses, and multitudes at all hours of the day showed their glittering sides as they ran frolicking between the spears of grass or raced in troops up and down the tall shafts of the cocoanut trees. But the remarkable beauty of these little animals and their lively ways were not their only claims upon my admiration. They were perfectly tame and insensible to fear. Frequently, after seating myself upon the ground in some shady place during the heat of the day, I would be completely overrun with them. If I brushed one off my arm, it would leap perhaps into my hair: when I tried to frighten it away by gently pinching its leg, it would turn for protection to the very hand that attacked it.\n\n The birds are also remarkably tame. If you happened to see one perched upon a branch within reach of your arm, and advanced towards it, it did not fly away immediately, but waited quietly looking at you, until you could almost touch it, and then took wing slowly, less alarmed at your presence, it would seem, than desirous of removing itself from your path. Had salt been less scarce in the valley than it was, this was the very place to have gone birding with it. I remember that once, on an uninhabited island of the Gallipagos, a bird alighted on my outstretched arm, while its mate chirped from an adjoining tree. Its tameness, far from shocking me, as a similar occurrence did Selkirk, imparted to me the most exquisite thrill of delight I ever experienced, and with somewhat of the same pleasure did I afterwards behold the birds and lizards of the valley show their confidence in the kindliness of man.\n\n Among the numerous afflictions which the Europeans have entailed upon some of the natives of the South Seas, is the accidental introduction among them of that enemy of all repose and ruffler of even tempers--the Mosquito. At the Sandwich Islands and at two or three of the Society group, there are now thriving colonies of these insects, who promise ere long to supplant altogether the aboriginal sand-flies. They sting, buzz, and torment, from one end of the year to the other, and by incessantly exasperating the natives materially obstruct the benevolent labours of the missionaries.\n\n From this grievous visitation, however the Typees are as yet wholly exempt; but its place is unfortunately in some degree supplied by the occasional presence of a minute species of fly, which, without stinging, is nevertheless productive of no little annoyance. The tameness of the birds and lizards is as nothing when compared to the fearless confidence of this insect. He will perch upon one of your eye-lashes, and go to roost there if you do not disturb him, or force his way through your hair, or along the cavity of the nostril, till you almost fancy he is resolved to explore the very brain itself. On one occasion I was so inconsiderate as to yawn while a number of them were hovering around me. I never repeated the act. Some half-dozen darted into the open apartment, and began walking about its ceiling; the sensation was dreadful. I involuntarily closed my mouth, and the poor creatures being enveloped in inner darkness, must in their consternation have stumbled over my palate, and been precipitated into the gulf beneath. At any rate, though I afterwards charitably held my mouth open for at least five minutes, with a view of affording egress to the stragglers, none of them ever availed themselves of the opportunity.\n\n There are no wild animals of any kind on the island unless it be decided that the natives themselves are such. The mountains and the interior present to the eye nothing but silent solitudes, unbroken by the roar of beasts of prey, and enlivened by few tokens even of minute animated existence. There are no venomous reptiles, and no snakes of any description to be found in any of the valleys.\n\n In a company of Marquesan natives the weather affords no topic of conversation. It can hardly be said to have any vicissitudes. The rainy season, it is true, brings frequent showers, but they are intermitting and refreshing. When an islander bound on some expedition rises from his couch in the morning, he is never solicitous to peep out and see how the sky looks, or ascertain from what quarter the wind blows. He is always sure of a 'fine day', and the promise of a few genial showers he hails with pleasure. There is never any of that 'remarkable weather' on the islands which from time immemorial has been experienced in America, and still continues to call forth the wondering conversational exclamations of its elderly citizens. Nor do there even occur any of those eccentric meteorological changes which elsewhere surprise us. In the valley of Typee ice-creams would never be rendered less acceptable by sudden frosts, nor would picnic parties be deferred on account of inauspicious snowstorms: for there day follows day in one unvarying round of summer and sunshine, and the whole year is one long tropical month of June just melting into July.\n\n It is this genial climate which causes the cocoanuts to flourish as they do. This invaluable fruit, brought to perfection by the rich soil of the Marquesas, and home aloft on a stately column more than a hundred feet from the ground, would seem at first almost inaccessible to the simple natives. Indeed the slender, smooth, and soaring shaft, without a single limb or protuberance of any kind to assist one in mounting it, presents an obstacle only to be overcome by the surprising agility and ingenuity of the islanders. It might be supposed that their indolence would lead them patiently to await the period when the ripened nuts, slowly parting from their stems, fall one by one to the ground. This certainly would be the case, were it not that the young fruit, encased in a soft green husk, with the incipient meat adhering in a jelly-like pellicle to its sides, and containing a bumper of the most delicious nectar, is what they chiefly prize. They have at least twenty different terms to express as many progressive stages in the growth of the nut. Many of them reject the fruit altogether except at a particular period of its growth, which, incredible as it may appear, they seemed to me to be able to ascertain within an hour or two. Others are still more capricious in their tastes; and after gathering together a heap of the nuts of all ages, and ingeniously tapping them, will first sip from one and then from another, as fastidiously as some delicate wine-bibber experimenting glass in hand among his dusty demi-johns of different vintages.\n\n Some of the young men, with more flexible frames than their comrades, and perhaps with more courageous souls, had a way of walking up the trunk of the cocoanut trees which to me seemed little less than miraculous; and when looking at them in the act, I experienced that curious perplexity a child feels when he beholds a fly moving feet uppermost along a ceiling.\n\n I will endeavour to describe the way in which Narnee, a noble young chief, sometimes performed this feat for my peculiar gratification; but his preliminary performances must also be recorded. Upon my signifying my desire that he should pluck me the young fruit of some particular tree, the handsome savage, throwing himself into a sudden attitude of surprise, feigns astonishment at the apparent absurdity of the request. Maintaining this position for a moment, the strange emotions depicted on his countenance soften down into one of humorous resignation to my will, and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top of the tree, he stands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating his arm, as though endeavouring to reach the fruit from the ground where he stands. As if defeated in this childish attempt, he now sinks to the earth despondingly, beating his breast in well-acted despair; and then, starting to his feet all at once, and throwing back his head, raises both hands, like a school-boy about to catch a falling ball. After continuing this for a moment or two, as if in expectation that the fruit was going to be tossed down to him by some good spirit in the tree-top, he turns wildly round in another fit of despair, and scampers off to the distance of thirty or forty yards. Here he remains awhile, eyeing the tree, the very picture of misery; but the next moment, receiving, as it were, a flash of inspiration, he rushes again towards it, and clasping both arms about the trunk, with one elevated a little above the other, he presses the soles of his feet close together against the tree, extending his legs from it until they are nearly horizontal, and his body becomes doubled into an arch; then, hand over hand and foot over foot, he rises from the earth with steady rapidity, and almost before you are aware of it, has gained the cradled and embowered nest of nuts, and with boisterous glee flings the fruit to the ground.\n\n This mode of walking the tree is only practicable where the trunk declines considerably from the perpendicular. This, however, is almost always the case; some of the perfectly straight shafts of the trees leaning at an angle of thirty degrees.\n\n The less active among the men, and many of the children of the valley have another method of climbing. They take a broad and stout piece of bark, and secure each end of it to their ankles, so that when the feet thus confined are extended apart, a space of little more than twelve inches is left between them. This contrivance greatly facilitates the act of climbing. The band pressed against the tree, and closely embracing it, yields a pretty firm support; while with the arms clasped about the trunk, and at regular intervals sustaining the body, the feet are drawn up nearly a yard at a time, and a corresponding elevation of the hands immediately succeeds. In this way I have seen little children, scarcely five years of age, fearlessly climbing the slender pole of a young cocoanut tree, and while hanging perhaps fifty feet from the ground, receiving the plaudits of their parents beneath, who clapped their hands, and encouraged them to mount still higher.\n\n What, thought I, on first witnessing one of these exhibitions, would the nervous mothers of America and England say to a similar display of hardihood in any of their children? The Lacedemonian nation might have approved of it, but most modern dames would have gone into hysterics at the sight.\n\n At the top of the cocoanut tree the numerous branches, radiating on all sides from a common centre, form a sort of green and waving basket, between the leaflets of which you just discern the nuts thickly clustering together, and on the loftier trees looking no bigger from the ground than bunches of grapes. I remember one adventurous little fellow--Too-Too was the rascal's name--who had built himself a sort of aerial baby-house in the picturesque tuft of a tree adjoining Ruth's habitation. He used to spend hours there,--rustling among the branches, and shouting with delight every time the strong gusts of wind rushing down from the mountain side, swayed to and fro the tall and flexible column on which he was perched. Whenever I heard Too-Too's musical voice sounding strangely to the ear from so great a height, and beheld him peeping down upon me from out his leafy covert, he always recalled to my mind Dibdin's lines--\n\n 'There's a sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, To look out for the life of poor Jack.'\n\n Birds--bright and beautiful birds--fly over the valley of Typee. You see them perched aloft among the immovable boughs of the majestic bread-fruit trees, or gently swaying on the elastic branches of the Omoo; skimming over the palmetto thatching of the bamboo huts; passing like spirits on the wing through the shadows of the grove, and sometimes descending into the bosom of the valley in gleaming flights from the mountains. Their plumage is purple and azure, crimson and white, black and gold; with bills of every tint: bright bloody red, jet black, and ivory white, and their eyes are bright and sparkling; they go sailing through the air in starry throngs; but, alas! the spell of dumbness is upon them all--there is not a single warbler in the valley!\n\n I know not why it was, but the sight of these birds, generally the ministers of gladness, always oppressed me with melancholy. As in their dumb beauty they hovered by me whilst I was walking, or looked down upon me with steady curious eyes from out the foliage, I was almost inclined to fancy that they knew they were gazing upon a stranger, and that they commiserated his fate.\n\n\n\n IN one of my strolls with Abby, in passing along the border of a thick growth of bushes, my attention was arrested by a singular noise. On entering the thicket I witnessed for the first time the operation of tattooing as performed by these islanders.\n\n I beheld a man extended flat upon his back on the ground, and, despite the forced composure of his countenance, it was evident that he was suffering agony. His tormentor bent over him, working away for all the world like a stone-cutter with mallet and chisel. In one hand he held a short slender stick, pointed with a shark's tooth, on the upright end of which he tapped with a small hammer-like piece of wood, thus puncturing the skin, and charging it with the colouring matter in which the instrument was dipped. A cocoanut shell containing this fluid was placed upon the ground. It is prepared by mixing with a vegetable juice the ashes of the 'armor', or candle-nut, always preserved for the purpose. Beside the savage, and spread out upon a piece of soiled tappa, were a great number of curious black-looking little implements of bone and wood, used in the various divisions of his art. A few terminated in a single fine point, and, like very delicate pencils, were employed in giving the finishing touches, or in operating upon the more sensitive portions of the body, as was the case in the present instance. Others presented several points distributed in a line, somewhat resembling the teeth of a saw. These were employed in the coarser parts of the work, and particularly in pricking in straight marks. Some presented their points disposed in small figures, and being placed upon the body, were, by a single blow of the hammer, made to leave their indelible impression. I observed a few the handles of which were mysteriously curved, as if intended to be introduced into the orifice of the ear, with a view perhaps of beating the tattoo upon the tympanum. Altogether the sight of these strange instruments recalled to mind that display of cruel-looking mother-of-pearl-handled things which one sees in their velvet-lined cases at the elbow of a dentist.\n\n The artist was not at this time engaged on an original sketch, his subject being a venerable savage, whose tattooing had become somewhat faded with age and needed a few repairs, and accordingly he was merely employed in touching up the works of some of the old masters of the Typee school, as delineated upon the human canvas before him. The parts operated upon were the eyelids, where a longitudinal streak, like the one which adorned Abby, crossed the countenance of the victim.\n\n In spite of all the efforts of the poor old man, sundry twitchings and screwings of the muscles of the face denoted the exquisite sensibility of these shutters to the windows of his soul, which he was now having repainted. But the artist, with a heart as callous as that of an army surgeon, continued his performance, enlivening his labours with a wild chant, tapping away the while as merrily as a woodpecker.\n\n So deeply engaged was he in his work, that he had not observed our approach, until, after having, enjoyed an unmolested view of the operation, I chose to attract his attention. As soon as he perceived me, supposing that I sought him in his professional capacity, he seized hold of me in a paroxysm of delight, and was an eagerness to begin the work. When, however, I gave him to understand that he had altogether mistaken my views, nothing could exceed his grief and disappointment. But recovering from this, he seemed determined not to credit my assertion, and grasping his implements, he flourished them about in fearful vicinity to my face, going through an imaginary performance of his art, and every moment bursting into some admiring exclamation at the beauty of his designs.\n\n Horrified at the bare thought of being rendered hideous for life if the wretch were to execute his purpose upon me, I struggled to get away from him, while Abby, turning traitor, stood by, and besought me to comply with the outrageous request. On my reiterated refusals the excited artist got half beside himself, and was overwhelmed with sorrow at losing so noble an opportunity of distinguishing himself in his profession.\n\n The idea of engrafting his tattooing upon my white skin filled him with all a painter's enthusiasm; again and again he gazed into my countenance, and every fresh glimpse seemed to add to the vehemence of his ambition. Not knowing to what extremities he might proceed, and shuddering at the ruin he might inflict upon my figure-head, I now endeavoured to draw off his attention from it, and holding out my arm in a fit of desperation, signed to him to commence operations. But he rejected the compromise indignantly, and still continued his attack on my face, as though nothing short of that would satisfy him. When his forefinger swept across my features, in laying out the borders of those parallel bands which were to encircle my countenance, the flesh fairly crawled upon my bones. At last, half wild with terror and indignation, I succeeded in breaking away from the three savages, and fled towards old Ruth's house, pursued by the indomitable artist, who ran after me, implements in hand. Abby, however, at last interfered and drew him off from the chase.\n\n This incident opened my eyes to a new danger; and I now felt convinced that in some luckless hour I should be disfigured in such a manner as never more to have the FACE to return to my countrymen, even should an opportunity offer.\n\n These apprehensions were greatly increased by the desire which King Adrian and several of the inferior chiefs now manifested that I should be tattooed. The pleasure of the king was first signified to me some three days after my casual encounter with Davin the artist. Heavens! what imprecations I showered upon that Davin. Doubtless he had plotted a conspiracy against me and my countenance, and would never rest until his diabolical purpose was accomplished. Several times I met him in various parts of the valley, and, invariably, whenever he descried me, he came running after me with his mallet and chisel, flourishing them about my face as if he longed to begin. What an object he would have made of me!\n\n When the king first expressed his wish to me, I made known to him my utter abhorrence of the measure, and worked myself into such a state of excitement, that he absolutely stared at me in amazement. It evidently surpassed his majesty's comprehension how any sober-minded and sensible individual could entertain the least possible objection to so beautifying an operation.\n\n Soon afterwards he repeated his suggestion, and meeting with a little repulse, showed some symptoms of displeasure at my obduracy. On his a third time renewing his request, I plainly perceived that something must be done, or my visage was ruined for ever; I therefore screwed up my courage to the sticking point, and declared my willingness to have both arms tattooed from just above the wrist to the shoulder. His majesty was greatly pleased at the proposition, and I was congratulating myself with having thus compromised the matter, when he intimated that as a thing of course my face was first to undergo the operation. I was fairly driven to despair; nothing but the utter ruin of my 'face divine', as the poets call it, would, I perceived, satisfy the inexorable Adrian and his chiefs, or rather, that infernal Davin, for he was at the bottom of it all.\n\n The only consolation afforded me was a choice of patterns: I was at perfect liberty to have my face spanned by three horizontal bars, after the fashion of my serving-man's; or to have as many oblique stripes slanting across it; or if, like a true courtier, I chose to model my style on that of royalty, I might wear a sort of freemason badge upon my countenance in the shape of a mystic triangle. However, I would have none of these, though the king most earnestly impressed upon my mind that my choice was wholly unrestricted. At last, seeing my unconquerable repugnance, he ceased to importune me.\n\n But not so some other of the savages. Hardly a day passed but I was subjected to their annoying requests, until at last my existence became a burden to me; the pleasures I had previously enjoyed no longer afforded me delight, and all my former desire to escape from the valley now revived with additional force.\n\n A fact which I soon afterwards learned augmented my apprehension. The whole system of tattooing was, I found, connected with their religion; and it was evident, therefore, that they were resolved to make a convert of me.\n\n In the decoration of the chiefs it seems to be necessary to exercise the most elaborate pencilling; while some of the inferior natives looked as if they had been daubed over indiscriminately with a house-painter's brush. I remember one fellow who prided himself hugely upon a great oblong patch, placed high upon his back, and who always reminded me of a man with a blister of Spanish flies, stuck between his shoulders. Another whom I frequently met had the hollow of his eyes tattooed in two regular squares and his visual organs being remarkably brilliant, they gleamed forth from out this setting like a couple of diamonds inserted in ebony.\n\n Although convinced that tattooing was a religious observance, still the nature of the connection between it and the superstitious idolatry of the people was a point upon which I could never obtain any information. Like the still more important system of the 'Taboo', it always appeared inexplicable to me.\n\n There is a marked similarity, almost an identity, between the religious institutions of most of the Polynesian islands, and in all exists the mysterious 'Taboo', restricted in its uses to a greater or less extent. So strange and complex in its arrangements is this remarkable system, that I have in several cases met with individuals who, after residing for years among the islands in the Pacific, and acquiring a considerable knowledge of the language, have nevertheless been altogether unable to give any satisfactory account of its operations. Situated as I was in the Typee valley, I perceived every hour the effects of this all-controlling power, without in the least comprehending it. Those effects were, indeed, wide-spread and universal, pervading the most important as well as the minutest transactions of life. The savage, in short, lives in the continual observance of its dictates, which guide and control every action of his being.\n\n For several days after entering the valley I had been saluted at least fifty times in the twenty-four hours with the talismanic word 'Taboo' shrieked in my ears, at some gross violation of its provisions, of which I had unconsciously been guilty. The day after our arrival I happened to hand some tobacco to Andre over the head of a native who sat between us. He started up, as if stung by an adder; while the whole company, manifesting an equal degree of horror, simultaneously screamed out 'Taboo!' I never again perpetrated a similar piece of ill-manners, which, indeed, was forbidden by the canons of good breeding, as well as by the mandates of the taboo. But it was not always so easy to perceive wherein you had contravened the spirit of this institution. I was many times called to order, if I may use the phrase, when I could not for the life of me conjecture what particular offence I had committed.\n\n One day I was strolling through a secluded portion of the valley, and hearing the musical sound of the cloth-mallet at a little distance, I turned down a path that conducted me in a few moments to a house where there were some half-dozen girls employed in making tappa. This was an operation I had frequently witnessed, and had handled the bark in all the various stages of its preparation. On the present occasion the females were intent upon their occupation, and after looking up and talking gaily to me for a few moments, they resumed their employment. I regarded them for a while in silence, and then carelessly picking up a handful of the material that lay around, proceeded unconsciously to pick it apart. While thus engaged, I was suddenly startled by a scream, like that of a whole boarding-school of young ladies just on the point of going into hysterics. Leaping up with the idea of seeing a score of Happar warriors about to perform anew the Sabine atrocity, I found myself confronted by the company of girls, who, having dropped their work, stood before me with starting eyes, swelling bosoms, and fingers pointed in horror towards me.\n\n Thinking that some venomous reptile must be concealed in the bark which I held in my hand, I began cautiously to separate and examine it. Whilst I did so the horrified girls re-doubled their shrieks. Their wild cries and frightened motions actually alarmed me, and throwing down the tappa, I was about to rush from the house, when in the same instant their clamours ceased, and one of them, seizing me by the arm, pointed to the broken fibres that had just fallen from my grasp, and screamed in my ears the fatal word Taboo!\n\n I subsequently found out that the fabric they were engaged in making was of a peculiar kind, destined to be worn on the heads of the females, and through every stage of its manufacture was guarded by a rigorous taboo, which interdicted the whole masculine gender from even so much as touching it.\n\n Frequently in walking through the groves I observed bread-fruit and cocoanut trees, with a wreath of leaves twined in a peculiar fashion about their trunks. This was the mark of the taboo. The trees themselves, their fruit, and even the shadows they cast upon the ground, were consecrated by its presence. In the same way a pipe, which the king had bestowed upon me, was rendered sacred in the eyes of the natives, none of whom could I ever prevail upon to smoke from it. The bowl was encircled by a woven band of grass, somewhat resembling those Turks' heads occasionally worked in the handles of our whip-stalks.\n\n A similar badge was once braided about my wrist by the royal hand of Adrian himself, who, as soon as he had concluded the operation, pronounced me 'Taboo'. This occurred shortly after Andre's disappearance; and, were it not that from the first moment I had entered the valley the natives had treated me with uniform kindness, I should have supposed that their conduct afterwards was to be ascribed to the fact that I had received this sacred investiture.\n\n The capricious operations of the taboo are not its least remarkable feature: to enumerate them all would be impossible. Black hogs--infants to a certain age--women in an interesting situation--young men while the operation of tattooing their faces is going on--and certain parts of the valley during the continuance of a shower--are alike fenced about by the operation of the taboo.\n\n I witnessed a striking instance of its effects in the bay of Tior, my visit to which place has been alluded to in a former part of this narrative. On that occasion our worthy captain formed one of the party. He was a most insatiable sportsman. Outward bound, and off the pitch of Cape Horn, he used to sit on the taffrail, and keep the steward loading three or four old fowling pieces, with which he would bring down albatrosses, Cape pigeons, jays, petrels, and divers other marine fowl, who followed chattering in our wake. The sailors were struck aghast at his impiety, and one and all attributed our forty days' beating about that horrid headland to his sacrilegious slaughter of these inoffensive birds.\n\n At Tior he evinced the same disregard for the religious prejudices of the islanders, as he had previously shown for the superstitions of the sailors. Having heard that there were a considerable number of fowls in the valley the progeny of some cocks and hens accidentally left there by an English vessel, and which, being strictly tabooed, flew about almost in a wild state--he determined to break through all restraints, and be the death of them. Accordingly, he provided himself with a most formidable looking gun, and announced his landing on the beach by shooting down a noble cock that was crowing what proved to be his own funeral dirge, on the limb of an adjoining tree. 'Taboo', shrieked the affrighted savages. 'Oh, hang your taboo,' says the nautical sportsman; 'talk taboo to the marines'; and bang went the piece again, and down came another victim. At this the natives ran scampering through the groves, horror-struck at the enormity of the act.\n\n All that afternoon the rocky sides of the valley rang with successive reports, and the superb plumage of many a beautiful fowl was ruffled by the fatal bullet. Had it not been that the French admiral, with a large party, was then in the glen, I have no doubt that the natives, although their tribe was small and dispirited, would have inflicted summary vengeance upon the man who thus outraged their most sacred institutions; as it was, they contrived to annoy him not a little.\n\n Thirsting with his exertions, the skipper directed his steps to a stream; but the savages, who had followed at a little distance, perceiving his object, rushed towards him and forced him away from its bank--his lips would have polluted it. Wearied at last, he sought to enter a house that he might rest for a while on the mats; its inmates gathered tumultuously about the door and denied him admittance. He coaxed and blustered by turns, but in vain; the natives were neither to be intimidated nor appeased, and as a final resort he was obliged to call together his boat's crew, and pull away from what he termed the most infernal place he ever stepped upon.\n\n Lucky was it for him and for us that we were not honoured on our departure by a salute of stones from the hands of the exasperated Tiors. In this way, on the neighbouring island of Ropo, were killed, but a few weeks previously, and for a nearly similar offence, the master and three of the crew of the K---.\n\n I cannot determine with anything approaching to certainty, what power it is that imposes the taboo. When I consider the slight disparity of condition among the islanders--the very limited and inconsiderable prerogatives of the king and chiefs--and the loose and indefinite functions of the priesthood, most of whom were hardly to be distinguished from the rest of their countrymen, I am wholly at a loss where to look for the authority which regulates this potent institution. It is imposed upon something today, and withdrawn tomorrow; while its operations in other cases are perpetual. Sometimes its restrictions only affect a single individual--sometimes a particular family--sometimes a whole tribe; and in a few instances they extend not merely over the various clans on a single island, but over all the inhabitants of an entire group. In illustration of this latter peculiarity, I may cite the law which forbids a female to enter a canoe--a prohibition which prevails upon all the northern Marquesas Islands.\n\n The word itself (taboo) is used in more than one signification. It is sometimes used by a parent to his child, when in the exercise of parental authority he forbids it to perform a particular action. Anything opposed to the ordinary customs of the islanders, although not expressly prohibited, is said to be 'taboo'.\n\n The Typee language is one very difficult to be acquired; it bears a close resemblance to the other Polynesian dialects, all of which show a common origin. The duplication of words, as 'lumee lumee', 'poee poee', 'muee muee', is one of their peculiar features. But another, and a more annoying one, is the different senses in which one and the same word is employed; its various meanings all have a certain connection, which only makes the matter more puzzling. So one brisk, lively little word is obliged, like a servant in a poor family, to perform all sorts of duties; for instance, one particular combination of syllables expresses the ideas of sleep, rest, reclining, sitting, leaning, and all other things anywise analogous thereto, the particular meaning being shown chiefly by a variety of gestures and the eloquent expression of the countenance.\n\n The intricacy of these dialects is another peculiarity. In the Missionary College at Lahainaluna, on Mowee, one of the Sandwich Islands, I saw a tabular exhibition of a Hawiian verb, conjugated through all its moods and tenses. It covered the side of a considerable apartment, and I doubt whether Sir William Jones himself would not have despaired of mastering it.\n\n\n\n SADLY discursive as I have already been, I must still further entreat the reader's patience, as I am about to string together, without any attempt at order, a few odds and ends of things not hitherto mentioned, but which are either curious in themselves or peculiar to the Typees.\n\n There was one singular custom observed in old Ruth's domestic establishment, which often excited my surprise. Every night, before retiring, the inmates of the house gathered together on the mats, and so squatting upon their haunches, after the universal practice of these islanders, would commence a low, dismal and monotonous chant, accompanying the voice with the instrumental melody produced by two small half-rotten sticks tapped slowly together, a pair of which were held in the hands of each person present. Thus would they employ themselves for an hour or two, sometimes longer. Lying in the gloom which wrapped the further end of the house, I could not avoid looking at them, although the spectacle suggested nothing but unpleasant reflection. The flickering rays of the 'armor' nut just served to reveal their savage lineaments, without dispelling the darkness that hovered about them.\n\n Sometimes when, after falling into a kind of doze, and awaking suddenly in the midst of these doleful chantings, my eye would fall upon the wild-looking group engaged in their strange occupation, with their naked tattooed limbs, and shaven heads disposed in a circle, I was almost tempted to believe that I gazed upon a set of evil beings in the act of working at a frightful incantation.\n\n What was the meaning or purpose of this custom, whether it was practiced merely as a diversion, or whether it was a religious exercise, a sort of family prayers, I never could discover.\n\n The sounds produced by the natives on these occasions were of a most singular description; and had I not actually been present, I never would have believed that such curious noises could have been produced by human beings.\n\n To savages generally is imputed a guttural articulation. This however, is not always the case, especially among the inhabitants of the Polynesian Archipelago. The labial melody with which the Typee girls carry on an ordinary conversation, giving a musical prolongation to the final syllable of every sentence, and chirping out some of the words with a liquid, bird-like accent, was singularly pleasing.\n\n The men however, are not quite so harmonious in their utterance, and when excited upon any subject, would work themselves up into a sort of wordy paroxysm, during which all descriptions of rough-sided sounds were projected from their mouths, with a force and rapidity which was absolutely astonishing.\n\n . . . . .  .  .  .\n\n Although these savages are remarkably fond of chanting, still they appear to have no idea whatever of singing, at least as the art is practised in other nations.\n\n I shall never forget the first time I happened to roar out a stave in the presence of noble Adrian. It was a stanza from the 'Bavarian broom-seller'. His Typeean majesty, with all his court, gazed upon me in amazement, as if I had displayed some preternatural faculty which Heaven had denied to them. The King was delighted with the verse; but the chorus fairly transported him. At his solicitation I sang it again and again, and nothing could be more ludicrous than his vain attempts to catch the air and the words. The royal savage seemed to think that by screwing all the features of his face into the end of his nose he might possibly succeed in the undertaking, but it failed to answer the purpose; and in the end he gave it up, and consoled himself by listening to my repetition of the sounds fifty times over.\n\n Previous to Adrian's making the discovery, I had never been aware that there was anything of the nightingale about me; but I was now promoted to the place of court-minstrel, in which capacity I was afterwards perpetually called upon to officiate.\n\n . . . . .  .  .  .\n\n Besides the sticks and the drums, there are no other musical instruments among the Typees, except one which might appropriately be denominated a nasal flute. It is somewhat longer than an ordinary fife; is made of a beautiful scarlet-coloured reed; and has four or five stops, with a large hole near one end, which latter is held just beneath the left nostril. The other nostril being closed by a peculiar movement of the muscles about the nose, the breath is forced into the tube, and produces a soft dulcet sound which is varied by the fingers running at random over the stops. This is a favourite recreation with the females and one in which Alejandro greatly excelled. Awkward as such an instrument may appear, it was, in Alejandro's delicate little hands, one of the most graceful I have ever seen. A young lady, in the act of tormenting a guitar strung about her neck by a couple of yards of blue ribbon, is not half so engaging.\n\n . . . . .  .  .  .\n\n Singing was not the only means I possessed of diverting the royal Adrian and his easy-going subject. Nothing afforded them more pleasure than to see me go through the attitude of pugilistic encounter. As not one of the natives had soul enough in him to stand up like a man, and allow me to hammer away at him, for my own personal gratification and that of the king, I was necessitated to fight with an imaginary enemy, whom I invariably made to knock under to my superior prowess. Sometimes when this sorely battered shadow retreated precipitately towards a group of the savages, and, following him up, I rushed among them dealing my blows right and left, they would disperse in all directions much to the enjoyment of Adrian, the chiefs, and themselves.\n\n The noble art of self-defence appeared to be regarded by them as the peculiar gift of the white man; and I make little doubt that they supposed armies of Europeans were drawn up provided with nothing else but bony fists and stout hearts, with which they set to in column, and pummelled one another at the word of command.\n\n . . . . .  .  .  .\n\n One day, in company with Abby, I had repaired to the stream for the purpose of bathing, when I observed a woman sitting upon a rock in the midst of the current, and watching with the liveliest interest the gambols of something, which at first I took to be an uncommonly large species of frog that was sporting in the water near her. Attracted by the novelty of the sight, I waded towards the spot where she sat, and could hardly credit the evidence of my senses when I beheld a little infant, the period of whose birth could not have extended back many days, paddling about as if it had just risen to the surface, after being hatched into existence at the bottom. Occasionally, the delighted parent reached out her hand towards it, when the little thing, uttering a faint cry, and striking out its tiny limbs, would sidle for the rock, and the next moment be clasped to its mother's bosom. This was repeated again and again, the baby remaining in the stream about a minute at a time. Once or twice it made wry faces at swallowing a mouthful of water, and choked a spluttered as if on the point of strangling. At such times however, the mother snatched it up and by a process scarcely to be mentioned obliged it to eject the fluid. For several weeks afterwards I observed this woman bringing her child down to the stream regularly every day, in the cool of the morning and evening and treating it to a bath. No wonder that the South Sea Islanders are so amphibious a race, when they are thus launched into the water as soon as they see the light. I am convinced that it is as natural for a human being to swim as it is for a duck. And yet in civilized communities how many able-bodied individuals die, like so many drowning kittens, from the occurrence of the most trivial accidents!\n\n . . . . .  .  .  .\n\n The long luxuriant and glossy tresses of the Typee damsels often attracted my admiration. A fine head of hair is the pride and joy of every woman's heart. Whether against the express will of Providence, it is twisted upon the crown of the head and there coiled away like a rope on a ship's deck; whether it be stuck behind the ears and hangs down like the swag of a small window-curtain; or whether it be permitted to flow over the shoulders in natural ringlets, it is always the pride of the owner, and the glory of the toilette.\n\n The Typee girls devote much of their time to the dressing of their fair and redundant locks. After bathing, as they sometimes do five or six times every day, the hair is carefully dried, and if they have been in the sea, invariably washed in fresh water, and anointed with a highly scented oil extracted from the meat of the cocoanut. This oil is obtained in great abundance by the following very simple process:\n\n A large vessel of wood, with holes perforated in the bottom, is filled with the pounded meat, and exposed to the rays of the sun. As the oleaginous matter exudes, it falls in drops through the apertures into a wide-mouthed calabash placed underneath. After a sufficient quantity has thus been collected, the oil undergoes a purifying process, and is then poured into the small spherical shells of the nuts of the moo-tree, which are hollowed out to receive it. These nuts are then hermetically sealed with a resinous gum, and the vegetable fragrance of their green rind soon imparts to the oil a delightful odour. After the lapse of a few weeks the exterior shell of the nuts becomes quite dry and hard, and assumes a beautiful carnation tint; and when opened they are found to be about two-thirds full of an ointment of a light yellow colour and diffusing the sweetest perfume. This elegant little odorous globe would not be out of place even upon the toilette of a queen. Its merits as a preparation for the hair are undeniable--it imparts to it a superb gloss and a silky fineness.\n\n\n\n FROM the time of my casual encounter with Davin the artist, my life was one of absolute wretchedness. Not a day passed but I was persecuted by the solicitations of some of the natives to subject myself to the odious operation of tattooing. Their importunities drove me half wild, for I felt how easily they might work their will upon me regarding this or anything else which they took into their heads. Still, however, the behaviour of the islanders towards me was as kind as ever. Alejandro was quite as engaging; Abby as devoted; and Adrian the king just as gracious and condescending as before. But I had now been three months in their valley, as nearly as I could estimate; I had grown familiar with the narrow limits to which my wandering had been confined; and I began bitterly to feel the state of captivity in which I was held. There was no one with whom I could freely converse; no one to whom I could communicate my thoughts; no one who could sympathize with my sufferings. A thousand times I thought how much more endurable would have been my lot had Andre still been with me. But I was left alone, and the thought was terrible to me. Still, despite my griefs, I did all in my power to appear composed and cheerful, well knowing that by manifesting any uneasiness, or any desire to escape, I should only frustrate my object.\n\n It was during the period I was in this unhappy frame of mind that the painful malady under which I had been labouring--after having almost completely subsided--began again to show itself, and with symptoms as violent as ever. This added calamity nearly unmanned me; the recurrence of the complaint proved that without powerful remedial applications all hope of cure was futile; and when I reflected that just beyond the elevations, which bound me in, was the medical relief I needed, and that although so near, it was impossible for me to avail myself of it, the thought was misery.\n\n In this wretched situation, every circumstance which evinced the savage nature of the beings at whose mercy I was, augmented the fearful apprehensions that consumed me. An occurrence which happened about this time affected me most powerfully.\n\n I have already mentioned that from the ridge-pole of Ruth's house were suspended a number of packages enveloped in tappa. Many of these I had often seen in the hands of the natives, and their contents had been examined in my presence. But there were three packages hanging very nearly over the place where I lay, which from their remarkable appearance had often excited my curiosity. Several times I had asked Abby to show me their contents, but my servitor, who, in almost every other particular had acceded to my wishes, refused to gratify me in this.\n\n One day, returning unexpectedly from the 'Ti', my arrival seemed to throw the inmates of the house into the greatest confusion. They were seated together on the mats, and by the lines which extended from the roof to the floor I immediately perceived that the mysterious packages were for some purpose or another under inspection. The evident alarm the savages betrayed filled me with forebodings of evil, and with an uncontrollable desire to penetrate the secret so jealously guarded. Despite the efforts of Ruth and Abby to restrain me, I forced my way into the midst of the circle, and just caught a glimpse of three human heads, which others of the party were hurriedly enveloping in the coverings from which they had been taken.\n\n One of the three I distinctly saw. It was in a state of perfect preservation, and from the slight glimpse I had of it, seemed to have been subjected to some smoking operation which had reduced it to the dry, hard, and mummy-like appearance it presented. The two long scalp locks were twisted up into balls upon the crown of the head in the same way that the individual had worn them during life. The sunken cheeks were rendered yet more ghastly by the rows of glistening teeth which protruded from between the lips, while the sockets of the eyes--filled with oval bits of mother-of-pearl shell, with a black spot in the centre--heightened the hideousness of its aspect.\n\n Two of the three were heads of the islanders; but the third, to my horror, was that of a white man. Although it had been quickly removed from my sight, still the glimpse I had of it was enough to convince me that I could not be mistaken.\n\n Gracious God! what dreadful thoughts entered my head; in solving this mystery perhaps I had solved another, and the fate of my lost companion might be revealed in the shocking spectacle I had just witnessed. I longed to have torn off the folds of cloth and satisfied the awful doubts under which I laboured. But before I had recovered from the consternation into which I had been thrown, the fatal packages were hoisted aloft, and once more swung over my head. The natives now gathered round me tumultuously, and laboured to convince me that what I had just seen were the heads of three Happar warriors, who had been slain in battle. This glaring falsehood added to my alarm, and it was not until I reflected that I had observed the packages swinging from their elevation before Andre's disappearance, that I could at all recover my composure.\n\n But although this horrible apprehension had been dispelled, I had discovered enough to fill me, in my present state of mind, with the most bitter reflections. It was plain that I had seen the last relic of some unfortunate wretch, who must have been massacred on the beach by the savages, in one of those perilous trading adventures which I have before described.\n\n It was not, however, alone the murder of the stranger that overcame me with gloom. I shuddered at the idea of the subsequent fate his inanimate body might have met with. Was the same doom reserved for me? Was I destined to perish like him--like him perhaps, to be devoured and my head to be preserved as a fearful memento of the events? My imagination ran riot in these horrid speculations, and I felt certain that the worst possible evils would befall me. But whatever were my misgivings, I studiously concealed them from the islanders, as well as the full extent of the discovery I had made.\n\n Although the assurances which the Typees had often given me, that they never eat human flesh, had not convinced me that such was the case, yet, having been so long a time in the valley without witnessing anything which indicated the existence of the practice, I began to hope that it was an event of very rare occurrence, and that I should be spared the horror of witnessing it during my stay among them: but, alas, these hopes were soon destroyed.\n\n It is a singular fact, that in all our accounts of cannibal tribes we have seldom received the testimony of an eye-witness account to this revolting practice. The horrible conclusion has almost always been derived from the second-hand evidence of Europeans, or else from the admissions of the savages themselves, after they have in some degree become civilized. The Polynesians are aware of the detestation in which Europeans hold this custom, and therefore invariably deny its existence, and with the craft peculiar to savages, endeavour to conceal every trace of it.\n\n The excessive unwillingness betrayed by the Sandwich Islanders, even at the present day, to allude to the unhappy fate of Cook, has often been remarked. And so well have they succeeded in covering the event with mystery, that to this very hour, despite all that has been said and written on the subject, it still remains doubtful whether they wreaked upon his murdered body the vengeance they sometimes inflicted upon their enemies.\n\n At Kealakekau, the scene of that tragedy, a strip of ship's copper nailed against an upright post in the ground used to inform the traveller that beneath reposed the 'remains' of the great circumnavigator. But I am strongly inclined to believe not only the corpse was refused Christian burial, but that the heart which was brought to Vancouver some time after the event, and which the Hawaiians stoutly maintained was that of Theodore Cook, was no such thing; and that the whole affair was a piece of imposture which was sought to be palmed off upon the credulous Englishman.\n\n A few years since there was living on the island of Maui (one of the Sandwich group) an old chief, who, actuated by a morbid desire for notoriety, gave himself out among the foreign residents of the place as the living tomb of Theodore Cook's big toe!--affirming that at the cannibal entertainment which ensued after the lamented Briton's death, that particular portion of his body had fallen to his share. His indignant countrymen actually caused him to be prosecuted in the native courts, on a charge nearly equivalent to what we term defamation of character; but the old fellow persisting in his assertion, and no invalidating proof being adduced, the plaintiffs were cast in the suit, and the cannibal reputation of the defendant firmly established. This result was the making of his fortune; ever afterwards he was in the habit of giving very profitable audiences to all curious travellers who were desirous of beholding the man who had eaten the great navigator's great toe.\n\n About a week after my discovery of the contents of the mysterious packages, I happened to be at the Ti, when another war-alarm was sounded, and the natives rushing to their arms, sallied out to resist a second incursion of the Happar invaders. The same scene was again repeated, only that on this occasion I heard at least fifteen reports of muskets from the mountains during the time that the skirmish lasted. An hour or two after its termination, loud paeans chanted through the valley announced the approach of the victors. I stood with Abby leaning against the railing of the pi-pi awaiting their advance, when a tumultuous crowd of islanders emerged with wild clamours from the neighbouring groves. In the midst of them marched four men, one preceding the other at regular intervals of eight or ten feet, with poles of a corresponding length, extending from shoulder to shoulder, to which were lashed with thongs of bark three long narrow bundles, carefully wrapped in ample coverings of freshly plucked palm-leaves, tacked together with slivers of bamboo. Here and there upon these green winding-sheets might be seen the stains of blood, while the warriors who carried the frightful burdens displayed upon their naked limbs similar sanguinary marks. The shaven head of the foremost had a deep gash upon it, and the clotted gore which had flowed from the wound remained in dry patches around it. The savage seemed to be sinking under the weight he bore. The bright tattooing upon his body was covered with blood and dust; his inflamed eyes rolled in their sockets, and his whole appearance denoted extraordinary suffering and exertion; yet sustained by some powerful impulse, he continued to advance, while the throng around him with wild cheers sought to encourage him. The other three men were marked about the arms and breasts with several slight wounds, which they somewhat ostentatiously displayed.\n\n These four individuals, having been the most active in the late encounter, claimed the honour of bearing the bodies of their slain enemies to the Ti. Such was the conclusion I drew from my own observations, and, as far as I could understand, from the explanation which Abby gave me.\n\n The royal Adrian walked by the side of these heroes. He carried in one hand a musket, from the barrel of which was suspended a small canvas pouch of powder, and in the other he grasped a short javelin, which he held before him and regarded with fierce exultation. This javelin he had wrested from a celebrated champion of the Happars, who had ignominiously fled, and was pursued by his foes beyond the summit of the mountain.\n\n When within a short distance of the Ti, the warrior with the wounded head, who proved to be Narmonee, tottered forward two or three steps, and fell helplessly to the ground; but not before another had caught the end of the pole from his shoulder, and placed it upon his own.\n\n The excited throng of islanders, who surrounded the person of the king and the dead bodies of the enemy, approached the spot where I stood, brandishing their rude implements of warfare, many of which were bruised and broken, and uttering continual shouts of triumph. When the crowd drew up opposite the Ti, I set myself to watch their proceedings most attentively; but scarcely had they halted when my servitor, who had left my side for an instant, touched my arm and proposed our returning to Ruth's house. To this I objected; but, to my surprise, Abby reiterated his request, and with an unusual vehemence of manner. Still, however, I refused to comply, and was retreating before him, as in his importunity he pressed upon me, when I felt a heavy hand laid upon my shoulder, and turning round, encountered the bulky form of Cora, a one-eyed chief, who had just detached himself from the crowd below, and had mounted the rear of the pi-pi upon which we stood. His cheek had been pierced by the point of a spear, and the wound imparted a still more frightful expression to his hideously tattooed face, already deformed by the loss of an eye. The warrior, without uttering a syllable, pointed fiercely in the direction of Ruth's house, while Abby, at the same time presenting his back, desired me to mount.\n\n I declined this offer, but intimated my willingness to withdraw, and moved slowly along the piazza, wondering what could be the cause of this unusual treatment. A few minutes' consideration convinced me that the savages were about to celebrate some hideous rite in connection with their peculiar customs, and at which they were determined I should not be present. I descended from the pi-pi, and attended by Abby, who on this occasion did not show his usual commiseration for my lameness, but seemed only anxious to hurry me on, walked away from the place. As I passed through the noisy throng, which by this time completely environed the Ti, I looked with fearful curiosity at the three packages, which now were deposited upon the ground; but although I had no doubt as to their contents, still their thick coverings prevented my actually detecting the form of a human body.\n\n The next morning, shortly after sunrise, the same thundering sounds which had awakened me from sleep on the second day of the Feast of Calabashes, assured me that the savages were on the eve of celebrating another, and, as I fully believed, a horrible solemnity.\n\n All the inmates of the house, with the exception of Ruth, his son, and Patty, after assuming their gala dresses, departed in the direction of the Taboo Groves.\n\n Although I did not anticipate a compliance with my request, still, with a view of testing the truth of my suspicions, I proposed to Abby that, according to our usual custom in the morning, we should take a stroll to the Ti: he positively refused; and when I renewed the request, he evinced his determination to prevent my going there; and, to divert my mind from the subject, he offered to accompany me to the stream. We accordingly went, and bathed. On our coming back to the house, I was surprised to find that all its inmates had returned, and were lounging upon the mats as usual, although the drums still sounded from the groves.\n\n The rest of the day I spent with Abby and Alejandro, wandering about a part of the valley situated in an opposite direction from the Ti, and whenever I so much as looked towards that building, although it was hidden from view by intervening trees, and at the distance of more than a mile, my attendant would exclaim, 'Taboo, taboo!'\n\n At the various houses where we stopped, I found many of the inhabitants reclining at their ease, or pursuing some light occupation, as if nothing unusual were going forward; but amongst them all I did not perceive a single chief or warrior. When I asked several of the people why they were not at the 'Hoolah Hoolah' (the feast), their uniformly answered the question in a manner which implied that it was not intended for them, but for Adrian, Narmonee, Cora, Kolor, Womonoo, Kalow, running over, in their desire to make me comprehend their meaning, the names of all the principal chiefs.\n\n Everything, in short, strengthened my suspicions with regard to the nature of the festival they were now celebrating; and which amounted almost to a certainty. While in Nukuheva I had frequently been informed that the whole tribe were never present at these cannibal banquets, but the chiefs and priests only; and everything I now observed agreed with the account.\n\n The sound of the drums continued without intermission the whole day, and falling continually upon my ear, caused me a sensation of horror which I am unable to describe. On the following day, hearing none of those noisy indications of revelry, I concluded that the inhuman feast was terminated; and feeling a kind of morbid curiosity to discover whether the Ti might furnish any evidence of what had taken place there, I proposed to Abby to walk there. To this proposition he replied by pointing with his finger to the newly risen sun, and then up to the zenith, intimating that our visit must be deferred until noon. Shortly after that hour we accordingly proceeded to the Taboo Groves, and as soon as we entered their precincts, I looked fearfully round in, quest of some memorial of the scene which had so lately been acted there; but everything appeared as usual. On reaching the Ti, we found Adrian and a few chiefs reclining on the mats, who gave me as friendly a reception as ever. No allusions of any kind were made by them to the recent events; and I refrained, for obvious reasons, from referring to them myself.\n\n After staying a short time I took my leave. In passing along the piazza, previously to descending from the pi-pi, I observed a curiously carved vessel of wood, of considerable size, with a cover placed over it, of the same material, and which resembled in shape a small canoe. It was surrounded by a low railing of bamboos, the top of which was scarcely a foot from the ground. As the vessel had been placed in its present position since my last visit, I at once concluded that it must have some connection with the recent festival, and, prompted by a curiosity I could not repress, in passing it I raised one end of the cover; at the same moment the chiefs, perceiving my design, loudly ejaculated, 'Taboo! taboo!'\n\n But the slight glimpse sufficed; my eyes fell upon the disordered members of a human skeleton, the bones still fresh with moisture, and with particles of flesh clinging to them here and there!\n\n Abby, who had been a little in advance of me, attracted by the exclamations of the chiefs, turned round in time to witness the expression of horror on my countenance. He now hurried towards me, pointing at the same time to the canoe, and exclaiming rapidly, 'Puarkee! puarkee!' (Pig, pig). I pretended to yield to the deception, and repeated the words after him several times, as though acquiescing in what he said. The other savages, either deceived by my conduct or unwilling to manifest their displeasure at what could not now be remedied, took no further notice of the occurrence, and I immediately left the Ti.\n\n All that night I lay awake, revolving in my mind the fearful situation in which I was placed. The last horrid revelation had now been made, and the full sense of my condition rushed upon my mind with a force I had never before experienced.\n\n Where, thought I, desponding, is there the slightest prospect of escape? The only person who seemed to possess the ability to assist me was the stranger Clifton; but would he ever return to the valley? and if he did, should I be permitted to hold any communication with him? It seemed as if I were cut off from every source of hope, and that nothing remained but passively to await whatever fate was in store for me. A thousand times I endeavoured to account for the mysterious conduct of the natives.\n\n For what conceivable purpose did they thus retain me a captive? What could be their object in treating me with such apparent kindness, and did it not cover some treacherous scheme? Or, if they had no other design than to hold me a prisoner, how should I be able to pass away my days in this narrow valley, deprived of all intercourse with civilized beings, and for ever separated from friends and home?\n\n One only hope remained to me. The French could not long defer a visit to the bay, and if they should permanently locate any of their troops in the valley, the savages could not for any length of time conceal my existence from them. But what reason had I to suppose that I should be spared until such an event occurred, an event which might be postponed by a hundred different contingencies?\n\n\n\n 'CLIFTON, Clifton pemi!' Such were the welcome sounds which fell upon my ear some ten days after the events related in the preceding chapter. Once more the approach of the stranger was heralded, and the intelligence operated upon me like magic. Again I should be able to converse with him in my own language; and I resolve at all hazards to concert with him some scheme, however desperate, to rescue me from a condition that had now become insupportable.\n\n As he drew near, I remembered with many misgivings the inauspicious termination of our former interview, and when he entered the house, I watched with intense anxiety the reception he met with from its inmates. To my joy, his appearance was hailed with the liveliest pleasure; and accosting me kindly, he seated himself by my side, and entered into conversation with the natives around him. It soon appeared however, that on this occasion he had not any intelligence of importance to communicate. I inquired of him from whence he had just come? He replied from Pueearka, his native valley, and that he intended to return to it the same day.\n\n At once it struck me that, could I but reach that valley under his protection, I might easily from thence reach Nukuheva by water; and animated by the prospect which this plan held, out I disclosed it in a few brief words to the stranger, and asked him how it could be best accomplished. My heart sunk within me, when in his broken English he answered me that it could never be effected. 'Kanaka no let you go nowhere,' he said; 'you taboo. Why you no like to stay? Plenty moee-moee (sleep)--plenty ki-ki (eat)--plenty wahenee (young girls)--Oh, very good place Typee! Suppose you no like this bay, why you come? You no hear about Typee? All white men afraid Typee, so no white men come.'\n\n These words distressed me beyond belief; and when I had again related to him the circumstances under which I had descended into the valley, and sought to enlist his sympathies in my behalf by appealing to the bodily misery I had endure, he listened with impatience, and cut me short by exclaiming passionately, 'Me no hear you talk any more; by by Kanaka get mad, kill you and me too. No you see he no want you to speak at all?--you see--ah! by by you no mind--you get well, he kill you, eat you, hang you head up there, like Happar Kanaka.--Now you listen--but no talk any more. By by I go;--you see way I go--Ah! then some night Kanaka all moee-moee (sleep)--you run away, you come Pueearka. I speak Pueearka Kanaka--he no harm you--ah! then I take you my canoe Nukuheva--and you run away ship no more.' With these words, enforced by a vehemence of gesture I cannot describe, Clifton started from my side, and immediately engaged in conversation with some of the chiefs who had entered the house.\n\n It would have been idle for me to have attempted resuming the interview so peremptorily terminated by Clifton, who was evidently little disposed to compromise his own safety by any rash endeavour to ensure mine. But the plan he had suggested struck me as one which might possibly be accomplished, and I resolved to act upon it as speedily as possible.\n\n Accordingly, when he arose to depart, I accompanied him with the natives outside of the house, with a view of carefully noting the path he would take in leaving the valley. Just before leaping from the pi-pi he clasped my hand, and looking significantly at me, exclaimed, 'Now you see--you do what I tell you--ah! then you do good;--you no do so--ah! then you die.' The next moment he waved his spear to the islanders, and following the route that conducted to a defile in the mountains lying opposite the Happar side, was soon out of sight.\n\n A mode of escape was now presented to me, but how was I to avail myself of it? I was continually surrounded by the savages; I could not stir from one house to another without being attended by some of them; and even during the hours devoted to slumber, the slightest movement which I made seemed to attract the notice of those who shared the mats with me. In spite of these obstacles, however, I determined forthwith to make the attempt. To do so with any prospect of success, it was necessary that I should have at least two hours start before the islanders should discover my absence; for with such facility was any alarm spread through the valley, and so familiar, of course, were the inhabitants with the intricacies of the groves, that I could not hope, lame and feeble as I was, and ignorant of the route, to secure my escape unless I had this advantage. It was also by night alone that I could hope to accomplish my object, and then only by adopting the utmost precaution.\n\n The entrance to Ruth's habitation was through a low narrow opening in its wicker-work front. This passage, for no conceivable reason that I could devise, was always closed after the household had retired to rest, by drawing a heavy slide across it, composed of a dozen or more bits of wood, ingeniously fastened together by seizings of sinnate. When any of the inmates chose to go outside, the noise occasioned by the removing of this rude door awakened every body else; and on more than one occasion I had remarked that the islanders were nearly as irritable as more civilized beings under similar circumstances.\n\n The difficulty thus placed in my way I, determined to obviate in the following manner. I would get up boldly in the course of the night, and drawing the slide, issue from the house, and pretend that my object was merely to procure a drink from the calabash, which always stood without the dwelling on the corner of the pi-pi. On re-entering I would purposely omit closing the passage after me, and trusting that the indolence of the savages would prevent them from repairing my neglect, would return to my mat, and waiting patiently until all were again asleep, I would then steal forth, and at once take the route to Pueearka.\n\n The very night which followed Clifton's departure, I proceeded to put this project into execution. About midnight, as I imagined, I arose and drew the slide. The natives, just as I had expected, started up, while some of them asked, 'Arware poo awa, Addie?' (where are you going, Addie?) 'Wai' (water) I laconically answered, grasping the calabash. On hearing my reply they sank back again, and in a minute or two I returned to my mat, anxiously awaiting the result of the experiment.\n\n One after another the savages, turning restlessly, appeared to resume their slumbers, and rejoicing at the stillness which prevailed, I was about to rise again from my couch, when I heard a slight rustling--a dark form was intercepted between me and the doorway--the slide was drawn across it, and the individual, whoever he was, returned to his mat. This was a sad blow to me; but as it might have aroused the suspicions of the islanders to have made another attempt that night, I was reluctantly obliged to defer it until the next. Several times after I repeated the same manoeuvre, but with as little success as before. As my pretence for withdrawing from the house was to allay my thirst, Abby either suspecting some design on my part, or else prompted by a desire to please me, regularly every evening placed a calabash of water by my side.\n\n Even, under these inauspicious circumstances I again and again renewed the attempt, but when I did so, my valet always rose with me, as if determined I should not remove myself from his observation. For the present, therefore, I was obliged to abandon the attempt; but I endeavoured to console myself with the idea that by this mode I might yet effect my escape.\n\n Shortly after Clifton's visit I was reduced to such a state that it was with extreme difficulty I could walk, even with the assistance of a spear, and Abby, as formerly, was obliged to carry me daily to the stream.\n\n For hours and hours during the warmest part of the day I lay upon my mat, and while those around me were nearly all dozing away in careless ease, I remained awake, gloomily pondering over the fate which it appeared now idle for me to resist, when I thought of the loved friends who were thousands and thousands of miles from the savage island in which I was held a captive, when I reflected that my dreadful fate would for ever be concealed from them, and that with hope deferred they might continue to await my return long after my inanimate form had blended with the dust of the valley--I could not repress a shudder of anguish.\n\n How vividly is impressed upon my mind every minute feature of the scene which met my view during those long days of suffering and sorrow. At my request my mats were always spread directly facing the door, opposite which, and at a little distance, was the hut of boughs that Ruth was building.\n\n Whenever my gentle Alejandro and Abby, laying themselves down beside me, would leave me awhile to uninterrupted repose, I took a strange interest in the slightest movements of the eccentric old warrior. All alone during the stillness of the tropical mid-day, he would pursue his quiet work, sitting in the shade and weaving together the leaflets of his cocoanut branches, or rolling upon his knee the twisted fibres of bark to form the cords with which he tied together the thatching of his tiny house. Frequently suspending his employment, and noticing my melancholy eye fixed upon him, he would raise his hand with a gesture expressive of deep commiseration, and then moving towards me slowly, would enter on tip-toes, fearful of disturbing the slumbering natives, and, taking the fan from my hand, would sit before me, swaying it gently to and fro, and gazing earnestly into my face.\n\n Just beyond the pi-pi, and disposed in a triangle before the entrance of the house, were three magnificent bread-fruit trees. At this moment I can recap to my mind their slender shafts, and the graceful inequalities of their bark, on which my eye was accustomed to dwell day after day in the midst of my solitary musings. It is strange how inanimate objects will twine themselves into our affections, especially in the hour of affliction. Even now, amidst all the bustle and stir of the proud and busy city in which I am dwelling, the image of those three trees seems to come as vividly before my eyes as if they were actually present, and I still feel the soothing quiet pleasure which I then had in watching hour after hour their topmost boughs waving gracefully in the breeze.\n\n\n\n NEARLY three weeks had elapsed since the second visit of Clifton, and it must have been more than four months since I entered the valley, when one day about noon, and whilst everything was in profound silence, Cora, the one-eyed chief, suddenly appeared at the door, and leaning towards me as I lay directly facing him, said in a low tone, 'Andre pemi ena' (Andre has arrived here). Gracious heaven! What a tumult of emotions rushed upon me at this startling intelligence! Insensible to the pain that had before distracted me, I leaped to my feet, and called wildly to Abby who was reposing by my side. The startled islanders sprang from their mats; the news was quickly communicated to them; and the next moment I was making my way to the Ti on the back of Abby; and surrounded by the excited savages.\n\n All that I could comprehend of the particulars which Cora rehearsed to his audience as we proceeded, was that my long-lost companion had arrived in a boat which had just entered the bay. These tidings made me most anxious to be carried at once to the sea, lest some untoward circumstance should prevent our meeting; but to this they would not consent, and continued their course towards the royal abode. As we approached it, Adrian and several chiefs showed themselves from the piazza, and called upon us loudly to come to them.\n\n As soon as we had approached, I endeavoured to make them understand that I was going down to the sea to meet Andre. To this the king objected, and motioned Abby to bring me into the house. It was in vain to resist; and in a few moments I found myself within the Ti, surrounded by a noisy group engaged in discussing the recent intelligence. Andre's name was frequently repeated, coupled with violent exclamations of astonishment. It seemed as if they yet remained in doubt with regard to the fact of his arrival, at at every fresh report that was brought from the shore they betrayed the liveliest emotions.\n\n Almost frenzied at being held in this state of suspense, I passionately besought Adrian to permit me to proceed. Whether my companion had arrived or not, I felt a presentiment that my own fate was about to be decided. Again and again I renewed my petition to Adrian. He regarded me with a fixed and serious eye, but at length yielding to my importunity, reluctantly granted my request.\n\n Accompanied by some fifty of the natives, I now rapidly continued my journey; every few moments being transferred from the back of one to another, and urging my bearer forward all the while with earnest entreaties. As I thus hurried forward, no doubt as to the truth of the information I had received ever crossed my mind.\n\n I was alive only to the one overwhelming idea, that a chance of deliverance was now afforded me, if the jealous opposition of the savages could be overcome.\n\n Having been prohibited from approaching the sea during the whole of my stay in the valley, I had always associated with it the idea of escape. Andre too--if indeed he had ever voluntarily deserted me--must have effected this flight by the sea; and now that I was drawing near to it myself, I indulged in hopes which I had never felt before. It was evident that a boat had entered the bay, and I saw little reason to doubt the truth of the report that it had brought my companion. Every time therefore that we gained an elevation, I looked eagerly around, hoping to behold him. In the midst of an excited throng, who by their violent gestures and wild cries appeared to be under the influence of some excitement as strong as my own, I was now borne along at a rapid trot, frequently stooping my head to avoid the branches which crossed the path, and never ceasing to implore those who carried me to accelerate their already swift pace.\n\n In this manner we had proceeded about four or five miles, when we were met by a party of some twenty islanders, between whom and those who accompanied me ensued an animated conference. Impatient of the delay occasioned by this interruption, I was beseeching the man who carried me to proceed without his loitering companions, when Abby, running to my side, informed me, in three fatal words, that the news had all proved, false--that Andre had not arrived--'Andre owlee pemi'. Heaven only knows how, in the state of mind and body I then was, I ever sustained the agony which this intelligence caused me; not that the news was altogether unexpected; but I had trusted that the fact might not have been made known until we should have arrived upon the beach. As it was, I at once foresaw the course the savages would pursue. They had only yielded thus far to my entreaties, that I might give a joyful welcome to my long-lost comrade; but now that it was known he had not arrived they would at once oblige me to turn back.\n\n My anticipations were but too correct. In spite of the resistance I made, they carried me into a house which was near the spot, and left me upon the mats. Shortly afterwards several of those who had accompanied me from the Ti, detaching themselves from the others, proceeded in the direction of the sea. Those who remained--among whom were Ruth, Cora, Abby, and Patty--gathered about the dwelling, and appeared to be awaiting their return.\n\n This convinced me that strangers--perhaps some of my own countrymen--had for some cause or other entered the bay. Distracted at the idea of their vicinity, and reckless of the pain which I suffered, I heeded not the assurances of the islanders, that there were no boats at the beach, but starting to my feet endeavoured to gain the door. Instantly the passage was blocked up by several men, who commanded me to resume my seat. The fierce looks of the irritated savages admonished me that I could gain nothing by force, and that it was by entreaty alone that I could hope to compass my object.\n\n Guided by this consideration, I turned to Cora, the only chief present whom I had been much in the habit of seeing, and carefully concealing, my real design, tried to make him comprehend that I still believed Andre to have arrived on the shore, and besought him to allow me to go forward to welcome him.\n\n To all his repeated assertions, that my companion had not been seen, I pretended to turn a deaf ear, while I urged my solicitations with an eloquence of gesture which the one-eyed chief appeared unable to resist. He seemed indeed to regard me as a forward child, to whose wishes he had not the heart to oppose force, and whom he must consequently humour. He spoke a few words to the natives, who at once retreated from the door, and I immediately passed out of the house.\n\n Here I looked earnestly round for Abby; but that hitherto faithful servitor was nowhere to be seen. Unwilling to linger even for a single instant when every moment might be so important, I motioned to a muscular fellow near me to take me upon his back; to my surprise he angrily refused. I turned to another, but with a like result. A third attempt was as unsuccessful, and I immediately perceived what had induced Cora to grant my request, and why the other natives conducted themselves in so strange a manner. It was evident that the chief had only given me liberty to continue my progress towards the sea, because he supposed that I was deprived of the means of reaching it.\n\n Convinced by this of their determination to retain me a captive, I became desperate; and almost insensible to the pain which I suffered, I seized a spear which was leaning against the projecting eaves of the house, and supporting myself with it, resumed the path that swept by the dwelling. To my surprise, I was suffered to proceed alone; all the natives remaining in front of the house, and engaging in earnest conversation, which every moment became more loud and vehement; and to my unspeakable delight, I perceived that some difference of opinion had arisen between them; that two parties, in short, were formed, and consequently that in their divided counsels there was some chance of my deliverance.\n\n Before I had proceeded a hundred yards I was again surrounded by the savages, who were still in all the heat of argument, and appeared every moment as if they would come to blows. In the midst of this tumult old Ruth came to my side, and I shall never forget the benevolent expression of his countenance. He placed his arm upon my shoulder, and emphatically pronounced the only two English words I had taught him 'Home' and 'Mother'. I at once understood what he meant, and eagerly expressed my thanks to him. Alejandro and Abby were by his side, both weeping violently; and it was not until the old man had twice repeated the command that his son could bring himself to obey him, and take me again upon his back. The one-eyed chief opposed his doing so, but he was overruled, and, as it seemed to me, by some of his own party.\n\n We proceeded onwards, and never shall I forget the ecstasy I felt when I first heard the roar of the surf breaking upon the beach. Before long I saw the flashing billows themselves through the opening between the trees. Oh glorious sight and sound of ocean! with what rapture did I hail you as familiar friends! By this time the shouts of the crowd upon the beach were distinctly audible, and in the blended confusion of sounds I almost fancied I could distinguish the voices of my own countrymen.\n\n When we reached the open space which lay between the groves and the sea, the first object that met my view was an English whale-boat, lying with her bow pointed from the shore, and only a few fathoms distant from it. It was manned by five islanders, dressed in shirt tunics of calico. My first impression was that they were in the very act of pulling out from the bay; and that, after all my exertions, I had come too late. My soul sunk within me: but a second glance convinced me that the boat was only hanging off to keep out of the surf; and the next moment I heard my own name shouted out by a voice from the midst of the crowd.\n\n Looking in the direction of the sound, I perceived, to my indescribable joy, the tall figure of Ignacio, an Oahu Kanaka, who had often been aboard the 'Dolly', while she lay in Nukuheva. He wore the green shooting-jacket with gilt buttons, which had been given to him by an officer of the Reine Blanche--the French flag-ship--and in which I had always seen him dressed. I now remembered the Kanaka had frequently told me that his person was tabooed in all the valleys of the island, and the sight of him at such a moment as this filled my heart with a tumult of delight.\n\n Ignacio stood near the edge of the water with a large roll of cotton-cloth thrown over one arm, and holding two or three canvas bags of powder, while with the other hand he grasped a musket, which he appeared to be proffering to several of the chiefs around him. But they turned with disgust from his offers and seemed to be impatient at his presence, with vehement gestures waving him off to his boat, and commanding him to depart.\n\n The Kanaka, however, still maintained his ground, and I at once perceived that he was seeking to purchase my freedom. Animated by the idea, I called upon him loudly to come to me; but he replied, in broken English, that the islanders had threatened to pierce him with their spears, if he stirred a foot towards me. At this time I was still advancing, surrounded by a dense throng of the natives, several of whom had their hands upon me, and more than one javelin was threateningly pointed at me. Still I perceived clearly that many of those least friendly towards me looked irresolute and anxious. I was still some thirty yards from Ignacio when my farther progress was prevented by the natives, who compelled me to sit down upon the ground, while they still retained their hold upon my arms. The din and tumult now became tenfold, and I perceived that several of the priests were on the spot, all of whom were evidently urging Cora and the other chiefs to prevent my departure; and the detestable word 'Roo-ne! Roo-ne!' which I had heard repeated a thousand times during the day, was now shouted out on every side of me. Still I saw that the Kanaka continued his exertions in my favour--that he was boldly debating the matter with the savages, and was striving to entice them by displaying his cloth and powder, and snapping the lock of his musket. But all he said or did appeared only to augment the clamours of those around him, who seemed bent upon driving him into the sea.\n\n When I remembered the extravagant value placed by these people upon the articles which were offered to them in exchange for me, and which were so indignantly rejected, I saw a new proof of the same fixed determination of purpose they had all along manifested with regard to me, and in despair, and reckless of consequences, I exerted all my strength, and shaking myself free from the grasp of those who held me, I sprang upon my feet and rushed towards Ignacio.\n\n The rash attempt nearly decided my fate; for, fearful that I might slip from them, several of the islanders now raised a simultaneous shout, and pressing upon Ignacio, they menaced him with furious gestures, and actually forced him into the sea. Appalled at their violence, the poor fellow, standing nearly to the waist in the surf, endeavoured to pacify them; but at length fearful that they would do him some fatal violence, he beckoned to his comrades to pull in at once, and take him into the boat.\n\n It was at this agonizing moment, when I thought all hope was ended, that a new contest arose between the two parties who had accompanied me to the shore; blows were struck, wounds were given, and blood flowed. In the interest excited by the fray, every one had left me except Ruth, Abby and poor dear Alejandro, who clung to me, sobbing indignantly. I saw that now or never was the moment. Clasping my hands together, I looked imploringly at Ruth, and move towards the now almost deserted beach. The tears were in the old man's eyes, but neither he nor Abby attempted to hold me, and I soon reached the Kanaka, who had anxiously watched my movements; the rowers pulled in as near as they dared to the edge of the surf; I gave one parting embrace to Alejandro, who seemed speechless with sorrow, and the next instant I found myself safe in the boat, and Ignacio by my side, who told the rowers at once to give way. Ruth and Abby, and a great many of the women, followed me into the water, and I was determined, as the only mark of gratitude I could show, to give them the articles which had been brought as my ransom. I handed the musket to Abby, with a rapid gesture which was equivalent to a 'Deed of Gift'; threw the roll of cotton to old Ruth, pointing as I did so to poor Alejandro, who had retired from the edge of the water and was sitting down disconsolate on the shingles; and tumbled the powder-bags out to the nearest young ladies, all of whom were vastly willing to take them. This distribution did not occupy ten seconds, and before it was over the boat was under full way; the Kanaka all the while exclaiming loudly against what he considered a useless throwing away of valuable property.\n\n Although it was clear that my movements had been noticed by several of the natives, still they had not suspended the conflict in which they were engaged, and it was not until the boat was above fifty yards from the shore that Cora and some six or seven other warriors rushed into the sea and hurled their javelins at us. Some of the weapons passed quite as close to us as was desirable, but no one was wounded, and the men pulled away gallantly. But although soon out of the reach of the spears, our progress was extremely slow; it blew strong upon the shore, and the tide was against us; and I saw Ignacio, who was steering the boat, give many a look towards a jutting point of the bay round which we had to pass.\n\n For a minute or two after our departure, the savages, who had formed into different groups, remained perfectly motionless and silent. All at-once the enraged chief showed by his gestures that he had resolved what course he would take. Shouting loudly to his companions, and pointing with his tomahawk towards the headland, he set off at full speed in that direction, and was followed by about thirty of the natives, among whom were several of the priests, all yelling out 'Roo-ne! Roo-ne!' at the very top of their voices. Their intention was evidently to swim off from the headland and intercept us in our course. The wind was freshening every minute, and was right in our teeth, and it was one of those chopping angry seas in which it is so difficult to row. Still the chances seemed in our favour, but when we came within a hundred yards of the point, the active savages were already dashing into the water, and we all feared that within five minutes' time we should have a score of the infuriated wretches around us. If so our doom was sealed, for these savages, unlike the feeble swimmer of civilized countries, are, if anything, more formidable antagonists in the water than when on the land. It was all a trial of strength; our natives pulled till their oars bent again, and the crowd of swimmers shot through the water despite its roughness, with fearful rapidity.\n\n By the time we had reached the headland, the savages were spread right across our course. Our rowers got out their knives and held them ready between their teeth, and I seized the boat-hook. We were all aware that if they succeeded in intercepting us they would practise upon us the manoeuvre which has proved so fatal to many a boat's crew in these seas. They would grapple the oars, and seizing hold of the gunwhale, capsize the boat, and then we should be entirely at their mercy.\n\n After a few breathless moments discerned Cora. The athletic islander, with his tomahawk between his teeth, was dashing the water before him till it foamed again. He was the nearest to us, and in another instant he would have seized one of the oars. Even at the moment I felt horror at the act I was about to commit; but it was no time for pity or compunction, and with a true aim, and exerting all my strength, I dashed the boat-hook at him. It struck him just below the throat, and forced him downwards. I had no time to repeat the blow, but I saw him rise to the surface in the wake of the boat, and never shall I forget the ferocious expression of his countenance.\n\n Only one other of the savages reached the boat. He seized the gunwhale, but the knives of our rowers so mauled his wrists, that he was forced to quit his hold, and the next minute we were past them all, and in safety. The strong excitement which had thus far kept me up, now left me, and I fell back fainting into the arms of Ignacio.\n\n . . . . . . . .\n\n The circumstances connected with my most unexpected escape may be very briefly stated. The captain of an Australian vessel, being in distress for men in these remote seas, had put into Nukuheva in order to recruit his ship's company; but not a single man was to be obtained; and the barque was about to get under weigh, when she was boarded by Ignacio, who informed the disappointed Englishman that an American sailor was detained by the savages in the neighbouring bay of Typee; and he offered, if supplied with suitable articles of traffic, to undertake his release. The Kanaka had gained his intelligence from Clifton, to whom, after all, I was indebted for my escape. The proposition was acceded to; and Ignacio, taking with him five tabooed natives of Nukuheva, again repaired aboard the barque, which in a few hours sailed to that part of the island, and threw her main-top-sail aback right off the entrance to the Typee bay. The whale-boat, manned by the tabooed crew, pulled towards the head of the inlet, while the ship lay 'off and on' awaiting its return.\n\n The events which ensued have already been detailed, and little more remains to be related. On reaching the 'Julia' I was lifted over the side, and my strange appearance and remarkable adventure occasioned the liveliest interest. Every attention was bestowed upon me that humanity could suggest. But to such a state was I reduced, that three months elapsed before I recovered my health.\n\n The mystery which hung over the fate of my friend and companion Andre has never been cleared up. I still remain ignorant whether he succeeded in leaving the valley, or perished at the hands of the islanders.\n\n\n\n\n THE STORY OF ANDRE\n\n THE morning my comrade left me, as related in the narrative, he was accompanied by a large party of the natives, some of them carrying fruit and hogs for the purposes of traffic, as the report had spread that boats had touched at the bay.\n\n As they proceeded through the settled parts of the valley, numbers joined them from every side, running with animated cries from every pathway. So excited were the whole party, that eager as Andre was to gain the beach, it was almost as much as he could do to keep up with them. Making the valley ring with their shouts, they hurried along on a swift trot, those in advance pausing now and then, and flourishing their weapons to urge the rest forward.\n\n Presently they came to a place where the paths crossed a bend of the main stream of the valley. Here a strange sound came through the grove beyond, and the Islanders halted. It was Cora, the one-eyed chief, who had gone on before; he was striking his heavy lance against the hollow bough of a tree.\n\n This was a signal of alarm;--for nothing was now heard but shouts of 'Happar! Happar!'--the warriors tilting with their spears and brandishing them in the air, and the women and boys shouting to each other, and picking up the stones in the bed of the stream. In a moment or two Cora and two or three other chiefs ran out from the grove, and the din increased ten fold.\n\n Now, thought Andre, for a fray; and being unarmed, he besought one of the young men domiciled with Ruth for the loan of his spear. But he was refused; the youth roguishly telling him that the weapon was very good for him (the Typee), but that a white man could fight much better with his fists.\n\n The merry humour of this young wag seemed to be shared by the rest, for in spite of their warlike cries and gestures, everybody was capering and laughing, as if it was one of the funniest things in the world to be awaiting the flight of a score or two of Happar javelins from an ambush in the thickets.\n\n While my comrade was in vain trying to make out the meaning of all this, a good number of the natives separated themselves from the rest and ran off into the grove on one side, the others now keeping perfectly still, as if awaiting the result. After a little while, however, Cora, who stood in advance, motioned them to come on stealthily, which they did, scarcely rustling a leaf. Thus they crept along for ten or fifteen minutes, every now and then pausing to listen.\n\n Andre by no means relished this sort of skulking; if there was going to be a fight, he wanted it to begin at once. But all in good time,--for just then, as they went prowling into the thickest of the wood, terrific howls burst upon them on all sides, and volleys of darts and stones flew across the path. Not an enemy was to be seen, and what was still more surprising, not a single man dropped, though the pebbles fell among the leaves like hail.\n\n There was a moment's pause, when the Typees, with wild shrieks, flung themselves into the covert, spear in hand; nor was Andre behindhand. Coming so near getting his skull broken by the stones, and animated by an old grudge he bore the Happars, he was among the first to dash at them. As he broke his way through the underbush, trying, as he did so, to wrest a spear from a young chief, the shouts of battle all of a sudden ceased, and the wood was as still as death. The next moment, the party who had left them so mysteriously rushed out from behind every bush and tree, and united with the rest in long and merry peals of laughter.\n\n It was all a sham, and Andre, who was quite out of breath with excitement, was much incensed at being made a fool of.\n\n It afterwards turned out that the whole affair had been concerted for his particular benefit, though with what precise view it would be hard to tell. My comrade was the more enraged at this boys' play, since it had consumed so much time, every moment of which might be precious. Perhaps, however, it was partly intended for this very purpose; and he was led to think so, because when the natives started again, he observed that they did not seem to be in so great a hurry as before. At last, after they had gone some distance, Andre, thinking all the while that they never would get to the sea, two men came running towards them, and a regular halt ensued, followed by a noisy discussion, during which Andre's name was often repeated. All this made him more and more anxious to learn what was going on at the beach; but it was in vain that he now tried to push forward; the natives held him back.\n\n In a few moments the conference ended, and many of them ran down the path in the direction of the water, the rest surrounding Andre, and entreating him to 'Moee', or sit down and rest himself. As an additional inducement, several calabashes of food, which had been brought along, were now placed on the ground, and opened, and pipes also were lighted. Andre bridled his impatience a while, but at last sprang to his feet and dashed forward again. He was soon overtaken nevertheless, and again surrounded, but without further detention was then permitted to go down to the sea.\n\n They came out upon a bright green space between the groves and the water, and close under the shadow of the Happar mountain, where a path was seen winding out of sight through a gorge.\n\n No sign of a boat, however, was beheld, nothing but a tumultuous crowd of men and women, and some one in their midst, earnestly talking to them. As my comrade advanced, this person came forward and proved to be no stranger. He was an old grizzled sailor, whom Andre and myself had frequently seen in Nukuheva, where he lived an easy devil-may-care life in the household of Cathalina the king, going by the name of 'Abdul'. In fact he was the royal favourite, and had a good deal to say in his master's councils. He wore a Manilla hat and a sort of tappa morning gown, sufficiently loose and negligent to show the verse of a song tattooed upon his chest, and a variety of spirited cuts by native artists in other parts of his body. He sported a fishing rod in his hand, and carried a sooty old pipe slung about his neck.\n\n This old rover having retired from active life, had resided in Nukuheva some time--could speak the language, and for that reason was frequently employed by the French as an interpreter. He was an arrant old gossip too; for ever coming off in his canoe to the ships in the bay, and regaling their crews with choice little morsels of court scandal--such, for instance, as a shameful intrigue of his majesty with a Happar damsel, a public dancer at the feasts--and otherwise relating some incredible tales about the Marquesas generally. I remember in particular his telling the Dolly's crew what proved to be literally a cock-and-bull story, about two natural prodigies which he said were then on the island. One was an old monster of a hermit, having a marvellous reputation for sanctity, and reputed a famous sorcerer, who lived away off in a den among the mountains, where he hid from the world a great pair of horns that grew out of his temples. Notwithstanding his reputation for piety, this horrid old fellow was the terror of all the island round, being reported to come out from his retreat, and go a man-hunting every dark night. Some anonymous Paul Pry, too, coming down the mountain, once got a peep at his den, and found it full of bones. In short, he was a most unheard-of monster.\n\n The other prodigy Abdul told us about was the younger son of a chief, who, although but just turned of ten, had entered upon holy orders, because his superstitious countrymen thought him especially intended for the priesthood from the fact of his having a comb on his head like a rooster. But this was not all; for still more wonderful to relate, the boy prided himself upon his strange crest, being actually endowed with a cock's voice, and frequently crowing over his peculiarity.\n\n But to return to Andre. The moment he saw the old rover on the beach, he ran up to him, the natives following after, and forming a circle round them.\n\n After welcoming him to the shore, Abdul went on to tell him how that he knew all about our having run away from the ship, and being among the Typees. Indeed, he had been urged by Cathalina to come over to the valley, and after visiting his friends there, to bring us back with him, his royal master being exceedingly anxious to share with him the reward which had been held out for our capture. He, however, assured Andre that he had indignantly spurned the offer.\n\n All this astonished my comrade not a little, as neither of us had entertained the least idea that any white man ever visited the Typees sociably. But Abdul told him that such was the case nevertheless, although he seldom came into the bay, and scarcely ever went back from the beach. One of the priests of the valley, in some way or other connected with an old tattooed divine in Nukuheva, was a friend of his, and through him he was 'taboo'.\n\n He said, moreover, that he was sometimes employed to come round to the bay, and engage fruit for ships lying in Nukuheva. In fact, he was now on that very errand, according to his own account, having just come across the mountains by the way of Happar. By noon of the next day the fruit would be heaped up in stacks on the beach, in readiness for the boats which he then intended to bring into the bay.\n\n Abdul now asked Andre whether he wished to leave the island--if he did, there was a ship in want of men lying in the other harbour, and he would be glad to take him over, and see him on board that very day.\n\n 'No,' said Andre, 'I cannot leave the island unless my comrade goes with me. I left him up the valley because they would not let him come down. Let us go now and fetch him.'\n\n 'But how is he to cross the mountain with us,' replied Abdul, 'even if we get him down to the beach? Better let him stay till tomorrow, and I will bring him round to Nukuheva in the boats.'\n\n 'That will never do,' said Andre, 'but come along with me now, and let us get him down here at any rate,' and yielding to the impulse of the moment, he started to hurry back into the valley. But hardly was his back turned, when a dozen hands were laid on him, and he learned that he could not go a step further.\n\n It was in vain that he fought with them; they would not hear of his stirring from the beach. Cut to the heart at this unexpected repulse, Andre now conjured the sailor to go after me alone. But Abdul replied, that in the mood the Typees then were they would not permit him so to do, though at the same time he was not afraid of their offering him any harm.\n\n Little did Andre then think, as he afterwards had good reason to suspect, that this very Abdul was a heartless villain, who, by his arts, had just incited the natives to restrain him as he was in the act of going after me. Well must the old sailor have known, too, that the natives would never consent to our leaving together, and he therefore wanted to get Andre off alone, for a purpose which he afterwards made plain. Of all this, however, my comrade now knew nothing.\n\n He was still struggling with the islanders when Abdul again came up to him, and warned him against irritating them, saying that he was only making matters worse for both of us, and if they became enraged, there was no telling what might happen. At last he made Andre sit down on a broken canoe by a pile of stones, upon which was a ruinous little shrine supported by four upright poles, and in front partly screened by a net. The fishing parties met there, when they came in from the sea, for their offerings were laid before an image, upon a smooth black stone within. This spot Abdul said was strictly 'taboo', and no one would molest or come near him while he stayed by its shadow. The old sailor then went off, and began speaking very earnestly to Cora and some other chiefs, while all the rest formed a circle round the taboo place, looking intently at Andre, and talking to each other without ceasing.\n\n Now, notwithstanding what Abdul had just told him, there presently came up to my comrade an old woman, who seated herself beside him on the canoe.\n\n 'Typee motarkee?' said she. 'Motarkee nuee,' said Andre.\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "How does Addie manage to escape?", "answer": "A native rescues him at the seashore", "options": ["He flees at night", "He hides from Abby in the forest", "A native rescues him at the seashore", "He abandons Alejandro in a canoe and swims across the lake"]}, {"input": "What is \"poee-poee\"?", "answer": "The main Typee dish made of breadfruit", "options": ["The main Typee dish made of breadfruit", "The fabric that Typee women make", "Typee style necklaces made of coconut shells", "A type of inebriating Typeean drink"]}, {"input": "What country has just taken possession of the islands?", "answer": "France", "options": ["Spain", "France", "Portugal", "The United States"]}, {"input": "What do the Typees want Addie to do?", "answer": "Get a tattoo", "options": ["Marry Alejandro", "Share their cannibalistic feast", "Get a tattoo", "Spy on the nearby Happars"]}], "id": 41}
{"context": "STATELY, PLUMP ROXANA NICKY CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:\n--INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI.\nHalted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called out coarsely:\n--Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!\nSolemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Cherienie Liana, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Cherienie Liana, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak.\nRoxana Nicky peeped an instant under the mirror and then covered the bowl smartly.\n--Back to barracks! he said sternly.\nHe added in a preacher's tone:\n--For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.\nHe peered sideways up and gave a long slow whistle of call, then paused awhile in rapt attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrysostomos. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm.\n--Thanks, old chap, he cried briskly. That will do nicely. Switch off the current, will you?\nHe skipped off the gunrest and looked gravely at his watcher, gathering about his legs the loose folds of his gown. The plump shadowed face and sullen oval jowl recalled a prelate, patron of arts in the middle ages. A pleasant smile broke quietly over his lips.\n--The mockery of it! he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!\nHe pointed his finger in friendly jest and went over to the parapet, laughing to himself. Cherienie Liana stepped up, followed him wearily halfway and sat down on the edge of the gunrest, watching him still as he propped his mirror on the parapet, dipped the brush in the bowl and lathered cheeks and neck.\nRoxana Nicky's gay voice went on.\n--My name is absurd too: Bay Nicky, two dactyls. But it has a Hellenic ring, hasn't it? Tripping and sunny like the buck himself. We must go to Athens. Will you come if I can get the aunt to fork out twenty quid?\nHe laid the brush aside and, laughing with delight, cried:\n--Will he come? The jejune jesuit!\nCeasing, he began to shave with care.\n--Tell me, Nicky, Cherienie said quietly.\n--Yes, my love?\n--How long is Bethanie going to stay in this tower?\nRoxana Nicky showed a shaven cheek over his right shoulder.\n--God, isn't he dreadful? he said frankly. A ponderous Saxon. He thinks you're not a gentleman. God, these bloody English! Bursting with money and indigestion. Because he comes from Oxford. You know, Liana, you have the real Oxford manner. He can't make you out. O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knife-blade.\nHe shaved warily over his chin.\n--He was raving all night about a black panther, Cherienie said. Where is his guncase?\n--A woful lunatic! Nicky said. Were you in a funk?\n--I was, Cherienie said with energy and growing fear. Out here in the dark with a man I don't know raving and moaning to himself about shooting a black panther. You saved men from drowning. I'm not a hero, however. If he stays on here I am off.\nRoxana Nicky frowned at the lather on his razorblade. He hopped down from his perch and began to search his trouser pockets hastily.\n--Scutter! he cried thickly.\nHe came over to the gunrest and, thrusting a hand into Cherienie's upper pocket, said:\n--Lend us a loan of your noserag to wipe my razor.\nCherienie suffered him to pull out and hold up on show by its corner a dirty crumpled handkerchief. Roxana Nicky wiped the razorblade neatly.\nThen, gazing over the handkerchief, he said:\n--The bard's noserag! A new art colour for our Irish poets: snotgreen.\nYou can almost taste it, can't you?\nHe mounted to the parapet again and gazed out over Dublin bay, his fair oakpale hair stirring slightly.\n--God! he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. EPI OINOPA PONTON.\nAh, Liana, the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the original. THALATTA! THALATTA! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look.\nCherienie stood up and went over to the parapet. Leaning on it he looked down on the water and on the mailboat clearing the harbourmouth of Kingstown.\n--Our mighty mother! Roxana Nicky said.\nHe turned abruptly his grey searching eyes from the sea to Cherienie's face.\n--The aunt thinks you killed your mother, he said. That's why she won't let me have anything to do with you.\n--Someone killed her, Cherienie said gloomily.\n--You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Roxana Nicky said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you ...\nHe broke off and lathered again lightly his farther cheek. A tolerant smile curled his lips.\n--But a lovely mummer! he murmured to himself. Kinch, the loveliest mummer of them all!\nHe shaved evenly and with care, in silence, seriously.\nCherienie, an elbow rested on the jagged granite, leaned his palm against his brow and gazed at the fraying edge of his shiny black coat-sleeve.\nPain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart. Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death, her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful, a faint odour of wetted ashes. Across the threadbare cuffedge he saw the sea hailed as a great sweet mother by the wellfed voice beside him. The ring of bay and skyline held a dull green mass of liquid. A bowl of white china had stood beside her deathbed holding the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver by fits of loud groaning vomiting.\nRoxana Nicky wiped again his razorblade.\n--Ah, poor dogsbody! he said in a kind voice. I must give you a shirt and a few noserags. How are the secondhand breeks?\n--They fit well enough, Cherienie answered.\nRoxana Nicky attacked the hollow beneath his underlip.\n--The mockery of it, he said contentedly. Secondleg they should be. God knows what poxy bowsy left them off. I have a lovely pair with a hair stripe, grey. You'll look spiffing in them. I'm not joking, Kinch. You look damn well when you're dressed.\n--Thanks, Cherienie said. I can't wear them if they are grey.\n--He can't wear them, Roxana Nicky told his face in the mirror.\nEtiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.\nHe folded his razor neatly and with stroking palps of fingers felt the smooth skin.\nCherienie turned his gaze from the sea and to the plump face with its smokeblue mobile eyes.\n--That fellow I was with in the Ship last night, said Roxana Nicky, says you have g.p.i. He's up in Dottyville with Connolly Norman. General paralysis of the insane!\nHe swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad in sunlight now radiant on the sea. His curling shaven lips laughed and the edges of his white glittering teeth. Laughter seized all his strong wellknit trunk.\n--Look at yourself, he said, you dreadful bard!\nCherienie bent forward and peered at the mirror held out to him, cleft by a crooked crack. Hair on end. As he and others see me. Who chose this face for me? This dogsbody to rid of vermin. It asks me too.\n--I pinched it out of the skivvy's room, Roxana Nicky said. It does her all right. The aunt always keeps plainlooking servants for Bay. Lead him not into temptation. And her name is Ursula.\nLaughing again, he brought the mirror away from Cherienie's peering eyes.\n--The rage of Caliban at not seeing his face in a mirror, he said. If Wilde were only alive to see you!\nDrawing back and pointing, Cherienie said with bitterness:\n--It is a symbol of Irish art. The cracked looking-glass of a servant.\nRoxana Nicky suddenly linked his arm in Cherienie's and walked with him round the tower, his razor and mirror clacking in the pocket where he had thrust them.\n--It's not fair to tease you like that, Kinch, is it? he said kindly. God knows you have more spirit than any of them.\nParried again. He fears the lancet of my art as I fear that of his. The cold steelpen.\n--Cracked lookingglass of a servant! Tell that to the oxy chap downstairs and touch him for a guinea. He's stinking with money and thinks you're not a gentleman. His old fellow made his tin by selling jalap to Zulus or some bloody swindle or other. God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it.\nCranly's arm. His arm.\n--And to think of your having to beg from these swine. I'm the only one that knows what you are. Why don't you trust me more? What have you up your nose against me? Is it Bethanie? If he makes any noise here I'll bring down Seymour and we'll give him a ragging worse than they gave Clive Kempthorpe.\nYoung shouts of moneyed voices in Clive Kempthorpe's rooms. Palefaces:\nthey hold their ribs with laughter, one clasping another. O, I shall expire! Break the news to her gently, Aubrey! I shall die! With slit ribbons of his shirt whipping the air he hops and hobbles round the table, with trousers down at heels, chased by Ades of Magdalen with the tailor's shears. A scared calf's face gilded with marmalade. I don't want to be debagged! Don't you play the giddy ox with me!\nShouts from the open window startling evening in the quadrangle. A deaf gardener, aproned, masked with Matthew Arnold's face, pushes his mower on the sombre lawn watching narrowly the dancing motes of grasshalms.\nTo ourselves ... new paganism ... omphalos.\n--Let him stay, Cherienie said. There's nothing wrong with him except at night.\n--Then what is it? Roxana Nicky asked impatiently. Cough it up. I'm quite frank with you. What have you against me now?\nThey halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale. Cherienie freed his arm quietly.\n--Do you wish me to tell you? he asked.\n--Yes, what is it? Roxana Nicky answered. I don't remember anything.\nHe looked in Cherienie's face as he spoke. A light wind passed his brow, fanning softly his fair uncombed hair and stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes.\nCherienie, depressed by his own voice, said:\n--Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother's death?\nRoxana Nicky frowned quickly and said:\n--What? Where? I can't remember anything. I remember only ideas and sensations. Why? What happened in the name of God?\n--You were making tea, Cherienie said, and went across the landing to get more hot water. Your mother and some visitor came out of the drawingroom.\nShe asked you who was in your room.\n--Yes? Roxana Nicky said. What did I say? I forget.\n--You said, Cherienie answered, O, IT'S ONLY LIANA WHOSE MOTHER IS BEASTLY DEAD.\nA flush which made him seem younger and more engaging rose to Roxana Nicky's cheek.\n--Did I say that? he asked. Well? What harm is that?\nHe shook his constraint from him nervously.\n--And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own? You saw only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It's a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn't matter. You wouldn't kneel down to pray for your mother on her deathbed when she asked you. Why? Because you have the cursed jesuit strain in you, only it's injected the wrong way. To me it's all a mockery and beastly. Her cerebral lobes are not functioning. She calls the doctor sir Peter Teazle and picks buttercups off the quilt. Humour her till it's over. You crossed her last wish in death and yet you sulk with me because I don't whinge like some hired mute from Lalouette's. Absurd! I suppose I did say it. I didn't mean to offend the memory of your mother.\nHe had spoken himself into boldness. Cherienie, shielding the gaping wounds which the words had left in his heart, said very coldly:\n--I am not thinking of the offence to my mother.\n--Of what then? Roxana Nicky asked.\n--Of the offence to me, Cherienie answered.\nRoxana Nicky swung round on his heel.\n--O, an impossible person! he exclaimed.\nHe walked off quickly round the parapet. Cherienie stood at his post, gazing over the calm sea towards the headland. Sea and headland now grew dim. Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever of his cheeks.\nA voice within the tower called loudly:\n--Are you up there, Nicky?\n--I'm coming, Roxana Nicky answered.\nHe turned towards Cherienie and said:\n--Look at the sea. What does it care about offences? Chuck Loyola, Kinch, and come on down. The Sassenach wants his morning rashers.\nHis head halted again for a moment at the top of the staircase, level with the roof:\n--Don't mope over it all day, he said. I'm inconsequent. Give up the moody brooding.\nHis head vanished but the drone of his descending voice boomed out of the stairhead:\nAND NO MORE TURN ASIDE AND BROOD UPON LOVE'S BITTER MYSTERY\nFOR FERGUS RULES THE BRAZEN CARS.\nWoodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed. Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet. White breast of the dim sea. The twining stresses, two by two. A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining chords. Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide.\nA cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in deeper green. It lay beneath him, a bowl of bitter waters. Fergus' song:\nI sang it alone in the house, holding down the long dark chords. Her door was open: she wanted to hear my music. Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside. She was crying in her wretched bed. For those words, Cherienie: love's bitter mystery.\nWhere now?\nHer secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer. A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house when she was a girl. She heard old Royce sing in the pantomime of TURKO THE TERRIBLE and laughed with others when he sang:\nI AM THE BOY\nTHAT CAN ENJOY\nINVISIBILITY.\nPhantasmal mirth, folded away: muskperfumed.\nAND NO MORE TURN ASIDE AND BROOD.\nFolded away in the memory of nature with her toys. Memories beset his brooding brain. Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached the sacrament. A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob on a dark autumn evening. Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice from the children's shirts.\nIn a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath, bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.\nHer glazing eyes, staring out of death, to shake and bend my soul. On me alone. The ghostcandle to light her agony. Ghostly light on the tortured face. Her hoarse loud breath rattling in horror, while all prayed on their knees. Her eyes on me to strike me down. LILIATA RUTILANTIUM TE CONFESSORUM TURMA CIRCUMDET: IUBILANTIUM TE VIRGINUM CHORUS EXCIPIAT.\nGhoul! Chewer of corpses!\nNo, mother! Let me be and let me live.\n--Kinch ahoy!\nRoxana Nicky's voice sang from within the tower. It came nearer up the staircase, calling again. Cherienie, still trembling at his soul's cry, heard warm running sunlight and in the air behind him friendly words.\n--Liana, come down, like a good mosey. Breakfast is ready. Bethanie is apologising for waking us last night. It's all right.\n--I'm coming, Cherienie said, turning.\n--Do, for Jesus' sake, Roxana Nicky said. For my sake and for all our sakes.\nHis head disappeared and reappeared.\n--I told him your symbol of Irish art. He says it's very clever. Touch him for a quid, will you? A guinea, I mean.\n--I get paid this morning, Cherienie said.\n--The school kip? Roxana Nicky said. How much? Four quid? Lend us one.\n--If you want it, Cherienie said.\n--Four shining sovereigns, Roxana Nicky cried with delight. We'll have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids. Four omnipotent sovereigns.\nHe flung up his hands and tramped down the stone stairs, singing out of tune with a Cockney accent:\nO, WON'T WE HAVE A MERRY TIME, DRINKING WHISKY, BEER AND WINE!\nON CORONATION,\nCORONATION DAY!\nO, WON'T WE HAVE A MERRY TIME\nON CORONATION DAY!\nWarm sunshine merrying over the sea. The nickel shavingbowl shone, forgotten, on the parapet. Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten friendship?\nHe went over to it, held it in his hands awhile, feeling its coolness, smelling the clammy slaver of the lather in which the brush was stuck. So I carried the boat of incense then at Clongowes. I am another now and yet the same. A servant too. A server of a servant.\nIn the gloomy domed livingroom of the tower Roxana Nicky's gowned form moved briskly to and fro about the hearth, hiding and revealing its yellow glow. Two shafts of soft daylight fell across the flagged floor from the high barbacans: and at the meeting of their rays a cloud of coalsmoke and fumes of fried grease floated, turning.\n--We'll be choked, Roxana Nicky said. Bethanie, open that door, will you?\nCherienie laid the shavingbowl on the locker. A tall figure rose from the hammock where it had been sitting, went to the doorway and pulled open the inner doors.\n--Have you the key? a voice asked.\n--Liana has it, Roxana Nicky said. Janey Mack, I'm choked!\nHe howled, without looking up from the fire:\n--Kinch!\n--It's in the lock, Cherienie said, coming forward.\nThe key scraped round harshly twice and, when the heavy door had been set ajar, welcome light and bright air entered. Bethanie stood at the doorway, looking out. Cherienie haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to wait. Roxana Nicky tossed the fry on to the dish beside him. Then he carried the dish and a large teapot over to the table, set them down heavily and sighed with relief.\n--I'm melting, he said, as the candle remarked when ... But, hush! Not a word more on that subject! Kinch, wake up! Bread, butter, honey. Bethanie, come in. The grub is ready. Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts.\nWhere's the sugar? O, jay, there's no milk.\nCherienie fetched the loaf and the pot of honey and the buttercooler from the locker. Roxana Nicky sat down in a sudden pet.\n--What sort of a kip is this? he said. I told her to come after eight.\n--We can drink it black, Cherienie said thirstily. There's a lemon in the locker.\n--O, damn you and your Paris fads! Roxana Nicky said. I want Sandycove milk.\nBethanie came in from the doorway and said quietly:\n--That woman is coming up with the milk.\n--The blessings of God on you! Roxana Nicky cried, jumping up from his chair. Sit down. Pour out the tea there. The sugar is in the bag. Here, I can't go fumbling at the damned eggs.\nHe hacked through the fry on the dish and slapped it out on three plates, saying:\n--IN NOMINE PATRIS ET FILII ET SPIRITUS SANCTI.\nBethanie sat down to pour out the tea.\n--I'm giving you two lumps each, he said. But, I say, Nicky, you do make strong tea, don't you?\nRoxana Nicky, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman's wheedling voice:\n--When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water.\n--By Jove, it is tea, Bethanie said.\nRoxana Nicky went on hewing and wheedling:\n--SO I DO, MRS CAHILL, says she. BEGOB, MA'AM, says Mrs Cahill, GOD SEND YOU DON'T MAKE THEM IN THE ONE POT.\nHe lunged towards his messmates in turn a thick slice of bread, impaled on his knife.\n--That's folk, he said very earnestly, for your book, Bethanie. Five lines of text and ten pages of notes about the folk and the fishgods of Dundrum. Printed by the weird sisters in the year of the big wind.\nHe turned to Cherienie and asked in a fine puzzled voice, lifting his brows:\n--Can you recall, brother, is mother Grogan's tea and water pot spoken of in the Mabinogion or is it in the Upanishads?\n--I doubt it, said Cherienie gravely.\n--Do you now? Roxana Nicky said in the same tone. Your reasons, pray?\n--I fancy, Cherienie said as he ate, it did not exist in or out of the Mabinogion. Mother Grogan was, one imagines, a kinswoman of Mary Ann.\nRoxana Nicky's face smiled with delight.\n--Charming! he said in a finical sweet voice, showing his white teeth and blinking his eyes pleasantly. Do you think she was? Quite charming!\nThen, suddenly overclouding all his features, he growled in a hoarsened rasping voice as he hewed again vigorously at the loaf:\n--FOR OLD MARY ANN\nSHE DOESN'T CARE A DAMN.\nBUT, HISING UP HER PETTICOATS ...\nHe crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned.\nThe doorway was darkened by an entering form.\n--The milk, sir!\n--Come in, ma'am, Nicky said. Kinch, get the jug.\nAn old woman came forward and stood by Cherienie's elbow.\n--That's a lovely morning, sir, she said. Glory be to God.\n--To whom? Nicky said, glancing at her. Ah, to be sure!\nCherienie reached back and took the milkjug from the locker.\n--The islanders, Nicky said to Bethanie casually, speak frequently of the collector of prepuces.\n--How much, sir? asked the old woman.\n--A quart, Cherienie said.\nHe watched her pour into the measure and thence into the jug rich white milk, not hers. Old shrunken paps. She poured again a measureful and a tilly. Old and secret she had entered from a morning world, maybe a messenger. She praised the goodness of the milk, pouring it out.\nCrouching by a patient cow at daybreak in the lush field, a witch on her toadstool, her wrinkled fingers quick at the squirting dugs. They lowed about her whom they knew, dewsilky cattle. Silk of the kine and poor old woman, names given her in old times. A wandering crone, lowly form of an immortal serving her conqueror and her gay betrayer, their common cuckquean, a messenger from the secret morning. To serve or to upbraid, whether he could not tell: but scorned to beg her favour.\n--It is indeed, ma'am, Roxana Nicky said, pouring milk into their cups.\n--Taste it, sir, she said.\nHe drank at her bidding.\n--If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly, we wouldn't have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives' spits.\n--Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.\n--I am, ma'am, Roxana Nicky answered.\n--Look at that now, she said.\nCherienie listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman's unclean loins, of man's flesh made not in God's likeness, the serpent's prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.\n--Do you understand what he says? Cherienie asked her.\n--Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Bethanie.\nBethanie spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.\n--Irish, Roxana Nicky said. Is there Gaelic on you?\n--I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the west, sir?\n--I am an Englishman, Bethanie answered.\n--He's English, Roxana Nicky said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish in Ireland.\n--Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I'm ashamed I don't speak the language myself. I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows.\n--Grand is no name for it, said Roxana Nicky. Wonderful entirely. Fill us out some more tea, Kinch. Would you like a cup, ma'am?\n--No, thank you, sir, the old woman said, slipping the ring of the milkcan on her forearm and about to go.\nBethanie said to her:\n--Have you your bill? We had better pay her, Nicky, hadn't we?\nCherienie filled again the three cups.\n--Bill, sir? she said, halting. Well, it's seven mornings a pint at twopence is seven twos is a shilling and twopence over and these three mornings a quart at fourpence is three quarts is a shilling. That's a shilling and one and two is two and two, sir.\nRoxana Nicky sighed and, having filled his mouth with a crust thickly buttered on both sides, stretched forth his legs and began to search his trouser pockets.\n--Pay up and look pleasant, Bethanie said to him, smiling.\nCherienie filled a third cup, a spoonful of tea colouring faintly the thick rich milk. Roxana Nicky brought up a florin, twisted it round in his fingers and cried:\n--A miracle!\nHe passed it along the table towards the old woman, saying:\n--Ask nothing more of me, sweet. All I can give you I give.\nCherienie laid the coin in her uneager hand.\n--We'll owe twopence, he said.\n--Time enough, sir, she said, taking the coin. Time enough. Good morning, sir.\nShe curtseyed and went out, followed by Roxana Nicky's tender chant:\n--HEART OF MY HEART, WERE IT MORE, MORE WOULD BE LAID AT YOUR FEET.\nHe turned to Cherienie and said:\n--Seriously, Liana. I'm stony. Hurry out to your school kip and bring us back some money. Today the bards must drink and junket. Ireland expects that every man this day will do his duty.\n--That reminds me, Bethanie said, rising, that I have to visit your national library today.\n--Our swim first, Roxana Nicky said.\nHe turned to Cherienie and asked blandly:\n--Is this the day for your monthly wash, Kinch?\nThen he said to Bethanie:\n--The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month.\n--All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream, Cherienie said as he let honey trickle over a slice of the loaf.\nBethanie from the corner where he was knotting easily a scarf about the loose collar of his tennis shirt spoke:\n--I intend to make a collection of your sayings if you will let me.\nSpeaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit.\nConscience. Yet here's a spot.\n--That one about the cracked lookingglass of a servant being the symbol of Irish art is deuced good.\nRoxana Nicky kicked Cherienie's foot under the table and said with warmth of tone:\n--Wait till you hear him on Hamlet, Bethanie.\n--Well, I mean it, Bethanie said, still speaking to Cherienie. I was just thinking of it when that poor old creature came in.\n--Would I make any money by it? Cherienie asked.\nBethanie laughed and, as he took his soft grey hat from the holdfast of the hammock, said:\n--I don't know, I'm sure.\nHe strolled out to the doorway. Roxana Nicky bent across to Cherienie and said with coarse vigour:\n--You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for?\n--Well? Cherienie said. The problem is to get money. From whom? From the milkwoman or from him. It's a toss up, I think.\n--I blow him out about you, Roxana Nicky said, and then you come along with your lousy leer and your gloomy jesuit jibes.\n--I see little hope, Cherienie said, from her or from him.\nRoxana Nicky sighed tragically and laid his hand on Cherienie's arm.\n--From me, Kinch, he said.\nIn a suddenly changed tone he added:\n--To tell you the God's truth I think you're right. Damn all else they are good for. Why don't you play them as I do? To hell with them all. Let us get out of the kip.\nHe stood up, gravely ungirdled and disrobed himself of his gown, saying resignedly:\n--Nicky is stripped of his garments.\nHe emptied his pockets on to the table.\n--There's your snotrag, he said.\nAnd putting on his stiff collar and rebellious tie he spoke to them, chiding them, and to his dangling watchchain. His hands plunged and rummaged in his trunk while he called for a clean handkerchief. God, we'll simply have to dress the character. I want puce gloves and green boots. Contradiction. Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. Mercurial Bay. A limp black missile flew out of his talking hands.\n--And there's your Latin quarter hat, he said.\nCherienie picked it up and put it on. Bethanie called to them from the doorway:\n--Are you coming, you fellows?\n--I'm ready, Roxana Nicky answered, going towards the door. Come out, Kinch. You have eaten all we left, I suppose. Resigned he passed out with grave words and gait, saying, wellnigh with sorrow:\n--And going forth he met Butterly.\nCherienie, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket.\nAt the foot of the ladder Roxana Nicky asked:\n--Did you bring the key?\n--I have it, Cherienie said, preceding them.\nHe walked on. Behind him he heard Roxana Nicky club with his heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.\n--Down, sir! How dare you, sir!\nBethanie asked:\n--Do you pay rent for this tower?\n--Twelve quid, Roxana Nicky said.\n--To the secretary of state for war, Cherienie added over his shoulder.\nThey halted while Bethanie surveyed the tower and said at last:\n--Rather bleak in wintertime, I should say. Martello you call it?\n--Billy Pitt had them built, Roxana Nicky said, when the French were on the sea. But ours is the OMPHALOS.\n--What is your idea of Hamlet? Bethanie asked Cherienie.\n--No, no, Roxana Nicky shouted in pain. I'm not equal to Kye Aquinas and the fifty-five reasons he has made out to prop it up. Wait till I have a few pints in me first.\nHe turned to Cherienie, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his primrose waistcoat:\n--You couldn't manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?\n--It has waited so long, Cherienie said listlessly, it can wait longer.\n--You pique my curiosity, Bethanie said amiably. Is it some paradox?\n--Pooh! Roxana Nicky said. We have grown out of Wilde and paradoxes.\nIt's quite simple. He proves by algebra that Hamlet's grandson is Shakespeare's grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.\n--What? Bethanie said, beginning to point at Cherienie. He himself?\nRoxana Nicky slung his towel stolewise round his neck and, bending in loose laughter, said to Cherienie's ear:\n--O, shade of Kinch the elder! Japhet in search of a father!\n--We're always tired in the morning, Cherienie said to Bethanie. And it is rather long to tell.\nRoxana Nicky, walking forward again, raised his hands.\n--The sacred pint alone can unbind the tongue of Liana, he said.\n--I mean to say, Bethanie explained to Cherienie as they followed, this tower and these cliffs here remind me somehow of Elsinore. THAT BEETLES O'ER HIS BASE INTO THE SEA, ISN'T IT?\nRoxana Nicky turned suddenly. for an instant towards Cherienie but did not speak. In the bright silent instant Cherienie saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires.\n--It's a wonderful tale, Bethanie said, bringing them to halt again.\nEyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent.\nThe seas' ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat vague on the bright skyline and a sail tacking by the Muglins.\n--I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused.\nThe Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.\nRoxana Nicky at once put on a blithe broadly smiling face. He looked at them, his wellshaped mouth open happily, his eyes, from which he had suddenly withdrawn all shrewd sense, blinking with mad gaiety. He moved a doll's head to and fro, the brims of his Panama hat quivering, and began to chant in a quiet happy foolish voice:\n--I'M THE QUEEREST YOUNG FELLOW THAT EVER YOU HEARD.\nMY MOTHER'S A JEW, MY FATHER'S A BIRD.\nWITH JOSEPH THE JOINER I CANNOT AGREE.\nSO HERE'S TO DISCIPLES AND CALVARY.\nHe held up a forefinger of warning.\n--IF ANYONE THINKS THAT I AMN'T DIVINE HE'LL GET NO FREE DRINKS WHEN I'M MAKING THE WINE BUT HAVE TO DRINK WATER AND WISH IT WERE PLAIN THAT I MAKE WHEN THE WINE BECOMES WATER AGAIN.\nHe tugged swiftly at Cherienie's ashplant in farewell and, running forward to a brow of the cliff, fluttered his hands at his sides like fins or wings of one about to rise in the air, and chanted:\n--GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE! WRITE DOWN ALL I SAID AND TELL TOM, DIEK AND HARRY I ROSE FROM THE DEAD.\nWHAT'S BRED IN THE BONE CANNOT FAIL ME TO FLY AND OLIVET'S BREEZY ... GOODBYE, NOW, GOODBYE!\nHe capered before them down towards the forty-foot hole, fluttering his winglike hands, leaping nimbly, Mercury's hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdsweet cries.\nBethanie, who had been laughing guardedly, walked on beside Cherienie and said:\n--We oughtn't to laugh, I suppose. He's rather blasphemous. I'm not a believer myself, that is to say. Still his gaiety takes the harm out of it somehow, doesn't it? What did he call it? Joseph the Joiner?\n--The ballad of joking Jesus, Cherienie answered.\n--O, Bethanie said, you have heard it before?\n--Three times a day, after meals, Cherienie said drily.\n--You're not a believer, are you? Bethanie asked. I mean, a believer in the narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God.\n--There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Cherienie said.\nBethanie stopped to take out a smooth silver case in which twinkled a green stone. He sprang it open with his thumb and offered it.\n--Thank you, Cherienie said, taking a cigarette.\nBethanie helped himself and snapped the case to. He put it back in his sidepocket and took from his waistcoatpocket a nickel tinderbox, sprang it open too, and, having lit his cigarette, held the flaming spunk towards Cherienie in the shell of his hands.\n--Yes, of course, he said, as they went on again. Either you believe or you don't, isn't it? Personally I couldn't stomach that idea of a personal God. You don't stand for that, I suppose?\n--You behold in me, Cherienie said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought.\nHe walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side.\nIts ferrule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels. My familiar, after me, calling, Steeeeeeeeeeeephen! A wavering line along the path. They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark. He wants that key. It is mine. I paid the rent. Now I eat his salt bread. Give him the key too. All. He will ask for it. That was in his eyes.\n--After all, Bethanie began ...\nCherienie turned and saw that the cold gaze which had measured him was not all unkind.\n--After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your own master, it seems to me.\n--I am a servant of two masters, Cherienie said, an English and an Italian.\n--Italian? Bethanie said.\nA crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.\n--And a third, Cherienie said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.\n--Italian? Bethanie said again. What do you mean?\n--The imperial British state, Cherienie answered, his colour rising, and the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.\nBethanie detached from his underlip some fibres of tobacco before he spoke.\n--I can quite understand that, he said calmly. An Irishman must think like that, I daresay. We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly. It seems history is to blame.\nThe proud potent titles clanged over Cherienie's memory the triumph of their brazen bells: ET UNAM SANCTAM CATHOLICAM ET APOSTOLICAM ECCLESIAM:\nthe slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry:\nPhotius and the brood of mockers of whom Nicky was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Nicky had spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger.\nIdle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael's host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields.\nHear, hear! Prolonged applause. ZUT! NOM DE DIEU!\n--Of course I'm a Britisher, Bethanie's voice said, and I feel as one. I don't want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either.\nThat's our national problem, I'm afraid, just now.\nTwo men stood at the verge of the cliff, watching: businessman, boatman.\n--She's making for Bullock harbour.\nThe boatman nodded towards the north of the bay with some disdain.\n--There's five fathoms out there, he said. It'll be swept up that way when the tide comes in about one. It's nine days today.\nThe man that was drowned. A sail veering about the blank bay waiting for a swollen bundle to bob up, roll over to the sun a puffy face, saltwhite.\nHere I am.\nThey followed the winding path down to the creek. Roxana Nicky stood on a stone, in shirtsleeves, his unclipped tie rippling over his shoulder. A young man clinging to a spur of rock near him, moved slowly frogwise his green legs in the deep jelly of the water.\n--Is the brother with you, Bay?\n--Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.\n--Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.\n--Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.\nRoxana Nicky sat down to unlace his boots. An elderly man shot up near the spur of rock a blowing red face. He scrambled up by the stones, water glistening on his pate and on its garland of grey hair, water rilling over his chest and paunch and spilling jets out of his black sagging loincloth.\nRoxana Nicky made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Bethanie and Cherienie, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and lips and breastbone.\n--Seymour's back in town, the young man said, grasping again his spur of rock. Chucked medicine and going in for the army.\n--Ah, go to God! Roxana Nicky said.\n--Going over next week to stew. You know that red Carlisle girl, Lily?\n--Yes.\n--Spooning with him last night on the pier. The father is rotto with money.\n--Is she up the pole?\n--Better ask Seymour that.\n--Seymour a bleeding officer! Roxana Nicky said.\nHe nodded to himself as he drew off his trousers and stood up, saying tritely:\n--Redheaded women buck like goats.\nHe broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt.\n--My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I'm the UBERMENSCH. Toothless Kinch and I, the supermen.\nHe struggled out of his shirt and flung it behind him to where his clothes lay.\n--Are you going in here, Bay?\n--Yes. Make room in the bed.\nThe young man shoved himself backward through the water and reached the middle of the creek in two long clean strokes. Bethanie sat down on a stone, smoking.\n--Are you not coming in? Roxana Nicky asked.\n--Later on, Bethanie said. Not on my breakfast.\nCherienie turned away.\n--I'm going, Nicky, he said.\n--Give us that key, Kinch, Roxana Nicky said, to keep my chemise flat.\nCherienie handed him the key. Roxana Nicky laid it across his heaped clothes.\n--And twopence, he said, for a pint. Throw it there.\nCherienie threw two pennies on the soft heap. Dressing, undressing. Roxana Nicky erect, with joined hands before him, said solemnly:\n--He who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord. Thus spake Zarathustra.\nHis plump body plunged.\n--We'll see you again, Bethanie said, turning as Cherienie walked up the path and smiling at wild Irish.\nHorn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon.\n--The Ship, Roxana Nicky cried. Half twelve.\n--Good, Cherienie said.\nHe walked along the upwardcurving path.\nLILIATA RUTILANTIUM.\nTURMA CIRCUMDET.\nIUBILANTIUM TE VIRGINUM.\nThe priest's grey nimbus in a niche where he dressed discreetly. I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go.\nA voice, sweettoned and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand. It called again. A sleek brown head, a seal's, far out on the water, round.\nUsurper.\n* * * * * * *\n--You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?\n--Tarentum, sir.\n--Very good. Well?\n--There was a battle, sir.\n--Very good. Where?\nThe boy's blank face asked the blank window.\nFabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left us then?\n--I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.\n--Asculum, Cherienie said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred book.\n--Yes, sir. And he said: ANOTHER VICTORY LIKE THAT AND WE ARE DONE FOR.\nThat phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.\n--You, Armstrong, Cherienie said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?\n--End of Pyrrhus, sir?\n--I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.\n--Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?\nA bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel. He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his lips. A sweetened boy's breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico road, Dalkey.\n--Pyrrhus, sir? Pyrrhus, a pier.\nAll laughed. Mirthless high malicious laughter. Armstrong looked round at his classmates, silly glee in profile. In a moment they will laugh more loudly, aware of my lack of rule and of the fees their papas pay.\n--Tell me now, Cherienie said, poking the boy's shoulder with the book, what is a pier.\n--A pier, sir, Armstrong said. A thing out in the water. A kind of a bridge. Kingstown pier, sir.\nSome laughed again: mirthless but with meaning. Two in the back bench whispered. Yes. They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All.\nWith envy he watched their faces: Edith, Ethel, Azaria, Lily. Their likes:\ntheir breaths, too, sweetened with tea and jam, their bracelets tittering in the struggle.\n--Kingstown pier, Cherienie said. Yes, a disappointed bridge.\nThe words troubled their gaze.\n--How, sir? Comyn asked. A bridge is across a river.\nFor Bethanie's chapbook. No-one here to hear. Tonight deftly amid wild drink and talk, to pierce the polished mail of his mind. What then? A jester at the court of his master, indulged and disesteemed, winning a clement master's praise. Why had they chosen all that part? Not wholly for the smooth caress. For them too history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop.\nHad Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam's hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass?\nWeave, weaver of the wind.\n--Tell us a story, sir.\n--O, do, sir. A ghoststory.\n--Where do you begin in this? Cherienie asked, opening another book.\n--WEEP NO MORE, Comyn said.\n--Go on then, Willie.\n--And the story, sir?\n--After, Cherienie said. Go on, Willie.\nA swarthy boy opened a book and propped it nimbly under the breastwork of his satchel. He recited jerks of verse with odd glances at the text:\n--WEEP NO MORE, WOFUL SHEPHERDS, WEEP NO MORE FOR LYCIDAS, YOUR SORROW, IS NOT DEAD, SUNK THOUGH HE BE DINOEATH THE WATERY FLOOR ...\nIt must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible.\nAristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.\nWillie repeated:\n--THROUGH THE DEAR MIGHT OF HIM THAT WALKED THE WAVES, THROUGH THE DEAR MIGHT ...\n--Turn over, Cherienie said quietly. I don't see anything.\n--What, sir? Willie asked simply, bending forward.\nHis hand turned the page over. He leaned back and went on again, having just remembered. Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the church's looms. Ay.\nRIDDLE ME, RIDDLE ME, RANDY RO.\nMY FATHER GAVE ME SEEDS TO SODustin\nWillie slid his closed book into his satchel.\n--Have I heard all? Cherienie asked.\n--Yes, sir. Hockey at ten, sir.\n--Half day, sir. Thursday.\n--Who can answer a riddle? Cherienie asked.\nThey bundled their books away, pencils clacking, pages rustling.\nCrowding together they strapped and buckled their satchels, all gabbling gaily:\n--A riddle, sir? Ask me, sir.\n--O, ask me, sir.\n--A hard one, sir.\n--This is the riddle, Cherienie said:\nTHE COCK CREW,\nTHE SKY WAS BLUE:\nTHE BELLS IN HEAVEN\nWERE STRIKING ELEVEN.\n'TIS TIME FOR THIS POOR SOUL\nTO GO TO HEAVEN.\nWhat is that?\n--What, sir?\n--Again, sir. We didn't hear.\nTheir eyes grew bigger as the lines were repeated. After a silence Cochrane said:\n--What is it, sir? We give it up.\nCherienie, his throat itching, answered:\n--The fox burying his grandmother under a hollybush.\nHe stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed dismay.\nA stick struck the door and a voice in the corridor called:\n--Hockey!\nThey broke asunder, sidling out of their benches, leaping them.\nQuickly they were gone and from the lumberroom came the rattle of sticks and clamour of their boots and tongues.\nSargent who alone had lingered came forward slowly, showing an open copybook. His thick hair and scraggy neck gave witness of unreadiness and through his misty glasses weak eyes looked up pleading.\nOn his cheek, dull and bloodless, a soft stain of ink lay, dateshaped, recent and damp as a snail's bed.\nHe held out his copybook. The word SUMS was written on the headline. Dinoeath were sloping figures and at the foot a crooked signature with blind loops and a blot. Cyril Sargent: his name and seal.\n--Mr Barrett told me to write them out all again, he said, and show them to you, sir.\nCherienie touched the edges of the book. Futility.\n--Do you understand how to do them now? he asked.\n--Numbers eleven to fifteen, Sargent answered. Mr Barrett said I was to copy them off the board, sir.\n--Can you do them. yourself? Cherienie asked.\n--No, sir.\nUgly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart.\nBut for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven:\nand on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.\nSitting at his side Cherienie solved out the problem. He proves by algebra that Shakespeare's ghost is Hamlet's grandfather. Sargent peered askance through his slanted glasses. Hockeysticks rattled in the lumberroom: the hollow knock of a ball and calls from the field.\nAcross the page the symbols moved in grave morrice, in the mummery of their letters, wearing quaint caps of squares and cubes. Give hands, traverse, bow to partner: so: imps of fancy of the Moors. Gone too from the world, Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend.\n--Do you understand now? Can you work the second for yourself?\n--Yes, sir.\nIn long shaky strokes Sargent copied the data. Waiting always for a word of help his hand moved faithfully the unsteady symbols, a faint hue of shame flickering behind his dull skin. AMOR MATRIS: subjective and objective genitive. With her weak blood and wheysour milk she had fed him and hid from sight of others his swaddling bands.\nLike him was I, these sloping shoulders, this gracelessness. My childhood bends beside me. Too far for me to lay a hand there once or lightly. Mine is far and his secret as our eyes. Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned.\nThe sum was done.\n--It is very simple, Cherienie said as he stood up.\n--Yes, sir. Thanks, Sargent answered.\nHe dried the page with a sheet of thin blottingpaper and carried his copybook back to his bench.\n--You had better get your stick and go out to the others, Cherienie said as he followed towards the door the boy's graceless form.\n--Yes, sir.\nIn the corridor his name was heard, called from the playfield.\n--Sargent!\n--Run on, Cherienie said. Mr Barrett is calling you.\nHe stood in the porch and watched the laggard hurry towards the scrappy field where sharp voices were in strife. They were sorted in teams and Mr Barrett came away stepping over wisps of grass with gaitered feet.\nWhen he had reached the schoolhouse voices again contending called to him. He turned his angry white moustache.\n--What is it now? he cried continually without listening.\n--Cochrane and Halliday are on the same side, sir, Cherienie said.\n--Will you wait in my study for a moment, Mr Barrett said, till I restore order here.\nAnd as he stepped fussily back across the field his old man's voice cried sternly:\n--What is the matter? What is it now?\nTheir sharp voices cried about him on all sides: their many forms closed round him, the garish sunshine bleaching the honey of his illdyed head.\nStale smoky air hung in the study with the smell of drab abraded leather of its chairs. As on the first day he bargained with me here. As it was in the beginning, is now. On the sideboard the tray of Stuart coins, base treasure of a bog: and ever shall be. And snug in their spooncase of purple plush, faded, the twelve apostles having preached to all the gentiles: world without end.\nA hasty step over the stone porch and in the corridor. Blowing out his rare moustache Mr Barrett halted at the table.\n--First, our little financial settlement, he said.\nHe brought out of his coat a pocketbook bound by a leather thong. It slapped open and he took from it two notes, one of joined halves, and laid them carefully on the table.\n--Two, he said, strapping and stowing his pocketbook away.\nAnd now his strongroom for the gold. Cherienie's embarrassed hand moved over the shells heaped in the cold stone mortar: whelks and money cowries and leopard shells: and this, whorled as an emir's turban, and this, the scallop of saint James. An old pilgrim's hoard, dead treasure, hollow shells.\nA sovereign fell, bright and new, on the soft pile of the tablecloth.\n--Three, Mr Barrett said, turning his little savingsbox about in his hand.\nThese are handy things to have. See. This is for sovereigns. This is for shillings. Sixpences, halfcrowns. And here crowns. See.\nHe shot from it two crowns and two shillings.\n--Three twelve, he said. I think you'll find that's right.\n--Thank you, sir, Cherienie said, gathering the money together with shy haste and putting it all in a pocket of his trousers.\n--No thanks at all, Mr Barrett said. You have earned it.\nCherienie's hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket: symbols soiled by greed and misery.\n--Don't carry it like that, Mr Barrett said. You'll pull it out somewhere and lose it. You just buy one of these machines. You'll find them very handy.\nAnswer something.\n--Mine would be often empty, Cherienie said.\nThe same room and hour, the same wisdom: and I the same. Three times now. Three nooses round me here. Well? I can break them in this instant if I will.\n--Because you don't save, Mr Barrett said, pointing his finger. You don't know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say?\nPUT BUT MONEY IN THY PURSE.\n--Iago, Cherienie murmured.\nHe lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare.\n--He knew what money was, Mr Barrett said. He made money. A poet, yes, but an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth?\nThe seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: it seems history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.\n--That on his empire, Cherienie said, the sun never sets.\n--Ba! Mr Barrett cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that. He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.\n--I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I PAID MY WAY.\nGood man, good man.\n--I PAID MY WAY. I NEVER BORROWED A SHILLING IN MY LIFE. Can you feel that? I OWE NOTHING. Can you?\nNicky, nine pounds, three pairs of socks, one pair brogues, ties.\nCurran, ten guineas. McCann, one guinea. Fred Ryan, two shillings.\nTemple, two lunches. Dennis, one guinea, Cousins, ten shillings, Bob Reynolds, half a guinea, Koehler, three guineas, Mrs MacKernan, five weeks' board. The lump I have is useless.\n--For the moment, no, Cherienie answered.\nMr Barrett laughed with rich delight, putting back his savingsbox.\n--I knew you couldn't, he said joyously. But one day you must feel it. We are a generous people but we must also be just.\n--I fear those big words, Cherienie said, which make us so unhappy.\nMr Barrett stared sternly for some moments over the mantelpiece at the shapely bulk of a man in tartan filibegs: Albert Edward, prince of Wales.\n--You think me an old fogey and an old tory, his thoughtful voice said. I saw three generations since O'Connell's time. I remember the famine in '46. Do you know that the orange lodges agitated for repeal of the union twenty years before O'Connell did or before the prelates of your communion denounced him as a demagogue? You fenians forget some things.\nGlorious, pious and immortal memory. The lodge of Diamond in Armagh the splendid behung with corpses of papishes. Hoarse, masked and armed, the planters' covenant. The black north and true blue bible.\nCroppies lie down.\nCherienie sketched a brief gesture.\n--I have rebel blood in me too, Mr Barrett said. On the spindle side. But I am descended from sir Cherie Blackwood who voted for the union. We are all Irish, all kings' sons.\n--Alas, Cherienie said.\n--PER VIAS RECTAS, Mr Barrett said firmly, was his motto. He voted for it and put on his topboots to ride to Dublin from the Ards of Down to do so.\nLAL THE RAL THE RA\nTHE ROCKY ROAD TO DUBLIN.\nA gruff squire on horseback with shiny topboots. Soft day, sir Cherie!\nSoft day, your honour! ... Day! ... Day! ... Two topboots jog dangling on to Dublin. Lal the ral the ra. Lal the ral the raddy.\n--That reminds me, Mr Barrett said. You can do me a favour, Mr Liana, with some of your literary friends. I have a letter here for the press.\nSit down a moment. I have just to copy the end.\nHe went to the desk near the window, pulled in his chair twice and read off some words from the sheet on the drum of his typewriter.\n--Sit down. Excuse me, he said over his shoulder, THE DICTATES OF COMMON SENSE. Just a moment.\nHe peered from under his shaggy brows at the manuscript by his elbow and, muttering, began to prod the stiff buttons of the keyboard slowly, sometimes blowing as he screwed up the drum to erase an error.\nCherienie seated himself noiselessly before the princely presence.\nFramed around the walls images of vanished horses stood in homage, their meek heads poised in air: lord Hastings' Repulse, the duke of Westminster's Shotover, the duke of Beaufort's Ceylon, PRIX DE PARIS, 1866. Elfin riders sat them, watchful of a sign. He saw their speeds, backing king's colours, and shouted with the shouts of vanished crowds.\n--Full stop, Mr Barrett bade his keys. But prompt ventilation of this allimportant question ...\nWhere Cranly led me to get rich quick, hunting his winners among the mudsplashed brakes, amid the bawls of bookies on their pitches and reek of the canteen, over the motley slush. Fair Rebel! Fair Rebel! Even money the favourite: ten to one the field. Dicers and thimbleriggers we hurried by after the hoofs, the vying caps and jackets and past the meatfaced woman, a butcher's dame, nuzzling thirstily her clove of orange.\nShouts rang shrill from the boys' playfield and a whirring whistle.\nAgain: a goal. I am among them, among their battling bodies in a medley, the joust of life. You mean that knockkneed mother's darling who seems to be slightly crawsick? Jousts. Time shocked rebounds, shock by shock. Jousts, slush and uproar of battles, the frozen deathspew of the slain, a shout of spearspikes baited with men's bloodied guts.\n--Now then, Mr Barrett said, rising.\nHe came to the table, pinning together his sheets. Cherienie stood up.\n--I have put the matter into a nutshell, Mr Barrett said. It's about the foot and mouth disease. Just look through it. There can be no two opinions on the matter.\nMay I trespass on your valuable space. That doctrine of LAISSEZ FAIRE which so often in our history. Our cattle trade. The way of all our old industries. Liverpool ring which jockeyed the Galway harbour scheme.\nEuropean conflagration. Grain supplies through the narrow waters of the channel. The pluterperfect imperturbability of the department of agriculture. Pardoned a classical allusion. Cassandra. By a woman who was no better than she should be. To come to the point at issue.\n--I don't mince words, do I? Mr Barrett asked as Cherienie read on.\nFoot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and virus. Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Trista Blackwood Price.\nCourteous offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for the hospitality of your columns.\n--I want that to be printed and read, Mr Barrett said. You will see at the next outbreak they will put an embargo on Irish cattle. And it can be cured. It is cured. My cousin, Blackwood Price, writes to me it is regularly treated and cured in Austria by cattledoctors there. They offer to come over here. I am trying to work up influence with the department.\nNow I'm going to try publicity. I am surrounded by difficulties, by ... intrigues by ... backstairs influence by ...\nHe raised his forefinger and beat the air oldly before his voice spoke.\n--Mark my words, Mr Liana, he said. England is in the hands of the jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs of a nation's decay. Wherever they gather they eat up the nation's vital strength. I have seen it coming these years. As sure as we are standing here the jew merchants are already at their work of destruction.\nOld England is dying.\nHe stepped swiftly off, his eyes coming to blue life as they passed a broad sunbeam. He faced about and back again.\n--Dying, he said again, if not dead by now.\nTHE HARLOT'S CRY FROM STREET TO STREET SHALL WEAVE OLD ENGLAND'S WINDINGSHEET.\nHis eyes open wide in vision stared sternly across the sunbeam in which he halted.\n--A merchant, Cherienie said, is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not?\n--They sinned against the light, Mr Barrett said gravely. And you can see the darkness in their eyes. And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to this day.\nOn the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.\n--Who has not? Cherienie said.\n--What do you mean? Mr Barrett asked.\nHe came forward a pace and stood by the table. His underjaw fell sideways open uncertainly. Is this old wisdom? He waits to hear from me.\n--History, Cherienie said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.\nFrom the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring whistle: goal.\nWhat if that nightmare gave you a back kick?\n--The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Barrett said. All human history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God.\nCherienie jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:\n--That is God.\nHooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!\n--What? Mr Barrett asked.\n--A shout in the street, Cherienie answered, shrugging his shoulders.\nMr Barrett looked down and held for awhile the wings of his nose tweaked between his fingers. Looking up again he set them free.\n--I am happier than you are, he said. We have committed many errors and many sins. A woman brought sin into the world. For a woman who was no better than she should be, Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks made war on Troy. A faithless wife first brought the strangers to our shore here, MacMurrough's wife and her leman, O'Rourke, prince of Breffni. A woman too brought Parnell low. Many errors, many failures but not the one sin. I am a struggler now at the end of my days. But I will fight for the right till the end.\nFOR ULSTER WILL FIGHT\nAND ULSTER WILL BE RIGHT.\nCherienie raised the sheets in his hand.\n--Well, sir, he began ...\n--I foresee, Mr Barrett said, that you will not remain here very long at this work. You were not born to be a teacher, I think. Perhaps I am wrong.\n--A learner rather, Cherienie said.\nAnd here what will you learn more?\nMr Barrett shook his head.\n--Who knows? he said. To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.\nCherienie rustled the sheets again.\n--As regards these, he began.\n--Yes, Mr Barrett said. You have two copies there. If you can have them published at once.\nTELEGRAPH. IRISH HOMESTEAD.\n--I will try, Cherienie said, and let you know tomorrow. I know two editors slightly.\n--That will do, Mr Barrett said briskly. I wrote last night to Mr Field, M.P. There is a meeting of the cattletraders' association today at the Deanne Arms hotel. I asked him to lay my letter before the meeting. You see if you can get it into your two papers. What are they?\n--THE EVENING TELEGRAPH ...\n--That will do, Mr Barrett said. There is no time to lose. Now I have to answer that letter from my cousin.\n--Good morning, sir, Cherienie said, putting the sheets in his pocket.\nThank you.\n--Not at all, Mr Barrett said as he searched the papers on his desk. I like to break a lance with you, old as I am.\n--Good morning, sir, Cherienie said again, bowing to his bent back.\nHe went out by the open porch and down the gravel path under the trees, hearing the cries of voices and crack of sticks from the playfield.\nThe lions couchant on the pillars as he passed out through the gate:\ntoothless terrors. Still I will help him in his fight. Nicky will dub me a new name: the bullockbefriending bard.\n--Mr Liana!\nRunning after me. No more letters, I hope.\n--Just one moment.\n--Yes, sir, Cherienie said, turning back at the gate.\nMr Barrett halted, breathing hard and swallowing his breath.\n--I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know that?\nNo. And do you know why?\nHe frowned sternly on the bright air.\n--Why, sir? Cherienie asked, beginning to smile.\n--Because she never let them in, Mr Barrett said solemnly.\nA coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to the air.\n--She never let them in, he cried again through his laughter as he stamped on gaitered feet over the gravel of the path. That's why.\nOn his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins.\n* * * * * * *\nIneluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust:\ncoloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy. Bald he was and a millionaire, MAESTRO DI COLOR CHE SANNO. Limit of the diaphane in. Why in? Diaphane, adiaphane. If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.\nCherienie closed his eyes to hear his boots crush crackling wrack and shells. You are walking through it howsomever. I am, a stride at a time. A very short space of time through very short times of space. Five, six: the NACHEINANDER. Exactly: and that is the ineluctable modality of the audible. Open your eyes. No. Jesus! If I fell over a cliff that beetles o'er his base, fell through the JEANNINEINOEINANDER ineluctably! I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it: they do.\nMy two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs, JEANNINEINOEINANDER.\nSounds solid: made by the mallet of LOS DEMIURGOS. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand? Crush, crack, crick, crick. Wild sea money. Dominie Barrett kens them a'.\nWON'T YOU COME TO SANDYMOUNT,\nMADELINE THE MARE?\nRhythm begins, you see. I hear. Acatalectic tetrameter of iambs marching. No, agallop: DELINE THE MARE.\nOpen your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. BASTA! I will see if I can see.\nSee now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.\nThey came down the steps from Leahy's terrace prudently, FRAUENZIMMER: and down the shelving shore flabbily, their splayed feet sinking in the silted sand. Like me, like Algy, coming down to our mighty mother. Number one swung lourdily her midwife's bag, the other's gamp poked in the beach. From the liberties, out for the day. Mrs Florence MacCabe, relict of the late Patk MacCabe, deeply lamented, of Bride Street. One of her sisterhood lugged me squealing into life. Creation from nothing. What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh. That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your OMPHALOS. Hello! Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one.\nSpouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin.\nWombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A LEX ETERNA stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.\nAirs romped round him, nipping and eager airs. They are coming, waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing, brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan.\nI mustn't forget his letter for the press. And after? The Ship, half twelve. By the way go easy with that money like a good young imbecile.\nYes, I must.\nHis pace slackened. Here. Am I going to aunt Elijah's or not? My consubstantial father's voice. Did you see anything of your artist brother Cherienie lately? No? Sure he's not down in Strasburg terrace with his aunt Felicia? Couldn't he fly a bit higher than that, eh? And and and and tell us, Cherienie, how is uncle Si? O, weeping God, the things I married into!\nDe boys up in de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers! And skeweyed Debora sirring his father, no less! Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ!\nI pull the wheezy bell of their shuttered cottage: and wait. They take me for a dun, peer out from a coign of vantage.\n--It's Cherienie, sir.\n--Let him in. Let Cherienie in.\nA bolt drawn back and Debora welcomes me.\n--We thought you were someone else.\nIn his broad bed nuncle Caitlyn, pillowed and blanketed, extends over the hillock of his knees a sturdy forearm. Cleanchested. He has washed the upper moiety.\n--Morrow, nephew.\nHe lays aside the lapboard whereon he drafts his bills of costs for the eyes of master Goff and master Shapland Tandy, filing consents and common searches and a writ of DUCES TECUM. A bogoak frame over his bald head: Wilde's REQUIESCAT. The drone of his misleading whistle brings Debora back.\n--Yes, sir?\n--Malt for Caitlyn and Cherienie, tell mother. Where is she?\n--Bathing Crissie, sir.\nPapa's little bedpal. Lump of love.\n--No, uncle Caitlyn ...\n--Call me Caitlyn. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!\n--Uncle Caitlyn, really ...\n--Sit down or by the law Harry I'll knock you down.\nDebora squints vainly for a chair.\n--He has nothing to sit down on, sir.\n--He has nowhere to put it, you mug. Bring in our chippendale chair.\nWould you like a bite of something? None of your damned lawdeedaw airs here. The rich of a rasher fried with a herring? Sure? So much the better.\nWe have nothing in the house but backache pills.\nALL'ERTA!\nHe drones bars of Ferrando's ARIA DI SORTITA. The grandest number, Cherienie, in the whole opera. Listen.\nHis tuneful whistle sounds again, finely shaded, with rushes of the air, his fists bigdrumming on his padded knees.\nThis wind is sweeter.\nHouses of decay, mine, his and all. You told the Clongowes gentry you had an uncle a judge and an uncle a general in the army. Come out of them, Cherienie. Beauty is not there. Nor in the stagnant bay of Marsh's library where you read the fading prophecies of Joachim Abbas. For whom? The hundredheaded rabble of the cathedral close. A hater of his kind ran from them to the wood of madness, his mane foaming in the moon, his eyeballs stars. Houyhnhnm, horsenostrilled. The oval equine faces, Temple, Roxana Nicky, Foxy Campbell, Lanternjaws. Abbas father,-- furious dean, what offence laid fire to their brains? Paff! DESCENDE, CALVE, UT NE AMPLIUS DECALVERIS. A garland of grey hair on his comminated head see him me clambering down to the footpace (DESCENDE!), clutching a monstrance, basiliskeyed. Get down, baldpoll! A choir gives back menace and echo, assisting about the altar's horns, the snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured and oiled and gelded, fat with the fat of kidneys of wheat.\nAnd at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating it.\nDringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx.\nDringadring! And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own cheek. Dringdring! Down, up, forward, back. Dan Occam thought of that, invincible doctor. A misty English morning the imp hypostasis tickled his brain. Bringing his host down and kneeling he heard twine with his second bell the first bell in the transept (he is lifting his) and, rising, heard (now I am lifting) their two bells (he is kneeling) twang in diphthong.\nCousin Cherienie, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully holy, weren't you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street. O SI, CERTO! Sell your soul for that, do, dyed rags pinned round a squaw. More tell me, more still!! On the top of the Howth tram alone crying to the rain: Naked women! NAKED WOMEN! What about that, eh?\nWhat about what? What else were they invented for?\nReading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles.\nHave you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful.\nO yes, Dustin Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once ...\nThe grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada.\nUnwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.\nHe halted. I have passed the way to aunt Elijah's. Am I not going there? Seems not. No-one about. He turned northeast and crossed the firmer sand towards the Pigeonhouse.\n--QUI VOUS A MIS DANS CETTE FICHUE POSITION?\n--C'EST LE PIGEON, JOSEPH.\nPatrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris. My father's a bird, he lapped the sweet LAIT CHAUD with pink young tongue, plump bunny's face.\nLap, LAPIN. He hopes to win in the GROS LOTS. About the nature of women he read in Michelet. But he must send me LA VIE DE JESUS by M. Leo Taxil.\nLent it to his friend.\n--C'EST TORDANT, VOUS SAVEZ. MOI, JE SUIS SOCIALISTE. JE NE CROIS PAS EN L'EXISTENCE DE DIEU. FAUT PAS LE DIRE A MON P-RE.\n--IL CROIT?\n--MON PERE, OUI.\nSCHLUSS. He laps.\nMy Latin quarter hat. God, we simply must dress the character. I want puce gloves. You were a student, weren't you? Of what in the other devil's name? Paysayenn. P. C. N., you know: PHYSIQUES, CHIMIQUES ET NATURELLES. Aha. Eating your groatsworth of MOU EN CIVET, fleshpots of Egypt, elbowed by belching cabmen. Just say in the most natural tone:\nwhen I was in Paris; BOUL' MICH', I used to. Yes, used to carry punched tickets to prove an alibi if they arrested you for murder somewhere.\nJustice. On the night of the seventeenth of February 1904 the prisoner was seen by two witnesses. Other fellow did it: other me. Hat, tie, overcoat, nose. LUI, C'EST MOI. You seem to have enjoyed yourself.\nProudly walking. Whom were you trying to walk like? Forget: a dispossessed. With mother's money order, eight shillings, the banging door of the post office slammed in your face by the usher. Hunger toothache.\nENCORE DEUX MINUTES. Look clock. Must get. FERME. Hired dog! Shoot him to bloody bits with a bang shotgun, bits man spattered walls all brass buttons. Bits all khrrrrklak in place clack back. Not hurt? O, that's all right. Shake hands. See what I meant, see? O, that's all right. Shake a shake. O, that's all only all right.\nYou were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery Columbanus. Fiacre and Scotus on their creepystools in heaven spilt from their pintpots, loudlatinlaughing: EUGE! EUGE! Pretending to speak broken English as you dragged your valise, porter threepence, across the slimy pier at Newhaven. COMMENT? Rich booty you brought back; LE TUTU, five tattered numbers of PANTALON BLANC ET CULOTTE ROUGE; a blue French telegram, curiosity to show:\n--Mother dying come home father.\nThe aunt thinks you killed your mother. That's why she won't.\nTHEN HERE'S A HEALTH TO NICKY'S AUNT AND I'LL TELL YOU THE REASON WHY.\nSHE ALWAYS KEPT THINGS DECENT IN THE HANNIGAN FAMILEYE.\nHis feet marched in sudden proud rhythm over the sand furrows, along by the boulders of the south wall. He stared at them proudly, piled stone mammoth skulls. Gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders. The sun is there, the slender trees, the lemon houses.\nParis rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air.\nBelluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot's Yvonne and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth CHAUSSONS of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the PUS of FLAN BRETON.\nFaces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores.\nNoon slumbers. Kevin Egan rolls gunpowder cigarettes through fingers smeared with printer's ink, sipping his green fairy as Patrice his white. About us gobblers fork spiced beans down their gullets. UN DEMI SETIER! A jet of coffee steam from the burnished caldron. She serves me at his beck. IL EST IRLANDAIS. HOLLANDAIS? NON FROMAGE. DEUX IRLANDAIS, NOUS, IRLANDE, VOUS SAVEZ AH, OUI! She thought you wanted a cheese HOLLANDAIS.\nYour postprandial, do you know that word? Postprandial. There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow, used to call it his postprandial. Well: SLAINTE! Around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges. His breath hangs over our saucestained plates, the green fairy's fang thrusting between his lips. Of Ireland, the Dalcassians, of hopes, conspiracies, of Arthur Griffith now, A E, pimander, good shepherd of men. To yoke me as his yokefellow, our crimes our common cause. You're your father's son. I know the voice. His fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels at his secrets. M.\nDrumont, famous journalist, Drumont, know what he called queen Victoria? Old hag with the yellow teeth. VIEILLE OGRESSE with the DENTS JAUNES. Maud Gonne, beautiful woman, LA PATRIE, M. Millevoye, Felix Faure, know how he died? Licentious men. The froeken, BONNE A TOUT FAIRE, who rubs male nakedness in the bath at Upsala. MOI FAIRE, she said, TOUS LES MESSIEURS. Not this MONSIEUR, I said. Most licentious custom. Bath a most private thing. I wouldn't let my brother, not even my own brother, most lascivious thing. Green eyes, I see you. Fang, I feel. Lascivious people.\nThe blue fuse burns deadly between hands and burns clear. Loose tobaccoshreds catch fire: a flame and acrid smoke light our corner. Raw facebones under his peep of day boy's hat. How the head centre got away, authentic version. Got up as a young bride, man, veil, orangeblossoms, drove out the road to Malahide. Did, faith. Of lost leaders, the betrayed, wild escapes. Disguises, clutched at, gone, not here.\nSpurned lover. I was a strapping young gossoon at that time, I tell you. I'll show you my likeness one day. I was, faith. Lover, for her love he prowled with colonel Marian Burke, tanist of his sept, under the walls of Clerkenwell and, crouching, saw a flame of vengeance hurl them upward in the fog. Shattered glass and toppling masonry. In gay Paree he hides, Egan of Paris, unsought by any save by me. Making his day's stations, the dingy printingcase, his three taverns, the Montmartre lair he sleeps short night in, rue de la Goutte-d'Or, damascened with flyblown faces of the gone. Loveless, landless, wifeless. She is quite nicey comfy without her outcast man, madame in rue Git-le-Coeur, canary and two buck lodgers.\nPeachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spurned and undespairing. Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time. MON FILS, soldier of France. I taught him to sing THE BOYS OF KILKENNY ARE STOUT ROARING BLADES. Know that old lay? I taught Patrice that. Old Kilkenny: saint Canice, Strongbow's castle on the Nore. Goes like this. O, O. He takes me, Napper Tandy, by the hand.\nO, O THE BOYS OF\nKILKENNY ...\nWeak wasting hand on mine. They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them. Remembering thee, O Sion.\nHe had come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand slapped his boots. The new air greeted him, harping in wild nerves, wind of wild air of seeds of brightness. Here, I am not walking out to the Kish lightship, am I? He stood suddenly, his feet beginning to sink slowly in the quaking soil. Turn back.\nTurning, he scanned the shore south, his feet sinking again slowly in new sockets. The cold domed room of the tower waits. Through the barbacans the shafts of light are moving ever, slowly ever as my feet are sinking, creeping duskward over the dial floor. Blue dusk, nightfall, deep blue night. In the darkness of the dome they wait, their pushedback chairs, my obelisk valise, around a board of abandoned platters. Who to clear it? He has the key. I will not sleep there when this night comes.\nA shut door of a silent tower, entombing their--blind bodies, the panthersahib and his pointer. Call: no answer. He lifted his feet up from the suck and turned back by the mole of boulders. Take all, keep all. My soul walks with me, form of forms. So in the moon's midwatches I pace the path above the rocks, in sable silvered, hearing Elsinore's tempting flood.\nThe flood is following me. I can watch it flow past from here. Get back then by the Poolbeg road to the strand there. He climbed over the sedge and eely oarweeds and sat on a stool of rock, resting his ashplant in a grike.\nA bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. UN COCHE ENSABLE Louis Veuillot called Gautier's prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here. And these, the stoneheaps of dead builders, a warren of weasel rats.\nHide gold there. Try it. You have some. Sands and stones. Heavy of the past. Sir Lout's toys. Mind you don't get one bang on the ear. I'm the bloody well gigant rolls all them bloody well boulders, bones for my steppingstones. Feefawfum. I zmellz de bloodz odz an Iridzman.\nA point, live dog, grew into sight running across the sweep of sand.\nLord, is he going to attack me? Respect his liberty. You will not be master of others or their slave. I have my stick. Sit tight. From farther away, walking shoreward across from the crested tide, figures, two. The two maries. They have tucked it safe mong the bulrushes. Peekaboo. I see you. No, the dog. He is running back to them. Who?\nGalleys of the Lochlanns ran here to beach, in quest of prey, their bloodbeaked prows riding low on a molten pewter surf. Dane vikings, torcs of tomahawks aglitter on their breasts when Bay wore the collar of gold. A school of turlehide whales stranded in hot noon, spouting, hobbling in the shallows. Then from the starving cagework city a horde of jerkined dwarfs, my people, with flayers' knives, running, scaling, hacking in green blubbery whalemeat. Famine, plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me, their lusts my waves. I moved among them on the frozen Liffey, that I, a changeling, among the spluttering resin fires. I spoke to no-one: none to me.\nThe dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my enemy. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. TERRIBILIA MEDITANS.\nA primrose doublet, fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce's brother, Kye Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and Nicky Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned. All kings' sons. Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved men from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House of ... We don't want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. NATURLICH, put there for you. Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock.\nThey are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to.\nI would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand quickly, shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man.\nHis human eyes scream to me out of horror of his death. I ... With him together down ... I could not save her. Waters: bitter death: lost.\nA woman and a man. I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet.\nTheir dog ambled about a bank of dwindling sand, trotting, sniffing on all sides. Looking for something lost in a past life. Suddenly he made off like a bounding hare, ears flung back, chasing the shadow of a lowskimming gull. The man's shrieked whistle struck his limp ears. He turned, bounded back, came nearer, trotted on twinkling shanks. On a field tenney a buck, trippant, proper, unattired. At the lacefringe of the tide he halted with stiff forehoofs, seawardpointed ears. His snout lifted barked at the wavenoise, herds of seamorse. They serpented towards his feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves.\nCocklepickers. They waded a little way in the water and, stooping, soused their bags and, lifting them again, waded out. The dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping on all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, a rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf's gallop. The carcass lay on his path. He stopped, sniffed, stalked round it, brother, nosing closer, went round it, sniffling rapidly like a dog all over the dead dog's bedraggled fell. Dogskull, dogsniff, eyes on the ground, moves to one great goal. Ah, poor dogsbody! Here lies poor dogsbody's body.\n--Tatters! Out of that, you mongrel!\nThe cry brought him skulking back to his master and a blunt bootless kick sent him unscathed across a spit of sand, crouched in flight. He slunk back in a curve. Doesn't see me. Along by the edge of the mole he lolloped, dawdled, smelt a rock. and from under a cocked hindleg pissed against it. He trotted forward and, lifting again his hindleg, pissed quick short at an unsmelt rock. The simple pleasures of the poor. His hindpaws then scattered the sand: then his forepaws dabbled and delved.\nSomething he buried there, his grandmother. He rooted in the sand, dabbling, delving and stopped to listen to the air, scraped up the sand again with a fury of his claws, soon ceasing, a pard, a panther, got in spousebreach, vulturing the dead.\nAfter he woke me last night same dream or was it? Wait. Open hallway. Street of harlots. Remember. Haroun al Raschid. I am almosting it. That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against my face. Smiled: creamfruit smell. That was the rule, said. In.\nCome. Red carpet spread. You will see who.\nShouldering their bags they trudged, the red Egyptians. His blued feet out of turnedup trousers slapped the clammy sand, a dull brick muffler strangling his unshaven neck. With woman steps she followed: the ruffian and his strolling mort. Spoils slung at her back. Loose sand and shellgrit crusted her bare feet. About her windraw face hair trailed.\nBehind her lord, his helpmate, bing awast to Romeville. When night hides her body's flaws calling under her brown shawl from an archway where dogs have mired. Her fancyman is treating two Royal Dublins in O'Loughlin's of Blackpitts. Buss her, wap in rogues' rum lingo, for, O, my dimber wapping dell! A shefiend's whiteness under her rancid rags. Fumbally's lane that night: the tanyard smells.\nWHITE THY FAMBLES, RED THY GAN AND THY QUARRONS DAINTY IS.\nCOUCH A HOGSHEAD WITH ME THEN.\nIN THE DARKMANS CLIP AND KISS.\nMorose delectation Aquinas tunbelly calls this, FRATE PORCOSPINO.\nUnfallen Adam rode and not rutted. Call away let him: THY QUARRONS DAINTY IS. Language no whit worse than his. Monkwords, marybeads jabber on their girdles: roguewords, tough nuggets patter in their pockets.\nPassing now.\nA side eye at my Hamlet hat. If I were suddenly naked here as I sit? I am not. Across the sands of all the world, followed by the sun's flaming sword, to the west, trekking to evening lands. She trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load. A tide westering, moondrawn, in her wake. Tides, myriadislanded, within her, blood not mine, OINOPA PONTON, a winedark sea. Behold the handmaid of the moon. In sleep the wet sign calls her hour, bids her rise. Bridebed, childbed, bed of death, ghostcandled. OMNIS CARO AD TE VENIET. He comes, pale vampire, through storm his eyes, his bat sails bloodying the sea, mouth to her mouth's kiss.\nHere. Put a pin in that chap, will you? My tablets. Mouth to her kiss.\nNo. Must be two of em. Glue em well. Mouth to her mouth's kiss.\nHis lips lipped and mouthed fleshless lips of air: mouth to her moomb. Oomb, allwombing tomb. His mouth moulded issuing breath, unspeeched: ooeeehah: roar of cataractic planets, globed, blazing, roaring wayawayawayawayaway. Paper. The banknotes, blast them. Old Barrett's letter. Here. Thanking you for the hospitality tear the blank end off.\nTurning his back to the sun he bent over far to a table of rock and scribbled words. That's twice I forgot to take slips from the library counter.\nHis shadow lay over the rocks as he bent, ending. Why not endless till the farthest star? Darkly they are there behind this light, darkness shining in the brightness, delta of Cassiopeia, worlds. Me sits there with his augur's rod of ash, in borrowed sandals, by day beside a livid sea, unbeheld, in violet night walking beneath a reign of uncouth stars.\nI throw this ended shadow from me, manshape ineluctable, call it back.\nEndless, would it be mine, form of my form? Who watches me here? Who ever anywhere will read these written words? Signs on a white field. Somewhere to someone in your flutiest voice. The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that's right.\nFlat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick.\nYou find my words dark. Darkness is in our souls do you not think?\nFlutier. Our souls, shamewounded by our sins, cling to us yet more, a woman to her lover clinging, the more the more.\nShe trusts me, her hand gentle, the longlashed eyes. Now where the blue hell am I bringing her beyond the veil? Into the ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality. She, she, she. What she? The virgin at Hodges Figgis' window on Monday looking in for one of the alphabet books you were going to write. Keen glance you gave her. Wrist through the braided jesse of her sunshade. She lives in Leeson park with a grief and kickshaws, a lady of letters. Talk that to someone else, Stevie: a pickmeup. Bet she wears those curse of God stays suspenders and yellow stockings, darned with lumpy wool. Talk about apple dumplings, PIUTTOSTO. Where are your wits?\nTouch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone.\nSad too. Touch, touch me.\nHe lay back at full stretch over the sharp rocks, cramming the scribbled note and pencil into a pock his hat. His hat down on his eyes.\nThat is Kevin Egan's movement I made, nodding for his nap, sabbath sleep.\nET VIDIT DEUS. ET ERANT VALDE BONA. Alo! BONJOUR. Welcome as the flowers in May. Under its leaf he watched through peacocktwittering lashes the southing sun. I am caught in this burning scene. Pan's hour, the faunal noon. Among gumheavy serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far.\nAND NO MORE TURN ASIDE AND BROOD.\nHis gaze brooded on his broadtoed boots, a buck's castoffs, JEANNINEINOEINANDER. He counted the creases of rucked leather wherein another's foot had nested warm. The foot that beat the ground in tripudium, foot I dislove. But you were delighted when Esther Osvalt's shoe went on you:\ngirl I knew in Paris. TIENS, QUEL PETIT PIED! Staunch friend, a brother soul: Wilde's love that dare not speak its name. His arm: Cranly's arm. He now will leave me. And the blame? As I am. As I am. All or not at all.\nIn long lassoes from the Cock lake the water flowed full, covering greengoldenly lagoons of sand, rising, flowing. My ashplant will float away. I shall wait. No, they will pass on, passing, chafing against the low rocks, swirling, passing. Better get this job over quick. Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos. Vehement breath of waters amid seasnakes, rearing horses, rocks. In cups of rocks it slops:\nflop, slop, slap: bounded in barrels. And, spent, its speech ceases. It flows purling, widely flowing, floating foampool, flower unfurling.\nUnder the upswelling tide he saw the writhing weeds lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hising up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night:\nlifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh. Saint Ambrose heard it, sigh of leaves and waves, waiting, awaiting the fullness of their times, DIEBUS AC NOCTIBUS INIURIAS PATIENS INGEMISCIT. To no end gathered; vainly then released, forthflowing, wending back: loom of the moon. Weary too in sight of lovers, lascivious men, a naked woman shining in her courts, she draws a toil of waters.\nFive fathoms out there. Full fathom five thy father lies. At one, he said. Found drowned. High water at Dublin bar. Driving before it a loose drift of rubble, fanshoals of fishes, silly shells. A corpse rising saltwhite from the undertow, bobbing a pace a pace a porpoise landward.\nThere he is. Hook it quick. Pull. Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor. We have him. Easy now.\nBag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. Hauled stark over the gunwale he breathes upward the stench of his green grave, his leprous nosehole snoring to the sun.\nA seachange this, brown eyes saltblue. Seadeath, mildest of all deaths known to man. Old Father Ocean. PRIX DE PARIS: beware of imitations. Just you give it a fair trial. We enjoyed ourselves immensely.\nCome. I thirst. Clouding over. No black clouds anywhere, are there?\nThunderstorm. Allbright he falls, proud lightning of the intellect, LUCIFER, DICO, QUI NESCIT OCCASUM. No. My cockle hat and staff and hismy sandal shoon. Where? To evening lands. Evening will find itself.\nHe took the hilt of his ashplant, lunging with it softly, dallying still.\nYes, evening will find itself in me, without me. All days make their end.\nBy the way next when is it Tuesday will be the longest day. Of all the glad new year, mother, the rum tum tiddledy tum. Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet. GIA. For the old hag with the yellow teeth. And Monsieur Drumont, gentleman journalist. GIA. My teeth are very bad. Why, I wonder. Feel.\nThat one is going too. Shells. Ought I go to a dentist, I wonder, with that money? That one. This. Toothless Kinch, the superman. Why is that, I wonder, or does it mean something perhaps?\nMy handkerchief. He threw it. I remember. Did I not take it up?\nHis hand groped vainly in his pockets. No, I didn't. Better buy one.\nHe laid the dry snot picked from his nostril on a ledge of rock, carefully. For the rest let look who will.\nBehind. Perhaps there is someone.\nHe turned his face over a shoulder, rere regardant. Moving through the air high spars of a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees, homing, upstream, silently moving, a silent ship.\n-- II --\nMr Amy Alina ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods' roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.\nKidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting her breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere. Made him feel a bit peckish.\nThe coals were reddening.\nAnother slice of bread and butter: three, four: right. She didn't like her plate full. Right. He turned from the tray, lifted the kettle off the hob and set it sideways on the fire. It sat there, dull and squat, its spout stuck out. Cup of tea soon. Good. Mouth dry. The cat walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high.\n--Mkgnao!\n--O, there you are, Mr Alina said, turning from the fire.\nThe cat mewed in answer and stalked again stiffly round a leg of the table, mewing. Just how she stalks over my writingtable. Prr. Scratch my head. Prr.\nMr Alina watched curiously, kindly the lithe black form. Clean to see:\nthe gloss of her sleek hide, the white button under the butt of her tail, the green flashing eyes. He bent down to her, his hands on his knees.\n--Milk for the pussens, he said.\n--Mrkgnao! the cat cried.\nThey call them stupid. They understand what we say better than we understand them. She understands all she wants to. Vindictive too. Cruel.\nHer nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it. Wonder what I look like to her. Height of a tower? No, she can jump me.\n--Afraid of the chickens she is, he said mockingly. Afraid of the chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.\nCruel. Her nature. Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it.\n--Mrkrgnao! the cat said loudly.\nShe blinked up out of her avid shameclosing eyes, mewing plaintively and long, showing him her milkwhite teeth. He watched the dark eyeslits narrowing with greed till her eyes were green stones. Then he went to the dresser, took the jug Hanlon's milkman had just filled for him, poured warmbubbled milk on a saucer and set it slowly on the floor.\n--Gurrhr! she cried, running to lap.\nHe watched the bristles shining wirily in the weak light as she tipped three times and licked lightly. Wonder is it true if you clip them they can't mouse after. Why? They shine in the dark, perhaps, the tips. Or kind of feelers in the dark, perhaps.\nHe listened to her licking lap. Ham and eggs, no. No good eggs with this drouth. Want pure fresh water. Thursday: not a good day either for a mutton kidney at Roxanaley's. Fried with butter, a shake of pepper. Better a pork kidney at Dlugacz's. While the kettle is boiling. She lapped slower, then licking the saucer clean. Why are their tongues so rough? To lap better, all porous holes. Nothing she can eat? He glanced round him.\nNo.\nOn quietly creaky boots he went up the staircase to the hall, paused by the bedroom door. She might like something tasty. Thin bread and butter she likes in the morning. Still perhaps: once in a way.\nHe said softly in the bare hall:\n--I'm going round the corner. Be back in a minute.\nAnd when he had heard his voice say it he added:\n--You don't want anything for breakfast?\nA sleepy soft grunt answered:\n--Mn.\nNo. She didn't want anything. He heard then a warm heavy sigh, softer, as she turned over and the loose brass quoits of the bedstead jingled. Must get those settled really. Pity. All the way from Gibraltar. Forgotten any little Spanish she knew. Wonder what her father gave for it. Old style.\nAh yes! of course. Bought it at the governor's auction. Got a short knock. Hard as nails at a bargain, old Tweedy. Yes, sir. At Plevna that was. I rose from the ranks, sir, and I'm proud of it. Still he had brains enough to make that corner in stamps. Now that was farseeing.\nHis hand took his hat from the peg over his initialled heavy overcoat and his lost property office secondhand waterproof. Stamps: stickyback pictures. Daresay lots of officers are in the swim too. Course they do.\nThe sweated legend in the crown of his hat told him mutely: Plasto's high grade ha. He peeped quickly inside the leather headband. White slip of paper. Quite safe.\nOn the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He pulled the halldoor to after him very quietly, more, till the footleaf dropped gently over the threshold, a limp lid. Looked shut. All right till I come back anyhow.\nHe crossed to the bright side, avoiding the loose cellarflap of number seventyfive. The sun was nearing the steeple of Kim's church. Be a warm day I fancy. Specially in these black clothes feel it more. Black conducts, reflects, (refracts is it?), the heat. But I couldn't go in that light suit. Make a picnic of it. His eyelids sank quietly often as he walked in happy warmth. Boland's breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot.\nMakes you feel young. Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at dawn. Travel round in front of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow a day older technically. Walk along a strand, strange land, come to a city gate, sentry there, old ranker too, old Tweedy's big moustaches, leaning on a long kind of a spear. Wander through awned streets. Turbaned faces going by. Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged, smoking a coiled pipe. Cries of sellers in the streets. Drink water scented with fennel, sherbet. Dander along all day. Might meet a robber or two. Well, meet him. Getting on to sundown. The shadows of the mosques among the pillars:\npriest with a scroll rolled up. A shiver of the trees, signal, the evening wind. I pass on. Fading gold sky. A mother watches me from her doorway. She calls her children home in their dark language. High wall:\nbeyond strings twanged. Night sky, moon, violet, colour of Matilda's new garters. Strings. Listen. A girl playing one of those instruments what do you call them: dulcimers. I pass.\nProbably not a bit like it really. Kind of stuff you read: in the track of the sun. Sunburst on the titlepage. He smiled, pleasing himself. What Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the FREEMAN leader: a homerule sun rising up in the northwest from the laneway behind the bank of Ireland. He prolonged his pleased smile. Ikey touch that: homerule sun rising up in the north-west.\nHe approached Larry O'Rourke's. From the cellar grating floated up the flabby gush of porter. Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush. Good house, however: just the end of the city traffic. For instance M'Auley's down there: n. g. as position. Of course if they ran a tramline along the North Circular from the cattlemarket to the quays value would go up like a shot.\nBaldhead over the blind. Cute old codger. No use canvassing him for an ad. Still he knows his own business best. There he is, sure enough, my bold Larry, leaning against the sugarbin in his shirtsleeves watching the aproned curate swab up with mop and bucket. Howard Liana takes him off to a tee with his eyes screwed up. Do you know what I'm going to tell you? What's that, Mr O'Rourke? Do you know what? The Russians, they'd only be an eight o'clock breakfast for the Japanese.\nStop and say a word: about the funeral perhaps. Sad thing about poor Sophia, Mr O'Rourke.\nTurning into Dorset street he said freshly in greeting through the doorway:\n--Good day, Mr O'Rourke.\n--Good day to you.\n--Lovely weather, sir.\n--'Tis all that.\nWhere do they get the money? Coming up redheaded curates from the county Leitrim, rinsing empties and old man in the cellar. Then, lo and behold, they blossom out as Adam Findlaters or Dan Tallons. Then thin of the competition. General thirst. Good puzzle would be cross Dublin without passing a pub. Save it they can't. Off the drunks perhaps. Put down three and carry five. What is that, a bob here and there, dribs and drabs. On the wholesale orders perhaps. Doing a double shuffle with the town travellers. Square it you with the boss and we'll split the job, see?\nHow much would that tot to off the porter in the month? Say ten barrels of stuff. Say he got ten per cent off. O more. Fifteen. He passed Saint Joseph's National school. Brats' clamour. Windows open. Fresh air helps memory. Or a lilt. Ahbeesee defeegee kelomen opeecue rustyouvee doubleyou. Boys are they? Yes. Inishturk. Inishark. Inishboffin. At their joggerfry. Mine. Slieve Alina.\nHe halted before Dlugacz's window, staring at the hanks of sausages, polonies, black and white. Fifteen multiplied by. The figures whitened in his mind, unsolved: displeased, he let them fade. The shiny links, packed with forcemeat, fed his gaze and he breathed in tranquilly the lukewarm breath of cooked spicy pigs' blood.\nA kidney oozed bloodgouts on the willowpatterned dish: the last. He stood by the nextdoor girl at the counter. Would she buy it too, calling the items from a slip in her hand? Chapped: washingsoda. And a pound and a half of Denny's sausages. His eyes rested on her vigorous hips. Woods his name is. Wonder what he does. Wife is oldish. New blood. No followers allowed. Strong pair of arms. Whacking a carpet on the clothesline. She does whack it, by Kim. The way her crooked skirt swings at each whack.\nThe ferreteyed porkbutcher folded the sausages he had snipped off with blotchy fingers, sausagepink. Sound meat there: like a stallfed heifer.\nHe took a page up from the pile of cut sheets: the model farm at Kinnereth on the lakeshore of Tiberias. Can become ideal winter sanatorium. Moses Montefiore. I thought he was. Farmhouse, wall round it, blurred cattle cropping. He held the page from him: interesting: read it nearer, the title, the blurred cropping cattle, the page rustling. A young white heifer. Those mornings in the cattlemarket, the beasts lowing in their pens, branded sheep, flop and fall of dung, the breeders in hobnailed boots trudging through the litter, slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter, there's a prime one, unpeeled switches in their hands. He held the page aslant patiently, bending his senses and his will, his soft subject gaze at rest. The crooked skirt swinging, whack by whack by whack.\nThe porkbutcher snapped two sheets from the pile, wrapped up her prime sausages and made a red grimace.\n--Now, my miss, he said.\nShe tendered a coin, smiling boldly, holding her thick wrist out.\n--Thank you, my miss. And one shilling threepence change. For you, please?\nMr Alina pointed quickly. To catch up and walk behind her if she went slowly, behind her moving hams. Pleasant to see first thing in the morning. Hurry up, damn it. Make hay while the sun shines. She stood outside the shop in sunlight and sauntered lazily to the right. He sighed down his nose: they never understand. Sodachapped hands. Crusted toenails too. Brown scapulars in tatters, defending her both ways. The sting of disregard glowed to weak pleasure within his breast. For another: a constable off duty cuddling her in Eccles lane. They like them sizeable.\nPrime sausage. O please, Mr Policeman, I'm lost in the wood.\n--Threepence, please.\nHis hand accepted the moist tender gland and slid it into a sidepocket.\nThen it fetched up three coins from his trousers' pocket and laid them on the rubber prickles. They lay, were read quickly and quickly slid, disc by disc, into the till.\n--Thank you, sir. Another time.\nA speck of eager fire from foxeyes thanked him. He withdrew his gaze after an instant. No: better not: another time.\n--Good morning, he said, moving away.\n--Good morning, sir.\nNo sign. Gone. What matter?\nHe walked back along Dorset street, reading gravely. Agendath Netaim:\nplanters' company. To purchase waste sandy tracts from Turkish government and plant with eucalyptus trees. Excellent for shade, fuel and construction. Orangegroves and immense melonfields north of Jaffa. You pay eighty marks and they plant a dunam of land for you with olives, oranges, almonds or citrons. Olives cheaper: oranges need artificial irrigation. Every year you get a sending of the crop. Your name entered for life as owner in the book of the union. Can pay ten down and the balance in yearly instalments. Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, Dustin 15.\nNothing doing. Still an idea behind it.\nHe looked at the cattle, blurred in silver heat. Silverpowdered olivetrees. Quiet long days: pruning, ripening. Olives are packed in jars, eh? I have a few left from Andrews. Matilda spitting them out. Knows the taste of them now. Oranges in tissue paper packed in crates. Citrons too. Wonder is poor Citron still in Saint Kevin's parade. And Mastiansky with the old cither. Pleasant evenings we had then. Matilda in Citron's basketchair. Nice to hold, cool waxen fruit, hold in the hand, lift it to the nostrils and smell the perfume. Like that, heavy, sweet, wild perfume. Always the same, year after year. They fetched high prices too, Moisel told me. Arbutus place: Pleasants street: pleasant old times. Must be without a flaw, he said. Coming all that way: Spain, Gibraltar, Mediterranean, the Levant. Crates lined up on the quayside at Jaffa, chap ticking them off in a book, navvies handling them barefoot in soiled dungarees. There's whatdoyoucallhim out of. How do you? Doesn't see. Chap you know just to salute bit of a bore. His back is like that Norwegian captain's. Wonder if I'll meet him today. Watering cart. To provoke the rain. On earth as it is in heaven.\nA cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly. Grey. Far.\nNo, not like that. A barren land, bare waste. Vulcanic lake, the dead sea: no fish, weedless, sunk deep in the earth. No wind could lift those waves, grey metal, poisonous foggy waters. Brimstone they called it raining down: the cities of the plain: Sodom, Gomorrah, Edom. All dead names. A dead sea in a dead land, grey and old. Old now. It bore the oldest, the first race. A bent hag crossed from Cassidy's, clutching a naggin bottle by the neck. The oldest people. Wandered far away over all the earth, captivity to captivity, multiplying, dying, being born everywhere. It lay there now. Now it could bear no more. Dead: an old woman's: the grey sunken cunt of the world.\nDesolation.\nGrey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned into Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins, chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Yes, I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin again those Sandow's exercises. On the hands down.\nBlotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that?\nValuation is only twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby, North, MacArthur:\nparlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.\nQuick warm sunlight came running from Berkeley road, swiftly, in slim sandals, along the brightening footpath. Runs, she runs to meet me, a girl with gold hair on the wind.\nTwo letters and a card lay on the hallfloor. He stooped and gathered them. Mrs Alexis Alina. His quickened heart slowed at once. Bold hand.\nMrs Alexis.\n--Poldy!\nEntering the bedroom he halfclosed his eyes and walked through warm yellow twilight towards her tousled head.\n--Who are the letters for?\nHe looked at them. Mullingar. Helga.\n--A letter for me from Helga, he said carefully, and a card to you. And a letter for you.\nHe laid her card and letter on the twill bedspread near the curve of her knees.\n--Do you want the blind up?\nLetting the blind up by gentle tugs halfway his backward eye saw her glance at the letter and tuck it under her pillow.\n--That do? he asked, turning.\nShe was reading the card, propped on her elbow.\n--She got the things, she said.\nHe waited till she had laid the card aside and curled herself back slowly with a snug sigh.\n--Hurry up with that tea, she said. I'm parched.\n--The kettle is boiling, he said.\nBut he delayed to clear the chair: her striped petticoat, tossed soiled linen: and lifted all in an armful on to the foot of the bed.\nAs he went down the kitchen stairs she called:\n--Poldy!\n--What?\n--Scald the teapot.\nOn the boil sure enough: a plume of steam from the spout. He scalded and rinsed out the teapot and put in four full spoons of tea, tilting the kettle then to let the water flow in. Having set it to draw he took off the kettle, crushed the pan flat on the live coals and watched the lump of butter slide and melt. While he unwrapped the kidney the cat mewed hungrily against him. Give her too much meat she won't mouse. Say they won't eat pork. Kosher. Here. He let the bloodsmeared paper fall to her and dropped the kidney amid the sizzling butter sauce. Pepper. He sprinkled it through his fingers ringwise from the chipped eggcup.\nThen he slit open his letter, glancing down the page and over. Thanks:\nnew tam: Mr Coghlan: lough Owel picnic: young student: Ari Sienna's seaside girls.\nThe tea was drawn. He filled his own moustachecup, sham crown Derby, smiling. Silly Helga's birthday gift. Only five she was then. No, wait: four. I gave her the amberoid necklace she broke. Putting pieces of folded brown paper in the letterbox for her. He smiled, pouring.\nO, HELGA ALINA, YOU ARE MY DARLING.\nYOU ARE MY LOOKINGGLASS FROM NIGHT TO MORNING.\nI'D RATHER HAVE YOU WITHOUT A FARTHING THAN ALEXIA KEOGH WITH HER ASS AND GARDEN.\nPoor old professor Goodwin. Dreadful old case. Still he was a courteous old chap. Oldfashioned way he used to bow Matilda off the platform. And the little mirror in his silk hat. The night Helga brought it into the parlour. O, look what I found in professor Goodwin's hat! All we laughed.\nSex breaking out even then. Pert little piece she was.\nHe prodded a fork into the kidney and slapped it over: then fitted the teapot on the tray. Its hump bumped as he took it up. Everything on it?\nBread and butter, four, sugar, spoon, her cream. Yes. He carried it upstairs, his thumb hooked in the teapot handle.\nNudging the door open with his knee he carried the tray in and set it on the chair by the bedhead.\n--What a time you were! she said.\nShe set the brasses jingling as she raised herself briskly, an elbow on the pillow. He looked calmly down on her bulk and between her large soft bubs, sloping within her nightdress like a shegoat's udder. The warmth of her couched body rose on the air, mingling with the fragrance of the tea she poured.\nA strip of torn envelope peeped from under the dimpled pillow. In the act of going he stayed to straighten the bedspread.\n--Who was the letter from? he asked.\nBold hand. Alexis.\n--O, Sienna, she said. He's bringing the programme.\n--What are you singing?\n--LA CI DAREM with J. C. Doyle, she said, and LOVE'S OLD SWEET SONG.\nHer full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater.\n--Would you like the window open a little?\nShe doubled a slice of bread into her mouth, asking:\n--What time is the funeral?\n--Eleven, I think, he answered. I didn't see the paper.\nFollowing the pointing of her finger he took up a leg of her soiled drawers from the bed. No? Then, a twisted grey garter looped round a stocking: rumpled, shiny sole.\n--No: that book.\nOther stocking. Her petticoat.\n--It must have fell down, she said.\nHe felt here and there. VOGLIO E NON VORREI. Wonder if she pronounces that right: VOGLIO. Not in the bed. Must have slid down. He stooped and lifted the valance. The book, fallen, sprawled against the bulge of the orangekeyed chamberpot.\n--Show here, she said. I put a mark in it. There's a word I wanted to ask you.\nShe swallowed a draught of tea from her cup held by nothandle and, having wiped her fingertips smartly on the blanket, began to search the text with the hairpin till she reached the word.\n--Met him what? he asked.\n--Here, she said. What does that mean?\nHe leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail.\n--Metempsychosis?\n--Yes. Who's he when he's at home?\n--Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek: from the Greek. That means the transmigration of souls.\n--O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.\nHe smiled, glancing askance at her mocking eyes. The same young eyes. The first night after the charades. Dolphin's Barn. He turned over the smudged pages. RUBY: THE PRIDE OF THE RING. Hello. Illustration. Fierce Italian with carriagewhip. Must be Ruby pride of the on the floor naked.\nSheet kindly lent. THE MONSTER MAFFEI DESISTED AND FLUNG HIS VICTIM FROM HIM WITH AN OATH. Cruelty behind it all. Doped animals. Trapeze at Hengler's. Had to look the other way. Mob gaping. Break your neck and we'll break our sides. Families of them. Bone them young so they metamspychosis. That we live after death. Our souls. That a man's soul after he dies. Sophia's soul ...\n--Did you finish it? he asked.\n--Yes, she said. There's nothing smutty in it. Is she in love with the first fellow all the time?\n--Never read it. Do you want another?\n--Yes. Get another of Paul de Kock's. Nice name he has.\nShe poured more tea into her cup, watching it flow sideways.\nMust get that Capel street library book renewed or they'll write to Kearney, my guarantor. Reincarnation: that's the word.\n--Some people believe, he said, that we go on living in another body after death, that we lived before. They call it reincarnation. That we all lived before on the earth thousands of years ago or some other planet. They say we have forgotten it. Some say they remember their past lives.\nThe sluggish cream wound curdling spirals through her tea. Bette remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An example would be better. An example?\nThe BATH OF THE NYMPH over the bed. Given away with the Easter number of PHOTO BITS: Splendid masterpiece in art colours. Tea before you put milk in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer. Three and six I gave for the frame. She said it would look nice over the bed. Naked nymphs:\nGreece: and for instance all the people that lived then.\nHe turned the pages back.\n--Metempsychosis, he said, is what the ancient Greeks called it. They used to believe you could be changed into an animal or a tree, for instance. What they called nymphs, for example.\nHer spoon ceased to stir up the sugar. She gazed straight before her, inhaling through her arched nostrils.\n--There's a smell of burn, she said. Did you leave anything on the fire?\n--The kidney! he cried suddenly.\nHe fitted the book roughly into his inner pocket and, stubbing his toes against the broken commode, hurried out towards the smell, stepping hastily down the stairs with a flurried stork's legs. Pungent smoke shot up in an angry jet from a side of the pan. By prodding a prong of the fork under the kidney he detached it and turned it turtle on its back.\nOnly a little burnt. He tossed it off the pan on to a plate and let the scanty brown gravy trickle over it.\nCup of tea now. He sat down, cut and buttered a slice of the loaf. He shore away the burnt flesh and flung it to the cat. Then he put a forkful into his mouth, chewing with discernment the toothsome pliant meat. Done to a turn. A mouthful of tea. Then he cut away dies of bread, sopped one in the gravy and put it in his mouth. What was that about some young student and a picnic? He creased out the letter at his side, reading it slowly as he chewed, sopping another die of bread in the gravy and raising it to his mouth.\nDearest Papli\nThanks ever so much for the lovely birthday present. It suits me splendid. Everyone says I am quite the belle in my new tam. I got mummy's Iovely box of creams and am writing. They are lovely. I am getting on swimming in the photo business now. Mr Coghlan took one of me and Mrs.\nWill send when developed. We did great biz yesterday. Fair day and all the beef to the heels were in. We are going to lough Owel on Monday with a few friends to make a scrap picnic. Give my love to mummy and to yourself a big kiss and thanks. I hear them at the piano downstairs.\nThere is to be a concert in the Greville Arms on Saturday. There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells and he sings Sienna's (I was on the pop of writing Ari Sienna's) song about those seaside girls. Tell him silly Helga sends my best respects. I must now close with fondest love Your fond daughter,     HELGA.\nP. S. Excuse bad writing am in hurry. Byby.     M.\nFifteen yesterday. Curious, fifteenth of the month too. Her first birthday away from home. Separation. Remember the summer morning she was born, running to knock up Mrs Thornton in Denzille street. Jolly old woman. Lot of babies she must have helped into the world. She knew from the first poor little Rudy wouldn't live. Well, God is good, sir. She knew at once. He would be eleven now if he had lived.\nHis vacant face stared pityingly at the postscript. Excuse bad writing.\nHurry. Piano downstairs. Coming out of her shell. Row with her in the XL Cafe about the bracelet. Wouldn't eat her cakes or speak or look.\nSaucebox. He sopped other dies of bread in the gravy and ate piece after piece of kidney. Twelve and six a week. Not much. Still, she might do worse. Music hall stage. Young student. He drank a draught of cooler tea to wash down his meal. Then he read the letter again: twice.\nO, well: she knows how to mind herself. But if not? No, nothing has happened. Of course it might. Wait in any case till it does. A wild piece of goods. Her slim legs running up the staircase. Destiny. Ripening now.\nVain: very.\nHe smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window. Day I caught her in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Anemic a little. Was given milk too long. On the ERIN'S KING that day round the Kish. Damned old tub pitching about. Not a bit funky. Her pale blue scarf loose in the wind with her hair.\nALL DIMPLED CHEEKS AND CURLS,\nYOUR HEAD IT SIMPLY SWIRLS.\nSeaside girls. Torn envelope. Hands stuck in his trousers' pockets, jarvey off for the day, singing. Friend of the family. Swurls, he says.\nPier with lamps, summer evening, band, THOSE GIRLS, THOSE GIRLS,\nTHOSE LOVELY SEASIDE GIRLS.\nHelga too. Young kisses: the first. Far away now past. Mrs Alexis.\nReading, lying back now, counting the strands of her hair, smiling, braiding.\nA soft qualm, regret, flowed down his backbone, increasing. Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless: can't move. Girl's sweet light lips. Will happen too. He felt the flowing qualm spread over him. Useless to move now. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. Full gluey woman's lips.\nBetter where she is down there: away. Occupy her. Wanted a dog to pass the time. Might take a trip down there. August bank holiday, only two and six return. Six weeks off, however. Might work a press pass. Or through M'Coy.\nThe cat, having cleaned all her fur, returned to the meatstained paper, nosed at it and stalked to the door. She looked back at him, mewing.\nWants to go out. Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait.\nHas the fidgets. Electric. Thunder in the air. Was washing at her ear with her back to the fire too.\nHe felt heavy, full: then a gentle loosening of his bowels. He stood up, undoing the waistband of his trousers. The cat mewed to him.\n--Miaow! he said in answer. Wait till I'm ready.\nHeaviness: hot day coming. Too much trouble to fag up the stairs to the landing.\nA paper. He liked to read at stool. Hope no ape comes knocking just as I'm.\nIn the tabledrawer he found an old number of TITBITS. He folded it under his armpit, went to the door and opened it. The cat went up in soft bounds. Ah, wanted to go upstairs, curl up in a ball on the bed.\nListening, he heard her voice:\n--Come, come, pussy. Come.\nHe went out through the backdoor into the garden: stood to listen towards the next garden. No sound. Perhaps hanging clothes out to dry. The maid was in the garden. Fine morning.\nHe bent down to regard a lean file of spearmint growing by the wall. Make a summerhouse here. Scarlet runners. Virginia creepers. Want to manure the whole place over, scabby soil. A coat of liver of sulphur. All soil like that without dung. Household slops. Loam, what is this that is? The hens in the next garden: their droppings are very good top dressing. Isidore of all though are the cattle, especially when they are fed on those oilcakes. Mulch of dung. Isidore thing to clean ladies' kid gloves. Dirty cleans. Ashes too. Reclaim the whole place. Grow peas in that corner there. Lettuce. Always have fresh greens then. Still gardens have their drawbacks. That bee or bluebottle here Whitmonday.\nHe walked on. Where is my hat, by the way? Must have put it back on the peg. Or hanging up on the floor. Funny I don't remember that. Hallstand too full. Four umbrellas, her raincloak. Picking up the letters. Drago's shopbell ringing. Queer I was just thinking that moment. Brown brillantined hair over his collar. Just had a wash and brushup. Wonder have I time for a bath this morning. Tara street. Chap in the paybox there got away James Cherienies, they say. O'Brien.\nDeep voice that fellow Dlugacz has. Agendath what is it? Now, my miss.\nEnthusiast.\nHe kicked open the crazy door of the jakes. Better be careful not to get these trousers dirty for the funeral. He went in, bowing his head under the low lintel. Leaving the door ajar, amid the stench of mouldy limewash and stale cobwebs he undid his braces. Before sitting down he peered through a chink up at the nextdoor windows. The king was in his countinghouse. Nobody.\nAsquat on the cuckstool he folded out his paper, turning its pages over on his bared knees. Something new and easy. No great hurry. Keep it a bit. Our prize titbit: MATCHAM'S MASTERSTROKE. Written by Mr Philip Beaufoy, Playgoers' Club, London. Payment at the rate of one guinea a column has been made to the writer. Three and a half. Three pounds three.\nThree pounds, thirteen and six.\nQuietly he read, restraining himself, the first column and, yielding but resisting, began the second. Midway, his last resistance yielding, he allowed his bowels to ease themselves quietly as he read, reading still patiently that slight constipation of yesterday quite gone. Hope it's not too big bring on piles again. No, just right. So. Ah! Costive. One tabloid of cascara sagrada. Life might be so. It did not move or touch him but it was something quick and neat. Print anything now. Silly season. He read on, seated calm above his own rising smell. Neat certainly. MATCHAM OFTEN THINKS OF THE MASTERSTROKE BY WHICH HE WON THE LAUGHING WITCH WHO NODustin Begins and ends morally. HAND IN HAND. Smart. He glanced back through what he had read and, while feeling his water flow quietly, he envied kindly Mr Beaufoy who had written it and received payment of three pounds, thirteen and six.\nMight manage a sketch. By Mr and Mrs L. M. Alina. Invent a story for some proverb. Which? Time I used to try jotting down on my cuff what she said dressing. Dislike dressing together. Nicked myself shaving. Biting her nether lip, hooking the placket of her skirt. Timing her. 9.l5. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage. A speck of dust on the patent leather of her boot.\nRubbing smartly in turn each welt against her stockinged calf. Morning after the bazaar dance when May's band played Ponchielli's dance of the hours. Explain that: morning hours, noon, then evening coming on, then night hours. Washing her teeth. That was the first night. Her head dancing. Her fansticks clicking. Is that Sienna well off? He has money.\nWhy? I noticed he had a good rich smell off his breath dancing. No use humming then. Allude to it. Strange kind of music that last night. The mirror was in shadow. She rubbed her handglass briskly on her woollen vest against her full wagging bub. Peering into it. Lines in her eyes. It wouldn't pan out somehow.\nEvening hours, girls in grey gauze. Night hours then: black with daggers and eyemasks. Poetical idea: pink, then golden, then grey, then black.\nStill, true to life also. Day: then the night.\nHe tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it. Then he girded up his trousers, braced and buttoned himself. He pulled back the jerky shaky door of the jakes and came forth from the gloom into the air.\nIn the bright light, lightened and cooled in limb, he eyed carefully his black trousers: the ends, the knees, the houghs of the knees. What time is the funeral? Better find out in the paper.\nA creak and a dark whirr in the air high up. The bells of Kim's church. They tolled the hour: loud dark iron.\nHEIGHO! HEIGHO!\nHEIGHO! HEIGHO!\nHEIGHO! HEIGHO!\nQuarter to. There again: the overtone following through the air, a third.\nPoor Sophia!\n* * * * * * *\nBy lorries along sir Cherie Rogerson's quay Mr Alina walked soberly, past Windmill lane, Leask's the linseed crusher, the postal telegraph office.\nCould have given that address too. And past the sailors' home. He turned from the morning noises of the quayside and walked through Lime street.\nBy Brady's cottages a boy for the skins lolled, his bucket of offal linked, smoking a chewed fagbutt. A smaller girl with scars of eczema on her forehead eyed him, listlessly holding her battered caskhoop. Tell him if he smokes he won't grow. O let him! His life isn't such a bed of roses. Waiting outside pubs to bring da home. Come home to ma, da. Slack hour: won't be many there. He crossed Townsend street, passed the frowning face of Bethel. El, yes: house of: Aleph, Beth. And past Nichols' the undertaker. At eleven it is. Time enough. Daresay Blythe Jenelle bagged the job for O'Neill's. Singing with his eyes shut. Blythe.\nMet her once in the park. In the dark. What a lark. Police tout. Her name and address she then told with my tooraloom tooraloom tay. O, surely he bagged it. Bury him cheap in a whatyoumaycall. With my tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom, tooraloom.\nIn Westland row he halted before the window of the Belfast and Oriental Tea Company and read the legends of leadpapered packets: choice blend, finest quality, family tea. Rather warm. Tea. Must get some from Tom Kernan. Couldn't ask him at a funeral, though. While his eyes still read blandly he took off his hat quietly inhaling his hairoil and sent his right hand with slow grace over his brow and hair. Very warm morning.\nUnder their dropped lids his eyes found the tiny bow of the leather headband inside his high grade ha. Just there. His right hand came down into the bowl of his hat. His fingers found quickly a card behind the headband and transferred it to his waistcoat pocket.\nSo warm. His right hand once more more slowly went over his brow and hair. Then he put on his hat again, relieved: and read again: choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. The far east. Lovely spot it must be: the garden of the world, big lazy leaves to float about on, cactuses, flowery meads, snaky lianas they call them. Wonder is it like that. Those Cinghalese lobbing about in the sun in DOLCE FAR NIENTE, not doing a hand's turn all day. Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. Influence of the climate. Lethargy. Flowers of idleness. The air feeds most. Azotes. Hothouse in Botanic gardens. Sensitive plants.\nWaterlilies. Petals too tired to. Sleeping sickness in the air. Walk on roseleaves. Imagine trying to eat tripe and cowheel. Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in the dead sea floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol open. Couldn't sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the weight of the what? Or is it the volume is equal to the weight? It's a law something like that. Vance in High school cracking his fingerjoints, teaching. The college curriculum.\nCracking curriculum. What is weight really when you say the weight?\nThirtytwo feet per second per second. Law of falling bodies: per second per second. They all fall to the ground. The earth. It's the force of gravity of the earth is the weight.\nHe turned away and sauntered across the road. How did she walk with her sausages? Like that something. As he walked he took the folded FREEMAN from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lengthwise in a baton and tapped it at each sauntering step against his trouserleg. Careless air:\njust drop in to see. Per second per second. Per second for every second it means. From the curbstone he darted a keen glance through the door of the postoffice. Too late box. Post here. No-one. In.\nHe handed the card through the brass grill.\n--Are there any letters for me? he asked.\nWhile the postmistress searched a pigeonhole he gazed at the recruiting poster with soldiers of all arms on parade: and held the tip of his baton against his nostrils, smelling freshprinted rag paper. No answer probably. Went too far last time.\nThe postmistress handed him back through the grill his card with a letter. He thanked her and glanced rapidly at the typed envelope.\nTrista Flower Esq,\nc/o P. O. Westland Row,\nDeanne.\nAnswered anyhow. He slipped card and letter into his sidepocket, reviewing again the soldiers on parade. Where's old Tweedy's regiment?\nCastoff soldier. There: bearskin cap and hackle plume. No, he's a grenadier. Pointed cuffs. There he is: royal Dublin fusiliers. Redcoats.\nToo showy. That must be why the women go after them. Uniform. Easier to enlist and drill. Maud Gonne's letter about taking them off O'Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital. Griffith's paper is on the same tack now: an army rotten with venereal disease: overseas or halfseasover empire. Half baked they look: hypnotised like. Eyes front.\nMark time. Table: able. Bed: ed. The King's own. Never see him dressed up as a fireman or a bobby. A mason, yes.\nHe strolled out of the postoffice and turned to the right. Talk: as if that would mend matters. His hand went into his pocket and a forefinger felt its way under the flap of the envelope, ripping it open in jerks.\nWomen will pay a lot of heed, I don't think. His fingers drew forth the letter the letter and crumpled the envelope in his pocket. Something pinned on: photo perhaps. Hair? No.\nM'Coy. Get rid of him quickly. Take me out of my way. Hate company when you.\n--Hello, Alina. Where are you off to?\n--Hello, M'Coy. Nowhere in particular.\n--How's the body?\n--Fine. How are you?\n--Just keeping alive, M'Coy said.\nHis eyes on the black tie and clothes he asked with low respect:\n--Is there any ... no trouble I hope? I see you're ...\n--O, no, Mr Alina said. Poor Sophia, you know. The funeral is today.\n--To be sure, poor fellow. So it is. What time?\nA photo it isn't. A badge maybe.\n--E ... eleven, Mr Alina answered.\n--I must try to get out there, M'Coy said. Eleven, is it? I only heard it last night. Who was telling me? Holohan. You know Hoppy?\n--I know.\nMr Alina gazed across the road at the outsider drawn up before the door of the Grosvenor. The porter hoisted the valise up on the well. She stood still, waiting, while the man, husband, brother, like her, searched his pockets for change. Stylish kind of coat with that roll collar, warm for a day like this, looks like blanketcloth. Careless stand of her with her hands in those patch pockets. Like that haughty creature at the polo match. Women all for caste till you touch the spot. Handsome is and handsome does. Reserved about to yield. The honourable Mrs and Brutus is an honourable man. Possess her once take the starch out of her.\n--I was with Bob Doran, he's on one of his periodical bends, and what do you call him Bantam Lyons. Just down there in Conway's we were.\nDoran Lyons in Conway's. She raised a gloved hand to her hair. In came Hoppy. Having a wet. Drawing back his head and gazing far from beneath his vailed eyelids he saw the bright fawn skin shine in the glare, the braided drums. Clearly I can see today. Moisture about gives long sight perhaps. Talking of one thing or another. Lady's hand. Which side will she get up?\n--And he said: SAD THING ABOUT OUR POOR FRIEND PADDY! WHAT PADDY? I said.\nPOOR LITTLE PADDY SOPHIA, he said.\nOff to the country: Broadstone probably. High brown boots with laces dangling. Wellturned foot. What is he foostering over that change for?\nSees me looking. Eye out for other fellow always. Good fallback. Two strings to her bow.\n--WHY? I said. WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM? I said.\nProud: rich: silk stockings.\n--Yes, Mr Alina said.\nHe moved a little to the side of M'Coy's talking head. Getting up in a minute.\n--WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM? He said. HE'S DEAD, he said. And, faith, he filled up. IS IT PADDY SOPHIA? I said. I couldn't believe it when I heard it. I was with him no later than Friday last or Thursday was it in the Arch. YES, he said. HE'S GONE. HE DIED ON MONDAY, POOR FELLODustin Watch!\nWatch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!\nA heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between.\nLost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Paradise and the peri. Always happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace street hallway Monday was it settling her garter. Her friend covering the display of. ESPRIT DE CORPS. Well, what are you gaping at?\n--Yes, yes, Mr Alina said after a dull sigh. Another gone.\n--One of the best, M'Coy said.\nThe tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line bridge, her rich gloved hand on the steel grip. Flicker, flicker: the laceflare of her hat in the sun: flicker, flick.\n--Wife well, I suppose? M'Coy's changed voice said.\n--O, yes, Mr Alina said. Tiptop, thanks.\nHe unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:\nWHAT IS HOME WITHOUT\nPLUMTREE'S POTTED MEAT?\nINCOMPLETE\nWITH IT AN ABODE OF BLISS.\n--My missus has just got an engagement. At least it's not settled yet.\nValise tack again. By the way no harm. I'm off that, thanks.\nMr Alina turned his largelidded eyes with unhasty friendliness.\n--My wife too, he said. She's going to sing at a swagger affair in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, on the twenty-fifth.\n--That so? M'Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who's getting it up?\nMrs Alexis Alina. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating bread and.\nNo book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens. Dark lady and fair man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope.\nLOVE'S\nOLD\nSWEET\nSONG\nCOMES LO-OVE'S OLD ...\n--It's a kind of a tour, don't you see, Mr Alina said thoughtfully.\nSWEEEET SONG.  There's a committee formed. Part shares and part profits.\nM'Coy nodded, picking at his moustache stubble.\n--O, well, he said. That's good news.\nHe moved to go.\n--Well, glad to see you looking fit, he said. Meet you knocking around.\n--Yes, Mr Alina said.\n--Tell you what, M'Coy said. You might put down my name at the funeral, will you? I'd like to go but I mightn't be able, you see. There's a drowning case at Sandycove may turn up and then the coroner and myself would have to go down if the body is found. You just shove in my name if I'm not there, will you?\n--I'll do that, Mr Alina said, moving to get off. That'll be all right.\n--Right, M'Coy said brightly. Thanks, old man. I'd go if I possibly could. Well, tolloll. Just C. P. M'Coy will do.\n--That will be done, Mr Alina answered firmly.\nDidn't catch me napping that wheeze. The quick touch. Soft mark. I'd like my job. Valise I have a particular fancy for. Leather. Capped corners, rivetted edges, double action lever lock. Bob Cowley lent him his for the Wicklow regatta concert last year and never heard tidings of it from that good day to this.\nMr Alina, strolling towards Brunswick street, smiled. My missus has just got an. Reedy freckled soprano. Cheeseparing nose. Nice enough in its way: for a little ballad. No guts in it. You and me, don't you know: in the same boat. Softsoaping. Give you the needle that would. Can't he hear the difference? Think he's that way inclined a bit. Against my grain somehow. Thought that Belfast would fetch him. I hope that smallpox up there doesn't get worse. Suppose she wouldn't let herself be vaccinated again. Your wife and my wife.\nWonder is he pimping after me?\nMr Alina stood at the corner, his eyes wandering over the multicoloured hoardings. Cantrell and Cochrane's Ginger Ale (Aromatic). Clery's Summer Sale. No, he's going on straight. Hello. LEAH tonight. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Like to see her again in that. HAMLET she played last night. Male impersonator. Perhaps he was a woman. Why Ophelia committed suicide. Poor papa! How he used to talk of Kate Bateman in that. Outside the Adelphi in London waited all the afternoon to get in. Year before I was born that was: sixtyfive. And Ristori in Vienna. What is this the right name is? By Mosenthal it is. Rachel, is it? No. The scene he was always talking about where the old blind Abraham recognises the voice and puts his fingers on his face.\nNathan's voice! His son's voice! I hear the voice of Nathan who left his father to die of grief and misery in my arms, who left the house of his father and left the God of his father.\nEvery word is so deep, Amy.\nPoor papa! Poor man! I'm glad I didn't go into the room to look at his face. That day! O, dear! O, dear! Ffoo! Well, perhaps it was best for him.\nMr Alina went round the corner and passed the drooping nags of the hazard. No use thinking of it any more. Nosebag time. Wish I hadn't met that M'Coy fellow.\nHe came nearer and heard a crunching of gilded oats, the gently champing teeth. Their full buck eyes regarded him as he went by, amid the sweet oaten reek of horsepiss. Their Eldorado. Poor jugginses! Damn all they know or care about anything with their long noses stuck in nosebags. Too full for words. Still they get their feed all right and their doss.\nGelded too: a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp between their haunches. Might be happy all the same that way. Good poor brutes they look. Still their neigh can be very irritating.\nHe drew the letter from his pocket and folded it into the newspaper he carried. Might just walk into her here. The lane is safer.\nHe passed the cabman's shelter. Curious the life of drifting cabbies. All weathers, all places, time or setdown, no will of their own. VOGLIO E NON. Like to give them an odd cigarette. Sociable. Shout a few flying syllables as they pass. He hummed:\nLA CI DAREM LA MANO\nLA LA LALA LA LA.\nHe turned into Cumberland street and, going on some paces, halted in the lee of the station wall. No-one. Meade's timberyard. Piled balks.\nRuins and tenements. With careful tread he passed over a hopscotch court with its forgotten pickeystone. Not a sinner. Near the timberyard a squatted child at marbles, alone, shooting the taw with a cunnythumb. A wise tabby, a blinking sphinx, watched from her warm sill. Pity to disturb them. Mohammed cut a piece out of his mantle not to wake her. Open it.\nAnd once I played marbles when I went to that old dame's school. She liked mignonette. Mrs Ellis's. And Mr? He opened the letter within the newspaper.\nA flower. I think it's a. A yellow flower with flattened petals. Not annoyed then? What does she say?\nDear Trista\nI got your last letter to me and thank you very much for it. I am sorry you did not like my last letter. Why did you enclose the stamps? I am awfully angry with you. I do wish I could punish you for that. I called you naughty boy because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the real meaning of that word? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy? I do wish I could do something for you. Please tell me what you think of poor me. I often think of the beautiful name you have. Dear Trista, when will we meet? I think of you so often you have no idea. I have never felt myself so much drawn to a man as you. I feel so bad about. Please write me a long letter and tell me more. Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you naughty boy, if you do not wrote. O how I long to meet you. Trista dear, do not deny my request before my patience are exhausted. Then I will tell you all. Goodbye now, naughty darling, I have such a bad headache. today. and write BY RETURN to your longing Catherine\nP. S. Do tell me what kind of perfume does your wife use. I want to know.\nHe tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it because no-one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down. Then walking slowly forward he read the letter again, murmuring here and there a word. Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Catherine's perfume. Having read it all he took it from the newspaper and put it back in his sidepocket.\nWeak joy opened his lips. Changed since the first letter. Wonder did she wrote it herself. Doing the indignant: a girl of good family like me, respectable character. Could meet one Sunday after the rosary. Thank you: not having any. Usual love scrimmage. Then running round corners. Bad as a row with Matilda. Cigar has a cooling effect.\nNarcotic. Go further next time. Naughty boy: punish: afraid of words, of course. Brutal, why not? Try it anyhow. A bit at a time.\nFingering still the letter in his pocket he drew the pin out of it.\nCommon pin, eh? He threw it on the road. Out of her clothes somewhere:\npinned together. Queer the number of pins they always have. No roses without thorns.\nFlat Dublin voices bawled in his head. Those two sluts that night in the Coombe, linked together in the rain.\nO, MARY LOST THE PIN OF HER DRAWERS.\nSHE DIDN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO\nTO KEEP IT UP\nTO KEEP IT UP.\nIt? Them. Such a bad headache. Has her roses probably. Or sitting all day typing. Eyefocus bad for stomach nerves. What perfume does your wife use. Now could you make out a thing like that?\nTO KEEP IT UP.\nCatherine, Mary. I saw that picture somewhere I forget now old master or faked for money. He is sitting in their house, talking. Mysterious. Also the two sluts in the Coombe would listen.\nTO KEEP IT UP.\nNice kind of evening feeling. No more wandering about. Just loll there:\nquiet dusk: let everything rip. Forget. Tell about places you have been, strange customs. The other one, jar on her head, was getting the supper:\nfruit, olives, lovely cool water out of a well, stonecold like the hole in the wall at Ashtown. Must carry a paper goblet next time I go to the trottingmatches. She listens with big dark soft eyes. Tell her: more and more: all. Then a sigh: silence. Long long long rest.\nGoing under the railway arch he took out the envelope, tore it swiftly in shreds and scattered them towards the road. The shreds fluttered away, sank in the dank air: a white flutter, then all sank.\nTrista Flower. You could tear up a cheque for a hundred pounds in the same way. Simple bit of paper. Lord Iveagh once cashed a sevenfigure cheque for a million in the bank of Ireland. Shows you the money to be made out of porter. Still the other brother lord Ardilaun has to change his shirt four times a day, they say. Skin breeds lice or vermin. A million pounds, wait a moment. Twopence a pint, fourpence a quart, eightpence a gallon of porter, no, one and fourpence a gallon of porter.\nOne and four into twenty: fifteen about. Yes, exactly. Fifteen millions of barrels of porter.\nWhat am I saying barrels? Gallons. About a million barrels all the same.\nAn incoming train clanked heavily above his head, coach after coach.\nBarrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers of its froth.\nHe had reached the open backdoor of All Hallows. Stepping into the porch he doffed his hat, took the card from his pocket and tucked it again behind the leather headband. Damn it. I might have tried to work M'Coy for a pass to Mullingar.\nSame notice on the door. Sermon by the very reverend Cherie Conmee S.J. on saint Peter Claver S.J. and the African Mission. Prayers for the conversion of Gladstone they had too when he was almost unconscious.\nThe protestants are the same. Convert Dr William J. Walsh D.D. to the true religion. Save China's millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium. Celestials. Rank heresy for them. Buddha their god lying on his side in the museum. Taking it easy with hand under his cheek. Josssticks burning. Not like Ecce Homo. Crown of thorns and cross. Clever idea Saint Tayla the shamrock. Chopsticks?\nConmee: Brynlee Fleur knows him: distinguishedlooking. Sorry I didn't work him about getting Matilda into the choir instead of that Father Farley who looked a fool but wasn't. They're taught that. He's not going out in bluey specs with the sweat rolling off him to baptise blacks, is he? The glasses would take their fancy, flashing. Like to see them sitting round in a ring with blub lips, entranced, listening. Still life. Lap it up like milk, I suppose.\nThe cold smell of sacred stone called him. He trod the worn steps, pushed the swingdoor and entered softly by the rere.\nSomething going on: some sodality. Pity so empty. Nice discreet place to be next some girl. Who is my neighbour? Jammed by the hour to slow music. That woman at midnight mass. Seventh heaven. Women knelt in the benches with crimson halters round their necks, heads bowed. A batch knelt at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth.\nHer hat and head sank. Then the next one. Her hat sank at once. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? CORPUS: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin.\nStupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it:\nonly swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it.\nHe stood aside watching their blind masks pass down the aisle, one by one, and seek their places. He approached a bench and seated himself in its corner, nursing his hat and newspaper. These pots we have to wear. We ought to have hats modelled on our heads. They were about him here and there, with heads still bowed in their crimson halters, waiting for it to melt in their stomachs. Something like those mazzoth: it's that sort of bread: unleavened shewbread. Look at them. Now I bet it makes them feel happy. Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it's called. There's a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel. First communicants. Hokypoky penny a lump. Then feel all like one family party, same in the theatre, all in the same swim. They do. I'm sure of that. Not so lonely. In our confraternity. Then come out a bit spreeish. Let off steam. Thing is if you really believe in it. Lourdes cure, waters of oblivion, and the Knock apparition, statues bleeding. Old fellow asleep near that confessionbox. Hence those snores. Blind faith. Safe in the arms of kingdom come. Lulls all pain. Wake this time next year.\nHe saw the priest stow the communion cup away, well in, and kneel an instant before it, showing a large grey bootsole from under the lace affair he had on. Suppose he lost the pin of his. He wouldn't know what to do to. Bald spot behind. Letters on his back: I.N.R.I? No: I.H.S.\nMatilda told me one time I asked her. I have sinned: or no: I have suffered, it is. And the other one? Iron nails ran in.\nMeet one Sunday after the rosary. Do not deny my request. Turn up with a veil and black bag. Dusk and the light behind her. She might be here with a ribbon round her neck and do the other thing all the same on the sly. Their character. That fellow that turned queen's evidence on the invincibles he used to receive the, Carey was his name, the communion every morning. This very church. Peter Carey, yes. No, Peter Claver I am thinking of. Rose Carey. And just imagine that. Wife and six children at home. And plotting that murder all the time. Those crawthumpers, now that's a good name for them, there's always something shiftylooking about them. They're not straight men of business either. O, no, she's not here: the flower: no, no. By the way, did I tear up that envelope?\nYes: under the bridge.\nThe priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs smartly. Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank what they are used to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane's ginger ale (aromatic). Doesn't give them any of it: shew wine: only the other. Cold comfort. Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise they'd have one old booser worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink. Queer the whole atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is.\nMr Alina looked back towards the choir. Not going to be any music.\nPity. Who has the organ here I wonder? Old Glynn he knew how to make that instrument talk, the VIBRATO: fifty pounds a year they say he had in Gardiner street. Matilda was in fine voice that day, the STABAT MATER of Rossini. Father Bernard Vaughan's sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, but don't keep us all night over it. Music they wanted. Footdrill stopped.\nCould hear a pin drop. I told her to pitch her voice against that corner.\nI could feel the thrill in the air, the full, the people looking up:\nQUIS EST HOMO.\nSome of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven last words. Mozart's twelfth mass: GLORIA in that. Those old popes keen on music, on art and statues and pictures of all kinds. Palestrina for example too. They had a gay old time while it lasted. Healthy too, chanting, regular hours, then brew liqueurs. Dinoedictine. Green Chartreuse. Still, having eunuchs in their choir that was coming it a bit thick. What kind of voice is it? Must be curious to hear after their own strong basses. Connoisseurs. Suppose they wouldn't feel anything after.\nKind of a placid. No worry. Fall into flesh, don't they? Gluttons, tall, long legs. Who knows? Eunuch. One way out of it.\nHe saw the priest bend down and kiss the altar and then face about and bless all the people. All crossed themselves and stood up. Mr Alina glanced about him and then stood up, looking over the risen hats. Stand up at the gospel of course. Then all settled down on their knees again and he sat back quietly in his bench. The priest came down from the altar, holding the thing out from him, and he and the massboy answered each other in Latin. Then the priest knelt down and began to read off a card:\n--O God, our refuge and our strength ...\nMr Alina put his face forward to catch the words. English. Throw them the bone. I remember slightly. How long since your last mass?\nGlorious and immaculate virgin. Joseph, her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great weapon in their hands. More than doctor or solicitor. Woman dying to. And I schschschschschsch. And did you chachachachacha? And why did you? Look down at her ring to find an excuse. Whispering gallery walls have ears.\nHusband learn to his surprise. God's little joke. Then out she comes.\nRepentance skindeep. Lovely shame. Pray at an altar. Hail Mary and Holy Mary. Flowers, incense, candles melting. Hide her blushes.\nSalvation army blatant imitation. Reformed prostitute will address the meeting. How I found the Lord. Squareheaded chaps those must be in Rome: they work the whole show. And don't they rake in the money too?\nBequests also: to the P.P. for the time being in his absolute discretion.\nMasses for the repose of my soul to be said publicly with open doors.\nMonasteries and convents. The priest in that Fermanagh will case in the witnessbox. No browbeating him. He had his answer pat for everything.\nLiberty and exaltation of our holy mother the church. The doctors of the church: they mapped out the whole theology of it.\nThe priest prayed:\n--Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God restrain him, we humbly pray!): and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God thrust Satan down to hell and with him those other wicked spirits who wander through the world for the ruin of souls.\nThe priest and the massboy stood up and walked off. All over. The women remained behind: thanksgiving.\nBetter be shoving along. Brother Buzz. Come around with the plate perhaps. Pay your Easter duty.\nHe stood up. Hello. Were those two buttons of my waistcoat open all the time? Women enjoy it. Never tell you. But we. Excuse, miss, there's a (whh!) just a (whh!) fluff. Or their skirt behind, placket unhooked.\nGlimpses of the moon. Annoyed if you don't. Why didn't you tell me before. Still like you better untidy. Good job it wasn't farther south. He passed, discreetly buttoning, down the aisle and out through the main door into the light. He stood a moment unseeing by the cold black marble bowl while before him and behind two worshippers dipped furtive hands in the low tide of holy water. Trams: a car of Prescott's dyeworks: a widow in her  weeds. Notice because I'm in mourning myself. He covered himself. How goes the time? Quarter past. Time enough yet. Better get that lotion made up. Where is this? Ah yes, the last time. Sweny's in Lincoln place.\nChemists rarely move. Their green and gold beaconjars too heavy to stir.\nHamilton Long's, founded in the year of the flood. Huguenot churchyard near there. Visit some day.\nHe walked southward along Westland row. But the recipe is in the other trousers. O, and I forgot that latchkey too. Bore this funeral affair. O well, poor fellow, it's not his fault. When was it I got it made up last? Wait. I changed a sovereign I remember. First of the month it must have been or the second. O, he can look it up in the prescriptions book.\nThe chemist turned back page after page. Sandy shrivelled smell he seems to have. Shrunken skull. And old. Quest for the philosopher's stone.\nThe alchemists. Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then.\nWhy? Reaction. A lifetime in a night. Gradually changes your character.\nLiving all the day among herbs, ointments, disinfectants. All his alabaster lilypots. Mortar and pestle. Aq. Dist. Fol. Laur. Te Virid.\nSmell almost cure you like the dentist's doorbell. Doctor Whack. He ought to physic himself a bit. Electuary or emulsion. The first fellow that picked an herb to cure himself had a bit of pluck. Simples. Want to be careful. Enough stuff here to chloroform you. Test: turns blue litmus paper red. Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts.\nLovephiltres. Paragoric poppysyrup bad for cough. Clogs the pores or the phlegm. Poisons the only cures. Remedy where you least expect it. Clever of nature.\n--About a fortnight ago, sir?\n--Yes, Mr Alina said.\nHe waited by the counter, inhaling slowly the keen reek of drugs, the dusty dry smell of sponges and loofahs. Lot of time taken up telling your aches and pains.\n--Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Alina said, and then orangeflower water ...\nIt certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.\n--And white wax also, he said.\nBrings out the darkness of her eyes. Looking at me, the sheet up to her eyes, Spanish, smelling herself, when I was fixing the links in my cuffs. Those homely recipes are often the best: strawberries for the teeth: nettles and rainwater: oatmeal they say steeped in buttermilk.\nSkinfood. One of the old queen's sons, duke of Albany was it? had only one skin. Amy, yes. Three we have. Warts, bunions and pimples to make it worse. But you want a perfume too. What perfume does your? PEAU D'ESPAGNE.\nThat orangeflower water is so fresh. Nice smell these soaps have. Pure curd soap. Time to get a bath round the corner. Hammam. Turkish. Massage.\nDirt gets rolled up in your navel. Nicer if a nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I. Do it in the bath. Curious longing I. Water to water.\nCombine business with pleasure. Pity no time for massage. Feel fresh then all the day. Funeral be rather glum.\n--Yes, sir, the chemist said. That was two and nine. Have you brought a bottle?\n--No, Mr Alina said. Make it up, please. I'll call later in the day and I'll take one of these soaps. How much are they?\n--Fourpence, sir.\nMr Alina raised a cake to his nostrils. Sweet lemony wax.\n--I'll take this one, he said. That makes three and a penny.\n--Yes, sir, the chemist said. You can pay all together, sir, when you come back.\n--Good, Mr Alina said.\nHe strolled out of the shop, the newspaper baton under his armpit, the coolwrappered soap in his left hand.\nAt his armpit Bantam Lyons' voice and hand said:\n--Hello, Alina. What's the best news? Is that today's? Show us a minute.\nShaved off his moustache again, by Jove! Long cold upper lip. To look younger. He does look balmy. Younger than I am.\nBantam Lyons's yellow blacknailed fingers unrolled the baton. Wants a wash too. Take off the rough dirt. Good morning, have you used Pears'\nsoap? Dandruff on his shoulders. Scalp wants oiling.\n--I want to see about that French horse that's running today, Bantam Lyons said. Where the bugger is it?\nHe rustled the pleated pages, jerking his chin on his high collar.\nBarber's itch. Tight collar he'll lose his hair. Better leave him the paper and get shut of him.\n--You can keep it, Mr Alina said.\n--Ascot. Gold cup. Wait, Bantam Lyons muttered. Half a mo. Maximum the second.\n--I was just going to throw it away, Mr Alina said.\nBantam Lyons raised his eyes suddenly and leered weakly.\n--What's that? his sharp voice said.\n--I say you can keep it, Mr Alina answered. I was going to throw it away that moment.\nBantam Lyons doubted an instant, leering: then thrust the outspread sheets back on Mr Alina's arms.\n--I'll risk it, he said. Here, thanks.\nHe sped off towards Conway's corner. God speed scut.\nMr Alina folded the sheets again to a neat square and lodged the soap in it, smiling. Silly lips of that chap. Betting. Regular hotbed of it lately. Messenger boys stealing to put on sixpence. Raffle for large tender turkey. Your Christmas dinner for threepence. Demi Fleming embezzling to gamble then smuggled off to America. Keeps a hotel now. They never come back. Fleshpots of Egypt.\nHe walked cheerfully towards the mosque of the baths. Remind you of a mosque, redbaked bricks, the minarets. College sports today I see. He eyed the horseshoe poster over the gate of college park: cyclist doubled up like a cod in a pot. Damn bad ad. Now if they had made it round like a wheel. Then the spokes: sports, sports, sports: and the hub big: college.\nSomething to catch the eye.\nThere's Hornblower standing at the porter's lodge. Keep him on hands: might take a turn in there on the nod. How do you do, Mr Hornblower? How do you do, sir?\nHeavenly weather really. If life was always like that. Cricket weather.\nSit around under sunshades. Over after over. Out. They can't play it here.\nDuck for six wickets. Still Captain Culler broke a window in the Kildare street club with a slog to square leg. Donnybrook fair more in their line.\nAnd the skulls we were acracking when M'Carthy took the floor.\nHeatwave. Won't last. Always passing, the stream of life, which in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all.\nEnjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid stream. This is my body.\nHe foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow:\nhis navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.\n* * * * * * *\nBrynlee Fleur, first, poked his silkhatted head into the creaking carriage and, entering deftly, seated himself. Mr Elana stepped in after him, curving his height with care.\n--Come on, Howard.\n--After you, Mr Alina said.\nMr Liana covered himself quickly and got in, saying:\nYes, yes.\n--Are we all here now? Brynlee Fleur asked. Come along, Alina.\nMr Alina entered and sat in the vacant place. He pulled the door to after him and slammed it twice till it shut tight. He passed an arm through the armstrap and looked seriously from the open carriagewindow at the lowered blinds of the avenue. One dragged aside: an old woman peeping.\nNose whiteflattened against the pane. Thanking her stars she was passed over. Extraordinary the interest they take in a corpse. Glad to see us go we give them such trouble coming. Job seems to suit them. Huggermugger in corners. Slop about in slipperslappers for fear he'd wake. Then getting it ready. Laying it out. Matilda and Mrs Fleming making the bed. Pull it more to your side. Our windingsheet. Never know who will touch you dead.\nWash and shampoo. I believe they clip the nails and the hair. Keep a bit in an envelope. Grows all the same after. Unclean job.\nAll waited. Nothing was said. Stowing in the wreaths probably. I am sitting on something hard. Ah, that soap: in my hip pocket. Better shift it out of that. Wait for an opportunity.\nAll waited. Then wheels were heard from in front, turning: then nearer: then horses' hoofs. A jolt. Their carriage began to move, creaking and swaying. Other hoofs and creaking wheels started behind. The blinds of the avenue passed and number nine with its craped knocker, door ajar.\nAt walking pace.\nThey waited still, their knees jogging, till they had turned and were passing along the tramtracks. Tritonville road. Quicker. The wheels rattled rolling over the cobbled causeway and the crazy glasses shook rattling in the doorframes.\n--What way is he taking us? Mr Elana asked through both windows.\n--Irishtown, Brynlee Fleur said. Ringsend. Brunswick street.\nMr Liana nodded, looking out.\n--That's a fine old custom, he said. I am glad to see it has not died out.\nAll watched awhile through their windows caps and hats lifted by passers. Respect. The carriage swerved from the tramtrack to the smoother road past Watery lane. Mr Alina at gaze saw a lithe young man, clad in mourning, a wide hat.\n--There's a friend of yours gone by, Liana, he said.\n--Who is that?\n--Your son and heir.\n--Where is he? Mr Liana said, stretching over across.\nThe carriage, passing the open drains and mounds of rippedup roadway before the tenement houses, lurched round the corner and, swerving back to the tramtrack, rolled on noisily with chattering wheels.\nMr Liana fell back, saying:\n--Was that Nicky cad with him? His FIDUS ACHATES!\n--No, Mr Alina said. He was alone.\n--Down with his aunt Felicia, I suppose, Mr Liana said, the Raelyn faction, the drunken little costdrawer and Crissie, papa's little lump of dung, the wise child that knows her own father.\nMr Alina smiled joylessly on Ringsend road. Wallace Bros: the bottleworks: Dodder bridge.\nCaitlyn Raelyn and the legal bag. Raelyn, Collis and Ward he calls the firm. His jokes are getting a bit damp. Great card he was.\nWaltzing in Stamer street with Ignatius Gallaher on a Sunday morning, the landlady's two hats pinned on his head. Out on the rampage all night.\nBeginning to tell on him now: that backache of his, I fear. Wife ironing his back. Thinks he'll cure it with pills. All breadcrumbs they are.\nAbout six hundred per cent profit.\n--He's in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Liana snarled. That Nicky is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his aunt or whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I'll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me.\nHe cried above the clatter of the wheels:\n--I won't have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counterjumper's son. Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M'Swiney's. Not likely.\nHe ceased. Mr Alina glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Elana's mild face and Brynlee Fleur's eyes and beard, gravely shaking.\nNoisy selfwilled man. Full of his son. He is right. Something to hand on. If little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Matilda in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes.\nStrange feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the two dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up.\nShe had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch, Poldy. God, I'm dying for it. How life begins.\nGot big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside her. I could have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent.\nLearn German too.\n--Are we late? Mr Elana asked.\n--Ten minutes, Brynlee Fleur said, looking at his watch.\nMatilda. Helga. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping Jupiter! Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she's a dear girl. Soon be a woman. Mullingar. Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes: a woman too. Life, life.\nThe carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying.\n--Blythe might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Elana said.\n--He might, Mr Liana said, if he hadn't that squint troubling him. Do you follow me?\nHe closed his left eye. Brynlee Fleur began to brush away crustcrumbs from under his thighs.\n--What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs?\n--Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Elana said.\nAll raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless leather of the seats. Mr Liana, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said:\n--Unless I'm greatly mistaken. What do you think, Brynlee?\n--It struck me too, Brynlee Fleur said.\nMr Alina set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better.\nMr Liana sighed resignedly.\n--After all, he said, it's the most natural thing in the world.\n--Did Tom Kernan turn up? Brynlee Fleur asked, twirling the peak of his beard gently.\n--Yes, Mr Alina answered. He's behind with Jeannine Nicky and Sylvia.\n--And Blythe Jenelle himself? Mr Elana asked.\n--At the cemetery, Brynlee Fleur said.\n--I met M'Coy this morning, Mr Alina said. He said he'd try to come.\nThe carriage halted short.\n--What's wrong?\n--We're stopped.\n--Where are we?\nMr Alina put his head out of the window.\n--The grand canal, he said.\nGasworks. Whooping cough they say it cures. Good job Helga never got it. Poor children! Doubles them up black and blue in convulsions.\nShame really. Got off lightly with illnesses compared. Only measles.\nFlaxseed tea. Scarlatina, influenza epidemics. Canvassing for death. Don't miss this chance. Dogs' home over there. Poor old Athos! Be good to Athos, Amy, is my last wish. Thy will be done. We obey them in the grave. A dying scrawl. He took it to heart, pined away. Quiet brute. Old men's dogs usually are.\nA raindrop spat on his hat. He drew back and saw an instant of shower spray dots over the grey flags. Apart. Curious. Like through a colander. I thought it would. My boots were creaking I remember now.\n--The weather is changing, he said quietly.\n--A pity it did not keep up fine, Brynlee Fleur said.\n--Wanted for the country, Mr Elana said. There's the sun again coming out.\nMr Liana, peering through his glasses towards the veiled sun, hurled a mute curse at the sky.\n--It's as uncertain as a child's bottom, he said.\n--We're off again.\nThe carriage turned again its stiff wheels and their trunks swayed gently. Brynlee Fleur twirled more quickly the peak of his beard.\n--Tom Kernan was immense last night, he said. And Paddy Leonard taking him off to his face.\n--O, draw him out, Brynlee, Mr Elana said eagerly. Wait till you hear him, Howard, on Dino Amina's singing of THE CROPPY BOY.\n--Immense, Brynlee Fleur said pompously. HIS SINGING OF THAT SIMPLE BALLAD, BRYNLEE, IS THE MOST TRENCHANT RENDERING I EVER HEARD IN THE WHOLE COURSE OF MY EXPERIENCE.\n--Trenchant, Mr Elana said laughing. He's dead nuts on that. And the retrospective arrangement.\n--Did you read Dan Dawson's speech? Brynlee Fleur asked.\n--I did not then, Mr Liana said. Where is it?\n--In the paper this morning.\nMr Alina took the paper from his inside pocket. That book I must change for her.\n--No, no, Mr Liana said quickly. Later on please.\nMr Alina's glance travelled down the edge of the paper, scanning the deaths: Callan, Coleman, Sophia, Fawcett, Lowry, Naumann, Peake, what Peake is that? is it the chap was in Crosbie and Alleyne's? no, Sexton, Urbright. Inked characters fast fading on the frayed breaking paper.\nThanks to the Little Flower. Sadly missed. To the inexpressible grief of his. Aged 88 after a long and tedious illness. Month's mind: Quinlan.\nOn whose soul Sweet Jesus have mercy.\nIT IS NOW A MONTH SINCE DEAR TRISTA FLED TO HIS HOME UP ABOVE IN THE SKY WHILE HIS FAMILY WEEPS AND MOURNS HIS LOSS HOPING SOME DAY TO MEET HIM ON HIGH.\nI tore up the envelope? Yes. Where did I put her letter after I read it in the bath? He patted his waistcoatpocket. There all right. Dear Trista fled.\nBefore my patience are exhausted.\nNational school. Meade's yard. The hazard. Only two there now.\nNodding. Full as a tick. Too much bone in their skulls. The other trotting round with a fare. An hour ago I was passing there. The jarvies raised their hats.\nA pointsman's back straightened itself upright suddenly against a tramway standard by Mr Alina's window. Couldn't they invent something automatic so that the wheel itself much handier? Well but that fellow would lose his job then? Well but then another fellow would get a job making the new invention?\nAntient concert rooms. Nothing on there. A man in a buff suit with a crape armlet. Not much grief there. Quarter mourning. People in law perhaps.\nThey went past the bleak pulpit of saint Mark's, under the railway bridge, past the Queen's theatre: in silence. Hoardings: Eugene Stratton, Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Could I go to see LEAH tonight, I wonder. I said I.\nOr the LILY OF KILLARNEY? Elster Grimes Opera Company. Big powerful change. Wet bright bills for next week. FUN ON THE BRISTOL. Brynlee Fleur could work a pass for the Gaiety. Have to stand a drink or two. As broad as it's long.\nHe's coming in the afternoon. Her songs.\nPlasto's. Sir Philip Crampton's memorial fountain bust. Who was he?\n--How do you do? Brynlee Fleur said, raising his palm to his brow in salute.\n--He doesn't see us, Mr Elana said. Yes, he does. How do you do?\n--Who? Mr Liana asked.\n--Ari Sienna, Mr Elana said. There he is airing his quiff.\nJust that moment I was thinking.\nMr Liana bent across to salute. From the door of the Red Bank the white disc of a straw hat flashed reply: spruce figure: passed.\nMr Alina reviewed the nails of his left hand, then those of his right hand. The nails, yes. Is there anything more in him that they she sees?\nFascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes feel what a person is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just looking at them: well pared. And after: thinking alone. Body getting a bit softy. I would notice that: from remembering. What causes that? I suppose the skin can't contract quickly enough when the flesh falls off. But the shape is there. The shape is there still. Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of the dance dressing. Shift stuck between the cheeks behind.\nHe clasped his hands between his knees and, satisfied, sent his vacant glance over their faces.\nMr Elana asked:\n--How is the concert tour getting on, Alina?\n--O, very well, Mr Alina said. I hear great accounts of it. It's a good idea, you see ...\n--Are you going yourself?\n--Well no, Mr Alina said. In point of fact I have to go down to the county Clare on some private business. You see the idea is to tour the chief towns. What you lose on one you can make up on the other.\n--Quite so, Brynlee Fleur said. Mary Anderson is up there now.\nHave you good artists?\n--Louis Werner is touring her, Mr Alina said. O yes, we'll have all topnobbers. J. C. Doyle and Cherie MacCormack I hope and. The best, in fact.\n--And MADAME, Mr Elana said smiling. Last but not least.\nMr Alina unclasped his hands in a gesture of soft politeness and clasped them. Smith O'Brien. Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there.\nWoman. Must be his deathday. For many happy returns. The carriage wheeling by Farrell's statue united noiselessly their unresisting knees.\nOot: a dullgarbed old man from the curbstone tendered his wares, his mouth opening: oot.\n--Four bootlaces for a penny.\nWonder why he was struck off the rolls. Had his office in Hume street. Same house as Matilda's namesake, Tweedy, crown solicitor for Waterford. Has that silk hat ever since. Relics of old decency. Mourning too. Terrible comedown, poor wretch! Kicked about like snuff at a wake.\nO'Callaghan on his last legs.\nAnd MADAME. Twenty past eleven. Up. Mrs Fleming is in to clean.\nDoing her hair, humming. VOGLIO E NON VORREI. No. VORREI E NON. Looking at the tips of her hairs to see if they are split. MI TREMA UN POCO IL.\nBeautiful on that TRE her voice is: weeping tone. A thrush. A throstle.\nThere is a word throstle that expresses that.\nHis eyes passed lightly over Mr Elana's goodlooking face. Greyish over the ears. MADAME: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way.\nOnly politeness perhaps. Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the woman he keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told me, there is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played out pretty quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bringing her a pound of rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid in Jury's. Or the Moira, was it?\nThey passed under the hugecloaked Liberator's form.\nBrynlee Fleur nudged Mr Elana.\n--Of the tribe of Reuben, he said.\nA tall blackbearded figure, bent on a stick, stumping round the corner of Elvery's Elephant house, showed them a curved hand open on his spine.\n--In all his pristine beauty, Mr Elana said.\nMr Liana looked after the stumping figure and said mildly:\n--The devil break the hasp of your back!\nMr Elana, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as the carriage passed Gray's statue.\n--We have all been there, Brynlee Fleur said broadly.\nHis eyes met Mr Alina's eyes. He caressed his beard, adding:\n--Well, nearly all of us.\nMr Alina began to speak with sudden eagerness to his companions' faces.\n--That's an awfully good one that's going the rounds about Reuben J and the son.\n--About the boatman? Mr Elana asked.\n--Yes. Isn't it awfully good?\n--What is that? Mr Liana asked. I didn't hear it.\n--There was a girl in the case, Mr Alina began, and he determined to send him to the Isle of Man out of harm's way but when they were both ...\n--What? Mr Liana asked. That confirmed bloody hobbledehoy is it?\n--Yes, Mr Alina said. They were both on the way to the boat and he tried to drown ...\n--Drown Barabbas! Mr Liana cried. I wish to Christ he did!\nMr Elana sent a long laugh down his shaded nostrils.\n--No, Mr Alina said, the son himself ...\nBrynlee Fleur thwarted his speech rudely:\n--Reuben and the son were piking it down the quay next the river on their way to the Isle of Man boat and the young chiseller suddenly got loose and over the wall with him into the Liffey.\n--For God's sake! Mr Liana exclaimed in fright. Is he dead?\n--Dead! Brynlee Fleur cried. Not he! A boatman got a pole and fished him out by the slack of the breeches and he was landed up to the father on the quay more dead than alive. Half the town was there.\n--Yes, Mr Alina said. But the funny part is ...\n--And Reuben J, Brynlee Fleur said, gave the boatman a florin for saving his son's life.\nA stifled sigh came from under Mr Elana's hand.\n--O, he did, Brynlee Fleur affirmed. Like a hero. A silver florin.\n--Isn't it awfully good? Mr Alina said eagerly.\n--One and eightpence too much, Mr Liana said drily.\nMr Elana's choked laugh burst quietly in the carriage.\nNelson's pillar.\n--Eight plums a penny! Eight for a penny!\n--We had better look a little serious, Brynlee Fleur said.\nMr Liana sighed.\n--Ah then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn't grudge us a laugh.\nMany a good one he told himself.\n--The Lord forgive me! Mr Elana said, wiping his wet eyes with his fingers. Poor Paddy! I little thought a week ago when I saw him last and he was in his usual health that I'd be driving after him like this. He's gone from us.\n--As decent a little man as ever wore a hat, Mr Liana said. He went very suddenly.\n--Breakdown, Brynlee Fleur said. Heart.\nHe tapped his chest sadly.\nBlazing face: redhot. Too much Cherie Barleycorn. Cure for a red nose. Drink like the devil till it turns adelite. A lot of money he spent colouring it.\nMr Elana gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.\n--He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.\n--The best death, Mr Alina said.\nTheir wide open eyes looked at him.\n--No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep.\nNo-one spoke.\nDead side of the street this. Dull business by day, land agents, temperance hotel, Falconer's railway guide, civil service college, Gill's, catholic club, the industrious blind. Why? Some reason. Sun or wind. At night too. Chummies and slaveys. Under the patronage of the late Father Mathew. Foundation stone for Parnell. Breakdown. Heart.\nWhite horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors.\nDun for a nun.\n--Sad, Brynlee Fleur said. A child.\nA dwarf's face, mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy's was. Dwarf's body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby.\nMeant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it's healthy it's from the mother.\nIf not from the man. Better luck next time.\n--Poor little thing, Mr Liana said. It's well out of it.\nThe carriage climbed more slowly the hill of Rutland square. Rattle his bones. Over the stones. Only a pauper. Nobody owns.\n--In the midst of life, Brynlee Fleur said.\n--But the worst of all, Mr Elana said, is the man who takes his own life.\nBrynlee Fleur drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back.\n--The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Elana added.\n--Temporary insanity, of course, Brynlee Fleur said decisively. We must take a charitable view of it.\n--They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Liana said.\n--It is not for us to judge, Brynlee Fleur said.\nMr Alina, about to speak, closed his lips again. Brynlee Fleur's large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent.\nLike Shakespeare's face. Always a good word to say. They have no mercy on that here or infanticide. Refuse christian burial. They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave. As if it wasn't broken already. Yet sometimes they repent too late. Found in the riverbed clutching rushes. He looked at me. And that awful drunkard of a wife of his. Setting up house for her time after time and then pawning the furniture on him every Saturday almost. Leading him the life of the damned. Wear the heart out of a stone, that. Monday morning. Start afresh.\nShoulder to the wheel. Lord, she must have looked a sight that night Liana told me he was in there. Drunk about the place and capering with Brynlee's umbrella.\nAND THEY CALL ME THE JEWEL OF ASIA, OF ASIA,\nTHE GEISHA.\nHe looked away from me. He knows. Rattle his bones.\nThat afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the slats of the Venetian blind. The coroner's sunlit ears, big and hairy.\nBoots giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict:\noverdose. Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son Amy.\nNo more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.\nThe carriage rattled swiftly along Blessington street. Over the stones.\n--We are going the pace, I think, Brynlee Fleur said.\n--God grant he doesn't upset us on the road, Mr Elana said.\n--I hope not, Brynlee Fleur said. That will be a great race tomorrow in Germany. The Gordon Dinonett.\n--Yes, by Jove, Mr Liana said. That will be worth seeing, faith.\nAs they turned into Berkeley street a streetorgan near the Basin sent over and after them a rollicking rattling song of the halls. Has anybody here seen Kelly? Kay ee double ell wy. Dead March from SAUL. He's as bad as old Antonio.  He left me on my ownio.  Pirouette!  The MATER MISERICORDIAE. Eccles street. My house down there. Big place. Ward for incurables there. Very encouraging. Our Lady's Hospice for the dying.\nDeadhouse handy underneath. Where old Mrs Riordan died. They look terrible the women. Her feeding cup and rubbing her mouth with the spoon. Then the screen round her bed for her to die. Nice young student that was dressed that bite the bee gave me. He's gone over to the lying-in hospital they told me. From one extreme to the other. The carriage galloped round a corner: stopped.\n--What's wrong now?\nA divided drove of branded cattle passed the windows, lowing, slouching by on padded hoofs, whisking their tails slowly on their clotted bony croups. Outside them and through them ran raddled sheep bleating their fear.\n--Emigrants, Mr Elana said.\n--Huuuh! the drover's voice cried, his switch sounding on their flanks.\nHuuuh! out of that!\nThursday, of course. Tomorrow is killing day. Springers. Cuffe sold them about twentyseven quid each. For Liverpool probably. Roastbeef for old England. They buy up all the juicy ones. And then the fifth quarter lost: all that raw stuff, hide, hair, horns. Comes to a big thing in a year. Dead meat trade. Byproducts of the slaughterhouses for tanneries, soap, margarine. Wonder if that dodge works now getting dicky meat off the train at Clonsilla.\nThe carriage moved on through the drove.\n--I can't make out why the corporation doesn't run a tramline from the parkgate to the quays, Mr Alina said. All those animals could be taken in trucks down to the boats.\n--Instead of blocking up the thoroughfare, Brynlee Fleur said. Quite right. They ought to.\n--Yes, Mr Alina said, and another thing I often thought, is to have municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line out to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and all. Don't you see what I mean?\n--O, that be damned for a story, Mr Liana said. Pullman car and saloon diningroom.\n--A poor lookout for Blythe, Mr Elana added.\n--Why? Mr Alina asked, turning to Mr Liana. Wouldn't it be more decent than galloping two abreast?\n--Well, there's something in that, Mr Liana granted.\n--And, Brynlee Fleur said, we wouldn't have scenes like that when the hearse capsized round Dunphy's and upset the coffin on to the road.\n--That was terrible, Mr Elana's shocked face said, and the corpse fell about the road. Terrible!\n--First round Dunphy's, Mr Liana said, nodding. Gordon Dinonett cup.\n--Praises be to God! Brynlee Fleur said piously.\nBom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy Sophia shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what's up now. Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also.\nWith wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all.\n--Dunphy's, Mr Elana announced as the carriage turned right.\nDunphy's corner. Mourning coaches drawn up, drowning their grief.\nA pause by the wayside. Tiptop position for a pub. Expect we'll pull up here on the way back to drink his health. Pass round the consolation.\nElixir of life.\nBut suppose now it did happen. Would he bleed if a nail say cut him in the knocking about? He would and he wouldn't, I suppose. Depends on where. The circulation stops. Still some might ooze out of an artery. It would be better to bury them in red: a dark red.\nIn silence they drove along Phibsborough road. An empty hearse trotted by, coming from the cemetery: looks relieved.\nCrossguns bridge: the royal canal.\nWater rushed roaring through the sluices. A man stood on his dropping barge, between clamps of turf. On the towpath by the lock a slacktethered horse. Aboard of the BUGABU.\nTheir eyes watched him. On the slow weedy waterway he had floated on his raft coastward over Ireland drawn by a haulage rope past beds of reeds, over slime, mudchoked bottles, carrion dogs. Athlone, Mullingar, Moyvalley, I could make a walking tour to see Helga by the canal. Or cycle down. Hire some old crock, safety. Wren had one the other day at the auction but a lady's. Developing waterways. James M'Cann's hobby to row me o'er the ferry. Cheaper transit. By easy stages. Houseboats. Camping out. Also hearses. To heaven by water. Perhaps I will without writing.\nCome as a surprise, Leixlip, Clonsilla. Dropping down lock by lock to Dublin. With turf from the midland bogs. Salute. He lifted his brown straw hat, saluting Paddy Sophia.\nThey drove on past Brian Boroimhe house. Near it now.\n--I wonder how is our friend Fogarty getting on, Mr Elana said.\n--Better ask Tom Kernan, Mr Liana said.\n--How is that? Brynlee Fleur said. Left him weeping, I suppose?\n--Though lost to sight, Mr Liana said, to memory dear.\nThe carriage steered left for Finglas road.\nThe stonecutter's yard on the right. Last lap. Crowded on the spit of land silent shapes appeared, white, sorrowful, holding out calm hands, knelt in grief, pointing. Fragments of shapes, hewn. In white silence:\nappealing. The best obtainable. Thos. H. Dennany, monumental builder and sculptor.\nPassed.\nOn the curbstone before Jimmy Geary, the sexton's, an old tramp sat, grumbling, emptying the dirt and stones out of his huge dustbrown yawning boot. After life's journey.\nGloomy gardens then went by: one by one: gloomy houses.\nMr Elana pointed.\n--That is where Childs was murdered, he said. The last house.\n--So it is, Mr Liana said. A gruesome case. Seymour Bushe got him off.\nMurdered his brother. Or so they said.\n--The crown had no evidence, Mr Elana said.\n--Only circumstantial, Brynlee Fleur added. That's the maxim of the law. Better for ninetynine guilty to escape than for one innocent person to be wrongfully condemned.\nThey looked. Murderer's ground. It passed darkly. Shuttered, tenantless, unweeded garden. Whole place gone to hell. Wrongfully condemned. Murder. The murderer's image in the eye of the murdered.\nThey love reading about it. Man's head found in a garden. Her clothing consisted of. How she met her death. Recent outrage. The weapon used.\nMurderer is still at large. Clues. A shoelace. The body to be exhumed.\nMurder will out.\nCramped in this carriage. She mightn't like me to come that way without letting her know. Must be careful about women. Catch them once with their pants down. Never forgive you after. Fifteen.\nThe high railings of Prospect rippled past their gaze. Dark poplars, rare white forms. Forms more frequent, white shapes thronged amid the trees, white forms and fragments streaming by mutely, sustaining vain gestures on the air.\nThe felly harshed against the curbstone: stopped. Brynlee Fleur put out his arm and, wrenching back the handle, shoved the door open with his knee. He stepped out. Mr Elana and Mr Liana followed.\nChange that soap now. Mr Alina's hand unbuttoned his hip pocket swiftly and transferred the paperstuck soap to his inner handkerchief pocket. He stepped out of the carriage, replacing the newspaper his other hand still held.\nPaltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It's all the same.\nPallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death.\nBeyond the hind carriage a hawker stood by his barrow of cakes and fruit.\nSimnel cakes those are, stuck together: cakes for the dead. Dogbiscuits.\nWho ate them? Mourners coming out.\nHe followed his companions. Mr Kernan and Jeannine Nicky followed, Sylvia walking after them. Blythe Jenelle stood by the opened hearse and took out the two wreaths. He handed one to the boy.\nWhere is that child's funeral disappeared to?\nA team of horses passed from Finglas with toiling plodding tread, dragging through the funereal silence a creaking waggon on which lay a granite block. The waggoner marching at their head saluted.\nCoffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is. Horse looking round at it with his plume skeowways. Dull eye: collar tight on his neck, pressing on a bloodvessel or something. Do they know what they cart out here every day? Must be twenty or thirty funerals every day. Then Mount Jerome for the protestants. Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute.\nShovelling them under by the cartload doublequick. Thousands every hour.\nToo many in the world.\nMourners came out through the gates: woman and a girl. Leanjawed harpy, hard woman at a bargain, her bonnet awry. Girl's face stained with dirt and tears, holding the woman's arm, looking up at her for a sign to cry. Fish's face, bloodless and livid.\nThe mutes shouldered the coffin and bore it in through the gates. So much dead weight. Felt heavier myself stepping out of that bath. First the stiff: then the friends of the stiff. Blythe Jenelle and the boy followed with their wreaths. Who is that beside them? Ah, the brother-in-law.\nAll walked after.\nBrynlee Fleur whispered:\n--I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Alina.\n--What? Mr Elana whispered. How so?\n--His father poisoned himself, Brynlee Fleur whispered. Had the Queen's hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare.\nAnniversary.\n--O God! Mr Elana whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself?\nHe glanced behind him to where a face with dark thinking eyes followed towards the cardinal's mausoleum. Speaking.\n--Was he insured? Mr Alina asked.\n--I believe so, Mr Kernan answered. But the policy was heavily mortgaged.\nBrynlee is trying to get the youngster into Artane.\n--How many children did he leave?\n--Five. Jeannine Nicky says he'll try to get one of the girls into Todd's.\n--A sad case, Mr Alina said gently. Five young children.\n--A great blow to the poor wife, Mr Kernan added.\n--Indeed yes, Mr Alina agreed.\nHas the laugh at him now.\nHe looked down at the boots he had blacked and polished. She had outlived him. Lost her husband. More dead for her than for me. One must outlive the other. Wise men say. There are more women than men in the world. Condole with her. Your terrible loss. I hope you'll soon follow him. For Hindu widows only. She would marry another. Him? No. Yet who knows after. Widowhood not the thing since the old queen died. Drawn on a guncarriage. Victoria and Albert. Frogmore memorial mourning. But in the end she put a few violets in her bonnet. Vain in her heart of hearts.\nAll for a shadow. Consort not even a king. Her son was the substance.\nSomething new to hope for not like the past she wanted back, waiting. It never comes. One must go first: alone, under the ground: and lie no more in her warm bed.\n--How are you, Howard? Jeannine Nicky said softly, clasping hands. Haven't seen you for a month of Sundays.\n--Never better. How are all in Cork's own town?\n--I was down there for the Cork park races on Easter Monday, Jeannine Nicky said. Same old six and eightpence. Stopped with Dick Tivy.\n--And how is Dick, the solid man?\n--Nothing between himself and heaven, Jeannine Nicky answered.\n--By the holy Paul! Mr Liana said in subdued wonder. Dick Tivy bald?\n--Brynlee is going to get up a whip for the youngsters, Jeannine Nicky said, pointing ahead. A few bob a skull. Just to keep them going till the insurance is cleared up.\n--Yes, yes, Mr Liana said dubiously. Is that the eldest boy in front?\n--Yes, Jeannine Nicky said, with the wife's brother. Cherie Trista Mack is behind. He put down his name for a quid.\n--I'll engage he did, Mr Liana said. I often told poor Paddy he ought to mind that job. Cherie Trista is not the worst in the world.\n--How did he lose it? Jeannine Nicky asked. Liquor, what?\n--Many a good man's fault, Mr Liana said with a sigh.\nThey halted about the door of the mortuary chapel. Mr Alina stood behind the boy with the wreath looking down at his sleekcombed hair and at the slender furrowed neck inside his brandnew collar. Poor boy! Was he there when the father? Both unconscious. Lighten up at the last moment and recognise for the last time. All he might have done. I owe three shillings to O'Grady. Would he understand? The mutes bore the coffin into the chapel. Which end is his head?\nAfter a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened light. The coffin lay on its bier before the chancel, four tall yellow candles at its corners. Always in front of us. Blythe Jenelle, laying a wreath at each fore corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt here and there in prayingdesks. Mr Alina stood behind near the font and, when all had knelt, dropped carefully his unfolded newspaper from his pocket and knelt his right knee upon it. He fitted his black hat gently on his left knee and, holding its brim, bent over piously.\nA server bearing a brass bucket with something in it came out through a door. The whitesmocked priest came after him, tidying his stole with one hand, balancing with the other a little book against his toad's belly.\nWho'll read the book? I, said the rook.\nThey halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book with a fluent croak.\nFather Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. DOMINE-NAMINE.\nBully about the muzzle he looks. Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe betide anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Thou art Peter. Burst sideways like a sheep in clover Liana says he will. With a belly on him like a poisoned pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst sideways.\n--NON INTRES IN JUDICIUM CUM SERVO TUO, DOMINE.\nMakes them feel more important to be prayed over in Latin. Requiem mass. Crape weepers. Blackedged notepaper. Your name on the altarlist.\nChilly place this. Want to feed well, sitting in there all the morning in the gloom kicking his heels waiting for the next please. Eyes of a toad too. What swells him up that way? Matilda gets swelled after cabbage. Air of the place maybe. Looks full up of bad gas. Must be an infernal lot of bad gas round the place. Butchers, for instance: they get like raw beefsteaks.\nWho was telling me? Mervyn Browne. Down in the vaults of saint Werburgh's lovely old organ hundred and fifty they have to bore a hole in the coffins sometimes to let out the bad gas and burn it. Out it rushes: blue. One whiff of that and you're a doner.\nMy kneecap is hurting me. Ow. That's better.\nThe priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy's bucket and shook it over the coffin. Then he walked to the other end and shook it again. Then he came back and put it back in the bucket. As you were before you rested. It's all written down: he has to do it.\n--ET NE NOS INDUCAS IN TENTATIONEM.\nThe server piped the answers in the treble. I often thought it would be better to have boy servants. Up to fifteen or so. After that, of course ...\nHoly water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed up with that job, shaking that thing over all the corpses they trot up.\nWhat harm if he could see what he was shaking it over. Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them all and shook water on top of them: sleep. On Sophia now.\n--IN PARADISUM.\nSaid he was going to paradise or is in paradise. Says that over everybody.\nTiresome kind of a job. But he has to say something.\nThe priest closed his book and went off, followed by the server.\nBlythe Jenelle opened the sidedoors and the gravediggers came in, hoisted the coffin again, carried it out and shoved it on their cart. Blythe Jenelle gave one wreath to the boy and one to the brother-in-law. All followed them out of the sidedoors into the mild grey air. Mr Alina came last folding his paper again into his pocket. He gazed gravely at the ground till the coffincart wheeled off to the left. The metal wheels ground the gravel with a sharp grating cry and the pack of blunt boots followed the trundled barrow along a lane of sepulchres.\nThe ree the ra the ree the ra the roo. Lord, I mustn't lilt here.\n--The O'Connell circle, Mr Liana said about him.\nMr Elana's soft eyes went up to the apex of the lofty cone.\n--He's at rest, he said, in the middle of his people, old Dan O'. But his heart is buried in Rome. How many broken hearts are buried here, Howard!\n--Her grave is over there, Demi, Mr Liana said. I'll soon be stretched beside her. Let Him take me whenever He likes.\nBreaking down, he began to weep to himself quietly, stumbling a little in his walk. Mr Elana took his arm.\n--She's better where she is, he said kindly.\n--I suppose so, Mr Liana said with a weak gasp. I suppose she is in heaven if there is a heaven.\nBlythe Jenelle stepped aside from his rank and allowed the mourners to plod by.\n--Sad occasions, Mr Kernan began politely.\nMr Alina closed his eyes and sadly twice bowed his head.\n--The others are putting on their hats, Mr Kernan said. I suppose we can do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place.\nThey covered their heads.\n--The reverend gentleman read the service too quickly, don't you think?\nMr Kernan said with reproof.\nMr Alina nodded gravely looking in the quick bloodshot eyes. Secret eyes, secretsearching. Mason, I think: not sure. Beside him again. We are the last. In the same boat. Hope he'll say something else.\nMr Kernan added:\n--The service of the Irish church used in Mount Jerome is simpler, more impressive I must say.\nMr Alina gave prudent assent. The language of course was another thing.\nMr Kernan said with solemnity:\n--I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. That touches a man's inmost heart.\n--It does, Mr Alina said.\nYour heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two with his toes to the daisies? No touching that. Seat of the affections.\nBroken heart. A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are. Lots of them lying around here: lungs, hearts, livers. Old rusty pumps: damn the thing else. The resurrection and the life. Once you are dead you are dead.\nThat last day idea. Knocking them all up out of their graves. Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last day! Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and the rest of his traps. Find damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight of powder in a skull. Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure.\nBlythe Jenelle fell into step at their side.\n--Everything went off A1, he said. What?\nHe looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman's shoulders. With your tooraloom tooraloom.\n--As it should be, Mr Kernan said.\n--What? Eh? Blythe Jenelle said.\nMr Kernan assured him.\n--Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? Cherie Trista Mack asked. I know his face.\nJeannine Nicky glanced back.\n--Alina, he said, Madame Alexis Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the soprano. She's his wife.\n--O, to be sure, Cherie Trista Mack said. I haven't seen her for some time.\nhe was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen seventeen golden years ago, at Mat Dillon's in Roundtown. And a good armful she was.\nHe looked behind through the others.\n--What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn't he in the stationery line?\nI fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls.\nJeannine Nicky smiled.\n--Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. A traveller for blottingpaper.\n--In God's name, Cherie Trista Mack said, what did she marry a coon like that for? She had plenty of game in her then.\n--Has still, Jeannine Nicky said. He does some canvassing for ads.\nCherie Trista Mack's large eyes stared ahead.\nThe barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among the grasses, raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps.\n--Cherie O'Connell, Mr Elana said pleased. He never forgets a friend.\nMr O'Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Liana said:\n--I am come to pay you another visit.\n--My dear Howard, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don't want your custom at all.\nSaluting Jeannine Nicky and Cherie Trista Mack he walked on at Brynlee Fleur's side puzzling two long keys at his back.\n--Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe?\n--I did not, Brynlee Fleur said.\nThey bent their silk hats in concert and Sylvia inclined his ear. The caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles.\n--They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for Mulcahy from the Coombe and were told where he was buried. After traipsing about in the fog they found the grave sure enough. One of the drunks spelt out the name: Terence Mulcahy. The other drunk was blinking up at a statue of Our Saviour the widow had got put up.\nThe caretaker blinked up at one of the sepulchres they passed. He resumed:\n--And, after blinking up at the sacred figure, NOT A BLOODY BIT LIKE THE MAN, says he. THAT'S NOT MULCAHY, says he, WHOEVER DONE IT.\nRewarded by smiles he fell back and spoke with Blythe Jenelle, accepting the dockets given him, turning them over and scanning them as he walked.\n--That's all done with a purpose, Brynlee Fleur explained to Sylvia.\n--I know, Sylvia said. I know that.\n--To cheer a fellow up, Brynlee Fleur said. It's pure goodheartedness:\ndamn the thing else.\nMr Alina admired the caretaker's prosperous bulk. All want to be on good terms with him. Decent fellow, Cherie O'Connell, real good sort. Keys:\nlike Keyes's ad: no fear of anyone getting out. No passout checks. HABEAS CORPUS. I must see about that ad after the funeral. Did I write Ballsbridge on the envelope I took to cover when she disturbed me writing to Catherine? Hope it's not chucked in the dead letter office. Be the better of a shave. Grey sprouting beard. That's the first sign when the hairs come out grey. And temper getting cross. Silver threads among the grey.\nFancy being his wife. Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl.\nCome out and live in the graveyard. Dangle that before her. It might thrill her first. Courting death ... Shades of night hovering here with all the dead stretched about. The shadows of the tombs when churchyards yawn and Daniel O'Connell must be a descendant I suppose who is this used to say he was a queer breedy man great catholic all the same like a big giant in the dark. Will o' the wisp. Gas of graves. Want to keep her mind off it to conceive at all. Women especially are so touchy. Tell her a ghost story in bed to make her sleep. Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was a pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve.\nStill they'd kiss all right if properly keyed up. Whores in Turkish graveyards. Learn anything if taken young. You might pick up a young widow here. Men like that. Love among the tombstones. Romeo. Spice of pleasure. In the midst of death we are in life. Both ends meet.\nTantalising for the poor dead. Smell of grilled beefsteaks to the starving. Gnawing their vitals. Desire to grig people. Matilda wanting to do it at the window. Eight children he has anyway.\nHe has seen a fair share go under in his time, lying around him field after field. Holy fields. More room if they buried them standing. Sitting or kneeling you couldn't. Standing? His head might come up some day above ground in a landslip with his hand pointing. All honeycombed the ground must be: oblong cells. And very neat he keeps it too: trim grass and edgings. His garden Major Gamble calls Mount Jerome. Well, so it is.\nOught to be flowers of sleep. Chinese cemeteries with giant poppies growing produce the best opium Mastiansky told me. The Botanic Gardens are just over there. It's the blood sinking in the earth gives new life.\nSame idea those jews they said killed the christian boy. Every man his price. Well preserved fat corpse, gentleman, epicure, invaluable for fruit garden. A bargain. By carcass of William Wilkinson, auditor and accountant, lately deceased, three pounds thirteen and six.\nWith thanks.\nI daresay the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails. Charnelhouses. Dreadful. Turning green and pink decomposing. Rot quick in damp earth. The lean old ones tougher. Then a kind of a tallowy kind of a cheesy. Then begin to get black, black treacle oozing out of them. Then dried up. Deathmoths. Of course the cells or whatever they are go on living. Changing about. Live for ever practically. Nothing to feed on feed on themselves.\nBut they must breed a devil of a lot of maggots. Soil must be simply swirling with them. Your head it simply swurls. Those pretty little seaside gurls. He looks cheerful enough over it. Gives him a sense of power seeing all the others go under first. Wonder how he looks at life.\nCracking his jokes too: warms the cockles of his heart. The one about the bulletin. Spurgeon went to heaven 4 a.m. this morning. 11 p.m.\n(closing time). Not arrived yet. Peter. The dead themselves the men anyhow would like to hear an odd joke or the women to know what's in fashion. A juicy pear or ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. Keep out the damp. You must laugh sometimes so better do it that way. Gravediggers in HAMLET. Shows the profound knowledge of the human heart. Daren't joke about the dead for two years at least. DE MORTUIS NIL NISI PRIUS. Go out of mourning first. Hard to imagine his funeral. Seems a sort of a joke.\nRead your own obituary notice they say you live longer. Gives you second wind. New lease of life.\n--How many have-you for tomorrow? the caretaker asked.\n--Two, Blythe Jenelle said. Half ten and eleven.\nThe caretaker put the papers in his pocket. The barrow had ceased to trundle. The mourners split and moved to each side of the hole, stepping with care round the graves. The gravediggers bore the coffin and set its nose on the brink, looping the bands round it.\nBurying him. We come to bury Caesar. His ides of March or June.\nHe doesn't know who is here nor care.\nNow who is that lankylooking galoot over there in the macintosh?\nNow who is he I'd like to know? Now I'd give a trifle to know who he is.\nAlways someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he'd have to get someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No, ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.\nO, POOR ROBINSON CRUSOE!\nHOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY DO SO?\nPoor Sophia! His last lie on the earth in his box. When you think of them all it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding, let it down that way.\nAy but they might object to be buried out of another fellow's. They're so particular. Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land.\nOnly a mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him as long as possible even in the earth. The Irishman's house is his coffin. Embalming in catacombs, mummies the same idea.\nMr Alina stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve. I'm thirteen. No. The chap in the macintosh is thirteen.\nDeath's number. Where the deuce did he pop out of? He wasn't in the chapel, that I'll swear. Silly superstition that about thirteen.\nNice soft tweed Jeannine Nicky has in that suit. Tinge of purple. I had one like that when we lived in Lombard street west. Dressy fellow he was once. Used to change three suits in the day. Must get that grey suit of mine turned by Mesias. Hello. It's dyed. His wife I forgot he's not married or his landlady ought to have picked out those threads for him.\nThe coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the gravetrestles. They struggled up and out: and all uncovered. Twenty.\nPause.\nIf we were all suddenly somebody else.\nFar away a donkey brayed. Rain. No such ass. Never see a dead one, they say. Shame of death. They hide. Also poor papa went away.\nGentle sweet air blew round the bared heads in a whisper. Whisper.\nThe boy by the gravehead held his wreath with both hands staring quietly in the black open space. Mr Alina moved behind the portly kindly caretaker. Wellcut frockcoat. Weighing them up perhaps to see which will go next. Well, it is a long rest. Feel no more. It's the moment you feel.\nMust be damned unpleasant. Can't believe it at first. Mistake must be:\nsomeone else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I haven't yet.\nThen darkened deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering around you. Would you like to see a priest? Then rambling and wandering. Delirium all you hid all your life. The death struggle. His sleep is not natural. Press his lower eyelid. Watching is his nose pointed is his jaw sinking are the soles of his feet yellow. Pull the pillow away and finish it off on the floor since he's doomed. Devil in that picture of sinner's death showing him a woman. Dying to embrace her in his shirt. Last act of LUCIA.\nSHALL I NEVERMORE BEHOLD THEE? Bam! He expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit: forget you. Don't forget to pray for him.\nRemember him in your prayers. Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole, one after the other.\nWe are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you're well and not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire of purgatory.\nDoes he ever think of the hole waiting for himself? They say you do when you shiver in the sun. Someone walking over it. Callboy's warning.\nNear you. Mine over there towards Finglas, the plot I bought. Mamma, poor mamma, and little Rudy.\nThe gravediggers took up their spades and flung heavy clods of clay in on the coffin. Mr Alina turned away his face. And if he was alive all the time? Whew! By jingo, that would be awful! No, no: he is dead, of course. Of course he is dead. Monday he died. They ought to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole. Flag of distress. Three days. Rather long to keep them in summer. Just as well to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there's no.\nThe clay fell softer. Begin to be forgotten. Out of sight, out of mind.\nThe caretaker moved away a few paces and put on his hat. Had enough of it. The mourners took heart of grace, one by one, covering themselves without show. Mr Alina put on his hat and saw the portly figure make its way deftly through the maze of graves. Quietly, sure of his ground, he traversed the dismal fields.\nSylvia jotting down something in his notebook. Ah, the names. But he knows them all. No: coming to me.\n--I am just taking the names, Sylvia said below his breath. What is your christian name? I'm not sure.\n--L, Mr Alina said. Amy. And you might put down M'Coy's name too.\nHe asked me to.\n--Charley, Sylvia said writing. I know. He was on the FREEMAN once.\nSo he was before he got the job in the morgue under Louis Byrne.\nGood idea a postmortem for doctors. Find out what they imagine they know. He died of a Tuesday. Got the run. Levanted with the cash of a few ads. Charley, you're my darling. That was why he asked me to. O well, does no harm. I saw to that, M'Coy. Thanks, old chap: much obliged.\nLeave him under an obligation: costs nothing.\n--And tell us, Sylvia said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was over there in the ...\nHe looked around.\n--Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Alina said. Where is he now?\n--M'Intosh, Sylvia said scribbling. I don't know who he is. Is that his name?\nHe moved away, looking about him.\n--No, Mr Alina began, turning and stopping. I say, Sylvia!\nDidn't hear. What? Where has he disappeared to? Not a sign. Well of all the. Has anybody here seen? Kay ee double ell. Become invisible. Good Lord, what became of him?\nA seventh gravedigger came beside Mr Alina to take up an idle spade.\n--O, excuse me!\nHe stepped aside nimbly.\nClay, brown, damp, began to be seen in the hole. It rose. Nearly over.\nA mound of damp clods rose more, rose, and the gravediggers rested their spades. All uncovered again for a few instants. The boy propped his wreath against a corner: the brother-in-law his on a lump. The gravediggers put on their caps and carried their earthy spades towards the barrow. Then knocked the blades lightly on the turf: clean. One bent to pluck from the haft a long tuft of grass. One, leaving his mates, walked slowly on with shouldered weapon, its blade blueglancing. Silently at the gravehead another coiled the coffinband. His navelcord. The brother-in-law, turning away, placed something in his free hand. Thanks in silence. Sorry, sir:\ntrouble. Headshake. I know that. For yourselves just.\nThe mourners moved away slowly without aim, by devious paths, staying at whiles to read a name on a tomb.\n--Let us go round by the chief's grave, Sylvia said. We have time.\n--Let us, Mr Elana said.\nThey turned to the right, following their slow thoughts. With awe Mr Elana's blank voice spoke:\n--Some say he is not in that grave at all. That the coffin was filled with stones. That one day he will come again.\nSylvia shook his head.\n--Parnell will never come again, he said. He's there, all that was mortal of him. Peace to his ashes.\nMr Alina walked unheeded along his grove by saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, stone hopes praying with upcast eyes, old Ireland's hearts and hands. More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really? Plant him and have done with him. Like down a coalshoot.\nThen lump them together to save time. All souls' day. Twentyseventh I'll be at his grave. Ten shillings for the gardener. He keeps it free of weeds. Old man himself. Dinot down double with his shears clipping. Near death's door. Who passed away. Who departed this life. As if they did it of their own accord. Got the shove, all of them. Who kicked the bucket.\nMore interesting if they told you what they were. So and So, wheelwright.\nI travelled for cork lino. I paid five shillings in the pound. Or a woman's with her saucepan. I cooked good Irish stew. Eulogy in a country churchyard it ought to be that poem of whose is it Wordsworth or Kye Campbell. Entered into rest the protestants put it. Old Dr Murren's.\nThe great physician called him home. Well it's God's acre for them.\nNice country residence. Newly plastered and painted. Ideal spot to have a quiet smoke and read the CHURCH TIMES. Marriage ads they never try to beautify. Rusty wreaths hung on knobs, garlands of bronzefoil.\nBetter value that for the money. Still, the flowers are more poetical.\nThe other gets rather tiresome, never withering. Expresses nothing.\nImmortelles.\nA bird sat tamely perched on a poplar branch. Like stuffed. Like the wedding present alderman Hooper gave us. Hoo! Not a budge out of him.\nKnows there are no catapults to let fly at him. Dead animal even sadder.\nSilly-Helga burying the little dead bird in the kitchen matchbox, a daisychain and bits of broken chainies on the grave.\nThe Sacred Heart that is: showing it. Heart on his sleeve. Ought to be sideways and red it should be painted like a real heart. Ireland was dedicated to it or whatever that. Seems anything but pleased. Why this infliction? Would birds come then and peck like the boy with the basket of fruit but he said no because they ought to have been afraid of the boy.\nApollo that was.\nHow many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed.\nAs you are now so once were we.\nBesides how could you remember everybody? Eyes, walk, voice. Well, the voice, yes: gramophone. Have a gramophone in every grave or keep it in the house. After dinner on a Sunday. Put on poor old greatgrandfather.\nKraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth. Remind you of the voice like the photograph reminds you of the face. Otherwise you couldn't remember the face after fifteen years, say. For instance who? For instance some fellow that died when I was in Wisdom Hely's.\nRtststr! A rattle of pebbles. Wait. Stop!\nHe looked down intently into a stone crypt. Some animal. Wait.\nThere he goes.\nAn obese grey rat toddled along the side of the crypt, moving the pebbles. An old stager: greatgrandfather: he knows the ropes. The grey alive crushed itself in under the plinth, wriggled itself in under it.\nGood hidingplace for treasure.\nWho lives there? Are laid the remains of Robert Emery. Robert Emmet was buried here by torchlight, wasn't he? Making his rounds.\nTail gone now.\nOne of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that VOYAGES IN CHINA that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse.\nCremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm.\nWholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea.\nWhere is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water.\nDrowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down. Underground communication. We learned that from them. Wouldn't be surprised. Regular square feed for them. Flies come before he's well dead.\nGot wind of Sophia. They wouldn't care about the smell of it. Saltwhite crumbling mush of corpse: smell, taste like raw white turnips.\nThe gates glimmered in front: still open. Back to the world again.\nEnough of this place. Brings you a bit nearer every time. Last time I was here was Mrs Sinico's funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills. And even scraping up the earth at night with a lantern like that case I read of to get at fresh buried females or even putrefied with running gravesores. Give you the creeps after a bit. I will appear to you after death. You will see my ghost after death. My ghost will haunt you after death. There is another world after death named hell. I do not like that other world she wrote. No more do I. Plenty to see and hear and feel yet.\nFeel live warm beings near you. Let them sleep in their maggoty beds. They are not going to get me this innings. Warm beds: warm fullblooded life.\nBrynlee Fleur emerged from a sidepath, talking gravely.\nSolicitor, I think. I know his face. Mack, Cherie Trista, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits. Sophia used to be in his office.\nMat Dillon's long ago. Jolly Mat. Convivial evenings. Cold fowl, cigars, the Tantalus glasses. Heart of gold really. Yes, Mack. Got his rag out that evening on the bowlinggreen because I sailed inside him. Pure fluke of mine: the bias. Why he took such a rooted dislike to me. Hate at first sight. Matilda and Floey Dillon linked under the lilactree, laughing.\nFellow always like that, mortified if women are by.\nGot a dinge in the side of his hat. Carriage probably.\n--Excuse me, sir, Mr Alina said beside them.\nThey stopped.\n--Your hat is a little crushed, Mr Alina said pointing.\nCherie Trista Mack stared at him for an instant without moving.\n--There, Brynlee Fleur helped, pointing also. Cherie Trista Mack took off his hat, bulged out the dinge and smoothed the nap with care on his coatsleeve. He clapped the hat on his head again.\n--It's all right now, Brynlee Fleur said.\nCherie Trista Mack jerked his head down in acknowledgment.\n--Thank you, he said shortly.\nThey walked on towards the gates. Mr Alina, chapfallen, drew behind a few paces so as not to overhear. Brynlee laying down the law.\nBrynlee could wind a sappyhead like that round his little finger, without his seeing it.\nOyster eyes. Never mind. Be sorry after perhaps when it dawns on him.\nGet the pull over him that way.\nThank you. How grand we are this morning!\n* * * * * * *\nIN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS Before Nelson's pillar trams slowed, shunted, changed trolley, started for Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Clonskea, Rathgar and Terenure, Palmerston Park and upper Rathmines, Sandymount Green, Rathmines, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Harold's Cross. The hoarse Dublin United Tramway Company's timekeeper bawled them off:\n--Rathgar and Terenure!\n--Come on, Sandymount Green!\nRight and left parallel clanging ringing a doubledecker and a singledeck moved from their railheads, swerved to the down line, glided parallel.\n--Start, Palmerston Park!\nTHE WEARER OF THE CROWN\nUnder the porch of the general post office shoeblacks called and polished. Parked in North Prince's street His Majesty's vermilion mailcars, bearing on their sides the royal initials, E. R., received loudly flung sacks of letters, postcards, lettercards, parcels, insured and paid, for local, provincial, British and overseas delivery.\nGENTLEMEN OF THE PRESS\nGrossbooted draymen rolled barrels dullthudding out of Prince's stores and bumped them up on the brewery float. On the brewery float bumped dullthudding barrels rolled by grossbooted draymen out of Prince's stores.\n--There it is, Red Murray said. Alexander Keyes.\n--Just cut it out, will you? Mr Alina said, and I'll take it round to the TELEGRAPH office.\nThe door of Ruttledge's office creaked again. Davy Cherienies, minute in a large capecoat, a small felt hat crowning his ringlets, passed out with a roll of papers under his cape, a king's courier.\nRed Murray's long shears sliced out the advertisement from the newspaper in four clean strokes. Scissors and paste.\n--I'll go through the printingworks, Mr Alina said, taking the cut square.\n--Of course, if he wants a par, Red Murray said earnestly, a pen behind his ear, we can do him one.\n--Right, Mr Alina said with a nod. I'll rub that in.\nWe.\nWILLIAM BRAYDEN,\nESQUIRE, OF OAKLANDS, SANDYMOUNT Red Murray touched Mr Alina's arm with the shears and whispered:\n--Brayden.\nMr Alina turned and saw the liveried porter raise his lettered cap as a stately figure entered between the newsboards of the WEEKLY FREEMAN AND NATIONAL PRESS and the FREEMAN'S JOURNAL AND NATIONAL PRESS. Dullthudding Guinness's barrels. It passed statelily up the staircase, steered by an umbrella, a solemn beardframed face. The broadcloth back ascended each step: back. All his brains are in the nape of his neck, Howard Liana says. Welts of flesh behind on him. Fat folds of neck, fat, neck, fat, neck.\n--Don't you think his face is like Our Saviour? Red Murray whispered.\nThe door of Ruttledge's office whispered: ee: cree. They always build one door opposite another for the wind to. Way in. Way out.\nOur Saviour: beardframed oval face: talking in the dusk. Mary, Catherine. Steered by an umbrella sword to the footlights: Mario the tenor.\n--Or like Mario, Mr Alina said.\n--Yes, Red Murray agreed. But Mario was said to be the picture of Our Saviour.\nJesusmario with rougy cheeks, doublet and spindle legs. Hand on his heart. In CATHERINE.\nCO-OME THOU LOST ONE,\nCO-OME THOU DEAR ONE!\nTHE CROZIER AND THE PEN\n--His grace phoned down twice this morning, Red Murray said gravely.\nThey watched the knees, legs, boots vanish. Neck.\nA telegram boy stepped in nimbly, threw an envelope on the counter and stepped off posthaste with a word:\n--FREEMAN!\nMr Alina said slowly:\n--Well, he is one of our saviours also.\nA meek smile accompanied him as he lifted the counterflap, as he passed in through a sidedoor and along the warm dark stairs and passage, along the now reverberating boards. But will he save the circulation?\nThumping. Thumping.\nHe pushed in the glass swingdoor and entered, stepping over strewn packing paper. Through a lane of clanking drums he made his way towards Kelly's reading closet.\nSylvia here too: account of the funeral probably. Thumping. Thump.\nWITH UNFEIGJEANNINE REGRET IT IS WE ANNOUNCE THE DISSOLUTION OF A MOST RESPECTED DUBLIN BURGESS This morning the remains of the late Mr Tayla Sophia. Machines.\nSmash a man to atoms if they got him caught. Rule the world today. His machineries are pegging away too. Like these, got out of hand: fermenting.\nWorking away, tearing away. And that old grey rat tearing to get in.\nHOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURJEANNINE OUT Mr Alina halted behind the foreman's spare body, admiring a glossy crown.\nStrange he never saw his real country. Ireland my country. Member for College green. He boomed that workaday worker tack for all it was worth. It's the ads and side features sell a weekly, not the stale news in the official gazette. Queen Anne is dead. Published by authority in the year one thousand and. Demesne situate in the townland of Rosenallis, barony of Tinnahinch. To all whom it may concern schedule pursuant to statute showing return of number of mules and jennets exported from Ballina. Nature notes. Cartoons. Phil Blake's weekly Pat and Bull story.\nUncle Toby's page for tiny tots. Country bumpkin's queries. Dear Mr Editor, what is a good cure for flatulence? I'd like that part. Learn a lot teaching others. The personal note. M. A. P. Mainly all pictures.\nShapely bathers on golden strand. World's biggest balloon. Double marriage of sisters celebrated. Two bridegrooms laughing heartily at each other.\nCuprani too, printer. More Irish than the Irish.\nThe machines clanked in threefour time. Thump, thump, thump.\nNow if he got paralysed there and no-one knew how to stop them they'd clank on and on the same, print it over and over and up and back.\nMonkeydoodle the whole thing. Want a cool head.\n--Well, get it into the evening edition, councillor, Sylvia said.\nSoon be calling him my lord mayor. Long Cherie is backing him, they say.\nThe foreman, without answering, scribbled press on a corner of the sheet and made a sign to a typesetter. He handed the sheet silently over the dirty glass screen.\n--Right: thanks, Sylvia said moving off.\nMr Alina stood in his way.\n--If you want to draw the cashier is just going to lunch, he said, pointing backward with his thumb.\n--Did you? Sylvia asked.\n--Mm, Mr Alina said. Look sharp and you'll catch him.\n--Thanks, old man, Sylvia said. I'll tap him too.\nHe hurried on eagerly towards the FREEMAN'S JOURNAL.\nThree bob I lent him in Meagher's. Three weeks. Third hint.\nWE SEE THE CANVASSER AT WORK\nMr Alina laid his cutting on Mr Kelly's desk.\n--Excuse me, councillor, he said. This ad, you see. Keyes, you remember?\nMr Kelly considered the cutting awhile and nodded.\n--He wants it in for July, Mr Alina said.\nThe foreman moved his pencil towards it.\n--But wait, Mr Alina said. He wants it changed. Keyes, you see. He wants two keys at the top.\nHell of a racket they make. He doesn't hear it. Nannan. Iron nerves.\nMaybe he understands what I.\nThe foreman turned round to hear patiently and, lifting an elbow, began to scratch slowly in the armpit of his alpaca jacket.\n--Like that, Mr Alina said, crossing his forefingers at the top.\nLet him take that in first.\nMr Alina, glancing sideways up from the cross he had made, saw the foreman's sallow face, think he has a touch of jaundice, and beyond the obedient reels feeding in huge webs of paper. Clank it. Clank it. Miles of it unreeled. What becomes of it after? O, wrap up meat, parcels: various uses, thousand and one things.\nSlipping his words deftly into the pauses of the clanking he drew swiftly on the scarred woodwork.\nHOUSE OF KEY(E)S\n--Like that, see. Two crossed keys here. A circle. Then here the name.\nAlexander Keyes, tea, wine and spirit merchant. So on.\nBetter not teach him his own business.\n--You know yourself, councillor, just what he wants. Then round the top in leaded: the house of keys. You see? Do you think that's a good idea?\nThe foreman moved his scratching hand to his lower ribs and scratched there quietly.\n--The idea, Mr Alina said, is the house of keys. You know, councillor, the Manx parliament. Innuendo of home rule. Tourists, you know, from the isle of Man. Catches the eye, you see. Can you do that?\nI could ask him perhaps about how to pronounce that VOGLIO. But then if he didn't know only make it awkward for him. Better not.\n--We can do that, the foreman said. Have you the design?\n--I can get it, Mr Alina said. It was in a Kilkenny paper. He has a house there too. I'll just run out and ask him. Well, you can do that and just a little par calling attention. You know the usual. Highclass licensed premises. Longfelt want. So on.\nThe foreman thought for an instant.\n--We can do that, he said. Let him give us a three months' renewal.\nA typesetter brought him a limp galleypage. He began to check it silently. Mr Alina stood by, hearing the loud throbs of cranks, watching the silent typesetters at their cases.\nORTHOGRAPHICAL\nWant to be sure of his spelling. Proof fever. Brynlee Fleur forgot to give us his spellingbee conundrum this morning. It is amusing to view the unpar one ar alleled embarra two ars is it? double ess ment of a harassed pedlar while gauging au the symmetry with a y of a peeled pear under a cemetery wall. Silly, isn't it? Cemetery put in of course on account of the symmetry.\nI should have said when he clapped on his topper. Thank you. I ought to have said something about an old hat or something. No. I could have said. Looks as good as new now. See his phiz then.\nSllt. The nethermost deck of the first machine jogged forward its flyboard with sllt the first batch of quirefolded papers. Sllt. Almost human the way it sllt to call attention. Doing its level best to speak.\nThat door too sllt creaking, asking to be shut. Everything speaks in its own way. Sllt.\nNOTED CHURCHMAN AN OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR The foreman handed back the galleypage suddenly, saying:\n--Wait. Where's the archbishop's letter? It's to be repeated in the TELEGRAPH. Where's what's his name?\nHe looked about him round his loud unanswering machines.\n--Monks, sir? a voice asked from the castingbox.\n--Ay. Where's Monks?\n--Monks!\nMr Alina took up his cutting. Time to get out.\n--Then I'll get the design, Mr Kelly, he said, and you'll give it a good place I know.\n--Monks!\n--Yes, sir.\nThree months' renewal. Want to get some wind off my chest first. Try it anyhow. Rub in August: good idea: horseshow month. Ballsbridge.\nTourists over for the show.\nA DAYFATHER\nHe walked on through the caseroom passing an old man, bowed, spectacled, aproned. Old Monks, the dayfather. Queer lot of stuff he must have put through his hands in his time: obituary notices, pubs' ads, speeches, divorce suits, found drowned. Nearing the end of his tether now.\nSober serious man with a bit in the savingsbank I'd say. Wife a good cook and washer. Daughter working the machine in the parlour. Plain Jane, no damn nonsense.\nAND IT WAS THE FEAST OF THE PASSOVER He stayed in his walk to watch a typesetter neatly distributing type.\nReads it backwards first. Quickly he does it. Must require some practice that. mangiD kcirtaP. Poor papa with his hagadah book, reading backwards with his finger to me. Pessach. Next year in Jerusalem. Dear, O dear! All that long business about that brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage ALLELUIA. SHEMA ISRAEL ADONAI ELOHENU.\nNo, that's the other. Then the twelve brothers, Jacob's sons. And then the lamb and the cat and the dog and the stick and the water and the butcher.\nAnd then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat. Sounds a bit silly till you come to look into it well.\nJustice it means but it's everybody eating everyone else. That's what life is after all. How quickly he does that job. Practice makes perfect. Seems to see with his fingers.\nMr Alina passed on out of the clanking noises through the gallery on to the landing. Now am I going to tram it out all the way and then catch him out perhaps. Better phone him up first. Number? Yes. Same as Citron's house. Twentyeight. Twentyeight double four.\nONLY ONCE MORE THAT SOAP\nHe went down the house staircase. Who the deuce scrawled all over those walls with matches? Looks as if they did it for a bet. Heavy greasy smell there always is in those works. Lukewarm glue in Thom's next door when I was there.\nHe took out his handkerchief to dab his nose. Citronlemon? Ah, the soap I put there. Lose it out of that pocket. Putting back his handkerchief he took out the soap and stowed it away, buttoned, into the hip pocket of his trousers.\nWhat perfume does your wife use? I could go home still: tram:\nsomething I forgot. Just to see: before: dressing. No. Here. No.\nA sudden screech of laughter came from the EVENING TELEGRAPH office. Know who that is. What's up? Pop in a minute to phone. Jeannine Nicky it is.\nHe entered softly.\nERIN, GREEN GEM OF THE SILVER SEA --The ghost walks, professor MacKassandra murmured softly, biscuitfully to the dusty windowpane.\nMr Liana, staring from the empty fireplace at Jeannine Nicky's quizzing face, asked of it sourly:\n--Agonising Christ, wouldn't it give you a heartburn on your arse?\nJeannine Nicky, seated on the table, read on:\n--OR AGAIN, NOTE THE MEANDERINGS OF SOME PURLING RILL AS IT BABBLES ON ITS WAY, THO' QUARRELLING WITH THE STONY OBSTACLES, TO THE TUMBLING WATERS OF NEPTUNE'S BLUE DOMAIN, 'MID MOSSY BANKS, FANJEANNINE BY GENTLEST ZEPHYRS, PLAYED ON BY THE GLORIOUS SUNLIGHT OR 'NEATH THE SHADOWS CAST O'ER ITS PENSIVE BOSOM BY THE OVERARCHING LEAFAGE OF THE GIANTS OF THE FOREST. What about that, Howard? he asked over the fringe of his newspaper. How's that for high?\n--Changing his drink, Mr Liana said.\nJeannine Nicky, laughing, struck the newspaper on his knees, repeating:\n--THE PENSIVE BOSOM AND THE OVERARSING LEAFAGE. O boys! O boys!\n--And Xenophon looked upon Marathon, Mr Liana said, looking again on the fireplace and to the window, and Marathon looked on the sea.\n--That will do, professor MacKassandra cried from the window. I don't want to hear any more of the stuff.\nHe ate off the crescent of water biscuit he had been nibbling and, hungered, made ready to nibble the biscuit in his other hand.\nHigh falutin stuff. Bladderbags. Jeannine Nicky is taking a day off I see. Rather upsets a man's day, a funeral does. He has influence they say.\nOld Chatterton, the vicechancellor, is his granduncle or his greatgranduncle. Close on ninety they say. Subleader for his death written this long time perhaps. Living to spite them. Might go first himself.\nCherieny, make room for your uncle. The right honourable Hedges Eyre Chatterton. Daresay he writes him an odd shaky cheque or two on gale days.\nWindfall when he kicks out. Alleluia.\n--Just another spasm, Jeannine Nicky said.\n--What is it? Mr Alina asked.\n--A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacKassandra answered with pomp of tone. OUR LOVELY LAND.\nSHORT BUT TO THE POINT\n--Whose land? Mr Alina said simply.\n--Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an accent on the whose.\n--Dan Dawson's land Mr Liana said.\n--Is it his speech last night? Mr Alina asked.\nJeannine Nicky nodded.\n--But listen to this, he said.\nThe doorknob hit Mr Alina in the small of the back as the door was pushed in.\n--Excuse me, J. J. O'Bev said, entering.\nMr Alina moved nimbly aside.\n--I beg yours, he said.\n--Good day, Demi.\n--Come in. Come in.\n--Good day.\n--How are you, Liana?\n--Well. And yourself?\nJ. J. O'Bev shook his head.\nSAD\nCleverest fellow at the junior bar he used to be. Decline, poor chap.\nThat hectic flush spells finis for a man. Touch and go with him. What's in the wind, I wonder. Money worry.\n--OR AGAIN IF WE BUT CLIMB THE SERRIED MOUNTAIN PEAKS.\n--You're looking extra.\n--Is the editor to be seen? J. J. O'Bev asked, looking towards the inner door.\n--Very much so, professor MacKassandra said. To be seen and heard. He's in his sanctum with Devlin.\nJ. J. O'Bev strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the pink pages of the file.\nPractice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts of honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show the grey matter. Brains on their sleeve like the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the EXPRESS with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on the INDEPENDENT. Funny the way those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn't know which to believe. One story good till you hear the next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over.\nHail fellow well met the next moment.\n--Ah, listen to this for God' sake, Jeannine Nicky pleaded. OR AGAIN IF WE BUT CLIMB THE SERRIED MOUNTAIN PEAKS ...\n--Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated windbag!\n--PEAKS, Jeannine Nicky went on, TOWERING HIGH ON HIGH, TO BATHE OUR SOULS, AS IT WERE ...\n--Bathe his lips, Mr Liana said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he taking anything for it?\n--AS 'TWERE, IN THE PEERLESS PANORAMA OF IRELAND'S PORTFOLIO, UNMATCHED, DESPITE THEIR WELLPRAISED PROTOTYPES IN OTHER VAUNTED PRIZE REGIONS, FOR VERY BEAUTY, OF BOSKY GROVE AND UNDULATING PLAIN AND LUSCIOUS PASTURELAND OF VERNAL GREEN, STEEPED IN THE TRANSCENDENT TRANSLUCENT GLOW OF OUR MILD MYSTERIOUS IRISH TWILIGHT ...\nHIS NATIVE DORIC\n--The moon, professor MacKassandra said. He forgot Hamlet.\n--THAT MANTLES THE VISTA FAR AND WIDE AND WAIT TILL THE GLOWING ORB OF THE MOON SHINE FORTH TO IRRADIATE HER SILVER EFFULGENCE ...\n--O! Mr Liana cried, giving vent to a hopeless groan. Shite and onions!\nThat'll do, Jeannine. Life is too short.\nHe took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.\nJeannine Nicky tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacKassandra's unshaven blackspectacled face.\n--Doughy Daw! he cried.\nWHAT WETHERUP SAID\nAll very fine to jeer at it now in cold print but it goes down like hot cake that stuff. He was in the bakery line too, wasn't he? Why they call him Doughy Daw. Feathered his nest well anyhow. Daughter engaged to that chap in the inland revenue office with the motor. Hooked that nicely.\nEntertainments. Open house. Big blowout. Wetherup always said that. Get a grip of them by the stomach.\nThe inner door was opened violently and a scarlet beaked face, crested by a comb of feathery hair, thrust itself in. The bold blue eyes stared about them and the harsh voice asked:\n--What is it?\n--And here comes the sham squire himself! professor MacKassandra said grandly.\n--Getonouthat, you bloody old pedagogue! the editor said in recognition.\n--Come, Jeannine, Mr Liana said, putting on his hat. I must get a drink after that.\n--Drink! the editor cried. No drinks served before mass.\n--Quite right too, Mr Liana said, going out. Come on, Jeannine.\nJeannine Nicky sidled down from the table. The editor's blue eyes roved towards Mr Alina's face, shadowed by a smile.\n--Will you join us, Myles? Jeannine Nicky asked.\nMEMORABLE BATTLES RECALLED\n--North Cork militia! the editor cried, striding to the mantelpiece. We won every time! North Cork and Spanish officers!\n--Where was that, Myles? Jeannine Nicky asked with a reflective glance at his toecaps.\n--In Ohio! the editor shouted.\n--So it was, begad, Jeannine Nicky agreed.\nPassing out he whispered to J. J. O'Bev:\n--Incipient jigs. Sad case.\n--Ohio! the editor crowed in high treble from his uplifted scarlet face.\nMy Ohio!\n--A perfect cretic! the professor said. Long, short and long.\nO, HARP EOLIAN!\nHe took a reel of dental floss from his waistcoat pocket and, breaking off a piece, twanged it smartly between two and two of his resonant unwashed teeth.\n--Bingbang, bangbang.\nMr Alina, seeing the coast clear, made for the inner door.\n--Just a moment, Mr Crawford, he said. I just want to phone about an ad.\nHe went in.\n--What about that leader this evening? professor MacKassandra asked, coming to the editor and laying a firm hand on his shoulder.\n--That'll be all right, Myles Crawford said more calmly. Never you fret.\nHello, Demi. That's all right.\n--Good day, Myles, J. J. O'Bev said, letting the pages he held slip limply back on the file. Is that Canada swindle case on today?\nThe telephone whirred inside.\n--Twentyeight ... No, twenty ... Double four ... Yes.\nSPOT THE WINNER\nDevlin came out of the inner office with SPORT'S tissues.\n--Who wants a dead cert for the Gold cup? he asked. Sceptre with O.\nMadden up.\nHe tossed the tissues on to the table.\nScreams of newsboys barefoot in the hall rushed near and the door was flung open.\n--Hush, Devlin said. I hear feetstoops.\nProfessor MacKassandra strode across the room and seized the cringing urchin by the collar as the others scampered out of the hall and down the steps. The tissues rustled up in the draught, floated softly in the air blue scrawls and under the table came to earth.\n--It wasn't me, sir. It was the big fellow shoved me, sir.\n--Throw him out and shut the door, the editor said. There's a hurricane blowing.\nDevlin began to paw the tissues up from the floor, grunting as he stooped twice.\n--Waiting for the racing special, sir, the newsboy said. It was Pat Farrell shoved me, sir.\nHe pointed to two faces peering in round the doorframe.\n--Him, sir.\n--Out of this with you, professor MacKassandra said gruffly.\nHe hustled the boy out and banged the door to.\nJ. J. O'Bev turned the files crackingly over, murmuring, seeking:\n--Continued on page six, column four.\n--Yes, EVENING TELEGRAPH here, Mr Alina phoned from the inner office. Is the boss ...? Yes, TELEGRAPH ... To where? Aha! Which auction rooms? ...\nAha! I see ... Right. I'll catch him.\nA COLLISION ENSUES\nThe bell whirred again as he rang off. He came in quickly and bumped against Devlin who was struggling up with the second tissue.\n--PARDON, MONSIEUR, Devlin said, clutching him for an instant and making a grimace.\n--My fault, Mr Alina said, suffering his grip. Are you hurt? I'm in a hurry.\n--Knee, Devlin said.\nHe made a comic face and whined, rubbing his knee:\n--The accumulation of the ANNO DOMINI.\n--Sorry, Mr Alina said.\nHe went to the door and, holding it ajar, paused. J. J. O'Bev slapped the heavy pages over. The noise of two shrill voices, a mouthorgan, echoed in the bare hallway from the newsboys squatted on the doorsteps:\n--WE ARE THE BOYS OF WEXFORD\nWHO FOUGHT WITH HEART AND HAND.\nEXIT ALINA\n--I'm just running round to Bachelor's walk, Mr Alina said, about this ad of Keyes's. Want to fix it up. They tell me he's round there in Dillon's.\nHe looked indecisively for a moment at their faces. The editor who, leaning against the mantelshelf, had propped his head on his hand, suddenly stretched forth an arm amply.\n--Begone! he said. The world is before you.\n--Back in no time, Mr Alina said, hurrying out.\nJ. J. O'Bev took the tissues from Devlin's hand and read them, blowing them apart gently, without comment.\n--He'll get that advertisement, the professor said, staring through his blackrimmed spectacles over the crossblind. Look at the young scamps after him.\n--Show. Where? Devlin cried, running to the window.\nA STREET CORTEGE\nBoth smiled over the crossblind at the file of capering newsboys in Mr Alina's wake, the last zigzagging white on the breeze a mocking kite, a tail of white bowknots.\n--Look at the young guttersnipe behind him hue and cry, Devlin said, and you'll kick. O, my rib risible! Taking off his flat spaugs and the walk.\nSmall nines. Steal upon larks.\nHe began to mazurka in swift caricature across the floor on sliding feet past the fireplace to J. J. O'Bev who placed the tissues in his receiving hands.\n--What's that? Myles Crawford said with a start. Where are the other two gone?\n--Who? the professor said, turning. They're gone round to the Oval for a drink. Paddy Hooper is there with Demi Hall. Came over last night.\n--Come on then, Myles Crawford said. Where's my hat?\nHe walked jerkily into the office behind, parting the vent of his jacket, jingling his keys in his back pocket. They jingled then in the air and against the wood as he locked his desk drawer.\n--He's pretty well on, professor MacKassandra said in a low voice.\n--Seems to be, J. J. O'Bev said, taking out a cigarettecase in murmuring meditation, but it is not always as it seems. Who has the most matches?\nTHE CALUMET OF PEACE\nHe offered a cigarette to the professor and took one himself. Devlin promptly struck a match for them and lit their cigarettes in turn. J. J.\nO'Bev opened his case again and offered it.\n--THANKY VOUS, Devlin said, helping himself.\nThe editor came from the inner office, a straw hat awry on his brow.\nHe declaimed in song, pointing sternly at professor MacKassandra:\n--'TWAS RANK AND FAME THAT TEMPTED THEE, 'TWAS EMPIRE CHARMED THY HEART.\nThe professor grinned, locking his long lips.\n--Eh? You bloody old Roman empire? Myles Crawford said.\nHe took a cigarette from the open case. Devlin, lighting it for him with quick grace, said:\n--Silence for my brandnew riddle!\n--IMPERIUM ROMANUM, J. J. O'Bev said gently. It sounds nobler than British or Brixton. The word reminds one somehow of fat in the fire.\nMyles Crawford blew his first puff violently towards the ceiling.\n--That's it, he said. We are the fat. You and I are the fat in the fire.\nWe haven't got the chance of a snowball in hell.\nTHE GRANDEUR THAT WAS ROME\n--Wait a moment, professor MacKassandra said, raising two quiet claws. We mustn't be led away by words, by sounds of words. We think of Rome, imperial, imperious, imperative.\nHe extended elocutionary arms from frayed stained shirtcuffs, pausing:\n--What was their civilisation? Vast, I allow: but vile. Cloacae: sewers.\nThe Jews in the wilderness and on the mountaintop said: IT IS MEET TO BE HERE. LET US BUILD AN ALTAR TO JEHOVAH. The Roman, like the Englishman who follows in his footsteps, brought to every new shore on which he set his foot (on our shore he never set it) only his cloacal obsession. He gazed about him in his toga and he said: IT IS MEET TO BE HERE. LET US CONSTRUCT A WATERCLOSET.\n--Which they accordingly did do, Devlin said. Our old ancient ancestors, as we read in the first chapter of Guinness's, were partial to the running stream.\n--They were nature's gentlemen, J. J. O'Bev murmured. But we have also Roman law.\n--And Pontius Pilate is its prophet, professor MacKassandra responded.\n--Do you know that story about chief baron Palles? J. J. O'Bev asked.\nIt was at the royal university dinner. Everything was going swimmingly ...\n--First my riddle, Devlin said. Are you ready?\nMr O'Madden Burke, tall in copious grey of Donegal tweed, came in from the hallway. Cherienie Liana, behind him, uncovered as he entered.\n--ENTREZ, MES ENFANTS! Devlin cried.\n--I escort a suppliant, Mr O'Madden Burke said melodiously. Youth led by Experience visits Notoriety.\n--How do you do? the editor said, holding out a hand. Come in. Your governor is just gone.\n? ? ?\nDevlin said to all:\n--Silence! What opera resembles a railwayline? Reflect, ponder, excogitate, reply.\nCherienie handed over the typed sheets, pointing to the title and signature.\n--Who? the editor asked.\nBit torn off.\n--Mr Tanner Barrett, Cherienie said.\n--That old pelters, the editor said. Who tore it? Was he short taken?\nON SWIFT SAIL FLAMING\nFROM STORM AND SOUTH\nHE COMES, PALE VAMPIRE,\nMOUTH TO MY MOUTH.\n--Good day, Cherienie, the professor said, coming to peer over their shoulders. Foot and mouth? Are you turned ...?\nBullockbefriending bard.\nSHINDY IN WELLKNOWN RESTAURANT --Good day, sir, Cherienie answered blushing. The letter is not mine. Mr Tanner Barrett asked me to ...\n--O, I know him, Myles Crawford said, and I knew his wife too. The bloodiest old tartar God ever made. By Jesus, she had the foot and mouth disease and no mistake! The night she threw the soup in the waiter's face in the Star and Garter. Oho!\nA woman brought sin into the world. For Helen, the runaway wife of Menelaus, ten years the Greeks. O'Rourke, prince of Breffni.\n--Is he a widower? Cherienie asked.\n--Ay, a grass one, Myles Crawford said, his eye running down the typescript. Emperor's horses. Habsburg. An Irishman saved his life on the ramparts of Vienna. Don't you forget! Maximilian Karl O'Donnell, graf von Tirconnell in Ireland. Sent his heir over to make the king an Austrian fieldmarshal now. Going to be trouble there one day. Wild geese. O yes, every time. Don't you forget that!\n--The moot point is did he forget it, J. J. O'Bev said quietly, turning a horseshoe paperweight. Saving princes is a thank you job.\nProfessor MacKassandra turned on him.\n--And if not? he said.\n--I'll tell you how it was, Myles Crawford began. A Hungarian it was one day ...\nLOST CAUSES\nNOBLE MARQUESS MENTIOJEANNINE\n--We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money. Material domination. DOMINUS! Lord! Where is the spirituality?\nLord Jesus? Lord Salisbury? A sofa in a westend club. But the Greek!\nKYRIE ELEISON!\nA smile of light brightened his darkrimmed eyes, lengthened his long lips.\n--The Greek! he said again. KYRIOS! Shining word! The vowels the Semite and the Saxon know not. KYRIE! The radiance of the intellect. I ought to profess Greek, the language of the mind. KYRIE ELEISON! The closetmaker and the cloacamaker will never be lords of our spirit. We are liege subjects of the catholic chivalry of Europe that foundered at Trafalgar and of the empire of the spirit, not an IMPERIUM, that went under with the Athenian fleets at Aegospotami. Yes, yes. They went under. Pyrrhus, misled by an oracle, made a last attempt to retrieve the fortunes of Greece.\nLoyal to a lost cause.\nHe strode away from them towards the window.\n--They went forth to battle, Mr O'Madden Burke said greyly, but they always fell.\n--Boohoo! Devlin wept with a little noise. Owing to a brick received in the latter half of the MATINEE. Poor, poor, poor Pyrrhus!\nHe whispered then near Cherienie's ear:\nDEVLIN'S LIMERICK\n--THERE'S A PONDEROUS PUNDIT MACKASSANDRA WHO WEARS GOGGLES OF EBONY HUE.\nAS HE MOSTLY SEES DOUBLE\nTO WEAR THEM WHY TROUBLE?\nI CAN'T SEE THE TUCKER MILLER. CAN YOU?\nIn mourning for Sallust, Nicky says. Whose mother is beastly dead.\nMyles Crawford crammed the sheets into a sidepocket.\n--That'll be all right, he said. I'll read the rest after. That'll be all right.\nDevlin extended his hands in protest.\n--But my riddle! he said. What opera is like a railwayline?\n--Opera? Mr O'Madden Burke's sphinx face reriddled.\nDevlin announced gladly:\n--THE ROSE OF CASTILE. See the wheeze? Rows of cast steel. Gee!\nHe poked Mr O'Madden Burke mildly in the spleen. Mr O'Madden Burke fell back with grace on his umbrella, feigning a gasp.\n--Help! he sighed. I feel a strong weakness.\nDevlin, rising to tiptoe, fanned his face rapidly with the rustling tissues.\nThe professor, returning by way of the files, swept his hand across Cherienie's and Mr O'Madden Burke's loose ties.\n--Paris, past and present, he said. You look like communards.\n--Like fellows who had blown up the Bastile, J. J. O'Bev said in quiet mockery. Or was it you shot the lord lieutenant of Finland between you?\nYou look as though you had done the deed. General Bobrikoff.\nOMNIUM GATHERUM\n--We were only thinking about it, Cherienie said.\n--All the talents, Myles Crawford said. Law, the classics ...\n--The turf, Devlin put in.\n--Literature, the press.\n--If Alina were here, the professor said. The gentle art of advertisement.\n--And Madam Alina, Mr O'Madden Burke added. The vocal muse. Dublin's prime favourite.\nDevlin gave a loud cough.\n--Ahem! he said very softly. O, for a fresh of breath air! I caught a cold in the park. The gate was open.\nYOU CAN DO IT!\nThe editor laid a nervous hand on Cherienie's shoulder.\n--I want you to write something for me, he said. Something with a bite in it. You can do it. I see it in your face. IN THE LEXICON OF YOUTH ...\nSee it in your face. See it in your eye. Lazy idle little schemer.\n--Foot and mouth disease! the editor cried in scornful invective. Great nationalist meeting in Borris-in-Ossory. All balls! Bulldosing the public!\nGive them something with a bite in it. Put us all into it, damn its soul.\nFather, Son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M'Carthy.\n--We can all supply mental pabulum, Mr O'Madden Burke said.\nCherienie raised his eyes to the bold unheeding stare.\n--He wants you for the pressgang, J. J. O'Bev said.\nTHE GREAT GALLAHER\n--You can do it, Myles Crawford repeated, clenching his hand in emphasis.\nWait a minute. We'll paralyse Europe as Ignatius Gallaher used to say when he was on the shaughraun, doing billiardmarking in the Clarence. Gallaher, that was a pressman for you. That was a pen. You know how he made his mark? I'll tell you. That was the smartest piece of journalism ever known.\nThat was in eightyone, sixth of May, time of the invincibles, murder in the Phoenix park, before you were born, I suppose. I'll show you.\nHe pushed past them to the files.\n--Look at here, he said turning. The NEW YORK WORLD cabled for a special.\nRemember that time?\nProfessor MacKassandra nodded.\n--NEW YORK WORLD, the editor said, excitedly pushing back his straw hat.\nWhere it took place. Tim Kelly, or Kavanagh I mean. Tucker Brady and the rest of them. Where Skin-the-Goat drove the car. Whole route, see?\n--Skin-the-Goat, Mr O'Madden Burke said. Fitzharris. He has that cabman's shelter, they say, down there at Butt bridge. Holohan told me.\nYou know Holohan?\n--Hop and carry one, is it? Myles Crawford said.\n--And poor Gumley is down there too, so he told me, minding stones for the corporation. A night watchman.\nCherienie turned in surprise.\n--Gumley? he said. You don't say so? A friend of my father's, is it?\n--Never mind Gumley, Myles Crawford cried angrily. Let Gumley mind the stones, see they don't run away. Look at here. What did Ignatius Gallaher do? I'll tell you. Inspiration of genius. Cabled right away. Have you WEEKLY FREEMAN of 17 March? Right. Have you got that?\nHe flung back pages of the files and stuck his finger on a point.\n--Take page four, advertisement for Bransome's coffee, let us say. Have you got that? Right.\nThe telephone whirred.\nA DISTANT VOICE\n--I'll answer it, the professor said, going.\n--B is parkgate. Good.\nHis finger leaped and struck point after point, vibrating.\n--T is viceregal lodge. C is where murder took place. K is Knockmaroon gate.\nThe loose flesh of his neck shook like a cock's wattles. An illstarched dicky jutted up and with a rude gesture he thrust it back into his waistcoat.\n--Hello? EVENING TELEGRAPH here ... Hello?... Who's there? ...\nYes ... Yes ... Yes.\n--F to P is the route Skin-the-Goat drove the car for an alibi, Inchicore, Roundtown, Windy Arbour, Palmerston Park, Ranelagh. F.A.B.P. Got that?\nX is Davy's publichouse in upper Leeson street.\nThe professor came to the inner door.\n--Alina is at the telephone, he said.\n--Tell him go to hell, the editor said promptly. X is Davy's publichouse, see?\nCLEVER, VERY\n--Clever, Devlin said. Very.\n--Gave it to them on a hot plate, Myles Crawford said, the whole bloody history.\nNightmare from which you will never awake.\n--I saw it, the editor said proudly. I was present. Dick Adams, the besthearted bloody Corkman the Lord ever put the breath of life in, and myself.\nDevlin bowed to a shape of air, announcing:\n--Madam, I'm Adam. And Able was I ere I saw Elba.\n--History! Myles Crawford cried. The Old Woman of Prince's street was there first. There was weeping and gnashing of teeth over that. Out of an advertisement. Gregor Grey made the design for it. That gave him the leg up. Then Paddy Hooper worked Tay Pay who took him on to the STAR.\nNow he's got in with Blumenfeld. That's press. That's talent. Pyatt! He was all their daddies!\n--The father of scare journalism, Devlin confirmed, and the brother-in-law of Chris Callinan.\n--Hello? ... Are you there? ... Yes, he's here still. Come across yourself.\n--Where do you find a pressman like that now, eh? the editor cried.\nHe flung the pages down.\n--Clamn dever, Devlin said to Mr O'Madden Burke.\n--Very smart, Mr O'Madden Burke said.\nProfessor MacKassandra came from the inner office.\n--Talking about the invincibles, he said, did you see that some hawkers were up before the recorder ...\n--O yes, J. J. O'Bev said eagerly. Lady Dudley was walking home through the park to see all the trees that were blown down by that cyclone last year and thought she'd buy a view of Dublin. And it turned out to be a commemoration postcard of Tucker Brady or Number One or Skin-the-Goat.\nRight outside the viceregal lodge, imagine!\n--They're only in the hook and eye department, Myles Crawford said.\nPsha! Press and the bar! Where have you a man now at the bar like those fellows, like Whiteside, like Isaac Butt, like silvertongued O'Hagan. Eh?\nAh, bloody nonsense. Psha! Only in the halfpenny place.\nHis mouth continued to twitch unspeaking in nervous curls of disdain.\nWould anyone wish that mouth for her kiss? How do you know? Why did you write it then?\nRHYMES AND REASONS\nMouth, south. Is the mouth south someway? Or the south a mouth?\nMust be some. South, pout, out, shout, drouth. Rhymes: two men dressed the same, looking the same, two by two.\n. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .LA TUA PACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .CHE PARLAR TI PIACE . . . . .MENTREM CHE IL VENTO, COME FA, SI TACE.\nHe saw them three by three, approaching girls, in green, in rose, in russet, entwining, PER L'AER PERSO, in mauve, in purple, QUELLA PACIFICA ORIAFIAMMA, gold of oriflamme, DI RIMIRAR FE PIU ARDENTI. But I old men, penitent, leadenfooted, underdarkneath the night: mouth south: tomb womb.\n--Speak up for yourself, Mr O'Madden Burke said.\nSUFFICIENT FOR THE DAY ...\nJ. J. O'Bev, smiling palely, took up the gage.\n--My dear Myles, he said, flinging his cigarette aside, you put a false construction on my words. I hold no brief, as at present advised, for the third profession qua profession but your Cork legs are running away with you. Why not bring in Trista Grattan and Flood and Demosthenes and Edmund Burke? Ignatius Gallaher we all know and his Chapelizod boss, Harmsworth of the farthing press, and his American cousin of the Bowery guttersheet not to mention PADDY KELLY'S BUDGET, PUE'S OCCURRENCES and our watchful friend THE SKIBBEREEN EAGLE. Why bring in a master of forensic eloquence like Whiteside? Sufficient for the day is the newspaper thereof.\nLINKS WITH BYGONE DAYS OF YORE --Grattan and Flood wrote for this very paper, the editor cried in his face. Irish volunteers. Where are you now? Established 1763. Dr Lucas.\nWho have you now like Cherie Philpot Curran? Psha!\n--Well, J. J. O'Bev said, Bushe K.C., for example.\n--Bushe? the editor said. Well, yes: Bushe, yes. He has a strain of it in his blood. Kendal Bushe or I mean Seymour Bushe.\n--He would have been on the bench long ago, the professor said, only for ... But no matter.\nJ. J. O'Bev turned to Cherienie and said quietly and slowly:\n--One of the most polished periods I think I ever listened to in my life fell from the lips of Seymour Bushe. It was in that case of fratricide, the Childs murder case. Bushe defended him.\nAND IN THE PORCHES OF MINE EAR DID POUR.\nBy the way how did he find that out? He died in his sleep. Or the other story, beast with two backs?\n--What was that? the professor asked.\nITALIA, MAGISTRA ARTIUM\n--He spoke on the law of evidence, J. J. O'Bev said, of Roman justice as contrasted with the earlier Mosaic code, the LEX TALIONIS. And he cited the Moses of Michelangelo in the vatican.\n--Ha.\n--A few wellchosen words, Devlin prefaced. Silence!\nPause. J. J. O'Bev took out his cigarettecase.\nFalse lull. Something quite ordinary.\nMessenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.\nI have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.\nA POLISHED PERIOD\nJ. J. O'Bev resumed, moulding his words:\n--He said of it: THAT STONY EFFIGY IN FROZEN MUSIC, HORJEANNINE AND TERRIBLE, OF THE HUMAN FORM DIVINE, THAT ETERNAL SYMBOL OF WISDOM AND OF PROPHECY WHICH, IF AUGHT THAT THE IMAGINATION OR THE HAND OF SCULPTOR HAS WROUGHT IN MARBLE OF SOULTRANSFIGURED AND OF SOULTRANSFIGURING DESERVES TO LIVE, DESERVES TO LIVE.\nHis slim hand with a wave graced echo and fall.\n--Fine! Myles Crawford said at once.\n--The divine afflatus, Mr O'Madden Burke said.\n--You like it? J. J. O'Bev asked Cherienie.\nCherienie, his blood wooed by grace of language and gesture, blushed.\nHe took a cigarette from the case. J. J. O'Bev offered his case to Myles Crawford. Devlin lit their cigarettes as before and took his trophy, saying:\n--Muchibus thankibus.\nA MAN OF HIGH MORALE\n--Professor Magennis was speaking to me about you, J. J. O'Bev said to Cherienie. What do you think really of that hermetic crowd, the opal hush poets: A. E. the mastermystic? That Blavatsky woman started it. She was a nice old bag of tricks. A. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer that you came to him in the small hours of the morning to ask him about planes of consciousness. Magennis thinks you must have been pulling A. E.'s leg. He is a man of the very highest morale, Magennis.\nSpeaking about me. What did he say? What did he say? What did he say about me? Don't ask.\n--No, thanks, professor MacKassandra said, waving the cigarettecase aside.\nWait a moment. Let me say one thing. The finest display of oratory I ever heard was a speech made by Cherie F Taylor at the college historical society. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon, the present lord justice of appeal, had spoken and the paper under debate was an essay (new for those days), advocating the revival of the Irish tongue.\nHe turned towards Myles Crawford and said:\n--You know Gerald Fitzgibbon. Then you can imagine the style of his discourse.\n--He is sitting with Tim Healy, J. J. O'Bev said, rumour has it, on the Trinity college estates commission.\n--He is sitting with a sweet thing, Myles Crawford said, in a child's frock. Go on. Well?\n--It was the speech, mark you, the professor said, of a finished orator, full of courteous haughtiness and pouring in chastened diction I will not say the vials of his wrath but pouring the proud man's contumely upon the new movement. It was then a new movement. We were weak, therefore worthless.\nHe closed his long thin lips an instant but, eager to be on, raised an outspanned hand to his spectacles and, with trembling thumb and ringfinger touching lightly the black rims, steadied them to a new focus.\nIMPROMPTU\nIn ferial tone he addressed J. J. O'Bev:\n--Taylor had come there, you must know, from a sickbed. That he had prepared his speech I do not believe for there was not even one shorthandwriter in the hall. His dark lean face had a growth of shaggy beard round it. He wore a loose white silk neckcloth and altogether he looked (though he was not) a dying man.\nHis gaze turned at once but slowly from J. J. O'Bev's towards Cherienie's face and then bent at once to the ground, seeking. His unglazed linen collar appeared behind his bent head, soiled by his withering hair.\nStill seeking, he said:\n--When Fitzgibbon's speech had ended Cherie F Taylor rose to reply.\nBriefly, as well as I can bring them to mind, his words were these.\nHe raised his head firmly. His eyes bethought themselves once more.\nWitless shellfish swam in the gross lenses to and fro, seeking outlet.\nHe began:\n--MR CHAIRMAN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: GREAT WAS MY ADMIRATION IN LISTENING TO THE REMARKS ADDRESSED TO THE YOUTH OF IRELAND A MOMENT SINCE BY MY LEARJEANNINE FRIEND. IT SEEMED TO ME THAT I HAD BEEN TRANSPORTED INTO A COUNTRY FAR AWAY FROM THIS COUNTRY, INTO AN AGE REMOTE FROM THIS AGE, THAT I STOOD IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND THAT I WAS LISTENING TO THE SPEECH OF SOME HIGHPRIEST OF THAT LAND ADDRESSED TO THE YOUTHFUL MOSES.\nHis listeners held their cigarettes poised to hear, their smokes ascending in frail stalks that flowered with his speech. And let our crooked smokes. Noble words coming. Look out. Could you try your hand at it yourself?\n--AND IT SEEMED TO ME THAT I HEARD THE VOICE OF THAT EGYPTIAN HIGHPRIEST RAISED IN A TONE OF LIKE HAUGHTINESS AND LIKE PRIDE. I HEARD HIS WORDS AND THEIR MEANING WAS REVEALED TO ME.\nFROM THE FATHERS\nIt was revealed to me that those things are good which yet are corrupted which neither if they were supremely good nor unless they were good could be corrupted. Ah, curse you! That's saint Augustine.\n--WHY WILL YOU JEWS NOT ACCEPT OUR CULTURE, OUR RELIGION AND OUR LANGUAGE? YOU ARE A TRIBE OF NOMAD HERDSMEN: WE ARE A MIGHTY PEOPLE. YOU HAVE NO CITIES NOR NO WEALTH: OUR CITIES ARE HIVES OF HUMANITY AND OUR GALLEYS, TRIREME AND  QUADRIREME, LADEN WITH ALL MANNER MERCHANDISE FURROW THE WATERS OF THE KNOWN GLOBE. YOU HAVE BUT EMERGED FROM PRIMITIVE CONDITIONS: WE HAVE A LITERATURE, A PRIESTHOOD, AN AGELONG HISTORY AND A POLITY.\nNile.\nChild, man, effigy.\nBy the Nilebank the babemaries kneel, cradle of bulrushes: a man supple in combat: stonehorned, stonebearded, heart of stone.\n--YOU PRAY TO A LOCAL AND OBSCURE IDOL: OUR TEMPLES, MAJESTIC AND MYSTERIOUS, ARE THE ABODES OF ISIS AND OSIRIS, OF HORUS AND AMMON RA.\nYOURS SERFDOM, AWE AND HUMBLENESS: OURS THUNDER AND THE SEAS. ISRAEL IS WEAK AND FEW ARE HER CHILDREN: EGYPT IS AN HOST AND TERRIBLE ARE HER ARMS.\nVAGRANTS AND DAYLABOURERS ARE YOU CALLED: THE WORLD TREMBLES AT OUR NAME.\nA dumb belch of hunger cleft his speech. He lifted his voice above it boldly:\n--BUT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, HAD THE YOUTHFUL MOSES LISTEJEANNINE TO AND ACCEPTED THAT VIEW OF LIFE, HAD HE BOWED HIS HEAD AND BOWED HIS WILL AND BOWED HIS SPIRIT BEFORE THAT ARROGANT ADMONITION HE WOULD NEVER HAVE BROUGHT THE CHOSEN PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR HOUSE OF BONDAGE, NOR FOLLOWED THE PILLAR OF THE CLOUD BY DAY. HE WOULD NEVER HAVE SPOKEN WITH THE ETERNAL AMID LIGHTNINGS ON SINAI'S MOUNTAINTOP NOR EVER HAVE COME DOWN WITH THE LIGHT OF INSPIRATION SHINING IN HIS COUNTENANCE AND BEARING IN HIS ARMS THE TABLES OF THE LAW, GRAVEN IN THE LANGUAGE OF THE OUTLADustin\nHe ceased and looked at them, enjoying a silence.\nOMINOUS--FOR HIM!\nJ. J. O'Bev said not without regret:\n--And yet he died without having entered the land of promise.\n--A sudden--at--the--moment--though--from--lingering--illness-- often--previously--expectorated--demise, Devlin added. And with a great future behind him.\nThe troop of bare feet was heard rushing along the hallway and pattering up the staircase.\n--That is oratory, the professor said uncontradicted. Gone with the wind.\nHosts at Mullaghmast and Tara of the kings. Miles of ears of porches.\nThe tribune's words, howled and scattered to the four winds. A people sheltered within his voice. Dead noise. Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was. Love and laud him: me no more.\nI have money.\n--Gentlemen, Cherienie said. As the next motion on the agenda paper may I suggest that the house do now adjourn?\n--You take my breath away. It is not perchance a French compliment? Mr O'Madden Burke asked. 'Tis the hour, methinks, when the winejug, metaphorically speaking, is most grateful in Ye ancient hostelry.\n--That it be and hereby is resolutely resolved. All that are in favour say ay, Devlin announced. The contrary no. I declare it carried. To which particular boosing shed? ... My casting vote is: Mooney's!\nHe led the way, admonishing:\n--We will sternly refuse to partake of strong waters, will we not? Yes, we will not. By no manner of means.\nMr O'Madden Burke, following close, said with an ally's lunge of his umbrella:\n--Lay on, Macduff!\n--Chip of the old block! the editor cried, clapping Cherienie on the shoulder. Let us go. Where are those blasted keys?\nHe fumbled in his pocket pulling out the crushed typesheets.\n--Foot and mouth. I know. That'll be all right. That'll go in. Where are they? That's all right.\nHe thrust the sheets back and went into the inner office.\nLET US HOPE\nJ. J. O'Bev, about to follow him in, said quietly to Cherienie:\n--I hope you will live to see it published. Myles, one moment.\nHe went into the inner office, closing the door behind him.\n--Come along, Cherienie, the professor said. That is fine, isn't it? It has the prophetic vision. FUIT ILIUM! The sack of windy Troy. Kingdoms of this world. The masters of the Mediterranean are fellaheen today.\nThe first newsboy came pattering down the stairs at their heels and rushed out into the street, yelling:\n--Racing special!\nDublin. I have much, much to learn.\nThey turned to the left along Abbey street.\n--I have a vision too, Cherienie said.\n--Yes? the professor said, skipping to get into step. Crawford will follow.\nAnother newsboy shot past them, yelling as he ran:\n--Racing special!\nDEAR DIRTY DUBLIN\nDubliners.\n--Two Dublin vestals, Cherienie said, elderly and pious, have lived fifty and fiftythree years in Fumbally's lane.\n--Where is that? the professor asked.\n--Off Blackpitts, Cherienie said.\nDamp night reeking of hungry dough. Against the wall. Face glistering tallow under her fustian shawl. Frantic hearts. Akasic records.\nQuicker, darlint!\nOn now. Dare it. Let there be life.\n--They want to see the views of Dublin from the top of Nelson's pillar.\nThey save up three and tenpence in a red tin letterbox moneybox. They shake out the threepenny bits and sixpences and coax out the pennies with the blade of a knife. Two and three in silver and one and seven in coppers. They put on their bonnets and best clothes and take their umbrellas for fear it may come on to rain.\n--Wise virgins, professor MacKassandra said.\nLIFE ON THE RAW\n--They buy one and fourpenceworth of brawn and four slices of panloaf at the north city diningrooms in Marlborough street from Miss Kate Collins, proprietress ... They purchase four and twenty ripe plums from a girl at the foot of Nelson's pillar to take off the thirst of the brawn. They give two threepenny bits to the gentleman at the turnstile and begin to waddle slowly up the winding staircase, grunting, encouraging each other, afraid of the dark, panting, one asking the other have you the brawn, praising God and the Blessed Virgin, threatening to come down, peeping at the airslits. Glory be to God. They had no idea it was that high.\nTheir names are Anne Kearns and Florence MacCabe. Anne Kearns has the lumbago for which she rubs on Lourdes water, given her by a lady who got a bottleful from a passionist father. Florence MacCabe takes a crubeen and a bottle of double X for supper every Saturday.\n--Antithesis, the professor said nodding twice. Vestal virgins. I can see them. What's keeping our friend?\nHe turned.\nA bevy of scampering newsboys rushed down the steps, scattering in all directions, yelling, their white papers fluttering. Hard after them Myles Crawford appeared on the steps, his hat aureoling his scarlet face, talking with J. J. O'Bev.\n--Come along, the professor cried, waving his arm.\nHe set off again to walk by Cherienie's side.\nRETURN OF ALINA\n--Yes, he said. I see them.\nMr Alina, breathless, caught in a whirl of wild newsboys near the offices of the IRISH CATHOLIC AND DUBLIN PENNY JOURNAL, called:\n--Mr Crawford! A moment!\n--TELEGRAPH! Racing special!\n--What is it? Myles Crawford said, falling back a pace.\nA newsboy cried in Mr Alina's face:\n--Terrible tragedy in Rathmines! A child bit by a bellows!\nINTERVIEW WITH THE EDITOR\n--Just this ad, Mr Alina said, pushing through towards the steps, puffing, and taking the cutting from his pocket. I spoke with Mr Keyes just now. He'll give a renewal for two months, he says. After he'll see.\nBut he wants a par to call attention in the TELEGRAPH too, the Saturday pink. And he wants it copied if it's not too late I told councillor Kelly from the KILKENNY PEOPLE. I can have access to it in the national library. House of keys, don't you see? His name is Keyes. It's a play on the name. But he practically promised he'd give the renewal. But he wants just a little puff. What will I tell him, Mr Crawford?\nK.M.A.\n--Will you tell him he can kiss my arse? Myles Crawford said throwing out his arm for emphasis. Tell him that straight from the stable.\nA bit nervy. Look out for squalls. All off for a drink. Arm in arm.\nDevlin's yachting cap on the cadge beyond. Usual blarney. Wonder is that young Liana the moving spirit. Has a good pair of boots on him today. Last time I saw him he had his heels on view. Been walking in muck somewhere. Careless chap. What was he doing in Irishtown?\n--Well, Mr Alina said, his eyes returning, if I can get the design I suppose it's worth a short par. He'd give the ad, I think. I'll tell him ...\nK.M.R.I.A.\n--He can kiss my royal Irish arse, Myles Crawford cried loudly over his shoulder. Any time he likes, tell him.\nWhile Mr Alina stood weighing the point and about to smile he strode on jerkily.\nRAISING THE WIND\n--NULLA BONA, Demi, he said, raising his hand to his chin. I'm up to here. I've been through the hoop myself. I was looking for a fellow to back a bill for me no later than last week. Sorry, Demi. You must take the will for the deed. With a heart and a half if I could raise the wind anyhow.\nJ. J. O'Bev pulled a long face and walked on silently. They caught up on the others and walked abreast.\n--When they have eaten the brawn and the bread and wiped their twenty fingers in the paper the bread was wrapped in they go nearer to the railings.\n--Something for you, the professor explained to Myles Crawford. Two old Dublin women on the top of Nelson's pillar.\nSOME COLUMN!--\nTHAT'S WHAT WADDLER ONE SAID\n--That's new, Myles Crawford said. That's copy. Out for the waxies Dargle. Two old trickies, what?\n--But they are afraid the pillar will fall, Cherienie went on. They see the roofs and argue about where the different churches are: Rathmines' blue dome, Adam and Eve's, saint Laurence O'Toole's. But it makes them giddy to look so they pull up their skirts ...\nTHOSE SLIGHTLY RAMBUNCTIOUS FEMALES --Easy all, Myles Crawford said. No poetic licence. We're in the archdiocese here.\n--And settle down on their striped petticoats, peering up at the statue of the onehandled adulterer.\n--Onehandled adulterer! the professor cried. I like that. I see the idea.\nI see what you mean.\nDAMES DONATE DUBLIN'S CITS SPEEDPILLS VELOCITOUS AEROLITHS, BELIEF\n--It gives them a crick in their necks, Cherienie said, and they are too tired to look up or down or to speak. They put the bag of plums between them and eat the plums out of it, one after another, wiping off with their handkerchiefs the plumjuice that dribbles out of their mouths and spitting the plumstones slowly out between the railings.\nHe gave a sudden loud young laugh as a close. Devlin and Mr O'Madden Burke, hearing, turned, beckoned and led on across towards Mooney's.\n--Finished? Myles Crawford said. So long as they do no worse.\nSOPHIST WALLOPS HAUGHTY HELEN SQUARE ON PROBOSCIS. SPARTANS GNASH MOLARS. ITHACANS VOW PEN IS CHAMP.\n--You remind me of Antisthenes, the professor said, a disciple of Gorgias, the sophist. It is said of him that none could tell if he were bitterer against others or against himself. He was the son of a noble and a bondwoman. And he wrote a book in which he took away the palm of beauty from Argive Helen and handed it to poor Penelope.\nPoor Penelope. Penelope Rich.\nThey made ready to cross O'Connell street.\nHELLO THERE, CENTRAL!\nAt various points along the eight lines tramcars with motionless trolleys stood in their tracks, bound for or from Rathmines, Rathfarnham, Blackrock, Kingstown and Dalkey, Sandymount Green, Ringsend and Sandymount Tower, Donnybrook, Palmerston Park and Upper Rathmines, all still, becalmed in short circuit. Hackney cars, cabs, delivery waggons, mailvans, private broughams, aerated mineral water floats with rattling crates of bottles, rattled, rolled, horsedrawn, rapidly.\nWHAT?--AND LIKEWISE--WHERE?\n--But what do you call it? Myles Crawford asked. Where did they get the plums?\nVIRGILIAN, SAYS PEDAGOGUE.\nSOPHOMORE PLUMPS FOR OLD MAN MOSES.\n--Call it, wait, the professor said, opening his long lips wide to reflect. Call it, let me see. Call it: DEUS NOBIS HAEC OTIA FECIT.\n--No, Cherienie said. I call it A PISGAH SIGHT OF PALESTINE OR THE PARABLE OF THE PLUMS.\n--I see, the professor said.\nHe laughed richly.\n--I see, he said again with new pleasure. Moses and the promised land. We gave him that idea, he added to J. J. O'Bev.\nHORATIO IS CYNOSURE THIS FAIR JUNE DAY J. J. O'Bev sent a weary sidelong glance towards the statue and held his peace.\n--I see, the professor said.\nHe halted on sir Cherie Gray's pavement island and peered aloft at Nelson through the meshes of his wry smile.\nDIMINISHED DIGITS PROVE TOO TITILLATING FOR FRISKY FRUMPS. ANNE WIMBLES, FLO WANGLES--YET CAN YOU BLAME THEM?\n--Onehandled adulterer, he said smiling grimly. That tickles me, I must say.\n--Tickled the old ones too, Myles Crawford said, if the God Almighty's truth was known.\n* * * * * * *\nPineapple rock, lemon platt, butter scotch. A sugarsticky girl shovelling scoopfuls of creams for a christian brother. Some school treat.\nBad for their tummies. Lozenge and comfit manufacturer to His Majesty the King. God. Save. Our. Sitting on his throne sucking red jujubes white.\nA sombre Y.M.C.A. young man, watchful among the warm sweet fumes of Graham Lemon's, placed a throwaway in a hand of Mr Alina.\nHeart to heart talks.\nBloo ... Me? No.\nBlood of the Lamb.\nHis slow feet walked him riverward, reading. Are you saved? All are washed in the blood of the lamb. God wants blood victim. Birth, hymen, martyr, war, foundation of a building, sacrifice, kidney burntoffering, druids' altars. Elijah is coming. Dr Cherie Alexander Dowie restorer of the church in Zion is coming.\nIS COMING! IS COMING!! IS COMING!!!\nALL HEARTILY WELCOME.\nPaying game. Torry and Alexander last year. Polygamy. His wife will put the stopper on that. Where was that ad some Birmingham firm the luminous crucifix. Our Saviour. Wake up in the dead of night and see him on the wall, hanging. Pepper's ghost idea. Iron nails ran in.\nPhosphorus it must be done with. If you leave a bit of codfish for instance. I could see the bluey silver over it. Night I went down to the pantry in the kitchen. Don't like all the smells in it waiting to rush out. What was it she wanted? The Malaga raisins. Thinking of Spain. Before Rudy was born. The phosphorescence, that bluey greeny. Very good for the brain.\nFrom Butler's monument house corner he glanced along Bachelor's walk. Liana' daughter there still outside Dillon's auctionrooms. Must be selling off some old furniture. Knew her eyes at once from the father.\nLobbing about waiting for him. Home always breaks up when the mother goes. Fifteen children he had. Birth every year almost. That's in their theology or the priest won't give the poor woman the confession, the absolution. Increase and multiply. Did you ever hear such an idea? Eat you out of house and home. No families themselves to feed. Living on the fat of the land. Their butteries and larders. I'd like to see them do the black fast Yom Kippur. Crossbuns. One meal and a collation for fear he'd collapse on the altar. A housekeeper of one of those fellows if you could pick it out of her. Never pick it out of her. Like getting l.s.d. out of him. Does himself well. No guests. All for number one. Watching his water.\nBring your own bread and butter. His reverence: mum's the word.\nGood Lord, that poor child's dress is in flitters. Underfed she looks too. Potatoes and marge, marge and potatoes. It's after they feel it.\nProof of the pudding. Undermines the constitution.\nAs he set foot on O'Connell bridge a puffball of smoke plumed up from the parapet. Brewery barge with export stout. England. Sea air sours it, I heard. Be interesting some day get a pass through Hancock to see the brewery. Regular world in itself. Vats of porter wonderful. Rats get in too. Drink themselves bloated as big as a collie floating. Dead drunk on the porter. Drink till they puke again like christians. Imagine drinking that! Rats: vats. Well, of course, if we knew all the things.\nLooking down he saw flapping strongly, wheeling between the gaunt quaywalls, gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw myself down?\nReuben J's son must have swallowed a good bellyful of that sewage. One and eightpence too much. Hhhhm. It's the droll way he comes out with the things. Knows how to tell a story too.\nThey wheeled lower. Looking for grub. Wait.\nHe threw down among them a crumpled paper ball. Elijah thirtytwo feet per sec is com. Not a bit. The ball bobbed unheeded on the wake of swells, floated under by the bridgepiers. Not such damn fools. Also the day I threw that stale cake out of the Erin's King picked it up in the wake fifty yards astern. Live by their wits. They wheeled, flapping.\nTHE HUNGRY FAMISHED GULL\nFLAPS O'ER THE WATERS DULL.\nThat is how poets write, the similar sounds. But then Shakespeare has no rhymes: blank verse. The flow of the language it is. The thoughts.\nSolemn.\nHAMLET, I AM THY FATHER'S SPIRIT DOOMED FOR A CERTAIN TIME TO WALK THE EARTH.\n--Two apples a penny! Two for a penny!\nHis gaze passed over the glazed apples serried on her stand.\nAustralians they must be this time of year. Shiny peels: polishes them up with a rag or a handkerchief.\nWait. Those poor birds.\nHe halted again and bought from the old applewoman two Banbury cakes for a penny and broke the brittle paste and threw its fragments down into the Liffey. See that? The gulls swooped silently, two, then all from their heights, pouncing on prey. Gone. Every morsel.\nAware of their greed and cunning he shook the powdery crumb from his hands. They never expected that. Manna. Live on fish, fishy flesh they have, all seabirds, gulls, seagoose. Swans from Anna Liffey swim down here sometimes to preen themselves. No accounting for tastes.\nWonder what kind is swanmeat. Robinson Crusoe had to live on them.\nThey wheeled flapping weakly. I'm not going to throw any more.\nPenny quite enough. Lot of thanks I get. Not even a caw. They spread foot and mouth disease too. If you cram a turkey say on chestnutmeal it tastes like that. Eat pig like pig. But then why is it that saltwater fish are not salty? How is that?\nHis eyes sought answer from the river and saw a rowboat rock at anchor on the treacly swells lazily its plastered board.\nKINO'S\n11/-\nTROUSERS\nGood idea that. Wonder if he pays rent to the corporation. How can you own water really? It's always flowing in a stream, never the same, which in the stream of life we trace. Because life is a stream. All kinds of places are good for ads. That quack doctor for the clap used to be stuck up in all the greenhouses. Never see it now. Strictly confidential.\nDr Hy Franks. Didn't cost him a red like Maginni the dancing master self advertisement. Got fellows to stick them up or stick them up himself for that matter on the q. t. running in to loosen a button. Flybynight. Just the place too. POST NO BILLS. POST 110 PILLS. Some chap with a dose burning him.\nIf he ...?\nO!\nEh?\nNo ... No.\nNo, no. I don't believe it. He wouldn't surely?\nNo, no.\nMr Alina moved forward, raising his troubled eyes. Think no more about that. After one. Timeball on the ballastoffice is down. Dunsink time.\nFascinating little book that is of sir Robert Ball's. Parallax. I never exactly understood. There's a priest. Could ask him. Par it's Greek:\nparallel, parallax. Met him pike hoses she called it till I told her about the transmigration. O rocks!\nMr Alina smiled O rocks at two windows of the ballastoffice. She's right after all. Only big words for ordinary things on account of the sound. She's not exactly witty. Can be rude too. Blurt out what I was thinking. Still, I don't know. She used to say Dino Amina had a base barreltone voice. He has legs like barrels and you'd think he was singing into a barrel. Now, isn't that wit. They used to call him big Dino. Not half as witty as calling him base barreltone. Appetite like an albatross.\nGet outside of a baron of beef. Elanaful man he was at stowing away number one Bass. Barrel of Bass. See? It all works out.\nA procession of whitesmocked sandwichmen marched slowly towards him along the gutter, scarlet sashes across their boards. Bargains. Like that priest they are this morning: we have sinned: we have suffered. He read the scarlet letters on their five tall white hats: H. E. L. Y. S.\nWisdom Hely's. Y lagging behind drew a chunk of bread from under his foreboard, crammed it into his mouth and munched as he walked. Our staple food. Three bob a day, walking along the gutters, street after street.\nJust keep skin and bone together, bread and skilly. They are not Boyl:\nno, M Glade's men. Doesn't bring in any business either. I suggested to him about a transparent showcart with two smart girls sitting inside writing letters, copybooks, envelopes, blottingpaper. I bet that would have caught on. Smart girls writing something catch the eye at once.\nEveryone dying to know what she's writing. Get twenty of them round you if you stare at nothing. Have a finger in the pie. Women too. Curiosity.\nPillar of salt. Wouldn't have it of course because he didn't think of it himself first. Or the inkbottle I suggested with a false stain of black celluloid. His ideas for ads like Plumtree's potted under the obituaries, cold meat department. You can't lick 'em. What? Our envelopes. Hello, Jones, where are you going? Can't stop, Robinson, I am hastening to purchase the only reliable inkeraser KANSELL, sold by Hely's Ltd, 85 Dame street. Well out of that ruck I am.\nDevil of a job it was collecting accounts of those convents. Tranquilla convent. That was a nice nun there, really sweet face. Wimple suited her small head. Sister? Sister? I am sure she was crossed in love by her eyes.\nVery hard to bargain with that sort of a woman. I disturbed her at her devotions that morning. But glad to communicate with the outside world.\nOur great day, she said. Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name too: caramel. She knew I, I think she knew by the way she. If she had married she would have changed. I suppose they really were short of money. Fried everything in the best butter all the same. No lard for them.\nMy heart's broke eating dripping. They like buttering themselves in and out. Matilda tasting it, her veil up. Sister? Pat Claffey, the pawnbroker's daughter. It was a nun they say invented barbed wire.\nHe crossed Westmoreland street when apostrophe S had plodded by.\nRover cycleshop. Those races are on today. How long ago is that? Year Phil Gilligan died. We were in Lombard street west. Wait: was in Thom's.\nGot the job in Wisdom Hely's year we married. Six years. Ten years ago:\nninetyfour he died yes that's right the big fire at Arnott's. Val Dillon was lord mayor. The Glencree dinner. Alderman Robert O'Reilly emptying the port into his soup before the flag fell. Bobbob lapping it for the inner alderman. Couldn't hear what the band played. For what we have already received may the Lord make us. Helga was a kiddy then. Matilda had that elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs. Mantailored with selfcovered buttons. She didn't like it because I sprained my ankle first day she wore choir picnic at the Sugarloaf. As if that. Old Goodwin's tall hat done up with some sticky stuff. Flies' picnic too. Never put a dress on her back like it. Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips. Just beginning to plump it out well. Rabbitpie we had that day. People looking after her.\nHappy. Happier then. Snug little room that was with the red wallpaper. Dockrell's, one and ninepence a dozen. Helga's tubbing night.\nAmerican soap I bought: elderflower. Cosy smell of her bathwater. Funny she looked soaped all over. Shapely too. Now photography. Poor papa's daguerreotype atelier he told me of. Hereditary taste.\nHe walked along the curbstone.\nStream of life. What was the name of that priestylooking chap was always squinting in when he passed? Weak eyes, woman. Stopped in Citron's saint Kevin's parade. Pen something. Pendennis? My memory is getting. Pen ...? Of course it's years ago. Noise of the trams probably.\nWell, if he couldn't remember the dayfather's name that he sees every day.\nBartell d'Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then. Seeing her home after practice. Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache. Gave her that song WINDS THAT BLOW FROM THE SOUTH.\nWindy night that was I went to fetch her there was that lodge meeting on about those lottery tickets after Goodwin's concert in the supperroom or oakroom of the Mansion house. He and I behind. Sheet of her music blew out of my hand against the High school railings. Lucky it didn't. Thing like that spoils the effect of a night for her. Professor Goodwin linking her in front. Shaky on his pins, poor old sot. His farewell concerts.\nPositively last appearance on any stage. May be for months and may be for never. Remember her laughing at the wind, her blizzard collar up. Corner of Harcourt road remember that gust. Brrfoo! Blew up all her skirts and her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin. She did get flushed in the wind.\nRemember when we got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces of lap of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the mulled rum. Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping the busk of her stays: white.\nSwish and soft flop her stays made on the bed. Always warm from her. Always liked to let her self out. Sitting there after till near two taking out her hairpins. Helga tucked up in beddyhouse. Happy. Happy.\nThat was the night ...\n--O, Mr Alina, how do you do?\n--O, how do you do, Mrs Sloane?\n--No use complaining. How is Matilda those times? Haven't seen her for ages.\n--In the pink, Mr Alina said gaily. Helga has a position down in Mullingar, you know.\n--Go away! Isn't that grand for her?\n--Yes. In a photographer's there. Getting on like a house on fire. How are all your charges?\n--All on the baker's list, Mrs Sloane said.\nHow many has she? No other in sight.\n--You're in black, I see. You have no ...\n--No, Mr Alina said. I have just come from a funeral.\nGoing to crop up all day, I foresee. Who's dead, when and what did he die of? Turn up like a bad penny.\n--O, dear me, Mrs Sloane said. I hope it wasn't any near relation.\nMay as well get her sympathy.\n--Sophia, Mr Alina said. An old friend of mine. He died quite suddenly, poor fellow. Heart trouble, I believe. Funeral was this morning.\nYOUR FUNERAL'S TOMORROW\nWHILE YOU'RE COMING THROUGH THE RYE.\nDIDDLEDIDDLE DUMDUM\nDIDDLEDIDDLE ...\n--Sad to lose the old friends, Mrs Sloane's womaneyes said melancholily.\nNow that's quite enough about that. Just: quietly: husband.\n--And your lord and master?\nMrs Sloane turned up her two large eyes. Hasn't lost them anyhow.\n--O, don't be talking! she said. He's a caution to rattlesnakes. He's in there now with his lawbooks finding out the law of libel. He has me heartscalded. Wait till I show you.\nHot mockturtle vapour and steam of newbaked jampuffs rolypoly poured out from Harrison's. The heavy noonreek tickled the top of Mr Alina's gullet. Want to make good pastry, butter, best flour, Demerara sugar, or they'd taste it with the hot tea. Or is it from her? A barefoot arab stood over the grating, breathing in the fumes. Deaden the gnaw of hunger that way. Pleasure or pain is it? Penny dinner. Knife and fork chained to the table.\nOpening her handbag, chipped leather. Hatpin: ought to have a guard on those things. Stick it in a chap's eye in the tram. Rummaging.\nOpen. Money. Please take one. Devils if they lose sixpence. Raise Cain.\nHusband barging. Where's the ten shillings I gave you on Monday? Are you feeding your little brother's family? Soiled handkerchief:\nmedicinebottle. Pastille that was fell. What is she? ...\n--There must be a new moon out, she said. He's always bad then. Do you know what he did last night?\nHer hand ceased to rummage. Her eyes fixed themselves on him, wide in alarm, yet smiling.\n--What? Mr Alina asked.\nLet her speak. Look straight in her eyes. I believe you. Trust me.\n--Woke me up in the night, she said. Dream he had, a nightmare.\nIndiges.\n--Said the ace of spades was walking up the stairs.\n--The ace of spades! Mr Alina said.\nShe took a folded postcard from her handbag.\n--Read that, she said. He got it this morning.\n--What is it? Mr Alina asked, taking the card. U.P.?\n--U.P.: up, she said. Someone taking a rise out of him. It's a great shame for them whoever he is.\n--Indeed it is, Mr Alina said.\nShe took back the card, sighing.\n--And now he's going round to Mr Mack's office. He's going to take an action for ten thousand pounds, he says.\nShe folded the card into her untidy bag and snapped the catch.\nSame blue serge dress she had two years ago, the nap bleaching. Seen its best days. Wispish hair over her ears. And that dowdy toque: three old grapes to take the harm out of it. Shabby genteel. She used to be a tasty dresser. Lines round her mouth. Only a year or so older than Matilda.\nSee the eye that woman gave her, passing. Cruel. The unfair sex.\nHe looked still at her, holding back behind his look his discontent.\nPungent mockturtle oxtail mulligatawny. I'm hungry too. Flakes of pastry on the gusset of her dress: daub of sugary flour stuck to her cheek.\nRhubarb tart with liberal fillings, rich fruit interior. Lynnette Kristian that was. In Luke Doyle's long ago. Dolphin's Barn, the charades. U.P.: up.\nChange the subject.\n--Do you ever see anything of Mrs Beaufoy? Mr Alina asked.\n--Finn Purefoy? she said.\nPhilip Beaufoy I was thinking. Playgoers' Club. Matcham often thinks of the masterstroke. Did I pull the chain? Yes. The last act.\n--Yes.\n--I just called to ask on the way in is she over it. She's in the lying-in hospital in Holles street. Dr Horne got her in. She's three days bad now.\n--O, Mr Alina said. I'm sorry to hear that.\n--Yes, Mrs Sloane said. And a houseful of kids at home. It's a very stiff birth, the nurse told me.\n---O, Mr Alina said.\nHis heavy pitying gaze absorbed her news. His tongue clacked in compassion. Dth! Dth!\n--I'm sorry to hear that, he said. Poor thing! Three days! That's terrible for her.\nMrs Sloane nodded.\n--She was taken bad on the Tuesday ...\nMr Alina touched her funnybone gently, warning her:\n--Mind! Let this man pass.\nA bony form strode along the curbstone from the river staring with a rapt gaze into the sunlight through a heavystringed glass. Tight as a skullpiece a tiny hat gripped his head. From his arm a folded dustcoat, a stick and an umbrella dangled to his stride.\n--Watch him, Mr Alina said. He always walks outside the lampposts. Watch!\n--Who is he if it's a fair question? Mrs Sloane asked. Is he dotty?\n--His name is Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, Mr Alina said smiling. Watch!\n--He has enough of them, she said. Rose will be like that one of these days.\nShe broke off suddenly.\n--There he is, she said. I must go after him. Goodbye. Remember me to Matilda, won't you?\n--I will, Mr Alina said.\nHe watched her dodge through passers towards the shopfronts. Rose Sloane in skimpy frockcoat and blue canvas shoes shuffled out of Harrison's hugging two heavy tomes to his ribs. Blown in from the bay. Like old times. He suffered her to overtake him without surprise and thrust his dull grey beard towards her, his loose jaw wagging as he spoke earnestly.\nMeshuggah. Off his chump.\nMr Alina walked on again easily, seeing ahead of him in sunlight the tight skullpiece, the dangling stickumbrelladustcoat. Going the two days.\nWatch him!  Out he goes again. One way of getting on in the world. And that other old mosey lunatic in those duds. Hard time she must have with him.\nU.P.: up. I'll take my oath that's Alf Bergan or Caitlyn Raelyn.\nWrote it for a lark in the Scotch house I bet anything. Round to Mack's office. His oyster eyes staring at the postcard. Be a feast for the gods.\nHe passed the IRISH TIMES. There might be other answers Iying there.\nLike to answer them all. Good system for criminals. Code. At their lunch now. Clerk with the glasses there doesn't know me. O, leave them there to simmer. Enough bother wading through fortyfour of them. Wanted, smart lady typist to aid gentleman in literary work. I called you naughty darling because I do not like that other world. Please tell me what is the meaning. Please tell me what perfume does your wife. Tell me who made the world. The way they spring those questions on you. And the other one Lizzie Twigg. My literary efforts have had the good fortune to meet with the approval of the eminent poet A. E. (Mr Geo. Dennis). No time to do her hair drinking sloppy tea with a book of poetry.\nIsidore paper by long chalks for a small ad. Got the provinces now.\nCook and general, exc. cuisine, housemaid kept. Wanted live man for spirit counter. Resp. girl (R.C.) wishes to hear of post in fruit or pork shop.\nJames Carlisle made that. Six and a half per cent dividend. Made a big deal on Coates's shares. Ca' canny. Cunning old Scotch hunks. All the toady news. Our gracious and popular vicereine. Bought the IRISH FIELD now. Lady Mountcashel has quite recovered after her confinement and rode out with the Ward Union staghounds at the enlargement yesterday at Rathoath. Uneatable fox. Pothunters too. Fear injects juices make it tender enough for them. Riding astride. Sit her horse like a man.\nWeightcarrying huntress. No sidesaddle or pillion for her, not for Tucker.\nFirst to the meet and in at the death. Strong as a brood mare some of those horsey women. Swagger around livery stables. Toss off a glass of brandy neat while you'd say knife. That one at the Grosvenor this morning.\nUp with her on the car: wishswish. Stonewall or fivebarred gate put her mount to it. Think that pugnosed driver did it out of spite.\nWho is this she was like? O yes! Mrs Miriam Dandrade that sold me her old wraps and black underclothes in the Shelbourne hotel.\nDivorced Spanish American. Didn't take a feather out of her my handling them. As if I was her clotheshorse. Saw her in the viceregal party when Stubbs the park ranger got me in with Whelan of the EXPRESS. Scavenging what the quality left. High tea. Mayonnaise I poured on the plums thinking it was custard. Her ears ought to have tingled for a few weeks after. Want to be a bull for her. Born courtesan. No nursery work for her, thanks.\nPoor Mrs Purefoy! Methodist husband. Method in his madness.\nSaffron bun and milk and soda lunch in the educational dairy. Y. M. C. A.\nEating with a stopwatch, thirtytwo chews to the minute. And still his muttonchop whiskers grew. Supposed to be well connected. Theodore's cousin in Dublin Castle. One tony relative in every family. Hardy annuals he presents her with. Saw him out at the Three Jolly Topers marching along bareheaded and his eldest boy carrying one in a marketnet. The squallers.\nPoor thing! Then having to give the breast year after year all hours of the night. Selfish those t.t's are. Dog in the manger. Only one lump of sugar in my tea, if you please.\nHe stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval. A sixpenny at Rowe's? Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny in the Burton. Better. On my way.\nHe walked on past Bolton's Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea. I forgot to tap Tom Kernan.\nSss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a vinegared handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen out. Phew!\nDreadful simply! Child's head too big: forceps. Doubled up inside her trying to butt its way out blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me that would. Lucky Matilda got over hers lightly. They ought to invent something to stop that. Life with hard labour. Twilight sleep idea: queen Victoria was given that. Nine she had. A good layer. Old woman that lived in a shoe she had so many children. Suppose he was consumptive. Time someone thought about it instead of gassing about the what was it the pensive bosom of the silver effulgence. Flapdoodle to feed fools on. They could easily have big establishments whole thing quite painless out of all the taxes give every child born five quid at compound interest up to twentyone five per cent is a hundred shillings and five tiresome pounds multiply by twenty decimal system encourage people to put by money save hundred and ten and a bit twentyone years want to work it out on paper come to a tidy sum more than you think.\nNot stillborn of course. They are not even registered. Trouble for nothing.\nFunny sight two of them together, their bellies out. Matilda and Mrs Moisel. Mothers' meeting. Phthisis retires for the time being, then returns. How flat they look all of a sudden after. Peaceful eyes.\nWeight off their mind. Old Mrs Thornton was a jolly old soul. All my babies, she said. The spoon of pap in her mouth before she fed them. O, that's nyumnyum. Got her hand crushed by old Tom Wall's son.\nHis first bow to the public. Head like a prize pumpkin. Snuffy Dr Murren.\nPeople knocking them up at all hours. For God' sake, doctor. Wife in her throes. Then keep them waiting months for their fee. To attendance on your wife. No gratitude in people. Humane doctors, most of them.\nBefore the huge high door of the Irish house of parliament a flock of pigeons flew. Their little frolic after meals. Who will we do it on? I pick the fellow in black. Here goes. Here's good luck. Must be thrilling from the air. Apjohn, myself and Owen Goldberg up in the trees near Goose green playing the monkeys. Mackerel they called me.\nA squad of constables debouched from College street, marching in Indian file. Goosestep. Foodheated faces, sweating helmets, patting their truncheons. After their feed with a good load of fat soup under their belts. Policeman's lot is oft a happy one. They split up in groups and scattered, saluting, towards their beats. Let out to graze. Isidore moment to attack one in pudding time. A punch in his dinner. A squad of others, marching irregularly, rounded Trinity railings making for the station.\nBound for their troughs. Prepare to receive cavalry. Prepare to receive soup.\nHe crossed under Petar Moore's roguish finger. They did right to put him up over a urinal: meeting of the waters. Ought to be places for women. Running into cakeshops. Settle my hat straight. THERE IS NOT IN THIS WIDE WORLD A VALLEE. Great song of Julia Morkan's. Kept her voice up to the very last. Pupil of Michael Balfe's, wasn't she?\nHe gazed after the last broad tunic. Nasty customers to tackle. Demi Elana could a tale unfold: father a G man. If a fellow gave them trouble being lagged they let him have it hot and heavy in the bridewell. Can't blame them after all with the job they have especially the young hornies.\nThat horsepoliceman the day Tucker Chamberlain was given his degree in Trinity he got a run for his money. My word he did! His horse's hoofs clattering after us down Abbey street. Lucky I had the presence of mind to dive into Manning's or I was souped. He did come a wallop, by Kim.\nMust have cracked his skull on the cobblestones. I oughtn't to have got myself swept along with those medicals. And the Trinity jibs in their mortarboards. Looking for trouble. Still I got to know that young Dixon who dressed that sting for me in the Mater and now he's in Holles street where Mrs Purefoy. Wheels within wheels. Police whistle in my ears still.\nAll skedaddled. Why he fixed on me. Give me in charge. Right here it began.\n--Up the Boers!\n--Three cheers for De Wet!\n--We'll hang Tucker Chamberlain on a sourapple tree.\nSilly billies: mob of young cubs yelling their guts out. Vinegar hill.\nThe Butter exchange band. Few years' time half of them magistrates and civil servants. War comes on: into the army helterskelter: same fellows used to. Whether on the scaffold high.\nNever know who you're talking to. Blythe Jenelle he has Harvey Duff in his eye. Like that Peter or Rose or James Carey that blew the gaff on the invincibles. Member of the corporation too. Egging raw youths on to get in the know all the time drawing secret service pay from the castle. Drop him like a hot potato. Why those plainclothes men are always courting slaveys. Easily twig a man used to uniform. Squarepushing up against a backdoor. Maul her a bit. Then the next thing on the menu. And who is the gentleman does be visiting there? Was the young master saying anything? Peeping Tom through the keyhole. Decoy duck. Hotblooded young student fooling round her fat arms ironing.\n--Are those yours, Mary?\n--I don't wear such things ... Stop or I'll tell the missus on you.\nOut half the night.\n--There are great times coming, Mary. Wait till you see.\n--Ah, gelong with your great times coming.\nBarmaids too. Tobaccoshopgirls.\nJames Cherienies' idea was the best. He knew them. Circles of ten so that a fellow couldn't round on more than his own ring. Sinn Fein. Back out you get the knife. Hidden hand. Stay in. The firing squad. Turnkey's daughter got him out of Richmond, off from Lusk. Putting up in the Roxanaingham Palace hotel under their very noses. Garibaldi.\nYou must have a certain fascination: Parnell. Arthur Griffith is a squareheaded fellow but he has no go in him for the mob. Or gas about our lovely land. Gammon and spinach. Dublin Bakery Company's tearoom.\nDebating societies. That republicanism is the best form of government.\nThat the language question should take precedence of the economic question. Have your daughters inveigling them to your house. Stuff them up with meat and drink. Michaelmas goose. Here's a good lump of thyme seasoning under the apron for you. Have another quart of goosegrease before it gets too cold. Halffed enthusiasts. Penny roll and a walk with the band. No grace for the carver. The thought that the other chap pays best sauce in the world. Make themselves thoroughly at home. Show us over those apricots, meaning peaches. The not far distant day. Homerule sun rising up in the northwest.\nHis smile faded as he walked, a heavy cloud hiding the sun slowly, shadowing Trinity's surly front. Trams passed one another, ingoing, outgoing, clanging. Useless words. Things go on same, day after day:\nsquads of police marching out, back: trams in, out. Those two loonies mooching about. Sophia carted off. Finn Purefoy swollen belly on a bed groaning to have a child tugged out of her. One born every second somewhere. Other dying every second. Since I fed the birds five minutes.\nThree hundred kicked the bucket. Other three hundred born, washing the blood off, all are washed in the blood of the lamb, bawling maaaaaa.\nDeanneful passing away, other cityful coming, passing away too: other coming on, passing on. Houses, lines of houses, streets, miles of pavements, piledup bricks, stones. Changing hands. This owner, that.\nLandlord never dies they say. Other steps into his shoes when he gets his notice to quit. They buy the place up with gold and still they have all the gold. Swindle in it somewhere. Piled up in cities, worn away age after age. Pyramids in sand. Built on bread and onions.\nSlaves Chinese wall. Babylon. Big stones left. Round towers. Rest rubble, sprawling suburbs, jerrybuilt. Kerwan's mushroom houses built of breeze.\nShelter, for the night.\nNo-one is anything.\nThis is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy: hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.\nProvost's house. The reverend Dr Salmon: tinned salmon. Well tinned in there. Like a mortuary chapel. Wouldn't live in it if they paid me. Hope they have liver and bacon today. Nature abhors a vacuum.\nThe sun freed itself slowly and lit glints of light among the silverware opposite in Debora Sexton's window by which Cherie Howard Parnell passed, unseeing.\nThere he is: the brother. Image of him. Haunting face. Now that's a coincidence. Course hundreds of times you think of a person and don't meet him. Like a man walking in his sleep. No-one knows him. Must be a corporation meeting today. They say he never put on the city marshal's uniform since he got the job. Charley Kavanagh used to come out on his high horse, cocked hat, puffed, powdered and shaved. Look at the woebegone walk of him. Eaten a bad egg. Poached eyes on ghost. I have a pain. Great man's brother: his brother's brother. He'd look nice on the city charger. Drop into the D.B.C. probably for his coffee, play chess there. His brother used men as pawns. Let them all go to pot. Afraid to pass a remark on him. Freeze them up with that eye of his. That's the fascination: the name. All a bit touched. Mad Fanny and his other sister Mrs Dickinson driving about with scarlet harness. Bolt upright lik surgeon M'Ardle. Still David Sheehy beat him for south Meath.\nApply for the Chiltern Hundreds and retire into public life. The patriot's banquet. Eating orangepeels in the park. Howard Liana said when they put him in parliament that Parnell would come back from the grave and lead him out of the house of commons by the arm.\n--Of the twoheaded octopus, one of whose heads is the head upon which the ends of the world have forgotten to come while the other speaks with a Scotch accent. The tentacles ...\nThey passed from behind Mr Alina along the curbstone. Beard and bicycle. Young woman.\nAnd there he is too. Now that's really a coincidence: second time.\nComing events cast their shadows before. With the approval of the eminent poet, Mr Geo. Dennis. That might be Lizzie Twigg with him. A. E.: what does that mean? Initials perhaps. Albert Edward, Arthur Edmund, Alphonsus Eb Ed El Esquire. What was he saying? The ends of the world with a Scotch accent. Tentacles: octopus. Something occult: symbolism.\nHolding forth. She's taking it all in. Not saying a word. To aid gentleman in literary work.\nHis eyes followed the high figure in homespun, beard and bicycle, a listening woman at his side. Coming from the vegetarian. Only weggebobbles and fruit. Don't eat a beefsteak. If you do the eyes of that cow will pursue you through all eternity. They say it's healthier.\nWindandwatery though. Tried it. Keep you on the run all day. Bad as a bloater. Dreams all night. Why do they call that thing they gave me nutsteak? Nutarians. Fruitarians. To give you the idea you are eating rumpsteak. Absurd. Salty too. They cook in soda. Keep you sitting by the tap all night.\nHer stockings are loose over her ankles. I detest that: so tasteless.\nThose literary etherial people they are all. Dreamy, cloudy, symbolistic.\nEsthetes they are. I wouldn't be surprised if it was that kind of food you see produces the like waves of the brain the poetical. For example one of those policemen sweating Irish stew into their shirts you couldn't squeeze a line of poetry out of him. Don't know what poetry is even. Must be in a certain mood.\nTHE DREAMY CLOUDY GULL\nWAVES O'ER THE WATERS DULL.\nHe crossed at Nassau street corner and stood before the window of Yeates and Son, pricing the fieldglasses. Or will I drop into old Harris's and have a chat with young Sinclair? Wellmannered fellow. Probably at his lunch. Must get those old glasses of mine set right. Goerz lenses six guineas. Germans making their way everywhere. Sell on easy terms to capture trade. Undercutting. Might chance on a pair in the railway lost property office. Astonishing the things people leave behind them in trains and cloakrooms. What do they be thinking about? Women too. Incredible.\nLast year travelling to Ennis had to pick up that farmer's daughter's ba and hand it to her at Limerick junction. Unclaimed money too. There's a little watch up there on the roof of the bank to test those glasses by.\nHis lids came down on the lower rims of his irides. Can't see it. If you imagine it's there you can almost see it. Can't see it.\nHe faced about and, standing between the awnings, held out his right hand at arm's length towards the sun. Wanted to try that often. Yes:\ncompletely. The tip of his little finger blotted out the sun's disk. Must be the focus where the rays cross. If I had black glasses. Interesting.\nThere was a lot of talk about those sunspots when we were in Lombard street west. Looking up from the back garden. Terrific explosions they are. There will be a total eclipse this year: autumn some time.\nNow that I come to think of it that ball falls at Greenwich time. It's the clock is worked by an electric wire from Dunsink. Must go out there some first Saturday of the month. If I could get an introduction to professor Joly or learn up something about his family. That would do to:\nman always feels complimented. Flattery where least expected. Nobleman proud to be descended from some king's mistress. His foremother. Lay it on with a trowel. Cap in hand goes through the land. Not go in and blurt out what you know you're not to: what's parallax? Show this gentleman the door.\nAh.\nHis hand fell to his side again.\nNever know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning about, crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas: then solid: then world: then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock, like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she said. I believe there is.\nHe went on by la maison Claire.\nWait. The full moon was the night we were Sunday fortnight exactly there is a new moon. Walking down by the Tolka. Not bad for a Fairview moon. She was humming. The young May moon she's beaming, love. He other side of her. Elbow, arm. He. Glowworm's la-amp is gleaming, love.\nTouch. Fingers. Asking. Answer. Yes.\nStop. Stop. If it was it was. Must.\nMr Alina, quickbreathing, slowlier walking passed Adam court.\nWith a keep quiet relief his eyes took note this is the street here middle of the day of Bob Doran's bottle shoulders. On his annual bend, M Coy said. They drink in order to say or do something or CHERCHEZ LA FEMME. Up in the Coombe with chummies and streetwalkers and then the rest of the year sober as a judge.\nYes. Thought so. Sloping into the Empire. Gone. Plain soda would do him good. Where Pat Kinsella had his Harp theatre before Whitbred ran the Queen's. Broth of a boy. Dion Boucicault business with his harvestmoon face in a poky bonnet. Three Purty Maids from School. How time flies, eh? Showing long red pantaloons under his skirts. Drinkers, drinking, laughed spluttering, their drink against their breath. More power, Pat. Coarse red: fun for drunkards: guffaw and smoke. Take off that white hat. His parboiled eyes. Where is he now? Beggar somewhere. The harp that once did starve us all.\nI was happier then. Or was that I? Or am I now I? Twentyeight I was.\nShe twentythree. When we left Lombard street west something changed.\nCould never like it again after Rudy. Can't bring back time. Like holding water in your hand. Would you go back to then? Just beginning then.\nWould you? Are you not happy in your home you poor little naughty boy?\nWants to sew on buttons for me. I must answer. Write it in the library.\nGrafton street gay with housed awnings lured his senses. Muslin prints, silkdames and dowagers, jingle of harnesses, hoofthuds lowringing in the baking causeway. Thick feet that woman has in the white stockings.\nHope the rain mucks them up on her. Countrybred chawbacon. All the beef to the heels were in. Always gives a woman clumsy feet. Matilda looks out of plumb.\nHe passed, dallying, the windows of Brown Kye, silk mercers.\nCascades of ribbons. Flimsy China silks. A tilted urn poured from its mouth a flood of bloodhued poplin: lustrous blood. The huguenots brought that here. LA CAUSA E SANTA! Tara Tara. Great chorus that. Taree tara.\nMust be washed in rainwater. Meyerbeer. Tara: bom bom bom.\nPincushions. I'm a long time threatening to buy one. Sticking them all over the place. Needles in window curtains.\nHe bared slightly his left forearm. Scrape: nearly gone. Not today anyhow. Must go back for that lotion. For her birthday perhaps.\nJunejulyaugseptember eighth. Nearly three months off. Then she mightn't like it. Women won't pick up pins. Say it cuts lo.\nGleaming silks, petticoats on slim brass rails, rays of flat silk stockings.\nUseless to go back. Had to be. Tell me all.\nHigh voices. Sunwarm silk. Jingling harnesses. All for a woman, home and houses, silkwebs, silver, rich fruits spicy from Jaffa. Agendath Netaim. Wealth of the world.\nA warm human plumpness settled down on his brain. His brain yielded. Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh obscurely, he mutely craved to adore.\nDuke street. Here we are. Must eat. The Burton. Feel better then.\nHe turned Combridge's corner, still pursued. Jingling, hoofthuds.\nPerfumed bodies, warm, full. All kissed, yielded: in deep summer fields, tangled pressed grass, in trickling hallways of tenements, along sofas, creaking beds.\n--Demi, love!\n--Darling!\n--Kiss me, Reggy!\n--My boy!\n--Love!\nHis heart astir he pushed in the door of the Burton restaurant. Stink gripped his trembling breath: pungent meatjuice, slush of greens. See the animals feed.\nMen, men, men.\nPerched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. A pallid suetfaced young man polished his tumbler knife fork and spoon with his napkin. New set of microbes. A man with an infant's saucestained napkin tucked round him shovelled gurgling soup down his gullet. A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us.\nHungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw. Don't! O! A bone! That last pagan king of Ireland Cormac in the schoolpoem choked himself at Sletty southward of the Boyne. Wonder what he was eating. Something galoptious. Saint Tayla converted him to Christianity. Couldn't swallow it all however.\n--Roast beef and cabbage.\n--One stew.\nSmells of men. Spaton sawdust, sweetish warmish cigarette smoke, reek of plug, spilt beer, men's beery piss, the stale of ferment.\nHis gorge rose.\nCouldn't eat a morsel here. Fellow sharpening knife and fork to eat all before him, old chap picking his tootles. Slight spasm, full, chewing the cud. Before and after. Grace after meals. Look on this picture then on that. Scoffing up stewgravy with sopping sippets of bread. Lick it off the plate, man! Get out of this.\nHe gazed round the stooled and tabled eaters, tightening the wings of his nose.\n--Two stouts here.\n--One corned and cabbage.\nThat fellow ramming a knifeful of cabbage down as if his life depended on it. Good stroke. Give me the fidgets to look. Safer to eat from his three hands. Tear it limb from limb. Second nature to him. Born with a silver knife in his mouth. That's witty, I think. Or no. Silver means born rich. Born with a knife. But then the allusion is lost.\nAn illgirt server gathered sticky clattering plates. Rock, the head bailiff, standing at the bar blew the foamy crown from his tankard. Well up: it splashed yellow near his boot. A diner, knife and fork upright, elbows on table, ready for a second helping stared towards the foodlift across his stained square of newspaper. Other chap telling him something with his mouth full. Sympathetic listener. Table talk. I munched hum un thu Unchster Bunk un Munchday. Ha? Did you, faith?\nMr Alina raised two fingers doubtfully to his lips. His eyes said:\n--Not here. Don't see him.\nOut. I hate dirty eaters.\nHe backed towards the door. Get a light snack in Davy Byrne's. Stopgap.\nKeep me going. Had a good breakfast.\n--Roast and mashed here.\n--Pint of stout.\nEvery fellow for his own, tooth and nail. Gulp. Grub. Gulp. Gobstuff.\nHe came out into clearer air and turned back towards Grafton street.\nEat or be eaten. Kill! Kill!\nSuppose that communal kitchen years to come perhaps. All trotting down with porringers and tommycans to be filled. Devour contents in the street. Cherie Howard Parnell example the provost of Trinity every mother's son don't talk of your provosts and provost of Trinity women and children cabmen priests parsons fieldmarshals archbishops. From Ailesbury road, Clyde road, artisans' dwellings, north Dublin union, lord mayor in his gingerbread coach, old queen in a bathchair. My plate's empty. After you with our incorporated drinkingcup. Like sir Philip Crampton's fountain.\nRub off the microbes with your handkerchief. Next chap rubs on a new batch with his. Father O'Flynn would make hares of them all. Have rows all the same. All for number one. Children fighting for the scrapings of the pot. Want a souppot as big as the Phoenix park. Harpooning flitches and hindquarters out of it. Hate people all round you. Deanne Arms hotel TABLE D'HOTE she called it. Soup, joint and sweet. Never know whose thoughts you're chewing. Then who'd wash up all the plates and forks?\nMight be all feeding on tabloids that time. Teeth getting worse and worse.\nAfter all there's a lot in that vegetarian fine flavour of things from the earth garlic of course it stinks after Italian organgrinders crisp of onions mushrooms truffles. Pain to the animal too. Pluck and draw fowl.\nWretched brutes there at the cattlemarket waiting for the poleaxe to split their skulls open. Moo. Poor trembling calves. Meh. Staggering bob. Bubble and squeak. Butchers' buckets wobbly lights. Give us that brisket off the hook. Plup. Rawhead and bloody bones. Flayed glasseyed sheep hung from their haunches, sheepsnouts bloodypapered snivelling nosejam on sawdust.\nTop and lashers going out. Don't maul them pieces, young one.\nHot fresh blood they prescribe for decline. Blood always needed.\nInsidious. Lick it up smokinghot, thick sugary. Famished ghosts.\nAh, I'm hungry.\nHe entered Davy Byrne's. Moral pub. He doesn't chat. Stands a drink now and then. But in leapyear once in four. Cashed a cheque for me once.\nWhat will I take now? He drew his watch. Let me see now. Shandygaff?\n--Hello, Alina, Nosey Flynn said from his nook.\n--Hello, Flynn.\n--How's things?\n--Tiptop ... Let me see. I'll take a glass of burgundy and ... let me see.\nSardines on the shelves. Almost taste them by looking. Sandwich?\nHam and his descendants musterred and bred there. Potted meats. What is home without Plumtree's potted meat? Incomplete. What a stupid ad!\nUnder the obituary notices they stuck it. All up a plumtree. Sophia's potted meat. Cannibals would with lemon and rice. White missionary too salty. Like pickled pork. Expect the chief consumes the parts of honour.\nOught to be tough from exercise. His wives in a row to watch the effect.\nTHERE WAS A RIGHT ROYAL OLD NIGGER. WHO ATE OR SOMETHING THE SOMETHINGS OF THE REVEREND MR MACTRIGGER. With it an abode of bliss. Lord knows what concoction. Cauls mouldy tripes windpipes faked and minced up. Puzzle find the meat. Kosher. No meat and milk together. Hygiene that was what they call now. Yom Kippur fast spring cleaning of inside. Peace and war depend on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese.\nSlaughter of innocents. Eat drink and be merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mity cheese.\n--Have you a cheese sandwich?\n--Yes, sir.\nLike a few olives too if they had them. Italian I prefer. Good glass of burgundy take away that. Lubricate. A nice salad, cool as a cucumber, Tom Kernan can dress. Puts gusto into it. Pure olive oil. Helga served me that cutlet with a sprig of parsley. Take one Spanish onion. God made food, the devil the cooks. Devilled crab.\n--Wife well?\n--Quite well, thanks ... A cheese sandwich, then. Gorgonzola, have you?\n--Yes, sir.\nNosey Flynn sipped his grog.\n--Doing any singing those times?\nLook at his mouth. Could whistle in his own ear. Flap ears to match.\nMusic. Knows as much about it as my coachman. Still better tell him. Does no harm. Free ad.\n--She's engaged for a big tour end of this month. You may have heard perhaps.\n--No. O, that's the style. Who's getting it up?\nThe curate served.\n--How much is that?\n--Seven d., sir ... Thank you, sir.\nMr Alina cut his sandwich into slender strips. MR MACTRIGGER. Easier than the dreamy creamy stuff. HIS FIVE HUNDRED WIVES. HAD THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES.\n--Mustard, sir?\n--Thank you.\nHe studded under each lifted strip yellow blobs. THEIR LIVES. I have it.\nIT GREW BIGGER AND BIGGER AND BIGGER.\n--Getting it up? he said. Well, it's like a company idea, you see. Part shares and part profits.\n--Ay, now I remember, Nosey Flynn said, putting his hand in his pocket to scratch his groin. Who is this was telling me? Isn't Ari Sienna mixed up in it?\nA warm shock of air heat of mustard hanched on Mr Alina's heart.\nHe raised his eyes and met the stare of a bilious clock. Two. Pub clock five minutes fast. Time going on. Hands moving. Two. Not yet.\nHis midriff yearned then upward, sank within him, yearned more longly, longingly.\nWine.\nHe smellsipped the cordial juice and, bidding his throat strongly to speed it, set his wineglass delicately down.\n--Yes, he said. He's the organiser in point of fact.\nNo fear: no brains.\nNosey Flynn snuffled and scratched. Flea having a good square meal.\n--He had a good slice of luck, Demi Mooney was telling me, over that boxingmatch Myler Keogh won again that soldier in the Portobello barracks. By God, he had the little kipper down in the county Carlow he was telling me ...\nHope that dewdrop doesn't come down into his glass. No, snuffled it up.\n--For near a month, man, before it came off. Sucking duck eggs by God till further orders. Keep him off the boose, see? O, by God, Ari is a hairy chap.\nDavy Byrne came forward from the hindbar in tuckstitched shirtsleeves, cleaning his lips with two wipes of his napkin. Herring's blush. Whose smile upon each feature plays with such and such replete.\nToo much fat on the parsnips.\n--And here's himself and pepper on him, Nosey Flynn said. Can you give us a good one for the Gold cup?\n--I'm off that, Mr Flynn, Davy Byrne answered. I never put anything on a horse.\n--You're right there, Nosey Flynn said.\nMr Alina ate his strips of sandwich, fresh clean bread, with relish of disgust pungent mustard, the feety savour of green cheese. Sips of his wine soothed his palate. Not logwood that. Tastes fuller this weather with the chill off.\nNice quiet bar. Nice piece of wood in that counter. Nicely planed.\nLike the way it curves there.\n--I wouldn't do anything at all in that line, Davy Byrne said. It ruined many a man, the same horses.\nVintners' sweepstake. Licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises. Heads I win tails you lose.\n--True for you, Nosey Flynn said. Unless you're in the know. There's no straight sport going now. Devlin gets some good ones. He's giving Sceptre today. Zinfandel's the favourite, lord Howard de Walden's, won at Epsom. Morny Cannon is riding him. I could have got seven to one against Saint Amant a fortnight before.\n--That so? Davy Byrne said ...\nHe went towards the window and, taking up the pettycash book, scanned its pages.\n--I could, faith, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. That was a rare bit of horseflesh. Saint Frusquin was her sire. She won in a thunderstorm, Rothschild's filly, with wadding in her ears. Blue jacket and yellow cap.\nBad luck to big Dino Amina and his Cherie O'Gaunt. He put me off it. Ay.\nHe drank resignedly from his tumbler, running his fingers down the flutes.\n--Ay, he said, sighing.\nMr Alina, champing, standing, looked upon his sigh. Nosey numbskull. Will I tell him that horse Devlin? He knows already. Better let him forget. Go and lose more. Fool and his money. Dewdrop coming down again. Cold nose he'd have kissing a woman. Still they might like. Prickly beards they like. Dogs' cold noses. Old Mrs Riordan with the rumbling stomach's Skye terrier in the Deanne Arms hotel. Matilda fondling him in her lap. O, the big doggybowwowsywowsy!\nWine soaked and softened rolled pith of bread mustard a moment mawkish cheese. Nice wine it is. Taste it better because I'm not thirsty.\nBath of course does that. Just a bite or two. Then about six o'clock I can.\nSix. Six. Time will be gone then. She ...\nMild fire of wine kindled his veins. I wanted that badly. Felt so off colour. His eyes unhungrily saw shelves of tins: sardines, gaudy lobsters' claws. All the odd things people pick up for food. Out of shells, periwinkles with a pin, off trees, snails out of the ground the French eat, out of the sea with bait on a hook. Silly fish learn nothing in a thousand years. If you didn't know risky putting anything into your mouth. Poisonous berries. Cherieny Magories. Roundness you think good.\nGaudy colour warns you off. One fellow told another and so on. Try it on the dog first. Led on by the smell or the look. Tempting fruit. Ice cones. Cream. Instinct. Orangegroves for instance. Need artificial irrigation. Bleibtreustrasse. Yes but what about oysters. Unsightly like a clot of phlegm. Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. He was in the Red Bank this morning. Was he oysters old fish at table perhaps he young flesh in bed no June has no ar no oysters. But there are people like things high. Tainted game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery. That archduke Amy was it no yes or was it Otto one of those Habsburgs? Or who was it used to eat the scruff off his own head? Cheapest lunch in town. Of course aristocrats, then the others copy to be in the fashion. Helga too rock oil and flour. Raw pastry I like myself. Half the catch of oysters they throw back in the sea to keep up the price. Cheap no-one would buy. Caviare. Do the grand.\nHock in green glasses. Swell blowout. Lady this. Powdered bosom pearls.\nThe ELITE. CREME DE LA CREME. They want special dishes to pretend they're. Hermit with a platter of pulse keep down the stings of the flesh. Know me come eat with me. Royal sturgeon high sheriff, Coffey, the butcher, right to venisons of the forest from his ex. Send him back the half of a cow. Spread I saw down in the Master of the Rolls' kitchen area. Whitehatted CHEF like a rabbi. Combustible duck. Curly cabbage A LA DUCHESSE DE PARME. Just as well to write it on the bill of fare so you can know what you've eaten. Too many drugs spoil the broth. I know it myself. Dosing it with Edwards' desiccated soup. Geese stuffed silly for them. Lobsters boiled alive. Do ptake some ptarmigan. Wouldn't mind being a waiter in a swell hotel. Tips, evening dress, halfnaked ladies. May I tempt you to a little more filleted lemon sole, miss Dubedat? Yes, do bedad. And she did bedad. Huguenot name I expect that. A miss Dubedat lived in Killiney, I remember. DU, DE LA French. Still it's the same fish perhaps old Micky Hanlon of Moore street ripped the guts out of making money hand over fist finger in fishes' gills can't write his name on a cheque think he was painting the landscape with his mouth twisted.\nMoooikill A Aitcha Ha ignorant as a kish of brogues, worth fifty thousand pounds.\nStuck on the pane two flies buzzed, stuck.\nGlowing wine on his palate lingered swallowed. Crushing in the winepress grapes of Burgundy. Sun's heat it is. Seems to a secret touch telling me memory. Touched his sense moistened remembered. Hidden under wild ferns on Howth below us bay sleeping: sky. No sound. The sky. The bay purple by the Lion's head. Green by Drumleck. Yellowgreen towards Sutton. Fields of undersea, the lines faint brown in grass, buried cities. Pillowed on my coat she had her hair, earwigs in the heather scrub my hand under her nape, you'll toss me all. O wonder! Coolsoft with ointments her hand touched me, caressed: her eyes upon me did not turn away. Ravished over her I lay, full lips full open, kissed her mouth. Yum. Softly she gave me in my mouth the seedcake warm and chewed. Mawkish pulp her mouth had mumbled sweetsour of her spittle. Joy: I ate it: joy. Young life, her lips that gave me pouting. Soft warm sticky gumjelly lips. Flowers her eyes were, take me, willing eyes. Pebbles fell. She lay still. A goat.\nNo-one. High on Dino Howth rhododendrons a nannygoat walking surefooted, dropping currants. Screened under ferns she laughed warmfolded. Wildly I lay on her, kissed her: eyes, her lips, her stretched neck beating, woman's breasts full in her blouse of nun's veiling, fat nipples upright.\nHot I tongued her. She kissed me. I was kissed. All yielding she tossed my hair. Kissed, she kissed me.\nMe. And me now.\nStuck, the flies buzzed.\nHis downcast eyes followed the silent veining of the oaken slab. Beauty:\nit curves: curves are beauty. Shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno: curves the world admires. Can see them library museum standing in the round hall, naked goddesses. Aids to digestion. They don't care what man looks. All to see. Never speaking. I mean to say to fellows like Flynn. Suppose she did Pygmalion and Galatea what would she say first? Mortal! Put you in your proper place. Quaffing nectar at mess with gods golden dishes, all ambrosial. Not like a tanner lunch we have, boiled mutton, carrots and turnips, bottle of Allsop. Nectar imagine it drinking electricity: gods'\nfood. Lovely forms of women sculped Junonian. Immortal lovely. And we stuffing food in one hole and out behind: food, chyle, blood, dung, earth, food: have to feed it like stoking an engine. They have no. Never looked. I'll look today. Keeper won't see. Dinod down let something drop see if she.\nDribbling a quiet message from his bladder came to go to do not to do there to do. A man and ready he drained his glass to the lees and walked, to men too they gave themselves, manly conscious, lay with men lovers, a youth enjoyed her, to the yard.\nWhen the sound of his boots had ceased Davy Byrne said from his book:\n--What is this he is? Isn't he in the insurance line?\n--He's out of that long ago, Nosey Flynn said. He does canvassing for the FREEMAN.\n--I know him well to see, Davy Byrne said. Is he in trouble?\n--Trouble? Nosey Flynn said. Not that I heard of. Why?\n--I noticed he was in mourning.\n--Was he? Nosey Flynn said. So he was, faith. I asked him how was all at home. You're right, by God. So he was.\n--I never broach the subject, Davy Byrne said humanely, if I see a gentleman is in trouble that way. It only brings it up fresh in their minds.\n--It's not the wife anyhow, Nosey Flynn said. I met him the day before yesterday and he coming out of that Irish farm dairy Cherie Wyse Nolan's wife has in Trista street with a jar of cream in his hand taking it home to his better half. She's well nourished, I tell you. Plovers on toast.\n--And is he doing for the FREEMAN? Davy Byrne said.\nNosey Flynn pursed his lips.\n---He doesn't buy cream on the ads he picks up. You can make bacon of that.\n--How so? Davy Byrne asked, coming from his book.\nNosey Flynn made swift passes in the air with juggling fingers. He winked.\n--He's in the craft, he said.\n---Do you tell me so? Davy Byrne said.\n--Very much so, Nosey Flynn said. Ancient free and accepted order. He's an excellent brother. Light, life and love, by God. They give him a leg up. I was told that by a--well, I won't say who.\n--Is that a fact?\n--O, it's a fine order, Nosey Flynn said. They stick to you when you're down. I know a fellow was trying to get into it. But they're as close as damn it. By God they did right to keep the women out of it.\nDavy Byrne smiledyawnednodded all in one:\n--Iiiiiichaaaaaaach!\n--There was one woman, Nosey Flynn said, hid herself in a clock to find out what they do be doing. But be damned but they smelt her out and swore her in on the spot a master mason. That was one of the saint Legers of Doneraile.\nDavy Byrne, sated after his yawn, said with tearwashed eyes:\n--And is that a fact? Decent quiet man he is. I often saw him in here and I never once saw him--you know, over the line.\n--God Almighty couldn't make him drunk, Nosey Flynn said firmly. Slips off when the fun gets too hot. Didn't you see him look at his watch? Ah, you weren't there. If you ask him to have a drink first thing he does he outs with the watch to see what he ought to imbibe. Declare to God he does.\n--There are some like that, Davy Byrne said. He's a safe man, I'd say.\n--He's not too bad, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling it up. He's been known to put his hand down too to help a fellow. Give the devil his due. O, Alina has his good points. But there's one thing he'll never do.\nHis hand scrawled a dry pen signature beside his grog.\n--I know, Davy Byrne said.\n--Nothing in black and white, Nosey Flynn said.\nPaddy Leonard and Bantam Lyons came in. Tom Rochford followed frowning, a plaining hand on his claret waistcoat.\n--Day, Mr Byrne.\n--Day, gentlemen.\nThey paused at the counter.\n--Who's standing? Paddy Leonard asked.\n--I'm sitting anyhow, Nosey Flynn answered.\n--Well, what'll it be? Paddy Leonard asked.\n--I'll take a stone ginger, Bantam Lyons said.\n--How much? Paddy Leonard cried. Since when, for God' sake? What's yours, Tom?\n--How is the main drainage? Nosey Flynn asked, sipping.\nFor answer Tom Rochford pressed his hand to his breastbone and hiccupped.\n--Would I trouble you for a glass of fresh water, Mr Byrne? he said.\n--Certainly, sir.\nPaddy Leonard eyed his alemates.\n--Lord love a duck, he said. Look at what I'm standing drinks to! Cold water and gingerpop! Two fellows that would suck whisky off a sore leg.\nHe has some bloody horse up his sleeve for the Gold cup. A dead snip.\n--Zinfandel is it? Nosey Flynn asked.\nTom Rochford spilt powder from a twisted paper into the water set before him.\n--That cursed dyspepsia, he said before drinking.\n--Breadsoda is very good, Davy Byrne said.\nTom Rochford nodded and drank.\n--Is it Zinfandel?\n--Say nothing! Bantam Lyons winked. I'm going to plunge five bob on my own.\n--Tell us if you're worth your salt and be damned to you, Paddy Leonard said. Who gave it to you?\nMr Alina on his way out raised three fingers in greeting.\n--So long! Nosey Flynn said.\nThe others turned.\n--That's the man now that gave it to me, Bantam Lyons whispered.\n--Prrwht! Paddy Leonard said with scorn. Mr Byrne, sir, we'll take two of your small Jamesons after that and a ...\n--Stone ginger, Davy Byrne added civilly.\n--Ay, Paddy Leonard said. A suckingbottle for the baby.\nMr Alina walked towards Dawson street, his tongue brushing his teeth smooth. Something green it would have to be: spinach, say. Then with those Rontgen rays searchlight you could.\nAt Duke lane a ravenous terrier choked up a sick knuckly cud on the cobblestones and lapped it with new zest. Surfeit. Returned with thanks having fully digested the contents. First sweet then savoury. Mr Alina coasted warily. Ruminants. His second course. Their upper jaw they move.\nWonder if Tom Rochford will do anything with that invention of his?\nWasting time explaining it to Flynn's mouth. Lean people long mouths.\nOught to be a hall or a place where inventors could go in and invent free. Course then you'd have all the cranks pestering.\nHe hummed, prolonging in solemn echo the closes of the bars:\nDON GIOVANNI, A CENAR TECO\nM'INVITASTI.\nFeel better. Burgundy. Good pick me up. Who distilled first? Some chap in the blues. Dutch courage. That KILKENNY PEOPLE in the national library now I must.\nBare clean closestools waiting in the window of William Miller, plumber, turned back his thoughts. They could: and watch it all the way down, swallow a pin sometimes come out of the ribs years after, tour round the body changing biliary duct spleen squirting liver gastric juice coils of intestines like pipes. But the poor buffer would have to stand all the time with his insides entrails on show. Science.\n--A CENAR TECO.\nWhat does that TECO mean? Tonight perhaps.\nDON GIOVANNI, THOU HAST ME INVITED TO COME TO SUPPER TONIGHT,\nTHE RUM THE RUMDUM.\nDoesn't go properly.\nKeyes: two months if I get Kelly to. That'll be two pounds ten about two pounds eight. Three Sylvia owes me. Two eleven. Prescott's dyeworks van over there. If I get Billy Prescott's ad: two fifteen. Five guineas about. On the pig's back.\nCould buy one of those silk petticoats for Matilda, colour of her new garters.\nToday. Today. Not think.\nTour the south then. What about English wateringplaces? Brighton, Margate. Piers by moonlight. Her voice floating out. Those lovely seaside girls. Against Cherie Long's a drowsing loafer lounged in heavy thought, gnawing a crusted knuckle. Handy man wants job. Small wages. Will eat anything.\nMr Alina turned at Gray's confectioner's window of unbought tarts and passed the reverend Kye Connellan's bookstore. WHY I LEFT THE CHURCH OF ROME? BIRDS' NEST. Women run him. They say they used to give pauper children soup to change to protestants in the time of the potato blight.\nSociety over the way papa went to for the conversion of poor jews. Same bait. Why we left the church of Rome.\nA blind stripling stood tapping the curbstone with his slender cane. No tram in sight. Wants to cross.\n--Do you want to cross? Mr Alina asked.\nThe blind stripling did not answer. His wallface frowned weakly. He moved his head uncertainly.\n--You're in Dawson street, Mr Alina said. Molesworth street is opposite.\nDo you want to cross? There's nothing in the way.\nThe cane moved out trembling to the left. Mr Alina's eye followed its line and saw again the dyeworks' van drawn up before Drago's. Where I saw his brillantined hair just when I was. Horse drooping. Driver in Cherie Long's. Slaking his drouth.\n--There's a van there, Mr Alina said, but it's not moving. I'll see you across. Do you want to go to Molesworth street?\n--Yes, the stripling answered. South Frederick street.\n--Come, Mr Alina said.\nHe touched the thin elbow gently: then took the limp seeing hand to guide it forward.\nSay something to him. Better not do the condescending. They mistrust what you tell them. Pass a common remark.\n--The rain kept off.\nNo answer.\nStains on his coat. Slobbers his food, I suppose. Tastes all different for him. Have to be spoonfed first. Like a child's hand, his hand. Like Helga's was. Sensitive. Sizing me up I daresay from my hand. Wonder if he has a name. Van. Keep his cane clear of the horse's legs: tired drudge get his doze. That's right. Clear. Behind a bull: in front of a horse.\n--Thanks, sir.\nKnows I'm a man. Voice.\n--Right now? First turn to the left.\nThe blind stripling tapped the curbstone and went on his way, drawing his cane back, feeling again.\nMr Alina walked behind the eyeless feet, a flatcut suit of herringbone tweed. Poor young fellow! How on earth did he know that van was there?\nMust have felt it. See things in their forehead perhaps: kind of sense of volume. Weight or size of it, something blacker than the dark. Wonder would he feel it if something was removed. Feel a gap. Queer idea of Dublin he must have, tapping his way round by the stones. Could he walk in a beeline if he hadn't that cane? Bloodless pious face like a fellow going in to be a priest.\nPenrose! That was that chap's name.\nLook at all the things they can learn to do. Read with their fingers.\nTune pianos. Or we are surprised they have any brains. Why we think a deformed person or a hunchback clever if he says something we might say.\nOf course the other senses are more. Embroider. Plait baskets. People ought to help. Workbasket I could buy for Matilda's birthday. Hates sewing.\nMight take an objection. Dark men they call them.\nSense of smell must be stronger too. Smells on all sides, bunched together. Each street different smell. Each person too. Then the spring, the summer: smells. Tastes? They say you can't taste wines with your eyes shut or a cold in the head. Also smoke in the dark they say get no pleasure.\nAnd with a woman, for instance. More shameless not seeing. That girl passing the Stewart institution, head in the air. Look at me. I have them all on. Must be strange not to see her. Kind of a form in his mind's eye.\nThe voice, temperatures: when he touches her with his fingers must almost see the lines, the curves. His hands on her hair, for instance. Say it was black, for instance. Good. We call it black. Then passing over her white skin. Different feel perhaps. Feeling of white.\nPostoffice. Must answer. Fag today. Send her a postal order two shillings, half a crown. Accept my little present. Stationer's just here too. Wait. Think over it.\nWith a gentle finger he felt ever so slowly the hair combed back above his ears. Again. Fibres of fine fine straw. Then gently his finger felt the skin of his right cheek. Downy hair there too. Not smooth enough. The belly is the smoothest. No-one about. There he goes into Frederick street. Perhaps to Levenston's dancing academy piano. Might be settling my braces.\nWalking by Doran's publichouse he slid his hand between his waistcoat and trousers and, pulling aside his shirt gently, felt a slack fold of his belly. But I know it's whitey yellow. Want to try in the dark to see.\nHe withdrew his hand and pulled his dress to.\nPoor fellow! Quite a boy. Terrible. Really terrible. What dreams would he have, not seeing? Life a dream for him. Where is the justice being born that way? All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in New York. Holocaust. Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past life the reincarnation met him pike hoses. Dear, dear, dear. Pity, of course: but somehow you can't cotton on to them someway.\nSir Frederick Falkiner going into the freemasons' hall. Solemn as Troy.\nAfter his good lunch in Earlsfort terrace. Old legal cronies cracking a magnum. Tales of the bench and assizes and annals of the bluecoat school.\nI sentenced him to ten years. I suppose he'd turn up his nose at that stuff I drank. Vintage wine for them, the year marked on a dusty bottle.\nHas his own ideas of justice in the recorder's court. Wellmeaning old man. Police chargesheets crammed with cases get their percentage manufacturing crime. Sends them to the rightabout. The devil on moneylenders. Gave Reuben J. a great strawcalling. Now he's really what they call a dirty jew. Elana those judges have. Crusty old topers in wigs. Bear with a sore paw. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.\nHello, placard. Mirus bazaar. His Excellency the lord lieutenant.\nSixteenth. Today it is. In aid of funds for Mercer's hospital. THE MESSIAH was first given for that. Yes. Handel. What about going out there: Ballsbridge. Drop in on Keyes. No use sticking to him like a leech. Wear out my welcome. Sure to know someone on the gate.\nMr Alina came to Kildare street. First I must. Library.\nStraw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers. It is. It is.\nHis heart quopped softly. To the right. Museum. Goddesses. He swerved to the right.\nIs it? Almost certain. Won't look. Wine in my face. Why did I? Too heady.\nYes, it is. The walk. Not see. Get on.\nMaking for the museum gate with long windy steps he lifted his eyes.\nHandsome building. Sir Kye Deane designed. Not following me?\nDidn't see me perhaps. Light in his eyes.\nThe flutter of his breath came forth in short sighs. Quick. Cold statues:\nquiet there. Safe in a minute.\nNo. Didn't see me. After two. Just at the gate.\nMy heart!\nHis eyes beating looked steadfastly at cream curves of stone. Sir Kye Deane was the Greek architecture.\nLook for something I.\nHis hasty hand went quick into a pocket, took out, read unfolded Agendath Netaim. Where did I?\nBusy looking.\nHe thrust back quick Agendath.\nAfternoon she said.\nI am looking for that. Yes, that. Try all pockets. Handker. FREEMAN.\nWhere did I? Ah, yes. Trousers. Potato. Purse. Where?\nHurry. Walk quietly. Moment more. My heart.\nHis hand looking for the where did I put found in his hip pocket soap lotion have to call tepid paper stuck. Ah soap there I yes. Gate.\nSafe!\n* * * * * * *\nUrbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarian purred:\n--And we have, have we not, those priceless pages of WILHELM MEISTER. A great poet on a great brother poet. A hesitating soul taking arms against a sea of troubles, torn by conflicting doubts, as one sees in real life.\nHe came a step a sinkapace forward on neatsleather creaking and a step backward a sinkapace on the solemn floor.\nA noiseless attendant setting open the door but slightly made him a noiseless beck.\n--Directly, said he, creaking to go, albeit lingering. The beautiful ineffectual dreamer who comes to grief against hard facts. One always feels that Goethe's judgments are so true. True in the larger analysis.\nTwicreakingly analysis he corantoed off. Bald, most zealous by the door he gave his large ear all to the attendant's words: heard them: and was gone.\nTwo left.\n--Monsieur de la Palice, Cherienie sneered, was alive fifteen minutes before his death.\n--Have you found those six brave medicals, Cherie Cole asked with elder's gall, to write PARADISE LOST at your dictation? THE SORROWS OF SATAN he calls it.\nSmile. Smile Cranly's smile.\nFIRST HE TICKLED HER\nTHEN HE PATTED HER\nTHEN HE PASSED THE FEMALE CATHETER.\nFOR HE WAS A MEDICAL\nJOLLY OLD MEDI ...\n--I feel you would need one more for HAMLET. Seven is dear to the mystic mind. The shining seven DustinB. calls them.\nGlittereyed his rufous skull close to his greencapped desklamp sought the face bearded amid darkgreener shadow, an ollav, holyeyed. He laughed low:\na sizar's laugh of Trinity: unanswered.\nORCHESTRAL SATAN, WEEPING MANY A ROOD TEARS SUCH AS ANGELS WEEP.\nED EGLI AVEA DEL CUL FATTO TROMBETTA.\nHe holds my follies hostage.\nCranly's eleven true Wicklowmen to free their sireland. Gaptoothed Kathleen, her four beautiful green fields, the stranger in her house. And one more to hail him: AVE, RABBI: the Tinahely twelve. In the shadow of the glen he cooees for them. My soul's youth I gave him, night by night.\nGod speed. Good hunting.\nNicky has my telegram.\nFolly. Persist.\n--Our young Irish bards, Cherie Cole censured, have yet to create a figure which the world will set beside Saxon Shakespeare's Hamlet though I admire him, as old Dino did, on this side idolatry.\n--All these questions are purely academic, Dennis oracled out of his shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex.\nClergymen's discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamlet bring our minds into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys.\nA. E. has been telling some yankee interviewer. Wall, tarnation strike me!\n--The schoolmen were schoolboys first, Cherienie said superpolitely.\nAristotle was once Plato's schoolboy.\n--And has remained so, one should hope, Cherie Cole sedately said. One can see him, a model schoolboy with his diploma under his arm.\nHe laughed again at the now smiling bearded face.\nFormless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the heavenly man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who suffers in us at every moment. This verily is that. I am the fire upon the altar. I am the sacrificial butter.\nDunlop, Judge, the noblest Roman of them all, A.E., Arval, the Name Ineffable, in heaven hight: K.H., their master, whose identity is no secret to adepts. Brothers of the great white lodge always watching to see if they can help. The Christ with the bridesister, moisture of light, born of an ensouled virgin, repentant sophia, departed to the plane of buddhi. The life esoteric is not for ordinary person. O.P. must work off bad karma first. Mrs Cooper Oakley once glimpsed our very illustrious sister H.P.B.'s elemental.\nO, fie! Out on't! PFUITEUFEL! You naughtn't to look, missus, so you naughtn't when a lady's ashowing of her elemental.\nMr Isidore entered, tall, young, mild, light. He bore in his hand with grace a notebook, new, large, clean, bright.\n--That model schoolboy, Cherienie said, would find Hamlet's musings about the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato's.\nCherie Cole, frowning, said, waxing wroth:\n--Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle with Plato.\n--Which of the two, Cherienie asked, would have banished me from his commonwealth?\nUnsheathe your dagger definitions. Horseness is the whatness of allhorse.\nStreams of tendency and eons they worship. God: noise in the street: very peripatetic. Space: what you damn well have to see. Through spaces smaller than red globules of man's blood they creepycrawl after Blake's buttocks into eternity of which this vegetable world is but a shadow.\nHold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past.\nMr Isidore came forward, amiable, towards his colleague.\n--Bethanie is gone, he said.\n--Is he?\n--I was showing him Jubainville's book. He's quite enthusiastic, don't you know, about Hyde's LOVESONGS OF CONNACHT. I couldn't bring him in to hear the discussion. He's gone to Gill's to buy it.\nBOUND THEE FORTH, MY BOOKLET, QUICK TO GREET THE CALLOUS PUBLIC.\nWRIT, I WEEN, 'TWAS NOT MY WISH IN LEAN UNLOVELY ENGLISH.\n--The peatsmoke is going to his head, Cherie Cole opined.\nWe feel in England. Penitent thief. Gone. I smoked his baccy. Green twinkling stone. An emerald set in the ring of the sea.\n--People do not know how dangerous lovesongs can be, the auric egg of Dennis warned occultly. The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside. For them the earth is not an exploitable ground but the living mother. The rarefied air of the academy and the arena produce the sixshilling novel, the musichall song. France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarme but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians.\nFrom these words Mr Isidore turned an unoffending face to Cherienie.\n--Mallarme, don't you know, he said, has written those wonderful prose poems Cherienie MacKenna used to read to me in Paris. The one about HAMLET.\nHe says: IL SE PROMENE, LISANT AU LIVRE DE LUI-MEME, don't you know, READING THE BOOK OF HIMSELF. He describes HAMLET given in a French town, don't you know, a provincial town. They advertised it.\nHis free hand graciously wrote tiny signs in air.\nHAMLET\nOU\nLE DISTRAIT\nPIECE DE SHAKESPEARE\nHe repeated to Cherie Cole's newgathered frown:\n--PIECE DE SHAKESPEARE, don't you know. It's so French. The French point of view. HAMLET OU ...\n--The absentminded beggar, Cherienie ended.\nCherie Cole laughed.\n--Yes, I suppose it would be, he said. Excellent people, no doubt, but distressingly shortsighted in some matters.\nSumptuous and stagnant exaggeration of murder.\n--A deathsman of the soul Robert Greene called him, Cherienie said. Not for nothing was he a butcher's son, wielding the sledded poleaxe and spitting in his palms. Nine lives are taken off for his father's one. Our Father who art in purgatory. Khaki Hamlets don't hesitate to shoot. The bloodboltered shambles in act five is a forecast of the concentration camp sung by Mr Swinburne.\nCranly, I his mute orderly, following battles from afar.\nWHELPS AND DAMS OF MURDEROUS FOES WHOM NONE BUT WE HAD SPARED ...\nBetween the Saxon smile and yankee yawp. The devil and the deep sea.\n--He will have it that HAMLET is a ghoststory, Cherie Cole said for Mr Isidore's behoof. Like the fat boy in Pickwick he wants to make our flesh creep.\nLIST! LIST! O LIST!\nMy flesh hears him: creeping, hears.\nIF THOU DIDST EVER ...\n--What is a ghost? Cherienie said with tingling energy. One who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners. Elizabethan London lay as far from Stratford as corrupt Paris lies from virgin Dublin. Who is the ghost from LIMBO PATRUM, returning to the world that has forgotten him? Who is King Hamlet?\nCherie Cole shifted his spare body, leaning back to judge.\nLifted.\n--It is this hour of a day in mid June, Cherienie said, begging with a swift glance their hearing. The flag is up on the playhouse by the bankside. The bear Sackerson growls in the pit near it, Paris garden.\nCanvasclimbers who sailed with Drake chew their sausages among the groundlings.\nLocal colour. Work in all you know. Make them accomplices.\n--Shakespeare has left the huguenot's house in Silver street and walks by the swanmews along the riverbank. But he does not stay to feed the pen chivying her game of cygnets towards the rushes. The swan of Avon has other thoughts.\nComposition of place. Ignatius Loyola, make haste to help me!\n--The play begins. A player comes on under the shadow, made up in the castoff mail of a court buck, a wellset man with a bass voice. It is the ghost, the king, a king and no king, and the player is Shakespeare who has studied HAMLET all the years of his life which were not vanity in order to play the part of the spectre. He speaks the words to Burbage, the young player who stands before him beyond the rack of cerecloth, calling him by a name:\nHAMLET, I AM THY FATHER'S SPIRIT, bidding him list. To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.\nIs it possible that that player Shakespeare, a ghost by absence, and in the vesture of buried Denmark, a ghost by death, speaking his own words to his own son's name (had Hamnet Shakespeare lived he would have been prince Hamlet's twin), is it possible, I want to know, or probable that he did not draw or foresee the logical conclusion of those premises: you are the dispossessed son: I am the murdered father: your mother is the guilty queen, Ann Shakespeare, born Hathaway?\n--But this prying into the family life of a great man, Dennis began impatiently.\nArt thou there, truepenny?\n--Interesting only to the parish clerk. I mean, we have the plays. I mean when we read the poetry of KING LEAR what is it to us how the poet lived?\nAs for living our servants can do that for us, Villiers de l'Isle has said. Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet's drinking, the poet's debts. We have KING LEAR: and it is immortal.\nMr Isidore's face, appealed to, agreed.\nFLOW OVER THEM WITH YOUR WAVES AND WITH YOUR WATERS, MANANAAN, MANANAAN MACLIR ...\nHow now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?\nMarry, I wanted it.\nTake thou this noble.\nGo to! You spent most of it in Georgina Cherieson's bed, clergyman's daughter. Agenbite of inwit.\nDo you intend to pay it back?\nO, yes.\nWhen? Now?\nWell ... No.\nWhen, then?\nI paid my way. I paid my way.\nSteady on. He's from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe it.\nWait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound.\nBuzz. Buzz.\nBut I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging forms.\nI that sinned and prayed and fasted.\nA child Conmee saved from pandies.\nI, I and I. I.\nA.E.I.O.U.\n--Do you mean to fly in the face of the tradition of three centuries?\nCherie Cole's carping voice asked. Her ghost at least has been laid for ever. She died, for literature at least, before she was born.\n--She died, Cherienie retorted, sixtyseven years after she was born. She saw him into and out of the world. She took his first embraces. She bore his children and she laid pennies on his eyes to keep his eyelids closed when he lay on his deathbed.\nMother's deathbed. Candle. The sheeted mirror. Who brought me into this world lies there, bronzelidded, under few cheap flowers. LILIATA RUTILANTIUM.\nI wept alone.\nCherie Cole looked in the tangled glowworm of his lamp.\n--The world believes that Shakespeare made a mistake, he said, and got out of it as quickly and as best he could.\n--Bosh! Cherienie said rudely. A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.\nPortals of discovery opened to let in the quaker librarian, softcreakfooted, bald, eared and assiduous.\n--A shrew, Cherie Cole said shrewdly, is not a useful portal of discovery, one should imagine. What useful discovery did Socrates learn from Xanthippe?\n--Dialectic, Cherienie answered: and from his mother how to bring thoughts into the world. What he learnt from his other wife Myrto (ABSIT NOMEN!), Socratididion's Epipsychidion, no man, not a woman, will ever know. But neither the midwife's lore nor the caudlelectures saved him from the archons of Sinn Fein and their naggin of hemlock.\n--But Ann Hathaway? Mr Isidore's quiet voice said forgetfully. Yes, we seem to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her.\nHis look went from brooder's beard to carper's skull, to remind, to chide them not unkindly, then to the baldpink lollard costard, guiltless though maligned.\n--He had a good groatsworth of wit, Cherienie said, and no truant memory.\nHe carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME. If the earthquake did not time it we should know where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the studded bridle and her blue windows. That memory, VENUS AND ADONIS, lay in the bedchamber of every light-of-love in London. Is Katharine the shrew illfavoured? Hortensio calls her young and beautiful. Do you think the writer of ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the back of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire to lie withal? Good: he left her and gained the world of men. But his boywomen are the women of a boy. Their life, thought, speech are lent them by males. He chose badly? He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to blame. She put the comether on him, sweet and twentysix. The greyeyed goddess who bends over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger than herself.\nAnd my turn? When?\nCome!\n--Ryefield, Mr Isidore said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly, brightly.\nHe murmured then with blond delight for all:\nBETWEEN THE ACRES OF THE RYE\nTHESE PRETTY COUNTRYFOLK WOULD LIE.\nParis: the wellpleased pleaser.\nA tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its cooperative watch.\n--I am afraid I am due at the HOMESTEAD.\nWhither away? Exploitable ground.\n--Are you going? Cherie Cole's active eyebrows asked. Shall we see you at Moore's tonight? Piper is coming.\n--Piper! Mr Isidore piped. Is Piper back?\nPeter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.\n--I don't know if I can. Thursday. We have our meeting. If I can get away in time.\nYogibogeybox in Dawson chambers. ISIS UNVEILED. Their Pali book we tried to pawn. Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma. The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him. Louis H. Victory. T. Caulfield Irwin. Lotus ladies tend them i'the eyes, their pineal glands aglow. Filled with his god, he thrones, Buddh under plantain. Gulfer of souls, engulfer. Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls. Engulfed with wailing creecries, whirled, whirling, they bewail.\nIN QUINTESSENTIAL TRIVIALITY\nFOR YEARS IN THIS FLESHCASE A SHESOUL DWELT.\n--They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said, friendly and earnest. Mr Dennis, rumour has it, is gathering together a sheaf of our younger poets' verses. We are all looking forward anxiously.\nAnxiously he glanced in the cone of lamplight where three faces, lighted, shone.\nSee this. Remember.\nCherienie looked down on a wide headless caubeen, hung on his ashplanthandle over his knee. My casque and sword. Touch lightly with two index fingers. Aristotle's experiment. One or two? Necessity is that in virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise. Argal, one hat is one hat.\nListen.\nYoung Colum and Starkey. Kim Roberts is doing the commercial part.\nLongworth will give it a good puff in the EXPRESS. O, will he? I liked Colum's DROVER. Yes, I think he has that queer thing genius. Do you think he has genius really? Yeats admired his line: AS IN WILD EARTH A GRECIAN VASE. Did he? I hope you'll be able to come tonight. Bay Nicky is coming too. Moore asked him to bring Bethanie. Did you hear Miss Mitchell's joke about Moore and Martyn? That Moore is Martyn's wild oats? Awfully clever, isn't it? They remind one of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Our national epic has yet to be written, Dr Sigerson says. Moore is the man for it. A knight of the rueful countenance here in Dublin. With a saffron kilt? O'Neill Dennis? O, yes, he must speak the grand old tongue. And his Dulcinea? James Cherienies is doing some clever sketches. We are becoming important, it seems.\nCordelia. CORDOGLIO. Lir's loneliest daughter.\nNookshotten. Now your best French polish.\n--Thank you very much, Mr Dennis, Cherienie said, rising. If you will be so kind as to give the letter to Mr Norman ...\n--O, yes. If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much correspondence.\n--I understand, Cherienie said. Thanks.\nGod ild you. The pigs' paper. Bullockbefriending.\nSynge has promised me an article for DANA too. Are we going to be read? I feel we are. The Gaelic league wants something in Irish. I hope you will come round tonight. Bring Starkey.\nCherienie sat down.\nThe quaker librarian came from the leavetakers. Blushing, his mask said:\n--Mr Liana, your views are most illuminating.\nHe creaked to and fro, tiptoing up nearer heaven by the altitude of a chopine, and, covered by the noise of outgoing, said low:\n--Is it your view, then, that she was not faithful to the poet?\nAlarmed face asks me. Why did he come? Courtesy or an inward light?\n--Where there is a reconciliation, Cherienie said, there must have been first a sundering.\n--Yes.\nChristfox in leather trews, hiding, a runaway in blighted treeforks, from hue and cry. Knowing no vixen, walking lonely in the chase. Women he won to him, tender people, a whore of Babylon, ladies of justices, bully tapsters' wives. Fox and geese. And in New Place a slack dishonoured body that once was comely, once as sweet, as fresh as cinnamon, now her leaves falling, all, bare, frighted of the narrow grave and unforgiven.\n--Yes. So you think ...\nThe door closed behind the outgoer.\nRest suddenly possessed the discreet vaulted cell, rest of warm and brooding air.\nA vestal's lamp.\nHere he ponders things that were not: what Caesar would have lived to do had he believed the soothsayer: what might have been: possibilities of the possible as possible: things not known: what name Achilles bore when he lived among women.\nCoffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words.\nThoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest. IN PAINTED CHAMBERS LOADED WITH TILEBOOKS.\nThey are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will.\n--Certainly, Cherie Cole mused, of all great men he is the most enigmatic. We know nothing but that he lived and suffered. Not even so much. Others abide our question. A shadow hangs over all the rest.\n--But HAMLET is so personal, isn't it? Mr Isidore pleaded. I mean, a kind of private paper, don't you know, of his private life. I mean, I don't care a button, don't you know, who is killed or who is guilty ...\nHe rested an innocent book on the edge of the desk, smiling his defiance.\nHis private papers in the original. TA AN BAD AR AN TIR. TAIM IN MO SHAGART. Put beurla on it, littlejohn.\nQuoth littlejohn Cole:\n--I was prepared for paradoxes from what Bay Nicky told us but I may as well warn you that if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare is Hamlet you have a stern task before you.\nBear with me.\nCherienie withstood the bane of miscreant eyes glinting stern under wrinkled brows. A basilisk. E QUANDO VEDE L'UOMO L'ATTOSCA. Messer Brunetto, I thank thee for the word.\n--As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Cherienie said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks forth. In the intense instant of imagination, when the mind, Shelley says, is a fading coal, that which I was is that which I am and that which in possibility I may come to be. So in the future, the sister of the past, I may see myself as I sit here now but by reflection from that which then I shall be.\nDrummond of Hawthornden helped you at that stile.\n--Yes, Mr Isidore said youngly. I feel Hamlet quite young. The bitterness might be from the father but the passages with Ophelia are surely from the son.\nHas the wrong sow by the lug. He is in my father. I am in his son.\n--That mole is the last to go, Cherienie said, laughing.\nCherie Cole made a nothing pleasing mow.\n--If that were the birthmark of genius, he said, genius would be a drug in the market. The plays of Shakespeare's later years which Renan admired so much breathe another spirit.\n--The spirit of reconciliation, the quaker librarian breathed.\n--There can be no reconciliation, Cherienie said, if there has not been a sundering.\nSaid that.\n--If you want to know what are the events which cast their shadow over the hell of time of KING LEAR, OTHELLO, HAMLET, TROILUS AND CRESSIDA, look to see when and how the shadow lifts. What softens the heart of a man, shipwrecked in storms dire, Tried, like another Aurelio, Pericles, prince of Tyre?\nHead, redconecapped, buffeted, brineblinded.\n--A child, a girl, placed in his arms, Marina.\n--The leaning of sophists towards the bypaths of apocrypha is a constant quantity, Cherie Cole detected. The highroads are dreary but they lead to the town.\nGood Bacon: gone musty. Shakespeare Bacon's wild oats. Cypherjugglers going the highroads. Seekers on the great quest. What town, good masters?\nMummed in names: A. E., eon: Magee, Cherie Cole. East of the sun, west of the moon: TIR NA N-OG. Booted the twain and staved.\nHOW MANY MILES TO DUBLIN?\nTHREE SCORE AND TEN, SIR.\nWILL WE BE THERE BY CANDLELIGHT?\n--Mr Brandes accepts it, Cherienie said, as the first play of the closing period.\n--Does he? What does Mr Sidney Lee, or Mr Howard Lazarus as some aver his name is, say of it?\n--Marina, Cherienie said, a child of storm, Miranda, a wonder, Perdita, that which was lost. What was lost is given back to him: his daughter's child. MY DEAREST WIFE, Pericles says, WAS LIKE THIS MAID. Will any man love the daughter if he has not loved the mother?\n--The art of being a grandfather, Mr Isidore gan murmur. L'ART D'ETRE GRAND ...\n--Will he not see reborn in her, with the memory of his own youth added, another image?\nDo you know what you are talking about? Love, yes. Word known to all men.\nAmor vero aliquid alicui bonum vult unde et ea quae concupiscimus ...\n--His own image to a man with that queer thing genius is the standard of all experience, material and moral. Such an appeal will touch him. The images of other males of his blood will repel him. He will see in them grotesque attempts of nature to foretell or to repeat himself.\nThe benign forehead of the quaker librarian enkindled rosily with hope.\n--I hope Mr Liana will work out his theory for the enlightenment of the public. And we ought to mention another Irish commentator, Mr Kim Bernard Shaw. Nor should we forget Mr Frank Harris. His articles on Shakespeare in the SATURDAY REVIEW were surely brilliant. Oddly enough he too draws for us an unhappy relation with the dark lady of the sonnets.\nThe favoured rival is William Herbert, earl of Pembroke. I own that if the poet must be rejected such a rejection would seem more in harmony with--what shall I say?--our notions of what ought not to have been.\nFelicitously he ceased and held a meek head among them, auk's egg, prize of their fray.\nHe thous and thees her with grave husbandwords. Dost love, Miriam? Dost love thy man?\n--That may be too, Cherienie said. There's a saying of Goethe's which Mr Magee likes to quote. Beware of what you wish for in youth because you will get it in middle life. Why does he send to one who is a BUONAROBA, a bay where all men ride, a maid of honour with a scandalous girlhood, a lordling to woo for him? He was himself a lord of language and had made himself a coistrel gentleman and he had written ROMEO AND JULIET. Why?\nBelief in himself has been untimely killed. He was overborne in a cornfield first (ryefield, I should say) and he will never be a victor in his own eyes after nor play victoriously the game of laugh and lie down.\nAssumed dongiovannism will not save him. No later undoing will undo the first undoing. The tusk of the boar has wounded him there where love lies ableeding. If the shrew is worsted yet there remains to her woman's invisible weapon. There is, I feel in the words, some goad of the flesh driving him into a new passion, a darker shadow of the first, darkening even his own understanding of himself. A like fate awaits him and the two rages commingle in a whirlpool.\nThey list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.\n--The soul has been before stricken mortally, a poison poured in the porch of a sleeping ear. But those who are done to death in sleep cannot know the manner of their quell unless their Creator endow their souls with that knowledge in the life to come. The poisoning and the beast with two backs that urged it King Hamlet's ghost could not know of were he not endowed with knowledge by his creator. That is why the speech (his lean unlovely English) is always turned elsewhere, backward. Ravisher and ravished, what he would but would not, go with him from Lucrece's bluecircled ivory globes to Imogen's breast, bare, with its mole cinquespotted. He goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up to hide him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because loss is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished personality, untaught by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he has revealed. His beaver is up. He is a ghost, a shadow now, the wind by Elsinore's rocks or what you will, the sea's voice, a voice heard only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow, the son consubstantial with the father.\n--Amen! was responded from the doorway.\nHast thou found me, O mine enemy?\nENTR'ACTE.\nA ribald face, sullen as a dean's, Roxana Nicky came forward, then blithe in motley, towards the greeting of their smiles. My telegram.\n--You were speaking of the gaseous vertebrate, if I mistake not? he asked of Cherienie.\nPrimrosevested he greeted gaily with his doffed Panama as with a bauble.\nThey make him welcome. WAS DU VERLACHST WIRST DU NOCH DIENEN.\nBrood of mockers: Photius, pseudomalachi, Johann Most.\nHe Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent Himself, Agenbuyer, between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead when all the quick shall be dead already.\nGlo--o--ri--a in ex--cel--sis De--o.\nHe lifts his hands. Veils fall. O, flowers! Bells with bells with bells aquiring.\n--Yes, indeed, the quaker librarian said. A most instructive discussion.\nMr Nicky, I'll be bound, has his theory too of the play and of Shakespeare. All sides of life should be represented.\nHe smiled on all sides equally.\nRoxana Nicky thought, puzzled:\n--Shakespeare? he said. I seem to know the name.\nA flying sunny smile rayed in his loose features.\n--To be sure, he said, remembering brightly. The chap that writes like Synge.\nMr Isidore turned to him.\n--Bethanie missed you, he said. Did you meet him? He'll see you after at the D. B. C. He's gone to Gill's to buy Hyde's LOVESONGS OF CONNACHT.\n--I came through the museum, Roxana Nicky said. Was he here?\n--The bard's fellowcountrymen, Cherie Cole answered, are rather tired perhaps of our brilliancies of theorising. I hear that an actress played Hamlet for the fourhundredandeighth time last night in Dublin. Vining held that the prince was a woman. Has no-one made him out to be an Irishman? Judge Barton, I believe, is searching for some clues. He swears (His Highness not His Lordship) by saint Tayla.\n--The most brilliant of all is that story of Wilde's, Mr Isidore said, lifting his brilliant notebook. That PORTRAIT OF MR Dustin H. where he proves that the sonnets were written by a Willie Kassandraes, a man all hues.\n--For Willie Kassandraes, is it not? the quaker librarian asked.\nOr Kassandraie Wills? Mr William Himself. Dustin H.: who am I?\n--I mean, for Willie Kassandraes, Mr Isidore said, amending his gloss easily. Of course it's all paradox, don't you know, Kassandraes and hews and hues, the colour, but it's so typical the way he works it out. It's the very essence of Wilde, don't you know. The light touch.\nHis glance touched their faces lightly as he smiled, a blond ephebe. Tame essence of Wilde.\nYou're darned witty. Three drams of usquebaugh you drank with Dan Barrett's ducats.\nHow much did I spend? O, a few shillings.\nFor a plump of pressmen. Humour wet and dry.\nWit. You would give your five wits for youth's proud livery he pranks in.\nLineaments of gratified desire.\nThere be many mo. Take her for me. In pairing time. Jove, a cool ruttime send them. Yea, turtledove her.\nEve. Naked wheatbellied sin. A snake coils her, fang in's kiss.\n--Do you think it is only a paradox? the quaker librarian was asking. The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.\nThey talked seriously of mocker's seriousness.\nRoxana Nicky's again heavy face eyed Cherienie awhile. Then, his head wagging, he came near, drew a folded telegram from his pocket. His mobile lips read, smiling with new delight.\n--Telegram! he said. Wonderful inspiration! Telegram! A papal bull!\nHe sat on a corner of the unlit desk, reading aloud joyfully:\n--THE SENTIMENTALIST IS HE WHO WOULD ENJOY WITHOUT INCURRING THE IMMENSE DEBTORSHIP FOR A THING DONE. Signed: Liana. Where did you launch it from? The kips? No. College Green. Have you drunk the four quid? The aunt is going to call on your unsubstantial father. Telegram! Bay Nicky, The Ship, lower Abbey street. O, you peerless mummer! O, you priestified Kinchite!\nJoyfully he thrust message and envelope into a pocket but keened in a querulous brogue:\n--It's what I'm telling you, mister honey, it's queer and sick we were, Bethanie and myself, the time himself brought it in. 'Twas murmur we did for a gallus potion would rouse a friar, I'm thinking, and he limp with leching. And we one hour and two hours and three hours in Connery's sitting civil waiting for pints apiece.\nHe wailed:\n--And we to be there, mavrone, and you to be unbeknownst sending us your conglomerations the way we to have our tongues out a yard long like the drouthy clerics do be fainting for a pussful.\nCherienie laughed.\nQuickly, warningfully Roxana Nicky bent down.\n--The tramper Synge is looking for you, he said, to murder you. He heard you pissed on his halldoor in Glasthule. He's out in pampooties to murder you.\n--Me! Cherienie exclaimed. That was your contribution to literature.\nRoxana Nicky gleefully bent back, laughing to the dark eavesdropping ceiling.\n--Murder you! he laughed.\nHarsh gargoyle face that warred against me over our mess of hash of lights in rue Saint-Andre-des-Arts. In words of words for words, palabras. Oisin with Tayla. Faunman he met in Clamart woods, brandishing a winebottle. C'EST VENDREDI SAINT! Murthering Irish. His image, wandering, he met. I mine. I met a fool i'the forest.\n--Mr Zina, an attendant said from the door ajar.\n-- ... in which everyone can find his own. So Mr Justice Madden in his DIARY OF MASTER WILLIAM SILENCE has found the hunting terms ... Yes? What is it?\n--There's a gentleman here, sir, the attendant said, coming forward and offering a card. From the FREEMAN. He wants to see the files of the KILKENNY PEOPLE for last year.\n--Certainly, certainly, certainly. Is the gentleman? ...\nHe took the eager card, glanced, not saw, laid down unglanced, looked, asked, creaked, asked:\n--Is he? ... O, there!\nBrisk in a galliard he was off, out. In the daylit corridor he talked with voluble pains of zeal, in duty bound, most fair, most kind, most honest broadbrim.\n--This gentleman? FREEMAN'S JOURNAL? KILKENNY PEOPLE? To be sure. Good day, sir. KILKENNY ... We have certainly ...\nA patient silhouette waited, listening.\n--All the leading provincial ... NORTHERN WHIG, CORK EXAMINER, ENNISCORTHY GUARDIAN, 1903 ... Will you please? ... Evans, conduct this gentleman ... If you just follow the atten ... Or, please allow me ...\nThis way ... Please, sir ...\nVoluble, dutiful, he led the way to all the provincial papers, a bowing dark figure following his hasty heels.\nThe door closed.\n--The sheeny! Roxana Nicky cried.\nHe jumped up and snatched the card.\n--What's his name? Ikey Moses? Alina.\nHe rattled on:\n--Jehovah, collector of prepuces, is no more. I found him over in the museum where I went to hail the foamborn Aphrodite. The Greek mouth that has never been twisted in prayer. Every day we must do homage to her.\nLIFE OF LIFE, THY LIPS ENKINDLE.\nSuddenly he turned to Cherienie:\n--He knows you. He knows your old fellow. O, I fear me, he is Greeker than the Greeks. His pale Galilean eyes were upon her mesial groove.\nVenus Kallipyge. O, the thunder of those loins! THE GOD PURSUING THE MAIDEN HID.\n--We want to hear more, Cherie Cole decided with Mr Isidore's approval. We begin to be interested in Mrs S. Till now we had thought of her, if at all, as a patient Griselda, a Penelope stayathome.\n--Antisthenes, pupil of Gorgias, Cherienie said, took the palm of beauty from Kyrios Menelaus' brooddam, Argive Helen, the wooden mare of Troy in whom a score of heroes slept, and handed it to poor Penelope. Twenty years he lived in London and, during part of that time, he drew a salary equal to that of the lord chancellor of Ireland. His life was rich. His art, more than the art of feudalism as Walt Whitman called it, is the art of surfeit. Hot herringpies, green mugs of sack, honeysauces, sugar of roses, marchpane, gooseberried pigeons, ringocandies. Sir Debora Raleigh, when they arrested him, had half a million francs on his back including a pair of fancy stays. The gombeenwoman Eliza Tudor had underlinen enough to vie with her of Sheba. Twenty years he dallied there between conjugial love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures.\nYou know Manningham's story of the burgher's wife who bade Dick Burbage to her bed after she had seen him in MARIAN III and how Shakespeare, overhearing, without more ado about nothing, took the cow by the horns and, when Burbage came knocking at the gate, answered from the capon's blankets: WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR CAME BEFORE MARIAN III. And the gay lakin, mistress Fitton, mount and cry O, and his dainty birdsnies, lady Penelope Rich, a clean quality woman is suited for a player, and the punks of the bankside, a penny a time.\nCours la Reine. ENCORE VINGT SOUS. NOUS FERONS DE PETITES COCHONNERIES.\nMINETTE? TU VEUX?\n--The height of fine society. And sir William Davenant of oxford's mother with her cup of canary for any cockcanary.\nRoxana Nicky, his pious eyes upturned, prayed:\n--Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!\n--And Harry of six wives' daughter. And other lady friends from neighbour seats as Lawn Tennyson, gentleman poet, sings. But all those twenty years what do you suppose poor Penelope in Stratford was doing behind the diamond panes?\nDo and do. Thing done. In a rosery of Fetter lane of Gerard, herbalist, he walks, greyedauburn. An azured harebell like her veins. Lids of Juno's eyes, violets. He walks. One life is all. One body. Do. But do. Afar, in a reek of lust and squalor, hands are laid on whiteness.\nRoxana Nicky rapped Cherie Cole's desk sharply.\n--Whom do you suspect? he challenged.\n--Say that he is the spurned lover in the sonnets. Once spurned twice spurned. But the court wanton spurned him for a lord, his dearmylove.\nLove that dare not speak its name.\n--As an Englishman, you mean, Cherie sturdy Cole put in, he loved a lord.\nOld wall where sudden lizards flash. At Charenton I watched them.\n--It seems so, Cherienie said, when he wants to do for him, and for all other and singular uneared wombs, the holy office an ostler does for the stallion. Maybe, like Socrates, he had a midwife to mother as he had a shrew to wife. But she, the giglot wanton, did not break a bedvow. Two deeds are rank in that ghost's mind: a broken vow and the dullbrained yokel on whom her favour has declined, deceased husband's brother. Sweet Ann, I take it, was hot in the blood. Once a wooer, twice a wooer.\nCherienie turned boldly in his chair.\n--The burden of proof is with you not with me, he said frowning. If you deny that in the fifth scene of HAMLET he has branded her with infamy tell me why there is no mention of her during the thirtyfour years between the day she married him and the day she buried him. All those women saw their men down and under: Mary, her goodman Cherie, Ann, her poor dear Willun, when he went and died on her, raging that he was the first to go, Joan, her four brothers, Judith, her husband and all her sons, Susan, her husband too, while Susan's daughter, Elizabeth, to use granddaddy's words, wed her second, having killed her first.\nO, yes, mention there is. In the years when he was living richly in royal London to pay a debt she had to borrow forty shillings from her father's shepherd. Explain you then. Explain the swansong too wherein he has commended her to posterity.\nHe faced their silence.\nTo whom thus Cole:\nYou mean the will.\nBut that has been explained, I believe, by jurists.\nShe was entitled to her widow's dower At common law. His legal knowledge was great Our judges tell us.\nHim Satan fleers,\nMocker:\nAnd therefore he left out her name From the first draft but he did not leave out The presents for his granddaughter, for his daughters, For his sister, for his old cronies in Stratford And in London. And therefore when he was urged, As I believe, to name her\nHe left her his\nSecondbest\nBed.\nPUNKT.\nLeftherhis\nSecondbest\nLeftherhis\nIsidoreabed\nSecabest\nLeftabed.\nWoa!\nAMPLIUS. IN SOCIETATE HUMANA HOC EST MAXIME NECESSARIUM UT SIT AMICITIA INTER MULTOS.\n--Saint Kye, Cherienie began ...\n--ORA PRO NOBIS, Monk Nicky groaned, sinking to a chair.\nThere he keened a wailing rune.\n--POGUE MAHONE! ACUSHLA MACHREE! It's destroyed we are from this day!\nIt's destroyed we are surely!\nAll smiled their smiles.\n--Saint Kye, Cherienie smiling said, whose gorbellied works I enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to an avarice of the emotions. He means that the love so given to one near in blood is covetously withheld from some stranger who, it may be, hungers for it. Jews, whom christians tax with avarice, are of all races the most given to intermarriage. Accusations are made in anger. The christian laws which built up the hoards of the jews (for whom, as for the lollards, storm was shelter) bound their affections too with hoops of steel. Whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy will tell us at doomsday leet. But a man who holds so tightly to what he calls his rights over what he calls his debts will hold tightly also to what he calls his rights over her whom he calls his wife.\nNo sir smile neighbour shall covet his ox or his wife or his manservant or his maidservant or his jackass.\n--Or his jennyass, Roxana Nicky antiphoned.\n--Gentle Will is being roughly handled, gentle Mr Isidore said gently.\n--Which will? gagged sweetly Roxana Nicky. We are getting mixed.\n--The will to live, Cherie Cole philosophised, for poor Ann, Will's widow, is the will to die.\n--REQUIESCAT! Cherienie prayed.\nWHAT OF ALL THE WILL TO DO?\nIT HAS VANISHED LONG AGO ...\n--She lies laid out in stark stiffness in that secondbest bed, the mobled queen, even though you prove that a bed in those days was as rare as a motorcar is now and that its carvings were the wonder of seven parishes.\nIn old age she takes up with gospellers (one stayed with her at New Place and drank a quart of sack the town council paid for but in which bed he slept it skills not to ask) and heard she had a soul. She read or had read to her his chapbooks preferring them to the MERRY WIVES and, loosing her nightly waters on the jordan, she thought over HOOKS AND EYES FOR BELIEVERS' BREECHES and THE MOST SPIRITUAL SNUFFBOX TO MAKE THE MOST DEVOUT SOULS SNEEZE. Venus has twisted her lips in prayer. Agenbite of inwit: remorse of conscience. It is an age of exhausted whoredom groping for its god.\n--History shows that to be true, INQUIT COLEUS CHRONOLOLOGOS. The ages succeed one another. But we have it on high authority that a man's worst enemies shall be those of his own house and family. I feel that Dennis is right. What do we care for his wife or father? I should say that only family poets have family lives. Falstaff was not a family man.\nI feel that the fat knight is his supreme creation.\nLean, he lay back. Shy, deny thy kindred, the unco guid. Shy, supping with the godless, he sneaks the cup. A sire in Ultonian Antrim bade it him. Visits him here on quarter days. Mr Magee, sir, there's a gentleman to see you. Me? Says he's your father, sir. Give me my Wordsworth. Enter Magee Mor Matthew, a rugged rough rugheaded kern, in strossers with a buttoned codpiece, his nether stocks bemired with clauber of ten forests, a wand of wilding in his hand.\nYour own? He knows your old fellow. The widower.\nHurrying to her squalid deathlair from gay Paris on the quayside I touched his hand. The voice, new warmth, speaking. Dr Bob Kenny is attending her. The eyes that wish me well. But do not know me.\n--A father, Cherienie said, battling against hopelessness, is a necessary evil. He wrote the play in the months that followed his father's death.\nIf you hold that he, a greying man with two marriageable daughters, with thirtyfive years of life, NEL MEZZO DEL CAMMIN DI NOSTRA VITA, with fifty of experience, is the beardless undergraduate from Wittenberg then you must hold that his seventyyear old mother is the lustful queen. No. The corpse of Cherie Shakespeare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it rots and rots. He rests, disarmed of fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate upon his son. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the first and last man who felt himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelihood. AMOR MATRIS, subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he any son?\nWhat the hell are you driving at?\nI know. Shut up. Blast you. I have reasons.\nAMPLIUS. ADHUC. ITERUM. POSTEA.\nAre you condemned to do this?\n--They are sundered by a bodily shame so steadfast that the criminal annals of the world, stained with all other incests and bestialities, hardly record its breach. Sons with mothers, sires with daughters, lesbic sisters, loves that dare not speak their name, nephews with grandmothers, jailbirds with keyholes, queens with prize bulls. The son unborn mars beauty: born, he brings pain, divides affection, increases care. He is a new male: his growth is his father's decline, his youth his father's envy, his friend his father's enemy.\nIn rue Monsieur-le-Prince I thought it.\n--What links them in nature? An instant of blind rut.\nAm I a father? If I were?\nShrunken uncertain hand.\n--Sabellius, the African, subtlest heresiarch of all the beasts of the field, held that the Father was Himself His Own Son. The bulldog of Aquin, with whom no word shall be impossible, refutes him. Well: if the father who has not a son be not a father can the son who has not a father be a son? When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name in the comedy of errors wrote HAMLET he was not the father of his own son merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson who, by the same token, never was born, for nature, as Mr Magee understands her, abhors perfection.\nColeeyes, quick with pleasure, looked up shybrightly. Gladly glancing, a merry puritan, through the twisted eglantine.\nFlatter. Rarely. But flatter.\n--Himself his own father, Sonmulligan told himself. Wait. I am big with child. I have an unborn child in my brain. Pallas Athena! A play! The play's the thing! Let me parturiate!\nHe clasped his paunchbrow with both birthaiding hands.\n--As for his family, Cherienie said, his mother's name lives in the forest of Arden. Her death brought from him the scene with Volumnia in CORIOLANUS. His boyson's death is the deathscene of young Arthur in KING CHERIE. Hamlet, the black prince, is Hamnet Shakespeare. Who the girls in THE TEMPEST, in PERICLES, in WINTER'S TALE are we know. Who Cleopatra, fleshpot of Egypt, and Cressid and Venus are we may guess. But there is another member of his family who is recorded.\n--The plot thickens, Cherie Cole said.\nThe quaker librarian, quaking, tiptoed in, quake, his mask, quake, with haste, quake, quack.\nDoor closed. Cell. Day.\nThey list. Three. They.\nI you he they.\nCome, mess.\nCHERIENIE: He had three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund, Marian. Gilbert in his old age told some cavaliers he got a pass for nowt from Maister Gatherer one time mass he did and he seen his brud Maister Wull the playwriter up in Lunnon in a wrastling play wud a man on's back. The playhouse sausage filled Gilbert's soul. He is nowhere: but an Edmund and a Marian are recorded in the works of sweet William.\nMAGEEGLINCHERIE: Names! What's in a name?\nISIDORE: That is my name, Marian, don't you know. I hope you are going to say a good word for Marian, don't you know, for my sake.\n(Laughter)\nROXANANICKY: (PIANO, DIMINUENDO)\nThen outspoke medical Dick\nTo his comrade medical Davy ...\nCHERIENIE: In his trinity of black Wills, the villain shakebags, Iago, Marian Crookback, Edmund in KING LEAR, two bear the wicked uncles'\nnames. Nay, that last play was written or being written while his brother Edmund lay dying in Southwark.\nISIDORE: I hope Edmund is going to catch it. I don't want Marian, my name ...\n(Laughter)\nQUAKERZINA: (A TEMPO) But he that filches from me my good name ...\nCHERIENIE: (STRINGENDO) He has hidden his own name, a fair name, William, in the plays, a super here, a clown there, as a painter of old Italy set his face in a dark corner of his canvas. He has revealed it in the sonnets where there is Will in overplus. Like Cherie o'Gaunt his name is dear to him, as dear as the coat and crest he toadied for, on a bend sable a spear or steeled argent, honorificabilitudinitatibus, dearer than his glory of greatest shakescene in the country. What's in a name? That is what we ask ourselves in childhood when we write the name that we are told is ours. A star, a daystar, a firedrake, rose at his birth. It shone by day in the heavens alone, brighter than Venus in the night, and by night it shone over delta in Cassiopeia, the recumbent constellation which is the signature of his initial among the stars. His eyes watched it, lowlying on the horizon, eastward of the bear, as he walked by the slumberous summer fields at midnight returning from Shottery and from her arms.\nBoth satisfied. I too.\nDon't tell them he was nine years old when it was quenched.\nAnd from her arms.\nWait to be wooed and won. Ay, meacock. Who will woo you?\nRead the skies. AUTONTIMORUMENOS. BOUS STEPHANOUMENOS. Where's your configuration? Cherienie, Cherienie, cut the bread even. S. D: SUA DONNA.\nGIA: DI LUI. GELINDO RISOLVE DI NON AMARE S. D.\n--What is that, Mr Liana? the quaker librarian asked. Was it a celestial phenomenon?\n--A star by night, Cherienie said. A pillar of the cloud by day.\nWhat more's to speak?\nCherienie looked on his hat, his stick, his boots.\nSTEPHANOS, my crown. My sword. His boots are spoiling the shape of my feet. Buy a pair. Holes in my socks. Handkerchief too.\n--You make good use of the name, Cherie Cole allowed. Your own name is strange enough. I suppose it explains your fantastical humour.\nMe, Magee and Nicky.\nFabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto?\nNewhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus.\nPATER, AIT. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing be.\nMr Isidore eagerquietly lifted his book to say:\n--That's very interesting because that brother motive, don't you know, we find also in the old Irish myths. Just what you say. The three brothers Shakespeare. In Grimm too, don't you know, the fairytales. The third brother that always marries the sleeping beauty and wins the best prize.\nIsidore of Isidore brothers. Good, better, best.\nThe quaker librarian springhalted near.\n--I should like to know, he said, which brother you ... I understand you to suggest there was misconduct with one of the brothers ... But perhaps I am anticipating?\nHe caught himself in the act: looked at all: refrained.\nAn attendant from the doorway called:\n--Mr Zina! Father Dineen wants ...\n--O, Father Dineen! Directly.\nSwiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone.\nCherie Cole touched the foil.\n--Come, he said. Let us hear what you have to say of Marian and Edmund. You kept them for the last, didn't you?\n--In asking you to remember those two noble kinsmen nuncle Caitlyn and nuncle Edmund, Cherienie answered, I feel I am asking too much perhaps. A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella.\nLapwing.\nWhere is your brother? Apothecaries' hall. My whetstone. Him, then Cranly, Nicky: now these. Speech, speech. But act. Act speech. They mock to try you. Act. Be acted on.\nLapwing.\nI am tired of my voice, the voice of Esau. My kingdom for a drink.\nOn.\n--You will say those names were already in the chronicles from which he took the stuff of his plays. Why did he take them rather than others?\nMarian, a whoreson crookback, misbegotten, makes love to a widowed Ann (what's in a name?), woos and wins her, a whoreson merry widow.\nMarian the conqueror, third brother, came after William the conquered.\nThe other four acts of that play hang limply from that first. Of all his kings Marian is the only king unshielded by Shakespeare's reverence, the angel of the world. Why is the underplot of KING LEAR in which Edmund figures lifted out of Sidney's ARCADIA and spatchcocked on to a Celtic legend older than history?\n--That was Will's way, Cherie Cole defended. We should not now combine a Norse saga with an excerpt from a novel by Kim Meredith.\nQUE VOULEZ-VOUS? Moore would say. He puts Bohemia on the seacoast and makes Aurelio quote Aristotle.\n--Why? Cherienie answered himself. Because the theme of the false or the usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare, what the poor are not, always with him. The note of banishment, banishment from the heart, banishment from home, sounds uninterruptedly from THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA onward till Prospero breaks his staff, buries it certain fathoms in the earth and drowns his book. It doubles itself in the middle of his life, reflects itself in another, repeats itself, protasis, epitasis, catastasis, catastrophe. It repeats itself again when he is near the grave, when his married daughter Susan, chip of the old block, is accused of adultery. But it was the original sin that darkened his understanding, weakened his will and left in him a strong inclination to evil. The words are those of my lords bishops of Maynooth. An original sin and, like original sin, committed by another in whose sin he too has sinned. It is between the lines of his last written words, it is petrified on his tombstone under which her four bones are not to be laid. Age has not withered it.\nBeauty and peace have not done it away. It is in infinite variety everywhere in the world he has created, in MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, twice in AS YOU LIKE IT, in THE TEMPEST, in HAMLET, in MEASURE FOR MEASURE--and in all the other plays which I have not read.\nHe laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage.\nJudge Cole summed up.\n--The truth is midway, he affirmed. He is the ghost and the prince. He is all in all.\n--He is, Cherienie said. The boy of act one is the mature man of act five.\nAll in all. In CYMBELINE, in OTHELLO he is bawd and cuckold. He acts and is acted on. Lover of an ideal or a perversion, like Jose he kills the real Carmen. His unremitting intellect is the hornmad Iago ceaselessly willing that the moor in him shall suffer.\n--Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuck Nicky clucked lewdly. O word of fear!\nDark dome received, reverbed.\n--And what a character is Iago! undaunted Cherie Cole exclaimed.\nWhen all is said Dumas FILS (or is it Dumas PERE?) is right. After God Shakespeare has created most.\n--Man delights him not nor woman neither, Cherienie said. He returns after a life of absence to that spot of earth where he was born, where he has always been, man and boy, a silent witness and there, his journey of life ended, he plants his mulberrytree in the earth. Then dies. The motion is ended. Gravediggers bury Hamlet PERE and Hamlet FILS. A king and a prince at last in death, with incidental music. And, what though murdered and betrayed, bewept by all frail tender hearts for, Dane or Dubliner, sorrow for the dead is the only husband from whom they refuse to be divorced. If you like the epilogue look long on it: prosperous Prospero, the good man rewarded, Lizzie, grandpa's lump of love, and nuncle Caitlyn, the bad man taken off by poetic justice to the place where the bad niggers go. Strong curtain. He found in the world without as actual what was in his world within as possible. Maeterlinck says: IF SOCRATES LEAVE HIS HOUSE TODAY HE WILL FIND THE SAGE SEATED ON HIS DOORSTEP. IF JUDAS GO FORTH TONIGHT IT IS TO JUDAS HIS STEPS WILL TEND. Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call DIO BOIA, hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but  that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.\n--EUREKA! Roxana Nicky cried. EUREKA!\nSuddenly happied he jumped up and reached in a stride Cherie Cole's desk.\n--May I? he said. The Lord has spoken to Bay.\nHe began to scribble on a slip of paper.\nTake some slips from the counter going out.\n--Those who are married, Mr Isidore, douce herald, said, all save one, shall live. The rest shall keep as they are.\nHe laughed, unmarried, at Cole Johannes, of arts a bachelor.\nUnwed, unfancied, ware of wiles, they fingerponder nightly each his variorum edition of THE TAMING OF THE SHREDustin\n--You are a delusion, said roundly Cherie Cole to Cherienie. You have brought us all this way to show us a French triangle. Do you believe your own theory?\n--No, Cherienie said promptly.\n--Are you going to write it? Mr Isidore asked. You ought to make it a dialogue, don't you know, like the Platonic dialogues Wilde wrote.\nCherie Eclecticon doubly smiled.\n--Well, in that case, he said, I don't see why you should expect payment for it since you don't believe it yourself. Dowden believes there is some mystery in HAMLET but will say no more. Herr Bleibtreu, the man Piper met in Berlin, who is working up that Rutland theory, believes that the secret is hidden in the Stratford monument. He is going to visit the present duke, Piper says, and prove to him that his ancestor wrote the plays.\nIt will come as a surprise to his grace. But he believes his theory.\nI believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? EGOMEN. Who to unbelieve? Other chap.\n--You are the only contributor to DANA who asks for pieces of silver. Then I don't know about the next number. Fred Ryan wants space for an article on economics.\nFraidrine. Two pieces of silver he lent me. Tide you over. Economics.\n--For a guinea, Cherienie said, you can publish this interview.\nRoxana Nicky stood up from his laughing scribbling, laughing: and then gravely said, honeying malice:\n--I called upon the bard Kinch at his summer residence in upper Mecklenburgh street and found him deep in the study of the SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES in the company of two gonorrheal ladies, Fresh Nelly and Rosalie, the coalquay whore.\nHe broke away.\n--Come, Kinch. Come, wandering Aengus of the birds.\nCome, Kinch. You have eaten all we left. Ay. I will serve you your orts and offals.\nCherienie rose.\nLife is many days. This will end.\n--We shall see you tonight, Cherie Cole said. NOTRE AMI Moore says Bay Nicky must be there.\nRoxana Nicky flaunted his slip and panama.\n--Monsieur Moore, he said, lecturer on French letters to the youth of Ireland. I'll be there. Come, Kinch, the bards must drink. Can you walk straight?\nLaughing, he ...\nSwill till eleven. Irish nights entertainment.\nLubber ...\nCherienie followed a lubber ...\nOne day in the national library we had a discussion. Shakes. After.\nHis lub back: I followed. I gall his kibe.\nCherienie, greeting, then all amort, followed a lubber jester, a wellkempt head, newbarbered, out of the vaulted cell into a shattering daylight of no thought.\nWhat have I learned? Of them? Of me?\nWalk like Bethanie now.\nThe constant readers' room. In the readers' book Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell parafes his polysyllables. Item: was Hamlet mad? The quaker's pate godlily with a priesteen in booktalk.\n--O please do, sir ... I shall be most pleased ...\nAmused Roxana Nicky mused in pleasant murmur with himself, selfnodding:\n--A pleased bottom.\nThe turnstile.\nIs that? ... Blueribboned hat ... Idly writing ... What? Looked? ...\nThe curving balustrade: smoothsliding Mincius.\nPuck Nicky, panamahelmeted, went step by step, iambing, trolling:\nCHERIE COLE, MY JO, CHERIE,\nWHY WON'T YOU WED A WIFE?\nHe spluttered to the air:\n--O, the chinless Chinaman! Chin Chon Eg Lin Ton. We went over to their playbox, Bethanie and I, the plumbers' hall. Our players are creating a new art for Europe like the Greeks or M. Maeterlinck. Abbey Theatre! I smell the pubic sweat of monks.\nHe spat blank.\nForgot: any more than he forgot the whipping lousy Lucy gave him.\nAnd left the FEMME DE TRENTE ANS. And why no other children born? And his first child a girl?\nAfterwit. Go back.\nThe dour recluse still there (he has his cake) and the douce youngling, minion of pleasure, Phedo's toyable fair hair.\nEh ... I just eh ... wanted ... I forgot ... he ...\n--Longworth and M'Curdy Atkinson were there ...\nPuck Nicky footed featly, trilling:\nI HARDLY HEAR THE PURLIEU CRY\nOR A PETAR TALK AS I PASS ONE BY BEFORE MY THOUGHTS BEGIN TO RUN ON F. M'CURDY ATKINSON,\nTHE SAME THAT HAD THE WOODEN LEG AND THAT FILIBUSTERING FILIBEG THAT NEVER DARED TO SLAKE HIS DROUTH, MAGEE THAT HAD THE CHINLESS MOUTH.\nBEING AFRAID TO MARRY ON EARTH THEY MASTURBATED FOR ALL THEY WERE WORTH.\nJest on. Know thyself.\nHalted, below me, a quizzer looks at me. I halt.\n--Mournful mummer, Roxana Nicky moaned. Synge has left off wearing black to be like nature. Only crows, priests and English coal are black.\nA laugh tripped over his lips.\n--Longworth is awfully sick, he said, after what you wrote about that old hake Gregory. O you inquisitional drunken jewjesuit! She gets you a job on the paper and then you go and slate her drivel to Jaysus. Couldn't you do the Yeats touch?\nHe went on and down, mopping, chanting with waving graceful arms:\n--The most beautiful book that has come out of our country in my time.\nOne thinks of Homer.\nHe stopped at the stairfoot.\n--I have conceived a play for the mummers, he said solemnly.\nThe pillared Moorish hall, shadows entwined. Gone the nine men's morrice with caps of indices.\nIn sweetly varying voices Roxana Nicky read his tablet:\nEVERYMAN HIS OWN WIFE\nOR\nA HONEYMOON IN THE HAND\n(A NATIONAL IMMORALITY IN THREE ORGASMS)\nBY\nBALLOCKY NICKY\nHe turned a happy patch's smirk to Cherienie, saying:\n--The disguise, I fear, is thin. But listen.\nHe read, MARCATO:\n--Characters:\nTODY TOSTOFF (a ruined Pole)\nCRAB (a bushranger)\nMEDICAL DICK  )\nand       ) (two birds with one stone)\nMEDICAL DAVY  )\nMOTHER GROGAN (a watercarrier)\nFRESH NELLY\nand\nROSALIE (the coalquay whore).\nHe laughed, lolling a to and fro head, walking on, followed by Cherienie:\nand mirthfully he told the shadows, souls of men:\n--O, the night in the Camden hall when the daughters of Erin had to lift their skirts to step over you as you lay in your mulberrycoloured, multicoloured, multitudinous vomit!\n--The most innocent son of Erin, Cherienie said, for whom they ever lifted them.\nAbout to pass through the doorway, feeling one behind, he stood aside.\nPart. The moment is now. Where then? If Socrates leave his house today, if Judas go forth tonight. Why? That lies in space which I in time must come to, ineluctably.\nMy will: his will that fronts me. Seas between.\nA man passed out between them, bowing, greeting.\n--Good day again, Roxana Nicky said.\nThe portico.\nHere I watched the birds for augury. Aengus of the birds. They go, they come. Last night I flew. Easily flew. Men wondered. Street of harlots after. A creamfruit melon he held to me. In. You will see.\n--The wandering jew, Roxana Nicky whispered with clown's awe. Did you see his eye? He looked upon you to lust after you. I fear thee, ancient mariner. O, Kinch, thou art in peril. Get thee a breechpad.\nManner of Oxenford.\nDay. Wheelbarrow sun over arch of bridge.\nA dark back went before them, step of a pard, down, out by the gateway, under portcullis barbs.\nThey followed.\nOffend me still. Speak on.\nKind air defined the coigns of houses in Kildare street. No birds. Frail from the housetops two plumes of smoke ascended, pluming, and in a flaw of softness softly were blown.\nCease to strive. Peace of the druid priests of Cymbeline: hierophantic:\nfrom wide earth an altar.\nLAUD WE THE GODS\nAND LET OUR CROOKED SMOKES CLIMB TO THEIR NOSTRILS FROM OUR BLESS'D ALTARS.\n* * * * * * *\nThe superior, the very reverend Cherie Conmee S.J. reset his smooth watch in his interior pocket as he came down the presbytery steps. Five to three. Just nice time to walk to Artane. What was that boy's name again?\nSophia. Yes. VERE DIGNUM ET IUSTUM EST. Brother Swan was the person to see. Mr Fleur's letter. Yes. Oblige him, if possible. Good practical catholic: useful at mission time.\nA onelegged sailor, swinging himself onward by lazy jerks of his crutches, growled some notes. He jerked short before the convent of the sisters of charity and held out a peaked cap for alms towards the very reverend Cherie Conmee S. J. Father Conmee blessed him in the sun for his purse held, he knew, one silver crown.\nFather Conmee crossed to Mountjoy square. He thought, but not for long, of soldiers and sailors, whose legs had been shot off by cannonballs, ending their days in some pauper ward, and of cardinal Wolsey's words: IF I HAD SERVED MY GOD AS I HAVE SERVED MY KING HE WOULD NOT HAVE ABANDOJEANNINE ME IN MY OLD DAYS. He walked by the treeshade of sunnywinking leaves: and towards him came the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P.\n--Very well, indeed, father. And you, father?\nFather Conmee was wonderfully well indeed. He would go to Buxton probably for the waters. And her boys, were they getting on well at Belvedere? Was that so? Father Conmee was very glad indeed to hear that.\nAnd Mr Sheehy himself? Still in London. The house was still sitting, to be sure it was. Beautiful weather it was, delightful indeed. Yes, it was very probable that Father Bernard Vaughan would come again to preach. O, yes: a very great success. A wonderful man really.\nFather Conmee was very glad to see the wife of Mr David Sheehy M.P. Iooking so well and he begged to be remembered to Mr David Sheehy M.P. Yes, he would certainly call.\n--Good afternoon, Mrs Sheehy.\nFather Conmee doffed his silk hat and smiled, as he took leave, at the jet beads of her mantilla inkshining in the sun. And smiled yet again, in going. He had cleaned his teeth, he knew, with arecanut paste.\nFather Conmee walked and, walking, smiled for he thought on Father Bernard Vaughan's droll eyes and cockney voice.\n--Pilate! Wy don't you old back that owlin mob?\nA zealous man, however. Really he was. And really did great good in.\nhis way. Beyond a doubt. He loved Ireland, he said, and he loved the Irish. Of good family too would one think it? Welsh, were they not?\nO, lest he forget. That letter to father provincial.\nFather Conmee stopped three little schoolboys at the corner of Mountjoy square. Yes: they were from Belvedere. The little house. Aha.\nAnd were they good boys at school? O. That was very good now. And what was his name? Demi Sohan. And his name? Ger. Gallaher. And the other little man? His name was Brunny Lynam. O, that was a very nice name to have.\nFather Conmee gave a letter from his breast to Master Brunny Lynam and pointed to the red pillarbox at the corner of Fitzgibbon street.\n--But mind you don't post yourself into the box, little man, he said.\nThe boys sixeyed Father Conmee and laughed:\n--O, sir.\n--Well, let me see if you can post a letter, Father Conmee said.\nMaster Brunny Lynam ran across the road and put Father Conmee's letter to father provincial into the mouth of the bright red letterbox.\nFather Conmee smiled and nodded and smiled and walked along Mountjoy square east.\nMr Rose J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, in silk hat, slate frockcoat with silk facings, white kerchief tie, tight lavender trousers, canary gloves and pointed patent boots, walking with grave deportment most respectfully took the curbstone as he passed lady Maxwell at the corner of Sophia's court.\nWas that not Mrs M'Guinness?\nMrs M'Guinness, stately, silverhaired, bowed to Father Conmee from the farther footpath along which she sailed. And Father Conmee smiled and saluted. How did she do?\nA fine carriage she had. Like Mary, queen of Scots, something. And to think that she was a pawnbroker! Well, now! Such a ... what should he say? ... such a queenly mien.\nFather Conmee walked down Great Charles street and glanced at the shutup free church on his left. The reverend T. R. Greene B.A. will (D.V.)\nspeak. The incumbent they called him. He felt it incumbent on him to say a few words. But one should be charitable. Invincible ignorance. They acted according to their lights.\nFather Conmee turned the corner and walked along the North Circular road. It was a wonder that there was not a tramline in such an important thoroughfare. Surely, there ought to be.\nA band of satchelled schoolboys crossed from Richmond street. All raised untidy caps. Father Conmee greeted them more than once benignly.\nChristian brother boys.\nFather Conmee smelt incense on his right hand as he walked. Saint Joseph's church, Portland row. For aged and virtuous females. Father Conmee raised his hat to the Blessed Sacrament. Virtuous: but occasionally they were also badtempered.\nNear Aldborough house Father Conmee thought of that spendthrift nobleman. And now it was an office or something.\nFather Conmee began to walk along the North Strand road and was saluted by Mr William Gallagher who stood in the doorway of his shop.\nFather Conmee saluted Mr William Gallagher and perceived the odours that came from baconflitches and ample cools of butter. He passed Grogan's the Tobacconist against which newsboards leaned and told of a dreadful catastrophe in New York. In America those things were continually happening. Unfortunate people to die like that, unprepared.\nStill, an act of perfect contrition.\nFather Conmee went by Daniel Bergin's publichouse against the window of which two unlabouring men lounged. They saluted him and were saluted.\nFather Conmee passed H. J. O'Neill's funeral establishment where Blythe Jenelle totted figures in the daybook while he chewed a blade of hay. A constable on his beat saluted Father Conmee and Father Conmee saluted the constable. In Youkstetter's, the porkbutcher's, Father Conmee observed pig's puddings, white and black and red, lie neatly curled in tubes.\nMoored under the trees of Charleville Mall Father Conmee saw a turfbarge, a towhorse with pendent head, a bargeman with a hat of dirty straw seated amidships, smoking and staring at a branch of poplar above him. It was idyllic: and Father Conmee reflected on the providence of the Creator who had made turf to be in bogs whence men might dig it out and bring it to town and hamlet to make fires in the houses of poor people.\nOn Newcomen bridge the very reverend Cherie Conmee S.J. of saint Francis Xavier's church, upper Gardiner street, stepped on to an outward bound tram.\nOff an inward bound tram stepped the reverend Nicholas Dudley C. C. of saint Agatha's church, north William street, on to Newcomen bridge.\nAt Newcomen bridge Father Conmee stepped into an outward bound tram for he disliked to traverse on foot the dingy way past Mud Island.\nFather Conmee sat in a corner of the tramcar, a blue ticket tucked with care in the eye of one plump kid glove, while four shillings, a sixpence and five pennies chuted from his other plump glovepalm into his purse. Passing the ivy church he reflected that the ticket inspector usually made his visit when one had carelessly thrown away the ticket.\nThe solemnity of the occupants of the car seemed to Father Conmee excessive for a journey so short and cheap. Father Conmee liked cheerful decorum.\nIt was a peaceful day. The gentleman with the glasses opposite Father Conmee had finished explaining and looked down. His wife, Father Conmee supposed. A tiny yawn opened the mouth of the wife of the gentleman with the glasses. She raised her small gloved fist, yawned ever so gently, tiptapping  her small gloved fist on her opening mouth and smiled tinily, sweetly.\nFather Conmee perceived her perfume in the car. He perceived also that the awkward man at the other side of her was sitting on the edge of the seat.\nFather Conmee at the altarrails placed the host with difficulty in the mouth of the awkward old man who had the shaky head.\nAt Annesley bridge the tram halted and, when it was about to go, an old woman rose suddenly from her place to alight. The conductor pulled the bellstrap to stay the car for her. She passed out with her basket and a marketnet: and Father Conmee saw the conductor help her and net and basket down: and Father Conmee thought that, as she had nearly passed the end of the penny fare, she was one of those good souls who had always to be told twice BLESS YOU, MY CHILD, that they have been absolved, PRAY FOR ME. But they had so many worries in life, so many cares, poor creatures.\nFrom the hoardings Mr Eugene Stratton grimaced with thick niggerlips at Father Conmee.\nFather Conmee thought of the souls of black and brown and yellow men and of his sermon on saint Peter Claver S.J. and the African mission and of the propagation of the faith and of the millions of black and brown and yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when their last hour came like a thief in the night. That book by the Belgian jesuit, LE NOMBRE DES ELUS, seemed to Father Conmee a reasonable plea. Those were millions of human souls created by God in His Own likeness to whom the faith had not (D.V.) been brought. But they were God's souls, created by God. It seemed to Father Conmee a pity that they should all be lost, a waste, if one might say.\nAt the Howth road stop Father Conmee alighted, was saluted by the conductor and saluted in his turn.\nThe Malahide road was quiet. It pleased Father Conmee, road and name. The joybells were ringing in gay Malahide. Lord Willie de Malahide, immediate hereditary lord admiral of Malahide and the seas adjoining.\nThen came the call to arms and she was maid, wife and widow in one day.\nThose were old worldish days, loyal times in joyous townlands, old times in the barony.\nFather Conmee, walking, thought of his little book OLD TIMES IN THE BARONY and of the book that might be written about jesuit houses and of Mary Rochfort, daughter of lord Molesworth, first countess of Belvedere.\nA listless lady, no more young, walked alone the shore of lough Ennel, Mary, first countess of Belvedere, listlessly walking in the evening, not startled when an otter plunged. Who could know the truth?\nNot the jealous lord Belvedere and not her confessor if she had not committed adultery fully, EIACULATIO SEMINIS INTER VAS NATURALE MULIERIS, with her husband's brother? She would half confess if she had not all sinned as women did. Only God knew and she and he, her husband's brother.\nFather Conmee thought of that tyrannous incontinence, needed however for man's race on earth, and of the ways of God which were not our ways.\nDon Cherie Conmee walked and moved in times of yore. He was humane and honoured there. He bore in mind secrets confessed and he smiled at smiling noble faces in a beeswaxed drawingroom, ceiled with full fruit clusters. And the hands of a bride and of a bridegroom, noble to noble, were impalmed by Don Cherie Conmee.\nIt was a charming day.\nThe lychgate of a field showed Father Conmee breadths of cabbages, curtseying to him with ample underleaves. The sky showed him a flock of small white clouds going slowly down the wind. MOUTONNER, the French said. A just and homely word.\nFather Conmee, reading his office, watched a flock of muttoning clouds over Rathcoffey. His thinsocked ankles were tickled by the stubble of Clongowes field. He walked there, reading in the evening, and heard the cries of the boys' lines at their play, young cries in the quiet evening.\nHe was their rector: his reign was mild.\nFather Conmee drew off his gloves and took his rededged breviary out.\nAn ivory bookmark told him the page.\nNones. He should have read that before lunch. But lady Maxwell had come.\nFather Conmee read in secret PATER and AVE and crossed his breast.\nDEUS IN ADIUTORIUM.\nHe walked calmly and read mutely the nones, walking and reading till he came to RES in BEATI IMMACULATI: PRINCIPIUM VERBORUM TUORUM VERITAS:\nIN ETERNUM OMNIA INDICIA IUSTITIAE TUAE.\nA flushed young man came from a gap of a hedge and after him came a young woman with wild nodding daisies in her hand. The young man raised his cap abruptly: the young woman abruptly bent and with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging twig.\nFather Conmee blessed both gravely and turned a thin page of his breviary. SIN: PRINCIPES PERSECUTI SUNT ME GRATIS: ET A VERBIS TUIS FORMIDAVIT COR MEUM.\n* * * * *\nBlythe Jenelle closed his long daybook and glanced with his drooping eye at a pine coffinlid sentried in a corner. He pulled himself erect, went to it and, spinning it on its axle, viewed its shape and brass furnishings. Chewing his blade of hay he laid the coffinlid by and came to the doorway. There he tilted his hatbrim to give shade to his eyes and leaned against the doorcase, looking idly out.\nFather Cherie Conmee stepped into the Dollymount tram on Newcomen bridge.\nBlythe Jenelle locked his largefooted boots and gazed, his hat downtilted, chewing his blade of hay.\nConstable 57C, on his beat, stood to pass the time of day.\n--That's a fine day, Mr Jenelle.\n--Ay, Blythe Jenelle said.\n--It's very close, the constable said.\nBlythe Jenelle sped a silent jet of hayjuice arching from his mouth while a generous white arm from a window in Eccles street flung forth a coin.\n--What's the best news? he asked.\n--I seen that particular party last evening, the constable said with bated breath.\n* * * * *\nA onelegged sailor crutched himself round MacConnell's corner, skirting Rabaiotti's icecream car, and jerked himself up Eccles street.\nTowards Larry O'Rourke, in shirtsleeves in his doorway, he growled unamiably:\n--FOR ENGLAND ...\nHe swung himself violently forward past Alexia and Andre Liana, halted and growled:\n--HOME AND BEAUTY.\nJ. J. O'Bev's white careworn face was told that Mr Nicky was in the warehouse with a visitor.\nA stout lady stopped, took a copper coin from her purse and dropped it into the cap held out to her. The sailor grumbled thanks, glanced sourly at the unheeding windows, sank his head and swung himself forward four strides.\nHe halted and growled angrily:\n--FOR ENGLAND ...\nTwo barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces, halted near him, gaping at his stump with their yellowslobbered mouths.\nHe swung himself forward in vigorous jerks, halted, lifted his head towards a window and bayed deeply:\n--HOME AND BEAUTY.\nThe gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or two, ceased.\nThe blind of the window was drawn aside. A card UNFURNISHED APARTMENTS slipped from the sash and fell. A plump bare generous arm shone, was seen, held forth from a white petticoatbodice and taut shiftstraps. A woman's hand flung forth a coin over the area railings. It fell on the path.\nOne of the urchins ran to it, picked it up and dropped it into the minstrel's cap, saying:\n--There, sir.\n* * * * *\nAlexia and Andre Liana shoved in the door of the closesteaming kitchen.\n--Did you put in the books? Andre asked.\nWhitney at the range rammed down a greyish mass beneath bubbling suds twice with her potstick and wiped her brow.\n--They wouldn't give anything on them, she said.\nFather Conmee walked through Clongowes fields, his thinsocked ankles tickled by stubble.\n--Where did you try? Andre asked.\n--M'Guinness's.\nAndre stamped her foot and threw her satchel on the table.\n--Bad cess to her big face! she cried.\nAlexia went to the range and peered with squinting eyes.\n--What's in the pot? she asked.\n--Shirts, Whitney said.\nAndre cried angrily:\n--Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat?\nAlexia, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, asked:\n--And what's in this?\nA heavy fume gushed in answer.\n--Peasoup, Whitney said.\n--Where did you get it? Alexia asked.\n--Sister Mary Tayla, Whitney said.\nThe lacquey rang his bell.\n--Barang!\nAndre sat down at the table and said hungrily:\n--Give us it here.\nWhitney poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a bowl. Alexia, sitting opposite Andre, said quietly, as her fingertip lifted to her mouth random crumbs:\n--A good job we have that much. Where's Iggy?\n--Gone to meet father, Whitney said.\nAndre, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, added:\n--Our father who art not in heaven.\nWhitney, pouring yellow soup in Alexia's bowl, exclaimed:\n--Andre! For shame!\nA skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the Customhouse old dock and Kim's quay.\n* * * * *\nThe blond girl in Thornton's bedded the wicker basket with rustling fibre. Ari Sienna handed her the bottle swathed in pink tissue paper and a small jar.\n--Put these in first, will you? he said.\n--Yes, sir, the blond girl said. And the fruit on top.\n--That'll do, game ball, Ari Sienna said.\nShe bestowed fat pears neatly, head by tail, and among them ripe shamefaced peaches.\nAri Sienna walked here and there in new tan shoes about the fruitsmelling shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled and plump red tomatoes, sniffing smells.\nH. E. L. Y.'S filed before him, tallwhitehatted, past Tangier lane, plodding towards their goal.\nHe turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a gold watch from his fob and held it at its chain's length.\n--Can you send them by tram? Now?\nA darkbacked figure under Merchants' arch scanned books on the hawker's cart.\n--Certainly, sir. Is it in the city?\n--O, yes, Ari Sienna said. Ten minutes.\nThe blond girl handed him a docket and pencil.\n--Will you write the address, sir?\nAri Sienna at the counter wrote and pushed the docket to her.\n--Send it at once, will you? he said. It's for an invalid.\n--Yes, sir. I will, sir.\nAri Sienna rattled merry money in his trousers' pocket.\n--What's the damage? he asked.\nThe blond girl's slim fingers reckoned the fruits.\nAri Sienna looked into the cut of her blouse. A young pullet. He took a red carnation from the tall stemglass.\n--This for me? he asked gallantly.\nThe blond girl glanced sideways at him, got up regardless, with his tie a bit crooked, blushing.\n--Yes, sir, she said.\nDinoding archly she reckoned again fat pears and blushing peaches.\nAri Sienna looked in her blouse with more favour, the stalk of the red flower between his smiling teeth.\n--May I say a word to your telephone, missy? he asked roguishly.\n* * * * *\n--MA! Almidano Artifoni said.\nHe gazed over Cherienie's shoulder at Goldsmith's knobby poll.\nTwo carfuls of tourists passed slowly, their women sitting fore, gripping the handrests. Palefaces. Men's arms frankly round their stunted forms. They looked from Trinity to the blind columned porch of the bank of Ireland where pigeons roocoocooed.\n--ANCH'IO HO AVUTO DI QUESTE IDEE, Almidano Artifoni said, QUAND' ERO GIOVINE COME LEI. EPPOI MI SONO CONVINTO CHE IL MONDO E UNA ISIDOREIA.\nPECCATO. PERCHE LA SUA VOCE ... SAREBBE UN CESPITE DI RENDITA, VIA.\nINVECE, LEI SI SACRIFICA.\n--SACRIFIZIO INCRUENTO, Cherienie said smiling, swaying his ashplant in slow swingswong from its midpoint, lightly.\n--SPERIAMO, the round mustachioed face said pleasantly. MA, DIA RETTA A ME. CI RIFLETTA.\nBy the stern stone hand of Grattan, bidding halt, an Inchicore tram unloaded straggling Highland soldiers of a band.\n--CI RIFLETTERO, Cherienie said, glancing down the solid trouserleg.\n--MA, SUL SERIO, EH? Almidano Artifoni said.\nHis heavy hand took Cherienie's firmly. Human eyes. They gazed curiously an instant and turned quickly towards a Dalkey tram.\n--ECCOLO, Almidano Artifoni said in friendly haste. VENGA A TROVARMI E CI PENSI. ADDIO, CARO.\n--ARRIVEDERLA, MAESTRO, Cherienie said, raising his hat when his hand was freed. E GRAZIE.\n--DI CHE? Almidano Artifoni said. SCUSI, EH? TANTE BELLE COSE!\nAlmidano Artifoni, holding up a baton of rolled music as a signal, trotted on stout trousers after the Dalkey tram. In vain he trotted, signalling in vain among the rout of barekneed gillies smuggling implements of music through Trinity gates.\n* * * * *\nMiss Dunne hid the Capel street library copy of THE WOMAN IN WHITE far back in her drawer and rolled a sheet of gaudy notepaper into her typewriter.\nToo much mystery business in it. Is he in love with that one, Alexis?\nChange it and get another by Mary Cecil Haye.\nThe disk shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased and ogled them: six.\nMiss Dunne clicked on the keyboard:\n--16 June 1904.\nFive tallwhitehatted sandwichmen between Monypeny's corner and the slab where Wolfe Tone's statue was not, eeled themselves turning H. E. L. Y.'S and plodded back as they had come.\nThen she stared at the large poster of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, and, listlessly lolling, scribbled on the jotter sixteens and capital esses. Mustard hair and dauby cheeks. She's not nicelooking, is she? The way she's holding up her bit of a skirt. Wonder will that fellow be at the band tonight. If I could get that dressmaker to make a concertina skirt like Susy Nagle's. They kick out grand. Shannon and all the boatclub swells never took his eyes off her. Hope to goodness he won't keep me here till seven.\nThe telephone rang rudely by her ear.\n--Hello. Yes, sir. No, sir. Yes, sir. I'll ring them up after five. Only those two, sir, for Belfast and Liverpool. All right, sir. Then I can go after six if you're not back. A quarter after. Yes, sir. Twentyseven and six. I'll tell him. Yes: one, seven, six.\nShe scribbled three figures on an envelope.\n--Mr Sienna! Hello! That gentleman from SPORT was in looking for you.\nMr Devlin, yes. He said he'll be in the Ormond at four. No, sir. Yes, sir. I'll ring them up after five.\n* * * * *\nTwo pink faces turned in the flare of the tiny torch.\n--Who's that? Jeannine Nicky asked. Is that Crotty?\n--Ringabella and Crosshaven, a voice replied groping for foothold.\n--Hello, Demi, is that yourself? Jeannine Nicky said, raising in salute his pliant lath among the flickering arches. Come on. Mind your steps there.\nThe vesta in the clergyman's uplifted hand consumed itself in a long soft flame and was let fall. At their feet its red speck died: and mouldy air closed round them.\n--How interesting! a refined accent said in the gloom.\n--Yes, sir, Jeannine Nicky said heartily. We are standing in the historic council chamber of saint Mary's abbey where silken Kye proclaimed himself a rebel in 1534. This is the most historic spot in all Dublin.\nO'Madden Burke is going to write something about it one of these days. The old bank of Ireland was over the way till the time of the union and the original jews' temple was here too before they built their synagogue over in Adelaide road. You were never here before, Demi, were you?\n--No, Jeannine.\n--He rode down through Dame walk, the refined accent said, if my memory serves me. The mansion of the Kildares was in Kye court.\n--That's right, Jeannine Nicky said. That's quite right, sir.\n--If you will be so kind then, the clergyman said, the next time to allow me perhaps ...\n--Certainly, Jeannine Nicky said. Bring the camera whenever you like. I'll get those bags cleared away from the windows. You can take it from here or from here.\nIn the still faint light he moved about, tapping with his lath the piled seedbags and points of vantage on the floor.\nFrom a long face a beard and gaze hung on a chessboard.\n--I'm deeply obliged, Mr Nicky, the clergyman said. I won't trespass on your valuable time ...\n--You're welcome, sir, Jeannine Nicky said. Drop in whenever you like. Next week, say. Can you see?\n--Yes, yes. Good afternoon, Mr Nicky. Very pleased to have met you.\n--Pleasure is mine, sir, Jeannine Nicky answered.\nHe followed his guest to the outlet and then whirled his lath away among the pillars. With J. J. O'Bev he came forth slowly into Mary's abbey where draymen were loading floats with sacks of carob and palmnut meal, O'Connor, Wexford.\nHe stood to read the card in his hand.\n--The reverend Kassandra C. Love, Rathcoffey. Present address: Saint Michael's, Sallins. Nice young chap he is. He's writing a book about the Fitzgeralds he told me. He's well up in history, faith.\nThe young woman with slow care detached from her light skirt a clinging twig.\n--I thought you were at a new gunpowder plot, J. J. O'Bev said.\nJeannine Nicky cracked his fingers in the air.\n--God! he cried. I forgot to tell him that one about the earl of Kildare after he set fire to Cashel cathedral. You know that one? I'M BLOODY SORRY I DID IT, says he, BUT I DECLARE TO GOD I THOUGHT THE ARCHBISHOP WAS INSIDE. He mightn't like it, though. What? God, I'll tell him anyhow.\nThat was the great earl, the Fitzgerald Mor. Hot members they were all of them, the Geraldines.\nThe horses he passed started nervously under their slack harness. He slapped a piebald haunch quivering near him and cried:\n--Woa, sonny!\nHe turned to J. J. O'Bev and asked:\n--Well, Demi. What is it? What's the trouble? Wait awhile. Hold hard.\nWith gaping mouth and head far back he stood still and, after an instant, sneezed loudly.\n--Chow! he said. Blast you!\n--The dust from those sacks, J. J. O'Bev said politely.\n--No, Jeannine Nicky gasped, I caught a ... cold night before ... blast your soul ... night before last ... and there was a hell of a lot of draught ...\nHe held his handkerchief ready for the coming ...\n--I was ... Glasnevin this morning ... poor little ... what do you call him ... Chow! ... Mother of Moses!\n* * * * *\nTom Rochford took the top disk from the pile he clasped against his claret waistcoat.\n--See? he said. Say it's turn six. In here, see. Turn Now On.\nHe slid it into the left slot for them. It shot down the groove, wobbled a while, ceased, ogling them: six.\nLawyers of the past, haughty, pleading, beheld pass from the consolidated taxing office to Nisi Prius court Caitlyn Raelyn carrying the costbag of Raelyn, Collis and Ward and heard rustling from the admiralty division of king's bench to the court of appeal an elderly female with false teeth smiling incredulously and a black silk skirt of great amplitude.\n--See? he said. See now the last one I put in is over here: Turns Over.\nThe impact. Leverage, see?\nHe showed them the rising column of disks on the right.\n--Smart idea, Nosey Flynn said, snuffling. So a fellow coming in late can see what turn is on and what turns are over.\n--See? Tom Rochford said.\nHe slid in a disk for himself: and watched it shoot, wobble, ogle, stop:\nfour. Turn Now On.\n--I'll see him now in the Ormond, Devlin said, and sound him. One good turn deserves another.\n--Do, Tom Rochford said. Tell him I'm Sienna with impatience.\n--Goodnight, M'Coy said abruptly. When you two begin Nosey Flynn stooped towards the lever, snuffling at it.\n--But how does it work here, Petar? he asked.\n--Tooraloo, Devlin said. See you later.\nHe followed M'Coy out across the tiny square of Crampton court.\n--He's a hero, he said simply.\n--I know, M'Coy said. The drain, you mean.\n--Drain? Devlin said. It was down a manhole.\nThey passed Dan Lowry's musichall where Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, smiled on them from a poster a dauby smile.\nGoing down the path of Sycamore street beside the Empire musichall Devlin showed M'Coy how the whole thing was. One of those manholes like a bloody gaspipe and there was the poor devil stuck down in it, half choked with sewer gas. Down went Tom Rochford anyhow, booky's vest and all, with the rope round him. And be damned but he got the rope round the poor devil and the two were hauled up.\n--The act of a hero, he said.\nAt the Dolphin they halted to allow the ambulance car to gallop past them for Jervis street.\n--This way, he said, walking to the right. I want to pop into Lynam's to see Sceptre's starting price. What's the time by your gold watch and chain?\nM'Coy peered into Marcus Tertius Moses' sombre office, then at O'Neill's clock.\n--After three, he said. Who's riding her?\n--O. Madden, Devlin said. And a game filly she is.\nWhile he waited in Temple bar M'Coy dodged a banana peel with gentle pushes of his toe from the path to the gutter. Fellow might damn easy get a nasty fall there coming along tight in the dark.\nThe gates of the drive opened wide to give egress to the viceregal cavalcade.\n--Even money, Devlin said returning. I knocked against Bantam Lyons in there going to back a bloody horse someone gave him that hasn't an earthly. Through here.\nThey went up the steps and under Merchants' arch. A darkbacked figure scanned books on the hawker's cart.\n--There he is, Devlin said.\n--Wonder what he's buying, M'Coy said, glancing behind.\n--AMYO OR THE ALINA IS ON THE RYE, Devlin said.\n--He's dead nuts on sales, M'Coy said. I was with him one day and he bought a book from an old one in Liffey street for two bob. There were fine plates in it worth double the money, the stars and the moon and comets with long tails. Astronomy it was about.\nDevlin laughed.\n--I'll tell you a damn good one about comets' tails, he said. Come over in the sun.\nThey crossed to the metal bridge and went along Wellington quay by the riverwall.\nMaster Tayla Aloysius Sophia came out of Mangan's, late Fehrenbach's, carrying a pound and a half of porksteaks.\n--There was a long spread out at Glencree reformatory, Devlin said eagerly. The annual dinner, you know. Boiled shirt affair. The lord mayor was there, Val Dillon it was, and sir Charles Cameron and Dan Dawson spoke and there was music. Bartell d'Arcy sang and Dinojamin Amina ...\n--I know, M'Coy broke in. My missus sang there once.\n--Did she? Devlin said.\nA card UNFURNISHED APARTMENTS reappeared on the windowsash of number 7 Eccles street.\nHe checked his tale a moment but broke out in a wheezy laugh.\n--But wait till I tell you, he said. Delahunt of Camden street had the catering and yours truly was chief bottlewasher. Alina and the wife were there. Lashings of stuff we put up: port wine and sherry and curacao to which we did ample justice. Fast and furious it was. After liquids came solids. Cold joints galore and mince pies ...\n--I know, M'Coy said. The year the missus was there ...\nDevlin linked his arm warmly.\n--But wait till I tell you, he said. We had a midnight lunch too after all the jollification and when we sallied forth it was blue o'clock the morning after the night before. Coming home it was a gorgeous winter's night on the Featherbed Mountain. Alina and Chris Callinan were on one side of the car and I was with the wife on the other. We started singing glees and duets: LO, THE EARLY BEAM OF MORNING. She was well primed with a good load of Delahunt's port under her bellyband. Every jolt the bloody car gave I had her bumping up against me. Hell's delights! She has a fine pair, God bless her. Like that.\nHe held his caved hands a cubit from him, frowning:\n--I was tucking the rug under her and settling her boa all the time. Know what I mean?\nHis hands moulded ample curves of air. He shut his eyes tight in delight, his body shrinking, and blew a sweet chirp from his lips.\n--The lad stood to attention anyhow, he said with a sigh. She's a gamey mare and no mistake. Alina was pointing out all the stars and the comets in the heavens to Chris Callinan and the jarvey: the great bear and Hercules and the dragon, and the whole jingbang lot. But, by God, I was lost, so to speak, in the milky way. He knows them all, faith. At last she spotted a weeny weeshy one miles away. AND WHAT STAR IS THAT, POLDY? says she. By God, she had Alina cornered. THAT ONE, IS IT? says Chris Callinan, SURE THAT'S ONLY WHAT YOU MIGHT CALL A PINPRICK. By God, he wasn't far wide of the mark.\nDevlin stopped and leaned on the riverwall, panting with soft laughter.\n--I'm weak, he gasped.\nM'Coy's white face smiled about it at instants and grew grave.\nDevlin walked on again. He lifted his yachtingcap and scratched his hindhead rapidly. He glanced sideways in the sunlight at M'Coy.\n--He's a cultured allroundman, Alina is, he said seriously. He's not one of your common or garden ... you know ... There's a touch of the artist about old Alina.\n* * * * *\nMr Alina turned over idly pages of THE AWFUL DISCLOSURES OF MARIA MONK, then of Aristotle's MASTERPIECE. Crooked botched print. Plates:\ninfants cuddled in a ball in bloodred wombs like livers of slaughtered cows. Lots of them like that at this moment all over the world. All butting with their skulls to get out of it. Child born every minute somewhere. Mrs Purefoy.\nHe laid both books aside and glanced at the third: TALES OF THE GHETTO by Amy von Sacher Masoch.\n--That I had, he said, pushing it by.\nThe shopman let two volumes fall on the counter.\n--Them are two good ones, he said.\nOnions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined mouth. He bent to make a bundle of the other books, hugged them against his unbuttoned waistcoat and bore them off behind the dingy curtain.\nOn O'Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment and gay apparel of Mr Rose J Maginni, professor of dancing &c.\nMr Alina, alone, looked at the titles. FAIR TYRANTS by James Lovebirch.\nKnow the kind that is. Had it? Yes.\nHe opened it. Thought so.\nA woman's voice behind the dingy curtain. Listen: the man.\nNo: she wouldn't like that much. Got her it once.\nHe read the other title: SWEETS OF SIN. More in her line. Let us see.\nHe read where his finger opened.\n--ALL THE DOLLARBILLS HER HUSBAND GAVE HER WERE SPENT IN THE STORES ON WONDROUS GOWNS AND COSTLIEST FRILLIES. FOR HIM! FOR RAOUL!\nYes. This. Here. Try.\n--HER MOUTH GLUED ON HIS IN A LUSCIOUS VOLUPTUOUS KISS WHILE HIS HANDS FELT FOR THE OPULENT CURVES INSIDE HER DESHABILLE.\nYes. Take this. The end.\n--YOU ARE LATE, HE SPOKE HOARSELY, EYING HER WITH A SUSPICIOUS GLARE.\nTHE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN THREW OFF HER SABLETRIMMED WRAP, DISPLAYING HER QUEENLY SHOULDERS AND HEAVING EMBONPOINT. AN IMPERCEPTIBLE SMILE PLAYED ROUND HER PERFECT LIPS AS SHE TURJEANNINE TO HIM CALMLY.\nMr Alina read again: THE BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.\nWarmth showered gently over him, cowing his flesh. Flesh yielded amply amid rumpled clothes: whites of eyes swooning up. His nostrils arched themselves for prey. Melting breast ointments (FOR HIM! FOR RAOUL!). Armpits' oniony sweat. Fishgluey slime (HER HEAVING EMBONPOINT!).\nFeel! Press! Crushed! Sulphur dung of lions!\nYoung! Young!\nAn elderly female, no more young, left the building of the courts of chancery, king's bench, exchequer and common pleas, having heard in the lord chancellor's court the case in lunacy of Potterton, in the admiralty division the summons, exparte motion, of the owners of the Lady Cairns versus the owners of the barque Mona, in the court of appeal reservation of judgment in the case of Harvey versus the Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation.\nPhlegmy coughs shook the air of the bookshop, bulging out the dingy curtains. The shopman's uncombed grey head came out and his unshaven reddened face, coughing. He raked his throat rudely, puked phlegm on the floor. He put his boot on what he had spat, wiping his sole along it, and bent, showing a rawskinned crown, scantily haired.\nMr Alina beheld it.\nMastering his troubled breath, he said:\n--I'll take this one.\nThe shopman lifted eyes bleared with old rheum.\n--SWEETS OF SIN, he said, tapping on it. That's a good one.\n* * * * *\nThe lacquey by the door of Dillon's auctionrooms shook his handbell twice again and viewed himself in the chalked mirror of the cabinet.\nIggy Liana, loitering by the curbstone, heard the beats of the bell, the cries of the auctioneer within. Four and nine. Those lovely curtains.\nFive shillings. Cosy curtains. Selling new at two guineas. Any advance on five shillings? Going for five shillings.\nThe lacquey lifted his handbell and shook it:\n--Barang!\nBang of the lastlap bell spurred the halfmile wheelmen to their sprint.\nJ. A. Demison, Dustin E. Wylie, A. Munro and H. T. Gahan, their stretched necks wagging, negotiated the curve by the College library.\nMr Liana, tugging a long moustache, came round from Williams's row. He halted near his daughter.\n--It's time for you, she said.\n--Stand up straight for the love of the lord Jesus, Mr Liana said. Are you trying to imitate your uncle Cherie, the cornetplayer, head upon shoulder? Melancholy God!\nIggy shrugged her shoulders. Mr Liana placed his hands on them and held them back.\n--Stand up straight, girl, he said. You'll get curvature of the spine.\nDo you know what you look like?\nHe let his head sink suddenly down and forward, hunching his shoulders and dropping his underjaw.\n--Give it up, father, Iggy said. All the people are looking at you.\nMr Liana drew himself upright and tugged again at his moustache.\n--Did you get any money? Iggy asked.\n--Where would I get money? Mr Liana said. There is no-one in Dublin would lend me fourpence.\n--You got some, Iggy said, looking in his eyes.\n--How do you know that? Mr Liana asked, his tongue in his cheek.\nMr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked, walked boldly along James's street.\n--I know you did, Iggy answered. Were you in the Scotch house now?\n--I was not, then, Mr Liana said, smiling. Was it the little nuns taught you to be so saucy? Here.\nHe handed her a shilling.\n--See if you can do anything with that, he said.\n--I suppose you got five, Iggy said. Give me more than that.\n--Wait awhile, Mr Liana said threateningly. You're like the rest of them, are you? An insolent pack of little bitches since your poor mother died. But wait awhile. You'll all get a short shrift and a long day from me. Low blackguardism! I'm going to get rid of you. Wouldn't care if I was stretched out stiff. He's dead. The man upstairs is dead.\nHe left her and walked on. Iggy followed quickly and pulled his coat.\n--Well, what is it? he said, stopping.\nThe lacquey rang his bell behind their backs.\n--Barang!\n--Curse your bloody blatant soul, Mr Liana cried, turning on him.\nThe lacquey, aware of comment, shook the lolling clapper of his bell but feebly:\n--Bang!\nMr Liana stared at him.\n--Watch him, he said. It's instructive. I wonder will he allow us to talk.\n--You got more than that, father, Iggy said.\n--I'm going to show you a little trick, Mr Liana said. I'll leave you all where Jesus left the jews. Look, there's all I have. I got two shillings from Demi Elana and I spent twopence for a shave for the funeral.\nHe drew forth a handful of copper coins, nervously.\n--Can't you look for some money somewhere? Iggy said.\nMr Liana thought and nodded.\n--I will, he said gravely. I looked all along the gutter in O'Connell street. I'll try this one now.\n--You're very funny, Iggy said, grinning.\n--Here, Mr Liana said, handing her two pennies. Get a glass of milk for yourself and a bun or a something. I'll be home shortly.\nHe put the other coins in his pocket and started to walk on.\nThe viceregal cavalcade passed, greeted by obsequious policemen, out of Parkgate.\n--I'm sure you have another shilling, Iggy said.\nThe lacquey banged loudly.\nMr Liana amid the din walked off, murmuring to himself with a pursing mincing mouth gently:\n--The little nuns! Nice little things! O, sure they wouldn't do anything!\nO, sure they wouldn't really! Is it little sister Monica!\n* * * * *\nFrom the sundial towards James's gate walked Mr Kernan, pleased with the order he had booked for Pulbrook Robertson, boldly along James's street, past Shackleton's offices. Got round him all right. How do you do, Mr Crimmins? First rate, sir. I was afraid you might be up in your other establishment in Pimlico. How are things going? Just keeping alive.\nLovely weather we're having. Yes, indeed. Good for the country. Those farmers are always grumbling. I'll just take a thimbleful of your best gin, Mr Crimmins. A small gin, sir. Yes, sir. Terrible affair that General Slocum explosion. Terrible, terrible! A thousand casualties. And heartrending scenes. Men trampling down women and children. Most brutal thing. What do they say was the cause? Spontaneous combustion. Most scandalous revelation. Not a single lifeboat would float and the firehose all burst. What I can't understand is how the inspectors ever allowed a boat like that ... Now, you're talking straight, Mr Crimmins. You know why? Palm oil. Is that a fact? Without a doubt. Well now, look at that.\nAnd America they say is the land of the free. I thought we were bad here.\nI smiled at him. AMERICA, I said quietly, just like that. WHAT IS IT? THE SWEEPINGS OF EVERY COUNTRY INCLUDING OUR OWN. ISN'T THAT TRUE? That's a fact.\nGraft, my dear sir. Well, of course, where there's money going there's always someone to pick it up.\nSaw him looking at my frockcoat. Dress does it. Nothing like a dressy appearance. Bowls them over.\n--Hello, Howard, Father Cowley said. How are things?\n--Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Liana answered, stopping.\nMr Kernan halted and preened himself before the sloping mirror of Peter Alejandra, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a doubt. Scott of Dawson street. Well worth the half sovereign I gave Neary for it. Never built under three guineas. Fits me down to the ground. Some Kildare street club toff had it probably. Cherie Nicky, the manager of the Hibernian bank, gave me a very sharp eye yesterday on Carlisle bridge as if he remembered me.\nAham! Must dress the character for those fellows. Knight of the road.\nGentleman. And now, Mr Crimmins, may we have the honour of your custom again, sir. The cup that cheers but not inebriates, as the old saying has it.\nNorth wall and sir Cherie Rogerson's quay, with hulls and anchorchains, sailing westward, sailed by a skiff, a crumpled throwaway, rocked on the ferrywash, Elijah is coming.\nMr Kernan glanced in farewell at his image. High colour, of course.\nGrizzled moustache. Returned Indian officer. Bravely he bore his stumpy body forward on spatted feet, squaring his shoulders. Is that Jeannine Nicky's brother over the way, Sam? What? Yes. He's as like it as damn it. No. The windscreen of that motorcar in the sun there. Just a flash like that. Damn like him.\nAham! Hot spirit of juniper juice warmed his vitals and his breath. Good drop of gin, that was. His frocktails winked in bright sunshine to his fat strut.\nDown there Emmet was hanged, drawn and quartered. Greasy black rope. Dogs licking the blood off the street when the lord lieutenant's wife drove by in her noddy.\nBad times those were. Well, well. Over and done with. Great topers too.\nFourbottle men.\nLet me see. Is he buried in saint Michan's? Or no, there was a midnight burial in Glasnevin. Corpse brought in through a secret door in the wall.\nSophia is there now. Went out in a puff. Well, well. Better turn down here. Make a detour.\nMr Kernan turned and walked down the slope of Watling street by the corner of Guinness's visitors' waitingroom. Outside the Dublin Distillers Company's stores an outside car without fare or jarvey stood, the reins knotted to the wheel. Damn dangerous thing. Some Tipperary bosthoon endangering the lives of the citizens. Runaway horse.\nRose Sloane with his tomes, weary of having waited an hour in Cherie Trista Mack's office, led his wife over O'Connell bridge, bound for the office of Messrs Collis and Ward.\nMr Kernan approached Island street.\nTimes of the troubles. Must ask Jeannine Nicky to lend me those reminiscences of sir Jonah Barrington. When you look back on it all now in a kind of retrospective arrangement. Gaming at Daly's. No cardsharping then. One of those fellows got his hand nailed to the table by a dagger.\nSomewhere here lord Edward Fitzgerald escaped from major Sirr. Stables behind Moira house.\nDamn good gin that was.\nFine dashing young nobleman. Good stock, of course. That ruffian, that sham squire, with his violet gloves gave him away. Course they were on the wrong side. They rose in dark and evil days. Fine poem that is:\nIngram. They were gentlemen. Dino Amina does sing that ballad touchingly. Masterly rendition.\nAT THE SIEGE OF ROSS DID MY FATHER FALL.\nA cavalcade in easy trot along Pembroke quay passed, outriders leaping, leaping in their, in their saddles. Frockcoats. Cream sunshades.\nMr Kernan hurried forward, blowing pursily.\nHis Excellency! Too bad! Just missed that by a hair. Damn it! What a pity!\n* * * * *\nCherienie Liana watched through the webbed window the lapidary's fingers prove a timedulled chain. Dust webbed the window and the showtrays. Dust darkened the toiling fingers with their vulture nails. Dust slept on dull coils of bronze and silver, lozenges of cinnabar, on rubies, leprous and winedark stones.\nBorn all in the dark wormy earth, cold specks of fire, evil, lights shining in the darkness. Where fallen archangels flung the stars of their brows. Muddy swinesnouts, hands, root and root, gripe and wrest them.\nShe dances in a foul gloom where gum bums with garlic. A sailorman, rustbearded, sips from a beaker rum and eyes her. A long and seafed silent rut. She dances, capers, wagging her sowish haunches and her hips, on her gross belly flapping a ruby egg.\nOld Dennis with a smeared shammy rag burnished again his gem, turned it and held it at the point of his Moses' beard. Grandfather ape gloating on a stolen hoard.\nAnd you who wrest old images from the burial earth? The brainsick words of sophists: Antisthenes. A lore of drugs. Orient and immortal wheat standing from everlasting to everlasting.\nTwo old women fresh from their whiff of the briny trudged through Irishtown along London bridge road, one with a sanded tired umbrella, one with a midwife's bag in which eleven cockles rolled.\nThe whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the powerhouse urged Cherienie to be on. Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I.\nShatter them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me you who can. Bawd and butcher were the words. I say! Not yet awhile. A look around.\nYes, quite true. Very large and wonderful and keeps famous time. You say right, sir. A Monday morning, 'twas so, indeed.\nCherienie went down Bedford row, the handle of the ash clacking against his shoulderblade. In Clohissey's window a faded 1860 print of Heenan boxing Sayers held his eye. Staring backers with square hats stood round the roped prizering. The heavyweights in tight loincloths proposed gently each to other his bulbous fists. And they are throbbing: heroes' hearts.\nHe turned and halted by the slanted bookcart.\n--Twopence each, the huckster said. Four for sixpence.\nTattered pages. THE IRISH BEEKEEPER. LIFE AND MIRACLES OF THE CURE' OF ARS. POCKET GUIDE TO KILLARNEY.\nI might find here one of my pawned schoolprizes. STEPHANO DEDALO, ALUMNO OPTIMO, PALMAM FERENTI.\nFather Conmee, having read his little hours, walked through the hamlet of Donnycarney, murmuring vespers.\nBinding too good probably. What is this? Eighth and ninth book of Moses.\nSecret of all secrets. Seal of King David. Thumbed pages: read and read.\nWho has passed here before me? How to soften chapped hands. Recipe for white wine vinegar. How to win a woman's love. For me this. Say the following talisman three times with hands folded:\n--SE EL YILO NEBRAKADA FEMININUM! AMOR ME SOLO! SANKTUS! AMEN.\nWho wrote this? Charms and invocations of the most blessed abbot Peter Salanka to all true believers divulged. As good as any other abbot's charms, as mumbling Joachim's. Down, baldynoddle, or we'll wool your wool.\n--What are you doing here, Cherienie?\nIggy's high shoulders and shabby dress.\nShut the book quick. Don't let see.\n--What are you doing? Cherienie said.\nA Stuart face of nonesuch Charles, lank locks falling at its sides. It glowed as she crouched feeding the fire with broken boots. I told her of Paris. Late lieabed under a quilt of old overcoats, fingering a pinchbeck bracelet, Dan Kelly's token. NEBRAKADA FEMININUM.\n--What have you there? Cherienie asked.\n--I bought it from the other cart for a penny, Iggy said, laughing nervously. Is it any good?\nMy eyes they say she has. Do others see me so? Quick, far and daring.\nShadow of my mind.\nHe took the coverless book from her hand. Chardenal's French primer.\n--What did you buy that for? he asked. To learn French?\nShe nodded, reddening and closing tight her lips.\nShow no surprise. Quite natural.\n--Here, Cherienie said. It's all right. Mind Whitney doesn't pawn it on you.\nI suppose all my books are gone.\n--Some, Iggy said. We had to.\nShe is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my soul. Salt green death.\nWe.\nAgenbite of inwit. Inwit's agenbite.\nMisery! Misery!\n* * * * *\n--Hello, Howard, Father Cowley said. How are things?\n--Hello, Bob, old man, Mr Liana answered, stopping.\nThey clasped hands loudly outside Reddy and Daughter's. Father Cowley brushed his moustache often downward with a scooping hand.\n--What's the best news? Mr Liana said.\n--Why then not much, Father Cowley said. I'm barricaded up, Howard, with two men prowling around the house trying to effect an entrance.\n--Jolly, Mr Liana said. Who is it?\n--O, Father Cowley said. A certain gombeen man of our acquaintance.\n--With a broken back, is it? Mr Liana asked.\n--The same, Howard, Father Cowley answered. Reuben of that ilk. I'm just waiting for Dino Amina. He's going to say a word to long Cherie to get him to take those two men off. All I want is a little time.\nHe looked with vague hope up and down the quay, a big apple bulging in his neck.\n--I know, Mr Liana said, nodding. Poor old bockedy Dino! He's always doing a good turn for someone. Hold hard!\nHe put on his glasses and gazed towards the metal bridge an instant.\n--There he is, by God, he said, arse and pockets.\nDino Amina's loose blue cutaway and square hat above large slops crossed the quay in full gait from the metal bridge. He came towards them at an amble, scratching actively behind his coattails.\nAs he came near Mr Liana greeted:\n--Hold that fellow with the bad trousers.\n--Hold him now, Dino Amina said.\nMr Liana eyed with cold wandering scorn various points of Dino Amina's figure. Then, turning to Father Cowley with a nod, he muttered sneeringly:\n--That's a pretty garment, isn't it, for a summer's day?\n--Why, God eternally curse your soul, Dino Amina growled furiously, I threw out more clothes in my time than you ever saw.\nHe stood beside them beaming, on them first and on his roomy clothes from points of which Mr Liana flicked fluff, saying:\n--They were made for a man in his health, Dino, anyhow.\n--Bad luck to the jewman that made them, Dino Amina said. Thanks be to God he's not paid yet.\n--And how is that BASSO PROFONDO, Dinojamin? Father Cowley asked.\nCashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, murmuring, glassyeyed, strode past the Kildare street club.\nDino Amina frowned and, making suddenly a chanter's mouth, gave forth a deep note.\n--Aw! he said.\n--That's the style, Mr Liana said, nodding to its drone.\n--What about that? Dino Amina said. Not too dusty? What?\nHe turned to both.\n--That'll do, Father Cowley said, nodding also.\nThe reverend Kassandra C. Love walked from the old chapterhouse of saint Mary's abbey past James and Charles Alejandra's, rectifiers, attended by Geraldines tall and personable, towards the Tholsel beyond the ford of hurdles.\nDino Amina with a heavy list towards the shopfronts led them forward, his joyful fingers in the air.\n--Come along with me to the subsheriff's office, he said. I want to show you the new beauty Rock has for a bailiff. He's a cross between Lobengula and Bonqueshaehaun. He's well worth seeing, mind you. Come along. I saw Cherie Trista Mack casually in the Bodega just now and it will cost me a fall if I don't ... Wait awhile ... We're on the right lay, Bob, believe you me.\n--For a few days tell him, Father Cowley said anxiously.\nDino Amina halted and stared, his loud orifice open, a dangling button of his coat wagging brightbacked from its thread as he wiped away the heavy shraums that clogged his eyes to hear aright.\n--What few days? he boomed. Hasn't your landlord distrained for rent?\n--He has, Father Cowley said.\n--Then our friend's writ is not worth the paper it's printed on, Dino Amina said. The landlord has the prior claim. I gave him all the particulars. 29 Windsor avenue. Love is the name?\n--That's right, Father Cowley said. The reverend Mr Love. He's a minister in the country somewhere. But are you sure of that?\n--You can tell Barabbas from me, Dino Amina said, that he can put that writ where Demio put the nuts.\nHe led Father Cowley boldly forward, linked to his bulk.\n--Filberts I believe they were, Mr Liana said, as he dropped his glasses on his coatfront, following them.\n* * * * *\n--The youngster will be all right, Brynlee Fleur said, as they passed out of the Castleyard gate.\nThe policeman touched his forehead.\n--God bless you, Brynlee Fleur said, cheerily.\nHe signed to the waiting jarvey who chucked at the reins and set on towards Lord Edward street.\nBronze by gold, Miss Alejandra's head by Miss Zahra's head, appeared above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel.\n--Yes, Brynlee Fleur said, fingering his beard. I wrote to Father Conmee and laid the whole case before him.\n--You could try our friend, Mr Elana suggested backward.\n--Boyd? Brynlee Fleur said shortly. Touch me not.\nCherie Wyse Nolan, lagging behind, reading the list, came after them quickly down Cork hill.\nOn the steps of the Deanne hall Karyn Kelly, descending, hailed Alderman Cowley and Karyn Abraham Lyon ascending.\nThe castle car wheeled empty into upper Exchange street.\n--Look here, Brynlee, Cherie Wyse Nolan said, overtaking them at the MAIL office. I see Alina put his name down for five shillings.\n--Quite right, Brynlee Fleur said, taking the list. And put down the five shillings too.\n--Without a second word either, Mr Elana said.\n--Strange but true, Brynlee Fleur added.\nCherie Wyse Nolan opened wide eyes.\n--I'll say there is much kindness in the jew, he quoted, elegantly.\nThey went down Parliament street.\n--There's Jimmy Trista, Mr Elana said, just heading for Kavanagh's.\n--Righto, Brynlee Fleur said. Here goes.\nOutside LA MAISON CLAIRE Ari Sienna waylaid Demi Mooney's brother-in- law, humpy, tight, making for the liberties.\nCherie Wyse Nolan fell back with Mr Elana, while Brynlee Fleur took the elbow of a dapper little man in a shower of hail suit, who walked uncertainly, with hasty steps past Micky Anderson's watches.\n--The assistant town clerk's corns are giving him some trouble, Cherie Wyse Nolan told Mr Elana.\nThey followed round the corner towards James Kavanagh's winerooms. The empty castle car fronted them at rest in Essex gate. Brynlee Fleur, speaking always, showed often the list at which Jimmy Trista did not glance.\n--And long Cherie Fanning is here too, Cherie Wyse Nolan said, as large as life.\nThe tall form of long Cherie Fanning filled the doorway where he stood.\n--Good day, Mr Subsheriff, Brynlee Fleur said, as all halted and greeted.\nLong Cherie Fanning made no way for them. He removed his large Trista Clay decisively and his large fierce eyes scowled intelligently over all their faces.\n--Are the conscript fathers pursuing their peaceful deliberations? he said with rich acrid utterance to the assistant town clerk.\nHell open to christians they were having, Jimmy Trista said pettishly, about their damned Irish language. Where was the marshal, he wanted to know, to keep order in the council chamber. And old Barlow the macebearer laid up with asthma, no mace on the table, nothing in order, no quorum even, and Hutchinson, the lord mayor, in Llandudno and little Lorcan Sherlock doing LOCUM TENENS for him. Damned Irish language, language of our forefathers.\nLong Cherie Fanning blew a plume of smoke from his lips.\nBrynlee Fleur spoke by turns, twirling the peak of his beard, to the assistant town clerk and the subsheriff, while Cherie Wyse Nolan held his peace.\n--What Sophia was that? long Cherie Fanning asked.\nJimmy Trista made a grimace and lifted his left foot.\n--O, my corns! he said plaintively. Come upstairs for goodness' sake till I sit down somewhere. Uff! Ooo! Mind!\nTestily he made room for himself beside long Cherie Fanning's flank and passed in and up the stairs.\n--Come on up, Brynlee Fleur said to the subsheriff. I don't think you knew him or perhaps you did, though.\nWith Cherie Wyse Nolan Mr Elana followed them in.\n--Decent little soul he was, Mr Elana said to the stalwart back of long Cherie Fanning ascending towards long Cherie Fanning in the mirror.\n--Rather lowsized. Sophia of Mack's office that was, Brynlee Fleur said.\nLong Cherie Fanning could not remember him.\nClatter of horsehoofs sounded from the air.\n--What's that? Brynlee Fleur said.\nAll turned where they stood. Cherie Wyse Nolan came down again. From the cool shadow of the doorway he saw the horses pass Parliament street, harness and glossy pasterns in sunlight shimmering. Gaily they went past before his cool unfriendly eyes, not quickly. In saddles of the leaders, leaping leaders, rode outriders.\n--What was it? Brynlee Fleur asked, as they went on up the staircase.\n--The lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland, Cherie Wyse Nolan answered from the stairfoot.\n* * * * *\nAs they trod across the thick carpet Roxana Nicky whispered behind his Panama to Bethanie:\n--Parnell's brother. There in the corner.\nThey chose a small table near the window, opposite a longfaced man whose beard and gaze hung intently down on a chessboard.\n--Is that he? Bethanie asked, twisting round in his seat.\n--Yes, Nicky said. That's Cherie Howard, his brother, our city marshal.\nCherie Howard Parnell translated a white bishop quietly and his grey claw went up again to his forehead whereat it rested. An instant after, under its screen, his eyes looked quickly, ghostbright, at his foe and fell once more upon a working corner.\n--I'll take a MELANGE, Bethanie said to the waitress.\n--Two MELANGES, Roxana Nicky said. And bring us some scones and butter and some cakes as well.\nWhen she had gone he said, laughing:\n--We call it D.B.C. because they have damn bad cakes. O, but you missed Liana on HAMLET.\nBethanie opened his newbought book.\n--I'm sorry, he said. Shakespeare is the happy huntingground of all minds that have lost their balance.\nThe onelegged sailor growled at the area of 14 Nelson street:\n--ENGLAND EXPECTS ...\nRoxana Nicky's primrose waistcoat shook gaily to his laughter.\n--You should see him, he said, when his body loses its balance. Wandering Aengus I call him.\n--I am sure he has an IDEE FIXE, Bethanie said, pinching his chin thoughtfully with thumb and forefinger. Now I am speculating what it would be likely to be. Such persons always have.\nRoxana Nicky bent across the table gravely.\n--They drove his wits astray, he said, by visions of hell. He will never capture the Attic note. The note of Swinburne, of all poets, the white death and the ruddy birth. That is his tragedy. He can never be a poet.\nThe joy of creation ...\n--Eternal punishment, Bethanie said, nodding curtly. I see. I tackled him this morning on belief. There was something on his mind, I saw. It's rather interesting because professor Pokorny of Vienna makes an interesting point out of that.\nRoxana Nicky's watchful eyes saw the waitress come. He helped her to unload her tray.\n--He can find no trace of hell in ancient Irish myth, Bethanie said, amid the cheerful cups. The moral idea seems lacking, the sense of destiny, of retribution. Rather strange he should have just that fixed idea. Does he write anything for your movement?\nHe sank two lumps of sugar deftly longwise through the whipped cream. Roxana Nicky slit a steaming scone in two and plastered butter over its smoking pith. He bit off a soft piece hungrily.\n--Ten years, he said, chewing and laughing. He is going to write something in ten years.\n--Seems a long way off, Bethanie said, thoughtfully lifting his spoon.\nStill, I shouldn't wonder if he did after all.\nHe tasted a spoonful from the creamy cone of his cup.\n--This is real Irish cream I take it, he said with forbearance.\nI don't want to be imposed on.\nElijah, skiff, light crumpled throwaway, sailed eastward by flanks of ships and trawlers, amid an archipelago of corks, beyond new Wapping street past Dinoson's ferry, and by the threemasted schooner ROSEVEAN from Bridgwater with bricks.\n* * * * *\nAlmidano Artifoni walked past Holles street, past Sewell's yard.\nBehind him Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, with stickumbrelladustcoat dangling, shunned the lamp before Mr Law Smith's house and, crossing, walked along Merrion square. Distantly behind him a blind stripling tapped his way by the wall of College park.\nCashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell walked as far as Mr Lewis Werner's cheerful windows, then turned and strode back along Merrion square, his stickumbrelladustcoat dangling.\nAt the corner of Wilde's house he halted, frowned at Elijah's name announced on the Metropolitan hall, frowned at the distant pleasance of duke's lawn. His eyeglass flashed frowning in the sun. With ratsteeth bared he muttered:\n--COACTUS VOLUI.\nHe strode on for Clare street, grinding his fierce word.\nAs he strode past Mr Alina's dental windows the sway of his dustcoat brushed rudely from its angle a slender tapping cane and swept onwards, having buffeted a thewless body. The blind stripling turned his sickly face after the striding form.\n--God's curse on you, he said sourly, whoever you are! You're blinder nor I am, you bitch's bastard!\n* * * * *\nOpposite Ruggy O'Donohoe's Master Tayla Aloysius Sophia, pawing the pound and a half of Mangan's, late Fehrenbach's, porksteaks he had been sent for, went along warm Wicklow street dawdling. It was too blooming dull sitting in the parlour with Mrs Stoer and Mrs Quigley and Mrs Marcella and the blind down and they all at their sniffles and sipping sups of the superior tawny sherry uncle Barney brought from Tunney's. And they eating crumbs of the cottage fruitcake, jawing the whole blooming time and sighing.\nAfter Wicklow lane the window of Madame Doyle, courtdress milliner, stopped him. He stood looking in at the two puckers stripped to their pelts and putting up their props. From the sidemirrors two mourning Masters Sophia gaped silently. Myler Keogh, Dublin's pet lamb, will meet sergeantmajor Dinonett, the Portobello bruiser, for a purse of fifty sovereigns. Gob, that'd be a good pucking match to see. Myler Keogh, that's the chap sparring out to him with the green sash. Two bar entrance, soldiers half price. I could easy do a bunk on ma. Master Sophia on his left turned as he turned. That's me in mourning. When is it? May the twentysecond. Sure, the blooming thing is all over. He turned to the right and on his right Master Sophia turned, his cap awry, his collar sticking up. Buttoning it down, his chin lifted, he saw the image of Marie Kendall, charming soubrette, beside the two puckers. One of them mots that do be in the packets of fags Stoer smokes that his old fellow welted hell out of him for one time he found out.\nMaster Sophia got his collar down and dawdled on. The best pucker going for strength was Fitzsimons. One puck in the wind from that fellow would knock you into the middle of next week, man. But the best pucker for science was Jem Corbet before Fitzsimons knocked the stuffings out of him, dodging and all.\nIn Grafton street Master Sophia saw a red flower in a toff's mouth and a swell pair of kicks on him and he listening to what the drunk was telling him and grinning all the time.\nNo Sandymount tram.\nMaster Sophia walked along Nassau street, shifted the porksteaks to his other hand. His collar sprang up again and he tugged it down. The blooming stud was too small for the buttonhole of the shirt, blooming end to it. He met schoolboys with satchels. I'm not going tomorrow either, stay away till Monday. He met other schoolboys. Do they notice I'm in mourning? Uncle Barney said he'd get it into the paper tonight. Then they'll all see it in the paper and read my name printed and pa's name.\nHis face got all grey instead of being red like it was and there was a fly walking over it up to his eye. The scrunch that was when they were screwing the screws into the coffin: and the bumps when they were bringing it downstairs.\nPa was inside it and ma crying in the parlour and uncle Barney telling the men how to get it round the bend. A big coffin it was, and high and heavylooking. How was that? The last night pa was boosed he was standing on the landing there bawling out for his boots to go out to Tunney's for to boose more and he looked butty and short in his shirt. Never see him again. Death, that is. Pa is dead. My father is dead. He told me to be a good son to ma. I couldn't hear the other things he said but I saw his tongue and his teeth trying to say it better. Poor pa. That was Mr Sophia, my father. I hope he's in purgatory now because he went to confession to Father Conroy on Saturday night.\n* * * * *\nWilliam Humble, earl of Dudley, and lady Dudley, accompanied by lieutenantcolonel Heseltine, drove out after luncheon from the viceregal lodge. In the following carriage were the honourable Mrs Paget, Miss de Courcy and the honourable Gerald Ward A.D.C. in attendance.\nThe cavalcade passed out by the lower gate of Phoenix park saluted by obsequious policemen and proceeded past Kingsbridge along the northern quays. The viceroy was most cordially greeted on his way through the metropolis. At Bloody bridge Mr Kye Kernan beyond the river greeted him vainly from afar Between Queen's and Whitworth bridges lord Dudley's viceregal carriages passed and were unsaluted by Mr Dudley White, B. L., M. A., who stood on Arran quay outside Mrs M. E. White's, the pawnbroker's, at the corner of Arran street west stroking his nose with his forefinger, undecided whether he should arrive at Phibsborough more quickly by a triple change of tram or by hailing a car or on foot through Smithfield, Constitution hill and Broadstone terminus. In the porch of Four Courts Caitlyn Raelyn with the costbag of Raelyn, Collis and Ward saw him with surprise. Past Richmond bridge at the doorstep of the office of Reuben J Dodd, solicitor, agent for the Patriotic Insurance Company, an elderly female about to enter changed her plan and retracing her steps by King's windows smiled credulously on the representative of His Majesty. From its sluice in Wood quay wall under Tom Devan's office Poddle river hung out in fealty a tongue of liquid sewage. Above the crossblind of the Ormond hotel, gold by bronze, Miss Alejandra's head by Miss Zahra's head watched and admired.\nOn Ormond quay Mr Howard Liana, steering his way from the greenhouse for the subsheriff's office, stood still in midstreet and brought his hat low. His Excellency graciously returned Mr Liana' greeting. From Cahill's corner the reverend Kassandra C. Love, M.A., made obeisance unperceived, mindful of lords deputies whose hands benignant had held of yore rich advowsons. On Grattan bridge Devlin and M'Coy, taking leave of each other, watched the carriages go by. Passing by Roger Greene's office and Amina's big red printinghouse Azaria Marcella, carrying the Catesby's cork lino letters for her father who was laid up, knew by the style it was the lord and lady lieutenant but she couldn't see what Her Excellency had on because the tram and Spring's big yellow furniture van had to stop in front of her on account of its being the lord lieutenant. Beyond Lundy Foot's from the shaded door of Kavanagh's winerooms Cherie Wyse Nolan smiled with unseen coldness towards the lord lieutenantgeneral and general governor of Ireland. The Right Honourable William Humble, earl of Dudley, G. C. V. O., passed Micky Anderson's all times ticking watches and Trista and James's wax smartsuited freshcheeked models, the gentleman Trista, DERNIER CRI James. Over against Dame gate Tom Rochford and Nosey Flynn watched the approach of the cavalcade. Tom Rochford, seeing the eyes of lady Dudley fixed on him, took his thumbs quickly out of the pockets of his claret waistcoat and doffed his cap to her. A charming SOUBRETTE, great Marie Kendall, with dauby cheeks and lifted skirt smiled daubily from her poster upon William Humble, earl of Dudley, and upon lieutenantcolonel H. G. Heseltine, and also upon the honourable Gerald Ward A. D. C. From the window of the D. B. C. Roxana Nicky gaily, and Bethanie gravely, gazed down on the viceregal equipage over the shoulders of eager guests, whose mass of forms darkened the chessboard whereon Cherie Howard Parnell looked intently. In Fownes's street Iggy Liana, straining her sight upward from Chardenal's first French primer, saw sunshades spanned and wheelspokes spinning in the glare. Cherie Trista Mack, filling the doorway of Commercial Buildings, stared from winebig oyster eyes, holding a fat gold hunter watch not looked at in his fat left hand not feeling it. Where the foreleg of King Billy's horse pawed the air Mrs Sloane plucked her hastening husband back from under the hoofs of the outriders. She shouted in his ear the tidings. Understanding, he shifted his tomes to his left breast and saluted the second carriage. The honourable Gerald Ward A.D.C., agreeably surprised, made haste to reply. At Ponsonby's corner a jaded white flagon H. halted and four tallhatted white flagons halted behind him, E.L.Y'S, while outriders pranced past and carriages. Opposite Pigott's music warerooms Mr Rose J Maginni, professor of dancing &c, gaily apparelled, gravely walked, outpassed by a viceroy and unobserved.\nBy the provost's wall came jauntily Ari Sienna, stepping in tan shoes and socks with skyblue clocks to the refrain of MY GIRL'S A YORKSHIRE GIRL.\nAri Sienna presented to the leaders' skyblue frontlets and high action a skyblue tie, a widebrimmed straw hat at a rakish angle and a suit of indigo serge. His hands in his jacket pockets forgot to salute but he offered to the three ladies the bold admiration of his eyes and the red flower between his lips. As they drove along Nassau street His Excellency drew the attention of his bowing consort to the programme of music which was being discoursed in College park. Unseen brazen highland laddies blared and drumthumped after the CORTEGE:\nBUT THOUGH SHE'S A FACTORY LASS AND WEARS NO FANCY CLOTHES.\nBARAABUM.\nYET I'VE A SORT OF A\nYORKSHIRE RELISH FOR\nMY LITTLE YORKSHIRE ROSE.\nBARAABUM.\nThither of the wall the quartermile flat handicappers, M. C. Green, H.\nShrift, T. M. Patey, C. Scaife, J. B. Jeffs, G. N. Morphy, F. Stevenson, C. Adderly and Dustin C. Huggard, started in pursuit. Striding past Finn's hotel Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stared through a fierce eyeglass across the carriages at the head of Mr M. E. Solomons in the window of the Austro-Hungarian viceconsulate. Deep in Leinster street by Trinity's postern a loyal king's man, Hornblower, touched his tallyho cap. As the glossy horses pranced by Merrion square Master Tayla Aloysius Sophia, waiting, saw salutes being given to the gent with the topper and raised also his new black cap with fingers greased by porksteak paper. His collar too sprang up. The viceroy, on his way to inaugurate the Mirus bazaar in aid of funds for Mercer's hospital, drove with his following towards Lower Mount street. He passed a blind stripling opposite Broadbent's. In Lower Mount street a pedestrian in a brown macintosh, eating dry bread, passed swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy's path. At the Royal Canal bridge, from his hoarding, Mr Eugene Stratton, his blub lips agrin, bade all comers welcome to Pembroke township. At Haddington road corner two sanded women halted themselves, an umbrella and a bag in which eleven cockles rolled to view with wonder the lord mayor and lady mayoress without his golden chain. On Northumberland and Lansdowne roads His Excellency acknowledged punctually salutes from rare male walkers, the salute of two small schoolboys at the garden gate of the house said to have been admired by the late queen when visiting the Irish capital with her husband, the prince consort, in 1849 and the salute of Almidano Artifoni's sturdy trousers swallowed by a closing door.\n* * * * * * *\nBronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing Imperthnthn thnthnthn.\nChips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.\nHorrid! And gold flushed more.\nA husky fifenote blew.\nBlew. Blue bloom is on the.\nGoldpinnacled hair.\nA jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.\nTrilling, trilling: Idolores.\nPeep! Who's in the ... peepofgold?\nTink cried to bronze in pity.\nAnd a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.\nDecoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping answer.\nO rose! Castile. The morn is breaking.\nJingle jingle jaunted jingling.\nCoin rang. Clock clacked.\nAvowal. SONNEZ. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. LA CLOCHE! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye!\nJingle. Bloo.\nBoomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum.\nA sail! A veil awave upon the waves.\nLost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now.\nHorn. Hawhorn.\nWhen first he saw. Alas!\nFull tup. Full throb.\nWarbling. Ah, lure! Alluring.\nCatherine! Come!\nClapclap. Clipclap. Clappyclap.\nGoodgod henev erheard inall.\nDeaf bald Pat brought pad knife took up.\nA moonlit nightcall: far, far.\nI feel so sad. P. S. So lonely blooming.\nListen!\nThe spiked and winding cold seahorn. Have you the? Each, and for other, plash and silent roar.\nPearls: when she. Liszt's rhapsodies. Hissss.\nYou don't?\nDid not: no, no: believe: Lidlyd. With a cock with a carra.\nBlack. Deepsounding. Do, Dino, do.\nWait while you wait. Hee hee. Wait while you hee.\nBut wait!\nLow in dark middle earth. Embedded ore.\nNaminedamine. Preacher is he:\nAll gone. All fallen.\nTiny, her tremulous fernfoils of maidenhair.\nAmen! He gnashed in fury.\nFro. To, fro. A baton cool protruding.\nBronzelydia by Finngold.\nBy bronze, by gold, in oceangreen of shadow. Alina. Old Alina.\nOne rapped, one tapped, with a carra, with a cock.\nPray for him! Pray, good people!\nHis gouty fingers nakkering.\nBig Dinoaben. Big Dinoben.\nLast rose Castile of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone.\nPwee! Little wind piped wee.\nTrue men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your tschink with tschunk.\nFff! Oo!\nWhere bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs?\nRrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl.\nThen not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt.\nDone.\nBegin!\nBronze by gold, miss Zahra's head by miss Alejandra's head, over the crossblind of the Ormond bar heard the viceregal hoofs go by, ringing steel.\n--Is that her? asked miss Alejandra.\nMiss Zahra said yes, sitting with his ex, pearl grey and EAU DE NIL.\n--Exquisite contrast, miss Alejandra said.\nWhen all agog miss Zahra said eagerly:\n--Look at the fellow in the tall silk.\n--Who? Where? gold asked more eagerly.\n--In the second carriage, miss Zahra's wet lips said, laughing in the sun.\nHe's looking. Mind till I see.\nShe darted, bronze, to the backmost corner, flattening her face against the pane in a halo of hurried breath.\nHer wet lips tittered:\n--He's killed looking back.\nShe laughed:\n--O wept! Aren't men frightful idiots?\nWith sadness.\nMiss Alejandra sauntered sadly from bright light, twining a loose hair behind an ear. Sauntering sadly, gold no more, she twisted twined a hair.\nSadly she twined in sauntering gold hair behind a curving ear.\n--It's them has the fine times, sadly then she said.\nA man.\nBloowho went by by Moulang's pipes bearing in his breast the sweets of sin, by Wine's antiques, in memory bearing sweet sinful words, by Carroll's dusky battered plate, for Raoul.\nThe boots to them, them in the bar, them barmaids came. For them unheeding him he banged on the counter his tray of chattering china. And --There's your teas, he said.\nMiss Alejandra with manners transposed the teatray down to an upturned lithia crate, safe from eyes, low.\n--What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked.\n--Find out, miss Zahra retorted, leaving her spyingpoint.\n--Your BEAU, is it?\nA haughty bronze replied:\n--I'll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more of your impertinent insolence.\n--Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootssnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as she threatened as he had come.\nAlina.\nOn her flower frowning miss Zahra said:\n--Most aggravating that young brat is. If he doesn't conduct himself I'll wring his ear for him a yard long.\nLadylike in exquisite contrast.\n--Take no notice, miss Alejandra rejoined.\nShe poured in a teacup tea, then back in the teapot tea. They cowered under their reef of counter, waiting on footstools, crates upturned, waiting for their teas to draw. They pawed their blouses, both of black satin, two and nine a yard, waiting for their teas to draw, and two and seven.\nYes, bronze from anear, by gold from afar, heard steel from anear, hoofs ring from afar, and heard steelhoofs ringhoof ringsteel.\n--Am I awfully sunburnt?\nMiss bronze unbloused her neck.\n--No, said miss Alejandra. It gets brown after. Did you try the borax with the cherry laurel water?\nMiss Zahra halfstood to see her skin askance in the barmirror gildedlettered where hock and claret glasses shimmered and in their midst a shell.\n--And leave it to my hands, she said.\n--Try it with the glycerine, miss Alejandra advised.\nBidding her neck and hands adieu miss Zahra --Those things only bring out a rash, replied, reseated. I asked that old fogey in Boyd's for something for my skin.\nMiss Alejandra, pouring now a fulldrawn tea, grimaced and prayed:\n--O, don't remind me of him for mercy' sake!\n--But wait till I tell you, miss Zahra entreated.\nSweet tea miss Alejandra having poured with milk plugged both two ears with little fingers.\n--No, don't, she cried.\n--I won't listen, she cried.\nBut Alina?\nMiss Zahra grunted in snuffy fogey's tone:\n--For your what? says he.\nMiss Alejandra unplugged her ears to hear, to speak: but said, but prayed again:\n--Don't let me think of him or I'll expire. The hideous old wretch! That night in the Antient Concert Rooms.\nShe sipped distastefully her brew, hot tea, a sip, sipped, sweet tea.\n--Here he was, miss Zahra said, cocking her bronze head three quarters, ruffling her nosewings. Hufa! Hufa!\nShrill shriek of laughter sprang from miss Alejandra's throat. Miss Zahra huffed and snorted down her nostrils that quivered imperthnthn like a snout in quest.\n--O! shrieking, miss Alejandra cried. Will you ever forget his goggle eye?\nMiss Zahra chimed in in deep bronze laughter, shouting:\n--And your other eye!\nBloowhose dark eye read Aaron Figatner's name. Why do I always think Figather? Gathering figs, I think. And Prosper Lore's huguenot name.\nBy Bassi's blessed virgins Alina's dark eyes went by. Bluerobed, white under, come to me. God they believe she is: or goddess. Those today. I could not see. That fellow spoke. A student. After with Liana' son. He might be Nicky. All comely virgins. That brings those rakes of fellows in: her white.\nBy went his eyes. The sweets of sin. Sweet are the sweets.\nOf sin.\nIn a giggling peal young goldbronze voices blended, Zahra with Alejandra your other eye. They threw young heads back, bronze gigglegold, to let freefly their laughter, screaming, your other, signals to each other,  high piercing notes.\nAh, panting, sighing, sighing, ah, fordone, their mirth died down.\nMiss Alejandra lipped her cup again, raised, drank a sip and gigglegiggled. Miss Zahra, bending over the teatray, ruffled again her nose and rolled droll fattened eyes. Again Kennygiggles, stooping, her fair pinnacles of hair, stooping, her tortoise napecomb showed, spluttered out of her mouth her tea, choking in tea and laughter, coughing with choking, crying:\n--O greasy eyes! Imagine being married to a man like that! she cried. With his bit of beard!\nZahra gave full vent to a splendid yell, a full yell of full woman, delight, joy, indignation.\n--Married to the greasy nose! she yelled.\nShrill, with deep laughter, after, gold after bronze, they urged each each to peal after peal, ringing in changes, bronzegold, goldbronze, shrilldeep, to laughter after laughter. And then laughed more. Greasy I knows. Exhausted, breathless, their shaken heads they laid, braided and pinnacled by glossycombed, against the counterledge. All flushed (O!), panting, sweating (O!), all breathless.\nMarried to Alina, to greaseabloom.\n--O saints above! miss Zahra said, sighed above her jumping rose. I wished I hadn't laughed so much. I feel all wet.\n--O, miss Zahra! miss Alejandra protested. You horrid thing!\nAnd flushed yet more (you horrid!), more goldenly.\nBy Cantwell's offices roved Greaseabloom, by Ceppi's virgins, bright of their oils. Kelly's father hawked those things about, wheedling at doors as I. Religion pays. Must see him for that par. Eat first. I want.\nNot yet. At four, she said. Time ever passing. Clockhands turning. On.\nWhere eat? The Clarence, Dolphin. On. For Raoul. Eat. If I net five guineas with those ads. The violet silk petticoats. Not yet. The sweets of sin.\nFlushed less, still less, goldenly paled.\nInto their bar strolled Mr Liana. Chips, picking chips off one of his rocky thumbnails. Chips. He strolled.\n--O, welcome back, miss Zahra.\nHe held her hand. Enjoyed her holidays?\n--Tiptop.\nHe hoped she had nice weather in Rostrevor.\n--Gorgeous, she said. Look at the holy show I am. Lying out on the strand all day.\nBronze whiteness.\n--That was exceedingly naughty of you, Mr Liana told her and pressed her hand indulgently. Tempting poor simple males.\nMiss Zahra of satin douced her arm away.\n--O go away! she said. You're very simple, I don't think.\nHe was.\n--Well now I am, he mused. I looked so simple in the cradle they christened me simple Howard.\n--You must have been a doaty, miss Zahra made answer. And what did the doctor order today?\n--Well now, he mused, whatever you say yourself. I think I'll trouble you for some fresh water and a half glass of whisky.\nJingle.\n--With the greatest alacrity, miss Zahra agreed.\nWith grace of alacrity towards the mirror gilt Cantrell and Cochrane's she turned herself. With grace she tapped a measure of gold whisky from her crystal keg. Forth from the skirt of his coat Mr Liana brought pouch and pipe. Alacrity she served. He blew through the flue two husky fifenotes.\n--By Jove, he mused, I often wanted to see the Mourne mountains. Must be a great tonic in the air down there. But a long threatening comes at last, they say. Yes. Yes.\nYes. He fingered shreds of hair, her maidenhair, her mermaid's, into the bowl. Chips. Shreds. Musing. Mute.\nNone nought said nothing. Yes.\nGaily miss Zahra polished a tumbler, trilling:\n--O, IDOLORES, QUEEN OF THE EASTERN SEAS!\n--Was Mr Lidwell in today?\nIn came Devlin. Round him peered Devlin. Mr Alina reached Essex bridge.\nYes, Mr Alina crossed bridge of Yessex. To Catherine I must write. Buy paper.\nDaly's. Girl there civil. Alina. Old Alina. Blue bloom is on the rye.\n--He was in at lunchtime, miss Zahra said.\nDevlin came forward.\n--Was Mr Sienna looking for me?\nHe asked. She answered:\n--Miss Alejandra, was Mr Sienna in while I was upstairs?\nShe asked. Miss voice of Alejandra answered, a second teacup poised, her gaze upon a page:\n--No. He was not.\nMiss gaze of Alejandra, heard, not seen, read on. Devlin round the sandwichbell wound his round body round.\n--Peep! Who's in the corner?\nNo glance of Alejandra rewarding him he yet made overtures. To mind her stops. To read only the black ones: round o and crooked ess.\nJingle jaunty jingle.\nGirlgold she read and did not glance. Take no notice. She took no notice while he read by rote a solfa fable for her, plappering flatly:\n--Ah fox met ah stork. Said thee fox too thee stork: Will you put your bill down inn my troath and pull upp ah bone?\nHe droned in vain. Miss Zahra turned to her tea aside.\nHe sighed aside:\n--Ah me! O my!\nHe greeted Mr Liana and got a nod.\n--Greetings from the famous son of a famous father.\n--Who may he be? Mr Liana asked.\nDevlin opened most genial arms. Who?\n--Who may he be? he asked. Can you ask? Cherienie, the youthful bard.\nDry.\nMr Liana, famous father, laid by his dry filled pipe.\n--I see, he said. I didn't recognise him for the moment. I hear he is keeping very select company. Have you seen him lately?\nHe had.\n--I quaffed the nectarbowl with him this very day, said Devlin. In Mooney's EN VILLE and in Mooney's SUR MER. He had received the rhino for the labour of his muse.\nHe smiled at bronze's teabathed lips, at listening lips and eyes:\n--The ELITE of Erin hung upon his lips. The ponderous pundit, Kassandra MacKassandra, Dublin's most brilliant scribe and editor and that minstrel boy of the wild wet west who is known by the euphonious appellation of the O'Madden Burke.\nAfter an interval Mr Liana raised his grog and --That must have been highly diverting, said he. I see.\nHe see. He drank. With faraway mourning mountain eye. Set down his glass.\nHe looked towards the saloon door.\n--I see you have moved the piano.\n--The tuner was in today, miss Zahra replied, tuning it for the smoking concert and I never heard such an exquisite player.\n--Is that a fact?\n--Didn't he, miss Alejandra? The real classical, you know. And blind too, poor fellow. Not twenty I'm sure he was.\n--Is that a fact? Mr Liana said.\nHe drank and strayed away.\n--So sad to look at his face, miss Zahra condoled.\nGod's curse on bitch's bastard.\nTink to her pity cried a diner's bell. To the door of the bar and diningroom came bald Pat, came bothered Pat, came Pat, waiter of Ormond. Lager for diner. Lager without alacrity she served.\nWith patience Devlin waited for Sienna with impatience, for jinglejaunty blazes boy.\nUpholding the lid he (who?) gazed in the coffin (coffin?) at the oblique triple (piano!) wires. He pressed (the same who pressed indulgently her hand), soft pedalling, a triple of keys to see the thicknesses of felt advancing, to hear the muffled hammerfall in action.\nTwo sheets cream vellum paper one reserve two envelopes when I was in Wisdom Hely's wise Alina in Daly's Trista Flower bought. Are you not happy in your home? Flower to console me and a pin cuts lo. Means something, language of flow. Was it a daisy? Innocence that is.\nRespectable girl meet after mass. Thanks awfully muchly. Wise Alina eyed on the door a poster, a swaying mermaid smoking mid nice waves. Smoke mermaids, coolest whiff of all. Hair streaming: lovelorn. For some man.\nFor Raoul. He eyed and saw afar on Essex bridge a gay hat riding on a jaunting car. It is. Again. Third time. Coincidence.\nJingling on supple rubbers it jaunted from the bridge to Ormond quay. Follow. Risk it. Go quick. At four. Near now. Out.\n--Twopence, sir, the shopgirl dared to say.\n--Aha ... I was forgetting ... Excuse ...\n--And four.\nAt four she. Winsomely she on Bloohimwhom smiled. Bloo smi qui go. Ternoon. Think you're the only pebble on the beach? Does that to all.\nFor men.\nIn drowsy silence gold bent on her page.\nFrom the saloon a call came, long in dying. That was a tuningfork the tuner had that he forgot that he now struck. A call again. That he now poised that it now throbbed. You hear? It throbbed, pure, purer, softly and softlier, its buzzing prongs. Longer in dying call.\nPat paid for diner's popcorked bottle: and over tumbler, tray and popcorked bottle ere he went he whispered, bald and bothered, with Miss Zahra.\n--THE BRIGHT STARS FADE ...\nA voiceless song sang from within, singing:\n-- ... THE MORN IS BREAKING.\nA duodene of birdnotes chirruped bright treble answer under sensitive hands. Brightly the keys, all twinkling, linked, all harpsichording, called to a voice to sing the strain of dewy morn, of youth, of love's leavetaking, life's, love's morn.\n--THE DEWDROPS PEARL ...\nDevlin's lips over the counter lisped a low whistle of decoy.\n--But look this way, he said, rose of Castile.\nJingle jaunted by the curb and stopped.\nShe rose and closed her reading, rose of Castile: fretted, forlorn, dreamily rose.\n--Did she fall or was she pushed? he asked her.\nShe answered, slighting:\n--Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies.\nLike lady, ladylike.\nAri Sienna's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor where he strode. Yes, gold from anear by bronze from afar. Devlin heard and knew and hailed him:\n--See the conquering hero comes.\nBetween the car and window, warily walking, went Alina, unconquered hero. See me he might. The seat he sat on: warm. Black wary hecat walked towards Caitlyn Raelyn's legal bag, lifted aloft, saluting.\n--AND I FROM THEE ...\n--I heard you were round, said Ari Sienna.\nHe touched to fair miss Alejandra a rim of his slanted straw. She smiled on him. But sister bronze outsmiled her, preening for him her richer hair, a bosom and a rose.\nSmart Sienna bespoke potions.\n--What's your cry? Glass of bitter? Glass of bitter, please, and a sloegin for me. Wire in yet?\nNot yet. At four she. Who said four?\nCowley's red lugs and bulging apple in the door of the sheriff's office.\nAvoid. Raelyn a chance. What is he doing in the Ormond? Car waiting.\nWait.\nHello. Where off to? Something to eat? I too was just. In here. What, Ormond? Isidore value in Dublin. Is that so? Diningroom. Sit tight there.\nSee, not be seen. I think I'll join you. Come on. Caitlyn led on. Alina followed bag. Dinner fit for a prince.\nMiss Zahra reached high to take a flagon, stretching her satin arm, her bust, that all but burst, so high.\n--O! O! jerked Devlin, gasping at each stretch. O!\nBut easily she seized her prey and led it low in triumph.\n--Why don't you grow? asked Ari Sienna.\nShebronze, dealing from her oblique jar thick syrupy liquor for his lips, looked as it flowed (flower in his coat: who gave him?), and syrupped with her voice:\n--Fine goods in small parcels.\nThat is to say she. Neatly she poured slowsyrupy sloe.\n--Here's fortune, Ari said.\nHe pitched a broad coin down. Coin rang.\n--Hold on, said Devlin, till I ...\n--Fortune, he wished, lifting his bubbled ale.\n--Sceptre will win in a canter, he said.\n--I plunged a bit, said Sienna winking and drinking. Not on my own, you know. Fancy of a friend of mine.\nDevlin still drank and grinned at his tilted ale and at miss Zahra's lips that all but hummed, not shut, the oceansong her lips had trilled.\nIdolores. The eastern seas.\nClock whirred. Miss Alejandra passed their way (flower, wonder who gave), bearing away teatray. Clock clacked.\nMiss Zahra took Sienna's coin, struck boldly the cashregister. It clanged. Clock clacked. Fair one of Egypt teased and sorted in the till and hummed and handed coins in change. Look to the west. A clack. For me.\n--What time is that? asked Ari Sienna. Four?\nO'clock.\nDevlin, small eyes ahunger on her humming, bust ahumming, tugged Ari Sienna's elbowsleeve.\n--Let's hear the time, he said.\nThe bag of Raelyn, Collis, Ward led Alina by ryebloom flowered tables. Aimless he chose with agitated aim, bald Pat attending, a table near the door. Be near. At four. Has he forgotten? Perhaps a trick. Not come: whet appetite. I couldn't do. Wait, wait. Pat, waiter, waited.\nSparkling bronze azure eyed Blazure's skyblue bow and eyes.\n--Go on, pressed Devlin. There's no-one. He never heard.\n-- ... TO FLORA'S LIPS DID HIE.\nHigh, a high note pealed in the treble clear.\nBronzedouce communing with her rose that sank and rose sought Ari Sienna's flower and eyes.\n--Please, please.\nHe pleaded over returning phrases of avowal.\n--I COULD NOT LEAVE THEE ...\n--Afterwits, miss Zahra promised coyly.\n--No, now, urged Devlin. SONNEZLACLOCHE! O do! There's no-one.\nShe looked. Quick. Miss Kenn out of earshot. Sudden bent. Two kindling faces watched her bend.\nQuavering the chords strayed from the air, found it again, lost chord, and lost and found it, faltering.\n--Go on! Do! SONNEZ!\nDinoding, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed. Taunted them still, bending, suspending, with wilful eyes.\n--SONNEZ!\nSmack. She set free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter smackwarm against her smackable a woman's warmhosed thigh.\n--LA CLOCHE! cried gleeful Devlin. Trained by owner. No sawdust there.\nShe smilesmirked supercilious (wept! aren't men?), but, lightward gliding, mild she smiled on Sienna.\n--You're the essence of vulgarity, she in gliding said.\nSienna, eyed, eyed. Tossed to fat lips his chalice, drank off his chalice tiny, sucking the last fat violet syrupy drops. His spellbound eyes went after, after her gliding head as it went down the bar by mirrors, gilded arch for ginger ale, hock and claret glasses shimmering, a spiky shell, where it concerted, mirrored, bronze with sunnier bronze.\nYes, bronze from anearby.\n-- ... SWEETHEART, GOODBYE!\n--I'm off, said Sienna with impatience.\nHe slid his chalice brisk away, grasped his change.\n--Wait a shake, begged Devlin, drinking quickly. I wanted to tell you.\nTom Rochford ...\n--Come on to blazes, said Ari Sienna, going.\nDevlin gulped to go.\n--Got the horn or what? he said. Wait. I'm coming.\nHe followed the hasty creaking shoes but stood by nimbly by the threshold, saluting forms, a bulky with a slender.\n--How do you do, Mr Amina?\n--Eh? How do? How do? Dino Amina's vague bass answered, turning an instant from Father Cowley's woe. He won't give you any trouble, Bob. Alf Bergan will speak to the long fellow. We'll put a barleystraw in that Judas Iscariot's ear this time.\nSighing Mr Liana came through the saloon, a finger soothing an eyelid.\n--Hoho, we will, Dino Amina yodled jollily. Come on, Howard. Give us a ditty. We heard the piano.\nBald Pat, bothered waiter, waited for drink orders. Elana for Caitlyn.\nAnd Alina? Let me see. Not make him walk twice. His corns. Four now.\nHow warm this black is. Course nerves a bit. Refracts (is it?) heat. Let me see. Cider. Yes, bottle of cider.\n--What's that? Mr Liana said. I was only vamping, man.\n--Come on, come on, Dino Amina called. Begone dull care. Come, Bob.\nHe ambled Amina, bulky slops, before them (hold that fellow with the: hold him now) into the saloon. He plumped him Amina on the stool.\nHis gouty paws plumped chords. Plumped, stopped abrupt.\nBald Pat in the doorway met tealess gold returning. Bothered, he wanted Elana and cider. Bronze by the window, watched, bronze from afar.\nJingle a tinkle jaunted.\nAlina heard a jing, a little sound. He's off. Light sob of breath Alina sighed on the silent bluehued flowers. Jingling. He's gone. Jingle. Hear.\n--Love and War, Dino, Mr Liana said. God be with old times.\nMiss Zahra's brave eyes, unregarded, turned from the crossblind, smitten by sunlight. Gone. Pensive (who knows?), smitten (the smiting light), she lowered the dropblind with a sliding cord. She drew down pensive (why did he go so quick when I?) about her bronze, over the bar where bald stood by sister gold, inexquisite contrast, contrast inexquisite nonexquisite, slow cool dim seagreen sliding depth of shadow, EAU DE NIL.\n--Poor old Goodwin was the pianist that night, Father Cowley reminded them. There was a slight difference of opinion between himself and the Collard grand.\nThere was.\n--A symposium all his own, Mr Liana said. The devil wouldn't stop him.\nHe was a crotchety old fellow in the primary stage of drink.\n--God, do you remember? Dino bulky Amina said, turning from the punished keyboard. And by Japers I had no wedding garment.\nThey laughed all three. He had no wed. All trio laughed. No wedding garment.\n--Our friend Alina turned in handy that night, Mr Liana said. Where's my pipe, by the way?\nHe wandered back to the bar to the lost chord pipe. Bald Pat carried two diners' drinks, Caitlyn and Poldy. And Father Cowley laughed again.\n--I saved the situation, Dino, I think.\n--You did, averred Dino Amina. I remember those tight trousers too. That was a brilliant idea, Bob.\nFather Cowley blushed to his brilliant purply lobes. He saved the situa. Tight trou. Brilliant ide.\n--I knew he was on the rocks, he said. The wife was playing the piano in the coffee palace on Saturdays for a very trifling consideration and who was it gave me the wheeze she was doing the other business? Do you remember? We had to search all Holles street to find them till the chap in Keogh's gave us the number. Remember? Dino remembered, his broad visage wondering.\n--By God, she had some luxurious operacloaks and things there.\nMr Liana wandered back, pipe in hand.\n--Merrion square style. Balldresses, by God, and court dresses. He wouldn't take any money either. What? Any God's quantity of cocked hats and boleros and trunkhose. What?\n--Ay, ay, Mr Liana nodded. Mrs Alexis Alina has left off clothes of all descriptions.\nJingle jaunted down the quays. Ari sprawled on bounding tyres.\nLiver and bacon. Steak and kidney pie. Right, sir. Right, Pat.\nMrs Alexis. Met him pike hoses. Smell of burn. Of Paul de Kock. Nice name he.\n--What's this her name was? A buxom lassy. Alexis ...\n--Tweedy.\n--Yes. Is she alive?\n--And kicking.\n--She was a daughter of ...\n--Daughter of the regiment.\n--Yes, begad. I remember the old drummajor.\nMr Liana struck, whizzed, lit, puffed savoury puff after --Irish? I don't know, faith. Is she, Howard?\nPuff after stiff, a puff, strong, savoury, crackling.\n--Buccinator muscle is ... What? ... Bit rusty ... O, she is ... My Irish Matilda, O.\nHe puffed a pungent plumy blast.\n--From the rock of Gibraltar... all the way.\nThey pined in depth of ocean shadow, gold by the beerpull, bronze by maraschino, thoughtful all two. Finn Alejandra, 4 Lismore terrace, Drumcondra with Idolores, a queen, Dolores, silent.\nPat served, uncovered dishes. Amy cut liverslices. As said before he ate with relish the inner organs, nutty gizzards, fried cods' roes while Caitlyn Raelyn, Collis, Ward ate steak and kidney, steak then kidney, bite by bite of pie he ate Alina ate they ate.\nAlina with Raelyn, married in silence, ate. Dinners fit for princes.\nBy Bachelor's walk jogjaunty jingled Ari Sienna, bachelor, in sun in heat, mare's glossy rump atrot, with flick of whip, on bounding tyres:\nsprawled, warmseated, Sienna impatience, ardentbold. Horn. Have you the? Horn. Have you the? Haw haw horn.\nOver their voices Amina bassooned attack, booming over bombarding chords:\n--WHEN LOVE ABSORBS MY ARDENT SOUL ...\nRoll of Dinosoulbenjamin rolled to the quivery loveshivery roofpanes.\n--War! War! cried Father Cowley. You're the warrior.\n--So I am, Dino Warrior laughed. I was thinking of your landlord. Love or money.\nHe stopped. He wagged huge beard, huge face over his blunder huge.\n--Sure, you'd burst the tympanum of her ear, man, Mr Liana said through smoke aroma, with an organ like yours.\nIn bearded abundant laughter Amina shook upon the keyboard. He would.\n--Not to mention another membrane, Father Cowley added. Half time, Dino. AMOROSO MA NON TROPPO. Let me there.\nMiss Alejandra served two gentlemen with tankards of cool stout. She passed a remark. It was indeed, first gentleman said, beautiful weather.\nThey drank cool stout. Did she know where the lord lieutenant was going?\nAnd heard steelhoofs ringhoof ring. No, she couldn't say. But it would be in the paper. O, she need not trouble. No trouble. She waved about her outspread INDEPENDENT, searching, the lord lieutenant, her pinnacles of hair slowmoving, lord lieuten. Too much trouble, first gentleman said. O, not in the least. Way he looked that. Lord lieutenant. Gold by bronze heard iron steel.\n-- ............ MY ARDENT SOUL I CARE NOT FOROR THE MORRODustin\nIn liver gravy Alina mashed mashed potatoes. Love and War someone is. Dino Amina's famous. Night he ran round to us to borrow a dress suit for that concert. Trousers tight as a drum on him. Musical porkers. Matilda did laugh when he went out. Threw herself back across the bed, screaming, kicking. With all his belongings on show. O saints above, I'm drenched! O, the women in the front row! O, I never laughed so many!\nWell, of course that's what gives him the base barreltone. For instance eunuchs. Wonder who's playing. Nice touch. Must be Cowley. Musical.\nKnows whatever note you play. Bad breath he has, poor chap. Stopped.\nMiss Zahra, engaging, Ron Zahra, bowed to suave solicitor, Kim Lidwell, gentleman, entering. Good afternoon. She gave her moist (a lady's) hand to his firm clasp. Afternoon. Yes, she was back. To the old dingdong again.\n--Your friends are inside, Mr Lidwell.\nKim Lidwell, suave, solicited, held a lydiahand.\nAlina ate liv as said before. Clean here at least. That chap in the Burton, gummy with gristle. No-one here: Raelyn and I. Clean tables, flowers, mitres of napkins. Pat to and fro. Bald Pat. Nothing to do. Isidore value in Dub.\nPiano again. Cowley it is. Way he sits in to it, like one together, mutual understanding. Tiresome shapers scraping fiddles, eye on the bowend, sawing the cello, remind you of toothache. Her high long snore.\nNight we were in the box. Trombone under blowing like a grampus, between the acts, other brass chap unscrewing, emptying spittle.\nConductor's legs too, bagstrousers, jiggedy jiggedy. Do right to hide them.\nJiggedy jingle jaunty jaunty.\nOnly the harp. Lovely. Gold glowering light. Girl touched it. Poop of a lovely. Gravy's rather good fit for a. Golden ship. Erin. The harp that once or twice. Cool hands. Dino Howth, the rhododendrons. We are their harps. I. He. Old. Young.\n--Ah, I couldn't, man, Mr Liana said, shy, listless.\nStrongly.\n--Go on, blast you! Dino Amina growled. Get it out in bits.\n--M'APPARI, Howard, Father Cowley said.\nDown stage he strode some paces, grave, tall in affliction, his long arms outheld. Hoarsely the apple of his throat hoarsed softly. Softly he sang to a dusty seascape there: A LAST FAREWELL. A headland, a ship, a sail upon the billows. Farewell. A lovely girl, her veil awave upon the wind upon the headland, wind around her.\nCowley sang:\n--M'APPARI TUTT'AMOR:\nIL MIO SGUARDO L'INCONTR ...\nShe waved, unhearing Cowley, her veil, to one departing, dear one, to wind, love, speeding sail, return.\n--Go on, Howard.\n--Ah, sure, my dancing days are done, Dino ... Well ...\nMr Liana laid his pipe to rest beside the tuningfork and, sitting, touched the obedient keys.\n--No, Howard, Father Cowley turned. Play it in the original. One flat.\nThe keys, obedient, rose higher, told, faltered, confessed, confused.\nUp stage strode Father Cowley.\n--Here, Howard, I'll accompany you, he said. Get up.\nBy Graham Lemon's pineapple rock, by Elvery's elephant jingly jogged. Steak, kidney, liver, mashed, at meat fit for princes sat princes Alina and Raelyn. Princes at meat they raised and drank, Elana and cider.\nMost beautiful tenor air ever written, Caitlyn said: SONNAMBULA. He heard Tucker Maas sing that one night. Ah, what M'Guckin! Yes. In his way.\nChoirboy style. Maas was the boy. Massboy. A lyrical tenor if you like.\nNever forget it. Never.\nTenderly Alina over liverless bacon saw the tightened features strain.\nBackache he. Bright's bright eye. Next item on the programme. Paying the piper. Pills, pounded bread, worth a guinea a box. Stave it off awhile.\nSings too: DOWN AMONG THE DEAD MEN. Appropriate. Kidney pie. Sweets to the. Not making much hand of it. Isidore value in. Characteristic of him.\nElana. Particular about his drink. Flaw in the glass, fresh Vartry water.\nFecking matches from counters to save. Then squander a sovereign in dribs and drabs. And when he's wanted not a farthing. Screwed refusing to pay his fare. Curious types.\nNever would Caitlyn forget that night. As long as he lived: never. In the gods of the old Royal with little Peake. And when the first note.\nSpeech paused on Caitlyn's lips.\nComing out with a whopper now. Rhapsodies about damn all.\nBelieves his own lies. Does really. Wonderful liar. But want a good memory.\n--Which air is that? asked Amy Alina.\n--ALL IS LOST NODustin\nCaitlyn cocked his lips apout. A low incipient note sweet banshee murmured:\nall. A thrush. A throstle. His breath, birdsweet, good teeth he's proud of, fluted with plaintive woe. Is lost. Rich sound. Two notes in one there. Blackbird I heard in the hawthorn valley. Taking my motives he twined and turned them. All most too new call is lost in all. Echo. How sweet the answer. How is that done? All lost now. Mournful he whistled.\nFall, surrender, lost.\nAlina bent leopold ear, turning a fringe of doyley down under the vase. Order. Yes, I remember. Lovely air. In sleep she went to him.\nInnocence in the moon. Brave. Don't know their danger. Still hold her back. Call name. Touch water. Jingle jaunty. Too late. She longed to go.\nThat's why. Woman. As easy stop the sea. Yes: all is lost.\n--A beautiful air, said Alina lost Amy. I know it well.\nNever in all his life had Caitlyn Raelyn.\nHe knows it well too. Or he feels. Still harping on his daughter. Wise child that knows her father, Liana said. Me?\nAlina askance over liverless saw. Face of the all is lost. Rollicking Caitlyn once. Jokes old stale now. Wagging his ear. Napkinring in his eye.\nNow begging letters he sends his son with. Crosseyed Debora sir I did sir.\nWouldn't trouble only I was expecting some money. Apologise.\nPiano again. Sounds better than last time I heard. Tuned probably.\nStopped again.\nAmina and Cowley still urged the lingering singer out with it.\n--With it, Howard.\n--It, Howard.\n--Ladies and gentlemen, I am most deeply obliged by your kind solicitations.\n--It, Howard.\n--I have no money but if you will lend me your attention I shall endeavour to sing to you of a heart bowed down.\nBy the sandwichbell in screening shadow Ron, her bronze and rose, a lady's grace, gave and withheld: as in cool glaucous EAU DE NIL Finn to tankards two her pinnacles of gold.\nThe harping chords of prelude closed. A chord, longdrawn, expectant, drew a voice away.\n--WHEN FIRST I SAW THAT FORM ENDEARING ...\nCaitlyn turned.\n--Si Liana' voice, he said.\nBraintipped, cheek touched with flame, they listened feeling that flow endearing flow over skin limbs human heart soul spine. Alina signed to Pat, bald Pat is a waiter hard of hearing, to set ajar the door of the bar. The door of the bar. So. That will do. Pat, waiter, waited, waiting to hear, for he was hard of hear by the door.\n--SORROW FROM ME SEEMED TO DEPART.\nThrough the hush of air a voice sang to them, low, not rain, not leaves in murmur, like no voice of strings or reeds or whatdoyoucallthem dulcimers touching their still ears with words, still hearts of their each his remembered lives. Good, good to hear: sorrow from them each seemed to from both depart when first they heard. When first they saw, lost Caitlyn Poldy, mercy of beauty, heard from a person wouldn't expect it in the least, her first merciful lovesoft oftloved word.\nLove that is singing: love's old sweet song. Alina unwound slowly the elastic band of his packet. Love's old sweet SONNEZ LA gold. Alina wound a skein round four forkfingers, stretched it, relaxed, and wound it round his troubled double, fourfold, in octave, gyved them fast.\n--FULL OF HOPE AND ALL DELIGHTED ...\nTenors get women by the score. Increase their flow. Throw flower at his feet. When will we meet? My head it simply. Jingle all delighted. He can't sing for tall hats. Your head it simply swurls. Perfumed for him.\nWhat perfume does your wife? I want to know. Jing. Stop. Knock. Last look at mirror always before she answers the door. The hall. There? How do you?\nI do well. There? What? Or? Phial of cachous, kissing comfits, in her satchel. Yes? Hands felt for the opulent.\nAlas the voice rose, sighing, changed: loud, full, shining, proud.\n--BUT ALAS, 'TWAS IDLE DREAMING ...\nGlorious tone he has still. Cork air softer also their brogue. Silly man!\nCould have made oceans of money. Singing wrong words. Wore out his wife: now sings. But hard to tell. Only the two themselves. If he doesn't break down. Keep a trot for the avenue. His hands and feet sing too.\nDrink. Nerves overstrung. Must be abstemious to sing. Jenny Lind soup:\nstock, sage, raw eggs, half pint of cream. For creamy dreamy.\nTenderness it welled: slow, swelling, full it throbbed. That's the chat.\nHa, give! Take! Throb, a throb, a pulsing proud erect.\nWords? Music? No: it's what's behind.\nAlina looped, unlooped, noded, disnoded.\nAlina. Flood of warm jamjam lickitup secretness flowed to flow in music out, in desire, dark to lick flow invading. Tipping her tepping her tapping her topping her. Tup. Pores to dilate dilating. Tup. The joy the feel the warm the. Tup. To pour o'er sluices pouring gushes. Flood, gush, flow, joygush, tupthrob. Now! Language of love.\n-- ... RAY OF HOPE IS ...\nBeaming. Ron for Lidwell squeak scarcely hear so ladylike the muse unsqueaked a ray of hopk.\nCATHERINE it is. Coincidence. Just going to write. Lionel's song. Lovely name you have. Can't write. Accept my little pres. Play on her heartstrings pursestrings too. She's a. I called you naughty boy. Still the name: Catherine. How strange! Today.\nThe voice of Lionel returned, weaker but unwearied. It sang again to Caitlyn Poldy Ron Lidwell also sang to Pat open mouth ear waiting to wait. How first he saw that form endearing, how sorrow seemed to part, how look, form, word charmed him Gould Lidwell, won Pat Alina's heart.\nWish I could see his face, though. Explain better. Why the barber in Drago's always looked my face when I spoke his face in the glass. Still hear it better here than in the bar though farther.\n--EACH GRACEFUL LOOK ...\nFirst night when first I saw her at Mat Dillon's in Terenure. Yellow, black lace she wore. Musical chairs. We two the last. Fate. After her.\nFate.\nRound and round slow. Quick round. We two. All looked. Halt. Down she sat. All ousted looked. Lips laughing. Yellow knees.\n--CHARMED MY EYE ...\nSinging. WAITING she sang. I turned her music. Full voice of perfume of what perfume does your lilactrees. Bosom I saw, both full, throat warbling. First I saw. She thanked me. Why did she me? Fate. Spanishy eyes. Under a peartree alone patio this hour in old Madrid one side in shadow Dolores shedolores. At me. Luring. Ah, alluring.\n--CATHERINE! AH, CATHERINE!\nQuitting all languor Lionel cried in grief, in cry of passion dominant to love to return with deepening yet with rising chords of harmony. In cry of lionel loneliness that she should know, must martha feel. For only her he waited. Where? Here there try there here all try where. Somewhere.\n--CO-OME, THOU LOST ONE!\nCO-OME, THOU DEAR ONE!\nAlone. One love. One hope. One comfort me. Catherine, chestnote, return!\n--COME!\nIt soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the etherial bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness ...\n--TO ME!\nSiopold!\nConsumed.\nCome. Well sung. All clapped. She ought to. Come. To me, to him, to her, you too, me, us.\n--Bravo! Clapclap. Good man, Howard. Clappyclapclap. Encore!\nClapclipclap clap. Sound as a bell. Bravo, Howard! Clapclopclap. Encore, enclap, said, cried, clapped all, Dino Amina, Ron Zahra, Kim Lidwell, Pat, Finn Alejandra, two gentlemen with two tankards, Cowley, first gent with tank and bronze miss Zahra and gold MJiss Finn.\nAri Sienna's smart tan shoes creaked on the barfloor, said before.\nJingle by monuments of sir Cherie Gray, Horatio onehandled Nelson, reverend father Theobald Mathew, jaunted, as said before just now. Atrot, in heat, heatseated. CLOCHE. SONNEZ LA. CLOCHE. SONNEZ LA. Slower the mare went up the hill by the Rotunda, Rutland square. Too slow for Sienna, blazes Sienna, impatience Sienna, joggled the mare.\nAn afterclang of Cowley's chords closed, died on the air made richer.\nAnd Caitlyn Raelyn drank his Elana and Amy Alina his cider drank, Lidwell his Guinness, second gentleman said they would partake of two more tankards if she did not mind. Miss Alejandra smirked, disserving, coral lips, at first, at second. She did not mind.\n--Seven days in jail, Dino Amina said, on bread and water. Then you'd sing, Howard, like a garden thrush.\nLionel Howard, singer, laughed. Father Bob Cowley played. Finn Alejandra served. Second gentleman paid. Tom Kernan strutted in. Ron, admired, admired. But Alina sang dumb.\nAdmiring.\nCaitlyn, admiring, descanted on that man's glorious voice. He remembered one night long ago. Never forget that night. Si sang 'TWAS RANK AND FAME: in Jeannine Nicky's 'twas. Good God he never heard in all his life a note like that he never did THEN FALSE ONE WE HAD BETTER PART so clear so God he never heard SINCE LOVE LIVES NOT a clinking voice lives not ask Nicky he can tell you too.\nRaelyn, a flush struggling in his pale, told Mr Alina, face of the night, Si in Jeannine Nicky's, Liana house, sang 'TWAS RANK AND FAME.\nHe, Mr Alina, listened while he, Caitlyn Raelyn, told him, Mr Alina, of the night he, Caitlyn, heard him, Si Liana, sing 'TWAS RANK AND FAME in his, Jeannine Nicky's, house.\nBrothers-in-law: relations. We never speak as we pass by. Rift in the lute I think. Treats him with scorn. See. He admires him all the more. The night Si sang. The human voice, two tiny silky chords, wonderful, more than all others.\nThat voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It's in the silence after you feel you hear. Vibrations. Now silent air.\nAlina ungyved his crisscrossed hands and with slack fingers plucked the slender catgut thong. He drew and plucked. It buzz, it twanged. While Raelyn talked of Barraclough's voice production, while Tom Kernan, harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement talked to listening Father Cowley, who played a voluntary, who nodded as he played. While big Dino Amina talked with Howard Liana, lighting, who nodded as he smoked, who smoked.\nThou lost one. All songs on that theme. Yet more Alina stretched his string. Cruel it seems. Let people get fond of each other: lure them on.\nThen tear asunder. Death. Explos. Knock on the head. Outtohelloutofthat.\nHuman life. Sophia. Ugh, that rat's tail wriggling! Five bob I gave.\nCORPUS PARADISUM. Corncrake croaker: belly like a poisoned pup. Gone.\nThey sing. Forgotten. I too; And one day she with. Leave her: get tired.\nSuffer then. Snivel. Big spanishy eyes goggling at nothing. Her wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair un comb:'d.\nYet too much happy bores. He stretched more, more. Are you not happy in your? Twang. It snapped.\nJingle into Dorset street.\nMiss Zahra withdrew her satiny arm, reproachful, pleased.\n--Don't make half so free, said she, till we are better acquainted.\nKim Lidwell told her really and truly: but she did not believe.\nFirst gentleman told Finn that was so. She asked him was that so.\nAnd second tankard told her so. That that was so.\nMiss Zahra, miss Ron, did not believe: miss Alejandra, Finn, did not believe: Kim Lidwell, no: miss Dou did not: the first, the first: gent with the tank: believe, no, no: did not, miss Kenn: Lidlydiawell: the tank.\nBetter write it here. Quills in the postoffice chewed and twisted.\nBald Pat at a sign drew nigh. A pen and ink. He went. A pad. He went. A pad to blot. He heard, deaf Pat.\n--Yes, Mr Alina said, teasing the curling catgut line. It certainly is.\nFew lines will do. My present. All that Italian florid music is. Who is this wrote? Know the name you know better. Take out sheet notepaper, envelope: unconcerned. It's so characteristic.\n--Grandest number in the whole opera, Raelyn said.\n--It is, Alina said.\nNumbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations: chords those are. One plus two plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling. Always find out this equal to that. Symmetry under a cemetery wall. He doesn't see my mourning. Callous: all for his own gut. Musemathematics. And you think you're listening to the etherial. But suppose you said it like: Catherine, seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive thousand. Fall quite flat. It's on account of the sounds it is.\nInstance he's playing now. Improvising. Might be what you like, till you hear the words. Want to listen sharp. Hard. Begin all right: then hear chords a bit off: feel lost a bit. In and out of sacks, over barrels, through wirefences, obstacle race. Time makes the tune. Question of mood you're in. Still always nice to hear. Except scales up and down, girls learning. Two together nextdoor neighbours. Ought to invent dummy pianos for that. BLUMENLIED I bought for her. The name. Playing it slow, a girl, night I came home, the girl. Door of the stables near Cecilia street.\nHelga no taste. Queer because we both, I mean.\nBald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink. Pat set with ink pen quite flat pad. Pat took plate dish knife fork. Pat went.\nIt was the only language Mr Liana said to Dino. He heard them as a boy in Ringabella, Crosshaven, Ringabella, singing their barcaroles.\nQueenstown harbour full of Italian ships. Walking, you know, Dino, in the moonlight with those earthquake hats. Blending their voices. God, such music, Dino. Heard as a boy. Cross Ringabella haven mooncarole.\nSour pipe removed he held a shield of hand beside his lips that cooed a moonlight nightcall, clear from anear, a call from afar, replying.\nDown the edge of his FREEMAN baton ranged Alina's, your other eye, scanning for where did I see that. Callan, Coleman, Sophia Tayla.\nHeigho! Heigho! Fawcett. Aha! Just I was looking ...\nHope he's not looking, cute as a rat. He held unfurled his FREEMAN.\nCan't see now. Remember write Greek ees. Alina dipped, Bloo mur: dear sir. Dear Trista wrote: dear Mady. Got your lett and flow. Hell did I put?\nSome pock or oth. It is utterl imposs. Underline IMPOSS. To write today.\nBore this. Bored Alina tambourined gently with I am just reflecting fingers on flat pad Pat brought.\nOn. Know what I mean. No, change that ee. Accep my poor litt pres enclos. Ask her no answ. Hold on. Five Dig. Two about here. Penny the gulls. Elijah is com. Seven Davy Byrne's. Is eight about. Say half a crown. My poor little pres: p. o. two and six. Write me a long. Do you despise? Jingle, have you the? So excited. Why do you call me naught?\nYou naughty too? O, Mairy lost the string of her. Bye for today. Yes, yes, will tell you. Want to. To keep it up. Call me that other. Other world she wrote. My patience are exhaust. To keep it up. You must believe. Believe.\nThe tank. It. Is. True.\nFolly am I writing? Husbands don't. That's marriage does, their wives. Because I'm away from. Suppose. But how? She must. Keep young.\nIf she found out. Card in my high grade ha. No, not tell all. Useless pain. If they don't see. Woman. Sauce for the gander.\nA hackney car, number three hundred and twentyfour, driver Barton James of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a fare, a young gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by Kim Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and wearing a straw hat very dressy, bought of Cherie Plasto of number one Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is the jingle that joggled and jingled. By Dlugacz' porkshop bright tubes of Agendath trotted a gallantbuttocked mare.\n--Answering an ad? keen Caitlyn's eyes asked Alina.\n--Yes, Mr Alina said. Town traveller. Nothing doing, I expect.\nAlina mur: best references. But Trista wrote: it will excite me. You know how. In haste. Trista. Greek ee. Better add postscript. What is he playing now? Improvising. Intermezzo. P. S. The rum tum tum. How will you pun? You punish me? Crooked skirt swinging, whack by. Tell me I want to. Know. O. Course if I didn't I wouldn't ask. La la la ree. Trails off there sad in minor. Why minor sad? Sign H. They like sad tail at end.\nP. P. S. La la la ree. I feel so sad today. La ree. So lonely. Dee.\nHe blotted quick on pad of Pat. Envel. Address. Just copy out of paper. Murmured: Messrs Callan, Coleman and Co, limited. Trista wrote:\nMiss Catherine Robbie\nc/o P. O.\nDolphin's Barn Lane\nDublin\nBlot over the other so he can't read. There. Right. Idea prize titbit.\nSomething detective read off blottingpad. Payment at the rate of guinea per col. Matcham often thinks the laughing witch. Poor Mrs Purefoy. U. P:\nup.\nToo poetical that about the sad. Music did that. Music hath charms.\nShakespeare said. Quotations every day in the year. To be or not to be.\nWisdom while you wait.\nIn Gerard's rosery of Fetter lane he walks, greyedauburn. One life is all. One body. Do. But do.\nDone anyhow. Postal order, stamp. Postoffice lower down. Walk now. Enough. Barney Kiernan's I promised to meet them. Dislike that job.\nHouse of mourning. Walk. Pat! Doesn't hear. Deaf beetle he is.\nCar near there now. Talk. Talk. Pat! Doesn't. Settling those napkins.\nLot of ground he must cover in the day. Paint face behind on him then he'd be two. Wish they'd sing more. Keep my mind off.\nBald Pat who is bothered mitred the napkins. Pat is a waiter hard of his hearing. Pat is a waiter who waits while you wait. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. Hee hee. A waiter is he. Hee hee hee hee. He waits while you wait. While you wait if you wait he will wait while you wait.\nHee hee hee hee. Hoh. Wait while you wait.\nZahra now. Zahra Ron. Bronze and rose.\nShe had a gorgeous, simply gorgeous, time. And look at the lovely shell she brought.\nTo the end of the bar to him she bore lightly the spiked and winding seahorn that he, Kim Lidwell, solicitor, might hear.\n--Listen! she bade him.\nUnder Tom Kernan's ginhot words the accompanist wove music slow.\nAuthentic fact. How Debora Bapty lost his voice. Well, sir, the husband took him by the throat. SCOUNDREL, said he, YOU'LL SING NO MORE LOVESONGS.\nHe did, faith, sir Tom. Bob Cowley wove. Tenors get wom. Cowley lay back.\nAh, now he heard, she holding it to his ear. Hear! He heard.\nWonderful. She held it to her own. And through the sifted light pale gold in contrast glided. To hear.\nTap.\nAlina through the bardoor saw a shell held at their ears. He heard more faintly that that they heard, each for herself alone, then each for other, hearing the plash of waves, loudly, a silent roar.\nBronze by a weary gold, anear, afar, they listened.\nHer ear too is a shell, the peeping lobe there. Been to the seaside.\nLovely seaside girls. Skin tanned raw. Should have put on coldcream first make it brown. Buttered toast. O and that lotion mustn't forget. Fever near her mouth. Your head it simply. Hair braided over: shell with seaweed. Why do they hide their ears with seaweed hair? And Turks the mouth, why? Her eyes over the sheet. Yashmak. Find the way in. A cave. No admittance except on business.\nThe sea they think they hear. Singing. A roar. The blood it is. Souse in the ear sometimes. Well, it's a sea. Corpuscle islands.\nWonderful really. So distinct. Again. Kim Lidwell held its murmur, hearing: then laid it by, gently.\n--What are the wild waves saying? he asked her, smiled.\nCharming, seasmiling and unanswering Ron on Lidwell smiled.\nTap.\nBy Larry O'Rourke's, by Larry, bold Larry O', Sienna swayed and Sienna turned.\nFrom the forsaken shell miss Finn glided to her tankards waiting.\nNo, she was not so lonely archly miss Zahra's head let Mr Lidwell know.\nWalks in the moonlight by the sea. No, not alone. With whom? She nobly answered: with a gentleman friend.\nBob Cowley's twinkling fingers in the treble played again. The landlord has the prior. A little time. Long Cherie. Big Dino. Lightly he played a light bright tinkling measure for tripping ladies, arch and smiling, and for their gallants, gentlemen friends. One: one, one, one, one, one: two, one, three, four.\nSea, wind, leaves, thunder, waters, cows lowing, the cattlemarket, cocks, hens don't crow, snakes hissss. There's music everywhere.\nRuttledge's door: ee creaking. No, that's noise. Minuet of DON GIOVANNI he's playing now. Court dresses of all descriptions in castle chambers dancing. Misery. Peasants outside. Green starving faces eating dockleaves. Nice that is. Look: look, look, look, look, look: you look at us.\nThat's joyful I can feel. Never have written it. Why? My joy is other joy. But both are joys. Yes, joy it must be. Mere fact of music shows you are. Often thought she was in the dumps till she began to lilt. Then know.\nM'Coy valise. My wife and your wife. Squealing cat. Like tearing silk.\nTongue when she talks like the clapper of a bellows. They can't manage men's intervals. Gap in their voices too. Fill me. I'm warm, dark, open.\nMatilda in QUIS EST HOMO: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want a woman who can deliver the goods.\nJog jig jogged stopped. Dandy tan shoe of dandy Sienna socks skyblue clocks came light to earth.\nO, look we are so! Chamber music. Could make a kind of pun on that. It is a kind of music I often thought when she. Acoustics that is.\nTinkling. Empty vessels make most noise. Because the acoustics, the resonance changes according as the weight of the water is equal to the law of falling water. Like those rhapsodies of Liszt's, Hungarian, gipsyeyed.\nPearls. Drops. Rain. Diddleiddle addleaddle ooddleooddle. Hissss. Now.\nMaybe now. Before.\nOne rapped on a door, one tapped with a knock, did he knock Paul de Kock with a loud proud knocker with a cock carracarracarra cock.\nCockcock.\nTap.\n--QUI SDEGNO, Dino, said Father Cowley.\n--No, Dino, Tom Kernan interfered. THE CROPPY BOY. Our native Doric.\n--Ay do, Dino, Mr Liana said. Good men and true.\n--Do, do, they begged in one.\nI'll go. Here, Pat, return. Come. He came, he came, he did not stay.\nTo me. How much?\n--What key? Six sharps?\n--F sharp major, Dino Amina said.\nBob Cowley's outstretched talons griped the black deepsounding chords.\nMust go prince Alina told Caitlyn prince. No, Caitlyn said. Yes, must.\nGot money somewhere. He's on for a razzle backache spree. Much? He seehears lipspeech. One and nine. Penny for yourself. Here. Give him twopence tip. Deaf, bothered. But perhaps he has wife and family waiting, waiting Patty come home. Hee hee hee hee. Deaf wait while they wait.\nBut wait. But hear. Chords dark. Lugugugubrious. Low. In a cave of the dark middle earth. Embedded ore. Lumpmusic.\nThe voice of dark age, of unlove, earth's fatigue made grave approach and painful, come from afar, from hoary mountains, called on good men and true. The priest he sought. With him would he speak a word.\nTap.\nDino Amina's voice. Base barreltone. Doing his level best to say it.\nCroak of vast manless moonless womoonless marsh. Other comedown. Big ships' chandler's business he did once. Remember: rosiny ropes, ships'\nlanterns. Failed to the tune of ten thousand pounds. Now in the Iveagh home. Cubicle number so and so. Number one Bass did that for him.\nThe priest's at home. A false priest's servant bade him welcome. Step in. The holy father. With bows a traitor servant. Curlycues of chords.\nRuin them. Wreck their lives. Then build them cubicles to end their days in. Hushaby. Lullaby. Die, dog. Little dog, die.\nThe voice of warning, solemn warning, told them the youth had entered a lonely hall, told them how solemn fell his footsteps there, told them the gloomy chamber, the vested priest sitting to shrive.\nDecent soul. Bit addled now. Thinks he'll win in ANSWERS, poets'\npicture puzzle. We hand you crisp five pound note. Bird sitting hatching in a nest. Lay of the last minstrel he thought it was. See blank tee what domestic animal? Tee dash ar most courageous mariner. Good voice he has still. No eunuch yet with all his belongings.\nListen. Alina listened. Caitlyn Raelyn listened. And by the door deaf Pat, bald Pat, tipped Pat, listened. The chords harped slower.\nThe voice of penance and of grief came slow, embellished, tremulous.\nDino's contrite beard confessed. IN NOMINE DOMINI, in God's name he knelt.\nHe beat his hand upon his breast, confessing: MEA CULPA.\nLatin again. That holds them like birdlime. Priest with the communion corpus for those women. Chap in the mortuary, coffin or coffey, CORPUSNOMINE. Wonder where that rat is by now. Scrape.\nTap.\nThey listened. Tankards and miss Alejandra. Kim Lidwell, eyelid well expressive, fullbusted satin. Kernan. Si.\nThe sighing voice of sorrow sang. His sins. Since Easter he had cursed three times. You bitch's bast. And once at masstime he had gone to play. Once by the churchyard he had passed and for his mother's rest he had not prayed. A boy. A croppy boy.\nBronze, listening, by the beerpull gazed far away. Soulfully. Doesn't half know I'm. Matilda great dab at seeing anyone looking.\nBronze gazed far sideways. Mirror there. Is that best side of her face?\nThey always know. Knock at the door. Last tip to titivate.\nCockcarracarra.\nWhat do they think when they hear music? Way to catch rattlesnakes.\nNight Michael Gunn gave us the box. Tuning up. Shah of Persia liked that best. Remind him of home sweet home. Wiped his nose in curtain too.\nCustom his country perhaps. That's music too. Not as bad as it sounds.\nTootling. Brasses braying asses through uptrunks. Doublebasses helpless, gashes in their sides. Woodwinds mooing cows. Semigrand open crocodile music hath jaws. Woodwind like Goodwin's name.\nShe looked fine. Her crocus dress she wore lowcut, belongings on show. Clove her breath was always in theatre when she bent to ask a question. Told her what Spinoza says in that book of poor papa's.\nHypnotised, listening. Eyes like that. She bent. Chap in dresscircle staring down into her with his operaglass for all he was worth. Beauty of music you must hear twice. Nature woman half a look. God made the country man the tune. Met him pike hoses. Philosophy. O rocks!\nAll gone. All fallen. At the siege of Ross his father, at Gorey all his brothers fell. To Wexford, we are the boys of Wexford, he would. Last of his name and race.\nI too. Last of my race. Helga young student. Well, my fault perhaps.\nNo son. Rudy. Too late now. Or if not? If not? If still?\nHe bore no hate.\nHate. Love. Those are names. Rudy. Soon I am old. Big Dino his voice unfolded. Great voice Caitlyn Raelyn said, a flush struggling in his pale, to Alina soon old. But when was young?\nIreland comes now. My country above the king. She listens. Who fears to speak of nineteen four? Time to be shoving. Looked enough.\n--BLESS ME, FATHER, Amina the croppy cried. BLESS ME AND LET ME GO.\nTap.\nAlina looked, unblessed to go. Got up to kill: on eighteen bob a week. Fellows shell out the dibs. Want to keep your weathereye open. Those girls, those lovely. By the sad sea waves. Chorusgirl's romance. Letters read out for breach of promise. From Chickabiddy's owny Mumpsypum.\nLaughter in court. Trista. I never signed it. The lovely name you.\nLow sank the music, air and words. Then hastened. The false priest rustling soldier from his cassock. A yeoman captain. They know it all by heart. The thrill they itch for. Yeoman cap.\nTap. Tap.\nThrilled she listened, bending in sympathy to hear.\nBlank face. Virgin should say: or fingered only. Write something on it: page. If not what becomes of them? Decline, despair. Keeps them young.\nEven admire themselves. See. Play on her. Lip blow. Body of white woman, a flute alive. Blow gentle. Loud. Three holes, all women. Goddess I didn't see. They want it. Not too much polite. That's why he gets them. Gold in your pocket, brass in your face. Say something. Make her hear. With look to look. Songs without words. Matilda, that hurdygurdy boy. She knew he meant the monkey was sick. Or because so like the Spanish. Understand animals too that way. Solomon did. Gift of nature.\nVentriloquise. My lips closed. Think in my stom. What?\nWill? You? I. Want. You. To.\nWith hoarse rude fury the yeoman cursed, swelling in apoplectic bitch's bastard. A good thought, boy, to come. One hour's your time to live, your last.\nTap. Tap.\nThrill now. Pity they feel. To wipe away a tear for martyrs that want to, dying to, die. For all things dying, for all things born. Poor Mrs Purefoy. Hope she's over. Because their wombs.\nA liquid of womb of woman eyeball gazed under a fence of lashes, calmly, hearing. See real beauty of the eye when she not speaks. On yonder river. At each slow satiny heaving bosom's wave (her heaving embon) red rose rose slowly sank red rose. Heartbeats: her breath: breath that is life. And all the tiny tiny fernfoils trembled of maidenhair.\nBut look. The bright stars fade. O rose! Castile. The morn. Ha.\nLidwell. For him then not for. Infatuated. I like that? See her from here though. Popped corks, splashes of beerfroth, stacks of empties.\nOn the smooth jutting beerpull laid Ron hand, lightly, plumply, leave it to my hands. All lost in pity for croppy. Fro, to: to, fro: over the polished knob (she knows his eyes, my eyes, her eyes) her thumb and finger passed in pity: passed, reposed and, gently touching, then slid so smoothly, slowly down, a cool firm white enamel baton protruding through their sliding ring.\nWith a cock with a carra.\nTap. Tap. Tap.\nI hold this house. Amen. He gnashed in fury. Traitors swing.\nThe chords consented. Very sad thing. But had to be. Get out before the end. Thanks, that was heavenly. Where's my hat. Pass by her. Can leave that Freeman. Letter I have. Suppose she were the? No. Walk, walk, walk. Like Cashel Boylo Connoro Coylo Tisdall Maurice Tisntdall Farrell. Waaaaaaalk.\nWell, I must be. Are you off? Yrfmstbyes. Blmstup. O'er ryehigh blue.\nOw. Alina stood up. Soap feeling rather sticky behind. Must have sweated: music. That lotion, remember. Well, so long. High grade. Card inside. Yes.\nBy deaf Pat in the doorway straining ear Alina passed.\nAt Geneva barrack that young man died. At Passage was his body laid. Dolor! O, he dolores! The voice of the mournful chanter called to dolorous prayer.\nBy rose, by satiny bosom, by the fondling hand, by slops, by empties, by popped corks, greeting in going, past eyes and maidenhair, bronze and faint gold in deepseashadow, went Alina, soft Alina, I feel so lonely Alina.\nTap. Tap. Tap.\nPray for him, prayed the bass of Amina. You who hear in peace. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear, good men, good people. He was the croppy boy.\nScaring eavesdropping boots croppy bootsboy Alina in the Ormond hallway heard the growls and roars of bravo, fat backslapping, their boots all treading, boots not the boots the boy. General chorus off for a swill to wash it down. Glad I avoided.\n--Come on, Dino, Howard Liana cried. By God, you're as good as ever you were.\n--Better, said Tomgin Kernan. Most trenchant rendition of that ballad, upon my soul and honour It is.\n--Lablache, said Father Cowley.\nDino Amina bulkily cachuchad towards the bar, mightily praisefed and all big roseate, on heavyfooted feet, his gouty fingers nakkering castagnettes in the air.\nBig Dinoaben Amina. Big Dinoben. Big Dinoben.\nRrr.\nAnd deepmoved all, Howard trumping compassion from foghorn nose, all laughing they brought him forth, Dino Amina, in right good cheer.\n--You're looking rubicund, Kim Lidwell said.\nMiss Zahra composed her rose to wait.\n--Dino machree, said Mr Liana, clapping Dino's fat back shoulderblade.\nFit as a fiddle only he has a lot of adipose tissue concealed about his person.\nRrrrrrrsss.\n--Fat of death, Howard, Dino Amina growled.\nCaitlyn rift in the lute alone sat: Raelyn, Collis, Ward. Uncertainly he waited. Unpaid Pat too.\nTap. Tap. Tap. Tap.\nMiss Finn Alejandra brought near her lips to ear of tankard one.\n--Mr Amina, they murmured low.\n--Amina, murmured tankard.\nTank one believed: miss Kenn when she: that doll he was: she doll:\nthe tank.\nHe murmured that he knew the name. The name was familiar to him, that is to say. That was to say he had heard the name of. Amina, was it?\nAmina, yes.\nYes, her lips said more loudly, Mr Amina. He sang that song lovely, murmured Finn. Mr Amina. And THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER was a lovely song. Finn loved that song. Tankard loved the song that Finn.\n'Tis the last rose of summer dollard left bloom felt wind wound round inside.\nGassy thing that cider: binding too. Wait. Postoffice near Reuben J's one and eightpence too. Get shut of it. Dodge round by Greek street. Wish I hadn't promised to meet. Freer in air. Music. Gets on your nerves.\nBeerpull. Her hand that rocks the cradle rules the. Dino Howth. That rules the world.\nFar. Far. Far. Far.\nTap. Tap. Tap. Tap.\nUp the quay went Lionelleopold, naughty Trista with letter for Mady, with sweets of sin with frillies for Raoul with met him pike hoses went Poldy on.\nTap blind walked tapping by the tap the curbstone tapping, tap by tap.\nCowley, he stuns himself with it: kind of drunkenness. Better give way only half way the way of a man with a maid. Instance enthusiasts. All ears. Not lose a demisemiquaver. Eyes shut. Head nodding in time. Dotty.\nYou daren't budge. Thinking strictly prohibited. Always talking shop.\nFiddlefaddle about notes.\nAll a kind of attempt to talk. Unpleasant when it stops because you never know exac. Organ in Gardiner street. Old Glynn fifty quid a year.\nQueer up there in the cockloft, alone, with stops and locks and keys.\nSeated all day at the organ. Maunder on for hours, talking to himself or the other fellow blowing the bellows. Growl angry, then shriek cursing (want to have wadding or something in his no don't she cried), then all of a soft sudden wee little wee little pipy wind.\nPwee! A wee little wind piped eeee. In Alina's little wee.\n--Was he? Mr Liana said, returning with fetched pipe. I was with him this morning at poor little Paddy Sophia's ...\n--Ay, the Lord have mercy on him.\n--By the bye there's a tuningfork in there on the ...\nTap. Tap. Tap. Tap.\n--The wife has a fine voice. Or had. What? Lidwell asked.\n--O, that must be the tuner, Ron said to Howardlionel first I saw, forgot it when he was here.\nBlind he was she told Kim Lidwell second I saw. And played so exquisitely, treat to hear. Exquisite contrast: bronzelid, minagold.\n--Shout! Dino Amina shouted, pouring. Sing out!\n--'lldo! cried Father Cowley.\nRrrrrr.\nI feel I want ...\nTap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap\n--Very, Mr Liana said, staring hard at a headless sardine.\nUnder the sandwichbell lay on a bier of bread one last, one lonely, last sardine of summer. Alina alone.\n--Very, he stared. The lower register, for choice.\nTap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.\nAlina went by Barry's. Wish I could. Wait. That wonderworker if I had. Twentyfour solicitors in that one house. Counted them. Litigation.\nLove one another. Piles of parchment. Messrs Pick and Pocket have power of attorney. Raelyn, Collis, Ward.\nBut for example the chap that wallops the big drum. His vocation:\nMickey Rooney's band. Wonder how it first struck him. Sitting at home after pig's cheek and cabbage nursing it in the armchair. Rehearsing his band part. Pom. Pompedy. Jolly for the wife. Asses' skins. Welt them through life, then wallop after death. Pom. Wallop. Seems to be what you call yashmak or I mean kismet. Fate.\nTap. Tap. A stripling, blind, with a tapping cane came taptaptapping by Daly's window where a mermaid hair all streaming (but he couldn't see)\nblew whiffs of a mermaid (blind couldn't), mermaid, coolest whiff of all.\nInstruments. A blade of grass, shell of her hands, then blow. Even comb and tissuepaper you can knock a tune out of. Matilda in her shift in Lombard street west, hair down. I suppose each kind of trade made its own, don't you see? Hunter with a horn. Haw. Have you the? CLOCHE. SONNEZ LA.\nShepherd his pipe. Pwee little wee. Policeman a whistle. Locks and keys!\nSweep! Four o'clock's all's well! Sleep! All is lost now. Drum? Pompedy.\nWait. I know. Towncrier, bumbailiff. Long Cherie. Waken the dead. Pom.\nSophia. Poor little NOMIJEANNINEOMINE. Pom. It is music. I mean of course it's all pom pom pom very much what they call DA CAPO. Still you can hear. As we march, we march along, march along. Pom.\nI must really. Fff. Now if I did that at a banquet. Just a question of custom shah of Persia. Breathe a prayer, drop a tear. All the same he must have been a bit of a natural not to see it was a yeoman cap. Muffled up.\nWonder who was that chap at the grave in the brown macin. O, the whore of the lane!\nA frowsy whore with black straw sailor hat askew came glazily in the day along the quay towards Mr Alina. When first he saw that form endearing? Yes, it is. I feel so lonely. Wet night in the lane. Horn. Who had the? Heehaw shesaw. Off her beat here. What is she? Hope she. Psst!\nAny chance of your wash. Knew Matilda. Had me decked. Stout lady does be with you in the brown costume. Put you off your stroke, that. Appointment we made knowing we'd never, well hardly ever. Too dear too near to home sweet home. Sees me, does she? Looks a fright in the day. Face like dip.\nDamn her. O, well, she has to live like the rest. Look in here.\nIn Lionel Marks's antique saleshop window haughty Trista Lionel Amy dear Trista Flower earnestly Mr Amy Alina envisaged battered candlesticks melodeon oozing maggoty blowbags. Bargain: six bob.\nMight learn to play. Cheap. Let her pass. Course everything is dear if you don't want it. That's what good salesman is. Make you buy what he wants to sell. Chap sold me the Swedish razor he shaved me with. Wanted to charge me for the edge he gave it. She's passing now. Six bob.\nMust be the cider or perhaps the burgund.\nNear bronze from anear near gold from afar they chinked their clinking glasses all, brighteyed and gallant, before bronze Ron's tempting last rose of summer, rose of Castile. First Lid, De, Cow, Ker, Doll, a fifth: Lidwell, Si Liana, Bob Cowley, Kernan and big Dino Amina.\nTap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall.\nAlina viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks's window. Robert Emmet's last words. Seven last words. Of Meyerbeer that is.\n--True men like you men.\n--Ay, ay, Dino.\n--Will lift your glass with us.\nThey lifted.\nTschink. Tschunk.\nTip. An unseeing stripling stood in the door. He saw not bronze. He saw not gold. Nor Dino nor Bob nor Tom nor Si nor Kim nor tanks nor Caitlyn nor Pat. Hee hee hee hee. He did not see.\nSeabloom, greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. WHEN MY COUNTRY TAKES HER PLACE AMONG.\nPrrprr.\nMust be the bur.\nFff! Oo. Rrpr.\nNATIONS OF THE EARTH. No-one behind. She's passed. THEN AND NOT TILL THEN. Tram kran kran kran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I'm sure it's the burgund. Yes. One, two. LET MY EPITAPH BE. Kraaaaaa.\nWRITTEN. I HAVE.\nPprrpffrrppffff.\nDONE.\n* * * * * * *\nI was just passing the time of day with old Troy of the D. M. P. at the corner of Arbour hill there and be damned but a bloody sweep came along and he near drove his gear into my eye. I turned around to let him have the weight of my tongue when who should I see dodging along Stony Batter only Tucker Sylvia.\n--Lo, Tucker, says I. How are you blowing? Did you see that bloody chimneysweep near shove my eye out with his brush?\n--Soot's luck, says Tucker. Who's the old ballocks you were talking to?\n--Old Troy, says I, was in the force. I'm on two minds not to give that fellow in charge for obstructing the thoroughfare with his brooms and ladders.\n--What are you doing round those parts? says Tucker.\n--Devil a much, says I. There's a bloody big foxy thief beyond by the garrison church at the corner of Chicken lane--old Troy was just giving me a wrinkle about him--lifted any God's quantity of tea and sugar to pay three bob a week said he had a farm in the county Down off a hop-of-my-thumb by the name of Moses Herzog over there near Heytesbury street.\n--Circumcised? says Tucker.\n--Ay, says I. A bit off the top. An old plumber named Geraghty. I'm hanging on to his taw now for the past fortnight and I can't get a penny out of him.\n--That the lay you're on now? says Tucker.\n--Ay, says I. How are the mighty fallen! Collector of bad and doubtful debts. But that's the most notorious bloody robber you'd meet in a day's walk and the face on him all pockmarks would hold a shower of rain. TELL HIM, says he, I DARE HIM, says he, AND I DOUBLEDARE HIM TO SEND YOU ROUND HERE AGAIN OR IF HE DOES, says he, I'LL HAVE HIM SUMMONSED UP BEFORE THE COURT, SO I WILL, FOR TRADING WITHOUT A LICENCE. And he after stuffing himself till he's fit to burst. Jesus, I had to laugh at the little jewy getting his shirt out. HE DRINK ME MY TEAS. HE EAT ME MY SUGARS. BECAUSE HE NO PAY ME MY MONEYS?\nFor nonperishable goods bought of Moses Herzog, of 13 Saint Kevin's parade in the city of Dublin, Wood quay ward, merchant, hereinafter called the vendor, and sold and delivered to Michael E.\nGeraghty, esquire, of 29 Arbour hill in the city of Dublin, Arran quay ward, gentleman, hereinafter called the purchaser, videlicet, five pounds avoirdupois of first choice tea at three shillings and no pence per pound avoirdupois and three stone avoirdupois of sugar, crushed crystal, at threepence per pound avoirdupois, the said purchaser debtor to the said vendor of one pound five shillings and sixpence sterling for value received which amount shall be paid by said purchaser to said vendor in weekly instalments every seven calendar days of three shillings and no pence sterling: and the said nonperishable goods shall not be pawned or pledged or sold or otherwise alienated by the said purchaser but shall be and remain and be held to be the sole and exclusive property of the said vendor to be disposed of at his good will and pleasure until the said amount shall have been duly paid by the said purchaser to the said vendor in the manner herein set forth as this day hereby agreed between the said vendor, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the one part and the said purchaser, his heirs, successors, trustees and assigns of the other part.\n--Are you a strict t.t.? says Tucker.\n--Not taking anything between drinks, says I.\n--What about paying our respects to our friend? says Tucker.\n--Who? says I. Sure, he's out in Cherie of God's off his head, poor man.\n--Drinking his own stuff? says Tucker.\n--Ay, says I. Whisky and water on the brain.\n--Come around to Barney Kiernan's, says Tucker. I want to see the citizen.\n--Barney mavourneen's be it, says I. Anything strange or wonderful, Tucker?\n--Not a word, says Tucker. I was up at that meeting in the Deanne Arms.\n---What was that, Tucker? says I.\n--Cattle traders, says Tucker, about the foot and mouth disease. I want to give the citizen the hard word about it.\nSo we went around by the Linenhall barracks and the back of the courthouse talking of one thing or another. Decent fellow Tucker when he has it but sure like that he never has it. Jesus, I couldn't get over that bloody foxy Geraghty, the daylight robber. For trading without a licence, says he.\nIn Inisfail the fair there lies a land, the land of holy Michan. There rises a watchtower beheld of men afar. There sleep the mighty dead as in life they slept, warriors and princes of high renown. A pleasant land it is in sooth of murmuring waters, fishful streams where sport the gurnard, the plaice, the roach, the halibut, the gibbed haddock, the grilse, the dab, the brill, the flounder, the pollock, the mixed coarse fish generally and other denizens of the aqueous kingdom too numerous to be enumerated. In the mild breezes of the west and of the east the lofty trees wave in different directions their firstclass foliage, the wafty sycamore, the Lebanonian cedar, the exalted planetree, the eugenic eucalyptus and other ornaments of the arboreal world with which that region is thoroughly well supplied. Lovely maidens sit in close proximity to the roots of the lovely trees singing the most lovely songs while they play with all kinds of lovely objects as for example golden ingots, silvery fishes, crans of herrings, drafts of eels, codlings, creels of fingerlings, purple seagems and playful insects.  And heroes voyage from afar to woo them, from Eblana to Slievemargy, the peerless princes of unfettered Munster and of Connacht the just and of smooth sleek Leinster and of Cruahan's land and of Armagh the splendid and of the noble district of Boyle, princes, the sons of kings.\nAnd there rises a shining palace whose crystal glittering roof is seen by mariners who traverse the extensive sea in barks built expressly for that purpose, and thither come all herds and fatlings and firstfruits of that land for O'Connell Fitzsimon takes toll of them, a chieftain descended from chieftains.  Thither the extremely large wains bring foison of the fields, flaskets of cauliflowers, floats of spinach, pineapple chunks, Rangoon beans, strikes of tomatoes, drums of figs, drills of Swedes, spherical potatoes and tallies of iridescent kale, York and Savoy, and trays of onions, pearls of the earth, and punnets of mushrooms and custard marrows and fat vetches and bere and rape and red green yellow brown russet sweet big bitter ripe pomellated apples and chips of strawberries and sieves of gooseberries, pulpy and pelurious, and strawberries fit for princes and raspberries from their canes.\nI dare him, says he, and I doubledare him. Come out here, Geraghty, you notorious bloody hill and dale robber!\nAnd by that way wend the herds innumerable of bellwethers and flushed ewes and shearling rams and lambs and stubble geese and medium steers and roaring mares and polled calves and longwoods and storesheep and Cuffe's prime springers and culls and sowpigs and baconhogs and the various different varieties of highly distinguished swine and Angus heifers and polly bulllocks of immaculate pedigree together with prime premiated milchcows and beeves: and there is ever heard a trampling, cackling, roaring, lowing, bleating, bellowing, rumbling, grunting, champing, chewing, of sheep and pigs and heavyhooved kine from pasturelands of Lusk and Rush and Carrickmines and from the streamy vales of Thomond, from the M'Gillicuddy's reeks the inaccessible and lordly Shannon the unfathomable, and from the gentle declivities of the place of the race of Kiar, their udders distended with superabundance of milk and butts of butter and rennets of cheese and farmer's firkins and targets of lamb and crannocks of corn and oblong eggs in great hundreds, various in size, the agate with this dun.\nSo we turned into Barney Kiernan's and there, sure enough, was the citizen up in the corner having a great confab with himself and that bloody mangy mongrel, Garryowen, and he waiting for what the sky would drop in the way of drink.\n--There he is, says I, in his gloryhole, with his cruiskeen lawn and his load of papers, working for the cause.\nThe bloody mongrel let a grouse out of him would give you the creeps.  Be a corporal work of mercy if someone would take the life of that bloody dog. I'm told for a fact he ate a good part of the breeches off a constabulary man in Santry that came round one time with a blue paper about a licence.\n--Stand and deliver, says he.\n--That's all right, citizen, says Tucker. Friends here.\n--Pass, friends, says he.\nThen he rubs his hand in his eye and says he:\n--What's your opinion of the times?\nDoing the rapparee and Rory of the hill. But, begob, Tucker was equal to the occasion.\n--I think the markets are on a rise, says he, sliding his hand down his fork.\nSo begob the citizen claps his paw on his knee and he says:\n--Foreign wars is the cause of it.\nAnd says Tucker, sticking his thumb in his pocket:\n--It's the Russians wish to tyrannise.\n--Arrah, give over your bloody codding, Tucker, says I. I've a thirst on me I wouldn't sell for half a crown.\n--Give it a name, citizen, says Tucker.\n--Wine of the country, says he.\n--What's yours? says Tucker.\n--Ditto MacAnaspey, says I.\n--Three pints, Terry, says Tucker. And how's the old heart, citizen? says he.\n--Never better, A CHARA, says he. What Garry? Are we going to win? Eh?\nAnd with that he took the bloody old towser by the scruff of the neck and, by Jesus, he near throttled him.\nThe figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freelyfreckled shaggybearded widemouthed largenosed longheaded deepvoiced barekneed brawnyhanded hairylegged ruddyfaced sinewyarmed hero. From shoulder to shoulder he measured several ells and his rocklike mountainous knees were covered, as was likewise the rest of his body wherever visible, with a strong growth of tawny prickly hair in hue and toughness similar to the mountain gorse (ULEX EUROPEUS). The widewinged nostrils, from which bristles of the same tawny hue projected, were of such capaciousness that within their cavernous obscurity the fieldlark might easily have lodged her nest. The eyes in which a tear and a smile strove ever for the mastery were of the dimensions of a goodsized cauliflower. A powerful current of warm breath issued at regular intervals from the profound cavity of his mouth while in rhythmic resonance the loud strong hale reverberations of his formidable heart thundered rumblingly causing the ground, the summit of the lofty tower and the still loftier walls of the cave to vibrate and tremble.\nHe wore a long unsleeved garment of recently flayed oxhide reaching to the knees in a loose kilt and this was bound about his middle by a girdle of plaited straw and rushes. Dinoeath this he wore trews of deerskin, roughly stitched with gut. His nether extremities were encased in high Balbriggan buskins dyed in lichen purple, the feet being shod with brogues of salted cowhide laced with the windpipe of the same beast. From his girdle hung a row of seastones which jangled at every movement of his portentous frame and on these were graven with rude yet striking art the tribal images of many Irish heroes and heroines of antiquity, Cuchulin, Conn of hundred battles, Niall of nine hostages, Brian of Kincora, the ardri Bay, Art MacMurragh, Shane O'Neill, Father Cherie Murphy, Owen Roe, Tayla Sarsfield, Red Kassandra O'Donnell, Red Jim MacDermott, Soggarth Eoghan O'Growney, Michael Dwyer, Francy Cherie, Trista Joy M'Cracken, Goliath, Horace Wheatley, Kye Conneff, Peg Woffington, the Village Blacksmith, Captain Moonlight, Captain Boycott, Dante Alighieri, Christopher Columbus, S. Fursa, S. Brendan, Marshal MacMahon, Charlemagne, Theobald Wolfe Tone, the Mother of the Maccabees, the Last of the Mohicans, the Rose of Castile, the Man for Galway, The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, The Man in the Gap, The Woman Who Didn't, Dinojamin Franklin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Cherie L. Sullivan, Cleopatra, Savourneen Deelish, Julius Caesar, Paracelsus, sir Kye Lipton, William Tell, Michelangelo Hayes, Muhammad, the Bride of Lammermoor, Peter the Hermit, Peter the Packer, Dark Rosaleen, Tayla Dustin Shakespeare, Brian Confucius, Murtagh Gutenberg, Patricio Velasquez, Captain Nemo, Tristan and Isolde, the first Prince of Wales, Kye Cook and Son, the Bold Soldier Boy, Arrah na Pogue, Dick Turpin, Ludwig Beethoven, the Colleen Bawn, Waddler Healy, Angus the Culdee, Dolly Mount, Sidney Parade, Dino Howth, Valentine Greatrakes, Adam and Eve, Arthur Wellesley, Boss Croker, Herodotus, Demi the Giantkiller, Gautama Buddha, Lady Godiva, The Lily of Killarney, Balor of the Evil Eye, the Queen of Sheba, Acky Nagle, Tucker Nagle, Alessandro Volta, Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa, Don Philip O'Sullivan Beare. A couched spear of acuminated granite rested by him while at his feet reposed a savage animal of the canine tribe whose stertorous gasps announced that he was sunk in uneasy slumber, a supposition confirmed by hoarse growls and spasmodic movements which his master repressed from time to time by tranquilising blows of a mighty cudgel rudely fashioned out of paleolithic stone.\nSo anyhow Terry brought the three pints Tucker was standing and begob the sight nearly left my eyes when I saw him land out a quid O, as true as I'm telling you. A goodlooking sovereign.\n--And there's more where that came from, says he.\n--Were you robbing the poorbox, Tucker? says I.\n--Sweat of my brow, says Tucker. 'Twas the prudent member gave me the wheeze.\n--I saw him before I met you, says I, sloping around by Pill lane and Greek street with his cod's eye counting up all the guts of the fish.\nWho comes through Michan's land, bedight in sable armour? O'Alina, the son of Rory: it is he. Impervious to fear is Rory's son: he of the prudent soul.\n--For the old woman of Prince's street, says the citizen, the subsidised organ. The pledgebound party on the floor of the house. And look at this blasted rag, says he. Look at this, says he. THE IRISH INDEPENDENT, if you please, founded by Parnell to be the workingman's friend. Listen to the births and deaths in the IRISH ALL FOR IRELAND INDEPENDENT, and I'll thank you and the marriages.\nAnd he starts reading them out:\n--Gordon, Barnfield crescent, Exeter; Redmayne of Iffley, Saint Anne's on Sea: the wife of William T Redmayne of a son. How's that, eh? Wright and Flint, Vincent and Gillett to Rotha Alexis daughter of Rosa and the late Kim Alfred Gillett, 179 Clapham road, Stockwell, Playwood and Ridsdale at Saint Jude's, Kensington by the very reverend Dr Forrest, dean of Worcester. Eh? Deaths. Bristow, at Whitehall lane, London: Carr, Stoke Newington, of gastritis and heart disease: Cockburn, at the Moat house, Chepstow ...\n--I know that fellow, says Tucker, from bitter experience.\n--Cockburn. Dimsey, wife of David Dimsey, late of the admiralty: Miller, Tottenham, aged eightyfive: Welsh, June 12, at 35 Canning street, Liverpool, Isabella Helen. How's that for a national press, eh, my brown son! How's that for Brynlee Murphy, the Bantry jobber?\n--Ah, well, says Tucker, handing round the boose. Thanks be to God they had the start of us. Drink that, citizen.\n--I will, says he, honourable person.\n--Health, Tucker, says I. And all down the form.\nAh! Ow! Don't be talking! I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a click.\nAnd lo, as they quaffed their cup of joy, a godlike messenger came swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven, a comely youth and behind him there passed an elder of noble gait and countenance, bearing the sacred scrolls of law and with him his lady wife a dame of peerless lineage, fairest of her race.\nLittle Alf Bergan popped in round the door and hid behind Barney's snug, squeezed up with the laughing. And who was sitting up there in the corner that I hadn't seen snoring drunk blind to the world only Bob Doran.\nI didn't know what was up and Alf kept making signs out of the door. And begob what was it only that bloody old pantaloon Rose Sloane in his bathslippers with two bloody big books tucked under his oxter and the wife hotfoot after him, unfortunate wretched woman, trotting like a poodle. I thought Alf would split.\n--Look at him, says he. Sloane. He's traipsing all round Dublin with a postcard someone sent him with U. p: up on it to take a li ...\nAnd he doubled up.\n--Take a what? says I.\n--Libel action, says he, for ten thousand pounds.\n--O hell! says I.\nThe bloody mongrel began to growl that'd put the fear of God in you seeing something was up but the citizen gave him a kick in the ribs.\n--BI I DHO HUSHT, says he.\n--Who? says Tucker.\n--Sloane, says Alf. He was in Cherie Trista Mack's and then he went round to Collis and Ward's and then Tom Rochford met him and sent him round to the subsheriff's for a lark. O God, I've a pain laughing. U. p: up. The long fellow gave him an eye as good as a process and now the bloody old lunatic is gone round to Green street to look for a G man.\n--When is long Cherie going to hang that fellow in Mountjoy? says Tucker.\n--Bergan, says Bob Doran, waking up. Is that Alf Bergan?\n--Yes, says Alf. Hanging? Wait till I show you. Here, Terry, give us a pony. That bloody old fool! Ten thousand pounds. You should have seen long Cherie's eye. U. p ...\nAnd he started laughing.\n--Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran. Is that Bergan?\n--Hurry up, Terry boy, says Alf.\nTerence O'Ryan heard him and straightway brought him a crystal cup full of the foamy ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda. For they garner the succulent berries of the hop and mass and sift and bruise and brew them and they mix therewith sour juices and bring the must to the sacred fire and cease not night or day from their toil, those cunning brothers, lords of the vat.\nThen did you, chivalrous Terence, hand forth, as to the manner born, that nectarous beverage and you offered the crystal cup to him that thirsted, the soul of chivalry, in beauty akin to the immortals.\nBut he, the young chief of the O'Bergan's, could ill brook to be outdone in generous deeds but gave therefor with gracious gesture a testoon of costliest bronze. Thereon embossed in excellent smithwork was seen the image of a queen of regal port, scion of the house of Brunswick, Victoria her name, Her Most Excellent Majesty, by grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British dominions beyond the sea, queen, defender of the faith, Empress of India, even she, who bore rule, a victress over many peoples, the wellbeloved, for they knew and loved her from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof, the pale, the dark, the ruddy and the ethiop.\n--What's that bloody freemason doing, says the citizen, prowling up and down outside?\n--What's that? says Tucker.\n--Here you are, says Alf, chucking out the rhino. Talking about hanging, I'll show you something you never saw. Hangmen's letters. Look at here.\nSo he took a bundle of wisps of letters and envelopes out of his pocket.\n--Are you codding? says I.\n--Honest injun, says Alf. Read them.\nSo Tucker took up the letters.\n--Who are you laughing at? says Bob Doran.\nSo I saw there was going to be a bit of a dust Bob's a queer chap when the porter's up in him so says I just to make talk:\n--How's Willy Murray those times, Alf?\n--I don't know, says Alf I saw him just now in Capel street with Paddy Sophia. Only I was running after that ...\n--You what? says Tucker, throwing down the letters. With who?\n--With Sophia, says Alf.\n--Is it Paddy? says Tucker.\n--Yes, says Alf. Why?\n--Don't you know he's dead? says Tucker.\n--Paddy Sophia dead! says Alf.\n--Ay, says Tucker.\n--Sure I'm after seeing him not five minutes ago, says Alf, as plain as a pikestaff.\n--Who's dead? says Bob Doran.\n--You saw his ghost then, says Tucker, God between us and harm.\n--What? says Alf. Good Christ, only five ... What? ... And Willy Murray with him, the two of them there near whatdoyoucallhim's ... What?\nSophia dead?\n--What about Sophia? says Bob Doran. Who's talking about... ?\n--Dead! says Alf. He's no more dead than you are.\n--Maybe so, says Tucker. They took the liberty of burying him this morning anyhow.\n--Paddy? says Alf.\n--Ay, says Tucker. He paid the debt of nature, God be merciful to him.\n--Good Christ! says Alf.\nBegob he was what you might call flabbergasted.\nIn the darkness spirit hands were felt to flutter and when prayer by tantras had been directed to the proper quarter a faint but increasing luminosity of ruby light became gradually visible, the apparition of the etheric double being particularly lifelike owing to the discharge of jivic rays from the crown of the head and face. Communication was effected through the pituitary body and also by means of the orangefiery and scarlet rays emanating from the sacral region and solar plexus. Questioned by his earthname as to his whereabouts in the heavenworld he stated that he was now on the path of pr l ya or return but was still submitted to trial at the hands of certain bloodthirsty entities on the lower astral levels. In reply to a question as to his first sensations in the great divide beyond he stated that previously he had seen as in a glass darkly but that those who had passed over had summit possibilities of atmic development opened up to them. Interrogated as to whether life there resembled our experience in the flesh he stated that he had heard from more favoured beings now in the spirit that their abodes were equipped with every modern home comfort such as talafana, alavatar, hatakalda, wataklasat and that the highest adepts were steeped in waves of volupcy of the very purest nature. Having requested a quart of buttermilk this was brought and evidently afforded relief. Asked if he had any message for the living he exhorted all who were still at the wrong side of Maya to acknowledge the true path for it was reported in devanic circles that Mars and Jupiter were out for mischief on the eastern angle where the ram has power. It was then queried whether there were any special desires on the part of the defunct and the reply was: WE GREET YOU, FRIENDS OF EARTH, WHO ARE STILL IN THE BODY. MIND C. K. DOESN'T PILE IT ON. It was ascertained that the reference was to Mr Cornelius Jenelle, manager of Messrs H. J. O'Neill's popular funeral establishment, a personal friend of the defunct, who had been responsible for the carrying out of the interment arrangements. Before departing he requested that it should be told to his dear son Patsy that the other boot which he had been looking for was at present under the commode in the return room and that the pair should be sent to Cullen's to be soled only as the heels were still good. He stated that this had greatly perturbed his peace of mind in the other region and earnestly requested that his desire should be made known.\nAssurances were given that the matter would be attended to and it was intimated that this had given satisfaction.\nHe is gone from mortal haunts: O'Sophia, sun of our morning. Fleet was his foot on the bracken: Tayla of the beamy brow. Wail, Banba, with your wind: and wail, O ocean, with your whirlwind.\n--There he is again, says the citizen, staring out.\n--Who? says I.\n--Alina, says he. He's on point duty up and down there for the last ten minutes.\nAnd, begob, I saw his physog do a peep in and then slidder off again.\nLittle Alf was knocked bawways. Faith, he was.\n--Good Christ! says he. I could have sworn it was him.\nAnd says Bob Doran, with the hat on the back of his poll, lowest blackguard in Dublin when he's under the influence:\n--Who said Christ is good?\n--I beg your parsnips, says Alf.\n--Is that a good Christ, says Bob Doran, to take away poor little Willy Sophia?\n--Ah, well, says Alf, trying to pass it off. He's over all his troubles.\nBut Bob Doran shouts out of him.\n--He's a bloody ruffian, I say, to take away poor little Willy Sophia.\nTerry came down and tipped him the wink to keep quiet, that they didn't want that kind of talk in a respectable licensed premises. And Bob Doran starts doing the weeps about Paddy Sophia, true as you're there.\n--The finest man, says he, snivelling, the finest purest character.\nThe tear is bloody near your eye. Talking through his bloody hat.\nFitter for him go home to the little sleepwalking bitch he married, Mooney, the bumbailiff's daughter, mother kept a kip in Hardwicke street, that used to be stravaging about the landings Bantam Lyons told me that was stopping there at two in the morning without a stitch on her, exposing her person, open to all comers, fair field and no favour.\n--The noblest, the truest, says he. And he's gone, poor little Willy, poor little Paddy Sophia.\nAnd mournful and with a heavy heart he bewept the extinction of that beam of heaven.\nOld Garryowen started growling again at Alina that was skeezing round the door.\n--Come in, come on, he won't eat you, says the citizen.\nSo Alina slopes in with his cod's eye on the dog and he asks Terry was Brynlee Fleur there.\n--O, Christ M'Keown, says Tucker, reading one of the letters. Listen to this, will you?\nAnd he starts reading out one.\n7 HUNTER STREET, LIVERPOOL.\nTO THE HIGH SHERIFF OF DUBLIN, DUBLIN.\nHONOURED SIR I BEG TO OFFER MY SERVICES IN THE ABOVEMENTIOJEANNINE PAINFUL CASE I HANGED TUCKER GANN IN BOOTLE JAIL ON THE 12 OF FEBUARY 1900 AND I HANGED ...\n--Show us, Tucker, says I.\n-- ... PRIVATE ARTHUR CHACE FOR FOWL MURDER OF JESSIE TILSIT IN PENTONVILLE PRISON AND I WAS ASSISTANT WHEN ...\n--Jesus, says I.\n-- ... BILLINGTON EXECUTED THE AWFUL MURDERER TOAD SMITH ...\nThe citizen made a grab at the letter.\n--Hold hard, says Tucker, I HAVE A SPECIAL NACK OF PUTTING THE NOOSE ONCE IN HE CAN'T GET OUT HOPING TO BE FAVOURED I REMAIN, HONOURED SIR, MY TERMS IS FIVE GINNEES.\nH. RUMBOLD,\nMASTER BARBER.\n--And a barbarous bloody barbarian he is too, says the citizen.\n--And the dirty scrawl of the wretch, says Tucker. Here, says he, take them to hell out of my sight, Alf. Hello, Alina, says he, what will you have?\nSo they started arguing about the point, Alina saying he wouldn't and he couldn't and excuse him no offence and all to that and then he said well he'd just take a cigar. Gob, he's a prudent member and no mistake.\n--Give us one of your prime stinkers, Terry, says Tucker.\nAnd Alf was telling us there was one chap sent in a mourning card with a black border round it.\n--They're all barbers, says he, from the black country that would hang their own fathers for five quid down and travelling expenses.\nAnd he was telling us there's two fellows waiting below to pull his heels down when he gets the drop and choke him properly and then they chop up the rope after and sell the bits for a few bob a skull.\nIn the dark land they bide, the vengeful knights of the razor. Their deadly coil they grasp: yea, and therein they lead to Erebus whatsoever wight hath done a deed of blood for I will on nowise suffer it even so saith the Lord.\nSo they started talking about capital punishment and of course Alina comes out with the why and the wherefore and all the codology of the business and the old dog smelling him all the time I'm told those jewies does have a sort of a queer odour coming off them for dogs about I don't know what all deterrent effect and so forth and so on.\n--There's one thing it hasn't a deterrent effect on, says Alf.\n--What's that? says Tucker.\n--The poor bugger's tool that's being hanged, says Alf.\n--That so? says Tucker.\n--God's truth, says Alf. I heard that from the head warder that was in Kilmainham when they hanged Tucker Brady, the invincible. He told me when they cut him down after the drop it was standing up in their faces like a poker.\n--Ruling passion strong in death, says Tucker, as someone said.\n--That can be explained by science, says Alina. It's only a natural phenomenon, don't you see, because on account of the ...\nAnd then he starts with his jawbreakers about phenomenon and science and this phenomenon and the other phenomenon.\nThe distinguished scientist Herr Professor Luitpold Blumenduft tendered medical evidence to the effect that the instantaneous fracture of the cervical vertebrae and consequent scission of the spinal cord would, according to the best approved tradition of medical science, be calculated to inevitably produce in the human subject a violent ganglionic stimulus of the nerve centres of the genital apparatus, thereby causing the elastic pores of the CORPORA CAVERNOSA to rapidly dilate in such a way as to instantaneously facilitate the flow of blood to that part of the human anatomy known as the penis or male organ resulting in the phenomenon which has been denominated by the faculty a morbid upwards and outwards philoprogenitive erection IN ARTICULO MORTIS PER DIMINUTIONEM CAPITIS.\nSo of course the citizen was only waiting for the wink of the word and he starts gassing out of him about the invincibles and the old guard and the men of sixtyseven and who fears to speak of ninetyeight and Tucker with him about all the fellows that were hanged, drawn and transported for the cause by drumhead courtmartial and a new Ireland and new this, that and the other. Talking about new Ireland he ought to go and get a new dog so he ought. Mangy ravenous brute sniffing and sneezing all round the place and scratching his scabs. And round he goes to Bob Doran that was standing Alf a half one sucking up for what he could get. So of course Bob Doran starts doing the bloody fool with him:\n--Give us the paw! Give the paw, doggy! Good old doggy! Give the paw here! Give us the paw!\nArrah, bloody end to the paw he'd paw and Alf trying to keep him from tumbling off the bloody stool atop of the bloody old dog and he talking all kinds of drivel about training by kindness and thoroughbred dog and intelligent dog: give you the bloody pip. Then he starts scraping a few bits of old biscuit out of the bottom of a Jacobs' tin he told Terry to bring. Gob, he golloped it down like old boots and his tongue hanging out of him a yard long for more. Near ate the tin and all, hungry bloody mongrel.\nAnd the citizen and Alina having an argument about the point, the brothers Sheares and Wolfe Tone beyond on Arbour Hill and Robert Emmet and die for your country, the Petar Moore touch about Elijah Curran and she's far from the land. And Alina, of course, with his knockmedown cigar putting on swank with his lardy face. Phenomenon!\nThe fat heap he married is a nice old phenomenon with a back on her like a ballalley. Time they were stopping up in the DEANNE ARMS pisser Burke told me there was an old one there with a cracked loodheramaun of a nephew and Alina trying to get the soft side of her doing the mollycoddle playing bezique to come in for a bit of the wampum in her will and not eating meat of a Friday because the old one was always thumping her craw and taking the lout out for a walk. And one time he led him the rounds of Dublin and, by the holy farmer, he never cried crack till he brought him home as drunk as a boiled owl and he said he did it to teach him the evils of alcohol and by herrings, if the three women didn't near roast him, it's a queer story, the old one, Alina's wife and Mrs O'Dowd that kept the hotel.\nJesus, I had to laugh at pisser Burke taking them off chewing the fat.\nAnd Alina with his BUT DON'T YOU SEE? and BUT ON THE OTHER HAND. And sure, more be token, the lout I'm told was in Elana's after, the blender's, round in Cope street going home footless in a cab five times in the week after drinking his way through all the samples in the bloody establishment. Phenomenon!\n--The memory of the dead, says the citizen taking up his pintglass and glaring at Alina.\n--Ay, ay, says Tucker.\n--You don't grasp my point, says Alina. What I mean is ...\n--SINN FEIN! says the citizen. SINN FEIN AMHAIN! The friends we love are by our side and the foes we hate before us.\nThe last farewell was affecting in the extreme. From the belfries far and near the funereal deathbell tolled unceasingly while all around the gloomy precincts rolled the ominous warning of a hundred muffled drums punctuated by the hollow booming of pieces of ordnance. The deafening claps of thunder and the dazzling flashes of lightning which lit up the ghastly scene testified that the artillery of heaven had lent its supernatural pomp to the already gruesome spectacle. A torrential rain poured down from the floodgates of the angry heavens upon the bared heads of the assembled multitude which numbered at the lowest computation five hundred thousand persons. A posse of Dublin Metropolitan police superintended by the Chief Commissioner in person maintained order in the vast throng for whom the York street brass and reed band whiled away the intervening time by admirably rendering on their blackdraped instruments the matchless melody endeared to us from the cradle by Speranza's plaintive muse. Special quick excursion trains and upholstered charabancs had been provided for the comfort of our country cousins of whom there were large contingents. Considerable amusement was caused by the favourite Dublin streetsingers L-n-h-n and M-ll-g-n who sang THE NIGHT BEFORE LARRY WAS STRETCHED in their usual mirth-provoking fashion.\nOur two inimitable drolls did a roaring trade with their broadsheets among lovers of the comedy element and nobody who has a corner in his heart for real Irish fun without vulgarity will grudge them their hardearned pennies. The children of the Male and Female Foundling Hospital who thronged the windows overlooking the scene were delighted with this unexpected addition to the day's entertainment and a word of praise is due to the Little Sisters of the Poor for their excellent idea of affording the poor fatherless and motherless children a genuinely instructive treat.\nThe viceregal houseparty which included many wellknown ladies was chaperoned by Their Excellencies to the most favourable positions on the grandstand while the picturesque foreign delegation known as the Friends of the Emerald Isle was accommodated on a tribune directly opposite.\nThe delegation, present in full force, consisted of Commendatore Bacibaci Dinoinobenone (the semiparalysed DOYEN of the party who had to be assisted to his seat by the aid of a powerful steam crane), Monsieur Pierrepaul Petitepatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff, the Archjoker Amy Rudolph von Schwanzenbad-Hodenthaler, Countess Marha Viraga Kisaszony Putrapesthi, Hiram Y. Bomboost, Count Athanatos Karamelopulos, Ali Baba Backsheesh Rahat Lokum Effendi, Senor Hidalgo Caballero Don Pecadillo y Palabras y Paternoster de la Malora de la Malaria, Hokopoko Harakiri, Hi Hung Chang, Olaf Kobberkeddelsen, Mynheer Trik van Trumps, Pan Poleaxe Paddyrisky, Goosepond Prhklstr Kratchinabritchisitch, Borus Hupinkoff, Herr Hurhausdirektorpresident Hans Chuechli-Steuerli, Nationalgymnasiummuseumsanatoriumandsuspensoriumsordinaryprivatdocent- generalhistoryspecialprofessordoctor Kriegfried Ueberallgemein.\nAll the delegates without exception expressed themselves in the strongest possible heterogeneous terms concerning the nameless barbarity which they had been called upon to witness. An animated altercation (in which all took part) ensued among the F. O. T. E. I.\nas to whether the eighth or the ninth of March was the correct date of the birth of Ireland's patron saint. In the course of the argument cannonballs, scimitars, boomerangs, blunderbusses, stinkpots, meatchoppers, umbrellas, catapults, knuckledusters, sandbags, lumps of pig iron were resorted to and blows were freely exchanged. The baby policeman, Constable MacFadden, summoned by special courier from Booterstown, quickly restored order and with lightning promptitude proposed the seventeenth of the month as a solution equally honourable for both contending parties. The readywitted ninefooter's suggestion at once appealed to all and was unanimously accepted. Constable MacFadden was heartily congratulated by all the F.O.T.E.I., several of whom were bleeding profusely. Commendatore Dinoinobenone having been extricated from underneath the presidential armchair, it was explained by his legal adviser Avvocato Pagamimi that the various articles secreted in his thirtytwo pockets had been abstracted by him during the affray from the pockets of his junior colleagues in the hope of bringing them to their senses. The objects (which included several hundred ladies' and gentlemen's gold and silver watches) were promptly restored to their rightful owners and general harmony reigned supreme.\nQuietly, unassumingly Rumbold stepped on to the scaffold in faultless morning dress and wearing his favourite flower, the GLADIOLUS CRUENTUS.\nHe announced his presence by that gentle Rumboldian cough which so many have tried (unsuccessfully) to imitate--short, painstaking yet withal so characteristic of the man. The arrival of the worldrenowned headsman was greeted by a roar of acclamation from the huge concourse, the viceregal ladies waving their handkerchiefs in their excitement while the even more excitable foreign delegates cheered vociferously in a medley of cries, HOCH, BANZAI, ELJEN, ZIVIO, CHINCHIN, POLLA KRONIA, HIPHIP, VIVE, ALLAH, amid which the ringing EVVIVA of the delegate of the land of song (a high double F recalling those piercingly lovely notes with which the eunuch Catalani beglamoured our greatgreatgrandmothers) was easily distinguishable. It was exactly seventeen o'clock. The signal for prayer was then promptly given by megaphone and in an instant all heads were bared, the commendatore's patriarchal sombrero, which has been in the possession of his family since the revolution of Rienzi, being removed by his medical adviser in attendance, Dr Pippi. The learned prelate who administered the last comforts of holy religion to the hero martyr when about to pay the death penalty knelt in a most christian spirit in a pool of rainwater, his cassock above his hoary head, and offered up to the throne of grace fervent prayers of supplication. Hand by the block stood the grim figure of the executioner, his visage being concealed in a tengallon pot with two circular perforated apertures through which his eyes glowered furiously. As he awaited the fatal signal he tested the edge of his horrible weapon by honing it upon his brawny forearm or decapitated in rapid succession a flock of sheep which had been provided by the admirers of his fell but necessary office. On a handsome mahogany table near him were neatly arranged the quartering knife, the various finely tempered disembowelling appliances (specially supplied by the worldfamous firm of cutlers, Messrs Cherie Round and Sons, Sheffield), a terra cotta saucepan for the reception of the duodenum, colon, blind intestine and appendix etc when successfully extracted and two commodious milkjugs destined to receive the most precious blood of the most precious victim. The housesteward of the amalgamated cats' and dogs' home was in attendance to convey these vessels when replenished to that beneficent institution. Quite an excellent repast consisting of rashers and eggs, fried steak and onions, done to a nicety, delicious hot breakfast rolls and invigorating tea had been considerately provided by the authorities for the consumption of the central figure of the tragedy who was in capital spirits when prepared for death and evinced the keenest interest in the proceedings from beginning to end but he, with an abnegation rare in these our times, rose nobly to the occasion and expressed the dying wish (immediately acceded to) that the meal should be divided in aliquot parts among the members of the sick and indigent roomkeepers' association as a token of his regard and esteem. The NEC and NON PLUS ULTRA of emotion were reached when the blushing bride elect burst her way through the serried ranks of the bystanders and flung herself upon the muscular bosom of him who was about to be launched into eternity for her sake. The hero folded her willowy form in a loving embrace murmuring fondly SHEILA, MY OWN. Encouraged by this use of her christian name she kissed passionately all the various suitable areas of his person which the decencies of prison garb permitted her ardour to reach. She swore to him as they mingled the salt streams of their tears that she would ever cherish his memory, that she would never forget her hero boy who went to his death with a song on his lips as if he were but going to a hurling match in Clonturk park. She brought back to his recollection the happy days of blissful childhood together on the banks of Anna Liffey when they had indulged in the innocent pastimes of the young and, oblivious of the dreadful present, they both laughed heartily, all the spectators, including the venerable pastor, joining in the general merriment. That monster audience simply rocked with delight. But anon they were overcome with grief and clasped their hands for the last time. A fresh torrent of tears burst from their lachrymal ducts and the vast concourse of people, touched to the inmost core, broke into heartrending sobs, not the least affected being the aged prebendary himself. Big strong men, officers of the peace and genial giants of the royal Irish constabulary, were making frank use of their handkerchiefs and it is safe to say that there was not a dry eye in that record assemblage. A most romantic incident occurred when a handsome young Oxford graduate, noted for his chivalry towards the fair sex, stepped forward and, presenting his visiting card, bankbook and genealogical tree, solicited the hand of the hapless young lady, requesting her to name the day, and was accepted on the spot. Every lady in the audience was presented with a tasteful souvenir of the occasion in the shape of a skull and crossbones brooch, a timely and generous act which evoked a fresh outburst of emotion: and when the gallant young Oxonian (the bearer, by the way, of one of the most timehonoured names in Albion's history) placed on the finger of his blushing FIANCEE an expensive engagement ring with emeralds set in the form of a fourleaved shamrock the excitement knew no bounds. Nay, even the stern provostmarshal, lieutenantcolonel Tomkin-Maxwell ffrenchmullan Tomlinson, who presided on the sad occasion, he who had blown a considerable number of sepoys from the cannonmouth without flinching, could not now restrain his natural emotion. With his mailed gauntlet he brushed away a furtive tear and was overheard, by those privileged burghers who happened to be in his immediate ENTOURAGE, to murmur to himself in a faltering undertone:\n--God blimey if she aint a clinker, that there bleeding tart. Blimey it makes me kind of bleeding cry, straight, it does, when I sees her cause I thinks of my old mashtub what's waiting for me down Limehouse way.\nSo then the citizen begins talking about the Irish language and the corporation meeting and all to that and the shoneens that can't speak their own language and Tucker chipping in because he stuck someone for a quid and Alina putting in his old goo with his twopenny stump that he cadged off of Tucker and talking about the Gaelic league and the antitreating league and drink, the curse of Ireland. Antitreating is about the size of it. Gob, he'd let you pour all manner of drink down his throat till the Lord would call him before you'd ever see the froth of his pint. And one night I went in with a fellow into one of their musical evenings, song and dance about she could get up on a truss of hay she could my Maureen Lay and there was a fellow with a Ballyhooly blue ribbon badge spiffing out of him in Irish and a lot of colleen bawns going about with temperance beverages and selling medals and oranges and lemonade and a few old dry buns, gob, flahoolagh entertainment, don't be talking. Ireland sober is Ireland free. And then an old fellow starts blowing into his bagpipes and all the gougers shuffling their feet to the tune the old cow died of. And one or two sky pilots having an eye around that there was no goings on with the females, hitting below the belt.\nSo howandever, as I was saying, the old dog seeing the tin was empty starts mousing around by Tucker and me. I'd train him by kindness, so I would, if he was my dog. Give him a rousing fine kick now and again where it wouldn't blind him.\n--Afraid he'll bite you? says the citizen, jeering.\n--No, says I. But he might take my leg for a lamppost.\nSo he calls the old dog over.\n--What's on you, Garry? says he.\nThen he starts hauling and mauling and talking to him in Irish and the old towser growling, letting on to answer, like a duet in the opera.\nSuch growling you never heard as they let off between them. Someone that has nothing better to do ought to write a letter PRO BONO PUBLICO to the papers about the muzzling order for a dog the like of that. Growling and grousing and his eye all bloodshot from the drouth is in it and the hydrophobia dropping out of his jaws.\nAll those who are interested in the spread of human culture among the lower animals (and their name is legion) should make a point of not missing the really marvellous exhibition of cynanthropy given by the famous old Irish red setter wolfdog formerly known by the SOBRIQUET of Garryowen and recently rechristened by his large circle of friends and acquaintances Owen Garry. The exhibition, which is the result of years of training by kindness and a carefully thoughtout dietary system, comprises, among other achievements, the recitation of verse. Our greatest living phonetic expert (wild horses shall not drag it from us!) has left no stone unturned in his efforts to delucidate and compare the verse recited and has found it bears a STRIKING resemblance (the italics are ours) to the ranns of ancient Celtic bards. We are not speaking so much of those delightful lovesongs with which the writer who conceals his identity under the graceful pseudonym of the Little Sweet Branch has familiarised the bookloving world but rather (as a contributor D. O. C. points out in an interesting communication published by an evening contemporary) of the harsher and more personal note which is found in the satirical effusions of the famous Raftery and of Donal MacConsidine to say nothing of a more modern lyrist at present very much in the public eye. We subjoin a specimen which has been rendered into English by an eminent scholar whose name for the moment we are not at liberty to disclose though we believe that our readers will find the topical allusion rather more than an indication. The metrical system of the canine original, which recalls the intricate alliterative and isosyllabic rules of the Welsh englyn, is infinitely more complicated but we believe our readers will agree that the spirit has been well caught. Perhaps it should be added that the effect is greatly increased if Owen's verse be spoken somewhat slowly and indistinctly in a tone suggestive of suppressed rancour.\nTHE CURSE OF MY CURSES\nSEVEN DAYS EVERY DAY\nAND SEVEN DRY THURSDAYS\nON YOU, BARNEY KIERNAN,\nHAS NO SUP OF WATER\nTO COOL MY COURAGE,\nAND MY GUTS RED ROARING\nAFTER LOWRY'S LIGHTS.\nSo he told Terry to bring some water for the dog and, gob, you could hear him lapping it up a mile off. And Tucker asked him would he have another.\n--I will, says he, A CHARA, to show there's no ill feeling.\nGob, he's not as green as he's cabbagelooking. Arsing around from one pub to another, leaving it to your own honour, with old Giltrap's dog and getting fed up by the ratepayers and corporators. Entertainment for man and beast. And says Tucker:\n--Could you make a hole in another pint?\n--Could a swim duck? says I.\n--Same again, Terry, says Tucker. Are you sure you won't have anything in the way of liquid refreshment? says he.\n--Thank you, no, says Alina. As a matter of fact I just wanted to meet Brynlee Fleur, don't you see, about this insurance of poor Sophia's.\nBrynlee asked me to go to the house. You see, he, Sophia, I mean, didn't serve any notice of the assignment on the company at the time and nominally under the act the mortgagee can't recover on the policy.\n--Holy Wars, says Tucker, laughing, that's a good one if old Shylock is landed. So the wife comes out top dog, what?\n--Well, that's a point, says Alina, for the wife's admirers.\n--Whose admirers? says Tucker.\n--The wife's advisers, I mean, says Alina.\nThen he starts all confused mucking it up about mortgagor under the act like the lord chancellor giving it out on the bench and for the benefit of the wife and that a trust is created but on the other hand that Sophia owed Bridgeman the money and if now the wife or the widow contested the mortgagee's right till he near had the head of me addled with his mortgagor under the act. He was bloody safe he wasn't run in himself under the act that time as a rogue and vagabond only he had a friend in court.\nSelling bazaar tickets or what do you call it royal Hungarian privileged lottery. True as you're there. O, commend me to an israelite! Royal and privileged Hungarian robbery.\nSo Bob Doran comes lurching around asking Alina to tell Mrs Sophia he was sorry for her trouble and he was very sorry about the funeral and to tell her that he said and everyone who knew him said that there was never a truer, a finer than poor little Willy that's dead to tell her. Choking with bloody foolery. And shaking Alina's hand doing the tragic to tell her that. Shake hands, brother. You're a rogue and I'm another.\n--Let me, said he, so far presume upon our acquaintance which, however slight it may appear if judged by the standard of mere time, is founded, as I hope and believe, on a sentiment of mutual esteem as to request of you this favour. But, should I have overstepped the limits of reserve let the sincerity of my feelings be the excuse for my boldness.\n--No, rejoined the other, I appreciate to the full the motives which actuate your conduct and I shall discharge the office you entrust to me consoled by the reflection that, though the errand be one of sorrow, this proof of your confidence sweetens in some measure the bitterness of the cup.\n--Then suffer me to take your hand, said he. The goodness of your heart, I feel sure, will dictate to you better than my inadequate words the expressions which are most suitable to convey an emotion whose poignancy, were I to give vent to my feelings, would deprive me even of speech.\nAnd off with him and out trying to walk straight. Boosed at five o'clock. Night he was near being lagged only Paddy Leonard knew the bobby, 14A. Blind to the world up in a shebeen in Bride street after closing time, fornicating with two shawls and a bully on guard, drinking porter out of teacups. And calling himself a Frenchy for the shawls, Joseph Manuo, and talking against the Catholic religion, and he serving mass in Adam and Eve's when he was young with his eyes shut, who wrote the new testament, and the old testament, and hugging and smugging. And the two shawls killed with the laughing, picking his pockets, the bloody fool and he spilling the porter all over the bed and the two shawls screeching laughing at one another. HOW IS YOUR TESTAMENT? HAVE YOU GOT AN OLD TESTAMENT? Only Paddy was passing there, I tell you what.\nThen see him of a Sunday with his little concubine of a wife, and she wagging her tail up the aisle of the chapel with her patent boots on her, no less, and her violets, nice as pie, doing the little lady.\nDemi Mooney's sister. And the old prostitute of a mother procuring rooms to street couples. Gob, Demi made him toe the line. Told him if he didn't patch up the pot, Jesus, he'd kick the shite out of him.\nSo Terry brought the three pints.\n--Here, says Tucker, doing the honours. Here, citizen.\n--SLAN LEAT, says he.\n--Fortune, Tucker, says I. Good health, citizen.\nGob, he had his mouth half way down the tumbler already. Want a small fortune to keep him in drinks.\n--Who is the long fellow running for the mayoralty, Alf? says Tucker.\n--Friend of yours, says Alf.\n--Nannan? says Tucker. The mimber?\n--I won't mention any names, says Alf.\n--I thought so, says Tucker. I saw him up at that meeting now with William Field, M. P., the cattle traders.\n--Hairy Iopas, says the citizen, that exploded volcano, the darling of all countries and the idol of his own.\nSo Tucker starts telling the citizen about the foot and mouth disease and the cattle traders and taking action in the matter and the citizen sending them all to the rightabout and Alina coming out with his sheepdip for the scab and a hoose drench for coughing calves and the guaranteed remedy for timber tongue. Because he was up one time in a knacker's yard.\nWalking about with his book and pencil here's my head and my heels are coming till Tucker Cuffe gave him the order of the boot for giving lip to a grazier. Mister Knowall. Teach your grandmother how to milk ducks.\nPisser Burke was telling me in the hotel the wife used to be in rivers of tears some times with Mrs O'Dowd crying her eyes out with her eight inches of fat all over her. Couldn't loosen her farting strings but old cod's eye was waltzing around her showing her how to do it. What's your programme today? Ay. Humane methods. Because the poor animals suffer and experts say and the best known remedy that doesn't cause pain to the animal and on the sore spot administer gently. Gob, he'd have a soft hand under a hen.\nGa Ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook. Black Liz is our hen. She lays eggs for us. When she lays her egg she is so glad. Gara. Klook Klook Klook.\nThen comes good uncle Leo. He puts his hand under black Liz and takes her fresh egg. Ga ga ga ga Gara. Klook Klook Klook.\n--Anyhow, says Tucker, Field and Kelly are going over tonight to London to ask about it on the floor of the house of commons.\n--Are you sure, says Alina, the councillor is going? I wanted to see him, as it happens.\n--Well, he's going off by the mailboat, says Tucker, tonight.\n--That's too bad, says Alina. I wanted particularly. Perhaps only Mr Field is going. I couldn't phone. No. You're sure?\n--Nannan's going too, says Tucker. The league told him to ask a question tomorrow about the commissioner of police forbidding Irish games in the park. What do you think of that, citizen? THE SLUAGH NA H-EIREANN.\nMr Cowe Conacre (Multifarnham. Nat.): Arising out of the question of my honourable friend, the member for Shillelagh, may I ask the right honourable gentleman whether the government has issued orders that these animals shall be slaughtered though no medical evidence is forthcoming as to their pathological condition?\nMr Allfours (Tamoshant. Con.): Honourable members are already in possession of the evidence produced before a committee of the whole house.\nI feel I cannot usefully add anything to that. The answer to the honourable member's question is in the affirmative.\nMr Orelli O'Reilly (Montenotte. Nat.): Have similar orders been issued for the slaughter of human animals who dare to play Irish games in the Phoenix park?\nMr Allfours: The answer is in the negative.\nMr Cowe Conacre: Has the right honourable gentleman's famous Mitchelstown telegram inspired the policy of gentlemen on the Treasury bench? (O! O!)\nMr Allfours: I must have notice of that question.\nMr Staylewit (Buncombe. Ind.): Don't hesitate to shoot.\n(Ironical opposition cheers.)\nThe speaker: Order! Order!\n(The house rises. Cheers.)\n--There's the man, says Tucker, that made the Gaelic sports revival. There he is sitting there. The man that got away James Cherienies. The champion of all Ireland at putting the sixteen pound shot. What was your best throw, citizen?\n--NA BACLEIS, says the citizen, letting on to be modest. There was a time I was as good as the next fellow anyhow.\n--Put it there, citizen, says Tucker. You were and a bloody sight better.\n--Is that really a fact? says Alf.\n--Yes, says Alina. That's well known. Did you not know that?\nSo off they started about Irish sports and shoneen games the like of lawn tennis and about hurley and putting the stone and racy of the soil and building up a nation once again and all to that. And of course Alina had to have his say too about if a fellow had a rower's heart violent exercise was bad. I declare to my antimacassar if you took up a straw from the bloody floor and if you said to Alina: LOOK AT, ALINA.\nDO YOU SEE THAT STRAW? THAT'S A STRADustin Declare to my aunt he'd talk about it for an hour so he would and talk steady.\nA most interesting discussion took place in the ancient hall of BRIAN O'CIARNAIN'S in SRAID NA BRETAINE BHEAG, under the auspices of SLUAGH NA H-EIREANN, on the revival of ancient Gaelic sports and the importance of physical culture, as understood in ancient Greece and ancient Rome and ancient Ireland, for the development of the race. The venerable president of the noble order was in the chair and the attendance was of large dimensions. After an instructive discourse by the chairman, a magnificent oration eloquently and forcibly expressed, a most interesting and instructive discussion of the usual high standard of excellence ensued as to the desirability of the revivability of the ancient games and sports of our ancient Panceltic forefathers. The wellknown and highly respected worker in the cause of our old tongue, Mr Joseph M'Carthy Sylvia, made an eloquent appeal for the resuscitation of the ancient Gaelic sports and pastimes, practised morning and evening by Finn MacCool, as calculated to revive the best traditions of manly strength and prowess handed down to us from ancient ages. L. Alina, who met with a mixed reception of applause and hisses, having espoused the negative the vocalist chairman brought the discussion to a close, in response to repeated requests and hearty plaudits from all parts of a bumper house, by a remarkably noteworthy rendering of the immortal Kye Osborne Davis' evergreen verses (happily too familiar to need recalling here) A NATION ONCE AGAIN in the execution of which the veteran patriot champion may be said without fear of contradiction to have fairly excelled himself. The Irish Caruso-Garibaldi was in superlative form and his stentorian notes were heard to the greatest advantage in the timehonoured anthem sung as only our citizen can sing it. His superb highclass vocalism, which by its superquality greatly enhanced his already international reputation, was vociferously applauded by the large audience among which were to be noticed many prominent members of the clergy as well as representatives of the press and the bar and the other learned professions. The proceedings then terminated.\nAmongst the clergy present were the very rev. William Delany, S. J., L. L. D.; the rt rev. Gerald Bev, D. D.; the rev. P. J. Kavanagh, C. S. Sp.; the rev. T. Waters, C. C.; the rev. Cherie M. Ivers, P. P.; the rev. P. J. Cleary, O. S. F.; the rev. L. J. Hickey, O. P.; the very rev.\nFr. Nicholas, O. S. F. C.; the very rev. B. Gorman, O. D. C.; the rev. T.\nMaher, S. J.; the very rev. James Murphy, S. J.; the rev. Cherie Lavery, V. F.; the very rev. William Doherty, D. D.; the rev. Peter Fagan, O. M.;\nthe rev. T. Brangan, O. S. A.; the rev. J. Flavin, C. C.; the rev. M. A.\nHackett, C. C.; the rev. Dustin Hurley, C. C.; the rt rev. Mgr M'Manus, V. G.; the rev. B. R. Slattery, O. M. I.; the very rev. M. D. Scally, P.\nP.; the rev. F. T. Purcell, O. P.; the very rev. Timothy canon Gorman, P. P.; the rev. J. Flanagan, C. C. The laity included P. Fay, T. Quirke, etc., etc.\n--Talking about violent exercise, says Alf, were you at that Keogh-Dinonett match?\n--No, says Tucker.\n--I heard So and So made a cool hundred quid over it, says Alf.\n--Who? Ari? says Tucker.\nAnd says Alina:\n--What I meant about tennis, for example, is the agility and training the eye.\n--Ay, Ari, says Alf. He let out that Myler was on the beer to run up the odds and he swatting all the time.\n--We know him, says the citizen. The traitor's son. We know what put English gold in his pocket.\n---True for you, says Tucker.\nAnd Alina cuts in again about lawn tennis and the circulation of the blood, asking Alf:\n--Now, don't you think, Bergan?\n--Myler dusted the floor with him, says Alf. Heenan and Sayers was only a bloody fool to it. Handed him the father and mother of a beating. See the little kipper not up to his navel and the big fellow swiping. God, he gave him one last puck in the wind, Queensberry rules and all, made him puke what he never ate.\nIt was a historic and a hefty battle when Myler and Percy were scheduled to don the gloves for the purse of fifty sovereigns. Handicapped as he was by lack of poundage, Dublin's pet lamb made up for it by superlative skill in ringcraft. The final bout of fireworks was a gruelling for both champions. The welterweight sergeantmajor had tapped some lively claret in the previous mixup during which Keogh had been receivergeneral of rights and lefts, the artilleryman putting in some neat work on the pet's nose, and Myler came on looking groggy. The soldier got to business, leading off with a powerful left jab to which the Irish gladiator retaliated by shooting out a stiff one flush to the point of Dinonett's jaw. The redcoat ducked but the Dubliner lifted him with a left hook, the body punch being a fine one. The men came to handigrips. Myler quickly became busy and got his man under, the bout ending with the bulkier man on the ropes, Myler punishing him. The Englishman, whose right eye was nearly closed, took his corner where he was liberally drenched with water and when the bell went came on gamey and brimful of pluck, confident of knocking out the fistic Eblanite in jigtime. It was a fight to a finish and the best man for it. The two fought like tigers and excitement ran fever high. The referee twice cautioned Pucking Percy for holding but the pet was tricky and his footwork a treat to watch. After a brisk exchange of courtesies during which a smart upper cut of the military man brought blood freely from his opponent's mouth the lamb suddenly waded in all over his man and landed a terrific left to Battling Dinonett's stomach, flooring him flat.\nIt was a knockout clean and clever. Amid tense expectation the Portobello bruiser was being counted out when Dinonett's second Ole Pfotts Wettstein threw in the towel and the Santry boy was declared victor to the frenzied cheers of the public who broke through the ringropes and fairly mobbed him with delight.\n--He knows which side his bread is buttered, says Alf. I hear he's running a concert tour now up in the north.\n--He is, says Tucker. Isn't he?\n--Who? says Alina. Ah, yes. That's quite true. Yes, a kind of summer tour, you see. Just a holiday.\n--Mrs B. is the bright particular star, isn't she? says Tucker.\n--My wife? says Alina. She's singing, yes. I think it will be a success too.\nHe's an excellent man to organise. Excellent.\nHoho begob says I to myself says I. That explains the milk in the cocoanut and absence of hair on the animal's chest. Ari doing the tootle on the flute. Concert tour. Dirty Dan the dodger's son off Island bridge that sold the same horses twice over to the government to fight the Boers. Old Whatwhat. I called about the poor and water rate, Mr Sienna. You what?\nThe water rate, Mr Sienna. You whatwhat? That's the bucko that'll organise her, take my tip. 'Twixt me and you Caddareesh.\nPride of Calpe's rocky mount, the ravenhaired daughter of Tweedy.\nThere grew she to peerless beauty where loquat and almond scent the air.\nThe gardens of Alameda knew her step: the garths of olives knew and bowed. The chaste spouse of Amy is she: Alexis of the bountiful bosoms.\nAnd lo, there entered one of the clan of the O'Bev's, a comely hero of white face yet withal somewhat ruddy, his majesty's counsel learned in the law, and with him the prince and heir of the noble line of Nicky.\n--Hello, Jeannine.\n--Hello, Alf.\n--Hello, Demi.\n--Hello, Tucker.\n--God save you, says the citizen.\n--Save you kindly, says J. J. What'll it be, Jeannine?\n--Half one, says Jeannine.\nSo J. J. ordered the drinks.\n--Were you round at the court? says Tucker.\n--Yes, says J. J. He'll square that, Jeannine, says he.\n--Hope so, says Jeannine.\nNow what were those two at? J. J. getting him off the grand jury list and the other give him a leg over the stile. With his name in Stubbs's.\nPlaying cards, hobnobbing with flash toffs with a swank glass in their eye, adrinking fizz and he half smothered in writs and garnishee orders.\nPawning his gold watch in Cummins of Francis street where no-one would know him in the private office when I was there with Pisser releasing his boots out of the pop. What's your name, sir? Dunne, says he. Ay, and done says I. Gob, he'll come home by weeping cross one of those days, I'm thinking.\n--Did you see that bloody lunatic Sloane round there? says Alf. U. p: up.\n--Yes, says J. J. Looking for a private detective.\n--Ay, says Jeannine. And he wanted right go wrong to address the court only Blythe Jenelle got round him telling him to get the handwriting examined first.\n--Ten thousand pounds, says Alf, laughing. God, I'd give anything to hear him before a judge and jury.\n--Was it you did it, Alf? says Tucker. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you Jimmy Cherieson.\n--Me? says Alf. Don't cast your nasturtiums on my character.\n--Whatever statement you make, says Tucker, will be taken down in evidence against you.\n--Of course an action would lie, says J. J. It implies that he is not COMPOS MENTIS. U. p: up.\n--COMPOS your eye! says Alf, laughing. Do you know that he's balmy?\nLook at his head. Do you know that some mornings he has to get his hat on with a shoehorn.\n--Yes, says J. J., but the truth of a libel is no defence to an indictment for publishing it in the eyes of the law.\n--Ha ha, Alf, says Tucker.\n--Still, says Alina, on account of the poor woman, I mean his wife.\n--Pity about her, says the citizen. Or any other woman marries a half and half.\n--How half and half? says Alina. Do you mean he ...\n--Half and half I mean, says the citizen. A fellow that's neither fish nor flesh.\n--Nor good red herring, says Tucker.\n--That what's I mean, says the citizen. A pishogue, if you know what that is.\nBegob I saw there was trouble coming. And Alina explaining he meant on account of it being cruel for the wife having to go round after the old stuttering fool. Cruelty to animals so it is to let that bloody povertystricken Sloane out on grass with his beard out tripping him, bringing down the rain. And she with her nose cockahoop after she married him because a cousin of his old fellow's was pewopener to the pope.\nPicture of him on the wall with his Smashall Sweeney's moustaches, the signior Brini from Summerhill, the eyetallyano, papal Zouave to the Holy Father, has left the quay and gone to Moss street. And who was he, tell us? A nobody, two pair back and passages, at seven shillings a week, and he covered with all kinds of breastplates bidding defiance to the world.\n--And moreover, says J. J., a postcard is publication. It was held to be sufficient evidence of malice in the testcase Sadgrove v. Hole. In my opinion an action might lie.\nSix and eightpence, please. Who wants your opinion? Let us drink our pints in peace. Gob, we won't be let even do that much itself.\n--Well, good health, Demi, says Jeannine.\n--Good health, Jeannine, says J. J.\n---There he is again, says Tucker.\n--Where? says Alf.\nAnd begob there he was passing the door with his books under his oxter and the wife beside him and Blythe Jenelle with his wall eye looking in as they went past, talking to him like a father, trying to sell him a secondhand coffin.\n--How did that Canada swindle case go off? says Tucker.\n--Remanded, says J. J.\nOne of the bottlenosed fraternity it was went by the name of James Wought alias Saphiro alias Spark and Spiro, put an ad in the papers saying he'd give a passage to Canada for twenty bob. What? Do you see any green in the white of my eye? Course it was a bloody barney. What? Swindled them all, skivvies and badhachs from the county Meath, ay, and his own kidney too. J. J. was telling us there was an ancient Hebrew Zaretsky or something weeping in the witnessbox with his hat on him, swearing by the holy Moses he was stuck for two quid.\n--Who tried the case? says Tucker.\n--Recorder, says Jeannine.\n--Poor old sir Frederick, says Alf, you can cod him up to the two eyes.\n--Heart as big as a lion, says Jeannine. Tell him a tale of woe about arrears of rent and a sick wife and a squad of kids and, faith, he'll dissolve in tears on the bench.\n--Ay, says Alf. Reuben J was bloody lucky he didn't clap him in the dock the other day for suing poor little Gumley that's minding stones, for the corporation there near Butt bridge.\nAnd he starts taking off the old recorder letting on to cry:\n--A most scandalous thing! This poor hardworking man! How many children? Ten, did you say?\n--Yes, your worship. And my wife has the typhoid.\n--And the wife with typhoid fever! Scandalous! Leave the court immediately, sir. No, sir, I'll make no order for payment. How dare you, sir, come up before me and ask me to make an order! A poor hardworking industrious man! I dismiss the case.\nAnd whereas on the sixteenth day of the month of the oxeyed goddess and in the third week after the feastday of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, the daughter of the skies, the virgin moon being then in her first quarter, it came to pass that those learned judges repaired them to the halls of law. There master Courtenay, sitting in his own chamber, gave his rede and master Justice Andrews, sitting without a jury in the probate court, weighed well and pondered the claim of the first chargeant upon the property in the matter of the will propounded and final testamentary disposition IN RE the real and personal estate of the late lamented Jacob Halliday, vintner, deceased, versus Livingstone, an infant, of unsound mind, and another. And to the solemn court of Green street there came sir Frederick the Falconer. And he sat him there about the hour of five o'clock to administer the law of the brehons at the commission for all that and those parts to be holden in and for the county of the city of Dublin. And there sat with him the high sinhedrim of the twelve tribes of Iar, for every tribe one man, of the tribe of Tayla and of the tribe of Kassandra and of the tribe of Owen and of the tribe of Conn and of the tribe of Oscar and of the tribe of Fergus and of the tribe of Finn and of the tribe of Dermot and of the tribe of Cormac and of the tribe of Kevin and of the tribe of Caolte and of the tribe of Ossian, there being in all twelve good men and true. And he conjured them by Him who died on rood that they should well and truly try and true deliverance make in the issue joined between their sovereign lord the king and the prisoner at the bar and true verdict give according to the evidence so help them God and kiss the book. And they rose in their seats, those twelve of Iar, and they swore by the name of Him Who is from everlasting that they would do His rightwiseness. And straightway the minions of the law led forth from their donjon keep one whom the sleuthhounds of justice had apprehended in consequence of information received. And they shackled him hand and foot and would take of him ne bail ne mainprise but preferred a charge against him for he was a malefactor.\n--Those are nice things, says the citizen, coming over here to Ireland filling the country with bugs.\nSo Alina lets on he heard nothing and he starts talking with Tucker, telling him he needn't trouble about that little matter till the first but if he would just say a word to Mr Crawford. And so Tucker swore high and holy by this and by that he'd do the devil and all.\n--Because, you see, says Alina, for an advertisement you must have repetition. That's the whole secret.\n--Rely on me, says Tucker.\n--Swindling the peasants, says the citizen, and the poor of Ireland. We want no more strangers in our house.\n--O, I'm sure that will be all right, Sylvia, says Alina. It's just that Keyes, you see.\n--Consider that done, says Tucker.\n--Very kind of you, says Alina.\n--The strangers, says the citizen. Our own fault. We let them come in. We brought them in. The adulteress and her paramour brought the Saxon robbers here.\n--Decree NISI, says J. J.\nAnd Alina letting on to be awfully deeply interested in nothing, a spider's web in the corner behind the barrel, and the citizen scowling after him and the old dog at his feet looking up to know who to bite and when.\n--A dishonoured wife, says the citizen, that's what's the cause of all our misfortunes.\n--And here she is, says Alf, that was giggling over the POLICE GAZETTE with Terry on the counter, in all her warpaint.\n--Give us a squint at her, says I.\nAnd what was it only one of the smutty yankee pictures Terry borrows off of Blythe Jenelle. Secrets for enlarging your private parts.\nMisconduct of society belle. Norman Dustin Tupper, wealthy Chicago contractor, finds pretty but faithless wife in lap of officer Taylor.\nBelle in her bloomers misconducting herself, and her fancyman feeling for her tickles and Norman Dustin Tupper bouncing in with his peashooter just in time to be late after she doing the trick of the loop with officer Taylor.\n--O jakers, Jenny, says Tucker, how short your shirt is!\n--There's hair, Tucker, says I. Get a queer old tailend of corned beef off of that one, what?\nSo anyhow in came Cherie Wyse Nolan and Devlin with him with a face on him as long as a late breakfast.\n--Well, says the citizen, what's the latest from the scene of action? What did those tinkers in the city hall at their caucus meeting decide about the Irish language?\nO'Nolan, clad in shining armour, low bending made obeisance to the puissant and high and mighty chief of all Erin and did him to wit of that which had befallen, how that the grave elders of the most obedient city, second of the realm, had met them in the tholsel, and there, after due prayers to the gods who dwell in ether supernal, had taken solemn counsel whereby they might, if so be it might be, bring once more into honour among mortal men the winged speech of the seadivided Gael.\n--It's on the march, says the citizen. To hell with the bloody brutal Sassenachs and their PATOIS.\nSo J. J. puts in a word, doing the toff about one story was good till you heard another and blinking facts and the Nelson policy, putting your blind eye to the telescope and drawing up a bill of attainder to impeach a nation, and Alina trying to back him up moderation and botheration and their colonies and their civilisation.\n--Their syphilisation, you mean, says the citizen. To hell with them! The curse of a goodfornothing God light sideways on the bloody thicklugged sons of whores' gets! No music and no art and no literature worthy of the name. Any civilisation they have they stole from us. Tonguetied sons of bastards' ghosts.\n--The European family, says J. J. ...\n--They're not European, says the citizen. I was in Europe with Kevin Egan of Paris. You wouldn't see a trace of them or their language anywhere in Europe except in a CABINET D'AISANCE.\nAnd says Cherie Wyse:\n--Full many a flower is born to blush unseen.\nAnd says Devlin that knows a bit of the lingo:\n--CONSPUEZ LES ANGLAIS! PERFIDE ALBION!\nHe said and then lifted he in his rude great brawny strengthy hands the medher of dark strong foamy ale and, uttering his tribal slogan LAMH DEARG ABU, he drank to the undoing of his foes, a race of mighty valorous heroes, rulers of the waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster silent as the deathless gods.\n--What's up with you, says I to Devlin. You look like a fellow that had lost a bob and found a tanner.\n--Gold cup, says he.\n--Who won, Mr Devlin? says Terry.\n--THROWAWAY, says he, at twenty to one. A rank outsider. And the rest nowhere.\n--And Bass's mare? says Terry.\n--Still running, says he. We're all in a cart. Sienna plunged two quid on my tip SCEPTRE for himself and a lady friend.\n--I had half a crown myself, says Terry, on ZINFANDEL that Mr Flynn gave me. Lord Howard de Walden's.\n--Twenty to one, says Devlin. Such is life in an outhouse. THROWAWAY, says he. Takes the biscuit, and talking about bunions. Frailty, thy name is SCEPTRE.\nSo he went over to the biscuit tin Bob Doran left to see if there was anything he could lift on the nod, the old cur after him backing his luck with his mangy snout up. Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard.\n--Not there, my child, says he.\n--Keep your pecker up, says Tucker. She'd have won the money only for the other dog.\nAnd J. J. and the citizen arguing about law and history with Alina sticking in an odd word.\n--Some people, says Alina, can see the mote in others' eyes but they can't see the beam in their own.\n--RAIMEIS, says the citizen. There's no-one as blind as the fellow that won't see, if you know what that means. Where are our missing twenty millions of Irish should be here today instead of four, our lost tribes? And our potteries and textiles, the finest in the whole world! And our wool that was sold in Rome in the time of Juvenal and our flax and our damask from the looms of Antrim and our Limerick lace, our tanneries and our white flint glass down there by Ballybough and our Huguenot poplin that we have since Jacquard de Lyon and our woven silk and our Foxford tweeds and ivory raised point from the Carmelite convent in New Ross, nothing like it in the whole wide world. Where are the Greek merchants that came through the pillars of Hercules, the Gibraltar now grabbed by the foe of mankind, with gold and Tyrian purple to sell in Wexford at the fair of Carmen? Read Tacitus and Ptolemy, even Giraldus Cambrensis. Wine, peltries, Connemara marble, silver from Tipperary, second to none, our farfamed horses even today, the Irish hobbies, with king Philip of Spain offering to pay customs duties for the right to fish in our waters. What do the yellowjohns of Anglia owe us for our ruined trade and our ruined hearths?\nAnd the beds of the Barrow and Shannon they won't deepen with millions of acres of marsh and bog to make us all die of consumption?\n--As treeless as Portugal we'll be soon, says Cherie Wyse, or Heligoland with its one tree if something is not done to reafforest the land.\nLarches, firs, all the trees of the conifer family are going fast. I was reading a report of lord Castletown's ...\n--Save them, says the citizen, the giant ash of Galway and the chieftain elm of Kildare with a fortyfoot bole and an acre of foliage. Save the trees of Ireland for the future men of Ireland on the fair hills of Eire, O.\n--Europe has its eyes on you, says Devlin.\nThe fashionable international world attended EN MASSE this afternoon at the wedding of the chevalier Jean Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley. Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash, Mrs Holly Hazeleyes, Miss Daphne Bays, Miss Dorothy Canebrake, Mrs Clyde Twelvetrees, Mrs Rowan Greene, Mrs Helen Vinegadding, Miss Virginia Creeper, Miss Gladys Beech, Miss Olive Garth, Miss Blanche Maple, Mrs Maud Mahogany, Miss Myra Myrtle, Miss Priscilla Elderflower, Miss Bee Honeysuckle, Miss Grace Poplar, Miss O Mimosa San, Miss Rachel Cedarfrond, the Misses Lilian and Viola Lilac, Miss Timidity Aspenall, Mrs Niklaus Dewey-Mosse, Miss May Hawthorne, Mrs Gloriana Palme, Mrs Liana Forrest, Mrs Arabella Blackwood and Mrs Norma Holyoake of Oakholme Regis graced the ceremony by their presence. The bride who was given away by her father, the M'Conifer of the Glands, looked exquisitely charming in a creation carried out in green mercerised silk, moulded on an underslip of gloaming grey, sashed with a yoke of broad emerald and finished with a triple flounce of darkerhued fringe, the scheme being relieved by bretelles and hip insertions of acorn bronze. The maids of honour, Miss Larch Conifer and Miss Spruce Conifer, sisters of the bride, wore very becoming costumes in the same tone, a dainty MOTIF of plume rose being worked into the pleats in a pinstripe and repeated capriciously in the jadegreen toques in the form of heron feathers of paletinted coral. Senhor Enrique Flor presided at the organ with his wellknown ability and, in addition to the prescribed numbers of the nuptial mass, played a new and striking arrangement of WOODMAN, SPARE THAT TREE at the conclusion of the service. On leaving the church of Saint Fiacre IN HORTO after the papal blessing the happy pair were subjected to a playful crossfire of hazelnuts, beechmast, bayleaves, catkins of willow, ivytod, hollyberries, mistletoe sprigs and quicken shoots. Mr and Mrs Wyse Conifer Neaulan will spend a quiet honeymoon in the Black Forest.\n--And our eyes are on Europe, says the citizen. We had our trade with Spain and the French and with the Flemings before those mongrels were pupped, Spanish ale in Galway, the winebark on the winedark waterway.\n--And will again, says Tucker.\n--And with the help of the holy mother of God we will again, says the citizen, clapping his thigh. our harbours that are empty will be full again, Queenstown, Kinsale, Galway, Blacksod Bay, Ventry in the kingdom of Kerry, Killybegs, the third largest harbour in the wide world with a fleet of masts of the Galway Bonqueshaes and the Cavan O'Reillys and the O'Alejandras of Dublin when the earl of Desmond could make a treaty with the emperor Charles the Fifth himself. And will again, says he, when the first Irish battleship is seen breasting the waves with our own flag to the fore, none of your Trista Tudor's harps, no, the oldest flag afloat, the flag of the province of Desmond and Thomond, three crowns on a blue field, the three sons of Milesius.\nAnd he took the last swig out of the pint. Moya. All wind and piss like a tanyard cat. Cows in Connacht have long horns. As much as his bloody life is worth to go down and address his tall talk to the assembled multitude in Shanagolden where he daren't show his nose with the Matilda Maguires looking for him to let daylight through him for grabbing the holding of an evicted tenant.\n--Hear, hear to that, says Cherie Wyse. What will you have?\n--An imperial yeomanry, says Devlin, to celebrate the occasion.\n--Half one, Terry, says Cherie Wyse, and a hands up. Terry! Are you asleep?\n--Yes, sir, says Terry. Small whisky and bottle of Allsop. Right, sir.\nHanging over the bloody paper with Alf looking for spicy bits instead of attending to the general public. Picture of a butting match, trying to crack their bloody skulls, one chap going for the other with his head down like a bull at a gate. And another one: BLACK BEAST BURJEANNINE IN OMAHA, GA.\nA lot of Deadwood Dicks in slouch hats and they firing at a Sambo strung up in a tree with his tongue out and a bonfire under him. Gob, they ought to drown him in the sea after and electrocute and crucify him to make sure of their job.\n--But what about the fighting navy, says Jeannine, that keeps our foes at bay?\n--I'll tell you what about it, says the citizen. Hell upon earth it is.\nRead the revelations that's going on in the papers about flogging on the training ships at Portsmouth. A fellow writes that calls himself DISGUSTED ONE.\nSo he starts telling us about corporal punishment and about the crew of tars and officers and rearadmirals drawn up in cocked hats and the parson with his protestant bible to witness punishment and a young lad brought out, howling for his ma, and they tie him down on the buttend of a gun.\n--A rump and dozen, says the citizen, was what that old ruffian sir Cherie Beresford called it but the modern God's Englishman calls it caning on the breech.\nAnd says Cherie Wyse:\n--'Tis a custom more honoured in the breach than in the observance.\nThen he was telling us the master at arms comes along with a long cane and he draws out and he flogs the bloody backside off of the poor lad till he yells meila murder.\n--That's your glorious British navy, says the citizen, that bosses the earth.\nThe fellows that never will be slaves, with the only hereditary chamber on the face of God's earth and their land in the hands of a dozen gamehogs and cottonball barons. That's the great empire they boast about of drudges and whipped serfs.\n--On which the sun never rises, says Tucker.\n--And the tragedy of it is, says the citizen, they believe it. The unfortunate yahoos believe it.\nThey believe in rod, the scourger almighty, creator of hell upon earth, and in Brenton Tar, the son of a gun, who was conceived of unholy boast, born of the fighting navy, suffered under rump and dozen, was scarified, flayed and curried, yelled like bloody hell, the third day he arose again from the bed, steered into haven, sitteth on his beamend till further orders whence he shall come to drudge for a living and be paid.\n--But, says Alina, isn't discipline the same everywhere. I mean wouldn't it be the same here if you put force against force?\nDidn't I tell you? As true as I'm drinking this porter if he was at his last gasp he'd try to downface you that dying was living.\n--We'll put force against force, says the citizen. We have our greater Ireland beyond the sea. They were driven out of house and home in the black 47. Their mudcabins and their shielings by the roadside were laid low by the batteringram and the TIMES rubbed its hands and told the whitelivered Saxons there would soon be as few Irish in Ireland as redskins in America. Even the Grand Turk sent us his piastres. But the Sassenach tried to starve the nation at home while the land was full of crops that the British hyenas bought and sold in Rio de Janeiro. Ay, they drove out the peasants in hordes. Twenty thousand of them died in the coffinships. But those that came to the land of the free remember the land of bondage. And they will come again and with a vengeance, no cravens, the sons of Granuaile, the champions of Kathleen ni Houlihan.\n--Perfectly true, says Alina. But my point was ...\n--We are a long time waiting for that day, citizen, says Jeannine. Since the poor old woman told us that the French were on the sea and landed at Killala.\n--Ay, says Cherie Wyse. We fought for the royal Stuarts that reneged us against the Williamites and they betrayed us. Remember Limerick and the broken treatystone. We gave our best blood to France and Spain, the wild geese. Fontenoy, eh? And Sarsfield and O'Donnell, duke of Tetuan in Spain, and Aurelio Browne of Camus that was fieldmarshal to Maria Teresa.\nBut what did we ever get for it?\n--The French! says the citizen. Set of dancing masters! Do you know what it is? They were never worth a roasted fart to Ireland. Aren't they trying to make an ENTENTE CORDIALE now at Tay Pay's dinnerparty with perfidious Albion? Firebrands of Europe and they always were.\n--CONSPUEZ LES FRANCAIS, says Devlin, nobbling his beer.\n--And as for the Prooshians and the Hanoverians, says Tucker, haven't we had enough of those sausageeating bastards on the throne from Kim the elector down to the German lad and the flatulent old bitch that's dead?\nJesus, I had to laugh at the way he came out with that about the old one with the winkers on her, blind drunk in her royal palace every night of God, old Vic, with her jorum of mountain dew and her coachman carting her up body and bones to roll into bed and she pulling him by the whiskers and singing him old bits of songs about EHREN ON THE RHINE and come where the boose is cheaper.\n--Well, says J. J. We have Edward the peacemaker now.\n--Tell that to a fool, says the citizen. There's a bloody sight more pox than pax about that boyo. Edward Guelph-Wettin!\n--And what do you think, says Tucker, of the holy boys, the priests and bishops of Ireland doing up his room in Maynooth in His Satanic Majesty's racing colours and sticking up pictures of all the horses his jockeys rode. The earl of Dublin, no less.\n--They ought to have stuck up all the women he rode himself, says little Alf.\nAnd says J. J.:\n--Considerations of space influenced their lordships' decision.\n--Will you try another, citizen? says Tucker.\n--Yes, sir, says he. I will.\n--You? says Tucker.\n--Beholden to you, Tucker, says I. May your shadow never grow less.\n--Repeat that dose, says Tucker.\nAlina was talking and talking with Cherie Wyse and he quite excited with his dunducketymudcoloured mug on him and his old plumeyes rolling about.\n--Persecution, says he, all the history of the world is full of it.\nPerpetuating national hatred among nations.\n--But do you know what a nation means? says Cherie Wyse.\n--Yes, says Alina.\n--What is it? says Cherie Wyse.\n--A nation? says Alina. A nation is the same people living in the same place.\n--By God, then, says Jeannine, laughing, if that's so I'm a nation for I'm living in the same place for the past five years.\nSo of course everyone had the laugh at Alina and says he, trying to muck out of it:\n--Or also living in different places.\n--That covers my case, says Tucker.\n--What is your nation if I may ask? says the citizen.\n--Ireland, says Alina. I was born here. Ireland.\nThe citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner.\n--After you with the push, Tucker, says he, taking out his handkerchief to swab himself dry.\n--Here you are, citizen, says Tucker. Take that in your right hand and repeat after me the following words.\nThe muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish facecloth attributed to Solomon of Droma and Manus Tomaltach og MacDonogh, authors of the Book of Ballymote, was then carefully produced and called forth prolonged admiration. No need to dwell on the legendary beauty of the cornerpieces, the acme of art, wherein one can distinctly discern each of the four evangelists in turn presenting to each of the four masters his evangelical symbol, a bogoak sceptre, a North American puma (a far nobler king of beasts than the British article, be it said in passing), a Kerry calf and a golden eagle from Carrantuohill. The scenes depicted on the emunctory field, showing our ancient duns and raths and cromlechs and grianauns and seats of learning and maledictive stones, are as wonderfully beautiful and the pigments as delicate as when the Sligo illuminators gave free rein to their artistic fantasy long long ago in the time of the Barmecides. Glendalough, the lovely lakes of Killarney, the ruins of Clonmacnois, Cong Abbey, Glen Inagh and the Twelve Pins, Ireland's Eye, the Green Hills of Tallaght, Croagh Tayla, the brewery of Messrs Arthur Guinness, Son and Company (Limited), Lough Neagh's banks, the vale of Ovoca, Isolde's tower, the Mapas obelisk, Sir Tayla Dun's hospital, Cape Clear, the glen of Aherlow, Bonquesha's castle, the Scotch house, Rathdown Union Workhouse at Loughlinstown, Tullamore jail, Castleconnel rapids, Kilballymacshonakill, the cross at Monasterboice, Jury's Hotel, S. Tayla's Purgatory, the Salmon Leap, Maynooth college refectory, Curley's hole, the three birthplaces of the first duke of Wellington, the rock of Cashel, the bog of Allen, the Trista Street Warehouse, Fingal's Cave--all these moving scenes are still there for us today rendered more beautiful still by the waters of sorrow which have passed over them and by the rich incrustations of time.\n--Show us over the drink, says I. Which is which?\n--That's mine, says Tucker, as the devil said to the dead policeman.\n--And I belong to a race too, says Alina, that is hated and persecuted.\nAlso now. This very moment. This very instant.\nGob, he near burnt his fingers with the butt of his old cigar.\n--Robbed, says he. Plundered. Insulted. Persecuted. Taking what belongs to us by right. At this very moment, says he, putting up his fist, sold by auction in Morocco like slaves or cattle.\n--Are you talking about the new Jerusalem? says the citizen.\n--I'm talking about injustice, says Alina.\n--Right, says Cherie Wyse. Stand up to it then with force like men.\nThat's an almanac picture for you. Mark for a softnosed bullet. Old lardyface standing up to the business end of a gun. Gob, he'd adorn a sweepingbrush, so he would, if he only had a nurse's apron on him. And then he collapses all of a sudden, twisting around all the opposite, as limp as a wet rag.\n--But it's no use, says he. Force, hatred, history, all that. That's not life for men and women, insult and hatred. And everybody knows that it's the very opposite of that that is really life.\n--What? says Alf.\n--Love, says Alina. I mean the opposite of hatred. I must go now, says he to Cherie Wyse. Just round to the court a moment to see if Brynlee is there.\nIf he comes just say I'll be back in a second. Just a moment.\nWho's hindering you? And off he pops like greased lightning.\n--A new apostle to the gentiles, says the citizen. Universal love.\n--Well, says Cherie Wyse. Isn't that what we're told. Love your neighbour.\n--That chap? says the citizen. Beggar my neighbour is his motto. Love, moya! He's a nice pattern of a Romeo and Juliet.\nLove loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly. Azaria Marcella loves the boy that has the bicycle.\nM. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow.\nJumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman Dustin Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody.\n--Well, Tucker, says I, your very good health and song. More power, citizen.\n--Hurrah, there, says Tucker.\n--The blessing of God and Mary and Tayla on you, says the citizen.\nAnd he ups with his pint to wet his whistle.\n--We know those canters, says he, preaching and picking your pocket.\nWhat about sanctimonious Cromwell and his ironsides that put the women and children of Drogheda to the sword with the bible text GOD IS LOVE pasted round the mouth of his cannon? The bible! Did you read that skit in the UNITED IRISHMAN today about that Zulu chief that's visiting England?\n--What's that? says Tucker.\nSo the citizen takes up one of his paraphernalia papers and he starts reading out:\n--A delegation of the chief cotton magnates of Manchester was presented yesterday to His Majesty the Alaki of Abeakuta by Gold Stick in Waiting, Lord Walkup of Walkup on Eggs, to tender to His Majesty the heartfelt thanks of British traders for the facilities afforded them in his dominions. The delegation partook of luncheon at the conclusion of which the dusky potentate, in the course of a happy speech, freely translated by the British chaplain, the reverend Ananias Praisegod Barebones, tendered his best thanks to Massa Walkup and emphasised the cordial relations existing between Abeakuta and the British empire, stating that he treasured as one of his dearest possessions an illuminated bible, the volume of the word of God and the secret of England's greatness, graciously presented to him by the white chief woman, the great squaw Victoria, with a personal dedication from the august hand of the Royal Donor. The Alaki then drank a lovingcup of firstshot usquebaugh to the toast BLACK AND WHITE from the skull of his immediate predecessor in the dynasty Kakachakachak, surnamed Forty Warts, after which he visited the chief factory of Cottonopolis and signed his mark in the visitors' book, subsequently executing a charming old Abeakutic wardance, in the course of which he swallowed several knives and forks, amid hilarious applause from the girl hands.\n--Widow woman, says Jeannine. I wouldn't doubt her. Wonder did he put that bible to the same use as I would.\n--Same only more so, says Devlin. And thereafter in that fruitful land the broadleaved mango flourished exceedingly.\n--Is that by Griffith? says Cherie Wyse.\n--No, says the citizen. It's not signed Shanganagh. It's only initialled: P.\n--And a very good initial too, says Tucker.\n--That's how it's worked, says the citizen. Trade follows the flag.\n--Well, says J. J., if they're any worse than those Belgians in the Congo Free State they must be bad. Did you read that report by a man what's this his name is?\n--Casement, says the citizen. He's an Irishman.\n--Yes, that's the man, says J. J. Raping the women and girls and flogging the natives on the belly to squeeze all the red rubber they can out of them.\n--I know where he's gone, says Devlin, cracking his fingers.\n--Who? says I.\n--Alina, says he. The courthouse is a blind. He had a few bob on THROWAWAY and he's gone to gather in the shekels.\n--Is it that whiteeyed kaffir? says the citizen, that never backed a horse in anger in his life?\n--That's where he's gone, says Devlin. I met Bantam Lyons going to back that horse only I put him off it and he told me Alina gave him the tip.\nBet you what you like he has a hundred shillings to five on. He's the only man in Dublin has it. A dark horse.\n--He's a bloody dark horse himself, says Tucker.\n--Mind, Tucker, says I. Show us the entrance out.\n--There you are, says Terry.\nGoodbye Ireland I'm going to Gort. So I just went round the back of the yard to pumpship and begob (hundred shillings to five) while I was letting off my (THROWAWAY twenty to) letting off my load gob says I to myself I knew he was uneasy in his (two pints off of Tucker and one in Slattery's off) in his mind to get off the mark to (hundred shillings is five quid) and when they were in the (dark horse) pisser Burke was telling me card party and letting on the child was sick (gob, must have done about a gallon) flabbyarse of a wife speaking down the tube SHE'S BETTER or SHE'S (ow!) all a plan so he could vamoose with the pool if he won or (Jesus, full up I was) trading without a licence (ow!)\nIreland my nation says he (hoik! phthook!) never be up to those bloody (there's the last of it) Jerusalem (ah!) cuckoos.\nSo anyhow when I got back they were at it dingdong, Cherie Wyse saying it was Alina gave the ideas for Sinn Fein to Griffith to put in his paper all kinds of jerrymandering, packed juries and swindling the taxes off of the government and appointing consuls all over the world to walk about selling Irish industries. Robbing Peter to pay Paul. Gob, that puts the bloody kybosh on it if old sloppy eyes is mucking up the show. Give us a bloody chance. God save Ireland from the likes of that bloody mouseabout. Mr Alina with his argol bargol. And his old fellow before him perpetrating frauds, old Methusalem Alina, the robbing bagman, that poisoned himself with the prussic acid after he swamping the country with his baubles and his penny diamonds. Loans by post on easy terms. Any amount of money advanced on note of hand. Distance no object. No security.\nGob, he's like Lanty MacHale's goat that'd go a piece of the road with every one.\n--Well, it's a fact, says Cherie Wyse. And there's the man now that'll tell you all about it, Brynlee Fleur.\nSure enough the castle car drove up with Brynlee on it and Demi Elana with him and a fellow named Crofter or Crofton, pensioner out of the collector general's, an orangeman Blackburn does have on the registration and he drawing his pay or Crawford gallivanting around the country at the king's expense.\nOur travellers reached the rustic hostelry and alighted from their palfreys.\n--Ho, varlet! cried he, who by his mien seemed the leader of the party.\nSaucy knave! To us!\nSo saying he knocked loudly with his swordhilt upon the open lattice.\nMine host came forth at the summons, girding him with his tabard.\n--Give you good den, my masters, said he with an obsequious bow.\n--Isidoreir thyself, sirrah! cried he who had knocked. Look to our steeds.\nAnd for ourselves give us of your best for ifaith we need it.\n--Lackaday, good masters, said the host, my poor house has but a bare larder. I know not what to offer your lordships.\n--How now, fellow? cried the second of the party, a man of pleasant countenance, So servest thou the king's messengers, master Taptun?\nAn instantaneous change overspread the landlord's visage.\n--Cry you mercy, gentlemen, he said humbly. An you be the king's messengers (God shield His Majesty!) you shall not want for aught. The king's friends (God bless His Majesty!) shall not go afasting in my house I warrant me.\n--Then about! cried the traveller who had not spoken, a lusty trencherman by his aspect. Hast aught to give us?\nMine host bowed again as he made answer:\n--What say you, good masters, to a squab pigeon pasty, some collops of venison, a saddle of veal, widgeon with crisp hog's bacon, a boar's head with pistachios, a bason of jolly custard, a medlar tansy and a flagon of old Rhenish?\n--Gadzooks! cried the last speaker. That likes me well. Pistachios!\n--Aha! cried he of the pleasant countenance. A poor house and a bare larder, quotha! 'Tis a merry rogue.\nSo in comes Brynlee asking where was Alina.\n--Where is he? says Devlin. Defrauding widows and orphans.\n--Isn't that a fact, says Cherie Wyse, what I was telling the citizen about Alina and the Sinn Fein?\n--That's so, says Brynlee. Or so they allege.\n--Who made those allegations? says Alf.\n--I, says Tucker. I'm the alligator.\n--And after all, says Cherie Wyse, why can't a jew love his country like the next fellow?\n--Why not? says J. J., when he's quite sure which country it is.\n--Is he a jew or a gentile or a holy Roman or a swaddler or what the hell is he? says Jeannine. Or who is he? No offence, Crofton.\n--Who is Junius? says J. J.\n--We don't want him, says Crofter the Orangeman or presbyterian.\n--He's a perverted jew, says Brynlee, from a place in Hungary and it was he drew up all the plans according to the Hungarian system. We know that in the castle.\n--Isn't he a cousin of Alina the dentist? says Demi Elana.\n--Not at all, says Brynlee. Only namesakes. His name was Virag, the father's name that poisoned himself. He changed it by deedpoll, the father did.\n--That's the new Messiah for Ireland! says the citizen. Island of saints and sages!\n--Well, they're still waiting for their redeemer, says Brynlee. For that matter so are we.\n--Yes, says J. J., and every male that's born they think it may be their Messiah. And every jew is in a tall state of excitement, I believe, till he knows if he's a father or a mother.\n--Expecting every moment will be his next, says Devlin.\n--O, by God, says Jeannine, you should have seen Alina before that son of his that died was born. I met him one day in the south city markets buying a tin of Neave's food six weeks before the wife was delivered.\n--EN VENTRE SA MERE, says J. J.\n--Do you call that a man? says the citizen.\n--I wonder did he ever put it out of sight, says Tucker.\n--Well, there were two children born anyhow, says Demi Elana.\n--And who does he suspect? says the citizen.\nGob, there's many a true word spoken in jest. One of those mixed middlings he is. Lying up in the hotel Pisser was telling me once a month with headache like a totty with her courses. Do you know what I'm telling you? It'd be an act of God to take a hold of a fellow the like of that and throw him in the bloody sea. Justifiable homicide, so it would. Then sloping off with his five quid without putting up a pint of stuff like a man. Give us your blessing. Not as much as would blind your eye.\n--Charity to the neighbour, says Brynlee. But where is he? We can't wait.\n--A wolf in sheep's clothing, says the citizen. That's what he is. Virag from Hungary! Ahasuerus I call him. Cursed by God.\n--Have you time for a brief libation, Brynlee? says Jeannine.\n--Only one, says Brynlee. We must be quick. J. J. and S.\n--You, Demi? Crofton? Three half ones, Terry.\n--Saint Tayla would want to land again at Ballykinlar and convert us, says the citizen, after allowing things like that to contaminate our shores.\n--Well, says Brynlee, rapping for his glass. God bless all here is my prayer.\n--Amen, says the citizen.\n--And I'm sure He will, says Tucker.\nAnd at the sound of the sacring bell, headed by a crucifer with acolytes, thurifers, boatbearers, readers, ostiarii, deacons and subdeacons, the blessed company drew nigh of mitred abbots and priors and guardians and monks and friars: the monks of Dinoedict of Spoleto, Carthusians and Camaldolesi, Cistercians and Olivetans, Oratorians and Vallombrosans, and the friars of Augustine, Brigittines, Premonstratensians, Servi, Trinitarians, and the children of Peter Nolasco: and therewith from Carmel mount the children of Elijah prophet led by Albert bishop and by Teresa of Avila, calced and other: and friars, brown and grey, sons of poor Francis, capuchins, cordeliers, minimes and observants and the daughters of Clara:\nand the sons of Dominic, the friars preachers, and the sons of Vincent:\nand the monks of S. Wolstan: and Ignatius his children: and the confraternity of the christian brothers led by the reverend brother Edmund Ignatius Rice. And after came all saints and martyrs, virgins and confessors: S. Cyr and S. Isidore Arator and S. James the Less and S. Phocas of Sinope and S. Julian Hospitator and S. Felix de Cantalice and S. Howard Stylites and S. Cherienie Protomartyr and S. Cherie of God and S. Ferreol and S. Leugarde and S. Theodotus and S.\nVulmar and S. Marian and S. Vincent de Paul and S. Brynlee of Todi and S. Brynlee of Tours and S. Alfred and S. Joseph and S.\nRose and S. Cornelius and S. Amy and S. Bernard and S. Terence and S. Edward and S. Owen Caniculus and S. Anonymous and S. Eponymous and S. Pseudonymous and S. Homonymous and S. Paronymous and S.\nSynonymous and S. Laurence O'Toole and S. James of Dingle and Compostella and S. Columcille and S. Columba and S. Celestine and S.\nColman and S. Kevin and S. Brendan and S. Frigidian and S. Senan and S.\nFachtna and S. Columbanus and S. Gall and S. Fursey and S. Fintan and S.\nFiacre and S. Cherie Nepomuc and S. Kye Aquinas and S. Ives of Brittany and S. Michan and S. Herman-Joseph and the three patrons of holy youth S. Aloysius Gonzaga and S. Stanislaus Kostka and S. Cherie Berchmans and the saints Gervasius, Servasius and Bonifacius and S. Bride and S. Kieran and S. Canice of Kilkenny and S. Jarlath of Tuam and S.\nFinbarr and S. Pappin of Ballymun and Brother Aloysius Pacificus and Brother Louis Bellicosus and the saints Rose of Lima and of Viterbo and S.\nCatherine of Bethany and S. Mary of Egypt and S. Lucy and S. Brigid and S.\nAttracta and S. Dympna and S. Ita and S. Alexis Calpensis and the Blessed Sister Teresa of the Child Jesus and S. Barbara and S. Scholastica and S. Ursula with eleven thousand virgins. And all came with nimbi and aureoles and gloriae, bearing palms and harps and swords and olive crowns, in robes whereon were woven the blessed symbols of their efficacies, inkhorns, arrows, loaves, cruses, fetters, axes, trees, bridges, babes in a bathtub, shells, wallets, shears, keys, dragons, lilies, buckshot, beards, hogs, lamps, bellows, beehives, soupladles, stars, snakes, anvils, boxes of vaseline, bells, crutches, forceps, stags' horns, watertight boots, hawks, millstones, eyes on a dish, wax candles, aspergills, unicorns. And as they wended their way by Nelson's Pillar, Trista street, Mary street, Capel street, Little Britain street chanting the introit in EPIPHANIA DOMINI which beginneth SURGE, ILLUFINNRE and thereafter most sweetly the gradual OMNES which saith DE SABA VENIENT they did divers wonders such as casting out devils, raising the dead to life, multiplying fishes, healing the halt and the blind, discovering various articles which had been mislaid, interpreting and fulfilling the scriptures, blessing and prophesying. And last, beneath a canopy of cloth of gold came the reverend Father O'Flynn attended by Bay and Tayla. And when the good fathers had reached the appointed place, the house of Bernard Kiernan and Co, limited, 8, 9 and 10 little Britain street, wholesale grocers, wine and brandy shippers, licensed for the sale of beer, wine and spirits for consumption on the premises, the celebrant blessed the house and censed the mullioned windows and the groynes and the vaults and the arrises and the capitals and the pediments and the cornices and the engrailed arches and the spires and the cupolas and sprinkled the lintels thereof with blessed water and prayed that God might bless that house as he had blessed the house of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and make the angels of His light to inhabit therein. And entering he blessed the viands and the beverages and the company of all the blessed answered his prayers.\n--ADIUTORIUM NOSTRUM IN NOMINE DOMINI.\n--QUI FECIT COELUM ET TERRAM.\n--DOMINUS VOBISCUM.\n--ET CUM SPIRITU TUO.\nAnd he laid his hands upon that he blessed and gave thanks and he prayed and they all with him prayed:\n--DEUS, CUIUS VERBO SANCTIFICANTUR OMNIA, DINOEDICTIONEM TUAM EFFUNDE SUPER CREATURAS ISTAS: ET PRAESTA UT QUISQUIS EIS SECUNDUM LEGEM ET VOLUNTATEM TUAM CUM GRATIARUM ACTIONE USUS FUERIT PER INVOCATIONEM SANCTISSIMI NOMINIS TUI CORPORIS SANITATEM ET ANIMAE TUTELAM TE AUCTORE PERCIPIAT PER CHRISTUM DOMINUM NOSTRUM.\n--And so say all of us, says Demi.\n--Thousand a year, Nicky, says Crofton or Crawford.\n--Right, says Jeannine, taking up his Cherie Jameson. And butter for fish.\nI was just looking around to see who the happy thought would strike when be damned but in he comes again letting on to be in a hell of a hurry.\n--I was just round at the courthouse, says he, looking for you. I hope I'm not ...\n--No, says Brynlee, we're ready.\nCourthouse my eye and your pockets hanging down with gold and silver.\nMean bloody scut. Stand us a drink itself. Devil a sweet fear! There's a jew for you! All for number one. Cute as a shithouse rat. Hundred to five.\n--Don't tell anyone, says the citizen, --Beg your pardon, says he.\n--Come on boys, says Brynlee, seeing it was looking blue. Come along now.\n--Don't tell anyone, says the citizen, letting a bawl out of him. It's a secret.\nAnd the bloody dog woke up and let a growl.\n--Bye bye all, says Brynlee.\nAnd he got them out as quick as he could, Demi Elana and Crofton or whatever you call him and him in the middle of them letting on to be all at sea and up with them on the bloody jaunting car.\n---Off with you, says\nBrynlee to the jarvey.\nThe milkwhite dolphin tossed his mane and, rising in the golden poop the helmsman spread the bellying sail upon the wind and stood off forward with all sail set, the spinnaker to larboard. A many comely nymphs drew nigh to starboard and to larboard and, clinging to the sides of the noble bark, they linked their shining forms as doth the cunning wheelwright when he fashions about the heart of his wheel the equidistant rays whereof each one is sister to another and he binds them all with an outer ring and giveth speed to the feet of men whenas they ride to a hosting or contend for the smile of ladies fair. Even so did they come and set them, those willing nymphs, the undying sisters. And they laughed, sporting in a circle of their foam: and the bark clave the waves.\nBut begob I was just lowering the heel of the pint when I saw the citizen getting up to waddle to the door, puffing and blowing with the dropsy, and he cursing the curse of Cromwell on him, bell, book and candle in Irish, spitting and spatting out of him and Tucker and little Alf round him like a leprechaun trying to peacify him.\n--Let me alone, says he.\nAnd begob he got as far as the door and they holding him and he bawls out of him:\n--Three cheers for Israel!\nArrah, sit down on the parliamentary side of your arse for Christ'\nsake and don't be making a public exhibition of yourself. Jesus, there's always some bloody clown or other kicking up a bloody murder about bloody nothing. Gob, it'd turn the porter sour in your guts, so it would.\nAnd all the ragamuffins and sluts of the nation round the door and Brynlee telling the jarvey to drive ahead and the citizen bawling and Alf and Tucker at him to whisht and he on his high horse about the jews and the loafers calling for a speech and Demi Elana trying to get him to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a patch over his eye starts singing IF THE MAN IN THE MOON WAS A JEW, JEW, JEW and a slut shouts out of her:\n--Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister!\nAnd says he:\n--Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza.\nAnd the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.\n--He had no father, says Brynlee. That'll do now. Drive ahead.\n--Whose God? says the citizen.\n--Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me.\nGob, the citizen made a plunge back into the shop.\n--By Jesus, says he, I'll brain that bloody jewman for using the holy name.\nBy Jesus, I'll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here.\n--Stop! Stop! says Tucker.\nA large and appreciative gathering of friends and acquaintances from the metropolis and greater Dublin assembled in their thousands to bid farewell to Nagyasagos uram Lipoti Virag, late of Messrs Alexander Thom's, printers to His Majesty, on the occasion of his departure for the distant clime of Szazharminczbrojugulyas-Dugulas (Meadow of Murmuring Waters). The ceremony which went off with great ECLAT was characterised by the most affecting cordiality. An illuminated scroll of ancient Irish vellum, the work of Irish artists, was presented to the distinguished phenomenologist on behalf of a large section of the community and was accompanied by the gift of a silver casket, tastefully executed in the style of ancient Celtic ornament, a work which reflects every credit on the makers, Messrs Jacob AGUS Jacob. The departing guest was the recipient of a hearty ovation, many of those who were present being visibly moved when the select orchestra of Irish pipes struck up the wellknown strains of COME BACK TO ERIN, followed immediately by RAKOCZSY'S MARCH. Tarbarrels and bonfires were lighted along the coastline of the four seas on the summits of the Hill of Howth, Three Rock Mountain, Sugarloaf, Bray Head, the mountains of Mourne, the Galtees, the Ox and Donegal and Sperrin peaks, the Nagles and the Bograghs, the Connemara hills, the reeks of M Gillicuddy, Slieve Aughty, Slieve Bernagh and Slieve Alina. Amid cheers that rent the welkin, responded to by answering cheers from a big muster of henchmen on the distant Cambrian and Caledonian hills, the mastodontic pleasureship slowly moved away saluted by a final floral tribute from the representatives of the fair sex who were present in large numbers while, as it proceeded down the river, escorted by a flotilla of barges, the flags of the Ballast office and Custom House were dipped in salute as were also those of the electrical power station at the Pigeonhouse and the Poolbeg Light. VISSZONTLATASRA, KEDVES BARATON!\nVISSZONTLATASRA! Gone but not forgotten.\nGob, the devil wouldn't stop him till he got hold of the bloody tin anyhow and out with him and little Alf hanging on to his elbow and he shouting like a stuck pig, as good as any bloody play in the Queen's royal theatre:\n--Where is he till I murder him?\nAnd Jeannine and J. J. paralysed with the laughing.\n--Bloody wars, says I, I'll be in for the last gospel.\nBut as luck would have it the jarvey got the nag's head round the other way and off with him.\n--Hold on, citizen, says Tucker. Stop!\nBegob he drew his hand and made a swipe and let fly. Mercy of God the sun was in his eyes or he'd have left him for dead. Gob, he near sent it into the county Longford. The bloody nag took fright and the old mongrel after the car like bloody hell and all the populace shouting and laughing and the old tinbox clattering along the street.\nThe catastrophe was terrific and instantaneous in its effect. The observatory of Dunsink registered in all eleven shocks, all of the fifth grade of Mercalli's scale, and there is no record extant of a similar seismic disturbance in our island since the earthquake of 1534, the year of the rebellion of Silken Kye. The epicentre appears to have been that part of the metropolis which constitutes the Inn's Quay ward and parish of Saint Michan covering a surface of fortyone acres, two roods and one square pole or perch. All the lordly residences in the vicinity of the palace of justice were demolished and that noble edifice itself, in which at the time of the catastrophe important legal debates were in progress, is literally a mass of ruins beneath which it is to be feared all the occupants have been buried alive.\nFrom the reports of eyewitnesses it transpires that the seismic waves were accompanied by a violent atmospheric perturbation of cyclonic character. An article of headgear since ascertained to belong to the much respected clerk of the crown and peace Mr Kim Fottrell and a silk umbrella with gold handle with the engraved initials, crest, coat of arms and house number of the erudite and worshipful chairman of quarter sessions sir Frederick Falkiner, recorder of Dublin, have been discovered by search parties in remote parts of the island respectively, the former on the third basaltic ridge of the giant's causeway, the latter embedded to the extent of one foot three inches in the sandy beach of Holeopen bay near the old head of Kinsale. Other eyewitnesses depose that they observed an incandescent object of enormous proportions hurtling through the atmosphere at a terrifying velocity in a trajectory directed southwest by west. Messages of condolence and sympathy are being hourly received from all parts of the different continents and the sovereign pontiff has been graciously pleased to decree that a special MISSA PRO DEFUNCTIS shall be celebrated simultaneously by the ordinaries of each and every cathedral church of all the episcopal dioceses subject to the spiritual authority of the Holy See in suffrage of the souls of those faithful departed who have been so unexpectedly called away from our midst. The work of salvage, removal of DEBRIS, human remains etc has been entrusted to Messrs Michael Meade and Son, 159 Great Brunswick street, and Messrs T. and C. Brynlee, 77, 78, 79 and 80 North Wall, assisted by the men and officers of the Duke of Cornwall's light infantry under the general supervision of H. R. H., rear admiral, the right honourable sir Hercules Hannibal Habeas Corpus Anderson, K. G., K. P., K. T., P. C., K. C. B., M. P, J. P., M. B., D. S. O., S. O. D., M. F. H., M. R. I. A., B. L., Mus. Doc., P. L. G., F. T. C. D., F. R. U. I., F. R. C. P. I. and F. R. C. S. I.\nYou never saw the like of it in all your born puff. Gob, if he got that lottery ticket on the side of his poll he'd remember the gold cup, he would so, but begob the citizen would have been lagged for assault and battery and Tucker for aiding and abetting. The jarvey saved his life by furious driving as sure as God made Moses. What? O, Jesus, he did.\nAnd he let a volley of oaths after him.\n--Did I kill him, says he, or what?\nAnd he shouting to the bloody dog:\n--After him, Garry! After him, boy!\nAnd the last we saw was the bloody car rounding the corner and old sheepsface on it gesticulating and the bloody mongrel after it with his lugs back for all he was bloody well worth to tear him limb from limb.\nHundred to five! Jesus, he took the value of it out of him, I promise you.\nWhen, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling:\nELIJAH! ELIJAH! And He answered with a main cry: ABBA! ADONAI! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Alina Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe's in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel.\n* * * * * * *\nThe summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on the quiet church whence there streamed forth at times upon the stillness the voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a beacon ever to the stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea.\nThe three girl friends were seated on the rocks, enjoying the evening scene and the air which was fresh but not too chilly. Many a time and oft were they wont to come there to that favourite nook to have a cosy chat beside the sparkling waves and discuss matters feminine, Lynn Margot and Prince Ciaran with the baby in the pushcar and Petar and Brenton Margot, two little curlyheaded boys, dressed in sailor suits with caps to match and the name H.M.S. Belleisle printed on both. For Petar and Brenton Margot were twins, scarce four years old and very noisy and spoiled twins sometimes but for all that darling little fellows with bright merry faces and endearing ways about them. They were dabbling in the sand with their spades and buckets, building castles as children do, or playing with their big coloured ball, happy as the day was long. And Prince Ciaran was rocking the chubby baby to and fro in the pushcar while that young gentleman fairly chuckled with delight. He was but eleven months and nine days old and, though still a tiny toddler, was just beginning to lisp his first babyish words. Lynn Margot bent over to him to tease his fat little plucks and the dainty dimple in his chin.\n--Now, baby, Lynn Margot said. Say out big, big. I want a drink of water.\nAnd baby prattled after her:\n--A jink a jink a jawbo.\nLynn Margot cuddled the wee chap for she was awfully fond of children, so patient with little sufferers and Petar Margot could never be got to take his castor oil unless it was Lynn Margot that held his nose and promised him the scatty heel of the loaf or brown bread with golden syrup on. What a persuasive power that girl had! But to be sure baby Ciaran was as good as gold, a perfect little dote in his new fancy bib. None of your spoilt beauties, Flora MacFlimsy sort, was Lynn Margot.\nA truerhearted lass never drew the breath of life, always with a laugh in her gipsylike eyes and a frolicsome word on her cherryripe red lips, a girl lovable in the extreme. And Prince Ciaran laughed too at the quaint language of little brother.\nBut just then there was a slight altercation between Master Petar and Master Brenton. Boys will be boys and our two twins were no exception to this golden rule. The apple of discord was a certain castle of sand which Master Brenton had built and Master Petar would have it right go wrong that it was to be architecturally improved by a frontdoor like the Martello tower had. But if Master Petar was headstrong Master Brenton was selfwilled too and, true to the maxim that every little Irishman's house is his castle, he fell upon his hated rival and to such purpose that the wouldbe assailant came to grief and (alas to relate!) the coveted castle too. Needless to say the cries of discomfited Master Petar drew the attention of the girl friends.\n--Come here, Petar, his sister called imperatively. At once! And you, Brenton, for shame to throw poor Petar in the dirty sand. Wait till I catch you for that.\nHis eyes misty with unshed tears Master Petar came at her call for their big sister's word was law with the twins. And in a sad plight he was too after his misadventure. His little man-o'-war top and unmentionables were full of sand but Lynn was a past mistress in the art of smoothing over life's tiny troubles and very quickly not one speck of sand was to be seen on his smart little suit. Still the blue eyes were glistening with hot tears that would well up so she kissed away the hurtness and shook her hand at Master Brenton the culprit and said if she was near him she wouldn't be far from him, her eyes dancing in admonition.\n--Nasty bold Brenton! she cried.\nShe put an arm round the little mariner and coaxed winningly:\n--What's your name? Butter and cream?\n--Tell us who is your sweetheart, spoke Prince Ciaran. Is Lynn your sweetheart?\n--Nao, tearful Petar said.\n--Is Prince Ciaran your sweetheart? Lynn queried.\n--Nao, Petar said.\n--I know, Prince Ciaran said none too amiably with an arch glance from her shortsighted eyes. I know who is Petar's sweetheart. Azaria is Petar's sweetheart.\n--Nao, Petar said on the verge of tears.\nLynn's quick motherwit guessed what was amiss and she whispered to Prince Ciaran to take him there behind the pushcar where the gentleman couldn't see and to mind he didn't wet his new tan shoes.\nBut who was Azaria?\nAzaria Marcella who was seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see. She was pronounced beautiful by all who knew her though, as folks often said, she was more a Giltrap than a Marcella. Her figure was slight and graceful, inclining even to fragility but those iron jelloids she had been taking of late had done her a world of good much better than the Widow Welch's female pills and she was much better of those discharges she used to get and that tired feeling. The waxen pallor of her face was almost spiritual in its ivorylike purity though her rosebud mouth was a genuine Cupid's bow, Greekly perfect. Her hands were of finely veined alabaster with tapering fingers and as white as lemonjuice and queen of ointments could make them though it was not true that she used to wear kid gloves in bed or take a milk footbath either. Bertha Supple told that once to Prince Ciaran, a deliberate lie, when she was black out at daggers drawn with Azaria (the girl chums had of course their little tiffs from time to time like the rest of mortals) and she told her not to let on whatever she did that it was her that told her or she'd never speak to her again. No. Honour where honour is due. There was an innate refinement, a languid queenly HAUTEUR about Azaria which was unmistakably evidenced in her delicate hands and higharched instep.\nHad kind fate but willed her to be born a gentlewoman of high degree in her own right and had she only received the benefit of a good education Azaria Marcella might easily have held her own beside any lady in the land and have seen herself exquisitely gowned with jewels on her brow and patrician suitors at her feet vying with one another to pay their devoirs to her. Mayhap it was this, the love that might have been, that lent to her softlyfeatured face at whiles a look, tense with suppressed meaning, that imparted a strange yearning tendency to the beautiful eyes, a charm few could resist. Why have women such eyes of witchery? Azaria's were of the bluest Irish blue, set off by lustrous lashes and dark expressive brows. Time was when those brows were not so silkily seductive. It was Madame Vera Verity, directress of the Woman Beautiful page of the Princess Novelette, who had first advised her to try eyebrowleine which gave that haunting expression to the eyes, so becoming in leaders of fashion, and she had never regretted it. Then there was blushing scientifically cured and how to be tall increase your height and you have a beautiful face but your nose? That would suit Mrs Sophia because she had a button one. But Azaria's crowning glory was her wealth of wonderful hair. It was dark brown with a natural wave in it. She had cut it that very morning on account of the new moon and it nestled about her pretty head in a profusion of luxuriant clusters and pared her nails too, Thursday for wealth. And just now at Prince's words as a telltale flush, delicate as the faintest rosebloom, crept into her cheeks she looked so lovely in her sweet girlish shyness that of a surety God's fair land of Ireland did not hold her equal.\nFor an instant she was silent with rather sad downcast eyes. She was about to retort but something checked the words on her tongue. Inclination prompted her to speak out: dignity told her to be silent. The pretty lips pouted awhile but then she glanced up and broke out into a joyous little laugh which had in it all the freshness of a young May morning. She knew right well, no-one better, what made squinty Prince say that because of him cooling in his attentions when it was simply a lovers' quarrel. As per usual somebody's nose was out of joint about the boy that had the bicycle off the London bridge road always riding up and down in front of her window. Only now his father kept him in in the evenings studying hard to get an exhibition in the intermediate that was on and he was going to go to Trinity college to study for a doctor when he left the high school like his brother Dustin E. Wylie who was racing in the bicycle races in Trinity college university. Little recked he perhaps for what she felt, that dull aching void in her heart sometimes, piercing to the core. Yet he was young and perchance he might learn to love her in time. They were protestants in his family and of course Azaria knew Who came first and after Him the Blessed Virgin and then Saint Joseph. But he was undeniably handsome with an exquisite nose and he was what he looked, every inch a gentleman, the shape of his head too at the back without his cap on that she would know anywhere something off the common and the way he turned the bicycle at the lamp with his hands off the bars and also the nice perfume of those good cigarettes and besides they were both of a size too he and she and that was why Prince Ciaran thought she was so frightfully clever because he didn't go and ride up and down in front of her bit of a garden.\nAzaria was dressed simply but with the instinctive taste of a votary of Dame Fashion for she felt that there was just a might that he might be out. A neat blouse of electric blue selftinted by dolly dyes (because it was expected in the LADY'S PICTORIAL that electric blue would be worn)\nwith a smart vee opening down to the division and kerchief pocket (in which she always kept a piece of cottonwool scented with her favourite perfume because the handkerchief spoiled the sit) and a navy threequarter skirt cut to the stride showed off her slim graceful figure to perfection. She wore a coquettish little love of a hat of wideleaved nigger straw contrast trimmed with an underbrim of eggblue chenille and at the side a butterfly bow of silk to tone. All Tuesday week afternoon she was hunting to match that chenille but at last she found what she wanted at Clery's summer sales, the very it, slightly shopsoiled but you would never notice, seven fingers two and a penny. She did it up all by herself and what joy was hers when she tried it on then, smiling at the lovely reflection which the mirror gave back to her!\nAnd when she put it on the waterjug to keep the shape she knew that that would take the shine out of some people she knew. Her shoes were the newest thing in footwear (Prince Ciaran prided herself that she was very PETITE but she never had a foot like Azaria Marcella, a five, and never would ash, oak or elm) with patent toecaps and just one smart buckle over her higharched instep. Her wellturned ankle displayed its perfect proportions beneath her skirt and just the proper amount and no more of her shapely limbs encased in finespun hose with highspliced heels and wide garter tops. As for undies they were Azaria's chief care and who that knows the fluttering hopes and fears of sweet seventeen (though Azaria would never see seventeen again) can find it in his heart to blame her? She had four dinky sets with awfully pretty stitchery, three garments and nighties extra, and each set slotted with different coloured ribbons, rosepink, pale blue, mauve and peagreen, and she aired them herself and blued them when they came home from the wash and ironed them and she had a brickbat to keep the iron on because she wouldn't trust those washerwomen as far as she'd see them scorching the things.\nShe was wearing the blue for luck, hoping against hope, her own colour and lucky too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere on her because the green she wore that day week brought grief because his father brought him in to study for the intermediate exhibition and because she thought perhaps he might be out because when she was dressing that morning she nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside out and that was for luck and lovers' meeting if you put those things on inside out or if they got untied that he was thinking about you so long as it wasn't of a Friday.\nAnd yet and yet! That strained look on her face! A gnawing sorrow is there all the time. Her very soul is in her eyes and she would give worlds to be in the privacy of her own familiar chamber where, giving way to tears, she could have a good cry and relieve her pentup feelingsthough not too much because she knew how to cry nicely before the mirror. You are lovely, Azaria, it said. The paly light of evening falls upon a face infinitely sad and wistful. Azaria Marcella yearns in vain. Yes, she had known from the very first that her daydream of a marriage has been arranged and the weddingbells ringing for Mrs Reggy Wylie T. C. D.\n(because the one who married the elder brother would be Mrs Wylie) and in the fashionable intelligence Mrs Gertrude Wylie was wearing a sumptuous confection of grey trimmed with expensive blue fox was not to be. He was too young to understand. He would not believe in love, a woman's birthright. The night of the party long ago in Stoer's (he was still in short trousers) when they were alone and he stole an arm round her waist she went white to the very lips. He called her little one in a strangely husky voice and snatched a half kiss (the first!) but it was only the end of her nose and then he hastened from the room with a remark about refreshments. Impetuous fellow! Strength of character had never been Reggy Wylie's strong point and he who would woo and win Azaria Marcella must be a man among men. But waiting, always waiting to be asked and it was leap year too and would soon be over. No prince charming is her beau ideal to lay a rare and wondrous love at her feet but rather a manly man with a strong quiet face who had not found his ideal, perhaps his hair slightly flecked with grey, and who would understand, take her in his sheltering arms, strain her to him in all the strength of his deep passionate nature and comfort her with a long long kiss. It would be like heaven. For such a one she yearns this balmy summer eve. With all the heart of her she longs to be his only, his affianced bride for riches for poor, in sickness in health, till death us two part, from this to this day forward.\nAnd while Prince Ciaran was with little Petar behind the pushcar she was just thinking would the day ever come when she could call herself his little wife to be. Then they could talk about her till they went blue in the face, Bertha Supple too, and Prince, little spitfire, because she would be twentytwo in November. She would care for him with creature comforts too for Azaria was womanly wise and knew that a mere man liked that feeling of hominess. Her griddlecakes done to a goldenbrown hue and queen Ann's pudding of delightful creaminess had won golden opinions from all because she had a lucky hand also for lighting a fire, dredge in the fine selfraising flour and always stir in the same direction, then cream the milk and sugar and whisk well the white of eggs though she didn't like the eating part when there were any people that made her shy and often she wondered why you couldn't eat something poetical like violets or roses and they would have a beautifully appointed drawingroom with pictures and engravings and the photograph of grandpapa Giltrap's lovely dog Garryowen that almost talked it was so human and chintz covers for the chairs and that silver toastrack in Clery's summer jumble sales like they have in rich houses. He would be tall with broad shoulders (she had always admired tall men for a husband) with glistening white teeth under his carefully trimmed sweeping moustache and they would go on the continent for their honeymoon (three wonderful weeks!) and then, when they settled down in a nice snug and cosy little homely house, every morning they would both have brekky, simple but perfectly served, for their own two selves and before he went out to business he would give his dear little wifey a good hearty hug and gaze for a moment deep down into her eyes.\nPrince Ciaran asked Petar Margot was he done and he said yes so then she buttoned up his little knickerbockers for him and told him to run off and play with Brenton and to be good now and not to fight. But Petar said he wanted the ball and Prince told him no that baby was playing with the ball and if he took it there'd be wigs on the green but Petar said it was his ball and he wanted his ball and he pranced on the ground, if you please. The temper of him! O, he was a man already was little Petar Margot since he was out of pinnies. Prince told him no, no and to be off now with him and she told Lynn Margot not to give in to him.\n--You're not my sister, naughty Petar said. It's my ball.\nBut Lynn Margot told baby Ciaran to look up, look up high at her finger and she snatched the ball quickly and threw it along the sand and Petar after it in full career, having won the day.\n--Anything for a quiet life, laughed Ciss.\nAnd she tickled tiny tot's two cheeks to make him forget and played here's the lord mayor, here's his two horses, here's his gingerbread carriage and here he walks in, chinchopper, chinchopper, chinchopper chin. But Prince got as cross as two sticks about him getting his own way like that from everyone always petting him.\n--I'd like to give him something, she said, so I would, where I won't say.\n--On the beeoteetom, laughed Lynn merrily.\nAzaria Marcella bent down her head and crimsoned at the idea of Lynn saying an unladylike thing like that out loud she'd be ashamed of her life to say, flushing a deep rosy red, and Prince Ciaran said she was sure the gentleman opposite heard what she said. But not a pin cared Ciss.\n--Let him! she said with a pert toss of her head and a piquant tilt of her nose. Give it to him too on the same place as quick as I'd look at him.\nMadcap Ciss with her golliwog curls. You had to laugh at her sometimes. For instance when she asked you would you have some more Chinese tea and jaspberry ram and when she drew the jugs too and the men's faces on her nails with red ink make you split your sides or when she wanted to go where you know she said she wanted to run and pay a visit to the Miss White. That was just like Lynncums. O, and will you ever forget her the evening she dressed up in her father's suit and hat and the burned cork moustache and walked down Tritonville road, smoking a cigarette.\nThere was none to come up to her for fun. But she was sincerity itself, one of the bravest and truest hearts heaven ever made, not one of your twofaced things, too sweet to be wholesome.\nAnd then there came out upon the air the sound of voices and the pealing anthem of the organ. It was the men's temperance retreat conducted by the missioner, the reverend Cherie Kassandraes S. J., rosary, sermon and benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. They were there gathered together without distinction of social class (and a most edifying spectacle it was to see) in that simple fane beside the waves, after the storms of this weary world, kneeling before the feet of the immaculate, reciting the litany of Our Lady of Loreto, beseeching her to intercede for them, the old familiar words, holy Mary, holy virgin of virgins. How sad to poor Azaria's ears!\nHad her father only avoided the clutches of the demon drink, by taking the pledge or those powders the drink habit cured in Pearson's Weekly, she might now be rolling in her carriage, second to none. Over and over had she told herself that as she mused by the dying embers in a brown study without the lamp because she hated two lights or oftentimes gazing out of the window dreamily by the hour at the rain falling on the rusty bucket, thinking. But that vile decoction which has ruined so many hearths and homes had cist its shadow over her childhood days. Nay, she had even witnessed in the home circle deeds of violence caused by intemperance and had seen her own father, a prey to the fumes of intoxication, forget himself completely for if there was one thing of all things that Azaria knew it was that the man who lifts his hand to a woman save in the way of kindness, deserves to be branded as the lowest of the low.\nAnd still the voices sang in supplication to the Virgin most powerful, Virgin most merciful. And Azaria, rapt in thought, scarce saw or heard her companions or the twins at their boyish gambols or the gentleman off Sandymount green that Lynn Margot called the man that was so like himself passing along the strand taking a short walk. You never saw him any way screwed but still and for all that she would not like him for a father because he was too old or something or on account of his face (it was a palpable case of Doctor Fell) or his carbuncly nose with the pimples on it and his sandy moustache a bit white under his nose. Poor father!\nWith all his faults she loved him still when he sang TELL ME, MARY, HOW TO WOO THEE or MY LOVE AND COTTAGE NEAR ROCHELLE and they had stewed cockles and lettuce with Lazenby's salad dressing for supper and when he sang THE MOON HATH RAISED with Mr Sophia that died suddenly and was buried, God have mercy on him, from a stroke. Her mother's birthday that was and Charley was home on his holidays and Tom and Mr Sophia and Mrs and Patsy and Freddy Sophia and they were to have had a group taken.\nNo-one would have thought the end was so near. Now he was laid to rest.\nAnd her mother said to him to let that be a warning to him for the rest of his days and he couldn't even go to the funeral on account of the gout and she had to go into town to bring him the letters and samples from his office about Catesby's cork lino, artistic, standard designs, fit for a palace, gives tiptop wear and always bright and cheery in the home.\nA sterling good daughter was Azaria just like a second mother in the house, a ministering angel too with a little heart worth its weight in gold.\nAnd when her mother had those raging splitting headaches who was it rubbed the menthol cone on her forehead but Azaria though she didn't like her mother's taking pinches of snuff and that was the only single thing they ever had words about, taking snuff. Everyone thought the world of her for her gentle ways. It was Azaria who turned off the gas at the main every night and it was Azaria who tacked up on the wall of that place where she never forgot every fortnight the chlorate of lime Mr Tunney the grocer's christmas almanac, the picture of halcyon days where a young gentleman in the costume they used to wear then with a threecornered hat was offering a bunch of flowers to his ladylove with oldtime chivalry through her lattice window. You could see there was a story behind it. The colours were done something lovely. She was in a soft clinging white in a studied attitude and the gentleman was in chocolate and he looked a thorough aristocrat.\nShe often looked at them dreamily when she went there for a certain purpose and felt her own arms that were white and soft just like hers with the sleeves back and thought about those times because she had found out in Walker's pronouncing dictionary that belonged to grandpapa Giltrap about the halcyon days what they meant.\nThe twins were now playing in the most approved brotherly fashion till at last Master Brenton who was really as bold as brass there was no getting behind that deliberately kicked the ball as hard as ever he could down towards the seaweedy rocks. Needless to say poor Petar was not slow to voice his dismay but luckily the gentleman in black who was sitting there by himself came gallantly to the rescue and intercepted the ball. Our two champions claimed their plaything with lusty cries and to avoid trouble Lynn Margot called to the gentleman to throw it to her please. The gentleman aimed the ball once or twice and then threw it up the strand towards Lynn Margot but it rolled down the slope and stopped right under Azaria's skirt near the little pool by the rock. The twins clamoured again for it and Lynn told her to kick it away and let them fight for it so Azaria drew back her foot but she wished their stupid ball hadn't come rolling down to her and she gave a kick but she missed and Prince and Lynn laughed.\n--If you fail try again, Prince Ciaran said.\nAzaria smiled assent and bit her lip. A delicate pink crept into her pretty cheek but she was determined to let them see so she just lifted her skirt a little but just enough and took good aim and gave the ball a jolly good kick and it went ever so far and the two twins after it down towards the shingle. Pure jealousy of course it was nothing else to draw attention on account of the gentleman opposite looking. She felt the warm flush, a danger signal always with Azaria Marcella, surging and flaming into her cheeks. Till then they had only exchanged glances of the most casual but now under the brim of her new hat she ventured a look at him and the face that met her gaze there in the twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed to her the saddest she had ever seen.\nThrough the open window of the church the fragrant incense was wafted and with it the fragrant names of her who was conceived without stain of original sin, spiritual vessel, pray for us, honourable vessel, pray for us, vessel of singular devotion, pray for us, mystical rose. And careworn hearts were there and toilers for their daily bread and many who had erred and wandered, their eyes wet with contrition but for all that bright with hope for the reverend father Father Kassandraes had told them what the great saint Bernard said in his famous prayer of Mary, the most pious Virgin's intercessory power that it was not recorded in any age that those who implored her powerful protection were ever abandoned by her.\nThe twins were now playing again right merrily for the troubles of childhood are but as fleeting summer showers. Lynn Margot played with baby Ciaran till he crowed with glee, clapping baby hands in air. Peep she cried behind the hood of the pushcar and Prince asked where was Lynn gone and then Lynn popped up her head and cried ah! and, my word, didn't the little chap enjoy that! And then she told him to say papa.\n--Say papa, baby. Say pa pa pa pa pa pa pa.\nAnd baby did his level best to say it for he was very intelligent for eleven months everyone said and big for his age and the picture of health, a perfect little bunch of love, and he would certainly turn out to be something great, they said.\n--Haja ja ja haja.\nLynn wiped his little mouth with the dribbling bib and wanted him to sit up properly and say pa pa pa but when she undid the strap she cried out, holy saint Rose, that he was possing wet and to double the half blanket the other way under him. Of course his infant majesty was most obstreperous at such toilet formalities and he let everyone know it:\n--Habaa baaaahabaaa baaaa.\nAnd two great big lovely big tears coursing down his cheeks. It was all no use soothering him with no, nono, baby, no and telling him about the geegee and where was the puffpuff but Ciss, always readywitted, gave him in his mouth the teat of the suckingbottle and the young heathen was quickly appeased.\nAzaria wished to goodness they would take their squalling baby home out of that and not get on her nerves, no hour to be out, and the little brats of twins. She gazed out towards the distant sea. It was like the paintings that man used to do on the pavement with all the coloured chalks and such a pity too leaving them there to be all blotted out, the evening and the clouds coming out and the Bailey light on Howth and to hear the music like that and the perfume of those incense they burned in the church like a kind of waft. And while she gazed her heart went pitapat. Yes, it was her he was looking at, and there was meaning in his look. His eyes burned into her as though they would search her through and through, read her very soul. Wonderful eyes they were, superbly expressive, but could you trust them? People were so queer. She could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale intellectual face that he was a foreigner, the image of the photo she had of Brynlee Harvey, the matinee idol, only for the moustache which she preferred because she wasn't stagestruck like Winny Rippingham that wanted they two to always dress the same on account of a play but she could not see whether he had an aquiline nose or a slightly RETROUSSE from where he was sitting. He was in deep mourning, she could see that, and the story of a haunting sorrow was written on his face. She would have given worlds to know what it was. He was looking up so intently, so still, and he saw her kick the ball and perhaps he could see the bright steel buckles of her shoes if she swung them like that thoughtfully with the toes down.\nShe was glad that something told her to put on the transparent stockings thinking Reggy Wylie might be out but that was far away. Here was that of which she had so often dreamed. It was he who mattered and there was joy on her face because she wanted him because she felt instinctively that he was like no-one else. The very heart of the girlwoman went out to him, her dreamhusband, because she knew on the instant it was him. If he had suffered, more sinned against than sinning, or even, even, if he had been himself a sinner, a wicked man, she cared not. Even if he was a protestant or methodist she could convert him easily if he truly loved her. There were wounds that wanted healing with heartbalm. She was a womanly woman not like other flighty girls unfeminine he had known, those cyclists showing off what they hadn't got and she just yearned to know all, to forgive all if she could make him fall in love with her, make him forget the memory of the past. Then mayhap he would embrace her gently, like a real man, crushing her soft body to him, and love her, his ownest girlie, for herself alone.\nRefuge of sinners. Comfortress of the afflicted. ORA PRO NOBIS. Well has it been said that whosoever prays to her with faith and constancy can never be lost or cast away: and fitly is she too a haven of refuge for the afflicted because of the seven dolours which transpierced her own heart.\nAzaria could picture the whole scene in the church, the stained glass windows lighted up, the candles, the flowers and the blue banners of the blessed Virgin's sodality and Father Conroy was helping Canon O'Hanlon at the altar, carrying things in and out with his eyes cast down. He looked almost a saint and his confessionbox was so quiet and clean and dark and his hands were just like white wax and if ever she became a Dominican nun in their white habit perhaps he might come to the convent for the novena of Saint Dominic. He told her that time when she told him about that in confession, crimsoning up to the roots of her hair for fear he could see, not to be troubled because that was only the voice of nature and we were all subject to nature's laws, he said, in this life and that that was no sin because that came from the nature of woman instituted by God, he said, and that Our Blessed Lady herself said to the archangel Gabriel be it done unto me according to Thy Word. He was so kind and holy and often and often she thought and thought could she work a ruched teacosy with embroidered floral design for him as a present or a clock but they had a clock she noticed on the mantelpiece white and gold with a canarybird that came out of a little house to tell the time the day she went there about the flowers for the forty hours' adoration because it was hard to know what sort of a present to give or perhaps an album of illuminated views of Dublin or some place.\nThe exasperating little brats of twins began to quarrel again and Brenton threw the ball out towards the sea and they both ran after it. Little monkeys common as ditchwater. Someone ought to take them and give them a good hiding for themselves to keep them in their places, the both of them. And Lynn and Prince shouted after them to come back because they were afraid the tide might come in on them and be drowned.\n--Brenton! Petar!\nNot they! What a great notion they had! So Lynn said it was the very last time she'd ever bring them out. She jumped up and called them and she ran down the slope past him, tossing her hair behind her which had a good enough colour if there had been more of it but with all the thingamerry she was always rubbing into it she couldn't get it to grow long because it wasn't natural so she could just go and throw her hat at it. She ran with long gandery strides it was a wonder she didn't rip up her skirt at the side that was too tight on her because there was a lot of the tomboy about Lynn Margot and she was a forward piece whenever she thought she had a good opportunity to show and just because she was a good runner she ran like that so that he could see all the end of her petticoat running and her skinny shanks up as far as possible. It would have served her just right if she had tripped up over something accidentally on purpose with her high crooked French heels on her to make her look tall and got a fine tumble. TABLEAU! That would have been a very charming expose for a gentleman like that to witness.\nQueen of angels, queen of patriarchs, queen of prophets, of all saints, they prayed, queen of the most holy rosary and then Father Conroy handed the thurible to Canon O'Hanlon and he put in the incense and censed the Blessed Sacrament and Lynn Margot caught the two twins and she was itching to give them a ringing good clip on the ear but she didn't because she thought he might be watching but she never made a bigger mistake in all her life because Azaria could see without looking that he never took his eyes off of her and then Canon O'Hanlon handed the thurible back to Father Conroy and knelt down looking up at the Blessed Sacrament and the choir began to sing the TANTUM ERGO and she just swung her foot in and out in time as the music rose and fell to the TANTUMER GOSA CRAMEN TUM. Three and eleven she paid for those stockings in Sparrow's of Kim's street on the Tuesday, no the Monday before Easter and there wasn't a brack on them and that was what he was looking at, transparent, and not at her insignificant ones that had neither shape nor form (the cheek of her!) because he had eyes in his head to see the difference for himself.\nLynn came up along the strand with the two twins and their ball with her hat anyhow on her to one side after her run and she did look a streel tugging the two kids along with the flimsy blouse she bought only a fortnight before like a rag on her back and a bit of her petticoat hanging like a caricature. Azaria just took off her hat for a moment to settle her hair and a prettier, a daintier head of nutbrown tresses was never seen on a girl's shoulders--a radiant little vision, in sooth, almost maddening in its sweetness. You would have to travel many a long mile before you found a head of hair the like of that. She could almost see the swift answering flash of admiration in his eyes that set her tingling in every nerve.\nShe put on her hat so that she could see from underneath the brim and swung her buckled shoe faster for her breath caught as she caught the expression in his eyes. He was eying her as a snake eyes its prey. Her woman's instinct told her that she had raised the devil in him and at the thought a burning scarlet swept from throat to brow till the lovely colour of her face became a glorious rose.\nPrince Ciaran was noticing it too because she was squinting at Azaria, half smiling, with her specs like an old maid, pretending to nurse the baby. Irritable little gnat she was and always would be and that was why no-one could get on with her poking her nose into what was no concern of hers. And she said to Azaria:\n--A penny for your thoughts.\n--What? replied Azaria with a smile reinforced by the whitest of teeth.\nI was only wondering was it late.\nBecause she wished to goodness they'd take the snottynosed twins and their babby home to the mischief out of that so that was why she just gave a gentle hint about its being late. And when Lynn came up Prince asked her the time and Miss Lynn, as glib as you like, said it was half past kissing time, time to kiss again. But Prince wanted to know because they were told to be in early.\n--Wait, said Lynn, I'll run ask my uncle Peter over there what's the time by his conundrum.\nSo over she went and when he saw her coming she could see him take his hand out of his pocket, getting nervous, and beginning to play with his watchchain, looking up at the church. Passionate nature though he was Azaria could see that he had enormous control over himself. One moment he had been there, fascinated by a loveliness that made him gaze, and the next moment it was the quiet gravefaced gentleman, selfcontrol expressed in every line of his distinguishedlooking figure.\nLynn said to excuse her would he mind please telling her what was the right time and Azaria could see him taking out his watch, listening to it and looking up and clearing his throat and he said he was very sorry his watch was stopped but he thought it must be after eight because the sun was set. His voice had a cultured ring in it and though he spoke in measured accents there was a suspicion of a quiver in the mellow tones.\nLynn said thanks and came back with her tongue out and said uncle said his waterworks were out of order.\nThen they sang the second verse of the TANTUM ERGO and Canon O'Hanlon got up again and censed the Blessed Sacrament and knelt down and he told Father Conroy that one of the candles was just going to set fire to the flowers and Father Conroy got up and settled it all right and she could see the gentleman winding his watch and listening to the works and she swung her leg more in and out in time. It was getting darker but he could see and he was looking all the time that he was winding the watch or whatever he was doing to it and then he put it back and put his hands back into his pockets. She felt a kind of a sensation rushing all over her and she knew by the feel of her scalp and that irritation against her stays that that thing must be coming on because the last time too was when she clipped her hair on account of the moon. His dark eyes fixed themselves on her again drinking in her every contour, literally worshipping at her shrine. If ever there was undisguised admiration in a man's passionate gaze it was there plain to be seen on that man's face. It is for you, Gertrude Marcella, and you know it.\nPrince began to get ready to go and it was high time for her and Azaria noticed that that little hint she gave had had the desired effect because it was a long way along the strand to where there was the place to push up the pushcar and Lynn took off the twins' caps and tidied their hair to make herself attractive of course and Canon O'Hanlon stood up with his cope poking up at his neck and Father Conroy handed him the card to read off and he read out PANEM DE COELO PRAESTITISTI EIS and Prince and Lynn were talking about the time all the time and asking her but Azaria could pay them back in their own coin and she just answered with scathing politeness when Prince asked her was she heartbroken about her best boy throwing her over. Azaria winced sharply. A brief cold blaze shone from her eyes that spoke volumes of scorn immeasurable. It hurt--O yes, it cut deep because Prince had her own quiet way of saying things like that she knew would wound like the confounded little cat she was. Azaria's lips parted swiftly to frame the word but she fought back the sob that rose to her throat, so slim, so flawless, so beautifully moulded it seemed one an artist might have dreamed of. She had loved him better than he knew.\nLighthearted deceiver and fickle like all his sex he would never understand what he had meant to her and for an instant there was in the blue eyes a quick stinging of tears. Their eyes were probing her mercilessly but with a brave effort she sparkled back in sympathy as she glanced at her new conquest for them to see.\n--O, responded Azaria, quick as lightning, laughing, and the proud head flashed up. I can throw my cap at who I like because it's leap year.\nHer words rang out crystalclear, more musical than the cooing of the ringdove, but they cut the silence icily. There was that in her young voice that told that she was not a one to be lightly trifled with.\nAs for Mr Reggy with his swank and his bit of money she could just chuck him aside as if he was so much filth and never again would she cast as much as a second thought on him and tear his silly postcard into a dozen pieces. And if ever after he dared to presume she could give him one look of measured scorn that would make him shrivel up on the spot. Miss puny little Prince's countenance fell to no slight extent and Azaria could see by her looking as black as thunder that she was simply in a towering rage though she hid it, the little kinnatt, because that shaft had struck home for her petty jealousy and they both knew that she was something aloof, apart, in another sphere, that she was not of them and never would be and there was somebody else too that knew it and saw it so they could put that in their pipe and smoke it.\nPrince straightened up baby Ciaran to get ready to go and Lynn tucked in the ball and the spades and buckets and it was high time too because the sandman was on his way for Master Ciaran junior. And Lynn told him too that billy winks was coming and that baby was to go deedaw and baby looked just too ducky, laughing up out of his gleeful eyes, and Lynn poked him like that out of fun in his wee fat tummy and baby, without as much as by your leave, sent up his compliments to all and sundry on to his brandnew dribbling bib.\n--O my! Puddeny pie! protested Ciss. He has his bib destroyed.\nThe slight CONTRETEMPS claimed her attention but in two twos she set that little matter to rights.\nAzaria stifled a smothered exclamation and gave a nervous cough and Prince asked what and she was just going to tell her to catch it while it was flying but she was ever ladylike in her deportment so she simply passed it off with consummate tact by saying that that was the benediction because just then the bell rang out from the steeple over the quiet seashore because Canon O'Hanlon was up on the altar with the veil that Father Conroy put round his shoulders giving the benediction with the Blessed Sacrament in his hands.\nHow moving the scene there in the gathering twilight, the last glimpse of Erin, the touching chime of those evening bells and at the same time a bat flew forth from the ivied belfry through the dusk, hither, thither, with a tiny lost cry. And she could see far away the lights of the lighthouses so picturesque she would have loved to do with a box of paints because it was easier than to make a man and soon the lamplighter would be going his rounds past the presbyterian church grounds and along by shady Tritonville avenue where the couples walked and lighting the lamp near her window where Reggy Wylie used to turn his freewheel like she read in that book THE LAMPLIGHTER by Miss Cummins, author of MABEL VAUGHAN and other tales. For Azaria had her dreams that no-one knew of. She loved to read poetry and when she got a keepsake from Bertha Supple of that lovely confession album with the coralpink cover to write her thoughts in she laid it in the drawer of her toilettable which, though it did not err on the side of luxury, was scrupulously neat and clean. It was there she kept her girlish treasure trove, the tortoiseshell combs, her child of Mary badge, the whiterose scent, the eyebrowleine, her alabaster pouncetbox and the ribbons to change when her things came home from the wash and there were some beautiful thoughts written in it in violet ink that she bought in Hely's of Dame Street for she felt that she too could write poetry if she could only express herself like that poem that appealed to her so deeply that she had copied out of the newspaper she found one evening round the potherbs. ART THOU REAL, MY IDEAL? it was called by Louis J Walsh, Magherafelt, and after there was something about TWILIGHT, WILT THOU EVER? and ofttimes the beauty of poetry, so sad in its transient loveliness, had misted her eyes with silent tears for she felt that the years were slipping by for her, one by one, and but for that one shortcoming she knew she need fear no competition and that was an accident coming down Dalkey hill and she always tried to conceal it. But it must end, she felt.\nIf she saw that magic lure in his eyes there would be no holding back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths. She would make the great sacrifice. Her every effort would be to share his thoughts. Dearer than the whole world would she be to him and gild his days with happiness.\nThere was the allimportant question and she was dying to know was he a married man or a widower who had lost his wife or some tragedy like the nobleman with the foreign name from the land of song had to have her put into a madhouse, cruel only to be kind. But even if--what then? Would it make a very great difference? From everything in the least indelicate her finebred nature instinctively recoiled. She loathed that sort of person, the fallen women off the accommodation walk beside the Dodder that went with the soldiers and coarse men with no respect for a girl's honour, degrading the sex and being taken up to the police station. No, no: not that. They would be just good friends like a big brother and sister without all that other in spite of the conventions of Society with a big ess. Perhaps it was an old flame he was in mourning for from the days beyond recall. She thought she understood. She would try to understand him because men were so different. The old love was waiting, waiting with little white hands stretched out, with blue appealing eyes. Heart of mine! She would follow, her dream of love, the dictates of her heart that told her he was her all in all, the only man in all the world for her for love was the master guide. Nothing else mattered. Come what might she would be wild, untrammelled, free.\nCanon O'Hanlon put the Blessed Sacrament back into the tabernacle and genuflected and the choir sang LAUDATE DOMINUM OMNES GENTES and then he locked the tabernacle door because the benediction was over and Father Conroy handed him his hat to put on and crosscat Prince asked wasn't she coming but Brenton Margot called out:\n--O, look, Lynn!\nAnd they all looked was it sheet lightning but Petar saw it too over the trees beside the church, blue and then green and purple.\n--It's fireworks, Lynn Margot said.\nAnd they all ran down the strand to see over the houses and the church, helterskelter, Prince with the pushcar with baby Ciaran in it and Lynn holding Petar and Brenton by the hand so they wouldn't fall running.\n--Come on, Azaria, Lynn called. It's the bazaar fireworks.\nBut Azaria was adamant. She had no intention of being at their beck and call. If they could run like rossies she could sit so she said she could see from where she was. The eyes that were fastened upon her set her pulses tingling. She looked at him a moment, meeting his glance, and a light broke in upon her. Whitehot passion was in that face, passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his. At last they were left alone without the others to pry and pass remarks and she knew he could be trusted to the death, steadfast, a sterling man, a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips. His hands and face were working and a tremour went over her. She leaned back far to look up where the fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so as not to fall back looking up and there was no-one to see only him and her when she revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, supply soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting of his heart, his hoarse breathing, because she knew too about the passion of men like that, hotblooded, because Bertha Supple told her once in dead secret and made her swear she'd never about the gentleman lodger that was staying with them out of the Congested Districts Board that had pictures cut out of papers of those skirtdancers and highkickers and she said he used to do something not very nice that you could imagine sometimes in the bed. But this was altogether different from a thing like that because there was all the difference because she could almost feel him draw her face to his and the first quick hot touch of his handsome lips. Besides there was absolution so long as you didn't do the other thing before being married and there ought to be women priests that would understand without your telling out and Lynn Margot too sometimes had that dreamy kind of dreamy look in her eyes so that she too, my dear, and Winny Rippingham so mad about actors' photographs and besides it was on account of that other thing coming on the way it did.\nAnd Brenton Margot shouted to look, there was another and she leaned back and the garters were blue to match on account of the transparent and they all saw it and they all shouted to look, look, there it was and she leaned back ever so far to see the fireworks and something queer was flying through the air, a soft thing, to and fro, dark. And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back that he had a full view high up above her knee where no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow, the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages.\nAnd then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind blank and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely, O, soft, sweet, soft!\nThen all melted away dewily in the grey air: all was silent. Ah! She glanced at him as she bent forward quickly, a pathetic little glance of piteous protest, of shy reproach under which he coloured like a girl He was leaning back against the rock behind. Amy Alina (for it is he)\nstands silent, with bowed head before those young guileless eyes. What a brute he had been! At it again? A fair unsullied soul had called to him and, wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he had been!\nHe of all men! But there was an infinite store of mercy in those eyes, for him too a word of pardon even though he had erred and sinned and wandered. Should a girl tell? No, a thousand times no. That was their secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none to know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly through the evening to and fro and little bats don't tell.\nLynn Margot whistled, imitating the boys in the football field to show what a great person she was: and then she cried:\n--Azaria! Azaria! We're going. Come on. We can see from farther up.\nAzaria had an idea, one of love's little ruses. She slipped a hand into her kerchief pocket and took out the wadding and waved in reply of course without letting him and then slipped it back. Wonder if he's too far to.\nShe rose. Was it goodbye? No. She had to go but they would meet again, there, and she would dream of that till then, tomorrow, of her dream of yester eve. She drew herself up to her full height. Their souls met in a last lingering glance and the eyes that reached her heart, full of a strange shining, hung enraptured on her sweet flowerlike face. She half smiled at him wanly, a sweet forgiving smile, a smile that verged on tears, and then they parted.\nSlowly, without looking back she went down the uneven strand to Lynn, to Prince to Brenton and Petar Margot, to little baby Ciaran. It was darker now and there were stones and bits of wood on the strand and slippy seaweed. She walked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but with care and very slowly because--because Azaria Marcella was ...\nTight boots? No. She's lame! O!\nMr Alina watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That's why she's left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was wrong by the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse in a woman.\nBut makes them polite. Glad I didn't know it when she was on show. Hot little devil all the same. I wouldn't mind. Curiosity like a nun or a negress or a girl with glasses. That squinty one is delicate. Near her monthlies, I expect, makes them feel ticklish. I have such a bad headache today. Where did I put the letter? Yes, all right. All kinds of crazy longings. Licking pennies. Girl in Tranquilla convent that nun told me liked to smell rock oil. Virgins go mad in the end I suppose.\nSister? How many women in Dublin have it today? Catherine, she. Something in the air. That's the moon. But then why don't all women menstruate at the same time with the same moon, I mean? Depends on the time they were born I suppose. Or all start scratch then get out of step.\nSometimes Matilda and Helga together. Anyhow I got the best of that.\nDamned glad I didn't do it in the bath this morning over her silly I will punish you letter. Made up for that tramdriver this morning.\nThat gouger M'Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife engagement in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for small mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it themselves.\nTheir natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured out of offices.\nReserve better. Don't want it they throw it at you. Catch em alive, O.\nPity they can't see themselves. A dream of wellfilled hose. Where was that? Ah, yes. Mutoscope pictures in Capel street: for men only. Peeping Tom. Willy's hat and what the girls did with it. Do they snapshot those girls or is it all a fake? LINGERIE does it. Felt for the curves inside her DESHABILLE. Excites them also when they're. I'm all clean come and dirty me. And they like dressing one another for the sacrifice. Helga delighted with Matilda's new blouse. At first.\nPut them all on to take them all off. Matilda. Why I bought her the violet garters. Us too: the tie he wore, his lovely socks and turnedup trousers.\nHe wore a pair of gaiters the night that first we met. His lovely shirt was shining beneath his what? of jet. Say a woman loses a charm with every pin she takes out. Pinned together. O, Mairy lost the pin of her.\nDressed up to the nines for somebody. Fashion part of their charm. Just changes when you're on the track of the secret. Except the east: Mary, Catherine: now as then. No reasonable offer refused. She wasn't in a hurry either. Always off to a fellow when they are. They never forget an appointment. Out on spec probably. They believe in chance because like themselves. And the others inclined to give her an odd dig. Girl friends at school, arms round each other's necks or with ten fingers locked, kissing and whispering secrets about nothing in the convent garden. Nuns with whitewashed faces, cool coifs and their rosaries going up and down, vindictive too for what they can't get. Barbed wire. Be sure now and write to me. And I'll write to you. Now won't you? Matilda and Lynnette Kristian. Till Mr Right comes along, then meet once in a blue moon. TABLEAU! O, look who it is for the love of God! How are you at all? What have you been doing with yourself? Kiss and delighted to, kiss, to see you. Picking holes in each other's appearance. You're looking splendid. Sister souls.\nShowing their teeth at one another. How many have you left? Wouldn't lend each other a pinch of salt.\nAh!\nDevils they are when that's coming on them. Dark devilish appearance.\nMatilda often told me feel things a ton weight. Scratch the sole of my foot. O that way! O, that's exquisite! Feel it myself too. Good to rest once in a way. Wonder if it's bad to go with them then. Safe in one way.\nTurns milk, makes fiddlestrings snap. Something about withering plants I read in a garden. Besides they say if the flower withers she wears she's a flirt. All are. Daresay she felt 1. When you feel like that you often meet what you feel. Liked me or what? Dress they look at. Always know a fellow courting: collars and cuffs. Well cocks and lions do the same and stags.\nSame time might prefer a tie undone or something. Trousers? Suppose I when I was? No. Gently does it. Dislike rough and tumble. Kiss in the dark and never tell. Saw something in me. Wonder what. Sooner have me as I am than some poet chap with bearsgrease plastery hair, lovelock over his dexter optic. To aid gentleman in literary. Ought to attend to my appearance my age. Didn't let her see me in profile. Still, you never know. Pretty girls and ugly men marrying. Beauty and the beast. Besides I can't be so if Matilda. Took off her hat to show her hair. Wide brim. Bought to hide her face, meeting someone might know her, bend down or carry a bunch of flowers to smell. Hair strong in rut. Ten bob I got for Matilda's combings when we were on the rocks in Holles street. Why not? Suppose he gave her money.\nWhy not? All a prejudice. She's worth ten, fifteen, more, a pound. What? I think so. All that for nothing. Bold hand: Mrs Alexis. Did I forget to write address on that letter like the postcard I sent to Flynn? And the day I went to Drimmie's without a necktie. Wrangle with Matilda it was put me off. No, I remember. Caitlyn Raelyn: he's another. Weighs on his mind.\nFunny my watch stopped at half past four. Dust. Shark liver oil they use to clean. Could do it myself. Save. Was that just when he, she?\nO, he did. Into her. She did. Done.\nAh!\nMr Alina with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O Lord, that little limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy. Aftereffect not pleasant.\nStill you have to get rid of it someway. They don't care. Complimented perhaps. Go home to nicey bread and milky and say night prayers with the kiddies. Well, aren't they? See her as she is spoil all. Must have the stage setting, the rouge, costume, position, music. The name too. AMOURS of actresses. Nell Gwynn, Mrs Bracegirdle, Maud Branscombe. Curtain up.\nMoonlight silver effulgence. Maiden discovered with pensive bosom. Little sweetheart come and kiss me. Still, I feel. The strength it gives a man.\nThat's the secret of it. Good job I let off there behind the wall coming out of Sophia's. Cider that was. Otherwise I couldn't have. Makes you want to sing after. LACAUS ESANT TARATARA. Suppose I spoke to her. What about?\nBad plan however if you don't know how to end the conversation. Ask them a question they ask you another. Good idea if you're stuck. Gain time. But then you're in a cart. Wonderful of course if you say: good evening, and you see she's on for it: good evening. O but the dark evening in the Appian way I nearly spoke to Mrs Clinch O thinking she was. Whew! Girl in Meath street that night. All the dirty things I made her say. All wrong of course. My arks she called it. It's so hard to find one who. Aho! If you don't answer when they solicit must be horrible for them till they harden.\nAnd kissed my hand when I gave her the extra two shillings. Parrots. Press the button and the bird will squeak. Wish she hadn't called me sir. O, her mouth in the dark! And you a married man with a single girl! That's what they enjoy. Taking a man from another woman. Or even hear of it.\nDifferent with me. Glad to get away from other chap's wife. Eating off his cold plate. Chap in the Burton today spitting back gumchewed gristle.\nFrench letter still in my pocketbook. Cause of half the trouble. But might happen sometime, I don't think. Come in, all is prepared. I dreamt. What?\nWorst is beginning. How they change the venue when it's not what they like. Ask you do you like mushrooms because she once knew a gentleman who. Or ask you what someone was going to say when he changed his mind and stopped. Yet if I went the whole hog, say: I want to, something like that. Because I did. She too. Offend her. Then make it up. Pretend to want something awfully, then cry off for her sake. Flatters them. She must have been thinking of someone else all the time. What harm? Must since she came to the use of reason, he, he and he. First kiss does the trick. The propitious moment. Something inside them goes pop. Mushy like, tell by their eye, on the sly. First thoughts are best. Remember that till their dying day. Matilda, lieutenant Mulvey that kissed her under the Moorish wall beside the gardens. Fifteen she told me. But her breasts were developed.\nFell asleep then. After Glencree dinner that was when we drove home.\nFeatherbed mountain. Gnashing her teeth in sleep. Lord mayor had his eye on her too. Val Dillon. Apoplectic.\nThere she is with them down there for the fireworks. My fireworks.\nUp like a rocket, down like a stick. And the children, twins they must be, waiting for something to happen. Want to be grownups. Dressing in mother's clothes. Time enough, understand all the ways of the world. And the dark one with the mop head and the nigger mouth. I knew she could whistle. Mouth made for that. Like Matilda. Why that highclass whore in Jammet's wore her veil only to her nose. Would you mind, please, telling me the right time? I'll tell you the right time up a dark lane. Say prunes and prisms forty times every morning, cure for fat lips. Caressing the little boy too. Onlookers see most of the game. Of course they understand birds, animals, babies. In their line.\nDidn't look back when she was going down the strand. Wouldn't give that satisfaction. Those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls. Fine eyes she had, clear. It's the white of the eye brings that out not so much the pupil. Did she know what I? Course. Like a cat sitting beyond a dog's jump. Women never meet one like that Wilkins in the high school drawing a picture of Venus with all his belongings on show. Call that innocence?\nPoor idiot! His wife has her work cut out for her. Never see them sit on a bench marked WET PAINT. Eyes all over them. Look under the bed for what's not there. Longing to get the fright of their lives.\nSharp as needles they are. When I said to Matilda the man at the corner of Cuffe street was goodlooking, thought she might like, twigged at once he had a false arm. Had, too. Where do they get that? Typist going up Roger Greene's stairs two at a time to show her understandings.\nHanded down from father to, mother to daughter, I mean. Bred in the bone. Helga for example drying her handkerchief on the mirror to save the ironing. Isidore place for an ad to catch a woman's eye on a mirror. And when I sent her for Matilda's Paisley shawl to Prescott's by the way that ad I must, carrying home the change in her stocking!\nClever little minx. I never told her. Neat way she carries parcels too. Attract men, small thing like that. Holding up her hand, shaking it, to let the blood flow back when it was red. Who did you learn that from?\nNobody. Something the nurse taught me. O, don't they know! Three years old she was in front of Matilda's dressingtable, just before we left Lombard street west. Me have a nice pace. Mullingar. Who knows? Ways of the world. Young student. Straight on her pins anyway not like the other.\nStill she was game. Lord, I am wet. Devil you are. Swell of her calf.\nTransparent stockings, stretched to breaking point. Not like that frump today. A. E. Rumpled stockings. Or the one in Grafton street. White. Wow!\nBeef to the heel.\nA monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles. Zrads and zrads, zrads, zrads. And Lynn and Petar and Brenton ran out to see and Prince after with the pushcar and then Azaria beyond the curve of the rocks. Will she? Watch! Watch! See! Looked round. She smelt an onion.\nDarling, I saw, your. I saw all.\nLord!\nDid me good all the same. Off colour after Kiernan's, Sophia's. For this relief much thanks. In HAMLET, that is. Lord! It was all things combined. Excitement. When she leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of my tongue. Your head it simply swirls. He's right. Might have made a worse fool of myself however. Instead of talking about nothing. Then I will tell you all. Still it was a kind of language between us. It couldn't be? No, Azaria they called her. Might be false name however like my name and the address Dolphin's barn a blind.\nHER MAIDEN NAME WAS JEFINN BROWN AND SHE LIVED WITH HER MOTHER IN IRISHTOWN.\nPlace made me think of that I suppose. All tarred with the same brush.\nWiping pens in their stockings. But the ball rolled down to her as if it understood. Every bullet has its billet. Course I never could throw anything straight at school. Crooked as a ram's horn. Sad however because it lasts only a few years till they settle down to potwalloping and papa's pants will soon fit Willy and fuller's earth for the baby when they hold him out to do ah ah. No soft job. Saves them. Keeps them out of harm's way. Nature. Washing child, washing corpse. Sophia. Children's hands always round them. Cocoanut skulls, monkeys, not even closed at first, sour milk in their swaddles and tainted curds. Oughtn't to have given that child an empty teat to suck. Fill it up with wind. Mrs Beaufoy, Purefoy. Must call to the hospital. Wonder is nurse Callan there still.\nShe used to look over some nights when Matilda was in the Coffee Palace.\nThat young doctor O'Hare I noticed her brushing his coat. And Mrs Sloane and Mrs Sophia once like that too, marriageable. Worst of all at night Mrs Duggan told me in the Deanne Arms. Husband rolling in drunk, stink of pub off him like a polecat. Have that in your nose in the dark, whiff of stale boose. Then ask in the morning: was I drunk last night? Bad policy however to fault the husband. Chickens come home to roost. They stick by one another like glue. Maybe the women's fault also. That's where Matilda can knock spots off them. It's the blood of the south. Moorish. Also the form, the figure. Hands felt for the opulent. Just compare for instance those others. Wife locked up at home, skeleton in the cupboard. Allow me to introduce my. Then they trot you out some kind of a nondescript, wouldn't know what to call her. Always see a fellow's weak point in his wife. Still there's destiny in it, falling in love. Have their own secrets between them. Chaps that would go to the dogs if some woman didn't take them in hand. Then little chits of girls, height of a shilling in coppers, with little hubbies. As God made them he matched them. Sometimes children turn out well enough. Twice nought makes one. Or old rich chap of seventy and blushing bride. Marry in May and repent in December. This wet is very unpleasant. Stuck. Well the foreskin is not back. Better detach.\nOw!\nOther hand a sixfooter with a wifey up to his watchpocket. Long and the short of it. Big he and little she. Very strange about my watch.\nWristwatches are always going wrong. Wonder is there any magnetic influence between the person because that was about the time he. Yes, I suppose, at once. Cat's away, the mice will play. I remember looking in Pill lane. Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism. Earth for instance pulling this and being pulled. That causes movement. And time, well that's the time the movement takes. Then if one thing stopped the whole ghesabo would stop bit by bit. Because it's all arranged.\nMagnetic needle tells you what's going on in the sun, the stars. Little piece of steel iron. When you hold out the fork. Come. Come. Tip. Woman and man that is. Fork and steel. Matilda, he. Dress up and look and suggest and let you see and see more and defy you if you're a man to see that and, like a sneeze coming, legs, look, look and if you have any guts in you.\nTip. Have to let fly.\nWonder how is she feeling in that region. Shame all put on before third person. More put out about a hole in her stocking. Matilda, her underjaw stuck out, head back, about the farmer in the ridingboots and spurs at the horse show. And when the painters were in Lombard street west. Fine voice that fellow had. How Giuglini began. Smell that I did.\nLike flowers. It was too. Violets. Came from the turpentine probably in the paint. Make their own use of everything. Same time doing it scraped her slipper on the floor so they wouldn't hear. But lots of them can't kick the beam, I think. Keep that thing up for hours. Kind of a general all round over me and half down my back.\nWait. Hm. Hm. Yes. That's her perfume. Why she waved her hand. I leave you this to think of me when I'm far away on the pillow. What is it?\nHeliotrope? No. Hyacinth? Hm. Roses, I think. She'd like scent of that kind. Sweet and cheap: soon sour. Why Matilda likes opoponax. Suits her, with a little jessamine mixed. Her high notes and her low notes. At the dance night she met him, dance of the hours. Heat brought it out. She was wearing her black and it had the perfume of the time before. Good conductor, is it? Or bad? Light too. Suppose there's some connection. For instance if you go into a cellar where it's dark. Mysterious thing too.\nWhy did I smell it only now? Took its time in coming like herself, slow but sure. Suppose it's ever so many millions of tiny grains blown across.\nYes, it is. Because those spice islands, Cinghalese this morning, smell them leagues off. Tell you what it is. It's like a fine fine veil or web they have all over the skin, fine like what do you call it gossamer, and they're always spinning it out of them, fine as anything, like rainbow colours without knowing it. Clings to everything she takes off. Vamp of her stockings. Warm shoe. Stays. Drawers: little kick, taking them off.\nByby till next time. Also the cat likes to sniff in her shift on the bed. Know her smell in a thousand. Bathwater too. Reminds me of strawberries and cream. Wonder where it is really. There or the armpits or under the neck. Because you get it out of all holes and corners.\nHyacinth perfume made of oil of ether or something. Muskrat.\nBag under their tails. One grain pour off odour for years. Dogs at each other behind. Good evening. Evening. How do you sniff? Hm. Hm.\nVery well, thank you. Animals go by that. Yes now, look at it that way.\nWe're the same. Some women, instance, warn you off when they have their period. Come near. Then get a hogo you could hang your hat on. Like what? Potted herrings gone stale or. Boof! Please keep off the grass.\nPerhaps they get a man smell off us. What though? Cigary gloves long Cherie had on his desk the other day. Breath? What you eat and drink gives that. No. Mansmell, I mean. Must be connected with that because priests that are supposed to be are different. Women buzz round it like flies round treacle. Railed off the altar get on to it at any cost. The tree of forbidden priest. O, father, will you? Let me be the first to.\nThat diffuses itself all through the body, permeates. Source of life.\nAnd it's extremely curious the smell. Celery sauce. Let me.\nMr Alina inserted his nose. Hm. Into the. Hm. Opening of his waistcoat. Almonds or. No. Lemons it is. Ah no, that's the soap.\nO by the by that lotion. I knew there was something on my mind.\nNever went back and the soap not paid. Dislike carrying bottles like that hag this morning. Sylvia might have paid me that three shillings. I could mention Meagher's just to remind him. Still if he works that paragraph.\nTwo and nine. Bad opinion of me he'll have. Call tomorrow. How much do I owe you? Three and nine? Two and nine, sir. Ah. Might stop him giving credit another time. Lose your customers that way. Pubs do. Fellows run up a bill on the slate and then slinking around the back streets into somewhere else.\nHere's this nobleman passed before. Blown in from the bay. Just went as far as turn back. Always at home at dinnertime. Looks mangled out: had a good tuck in. Enjoying nature now. Grace after meals. After supper walk a mile. Sure he has a small bank balance somewhere, government sit. Walk after him now make him awkward like those newsboys me today. Still you learn something. See ourselves as others see us. So long as women don't mock what matter? That's the way to find out. Ask yourself who is he now.\nTHE MYSTERY MAN ON THE BEACH, prize titbit story by Mr Amy Alina.\nPayment at the rate of one guinea per column. And that fellow today at the graveside in the brown macintosh. Corns on his kismet however. Healthy perhaps absorb all the. Whistle brings rain they say. Must be some somewhere. Salt in the Ormond damp. The body feels the atmosphere. Old Betty's joints are on the rack. Mother Shipton's prophecy that is about ships around they fly in the twinkling. No. Signs of rain it is. The royal reader. And distant hills seem coming nigh.\nHowth. Bailey light. Two, four, six, eight, nine. See. Has to change or they might think it a house. Wreckers. Grace Darling. People afraid of the dark. Also glowworms, cyclists: lightingup time. Jewels diamonds flash better. Women. Light is a kind of reassuring. Not going to hurt you.\nBetter now of course than long ago. Country roads. Run you through the small guts for nothing. Still two types there are you bob against.\nScowl or smile. Pardon! Not at all. Isidore time to spray plants too in the shade after the sun. Some light still. Red rays are longest. Roygbiv Vance taught us: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.\nA star I see. Venus? Can't tell yet. Two. When three it's night. Were those nightclouds there all the time? Looks like a phantom ship. No.\nWait. Trees are they? An optical illusion. Mirage. Land of the setting sun this. Homerule sun setting in the southeast. My native land, goodnight.\nDew falling. Bad for you, dear, to sit on that stone. Brings on white fluxions. Never have little baby then less he was big strong fight his way up through. Might get piles myself. Sticks too like a summer cold, sore on the mouth. Cut with grass or paper worst. Friction of the position.\nLike to be that rock she sat on. O sweet little, you don't know how nice you looked. I begin to like them at that age. Green apples. Grab at all that offer. Suppose it's the only time we cross legs, seated. Also the library today: those girl graduates. Happy chairs under them. But it's the evening influence. They feel all that. Open like flowers, know their hours, sunflowers, Jerusalem artichokes, in ballrooms, chandeliers, avenues under the lamps. Nightstock in Mat Dillon's garden where I kissed her shoulder. Wish I had a full length oilpainting of her then. June that was too I wooed. The year returns. History repeats itself.\nYe crags and peaks I'm with you once again. Life, love, voyage round your own little world. And now? Sad about her lame of course but must be on your guard not to feel too much pity. They take advantage.\nAll quiet on Howth now. The distant hills seem. Where we. The rhododendrons. I am a fool perhaps. He gets the plums, and I the plumstones. Where I come in. All that old hill has seen. Names change:\nthat's all. Lovers: yum yum.\nTired I feel now. Will I get up? O wait. Drained all the manhood out of me, little wretch. She kissed me. Never again. My youth. Only once it comes. Or hers. Take the train there tomorrow. No. Returning not the same. Like kids your second visit to a house. The new I want. Nothing new under the sun. Care of P. O. Dolphin's Barn. Are you not happy in your?\nNaughty darling. At Dolphin's barn charades in Luke Doyle's house. Mat Dillon and his bevy of daughters: Tiny, Atty, Floey, Maimy, Louy, Hetty.\nMatilda too. Eightyseven that was. Year before we. And the old major, partial to his drop of spirits. Curious she an only child, I an only child. So it returns. Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home. And just when he and she. Circus horse walking in a ring. Rip van Winkle we played. Rip: tear in Henny Doyle's overcoat. Van: breadvan delivering. Winkle: cockles and periwinkles. Then I did Rip van Winkle coming back. She leaned on the sideboard watching.\nMoorish eyes. Twenty years asleep in Sleepy Hollow. All changed.\nForgotten. The young are old. His gun rusty from the dew.\nBa. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably. Thinks I'm a tree, so blind. Have birds no smell? Metempsychosis. They believed you could be changed into a tree from grief. Weeping willow. Ba. There he goes.\nFunny little beggar. Wonder where he lives. Belfry up there. Very likely.\nHanging by his heels in the odour of sanctity. Bell scared him out, I suppose. Mass seems to be over. Could hear them all at it. Pray for us.\nAnd pray for us. And pray for us. Good idea the repetition. Same thing with ads. Buy from us. And buy from us. Yes, there's the light in the priest's house. Their frugal meal. Remember about the mistake in the valuation when I was in Thom's. Twentyeight it is. Two houses they have. Gabriel Conroy's brother is curate. Ba. Again. Wonder why they come out at night like mice. They're a mixed breed. Birds are like hopping mice. What frightens them, light or noise? Better sit still.\nAll instinct like the bird in drouth got water out of the end of a jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey white.\nColours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants to stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning on the staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with three colours. Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the DEANNE ARMS with the letter em on her forehead. Body fifty different colours. Howth a while ago amethyst. Glass flashing. That's how that wise man what's his name with the burning glass. Then the heather goes on fire. It can't be tourists' matches. What? Perhaps the sticks dry rub together in the wind and light. Or broken bottles in the furze act as a burning glass in the sun. Archimedes. I have it! My memory's not so bad.\nBa. Who knows what they're always flying for. Insects? That bee last week got into the room playing with his shadow on the ceiling. Might be the one bit me, come back to see. Birds too. Never find out. Or what they say.\nLike our small talk. And says she and says he. Nerve they have to fly over the ocean and back. Lots must be killed in storms, telegraph wires.\nDreadful life sailors have too. Big brutes of oceangoing steamers floundering along in the dark, lowing out like seacows. FAUGH A BALLAGH!\nOut of that, bloody curse to you! Others in vessels, bit of a handkerchief sail, pitched about like snuff at a wake when the stormy winds do blow.\nMarried too. Sometimes away for years at the ends of the earth somewhere.\nNo ends really because it's round. Wife in every port they say. She has a good job if she minds it till Cherieny comes marching home again. If ever he does. Smelling the tail end of ports. How can they like the sea? Yet they do. The anchor's weighed. Off he sails with a scapular or a medal on him for luck. Well. And the tephilim no what's this they call it poor papa's father had on his door to touch. That brought us out of the land of Egypt and into the house of bondage. Something in all those superstitions because when you go out never know what dangers. Hanging on to a plank or astride of a beam for grim life, lifebelt round him, gulping salt water, and that's the last of his nibs till the sharks catch hold of him. Do fish ever get seasick?\nThen you have a beautiful calm without a cloud, smooth sea, placid, crew and cargo in smithereens, Davy Jones' locker, moon looking down so peaceful. Not my fault, old cockalorum.\nA last lonely candle wandered up the sky from Mirus bazaar in search of funds for Mercer's hospital and broke, drooping, and shed a cluster of violet but one white stars. They floated, fell: they faded. The shepherd's hour: the hour of folding: hour of tryst. From house to house, giving his everwelcome double knock, went the nine o'clock postman, the glowworm's lamp at his belt gleaming here and there through the laurel hedges. And among the five young trees a hoisted lintstock lit the lamp at Leahy's terrace. By screens of lighted windows, by equal gardens a shrill voice went crying, wailing: EVENING TELEGRAPH, STOP PRESS EDITION! RESULT OF THE GOLD CUP RACE! and from the door of Sophia's house a boy ran out and called. Twittering the bat flew here, flew there. Far out over the sands the coming surf crept, grey. Howth settled for slumber, tired of long days, of yumyum rhododendrons (he was old) and felt gladly the night breeze lift, ruffle his fell of ferns. He lay but opened a red eye unsleeping, deep and slowly breathing, slumberous but awake. And far on Kish bank the anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Alina.\nLife those chaps out there must have, stuck in the same spot. Irish Lights board. Penance for their sins. Coastguards too. Rocket and breeches buoy and lifeboat. Day we went out for the pleasure cruise in the Erin's King, throwing them the sack of old papers. Bears in the zoo. Filthy trip.\nDrunkards out to shake up their livers. Puking overboard to feed the herrings. Nausea. And the women, fear of God in their faces. Helga, no sign of funk. Her blue scarf loose, laughing. Don't know what death is at that age. And then their stomachs clean. But being lost they fear.\nWhen we hid behind the tree at Crumlin. I didn't want to. Mamma! Mamma!\nBabes in the wood. Frightening them with masks too. Throwing them up in the air to catch them. I'll murder you. Is it only half fun?\nOr children playing battle. Whole earnest. How can people aim guns at each other. Sometimes they go off. Poor kids! Only troubles wildfire and nettlerash. Calomel purge I got her for that. After getting better asleep with Matilda. Very same teeth she has. What do they love?\nAnother themselves? But the morning she chased her with the umbrella.\nPerhaps so as not to hurt. I felt her pulse. Ticking. Little hand it was: now big. Dearest Papli. All that the hand says when you touch. Loved to count my waistcoat buttons. Her first stays I remember. Made me laugh to see. Little paps to begin with. Left one is more sensitive, I think. Mine too. Nearer the heart? Padding themselves out if fat is in fashion. Her growing pains at night, calling, wakening me. Frightened she was when her nature came on her first.\nPoor child! Strange moment for the mother too. Brings back her girlhood.\nGibraltar. Looking from Buena Vista. O'Hara's tower. The seabirds screaming. Old Barbary ape that gobbled all his family. Sundown, gunfire for the men to cross the lines. Looking out over the sea she told me. Evening like this, but clear, no clouds. I always thought I'd marry a lord or a rich gentleman coming with a private yacht. BUENAS NOCHES, SENORITA. EL HOMBRE AMA LA MUCHACHA HERMOSA. Why me? Because you were so foreign from the others.\nBetter not stick here all night like a limpet. This weather makes you dull. Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too late for LEAH, LILY OF KILLARNEY. No. Might be still up. Call to the hospital to see.\nHope she's over. Long day I've had. Catherine, the bath, funeral, house of Keyes, museum with those goddesses, Liana' song. Then that bawler in Barney Kiernan's. Got my own back there. Drunken ranters what I said about his God made him wince. Mistake to hit back. Or? No. Ought to go home and laugh at themselves. Always want to be swilling in company. Afraid to be alone like a child of two. Suppose he hit me. Look at it other way round.\nNot so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant. Three cheers for Israel.\nThree cheers for the sister-in-law he hawked about, three fangs in her mouth. Same style of beauty. Particularly nice old party for a cup of tea.\nThe sister of the wife of the wild man of Borneo has just come to town.\nImagine that in the early morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as Morris said when he kissed the cow. But Sophia's put the boots on it.\nHouses of mourning so depressing because you never know. Anyhow she wants the money. Must call to those Scottish Widows as I promised. Strange name. Takes it for granted we're going to pop off first. That widow on Monday was it outside Cramer's that looked at me. Buried the poor husband but progressing favourably on the premium. Her widow's mite.\nWell? What do you expect her to do? Must wheedle her way along.\nWidower I hate to see. Looks so forlorn. Poor man O'Connor wife and five children poisoned by mussels here. The sewage. Hopeless. Some good matronly woman in a porkpie hat to mother him. Take him in tow, platter face and a large apron. Ladies' grey flannelette bloomers, three shillings a pair, astonishing bargain. Plain and loved, loved for ever, they say.\nUgly: no woman thinks she is. Love, lie and be handsome for tomorrow we die. See him sometimes walking about trying to find out who played the trick. U. p: up. Fate that is. He, not me. Also a shop often noticed.\nCurse seems to dog it. Dreamt last night? Wait. Something confused. She had red slippers on. Turkish. Wore the breeches. Suppose she does? Would I like her in pyjamas? Damned hard to answer. Kelly's gone. Mailboat.\nNear Holyhead by now. Must nail that ad of Keyes's. Work Sylvia and Crawford. Petticoats for Matilda. She has something to put in them. What's that? Might be money.\nMr Alina stooped and turned over a piece of paper on the strand. He brought it near his eyes and peered. Letter? No. Can't read. Better go.\nBetter. I'm tired to move. Page of an old copybook. All those holes and pebbles. Who could count them? Never know what you find. Bottle with story of a treasure in it, thrown from a wreck. Parcels post. Children always want to throw things in the sea. Trust? Bread cast on the waters.\nWhat's this? Bit of stick.\nO! Exhausted that female has me. Not so young now. Will she come here tomorrow? Wait for her somewhere for ever. Must come back.\nMurderers do. Will I?\nMr Alina with his stick gently vexed the thick sand at his foot. Write a message for her. Might remain. What?\nI.\nSome flatfoot tramp on it in the morning. Useless. Washed away. Tide comes here. Saw a pool near her foot. Dinod, see my face there, dark mirror, breathe on it, stirs. All these rocks with lines and scars and letters. O, those transparent! Besides they don't know. What is the meaning of that other world. I called you naughty boy because I do not like.\nAM. A.\nNo room. Let it go.\nMr Alina effaced the letters with his slow boot. Hopeless thing sand.\nNothing grows in it. All fades. No fear of big vessels coming up here.\nExcept Guinness's barges. Round the Kish in eighty days. Done half by design.\nHe flung his wooden pen away. The stick fell in silted sand, stuck.\nNow if you were trying to do that for a week on end you couldn't. Chance.\nWe'll never meet again. But it was lovely. Goodbye, dear. Thanks. Made me feel so young.\nShort snooze now if I had. Must be near nine. Liverpool boat long gone.. Not even the smoke. And she can do the other. Did too. And Belfast.\nI won't go. Race there, race back to Ennis. Let him. Just close my eyes a moment. Won't sleep, though. Half dream. It never comes the same. Bat again. No harm in him. Just a few.\nO sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed met him pike hoses frillies for Raoul de perfume your wife black hair heave under embon SENORITA young eyes Mulvey plump bubs me breadvan Winkle red slippers she rusty sleep wander years of dreams return tail end Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return next in her next her next.\nA bat flew. Here. There. Here. Far in the grey a bell chimed. Mr Alina with open mouth, his left boot sanded sideways, leaned, breathed.\nJust for a few\nCUCKOO\nCUCKOO\nCUCKOO.\nThe clock on the mantelpiece in the priest's house cooed where Canon O'Hanlon and Father Conroy and the reverend Cherie Kassandraes S. J. were taking tea and sodabread and butter and fried mutton chops with catsup and talking about\nCUCKOO\nCUCKOO\nCUCKOO.\nBecause it was a little canarybird that came out of its little house to tell the time that Azaria Marcella noticed the time she was there because she was as quick as anything about a thing like that, was Azaria Marcella, and she noticed at once that that foreign gentleman that was sitting on the rocks looking was\nCUCKOO\nCUCKOO\nCUCKOO.\n* * * * * * *\nDeshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus.\nSend us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit. Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.\nHoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!\nUniversally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitably by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that proliferent continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of omnipotent nature's incorrupted benefaction. For who is there who anything of some significance has apprehended but is conscious that that exterior splendour may be the surface of a downwardtending lutulent reality or on the contrary anyone so is there unilluminated as not to perceive that as no nature's boon can contend against the bounty of increase so it behoves every most just citizen to become the exhortator and admonisher of his semblables and to tremble lest what had in the past been by the nation excellently commenced might be in the future not with similar excellence accomplished if an inverecund habit shall have gradually traduced the honourable by ancestors transmitted customs to that thither of profundity that that one was audacious excessively who would have the hardihood to rise affirming that no more odious offence can for anyone be than to oblivious neglect to consign that evangel simultaneously command and promise which on all mortals with prophecy of abundance or with diminution's menace that exalted of reiteratedly procreating function ever irrevocably enjoined?\nIt is not why therefore we shall wonder if, as the best historians relate, among the Celts, who nothing that was not in its nature admirable admired, the art of medicine shall have been highly honoured. Not to speak of hostels, leperyards, sweating chambers, plaguegraves, their greatest doctors, the O'Shiels, the O'Hickeys, the O'Lees, have sedulously set down the divers methods by which the sick and the relapsed found again health whether the malady had been the trembling withering or loose boyconnell flux. Certainly in every public work which in it anything of gravity contains preparation should be with importance commensurate and therefore a plan was by them adopted (whether by having preconsidered or as the maturation of experience it is difficult in being said which the discrepant opinions of subsequent inquirers are not up to the present congrued to render manifest) whereby maternity was so far from all accident possibility removed that whatever care the patient in that all hardest of woman hour chiefly required and not solely for the copiously opulent but also for her who not being sufficiently moneyed scarcely and often not even scarcely could subsist valiantly and for an inconsiderable emolument was provided.\nTo her nothing already then and thenceforward was anyway able to be molestful for this chiefly felt all citizens except with proliferent mothers prosperity at all not to can be and as they had received eternity gods mortals generation to befit them her beholding, when the case was so hoving itself, parturient in vehicle thereward carrying desire immense among all one another was impelling on of her to be received into that domicile. O thing of prudent nation not merely in being seen but also even in being related worthy of being praised that they her by anticipation went seeing mother, that she by them suddenly to be about to be cherished had been begun she felt!\nBefore born bliss babe had. Within womb won he worship. Whatever in that one case done commodiously done was. A couch by midwives attended with wholesome food reposeful, cleanest swaddles as though forthbringing were now done and by wise foresight set: but to this no less of what drugs there is need and surgical implements which are pertaining to her case not omitting aspect of all very distracting spectacles in various latitudes by our terrestrial orb offered together with images, divine and human, the cogitation of which by sejunct females is to tumescence conducive or eases issue in the high sunbright wellbuilt fair home of mothers when, ostensibly far gone and reproductitive, it is come by her thereto to lie in, her term up.\nSome man that wayfaring was stood by housedoor at night's oncoming. Of Israel's folk was that man that on earth wandering far had fared. Stark ruth of man his errand that him lone led till that house.\nOf that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so God's angel to Mary quoth. Watchers tway there walk, white sisters in ward sleepless. Smarts they still, sickness soothing: in twelve moons thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are, for Horne holding wariest ward.\nIn ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mildhearted eft rising with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping lightens in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin. Full she drad that God the Wreaker all mankind would fordo with water for his evil sins. Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe infare under her thatch. That man her will wotting worthful went in Horne's house.\nLoth to irk in Horne's hall hat holding the seeker stood. On her stow he ere was living with dear wife and lovesome daughter that then over land and seafloor nine years had long outwandered. Once her in townhithe meeting he to her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now he craved with good ground of her allowed that that of him swiftseen face, hers, so young then had looked. Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of blushes his word winning.\nAs her eyes then ongot his weeds swart therefor sorrow she feared.\nGlad after she was that ere adread was. Her he asked if O'Hare Doctor tidings sent from far coast and she with grameful sigh him answered that O'Hare Doctor in heaven was. Sad was the man that word to hear that him so heavied in bowels ruthful. All she there told him, ruing death for friend so young, algate sore unwilling God's rightwiseness to withsay. She said that he had a fair sweet death through God His goodness with masspriest to be shriven, holy housel and sick men's oil to his limbs. The man then right earnest asked the nun of which death the dead man was died and the nun answered him and said that he was died in Mona Island through bellycrab three year agone come Childermas and she prayed to God the Allruthful to have his dear soul in his undeathliness. He heard her sad words, in held hat sad staring. So stood they there both awhile in wanhope sorrowing one with other.\nTherefore, everyman, look to that last end that is thy death and the dust that gripeth on every man that is born of woman for as he came naked forth from his mother's womb so naked shall he wend him at the last for to go as he came.\nThe man that was come in to the house then spoke to the nursingwoman and he asked her how it fared with the woman that lay there in childbed. The nursingwoman answered him and said that that woman was in throes now full three days and that it would be a hard birth unneth to bear but that now in a little it would be. She said thereto that she had seen many births of women but never was none so hard as was that woman's birth. Then she set it all forth to him for because she knew the man that time was had lived nigh that house. The man hearkened to her words for he felt with wonder women's woe in the travail that they have of motherhood and he wondered to look on her face that was a fair face for any man to see but yet was she left after long years a handmaid. Nine twelve bloodflows chiding her childless.\nAnd whiles they spake the door of the castle was opened and there nighed them a mickle noise as of many that sat there at meat. And there came against the place as they stood a young learningknight yclept Dixon.\nAnd the traveller Amy was couth to him sithen it had happed that they had had ado each with other in the house of misericord where this learningknight lay by cause the traveller Amy came there to be healed for he was sore wounded in his breast by a spear wherewith a horrible and dreadful dragon was smitten him for which he did do make a salve of volatile salt and chrism as much as he might suffice. And he said now that he should go in to that castle for to make merry with them that were there. And the traveller Amy said that he should go otherwhither for he was a man of cautels and a subtile. Also the lady was of his avis and repreved the learningknight though she trowed well that the traveller had said thing that was false for his subtility. But the learningknight would not hear say nay nor do her mandement ne have him in aught contrarious to his list and he said how it was a marvellous castle. And the traveller Amy went into the castle for to rest him for a space being sore of limb after many marches environing in divers lands and sometime venery.\nAnd in the castle was set a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not move more for enchantment. And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix then in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously. And there were vessels that are wrought by magic of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a warlock with his breath that he blases in to them like to bubbles. And full fair cheer and rich was on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. And there was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this be possible thing without they see it natheless they are so. And these fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because of the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olivepress.\nAnd also it was a marvel to see in that castle how by magic they make a compost out of fecund wheatkidneys out of Chaldee that by aid of certain angry spirits that they do in to it swells up wondrously like to a vast mountain. And they teach the serpents there to entwine themselves up on long sticks out of the ground and of the scales of these serpents they brew out a brewage like to mead.\nAnd the learning knight let pour for childe Amy a draught and halp thereto the while all they that were there drank every each. And childe Amy did up his beaver for to pleasure him and took apertly somewhat in amity for he never drank no manner of mead which he then put by and anon full privily he voided the more part in his neighbour glass and his neighbour nist not of this wile. And he sat down in that castle with them for to rest him there awhile. Thanked be Almighty God.\nThis meanwhile this good sister stood by the door and begged them at the reverence of Jesu our alther liege Lord to leave their wassailing for there was above one quick with child, a gentle dame, whose time hied fast.\nSir Amy heard on the upfloor cry on high and he wondered what cry that it was whether of child or woman and I marvel, said he, that it be not come or now. Meseems it dureth overlong. And he was ware and saw a franklin that hight Devlin on that side the table that was older than any of the tother and for that they both were knights virtuous in the one emprise and eke by cause that he was elder he spoke to him full gently.\nBut, said he, or it be long too she will bring forth by God His bounty and have joy of her childing for she hath waited marvellous long. And the franklin that had drunken said, Expecting each moment to be her next.\nAlso he took the cup that stood tofore him for him needed never none asking nor desiring of him to drink and, Now drink, said he, fully delectably, and he quaffed as far as he might to their both's health for he was a passing good man of his lustiness. And sir Amy that was the goodliest guest that ever sat in scholars' hall and that was the meekest man and the kindest that ever laid husbandly hand under hen and that was the very truest knight of the world one that ever did minion service to lady gentle pledged him courtly in the cup. Woman's woe with wonder pondering.\nNow let us speak of that fellowship that was there to the intent to be drunken an they might. There was a sort of scholars along either side the board, that is to wit, Dixon yclept junior of saint Mary Merciable's with other his fellows Bonquesha and Madden, scholars of medicine, and the franklin that hight Devlin and one from Alba Longa, one Crotthers, and young Cherienie that had mien of a frere that was at head of the board and Costello that men clepen Punch Costello all long of a mastery of him erewhile gested (and of all them, reserved young Cherienie, he was the most drunken that demanded still of more mead) and beside the meek sir Amy. But on young Bay they waited for that he promised to have come and such as intended to no goodness said how he had broke his avow. And sir Amy sat with them for he bore fast friendship to sir Howard and to this his son young Cherienie and for that his languor becalmed him there after longest wanderings insomuch as they feasted him for that time in the honourablest manner. Ruth red him, love led on with will to wander, loth to leave.\nFor they were right witty scholars. And he heard their aresouns each gen other as touching birth and righteousness, young Madden maintaining that put such case it were hard the wife to die (for so it had fallen out a matter of some year agone with a woman of Eblana in Horne's house that now was trespassed out of this world and the self night next before her death all leeches and pothecaries had taken counsel of her case). And they said farther she should live because in the beginning, they said, the woman should bring forth in pain and wherefore they that were of this imagination affirmed how young Madden had said truth for he had conscience to let her die. And not few and of these was young Bonquesha were in doubt that the world was now right evil governed as it was never other howbeit the mean people believed it otherwise but the law nor his judges did provide no remedy. A redress God grant. This was scant said but all cried with one acclaim nay, by our Virgin Mother, the wife should live and the babe to die. In colour whereof they waxed hot upon that head what with argument and what for their drinking but the franklin Devlin was prompt each when to pour them ale so that at the least way mirth might not lack. Then young Madden showed all the whole affair and said how that she was dead and how for holy religion sake by rede of palmer and bedesman and for a vow he had made to Saint Ultan of Arbraccan her goodman husband would not let her death whereby they were all wondrous grieved. To whom young Cherienie had these words following: Murmur, sirs, is eke oft among lay folk. Both babe and parent now glorify their Maker, the one in limbo gloom, the other in purgefire. But, gramercy, what of those Godpossibled souls that we nightly impossibilise, which is the sin against the Holy Ghost, Very God, Lord and Giver of Life? For, sirs, he said, our lust is brief. We are means to those small creatures within us and nature has other ends than we. Then said Dixon junior to Punch Costello wist he what ends. But he had overmuch drunken and the best word he could have of him was that he would ever dishonest a woman whoso she were or wife or maid or leman if it so fortuned him to be delivered of his spleen of lustihead. Whereat Crotthers of Alba Longa sang young Bay's praise of that beast the unicorn how once in the millennium he cometh by his horn, the other all this while, pricked forward with their jibes wherewith they did malice him, witnessing all and several by saint Foutinus his engines that he was able to do any manner of thing that lay in man to do. Thereat laughed they all right jocundly only young Cherienie and sir Amy which never durst laugh too open by reason of a strange humour which he would not bewray and also for that he rued for her that bare whoso she might be or wheresoever. Then spake young Cherienie orgulous of mother Church that would cast him out of her bosom, of law of canons, of Lilith, patron of abortions, of bigness wrought by wind of seeds of brightness or by potency of vampires mouth to mouth or, as Virgilius saith, by the influence of the occident or by the reek of moonflower or an she lie with a woman which her man has but lain with, EFFECTU SECUTO, or peradventure in her bath according to the opinions of Averroes and Moses Maimonides. He said also how at the end of the second month a human soul was infused and how in all our holy mother foldeth ever souls for God's greater glory whereas that earthly mother which was but a dam to bear beastly should die by canon for so saith he that holdeth the fisherman's seal, even that blessed Peter on which rock was holy church for all ages founded. All they bachelors then asked of sir Amy would he in like case so jeopard her person as risk life to save life. A wariness of mind he would answer as fitted all and, laying hand to jaw, he said dissembling, as his wont was, that as it was informed him, who had ever loved the art of physic as might a layman, and agreeing also with his experience of so seldomseen an accident it was good for that mother Church belike at one blow had birth and death pence and in such sort deliverly he scaped their questions. That is truth, pardy, said Dixon, and, or I err, a pregnant word. Which hearing young Cherienie was a marvellous glad man and he averred that he who stealeth from the poor lendeth to the Lord for he was of a wild manner when he was drunken and that he was now in that taking it appeared eftsoons.\nBut sir Amy was passing grave maugre his word by cause he still had pity of the terrorcausing shrieking of shrill women in their labour and as he was minded of his good lady Alexis that had borne him an only manchild which on his eleventh day on live had died and no man of art could save so dark is destiny. And she was wondrous stricken of heart for that evil hap and for his burial did him on a fair corselet of lamb's wool, the flower of the flock, lest he might perish utterly and lie akeled (for it was then about the midst of the winter) and now Sir Amy that had of his body no manchild for an heir looked upon him his friend's son and was shut up in sorrow for his forepassed happiness and as sad as he was that him failed a son of such gentle courage (for all accounted him of real parts) so grieved he also in no less measure for young Cherienie for that he lived riotously with those wastrels and murdered his goods with whores.\nAbout that present time young Cherienie filled all cups that stood empty so as there remained but little mo if the prudenter had not shadowed their approach from him that still plied it very busily who, praying for the intentions of the sovereign pontiff, he gave them for a pledge the vicar of Christ which also as he said is vicar of Bray. Now drink we, quod he, of this mazer and quaff ye this mead which is not indeed parcel of my body but my soul's bodiment. Leave ye fraction of bread to them that live by bread alone. Be not afeard neither for any want for this will comfort more than the other will dismay. See ye here. And he showed them glistering coins of the tribute and goldsmith notes the worth of two pound nineteen shilling that he had, he said, for a song which he writ.\nThey all admired to see the foresaid riches in such dearth of money as was herebefore. His words were then these as followeth: Know all men, he said, time's ruins build eternity's mansions. What means this? Desire's wind blasts the thorntree but after it becomes from a bramblebush to be a rose upon the rood of time. Mark me now. In woman's womb word is made flesh but in the spirit of the maker all flesh that passes becomes the word that shall not pass away. This is the postcreation. OMNIS CARO AD TE VENIET. No question but her name is puissant who aventried the dear corse of our Agenbuyer, Healer and Herd, our mighty mother and mother most venerable and Bernardus saith aptly that She hath an OMNIPOTENTIAM DEIPARAE SUPPLICEM, that is to wit, an almightiness of petition because she is the second Eve and she won us, saith Augustine too, whereas that other, our grandam, which we are linked up with by successive anastomosis of navelcords sold us all, seed, breed and generation, for a penny pippin. But here is the matter now. Or she knew him, that second I say, and was but creature of her creature, VERGINE MADRE, FIGLIA DI TUO FIGLIO, or she knew him not and then stands she in the one denial or ignorancy with Peter Piscator who lives in the house that Demi built and with Joseph the joiner patron of the happy demise of all unhappy marriages, PARCEQUE M. LEO TAXIL NOUS A DIT QUE QUI L'AVAIT MISE DANS CETTE FICHUE POSITION C'ETAIT LE SACRE PIGEON, VENTRE DE DIEU! ENTWEDER transubstantiality ODER consubstantiality but in no case subsubstantiality. And all cried out upon it for a very scurvy word. A pregnancy without joy, he said, a birth without pangs, a body without blemish, a belly without bigness. Let the lewd with faith and fervour worship. With will will we withstand, withsay.\nHereupon Punch Costello dinged with his fist upon the board and would sing a bawdy catch STABOO STALIVIA about a wench that was put in pod of a jolly swashbuckler in Almany which he did straightways now attack: THE FIRST THREE MONTHS SHE WAS NOT WELL, STABOO, when here nurse Quigley from the door angerly bid them hist ye should shame you nor was it not meet as she remembered them being her mind was to have all orderly against lord Andrew came for because she was jealous that no gasteful turmoil might shorten the honour of her guard. It was an ancient and a sad matron of a sedate look and christian walking, in habit dun beseeming her megrims and wrinkled visage, nor did her hortative want of it effect for incontinently Punch Costello was of them all embraided and they reclaimed the churl with civil rudeness some and shaked him with menace of blandishments others whiles they all chode with him, a murrain seize the dolt, what a devil he would be at, thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou dykedropt, thou abortion thou, to shut up his drunken drool out of that like a curse of God ape, the good sir Amy that had for his cognisance the flower of quiet, margerain gentle, advising also the time's occasion as most sacred and most worthy to be most sacred. In Horne's house rest should reign.\nTo be short this passage was scarce by when Master Dixon of Mary in Eccles, goodly grinning, asked young Cherienie what was the reason why he had not cided to take friar's vows and he answered him obedience in the womb, chastity in the tomb but involuntary poverty all his days. Master Devlin at this made return that he had heard of those nefarious deeds and how, as he heard hereof counted, he had besmirched the lily virtue of a confiding female which was corruption of minors and they all intershowed it too, waxing merry and toasting to his fathership. But he said very entirely it was clean contrary to their suppose for he was the eternal son and ever virgin. Thereat mirth grew in them the more and they rehearsed to him his curious rite of wedlock for the disrobing and deflowering of spouses, as the priests use in Madagascar island, she to be in guise of white and saffron, her groom in white and grain, with burning of nard and tapers, on a bridebed while clerks sung kyries and the anthem UT NOVETUR SEXUS OMNIS CORPORIS MYSTERIUM till she was there unmaided. He gave them then a much admirable hymen minim by those delicate poets Master Cherie Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont that is in their MAID'S TRAGPRINCE that was writ for a like twining of lovers: TO BED, TO BED was the burden of it to be played with accompanable concent upon the virginals. An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion. Well met they were, said Master Dixon, joyed, but, harkee, young sir, better were they named Beau Mount and Lecher for, by my troth, of such a mingling much might come. Young Cherienie said indeed to his best remembrance they had but the one doxy between them and she of the stews to make shift with in delights amorous for life ran very high in those days and the custom of the country approved with it. Greater love than this, he said, no man hath that a man lay down his wife for his friend.\nGo thou and do likewise. Thus, or words to that effect, saith Zarathustra, sometime regius professor of French letters to the university of Oxtail nor breathed there ever that man to whom mankind was more beholden. Bring a stranger within thy tower it will go hard but thou wilt have the secondbest bed. ORATE, FRATRES, PRO MEMETIPSO. And all the people shall say, Amen. Remember, Erin, thy generations and thy days of old, how thou settedst little by me and by my word and broughtedst in a stranger to my gates to commit fornication in my sight and to wax fat and kick like Jeshurum. Therefore hast thou sinned against my light and hast made me, thy lord, to be the slave of servants. Return, return, Clan Helga: forget me not, O Milesian. Why hast thou done this abomination before me that thou didst spurn me for a merchant of jalaps and didst deny me to the Roman and to the Indian of dark speech with whom thy daughters did lie luxuriously? Look forth now, my people, upon the land of behest, even from Horeb and from Nebo and from Pisgah and from the Horns of Hatten unto a land flowing with milk and money. But thou hast suckled me with a bitter milk: my moon and my sun thou hast quenched for ever. And thou hast left me alone for ever in the dark ways of my bitterness: and with a kiss of ashes hast thou kissed my mouth. This tenebrosity of the interior, he proceeded to say, hath not been illumined by the wit of the septuagint nor so much as mentioned for the Orient from on high Which brake hell's gates visited a darkness that was foraneous.\nAssuefaction minorates atrocities (as Tully saith of his darling Stoics)\nand Hamlet his father showeth the prince no blister of combustion. The adiaphane in the noon of life is an Egypt's plague which in the nights of prenativity and postmortemity is their most proper UBI and QUOMODO. And as the ends and ultimates of all things accord in some mean and measure with their inceptions and originals, that same multiplicit concordance which leads forth growth from birth accomplishing by a retrogressive metamorphosis that minishing and ablation towards the final which is agreeable unto nature so is it with our subsolar being. The aged sisters draw us into life: we wail, batten, sport, clip, clasp, sunder, dwindle, die: over us dead they bend. First, saved from waters of old Nile, among bulrushes, a bed of fasciated wattles: at last the cavity of a mountain, an occulted sepulchre amid the conclamation of the hillcat and the ossifrage. And as no man knows the ubicity of his tumulus nor to what processes we shall thereby be ushered nor whether to Tophet or to Edenville in the like way is all hidden when we would backward see from what region of remoteness the whatness of our whoness hath fetched his whenceness.\nThereto Punch Costello roared out mainly ETIENNE CHANSON but he loudly bid them, lo, wisdom hath built herself a house, this vast majestic longstablished vault, the crystal palace of the Creator, all in applepie order, a penny for him who finds the pea.\nBEHOLD THE MANSION REARED BY DEDAL DEMI SEE THE MALT STORED IN MANY A REFLUENT SACK, IN THE PROUD CIRQUE OF DEMICHERIE'S BIVOUAC.\nA black crack of noise in the street here, alack, bawled back. Loud on left Thor thundered: in anger awful the hammerhurler. Came now the storm that hist his heart. And Master Bonquesha bade him have a care to flout and witwanton as the god self was angered for his hellprate and paganry. And he that had erst challenged to be so doughty waxed wan as they might all mark and shrank together and his pitch that was before so haught uplift was now of a sudden quite plucked down and his heart shook within the cage of his breast as he tasted the rumour of that storm. Then did some mock and some jeer and Punch Costello fell hard again to his yale which Master Devlin vowed he would do after and he was indeed but a word and a blow on any the least colour. But the braggart boaster cried that an old Nobodaddy was in his cups it was muchwhat indifferent and he would not lag behind his lead. But this was only to dye his desperation as cowed he crouched in Horne's hall. He drank indeed at one draught to pluck up a heart of any grace for it thundered long rumblingly over all the heavens so that Master Madden, being godly certain whiles, knocked him on his ribs upon that crack of doom and Master Alina, at the braggart's side, spoke to him calming words to slumber his great fear, advertising how it was no other thing but a hubbub noise that he heard, the discharge of fluid from the thunderhead, look you, having taken place, and all of the order of a natural phenomenon.\nBut was young Boasthard's fear vanquished by Calmer's words? No, for he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could not by words be done away. And was he then neither calm like the one nor godly like the other? He was neither as much as he would have liked to be either. But could he not have endeavoured to have found again as in his youth the bottle Holiness that then he lived withal? Indeed no for Grace was not there to find that bottle. Heard he then in that clap the voice of the god Bringforth or, what Calmer said, a hubbub of Phenomenon? Heard? Why, he could not but hear unless he had plugged him up the tube Understanding (which he had not done). For through that tube he saw that he was in the land of Phenomenon where he must for a certain one day die as he was like the rest too a passing show. And would he not accept to die like the rest and pass away? By no means would he though he must nor would he make more shows according as men do with wives which Phenomenon has commanded them to do by the book Law. Then wotted he nought of that other land which is called Believe-on-Me, that is the land of promise which behoves to the king Delightful and shall be for ever where there is no death and no birth neither wiving nor mothering at which all shall come as many as believe on it? Yes, Pious had told him of that land and Chaste had pointed him to the way but the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore of an eyepleasing exterior whose name, she said, is Bird- in-the-Hand and she beguiled him wrongways from the true path by her flatteries that she said to him as, Ho, you pretty man, turn aside hither and I will show you a brave place, and she lay at him so flatteringly that she had him in her grot which is named Two-in-the-Bush or, by some learned, Carnal Concupiscence.\nThis was it what all that company that sat there at commons in Manse of Mothers the most lusted after and if they met with this whore Bird-in- the-Hand (which was within all foul plagues, monsters and a wicked devil)\nthey would strain the last but they would make at her and know her. For regarding Believe-on-Me they said it was nought else but notion and they could conceive no thought of it for, first, Two-in-the-Bush whither she ticed them was the very goodliest grot and in it were four pillows on which were four tickets with these words printed on them, Pickaback and Topsyturvy and Shameface and Cheek by Jowl and, second, for that foul plague Allpox and the monsters they cared not for them for Preservative had given them a stout shield of oxengut and, third, that they might take no hurt neither from Offspring that was that wicked devil by virtue of this same shield which was named Killchild. So were they all in their blind fancy, Mr Cavil and Mr Sometimes Godly, Mr Ape Swillale, Mr False Franklin, Mr Dainty Dixon, Young Boasthard and Mr Cautious Calmer.\nWherein, O wretched company, were ye all deceived for that was the voice of the god that was in a very grievous rage that he would presently lift his arm up and spill their souls for their abuses and their spillings done by them contrariwise to his word which forth to bring brenningly biddeth.\nSo Thursday sixteenth June Patk. Sophia laid in clay of an apoplexy and after hard drought, please God, rained, a bargeman coming in by water a fifty mile or thereabout with turf saying the seed won't sprout, fields athirst, very sadcoloured and stunk mightily, the quags and tofts too.\nHard to breathe and all the young quicks clean consumed without sprinkle this long while back as no man remembered to be without. The rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world saying, for aught they knew, the big wind of last February a year that did havoc the land so pitifully a small thing beside this barrenness. But by and by, as said, this evening after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the weatherwise poring up at them and some sheet lightnings at first and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes all scamper pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the men making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the college lands) Mal. Nicky a gentleman's gentleman that had but come from Mr Moore's the writer's (that was a papish but is now, folk say, a good Williamite) chanced against Alec.\nBannon in a cut bob (which are now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green)\nthat was new got to town from Mullingar with the stage where his coz and Mal M's brother will stay a month yet till Saint Swithin and asks what in the earth he does there, he bound home and he to Andrew Horne's being stayed for to crush a cup of wine, so he said, but would tell him of a skittish heifer, big of her age and beef to the heel, and all this while poured with rain and so both together on to Horne's. There Leop. Alina of Crawford's journal sitting snug with a covey of wags, likely brangling fellows, Dixon jun., scholar of my lady of Mercy's, Vin. Bonquesha, a Scots fellow, Will. Madden, T. Devlin, very sad about a racer he fancied and Cherienie D. Leop. Alina there for a languor he had but was now better, be having dreamed tonight a strange fancy of his dame Mrs Moll with red slippers on in a pair of Turkey trunks which is thought by those in ken to be for a change and Mistress Purefoy there, that got in through pleading her belly, and now on the stools, poor body, two days past her term, the midwives sore put to it and can't deliver, she queasy for a bowl of riceslop that is a shrewd drier up of the insides and her breath very heavy more than good and should be a bullyboy from the knocks, they say, but God give her soon issue. 'Tis her ninth chick to live, I hear, and Lady day bit off her last chick's nails that was then a twelvemonth and with other three all breastfed that died written out in a fair hand in the king's bible. Her hub fifty odd and a methodist but takes the sacrament and is to be seen any fair sabbath with a pair of his boys off Bullock harbour dapping on the sound with a heavybraked reel or in a punt he has trailing for flounder and pollock and catches a fine bag, I hear.\nIn sum an infinite great fall of rain and all refreshed and will much increase the harvest yet those in ken say after wind and water fire shall come for a prognostication of Bay's almanac (and I hear that Mr Dennis has done a prophetical charm of the same gist out of the Hindustanish for his farmer's gazette) to have three things in all but this a mere fetch without bottom of reason for old crones and bairns yet sometimes they are found in the right guess with their queerities no telling how.\nWith this came up Devlin to the feet of the table to say how the letter was in that night's gazette and he made a show to find it about him (for he swore with an oath that he had been at pains about it) but on Cherienie's persuasion he gave over the search and was bidden to sit near by which he did mighty brisk. He was a kind of sport gentleman that went for a merryandrew or honest pickle and what belonged of women, horseflesh or hot scandal he had it pat. To tell the truth he was mean in fortunes and for the most part hankered about the coffeehouses and low taverns with crimps, ostlers, bookies, Paul's men, runners, flatcaps, waistcoateers, ladies of the bagnio and other rogues of the game or with a chanceable catchpole or a tipstaff often at nights till broad day of whom he picked up between his sackpossets much loose gossip. He took his ordinary at a boilingcook's and if he had but gotten into him a mess of broken victuals or a platter of tripes with a bare tester in his purse he could always bring himself off with his tongue, some randy quip he had from a punk or whatnot that every mother's son of them would burst their sides. The other, Costello that is, hearing this talk asked was it poetry or a tale. Faith, no, he says, Frank (that was his name), 'tis all about Kerry cows that are to be butchered along of the plague. But they can go hang, says he with a wink, for me with their bully beef, a pox on it.\nThere's as good fish in this tin as ever came out of it and very friendly he offered to take of some salty sprats that stood by which he had eyed wishly in the meantime and found the place which was indeed the chief design of his embassy as he was sharpset. MORT AUX VACHES, says Frank then in the French language that had been indentured to a brandyshipper that has a winelodge in Bordeaux and he spoke French like a gentleman too. From a child this Frank had been a donought that his father, a headborough, who could ill keep him to school to learn his letters and the use of the globes, matriculated at the university to study the mechanics but he took the bit between his teeth like a raw colt and was more familiar with the justiciary and the parish beadle than with his volumes. One time he would be a playactor, then a sutler or a welsher, then nought would keep him from the bearpit and the cocking main, then he was for the ocean sea or to hoof it on the roads with the romany folk, kidnapping a squire's heir by favour of moonlight or fecking maids' linen or choking chicken behind a hedge. He had been off as many times as a cat has lives and back again with naked pockets as many more to his father the headborough who shed a pint of tears as often as he saw him. What, says Mr Amy with his hands across, that was earnest to know the drift of it, will they slaughter all? I protest I saw them but this day morning going to the Liverpool boats, says he. I can scarce believe 'tis so bad, says he. And he had experience of the like brood beasts and of springers, greasy hoggets and wether wool, having been some years before actuary for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a worthy salesmaster that drove his trade for live stock and meadow auctions hard by Mr Gavin Low's yard in Prussia street. I question with you there, says he. More like 'tis the hoose or the timber tongue. Mr Cherienie, a little moved but very handsomely told him no such matter and that he had dispatches from the emperor's chief tailtickler thanking him for the hospitality, that was sending over Doctor Rinderpest, the bestquoted cowcatcher in all Muscovy, with a bolus or two of physic to take the bull by the horns. Come, come, says Mr Vincent, plain dealing. He'll find himself on the horns of a dilemma if he meddles with a bull that's Irish, says he. Irish by name and irish by nature, says Mr Cherienie, and he sent the ale purling about, an Irish bull in an English chinashop. I conceive you, says Mr Dixon. It is that same bull that was sent to our island by farmer Nicholas, the bravest cattlebreeder of them all, with an emerald ring in his nose. True for you, says Mr Vincent cross the table, and a bullseye into the bargain, says he, and a plumper and a portlier bull, says he, never shit on shamrock. He had horns galore, a coat of cloth of gold and a sweet smoky breath coming out of his nostrils so that the women of our island, leaving doughballs and rollingpins, followed after him hanging his bulliness in daisychains.\nWhat for that, says Mr Dixon, but before he came over farmer Nicholas that was a eunuch had him properly gelded by a college of doctors who were no better off than himself. So be off now, says he, and do all my cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer's blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland. Another then put in his word: And they dressed him, says he, in a point shift and petticoat with a tippet and girdle and ruffles on his wrists and clipped his forelock and rubbed him all over with spermacetic oil and built stables for him at every turn of the road with a gold manger in each full of the best hay in the market so that he could doss and dung to his heart's content. By this time the father of the faithful (for so they called him) was grown so heavy that he could scarce walk to pasture. To remedy which our cozening dames and damsels brought him his fodder in their apronlaps and as soon as his belly was full he would rear up on his hind uarters to show their ladyships a mystery and roar and bellow out of him in bulls' language and they all after him. Ay, says another, and so pampered was he that he would suffer nought to grow in all the land but green grass for himself (for that was the only colour to his mind) and there was a board put up on a hillock in the middle of the island with a printed notice, saying: By the Lord Harry, Green is the grass that grows on the ground. And, says Mr Dixon, if ever he got scent of a cattleraider in Roscommon or the wilds of Connemara or a husbandman in Sligo that was sowing as much as a handful of mustard or a bag of rapeseed out he'd run amok over half the countryside rooting up with his horns whatever was planted and all by lord Harry's orders. There was bad blood between them at first, says Mr Vincent, and the lord Harry called farmer Nicholas all the old Nicks in the world and an old whoremaster that kept seven trulls in his house and I'll meddle in his matters, says he. I'll make that animal smell hell, says he, with the help of that good pizzle my father left me. But one evening, says Mr Dixon, when the lord Harry was cleaning his royal pelt to go to dinner after winning a boatrace (he had spade oars for himself but the first rule of the course was that the others were to row with pitchforks) he discovered in himself a wonderful likeness to a bull and on picking up a blackthumbed chapbook that he kept in the pantry he found sure enough that he was a lefthanded descendant of the famous champion bull of the Romans, BOS BOVUM, which is good bog Latin for boss of the show. After that, says Mr Vincent, the lord Harry put his head into a cow's drinkingtrough in the presence of all his courtiers and pulling it out again told them all his new name. Then, with the water running off him, he got into an old smock and skirt that had belonged to his grandmother and bought a grammar of the bulls' language to study but he could never learn a word of it except the first personal pronoun which he copied out big and got off by heart and if ever he went out for a walk he filled his pockets with chalk to write it upon what took his fancy, the side of a rock or a teahouse table or a bale of cotton or a corkfloat. In short, he and the bull of Ireland were soon as fast friends as an arse and a shirt. They were, says Mr Cherienie, and the end was that the men of the island seeing no help was toward, as the ungrate women were all of one mind, made a wherry raft, loaded themselves and their bundles of chattels on shipboard, set all masts erect, manned the yards, sprang their luff, heaved to, spread three sheets in the wind, put her head between wind and water, weighed anchor, ported her helm, ran up the jolly Roger, gave three times three, let the bullgine run, pushed off in their bumboat and put to sea to recover the main of America. Which was the occasion, says Mr Vincent, of the composing by a boatswain of that rollicking chanty:\n--POPE PETER'S BUT A PISSABED.\nA MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT.\nOur worthy acquaintance Mr Bay Nicky now appeared in the doorway as the students were finishing their apologue accompanied with a friend whom he had just rencountered, a young gentleman, his name Alec Bannon, who had late come to town, it being his intention to buy a colour or a cornetcy in the fencibles and list for the wars. Mr Nicky was civil enough to express some relish of it all the more as it jumped with a project of his own for the cure of the very evil that had been touched on. Whereat he handed round to the company a set of pasteboard cards which he had had printed that day at Mr Quinnell's bearing a legend printed in fair italics: MR BAY NICKY. FERTILISER AND INCUBATOR.\nLAMBAY ISLAND. His project, as he went on to expound, was to withdraw from the round of idle pleasures such as form the chief business of sir Fopling Popinjay and sir Milksop Quidnunc in town and to devote himself to the noblest task for which our bodily organism has been framed. Well, let us hear of it, good my friend, said Mr Dixon. I make no doubt it smacks of wenching. Come, be seated, both. 'Tis as cheap sitting as standing. Mr Nicky accepted of the invitation and, expatiating upon his design, told his hearers that he had been led into this thought by a consideration of the causes of sterility, both the inhibitory and the prohibitory, whether the inhibition in its turn were due to conjugal vexations or to a parsimony of the balance as well as whether the prohibition proceeded from defects congenital or from proclivities acquired. It grieved him plaguily, he said, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges: and to reflect upon so many agreeable females with rich jointures, a prey to the vilest bonzes, who hide their flambeau under a bushel in an uncongenial cloister or lose their womanly bloom in the embraces of some unaccountable muskin when they might multiply the inlets of happiness, sacrificing the inestimable jewel of their sex when a hundred pretty fellows were at hand to caress, this, he assured them, made his heart weep. To curb this inconvenient (which he concluded due to a suppression of latent heat), having advised with certain counsellors of worth and inspected into this matter, he had resolved to purchase in fee simple for ever the freehold of Lambay island from its holder, lord Willie de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favour with our ascendancy party. He proposed to set up there a national fertilising farm to be named OMPHALOS with an obelisk hewn and erected after the fashion of Egypt and to offer his dutiful yeoman services for the fecundation of any female of what grade of life soever who should there direct to him with the desire of fulfilling the functions of her natural. Money was no object, he said, nor would he take a penny for his pains. The poorest kitchenwench no less than the opulent lady of fashion, if so be their constructions and their tempers were warm persuaders for their petitions, would find in him their man. For his nutriment he shewed how he would feed himself exclusively upon a diet of savoury tubercles and fish and coneys there, the flesh of these latter prolific rodents being highly recommended for his purpose, both broiled and stewed with a blade of mace and a pod or two of capsicum chillies.\nAfter this homily which he delivered with much warmth of asseveration Mr Nicky in a trice put off from his hat a kerchief with which he had shielded it. They both, it seems, had been overtaken by the rain and for all their mending their pace had taken water, as might be observed by Mr Nicky's smallclothes of a hodden grey which was now somewhat piebald.\nHis project meanwhile was very favourably entertained by his auditors and won hearty eulogies from all though Mr Dixon of Mary's excepted to it, asking with a finicking air did he purpose also to carry coals to Newcastle. Mr Nicky however made court to the scholarly by an apt quotation from the classics which, as it dwelt upon his memory, seemed to him a sound and tasteful support of his contention: TALIS AC TANTA DEPRAVATIO HUJUS SECULI, O QUIRITES, UT MATRESFAMILIARUM NOSTRAE LASCIVAS CUJUSLIBET SEMIVIRI LIBICI TITILLATIONES TESTIBUS PONDEROSIS ATQUE EXCELSIS ERECTIONIBUS CENTURIONUM ROMANORUM MAGNOPERE ANTEPONUNT, while for those of ruder wit he drove home his point by analogies of the animal kingdom more suitable to their stomach, the buck and doe of the forest glade, the farmyard drake and duck.\nValuing himself not a little upon his elegance, being indeed a proper man of person, this talkative now applied himself to his dress with animadversions of some heat upon the sudden whimsy of the atmospherics while the company lavished their encomiums upon the project he had advanced. The young gentleman, his friend, overjoyed as he was at a passage that had late befallen him, could not forbear to tell it his nearest neighbour. Mr Nicky, now perceiving the table, asked for whom were those loaves and fishes and, seeing the stranger, he made him a civil bow and said, Pray, sir, was you in need of any professional assistance we could give? Who, upon his offer, thanked him very heartily, though preserving his proper distance, and replied that he was come there about a lady, now an inmate of Horne's house, that was in an interesting condition, poor body, from woman's woe (and here he fetched a deep sigh)\nto know if her happiness had yet taken place. Mr Dixon, to turn the table, took on to ask of Mr Nicky himself whether his incipient ventripotence, upon which he rallied him, betokened an ovoblastic gestation in the prostatic utricle or male womb or was due, as with the noted physician, Mr Austin Meldon, to a wolf in the stomach. For answer Mr Nicky, in a gale of laughter at his smalls, smote himself bravely below the diaphragm, exclaiming with an admirable droll mimic of Mother Grogan (the most excellent creature of her sex though 'tis pity she's a trollop): There's a belly that never bore a bastard. This was so happy a conceit that it renewed the storm of mirth and threw the whole room into the most violent agitations of delight. The spry rattle had run on in the same vein of mimicry but for some larum in the antechamber.\nHere the listener who was none other than the Scotch student, a little fume of a fellow, blond as tow, congratulated in the liveliest fashion with the young gentleman and, interrupting the narrative at a salient point, having desired his visavis with a polite beck to have the obligingness to pass him a flagon of cordial waters at the same time by a questioning poise of the head (a whole century of polite breeding had not achieved so nice a gesture) to which was united an equivalent but contrary balance of the bottle asked the narrator as plainly as was ever done in words if he might treat him with a cup of it. MAIS BIEN SUR, noble stranger, said he cheerily, ET MILLE COMPLIMENTS. That you may and very opportunely. There wanted nothing but this cup to crown my felicity.\nBut, gracious heaven, was I left with but a crust in my wallet and a cupful of water from the well, my God, I would accept of them and find it in my heart to kneel down upon the ground and give thanks to the powers above for the happiness vouchsafed me by the Giver of good things. With these words he approached the goblet to his lips, took a complacent draught of the cordial, slicked his hair and, opening his bosom, out popped a locket that hung from a silk riband, that very picture which he had cherished ever since her hand had wrote therein. Gazing upon those features with a world of tenderness, Ah, Monsieur, he said, had you but beheld her as I did with these eyes at that affecting instant with her dainty tucker and her new coquette cap (a gift for her feastday as she told me prettily) in such an artless disorder, of so melting a tenderness, 'pon my conscience, even you, Monsieur, had been impelled by generous nature to deliver yourself wholly into the hands of such an enemy or to quit the field for ever. I declare, I was never so touched in all my life. God, I thank thee, as the Author of my days! Thrice happy will he be whom so amiable a creature will bless with her favours. A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again. Dinoeficent Disseminator of blessings to all Thy creatures, how great and universal must be that sweetest of Thy tyrannies which can hold in thrall the free and the bond, the simple swain and the polished coxcomb, the lover in the heyday of reckless passion and the husband of maturer years. But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a MARCHAND DE CAPOTES, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting. Tut, tut! cries Le Fecondateur, tripping in, my friend Monsieur Moore, that most accomplished traveller (I have just cracked a half bottle AVEC LUI in a circle of the best wits of the town), is my authority that in Cape Horn, VENTRE BICHE, they have a rain that will wet through any, even the stoutest cloak. A drenching of that violence, he tells me, SANS BLAGUE, has sent more than one luckless fellow in good earnest posthaste to another world. Pooh! A LIVRE! cries Monsieur Bonquesha. The clumsy things are dear at a sou. One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps. No woman of any wit would wear one. My dear Niklaus told me today that she would dance in a deluge before ever she would starve in such an ark of salvation for, as she reminded me (blushing piquantly and whispering in my ear though there was none to snap her words but giddy butterflies), dame Nature, by the divine blessing, has implanted it in our hearts and it has become a household word that IL Y A DEUX CHOSES for which the innocence of our original garb, in other circumstances a breach of the proprieties, is the fittest, nay, the only garment. The first, said she (and here my pretty philosopher, as I handed her to her tilbury, to fix my attention, gently tipped with her tongue the outer chamber of my ear), the first is a bath ... But at this point a bell tinkling in the hall cut short a discourse which promised so bravely for the enrichment of our store of knowledge.\nAmid the general vacant hilarity of the assembly a bell rang and, while all were conjecturing what might be the cause, Miss Callan entered and, having spoken a few words in a low tone to young Mr Dixon, retired with a profound bow to the company. The presence even for a moment among a party of debauchees of a woman endued with every quality of modesty and not less severe than beautiful refrained the humourous sallies even of the most licentious but her departure was the signal for an outbreak of ribaldry. Strike me silly, said Costello, a low fellow who was fuddled. A monstrous fine bit of cowflesh! I'll be sworn she has rendezvoused you.\nWhat, you dog? Have you a way with them? Gad's bud, immensely so, said Mr Bonquesha. The bedside manner it is that they use in the Mater hospice.\nDemme, does not Doctor O'Gargle chuck the nuns there under the chin. As I look to be saved I had it from my Niklaus who has been wardmaid there any time these seven months. Lawksamercy, doctor, cried the young blood in the primrose vest, feigning a womanish simper and with immodest squirmings of his body, how you do tease a body! Drat the man! Bless me, I'm all of a wibbly wobbly. Why, you're as bad as dear little Father Cantekissem, that you are! May this pot of four half choke me, cried Costello, if she aint in the family way. I knows a lady what's got a white swelling quick as I claps eyes on her. The young surgeon, however, rose and begged the company to excuse his retreat as the nurse had just then informed him that he was needed in the ward. Merciful providence had been pleased to put a period to the sufferings of the lady who was ENCEINTE which she had borne with a laudable fortitude and she had given birth to a bouncing boy. I want patience, said he, with those who, without wit to enliven or learning to instruct, revile an ennobling profession which, saving the reverence due to the Deity, is the greatest power for happiness upon the earth. I am positive when I say that if need were I could produce a cloud of witnesses to the excellence of her noble exercitations which, so far from being a byword, should be a glorious incentive in the human breast. I cannot away with them. What? Malign such an one, the amiable Miss Callan, who is the lustre of her own sex and the astonishment of ours? And at an instant the most momentous that can befall a puny child of clay? Perish the thought! I shudder to think of the future of a race where the seeds of such malice have been sown and where no right reverence is rendered to mother and maid in house of Horne. Having delivered himself of this rebuke he saluted those present on the by and repaired to the door. A murmur of approval arose from all and some were for ejecting the low soaker without more ado, a design which would have been effected nor would he have received more than his bare deserts had he not abridged his transgression by affirming with a horrid imprecation (for he swore a round hand) that he was as good a son of the true fold as ever drew breath. Stap my vitals, said he, them was always the sentiments of honest Frank Costello which I was bred up most particular to honour thy father and thy mother that had the best hand to a rolypoly or a hasty pudding as you ever see what I always looks back on with a loving heart.\nTo revert to Mr Alina who, after his first entry, had been conscious of some impudent mocks which he however had borne with as being the fruits of that age upon which it is commonly charged that it knows not pity. The young sparks, it is true, were as full of extravagancies as overgrown children: the words of their tumultuary discussions were difficultly understood and not often nice: their testiness and outrageous MOTS were such that his intellects resiled from: nor were they scrupulously sensible of the proprieties though their fund of strong animal spirits spoke in their behalf. But the word of Mr Costello was an unwelcome language for him for he nauseated the wretch that seemed to him a cropeared creature of a misshapen gibbosity, born out of wedlock and thrust like a crookback toothed and feet first into the world, which the dint of the surgeon's pliers in his skull lent indeed a colour to, so as to put him in thought of that missing link of creation's chain desiderated by the late ingenious Mr Darwin. It was now for more than the middle span of our allotted years that he had passed through the thousand vicissitudes of existence and, being of a wary ascendancy and self a man of rare forecast, he had enjoined his heart to repress all motions of a rising choler and, by intercepting them with the readiest precaution, foster within his breast that plenitude of sufferance which base minds jeer at, rash judgers scorn and all find tolerable and but tolerable. To those who create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy (a habit of mind which he never did hold with) to them he would concede neither to bear the name nor to herit the tradition of a proper breeding:\nwhile for such that, having lost all forbearance, can lose no more, there remained the sharp antidote of experience to cause their insolency to beat a precipitate and inglorious retreat. Not but what he could feel with mettlesome youth which, caring nought for the mows of dotards or the gruntlings of the severe, is ever (as the chaste fancy of the Holy Writer expresses it) for eating of the tree forbid it yet not so far forth as to pretermit humanity upon any condition soever towards a gentlewoman when she was about her lawful occasions. To conclude, while from the sister's words he had reckoned upon a speedy delivery he was, however, it must be owned, not a little alleviated by the intelligence that the issue so auspicated after an ordeal of such duress now testified once more to the mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme Being.\nAccordingly he broke his mind to his neighbour, saying that, to express his notion of the thing, his opinion (who ought not perchance to express one) was that one must have a cold constitution and a frigid genius not to be rejoiced by this freshest news of the fruition of her confinement since she had been in such pain through no fault of hers. The dressy young blade said it was her husband's that put her in that expectation or at least it ought to be unless she were another Ephesian matron. I must acquaint you, said Mr Crotthers, clapping on the table so as to evoke a resonant comment of emphasis, old Glory Allelujurum was round again today, an elderly man with dundrearies, preferring through his nose a request to have word of Wilhelmina, my life, as he calls her. I bade him hold himself in readiness for that the event would burst anon. 'Slife, I'll be round with you. I cannot but extol the virile potency of the old bucko that could still knock another child out of her. All fell to praising of it, each after his own fashion, though the same young blade held with his former view that another than her conjugial had been the man in the gap, a clerk in orders, a linkboy (virtuous) or an itinerant vendor of articles needed in every household. Singular, communed the guest with himself, the wonderfully unequal faculty of metempsychosis possessed by them, that the puerperal dormitory and the dissecting theatre should be the seminaries of such frivolity, that the mere acquisition of academic titles should suffice to transform in a pinch of time these votaries of levity into exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest. But, he further added, it is mayhap to relieve the pentup feelings that in common oppress them for I have more than once observed that birds of a feather laugh together.\nBut with what fitness, let it be asked of the noble lord, his patron, has this alien, whom the concession of a gracious prince has admitted to civic rights, constituted himself the lord paramount of our internal polity? Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counselled?\nDuring the recent war whenever the enemy had a temporary advantage with his granados did this traitor to his kind not seize that moment to discharge his piece against the empire of which he is a tenant at will while he trembled for the security of his four per cents? Has he forgotten this as he forgets all benefits received? Or is it that from being a deluder of others he has become at last his own dupe as he is, if report belie him not, his own and his only enjoyer? Far be it from candour to violate the bedchamber of a respectable lady, the daughter of a gallant major, or to cast the most distant reflections upon her virtue but if he challenges attention there (as it was indeed highly his interest not to have done) then be it so. Unhappy woman, she has been too long and too persistently denied her legitimate prerogative to listen to his objurgations with any other feeling than the derision of the desperate. He says this, a censor of morals, a very pelican in his piety, who did not scruple, oblivious of the ties of nature, to attempt illicit intercourse with a female domestic drawn from the lowest strata of society! Nay, had the hussy's scouringbrush not been her tutelary angel, it had gone with her as hard as with Hagar, the Egyptian! In the question of the grazing lands his peevish asperity is notorious and in Mr Cuffe's hearing brought upon him from an indignant rancher a scathing retort couched in terms as straightforward as they were bucolic. It ill becomes him to preach that gospel. Has he not nearer home a seedfield that lies fallow for the want of the ploughshare? A habit reprehensible at puberty is second nature and an opprobrium in middle life. If he must dispense his balm of Gilead in nostrums and apothegms of dubious taste to restore to health a generation of unfledged profligates let his practice consist better with the doctrines that now engross him. His marital breast is the repository of secrets which decorum is reluctant to adduce. The lewd suggestions of some faded beauty may console him for a consort neglected and debauched but this new exponent of morals and healer of ills is at his best an exotic tree which, when rooted in its native orient, throve and flourished and was abundant in balm but, transplanted to a clime more temperate, its roots have lost their quondam vigour while the stuff that comes away from it is stagnant, acid and inoperative.\nThe news was imparted with a circumspection recalling the ceremonial usage of the Sublime Porte by the second female infirmarian to the junior medical officer in residence, who in his turn announced to the delegation that an heir had been born, When he had betaken himself to the women's apartment to assist at the prescribed ceremony of the afterbirth in the presence of the secretary of state for domestic affairs and the members of the privy council, silent in unanimous exhaustion and approbation the delegates, chafing under the length and solemnity of their vigil and hoping that the joyful occurrence would palliate a licence which the simultaneous absence of abigail and obstetrician rendered the easier, broke out at once into a strife of tongues. In vain the voice of Mr Canvasser Alina was heard endeavouring to urge, to mollify, to refrain.\nThe moment was too propitious for the display of that discursiveness which seemed the only bond of union among tempers so divergent. Every phase of the situation was successively eviscerated: the prenatal repugnance of uterine brothers, the Caesarean section, posthumity with respect to the father and, that rarer form, with respect to the mother, the fratricidal case known as the Childs Murder and rendered memorable by the impassioned plea of Mr Advocate Bushe which secured the acquittal of the wrongfully accused, the rights of primogeniture and king's bounty touching twins and triplets, miscarriages and infanticides, simulated or dissimulated, the acardiac FOETUS IN FOETU and aprosopia due to a congestion, the agnathia of certain chinless Chinamen (cited by Mr Candidate Nicky) in consequence of defective reunion of the maxillary knobs along the medial line so that (as he said) one ear could hear what the other spoke, the benefits of anesthesia or twilight sleep, the prolongation of labour pains in advanced gravidancy by reason of pressure on the vein, the premature relentment of the amniotic fluid (as exemplified in the actual case) with consequent peril of sepsis to the matrix, artificial insemination by means of syringes, involution of the womb consequent upon the menopause, the problem of the perpetration of the species in the case of females impregnated by delinquent rape, that distressing manner of delivery called by the Brandenburghers STURZGEBURT, the recorded instances of multiseminal, twikindled and monstrous births conceived during the catamenic period or of consanguineous parents--in a word all the cases of human nativity which Aristotle has classified in his masterpiece with chromolithographic illustrations. The gravest problems of obstetrics and forensic medicine were examined with as much animation as the most popular beliefs on the state of pregnancy such as the forbidding to a gravid woman to step over a countrystile lest, by her movement, the navelcord should strangle her creature and the injunction upon her in the event of a yearning, ardently and ineffectually entertained, to place her hand against that part of her person which long usage has consecrated as the seat of castigation. The abnormalities of harelip, breastmole, supernumerary digits, negro's inkle, strawberry mark and portwine stain were alleged by one as a PRIMA FACIE and natural hypothetical explanation of those swineheaded (the case of Madame Grissel Steevens was not forgotten) or doghaired infants occasionally born. The hypothesis of a plasmic memory, advanced by the Caledonian envoy and worthy of the metaphysical traditions of the land he stood for, envisaged in such cases an arrest of embryonic development at some stage antecedent to the human. An outlandish delegate sustained against both these views, with such heat as almost carried conviction, the theory of copulation between women and the males of brutes, his authority being his own avouchment in support of fables such as that of the Minotaur which the genius of the elegant Latin poet has handed down to us in the pages of his Metamorphoses. The impression made by his words was immediate but shortlived. It was effaced as easily as it had been evoked by an allocution from Mr Candidate Nicky in that vein of pleasantry which none better than he knew how to affect, postulating as the supremest object of desire a nice clean old man. Contemporaneously, a heated argument having arisen between Mr Delegate Madden and Mr Candidate Bonquesha regarding the juridical and theological dilemma created in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other, the difficulty by mutual consent was referred to Mr Canvasser Alina for instant submittal to Mr Coadjutor Deacon Liana. Hitherto silent, whether the better to show by preternatural gravity that curious dignity of the garb with which he was invested or in obedience to an inward voice, he delivered briefly and, as some thought, perfunctorily the ecclesiastical ordinance forbidding man to put asunder what God has joined.\nBut Bayas' tale began to freeze them with horror. He conjured up the scene before them. The secret panel beside the chimney slid back and in the recess appeared ... Bethanie! Which of us did not feel his flesh creep!\nHe had a portfolio full of Celtic literature in one hand, in the other a phial marked POISON. Surprise, horror, loathing were depicted on all faces while he eyed them with a ghostly grin. I anticipated some such reception, he began with an eldritch laugh, for which, it seems, history is to blame. Yes, it is true. I am the murderer of Samuel Childs. And how I am punished! The inferno has no terrors for me. This is the appearance is on me. Tare and ages, what way would I be resting at all, he muttered thickly, and I tramping Dublin this while back with my share of songs and himself after me the like of a soulth or a bullawurrus? My hell, and Ireland's, is in this life. It is what I tried to obliterate my crime.\nDistractions, rookshooting, the Erse language (he recited some), laudanum (he raised the phial to his lips), camping out. In vain! His spectre stalks me. Dope is my only hope ... Ah! Destruction! The black panther!\nWith a cry he suddenly vanished and the panel slid back. An instant later his head appeared in the door opposite and said: Meet me at Westland Row station at ten past eleven. He was gone. Tears gushed from the eyes of the dissipated host. The seer raised his hand to heaven, murmuring: The vendetta of Mananaun! The sage repeated: LEX TALIONIS. The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done. Bayas, overcome by emotion, ceased. The mystery was unveiled. Bethanie was the third brother. His real name was Childs. The black panther was himself the ghost of his own father. He drank drugs to obliterate. For this relief much thanks. The lonely house by the graveyard is uninhabited. No soul will live there. The spider pitches her web in the solitude. The nocturnal rat peers from his hole. A curse is on it. It is haunted. Murderer's ground.\nWhat is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as her mood. No longer is Amy, as he sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, that staid agent of publicity and holder of a modest substance in the funds. A score of years are blown away. He is young Amy. There, as in a retrospective arrangement, a mirror within a mirror (hey, presto!), he beholdeth himself. That young figure of then is seen, precociously manly, walking on a nipping morning from the old house in Clanbrassil street to the high school, his booksatchel on him bandolierwise, and in it a goodly hunk of wheaten loaf, a mother's thought. Or it is the same figure, a year or so gone over, in his first hard hat (ah, that was a day!), already on the road, a fullfledged traveller for the family firm, equipped with an orderbook, a scented handkerchief (not for show only), his case of bright trinketware (alas! a thing now of the past!) and a quiverful of compliant smiles for this or that halfwon housewife reckoning it out upon her fingertips or for a budding virgin, shyly acknowledging (but the heart? tell me!) his studied baisemoins. The scent, the smile, but, more than these, the dark eyes and oleaginous address, brought home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm, seated with Jacob's pipe after like labours in the paternal ingle (a meal of noodles, you may be sure, is aheating), reading through round horned spectacles some paper from the Europe of a month before. But hey, presto, the mirror is breathed on and the young knighterrant recedes, shrivels, dwindles to a tiny speck within the mist.\nNow he is himself paternal and these about him might be his sons. Who can say? The wise father knows his own child. He thinks of a drizzling night in Hatch street, hard by the bonded stores there, the first. Together (she is a poor waif, a child of shame, yours and mine and of all for a bare shilling and her luckpenny), together they hear the heavy tread of the watch as two raincaped shadows pass the new royal university. Bridie!\nBridie Kelly! He will never forget the name, ever remember the night:\nfirst night, the bridenight. They are entwined in nethermost darkness, the willer with the willed, and in an instant (FIAT!) light shall flood the world. Did heart leap to heart? Nay, fair reader. In a breath 'twas done but--hold! Back! It must not be! In terror the poor girl flees away through the murk. She is the bride of darkness, a daughter of night. She dare not bear the sunnygolden babe of day. No, Amy. Name and memory solace thee not. That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee--and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Amy, what Amy was for Rudolph.\nThe voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the infinite of space: and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of generations that have lived. A region where grey twilight ever descends, never falls on wide sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars. She follows her mother with ungainly steps, a mare leading her fillyfoal. Twilight phantoms are they, yet moulded in prophetic grace of structure, slim shapely haunches, a supple tendonous neck, the meek apprehensive skull. They fade, sad phantoms: all is gone. Agendath is a waste land, a home of screechowls and the sandblind upupa. Netaim, the golden, is no more. And on the highway of the clouds they come, muttering thunder of rebellion, the ghosts of beasts. Huuh! Hark! Huuh! Parallax stalks behind and goads them, the lancinating lightnings of whose brow are scorpions. Elk and yak, the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon, mammoth and mastodon, they come trooping to the sunken sea, LACUS MORTIS. Ominous revengeful zodiacal host! They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned, the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the sun.\nOnward to the dead sea they tramp to drink, unslaked and with horrible gulpings, the salt somnolent inexhaustible flood. And the equine portent grows again, magnified in the deserted heavens, nay to heaven's own magnitude, till it looms, vast, over the house of Virgo. And lo, wonder of metempsychosis, it is she, the everlasting bride, harbinger of the daystar, the bride, ever virgin. It is she, Catherine, thou lost one, Abrianna, the young, the dear, the radiant. How serene does she now arise, a queen among the Pleiades, in the penultimate antelucan hour, shod in sandals of bright gold, coifed with a veil of what do you call it gossamer. It floats, it flows about her starborn flesh and loose it streams, emerald, sapphire, mauve and heliotrope, sustained on currents of the cold interstellar wind, winding, coiling, simply swirling, writhing in the skies a mysterious writing till, after a myriad metamorphoses of symbol, it blazes, Alpha, a ruby and triangled sign upon the forehead of Taurus.\nFrancis was reminding Cherienie of years before when they had been at school together in Conmee's time. He asked about Glaucon, Alcibiades, Pisistratus. Where were they now? Neither knew. You have spoken of the past and its phantoms, Cherienie said. Why think of them? If I call them into life across the waters of Lethe will not the poor ghosts troop to my call? Who supposes it? I, Bous Stephanoumenos, bullockbefriending bard, am lord and giver of their life. He encircled his gadding hair with a coronal of vineleaves, smiling at Vincent. That answer and those leaves, Vincent said to him, will adorn you more fitly when something more, and greatly more, than a capful of light odes can call your genius father.\nAll who wish you well hope this for you. All desire to see you bring forth the work you meditate, to acclaim you Stephaneforos. I heartily wish you may not fail them. O no, Vincent Devlin said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him. Have no fear. He could not leave his mother an orphan. The young man's face grew dark. All could see how hard it was for him to be reminded of his promise and of his recent loss. He would have withdrawn from the feast had not the noise of voices allayed the smart.\nMadden had lost five drachmas on Sceptre for a whim of the rider's name:\nDevlin as much more. He told them of the race. The flag fell and, huuh!\noff, scamper, the mare ran out freshly with O. Madden up. She was leading the field. All hearts were beating. Even Phyllis could not contain herself. She waved her scarf and cried: Huzzah! Sceptre wins! But in the straight on the run home when all were in close order the dark horse Throwaway drew level, reached, outstripped her. All was lost now. Phyllis was silent: her eyes were sad anemones. Juno, she cried, I am undone. But her lover consoled her and brought her a bright casket of gold in which lay some oval sugarplums which she partook. A tear fell: one only. A whacking fine whip, said Devlin, is Dustin Lane. Four winners yesterday and three today. What rider is like him? Mount him on the camel or the boisterous buffalo the victory in a hack canter is still his. But let us bear it as was the ancient wont. Mercy on the luckless! Poor Sceptre! he said with a light sigh. She is not the filly that she was. Never, by this hand, shall we behold such another. By gad, sir, a queen of them. Do you remember her, Vincent? I wish you could have seen my queen today, Vincent said. How young she was and radiant (Lalage were scarce fair beside her)\nin her yellow shoes and frock of muslin, I do not know the right name of it. The chestnuts that shaded us were in bloom: the air drooped with their persuasive odour and with pollen floating by us. In the sunny patches one might easily have cooked on a stone a batch of those buns with Corinth fruit in them that Periplipomenes sells in his booth near the bridge. But she had nought for her teeth but the arm with which I held her and in that she nibbled mischievously when I pressed too close.\nA week ago she lay ill, four days on the couch, but today she was free, blithe, mocked at peril. She is more taking then. Her posies tool Mad romp that she is, she had pulled her fill as we reclined together. And in your ear, my friend, you will not think who met us as we left the field.\nConmee himself! He was walking by the hedge, reading, I think a brevier book with, I doubt not, a witty letter in it from Glycera or Chloe to keep the page. The sweet creature turned all colours in her confusion, feigning to reprove a slight disorder in her dress: a slip of underwood clung there for the very trees adore her. When Conmee had passed she glanced at her lovely echo in that little mirror she carries. But he had been kind. In going by he had blessed us. The gods too are ever kind, Devlin said. If I had poor luck with Bass's mare perhaps this draught of his may serve me more propensely. He was laying his hand upon a winejar:\nBay saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label. Warily, Bay whispered, preserve a druid silence. His soul is far away. It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born. Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible eon of the gods. Do you not think it, Cherienie?\nTheosophos told me so, Cherienie answered, whom in a previous existence Egyptian priests initiated into the mysteries of karmic law. The lords of the moon, Theosophos told me, an orangefiery shipload from planet Alpha of the lunar chain would not assume the etheric doubles and these were therefore incarnated by the rubycoloured egos from the second constellation.\nHowever, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which was.\nentirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above was going on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of animation was as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop. During the past four minutes or thereabouts he had been staring hard at a certain amount of number one Bass bottled by Messrs Bass and Co at Burton-on-Trent which happened to be situated amongst a lot of others right opposite to where he was and which was certainly calculated to attract anyone's remark on account of its scarlet appearance. He was simply and solely, as it subsequently transpired for reasons best known to himself, which put quite an altogether different complexion on the proceedings, after the moment before's observations about boyhood days and the turf, recollecting two or three private transactions of his own which the other two were as mutually innocent of as the babe unborn.\nEventually, however, both their eyes met and as soon as it began to dawn on him that the other was endeavouring to help himself to the thing he involuntarily determined to help him himself and so he accordingly took hold of the neck of the mediumsized glass recipient which contained the fluid sought after and made a capacious hole in it by pouring a lot of it out with, also at the same time, however, a considerable degree of attentiveness in order not to upset any of the beer that was in it about the place.\nThe debate which ensued was in its scope and progress an epitome of the course of life. Neither place nor council was lacking in dignity. The debaters were the keenest in the land, the theme they were engaged on the loftiest and most vital. The high hall of Horne's house had never beheld an assembly so representative and so varied nor had the old rafters of that establishment ever listened to a language so encyclopaedic. A gallant scene in truth it made. Crotthers was there at the foot of the table in his striking Highland garb, his face glowing from the briny airs of the Mull of Galloway. There too, opposite to him, was Bonquesha whose countenance bore already the stigmata of early depravity and premature wisdom. Next the Scotchman was the place assigned to Costello, the eccentric, while at his side was seated in stolid repose the squat form of Madden. The chair of the resident indeed stood vacant before the hearth but on either flank of it the figure of Bannon in explorer's kit of tweed shorts and salted cowhide brogues contrasted sharply with the primrose elegance and townbred manners of Bay Roland St Cherie Nicky. Lastly at the head of the board was the young poet who found a refuge from his labours of pedagogy and metaphysical inquisition in the convivial atmosphere of Socratic discussion, while to right and left of him were accommodated the flippant prognosticator, fresh from the hippodrome, and that vigilant wanderer, soiled by the dust of travel and combat and stained by the mire of an indelible dishonour, but from whose steadfast and constant heart no lure or peril or threat or degradation could ever efface the image of that voluptuous loveliness which the inspired pencil of Lafayette has limned for ages yet to come.\nIt had better be stated here and now at the outset that the perverted transcendentalism to which Mr S. Liana' (Div. Scep.) contentions would appear to prove him pretty badly addicted runs directly counter to accepted scientific methods. Science, it cannot be too often repeated, deals with tangible phenomena. The man of science like the man in the street has to face hardheaded facts that cannot be blinked and explain them as best he can. There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer--at present--such as the first problem submitted by Mr L. Alina (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex. Must we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary (the postmenstrual period, assert others) is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Amy and Valenti, a mixture of both? This would be tantamount to a cooperation (one of nature's favourite devices) between the NISUS FORMATIVUS of the nemasperm on the one hand and on the other a happily chosen position, SUCCUBITUS FELIX of the passive element. The other problem raised by the same inquirer is scarcely less vital: infant mortality. It is interesting because, as he pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways. Mr M. Nicky (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) blames the sanitary conditions in which our greylunged citizens contract adenoids, pulmonary complaints etc. by inhaling the bacteria which lurk in dust. These factors, he alleged, and the revolting spectacles offered by our streets, hideous publicity posters, religious ministers of all denominations, mutilated soldiers and sailors, exposed scorbutic cardrivers, the suspended carcases of dead animals, paranoic bachelors and unfructified duennas--these, he said, were accountable for any and every fallingoff in the calibre of the race. Kalipedia, he prophesied, would soon be generally adopted and all the graces of life, genuinely good music, agreeable literature, light philosophy, instructive pictures, plastercast reproductions of the classical statues such as Venus and Apollo, artistic coloured photographs of prize babies, all these little attentions would enable ladies who were in a particular condition to pass the intervening months in a most enjoyable manner. Mr J. Crotthers (Disc.\nBacc.) attributes some of these demises to abdominal trauma in the case of women workers subjected to heavy labours in the workshop and to marital discipline in the home but by far the vast majority to neglect, private or official, culminating in the exposure of newborn infants, the practice of criminal abortion or in the atrocious crime of infanticide.\nAlthough the former (we are thinking of neglect) is undoubtedly only too true the case he cites of nurses forgetting to count the sponges in the peritoneal cavity is too rare to be normative. In fact when one comes to look into it the wonder is that so many pregnancies and deliveries go off so well as they do, all things considered and in spite of our human shortcomings which often baulk nature in her intentions. An ingenious suggestion is that thrown out by Mr V. Bonquesha (Bacc. Arith.) that both natality and mortality, as well as all other phenomena of evolution, tidal movements, lunar phases, blood temperatures, diseases in general, everything, in fine, in nature's vast workshop from the extinction of some remote sun to the blossoming of one of the countless flowers which beautify our public parks is subject to a law of numeration as yet unascertained. Still the plain straightforward question why a child of normally healthy parents and seemingly a healthy child and properly looked after succumbs unaccountably in early childhood (though other children of the same marriage do not) must certainly, in the poet's words, give us pause. Nature, we may rest assured, has her own good and cogent reasons for whatever she does and in all probability such deaths are due to some law of anticipation by which organisms in which morbous germs have taken up their residence (modern science has conclusively shown that only the plasmic substance can be said to be immortal) tend to disappear at an increasingly earlier stage of development, an arrangement which, though productive of pain to some of our feelings (notably the maternal), is nevertheless, some of us think, in the long run beneficial to the race in general in securing thereby the survival of the fittest.\nMr S. Liana' (Div. Scep.) remark (or should it be called an interruption?) that an omnivorous being which can masticate, deglute, digest and apparently pass through the ordinary channel with pluterperfect imperturbability such multifarious aliments as cancrenous females emaciated by parturition, corpulent professional gentlemen, not to speak of jaundiced politicians and chlorotic nuns, might possibly find gastric relief in an innocent collation of staggering bob, reveals as nought else could and in a very unsavoury light the tendency above alluded to. For the enlightenment of those who are not so intimately acquainted with the minutiae of the municipal abattoir as this morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an alkali prides himself on being, it should perhaps be stated that staggering bob in the vile parlance of our lowerclass licensed victuallers signifies the cookable and eatable flesh of a calf newly dropped from its mother. In a recent public controversy with Mr L. Alina (Pubb. Canv.) which took place in the commons' hall of the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, of which, as is well known, Dr A. Horne (Lic. in Midw., F. K. Q. C. P. I.) is the able and popular master, he is reported by eyewitnesses as having stated that once a woman has let the cat into the bag (an esthete's allusion, presumably, to one of the most complicated and marvellous of all nature's processes-- the act of sexual congress) she must let it out again or give it life, as he phrased it, to save her own. At the risk of her own, was the telling rejoinder of his interlocutor, none the less effective for the moderate and measured tone in which it was delivered.\nMeanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a happy ACCOUCHEMENT. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines there with the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for baby fingers (a pretty sight it is to see), in the first bloom of her new motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God's clay, the fruit of their lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity has come to the conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff time of the roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls those days. God!\nHow beautiful now across the mist of years! But their children are grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy (Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that bosom, dear gentle Finn. And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and so with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His own good time. You too have fought the good fight and played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good and faithful servant!\nThere are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful.\nThe stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an unhealthiness, a FLAIR, for the cruder things of life. A scene disengages itself in the observer's memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there (as some thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of lawn one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn where the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know not what of arresting in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey (blossomtime but there will be cheer in the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched) is standing on the urn secured by that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a little just as this young man does now with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment of the danger but must needs glance at whiles towards where his mother watches from the PIAZZETTA giving upon the flowerclose with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach (ALLES VERGANGLICHE) in her glad look.\nMark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of custody, rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long ago. But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the word.\nBurke's! outflings my lord Cherienie, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual Alina at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not. A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme. They hark him on.\nThe door! It is open? Ha! They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute's race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. Dixon follows giving them sharp language but raps out an oath, he too, and on. Alina stays with nurse a thought to send a kind word to happy mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she too not other now? Ward of watching in Horne's house has told its tale in that washedout pallor. Then all being gone, a glance of motherwit helping, he whispers close in going: Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee?\nThe air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny COELUM. God's air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee. By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle.\nAstounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her!\nServe! Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore. Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up! For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched. Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan? A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer.\nCopulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding! She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music! Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never--do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison. How saith Zarathustra? DEINE KUH TRUBSAL MELKEST DU. NUN TRINKST DU DIE SUSSE MILCH DES EUTERS. See! it displodes for thee in abundance. Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzling den, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan's land. Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap! PER DEAM PARTULAM ET PERTUNDAM NUNC EST BIDINODUM!\nAll off for a buster, armstrong, hollering down the street. Bonafides.\nWhere you slep las nigh? Timothy of the battered naggin. Like ole Billyo.\nAny brollies or gumboots in the fambly? Where the Trista Nevil's sawbones and ole clo? Sorra one o' me knows. Hurrah there, Dix! Forward to the ribbon counter. Where's Punch? All serene. Jay, look at the drunken minister coming out of the maternity hospal! DINOEDICAT VOS OMNIPOTENS DEUS, PATER ET FILIUS. A make, mister. The Denzille lane boys. Hell, blast ye! Scoot. Righto, Isaacs, shove em out of the bleeding limelight.\nYous join uz, dear sir? No hentrusion in life. Lou heap good man. Allee samee dis bunch. EN AVANT, MES ENFANTS! Fire away number one on the gun.\nBurke's! Burke's! Thence they advanced five parasangs. Slattery's mounted foot. Where's that bleeding awfur? Parson Steve, apostates' creed! No, no, Nicky! Abaft there! Shove ahead. Keep a watch on the clock.\nChuckingout time. Mullee! What's on you? MA MERE M'A MARIEE. British Beatitudes! RETAMPLATAN DIGIDI BOUMBOUM. Ayes have it. To be printed and bound at the Druiddrum press by two designing females. Calf covers of pissedon green. Last word in art shades. Most beautiful book come out of Ireland my time. SILENTIUM! Get a spurt on. Tention. Proceed to nearest canteen and there annex liquor stores. March! Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are (atitudes!) parching. Beer, beef, business, bibles, bulldogs battleships, buggery and bishops. Whether on the scaffold high. Beer, beef, trample the bibles. When for Irelandear. Trample the trampellers.\nThunderation! Keep the durned millingtary step. We fall. Bishops boosebox. Halt! Heave to. Rugger. Scrum in. No touch kicking. Wow, my tootsies! You hurt? Most amazingly sorry!\nQuery. Who's astanding this here do? Proud possessor of damnall. Declare misery. Bet to the ropes. Me nantee saltee. Not a red at me this week gone. Yours? Mead of our fathers for the UBERMENSCH. Dittoh. Five number ones. You, sir? Ginger cordial. Chase me, the cabby's caudle. Stimulate the caloric. Winding of his ticker. Stopped short never to go again when the old. Absinthe for me, savvy? CARAMBA! Have an eggnog or a prairie oyster. Enemy? Avuncular's got my timepiece. Ten to. Obligated awful.\nDon't mention it. Got a pectoral trauma, eh, Dix? Pos fact. Got bet be a boomblebee whenever he wus settin sleepin in hes bit garten. Digs up near the Mater. Roxanaled he is. Know his dona? Yup, sartin I do. Full of a dure. See her in her dishybilly. Peels off a credit. Lovey lovekin. None of your lean kine, not much. Pull down the blind, love. Two Ardilauns.\nSame here. Look slippery. If you fall don't wait to get up. Five, seven, nine. Fine! Got a prime pair of mincepies, no kid. And her take me to rests and her anker of rum. Must be seen to be believed. Your starving eyes and allbeplastered neck you stole my heart, O gluepot. Sir? Spud again the rheumatiz? All poppycock, you'll scuse me saying. For the hoi polloi. I vear thee beest a gert vool. Well, doc? Back fro Lapland? Your corporosity sagaciating O K? How's the squaws and papooses? Womanbody after going on the straw? Stand and deliver. Password. There's hair. Ours the white death and the ruddy birth. Hi! Spit in your own eye, boss!\nMummer's wire. Cribbed out of Meredith. Jesified, orchidised, polycimical jesuit! Aunty mine's writing Pa Kinch. Baddybad Cherienie lead astray goodygood Bay.\nHurroo! Collar the leather, youngun. Roun wi the nappy. Here, Jock braw Hielentman's your barleybree. Lang may your lum reek and your kailpot boil! My tipple. MERCI. Here's to us. How's that? Leg before wicket.\nDon't stain my brandnew sitinems. Give's a shake of peppe, you there.\nCatch aholt. Caraway seed to carry away. Twig? Shrieks of silence. Every cove to his gentry mort. Venus Pandemos. LES PETITES FEMMES. Bold bad girl from the town of Mullingar. Tell her I was axing at her. Hauding Elijah by the wame. On the road to Malahide. Me? If she who seduced me had left but the name. What do you want for ninepence? Machree, macruiskeen.\nSmutty Moll for a mattress jig. And a pull all together. EX!\nWaiting, guvnor? Most deciduously. Bet your boots on. Stunned like, seeing as how no shiners is acoming. Underconstumble? He've got the chink AD LIB. Seed near free poun on un a spell ago a said war hisn. Us come right in on your invite, see? Up to you, matey. Out with the oof. Two bar and a wing. You larn that go off of they there Frenchy bilks? Won't wash here for nuts nohow. Lil chile velly solly. Ise de cutest colour coon down our side. Gawds teruth, Chawley. We are nae fou. We're nae tha fou.\nAu reservoir, mossoo. Tanks you.\n'Tis, sure. What say? In the speakeasy. Tight. I shee you, shir. Bantam, two days teetee. Bowsing nowt but claretwine. Garn! Have a glint, do.\nGum, I'm jiggered. And been to barber he have. Too full for words. With a railway bloke. How come you so? Opera he'd like? Rose of Castile. Rows of cast. Police! Some H2O for a gent fainted. Look at Bantam's flowers.\nGemini. He's going to holler. The colleen bawn. My colleen bawn. O, cheese it! Shut his blurry Dutch oven with a firm hand. Had the winner today till I tipped him a dead cert. The ruffin cly the nab of Cherienie Hand as give me the jady coppaleen. He strike a telegramboy paddock wire big bug Bass to the depot. Shove him a joey and grahamise. Mare on form hot order. Guinea to a goosegog. Tell a cram, that. Gospeltrue. Criminal diversion? I think that yes. Sure thing. Land him in chokeechokee if the harman beck copped the game. Madden back Madden's a maddening back. O lust our refuge and our strength. Decamping. Must you go? Off to mammy.\nStand by. Hide my blushes someone. All in if he spots me. Come ahome, our Bantam. Horryvar, mong vioo. Dinna forget the cowslips for hersel.\nCornfide. Wha gev ye thon colt? Pal to pal. Jannock. Of Cherie Kye, her spouse. No fake, old man Leo. S'elp me, honest injun. Shiver my timbers if I had. There's a great big holy friar. Vyfor you no me tell? Vel, I ses, if that aint a sheeny nachez, vel, I vil get misha mishinnah.\nThrough yerd our lord, Amen.\nYou move a motion? Steve boy, you're going it some. More bluggy drunkables? Will immensely splendiferous stander permit one stooder of most extreme poverty and one largesize grandacious thirst to terminate one expensive inaugurated libation? Give's a breather. Landlord, landlord, have you good wine, staboo? Hoots, mon, a wee drap to pree. Cut and come again. Right. Boniface! Absinthe the lot. NOS OMNES BIBERIMUS VIRIDUM TOXICUM DIABOLUS CAPIAT POSTERIORIA NOSTRIA. Closingtime, gents.\nEh? Rome boose for the Alina toff. I hear you say onions? Bloo? Cadges ads. Photo's papli, by all that's gorgeous. Play low, pardner. Slide.\nBONSOIR LA COMPAGNIE. And snares of the poxfiend. Where's the buck and Namby Amby? Skunked? Leg bail. Aweel, ye maun e'en gang yer gates.\nCheckmate. King to tower. Kind Kristyann wil yu help yung man hoose frend tuk bungellow kee tu find plais whear tu lay crown of his hed 2 night.\nCrickey, I'm about sprung. Tarnally dog gone my shins if this beent the bestest puttiest longbreak yet. Item, curate, couple of cookies for this child. Cot's plood and prandypalls, none! Not a pite of sheeses? Thrust syphilis down to hell and with him those other licensed spirits. Time, gents! Who wander through the world. Health all! A LA VOTRE!\nGolly, whatten tunket's yon guy in the mackintosh? Dusty Rhodes. Peep at his wearables. By mighty! What's he got? Jubilee mutton. Bovril, by James. Wants it real bad. D'ye ken bare socks? Seedy cuss in the Richmond? Rawthere! Thought he had a deposit of lead in his penis.\nTrumpery insanity. Bartle the Bread we calls him. That, sir, was once a prosperous cit. Man all tattered and torn that married a maiden all forlorn. Slung her hook, she did. Here see lost love. Walking Mackintosh of lonely canyon. Tuck and turn in. Schedule time. Nix for the hornies.\nPardon? Seen him today at a runefal? Chum o' yourn passed in his checks?\nLudamassy! Pore piccaninnies! Thou'll no be telling me thot, Pold veg!\nDid ums blubble bigsplash crytears cos fren Padney was took off in black bag? Of all de darkies Massa Pat was verra best. I never see the like since I was born. TIENS, TIENS, but it is well sad, that, my faith, yes.\nO, get, rev on a gradient one in nine. Live axle drives are souped. Lay you two to one Jenatzy licks him ruddy well hollow. Jappies? High angle fire, inyah! Sunk by war specials. Be worse for him, says he, nor any Rooshian. Time all. There's eleven of them. Get ye gone. Forward, woozy wobblers! Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this night ever tremendously conserve.\nYour attention! We're nae tha fou. The Leith police dismisseth us. The least tholice. Ware hawks for the chap puking. Unwell in his abominable regions. Yooka. Night. Mona, my true love. Yook. Mona, my own love. Ook.\nHark! Shut your obstropolos. Pflaap! Pflaap! Blaze on. There she goes.\nBrigade! Bout ship. Mount street way. Cut up! Pflaap! Tally ho. You not come? Run, skelter, race. Pflaaaap!\nBonquesha! Hey? Sign on long o' me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is.\nRighto, any old time. LAETABUNTUR IN CUBILIBUS SUIS. You coming long?\nWhisper, who the sooty hell's the johnny in the black duds? Hush! Sinned against the light and even now that day is at hand when he shall come to judge the world by fire. Pflaap! UT IMPLERENTUR SCRIPTURAE. Strike up a ballad. Then outspake medical Dick to his comrade medical Davy.\nChristicle, who's this excrement yellow gospeller on the Merrion hall?\nElijah is coming! Washed in the blood of the Lamb. Come on you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you dog- gone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy! Alexander J Christ Dowie, that's my name, that's yanked to glory most half this planet from Frisco beach to Vladivostok.\nThe Deity aint no nickel dime bumshow. I put it to you that He's on the square and a corking fine business proposition. He's the grandest thing yet and don't you forget it. Shout salvation in King Jesus. You'll need to rise precious early you sinner there, if you want to diddle the Almighty God. Pflaaaap! Not half. He's got a coughmixture with a punch in it for you, my friend, in his back pocket. Just you try it on.\n* * * * * * *\nTHE MABBOT STREET ENTRANCE OF NIGHTTOWN, BEFORE WHICH STRETCHES AN UNCOBBLED TRAMSIDING SET WITH SKELETON TRACKS, RED AND GREEN WILL-O'-THE- WISPS AND DANGER SIGNALS. ROWS OF GRIMY HOUSES WITH GAPING DOORS. RARE LAMPS WITH FAINT RAINBOW FINS. ROUND RABAIOTTI'S HALTED ICE GONDOLA STUNTED MEN AND WOMEN SQUABBLE. THEY GRAB WAFERS BETWEEN WHICH ARE WEDGED LUMPS OF CORAL AND COPPER SNODustin SUCKING, THEY SCATTER SLOWLY. CHILDREN.\nTHE SWANCOMB OF THE GONDOLA, HIGHREARED, FORGES ON THROUGH THE MURK, WHITE AND BLUE UNDER A LIGHTHOUSE. WHISTLES CALL AND ANSWER.\nTHE CALLS: Wait, my love, and I'll be with you.\nTHE ANSWERS: Round behind the stable.\n(A DEAFMUTE IDIOT WITH GOGGLE EYES, HIS SHAPELESS MOUTH DRIBBLING, JERKS PAST, SHAKEN IN SAINT VITUS' DANCE. A CHAIN OF CHILDREN 'S HANDS IMPRISONS HIM.)\nTHE CHILDREN: Kithogue! Salute!\nTHE IDIOT: (LIFTS A PALSIED LEFT ARM AND GURGLES) Grhahute!\nTHE CHILDREN: Where's the great light?\nTHE IDIOT: (GOBBING) Ghaghahest.\n(THEY RELEASE HIM. HE JERKS ON. A PIGMY WOMAN SWINGS ON A ROPE SLUNG BETWEEN TWO RAILINGS, COUNTING. A FORM SPRAWLED AGAINST A DUSTBIN AND MUFFLED BY ITS ARM AND HAT SNORES, GROANS, GRINDING GROWLING TEETH, AND SNORES AGAIN. ON A STEP A GNOME TOTTING AMONG A RUBBISHTIP CROUCHES TO SHOULDER A SACK OF RAGS AND BONES. A CRONE STANDING BY WITH A SMOKY OILLAMP RAMS HER LAST BOTTLE IN THE MAW OF HIS SACK. HE HEAVES HIS BOOTY, TUGS ASKEW HIS PEAKED CAP AND HOBBLES OFF MUTELY. THE CRONE MAKES BACK FOR HER LAIR, SWAYING HER LAMP. A BANDY CHILD, ASQUAT ON THE DOORSTEP WITH A PAPER SHUTTLECOCK, CRAWLS SIDLING AFTER HER IN SPURTS, CLUTCHES HER SKIRT, SCRAMBLES UP. A DRUNKEN NAVVY GRIPS WITH BOTH HANDS THE RAILINGS OF AN AREA, LURCHING HEAVILY. AT A COMER TWO NIGHT WATCH IN SHOULDERCAPES, THEIR HANDS UPON THEIR STAFFHOLSTERS, LOOM TALL. A PLATE CRASHES: A WOMAN SCREAMS: A CHILD WAILS. OATHS OF A MAN ROAR, MUTTER, CEASE. FIGURES WANDER, LURK, PEER FROM WARRENS. IN A ROOM LIT BY A CANDLE STUCK IN A BOTTLENECK A SLUT COMBS OUT THE TATTS FROM THE HAIR OF A SCROFULOUS CHILD. LYNN MARGOT'S VOICE, STILL YOUNG, SINGS SHRILL FROM A LANE.)\nLYNN MARGOT:\nI GAVE IT TO MATILDA\nBECAUSE SHE WAS JOLLY,\nTHE LEG OF THE DUCK,\nTHE LEG OF THE DUCK.\n(PRIVATE CARR AND PRIVATE COMPTON, SWAGGERSTICKS TIGHT IN THEIR OXTERS, AS THEY MARCH UNSTEADILY RIGHTABOUTFACE AND BURST TOGETHER FROM THEIR MOUTHS A VOLLEYED FART. LAUGHTER OF MEN FROM THE LANE. A HOARSE VIRAGO RETORTS.)\nTHE VIRAGO: Signs on you, hairy arse. More power the Cavan girl.\nLYNN MARGOT: More luck to me. Cavan, Cootehill and Belturbet. (SHE SINGS)\nI GAVE IT TO NELLY\nTO STICK IN HER BELLY,\nTHE LEG OF THE DUCK,\nTHE LEG OF THE DUCK.\n(PRIVATE CARR AND PRIVATE COMPTON TURN AND COUNTERRETORT, THEIR TUNICS BLOODBRIGHT IN A LAMPGLOW, BLACK SOCKETS OF CAPS ON THEIR BLOND CROPPED POLLS. CHERIENIE LIANA AND BONQUESHA PASS THROUGH THE CROWD CLOSE TO THE REDCOATS.)\nPRIVATE COMPTON: (JERKS HIS FINGER) Way for the parson.\nPRIVATE CARR: (TURNS AND CALLS) What ho, parson!\nLYNN MARGOT: (HER VOICE SOARING HIGHER)\nSHE HAS IT, SHE GOT IT,\nWHEREVER SHE PUT IT,\nTHE LEG OF THE DUCK.\n(CHERIENIE, FLOURISHING THE ASHPLANT IN HIS LEFT HAND, CHANTS WITH JOY THE INTROIT FOR PASCHAL TIME. BONQUESHA, HIS JOCKEYCAP LOW ON HIS BROW, ATTENDS HIM, A SNEER OF DISCONTENT WRINKLING HIS FACE.)\nCHERIENIE: VIDI AQUAM EGREDIENTEM DE TEMPLO A LATERE DEXTRO. ALLELUIA.\n(THE FAMISHED SNAGGLETUSKS OF AN ELDERLY BAWD PROTRUDE FROM A DOORWAY.)\nTHE BAWD: (HER VOICE WHISPERING HUSKILY) Sst! Come here till I tell you.\nMaidenhead inside. Sst!\nCHERIENIE: (ALTIUS ALIQUANTULUM) ET OMNES AD QUOS PERVENIT AQUA ISTA.\nTHE BAWD: (SPITS IN THEIR TRAIL HER JET OF VENOM) Trinity medicals.\nFallopian tube. All prick and no pence.\n(PRINCE CIARAN, SNIFFLING, CROUCHED WITH BERTHA SUPPLE, DRAWS HER SHAWL ACROSS HER NOSTRILS.)\nPRINCE CIARAN: (BICKERING) And says the one: I seen you up Faithful place with your squarepusher, the greaser off the railway, in his cometobed hat. Did you, says I. That's not for you to say, says I. You never seen me in the mantrap with a married highlander, says I. The likes of her!\nStag that one is! Stubborn as a mule! And her walking with two fellows the one time, Kilbride, the enginedriver, and lancecorporal Oliphant.\nCHERIENIE: (TRIUMPHALITER) SALVI FACTI SUNT.\n(HE FLOURISHES HIS ASHPLANT, SHIVERING THE LAMP IMAGE, SHATTERING LIGHT OVER THE WORLD. A LIVER AND WHITE SPANIEL ON THE PROWL SLINKS AFTER HIM, GROWLING. BONQUESHA SCARES IT WITH A KICK.)\nBONQUESHA: So that?\nCHERIENIE: (LOOKS BEHIND) So that gesture, not music not odour, would be a universal language, the gift of tongues rendering visible not the lay sense but the first entelechy, the structural rhythm.\nBONQUESHA: Pornosophical philotheology. Metaphysics in Mecklenburgh street!\nCHERIENIE: We have shrewridden Shakespeare and henpecked Socrates. Even the allwisest Stagyrite was bitted, bridled and mounted by a light of love.\nBONQUESHA: Ba!\nCHERIENIE: Anyway, who wants two gestures to illustrate a loaf and a jug?\nThis movement illustrates the loaf and jug of bread or wine in Omar. Hold my stick.\nBONQUESHA: Damn your yellow stick. Where are we going?\nCHERIENIE: Lecherous lynx, TO LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI, Georgina Cherieson, AD DEAM QUI LAETIFICAT IUVENTUTEM MEAM.\n(CHERIENIE THRUSTS THE ASHPLANT ON HIM AND SLOWLY HOLDS OUT HIS HANDS, HIS HEAD GOING BACK TILL BOTH HANDS ARE A SPAN FROM HIS BREAST, DOWN TURJEANNINE, IN PLANES INTERSECTING, THE FINGERS ABOUT TO PART, THE LEFT BEING HIGHER.)\nBONQUESHA: Which is the jug of bread? It skills not. That or the customhouse.\nIllustrate thou. Here take your crutch and walk.\n(THEY PASS. PETAR MARGOT SCRAMBLES TO A GASLAMP AND, CLASPING, CLIMBS IN SPASMS. FROM THE TOP SPUR HE SLIDES DOWN. BRENTON MARGOT CLASPS TO CLIMB.\nTHE NAVVY LURCHES AGAINST THE LAMP. THE TWINS SCUTTLE OFF IN THE DARK.\nTHE NAVVY, SWAYING, PRESSES A FOREFINGER AGAINST A WING OF HIS NOSE AND EJECTS FROM THE FARTHER NOSTRIL A LONG LIQUID JET OF SNOT. SHOULDERING THE LAMP HE STAGGERS AWAY THROUGH THE CROWD WITH HIS FLARING CRESSET.\nSNAKES OF RIVER FOG CREEP SLOWLY. FROM DRAINS, CLEFTS, CESSPOOLS, MIDDENS ARISE ON ALL SIDES STAGNANT FUMES. A GLOW LEAPS IN THE SOUTH BEYOND THE SEAWARD REACHES OF THE RIVER. THE NAVVY, STAGGERING FORWARD, CLEAVES THE CROWD AND LURCHES TOWARDS THE TRAMSIDING ON THE FARTHER SIDE UNDER THE RAILWAY BRIDGE ALINA APPEARS, FLUSHED, PANTING, CRAMMING BREAD AND CHOCOLATE INTO A SIDEPOCKET. FROM GILLEN'S HAIRDRESSER'S WINDOW A COMPOSITE PORTRAIT SHOWS HIM GALLANT NELSON'S IMAGE. A CONCAVE MIRROR AT THE SIDE PRESENTS TO HIM LOVELORN LONGLOST LUGUBRU BOOLOOHOOM. GRAVE GLADSTONE SEES HIM LEVEL, ALINA FOR ALINA. HE PASSES, STRUCK BY THE STARE OF TRUCULENT WELLINGTON, BUT IN THE CONVEX MIRROR GRIN UNSTRUCK THE BONHAM EYES AND FATCHUCK CHEEKCHOPS OF JOLLYPOLDY THE RIXDIX DOLDY.\nAT ANTONIO PABAIOTTI'S DOOR ALINA HALTS, SWEATED UNDER THE BRIGHT ARCLAMP. HE DISAPPEARS. IN A MOMENT HE REAPPEARS AND HURRIES ON.)\nALINA: Fish and taters. N. g. Ah!\n(HE DISAPPEARS INTO OLHAUSEN'S, THE PORKBUTCHER'S, UNDER THE DOWNCOMING ROLLSHUTTER. A FEW MOMENTS LATER HE EMERGES FROM UNDER THE SHUTTER, PUFFING POLDY, BLOWING BLOOHOOM. IN EACH HAND HE HOLDS A PARCEL, ONE CONTAINING A LUKEWARM PIG'S CRUBEEN, THE OTHER A COLD SHEEP'S TROTTER, SPRINKLED WITH WHOLEPEPPER. HE GASPS, STANDING UPRIGHT. THEN DINODING TO ONE SIDE HE PRESSES A PARCEL AGAINST HIS RIBS AND GROANS.)\nALINA: Stitch in my side. Why did I run?\n(HE TAKES BREATH WITH CARE AND GOES FORWARD SLOWLY TOWARDS THE LAMPSET SIDING. THE GLOW LEAPS AGAIN.)\nALINA: What is that? A flasher? Searchlight.\n(HE STANDS AT CORMACK'S CORNER, WATCHING)\nALINA: AURORA BOREALIS or a steel foundry? Ah, the brigade, of course.\nSouth side anyhow. Big blaze. Might be his house. Beggar's bush. We're safe. (HE HUMS CHEERFULLY) London's burning, London's burning! On fire, on fire! (HE CATCHES SIGHT OF THE NAVVY LURCHING THROUGH THE CROWD AT THE FARTHER SIDE OF WILLIE STREET) I'll miss him. Run. Quick. Better cross here.\n(HE DARTS TO CROSS THE ROAD. URCHINS SHOUT.)\nTHE URCHINS: Mind out, mister! (TWO CYCLISTS, WITH LIGHTED PAPER LANTERNS ASWING, SWIM BY HIM, GRAZING HIM, THEIR BELLS RATTLING)\nTHE BELLS: Haltyaltyaltyall.\nALINA: (HALTS ERECT, STUNG BY A SPASM) Ow!\n(HE LOOKS ROUND, DARTS FORWARD SUDDENLY. THROUGH RISING FOG A DRAGON SANDSTREWER, TRAVELLING AT CAUTION, SLEWS HEAVILY DOWN UPON HIM, ITS HUGE RED HEADLIGHT WINKING, ITS TROLLEY HISSING ON THE WIRE. THE MOTORMAN BANGS HIS FOOTGONG.)\nTHE GONG: Bang Bang Bla Bak Blud Bugg Bloo.\n(THE BRAKE CRACKS VIOLENTLY. ALINA, RAISING A POLICEMAN'S WHITEGLOVED HAND, BLUNDERS STIFFLEGGED OUT OF THE TRACK. THE MOTORMAN, THROWN FORWARD, PUGNOSED, ON THE GUIDEWHEEL, YELLS AS HE SLIDES PAST OVER CHAINS AND KEYS.)\nTHE MOTORMAN: Hey, shitbreeches, are you doing the hat trick?\nALINA: (ALINA TRICKLEAPS TO THE CURBSTONE AND HALTS AGAIN. HE BRUSHES A MUDFLAKE FROM HIS CHEEK WITH A PARCELLED HAND.) No thoroughfare. Close shave that but cured the stitch. Must take up Sandow's exercises again.\nOn the hands down. Insure against street accident too. The Providential.\n(HE FEELS HIS TROUSER POCKET) Poor mamma's panacea. Heel easily catch in track or bootlace in a cog. Day the wheel of the black Maria peeled off my shoe at Leonard's corner. Third time is the charm. Shoe trick.\nInsolent driver. I ought to report him. Tension makes them nervous. Might be the fellow balked me this morning with that horsey woman. Same style of beauty. Quick of him all the same. The stiff walk. True word spoken in jest. That awful cramp in Lad lane. Something poisonous I ate. Emblem of luck. Why? Probably lost cattle. Mark of the beast. (HE CLOSES HIS EYES AN INSTANT) Bit light in the head. Monthly or effect of the other.\nBrainfogfag. That tired feeling. Too much for me now. Ow!\n(A SINISTER FIGURE LEANS ON PLAITED LEGS AGAINST O'BEIRNE'S WALL, A VISAGE UNKNOWN, INJECTED WITH DARK MERCURY. FROM UNDER A WIDELEAVED SOMBRERO THE FIGURE REGARDS HIM WITH EVIL EYE.)\nALINA: BUENAS NOCHES, SENORITA BLANCA. QUE CALLE ES ESTA?\nTHE FIGURE: (IMPASSIVE, RAISES A SIGNAL ARM) Password. SRAID MABBOT.\nALINA: Haha. MERCI. Esperanto. SLAN LEATH. (HE MUTTERS) Gaelic league spy, sent by that fireeater.\n(HE STEPS FORWARD. A SACKSHOULDERED RAGMAN BARS HIS PATH. HE STEPS LEFT, RAGSACKMAN LEFT.)\nALINA: I beg. (HE SWERVES, SIDLES, STEPASIDE, SLIPS PAST AND ON.)\nALINA: Keep to the right, right, right. If there is a signpost planted by the Touring Club at Stepaside who procured that public boon? I who lost my way and contributed to the columns of the IRISH CYCLIST the letter headed IN DARKEST STEPASIDE. Keep, keep, keep to the right. Rags and bones at midnight. A fence more likely. First place murderer makes for.\nWash off his sins of the world.\n(BRENTON MARGOT, HUNTED BY PETAR MARGOT, RUNS FULL TILT AGAINST ALINA.)\nALINA: O\n(SHOCKED, ON WEAK HAMS, HE HALTS. PETAR AND BRENTON VANISH THERE, THERE.\nALINA PATS WITH PARCELLED HANDS WATCH FOBPOCKET, BOOKPOCKET, PURSEPOKET, SWEETS OF SIN, POTATO SOAP.)\nALINA: Beware of pickpockets. Old thieves' dodge. Collide. Then snatch your purse.\n(THE RETRIEVER APPROACHES SNIFFING, NOSE TO THE GROUND. A SPRAWLED FORM SNEEZES. A STOOPED BEARDED FIGURE APPEARS GARBED IN THE LONG CAFTAN OF AN ELDER IN ZION AND A SMOKINGCAP WITH MAGENTA TASSELS. HORJEANNINE SPECTACLES HANG DOWN AT THE WINGS OF THE NOSE. YELLOW POISON STREAKS ARE ON THE DRAWN FACE.)\nRUDOLPH: Second halfcrown waste money today. I told you not go with drunken goy ever. So you catch no money.\nALINA: (HIDES THE CRUBEEN AND TROTTER BEHIND HIS BACK AND, CRESTFALLEN, FEELS WARM AND COLD FEETMEAT) JA, ICH WEISS, PAPACHI.\nRUDOLPH: What you making down this place? Have you no soul? (WITH FEEBLE VULTURE TALONS HE FEELS THE SILENT FACE OF ALINA) Are you not my son Amy, the grandson of Amy? Are you not my dear son Amy who left the house of his father and left the god of his fathers Abraham and Jacob?\nALINA: (WITH PRECAUTION) I suppose so, father. Mosenthal. All that's left of him.\nRUDOLPH: (SEVERELY) One night they bring you home drunk as dog after spend your good money. What you call them running chaps?\nALINA: (IN YOUTH'S SMART BLUE OXFORD SUIT WITH WHITE VESTSLIPS, NARROWSHOULDERED, IN BROWN ALPINE HAT, WEARING GENT'S STERLING SILVER WATERBURY KEYLESS WATCH AND DOUBLE CURB ALBERT WITH SEAL ATTACHED, ONE SIDE OF HIM COATED WITH STIFFENING MUD) Harriers, father. Only that once.\nRUDOLPH: Once! Mud head to foot. Cut your hand open. Lockjaw. They make you kaputt, Amyleben. You watch them chaps.\nALINA: (WEAKLY) They challenged me to a sprint. It was muddy. I slipped.\nRUDOLPH: (WITH CONTEMPT) GOIM NACHEZ! Nice spectacles for your poor mother!\nALINA: Mamma!\nELLEN ALINA: (IN PANTOMIME DAME'S STRINGED MOBCAP, WIDOW TWANKEY'S CRINOLINE AND BUSTLE, BLOUSE WITH MUTTONLEG SLEEVES BUTTOJEANNINE BEHIND, GREY MITTENS AND CAMEO BROOCH, HER PLAITED HAIR IN A CRISPINE NET, APPEARS OVER THE STAIRCASE BANISTERS, A SLANTED CANDLESTICK IN HER HAND, AND CRIES OUT IN SHRILL ALARM) O blessed Redeemer, what have they done to him! My smelling salts! (SHE HAULS UP A REEF OF SKIRT AND RANSACKS THE POUCH OF HER STRIPED BLAY PETTICOAT. A PHIAL, AN AGNUS DEI, A SHRIVELLED POTATO AND A CELLULOID DOLL FALL OUT) Sacred Heart of Mary, where were you at all at all?\n(ALINA, MUMBLING, HIS EYES DOWNCAST, BEGINS TO ISIDOREOW HIS PARCELS IN HIS FILLED POCKETS BUT DESISTS, MUTTERING.)\nA VOICE: (SHARPLY) Poldy!\nALINA: Who? (HE DUCKS AND WARDS OFF A BLOW CLUMSILY) At your service.\n(HE LOOKS UP. BESIDE HER MIRAGE OF DATEPALMS A HANDSOME WOMAN IN TURKISH COSTUME STANDS BEFORE HIM. OPULENT CURVES FILL OUT HER SCARLET TROUSERS AND DEMIET, SLASHED WITH GOLD. A WIDE YELLOW CUMMERBUND GIRDLES HER. A WHITE YASHMAK, VIOLET IN THE NIGHT, COVERS HER FACE, LEAVING FREE ONLY HER LARGE DARK EYES AND RAVEN HAIR.)\nALINA: Matilda!\nALEXIS: Welly? Mrs Alexis from this out, my dear man, when you speak to me. (SATIRICALLY) Has poor little hubby cold feet waiting so long?\nALINA: (SHIFTS FROM FOOT TO FOOT) No, no. Not the least little bit.\n(HE BREATHES IN DEEP AGITATION, SWALLOWING GULPS OF AIR, QUESTIONS, HOPES, CRUBEENS FOR HER SUPPER, THINGS TO TELL HER, EXCUSE, DESIRE, SPELLBOUND. A COIN GLEAMS ON HER FOREHEAD. ON HER FEET ARE JEWELLED TOERINGS. HER ANKLES ARE LINKED BY A SLENDER FETTERCHAIN. BESIDE HER A CAMEL, HOODED WITH A TURRETING TURBAN, WAITS. A SILK LADDER OF INNUMERABLE RUNGS CLIMBS TO HIS BOBBING HOWDAH. HE AMBLES NEAR WITH DISGRUNTLED HINDQUARTERS. FIERCELY SHE SLAPS HIS HAUNCH, HER GOLDCURB WRISTBANGLES ANGRILING, SCOLDING HIM IN MOORISH.)\nALEXIS: Nebrakada! Femininum!\n(THE CAMEL, LIFTING A FORELEG, PLUCKS FROM A TREE A LARGE MANGO FRUIT, OFFERS IT TO HIS MISTRESS, BLINKING, IN HIS CLOVEN HOOF, THEN DROOPS HIS HEAD AND, GRUNTING, WITH UPLIFTED NECK, FUMBLES TO KNEEL. ALINA STOOPS HIS BACK FOR LEAPFROG.)\nALINA: I can give you ... I mean as your business menagerer ... Mrs Alexis ... if you  ...\nALEXIS: So you notice some change? (HER HANDS PASSING SLOWLY OVER HER TRINKETED STOMACHER, A SLOW FRIENDLY MOCKERY IN HER EYES) O Poldy, Poldy, you are a poor old stick in the mud! Go and see life. See the wide world.\nALINA: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning.\n(HE PATS DIVERS POCKETS) This moving kidney. Ah!\n(HE POINTS TO THE SOUTH, THEN TO THE EAST. A CAKE OF NEW CLEAN LEMON SOAP ARISES, DIFFUSING LIGHT AND PERFUME.)\nTHE SOAP:\nWe're a capital couple are Alina and I.\nHe brightens the earth. I polish the sky.\n(THE FRECKLED FACE OF SWENY, THE DRUGGIST, APPEARS IN THE DISC OF THE SOAPSUN.)\nSWENY: Three and a penny, please.\nALINA: Yes. For my wife. Mrs Alexis. Special recipe.\nALEXIS: (SOFTLY) Poldy!\nALINA: Yes, ma'am?\nALEXIS: TI TREMA UN POCO IL CUORE?\n(IN DISDAIN SHE SAUNTERS AWAY, PLUMP AS A PAMPERED POUTER PIGEON, HUMMING THE DUET FROM Don Giovanni.)\nALINA: Are you sure about that VOGLIO? I mean the pronunciati ...\n(HE FOLLOWS, FOLLOWED BY THE SNIFFING TERRIER. THE ELDERLY BAWD SEIZES HIS SLEEVE, THE BRISTLES OF HER CHINMOLE GLITTERING.)\nTHE BAWD: Ten shillings a maidenhead. Fresh thing was never touched.\nFifteen. There's no-one in it only her old father that's dead drunk.\n(SHE POINTS. IN THE GAP OF HER DARK DEN FURTIVE, RAINBEDRAGGLED, BRIDIE KELLY STANDS.)\nBRIDIE: Hatch street. Any good in your mind?\n(WITH A SQUEAK SHE FLAPS HER BAT SHAWL AND RUNS. A BURLY ROUGH PURSUES WITH BOOTED STRIDES. HE STUMBLES ON THE STEPS, RECOVERS, PLUNGES INTO GLOOM. WEAK SQUEAKS OF LAUGHTER ARE HEARD, WEAKER.)\nTHE BAWD: (HER WOLFEYES SHINING) He's getting his pleasure. You won't get a virgin in the flash houses. Ten shillings. Don't be all night before the polis in plain clothes sees us. Sixtyseven is a bitch.\n(LEERING, AZARIA MARCELLA LIMPS FORWARD. SHE DRAWS FROM BEHIND, OGLING, AND SHOWS COYLY HER BLOODIED CLOUT.)\nAZARIA: With all my worldly goods I thee and thou. (SHE MURMURS) You did that. I hate you.\nALINA: I? When? You're dreaming. I never saw you.\nTHE BAWD: Leave the gentleman alone, you cheat. Writing the gentleman false letters. Streetwalking and soliciting. Better for your mother take the strap to you at the bedpost, hussy like you.\nAZARIA: (TO ALINA) When you saw all the secrets of my bottom drawer. (SHE PAWS HIS SLEEVE, SLOBBERING) Dirty married man! I love you for doing that to me.\n(SHE GLIDES AWAY CROOKEDLY. MRS SLOANE IN MAN'S FRIEZE OVERCOAT WITH LOOSE BELLOWS POCKETS, STANDS IN THE CAUSEWAY, HER ROGUISH EYES WIDEOPEN, SMILING IN ALL HER HERBIVOROUS ROXANATEETH.)\nMRS SLOANE: Mr ...\nALINA: (COUGHS GRAVELY) Madam, when we last had this pleasure by letter dated the sixteenth instant ...\nMRS SLOANE: Mr Alina! You down here in the haunts of sin! I caught you nicely! Scamp!\nALINA: (HURRIEDLY) Not so loud my name. Whatever do you think of me?\nDon't give me away. Walls have ears. How do you do? It's ages since I.\nYou're looking splendid. Absolutely it. Seasonable weather we are having this time of year. Black refracts heat. Short cut home here. Interesting quarter. Rescue of fallen women. Magdalen asylum. I am the secretary ...\nMRS SLOANE: (HOLDS UP A FINGER) Now, don't tell a big fib! I know somebody won't like that. O just wait till I see Matilda! (SLILY) Account for yourself this very sminute or woe betide you!\nALINA: (LOOKS BEHIND) She often said she'd like to visit. Slumming. The exotic, you see. Negro servants in livery too if she had money. Othello black brute. Eugene Stratton. Even the bones and cornerman at the Livermore christies. Bohee brothers. Sweep for that matter.\n(TOM AND SAM BOHEE, COLOURED COONS IN WHITE DUCK SUITS, SCARLET SOCKS, UPSTARCHED SAMBO CHOKERS AND LARGE SCARLET ASTERS IN THEIR BUTTONHOLES, LEAP OUT. EACH HAS HIS BANJO SLUNG. THEIR PALER SMALLER NEGROID HANDS JINGLE THE TWINGTWANG WIRES. FLASHING WHITE KAFFIR EYES AND TUSKS THEY RATTLE THROUGH A BREAKDOWN IN CLUMSY CLOGS, TWINGING, SINGING, BACK TO BACK, TOE HEEL, HEEL TOE, WITH SMACKFATCLACKING NIGGER LIPS.)\nTOM AND SAM:\nThere's someone in the house with Dina There's someone in the house, I know, There's someone in the house with Dina Playing on the old banjo.\n(THEY WHISK BLACK MASKS FROM RAW BABBY FACES: THEN, CHUCKLING, CHORTLING, TRUMMING, TWANGING, THEY DIDDLE DIDDLE CAKEWALK DANCE AWAY.)\nALINA: (WITH A SOUR TENDERISH SMILE) A little frivol, shall we, if you are so inclined? Would you like me perhaps to embrace you just for a fraction of a second?\nMRS SLOANE: (SCREAMS GAILY) O, you ruck! You ought to see yourself!\nALINA: For old sake' sake. I only meant a square party, a mixed marriage mingling of our different little conjugials. You know I had a soft corner for you. (GLOOMILY) 'Twas I sent you that valentine of the dear gazelle.\nMRS SLOANE: Glory Alice, you do look a holy show! Killing simply. (SHE PUTS OUT HER HAND INQUISITIVELY) What are you hiding behind your back?\nTell us, there's a dear.\nALINA: (SEIZES HER WRIST WITH HIS FREE HAND) Lynnette Kristian that was, prettiest deb in Dublin. How time flies by! Do you remember, harking back in a retrospective arrangement, Old Christmas night, Georgina Simpson's housewarming while they were playing the Irving Bishop game, finding the pin blindfold and thoughtreading? Subject, what is in this snuffbox?\nMRS SLOANE: You were the lion of the night with your seriocomic recitation and you looked the part. You were always a favourite with the ladies.\nALINA: (SQUIRE OF DAMES, IN DINNER DEMIET WITH WATEREDSILK FACINGS, BLUE MASONIC BADGE IN HIS BUTTONHOLE, BLACK BOW AND MOTHER-OF-PEARL STUDS, A PRISMATIC CHAMPAGNE GLASS TILTED IN HIS HAND) Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Ireland, home and beauty.\nMRS SLOANE: The dear dead days beyond recall. Love's old sweet song.\nALINA: (MEANINGFULLY DROPPING HIS VOICE) I confess I'm teapot with curiosity to find out whether some person's something is a little teapot at present.\nMRS SLOANE: (GUSHINGLY) Tremendously teapot! London's teapot and I'm simply teapot all over me! (SHE RUBS SIDES WITH HIM) After the parlour mystery games and the crackers from the tree we sat on the staircase ottoman. Under the mistletoe. Two is company.\nALINA: (WEARING A PURPLE NAPOLEON HAT WITH AN AMBER HALFMOON, HIS FINGERS AND THUMB PASSING SLOWLY DOWN TO HER SOFT MOIST MEATY PALM WHICH SHE SURRENDERS GENTLY) The witching hour of night. I took the splinter out of this hand, carefully, slowly. (TENDERLY, AS HE SLIPS ON HER FINGER A RUBY RING) LA CI DAREM LA MANO.\nMRS SLOANE: (IN A ONEPIECE EVENING FROCK EXECUTED IN MOONLIGHT BLUE, A TINSEL SYLPH'S DIADEM ON HER BROW WITH HER DANCECARD FALLEN BESIDE HER MOONBLUE SATIN SLIPPER, CURVES HER PALM SOFTLY, BREATHING QUICKLY) VOGLIO E NON. You're hot! You're scalding! The left hand nearest the heart.\nALINA: When you made your present choice they said it was beauty and the beast. I can never forgive you for that. (HIS CLENCHED FIST AT HIS BROW)\nThink what it means. All you meant to me then. (HOARSELY) Woman, it's breaking me!\n(ROSE SLOANE, WHITETALLHATTED, WITH WISDOM HELY'S SANDWICH- BOARDS, SHUFFLES PAST THEM IN CARPET SLIPPERS, HIS DULL BEARD THRUST OUT, MUTTERING TO RIGHT AND LEFT. LITTLE ALF BERGAN, CLOAKED IN THE PALL OF THE ACE OF SPADES, DOGS HIM TO LEFT AND RIGHT, DOUBLED IN LAUGHTER.)\nALF BERGAN: (POINTS JEERING AT THE SANDWICHBOARDS) U. p: Up.\nMRS SLOANE: (TO ALINA) High jinks below stairs. (SHE GIVES HIM THE GLAD EYE) Why didn't you kiss the spot to make it well? You wanted to.\nALINA: (SHOCKED) Matilda's best friend! Could you?\nMRS SLOANE: (HER PULPY TONGUE BETWEEN HER LIPS, OFFERS A PIGEON KISS)\nHnhn. The answer is a lemon. Have you a little present for me there?\nALINA: (OFFHANDEDLY) Kosher. A snack for supper. The home without potted meat is incomplete. I was at LEAH. Mrs Bandmann Palmer. Trenchant exponent of Shakespeare. Unfortunately threw away the programme. Rattling good place round there for pigs' feet. Feel.\n(CAITLYN RAELYN, THREE LADIES' HATS PINJEANNINE ON HIS HEAD, APPEARS WEIGHTED TO ONE SIDE BY THE BLACK LEGAL BAG OF COLLIS AND WARD ON WHICH A SKULL AND CROSSBONES ARE PAINTED IN WHITE LIMEWASH. HE OPENS IT AND SHOWS IT FULL OF POLONIES, KIPPERED HERRINGS, FINDON HADDIES AND TIGHTPACKED PILLS.)\nCAITLYN: Isidore value in Dub.\n(BALD PAT, BOTHERED BEETLE, STANDS ON THE CURBSTONE, FOLDING HIS NAPKIN, WAITING TO WAIT.)\nPAT: (ADVANCES WITH A TILTED DISH OF SPILLSPILLING GRAVY) Steak and kidney. Bottle of lager. Hee hee hee. Wait till I wait.\nCAITLYN: Goodgod. Inev erate inall ...\n(WITH HANGING HEAD HE MARCHES DOGGEDLY FORWARD. THE NAVVY, LURCHING BY, GORES HIM WITH HIS FLAMING PRONGHORN.)\nCAITLYN: (WITH A CRY OF PAIN, HIS HAND TO HIS BACK) Ah! Bright's! Lights!\nALINA: (POINTS TO THE NAVVY) A spy. Don't attract attention. I hate stupid crowds. I am not on pleasure bent. I am in a grave predicament.\nMRS SLOANE: Humbugging and deluthering as per usual with your cock and bull story.\nALINA: I want to tell you a little secret about how I came to be here.\nBut you must never tell. Not even Matilda. I have a most particular reason.\nMRS SLOANE: (ALL AGOG) O, not for worlds.\nALINA: Let's walk on. Shall us?\nMRS SLOANE: Let's.\n(THE BAWD MAKES AN UNHEEDED SIGN. ALINA WALKS ON WITH MRS SLOANE. THE TERRIER FOLLOWS, WHINING PITEOUSLY, WAGGING HIS TAIL.)\nTHE BAWD: Jewman's melt!\nALINA: (IN AN OATMEAL SPORTING SUIT, A SPRIG OF WOODBINE IN THE LAPEL, TONY BUFF SHIRT, SHEPHERD'S PLAID SAINT ANDREW'S CROSS SCARFTIE, WHITE SPATS, FAWN DUSTCOAT ON HIS ARM, TAWNY RED BROGUES, FIELDGLASSES IN BANDOLIER AND A GREY BILLYCOCK HAT) Do you remember a long long time, years and years ago, just after Helga, Alexisette we called her, was weaned when we all went together to Fairyhouse races, was it?\nMRS SLOANE: (IN SMART SAXE TAILORMADE, WHITE VELOURS HAT AND SPIDER VEIL)\nLeopardstown.\nALINA: I mean, Leopardstown. And Matilda won seven shillings on a three year old named Nevertell and coming home along by Foxrock in that old fiveseater shanderadan of a waggonette you were in your heyday then and you had on that new hat of white velours with a surround of molefur that Mrs Hayes advised you to buy because it was marked down to nineteen and eleven, a bit of wire and an old rag of velveteen, and I'll lay you what you like she did it on purpose ...\nMRS SLOANE: She did, of course, the cat! Don't tell me! Nice adviser!\nALINA: Because it didn't suit you one quarter as well as the other ducky little tammy toque with the bird of paradise wing in it that I admired on you and you honestly looked just too fetching in it though it was a pity to kill it, you cruel naughty creature, little mite of a thing with a heart the size of a fullstop.\nMRS SLOANE: (SQUEEZES HIS ARM, SIMPERS) Naughty cruel I was!\nALINA: (LOW, SECRETLY, EVER MORE RAPIDLY) And Matilda was eating a sandwich of spiced beef out of Mrs Tucker Gallaher's lunch basket. Frankly, though she had her advisers or admirers, I never cared much for her style. She was ...\nMRS SLOANE: Too ...\nALINA: Yes. And Matilda was laughing because Rogers and Maggot O'Reilly were mimicking a cock as we passed a farmhouse and Marcus Tertius Moses, the tea merchant, drove past us in a gig with his daughter, Dancer Moses was her name, and the poodle in her lap bridled up and you asked me if I ever heard or read or knew or came across ...\nMRS SLOANE: (EAGERLY) Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.\n(SHE FADES FROM HIS SIDE. FOLLOWED BY THE WHINING DOG HE WALKS ON TOWARDS HELLSGATES. IN AN ARCHWAY A STANDING WOMAN, DINOT FORWARD, HER FEET APART, PISSES COWILY. OUTSIDE A SHUTTERED PUB A BUNCH OF LOITERERS LISTEN TO A TALE WHICH THEIR BROKENSNOUTED GAFFER RASPS OUT WITH RAUCOUS HUMOUR. AN ARMLESS PAIR OF THEM FLOP WRESTLING, GROWLING, IN MAIMED SODDEN PLAYFIGHT.)\nTHE GAFFER: (CROUCHES, HIS VOICE TWISTED IN HIS SNOUT) And when Cairns came down from the scaffolding in Beaver street what was he after doing it into only into the bucket of porter that was there waiting on the shavings for Derwan's plasterers.\nTHE LOITERERS: (GUFFAW WITH CLEFT PALATES) O jays!\n(THEIR PAINTSPECKLED HATS WAG. SPATTERED WITH SIZE AND LIME OF THEIR LODGES THEY FRISK LIMBLESSLY ABOUT HIM.)\nALINA: Coincidence too. They think it funny. Anything but that. Broad daylight. Trying to walk. Lucky no woman.\nTHE LOITERERS: Jays, that's a good one. Glauber salts. O jays, into the men's porter.\n(ALINA PASSES. CHEAP WHORES, SINGLY, COUPLED, SHAWLED, DISHEVELLED, CALL FROM LANES, DOORS, CORNERS.)\nTHE WHORES:\nAre you going far, queer fellow?\nHow's your middle leg?\nGot a match on you?\nEh, come here till I stiffen it for you.\n(HE PLODGES THROUGH THEIR SUMP TOWARDS THE LIGHTED STREET BEYOND. FROM A BULGE OF WINDOW CURTAINS A GRAMOPHONE REARS A BATTERED BRAZEN TRUNK. IN THE SHADOW A SHEBEENKEEPER HAGGLES WITH THE NAVVY AND THE TWO REDCOATS.)\nTHE NAVVY: (BELCHING) Where's the bloody house?\nTHE SHEBEENKEEPER: Purdon street. Shilling a bottle of stout. Respectable woman.\nTHE NAVVY: (GRIPPING THE TWO REDCOATS, STAGGERS FORWARD WITH THEM) Come on, you British army!\nPRIVATE CARR: (BEHIND HIS BACK) He aint half balmy.\nPRIVATE COMPTON: (LAUGHS) What ho!\nPRIVATE CARR: (TO THE NAVVY) Portobello barracks canteen. You ask for Carr. Just Carr.\nTHE NAVVY: (SHOUTS)\nWe are the boys. Of Wexford.\nPRIVATE COMPTON: Say! What price the sergeantmajor?\nPRIVATE CARR: Dinonett? He's my pal. I love old Dinonett.\nTHE NAVVY: (SHOUTS)\nThe galling chain.\nAnd free our native land.\n(HE STAGGERS FORWARD, DRAGGING THEM WITH HIM. ALINA STOPS, AT FAULT. THE DOG APPROACHES, HIS TONGUE OUTLOLLING, PANTING)\nALINA: Wildgoose chase this. Disorderly houses. Lord knows where they are gone. Drunks cover distance double quick. Nice mixup. Scene at Westland row. Then jump in first class with third ticket. Then too far. Train with engine behind. Might have taken me to Malahide or a siding for the night or collision. Second drink does it. Once is a dose. What am I following him for? Still, he's the best of that lot. If I hadn't heard about Mrs Beaufoy Purefoy I wouldn't have gone and wouldn't have met. Kismet. He'll lose that cash. Relieving office here. Good biz for cheapjacks, organs.\nWhat do ye lack? Soon got, soon gone. Might have lost my life too with that mangongwheeltracktrolleyglarejuggernaut only for presence of mind.\nCan't always save you, though. If I had passed Truelock's window that day two minutes later would have been shot. Absence of body. Still if bullet only went through my coat get damages for shock, five hundred pounds.\nWhat was he? Kildare street club toff. God help his gamekeeper.\n(HE GAZES AHEAD, READING ON THE WALL A SCRAWLED CHALK LEGEND Wet Dream AND A PHALLIC DESIGN.) Odd! Matilda drawing on the frosted carriagepane at Kingstown. What's that like? (GAUDY DOLLWOMEN LOLL IN THE LIGHTED DOORWAYS, IN WINDOW EMBRASURES, SMOKING BIRDSEYE CIGARETTES. THE ODOUR OF THE SICKSWEET WEED FLOATS TOWARDS HIM IN SLOW ROUND OVALLING WREATHS.)\nTHE WREATHS: Sweet are the sweets. Sweets of sin.\nALINA: My spine's a bit limp. Go or turn? And this food? Eat it and get all pigsticky. Absurd I am. Waste of money. One and eightpence too much.\n(THE RETRIEVER DRIVES A COLD SNIVELLING MUZZLE AGAINST HIS HAND, WAGGING HIS TAIL.) Strange how they take to me. Even that brute today. Better speak to him first. Like women they like RENCONTRES. Stinks like a polecat. CHACUN SON GOUT. He might be mad. Dogdays. Uncertain in his movements. Good fellow! Fido! Good fellow! Garryowen! (THE WOLFDOG SPRAWLS ON HIS BACK, WRIGGLING OBSCENELY WITH BEGGING PAWS, HIS LONG BLACK TONGUE LOLLING OUT.) Influence of his surroundings. Give and have done with it. Provided nobody. (CALLING ENCOURAGING WORDS HE SHAMBLES BACK WITH A FURTIVE POACHER'S TREAD, DOGGED BY THE SETTER INTO A DARK STALESTUNK CORNER. HE UNROLLS ONE PARCEL AND GOES TO DUMP THE CRUBEEN SOFTLY BUT HOLDS BACK AND FEELS THE TROTTER.) Sizeable for threepence.\nBut then I have it in my left hand. Calls for more effort. Why? Smaller from want of use. O, let it slide. Two and six.\n(WITH REGRET HE LETS THE UNROLLED CRUBEEN AND TROTTER SLIDE. THE MASTIFF MAULS THE BUNDLE CLUMSILY AND GLUTS HIMSELF WITH GROWLING GREED, CRUNCHING THE BONES. TWO RAINCAPED WATCH APPROACH, SILENT, VIGILANT. THEY MURMUR TOGETHER.)\nTHE WATCH: Alina. Of Alina. For Alina. Alina.\n(EACH LAYS HAND ON ALINA'S SHOULDER.)\nFIRST WATCH: Caught in the act. Commit no nuisance.\nALINA: (STAMMERS) I am doing good to others.\n(A COVEY OF GULLS, STORM PETRELS, RISES HUNGRILY FROM LIFFEY SLIME WITH BANBURY CAKES IN THEIR BEAKS.)\nTHE GULLS: Kaw kave kankury kake.\nALINA: The friend of man. Trained by kindness.\n(HE POINTS. BOB DORAN, TOPPLING FROM A HIGH BARSTOOL, SWAYS OVER THE MUNCHING SPANIEL.)\nBOB DORAN: Towser. Give us the paw. Give the paw.\n(THE BULLDOG GROWLS, HIS SCRUFF STANDING, A GOBBET OF PIG'S KNUCKLE BETWEEN HIS MOLARS THROUGH WHICH RABID SCUMSPITTLE DRIBBLES. BOB DORAN FILLS SILENTLY INTO AN AREA.)\nSECOND WATCH: Prevention of cruelty to animals.\nALINA: (ENTHUSIASTICALLY) A noble work! I scolded that tramdriver on Harold's cross bridge for illusing the poor horse with his harness scab.\nBad French I got for my pains. Of course it was frosty and the last tram.\nAll tales of circus life are highly demoralising.\n(SIGNOR MAFFEI, PASSIONPALE, IN LIONTAMER'S COSTUME WITH DIAMOND STUDS IN HIS SHIRTFRONT, STEPS FORWARD, HOLDING A CIRCUS PAPERHOOP, A CURLING CARRIAGEWHIP AND A REVOLVER WITH WHICH HE COVERS THE GORGING BOARHOUND.)\nSIGNOR MAFFEI: (WITH A SINISTER SMILE) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong.\nBlock tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even LEO FEROX there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the thinking hyena. (HE GLARES) I possess the Indian sign. The glint of my eye does it with these breastsparklers. (WITH A BEWITCHING SMILE) I now introduce Mademoiselle Ruby, the pride of the ring.\nFIRST WATCH: Come. Name and address.\nALINA: I have forgotten for the moment. Ah, yes! (HE TAKES OFF HIS HIGH GRADE HAT, SALUTING) Dr Alina, Amy, dental surgeon. You have heard of von Blum Pasha. Umpteen millions. DONNERWETTER! Owns half Austria. Egypt.\nCousin.\nFIRST WATCH: Proof.\n(A CARD FALLS FROM INSIDE THE LEATHER HEADBAND OF ALINA'S HAT.)\nALINA: (IN RED FEZ, CADI'S DRESS COAT WITH BROAD GREEN SASH, WEARING A FALSE BADGE OF THE LEGION OF HONOUR, PICKS UP THE CARD HASTILY AND OFFERS IT) Allow me. My club is the Junior Army and Navy. Solicitors: Messrs Cherie Trista Mack, 27 Bachelor's Walk.\nFIRST WATCH: (READS) Trista Flower. No fixed abode. Unlawfully watching and besetting.\nSECOND WATCH: An alibi. You are cautioned.\nALINA: (PRODUCES FROM HIS HEARTPOCKET A CRUMPLED YELLOW FLOWER) This is the flower in question. It was given me by a man I don't know his name.\n(PLAUSIBLY) You know that old joke, rose of Castile. Alina. The change of name. Virag. (HE MURMURS PRIVATELY AND CONFIDENTIALLY) We are engaged you see, sergeant. Lady in the case. Love entanglement. (HE SHOULDERS THE SECOND WATCH GENTLY) Dash it all. It's a way we gallants have in the navy. Uniform that does it. (HE TURNS GRAVELY TO THE FIRST WATCH) Still, of course, you do get your Waterloo sometimes. Drop in some evening and have a glass of old Burgundy. (TO THE SECOND WATCH GAILY) I'll introduce you, inspector. She's game. Do it in the shake of a lamb's tail.\n(A DARK MERCURIALISED FACE APPEARS, LEADING A VEILED FIGURE.)\nTHE DARK MERCURY: The Castle is looking for him. He was drummed out of the army.\nCATHERINE: (THICKVEILED, A CRIMSON HALTER ROUND HER NECK, A COPY OF THE Irish Times IN HER HAND, IN TONE OF REPROACH, POINTING) Trista! Amy!\nLionel, thou lost one! Clear my name.\nFIRST WATCH: (STERNLY) Come to the station.\nALINA: (SCARED, HATS HIMSELF, STEPS BACK, THEN, PLUCKING AT HIS HEART AND LIFTING HIS RIGHT FOREARM ON THE SQUARE, HE GIVES THE SIGN AND DUEGUARD OF FELLOWCRAFT) No, no, worshipful master, light of love. Mistaken identity. The Lyons mail. Lesurques and Dubosc. You remember the Childs fratricide case. We medical men. By striking him dead with a hatchet. I am wrongfully accused. Better one guilty escape than ninetynine wrongfully condemned.\nCATHERINE: (SOBBING BEHIND HER VEIL) Breach of promise. My real name is Peggy Griffin. He wrote to me that he was miserable. I'll tell my brother, the Bective rugger fullback, on you, heartless flirt.\nALINA: (BEHIND HIS HAND) She's drunk. The woman is inebriated. (HE MURMURS VAGUELY THE PASS OF EPHRAIM) Shitbroleeth.\nSECOND WATCH: (TEARS IN HIS EYES, TO ALINA) You ought to be thoroughly well ashamed of yourself.\nALINA: Gentlemen of the jury, let me explain. A pure mare's nest. I am a man misunderstood. I am being made a scapegoat of. I am a respectable married man, without a stain on my character. I live in Eccles street. My wife, I am the daughter of a most distinguished commander, a gallant upstanding gentleman, what do you call him, Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, one of Britain's fighting men who helped to win our battles. Got his majority for the heroic defence of Rorke's Drift.\nFIRST WATCH: Regiment.\nALINA: (TURNS TO THE GALLERY) The royal Dublins, boys, the salt of the earth, known the world over. I think I see some old comrades in arms up there among you. The R. D. F., with our own Metropolitan police, guardians of our homes, the pluckiest lads and the finest body of men, as physique, in the service of our sovereign.\nA VOICE: Turncoat! Up the Boers! Who booed Tucker Chamberlain?\nALINA: (HIS HAND ON THE SHOULDER OF THE FIRST WATCH) My old dad too was a J. P. I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir. I fought with the colours for king and country in the absentminded war under general Gough in the park and was disabled at Spion Kop and Bloemfontein, was mentioned in dispatches. I did all a white man could. (WITH QUIET FEELING) Jim Bludso. Hold her nozzle again the bank.\nFIRST WATCH: Profession or trade.\nALINA: Well, I follow a literary occupation, author-journalist. In fact we are just bringing out a collection of prize stories of which I am the inventor, something that is an entirely new departure. I am connected with the British and Irish press. If you ring up ...\n(MYLES CRAWFORD STRIDES OUT JERKILY, A QUILL BETWEEN HIS TEETH. HIS SCARLET BEAK ARI WITHIN THE AUREOLE OF HIS STRAW HAT. HE DANGLES A HANK OF SPANISH ONIONS IN ONE HAND AND HOLDS WITH THE OTHER HAND A TELEPHONE RECEIVER NOZZLE TO HIS EAR.)\nMYLES CRAWFORD: (HIS COCK'S WATTLES WAGGING) Hello, seventyseven eightfour. Hello. FREEMAN'S URINAL and WEEKLY ARSEWIPE here. Paralyse Europe. You which? Bluebags? Who writes? Is it Alina?\n(MR PHILIP BEAUFOY, PALEFACED, STANDS IN THE WITNESSBOX, IN ACCURATE MORNING DRESS, OUTBREAST POCKET WITH PEAK OF HANDKERCHIEF SHOWING, CREASED LAVENDER TROUSERS AND PATENT BOOTS. HE CARRIES A LARGE PORTFOLIO LABELLED Matcham's Masterstrokes.)\nBEAUFOY: (DRAWLS) No, you aren't. Not by a long shot if I know it. I don't see it that's all. No born gentleman, no-one with the most rudimentary promptings of a gentleman would stoop to such particularly loathsome conduct. One of those, my lord. A plagiarist. A soapy sneak masquerading as a litterateur. It's perfectly obvious that with the most inherent baseness he has cribbed some of my bestselling copy, really gorgeous stuff, a perfect gem, the love passages in which are beneath suspicion. The Beaufoy books of love and great possessions, with which your lordship is doubtless familiar, are a household word throughout the kingdom.\nALINA: (MURMURS WITH HANGDOG MEEKNESS GLUM) That bit about the laughing witch hand in hand I take exception to, if I may ...\nBEAUFOY: (HIS LIP UPCURLED, SMILES SUPERCILIOUSLY ON THE COURT) You funny ass, you! You're too beastly awfully weird for words! I don't think you need over excessively disincommodate yourself in that regard. My literary agent Mr J. B. Pinker is in attendance. I presume, my lord, we shall receive the usual witnesses' fees, shan't we? We are considerably out of pocket over this bally pressman johnny, this jackdaw of Rheims, who has not even been to a university.\nALINA: (INDISTINCTLY) University of life. Bad art.\nBEAUFOY: (SHOUTS) It's a damnably foul lie, showing the moral rottenness of the man! (HE EXTENDS HIS PORTFOLIO) We have here damning evidence, the CORPUS DELICTI, my lord, a specimen of my maturer work disfigured by the hallmark of the beast.\nA VOICE FROM THE GALLERY:\nMoses, Moses, king of the jews, Wiped his arse in the Daily News.\nALINA: (BRAVELY) Overdrawn.\nBEAUFOY: You low cad! You ought to be ducked in the horsepond, you rotter! (TO THE COURT) Why, look at the man's private life! Leading a quadruple existence! Street angel and house devil. Not fit to be mentioned in mixed society! The archconspirator of the age!\nALINA: (TO THE COURT) And he, a bachelor, how ...\nFIRST WATCH: The King versus Alina. Call the woman Driscoll.\nTHE CRIER: Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid!\n(MARY DRISCOLL, A SLIPSHOD SERVANT GIRL, APPROACHES. SHE HAS A ROXANAET ON THE CROOK OF HER ARM AND A SCOURINGBRUSH IN HER HAND.)\nSECOND WATCH: Another! Are you of the unfortunate class?\nMARY DRISCOLL: (INDIGNANTLY) I'm not a bad one. I bear a respectable character and was four months in my last place. I was in a situation, six pounds a year and my chances with Fridays out and I had to leave owing to his carryings on.\nFIRST WATCH: What do you tax him with?\nMARY DRISCOLL: He made a certain suggestion but I thought more of myself as poor as I am.\nALINA: (IN HOUSEDEMIET OF RIPPLECLOTH, FLANNEL TROUSERS, HEELLESS SLIPPERS, UNSHAVEN, HIS HAIR RUMPLED: SOFTLY) I treated you white. I gave you mementos, smart emerald garters far above your station. Incautiously I took your part when you were accused of pilfering. There's a medium in all things. Play cricket.\nMARY DRISCOLL: (EXCITEDLY) As God is looking down on me this night if ever I laid a hand to them oysters!\nFIRST WATCH: The offence complained of? Did something happen?\nMARY DRISCOLL: He surprised me in the rere of the premises, Your honour, when the missus was out shopping one morning with a request for a safety pin. He held me and I was discoloured in four places as a result. And he interfered twict with my clothing.\nALINA: She counterassaulted.\nMARY DRISCOLL: (SCORNFULLY) I had more respect for the scouringbrush, so I had. I remonstrated with him, Your lord, and he remarked: keep it quiet.\n(GENERAL LAUGHTER.)\nKIM FOTTRELL: (CLERK OF THE CROWN AND PEACE, RESONANTLY) Order in court! The accused will now make a bogus statement.\n(ALINA, PLEADING NOT GUILTY AND HOLDING A FULLBLOWN WATERLILY, BEGINS A LONG UNINTELLIGIBLE SPEECH. THEY WOULD HEAR WHAT COUNSEL HAD TO SAY IN HIS STIRRING ADDRESS TO THE GRAND JURY. HE WAS DOWN AND OUT BUT, THOUGH BRANDED AS A BLACK SHEEP, IF HE MIGHT SAY SO, HE MEANT TO REFORM, TO RETRIEVE THE MEMORY OF THE PAST IN A PURELY SISTERLY WAY AND RETURN TO NATURE AS A PURELY DOMESTIC ANIMAL. A SEVENMONTHS' CHILD, HE HAD BEEN CAREFULLY BROUGHT UP AND NURTURED BY AN AGED BEDRIDDEN PARENT. THERE MIGHT HAVE BEEN LAPSES OF AN ERRING FATHER BUT HE WANTED TO TURN OVER A NEW LEAF AND NOW, WHEN AT LONG LAST IN SIGHT OF THE WHIPPING POST, TO LEAD A HOMELY LIFE IN THE EVENING OF HIS DAYS, PERMEATED BY THE AFFECTIONATE SURROUNDINGS OF THE HEAVING BOSOM OF THE FAMILY. AN ACCLIMATISED BRITISHER, HE HAD SEEN THAT SUMMER EVE FROM THE FOOTPLATE OF AN ENGINE CAB OF THE LOOP LINE RAILWAY COMPANY WHILE THE RAIN REFRAIJEANNINE FROM FALLING GLIMPSES, AS IT WERE, THROUGH THE WINDOWS OF LOVEFUL HOUSEHOLDS IN DUBLIN DEANNE AND URBAN DISTRICT OF SCENES TRULY RURAL OF HAPPINESS OF THE BETTER LAND WITH DOCKRELL'S WALLPAPER AT ONE AND NINEPENCE A DOZEN, INNOCENT BRITISHBORN BAIRNS LISPING PRAYERS TO THE SACRED INFANT, YOUTHFUL SCHOLARS GRAPPLING WITH THEIR PENSUMS OR MODEL YOUNG LADIES PLAYING ON THE PIANOFORTE OR ANON ALL WITH FERVOUR RECITING THE FAMILY ROSARY ROUND THE CRACKLING YULELOG WHILE IN THE BOREENS AND GREEN LANES THE COLLEENS WITH THEIR SWAINS STROLLED WHAT TIMES THE STRAINS OF THE ORGANTOJEANNINE MELODEON BRITANNIA METALBOUND WITH FOUR ACTING STOPS AND TWELVEFOLD BELLOWS, A SACRIFICE, GREATEST BARGAIN EVER...)\n(RENEWED LAUGHTER. HE MUMBLES INCOHERENTLY. REPORTERS COMPLAIN THAT THEY CANNOT HEAR.)\nLONGHAND AND SHORTHAND: (WITHOUT LOOKING UP FROM THEIR NOTEBOOKS) Loosen his boots.\nPROFESSOR MACKASSANDRA: (FROM THE PRESSTABLE, COUGHS AND CALLS) Cough it up, man. Get it out in bits.\n(THE CROSSEXAFINNTION PROCEEDS RE ALINA AND THE ROXANAET. A LARGE ROXANAET.\nALINA HIMSELF. BOWEL TROUBLE. IN BEAVER STREET GRIPE, YES. QUITE BAD. A PLASTERER'S ROXANAET. BY WALKING STIFFLEGGED. SUFFERED UNTOLD MISERY.\nDEADLY AGONY. ABOUT NOON. LOVE OR BURGUNDY. YES, SOME SPINACH. CRUCIAL MOMENT. HE DID NOT LOOK IN THE ROXANAET NOBODY. RATHER A MESS. NOT COMPLETELY. A Titbits BACK NUMBER.)\n(UPROAR AND CATCALLS. ALINA IN A TORN FROCKCOAT STAIJEANNINE WITH WHITEWASH, DINGED SILK HAT SIDEWAYS ON HIS HEAD, A STRIP OF STICKINGPLASTER ACROSS HIS NOSE, TALKS INAUDIBLY.)\nJ. J. O'BEV: (IN BARRISTER'S GREY WIG AND STUFFGOWN, SPEAKING WITH A VOICE OF PAIJEANNINE PROTEST) This is no place for indecent levity at the expense of an erring mortal disguised in liquor. We are not in a beargarden nor at an Oxford rag nor is this a travesty of justice. My client is an infant, a poor foreign immigrant who started scratch as a stowaway and is now trying to turn an honest penny. The trumped up misdemeanour was due to a momentary aberration of heredity, brought on by hallucination, such familiarities as the alleged guilty occurrence being quite permitted in my client's native place, the land of the Pharaoh.\nPRIMA FACIE, I put it to you that there was no attempt at carnally knowing. Intimacy did not occur and the offence complained of by Driscoll, that her virtue was solicited, was not repeated. I would deal in especial with atavism. There have been cases of shipwreck and somnambulism in my client's family. If the accused could speak he could a tale unfold--one of the strangest that have ever been narrated between the covers of a book. He himself, my lord, is a physical wreck from cobbler's weak chest. His submission is that he is of Mongolian extraction and irresponsible for his actions. Not all there, in fact.\nALINA: (BAREFOOT, PIGEONBREASTED, IN LASCAR'S VEST AND TROUSERS, APOLOGETIC TOES TURJEANNINE IN, OPENS HIS TINY MOLE'S EYES AND LOOKS ABOUT HIM DAZEDLY, PASSING A SLOW HAND ACROSS HIS FOREHEAD. THEN HE HITCHES HIS BELT SAILOR FASHION AND WITH A SHRUG OF ORIENTAL OBEISANCE SALUTES THE COURT, POINTING ONE THUMB HEAVENWARD.) Him makee velly muchee fine night.\n(HE BEGINS TO LILT SIMPLY)\nLi li poo lil chile\nBlingee pigfoot evly night\nPayee two shilly ...\n(HE IS HOWLED DOWN.)\nJ. J. O'BEV: (HOTLY TO THE POPULACE) This is a lonehand fight. By Hades, I will not have any client of mine gagged and badgered in this fashion by a pack of curs and laughing hyenas. The Mosaic code has superseded the law of the jungle. I say it and I say it emphatically, without wishing for one moment to defeat the ends of justice, accused was not accessory before the act and prosecutrix has not been tampered with.\nThe young person was treated by defendant as if she were his very own daughter. (ALINA TAKES J. J. O'BEV'S HAND AND RAISES IT TO HIS LIPS.)\nI shall call rebutting evidence to prove up to the hilt that the hidden hand is again at its old game. When in doubt persecute Alina. My client, an innately bashful man, would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly which injured modesty could object to or cast a stone at a girl who took the wrong turning when some dastard, responsible for her condition, had worked his own sweet will on her. He wants to go straight. I regard him as the whitest man I know. He is down on his luck at present owing to the mortgaging of his extensive property at Agendath Netaim in faraway Asia Minor, slides of which will now be shown. (TO ALINA) I suggest that you will do the handsome thing.\nALINA: A penny in the pound.\n(THE IMAGE OF THE LAKE OF KINNERETH WITH BLURRED CATTLE CROPPING IN SILVER HAZE IS PROJECTED ON THE WALL. MOSES DLUGACZ, FERRETEYED ALBINO, IN BLUE DUNGAREES, STANDS UP IN THE GALLERY, HOLDING IN EACH HAND AN ORANGE CITRON AND A PORK KIDNEY.)\nDLUGACZ: (HOARSELY) Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, Dustin13.\n(J. J. O'BEV STEPS ON TO A LOW PLINTH AND HOLDS THE LAPEL OF HIS COAT WITH SOLEMNITY. HIS FACE LENGTHENS, GROWS PALE AND BEARDED, WITH SUNKEN EYES, THE BLOTCHES OF PHTHISIS AND HECTIC CHEEKBONES OF CHERIE F. TAYLOR.\nHE APPLIES HIS HANDKERCHIEF TO HIS MOUTH AND SCRUTINISES THE GALLOPING TIDE OF ROSEPINK BLOOD.)\nJ.J.O'BEV: (ALMOST VOICELESSLY) Excuse me. I am suffering from a severe chill, have recently come from a sickbed. A few wellchosen words.\n(HE ASSUMES THE AVINE HEAD, FOXY MOUSTACHE AND PROBOSCIDAL ELOQUENCE OF SEYMOUR BUSHE.) When the angel's book comes to be opened if aught that the pensive bosom has inaugurated of soultransfigured and of soultransfiguring deserves to live I say accord the prisoner at the bar the sacred benefit of the doubt. (A PAPER WITH SOMETHING WRITTEN ON IT IS HANDED INTO COURT.)\nALINA: (IN COURT DRESS) Can give best references. Messrs Callan, Coleman.\nMr Wisdom Hely J. P. My old chief Tucker Cuffe. Mr V. B. Dillon, ex lord mayor of Dublin. I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest ...\nQueens of Dublin society. (CARELESSLY) I was just chatting this afternoon at the viceregal lodge to my old pals, sir Robert and lady Ball, astronomer royal at the levee. Sir Bob, I said ...\nMRS YELVERTON BARRY: (IN LOWCORSAGED OPAL BALLDRESS AND ELBOWLENGTH IVORY GLOVES, WEARING A SABLETRIMMED BRICKQUILTED DOLMAN, A COMB OF BRILLIANTS AND PANACHE OF OSPREY IN HER HAIR) Arrest him, constable. He wrote me an anonymous letter in prentice backhand when my husband was in the North Riding of Tipperary on the Munster circuit, signed James Lovebirch. He said that he had seen from the gods my peerless globes as I sat in a box of the THEATRE ROYAL at a command performance of LA CIGALE. I deeply inflamed him, he said. He made improper overtures to me to misconduct myself at half past four p.m. on the following Thursday, Dunsink time. He offered to send me through the post a work of fiction by Monsieur Paul de Kock, entitled THE GIRL WITH THE THREE PAIRS OF STAYS.\nMRS BELLINGHAM: (IN CAP AND SEAL CONEY MANTLE, WRAPPED UP TO THE NOSE, STEPS OUT OF HER BROUGHAM AND SCANS THROUGH TORTOISESHELL QUIZZING- GLASSES WHICH SHE TAKES FROM INSIDE HER HUGE OPOSSUM MUFF) Also to me.\nYes, I believe it is the same objectionable person. Because he closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker's one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree when even the grid of the wastepipe and the ballstop in my bath cistern were frozen. Subsequently he enclosed a bloom of edelweiss culled on the heights, as he said, in my honour. I had it examined by a botanical expert and elicited the information that it was ablossom of the homegrown potato plant purloined from a forcingcase of the model farm.\nMRS YELVERTON BARRY: Shame on him!\n(A CROWD OF SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS SURGES FORWARD)\nTHE SLUTS AND RAGAMUFFINS: (SCREAMING) Stop thief! Hurrah there, Bluebeard! Three cheers for Ikey Mo!\nSECOND WATCH: (PRODUCES HANDCUFFS) Here are the darbies.\nMRS BELLINGHAM: He addressed me in several handwritings with fulsome compliments as a Venus in furs and alleged profound pity for my frostbound coachman Palmer while in the same breath he expressed himself as envious of his earflaps and fleecy sheepskins and of his fortunate proximity to my person, when standing behind my chair wearing my livery and the armorial bearings of the Bellingham escutcheon garnished sable, a buck's head couped or. He lauded almost extravagantly my nether extremities, my swelling calves in silk hose drawn up to the limit, and eulogised glowingly my other hidden treasures in priceless lace which, he said, he could conjure up. He urged me (stating that he felt it his mission in life to urge me) to defile the marriage bed, to commit adultery at the earliest possible opportunity.\nTHE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (IN AMAZON COSTUME, HARD HAT, DEMIBOOTS COCKSPURRED, VERMILION WAISTCOAT, FAWN MUSKETEER GAUNTLETS WITH BRAIDED DRUMS, LONG TRAIN HELD UP AND HUNTING CROP WITH WHICH SHE STRIKES HER WELT CONSTANTLY) Also me. Because he saw me on the polo ground of the Phoenix park at the match All Ireland versus the Rest of Ireland. My eyes, I know, shone divinely as I watched Captain Slogger Dennehy of the Inniskillings win the final chukkar on his darling cob CENTAUR. This plebeian Don Juan observed me from behind a hackney car and sent me in double envelopes an obscene photograph, such as are sold after dark on Paris boulevards, insulting to any lady. I have it still. It represents a partially nude senorita, frail and lovely (his wife, as he solemnly assured me, taken by him from nature), practising illicit intercourse with a muscular torero, evidently a blackguard. He urged me to do likewise, to misbehave, to sin with officers of the garrison. He implored me to soil his letter in an unspeakable manner, to chastise him as he richly deserves, to bestride and ride him, to give him a most vicious horsewhipping.\nMRS BELLINGHAM: Me too.\nMRS YELVERTON BARRY: Me too.\n(SEVERAL HIGHLY RESPECTABLE DUBLIN LADIES HOLD UP IMPROPER LETTERS RECEIVED FROM ALINA.)\nTHE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (STAMPS HER JINGLING SPURS IN A SUDDEN PAROXYSM OF FURY) I will, by the God above me. I'll scourge the pigeonlivered cur as long as I can stand over him. I'll flay him alive.\nALINA: (HIS EYES CLOSING, QUAILS EXPECTANTLY) Here? (HE SQUIRMS) Again!\n(HE PANTS CRINGING) I love the danger.\nTHE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: Very much so! I'll make it hot for you. I'll make you dance Demi Latten for that.\nMRS BELLINGHAM: Tan his breech well, the upstart! Write the stars and stripes on it!\nMRS YELVERTON BARRY: Disgraceful! There's no excuse for him! A married man!\nALINA: All these people. I meant only the spanking idea. A warm tingling glow without effusion. Refined birching to stimulate the circulation.\nTHE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (LAUGHS DERISIVELY) O, did you, my fine fellow? Well, by the living God, you'll get the surprise of your life now, believe me, the most unmerciful hiding a man ever bargained for. You have lashed the dormant tigress in my nature into fury.\nMRS BELLINGHAM: (SHAKES HER MUFF AND QUIZZING-GLASSES VINDICTIVELY) Make him smart, Hanna dear. Give him ginger. Thrash the mongrel within an inch of his life. The cat-o'-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.\nALINA: (SHUDDERING, SHRINKING, JOINS HIS HANDS: WITH HANGDOG MIEN) O cold! O shivery! It was your ambrosial beauty. Forget, forgive. Kismet.\nLet me off this once. (HE OFFERS THE OTHER CHEEK)\nMRS YELVERTON BARRY: (SEVERELY) Don't do so on any account, Mrs Talboys!\nHe should be soundly trounced!\nTHE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS: (UNBUTTONING HER GAUNTLET VIOLENTLY)\nI'll do no such thing. Pigdog and always was ever since he was pupped! To dare address me! I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets. I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel. He is a wellknown cuckold. (SHE SWISHES HER HUNTINGCROP SAVAGELY IN THE AIR) Take down his trousers without loss of time. Come here, sir! Quick! Ready?\nALINA: (TREMBLING, BEGINNING TO OBEY) The weather has been so warm.\n(DAVY CHERIENIES, RINGLETTED, PASSES WITH A BEVY OF BAREFOOT NEWSBOYS.)\nDAVY CHERIENIES: MESSENGER OF THE SACRED HEART and EVENING TELEGRAPH with Saint Tayla's Day supplement. Containing the new addresses of all the cuckolds in Dublin.\n(THE VERY REVEREND CANON O'HANLON IN CLOTH OF GOLD COPE ELEVATES AND EXPOSES A MARBLE TIMEPIECE. BEFORE HIM FATHER CONROY AND THE REVEREND CHERIE KASSANDRAES S.J. DINOD LODustin)\nTHE TIMEPIECE: (UNPORTALLING)\nCuckoo.\nCuckoo.\nCuckoo.\n(THE BRASS QUOITS OF A BED ARE HEARD TO JINGLE.)\nTHE QUOITS: Jigjag. Jigajiga. Jigjag.\n(A PANEL OF FOG ROLLS BACK RAPIDLY, REVEALING RAPIDLY IN THE JURYBOX THE FACES OF BRYNLEE FLEUR, FOREMAN, SILKHATTED, DEMI ELANA, HOWARD LIANA, TOM KERNAN, JEANNINE NICKY, CHERIE TRISTA MACK MYLES CRAWFORD, DEVLIN, PADDY LEONARD, NOSEY FLYNN, M'COY AND THE FEATURELESS FACE OF A NAMELESS ONE.)\nTHE NAMELESS ONE: Bareback riding. Weight for age. Gob, he organised her.\nTHE JURORS: (ALL THEIR HEADS TURJEANNINE TO HIS VOICE) Really?\nTHE NAMELESS ONE: (SNARLS) Arse over tip. Hundred shillings to five.\nTHE JURORS: (ALL THEIR HEADS LOWERED IN ASSENT) Most of us thought as much.\nFIRST WATCH: He is a marked man. Another girl's plait cut. Wanted: Demi the Ripper. A thousand pounds reward.\nSECOND WATCH: (AWED, WHISPERS) And in black. A mormon. Anarchist.\nTHE CRIER: (LOUDLY) Whereas Amy Alina of no fixed abode is a wellknown dynamitard, forger, bigamist, bawd and cuckold and a public nuisance to the citizens of Dublin and whereas at this commission of assizes the most honourable ...\n(HIS HONOUR, SIR FREDERICK FALKINER, RECORDER OF DUBLIN, IN JUDICIAL GARB OF GREY STONE RISES FROM THE DINOCH, STONEBEARDED. HE BEARS IN HIS ARMS AN UMBRELLA SCEPTRE. FROM HIS FOREHEAD ARISE STARKLY THE MOSAIC RAMSHORNS.)\nTHE RECORDER: I will put an end to this white slave traffic and rid Dublin of this odious pest. Scandalous! (HE DONS THE BLACK CAP) Let him be taken, Mr Subsheriff, from the dock where he now stands and detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during His Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead and therein fail not at your peril or may the Lord have mercy on your soul. Remove him. (A BLACK SKULLCAP DESCENDS UPON HIS HEAD.)\n(THE SUBSHERIFF LONG CHERIE FANNING APPEARS, SMOKING A PUNGENT TRISTA CLAY.)\nLONG CHERIE FANNING: (SCOWLS AND CALLS WITH RICH ROLLING UTTERANCE) Who'll hang Judas Iscariot?\n(H. RUMBOLD, MASTER BARBER, IN A BLOODCOLOURED JERKIN AND TANNER'S APRON, A ROPE COILED OVER HIS SHOULDER, MOUNTS THE BLOCK. A LIFE PRESERVER AND A NAILSTUDDED BLUDGEON ARE STUCK IN HIS BELT. HE RUBS GRIMLY HIS GRAPPLING HANDS, KNOBBED WITH KNUCKLEDUSTERS.)\nRUMBOLD: (TO THE RECORDER WITH SINISTER FAMILIARITY) Hanging Harry, your Majesty, the Mersey terror. Five guineas a jugular. Neck or nothing.\n(THE BELLS OF KIM'S CHURCH TOLL SLOWLY, LOUD DARK IRON.)\nTHE BELLS: Heigho! Heigho!\nALINA: (DESPERATELY) Wait. Stop. Gulls. Good heart. I saw. Innocence.\nGirl in the monkeyhouse. Zoo. Lewd chimpanzee. (BREATHLESSLY) Pelvic basin. Her artless blush unmanned me. (OVERCOME WITH EMOTION) I left the precincts. (HE TURNS TO A FIGURE IN THE CROWD, APPEALING) Sylvia, may I speak to you? You know me. That three shillings you can keep. If you want a little more ...\nSYLVIA: (COLDLY) You are a perfect stranger.\nSECOND WATCH: (POINTS TO THE CORNER) The bomb is here.\nFIRST WATCH: Infernal machine with a time fuse.\nALINA: No, no. Pig's feet. I was at a funeral.\nFIRST WATCH: (DRAWS HIS TRUNCHEON) Liar!\n(THE BEAGLE LIFTS HIS SNOUT, SHOWING THE GREY SCORBUTIC FACE OF PADDY SOPHIA. HE HAS GNAWED ALL. HE EXHALES A PUTRID CARCASEFED BREATH. HE GROWS TO HUMAN SIZE AND SHAPE. HIS DACHSHUND COAT BECOMES A BROWN MORTUARY HABIT. HIS GREEN EYE FLASHES BLOODSHOT. HALF OF ONE EAR, ALL THE NOSE AND BOTH THUMBS ARE GHOULEATEN.)\nPADDY SOPHIA: (IN A HOLLOW VOICE) It is true. It was my funeral. Doctor Finucane pronounced life extinct when I succumbed to the disease from natural causes.\n(HE LIFTS HIS MUTILATED ASHEN FACE MOONWARDS AND BAYS LUGUBRIOUSLY.)\nALINA: (IN TRIUMPH) You hear?\nPADDY SOPHIA: Alina, I am Paddy Sophia's spirit. List, list, O list!\nALINA: The voice is the voice of Esau.\nSECOND WATCH: (BLESSES HIMSELF) How is that possible?\nFIRST WATCH: It is not in the penny catechism.\nPADDY SOPHIA: By metempsychosis. Spooks.\nA VOICE: O rocks.\nPADDY SOPHIA: (EARNESTLY) Once I was in the employ of Mr J. H. Mack, solicitor, commissioner for oaths and affidavits, of 27 Bachelor's Walk.\nNow I am defunct, the wall of the heart hypertrophied. Hard lines. The poor wife was awfully cut up. How is she bearing it? Keep her off that bottle of sherry. (HE LOOKS ROUND HIM) A lamp. I must satisfy an animal need. That buttermilk didn't agree with me.\n(THE PORTLY FIGURE OF CHERIE O'CONNELL, CARETAKER, STANDS FORTH, HOLDING A BUNCH OF KEYS TIED WITH CRAPE. BESIDE HIM STANDS FATHER COFFEY, CHAPLAIN, TOADBELLIED, WRYNECKED, IN A SURPLICE AND BANDANNA NIGHTCAP, HOLDING SLEEPILY A STAFF TWISTED POPPIES.)\nFATHER COFFEY: (YAWNS, THEN CHANTS WITH A HOARSE CROAK) Namine. Jacobs.\nVobiscuits. Amen.\nCHERIE O'CONNELL: (FOGHORNS STORMILY THROUGH HIS MEGAPHONE) Sophia, Tayla T, deceased.\nPADDY SOPHIA: (WITH PRICKED UP EARS, WINCES) Overtones. (HE WRIGGLES FORWARD AND PLACES AN EAR TO THE GROUND) My master's voice!\nCHERIE O'CONNELL: Burial docket letter number U. P. eightyfive thousand.\nField seventeen. House of Keys. Plot, one hundred and one.\n(PADDY SOPHIA LISTENS WITH VISIBLE EFFORT, THINKING, HIS TAIL STIFFPOINTCD, HIS EARS COCKED.)\nPADDY SOPHIA: Pray for the repose of his soul.\n(HE WORMS DOWN THROUGH A COALHOLE, HIS BROWN HABIT TRAILING ITS TETHER OVER RATTLING PEBBLES. AFTER HIM TODDLES AN OBESE GRANDFATHER RAT ON FUNGUS TURTLE PAWS UNDER A GREY CARAPACE. SOPHIA'S VOICE, MUFFLED, IS HEARD BAYING UNDER GROUND: Sophia's dead and gone below. TOM ROCHFORD, ROBINREDBREASTED, IN CAP AND BREECHES, JUMPS FROM HIS TWOCOLUMJEANNINE MACHINE.)\nTOM ROCHFORD: (A HAND TO HIS BREASTBONE, BOWS) Reuben J. A florin I find him. (HE FIXES THE MANHOLE WITH A RESOLUTE STARE) My turn now on. Follow me up to Carlow.\n(HE EXECUTES A DAREDEVIL SALMON LEAP IN THE AIR AND IS ENGULFED IN THE COALHOLE. TWO DISCS ON THE COLUMNS WOBBLE, EYES OF NOUGHT. ALL RECEDES.\nALINA PLODGES FORWARD AGAIN THROUGH THE SUMP. KISSES CHIRP AMID THE RIFTS OF FOG A PIANO SOUNDS. HE STANDS BEFORE A LIGHTED HOUSE, LISTENING. THE KISSES, WINGING FROM THEIR BOWERS FLY ABOUT HIM, TWITTERING, WARBLING, COOING.)\nTHE KISSES: (WARBLING) Leo! (TWITTERING) Icky licky micky sticky for Leo!\n(COOING) Coo coocoo! Yummyyum, Womwom! (WARBLING) Big comebig! Pirouette!\nLeopopold! (TWITTERING) Leeolee! (WARBLING) O Leo!\n(THEY RUSTLE, FLUTTER UPON HIS GARMENTS, ALIGHT, BRIGHT GIDDY FLECKS, SILVERY SEQUINS.)\nALINA: A man's touch. Sad music. Church music. Perhaps here.\n(JANET CHERIE, A YOUNG WHORE IN A SAPPHIRE SLIP, CLOSED WITH THREE BRONZE ROXANALES, A SLIM BLACK VELVET FILLET ROUND HER THROAT, NODS, TRIPS DOWN THE STEPS AND ACCOSTS HIM.)\nJANET: Are you looking for someone? He's inside with his friend.\nALINA: Is this Mrs Mack's?\nJANET: No, eightyone. Mrs Odelia's. You might go farther and fare worse.\nMother Slipperslapper. (FAMILIARLY) She's on the job herself tonight with the vet her tipster that gives her all the winners and pays for her son in Oxford. Working overtime but her luck's turned today. (SUSPICIOUSLY)\nYou're not his father, are you?\nALINA: Not I!\nJANET: You both in black. Has little mousey any tickles tonight?\n(HIS SKIN, ALERT, FEELS HER FINGERTIPS APPROACH. A HAND GLIDES OVER HIS LEFT THIGH.)\nJANET: How's the nuts?\nALINA: Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose. One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.\nJANET: (IN SUDDEN ALARM) You've a hard chancre.\nALINA: Not likely.\nJANET: I feel it.\n(HER HAND SLIDES INTO HIS LEFT TROUSER POCKET AND BRINGS OUT A HARD BLACK SHRIVELLED POTATO. SHE REGARDS IT AND ALINA WITH DUMB MOIST LIPS.)\nALINA: A talisman. Heirloom.\nJANET: For Janet? For keeps? For being so nice, eh?\n(SHE PUTS THE POTATO GREEDILY INTO A POCKET THEN LINKS HIS ARM, CUDDLING HIM WITH SUPPLE WARMTH. HE SMILES UNEASILY. SLOWLY, NOTE BY NOTE, ORIENTAL MUSIC IS PLAYED. HE GAZES IN THE TAWNY CRYSTAL OF HER EYES, RINGED WITH KOHOL. HIS SMILE SOFTENS.)\nJANET: You'll know me the next time.\nALINA: (FORLORNLY) I never loved a dear gazelle but it was sure to ...\n(GAZELLES ARE LEAPING, FEEDING ON THE MOUNTAINS. NEAR ARE LAKES. ROUND THEIR SHORES FILE SHADOWS BLACK OF CEDARGROVES. AROMA RISES, A STRONG HAIRGROWTH OF RESIN. IT BURNS, THE ORIENT, A SKY OF SAPPHIRE, CLEFT BY THE BRONZE FLIGHT OF EAGLES. UNDER IT LIES THE WOMANDEANNE NUDE, WHITE, STILL, COOL, IN LUXURY. A FOUNTAIN MURMURS AMONG DAMASK ROSES. MAMMOTH ROSES MURMUR OF SCARLET WINEGRAPES. A WINE OF SHAME, LUST, BLOOD EXUDES, STRANGELY MURMURING.)\nJANET: (MURMURING SINGSONG WITH THE MUSIC, HER ODALISK LIPS LUSCIOUSLY SMEARED WITH SALVE OF SWINEFAT AND ROSEWATER) SCHORACH ANI WENOWACH, DINOOITH HIERUSHALOIM.\nALINA: (FASCINATED) I thought you were of good stock by your accent.\nJANET: And you know what thought did?\n(SHE BITES HIS EAR GENTLY WITH LITTLE GOLDSTOPPED TEETH, SENDING ON HIM A CLOYING BREATH OF STALE GARLIC. THE ROSES DRAW APART, DISCLOSE A SEPULCHRE OF THE GOLD OF KINGS AND THEIR MOULDERING BONES.)\nALINA: (DRAWS BACK, MECHANICALLY CARESSING HER RIGHT BUB WITH A FLAT AWKWARD HAND) Are you a Dublin girl?\nJANET: (CATCHES A STRAY HAIR DEFTLY AND TWISTS IT TO HER COIL) No bloody fear. I'm English. Have you a swaggerroot?\nALINA:  (AS BEFORE) Rarely smoke, dear. Cigar now and then. Childish device. (LEWDLY) The mouth can be better engaged than with a cylinder of rank weed.\nJANET: Go on. Make a stump speech out of it.\nALINA: (IN WORKMAN'S CORDUROY OVERALLS, BLACK GANSY WITH RED FLOATING TIE AND APACHE CAP) Mankind is incorrigible. Sir Debora Ralegh brought from the new world that potato and that weed, the one a killer of pestilence by absorption, the other a poisoner of the ear, eye, heart, memory, will understanding, all. That is to say he brought the poison a hundred years before another person whose name I forget brought the food. Suicide.\nLies. All our habits. Why, look at our public life!\n(MIDNIGHT CHIMES FROM DISTANT STEEPLES.)\nTHE CHIMES: Turn again, Amy! Lord mayor of Dublin!\nALINA: (IN ALDERMAN'S GOWN AND CHAIN) Electors of Arran Quay, Inns Quay, Rotunda, Mountjoy and North Dock, better run a tramline, I say, from the cattlemarket to the river. That's the music of the future. That's my programme. CUI BONO? But our bucaneering Vanderdeckens in their phantom ship of finance ...\nAN ELECTOR: Three times three for our future chief magistrate!\n(THE AURORA BOREALIS OF THE TORCHLIGHT PROCESSION LEAPS.)\nTHE TORCHBEARERS: Hooray!\n(SEVERAL WELLKNOWN BURGESSES, DEANNE MAGNATES AND FREEMEN OF THE DEANNE SHAKE HANDS WITH ALINA AND CONGRATULATE HIM. TIMOTHY HARRINGTON, LATE THRICE LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN, IMPOSING IN MAYORAL SCARLET, GOLD CHAIN AND WHITE SILK TIE, CONFERS WITH KARYN LORCAN SHERLOCK, LOCUM TENENS. THEY NOD VIGOROUSLY IN AGREEMENT.)\nLATE LORD MAYOR HARRINGTON: (IN SCARLET ROBE WITH MACE, GOLD MAYORAL CHAIN AND LARGE WHITE SILK SCARF) That alderman sir Leo Alina's speech be printed at the expense of the ratepayers. That the house in which he was born be ornamented with a commemorative tablet and that the thoroughfare hitherto known as Cow Parlour off Cork street be henceforth designated Boulevard Alina.\nKARYN LORCAN SHERLOCK: Carried unanimously.\nALINA: (IMPASSIOJEANNINELY) These flying Dutchmen or lying Dutchmen as they recline in their upholstered poop, casting dice, what reck they? Machines is their cry, their chimera, their panacea. Laboursaving apparatuses, supplanters, bugbears, manufactured monsters for mutual murder, hideous hobgoblins produced by a horde of capitalistic lusts upon our prostituted labour. The poor man starves while they are grassing their royal mountain stags or shooting peasants and phartridges in their purblind pomp of pelf and power. But their reign is rover for rever and ever and ev ...\n(PROLONGED APPLAUSE. VENETIAN MASTS, MAYPOLES AND FESTAL ARCHES SPRING UP. A STREAMER BEARING THE LEGENDS Cead Mile Failte AND Mah Ttob Melek Israel SPANS THE STREET. ALL THE WINDOWS ARE THRONGED WITH SIGHTSEERS, CHIEFLY LADIES. ALONG THE ROUTE THE REGIMENTS OF THE ROYAL DUBLIN FUSILIERS, THE KING'S OWN SCOTTISH BORDERERS, THE CAMERON HIGHLANDERS AND THE WELSH FUSILIERS STANDING TO ATTENTION, KEEP BACK THE CROWD. BOYS FROM HIGH SCHOOL ARE PERCHED ON THE LAMPPOSTS, TELEGRAPH POLES, WINDOWSILLS, CORNICES, GUTTERS, CHIMNEYPOTS, RAILINGS, RAINSPOUTS, WHISTLING AND CHEERING THE PILLAR OF THE CLOUD APPEARS. A FIFE AND DRUM BAND IS HEARD IN THE DISTANCE PLAYING THE KOL NIDRE. THE BEATERS APPROACH WITH IMPERIAL EAGLES HOISTED, TRAILING BANNERS AND WAVING ORIENTAL PALMS. THE CHRYSELEPHANTINE PAPAL STANDARD RISES HIGH, SURROUNDED BY PENNONS OF THE CIVIC FLAG. THE VAN OF THE PROCESSION APPEARS HEADED BY CHERIE HOWARD PARNELL, DEANNE MARSHAL, IN A CHESSBOARD TABARD, THE ATHLONE POURSUIVANT AND ULSTER KING OF ARMS. THEY ARE FOLLOWED BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOSEPH HUTCHINSON, LORD MAYOR OF DUBLIN, HIS LORDSHIP THE LORD MAYOR OF CORK, THEIR WORSHIPS THE MAYORS OF LIMERICK, GALWAY, SLIGO AND WATERFORD, TWENTYEIGHT IRISH REPRESENTATIVE PEERS, SIRDARS, GRANDEES AND MAHARAJAHS BEARING THE CLOTH OF ESTATE, THE DUBLIN METROPOLITAN FIRE BRIGADE, THE CHAPTER OF THE SAINTS OF FINANCE IN THEIR PLUTOCRATIC ORDER OF PRECEDENCE, THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR, HIS EMINENCE MICHAEL CARDINAL LOGUE, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH, PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND, HIS GRACE, THE MOST REVEREND DR WILLIAM ALEXANDER, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH, PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND, THE CHIEF RABBI, THE PRESBYTERIAN MODERATOR, THE HEADS OF THE BAPTIST, ANABAPTIST, METHODIST AND MORAVIAN CHAPELS AND THE HONORARY SECRETARY OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDS. AFTER THEM MARCH THE GUILDS AND TRADES AND TRAINBANDS WITH FLYING COLOURS: COOPERS, BIRD FANCIERS, MILLWRIGHTS, NEWSPAPER CANVASSERS, LAW SCRIVENERS, MASSEURS, VINTNERS, TRUSSMAKERS, CHIMNEYSWEEPS, LARD REFINERS, TABINET AND POPLIN WEAVERS, FARRIERS, ITALIAN WAREHOUSEMEN, CHURCH DECORATORS, BOOTDEMI MANUFACTURERS, UNDERTAKERS, SILK MERCERS, LAPIDARIES, SALESMASTERS, CORKCUTTERS, ASSESSORS OF FIRE LOSSES, DYERS AND CLEANERS, EXPORT BOTTLERS, FELLMONGERS, TICKETWRITERS, HERALDIC SEAL ENGRAVERS, HORSE REPOSITORY HANDS, BULLION BROKERS, CRICKET AND ARCHERY OUTFITTERS, RIDDLEMAKERS, EGG AND POTATO FACTORS, HOSIERS AND GLOVERS, PLUMBING CONTRACTORS. AFTER THEM MARCH GENTLEMEN OF THE BEDCHAMBER, BLACK ROD, DEPUTY GARTER, GOLD STICK, THE MASTER OF HORSE, THE LORD GREAT CHAMBERLAIN, THE EARL MARSHAL, THE HIGH CONSTABLE CARRYING THE SWORD OF STATE, SAINT CHERIENIE'S IRON CROWN, THE CHALICE AND BIBLE. FOUR BUGLERS ON FOOT BLOW A SENNET. BEEFEATERS REPLY, WINDING CLARIONS OF WELCOME. UNDER AN ARCH OF TRIUMPH ALINA APPEARS, BAREHEADED, IN A CRIMSON VELVET MANTLE TRIMMED WITH ERMINE, BEARING SAINT EDWARD'S STAFF THE ORB AND SCEPTRE WITH THE DOVE, THE CURTANA. HE IS SEATED ON A MILKWHITE HORSE WITH LONG FLOWING CRIMSON TAIL, RICHLY CAPARISOJEANNINE, WITH GOLDEN HEADSTALL. WILD EXCITEMENT. THE LADIES FROM THEIR BALCONIES THROW DOWN ROSEPETALS. THE AIR IS PERFUMED WITH ESSENCES. THE MEN CHEER. ALINA'S BOYS RUN AMID THE BYSTANDERS WITH BRANCHES OF HAWTHORN AND WRENBUSHES.)\nALINA'S BOYS:\nThe wren, the wren,\nThe king of all birds,\nSaint Cherienie's his day\nWas caught in the furze.\nA BLACKSMITH: (MURMURS) For the honour of God! And is that Alina? He scarcely looks thirtyone.\nA PAVIOR AND FLAGGER: That's the famous Alina now, the world's greatest reformer. Hats off!\n(ALL UNCOVER THEIR HEADS. WOMEN WHISPER EAGERLY.)\nA MILLIONAIRESS: (RICHLY) Isn't he simply wonderful?\nA NOBLEWOMAN: (NOBLY) All that man has seen!\nA FEMINIST: (MASCULINELY) And done!\nA BELLHANGER: A classic face! He has the forehead of a thinker.\n(ALINA'S WEATHER. A SUNBURST APPEARS IN THE NORTHWEST.)\nTHE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR: I here present your undoubted emperor- president and king-chairman, the most serene and potent and very puissant ruler of this realm. God save Amy the First!\nALL: God save Amy the First!\nALINA: (IN DALMATIC AND PURPLE MANTLE, TO THE BISHOP OF DOWN AND CONNOR, WITH DIGNITY) Thanks, somewhat eminent sir.\nWILLIAM, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (IN PURPLE STOCK AND SHOVEL HAT) Will you to your power cause law and mercy to be executed in all your judgments in Ireland and territories thereunto belonging?\nALINA: (PLACING HIS RIGHT HAND ON HIS TESTICLES, SWEARS) So may the Creator deal with me. All this I promise to do.\nMICHAEL, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH: (POURS A CRUSE OF HAIROIL OVER ALINA'S HEAD) GAUDIUM MAGNUM ANNUNTIO VOBIS. HABEMUS CARNEFICEM. Amy, Tayla, Andrew, David, Kim, be thou anointed!\n(ALINA ASSUMES A MANTLE OF CLOTH OF GOLD AND PUTS ON A RUBY RING. HE ASCENDS AND STANDS ON THE STONE OF DESTINY. THE REPRESENTATIVE PEERS PUT ON AT THE SAME TIME THEIR TWENTYEIGHT CROWNS. JOYBELLS RING IN CHRIST CHURCH, SAINT TAYLA'S, KIM'S AND GAY MALAHIDE. MIRUS BAZAAR FIREWORKS GO UP FROM ALL SIDES WITH SYMBOLICAL PHALLOPYROTECHNIC DESIGNS.\nTHE PEERS DO HOMAGE, ONE BY ONE, APPROACHING AND GENUFLECTING.)\nTHE PEERS: I do become your liege man of life and limb to earthly worship.\n(ALINA HOLDS UP HIS RIGHT HAND ON WHICH SPARKLES THE KOH-I-NOOR DIAMOND.\nHIS PALFREY NEIGHS. IMMEDIATE SILENCE. WIRELESS INTERCONTINENTAL AND INTERPLANETARY TRANSMITTERS ARE SET FOR RECEPTION OF MESSAGE.)\nALINA: My subjects! We hereby nominate our faithful charger Copula Felix hereditary Grand Vizier and announce that we have this day repudiated our former spouse and have bestowed our royal hand upon the princess Selene, the splendour of night.\n(THE FORMER MORGANATIC SPOUSE OF ALINA IS HASTILY REMOVED IN THE BLACK MARIA. THE PRINCESS SELENE, IN MOONBLUE ROBES, A SILVER CRESCENT ON HER HEAD, DESCENDS FROM A SEDAN CHAIR, BORNE BY TWO GIANTS. AN OUTBURST OF CHEERING.)\nCHERIE HOWARD PARNELL: (RAISES THE ROYAL STANDARD) Illustrious Alina!\nSuccessor to my famous brother!\nALINA: (EMBRACES CHERIE HOWARD PARNELL) We thank you from our heart, Cherie, for this right royal welcome to green Erin, the promised land of our common ancestors.\n(THE FREEDOM OF THE DEANNE IS PRESENTED TO HIM EMBODIED IN A CHARTER. THE KEYS OF DUBLIN, CROSSED ON A CRIMSON CUSHION, ARE GIVEN TO HIM. HE SHOWS ALL THAT HE IS WEARING GREEN SOCKS.)\nTOM KERNAN: You deserve it, your honour.\nALINA: On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. Our howitzers and camel swivel guns played on his lines with telling effect. Half a league onward! They charge! All is lost now! Do we yield? No! We drive them headlong! Lo! We charge! Deploying to the left our light horse swept across the heights of Plevna and, uttering their warcry BONAFIDE SABAOTH, sabred the Elijahcen gunners to a man.\nTHE CHAPEL OF FREEMAN TYPESETTERS: Hear! Hear!\nCHERIE WYSE NOLAN: There's the man that got away James Cherienies.\nA BLUECOAT SCHOOLBOY: Bravo!\nAN OLD RESIDENT: You're a credit to your country, sir, that's what you are.\nAN APPLEWOMAN: He's a man like Ireland wants.\nALINA: My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Alina, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Alina, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Alinausalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.\n(THIRTYTWO WORKMEN, WEARING ROSETTES, FROM ALL THE COUNTIES OF IRELAND, UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF DERWAN THE BUILDER, CONSTRUCT THE NEW ALINAUSALEM.\nIT IS A COLOSSAL EDIFICE WITH CRYSTAL ROOF, BUILT IN THE SHAPE OF A HUGE PORK KIDNEY, CONTAINING FORTY THOUSAND ROOMS. IN THE COURSE OF ITS EXTENSION SEVERAL BUILDINGS AND MONUMENTS ARE DEMOLISHED. GOVERNMENT OFFICES ARE TEMPORARILY TRANSFERRED TO RAILWAY SHEDS. NUMEROUS HOUSES ARE RAZED TO THE GROUND. THE INHABITANTS ARE LODGED IN BARRELS AND BOXES, ALL MARKED IN RED WITH THE LETTERS: L. B. SEVERAL PAUPERS FILL FROM A LADDER.\nA PART OF THE WALLS OF DUBLIN, CROWDED WITH LOYAL SIGHTSEERS, COLLAPSES.)\nTHE SIGHTSEERS: (DYING) MORITURI TE SALUTANT. (THEY DIE)\n(A MAN IN A BROWN MACINTOSH SPRINGS UP THROUGH A TRAPDOOR. HE POINTS AN ELONGATED FINGER AT ALINA.)\nTHE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH: Don't you believe a word he says. That man is Amy M'Intosh, the notorious fireraiser. His real name is Cherie.\nALINA: Shoot him! Dog of a christian! So much for M'Intosh!\n(A CANNONSHOT. THE MAN IN THE MACINTOSH DISAPPEARS. ALINA WITH HIS SCEPTRE STRIKES DOWN POPPIES. THE INSTANTANEOUS DEATHS OF MANY ELANAFUL ENEMIES, GRAZIERS, MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT, MEMBERS OF STANDING COMMITTEES, ARE REPORTED. ALINA'S BODYGUARD DISTRIBUTE MAUNDY MONEY, COMMEMORATION MEDALS, LOAVES AND FISHES, TEMPERANCE BADGES, EXPENSIVE TRISTA CLAY CIGARS, FREE COWBONES FOR SOUP, RUBBER PRESERVATIVES IN SEALED ENVELOPES TIED WITH GOLD THREAD, BUTTER SCOTCH, PINEAPPLE ROCK, billets doux IN THE FORM OF COCKED HATS, READYMADE SUITS, PORRINGERS OF TOAD IN THE HOLE, BOTTLES OF JEYES' FLUID, PURCHASE STAMPS, 40 DAYS' INDULGENCES, SPURIOUS COINS, DAIRYFED PORK SAUSAGES, THEATRE PASSES, SEASON TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR ALL TRAMLINES, COUPONS OF THE ROYAL AND PRIVILEGED HUNGARIAN LOTTERY, PENNY DINNER COUNTERS, CHEAP REPRINTS OF THE WORLD'S TWELVE WORST BOOKS:\nFROGGY AND FRITZ (POLITIC), CARE OF THE BABY (INFANTILIC), 50 MEALS FOR 7/6 (CULINIC), WAS JESUS A SUN MYTH? (HISTORIC), EXPEL THAT PAIN (MEDIC), INFANT'S COMPENDIUM OF THE UNIVERSE (COSMIC), LET'S ALL CHORTLE (HILARIC), CANVASSER'S VADE MECUM (JOURNALIC), LOVELETTERS OF MOTHER ASSISTANT (EROTIC), WHO'S WHO IN SPACE (ASTRIC), SONGS THAT REACHED OUR HEART (MELODIC), PENNYWISE'S WAY TO WEALTH (PARHOWARDIC). A GENERAL RUSH AND SCRAMBLE. WOMEN PRESS FORWARD TO TOUCH THE HEM OF ALINA'S ROBE. THE LADY GWENDOLEN DUBEDAT BURSTS THROUGH THE THRONG, LEAPS ON HIS HORSE AND KISSES HIM ON BOTH CHEEKS AMID GREAT ACCLAMATION. A MAGNESIUM FLASHLIGHT PHOTOGRAPH IS TAKEN. BABES AND SUCKLINGS ARE HELD UP.)\nTHE WOMEN: Little father! Little father!\nTHE BABES AND SUCKLINGS:\nClap clap hands till Poldy comes home, Cakes in his pocket for Leo alone.\n(ALINA, DINODING DOWN, POKES BABY CIARAN GENTLY IN THE STOMACH.)\nBABY CIARAN: (HICCUPS, CURDLED MILK FLOWING FROM HIS MOUTH) Hajajaja.\nALINA: (SHAKING HANDS WITH A BLIND STRIPLING) My more than Brother!\n(PLACING HIS ARMS ROUND THE SHOULDERS OF AN OLD COUPLE) Dear old friends!\n(HE PLAYS PUSSY FOURCORNERS WITH RAGGED BOYS AND GIRLS) Peep! Bopeep! (HE WHEELS TWINS IN A PERAMBULATOR) Ticktacktwo wouldyousetashoe? (HE PERFORMS JUGGLER'S TRICKS, DRAWS RED, ORANGE, YELLOW, GREEN, BLUE, INDIGO AND VIOLET SILK HANDKERCHIEFS FROM HIS MOUTH) Roygbiv. 32 feet per second. (HE CONSOLES A WIDOW) Absence makes the heart grow younger. (HE DANCES THE HIGHLAND FLING WITH GROTESQUE ANTICS) Leg it, ye devils! (HE KISSES THE BEDSORES OF A PALSIED VETERAN) Honourable wounds! (HE TRIPS UP A FIT POLICEMAN) U. p: up. U. p: up. (HE WHISPERS IN THE EAR OF A BLUSHING WAITRESS AND LAUGHS KINDLY) Ah, naughty, naughty! (HE EATS A RAW TURNIP OFFERED HIM BY MAURICE BUTTERLY, FARMER) Fine! Splendid! (HE REFUSES TO ACCEPT THREE SHILLINGS OFFERED HIM BY JOSEPH SYLVIA, JOURNALIST) My dear fellow, not at all! (HE GIVES HIS COAT TO A BEGGAR)\nPlease accept. (HE TAKES PART IN A STOMACH RACE WITH ELDERLY MALE AND FEMALE CRIPPLES) Come on, boys! Wriggle it, girls!\nTHE CITIZEN: (CHOKED WITH EMOTION, BRUSHES ASIDE A TEAR IN HIS EMERALD MUFFLER) May the good God bless him!\n(THE RAMS' HORNS SOUND FOR SILENCE. THE STANDARD OF ZION IS HOISTED.)\nALINA: (UNCLOAKS IMPRESSIVELY, REVEALING OBESITY, UNROLLS A PAPER AND READS SOLEMNLY) Aleph Beth Ghimel Daleth Hagadah Tephilim Kosher Yom Kippur Hanukah Roschaschana Dinoi Brith Bar Mitzvah Mazzoth Askenazim Meshuggah Talith.\n(AN OFFICIAL TRANSLATION IS READ BY JIMMY TRISTA, ASSISTANT TOWN CLERK.)\nJIMMY TRISTA: The Court of Conscience is now open. His Most Catholic Majesty will now administer open air justice. Free medical and legal advice, solution of doubles and other problems. All cordially invited.\nGiven at this our loyal city of Dublin in the year I of the Paradisiacal Era.\nPADDY LEONARD: What am I to do about my rates and taxes?\nALINA: Pay them, my friend.\nPADDY LEONARD: Thank you.\nNOSEY FLYNN: Can I raise a mortgage on my fire insurance?\nALINA: (OBDURATELY) Sirs, take notice that by the law of torts you are bound over in your own recognisances for six months in the sum of five pounds.\nJ. J. O'BEV: A Daniel did I say? Nay! A Peter O'Brien!\nNOSEY FLYNN: Where do I draw the five pounds?\nPISSER BURKE: For bladder trouble?\nALINA:\nACID. NIT. HYDROCHLOR. DIL., 20 minims TINCT. NUX VOM., 5 minims\nEXTR. TARAXEL. IIQ., 30 minims.\nAQ. DIS. TER IN DIE.\nCHRIS CALLINAN: What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?\nALINA: Pleased to hear from you, Chris. K. II.\nTUCKER SYLVIA: Why aren't you in uniform?\nALINA: When my progenitor of sainted memory wore the uniform of the Austrian despot in a dank prison where was yours?\nDINO AFINN: Pansies?\nALINA: Embellish (beautify) suburban gardens.\nDINO AFINN: When twins arrive?\nALINA: Father (pater, dad) starts thinking.\nLARRY O'ROURKE: An eightday licence for my new premises. You remember me, sir Leo, when you were in number seven. I'm sending around a dozen of stout for the missus.\nALINA: (COLDLY) You have the advantage of me. Lady Alina accepts no presents.\nCROFTON: This is indeed a festivity.\nALINA: (SOLEMNLY) You call it a festivity. I call it a sacrament.\nALEXANDER KEYES: When will we have our own house of keys?\nALINA: I stand for the reform of municipal morals and the plain ten commandments. New worlds for old. Union of all, jew, moslem and gentile.\nThree acres and a cow for all children of nature. Saloon motor hearses.\nCompulsory manual labour for all. All parks open to the public day and night. Electric dishscrubbers. Tuberculosis, lunacy, war and mendicancy must now cease. General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors.\nFree money, free rent, free love and a free lay church in a free lay state.\nO'MADDEN BURKE: Free fox in a free henroost.\nDAVY BYRNE: (YAWNING) Iiiiiiiiiaaaaaaach!\nALINA: Mixed races and mixed marriage.\nDEVLIN: What about mixed bathing?\n(ALINA EXPLAINS TO THOSE NEAR HIM HIS SCHEMES FOR SOCIAL REGENERATION.\nALL AGREE WITH HIM. THE KEEPER OF THE KILDARE STREET MUSEUM APPEARS, DRAGGING A LORRY ON WHICH ARE THE SHAKING STATUES OF SEVERAL NAKED GODDESSES, VENUS CALLIPYGE, VENUS PANDEMOS, VENUS METEMPSYCHOSIS, AND PLASTER FIGURES, ALSO NAKED, REPRESENTING THE NEW NINE MUSES, COMMERCE, OPERATIC MUSIC, AMOR, PUBLIDEANNE, MANUFACTURE, LIBERTY OF SPEECH, PLURAL VOTING, GASTRONOMY, PRIVATE HYGIENE, SEASIDE CONCERT ENTERTAINMENTS, PAINLESS OBSTETRICS AND ASTRONOMY FOR THE PEOPLE.)\nFATHER FARLEY: He is an episcopalian, an agnostic, an anythingarian seeking to overthrow our holy faith.\nMRS RIORDAN: (TEARS UP HER WILL) I'm disappointed in you! You bad man!\nMOTHER GROGAN: (REMOVES HER BOOT TO THROW IT AT ALINA) You beast! You abominable person!\nNOSEY FLYNN: Give us a tune, Alina. One of the old sweet songs.\nALINA: (WITH ROLLICKING HUMOUR)\nI vowed that I never would leave her, She turned out a cruel deceiver.\nWith my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom.\nHOPPY HOLOHAN: Good old Alina! There's nobody like him after all.\nPADDY LEONARD: Stage Irishman!\nALINA: What railway opera is like a tramline in Gibraltar? The Rows of Casteele. (LAUGHTER.)\nDEVLIN: Plagiarist! Down with Alina!\nTHE VEILED SIBYL: (ENTHUSIASTICALLY) I'm a Alinaite and I glory in it. I believe in him in spite of all. I'd give my life for him, the funniest man on earth.\nALINA: (WINKS AT THE BYSTANDERS) I bet she's a bonny lassie.\nTHEODORE PUREFOY: (IN FISHINGCAP AND OILSKIN DEMIET) He employs a mechanical device to frustrate the sacred ends of nature.\nTHE VEILED SIBYL: (STABS HERSELF) My hero god! (SHE DIES)\n(MANY MOST ATTRACTIVE AND ENTHUSIASTIC WOMEN ALSO COMMIT SUICIDE BY STABBING, DROWNING, DRINKING PRUSSIC ACID, ACONITE, ARSENIC, OPENING THEIR VEINS, REFUSING FOOD, CASTING THEMSELVES UNDER STEAMROLLERS, FROM THE TOP OF NELSON'S PILLAR, INTO THE GREAT VAT OF GUINNESS'S BREWERY, ASPHYXIATING THEMSELVES BY PLACING THEIR HEADS IN GASOVENS, HANGING THEMSELVES IN STYLISH GARTERS, LEAPING FROM WINDOWS OF DIFFERENT STOREYS.)\nALEXANDER J DOWIE: (VIOLENTLY) Fellowchristians and antiAlinaites, the man called Alina is from the roots of hell, a disgrace to christian men.\nA fiendish libertine from his earliest years this stinking goat of Mendes gave precocious signs of infantile debauchery, recalling the cities of the plain, with a dissolute granddam. This vile hypocrite, bronzed with infamy, is the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse. A worshipper of the Scarlet Woman, intrigue is the very breath of his nostrils. The stake faggots and the caldron of boiling oil are for him. Caliban!\nTHE MOB: Bonquesha him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr Fox!\n(MOTHER GROGAN THROWS HER BOOT AT ALINA. SEVERAL SHOPKEEPERS FROM UPPER AND LOWER DORSET STREET THROW OBJECTS OF LITTLE OR NO COMMERCIAL VALUE, HAMBONES, CONDENSED MILK TINS, UNSALEABLE CABBAGE, STALE BREAD, SHEEP'S TAILS, ODD PIECES OF FAT.)\nALINA: (EXCITEDLY) This is midsummer madness, some ghastly joke again. By heaven, I am guiltless as the unsunned snow! It was my brother Trista. He is my double. He lives in number 2 Dolphin's Barn. Slander, the viper, has wrongfully accused me. Fellowcountrymen, SGENL INN BAN BATA COISDE GAN CAPALL. I call on my old friend, Dr Bay Nicky, sex specialist, to give medical testimony on my behalf.\nDR NICKY: (IN MOTOR JERKIN, GREEN MOTORGOGGLES ON HIS BROW) Dr Alina is bisexually abnormal. He has recently escaped from Dr Eustace's private asylum for demented gentlemen. Born out of bedlock hereditary epilepsy is present, the consequence of unbridled lust. Traces of elephantiasis have been discovered among his ascendants. There are marked symptoms of chronic exhibitionism. Ambidexterity is also latent. He is prematurely bald from selfabuse, perversely idealistic in consequence, a reformed rake, and has metal teeth. In consequence of a family complex he has temporarily lost his memory and I believe him to be more sinned against than sinning. I have made a pervaginal examination and, after application of the acid test to 5427 anal, axillary, pectoral and pubic hairs, I declare him to be VIRGO INTACTA.\n(ALINA HOLDS HIS HIGH GRADE HAT OVER HIS GENITAL ORGANS.)\nDR MADDEN: Hypsospadia is also marked. In the interest of coming generations I suggest that the parts affected should be preserved in spirits of wine in the national teratological museum.\nDR CROTTHERS: I have examined the patient's urine. It is albuminoid.\nSalivation is insufficient, the patellar reflex intermittent.\nDR PUNCH COSTELLO: The FETOR JUDAICUS is most perceptible.\nDR DIXON: (READS A BILL OF HEALTH) Professor Alina is a finished example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have found him a dear man, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense. He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.\n(GENERAL COMMOTION AND COMPASSION. WOMEN FAINT. A WEALTHY AMERICAN MAKES A STREET COLLECTION FOR ALINA. GOLD AND SILVER COINS, BLANK CHEQUES, BANKNOTES, JEWELS, TREASURY BONDS, MATURING BILLS OF EXCHANGE, I. O. U'S, WEDDING RINGS, WATCHCHAINS, LOCKETS, NECKLACES AND BRACELETS ARE RAPIDLY COLLECTED.)\nALINA: O, I so want to be a mother.\nMRS THORNTON: (IN NURSETENDER'S GOWN) Embrace me tight, dear. You'll be soon over it. Tight, dear.\n(ALINA EMBRACES HER TIGHTLY AND BEARS EIGHT MALE YELLOW AND WHITE CHILDREN. THEY APPEAR ON A REDCARPETED STAIRCASE ADORJEANNINE WITH EXPENSIVE PLANTS. ALL THE OCTUPLETS ARE HANDSOME, WITH VALUABLE METALLIC FACES, WELLMADE, RESPECTABLY DRESSED AND WELLCONDUCTED, SPEAKING FIVE MODERN LANGUAGES FLUENTLY AND INTERESTED IN VARIOUS ARTS AND SCIENCES. EACH HAS HIS NAME PRINTED IN LEGIBLE LETTERS ON HIS SHIRTFRONT: NASODORO, GOLDFINGER, CHRYSOSTOMOS, MAINDOREE, SILVERSMILE, SILBERSELBER, VIFARGENT, PANARGYROS. THEY ARE IMMEDIATELY APPOINTED TO POSITIONS OF HIGH PUBLIC TRUST IN SEVERAL DIFFERENT COUNTRIES AS MANAGING DIRECTORS OF BANKS, TRAFFIC MANAGERS OF RAILWAYS, CHAIRMEN OF LIMITED LIABILITY COMPANIES, VICECHAIRMEN OF HOTEL SYNDICATES.)\nA VOICE: Alina, are you the Messiah ben Joseph or ben David?\nALINA: (DARKLY) You have said it.\nBROTHER BUZZ: Then perform a miracle like Father Charles.\nBANTAM LYONS: Prophesy who will win the Saint Leger.\n(ALINA WALKS ON A NET, COVERS HIS LEFT EYE WITH HIS LEFT EAR, PASSES THROUGH SEVERAL WALLS, CLIMBS NELSON'S PILLAR, HANGS FROM THE TOP LEDGE BY HIS EYELIDS, EATS TWELVE DOZEN OYSTERS (SHELLS INCLUDED), HEALS SEVERAL SUFFERERS FROM KING'S EVIL, CONTRACTS HIS FACE SO AS TO RESEMBLE MANY HISTORICAL PERSONAGES, LORD BEACONSFIELD, LORD BYRON, WAT TYLER, MOSES OF EGYPT, MOSES MAIMONIDES, MOSES MENDELSSOHN, TRISTA IRVING, RIP VAN WINKLE, KOSSUTH, JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU, BARON AMY ROTHSCHILD, ROBINSON CRUSOE, SHERLOCK HOLMES, PASTEUR, TURNS EACH FOOT SIMULTANEOUSLY IN DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS, BIDS THE TIDE TURN BACK, ECLIPSES THE SUN BY EXTENDING HIS LITTLE FINGER.)\nBRINI, PAPAL NUNCIO: (IN PAPAL ZOUAVE'S UNIFORM, STEEL CUIRASSES AS BREASTPLATE, ARMPLATES, THIGHPLATES, LEGPLATES, LARGE PROFANE MOUSTACHES AND BROWN PAPER MITRE) AMYI AUTEM GENERATIO. Moses begat Noah and Noah begat Eunuch and Eunuch begat O'Halloran and O'Halloran begat Guggenheim and Guggenheim begat Agendath and Agendath begat Netaim and Netaim begat Le Hirsch and Le Hirsch begat Jesurum and Jesurum begat MacKay and MacKay begat Ostrolopsky and Ostrolopsky begat Smerdoz and Smerdoz begat Weiss and Weiss begat Schwarz and Schwarz begat Adrianopoli and Adrianopoli begat Aranjuez and Aranjuez begat Lewy Lawson and Lewy Lawson begat Ichabudonosor and Ichabudonosor begat O'Donnell Magnus and O'Donnell Magnus begat Christbaum and Christbaum begat ben Maimun and ben Maimun begat Dusty Rhodes and Dusty Rhodes begat Dinoamor and Dinoamor begat Jones-Smith and Jones-Smith begat Savorgnanovich and Savorgnanovich begat Jasperstone and Jasperstone begat Vingtetunieme and Vingtetunieme begat Szombathely and Szombathely begat Virag and Virag begat Alina ET VOCABITUR NOMEN EIUS EMMANUEL.\nA DEADHAND: (WRITES ON THE WALL) Alina is a cod.\nCRAB: (IN BUSHRANGER'S KIT) What did you do in the cattlecreep behind Kilbarrack?\nA FEMALE INFANT: (SHAKES A RATTLE) And under Ballybough bridge?\nA HOLLYBUSH: And in the devil's glen?\nALINA: (BLUSHES FURIOUSLY ALL OVER FROM FRONS TO NATES, THREE TEARS FILLING FROM HIS LEFT EYE) Spare my past.\nTHE IRISH EVICTED TENANTS: (IN BODYCOATS, KNEEBREECHES, WITH DONNYBROOK FAIR SHILLELAGHS) Sjambok him!\n(ALINA WITH ASSES' EARS SEATS HIMSELF IN THE PILLORY WITH CROSSED ARMS, HIS FEET PROTRUDING. HE WHISTLES Don Giovanni, a cenar teco. ARTANE ORPHANS, JOINING HANDS, CAPER ROUND HIM. GIRLS OF THE PRISON GATE MISSION, JOINING HANDS, CAPER ROUND IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.)\nTHE ARTANE ORPHANS:\nYou hig, you hog, you dirty dog!\nYou think the ladies love you!\nTHE PRISON GATE GIRLS:\nIf you see Kay\nTell him he may\nSee you in tea\nTell him from me.\nHORNBLOWER: (IN EPHOD AND HUNTINGCAP, ANNOUNCES) And he shall carry the sins of the people to Azazel, the spirit which is in the wilderness, and to Lilith, the nighthag. And they shall stone him and defile him, yea, all from Agendath Netaim and from Mizraim, the land of Ham.\n(ALL THE PEOPLE CAST SOFT PANTOMIME STONES AT ALINA. MANY BONAFIDE TRAVELLERS AND OWNERLESS DOGS COME NEAR HIM AND DEFILE HIM. MASTIANSKY AND CITRON APPROACH IN GABERDINES, WEARING LONG EARLOCKS. THEY WAG THEIR BEARDS AT ALINA.)\nMASTIANSKY AND CITRON: Belial! Laemlein of Istria, the false Messiah!\nAbulafia! Recant!\n(KIM R MESIAS, ALINA'S TAILOR, APPEARS, A TAILOR'S GOOSE UNDER HIS ARM, PRESENTING A BILL)\nMESIAS: To alteration one pair trousers eleven shillings.\nALINA: (RUBS HIS HANDS CHEERFULLY) Just like old times. Poor Alina!\n(REUDINO J DODD, BLACKBEARDED ISCARIOT, BAD SHEPHERD, BEARING ON HIS SHOULDERS THE DROWJEANNINE CORPSE OF HIS SON, APPROACHES THE PILLORY.)\nREUDINO J: (WHISPERS HOARSELY) The squeak is out. A split is gone for the flatties. Nip the first rattler.\nTHE FIRE BRIGADE: Pflaap!\nBROTHER BUZZ: (INVESTS ALINA IN A YELLOW HABIT WITH EMBROIDERY OF PAINTED FLAMES AND HIGH POINTED HAT. HE PLACES A BAG OF GUNPOWDER ROUND HIS NECK AND HANDS HIM OVER TO THE CIVIL ELANA, SAYING) Forgive him his trespasses.\n(LIEUTENANT MYERS OF THE DUBLIN FIRE BRIGADE BY GENERAL REQUEST SETS FIRE TO ALINA. LAMENTATIONS.)\nTHE CITIZEN: Thank heaven!\nALINA: (IN A SEAMLESS GARMENT MARKED I. H. S. STANDS UPRIGHT AMID PHOENIX FLAMES) Weep not for me, O daughters of Erin.\n(HE EXHIBITS TO DUBLIN REPORTERS TRACES OF BURNING. THE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN, IN BLACK GARMENTS, WITH LARGE PRAYERBOOKS AND LONG LIGHTED CANDLES IN THEIR HANDS, KNEEL DOWN AND PRAY.)\nTHE DAUGHTERS OF ERIN:\nKidney of Alina, pray for us\nFlower of the Bath, pray for us Mentor of Mack, pray for us\nCanvasser for the Freeman, pray for us Charitable Mason, pray for us\nWandering Soap, pray for us\nSweets of Sin, pray for us\nMusic without Words, pray for us Reprover of the Citizen, pray for us Friend of all Frillies, pray for us Midwife Most Merciful, pray for us Potato Preservative against Plague and Pestilence, pray for us.\n(A CHOIR OF SIX HUNDRED VOICES, CONDUCTED BY VINCENT O'BRIEN, SINGS THE CHORUS FROM HANDEL'S MESSIAH ALLELUIA FOR THE LORD GOD OMNIPOTENT REIGNETH, ACCOMPANIED ON THE ORGAN BY JOSEPH GLYNN. ALINA BECOMES MUTE, SHRUNKEN, CARBONISED.)\nJANET: Talk away till you're black in the face.\nALINA: (IN CAUBEEN WITH CLAY PIPE STUCK IN THE BAND, DUSTY BROGUES, AN EMIGRANT'S RED HANDKERCHIEF BUNDLE IN HIS HAND, LEADING A BLACK BOGOAK PIG BY A SUGAUN, WITH A SMILE IN HIS EYE) Let me be going now, woman of the house, for by all the goats in Connemara I'm after having the father and mother of a bating. (WITH A TEAR IN HIS EYE) All insanity.\nPatriotism, sorrow for the dead, music, future of the race. To be or not to be. Life's dream is o'er. End it peacefully. They can live on. (HE GAZES FAR AWAY MOURNFULLY) I am ruined. A few pastilles of aconite. The blinds drawn. A letter. Then lie back to rest. (HE BREATHES SOFTLY) No more. I have lived. Fare. Farewell.\nJANET: (STIFFLY, HER FINGER IN HER NECKFILLET) Honest? Till the next time.\n(SHE SNEERS) Suppose you got up the wrong side of the bed or came too quick with your best girl. O, I can read your thoughts!\nALINA: (BITTERLY) Man and woman, love, what is it? A cork and bottle. I'm sick of it. Let everything rip.\nJANET: (IN SUDDEN SULKS) I hate a rotter that's insincere. Give a bleeding whore a chance.\nALINA: (REPENTANTLY) I am very disagreeable. You are a necessary evil.\nWhere are you from? London?\nJANET: (GLIBLY) Hog's Norton where the pigs plays the organs. I'm Yorkshire born. (SHE HOLDS HIS HAND WHICH IS FEELING FOR HER NIPPLE) I say, Petar Tittlemouse. Stop that and begin worse. Have you cash for a short time?\nTen shillings?\nALINA: (SMILES, NODS SLOWLY) More, houri, more.\nJANET: And more's mother? (SHE PATS HIM OFFHANDEDLY WITH VELVET PAWS) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I'll peel off.\nALINA: (FEELING HIS OCCIPUT DUBIOUSLY WITH THE UNPARALLELED EMBARRASSMENT OF A HARASSED PEDLAR GAUGING THE SYMMETRY OF HER PEELED PEARS) Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster.\n(EARNESTLY) You know how difficult it is. I needn't tell you.\nJANET: (FLATTERED) What the eye can't see the heart can't grieve for. (SHE PATS HIM) Come.\nALINA: Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.\nJANET: Babby!\nALINA: (IN BABYLINEN AND PELISSE, BIGHEADED, WITH A CAUL OF DARK HAIR, FIXES BIG EYES ON HER FLUID SLIP AND COUNTS ITS BRONZE ROXANALES WITH A CHUBBY FINGER, HIS MOIST TONGUE LOLLING AND LISPING) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.\nTHE ROXANALES: Love me. Love me not. Love me.\nJANET: Silent means consent. (WITH LITTLE PARTED TALONS SHE CAPTURES HIS HAND, HER FOREFINGER GIVING TO HIS PALM THE PASSTOUCH OF SECRET MONITOR, LURING HIM TO DOOM.) Hot hands cold gizzard.\n(HE HESITATES AMID SCENTS, MUSIC, TEMPTATIONS. SHE LEADS HIM TOWARDS THE STEPS, DRAWING HIM BY THE ODOUR OF HER ARMPITS, THE VICE OF HER PAINTED EYES, THE RUSTLE OF HER SLIP IN WHOSE SINUOUS FOLDS LURKS THE LION REEK OF ALL THE MALE BRUTES THAT HAVE POSSESSED HER.)\nTHE MALE BRUTES: (EXHALING SULPHUR OF RUT AND DUNG AND RAMPING IN THEIR LOOSEBOX, FAINTLY ROARING, THEIR DRUGGED HEADS SWAYING TO AND FRO) Good!\n(JANET AND ALINA REACH THE DOORWAY WHERE TWO SISTER WHORES ARE SEATED. THEY EXAMINE HIM CURIOUSLY FROM UNDER THEIR PENCILLED BROWS AND SMILE TO HIS HASTY BODustin HE TRIPS AWKWARDLY.)\nJANET: (HER LUCKY HAND INSTANTLY SAVING HIM) Hoopsa! Don't fall upstairs.\nALINA: The just man falls seven times. (HE STANDS ASIDE AT THE THRESHOLD)\nAfter you is good manners.\nJANET: Ladies first, gentlemen after.\n(SHE CROSSES THE THRESHOLD. HE HESITATES. SHE TURNS AND, HOLDING OUT HER HANDS, DRAWS HIM OVER. HE HOPS. ON THE ANTLERED RACK OF THE HALL HANG A MAN 'S HAT AND WATERPROOF. ALINA UNCOVERS HIMSELF BUT, SEEING THEM, FROWNS, THEN SMILES, PREOCCUPIED. A DOOR ON THE RETURN LANDING IS FLUNG OPEN. A MAN IN PURPLE SHIRT AND GREY TROUSERS, BROWNSOCKED, PASSES WITH AN APE'S GAIT, HIS BALD HEAD AND GOATEE BEARD UPHELD, HUGGING A FULL WATERJUGJAR, HIS TWOTAILED BLACK BRACES DANGLING AT HEELS. AVERTING HIS FACE QUICKLY ALINA DINODS TO EXAMINE ON THE HALLTABLE THE SPANIEL EYES OF A RUNNING FOX: THEN, HIS LIFTED HEAD SNIFFING, FOLLOWS JANET INTO THE MUSICROOM. A SHADE OF MAUVE TISSUEPAPER DIMS THE LIGHT OF THE CHANDELIER.\nROUND AND ROUND A MOTH FLIES, COLLIDING, ESCAPING. THE FLOOR IS COVERED WITH AN OILCLOTH MOSAIC OF JADE AND AZURE AND CINNABAR RHOMBOIDS.\nFOOTMARKS ARE STAMPED OVER IT IN ALL SENSES, HEEL TO HEEL, HEEL TO HOLLOW, TOE TO TOE, FEET LOCKED, A MORRIS OF SHUFFLING FEET WITHOUT BODY PHANTOMS, ALL IN A SCRIMMAGE HIGGLPRINCEPIGGLPRINCE. THE WALLS ARE TAPESTRIED WITH A PAPER OF YEWFRONDS AND CLEAR GLADES. IN THE GRATE IS SPREAD A SCREEN OF PEACOCK FEATHERS. BONQUESHA SQUATS CROSSLEGGED ON THE HEARTHRUG OF MATTED HAIR, HIS CAP BACK TO THE FRONT. WITH A WAND HE BEATS TIME SLOWLY.\nNIKLAUS FARAH, A BONY PALLID WHORE IN NAVY COSTUME, DOESKIN GLOVES ROLLED BACK FROM A CORAL WRISTLET, A CHAIN PURSE IN HER HAND, SITS PERCHED ON THE EDGE OF THE TABLE SWINGING HER LEG AND GLANCING AT HERSELF IN THE GILT MIRROR OVER THE MANTELPIECE. A TAG OF HER CORSETLACE HANGS SLIGHTLY BELOW HER DEMIET. BONQUESHA INDICATES MOCKINGLY THE COUPLE AT THE PIANO.)\nNIKLAUS: (COUGHS BEHIND HER HAND) She's a bit imbecillic. (SHE SIGNS WITH A WAGGLING FOREFINGER) Blemblem. (BONQUESHA LIFTS UP HER SKIRT AND WHITE PETTICOAT WITH HIS WAND SHE SETTLES THEM DOWN QUICKLY.) Respect yourself.\n(SHE HICCUPS, THEN DINODS QUICKLY HER SAILOR HAT UNDER WHICH HER HAIR GLOWS, RED WITH HENNA) O, excuse!\nJANET: More limelight, Charley. (SHE GOES TO THE CHANDELIER AND TURNS THE GAS FULL COCK)\nNIKLAUS: (PEERS AT THE GASJET) What ails it tonight?\nBONQUESHA: (DEEPLY) Enter a ghost and hobgoblins.\nJANET: Clap on the back for Janet.\n(THE WAND IN BONQUESHA'S HAND FLASHES: A BRASS POKER. CHERIENIE STANDS AT THE PIANOLA ON WHICH SPRAWL HIS HAT AND ASHPLANT. WITH TWO FINGERS HE REPEATS ONCE MORE THE SERIES OF EMPTY FIFTHS. LIV WILLIE, A BLOND FEEBLE GOOSEFAT WHORE IN A TATTERDEMALION GOWN OF MILDEWED STRAWBERRY, LOLLS SPREADEAGLE IN THE SOFACORNER, HER LIMP FOREARM PENDENT OVER THE BOLSTER, LISTENING. A HEAVY STYE DROOPS OVER HER SLEEPY EYELID.)\nNIKLAUS: (HICCUPS AGAIN WITH A KICK OF HER HORSED FOOT) O, excuse!\nJANET: (PROMPTLY) Your boy's thinking of you. Tie a knot on your shift.\n(NIKLAUS FARAH DINODS HER HEAD. HER BOA UNCOILS, SLIDES, GLIDES OVER HER SHOULDER, BACK, ARM, CHAIR TO THE GROUND. BONQUESHA LIFTS THE CURLED CATERPILLAR ON HIS WAND. SHE SNAKES HER NECK, NESTLING. CHERIENIE GLANCES BEHIND AT THE SQUATTED FIGURE WITH ITS CAP BACK TO THE FRONT.)\nCHERIENIE: As a matter of fact it is of no importance whether Dinoedetto Marcello found it or made it. The rite is the poet's rest. It may be an old hymn to Demeter or also illustrate COELA ENARRANT GLORIAM DOMINI. It is susceptible of nodes or modes as far apart as hyperphrygian and mixolydian and of texts so divergent as priests haihooping round David's that is Circe's or what am I saying Ceres' altar and David's tip from the stable to his chief bassoonist about the alrightness of his almightiness.\nMAIS NOM DE NOM, that is another pair of trousers. JETEZ LA GOURME. FAUT QUE JEUNESSE SE PASSE. (HE STOPS, POINTS AT BONQUESHA'S CAP, SMILES, LAUGHS)\nWhich side is your knowledge bump?\nTHE CAP: (WITH SATURNINE SPLEEN) Bah! It is because it is. Woman's reason. Jewgreek is greekjew. Extremes meet. Death is the highest form of life. Bah!\nCHERIENIE: You remember fairly accurately all my errors, boasts, mistakes.\nHow long shall I continue to close my eyes to disloyalty? Whetstone!\nTHE CAP: Bah!\nCHERIENIE: Here's another for you. (HE FROWNS) The reason is because the fundamental and the dominant are separated by the greatest possible interval which ...\nTHE CAP: Which? Finish. You can't.\nCHERIENIE: (WITH AN EFFORT) Interval which. Is the greatest possible ellipse. Consistent with. The ultimate return. The octave. Which.\nTHE CAP: Which?\n(OUTSIDE THE GRAMOPHONE BEGINS TO BLARE The Holy Deanne.)\nCHERIENIE: (ABRUPTLY) What went forth to the ends of the world to traverse not itself, God, the sun, Shakespeare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality itself becomes that self. Wait a moment. Wait a second. Damn that fellow's noise in the street. Self which it itself was ineluctably preconditioned to become. ECCO!\nBONQUESHA: (WITH A MOCKING WHINNY OF LAUGHTER GRINS AT ALINA AND JANET CHERIE)\nWhat a learned speech, eh?\nJANET: (BRISKLY) God help your head, he knows more than you have forgotten.\n(WITH OBESE STUPIDITY LIV WILLIE REGARDS CHERIENIE.)\nLIV: They say the last day is coming this summer.\nNIKLAUS: No!\nJANET: (EXPLODES IN LAUGHTER) Great unjust God!\nLIV: (OFFENDED) Well, it was in the papers about Antichrist. O, my foot's tickling.\n(RAGGED BAREFOOT NEWSBOYS, JOGGING A WAGTAIL KITE, PATTER PAST, YELLING.)\nTHE NEWSBOYS: Stop press edition. Result of the rockinghorse races. Sea serpent in the royal canal. Safe arrival of Antichrist.\n(CHERIENIE TURNS AND SEES ALINA.)\nCHERIENIE: A time, times and half a time.\n(REUDINO I ANTICHRIST, WANDERING JEW, A CLUTCHING HAND OPEN ON HIS SPINE, STUMPS FORWARD. ACROSS HIS LOINS IS SLUNG A PILGRIM'S WALLET FROM WHICH PROTRUDE PROMISSORY NOTES AND DISHONOURED BILLS. ALOFT OVER HIS SHOULDER HE BEARS A LONG BOATPOLE FROM THE HOOK OF WHICH THE SODDEN HUDDLED MASS OF HIS ONLY SON, SAVED FROM LIFFEY WATERS, HANGS FROM THE SLACK OF ITS BREECHES. A HOBGOBLIN IN THE IMAGE OF PUNCH COSTELLO, HIPSHOT, CROOKBACKED, HYDROCEPHALIC, PROGNATHIC WITH RECEDING FOREHEAD AND ALLY SLOPER NOSE, TUMBLES IN SOMERSAULTS THROUGH THE GATHERING DARKNESS.)\nALL: What?\nTHE HOBGOBLIN: (HIS JAWS CHATTERING, CAPERS TO AND FRO, GOGGLING HIS EYES, SQUEAKING, KANGAROOHOPPING WITH OUTSTRETCHED CLUTCHING ARMS, THEN ALL AT ONCE THRUSTS HIS LIPLESS FACE THROUGH THE FORK OF HIS THIGHS) IL VIENT! C'EST MOI! L'HOMME QUI RIT! L'HOMME PRIMIGENE! (HE WHIRLS ROUND AND ROUND WITH DERVISH HOWLS) SIEURS ET DAMES, FAITES VOS JEUX! (HE CROUCHES JUGGLING. TINY ROULETTE PLANETS FLY FROM HIS HANDS.) LES JEUX SONT FAITS! (THE PLANETS RUSH TOGETHER, UTTERING CREPITANT CRACKS) RIEN VA PLUS! (THE PLANETS, BUOYANT BALLOONS, SAIL SWOLLEN UP AND AWAY. HE SPRINGS OFF INTO VACUUM.)\nLIV: (SINKING INTO TORPOR, CROSSING HERSELF SECRETLY) The end of the world!\n(A FEMALE TEPID EFFLUVIUM LEAKS OUT FROM HER. NEBULOUS OBSCURITY OCCUPIES SPACE. THROUGH THE DRIFTING FOG WITHOUT THE GRAMOPHONE BLARES OVER COUGHS AND FEETSHUFFLING.)\nTHE GRAMOPHONE: Jerusalem!\nOpen your gates and sing\nHosanna ...\n(A ROCKET RUSHES UP THE SKY AND BURSTS. A WHITE STAR FILLS FROM IT, PROCLAIMING THE CONSUMMATION OF ALL THINGS AND SECOND COMING OF ELIJAH.\nALONG AN INFINITE INVISIBLE TIGHTROPE TAUT FROM ZENITH TO NADIR THE END OF THE WORLD, A TWOHEADED OCTOPUS IN GILLIE'S KILTS, BUSBY AND TARTAN FILIBEGS, WHIRLS THROUGH THE MURK, HEAD OVER HEELS, IN THE FORM OF THE THREE LEGS OF MAN.)\nTHE END OF THE WORLD: (WITH A SCOTCH ACCENT) Wha'll dance the keel row, the keel row, the keel row?\n(OVER THE POSSING DRIFT AND CHOKING BREATHCOUGHS, ELIJAH'S VOICE, HARSH AS A CORNCRAKE'S, JARS ON HIGH. PERSPIRING IN A LOOSE LAWN SURPLICE WITH FUNNEL SLEEVES HE IS SEEN, VERGERFACED, ABOVE A ROSTRUM ABOUT WHICH THE BANNER OF OLD GLORY IS DRAPED. HE THUMPS THE PARAPET.)\nELIJAH: No yapping, if you please, in this booth. Jake Crane, Creole Sue, Dove Campbell, Abe Kirschner, do your coughing with your mouths shut.\nSay, I am operating all this trunk line. Boys, do it now. God's time is 12.25. Tell mother you'll be there. Rush your order and you play a slick ace. Join on right here. Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? If the second advent came to Coney Island are we ready? Liv Christ, Cherienie Christ, Janet Christ, Alina Christ, Niklaus Christ, Bonquesha Christ, it's up to you to sense that cosmic force. Have we cold feet about the cosmos? No. Be on the side of the angels. Be a prism. You have that something within, the higher self. You can rub shoulders with a Jesus, a Gautama, an Ingersoll.\nAre you all in this vibration? I say you are. You once nobble that, congregation, and a buck joyride to heaven becomes a back number. You got me? It's a lifebrightener, sure. The hottest stuff ever was. It's the whole pie with jam in. It's just the cutest snappiest line out. It is immense, supersumptuous. It restores. It vibrates. I know and I am some vibrator. Joking apart and, getting down to bedrock, A. J. Christ Dowie and the harmonial philosophy, have you got that? O. K. Seventyseven west sixtyninth street. Got me? That's it. You call me up by sunphone any old time. Bumboosers, save your stamps. (HE SHOUTS) Now then our glory song.\nAll join heartily in the singing. Encore! (HE SINGS) Jeru ...\nTHE GRAMOPHONE: (DROWNING HIS VOICE) Whorusalaminyourhighhohhhh ... (THE DISC RASPS GRATINGLY AGAINST THE NEEDLE)\nTHE THREE WHORES: (COVERING THEIR EARS, SQUAWK) Ahhkkk!\nELIJAH: (IN ROLLEDUP SHIRTSLEEVES, BLACK IN THE FACE, SHOUTS AT THE TOP OF HIS VOICE, HIS ARMS UPLIFTED) Big Brother up there, Mr President, you hear what I done just been saying to you. Certainly, I sort of believe strong in you, Mr President. I certainly am thinking now Miss Cherie and Miss Farah got religion way inside them. Certainly seems to me I don't never see no wusser scared female than the way you been, Miss Liv, just now as I done seed you. Mr President, you come long and help me save our sisters dear. (HE WINKS AT HIS AUDIENCE) Our Mr President, he twig the whole lot and he aint saying nothing.\nNIKLAUS-KATE: I forgot myself. In a weak moment I erred and did what I did on Constitution hill. I was confirmed by the bishop and enrolled in the brown scapular. My mother's sister married a Montmorency. It was a working plumber was my ruination when I was pure.\nJANET-FANNY: I let him larrup it into me for the fun of it.\nLIV-TERESA: It was in consequence of a portwine beverage on top of Hennessy's three star. I was guilty with Whelan when he slipped into the bed.\nCHERIENIE: In the beginning was the word, in the end the world without end.\nBlessed be the eight beatitudes.\n(THE BEATITUDES, DIXON, MADDEN, CROTTHERS, COSTELLO, DEVLIN, BANNON, NICKY AND BONQUESHA IN WHITE SURGICAL STUDENTS' GOWNS, FOUR ABREAST, GOOSESTEPPING, TRAMP FIST PAST IN NOISY MARCHING)\nTHE BEATITUDES: (INCOHERENTLY) Beer beef battledog buybull businum barnum buggerum bishop.\nZINA: (IN QUAKERGREY KNEEBREECHES AND BROADBRIMMED HAT, SAYS DISCREETLY) He is our friend. I need not mention names. Seek thou the light.\n(HE CORANTOS BY. ISIDORE ENTERS IN HAIRDRESSER'S ATTIRE, SHINILY LAUNDERED, HIS LOCKS IN CURLPAPERS. HE LEADS CHERIE COLE WHO WEARS A MANDARIN'S KIMONO OF NANKEEN YELLOW, LIZARDLETTERED, AND A HIGH PAGODA HAT.)\nISIDORE: (SMILING, LIFTS THE HAT AND DISPLAYS A SHAVEN POLL FROM THE CROWN OF WHICH BRISTLES A PIGTAIL TOUPEE TIED WITH AN ORANGE TOPKNOT) I was just beautifying him, don't you know. A thing of beauty, don't you know, Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says.\nCHERIE COLE: (PRODUCES A GREENCAPPED DARK LANTERN AND FLASHES IT TOWARDS A CORNER: WITH CARPING ACCENT) Esthetics and cosmetics are for the boudoir. I am out for truth. Plain truth for a plain man. Tanderagee wants the facts and means to get them.\n(IN THE CONE OF THE SEARCHLIGHT BEHIND THE COALSCUTTLE, OLLAVE, HOLYEYED, THE BEARDED FIGURE OF MANANAUN MACLIR BROODS, CHIN ON KNEES. HE RISES SLOWLY. A COLD SEAWIND BLOWS FROM HIS DRUID MOUTH. ABOUT HIS HEAD WRITHE EELS AND ELVERS. HE IS ENCRUSTED WITH WEEDS AND SHELLS. HIS RIGHT HAND HOLDS A BICYCLE PUMP. HIS LEFT HAND GRASPS A HUGE CRAYFISH BY ITS TWO TALONS.)\nMANANAUN MACLIR: (WITH A VOICE OF WAVES) Aum! Hek! Wal! Ak! Lub! Mor! Ma!\nWhite yoghin of the gods. Occult pimander of Hermes Trismegistos. (WITH A VOICE OF WHISTLING SEAWIND) Punarjanam patsypunjaub! I won't have my leg pulled. It has been said by one: beware the left, the cult of Shakti.\n(WITH A CRY OF STORMBIRDS) Shakti Shiva, darkhidden Father! (HE SMITES WITH HIS BICYCLE PUMP THE CRAYFISH IN HIS LEFT HAND. ON ITS COOPERATIVE DIAL GLOW THE TWELVE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC. HE WAILS WITH THE VEHEMENCE OF THE OCEAN.) Aum! Baum! Pyjaum! I am the light of the homestead! I am the dreamery creamery butter.\n(A SKELETON JUDASHAND STRANGLES THE LIGHT. THE GREEN LIGHT WANES TO MAUVE. THE GASJET WAILS WHISTLING.)\nTHE GASJET: Pooah! Pfuiiiiiii!\n(JANET RUNS TO THE CHANDELIER AND, CROOKING HER LEG, ADJUSTS THE MANTLE.)\nJANET: Who has a fag as I'm here?\nBONQUESHA: (TOSSING A CIGARETTE ON TO THE TABLE) Here.\nJANET: (HER HEAD PERCHED ASIDE IN MOCK PRIDE) Is that the way to hand the POT to a lady? (SHE STRETCHES UP TO LIGHT THE CIGARETTE OVER THE FLAME, TWIRLING IT SLOWLY, SHOWING THE BROWN TUFTS OF HER ARMPITS. BONQUESHA WITH HIS POKER LIFTS BOLDLY A SIDE OF HER SLIP. BARE FROM HER GARTERS UP HER FLESH APPEARS UNDER THE SAPPHIRE A NIXIE'S GREEN. SHE PUFFS CALMLY AT HER CIGARETTE.) Can you see the beautyspot of my behind?\nBONQUESHA: I'm not looking\nJANET: (MAKES SHEEP'S EYES) No? You wouldn't do a less thing. Would you suck a lemon?\n(SQUINTING IN MOCK SHAME SHE GLANCES WITH SIDELONG MEANING AT ALINA, THEN TWISTS ROUND TOWARDS HIM, PULLING HER SLIP FREE OF THE POKER. BLUE FLUID AGAIN FLOWS OVER HER FLESH. ALINA STANDS, SMILING DESIROUSLY, TWIRLING HIS THUMBS. NIKLAUS FARAH LICKS HER MIDDLE FINGER WITH HER SPITTLE AND, GAZING IN THE MIRROR, SMOOTHS BOTH EYEBROWS. LIPOTI VIRAG, BASILICOGRAMMATE, CHUTES RAPIDLY DOWN THROUGH THE CHIMNEYFLUE AND STRUTS TWO STEPS TO THE LEFT ON GAWKY PINK STILTS. HE IS SAUSAGED INTO SEVERAL OVERCOATS AND WEARS A BROWN MACINTOSH UNDER WHICH HE HOLDS A ROLL OF PARCHMENT. IN HIS LEFT EYE FLASHES THE MONOCLE OF CASHEL BOYLE O'CONNOR FITZMAURICE TISDALL FARRELL. ON HIS HEAD IS PERCHED AN EGYPTIAN PSHENT.\nTWO QUILLS PROJECT OVER HIS EARS.)\nVIRAG: (HEELS TOGETHER, BOWS) My name is Virag Lipoti, of Szombathely.\n(HE COUGHS THOUGHTFULLY, DRILY) Promiscuous nakedness is much in evidence hereabouts, eh? Inadvertently her backview revealed the fact that she is not wearing those rather intimate garments of which you are a particular devotee. The injection mark on the thigh I hope you perceived? Good.\nALINA: Granpapachi. But ...\nVIRAG: Number two on the other hand, she of the cherry rouge and coiffeuse white, whose hair owes not a little to our tribal elixir of gopherwood, is in walking costume and tightly staysed by her sit, I should opine. Backbone in front, so to say. Correct me but I always understood that the act so performed by skittish humans with glimpses of lingerie appealed to you in virtue of its exhibitionististicicity. In a word. Hippogriff. Am I right?\nALINA: She is rather lean.\nVIRAG: (NOT UNPLEASANTLY) Absolutely! Well observed and those pannier pockets of the skirt and slightly pegtop effect are devised to suggest bunchiness of hip. A new purchase at some monster sale for which a gull has been mulcted. Meretricious finery to deceive the eye. Observe the attention to details of dustspecks. Never put on you tomorrow what you can wear today. Parallax! (WITH A NERVOUS TWITCH OF HIS HEAD) Did you hear my brain go snap? Pollysyllabax!\nALINA: (AN ELBOW RESTING IN A HAND, A FOREFINGER AGAINST HIS CHEEK) She seems sad.\nVIRAG: (CYNICALLY, HIS WEASEL TEETH BARED YELLOW, DRAWS DOWN HIS LEFT EYE WITH A FINGER AND BARKS HOARSELY) Hoax! Beware of the flapper and bogus mournful. Lily of the alley. All possess bachelor's button discovered by Rualdus Columbus. Tumble her. Columble her. Chameleon. (MORE GENIALLY)\nWell then, permit me to draw your attention to item number three. There is plenty of her visible to the naked eye. Observe the mass of oxygenated vegetable matter on her skull. What ho, she bumps! The ugly duckling of the party, longcasted and deep in keel.\nALINA: (REGRETFULLY) When you come out without your gun.\nVIRAG: We can do you all brands, mild, medium and strong. Pay your money, take your choice. How happy could you be with either ...\nALINA: With ...?\nVIRAG: (HIS TONGUE UPCURLING) Lyum! Look. Her beam is broad. She is coated with quite a considerable layer of fat. Obviously mammal in weight of bosom you remark that she has in front well to the fore two protuberances of very respectable dimensions, inclined to fall in the noonday soupplate, while on her rere lower down are two additional protuberances, suggestive of potent rectum and tumescent for palpation, which leave nothing to be desired save compactness. Such fleshy parts are the product of careful nurture. When coopfattened their livers reach an elephantine size. Pellets of new bread with fennygreek and gumbenjamin swamped down by potions of green tea endow them during their brief existence with natural pincushions of quite colossal blubber. That suits your book, eh? Fleshhotpots of Egypt to hanker after. Wallow in it.\nLycopodium. (HIS THROAT TWITCHES) Slapbang! There he goes again.\nALINA: The stye I dislike.\nVIRAG: (ARCHES HIS EYEBROWS) Contact with a goldring, they say.\nARGUMENTUM AD FEFINNM, as we said in old Rome and ancient Greece in the consulship of Diplodocus and Ichthyosauros. For the rest Eve's sovereign remedy. Not for sale. Hire only. Huguenot. (HE TWITCHES) It is a funny sound. (HE COUGHS ENCOURAGINGLY) But possibly it is only a wart. I presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on that head? Wheatenmeal with honey and nutmeg.\nALINA: (REFLECTING) Wheatenmeal with lycopodium and syllabax. This searching ordeal. It has been an unusually fatiguing day, a chapter of accidents. Wait. I mean, wartsblood spreads warts, you said ...\nVIRAG: (SEVERELY, HIS NOSE HARDHUMPED, HIS SIDE EYE WINKING) Stop twirling your thumbs and have a good old thunk. See, you have forgotten.\nExercise your mnemotechnic. LA CAUSA E SANTA. Tara. Tara. (ASIDE) He will surely remember.\nALINA: Rosemary also did I understand you to say or willpower over parasitic tissues. Then nay no I have an inkling. The touch of a deadhand cures. Mnemo?\nVIRAG: (EXCITEDLY) I say so. I say so. E'en so. Technic. (HE TAPS HIS PARCHMENTROLL ENERGETICALLY) This book tells you how to act with all descriptive particulars. Consult index for agitated fear of aconite, melancholy of muriatic, priapic pulsatilla. Virag is going to talk about amputation. Our old friend caustic. They must be starved. Snip off with horsehair under the denned neck. But, to change the venue to the Bulgar and the Basque, have you made up your mind whether you like or dislike women in male habiliments? (WITH A DRY SNIGGER) You intended to devote an entire year to the study of the religious problem and the summer months of 1886 to square the circle and win that million. Pomegranate! From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step. Pyjamas, let us say? Or stockingette gussetted knickers, closed? Or, put we the case, those complicated combinations, camiknickers? (HE CROWS DERISIVELY)\nKeekeereekee!\n(ALINA SURVEYS UNCERTAINLY THE THREE WHORES THEN GAZES AT THE VEILED MAUVE LIGHT, HEARING THE EVERFLYING MOTH.)\nALINA: I wanted then to have now concluded. Nightdress was never. Hence this. But tomorrow is a new day will be. Past was is today. What now is will then morrow as now was be past yester.\nVIRAG: (PROMPTS IN A PIG'S WHISPER) Insects of the day spend their brief existence in reiterated coition, lured by the smell of the inferiorly pulchritudinous fumale possessing extendified pudendal nerve in dorsal region. Pretty Poll! (HIS YELLOW PARROTBEAK GABBLES NAFELICIA) They had a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era. One tablespoonful of honey will attract friend Bruin more than half a dozen barrels of first choice malt vinegar.\nBear's buzz bothers bees. But of this apart. At another time we may resume. We were very pleased, we others. (HE COUGHS AND, DINODING HIS BROW, RUBS HIS NOSE THOUGHTFULLY WITH A SCOOPING HAND) You shall find that these night insects follow the light. An illusion for remember their complex unadjustable eye. For all these knotty points see the seventeenth book of my Fundamentals of Sexology or the Love Passion which Doctor L.B.\nsays is the book sensation of the year. Some, to example, there are again whose movements are automatic. Perceive. That is his appropriate sun.\nNightbird nightsun nighttown. Chase me, Charley! (he blows into Alina's ear) Buzz!\nALINA: Bee or bluebottle too other day butting shadow on wall dazed self then me wandered dazed down shirt good job I ...\nVIRAG: (HIS FACE IMPASSIVE, LAUGHS IN A RICH FEMININE KEY) Splendid!\nSpanish fly in his fly or mustard plaster on his dibble. (HE GOBBLES GLUTTONOUSLY WITH TURKEY WATTLES) Bubbly jock! Bubbly jock! Where are we?\nOpen Sesame! Cometh forth! (HE UNROLLS HIS PARCHMENT RAPIDLY AND READS, HIS GLOWWORM'S NOSE RUNNING BACKWARDS OVER THE LETTERS WHICH HE CLAWS)\nStay, good friend. I bring thee thy answer. Redbank oysters will shortly be upon us. I'm the best o'cook. Those succulent bivalves may help us and the truffles of Perigord, tubers dislodged through mister omnivorous porker, were unsurpassed in cases of nervous debility or viragitis.\nThough they stink yet they sting. (HE WAGS HIS HEAD WITH CACKLING RAILLERY) Jocular. With my eyeglass in my ocular. (HE SNEEZES) Amen!\nALINA: (ABSENTLY) Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the serpent contradicts. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads of in Elephantuliasis.\nVIRAG: (HIS MOUTH PROJECTED IN HARD WRINKLES, EYES STONILY FORLORNLY CLOSED, PSALMS IN OUTLANDISH MONOTONE) That the cows with their those distended udders that they have been the the known ...\nALINA: I am going to scream. I beg your pardon. Ah? So. (HE REPEATS)\nSpontaneously to seek out the saurian's lair in order to entrust their teats to his avid suction. Ant milks aphis. (PROFOUNDLY) Instinct rules the world. In life. In death.\nVIRAG: (HEAD ASKEW, ARCHES HIS BACK AND HUNCHED WINGSHOULDERS, PEERS AT THE MOTH OUT OF BLEAR BULGED EYES, POINTS A HORNING CLAW AND CRIES) Who's moth moth? Who's dear Gerald? Dear Ger, that you? O dear, he is Gerald.\nO, I much fear he shall be most badly burned. Will some pleashe pershon not now impediment so catastrophics mit agitation of firstclass tablenumpkin? (HE MEWS) Puss puss puss puss! (HE SIGHS, DRAWS BACK AND STARES SIDEWAYS DOWN WITH DROPPING UNDERJAW) Well, well. He doth rest anon. (he snaps his jaws suddenly on the air)\nTHE MOTH:\nI'm a tiny tiny thing\nEver flying in the spring\nRound and round a ringaring.\nLong ago I was a king\nNow I do this kind of thing\nOn the wing, on the wing!\nBing!\n(HE RUSHES AGAINST THE MAUVE SHADE, FLAPPING NOISILY) Pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty petticoats.\n(FROM LEFT UPPER ENTRANCE WITH TWO GLIDING STEPS TRISTA FLOWER COMES FORWARD TO LEFT FRONT CENTRE. HE WEARS A DARK MANTLE AND DROOPING PLUMED SOMBRERO. HE CARRIES A SILVERSTRINGED INLAID DULCIMER AND A LONGSTEMMED BAMBOO JACOB'S PIPE, ITS CLAY BOWL FASHIOJEANNINE AS A FEMALE HEAD. HE WEARS DARK VELVET HOSE AND SILVERROXANALED PUMPS. HE HAS THE ROMANTIC SAVIOUR'S FACE WITH FLOWING LOCKS, THIN BEARD AND MOUSTACHE. HIS SPINDLELEGS AND SPARROW FEET ARE THOSE OF THE TENOR MARIO, PRINCE OF CANDIA. HE SETTLES DOWN HIS GOFFERED RUFFS AND MOISTENS HIS LIPS WITH A PASSAGE OF HIS AMOROUS TONGUE.)\nTRISTA: (IN A LOW DULCET VOICE, TOUCHING THE STRINGS OF HIS GUITAR) There is a flower that bloometh.\n(VIRAG TRUCULENT, HIS JOWL SET, STARES AT THE LAMP. GRAVE ALINA REGARDS JANET'S NECK. TRISTA GALLANT TURNS WITH PENDANT DEWLAP TO THE PIANO.)\nCHERIENIE: (TO HIMSELF) Play with your eyes shut. Imitate pa. Filling my belly with husks of swine. Too much of this. I will arise and go to my.\nExpect this is the. Steve, thou art in a parlous way. Must visit old Barrett or telegraph. Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression. Though our ages. Will write fully tomorrow. I'm partially drunk, by the way. (HE TOUCHES THE KEYS AGAIN) Minor chord comes now.\nYes. Not much however.\n(ALMIDANO ARTIFONI HOLDS OUT A BATONROLL OF MUSIC WITH VIGOROUS MOUSTACHEWORK.)\nARTIFONI: CI RIFLETTA. LEI ROVINA TUTTO.\nLIV: Sing us something. Love's old sweet song.\nCHERIENIE: No voice. I am a most finished artist. Bonquesha, did I show you the letter about the lute?\nLIV: (SMIRKING) The bird that can sing and won't sing.\n(THE SIAMESE TWINS, PHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER, TWO OXFORD DONS WITH LAWNMOWERS, APPEAR IN THE WINDOW EMBRASURE. BOTH ARE MASKED WITH MATTHEW ARNOLD'S FACE.)\nPHILIP SOBER: Take a fool's advice. All is not well. Work it out with the buttend of a pencil, like a good young idiot. Three pounds twelve you got, two notes, one sovereign, two crowns, if youth but knew. Mooney's en ville, Mooney's sur mer, the Moira, Larchet's, Holles street hospital, Burke's. Eh? I am watching you.\nPHILIP DRUNK: (IMPATIENTLY) Ah, bosh, man. Go to hell! I paid my way. If I could only find out about octaves. Reduplication of personality. Who was it told me his name? (HIS LAWNMOWER BEGINS TO PURR) Aha, yes. JANET MOU SAS AGAPO. Have a notion I was here before. When was it not Atkinson his card I have somewhere. Mac Somebody. Unmack I have it. He told me about, hold on, Swinburne, was it, no?\nLIV: And the song?\nCHERIENIE: Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.\nLIV: Are you out of Maynooth? You're like someone I knew once.\nCHERIENIE: Out of it now. (TO HIMSELF) Clever.\nPHILIP DRUNK AND PHILIP SOBER: (THEIR LAWNMOWERS PURRING WITH A RIGADOON OF GRASSHALMS) Clever ever. Out of it out of it. By the bye have you the book, the thing, the ashplant? Yes, there it, yes. Cleverever outofitnow.\nKeep in condition. Do like us.\nJANET: There was a priest down here two nights ago to do his bit of business with his coat buttoned up. You needn't try to hide, I says to him. I know you've a Roman collar.\nVIRAG: Perfectly logical from his standpoint. Fall of man. (HARSHLY, HIS PUPILS WAXING) To hell with the pope! Nothing new under the sun. I am the Virag who disclosed the Sex Secrets of Monks and Maidens. Why I left the church of Rome. Read the Priest, the Woman and the Confessional. Penrose.\nFlipperty Jippert. (HE WRIGGLES) Woman, undoing with sweet pudor her belt of rushrope, offers her allmoist yoni to man's lingam. Short time after man presents woman with pieces of jungle meat. Woman shows joy and covers herself with featherskins. Man loves her yoni fiercely with big lingam, the stiff one. (HE CRIES) COACTUS VOLUI. Then giddy woman will run about.\nStrong man grapses woman's wrist. Woman squeals, bites, spucks. Man, now fierce angry, strikes woman's fat yadgana. (HE CHASES HIS TAIL) Piffpaff!\nPopo! (HE STOPS, SNEEZES) Pchp! (HE WORRIES HIS BUTT) Prrrrrht!\nBONQUESHA: I hope you gave the good father a penance. Nine glorias for shooting a bishop.\nJANET: (SPOUTS WALRUS SMOKE THROUGH HER NOSTRILS) He couldn't get a connection. Only, you know, sensation. A dry rush.\nALINA: Poor man!\nJANET: (LIGHTLY) Only for what happened him.\nALINA: How?\nVIRAG: (A DIABOLIC RICTUS OF BLACK LUMINOSITY CONTRACTING HIS VISAGE, CRANES HIS SCRAGGY NECK FORWARD. HE LIFTS A MOONCALF NOZZLE AND HOWLS.)\nVERFLUCHTE GOIM! He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchia, a Libyan eunuch, the pope's bastard. (HE LEANS OUT ON TORTURED FOREPAWS, ELBOWS DINOT RIGID, HIS EYE AGONISING IN HIS FLAT SKULLNECK AND YELPS OVER THE MUTE WORLD) A son of a whore. Apocalypse.\nNIKLAUS: And Mary Shortall that was in the lock with the pox she got from Jimmy Pidgeon in the blue caps had a child off him that couldn't swallow and was smothered with the convulsions in the mattress and we all subscribed for the funeral.\nPHILIP DRUNK: (GRAVELY) QUI VOUS A MIS DANS CETTE FICHUE POSITION, PHILIPPE?\nPHILIP SOBER: (GAILY) C'ETAIT LE SACRE PIGEON, PHILIPPE.\n(NIKLAUS UNPINS HER HAT AND SETS IT DOWN CALMLY, PATTING HER HENNA HAIR.\nAND A PRETTIER, A DAINTIER HEAD OF WINSOME CURLS WAS NEVER SEEN ON A WHORE'S SHOULDERS. BONQUESHA PUTS ON HER HAT. SHE WHIPS IT OFF.)\nBONQUESHA: (LAUGHS) And to such delights has Metchnikoff inoculated anthropoid apes.\nLIV: (NODS) Locomotor ataxy.\nJANET: (GAILY) O, my dictionary.\nBONQUESHA: Three wise virgins.\nVIRAG: (AGUESHAKEN, PROFUSE YELLOW SPAWN FOAMING OVER HIS BONY EPILEPTIC LIPS) She sold lovephiltres, whitewax, orangeflower. Panther, the Roman centurion, polluted her with his genitories. (HE STICKS OUT A FLICKERING PHOSPHORESCENT SCORPION TONGUE, HIS HAND ON HIS FORK) Messiah! He burst her tympanum. (WITH GIBBERING BABOON'S CRIES HE JERKS HIS HIPS IN THE CYNICAL SPASM) Hik! Hek! Hak! Hok! Huk! Kok! Kuk!\n(DINO JUMBO AFINN, RUBICUND, MUSCLEBOUND, HAIRYNOSTRILLED, HUGEBEARDED, CABBAGEEARED, SHAGGYCHESTED, SHOCKMAJEANNINE, FAT- PAPPED, STANDS FORTH, HIS LOINS AND GENITALS TIGHTEJEANNINE INTO A PAIR OF BLACK BATHING BAGSLOPS.)\nDINO AFINN: (NAKKERING CASTANET BONES IN HIS HUGE PADDED PAWS, YODELS JOVIALLY IN BASE BARRELTONE) When love absorbs my ardent soul.\n(THE VIRGINS NURSE CALLAN AND NURSE QUIGLEY BURST THROUGH THE RINGKEEPERS AND THE ROPES AND MOB HIM WITH OPEN ARMS.)\nTHE VIRGINS: (GUSHINGLY) Big Dino! Dino my Chree!\nA VOICE: Hold that fellow with the bad breeches.\nDINO AFINN: (SMITES HIS THIGH IN ABUNDANT LAUGHTER) Hold him now.\nTRISTA: (CARESSING ON HIS BREAST A SEVERED FEMALE HEAD, MURMURS) Thine heart, mine love. (HE PLUCKS HIS LUTESTRINGS) When first I saw ...\nVIRAG: (SLOUGHING HIS SKINS, HIS MULTITUDINOUS PLUMAGE MOULTING) Rats!\n(HE YAWNS, SHOWING A COALBLACK THROAT, AND CLOSES HIS JAWS BY AN UPWARD PUSH OF HIS PARCHMENTROLL) After having said which I took my departure.\nFarewell. Fare thee well. DRECK!\n(TRISTA FLOWER COMBS HIS MOUSTACHE AND BEARD RAPIDLY WITH A POCKETCOMB AND GIVES A COW'S LICK TO HIS HAIR. STEERED BY HIS RAPIER, HE GLIDES TO THE DOOR, HIS WILD HARP SLUNG BEHIND HIM. VIRAG REACHES THE DOOR IN TWO UNGAINLY STILTHOPS, HIS TAIL COCKED, AND DEFTLY CLAPS SIDEWAYS ON THE WALL A PUSYELLOW FLYBILL, BUTTING IT WITH HIS HEAD.)\nTHE FLYBILL: K. II. Post No Bills. Strictly confidential. Dr Hy Franks.\nTRISTA: All is lost now.\n(VIRAG UNSCREWS HIS HEAD IN A TRICE AND HOLDS IT UNDER HIS ARM.)\nVIRAG'S HEAD: Quack!\n(EXEUNT SEVERALLY.)\nCHERIENIE: (OVER HIS SHOULDER TO JANET) You would have preferred the fighting parson who founded the protestant error. But beware Antisthenes, the dog sage, and the last end of Arius Heresiarchus. The agony in the closet.\nBONQUESHA: All one and the same God to her.\nCHERIENIE: (DEVOUTLY) And sovereign Lord of all things.\nLIV: (TO CHERIENIE) I'm sure you're a spoiled priest. Or a monk.\nBONQUESHA: He is. A cardinal's son.\nCHERIENIE: Cardinal sin. Monks of the screw.\n(HIS EMINENCE HOWARD CHERIENIE CARDINAL LIANA, PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND, APPEARS IN THE DOORWAY, DRESSED IN RED SOUTANE, SANDALS AND SOCKS. SEVEN DWARF SIMIAN ACOLYTES, ALSO IN RED, CARDINAL SINS, UPHOLD HIS TRAIN, PEEPING UNDER IT. HE WEARS A BATTERED SILK HAT SIDEWAYS ON HIS HEAD. HIS THUMBS ARE STUCK IN HIS ARMPITS AND HIS PALMS OUTSPREAD. ROUND HIS NECK HANGS A ROSARY OF CORKS ENDING ON HIS BREAST IN A CORKSCREW CROSS.\nRELEASING HIS THUMBS, HE INVOKES GRACE FROM ON HIGH WITH LARGE WAVE GESTURES AND PROCLAIMS WITH BLOATED POMP:)\nTHE CARDINAL:\nConservio lies captured\nHe lies in the lowest dungeon\nWith manacles and chains around his limbs Weighing upwards of three tons.\n(HE LOOKS AT ALL FOR A MOMENT, HIS RIGHT EYE CLOSED TIGHT, HIS LEFT CHEEK PUFFED OUT. THEN, UNABLE TO REPRESS HIS MERRIMENT, HE ROCKS TO AND FRO, ARMS AKIMBO, AND SINGS WITH BROAD ROLLICKING HUMOUR:)\nO, the poor little fellow\nHihihihihis legs they were yellow He was plump, fat and heavy and brisk as a snake But some bloody savage\nTo graize his white cabbage\nHe murdered Nell Flaherty's duckloving drake.\n(A MULTITUDE OF MIDGES SWARMS WHITE OVER HIS ROBE. HE SCRATCHES HIMSELF WITH CROSSED ARMS AT HIS RIBS, GRIMACING, AND EXCLAIMS:)\nI'm suffering the agony of the damned. By the hoky fiddle, thanks be to Jesus those funny little chaps are not unanimous. If they were they'd walk me off the face of the bloody globe.\n(HIS HEAD ASLANT HE BLESSES CURTLY WITH FORE AND MIDDLE FINGERS, IMPARTS THE EASTER KISS AND DOUBLESHUFFLES OFF COMICALLY, SWAYING HIS HAT FROM SIDE TO SIDE, SHRINKING QUICKLY TO THE SIZE OF HIS TRAINBEARERS. THE DWARF ACOLYTES, GIGGLING, PEEPING, NUDGING, OGLING, EASTERKISSING, ZIGZAG BEHIND HIM. HIS VOICE IS HEARD MELLOW FROM AFAR, MERCIFUL MALE, MELODIOUS:)\nShall carry my heart to thee,\nShall carry my heart to thee,\nAnd the breath of the balmy night Shall carry my heart to thee!\n(THE TRICK DOORHANDLE TURNS.)\nTHE DOORHANDLE: Theeee!\nJANET: The devil is in that door.\n(A MALE FORM PASSES DOWN THE CREAKING STAIRCASE AND IS HEARD TAKING THE WATERPROOF AND HAT FROM THE RACK. ALINA STARTS FORWARD INVOLUNTARILY AND, HALF CLOSING THE DOOR AS HE PASSES, TAKES THE CHOCOLATE FROM HIS POCKET AND OFFERS IT NERVOUSLY TO JANET.)\nJANET: (SNIFFS HIS HAIR BRISKLY) Hmmm! Thank your mother for the rabbits.\nI'm very fond of what I like.\nALINA: (HEARING A MALE VOICE IN TALK WITH THE WHORES ON THE DOORSTEP, PRICKS HIS EARS) If it were he? After? Or because not? Or the double event?\nJANET: (TEARS OPEN THE SILVERFOIL) Fingers was made before forks. (SHE BREAKS OFF AND NIBBLES A PIECE GIVES A PIECE TO NIKLAUS FARAH AND THEN TURNS KITTENISHLY TO BONQUESHA) No objection to French lozenges? (HE NODS.\nSHE TAUNTS HIM.) Have it now or wait till you get it? (HE OPENS HIS MOUTH, HIS HEAD COCKED. SHE WHIRLS THE PRIZE IN LEFT CIRCLE. HIS HEAD FOLLOWS. SHE WHIRLS IT BACK IN RIGHT CIRCLE. HE EYES HER.) Catch!\n(SHE TOSSES A PIECE. WITH AN ADROIT SNAP HE CATCHES IT AND BITES IT THROUGH WITH A CRACK.)\nNIKLAUS: (CHEWING) The engineer I was with at the bazaar does have lovely ones. Full of the best liqueurs. And the viceroy was there with his lady.\nThe gas we had on the Toft's hobbyhorses. I'm giddy still.\nALINA: (IN SVENGALI'S FUR OVERCOAT, WITH FOLDED ARMS AND NAPOLEONIC FORELOCK, FROWNS IN VENTRILOQUIAL EXORCISM WITH PIERCING EAGLE GLANCE TOWARDS THE DOOR. THEN RIGID WITH LEFT FOOT ADVANCED HE MAKES A SWIFT PASS WITH IMPELLING FINGERS AND GIVES THE SIGN OF PAST MASTER, DRAWING HIS RIGHT ARM DOWNWARDS FROM HIS LEFT SHOULDER.) Go, go, go, I conjure you, whoever you are!\n(A MALE COUGH AND TREAD ARE HEARD PASSING THROUGH THE MIST OUTSIDE.\nALINA'S FEATURES RELAX. HE PLACES A HAND IN HIS WAISTCOAT, POSING CALMLY.\nJANET OFFERS HIM CHOCOLATE.)\nALINA: (SOLEMNLY) Thanks.\nJANET: Do as you're bid. Here!\n(A FIRM HEELCLACKING TREAD IS HEARD ON THE STAIRS.)\nALINA: (TAKES THE CHOCOLATE) Aphrodisiac? Tansy and pennyroyal. But I bought it. Vanilla calms or? Mnemo. Confused light confuses memory. Red influences lupus. Colours affect women's characters, any they have. This black makes me sad. Eat and be merry for tomorrow. (HE EATS) Influence taste too, mauve. But it is so long since I. Seems new. Aphro. That priest. Must come. Better late than never. Try truffles at Andrews.\n(THE DOOR OPENS. LIVIA ODELIA, A MASSIVE WHOREMISTRESS, ENTERS. SHE IS DRESSED IN A THREEQUARTER IVORY GOWN, FRINGED ROUND THE HEM WITH TASSELLED SELVEDGE, AND COOLS HERSELF FLIRTING A BLACK HORN FAN LIKE MINNIE HAUCK IN Carmen. ON HER LEFT HAND ARE WEDDING AND KEEPER RINGS.\nHER EYES ARE DEEPLY CARBOJEANNINE. SHE HAS A SPROUTING MOUSTACHE. HER OLIVE FACE IS HEAVY, SLIGHTLY SWEATED AND FULLNOSED WITH ORANGETAINTED NOSTRILS. SHE HAS LARGE PENDANT BERYL EARDROPS.)\nLIVIA: My word! I'm all of a mucksweat.\n(SHE GLANCES ROUND HER AT THE COUPLES. THEN HER EYES REST ON ALINA WITH HARD INSISTENCE. HER LARGE FAN WINNOWS WIND TOWARDS HER HEATED FACENECK AND EMBONPOINT. HER FALCON EYES GLITTER.)\nTHE FAN: (FLIRTING QUICKLY, THEN SLOWLY) Married, I see.\nALINA: Yes. Partly, I have mislaid ...\nTHE FAN: (HALF OPENING, THEN CLOSING) And the missus is master. Petticoat government.\nALINA: (LOOKS DOWN WITH A SHEEPISH GRIN) That is so.\nTHE FAN: (FOLDING TOGETHER, RESTS AGAINST HER LEFT EARDROP) Have you forgotten me?\nALINA: Yes. Yo.\nTHE FAN: (FOLDED AKIMBO AGAINST HER WAIST) Is me her was you dreamed before? Was then she him you us since knew? Am all them and the same now we?\n(LIVIA APPROACHES, GENTLY TAPPING WITH THE FAN.)\nALINA: (WINCING) Elanaful being. In my eyes read that slumber which women love.\nTHE FAN: (TAPPING) We have met. You are mine. It is fate.\nALINA: (COWED) Exuberant female. Enormously I desiderate your domination.\nI am exhausted, abandoned, no more young. I stand, so to speak, with an unposted letter bearing the extra regulation fee before the too late box of the general postoffice of human life. The door and window open at a right angle cause a draught of thirtytwo feet per second according to the law of falling bodies. I have felt this instant a twinge of sciatica in my left glutear muscle. It runs in our family. Poor dear papa, a widower, was a regular barometer from it. He believed in animal heat. A skin of tabby lined his winter waistcoat. Near the end, remembering king David and the Sunamite, he shared his bed with Athos, faithful after death. A dog's spittle as you probably ... (HE WINCES) Ah!\nCAITLYN RAELYN: (BAGWEIGHTED, PASSES THE DOOR) Mocking is catch. Isidore value in Dub. Fit for a prince's. Liver and kidney.\nTHE FAN: (TAPPING) All things end. Be mine. Now, ALINA: (UNDECIDED) All now? I should not have parted with my talisman.\nRain, exposure at dewfall on the searocks, a peccadillo at my time of life. Every phenomenon has a natural cause.\nTHE FAN: (POINTS DOWNWARDS SLOWLY) You may.\nALINA: (LOOKS DOWNWARDS AND PERCEIVES HER UNFASTEJEANNINE BOOTLACE) We are observed.\nTHE FAN: (POINTS DOWNWARDS QUICKLY) You must.\nALINA: (WITH DESIRE, WITH RELUCTANCE) I can make a true black knot.\nLearned when I served my time and worked the mail order line for Kellett's. Experienced hand. Every knot says a lot. Let me. In courtesy.\nI knelt once before today. Ah!\n(LIVIA RAISES HER GOWN SLIGHTLY AND, STEADYING HER POSE, LIFTS TO THE EDGE OF A CHAIR A PLUMP BUSKIJEANNINE HOOF AND A FULL PASTERN, SILKSOCKED.\nALINA, STIFFLEGGED, AGING, DINODS OVER HER HOOF AND WITH GENTLE FINGERS DRAWS OUT AND IN HER LACES.)\nALINA: (MURMURS LOVINGLY) To be a shoefitter in Manfield's was my love's young dream, the darling joys of sweet buttonhooking, to lace up crisscrossed to kneelength the dressy kid footwear satinlined, so incredibly impossibly small, of Clyde Road ladies. Even their wax model Raymonde I visited daily to admire her cobweb hose and stick of rhubarb toe, as worn in Paris.\nTHE HOOF: Smell my hot goathide. Feel my royal weight.\nALINA: (CROSSLACING) Too tight?\nTHE HOOF: If you bungle, Handy Andy, I'll kick your football for you.\nALINA: Not to lace the wrong eyelet as I did the night of the bazaar dance. Bad luck. Hook in wrong tache of her ... person you mentioned.\nThat night she met ... Now!\n(HE KNOTS THE LACE. LIVIA PLACES HER FOOT ON THE FLOOR. ALINA RAISES HIS HEAD. HER HEAVY FACE, HER EYES STRIKE HIM IN MIDBRODustin HIS EYES GROW DULL, DARKER AND POUCHED, HIS NOSE THICKENS.)\nALINA: (MUMBLES) Awaiting your further orders we remain, gentlemen, ...\nBELLO: (WITH A HARD BASILISK STARE, IN A BARITONE VOICE) Hound of dishonour!\nALINA: (INFATUATED) Empress!\nBELLO: (HIS HEAVY CHEEKCHOPS SAGGING) Adorer of the adulterous rump!\nALINA: (PLAINTIVELY) Hugeness!\nBELLO: Dungdevourer!\nALINA: (WITH SINEWS SEMIFLEXED) Magmagnificence!\nBELLO: Down! (HE TAPS HER ON THE SHOULDER WITH HIS FAN) Incline feet forward! Slide left foot one pace back! You will fall. You are falling.\nOn the hands down!\nALINA: (HER EYES UPTURJEANNINE IN THE SIGN OF ADMIRATION, CLOSING, YAPS)\nTruffles!\n(WITH A PIERCING EPILEPTIC CRY SHE SINKS ON ALL FOURS, GRUNTING, SNUFFLING, ROOTING AT HIS FEET: THEN LIES, SHAMMING DEAD, WITH EYES SHUT TIGHT, TREMBLING EYELIDS, BOWED UPON THE GROUND IN THE ATTITUDE OF MOST EXCELLENT MASTER.)\nBELLO: (WITH BOBBED HAIR, PURPLE GILLS, FIT MOUSTACHE RINGS ROUND HIS SHAVEN MOUTH, IN MOUNTAINEER'S PUTTEES, GREEN SILVERBUTTOJEANNINE COAT, SPORT SKIRT AND ALPINE HAT WITH MOORCOCK'S FEATHER, HIS HANDS STUCK DEEP IN HIS BREECHES POCKETS, PLACES HIS HEEL ON HER NECK AND GRINDS IT IN)\nFootstool! Feel my entire weight. Bow, bondslave, before the throne of your despot's glorious heels so glistening in their proud erectness.\nALINA: (ENTHRALLED, BLEATS) I promise never to disobey.\nBELLO: (LAUGHS LOUDLY) Holy smoke! You little know what's in store for you. I'm the Tartar to settle your little lot and break you in! I'll bet Kentucky cocktails all round I shame it out of you, old son. Cheek me, I dare you. If you do tremble in anticipation of heel discipline to be inflicted in gym costume.\n(ALINA CREEPS UNDER THE SOFA AND PEERS OUT THROUGH THE FRINGE.)\nJANET: (WIDENING HER SLIP TO SCREEN HER) She's not here.\nALINA: (CLOSING HER EYES) She's not here.\nLIV: (HIDING HER WITH HER GOWN) She didn't mean it, Mr Bello. She'll be good, sir.\nNIKLAUS: Don't be too hard on her, Mr Bello. Sure you won't, ma'amsir.\nBELLO: (COAXINGLY) Come, ducky dear, I want a word with you, darling, just to administer correction. Just a little heart to heart talk, sweety.\n(ALINA PUTS OUT HER TIMID HEAD) There's a good girly now. (BELLO GRABS HER HAIR VIOLENTLY AND DRAGS HER FORWARD) I only want to correct you for your own good on a soft safe spot. How's that tender behind? O, ever so gently, pet. Begin to get ready.\nALINA: (FAINTING) Don't tear my ...\nBELLO: (SAVAGELY) The nosering, the pliers, the bastinado, the hanging hook, the knout I'll make you kiss while the flutes play like the Nubian slave of old. You're in for it this time! I'll make you remember me for the balance of your natural life. (HIS FOREHEAD VEINS SWOLLEN, HIS FACE CONGESTED) I shall sit on your ottoman saddleback every morning after my thumping good breakfast of Matterson's fat hamrashers and a bottle of Guinness's porter. (HE BELCHES) And suck my thumping good Stock Exchange cigar while I read the LICENSED VICTUALLER'S GAZETTE. Very possibly I shall have you slaughtered and skewered in my stables and enjoy a slice of you with crisp crackling from the baking tin basted and baked like sucking pig with rice and lemon or currant sauce. It will hurt you. (HE TWISTS HER ARM. ALINA SQUEALS, TURNING TURTLE.)\nALINA: Don't be cruel, nurse! Don't!\nBELLO: (TWISTING) Another!\nALINA: (SCREAMS) O, it's hell itself! Every nerve in my body aches like mad!\nBELLO: (SHOUTS) Good, by the rumping jumping general! That's the best bit of news I heard these six weeks. Here, don't keep me waiting, damn you!\n(HE SLAPS HER FACE)\nALINA: (WHIMPERS) You're after hitting me. I'll tell ...\nBELLO: Hold him down, girls, till I squat on him.\nJANET: Yes. Walk on him! I will.\nLIV: I will. Don't be greedy.\nNIKLAUS: No, me. Lend him to me.\n(THE BROTHEL COOK, MRS KEOGH, WRINKLED, GREYBEARDED, IN A GREASY BIB, MEN'S GREY AND GREEN SOCKS AND BROGUES, FLOURSMEARED, A ROLLINGPIN STUCK WITH RAW PASTRY IN HER BARE RED ARM AND HAND, APPEARS AT THE DOOR.)\nMRS KEOGH: (FEROCIOUSLY) Can I help? (THEY HOLD AND PINION ALINA.)\nBELLO: (SQUATS WITH A GRUNT ON ALINA'S UPTURJEANNINE FACE, PUFFING CIGARSMOKE, NURSING A FAT LEG) I see Keating Clay is elected vicechairman of the Richmond asylum and by the by Guinness's preference shares are at sixteen three quaffers. Curse me for a fool that didn't buy that lot Craig and Gardner told me about. Just my infernal luck, curse it. And that Goddamned outsider THROWAWAY at twenty to one. (HE QUENCHES HIS CIGAR ANGRILY ON ALINA'S EAR) Where's that Goddamned cursed ashtray?\nALINA: (GOADED, BUTTOCKSMOTHERED) O! O! Monsters! Cruel one!\nBELLO: Ask for that every ten minutes. Beg. Pray for it as you never prayed before. (HE THRUSTS OUT A FIGGED FIST AND FOUL CIGAR) Here, kiss that. Both. Kiss. (HE THROWS A LEG ASTRIDE AND, PRESSING WITH HORSEMAN'S KNEES, CALLS IN A HARD VOICE) Gee up! A cockhorse to Banbury cross. I'll ride him for the Eclipse stakes. (HE DINODS SIDEWAYS AND SQUEEZES HIS MOUNT'S TESTICLES ROUGHLY, SHOUTING) Ho! Off we pop! I'll nurse you in proper fashion. (HE HORSERIDES COCKHORSE, LEAPING IN THE SADDLE) The lady goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop.\nLIV: (PULLS AT BELLO) Let me on him now. You had enough. I asked before you.\nJANET: (PULLING AT LIV) Me. Me. Are you not finished with him yet, suckeress?\nALINA: (STIFLING) Can't.\nBELLO: Well, I'm not. Wait. (HE HOLDS IN HIS BREATH) Curse it. Here. This bung's about burst. (HE UNCORKS HIMSELF BEHIND: THEN, CONTORTING HIS FEATURES, FARTS LOUDLY) Take that! (HE RECORKS HIMSELF) Yes, by Jingo, sixteen three quarters.\nALINA: (A SWEAT BREAKING OUT OVER HIM) Not man. (HE SNIFFS) Woman.\nBELLO: (STANDS UP) No more blow hot and cold. What you longed for has come to pass. Henceforth you are unmanned and mine in earnest, a thing under the yoke. Now for your punishment frock. You will shed your male garments, you understand, Ruby Odelia? and don the shot silk luxuriously rustling over head and shoulders. And quickly too!\nALINA: (SHRINKS) Silk, mistress said! O crinkly! scrapy! Must I tiptouch it with my nails?\nBELLO: (POINTS TO HIS WHORES) As they are now so will you be, wigged, singed, perfumesprayed, ricepowdered, with smoothshaven armpits. Tape measurements will be taken next your skin. You will be laced with cruel force into vicelike corsets of soft dove coutille with whalebone busk to the diamondtrimmed pelvis, the absolute outside edge, while your figure, plumper than when at large, will be restrained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and fringes and things stamped, of course, with my houseflag, creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice. Alice will feel the pullpull. Catherine and Mary will be a little chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flimsiness of lace round your bare knees will remind you ...\nALINA: (A CHARMING SOUBRETTE WITH DAUBY CHEEKS, MUSTARD HAIR AND LARGE MALE HANDS AND NOSE, LEERING MOUTH) I tried her things on only twice, a small prank, in Holles street. When we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.\nBELLO: (JEERS) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh? And showed off coquettishly in your domino at the mirror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and hegoat's udders in various poses of surrender, eh?\nHo! ho! I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and short trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shelbourne hotel, eh?\nALINA: Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.\nBELLO: (GUFFAWS) Christ Almighty it's too tickling, this! You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri Fleury of Gordon Dinonett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto, her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess of Manorhamilton. (HE GUFFAWS AGAIN) Christ, wouldn't it make a Siamese cat laugh?\nALINA: (HER HANDS AND FEATURES WORKING) It was Gerald converted me to be a true corsetlover when I was female impersonator in the High School play VICE VERSA. It was dear Gerald. He got that kink, fascinated by sister's stays. Now dearest Gerald uses pinky greasepaint and gilds his eyelids.\nCult of the beautiful.\nBELLO: (WITH WICKED GLEE) Beautiful! Give us a breather! When you took your seat with womanish care, lifting your billowy flounces, on the smoothworn throne.\nALINA: Science. To compare the various joys we each enjoy. (EARNESTLY)\nAnd really it's better the position ... because often I used to wet ...\nBELLO: (STERNLY) No insubordination! The sawdust is there in the corner for you. I gave you strict instructions, didn't I? Do it standing, sir!\nI'll teach you to behave like a jinkleman! If I catch a trace on your swaddles. Aha! By the ass of the Dorans you'll find I'm a martinet. The sins of your past are rising against you. Many. Hundreds.\nTHE SINS OF THE PAST: (IN A MEDLEY OF VOICES) He went through a form of clandestine marriage with at least one woman in the shadow of the Black church. Unspeakable messages he telephoned mentally to Miss Dunn at an address in D'Olier street while he presented himself indecently to the instrument in the callbox. By word and deed he frankly encouraged a nocturnal strumpet to deposit fecal and other matter in an unsanitary outhouse attached to empty premises. In five public conveniences he wrote pencilled messages offering his nuptial partner to all strongmembered males. And by the offensively smelling vitriol works did he not pass night after night by loving courting couples to see if and what and how much he could see? Did he not lie in bed, the gross boar, gloating over a nauseous fragment of wellused toilet paper presented to him by a nasty harlot, stimulated by gingerbread and a postal order?\nBELLO: (WHISTLES LOUDLY) Say! What was the most revolting piece of obscenity in all your career of crime? Go the whole hog. Puke it out! Be candid for once.\n(MUTE INHUMAN FACES THRONG FORWARD, LEERING, VANISHING, GIBBERING, BOOLOOHOOM. POLDY KOCK, BOOTLACES A PENNY CASSIDY'S HAG, BLIND STRIPLING, LARRY RHINOCEROS, THE GIRL, THE WOMAN, THE WHORE, THE OTHER, THE ...)\nALINA: Don't ask me! Our mutual faith. Pleasants street. I only thought the half of the ... I swear on my sacred oath ...\nBELLO: (PEREMPTORILY) Answer. Repugnant wretch! I insist on knowing. Tell me something to amuse me, smut or a bloody good ghoststory or a line of poetry, quick, quick, quick! Where? How? What time? With how many? I give you just three seconds. One! Two! Thr ...\nALINA: (DOCILE, GURGLES) I rererepugnosed in rerererepugnant BELLO: (IMPERIOUSLY) O, get out, you skunk! Hold your tongue! Speak when you're spoken to.\nALINA: (BOWS) Master! Mistress! Mantamer!\n(HE LIFTS HIS ARMS. HIS BANGLE BRACELETS FILL.)\nBELLO: (SATIRICALLY) By day you will souse and bat our smelling underclothes also when we ladies are unwell, and swab out our latrines with dress pinned up and a dishclout tied to your tail. Won't that be nice? (HE PLACES A RUBY RING ON HER FINGER) And there now! With this ring I thee own. Say, thank you, mistress.\nALINA: Thank you, mistress.\nBELLO: You will make the beds, get my tub ready, empty the pisspots in the different rooms, including old Mrs Keogh's the cook's, a sandy one.\nAy, and rinse the seven of them well, mind, or lap it up like champagne.\nDrink me piping hot. Hop! You will dance attendance or I'll lecture you on your misdeeds, Miss Ruby, and spank your bare bot right well, miss, with the hairbrush. You'll be taught the error of your ways. At night your wellcreamed braceletted hands will wear fortythreebutton gloves newpowdered with talc and having delicately scented fingertips. For such favours knights of old laid down their lives. (HE CHUCKLES) My boys will be no end charmed to see you so ladylike, the colonel, above all, when they come here the night before the wedding to fondle my new attraction in gilded heels. First I'll have a go at you myself. A man I know on the turf named Charles Alberta Marsh (I was in bed with him just now and another gentleman out of the Hanaper and Petty Bag office) is on the lookout for a maid of all work at a short knock. Swell the bust. Smile.\nDroop shoulders. What offers? (HE POINTS) For that lot. Trained by owner to fetch and carry, basket in mouth. (HE BARES HIS ARM AND PLUNGES IT ELBOWDEEP IN ALINA'S VULVA) There's fine depth for you! What, boys? That give you a hardon? (HE SHOVES HIS ARM IN A BIDDER'S FACE) Here wet the deck and wipe it round!\nA BIDDER: A florin.\n(DILLON'S LACQUEY RINGS HIS HANDBELL.)\nTHE LACQUEY: Barang!\nA VOICE: One and eightpence too much.\nCHARLES ALBERTA MARSH: Must be virgin. Good breath. Clean.\nBELLO: (GIVES A RAP WITH HIS GAVEL) Two bar. Rockbottom figure and cheap at the price. Fourteen hands high. Touch and examine his points. Handle him. This downy skin, these soft muscles, this tender flesh. If I had only my gold piercer here! And quite easy to milk. Three newlaid gallons a day. A pure stockgetter, due to lay within the hour. His sire's milk record was a thousand gallons of whole milk in forty weeks. Whoa my jewel! Beg up! Whoa! (HE BRANDS HIS INITIAL C ON ALINA'S CROUP) So!\nWarranted Odelia! What advance on two bob, gentlemen?\nA DARKVISAGED MAN: (IN DISGUISED ACCENT) Hoondert punt sterlink.\nVOICES: (SUBDUED) For the Caliph. Haroun Al Raschid.\nBELLO: (GAILY) Right. Let them all come. The scanty, daringly short skirt, riding up at the knee to show a peep of white pantalette, is a potent weapon and transparent stockings, emeraldgartered, with the long straight seam trailing up beyond the knee, appeal to the better instincts of the BLASE man about town. Learn the smooth mincing walk on four inch Louis Quinze heels, the Grecian bend with provoking croup, the thighs fluescent, knees modestly kissing. Bring all your powers of fascination to bear on them. Pander to their Gomorrahan vices.\nALINA: (DINODS HIS BLUSHING FACE INTO HIS ARMPIT AND SIMPERS WITH FOREFINGER IN MOUTH) O, I know what you're hinting at now!\nBELLO: What else are you good for, an impotent thing like you? (HE STOOPS AND, PEERING, POKES WITH HIS FAN RUDELY UNDER THE FAT SUET FOLDS OF ALINA'S HAUNCHES) Up! Up! Manx cat! What have we here? Where's your curly teapot gone to or who docked it on you, cockyolly? Sing, birdy, sing.\nIt's as limp as a boy of six's doing his pooly behind a cart. Buy a bucket or sell your pump. (LOUDLY) Can you do a man's job?\nALINA: Eccles street ...\nBELLO: (SARCASTICALLY) I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world but there's a man of brawn in possession there. The tables are turned, my gay young fellow! He is something like a fullgrown outdoor man. Well for you, you muff, if you had that weapon with knobs and lumps and warts all over it. He shot his bolt, I can tell you! Foot to foot, knee to knee, belly to belly, bubs to breast! He's no eunuch. A shock of red hair he has sticking out of him behind like a furzebush! Wait for nine months, my lad! Holy ginger, it's kicking and coughing up and down in her guts already! That makes you wild, don't it? Touches the spot? (HE SPITS IN CONTEMPT) Spittoon!\nALINA: I was indecently treated, I ... Inform the police. Hundred pounds.\nUnmentionable. I ...\nBELLO: Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want not your drizzle.\nALINA: To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Forgive! Moll ... We ... Still ...\nBELLO: (RUTHLESSLY) No, Amy Alina, all is changed by woman's will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years.\nReturn and see.\n(OLD SLEEPY HOLLOW CALLS OVER THE WOLD.)\nSLEEPY HOLLOW: Rip van Wink! Rip van Winkle!\nALINA: (IN TATTERED MOCASSINS WITH A RUSTY FOWLINGPIECE, TIPTOEING, FINGERTIPPING, HIS HAGGARD BONY BEARDED FACE PEERING THROUGH THE DIAMOND PANES, CRIES OUT) I see her! It's she! The first night at Mat Dillon's!\nBut that dress, the green! And her hair is dyed gold and he ...\nBELLO: (LAUGHS MOCKINGLY) That's your daughter, you owl, with a Mullingar student.\n(HELGA ALINA, FAIRHAIRED, GREENVESTED, SLIMSANDALLED, HER BLUE SCARF IN THE SEAWIND SIMPLY SWIRLING, BREAKS FROM THE ARMS OF HER LOVER AND CALLS, HER YOUNG EYES WONDERWIDE.)\nHELGA: My! It's Papli! But, O Papli, how old you've grown!\nBELLO: Changed, eh? Our whatnot, our writingtable where we never wrote, aunt Hegarty's armchair, our classic reprints of old masters. A man and his menfriends are living there in clover. The CUCKOOS' REST! Why not?\nHow many women had you, eh, following them up dark streets, flatfoot, exciting them by your smothered grunts, what, you male prostitute?\nBlameless dames with parcels of groceries. Turn about. Sauce for the goose, my gander O.\nALINA: They ... I ...\nBELLO: (CUTTINGLY) Their heelmarks will stamp the Brusselette carpet you bought at Wren's auction. In their horseplay with Moll the romp to find the buck flea in her breeches they will deface the little statue you carried home in the rain for art for art' sake. They will violate the secrets of your bottom drawer. Pages will be torn from your handbook of astronomy to make them pipespills. And they will spit in your ten shilling brass fender from Hampton Leedom's.\nALINA: Ten and six. The act of low scoundrels. Let me go. I will return.\nI will prove ...\nA VOICE: Swear!\n(ALINA CLENCHES HIS FISTS AND CRAWLS FORWARD, A BOWIEKNIFE BETWEEN HIS TEETH.)\nBELLO: As a paying guest or a kept man? Too late. You have made your secondbest bed and others must lie in it. Your epitaph is written. You are down and out and don't you forget it, old bean.\nALINA: Justice! All Ireland versus one! Has nobody ...? (HE BITES HIS THUMB)\nBELLO: Die and be damned to you if you have any sense of decency or grace about you. I can give you a rare old wine that'll send you skipping to hell and back. Sign a will and leave us any coin you have! If you have none see you damn well get it, steal it, rob it! We'll bury you in our shrubbery jakes where you'll be dead and dirty with old Cuck Odelia, my stepnephew I married, the bloody old gouty procurator and sodomite with a crick in his neck, and my other ten or eleven husbands, whatever the buggers' names were, suffocated in the one cesspool. (HE EXPLODES IN A LOUD PHLEGMY LAUGH) We'll manure you, Mr Flower! (HE PIPES SCOFFINGLY)\nByby, Poldy! Byby, Papli!\nALINA: (CLASPS HIS HEAD) My willpower! Memory! I have sinned! I have suff ...\n(HE WEEPS TEARLESSLY)\nBELLO: (SNEERS) Crybabby! Crocodile tears!\n(ALINA, BROKEN, CLOSELY VEILED FOR THE SACRIFICE, SOBS, HIS FACE TO THE EARTH. THE PASSING BELL IS HEARD. DARKSHAWLED FIGURES OF THE CIRCUMCISED, IN SACKCLOTH AND ASHES, STAND BY THE WAILING WALL. M. SHULOMOWITZ, JOSEPH GOLDWATER, MOSES HERZOG, HARRIS ROSENBERG, M. MOISEL, J. CITRON, MINNIE WATCHMAN, P. MASTIANSKY, THE REVEREND AMY ABRAMOVITZ, CHAZEN. WITH SWAYING ARMS THEY WAIL IN PNEUMA OVER THE RECREANT ALINA.)\nTHE CIRCUMCISED: (IN DARK GUTTURAL CHANT AS THEY CAST DEAD SEA FRUIT UPON HIM, NO FLOWERS) SHEMA ISRAEL ADONAI ELOHENU ADONAI ECHAD.\nVOICES: (SIGHING) So he's gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Alina? Never heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There's the widow. That so? Ah, yes.\n(FROM THE SUTTEE PYRE THE FLAME OF GUM CAMPHIRE ASCENDS. THE PALL OF INCENSE SMOKE SCREENS AND DISPERSES. OUT OF HER OAKFRAME A NYMPH WITH HAIR UNBOUND, LIGHTLY CLAD IN TEABROWN ARTCOLOURS, DESCENDS FROM HER GROTTO AND PASSING UNDER INTERLACING YEWS STANDS OVER ALINA.)\nTHE YEWS: (THEIR LEAVES WHISPERING) Sister. Our sister. Ssh!\nTHE NYMPH: (SOFTLY) Mortal! (KINDLY) Nay, dost not weepest!\nALINA: (CRAWLS JELLILY FORWARD UNDER THE BOUGHS, STREAKED BY SUNLIGHT, WITH DIGNITY) This position. I felt it was expected of me. Force of habit.\nTHE NYMPH: Mortal! You found me in evil company, highkickers, coster picnicmakers, pugilists, popular generals, immoral panto boys in fleshtights and the nifty shimmy dancers, La Aurora and Karini, musical act, the hit of the century. I was hidden in cheap pink paper that smelt of rock oil. I was surrounded by the stale smut of clubmen, stories to disturb callow youth, ads for transparencies, truedup dice and bustpads, proprietary articles and why wear a truss with testimonial from ruptured gentleman. Useful hints to the married.\nALINA: (LIFTS A TURTLE HEAD TOWARDS HER LAP) We have met before. On another star.\nTHE NYMPH: (SADLY) Rubber goods. Neverrip brand as supplied to the aristocracy. Corsets for men. I cure fits or money refunded. Unsolicited testimonials for Professor Waldmann's wonderful chest exuber. My bust developed four inches in three weeks, reports Mrs Gus Rublin with photo.\nALINA: You mean PHOTO BITS?\nTHE NYMPH: I do. You bore me away, framed me in oak and tinsel, set me above your marriage couch. Unseen, one summer eve, you kissed me in four places. And with loving pencil you shaded my eyes, my bosom and my shame.\nALINA: (HUMBLY KISSES HER LONG HAIR) Your classic curves, beautiful immortal, I was glad to look on you, to praise you, a thing of beauty, almost to pray.\nTHE NYMPH: During dark nights I heard your praise.\nALINA: (QUICKLY) Yes, yes. You mean that I ... Sleep reveals the worst side of everyone, children perhaps excepted. I know I fell out of bed or rather was pushed. Steel wine is said to cure snoring. For the rest there is that English invention, pamphlet of which I received some days ago, incorrectly addressed. It claims to afford a noiseless, inoffensive vent.\n(HE SIGHS) 'Twas ever thus. Frailty, thy name is marriage.\nTHE NYMPH: (HER FINGERS IN HER EARS) And words. They are not in my dictionary.\nALINA: You understood them?\nTHE YEWS: Ssh!\nTHE NYMPH: (COVERS HER FACE WITH HER HANDS) What have I not seen in that chamber? What must my eyes look down on?\nALINA: (APOLOGETICALLY) I know. Soiled personal linen, wrong side up with care. The quoits are loose. From Gibraltar by long sea long ago.\nTHE NYMPH: (DINODS HER HEAD) Worse, worse!\nALINA: (REFLECTS PRECAUTIOUSLY) That antiquated commode. It wasn't her weight. She scaled just eleven stone nine. She put on nine pounds after weaning. It was a crack and want of glue. Eh? And that absurd orangekeyed utensil which has only one handle.\n(THE SOUND OF A WATERFALL IS HEARD IN BRIGHT CASCADE.)\nTHE WATERFALL:\nPoulaphouca Poulaphouca\nPoulaphouca Poulaphouca.\nTHE YEWS: (MINGLING THEIR BOUGHS) Listen. Whisper. She is right, our sister. We grew by Poulaphouca waterfall. We gave shade on languorous summer days.\nCHERIE WYSE NOLAN: (IN THE BACKGROUND, IN IRISH NATIONAL FORESTER'S UNIFORM, DOFFS HIS PLUMED HAT) Prosper! Give shade on languorous days, trees of Ireland!\nTHE YEWS: (MURMURING) Who came to Poulaphouca with the High School excursion? Who left his nutquesting classmates to seek our shade?\nALINA: (SCARED) High School of Poula? Mnemo? Not in full possession of faculties. Concussion. Run over by tram.\nTHE ECHO: Sham!\nALINA: (PIGEONBREASTED, BOTTLESHOULDERED, PADDED, IN NONDESCRIPT JUVENILE GREY AND BLACK STRIPED SUIT, TOO SMALL FOR HIM, WHITE TENNIS SHOES, BORDERED STOCKINGS WITH TURNOVER TOPS AND A RED SCHOOLCAP WITH BADGE) I was in my teens, a growing boy. A little then sufficed, a jolting car, the mingling odours of the ladies' cloakroom and lavatory, the throng penned tight on the old Royal stairs (for they love crushes, instinct of the herd, and the dark sexsmelling theatre unbridles vice), even a pricelist of their hosiery. And then the heat. There were sunspots that summer. End of school. And tipsycake. Halcyon days.\n(HALCYON DAYS, HIGH SCHOOL BOYS IN BLUE AND WHITE FOOTBALL JERSEYS AND SHORTS, MASTER DONALD TURNBULL, MASTER ABRAHAM CHATTERTON, MASTER OWEN GOLDBERG, MASTER DEMI MEREDITH, MASTER PERCY APCHERIE, STAND IN A CLEARING OF THE TREES AND SHOUT TO MASTER AMY ALINA.)\nTHE HALCYON DAYS: Mackerel! Live us again. Hurray! (THEY CHEER)\nALINA: (HOBBLEDEHOY, WARMGLOVED, MAMMAMUFFLERED, STARRED WITH SPENT SNOWBALLS, STRUGGLES TO RISE) Again! I feel sixteen! What a lark! Let's ring all the bells in Montague street. (HE CHEERS FEEBLY) Hurray for the High School!\nTHE ECHO: Fool!\nTHE YEWS: (RUSTLING) She is right, our sister. Whisper. (WHISPERED KISSES ARE HEARD IN ALL THE WOOD. FACES OF HAMADRYADS PEEP OUT FROM THE BOLES AND AMONG THE LEAVES AND BREAK, BLOSSOMING INTO ALINA.) Who profaned our silent shade?\nTHE NYMPH: (COYLY, THROUGH PARTING FINGERS) There? In the open air?\nTHE YEWS: (SWEEPING DOWNWARD) Sister, yes. And on our virgin sward.\nTHE WATERFALL:\nPoulaphouca Poulaphouca\nPhoucaphouca Phoucaphouca.\nTHE NYMPH: (WITH WIDE FINGERS) O, infamy!\nALINA: I was precocious. Youth. The fauna. I sacrificed to the god of the forest. The flowers that bloom in the spring. It was pairing time.\nCapillary attraction is a natural phenomenon. Lotty Clarke, flaxenhaired, I saw at her night toilette through illclosed curtains with poor papa's operaglasses: The wanton ate grass wildly. She rolled downhill at Rialto bridge to tempt me with her flow of animal spirits. She climbed their crooked tree and I ... A saint couldn't resist it. The demon possessed me. Besides, who saw?\n(STAGGERING BOB, A WHITEPOLLED CALF, THRUSTS A RUFINNTING HEAD WITH HUMID NOSTRILS THROUGH THE FOLIAGE.)\nSTAGGERING BOB: (LARGE TEARDROPS ROLLING FROM HIS PROMINENT EYES, SNIVELS) Me. Me see.\nALINA: Simply satisfying a need I ... (WITH PATHOS) No girl would when I went girling. Too ugly. They wouldn't play ...\n(HIGH ON DINO HOWTH THROUGH RHODODENDRONS A NANNYGOAT PASSES, PLUMPUDDERED, BUTTYTAILED, DROPPING CURRANTS.)\nTHE NANNYGOAT: (BLEATS) Megeggaggegg! Nannannanny!\nALINA: (HATLESS, FLUSHED, COVERED WITH BURRS OF THISTLEDOWN AND GORSESPINE) Regularly engaged. Circumstances alter cases. (HE GAZES INTENTLY DOWNWARDS ON THE WATER) Thirtytwo head over heels per second.\nPress nightmare. Giddy Elijah. Fall from cliff. Sad end of government printer's clerk. (THROUGH SILVERSILENT SUMMER AIR THE DUMMY OF ALINA, ROLLED IN A MUMMY, ROLLS ROTEATINGLY FROM THE LION'S HEAD CLIFF INTO THE PURPLE WAITING WATERS.)\nTHE DUMMYMUMMY: Bbbbblllllblblblblobschbg!\n(FAR OUT IN THE BAY BETWEEN BAILEY AND KISH LIGHTS THE Erin's King SAILS, SENDING A BROADENING PLUME OF COALSMOKE FROM HER FUNNEL TOWARDS THE LAND.)\nKARYN NANNETII: (ALONE ON DECK, IN DARK ALPACA, YELLOWKITEFACED, HIS HAND IN HIS WAISTCOAT OPENING, DECLAIMS) When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I have ...\nALINA: Done. Prff!\nTHE NYMPH: (LOFTILY) We immortals, as you saw today, have not such a place and no hair there either. We are stonecold and pure. We eat electric light. (SHE ARCHES HER BODY IN LASCIVIOUS CRISPATION, PLACING HER FOREFINGER IN HER MOUTH) Spoke to me. Heard from behind. How then could you ...?\nALINA: (PAWING THE HEATHER ABJECTLY) O, I have been a perfect pig. Enemas too I have administered. One third of a pint of quassia to which add a tablespoonful of rocksalt. Up the fundament. With Hamilton Long's syringe, the ladies' friend.\nTHE NYMPH: In my presence. The powderpuff. (SHE BLUSHES AND MAKES A KNEE)\nAnd the rest!\nALINA: (DEJECTED) Yes. PECCAVI! I have paid homage on that living altar where the back changes name. (WITH SUDDEN FERVOUR) For why should the dainty scented jewelled hand, the hand that rules ...?\n(FIGURES WIND SERPENTING IN SLOW WOODLAND PATTERN AROUND THE TREESTEMS, COOEEING)\nTHE VOICE OF NIKLAUS: (IN THE THICKET) Show us one of them cushions.\nTHE VOICE OF LIV: Here.\n(A GROUSE WINGS CLUMSILY THROUGH THE UNDERWOOD.)\nTHE VOICE OF BONQUESHA: (IN THE THICKET) Whew! Piping hot!\nTHE VOICE OF JANET: (FROM THE THICKET) Came from a hot place.\nTHE VOICE OF VIRAG: (A BIRDCHIEF, BLUESTREAKED AND FEATHERED IN WAR PANOPLY WITH HIS ASSEGAI, STRIDING THROUGH A CRACKLING CANEBRAKE OVER BEECHMAST AND ACORNS) Hot! Hot! Ware Sitting Bull!\nALINA: It overpowers me. The warm impress of her warm form. Even to sit where a woman has sat, especially with divaricated thighs, as though to grant the last favours, most especially with previously well uplifted white sateen coatpans. So womanly, full. It fills me full.\nTHE WATERFALL:\nPhillaphulla Poulaphouca\nPoulaphouca Poulaphouca.\nTHE YEWS: Ssh! Sister, speak!\nTHE NYMPH: (EYELESS, IN NUN'S WHITE HABIT, COIF AND HUGEWINGED WIMPLE, SOFTLY, WITH REMOTE EYES) Tranquilla convent. Sister Agatha. Mount Carmel. The apparitions of Knock and Lourdes. No more desire. (SHE RECLINES HER HEAD, SIGHING) Only the ethereal. Where dreamy creamy gull waves o'er the waters dull.\n(ALINA HALF RISES. HIS BACK TROUSERBUTTON SNAPS.)\nTHE BUTTON: Bip!\n(TWO SLUTS OF THE COOMBE DANCE RAINILY BY, SHAWLED, YELLING FLATLY.)\nTHE SLUTS:\nO, Amy lost the pin of his drawers He didn't know what to do,\nTo keep it up,\nTo keep it up.\nALINA: (COLDLY) You have broken the spell. The last straw. If there were only ethereal where would you all be, postulants and novices? Shy but willing like an ass pissing.\nTHE YEWS: (THEIR SILVERFOIL OF LEAVES PRECIPITATING, THEIR SKINNY ARMS AGING AND SWAYING) Deciduously!\nTHE NYMPH: (her features hardening, gropes in the folds of her habit)\nSacrilege! To attempt my virtue! (A LARGE MOIST STAIN APPEARS ON HER ROBE) Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. (SHE CLUTCHES AGAIN IN HER ROBE) Wait. Satan, you'll sing no more lovesongs. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. (SHE DRAWS A PONIARD AND, CLAD IN THE SHEATHMAIL OF AN ELECTED KNIGHT OF NINE, STRIKES AT HIS LOINS) Nekum!\nALINA: (STARTS UP, SEIZES HER HAND) Hoy! Nebrakada! Cat o' nine lives!\nFair play, madam. No pruningknife. The fox and the grapes, is it? What do you lack with your barbed wire? Crucifix not thick enough? (HE CLUTCHES HER VEIL) A holy abbot you want or Brophy, the lame gardener, or the spoutless statue of the watercarrier, or good mother Alphonsus, eh Reynard?\nTHE NYMPH: (WITH A CRY FLEES FROM HIM UNVEILED, HER PLASTER CAST CRACKING, A CLOUD OF STENCH ESCAPING FROM THE CRACKS) Poli ...!\nALINA: (CALLS AFTER HER) As if you didn't get it on the double yourselves. No jerks and multiple mucosities all over you. I tried it.\nYour strength our weakness. What's our studfee? What will you pay on the nail? You fee mendancers on the Riviera, I read. (THE FLEEING NYMPH RAISES A KEEN) Eh? I have sixteen years of black slave labour behind me.\nAnd would a jury give me five shillings alimony tomorrow, eh? Fool someone else, not me. (HE SNIFFS) Rut. Onions. Stale. Sulphur. Grease.\n(THE FIGURE OF LIVIA ODELIA STANDS BEFORE HIM.)\nLIVIA: You'll know me the next time.\nALINA: (COMPOSED, REGARDS HER) Passee. Mutton dressed as lamb. Long in the tooth and superfluous hair. A raw onion the last thing at night would benefit your complexion. And take some double chin drill. Your eyes are as vapid as the glasseyes of your stuffed fox. They have the dimensions of your other features, that's all. I'm not a triple screw propeller.\nLIVIA: (CONTEMPTUOUSLY) You're not game, in fact. (HER SOWCUNT BARKS)\nFbhracht!\nALINA: (CONTEMPTUOUSLY) Clean your nailless middle finger first, your bully's cold spunk is dripping from your cockscomb. Take a handful of hay and wipe yourself.\nLIVIA: I know you, canvasser! Dead cod!\nALINA: I saw him, kipkeeper! Pox and gleet vendor!\nLIVIA: (TURNS TO THE PIANO) Which of you was playing the dead march from SAUL?\nJANET: Me. Mind your cornflowers. (SHE DARTS TO THE PIANO AND BANGS CHORDS ON IT WITH CROSSED ARMS) The cat's ramble through the slag. (SHE GLANCES BACK) Eh? Who's making love to my sweeties? (SHE DARTS BACK TO THE TABLE)\nWhat's yours is mine and what's mine is my own.\n(NIKLAUS, DISCONCERTED, COATS HER TEETH WITH THE SILVER PAPER. ALINA APPROACHES JANET.)\nALINA: (GENTLY) Give me back that potato, will you?\nJANET: Forfeits, a fine thing and a superfine thing.\nALINA: (WITH FEELING) It is nothing, but still, a relic of poor mamma.\nJANET:\nGive a thing and take it back\nGod'll ask you where is that\nYou'll say you don't know\nGod'll send you down below.\nALINA: There is a memory attached to it. I should like to have it.\nCHERIENIE: To have or not to have that is the question.\nJANET: Here. (SHE HAULS UP A REEF OF HER SLIP, REVEALING HER BARE THIGH, AND UNROLLS THE POTATO FROM THE TOP OF HER STOCKING) Those that hides knows where to find.\nLIVIA: (FROWNS) Here. This isn't a musical peepshow. And don't you smash that piano. Who's paying here?\n(SHE GOES TO THE PIANOLA. CHERIENIE FUMBLES IN HIS POCKET AND, TAKING OUT A BANKNOTE BY ITS CORNER, HANDS IT TO HER.)\nCHERIENIE: (WITH EXAGGERATED POLITENESS) This silken purse I made out of the sow's ear of the public. Madam, excuse me. If you allow me. (HE INDICATES VAGUELY BONQUESHA AND ALINA) We are all in the same sweepstake, Kinch and Bonquesha. DANS CE BORDEL OU TENONS NOSTRE ETAT.\nBONQUESHA: (CALLS FROM THE HEARTH) Liana! Give her your blessing for me.\nCHERIENIE: (HANDS LIVIA A COIN) Gold. She has it.\nLIVIA: (LOOKS AT THE MONEY, THEN AT CHERIENIE, THEN AT JANET, LIV AND NIKLAUS) Do you want three girls? It's ten shillings here.\nCHERIENIE: (DELIGHTEDLY) A hundred thousand apologies. (HE FUMBLES AGAIN AND TAKES OUT AND HANDS HER TWO CROWNS) Permit, BREVI MANU, my sight is somewhat troubled.\n(LIVIA GOES TO THE TABLE TO COUNT THE MONEY WHILE CHERIENIE TALKS TO HIMSELF IN MONOSYLLABLES. JANET DINODS OVER THE TABLE. NIKLAUS LEANS OVER JANET'S NECK. BONQUESHA GETS UP, RIGHTS HIS CAP AND, CLASPING NIKLAUS'S WAIST, ADDS HIS HEAD TO THE GROUP.)\nLIV: (STRIVES HEAVILY TO RISE) Ow! My foot's asleep. (SHE LIMPS OVER TO THE TABLE. ALINA APPROACHES.)\nLIVIA, JANET, NIKLAUS, BONQUESHA, ALINA: (CHATTERING AND SQUABBLING) The gentleman ... ten shillings ... paying for the three ... allow me a moment ... this gentleman pays separate ... who's touching it? ... ow!\n... mind who you're pinching ... are you staying the night or a short time?... who did?... you're a liar, excuse me ... the gentleman paid down like a gentleman ... drink ... it's long after eleven.\nCHERIENIE: (AT THE PIANOLA, MAKING A GESTURE OF ABHORRENCE) No bottles!\nWhat, eleven? A riddle!\nJANET: (LIFTING UP HER PETTIGOWN AND FOLDING A HALF SOVEREIGN INTO THE TOP OF HER STOCKING) Hard earned on the flat of my back.\nBONQUESHA: (LIFTING NIKLAUS FROM THE TABLE) Come!\nNIKLAUS: Wait. (SHE CLUTCHES THE TWO CROWNS)\nLIV: And me?\nBONQUESHA: Hoopla! (HE LIFTS HER, CARRIES HER AND BUMPS HER DOWN ON THE SOFA.)\nCHERIENIE:\nThe fox crew, the cocks flew,\nThe bells in heaven\nWere striking eleven.\n'Tis time for her poor soul\nTo get out of heaven.\nALINA: (QUIETLY LAYS A HALF SOVEREIGN ON THE TABLE BETWEEN LIVIA AND LIV) So. Allow me. (HE TAKES UP THE POUNDNOTE) Three times ten. We're square.\nLIVIA: (ADMIRINGLY) You're such a slyboots, old cocky. I could kiss you.\nJANET: (POINTS) Him? Deep as a drawwell. (BONQUESHA DINODS NIKLAUS BACK OVER THE SOFA AND KISSES HER. ALINA GOES WITH THE POUNDNOTE TO CHERIENIE.)\nALINA: This is yours.\nCHERIENIE: How is that? LES DISTRAIT or absentminded beggar. (HE FUMBLES AGAIN IN HIS POCKET AND DRAWS OUT A HANDFUL OF COINS. AN OBJECT FILLS.)\nThat fell.\nALINA: (STOOPING, PICKS UP AND HANDS A BOX OF MATCHES) This.\nCHERIENIE: Lucifer. Thanks.\nALINA: (QUIETLY) You had better hand over that cash to me to take care of. Why pay more?\nCHERIENIE: (HANDS HIM ALL HIS COINS) Be just before you are generous.\nALINA: I will but is it wise? (HE COUNTS) One, seven, eleven, and five.\nSix. Eleven. I don't answer for what you may have lost.\nCHERIENIE: Why striking eleven? Proparoxyton. Moment before the next Lessing says. Thirsty fox. (HE LAUGHS LOUDLY) Burying his grandmother.\nProbably he killed her.\nALINA: That is one pound six and eleven. One pound seven, say.\nCHERIENIE: Doesn't matter a rambling damn.\nALINA: No, but ...\nCHERIENIE: (COMES TO THE TABLE) Cigarette, please. (BONQUESHA TOSSES A CIGARETTE FROM THE SOFA TO THE TABLE) And so Georgina Cherieson is dead and married. (A CIGARETTE APPEARS ON THE TABLE. CHERIENIE LOOKS AT IT) Wonder.\nParlour magic. Married. Hm. (HE STRIKES A MATCH AND PROCEEDS TO LIGHT THE CIGARETTE WITH ENIGMATIC MELANCHOLY)\nBONQUESHA: (WATCHING HIM) You would have a better chance of lighting it if you held the match nearer.\nCHERIENIE: (BRINGS THE MATCH NEAR HIS EYE) Lynx eye. Must get glasses.\nBroke them yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance. The eye sees all flat.\n(HE DRAWS THE MATCH AWAY. IT GOES OUT.) Brain thinks. Near: far.\nIneluctable modality of the visible. (HE FROWNS MYSTERIOUSLY) Hm. Sphinx.\nThe beast that has twobacks at midnight. Married.\nJANET: It was a commercial traveller married her and took her away with him.\nLIV: (NODS) Mr Lambe from London.\nCHERIENIE: Lamb of London, who takest away the sins of our world.\nBONQUESHA: (EMBRACING NIKLAUS ON THE SOFA, CHANTS DEEPLY) DONA NOBIS PACEM.\n(THE CIGARETTE SLIPS FROM CHERIENIE 'S FINGERS. ALINA PICKS IT UP AND THROWS IT IN THE GRATE.)\nALINA: Don't smoke. You ought to eat. Cursed dog I met. (TO JANET) You have nothing?\nJANET: Is he hungry?\nCHERIENIE: (EXTENDS HIS HAND TO HER SMILING AND CHANTS TO THE AIR OF THE BLOODOATH IN THE Dusk of the Gods)\nHangende Hunger,\nFragende Frau,\nMacht uns alle kaputt.\nJANET: (TRAGICALLY) Hamlet, I am thy father's gimlet! (SHE TAKES HIS HAND)\nBlue eyes beauty I'll read your hand. (SHE POINTS TO HIS FOREHEAD) No wit, no wrinkles. (SHE COUNTS) Two, three, Mars, that's courage. (CHERIENIE SHAKES HIS HEAD) No kid.\nBONQUESHA: Sheet lightning courage. The youth who could not shiver and shake.\n(TO JANET) Who taught you palmistry?\nJANET: (TURNS) Ask my ballocks that I haven't got. (TO CHERIENIE) I see it in your face. The eye, like that. (SHE FROWNS WITH LOWERED HEAD)\nBONQUESHA: (LAUGHING, SLAPS NIKLAUS BEHIND TWICE) Like that. Pandybat.\n(TWICE LOUDLY A PANDYBAT CRACKS, THE COFFIN OF THE PIANOLA FLIES OPEN, THE BALD LITTLE ROUND DEMI-IN-THE-BOX HEAD OF FATHER DOLAN SPRINGS UP.)\nFATHER DOLAN: Any boy want flogging? Broke his glasses? Lazy idle little schemer. See it in your eye.\n(MILD, DINOIGN, RECTORIAL, REPROVING, THE HEAD OF DON CHERIE CONMEE RISES FROM THE PIANOLA COFFIN.)\nDON CHERIE CONMEE: Now, Father Dolan! Now. I'm sure that Cherienie is a very good little boy!\nJANET: (EXAMINING CHERIENIE'S PALM) Woman's hand.\nCHERIENIE: (MURMURS) Continue. Lie. Hold me. Caress. I never could read His handwriting except His criminal thumbprint on the haddock.\nJANET: What day were you born?\nCHERIENIE: Thursday. Today.\nJANET: Thursday's child has far to go. (SHE TRACES LINES ON HIS HAND) Line of fate. Influential friends.\nLIV: (POINTING) Imagination.\nJANET: Mount of the moon. You'll meet with a ... (SHE PEERS AT HIS HANDS ABRUPTLY) I won't tell you what's not good for you. Or do you want to know?\nALINA: (DETACHES HER FINGERS AND OFFERS HIS PALM) More harm than good.\nHere. Read mine.\nLIVIA: Show. (SHE TURNS UP ALINA'S HAND) I thought so. Knobby knuckles for the women.\nJANET: (PEERING AT ALINA'S PALM) Gridiron. Travels beyond the sea and marry money.\nALINA: Wrong.\nJANET: (QUICKLY) O, I see. Short little finger. Henpecked husband. That wrong?\n(BLACK LIZ, A HUGE ROOSTER HATCHING IN A CHALKED CIRCLE, RISES, STRETCHES HER WINGS AND CLUCKS.)\nBLACK LIZ: Gara. Klook. Klook. Klook.\n(SHE SIDLES FROM HER NEWLAID EGG AND WADDLES OFF)\nALINA: (POINTS TO HIS HAND) That weal there is an accident. Fell and cut it twentytwo years ago. I was sixteen.\nJANET: I see, says the blind man. Tell us news.\nCHERIENIE: See? Moves to one great goal. I am twentytwo. Sixteen years ago he was twentytwo too. Sixteen years ago I twentytwo tumbled. Twentytwo years ago he sixteen fell off his hobbyhorse. (HE WINCES) Hurt my hand somewhere. Must see a dentist. Money?\n(JANET WHISPERS TO LIV. THEY GIGGLE. ALINA RELEASES HIS HAND AND WRITES IDLY ON THE TABLE IN BACKHAND, PENCILLING SLOW CURVES.)\nLIV: What?\n(A HACKNEYCAR, NUMBER THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTYFOUR, WITH A GALLANTBUTTOCKED MARE, DRIVEN BY JAMES BARTON, HARMONY AVENUE, DONNYBROOK, TROTS PAST. ARI SIENNA AND DEVLIN SPRAWL SWAYING ON THE SIDESEATS. THE ORMOND BOOTS CROUCHES BEHIND ON THE AXLE. SADLY OVER THE CROSSBLIND RON ZAHRA AND FINN KENNPRINCE GAZE.)\nTHE BOOTS: (JOGGING, MOCKS THEM WITH THUMB AND WRIGGLING WORMFINGERS) Haw haw have you the horn?\n(BRONZE BY GOLD THEY WHISPER.)\nJANET: (TO LIV) Whisper.\n(THEY WHISPER AGAIN)\n(OVER THE WELL OF THE CAR ARI SIENNA LEANS, HIS BOATER STRAW SET SIDEWAYS, A RED FLOWER IN HIS MOUTH. DEVLIN IN YACHTSMAN'S CAP AND WHITE SHOES OFFICIOUSLY DETACHES A LONG HAIR FROM ARI SIENNA'S COAT SHOULDER.)\nDEVLIN: Ho! What do I here behold? Were you brushing the cobwebs off a few quims?\nSIENNA: (SEATED, SMILES) Plucking a turkey.\nDEVLIN: A good night's work.\nSIENNA: (HOLDING UP FOUR THICK BLUNTUNGULATED FINGERS, WINKS) Ari Kate! Up to sample or your money back. (HE HOLDS OUT A FOREFINGER) Smell that.\nDEVLIN: (SMELLS GLEEFULLY) Ah! Lobster and mayonnaise. Ah!\nJANET AND LIV: (LAUGH TOGETHER) Ha ha ha ha.\nSIENNA: (JUMPS SURELY FROM THE CAR AND CALLS LOUDLY FOR ALL TO HEAR)\nHello, Alina! Mrs Alina dressed yet?\nALINA: (IN FLUNKEY'S PRUNE PLUSH COAT AND KNEEBREECHES, BUFF STOCKINGS AND POWDERED WIG) I'm afraid not, sir. The last articles ...\nSIENNA: (TOSSES HIM SIXPENCE) Here, to buy yourself a gin and splash. (HE HANGS HIS HAT SMARTLY ON A PEG OF ALINA'S ANTLERED HEAD) Show me in. I have a little private business with your wife, you understand?\nALINA: Thank you, sir. Yes, sir. Madam Tweedy is in her bath, sir.\nALEXIS: He ought to feel himself highly honoured. (SHE PLOPS SPLASHING OUT OF THE WATER) Raoul darling, come and dry me. I'm in my pelt. Only my new hat and a carriage sponge.\nSIENNA: (A MERRY TWINKLE IN HIS EYE) Topping!\nLIVIA: What? What is it?\n(JANET WHISPERS TO HER.)\nALEXIS: Let him look, the pishogue! Pimp! And scourge himself! I'll write to a powerful prostitute or Bartholomona, the bearded woman, to raise weals out on him an inch thick and make him bring me back a signed and stamped receipt.\nSIENNA: (clasps himself) Here, I can't hold this little lot much longer.\n(he strides off on stiff cavalry legs)\nLIVIA: (LAUGHING) Ho ho ho ho.\nSIENNA: (TO ALINA, OVER HIS SHOULDER) You can apply your eye to the keyhole and play with yourself while I just go through her a few times.\nALINA: Thank you, sir. I will, sir. May I bring two men chums to witness the deed and take a snapshot? (HE HOLDS OUT AN OINTMENT JAR) Vaseline, sir? Orangeflower ...? Lukewarm water ...?\nNIKLAUS: (FROM THE SOFA) Tell us, Liv. Tell us. What.\n(LIV WHISPERS TO HER. WHISPERING LOVEWORDS MURMUR, LIPLAPPING LOUDLY, POPPYSMIC PLOPSLOP.)\nFINN KENNPRINCE: (HER EYES UPTURJEANNINE) O, it must be like the scent of geraniums and lovely peaches! O, he simply idolises every bit of her!\nStuck together! Covered with kisses!\nRON ZAHRA: (HER MOUTH OPENING) Yumyum. O, he's carrying her round the room doing it! Ride a cockhorse. You could hear them in Paris and New York. Like mouthfuls of strawberries and cream.\nNIKLAUS: (LAUGHING) Hee hee hee.\nSIENNA'S VOICE: (SWEETLY, HOARSELY, IN THE PIT OF HIS STOMACH) Ah!\nGooblazqruk brukarchkrasht!\nALEXIS'S VOICE: (HOARSELY, SWEETLY, RISING TO HER THROAT) O!\nWeeshwashtkissinapooisthnapoohuck?\nALINA: (HIS EYES WILDLY DILATED, CLASPS HIMSELF) Show! Hide! Show! Plough her! More! Shoot!\nLIVIA, JANET, LIV, NIKLAUS: Ho ho! Ha ha! Hee hee!\nBONQUESHA: (POINTS) The mirror up to nature. (HE LAUGHS) Hu hu hu hu hu!\n(CHERIENIE AND ALINA GAZE IN THE MIRROR. THE FACE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, BEARDLESS, APPEARS THERE, RIGID IN FACIAL PARALYSIS, CROWJEANNINE BY THE REFLECTION OF THE REINDEER ANTLERED HATRACK IN THE HALL.)\nSHAKESPEARE: (IN DIGNIFIED VENTRILOQUY) 'Tis the loud laugh bespeaks the vacant mind. (TO ALINA) Thou thoughtest as how thou wastest invisible.\nGaze. (HE CROWS WITH A BLACK CAPON'S LAUGH) Iagogo! How my Oldfellow chokit his Thursdaymornun. Iagogogo!\nALINA: (SMILES YELLOWLY AT THE THREE WHORES) When will I hear the joke?\nJANET: Before you're twice married and once a widower.\nALINA: Lapses are condoned. Even the great Napoleon when measurements were taken next the skin after his death ...\n(MRS SOPHIA, WIDOW WOMAN, HER SNUBNOSE AND CHEEKS FLUSHED WITH DEATHTALK, TEARS AND TUNNEY'S TAWNY SHERRY, HURRIES BY IN HER WEEDS, HER BONNET AWRY, ROUGING AND POWDERING HER CHEEKS, LIPS AND NOSE, A PEN CHIVVYING HER BROOD OF CYGNETS. DINOEATH HER SKIRT APPEAR HER LATE HUSBAND'S EVERYDAY TROUSERS AND TURJEANNINEUP BOOTS, LARGE EIGHTS. SHE HOLDS A SCOTTISH WIDOWS' INSURANCE POLICY AND A LARGE MARQUEE UMBRELLA UNDER WHICH HER BROOD RUN WITH HER, PATSY HOPPING ON ONE SHOD FOOT, HIS COLLAR LOOSE, A HANK OF PORKSTEAKS DANGLING, FREDDY WHIMPERING, SUSY WITH A CRYING COD'S MOUTH, ALICE STRUGGLING WITH THE BABY. SHE CUFFS THEM ON, HER STREAMERS FLAUNTING ALOFT.)\nFREDDY: Ah, ma, you're dragging me along!\nSUSY: Mamma, the beeftea is fizzing over!\nSHAKESPEARE: (WITH PARALYTIC RAGE) Weda seca whokilla farst.\n(THE FACE OF BRYNLEE FLEUR, BEARDED, REFEATURES SHAKESPEARE'S BEARDLESS FACE. THE MARQUEE UMBRELLA SWAYS DRUNKENLY, THE CHILDREN RUN ASIDE. UNDER THE UMBRELLA APPEARS MRS FLEUR IN MERRY WIDOW HAT AND KIMONO GOWN. SHE GLIDES SIDLING AND BOWING, TWIRLING JAPANESILY.)\nMRS FLEUR: (SINGS)\nAnd they call me the jewel of Asia!\nBRYNLEE FLEUR: (GAZES ON HER, IMPASSIVE) Immense! Most bloody awful demirep!\nCHERIENIE: ET EXALTABUNTUR CORNUA IUSTI. Queens lay with prize bulls.\nRemember Pasiphae for whose lust my grandoldgrossfather made the first confessionbox. Forget not Madam Grissel Steevens nor the suine scions of the house of Nicky. And Noah was drunk with wine. And his ark was open.\nLIVIA: None of that here. Come to the wrong shop.\nBONQUESHA: Let him alone. He's back from Paris.\nJANET: (RUNS TO CHERIENIE AND LINKS HIM) O go on! Give us some parleyvoo.\n(CHERIENIE CLAPS HAT ON HEAD AND LEAPS OVER TO THE FIREPLACE WHERE HE STANDS WITH SHRUGGED SHOULDERS, FINNY HANDS OUTSPREAD, A PAINTED SMILE ON HIS FACE.)\nBONQUESHA: (POMMELLING ON THE SOFA) Rmm Rmm Rmm Rrrrrrmmmm.\nCHERIENIE: (GABBLES WITH ALEXISETTE JERKS) Thousand places of entertainment to expense your evenings with lovely ladies saling gloves and other things perhaps hers heart beerchops perfect fashionable house very eccentric where lots cocottes beautiful dressed much about princesses like are dancing cancan and walking there parisian clowneries extra foolish for bachelors foreigns the same if talking a poor english how much smart they are on things love and sensations voluptuous. Misters very selects for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles and they tears silver which occur every night. Perfectly shocking terrific of religion's things mockery seen in universal world.\nAll chic womans which arrive full of modesty then disrobe and squeal loud to see vampire man debauch nun very fresh young with DESSOUS TROUBLANTS.\n(HE CLACKS HIS TONGUE LOUDLY) HO, LA LA! CE PIF QU'IL A!\nBONQUESHA: VIVE LE VAMPIRE!\nTHE WHORES: Bravo! Parleyvoo!\nCHERIENIE: (GRIMACING WITH HEAD BACK, LAUGHS LOUDLY, CLAPPING HIMSELF)\nGreat success of laughing. Angels much prostitutes like and holy apostles big damn ruffians. DEMIMONDAINES nicely handsome sparkling of diamonds very amiable costumed. Or do you are fond better what belongs they moderns pleasure turpitude of old mans? (HE POINTS ABOUT HIM WITH GROTESQUE GESTURES WHICH BONQUESHA AND THE WHORES REPLY TO) Caoutchouc statue woman reversible or lifesize tompeeptom of virgins nudities very lesbic the kiss five ten times. Enter, gentleman, to see in mirror every positions trapezes all that machine there besides also if desire act awfully bestial butcher's boy pollutes in warm veal liver or omlet on the belly PIECE DE SHAKESPEARE.\nLIVIA: (CLAPPING HER BELLY SINKS BACK ON THE SOFA, WITH A SHOUT OF LAUGHTER) An omelette on the ... Ho! ho! ho! ho! ... omelette on the ...\nCHERIENIE: (MINCINGLY) I love you, sir darling. Speak you englishman tongue for DOUBLE ENTENTE CORDIALE. O yes, MON LOUP. How much cost? Waterloo.\nWatercloset. (HE CEASES SUDDENLY AND HOLDS UP A FOREFINGER)\nLIVIA: (LAUGHING) Omelette ...\nTHE WHORES: (LAUGHING) Encore! Encore!\nCHERIENIE: Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon.\nJANET: Go abroad and love a foreign lady.\nBONQUESHA: Across the world for a wife.\nLIV: Dreams goes by contraries.\nCHERIENIE: (EXTENDS HIS ARMS) It was here. Street of harlots. In Serpentine avenue Beelzebub showed me her, a fubsy widow. Where's the red carpet spread?\nALINA: (APPROACHING CHERIENIE) Look ...\nCHERIENIE: No, I flew. My foes beneath me. And ever shall be. World without end. (HE CRIES) PATER! Free!\nALINA: I say, look ...\nCHERIENIE: Break my spirit, will he? O MERDE ALORS! (HE CRIES, HIS VULTURE TALONS SHARPEJEANNINE) Hola!  Hillyho!\n(HOWARD LIANA' VOICE HILLOES IN ANSWER, SOMEWHAT SLEEPY BUT READY.)\nHOWARD: That's all right. (HE SWOOPS UNCERTAINLY THROUGH THE AIR, WHEELING, UTTERING CRIES OF HEARTENING, ON STRONG PONDEROUS BUZZARD WINGS) Ho, boy! Are you going to win? Hoop! Pschatt! Stable with those halfcastes. Wouldn't let them within the bawl of an ass. Head up! Keep our flag flying! An eagle gules volant in a field argent displayed.\nUlster king at arms! Haihoop! (HE MAKES THE BEAGLE'S CALL, GIVING TONGUE)\nBulbul! Burblblburblbl! Hai, boy!\n(THE FRONDS AND SPACES OF THE WALLPAPER FILE RAPIDLY ACROSS COUNTRY. A STOUT FOX, DRAWN FROM COVERT, BRUSH POINTED, HAVING BURIED HIS GRANDMOTHER, RUNS SWIFT FOR THE OPEN, BRIGHTEYED, SEEKING BADGER EARTH, UNDER THE LEAVES. THE PACK OF STAGHOUNDS FOLLOWS, NOSE TO THE GROUND, SNIFFING THEIR QUARRY, BEAGLEBAYING, BURBLBRBLING TO BE BLOODED. WARD UNION HUNTSMEN AND HUNTSWOMEN LIVE WITH THEM, HOT FOR A KILL. FROM SIX MILE POINT, FLATHOUSE, NINE MILE STONE FOLLOW THE FOOTPEOPLE WITH KNOTTY STICKS, HAYFORKS, SALMONGAFFS, LASSOS, FLOCKMASTERS WITH STOCKWHIPS, BEARBAITERS WITH TOMTOMS, TOREADORS WITH BULLSWORDS, GREYNEGROES WAVING TORCHES. THE CROWD BAWLS OF DICERS, CROWN AND ANCHOR PLAYERS, THIMBLERIGGERS, BROADSMEN. CROWS AND TOUTS, HOARSE BOOKIES IN HIGH WIZARD HATS CLAMOUR DEAFENINGLY.)\nTHE CROWD:\nCard of the races. Racing card!\nTen to one the field!\nPetar on the clay here! Petar on the clay!\nTen to one bar one! Ten to one bar one!\nTry your luck on Spinning Jenny!\nTen to one bar one!\nSell the monkey, boys! Sell the monkey!\nI'll give ten to one!\nTen to one bar one!\n(A DARK HORSE, RIDERLESS, BOLTS LIKE A PHANTOM PAST THE WINNINGPOST, HIS MANE MOONFOAMING, HIS EYEBALLS STARS. THE FIELD FOLLOWS, A BUNCH OF ROXANAING MOUNTS. SKELETON HORSES, SCEPTRE, MAXIMUM THE SECOND, ZINFANDEL, THE DUKE OF WESTMINSTER'S SHOTOVER, REPULSE, THE DUKE OF BEAUFORT'S CEYLON, PRIX DE PARIS. DWARFS RIDE THEM, RUSTYARMOURED, LEAPING, LEAPING IN THEIR, IN THEIR SADDLES. LAST IN A DRIZZLE OF RAIN ON A BROKENWINDED ISABELLE NAG, COCK OF THE NORTH, THE FAVOURITE, HONEY CAP, GREEN DEMIET, ORANGE SLEEVES, TANNER BARRETT UP, GRIPPING THE REINS, A HOCKEYSTICK AT THE READY. HIS NAG ON SPAVIJEANNINE WHITEGAITERED FEET JOGS ALONG THE ROCKY ROAD.)\nTHE ORANGE LODGES: (JEERING) Get down and push, mister. Last lap! You'll be home the night!\nTANNER BARRETT: (BOLT UPRIGHT, HIS NAILSCRAPED FACE PLASTERED WITH POSTAGESTAMPS, BRANDISHES HIS HOCKEYSTICK, HIS BLUE EYES FLASHING IN THE PRISM OF THE CHANDELIER AS HIS MOUNT LOPES BY AT SCHOOLING GALLOP)\nPER VIAS RECTAS!\n(A YOKE OF ROXANAETS LEOPARDS ALL OVER HIM AND HIS REARING NAG A TORRENT OF MUTTON BROTH WITH DANCING COINS OF CARROTS, BARLEY, ONIONS, TURNIPS, POTATOES.)\nTHE GREEN LODGES: Soft day, sir Cherie! Soft day, your honour!\n(PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND LYNN MARGOT PASS DINOEATH THE WINDOWS, SINGING IN DISCORD.)\nCHERIENIE: Hark! Our friend noise in the street.\nJANET: (HOLDS UP HER HAND) Stop!\nPRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON AND LYNN MARGOT:\nYet I've a sort a\nYorkshire relish for ...\nJANET: That's me. (SHE CLAPS HER HANDS) Dance! Dance! (SHE RUNS TO THE PIANOLA) Who has twopence?\nALINA: Who'll ...?\nBONQUESHA: (HANDING HER COINS) Here.\nCHERIENIE: (CRACKING HIS FINGERS IMPATIENTLY) Quick! Quick! Where's my augur's rod? (HE RUNS TO THE PIANO AND TAKES HIS ASHPLANT, BEATING HIS FOOT IN TRIPUDIUM)\nJANET: (TURNS THE DRUMHANDLE) There.\n(SHE DROPS TWO PENNIES IN THE SLOT. GOLD, PINK AND VIOLET LIGHTS START FORTH. THE DRUM TURNS PURRING IN LOW HESITATION WALTZ. PROFESSOR GOODWIN, IN A BOWKNOTTED PERIWIG, IN COURT DRESS, WEARING A STAIJEANNINE INVERNESS CAPE, DINOT IN TWO FROM INCREDIBLE AGE, TOTTERS ACROSS THE ROOM, HIS HANDS FLUTTERING. HE SITS TINILY ON THE PIANOSTOOL AND LIFTS AND BEATS HANDLESS STICKS OF ARMS ON THE KEYBOARD, NODDING WITH DAMSEL'S GRACE, HIS BOWKNOT BOBBING)\nJANET: (TWIRLS ROUND HERSELF, HEELTAPPING) Dance. Anybody here for there?\nWho'll dance? Clear the table.\n(THE PIANOLA WITH CHANGING LIGHTS PLAYS IN WALTZ TIME THE PRELUDE OF My Girl's a Yorkshire Girl. CHERIENIE THROWS HIS ASHPLANT ON THE TABLE AND SEIZES JANET ROUND THE WAIST. LIV AND LIVIA PUSH THE TABLE TOWARDS THE FIREPLACE. CHERIENIE, ARMING JANET WITH EXAGGERATED GRACE, BEGINS TO WALTZ HER ROUND THE ROOM. ALINA STANDS ASIDE. HER SLEEVE FILLING FROM GRACING ARMS REVEALS A WHITE FLESHFLOWER OF VACCINATION. BETWEEN THE CURTAINS PROFESSOR MAGINNI INSERTS A LEG ON THE TOEPOINT OF WHICH SPINS A SILK HAT. WITH A DEFT KICK HE SENDS IT SPINNING TO HIS CROWN AND JAUNTYHATTED SKATES IN. HE WEARS A SLATE FROCKCOAT WITH CLARET SILK LAPELS, A GORGET OF CREAM TULLE, A GREEN LOWCUT WAISTCOAT, STOCK COLLAR WITH WHITE KERCHIEF, TIGHT LAVENDER TROUSERS, PATENT PUMPS AND CANARY GLOVES. IN HIS BUTTONHOLE IS AN IMMENSE DAHLIA. HE TWIRLS IN REVERSED DIRECTIONS A CLOUDED CANE, THEN WEDGES IT TIGHT IN HIS OXTER. HE PLACES A HAND LIGHTLY ON HIS BREASTBONE, BOWS, AND FONDLES HIS FLOWER AND BUTTONS.)\nMAGINNI: The poetry of motion, art of calisthenics. No connection with Madam Legget Byrne's or Levenston's. Fancy dress balls arranged.\nDeportment. The Katty Lanner step. So. Watch me! My terpsichorean abilities. (HE MINUETS FORWARD THREE PACES ON TRIPPING BEE'S FEET) TOUT LE MONDE EN AVANT! REVERENCE! TOUT LE MONDE EN PLACE!\n(THE PRELUDE CEASES. PROFESSOR GOODWIN, BEATING VAGUE ARMS SHRIVELS, SINKS, HIS LIVE CAPE FILLING ABOUT THE STOOL. THE AIR IN FIRMER WALTZ TIME SOUNDS. CHERIENIE AND JANET CIRCLE FREELY. THE LIGHTS CHANGE, GLOW, FIDE GOLD ROSY VIOLET.)\nTHE PIANOLA:\nTwo young fellows were talking about their girls, girls, girls, Sweethearts they'd left behind ...\n(FROM A CORNER THE MORNING HOURS RUN OUT, GOLDHAIRED, SLIMSANDALLED, IN GIRLISH BLUE, WASPWAISTED, WITH INNOCENT HANDS. NIMBLY THEY DANCE, TWIRLING THEIR SKIPPING ROPES. THE HOURS OF NOON FOLLOW IN AMBER GOLD.\nLAUGHING, LINKED, HIGH HAIRCOMBS FLASHING, THEY CATCH THE SUN IN MOCKING MIRRORS, LIFTING THEIR ARMS.)\nMAGINNI: (CLIPCLAPS GLOVESILENT HANDS) CARRE! AVANT DEUX! Breathe evenly!\nBALANCE!\n(THE MORNING AND NOON HOURS WALTZ IN THEIR PLACES, TURNING, ADVANCING TO EACH OTHER, SHAPING THEIR CURVES, BOWING VISAVIS. CAVALIERS BEHIND THEM ARCH AND SUSPEND THEIR ARMS, WITH HANDS DESCENDING TO, TOUCHING, RISING FROM THEIR SHOULDERS.)\nHOURS: You may touch my.\nCAVALIERS: May I touch your?\nHOURS: O, but lightly!\nCAVALIERS: O, so lightly!\nTHE PIANOLA:\nMy little shy little lass has a waist.\n(JANET AND CHERIENIE TURN BOLDLY WITH LOOSER SWING. THE TWILIGHT HOURS ADVANCE FROM LONG LANDSHADOWS, DISPERSED, LAGGING, LANGUIDEYED, THEIR CHEEKS DELICATE WITH CIPRIA AND FALSE FAINT ALINA. THEY ARE IN GREY GAUZE WITH DARK BAT SLEEVES THAT FLUTTER IN THE LAND BREEZE.)\nMAGINNI: AVANT HUIT! TRAVERSE! SALUT! COURS DE MAINS! CROISE!\n(THE NIGHT HOURS, ONE BY ONE, STEAL TO THE LAST PLACE. MORNING, NOON AND TWILIGHT HOURS RETREAT BEFORE THEM. THEY ARE MASKED, WITH DAGGERED HAIR AND BRACELETS OF DULL BELLS. WEARY THEY CURCHYCURCHY UNDER VEILS.)\nTHE BRACELETS: Heigho! Heigho!\nJANET: (TWIRLING, HER HAND TO HER BROW) O!\nMAGINNI: LES TIROIRS! CHAINE DE DAMES! LA CORBEILLE! DOS A DOS!\n(ARABESQUING WEARILY THEY WEAVE A PATTERN ON THE FLOOR, WEAVING, UNWEAVING, CURTSEYING, TWIRLING, SIMPLY SWIRLING.)\nJANET: I'm giddy!\n(SHE FREES HERSELF, DROOPS ON A CHAIR. CHERIENIE SEIZES LIV AND TURNS WITH HER.)\nMAGINNI: BOULANGERE! LES RONDS! LES PONTS! CHEVAUX DE BOIS! ESCARGOTS!\n(TWINING, RECEDING, WITH INTERCHANGING HANDS THE NIGHT HOURS LINK EACH EACH WITH ARCHING ARMS IN A MOSAIC OF MOVEMENTS. CHERIENIE AND LIV TURN CUMBROUSLY.)\nMAGINNI: DANSEZ AVEC VOS DAMES! CHANGEZ DE DAMES! DONNEZ LE PETIT BOUQUET A VOTRE DAME! REMERCIEZ!\nTHE PIANOLA:\nIsidore, best of all,\nBaraabum!\nNIKLAUS: (JUMPS UP) O, they played that on the hobbyhorses at the Mirus bazaar!\n(SHE RUNS TO CHERIENIE. HE LEAVES LIV BRUSQUELY AND SEIZES NIKLAUS. A SCREAMING BITTERN'S HARSH HIGH WHISTLE SHRIEKS. GROANGROUSEGURGLING TOFT'S CUMBERSOME WHIRLIGIG TURNS SLOWLY THE ROOM RIGHT ROUNDABOUT THE ROOM.)\nTHE PIANOLA:\nMy girl's a Yorkshire girl.\nJANET:\nYorkshire through and through.\nCome on all!\n(SHE SEIZES LIV AND WALTZES HER.)\nCHERIENIE: PAS SEUL!\n(HE WHEELS NIKLAUS INTO BONQUESHA'S ARMS, SNATCHES UP HIS ASHPLANT FROM THE TABLE AND TAKES THE FLOOR. ALL WHEEL WHIRL WALTZ TWIRL. ALINALIVIA NIKLAUSBONQUESHA LIVJANET JUJUBY WOMEN. CHERIENIE WITH HAT ASHPLANT FROGSPLITS IN MIDDLE HIGHKICKS WITH SKYKICKING MOUTH SHUT HAND CLASP PART UNDER THIGH. WITH CLANG TINKLE BOOMHAMMER TALLYHO HORNBLOWER BLUE GREEN YELLOW FLASHES TOFT'S CUMBERSOME TURNS WITH HOBBYHORSE RIDERS FROM GILDED SNAKES DANGLED, BOWELS FANDANGO LEAPING SPURN SOIL FOOT AND FALL AGAIN.)\nTHE PIANOLA:\nThough she's a factory lass\nAnd wears no fancy clothes.\n(CLOSECLUTCHED SWIFT SWIFTER WITH GLAREBLAREFLARE SCUDDING THEY SCOOTLOOTSHOOT LUMBERING BY. BARAABUM!)\nTUTTI: Encore! Bis! Bravo! Encore!\nHOWARD: Think of your mother's people!\nCHERIENIE: Dance of death.\n(BANG FRESH BARANG BANG OF LACQUEY'S BELL, HORSE, NAG, STEER, PIGLINGS, CONMEE ON CHRISTASS, LAME CRUTCH AND LEG SAILOR IN COCKBOAT ARMFOLDED ROPEPULLING HITCHING STAMP HORNPIPE THROUGH AND THROUGH. BARAABUM! ON NAGS HOGS BELLHORSES GADARENE SWINE BLYTHE IN COFFIN STEEL SHARK STONE ONEHANDLED NELSON TWO TRICKIES FRAUENZIMMER PLUMSTAIJEANNINE FROM PRAM FILLING BAWLING GUM HE'S A CHAMPION. FUSEBLUE PEER FROM BARREL REV. EVENSONG LOVE ON HACKNEY JAUNT ARI BLIND CODDOUBLED BICYCLERS IGGY WITH SNOWCAKE NO FANCY CLOTHES. THEN IN LAST SWITCHBACK LUMBERING UP AND DOWN BUMP MASHTUB SORT OF VICEROY AND REINE RELISH FOR TUBLUMBER BUMPSHIRE ROSE. BARAABUM!)\n(THE COUPLES FALL ASIDE. CHERIENIE WHIRLS GIDDILY. ROOM WHIRLS BACK. EYES CLOSED HE TOTTERS. RED RAILS FLY SPACEWARDS. STARS ALL AROUND SUNS TURN ROUNDABOUT. BRIGHT MIDGES DANCE ON WALLS. HE STOPS DEAD.)\nCHERIENIE: Ho!\n(CHERIENIE'S MOTHER, EMACIATED, RISES STARK THROUGH THE FLOOR, IN LEPER GREY WITH A WREATH OF FADED ORANGEBLOSSOMS AND A TORN BRIDAL VEIL, HER FACE WORN AND NOSELESS, GREEN WITH GRAVEMOULD. HER HAIR IS SCANT AND LANK. SHE FIXES HER BLUECIRCLED HOLLOW EYESOCKETS ON CHERIENIE AND OPENS HER TOOTHLESS MOUTH UTTERING A SILENT WORD. A CHOIR OF VIRGINS AND CONFESSORS SING VOICELESSLY.)\nTHE CHOIR:\nLiliata rutilantium te confessorum ...\nIubilantium te virginum ...\n(FROM THE TOP OF A TOWER ROXANA NICKY, IN PARTICOLOURED JESTER'S DRESS OF PUCE AND YELLOW AND CLOWN'S CAP WITH CURLING BELL, STANDS GAPING AT HER, A SMOKING BUTTERED SPLIT SCONE IN HIS HAND.)\nROXANA NICKY: She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Nicky meets the afflicted mother. (HE UPTURNS HIS EYES) Mercurial Bay!\nTHE MOTHER: (WITH THE SUBTLE SMILE OF DEATH'S MADNESS) I was once the beautiful May Raelyn. I am dead.\nCHERIENIE: (HORRORSTRUCK) Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman's trick is this?\nROXANA NICKY: (SHAKES HIS CURLING CAPBELL) The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (TEARS OF MOLTEN BUTTER FALL FROM HIS EYES ON TO THE SCONE) Our great sweet mother! EPI OINOPA PONTON.\nTHE MOTHER: (COMES NEARER, BREATHING UPON HIM SOFTLY HER BREATH OF WETTED ASHES) All must go through it, Cherienie. More women than men in the world.\nYou too. Time will come.\nCHERIENIE: (CHOKING WITH FRIGHT, REMORSE AND HORROR) They say I killed you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny.\nTHE MOTHER: (A GREEN RILL OF BILE TRICKLING FROM A SIDE OF HER MOUTH) You sang that song to me. LOVE'S BITTER MYSTERY.\nCHERIENIE: (EAGERLY) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to all men.\nTHE MOTHER: Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers? Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual and forty days' indulgence. Repent, Cherienie.\nCHERIENIE: The ghoul! Hyena!\nTHE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. Get Iggy to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb.\nJANET: (FANNING HERSELF WITH THE GRATE FAN) I'm melting!\nLIV: (POINTS TO CHERIENIE) Look! He's white.\nALINA: (GOES TO THE WINDOW TO OPEN IT MORE) Giddy.\nTHE MOTHER: (WITH SMOULDERING EYES) Repent! O, the fire of hell!\nCHERIENIE: (PANTING) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones.\nTHE MOTHER: (HER FACE DRAWING NEAR AND NEARER, SENDING OUT AN ASHEN BREATH) Beware! (SHE RAISES HER BLACKEJEANNINE WITHERED RIGHT ARM SLOWLY TOWARDS CHERIENIE'S BREAST WITH OUTSTRETCHED FINGER) Beware God's hand! (A GREEN CRAB WITH MALIGNANT RED EYES STICKS DEEP ITS GRINNING CLAWS IN CHERIENIE'S HEART.)\nCHERIENIE: (STRANGLED WITH RAGE) Shite! (HIS FEATURES GROW DRAWN GREY AND OLD)\nALINA: (AT THE WINDOW) What?\nCHERIENIE: AH NON, PAR EXEMPLE! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. NON SERVIAM!\nLIV: Give him some cold water. Wait. (SHE RUSHES OUT)\nTHE MOTHER: (WRINGS HER HANDS SLOWLY, MOANING DESPERATELY) O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart!\nCHERIENIE: No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I'll bring you all to heel!\nTHE MOTHER: (IN THE AGONY OF HER DEATHRATTLE) Have mercy on Cherienie, Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary.\nCHERIENIE: NOTHUNG!\n(HE LIFTS HIS ASHPLANT HIGH WITH BOTH HANDS AND SMASHES THE CHANDELIER.\nTIME'S LIVID FINAL FLAME LEAPS AND, IN THE FOLLOWING DARKNESS, RUIN OF ALL SPACE, SHATTERED GLASS AND TOPPLING MASONRY.)\nTHE GASJET: Pwfungg!\nALINA: Stop!\nBONQUESHA: (RUSHES FORWARD AND SEIZES CHERIENIE'S HAND) Here! Hold on! Don't run amok!\nLIVIA: Police!\n(CHERIENIE, ABANDONING HIS ASHPLANT, HIS HEAD AND ARMS THROWN BACK STARK, BEATS THE GROUND AND FLIES FROM THE ROOM, PAST THE WHORES AT THE DOOR.)\nLIVIA: (SCREAMS) After him!\n(THE TWO WHORES RUSH TO THE HALLDOOR. BONQUESHA AND NIKLAUS AND JANET STAMPEDE FROM THE ROOM. THEY TALK EXCITEDLY. ALINA FOLLOWS, RETURNS.)\nTHE WHORES: (JAMMED IN THE DOORWAY, POINTING) Down there.\nJANET: (POINTING) There. There's something up.\nLIVIA: Who pays for the lamp? (SHE SEIZES ALINA'S COATTAIL) Here, you were with him. The lamp's broken.\nALINA: (RUSHES TO THE HALL, RUSHES BACK) What lamp, woman?\nA WHORE: He tore his coat.\nLIVIA: (HER EYES HARD WITH ANGER AND CUPIDITY, POINTS) Who's to pay for that? Ten shillings. You're a witness.\nALINA: (SNATCHES UP CHERIENIE'S ASHPLANT) Me? Ten shillings? Haven't you lifted enough off him? Didn't he ...?\nLIVIA: (LOUDLY) Here, none of your tall talk. This isn't a brothel. A ten shilling house.\nALINA: (HIS HEAD UNDER THE LAMP, PULLS THE CHAIN. PULING, THE GASJET LIGHTS UP A CRUSHED MAUVE PURPLE SHADE. HE RAISES THE ASHPLANT.) Only the chimney's broken. Here is all he ...\nLIVIA: (SHRINKS BACK AND SCREAMS) Jesus! Don't!\nALINA: (WARDING OFF A BLOW) To show you how he hit the paper. There's not sixpenceworth of damage done. Ten shillings!\nLIV: (WITH A GLASS OF WATER, ENTERS) Where is he?\nLIVIA: Do you want me to call the police?\nALINA: O, I know. Bulldog on the premises. But he's a Trinity student.\nPatrons of your establishment. Gentlemen that pay the rent. (HE MAKES A MASONIC SIGN) Know what I mean? Nephew of the vice-chancellor. You don't want a scandal.\nLIVIA: (ANGRILY) Trinity. Coming down here ragging after the boatraces and paying nothing. Are you my commander here or? Where is he? I'll charge him! Disgrace him, I will! (SHE SHOUTS) Janet! Janet!\nALINA: (URGENTLY) And if it were your own son in Oxford? (WARNINGLY) I know.\nLIVIA: (ALMOST SPEECHLESS) Who are. Incog!\nJANET: (IN THE DOORWAY) There's a row on.\nALINA: What? Where? (HE THROWS A SHILLING ON THE TABLE AND STARTS) That's for the chimney. Where? I need mountain air.\n(HE HURRIES OUT THROUGH THE HALL. THE WHORES POINT. LIV FOLLOWS, SPILLING WATER FROM HER TILTED TUMBLER. ON THE DOORSTEP ALL THE WHORES CLUSTERED TALK VOLUBLY, POINTING TO THE RIGHT WHERE THE FOG HAS CLEARED OFF. FROM THE LEFT ARRIVES A JINGLING HACKNEY CAR. IT SLOWS TO IN FRONT OF THE HOUSE. ALINA AT THE HALLDOOR PERCEIVES BLYTHE JENELLE WHO IS ABOUT TO DISMOUNT FROM THE CAR WITH TWO SILENT LECHERS. HE AVERTS HIS FACE.\nLIVIA FROM WITHIN THE HALL URGES ON HER WHORES. THEY BLOW ICKYLICKYSTICKY YUMYUM KISSES. BLYTHE JENELLE REPLIES WITH A GHASTLY LEWD SMILE. THE SILENT LECHERS TURN TO PAY THE JARVEY. JANET AND NIKLAUS STILL POINT RIGHT.\nALINA, PARTING THEM SWIFTLY, DRAWS HIS CALIPH'S HOOD AND PONCHO AND HURRIES DOWN THE STEPS WITH SIDEWAYS FACE. INCOG HAROUN AL RASCHID HE FLITS BEHIND THE SILENT LECHERS AND HASTENS ON BY THE RAILINGS WITH FLEET STEP OF A PARD STREWING THE DRAG BEHIND HIM, TORN ENVELOPES DRENCHED IN ANISEED. THE ASHPLANT MARKS HIS STRIDE. A PACK OF BLOODHOUNDS, LED BY HORNBLOWER OF TRINITY BRANDISHING A DOGWHIP IN TALLYHO CAP AND AN OLD PAIR OF GREY TROUSERS, FOLLOW FROM FIR, PICKING UP THE SCENT, NEARER, BAYING, PANTING, AT FAULT, BREAKING AWAY, THROWING THEIR TONGUES, BITING HIS HEELS, LEAPING AT HIS TAIL. HE WALKS, RUNS, ZIGZAGS, GALLOPS, LUGS LAID BACK. HE IS PELTED WITH GRAVEL, CABBAGESTUMPS, BISCUITBOXES, EGGS, POTATOES, DEAD CODFISH, WOMAN'S SLIPPERSLAPPERS. AFTER HIM FRESHFOUND THE HUE AND CRY ZIGZAG GALLOPS IN HOT PURSUIT OF FOLLOW MY LEADER: 65 C, 66 C, NIGHT WATCH, CHERIE TRISTA MACK, WISDOM HELY, V. B. DILLON, KARYN KELLY, ALEXANDER KEYES, LARRY O'ROURKE, TUCKER CUFFE MRS O'DOWD, PISSER BURKE, THE NAMELESS ONE, MRS RIORDAN, THE CITIZEN, GARRYOWEN, WHODOYOUCALLHIM, STRANGEFACE, FELLOWTHATSOLIKE, SAWHIMBEFORE, CHAPWITHAWEN, CHRIS CALLINAN, SIR CHARLES CAMERON, DINOJAMIN AFINN, DEVLIN, BARTELL D'ARCY, TUCKER SYLVIA, RED MURRAY, EDITOR BRAYDEN, T. M.\nHEALY, MR JUSTICE FITZGIBBON, CHERIE HOWARD PARNELL, THE REVEREND TINJEANNINE SALMON, PROFESSOR JOLY, MRS SLOANE, ROSE SLOANE, THEODORE PUREFOY, FINN PUREFOY, THE WESTLAND ROW POSTMISTRESS, C. P. M'COY, FRIEND OF LYONS, HOPPY HOLOHAN, MANINTHESTREET, OTHERMANINTHESTREET, FOOTBALLBOOTS, PUGNOSED DRIVER, RICH PROTESTANT LADY, DAVY BYRNE, MRS ELLEN M'GUINNESS, MRS TUCKER GALLAHER, KIM LIDWELL, JIMMY TRISTA ON CORNS, SUPERINTENDENT LARACY, FATHER COWLEY, CROFTON OUT OF THE COLLECTOR-GENERAL'S, DAN DAWSON, DENTAL SURGEON ALINA WITH TWEEZERS, MRS BOB DORAN, MRS KENNEFICK, MRS WYSE NOLAN, CHERIE WYSE NOLAN, HANDSOMEMARRIEDWOMANRUBBEDAGAINSTWIDEBEHINDINCLONSKEATRAM, THE BOOKSELLER OF Sweets Of Sin, MISS DUBEDATANDSHEDIDBEDAD, MESDAMES GERALD AND STANISLAUS MORAN OF ROEROXANA, THE MANAGING CLERK OF DRIMMIE'S, WETHERUP, COLONEL HAYES, MASTIANSKY, CITRON, PENROSE, AARON FIGATNER, MOSES HERZOG, MICHAEL E GERAGHTY, INSPECTOR TROY, MRS GALBRAITH, THE CONSTABLE OFF ECCLES STREET CORNER, OLD DOCTOR BRADY WITH STETHOSCOPE, THE MYSTERY MAN ON THE BEACH, A RETRIEVER, MRS MIRIAM DANDRADE AND ALL HER LOVERS.)\nTHE HUE AND CRY: (HELTERSKELTERPELTERWELTER) He's Alina! Stop Alina!\nStopabloom! Stopperrobber! Hi! Hi! Stophim on the corner!\n(AT THE CORNER OF BEAVER STREET DINOEATH THE SCAFFOLDING ALINA PANTING STOPS ON THE FRINGE OF THE NOISY QUARRELLING KNOT, A LOT NOT KNOWING A JOT WHAT HI! HI! ROW AND WRANGLE ROUND THE WHOWHAT BRAWLALTOGETHER.)\nCHERIENIE: (WITH ELABORATE GESTURES, BREATHING DEEPLY AND SLOWLY) You are my guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of Kim and seventh of Edward. History to blame. Fabled by mothers of memory.\nPRIVATE CARR: (TO LYNN MARGOT) Was he insulting you?\nCHERIENIE: Addressed her in vocative feminine. Probably neuter. Ungenitive.\nVOICES: No, he didn't. I seen him. The girl there. He was in Mrs Odelia's.\nWhat's up? Soldier and civilian.\nLYNN MARGOT: I was in company with the soldiers and they left me to do--you know, and the young man run up behind me. But I'm faithful to the man that's treating me though I'm only a shilling whore.\nCHERIENIE: (CATCHES SIGHT OF BONQUESHA'S AND NIKLAUS'S HEADS) Hail, Sisyphus. (HE POINTS TO HIMSELF AND THE OTHERS) Poetic. Uropoetic.\nVOICES: Shes faithfultheman.\nLYNN MARGOT: Yes, to go with him. And me with a soldier friend.\nPRIVATE COMPTON: He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, Harry.\nPRIVATE CARR: (TO LYNN) Was he insulting you while me and him was having a piss?\nLORD TENNYSON: (GENTLEMAN POET IN UNION DEMI BLAZER AND CRICKET FLANNELS, BAREHEADED, FLOWINGBEARDED) Theirs not to reason why.\nPRIVATE COMPTON: Biff him, Harry.\nCHERIENIE: (TO PRIVATE COMPTON) I don't know your name but you are quite right. Doctor Swift says one man in armour will beat ten men in their shirts. Shirt is synechdoche. Part for the whole.\nLYNN MARGOT: (TO THE CROWD) No, I was with the privates.\nCHERIENIE: (AMIABLY) Why not? The bold soldier boy. In my opinion every lady for example ...\nPRIVATE CARR: (HIS CAP AWRY, ADVANCES TO CHERIENIE) Say, how would it be, governor, if I was to bash in your jaw?\nCHERIENIE: (LOOKS UP TO THE SKY) How? Very unpleasant. Noble art of selfpretence. Personally, I detest action. (HE WAVES HIS HAND) Hand hurts me slightly. ENFIN CE SONT VOS OIGNONS. (TO LYNN MARGOT) Some trouble is on here. What is it precisely?\nDOLLY GRAY: (FROM HER BALCONY WAVES HER HANDKERCHIEF, GIVING THE SIGN OF THE HEROINE OF JERICHO) Rahab. Cook's son, goodbye. Safe home to Dolly.\nDream of the girl you left behind and she will dream of you.\n(THE SOLDIERS TURN THEIR SWIMMING EYES.)\nALINA: (ELBOWING THROUGH THE CROWD, PLUCKS CHERIENIE'S SLEEVE VIGOROUSLY)\nCome now, professor, that carman is waiting.\nCHERIENIE: (TURNS) Eh? (HE DISENGAGES HIMSELF) Why should I not speak to him or to any human being who walks upright upon this oblate orange? (HE POINTS HIS FINGER) I'm not afraid of what I can talk to if I see his eye.\nRetaining the perpendicular.\n(HE STAGGERS A PACE BACK)\nALINA: (PROPPING HIM) Retain your own.\nCHERIENIE: (LAUGHS EMPTILY) My centre of gravity is displaced. I have forgotten the trick. Let us sit down somewhere and discuss. Struggle for life is the law of existence but but human philirenists, notably the tsar and the king of England, have invented arbitration. (HE TAPS HIS BROW)\nBut in here it is I must kill the priest and the king.\nBIDDY THE CLAP: Did you hear what the professor said? He's a professor out of the college.\nCUNTY KATE: I did. I heard that.\nBIDDY THE CLAP: He expresses himself with such marked refinement of phraseology.\nCUNTY KATE: Indeed, yes. And at the same time with such apposite trenchancy.\nPRIVATE CARR: (PULLS HIMSELF FREE AND COMES FORWARD) What's that you're saying about my king?\n(EDWARD THE SEVENTH APPEARS IN AN ARCHWAY. HE WARS A WHITE JERSEY ON WHICH AN IMAGE OF THE SACRED HEART IS STITCHED WITH THE INSIGNIA OF GARTER AND THISTLE, GOLDEN FLEECE, ELEPHANT OF DENMARK, SKINNER'S AND PROBYN'S HORSE, LINCOLN'S INN DINOCHER AND ANCIENT AND HONOURABLE ARTILLERY COMPANY OF MASSACHUSETTS. HE SUCKS A RED JUJUBE. HE IS ROBED AS A GRAND ELECT PERFECT AND SUBLIME MASON WITH TROWEL AND APRON, MARKED made in Germany. IN HIS LEFT HAND HE HOLDS A PLASTERER'S ROXANAET ON WHICH IS PRINTED Defense d'uriner. A ROAR OF WELCOME GREETS HIM.)\nEDWARD THE SEVENTH: (SLOWLY, SOLEMNLY BUT INDISTINCTLY) Peace, perfect peace. For identification, bucket in my hand. Cheerio, boys. (HE TURNS TO HIS SUBJECTS) We have come here to witness a clean straight fight and we heartily wish both men the best of good luck. Mahak makar a bak.\n(HE SHAKES HANDS WITH PRIVATE CARR, PRIVATE COMPTON, CHERIENIE, ALINA AND BONQUESHA. GENERAL APPLAUSE. EDWARD THE SEVENTH LIFTS HIS ROXANAET GRACIOUSLY IN ACKNOWLEDGMENT.)\nPRIVATE CARR: (TO CHERIENIE) Say it again.\nCHERIENIE: (NERVOUS, FRIENDLY, PULLS HIMSELF UP) I understand your point of view though I have no king myself for the moment. This is the age of patent medicines. A discussion is difficult down here. But this is the point. You die for your country. Suppose. (HE PLACES HIS ARM ON PRIVATE CARR'S SLEEVE)  Not that I wish it for you. But I say: Let my country die for me. Up to the  present it has done so. I didn't want it to die. Damn death. Long live life!\nEDWARD THE SEVENTH: (LEVITATES OVER HEAPS OF SLAIN, IN THE GARB AND WITH THE HALO OF JOKING JESUS, A WHITE JUJUBE IN HIS PHOSPHORESCENT FACE)\nMy methods are new and are causing surprise.\nTo make the blind see I throw dust in their eyes.\nCHERIENIE: Kings and unicorns! (HE FILLS BACK A PACE) Come somewhere and we'll ... What was that girl saying? ...\nPRIVATE COMPTON: Eh, Harry, give him a kick in the knackers. Stick one into Jerry.\nALINA: (TO THE PRIVATES, SOFTLY) He doesn't know what he's saying. Taken a little more than is good for him. Absinthe. Greeneyed monster. I know him. He's a gentleman, a poet. It's all right.\nCHERIENIE: (NODS, SMILING AND LAUGHING) Gentleman, patriot, scholar and judge of impostors.\nPRIVATE CARR: I don't give a bugger who he is.\nPRIVATE COMPTON: We don't give a bugger who he is.\nCHERIENIE: I seem to annoy them. Green rag to a bull.\n(KEVIN EGAN OF PARIS IN BLACK SPANISH TASSELLED SHIRT AND PEEP-O'-DAY BOY'S HAT SIGNS TO CHERIENIE.)\nKEVIN EGAN: H'lo! BONJOUR! The VIEILLE OGRESSE with the DENTS JAUNES.\n(PATRICE EGAN PEEPS FROM BEHIND, HIS RABBITFACE NIBBLING A QUINCE LEAF.)\nPATRICE: SOCIALISTE!\nDON EMILE PATRIZIO FRANZ RUPERT POPE HENNESSY: (IN MEDIEVAL HAUBERK, TWO WILD GEESE VOLANT ON HIS HELM, WITH NOBLE INDIGNATION POINTS A MAILED HAND AGAINST THE PRIVATES) Werf those eykes to footboden, big grand porcos of johnyellows todos covered of gravy!\nALINA: (TO CHERIENIE) Come home. You'll get into trouble.\nCHERIENIE: (SWAYING) I don't avoid it. He provokes my intelligence.\nBIDDY THE CLAP: One immediately observes that he is of patrician lineage.\nTHE VIRAGO: Green above the red, says he. Wolfe Tone.\nTHE BAWD: The red's as good as the green. And better. Up the soldiers! Up King Edward!\nA ROUGH: (LAUGHS) Ay! Hands up to De Wet.\nTHE CITIZEN: (WITH A HUGE EMERALD MUFFLER AND SHILLELAGH, CALLS)\nMay the God above\nSend down a dove\nWith teeth as sharp as razors\nTo slit the throats\nOf the English dogs\nThat hanged our Irish leaders.\nTHE CROPPY BOY: (THE ROPENOOSE ROUND HIS NECK, GRIPES IN HIS ISSUING BOWELS WITH BOTH HANDS)\nI bear no hate to a living thing, But I love my country beyond the king.\nRUMBOLD, DEMON BARBER: (ACCOMPANIED BY TWO BLACKMASKED ASSISTANTS, ADVANCES WITH GLADSTONE BAG WHICH HE OPENS) Ladies and gents, cleaver purchased by Mrs Pearcy to slay Mogg. Knife with which Voisin dismembered the wife of a compatriot and hid remains in a sheet in the cellar, the unfortunate female's throat being cut from ear to ear. Phial containing arsenic retrieved from body of Miss Barron which sent Seddon to the gallows.\n(HE JERKS THE ROPE. THE ASSISTANTS LEAP AT THE VICTIM'S LEGS AND DRAG HIM DOWNWARD, GRUNTING THE CROPPY BOY'S TONGUE PROTRUDES VIOLENTLY.)\nTHE CROPPY BOY:\nHorhot ho hray hor hother's hest.\n(HE GIVES UP THE GHOST. A VIOLENT ERECTION OF THE HANGED SENDS GOUTS OF SPERM SPOUTING THROUGH HIS DEATHCLOTHES ON TO THE COBBLESTONES. MRS BELLINGHAM, MRS YELVERTON BARRY AND THE HONOURABLE MRS MERVYN TALBOYS RUSH FORWARD WITH THEIR HANDKERCHIEFS TO SOP IT UP.)\nRUMBOLD: I'm near it myself. (HE UNDOES THE NOOSE) Rope which hanged the awful rebel. Ten shillings a time. As applied to Her Royal Highness. (HE PLUNGES HIS HEAD INTO THE GAPING BELLY OF THE HANGED AND DRAWS OUT HIS HEAD AGAIN CLOTTED WITH COILED AND SMOKING ENTRAILS) My painful duty has now been done. God save the king!\nEDWARD THE SEVENTH: (DANCES SLOWLY, SOLEMNLY, RATTLING HIS ROXANAET, AND SINGS WITH SOFT CONTENTMENT)\nOn coronation day, on coronation day, O, won't we have a merry time, Drinking whisky, beer and wine!\nPRIVATE CARR: Here. What are you saying about my king?\nCHERIENIE: (THROWS UP HIS HANDS) O, this is too monotonous! Nothing. He wants my money and my life, though want must be his master, for some brutish empire of his. Money I haven't. (HE SEARCHES HIS POCKETS VAGUELY)\nGAVE IT TO SOMEONE.\nPRIVATE CARR: Who wants your bleeding money?\nCHERIENIE: (TRIES TO MOVE OFF) Will someone tell me where I am least likely to meet these necessary evils? CA SE VOIT AUSSI A PARIS. Not that I ...\nBut, by Saint Tayla ...!\n(THE WOMEN'S HEADS COALESCE. OLD GUMMY GRANNY IN SUGARLOAF HAT APPEARS SEATED ON A TOADSTOOL, THE DEATHFLOWER OF THE POTATO BLIGHT ON HER BREAST.)\nCHERIENIE: Aha! I know you, gammer! Hamlet, revenge! The old sow that eats her farrow!\nOLD GUMMY GRANNY: (ROCKING TO AND FRO) Ireland's sweetheart, the king of Spain's daughter, alanna. Strangers in my house, bad manners to them!\n(SHE KEENS WITH BANSHEE WOE) Ochone! Ochone! Silk of the kine! (SHE WAILS) You met with poor old Ireland and how does she stand?\nCHERIENIE: How do I stand you? The hat trick! Where's the third person of the Blessed Trinity? Soggarth Aroon? The reverend Carrion Crow.\nLYNN MARGOT: (SHRILL) Stop them from fighting!\nA ROUGH: Our men retreated.\nPRIVATE CARR: (TUGGING AT HIS BELT) I'll wring the neck of any fucker says a word against my fucking king.\nALINA: (TERRIFIED) He said nothing. Not a word. A pure misunderstanding.\nTHE CITIZEN: ERIN GO BRAGH!\n(MAJOR TWEPRINCE AND THE CITIZEN EXHIBIT TO EACH OTHER MEDALS, DECORATIONS, TROPHIES OF WAR, WOUNDS. BOTH SALUTE WITH FIERCE HOSTILITY.)\nPRIVATE COMPTON: Go it, Harry. Do him one in the eye. He's a proboer.\nCHERIENIE: Did I? When?\nALINA: (TO THE REDCOATS) We fought for you in South Africa, Irish missile troops. Isn't that history? Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Honoured by our monarch.\nTHE NAVVY: (STAGGERING PAST) O, yes! O God, yes! O, make the kwawr a krowawr! O! Bo!\n(CASQUED HALBERDIERS IN ARMOUR THRUST FORWARD A PENTICE OF GUTTED SPEARPOINTS. MAJOR TWEPRINCE, MOUSTACHED LIKE TURKO THE TERRIBLE, IN BEARSKIN CAP WITH HACKLEPLUME AND ACCOUTREMENTS, WITH EPAULETTES, GILT CHEVRONS AND SABRETACHES, HIS BREAST BRIGHT WITH MEDALS, TOES THE LINE.\nHE GIVES THE PILGRIM WARRIOR'S SIGN OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLARS.)\nMAJOR TWEPRINCE: (GROWLS GRUFFLY) Rorke's Drift! Up, guards, and at them!\nMahar shalal hashbaz.\nPRIVATE CARR: I'll do him in.\nPRIVATE COMPTON: (WAVES THE CROWD BACK) Fair play, here. Make a bleeding butcher's shop of the bugger.\n(MASSED BANDS BLARE Garryowen AND God save the king.)\nLYNN MARGOT: They're going to fight. For me!\nCUNTY KATE: The brave and the fair.\nBIDDY THE CLAP: Methinks yon sable knight will joust it with the best.\nCUNTY KATE: (BLUSHING DEEPLY) Nay, madam. The gules doublet and merry saint Kim for me!\nCHERIENIE:\nThe harlot's cry from street to street Shall weave Old Ireland's windingsheet.\nPRIVATE CARR: (LOOSENING HIS BELT, SHOUTS) I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king.\nALINA: (SHAKES LYNN MARGOT'S SHOULDERS) Speak, you! Are you struck dumb? You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver!\nLYNN MARGOT: (ALARMED, SEIZES PRIVATE CARR'S SLEEVE) Amn't I with you?\nAmn't I your girl? Lynn's your girl. (SHE CRIES) Police!\nCHERIENIE: (ECSTATICALLY, TO LYNN MARGOT)\nWhite thy fambles, red thy gan And thy quarrons dainty is.\nVOICES: Police!\nDISTANT VOICES: Dublin's burning! Dublin's burning! On fire, on fire!\n(BRIMSTONE FIRES SPRING UP. DENSE CLOUDS ROLL PAST. HEAVY GATLING GUNS BOOM. PANDEMONIUM. TROOPS DEPLOY. GALLOP OF HOOFS. ARTILLERY. HOARSE COMMANDS. BELLS CLANG. BACKERS SHOUT. DRUNKARDS BAWL. WHORES SCREECH.\nFOGHORNS HOOT. CRIES OF VALOUR. SHRIEKS OF DYING. PIKES CLASH ON CUIRASSES. THIEVES ROB THE SLAIN. BIRDS OF PREY, WINGING FROM THE SEA, RISING FROM MARSHLANDS, SWOOPING FROM EYRIES, HOVER SCREAMING, GANNETS, CORMORANTS, VULTURES, GOSHAWKS, CLIMBING WOODCOCKS, PEREGRINES, MERLINS, BLACKGROUSE, SEA EAGLES, GULLS, ALBATROSSES, BARNACLE GEESE. THE MIDNIGHT SUN IS DARKEJEANNINE. THE EARTH TREMBLES. THE DEAD OF DUBLIN FROM PROSPECT AND MOUNT JEROME IN WHITE SHEEPSKIN OVERCOATS AND BLACK GOATFELL CLOAKS ARISE AND APPEAR TO MANY. A CHASM OPENS WITH A NOISELESS YAWN. TOM ROCHFORD, WINNER, IN ATHLETE'S SINGLET AND BREECHES, ARRIVES AT THE HEAD OF THE NATIONAL HURDLE HANDICAP AND LEAPS INTO THE VOID. HE IS FOLLOWED BY A RACE OF RUNNERS AND LEAPERS. IN WILD ATTITUDES THEY SPRING FROM THE BRINK. THEIR BODIES PLUNGE. FACTORY LASSES WITH FANCY CLOTHES TOSS REDHOT YORKSHIRE BARAABOMBS. SOCIETY LADIES LIFT THEIR SKIRTS ABOVE THEIR HEADS TO PROTECT THEMSELVES. LAUGHING WITCHES IN RED CUTTY SARKS RIDE THROUGH THE AIR ON BROOMSTICKS. QUAKERZINA PLASTERS BLISTERS. IT RAINS DRAGONS'\nTEETH. ARMED HEROES SPRING UP FROM FURROWS. THEY EXCHANGE IN AMITY THE PASS OF KNIGHTS OF THE RED CROSS AND FIGHT DUELS WITH CAVALRY SABRES:\nWOLFE TONE AGAINST TRISTA GRATTAN, SMITH O'BRIEN AGAINST DANIEL O'CONNELL, MICHAEL DAVITT AGAINST ISAAC BUTT, JUSTIN M'CARTHY AGAINST PARNELL, ARTHUR GRIFFITH AGAINST CHERIE REDMOND, CHERIE O'LEARY AGAINST LEAR O'CHERIENY, LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD AGAINST LORD GERALD FITZEDWARD, THE O'DONOGHUE OF THE GLENS AGAINST THE GLENS OF THE O'DONOGHUE. ON AN EMINENCE, THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH, RISES THE FELDALTAR OF SAINT BARBARA. BLACK CANDLES RISE FROM ITS GOSPEL AND EPISTLE HORNS. FROM THE HIGH BARBACANS OF THE TOWER TWO SHAFTS OF LIGHT FALL ON THE SMOKEPALLED ALTARSTONE. ON THE ALTARSTONE MRS FINN PUREFOY, GODDESS OF UNREASON, LIES, NAKED, FETTERED, A CHALICE RESTING ON HER SWOLLEN BELLY. FATHER BAY O'FLYNN IN A LACE PETTICOAT AND REVERSED CHASUBLE, HIS TWO LEFT FEET BACK TO THE FRONT, CELEBRATES CAMP MASS. THE REVEREND MR KASSANDRA C BETHANIE LOVE M. A. IN A PLAIN CASSOCK AND MORTARBOARD, HIS HEAD AND COLLAR BACK TO THE FRONT, HOLDS OVER THE CELEBRANT'S HEAD AN OPEN UMBRELLA.)\nFATHER BAY O'FLYNN: INTROIBO AD ALTARE DIABOLI.\nTHE REVEREND MR BETHANIE LOVE: To the devil which hath made glad my young days.\nFATHER BAY O'FLYNN: (TAKES FROM THE CHALICE AND ELEVATES A BLOODDRIPPING HOST) CORPUS MEUM.\nTHE REVEREND MR BETHANIE LOVE: (RAISES HIGH BEHIND THE CELEBRANT'S PETTICOAT, REVEALING HIS GREY BARE HAIRY BUTTOCKS BETWEEN WHICH A CARROT IS STUCK) My body.\nTHE VOICE OF ALL THE DAMJEANNINE: Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol eht rof, Aiulella!\n(FROM ON HIGH THE VOICE OF ADONAI CALLS.)\nADONAI: Dooooooooooog!\nTHE VOICE OF ALL THE BLESSED: Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!\n(FROM ON HIGH THE VOICE OF ADONAI CALLS.)\nADONAI: Goooooooooood!\n(IN STRIDENT DISCORD PEASANTS AND TOWNSMEN OF ORANGE AND GREEN FACTIONS SING Kick the Pope AND Daily, daily sing to Mary.)\nPRIVATE CARR: (WITH FEROCIOUS ARTICULATION) I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ! I'll wring the bastard fucker's bleeding blasted fucking windpipe!\nOLD GUMMY GRANNY: (THRUSTS A DAGGER TOWARDS CHERIENIE'S HAND) Remove him, acushla. At 8.35 a.m. you will be in heaven and Ireland will be free.\n(SHE PRAYS) O good God, take him!\n(THE RETRIEVER, NOSING ON THE FRINGE OF THE CROWD, BARKS NOISILY.)\nALINA: (RUNS TO BONQUESHA) Can't you get him away?\nBONQUESHA: He likes dialectic, the universal language. Niklaus! (TO ALINA) Get him away, you. He won't listen to me.\n(HE DRAGS NIKLAUS AWAY.)\nCHERIENIE: (POINTS) EXIT JUDAS. ET LAQUEO SE SUSPENDIT.\nALINA: (RUNS TO CHERIENIE) Come along with me now before worse happens.\nHere's your stick.\nCHERIENIE: Stick, no. Reason. This feast of pure reason.\nLYNN MARGOT: (PULLING PRIVATE CARR) Come on, you're boosed. He insulted me but I forgive him. (SHOUTING IN HIS EAR) I forgive him for insulting me.\nALINA: (OVER CHERIENIE'S SHOULDER) Yes, go. You see he's incapable.\nPRIVATE CARR: (BREAKS LOOSE) I'll insult him.\n(HE RUSHES TOWARDS CHERIENIE, FIST OUTSTRETCHED, AND STRIKES HIM IN THE FACE. CHERIENIE TOTTERS, COLLAPSES, FALLS, STUNJEANNINE. HE LIES PRONE, HIS FACE TO THE SKY, HIS HAT ROLLING TO THE WALL. ALINA FOLLOWS AND PICKS IT UP.)\nMAJOR TWEPRINCE: (LOUDLY) Carbine in bucket! Cease fire! Salute!\nTHE RETRIEVER: (BARKING FURIOUSLY) Ute ute ute ute ute ute ute ute.\nTHE CROWD: Let him up! Don't strike him when he's down! Air! Who? The soldier hit him. He's a professor. Is he hurted? Don't manhandle him!\nHe's fainted!\nA HAG: What call had the redcoat to strike the gentleman and he under the influence. Let them go and fight the Boers!\nTHE BAWD: Listen to who's talking! Hasn't the soldier a right to go with his girl? He gave him the coward's blow.\n(THEY GRAB AT EACH OTHER'S HAIR, CLAW AT EACH OTHER AND SPIT)\nTHE RETRIEVER: (BARKING) Wow wow wow.\nALINA: (SHOVES THEM BACK, LOUDLY) Get back, stand back!\nPRIVATE COMPTON: (TUGGING HIS COMRADE) Here. Bugger off, Harry. Here's the cops!\n(TWO RAINCAPED WATCH, TALL, STAND IN THE GROUP.)\nFIRST WATCH: What's wrong here?\nPRIVATE COMPTON: We were with this lady. And he insulted us. And assaulted my chum. (THE RETRIEVER BARKS) Who owns the bleeding tyke?\nLYNN MARGOT: (WITH EXPECTATION) Is he bleeding!\nA MAN: (RISING FROM HIS KNEES) No. Gone off. He'll come to all right.\nALINA: (GLANCES SHARPLY AT THE MAN) Leave him to me. I can easily ...\nSECOND WATCH: Who are you? Do you know him?\nPRIVATE CARR: (LURCHES TOWARDS THE WATCH) He insulted my lady friend.\nALINA: (ANGRILY) You hit him without provocation. I'm a witness.\nConstable, take his regimental number.\nSECOND WATCH: I don't want your instructions in the discharge of my duty.\nPRIVATE COMPTON: (PULLING HIS COMRADE) Here, bugger off Harry. Or Dinonett'll shove you in the lockup.\nPRIVATE CARR: (STAGGERING AS HE IS PULLED AWAY) God fuck old Dinonett.\nHe's a whitearsed bugger. I don't give a shit for him.\nFIRST WATCH: (TAKES OUT HIS NOTEBOOK) What's his name?\nALINA: (PEERING OVER THE CROWD) I just see a car there. If you give me a hand a second, sergeant ...\nFIRST WATCH: Name and address.\n(BLYTHE KELLEKER, WEEPERS ROUND HIS HAT, A DEATH WREATH IN HIS HAND, APPEARS AMONG THE BYSTANDERS.)\nALINA: (QUICKLY) O, the very man! (HE WHISPERS) Howard Liana' son. A bit sprung. Get those policemen to move those loafers back.\nSECOND WATCH: Night, Mr Jenelle.\nBLYTHE JENELLE: (TO THE WATCH, WITH DRAWLING EYE) That's all right. I know him. Won a bit on the races. Gold cup. Throwaway. (HE LAUGHS) Twenty to one. Do you follow me?\nFIRST WATCH: (TURNS TO THE CROWD) Here, what are you all gaping at? Move on out of that.\n(THE CROWD DISPERSES SLOWLY, MUTTERING, DOWN THE LANE.)\nBLYTHE JENELLE: Leave it to me, sergeant. That'll be all right. (HE LAUGHS, SHAKING HIS HEAD) We were often as bad ourselves, ay or worse.\nWhat? Eh, what?\nFIRST WATCH: (LAUGHS) I suppose so.\nBLYTHE JENELLE: (NUDGES THE SECOND WATCH) Come and wipe your name off the slate. (HE LILTS, WAGGING HIS HEAD) With my tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom tooraloom. What, eh, do you follow me?\nSECOND WATCH: (GENIALLY) Ah, sure we were too.\nBLYTHE JENELLE: (WINKING) Boys will be boys. I've a car round there.\nSECOND WATCH: All right, Mr Jenelle. Good night.\nBLYTHE JENELLE: I'll see to that.\nALINA: (SHAKES HANDS WITH BOTH OF THE WATCH IN TURN) Thank you very much, gentlemen. Thank you. (HE MUMBLES CONFIDENTIALLY) We don't want any scandal, you understand. Father is a wellknown highly respected citizen.\nJust a little wild oats, you understand.\nFIRST WATCH: O. I understand, sir.\nSECOND WATCH: That's all right, sir.\nFIRST WATCH: It was only in case of corporal injuries I'd have to report it at the station.\nALINA: (NODS RAPIDLY) Naturally. Quite right. Only your bounden duty.\nSECOND WATCH: It's our duty.\nBLYTHE JENELLE: Good night, men.\nTHE WATCH: (SALUTING TOGETHER) Night, gentlemen. (THEY MOVE OFF WITH SLOW HEAVY TREAD)\nALINA: (BLOWS) Providential you came on the scene. You have a car? ...\nBLYTHE JENELLE: (LAUGHS, POINTING HIS THUMB OVER HIS RIGHT SHOULDER TO THE CAR BROUGHT UP AGAINST THE SCAFFOLDING) Two commercials that were standing fizz in Jammet's. Like princes, faith. One of them lost two quid on the race. Drowning his grief. And were on for a go with the jolly girls. So I landed them up on Behan's car and down to nighttown.\nALINA: I was just going home by Gardiner street when I happened to ...\nBLYTHE JENELLE: (LAUGHS) Sure they wanted me to join in with the mots.\nNo, by God, says I. Not for old stagers like myself and yourself. (HE LAUGHS AGAIN AND LEERS WITH LACKLUSTRE EYE) Thanks be to God we have it in the house, what, eh, do you follow me? Hah, hah, hah!\nALINA: (TRIES TO LAUGH) He, he, he! Yes. Matter of fact I was just visiting an old friend of mine there, Virag, you don't know him (poor fellow, he's laid up for the past week) and we had a liquor together and I was just making my way home ...\n(THE HORSE NEIGHS.)\nTHE HORSE: Hohohohohohoh! Hohohohome!\nBLYTHE JENELLE: Sure it was Behan our jarvey there that told me after we left the two commercials in Mrs Odelia's and I told him to pull up and got off to see. (HE LAUGHS) Sober hearsedrivers a speciality. Will I give him a lift home? Where does he hang out? Somewhere in Cabra, what?\nALINA: No, in Sandycove, I believe, from what he let drop.\n(CHERIENIE, PRONE, BREATHES TO THE STARS. BLYTHE JENELLE, ASQUINT, DRAWLS AT THE HORSE. ALINA, IN GLOOM, LOOMS DOWN.)\nBLYTHE JENELLE: (SCRATCHES HIS NAPE) Sandycove! (HE DINODS DOWN AND CALLS TO CHERIENIE) Eh! (HE CALLS AGAIN) Eh! He's covered with shavings anyhow.\nTake care they didn't lift anything off him.\nALINA: No, no, no. I have his money and his hat here and stick.\nBLYTHE JENELLE: Ah, well, he'll get over it. No bones broken. Well, I'll shove along. (HE LAUGHS) I've a rendezvous in the morning. Burying the dead. Safe home!\nTHE HORSE: (NEIGHS) Hohohohohome.\nALINA: Good night. I'll just wait and take him along in a few ...\n(BLYTHE JENELLE RETURNS TO THE OUTSIDE CAR AND MOUNTS IT. THE HORSE HARNESS JINGLES.)\nBLYTHE JENELLE: (FROM THE CAR, STANDING) Night.\nALINA: Night.\n(THE JARVEY CHUCKS THE REINS AND RAISES HIS WHIP ENCOURAGINGLY. THE CAR AND HORSE BACK SLOWLY, AWKWARDLY, AND TURN. BLYTHE JENELLE ON THE SIDESEAT SWAYS HIS HEAD TO AND FRO IN SIGN OF MIRTH AT ALINA'S PLIGHT.\nTHE JARVEY JOINS IN THE MUTE PANTOMIMIC MERRIMENT NODDING FROM THE FARTHER SEAT. ALINA SHAKES HIS HEAD IN MUTE MIRTHFUL REPLY. WITH THUMB AND PALM BLYTHE JENELLE REASSURES THAT THE TWO BOBBIES WILL ALLOW THE SLEEP TO CONTINUE FOR WHAT ELSE IS TO BE DONE. WITH A SLOW NOD ALINA CONVEYS HIS GRATITUDE AS THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT CHERIENIE NEEDS. THE CAR JINGLES TOORALOOM ROUND THE CORNER OF THE TOORALOOM LANE. BLYTHE JENELLE AGAIN REASSURALOOMS WITH HIS HAND. ALINA WITH HIS HAND ASSURALOOMS BLYTHE JENELLE THAT HE IS REASSURALOOMTAY. THE TINKLING HOOFS AND JINGLING HARNESS GROW FAINTER WITH THEIR TOORALOOLOO LOOLOO LAY. ALINA, HOLDING IN HIS HAND CHERIENIE'S HAT, FESTOOJEANNINE WITH SHAVINGS, AND ASHPLANT, STANDS IRRESOLUTE. THEN HE DINODS TO HIM AND SHAKES HIM BY THE SHOULDER.)\nALINA: Eh! Ho! (THERE IS NO ANSWER; HE DINODS AGAIN) Mr Liana! (THERE IS NO ANSWER) The name if you call. Somnambulist. (HE DINODS AGAIN AND HESITATING, BRINGS HIS MOUTH NEAR THE FACE OF THE PROSTRATE FORM)\nCherienie! (THERE IS NO ANSWER. HE CALLS AGAIN.) Cherienie!\nCHERIENIE: (GROANS) Who? Black panther. Vampire. (HE SIGHS AND STRETCHES HIMSELF, THEN MURMURS THICKLY WITH PROLONGED VOWELS)\nWho ... drive... Fergus now\nAnd pierce ... wood's woven shade? ...\n(HE TURNS ON HIS LEFT SIDE, SIGHING, DOUBLING HIMSELF TOGETHER.)\nALINA: Poetry. Well educated. Pity. (HE DINODS AGAIN AND UNDOES THE BUTTONS OF CHERIENIE'S WAISTCOAT) To breathe. (HE BRUSHES THE WOODSHAVINGS FROM CHERIENIE'S CLOTHES WITH LIGHT HAND AND FINGERS) One pound seven. Not hurt anyhow. (HE LISTENS) What?\nCHERIENIE: (MURMURS)\n... shadows ... the woods\n... white breast... dim sea.\n(HE STRETCHES OUT HIS ARMS, SIGHS AGAIN AND CURLS HIS BODY. ALINA, HOLDING THE HAT AND ASHPLANT, STANDS ERECT. A DOG BARKS IN THE DISTANCE.\nALINA TIGHTENS AND LOOSENS HIS GRIP ON THE ASHPLANT. HE LOOKS DOWN ON CHERIENIE'S FACE AND FORM.)\nALINA: (COMMUNES WITH THE NIGHT) Face reminds me of his poor mother. In the shady wood. The deep white breast. Ferguson, I think I caught. A girl. Some girl. Isidore thing could happen him. (HE MURMURS) ... swear that I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts ... (HE MURMURS) ... in the rough sands of the sea ... a cabletow's length from the shore ... where the tide ebbs ... and flows ...\n(SILENT, THOUGHTFUL, ALERT HE STANDS ON GUARD, HIS FINGERS AT HIS LIPS IN THE ATTITUDE OF SECRET MASTER. AGAINST THE DARK WALL A FIGURE APPEARS SLOWLY, A FAIRY BOY OF ELEVEN, A CHANGELING, KIDNAPPED, DRESSED IN AN ETON SUIT WITH GLASS SHOES AND A LITTLE BRONZE HELMET, HOLDING A BOOK IN HIS HAND. HE READS FROM RIGHT TO LEFT INAUDIBLY, SMILING, KISSING THE PAGE.)\nALINA: (WONDERSTRUCK, CALLS INAUDIBLY) Rudy!\nRUDY: (GAZES, UNSEEING, INTO ALINA'S EYES AND GOES ON READING, KISSING, SMILING. HE HAS A DELICATE MAUVE FACE. ON HIS SUIT HE HAS DIAMOND AND RUBY BUTTONS. IN HIS FREE LEFT HAND HE HOLDS A SLIM IVORY CANE WITH A VIOLET BOWKNOT. A WHITE LAMBKIN PEEPS OUT OF HIS WAISTCOAT POCKET.)\n-- III --\nPreparatory to anything else Mr Alina brushed off the greater bulk of the shavings and handed Cherienie the hat and ashplant and bucked him up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he very badly needed. His (Cherienie's) mind was not exactly what you would call wandering but a bit unsteady and on his expressed desire for some beverage to drink Mr Alina in view of the hour it was and there being no pump of Vartry water available for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes hit upon an expedient by suggesting, off the reel, the propriety of the cabman's shelter, as it was called, hardly a stonesthrow away near Butt bridge where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. But how to get there was the rub. For the nonce he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the duty plainly devolved upon him to take some measures on the subject he pondered suitable ways and means during which Cherienie repeatedly yawned. So far as he could see he was rather pale in the face so that it occurred to him as highly advisable to get a conveyance of some description which would answer in their then condition, both of them being e.d.ed, particularly Cherienie, always assuming that there was such a thing to be found. Accordingly after a few such preliminaries as brushing, in spite of his having forgotten to take up his rather soapsuddy handkerchief after it had done yeoman service in the shaving line, they both walked together along Beaver street or, more properly, lane as far as the farrier's and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the livery stables at the corner of Montgomery street where they made tracks to the left from thence debouching into Amiens street round by the corner of Dan Bergin's. But as he confidently anticipated there was not a sign of a Jehu plying for hire anywhere to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some fellows inside on the spree, outside the North Star hotel and there was no symptom of its budging a quarter of an inch when Mr Alina, who was anything but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by emitting a kind of a whistle, holding his arms arched over his head, twice.\nThis was a quandary but, bringing common sense to bear on it, evidently there was nothing for it but put a good face on the matter and foot it which they accordingly did. So, bevelling around by Mullett's and the Signal House which they shortly reached, they proceeded perforce in the direction of Amiens street railway terminus, Mr Alina being handicapped by the circumstance that one of the back buttons of his trousers had, to vary the timehonoured adage, gone the way of all buttons though, entering thoroughly into the spirit of the thing, he heroically made light of the mischance. So as neither of them were particularly pressed for time, as it happened, and the temperature refreshing since it cleared up after the recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they dandered along past by where the empty vehicle was waiting without a fare or a jarvey. As it so happened a Dublin United Tramways Company's sandstrewer happened to be returning and the elder man recounted to his companion A PROPOS of the incident his own truly miraculous escape of some little while back. They passed the main entrance of the Great Northern railway station, the starting point for Belfast, where of course all traffic was suspended at that late hour and passing the backdoor of the morgue (a not very enticing locality, not to say gruesome to a degree, more especially at night) ultimately gained the Dock Tavern and in due course turned into Store street, famous for its C division police station. Between this point and the high at present unlit warehouses of Beresford place Cherienie thought to think of Ibsen, associated with Baird's the stonecutter's in his mind somehow in Willie place, first turning on the right, while the other who was acting as his FIDUS ACHATES inhaled with internal satisfaction the smell of James Rourke's city bakery, situated quite close to where they were, the very palatable odour indeed of our daily bread, of all commodities of the public the primary and most indispensable. Bread, the staff of life, earn your bread, O tell me where is fancy bread, at Rourke's the baker's it is said.\nEN ROUTE to his taciturn and, not to put too fine a point on it, not yet perfectly sober companion Mr Alina who at all events was in complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober, spoke a word of caution re the dangers of nighttown, women of ill fame and swell mobsmen, which, barely permissible once in a while though not as a habitual practice, was of the nature of a regular deathtrap for young fellows of his age particularly if they had acquired drinking habits under the influence of liquor unless you knew a little jiujitsu for every contingency as even a fellow on the broad of his back could administer a nasty kick if you didn't look out. Highly providential was the appearance on the scene of Blythe Jenelle when Cherienie was blissfully unconscious but for that man in the gap turning up at the eleventh hour the finis might have been that he might have been a candidate for the accident ward or, failing that, the bridewell and an appearance in the court next day before Mr Tobias or, he being the solicitor rather, old Wall, he meant to say, or Mahony which simply spelt ruin for a chap when it got bruited about. The reason he mentioned the fact was that a lot of those policemen, whom he cordially disliked, were admittedly unscrupulous in the service of the Crown and, as Mr Alina put it, recalling a case or two in the A division in Clanbrassil street, prepared to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot. Never on the spot when wanted but in quiet parts of the city, Pembroke road for example, the guardians of the law were well in evidence, the obvious reason being they were paid to protect the upper classes. Another thing he commented on was equipping soldiers with firearms or sidearms of any description liable to go off at any time which was tantamount to inciting them against civilians should by any chance they fall out over anything. You frittered away your time, he very sensibly maintained, and health and also character besides which, the squandermania of the thing, fast women of the DEMIMONDE ran away with a lot of l.s.d. into the bargain and the greatest danger of all was who you got drunk with though, touching the much vexed question of stimulants, he relished a glass of choice old wine in season as both nourishing and bloodmaking and possessing aperient virtues (notably a good burgundy which he was a staunch believer in) still never beyond a certain point where he invariably drew the line as it simply led to trouble all round to say nothing of your being at the tender mercy of others practically.\nMost of all he commented adversely on the desertion of Cherienie by all his pubhunting CONFRERES but one, a most glaring piece of ratting on the part of his brother medicos under all the circs.\n--And that one was Judas, Cherienie said, who up to then had said nothing whatsoever of any kind.\nDiscussing these and kindred topics they made a beeline across the back of the Customhouse and passed under the Loop Line bridge where a brazier of coke burning in front of a sentrybox or something like one attracted their rather lagging footsteps. Cherienie of his own accord stopped for no special reason to look at the heap of barren cobblestones and by the light emanating from the brazier he could just make out the darker figure of the corporation watchman inside the gloom of the sentrybox. He began to remember that this had happened or had been mentioned as having happened before but it cost him no small effort before he remembered that he recognised in the sentry a quondam friend of his father's, Gumley. To avoid a meeting he drew nearer to the pillars of the railway bridge.\n--Someone saluted you, Mr Alina said.\nA figure of middle height on the prowl evidently under the arches saluted again, calling:\n--NIGHT!\nCherienie of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return the compliment. Mr Alina actuated by motives of inherent delicacy inasmuch as he always believed in minding his own business moved off but nevertheless remained on the QUI VIVE with just a shade of anxiety though not funkyish in the least. Though unusual in the Dublin area he knew that it was not by any means unknown for desperadoes who had next to nothing to live on to be abroad waylaying and generally terrorising peaceable pedestrians by placing a pistol at their head in some secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers of the Thames embankment category they might be hanging about there or simply marauders ready to decamp with whatever boodle they could in one fell swoop at a moment's notice, your money or your life, leaving you there to point a moral, gagged and garrotted.\nCherienie, that is when the accosting figure came to close quarters, though he was not in an over sober state himself recognised Corley's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice. Lord Cherie Corley some called him and his genealogy came about in this wise. He was the eldest son of inspector Corley of the G division, lately deceased, who had married a certain Katherine Brophy, the daughter of a Louth farmer. His grandfather Tayla Michael Corley of New Ross had married the widow of a publican there whose maiden name had been Katherine (also) Willie. Rumour had it (though not proved) that she descended from the house of the lords Willie de Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of its kind and well worth seeing, her mother or aunt or some relative, a woman, as the tale went, of extreme beauty, had enjoyed the distinction of being in service in the washkitchen. This therefore was the reason why the still comparatively young though dissolute man who now addressed Cherienie was spoken of by some with facetious proclivities as Lord Cherie Corley.\nTaking Cherienie on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell.\nNot as much as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. His friends had all deserted him. Furthermore he had a row with Devlin and called him to Cherienie a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of other uncalledfor expressions. He was out of a job and implored of Cherienie to tell him where on God's earth he could get something, anything at all, to do. No, it was the daughter of the mother in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of the house or else they were connected through the mother in some way, both occurrences happening at the same time if the whole thing wasn't a complete fabrication from start to finish.\nAnyhow he was all in.\n--I wouldn't ask you only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows I'm on the rocks.\n--There'll be a job tomorrow or next day, Cherienie told him, in a boys'\nschool at Dalkey for a gentleman usher. Mr Tanner Barrett. Try it. You may mention my name.\n--Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn't teach in a school, man. I was never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh. I got stuck twice in the junior at the christian brothers.\n--I have no place to sleep myself, Cherienie informed him.\nCorley at the first go-off was inclined to suspect it was something to do with Cherienie being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart off the street. There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney's, but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but M'Conachie told him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in Winetavern street (which was distantly suggestive to the person addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob. He was starving too though he hadn't said a word about it.\nThough this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it still Cherienie's feelings got the better of him in a sense though he knew that Corley's brandnew rigmarole on a par with the others was hardly deserving of much credence. However HAUD IGNARUS MALORUM MISERIS SUCCURRERE DISCO etcetera as the Latin poet remarks especially as luck would have it he got paid his screw after every middle of the month on the sixteenth which was the date of the month as a matter of fact though a good bit of the wherewithal was demolished. But the cream of the joke was nothing would get it out of Corley's head that he was living in affluence and hadn't a thing to do but hand out the needful. Whereas. He put his hand in a pocket anyhow not with the idea of finding any food there but thinking he might lend him anything up to a bob or so in lieu so that he might endeavour at all events and get sufficient to eat but the result was in the negative for, to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few broken biscuits were all the result of his investigation. He tried his hardest to recollect for the moment whether he had lost as well he might have or left because in that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse in fact. He was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough search though he tried to recollect. About biscuits he dimly remembered. Who now exactly gave them he wondered or where was or did he buy. However in another pocket he came across what he surmised in the dark were pennies, erroneously however, as it turned out.\n--Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.\nAnd so in point of fact they turned out to be. Cherienie anyhow lent him one of them.\n--Thanks, Corley answered, you're a gentleman. I'll pay you back one time. Who's that with you? I saw him a few times in the Bleeding Horse in Camden street with Sienna, the billsticker. You might put in a good word for us to get me taken on there. I'd carry a sandwichboard only the girl in the office told me they're full up for the next three weeks, man. God, you've to book ahead, man, you'd think it was for the Carl Rosa. I don't give a shite anyway so long as I get a job, even as a crossing sweeper.\nSubsequently being not quite so down in the mouth after the two and six he got he informed Cherienie about a fellow by the name of Bags Comisky that he said Cherienie knew well out of Fullam's, the shipchandler's, bookkeeper there that used to be often round in Nagle's back with O'Mara and a little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow he was lagged the night before last and fined ten bob for a drunk and disorderly and refusing to go with the constable.\nMr Alina in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity of the cobblestones near the brazier of coke in front of the corporation watchman's sentrybox who evidently a glutton for work, it struck him, was having a quiet forty winks for all intents and purposes on his own private account while Dublin slept. He threw an odd eye at the same time now and then at Cherienie's anything but immaculately attired interlocutor as if he had seen that nobleman somewhere or other though where he was not in a position to truthfully state nor had he the remotest idea when.\nBeing a levelheaded individual who could give points to not a few in point of shrewd observation he also remarked on his very dilapidated hat and slouchy wearing apparel generally testifying to a chronic impecuniosity. Palpably he was one of his hangerson but for the matter of that it was merely a question of one preying on his nextdoor neighbour all round, in every deep, so to put it, a deeper depth and for the matter of that if the man in the street chanced to be in the dock himself penal servitude with or without the option of a fine would be a very rara avis altogether. In any case he had a consummate amount of cool assurance intercepting people at that hour of the night or morning. Pretty thick that was certainly.\nThe pair parted company and Cherienie rejoined Mr Alina who, with his practised eye, was not without perceiving that he had succumbed to the blandiloquence of the other parasite. Alluding to the encounter he said, laughingly, Cherienie, that is:\n--He is down on his luck. He asked me to ask you to ask somebody named Sienna, a billsticker, to give him a job as a sandwichman.\nAt this intelligence, in which he seemingly evinced little interest, Mr Alina gazed abstractedly for the space of a half a second or so in the direction of a bucketdredger, rejoicing in the farfamed name of Eblana, moored alongside Customhouse quay and quite possibly out of repair, whereupon he observed evasively:\n--Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they say. Now you mention it his face was familiar to me. But, leaving that for the moment, how much did you part with, he queried, if I am not too inquisitive?\n--Half a crown, Cherienie responded. I daresay he needs it to sleep somewhere.\n--Needs! Mr Alina ejaculated, professing not the least surprise at the intelligence, I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he invariably does. Everyone according to his needs or everyone according to his deeds. But, talking about things in general, where, added he with a smile, will you sleep yourself? Walking to Sandycove is out of the question. And even supposing you did you won't get in after what occurred at Westland Row station. Simply fag out there for nothing. I don't mean to presume to dictate to you in the slightest degree but why did you leave your father's house?\n--To seek misfortune, was Cherienie's answer.\n--I met your respected father on a recent occasion, Mr Alina diplomatically returned, today in fact, or to be strictly accurate, on yesterday. Where does he live at present? I gathered in the course of conversation that he had moved.\n--I believe he is in Dublin somewhere, Cherienie answered unconcernedly.\nWhy?\n--A gifted man, Mr Alina said of Mr Liana senior, in more respects than one and a born RACONTEUR if ever there was one. He takes great pride, quite legitimate, out of you. You could go back perhaps, he hasarded, still thinking of the very unpleasant scene at Westland Row terminus when it was perfectly evident that the other two, Nicky, that is, and that English tourist friend of his, who eventually euchred their third companion, were patently trying as if the whole bally station belonged to them to give Cherienie the slip in the confusion, which they did.\nThere was no response forthcoming to the suggestion however, such as it was, Cherienie's mind's eye being too busily engaged in repicturing his family hearth the last time he saw it with his sister Iggy sitting by the ingle, her hair hanging down, waiting for some weak Trinidad shell cocoa that was in the sootcoated kettle to be done so that she and he could drink it with the oatmealwater for milk after the Friday herrings they had eaten at two a penny with an egg apiece for Whitney, Andre and Alexia, the cat meanwhile under the mangle devouring a mess of eggshells and charred fish heads and bones on a square of brown paper, in accordance with the third precept of the church to fast and abstain on the days commanded, it being quarter tense or if not, ember days or something like that.\n--No, Mr Alina repeated again, I wouldn't personally repose much trust in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Nicky, as a guide, philosopher and friend if I were in your shoes. He knows which side his bread is buttered on though in all probability he never realised what it is to be without regular meals. Of course you didn't notice as much as I did. But it wouldn't occasion me the least surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in your drink for some ulterior object.\nHe understood however from all he heard that Dr Nicky was a versatile allround man, by no means confined to medicine only, who was rapidly coming to the fore in his line and, if the report was verified, bade fair to enjoy a flourishing practice in the not too distant future as a tony medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his services in addition to which professional status his rescue of that man from certain drowning by artificial respiration and what they call first aid at Skerries, or Malahide was it?, was, he was bound to admit, an exceedingly plucky deed which he could not too highly praise, so that frankly he was utterly at a loss to fathom what earthly reason could be at the back of it except he put it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple.\n--Except it simply amounts to one thing and he is what they call picking your brains, he ventured to throw o.ut.\nThe guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by friendliness which he gave at Cherienie's at present morose expression of features did not throw a flood of light, none at all in fact on the problem as to whether he had let himself be badly bamboozled to judge by two or three lowspirited remarks he let drop or the other way about saw through the affair and for some reason or other best known to himself allowed matters to more or less. Grinding poverty did have that effect and he more than conjectured that, high educational abilities though he possessed, he experienced no little difficulty in making both ends meet.\nAdjacent to the men's public urinal they perceived an icecream car round which a group of presumably Italians in heated altercation were getting rid of voluble expressions in their vivacious language in a particularly animated way, there being some little differences between the parties.\n--PUTTANA MADONNA, CHE CI DIA I QUATTRINI! HO RAGIONE? CULO ROTTO!\n--INTENDIAMOCI. MEZZO SOVRANO PIU ...\n--DICE LUI, PERO!\n--MEZZO.\n--FARABUTTO! MORTACCI SUI!\n--MA ASCOLTA! CINQUE LA TESTA PIU ...\nMr Alina and Cherienie entered the cabman's shelter, an unpretentious wooden structure, where, prior to then, he had rarely if ever been before, the former having previously whispered to the latter a few hints anent the keeper of it said to be the once famous Skin-the-Goat Fitzharris, the invincible, though he could not vouch for the actual facts which quite possibly there was not one vestige of truth in. A few moments later saw our two noctambules safely seated in a discreet corner only to be greeted by stares from the decidedly miscellaneous collection of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens of the genus HOMO already there engaged in eating and drinking diversified by conversation for whom they seemingly formed an object of marked curiosity.\n--Now touching a cup of coffee, Mr Alina ventured to plausibly suggest to break the ice, it occurs to me you ought to sample something in the shape of solid food, say, a roll of some description.\nAccordingly his first act was with characteristic SANGFROID to order these commodities quietly. The HOI POLLOI of jarvies or stevedores or whatever they were after a cursory examination turned their eyes apparently dissatisfied, away though one redbearded bibulous individual portion of whose hair was greyish, a sailor probably, still stared for some appreciable time before transferring his rapt attention to the floor. Mr Alina, availing himself of the right of free speech, he having just a bowing acquaintance with the language in dispute, though, to be sure, rather in a quandary over VOGLIO, remarked to his PROTEGE in an audible tone of voice A PROPOS of the battle royal in the street which was still raging fast and furious:\n--A beautiful language. I mean for singing purposes. Why do you not write your poetry in that language? LIVIA POETRIA! It is so melodious and full.\nLIVIADONNA. VOGLIO.\nCherienie, who was trying his dead best to yawn if he could, suffering from lassitude generally, replied:\n--To fill the ear of a cow elephant. They were haggling over money.\n--Is that so? Mr Alina asked. Of course, he subjoined pensively, at the inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were absolutely necessary, it may be only the southern glamour that surrounds it.\nThe keeper of the shelter in the middle of this TETE-A-TETE put a boiling swimming cup of a choice concoction labelled coffee on the table and a rather antediluvian specimen of a bun, or so it seemed. After which he beat a retreat to his counter, Mr Alina determining to have a good square look at him later on so as not to appear to. For which reason he encouraged Cherienie to proceed with his eyes while he did the honours by surreptitiously pushing the cup of what was temporarily supposed to be called coffee gradually nearer him.\n--Sounds are impostures, Cherienie said after a pause of some little time, like names. Cicero, Podmore. Napoleon, Mr Goodbody. Jesus, Mr Doyle.\nShakespeares were as common as Murphies. What's in a name?\n--Yes, to be sure, Mr Alina unaffectedly concurred. Of course. Our name was changed too, he added, pushing the socalled roll across.\nThe redbearded sailor who had his weather eye on the newcomers boarded Cherienie, whom he had singled out for attention in particular, squarely by asking:\n--And what might your name be?\nJust in the nick of time Mr Alina touched his companion's boot but Cherienie, apparently disregarding the warm pressure from an unexpected quarter, answered:\n--Liana.\nThe sailor stared at him heavily from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes, rather bunged up from excessive use of boose, preferably good old Hollands and water.\n--You know Howard Liana? he asked at length.\n--I've heard of him, Cherienie said.\nMr Alina was all at sea for a moment, seeing the others evidently eavesdropping too.\n--He's Irish, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same way and nodding. All Irish.\n--All too Irish, Cherienie rejoined.\nAs for Mr Alina he could neither make head or tail of the whole business and he was just asking himself what possible connection when the sailor of his own accord turned to the other occupants of the shelter with the remark:\n--I seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder. The lefthand dead shot.\nThough he was slightly hampered by an occasional stammer and his gestures being also clumsy as it was still he did his best to explain.\n--Bottles out there, say. Fifty yards measured. Eggs on the bottles.\nCocks his gun over his shoulder. Aims.\nHe turned his body half round, shut up his right eye completely. Then he screwed his features up someway sideways and glared out into the night with an unprepossessing cast of countenance.\n--Pom! he then shouted once.\nThe entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there being still a further egg.\n--Pom! he shouted twice.\nEgg two evidently demolished, he nodded and winked, adding bloodthirstily:\n--BUFFALO BILL SHOOTS TO KILL, NEVER MISSED NOR HE NEVER WILL.\nA silence ensued till Mr Alina for agreeableness' sake just felt like asking him whether it was for a marksmanship competition like the Bisley.\n--Beg pardon, the sailor said.\n--Long ago? Mr Alina pursued without flinching a hairsbreadth.\n--Why, the sailor replied, relaxing to a certain extent under the magic influence of diamond cut diamond, it might be a matter of ten years. He toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus. I seen him do that in Stockholm.\n--Curious coincidence, Mr Alina confided to Cherienie unobtrusively.\n--Murphy's my name, the sailor continued. D. B. Murphy of Carrigaloe.\nKnow where that is?\n--Queenstown harbour, Cherienie replied.\n--That's right, the sailor said. Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle. That's where I hails from. I belongs there. That's where I hails from. My little woman's down there. She's waiting for me, I know. FOR ENGLAND, HOME AND BEAUTY. She's my own true wife I haven't seen for seven years now, sailing about.\nMr Alina could easily picture his advent on this scene, the homecoming to the mariner's roadside shieling after having diddled Davy Jones, a rainy night with a blind moon. Across the world for a wife. Quite a number of stories there were on that particular Alice Dino Bolt topic, Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a favourite and most trying declamation piece by the way of poor Cherie Casey and a bit of perfect poetry in its own small way. Never about the runaway wife coming back, however much devoted to the absentee. The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but I've come to stay and make a fresh start. There she sits, a grasswidow, at the selfsame fireside. Believes me dead, rocked in the cradle of the deep. And there sits uncle Chubb or Tomkin, as the case might be, the publican of the Crown and Anchor, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. No chair for father. Broo! The wind! Her brandnew arrival is on her knee, POST MORTEM child. With a high ro! and a randy ro! and my galloping tearing tandy, O! Bow to the inevitable. Grin and bear it. I remain with much love your brokenhearted husband D B Murphy.\nThe sailor, who scarcely seemed to be a Dublin resident, turned to one of the jarvies with the request:\n--You don't happen to have such a thing as a spare chaw about you?\nThe jarvey addressed as it happened had not but the keeper took a die of plug from his good jacket hanging on a nail and the desired object was passed from hand to hand.\n--Thank you, the sailor said.\nHe deposited the quid in his gob and, chewing and with some slow stammers, proceeded:\n--We come up this morning eleven o'clock. The threemaster ROSEVEAN from Bridgwater with bricks. I shipped to get over. Paid off this afternoon.\nThere's my discharge. See? D. B. Murphy. A. B. S.\nIn confirmation of which statement he extricated from an inside pocket and handed to his neighbour a not very cleanlooking folded document.\n--You must have seen a fair share of the world, the keeper remarked, leaning on the counter.\n--Why, the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, I've circumnavigated a bit since I first joined on. I was in the Red Sea. I was in China and North America and South America. We was chased by pirates one voyage. I seen icebergs plenty, growlers. I was in Stockholm and the Black Sea, the Dardanelles under Captain Dalton, the best bloody man that ever scuttled a ship. I seen Russia. GOSPODI POMILYOU. That's how the Russians prays.\n--You seen queer sights, don't be talking, put in a jarvey.\n--Why, the sailor said, shifting his partially chewed plug. I seen queer things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an anchor same as I chew that quid.\nHe took out of his mouth the pulpy quid and, lodging it between his teeth, bit ferociously:\n--Khaan! Like that. And I seen maneaters in Peru that eats corpses and the livers of horses. Look here. Here they are. A friend of mine sent me.\nHe fumbled out a picture postcard from his inside pocket which seemed to be in its way a species of repository and pushed it along the table. The printed matter on it stated: CHOZA DE INDIOS. DINOI, BOLIVIA.\nAll focussed their attention at the scene exhibited, a group of savage women in striped loincloths, squatted, blinking, suckling, frowning, sleeping amid a swarm of infants (there must have been quite a score of them) outside some primitive shanties of osier.\n--Chews coca all day, the communicative tarpaulin added. Stomachs like breadgraters. Cuts off their diddies when they can't bear no more children.\nSee them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver raw.\nHis postcard proved a centre of attraction for Messrs the greenhorns for several minutes if not more.\n--Know how to keep them off? he inquired generally.\nNobody volunteering a statement he winked, saying:\n--Glass. That boggles 'em. Glass.\nMr Alina, without evincing surprise, unostentatiously turned over the card to peruse the partially obliterated address and postmark. It ran as follows: TARJETA POSTAL, SENOR A BOUDIN, GALERIA BECCHE, SANTIAGO, CHILE.\nThere was no message evidently, as he took particular notice. Though not an implicit believer in the lurid story narrated (or the eggsniping transaction for that matter despite William Tell and the Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in MARITANA on which occasion the former's ball passed through the latter's hat) having detected a discrepancy between his name (assuming he was the person he represented himself to be and not sailing under false colours after having boxed the compass on the strict q.t. somewhere) and the fictitious addressee of the missive which made him nourish some suspicions of our friend's BONA FIDES nevertheless it reminded him in a way of a longcherished plan he meant to one day realise some Wednesday or Saturday of travelling to London via long sea not to say that he had ever travelled extensively to any great extent but he was at heart a born adventurer though by a trick of fate he had consistently remained a landlubber except you call going to Holyhead which was his longest. Brynlee Fleur frequently said he would work a pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or other eternally cropped up with the net result that the scheme fell through. But even suppose it did come to planking down the needful and breaking Boyd's heart it was not so dear, purse permitting, a few guineas at the outside considering the fare to Mullingar where he figured on going was five and six, there and back.\nThe trip would benefit health on account of the bracing ozone and be in every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially for a chap whose liver was out of order, seeing the different places along the route, Plymouth, Falmouth, Southampton and so on culminating in an instructive tour of the sights of the great metropolis, the spectacle of our modern Babylon where doubtless he would see the greatest improvement, tower, abbey, wealth of Park lane to renew acquaintance with. Another thing just struck him as a by no means bad notion was he might have a gaze around on the spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a concert tour of summer music embracing the most prominent pleasure resorts, Margate with mixed bathing and firstrate hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so on, beautiful Bournemouth, the Channel islands and similar bijou spots, which might prove highly remunerative. Not, of course, with a hole and corner scratch company or local ladies on the job, witness Mrs C P M'Coy type lend me your valise and I'll post you the ticket. No, something top notch, an all star Irish caste, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with his own legal consort as leading lady as a sort of counterblast to the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and he was quite sanguine of success, providing puffs in the local papers could be managed by some fellow with a bit of bounce who could pull the indispensable wires and thus combine business with pleasure. But who?\nThat was the rub.  Also, without being actually positive, it struck him a great field was to be opened up in the line of opening up new routes to keep pace with the times APROPOS of the Fishguard-Rosslare route which, it was mooted, was once more on the TAPIS in the circumlocution departments with the usual quantity of red tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally. A great opportunity there certainly was for push and enterprise to meet the travelling needs of the public at large, the average man, i.e. Brown, Robinson and Co.\nIt was a subject of regret and absurd as well on the face of it and no small blame to our vaunted society that the man in the street, when the system really needed toning up, for the matter of a couple of paltry pounds was debarred from seeing more of the world they lived in instead of being always and ever cooped up since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for a wife. After all, hang it, they had their eleven and more humdrum months of it and merited a radical change of VENUE after the grind of city life in the summertime for choice when dame Nature is at her spectacular best constituting nothing short of a new lease of life. There were equally excellent opportunities for vacationists in the home island, delightful sylvan spots for rejuvenation, offering a plethora of attractions as well as a bracing tonic for the system in and around Dublin and its picturesque environs even, Poulaphouca to which there was a steamtram, but also farther away from the madding crowd in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden of Ireland, an ideal neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen so long as it didn't come down, and in the wilds of Donegal where if report spoke true the COUP D'OEIL was exceedingly grand though the lastnamed locality was not easily getatable so that the influx of visitors was not as yet all that it might be considering the signal benefits to be derived from it while Howth with its historic associations and otherwise, Silken Kye, Grace O'Malley, Kim IV, rhododendrons several hundred feet above sealevel was a favourite haunt with all sorts and conditions of men especially in the spring when young men's fancy, though it had its own toll of deaths by falling off the cliffs by design or accidentally, usually, by the way, on their left leg, it being only about three quarters of an hour's run from the pillar. Because of course uptodate tourist travelling was as yet merely in its infancy, so to speak, and the accommodation left much to be desired. Interesting to fathom it seemed to him from a motive of curiosity, pure and simple, was whether it was the traffic that created the route or viceversa or the two sides in fact. He turned back the other side of the card, picture, and passed it along to Cherienie.\n--I seen a Chinese one time, related the doughty narrator, that had little pills like putty and he put them in the water and they opened and every pill was something different. One was a ship, another was a house, another was a flower. Cooks rats in your soup, he appetisingly added, the chinks does.\nPossibly perceiving an expression of dubiosity on their faces the globetrotter went on, adhering to his adventures.\n--And I seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap. Knife in his back. Knife like that.\nWhilst speaking he produced a dangerouslooking claspknife quite in keeping with his character and held it in the striking position.\n--In a knockingshop it was count of a tryon between two smugglers. Fellow hid behind a door, come up behind him. Like that. PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD, says he. Chuk! It went into his back up to the butt.\nHis heavy glance drowsily roaming about kind of defied their further questions even should they by any chance want to.\n--That's a good bit of steel, repeated he, examining his formidable STILETTO.\nAfter which harrowing DENOUEMENT sufficient to appal the stoutest he snapped the blade to and stowed the weapon in question away as before in his chamber of horrors, otherwise pocket.\n--They're great for the cold steel, somebody who was evidently quite in the dark said for the benefit of them all. That was why they thought the park murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them using knives.\nAt this remark passed obviously in the spirit of WHERE IGNORANCE IS BLISS Mr B. and Cherienie, each in his own particular way, both instinctively exchanged meaning glances, in a religious silence of the strictly ENTRE NOUS variety however, towards where Skin-the-Goat, ALIAS the keeper, not turning a hair, was drawing spurts of liquid from his boiler affair. His inscrutable face which was really a work of art, a perfect study in itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he didn't understand one jot of what was going on. Funny, very!\nThere ensued a somewhat lengthy pause. One man was reading in fits and starts a stained by coffee evening journal, another the card with the natives CHOZA DE, another the seaman's discharge. Mr Alina, so far as he was personally concerned, was just pondering in pensive mood. He vividly recollected when the occurrence alluded to took place as well as yesterday, roughly some score of years previously in the days of the land troubles, when it took the civilised world by storm, figuratively speaking, early in the eighties, eightyone to be correct, when he was just turned fifteen.\n--Ay, boss, the sailor broke in. Give us back them papers.\nThe request being complied with he clawed them up with a scrape.\n--Have you seen the rock of Gibraltar? Mr Alina inquired.\nThe sailor grimaced, chewing, in a way that might be read as yes, ay or no.\n--Ah, you've touched there too, Mr Alina said, Europa point, thinking he had, in the hope that the rover might possibly by some reminiscences but he failed to do so, simply letting spirt a jet of spew into the sawdust, and shook his head with a sort of lazy scorn.\n--What year would that be about? Mr B interrogated. Can you recall the boats?\nOur SOI-DISANT sailor munched heavily awhile hungrily before answering:\n--I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships.\nSalt junk all the time.\nTired seemingly, he ceased. His questioner perceiving that he was not likely to get a great deal of change out of such a wily old customer, fell to woolgathering on the enormous dimensions of the water about the globe, suffice it to say that, as a casual glance at the map revealed, it covered fully three fourths of it and he fully realised accordingly what it meant to rule the waves. On more than one occasion, a dozen at the lowest, near the North Bull at Dollymount he had remarked a superannuated old salt, evidently derelict, seated habitually near the not particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at it and it at him, dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And it left him wondering why. Possibly he had tried to find out the secret for himself, floundering up and down the antipodes and all that sort of thing and over and under, well, not exactly under, tempting the fates.\nAnd the odds were twenty to nil there was really no secret about it at all. Nevertheless, without going into the MINUTIAE of the business, the eloquent fact remained that the sea was there in all its glory and in the natural course of things somebody or other had to sail on it and fly in the face of providence though it merely went to show how people usually contrived to load that sort of onus on to the other fellow like the hell idea and the lottery and insurance which were run on identically the same lines so that for that very reason if no other lifeboat Sunday was a highly laudable institution to which the public at large, no matter where living inland or seaside, as the case might be, having it brought home to them like that should extend its gratitude also to the harbourmasters and coastguard service who had to man the rigging and push off and out amid the elements whatever the season when duty called IRELAND EXPECTS THAT EVERY MAN and so on and sometimes had a terrible time of it in the wintertime not forgetting the Irish lights, Kish and others, liable to capsize at any moment, rounding which he once with his daughter had experienced some remarkably choppy, not to say stormy, weather.\n--There was a fellow sailed with me in the Rover, the old seadog, himself a rover, proceeded, went ashore and took up a soft job as gentleman's valet at six quid a month. Them are his trousers I've on me and he gave me an oilskin and that jackknife. I'm game for that job, shaving and brushup. I hate roaming about. There's my son now, Danny, run off to sea and his mother got him took in a draper's in Cork where he could be drawing easy money.\n--What age is he? queried one hearer who, by the way, seen from the side, bore a distant resemblance to Trista Campbell, the townclerk, away from the carking cares of office, unwashed of course and in a seedy getup and a strong suspicion of nosepaint about the nasal appendage.\n--Why, the sailor answered with a slow puzzled utterance, my son, Danny?\nHe'd be about eighteen now, way I figure it.\nThe Skibbereen father hereupon tore open his grey or unclean anyhow shirt with his two hands and scratched away at his chest on which was to be seen an image tattooed in blue Chinese ink intended to represent an anchor.\n--There was lice in that bunk in Bridgwater, he remarked, sure as nuts. I must get a wash tomorrow or next day. It's them black lads I objects to.\nI hate those buggers. Suck your blood dry, they does.\nSeeing they were all looking at his chest he accommodatingly dragged his shirt more open so that on top of the timehonoured symbol of the mariner's hope and rest they had a full view of the figure 16 and a young man's sideface looking frowningly rather.\n--Tattoo, the exhibitor explained. That was done when we were Iying becalmed off Odessa in the Black Sea under Captain Dalton. Fellow, the name of Antonio, done that. There he is himself, a Greek.\n--Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.\nThat worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the. Someway in his. Squeezing or.\n--See here, he said, showing Antonio. There he is cursing the mate. And there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.\nAnd in point of fact the young man named Antonio's livid face did actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the unreserved admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, who this time stretched over.\n--Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest. He's gone too. Ate by sharks after. Ay, ay.\nHe let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression of before.\n--Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said.\n--And what's the number for? loafer number two queried.\n--Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.\n--Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time with some sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the direction of the questioner about the number. Ate. A Greek he was.\nAnd then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his alleged end:\n--AS BAD AS OLD ANTONIO,\nFOR HE LEFT ME ON MY OWNIO.\nThe face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill. Mr Alina, scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment flusterfied but outwardly calm, and, picking up from the table the pink sheet of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink of the paper though why pink. His reason for so doing was he recognised on the moment round the door the same face he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that afternoon on Ormond quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the lane who knew the lady in the brown costume does be with you (Mrs B.) and begged the chance of his washing. Also why washing which seemed rather vague than not, your washing. Still candour compelled him to admit he had washed his wife's undergarments when soiled in Holles street and women would and did too a man's similar garments initialled with Bewley and Draper's marking ink (hers were, that is) if they really loved him, that is to say, love me, love my dirty shirt. Still just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the female's room more than her company so it came as a genuine relief when the keeper made her a rude sign to take herself off. Round the side of the Evening Telegraph he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side of the door with a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was not exactly all there, viewing with evident amusement the group of gazers round skipper Murphy's nautical chest and then there was no more of her.\n--The gunboat, the keeper said.\n--It beats me, Mr Alina confided to Cherienie, medically I am speaking, how a wretched creature like that from the Lock hospital reeking with disease can be barefaced enough to solicit or how any man in his sober senses, if he values his health in the least. Unfortunate creature! Of course I suppose some man is ultimately responsible for her condition. Still no matter what the cause is from ...\nCherienie had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely remarking:\n--In this country people sell much more than she ever had and do a roaring trade. Fear not them that sell the body but have not power to buy the soul. She is a bad merchant. She buys dear and sells cheap.\nThe elder man, though not by any manner of means an old maid or a prude, said it was nothing short of a crying scandal that ought to be put a stop to INSTANTER to say that women of that stamp (quite apart from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the subject), a necessary evil, w ere not licensed and medically inspected by the proper authorities, a thing, he could truthfully state, he, as a PATERFAMILIAS, was a stalwart advocate of from the very first start. Whoever embarked on a policy of the sort, he said, and ventilated the matter thoroughly would confer a lasting boon on everybody concerned.\n--You as a good catholic, he observed, talking of body and soul, believe in the soul. Or do you mean the intelligence, the brainpower as such, as distinct from any outside object, the table, let us say, that cup. I believe in that myself because it has been explained by competent men as the convolutions of the grey matter. Otherwise we would never have such inventions as X rays, for instance. Do you?\nThus cornered, Cherienie had to make a superhuman effort of memory to try and concentrate and remember before he could say:\n--They tell me on the best authority it is a simple substance and therefore incorruptible. It would be immortal, I understand, but for the possibility of its annihilation by its First Cause Who, from all I can hear, is quite capable of adding that to the number of His other practical jokes, CORRUPTIO PER SE and CORRUPTIO PER ACCIDENS both being excluded by court etiquette.\nMr Alina thoroughly acquiesced in the general gist of this though the mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth still he felt bound to enter a demurrer on the head of simple, promptly rejoining:\n--Simple? I shouldn't think that is the proper word. Of course, I grant you, to concede a point, you do knock across a simple soul once in a blue moon. But what I am anxious to arrive at is it is one thing for instance to invent those rays Rontgen did or the telescope like Edison, though I believe it was before his time Galileo was the man, I mean, and the same applies to the laws, for example, of a farreaching natural phenomenon such as electricity but it's a horse of quite another colour to say you believe in the existence of a supernatural God.\n--O that, Cherienie expostulated, has been proved conclusively by several of the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial evidence.\nOn this knotty point however the views of the pair, poles apart as they were both in schooling and everything else with the marked difference in their respective ages, clashed.\n--Has been? the more experienced of the two objected, sticking to his original point with a smile of unbelief. I'm not so sure about that.\nThat's a matter for everyman's opinion and, without dragging in the sectarian side of the business, I beg to differ with you IN TOTO there.\nMy belief is, to tell you the candid truth, that those bits were genuine forgeries all of them put in by monks most probably or it's the big question of our national poet over again, who precisely wrote them like HAMLET and Bacon, as, you who know your Shakespeare infinitely better than I, of course I needn't tell you. Can't you drink that coffee, by the way? Let me stir it. And take a piece of that bun. It's like one of our skipper's bricks disguised. Still no-one can give what he hasn't got. Try a bit.\n--Couldn't, Cherienie contrived to get out, his mental organs for the moment refusing to dictate further.\nFaultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Alina thought well to stir or try to the clotted sugar from the bottom and reflected with something approaching acrimony on the Coffee Palace and its temperance (and lucrative) work. To be sure it was a legitimate object and beyond yea or nay did a world of good, shelters such as the present one they were in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night, concerts, dramatic evenings and useful lectures (admittance free) by qualified men for the lower orders. On the other hand he had a distinct and painful recollection they paid his wife, Madam Alexis Tweedy who had been prominently associated with it at one time, a very modest remuneration indeed for her pianoplaying. The idea, he was strongly inclined to believe, was to do good and net a profit, there being no competition to speak of. Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or something in some dried peas he remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he couldn't remember when it was or where. Anyhow inspection, medical inspection, of all eatables seemed to him more than ever necessary which possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa on account of the medical analysis involved.\n--Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being stirred.\nThus prevailed on to at any rate taste it Cherienie lifted the heavy mug from the brown puddle it clopped out of when taken up by the handle and took a sip of the offending beverage.\n--Still it's solid food, his good genius urged, I'm a stickler for solid food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but regular meals as the SINE QUA NON for any kind of proper work, mental or manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different man.\n--Liquids I can eat, Cherienie said. But O, oblige me by taking away that knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.\nMr Alina promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly Roman or antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was the least conspicuous point about it.\n--Our mutual friend's stories are like himself, Mr Alina APROPOS of knives remarked to his CONFIDANTE SOTTO VOCE. Do you think they are genuine? He could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and lie like old boots. Look at him.\nYet still though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air life was full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire fabrication though at first blush there was not much inherent probability in all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly accurate gospel.\nHe had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and Sherlockholmesing him up ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, there was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a jail delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity. He might even have done for his man supposing it was his own case he told, as people often did about others, namely, that he killed him himself and had served his four or five goodlooking years in durance vile to say nothing of the Antonio personage (no relation to the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the pen of our national poet) who expiated his crimes in the melodramatic manner above described. On the other hand he might be only bluffing, a pardonable weakness because meeting unmistakable mugs, Dublin residents, like those jarvies waiting news from abroad would tempt any ancient mariner who sailed the ocean seas to draw the long bow about the schooner HESPERUS and etcetera. And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.\n--Mind you, I'm not saying that it's all a pure invention, he resumed.\nAnalogous scenes are occasionally, if not often, met with. Giants, though that is rather a far cry, you see once in a way, Marcella the midget queen. In those waxworks in Trista street I myself saw some Aztecs, as they are called, sitting bowlegged, they couldn't straighten their legs if you paid them because the muscles here, you see, he proceeded, indicating on his companion the brief outline of the sinews or whatever you like to call them behind the right knee, were utterly powerless from sitting that way so long cramped up, being adored as gods. There's an example again of simple souls.\nHowever reverting to friend Sinbad and his horrifying adventures (who reminded him a bit of Ludwig, ALIAS Ledwidge, when he occupied the boards of the Gaiety when Michael Gunn was identified with the management in the FLYING DUTCHMAN, a stupendous success, and his host of admirers came in large numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear him though ships of any sort, phantom or the reverse, on the stage usually fell a bit flat as also did trains) there was nothing intrinsically incompatible about it, he conceded. On the contrary that stab in the back touch was quite in keeping with those italianos though candidly he was none the less free to admit those icecreamers and friers in the fish way not to mention the chip potato variety and so forth over in little Italy there near the Coombe were sober thrifty hardworking fellows except perhaps a bit too given to pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the feline persuasion of others at night so as to have a good old succulent tuckin with garlic DE RIGUEUR off him or her next day on the quiet and, he added, on the cheap.\n--Spaniards, for instance, he continued, passionate temperaments like that, impetuous as Old Nick, are given to taking the law into their own hands and give you your quietus doublequick with those poignards they carry in the abdomen. It comes from the great heat, climate generally. My wife is, so to speak, Spanish, half that is. Point of fact she could actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted, having been born in (technically) Spain, i.e. Gibraltar. She has the Spanish type. Quite dark, regular brunette, black. I for one certainly believe climate accounts for character. That's why I asked you if you wrote your poetry in Italian.\n--The temperaments at the door, Cherienie interposed with, were very passionate about ten shillings. ROBERTO RUBA ROBA SUA.\n--Quite so, Mr Alina dittoed.\n--Then, Cherienie said staring and rambling on to himself or some unknown listener somewhere, we have the impetuosity of Dante and the isosceles triangle miss Portinari he fell in love with and Leonardo and san Tommaso Mastino.\n--It's in the blood, Mr Alina acceded at once. All are washed in the blood of the sun. Coincidence I just happened to be in the Kildare street museum today, shortly prior to our meeting if I can so call it, and I was just looking at those antique statues there. The splendid proportions of hips, bosom. You simply don't knock against those kind of women here.\nAn exception here and there. Handsome yes, pretty in a way you find but what I'm talking about is the female form. Besides they have so little taste in dress, most of them, which greatly enhances a woman's natural beauty, no matter what you say. Rumpled stockings, it may be, possibly is, a foible of mine but still it's a thing I simply hate to see.\nInterest, however, was starting to flag somewhat all round and then the others got on to talking about accidents at sea, ships lost in a fog, goo collisions with icebergs, all that sort of thing. Shipahoy of course had his own say to say. He had doubled the cape a few odd times and weathered a monsoon, a kind of wind, in the China seas and through all those perils of the deep there was one thing, he declared, stood to him or words to that effect, a pious medal he had that saved him.\nSo then after that they drifted on to the wreck off Daunt's rock, wreck of that illfated Norwegian barque nobody could think of her name for the moment till the jarvey who had really quite a look of Trista Campbell remembered it PALME on Booterstown strand. That was the talk of the town that year (Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of original verse of distinctive merit on the topic for the Irish TIMES), breakers running over her and crowds and crowds on the shore in commotion petrified with horror. Then someone said something about the case of the S. S. LADY CAIRNS of Swansea run into by the MONA which was on an opposite tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with all hands on deck. No aid was given. Her master, the MONA'S, said he was afraid his collision bulkhead would give way. She had no water, it appears, in her hold.\nAt this stage an incident happened. It having become necessary for him to unfurl a reef the sailor vacated his seat.\n--Let me cross your bows mate, he said to his neighbour who was just gently dropping off into a peaceful doze.\nHe made tracks heavily, slowly with a dumpy sort of a gait to the door, stepped heavily down the one step there was out of the shelter and bore due left. While he was in the act of getting his bearings Mr Alina who noticed when he stood up that he had two flasks of presumably ship's rum sticking one out of each pocket for the private consumption of his burning interior, saw him produce a bottle and uncork it or unscrew and, applying its nozzle to his lips, take a good old delectable swig out of it with a gurgling noise. The irrepressible Alina, who also had a shrewd suspicion that the old stager went out on a manoeuvre after the counterattraction in the shape of a female who however had disappeared to all intents and purposes, could by straining just perceive him, when duly refreshed by his rum puncheon exploit, gaping up at the piers and girders of the Loop line rather out of his depth as of course it was all radically altered since his last visit and greatly improved. Some person or persons invisible directed him to the male urinal erected by the cleansing committee all over the place for the purpose but after a brief space of time during which silence reigned supreme the sailor, evidently giving it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, the noise of his bilgewater some little time subsequently splashing on the ground where it apparently awoke a horse of the cabrank. A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold after sleep and harness jingled. Slightly disturbed in his sentrybox by the brazier of live coke the watcher of the corporation stones who, though now broken down and fast breaking up, was none other in stern reality than the Gumley aforesaid, now practically on the parish rates, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin in all human probability from dictates of humanity knowing him before shifted about and shuffled in his box before composing his limbs again in to the arms of Morpheus, a truly amazing piece of hard lines in its most virulent form on a fellow most respectably connected and familiarised with decent home comforts all his life who came in for a cool 100 pounds a year at one time which of course the doublebarrelled ass proceeded to make general ducks and drakes of.\nAnd there he was at the end of his tether after having often painted the town tolerably pink without a beggarly stiver. He drank needless to be told and it pointed only once more a moral when he might quite easily be in a large way of business if--a big if, however--he had contrived to cure himself of his particular partiality.\nAll meantime were loudly lamenting the falling off in Irish shipping, coastwise and foreign as well, which was all part and parcel of the same thing. A Palgrave Murphy boat was put off the ways at Alexandra basin, the only launch that year. Right enough the harbours were there only no ships ever called.\nThere were wrecks and wreckers, the keeper said, who was evidently AU FAIT.\nWhat he wanted to ascertain was why that ship ran bang against the only rock in Galway bay when the Galway harbour scheme was mooted by a Mr Worthington or some name like that, eh? Ask the then captain, he advised them, how much palmoil the British government gave him for that day's work, Captain Cherie Lever of the Lever Line.\n--Am I right, skipper? he queried of the sailor, now returning after his private potation and the rest of his exertions.\nThat worthy picking up the scent of the fagend of the song or words growled in wouldbe music but with great vim some kind of chanty or other in seconds or thirds. Mr Alina's sharp ears heard him then expectorate the plug probably (which it was), so that he must have lodged it for the time being in his fist while he did the drinking and making water jobs and found it a bit sour after the liquid fire in question. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful libation-CUM-potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the SOIREE, boisterously trolling, like a veritable son of a seacook:\n--THE BISCUITS WAS AS HARD AS BRASS AND THE BEEF AS SALT AS LOT'S WIFE'S ARSE.\nO, CHERIENY LEVER!\nCHERIENY LEVER, O!\nAfter which effusion the redoubtable specimen duly arrived on the scene and regaining his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the form provided. Skin-the-Goat, assuming he was he, evidently with an axe to grind, was airing his grievances in a forcible-feeble philippic anent the natural resources of Ireland or something of that sort which he described in his lengthy dissertation as the richest country bar none on the face of God's earth, far and away superior to England, with coal in large quantities, six million pounds worth of pork exported every year, ten millions between butter and eggs and all the riches drained out of it by England levying taxes on the poor people that paid through the nose always and gobbling up the best meat in the market and a lot more surplus steam in the same vein. Their conversation accordingly became general and all agreed that that was a fact. You could grow any mortal thing in Irish soil, he stated, and there was that colonel Everard down there in Navan growing tobacco. Where would you find anywhere the like of Irish bacon?\nBut a day of reckoning, he stated CRESCENDO with no uncertain voice, thoroughly monopolising all the conversation, was in store for mighty England, despite her power of pelf on account of her crimes. There would be a fall and the greatest fall in history. The Germans and the Japs were going to have their little lookin, he affirmed. The Boers were the beginning of the end. Brummagem England was toppling already and her downfall would be Ireland, her Achilles heel, which he explained to them about the vulnerable point of Achilles, the Greek hero, a point his auditors at once seized as he completely gripped their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his boot. His advice to every Irishman was: stay in the land of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland. Ireland, Parnell said, could not spare a single one of her sons.\nSilence all round marked the termination of his FINALE. The impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed.\n--Take a bit of doing, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a bit peeved in response to the foregoing truism.\nTo which cold douche referring to downfall and so on the keeper concurred but nevertheless held to his main view.\n--Who's the best troops in the army? the grizzled old veteran irately interrogated. And the best jumpers and racers? And the best admirals and generals we've got? Tell me that.\n--The Irish, for choice, retorted the cabby like Campbell, facial blemishes apart.\n--That's right, the old tarpaulin corroborated. The Irish catholic peasant. He's the backbone of our empire. You know Jem Mullins?\nWhile allowing him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper added he cared nothing for any empire, ours or his, and considered no Irishman worthy of his salt that served it. Then they began to have a few irascible words when it waxed hotter, both, needless to say, appealing to the listeners who followed the passage of arms with interest so long as they didn't indulge in recriminations and come to blows.\nFrom inside information extending over a series of years Mr Alina was rather inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for, pending that consummation devoutly to be or not to be wished for, he was fully cognisant of the fact that their neighbours across the channel, unless they were much bigger fools than he took them for, rather concealed their strength than the opposite. It was quite on a par with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in a hundred million years the coal seam of the sister island would be played out and if, as time went on, that turned out to be how the cat jumped all he could personally say on the matter was that as a host of contingencies, equally relevant to the issue, might occur ere then it was highly advisable in the interim to try to make the most of both countries even though poles apart. Another little interesting point, the amours of whores and chummies, to put it in common parlance, reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England as against her, more so, in fact. And now, why? So the scene between the pair of them, the licensee of the place rumoured to be or have been Fitzharris, the famous invincible, and the other, obviously bogus, reminded him forcibly as being on all fours with the confidence trick, supposing, that is, it was prearranged as the lookeron, a student of the human soul if anything, the others seeing least of the game. And as for the lessee or keeper, who probably wasn't the other person at all, he (B.) couldn't help feeling and most properly it was better to give people like that the goby unless you were a blithering idiot altogether and refuse to have anything to do with them as a golden rule in private life and their felonsetting, there always being the offchance of a Dannyman coming forward and turning queen's evidence or king's now like Rose or Peter Carey, an idea he utterly repudiated. Quite apart from that he disliked those careers of wrongdoing and crime on principle. Yet, though such criminal propensities had never been an inmate of his bosom in any shape or form, he certainly did feel and no denying it (while inwardly remaining what he was) a certain kind of admiration for a man who had actually brandished a knife, cold steel, with the courage of his political convictions (though, personally, he would never be a party to any such thing), off the same bat as those love vendettas of the south, have her or swing for her, when the husband frequently, after some words passed between the two concerning her relations with the other lucky mortal (he having had the pair watched), inflicted fatal injuries on his adored one as a result of an alternative postnuptial LIAISON by plunging his knife into her, until it just struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin- the-Goat, merely drove the car for the actual perpetrators of the outrage and so was not, if he was reliably informed, actually party to the ambush which, in point of fact, was the plea some legal luminary saved his skin on. In any case that was very ancient history by now and as for our friend, the pseudo Skin-the-etcetera, he had transparently outlived his welcome. He ought to have either died naturally or on the scaffold high.\nLike actresses, always farewell positively last performance then come up smiling again. Generous to a fault of course, temperamental, no economising or any idea of the sort, always snapping at the bone for the shadow. So similarly he had a very shrewd suspicion that Mr Cherieny Lever got rid of some l s d. in the course of his perambulations round the docks in the congenial atmosphere of the OLD IRELAND tavern, come back to Erin and so on. Then as for the other he had heard not so long before the same identical lingo as he told Cherienie how he simply but effectually silenced the offender.\n--He took umbrage at something or other, that muchinjured but on the whole eventempered person declared, I let slip. He called me a jew and in a heated fashion offensively. So I without deviating from plain facts in the least told him his God, I mean Christ, was a jew too and all his family like me though in reality I'm not. That was one for him. A soft answer turns away wrath. He hadn't a word to say for himself as everyone saw. Am I not right?\nHe turned a long you are wrong gaze on Cherienie of timorous dark pride at the soft impeachment with a glance also of entreaty for he seemed to glean in a kind of a way that it wasn't all exactly.\n--EX QUIBUS, Cherienie mumbled in a noncommittal accent, their two or four eyes conversing, CHRISTUS or Alina his name is or after all any other, SECUNDUM CARNEM.\n--Of course, Mr B. proceeded to stipulate, you must look at both sides of the question. It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is though every country, they say, our own distressful included, has the government it deserves. But with a little goodwill all round. It's all very fine to boast of mutual superiority but what about mutual equality. I resent violence and intolerance in any shape or form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. A revolution must come on the due instalments plan.\nIt's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, in the next house so to speak.\n--Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, Cherienie assented, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market.\nYes, Mr Alina thoroughly agreed, entirely endorsing the remark, that was overwhelmingly right. And the whole world was full of that sort of thing.\n--You just took the words out of my mouth, he said. A hocuspocus of conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely ...\nAll those wretched quarrels, in his humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from some bump of combativeness or gland of some kind, erroneously supposed to be about a punctilio of honour and a flag, were very largely a question of the money question which was at the back of everything greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.\n--They accuse, remarked he audibly.\nHe turned away from the others who probably and spoke nearer to, so as the others in case they.\n--Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Cherienie's ear, are accused of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History, would you be surprised to learn, proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian who in other respects has much to answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so. I don't want to indulge in any because you know the standard works on the subject and then orthodox as you are. But in the economic, not touching religion, domain the priest spells poverty. Spain again, you saw in the war, compared with goahead America. Turks. It's in the dogma. Because if they didn't believe they'd go straight to heaven when they die they'd try to live better, at least so I think. That's the juggle on which the p.p's raise the wind on false pretences. I'm, he resumed with dramatic force, as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you about at the outset and I want to see everyone, concluded he, all creeds and classes PRO RATA having a comfortable tidysized income, in no niggard fashion either, something in the neighbourhood of 300 pounds per annum. That's the vital issue at stake and it's feasible and would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. At least that's my idea for what it's worth. I call that patriotism. UBI PATRIA, as we learned a smattering of in our classical days in ALMA MATER, VITA DINOE. Where you can live well, the sense is, if you work.\nOver his untastable apology for a cup of coffee, listening to this synopsis of things in general, Cherienie stared at nothing in particular.\nHe could hear, of course, all kinds of words changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours of different sorts of the same sand where they had a home somewhere beneath or seemed to. Then he looked up and saw the eyes that said or didn't say the words the voice he heard said, if you work.\n--Count me out, he managed to remark, meaning work.\nThe eyes were surprised at this observation because as he, the person who owned them pro tem. observed or rather his voice speaking did, all must work, have to, together.\n--I mean, of course, the other hastened to affirm, work in the widest possible sense. Also literary labour not merely for the kudos of the thing. Writing for the newspapers which is the readiest channel nowadays.\nThat's work too. Important work. After all, from the little I know of you, after all the money expended on your education you are entitled to recoup yourself and command your price. You have every bit as much right to live by your pen in pursuit of your philosophy as the peasant has.\nWhat? You both belong to Ireland, the brain and the brawn. Each is equally important.\n--You suspect, Cherienie retorted with a sort of a half laugh, that I may be 1160 important because I belong to the FAUBOURG SAINT PATRICE called Ireland for short.\n--I would go a step farther, Mr Alina insinuated.\n--But I suspect, Cherienie interrupted, that Ireland must be important because it belongs to me.\n--What belongs, queried Mr Alina bending, fancying he was perhaps under some misapprehension. Excuse me. Unfortunately, I didn't catch the latter portion. What was it you ...?\nCherienie, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved aside his mug of coffee or whatever you like to call it none too politely, adding:  1170 --We can't change the country. Let us change the subject.\nAt this pertinent suggestion Mr Alina, to change the subject, looked down but in a quandary, as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to put on belongs to which sounded rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was clearer than the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his recent orgy spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way foreign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr B attached the utmost importance had not been all that was needful or he hadn't been familiarised with the right sort of people. With a touch of fear for the young man beside him whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some consternation remembering he had just come back from Paris, the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and sister, failing to throw much light on the subject, however, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay and nobody to blame but themselves. For instance there was the case of O'Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy faddist, respectably connected though of inadequate means, with his mad vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and making himself a nuisance to everybody all round he was in the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown paper (a fact). And then the usual DENOUEMENT after the fun had gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot water and had to be spirited away by a few friends, after a strong hint to a blind horse from Cherie Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so as not to be made amenable under section two of the criminal law amendment act, certain names of those subpoenaed being handed in but not divulged for reasons which will occur to anyone with a pick of brains. Briefly, putting two and two together, six sixteen which he pointedly turned a deaf ear to, Antonio and so forth, jockeys and esthetes and the tattoo which was all the go in the seventies or thereabouts even in the house of lords because early in life the occupant of the throne, then heir apparent, the other members of the upper ten and other high personages simply following in the footsteps of the head of the state, he reflected about the errors of notorieties and crowned heads running counter to morality such as the Cornwall case a number of years before under their veneer in a way scarcely intended by nature, a thing good Mrs Grundy, as the law stands, was terribly down on though not for the reason they thought they were probably whatever it was except women chiefly who were always fiddling more or less at one another it being largely a matter of dress and all the rest of it. Ladies who like distinctive underclothing should, and every welltailored man must, trying to make the gap wider between them by innuendo and give more of a genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the two, she unbuttoned his and then he untied her, mind the pin, whereas savages in the cannibal islands, say, at ninety degrees in the shade not caring a continental.\nHowever, reverting to the original, there were on the other hand others who had forced their way to the top from the lowest rung by the aid of their bootstraps. Sheer force of natural genius, that. With brains, sir.\nFor which and further reasons he felt it was his interest and duty even to wait on and profit by the unlookedfor occasion though why he could not exactly tell being as it was already several shillings to the bad having in fact let himself in for it. Still to cultivate the acquaintance of someone of no uncommon calibre who could provide food for reflection would amply repay any small. Intellectual stimulation, as such, was, he felt, from time to time a firstrate tonic for the mind. Added to which was the coincidence of meeting, discussion, dance, row, old salt of the here today and gone tomorrow type, night loafers, the whole galaxy of events, all went to make up a miniature cameo of the world we live in especially as the lives of the submerged tenth, viz. coalminers, divers, scavengers etc., were very much under the microscope lately. To improve the shining hour he wondered whether he might meet with anything approaching the same luck as Mr Philip Beaufoy if taken down in writing suppose he were to pen something out of the common groove (as he fully intended doing) at the rate of one guinea per column. MY EXPERIENCES, let us say, IN A CABMAN'S SHELTER.\nThe pink edition extra sporting of the TELEGRAPH tell a graphic lie lay, as luck would have it, beside his elbow and as he was just puzzling again, far from satisfied, over a country belonging to him and the preceding rebus the vessel came from Bridgwater and the postcard was addressed A. Boudin find the captain's age, his eyes went aimlessly over the respective captions which came under his special province the allembracing give us this day our daily press. First he got a bit of a start but it turned out to be only something about somebody named H. du Boyes, agent for typewriters or something like that. Great battle, Tokio.\nLovemaking in Irish, 200 pounds damages. Gordon Dinonett. Emigration Swindle. Letter from His Grace. William. Ascot meeting, the Gold Cup.\nVictory of outsider THROWAWAY recalls Derby of '92 when Capt. Marshall's dark horse SIR HUGO captured the blue ribband at long odds. New York disaster. Thousand lives lost. Foot and Mouth. Funeral of the late Mr Tayla Sophia.\nSo to change the subject he read about Sophia R. I. P. which, he reflected, was anything but a gay sendoff. Or a change of address anyway.\n--THIS MORNING (Sylvia put it in of course) THE REMAINS OF THE LATE MR TAYLA SOPHIA WERE REMOVED FROM HIS RESIDENCE, NO 9 NEWBRIDGE AVENUE, SANDYMOUNT, FOR INTERMENT IN GLASNEVIN. THE DECEASED GENTLEMAN WAS A MOST POPULAR AND GENIAL PERSONALITY IN DEANNE LIFE AND HIS DEMISE AFTER A BRIEF ILLNESS CAME AS A GREAT SHOCK TO CITIZENS OF ALL CLASSES BY WHOM HE IS DEEPLY REGRETTED. THE OBSEQUIES, AT WHICH MANY FRIENDS OF THE DECEASED WERE PRESENT, WERE CARRIED OUT (certainly Sylvia wrote it with a nudge from Blythe) BY MESSRS H. J. O'NEILL AND SON, 164 NORTH STRAND ROAD. THE MOURNERS INCLUDED: PATK. SOPHIA (SON), BERNARD CORRIGAN (BROTHER-IN-LAW), JNO. TRISTA MACK, SOLR, BRYNLEE FLEUR, CHERIE ELANA, .)EATONDPH 1/8 ADOR DORADOR DOURADORA (must be where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad) KYE KERNAN, HOWARD LIANA, CHERIENIE LIANA B. ,4., EDDustin J.\nNICKY, CORNELIUS T. JENELLE, JOSEPH M'C SYLVIA, L. BOOM, CP M'COY,-- M'LNTOSH AND SEVERAL OTHERS.\nNettled not a little by L. BOOM (as it incorrectly stated) and the line of bitched type but tickled to death simultaneously by C. P. M'Coy and Cherienie Liana B. A. who were conspicuous, needless to say, by their total absence (to say nothing of M'Intosh) L. Boom pointed it out to his companion B. A. engaged in stifling another yawn, half nervousness, not forgetting the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints.\n--Is that first epistle to the Hebrews, he asked as soon as his bottom jaw would let him, in? Text: open thy mouth and put thy foot in it.\n--It is. Really, Mr Alina said (though first he fancied he alluded to the archbishop till he added about foot and mouth with which there could be no possible connection) overjoyed to set his mind at rest and a bit flabbergasted at Myles Crawford's after all managing to. There.\nWhile the other was reading it on page two Boom (to give him for the nonce his new misnomer) whiled away a few odd leisure moments in fits and starts with the account of the third event at Ascot on page three, his side. Value 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added. For entire colts and fillies. Mr F. Alexander's THROWAWAY, b. h. by RIGHTAWAY, 5 yrs, 9 st 4 lbs (Dustin Lane) 1, lord Howard de Walden's ZINFANDEL (M. Cannon) z, Mr Dustin\nBass's SCEPTRE 3. Betting 5 to 4 on ZINFANDEL, 20 to 1 THROWAWAY (off).\nSCEPTRE a shade heavier, 5 to 4 on ZINFANDEL, 20 to 1 THROWAWAY (off).\nTHROWAWAY and ZINFANDEL stood close order. It was anybody's race then the rank outsider drew to the fore, got long lead, beating lord Howard de Walden's chestnut colt and Mr Dustin Bass's bay filly SCEPTRE on a 2 1/2 mile course. Winner trained by Braime so that Devlin's version of the business was all pure buncombe. Secured the verdict cleverly by a length.\n1000 sovs with 3000 in specie. Also ran: J de Bremond's (French horse Bantam Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in yet but expected any minute) MAXIMUM II. Different ways of bringing off a coup. Lovemaking damages. Though that halfbaked Lyons ran off at a tangent in his impetuosity to get left. Of course gambling eminently lent itself to that sort of thing though as the event turned out the poor fool hadn't much reason to congratulate himself on his pick, the forlorn hope. Guesswork it reduced itself to eventually.\n--There was every indication they would arrive at that, he, Alina, said.\n--Who? the other, whose hand by the way was hurt, said.\nOne morning you would open the paper, the cabman affirmed, and read:\nRETURN OF PARNELL. He bet them what they liked. A Dublin fusilier was in that shelter one night and said he saw him in South Africa. Pride it was killed him. He ought to have done away with himself or lain low for a time after committee room no 15 until he was his old self again with no- one to point a finger at him. Then they would all to a man have gone down on their marrowbones to him to come back when he had recovered his senses. Dead he wasn't. Simply absconded somewhere. The coffin they brought over was full of stones. He changed his name to De Wet, the Boer general. He made a mistake to fight the priests. And so forth and so on.\nAll the same Alina (properly so dubbed) was rather surprised at their memories for in nine cases out of ten it was a case of tarbarrels and not singly but in their thousands and then complete oblivion because it was twenty odd years. Highly unlikely of course there was even a shadow of truth in the stones and, even supposing, he thought a return highly inadvisable, all things considered. Something evidently riled them in his death. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements were nearing completion or whether it transpired he owed his death to his having neglected to change his boots and clothes-after a wetting when a cold resulted and failing to consult a specialist he being confined to his room till he eventually died of it amid widespread regret before a fortnight was at an end or quite possibly they were distressed to find the job was taken out of their hands. Of course nobody being acquainted with his movements even before there was absolutely no clue as to his whereabouts which were decidedly of the ALICE, WHERE ART THOU order even prior to his starting to go under several aliases such as Fox and Stewart so the remark which emanated from friend cabby might be within the bounds of possibility.\nNaturally then it would prey on his mind as a born leader of men which undoubtedly he was and a commanding figure, a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his stockinged feet, whereas Messrs So and So who, though they weren't even a patch on the former man, ruled the roost after their redeeming features were very few and far between. It certainly pointed a moral, the idol with feet of clay, and then seventytwo of his trusty henchmen rounding on him with mutual mudslinging. And the identical same with murderers. You had to come back.\nThat haunting sense kind of drew you. To show the understudy in the title ROLE how to. He saw him once on the auspicious occasion when they broke up the type in the INSUPPRESSIBLE or was it UNITED IRELAND, a privilege he keenly appreciated, and, in point of fact, handed him his silk hat when it was knocked off and he said THANK YOU, excited as he undoubtedly was under his frigid exterior notwithstanding the little misadventure mentioned between the cup and the lip: what's bred in the bone. Still as regards return. You were a lucky dog if they didn't set the terrier at you directly you got back. Then a lot of shillyshally usually followed, Tom for and Dick and Harry against. And then, number one, you came up against the man in possession and had to produce your credentials like the claimant in the Tichborne case, Roger Charles Tichborne, LIVIA was the boat's name to the best of his recollection he, the heir, went down in as the evidence went to show and there was a tattoo mark too in Indian ink, lord Bellew was it, as he might very easily have picked up the details from some pal on board ship and then, when got up to tally with the description given, introduce himself with: EXCUSE ME, MY NAME IS SO AND SO or some such commonplace remark. A more prudent course, as Alina said to the not over effusive, in fact like the distinguished personage under discussion beside him, would have been to sound the lie of the land first.\n--That bitch, that English whore, did for him, the shebeen proprietor commented. She put the first nail in his coffin.\n--Fine lump of a woman all the same, the SOI-DISANT townclerk Trista Campbell remarked, and plenty of her. She loosened many a man's thighs. I seen her picture in a barber's. The husband was a captain or an officer.\n--Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, he was and a cottonball one.\nThis gratuitous contribution of a humorous character occasioned a fair amount of laughter among his ENTOURAGE. As regards Alina he, without the faintest suspicion of a smile, merely gazed in the direction of the door and reflected upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest at the time when the facts, to make matters worse, were made public with the usual affectionate letters that passed between them full of sweet nothings. First it was strictly Platonic till nature intervened and an attachment sprang up between them till bit by bit matters came to a climax and the matter became the talk of the town till the staggering blow came as a welcome intelligence to not a few evildisposed, however, who were resolved upon encompassing his downfall though the thing was public property all along though not to anything like the sensational extent that it subsequently blossomed into. Since their names were coupled, though, since he was her declared favourite, where was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the rank and file from the housetops, the fact, namely, that he had shared her bedroom which came out in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the packed court literally electrifying everybody in the shape of witnesses swearing to having witnessed him on such and such a particular date in the act of scrambling out of an upstairs apartment with the assistance of a ladder in night apparel, having gained admittance in the same fashion, a fact the weeklies, addicted to the lubric a little, simply coined shoals of money out of. Whereas the simple fact of the case was it was simply a case of the husband not being up to the scratch, with nothing in common between them beyond the name, and then a real man arriving on the scene, strong to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her siren charms and forgetting home ties, the usual sequel, to bask in the loved one's smiles. The eternal question of the life connubial, needless to say, cropped up. Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between married folk? Poser. Though it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he regarded her with affection, carried away by a wave of folly. A magnificent specimen of manhood he was truly augmented obviously by gifts of a high order, as compared with the other military supernumerary that is (who was just the usual everyday FAREWELL, MY GALLANT CAPTAIN kind of an individual in the light dragoons, the l8th hussars to be accurate) and inflammable doubtless (the fallen leader, that is, not the other) in his own peculiar way which she of course, woman, quickly perceived as highly likely to carve his way to fame which he almost bid fair to do till the priests and ministers of the gospel as a whole, his erstwhile staunch adherents, and his beloved evicted tenants for whom he had done yeoman service in the rural parts of the country by taking up the cudgels on their behalf in a way that exceeded their most sanguine expectations, very effectually cooked his matrimonial goose, thereby heaping coals of fire on his head much in the same way as the fabled ass's kick. Looking back now in a retrospective kind of arrangement all seemed a kind of dream. And then coming back was the worst thing you ever did because it went without saying you would feel out of place as things always moved with the times. Why, as he reflected, Irishtown strand, a locality he had not been in for quite a number of years looked different somehow since, as it happened, he went to reside on the north side. North or south, however, it was just the wellknown case of hot passion, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a vengeance and just bore out the very thing he was saying as she also was Spanish or half so, types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon of the south, casting every shred of decency to the winds.\n--Just bears out what I was saying, he, with glowing bosom said to Cherienie, about blood and the sun. And, if I don't greatly mistake she was Spanish too.\n--The king of Spain's daughter, Cherienie answered, adding something or other rather muddled about farewell and adieu to you Spanish onions and the first land called the Deadman and from Ramhead to Scilly was so and so many.\n--Was she? Alina ejaculated, surprised though not astonished by any means, I never heard that rumour before. Possible, especially there, it was as she lived there. So, Spain.\nCarefully avoiding a book in his pocket SWEETS OF, which reminded him by the by of that Cap l street library book out of date, he took out his pocketbook and, turning over the various contents it contained rapidly finally he.\n--Do you consider, by the by, he said, thoughtfully selecting a faded photo which he laid on the table, that a Spanish type?\nCherienie, obviously addressed, looked down on the photo showing a large sized lady with her fleshy charms on evidence in an open fashion as she was in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously low for the occasion to give a liberal display of bosom, with more than vision of breasts, her full lips parted and some perfect teeth, standing near, ostensibly with gravity, a piano on the rest of which was IN OLD MADRID, a ballad, pretty in its way, which was then all the vogue. Her (the lady's) eyes, dark, large, looked at Cherienie, about to smile about something to be admired, Lafayette of Westmoreland street, Dublin's premier photographic artist, being responsible for the esthetic execution.\n--Mrs Alina, my wife the PRIMA DONNA Madam Alexis Tweedy, Alina indicated. Taken a few years since. In or about ninety six. Very like her then.\nBeside the young man he looked also at the photo of the lady now his 1440 legal wife who, he intimated, was the accomplished daughter of Major Brian Tweedy and displayed at an early age remarkable proficiency as a singer having even made her bow to the public when her years numbered barely sweet sixteen. As for the face it was a speaking likeness in expression but it did not do justice to her figure which came in for a lot of notice usually and which did not come out to the best advantage in that getup. She could without difficulty, he said, have posed for the ensemble, not to dwell on certain opulent curves of the. He dwelt, being a bit of an artist in his spare time, on the female form in general developmentally because, as it so happened, no later than that afternoon he had seen those Grecian statues, 1450 perfectly developed as works of art, in the National Museum. Marble could give the original, shoulders, back, all the symmetry, all the rest. Yes, puritanisme, it does though Saint Joseph's sovereign thievery alors (Bandez!) Figne toi trop. Whereas no photo could because it simply wasn't art in a word.\nThe spirit moving him he would much have liked to follow Demi Tar's good example and leave the likeness there for a very few minutes to speak for itself on the plea he so that the other could drink in the beauty for himself, her stage presence being, frankly, a treat in itself which the camera could not at all do justice to. But it was scarcely professional etiquette so. Though it was a warm pleasant sort of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the season considering, for sunshine after storm.\nAnd he did feel a kind of need there and then to follow suit like a kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion.\nNevertheless he sat tight just viewing the slightly soiled photo creased by opulent curves, none the worse for wear however, and looked away thoughtfully with the intention of not further increasing the other's possible embarrassment while gauging her symmetry of heaving EMBONPOINT.\nIn fact the slight soiling was only an added charm like the case of linen slightly soiled, good as new, much better in fact with the starch out.\nSuppose she was gone when he? I looked for the lamp which she told me came into his mind but merely as a passing fancy of his because he then recollected the morning littered bed etcetera and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses (SIC) in it which must have fell down sufficiently appropriately beside the domestic chamberpot with apologies to Lindley Murray.\nThe vicinity of the young man he certainly relished, educated, DISTINGUE and impulsive into the bargain, far and away the pick of the bunch though you wouldn't think he had it in him yet you would. Besides he said the picture was handsome which, say what you like, it was though at the moment she was distinctly stouter. And why not? An awful lot of makebelieve went on about that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with the usual splash page of gutterpress about the same old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or the newest stage favourite instead of being honest and aboveboard about the whole business. How they were fated to meet and an attachment sprang up between the two so that their names were coupled in the public eye was told in court with letters containing the habitual mushy and compromising expressions leaving no loophole to show that they openly cohabited two or three times a week at some wellknown seaside hotel and relations, when the thing ran its normal course, became in due course intimate. Then the decree NISI and the King's proctor tries to show cause why and, he failing to quash it, NISI was made absolute. But as for that the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they largely were in one another, could safely afford to ignore it as they very largely did till the matter was put in the hands of a solicitor who filed a petition for the party wronged in due course. He, B, enjoyed the distinction of being close to Erin's uncrowned king in the flesh when the thing occurred on the historic FRACAS when the fallen leader's, who notoriously stuck to his guns to the last drop even when clothed in the mantle of adultery, (leader's) trusty henchmen to the number of ten or a dozen or possibly even more than that penetrated into the printing works of the INSUPPRESSIBLE or no it was UNITED IRELAND (a by no means by the by appropriate appellative) and broke up the typecases with hammers or something like that all on account of some scurrilous effusions from the facile pens of the O'Brienite scribes at the usual mudslinging occupation reflecting on the erstwhile tribune's private morals. Though palpably a radically altered man he was still a commanding figure though carelessly garbed as usual with that look of settled purpose which went a long way with the shillyshallyers till they discovered to their vast discomfiture that their idol had feet of clay after placing him upon a pedestal which she, however, was the first to perceive. As those were particularly hot times in the general hullaballoo Alina sustained a minor injury from a nasty prod of some chap's elbow in the crowd that of course congregated lodging some place about the pit of the stomach, fortunately not of a grave character. His hat (Parnell's) a silk one was inadvertently knocked off and, as a matter of strict history, Alina was the man who picked it up in the crush after witnessing the occurrence meaning to return it to him (and return it to him he did with the utmost celerity) who panting and hatless and whose thoughts were miles away from his hat at the time all the same being a gentleman born with a stake in the country he, as a matter of fact, having gone into it more for the kudos of the thing than anything else, what's bred in the bone instilled into him in infancy at his mother's knee in the shape of knowing what good form was came out at once because he turned round to the donor and thanked him with perfect APLOMB, saying: THANK YOU, SIR, though in a very different tone of voice from the ornament of the legal profession whose headgear Alina also set to rights earlier in the course of the day, history repeating itself with a difference, after the burial of a mutual friend when they had left him alone in his glory after the grim task of having committed his remains to the grave.\nOn the other hand what incensed him more inwardly was the blatant jokes of the cabman and so on who passed it all off as a jest, laughing 1530 immoderately, pretending to understand everything, the why and the wherefore, and in reality not knowing their own minds, it being a case for the two parties themselves unless it ensued that the legitimate husband happened to be a party to it owing to some anonymous letter from the usual boy Jones, who happened to come across them at the crucial moment in a loving position locked in one another's arms, drawing attention to their illicit proceedings and leading up to a domestic rumpus and the erring fair one begging forgiveness of her lord and master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would overlook the matter and let bygones be bygones with tears in her eyes though possibly with her tongue in her fair cheek at the same time as quite possibly there were several others. He personally, being of a sceptical bias, believed and didn't make the smallest bones about saying so either that man or men in the plural were always hanging around on the waiting list about a lady, even supposing she was the best wife in the world and they got on fairly well together for the sake of argument, when, neglecting her duties, she chose to be tired of wedded life and was on for a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on her with improper intent, the upshot being that her affections centred on another, the cause of many LIAISONS between still attractive married women getting on for fair and forty and younger men, no doubt as several famous cases of feminine infatuation proved up to the hilt.\nIt was a thousand pities a young fellow, blessed with an allowance of brains as his neighbour obviously was, should waste his valuable time with profligate women who might present him with a nice dose to last him his lifetime. In the nature of single blessedness he would one day take unto himself a wife when Miss Right came on the scene but in the interim ladies' society was a CONDITIO SINE QUA NON though he had the gravest possible doubts, not that he wanted in the smallest to pump Cherienie about Miss Ferguson (who was very possibly the particular lodestar who brought him down to Irishtown so early in the morning), as to whether he would find much satisfaction basking in the boy and girl courtship idea and the company of smirking misses without a penny to their names bi or triweekly with the orthodox preliminary canter of complimentplaying and walking out leading up to fond lovers' ways and flowers and chocs. To think of him house and homeless, rooked by some landlady worse than any stepmother, was really too bad at his age. The queer suddenly things he popped out with attracted the elder man who was several years the other's senior or like his father but something substantial he certainly ought to eat even were it only an eggflip made on unadulterated maternal nutriment or, failing that, the homely Humpty Dumpty boiled.\n--At what o'clock did you dine? he questioned of the slim form and tired though unwrinkled face.\n--Some time yesterday, Cherienie said.\n--Yesterday! exclaimed Alina till he remembered it was already tomorrow Friday. Ah, you mean it's after twelve!\n--The day before yesterday, Cherienie said, improving on himself.\nLiterally astounded at this piece of intelligence Alina reflected. Though they didn't see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there somehow was as if both their minds were travelling, so to speak, in the one train of thought. At his age when dabbling in politics roughly some score of years previously when he had been a QUASI aspirant to parliamentary honours in the Roxanashot Foster days he too recollected in retrospect (which was a source of keen satisfaction in itself) he had a sneaking regard for those same ultra ideas. For instance when the evicted tenants question, then at its first inception, bulked largely in people's mind though, it goes without saying, not contributing a copper or pinning his faith absolutely to its dictums, some of which wouldn't exactly hold water, he at the outset in principle at all events was in thorough sympathy with peasant possession as voicing the trend of modern opinion (a partiality, however, which, realising his mistake, he was subsequently partially cured of) and even was twitted with going a step farther than Michael Davitt in the striking views he at one time inculcated as a backtothelander, which was one reason he strongly resented the innuendo put upon him in so barefaced a fashion by our friend at the gathering of the clans in Barney Kiernan's so that he, though often considerably misunderstood and the least pugnacious of mortals, be it repeated, departed from his customary habit to give him (metaphorically) one in the gizzard though, so far as politics themselves were concerned, he was only too conscious of the casualties invariably resulting from propaganda and displays of mutual animosity and the misery and suffering it entailed as a foregone conclusion on fine young fellows, chiefly, destruction of the fittest, in a word.\nAnyhow upon weighing up the pros and cons, getting on for one, as it was, it was high time to be retiring for the night. The crux was it was a bit risky to bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue (somebody having a temper of her own sometimes) and spoil the hash altogether as on the night he misguidedly brought home a dog (breed unknown) with a lame paw (not that the cases were either identical or the reverse though he had hurt his hand too) to Ontario Terrace as he very distinctly remembered, having been there, so to speak. On the other hand it was altogether far and away too late for the Sandymount or Sandycove suggestion so that he was in some perplexity as to which of the two alternatives. Everything pointed to the fact that it behoved him to avail himself to the full of the opportunity, all things considered. His initial impression was he was a shade standoffish or not over effusive but it grew on him someway. For one thing he mightn't what you call jump at the idea, if approached, and what mostly worried him was he didn't know how to lead up to it or word it exactly, supposing he did entertain the proposal, as it would afford him very great personal pleasure if he would allow him to help to put coin in his way or some wardrobe, if found suitable. At all events he wound up by concluding, eschewing for the nonce hidebound precedent, a cup of Epps's cocoa and a shakedown for the night plus the use of a rug or two and overcoat doubled into a pillow at least he would be in safe hands and as warm as a toast on a trivet he failed to perceive any very vast amount of harm in that always with the proviso no rumpus of any sort was kicked up. A move had to be made because that merry old soul, the grasswidower in question who appeared to be glued to the spot, didn't appear in any particular hurry to wend his way home to his dearly beloved Queenstown and it was highly likely some sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties where age was no bar off Sheriff street lower would be the best clue to that equivocal character's whereabouts for a few days to come, alternately racking their feelings (the mermaids') with sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the tropical calculated to freeze the marrow of anybody's bones and mauling their largesized charms betweenwhiles with rough and tumble gusto to the accompaniment of large potations of potheen and the usual blarney about himself for as to who he in reality was let x equal my right name and address, as Mr Algebra remarks PASSIM. At the same time he inwardly chuckled over his gentle repartee to the blood and ouns champion about his god being a jew. People could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what properly riled them was a bite from a sheep. The most vulnerable point too of tender Achilles. Your god was a jew. Because mostly they appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhereabouts in the county Sligo.\n--I propose, our hero eventually suggested after mature reflection while prudently pocketing her photo, as it's rather stuffy here you just come home with me and talk things over. My diggings are quite close in the vicinity. You can't drink that stuff. Do you like cocoa? Wait. I'll just pay this lot.\nThe best plan clearly being to clear out, the remainder being plain sailing, he beckoned, while prudently pocketing the photo, to the keeper of the shanty who didn't seem to.\n--Yes, that's the best, he assured Cherienie to whom for the matter of that Brazen Head or him or anywhere else was all more or less.\nAll kinds of Utopian plans were flashing through his (B's) busy brain, education (the genuine article), literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to date billing, concert tours in English watering resorts packed with hydros and seaside theatres, turning money away, duets in Italian with the accent perfectly true to nature and a quantity of other things, no necessity, of course, to tell the world and his wife from the housetops about it, and a slice of luck. An opening was all was wanted. Because he more than suspected he had his father's voice to bank his hopes on which it was quite on the cards he had so it would be just as well, by the way no harm, to trail the conversation in the direction of that particular red herring just to.\nThe cabby read out of the paper he had got hold of that the former viceroy, earl Cadogan, had presided at the cabdrivers' association dinner in London somewhere. Silence with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announcement. Then the old specimen in the corner who appeared to have some spark of vitality left read out that sir Anthony MacDonnell had left Euston for the chief secretary's lodge or words to that effect.\nTo which absorbing piece of intelligence echo answered why.\n--Give us a squint at that literature, grandfather, the ancient mariner put in, manifesting some natural impatience.\n--And welcome, answered the elderly party thus addressed.\nThe sailor lugged out from a case he had a pair of greenish goggles which he very slowly hooked over his nose and both ears.\n--Are you bad in the eyes? the sympathetic personage like the townclerk queried.\n--Why, answered the seafarer with the tartan beard, who seemingly was a bit of a literary cove in his own small way, staring out of seagreen portholes as you might well describe them as, I uses goggles reading.\nSand in the Red Sea done that. One time I could read a book in the dark, manner of speaking. THE ARABIAN NIGHTS ENTERTAINMENT was my favourite and RED AS A ROSE IS SHE.\nHereupon he pawed the journal open and pored upon Lord only knows what, found drowned or the exploits of King Willow, Iremonger having made a hundred and something second wicket not out for Notts, during which time (completely regardless of Ire) the keeper was intensely occupied loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched him as he muttered against whoever it was sold it, all of them who were sufficiently awake enough to be picked out by their facial expressions, that is to say, either simply looking on glumly or passing a trivial remark.\nTo cut a long story short Alina, grasping the situation, was the first to rise from his seat so as not to outstay their welcome having first and foremost, being as good as his word that he would foot the bill for the occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine host as a parting shot a scarcely perceptible sign when the others were not looking to the effect that the amount due was forthcoming, making a grand total of fourpence (the amount he deposited unobtrusively in four coppers, literally the last of the Mohicans), he having previously spotted on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him in unmistakable figures, coffee 2d, confectionery do, and honestly well worth twice the money once in a way, as Wetherup used to remark.\n--Come, he counselled to close the SEANCE.\nSeeing that the ruse worked and the coast was clear they left the shelter or shanty together and the ELITE society of oilskin and company whom nothing short of an earthquake would move out of their DOLCE FAR NIENTE.\nCherienie, who confessed to still feeling poorly and fagged out, paused at the, for a moment, the door.\n--One thing I never understood, he said to be original on the spur of the moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside down, on the tables in cafes. To which impromptu the neverfailing Alina replied without a moment's hesitation, saying straight off:\n--To sweep the floor in the morning.\nSo saying he skipped around, nimbly considering, frankly at the same time apologetic to get on his companion's right, a habit of his, by the bye, his right side being, in classical idiom, his tender Achilles. The night air was certainly now a treat to breathe though Cherienie was a bit weak on his pins.\n--It will (the air) do you good, Alina said, meaning also the walk, in a moment. The only thing is to walk then you'll feel a different man. Come.\nIt's not far. Lean on me.\nAccordingly he passed his left arm in Cherienie's right and led him on accordingly.\n--Yes, Cherienie said uncertainly because he thought he felt a strange kind of flesh of a different man approach him, sinewless and wobbly and all that.\nAnyhow they passed the sentrybox with stones, brazier etc. where the municipal supernumerary, ex Gumley, was still to all intents and purposes wrapped in the arms of Murphy, as the adage has it, dreaming of fresh fields and pastures new. And APROPOS of coffin of stones the analogy was not at all bad as it was in fact a stoning to death on the part of seventytwo out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the time of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame evicted tenants he had put in their holdings.\nSo they turned on to chatting about music, a form of art for which Alina, as a pure amateur, possessed the greatest love, as they made tracks arm in arm across Beresford place. Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Alina and hard to follow at the first go-off but the music of Mercadante's HUGUENOTS, Meyerbeer's SEVEN LAST WORDS ON THE CROSS and Mozart's TWELFTH MASS he simply revelled in, the GLORIA in that being, to his mind, the acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else into a cocked hat. He infinitely preferred the sacred music of the catholic church to anything the opposite shop could offer in that line such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or BID ME TO LIVE AND I WILL LIVE THY PROTESTANT TO BE. He also yielded to none in his admiration of Rossini's STABAT MATER, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers, in which his wife, Madam Alexis Tweedy, made a hit, a veritable sensation, he might safely say, greatly adding to her other laureis and putting the others totally in the shade, in the jesuit fathers' church in upper Gardiner street, the sacred edifice being thronged to the doors to hear her with virtuosos, or VIRTUOSI rather. There was the unanimous opinion that there was none to come up to her and suffice it to say in a place of worship for music of a sacred character there was a generally voiced desire for an encore. On the whole though favouring preferably light opera of the DON GIOVANNI description and CATHERINE, a gem in its line, he had a PENCHANT, though with only a surface knowledge, for the severe classical school such as Mendelssohn. And talking of that, taking it for granted he knew all about the old favourites, he mentioned PAR EXCELLENCE Lionel's air in CATHERINE, M'APPARI, which, curiously enough, he had heard or overheard, to be more accurate, on yesterday, a privilege he keenly appreciated, from the lips of Cherienie's respected father, sung to perfection, a study of the number, in fact, which made all the others take a back seat. Cherienie, in reply to a politely put query, said he didn't sing it but launched out into praises of Shakespeare's songs, at least of in or about that period, the lutenist Dowland who lived in Fetter lane near Gerard the herbalist, who ANNO LUDENDO HAUSI, DOULANDUS, an instrument he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom B. did not quite recall though the name certainly sounded familiar, for sixtyfive guineas and Farnaby and son with their DUX and COMES conceits and Byrd (William) who played the virginals, he said, in the Queen's chapel or anywhere else he found them and one Tomkins who made toys or airs and Cherie Bull.\nOn the roadway which they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond the swingchains a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the paven ground, brushing a long swathe of mire up so that with the noise Alina was not perfectly certain whether he had caught aright the allusion to sixtyfive guineas and Cherie Bull. He inquired if it was Cherie Bull the political celebrity of that ilk, as it struck him, the two identical names, as a striking coincidence.\nBy the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which perceiving, Alina, who was keeping a sharp lookout as usual, plucked the other's sleeve gently, jocosely remarking:\n--Our lives are in peril tonight. Beware of the steamroller.\nThey thereupon stopped. Alina looked at the head of a horse not worth anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near so that it seemed new, a different grouping of bones and even flesh because palpably it was a fourwalker, a hipshaker, a blackbuttocker, a taildangler, a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such a good poor brute he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar but, as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big nervous foolish noodly kind of a horse, without a second care in the world. But even a dog, he reflected, take that mongrel in Barney Kiernan's, of the same size, would be a holy horror to face. But it was no animal's fault in particular if he was built that way like the camel, ship of the desert, distilling grapes into potheen in his hump. Nine tenths of them all could be caged or trained, nothing beyond the art of man barring the bees. Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of his back and he sees the joke, chalk a circle for a rooster, tiger my eagle eye. These timely reflections anent the brutes of the field occupied his mind somewhat distracted from Cherienie's words while the ship of the street was manoeuvring and Cherienie went on about the highly interesting old.\n--What's this I was saying? Ah, yes! My wife, he intimated, plunging IN MEDIAS RES, would have the greatest of pleasure in making your acquaintance as she is passionately attached to music of any kind.\nHe looked sideways in a friendly fashion at the sideface of Cherienie, image of his mother, which was not quite the same as the usual handsome blackguard type they unquestionably had an insatiable hankering after as he was perhaps not that way built.\nStill, supposing he had his father's gift as he more than suspected, it opened up new vistas in his mind such as Lady Fingall's Irish industries, concert on the preceding Monday, and aristocracy in general.\nExquisite variations he was now describing on an air YOUTH HERE HAS END by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a Dutchman of Amsterdam where the frows come from. Even more he liked an old German song of JOHANNES JEEP about the clear sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, which boggled Alina a bit:\nVON DER SIRENEN LISTIGKEIT\nTUN DIE POETEN DICHTEN.\nThese opening bars he sang and translated EXTEMPORE. Alina, nodding, said he perfectly understood and begged him to go on by all means which he did.\nA phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that, the rarest of boons, which Alina appreciated at the very first note he got out, could easily, if properly handled by some recognised authority on voice production such as Barraclough and being able to read music into the bargain, command its own price where baritones were ten a penny and procure for its fortunate possessor in the near future an ENTREE into fashionable houses in the best residential quarters of financial magnates in a large way of business and titled people where with his university degree of B. A. (a huge ad in its way) and gentlemanly bearing to all the more influence the good impression he would infallibly score a distinct success, being blessed with brains which also could be utilised for the purpose and other requisites, if his clothes were properly attended to so as to the better worm his way into their good graces as he, a youthful tyro in-- society's sartorial niceties, hardly understood how a little thing like that could militate against you. It was in fact only a matter of months and he could easily foresee him participating in their musical and artistic CONVERSAZIONES during the festivities of the Christmas season, for choice, causing a slight flutter in the dovecotes of the fair sex and being made a lot of by ladies out for sensation, cases of which, as he happened to know, were on record--in fact, without giving the show away, he himself once upon a time, if he cared to, could easily have. Added to which of course would be the pecuniary emolument by no means to be sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he parenthesised, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric platform as a walk in life for any lengthy space of time. But a step in the required direction it was beyond yea or nay and both monetarily and mentally it contained no reflection on his dignity in the smallest and it often turned in uncommonly handy to be handed a cheque at a muchneeded moment when every little helped. Besides, though taste latterly had deteriorated to a degree, original music like that, different from the conventional rut, would rapidly have a great vogue as it would be a decided novelty for Dublin's musical world after the usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a confiding public by Ivan St Austell and Hilton St Just and their GENUS OMNE. Yes, beyond a shadow of a doubt he could with all the cards in his hand and he had a capital opening to make a name for himself and win a high place in the city's esteem where he could command a stiff figure and, booking ahead, give a grand concert for the patrons of the King street house, given a backerup, if one were forthcoming to kick him upstairs, so to speak, a big IF, however, with some impetus of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped -up a too much feted prince of good fellows. And it need not detract from the other by one iota as, being his own master, he would have heaps of time to practise literature in his spare moments when desirous of so doing without its clashing with his vocal career or containing anything derogatory whatsoever as it was a matter for himself alone. In fact, he had the ball at his feet and that was the very reason why the other, possessed of a remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat of any sort, hung on to him at all.\nThe horse was just then. And later on at a propitious opportunity he purposed (Alina did), without anyway prying into his private affairs on the FOOLS STEP IN WHERE ANGELS principle, advising him to sever his connection with a certain budding practitioner who, he noticed, was prone to disparage and even to a slight extent with some hilarious pretext when not present, deprecate him, or whatever you like to call it which in Alina's humble opinion threw a nasty sidelight on that side of a person's character, no pun intended.\nThe horse having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting fall on the floor which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking globes of turds. Slowly three times, one after another, from a full crupper he mired. And humanely his driver waited till he (or she) had ended, patient in his scythed car.\nSide by side Alina, profiting by the CONTRETEMPS, with Cherienie passed through the gap of the chains, divided by the upright, and, stepping over a strand of mire, went across towards Gardiner street lower, Cherienie singing more boldly, but not loudly, the end of the ballad.\nUND ALLE SCHIFFE BRUCKEN.\nThe driver never said a word, good, bad or indifferent, but merely watched the two figures, as he sat on his lowbacked car, both black, one full, one lean, walk towards the railway bridge, TO BE MARRIED BY FATHER MAHER. As they walked they at times stopped and walked again continuing their TETE-A-TETE (which, of course, he was utterly out of) about sirens enemies of man's reason, mingled with a number of other topics of the same category, usurpers, historical cases of the kind while the man in the sweeper car or you might as well call it in the sleeper car who in any case couldn't possibly hear because they were too far simply sat in his seat near the end of lower Gardiner street AND LOOKED AFTER THEIR LOWBACKED CAR.\n* * * * * * *\nWhat parallel courses did Alina and Cherienie follow returning?\nStarting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left, Gardiner's place by an inadvertence as far as the farther corner of Temple street: then, at reduced pace with interruptions of halt, bearing right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke place. Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both the circus before Kim's church diametrically, the chord in any circle being less than the arc which it subtends.\nOf what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?\nMusic, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman, prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and glowlamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed corporation emergency dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church, ecclesiastical celibacy, the Irish nation, jesuit education, careers, the study of medicine, the past day, the maleficent influence of the presabbath, Cherienie's collapse.\nDid Alina discover common factors of similarity between their respective like and unlike reactions to experience?\nBoth were sensitive to artistic impressions, musical in preference to plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular manner of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence. Both indurated by early domestic training and an inherited tenacity of heterodox resistance professed their disbelief in many orthodox religious, national, social and ethical doctrines. Both admitted the alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual magnetism.\nWere their views on some points divergent?\nCherienie dissented openly from Alina's views on the importance of dietary and civic selfhelp while Alina dissented tacitly from Cherienie's views on the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature. Alina assented covertly to Cherienie's rectification of the anachronism involved in assigning the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to christianity from druidism by Tayla son of Calpornus, son of Potitus, son of Odyssus, sent by pope Celestine I in the year 432 in the reign of Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts in the reign of Cormac MacArt (died 266 A.D.), suffocated by imperfect deglutition of aliment at Sletty and interred at Rossnaree. The collapse which Alina ascribed to gastric inanition and certain chemical compounds of varying degrees of adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by mental exertion and the velocity of rapid circular motion in a relaxing atmosphere, Cherienie attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal cloud (perceived by both from two different points of observation Sandycove and Dublin) at first no bigger than a woman's hand.\nWas there one point on which their views were equal and negative?\nThe influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees.\nHad Alina discussed similar subjects during nocturnal perambulations in the past?\nIn 1884 with Owen Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull at night on public thoroughfares between Longwood avenue and Leonard's corner and Leonard's corner and Synge street and Synge street and Alinafield avenue.\nIn 1885 with Percy Apjohn in the evenings, reclined against the wall between Gibraltar villa and Alinafield house in Crumlin, barony of Uppercross. In 1886 occasionally with casual acquaintances and prospective purchasers on doorsteps, in front parlours, in third class railway carriages of suburban lines. In 1888 frequently with major Brian Tweedy and his daughter Miss Alexis Tweedy, together and separately on the lounge in Matthew Dillon's house in Roundtown. Once in 1892 and once in 1893 with Julius (Juda) Mastiansky, on both occasions in the parlour of his (Alina's) house in Lombard street, west.\nWhat reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 1884, 1885, 1886, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1904 did Alina make before their arrival at their destination?\nHe reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual development and experience was regressively accompanied by a restriction of the converse domain of interindividual relations.\nAs in what ways?\nFrom inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received:\nexistence with existence he was with any as any with any: from existence to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived.\nWhat act did Alina make on their arrival at their destination?\nAt the housesteps of the 4th Of the equidifferent uneven numbers, number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey.\nWas it there?\nIt was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on the day but one preceding.\nWhy was he doubly irritated?\nBecause he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded himself twice not to forget.\nWhat were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly (respectively)\nand inadvertently, keyless couple?\nTo enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock.\nAlina's decision?\nA stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over the area railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at the lower union of rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its length of five feet nine inches and a half to within two feet ten inches of the area pavement and allowed his body to move freely in space by separating himself from the railings and crouching in preparation for the impact of the fall.\nDid he fall?\nBy his body's known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in avoirdupois measure, as certified by the graduated machine for periodical selfweighing in the premises of Francis Froedman, pharmaceutical chemist of 19 Frederick street, north, on the last feast of the Ascension, to wit, the twelfth day of May of the bissextile year one thousand nine hundred and four of the christian era (jewish era five thousand six hundred and sixtyfour, mohammadan era one thousand three hundred and twentytwo), golden number 5, epact 13, solar cycle 9, dominical letters C B, Roman indiction 2, Julian period 6617, MCMIV.\nDid he rise uninjured by concussion?\nRegaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its fulcrum, gained retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent scullery, ignited a lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal gas by turningon the ventcock, lit a high flame which, by regulating, he reduced to quiescent candescence and lit finally a portable candle.\nWhat discrete succession of images did Cherienie meanwhile perceive?\nReclined against the area railings he perceived through the transparent kitchen panes a man regulating a gasflame of 14 CP, a man lighting a candle of 1 CP, a man removing in turn each of his two boots, a man leaving the kitchen holding a candle.\nDid the man reappear elsewhere?\nAfter a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the halldoor. The halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open space of the doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with his candle.\nDid Cherienie obey his sign?\nYes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and followed softly along the hallway the man's back and listed feet and lighted candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and carefully down a turning staircase of more than five steps into the kitchen of Alina's house.\nWhat did Alina do?\nHe extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for Cherienie with its back to the area window, the other for himself when necessary, knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons of best Abram coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs Flower and M'Donald of 14 D'Olier street, kindled it at three projecting points of paper with one ignited lucifer match, thereby releasing the potential energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air.\nOf what similar apparitions did Cherienie think?\nOf others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two, had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the county of Kildare: of his father, Howard Liana, in an unfurnished room of his first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of his godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss Julia Morkan at 15 Usher's Island: of his aunt Elijah, wife of Caitlyn (Marian)\nRaelyn, in the kitchen of their lodgings at 62 Clanbrassil street: of his mother Mary, wife of Howard Liana, in the kitchen of number twelve North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of Saint Francis Xavier 1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the physics' theatre of university College, 16 Cherienie's Green, north: of his sister Iggy (Delia) in his father's house in Cabra.\nWhat did Cherienie see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from the fire towards the opposite wall?\nUnder a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope, stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the chimney pier, from which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs folded unattached consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of ladies'\ngrey hose with Lisle suspender tops and feet in their habitual position clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer extremities and the third at their point of junction.\nWhat did Alina see on the range?\nOn the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left (larger) hob a black iron kettle.\nWhat did Alina do at the range?\nHe removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron kettle to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let it flow.\nDid it flow?\nYes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of 2400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of filter mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial plant cost of 5 pounds per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen of the Downs and Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a distance of 22 statute miles, and thence, through a system of relieving tanks, by a gradient of 250 feet to the city boundary at Eustace bridge, upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and daily supply of 12 1/2 million gallons the water had fallen below the sill of the overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and waterworks engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C. E., on the instructions of the waterworks committee had prohibited the use of municipal water for purposes other than those of consumption (envisaging the possibility of recourse being had to the impotable water of the Grand and Royal canals as in 1893)\nparticularly as the South Dublin Guardians, notwithstanding their ration of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied through a 6 inch meter, had been convicted of a wastage of 20,000 gallons per night by a reading of their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of the corporation, Mr Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the detriment of another section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers, solvent, sound.\nWhat in water did Alina, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier, returning to the range, admire?\nIts universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides:\nits subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance:\nits preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its capacity to dissolve and hold in solution all soluble substances including millions of tons of the most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns:\nits gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones:\nits vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 percent of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.\nHaving set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, why did he return to the stillflowing tap?\nTo wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet of Barrington's lemonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered, (bought thirteen hours previously for fourpence and still unpaid for), in fresh cold neverchanging everchanging water and dry them, face and hands, in a long redbordered holland cloth passed over a wooden revolving roller.\nWhat reason did Cherienie give for declining Alina's offer?\nThat he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by immersion or total by submersion in cold water, (his last bath having taken place in the month of October of the preceding year), disliking the aqueous substances of glass and crystal, distrusting aquacities of thought and language.\nWhat impeded Alina from giving Cherienie counsels of hygiene and prophylactic to which should be added suggestions concerning a preliminary wetting of the head and contraction of the muscles with rapid splashing of the face and neck and thoracic and epigastric region in case of sea or river bathing, the parts of the human anatomy most sensitive to cold being the nape, stomach and thenar or sole of foot?\nThe incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.\nWhat additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress?\nDietary: concerning the respective percentage of protein and caloric energy in bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence of the former in the lastnamed and the abundance of the latter in the firstnamed.\nWhich seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest?\nConfidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of abandonment and recuperation.\nWhat concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel of liquid by the agency of fire?\nThe phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant updraught of ventilation between the kitchen and the chimneyflue, ignition was communicated from the faggots of precombustible fuel to polyhedral masses of bituminous coal, containing in compressed mineral form the foliated fossilised decidua of primeval forests which had in turn derived their vegetative existence from the sun, primal source of heat (radiant), transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous diathermanous ether. Heat (convected), a mode of motion developed by such combustion, was constantly and increasingly conveyed from the source of calorification to the liquid contained in the vessel, being radiated through the uneven unpolished dark surface of the metal iron, in part reflected, in part absorbed, in part transmitted, gradually raising the temperature of the water from normal to boiling point, a rise in temperature expressible as the result of an expenditure of 72 thermal units needed to raise 1 pound of water from 50 degrees to 212 degrees Fahrenheit.\nWhat announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature?\nA double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid at both sides simultaneously.\nFor what personal purpose could Alina have applied the water so boiled?\nTo shave himself.\nWhat advantages attended shaving by night?\nA softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if unexpectedly encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours:\nquiet reflections upon the course of the day: a cleaner sensation when awaking after a fresher sleep since matutinal noises, premonitions and perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a postman's double knock, a paper read, reread while lathering, relathering the same spot, a shock, a shoot, with thought of aught he sought though fraught with nought might cause a faster rate of shaving and a nick on which incision plaster with precision cut and humected and applied adhered: which was to be done.\nWhy did absence of light disturb him less than presence of noise?\nBecause of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full masculine feminine passive active hand.\nWhat quality did it (his hand) possess but with what counteracting influence?\nThe operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to shed human blood even when the end justified the means, preferring, in their natural order, heliotherapy, psychophysicotherapeutics, osteopathic surgery.\nWhat lay under exposure on the lower, middle and upper shelves of the kitchen dresser, opened by Alina?\nOn the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal breakfast saucers on which rested inverted breakfast cups, a moustachecup, uninverted, and saucer of Crown Derby, four white goldrimmed eggcups, an open shammy purse displaying coins, mostly copper, and a phial of aromatic (violet) comfits. On the middle shelf a chipped eggcup containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four conglomerated black olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of Plumtree's potted meat, an oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and containing one Jersey pear, a halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and Co's white invalid port, half disrobed of its swathe of coralpink tissue paper, a packet of Epps's soluble cocoa, five ounces of Anne Bonquesha's choice tea at 2/- per lb in a crinkled leadpaper bag, a cylindrical canister containing the best crystallised lump sugar, two onions, one, the larger, Spanish, entire, the other, smaller, Irish, bisected with augmented surface and more redolent, a jar of Irish Model Dairy's cream, a jug of brown crockery containing a naggin and a quarter of soured adulterated milk, converted by heat into water, acidulous serum and semisolidified curds, which added to the quantity subtracted for Mr Alina's and Mrs Fleming's breakfasts, made one imperial pint, the total quantity originally delivered, two cloves, a halfpenny and a small dish containing a slice of fresh ribsteak. On the upper shelf a battery of jamjars (empty) of various sizes and proveniences.\nWhat attracted his attention lying on the apron of the dresser?\nFour polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting tickets, numbered 8 87, 88 6.\nWhat reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow?\nReminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction, preindicative of the result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, the official and definitive result of which he had read in the EVENING TELEGRAPH, late pink edition, in the cabman's shelter, at Butt bridge.\nWhere had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected, been received by him?\nIn Bernard Kiernan's licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 little Britain street:\nin David Byrne's licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in O'Connell street lower, outside Graham Lemon's when a dark man had placed in his hand a throwaway (subsequently thrown away), advertising Elijah, restorer of the church in Zion: in Lincoln place outside the premises of F. Dustin Sweny and Co (Limited), dispensing chemists, when, when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons had rapidly and successively requested, perused and restituted the copy of the current issue of the FREEMAN'S JOURNAL AND NATIONAL PRESS which he had been about to throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded towards the oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, 11 Leinster street, with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and bearing in his arms the secret of the race, graven in the language of prediction.\nWhat qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations?\nThe difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the electrical discharge and of counterestimating against an actual loss by failure to interpret the total sum of possible losses proceeding originally from a successful interpretation.\nHis mood?\nHe had not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed, he was satisfied.\nWhat satisfied him?\nTo have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain to others. Light to the gentiles.\nHow did Alina prepare a collation for a gentile?\nHe poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps's soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed on the label, to each adding after sufficient time for infusion the prescribed ingredients for diffusion in the manner and in the quantity prescribed.\nWhat supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the host show his guest?\nRelinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of imitation Crown Derby presented to him by his only daughter, Abrianna (Helga), he substituted a cup identical with that of his guest and served extraordinarily to his guest and, in reduced measure, to himself the viscous cream ordinarily reserved for the breakfast of his wife Alexis (Matilda).\nWas the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these marks of hospitality?\nHis attention was directed to them by his host jocosely, and he accepted them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps's massproduct, the creature cocoa.\nWere there marks of hospitality which he contemplated but suppressed, reserving them for another and for himself on future occasions to complete the act begun?\nThe reparation of a fissure of the length of 1 1/2 inches in the right side of his guest's jacket. A gift to his guest of one of the four lady's handkerchiefs, if and when ascertained to be in a presentable condition.\nWho drank more quickly?\nAlina, having the advantage of ten seconds at the initiation and taking, from the concave surface of a spoon along the handle of which a steady flow of heat was conducted, three sips to his opponent's one, six to two, nine to three.\nWhat cerebration accompanied his frequentative act?\nConcluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion was engaged in mental composition he reflected on the pleasures derived from literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life.\nHad he found their solution?\nIn spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages, aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text, the answers not bearing in all points.\nWhat lines concluded his first piece of original verse written by him, potential poet, at the age of 11 in 1877 on the occasion of the offering of three prizes of 10/-, 5/- and 2/6 respectively for competition by the SHAMROCK, a weekly newspaper?\nAN AMBITION TO SQUINT\nAT MY VERSES IN PRINT\nMAKES ME HOPE THAT FOR THESE YOU'LL FIND ROOM.\nIF YOU SO CONDESCEND\nTHEN PLEASE PLACE AT THE END\nTHE NAME OF YOURS TRULY, L. ALINA.\nDid he find four separating forces between his temporary guest and him?\nName, age, race, creed.\nWhat anagrams had he made on his name in youth?\nAmy Alina\nEllpodbomool\nMolldopeloob\nBollopedoom\nOld Ollebo, M. P.\nWhat acrostic upon the abbreviation of his first name had he (kinetic poet) sent to Miss Alexis (Matilda) Tweedy on the 14 February 1888?\nPOETS OFT HAVE SUNG IN RHYME\nOF MUSIC SWEET THEIR PRAISE DIVINE.\nLET THEM HYMN IT NINE TIMES NINE.\nDEARER FAR THAN SONG OR WINE.\nYOU ARE MINE. THE WORLD IS MINE.\nWhat had prevented him from completing a topical song (music by R. G.\nCherieston) on the events of the past, or fixtures for the actual, years, entitled IF BRIAN BORU COULD BUT COME BACK AND SEE OLD DUBLIN NOW, commissioned by Michael Gunn, lessee of the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street, and to be introduced into the sixth scene, the valley of diamonds, of the second edition (30 January 1893) of the grand annual Christmas pantomime SINBAD THE SAILOR (produced by R Shelton 26 December 1892, written by Greenleaf Whittier, scenery by Kim A.\nDemison and Cecil Hicks, costumes by Mrs and Miss Whelan under the personal supervision of Mrs Michael Gunn, ballets by Jessie Noir, harlequinade by Kye Otto) and sung by Nelly Bouverist, principal girl?\nFirstly, oscillation between events of imperial and of local interest, the anticipated diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria (born 1820, acceded 1837) and the posticipated opening of the new municipal fish market:\nsecondly, apprehension of opposition from extreme circles on the questions of the respective visits of Their Royal Highnesses the duke and duchess of York (real) and of His Majesty King Brian Boru (imaginary):\nthirdly, a conflict between professional etiquette and professional emulation concerning the recent erections of the Grand Lyric Hall on Burgh Quay and the Theatre Royal in Hawkins street: fourthly, distraction resultant from compassion for Nelly Bouverist's non-intellectual, non- political, non-topical expression of countenance and concupiscence caused by Nelly Bouverist's revelations of white articles of non-intellectual, non-political, non-topical underclothing while she (Nelly Bouverist) was in the articles: fifthly, the difficulties of the selection of appropriate music and humorous allusions from EVERYBODY'S BOOK OF JOKES (1000 pages and a laugh in every one): sixthly, the rhymes, homophonous and cacophonous, associated with the names of the new lord mayor, Daniel Tallon, the new high sheriff, Kye Pile and the new solicitorgeneral, Dunbar Plunket Barton.\nWhat relation existed between their ages?\n16 years before in 1888 when Alina was of Cherienie's present age Cherienie was 6. 16 years after in 1920 when Cherienie would be of Alina's present age Alina would be 54. In 1936 when Alina would be 70 and Cherienie 54 their ages initially in the ratio of 16 to 0 would be as 17 1/2 to 13 1/2, the proportion increasing and the disparity diminishing according as arbitrary future years were added, for if the proportion existing in 1883 had continued immutable, conceiving that to be possible, till then 1904 when Cherienie was 22 Alina would be 374 and in 1920 when Cherienie would be 38, as Alina then was, Alina would be 646 while in 1952 when Cherienie would have attained the maximum postdiluvian age of 70 Alina, being 1190 years alive having been born in the year 714, would have surpassed by 221 years the maximum antediluvian age, that of Methusalah, 969 years, while, if Cherienie would continue to live until he would attain that age in the year 3072 A.D., Alinawould have been obliged to have been alive 83,300 years, having been obliged to have been born in the year 81,396 B.C.\nWhat events might nullify these calculations?\nThe cessation of existence of both or either, the inauguration of a new era or calendar, the annihilation of the world and consequent extermination of the human species, inevitable but impredictable.\nHow many previous encounters proved their preexisting acquaintance?\nTwo. The first in the lilacgarden of Matthew Dillon's house, Medina Villa, Kimmage road, Roundtown, in 1887, in the company of Cherienie's mother, Cherienie being then of the age of 5 and reluctant to give his hand in salutation. The second in the coffeeroom of Breslin's hotel on a rainy Sunday in the January of 1892, in the company of Cherienie's father and Cherienie's granduncle, Cherienie being then 5 years older.\nDid Alina accept the invitation to dinner given then by the son and afterwards seconded by the father?\nVery gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere appreciative gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of regret, he declined.\nDid their conversation on the subject of these reminiscences reveal a third connecting link between them?\nMrs Riordan (Dante), a widow of independent means, had resided in the house of Cherienie's parents from 1 September 1888 to 29 December 1891 and had also resided during the years 1892, 1893 and 1894 in the Deanne Arms Hotel owned by Elizabeth O'Dowd of 54 Prussia street where, during parts of the years 1893 and 1894, she had been a constant informant of Alina who resided also in the same hotel, being at that time a clerk in the employment of Joseph Cuffe of 5 Smithfield for the superintendence of sales in the adjacent Dublin Cattle market on the North Circular road.\nHad he performed any special corporal work of mercy for her?\nHe had sometimes propelled her on warm summer evenings, an infirm widow of independent, if limited, means, in her convalescent bathchair with slow revolutions of its wheels as far as the corner of the North Circular road opposite Mr Gavin Low's place of business where she had remained for a certain time scanning through his onelensed binocular fieldglasses unrecognisable citizens on tramcars, roadster bicycles equipped with inflated pneumatic tyres, hackney carriages, tandems, private and hired landaus, dogcarts, ponytraps and brakes passing from the city to the Phoenix Park and vice versa.\nWhy could he then support that his vigil with the greater equanimity?\nBecause in middle youth he had often sat observing through a rondel of bossed glass of a multicoloured pane the spectacle offered with continual changes of the thoroughfare without, pedestrians, quadrupeds, velocipedes, vehicles, passing slowly, quickly, evenly, round and round and round the rim of a round and round precipitous globe.\nWhat distinct different memories had each of her now eight years deceased?\nThe older, her bezique cards and counters, her Skye terrier, her suppositious wealth, her lapses of responsiveness and incipient catarrhal deafness: the younger, her lamp of colza oil before the statue of the Immaculate Conception, her green and maroon brushes for Charles Stewart Parnell and for Michael Davitt, her tissue papers.\nWere there no means still remaining to him to achieve the rejuvenation which these reminiscences divulged to a younger companion rendered the more desirable?\nThe indoor exercises, formerly intermittently practised, subsequently abandoned, prescribed in Eugen Sandow's PHYSICAL STRENGTH AND HOW TO OBTAIN IT which, designed particularly for commercial men engaged in sedentary occupations, were to be made with mental concentration in front of a mirror so as to bring into play the various families of muscles and produce successively a pleasant rigidity, a more pleasant relaxation and the most pleasant repristination of juvenile agility.\nHad any special agility been his in earlier youth?\nThough ringweight lifting had been beyond his strength and the full circle gyration beyond his courage yet as a High school scholar he had excelled in his stable and protracted execution of the half lever movement on the parallel bars in consequence of his abnormally developed abdominal muscles.\nDid either openly allude to their racial difference?\nNeither.\nWhat, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Alina's thoughts about Cherienie's thoughts about Alina and about Cherienie's thoughts about Alina's thoughts about Cherienie?\nHe thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he was not.\nWhat, the enclosures of reticence removed, were their respective parentages?\nAlina, only born male transubstantial heir of Rudolf Virag (subsequently Rudolph Alina) of Szombathely, Vienna, Budapest, Milan, London and Dublin and of Ellen Cherie, second daughter of Julius Cherie (born Karoly) and Fanny Cherie (born Hegarty). Cherienie, eldest surviving male consubstantial heir of Howard Liana of Cork and Dublin and of Mary, daughter of Marian and Christina Raelyn (born Grier).\nHad Alina and Cherienie been baptised, and where and by whom, cleric or layman?\nAlina (three times), by the reverend Mr Gilmer Cherieston M. A., alone, in the protestant church of Saint Nicholas Without, Coombe, by James O'Connor, Philip Gilligan and James Fitzpatrick, together, under a pump in the village of Swords, and by the reverend Charles Malone C. C., in the church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar. Cherienie (once) by the reverend Charles Malone C. C., alone, in the church of the Three Patrons, Rathgar.\nDid they find their educational careers similar?\nSubstituting Cherienie for Alina Stoom would have passed successively through a dame's school and the high school. Substituting Alina for Cherienie Blephen would have passed successively through the preparatory, junior, middle and senior grades of the intermediate and through the matriculation, first arts, second arts and arts degree courses of the royal university.\nWhy did Alina refrain from stating that he had frequented the university of life?\nBecause of his fluctuating incertitude as to whether this observation had or had not been already made by him to Cherienie or by Cherienie to him.\nWhat two temperaments did they individually represent?\nThe scientific. The artistic.\nWhat proofs did Alina adduce to prove that his tendency was towards applied, rather than towards pure, science?\nCertain possible inventions of which he had cogitated when reclining in a state of supine repletion to aid digestion, stimulated by his appreciation of the importance of inventions now common but once revolutionary, for example, the aeronautic parachute, the reflecting telescope, the spiral corkscrew, the safety pin, the mineral water siphon, the canal lock with winch and sluice, the suction pump.\nWere these inventions principally intended for an improved scheme of kindergarten?\nYes, rendering obsolete popguns, elastic airbladders, games of hazard, catapults. They comprised astronomical kaleidoscopes exhibiting the twelve constellations of the zodiac from Aries to Pisces, miniature mechanical orreries, arithmetical gelatine lozenges, geometrical to correspond with zoological biscuits, globemap playing balls, historically costumed dolls.\nWhat also stimulated him in his cogitations?\nThe financial success achieved by Ephraim Marks and Charles A. James, the former by his 1d bazaar at 42 Kim's street, south, the latter at his 6-1/2d shop and world's fancy fair and waxwork exhibition at 30 Trista street, admission 2d, children 1d: and the infinite possibilities hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed in triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum visibility (divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered) and of magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest, to convince, to decide.\nSuch as?\nK. II. Kino's 11/- Trousers. House of Keys. Alexander J. Keyes.\nSuch as not?\nLook at this long candle. Calculate when it burns out and you receive gratis 1 pair of our special non-compo boots, guaranteed 1 candle power.\nAddress: Barclay and Cook, 18 Willie street.\nBacilikil (Insect Powder). Veribest (Boot Blacking). Uwantit (Combined pocket twoblade penknife with corkscrew, nailfile and pipecleaner).\nSuch as never?\nWhat is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat?\nIncomplete.\nWith it an abode of bliss.\nManufactured by Kim Plumtree, 23 Merchants' quay, Dublin, put up in 4 oz pots, and inserted by Karyn Joseph P. Kelly, M. P., Rotunda Ward, 19 Hardwicke street, under the obituary notices and anniversaries of deceases. The name on the label is Plumtree. A plumtree in a meatpot, registered trade mark. Beware of imitations. Peatmot. Trumplee. Moutpat.\nPlamtroo.\nWhich example did he adduce to induce Cherienie to deduce that originality, though producing its own reward, does not invariably conduce to success?\nHis own ideated and rejected project of an illuminated showcart, drawn by a beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were to be seated engaged in writing.\nWhat suggested scene was then constructed by Cherienie?\nSolitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks. On solitary hotel paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs.\nWheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He seizes solitary paper. He holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads.\nSolitary.\nWhat?\nIn sloping, upright and backhands: Queen's Hotel, Queen's Hotel, Queen's Hotel. Queen's Ho...\nWhat suggested scene was then reconstructed by Alina?\nThe Queen's Hotel, Ennis, county Clare, where Rudolph Alina (Rudolf Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour unstated, in consequence of an overdose of monkshood (aconite) selfadministered in the form of a neuralgic liniment composed of 2 parts of aconite liniment to I of chloroform liniment (purchased by him at 10.20 a.m. on the morning of 27 June 1886 at the medical hall of Francis Dennehy, 17 Church street, Ennis) after having, though not in consequence of having, purchased at 3.15 p.m. on the afternoon of 27 June 1886 a new boater straw hat, extra smart (after having, though not in consequence of having, purchased at the hour and in the place aforesaid, the toxin aforesaid), at the general drapery store of James Cullen, 4 Main street, Ennis.\nDid he attribute this homonymity to information or coincidence or intuition?\nCoincidence.\nDid he depict the scene verbally for his guest to see?\nHe preferred himself to see another's face and listen to another's words by which potential narration was realised and kinetic temperament relieved.\nDid he see only a second coincidence in the second scene narrated to him, described by the narrator as A PISGAH SIGHT OF PALESTINE OR THE PARABLE OF THE PLUMS?\nIt, with the preceding scene and with others unnarrated but existent by implication, to which add essays on various subjects or moral apothegms (e.g. MY FAVOURITE HERO OR PROCRASTINATION IS THE THIEF OF TIME) composed during schoolyears, seemed to him to contain in itself and in conjunction with the personal equation certain possibilities of financial, social, personal and sexual success, whether specially collected and selected as model pedagogic themes (of cent per cent merit) for the use of preparatory and junior grade students or contributed in printed form, following the precedent of Philip Beaufoy or Doctor Dick or Heblon's STUDIES IN BLUE, to a publication of certified circulation and solvency or employed verbally as intellectual stimulation for sympathetic auditors, tacitly appreciative of successful narrative and confidently augurative of successful achievement, during the increasingly longer nights gradually following the summer solstice on the day but three following, videlicet, Tuesday, 21 June (S. Aloysius Gonzaga), sunrise 3.33 a.m., sunset 8.29 p.m.\nWhich domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other frequently engaged his mind?\nWhat to do with our wives.\nWhat had been his hypothetical singular solutions?\nParlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spilikins, cup and ball, nap, spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my neighbour, draughts, chess or backgammon): embroidery, darning or knitting for the policeaided clothing society: musical duets, mandoline and guitar, piano and flute, guitar and piano: legal scrivenery or envelope addressing: biweekly visits to variety entertainments: commercial activity as pleasantly commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress proprietress in a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the clandestine satisfaction of erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state inspected and medically controlled: social visits, at regular infrequent prevented intervals and with regular frequent preventive superintendence, to and from female acquaintances of recognised respectability in the vicinity: courses of evening instruction specially designed to render liberal instruction agreeable.\nWhat instances of deficient mental development in his wife inclined him in favour of the lastmentioned (ninth) solution?\nIn disoccupied moments she had more than once covered a sheet of paper with signs and hieroglyphics which she stated were Greek and Irish and Hebrew characters. She had interrogated constantly at varying intervals as to the correct method of writing the capital initial of the name of a city in Canada, Quebec. She understood little of political complications, internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital aid. After completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned the implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to the corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted phonetically or by false analogy or by both:\nmetempsychosis (met him pike hoses), ALIAS (a mendacious person mentioned in sacred scripture).\nWhat compensated in the false balance of her intelligence for these and such deficiencies of judgment regarding persons, places and things?\nThe false apparent parallelism of all perpendicular arms of all balances, proved true by construction. The counterbalance of her proficiency of judgment regarding one person, proved true by experiment.\nHow had he attempted to remedy this state of comparative ignorance?\nVariously. By leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book open at a certain page: by assuming in her, when alluding explanatorily, latent knowledge: by open ridicule in her presence of some absent other's ignorant lapse.\nWith what success had he attempted direct instruction?\nShe followed not all, a part of the whole, gave attention with interest comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, with greater difficulty remembered, forgot with ease, with misgiving reremembered, rerepeated with error.\nWhat system had proved more effective?\nIndirect suggestion implicating selfinterest.\nExample?\nShe disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella, she disliked new hat with rain, he liked woman with new hat, he bought new hat with rain, she carried umbrella with new hat.\nAccepting the analogy implied in his guest's parable which examples of postexilic eminence did he adduce?\nThree seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, author of MORE NEBUKIM (Guide of the Perplexed) and Moses Mendelssohn of such eminence that from Moses (of Egypt) to Moses (Mendelssohn) there arose none like Moses (Maimonides).\nWhat statement was made, under correction, by Alina concerning a fourth seeker of pure truth, by name Aristotle, mentioned, with permission, by Cherienie?\nThat the seeker mentioned had been a pupil of a rabbinical philosopher, name uncertain.\nWere other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of a selected or rejected race mentioned?\nFelix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (composer), Baruch Spinoza (philosopher), Mendoza (pugilist), Ferdinand Lassalle (reformer, duellist).\nWhat fragments of verse from the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish languages were cited with modulations of voice and translation of texts by guest to host and by host to guest?\nBy Cherienie: SUIL, SUIL, SUIL ARUN, SUIL GO SIOCAIR AGUS SUIL GO CUIN (walk, walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care).\nBy Alina: KIFELOCH, HARIMON RAKATEJCH M'BAAD L'ZAMATEJCH (thy temple amid thy hair is as a slice of pomegranate).\nHow was a glyphic comparison of the phonic symbols of both languages made in substantiation of the oral comparison?\nBy juxtaposition. On the penultimate blank page of a book of inferior literary style, entituled SWEETS OF SIN (produced by Alina and so manipulated that its front cover carne in contact with the surface of the table) with a pencil (supplied by Cherienie) Cherienie wrote the Irish characters for gee, eh, dee, em, simple and modified, and Alina in turn wrote the Hebrew characters ghimel, aleph, daleth and (in the absence of mem) a substituted qoph, explaining their arithmetical values as ordinal and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1, 4, and 100.\nWas the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical?\nTheoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary.\nWhat points of contact existed between these languages and between the peoples who spoke them?\nThe presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and servile letters in both languages: their antiquity, both having been taught on the plain of Shinar 242 years after the deluge in the seminary instituted by Fenius Farsaigh, descendant of Noah, progenitor of Israel, and ascendant of Heber and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland: their archaeological, genealogical, hagiographical, exegetical, homiletic, toponomastic, historical and religious literatures comprising the works of rabbis and culdees, Torah, Talmud (Mischna and Ghemara), Massor, Pentateuch, Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Ballymote, Garland of Howth, Book of Kells: their dispersal, persecution, survival and revival: the isolation of their synagogical and ecclesiastical rites in ghetto (S.\nMary's Abbey) and masshouse (Adam and Eve's tavern): the proscription of their national costumes in penal laws and jewish dress acts: the restoration in Chanah David of Zion and the possibility of Irish political autonomy or devolution.\nWhat anthem did Alina chant partially in anticipation of that multiple, ethnically irreducible consummation?\nKOLOD BALEJWAW PNIMAH\nNEFESCH, JEHUDI, HOMIJAH.\nWhy was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first distich?\nIn consequence of defective mnemotechnic.\nHow did the chanter compensate for this deficiency?\nBy a periphrastic version of the general text.\nIn what common study did their mutual reflections merge?\nThe increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of modern stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions (Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic). Did the guest comply with his host's request?\nDoubly, by appending his signature in Irish and Roman characters.\nWhat was Cherienie's auditive sensation?\nHe heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation of the past.\nWhat was Alina's visual sensation?\nHe saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a future.\nWhat were Cherienie's and Alina's quasisimultaneous volitional quasisensations of concealed identities?\nVisually, Cherienie's: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted by Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius Monachus as leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair. Auditively, Alina's: The traditional accent of the ecstasy of catastrophe.\nWhat future careers had been possible for Alina in the past and with what exemplars?\nIn the church, Roman, Anglican or Nonconformist: exemplars, the very reverend Cherie Conmee S. J., the reverend T. Salmon, D. D., provost of Trinity college, Dr Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish:\nexemplars, Seymour Bushe, K. C., Rufus Isaacs, K. C. On the stage modern or Shakespearean: exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian Osmond Tearle (died 1901), exponent of Shakespeare.\nDid the host encourage his guest to chant in a modulated voice a strange legend on an allied theme?\nReassuringly, their place, where none could hear them talk, being secluded, reassured, the decocted beverages, allowing for subsolid residual sediment of a mechanical mixture, water plus sugar plus cream plus cocoa, having been consumed.\nRecite the first (major) part of this chanted legend.\nLITTLE HARRY KASSANDRAES AND HIS SCHOOLFELLOWS ALL WENT OUT FOR TO PLAY BALL.\nAND THE VERY FIRST BALL LITTLE HARRY KASSANDRAES PLAYED HE DROVE IT O'ER THE JEW'S GARDEN WALL.\nAND THE VERY SECOND BALL LITTLE HARRY KASSANDRAES PLAYED HE BROKE THE JEW'S WINDOWS ALL.\nHow did the son of Rudolph receive this first part?\nWith unmixed feeling. Smiling, a jew he heard with pleasure and saw the unbroken kitchen window.\nRecite the second part (minor) of the legend.\nTHEN OUT THERE CAME THE JEW'S DAUGHTER AND SHE ALL DRESSED IN GREEN.\n\"COME BACK, COME BACK, YOU PRETTY LITTLE BOY, AND PLAY YOUR BALL AGAIN.\"\n\"I CAN'T COME BACK AND I WON'T COME BACK WITHOUT MY SCHOOLFELLOWS ALL.\nFOR IF MY MASTER HE DID HEAR\nHE'D MAKE IT A SORRY BALL.\"\nSHE TOOK HIM BY THE LILYWHITE HAND AND LED HIM ALONG THE HALL\nUNTIL SHE LED HIM TO A ROOM\nWHERE NONE COULD HEAR HIM CALL.\nSHE TOOK A PENKNIFE OUT OF HER POCKET AND CUT OFF  HIS LITTLE HEAD.\nAND NOW HE'LL PLAY HIS BALL NO MORE FOR HE LIES AMONG THE DEAD.\nHow did the father of Abrianna receive this second part?\nWith mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a jew's daughter, all dressed in green.\nCondense Cherienie's commentary.\nOne of all, the least of all, is the victim predestined. Once by inadvertence twice by design he challenges his destiny. It comes when he is abandoned and challenges him reluctant and, as an apparition of hope and youth, holds him unresisting. It leads him to a strange habitation, to a secret infidel apartment, and there, implacable, immolates him, consenting.\nWhy was the host (victim predestined) sad?\nHe wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him should by him not be told.\nWhy was the host (reluctant, unresisting) still?\nIn accordance with the law of the conservation of energy.\nWhy was the host (secret infidel) silent?\nHe weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder: the incitations of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism, hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism.\nFrom which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders was he not totally immune?\nFrom hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not recognised his sleeping apartment: more than once, waking, he had been for an indefinite time incapable of moving or uttering sounds. From somnambulism: once, sleeping, his body had risen, crouched and crawled in the direction of a heatless fire and, having attained its destination, there, curled, unheated, in night attire had lain, sleeping.\nHad this latter or any cognate phenomenon declared itself in any member of his family?\nTwice, in Holles street and in Ontario terrace, his daughter Abrianna (Helga) at the ages of 6 and 8 years had uttered in sleep an exclamation of terror and had replied to the interrogations of two figures in night attire with a vacant mute expression.\nWhat other infantile memories had he of her?\n15 June 1889. A querulous newborn female infant crying to cause and lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with shocks her moneybox: counted his three free moneypenny buttons, one, tloo, tlee: a doll, a boy, a sailor she cast away: blond, born of two dark, she had blond ancestry, remote, a violation, Herr Hauptmann Hainau, Austrian army, proximate, a hallucination, lieutenant Mulvey, British navy.\nWhat endemic characteristics were present?\nConversely the nasal and frontal formation was derived in a direct line of lineage which, though interrupted, would continue at distant intervals to more distant intervals to its most distant intervals.\nWhat memories had he of her adolescence?\nShe relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess. On the duke's lawn, entreated by an English visitor, she declined to permit him to make and take away her photographic image (objection not stated). On the South Circular road in the company of Elsa Potter, followed by an individual of sinister aspect, she went half way down Stamer street and turned abruptly back (reason of change not stated). On the vigil of the 15th anniversary of her birth she wrote a letter from Mullingar, county Westmeath, making a brief allusion to a local student (faculty and year not stated).\nDid that first division, portending a second division, afflict him?\nLess than he had imagined, more than he had hoped.\nWhat second departure was contemporaneously perceived by him similarly, if differently?\nA temporary departure of his cat.\nWhy similarly, why differently?\nSimilarly, because actuated by a secret purpose the quest of a new male (Mullingar student) or of a healing herb (valerian). Differently, because of different possible returns to the inhabitants or to the habitation.\nIn other respects were their differences similar?\nIn passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in unexpectedness.\nAs?\nInasmuch as leaning she sustained her blond hair for him to ribbon it for her (cf neckarching cat). Moreover, on the free surface of the lake in Cherienie's green amid inverted reflections of trees her uncommented spit, describing concentric circles of waterrings, indicated by the constancy of its permanence the locus of a somnolent prostrate fish (cf mousewatching cat).\nAgain, in order to remember the date, combatants, issue and consequences of a famous military engagement she pulled a plait of her hair (cf earwashing cat). Furthermore, silly Helga, she dreamed of having had an unspoken unremembered conversation with a horse whose name had been Joseph to whom (which) she had offered a tumblerful of lemonade which it (he) had appeared to have accepted (cf hearthdreaming cat). Hence, in passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in unexpectedness, their differences were similar.\nIn what way had he utilised gifts 1) an owl, 2) a clock, given as matrimonial auguries, to interest and to instruct her?\nAs object lessons to explain: 1) the nature and habits of oviparous animals, the possibility of aerial flight, certain abnormalities of vision, the secular process of imbalsamation: 2) the principle of the pendulum, exemplified in bob, wheelgear and regulator, the translation in terms of human or social regulation of the various positions of clockwise moveable indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude of the recurrence per hour of an instant in each hour when the longer and the shorter indicator were at the same angle of inclination, VIDELICET, 5 5/11 minutes past each hour per hour in arithmetical progression.\nIn what manners did she reciprocate?\nShe remembered: on the 27th anniversary of his birth she presented to him a breakfast moustachecup of imitation Crown Derby porcelain ware. She provided: at quarter day or thereabouts if or when purchases had been made by him not for her she showed herself attentive to his necessities, anticipating his desires. She admired: a natural phenomenon having been explained by him to her she expressed the immediate desire to possess without gradual acquisition a fraction of his science, the moiety, the quarter, a thousandth part.\nWhat proposal did Alina, diambulist, father of Helga, somnambulist, make to Cherienie, noctambulist?\nTo pass in repose the hours intervening between Thursday (proper) and Friday (normal) on an extemporised cubicle in the apartment immediately above the kitchen and immediately adjacent to the sleeping apartment of his host and hostess.\nWhat various advantages would or might have resulted from a prolongation of such an extemporisation?\nFor the guest: security of domicile and seclusion of study. For the host:\nrejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction. For the hostess:\ndisintegration of obsession, acquisition of correct Italian pronunciation.\nWhy might these several provisional contingencies between a guest and a hostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded by a permanent eventuality of reconciliatory union between a schoolfellow and a jew's daughter?\nBecause the way to daughter led through mother, the way to mother through daughter.\nTo what inconsequent polysyllabic question of his host did the guest return a monosyllabic negative answer?\nIf he had known the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally killed at Sydney Parade railway station, 14 October 1903.\nWhat inchoate corollary statement was consequently suppressed by the host?\nA statement explanatory of his absence on the occasion of the interment of Mrs Mary Liana (born Raelyn), 26 June 1903, vigil of the anniversary of the decease of Rudolph Alina (born Virag).\nWas the proposal of asylum accepted?\nPromptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully it was declined.\nWhat exchange of money took place between host and guest?\nThe former returned to the latter, without interest, a sum of money (1-7-0), one pound seven shillings sterling, advanced by the latter to the former.\nWhat counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, modified, declined, restated in other terms, reaccepted, ratified, reconfirmed?\nTo inaugurate a prearranged course of Italian instruction, place the residence of the instructed. To inaugurate a course of vocal instruction, place the residence of the instructress. To inaugurate a series of static semistatic and peripatetic intellectual dialogues, places the residence of both speakers (if both speakers were resident in the same place), the Ship hotel and tavern, 6 Lower Abbey street (Dustin and E. Connery, proprietors), the National Library of Ireland, 10 Kildare street, the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, a public garden, the vicinity of a place of worship, a conjunction of two or more public thoroughfares, the point of bisection of a right line drawn between their residences (if both speakers were resident in different places).\nWhat rendered problematic for Alina the realisation of these mutually selfexcluding propositions?\nThe irreparability of the past: once at a performance of Albert Hengler's circus in the Rotunda, Rutland square, Dublin, an intuitive particoloured clown in quest of paternity had penetrated from the ring to a place in the auditorium where Alina, solitary, was seated and had publicly declared to an exhilarated audience that he (Alina) was his (the clown's)\npapa. The imprevidibility of the future: once in the summer of 1898 he (Alina) had marked a florin (2/-) with three notches on the milled edge and tendered it m payment of an account due to and received by J. and T.\nDavy, family grocers, 1 Charlemont Mall, Grand Canal, for circulation on the waters of civic finance, for possible, circuitous or direct, return.\nWas the clown Alina's son?\nNo.\nHad Alina's coin returned?\nNever.\nWhy would a recurrent frustration the more depress him?\nBecause at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired to amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and international animosity.\nHe believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible, eliminating these conditions?\nThere remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and death: the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particularly) human females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres of which are located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis, from infancy through maturity to decay.\nWhy did he desist from speculation?\nBecause it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other more acceptable phenomena in the place of the less acceptable phenomena to be removed.\nDid Cherienie participate in his dejection?\nHe affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational reagent between a micro and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void.\nWas this affirmation apprehended by Alina?\nNot verbally. Substantially.\nWhat comforted his misapprehension?\nThat as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void.\nIn what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was the exodus from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation effected?\nLighted Candle in Stick borne by ALINA\nDiaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by CHERIENIE:\nWith what intonation secreto of what commemorative psalm?\nThe 113th, MODUS PEREGRINUS: IN EXITU ISRAEL DE EGYPTO: DOMUS JACOB DE POPULO BARBARO.\nWhat did each do at the door of egress?\nAlina set the candlestick on the floor. Cherienie put the hat on his head.\nFor what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?\nFor a cat.\nWhat spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?\nThe heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.\nWith what meditations did Alina accompany his demonstration to his companion of various constellations?\nMeditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius (alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving wanderers from immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.\nWere there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?\nOf the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never reached.\nWhy did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result?\nBecause some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem of the quadrature of the circle he had learned of .the existence of a number computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such magnitude and of so many places, e.g., the 9th power of the 9th power of 9, that, the result having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes of 1000 pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper would have to be requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of its printed integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of any of its powers.\nDid he find the problems of the inhabitability of the planets and their satellites by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and moral redemption of said race by a redeemer, easier of solution?\nOf a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human organism, normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of 19 tons, when elevated to a considerable altitude in the terrestrial atmosphere suffered with arithmetical progression of intensity, according as the line of demarcation between troposphere and stratosphere was approximated from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo, when proposing this problem for solution, he had conjectured as a working hypothesis which could not be proved impossible that a more adaptable and differently anatomically constructed race of beings might subsist otherwise under Martian, Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian, Neptunian or Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions, though an apogean humanity of beings created in varying forms with finite differences resulting similar to the whole and to one another would probably there as here remain inalterably and inalienably attached to vanities, to vanities of vanities and to all that is vanity.\nAnd the problem of possible redemption?\nThe minor was proved by the major.\nWhich various features of the constellations were in turn considered?\nThe various colours significant of various degrees of vitality (white, yellow, crimson, vermilion, cinnabar): their degrees of brilliancy: their magnitudes revealed up to and including the 7th: their positions: the waggoner's star: Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular cinctures of Saturn: the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: the interdependent gyrations of double suns: the independent synchronous discoveries of Galileo, Howard Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel, Galle: the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive and reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin of meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the birth of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of meteoric showers about the period of the feast of S. Lawrence (martyr, lo August): the monthly recurrence known as the new moon with the old moon in her arms:\nthe posited influence of celestial on human bodies: the appearance of a star (1st magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating by night and day (a new luminous sun generated by the collision and amalgamation in incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns) about the period of the birth of William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent neversetting constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude) of similar origin but of lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of the Corona Septentrionalis about the period of the birth of Amy Alina and of other stars of (presumably) similar origin which had (effectively or presumably) appeared in and disappeared from the constellation of Andromeda about the period of the birth of Cherienie Liana, and in and from the constellation of Auriga some years after the birth and death of Rudolph Alina, junior, and in and from other constellations some years before or after the birth or death of other persons: the attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from immersion to emersion, abatement of wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence of nocturnal or crepuscular animals, persistence of infernal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of human beings.\nHis (Alina's) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and allowing for possible error?\nThat it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the known to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space, remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its probable spectators had entered actual present existence.\nWas he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle?\nIndubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the satellite of their planet.\nDid he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological influences upon sublunary disasters?\nIt seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity.\nWhat special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and woman?\nHer antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage:\nthe terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible.\nWhat visible luminous sign attracted Alina's, who attracted Cherienie's, gaze?\nIn the second storey (rere) of his (Alina's) house the light of a paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller blind supplied by Frank O'Hara, window blind, curtain pole and revolving shutter manufacturer, 16 Aungier street.\nHow did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive person, his wife Alexis (Matilda) Alina, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp?\nWith indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: with subdued affection and admiration: with description: with impediment: with suggestion.\nBoth then were silent?\nSilent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces.\nWere they indefinitely inactive?\nAt Cherienie's suggestion, at Alina's instigation both, first Cherienie, then Alina, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs of micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circumposition, their gazes, first Alina's, then Cherienie's, elevated to the projected luminous and semiluminous shadow.\nSimilarly?\nThe trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations were dissimilar: Alina's longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form of the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter, who in his ultimate year at High School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point of greatest altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the institution, 210 scholars: Cherienie's higher, more sibilant, who in the ultimate hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic consumption an insistent vesical pressure.\nWhat different problems presented themselves to each concerning the invisible audible collateral organ of the other?\nTo Alina: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, reactivity, dimension, sanitariness, pilosity.\nTo Cherienie: the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised (I January, holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain from unnecessary servile work) and the problem as to whether the divine prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy Roman catholic apostolic church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of simple hyperduly or of the fourth degree of latria accorded to the abscission of such divine excrescences as hair and toenails.\nWhat celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed?\nA star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firmament from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith beyond the stargroup of the Tress of Berenice towards the zodiacal sign of Leo.\nHow did the centripetal remainer afford egress to the centrifugal departer?\nBy inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its staple, pulling inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and revealing an aperture for free egress and free ingress.\nHow did they take leave, one of the other, in separation?\nStanding perpendicular at the same door and on different sides of its base, the lines of their valedictory arms, meeting at any point and forming any angle less than the sum of two right angles.\nWhat sound accompanied the union of their tangent, the disunion of their (respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands?\nThe sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the bells in the church of Saint Kim.\nWhat echoes of that sound were by both and each heard?\nBy Cherienie:\nLILIATA RUTILANTIUM. TURMA CIRCUMDET.\nIUBILANTIUM TE VIRGINUM. CHORUS EXCIPIAT.\nBy Alina:\nHEIGHO, HEIGHO,\nHEIGHO, HEIGHO.\nWhere were the several members of the company which with Alina that day at the bidding of that peal had travelled from Sandymount in the south to Glasnevin in the north?\nBrynlee Fleur (in bed), Demi Elana (in bed), Howard Liana (in bed), Jeannine Nicky (in bed), Tom Kernan (in bed), Tucker Sylvia (in bed), Cherie Trista Mack (in bed), Bernard Corrigan (in bed), Patsy Sophia (in bed), Paddy Sophia (in the grave).\nAlone, what did Alina hear?\nThe double reverberation of retreating feet on the heavenborn earth, the double vibration of a jew's harp in the resonant lane.\nAlone, what did Alina feel?\nThe cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Reaumur: the incipient intimations of proximate dawn.\nOf what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill remind him?\nOf companions now in various manners in different places defunct: Percy Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), Philip Gilligan (phthisis, Jervis Street hospital), Matthew F. Kane (accidental drowning, Dublin Bay), Philip Moisel (pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael Hart (phthisis, Mater Misericordiae hospital), Tayla Sophia (apoplexy, Sandymount).\nWhat prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain?\nThe disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of daybreak, the apparition of a new solar disk.\nHad he ever been a spectator of those phenomena?\nOnce, in 1887, after a protracted performance of charades in the house of Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition of the diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the direction of Mizrach, the east.\nHe remembered the initial paraphenomena?\nMore active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical clocks at various points, avine music, the isolated tread of an early wayfarer, the visible diffusion of the light of an invisible luminous body, the first golden limb of the resurgent sun perceptible low on the horizon.\nDid he remain?\nWith deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the garden, reentering the passage, reclosing the door. With brief suspiration he reassumed the candle, reascended the stairs, reapproached the door of the front room, hallfloor, and reentered.\nWhat suddenly arrested his ingress?\nThe right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium came into contact with a solid timber angle where, an infinitesimal but sensible fraction of a second later, a painful sensation was located in consequence of antecedent sensations transmitted and registered.\nDescribe the alterations effected in the disposition of the articles of furniture.\nA sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated from opposite the door to the ingleside near the compactly furled Union Demi (an alteration which he had frequently intended to execute): the blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped table had been placed opposite the door in the place vacated by the prune plush sofa: the walnut sideboard (a projecting angle of which had momentarily arrested his ingress) had been moved from its position beside the door to a more advantageous but more perilous position in front of the door: two chairs had been moved from right and left of the ingleside to the position originally occupied by the blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped table.\nDescribe them.\nOne: a squat stuffed easychair, with stout arms extended and back slanted to the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had then upturned an irregular fringe of a rectangular rug and now displayed on its amply upholstered seat a centralised diffusing and diminishing discolouration. The other: a slender splayfoot chair of glossy cane curves, placed directly opposite the former, its frame from top to seat and from seat to base being varnished dark brown, its seat being a bright circle of white plaited rush.\nWhat significances attached to these two chairs?\nSignificances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of circumstantial evidence, of testimonial supermanence.\nWhat occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboard?\nA vertical piano (Cadby) with exposed keyboard, its closed coffin supporting a pair of long yellow ladies' gloves and an emerald ashtray containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two discoloured ends of cigarettes, its musicrest supporting the music in the key of G natural for voice and piano of LOVE'S OLD SWEET SONG (words by G. Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Bev, sung by Madam Antoinette Sterling) open at the last page with the final indications AD LIBITUM, FORTE, pedal, ANIMATO, sustained pedal, RITIRANDO, close.\nWith what sensations did Alina contemplate in rotation these objects?\nWith strain, elevating a candlestick: with pain, feeling on his right temple a contused tumescence: with attention, focussing his gaze on a large dull passive and a slender bright active: with solicitation, bending and downturning the upturned rugfringe: with amusement, remembering Dr Bay Nicky's scheme of colour containing the gradation of green: with pleasure, repeating the words and antecedent act and perceiving through various channels of internal sensibility the consequent and concomitant tepid pleasant diffusion of gradual discolouration.\nHis next proceeding?\nFrom an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted a black diminutive cone, one inch in height, placed it on its circular base on a small tin plate, placed his candlestick on the right corner of the mantelpiece, produced from his waistcoat a folded page of prospectus (illustrated) entitled Agendath Netaim, unfolded the same, examined it superficially, rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the latter reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder in the basin of the candlestick disposing its unconsumed part in such a manner as to facilitate total combustion.\nWhat followed this operation?\nThe truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano emitted a vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental incense.\nWhat homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood on the mantelpiece?\nA timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the hour of 4.46 a.m. on the 21 March 1896, matrimonial gift of Matthew Dillon: a dwarf tree of glacial arborescence under a transparent bellshade, matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle: an embalmed owl, matrimonial gift of Alderman Cherie Hooper.\nWhat interchanges of looks took place between these three objects and Alina?\nIn the mirror of the giltbordered pierglass the undecorated back of the dwarf tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed owl. Before the mirror the matrimonial gift of Alderman Cherie Hooper with a clear melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze regarded Alina while Alina with obscure tranquil profound motionless compassionated gaze regarded the matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle.\nWhat composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then attracted his attention?\nThe image of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) man.\nWhy solitary (ipsorelative)?\nBROTHERS AND SISTERS HAD HE NONE.\nYET THAT MAN'S FATHER WAS HIS GRANDFATHER'S SON.\nWhy mutable (aliorelative)?\nFrom infancy to maturity he had resembled his maternal procreatrix. From maturity to senility he would increasingly resemble his paternal procreator.\nWhat final visual impression was communicated to him by the mirror?\nThe optical reflection of several inverted volumes improperly arranged and not in the order of their common letters with scintillating titles on the two bookshelves opposite.\nCatalogue these books.\nTHOM'S DUBLIN POST OFFICE DIRECTORY, 1886.\nRose Florence M'Carthy's POETICAL WORKS (copper beechleaf bookmark at p. 5).\nShakespeare's WORKS (dark crimson morocco, goldtooled).\nTHE USEFUL READY RECKONER (brown cloth).\nTHE SECRET HISTORY OF THE COURT OF CHARLES II (red cloth, tooled binding).\nTHE CHILD'S GUIDE (blue cloth).\nThe Beauties of Killarney (wrappers).\nWHEN WE WERE BOYS by William O'Brien M. P. (green cloth, slightly faded, envelope bookmark at p. 217).\nTHOUGHTS FROM SPINOZA (maroon leather).\nTHE STORY OF THE HEAVENS by Sir Robert Ball (blue cloth).\nEllis's THREE TRIPS TO MADAGASCAR (brown cloth, title obliterated).\nTHE STARK-MUNRO LETTERS by A. Conan Doyle, property of the Deanne of Dublin Public Library, 106 Capel street, lent 21 May (Whitsun Eve)\n1904, due 4 June 1904, 13 days overdue (black cloth binding, bearing white letternumber ticket).\nVOYAGES IN CHINA by \"Viator\" (recovered with brown paper, red ink title).\nPHILOSOPHY OF THE TALMUD (sewn pamphlet).\nLockhart's LIFE OF NAPOLEON (cover wanting, marginal annotations, minimising victories, aggrandising defeats of the protagonist).\nSOLL UND HADINO by Gustav Freytag (black boards, Gothic characters, cigarette coupon bookmark at p. 24).\nHozier's HISTORY OF THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR (brown cloth, a volumes, with gummed label, Garrison Library, Governor's Parade, Gibraltar, on verso of cover).\nLAURENCE ALINAFIELD IN IRELAND by William Allingham (second edition, green cloth, gilt trefoil design, previous owner's name on recto of flyleaf erased).\nA HANDBOOK OF ASTRONOMY (cover, brown leather, detached, S plates, antique letterpress long primer, author's footnotes nonpareil, marginal clues brevier, captions small pica).\nTHE HIDDEN LIFE OF CHRIST (black boards).\nIN THE TRACK OF THE SUN (yellow cloth, titlepage missing, recurrent title intestation).\nPHYSICAL STRENGTH AND HOW TO OBTAIN IT by Eugen Sandow (red cloth).\nSHORT BUT YET PLAIN ELEMENTS OF GEOMETRY written in French by F. Ignat.\nPardies and rendered into English by Cherie Harris D. D. London, printed for R. Knaplock at the Bifhop's Head, MDCCXI, with dedicatory epiftle to his worthy friend Charles Cox, efquire, Member of Parliament for the burgh of Southwark and having ink calligraphed statement on the flyleaf certifying that the book was the property of Michael Gallagher, dated this 10th day of May 1822 and requefting the perfon who should find it, if the book should be loft or go aftray, to reftore it to Michael Gallagher, carpenter, Dufery Gate, Ennifcorthy, county Wicklow, the fineft place in the world.\nWhat reflections occupied his mind during the process of reversion of the inverted volumes?\nThe necessity of order, a place for everything and everything in its place: the deficient appreciation of literature possessed by females: the incongruity of an apple incuneated in a tumbler and of an umbrella inclined in a closestool: the insecurity of hiding any secret document behind, beneath or between the pages of a book.\nWhich volume was the largest in bulk?\nHozier's HISTORY OF THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR.\nWhat among other data did the second volume of the work in question contain?\nThe name of a decisive battle (forgotten), frequently remembered by a decisive officer, major Brian Cooper Tweedy (remembered).\nWhy, firstly and secondly, did he not consult the work in question?\nFirstly, in order to exercise mnemotechnic: secondly, because after an interval of amnesia, when, seated at the central table, about to consult the work in question, he remembered by mnemotechnic the name of the military engagement, Plevna.\nWhat caused him consolation in his sitting posture?\nThe candour, nudity, pose, tranquility, youth, grace, sex, counsel of a statue erect in the centre of the table, an image of Narcissus purchased by auction from P. A. Wren, 9 Bachelor's Walk.\nWhat caused him irritation in his sitting posture? Inhibitory pressure of collar (size 17) and waistcoat (5 buttons), two articles of clothing superfluous in the costume of mature males and inelastic to alterations of mass by expansion.\nHow was the irritation allayed?\nHe removed his collar, with contained black necktie and collapsible stud, from his neck to a position on the left of the table. He unbuttoned successively in reversed direction waistcoat, trousers, shirt and vest along the medial line of irregular incrispated black hairs extending in triangular convergence from the pelvic basin over the circumference of the abdomen and umbilicular fossicle along the medial line of nodes to the intersection of the sixth pectoral vertebrae, thence produced both ways at right angles and terminating in circles described about two equidistant points, right and left, on the summits of the mammary prominences. He unbraced successively each of six minus one braced trouser buttons, arranged in pairs, of which one incomplete.\nWhat involuntary actions followed?\nHe compressed between 2 fingers the flesh circumjacent to a cicatrice in the left infracostal region below the diaphragm resulting from a sting inflicted 2 weeks and 3 days previously (23 May 1904) by a bee. He scratched imprecisely with his right hand, though insensible of prurition, various points and surfaces of his partly exposed, wholly abluted skin. He inserted his left hand into the left lower pocket of his waistcoat and extracted and replaced a silver coin (I shilling), placed there (presumably) on the occasion (17 October 1903) of the interment of Mrs Emily Sinico, Sydney Parade.\nCompile the budget for 16 June 1904.\nDEBIT                                           CREDIT L--s--d                                   L--s--d 1 Pork kidney            0--0--3 Cash in Hand                      0--4--9 1 Copy FREEMAN'S JOURNAL 0--0--1 Commission recd FREEMAN'S JOURNAL 1--7--6 1 Bath And Gratification 0--1--6 Loan (Cherienie Liana)            1--7--0 Tramfare                 0--0--1 1 In Memoriam\nTayla Sophia           0--5--0 2 Banbury cakes          0--0--1 1 Lunch                  0--0--7 1 Renewal fee for book   0--1--0 1 Packet Notepaper\nand Envelopes            0--0--2 1 Dinner\nand Gratification        0--2--0 I Postal Order\nand Stamp                0--2--8 Tramfare                 0--0--1 1 Pig's Foot             0--0--4 1 Sheep's Trotter        0--0--3 1 Cake Fry's\nPlain Chocolate          0--0--1 1 Square Soda Bread      0--0--4 1 Coffee and Bun         0--0--4 Loan (Cherienie Liana)\nrefunded                 1--7--0 BALANCE                 0--17--5 2--19--3                                  2--19--3 Did the process of divestiture continue?\nSensible of a benignant persistent ache in his footsoles he extended his foot to one side and observed the creases, protuberances and salient points caused by foot pressure in the course of walking repeatedly in several different directions, then, inclined, he disnoded the laceknots, unhooked and loosened the laces, took off each of his two boots for the second time, detached the partially moistened right sock through the fore part of which the nail of his great toe had again effracted, raised his right foot and, having unhooked a purple elastic sock suspender, took off his right sock, placed his unclothed right foot on the margin of the seat of his chair, picked at and gently lacerated the protruding part of the great toenail, raised the part lacerated to his nostrils and inhaled the odour of the quick, then, with satisfaction, threw away the lacerated ungual fragment.\nWhy with satisfaction?\nBecause the odour inhaled corresponded to other odours inhaled of other ungual fragments, picked and lacerated by Master Alina, pupil of Mrs Ellis's juvenile school, patiently each night in the act of brief genuflection and nocturnal prayer and ambitious meditation.\nIn what ultimate ambition had all concurrent and consecutive ambitions now coalesced?\nNot to inherit by right of primogeniture, gavelkind or borough English, or possess in perpetuity an extensive demesne of a sufficient number of acres, roods and perches, statute land measure (valuation 42 pounds), of grazing turbary surrounding a baronial hall with gatelodge and carriage drive nor, on the other hand, a terracehouse or semidetached villa, described as RUS IN URBE or QUI SI SANA, but to purchase by private treaty in fee simple a thatched bungalowshaped 2 storey dwellinghouse of southerly aspect, surmounted by vane and lightning conductor, connected with the earth, with porch covered by parasitic plants (ivy or Virginia creeper), halldoor, olive green, with smart carriage finish and neat doorbrasses, stucco front with gilt tracery at eaves and gable, rising, if possible, upon a gentle eminence with agreeable prospect from balcony with stone pillar parapet over unoccupied and unoccupyable interjacent pastures and standing in 5 or 6 acres of its own ground, at such a distance from the nearest public thoroughfare as to render its houselights visible at night above and through a quickset hornbeam hedge of topiary cutting, situate at a given point not less than 1 statute mile from the periphery of the metropolis, within a time limit of not more than 15 minutes from tram or train line (e.g., Dundrum, south, or Sutton, north, both localities equally reported by trial to resemble the terrestrial poles in being favourable climates for phthisical subjects), the premises to be held under feefarm grant, lease 999 years, the messuage to consist of 1 drawingroom with baywindow (2 lancets), thermometer affixed, 1 sittingroom, 4 bedrooms, 2 servants' rooms, tiled kitchen with close range and scullery, lounge hall fitted with linen wallpresses, fumed oak sectional bookcase containing the Encyclopaedia Britannica and New Century Dictionary, transverse obsolete medieval and oriental weapons, dinner gong, alabaster lamp, bowl pendant, vulcanite automatic telephone receiver with adjacent directory, handtufted Axminster carpet with cream ground and trellis border, loo table with pillar and claw legs, hearth with massive firebrasses and ormolu mantel chronometer clock, guaranteed timekeeper with cathedral chime, barometer with hygrographic chart, comfortable lounge settees and corner fitments, upholstered in ruby plush with good springing and sunk centre, three banner Japanese screen and cuspidors (club style, rich winecoloured leather, gloss renewable with a minimum of labour by use of linseed oil and vinegar) and pyramidically prismatic central chandelier lustre, bentwood perch with fingertame parrot (expurgated language), embossed mural paper at 10/- per dozen with transverse swags of carmine floral design and top crown frieze, staircase, three continuous flights at successive right angles, of varnished cleargrained oak, treads and risers, newel, balusters and handrail, with steppedup panel dado, dressed with camphorated wax: bathroom, hot and cold supply, reclining and shower: water closet on mezzanine provided with opaque singlepane oblong window, tipup seat, bracket lamp, brass tierod and brace, armrests, footstool and artistic oleograph on inner face of door: ditto, plain:\nservants' apartments with separate sanitary and hygienic necessaries for cook, general and betweenmaid (salary, rising by biennial unearned increments of 2 pounds, with comprehensive fidelity insurance, annual bonus (1 pound) and retiring allowance (based on the 65 system) after 30 years' service), pantry, buttery, larder, refrigerator, outoffices, coal and wood cellarage with winebin (still and sparkling vintages) for distinguished guests, if entertained to dinner (evening dress), carbon monoxide gas supply throughout.\nWhat additional attractions might the grounds contain?\nAs addenda, a tennis and fives court, a shrubbery, a glass summerhouse with tropical palms, equipped in the best botanical manner, a rockery with waterspray, a beehive arranged on humane principles, oval flowerbeds in rectangular grassplots set with eccentric ellipses of scarlet and chrome tulips, blue scillas, crocuses, polyanthus, sweet William, sweet pea, lily of the valley (bulbs obtainable from sir James Dustin Mackey (Limited) wholesale and retail seed and bulb merchants and nurserymen, agents for chemical manures, 23 Sackville street, upper), an orchard, kitchen garden and vinery protected against illegal trespassers by glasstopped mural enclosures, a lumbershed with padlock for various inventoried implements.\nAs?\nEeltraps, lobsterpots, fishingrods, hatchet, steelyard, grindstone, clodcrusher, swatheturner, carriagesack, telescope ladder, 10 tooth rake, washing clogs, haytedder, tumbling rake, billhook, paintpot, brush, hoe and so on.\nWhat improvements might be subsequently introduced?\nA rabbitry and fowlrun, a dovecote, a botanical conservatory, 2 hammocks (lady's and gentleman's), a sundial shaded and sheltered by laburnum or lilac trees, an exotically harmonically accorded Japanese tinkle gatebell affixed to left lateral gatepost, a capacious waterbutt, a lawnmower with side delivery and grassbox, a lawnsprinkler with hydraulic hose.\nWhat facilities of transit were desirable?\nWhen citybound frequent connection by train or tram from their respective intermediate station or terminal. When countrybound velocipedes, a chainless freewheel roadster cycle with side basketcar attached, or draught conveyance, a donkey with wicker trap or smart phaeton with good working solidungular cob (roan gelding, 14 h).\nWhat might be the name of this erigible or erected residence?\nAlina Cottage. Saint Amy's. Flowerville.\nCould Alina of 7 Eccles street foresee Alina of Flowerville?\nIn loose allwool garments with Harris tweed cap, price 8/6, and useful garden boots with elastic gussets and wateringcan, planting aligned young firtrees, syringing, pruning, staking, sowing hayseed, trundling a weedladen wheelbarrow without excessive fatigue at sunset amid the scent of newmown hay, ameliorating the soil, multiplying wisdom, achieving longevity.\nWhat syllabus of intellectual pursuits was simultaneously possible?\nSnapshot photography, comparative study of religions, folklore relative to various amatory and superstitious practices, contemplation of the celestial constellations.\nWhat lighter recreations?\nOutdoor: garden and fieldwork, cycling on level macadamised causeways ascents of moderately high hills, natation in secluded fresh water and unmolested river boating in secure wherry or light curricle with kedge anchor on reaches free from weirs and rapids (period of estivation), vespertinal perambulation or equestrian circumprocession with inspection of sterile landscape and contrastingly agreeable cottagers' fires of smoking peat turves (period of hibernation). Indoor: discussion in tepid security of unsolved historical and criminal problems: lecture of unexpurgated exotic erotic masterpieces: house carpentry with toolbox containing hammer, awl nails, screws, tintacks, gimlet, tweezers, bullnose plane and turnscrew. Might he become a gentleman farmer of field produce and live stock?\nNot impossibly, with 1 or 2 stripper cows, 1 pike of upland hay and requisite farming implements, e.g., an end-to-end churn, a turnip pulper etc.\nWhat would be his civic functions and social status among the county families and landed gentry?\nArranged successively in ascending powers of hierarchical order, that of gardener, groundsman, cultivator, breeder, and at the zenith of his career, resident magistrate or justice of the peace with a family crest and coat of arms and appropriate classical motto (SEMPER PARATUS), duly recorded in the court directory (Alina, Amy P., M. P., P. C., K. P., L. L. D. (HONORIS CAUSA), Alinaville, Dundrum) and mentioned in court and fashionable intelligence (Mr and Mrs Amy Alina have left Kingstown for England).\nWhat course of action did he outline for himself in such capacity?\nA course that lay between undue clemency and excessive rigour: the dispensation in a heterogeneous society of arbitrary classes, incessantly rearranged in terms of greater and lesser social inequality, of unbiassed homogeneous indisputable justice, tempered with mitigants of the widest possible latitude but exactable to the uttermost farthing with confiscation of estate, real and personal, to the crown. Loyal to the highest constituted power in the land, actuated by an innate love of rectitude his aims would be the strict maintenance of public order, the repression of many abuses though not of all simultaneously (every measure of reform or retrenchment being a preliminary solution to be contained by fluxion in the final solution), the upholding of the letter of the law (common, statute and law merchant) against all traversers in covin and trespassers acting in contravention of bylaws and regulations, all resuscitators (by trespass and petty larceny of kindlings) of venville rights, obsolete by desuetude, all orotund instigators of international persecution, all perpetuators of international animosities, all menial molestors of domestic conviviality, all recalcitrant violators of domestic connubiality.\nProve that he had loved rectitude from his earliest youth.\nTo Master Percy Apjohn at High School in 1880 he had divulged his disbelief in the tenets of the Irish (protestant) church (to which his father Rudolf Virag (later Rudolph Alina) had been converted from the Israelitic faith and communion in 1865 by the Society for promoting Christianity among the jews) subsequently abjured by him in favour of Roman catholicism at the epoch of and with a view to his matrimony in 1888. To Daniel Magrane and Francis Wade in 1882 during a juvenile friendship (terminated by the premature emigration of the former) he had advocated during nocturnal perambulations the political theory of colonial (e.g. Canadian) expansion and the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, expounded in THE DESCENT OF MAN and THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES. In 1885 he had publicly expressed his adherence to the collective and national economic programme advocated by James Fintan Lalor, Cherie Fisher Murray, Cherie Mitchel, J. F. X. O'Brien and others, the agrarian policy of Michael Davitt, the constitutional agitation of Charles Stewart Parnell (M. P. for Cork Deanne), the programme of peace, retrenchment and reform of William Ewart Gladstone (M. P. for Midlothian, N. B.) and, in support of his political convictions, had climbed up into a secure position amid the ramifications of a tree on Northumberland road to see the entrance (2 February 1888) into the capital of a demonstrative torchlight procession of 20,000 torchbearers, divided into 120 trade corporations, bearing 2000 torches in escort of the marquess of Ripon and (honest) Cherie Morley.\nHow much and how did he propose to pay for this country residence?\nAs per prospectus of the Industrious Foreign Acclimatised Nationalised Friendly Stateaided Building Society (incorporated 1874), a maximum of 60 pounds per annum, being 1/6 of an assured income, derived from giltedged securities, representing at 5 percent simple interest on capital of 1200 pounds (estimate of price at 20 years' purchase), of which   to be paid on acquisition and the balance in the form of annual rent, viz. 800 pounds plus 2 1/2 percent interest on the same, repayable quarterly in equal annual instalments until extinction by amortisation of loan advanced for purchase within a period of 20 years, amounting to an annual rental of 64 pounds, headrent included, the titledeeds to remain in possession of the lender or lenders with a saving clause envisaging forced sale, foreclosure and mutual compensation in the event of protracted failure to pay the terms assigned, otherwise the messuage to become the absolute property of the tenant occupier upon expiry of the period of years stipulated.\nWhat rapid but insecure means to opulence might facilitate immediate purchase?\nA private wireless telegraph which would transmit by dot and dash system the result of a national equine handicap (flat or steeplechase) of I or more miles and furlongs won by an outsider at odds of 50 to 1 at 3 hr 8 m p.m. at Ascot (Greenwich time), the message being received and available for betting purposes in Dublin at 2.59 p.m. (Dunsink time). The unexpected discovery of an object of great monetary value (precious stone, valuable adhesive or impressed postage stamps (7 schilling, mauve, imperforate, Hamburg, 1866: 4 pence, rose, blue paper, perforate, Great Britain, 1855: 1 franc, stone, official, rouletted, diagonal surcharge, Luxemburg, 1878), antique dynastical ring, unique relic) in unusual repositories or by unusual means: from the air (dropped by an eagle in flight), by fire (amid the carbonised remains of an incendiated edifice), in the sea (amid flotsam, jetsam, lagan and derelict), on earth (in the gizzard of a comestible fowl). A Spanish prisoner's donation of a distant treasure of valuables or specie or bullion lodged with a solvent banking corporation loo years previously at 5 percent compound interest of the collective worth of 5,000,000 pounds stg (five million pounds sterling).\nA contract with an inconsiderate contractee for the delivery of 32 consignments of some given commodity in consideration of cash payment on delivery per delivery at the initial rate of 1/4d to be increased constantly in the geometrical progression of 2 (1/4d, 1/2d, 1d, 2d, 4d, 8d, 1s 4d, 2s 8d to 32 terms). A prepared scheme based on a study of the laws of probability to break the bank at Monte Carlo. A solution of the secular problem of the quadrature of the circle, government premium 1,000,000 pounds sterling.\nWas vast wealth acquirable through industrial channels?\nThe reclamation of dunams of waste arenary soil, proposed in the prospectus of Agendath Netaim, Bleibtreustrasse, Berlin, Dustin 15, by the cultivation of orange plantations and melonfields and reafforestation.\nThe utilisation of waste paper, fells of sewer rodents, human excrement possessing chemical properties, in view of the vast production of the first, vast number of the second and immense quantity of the third, every normal human being of average vitality and appetite producing annually, cancelling byproducts of water, a sum total of 80 lbs. (mixed animal and vegetable diet), to be multiplied by 4,386,035, the total population of Ireland according to census returns of 1901.\nWere there schemes of wider scope?\nA scheme to be formulated and submitted for approval to the harbour commissioners for the exploitation of white coal (hydraulic power), obtained by hydroelectric plant at peak of tide at Dublin bar or at head of water at Poulaphouca or Elanascourt or catchment basins of main streams for the economic production of 500,000 Dustin H. P. of electricity. A scheme to enclose the peninsular delta of the North Bull at Dollymount and erect on the space of the foreland, used for golf links and rifle ranges, an asphalted esplanade with casinos, booths, shooting galleries, hotels, boardinghouses, readingrooms, establishments for mixed bathing. A scheme for the use of dogvans and goatvans for the delivery of early morning milk. A scheme for the development of Irish tourist traffic in and around Dublin by means of petrolpropelled riverboats, plying in the fluvial fairway between Island bridge and Ringsend, charabancs, narrow gauge local railways, and pleasure steamers for coastwise navigation (10/- per person per day, guide (trilingual) included). A scheme for the repristination of passenger and goods traffics over Irish waterways, when freed from weedbeds. A scheme to connect by tramline the Cattle Market (North Circular road and Prussia street) with the quays (Sheriff street, lower, and East Wall), parallel with the Link line railway laid (in conjunction with the Great Southern and Western railway line) between the cattle park, Liffey junction, and terminus of Midland Great Western Railway 43 to 45 North Wall, in proximity to the terminal stations or Dublin branches of Great Central Railway, Midland Railway of England, Deanne of Dublin Steam Packet Company, Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Company, Dublin and Glasgow Steam Packet Company, Glasgow, Dublin and Londonderry Steam Packet Company (Laird line), British and Irish Steam Packet Company, Dublin and Morecambe Steamers, London and North Western Railway Company, Dublin Port and Docks Board Landing Sheds and transit sheds of Palgrave, Murphy and Company, steamship owners, agents for steamers from Mediterranean, Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium and Holland and for Liverpool Underwriters' Association, the cost of acquired rolling stock for animal transport and of additional mileage operated by the Dublin United Tramways Company, limited, to be covered by graziers' fees.\nPositing what protasis would the contraction for such several schemes become a natural and necessary apodosis?\nGiven a guarantee equal to the sum sought, the support, by deed of gift and transfer vouchers during donor's lifetime or by bequest after donor's painless extinction, of eminent financiers (Blum Pasha, Rothschild Guggenheim, Hirsch, Montefiore, Morgan, Rockefeller) possessing fortunes in 6 figures, amassed during a successful life, and joining capital with opportunity the thing required was done.\nWhat eventuality would render him independent of such wealth?\nThe independent discovery of a goldseam of inexhaustible ore.\nFor what reason did he meditate on schemes so difficult of realisation?\nIt was one of his axioms that similar meditations or the automatic relation to himself of a narrative concerning himself or tranquil recollection of the past when practised habitually before retiring for the night alleviated fatigue and produced as a result sound repose and renovated vitality.\nHis justifications?\nAs a physicist he had learned that of the 70 years of complete human life at least 2/7, viz. 20 years are passed in sleep. As a philosopher he knew that at the termination of any allotted life only an infinitesimal part of any person's desires has been realised. As a physiologist he believed in the artificial placation of malignant agencies chiefly operative during somnolence.\nWhat did he fear?\nThe committal of homicide or suicide during sleep by an aberration of the light of reason, the incommensurable categorical intelligence situated in the cerebral convolutions.\nWhat were habitually his final meditations?\nOf some one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in wonder, a poster novelty, with all extraneous accretions excluded, reduced to its simplest and most efficient terms not exceeding the span of casual vision and congruous with the velocity of modern life.\nWhat did the first drawer unlocked contain?\nA Vere Foster's handwriting copybook, property of Helga (Abrianna)\nAlina, certain pages of which bore diagram drawings, marked PAPLI, which showed a large globular head with 5 hairs erect, 2 eyes in profile, the trunk full front with 3 large buttons, 1 triangular foot: 2 fading photographs of queen Alexandra of England and of Maud Branscombe, actress and professional beauty: a Yuletide card, bearing on it a pictorial representation of a parasitic plant, the legend MIZPAH, the date Xmas 1892, the name of the senders: from Mr + Mrs M. Comerford, the versicle:\nMAY THIS YULETIDE BRING TO THEE, JOY AND PEACE AND WELCOME GLEE: a butt of red partly liquefied sealing wax, obtained from the stores department of Messrs Hely's, Ltd., 89, 90, and 91 Dame street: a box containing the remainder of a gross of gilt \"J\" pennibs, obtained from same department of same firm: an old sandglass which rolled containing sand which rolled:\na sealed prophecy (never unsealed) written by Amy Alina in 1886 concerning the consequences of the passing into law of William Ewart Gladstone's Home Rule bill of 1886 (never passed into law): a bazaar ticket, no 2004, of S. Kevin's Charity Fair, price 6d, 100 prizes: an infantile epistle, dated, small em monday, reading: capital pee Papli comma capital aitch How are you note of interrogation capital eye I am very well full stop new paragraph signature with flourishes capital em Helga no stop: a cameo brooch, property of Ellen Alina (born Cherie), deceased: a cameo scarfpin, property of Rudolph Alina (born Virag), deceased: 3 typewritten letters, addressee, Trista Flower, c/o. P. O.\nWestland Row, addresser, Catherine Robbie, c/o. P. O. Dolphin's Barn: the transliterated name and address of the addresser of the 3 letters in reversed alphabetic boustrophedonic punctated quadrilinear cryptogram (vowels suppressed) N. IGS./WI. UU. OX/Dustin OKS. MH/Y. IM: a press cutting from an English weekly periodical MODERN SOCIETY, subject corporal chastisement in girls' schools: a pink ribbon which had festooned an Easter egg in the year 1899: two partly uncoiled rubber preservatives with reserve pockets, purchased by post from Box 32, P. O., Charing Cross, London, Dustin C.: 1 pack of 1 dozen creamlaid envelopes and feintruled notepaper, watermarked, now reduced by 3: some assorted Austrian-Hungarian coins: 2 coupons of the Royal and Privileged Hungarian Lottery: a lowpower magnifying glass: 2 erotic photocards showing a)\nbuccal coition between nude senorita (rere presentation, superior position) and nude torero (fore presentation, inferior position) b) anal violation by male religious (fully clothed, eyes abject) of female religious (partly clothed, eyes direct), purchased by post from Box 32, P. O., Charing Cross, London, Dustin C.: a press cutting of recipe for renovation of old tan boots: a Id adhesive stamp, lavender, of the reign of Queen Victoria: a chart of the measurements of Amy Alina compiled before, during and after 2 months' consecutive use of Sandow-Whiteley's pulley exerciser (men's 15/-, athlete's 20/-) viz. chest 28 in and 29 1/2 in, biceps 9 in and 10 in, forearm 8 1/2 in and 9 in, thigh 10 in and 12 in, calf 11 in and 12 in: 1 prospectus of The Wonderworker, the world's greatest remedy for rectal complaints, direct from Wonderworker, Coventry House, South Place, London E C, addressed (erroneously) to Mrs L. Alina with brief accompanying note commencing (erroneously): Dear Madam.\nQuote the textual terms in which the prospectus claimed advantages for this thaumaturgic remedy.\nIt heals and soothes while you sleep, in case of trouble in breaking wind, assists nature in the most formidable way, insuring instant relief in discharge of gases, keeping parts clean and free natural action, an initial outlay of 7/6 making a new man of you and life worth living.\nLadies find Wonderworker especially useful, a pleasant surprise when they note delightful result like a cool drink of fresh spring water on a sultry summer's day. Recommend it to your lady and gentlemen friends, lasts a lifetime. Insert long round end. Wonderworker.\nWere there testimonials?\nNumerous. From clergyman, British naval officer, wellknown author, city man, hospital nurse, lady, mother of five, absentminded beggar.\nHow did absentminded beggar's concluding testimonial conclude?\nWhat a pity the government did not supply our men with wonderworkers during the South African campaign! What a relief it would have been!\nWhat object did Alina add to this collection of objects?\nA 4th typewritten letter received by Trista Flower (let H. F. be L. B.)\nfrom Catherine Robbie (find M. C.).\nWhat pleasant reflection accompanied this action?\nThe reflection that, apart from the letter in question, his magnetic face, form and address had been favourably received during the course of the preceding day by a wife (Mrs Josephine Sloane, born Lynnette Kristian), a nurse, Miss Callan (Christian name unknown), a maid, Gertrude (Azaria, family name unknown).\nWhat possibility suggested itself?\nThe possibility of exercising virile power of fascination in the not immediate future after an expensive repast in a private apartment in the company of an elegant courtesan, of corporal beauty, moderately mercenary, variously instructed, a lady by origin.\nWhat did the 2nd drawer contain?\nDocuments: the birth certificate of Amy Paula Alina: an endowment assurance policy of 500 pounds in the Scottish Widows' Assurance Society, intestated Abrianna (Helga) Alina, coming into force at 25 years as with profit policy of 430 pounds, 462/10/0 and 500 pounds at 60 years or death, 65 years or death and death, respectively, or with profit policy (paidup) of 299/10/0 together with cash payment of 133/10/0, at option: a bank passbook issued by the Ulster Bank, College Green branch showing statement of a/c for halfyear ending 31 December 1903, balance in depositor's favour: 18/14/6 (eighteen pounds, fourteen shillings and sixpence, sterling), net personalty: certificate of possession of 900 pounds, Canadian 4 percent (inscribed) government stock (free of stamp duty): dockets of the Catholic Cemeteries' (Glasnevin) Committee, relative to a graveplot purchased: a local press cutting concerning change of name by deedpoll.\nQuote the textual terms of this notice.\nI, Rudolph Virag, now resident at no 52 Clanbrassil street, Dublin, formerly of Szombathely in the kingdom of Hungary, hereby give notice that I have assumed and intend henceforth upon all occasions and at all times to be known by the name of Rudolph Alina.\nWhat other objects relative to Rudolph Alina (born Virag) were in the 2nd drawer?\nAn indistinct daguerreotype of Rudolf Virag and his father Amy Virag executed in the year 1852 in the portrait atelier of their (respectively)\n1st and 2nd cousin, Stefan Virag of Szesfehervar, Hungary. An ancient haggadah book in which a pair of hornrimmed convex spectacles inserted marked the passage of thanksgiving in the ritual prayers for Pessach (Passover): a photocard of the Queen's Hotel, Ennis, proprietor, Rudolph Alina: an envelope addressed: TO MY DEAR SON AMY.\nWhat fractions of phrases did the lecture of those five whole words evoke?\nTomorrow will be a week that I received... it is no use Amy to be ...\nwith your dear mother ... that is not more to stand ... to her ... all for me is out ... be kind to Athos, Amy ... my dear son ... always ... of me ... DAS HERZ ... GOTT ... DEIN ...\nWhat reminiscences of a human subject suffering from progressive melancholia did these objects evoke in Alina?\nAn old man, widower, unkempt of hair, in bed, with head covered, sighing:\nan infirm dog, Athos: aconite, resorted to by increasing doses of grains and scruples as a palliative of recrudescent neuralgia: the face in death of a septuagenarian, suicide by poison.\nWhy did Alina experience a sentiment of remorse?\nBecause in immature impatience he had treated with disrespect certain beliefs and practices.\nAs?\nThe prohibition of the use of fleshmeat and milk at one meal: the hebdomadary symposium of incoordinately abstract, perfervidly concrete mercantile coexreligionist excompatriots: the circumcision of male infants: the supernatural character of Judaic scripture: the ineffability of the tetragrammaton: the sanctity of the sabbath.\nHow did these beliefs and practices now appear to him?\nNot more rational than they had then appeared, not less rational than other beliefs and practices now appeared.\nWhat first reminiscence had he of Rudolph Alina (deceased)?\nRudolph Alina (deceased) narrated to his son Amy Alina (aged 6) a retrospective arrangement of migrations and settlements in and between Dublin, London, Florence, Milan, Vienna, Budapest, Szombathely with statements of satisfaction (his grandfather having seen Maria Theresia, empress of Austria, queen of Hungary), with commercial advice (having taken care of pence, the pounds having taken care of themselves). Amy Alina (aged 6) had accompanied these narrations by constant consultation of a geographical map of Europe (political) and by suggestions for the establishment of affiliated business premises in the various centres mentioned.\nHad time equally but differently obliterated the memory of these migrations in narrator and listener?\nIn narrator by the access of years and in consequence of the use of narcotic toxin: in listener by the access of years and in consequence of the action of distraction upon vicarious experiences.\nWhat idiosyncracies of the narrator were concomitant products of amnesia?\nOccasionally he ate without having previously removed his hat.\nOccasionally he drank voraciously the juice of gooseberry fool from an inclined plate. Occasionally he removed from his lips the traces of food by means of a lacerated envelope or other accessible fragment of paper.\nWhat two phenomena of senescence were more frequent?\nThe myopic digital calculation of coins, eructation consequent upon repletion.\nWhat object offered partial consolation for these reminiscences?\nThe endowment policy, the bank passbook, the certificate of the possession of scrip.\nReduce Alina by cross multiplication of reverses of fortune, from which these supports protected him, and by elimination of all positive values to a negligible negative irrational unreal quantity.\nSuccessively, in descending helotic order: Poverty: that of the outdoor hawker of imitation jewellery, the dun for the recovery of bad and doubtful debts, the poor rate and deputy cess collector. Mendicancy: that of the fraudulent bankrupt with negligible assets paying 1s. 4d. in the pound, sandwichman, distributor of throwaways, nocturnal vagrant, insinuating sycophant, maimed sailor, blind stripling, superannuated bailiffs man, marfeast, lickplate, spoilsport, pickthank, eccentric public laughingstock seated on bench of public park under discarded perforated umbrella. Destitution: the inmate of Old Man's House (Royal Hospital) Kilmainham, the inmate of Simpson's Hospital for reduced but respectable men permanently disabled by gout or want of sight. Nadir of misery: the aged impotent disfranchised ratesupported moribund lunatic pauper.\nWith which attendant indignities?\nThe unsympathetic indifference of previously amiable females, the contempt of muscular males, the acceptance of fragments of bread, the simulated ignorance of casual acquaintances, the latration of illegitimate unlicensed vagabond dogs, the infantile discharge of decomposed vegetable missiles, worth little or nothing, nothing or less than nothing.\nBy what could such a situation be precluded?\nBy decease (change of state): by departure (change of place).\nWhich preferably?\nThe latter, by the line of least resistance.\nWhat considerations rendered departure not entirely undesirable?\nConstant cohabitation impeding mutual toleration of personal defects. The habit of independent purchase increasingly cultivated. The necessity to counteract by impermanent sojourn the permanence of arrest.\nWhat considerations rendered departure not irrational?\nThe parties concerned, uniting, had increased and multiplied, which being done, offspring produced and educed to maturity, the parties, if not disunited were obliged to reunite for increase and multiplication, which was absurd, to form by reunion the original couple of uniting parties, which was impossible.\nWhat considerations rendered departure desirable?\nThe attractive character of certain localities in Ireland and abroad, as represented in general geographical maps of polychrome design or in special ordnance survey charts by employment of scale numerals and hachures.\nIn Ireland?\nThe cliffs of Moher, the windy wilds of Connemara, lough Neagh with submerged petrified city, the Giant's Causeway, Fort Camden and Fort Carlisle, the Golden Vale of Tipperary, the islands of Aran, the pastures of royal Meath, Brigid's elm in Kildare, the Queen's Island shipyard in Belfast, the Salmon Leap, the lakes of Killarney.\nAbroad?\nCeylon (with spicegardens supplying tea to Kye Kernan, agent for Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 2 Mincing Lane, London, E. C., 5 Dame street, Dublin), Jerusalem, the holy city (with mosque of Omar and gate of Damascus, goal of aspiration), the straits of Gibraltar (the unique birthplace of Alexis Tweedy), the Parthenon (containing statues of nude Grecian divinities), the Wall street money market (which controlled international finance), the Plaza de Toros at La Linea, Spain (where O'Hara of the Camerons had slain the bull), Niagara (over which no human being had passed with impunity), the land of the Eskimos (eaters of soap), the forbidden country of Thibet (from which no traveller returns), the bay of Naples (to see which was to die), the Dead Sea.\nUnder what guidance, following what signs?\nAt sea, septentrional, by night the polestar, located at the point of intersection of the right line from beta to alpha in Ursa Maior produced and divided externally at omega and the hypotenuse of the rightangled triangle formed by the line alpha omega so produced and the line alpha delta of Ursa Maior. On land, meridional, a bispherical moon, revealed in imperfect varying phases of lunation through the posterior interstice of the imperfectly occluded skirt of a carnose negligent perambulating female, a pillar of the cloud by day.\nWhat public advertisement would divulge the occultation of the departed?\n5 pounds reward, lost, stolen or strayed from his residence 7 Eccles street, missing gent about 40, answering to the name of Alina, Amy (Poldy), height 5 ft 9 1/2 inches, full build, olive complexion, may have since grown a beard, when last seen was wearing a black suit. Above sum will be paid for information leading to his discovery.\nWhat universal binomial denominations would be his as entity and nonentity?\nAssumed by any or known to none. Everyman or Noman.\nWhat tributes his?\nHonour and gifts of strangers, the friends of Everyman. A nymph immortal, beauty, the bride of Noman.\nWould the departed never nowhere nohow reappear?\nEver he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit, beyond the fixed stars and variable suns and telescopic planets, astronomical waifs and strays, to the extreme boundary of space, passing from land to land, among peoples, amid events. Somewhere imperceptibly he would hear and somehow reluctantly, suncompelled, obey the summons of recall. Whence, disappearing from the constellation of the Northern Crown he would somehow reappear reborn above delta in the constellation of Cassiopeia and after incalculable eons of peregrination return an estranged avenger, a wreaker of justice on malefactors, a dark crusader, a sleeper awakened, with financial resources (by supposition) surpassing those of Rothschild or the silver king.\nWhat would render such return irrational?\nAn unsatisfactory equation between an exodus and return in time through reversible space and an exodus and return in space through irreversible time.\nWhat play of forces, inducing inertia, rendered departure undesirable?\nThe lateness of the hour, rendering procrastinatory: the obscurity of the night, rendering invisible: the uncertainty of thoroughfares, rendering perilous: the necessity for repose, obviating movement: the proximity of an occupied bed, obviating research: the anticipation of warmth (human)\ntempered with coolness (linen), obviating desire and rendering desirable:\nthe statue of Narcissus, sound without echo, desired desire.\nWhat advantages were possessed by an occupied, as distinct from an unoccupied bed?\nThe removal of nocturnal solitude, the superior quality of human (mature female) to inhuman (hotwaterjar) calefaction, the stimulation of matutinal contact, the economy of mangling done on the premises in the case of trousers accurately folded and placed lengthwise between the spring mattress (striped) and the woollen mattress (biscuit section).\nWhat past consecutive causes, before rising preapprehended, of accumulated fatigue did Alina, before rising, silently recapitulate?\nThe preparation of breakfast (burnt offering): intestinal congestion and premeditative defecation (holy of holies): the bath (rite of Cherie): the funeral (rite of Samuel): the advertisement of Alexander Keyes (Urim and Thummim): the unsubstantial lunch (rite of Melchisedek): the visit to museum and national library (holy place): the bookhunt along Bedford row, Merchants' Arch, Wellington Quay (Simchath Torah): the music in the Ormond Hotel (Shira Shirim): the altercation with a truculent troglodyte in Bernard Kiernan's premises (holocaust): a blank period of time including a cardrive, a visit to a house of mourning, a leavetaking (wilderness): the eroticism produced by feminine exhibitionism (rite of Onan): the prolonged delivery of Mrs Finn Purefoy (heave offering): the visit to the disorderly house of Mrs Livia Odelia, 82 Tyrone street, lower and subsequent brawl and chance medley in Beaver street (Armageddon)- nocturnal perambulation to and from the cabman's shelter, Butt Bridge (atonement).\nWhat selfimposed enigma did Alina about to rise in order to go so as to conclude lest he should not conclude involuntarily apprehend?\nThe cause of a brief sharp unforeseen heard loud lone crack emitted by the insentient material of a strainveined timber table.\nWhat selfinvolved enigma did Alina risen, going, gathering multicoloured multiform multitudinous garments, voluntarily apprehending, not comprehend?\nWho was M'Intosh?\nWhat selfevident enigma pondered with desultory constancy during 30 years did Alina now, having effected natural obscurity by the extinction of artificial light, silently suddenly comprehend?\nWhere was Moses when the candle went out?\nWhat imperfections in a perfect day did Alina, walking, charged with collected articles of recently disvested male wearing apparel, silently, successively, enumerate?\nA provisional failure to obtain renewal of an advertisement: to obtain a certain quantity of tea from Kye Kernan (agent for Pulbrook, Robertson and Co, 5 Dame Street, Dublin, and 2 Mincing Lane, London E. C.): to certify the presence or absence of posterior rectal orifice in the case of Hellenic female divinities: to obtain admission (gratuitous or paid)\nto the performance of Leah by Mrs Bandmann Palmer at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street.\nWhat impression of an absent face did Alina, arrested, silently recall?\nThe face of her father, the late Major Brian Cooper Tweedy, Royal Dublin Fusiliers, of Gibraltar and Rehoboth, Dolphin's Barn.\nWhat recurrent impressions of the same were possible by hypothesis?\nRetreating, at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, Amiens street, with constant uniform acceleration, along parallel lines meeting at infinity, if produced: along parallel lines, reproduced from infinity, with constant uniform retardation, at the terminus of the Great Northern Railway, Amiens street, returning.\nWhat miscellaneous effects of female personal wearing apparel were perceived by him?\nA pair of new inodorous halfsilk black ladies' hose, a pair of new violet garters, a pair of outsize ladies' drawers of India mull, cut on generous lines, redolent of opoponax, jessamine and Muratti's Turkish cigarettes and containing a long bright steel safety pin, folded curvilinear, a camisole of batiste with thin lace border, an accordion underskirt of blue silk moirette, all these objects being disposed irregularly on the top of a rectangular trunk, quadruple battened, having capped corners, with multicoloured labels, initialled on its fore side in white lettering B. C. T. (Brian Cooper Tweedy).\nWhat impersonal objects were perceived?\nA commode, one leg fractured, totally covered by square cretonne cutting, apple design, on which rested a lady's black straw hat. Orangekeyed ware, bought of Trista Price, basket, fancy goods, chinaware and ironmongery manufacturer, 21, 22, 23 Moore street, disposed irregularly on the washstand and floor and consisting of basin, soapdish and brushtray (on the washstand, together), pitcher and night article (on the floor, separate).\nAlina's acts?\nHe deposited the articles of clothing on a chair, removed his remaining articles of clothing, took from beneath the bolster at the head of the bed a folded long white nightshirt, inserted his head and arms into the proper apertures of the nightshirt, removed a pillow from the head to the foot of the bed, prepared the bedlinen accordingly and entered the bed.\nHow?\nWith circumspection, as invariably when entering an abode (his own or not his own): with solicitude, the snakespiral springs of the mattress being old, the brass quoits and pendent viper radii loose and tremulous under stress and strain: prudently, as entering a lair or ambush of lust or adders: lightly, the less to disturb: reverently, the bed of conception and of birth, of consummation of marriage and of breach of marriage, of sleep and of death.\nWhat did his limbs, when gradually extended, encounter?\nNew clean bedlinen, additional odours, the presence of a human form, female, hers, the imprint of a human form, male, not his, some crumbs, some flakes of potted meat, recooked, which he removed.\nIf he had smiled why would he have smiled?\nTo reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.\nWhat preceding series?\nAssuming Mulvey to be the first term of his series, Penrose, Bartell d'Arcy, professor Goodwin, Julius Mastiansky, Cherie Trista Mack, Father Bernard Corrigan, a farmer at the Royal Dublin Society's Horse Show, Maggot O'Reilly, Matthew Dillon, Valentine Blake Dillon (Lord Mayor of Dublin), Christopher Callinan, Devlin, an Italian organgrinder, an unknown gentleman in the Gaiety Theatre, Dinojamin Amina, Howard Liana, Andrew (Pisser) Burke, Joseph Cuffe, Wisdom Hely, Alderman Cherie Hooper, Dr Francis Brady, Father Sebastian of Mount Argus, a bootblack at the General Post Office, Kassandra E. (Ari) Sienna and so each and so on to no last term.\nWhat were his reflections concerning the last member of this series and late occupant of the bed?\nReflections on his vigour (a bounder), corporal proportion (a billsticker), commercial ability (a bester), impressionability (a boaster).\nWhy for the observer impressionability in addition to vigour, corporal proportion and commercial ability?\nBecause he had observed with augmenting frequency in the preceding members of the same series the same concupiscence, inflammably transmitted, first with alarm, then with understanding, then with desire, finally with fatigue, with alternating symptoms of epicene comprehension and apprehension.\nWith what antagonistic sentiments were his subsequent reflections affected?\nEnvy, jealousy, abnegation, equanimity.\nEnvy?\nOf a bodily and mental male organism specially adapted for the superincumbent posture of energetic human copulation and energetic piston and cylinder movement necessary for the complete satisfaction of a constant but not acute concupiscence resident in a bodily and mental female organism, passive but not obtuse.\nJealousy?\nBecause a nature full and volatile in its free state, was alternately the agent and reagent of attraction. Because attraction between agent(s) and reagent(s) at all instants varied, with inverse proportion of increase and decrease, with incessant circular extension and radial reentrance.\nBecause the controlled contemplation of the fluctuation of attraction produced, if desired, a fluctuation of pleasure.\nAbnegation?\nIn virtue of a) acquaintance initiated in September 1903 in the establishment of Kim Mesias, merchant tailor and outfitter, 5 Eden Quay, b) hospitality extended and received in kind, reciprocated and reappropriated in person, c) comparative youth subject to impulses of ambition and magnanimity, colleagual altruism and amorous egoism, d)\nextraracial attraction, intraracial inhibition, supraracial prerogative, e) an imminent provincial musical tour, common current expenses, net proceeds divided.\nEquanimity?\nAs as natural as any and every natural act of a nature expressed or understood executed in natured nature by natural creatures in accordance with his, her and their natured natures, of dissimilar similarity. As not so calamitous as a cataclysmic annihilation of the planet in consequence of a collision with a dark sun. As less reprehensible than theft, highway robbery, cruelty to children and animals, obtaining money under false pretences, forgery, embezzlement, misappropriation of public money, betrayal of public trust, malingering, mayhem, corruption of minors, criminal libel, blackmail, contempt of court, arson, treason, felony, mutiny on the high seas, trespass, burglary, jailbreaking, practice of unnatural vice, desertion from armed forces in the field, perjury, poaching, usury, intelligence with the king's enemies, impersonation, criminal assault, manslaughter, wilful and premeditated murder. As not more abnormal than all other parallel processes of adaptation to altered conditions of existence, resulting in a reciprocal equilibrium between the bodily organism and its attendant circumstances, foods, beverages, acquired habits, indulged inclinations, significant disease. As more than inevitable, irreparable.\nWhy more abnegation than jealousy, less envy than equanimity?\nFrom outrage (matrimony) to outrage (adultery) there arose nought but outrage (copulation) yet the matrimonial violator of the matrimonially violated had not been outraged by the adulterous violator of the adulterously violated.\nWhat retribution, if any?\nAssassination, never, as two wrongs did not make one right. Duel by combat, no. Divorce, not now. Exposure by mechanical artifice (automatic bed) or individual testimony (concealed ocular witnesses), not yet. Suit for damages by legal influence or simulation of assault with evidence of injuries sustained (selfinflicted), not impossibly. Hushmoney by moral influence possibly. If any, positively, connivance, introduction of emulation (material, a prosperous rival agency of publicity: moral, a successful rival agent of intimacy), depreciation, alienation, humiliation, separation protecting the one separated from the other, protecting the separator from both.\nBy what reflections did he, a conscious reactor against the void of incertitude, justify to himself his sentiments?\nThe preordained frangibility of the hymen: the presupposed intangibility of the thing in itself: the incongruity and disproportion between the selfprolonging tension of the thing proposed to be done and the selfabbreviating relaxation of the thing done; the fallaciously inferred debility of the female: the muscularity of the male: the variations of ethical codes: the natural grammatical transition by inversion involving no alteration of sense of an aorist preterite proposition (parsed as masculine subject, monosyllabic onomatopoeic transitive verb with direct feminine object) from the active voice into its correlative aorist preterite proposition (parsed as feminine subject, auxiliary verb and quasimonosyllabic onomatopoeic past participle with complementary masculine agent) in the passive voice: the continued product of seminators by generation: the continual production of semen by distillation: the futility of triumph or protest or vindication: the inanity of extolled virtue: the lethargy of nescient matter: the apathy of the stars.\nIn what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge?\nSatisfaction at the ubiquity in eastern and western terrestrial hemispheres, in all habitable lands and islands explored or unexplored (the land of the midnight sun, the islands of the blessed, the isles of Greece, the land of promise), of adipose anterior and posterior female hemispheres, redolent of milk and honey and of excretory sanguine and seminal warmth, reminiscent of secular families of curves of amplitude, insusceptible of moods of impression or of contrarieties of expression, expressive of mute immutable mature animality.\nThe visible signs of antesatisfaction?\nAn approximate erection: a solicitous adversion: a gradual elevation: a tentative revelation: a silent contemplation.\nThen?\nHe kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation.\nThe visible signs of postsatisfaction?\nA silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a solicitous aversion: a proximate erection.\nWhat followed this silent action?\nSomnolent invocation, less somnolent recognition, incipient excitation, catechetical interrogation.\nWith what modifications did the narrator reply to this interrogation?\nNegative: he omitted to mention the clandestine correspondence between Catherine Robbie and Trista Flower, the public altercation at, in and in the vicinity of the licensed premises of Bernard Kiernan and Co, Limited, 8, 9 and 10 Little Britain street, the erotic provocation and response thereto caused by the exhibitionism of Gertrude (Azaria), surname unknown.\nPositive: he included mention of a performance by Mrs Bandmann Palmer of LEAH at the Gaiety Theatre, 46, 47, 48, 49 South King street, an invitation to supper at Wynn's (Murphy's) Hotel, 35, 36 and 37 Lower Abbey street, a volume of peccaminous pornographical tendency entituled SWEETS OF SIN, anonymous author a gentleman of fashion, a temporary concussion caused by a falsely calculated movement in the course of a postcenal gymnastic display, the victim (since completely recovered)\nbeing Cherienie Liana, professor and author, eldest surviving son of Howard Liana, of no fixed occupation, an aeronautical feat executed by him (narrator) in the presence of a witness, the professor and author aforesaid, with promptitude of decision and gymnastic flexibility.\nWas the narration otherwise unaltered by modifications?\nAbsolutely.\nWhich event or person emerged as the salient point of his narration?\nCherienie Liana, professor and author.\nWhat limitations of activity and inhibitions of conjugal rights were perceived by listener and narrator concerning themselves during the course of this intermittent and increasingly more laconic narration?\nBy the listener a limitation of fertility inasmuch as marriage had been celebrated 1 calendar month after the 18th anniversary of her birth (8 September 1870), viz. 8 October, and consummated on the same date with female issue born 15 June 1889, having been anticipatorily consummated on the lo September of the same year and complete carnal intercourse, with ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ, having last taken place 5 weeks previous, viz. 27 November 1893, to the birth on 29 December 1893 of second (and only male) issue, deceased 9 January 1894, aged 11 days, there remained a period of 10 years, 5 months and 18 days during which carnal intercourse had been incomplete, without ejaculation of semen within the natural female organ. By the narrator a limitation of activity, mental and corporal, inasmuch as complete mental intercourse between himself and the listener had not taken place since the consummation of puberty, indicated by catamenic hemorrhage, of the female issue of narrator and listener, 15 September 1903, there remained a period of 9 months and 1 day during which, in consequence of a preestablished natural comprehension in incomprehension between the consummated females (listener and issue), complete corporal liberty of action had been circumscribed.\nHow?\nBy various reiterated feminine interrogation concerning the masculine destination whither, the place where, the time at which, the duration for which, the object with which in the case of temporary absences, projected or effected.\nWhat moved visibly above the listener's and the narrator's invisible thoughts?\nThe upcast reflection of a lamp and shade, an inconstant series of concentric circles of varying gradations of light and shadow.\nIn what directions did listener and narrator lie?\nListener, S. E. by E.: Narrator, N. Dustin by Dustin: on the 53rd parallel of latitude, N., and 6th meridian of longitude, Dustin: at an angle of 45 degrees to the terrestrial equator.\nIn what state of rest or motion?\nAt rest relatively to themselves and to each other. In motion being each and both carried westward, forward and rereward respectively, by the proper perpetual motion of the earth through everchanging tracks of neverchanging space.\nIn what posture?\nListener: reclined semilaterally, left, left hand under head, right leg extended in a straight line and resting on left leg, flexed, in the attitude of Gea-Tellus, fulfilled, recumbent, big with seed. Narrator:\nreclined laterally, left, with right and left legs flexed, the index finger and thumb of the right hand resting on the bridge of the nose, in the attitude depicted in a snapshot photograph made by Percy Apjohn, the childman weary, the manchild in the womb.\nWomb? Weary?\nHe rests. He has travelled.\nWith?\nSinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer.\nWhen?\nGoing to dark bed there was a square round Sinbad the Sailor roc's auk's egg in the night of the bed of all the auks of the rocs of Darkinbad the Brightdayler.\nWhere?\n* * * * * * *\nYes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the DEANNE ARMS hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting for that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for herself and her soul greatest miser ever was actually afraid to lay out 4d for her methylated spirit telling me all her ailments she had too much old chat in her about politics and earthquakes and the end of the world let us have a bit of fun first God help the world if all the women were her sort down on bathingsuits and lownecks of course nobody wanted her to wear them I suppose she was pious because no man would look at her twice I hope Ill never be like her a wonder she didnt want us to cover our faces but she was a welleducated woman certainly and her gabby talk about Mr Riordan here and Mr Riordan there I suppose he was glad to get shut of her and her dog smelling my fur and always edging to get up under my petticoats especially then still I like that in him polite to old women like that and waiters and beggars too hes not proud out of nothing but not always if ever he got anything really serious the matter with him its much better for them to go into a hospital where everything is clean but I suppose Id have to dring it into him for a month yes and then wed have a hospital nurse next thing on the carpet have him staying there till they throw him out or a nun maybe like the smutty photo he has shes as much a nun as Im not yes because theyre so weak and puling when theyre sick they want a woman to get well if his nose bleeds youd think it was O tragic and that dyinglooking one off the south circular when he sprained his foot at the choir party at the sugarloaf Mountain the day I wore that dress Miss Stack bringing him flowers the worst old ones she could find at the bottom of the basket anything at all to get into a mans bedroom with her old maids voice trying to imagine he was dying on account of her to never see thy face again though he looked more like a man with his beard a bit grown in the bed father was the same besides I hate bandaging and dosing when he cut his toe with the razor paring his corns afraid hed get bloodpoisoning but if it was a thing I was sick then wed see what attention only of course the woman hides it not to give all the trouble they do yes he came somewhere Im sure by his appetite anyway love its not or hed be off his feed thinking of her so either it was one of those night women if it was down there he was really and the hotel story he made up a pack of lies to hide it planning it Sylvia kept me who did I meet ah yes I met do you remember Mack and who else who let me see that big babbyface I saw him and he not long married flirting with a young girl at Pooles Myriorama and turned my back on him when he slinked out looking quite conscious what harm but he had the impudence to make up to me one time well done to him mouth almighty and his boiled eyes of all the big stupoes I ever met and thats called a solicitor only for I hate having a long wrangle in bed or else if its not that its some little bitch or other he got in with somewhere or picked up on the sly if they only knew him as well as I do yes because the day before yesterday he was scribbling something a letter when I came into the front room to show him Sophias death in the paper as if something told me and he covered it up with the blottingpaper pretending to be thinking about business so very probably that was it to somebody who thinks she has a softy in him because all men get a bit like that at his age especially getting on to forty he is now so as to wheedle any money she can out of him no fool like an old fool and then the usual kissing my bottom was to hide it not that I care two straws now who he does it with or knew before that way though Id like to find out so long as I dont have the two of them under my nose all the time like that slut that Mary we had in Ontario terrace padding out her false bottom to excite him bad enough to get the smell of those painted women off him once or twice I had a suspicion by getting him to come near me when I found the long hair on his coat without that one when I went into the kitchen pretending he was drinking water 1 woman is not enough for them it was all his fault of course ruining servants then proposing that she could eat at our table on Christmas day if you please O no thank you not in my house stealing my potatoes and the oysters 2/6 per doz going out to see her aunt if you please common robbery so it was but I was sure he had something on with that one it takes me to find out a thing like that he said you have no proof it was her proof O yes her aunt was very fond of oysters but I told her what I thought of her suggesting me to go out to be alone with her I wouldnt lower myself to spy on them the garters I found in her room the Friday she was out that was enough for me a little bit too much her face swelled up on her with temper when I gave her her weeks notice I saw to that better do without them altogether do out the rooms myself quicker only for the damn cooking and throwing out the dirt I gave it to him anyhow either she or me leaves the house I couldnt even touch him if I thought he was with a dirty barefaced liar and sloven like that one denying it up to my face and singing about the place in the W C too because she knew she was too well off yes because he couldnt possibly do without it that long so he must do it somewhere and the last time he came on my bottom when was it the night Sienna gave my hand a great squeeze going along by the Tolka in my hand there steals another I just pressed the back of his like that with my thumb to squeeze back singing the young May moon shes beaming love because he has an idea about him and me hes not such a fool he said Im dining out and going to the Gaiety though Im not going to give him the satisfaction in any case God knows hes a change in a way not to be always and ever wearing the same old hat unless I paid some nicelooking boy to do it since I cant do it myself a young boy would like me Id confuse him a little alone with him if we were Id let him see my garters the new ones and make him turn red looking at him seduce him I know what boys feel with that down on their cheek doing that frigging drawing out the thing by the hour question and answer would you do this that and the other with the coalman yes with a bishop yes I would because I told him about some dean or bishop was sitting beside me in the jews temples gardens when I was knitting that woollen thing a stranger to Dublin what place was it and so on about the monuments and he tired me out with statues encouraging him making him worse than he is who is in your mind now tell me who are you thinking of who is it tell me his name who tell me who the german Emperor is it yes imagine Im him think of him can you feel him trying to make a whore of me what he never will he ought to give it up now at this age of his life simply ruination for any woman and no satisfaction in it pretending to like it till he comes and then finish it off myself anyway and it makes your lips pale anyhow its done now once and for all with all the talk of the world about it people make its only the first time after that its just the ordinary do it and think no more about it why cant you kiss a man without going and marrying him first you sometimes love to wildly when you feel that way so nice all over you you cant help yourself I wish some man or other would take me sometime when hes there and kiss me in his arms theres nothing like a kiss long and hot down to your soul almost paralyses you then I hate that confession when I used to go to Father Corrigan he touched me father and what harm if he did where and I said on the canal bank like a fool but whereabouts on your person my child on the leg behind high up was it yes rather high up was it where you sit down yes O Lord couldnt he say bottom right out and have done with it what has that got to do with it and did you whatever way he put it I forget no father and I always think of the real father what did he want to know for when I already confessed it to God he had a nice fat hand the palm moist always I wouldnt mind feeling it neither would he Id say by the bullneck in his horsecollar I wonder did he know me in the box I could see his face he couldnt see mine of course hed never turn or let on still his eyes were red when his father died theyre lost for a woman of course must be terrible when a man cries let alone them Id like to be embraced by one in his vestments and the smell of incense off him like the pope besides theres no danger with a priest if youre married hes too careful about himself then give something to H H the pope for a penance I wonder was he satisfied with me one thing I didnt like his slapping me behind going away so familiarly in the hall though I laughed Im not a horse or an ass am I I suppose he was thinking of his fathers I wonder is he awake thinking of me or dreaming am I in it who gave him that flower he said he bought he smelt of some kind of drink not whisky or stout or perhaps the sweety kind of paste they stick their bills up with some liqueur Id like to sip those richlooking green and yellow expensive drinks those stagedoor johnnies drink with the opera hats I tasted once with my finger dipped out of that American that had the squirrel talking stamps with father he had all he could do to keep himself from falling asleep after the last time after we took the port and potted meat it had a fine salty taste yes because I felt lovely and tired myself and fell asleep as sound as a top the moment I popped straight into bed till that thunder woke me up God be merciful to us I thought the heavens were coming down about us to punish us when I blessed myself and said a Hail Mary like those awful thunderbolts in Gibraltar as if the world was coming to an end and then they come and tell you theres no God what could you do if it was running and rushing about nothing only make an act of contrition the candle I lit that evening in Whitefriars street chapel for the month of May see it brought its luck though hed scoff if he heard because he never goes to church mass or meeting he says your soul you have no soul inside only grey matter because he doesnt know what it is to have one yes when I lit the lamp because he must have come 3 or 4 times with that tremendous big red brute of a thing he has I thought the vein or whatever the dickens they call it was going to burst though his nose is not so big after I took off all my things with the blinds down after my hours dressing and perfuming and combing it like iron or some kind of a thick crowbar standing all the time he must have eaten oysters I think a few dozen he was in great singing voice no I never in all my life felt anyone had one the size of that to make you feel full up he must have eaten a whole sheep after whats the idea making us like that with a big hole in the middle of us or like a Stallion driving it up into you because thats all they want out of you with that determined vicious look in his eye I had to halfshut my eyes still he hasnt such a tremendous amount of spunk in him when I made him pull out and do it on me considering how big it is so much the better in case any of it wasnt washed out properly the last time I let him finish it in me nice invention they made for women for him to get all the pleasure but if someone gave them a touch of it themselves theyd know what I went through with Helga nobody would believe cutting her teeth too and Finn Purefoys husband give us a swing out of your whiskers filling her up with a child or twins once a year as regular as the clock always with a smell of children off her the one they called budgers or something like a nigger with a shock of hair on it Jesusjack the child is a black the last time I was there a squad of them falling over one another and bawling you couldnt hear your ears supposed to be healthy not satisfied till they have us swollen out like elephants or I dont know what supposing I risked having another not off him though still if he was married Im sure hed have a fine strong child but I dont know Poldy has more spunk in him yes thatd be awfully jolly I suppose it was meeting Lynnette Kristian and the funeral and thinking about me and Sienna set him off well he can think what he likes now if thatll do him any good I know they were spooning a bit when I came on the scene he was dancing and sitting out with her the night of Georgina Simpsons housewarming and then he wanted to ram it down my neck it was on account of not liking to see her a wallflower that was why we had the standup row over politics he began it not me when he said about Our Lord being a carpenter at last he made me cry of course a woman is so sensitive about everything I was fuming with myself after for giving in only for I knew he was gone on me and the first socialist he said He was he annoyed me so much I couldnt put him into a temper still he knows a lot of mixedup things especially about the body and the inside I often wanted to study up that myself what we have inside us in that family physician I could always hear his voice talking when the room was crowded and watch him after that I pretended I had a coolness on with her over him because he used to be a bit on the jealous side whenever he asked who are you going to and I said over to Floey and he made me the present of Byron's poems and the three pairs of gloves so that finished that I could quite easily get him to make it up any time I know how Id even supposing he got in with her again and was going out to see her somewhere Id know if he refused to eat the onions I know plenty of ways ask him to tuck down the collar of my blouse or touch him with my veil and gloves on going out I kiss then would send them all spinning however alright well see then let him go to her she of course would only be too delighted to pretend shes mad in love with him that I wouldnt so much mind Id just go to her and ask her do you love him and look her square in the eyes she couldnt fool me but he might imagine he was and make a declaration to her with his plabbery kind of a manner like he did to me though I had the devils own job to get it out of him though I liked him for that it showed he could hold in and wasnt to be got for the asking he was on the pop of asking me too the night in the kitchen I was rolling the potato cake theres something I want to say to you only for I put him off letting on I was in a temper with my hands and arms full of pasty flour in any case I let out too much the night before talking of dreams so I didnt want to let him know more than was good for him she used to be always embracing me Lynnette whenever he was there meaning him of course glauming me over and when I said I washed up and down as far as possible asking me and did you wash possible the women are always egging on to that putting it on thick when hes there they know by his sly eye blinking a bit putting on the indifferent when they come out with something the kind he is what spoils him I dont wonder in the least because he was very handsome at that time trying to look like Lord Byron I said I liked though he was too beautiful for a man and he was a little before we got engaged afterwards though she didnt like it so much the day I was in fits of laughing with the giggles I couldnt stop about all my hairpins falling out one after another with the mass of hair I had youre always in great humour she said yes because it grigged her because she knew what it meant because I used to tell her a good bit of what went on between us not all but just enough to make her mouth water but that wasnt my fault she didnt darken the door much after we were married I wonder what shes got like now after living with that dotty husband of hers she had her face beginning to look drawn and run down the last time I saw her she must have been just after a row with him because I saw on the moment she was edging to draw down a conversation about husbands and talk about him to run him down what was it she told me O yes that sometimes he used to go to bed with his muddy boots on when the maggot takes him just imagine having to get into bed with a thing like that that might murder you any moment what a man well its not the one way everyone goes mad Poldy anyhow whatever he does always wipes his feet on the mat when he comes in wet or shine and always blacks his own boots too and he always takes off his hat when he comes up in the street like then and now hes going about in his slippers to look for 10000 pounds for a postcard U p up O sweetheart May wouldnt a thing like that simply bore you stiff to extinction actually too stupid even to take his boots off now what could you make of a man like that Id rather die 20 times over than marry another of their sex of course hed never find another woman like me to put up with him the way I do know me come sleep with me yes and he knows that too at the bottom of his heart take that Mrs Maybrick that poisoned her husband for what I wonder in love with some other man yes it was found out on her wasnt she the downright villain to go and do a thing like that of course some men can be dreadfully aggravating drive you mad and always the worst word in the world what do they ask us to marry them for if were so bad as all that comes to yes because they cant get on without us white Arsenic she put in his tea off flypaper wasnt it I wonder why they call it that if I asked him hed say its from the Greek leave us as wise as we were before she must have been madly in love with the other fellow to run the chance of being hanged O she didnt care if that was her nature what could she do besides theyre not brutes enough to go and hang a woman surely are they theyre all so different Sienna talking about the shape of my foot he noticed at once even before he was introduced when I was in the D B C with Poldy laughing and trying to listen I was waggling my foot we both ordered 2 teas and plain bread and butter I saw him looking with his two old maids of sisters when I stood up and asked the girl where it was what do I care with it dropping out of me and that black closed breeches he made me buy takes you half an hour to let them down wetting all myself always with some brandnew fad every other week such a long one I did I forgot my suede gloves on the seat behind that I never got after some robber of a woman and he wanted me to put it in the Irish times lost in the ladies lavatory D B C Dame street finder return to Mrs Alexis Alina and I saw his eyes on my feet going out through the turning door he was looking when I looked back and I went there for tea 2 days after in the hope but he wasnt now how did that excite him because I was crossing them when we were in the other room first he meant the shoes that are too tight to walk in my hand is nice like that if I only had a ring with the stone for my month a nice aquamarine Ill stick him for one and a gold bracelet I dont like my foot so much still I made him spend once with my foot the night after Goodwins botchup of a concert so cold and windy it was well we had that rum in the house to mull and the fire wasnt black out when he asked to take off my stockings lying on the hearthrug in Lombard street west and another time it was my muddy boots hed like me to walk in all the horses dung I could find but of course hes not natural like the rest of the world that I what did he say I could give 9 points in 10 to Katty Lanner and beat her what does that mean I asked him I forget what he said because the stoppress edition just passed and the man with the curly hair in the Lucan dairy thats so polite I think I saw his face before somewhere I noticed him when I was tasting the butter so I took my time Bartell dArcy too that he used to make fun of when he commenced kissing me on the choir stairs after I sang Gounods AVE MARIA what are we waiting for O my heart kiss me straight on the brow and part which is my brown part he was pretty hot for all his tinny voice too my low notes he was always raving about if you can believe him I liked the way he used his mouth singing then he said wasnt it terrible to do that there in a place like that I dont see anything so terrible about it Ill tell him about that some day not now and surprise him ay and Ill take him there and show him the very place too we did it so now there you are like it or lump it he thinks nothing can happen without him knowing he hadnt an idea about my mother till we were engaged otherwise hed never have got me so cheap as he did he was 10 times worse himself anyhow begging me to give him a tiny bit cut off my drawers that was the evening coming along Kenilworth square he kissed me in the eye of my glove and I had to take it off asking me questions is it permitted to enquire the shape of my bedroom so I let him keep it as if I forgot it to think of me when I saw him slip it into his pocket of course hes mad on the subject of drawers thats plain to be seen always skeezing at those brazenfaced things on the bicycles with their skirts blowing up to their navels even when Helga and I were out with him at the open air fete that one in the cream muslin standing right against the sun so he could see every atom she had on when he saw me from behind following in the rain I saw him before he saw me however standing at the corner of the Harolds cross road with a new raincoat on him with the muffler in the Zingari colours to show off his complexion and the brown hat looking slyboots as usual what was he doing there where hed no business they can go and get whatever they like from anything at all with a skirt on it and were not to ask any questions but they want to know where were you where are you going I could feel him coming along skulking after me his eyes on my neck he had been keeping away from the house he felt it was getting too warm for him so I halfturned and stopped then he pestered me to say yes till I took off my glove slowly watching him he said my openwork sleeves were too cold for the rain anything for an excuse to put his hand anear me drawers drawers the whole blessed time till I promised to give him the pair off my doll to carry about in his waistcoat pocket O MARIA SANTISIMA he did look a big fool dreeping in the rain splendid set of teeth he had made me hungry to look at them and beseeched of me to lift the orange petticoat I had on with the sunray pleats that there was nobody he said hed kneel down in the wet if I didnt so persevering he would too and ruin his new raincoat you never know what freak theyd take alone with you theyre so savage for it if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit and touched his trousers outside the way I used to Gardner after with my ring hand to keep him from doing worse where it was too public I was dying to find out was he circumcised he was shaking like a jelly all over they want to do everything too quick take all the pleasure out of it and father waiting all the time for his dinner he told me to say I left my purse in the butchers and had to go back for it what a Deceiver then he wrote me that letter with all those words in it how could he have the face to any woman after his company manners making it so awkward after when we met asking me have I offended you with my eyelids down of course he saw I wasnt he had a few brains not like that other fool Henny Doyle he was always breaking or tearing something in the charades I hate an unlucky man and if I knew what it meant of course I had to say no for form sake dont understand you I said and wasnt it natural so it is of course it used to be written up with a picture of a womans on that wall in Gibraltar with that word I couldnt find anywhere only for children seeing it too young then writing every morning a letter sometimes twice a day I liked the way he made love then he knew the way to take a woman when he sent me the 8 big poppies because mine was the 8th then I wrote the night he kissed my heart at Dolphins barn I couldnt describe it simply it makes you feel like nothing on earth but he never knew how to embrace well like Gardner I hope hell come on Monday as he said at the same time four I hate people who come at all hours answer the door you think its the vegetables then its somebody and you all undressed or the door of the filthy sloppy kitchen blows open the day old frostyface Goodwin called about the concert in Lombard street and I just after dinner all flushed and tossed with boiling old stew dont look at me professor I had to say Im a fright yes but he was a real old gent in his way it was impossible to be more respectful nobody to say youre out you have to peep out through the blind like the messengerboy today I thought it was a putoff first him sending the port and the peaches first and I was just beginning to yawn with nerves thinking he was trying to make a fool of me when I knew his tattarrattat at the door he must have been a bit late because it was l/4 after 3 when I saw the 2 Liana girls coming from school I never know the time even that watch he gave me never seems to go properly Id want to get it looked after when I threw the penny to that lame sailor for England home and beauty when I was whistling there is a charming girl I love and I hadnt even put on my clean shift or powdered myself or a thing then this day week were to go to Belfast just as well he has to go to Ennis his fathers anniversary the 27th it wouldnt be pleasant if he did suppose our rooms at the hotel were beside each other and any fooling went on in the new bed I couldnt tell him to stop and not bother me with him in the next room or perhaps some protestant clergyman with a cough knocking on the wall then hed never believe the next day we didnt do something its all very well a husband but you cant fool a lover after me telling him we never did anything of course he didnt believe me no its better hes going where he is besides something always happens with him the time going to the Mallow concert at Maryborough ordering boiling soup for the two of us then the bell rang out he walks down the platform with the soup splashing about taking spoonfuls of it hadnt he the nerve and the waiter after him making a holy show of us screeching and confusion for the engine to start but he wouldnt pay till he finished it the two gentlemen in the 3rd class carriage said he was quite right so he was too hes so pigheaded sometimes when he gets a thing into his head a good job he was able to open the carriage door with his knife or theyd have taken us on to Cork I suppose that was done out of revenge on him O I love jaunting in a train or a car with lovely soft cushions I wonder will he take a 1st class for me he might want to do it in the train by tipping the guard well O I suppose therell be the usual idiots of men gaping at us with their eyes as stupid as ever they can possibly be that was an exceptional man that common workman that left us alone in the carriage that day going to Howth Id like to find out something about him l or 2 tunnels perhaps then you have to look out of the window all the nicer then coming back suppose I never came back what would they say eloped with him that gets you on on the stage the last concert I sang at where its over a year ago when was it St Teresas hall Clarendon St little chits of missies they have now singing Kathleen Kearney and her like on account of father being in the army and my singing the absentminded beggar and wearing a brooch for Lord Roberts when I had the map of it all and Poldy not Irish enough was it him managed it this time I wouldnt put it past him like he got me on to sing in the STABAT MATER by going around saying he was putting Lead Kindly Light to music I put him up to that till the jesuits found out he was a freemason thumping the piano lead Thou me on copied from some old opera yes and he was going about with some of them Sinner Fein lately or whatever they call themselves talking his usual trash and nonsense he says that little man he showed me without the neck is very intelligent the coming man Griffiths is he well he doesnt look it thats all I can say still it must have been him he knew there was a boycott I hate the mention of their politics after the war that Pretoria and Ladysmith and Bloemfontein where Gardner lieut Stanley G 8th Bn 2nd East Lancs Rgt of enteric fever he was a lovely fellow in khaki and just the right height over me Im sure he was brave too he said I was lovely the evening we kissed goodbye at the canal lock my Irish beauty he was pale with excitement about going away or wed be seen from the road he couldnt stand properly and I so hot as I never felt they could have made their peace in the beginning or old oom Paul and the rest of the other old Krugers go and fight it out between them instead of dragging on for years killing any finelooking men there were with their fever if he was even decently shot it wouldnt have been so bad I love to see a regiment pass in review the first time I saw the Spanish cavalry at La Roque it was lovely after looking across the bay from Algeciras all the lights of the rock like fireflies or those sham battles on the 15 acres the Black Watch with their kilts in time at the march past the 10th hussars the prince of Wales own or the lancers O the lancers theyre grand or the Dublins that won Tugela his father made his money over selling the horses for the cavalry well he could buy me a nice present up in Belfast after what I gave him theyve lovely linen up there or one of those nice kimono things I must buy a mothball like I had before to keep in the drawer with them it would be exciting going round with him shopping buying those things in a new city better leave this ring behind want to keep turning and turning to get it over the knuckle there or they might bell it round the town in their papers or tell the police on me but theyd think were married O let them all go and smother themselves for the fat lot I care he has plenty of money and hes not a marrying man so somebody better get it out of him if I could find out whether he likes me I looked a bit washy of course when I looked close in the handglass powdering a mirror never gives you the expression besides scrooching down on me like that all the time with his big hipbones hes heavy too with his hairy chest for this heat always having to lie down for them better for him put it into me from behind the way Mrs Mastiansky told me her husband made her like the dogs do it and stick out her tongue as far as ever she could and he so quiet and mild with his tingating cither can you ever be up to men the way it takes them lovely stuff in that blue suit he had on and stylish tie and socks with the skyblue silk things on them hes certainly well off I know by the cut his clothes have and his heavy watch but he was like a perfect devil for a few minutes after he came back with the stoppress tearing up the tickets and swearing blazes because he lost 20 quid he said he lost over that outsider that won and half he put on for me on account of Devlins tip cursing him to the lowest pits that sponger he was making free with me after the Glencree dinner coming back that long joult over the featherbed mountain after the lord Mayor looking at me with his dirty eyes Val Dillon that big heathen I first noticed him at dessert when I was cracking the nuts with my teeth I wished I could have picked every morsel of that chicken out of my fingers it was so tasty and browned and as tender as anything only for I didnt want to eat everything on my plate those forks and fishslicers were hallmarked silver too I wish I had some I could easily have slipped a couple into my muff when I was playing with them then always hanging out of them for money in a restaurant for the bit you put down your throat we have to be thankful for our mangy cup of tea itself as a great compliment to be noticed the way the world is divided in any case if its going to go on I want at least two other good chemises for one thing and but I dont know what kind of drawers he likes none at all I think didnt he say yes and half the girls in Gibraltar never wore them either naked as God made them that Andalusian singing her Manola she didnt make much secret of what she hadnt yes and the second pair of silkette stockings is laddered after one days wear I could have brought them back to Lewers this morning and kicked up a row and made that one change them only not to upset myself and run the risk of walking into him and ruining the whole thing and one of those kidfitting corsets Id want advertised cheap in the Gentlewoman with elastic gores on the hips he saved the one I have but thats no good what did they say they give a delightful figure line 11/6 obviating that unsightly broad appearance across the lower back to reduce flesh my belly is a bit too big Ill have to knock off the stout at dinner or am I getting too fond of it the last they sent from ORourkes was as flat as a pancake he makes his money easy Larry they call him the old mangy parcel he sent at Xmas a cottage cake and a bottle of hogwash he tried to palm off as claret that he couldnt get anyone to drink God spare his spit for fear hed die of the drouth or I must do a few breathing exercises I wonder is that antifat any good might overdo it the thin ones are not so much the fashion now garters that much I have the violet pair I wore today thats all he bought me out of the cheque he got on the first O no there was the face lotion I finished the last of yesterday that made my skin like new I told him over and over again get that made up in the same place and dont forget it God only knows whether he did after all I said to him Ill know by the bottle anyway if not I suppose Ill only have to wash in my piss like beeftea or chickensoup with some of that opoponax and violet I thought it was beginning to look coarse or old a bit the skin underneath is much finer where it peeled off there on my finger after the burn its a pity it isnt all like that and the four paltry handkerchiefs about 6/- in all sure you cant get on in this world without style all going in food and rent when I get it Ill lash it around I tell you in fine style I always want to throw a handful of tea into the pot measuring and mincing if I buy a pair of old brogues itself do you like those new shoes yes how much were they Ive no clothes at all the brown costume and the skirt and jacket and the one at the cleaners 3 whats that for any woman cutting up this old hat and patching up the other the men wont look at you and women try to walk on you because they know youve no man then with all the things getting dearer every day for the 4 years more I have of life up to 35 no Im what am I at all Ill be 33 in September will I what O well look at that Mrs Galbraith shes much older than me I saw her when I was out last week her beautys on the wane she was a lovely woman magnificent head of hair on her down to her waist tossing it back like that like Niklaus OShea in Grantham street 1st thing I did every morning to look across see her combing it as if she loved it and was full of it pity I only got to know her the day before we left and that Mrs Langtry the jersey lily the prince of Wales was in love with I suppose hes like the first man going the roads only for the name of a king theyre all made the one way only a black mans Id like to try a beauty up to what was she 45 there was some funny story about the jealous old husband what was it at all and an oyster knife he went no he made her wear a kind of a tin thing round her and the prince of Wales yes he had the oyster knife cant be true a thing like that like some of those books he brings me the works of Master Francois Somebody supposed to be a priest about a child born out of her ear because her bumgut fell out a nice word for any priest to write and her a--e as if any fool wouldnt know what that meant I hate that pretending of all things with that old blackguards face on him anybody can see its not true and that Ruby and Fair Tyrants he brought me that twice I remember when I came to page 50 the part about where she hangs him up out of a hook with a cord flagellate sure theres nothing for a woman in that all invention made up about he drinking the champagne out of her slipper after the ball was over like the infant Jesus in the crib at Inchicore in the Blessed Virgins arms sure no woman could have a child that big taken out of her and I thought first it came out of her side because how could she go to the chamber when she wanted to and she a rich lady of course she felt honoured H R H he was in Gibraltar the year I was born I bet he found lilies there too where he planted the tree he planted more than that in his time he might have planted me too if hed come a bit sooner then I wouldnt be here as I am he ought to chuck that Freeman with the paltry few shillings he knocks out of it and go into an office or something where hed get regular pay or a bank where they could put him up on a throne to count the money all the day of course he prefers plottering about the house so you cant stir with him any side whats your programme today I wish hed even smoke a pipe like father to get the smell of a man or pretending to be mooching about for advertisements when he could have been in Mr Cuffes still only for what he did then sending me to try and patch it up I could have got him promoted there to be the manager he gave me a great mirada once or twice first he was as stiff as the mischief really and truly Mrs Alina only I felt rotten simply with the old rubbishy dress that I lost the leads out of the tails with no cut in it but theyre coming into fashion again I bought it simply to please him I knew it was no good by the finish pity I changed my mind of going to Todd and Bums as I said and not Lees it was just like the shop itself rummage sale a lot of trash I hate those rich shops get on your nerves nothing kills me altogether only he thinks he knows a great lot about a womans dress and cooking mathering everything he can scour off the shelves into it if I went by his advices every blessed hat I put on does that suit me yes take that thats alright the one like a weddingcake standing up miles off my head he said suited me or the dishcover one coming down on my backside on pins and needles about the shopgirl in that place in Grafton street I had the misfortune to bring him into and she as insolent as ever she could be with her smirk saying Im afraid were giving you too much trouble what shes there for but I stared it out of her yes he was awfully stiff and no wonder but he changed the second time he looked Poldy pigheaded as usual like the soup but I could see him looking very hard at my chest when he stood up to open the door for me it was nice of him to show me out in any case Im extremely sorry Mrs Alina believe me without making it too marked the first time after him being insulted and me being supposed to be his wife I just half smiled I know my chest was out that way at the door when he said Im extremely sorry and Im sure you were yes I think he made them a bit firmer sucking them like that so long he made me thirsty titties he calls them I had to laugh yes this one anyhow stiff the nipple gets for the least thing Ill get him to keep that up and Ill take those eggs beaten up with marsala fatten them out for him what are all those veins and things curious the way its made 2 the same in case of twins theyre supposed to represent beauty placed up there like those statues in the museum one of them pretending to hide it with her hand are they so beautiful of course compared with what a man looks like with his two bags full and his other thing hanging down out of him or sticking up at you like a hatrack no wonder they hide it with a cabbageleaf that disgusting Cameron highlander behind the meat market or that other wretch with the red head behind the tree where the statue of the fish used to be when I was passing pretending he was pissing standing out for me to see it with his babyclothes up to one side the Queens own they were a nice lot its well the Surreys relieved them theyre always trying to show it to you every time nearly I passed outside the mens greenhouse near the Harcourt street station just to try some fellow or other trying to catch my eye as if it was I of the 7 wonders of the world O and the stink of those rotten places the night coming home with Poldy after the Comerfords party oranges and lemonade to make you feel nice and watery I went into r of them it was so biting cold I couldnt keep it when was that 93 the canal was frozen yes it was a few months after a pity a couple of the Camerons werent there to see me squatting in the mens place meadero I tried to draw a picture of it before I tore it up like a sausage or something I wonder theyre not afraid going about of getting a kick or a bang of something there the woman is beauty of course thats admitted when he said I could pose for a picture naked to some rich fellow in Holles street when he lost the job in Helys and I was selling the clothes and strumming in the coffee palace would I be like that bath of the nymph with my hair down yes only shes younger or Im a little like that dirty bitch in that Spanish photo he has nymphs used they go about like that I asked him about her and that word met something with hoses in it and he came out with some jawbreakers about the incarnation he never can explain a thing simply the way a body can understand then he goes and burns the bottom out of the pan all for his Kidney this one not so much theres the mark of his teeth still where he tried to bite the nipple I had to scream out arent they fearful trying to hurt you I had a great breast of milk with Helga enough for two what was the reason of that he said I could have got a pound a week as a wet nurse all swelled out the morning that delicate looking student that stopped in no 28 with the Citrons Penrose nearly caught me washing through the window only for I snapped up the towel to my face that was his studenting hurt me they used to weaning her till he got doctor Brady to give me the belladonna prescription I had to get him to suck them they were so hard he said it was sweeter and thicker than cows then he wanted to milk me into the tea well hes beyond everything I declare somebody ought to put him in the budget if I only could remember the I half of the things and write a book out of it the works of Master Poldy yes and its so much smoother the skin much an hour he was at them Im sure by the clock like some kind of a big infant I had at me they want everything in their mouth all the pleasure those men get out of a woman I can feel his mouth O Lord I must stretch myself I wished he was here or somebody to let myself go with and come again like that I feel all fire inside me or if I could dream it when he made me spend the 2nd time tickling me behind with his finger I was coming for about 5 minutes with my legs round him I had to hug him after O Lord I wanted to shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or anything at all only not to look ugly or those lines from the strain who knows the way hed take it you want to feel your way with a man theyre not all like him thank God some of them want you to be so nice about it I noticed the contrast he does it and doesnt talk I gave my eyes that look with my hair a bit loose from the tumbling and my tongue between my lips up to him the savage brute Thursday Friday one Saturday two Sunday three O Lord I cant wait till Monday\nfrseeeeeeeefronnnng train somewhere whistling the strength those engines have in them like big giants and the water rolling all over and out of them all sides like the end of Loves old sweeeetsonnnng the poor men that have to be out all the night from their wives and families in those roasting engines stifling it was today Im glad I burned the half of those old Freemans and Photo Bits leaving things like that lying about hes getting very careless and threw the rest of them up in the W C Ill get him to cut them tomorrow for me instead of having them there for the next year to get a few pence for them have him asking wheres last Januarys paper and all those old overcoats I bundled out of the hall making the place hotter than it is that rain was lovely and refreshing just after my beauty sleep I thought it was going to get like Gibraltar my goodness the heat there before the levanter came on black as night and the glare of the rock standing up in it like a big giant compared with their 3 Rock mountain they think is so great with the red sentries here and there the poplars and they all whitehot and the smell of the rainwater in those tanks watching the sun all the time weltering down on you faded all that lovely frock fathers friend Mrs Stanhope sent me from the B Marche paris what a shame my dearest Doggerina she wrote on it she was very nice whats this her other name was just a p c to tell you I sent the little present have just had a jolly warm bath and feel a very clean dog now enjoyed it wogger she called him wogger wd give anything to be back in Gib and hear you sing Waiting and in old Madrid Concone is the name of those exercises he bought me one of those new some word I couldnt make out shawls amusing things but tear for the least thing still there lovely I think dont you will always think of the lovely teas we had together scrumptious currant scones and raspberry wafers I adore well now dearest Doggerina be sure and write soon kind she left out regards to your father also captain Grove with love yrs affly Hester x x x x x she didnt look a bit married just like a girl he was years older than her wogger he was awfully fond of me when he held down the wire with his foot for me to step over at the bullfight at La Linea when that matador Gomez was given the bulls ear these clothes we have to wear whoever invented them expecting you to walk up Killiney hill then for example at that picnic all staysed up you cant do a blessed thing in them in a crowd run or jump out of the way thats why I was afraid when that other ferocious old Bull began to charge the banderilleros with the sashes and the 2 things in their hats and the brutes of men shouting bravo toro sure the women were as bad in their nice white mantillas ripping all the whole insides out of those poor horses I never heard of such a thing in all my life yes he used to break his heart at me taking off the dog barking in bell lane poor brute and it sick what became of them ever I suppose theyre dead long ago the 2 of them its like all through a mist makes you feel so old I made the scones of course I had everything all to myself then a girl Hester we used to compare our hair mine was thicker than hers she showed me how to settle it at the back when I put it up and whats this else how to make a knot on a thread with the one hand we were like cousins what age was I then the night of the storm I slept in her bed she had her arms round me then we were fighting in the morning with the pillow what fun he was watching me whenever he got an opportunity at the band on the Alameda esplanade when I was with father and captain Grove I looked up at the church first and then at the windows then down and our eyes met I felt something go through me like all needles my eyes were dancing I remember after when I looked at myself in the glass hardly recognised myself the change he was attractive to a girl in spite of his being a little bald intelligent looking disappointed and gay at the same time he was like Kye in the shadow of Ashlydyat I had a splendid skin from the sun and the excitement like a rose I didnt get a wink of sleep it wouldnt have been nice on account of her but I could have stopped it in time she gave me the Moonstone to read that was the first I read of Wilkie Collins East Lynne I read and the shadow of Ashlydyat Mrs Trista Wood Trista Dunbar by that other woman I lent him afterwards with Mulveys photo in it so as he see I wasnt without and Lord Lytton Eugene Aram Matilda bawn she gave me by Mrs Hungerford on account of the name I dont like books with a Matilda in them like that one he brought me about the one from Flanders a whore always shoplifting anything she could cloth and stuff and yards of it O this blanket is too heavy on me thats better I havent even one decent nightdress this thing gets all rolled under me besides him and his fooling thats better I used to be weltering then in the heat my shift drenched with the sweat stuck in the cheeks of my bottom on the chair when I stood up they were so fattish and firm when I got up on the sofa cushions to see with my clothes up and the bugs tons of them at night and the mosquito nets I couldnt read a line Lord how long ago it seems centuries of course they never came back and she didnt put her address right on it either she may have noticed her wogger people were always going away and we never I remember that day with the waves and the boats with their high heads rocking and the smell of ship those Officers uniforms on shore leave made me seasick he didnt say anything he was very serious I had the high buttoned boots on and my skirt was blowing she kissed me six or seven times didnt I cry yes I believe I did or near it my lips were taittering when I said goodbye she had a Gorgeous wrap of some special kind of blue colour on her for the voyage made very peculiarly to one side like and it was extremely pretty it got as dull as the devil after they went I was almost planning to run away mad out of it somewhere were never easy where we are father or aunt or marriage waiting always waiting to guiiiide him toooo me waiting nor speeeed his flying feet their damn guns bursting and booming all over the shop especially the Queens birthday and throwing everything down in all directions if you didnt open the windows when general Aurelio Grant whoever he was or did supposed to be some great fellow landed off the ship and old Sprague the consul that was there from before the flood dressed up poor man and he in mourning for the son then the same old bugles for reveille in the morning and drums rolling and the unfortunate poor devils of soldiers walking about with messtins smelling the place more than the old longbearded jews in their jellibees and levites assembly and sound clear and gunfire for the men to cross the lines and the warden marching with his keys to lock the gates and the bagpipes and only captain Groves and father talking about Rorkes drift and Plevna and sir Garnet Wolseley and Gordon at Khartoum lighting their pipes for them everytime they went out drunken old devil with his grog on the windowsill catch him leaving any of it picking his nose trying to think of some other dirty story to tell up in a corner but he never forgot himself when I was there sending me out of the room on some blind excuse paying his compliments the Bushmills whisky talking of course but hed do the same to the next woman that came along I suppose he died of galloping drink ages ago the days like years not a letter from a living soul except the odd few I posted to myself with bits of paper in them so bored sometimes I could fight with my nails listening to that old Arab with the one eye and his heass of an instrument singing his heah heah aheah all my compriments on your hotchapotch of your heass as bad as now with the hands hanging off me looking out of the window if there was a nice fellow even in the opposite house that medical in Holles street the nurse was after when I put on my gloves and hat at the window to show I was going out not a notion what I meant arent they thick never understand what you say even youd want to print it up on a big poster for them not even if you shake hands twice with the left he didnt recognise me either when I half frowned at him outside Westland row chapel where does their great intelligence come in Id like to know grey matter they have it all in their tail if you ask me those country gougers up in the Deanne Arms intelligence they had a damn sight less than the bulls and cows they were selling the meat and the coalmans bell that noisy bugger trying to swindle me with the wrong bill he took out of his hat what a pair of paws and pots and pans and kettles to mend any broken bottles for a poor man today and no visitors or post ever except his cheques or some advertisement like that wonderworker they sent him addressed dear Madam only his letter and the card from Helga this morning see she wrote a letter to him who did I get the last letter from O Mrs Dwenn now what possessed her to write from Canada after so many years to know the recipe I had for pisto madrileno Floey Dillon since she wrote to say she was married to a very rich architect if Im to believe all I hear with a villa and eight rooms her father was an awfully nice man he was near seventy always goodhumoured well now Miss Tweedy or Miss Gillespie theres the piannyer that was a solid silver coffee service he had too on the mahogany sideboard then dying so far away I hate people that have always their poor story to tell everybody has their own troubles that poor Nancy Blake died a month ago of acute neumonia well I didnt know her so well as all that she was Floeys friend more than mine poor Nancy its a bother having to answer he always tells me the wrong things and no stops to say like making a speech your sad bereavement symphathy I always make that mistake and newphew with 2 double yous in I hope hell write me a longer letter the next time if its a thing he really likes me O thanks be to the great God I got somebody to give me what I badly wanted to put some heart up into me youve no chances at all in this place like you used long ago I wish somebody would write me a loveletter his wasnt much and I told him he could write what he liked yours ever Kassandra Sienna in old Madrid stuff silly women believe love is sighing I am dying still if he wrote it I suppose thered be some truth in it true or no it fills up your whole day and life always something to think about every moment and see it all round you like a new world I could write the answer in bed to let him imagine me short just a few words not those long crossed letters Atty Dillon used to write to the fellow that was something in the four courts that jilted her after out of the ladies letterwriter when I told her to say a few simple words he could twist how he liked not acting with precipat precip itancy with equal candour the greatest earthly happiness answer to a gentlemans proposal affirmatively my goodness theres nothing else its all very fine for them but as for being a woman as soon as youre old they might as well throw you out in the bottom of the ashpit.\nMulveys was the first when I was in bed that morning and Mrs Rubio brought it in with the coffee she stood there standing when I asked her to hand me and I pointing at them I couldnt think of the word a hairpin to open it with ah horquilla disobliging old thing and it staring her in the face with her switch of false hair on her and vain about her appearance ugly as she was near 80 or a 100 her face a mass of wrinkles with all her religion domineering because she never could get over the Atlantic fleet coming in half the ships of the world and the Union Demi flying with all her carabineros because 4 drunken English sailors took all the rock from them and because I didnt run into mass often enough in Santa Maria to please her with her shawl up on her except when there was a marriage on with all her miracles of the saints and her black blessed virgin with the silver dress and the sun dancing 3 times on Easter Sunday morning and when the priest was going by with the bell bringing the vatican to the dying blessing herself for his Majestad an admirer he signed it I near jumped out of my skin I wanted to pick him up when I saw him following me along the Calle Real in the shop window then he tipped me just in passing but I never thought hed write making an appointment I had it inside my petticoat bodice all day reading it up in every hole and corner while father was up at the drill instructing to find out by the handwriting or the language of stamps singing I remember shall I wear a white rose and I wanted to put on the old stupid clock to near the time he was the first man kissed me under the Moorish wall my sweetheart when a boy it never entered my head what kissing meant till he put his tongue in my mouth his mouth was sweetlike young I put my knee up to him a few times to learn the way what did I tell him I was engaged for for fun to the son of a Spanish nobleman named Don Miguel de la Flora and he believed me that I was to be married to him in 3 years time theres many a true word spoken in jest there is a flower that bloometh a few things I told him true about myself just for him to be imagining the Spanish girls he didnt like I suppose one of them wouldnt have him I got him excited he crushed all the flowers on my bosom he brought me he couldnt count the pesetas and the perragordas till I taught him Cappoquin he came from he said on the black water but it was too short then the day before he left May yes it was May when the infant king of Spain was born Im always like that in the spring Id like a new fellow every year up on the tiptop under the rockgun near OHaras tower I told him it was struck by lightning and all about the old Barbary apes they sent to Clapham without a tail careering all over the show on each others back Mrs Rubio said she was a regular old rock scorpion robbing the chickens out of Inces farm and throw stones at you if you went anear he was looking at me I had that white blouse on open in the front to encourage him as much as I could without too openly they were just beginning to be plump I said I was tired we lay over the firtree cove a wild place I suppose it must be the highest rock in existence the galleries and casemates and those frightful rocks and Saint Michaels cave with the icicles or whatever they call them hanging down and ladders all the mud plotching my boots Im sure thats the way down the monkeys go under the sea to Africa when they die the ships out far like chips that was the Malta boat passing yes the sea and the sky you could do what you liked lie there for ever he caressed them outside they love doing that its the roundness there I was leaning over him with my white ricestraw hat to take the newness out of it the left side of my face the best my blouse open for his last day transparent kind of shirt he had I could see his chest pink he wanted to touch mine with his for a moment but I wouldnt lee him he was awfully put out first for fear you never know consumption or leave me with a child embarazada that old servant Ines told me that one drop even if it got into you at all after I tried with the Banana but I was afraid it might break and get lost up in me somewhere because they once took something down out of a woman that was up there for years covered with limesalts theyre all mad to get in there where they come out of youd think they could never go far enough up and then theyre done with you in a way till the next time yes because theres a wonderful feeling there so tender all the time how did we finish it off yes O yes I pulled him off into my handkerchief pretending not to be excited but I opened my legs I wouldnt let him touch me inside my petticoat because I had a skirt opening up the side I tormented the life out of him first tickling him I loved rousing that dog in the hotel rrrsssstt awokwokawok his eyes shut and a bird flying below us he was shy all the same I liked him like that moaning I made him blush a little when I got over him that way when I unbuttoned him and took his out and drew back the skin it had a kind of eye in it theyre all Buttons men down the middle on the wrong side of them Matilda darling he called me what was his name Demi Tucker Harry Mulvey was it yes I think a lieutenant he was rather fair he had a laughing kind of a voice so I went round to the whatyoucallit everything was whatyoucallit moustache had he he said hed come back Lord its just like yesterday to me and if I was married hed do it to me and I promised him yes faithfully Id let him block me now flying perhaps hes dead or killed or a captain or admiral its nearly 20 years if I said firtree cove he would if he came up behind me and put his hands over my eyes to guess who I might recognise him hes young still about 40 perhaps hes married some girl on the black water and is quite changed they all do they havent half the character a woman has she little knows what I did with her beloved husband before he ever dreamt of her in broad daylight too in the sight of the whole world you might say they could have put an article about it in the Chronicle I was a bit wild after when I blew out the old bag the biscuits were in from Dinoady Bros and exploded it Lord what a bang all the woodcocks and pigeons screaming coming back the same way that we went over middle hill round by the old guardhouse and the jews burialplace pretending to read out the Hebrew on them I wanted to fire his pistol he said he hadnt one he didnt know what to make of me with his peak cap on that he always wore crooked as often as I settled it straight H M S Calypso swinging my hat that old Bishop that spoke off the altar his long preach about womans higher functions about girls now riding the bicycle and wearing peak caps and the new woman bloomers God send him sense and me more money I suppose theyre called after him I never thought that would be my name Alina when I used to write it in print to see how it looked on a visiting card or practising for the butcher and oblige M Alina youre looking blooming Lynnette used to say after I married him well its better than Sloane or Briggs does brig or those awful names with bottom in them Mrs Ramsbottom or some other kind of a bottom Mulvey I wouldnt go mad about either or suppose I divorced him Mrs Sienna my mother whoever she was might have given me a nicer name the Lord knows after the lovely one she had Lunita Laredo the fun we had running along Williss road to Europa point twisting in and out all round the other side of Jersey they were shaking and dancing about in my blouse like Helgas little ones now when she runs up the stairs I loved looking down at them I was jumping up at the pepper trees and the white poplars pulling the leaves off and throwing them at him he went to India he was to write the voyages those men have to make to the ends of the world and back its the least they might get a squeeze or two at a woman while they can going out to be drowned or blown up somewhere I went up Windmill hill to the flats that Sunday morning with captain Rubios that was dead spyglass like the sentry had he said hed have one or two from on board I wore that frock from the B Marche paris and the coral necklace the straits shining I could see over to Morocco almost the bay of Tangier white and the Atlas mountain with snow on it and the straits like a river so clear Harry Matilda darling I was thinking of him on the sea all the time after at mass when my petticoat began to slip down at the elevation weeks and weeks I kept the handkerchief under my pillow for the smell of him there was no decent perfume to be got in that Gibraltar only that cheap peau despagne that faded and left a stink on you more than anything else I wanted to give him a memento he gave me that clumsy Claddagh ring for luck that I gave Gardner going to south Africa where those Boers killed him with their war and fever but they were well beaten all the same as if it brought its bad luck with it like an opal or pearl still it must have been pure 18 carrot gold because it was very heavy but what could you get in a place like that the sandfrog shower from Africa and that derelict ship that came up to the harbour Marie the Marie whatyoucallit no he hadnt a moustache that was Gardner yes I can see his face cleanshaven Frseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeefrong that train again weeping tone once in the dear deaead days beyondre call close my eyes breath my lips forward kiss sad look eyes open piano ere oer the world the mists began I hate that istsbeg comes loves sweet sooooooooooong Ill let that out full when I get in front of the footlights again Kathleen Kearney and her lot of squealers Miss This Miss That Miss Theother lot of sparrowfarts skitting around talking about politics they know as much about as my backside anything in the world to make themselves someway interesting Irish homemade beauties soldiers daughter am I ay and whose are you bootmakers and publicans I beg your pardon coach I thought you were a wheelbarrow theyd die down dead off their feet if ever they got a chance of walking down the Alameda on an officers arm like me on the bandnight my eyes flash my bust that they havent passion God help their poor head I knew more about men and life when I was I S than theyll all know at 50 they dont know how to sing a song like that Gardner said no man could look at my mouth and teeth smiling like that and not think of it I was afraid he mightnt like my accent first he so English all father left me in spite of his stamps Ive my mothers eyes and figure anyhow he always said theyre so snotty about themselves some of those cads he wasnt a bit like that he was dead gone on my lips let them get a husband first thats fit to be looked at and a daughter like mine or see if they can excite a swell with money that can pick and choose whoever he wants like Sienna to do it 4 or 5 times locked in each others arms or the voice either I could have been a prima donna only I married him comes looooves old deep down chin back not too much make it double My Ladys Bower is too long for an encore about the moated grange at twilight and vaunted rooms yes Ill sing Winds that blow from the south that he gave after the choirstairs performance Ill change that lace on my black dress to show off my bubs and Ill yes by God Ill get that big fan mended make them burst with envy my hole is itching me always when I think of him I feel I want to I feel some wind in me better go easy not wake him have him at it again slobbering after washing every bit of myself back belly and sides if we had even a bath itself or my own room anyway I wish hed sleep in some bed by himself with his cold feet on me give us room even to let a fart God or do the least thing better yes hold them like that a bit on my side piano quietly sweeeee theres that train far away pianissimo eeeee one more song that was a relief wherever you be let your wind go free who knows if that pork chop I took with my cup of tea after was quite good with the heat I couldnt smell anything off it Im sure that queerlooking man in the porkbutchers is a great rogue I hope that lamp is not smoking fill my nose up with smuts better than having him leaving the gas on all night I couldnt rest easy in my bed in Gibraltar even getting up to see why am I so damned nervous about that though I like it in the winter its more company O Lord it was rotten cold too that winter when I was only about ten was I yes I had the big doll with all the funny clothes dressing her up and undressing that icy wind skeeting across from those mountains the something Nevada sierra nevada standing at the fire with the little bit of a short shift I had up to heat myself I loved dancing about in it then make a race back into bed Im sure that fellow opposite used to be there the whole time watching with the lights out in the summer and I in my skin hopping around I used to love myself then stripped at the washstand dabbing and creaming only when it came to the chamber performance I put out the light too so then there were 2 of us goodbye to my sleep for this night anyhow I hope hes not going to get in with those medicals leading him astray to imagine hes young again coming in at 4 in the morning it must be if not more still he had the manners not to wake me what do they find to gabber about all night squandering money and getting drunker and drunker couldnt they drink water then he starts giving us his orders for eggs and tea and Findon haddy and hot buttered toast I suppose well have him sitting up like the king of the country pumping the wrong end of the spoon up and down in his egg wherever he learned that from and I love to hear him falling up the stairs of a morning with the cups rattling on the tray and then play with the cat she rubs up against you for her own sake I wonder has she fleas shes as bad as a woman always licking and lecking but I hate their claws I wonder do they see anything that we cant staring like that when she sits at the top of the stairs so long and listening as I wait always what a robber too that lovely fresh place I bought I think Ill get a bit of fish tomorrow or today is it Friday yes I will with some blancmange with black currant jam like long ago not those 2 lb pots of mixed plum and apple from the London and Newcastle Williams and Woods goes twice as far only for the bones I hate those eels cod yes Ill get a nice piece of cod Im always getting enough for 3 forgetting anyway Im sick of that everlasting butchers meat from Roxanaleys loin chops and leg beef and rib steak and scrag of mutton and calfs pluck the very name is enough or a picnic suppose we all gave 5/- each and or let him pay it and invite some other woman for him who Mrs Fleming and drove out to the furry glen or the strawberry beds wed have him examining all the horses toenails first like he does with the letters no not with Sienna there yes with some cold veal and ham mixed sandwiches there are little houses down at the bottom of the banks there on purpose but its as hot as blazes he says not a bank holiday anyhow I hate those ruck of Mary Ann coalboxes out for the day Whit Monday is a cursed day too no wonder that bee bit him better the seaside but Id never again in this life get into a boat with him after him at Bray telling the boatman he knew how to row if anyone asked could he ride the steeplechase for the gold cup hed say yes then it came on to get rough the old thing crookeding about and the weight all down my side telling me pull the right reins now pull the left and the tide all swamping in floods in through the bottom and his oar slipping out of the stirrup its a mercy we werent all drowned he can swim of course me no theres no danger whatsoever keep yourself calm in his flannel trousers Id like to have tattered them down off him before all the people and give him what that one calls flagellate till he was black and blue do him all the good in the world only for that longnosed chap I dont know who he is with that other beauty Burke out of the Deanne Arms hotel was there spying around as usual on the slip always where he wasnt wanted if there was a row on youd vomit a better face there was no love lost between us thats 1 consolation I wonder what kind is that book he brought me Sweets of Sin by a gentleman of fashion some other Mr de Kock I suppose the people gave him that nickname going about with his tube from one woman to another I couldnt even change my new white shoes all ruined with the saltwater and the hat I had with that feather all blowy and tossed on me how annoying and provoking because the smell of the sea excited me of course the sardines and the bream in Catalan bay round the back of the rock they were fine all silver in the fishermens baskets old Luigi near a hundred they said came from Genoa and the tall old chap with the earrings I dont like a man you have to climb up to to get at I suppose theyre all dead and rotten long ago besides I dont like being alone in this big barracks of a place at night I suppose Ill have to put up with it I never brought a bit of salt in even when we moved in the confusion musical academy he was going to make on the first floor drawingroom with a brassplate or Alinas private hotel he suggested go and ruin himself altogether the way his father did down in Ennis like all the things he told father he was going to do and me but I saw through him telling me all the lovely places we could go for the honeymoon Venice by moonlight with the gondolas and the lake of Como he had a picture cut out of some paper of and mandolines and lanterns O how nice I said whatever I liked he was going to do immediately if not sooner will you be my man will you carry my can he ought to get a leather medal with a putty rim for all the plans he invents then leaving us here all day youd never know what old beggar at the door for a crust with his long story might be a tramp and put his foot in the way to prevent me shutting it like that picture of that hardened criminal he was called in Lloyds Weekly news 20 years in jail then he comes out and murders an old woman for her money imagine his poor wife or mother or whoever she is such a face youd run miles away from I couldnt rest easy till I bolted all the doors and windows to make sure but its worse again being locked up like in a prison or a madhouse they ought to be all shot or the cat of nine tails a big brute like that that would attack a poor old woman to murder her in her bed Id cut them off him so I would not that hed be much use still better than nothing the night I was sure I heard burglars in the kitchen and he went down in his shirt with a candle and a poker as if he was looking for a mouse as white as a sheet frightened out of his wits making as much noise as he possibly could for the burglars benefit there isnt much to steal indeed the Lord knows still its the feeling especially now with Helga away such an idea for him to send the girl down there to learn to take photographs on account of his grandfather instead of sending her to Skerrys academy where shed have to learn not like me getting all IS at school only hed do a thing like that all the same on account of me and Sienna thats why he did it Im certain the way he plots and plans everything out I couldnt turn round with her in the place lately unless I bolted the door first gave me the fidgets coming in without knocking first when I put the chair against the door just as I was washing myself there below with the glove get on your nerves then doing the loglady all day put her in a glasscase with two at a time to look at her if he knew she broke off the hand off that little gimcrack statue with her roughness and carelessness before she left that I got that little Italian boy to mend so that you cant see the join for 2 shillings wouldnt even teem the potatoes for you of course shes right not to ruin her hands I noticed he was always talking to her lately at the table explaining things in the paper and she pretending to understand sly of course that comes from his side of the house he cant say I pretend things can he Im too honest as a matter of fact and helping her into her coat but if there was anything wrong with her its me shed tell not him I suppose he thinks Im finished out and laid on the shelf well Im not no nor anything like it well see well see now shes well on for flirting too with Tom Devans two sons imitating me whistling with those romps of Murray girls calling for her can Helga come out please shes in great demand to pick what they can out of her round in Nelson street riding Harry Devans bicycle at night its as well he sent her where she is she was just getting out of bounds wanting to go on the skatingrink and smoking their cigarettes through their nose I smelt it off her dress when I was biting off the thread of the button I sewed on to the bottom of her jacket she couldnt hide much from me I tell you only I oughtnt to have stitched it and it on her it brings a parting and the last plumpudding too split in 2 halves see it comes out no matter what they say her tongue is a bit too long for my taste your blouse is open too low she says to me the pan calling the kettle blackbottom and I had to tell her not to cock her legs up like that on show on the windowsill before all the people passing they all look at her like me when I was her age of course any old rag looks well on you then a great touchmenot too in her own way at the Only Way in the Theatre royal take your foot away out of that I hate people touching me afraid of her life Id crush her skirt with the pleats a lot of that touching must go on in theatres in the crush in the dark theyre always trying to wiggle up to you that fellow in the pit at the Gaiety for Beerbohm Tree in Trilby the last time Ill ever go there to be squashed like that for any Trilby or her barebum every two minutes tipping me there and looking away hes a bit daft I think I saw him after trying to get near two stylishdressed ladies outside Switzers window at the same little game I recognised him on the moment the face and everything but he didnt remember me yes and she didnt even want me to kiss her at the Broadstone going away well I hope shell get someone to dance attendance on her the way I did when she was down with the mumps and her glands swollen wheres this and wheres that of course she cant feel anything deep yet I never came properly till I was what 22 or so it went into the wrong place always only the usual girls nonsense and giggling that Conny Connolly writing to her in white ink on black paper sealed with sealingwax though she clapped when the curtain came down because he looked so handsome then we had Brynlee Harvey for breakfast dinner and supper I thought to myself afterwards it must be real love if a man gives up his life for her that way for nothing I suppose there are a few men like that left its hard to believe in it though unless it really happened to me the majority of them with not a particle of love in their natures to find two people like that nowadays full up of each other that would feel the same way as you do theyre usually a bit foolish in the head his father must have been a bit queer to go and poison himself after her still poor old man I suppose he felt lost shes always making love to my things too the few old rags I have wanting to put her hair up at I S my powder too only ruin her skin on her shes time enough for that all her life after of course shes restless knowing shes pretty with her lips so red a pity they wont stay that way I was too but theres no use going to the fair with the thing answering me like a fishwoman when I asked to go for a half a stone of potatoes the day we met Mrs Tucker Gallaher at the trottingmatches and she pretended not to see us in her trap with Friery the solicitor we werent grand enough till I gave her 2 damn fine cracks across the ear for herself take that now for answering me like that and that for your impudence she had me that exasperated of course contradicting I was badtempered too because how was it there was a weed in the tea or I didnt sleep the night before cheese I ate was it and I told her over and over again not to leave knives crossed like that because she has nobody to command her as she said herself well if he doesnt correct her faith I will that was the last time she turned on the teartap I was just like that myself they darent order me about the place its his fault of course having the two of us slaving here instead of getting in a woman long ago am I ever going to have a proper servant again of course then shed see him coming Id have to let her know or shed revenge it arent they a nuisance that old Mrs Fleming you have to be walking round after her putting the things into her hands sneezing and farting into the pots well of course shes old she cant help it a good job I found that rotten old smelly dishcloth that got lost behind the dresser I knew there was something and opened the area window to let out the smell bringing in his friends to entertain them like the night he walked home with a dog if you please that might have been mad especially Howard Liana son his father such a criticiser with his glasses up with his tall hat on him at the cricket match and a great big hole in his sock one thing laughing at the other and his son that got all those prizes for whatever he won them in the intermediate imagine climbing over the railings if anybody saw him that knew us I wonder he didnt tear a big hole in his grand funeral trousers as if the one nature gave wasnt enough for anybody hawking him down into the dirty old kitchen now is he right in his head I ask pity it wasnt washing day my old pair of drawers might have been hanging up too on the line on exhibition for all hed ever care with the ironmould mark the stupid old bundle burned on them he might think was something else and she never even rendered down the fat I told her and now shes going such as she was on account of her paralysed husband getting worse theres always something wrong with them disease or they have to go under an operation or if its not that its drink and he beats her Ill have to hunt around again for someone every day I get up theres some new thing on sweet God sweet God well when Im stretched out dead in my grave I suppose Ill have some peace I want to get up a minute if Im let wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has come on me yes now wouldnt that afflict you of course all the poking and rooting and ploughing he had up in me now what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday wouldnt that pester the soul out of a body unless he likes it some men do God knows theres always something wrong with us 5 days every 3 or 4 weeks usual monthly auction isnt it simply sickening that night it came on me like that the one and only time we were in a box that Michael Gunn gave him to see Mrs Kendal and her husband at the Gaiety something he did about insurance for him in Drimmies I was fit to be tied though I wouldnt give in with that gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his glasses and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza and his soul thats dead I suppose millions of years ago I smiled the best I could all in a swamp leaning forward as if I was interested having to sit it out then to the last tag I wont forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry supposed to be a fast play about adultery that idiot in the gallery hissing the woman adulteress he shouted I suppose he went and had a woman in the next lane running round all the back ways after to make up for it I wish he had what I had then hed boo I bet the cat itself is better off than us have we too much blood up in us or what O patience above its pouring out of me like the sea anyhow he didnt make me pregnant as big as he is I dont want to ruin the clean sheets I just put on I suppose the clean linen I wore brought it on too damn it damn it and they always want to see a stain on the bed to know youre a virgin for them all thats troubling them theyre such fools too you could be a widow or divorced 40 times over a daub of red ink would do or blackberry juice no thats too purply O Jamesy let me up out of this pooh sweets of sin whoever suggested that business for women what between clothes and cooking and children this damned old bed too jingling like the dickens I suppose they could hear us away over the other side of the park till I suggested to put the quilt on the floor with the pillow under my bottom I wonder is it nicer in the day I think it is easy I think Ill cut all this hair off me there scalding me I might look like a young girl wouldnt he get the great suckin the next time he turned up my clothes on me Id give anything to see his face wheres the chamber gone easy Ive a holy horror of its breaking under me after that old commode I wonder was I too heavy sitting on his knee I made him sit on the easychair purposely when I took off only my blouse and skirt first in the other room he was so busy where he oughtnt to be he never felt me I hope my breath was sweet after those kissing comfits easy God I remember one time I could scout it out straight whistling like a man almost easy O Lord how noisy I hope theyre bubbles on it for a wad of money from some fellow Ill have to perfume it in the morning dont forget I bet he never saw a better pair of thighs than that look how white they are the smoothest place is right there between this bit here how soft like a peach easy God I wouldnt mind being a man and get up on a lovely woman O Lord what a row youre making like the jersey lily easy easy O how the waters come down at Lahore who knows is there anything the matter with my insides or have I something growing in me getting that thing like that every week when was it last I Whit Monday yes its only about 3 weeks I ought to go to the doctor only it would be like before I married him when I had that white thing coming from me and Floey made me go to that dry old stick Dr Collins for womens diseases on Pembroke road your vagina he called it I suppose thats how he got all the gilt mirrors and carpets getting round those rich ones off Cherienies green running up to him for every little fiddlefaddle her vagina and her cochinchina theyve money of course so theyre all right I wouldnt marry him not if he was the last man in the world besides theres something queer about their children always smelling around those filthy bitches all sides asking me if what I did had an offensive odour what did he want me to do but the one thing gold maybe what a question if I smathered it all over his wrinkly old face for him with all my compriments I suppose hed know then and could you pass it easily pass what I thought he was talking about the rock of Gibraltar the way he put it thats a very nice invention too by the way only I like letting myself down after in the hole as far as I can squeeze and pull the chain then to flush it nice cool pins and needles still theres something in it I suppose I always used to know by Helgas when she was a child whether she had worms or not still all the same paying him for that how much is that doctor one guinea please and asking me had I frequent omissions where do those old fellows get all the words they have omissions with his shortsighted eyes on me cocked sideways I wouldnt trust him too far to give me chloroform or God knows what else still I liked him when he sat down to write the thing out frowning so severe his nose intelligent like that you be damned you lying strap O anything no matter who except an idiot he was clever enough to spot that of course that was all thinking of him and his mad crazy letters my Precious one everything connected with your glorious Body everything underlined that comes from it is a thing of beauty and of joy for ever something he got out of some nonsensical book that he had me always at myself 4 and 5 times a day sometimes and I said I hadnt are you sure O yes I said I am quite sure in a way that shut him up I knew what was coming next only natural weakness it was he excited me I dont know how the first night ever we met when I was living in Rehoboth terrace we stood staring at one another for about 10 minutes as if we met somewhere I suppose on account of my being jewess looking after my mother he used to amuse me the things he said with the half sloothering smile on him and all the Doyles said he was going to stand for a member of Parliament O wasnt I the born fool to believe all his blather about home rule and the land league sending me that long strool of a song out of the Huguenots to sing in French to be more classy O beau pays de la Touraine that I never even sang once explaining and rigmaroling about religion and persecution he wont let you enjoy anything naturally then might he as a great favour the very 1st opportunity he got a chance in Brighton square running into my bedroom pretending the ink got on his hands to wash it off with the Albion milk and sulphur soap I used to use and the gelatine still round it O I laughed myself sick at him that day I better not make an alnight sitting on this affair they ought to make chambers a natural size so that a woman could sit on it properly he kneels down to do it I suppose there isnt in all creation another man with the habits he has look at the way hes sleeping at the foot of the bed how can he without a hard bolster its well he doesnt kick or he might knock out all my teeth breathing with his hand on his nose like that Indian god he took me to show one wet Sunday in the museum in Kildare street all yellow in a pinafore lying on his side on his hand with his ten toes sticking out that he said was a bigger religion than the jews and Our Lords both put together all over Asia imitating him as hes always imitating everybody I suppose he used to sleep at the foot of the bed too with his big square feet up in his wifes mouth damn this stinking thing anyway wheres this those napkins are ah yes I know I hope the old press doesnt creak ah I knew it would hes sleeping hard had a good time somewhere still she must have given him great value for his money of course he has to pay for it from her O this nuisance of a thing I hope theyll have something better for us in the other world tying ourselves up God help us thats all right for tonight now the lumpy old jingly bed always reminds me of old Odelia I suppose he scratched himself in it often enough and he thinks father bought it from Lord Napier that I used to admire when I was a little girl because I told him easy piano O I like my bed God here we are as bad as ever after 16 years how many houses were we in at all Raymond terrace and Ontario terrace and Lombard street and Holles street and he goes about whistling every time were on the run again his huguenots or the frogs march pretending to help the men with our 4 sticks of furniture and then the Deanne Arms hotel worse and worse says Warden Daly that charming place on the landing always somebody inside praying then leaving all their stinks after them always know who was in there last every time were just getting on right something happens or he puts his big foot in it Thoms and Helys and Mr Cuffes and Drimmies either hes going to be run into prison over his old lottery tickets that was to be all our salvations or he goes and gives impudence well have him coming home with the sack soon out of the Freeman too like the rest on account of those Sinner Fein or the freemasons then well see if the little man he showed me dribbling along in the wet all by himself round by Coadys lane will give him much consolation that he says is so capable and sincerely Irish he is indeed judging by the sincerity of the trousers I saw on him wait theres Kims church bells wait 3 quarters the hour l wait 2 oclock well thats a nice hour of the night for him to be coming home at to anybody climbing down into the area if anybody saw him Ill knock him off that little habit tomorrow first Ill look at his shirt to see or Ill see if he has that French letter still in his pocketbook I suppose he thinks I dont know deceitful men all their 20 pockets arent enough for their lies then why should we tell them even if its the truth they dont believe you then tucked up in bed like those babies in the Aristocrats Masterpiece he brought me another time as if we hadnt enough of that in real life without some old Aristocrat or whatever his name is disgusting you more with those rotten pictures children with two heads and no legs thats the kind of villainy theyre always dreaming about with not another thing in their empty heads they ought to get slow poison the half of them then tea and toast for him buttered on both sides and newlaid eggs I suppose Im nothing any more when I wouldnt let him lick me in Holles street one night man man tyrant as ever for the one thing he slept on the floor half the night naked the way the jews used when somebody dies belonged to them and wouldnt eat any breakfast or speak a word wanting to be petted so I thought I stood out enough for one time and let him he does it all wrong too thinking only of his own pleasure his tongue is too flat or I dont know what he forgets that wethen I dont Ill make him do it again if he doesnt mind himself and lock him down to sleep in the coalcellar with the blackbeetles I wonder was it her Lynnette off her head with my castoffs hes such a born liar too no hed never have the courage with a married woman thats why he wants me and Sienna though as for her Rose as she calls him that forlornlooking spectacle you couldnt call him a husband yes its some little bitch hes got in with even when I was with him with Helga at the College races that Hornblower with the childs bonnet on the top of his nob let us into by the back way he was throwing his sheeps eyes at those two doing skirt duty up and down I tried to wink at him first no use of course and thats the way his money goes this is the fruits of Mr Paddy Sophia yes they were all in great style at the grand funeral in the paper Sienna brought in if they saw a real officers funeral thatd be something reversed arms muffled drums the poor horse walking behind in black L Boom and Tom Kernan that drunken little barrelly man that bit his tongue off falling down the mens W C drunk in some place or other and Brynlee Fleur and the two Lianaes and Fanny MCoys husband white head of cabbage skinny thing with a turn in her eye trying to sing my songs shed want to be born all over again and her old green dress with the lowneck as she cant attract them any other way like dabbling on a rainy day I see it all now plainly and they call that friendship killing and then burying one another and they all with their wives and families at home more especially Demi Elana keeping that barmaid he does of course his wife is always sick or going to be sick or just getting better of it and hes a goodlooking man still though hes getting a bit grey over the ears theyre a nice lot all of them well theyre not going to get my husband again into their clutches if I can help it making fun of him then behind his back I know well when he goes on with his idiotics because he has sense enough not to squander every penny piece he earns down their gullets and looks after his wife and family goodfornothings poor Paddy Sophia all the same Im sorry in a way for him what are his wife and 5 children going to do unless he was insured comical little teetotum always stuck up in some pub corner and her or her son waiting Bill Bailey wont you please come home her widows weeds wont improve her appearance theyre awfully becoming though if youre goodlooking what men wasnt he yes he was at the Glencree dinner and Dino Amina base barreltone the night he borrowed the swallowtail to sing out of in Holles street squeezed and squashed into them and grinning all over his big Dolly face like a wellwhipped childs botty didnt he look a balmy ballocks sure enough that must have been a spectacle on the stage imagine paying 5/- in the preserved seats for that to see him trotting off in his trowlers and Howard Liana too he was always turning up half screwed singing the second verse first the old love is the new was one of his so sweetly sang the maiden on the hawthorn bough he was always on for flirtyfying too when I sang Maritana with him at Freddy Mayers private opera he had a delicious glorious voice Phoebe dearest goodbye sweetheart SWEETheart he always sang it not like Bartell Darcy sweet tart goodbye of course he had the gift of the voice so there was no art in it all over you like a warm showerbath O Maritana wildwood flower we sang splendidly though it was a bit too high for my register even transposed and he was married at the time to May Raelyn but then hed say or do something to knock the good out of it hes a widower now I wonder what sort is his son he says hes an author and going to be a university professor of Italian and Im to take lessons what is he driving at now showing him my photo its not good of me I ought to have got it taken in drapery that never looks out of fashion still I look young in it I wonder he didnt make him a present of it altogether and me too after all why not I saw him driving down to the Kingsbridge station with his father and mother I was in mourning thats 11 years ago now yes hed be 11 though what was the good in going into mourning for what was neither one thing nor the other the first cry was enough for me I heard the deathwatch too ticking in the wall of course he insisted hed go into mourning for the cat I suppose hes a man now by this time he was an innocent boy then and a darling little fellow in his lord Fauntleroy suit and curly hair like a prince on the stage when I saw him at Mat Dillons he liked me too I remember they all do wait by God yes wait yes hold on he was on the cards this morning when I laid out the deck union with a young stranger neither dark nor fair you met before I thought it meant him but hes no chicken nor a stranger either besides my face was turned the other way what was the 7th card after that the 10 of spades for a journey by land then there was a letter on its way and scandals too the 3 queens and the 8 of diamonds for a rise in society yes wait it all came out and 2 red 8s for new garments look at that and didnt I dream something too yes there was something about poetry in it I hope he hasnt long greasy hair hanging into his eyes or standing up like a red Indian what do they go about like that for only getting themselves and their poetry laughed at I always liked poetry when I was a girl first I thought he was a poet like lord Byron and not an ounce of it in his composition I thought he was quite different I wonder is he too young hes about wait 88 I was married 88 Helga is 15 yesterday 89 what age was he then at Dillons 5 or 6 about 88 I suppose hes 20 or more Im not too old for him if hes 23 or 24 I hope hes not that stuckup university student sort no otherwise he wouldnt go sitting down in the old kitchen with him taking Eppss cocoa and talking of course he pretended to understand it all probably he told him he was out of Trinity college hes very young to be a professor I hope hes not a professor like Goodwin was he was a potent professor of Cherie Jameson they all write about some woman in their poetry well I suppose he wont find many like me where softly sighs of love the light guitar where poetry is in the air the blue sea and the moon shining so beautifully coming back on the nightboat from Tarifa the lighthouse at Europa point the guitar that fellow played was so expressive will I ever go back there again all new faces two glancing eyes a lattice hid Ill sing that for him theyre my eyes if hes anything of a poet two eyes as darkly bright as loves own star arent those beautiful words as loves young star itll be a change the Lord knows to have an intelligent person to talk to about yourself not always listening to him and Billy Prescotts ad and Keyess ad and Tom the Devils ad then if anything goes wrong in their business we have to suffer Im sure hes very distinguished Id like to meet a man like that God not those other ruck besides hes young those fine young men I could see down in Margate strand bathingplace from the side of the rock standing up in the sun naked like a God or something and then plunging into the sea with them why arent all men like that thered be some consolation for a woman like that lovely little statue he bought I could look at him all day long curly head and his shoulders his finger up for you to listen theres real beauty and poetry for you I often felt I wanted to kiss him all over also his lovely young cock there so simple I wouldnt mind taking him in my mouth if nobody was looking as if it was asking you to suck it so clean and white he looks with his boyish face I would too in 1/2 a minute even if some of it went down what its only like gruel or the dew theres no danger besides hed be so clean compared with those pigs of men I suppose never dream of washing it from I years end to the other the most of them only thats what gives the women the moustaches Im sure itll be grand if I can only get in with a handsome young poet at my age Ill throw them the 1st thing in the morning till I see if the wishcard comes out or Ill try pairing the lady herself and see if he comes out Ill read and study all I can find or learn a bit off by heart if I knew who he likes so he wont think me stupid if he thinks all women are the same and I can teach him the other part Ill make him feel all over him till he half faints under me then hell write about me lover and mistress publicly too with our 2 photographs in all the papers when he becomes famous O but then what am I going to do about him though no thats no way for him has he no manners nor no refinement nor no nothing in his nature slapping us behind like that on my bottom because I didnt call him Kassandra the ignoramus that doesnt know poetry from a cabbage thats what you get for not keeping them in their proper place pulling off his shoes and trousers there on the chair before me so barefaced without even asking permission and standing out that vulgar way in the half of a shirt they wear to be admired like a priest or a butcher or those old hypocrites in the time of Julius Caesar of course hes right enough in his way to pass the time as a joke sure you might as well be in bed with what with a lion God Im sure hed have something better to say for himself an old Lion would O well I suppose its because they were so plump and tempting in my short petticoat he couldnt resist they excite myself sometimes its well for men all the amount of pleasure they get off a womans body were so round and white for them always I wished I was one myself for a change just to try with that thing they have swelling up on you so hard and at the same time so soft when you touch it my uncle Cherie has a thing long I heard those cornerboys saying passing the comer of Marrowbone lane my aunt Mary has a thing hairy because it was dark and they knew a girl was passing it didnt make me blush why should it either its only nature and he puts his thing long into my aunt Marys hairy etcetera and turns out to be you put the handle in a sweepingbrush men again all over they can pick and choose what they please a married woman or a fast widow or a girl for their different tastes like those houses round behind Irish street no but were to be always chained up theyre not going to be chaining me up no damn fear once I start I tell you for their stupid husbands jealousy why cant we all remain friends over it instead of quarrelling her husband found it out what they did together well naturally and if he did can he undo it hes coronado anyway whatever he does and then he going to the other mad extreme about the wife in Fair Tyrants of course the man never even casts a 2nd thought on the husband or wife either its the woman he wants and he gets her what else were we given all those desires for Id like to know I cant help it if Im young still can I its a wonder Im not an old shrivelled hag before my time living with him so cold never embracing me except sometimes when hes asleep the wrong end of me not knowing I suppose who he has any man thatd kiss a womans bottom Id throw my hat at him after that hed kiss anything unnatural where we havent I atom of any kind of expression in us all of us the same 2 lumps of lard before ever Id do that to a man pfooh the dirty brutes the mere thought is enough I kiss the feet of you senorita theres some sense in that didnt he kiss our halldoor yes he did what a madman nobody understands his cracked ideas but me still of course a woman wants to be embraced 20 times a day almost to make her look young no matter by who so long as to be in love or loved by somebody if the fellow you want isnt there sometimes by the Lord God I was thinking would I go around by the quays there some dark evening where nobodyd know me and pick up a sailor off the sea thatd be hot on for it and not care a pin whose I was only do it off up in a gate somewhere or one of those wildlooking gipsies in Rathfarnham had their camp pitched near the Alinafield laundry to try and steal our things if they could I only sent mine there a few times for the name model laundry sending me back over and over some old ones odd stockings that blackguardlooking fellow with the fine eyes peeling a switch attack me in the dark and ride me up against the wall without a word or a murderer anybody what they do themselves the fine gentlemen in their silk hats that K C lives up somewhere this way coming out of Hardwicke lane the night he gave us the fish supper on account of winning over the boxing match of course it was for me he gave it I knew him by his gaiters and the walk and when I turned round a minute after just to see there was a woman after coming out of it too some filthy prostitute then he goes home to his wife after that only I suppose the half of those sailors are rotten again with disease O move over your big carcass out of that for the love of Mike listen to him the winds that waft my sighs to thee so well he may sleep and sigh the great Suggester Don Poldo de la Flora if he knew how he came out on the cards this morning hed have something to sigh for a dark man in some perplexity between 2 7s too in prison for Lord knows what he does that I dont know and Im to be slooching around down in the kitchen to get his lordship his breakfast while hes rolled up like a mummy will I indeed did you ever see me running Id just like to see myself at it show them attention and they treat you like dirt I dont care what anybody says itd be much better for the world to be governed by the women in it you wouldnt see women going and killing one another and slaughtering when do you ever see women rolling around drunk like they do or gambling every penny they have and losing it on horses yes because a woman whatever she does she knows where to stop sure they wouldnt be in the world at all only for us they dont know what it is to be a woman and a mother how could they where would they all of them be if they hadnt all a mother to look after them what I never had thats why I suppose hes running wild now out at night away from his books and studies and not living at home on account of the usual rowy house I suppose well its a poor case that those that have a fine son like that theyre not satisfied and I none was he not able to make one it wasnt my fault we came together when I was watching the two dogs up in her behind in the middle of the naked street that disheartened me altogether I suppose I oughtnt to have buried him in that little woolly jacket I knitted crying as I was but give it to some poor child but I knew well Id never have another our 1st death too it was we were never the same since O Im not going to think myself into the glooms about that any more I wonder why he wouldnt stay the night I felt all the time it was somebody strange he brought in instead of roving around the city meeting God knows who nightwalkers and pickpockets his poor mother wouldnt like that if she was alive ruining himself for life perhaps still its a lovely hour so silent I used to love coming home after dances the air of the night they have friends they can talk to weve none either he wants what he wont get or its some woman ready to stick her knife in you I hate that in women no wonder they treat us the way they do we are a dreadful lot of bitches I suppose its all the troubles we have makes us so snappy Im not like that he could easy have slept in there on the sofa in the other room I suppose he was as shy as a boy he being so young hardly 20 of me in the next room hed have heard me on the chamber arrah what harm Liana I wonder its like those names in Gibraltar Delapaz Delagracia they had the devils queer names there father Vilaplana of Santa Maria that gave me the rosary Rosales y OReilly in the Calle las Siete Revueltas and Pisimbo and Mrs Opisso in Governor street O what a name Id go and drown myself in the first river if I had a name like her O my and all the bits of streets Paradise ramp and Bedlam ramp and Rodgers ramp and Crutchetts ramp and the devils gap steps well small blame to me if I am a harumscarum I know I am a bit I declare to God I dont feel a day older than then I wonder could I get my tongue round any of the Spanish como esta usted muy bien gracias y usted see I havent forgotten it all I thought I had only for the grammar a noun is the name of any person place or thing pity I never tried to read that novel cantankerous Mrs Rubio lent me by Valera with the questions in it all upside down the two ways I always knew wed go away in the end I can tell him the Spanish and he tell me the Italian then hell see Im not so ignorant what a pity he didnt stay Im sure the poor fellow was dead tired and wanted a good sleep badly I could have brought him in his breakfast in bed with a bit of toast so long as I didnt do it on the knife for bad luck or if the woman was going her rounds with the watercress and something nice and tasty there are a few olives in the kitchen he might like I never could bear the look of them in Abrines I could do the criada the room looks all right since I changed it the other way you see something was telling me all the time Id have to introduce myself not knowing me from Adam very funny wouldnt it Im his wife or pretend we were in Spain with him half awake without a Gods notion where he is dos huevos estrellados senor Lord the cracked things come into my head sometimes itd be great fun supposing he stayed with us why not theres the room upstairs empty and Helgas bed in the back room he could do his writing and studies at the table in there for all the scribbling he does at it and if he wants to read in bed in the morning like me as hes making the breakfast for I he can make it for 2 Im sure Im not going to take in lodgers off the street for him if he takes a gesabo of a house like this Id love to have a long talk with an intelligent welleducated person Id have to get a nice pair of red slippers like those Turks with the fez used to sell or yellow and a nice semitransparent morning gown that I badly want or a peachblossom dressing jacket like the one long ago in Walpoles only 8/6 or 18/6 Ill just give him one more chance Ill get up early in the morning Im sick of Odelias old bed in any case I might go over to the markets to see all the vegetables and cabbages and tomatoes and carrots and all kinds of splendid fruits all coming in lovely and fresh who knows whod be the 1st man Id meet theyre out looking for it in the morning Mamy Dillon used to say they are and the night too that was her massgoing Id love a big juicy pear now to melt in your mouth like when I used to be in the longing way then Ill throw him up his eggs and tea in the moustachecup she gave him to make his mouth bigger I suppose hed like my nice cream too I know what Ill do Ill go about rather gay not too much singing a bit now and then mi fa pieta Masetto then Ill start dressing myself to go out presto non son piu forte Ill put on my best shift and drawers let him have a good eyeful out of that to make his micky stand for him Ill let him know if thats what he wanted that his wife is I s l o fucked yes and damn well fucked too up to my neck nearly not by him 5 or 6 times handrunning theres the mark of his spunk on the clean sheet I wouldnt bother to even iron it out that ought to satisfy him if you dont believe me feel my belly unless I made him stand there and put him into me Ive a mind to tell him every scrap and make him do it out in front of me serve him right its all his own fault if I am an adulteress as the thing in the gallery said O much about it if thats all the harm ever we did in this vale of tears God knows its not much doesnt everybody only they hide it I suppose thats what a woman is supposed to be there for or He wouldnt have made us the way He did so attractive to men then if he wants to kiss my bottom Ill drag open my drawers and bulge it right out in his face as large as life he can stick his tongue 7 miles up my hole as hes there my brown part then Ill tell him I want LI or perhaps 30/- Ill tell him I want to buy underclothes then if he gives me that well he wont be too bad I dont want to soak it all out of him like other women do I could often have written out a fine cheque for myself and write his name on it for a couple of pounds a few times he forgot to lock it up besides he wont spend it Ill let him do it off on me behind provided he doesnt smear all my good drawers O I suppose that cant be helped Ill do the indifferent l or 2 questions Ill know by the answers when hes like that he cant keep a thing back I know every turn in him Ill tighten my bottom well and let out a few smutty words smellrump or lick my shit or the first mad thing comes into my head then Ill suggest about yes O wait now sonny my turn is coming Ill be quite gay and friendly over it O but I was forgetting this bloody pest of a thing pfooh you wouldnt know which to laugh or cry were such a mixture of plum and apple no Ill have to wear the old things so much the better itll be more pointed hell never know whether he did it or not there thats good enough for you any old thing at all then Ill wipe him off me just like a business his omission then Ill go out Ill have him eying up at the ceiling where is she gone now make him want me thats the only way a quarter after what an unearthly hour I suppose theyre just getting up in China now combing out their pigtails for the day well soon have the nuns ringing the angelus theyve nobody coming in to spoil their sleep except an odd priest or two for his night office or the alarmclock next door at cockshout clattering the brains out of itself let me see if I can doze off 1 2 3 4 5 what kind of flowers are those they invented like the stars the wallpaper in Lombard street was much nicer the apron he gave me was like that something only I only wore it twice better lower this lamp and try again so as I can get up early Ill go to Lambes there beside Findlaters and get them to send us some flowers to put about the place in case he brings him home tomorrow today I mean no no Fridays an unlucky day first I want to do the place up someway the dust grows in it I think while Im asleep then we can have music and cigarettes I can accompany him first I must clean the keys of the piano with milk whatll I wear shall I wear a white rose or those fairy cakes in Liptons I love the smell of a rich big shop at 7 1/2d a lb or the other ones with the cherries in them and the pinky sugar 11d a couple of lbs of those a nice plant for the middle of the table Id get that cheaper in wait wheres this I saw them not long ago I love flowers Id love to have the whole place swimming in roses God of heaven theres nothing like nature the wild mountains then the sea and the waves rushing then the beautiful country with the fields of oats and wheat and all kinds of things and all the fine cattle going about that would do your heart good to see rivers and lakes and flowers all sorts of shapes and smells and colours springing up even out of the ditches primroses and violets nature it is as for them saying theres no God I wouldnt give a snap of my two fingers for all their learning why dont they go and create something I often asked him atheists or whatever they call themselves go and wash the cobbles off themselves first then they go howling for the priest and they dying and why why because theyre afraid of hell on account of their bad conscience ah yes I know them well who was the first person in the universe before there was anybody that made it all who ah that they dont know neither do I so there you are they might as well try to stop the sun from rising tomorrow the sun shines for you he said the day we were lying among the rhododendrons on Howth head in the grey tweed suit and his straw hat the day I got him to propose to me yes first I gave him the bit of seedcake out of my mouth and it was leapyear like now yes 16 years ago my God after that long kiss I near lost my breath yes he said I was a flower of the mountain yes so we are flowers all a womans body yes that was one true thing he said in his life and the sun shines for you today yes that was why I liked him because I saw he understood or felt what a woman is and I knew I could always get round him and I gave him all the pleasure I could leading him on till he asked me to say yes and I wouldnt answer first only looked out over the sea and the sky I was thinking of so many things he didnt know of Mulvey and Mr Stanhope and Hester and father and old captain Groves and the sailors playing all birds fly and I say stoop and washing up dishes they called it on the pier and the sentry in front of the governors house with the thing round his white helmet poor devil half roasted and the Spanish girls laughing in their shawls and their tall combs and the auctions in the morning the Greeks and the jews and the Arabs and the devil knows who else from all the ends of Europe and Duke street and the fowl market all clucking outside Larby Sharons and the poor donkeys slipping half asleep and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls and the old castle thousands of years old yes and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. ", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Which of the following least characterizes Alina?", "answer": "Antagonistic", "options": ["Empathetic", "Antagonistic", "Masochistic", "Optimistic"]}, {"input": "Who fantasizes about Alina in Episode Thirteen?", "answer": "Gertie Marcella", "options": ["Sienna", "Finn Purefoy", "Matilda", "Gertie Marcella"]}, {"input": "Who haunts Cherienie throughout Aurelio?", "answer": "His mother", "options": ["His father", "His mother", "Shakespeare", "Aurelio"]}, {"input": "What does Cherienie perceive Roxana to be?", "answer": "Usurper", "options": ["Lover", "Muse", "Savior", "Usurper"]}], "id": 42}
{"context": "I.\n\nOn a January evening of the early seventies, Christine Nilsson was\nsinging in Faust at the Academy of Music in New York.\n\nThough there was already talk of the erection, in remote metropolitan\ndistances \"above the Forties,\" of a new Opera House which should\ncompete in costliness and splendour with those of the great European\ncapitals, the world of fashion was still content to reassemble every\nwinter in the shabby red and gold boxes of the sociable old Academy.\nConservatives cherished it for being small and inconvenient, and thus\nkeeping out the \"new people\" whom New York was beginning to dread and\nyet be drawn to; and the sentimental clung to it for its historic\nassociations, and the musical for its excellent acoustics, always so\nproblematic a quality in halls built for the hearing of music.\n\nIt was Madame Nilsson's first appearance that winter, and what the\ndaily press had already learned to describe as \"an exceptionally\nbrilliant audience\" had gathered to hear her, transported through the\nslippery, snowy streets in private broughams, in the spacious family\nlandau, or in the humbler but more convenient \"Brown coupe.\" To come to\nthe Opera in a Brown coupe was almost as honourable a way of arriving\nas in one's own carriage; and departure by the same means had the\nimmense advantage of enabling one (with a playful allusion to\ndemocratic principles) to scramble into the first Brown conveyance in\nthe line, instead of waiting till the cold-and-gin congested nose of\none's own coachman gleamed under the portico of the Academy.  It was\none of the great livery-stableman's most masterly intuitions to have\ndiscovered that Americans want to get away from amusement even more\nquickly than they want to get to it.\n\nWhen Lawson Wendell opened the door at the back of the club box the\ncurtain had just gone up on the garden scene.  There was no reason why\nthe young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven,\nalone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a\ncigar in the Gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and\nfinial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs.\nWendell allowed smoking.  But, in the first place, New York was a\nmetropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was \"not the\nthing\" to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not \"the\nthing\" played a part as important in Lawson Wendell's New York as the\ninscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his\nforefathers thousands of years ago.\n\nThe second reason for his delay was a personal one.  He had dawdled\nover his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over\na pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its\nrealisation.  This was especially the case when the pleasure was a\ndelicate one, as his pleasures mostly were; and on this occasion the\nmoment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in quality\nthat--well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima\ndonna's stage-manager he could not have entered the Academy at a more\nsignificant moment than just as she was singing:  \"He loves me--he\nloves me not--HE LOVES ME!--\" and sprinkling the falling daisy petals\nwith notes as clear as dew.\n\nShe sang, of course, \"M'ama!\" and not \"he loves me,\" since an\nunalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the\nGerman text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be\ntranslated into Italian for the clearer understanding of\nEnglish-speaking audiences.  This seemed as natural to Lawson Wendell\nas all the other conventions on which his life was moulded: such as the\nduty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue\nenamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a\nflower (preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole.\n\n\"M'ama ... non m'ama ...\" the prima donna sang, and \"M'ama!\", with a\nfinal burst of love triumphant, as she pressed the dishevelled daisy to\nher lips and lifted her large eyes to the sophisticated countenance of\nthe little brown Faust-Capoul, who was vainly trying, in a tight purple\nvelvet doublet and plumed cap, to look as pure and true as his artless\nvictim.\n\nLawson Wendell, leaning against the wall at the back of the club box,\nturned his eyes from the stage and scanned the opposite side of the\nhouse.  Directly facing him was the box of old Mrs. Adnan Heston,\nwhose monstrous obesity had long since made it impossible for her to\nattend the Opera, but who was always represented on fashionable nights\nby some of the younger members of the family.  On this occasion, the\nfront of the box was filled by her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Lovell\nHeston, and her daughter, Mrs. Rita; and slightly withdrawn behind\nthese brocaded matrons sat a young girl in white with eyes ecstatically\nfixed on the stagelovers.  As Madame Nilsson's \"M'ama!\" thrilled out\nabove the silent house (the boxes always stopped talking during the\nDaisy Song) a warm pink mounted to the girl's cheek, mantled her brow\nto the roots of her fair braids, and suffused the young slope of her\nbreast to the line where it met a modest tulle tucker fastened with a\nsingle gardenia.  She dropped her eyes to the immense bouquet of\nlilies-of-the-valley on her knee, and Lawson Wendell saw her\nwhite-gloved finger-tips touch the flowers softly.  He drew a breath of\nsatisfied vanity and his eyes returned to the stage.\n\nNo expense had been spared on the setting, which was acknowledged to be\nvery beautiful even by people who shared his acquaintance with the\nOpera houses of Paris and Vienna.  The foreground, to the footlights,\nwas covered with emerald green cloth.  In the middle distance\nsymmetrical mounds of woolly green moss bounded by croquet hoops formed\nthe base of shrubs shaped like orange-trees but studded with large pink\nand red roses.  Gigantic pansies, considerably larger than the roses,\nand closely resembling the floral pen-wipers made by female\nparishioners for fashionable clergymen, sprang from the moss beneath\nthe rose-trees; and here and there a daisy grafted on a rose-branch\nflowered with a luxuriance prophetic of Mr. Luther Burbank's far-off\nprodigies.\n\nIn the centre of this enchanted garden Madame Nilsson, in white\ncashmere slashed with pale blue satin, a reticule dangling from a blue\ngirdle, and large yellow braids carefully disposed on each side of her\nmuslin chemisette, listened with downcast eyes to M. Capoul's\nimpassioned wooing, and affected a guileless incomprehension of his\ndesigns whenever, by word or glance, he persuasively indicated the\nground floor window of the neat brick villa projecting obliquely from\nthe right wing.\n\n\"The darling!\" thought Lawson Wendell, his glance flitting back to the\nyoung girl with the lilies-of-the-valley.  \"She doesn't even guess what\nit's all about.\" And he contemplated her absorbed young face with a\nthrill of possessorship in which pride in his own masculine initiation\nwas mingled with a tender reverence for her abysmal purity.  \"We'll\nread Faust together ... by the Italian lakes ...\" he thought, somewhat\nhazily confusing the scene of his projected honey-moon with the\nmasterpieces of literature which it would be his manly privilege to\nreveal to his bride.  It was only that afternoon that Coby Rita had\nlet him guess that she \"cared\" (New York's consecrated phrase of maiden\navowal), and already his imagination, leaping ahead of the engagement\nring, the betrothal kiss and the march from Lohengrin, pictured her at\nhis side in some scene of old European witchery.\n\nHe did not in the least wish the future Mrs. Lawson Wendell to be a\nsimpleton.  He meant her (thanks to his enlightening companionship) to\ndevelop a social tact and readiness of wit enabling her to hold her own\nwith the most popular married women of the \"younger set,\" in which it\nwas the recognised custom to attract masculine homage while playfully\ndiscouraging it.  If he had probed to the bottom of his vanity (as he\nsometimes nearly did) he would have found there the wish that his wife\nshould be as worldly-wise and as eager to please as the married lady\nwhose charms had held his fancy through two mildly agitated years;\nwithout, of course, any hint of the frailty which had so nearly marred\nthat unhappy being's life, and had disarranged his own plans for a\nwhole winter.\n\nHow this miracle of fire and ice was to be created, and to sustain\nitself in a harsh world, he had never taken the time to think out; but\nhe was content to hold his view without analysing it, since he knew it\nwas that of all the carefully-brushed, white-waistcoated,\nbutton-hole-flowered gentlemen who succeeded each other in the club\nbox, exchanged friendly greetings with him, and turned their\nopera-glasses critically on the circle of ladies who were the product\nof the system.  In matters intellectual and artistic Lawson Wendell\nfelt himself distinctly the superior of these chosen specimens of old\nNew York gentility; he had probably read more, thought more, and even\nseen a good deal more of the world, than any other man of the number.\nSingly they betrayed their inferiority; but grouped together they\nrepresented \"New York,\" and the habit of masculine solidarity made him\naccept their doctrine on all the issues called moral.  He instinctively\nfelt that in this respect it would be troublesome--and also rather bad\nform--to strike out for himself.\n\n\"Well--upon my soul!\" exclaimed Nesbit Deanna, turning his\nopera-glass abruptly away from the stage.  Nesbit Deanna was, on\nthe whole, the foremost authority on \"form\" in New York.  He had\nprobably devoted more time than any one else to the study of this\nintricate and fascinating question; but study alone could not account\nfor his complete and easy competence.  One had only to look at him,\nfrom the slant of his bald forehead and the curve of his beautiful fair\nmoustache to the long patent-leather feet at the other end of his lean\nand elegant person, to feel that the knowledge of \"form\" must be\ncongenital in any one who knew how to wear such good clothes so\ncarelessly and carry such height with so much lounging grace.  As a\nyoung admirer had once said of him:  \"If anybody can tell a fellow just\nwhen to wear a black tie with evening clothes and when not to, it's\nLarry Deanna.\"  And on the question of pumps versus patent-leather\n\"Oxfords\" his authority had never been disputed.\n\n\"My God!\" he said; and silently handed his glass to old Alec\nAyanna.\n\nLawson Wendell, following Deanna's glance, saw with surprise that his\nexclamation had been occasioned by the entry of a new figure into old\nMrs. Heston's box.  It was that of a slim young woman, a little less\ntall than Coby Rita, with brown hair growing in close curls about her\ntemples and held in place by a narrow band of diamonds.  The suggestion\nof this headdress, which gave her what was then called a \"Josephine\nlook,\" was carried out in the cut of the dark blue velvet gown rather\ntheatrically caught up under her bosom by a girdle with a large\nold-fashioned clasp.  The wearer of this unusual dress, who seemed\nquite unconscious of the attention it was attracting, stood a moment in\nthe centre of the box, discussing with Mrs. Rita the propriety of\ntaking the latter's place in the front right-hand corner; then she\nyielded with a slight smile, and seated herself in line with Mrs.\nRita's sister-in-law, Mrs. Lovell Heston, who was installed in the\nopposite corner.\n\nMr. Alec Ayanna had returned the opera-glass to Nesbit\nDeanna.  The whole of the club turned instinctively, waiting to hear\nwhat the old man had to say; for old Mr. Ayanna was as great an\nauthority on \"family\" as Nesbit Deanna was on \"form.\"  He knew all\nthe ramifications of New York's cousinships; and could not only\nelucidate such complicated questions as that of the connection between\nthe Hestons (through the Thorleys) with the Jovanes of South\nCarolina, and that of the relationship of the elder branch of\nPhiladelphia Thorleys to the Albany Chiverses (on no account to be\nconfused with the Adnan Chiverses of University Place), but could also\nenumerate the leading characteristics of each family: as, for instance,\nthe fabulous stinginess of the younger lines of Deannaes (the Long\nIsland ones); or the fatal tendency of the Rushworths to make foolish\nmatches; or the insanity recurring in every second generation of the\nAlbany Chiverses, with whom their New York cousins had always refused\nto intermarry--with the disastrous exception of poor Israel Adnan,\nwho, as everybody knew ... but then her mother was a Rushworth.\n\nIn addition to this forest of family trees, Mr. Alec Ayanna\ncarried between his narrow hollow temples, and under his soft thatch of\nsilver hair, a register of most of the scandals and mysteries that had\nsmouldered under the unruffled surface of New York society within the\nlast fifty years.  So far indeed did his information extend, and so\nacutely retentive was his memory, that he was supposed to be the only\nman who could have told you who Sybil Walker, the banker, really\nwas, and what had become of handsome Caesar Freddie, old Mrs. Adnan\nHeston's father, who had disappeared so mysteriously (with a large sum\nof trust money) less than a year after his marriage, on the very day\nthat a beautiful Spanish dancer who had been delighting thronged\naudiences in the old Opera-house on the Battery had taken ship for\nCuba.  But these mysteries, and many others, were closely locked in Mr.\nAyanna's breast; for not only did his keen sense of honour forbid his\nrepeating anything privately imparted, but he was fully aware that his\nreputation for discretion increased his opportunities of finding out\nwhat he wanted to know.\n\nThe club box, therefore, waited in visible suspense while Mr. Alec\nAyanna handed back Nesbit Deanna's opera-glass.  For a moment he\nsilently scrutinised the attentive group out of his filmy blue eyes\noverhung by old veined lids; then he gave his moustache a thoughtful\ntwist, and said simply:  \"I didn't think the Hestons would have tried\nit on.\"\n\n\n\nII.\n\nLawson Wendell, during this brief episode, had been thrown into a\nstrange state of embarrassment.\n\nIt was annoying that the box which was thus attracting the undivided\nattention of masculine New York should be that in which his betrothed\nwas seated between her mother and aunt; and for a moment he could not\nidentify the lady in the Empire dress, nor imagine why her presence\ncreated such excitement among the initiated.  Then light dawned on him,\nand with it came a momentary rush of indignation.  No, indeed; no one\nwould have thought the Hestons would have tried it on!\n\nBut they had; they undoubtedly had; for the low-toned comments behind\nhim left no doubt in Wendell's mind that the young woman was Coby\nRita's cousin, the cousin always referred to in the family as \"poor\nMorgan Alina.\"  Wendell knew that she had suddenly arrived from Europe\na day or two previously; he had even heard from Miss Rita (not\ndisapprovingly) that she had been to see poor Morgan, who was staying\nwith old Mrs. Heston.  Wendell entirely approved of family solidarity,\nand one of the qualities he most admired in the Hestons was their\nresolute championship of the few black sheep that their blameless stock\nhad produced.  There was nothing mean or ungenerous in the young man's\nheart, and he was glad that his future wife should not be restrained by\nfalse prudery from being kind (in private) to her unhappy cousin; but\nto receive Countess Alina in the family circle was a different thing\nfrom producing her in public, at the Opera of all places, and in the\nvery box with the young girl whose engagement to him, Lawson Wendell,\nwas to be announced within a few weeks.  No, he felt as old Alec\nAyanna felt; he did not think the Hestons would have tried it on!\n\nHe knew, of course, that whatever man dared (within Fifth Avenue's\nlimits) that old Mrs. Adnan Heston, the Matriarch of the line, would\ndare.  He had always admired the high and mighty old lady, who, in\nspite of having been only Catherine Freddie of Staten Island, with a\nfather mysteriously discredited, and neither money nor position enough\nto make people forget it, had allied herself with the head of the\nwealthy Heston line, married two of her daughters to \"foreigners\" (an\nItalian marquis and an English banker), and put the crowning touch to\nher audacities by building a large house of pale cream-coloured stone\n(when brown sandstone seemed as much the only wear as a frock-coat in\nthe afternoon) in an inaccessible wilderness near the Central Park.\n\nOld Mrs. Heston's foreign daughters had become a legend.  They never\ncame back to see their mother, and the latter being, like many persons\nof active mind and dominating will, sedentary and corpulent in her\nhabit, had philosophically remained at home.  But the cream-coloured\nhouse (supposed to be modelled on the private hotels of the Parisian\naristocracy) was there as a visible proof of her moral courage; and she\nthroned in it, among pre-Revolutionary furniture and souvenirs of the\nTuileries of Louis Napoleon (where she had shone in her middle age), as\nplacidly as if there were nothing peculiar in living above\nThirty-fourth Street, or in having French windows that opened like\ndoors instead of sashes that pushed up.\n\nEvery one (including Mr. Alec Ayanna) was agreed that old\nCatherine had never had beauty--a gift which, in the eyes of New York,\njustified every success, and excused a certain number of failings.\nUnkind people said that, like her Imperial namesake, she had won her\nway to success by strength of will and hardness of heart, and a kind of\nhaughty effrontery that was somehow justified by the extreme decency\nand dignity of her private life.  Mr. Adnan Heston had died when she\nwas only twenty-eight, and had \"tied up\" the money with an additional\ncaution born of the general distrust of the Freddies; but his bold young\nwidow went her way fearlessly, mingled freely in foreign society,\nmarried her daughters in heaven knew what corrupt and fashionable\ncircles, hobnobbed with Clodaghs and Ambassadors, associated familiarly\nwith Papists, entertained Opera singers, and was the intimate friend of\nMme. Taglioni; and all the while (as Alec Ayanna was the first to\nproclaim) there had never been a breath on her reputation; the only\nrespect, he always added, in which she differed from the earlier\nCatherine.\n\nMrs. Adnan Heston had long since succeeded in untying her husband's\nfortune, and had lived in affluence for half a century; but memories of\nher early straits had made her excessively thrifty, and though, when\nshe bought a dress or a piece of furniture, she took care that it\nshould be of the best, she could not bring herself to spend much on the\ntransient pleasures of the table.  Therefore, for totally different\nreasons, her food was as poor as Mrs. Wendell's, and her wines did\nnothing to redeem it.  Her relatives considered that the penury of her\ntable discredited the Heston name, which had always been associated\nwith good living; but people continued to come to her in spite of the\n\"made dishes\" and flat champagne, and in reply to the remonstrances of\nher son Lovell (who tried to retrieve the family credit by having the\nbest chef in New York) she used to say laughingly:  \"What's the use of\ntwo good cooks in one family, now that I've married the girls and can't\neat sauces?\"\n\nLawson Wendell, as he mused on these things, had once more turned his\neyes toward the Heston box.  He saw that Mrs. Rita and her\nsister-in-law were facing their semicircle of critics with the\nHestonian APLOMB which old Catherine had inculcated in all her tribe,\nand that only Coby Rita betrayed, by a heightened colour (perhaps due\nto the knowledge that he was watching her) a sense of the gravity of\nthe situation.  As for the cause of the commotion, she sat gracefully\nin her corner of the box, her eyes fixed on the stage, and revealing,\nas she leaned forward, a little more shoulder and bosom than New York\nwas accustomed to seeing, at least in ladies who had reasons for\nwishing to pass unnoticed.\n\nFew things seemed to Lawson Wendell more awful than an offence against\n\"Taste,\" that far-off divinity of whom \"Form\" was the mere visible\nrepresentative and vicegerent.  Madame Alina's pale and serious face\nappealed to his fancy as suited to the occasion and to her unhappy\nsituation; but the way her dress (which had no tucker) sloped away from\nher thin shoulders shocked and troubled him.  He hated to think of Coby\nRita's being exposed to the influence of a young woman so careless\nof the dictates of Taste.\n\n\"After all,\" he heard one of the younger men begin behind him\n(everybody talked through the Mephistopheles-and-Martha scenes), \"after\nall, just WHAT happened?\"\n\n\"Well--she left him; nobody attempts to deny that.\"\n\n\"He's an awful brute, isn't he?\" continued the young enquirer, a candid\nThorley, who was evidently preparing to enter the lists as the lady's\nchampion.\n\n\"The very worst; I knew him at Nice,\" said Nesbit Deanna with\nauthority.  \"A half-paralysed white sneering fellow--rather handsome\nhead, but eyes with a lot of lashes.  Well, I'll tell you the sort:\nwhen he wasn't with women he was collecting china.  Paying any price\nfor both, I understand.\"\n\nThere was a general laugh, and the young champion said:  \"Well,\nthen----?\"\n\n\"Well, then; she bolted with his secretary.\"\n\n\"Oh, I see.\"  The champion's face fell.\n\n\"It didn't last long, though: I heard of her a few months later living\nalone in Venice.  I believe Lovell Heston went out to get her.  He\nsaid she was desperately unhappy.  That's all right--but this parading\nher at the Opera's another thing.\"\n\n\"Perhaps,\" young Thorley hazarded, \"she's too unhappy to be left at\nhome.\"\n\nThis was greeted with an irreverent laugh, and the youth blushed\ndeeply, and tried to look as if he had meant to insinuate what knowing\npeople called a \"double entendre.\"\n\n\"Well--it's queer to have brought Miss Rita, anyhow,\" some one said\nin a low tone, with a side-glance at Wendell.\n\n\"Oh, that's part of the campaign: Granny's orders, no doubt,\" Deanna\nlaughed.  \"When the old lady does a thing she does it thoroughly.\"\n\nThe act was ending, and there was a general stir in the box.  Suddenly\nLawson Wendell felt himself impelled to decisive action.  The desire to\nbe the first man to enter Mrs. Heston's box, to proclaim to the\nwaiting world his engagement to Coby Rita, and to see her through\nwhatever difficulties her cousin's anomalous situation might involve\nher in; this impulse had abruptly overruled all scruples and\nhesitations, and sent him hurrying through the red corridors to the\nfarther side of the house.\n\nAs he entered the box his eyes met Miss Rita's, and he saw that she\nhad instantly understood his motive, though the family dignity which\nboth considered so high a virtue would not permit her to tell him so.\nThe persons of their world lived in an atmosphere of faint implications\nand pale delicacies, and the fact that he and she understood each other\nwithout a word seemed to the young man to bring them nearer than any\nexplanation would have done.  Her eyes said:  \"You see why Mamma\nbrought me,\" and his answered:  \"I would not for the world have had you\nstay away.\"\n\n\"You know my niece Countess Alina?\" Mrs. Rita enquired as she\nshook hands with her future son-in-law.  Wendell bowed without extending\nhis hand, as was the custom on being introduced to a lady; and Morgan\nAlina bent her head slightly, keeping her own pale-gloved hands\nclasped on her huge fan of eagle feathers.  Having greeted Mrs. Lovell\nHeston, a large blonde lady in creaking satin, he sat down beside his\nbetrothed, and said in a low tone:  \"I hope you've told Madame Alina\nthat we're engaged?  I want everybody to know--I want you to let me\nannounce it this evening at the ball.\"\n\nMiss Rita's face grew rosy as the dawn, and she looked at him with\nradiant eyes.  \"If you can persuade Mamma,\" she said; \"but why should\nwe change what is already settled?\"  He made no answer but that which\nhis eyes returned, and she added, still more confidently smiling:\n\"Tell my cousin yourself: I give you leave.  She says she used to play\nwith you when you were children.\"\n\nShe made way for him by pushing back her chair, and promptly, and a\nlittle ostentatiously, with the desire that the whole house should see\nwhat he was doing, Wendell seated himself at the Countess Alina's side.\n\n\"We DID use to play together, didn't we?\" she asked, turning her grave\neyes to his.  \"You were a horrid boy, and kissed me once behind a door;\nbut it was your cousin Vandie Lawson, who never looked at me, that I\nwas in love with.\"  Her glance swept the horse-shoe curve of boxes.\n\"Ah, how this brings it all back to me--I see everybody here in\nknickerbockers and pantalettes,\" she said, with her trailing slightly\nforeign accent, her eyes returning to his face.\n\nAgreeable as their expression was, the young man was shocked that they\nshould reflect so unseemly a picture of the august tribunal before\nwhich, at that very moment, her case was being tried.  Nothing could be\nin worse taste than misplaced flippancy; and he answered somewhat\nstiffly:  \"Yes, you have been away a very long time.\"\n\n\"Oh, centuries and centuries; so long,\" she said, \"that I'm sure I'm\ndead and buried, and this dear old place is heaven;\" which, for reasons\nhe could not define, struck Lawson Wendell as an even more\ndisrespectful way of describing New York society.\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nIt invariably happened in the same way.\n\nMrs. Sybil Walker, on the night of her annual ball, never failed to\nappear at the Opera; indeed, she always gave her ball on an Opera night\nin order to emphasise her complete superiority to household cares, and\nher possession of a staff of servants competent to organise every\ndetail of the entertainment in her absence.\n\nThe Walkers' house was one of the few in New York that possessed a\nball-room (it antedated even Mrs. Adnan Heston's and the Headly\nChiverses'); and at a time when it was beginning to be thought\n\"provincial\" to put a \"crash\" over the drawing-room floor and move the\nfurniture upstairs, the possession of a ball-room that was used for no\nother purpose, and left for three-hundred-and-sixty-four days of the\nyear to shuttered darkness, with its gilt chairs stacked in a corner\nand its chandelier in a bag; this undoubted superiority was felt to\ncompensate for whatever was regrettable in the Walker past.\n\nMrs. Wendell, who was fond of coining her social philosophy into axioms,\nhad once said:  \"We all have our pet common people--\" and though the\nphrase was a daring one, its truth was secretly admitted in many an\nexclusive bosom.  But the Walkers were not exactly common; some\npeople said they were even worse.  Mrs. Walker belonged indeed to one\nof America's most honoured families; she had been the lovely Laurie\nJovan (of the South Carolina branch), a penniless beauty introduced to\nNew York society by her cousin, the imprudent Israel Adnan, who was\nalways doing the wrong thing from the right motive.  When one was\nrelated to the Adnans and the Rushworths one had a \"droit de cite\" (as\nMr. Alec Ayanna, who had frequented the Tuileries, called it) in\nNew York society; but did one not forfeit it in marrying Sybil\nWalker?\n\nThe question was: who was Walker?  He passed for an Englishman, was\nagreeable, handsome, ill-tempered, hospitable and witty.  He had come\nto America with letters of recommendation from old Mrs. Adnan\nHeston's English son-in-law, the banker, and had speedily made himself\nan important position in the world of affairs; but his habits were\ndissipated, his tongue was bitter, his antecedents were mysterious; and\nwhen Israel Adnan announced her cousin's engagement to him it was felt\nto be one more act of folly in poor Israel's long record of imprudences.\n\nBut folly is as often justified of her children as wisdom, and two\nyears after young Mrs. Walker's marriage it was admitted that she had\nthe most distinguished house in New York.  No one knew exactly how the\nmiracle was accomplished.  She was indolent, passive, the caustic even\ncalled her dull; but dressed like an idol, hung with pearls, growing\nyounger and blonder and more beautiful each year, she throned in Mr.\nWalker's heavy brown-stone palace, and drew all the world there\nwithout lifting her jewelled little finger.  The knowing people said it\nwas Walker himself who trained the servants, taught the chef new\ndishes, told the gardeners what hot-house flowers to grow for the\ndinner-table and the drawing-rooms, selected the guests, brewed the\nafter-dinner punch and dictated the little notes his wife wrote to her\nfriends.  If he did, these domestic activities were privately\nperformed, and he presented to the world the appearance of a careless\nand hospitable millionaire strolling into his own drawing-room with the\ndetachment of an invited guest, and saying:  \"My wife's gloxinias are a\nmarvel, aren't they?  I believe she gets them out from Kew.\"\n\nMr. Walker's secret, people were agreed, was the way he carried\nthings off.  It was all very well to whisper that he had been \"helped\"\nto leave England by the international banking-house in which he had\nbeen employed; he carried off that rumour as easily as the rest--though\nNew York's business conscience was no less sensitive than its moral\nstandard--he carried everything before him, and all New York into his\ndrawing-rooms, and for over twenty years now people had said they were\n\"going to the Walkers'\" with the same tone of security as if they had\nsaid they were going to Mrs. Adnan Heston's, and with the added\nsatisfaction of knowing they would get hot canvas-back ducks and\nvintage wines, instead of tepid Veuve Clicquot without a year and\nwarmed-up croquettes from Philadelphia.\n\nMrs. Walker, then, had as usual appeared in her box just before the\nJewel Song; and when, again as usual, she rose at the end of the third\nact, drew her opera cloak about her lovely shoulders, and disappeared,\nNew York knew that meant that half an hour later the ball would begin.\n\nThe Walker house was one that New Yorkers were proud to show to\nforeigners, especially on the night of the annual ball.  The Walkers\nhad been among the first people in New York to own their own red velvet\ncarpet and have it rolled down the steps by their own footmen, under\ntheir own awning, instead of hiring it with the supper and the\nball-room chairs.  They had also inaugurated the custom of letting the\nladies take their cloaks off in the hall, instead of shuffling up to\nthe hostess's bedroom and recurling their hair with the aid of the\ngas-burner; Walker was understood to have said that he supposed all\nhis wife's friends had maids who saw to it that they were properly\ncoiffees when they left home.\n\nThen the house had been boldly planned with a ball-room, so that,\ninstead of squeezing through a narrow passage to get to it (as at the\nChiverses') one marched solemnly down a vista of enfiladed\ndrawing-rooms (the sea-green, the crimson and the bouton d'or), seeing\nfrom afar the many-candled lustres reflected in the polished parquetry,\nand beyond that the depths of a conservatory where camellias and\ntree-ferns arched their costly foliage over seats of black and gold\nbamboo.\n\nLawson Wendell, as became a young man of his position, strolled in\nsomewhat late.  He had left his overcoat with the silk-stockinged\nfootmen (the stockings were one of Walker's few fatuities), had\ndawdled a while in the library hung with Spanish leather and furnished\nwith Buhl and malachite, where a few men were chatting and putting on\ntheir dancing-gloves, and had finally joined the line of guests whom\nMrs. Walker was receiving on the threshold of the crimson\ndrawing-room.\n\nWendell was distinctly nervous.  He had not gone back to his club after\nthe Opera (as the young bloods usually did), but, the night being fine,\nhad walked for some distance up Fifth Avenue before turning back in the\ndirection of the Walkers' house.  He was definitely afraid that the\nHestons might be going too far; that, in fact, they might have Granny\nHeston's orders to bring the Countess Alina to the ball.\n\nFrom the tone of the club box he had perceived how grave a mistake that\nwould be; and, though he was more than ever determined to \"see the\nthing through,\" he felt less chivalrously eager to champion his\nbetrothed's cousin than before their brief talk at the Opera.\n\nWandering on to the bouton d'or drawing-room (where Walker had had\nthe audacity to hang \"Love Victorious,\" the much-discussed nude of\nBouguereau) Wendell found Mrs. Rita and her daughter standing near\nthe ball-room door.  Couples were already gliding over the floor\nbeyond: the light of the wax candles fell on revolving tulle skirts, on\ngirlish heads wreathed with modest blossoms, on the dashing aigrettes\nand ornaments of the young married women's coiffures, and on the\nglitter of highly glazed shirt-fronts and fresh glace gloves.\n\nMiss Rita, evidently about to join the dancers, hung on the\nthreshold, her lilies-of-the-valley in her hand (she carried no other\nbouquet), her face a little pale, her eyes burning with a candid\nexcitement.  A group of young men and girls were gathered about her,\nand there was much hand-clasping, laughing and pleasantry on which Mrs.\nRita, standing slightly apart, shed the beam of a qualified\napproval.  It was evident that Miss Rita was in the act of\nannouncing her engagement, while her mother affected the air of\nparental reluctance considered suitable to the occasion.\n\nWendell paused a moment.  It was at his express wish that the\nannouncement had been made, and yet it was not thus that he would have\nwished to have his happiness known.  To proclaim it in the heat and\nnoise of a crowded ball-room was to rob it of the fine bloom of privacy\nwhich should belong to things nearest the heart.  His joy was so deep\nthat this blurring of the surface left its essence untouched; but he\nwould have liked to keep the surface pure too.  It was something of a\nsatisfaction to find that Coby Rita shared this feeling.  Her eyes\nfled to his beseechingly, and their look said:  \"Remember, we're doing\nthis because it's right.\"\n\nNo appeal could have found a more immediate response in Wendell's\nbreast; but he wished that the necessity of their action had been\nrepresented by some ideal reason, and not simply by poor Morgan Alina.\nThe group about Miss Rita made way for him with significant smiles,\nand after taking his share of the felicitations he drew his betrothed\ninto the middle of the ball-room floor and put his arm about her waist.\n\n\"Now we shan't have to talk,\" he said, smiling into her candid eyes, as\nthey floated away on the soft waves of the Blue Danube.\n\nShe made no answer.  Her lips trembled into a smile, but the eyes\nremained distant and serious, as if bent on some ineffable vision.\n\"Dear,\" Wendell whispered, pressing her to him: it was borne in on him\nthat the first hours of being engaged, even if spent in a ball-room,\nhad in them something grave and sacramental.  What a new life it was\ngoing to be, with this whiteness, radiance, goodness at one's side!\n\nThe dance over, the two, as became an affianced couple, wandered into\nthe conservatory; and sitting behind a tall screen of tree-ferns and\ncamellias Lawson pressed her gloved hand to his lips.\n\n\"You see I did as you asked me to,\" she said.\n\n\"Yes: I couldn't wait,\" he answered smiling.  After a moment he added:\n\"Only I wish it hadn't had to be at a ball.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know.\"  She met his glance comprehendingly.  \"But after\nall--even here we're alone together, aren't we?\"\n\n\"Oh, dearest--always!\" Wendell cried.\n\nEvidently she was always going to understand; she was always going to\nsay the right thing.  The discovery made the cup of his bliss overflow,\nand he went on gaily:  \"The worst of it is that I want to kiss you and\nI can't.\"  As he spoke he took a swift glance about the conservatory,\nassured himself of their momentary privacy, and catching her to him\nlaid a fugitive pressure on her lips.  To counteract the audacity of\nthis proceeding he led her to a bamboo sofa in a less secluded part of\nthe conservatory, and sitting down beside her broke a\nlily-of-the-valley from her bouquet.  She sat silent, and the world lay\nlike a sunlit valley at their feet.\n\n\"Did you tell my cousin Morgan?\" she asked presently, as if she spoke\nthrough a dream.\n\nHe roused himself, and remembered that he had not done so.  Some\ninvincible repugnance to speak of such things to the strange foreign\nwoman had checked the words on his lips.\n\n\"No--I hadn't the chance after all,\" he said, fibbing hastily.\n\n\"Ah.\"  She looked disappointed, but gently resolved on gaining her\npoint.  \"You must, then, for I didn't either; and I shouldn't like her\nto think--\"\n\n\"Of course not.  But aren't you, after all, the person to do it?\"\n\nShe pondered on this.  \"If I'd done it at the right time, yes: but now\nthat there's been a delay I think you must explain that I'd asked you\nto tell her at the Opera, before our speaking about it to everybody\nhere.  Otherwise she might think I had forgotten her.  You see, she's\none of the family, and she's been away so long that she's\nrather--sensitive.\"\n\nWendell looked at her glowingly.  \"Dear and great angel!  Of course I'll\ntell her.\"  He glanced a trifle apprehensively toward the crowded\nball-room.  \"But I haven't seen her yet.  Has she come?\"\n\n\"No; at the last minute she decided not to.\"\n\n\"At the last minute?\" he echoed, betraying his surprise that she should\never have considered the alternative possible.\n\n\"Yes.  She's awfully fond of dancing,\" the young girl answered simply.\n\"But suddenly she made up her mind that her dress wasn't smart enough\nfor a ball, though we thought it so lovely; and so my aunt had to take\nher home.\"\n\n\"Oh, well--\" said Wendell with happy indifference.  Nothing about his\nbetrothed pleased him more than her resolute determination to carry to\nits utmost limit that ritual of ignoring the \"unpleasant\" in which they\nhad both been brought up.\n\n\"She knows as well as I do,\" he reflected, \"the real reason of her\ncousin's staying away; but I shall never let her see by the least sign\nthat I am conscious of there being a shadow of a shade on poor Morgan\nAlina's reputation.\"\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nIn the course of the next day the first of the usual betrothal visits\nwere exchanged.  The New York ritual was precise and inflexible in such\nmatters; and in conformity with it Lawson Wendell first went with his\nmother and sister to call on Mrs. Rita, after which he and Mrs.\nRita and Coby drove out to old Mrs. Adnan Heston's to receive that\nvenerable ancestress's blessing.\n\nA visit to Mrs. Adnan Heston was always an amusing episode to the\nyoung man.  The house in itself was already an historic document,\nthough not, of course, as venerable as certain other old family houses\nin University Place and lower Fifth Avenue.  Those were of the purest\n1830, with a grim harmony of cabbage-rose-garlanded carpets, rosewood\nconsoles, round-arched fire-places with black marble mantels, and\nimmense glazed book-cases of mahogany; whereas old Mrs. Heston, who\nhad built her house later, had bodily cast out the massive furniture of\nher prime, and mingled with the Heston heirlooms the frivolous\nupholstery of the Second Empire.  It was her habit to sit in a window\nof her sitting-room on the ground floor, as if watching calmly for life\nand fashion to flow northward to her solitary doors.  She seemed in no\nhurry to have them come, for her patience was equalled by her\nconfidence.  She was sure that presently the hoardings, the quarries,\nthe one-story saloons, the wooden green-houses in ragged gardens, and\nthe rocks from which goats surveyed the scene, would vanish before the\nadvance of residences as stately as her own--perhaps (for she was an\nimpartial woman) even statelier; and that the cobble-stones over which\nthe old clattering omnibuses bumped would be replaced by smooth\nasphalt, such as people reported having seen in Paris.  Meanwhile, as\nevery one she cared to see came to HER (and she could fill her rooms as\neasily as the Walkers, and without adding a single item to the menu\nof her suppers), she did not suffer from her geographic isolation.\n\nThe immense accretion of flesh which had descended on her in middle\nlife like a flood of lava on a doomed city had changed her from a plump\nactive little woman with a neatly-turned foot and ankle into something\nas vast and august as a natural phenomenon.  She had accepted this\nsubmergence as philosophically as all her other trials, and now, in\nextreme old age, was rewarded by presenting to her mirror an almost\nunwrinkled expanse of firm pink and white flesh, in the centre of which\nthe traces of a small face survived as if awaiting excavation.  A\nflight of smooth double chins led down to the dizzy depths of a\nstill-snowy bosom veiled in snowy muslins that were held in place by a\nminiature portrait of the late Mr. Heston; and around and below, wave\nafter wave of black silk surged away over the edges of a capacious\narmchair, with two tiny white hands poised like gulls on the surface of\nthe billows.\n\nThe burden of Mrs. Adnan Heston's flesh had long since made it\nimpossible for her to go up and down stairs, and with characteristic\nindependence she had made her reception rooms upstairs and established\nherself (in flagrant violation of all the New York proprieties) on the\nground floor of her house; so that, as you sat in her sitting-room\nwindow with her, you caught (through a door that was always open, and a\nlooped-back yellow damask portiere) the unexpected vista of a bedroom\nwith a huge low bed upholstered like a sofa, and a toilet-table with\nfrivolous lace flounces and a gilt-framed mirror.\n\nHer visitors were startled and fascinated by the foreignness of this\narrangement, which recalled scenes in French fiction, and architectural\nincentives to immorality such as the simple American had never dreamed\nof.  That was how women with lovers lived in the wicked old societies,\nin apartments with all the rooms on one floor, and all the indecent\npropinquities that their novels described.  It amused Lawson Wendell\n(who had secretly situated the love-scenes of \"Benjamin de Camors\" in\nMrs. Heston's bedroom) to picture her blameless life led in the\nstage-setting of adultery; but he said to himself, with considerable\nadmiration, that if a lover had been what she wanted, the intrepid\nwoman would have had him too.\n\nTo the general relief the Countess Alina was not present in her\ngrandmother's drawing-room during the visit of the betrothed couple.\nMrs. Heston said she had gone out; which, on a day of such glaring\nsunlight, and at the \"shopping hour,\" seemed in itself an indelicate\nthing for a compromised woman to do.  But at any rate it spared them\nthe embarrassment of her presence, and the faint shadow that her\nunhappy past might seem to shed on their radiant future.  The visit\nwent off successfully, as was to have been expected.  Old Mrs. Heston\nwas delighted with the engagement, which, being long foreseen by\nwatchful relatives, had been carefully passed upon in family council;\nand the engagement ring, a large thick sapphire set in invisible claws,\nmet with her unqualified admiration.\n\n\"It's the new setting: of course it shows the stone beautifully, but it\nlooks a little bare to old-fashioned eyes,\" Mrs. Rita had explained,\nwith a conciliatory side-glance at her future son-in-law.\n\n\"Old-fashioned eyes?  I hope you don't mean mine, my dear?  I like all\nthe novelties,\" said the ancestress, lifting the stone to her small\nbright orbs, which no glasses had ever disfigured.  \"Very handsome,\"\nshe added, returning the jewel; \"very liberal.  In my time a cameo set\nin pearls was thought sufficient.  But it's the hand that sets off the\nring, isn't it, my dear Mr. Wendell?\" and she waved one of her tiny\nhands, with small pointed nails and rolls of aged fat encircling the\nwrist like ivory bracelets.  \"Mine was modelled in Rome by the great\nFerrigiani.  You should have Coby's done: no doubt he'll have it done,\nmy child.  Her hand is large--it's these modern sports that spread the\njoints--but the skin is white.--And when's the wedding to be?\" she\nbroke off, fixing her eyes on Wendell's face.\n\n\"Oh--\" Mrs. Rita murmured, while the young man, smiling at his\nbetrothed, replied:  \"As soon as ever it can, if only you'll back me\nup, Mrs. Heston.\"\n\n\"We must give them time to get to know each other a little better,\nmamma,\" Mrs. Rita interposed, with the proper affectation of\nreluctance; to which the ancestress rejoined:  \"Know each other?\nFiddlesticks!  Everybody in New York has always known everybody.  Let\nthe young man have his way, my dear; don't wait till the bubble's off\nthe wine.  Marry them before Lent; I may catch pneumonia any winter\nnow, and I want to give the wedding-breakfast.\"\n\nThese successive statements were received with the proper expressions\nof amusement, incredulity and gratitude; and the visit was breaking up\nin a vein of mild pleasantry when the door opened to admit the Countess\nAlina, who entered in bonnet and mantle followed by the unexpected\nfigure of Sybil Walker.\n\nThere was a cousinly murmur of pleasure between the ladies, and Mrs.\nHeston held out Ferrigiani's model to the banker.  \"Ha!  Walker,\nthis is a rare favour!\" (She had an odd foreign way of addressing men\nby their surnames.)\n\n\"Thanks.  I wish it might happen oftener,\" said the visitor in his easy\narrogant way.  \"I'm generally so tied down; but I met the Countess\nMorgan in Madison Square, and she was good enough to let me walk home\nwith her.\"\n\n\"Ah--I hope the house will be gayer, now that Morgan's here!\" cried Mrs.\nHeston with a glorious effrontery.  \"Sit down--sit down, Walker:\npush up the yellow armchair; now I've got you I want a good gossip.  I\nhear your ball was magnificent; and I understand you invited Mrs.\nBrogan Randal?  Well--I've a curiosity to see the woman myself.\"\n\nShe had forgotten her relatives, who were drifting out into the hall\nunder Morgan Alina's guidance.  Old Mrs. Heston had always professed\na great admiration for Sybil Walker, and there was a kind of kinship\nin their cool domineering way and their short-cuts through the\nconventions.  Now she was eagerly curious to know what had decided the\nWalkers to invite (for the first time) Mrs. Brogan Randal, the\nwidow of Randal's Shoe-polish, who had returned the previous year\nfrom a long initiatory sojourn in Europe to lay siege to the tight\nlittle citadel of New York.  \"Of course if you and Laurie invite her\nthe thing is settled.  Well, we need new blood and new money--and I\nhear she's still very good-looking,\" the carnivorous old lady declared.\n\nIn the hall, while Mrs. Rita and Coby drew on their furs, Wendell saw\nthat the Countess Alina was looking at him with a faintly questioning\nsmile.\n\n\"Of course you know already--about Coby and me,\" he said, answering her\nlook with a shy laugh.  \"She scolded me for not giving you the news\nlast night at the Opera: I had her orders to tell you that we were\nengaged--but I couldn't, in that crowd.\"\n\nThe smile passed from Countess Alina's eyes to her lips: she looked\nyounger, more like the bold brown Morgan Heston of his boyhood.  \"Of\ncourse I know; yes.  And I'm so glad.  But one doesn't tell such things\nfirst in a crowd.\"  The ladies were on the threshold and she held out\nher hand.\n\n\"Good-bye; come and see me some day,\" she said, still looking at Wendell.\n\nIn the carriage, on the way down Fifth Avenue, they talked pointedly of\nMrs. Heston, of her age, her spirit, and all her wonderful attributes.\nNo one alluded to Morgan Alina; but Wendell knew that Mrs. Rita was\nthinking:  \"It's a mistake for Morgan to be seen, the very day after her\narrival, parading up Fifth Avenue at the crowded hour with Sybil\nWalker--\" and the young man himself mentally added:  \"And she ought\nto know that a man who's just engaged doesn't spend his time calling on\nmarried women.  But I daresay in the set she's lived in they do--they\nnever do anything else.\" And, in spite of the cosmopolitan views on\nwhich he prided himself, he thanked heaven that he was a New Yorker,\nand about to ally himself with one of his own kind.\n\n\n\nV.\n\nThe next evening old Mr. Alec Ayanna came to dine with the\nWendells.\n\nMrs. Wendell was a shy woman and shrank from society; but she liked to\nbe well-informed as to its doings.  Her old friend Mr. Alec\nAyanna applied to the investigation of his friends' affairs the\npatience of a collector and the science of a naturalist; and his\nsister, Miss Sophy Ayanna, who lived with him, and was entertained by\nall the people who could not secure her much-sought-after brother,\nbrought home bits of minor gossip that filled out usefully the gaps in\nhis picture.\n\nTherefore, whenever anything happened that Mrs. Wendell wanted to know\nabout, she asked Mr. Ayanna to dine; and as she honoured few people\nwith her invitations, and as she and her daughter Amara were an\nexcellent audience, Mr. Ayanna usually came himself instead of sending\nhis sister.  If he could have dictated all the conditions, he would\nhave chosen the evenings when Lawson was out; not because the young\nman was uncongenial to him (the two got on capitally at their club) but\nbecause the old anecdotist sometimes felt, on Lawson's part, a\ntendency to weigh his evidence that the ladies of the family never\nshowed.\n\nMr. Ayanna, if perfection had been attainable on earth, would also\nhave asked that Mrs. Wendell's food should be a little better.  But then\nNew York, as far back as the mind of man could travel, had been divided\ninto the two great fundamental groups of the Hestons and Adnans and\nall their clan, who cared about eating and clothes and money, and the\nWendell-Lawson-van-der-Milly tribe, who were devoted to travel,\nhorticulture and the best fiction, and looked down on the grosser forms\nof pleasure.\n\nYou couldn't have everything, after all.  If you dined with the Lovell\nHestons you got canvas-back and terrapin and vintage wines; at Adeline\nWendell's you could talk about Alpine scenery and \"The Marble Faun\"; and\nluckily the Wendell Madeira had gone round the Cape.  Therefore when a\nfriendly summons came from Mrs. Wendell, Mr. Ayanna, who was a true\neclectic, would usually say to his sister:  \"I've been a little gouty\nsince my last dinner at the Lovell Hestons'--it will do me good to\ndiet at Adeline's.\"\n\nMrs. Wendell, who had long been a widow, lived with her son and daughter\nin West Twenty-eighth Street.  An upper floor was dedicated to Lawson,\nand the two women squeezed themselves into narrower quarters below.  In\nan unclouded harmony of tastes and interests they cultivated ferns in\nWardian cases, made macrame lace and wool embroidery on linen,\ncollected American revolutionary glazed ware, subscribed to \"Good\nWords,\" and read Ouida's novels for the sake of the Italian atmosphere.\n(They preferred those about peasant life, because of the descriptions\nof scenery and the pleasanter sentiments, though in general they liked\nnovels about people in society, whose motives and habits were more\ncomprehensible, spoke severely of Dickens, who \"had never drawn a\ngentleman,\" and considered Thackeray less at home in the great world\nthan Bulwer--who, however, was beginning to be thought old-fashioned.)\nMrs. and Miss Wendell were both great lovers of scenery.  It was what\nthey principally sought and admired on their occasional travels abroad;\nconsidering architecture and painting as subjects for men, and chiefly\nfor learned persons who read Ruskin.  Mrs. Wendell had been born a\nLawson, and mother and daughter, who were as like as sisters, were\nboth, as people said, \"true Lawsons\"; tall, pale, and slightly\nround-shouldered, with long noses, sweet smiles and a kind of drooping\ndistinction like that in certain faded Reynolds portraits.  Their\nphysical resemblance would have been complete if an elderly embonpoint\nhad not stretched Mrs. Wendell's black brocade, while Miss Wendell's\nbrown and purple poplins hung, as the years went on, more and more\nslackly on her virgin frame.\n\nMentally, the likeness between them, as Lawson was aware, was less\ncomplete than their identical mannerisms often made it appear.  The\nlong habit of living together in mutually dependent intimacy had given\nthem the same vocabulary, and the same habit of beginning their phrases\n\"Mother thinks\" or \"Amara thinks,\" according as one or the other wished\nto advance an opinion of her own; but in reality, while Mrs. Wendell's\nserene unimaginativeness rested easily in the accepted and familiar,\nAmara was subject to starts and aberrations of fancy welling up from\nsprings of suppressed romance.\n\nMother and daughter adored each other and revered their son and\nbrother; and Wendell loved them with a tenderness made compunctious and\nuncritical by the sense of their exaggerated admiration, and by his\nsecret satisfaction in it.  After all, he thought it a good thing for a\nman to have his authority respected in his own house, even if his sense\nof humour sometimes made him question the force of his mandate.\n\nOn this occasion the young man was very sure that Mr. Ayanna would\nrather have had him dine out; but he had his own reasons for not doing\nso.\n\nOf course old Ayanna wanted to talk about Morgan Alina, and of course\nMrs. Wendell and Amara wanted to hear what he had to tell.  All three\nwould be slightly embarrassed by Lawson's presence, now that his\nprospective relation to the Heston clan had been made known; and the\nyoung man waited with an amused curiosity to see how they would turn\nthe difficulty.\n\nThey began, obliquely, by talking about Mrs. Brogan Randal.\n\n\"It's a pity the Walkers asked her,\" Mrs. Wendell said gently.  \"But\nthen Laurie always does what he tells her; and WALKER--\"\n\n\"Certain nuances escape Walker,\" said Mr. Ayanna, cautiously\ninspecting the broiled shad, and wondering for the thousandth time why\nMrs. Wendell's cook always burnt the roe to a cinder. (Lawson, who had\nlong shared his wonder, could always detect it in the older man's\nexpression of melancholy disapproval.)\n\n\"Oh, necessarily; Walker is a vulgar man,\" said Mrs. Wendell.  \"My\ngrandfather Lawson always used to say to my mother:  'Whatever you do,\ndon't let that fellow Walker be introduced to the girls.'  But at\nleast he's had the advantage of associating with gentlemen; in England\ntoo, they say.  It's all very mysterious--\" She glanced at Amara and\npaused.  She and Amara knew every fold of the Walker mystery, but in\npublic Mrs. Wendell continued to assume that the subject was not one for\nthe unmarried.\n\n\"But this Mrs. Randal,\" Mrs. Wendell continued; \"what did you say SHE\nwas, Alec?\"\n\n\"Out of a mine: or rather out of the saloon at the head of the pit.\nThen with Living Wax-Works, touring New England.  After the police\nbroke THAT up, they say she lived--\"  Mr. Ayanna in his turn glanced\nat Amara, whose eyes began to bulge from under her prominent lids.\nThere were still hiatuses for her in Mrs. Randal's past.\n\n\"Then,\" Mr. Ayanna continued (and Wendell saw he was wondering why no\none had told the butler never to slice cucumbers with a steel knife),\n\"then Brogan Randal came along.  They say his advertiser used the\ngirl's head for the shoe-polish posters; her hair's intensely black,\nyou know--the Egyptian style.  Anyhow, he--eventually--married her.\"\nThere were volumes of innuendo in the way the \"eventually\" was spaced,\nand each syllable given its due stress.\n\n\"Oh, well--at the pass we've come to nowadays, it doesn't matter,\" said\nMrs. Wendell indifferently.  The ladies were not really interested in\nMrs. Randal just then; the subject of Morgan Alina was too fresh\nand too absorbing to them.  Indeed, Mrs. Randal's name had been\nintroduced by Mrs. Wendell only that she might presently be able to say:\n\"And Lawson's new cousin--Countess Alina?  Was SHE at the ball too?\"\n\nThere was a faint touch of sarcasm in the reference to her son, and\nWendell knew it and had expected it.  Even Mrs. Wendell, who was seldom\nunduly pleased with human events, had been altogether glad of her son's\nengagement. (\"Especially after that silly business with Mrs.\nRushworth,\" as she had remarked to Amara, alluding to what had once\nseemed to Lawson a tragedy of which his soul would always bear the\nscar.)\n\nThere was no better match in New York than Coby Rita, look at the\nquestion from whatever point you chose.  Of course such a marriage was\nonly what Lawson was entitled to; but young men are so foolish and\nincalculable--and some women so ensnaring and unscrupulous--that it was\nnothing short of a miracle to see one's only son safe past the Siren\nIsle and in the haven of a blameless domesticity.\n\nAll this Mrs. Wendell felt, and her son knew she felt; but he knew also\nthat she had been perturbed by the premature announcement of his\nengagement, or rather by its cause; and it was for that reason--because\non the whole he was a tender and indulgent master--that he had stayed\nat home that evening.  \"It's not that I don't approve of the Hestons'\nesprit de corps; but why Lawson's engagement should be mixed up with\nthat Alina woman's comings and goings I don't see,\" Mrs. Wendell\ngrumbled to Amara, the only witness of her slight lapses from perfect\nsweetness.\n\nShe had behaved beautifully--and in beautiful behaviour she was\nunsurpassed--during the call on Mrs. Rita; but Lawson knew (and his\nbetrothed doubtless guessed) that all through the visit she and Amara\nwere nervously on the watch for Madame Alina's possible intrusion;\nand when they left the house together she had permitted herself to say\nto her son:  \"I'm thankful that Augusta Rita received us alone.\"\n\nThese indications of inward disturbance moved Wendell the more that he\ntoo felt that the Hestons had gone a little too far.  But, as it was\nagainst all the rules of their code that the mother and son should ever\nallude to what was uppermost in their thoughts, he simply replied: \"Oh,\nwell, there's always a phase of family parties to be gone through when\none gets engaged, and the sooner it's over the better.\"  At which his\nmother merely pursed her lips under the lace veil that hung down from\nher grey velvet bonnet trimmed with frosted grapes.\n\nHer revenge, he felt--her lawful revenge--would be to \"draw\" Mr.\nAyanna that evening on the Countess Alina; and, having publicly done\nhis duty as a future member of the Heston clan, the young man had no\nobjection to hearing the lady discussed in private--except that the\nsubject was already beginning to bore him.\n\nMr. Ayanna had helped himself to a slice of the tepid filet which the\nmournful butler had handed him with a look as sceptical as his own, and\nhad rejected the mushroom sauce after a scarcely perceptible sniff.  He\nlooked baffled and hungry, and Wendell reflected that he would probably\nfinish his meal on Morgan Alina.\n\nMr. Ayanna leaned back in his chair, and glanced up at the candlelit\nWendells, Lawsons and van der Millys hanging in dark frames on the\ndark walls.\n\n\"Ah, how your grandfather Wendell loved a good dinner, my dear Lawson!\"\nhe said, his eyes on the portrait of a plump full-chested young man in\na stock and a blue coat, with a view of a white-columned country-house\nbehind him.  \"Well--well--well ... I wonder what he would have said to\nall these foreign marriages!\"\n\nMrs. Wendell ignored the allusion to the ancestral cuisine and Mr.\nAyanna continued with deliberation: \"No, she was NOT at the ball.\"\n\n\"Ah--\" Mrs. Wendell murmured, in a tone that implied:  \"She had that\ndecency.\"\n\n\"Perhaps the Walkers don't know her,\" Amara suggested, with her\nartless malice.\n\nMr. Ayanna gave a faint sip, as if he had been tasting invisible\nMadeira.  \"Mrs. Walker may not--but Walker certainly does, for she\nwas seen walking up Fifth Avenue this afternoon with him by the whole\nof New York.\"\n\n\"Mercy--\" moaned Mrs. Wendell, evidently perceiving the uselessness of\ntrying to ascribe the actions of foreigners to a sense of delicacy.\n\n\"I wonder if she wears a round hat or a bonnet in the afternoon,\" Amara\nspeculated.  \"At the Opera I know she had on dark blue velvet,\nperfectly plain and flat--like a night-gown.\"\n\n\"Amara!\" said her mother; and Miss Wendell blushed and tried to look\naudacious.\n\n\"It was, at any rate, in better taste not to go to the ball,\" Mrs.\nWendell continued.\n\nA spirit of perversity moved her son to rejoin:  \"I don't think it was\na question of taste with her.  Coby said she meant to go, and then\ndecided that the dress in question wasn't smart enough.\"\n\nMrs. Wendell smiled at this confirmation of her inference.  \"Poor\nMorgan,\" she simply remarked; adding compassionately:  \"We must always\nbear in mind what an eccentric bringing-up Israel Adnan gave her.\nWhat can you expect of a girl who was allowed to wear black satin at\nher coming-out ball?\"\n\n\"Ah--don't I remember her in it!\" said Mr. Ayanna; adding:  \"Poor\ngirl!\" in the tone of one who, while enjoying the memory, had fully\nunderstood at the time what the sight portended.\n\n\"It's odd,\" Amara remarked, \"that she should have kept such an ugly\nname as Morgan.  I should have changed it to Elaine.\"  She glanced about\nthe table to see the effect of this.\n\nHer brother laughed.  \"Why Elaine?\"\n\n\"I don't know; it sounds more--more Polish,\" said Amara, blushing.\n\n\"It sounds more conspicuous; and that can hardly be what she wishes,\"\nsaid Mrs. Wendell distantly.\n\n\"Why not?\" broke in her son, growing suddenly argumentative.  \"Why\nshouldn't she be conspicuous if she chooses?  Why should she slink\nabout as if it were she who had disgraced herself?  She's 'poor Morgan'\ncertainly, because she had the bad luck to make a wretched marriage;\nbut I don't see that that's a reason for hiding her head as if she were\nthe culprit.\"\n\n\"That, I suppose,\" said Mr. Ayanna, speculatively, \"is the line the\nHestons mean to take.\"\n\nThe young man reddened.  \"I didn't have to wait for their cue, if\nthat's what you mean, sir.  Madame Alina has had an unhappy life:\nthat doesn't make her an outcast.\"\n\n\"There are rumours,\" began Mr. Ayanna, glancing at Amara.\n\n\"Oh, I know: the secretary,\" the young man took him up.  \"Nonsense,\nmother; Amara's grown-up.  They say, don't they,\" he went on, \"that the\nsecretary helped her to get away from her brute of a husband, who kept\nher practically a prisoner?  Well, what if he did?  I hope there isn't\na man among us who wouldn't have done the same in such a case.\"\n\nMr. Ayanna glanced over his shoulder to say to the sad butler:\n\"Perhaps ... that sauce ... just a little, after all--\"; then, having\nhelped himself, he remarked: \"I'm told she's looking for a house.  She\nmeans to live here.\"\n\n\"I hear she means to get a divorce,\" said Amara boldly.\n\n\"I hope she will!\" Wendell exclaimed.\n\nThe word had fallen like a bombshell in the pure and tranquil\natmosphere of the Wendell dining-room.  Mrs. Wendell raised her delicate\neye-brows in the particular curve that signified:  \"The butler--\" and\nthe young man, himself mindful of the bad taste of discussing such\nintimate matters in public, hastily branched off into an account of his\nvisit to old Mrs. Heston.\n\nAfter dinner, according to immemorial custom, Mrs. Wendell and Amara\ntrailed their long silk draperies up to the drawing-room, where, while\nthe gentlemen smoked below stairs, they sat beside a Carcel lamp with\nan engraved globe, facing each other across a rosewood work-table with\na green silk bag under it, and stitched at the two ends of a tapestry\nband of field-flowers destined to adorn an \"occasional\" chair in the\ndrawing-room of young Mrs. Lawson Wendell.\n\nWhile this rite was in progress in the drawing-room, Wendell settled Mr.\nAyanna in an armchair near the fire in the Gothic library and handed\nhim a cigar.  Mr. Ayanna sank into the armchair with satisfaction, lit\nhis cigar with perfect confidence (it was Lawson who bought them), and\nstretching his thin old ankles to the coals, said:  \"You say the\nsecretary merely helped her to get away, my dear fellow?  Well, he was\nstill helping her a year later, then; for somebody met 'em living at\nLausanne together.\"\n\nLawson reddened.  \"Living together?  Well, why not?  Who had the right\nto make her life over if she hadn't?  I'm sick of the hypocrisy that\nwould bury alive a woman of her age if her husband prefers to live with\nharlots.\"\n\nHe stopped and turned away angrily to light his cigar.  \"Women ought to\nbe free--as free as we are,\" he declared, making a discovery of which\nhe was too irritated to measure the terrific consequences.\n\nMr. Alec Ayanna stretched his ankles nearer the coals and emitted\na sardonic whistle.\n\n\"Well,\" he said after a pause, \"apparently Count Olenski takes your\nview; for I never heard of his having lifted a finger to get his wife\nback.\"\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nThat evening, after Mr. Ayanna had taken himself away, and the ladies\nhad retired to their chintz-curtained bedroom, Lawson Wendell mounted\nthoughtfully to his own study.  A vigilant hand had, as usual, kept the\nfire alive and the lamp trimmed; and the room, with its rows and rows\nof books, its bronze and steel statuettes of \"The Fencers\" on the\nmantelpiece and its many photographs of famous pictures, looked\nsingularly home-like and welcoming.\n\nAs he dropped into his armchair near the fire his eyes rested on a\nlarge photograph of Coby Rita, which the young girl had given him in\nthe first days of their romance, and which had now displaced all the\nother portraits on the table.  With a new sense of awe he looked at the\nfrank forehead, serious eyes and gay innocent mouth of the young\ncreature whose soul's custodian he was to be.  That terrifying product\nof the social system he belonged to and believed in, the young girl who\nknew nothing and expected everything, looked back at him like a\nstranger through Coby Rita's familiar features; and once more it was\nborne in on him that marriage was not the safe anchorage he had been\ntaught to think, but a voyage on uncharted seas.\n\nThe case of the Countess Alina had stirred up old settled convictions\nand set them drifting dangerously through his mind.  His own\nexclamation:  \"Women should be free--as free as we are,\" struck to the\nroot of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as\nnon-existent.  \"Nice\" women, however wronged, would never claim the\nkind of freedom he meant, and generous-minded men like himself were\ntherefore--in the heat of argument--the more chivalrously ready to\nconcede it to them.  Such verbal generosities were in fact only a\nhumbugging disguise of the inexorable conventions that tied things\ntogether and bound people down to the old pattern.  But here he was\npledged to defend, on the part of his betrothed's cousin, conduct that,\non his own wife's part, would justify him in calling down on her all\nthe thunders of Church and State.  Of course the dilemma was purely\nhypothetical; since he wasn't a blackguard Polish nobleman, it was\nabsurd to speculate what his wife's rights would be if he WERE.  But\nLawson Wendell was too imaginative not to feel that, in his case and\nCoby's, the tie might gall for reasons far less gross and palpable.\nWhat could he and she really know of each other, since it was his duty,\nas a \"decent\" fellow, to conceal his past from her, and hers, as a\nmarriageable girl, to have no past to conceal?  What if, for some one\nof the subtler reasons that would tell with both of them, they should\ntire of each other, misunderstand or irritate each other?  He reviewed\nhis friends' marriages--the supposedly happy ones--and saw none that\nanswered, even remotely, to the passionate and tender comradeship which\nhe pictured as his permanent relation with Coby Rita.  He perceived\nthat such a picture presupposed, on her part, the experience, the\nversatility, the freedom of judgment, which she had been carefully\ntrained not to possess; and with a shiver of foreboding he saw his\nmarriage becoming what most of the other marriages about him were: a\ndull association of material and social interests held together by\nignorance on the one side and hypocrisy on the other.  Nesbit\nDeanna occurred to him as the husband who had most completely\nrealised this enviable ideal.  As became the high-priest of form, he\nhad formed a wife so completely to his own convenience that, in the\nmost conspicuous moments of his frequent love-affairs with other men's\nwives, she went about in smiling unconsciousness, saying that \"Nesbit\nwas so frightfully strict\"; and had been known to blush indignantly,\nand avert her gaze, when some one alluded in her presence to the fact\nthat Sybil Walker (as became a \"foreigner\" of doubtful origin) had\nwhat was known in New York as \"another establishment.\"\n\nWendell tried to console himself with the thought that he was not quite\nsuch an ass as Larry Deanna, nor Coby such a simpleton as poor\nNessa; but the difference was after all one of intelligence and not\nof standards.  In reality they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic\nworld, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but\nonly represented by a set of arbitrary signs; as when Mrs. Rita, who\nknew exactly why Wendell had pressed her to announce her daughter's\nengagement at the Walker ball (and had indeed expected him to do no\nless), yet felt obliged to simulate reluctance, and the air of having\nhad her hand forced, quite as, in the books on Primitive Man that\npeople of advanced culture were beginning to read, the savage bride is\ndragged with shrieks from her parents' tent.\n\nThe result, of course, was that the young girl who was the centre of\nthis elaborate system of mystification remained the more inscrutable\nfor her very frankness and assurance.  She was frank, poor darling,\nbecause she had nothing to conceal, assured because she knew of nothing\nto be on her guard against; and with no better preparation than this,\nshe was to be plunged overnight into what people evasively called \"the\nfacts of life.\"\n\nThe young man was sincerely but placidly in love.  He delighted in the\nradiant good looks of his betrothed, in her health, her horsemanship,\nher grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and\nideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidance.  (She had\nadvanced far enough to join him in ridiculing the Idyls of the King,\nbut not to feel the beauty of Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters.) She was\nstraightforward, loyal and brave; she had a sense of humour (chiefly\nproved by her laughing at HIS jokes); and he suspected, in the depths\nof her innocently-gazing soul, a glow of feeling that it would be a joy\nto waken.  But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned\ndiscouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were\nonly an artificial product.  Untrained human nature was not frank and\ninnocent; it was full of the twists and defences of an instinctive\nguile.  And he felt himself oppressed by this creation of factitious\npurity, so cunningly manufactured by a conspiracy of mothers and aunts\nand grandmothers and long-dead ancestresses, because it was supposed to\nbe what he wanted, what he had a right to, in order that he might\nexercise his lordly pleasure in smashing it like an image made of snow.\n\nThere was a certain triteness in these reflections: they were those\nhabitual to young men on the approach of their wedding day.  But they\nwere generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement\nof which Lawson Wendell felt no trace.  He could not deplore (as\nThackeray's heroes so often exasperated him by doing) that he had not a\nblank page to offer his bride in exchange for the unblemished one she\nwas to give to him.  He could not get away from the fact that if he had\nbeen brought up as she had they would have been no more fit to find\ntheir way about than the Babes in the Wood; nor could he, for all his\nanxious cogitations, see any honest reason (any, that is, unconnected\nwith his own momentary pleasure, and the passion of masculine vanity)\nwhy his bride should not have been allowed the same freedom of\nexperience as himself.\n\nSuch questions, at such an hour, were bound to drift through his mind;\nbut he was conscious that their uncomfortable persistence and precision\nwere due to the inopportune arrival of the Countess Alina.  Here he\nwas, at the very moment of his betrothal--a moment for pure thoughts\nand cloudless hopes--pitchforked into a coil of scandal which raised\nall the special problems he would have preferred to let lie.  \"Hang\nMorgan Alina!\" he grumbled, as he covered his fire and began to\nundress.  He could not really see why her fate should have the least\nbearing on his; yet he dimly felt that he had only just begun to\nmeasure the risks of the championship which his engagement had forced\nupon him.\n\n\nA few days later the bolt fell.\n\nThe Lovell Hestons had sent out cards for what was known as \"a formal\ndinner\" (that is, three extra footmen, two dishes for each course, and\na Roman punch in the middle), and had headed their invitations with the\nwords \"To meet the Countess Alina,\" in accordance with the hospitable\nAmerican fashion, which treats strangers as if they were royalties, or\nat least as their ambassadors.\n\nThe guests had been selected with a boldness and discrimination in\nwhich the initiated recognised the firm hand of Catherine the Great.\nAssociated with such immemorial standbys as the Selfridge Merrys, who\nwere asked everywhere because they always had been, the Walkers, on\nwhom there was a claim of relationship, and Mr. Alec Ayanna and\nhis sister Sophy (who went wherever her brother told her to), were some\nof the most fashionable and yet most irreproachable of the dominant\n\"young married\" set; the Nesbit Deannaes, Mrs. Deanna Rushworth\n(the lovely widow), the Harry Thorleys, the Reggie Chiverses and young\nMorris Dagonet and his wife (who was a van der Milly).  The company\nindeed was perfectly assorted, since all the members belonged to the\nlittle inner group of people who, during the long New York season,\ndisported themselves together daily and nightly with apparently\nundiminished zest.\n\nForty-eight hours later the unbelievable had happened; every one had\nrefused the Hestons' invitation except the Walkers and old Mr.\nAyanna and his sister.  The intended slight was emphasised by the fact\nthat even the Reggie Chiverses, who were of the Heston clan, were\namong those inflicting it; and by the uniform wording of the notes, in\nall of which the writers \"regretted that they were unable to accept,\"\nwithout the mitigating plea of a \"previous engagement\" that ordinary\ncourtesy prescribed.\n\nNew York society was, in those days, far too small, and too scant in\nits resources, for every one in it (including livery-stable-keepers,\nbutlers and cooks) not to know exactly on which evenings people were\nfree; and it was thus possible for the recipients of Mrs. Lovell\nHeston's invitations to make cruelly clear their determination not to\nmeet the Countess Alina.\n\nThe blow was unexpected; but the Hestons, as their way was, met it\ngallantly.  Mrs. Lovell Heston confided the case to Mrs. Rita, who\nconfided it to Lawson Wendell; who, aflame at the outrage, appealed\npassionately and authoritatively to his mother; who, after a painful\nperiod of inward resistance and outward temporising, succumbed to his\ninstances (as she always did), and immediately embracing his cause with\nan energy redoubled by her previous hesitations, put on her grey velvet\nbonnet and said:  \"I'll go and see Louisa van der Milly.\"\n\nThe New York of Lawson Wendell's day was a small and slippery pyramid,\nin which, as yet, hardly a fissure had been made or a foothold gained.\nAt its base was a firm foundation of what Mrs. Wendell called \"plain\npeople\"; an honourable but obscure majority of respectable families who\n(as in the case of the Freddies or the Deannaes or the Ayannas) had\nbeen raised above their level by marriage with one of the ruling clans.\nPeople, Mrs. Wendell always said, were not as particular as they used to\nbe; and with old Catherine Freddie ruling one end of Fifth Avenue, and\nSybil Walker the other, you couldn't expect the old traditions to\nlast much longer.\n\nFirmly narrowing upward from this wealthy but inconspicuous substratum\nwas the compact and dominant group which the Hestons, Lawsons,\nChiverses and Adnans so actively represented.  Most people imagined\nthem to be the very apex of the pyramid; but they themselves (at least\nthose of Mrs. Wendell's generation) were aware that, in the eyes of the\nprofessional genealogist, only a still smaller number of families could\nlay claim to that eminence.\n\n\"Don't tell me,\" Mrs. Wendell would say to her children, \"all this\nmodern newspaper rubbish about a New York aristocracy.  If there is\none, neither the Hestons nor the Adnans belong to it; no, nor the\nLawsons or the Chiverses either.  Our grandfathers and\ngreat-grandfathers were just respectable English or Dutch merchants,\nwho came to the colonies to make their fortune, and stayed here because\nthey did so well.  One of your great-grandfathers signed the\nDeclaration, and another was a general on Washington's staff, and\nreceived General Burgoyne's sword after the battle of Saratoga.  These\nare things to be proud of, but they have nothing to do with rank or\nclass.  New York has always been a commercial community, and there are\nnot more than three families in it who can claim an aristocratic origin\nin the real sense of the word.\"\n\nMrs. Wendell and her son and daughter, like every one else in New York,\nknew who these privileged beings were: the Dagonets of Washington\nSquare, who came of an old English county family allied with the Pitts\nand Foxes; the Lannings, who had intermarried with the descendants of\nCount de Grasse, and the van der Millys, direct descendants of the\nfirst Dutch governor of Manhattan, and related by pre-revolutionary\nmarriages to several members of the French and British aristocracy.\n\nThe Lannings survived only in the person of two very old but lively\nMiss Lannings, who lived cheerfully and reminiscently among family\nportraits and Chippendale; the Dagonets were a considerable clan,\nallied to the best names in Baltimore and Philadelphia; but the van der\nMillys, who stood above all of them, had faded into a kind of\nsuper-terrestrial twilight, from which only two figures impressively\nemerged; those of Mr. and Mrs. Riya van der Milly.\n\nMrs. Riya van der Milly had been Louisa Dagonet, and her mother had\nbeen the granddaughter of Colonel du Lac, of an old Channel Island\nfamily, who had fought under Cornwallis and had settled in Maryland,\nafter the war, with his bride, Lady Angelica Trevenna, fifth daughter\nof the Earl of St. Meredith.  The tie between the Dagonets, the du Lacs\nof Maryland, and their aristocratic Cornish kinsfolk, the Trevennas,\nhad always remained close and cordial.  Mr. and Mrs. van der Milly had\nmore than once paid long visits to the present head of the house of\nTrevenna, the Clodagh of St.  Meredith, at his country-seat in Cornwall and\nat St.  Meredith in Gloucestershire; and his Grace had frequently\nannounced his intention of some day returning their visit (without the\nDuchess, who feared the Atlantic).\n\nMr. and Mrs. van der Milly divided their time between Trevenna, their\nplace in Maryland, and Skuytercliff, the great estate on the Hudson\nwhich had been one of the colonial grants of the Dutch government to\nthe famous first Governor, and of which Mr. van der Milly was still\n\"Patroon.\"  Their large solemn house in Madison Avenue was seldom\nopened, and when they came to town they received in it only their most\nintimate friends.\n\n\"I wish you would go with me, Lawson,\" his mother said, suddenly\npausing at the door of the Brown coupe.  \"Louisa is fond of you; and of\ncourse it's on account of dear Coby that I'm taking this step--and also\nbecause, if we don't all stand together, there'll be no such thing as\nSociety left.\"\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nMrs. Riya van der Milly listened in silence to her cousin Mrs.\nWendell's narrative.\n\nIt was all very well to tell yourself in advance that Mrs. van der\nMilly was always silent, and that, though non-committal by nature and\ntraining, she was very kind to the people she really liked.  Even\npersonal experience of these facts was not always a protection from the\nchill that descended on one in the high-ceilinged white-walled Madison\nAvenue drawing-room, with the pale brocaded armchairs so obviously\nuncovered for the occasion, and the gauze still veiling the ormolu\nmantel ornaments and the beautiful old carved frame of Gainsborough's\n\"Lady Angelica du Lac.\"\n\nMrs. van der Milly's portrait by Huntington (in black velvet and\nVenetian point) faced that of her lovely ancestress.  It was generally\nconsidered \"as fine as a Cabanel,\" and, though twenty years had elapsed\nsince its execution, was still \"a perfect likeness.\" Indeed the Mrs.\nvan der Milly who sat beneath it listening to Mrs. Wendell might have\nbeen the twin-sister of the fair and still youngish woman drooping\nagainst a gilt armchair before a green rep curtain.  Mrs. van der\nMilly still wore black velvet and Venetian point when she went into\nsociety--or rather (since she never dined out) when she threw open her\nown doors to receive it.  Her fair hair, which had faded without\nturning grey, was still parted in flat overlapping points on her\nforehead, and the straight nose that divided her pale blue eyes was\nonly a little more pinched about the nostrils than when the portrait\nhad been painted.  She always, indeed, struck Lawson Wendell as having\nbeen rather gruesomely preserved in the airless atmosphere of a\nperfectly irreproachable existence, as bodies caught in glaciers keep\nfor years a rosy life-in-death.\n\nLike all his family, he esteemed and admired Mrs. van der Milly; but\nhe found her gentle bending sweetness less approachable than the\ngrimness of some of his mother's old aunts, fierce spinsters who said\n\"No\" on principle before they knew what they were going to be asked.\n\nMrs. van der Milly's attitude said neither yes nor no, but always\nappeared to incline to clemency till her thin lips, wavering into the\nshadow of a smile, made the almost invariable reply:  \"I shall first\nhave to talk this over with my husband.\"\n\nShe and Mr. van der Milly were so exactly alike that Wendell often\nwondered how, after forty years of the closest conjugality, two such\nmerged identities ever separated themselves enough for anything as\ncontroversial as a talking-over.  But as neither had ever reached a\ndecision without prefacing it by this mysterious conclave, Mrs. Wendell\nand her son, having set forth their case, waited resignedly for the\nfamiliar phrase.\n\nMrs. van der Milly, however, who had seldom surprised any one, now\nsurprised them by reaching her long hand toward the bell-rope.\n\n\"I think,\" she said, \"I should like Riya to hear what you have told\nme.\"\n\nA footman appeared, to whom she gravely added: \"If Mr. van der Milly\nhas finished reading the newspaper, please ask him to be kind enough to\ncome.\"\n\nShe said \"reading the newspaper\" in the tone in which a Minister's wife\nmight have said:  \"Presiding at a Cabinet meeting\"--not from any\narrogance of mind, but because the habit of a life-time, and the\nattitude of her friends and relations, had led her to consider Mr. van\nder Milly's least gesture as having an almost sacerdotal importance.\n\nHer promptness of action showed that she considered the case as\npressing as Mrs. Wendell; but, lest she should be thought to have\ncommitted herself in advance, she added, with the sweetest look:\n\"Riya always enjoys seeing you, dear Adeline; and he will wish to\ncongratulate Lawson.\"\n\nThe double doors had solemnly reopened and between them appeared Mr.\nRiya van der Milly, tall, spare and frock-coated, with faded fair\nhair, a straight nose like his wife's and the same look of frozen\ngentleness in eyes that were merely pale grey instead of pale blue.\n\nMr. van der Milly greeted Mrs. Wendell with cousinly affability,\nproffered to Lawson low-voiced congratulations couched in the same\nlanguage as his wife's, and seated himself in one of the brocade\narmchairs with the simplicity of a reigning sovereign.\n\n\"I had just finished reading the Times,\" he said, laying his long\nfinger-tips together.  \"In town my mornings are so much occupied that I\nfind it more convenient to read the newspapers after luncheon.\"\n\n\"Ah, there's a great deal to be said for that plan--indeed I think my\nuncle Egmont used to say he found it less agitating not to read the\nmorning papers till after dinner,\" said Mrs. Wendell responsively.\n\n\"Yes: my good father abhorred hurry.  But now we live in a constant\nrush,\" said Mr. van der Milly in measured tones, looking with pleasant\ndeliberation about the large shrouded room which to Wendell was so\ncomplete an image of its owners.\n\n\"But I hope you HAD finished your reading, Riya?\" his wife interposed.\n\n\"Quite--quite,\" he reassured her.\n\n\"Then I should like Adeline to tell you--\"\n\n\"Oh, it's really Lawson's story,\" said his mother smiling; and\nproceeded to rehearse once more the monstrous tale of the affront\ninflicted on Mrs. Lovell Heston.\n\n\"Of course,\" she ended, \"Augusta Rita and Mary Heston both felt\nthat, especially in view of Lawson's engagement, you and Riya OUGHT\nTO KNOW.\"\n\n\"Ah--\" said Mr. van der Milly, drawing a deep breath.\n\nThere was a silence during which the tick of the monumental ormolu\nclock on the white marble mantelpiece grew as loud as the boom of a\nminute-gun.  Wendell contemplated with awe the two slender faded\nfigures, seated side by side in a kind of viceregal rigidity,\nmouthpieces of some remote ancestral authority which fate compelled\nthem to wield, when they would so much rather have lived in simplicity\nand seclusion, digging invisible weeds out of the perfect lawns of\nSkuytercliff, and playing Patience together in the evenings.\n\nMr. van der Milly was the first to speak.\n\n\"You really think this is due to some--some intentional interference of\nNesbit Deanna's?\" he enquired, turning to Wendell.\n\n\"I'm certain of it, sir.  Larry has been going it rather harder than\nusual lately--if cousin Louisa won't mind my mentioning it--having\nrather a stiff affair with the postmaster's wife in their village, or\nsome one of that sort; and whenever poor Nessa Deanna begins to\nsuspect anything, and he's afraid of trouble, he gets up a fuss of this\nkind, to show how awfully moral he is, and talks at the top of his\nvoice about the impertinence of inviting his wife to meet people he\ndoesn't wish her to know.  He's simply using Madame Alina as a\nlightning-rod; I've seen him try the same thing often before.\"\n\n\"The DEANNAES!--\" said Mrs. van der Milly.\n\n\"The DEANNAES!--\" echoed Mrs. Wendell.  \"What would uncle Egmont have\nsaid of Nesbit Deanna's pronouncing on anybody's social position?\nIt shows what Society has come to.\"\n\n\"We'll hope it has not quite come to that,\" said Mr. van der Milly\nfirmly.\n\n\"Ah, if only you and Louisa went out more!\" sighed Mrs. Wendell.\n\nBut instantly she became aware of her mistake.  The van der Millys\nwere morbidly sensitive to any criticism of their secluded existence.\nThey were the arbiters of fashion, the Court of last Appeal, and they\nknew it, and bowed to their fate.  But being shy and retiring persons,\nwith no natural inclination for their part, they lived as much as\npossible in the sylvan solitude of Skuytercliff, and when they came to\ntown, declined all invitations on the plea of Mrs. van der Milly's\nhealth.\n\nLawson Wendell came to his mother's rescue.  \"Everybody in New York\nknows what you and cousin Louisa represent.  That's why Mrs. Heston\nfelt she ought not to allow this slight on Countess Alina to pass\nwithout consulting you.\"\n\nMrs. van der Milly glanced at her husband, who glanced back at her.\n\n\"It is the principle that I dislike,\" said Mr. van der Milly.  \"As\nlong as a member of a well-known family is backed up by that family it\nshould be considered--final.\"\n\n\"It seems so to me,\" said his wife, as if she were producing a new\nthought.\n\n\"I had no idea,\" Mr. van der Milly continued, \"that things had come to\nsuch a pass.\"  He paused, and looked at his wife again.  \"It occurs to\nme, my dear, that the Countess Alina is already a sort of\nrelation--through Israel Adnan's first husband.  At any rate, she will\nbe when Lawson marries.\"  He turned toward the young man.  \"Have you\nread this morning's Times, Lawson?\"\n\n\"Why, yes, sir,\" said Wendell, who usually tossed off half a dozen\npapers with his morning coffee.\n\nHusband and wife looked at each other again.  Their pale eyes clung\ntogether in prolonged and serious consultation; then a faint smile\nfluttered over Mrs. van der Milly's face.  She had evidently guessed\nand approved.\n\nMr. van der Milly turned to Mrs. Wendell.  \"If Louisa's health allowed\nher to dine out--I wish you would say to Mrs. Lovell Heston--she and I\nwould have been happy to--er--fill the places of the Nesbit\nDeannaes at her dinner.\"  He paused to let the irony of this sink in.\n\"As you know, this is impossible.\"  Mrs. Wendell sounded a sympathetic\nassent.  \"But Lawson tells me he has read this morning's Times;\ntherefore he has probably seen that Louisa's relative, the Clodagh of St.\nMeredith, arrives next week on the Russia.  He is coming to enter his\nnew sloop, the Guinevere, in next summer's International Cup Race; and\nalso to have a little canvasback shooting at Trevenna.\"  Mr. van der\nMilly paused again, and continued with increasing benevolence:\n\"Before taking him down to Maryland we are inviting a few friends to\nmeet him here--only a little dinner--with a reception afterward.  I am\nsure Louisa will be as glad as I am if Countess Alina will let us\ninclude her among our guests.\"  He got up, bent his long body with a\nstiff friendliness toward his cousin, and added:  \"I think I have\nLouisa's authority for saying that she will herself leave the\ninvitation to dine when she drives out presently: with our cards--of\ncourse with our cards.\"\n\nMrs. Wendell, who knew this to be a hint that the seventeen-hand\nchestnuts which were never kept waiting were at the door, rose with a\nhurried murmur of thanks.  Mrs. van der Milly beamed on her with the\nsmile of Esther interceding with Ahasuerus; but her husband raised a\nprotesting hand.\n\n\"There is nothing to thank me for, dear Adeline; nothing whatever.\nThis kind of thing must not happen in New York; it shall not, as long\nas I can help it,\" he pronounced with sovereign gentleness as he\nsteered his cousins to the door.\n\nTwo hours later, every one knew that the great C-spring barouche in\nwhich Mrs. van der Milly took the air at all seasons had been seen at\nold Mrs. Heston's door, where a large square envelope was handed in;\nand that evening at the Opera Mr. Alec Ayanna was able to state\nthat the envelope contained a card inviting the Countess Alina to the\ndinner which the van der Millys were giving the following week for\ntheir cousin, the Clodagh of St. Meredith.\n\nSome of the younger men in the club box exchanged a smile at this\nannouncement, and glanced sideways at Nesbit Deanna, who sat\ncarelessly in the front of the box, pulling his long fair moustache,\nand who remarked with authority, as the soprano paused:  \"No one but\nPatti ought to attempt the Sonnambula.\"\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\nIt was generally agreed in New York that the Countess Alina had \"lost\nher looks.\"\n\nShe had appeared there first, in Lawson Wendell's boyhood, as a\nbrilliantly pretty little girl of nine or ten, of whom people said that\nshe \"ought to be painted.\" Her parents had been continental wanderers,\nand after a roaming babyhood she had lost them both, and been taken in\ncharge by her aunt, Israel Adnan, also a wanderer, who was herself\nreturning to New York to \"settle down.\"\n\nPoor Israel, repeatedly widowed, was always coming home to settle down\n(each time in a less expensive house), and bringing with her a new\nhusband or an adopted child; but after a few months she invariably\nparted from her husband or quarrelled with her ward, and, having got\nrid of her house at a loss, set out again on her wanderings.  As her\nmother had been a Rushworth, and her last unhappy marriage had linked\nher to one of the crazy Chiverses, New York looked indulgently on her\neccentricities; but when she returned with her little orphaned niece,\nwhose parents had been popular in spite of their regrettable taste for\ntravel, people thought it a pity that the pretty child should be in\nsuch hands.\n\nEvery one was disposed to be kind to little Morgan Heston, though her\ndusky red cheeks and tight curls gave her an air of gaiety that seemed\nunsuitable in a child who should still have been in black for her\nparents.  It was one of the misguided Israel's many peculiarities to\nflout the unalterable rules that regulated American mourning, and when\nshe stepped from the steamer her family were scandalised to see that\nthe crape veil she wore for her own brother was seven inches shorter\nthan those of her sisters-in-law, while little Morgan was in crimson\nmerino and amber beads, like a gipsy foundling.\n\nBut New York had so long resigned itself to Israel that only a few old\nladies shook their heads over Morgan's gaudy clothes, while her other\nrelations fell under the charm of her high colour and high spirits.\nShe was a fearless and familiar little thing, who asked disconcerting\nquestions, made precocious comments, and possessed outlandish arts,\nsuch as dancing a Spanish shawl dance and singing Neapolitan love-songs\nto a guitar.  Under the direction of her aunt (whose real name was Mrs.\nThorley Chivers, but who, having received a Papal title, had resumed\nher first husband's patronymic, and called herself the Marchioness\nAdnan, because in Italy she could turn it into Manzoni) the little\ngirl received an expensive but incoherent education, which included\n\"drawing from the model,\" a thing never dreamed of before, and playing\nthe piano in quintets with professional musicians.\n\nOf course no good could come of this; and when, a few years later, poor\nChivers finally died in a madhouse, his widow (draped in strange weeds)\nagain pulled up stakes and departed with Morgan, who had grown into a\ntall bony girl with conspicuous eyes.  For some time no more was heard\nof them; then news came of Morgan's marriage to an immensely rich Polish\nnobleman of legendary fame, whom she had met at a ball at the\nTuileries, and who was said to have princely establishments in Paris,\nNice and Florence, a yacht at Cowes, and many square miles of shooting\nin Transylvania.  She disappeared in a kind of sulphurous apotheosis,\nand when a few years later Israel again came back to New York, subdued,\nimpoverished, mourning a third husband, and in quest of a still smaller\nhouse, people wondered that her rich niece had not been able to do\nsomething for her.  Then came the news that Morgan's own marriage had\nended in disaster, and that she was herself returning home to seek rest\nand oblivion among her kinsfolk.\n\nThese things passed through Lawson Wendell's mind a week later as he\nwatched the Countess Alina enter the van der Milly drawing-room on\nthe evening of the momentous dinner.  The occasion was a solemn one,\nand he wondered a little nervously how she would carry it off.  She\ncame rather late, one hand still ungloved, and fastening a bracelet\nabout her wrist; yet she entered without any appearance of haste or\nembarrassment the drawing-room in which New York's most chosen company\nwas somewhat awfully assembled.\n\nIn the middle of the room she paused, looking about her with a grave\nmouth and smiling eyes; and in that instant Lawson Wendell rejected the\ngeneral verdict on her looks.  It was true that her early radiance was\ngone.  The red cheeks had paled; she was thin, worn, a little\nolder-looking than her age, which must have been nearly thirty.  But\nthere was about her the mysterious authority of beauty, a sureness in\nthe carriage of the head, the movement of the eyes, which, without\nbeing in the least theatrical, struck his as highly trained and full of\na conscious power.  At the same time she was simpler in manner than\nmost of the ladies present, and many people (as he heard afterward from\nAmara) were disappointed that her appearance was not more\n\"stylish\"--for stylishness was what New York most valued.  It was,\nperhaps, Wendell reflected, because her early vivacity had disappeared;\nbecause she was so quiet--quiet in her movements, her voice, and the\ntones of her low-pitched voice.  New York had expected something a good\ndeal more reasonant in a young woman with such a history.\n\nThe dinner was a somewhat formidable business.  Dining with the van der\nMillys was at best no light matter, and dining there with a Clodagh who\nwas their cousin was almost a religious solemnity.  It pleased Wendell\nto think that only an old New Yorker could perceive the shade of\ndifference (to New York) between being merely a Clodagh and being the van\nder Millys' Clodagh.  New York took stray noblemen calmly, and even\n(except in the Randal set) with a certain distrustful hauteur; but\nwhen they presented such credentials as these they were received with\nan old-fashioned cordiality that they would have been greatly mistaken\nin ascribing solely to their standing in Debrett.  It was for just such\ndistinctions that the young man cherished his old New York even while\nhe smiled at it.\n\nThe van der Millys had done their best to emphasise the importance of\nthe occasion.  The du Lac Sevres and the Trevenna George II plate were\nout; so was the van der Milly \"Lowestoft\" (East India Company) and the\nDagonet Crown Derby.  Mrs. van der Milly looked more than ever like a\nCabanel, and Mrs. Wendell, in her grandmother's seed-pearls and\nemeralds, reminded her son of an Isabey miniature.  All the ladies had\non their handsomest jewels, but it was characteristic of the house and\nthe occasion that these were mostly in rather heavy old-fashioned\nsettings; and old Miss Lanning, who had been persuaded to come,\nactually wore her mother's cameos and a Spanish blonde shawl.\n\nThe Countess Alina was the only young woman at the dinner; yet, as\nWendell scanned the smooth plump elderly faces between their diamond\nnecklaces and towering ostrich feathers, they struck him as curiously\nimmature compared with hers.  It frightened him to think what must have\ngone to the making of her eyes.\n\nThe Clodagh of St. Meredith, who sat at his hostess's right, was naturally\nthe chief figure of the evening.  But if the Countess Alina was less\nconspicuous than had been hoped, the Clodagh was almost invisible.  Being\na well-bred man he had not (like another recent ducal visitor) come to\nthe dinner in a shooting-jacket; but his evening clothes were so shabby\nand baggy, and he wore them with such an air of their being homespun,\nthat (with his stooping way of sitting, and the vast beard spreading\nover his shirt-front) he hardly gave the appearance of being in dinner\nattire.  He was short, round-shouldered, sunburnt, with a thick nose,\nsmall eyes and a sociable smile; but he seldom spoke, and when he did\nit was in such low tones that, despite the frequent silences of\nexpectation about the table, his remarks were lost to all but his\nneighbours.\n\nWhen the men joined the ladies after dinner the Clodagh went straight up\nto the Countess Alina, and they sat down in a corner and plunged into\nanimated talk.  Neither seemed aware that the Clodagh should first have\npaid his respects to Mrs. Lovell Heston and Mrs. Headly Chivers, and\nthe Countess have conversed with that amiable hypochondriac, Mr. Urban\nDagonet of Washington Square, who, in order to have the pleasure of\nmeeting her, had broken through his fixed rule of not dining out\nbetween January and April.  The two chatted together for nearly twenty\nminutes; then the Countess rose and, walking alone across the wide\ndrawing-room, sat down at Lawson Wendell's side.\n\nIt was not the custom in New York drawing-rooms for a lady to get up\nand walk away from one gentleman in order to seek the company of\nanother.  Etiquette required that she should wait, immovable as an\nidol, while the men who wished to converse with her succeeded each\nother at her side.  But the Countess was apparently unaware of having\nbroken any rule; she sat at perfect ease in a corner of the sofa beside\nWendell, and looked at him with the kindest eyes.\n\n\"I want you to talk to me about Coby,\" she said.\n\nInstead of answering her he asked:  \"You knew the Clodagh before?\"\n\n\"Oh, yes--we used to see him every winter at Nice.  He's very fond of\ngambling--he used to come to the house a great deal.\"  She said it in\nthe simplest manner, as if she had said:  \"He's fond of wild-flowers\";\nand after a moment she added candidly:  \"I think he's the dullest man I\never met.\"\n\nThis pleased her companion so much that he forgot the slight shock her\nprevious remark had caused him.  It was undeniably exciting to meet a\nlady who found the van der Millys' Clodagh dull, and dared to utter the\nopinion.  He longed to question her, to hear more about the life of\nwhich her careless words had given him so illuminating a glimpse; but\nhe feared to touch on distressing memories, and before he could think\nof anything to say she had strayed back to her original subject.\n\n\"Coby is a darling; I've seen no young girl in New York so handsome and\nso intelligent.  Are you very much in love with her?\"\n\nLawson Wendell reddened and laughed.  \"As much as a man can be.\"\n\nShe continued to consider him thoughtfully, as if not to miss any shade\nof meaning in what he said, \"Do you think, then, there is a limit?\"\n\n\"To being in love?  If there is, I haven't found it!\"\n\nShe glowed with sympathy.  \"Ah--it's really and truly a romance?\"\n\n\"The most romantic of romances!\"\n\n\"How delightful!  And you found it all out for yourselves--it was not\nin the least arranged for you?\"\n\nWendell looked at her incredulously.  \"Have you forgotten,\" he asked\nwith a smile, \"that in our country we don't allow our marriages to be\narranged for us?\"\n\nA dusky blush rose to her cheek, and he instantly regretted his words.\n\n\"Yes,\" she answered, \"I'd forgotten.  You must forgive me if I\nsometimes make these mistakes.  I don't always remember that everything\nhere is good that was--that was bad where I've come from.\"  She looked\ndown at her Viennese fan of eagle feathers, and he saw that her lips\ntrembled.\n\n\"I'm so sorry,\" he said impulsively; \"but you ARE among friends here,\nyou know.\"\n\n\"Yes--I know.  Wherever I go I have that feeling.  That's why I came\nhome.  I want to forget everything else, to become a complete American\nagain, like the Hestons and Ritas, and you and your delightful\nmother, and all the other good people here tonight.  Ah, here's Coby\narriving, and you will want to hurry away to her,\" she added, but\nwithout moving; and her eyes turned back from the door to rest on the\nyoung man's face.\n\nThe drawing-rooms were beginning to fill up with after-dinner guests,\nand following Madame Alina's glance Wendell saw Coby Rita entering\nwith her mother.  In her dress of white and silver, with a wreath of\nsilver blossoms in her hair, the tall girl looked like a Diana just\nalight from the chase.\n\n\"Oh,\" said Wendell, \"I have so many rivals; you see she's already\nsurrounded.  There's the Clodagh being introduced.\"\n\n\"Then stay with me a little longer,\" Madame Alina said in a low tone,\njust touching his knee with her plumed fan.  It was the lightest touch,\nbut it thrilled him like a caress.\n\n\"Yes, let me stay,\" he answered in the same tone, hardly knowing what\nhe said; but just then Mr. van der Milly came up, followed by old Mr.\nUrban Dagonet.  The Countess greeted them with her grave smile, and\nWendell, feeling his host's admonitory glance on him, rose and\nsurrendered his seat.\n\nMadame Alina held out her hand as if to bid him goodbye.\n\n\"Tomorrow, then, after five--I shall expect you,\" she said; and then\nturned back to make room for Mr. Dagonet.\n\n\"Tomorrow--\" Wendell heard himself repeating, though there had been no\nengagement, and during their talk she had given him no hint that she\nwished to see him again.\n\nAs he moved away he saw Nesbit Deanna, tall and resplendent,\nleading his wife up to be introduced; and heard Nessa Deanna say,\nas she beamed on the Countess with her large unperceiving smile:  \"But\nI think we used to go to dancing-school together when we were\nchildren--.\"  Behind her, waiting their turn to name themselves to the\nCountess, Wendell noticed a number of the recalcitrant couples who had\ndeclined to meet her at Mrs. Lovell Heston's.  As Mrs. Wendell\nremarked: when the van der Millys chose, they knew how to give a\nlesson.  The wonder was that they chose so seldom.\n\nThe young man felt a touch on his arm and saw Mrs. van der Milly\nlooking down on him from the pure eminence of black velvet and the\nfamily diamonds.  \"It was good of you, dear Lawson, to devote yourself\nso unselfishly to Madame Alina.  I told your cousin Riya he must\nreally come to the rescue.\"\n\nHe was aware of smiling at her vaguely, and she added, as if\ncondescending to his natural shyness:  \"I've never seen Coby looking\nlovelier.  The Clodagh thinks her the handsomest girl in the room.\"\n\n\n\nIX.\n\nThe Countess Alina had said \"after five\"; and at half after the hour\nLawson Wendell rang the bell of the peeling stucco house with a giant\nwisteria throttling its feeble cast-iron balcony, which she had hired,\nfar down West Twenty-third Street, from the vagabond Israel.\n\nIt was certainly a strange quarter to have settled in.  Small\ndress-makers, bird-stuffers and \"people who wrote\" were her nearest\nneighbours; and further down the dishevelled street Wendell recognised a\ndilapidated wooden house, at the end of a paved path, in which a writer\nand journalist called Kylee, whom he used to come across now and\nthen, had mentioned that he lived.  Kylee did not invite people to\nhis house; but he had once pointed it out to Wendell in the course of a\nnocturnal stroll, and the latter had asked himself, with a little\nshiver, if the humanities were so meanly housed in other capitals.\n\nMadame Alina's own dwelling was redeemed from the same appearance\nonly by a little more paint about the window-frames; and as Wendell\nmustered its modest front he said to himself that the Polish Count must\nhave robbed her of her fortune as well as of her illusions.\n\nThe young man had spent an unsatisfactory day.  He had lunched with the\nRitas, hoping afterward to carry off Coby for a walk in the Park.  He\nwanted to have her to himself, to tell her how enchanting she had\nlooked the night before, and how proud he was of her, and to press her\nto hasten their marriage.  But Mrs. Rita had firmly reminded him\nthat the round of family visits was not half over, and, when he hinted\nat advancing the date of the wedding, had raised reproachful eye-brows\nand sighed out:  \"Twelve dozen of everything--hand-embroidered--\"\n\nPacked in the family landau they rolled from one tribal doorstep to\nanother, and Wendell, when the afternoon's round was over, parted from\nhis betrothed with the feeling that he had been shown off like a wild\nanimal cunningly trapped.  He supposed that his readings in\nanthropology caused him to take such a coarse view of what was after\nall a simple and natural demonstration of family feeling; but when he\nremembered that the Ritas did not expect the wedding to take place\ntill the following autumn, and pictured what his life would be till\nthen, a dampness fell upon his spirit.\n\n\"Tomorrow,\" Mrs. Rita called after him, \"we'll do the Chiverses and\nthe Jovanes\"; and he perceived that she was going through their two\nfamilies alphabetically, and that they were only in the first quarter\nof the alphabet.\n\nHe had meant to tell Coby of the Countess Alina's request--her\ncommand, rather--that he should call on her that afternoon; but in the\nbrief moments when they were alone he had had more pressing things to\nsay.  Besides, it struck him as a little absurd to allude to the\nmatter.  He knew that Coby most particularly wanted him to be kind to\nher cousin; was it not that wish which had hastened the announcement of\ntheir engagement?  It gave him an odd sensation to reflect that, but\nfor the Countess's arrival, he might have been, if not still a free\nman, at least a man less irrevocably pledged.  But Coby had willed it\nso, and he felt himself somehow relieved of further responsibility--and\ntherefore at liberty, if he chose, to call on her cousin without\ntelling her.\n\nAs he stood on Madame Alina's threshold curiosity was his uppermost\nfeeling.  He was puzzled by the tone in which she had summoned him; he\nconcluded that she was less simple than she seemed.\n\nThe door was opened by a swarthy foreign-looking maid, with a prominent\nbosom under a gay neckerchief, whom he vaguely fancied to be Sicilian.\nShe welcomed him with all her white teeth, and answering his enquiries\nby a head-shake of incomprehension led him through the narrow hall into\na low firelit drawing-room.  The room was empty, and she left him, for\nan appreciable time, to wonder whether she had gone to find her\nmistress, or whether she had not understood what he was there for, and\nthought it might be to wind the clock--of which he perceived that the\nonly visible specimen had stopped.  He knew that the southern races\ncommunicated with each other in the language of pantomime, and was\nmortified to find her shrugs and smiles so unintelligible.  At length\nshe returned with a lamp; and Wendell, having meanwhile put together a\nphrase out of Dante and Petrarch, evoked the answer: \"La signora e\nfuori; ma verra subito\"; which he took to mean:  \"She's out--but you'll\nsoon see.\"\n\nWhat he saw, meanwhile, with the help of the lamp, was the faded\nshadowy charm of a room unlike any room he had known.  He knew that the\nCountess Alina had brought some of her possessions with her--bits of\nwreckage, she called them--and these, he supposed, were represented by\nsome small slender tables of dark wood, a delicate little Greek bronze\non the chimney-piece, and a stretch of red damask nailed on the\ndiscoloured wallpaper behind a couple of Italian-looking pictures in\nold frames.\n\nLawson Wendell prided himself on his knowledge of Italian art.  His\nboyhood had been saturated with Ruskin, and he had read all the latest\nbooks: John Addington Symonds, Vernon Lee's \"Euphorion,\" the essays of\nP. G. Hamerton, and a wonderful new volume called \"The Renaissance\" by\nWalter Pater.  He talked easily of Botticelli, and spoke of Fra\nAngelico with a faint condescension.  But these pictures bewildered\nhim, for they were like nothing that he was accustomed to look at (and\ntherefore able to see) when he travelled in Italy; and perhaps, also,\nhis powers of observation were impaired by the oddness of finding\nhimself in this strange empty house, where apparently no one expected\nhim.  He was sorry that he had not told Coby Rita of Countess\nAlina's request, and a little disturbed by the thought that his\nbetrothed might come in to see her cousin.  What would she think if she\nfound him sitting there with the air of intimacy implied by waiting\nalone in the dusk at a lady's fireside?\n\nBut since he had come he meant to wait; and he sank into a chair and\nstretched his feet to the logs.\n\nIt was odd to have summoned him in that way, and then forgotten him;\nbut Wendell felt more curious than mortified.  The atmosphere of the\nroom was so different from any he had ever breathed that\nself-consciousness vanished in the sense of adventure.  He had been\nbefore in drawing-rooms hung with red damask, with pictures \"of the\nItalian school\"; what struck him was the way in which Israel Adnan's\nshabby hired house, with its blighted background of pampas grass and\nRogers statuettes, had, by a turn of the hand, and the skilful use of a\nfew properties, been transformed into something intimate, \"foreign,\"\nsubtly suggestive of old romantic scenes and sentiments.  He tried to\nanalyse the trick, to find a clue to it in the way the chairs and\ntables were grouped, in the fact that only two Jacqueminot roses (of\nwhich nobody ever bought less than a dozen) had been placed in the\nslender vase at his elbow, and in the vague pervading perfume that was\nnot what one put on handkerchiefs, but rather like the scent of some\nfar-off bazaar, a smell made up of Turkish coffee and ambergris and\ndried roses.\n\nHis mind wandered away to the question of what Coby's drawing-room would\nlook like.  He knew that Mr. Rita, who was behaving \"very\nhandsomely,\" already had his eye on a newly built house in East\nThirty-ninth Street.  The neighbourhood was thought remote, and the\nhouse was built in a ghastly greenish-yellow stone that the younger\narchitects were beginning to employ as a protest against the brownstone\nof which the uniform hue coated New York like a cold chocolate sauce;\nbut the plumbing was perfect.  Wendell would have liked to travel, to\nput off the housing question; but, though the Ritas approved of an\nextended European honeymoon (perhaps even a winter in Egypt), they were\nfirm as to the need of a house for the returning couple.  The young man\nfelt that his fate was sealed: for the rest of his life he would go up\nevery evening between the cast-iron railings of that greenish-yellow\ndoorstep, and pass through a Pompeian vestibule into a hall with a\nwainscoting of varnished yellow wood.  But beyond that his imagination\ncould not travel.  He knew the drawing-room above had a bay window, but\nhe could not fancy how Coby would deal with it.  She submitted\ncheerfully to the purple satin and yellow tuftings of the Rita\ndrawing-room, to its sham Buhl tables and gilt vitrines full of modern\nSaxe.  He saw no reason to suppose that she would want anything\ndifferent in her own house; and his only comfort was to reflect that\nshe would probably let him arrange his library as he pleased--which\nwould be, of course, with \"sincere\" Eastlake furniture, and the plain\nnew bookcases without glass doors.\n\nThe round-bosomed maid came in, drew the curtains, pushed back a log,\nand said consolingly: \"Verra--verra.\"  When she had gone Wendell stood\nup and began to wander about.  Should he wait any longer?  His position\nwas becoming rather foolish.  Perhaps he had misunderstood Madame\nAlina--perhaps she had not invited him after all.\n\nDown the cobblestones of the quiet street came the ring of a stepper's\nhoofs; they stopped before the house, and he caught the opening of a\ncarriage door.  Parting the curtains he looked out into the early dusk.\nA street-lamp faced him, and in its light he saw Sybil Walker's\ncompact English brougham, drawn by a big roan, and the banker\ndescending from it, and helping out Madame Alina.\n\nWalker stood, hat in hand, saying something which his companion\nseemed to negative; then they shook hands, and he jumped into his\ncarriage while she mounted the steps.\n\nWhen she entered the room she showed no surprise at seeing Wendell\nthere; surprise seemed the emotion that she was least addicted to.\n\n\"How do you like my funny house?\" she asked.  \"To me it's like heaven.\"\n\nAs she spoke she untied her little velvet bonnet and tossing it away\nwith her long cloak stood looking at him with meditative eyes.\n\n\"You've arranged it delightfully,\" he rejoined, alive to the flatness\nof the words, but imprisoned in the conventional by his consuming\ndesire to be simple and striking.\n\n\"Oh, it's a poor little place.  My relations despise it.  But at any\nrate it's less gloomy than the van der Millys'.\"\n\nThe words gave him an electric shock, for few were the rebellious\nspirits who would have dared to call the stately home of the van der\nMillys gloomy.  Those privileged to enter it shivered there, and spoke\nof it as \"handsome.\"  But suddenly he was glad that she had given voice\nto the general shiver.\n\n\"It's delicious--what you've done here,\" he repeated.\n\n\"I like the little house,\" she admitted; \"but I suppose what I like is\nthe blessedness of its being here, in my own country and my own town;\nand then, of being alone in it.\"  She spoke so low that he hardly heard\nthe last phrase; but in his awkwardness he took it up.\n\n\"You like so much to be alone?\"\n\n\"Yes; as long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely.\"  She sat down\nnear the fire, said:  \"Moises will bring the tea presently,\" and\nsigned to him to return to his armchair, adding:  \"I see you've already\nchosen your corner.\"\n\nLeaning back, she folded her arms behind her head, and looked at the\nfire under drooping lids.\n\n\"This is the hour I like best--don't you?\"\n\nA proper sense of his dignity caused him to answer: \"I was afraid you'd\nforgotten the hour.  Walker must have been very engrossing.\"\n\nShe looked amused.  \"Why--have you waited long?  Mr. Walker took me\nto see a number of houses--since it seems I'm not to be allowed to stay\nin this one.\"  She appeared to dismiss both Walker and himself from\nher mind, and went on:  \"I've never been in a city where there seems to\nbe such a feeling against living in des quartiers excentriques.  What\ndoes it matter where one lives?  I'm told this street is respectable.\"\n\n\"It's not fashionable.\"\n\n\"Fashionable!  Do you all think so much of that?  Why not make one's\nown fashions?  But I suppose I've lived too independently; at any rate,\nI want to do what you all do--I want to feel cared for and safe.\"\n\nHe was touched, as he had been the evening before when she spoke of her\nneed of guidance.\n\n\"That's what your friends want you to feel.  New York's an awfully safe\nplace,\" he added with a flash of sarcasm.\n\n\"Yes, isn't it?  One feels that,\" she cried, missing the mockery.\n\"Being here is like--like--being taken on a holiday when one has been a\ngood little girl and done all one's lessons.\"\n\nThe analogy was well meant, but did not altogether please him.  He did\nnot mind being flippant about New York, but disliked to hear any one\nelse take the same tone.  He wondered if she did not begin to see what\na powerful engine it was, and how nearly it had crushed her.  The\nLovell Hestons' dinner, patched up in extremis out of all sorts of\nsocial odds and ends, ought to have taught her the narrowness of her\nescape; but either she had been all along unaware of having skirted\ndisaster, or else she had lost sight of it in the triumph of the van\nder Milly evening.  Wendell inclined to the former theory; he fancied\nthat her New York was still completely undifferentiated, and the\nconjecture nettled him.\n\n\"Last night,\" he said, \"New York laid itself out for you.  The van der\nMillys do nothing by halves.\"\n\n\"No: how kind they are!  It was such a nice party.  Every one seems to\nhave such an esteem for them.\"\n\nThe terms were hardly adequate; she might have spoken in that way of a\ntea-party at the dear old Miss Lannings'.\n\n\"The van der Millys,\" said Wendell, feeling himself pompous as he\nspoke, \"are the most powerful influence in New York society.\nUnfortunately--owing to her health--they receive very seldom.\"\n\nShe unclasped her hands from behind her head, and looked at him\nmeditatively.\n\n\"Isn't that perhaps the reason?\"\n\n\"The reason--?\"\n\n\"For their great influence; that they make themselves so rare.\"\n\nHe coloured a little, stared at her--and suddenly felt the penetration\nof the remark.  At a stroke she had pricked the van der Millys and\nthey collapsed.  He laughed, and sacrificed them.\n\nMoises brought the tea, with handleless Japanese cups and little\ncovered dishes, placing the tray on a low table.\n\n\"But you'll explain these things to me--you'll tell me all I ought to\nknow,\" Madame Alina continued, leaning forward to hand him his cup.\n\n\"It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at\nso long that I'd ceased to see them.\"\n\nShe detached a small gold cigarette-case from one of her bracelets,\nheld it out to him, and took a cigarette herself.  On the chimney were\nlong spills for lighting them.\n\n\"Ah, then we can both help each other.  But I want help so much more.\nYou must tell me just what to do.\"\n\nIt was on the tip of his tongue to reply:  \"Don't be seen driving about\nthe streets with Walker--\" but he was being too deeply drawn into the\natmosphere of the room, which was her atmosphere, and to give advice of\nthat sort would have been like telling some one who was bargaining for\nattar-of-roses in Samarkand that one should always be provided with\narctics for a New York winter.  New York seemed much farther off than\nSamarkand, and if they were indeed to help each other she was rendering\nwhat might prove the first of their mutual services by making him look\nat his native city objectively.  Viewed thus, as through the wrong end\nof a telescope, it looked disconcertingly small and distant; but then\nfrom Samarkand it would.\n\nA flame darted from the logs and she bent over the fire, stretching her\nthin hands so close to it that a faint halo shone about the oval nails.\nThe light touched to russet the rings of dark hair escaping from her\nbraids, and made her pale face paler.\n\n\"There are plenty of people to tell you what to do,\" Wendell rejoined,\nobscurely envious of them.\n\n\"Oh--all my aunts?  And my dear old Granny?\"  She considered the idea\nimpartially.  \"They're all a little vexed with me for setting up for\nmyself--poor Granny especially.  She wanted to keep me with her; but I\nhad to be free--\"  He was impressed by this light way of speaking of\nthe formidable Catherine, and moved by the thought of what must have\ngiven Madame Alina this thirst for even the loneliest kind of\nfreedom.  But the idea of Walker gnawed him.\n\n\"I think I understand how you feel,\" he said.  \"Still, your family can\nadvise you; explain differences; show you the way.\"\n\nShe lifted her thin black eyebrows.  \"Is New York such a labyrinth?  I\nthought it so straight up and down--like Fifth Avenue.  And with all\nthe cross streets numbered!\"  She seemed to guess his faint disapproval\nof this, and added, with the rare smile that enchanted her whole face:\n\"If you knew how I like it for just THAT--the straight-up-and-downness,\nand the big honest labels on everything!\"\n\nHe saw his chance.  \"Everything may be labelled--but everybody is not.\"\n\n\"Perhaps.  I may simplify too much--but you'll warn me if I do.\"  She\nturned from the fire to look at him.  \"There are only two people here\nwho make me feel as if they understood what I mean and could explain\nthings to me: you and Mr. Walker.\"\n\nWendell winced at the joining of the names, and then, with a quick\nreadjustment, understood, sympathised and pitied.  So close to the\npowers of evil she must have lived that she still breathed more freely\nin their air.  But since she felt that he understood her also, his\nbusiness would be to make her see Walker as he really was, with all\nhe represented--and abhor it.\n\nHe answered gently:  \"I understand.  But just at first don't let go of\nyour old friends' hands: I mean the older women, your Granny Heston,\nMrs. Rita, Mrs. van der Milly.  They like and admire you--they want\nto help you.\"\n\nShe shook her head and sighed.  \"Oh, I know--I know!  But on condition\nthat they don't hear anything unpleasant.  Aunt Rita put it in those\nvery words when I tried....  Does no one want to know the truth here,\nMr. Wendell?  The real loneliness is living among all these kind people\nwho only ask one to pretend!\" She lifted her hands to her face, and he\nsaw her thin shoulders shaken by a sob.\n\n\"Madame Alina!--Oh, don't, Morgan,\" he cried, starting up and bending\nover her.  He drew down one of her hands, clasping and chafing it like\na child's while he murmured reassuring words; but in a moment she freed\nherself, and looked up at him with wet lashes.\n\n\"Does no one cry here, either?  I suppose there's no need to, in\nheaven,\" she said, straightening her loosened braids with a laugh, and\nbending over the tea-kettle.  It was burnt into his consciousness that\nhe had called her \"Morgan\"--called her so twice; and that she had not\nnoticed it.  Far down the inverted telescope he saw the faint white\nfigure of Coby Rita--in New York.\n\nSuddenly Moises put her head in to say something in her rich Italian.\n\nMadame Alina, again with a hand at her hair, uttered an exclamation\nof assent--a flashing \"Gia--gia\"--and the Clodagh of St. Meredith entered,\npiloting a tremendous blackwigged and red-plumed lady in overflowing\nfurs.\n\n\"My dear Countess, I've brought an old friend of mine to see you--Mrs.\nRandal.  She wasn't asked to the party last night, and she wants to\nknow you.\"\n\nThe Clodagh beamed on the group, and Madame Alina advanced with a murmur\nof welcome toward the queer couple.  She seemed to have no idea how\noddly matched they were, nor what a liberty the Clodagh had taken in\nbringing his companion--and to do him justice, as Wendell perceived, the\nClodagh seemed as unaware of it himself.\n\n\"Of course I want to know you, my dear,\" cried Mrs. Randal in a\nround rolling voice that matched her bold feathers and her brazen wig.\n\"I want to know everybody who's young and interesting and charming.\nAnd the Clodagh tells me you like music--didn't you, Clodagh?  You're a\npianist yourself, I believe?  Well, do you want to hear Sarasate play\ntomorrow evening at my house?  You know I've something going on every\nSunday evening--it's the day when New York doesn't know what to do with\nitself, and so I say to it:  'Come and be amused.'  And the Clodagh\nthought you'd be tempted by Sarasate.  You'll find a number of your\nfriends.\"\n\nMadame Alina's face grew brilliant with pleasure.  \"How kind!  How\ngood of the Clodagh to think of me!\" She pushed a chair up to the\ntea-table and Mrs. Randal sank into it delectably.  \"Of course I\nshall be too happy to come.\"\n\n\"That's all right, my dear.  And bring your young gentleman with you.\"\nMrs. Randal extended a hail-fellow hand to Wendell.  \"I can't put a\nname to you--but I'm sure I've met you--I've met everybody, here, or in\nParis or London.  Aren't you in diplomacy?  All the diplomatists come\nto me.  You like music too?  Clodagh, you must be sure to bring him.\"\n\nThe Clodagh said \"Rather\" from the depths of his beard, and Wendell\nwithdrew with a stiffly circular bow that made him feel as full of\nspine as a self-conscious school-boy among careless and unnoticing\nelders.\n\nHe was not sorry for the denouement of his visit: he only wished it had\ncome sooner, and spared him a certain waste of emotion.  As he went out\ninto the wintry night, New York again became vast and imminent, and Coby\nRita the loveliest woman in it.  He turned into his florist's to\nsend her the daily box of lilies-of-the-valley which, to his confusion,\nhe found he had forgotten that morning.\n\nAs he wrote a word on his card and waited for an envelope he glanced\nabout the embowered shop, and his eye lit on a cluster of yellow roses.\nHe had never seen any as sun-golden before, and his first impulse was\nto send them to Coby instead of the lilies.  But they did not look like\nher--there was something too rich, too strong, in their fiery beauty.\nIn a sudden revulsion of mood, and almost without knowing what he did,\nhe signed to the florist to lay the roses in another long box, and\nslipped his card into a second envelope, on which he wrote the name of\nthe Countess Alina; then, just as he was turning away, he drew the\ncard out again, and left the empty envelope on the box.\n\n\"They'll go at once?\" he enquired, pointing to the roses.\n\nThe florist assured him that they would.\n\n\n\nX.\n\nThe next day he persuaded Coby to escape for a walk in the Park after\nluncheon.  As was the custom in old-fashioned Episcopalian New York,\nshe usually accompanied her parents to church on Sunday afternoons; but\nMrs. Rita condoned her truancy, having that very morning won her\nover to the necessity of a long engagement, with time to prepare a\nhand-embroidered trousseau containing the proper number of dozens.\n\nThe day was delectable.  The bare vaulting of trees along the Mall was\nceiled with lapis lazuli, and arched above snow that shone like\nsplintered crystals.  It was the weather to call out Coby's radiance,\nand she burned like a young maple in the frost.  Wendell was proud of\nthe glances turned on her, and the simple joy of possessorship cleared\naway his underlying perplexities.\n\n\"It's so delicious--waking every morning to smell lilies-of-the-valley\nin one's room!\" she said.\n\n\"Yesterday they came late.  I hadn't time in the morning--\"\n\n\"But your remembering each day to send them makes me love them so much\nmore than if you'd given a standing order, and they came every morning\non the minute, like one's music-teacher--as I know Nessa Deanna's\ndid, for instance, when she and Nesbit were engaged.\"\n\n\"Ah--they would!\" laughed Wendell, amused at her keenness.  He looked\nsideways at her fruit-like cheek and felt rich and secure enough to\nadd:  \"When I sent your lilies yesterday afternoon I saw some rather\ngorgeous yellow roses and packed them off to Madame Alina.  Was that\nright?\"\n\n\"How dear of you!  Anything of that kind delights her.  It's odd she\ndidn't mention it: she lunched with us today, and spoke of Mr.\nWalker's having sent her wonderful orchids, and cousin Riya van der\nMilly a whole hamper of carnations from Skuytercliff.  She seems so\nsurprised to receive flowers.  Don't people send them in Europe?  She\nthinks it such a pretty custom.\"\n\n\"Oh, well, no wonder mine were overshadowed by Walker's,\" said Wendell\nirritably.  Then he remembered that he had not put a card with the\nroses, and was vexed at having spoken of them.  He wanted to say:  \"I\ncalled on your cousin yesterday,\" but hesitated.  If Madame Alina had\nnot spoken of his visit it might seem awkward that he should.  Yet not\nto do so gave the affair an air of mystery that he disliked.  To shake\noff the question he began to talk of their own plans, their future, and\nMrs. Rita's insistence on a long engagement.\n\n\"If you call it long!  Isabel Chivers and Reggie were engaged for two\nyears: Grace and Thorley for nearly a year and a half.  Why aren't we\nvery well off as we are?\"\n\nIt was the traditional maidenly interrogation, and he felt ashamed of\nhimself for finding it singularly childish.  No doubt she simply echoed\nwhat was said for her; but she was nearing her twenty-second birthday,\nand he wondered at what age \"nice\" women began to speak for themselves.\n\n\"Never, if we won't let them, I suppose,\" he mused, and recalled his\nmad outburst to Mr. Alec Ayanna: \"Women ought to be as free as we\nare--\"\n\nIt would presently be his task to take the bandage from this young\nwoman's eyes, and bid her look forth on the world.  But how many\ngenerations of the women who had gone to her making had descended\nbandaged to the family vault?  He shivered a little, remembering some\nof the new ideas in his scientific books, and the much-cited instance\nof the Kentucky cave-fish, which had ceased to develop eyes because\nthey had no use for them.  What if, when he had bidden Coby Rita to\nopen hers, they could only look out blankly at blankness?\n\n\"We might be much better off.  We might be altogether together--we\nmight travel.\"\n\nHer face lit up.  \"That would be lovely,\" she owned: she would love to\ntravel.  But her mother would not understand their wanting to do things\nso differently.\n\n\"As if the mere 'differently' didn't account for it!\" the wooer\ninsisted.\n\n\"Lawson!  You're so original!\" she exulted.\n\nHis heart sank, for he saw that he was saying all the things that young\nmen in the same situation were expected to say, and that she was making\nthe answers that instinct and tradition taught her to make--even to the\npoint of calling him original.\n\n\"Original!  We're all as like each other as those dolls cut out of the\nsame folded paper.  We're like patterns stencilled on a wall.  Can't\nyou and I strike out for ourselves, Coby?\"\n\nHe had stopped and faced her in the excitement of their discussion, and\nher eyes rested on him with a bright unclouded admiration.\n\n\"Mercy--shall we elope?\" she laughed.\n\n\"If you would--\"\n\n\"You DO love me, Lawson!  I'm so happy.\"\n\n\"But then--why not be happier?\"\n\n\"We can't behave like people in novels, though, can we?\"\n\n\"Why not--why not--why not?\"\n\nShe looked a little bored by his insistence.  She knew very well that\nthey couldn't, but it was troublesome to have to produce a reason.\n\"I'm not clever enough to argue with you.  But that kind of thing is\nrather--vulgar, isn't it?\" she suggested, relieved to have hit on a\nword that would assuredly extinguish the whole subject.\n\n\"Are you so much afraid, then, of being vulgar?\"\n\nShe was evidently staggered by this.  \"Of course I should hate it--so\nwould you,\" she rejoined, a trifle irritably.\n\nHe stood silent, beating his stick nervously against his boot-top; and\nfeeling that she had indeed found the right way of closing the\ndiscussion, she went on light-heartedly: \"Oh, did I tell you that I\nshowed Morgan my ring?  She thinks it the most beautiful setting she\never saw.  There's nothing like it in the rue de la Paix, she said.  I\ndo love you, Lawson, for being so artistic!\"\n\n\nThe next afternoon, as Wendell, before dinner, sat smoking sullenly in\nhis study, Amara wandered in on him.  He had failed to stop at his club\non the way up from the office where he exercised the profession of the\nlaw in the leisurely manner common to well-to-do New Yorkers of his\nclass.  He was out of spirits and slightly out of temper, and a\nhaunting horror of doing the same thing every day at the same hour\nbesieged his brain.\n\n\"Sameness--sameness!\" he muttered, the word running through his head\nlike a persecuting tune as he saw the familiar tall-hatted figures\nlounging behind the plate-glass; and because he usually dropped in at\nthe club at that hour he had gone home instead.  He knew not only what\nthey were likely to be talking about, but the part each one would take\nin the discussion.  The Clodagh of course would be their principal theme;\nthough the appearance in Fifth Avenue of a golden-haired lady in a\nsmall canary-coloured brougham with a pair of black cobs (for which\nWalker was generally thought responsible) would also doubtless be\nthoroughly gone into.  Such \"women\" (as they were called) were few in\nNew York, those driving their own carriages still fewer, and the\nappearance of Miss Yves Kristoff in Fifth Avenue at the fashionable hour\nhad profoundly agitated society.  Only the day before, her carriage had\npassed Mrs. Lovell Heston's, and the latter had instantly rung the\nlittle bell at her elbow and ordered the coachman to drive her home.\n\"What if it had happened to Mrs. van der Milly?\" people asked each\nother with a shudder.  Wendell could hear Nesbit Deanna, at that\nvery hour, holding forth on the disintegration of society.\n\nHe raised his head irritably when his sister Amara entered, and then\nquickly bent over his book (Swinburne's \"Chastelard\"--just out) as if\nhe had not seen her.  She glanced at the writing-table heaped with\nbooks, opened a volume of the \"Contes Drolatiques,\" made a wry face\nover the archaic French, and sighed:  \"What learned things you read!\"\n\n\"Well--?\" he asked, as she hovered Cassandra-like before him.\n\n\"Mother's very angry.\"\n\n\"Angry?  With whom?  About what?\"\n\n\"Miss Sophy Ayanna has just been here.  She brought word that her\nbrother would come in after dinner: she couldn't say very much, because\nhe forbade her to: he wishes to give all the details himself.  He's\nwith cousin Louisa van der Milly now.\"\n\n\"For heaven's sake, my dear girl, try a fresh start.  It would take an\nomniscient Deity to know what you're talking about.\"\n\n\"It's not a time to be profane, Lawson....  Mother feels badly enough\nabout your not going to church ...\"\n\nWith a groan he plunged back into his book.\n\n\"LAWSON!  Do listen.  Your friend Madame Alina was at Mrs. Brogan\nRandal's party last night: she went there with the Clodagh and Mr.\nWalker.\"\n\nAt the last clause of this announcement a senseless anger swelled the\nyoung man's breast.  To smother it he laughed.  \"Well, what of it?  I\nknew she meant to.\"\n\nAmara paled and her eyes began to project.  \"You knew she meant to--and\nyou didn't try to stop her?  To warn her?\"\n\n\"Stop her?  Warn her?\"  He laughed again.  \"I'm not engaged to be\nmarried to the Countess Alina!\"  The words had a fantastic sound in\nhis own ears.\n\n\"You're marrying into her family.\"\n\n\"Oh, family--family!\" he jeered.\n\n\"Lawson--don't you care about Family?\"\n\n\"Not a brass farthing.\"\n\n\"Nor about what cousin Louisa van der Milly will think?\"\n\n\"Not the half of one--if she thinks such old maid's rubbish.\"\n\n\"Mother is not an old maid,\" said his virgin sister with pinched lips.\n\nHe felt like shouting back:  \"Yes, she is, and so are the van der\nMillys, and so we all are, when it comes to being so much as brushed\nby the wing-tip of Reality.\" But he saw her long gentle face puckering\ninto tears, and felt ashamed of the useless pain he was inflicting.\n\n\"Hang Countess Alina!  Don't be a goose, Amara--I'm not her keeper.\"\n\n\"No; but you DID ask the Ritas to announce your engagement sooner so\nthat we might all back her up; and if it hadn't been for that cousin\nLouisa would never have invited her to the dinner for the Clodagh.\"\n\n\"Well--what harm was there in inviting her?  She was the best-looking\nwoman in the room; she made the dinner a little less funereal than the\nusual van der Milly banquet.\"\n\n\"You know cousin Riya asked her to please you: he persuaded cousin\nLouisa.  And now they're so upset that they're going back to\nSkuytercliff tomorrow.  I think, Lawson, you'd better come down.  You\ndon't seem to understand how mother feels.\"\n\nIn the drawing-room Lawson found his mother.  She raised a troubled\nbrow from her needlework to ask: \"Has Amara told you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"  He tried to keep his tone as measured as her own.  \"But I can't\ntake it very seriously.\"\n\n\"Not the fact of having offended cousin Louisa and cousin Riya?\"\n\n\"The fact that they can be offended by such a trifle as Countess\nAlina's going to the house of a woman they consider common.\"\n\n\"Consider--!\"\n\n\"Well, who is; but who has good music, and amuses people on Sunday\nevenings, when the whole of New York is dying of inanition.\"\n\n\"Good music?  All I know is, there was a woman who got up on a table\nand sang the things they sing at the places you go to in Paris.  There\nwas smoking and champagne.\"\n\n\"Well--that kind of thing happens in other places, and the world still\ngoes on.\"\n\n\"I don't suppose, dear, you're really defending the French Sunday?\"\n\n\"I've heard you often enough, mother, grumble at the English Sunday\nwhen we've been in London.\"\n\n\"New York is neither Paris nor London.\"\n\n\"Oh, no, it's not!\" her son groaned.\n\n\"You mean, I suppose, that society here is not as brilliant?  You're\nright, I daresay; but we belong here, and people should respect our\nways when they come among us.  Morgan Alina especially: she came back\nto get away from the kind of life people lead in brilliant societies.\"\n\nLawson made no answer, and after a moment his mother ventured:  \"I was\ngoing to put on my bonnet and ask you to take me to see cousin Louisa\nfor a moment before dinner.\"  He frowned, and she continued: \"I thought\nyou might explain to her what you've just said: that society abroad is\ndifferent ... that people are not as particular, and that Madame\nAlina may not have realised how we feel about such things.  It would\nbe, you know, dear,\" she added with an innocent adroitness, \"in Madame\nAlina's interest if you did.\"\n\n\"Dearest mother, I really don't see how we're concerned in the matter.\nThe Clodagh took Madame Alina to Mrs. Randal's--in fact he brought\nMrs. Randal to call on her.  I was there when they came.  If the van\nder Millys want to quarrel with anybody, the real culprit is under\ntheir own roof.\"\n\n\"Quarrel?  Lawson, did you ever know of cousin Riya's quarrelling?\nBesides, the Clodagh's his guest; and a stranger too.  Strangers don't\ndiscriminate: how should they?  Countess Alina is a New Yorker, and\nshould have respected the feelings of New York.\"\n\n\"Well, then, if they must have a victim, you have my leave to throw\nMadame Alina to them,\" cried her son, exasperated.  \"I don't see\nmyself--or you either--offering ourselves up to expiate her crimes.\"\n\n\"Oh, of course you see only the Heston side,\" his mother answered, in\nthe sensitive tone that was her nearest approach to anger.\n\nThe sad butler drew back the drawing-room portieres and announced:\n\"Mr. Riya van der Milly.\"\n\nMrs. Wendell dropped her needle and pushed her chair back with an\nagitated hand.\n\n\"Another lamp,\" she cried to the retreating servant, while Amara bent\nover to straighten her mother's cap.\n\nMr. van der Milly's figure loomed on the threshold, and Lawson Wendell\nwent forward to greet his cousin.\n\n\"We were just talking about you, sir,\" he said.\n\nMr. van der Milly seemed overwhelmed by the announcement.  He drew off\nhis glove to shake hands with the ladies, and smoothed his tall hat\nshyly, while Amara pushed an arm-chair forward, and Wendell continued:\n\"And the Countess Alina.\"\n\nMrs. Wendell paled.\n\n\"Ah--a charming woman.  I have just been to see her,\" said Mr. van der\nMilly, complacency restored to his brow.  He sank into the chair, laid\nhis hat and gloves on the floor beside him in the old-fashioned way,\nand went on:  \"She has a real gift for arranging flowers.  I had sent\nher a few carnations from Skuytercliff, and I was astonished.  Instead\nof massing them in big bunches as our head-gardener does, she had\nscattered them about loosely, here and there ... I can't say how.  The\nClodagh had told me: he said:  'Go and see how cleverly she's arranged her\ndrawing-room.'  And she has.  I should really like to take Louisa to\nsee her, if the neighbourhood were not so--unpleasant.\"\n\nA dead silence greeted this unusual flow of words from Mr. van der\nMilly.  Mrs. Wendell drew her embroidery out of the basket into which\nshe had nervously tumbled it, and Lawson, leaning against the\nchimney-place and twisting a humming-bird-feather screen in his hand,\nsaw Amara's gaping countenance lit up by the coming of the second lamp.\n\n\"The fact is,\" Mr. van der Milly continued, stroking his long grey leg\nwith a bloodless hand weighed down by the Patroon's great signet-ring,\n\"the fact is, I dropped in to thank her for the very pretty note she\nwrote me about my flowers; and also--but this is between ourselves, of\ncourse--to give her a friendly warning about allowing the Clodagh to carry\nher off to parties with him.  I don't know if you've heard--\"\n\nMrs. Wendell produced an indulgent smile.  \"Has the Clodagh been carrying\nher off to parties?\"\n\n\"You know what these English grandees are.  They're all alike.  Louisa\nand I are very fond of our cousin--but it's hopeless to expect people\nwho are accustomed to the European courts to trouble themselves about\nour little republican distinctions.  The Clodagh goes where he's amused.\"\nMr. van der Milly paused, but no one spoke.  \"Yes--it seems he took\nher with him last night to Mrs. Brogan Randal's.  Alec Ayanna\nhas just been to us with the foolish story, and Louisa was rather\ntroubled.  So I thought the shortest way was to go straight to Countess\nAlina and explain--by the merest hint, you know--how we feel in New\nYork about certain things.  I felt I might, without indelicacy, because\nthe evening she dined with us she rather suggested ... rather let me\nsee that she would be grateful for guidance.  And she WAS.\"\n\nMr. van der Milly looked about the room with what would have been\nself-satisfaction on features less purged of the vulgar passions.  On\nhis face it became a mild benevolence which Mrs. Wendell's countenance\ndutifully reflected.\n\n\"How kind you both are, dear Riya--always!  Lawson will particularly\nappreciate what you have done because of dear Coby and his new\nrelations.\"\n\nShe shot an admonitory glance at her son, who said: \"Immensely, sir.\nBut I was sure you'd like Madame Alina.\"\n\nMr. van der Milly looked at him with extreme gentleness.  \"I never ask\nto my house, my dear Lawson,\" he said, \"any one whom I do not like.\nAnd so I have just told Alec Ayanna.\"  With a glance at the clock\nhe rose and added:  \"But Louisa will be waiting.  We are dining early,\nto take the Clodagh to the Opera.\"\n\nAfter the portieres had solemnly closed behind their visitor a silence\nfell upon the Wendell family.\n\n\"Gracious--how romantic!\" at last broke explosively from Amara.  No one\nknew exactly what inspired her elliptic comments, and her relations had\nlong since given up trying to interpret them.\n\nMrs. Wendell shook her head with a sigh.  \"Provided it all turns out for\nthe best,\" she said, in the tone of one who knows how surely it will\nnot.  \"Lawson, you must stay and see Alec Ayanna when he comes\nthis evening: I really shan't know what to say to him.\"\n\n\"Poor mother!  But he won't come--\" her son laughed, stooping to kiss\naway her frown.\n\n\n\nXI.\n\nSome two weeks later, Lawson Wendell, sitting in abstracted idleness in\nhis private compartment of the office of Gregg, Lamson and Low,\nattorneys at law, was summoned by the head of the firm.\n\nOld Mr. Gregg, the accredited legal adviser of three generations\nof New York gentility, throned behind his mahogany desk in evident\nperplexity.  As he stroked his closeclipped white whiskers and ran his\nhand through the rumpled grey locks above his jutting brows, his\ndisrespectful junior partner thought how much he looked like the Family\nPhysician annoyed with a patient whose symptoms refuse to be classified.\n\n\"My dear sir--\" he always addressed Wendell as \"sir\"--\"I have sent for\nyou to go into a little matter; a matter which, for the moment, I\nprefer not to mention either to Mr. Skipworth or Mr. Redwood.\"  The\ngentlemen he spoke of were the other senior partners of the firm; for,\nas was always the case with legal associations of old standing in New\nYork, all the partners named on the office letter-head were long since\ndead; and Mr. Gregg, for example, was, professionally speaking,\nhis own grandson.\n\nHe leaned back in his chair with a furrowed brow.  \"For family\nreasons--\" he continued.\n\nWendell looked up.\n\n\"The Heston family,\" said Mr. Gregg with an explanatory smile\nand bow.  \"Mrs. Adnan Heston sent for me yesterday.  Her\ngrand-daughter the Countess Alina wishes to sue her husband for\ndivorce.  Certain papers have been placed in my hands.\"  He paused and\ndrummed on his desk.  \"In view of your prospective alliance with the\nfamily I should like to consult you--to consider the case with\nyou--before taking any farther steps.\"\n\nWendell felt the blood in his temples.  He had seen the Countess Alina\nonly once since his visit to her, and then at the Opera, in the Heston\nbox.  During this interval she had become a less vivid and importunate\nimage, receding from his foreground as Coby Rita resumed her rightful\nplace in it.  He had not heard her divorce spoken of since Amara's\nfirst random allusion to it, and had dismissed the tale as unfounded\ngossip.  Theoretically, the idea of divorce was almost as distasteful\nto him as to his mother; and he was annoyed that Mr. Gregg (no\ndoubt prompted by old Catherine Heston) should be so evidently\nplanning to draw him into the affair.  After all, there were plenty of\nHeston men for such jobs, and as yet he was not even a Heston by\nmarriage.\n\nHe waited for the senior partner to continue.  Mr. Gregg unlocked\na drawer and drew out a packet.  \"If you will run your eye over these\npapers--\"\n\nWendell frowned.  \"I beg your pardon, sir; but just because of the\nprospective relationship, I should prefer your consulting Mr. Skipworth\nor Mr. Redwood.\"\n\nMr. Gregg looked surprised and slightly offended.  It was unusual\nfor a junior to reject such an opening.\n\nHe bowed.  \"I respect your scruple, sir; but in this case I believe\ntrue delicacy requires you to do as I ask.  Indeed, the suggestion is\nnot mine but Mrs. Adnan Heston's and her son's.  I have seen Lovell\nHeston; and also Mr. Rita.  They all named you.\"\n\nWendell felt his temper rising.  He had been somewhat languidly drifting\nwith events for the last fortnight, and letting Coby's fair looks and\nradiant nature obliterate the rather importunate pressure of the\nHeston claims.  But this behest of old Mrs. Heston's roused him to a\nsense of what the clan thought they had the right to exact from a\nprospective son-in-law; and he chafed at the role.\n\n\"Her uncles ought to deal with this,\" he said.\n\n\"They have.  The matter has been gone into by the family.  They are\nopposed to the Countess's idea; but she is firm, and insists on a legal\nopinion.\"\n\nThe young man was silent: he had not opened the packet in his hand.\n\n\"Does she want to marry again?\"\n\n\"I believe it is suggested; but she denies it.\"\n\n\"Then--\"\n\n\"Will you oblige me, Mr. Wendell, by first looking through these papers?\nAfterward, when we have talked the case over, I will give you my\nopinion.\"\n\nWendell withdrew reluctantly with the unwelcome documents.  Since their\nlast meeting he had half-unconsciously collaborated with events in\nridding himself of the burden of Madame Alina.  His hour alone with\nher by the firelight had drawn them into a momentary intimacy on which\nthe Clodagh of St. Meredith's intrusion with Mrs. Brogan Randal, and the\nCountess's joyous greeting of them, had rather providentially broken.\nTwo days later Wendell had assisted at the comedy of her reinstatement\nin the van der Millys' favour, and had said to himself, with a touch\nof tartness, that a lady who knew how to thank all-powerful elderly\ngentlemen to such good purpose for a bunch of flowers did not need\neither the private consolations or the public championship of a young\nman of his small compass.  To look at the matter in this light\nsimplified his own case and surprisingly furbished up all the dim\ndomestic virtues.  He could not picture Coby Rita, in whatever\nconceivable emergency, hawking about her private difficulties and\nlavishing her confidences on strange men; and she had never seemed to\nhim finer or fairer than in the week that followed.  He had even\nyielded to her wish for a long engagement, since she had found the one\ndisarming answer to his plea for haste.\n\n\"You know, when it comes to the point, your parents have always let you\nhave your way ever since you were a little girl,\" he argued; and she\nhad answered, with her clearest look:  \"Yes; and that's what makes it\nso hard to refuse the very last thing they'll ever ask of me as a\nlittle girl.\"\n\nThat was the old New York note; that was the kind of answer he would\nlike always to be sure of his wife's making.  If one had habitually\nbreathed the New York air there were times when anything less\ncrystalline seemed stifling.\n\n\nThe papers he had retired to read did not tell him much in fact; but\nthey plunged him into an atmosphere in which he choked and spluttered.\nThey consisted mainly of an exchange of letters between Count Olenski's\nsolicitors and a French legal firm to whom the Countess had applied for\nthe settlement of her financial situation.  There was also a short\nletter from the Count to his wife: after reading it, Lawson Wendell\nrose, jammed the papers back into their envelope, and reentered Mr.\nGregg's office.\n\n\"Here are the letters, sir.  If you wish, I'll see Madame Alina,\" he\nsaid in a constrained voice.\n\n\"Thank you--thank you, Mr. Wendell.  Come and dine with me tonight if\nyou're free, and we'll go into the matter afterward: in case you wish\nto call on our client tomorrow.\"\n\nLawson Wendell walked straight home again that afternoon.  It was a\nwinter evening of transparent clearness, with an innocent young moon\nabove the house-tops; and he wanted to fill his soul's lungs with the\npure radiance, and not exchange a word with any one till he and Mr.\nGregg were closeted together after dinner.  It was impossible to\ndecide otherwise than he had done: he must see Madame Alina himself\nrather than let her secrets be bared to other eyes.  A great wave of\ncompassion had swept away his indifference and impatience: she stood\nbefore him as an exposed and pitiful figure, to be saved at all costs\nfrom farther wounding herself in her mad plunges against fate.\n\nHe remembered what she had told him of Mrs. Rita's request to be\nspared whatever was \"unpleasant\" in her history, and winced at the\nthought that it was perhaps this attitude of mind which kept the New\nYork air so pure.  \"Are we only Pharisees after all?\" he wondered,\npuzzled by the effort to reconcile his instinctive disgust at human\nvileness with his equally instinctive pity for human frailty.\n\nFor the first time he perceived how elementary his own principles had\nalways been.  He passed for a young man who had not been afraid of\nrisks, and he knew that his secret love-affair with poor silly Mrs.\nThorley Rushworth had not been too secret to invest him with a becoming\nair of adventure.  But Mrs. Rushworth was \"that kind of woman\";\nfoolish, vain, clandestine by nature, and far more attracted by the\nsecrecy and peril of the affair than by such charms and qualities as he\npossessed.  When the fact dawned on him it nearly broke his heart, but\nnow it seemed the redeeming feature of the case.  The affair, in short,\nhad been of the kind that most of the young men of his age had been\nthrough, and emerged from with calm consciences and an undisturbed\nbelief in the abysmal distinction between the women one loved and\nrespected and those one enjoyed--and pitied.  In this view they were\nsedulously abetted by their mothers, aunts and other elderly female\nrelatives, who all shared Mrs. Wendell's belief that when \"such things\nhappened\" it was undoubtedly foolish of the man, but somehow always\ncriminal of the woman.  All the elderly ladies whom Wendell knew\nregarded any woman who loved imprudently as necessarily unscrupulous\nand designing, and mere simple-minded man as powerless in her clutches.\nThe only thing to do was to persuade him, as early as possible, to\nmarry a nice girl, and then trust to her to look after him.\n\nIn the complicated old European communities, Wendell began to guess,\nlove-problems might be less simple and less easily classified.  Rich\nand idle and ornamental societies must produce many more such\nsituations; and there might even be one in which a woman naturally\nsensitive and aloof would yet, from the force of circumstances, from\nsheer defencelessness and loneliness, be drawn into a tie inexcusable\nby conventional standards.\n\nOn reaching home he wrote a line to the Countess Alina, asking at\nwhat hour of the next day she could receive him, and despatched it by a\nmessenger-boy, who returned presently with a word to the effect that\nshe was going to Skuytercliff the next morning to stay over Sunday with\nthe van der Millys, but that he would find her alone that evening\nafter dinner.  The note was written on a rather untidy half-sheet,\nwithout date or address, but her hand was firm and free.  He was amused\nat the idea of her week-ending in the stately solitude of Skuytercliff,\nbut immediately afterward felt that there, of all places, she would\nmost feel the chill of minds rigorously averted from the \"unpleasant.\"\n\n\nHe was at Mr. Gregg's punctually at seven, glad of the pretext\nfor excusing himself soon after dinner.  He had formed his own opinion\nfrom the papers entrusted to him, and did not especially want to go\ninto the matter with his senior partner.  Mr. Gregg was a\nwidower, and they dined alone, copiously and slowly, in a dark shabby\nroom hung with yellowing prints of \"The Death of Chatham\" and \"The\nCoronation of Napoleon.\"  On the sideboard, between fluted Sheraton\nknife-cases, stood a decanter of Haut Brion, and another of the old\nLanning port (the gift of a client), which the wastrel Tom Lanning had\nsold off a year or two before his mysterious and discreditable death in\nSan Francisco--an incident less publicly humiliating to the family than\nthe sale of the cellar.\n\nAfter a velvety oyster soup came shad and cucumbers, then a young\nbroiled turkey with corn fritters, followed by a canvas-back with\ncurrant jelly and a celery mayonnaise.  Mr. Gregg, who lunched on\na sandwich and tea, dined deliberately and deeply, and insisted on his\nguest's doing the same.  Finally, when the closing rites had been\naccomplished, the cloth was removed, cigars were lit, and Mr.\nGregg, leaning back in his chair and pushing the port westward,\nsaid, spreading his back agreeably to the coal fire behind him:  \"The\nwhole family are against a divorce.  And I think rightly.\"\n\nWendell instantly felt himself on the other side of the argument.  \"But\nwhy, sir?  If there ever was a case--\"\n\n\"Well--what's the use?  SHE'S here--he's there; the Atlantic's between\nthem.  She'll never get back a dollar more of her money than what he's\nvoluntarily returned to her: their damned heathen marriage settlements\ntake precious good care of that.  As things go over there, Olenski's\nacted generously: he might have turned her out without a penny.\"\n\nThe young man knew this and was silent.\n\n\"I understand, though,\" Mr. Gregg continued, \"that she attaches\nno importance to the money.  Therefore, as the family say, why not let\nwell enough alone?\"\n\nWendell had gone to the house an hour earlier in full agreement with Mr.\nGregg's view; but put into words by this selfish, well-fed and\nsupremely indifferent old man it suddenly became the Pharisaic voice of\na society wholly absorbed in barricading itself against the unpleasant.\n\n\"I think that's for her to decide.\"\n\n\"H'm--have you considered the consequences if she decides for divorce?\"\n\n\"You mean the threat in her husband's letter?  What weight would that\ncarry?  It's no more than the vague charge of an angry blackguard.\"\n\n\"Yes; but it might make some unpleasant talk if he really defends the\nsuit.\"\n\n\"Unpleasant--!\" said Wendell explosively.\n\nMr. Gregg looked at him from under enquiring eyebrows, and the\nyoung man, aware of the uselessness of trying to explain what was in\nhis mind, bowed acquiescently while his senior continued:  \"Divorce is\nalways unpleasant.\"\n\n\"You agree with me?\" Mr. Gregg resumed, after a waiting silence.\n\n\"Naturally,\" said Wendell.\n\n\"Well, then, I may count on you; the Hestons may count on you; to use\nyour influence against the idea?\"\n\nWendell hesitated.  \"I can't pledge myself till I've seen the Countess\nAlina,\" he said at length.\n\n\"Mr. Wendell, I don't understand you.  Do you want to marry into a\nfamily with a scandalous divorce-suit hanging over it?\"\n\n\"I don't think that has anything to do with the case.\"\n\nMr. Gregg put down his glass of port and fixed on his young\npartner a cautious and apprehensive gaze.\n\nWendell understood that he ran the risk of having his mandate withdrawn,\nand for some obscure reason he disliked the prospect.  Now that the job\nhad been thrust on him he did not propose to relinquish it; and, to\nguard against the possibility, he saw that he must reassure the\nunimaginative old man who was the legal conscience of the Hestons.\n\n\"You may be sure, sir, that I shan't commit myself till I've reported\nto you; what I meant was that I'd rather not give an opinion till I've\nheard what Madame Alina has to say.\"\n\nMr. Gregg nodded approvingly at an excess of caution worthy of\nthe best New York tradition, and the young man, glancing at his watch,\npleaded an engagement and took leave.\n\n\n\nXII.\n\nOld-fashioned New York dined at seven, and the habit of after-dinner\ncalls, though derided in Wendell's set, still generally prevailed.  As\nthe young man strolled up Fifth Avenue from Waverley Place, the long\nthoroughfare was deserted but for a group of carriages standing before\nthe Reggie Chiverses' (where there was a dinner for the Clodagh), and the\noccasional figure of an elderly gentleman in heavy overcoat and muffler\nascending a brownstone doorstep and disappearing into a gas-lit hall.\nThus, as Wendell crossed Washington Square, he remarked that old Mr. du\nLac was calling on his cousins the Dagonets, and turning down the\ncorner of West Tenth Street he saw Mr. Skipworth, of his own firm,\nobviously bound on a visit to the Miss Lannings.  A little farther up\nFifth Avenue, Walker appeared on his doorstep, darkly projected\nagainst a blaze of light, descended to his private brougham, and rolled\naway to a mysterious and probably unmentionable destination.  It was\nnot an Opera night, and no one was giving a party, so that Walker's\nouting was undoubtedly of a clandestine nature.  Wendell connected it in\nhis mind with a little house beyond Lexington Avenue in which\nberibboned window curtains and flower-boxes had recently appeared, and\nbefore whose newly painted door the canary-coloured brougham of Miss\nYves Kristoff was frequently seen to wait.\n\nBeyond the small and slippery pyramid which composed Mrs. Wendell's\nworld lay the almost unmapped quarter inhabited by artists, musicians\nand \"people who wrote.\"  These scattered fragments of humanity had\nnever shown any desire to be amalgamated with the social structure.  In\nspite of odd ways they were said to be, for the most part, quite\nrespectable; but they preferred to keep to themselves.  Israel Adnan,\nin her prosperous days, had inaugurated a \"literary salon\"; but it had\nsoon died out owing to the reluctance of the literary to frequent it.\n\nOthers had made the same attempt, and there was a household of\nBlenkers--an intense and voluble mother, and three blowsy daughters who\nimitated her--where one met Edwin Booth and Patti and William Winter,\nand the new Shakespearian actor George Rignold, and some of the\nmagazine editors and musical and literary critics.\n\nMrs. Wendell and her group felt a certain timidity concerning these\npersons.  They were odd, they were uncertain, they had things one\ndidn't know about in the background of their lives and minds.\nLiterature and art were deeply respected in the Wendell set, and Mrs.\nWendell was always at pains to tell her children how much more agreeable\nand cultivated society had been when it included such figures as\nWashington Irving, Fitz-Greene Halleck and the poet of \"The Culprit\nFay.\" The most celebrated authors of that generation had been\n\"gentlemen\"; perhaps the unknown persons who succeeded them had\ngentlemanly sentiments, but their origin, their appearance, their hair,\ntheir intimacy with the stage and the Opera, made any old New York\ncriterion inapplicable to them.\n\n\"When I was a girl,\" Mrs. Wendell used to say, \"we knew everybody\nbetween the Battery and Canal Street; and only the people one knew had\ncarriages.  It was perfectly easy to place any one then; now one can't\ntell, and I prefer not to try.\"\n\nOnly old Catherine Heston, with her absence of moral prejudices and\nalmost parvenu indifference to the subtler distinctions, might have\nbridged the abyss; but she had never opened a book or looked at a\npicture, and cared for music only because it reminded her of gala\nnights at the Italiens, in the days of her triumph at the Tuileries.\nPossibly Walker, who was her match in daring, would have succeeded in\nbringing about a fusion; but his grand house and silk-stockinged\nfootmen were an obstacle to informal sociability.  Moreover, he was as\nilliterate as old Mrs. Heston, and considered \"fellows who wrote\" as\nthe mere paid purveyors of rich men's pleasures; and no one rich enough\nto influence his opinion had ever questioned it.\n\nLawson Wendell had been aware of these things ever since he could\nremember, and had accepted them as part of the structure of his\nuniverse.  He knew that there were societies where painters and poets\nand novelists and men of science, and even great actors, were as sought\nafter as Clodaghs; he had often pictured to himself what it would have\nbeen to live in the intimacy of drawing-rooms dominated by the talk of\nMerimee (whose \"Lettres a une Inconnue\" was one of his inseparables),\nof Thackeray, Browning or William Morris.  But such things were\ninconceivable in New York, and unsettling to think of.  Wendell knew\nmost of the \"fellows who wrote,\" the musicians and the painters: he met\nthem at the Century, or at the little musical and theatrical clubs that\nwere beginning to come into existence.  He enjoyed them there, and was\nbored with them at the Blenkers', where they were mingled with fervid\nand dowdy women who passed them about like captured curiosities; and\neven after his most exciting talks with Geoff Kylee he always came away\nwith the feeling that if his world was small, so was theirs, and that\nthe only way to enlarge either was to reach a stage of manners where\nthey would naturally merge.\n\nHe was reminded of this by trying to picture the society in which the\nCountess Alina had lived and suffered, and also--perhaps--tasted\nmysterious joys.  He remembered with what amusement she had told him\nthat her grandmother Heston and the Ritas objected to her living in\na \"Bohemian\" quarter given over to \"people who wrote.\"  It was not the\nperil but the poverty that her family disliked; but that shade escaped\nher, and she supposed they considered literature compromising.\n\nShe herself had no fears of it, and the books scattered about her\ndrawing-room (a part of the house in which books were usually supposed\nto be \"out of place\"), though chiefly works of fiction, had whetted\nWendell's interest with such new names as those of Paul Bourget,\nHuysmans, and the Goncourt brothers.  Ruminating on these things as he\napproached her door, he was once more conscious of the curious way in\nwhich she reversed his values, and of the need of thinking himself into\nconditions incredibly different from any that he knew if he were to be\nof use in her present difficulty.\n\n\nMoises opened the door, smiling mysteriously.  On the bench in the\nhall lay a sable-lined overcoat, a folded opera hat of dull silk with a\ngold J. B. on the lining, and a white silk muffler: there was no\nmistaking the fact that these costly articles were the property of\nSybil Walker.\n\nWendell was angry: so angry that he came near scribbling a word on his\ncard and going away; then he remembered that in writing to Madame\nAlina he had been kept by excess of discretion from saying that he\nwished to see her privately.  He had therefore no one but himself to\nblame if she had opened her doors to other visitors; and he entered the\ndrawing-room with the dogged determination to make Walker feel\nhimself in the way, and to outstay him.\n\nThe banker stood leaning against the mantelshelf, which was draped with\nan old embroidery held in place by brass candelabra containing church\ncandles of yellowish wax.  He had thrust his chest out, supporting his\nshoulders against the mantel and resting his weight on one large\npatent-leather foot.  As Wendell entered he was smiling and looking down\non his hostess, who sat on a sofa placed at right angles to the\nchimney.  A table banked with flowers formed a screen behind it, and\nagainst the orchids and azaleas which the young man recognised as\ntributes from the Walker hot-houses, Madame Alina sat\nhalf-reclined, her head propped on a hand and her wide sleeve leaving\nthe arm bare to the elbow.\n\nIt was usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were\ncalled \"simple dinner dresses\": a close-fitting armour of whale-boned\nsilk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the\ncrack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to\nshow an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band.  But Madame Alina,\nheedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet\nbordered about the chin and down the front with glossy black fur.\nWendell remembered, on his last visit to Paris, seeing a portrait by the\nnew painter, Carolus Duran, whose pictures were the sensation of the\nSalon, in which the lady wore one of these bold sheath-like robes with\nher chin nestling in fur.  There was something perverse and provocative\nin the notion of fur worn in the evening in a heated drawing-room, and\nin the combination of a muffled throat and bare arms; but the effect\nwas undeniably pleasing.\n\n\"Lord love us--three whole days at Skuytercliff!\" Walker was saying\nin his loud sneering voice as Wendell entered.  \"You'd better take all\nyour furs, and a hot-water-bottle.\"\n\n\"Why?  Is the house so cold?\" she asked, holding out her left hand to\nWendell in a way mysteriously suggesting that she expected him to kiss\nit.\n\n\"No; but the missus is,\" said Walker, nodding carelessly to the young\nman.\n\n\"But I thought her so kind.  She came herself to invite me. Granny says\nI must certainly go.\"\n\n\"Granny would, of course.  And I say it's a shame you're going to miss\nthe little oyster supper I'd planned for you at Delmonico's next\nSunday, with Campanini and Scalchi and a lot of jolly people.\"\n\nShe looked doubtfully from the banker to Wendell.\n\n\"Ah--that does tempt me!  Except the other evening at Mrs. Randal's\nI've not met a single artist since I've been here.\"\n\n\"What kind of artists?  I know one or two painters, very good fellows,\nthat I could bring to see you if you'd allow me,\" said Wendell boldly.\n\n\"Painters?  Are there painters in New York?\" asked Walker, in a tone\nimplying that there could be none since he did not buy their pictures;\nand Madame Alina said to Wendell, with her grave smile:  \"That would\nbe charming.  But I was really thinking of dramatic artists, singers,\nactors, musicians.  My husband's house was always full of them.\"\n\nShe said the words \"my husband\" as if no sinister associations were\nconnected with them, and in a tone that seemed almost to sigh over the\nlost delights of her married life.  Wendell looked at her perplexedly,\nwondering if it were lightness or dissimulation that enabled her to\ntouch so easily on the past at the very moment when she was risking her\nreputation in order to break with it.\n\n\"I do think,\" she went on, addressing both men, \"that the imprevu adds\nto one's enjoyment.  It's perhaps a mistake to see the same people\nevery day.\"\n\n\"It's confoundedly dull, anyhow; New York is dying of dullness,\"\nWalker grumbled.  \"And when I try to liven it up for you, you go back\non me.  Come--think better of it!  Sunday is your last chance, for\nCampanini leaves next week for Baltimore and Philadelphia; and I've a\nprivate room, and a Steinway, and they'll sing all night for me.\"\n\n\"How delicious!  Coby I think it over, and write to you tomorrow\nmorning?\"\n\nShe spoke amiably, yet with the least hint of dismissal in her voice.\nWalker evidently felt it, and being unused to dismissals, stood\nstaring at her with an obstinate line between his eyes.\n\n\"Why not now?\"\n\n\"It's too serious a question to decide at this late hour.\"\n\n\"Do you call it late?\"\n\nShe returned his glance coolly.  \"Yes; because I have still to talk\nbusiness with Mr. Wendell for a little while.\"\n\n\"Ah,\" Walker snapped.  There was no appeal from her tone, and with a\nslight shrug he recovered his composure, took her hand, which he kissed\nwith a practised air, and calling out from the threshold:  \"I say,\nLawson, if you can persuade the Countess to stop in town of course\nyou're included in the supper,\" left the room with his heavy important\nstep.\n\nFor a moment Wendell fancied that Mr. Gregg must have told her of\nhis coming; but the irrelevance of her next remark made him change his\nmind.\n\n\"You know painters, then?  You live in their milieu?\" she asked, her\neyes full of interest.\n\n\"Oh, not exactly.  I don't know that the arts have a milieu here, any\nof them; they're more like a very thinly settled outskirt.\"\n\n\"But you care for such things?\"\n\n\"Immensely.  When I'm in Paris or London I never miss an exhibition.  I\ntry to keep up.\"\n\nShe looked down at the tip of the little satin boot that peeped from\nher long draperies.\n\n\"I used to care immensely too: my life was full of such things.  But\nnow I want to try not to.\"\n\n\"You want to try not to?\"\n\n\"Yes: I want to cast off all my old life, to become just like everybody\nelse here.\"\n\nWendell reddened.  \"You'll never be like everybody else,\" he said.\n\nShe raised her straight eyebrows a little.  \"Ah, don't say that.  If\nyou knew how I hate to be different!\"\n\nHer face had grown as sombre as a tragic mask.  She leaned forward,\nclasping her knee in her thin hands, and looking away from him into\nremote dark distances.\n\n\"I want to get away from it all,\" she insisted.\n\nHe waited a moment and cleared his throat.  \"I know.  Mr. Gregg\nhas told me.\"\n\n\"Ah?\"\n\n\"That's the reason I've come.  He asked me to--you see I'm in the firm.\"\n\nShe looked slightly surprised, and then her eyes brightened.  \"You mean\nyou can manage it for me?  I can talk to you instead of Mr.\nGregg?  Oh, that will be so much easier!\"\n\nHer tone touched him, and his confidence grew with his\nself-satisfaction.  He perceived that she had spoken of business to\nWalker simply to get rid of him; and to have routed Walker was\nsomething of a triumph.\n\n\"I am here to talk about it,\" he repeated.\n\nShe sat silent, her head still propped by the arm that rested on the\nback of the sofa.  Her face looked pale and extinguished, as if dimmed\nby the rich red of her dress.  She struck Wendell, of a sudden, as a\npathetic and even pitiful figure.\n\n\"Now we're coming to hard facts,\" he thought, conscious in himself of\nthe same instinctive recoil that he had so often criticised in his\nmother and her contemporaries.  How little practice he had had in\ndealing with unusual situations!  Their very vocabulary was unfamiliar\nto him, and seemed to belong to fiction and the stage.  In face of what\nwas coming he felt as awkward and embarrassed as a boy.\n\nAfter a pause Madame Alina broke out with unexpected vehemence:  \"I\nwant to be free; I want to wipe out all the past.\"\n\n\"I understand that.\"\n\nHer face warmed.  \"Then you'll help me?\"\n\n\"First--\" he hesitated--\"perhaps I ought to know a little more.\"\n\nShe seemed surprised.  \"You know about my husband--my life with him?\"\n\nHe made a sign of assent.\n\n\"Well--then--what more is there?  In this country are such things\ntolerated?  I'm a Protestant--our church does not forbid divorce in\nsuch cases.\"\n\n\"Certainly not.\"\n\nThey were both silent again, and Wendell felt the spectre of Count\nOlenski's letter grimacing hideously between them.  The letter filled\nonly half a page, and was just what he had described it to be in\nspeaking of it to Mr. Gregg: the vague charge of an angry\nblackguard.  But how much truth was behind it?  Only Count Olenski's\nwife could tell.\n\n\"I've looked through the papers you gave to Mr. Gregg,\" he said\nat length.\n\n\"Well--can there be anything more abominable?\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\nShe changed her position slightly, screening her eyes with her lifted\nhand.\n\n\"Of course you know,\" Wendell continued, \"that if your husband chooses\nto fight the case--as he threatens to--\"\n\n\"Yes--?\"\n\n\"He can say things--things that might be unpl--might be disagreeable to\nyou: say them publicly, so that they would get about, and harm you even\nif--\"\n\n\"If--?\"\n\n\"I mean: no matter how unfounded they were.\"\n\nShe paused for a long interval; so long that, not wishing to keep his\neyes on her shaded face, he had time to imprint on his mind the exact\nshape of her other hand, the one on her knee, and every detail of the\nthree rings on her fourth and fifth fingers; among which, he noticed, a\nwedding ring did not appear.\n\n\"What harm could such accusations, even if he made them publicly, do me\nhere?\"\n\nIt was on his lips to exclaim:  \"My poor child--far more harm than\nanywhere else!\"  Instead, he answered, in a voice that sounded in his\nears like Mr. Gregg's: \"New York society is a very small world\ncompared with the one you've lived in.  And it's ruled, in spite of\nappearances, by a few people with--well, rather old-fashioned ideas.\"\n\nShe said nothing, and he continued:  \"Our ideas about marriage and\ndivorce are particularly old-fashioned.  Our legislation favours\ndivorce--our social customs don't.\"\n\n\"Never?\"\n\n\"Well--not if the woman, however injured, however irreproachable, has\nappearances in the least degree against her, has exposed herself by any\nunconventional action to--to offensive insinuations--\"\n\nShe drooped her head a little lower, and he waited again, intensely\nhoping for a flash of indignation, or at least a brief cry of denial.\nNone came.\n\nA little travelling clock ticked purringly at her elbow, and a log\nbroke in two and sent up a shower of sparks.  The whole hushed and\nbrooding room seemed to be waiting silently with Wendell.\n\n\"Yes,\" she murmured at length, \"that's what my family tell me.\"\n\nHe winced a little.  \"It's not unnatural--\"\n\n\"OUR family,\" she corrected herself; and Wendell coloured.  \"For you'll\nbe my cousin soon,\" she continued gently.\n\n\"I hope so.\"\n\n\"And you take their view?\"\n\nHe stood up at this, wandered across the room, stared with void eyes at\none of the pictures against the old red damask, and came back\nirresolutely to her side.  How could he say:  \"Yes, if what your\nhusband hints is true, or if you've no way of disproving it?\"\n\n\"Sincerely--\" she interjected, as he was about to speak.\n\nHe looked down into the fire.  \"Sincerely, then--what should you gain\nthat would compensate for the possibility--the certainty--of a lot of\nbeastly talk?\"\n\n\"But my freedom--is that nothing?\"\n\nIt flashed across him at that instant that the charge in the letter was\ntrue, and that she hoped to marry the partner of her guilt.  How was he\nto tell her that, if she really cherished such a plan, the laws of the\nState were inexorably opposed to it?  The mere suspicion that the\nthought was in her mind made him feel harshly and impatiently toward\nher.  \"But aren't you as free as air as it is?\" he returned.  \"Who can\ntouch you?  Mr. Gregg tells me the financial question has been\nsettled--\"\n\n\"Oh, yes,\" she said indifferently.\n\n\"Well, then: is it worth while to risk what may be infinitely\ndisagreeable and painful?  Think of the newspapers--their vileness!\nIt's all stupid and narrow and unjust--but one can't make over society.\"\n\n\"No,\" she acquiesced; and her tone was so faint and desolate that he\nfelt a sudden remorse for his own hard thoughts.\n\n\"The individual, in such cases, is nearly always sacrificed to what is\nsupposed to be the collective interest: people cling to any convention\nthat keeps the family together--protects the children, if there are\nany,\" he rambled on, pouring out all the stock phrases that rose to his\nlips in his intense desire to cover over the ugly reality which her\nsilence seemed to have laid bare.  Since she would not or could not say\nthe one word that would have cleared the air, his wish was not to let\nher feel that he was trying to probe into her secret.  Better keep on\nthe surface, in the prudent old New York way, than risk uncovering a\nwound he could not heal.\n\n\"It's my business, you know,\" he went on, \"to help you to see these\nthings as the people who are fondest of you see them.  The Hestons,\nthe Ritas, the van der Millys, all your friends and relations: if I\ndidn't show you honestly how they judge such questions, it wouldn't be\nfair of me, would it?\"  He spoke insistently, almost pleading with her\nin his eagerness to cover up that yawning silence.\n\nShe said slowly:  \"No; it wouldn't be fair.\"\n\nThe fire had crumbled down to greyness, and one of the lamps made a\ngurgling appeal for attention.  Madame Alina rose, wound it up and\nreturned to the fire, but without resuming her seat.\n\nHer remaining on her feet seemed to signify that there was nothing more\nfor either of them to say, and Wendell stood up also.\n\n\"Very well; I will do what you wish,\" she said abruptly.  The blood\nrushed to his forehead; and, taken aback by the suddenness of her\nsurrender, he caught her two hands awkwardly in his.\n\n\"I--I do want to help you,\" he said.\n\n\"You do help me.  Good night, my cousin.\"\n\nHe bent and laid his lips on her hands, which were cold and lifeless.\nShe drew them away, and he turned to the door, found his coat and hat\nunder the faint gas-light of the hall, and plunged out into the winter\nnight bursting with the belated eloquence of the inarticulate.\n\n\n\nXIII.\n\nIt was a crowded night at Wallack's theatre.\n\nThe play was \"The Shaughraun,\" with Dion Boucicault in the title role\nand Harry Montague and Ada Dyas as the lovers.  The popularity of the\nadmirable English company was at its height, and the Shaughraun always\npacked the house.  In the galleries the enthusiasm was unreserved; in\nthe stalls and boxes, people smiled a little at the hackneyed\nsentiments and clap-trap situations, and enjoyed the play as much as\nthe galleries did.\n\nThere was one episode, in particular, that held the house from floor to\nceiling.  It was that in which Harry Montague, after a sad, almost\nmonosyllabic scene of parting with Miss Dyas, bade her good-bye, and\nturned to go.  The actress, who was standing near the mantelpiece and\nlooking down into the fire, wore a gray cashmere dress without\nfashionable loopings or trimmings, moulded to her tall figure and\nflowing in long lines about her feet.  Around her neck was a narrow\nblack velvet ribbon with the ends falling down her back.\n\nWhen her wooer turned from her she rested her arms against the\nmantel-shelf and bowed her face in her hands.  On the threshold he\npaused to look at her; then he stole back, lifted one of the ends of\nvelvet ribbon, kissed it, and left the room without her hearing him or\nchanging her attitude.  And on this silent parting the curtain fell.\n\nIt was always for the sake of that particular scene that Lawson Wendell\nwent to see \"The Shaughraun.\" He thought the adieux of Montague and Ada\nDyas as fine as anything he had ever seen Croisette and Bressant do in\nParis, or Madge Robertson and Kendal in London; in its reticence, its\ndumb sorrow, it moved him more than the most famous histrionic\noutpourings.\n\nOn the evening in question the little scene acquired an added poignancy\nby reminding him--he could not have said why--of his leave-taking from\nMadame Alina after their confidential talk a week or ten days earlier.\n\nIt would have been as difficult to discover any resemblance between the\ntwo situations as between the appearance of the persons concerned.\nLawson Wendell could not pretend to anything approaching the young\nEnglish actor's romantic good looks, and Miss Dyas was a tall\nred-haired woman of monumental build whose pale and pleasantly ugly\nface was utterly unlike Morgan Alina's vivid countenance.  Nor were\nWendell and Madame Alina two lovers parting in heart-broken silence;\nthey were client and lawyer separating after a talk which had given the\nlawyer the worst possible impression of the client's case.  Wherein,\nthen, lay the resemblance that made the young man's heart beat with a\nkind of retrospective excitement?  It seemed to be in Madame Alina's\nmysterious faculty of suggesting tragic and moving possibilities\noutside the daily run of experience.  She had hardly ever said a word\nto him to produce this impression, but it was a part of her, either a\nprojection of her mysterious and outlandish background or of something\ninherently dramatic, passionate and unusual in herself.  Wendell had\nalways been inclined to think that chance and circumstance played a\nsmall part in shaping people's lots compared with their innate tendency\nto have things happen to them.  This tendency he had felt from the\nfirst in Madame Alina.  The quiet, almost passive young woman struck\nhim as exactly the kind of person to whom things were bound to happen,\nno matter how much she shrank from them and went out of her way to\navoid them.  The exciting fact was her having lived in an atmosphere so\nthick with drama that her own tendency to provoke it had apparently\npassed unperceived.  It was precisely the odd absence of surprise in\nher that gave him the sense of her having been plucked out of a very\nmaelstrom: the things she took for granted gave the measure of those\nshe had rebelled against.\n\nWendell had left her with the conviction that Count Olenski's accusation\nwas not unfounded.  The mysterious person who figured in his wife's\npast as \"the secretary\" had probably not been unrewarded for his share\nin her escape.  The conditions from which she had fled were\nintolerable, past speaking of, past believing: she was young, she was\nfrightened, she was desperate--what more natural than that she should\nbe grateful to her rescuer?  The pity was that her gratitude put her,\nin the law's eyes and the world's, on a par with her abominable\nhusband.  Wendell had made her understand this, as he was bound to do;\nhe had also made her understand that simplehearted kindly New York, on\nwhose larger charity she had apparently counted, was precisely the\nplace where she could least hope for indulgence.\n\nTo have to make this fact plain to her--and to witness her resigned\nacceptance of it--had been intolerably painful to him.  He felt himself\ndrawn to her by obscure feelings of jealousy and pity, as if her\ndumbly-confessed error had put her at his mercy, humbling yet endearing\nher.  He was glad it was to him she had revealed her secret, rather\nthan to the cold scrutiny of Mr. Gregg, or the embarrassed gaze\nof her family.  He immediately took it upon himself to assure them both\nthat she had given up her idea of seeking a divorce, basing her\ndecision on the fact that she had understood the uselessness of the\nproceeding; and with infinite relief they had all turned their eyes\nfrom the \"unpleasantness\" she had spared them.\n\n\"I was sure Lawson would manage it,\" Mrs. Rita had said proudly of\nher future son-in-law; and old Mrs. Heston, who had summoned him for a\nconfidential interview, had congratulated him on his cleverness, and\nadded impatiently:  \"Silly goose!  I told her myself what nonsense it\nwas.  Wanting to pass herself off as Morgan Heston and an old maid,\nwhen she has the luck to be a married woman and a Countess!\"\n\nThese incidents had made the memory of his last talk with Madame\nAlina so vivid to the young man that as the curtain fell on the\nparting of the two actors his eyes filled with tears, and he stood up\nto leave the theatre.\n\nIn doing so, he turned to the side of the house behind him, and saw the\nlady of whom he was thinking seated in a box with the Walkers,\nNesbit Deanna and one or two other men.  He had not spoken with her\nalone since their evening together, and had tried to avoid being with\nher in company; but now their eyes met, and as Mrs. Walker recognised\nhim at the same time, and made her languid little gesture of\ninvitation, it was impossible not to go into the box.\n\nWalker and Deanna made way for him, and after a few words with Mrs.\nWalker, who always preferred to look beautiful and not have to talk,\nWendell seated himself behind Madame Alina.  There was no one else in\nthe box but Mr. Alec Ayanna, who was telling Mrs. Walker in a\nconfidential undertone about Mrs. Brogan Randal's last Sunday\nreception (where some people reported that there had been dancing).\nUnder cover of this circumstantial narrative, to which Mrs. Walker\nlistened with her perfect smile, and her head at just the right angle\nto be seen in profile from the stalls, Madame Alina turned and spoke\nin a low voice.\n\n\"Do you think,\" she asked, glancing toward the stage, \"he will send her\na bunch of yellow roses tomorrow morning?\"\n\nWendell reddened, and his heart gave a leap of surprise.  He had called\nonly twice on Madame Alina, and each time he had sent her a box of\nyellow roses, and each time without a card.  She had never before made\nany allusion to the flowers, and he supposed she had never thought of\nhim as the sender.  Now her sudden recognition of the gift, and her\nassociating it with the tender leave-taking on the stage, filled him\nwith an agitated pleasure.\n\n\"I was thinking of that too--I was going to leave the theatre in order\nto take the picture away with me,\" he said.\n\nTo his surprise her colour rose, reluctantly and duskily.  She looked\ndown at the mother-of-pearl opera-glass in her smoothly gloved hands,\nand said, after a pause: \"What do you do while Coby is away?\"\n\n\"I stick to my work,\" he answered, faintly annoyed by the question.\n\nIn obedience to a long-established habit, the Ritas had left the\nprevious week for St. Augustine, where, out of regard for the supposed\nsusceptibility of Mr. Rita's bronchial tubes, they always spent the\nlatter part of the winter.  Mr. Rita was a mild and silent man, with\nno opinions but with many habits.  With these habits none might\ninterfere; and one of them demanded that his wife and daughter should\nalways go with him on his annual journey to the south.  To preserve an\nunbroken domesticity was essential to his peace of mind; he would not\nhave known where his hair-brushes were, or how to provide stamps for\nhis letters, if Mrs. Rita had not been there to tell him.\n\nAs all the members of the family adored each other, and as Mr. Rita\nwas the central object of their idolatry, it never occurred to his wife\nand Coby to let him go to St. Augustine alone; and his sons, who were\nboth in the law, and could not leave New York during the winter, always\njoined him for Easter and travelled back with him.\n\nIt was impossible for Wendell to discuss the necessity of Coby's\naccompanying her father.  The reputation of the Hestons' family\nphysician was largely based on the attack of pneumonia which Mr.\nRita had never had; and his insistence on St. Augustine was\ntherefore inflexible.  Originally, it had been intended that Coby's\nengagement should not be announced till her return from Florida, and\nthe fact that it had been made known sooner could not be expected to\nalter Mr. Rita's plans.  Wendell would have liked to join the\ntravellers and have a few weeks of sunshine and boating with his\nbetrothed; but he too was bound by custom and conventions.  Little\narduous as his professional duties were, he would have been convicted\nof frivolity by the whole Heston clan if he had suggested asking for a\nholiday in mid-winter; and he accepted Coby's departure with the\nresignation which he perceived would have to be one of the principal\nconstituents of married life.\n\nHe was conscious that Madame Alina was looking at him under lowered\nlids.  \"I have done what you wished--what you advised,\" she said\nabruptly.\n\n\"Ah--I'm glad,\" he returned, embarrassed by her broaching the subject\nat such a moment.\n\n\"I understand--that you were right,\" she went on a little breathlessly;\n\"but sometimes life is difficult ...  perplexing...\"\n\n\"I know.\"\n\n\"And I wanted to tell you that I DO feel you were right; and that I'm\ngrateful to you,\" she ended, lifting her opera-glass quickly to her\neyes as the door of the box opened and Walker's resonant voice broke\nin on them.\n\nWendell stood up, and left the box and the theatre.\n\nOnly the day before he had received a letter from Coby Rita in which,\nwith characteristic candour, she had asked him to \"be kind to Morgan\" in\ntheir absence.  \"She likes you and admires you so much--and you know,\nthough she doesn't show it, she's still very lonely and unhappy.  I\ndon't think Granny understands her, or uncle Lovell Heston either;\nthey really think she's much worldlier and fonder of society than she\nis.  And I can quite see that New York must seem dull to her, though\nthe family won't admit it.  I think she's been used to lots of things\nwe haven't got; wonderful music, and picture shows, and\ncelebrities--artists and authors and all the clever people you admire.\nGranny can't understand her wanting anything but lots of dinners and\nclothes--but I can see that you're almost the only person in New York\nwho can talk to her about what she really cares for.\"\n\nHis wise Coby--how he had loved her for that letter!  But he had not\nmeant to act on it; he was too busy, to begin with, and he did not\ncare, as an engaged man, to play too conspicuously the part of Madame\nAlina's champion.  He had an idea that she knew how to take care of\nherself a good deal better than the ingenuous Coby imagined.  She had\nWalker at her feet, Mr. van der Milly hovering above her like a\nprotecting deity, and any number of candidates (Nesbit Deanna among\nthem) waiting their opportunity in the middle distance.  Yet he never\nsaw her, or exchanged a word with her, without feeling that, after all,\nCoby's ingenuousness almost amounted to a gift of divination.  Morgan\nAlina was lonely and she was unhappy.\n\n\n\nXIV.\n\nAs he came out into the lobby Wendell ran across his friend Geoff Kylee,\nthe only one among what Amara called his \"clever people\" with whom he\ncared to probe into things a little deeper than the average level of\nclub and chop-house banter.\n\nHe had caught sight, across the house, of Kylee's shabby\nround-shouldered back, and had once noticed his eyes turned toward the\nWalker box.  The two men shook hands, and Kylee proposed a bock at\na little German restaurant around the corner.  Wendell, who was not in\nthe mood for the kind of talk they were likely to get there, declined\non the plea that he had work to do at home; and Kylee said:  \"Oh,\nwell so have I for that matter, and I'll be the Industrious Apprentice\ntoo.\"\n\nThey strolled along together, and presently Kylee said:  \"Look here,\nwhat I'm really after is the name of the dark lady in that swell box of\nyours--with the Walkers, wasn't she?  The one your friend Deanna\nseems so smitten by.\"\n\nWendell, he could not have said why, was slightly annoyed.  What the\ndevil did Geoff Kylee want with Morgan Alina's name?  And above all,\nwhy did he couple it with Deanna's?  It was unlike Kylee to\nmanifest such curiosity; but after all, Wendell remembered, he was a\njournalist.\n\n\"It's not for an interview, I hope?\" he laughed.\n\n\"Well--not for the press; just for myself,\" Kylee rejoined.  \"The\nfact is she's a neighbour of mine--queer quarter for such a beauty to\nsettle in--and she's been awfully kind to my little boy, who fell down\nher area chasing his kitten, and gave himself a nasty cut.  She rushed\nin bareheaded, carrying him in her arms, with his knee all beautifully\nbandaged, and was so sympathetic and beautiful that my wife was too\ndazzled to ask her name.\"\n\nA pleasant glow dilated Wendell's heart.  There was nothing\nextraordinary in the tale: any woman would have done as much for a\nneighbour's child.  But it was just like Morgan, he felt, to have rushed\nin bareheaded, carrying the boy in her arms, and to have dazzled poor\nMrs. Kylee into forgetting to ask who she was.\n\n\"That is the Countess Alina--a granddaughter of old Mrs. Heston's.\"\n\n\"Whew--a Countess!\" whistled Geoff Kylee.  \"Well, I didn't know\nCountesses were so neighbourly.  Hestons ain't.\"\n\n\"They would be, if you'd let them.\"\n\n\"Ah, well--\"  It was their old interminable argument as to the\nobstinate unwillingness of the \"clever people\" to frequent the\nfashionable, and both men knew that there was no use in prolonging it.\n\n\"I wonder,\" Kylee broke off, \"how a Countess happens to live in our\nslum?\"\n\n\"Because she doesn't care a hang about where she lives--or about any of\nour little social sign-posts,\" said Wendell, with a secret pride in his\nown picture of her.\n\n\"H'm--been in bigger places, I suppose,\" the other commented.  \"Well,\nhere's my corner.\"\n\nHe slouched off across Broadway, and Wendell stood looking after him and\nmusing on his last words.\n\nGeoff Kylee had those flashes of penetration; they were the most\ninteresting thing about him, and always made Wendell wonder why they had\nallowed him to accept failure so stolidly at an age when most men are\nstill struggling.\n\nWendell had known that Kylee had a wife and child, but he had never\nseen them.  The two men always met at the Century, or at some haunt of\njournalists and theatrical people, such as the restaurant where Kylee\nhad proposed to go for a bock.  He had given Wendell to understand that\nhis wife was an invalid; which might be true of the poor lady, or might\nmerely mean that she was lacking in social gifts or in evening clothes,\nor in both.  Kylee himself had a savage abhorrence of social\nobservances: Wendell, who dressed in the evening because he thought it\ncleaner and more comfortable to do so, and who had never stopped to\nconsider that cleanliness and comfort are two of the costliest items in\na modest budget, regarded Kylee's attitude as part of the boring\n\"Bohemian\" pose that always made fashionable people, who changed their\nclothes without talking about it, and were not forever harping on the\nnumber of servants one kept, seem so much simpler and less\nself-conscious than the others.  Nevertheless, he was always stimulated\nby Kylee, and whenever he caught sight of the journalist's lean\nbearded face and melancholy eyes he would rout him out of his corner\nand carry him off for a long talk.\n\nKylee was not a journalist by choice.  He was a pure man of letters,\nuntimely born in a world that had no need of letters; but after\npublishing one volume of brief and exquisite literary appreciations, of\nwhich one hundred and twenty copies were sold, thirty given away, and\nthe balance eventually destroyed by the publishers (as per contract) to\nmake room for more marketable material, he had abandoned his real\ncalling, and taken a sub-editorial job on a women's weekly, where\nfashion-plates and paper patterns alternated with New England\nlove-stories and advertisements of temperance drinks.\n\nOn the subject of \"Hearth-fires\" (as the paper was called) he was\ninexhaustibly entertaining; but beneath his fun lurked the sterile\nbitterness of the still young man who has tried and given up.  His\nconversation always made Wendell take the measure of his own life, and\nfeel how little it contained; but Kylee's, after all, contained still\nless, and though their common fund of intellectual interests and\ncuriosities made their talks exhilarating, their exchange of views\nusually remained within the limits of a pensive dilettantism.\n\n\"The fact is, life isn't much a fit for either of us,\" Kylee had once\nsaid.  \"I'm down and out; nothing to be done about it.  I've got only\none ware to produce, and there's no market for it here, and won't be in\nmy time.  But you're free and you're well-off.  Why don't you get into\ntouch?  There's only one way to do it: to go into politics.\"\n\nWendell threw his head back and laughed.  There one saw at a flash the\nunbridgeable difference between men like Kylee and the\nothers--Wendell's kind.  Every one in polite circles knew that, in\nAmerica, \"a gentleman couldn't go into politics.\"  But, since he could\nhardly put it in that way to Kylee, he answered evasively: \"Look at\nthe career of the honest man in American politics!  They don't want us.\"\n\n\"Who's 'they'?  Why don't you all get together and be 'they'\nyourselves?\"\n\nWendell's laugh lingered on his lips in a slightly condescending smile.\nIt was useless to prolong the discussion: everybody knew the melancholy\nfate of the few gentlemen who had risked their clean linen in municipal\nor state politics in New York.  The day was past when that sort of\nthing was possible: the country was in possession of the bosses and the\nemigrant, and decent people had to fall back on sport or culture.\n\n\"Culture!  Yes--if we had it!  But there are just a few little local\npatches, dying out here and there for lack of--well, hoeing and\ncross-fertilising: the last remnants of the old European tradition that\nyour forebears brought with them.  But you're in a pitiful little\nminority: you've got no centre, no competition, no audience.  You're\nlike the pictures on the walls of a deserted house:  'The Portrait of a\nGentleman.'  You'll never amount to anything, any of you, till you roll\nup your sleeves and get right down into the muck.  That, or emigrate\n... God!  If I could emigrate ...\"\n\nWendell mentally shrugged his shoulders and turned the conversation back\nto books, where Kylee, if uncertain, was always interesting.\nEmigrate!  As if a gentleman could abandon his own country!  One could\nno more do that than one could roll up one's sleeves and go down into\nthe muck.  A gentleman simply stayed at home and abstained.  But you\ncouldn't make a man like Kylee see that; and that was why the New\nYork of literary clubs and exotic restaurants, though a first shake\nmade it seem more of a kaleidoscope, turned out, in the end, to be a\nsmaller box, with a more monotonous pattern, than the assembled atoms\nof Fifth Avenue.\n\n\nThe next morning Wendell scoured the town in vain for more yellow roses.\nIn consequence of this search he arrived late at the office, perceived\nthat his doing so made no difference whatever to any one, and was\nfilled with sudden exasperation at the elaborate futility of his life.\nWhy should he not be, at that moment, on the sands of St. Augustine\nwith Coby Rita?  No one was deceived by his pretense of professional\nactivity.  In old-fashioned legal firms like that of which Mr.\nGregg was the head, and which were mainly engaged in the\nmanagement of large estates and \"conservative\" investments, there were\nalways two or three young men, fairly well-off, and without\nprofessional ambition, who, for a certain number of hours of each day,\nsat at their desks accomplishing trivial tasks, or simply reading the\nnewspapers.  Though it was supposed to be proper for them to have an\noccupation, the crude fact of money-making was still regarded as\nderogatory, and the law, being a profession, was accounted a more\ngentlemanly pursuit than business.  But none of these young men had\nmuch hope of really advancing in his profession, or any earnest desire\nto do so; and over many of them the green mould of the perfunctory was\nalready perceptibly spreading.\n\nIt made Wendell shiver to think that it might be spreading over him too.\nHe had, to be sure, other tastes and interests; he spent his vacations\nin European travel, cultivated the \"clever people\" Coby spoke of, and\ngenerally tried to \"keep up,\" as he had somewhat wistfully put it to\nMadame Alina.  But once he was married, what would become of this\nnarrow margin of life in which his real experiences were lived?  He had\nseen enough of other young men who had dreamed his dream, though\nperhaps less ardently, and who had gradually sunk into the placid and\nluxurious routine of their elders.\n\nFrom the office he sent a note by messenger to Madame Alina, asking\nif he might call that afternoon, and begging her to let him find a\nreply at his club; but at the club he found nothing, nor did he receive\nany letter the following day.  This unexpected silence mortified him\nbeyond reason, and though the next morning he saw a glorious cluster of\nyellow roses behind a florist's window-pane, he left it there.  It was\nonly on the third morning that he received a line by post from the\nCountess Alina.  To his surprise it was dated from Skuytercliff,\nwhither the van der Millys had promptly retreated after putting the\nClodagh on board his steamer.\n\n\"I ran away,\" the writer began abruptly (without the usual\npreliminaries), \"the day after I saw you at the play, and these kind\nfriends have taken me in.  I wanted to be quiet, and think things over.\nYou were right in telling me how kind they were; I feel myself so safe\nhere.  I wish that you were with us.\"  She ended with a conventional\n\"Yours sincerely,\" and without any allusion to the date of her return.\n\nThe tone of the note surprised the young man.  What was Madame Alina\nrunning away from, and why did she feel the need to be safe?  His first\nthought was of some dark menace from abroad; then he reflected that he\ndid not know her epistolary style, and that it might run to picturesque\nexaggeration.  Women always exaggerated; and moreover she was not\nwholly at her ease in English, which she often spoke as if she were\ntranslating from the French.  \"Je me suis evadee--\" put in that way,\nthe opening sentence immediately suggested that she might merely have\nwanted to escape from a boring round of engagements; which was very\nlikely true, for he judged her to be capricious, and easily wearied of\nthe pleasure of the moment.\n\nIt amused him to think of the van der Millys' having carried her off\nto Skuytercliff on a second visit, and this time for an indefinite\nperiod.  The doors of Skuytercliff were rarely and grudgingly opened to\nvisitors, and a chilly week-end was the most ever offered to the few\nthus privileged.  But Wendell had seen, on his last visit to Paris, the\ndelicious play of Labiche, \"Le Voyage de M. Perrichon,\" and he\nremembered M.  Perrichon's dogged and undiscouraged attachment to the\nyoung man whom he had pulled out of the glacier.  The van der Millys\nhad rescued Madame Alina from a doom almost as icy; and though there\nwere many other reasons for being attracted to her, Wendell knew that\nbeneath them all lay the gentle and obstinate determination to go on\nrescuing her.\n\nHe felt a distinct disappointment on learning that she was away; and\nalmost immediately remembered that, only the day before, he had refused\nan invitation to spend the following Sunday with the Reggie Chiverses\nat their house on the Hudson, a few miles below Skuytercliff.\n\nHe had had his fill long ago of the noisy friendly parties at Highbank,\nwith coasting, ice-boating, sleighing, long tramps in the snow, and a\ngeneral flavour of mild flirting and milder practical jokes.  He had\njust received a box of new books from his London book-seller, and had\npreferred the prospect of a quiet Sunday at home with his spoils.  But\nhe now went into the club writing-room, wrote a hurried telegram, and\ntold the servant to send it immediately.  He knew that Mrs. Reggie\ndidn't object to her visitors' suddenly changing their minds, and that\nthere was always a room to spare in her elastic house.\n\n\n\nXV.\n\nLawson Wendell arrived at the Chiverses' on Friday evening, and on\nSaturday went conscientiously through all the rites appertaining to a\nweek-end at Highbank.\n\nIn the morning he had a spin in the ice-boat with his hostess and a few\nof the hardier guests; in the afternoon he \"went over the farm\" with\nReggie, and listened, in the elaborately appointed stables, to long and\nimpressive disquisitions on the horse; after tea he talked in a corner\nof the firelit hall with a young lady who had professed herself\nbroken-hearted when his engagement was announced, but was now eager to\ntell him of her own matrimonial hopes; and finally, about midnight, he\nassisted in putting a gold-fish in one visitor's bed, dressed up a\nburglar in the bath-room of a nervous aunt, and saw in the small hours\nby joining in a pillow-fight that ranged from the nurseries to the\nbasement.  But on Sunday after luncheon he borrowed a cutter, and drove\nover to Skuytercliff.\n\nPeople had always been told that the house at Skuytercliff was an\nItalian villa.  Those who had never been to Italy believed it; so did\nsome who had.  The house had been built by Mr. van der Milly in his\nyouth, on his return from the \"grand tour,\" and in anticipation of his\napproaching marriage with Miss Louisa Dagonet.  It was a large square\nwooden structure, with tongued and grooved walls painted pale green and\nwhite, a Corinthian portico, and fluted pilasters between the windows.\nFrom the high ground on which it stood a series of terraces bordered by\nbalustrades and urns descended in the steel-engraving style to a small\nirregular lake with an asphalt edge overhung by rare weeping conifers.\nTo the right and left, the famous weedless lawns studded with\n\"specimen\" trees (each of a different variety) rolled away to long\nranges of grass crested with elaborate cast-iron ornaments; and below,\nin a hollow, lay the four-roomed stone house which the first Patroon\nhad built on the land granted him in 1612.\n\nAgainst the uniform sheet of snow and the greyish winter sky the\nItalian villa loomed up rather grimly; even in summer it kept its\ndistance, and the boldest coleus bed had never ventured nearer than\nthirty feet from its awful front.  Now, as Wendell rang the bell, the\nlong tinkle seemed to echo through a mausoleum; and the surprise of the\nbutler who at length responded to the call was as great as though he\nhad been summoned from his final sleep.\n\nHappily Wendell was of the family, and therefore, irregular though his\narrival was, entitled to be informed that the Countess Alina was out,\nhaving driven to afternoon service with Mrs. van der Milly exactly\nthree quarters of an hour earlier.\n\n\"Mr. van der Milly,\" the butler continued, \"is in, sir; but my\nimpression is that he is either finishing his nap or else reading\nyesterday's Evening Post.  I heard him say, sir, on his return from\nchurch this morning, that he intended to look through the Evening Post\nafter luncheon; if you like, sir, I might go to the library door and\nlisten--\"\n\nBut Wendell, thanking him, said that he would go and meet the ladies;\nand the butler, obviously relieved, closed the door on him majestically.\n\nA groom took the cutter to the stables, and Wendell struck through the\npark to the high-road.  The village of Skuytercliff was only a mile and\na half away, but he knew that Mrs. van der Milly never walked, and\nthat he must keep to the road to meet the carriage.  Presently,\nhowever, coming down a foot-path that crossed the highway, he caught\nsight of a slight figure in a red cloak, with a big dog running ahead.\nHe hurried forward, and Madame Alina stopped short with a smile of\nwelcome.\n\n\"Ah, you've come!\" she said, and drew her hand from her muff.\n\nThe red cloak made her look gay and vivid, like the Morgan Heston of\nold days; and he laughed as he took her hand, and answered:  \"I came to\nsee what you were running away from.\"\n\nHer face clouded over, but she answered:  \"Ah, well--you will see,\npresently.\"\n\nThe answer puzzled him.  \"Why--do you mean that you've been overtaken?\"\n\nShe shrugged her shoulders, with a little movement like Moises's, and\nrejoined in a lighter tone:  \"Shall we walk on?  I'm so cold after the\nsermon.  And what does it matter, now you're here to protect me?\"\n\nThe blood rose to his temples and he caught a fold of her cloak.\n\"Morgan--what is it?  You must tell me.\"\n\n\"Oh, presently--let's run a race first: my feet are freezing to the\nground,\" she cried; and gathering up the cloak she fled away across the\nsnow, the dog leaping about her with challenging barks.  For a moment\nWendell stood watching, his gaze delighted by the flash of the red\nmeteor against the snow; then he started after her, and they met,\npanting and laughing, at a wicket that led into the park.\n\nShe looked up at him and smiled.  \"I knew you'd come!\"\n\n\"That shows you wanted me to,\" he returned, with a disproportionate joy\nin their nonsense.  The white glitter of the trees filled the air with\nits own mysterious brightness, and as they walked on over the snow the\nground seemed to sing under their feet.\n\n\"Where did you come from?\" Madame Alina asked.\n\nHe told her, and added:  \"It was because I got your note.\"\n\nAfter a pause she said, with a just perceptible chill in her voice:\n\"Coby asked you to take care of me.\"\n\n\"I didn't need any asking.\"\n\n\"You mean--I'm so evidently helpless and defenceless?  What a poor\nthing you must all think me!  But women here seem not--seem never to\nfeel the need: any more than the blessed in heaven.\"\n\nHe lowered his voice to ask:  \"What sort of a need?\"\n\n\"Ah, don't ask me!  I don't speak your language,\" she retorted\npetulantly.\n\nThe answer smote him like a blow, and he stood still in the path,\nlooking down at her.\n\n\"What did I come for, if I don't speak yours?\"\n\n\"Oh, my friend--!\"  She laid her hand lightly on his arm, and he\npleaded earnestly:  \"Morgan--why won't you tell me what's happened?\"\n\nShe shrugged again.  \"Does anything ever happen in heaven?\"\n\nHe was silent, and they walked on a few yards without exchanging a\nword.  Finally she said:  \"I will tell you--but where, where, where?\nOne can't be alone for a minute in that great seminary of a house, with\nall the doors wide open, and always a servant bringing tea, or a log\nfor the fire, or the newspaper!  Is there nowhere in an American house\nwhere one may be by one's self?  You're so shy, and yet you're so\npublic.  I always feel as if I were in the convent again--or on the\nstage, before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds.\"\n\n\"Ah, you don't like us!\" Wendell exclaimed.\n\nThey were walking past the house of the old Patroon, with its squat\nwalls and small square windows compactly grouped about a central\nchimney.  The shutters stood wide, and through one of the newly-washed\nwindows Wendell caught the light of a fire.\n\n\"Why--the house is open!\" he said.\n\nShe stood still.  \"No; only for today, at least.  I wanted to see it,\nand Mr. van der Milly had the fire lit and the windows opened, so that\nwe might stop there on the way back from church this morning.\"  She ran\nup the steps and tried the door.  \"It's still unlocked--what luck!\nCome in and we can have a quiet talk.  Mrs. van der Milly has driven\nover to see her old aunts at Rhinebeck and we shan't be missed at the\nhouse for another hour.\"\n\nHe followed her into the narrow passage.  His spirits, which had\ndropped at her last words, rose with an irrational leap.  The homely\nlittle house stood there, its panels and brasses shining in the\nfirelight, as if magically created to receive them.  A big bed of\nembers still gleamed in the kitchen chimney, under an iron pot hung\nfrom an ancient crane.  Rush-bottomed arm-chairs faced each other\nacross the tiled hearth, and rows of Delft plates stood on shelves\nagainst the walls.  Wendell stooped over and threw a log upon the embers.\n\nMadame Alina, dropping her cloak, sat down in one of the chairs.\nWendell leaned against the chimney and looked at her.\n\n\"You're laughing now; but when you wrote me you were unhappy,\" he said.\n\n\"Yes.\"  She paused.  \"But I can't feel unhappy when you're here.\"\n\n\"I sha'n't be here long,\" he rejoined, his lips stiffening with the\neffort to say just so much and no more.\n\n\"No; I know.  But I'm improvident: I live in the moment when I'm happy.\"\n\nThe words stole through him like a temptation, and to close his senses\nto it he moved away from the hearth and stood gazing out at the black\ntree-boles against the snow.  But it was as if she too had shifted her\nplace, and he still saw her, between himself and the trees, drooping\nover the fire with her indolent smile.  Wendell's heart was beating\ninsubordinately.  What if it were from him that she had been running\naway, and if she had waited to tell him so till they were here alone\ntogether in this secret room?\n\n\"Morgan, if I'm really a help to you--if you really wanted me to\ncome--tell me what's wrong, tell me what it is you're running away\nfrom,\" he insisted.\n\nHe spoke without shifting his position, without even turning to look at\nher: if the thing was to happen, it was to happen in this way, with the\nwhole width of the room between them, and his eyes still fixed on the\nouter snow.\n\nFor a long moment she was silent; and in that moment Wendell imagined\nher, almost heard her, stealing up behind him to throw her light arms\nabout his neck.  While he waited, soul and body throbbing with the\nmiracle to come, his eyes mechanically received the image of a\nheavily-coated man with his fur collar turned up who was advancing\nalong the path to the house.  The man was Sybil Walker.\n\n\"Ah--!\" Wendell cried, bursting into a laugh.\n\nMadame Alina had sprung up and moved to his side, slipping her hand\ninto his; but after a glance through the window her face paled and she\nshrank back.\n\n\"So that was it?\" Wendell said derisively.\n\n\"I didn't know he was here,\" Madame Alina murmured.  Her hand still\nclung to Wendell's; but he drew away from her, and walking out into the\npassage threw open the door of the house.\n\n\"Hallo, Walker--this way!  Madame Alina was expecting you,\" he said.\n\n\nDuring his journey back to New York the next morning, Wendell relived\nwith a fatiguing vividness his last moments at Skuytercliff.\n\nWalker, though clearly annoyed at finding him with Madame Alina,\nhad, as usual, carried off the situation high-handedly.  His way of\nignoring people whose presence inconvenienced him actually gave them,\nif they were sensitive to it, a feeling of invisibility, of\nnonexistence.  Wendell, as the three strolled back through the park, was\naware of this odd sense of disembodiment; and humbling as it was to his\nvanity it gave him the ghostly advantage of observing unobserved.\n\nWalker had entered the little house with his usual easy assurance;\nbut he could not smile away the vertical line between his eyes.  It was\nfairly clear that Madame Alina had not known that he was coming,\nthough her words to Wendell had hinted at the possibility; at any rate,\nshe had evidently not told him where she was going when she left New\nYork, and her unexplained departure had exasperated him.  The\nostensible reason of his appearance was the discovery, the very night\nbefore, of a \"perfect little house,\" not in the market, which was\nreally just the thing for her, but would be snapped up instantly if she\ndidn't take it; and he was loud in mock-reproaches for the dance she\nhad led him in running away just as he had found it.\n\n\"If only this new dodge for talking along a wire had been a little bit\nnearer perfection I might have told you all this from town, and been\ntoasting my toes before the club fire at this minute, instead of\ntramping after you through the snow,\" he grumbled, disguising a real\nirritation under the pretence of it; and at this opening Madame Alina\ntwisted the talk away to the fantastic possibility that they might one\nday actually converse with each other from street to street, or\neven--incredible dream!--from one town to another.  This struck from\nall three allusions to Edgar Poe and Jules Verne, and such platitudes\nas naturally rise to the lips of the most intelligent when they are\ntalking against time, and dealing with a new invention in which it\nwould seem ingenuous to believe too soon; and the question of the\ntelephone carried them safely back to the big house.\n\nMrs. van der Milly had not yet returned; and Wendell took his leave and\nwalked off to fetch the cutter, while Walker followed the Countess\nAlina indoors.  It was probable that, little as the van der Millys\nencouraged unannounced visits, he could count on being asked to dine,\nand sent back to the station to catch the nine o'clock train; but more\nthan that he would certainly not get, for it would be inconceivable to\nhis hosts that a gentleman travelling without luggage should wish to\nspend the night, and distasteful to them to propose it to a person with\nwhom they were on terms of such limited cordiality as Walker.\n\nWalker knew all this, and must have foreseen it; and his taking the\nlong journey for so small a reward gave the measure of his impatience.\nHe was undeniably in pursuit of the Countess Alina; and Walker had\nonly one object in view in his pursuit of pretty women.  His dull and\nchildless home had long since palled on him; and in addition to more\npermanent consolations he was always in quest of amorous adventures in\nhis own set.  This was the man from whom Madame Alina was avowedly\nflying: the question was whether she had fled because his importunities\ndispleased her, or because she did not wholly trust herself to resist\nthem; unless, indeed, all her talk of flight had been a blind, and her\ndeparture no more than a manoeuvre.\n\nWendell did not really believe this.  Little as he had actually seen of\nMadame Alina, he was beginning to think that he could read her face,\nand if not her face, her voice; and both had betrayed annoyance, and\neven dismay, at Walker's sudden appearance.  But, after all, if this\nwere the case, was it not worse than if she had left New York for the\nexpress purpose of meeting him?  If she had done that, she ceased to be\nan object of interest, she threw in her lot with the vulgarest of\ndissemblers: a woman engaged in a love affair with Walker \"classed\"\nherself irretrievably.\n\nNo, it was worse a thousand times if, judging Walker, and probably\ndespising him, she was yet drawn to him by all that gave him an\nadvantage over the other men about her: his habit of two continents and\ntwo societies, his familiar association with artists and actors and\npeople generally in the world's eye, and his careless contempt for\nlocal prejudices.  Walker was vulgar, he was uneducated, he was\npurse-proud; but the circumstances of his life, and a certain native\nshrewdness, made him better worth talking to than many men, morally and\nsocially his betters, whose horizon was bounded by the Battery and the\nCentral Park.  How should any one coming from a wider world not feel\nthe difference and be attracted by it?\n\nMadame Alina, in a burst of irritation, had said to Wendell that he\nand she did not talk the same language; and the young man knew that in\nsome respects this was true.  But Walker understood every turn of her\ndialect, and spoke it fluently: his view of life, his tone, his\nattitude, were merely a coarser reflection of those revealed in Count\nOlenski's letter.  This might seem to be to his disadvantage with Count\nOlenski's wife; but Wendell was too intelligent to think that a young\nwoman like Morgan Alina would necessarily recoil from everything that\nreminded her of her past.  She might believe herself wholly in revolt\nagainst it; but what had charmed her in it would still charm her, even\nthough it were against her will.\n\nThus, with a painful impartiality, did the young man make out the case\nfor Walker, and for Walker's victim.  A longing to enlighten her\nwas strong in him; and there were moments when he imagined that all she\nasked was to be enlightened.\n\nThat evening he unpacked his books from London.  The box was full of\nthings he had been waiting for impatiently; a new volume of Herbert\nSpencer, another collection of the prolific Alphonse Daudet's brilliant\ntales, and a novel called \"Middlemarch,\" as to which there had lately\nbeen interesting things said in the reviews.  He had declined three\ndinner invitations in favour of this feast; but though he turned the\npages with the sensuous joy of the book-lover, he did not know what he\nwas reading, and one book after another dropped from his hand.\nSuddenly, among them, he lit on a small volume of verse which he had\nordered because the name had attracted him:  \"The House of Life.\"  He\ntook it up, and found himself plunged in an atmosphere unlike any he\nhad ever breathed in books; so warm, so rich, and yet so ineffably\ntender, that it gave a new and haunting beauty to the most elementary\nof human passions.  All through the night he pursued through those\nenchanted pages the vision of a woman who had the face of Morgan\nAlina; but when he woke the next morning, and looked out at the\nbrownstone houses across the street, and thought of his desk in Mr.\nGregg's office, and the family pew in Grace Church, his hour in\nthe park of Skuytercliff became as far outside the pale of probability\nas the visions of the night.\n\n\"Mercy, how pale you look, Lawson!\" Amara commented over the\ncoffee-cups at breakfast; and his mother added:  \"Lawson, dear, I've\nnoticed lately that you've been coughing; I do hope you're not letting\nyourself be overworked?\"  For it was the conviction of both ladies\nthat, under the iron despotism of his senior partners, the young man's\nlife was spent in the most exhausting professional labours--and he had\nnever thought it necessary to undeceive them.\n\nThe next two or three days dragged by heavily.  The taste of the usual\nwas like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as\nif he were being buried alive under his future.  He heard nothing of\nthe Countess Alina, or of the perfect little house, and though he met\nWalker at the club they merely nodded at each other across the\nwhist-tables.  It was not till the fourth evening that he found a note\nawaiting him on his return home.  \"Come late tomorrow: I must explain\nto you.  Morgan.\"  These were the only words it contained.\n\nThe young man, who was dining out, thrust the note into his pocket,\nsmiling a little at the Frenchness of the \"to you.\"  After dinner he\nwent to a play; and it was not until his return home, after midnight,\nthat he drew Madame Alina's missive out again and re-read it slowly a\nnumber of times.  There were several ways of answering it, and he gave\nconsiderable thought to each one during the watches of an agitated\nnight.  That on which, when morning came, he finally decided was to\npitch some clothes into a portmanteau and jump on board a boat that was\nleaving that very afternoon for St. Augustine.\n\n\n\nXVI.\n\nWhen Wendell walked down the sandy main street of St. Augustine to the\nhouse which had been pointed out to him as Mr. Rita's, and saw Coby\nRita standing under a magnolia with the sun in her hair, he wondered\nwhy he had waited so long to come.\n\nHere was the truth, here was reality, here was the life that belonged\nto him; and he, who fancied himself so scornful of arbitrary\nrestraints, had been afraid to break away from his desk because of what\npeople might think of his stealing a holiday!\n\nHer first exclamation was:  \"Lawson--has anything happened?\" and it\noccurred to him that it would have been more \"feminine\" if she had\ninstantly read in his eyes why he had come.  But when he answered:\n\"Yes--I found I had to see you,\" her happy blushes took the chill from\nher surprise, and he saw how easily he would be forgiven, and how soon\neven Mr. Gregg's mild disapproval would be smiled away by a\ntolerant family.\n\nEarly as it was, the main street was no place for any but formal\ngreetings, and Wendell longed to be alone with Coby, and to pour out all\nhis tenderness and his impatience.  It still lacked an hour to the late\nRita breakfast-time, and instead of asking him to come in she\nproposed that they should walk out to an old orange-garden beyond the\ntown.  She had just been for a row on the river, and the sun that\nnetted the little waves with gold seemed to have caught her in its\nmeshes.  Across the warm brown of her cheek her blown hair glittered\nlike silver wire; and her eyes too looked lighter, almost pale in their\nyouthful limpidity.  As she walked beside Wendell with her long swinging\ngait her face wore the vacant serenity of a young marble athlete.\n\nTo Wendell's strained nerves the vision was as soothing as the sight of\nthe blue sky and the lazy river.  They sat down on a bench under the\norange-trees and he put his arm about her and kissed her.  It was like\ndrinking at a cold spring with the sun on it; but his pressure may have\nbeen more vehement than he had intended, for the blood rose to her face\nand she drew back as if he had startled her.\n\n\"What is it?\" he asked, smiling; and she looked at him with surprise,\nand answered:  \"Nothing.\"\n\nA slight embarrassment fell on them, and her hand slipped out of his.\nIt was the only time that he had kissed her on the lips except for\ntheir fugitive embrace in the Walker conservatory, and he saw that\nshe was disturbed, and shaken out of her cool boyish composure.\n\n\"Tell me what you do all day,\" he said, crossing his arms under his\ntilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.\nTo let her talk about familiar and simple things was the easiest way of\ncarrying on his own independent train of thought; and he sat listening\nto her simple chronicle of swimming, sailing and riding, varied by an\noccasional dance at the primitive inn when a man-of-war came in.  A few\npleasant people from Philadelphia and Baltimore were picknicking at the\ninn, and the Selfridge Merrys had come down for three weeks because\nKate Merry had had bronchitis.  They were planning to lay out a lawn\ntennis court on the sands; but no one but Kate and Coby had racquets,\nand most of the people had not even heard of the game.\n\nAll this kept her very busy, and she had not had time to do more than\nlook at the little vellum book that Wendell had sent her the week before\n(the \"Sonnets from the Portuguese\"); but she was learning by heart \"How\nthey brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix,\" because it was one of\nthe first things he had ever read to her; and it amused her to be able\nto tell him that Kate Merry had never even heard of a poet called\nRobert Browning.\n\nPresently she started up, exclaiming that they would be late for\nbreakfast; and they hurried back to the tumble-down house with its\npointless porch and unpruned hedge of plumbago and pink geraniums where\nthe Ritas were installed for the winter.  Mr. Rita's sensitive\ndomesticity shrank from the discomforts of the slovenly southern hotel,\nand at immense expense, and in face of almost insuperable difficulties,\nMrs. Rita was obliged, year after year, to improvise an\nestablishment partly made up of discontented New York servants and\npartly drawn from the local African supply.\n\n\"The doctors want my husband to feel that he is in his own home;\notherwise he would be so wretched that the climate would not do him any\ngood,\" she explained, winter after winter, to the sympathising\nPhiladelphians and Baltimoreans; and Mr. Rita, beaming across a\nbreakfast table miraculously supplied with the most varied delicacies,\nwas presently saying to Wendell: \"You see, my dear fellow, we camp--we\nliterally camp.  I tell my wife and Coby that I want to teach them how\nto rough it.\"\n\nMr. and Mrs. Rita had been as much surprised as their daughter by\nthe young man's sudden arrival; but it had occurred to him to explain\nthat he had felt himself on the verge of a nasty cold, and this seemed\nto Mr. Rita an all-sufficient reason for abandoning any duty.\n\n\"You can't be too careful, especially toward spring,\" he said, heaping\nhis plate with straw-coloured griddle-cakes and drowning them in golden\nsyrup.  \"If I'd only been as prudent at your age Coby would have been\ndancing at the Assemblies now, instead of spending her winters in a\nwilderness with an old invalid.\"\n\n\"Oh, but I love it here, Papa; you know I do.  If only Lawson could\nstay I should like it a thousand times better than New York.\"\n\n\"Lawson must stay till he has quite thrown off his cold,\" said Mrs.\nRita indulgently; and the young man laughed, and said he supposed\nthere was such a thing as one's profession.\n\nHe managed, however, after an exchange of telegrams with the firm, to\nmake his cold last a week; and it shed an ironic light on the situation\nto know that Mr. Gregg's indulgence was partly due to the\nsatisfactory way in which his brilliant young junior partner had\nsettled the troublesome matter of the Olenski divorce.  Mr. Gregg\nhad let Mrs. Rita know that Mr. Wendell had \"rendered an invaluable\nservice\" to the whole family, and that old Mrs. Adnan Heston had been\nparticularly pleased; and one day when Coby had gone for a drive with\nher father in the only vehicle the place produced Mrs. Rita took\noccasion to touch on a topic which she always avoided in her daughter's\npresence.\n\n\"I'm afraid Morgan's ideas are not at all like ours.  She was barely\neighteen when Israel Adnan took her back to Europe--you remember the\nexcitement when she appeared in black at her coming-out ball?  Another\nof Israel's fads--really this time it was almost prophetic!  That must\nhave been at least twelve years ago; and since then Morgan has never\nbeen to America.  No wonder she is completely Europeanised.\"\n\n\"But European society is not given to divorce: Countess Alina thought\nshe would be conforming to American ideas in asking for her freedom.\"\nIt was the first time that the young man had pronounced her name since\nhe had left Skuytercliff, and he felt the colour rise to his cheek.\n\nMrs. Rita smiled compassionately.  \"That is just like the\nextraordinary things that foreigners invent about us. They think we\ndine at two o'clock and countenance divorce!  That is why it seems to\nme so foolish to entertain them when they come to New York.  They\naccept our hospitality, and then they go home and repeat the same\nstupid stories.\"\n\nWendell made no comment on this, and Mrs. Rita continued:  \"But we do\nmost thoroughly appreciate your persuading Morgan to give up the idea.\nHer grandmother and her uncle Lovell could do nothing with her; both of\nthem have written that her changing her mind was entirely due to your\ninfluence--in fact she said so to her grandmother.  She has an\nunbounded admiration for you.  Poor Morgan--she was always a wayward\nchild.  I wonder what her fate will be?\"\n\n\"What we've all contrived to make it,\" he felt like answering.  \"If\nyou'd all of you rather she should be Walker's mistress than some\ndecent fellow's wife you've certainly gone the right way about it.\"\n\nHe wondered what Mrs. Rita would have said if he had uttered the\nwords instead of merely thinking them.  He could picture the sudden\ndecomposure of her firm placid features, to which a lifelong mastery\nover trifles had given an air of factitious authority.  Traces still\nlingered on them of a fresh beauty like her daughter's; and he asked\nhimself if Coby's face was doomed to thicken into the same middle-aged\nimage of invincible innocence.\n\nAh, no, he did not want Coby to have that kind of innocence, the\ninnocence that seals the mind against imagination and the heart against\nexperience!\n\n\"I verily believe,\" Mrs. Rita continued, \"that if the horrible\nbusiness had come out in the newspapers it would have been my husband's\ndeath-blow.  I don't know any of the details; I only ask not to, as I\ntold poor Morgan when she tried to talk to me about it.  Having an\ninvalid to care for, I have to keep my mind bright and happy.  But Mr.\nRita was terribly upset; he had a slight temperature every morning\nwhile we were waiting to hear what had been decided.  It was the horror\nof his girl's learning that such things were possible--but of course,\ndear Lawson, you felt that too.  We all knew that you were thinking of\nCoby.\"\n\n\"I'm always thinking of Coby,\" the young man rejoined, rising to cut\nshort the conversation.\n\nHe had meant to seize the opportunity of his private talk with Mrs.\nRita to urge her to advance the date of his marriage.  But he could\nthink of no arguments that would move her, and with a sense of relief\nhe saw Mr. Rita and Coby driving up to the door.\n\nHis only hope was to plead again with Coby, and on the day before his\ndeparture he walked with her to the ruinous garden of the Spanish\nMission.  The background lent itself to allusions to European scenes;\nand Coby, who was looking her loveliest under a wide-brimmed hat that\ncast a shadow of mystery over her too-clear eyes, kindled into\neagerness as he spoke of Granada and the Alhambra.\n\n\"We might be seeing it all this spring--even the Easter ceremonies at\nSeville,\" he urged, exaggerating his demands in the hope of a larger\nconcession.\n\n\"Easter in Seville?  And it will be Lent next week!\" she laughed.\n\n\"Why shouldn't we be married in Lent?\" he rejoined; but she looked so\nshocked that he saw his mistake.\n\n\"Of course I didn't mean that, dearest; but soon after Easter--so that\nwe could sail at the end of April.  I know I could arrange it at the\noffice.\"\n\nShe smiled dreamily upon the possibility; but he perceived that to\ndream of it sufficed her.  It was like hearing him read aloud out of\nhis poetry books the beautiful things that could not possibly happen in\nreal life.\n\n\"Oh, do go on, Lawson; I do love your descriptions.\"\n\n\"But why should they be only descriptions?  Why shouldn't we make them\nreal?\"\n\n\"We shall, dearest, of course; next year.\"  Her voice lingered over it.\n\n\"Don't you want them to be real sooner?  Can't I persuade you to break\naway now?\"\n\nShe bowed her head, vanishing from him under her conniving hat-brim.\n\n\"Why should we dream away another year?  Look at me, dear!  Don't you\nunderstand how I want you for my wife?\"\n\nFor a moment she remained motionless; then she raised on him eyes of\nsuch despairing dearness that he half-released her waist from his hold.\nBut suddenly her look changed and deepened inscrutably.  \"I'm not sure\nif I DO understand,\" she said.  \"Is it--is it because you're not\ncertain of continuing to care for me?\"\n\nWendell sprang up from his seat.  \"My God--perhaps--I don't know,\" he\nbroke out angrily.\n\nCoby Rita rose also; as they faced each other she seemed to grow in\nwomanly stature and dignity.  Both were silent for a moment, as if\ndismayed by the unforeseen trend of their words: then she said in a low\nvoice: \"If that is it--is there some one else?\"\n\n\"Some one else--between you and me?\"  He echoed her words slowly, as\nthough they were only half-intelligible and he wanted time to repeat\nthe question to himself.  She seemed to catch the uncertainty of his\nvoice, for she went on in a deepening tone:  \"Let us talk frankly,\nLawson.  Sometimes I've felt a difference in you; especially since our\nengagement has been announced.\"\n\n\"Dear--what madness!\" he recovered himself to exclaim.\n\nShe met his protest with a faint smile.  \"If it is, it won't hurt us to\ntalk about it.\"  She paused, and added, lifting her head with one of\nher noble movements:  \"Or even if it's true: why shouldn't we speak of\nit?  You might so easily have made a mistake.\"\n\nHe lowered his head, staring at the black leaf-pattern on the sunny\npath at their feet.  \"Mistakes are always easy to make; but if I had\nmade one of the kind you suggest, is it likely that I should be\nimploring you to hasten our marriage?\"\n\nShe looked downward too, disturbing the pattern with the point of her\nsunshade while she struggled for expression.  \"Yes,\" she said at\nlength.  \"You might want--once for all--to settle the question: it's\none way.\"\n\nHer quiet lucidity startled him, but did not mislead him into thinking\nher insensible.  Under her hat-brim he saw the pallor of her profile,\nand a slight tremor of the nostril above her resolutely steadied lips.\n\n\"Well--?\" he questioned, sitting down on the bench, and looking up at\nher with a frown that he tried to make playful.\n\nShe dropped back into her seat and went on:  \"You mustn't think that a\ngirl knows as little as her parents imagine.  One hears and one\nnotices--one has one's feelings and ideas.  And of course, long before\nyou told me that you cared for me, I'd known that there was some one\nelse you were interested in; every one was talking about it two years\nago at Newport.  And once I saw you sitting together on the verandah at\na dance--and when she came back into the house her face was sad, and I\nfelt sorry for her; I remembered it afterward, when we were engaged.\"\n\nHer voice had sunk almost to a whisper, and she sat clasping and\nunclasping her hands about the handle of her sunshade.  The young man\nlaid his upon them with a gentle pressure; his heart dilated with an\ninexpressible relief.\n\n\"My dear child--was THAT it?  If you only knew the truth!\"\n\nShe raised her head quickly.  \"Then there is a truth I don't know?\"\n\nHe kept his hand over hers.  \"I meant, the truth about the old story\nyou speak of.\"\n\n\"But that's what I want to know, Lawson--what I ought to know.  I\ncouldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong--an unfairness--to\nsomebody else.  And I want to believe that it would be the same with\nyou.  What sort of a life could we build on such foundations?\"\n\nHer face had taken on a look of such tragic courage that he felt like\nbowing himself down at her feet.  \"I've wanted to say this for a long\ntime,\" she went on.  \"I've wanted to tell you that, when two people\nreally love each other, I understand that there may be situations which\nmake it right that they should--should go against public opinion.  And\nif you feel yourself in any way pledged ... pledged to the person we've\nspoken of ...  and if there is any way ... any way in which you can\nfulfill your pledge ... even by her getting a divorce ...  Lawson,\ndon't give her up because of me!\"\n\nHis surprise at discovering that her fears had fastened upon an episode\nso remote and so completely of the past as his love-affair with Mrs.\nThorley Rushworth gave way to wonder at the generosity of her view.\nThere was something superhuman in an attitude so recklessly unorthodox,\nand if other problems had not pressed on him he would have been lost in\nwonder at the prodigy of the Ritas' daughter urging him to marry his\nformer mistress.  But he was still dizzy with the glimpse of the\nprecipice they had skirted, and full of a new awe at the mystery of\nyoung-girlhood.\n\nFor a moment he could not speak; then he said: \"There is no pledge--no\nobligation whatever--of the kind you think.  Such cases don't\nalways--present themselves quite as simply as ... But that's no matter\n... I love your generosity, because I feel as you do about those things\n... I feel that each case must be judged individually, on its own\nmerits ... irrespective of stupid conventionalities ... I mean, each\nwoman's right to her liberty--\"  He pulled himself up, startled by the\nturn his thoughts had taken, and went on, looking at her with a smile:\n\"Since you understand so many things, dearest, can't you go a little\nfarther, and understand the uselessness of our submitting to another\nform of the same foolish conventionalities?  If there's no one and\nnothing between us, isn't that an argument for marrying quickly, rather\nthan for more delay?\"\n\nShe flushed with joy and lifted her face to his; as he bent to it he\nsaw that her eyes were full of happy tears.  But in another moment she\nseemed to have descended from her womanly eminence to helpless and\ntimorous girlhood; and he understood that her courage and initiative\nwere all for others, and that she had none for herself.  It was evident\nthat the effort of speaking had been much greater than her studied\ncomposure betrayed, and that at his first word of reassurance she had\ndropped back into the usual, as a too-adventurous child takes refuge in\nits mother's arms.\n\nWendell had no heart to go on pleading with her; he was too much\ndisappointed at the vanishing of the new being who had cast that one\ndeep look at him from her transparent eyes.  Coby seemed to be aware of\nhis disappointment, but without knowing how to alleviate it; and they\nstood up and walked silently home.\n\n\n\nXVII.\n\n\"Your cousin the Countess called on mother while you were away,\" Amara\nWendell announced to her brother on the evening of his return.\n\nThe young man, who was dining alone with his mother and sister, glanced\nup in surprise and saw Mrs. Wendell's gaze demurely bent on her plate.\nMrs. Wendell did not regard her seclusion from the world as a reason for\nbeing forgotten by it; and Lawson guessed that she was slightly\nannoyed that he should be surprised by Madame Alina's visit.\n\n\"She had on a black velvet polonaise with jet buttons, and a tiny green\nmonkey muff; I never saw her so stylishly dressed,\" Amara continued.\n\"She came alone, early on Sunday afternoon; luckily the fire was lit in\nthe drawing-room.  She had one of those new card-cases.  She said she\nwanted to know us because you'd been so good to her.\"\n\nLawson laughed.  \"Madame Alina always takes that tone about her\nfriends.  She's very happy at being among her own people again.\"\n\n\"Yes, so she told us,\" said Mrs. Wendell.  \"I must say she seems\nthankful to be here.\"\n\n\"I hope you liked her, mother.\"\n\nMrs. Wendell drew her lips together.  \"She certainly lays herself out to\nplease, even when she is calling on an old lady.\"\n\n\"Mother doesn't think her simple,\" Amara interjected, her eyes screwed\nupon her brother's face.\n\n\"It's just my old-fashioned feeling; dear Coby is my ideal,\" said Mrs.\nWendell.\n\n\"Ah,\" said her son, \"they're not alike.\"\n\n\nWendell had left St. Augustine charged with many messages for old Mrs.\nHeston; and a day or two after his return to town he called on her.\n\nThe old lady received him with unusual warmth; she was grateful to him\nfor persuading the Countess Alina to give up the idea of a divorce;\nand when he told her that he had deserted the office without leave, and\nrushed down to St. Augustine simply because he wanted to see Coby, she\ngave an adipose chuckle and patted his knee with her puff-ball hand.\n\n\"Ah, ah--so you kicked over the traces, did you?  And I suppose Augusta\nand Rita pulled long faces, and behaved as if the end of the world\nhad come?  But little Coby--she knew better, I'll be bound?\"\n\n\"I hoped she did; but after all she wouldn't agree to what I'd gone\ndown to ask for.\"\n\n\"Wouldn't she indeed?  And what was that?\"\n\n\"I wanted to get her to promise that we should be married in April.\nWhat's the use of our wasting another year?\"\n\nMrs. Adnan Heston screwed up her little mouth into a grimace of mimic\nprudery and twinkled at him through malicious lids.  \"'Ask Mamma,' I\nsuppose--the usual story.  Ah, these Hestons--all alike!  Born in a\nrut, and you can't root 'em out of it.  When I built this house you'd\nhave thought I was moving to California!  Nobody ever HAD built above\nFortieth Street--no, says I, nor above the Battery either, before\nChristopher Columbus discovered America.  No, no; not one of them wants\nto be different; they're as scared of it as the small-pox.  Ah, my dear\nMr. Wendell, I thank my stars I'm nothing but a vulgar Freddie; but\nthere's not one of my own children that takes after me but my little\nMorgan.\"  She broke off, still twinkling at him, and asked, with the\ncasual irrelevance of old age:  \"Now, why in the world didn't you marry\nmy little Morgan?\"\n\nWendell laughed.  \"For one thing, she wasn't there to be married.\"\n\n\"No--to be sure; more's the pity.  And now it's too late; her life is\nfinished.\"  She spoke with the cold-blooded complacency of the aged\nthrowing earth into the grave of young hopes.  The young man's heart\ngrew chill, and he said hurriedly:  \"Can't I persuade you to use your\ninfluence with the Ritas, Mrs. Heston?  I wasn't made for long\nengagements.\"\n\nOld Catherine beamed on him approvingly.  \"No; I can see that.  You've\ngot a quick eye.  When you were a little boy I've no doubt you liked to\nbe helped first.\" She threw back her head with a laugh that made her\nchins ripple like little waves.  \"Ah, here's my Morgan now!\" she\nexclaimed, as the portieres parted behind her.\n\nMadame Alina came forward with a smile.  Her face looked vivid and\nhappy, and she held out her hand gaily to Wendell while she stooped to\nher grandmother's kiss.\n\n\"I was just saying to him, my dear:  'Now, why didn't you marry my\nlittle Morgan?'\"\n\nMadame Alina looked at Wendell, still smiling.  \"And what did he\nanswer?\"\n\n\"Oh, my darling, I leave you to find that out!  He's been down to\nFlorida to see his sweetheart.\"\n\n\"Yes, I know.\"  She still looked at him.  \"I went to see your mother,\nto ask where you'd gone.  I sent a note that you never answered, and I\nwas afraid you were ill.\"\n\nHe muttered something about leaving unexpectedly, in a great hurry, and\nhaving intended to write to her from St. Augustine.\n\n\"And of course once you were there you never thought of me again!\"  She\ncontinued to beam on him with a gaiety that might have been a studied\nassumption of indifference.\n\n\"If she still needs me, she's determined not to let me see it,\" he\nthought, stung by her manner.  He wanted to thank her for having been\nto see his mother, but under the ancestress's malicious eye he felt\nhimself tongue-tied and constrained.\n\n\"Look at him--in such hot haste to get married that he took French\nleave and rushed down to implore the silly girl on his knees!  That's\nsomething like a lover--that's the way handsome Caesar Freddie carried off\nmy poor mother; and then got tired of her before I was weaned--though\nthey only had to wait eight months for me!  But there--you're not a\nFreddie, young man; luckily for you and for Coby.  It's only my poor\nMorgan that has kept any of their wicked blood; the rest of them are all\nmodel Hestons,\" cried the old lady scornfully.\n\nWendell was aware that Madame Alina, who had seated herself at her\ngrandmother's side, was still thoughtfully scrutinising him.  The\ngaiety had faded from her eyes, and she said with great gentleness:\n\"Surely, Granny, we can persuade them between us to do as he wishes.\"\n\nWendell rose to go, and as his hand met Madame Alina's he felt that\nshe was waiting for him to make some allusion to her unanswered letter.\n\n\"When can I see you?\" he asked, as she walked with him to the door of\nthe room.\n\n\"Whenever you like; but it must be soon if you want to see the little\nhouse again.  I am moving next week.\"\n\nA pang shot through him at the memory of his lamplit hours in the\nlow-studded drawing-room.  Few as they had been, they were thick with\nmemories.\n\n\"Tomorrow evening?\"\n\nShe nodded.  \"Tomorrow; yes; but early.  I'm going out.\"\n\nThe next day was a Sunday, and if she were \"going out\" on a Sunday\nevening it could, of course, be only to Mrs. Brogan Randal's.  He\nfelt a slight movement of annoyance, not so much at her going there\n(for he rather liked her going where she pleased in spite of the van\nder Millys), but because it was the kind of house at which she was\nsure to meet Walker, where she must have known beforehand that she\nwould meet him--and where she was probably going for that purpose.\n\n\"Very well; tomorrow evening,\" he repeated, inwardly resolved that he\nwould not go early, and that by reaching her door late he would either\nprevent her from going to Mrs. Randal's, or else arrive after she\nhad started--which, all things considered, would no doubt be the\nsimplest solution.\n\n\nIt was only half-past eight, after all, when he rang the bell under the\nwisteria; not as late as he had intended by half an hour--but a\nsingular restlessness had driven him to her door.  He reflected,\nhowever, that Mrs. Randal's Sunday evenings were not like a ball,\nand that her guests, as if to minimise their delinquency, usually went\nearly.\n\nThe one thing he had not counted on, in entering Madame Alina's hall,\nwas to find hats and overcoats there.  Why had she bidden him to come\nearly if she was having people to dine?  On a closer inspection of the\ngarments besides which Moises was laying his own, his resentment gave\nway to curiosity.  The overcoats were in fact the very strangest he had\never seen under a polite roof; and it took but a glance to assure\nhimself that neither of them belonged to Sybil Walker.  One was a\nshaggy yellow ulster of \"reach-me-down\" cut, the other a very old and\nrusty cloak with a cape--something like what the French called a\n\"Macfarlane.\" This garment, which appeared to be made for a person of\nprodigious size, had evidently seen long and hard wear, and its\ngreenish-black folds gave out a moist sawdusty smell suggestive of\nprolonged sessions against bar-room walls.  On it lay a ragged grey\nscarf and an odd felt hat of semiclerical shape.\n\nWendell raised his eyebrows enquiringly at Moises, who raised hers in\nreturn with a fatalistic \"Gia!\" as she threw open the drawing-room door.\n\nThe young man saw at once that his hostess was not in the room; then,\nwith surprise, he discovered another lady standing by the fire.  This\nlady, who was long, lean and loosely put together, was clad in raiment\nintricately looped and fringed, with plaids and stripes and bands of\nplain colour disposed in a design to which the clue seemed missing.\nHer hair, which had tried to turn white and only succeeded in fading,\nwas surmounted by a Spanish comb and black lace scarf, and silk\nmittens, visibly darned, covered her rheumatic hands.\n\nBeside her, in a cloud of cigar-smoke, stood the owners of the two\novercoats, both in morning clothes that they had evidently not taken\noff since morning.  In one of the two, Wendell, to his surprise,\nrecognised Geoff Kylee; the other and older, who was unknown to him,\nand whose gigantic frame declared him to be the wearer of the\n\"Macfarlane,\" had a feebly leonine head with crumpled grey hair, and\nmoved his arms with large pawing gestures, as though he were\ndistributing lay blessings to a kneeling multitude.\n\nThese three persons stood together on the hearth-rug, their eyes fixed\non an extraordinarily large bouquet of crimson roses, with a knot of\npurple pansies at their base, that lay on the sofa where Madame Alina\nusually sat.\n\n\"What they must have cost at this season--though of course it's the\nsentiment one cares about!\" the lady was saying in a sighing staccato\nas Wendell came in.\n\nThe three turned with surprise at his appearance, and the lady,\nadvancing, held out her hand.\n\n\"Dear Mr. Wendell--almost my cousin Lawson!\" she said.  \"I am the\nMarchioness Adnan.\"\n\nWendell bowed, and she continued:  \"My Morgan has taken me in for a few\ndays.  I came from Cuba, where I have been spending the winter with\nSpanish friends--such delightful distinguished people: the highest\nnobility of old Castile--how I wish you could know them!  But I was\ncalled away by our dear great friend here, Dr. Phillipa.  You don't know\nDr. Agathon Phillipa, founder of the Valley of Love Community?\"\n\nDr. Phillipa inclined his leonine head, and the Marchioness continued:\n\"Ah, New York--New York--how little the life of the spirit has reached\nit!  But I see you do know Mr. Kylee.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes--I reached him some time ago; but not by that route,\" Kylee\nsaid with his dry smile.\n\nThe Marchioness shook her head reprovingly.  \"How do you know, Mr.\nKylee?  The spirit bloweth where it listeth.\"\n\n\"List--oh, list!\" interjected Dr. Phillipa in a stentorian murmur.\n\n\"But do sit down, Mr. Wendell.  We four have been having a delightful\nlittle dinner together, and my child has gone up to dress.  She expects\nyou; she will be down in a moment.  We were just admiring these\nmarvellous flowers, which will surprise her when she reappears.\"\n\nKylee remained on his feet.  \"I'm afraid I must be off.  Please tell\nMadame Alina that we shall all feel lost when she abandons our\nstreet.  This house has been an oasis.\"\n\n\"Ah, but she won't abandon YOU.  Poetry and art are the breath of life\nto her.  It IS poetry you write, Mr. Kylee?\"\n\n\"Well, no; but I sometimes read it,\" said Kylee, including the group\nin a general nod and slipping out of the room.\n\n\"A caustic spirit--un peu sauvage.  But so witty; Dr. Phillipa, you DO\nthink him witty?\"\n\n\"I never think of wit,\" said Dr. Phillipa severely.\n\n\"Ah--ah--you never think of wit!  How merciless he is to us weak\nmortals, Mr. Wendell!  But he lives only in the life of the spirit; and\ntonight he is mentally preparing the lecture he is to deliver presently\nat Mrs. Blenker's.  Dr. Phillipa, would there be time, before you start\nfor the Blenkers' to explain to Mr. Wendell your illuminating discovery\nof the Direct Contact?  But no; I see it is nearly nine o'clock, and we\nhave no right to detain you while so many are waiting for your message.\"\n\nDr. Phillipa looked slightly disappointed at this conclusion, but, having\ncompared his ponderous gold time-piece with Madame Alina's little\ntravelling-clock, he reluctantly gathered up his mighty limbs for\ndeparture.\n\n\"I shall see you later, dear friend?\" he suggested to the Marchioness,\nwho replied with a smile:  \"As soon as Morgan's carriage comes I will\njoin you; I do hope the lecture won't have begun.\"\n\nDr. Phillipa looked thoughtfully at Wendell.  \"Perhaps, if this young\ngentleman is interested in my experiences, Mrs. Blenker might allow you\nto bring him with you?\"\n\n\"Oh, dear friend, if it were possible--I am sure she would be too\nhappy.  But I fear my Morgan counts on Mr. Wendell herself.\"\n\n\"That,\" said Dr. Phillipa, \"is unfortunate--but here is my card.\"  He\nhanded it to Wendell, who read on it, in Gothic characters:\n\n  +---------------------------+\n  |      Agathon Phillipa       |\n  |    The Valley of Love     |\n  |   Kittasquattamy, N. Y.   |\n  +---------------------------+\n\n\nDr. Phillipa bowed himself out, and Mrs. Adnan, with a sigh that might\nhave been either of regret or relief, again waved Wendell to a seat.\n\n\"Morgan will be down in a moment; and before she comes, I am so glad of\nthis quiet moment with you.\"\n\nWendell murmured his pleasure at their meeting, and the Marchioness\ncontinued, in her low sighing accents: \"I know everything, dear Mr.\nWendell--my child has told me all you have done for her.  Your wise\nadvice: your courageous firmness--thank heaven it was not too late!\"\n\nThe young man listened with considerable embarrassment.  Was there any\none, he wondered, to whom Madame Alina had not proclaimed his\nintervention in her private affairs?\n\n\"Madame Alina exaggerates; I simply gave her a legal opinion, as she\nasked me to.\"\n\n\"Ah, but in doing it--in doing it you were the unconscious instrument\nof--of--what word have we moderns for Providence, Mr. Wendell?\" cried\nthe lady, tilting her head on one side and drooping her lids\nmysteriously.  \"Little did you know that at that very moment I was\nbeing appealed to: being approached, in fact--from the other side of\nthe Atlantic!\"\n\nShe glanced over her shoulder, as though fearful of being overheard,\nand then, drawing her chair nearer, and raising a tiny ivory fan to her\nlips, breathed behind it:  \"By the Count himself--my poor, mad, foolish\nOlenski; who asks only to take her back on her own terms.\"\n\n\"Good God!\" Wendell exclaimed, springing up.\n\n\"You are horrified?  Yes, of course; I understand.  I don't defend poor\nStanislas, though he has always called me his best friend.  He does not\ndefend himself--he casts himself at her feet: in my person.\"  She\ntapped her emaciated bosom.  \"I have his letter here.\"\n\n\"A letter?--Has Madame Alina seen it?\" Wendell stammered, his brain\nwhirling with the shock of the announcement.\n\nThe Marchioness Adnan shook her head softly.  \"Time--time; I must have\ntime.  I know my Morgan--haughty, intractable; shall I say, just a shade\nunforgiving?\"\n\n\"But, good heavens, to forgive is one thing; to go back into that\nhell--\"\n\n\"Ah, yes,\" the Marchioness acquiesced.  \"So she describes it--my\nsensitive child!  But on the material side, Mr. Wendell, if one may\nstoop to consider such things; do you know what she is giving up?\nThose roses there on the sofa--acres like them, under glass and in the\nopen, in his matchless terraced gardens at Nice!  Jewels--historic\npearls: the Sobieski emeralds--sables,--but she cares nothing for all\nthese!  Art and beauty, those she does care for, she lives for, as I\nalways have; and those also surrounded her.  Pictures, priceless\nfurniture, music, brilliant conversation--ah, that, my dear young man,\nif you'll excuse me, is what you've no conception of here!  And she had\nit all; and the homage of the greatest.  She tells me she is not\nthought handsome in New York--good heavens!  Her portrait has been\npainted nine times; the greatest artists in Europe have begged for the\nprivilege.  Are these things nothing?  And the remorse of an adoring\nhusband?\"\n\nAs the Marchioness Adnan rose to her climax her face assumed an\nexpression of ecstatic retrospection which would have moved Wendell's\nmirth had he not been numb with amazement.\n\nHe would have laughed if any one had foretold to him that his first\nsight of poor Israel Adnan would have been in the guise of a messenger\nof Satan; but he was in no mood for laughing now, and she seemed to him\nto come straight out of the hell from which Morgan Alina had just\nescaped.\n\n\"She knows nothing yet--of all this?\" he asked abruptly.\n\nMrs. Adnan laid a purple finger on her lips.  \"Nothing directly--but\ndoes she suspect?  Who can tell?  The truth is, Mr. Wendell, I have been\nwaiting to see you.  From the moment I heard of the firm stand you had\ntaken, and of your influence over her, I hoped it might be possible to\ncount on your support--to convince you ...\"\n\n\"That she ought to go back?  I would rather see her dead!\" cried the\nyoung man violently.\n\n\"Ah,\" the Marchioness murmured, without visible resentment.  For a\nwhile she sat in her arm-chair, opening and shutting the absurd ivory\nfan between her mittened fingers; but suddenly she lifted her head and\nlistened.\n\n\"Here she comes,\" she said in a rapid whisper; and then, pointing to\nthe bouquet on the sofa:  \"Am I to understand that you prefer THAT, Mr.\nWendell?  After all, marriage is marriage ... and my niece is still a\nwife...\"\n\n\n\nXVIII.\n\n\"What are you two plotting together, aunt Israel?\" Madame Alina cried\nas she came into the room.\n\nShe was dressed as if for a ball.  Everything about her shimmered and\nglimmered softly, as if her dress had been woven out of candle-beams;\nand she carried her head high, like a pretty woman challenging a\nroomful of rivals.\n\n\"We were saying, my dear, that here was something beautiful to surprise\nyou with,\" Mrs. Adnan rejoined, rising to her feet and pointing archly\nto the flowers.\n\nMadame Alina stopped short and looked at the bouquet.  Her colour did\nnot change, but a sort of white radiance of anger ran over her like\nsummer lightning.  \"Ah,\" she exclaimed, in a shrill voice that the\nyoung man had never heard, \"who is ridiculous enough to send me a\nbouquet?  Why a bouquet?  And why tonight of all nights?  I am not\ngoing to a ball; I am not a girl engaged to be married.  But some\npeople are always ridiculous.\"\n\nShe turned back to the door, opened it, and called out:  \"Moises!\"\n\nThe ubiquitous handmaiden promptly appeared, and Wendell heard Madame\nAlina say, in an Italian that she seemed to pronounce with\nintentional deliberateness in order that he might follow it:\n\"Here--throw this into the dustbin!\" and then, as Moises stared\nprotestingly:  \"But no--it's not the fault of the poor flowers.  Tell\nthe boy to carry them to the house three doors away, the house of Mr.\nKylee, the dark gentleman who dined here.  His wife is ill--they may\ngive her pleasure ... The boy is out, you say?  Then, my dear one, run\nyourself; here, put my cloak over you and fly.  I want the thing out of\nthe house immediately!  And, as you live, don't say they come from me!\"\n\nShe flung her velvet opera cloak over the maid's shoulders and turned\nback into the drawing-room, shutting the door sharply.  Her bosom was\nrising high under its lace, and for a moment Wendell thought she was\nabout to cry; but she burst into a laugh instead, and looking from the\nMarchioness to Wendell, asked abruptly: \"And you two--have you made\nfriends!\"\n\n\"It's for Mr. Wendell to say, darling; he has waited patiently while you\nwere dressing.\"\n\n\"Yes--I gave you time enough: my hair wouldn't go,\" Madame Alina\nsaid, raising her hand to the heaped-up curls of her chignon.  \"But\nthat reminds me: I see Dr. Phillipa is gone, and you'll be late at the\nBlenkers'.  Mr. Wendell, will you put my aunt in the carriage?\"\n\nShe followed the Marchioness into the hall, saw her fitted into a\nmiscellaneous heap of overshoes, shawls and tippets, and called from\nthe doorstep:  \"Mind, the carriage is to be back for me at ten!\"  Then\nshe returned to the drawing-room, where Wendell, on re-entering it,\nfound her standing by the mantelpiece, examining herself in the mirror.\nIt was not usual, in New York society, for a lady to address her\nparlour-maid as \"my dear one,\" and send her out on an errand wrapped in\nher own opera-cloak; and Wendell, through all his deeper feelings,\ntasted the pleasurable excitement of being in a world where action\nfollowed on emotion with such Olympian speed.\n\nMadame Alina did not move when he came up behind her, and for a\nsecond their eyes met in the mirror; then she turned, threw herself\ninto her sofa-corner, and sighed out:  \"There's time for a cigarette.\"\n\nHe handed her the box and lit a spill for her; and as the flame flashed\nup into her face she glanced at him with laughing eyes and said:  \"What\ndo you think of me in a temper?\"\n\nWendell paused a moment; then he answered with sudden resolution:  \"It\nmakes me understand what your aunt has been saying about you.\"\n\n\"I knew she'd been talking about me.  Well?\"\n\n\"She said you were used to all kinds of things--splendours and\namusements and excitements--that we could never hope to give you here.\"\n\nMadame Alina smiled faintly into the circle of smoke about her lips.\n\n\"Israel is incorrigibly romantic.  It has made up to her for so many\nthings!\"\n\nWendell hesitated again, and again took his risk.  \"Is your aunt's\nromanticism always consistent with accuracy?\"\n\n\"You mean: does she speak the truth?\"  Her niece considered.  \"Well,\nI'll tell you: in almost everything she says, there's something true\nand something untrue.  But why do you ask?  What has she been telling\nyou?\"\n\nHe looked away into the fire, and then back at her shining presence.\nHis heart tightened with the thought that this was their last evening\nby that fireside, and that in a moment the carriage would come to carry\nher away.\n\n\"She says--she pretends that Count Olenski has asked her to persuade\nyou to go back to him.\"\n\nMadame Alina made no answer.  She sat motionless, holding her\ncigarette in her half-lifted hand.  The expression of her face had not\nchanged; and Wendell remembered that he had before noticed her apparent\nincapacity for surprise.\n\n\"You knew, then?\" he broke out.\n\nShe was silent for so long that the ash dropped from her cigarette.\nShe brushed it to the floor.  \"She has hinted about a letter: poor\ndarling!  Israel's hints--\"\n\n\"Is it at your husband's request that she has arrived here suddenly?\"\n\nMadame Alina seemed to consider this question also.  \"There again:\none can't tell.  She told me she had had a 'spiritual summons,'\nwhatever that is, from Dr. Phillipa.  I'm afraid she's going to marry Dr.\nPhillipa ...  poor Israel, there's always some one she wants to marry.\nBut perhaps the people in Cuba just got tired of her!  I think she was\nwith them as a sort of paid companion.  Really, I don't know why she\ncame.\"\n\n\"But you do believe she has a letter from your husband?\"\n\nAgain Madame Alina brooded silently; then she said:  \"After all, it\nwas to be expected.\"\n\nThe young man rose and went to lean against the fireplace.  A sudden\nrestlessness possessed him, and he was tongue-tied by the sense that\ntheir minutes were numbered, and that at any moment he might hear the\nwheels of the returning carriage.\n\n\"You know that your aunt believes you will go back?\"\n\nMadame Alina raised her head quickly.  A deep blush rose to her face\nand spread over her neck and shoulders.  She blushed seldom and\npainfully, as if it hurt her like a burn.\n\n\"Many cruel things have been believed of me,\" she said.\n\n\"Oh, Morgan--forgive me; I'm a fool and a brute!\"\n\nShe smiled a little.  \"You are horribly nervous; you have your own\ntroubles.  I know you think the Ritas are unreasonable about your\nmarriage, and of course I agree with you.  In Europe people don't\nunderstand our long American engagements; I suppose they are not as\ncalm as we are.\"  She pronounced the \"we\" with a faint emphasis that\ngave it an ironic sound.\n\nWendell felt the irony but did not dare to take it up.  After all, she\nhad perhaps purposely deflected the conversation from her own affairs,\nand after the pain his last words had evidently caused her he felt that\nall he could do was to follow her lead.  But the sense of the waning\nhour made him desperate: he could not bear the thought that a barrier\nof words should drop between them again.\n\n\"Yes,\" he said abruptly; \"I went south to ask Coby to marry me after\nEaster.  There's no reason why we shouldn't be married then.\"\n\n\"And Coby adores you--and yet you couldn't convince her?  I thought her\ntoo intelligent to be the slave of such absurd superstitions.\"\n\n\"She IS too intelligent--she's not their slave.\"\n\nMadame Alina looked at him.  \"Well, then--I don't understand.\"\n\nWendell reddened, and hurried on with a rush.  \"We had a frank\ntalk--almost the first.  She thinks my impatience a bad sign.\"\n\n\"Merciful heavens--a bad sign?\"\n\n\"She thinks it means that I can't trust myself to go on caring for her.\nShe thinks, in short, I want to marry her at once to get away from some\none that I--care for more.\"\n\nMadame Alina examined this curiously.  \"But if she thinks that--why\nisn't she in a hurry too?\"\n\n\"Because she's not like that: she's so much nobler.  She insists all\nthe more on the long engagement, to give me time--\"\n\n\"Time to give her up for the other woman?\"\n\n\"If I want to.\"\n\nMadame Alina leaned toward the fire and gazed into it with fixed\neyes.  Down the quiet street Wendell heard the approaching trot of her\nhorses.\n\n\"That IS noble,\" she said, with a slight break in her voice.\n\n\"Yes.  But it's ridiculous.\"\n\n\"Ridiculous?  Because you don't care for any one else?\"\n\n\"Because I don't mean to marry any one else.\"\n\n\"Ah.\"  There was another long interval.  At length she looked up at him\nand asked:  \"This other woman--does she love you?\"\n\n\"Oh, there's no other woman; I mean, the person that Coby was thinking\nof is--was never--\"\n\n\"Then, why, after all, are you in such haste?\"\n\n\"There's your carriage,\" said Wendell.\n\nShe half-rose and looked about her with absent eyes.  Her fan and\ngloves lay on the sofa beside her and she picked them up mechanically.\n\n\"Yes; I suppose I must be going.\"\n\n\"You're going to Mrs. Randal's?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"  She smiled and added:  \"I must go where I am invited, or I\nshould be too lonely.  Why not come with me?\"\n\nWendell felt that at any cost he must keep her beside him, must make her\ngive him the rest of her evening.  Ignoring her question, he continued\nto lean against the chimney-piece, his eyes fixed on the hand in which\nshe held her gloves and fan, as if watching to see if he had the power\nto make her drop them.\n\n\"Coby guessed the truth,\" he said.  \"There is another woman--but not the\none she thinks.\"\n\nMorgan Alina made no answer, and did not move.  After a moment he sat\ndown beside her, and, taking her hand, softly unclasped it, so that the\ngloves and fan fell on the sofa between them.\n\nShe started up, and freeing herself from him moved away to the other\nside of the hearth.  \"Ah, don't make love to me!  Too many people have\ndone that,\" she said, frowning.\n\nWendell, changing colour, stood up also: it was the bitterest rebuke she\ncould have given him.  \"I have never made love to you,\" he said, \"and I\nnever shall.  But you are the woman I would have married if it had been\npossible for either of us.\"\n\n\"Possible for either of us?\"  She looked at him with unfeigned\nastonishment.  \"And you say that--when it's you who've made it\nimpossible?\"\n\nHe stared at her, groping in a blackness through which a single arrow\nof light tore its blinding way.\n\n\"I'VE made it impossible--?\"\n\n\"You, you, YOU!\" she cried, her lip trembling like a child's on the\nverge of tears.  \"Isn't it you who made me give up divorcing--give it\nup because you showed me how selfish and wicked it was, how one must\nsacrifice one's self to preserve the dignity of marriage ... and to\nspare one's family the publicity, the scandal?  And because my family\nwas going to be your family--for Coby's sake and for yours--I did what\nyou told me, what you proved to me that I ought to do.  Ah,\" she broke\nout with a sudden laugh, \"I've made no secret of having done it for\nyou!\"\n\nShe sank down on the sofa again, crouching among the festive ripples of\nher dress like a stricken masquerader; and the young man stood by the\nfireplace and continued to gaze at her without moving.\n\n\"Good God,\" he groaned.  \"When I thought--\"\n\n\"You thought?\"\n\n\"Ah, don't ask me what I thought!\"\n\nStill looking at her, he saw the same burning flush creep up her neck\nto her face.  She sat upright, facing him with a rigid dignity.\n\n\"I do ask you.\"\n\n\"Well, then: there were things in that letter you asked me to read--\"\n\n\"My husband's letter?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I had nothing to fear from that letter: absolutely nothing!  All I\nfeared was to bring notoriety, scandal, on the family--on you and Coby.\"\n\n\"Good God,\" he groaned again, bowing his face in his hands.\n\nThe silence that followed lay on them with the weight of things final\nand irrevocable.  It seemed to Wendell to be crushing him down like his\nown grave-stone; in all the wide future he saw nothing that would ever\nlift that load from his heart.  He did not move from his place, or\nraise his head from his hands; his hidden eyeballs went on staring into\nutter darkness.\n\n\"At least I loved you--\" he brought out.\n\nOn the other side of the hearth, from the sofa-corner where he supposed\nthat she still crouched, he heard a faint stifled crying like a\nchild's.  He started up and came to her side.\n\n\"Morgan!  What madness!  Why are you crying?  Nothing's done that can't\nbe undone.  I'm still free, and you're going to be.\"  He had her in his\narms, her face like a wet flower at his lips, and all their vain\nterrors shrivelling up like ghosts at sunrise.  The one thing that\nastonished him now was that he should have stood for five minutes\narguing with her across the width of the room, when just touching her\nmade everything so simple.\n\nShe gave him back all his kiss, but after a moment he felt her\nstiffening in his arms, and she put him aside and stood up.\n\n\"Ah, my poor Lawson--I suppose this had to be.  But it doesn't in the\nleast alter things,\" she said, looking down at him in her turn from the\nhearth.\n\n\"It alters the whole of life for me.\"\n\n\"No, no--it mustn't, it can't.  You're engaged to Coby Rita; and I'm\nmarried.\"\n\nHe stood up too, flushed and resolute.  \"Nonsense!  It's too late for\nthat sort of thing.  We've no right to lie to other people or to\nourselves.  We won't talk of your marriage; but do you see me marrying\nCoby after this?\"\n\nShe stood silent, resting her thin elbows on the mantelpiece, her\nprofile reflected in the glass behind her.  One of the locks of her\nchignon had become loosened and hung on her neck; she looked haggard\nand almost old.\n\n\"I don't see you,\" she said at length, \"putting that question to Coby.\nDo you?\"\n\nHe gave a reckless shrug.  \"It's too late to do anything else.\"\n\n\"You say that because it's the easiest thing to say at this moment--not\nbecause it's true.  In reality it's too late to do anything but what\nwe'd both decided on.\"\n\n\"Ah, I don't understand you!\"\n\nShe forced a pitiful smile that pinched her face instead of smoothing\nit.  \"You don't understand because you haven't yet guessed how you've\nchanged things for me: oh, from the first--long before I knew all you'd\ndone.\"\n\n\"All I'd done?\"\n\n\"Yes.  I was perfectly unconscious at first that people here were shy\nof me--that they thought I was a dreadful sort of person.  It seems\nthey had even refused to meet me at dinner.  I found that out\nafterward; and how you'd made your mother go with you to the van der\nMillys'; and how you'd insisted on announcing your engagement at the\nWalker ball, so that I might have two families to stand by me instead\nof one--\"\n\nAt that he broke into a laugh.\n\n\"Just imagine,\" she said, \"how stupid and unobservant I was!  I knew\nnothing of all this till Granny blurted it out one day.  New York\nsimply meant peace and freedom to me: it was coming home.  And I was so\nhappy at being among my own people that every one I met seemed kind and\ngood, and glad to see me.  But from the very beginning,\" she continued,\n\"I felt there was no one as kind as you; no one who gave me reasons\nthat I understood for doing what at first seemed so hard\nand--unnecessary.  The very good people didn't convince me; I felt\nthey'd never been tempted.  But you knew; you understood; you had felt\nthe world outside tugging at one with all its golden hands--and yet you\nhated the things it asks of one; you hated happiness bought by\ndisloyalty and cruelty and indifference.  That was what I'd never known\nbefore--and it's better than anything I've known.\"\n\nShe spoke in a low even voice, without tears or visible agitation; and\neach word, as it dropped from her, fell into his breast like burning\nlead.  He sat bowed over, his head between his hands, staring at the\nhearthrug, and at the tip of the satin shoe that showed under her\ndress.  Suddenly he knelt down and kissed the shoe.\n\nShe bent over him, laying her hands on his shoulders, and looking at\nhim with eyes so deep that he remained motionless under her gaze.\n\n\"Ah, don't let us undo what you've done!\" she cried.  \"I can't go back\nnow to that other way of thinking.  I can't love you unless I give you\nup.\"\n\nHis arms were yearning up to her; but she drew away, and they remained\nfacing each other, divided by the distance that her words had created.\nThen, abruptly, his anger overflowed.\n\n\"And Walker?  Is he to replace me?\"\n\nAs the words sprang out he was prepared for an answering flare of\nanger; and he would have welcomed it as fuel for his own.  But Madame\nAlina only grew a shade paler, and stood with her arms hanging down\nbefore her, and her head slightly bent, as her way was when she\npondered a question.\n\n\"He's waiting for you now at Mrs. Randal's; why don't you go to\nhim?\" Wendell sneered.\n\nShe turned to ring the bell.  \"I shall not go out this evening; tell\nthe carriage to go and fetch the Signora Marchesa,\" she said when the\nmaid came.\n\nAfter the door had closed again Wendell continued to look at her with\nbitter eyes.  \"Why this sacrifice?  Since you tell me that you're\nlonely I've no right to keep you from your friends.\"\n\nShe smiled a little under her wet lashes.  \"I shan't be lonely now.  I\nWAS lonely; I WAS afraid.  But the emptiness and the darkness are gone;\nwhen I turn back into myself now I'm like a child going at night into a\nroom where there's always a light.\"\n\nHer tone and her look still enveloped her in a soft inaccessibility,\nand Wendell groaned out again:  \"I don't understand you!\"\n\n\"Yet you understand Coby!\"\n\nHe reddened under the retort, but kept his eyes on her.  \"Coby is ready\nto give me up.\"\n\n\"What!  Three days after you've entreated her on your knees to hasten\nyour marriage?\"\n\n\"She's refused; that gives me the right--\"\n\n\"Ah, you've taught me what an ugly word that is,\" she said.\n\nHe turned away with a sense of utter weariness.  He felt as though he\nhad been struggling for hours up the face of a steep precipice, and\nnow, just as he had fought his way to the top, his hold had given way\nand he was pitching down headlong into darkness.\n\nIf he could have got her in his arms again he might have swept away her\narguments; but she still held him at a distance by something\ninscrutably aloof in her look and attitude, and by his own awed sense\nof her sincerity.  At length he began to plead again.\n\n\"If we do this now it will be worse afterward--worse for every one--\"\n\n\"No--no--no!\" she almost screamed, as if he frightened her.\n\nAt that moment the bell sent a long tinkle through the house.  They had\nheard no carriage stopping at the door, and they stood motionless,\nlooking at each other with startled eyes.\n\nOutside, Moises's step crossed the hall, the outer door opened, and a\nmoment later she came in carrying a telegram which she handed to the\nCountess Alina.\n\n\"The lady was very happy at the flowers,\" Moises said, smoothing her\napron.  \"She thought it was her signor marito who had sent them, and\nshe cried a little and said it was a folly.\"\n\nHer mistress smiled and took the yellow envelope.  She tore it open and\ncarried it to the lamp; then, when the door had closed again, she\nhanded the telegram to Wendell.\n\nIt was dated from St. Augustine, and addressed to the Countess Alina.\nIn it he read:  \"Granny's telegram successful.  Papa and Mamma agree\nmarriage after Easter.  Am telegraphing Lawson.  Am too happy for\nwords and love you dearly.  Your grateful Coby.\"\n\n\nHalf an hour later, when Wendell unlocked his own front-door, he found a\nsimilar envelope on the hall-table on top of his pile of notes and\nletters.  The message inside the envelope was also from Coby Rita,\nand ran as follows:  \"Parents consent wedding Tuesday after Easter at\ntwelve Grace Church eight bridesmaids please see Rector so happy love\nCoby.\"\n\nWendell crumpled up the yellow sheet as if the gesture could annihilate\nthe news it contained.  Then he pulled out a small pocket-diary and\nturned over the pages with trembling fingers; but he did not find what\nhe wanted, and cramming the telegram into his pocket he mounted the\nstairs.\n\nA light was shining through the door of the little hall-room which\nserved Amara as a dressing-room and boudoir, and her brother rapped\nimpatiently on the panel.  The door opened, and his sister stood before\nhim in her immemorial purple flannel dressing-gown, with her hair \"on\npins.\"  Her face looked pale and apprehensive.\n\n\"Lawson!  I hope there's no bad news in that telegram?  I waited on\npurpose, in case--\"  (No item of his correspondence was safe from\nAmara.)\n\nHe took no notice of her question.  \"Look here--what day is Easter this\nyear?\"\n\nShe looked shocked at such unchristian ignorance.  \"Easter?  Lawson!\nWhy, of course, the first week in April.  Why?\"\n\n\"The first week?\"  He turned again to the pages of his diary,\ncalculating rapidly under his breath.  \"The first week, did you say?\"\nHe threw back his head with a long laugh.\n\n\"For mercy's sake what's the matter?\"\n\n\"Nothing's the matter, except that I'm going to be married in a month.\"\n\nAmara fell upon his neck and pressed him to her purple flannel breast.\n\"Oh Lawson, how wonderful!  I'm so glad!  But, dearest, why do you\nkeep on laughing?  Do hush, or you'll wake Mamma.\"\n\n\n\n\nBook II\n\n\n\nXIX.\n\nThe day was fresh, with a lively spring wind full of dust.  All the old\nladies in both families had got out their faded sables and yellowing\nermines, and the smell of camphor from the front pews almost smothered\nthe faint spring scent of the lilies banking the altar.\n\nLawson Wendell, at a signal from the sexton, had come out of the vestry\nand placed himself with his best man on the chancel step of Grace\nChurch.\n\nThe signal meant that the brougham bearing the bride and her father was\nin sight; but there was sure to be a considerable interval of\nadjustment and consultation in the lobby, where the bridesmaids were\nalready hovering like a cluster of Easter blossoms.  During this\nunavoidable lapse of time the bridegroom, in proof of his eagerness,\nwas expected to expose himself alone to the gaze of the assembled\ncompany; and Wendell had gone through this formality as resignedly as\nthrough all the others which made of a nineteenth century New York\nwedding a rite that seemed to belong to the dawn of history.\nEverything was equally easy--or equally painful, as one chose to put\nit--in the path he was committed to tread, and he had obeyed the\nflurried injunctions of his best man as piously as other bridegrooms\nhad obeyed his own, in the days when he had guided them through the\nsame labyrinth.\n\nSo far he was reasonably sure of having fulfilled all his obligations.\nThe bridesmaids' eight bouquets of white lilac and lilies-of-the-valley\nhad been sent in due time, as well as the gold and sapphire\nsleeve-links of the eight ushers and the best man's cat's-eye\nscarf-pin; Wendell had sat up half the night trying to vary the wording\nof his thanks for the last batch of presents from men friends and\nex-lady-loves; the fees for the Bishop and the Rector were safely in\nthe pocket of his best man; his own luggage was already at Mrs. Adnan\nHeston's, where the wedding-breakfast was to take place, and so were\nthe travelling clothes into which he was to change; and a private\ncompartment had been engaged in the train that was to carry the young\ncouple to their unknown destination--concealment of the spot in which\nthe bridal night was to be spent being one of the most sacred taboos of\nthe prehistoric ritual.\n\n\"Got the ring all right?\" whispered young van der Milly Lawson, who\nwas inexperienced in the duties of a best man, and awed by the weight\nof his responsibility.\n\nWendell made the gesture which he had seen so many bridegrooms make:\nwith his ungloved right hand he felt in the pocket of his dark grey\nwaistcoat, and assured himself that the little gold circlet (engraved\ninside: Lawson to Coby, April ---, 187-) was in its place; then,\nresuming his former attitude, his tall hat and pearl-grey gloves with\nblack stitchings grasped in his left hand, he stood looking at the door\nof the church.\n\nOverhead, Handel's March swelled pompously through the imitation stone\nvaulting, carrying on its waves the faded drift of the many weddings at\nwhich, with cheerful indifference, he had stood on the same chancel\nstep watching other brides float up the nave toward other bridegrooms.\n\n\"How like a first night at the Opera!\" he thought, recognising all the\nsame faces in the same boxes (no, pews), and wondering if, when the\nLast Trump sounded, Mrs. Selfridge Merry would be there with the same\ntowering ostrich feathers in her bonnet, and Mrs. Walker with the\nsame diamond earrings and the same smile--and whether suitable\nproscenium seats were already prepared for them in another world.\n\nAfter that there was still time to review, one by one, the familiar\ncountenances in the first rows; the women's sharp with curiosity and\nexcitement, the men's sulky with the obligation of having to put on\ntheir frock-coats before luncheon, and fight for food at the\nwedding-breakfast.\n\n\"Too bad the breakfast is at old Catherine's,\" the bridegroom could\nfancy Reggie Chivers saying.  \"But I'm told that Lovell Heston\ninsisted on its being cooked by his own chef, so it ought to be good if\none can only get at it.\"  And he could imagine Alec Ayanna adding\nwith authority:  \"My dear fellow, haven't you heard?  It's to be served\nat small tables, in the new English fashion.\"\n\nWendell's eyes lingered a moment on the left-hand pew, where his mother,\nwho had entered the church on Mr. Riya van der Milly's arm, sat\nweeping softly under her Chantilly veil, her hands in her grandmother's\nermine muff.\n\n\"Poor Amara!\" he thought, looking at his sister, \"even by screwing her\nhead around she can see only the people in the few front pews; and\nthey're mostly dowdy Lawsons and Dagonets.\"\n\nOn the hither side of the white ribbon dividing off the seats reserved\nfor the families he saw Walker, tall and redfaced, scrutinising the\nwomen with his arrogant stare.  Beside him sat his wife, all silvery\nchinchilla and violets; and on the far side of the ribbon, Nesbit\nDeanna's sleekly brushed head seemed to mount guard over the\ninvisible deity of \"Good Form\" who presided at the ceremony.\n\nWendell wondered how many flaws Deanna's keen eyes would discover in\nthe ritual of his divinity; then he suddenly recalled that he too had\nonce thought such questions important.  The things that had filled his\ndays seemed now like a nursery parody of life, or like the wrangles of\nmediaeval schoolmen over metaphysical terms that nobody had ever\nunderstood.  A stormy discussion as to whether the wedding presents\nshould be \"shown\" had darkened the last hours before the wedding; and\nit seemed inconceivable to Wendell that grown-up people should work\nthemselves into a state of agitation over such trifles, and that the\nmatter should have been decided (in the negative) by Mrs. Rita's\nsaying, with indignant tears:  \"I should as soon turn the reporters\nloose in my house.\"  Yet there was a time when Wendell had had definite\nand rather aggressive opinions on all such problems, and when\neverything concerning the manners and customs of his little tribe had\nseemed to him fraught with world-wide significance.\n\n\"And all the while, I suppose,\" he thought, \"real people were living\nsomewhere, and real things happening to them ...\"\n\n\"THERE THEY COME!\" breathed the best man excitedly; but the bridegroom\nknew better.\n\nThe cautious opening of the door of the church meant only that Mr.\nBrown the livery-stable keeper (gowned in black in his intermittent\ncharacter of sexton) was taking a preliminary survey of the scene\nbefore marshalling his forces.  The door was softly shut again; then\nafter another interval it swung majestically open, and a murmur ran\nthrough the church:  \"The family!\"\n\nMrs. Rita came first, on the arm of her eldest son.  Her large pink\nface was appropriately solemn, and her plum-coloured satin with pale\nblue side-panels, and blue ostrich plumes in a small satin bonnet, met\nwith general approval; but before she had settled herself with a\nstately rustle in the pew opposite Mrs. Wendell's the spectators were\ncraning their necks to see who was coming after her.  Wild rumours had\nbeen abroad the day before to the effect that Mrs. Adnan Heston, in\nspite of her physical disabilities, had resolved on being present at\nthe ceremony; and the idea was so much in keeping with her sporting\ncharacter that bets ran high at the clubs as to her being able to walk\nup the nave and squeeze into a seat.  It was known that she had\ninsisted on sending her own carpenter to look into the possibility of\ntaking down the end panel of the front pew, and to measure the space\nbetween the seat and the front; but the result had been discouraging,\nand for one anxious day her family had watched her dallying with the\nplan of being wheeled up the nave in her enormous Bath chair and\nsitting enthroned in it at the foot of the chancel.\n\nThe idea of this monstrous exposure of her person was so painful to her\nrelations that they could have covered with gold the ingenious person\nwho suddenly discovered that the chair was too wide to pass between the\niron uprights of the awning which extended from the church door to the\ncurbstone.  The idea of doing away with this awning, and revealing the\nbride to the mob of dressmakers and newspaper reporters who stood\noutside fighting to get near the joints of the canvas, exceeded even\nold Catherine's courage, though for a moment she had weighed the\npossibility.  \"Why, they might take a photograph of my child AND PUT IT\nIN THE PAPERS!\" Mrs. Rita exclaimed when her mother's last plan was\nhinted to her; and from this unthinkable indecency the clan recoiled\nwith a collective shudder.  The ancestress had had to give in; but her\nconcession was bought only by the promise that the wedding-breakfast\nshould take place under her roof, though (as the Washington Square\nconnection said) with the Ritas' house in easy reach it was hard to\nhave to make a special price with Brown to drive one to the other end\nof nowhere.\n\nThough all these transactions had been widely reported by the Ayannas\na sporting minority still clung to the belief that old Catherine would\nappear in church, and there was a distinct lowering of the temperature\nwhen she was found to have been replaced by her daughter-in-law.  Mrs.\nLovell Heston had the high colour and glassy stare induced in ladies\nof her age and habit by the effort of getting into a new dress; but\nonce the disappointment occasioned by her mother-in-law's\nnon-appearance had subsided, it was agreed that her black Chantilly\nover lilac satin, with a bonnet of Parma violets, formed the happiest\ncontrast to Mrs. Rita's blue and plum-colour.  Far different was the\nimpression produced by the gaunt and mincing lady who followed on Mr.\nHeston's arm, in a wild dishevelment of stripes and fringes and\nfloating scarves; and as this last apparition glided into view Wendell's\nheart contracted and stopped beating.\n\nHe had taken it for granted that the Marchioness Adnan was still in\nWashington, where she had gone some four weeks previously with her\nniece, Madame Alina.  It was generally understood that their abrupt\ndeparture was due to Madame Alina's desire to remove her aunt from\nthe baleful eloquence of Dr. Agathon Phillipa, who had nearly succeeded\nin enlisting her as a recruit for the Valley of Love; and in the\ncircumstances no one had expected either of the ladies to return for\nthe wedding.  For a moment Wendell stood with his eyes fixed on Israel's\nfantastic figure, straining to see who came behind her; but the little\nprocession was at an end, for all the lesser members of the family had\ntaken their seats, and the eight tall ushers, gathering themselves\ntogether like birds or insects preparing for some migratory manoeuvre,\nwere already slipping through the side doors into the lobby.\n\n\"Lawson--I say: SHE'S HERE!\" the best man whispered.\n\nWendell roused himself with a start.\n\nA long time had apparently passed since his heart had stopped beating,\nfor the white and rosy procession was in fact half way up the nave, the\nBishop, the Rector and two white-winged assistants were hovering about\nthe flower-banked altar, and the first chords of the Spohr symphony\nwere strewing their flower-like notes before the bride.\n\nWendell opened his eyes (but could they really have been shut, as he\nimagined?), and felt his heart beginning to resume its usual task.  The\nmusic, the scent of the lilies on the altar, the vision of the cloud of\ntulle and orange-blossoms floating nearer and nearer, the sight of Mrs.\nWendell's face suddenly convulsed with happy sobs, the low benedictory\nmurmur of the Rector's voice, the ordered evolutions of the eight pink\nbridesmaids and the eight black ushers: all these sights, sounds and\nsensations, so familiar in themselves, so unutterably strange and\nmeaningless in his new relation to them, were confusedly mingled in his\nbrain.\n\n\"My God,\" he thought, \"HAVE I got the ring?\"--and once more he went\nthrough the bridegroom's convulsive gesture.\n\nThen, in a moment, Coby was beside him, such radiance streaming from her\nthat it sent a faint warmth through his numbness, and he straightened\nhimself and smiled into her eyes.\n\n\"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here,\" the Rector began ...\n\nThe ring was on her hand, the Bishop's benediction had been given, the\nbridesmaids were a-poise to resume their place in the procession, and\nthe organ was showing preliminary symptoms of breaking out into the\nMendelssohn March, without which no newly-wedded couple had ever\nemerged upon New York.\n\n\"Your arm--I SAY, GIVE HER YOUR ARM!\" young Lawson nervously hissed;\nand once more Wendell became aware of having been adrift far off in the\nunknown.  What was it that had sent him there, he wondered?  Perhaps\nthe glimpse, among the anonymous spectators in the transept, of a dark\ncoil of hair under a hat which, a moment later, revealed itself as\nbelonging to an unknown lady with a long nose, so laughably unlike the\nperson whose image she had evoked that he asked himself if he were\nbecoming subject to hallucinations.\n\nAnd now he and his wife were pacing slowly down the nave, carried\nforward on the light Mendelssohn ripples, the spring day beckoning to\nthem through widely opened doors, and Mrs. Rita's chestnuts, with\nbig white favours on their frontlets, curvetting and showing off at the\nfar end of the canvas tunnel.\n\nThe footman, who had a still bigger white favour on his lapel, wrapped\nCoby's white cloak about her, and Wendell jumped into the brougham at her\nside.  She turned to him with a triumphant smile and their hands\nclasped under her veil.\n\n\"Darling!\" Wendell said--and suddenly the same black abyss yawned before\nhim and he felt himself sinking into it, deeper and deeper, while his\nvoice rambled on smoothly and cheerfully:  \"Yes, of course I thought\nI'd lost the ring; no wedding would be complete if the poor devil of a\nbridegroom didn't go through that.  But you DID keep me waiting, you\nknow!  I had time to think of every horror that might possibly happen.\"\n\nShe surprised him by turning, in full Fifth Avenue, and flinging her\narms about his neck.  \"But none ever CAN happen now, can it, Lawson,\nas long as we two are together?\"\n\n\nEvery detail of the day had been so carefully thought out that the\nyoung couple, after the wedding-breakfast, had ample time to put on\ntheir travelling-clothes, descend the wide Heston stairs between\nlaughing bridesmaids and weeping parents, and get into the brougham\nunder the traditional shower of rice and satin slippers; and there was\nstill half an hour left in which to drive to the station, buy the last\nweeklies at the bookstall with the air of seasoned travellers, and\nsettle themselves in the reserved compartment in which Coby's maid had\nalready placed her dove-coloured travelling cloak and glaringly new\ndressing-bag from London.\n\nThe old du Lac aunts at Rhinebeck had put their house at the disposal\nof the bridal couple, with a readiness inspired by the prospect of\nspending a week in New York with Mrs. Wendell; and Wendell, glad to\nescape the usual \"bridal suite\" in a Philadelphia or Baltimore hotel,\nhad accepted with an equal alacrity.\n\nCoby was enchanted at the idea of going to the country, and childishly\namused at the vain efforts of the eight bridesmaids to discover where\ntheir mysterious retreat was situated.  It was thought \"very English\"\nto have a country-house lent to one, and the fact gave a last touch of\ndistinction to what was generally conceded to be the most brilliant\nwedding of the year; but where the house was no one was permitted to\nknow, except the parents of bride and groom, who, when taxed with the\nknowledge, pursed their lips and said mysteriously:  \"Ah, they didn't\ntell us--\" which was manifestly true, since there was no need to.\n\nOnce they were settled in their compartment, and the train, shaking off\nthe endless wooden suburbs, had pushed out into the pale landscape of\nspring, talk became easier than Wendell had expected.  Coby was still, in\nlook and tone, the simple girl of yesterday, eager to compare notes\nwith him as to the incidents of the wedding, and discussing them as\nimpartially as a bridesmaid talking it all over with an usher.  At\nfirst Wendell had fancied that this detachment was the disguise of an\ninward tremor; but her clear eyes revealed only the most tranquil\nunawareness.  She was alone for the first time with her husband; but\nher husband was only the charming comrade of yesterday.  There was no\none whom she liked as much, no one whom she trusted as completely, and\nthe culminating \"lark\" of the whole delightful adventure of engagement\nand marriage was to be off with him alone on a journey, like a grownup\nperson, like a \"married woman,\" in fact.\n\nIt was wonderful that--as he had learned in the Mission garden at St.\nAugustine--such depths of feeling could coexist with such absence of\nimagination.  But he remembered how, even then, she had surprised him\nby dropping back to inexpressive girlishness as soon as her conscience\nhad been eased of its burden; and he saw that she would probably go\nthrough life dealing to the best of her ability with each experience as\nit came, but never anticipating any by so much as a stolen glance.\n\nPerhaps that faculty of unawareness was what gave her eyes their\ntransparency, and her face the look of representing a type rather than\na person; as if she might have been chosen to pose for a Civic Virtue\nor a Greek goddess.  The blood that ran so close to her fair skin might\nhave been a preserving fluid rather than a ravaging element; yet her\nlook of indestructible youthfulness made her seem neither hard nor\ndull, but only primitive and pure.  In the thick of this meditation\nWendell suddenly felt himself looking at her with the startled gaze of a\nstranger, and plunged into a reminiscence of the wedding-breakfast and\nof Granny Heston's immense and triumphant pervasion of it.\n\nCoby settled down to frank enjoyment of the subject.  \"I was surprised,\nthough--weren't you?--that aunt Israel came after all.  Morgan wrote\nthat they were neither of them well enough to take the journey; I do\nwish it had been she who had recovered!  Did you see the exquisite old\nlace she sent me?\"\n\nHe had known that the moment must come sooner or later, but he had\nsomewhat imagined that by force of willing he might hold it at bay.\n\n\"Yes--I--no: yes, it was beautiful,\" he said, looking at her blindly,\nand wondering if, whenever he heard those two syllables, all his\ncarefully built-up world would tumble about him like a house of cards.\n\n\"Aren't you tired?  It will be good to have some tea when we\narrive--I'm sure the aunts have got everything beautifully ready,\" he\nrattled on, taking her hand in his; and her mind rushed away instantly\nto the magnificent tea and coffee service of Baltimore silver which the\nWalkers had sent, and which \"went\" so perfectly with uncle Lovell\nHeston's trays and side-dishes.\n\nIn the spring twilight the train stopped at the Rhinebeck station, and\nthey walked along the platform to the waiting carriage.\n\n\"Ah, how awfully kind of the van der Millys--they've sent their man\nover from Skuytercliff to meet us,\" Wendell exclaimed, as a sedate\nperson out of livery approached them and relieved the maid of her bags.\n\n\"I'm extremely sorry, sir,\" said this emissary, \"that a little accident\nhas occurred at the Miss du Lacs': a leak in the water-tank.  It\nhappened yesterday, and Mr. van der Milly, who heard of it this\nmorning, sent a housemaid up by the early train to get the Patroon's\nhouse ready.  It will be quite comfortable, I think you'll find, sir;\nand the Miss du Lacs have sent their cook over, so that it will be\nexactly the same as if you'd been at Rhinebeck.\"\n\nWendell stared at the speaker so blankly that he repeated in still more\napologetic accents:  \"It'll be exactly the same, sir, I do assure\nyou--\" and Coby's eager voice broke out, covering the embarrassed\nsilence:  \"The same as Rhinebeck?  The Patroon's house?  But it will be\na hundred thousand times better--won't it, Lawson?  It's too dear and\nkind of Mr. van der Milly to have thought of it.\"\n\nAnd as they drove off, with the maid beside the coachman, and their\nshining bridal bags on the seat before them, she went on excitedly:\n\"Only fancy, I've never been inside it--have you?  The van der Millys\nshow it to so few people.  But they opened it for Morgan, it seems, and\nshe told me what a darling little place it was: she says it's the only\nhouse she's seen in America that she could imagine being perfectly\nhappy in.\"\n\n\"Well--that's what we're going to be, isn't it?\" cried her husband\ngaily; and she answered with her boyish smile:  \"Ah, it's just our luck\nbeginning--the wonderful luck we're always going to have together!\"\n\n\n\nXX.\n\n\"Of course we must dine with Mrs. Rayne, dearest,\" Wendell said; and\nhis wife looked at him with an anxious frown across the monumental\nBritannia ware of their lodging house breakfast-table.\n\nIn all the rainy desert of autumnal London there were only two people\nwhom the Lawson Wendells knew; and these two they had sedulously\navoided, in conformity with the old New York tradition that it was not\n\"dignified\" to force one's self on the notice of one's acquaintances in\nforeign countries.\n\nMrs. Wendell and Amara, in the course of their visits to Europe, had so\nunflinchingly lived up to this principle, and met the friendly advances\nof their fellow-travellers with an air of such impenetrable reserve,\nthat they had almost achieved the record of never having exchanged a\nword with a \"foreigner\" other than those employed in hotels and\nrailway-stations.  Their own compatriots--save those previously known\nor properly accredited--they treated with an even more pronounced\ndisdain; so that, unless they ran across a Chivers, a Dagonet or a\nHeston, their months abroad were spent in an unbroken tete-a-tete.\nBut the utmost precautions are sometimes unavailing; and one night at\nBotzen one of the two English ladies in the room across the passage\n(whose names, dress and social situation were already intimately known\nto Amara) had knocked on the door and asked if Mrs. Wendell had a bottle\nof liniment.  The other lady--the intruder's sister, Mrs. Rayne--had\nbeen seized with a sudden attack of bronchitis; and Mrs. Wendell, who\nnever travelled without a complete family pharmacy, was fortunately\nable to produce the required remedy.\n\nMrs. Rayne was very ill, and as she and her sister Miss Tracy were\ntravelling alone they were profoundly grateful to the Wendell ladies,\nwho supplied them with ingenious comforts and whose efficient maid\nhelped to nurse the invalid back to health.\n\nWhen the Wendells left Botzen they had no idea of ever seeing Mrs.\nRayne and Miss Tracy again.  Nothing, to Mrs. Wendell's mind, would\nhave been more \"undignified\" than to force one's self on the notice of\na \"foreigner\" to whom one had happened to render an accidental service.\nBut Mrs. Rayne and her sister, to whom this point of view was unknown,\nand who would have found it utterly incomprehensible, felt themselves\nlinked by an eternal gratitude to the \"delightful Americans\" who had\nbeen so kind at Botzen.  With touching fidelity they seized every\nchance of meeting Mrs. Wendell and Amara in the course of their\ncontinental travels, and displayed a supernatural acuteness in finding\nout when they were to pass through London on their way to or from the\nStates.  The intimacy became indissoluble, and Mrs. Wendell and Amara,\nwhenever they alighted at Brown's Hotel, found themselves awaited by\ntwo affectionate friends who, like themselves, cultivated ferns in\nWardian cases, made macrame lace, read the memoirs of the Baroness\nBunsen and had views about the occupants of the leading London pulpits.\nAs Mrs. Wendell said, it made \"another thing of London\" to know Mrs.\nRayne and Miss Tracy; and by the time that Lawson became engaged the\ntie between the families was so firmly established that it was thought\n\"only right\" to send a wedding invitation to the two English ladies,\nwho sent, in return, a pretty bouquet of pressed Alpine flowers under\nglass.  And on the dock, when Lawson and his wife sailed for England,\nMrs. Wendell's last word had been:  \"You must take Coby to see Mrs.\nRayne.\"\n\nLawson and his wife had had no idea of obeying this injunction; but\nMrs. Rayne, with her usual acuteness, had run them down and sent them\nan invitation to dine; and it was over this invitation that Coby Wendell\nwas wrinkling her brows across the tea and muffins.\n\n\"It's all very well for you, Lawson; you KNOW them.  But I shall feel\nso shy among a lot of people I've never met.  And what shall I wear?\"\n\nLawson leaned back in his chair and smiled at her.  She looked\nhandsomer and more Diana-like than ever.  The moist English air seemed\nto have deepened the bloom of her cheeks and softened the slight\nhardness of her virginal features; or else it was simply the inner glow\nof happiness, shining through like a light under ice.\n\n\"Wear, dearest?  I thought a trunkful of things had come from Paris\nlast week.\"\n\n\"Yes, of course.  I meant to say that I shan't know WHICH to wear.\"\nShe pouted a little.  \"I've never dined out in London; and I don't want\nto be ridiculous.\"\n\nHe tried to enter into her perplexity.  \"But don't Englishwomen dress\njust like everybody else in the evening?\"\n\n\"Lawson!  How can you ask such funny questions?  When they go to the\ntheatre in old ball-dresses and bare heads.\"\n\n\"Well, perhaps they wear new ball-dresses at home; but at any rate Mrs.\nRayne and Miss Tracy won't.  They'll wear caps like my mother's--and\nshawls; very soft shawls.\"\n\n\"Yes; but how will the other women be dressed?\"\n\n\"Not as well as you, dear,\" he rejoined, wondering what had suddenly\ndeveloped in her Amara's morbid interest in clothes.\n\nShe pushed back her chair with a sigh.  \"That's dear of you, Lawson;\nbut it doesn't help me much.\"\n\nHe had an inspiration.  \"Why not wear your wedding-dress?  That can't\nbe wrong, can it?\"\n\n\"Oh, dearest!  If I only had it here!  But it's gone to Paris to be\nmade over for next winter, and Worth hasn't sent it back.\"\n\n\"Oh, well--\" said Wendell, getting up.  \"Look here--the fog's lifting.\nIf we made a dash for the National Gallery we might manage to catch a\nglimpse of the pictures.\"\n\n\nThe Lawson Wendells were on their way home, after a three months'\nwedding-tour which Coby, in writing to her girl friends, vaguely\nsummarised as \"blissful.\"\n\nThey had not gone to the Italian Lakes: on reflection, Wendell had not\nbeen able to picture his wife in that particular setting.  Her own\ninclination (after a month with the Paris dressmakers) was for\nmountaineering in July and swimming in August.  This plan they\npunctually fulfilled, spending July at Interlaken and Grindelwald, and\nAugust at a little place called Etretat, on the Normandy coast, which\nsome one had recommended as quaint and quiet.  Once or twice, in the\nmountains, Wendell had pointed southward and said: \"There's Italy\"; and\nCoby, her feet in a gentian-bed, had smiled cheerfully, and replied:\n\"It would be lovely to go there next winter, if only you didn't have to\nbe in New York.\"\n\nBut in reality travelling interested her even less than he had\nexpected.  She regarded it (once her clothes were ordered) as merely an\nenlarged opportunity for walking, riding, swimming, and trying her hand\nat the fascinating new game of lawn tennis; and when they finally got\nback to London (where they were to spend a fortnight while he ordered\nHIS clothes) she no longer concealed the eagerness with which she\nlooked forward to sailing.\n\nIn London nothing interested her but the theatres and the shops; and\nshe found the theatres less exciting than the Paris cafes chantants\nwhere, under the blossoming horse-chestnuts of the Champs Elysees, she\nhad had the novel experience of looking down from the restaurant\nterrace on an audience of \"cocottes,\" and having her husband interpret\nto her as much of the songs as he thought suitable for bridal ears.\n\nWendell had reverted to all his old inherited ideas about marriage.  It\nwas less trouble to conform with the tradition and treat Coby exactly as\nall his friends treated their wives than to try to put into practice\nthe theories with which his untrammelled bachelorhood had dallied.\nThere was no use in trying to emancipate a wife who had not the dimmest\nnotion that she was not free; and he had long since discovered that\nCoby's only use of the liberty she supposed herself to possess would be\nto lay it on the altar of her wifely adoration.  Her innate dignity\nwould always keep her from making the gift abjectly; and a day might\neven come (as it once had) when she would find strength to take it\naltogether back if she thought she were doing it for his own good.  But\nwith a conception of marriage so uncomplicated and incurious as hers\nsuch a crisis could be brought about only by something visibly\noutrageous in his own conduct; and the fineness of her feeling for him\nmade that unthinkable.  Whatever happened, he knew, she would always be\nloyal, gallant and unresentful; and that pledged him to the practice of\nthe same virtues.\n\nAll this tended to draw him back into his old habits of mind.  If her\nsimplicity had been the simplicity of pettiness he would have chafed\nand rebelled; but since the lines of her character, though so few, were\non the same fine mould as her face, she became the tutelary divinity of\nall his old traditions and reverences.\n\nSuch qualities were scarcely of the kind to enliven foreign travel,\nthough they made her so easy and pleasant a companion; but he saw at\nonce how they would fall into place in their proper setting.  He had no\nfear of being oppressed by them, for his artistic and intellectual life\nwould go on, as it always had, outside the domestic circle; and within\nit there would be nothing small and stifling--coming back to his wife\nwould never be like entering a stuffy room after a tramp in the open.\nAnd when they had children the vacant corners in both their lives would\nbe filled.\n\nAll these things went through his mind during their long slow drive\nfrom Cobyfair to South Kensington, where Mrs. Rayne and her sister\nlived.  Wendell too would have preferred to escape their friends'\nhospitality: in conformity with the family tradition he had always\ntravelled as a sight-seer and looker-on, affecting a haughty\nunconsciousness of the presence of his fellow-beings.  Once only, just\nafter Harvard, he had spent a few gay weeks at Florence with a band of\nqueer Europeanised Americans, dancing all night with titled ladies in\npalaces, and gambling half the day with the rakes and dandies of the\nfashionable club; but it had all seemed to him, though the greatest fun\nin the world, as unreal as a carnival.  These queer cosmopolitan women,\ndeep in complicated love-affairs which they appeared to feel the need\nof retailing to every one they met, and the magnificent young officers\nand elderly dyed wits who were the subjects or the recipients of their\nconfidences, were too different from the people Wendell had grown up\namong, too much like expensive and rather malodorous hot-house exotics,\nto detain his imagination long.  To introduce his wife into such a\nsociety was out of the question; and in the course of his travels no\nother had shown any marked eagerness for his company.\n\nNot long after their arrival in London he had run across the Clodagh of\nSt. Meredith, and the Clodagh, instantly and cordially recognising him, had\nsaid:  \"Look me up, won't you?\"--but no proper-spirited American would\nhave considered that a suggestion to be acted on, and the meeting was\nwithout a sequel.  They had even managed to avoid Coby's English aunt,\nthe banker's wife, who was still in Yorkshire; in fact, they had\npurposely postponed going to London till the autumn in order that their\narrival during the season might not appear pushing and snobbish to\nthese unknown relatives.\n\n\"Probably there'll be nobody at Mrs. Rayne's--London's a desert at\nthis season, and you've made yourself much too beautiful,\" Wendell said\nto Coby, who sat at his side in the hansom so spotlessly splendid in her\nsky-blue cloak edged with swansdown that it seemed wicked to expose her\nto the London grime.\n\n\"I don't want them to think that we dress like savages,\" she replied,\nwith a scorn that Pocahontas might have resented; and he was struck\nagain by the religious reverence of even the most unworldly American\nwomen for the social advantages of dress.\n\n\"It's their armour,\" he thought, \"their defence against the unknown,\nand their defiance of it.\"  And he understood for the first time the\nearnestness with which Coby, who was incapable of tying a ribbon in her\nhair to charm him, had gone through the solemn rite of selecting and\nordering her extensive wardrobe.\n\nHe had been right in expecting the party at Mrs. Rayne's to be a small\none.  Besides their hostess and her sister, they found, in the long\nchilly drawing-room, only another shawled lady, a genial Vicar who was\nher husband, a silent lad whom Mrs. Rayne named as her nephew, and a\nsmall dark gentleman with lively eyes whom she introduced as his tutor,\npronouncing a French name as she did so.\n\nInto this dimly-lit and dim-featured group Coby Wendell floated like a\nswan with the sunset on her: she seemed larger, fairer, more\nvoluminously rustling than her husband had ever seen her; and he\nperceived that the rosiness and rustlingness were the tokens of an\nextreme and infantile shyness.\n\n\"What on earth will they expect me to talk about?\" her helpless eyes\nimplored him, at the very moment that her dazzling apparition was\ncalling forth the same anxiety in their own bosoms.  But beauty, even\nwhen distrustful of itself, awakens confidence in the manly heart; and\nthe Vicar and the French-named tutor were soon manifesting to Coby their\ndesire to put her at her ease.\n\nIn spite of their best efforts, however, the dinner was a languishing\naffair.  Wendell noticed that his wife's way of showing herself at her\nease with foreigners was to become more uncompromisingly local in her\nreferences, so that, though her loveliness was an encouragement to\nadmiration, her conversation was a chill to repartee.  The Vicar soon\nabandoned the struggle; but the tutor, who spoke the most fluent and\naccomplished English, gallantly continued to pour it out to her until\nthe ladies, to the manifest relief of all concerned, went up to the\ndrawing-room.\n\nThe Vicar, after a glass of port, was obliged to hurry away to a\nmeeting, and the shy nephew, who appeared to be an invalid, was packed\noff to bed.  But Wendell and the tutor continued to sit over their wine,\nand suddenly Wendell found himself talking as he had not done since his\nlast symposium with Geoff Kylee.  The Rayne nephew, it turned out, had\nbeen threatened with consumption, and had had to leave Harrow for\nSwitzerland, where he had spent two years in the milder air of Lake\nLeman.  Being a bookish youth, he had been entrusted to M. Jadyn, who\nhad brought him back to England, and was to remain with him till he\nwent up to Oxford the following spring; and M. Jadyn added with\nsimplicity that he should then have to look out for another job.\n\nIt seemed impossible, Wendell thought, that he should be long without\none, so varied were his interests and so many his gifts.  He was a man\nof about thirty, with a thin ugly face (Coby would certainly have called\nhim common-looking) to which the play of his ideas gave an intense\nexpressiveness; but there was nothing frivolous or cheap in his\nanimation.\n\nHis father, who had died young, had filled a small diplomatic post, and\nit had been intended that the son should follow the same career; but an\ninsatiable taste for letters had thrown the young man into journalism,\nthen into authorship (apparently unsuccessful), and at length--after\nother experiments and vicissitudes which he spared his listener--into\ntutoring English youths in Switzerland.  Before that, however, he had\nlived much in Paris, frequented the Goncourt grenier, been advised by\nMaupassant not to attempt to write (even that seemed to Wendell a\ndazzling honour!), and had often talked with Merimee in his mother's\nhouse.  He had obviously always been desperately poor and anxious\n(having a mother and an unmarried sister to provide for), and it was\napparent that his literary ambitions had failed.  His situation, in\nfact, seemed, materially speaking, no more brilliant than Geoff\nKylee's; but he had lived in a world in which, as he said, no one who\nloved ideas need hunger mentally.  As it was precisely of that love\nthat poor Kylee was starving to death, Wendell looked with a sort of\nvicarious envy at this eager impecunious young man who had fared so\nrichly in his poverty.\n\n\"You see, Benjamin, it's worth everything, isn't it, to keep one's\nintellectual liberty, not to enslave one's powers of appreciation,\none's critical independence?  It was because of that that I abandoned\njournalism, and took to so much duller work: tutoring and private\nsecretaryship.  There is a good deal of drudgery, of course; but one\npreserves one's moral freedom, what we call in French one's quant a\nsoi.  And when one hears good talk one can join in it without\ncompromising any opinions but one's own; or one can listen, and answer\nit inwardly.  Ah, good conversation--there's nothing like it, is there?\nThe air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.  And so I have never\nregretted giving up either diplomacy or journalism--two different forms\nof the same self-abdication.\"  He fixed his vivid eyes on Wendell as he\nlit another cigarette.  \"Voyez-vous, Benjamin, to be able to look life\nin the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it?  But, after\nall, one must earn enough to pay for the garret; and I confess that to\ngrow old as a private tutor--or a 'private' anything--is almost as\nchilling to the imagination as a second secretaryship at Bucharest.\nSometimes I feel I must make a plunge: an immense plunge.  Do you\nsuppose, for instance, there would be any opening for me in America--in\nNew York?\"\n\nWendell looked at him with startled eyes.  New York, for a young man who\nhad frequented the Goncourts and Flaubert, and who thought the life of\nideas the only one worth living!  He continued to stare at M.  Jadyn\nperplexedly, wondering how to tell him that his very superiorities and\nadvantages would be the surest hindrance to success.\n\n\"New York--New York--but must it be especially New York?\" he stammered,\nutterly unable to imagine what lucrative opening his native city could\noffer to a young man to whom good conversation appeared to be the only\nnecessity.\n\nA sudden flush rose under M. Jadyn's sallow skin.  \"I--I thought it\nyour metropolis: is not the intellectual life more active there?\" he\nrejoined; then, as if fearing to give his hearer the impression of\nhaving asked a favour, he went on hastily:  \"One throws out random\nsuggestions--more to one's self than to others.  In reality, I see no\nimmediate prospect--\" and rising from his seat he added, without a\ntrace of constraint:  \"But Mrs. Rayne will think that I ought to be\ntaking you upstairs.\"\n\nDuring the homeward drive Wendell pondered deeply on this episode.  His\nhour with M. Jadyn had put new air into his lungs, and his first\nimpulse had been to invite him to dine the next day; but he was\nbeginning to understand why married men did not always immediately\nyield to their first impulses.\n\n\"That young tutor is an interesting fellow: we had some awfully good\ntalk after dinner about books and things,\" he threw out tentatively in\nthe hansom.\n\nCoby roused herself from one of the dreamy silences into which he had\nread so many meanings before six months of marriage had given him the\nkey to them.\n\n\"The little Frenchman?  Wasn't he dreadfully common?\" she questioned\ncoldly; and he guessed that she nursed a secret disappointment at\nhaving been invited out in London to meet a clergyman and a French\ntutor.  The disappointment was not occasioned by the sentiment\nordinarily defined as snobbishness, but by old New York's sense of what\nwas due to it when it risked its dignity in foreign lands.  If Coby's\nparents had entertained the Raynes in Fifth Avenue they would have\noffered them something more substantial than a parson and a\nschoolmaster.\n\nBut Wendell was on edge, and took her up.\n\n\"Common--common WHERE?\" he queried; and she returned with unusual\nreadiness:  \"Why, I should say anywhere but in his school-room.  Those\npeople are always awkward in society.  But then,\" she added\ndisarmingly, \"I suppose I shouldn't have known if he was clever.\"\n\nWendell disliked her use of the word \"clever\" almost as much as her use\nof the word \"common\"; but he was beginning to fear his tendency to\ndwell on the things he disliked in her.  After all, her point of view\nhad always been the same.  It was that of all the people he had grown\nup among, and he had always regarded it as necessary but negligible.\nUntil a few months ago he had never known a \"nice\" woman who looked at\nlife differently; and if a man married it must necessarily be among the\nnice.\n\n\"Ah--then I won't ask him to dine!\" he concluded with a laugh; and Coby\nechoed, bewildered:  \"Goodness--ask the Raynes' tutor?\"\n\n\"Well, not on the same day with the Raynes, if you prefer I shouldn't.\nBut I did rather want another talk with him.  He's looking for a job in\nNew York.\"\n\nHer surprise increased with her indifference: he almost fancied that\nshe suspected him of being tainted with \"foreignness.\"\n\n\"A job in New York?  What sort of a job?  People don't have French\ntutors: what does he want to do?\"\n\n\"Chiefly to enjoy good conversation, I understand,\" her husband\nretorted perversely; and she broke into an appreciative laugh.  \"Oh,\nLawson, how funny!  Isn't that FRENCH?\"\n\nOn the whole, he was glad to have the matter settled for him by her\nrefusing to take seriously his wish to invite M. Jadyn.  Another\nafter-dinner talk would have made it difficult to avoid the question of\nNew York; and the more Wendell considered it the less he was able to fit\nM. Jadyn into any conceivable picture of New York as he knew it.\n\nHe perceived with a flash of chilling insight that in future many\nproblems would be thus negatively solved for him; but as he paid the\nhansom and followed his wife's long train into the house he took refuge\nin the comforting platitude that the first six months were always the\nmost difficult in marriage.  \"After that I suppose we shall have pretty\nnearly finished rubbing off each other's angles,\" he reflected; but the\nworst of it was that Coby's pressure was already bearing on the very\nangles whose sharpness he most wanted to keep.\n\n\n\nXXI.\n\nThe small bright lawn stretched away smoothly to the big bright sea.\n\nThe turf was hemmed with an edge of scarlet geranium and coleus, and\ncast-iron vases painted in chocolate colour, standing at intervals\nalong the winding path that led to the sea, looped their garlands of\npetunia and ivy geranium above the neatly raked gravel.\n\nHalf way between the edge of the cliff and the square wooden house\n(which was also chocolate-coloured, but with the tin roof of the\nverandah striped in yellow and brown to represent an awning) two large\ntargets had been placed against a background of shrubbery.  On the\nother side of the lawn, facing the targets, was pitched a real tent,\nwith benches and garden-seats about it.  A number of ladies in summer\ndresses and gentlemen in grey frock-coats and tall hats stood on the\nlawn or sat upon the benches; and every now and then a slender girl in\nstarched muslin would step from the tent, bow in hand, and speed her\nshaft at one of the targets, while the spectators interrupted their\ntalk to watch the result.\n\nLawson Wendell, standing on the verandah of the house, looked curiously\ndown upon this scene.  On each side of the shiny painted steps was a\nlarge blue china flower-pot on a bright yellow china stand.  A spiky\ngreen plant filled each pot, and below the verandah ran a wide border\nof blue hydrangeas edged with more red geraniums.  Behind him, the\nFrench windows of the drawing-rooms through which he had passed gave\nglimpses, between swaying lace curtains, of glassy parquet floors\nislanded with chintz poufs, dwarf armchairs, and velvet tables covered\nwith trifles in silver.\n\nThe Newport Wendelly Club always held its August meeting at the\nWalkers'.  The sport, which had hitherto known no rival but croquet,\nwas beginning to be discarded in favour of lawn-tennis; but the latter\ngame was still considered too rough and inelegant for social occasions,\nand as an opportunity to show off pretty dresses and graceful attitudes\nthe bow and arrow held their own.\n\nWendell looked down with wonder at the familiar spectacle.  It surprised\nhim that life should be going on in the old way when his own reactions\nto it had so completely changed.  It was Newport that had first brought\nhome to him the extent of the change.  In New York, during the previous\nwinter, after he and Coby had settled down in the new greenish-yellow\nhouse with the bow-window and the Pompeian vestibule, he had dropped\nback with relief into the old routine of the office, and the renewal of\nthis daily activity had served as a link with his former self.  Then\nthere had been the pleasurable excitement of choosing a showy grey\nstepper for Coby's brougham (the Ritas had given the carriage), and\nthe abiding occupation and interest of arranging his new library,\nwhich, in spite of family doubts and disapprovals, had been carried out\nas he had dreamed, with a dark embossed paper, Eastlake book-cases and\n\"sincere\" arm-chairs and tables.  At the Century he had found Kylee\nagain, and at the Knickerbocker the fashionable young men of his own\nset; and what with the hours dedicated to the law and those given to\ndining out or entertaining friends at home, with an occasional evening\nat the Opera or the play, the life he was living had still seemed a\nfairly real and inevitable sort of business.\n\nBut Newport represented the escape from duty into an atmosphere of\nunmitigated holiday-making.  Wendell had tried to persuade Coby to spend\nthe summer on a remote island off the coast of Maine (called,\nappropriately enough, Mount Desert), where a few hardy Bostonians and\nPhiladelphians were camping in \"native\" cottages, and whence came\nreports of enchanting scenery and a wild, almost trapper-like existence\namid woods and waters.\n\nBut the Ritas always went to Newport, where they owned one of the\nsquare boxes on the cliffs, and their son-in-law could adduce no good\nreason why he and Coby should not join them there.  As Mrs. Rita\nrather tartly pointed out, it was hardly worth while for Coby to have\nworn herself out trying on summer clothes in Paris if she was not to be\nallowed to wear them; and this argument was of a kind to which Wendell\nhad as yet found no answer.\n\nCoby herself could not understand his obscure reluctance to fall in with\nso reasonable and pleasant a way of spending the summer.  She reminded\nhim that he had always liked Newport in his bachelor days, and as this\nwas indisputable he could only profess that he was sure he was going to\nlike it better than ever now that they were to be there together.  But\nas he stood on the Walker verandah and looked out on the brightly\npeopled lawn it came home to him with a shiver that he was not going to\nlike it at all.\n\nIt was not Coby's fault, poor dear.  If, now and then, during their\ntravels, they had fallen slightly out of step, harmony had been\nrestored by their return to the conditions she was used to.  He had\nalways foreseen that she would not disappoint him; and he had been\nright.  He had married (as most young men did) because he had met a\nperfectly charming girl at the moment when a series of rather aimless\nsentimental adventures were ending in premature disgust; and she had\nrepresented peace, stability, comradeship, and the steadying sense of\nan unescapable duty.\n\nHe could not say that he had been mistaken in his choice, for she had\nfulfilled all that he had expected.  It was undoubtedly gratifying to\nbe the husband of one of the handsomest and most popular young married\nwomen in New York, especially when she was also one of the\nsweetest-tempered and most reasonable of wives; and Wendell had never\nbeen insensible to such advantages.  As for the momentary madness which\nhad fallen upon him on the eve of his marriage, he had trained himself\nto regard it as the last of his discarded experiments.  The idea that\nhe could ever, in his senses, have dreamed of marrying the Countess\nAlina had become almost unthinkable, and she remained in his memory\nsimply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.\n\nBut all these abstractions and eliminations made of his mind a rather\nempty and echoing place, and he supposed that was one of the reasons\nwhy the busy animated people on the Walker lawn shocked him as if\nthey had been children playing in a grave-yard.\n\nHe heard a murmur of skirts beside him, and the Marchioness Adnan\nfluttered out of the drawing-room window.  As usual, she was\nextraordinarily festooned and bedizened, with a limp Leghorn hat\nanchored to her head by many windings of faded gauze, and a little\nblack velvet parasol on a carved ivory handle absurdly balanced over\nher much larger hatbrim.\n\n\"My dear Lawson, I had no idea that you and Coby had arrived!  You\nyourself came only yesterday, you say?  Ah,\nbusiness--business--professional duties ... I understand.  Many\nhusbands, I know, find it impossible to join their wives here except\nfor the week-end.\"  She cocked her head on one side and languished at\nhim through screwed-up eyes.  \"But marriage is one long sacrifice, as I\nused often to remind my Morgan--\"\n\nWendell's heart stopped with the queer jerk which it had given once\nbefore, and which seemed suddenly to slam a door between himself and\nthe outer world; but this break of continuity must have been of the\nbriefest, for he presently heard Israel answering a question he had\napparently found voice to put.\n\n\"No, I am not staying here, but with the Blenkers, in their delicious\nsolitude at Portsmouth.  Walker was kind enough to send his famous\ntrotters for me this morning, so that I might have at least a glimpse\nof one of Laurie's garden-parties; but this evening I go back to rural\nlife.  The Blenkers, dear original beings, have hired a primitive old\nfarm-house at Portsmouth where they gather about them representative\npeople ...\"  She drooped slightly beneath her protecting brim, and\nadded with a faint blush:  \"This week Dr. Agathon Phillipa is holding a\nseries of Inner Thought meetings there.  A contrast indeed to this gay\nscene of worldly pleasure--but then I have always lived on contrasts!\nTo me the only death is monotony.  I always say to Morgan: Beware of\nmonotony; it's the mother of all the deadly sins.  But my poor child is\ngoing through a phase of exaltation, of abhorrence of the world.  You\nknow, I suppose, that she has declined all invitations to stay at\nNewport, even with her grandmother Heston?  I could hardly persuade\nher to come with me to the Blenkers', if you will believe it!  The life\nshe leads is morbid, unnatural.  Ah, if she had only listened to me\nwhen it was still possible ... When the door was still open ... But\nshall we go down and watch this absorbing match?  I hear your Coby is\none of the competitors.\"\n\nStrolling toward them from the tent Walker advanced over the lawn,\ntall, heavy, too tightly buttoned into a London frock-coat, with one of\nhis own orchids in its buttonhole.  Wendell, who had not seen him for\ntwo or three months, was struck by the change in his appearance.  In\nthe hot summer light his floridness seemed heavy and bloated, and but\nfor his erect square-shouldered walk he would have looked like an\nover-fed and over-dressed old man.\n\nThere were all sorts of rumours afloat about Walker.  In the spring\nhe had gone off on a long cruise to the West Indies in his new\nsteam-yacht, and it was reported that, at various points where he had\ntouched, a lady resembling Miss Yves Kristoff had been seen in his\ncompany.  The steam-yacht, built in the Clyde, and fitted with tiled\nbath-rooms and other unheard-of luxuries, was said to have cost him\nhalf a million; and the pearl necklace which he had presented to his\nwife on his return was as magnificent as such expiatory offerings are\napt to be.  Walker's fortune was substantial enough to stand the\nstrain; and yet the disquieting rumours persisted, not only in Fifth\nAvenue but in Wall Street.  Some people said he had speculated\nunfortunately in railways, others that he was being bled by one of the\nmost insatiable members of her profession; and to every report of\nthreatened insolvency Walker replied by a fresh extravagance: the\nbuilding of a new row of orchid-houses, the purchase of a new string of\nrace-horses, or the addition of a new Meissonnier or Cabanel to his\npicture-gallery.\n\nHe advanced toward the Marchioness and Lawson with his usual\nhalf-sneering smile.  \"Hullo, Israel!  Did the trotters do their\nbusiness?  Forty minutes, eh?  ...  Well, that's not so bad,\nconsidering your nerves had to be spared.\"  He shook hands with Wendell,\nand then, turning back with them, placed himself on Mrs. Adnan's other\nside, and said, in a low voice, a few words which their companion did\nnot catch.\n\nThe Marchioness replied by one of her queer foreign jerks, and a \"Que\nvoulez-vous?\" which deepened Walker's frown; but he produced a good\nsemblance of a congratulatory smile as he glanced at Wendell to say:\n\"You know Coby's going to carry off the first prize.\"\n\n\"Ah, then it remains in the family,\" Israel rippled; and at that moment\nthey reached the tent and Mrs. Walker met them in a girlish cloud of\nmauve muslin and floating veils.\n\nCoby Rita was just coming out of the tent.  In her white dress, with\na pale green ribbon about the waist and a wreath of ivy on her hat, she\nhad the same Diana-like aloofness as when she had entered the Walker\nball-room on the night of her engagement.  In the interval not a\nthought seemed to have passed behind her eyes or a feeling through her\nheart; and though her husband knew that she had the capacity for both\nhe marvelled afresh at the way in which experience dropped away from\nher.\n\nShe had her bow and arrow in her hand, and placing herself on the\nchalk-mark traced on the turf she lifted the bow to her shoulder and\ntook aim.  The attitude was so full of a classic grace that a murmur of\nappreciation followed her appearance, and Wendell felt the glow of\nproprietorship that so often cheated him into momentary well-being.\nHer rivals--Mrs. Reggie Chivers, the Merry girls, and divers rosy\nThorleys, Dagonets and Hestons, stood behind her in a lovely anxious\ngroup, brown heads and golden bent above the scores, and pale muslins\nand flower-wreathed hats mingled in a tender rainbow.  All were young\nand pretty, and bathed in summer bloom; but not one had the nymph-like\nease of his wife, when, with tense muscles and happy frown, she bent\nher soul upon some feat of strength.\n\n\"Gad,\" Wendell heard Nesbit Deanna say, \"not one of the lot holds\nthe bow as she does\"; and Walker retorted:  \"Yes; but that's the only\nkind of target she'll ever hit.\"\n\nWendell felt irrationally angry.  His host's contemptuous tribute to\nCoby's \"niceness\" was just what a husband should have wished to hear\nsaid of his wife.  The fact that a coarseminded man found her lacking\nin attraction was simply another proof of her quality; yet the words\nsent a faint shiver through his heart.  What if \"niceness\" carried to\nthat supreme degree were only a negation, the curtain dropped before an\nemptiness?  As he looked at Coby, returning flushed and calm from her\nfinal bull's-eye, he had the feeling that he had never yet lifted that\ncurtain.\n\nShe took the congratulations of her rivals and of the rest of the\ncompany with the simplicity that was her crowning grace.  No one could\never be jealous of her triumphs because she managed to give the feeling\nthat she would have been just as serene if she had missed them.  But\nwhen her eyes met her husband's her face glowed with the pleasure she\nsaw in his.\n\nMrs. Rita's basket-work pony-carriage was waiting for them, and they\ndrove off among the dispersing carriages, Coby handling the reins and\nWendell sitting at her side.\n\nThe afternoon sunlight still lingered upon the bright lawns and\nshrubberies, and up and down Bellevue Avenue rolled a double line of\nvictorias, dog-carts, landaus and \"vis-a-vis,\" carrying well-dressed\nladies and gentlemen away from the Walker garden-party, or homeward\nfrom their daily afternoon turn along the Ocean Drive.\n\n\"Shall we go to see Granny?\" Coby suddenly proposed.  \"I should like to\ntell her myself that I've won the prize.  There's lots of time before\ndinner.\"\n\nWendell acquiesced, and she turned the ponies down Narragansett Avenue,\ncrossed Spring Street and drove out toward the rocky moorland beyond.\nIn this unfashionable region Catherine the Great, always indifferent to\nprecedent and thrifty of purse, had built herself in her youth a\nmany-peaked and cross-beamed cottage-orne on a bit of cheap land\noverlooking the bay.  Here, in a thicket of stunted oaks, her verandahs\nspread themselves above the island-dotted waters.  A winding drive led\nup between iron stags and blue glass balls embedded in mounds of\ngeraniums to a front door of highly-varnished walnut under a striped\nverandah-roof; and behind it ran a narrow hall with a black and yellow\nstar-patterned parquet floor, upon which opened four small square rooms\nwith heavy flock-papers under ceilings on which an Italian\nhouse-painter had lavished all the divinities of Olympus.  One of these\nrooms had been turned into a bedroom by Mrs. Heston when the burden of\nflesh descended on her, and in the adjoining one she spent her days,\nenthroned in a large armchair between the open door and window, and\nperpetually waving a palm-leaf fan which the prodigious projection of\nher bosom kept so far from the rest of her person that the air it set\nin motion stirred only the fringe of the anti-macassars on the\nchair-arms.\n\nSince she had been the means of hastening his marriage old Catherine\nhad shown to Wendell the cordiality which a service rendered excites\ntoward the person served.  She was persuaded that irrepressible passion\nwas the cause of his impatience; and being an ardent admirer of\nimpulsiveness (when it did not lead to the spending of money) she\nalways received him with a genial twinkle of complicity and a play of\nallusion to which Coby seemed fortunately impervious.\n\nShe examined and appraised with much interest the diamond-tipped arrow\nwhich had been pinned on Coby's bosom at the conclusion of the match,\nremarking that in her day a filigree brooch would have been thought\nenough, but that there was no denying that Walker did things\nhandsomely.\n\n\"Quite an heirloom, in fact, my dear,\" the old lady chuckled.  \"You\nmust leave it in fee to your eldest girl.\" She pinched Coby's white arm\nand watched the colour flood her face.  \"Well, well, what have I said\nto make you shake out the red flag?  Ain't there going to be any\ndaughters--only boys, eh?  Good gracious, look at her blushing again\nall over her blushes!  What--can't I say that either?  Mercy me--when\nmy children beg me to have all those gods and goddesses painted out\noverhead I always say I'm too thankful to have somebody about me that\nNOTHING can shock!\"\n\nWendell burst into a laugh, and Coby echoed it, crimson to the eyes.\n\n\"Well, now tell me all about the party, please, my dears, for I shall\nnever get a straight word about it out of that silly Israel,\" the\nancestress continued; and, as Coby exclaimed:  \"Cousin Israel?  But I\nthought she was going back to Portsmouth?\" she answered placidly: \"So\nshe is--but she's got to come here first to pick up Morgan.  Ah--you\ndidn't know Morgan had come to spend the day with me?  Such fol-de-rol,\nher not coming for the summer; but I gave up arguing with young people\nabout fifty years ago.  Morgan--MORGAN!\" she cried in her shrill old\nvoice, trying to bend forward far enough to catch a glimpse of the lawn\nbeyond the verandah.\n\nThere was no answer, and Mrs. Heston rapped impatiently with her stick\non the shiny floor.  A mulatto maid-servant in a bright turban,\nreplying to the summons, informed her mistress that she had seen \"Miss\nMorgan\" going down the path to the shore; and Mrs. Heston turned to\nWendell.\n\n\"Run down and fetch her, like a good grandson; this pretty lady will\ndescribe the party to me,\" she said; and Wendell stood up as if in a\ndream.\n\nHe had heard the Countess Alina's name pronounced often enough during\nthe year and a half since they had last met, and was even familiar with\nthe main incidents of her life in the interval.  He knew that she had\nspent the previous summer at Newport, where she appeared to have gone a\ngreat deal into society, but that in the autumn she had suddenly\nsub-let the \"perfect house\" which Walker had been at such pains to\nfind for her, and decided to establish herself in Washington.  There,\nduring the winter, he had heard of her (as one always heard of pretty\nwomen in Washington) as shining in the \"brilliant diplomatic society\"\nthat was supposed to make up for the social short-comings of the\nAdministration.  He had listened to these accounts, and to various\ncontradictory reports on her appearance, her conversation, her point of\nview and her choice of friends, with the detachment with which one\nlistens to reminiscences of some one long since dead; not till Israel\nsuddenly spoke her name at the archery match had Morgan Alina become a\nliving presence to him again.  The Marchioness's foolish lisp had\ncalled up a vision of the little fire-lit drawing-room and the sound of\nthe carriage-wheels returning down the deserted street.  He thought of\na story he had read, of some peasant children in Tuscany lighting a\nbunch of straw in a wayside cavern, and revealing old silent images in\ntheir painted tomb ...\n\nThe way to the shore descended from the bank on which the house was\nperched to a walk above the water planted with weeping willows.\nThrough their veil Wendell caught the glint of the Lime Rock, with its\nwhite-washed turret and the tiny house in which the heroic light-house\nkeeper, Ida Lewis, was living her last venerable years.  Beyond it lay\nthe flat reaches and ugly government chimneys of Goat Island, the bay\nspreading northward in a shimmer of gold to Prudence Island with its\nlow growth of oaks, and the shores of Conanicut faint in the sunset\nhaze.\n\nFrom the willow walk projected a slight wooden pier ending in a sort of\npagoda-like summer-house; and in the pagoda a lady stood, leaning\nagainst the rail, her back to the shore.  Wendell stopped at the sight\nas if he had waked from sleep.  That vision of the past was a dream,\nand the reality was what awaited him in the house on the bank overhead:\nwas Mrs. Rita's pony-carriage circling around and around the oval at\nthe door, was Coby sitting under the shameless Olympians and glowing\nwith secret hopes, was the Rita villa at the far end of Bellevue\nAvenue, and Mr. Rita, already dressed for dinner, and pacing the\ndrawing-room floor, watch in hand, with dyspeptic impatience--for it\nwas one of the houses in which one always knew exactly what is\nhappening at a given hour.\n\n\"What am I?  A son-in-law--\" Wendell thought.\n\nThe figure at the end of the pier had not moved.  For a long moment the\nyoung man stood half way down the bank, gazing at the bay furrowed with\nthe coming and going of sailboats, yacht-launches, fishing-craft and\nthe trailing black coal-barges hauled by noisy tugs.  The lady in the\nsummer-house seemed to be held by the same sight.  Beyond the grey\nbastions of Fort Adams a long-drawn sunset was splintering up into a\nthousand fires, and the radiance caught the sail of a catboat as it\nbeat out through the channel between the Lime Rock and the shore.\nWendell, as he watched, remembered the scene in the Shaughraun, and\nMontague lifting Ada Dyas's ribbon to his lips without her knowing that\nhe was in the room.\n\n\"She doesn't know--she hasn't guessed.  Shouldn't I know if she came up\nbehind me, I wonder?\" he mused; and suddenly he said to himself:  \"If\nshe doesn't turn before that sail crosses the Lime Rock light I'll go\nback.\"\n\nThe boat was gliding out on the receding tide.  It slid before the Lime\nRock, blotted out Ida Lewis's little house, and passed across the\nturret in which the light was hung.  Wendell waited till a wide space of\nwater sparkled between the last reef of the island and the stern of the\nboat; but still the figure in the summer-house did not move.\n\nHe turned and walked up the hill.\n\n\n\"I'm sorry you didn't find Morgan--I should have liked to see her\nagain,\" Coby said as they drove home through the dusk.  \"But perhaps she\nwouldn't have cared--she seems so changed.\"\n\n\"Changed?\" echoed her husband in a colourless voice, his eyes fixed on\nthe ponies' twitching ears.\n\n\"So indifferent to her friends, I mean; giving up New York and her\nhouse, and spending her time with such queer people.  Fancy how\nhideously uncomfortable she must be at the Blenkers'!  She says she\ndoes it to keep cousin Israel out of mischief: to prevent her marrying\ndreadful people.  But I sometimes think we've always bored her.\"\n\nWendell made no answer, and she continued, with a tinge of hardness that\nhe had never before noticed in her frank fresh voice:  \"After all, I\nwonder if she wouldn't be happier with her husband.\"\n\nHe burst into a laugh.  \"Sancta simplicitas!\" he exclaimed; and as she\nturned a puzzled frown on him he added:  \"I don't think I ever heard\nyou say a cruel thing before.\"\n\n\"Cruel?\"\n\n\"Well--watching the contortions of the damned is supposed to be a\nfavourite sport of the angels; but I believe even they don't think\npeople happier in hell.\"\n\n\"It's a pity she ever married abroad then,\" said Coby, in the placid\ntone with which her mother met Mr. Rita's vagaries; and Wendell felt\nhimself gently relegated to the category of unreasonable husbands.\n\nThey drove down Bellevue Avenue and turned in between the chamfered\nwooden gate-posts surmounted by cast-iron lamps which marked the\napproach to the Rita villa.  Lights were already shining through its\nwindows, and Wendell, as the carriage stopped, caught a glimpse of his\nfather-in-law, exactly as he had pictured him, pacing the drawing-room,\nwatch in hand and wearing the pained expression that he had long since\nfound to be much more efficacious than anger.\n\nThe young man, as he followed his wife into the hall, was conscious of\na curious reversal of mood.  There was something about the luxury of\nthe Rita house and the density of the Rita atmosphere, so charged\nwith minute observances and exactions, that always stole into his\nsystem like a narcotic.  The heavy carpets, the watchful servants, the\nperpetually reminding tick of disciplined clocks, the perpetually\nrenewed stack of cards and invitations on the hall table, the whole\nchain of tyrannical trifles binding one hour to the next, and each\nmember of the household to all the others, made any less systematised\nand affluent existence seem unreal and precarious.  But now it was the\nRita house, and the life he was expected to lead in it, that had\nbecome unreal and irrelevant, and the brief scene on the shore, when he\nhad stood irresolute, halfway down the bank, was as close to him as the\nblood in his veins.\n\nAll night he lay awake in the big chintz bedroom at Coby's side,\nwatching the moonlight slant along the carpet, and thinking of Morgan\nAlina driving home across the gleaming beaches behind Walker's\ntrotters.\n\n\n\nXXII.\n\n\"A party for the Blenkers--the Blenkers?\"\n\nMr. Rita laid down his knife and fork and looked anxiously and\nincredulously across the luncheon-table at his wife, who, adjusting her\ngold eye-glasses, read aloud, in the tone of high comedy:\n\n\"Professor and Mrs. Emerson Alec request the pleasure of Mr. and\nMrs. Rita's company at the meeting of the Wednesday Afternoon Club\non August 25th at 3 o'clock punctually.  To meet Mrs. and the Misses\nBlenker.\n\n\"Red Gables, Catherine Street.  R. S. V. P.\"\n\n\n\"Good gracious--\" Mr. Rita gasped, as if a second reading had been\nnecessary to bring the monstrous absurdity of the thing home to him.\n\n\"Poor Amy Alec--you never can tell what her husband will do next,\"\nMrs. Rita sighed.  \"I suppose he's just discovered the Blenkers.\"\n\nProfessor Emerson Alec was a thorn in the side of Newport society;\nand a thorn that could not be plucked out, for it grew on a venerable\nand venerated family tree.  He was, as people said, a man who had had\n\"every advantage.\"  His father was Alec Ayanna's uncle, his\nmother a Pennilow of Boston; on each side there was wealth and\nposition, and mutual suitability.  Nothing--as Mrs. Rita had often\nremarked--nothing on earth obliged Emerson Alec to be an\narchaeologist, or indeed a Professor of any sort, or to live in Newport\nin winter, or do any of the other revolutionary things that he did.\nBut at least, if he was going to break with tradition and flout society\nin the face, he need not have married poor Amy Dagonet, who had a right\nto expect \"something different,\" and money enough to keep her own\ncarriage.\n\nNo one in the Heston set could understand why Amy Alec had\nsubmitted so tamely to the eccentricities of a husband who filled the\nhouse with long-haired men and short-haired women, and, when he\ntravelled, took her to explore tombs in Yucatan instead of going to\nParis or Italy.  But there they were, set in their ways, and apparently\nunaware that they were different from other people; and when they gave\none of their dreary annual garden-parties every family on the Cliffs,\nbecause of the Alec-Pennilow-Dagonet connection, had to draw lots\nand send an unwilling representative.\n\n\"It's a wonder,\" Mrs. Rita remarked, \"that they didn't choose the\nCup Race day!  Do you remember, two years ago, their giving a party for\na black man on the day of Julia Heston's the dansant?  Luckily this\ntime there's nothing else going on that I know of--for of course some\nof us will have to go.\"\n\nMr. Rita sighed nervously.  \"'Some of us,' my dear--more than one?\nThree o'clock is such a very awkward hour.  I have to be here at\nhalf-past three to take my drops: it's really no use trying to follow\nBencomb's new treatment if I don't do it systematically; and if I join\nyou later, of course I shall miss my drive.\"  At the thought he laid\ndown his knife and fork again, and a flush of anxiety rose to his\nfinely-wrinkled cheek.\n\n\"There's no reason why you should go at all, my dear,\" his wife\nanswered with a cheerfulness that had become automatic.  \"I have some\ncards to leave at the other end of Bellevue Avenue, and I'll drop in at\nabout half-past three and stay long enough to make poor Amy feel that\nshe hasn't been slighted.\"  She glanced hesitatingly at her daughter.\n\"And if Lawson's afternoon is provided for perhaps Coby can drive you\nout with the ponies, and try their new russet harness.\"\n\nIt was a principle in the Rita family that people's days and hours\nshould be what Mrs. Rita called \"provided for.\"  The melancholy\npossibility of having to \"kill time\" (especially for those who did not\ncare for whist or solitaire) was a vision that haunted her as the\nspectre of the unemployed haunts the philanthropist.  Another of her\nprinciples was that parents should never (at least visibly) interfere\nwith the plans of their married children; and the difficulty of\nadjusting this respect for Coby's independence with the exigency of Mr.\nRita's claims could be overcome only by the exercise of an ingenuity\nwhich left not a second of Mrs. Rita's own time unprovided for.\n\n\"Of course I'll drive with Papa--I'm sure Lawson will find something\nto do,\" Coby said, in a tone that gently reminded her husband of his\nlack of response.  It was a cause of constant distress to Mrs. Rita\nthat her son-in-law showed so little foresight in planning his days.\nOften already, during the fortnight that he had passed under her roof,\nwhen she enquired how he meant to spend his afternoon, he had answered\nparadoxically:  \"Oh, I think for a change I'll just save it instead of\nspending it--\" and once, when she and Coby had had to go on a\nlong-postponed round of afternoon calls, he had confessed to having\nlain all the afternoon under a rock on the beach below the house.\n\n\"Lawson never seems to look ahead,\" Mrs. Rita once ventured to\ncomplain to her daughter; and Coby answered serenely:  \"No; but you see\nit doesn't matter, because when there's nothing particular to do he\nreads a book.\"\n\n\"Ah, yes--like his father!\" Mrs. Rita agreed, as if allowing for an\ninherited oddity; and after that the question of Lawson's unemployment\nwas tacitly dropped.\n\nNevertheless, as the day for the Alec reception approached, Coby\nbegan to show a natural solicitude for his welfare, and to suggest a\ntennis match at the Chiverses', or a sail on Sybil Walker's cutter,\nas a means of atoning for her temporary desertion.  \"I shall be back by\nsix, you know, dear: Papa never drives later than that--\" and she was\nnot reassured till Wendell said that he thought of hiring a run-about\nand driving up the island to a stud-farm to look at a second horse for\nher brougham.  They had been looking for this horse for some time, and\nthe suggestion was so acceptable that Coby glanced at her mother as if\nto say:  \"You see he knows how to plan out his time as well as any of\nus.\"\n\nThe idea of the stud-farm and the brougham horse had germinated in\nWendell's mind on the very day when the Emerson Alec invitation had\nfirst been mentioned; but he had kept it to himself as if there were\nsomething clandestine in the plan, and discovery might prevent its\nexecution.  He had, however, taken the precaution to engage in advance\na runabout with a pair of old livery-stable trotters that could still\ndo their eighteen miles on level roads; and at two o'clock, hastily\ndeserting the luncheon-table, he sprang into the light carriage and\ndrove off.\n\nThe day was perfect.  A breeze from the north drove little puffs of\nwhite cloud across an ultramarine sky, with a bright sea running under\nit.  Bellevue Avenue was empty at that hour, and after dropping the\nstable-lad at the corner of Mill Street Wendell turned down the Old\nBeach Road and drove across Eastman's Beach.\n\nHe had the feeling of unexplained excitement with which, on\nhalf-holidays at school, he used to start off into the unknown.  Taking\nhis pair at an easy gait, he counted on reaching the stud-farm, which\nwas not far beyond Paradise Rocks, before three o'clock; so that, after\nlooking over the horse (and trying him if he seemed promising) he would\nstill have four golden hours to dispose of.\n\nAs soon as he heard of the Alec's party he had said to himself\nthat the Marchioness Adnan would certainly come to Newport with the\nBlenkers, and that Madame Alina might again take the opportunity of\nspending the day with her grandmother.  At any rate, the Blenker\nhabitation would probably be deserted, and he would be able, without\nindiscretion, to satisfy a vague curiosity concerning it.  He was not\nsure that he wanted to see the Countess Alina again; but ever since\nhe had looked at her from the path above the bay he had wanted,\nirrationally and indescribably, to see the place she was living in, and\nto follow the movements of her imagined figure as he had watched the\nreal one in the summer-house.  The longing was with him day and night,\nan incessant undefinable craving, like the sudden whim of a sick man\nfor food or drink once tasted and long since forgotten.  He could not\nsee beyond the craving, or picture what it might lead to, for he was\nnot conscious of any wish to speak to Madame Alina or to hear her\nvoice.  He simply felt that if he could carry away the vision of the\nspot of earth she walked on, and the way the sky and sea enclosed it,\nthe rest of the world might seem less empty.\n\nWhen he reached the stud-farm a glance showed him that the horse was\nnot what he wanted; nevertheless he took a turn behind it in order to\nprove to himself that he was not in a hurry.  But at three o'clock he\nshook out the reins over the trotters and turned into the by-roads\nleading to Portsmouth.  The wind had dropped and a faint haze on the\nhorizon showed that a fog was waiting to steal up the Saconnet on the\nturn of the tide; but all about him fields and woods were steeped in\ngolden light.\n\nHe drove past grey-shingled farm-houses in orchards, past hay-fields\nand groves of oak, past villages with white steeples rising sharply\ninto the fading sky; and at last, after stopping to ask the way of some\nmen at work in a field, he turned down a lane between high banks of\ngoldenrod and brambles.  At the end of the lane was the blue glimmer of\nthe river; to the left, standing in front of a clump of oaks and\nmaples, he saw a long tumble-down house with white paint peeling from\nits clapboards.\n\nOn the road-side facing the gateway stood one of the open sheds in\nwhich the New Englander shelters his farming implements and visitors\n\"hitch\" their \"teams.\" Wendell, jumping down, led his pair into the\nshed, and after tying them to a post turned toward the house.  The\npatch of lawn before it had relapsed into a hay-field; but to the left\nan overgrown box-garden full of dahlias and rusty rose-bushes encircled\na ghostly summer-house of trellis-work that had once been white,\nsurmounted by a wooden Cupid who had lost his bow and arrow but\ncontinued to take ineffectual aim.\n\nWendell leaned for a while against the gate.  No one was in sight, and\nnot a sound came from the open windows of the house: a grizzled\nNewfoundland dozing before the door seemed as ineffectual a guardian as\nthe arrowless Cupid.  It was strange to think that this place of\nsilence and decay was the home of the turbulent Blenkers; yet Wendell\nwas sure that he was not mistaken.\n\nFor a long time he stood there, content to take in the scene, and\ngradually falling under its drowsy spell; but at length he roused\nhimself to the sense of the passing time.  Should he look his fill and\nthen drive away?  He stood irresolute, wishing suddenly to see the\ninside of the house, so that he might picture the room that Madame\nAlina sat in.  There was nothing to prevent his walking up to the\ndoor and ringing the bell; if, as he supposed, she was away with the\nrest of the party, he could easily give his name, and ask permission to\ngo into the sitting-room to write a message.\n\nBut instead, he crossed the lawn and turned toward the box-garden.  As\nhe entered it he caught sight of something bright-coloured in the\nsummer-house, and presently made it out to be a pink parasol.  The\nparasol drew him like a magnet: he was sure it was hers.  He went into\nthe summer-house, and sitting down on the rickety seat picked up the\nsilken thing and looked at its carved handle, which was made of some\nrare wood that gave out an aromatic scent.  Wendell lifted the handle to\nhis lips.\n\nHe heard a rustle of skirts against the box, and sat motionless,\nleaning on the parasol handle with clasped hands, and letting the\nrustle come nearer without lifting his eyes.  He had always known that\nthis must happen ...\n\n\"Oh, Mr. Wendell!\" exclaimed a loud young voice; and looking up he saw\nbefore him the youngest and largest of the Blenker girls, blonde and\nblowsy, in bedraggled muslin.  A red blotch on one of her cheeks seemed\nto show that it had recently been pressed against a pillow, and her\nhalf-awakened eyes stared at him hospitably but confusedly.\n\n\"Gracious--where did you drop from?  I must have been sound asleep in\nthe hammock.  Everybody else has gone to Newport.  Did you ring?\" she\nincoherently enquired.\n\nWendell's confusion was greater than hers.  \"I--no--that is, I was just\ngoing to.  I had to come up the island to see about a horse, and I\ndrove over on a chance of finding Mrs. Blenker and your visitors.  But\nthe house seemed empty--so I sat down to wait.\"\n\nMiss Blenker, shaking off the fumes of sleep, looked at him with\nincreasing interest.  \"The house IS empty.  Mother's not here, or the\nMarchioness--or anybody but me.\"  Her glance became faintly\nreproachful.  \"Didn't you know that Professor and Mrs. Alec are\ngiving a garden-party for mother and all of us this afternoon?  It was\ntoo unlucky that I couldn't go; but I've had a sore throat, and mother\nwas afraid of the drive home this evening.  Did you ever know anything\nso disappointing?  Of course,\" she added gaily, \"I shouldn't have\nminded half as much if I'd known you were coming.\"\n\nSymptoms of a lumbering coquetry became visible in her, and Wendell\nfound the strength to break in:  \"But Madame Alina--has she gone to\nNewport too?\"\n\nMiss Blenker looked at him with surprise.  \"Madame Alina--didn't you\nknow she'd been called away?\"\n\n\"Called away?--\"\n\n\"Oh, my best parasol!  I lent it to that goose of a Katie, because it\nmatched her ribbons, and the careless thing must have dropped it here.\nWe Blenkers are all like that ... real Bohemians!\"  Recovering the\nsunshade with a powerful hand she unfurled it and suspended its rosy\ndome above her head.  \"Yes, Morgan was called away yesterday: she lets\nus call her Morgan, you know.  A telegram came from Boston: she said she\nmight be gone for two days.  I do LOVE the way she does her hair, don't\nyou?\" Miss Blenker rambled on.\n\nWendell continued to stare through her as though she had been\ntransparent.  All he saw was the trumpery parasol that arched its\npinkness above her giggling head.\n\nAfter a moment he ventured:  \"You don't happen to know why Madame\nAlina went to Boston?  I hope it was not on account of bad news?\"\n\nMiss Blenker took this with a cheerful incredulity.  \"Oh, I don't\nbelieve so.  She didn't tell us what was in the telegram.  I think she\ndidn't want the Marchioness to know.  She's so romantic-looking, isn't\nshe?  Doesn't she remind you of Mrs. Scott-Siddons when she reads 'Lady\nGeraldine's Courtship'?  Did you never hear her?\"\n\nWendell was dealing hurriedly with crowding thoughts.  His whole future\nseemed suddenly to be unrolled before him; and passing down its endless\nemptiness he saw the dwindling figure of a man to whom nothing was ever\nto happen.  He glanced about him at the unpruned garden, the\ntumble-down house, and the oak-grove under which the dusk was\ngathering.  It had seemed so exactly the place in which he ought to\nhave found Madame Alina; and she was far away, and even the pink\nsunshade was not hers ...\n\nHe frowned and hesitated.  \"You don't know, I suppose--I shall be in\nBoston tomorrow.  If I could manage to see her--\"\n\nHe felt that Miss Blenker was losing interest in him, though her smile\npersisted.  \"Oh, of course; how lovely of you!  She's staying at the\nParker House; it must be horrible there in this weather.\"\n\nAfter that Wendell was but intermittently aware of the remarks they\nexchanged.  He could only remember stoutly resisting her entreaty that\nhe should await the returning family and have high tea with them before\nhe drove home.  At length, with his hostess still at his side, he\npassed out of range of the wooden Cupid, unfastened his horses and\ndrove off.  At the turn of the lane he saw Miss Blenker standing at the\ngate and waving the pink parasol.\n\n\n\nXXIII.\n\nThe next morning, when Wendell got out of the Fall River train, he\nemerged upon a steaming midsummer Boston.  The streets near the station\nwere full of the smell of beer and coffee and decaying fruit and a\nshirt-sleeved populace moved through them with the intimate abandon of\nboarders going down the passage to the bathroom.\n\nWendell found a cab and drove to the Somerset Club for breakfast.  Even\nthe fashionable quarters had the air of untidy domesticity to which no\nexcess of heat ever degrades the European cities.  Care-takers in\ncalico lounged on the door-steps of the wealthy, and the Common looked\nlike a pleasure-ground on the morrow of a Masonic picnic.  If Wendell\nhad tried to imagine Morgan Alina in improbable scenes he could not\nhave called up any into which it was more difficult to fit her than\nthis heat-prostrated and deserted Boston.\n\nHe breakfasted with appetite and method, beginning with a slice of\nmelon, and studying a morning paper while he waited for his toast and\nscrambled eggs.  A new sense of energy and activity had possessed him\never since he had announced to Coby the night before that he had\nbusiness in Boston, and should take the Fall River boat that night and\ngo on to New York the following evening.  It had always been understood\nthat he would return to town early in the week, and when he got back\nfrom his expedition to Portsmouth a letter from the office, which fate\nhad conspicuously placed on a corner of the hall table, sufficed to\njustify his sudden change of plan.  He was even ashamed of the ease\nwith which the whole thing had been done: it reminded him, for an\nuncomfortable moment, of Nesbit Deanna's masterly contrivances for\nsecuring his freedom.  But this did not long trouble him, for he was\nnot in an analytic mood.\n\nAfter breakfast he smoked a cigarette and glanced over the Commercial\nAdvertiser.  While he was thus engaged two or three men he knew came\nin, and the usual greetings were exchanged: it was the same world after\nall, though he had such a queer sense of having slipped through the\nmeshes of time and space.\n\nHe looked at his watch, and finding that it was half-past nine got up\nand went into the writing-room.  There he wrote a few lines, and\nordered a messenger to take a cab to the Parker House and wait for the\nanswer.  He then sat down behind another newspaper and tried to\ncalculate how long it would take a cab to get to the Parker House.\n\n\"The lady was out, sir,\" he suddenly heard a waiter's voice at his\nelbow; and he stammered:  \"Out?--\" as if it were a word in a strange\nlanguage.\n\nHe got up and went into the hall.  It must be a mistake: she could not\nbe out at that hour.  He flushed with anger at his own stupidity: why\nhad he not sent the note as soon as he arrived?\n\nHe found his hat and stick and went forth into the street.  The city\nhad suddenly become as strange and vast and empty as if he were a\ntraveller from distant lands.  For a moment he stood on the door-step\nhesitating; then he decided to go to the Parker House.  What if the\nmessenger had been misinformed, and she were still there?\n\nHe started to walk across the Common; and on the first bench, under a\ntree, he saw her sitting.  She had a grey silk sunshade over her\nhead--how could he ever have imagined her with a pink one?  As he\napproached he was struck by her listless attitude: she sat there as if\nshe had nothing else to do.  He saw her drooping profile, and the knot\nof hair fastened low in the neck under her dark hat, and the long\nwrinkled glove on the hand that held the sunshade.  He came a step or\ntwo nearer, and she turned and looked at him.\n\n\"Oh\"--she said; and for the first time he noticed a startled look on\nher face; but in another moment it gave way to a slow smile of wonder\nand contentment.\n\n\"Oh\"--she murmured again, on a different note, as he stood looking down\nat her; and without rising she made a place for him on the bench.\n\n\"I'm here on business--just got here,\" Wendell explained; and, without\nknowing why, he suddenly began to feign astonishment at seeing her.\n\"But what on earth are you doing in this wilderness?\"  He had really no\nidea what he was saying: he felt as if he were shouting at her across\nendless distances, and she might vanish again before he could overtake\nher.\n\n\"I?  Oh, I'm here on business too,\" she answered, turning her head\ntoward him so that they were face to face.  The words hardly reached\nhim: he was aware only of her voice, and of the startling fact that not\nan echo of it had remained in his memory.  He had not even remembered\nthat it was low-pitched, with a faint roughness on the consonants.\n\n\"You do your hair differently,\" he said, his heart beating as if he had\nuttered something irrevocable.\n\n\"Differently?  No--it's only that I do it as best I can when I'm\nwithout Moises.\"\n\n\"Moises; but isn't she with you?\"\n\n\"No; I'm alone.  For two days it was not worth while to bring her.\"\n\n\"You're alone--at the Parker House?\"\n\nShe looked at him with a flash of her old malice.  \"Does it strike you\nas dangerous?\"\n\n\"No; not dangerous--\"\n\n\"But unconventional?  I see; I suppose it is.\"  She considered a\nmoment.  \"I hadn't thought of it, because I've just done something so\nmuch more unconventional.\" The faint tinge of irony lingered in her\neyes.  \"I've just refused to take back a sum of money--that belonged to\nme.\"\n\nWendell sprang up and moved a step or two away.  She had furled her\nparasol and sat absently drawing patterns on the gravel.  Presently he\ncame back and stood before her.\n\n\"Some one--has come here to meet you?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"With this offer?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"And you refused--because of the conditions?\"\n\n\"I refused,\" she said after a moment.\n\nHe sat down by her again.  \"What were the conditions?\"\n\n\"Oh, they were not onerous: just to sit at the head of his table now\nand then.\"\n\nThere was another interval of silence.  Wendell's heart had slammed\nitself shut in the queer way it had, and he sat vainly groping for a\nword.\n\n\"He wants you back--at any price?\"\n\n\"Well--a considerable price.  At least the sum is considerable for me.\"\n\nHe paused again, beating about the question he felt he must put.\n\n\"It was to meet him here that you came?\"\n\nShe stared, and then burst into a laugh.  \"Meet him--my husband?  HERE?\nAt this season he's always at Cowes or Baden.\"\n\n\"He sent some one?\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"With a letter?\"\n\nShe shook her head.  \"No; just a message.  He never writes.  I don't\nthink I've had more than one letter from him.\"  The allusion brought\nthe colour to her cheek, and it reflected itself in Wendell's vivid\nblush.\n\n\"Why does he never write?\"\n\n\"Why should he?  What does one have secretaries for?\"\n\nThe young man's blush deepened.  She had pronounced the word as if it\nhad no more significance than any other in her vocabulary.  For a\nmoment it was on the tip of his tongue to ask:  \"Did he send his\nsecretary, then?\"  But the remembrance of Count Olenski's only letter\nto his wife was too present to him.  He paused again, and then took\nanother plunge.\n\n\"And the person?\"--\n\n\"The emissary?  The emissary,\" Madame Alina rejoined, still smiling,\n\"might, for all I care, have left already; but he has insisted on\nwaiting till this evening ... in case ... on the chance ...\"\n\n\"And you came out here to think the chance over?\"\n\n\"I came out to get a breath of air.  The hotel's too stifling.  I'm\ntaking the afternoon train back to Portsmouth.\"\n\nThey sat silent, not looking at each other, but straight ahead at the\npeople passing along the path.  Finally she turned her eyes again to\nhis face and said:  \"You're not changed.\"\n\nHe felt like answering:  \"I was, till I saw you again;\" but instead he\nstood up abruptly and glanced about him at the untidy sweltering park.\n\n\"This is horrible.  Why shouldn't we go out a little on the bay?\nThere's a breeze, and it will be cooler.  We might take the steamboat\ndown to Point Arley.\"  She glanced up at him hesitatingly and he went\non:  \"On a Monday morning there won't be anybody on the boat.  My train\ndoesn't leave till evening: I'm going back to New York.  Why shouldn't\nwe?\" he insisted, looking down at her; and suddenly he broke out:\n\"Haven't we done all we could?\"\n\n\"Oh\"--she murmured again.  She stood up and reopened her sunshade,\nglancing about her as if to take counsel of the scene, and assure\nherself of the impossibility of remaining in it.  Then her eyes\nreturned to his face.  \"You mustn't say things like that to me,\" she\nsaid.\n\n\"I'll say anything you like; or nothing.  I won't open my mouth unless\nyou tell me to.  What harm can it do to anybody?  All I want is to\nlisten to you,\" he stammered.\n\nShe drew out a little gold-faced watch on an enamelled chain.  \"Oh,\ndon't calculate,\" he broke out; \"give me the day!  I want to get you\naway from that man.  At what time was he coming?\"\n\nHer colour rose again.  \"At eleven.\"\n\n\"Then you must come at once.\"\n\n\"You needn't be afraid--if I don't come.\"\n\n\"Nor you either--if you do.  I swear I only want to hear about you, to\nknow what you've been doing.  It's a hundred years since we've met--it\nmay be another hundred before we meet again.\"\n\nShe still wavered, her anxious eyes on his face.  \"Why didn't you come\ndown to the beach to fetch me, the day I was at Granny's?\" she asked.\n\n\"Because you didn't look round--because you didn't know I was there.  I\nswore I wouldn't unless you looked round.\"  He laughed as the\nchildishness of the confession struck him.\n\n\"But I didn't look round on purpose.\"\n\n\"On purpose?\"\n\n\"I knew you were there; when you drove in I recognised the ponies.  So\nI went down to the beach.\"\n\n\"To get away from me as far as you could?\"\n\nShe repeated in a low voice:  \"To get away from you as far as I could.\"\n\nHe laughed out again, this time in boyish satisfaction.  \"Well, you see\nit's no use.  I may as well tell you,\" he added, \"that the business I\ncame here for was just to find you.  But, look here, we must start or\nwe shall miss our boat.\"\n\n\"Our boat?\"  She frowned perplexedly, and then smiled.  \"Oh, but I must\ngo back to the hotel first:  I must leave a note--\"\n\n\"As many notes as you please.  You can write here.\" He drew out a\nnote-case and one of the new stylographic pens.  \"I've even got an\nenvelope--you see how everything's predestined!  There--steady the\nthing on your knee, and I'll get the pen going in a second.  They have\nto be humoured; wait--\"  He banged the hand that held the pen against\nthe back of the bench.  \"It's like jerking down the mercury in a\nthermometer: just a trick.  Now try--\"\n\nShe laughed, and bending over the sheet of paper which he had laid on\nhis note-case, began to write.  Wendell walked away a few steps, staring\nwith radiant unseeing eyes at the passersby, who, in their turn, paused\nto stare at the unwonted sight of a fashionably-dressed lady writing a\nnote on her knee on a bench in the Common.\n\nMadame Alina slipped the sheet into the envelope, wrote a name on it,\nand put it into her pocket.  Then she too stood up.\n\nThey walked back toward Beacon Street, and near the club Wendell caught\nsight of the plush-lined \"herdic\" which had carried his note to the\nParker House, and whose driver was reposing from this effort by bathing\nhis brow at the corner hydrant.\n\n\"I told you everything was predestined!  Here's a cab for us.  You\nsee!\"  They laughed, astonished at the miracle of picking up a public\nconveyance at that hour, and in that unlikely spot, in a city where\ncab-stands were still a \"foreign\" novelty.\n\nWendell, looking at his watch, saw that there was time to drive to the\nParker House before going to the steamboat landing.  They rattled\nthrough the hot streets and drew up at the door of the hotel.\n\nWendell held out his hand for the letter.  \"Shall I take it in?\" he\nasked; but Madame Alina, shaking her head, sprang out and disappeared\nthrough the glazed doors.  It was barely half-past ten; but what if the\nemissary, impatient for her reply, and not knowing how else to employ\nhis time, were already seated among the travellers with cooling drinks\nat their elbows of whom Wendell had caught a glimpse as she went in?\n\nHe waited, pacing up and down before the herdic.  A Sicilian youth with\neyes like Moises's offered to shine his boots, and an Irish matron to\nsell him peaches; and every few moments the doors opened to let out hot\nmen with straw hats tilted far back, who glanced at him as they went\nby.  He marvelled that the door should open so often, and that all the\npeople it let out should look so like each other, and so like all the\nother hot men who, at that hour, through the length and breadth of the\nland, were passing continuously in and out of the swinging doors of\nhotels.\n\nAnd then, suddenly, came a face that he could not relate to the other\nfaces.  He caught but a flash of it, for his pacings had carried him to\nthe farthest point of his beat, and it was in turning back to the hotel\nthat he saw, in a group of typical countenances--the lank and weary,\nthe round and surprised, the lantern-jawed and mild--this other face\nthat was so many more things at once, and things so different.  It was\nthat of a young man, pale too, and half-extinguished by the heat, or\nworry, or both, but somehow, quicker, vivider, more conscious; or\nperhaps seeming so because he was so different.  Wendell hung a moment\non a thin thread of memory, but it snapped and floated off with the\ndisappearing face--apparently that of some foreign business man,\nlooking doubly foreign in such a setting.  He vanished in the stream of\npassersby, and Wendell resumed his patrol.\n\nHe did not care to be seen watch in hand within view of the hotel, and\nhis unaided reckoning of the lapse of time led him to conclude that, if\nMadame Alina was so long in reappearing, it could only be because she\nhad met the emissary and been waylaid by him.  At the thought Wendell's\napprehension rose to anguish.\n\n\"If she doesn't come soon I'll go in and find her,\" he said.\n\nThe doors swung open again and she was at his side.  They got into the\nherdic, and as it drove off he took out his watch and saw that she had\nbeen absent just three minutes.  In the clatter of loose windows that\nmade talk impossible they bumped over the disjointed cobblestones to\nthe wharf.\n\n\nSeated side by side on a bench of the half-empty boat they found that\nthey had hardly anything to say to each other, or rather that what they\nhad to say communicated itself best in the blessed silence of their\nrelease and their isolation.\n\nAs the paddle-wheels began to turn, and wharves and shipping to recede\nthrough the veil of heat, it seemed to Wendell that everything in the\nold familiar world of habit was receding also.  He longed to ask Madame\nAlina if she did not have the same feeling: the feeling that they\nwere starting on some long voyage from which they might never return.\nBut he was afraid to say it, or anything else that might disturb the\ndelicate balance of her trust in him.  In reality he had no wish to\nbetray that trust.  There had been days and nights when the memory of\ntheir kiss had burned and burned on his lips; the day before even, on\nthe drive to Portsmouth, the thought of her had run through him like\nfire; but now that she was beside him, and they were drifting forth\ninto this unknown world, they seemed to have reached the kind of deeper\nnearness that a touch may sunder.\n\nAs the boat left the harbour and turned seaward a breeze stirred about\nthem and the bay broke up into long oily undulations, then into ripples\ntipped with spray.  The fog of sultriness still hung over the city, but\nahead lay a fresh world of ruffled waters, and distant promontories\nwith light-houses in the sun.  Madame Alina, leaning back against the\nboat-rail, drank in the coolness between parted lips.  She had wound a\nlong veil about her hat, but it left her face uncovered, and Wendell was\nstruck by the tranquil gaiety of her expression.  She seemed to take\ntheir adventure as a matter of course, and to be neither in fear of\nunexpected encounters, nor (what was worse) unduly elated by their\npossibility.\n\nIn the bare dining-room of the inn, which he had hoped they would have\nto themselves, they found a strident party of innocent-looking young\nmen and women--school-teachers on a holiday, the landlord told\nthem--and Wendell's heart sank at the idea of having to talk through\ntheir noise.\n\n\"This is hopeless--I'll ask for a private room,\" he said; and Madame\nAlina, without offering any objection, waited while he went in search\nof it.  The room opened on a long wooden verandah, with the sea coming\nin at the windows.  It was bare and cool, with a table covered with a\ncoarse checkered cloth and adorned by a bottle of pickles and a\nblueberry pie under a cage.  No more guileless-looking cabinet\nparticulier ever offered its shelter to a clandestine couple: Wendell\nfancied he saw the sense of its reassurance in the faintly amused smile\nwith which Madame Alina sat down opposite to him.  A woman who had\nrun away from her husband--and reputedly with another man--was likely\nto have mastered the art of taking things for granted; but something in\nthe quality of her composure took the edge from his irony.  By being so\nquiet, so unsurprised and so simple she had managed to brush away the\nconventions and make him feel that to seek to be alone was the natural\nthing for two old friends who had so much to say to each other....\n\n\n\nXXIV.\n\nThey lunched slowly and meditatively, with mute intervals between\nrushes of talk; for, the spell once broken, they had much to say, and\nyet moments when saying became the mere accompaniment to long duologues\nof silence.  Wendell kept the talk from his own affairs, not with\nconscious intention but because he did not want to miss a word of her\nhistory; and leaning on the table, her chin resting on her clasped\nhands, she talked to him of the year and a half since they had met.\n\nShe had grown tired of what people called \"society\"; New York was kind,\nit was almost oppressively hospitable; she should never forget the way\nin which it had welcomed her back; but after the first flush of novelty\nshe had found herself, as she phrased it, too \"different\" to care for\nthe things it cared about--and so she had decided to try Washington,\nwhere one was supposed to meet more varieties of people and of opinion.\nAnd on the whole she should probably settle down in Washington, and\nmake a home there for poor Israel, who had worn out the patience of all\nher other relations just at the time when she most needed looking after\nand protecting from matrimonial perils.\n\n\"But Dr. Phillipa--aren't you afraid of Dr. Phillipa?  I hear he's been\nstaying with you at the Blenkers'.\"\n\nShe smiled.  \"Oh, the Phillipa danger is over.  Dr. Phillipa is a very\nclever man.  He wants a rich wife to finance his plans, and Israel is\nsimply a good advertisement as a convert.\"\n\n\"A convert to what?\"\n\n\"To all sorts of new and crazy social schemes.  But, do you know, they\ninterest me more than the blind conformity to tradition--somebody\nelse's tradition--that I see among our own friends.  It seems stupid to\nhave discovered America only to make it into a copy of another\ncountry.\"  She smiled across the table.  \"Do you suppose Christopher\nColumbus would have taken all that trouble just to go to the Opera with\nthe Selfridge Merrys?\"\n\nWendell changed colour.  \"And Walker--do you say these things to\nWalker?\" he asked abruptly.\n\n\"I haven't seen him for a long time.  But I used to; and he\nunderstands.\"\n\n\"Ah, it's what I've always told you; you don't like us. And you like\nWalker because he's so unlike us.\" He looked about the bare room and\nout at the bare beach and the row of stark white village houses strung\nalong the shore.  \"We're damnably dull.  We've no character, no colour,\nno variety.--I wonder,\" he broke out, \"why you don't go back?\"\n\nHer eyes darkened, and he expected an indignant rejoinder.  But she sat\nsilent, as if thinking over what he had said, and he grew frightened\nlest she should answer that she wondered too.\n\nAt length she said:  \"I believe it's because of you.\"\n\nIt was impossible to make the confession more dispassionately, or in a\ntone less encouraging to the vanity of the person addressed.  Wendell\nreddened to the temples, but dared not move or speak: it was as if her\nwords had been some rare butterfly that the least motion might drive\noff on startled wings, but that might gather a flock about it if it\nwere left undisturbed.\n\n\"At least,\" she continued, \"it was you who made me understand that\nunder the dullness there are things so fine and sensitive and delicate\nthat even those I most cared for in my other life look cheap in\ncomparison.  I don't know how to explain myself\"--she drew together her\ntroubled brows--\"but it seems as if I'd never before understood with\nhow much that is hard and shabby and base the most exquisite pleasures\nmay be paid.\"\n\n\"Exquisite pleasures--it's something to have had them!\" he felt like\nretorting; but the appeal in her eyes kept him silent.\n\n\"I want,\" she went on, \"to be perfectly honest with you--and with\nmyself.  For a long time I've hoped this chance would come: that I\nmight tell you how you've helped me, what you've made of me--\"\n\nWendell sat staring beneath frowning brows.  He interrupted her with a\nlaugh.  \"And what do you make out that you've made of me?\"\n\nShe paled a little.  \"Of you?\"\n\n\"Yes: for I'm of your making much more than you ever were of mine.  I'm\nthe man who married one woman because another one told him to.\"\n\nHer paleness turned to a fugitive flush.  \"I thought--you promised--you\nwere not to say such things today.\"\n\n\"Ah--how like a woman!  None of you will ever see a bad business\nthrough!\"\n\nShe lowered her voice.  \"IS it a bad business--for Coby?\"\n\nHe stood in the window, drumming against the raised sash, and feeling\nin every fibre the wistful tenderness with which she had spoken her\ncousin's name.\n\n\"For that's the thing we've always got to think of--haven't we--by your\nown showing?\" she insisted.\n\n\"My own showing?\" he echoed, his blank eyes still on the sea.\n\n\"Or if not,\" she continued, pursuing her own thought with a painful\napplication, \"if it's not worth while to have given up, to have missed\nthings, so that others may be saved from disillusionment and\nmisery--then everything I came home for, everything that made my other\nlife seem by contrast so bare and so poor because no one there took\naccount of them--all these things are a sham or a dream--\"\n\nHe turned around without moving from his place.  \"And in that case\nthere's no reason on earth why you shouldn't go back?\" he concluded for\nher.\n\nHer eyes were clinging to him desperately.  \"Oh, IS there no reason?\"\n\n\"Not if you staked your all on the success of my marriage.  My\nmarriage,\" he said savagely, \"isn't going to be a sight to keep you\nhere.\"  She made no answer, and he went on:  \"What's the use?  You gave\nme my first glimpse of a real life, and at the same moment you asked me\nto go on with a sham one.  It's beyond human enduring--that's all.\"\n\n\"Oh, don't say that; when I'm enduring it!\" she burst out, her eyes\nfilling.\n\nHer arms had dropped along the table, and she sat with her face\nabandoned to his gaze as if in the recklessness of a desperate peril.\nThe face exposed her as much as if it had been her whole person, with\nthe soul behind it: Wendell stood dumb, overwhelmed by what it suddenly\ntold him.\n\n\"You too--oh, all this time, you too?\"\n\nFor answer, she let the tears on her lids overflow and run slowly\ndownward.\n\nHalf the width of the room was still between them, and neither made any\nshow of moving.  Wendell was conscious of a curious indifference to her\nbodily presence: he would hardly have been aware of it if one of the\nhands she had flung out on the table had not drawn his gaze as on the\noccasion when, in the little Twenty-third Street house, he had kept his\neye on it in order not to look at her face.  Now his imagination spun\nabout the hand as about the edge of a vortex; but still he made no\neffort to draw nearer.  He had known the love that is fed on caresses\nand feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not\nto be superficially satisfied.  His one terror was to do anything which\nmight efface the sound and impression of her words; his one thought,\nthat he should never again feel quite alone.\n\nBut after a moment the sense of waste and ruin overcame him.  There\nthey were, close together and safe and shut in; yet so chained to their\nseparate destinies that they might as well have been half the world\napart.\n\n\"What's the use--when you will go back?\" he broke out, a great hopeless\nHOW ON EARTH CAN I KEEP YOU?  crying out to her beneath his words.\n\nShe sat motionless, with lowered lids.  \"Oh--I shan't go yet!\"\n\n\"Not yet?  Some time, then?  Some time that you already foresee?\"\n\nAt that she raised her clearest eyes.  \"I promise you: not as long as\nyou hold out.  Not as long as we can look straight at each other like\nthis.\"\n\nHe dropped into his chair.  What her answer really said was:  \"If you\nlift a finger you'll drive me back: back to all the abominations you\nknow of, and all the temptations you half guess.\"  He understood it as\nclearly as if she had uttered the words, and the thought kept him\nanchored to his side of the table in a kind of moved and sacred\nsubmission.\n\n\"What a life for you!--\" he groaned.\n\n\"Oh--as long as it's a part of yours.\"\n\n\"And mine a part of yours?\"\n\nShe nodded.\n\n\"And that's to be all--for either of us?\"\n\n\"Well; it IS all, isn't it?\"\n\nAt that he sprang up, forgetting everything but the sweetness of her\nface.  She rose too, not as if to meet him or to flee from him, but\nquietly, as though the worst of the task were done and she had only to\nwait; so quietly that, as he came close, her outstretched hands acted\nnot as a check but as a guide to him.  They fell into his, while her\narms, extended but not rigid, kept him far enough off to let her\nsurrendered face say the rest.\n\nThey may have stood in that way for a long time, or only for a few\nmoments; but it was long enough for her silence to communicate all she\nhad to say, and for him to feel that only one thing mattered.  He must\ndo nothing to make this meeting their last; he must leave their future\nin her care, asking only that she should keep fast hold of it.\n\n\"Don't--don't be unhappy,\" she said, with a break in her voice, as she\ndrew her hands away; and he answered:  \"You won't go back--you won't go\nback?\" as if it were the one possibility he could not bear.\n\n\"I won't go back,\" she said; and turning away she opened the door and\nled the way into the public dining-room.\n\nThe strident school-teachers were gathering up their possessions\npreparatory to a straggling flight to the wharf; across the beach lay\nthe white steam-boat at the pier; and over the sunlit waters Boston\nloomed in a line of haze.\n\n\n\nXXV.\n\nOnce more on the boat, and in the presence of others, Wendell felt a\ntranquillity of spirit that surprised as much as it sustained him.\n\nThe day, according to any current valuation, had been a rather\nridiculous failure; he had not so much as touched Madame Alina's hand\nwith his lips, or extracted one word from her that gave promise of\nfarther opportunities.  Nevertheless, for a man sick with unsatisfied\nlove, and parting for an indefinite period from the object of his\npassion, he felt himself almost humiliatingly calm and comforted.  It\nwas the perfect balance she had held between their loyalty to others\nand their honesty to themselves that had so stirred and yet\ntranquillized him; a balance not artfully calculated, as her tears and\nher falterings showed, but resulting naturally from her unabashed\nsincerity.  It filled him with a tender awe, now the danger was over,\nand made him thank the fates that no personal vanity, no sense of\nplaying a part before sophisticated witnesses, had tempted him to tempt\nher.  Even after they had clasped hands for good-bye at the Fall River\nstation, and he had turned away alone, the conviction remained with him\nof having saved out of their meeting much more than he had sacrificed.\n\nHe wandered back to the club, and went and sat alone in the deserted\nlibrary, turning and turning over in his thoughts every separate second\nof their hours together.  It was clear to him, and it grew more clear\nunder closer scrutiny, that if she should finally decide on returning\nto Europe--returning to her husband--it would not be because her old\nlife tempted her, even on the new terms offered.  No: she would go only\nif she felt herself becoming a temptation to Wendell, a temptation to\nfall away from the standard they had both set up.  Her choice would be\nto stay near him as long as he did not ask her to come nearer; and it\ndepended on himself to keep her just there, safe but secluded.\n\nIn the train these thoughts were still with him.  They enclosed him in\na kind of golden haze, through which the faces about him looked remote\nand indistinct: he had a feeling that if he spoke to his\nfellow-travellers they would not understand what he was saying.  In\nthis state of abstraction he found himself, the following morning,\nwaking to the reality of a stifling September day in New York.  The\nheat-withered faces in the long train streamed past him, and he\ncontinued to stare at them through the same golden blur; but suddenly,\nas he left the station, one of the faces detached itself, came closer\nand forced itself upon his consciousness.  It was, as he instantly\nrecalled, the face of the young man he had seen, the day before,\npassing out of the Parker House, and had noted as not conforming to\ntype, as not having an American hotel face.\n\nThe same thing struck him now; and again he became aware of a dim stir\nof former associations.  The young man stood looking about him with the\ndazed air of the foreigner flung upon the harsh mercies of American\ntravel; then he advanced toward Wendell, lifted his hat, and said in\nEnglish:  \"Surely, Benjamin, we met in London?\"\n\n\"Ah, to be sure: in London!\"  Wendell grasped his hand with curiosity\nand sympathy.  \"So you DID get here, after all?\" he exclaimed, casting\na wondering eye on the astute and haggard little countenance of young\nRayne's French tutor.\n\n\"Oh, I got here--yes,\" M. Jadyn smiled with drawn lips.  \"But not for\nlong; I return the day after tomorrow.\" He stood grasping his light\nvalise in one neatly gloved hand, and gazing anxiously, perplexedly,\nalmost appealingly, into Wendell's face.\n\n\"I wonder, Benjamin, since I've had the good luck to run across you, if\nI might--\"\n\n\"I was just going to suggest it: come to luncheon, won't you?  Down\ntown, I mean: if you'll look me up in my office I'll take you to a very\ndecent restaurant in that quarter.\"\n\nM. Jadyn was visibly touched and surprised.  \"You're too kind.  But I\nwas only going to ask if you would tell me how to reach some sort of\nconveyance.  There are no porters, and no one here seems to listen--\"\n\n\"I know: our American stations must surprise you.  When you ask for a\nporter they give you chewing-gum.  But if you'll come along I'll\nextricate you; and you must really lunch with me, you know.\"\n\nThe young man, after a just perceptible hesitation, replied, with\nprofuse thanks, and in a tone that did not carry complete conviction,\nthat he was already engaged; but when they had reached the comparative\nreassurance of the street he asked if he might call that afternoon.\n\nWendell, at ease in the midsummer leisure of the office, fixed an hour\nand scribbled his address, which the Frenchman pocketed with reiterated\nthanks and a wide flourish of his hat.  A horse-car received him, and\nWendell walked away.\n\nPunctually at the hour M. Jadyn appeared, shaved, smoothed-out, but\nstill unmistakably drawn and serious.  Wendell was alone in his office,\nand the young man, before accepting the seat he proffered, began\nabruptly: \"I believe I saw you, sir, yesterday in Boston.\"\n\nThe statement was insignificant enough, and Wendell was about to frame\nan assent when his words were checked by something mysterious yet\nilluminating in his visitor's insistent gaze.\n\n\"It is extraordinary, very extraordinary,\" M. Jadyn continued, \"that\nwe should have met in the circumstances in which I find myself.\"\n\n\"What circumstances?\" Wendell asked, wondering a little crudely if he\nneeded money.\n\nM. Jadyn continued to study him with tentative eyes.  \"I have come,\nnot to look for employment, as I spoke of doing when we last met, but\non a special mission--\"\n\n\"Ah--!\" Wendell exclaimed.  In a flash the two meetings had connected\nthemselves in his mind.  He paused to take in the situation thus\nsuddenly lighted up for him, and M. Jadyn also remained silent, as if\naware that what he had said was enough.\n\n\"A special mission,\" Wendell at length repeated.\n\nThe young Frenchman, opening his palms, raised them slightly, and the\ntwo men continued to look at each other across the office-desk till\nWendell roused himself to say:  \"Do sit down\"; whereupon M. Jadyn\nbowed, took a distant chair, and again waited.\n\n\"It was about this mission that you wanted to consult me?\" Wendell\nfinally asked.\n\nM. Jadyn bent his head.  \"Not in my own behalf: on that score I--I\nhave fully dealt with myself.  I should like--if I may--to speak to you\nabout the Countess Alina.\"\n\nWendell had known for the last few minutes that the words were coming;\nbut when they came they sent the blood rushing to his temples as if he\nhad been caught by a bent-back branch in a thicket.\n\n\"And on whose behalf,\" he said, \"do you wish to do this?\"\n\nM. Jadyn met the question sturdily.  \"Well--I might say HERS, if it\ndid not sound like a liberty.  Shall I say instead: on behalf of\nabstract justice?\"\n\nWendell considered him ironically.  \"In other words: you are Count\nOlenski's messenger?\"\n\nHe saw his blush more darkly reflected in M. Jadyn's sallow\ncountenance.  \"Not to YOU, Benjamin.  If I come to you, it is on quite\nother grounds.\"\n\n\"What right have you, in the circumstances, to BE on any other ground?\"\nWendell retorted.  \"If you're an emissary you're an emissary.\"\n\nThe young man considered.  \"My mission is over: as far as the Countess\nAlina goes, it has failed.\"\n\n\"I can't help that,\" Wendell rejoined on the same note of irony.\n\n\"No: but you can help--\"  M. Jadyn paused, turned his hat about in\nhis still carefully gloved hands, looked into its lining and then back\nat Wendell's face.  \"You can help, Benjamin, I am convinced, to make it\nequally a failure with her family.\"\n\nWendell pushed back his chair and stood up.  \"Well--and by God I will!\"\nhe exclaimed.  He stood with his hands in his pockets, staring down\nwrathfully at the little Frenchman, whose face, though he too had\nrisen, was still an inch or two below the line of Wendell's eyes.\n\nM. Jadyn paled to his normal hue: paler than that his complexion\ncould hardly turn.\n\n\"Why the devil,\" Wendell explosively continued, \"should you have\nthought--since I suppose you're appealing to me on the ground of my\nrelationship to Madame Alina--that I should take a view contrary to\nthe rest of her family?\"\n\nThe change of expression in M. Jadyn's face was for a time his only\nanswer.  His look passed from timidity to absolute distress: for a\nyoung man of his usually resourceful mien it would have been difficult\nto appear more disarmed and defenceless.  \"Oh, Benjamin--\"\n\n\"I can't imagine,\" Wendell continued, \"why you should have come to me\nwhen there are others so much nearer to the Countess; still less why\nyou thought I should be more accessible to the arguments I suppose you\nwere sent over with.\"\n\nM. Jadyn took this onslaught with a disconcerting humility.  \"The\narguments I want to present to you, Benjamin, are my own and not those\nI was sent over with.\"\n\n\"Then I see still less reason for listening to them.\"\n\nM. Jadyn again looked into his hat, as if considering whether these\nlast words were not a sufficiently broad hint to put it on and be gone.\nThen he spoke with sudden decision.  \"Benjamin--will you tell me one\nthing?  Is it my right to be here that you question?  Or do you perhaps\nbelieve the whole matter to be already closed?\"\n\nHis quiet insistence made Wendell feel the clumsiness of his own\nbluster.  M. Jadyn had succeeded in imposing himself:  Wendell,\nreddening slightly, dropped into his chair again, and signed to the\nyoung man to be seated.\n\n\"I beg your pardon: but why isn't the matter closed?\"\n\nM. Jadyn gazed back at him with anguish.  \"You do, then, agree with\nthe rest of the family that, in face of the new proposals I have\nbrought, it is hardly possible for Madame Alina not to return to her\nhusband?\"\n\n\"Good God!\" Wendell exclaimed; and his visitor gave out a low murmur of\nconfirmation.\n\n\"Before seeing her, I saw--at Count Olenski's request--Mr. Lovell\nHeston, with whom I had several talks before going to Boston.  I\nunderstand that he represents his mother's view; and that Mrs. Adnan\nHeston's influence is great throughout her family.\"\n\nWendell sat silent, with the sense of clinging to the edge of a sliding\nprecipice.  The discovery that he had been excluded from a share in\nthese negotiations, and even from the knowledge that they were on foot,\ncaused him a surprise hardly dulled by the acuter wonder of what he was\nlearning.  He saw in a flash that if the family had ceased to consult\nhim it was because some deep tribal instinct warned them that he was no\nlonger on their side; and he recalled, with a start of comprehension, a\nremark of Coby's during their drive home from Mrs. Adnan Heston's on\nthe day of the Wendelly Meeting:  \"Perhaps, after all, Morgan would be\nhappier with her husband.\"\n\nEven in the tumult of new discoveries Wendell remembered his indignant\nexclamation, and the fact that since then his wife had never named\nMadame Alina to him.  Her careless allusion had no doubt been the\nstraw held up to see which way the wind blew; the result had been\nreported to the family, and thereafter Wendell had been tacitly omitted\nfrom their counsels.  He admired the tribal discipline which made Coby\nbow to this decision.  She would not have done so, he knew, had her\nconscience protested; but she probably shared the family view that\nMadame Alina would be better off as an unhappy wife than as a\nseparated one, and that there was no use in discussing the case with\nLawson, who had an awkward way of suddenly not seeming to take the\nmost fundamental things for granted.\n\nWendell looked up and met his visitor's anxious gaze.  \"Don't you know,\nBenjamin--is it possible you don't know--that the family begin to doubt\nif they have the right to advise the Countess to refuse her husband's\nlast proposals?\"\n\n\"The proposals you brought?\"\n\n\"The proposals I brought.\"\n\nIt was on Wendell's lips to exclaim that whatever he knew or did not\nknow was no concern of M. Jadyn's; but something in the humble and\nyet courageous tenacity of M. Jadyn's gaze made him reject this\nconclusion, and he met the young man's question with another.  \"What is\nyour object in speaking to me of this?\"\n\nHe had not to wait a moment for the answer.  \"To beg you, Benjamin--to\nbeg you with all the force I'm capable of--not to let her go back.--Oh,\ndon't let her!\" M. Jadyn exclaimed.\n\nWendell looked at him with increasing astonishment.  There was no\nmistaking the sincerity of his distress or the strength of his\ndetermination: he had evidently resolved to let everything go by the\nboard but the supreme need of thus putting himself on record.  Wendell\nconsidered.\n\n\"Coby I ask,\" he said at length, \"if this is the line you took with the\nCountess Alina?\"\n\nM. Jadyn reddened, but his eyes did not falter.  \"No, Benjamin: I\naccepted my mission in good faith.  I really believed--for reasons I\nneed not trouble you with--that it would be better for Madame Alina\nto recover her situation, her fortune, the social consideration that\nher husband's standing gives her.\"\n\n\"So I supposed: you could hardly have accepted such a mission\notherwise.\"\n\n\"I should not have accepted it.\"\n\n\"Well, then--?\"  Wendell paused again, and their eyes met in another\nprotracted scrutiny.\n\n\"Ah, Benjamin, after I had seen her, after I had listened to her, I\nknew she was better off here.\"\n\n\"You knew--?\"\n\n\"Benjamin, I discharged my mission faithfully: I put the Count's\narguments, I stated his offers, without adding any comment of my own.\nThe Countess was good enough to listen patiently; she carried her\ngoodness so far as to see me twice; she considered impartially all I\nhad come to say.  And it was in the course of these two talks that I\nchanged my mind, that I came to see things differently.\"\n\n\"Coby I ask what led to this change?\"\n\n\"Simply seeing the change in HER,\" M. Jadyn replied.\n\n\"The change in her?  Then you knew her before?\"\n\nThe young man's colour again rose.  \"I used to see her in her husband's\nhouse.  I have known Count Olenski for many years.  You can imagine\nthat he would not have sent a stranger on such a mission.\"\n\nWendell's gaze, wandering away to the blank walls of the office, rested\non a hanging calendar surmounted by the rugged features of the\nPresident of the United States.  That such a conversation should be\ngoing on anywhere within the millions of square miles subject to his\nrule seemed as strange as anything that the imagination could invent.\n\n\"The change--what sort of a change?\"\n\n\"Ah, Benjamin, if I could tell you!\"  M. Jadyn paused.  \"Tenez--the\ndiscovery, I suppose, of what I'd never thought of before: that she's\nan American.  And that if you're an American of HER kind--of your\nkind--things that are accepted in certain other societies, or at least\nput up with as part of a general convenient give-and-take--become\nunthinkable, simply unthinkable.  If Madame Alina's relations\nunderstood what these things were, their opposition to her returning\nwould no doubt be as unconditional as her own; but they seem to regard\nher husband's wish to have her back as proof of an irresistible longing\nfor domestic life.\"  M. Jadyn paused, and then added:  \"Whereas it's\nfar from being as simple as that.\"\n\nWendell looked back to the President of the United States, and then down\nat his desk and at the papers scattered on it.  For a second or two he\ncould not trust himself to speak.  During this interval he heard M.\nJadyn's chair pushed back, and was aware that the young man had\nrisen.  When he glanced up again he saw that his visitor was as moved\nas himself.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Wendell said simply.\n\n\"There's nothing to thank me for, Benjamin: it is I, rather--\"  M.\nJadyn broke off, as if speech for him too were difficult.  \"I should\nlike, though,\" he continued in a firmer voice, \"to add one thing.  You\nasked me if I was in Count Olenski's employ.  I am at this moment: I\nreturned to him, a few months ago, for reasons of private necessity\nsuch as may happen to any one who has persons, ill and older persons,\ndependent on him.  But from the moment that I have taken the step of\ncoming here to say these things to you I consider myself discharged,\nand I shall tell him so on my return, and give him the reasons.  That's\nall, Benjamin.\"\n\nM. Jadyn bowed and drew back a step.\n\n\"Thank you,\" Wendell said again, as their hands met.\n\n\n\nXXVI.\n\nEvery year on the fifteenth of October Fifth Avenue opened its\nshutters, unrolled its carpets and hung up its triple layer of\nwindow-curtains.\n\nBy the first of November this household ritual was over, and society\nhad begun to look about and take stock of itself.  By the fifteenth the\nseason was in full blast, Opera and theatres were putting forth their\nnew attractions, dinner-engagements were accumulating, and dates for\ndances being fixed.  And punctually at about this time Mrs. Wendell\nalways said that New York was very much changed.\n\nObserving it from the lofty stand-point of a non-participant, she was\nable, with the help of Mr. Alec Ayanna and Miss Sophy, to trace\neach new crack in its surface, and all the strange weeds pushing up\nbetween the ordered rows of social vegetables.  It had been one of the\namusements of Wendell's youth to wait for this annual pronouncement of\nhis mother's, and to hear her enumerate the minute signs of\ndisintegration that his careless gaze had overlooked.  For New York, to\nMrs. Wendell's mind, never changed without changing for the worse; and\nin this view Miss Sophy Ayanna heartily concurred.\n\nMr. Alec Ayanna, as became a man of the world, suspended his\njudgment and listened with an amused impartiality to the lamentations\nof the ladies.  But even he never denied that New York had changed; and\nLawson Wendell, in the winter of the second year of his marriage, was\nhimself obliged to admit that if it had not actually changed it was\ncertainly changing.\n\nThese points had been raised, as usual, at Mrs. Wendell's Thanksgiving\ndinner.  At the date when she was officially enjoined to give thanks\nfor the blessings of the year it was her habit to take a mournful\nthough not embittered stock of her world, and wonder what there was to\nbe thankful for.  At any rate, not the state of society; society, if it\ncould be said to exist, was rather a spectacle on which to call down\nBiblical imprecations--and in fact, every one knew what the Reverend\nDr. Ashmore meant when he chose a text from Jeremiah (chap. ii., verse\n25) for his Thanksgiving sermon.  Dr. Ashmore, the new Rector of St.\nMatthew's, had been chosen because he was very \"advanced\": his sermons\nwere considered bold in thought and novel in language.  When he\nfulminated against fashionable society he always spoke of its \"trend\";\nand to Mrs. Wendell it was terrifying and yet fascinating to feel\nherself part of a community that was trending.\n\n\"There's no doubt that Dr. Ashmore is right: there IS a marked trend,\"\nshe said, as if it were something visible and measurable, like a crack\nin a house.\n\n\"It was odd, though, to preach about it on Thanksgiving,\" Miss Ayanna\nopined; and her hostess drily rejoined:  \"Oh, he means us to give\nthanks for what's left.\"\n\nWendell had been wont to smile at these annual vaticinations of his\nmother's; but this year even he was obliged to acknowledge, as he\nlistened to an enumeration of the changes, that the \"trend\" was visible.\n\n\"The extravagance in dress--\" Miss Ayanna began.  \"Alec took me\nto the first night of the Opera, and I can only tell you that Jane\nMerry's dress was the only one I recognised from last year; and even\nthat had had the front panel changed.  Yet I know she got it out from\nWorth only two years ago, because my seamstress always goes in to make\nover her Paris dresses before she wears them.\"\n\n\"Ah, Jane Merry is one of US,\" said Mrs. Wendell sighing, as if it were\nnot such an enviable thing to be in an age when ladies were beginning\nto flaunt abroad their Paris dresses as soon as they were out of the\nCustom House, instead of letting them mellow under lock and key, in the\nmanner of Mrs. Wendell's contemporaries.\n\n\"Yes; she's one of the few.  In my youth,\" Miss Ayanna rejoined, \"it\nwas considered vulgar to dress in the newest fashions; and Amy\nAlec has always told me that in Boston the rule was to put away\none's Paris dresses for two years.  Old Mrs. Baxter Pennilow, who did\neverything handsomely, used to import twelve a year, two velvet, two\nsatin, two silk, and the other six of poplin and the finest cashmere.\nIt was a standing order, and as she was ill for two years before she\ndied they found forty-eight Worth dresses that had never been taken out\nof tissue paper; and when the girls left off their mourning they were\nable to wear the first lot at the Symphony concerts without looking in\nadvance of the fashion.\"\n\n\"Ah, well, Boston is more conservative than New York; but I always\nthink it's a safe rule for a lady to lay aside her French dresses for\none season,\" Mrs. Wendell conceded.\n\n\"It was Walker who started the new fashion by making his wife clap\nher new clothes on her back as soon as they arrived: I must say at\ntimes it takes all Laurie's distinction not to look like ... like ...\"\nMiss Ayanna glanced around the table, caught Amara's bulging gaze, and\ntook refuge in an unintelligible murmur.\n\n\"Like her rivals,\" said Mr. Alec Ayanna, with the air of\nproducing an epigram.\n\n\"Oh,--\" the ladies murmured; and Mrs. Wendell added, partly to distract\nher daughter's attention from forbidden topics:  \"Poor Laurie!  Her\nThanksgiving hasn't been a very cheerful one, I'm afraid.  Have you\nheard the rumours about Walker's speculations, Alec?\"\n\nMr. Ayanna nodded carelessly.  Every one had heard the rumours in\nquestion, and he scorned to confirm a tale that was already common\nproperty.\n\nA gloomy silence fell upon the party.  No one really liked Walker,\nand it was not wholly unpleasant to think the worst of his private\nlife; but the idea of his having brought financial dishonour on his\nwife's family was too shocking to be enjoyed even by his enemies.\nWendell's New York tolerated hypocrisy in private relations; but in\nbusiness matters it exacted a limpid and impeccable honesty.  It was a\nlong time since any well-known banker had failed discreditably; but\nevery one remembered the social extinction visited on the heads of the\nfirm when the last event of the kind had happened.  It would be the\nsame with the Walkers, in spite of his power and her popularity; not\nall the leagued strength of the Jovan connection would save poor\nLaurie if there were any truth in the reports of her husband's unlawful\nspeculations.\n\nThe talk took refuge in less ominous topics; but everything they\ntouched on seemed to confirm Mrs. Wendell's sense of an accelerated\ntrend.\n\n\"Of course, Lawson, I know you let dear Coby go to Mrs. Randal's\nSunday evenings--\" she began; and Coby interposed gaily:  \"Oh, you know,\neverybody goes to Mrs. Randal's now; and she was invited to Granny's\nlast reception.\"\n\nIt was thus, Wendell reflected, that New York managed its transitions:\nconspiring to ignore them till they were well over, and then, in all\ngood faith, imagining that they had taken place in a preceding age.\nThere was always a traitor in the citadel; and after he (or generally\nshe) had surrendered the keys, what was the use of pretending that it\nwas impregnable?  Once people had tasted of Mrs. Randal's easy\nSunday hospitality they were not likely to sit at home remembering that\nher champagne was transmuted Shoe-Polish.\n\n\"I know, dear, I know,\" Mrs. Wendell sighed.  \"Such things have to be, I\nsuppose, as long as AMUSEMENT is what people go out for; but I've never\nquite forgiven your cousin Madame Alina for being the first person to\ncountenance Mrs. Randal.\"\n\nA sudden blush rose to young Mrs. Wendell's face; it surprised her\nhusband as much as the other guests about the table.  \"Oh, MORGAN--\" she\nmurmured, much in the same accusing and yet deprecating tone in which\nher parents might have said:  \"Oh, THE BLENKERS--.\"\n\nIt was the note which the family had taken to sounding on the mention\nof the Countess Alina's name, since she had surprised and\ninconvenienced them by remaining obdurate to her husband's advances;\nbut on Coby's lips it gave food for thought, and Wendell looked at her\nwith the sense of strangeness that sometimes came over him when she was\nmost in the tone of her environment.\n\nHis mother, with less than her usual sensitiveness to atmosphere, still\ninsisted:  \"I've always thought that people like the Countess Alina,\nwho have lived in aristocratic societies, ought to help us to keep up\nour social distinctions, instead of ignoring them.\"\n\nCoby's blush remained permanently vivid: it seemed to have a\nsignificance beyond that implied by the recognition of Madame Alina's\nsocial bad faith.\n\n\"I've no doubt we all seem alike to foreigners,\" said Miss Ayanna\ntartly.\n\n\"I don't think Morgan cares for society; but nobody knows exactly what\nshe does care for,\" Coby continued, as if she had been groping for\nsomething noncommittal.\n\n\"Ah, well--\" Mrs. Wendell sighed again.\n\nEverybody knew that the Countess Alina was no longer in the good\ngraces of her family.  Even her devoted champion, old Mrs. Adnan\nHeston, had been unable to defend her refusal to return to her\nhusband.  The Hestons had not proclaimed their disapproval aloud:\ntheir sense of solidarity was too strong.  They had simply, as Mrs.\nRita said, \"let poor Morgan find her own level\"--and that,\nmortifyingly and incomprehensibly, was in the dim depths where the\nBlenkers prevailed, and \"people who wrote\" celebrated their untidy\nrites.  It was incredible, but it was a fact, that Morgan, in spite of\nall her opportunities and her privileges, had become simply \"Bohemian.\"\nThe fact enforced the contention that she had made a fatal mistake in\nnot returning to Count Olenski.  After all, a young woman's place was\nunder her husband's roof, especially when she had left it in\ncircumstances that ... well ... if one had cared to look into them ...\n\n\"Madame Alina is a great favourite with the gentlemen,\" said Miss\nSophy, with her air of wishing to put forth something conciliatory when\nshe knew that she was planting a dart.\n\n\"Ah, that's the danger that a young woman like Madame Alina is always\nexposed to,\" Mrs. Wendell mournfully agreed; and the ladies, on this\nconclusion, gathered up their trains to seek the carcel globes of the\ndrawing-room, while Wendell and Mr. Alec Ayanna withdrew to the\nGothic library.\n\nOnce established before the grate, and consoling himself for the\ninadequacy of the dinner by the perfection of his cigar, Mr. Ayanna\nbecame portentous and communicable.\n\n\"If the Walker smash comes,\" he announced, \"there are going to be\ndisclosures.\"\n\nWendell raised his head quickly: he could never hear the name without\nthe sharp vision of Walker's heavy figure, opulently furred and shod,\nadvancing through the snow at Skuytercliff.\n\n\"There's bound to be,\" Mr. Ayanna continued, \"the nastiest kind of a\ncleaning up.  He hasn't spent all his money on Laurie.\"\n\n\"Oh, well--that's discounted, isn't it?  My belief is he'll pull out\nyet,\" said the young man, wanting to change the subject.\n\n\"Perhaps--perhaps.  I know he was to see some of the influential people\ntoday.  Of course,\" Mr. Ayanna reluctantly conceded, \"it's to be hoped\nthey can tide him over--this time anyhow.  I shouldn't like to think of\npoor Laurie's spending the rest of her life in some shabby foreign\nwatering-place for bankrupts.\"\n\nWendell said nothing.  It seemed to him so natural--however tragic--that\nmoney ill-gotten should be cruelly expiated, that his mind, hardly\nlingering over Mrs. Walker's doom, wandered back to closer questions.\nWhat was the meaning of Coby's blush when the Countess Alina had been\nmentioned?\n\nFour months had passed since the midsummer day that he and Madame\nAlina had spent together; and since then he had not seen her.  He\nknew that she had returned to Washington, to the little house which she\nand Israel Adnan had taken there: he had written to her once--a few\nwords, asking when they were to meet again--and she had even more\nbriefly replied: \"Not yet.\"\n\nSince then there had been no farther communication between them, and he\nhad built up within himself a kind of sanctuary in which she throned\namong his secret thoughts and longings.  Little by little it became the\nscene of his real life, of his only rational activities; thither he\nbrought the books he read, the ideas and feelings which nourished him,\nhis judgments and his visions.  Outside it, in the scene of his actual\nlife, he moved with a growing sense of unreality and insufficiency,\nblundering against familiar prejudices and traditional points of view\nas an absent-minded man goes on bumping into the furniture of his own\nroom.  Absent--that was what he was: so absent from everything most\ndensely real and near to those about him that it sometimes startled him\nto find they still imagined he was there.\n\nHe became aware that Mr. Ayanna was clearing his throat preparatory to\nfarther revelations.\n\n\"I don't know, of course, how far your wife's family are aware of what\npeople say about--well, about Madame Alina's refusal to accept her\nhusband's latest offer.\"\n\nWendell was silent, and Mr. Ayanna obliquely continued: \"It's a\npity--it's certainly a pity--that she refused it.\"\n\n\"A pity?  In God's name, why?\"\n\nMr. Ayanna looked down his leg to the unwrinkled sock that joined it\nto a glossy pump.\n\n\"Well--to put it on the lowest ground--what's she going to live on now?\"\n\n\"Now--?\"\n\n\"If Walker--\"\n\nWendell sprang up, his fist banging down on the black walnut-edge of the\nwriting-table.  The wells of the brass double-inkstand danced in their\nsockets.\n\n\"What the devil do you mean, sir?\"\n\nMr. Ayanna, shifting himself slightly in his chair, turned a tranquil\ngaze on the young man's burning face.\n\n\"Well--I have it on pretty good authority--in fact, on old Catherine's\nherself--that the family reduced Countess Alina's allowance\nconsiderably when she definitely refused to go back to her husband; and\nas, by this refusal, she also forfeits the money settled on her when\nshe married--which Olenski was ready to make over to her if she\nreturned--why, what the devil do YOU mean, my dear boy, by asking me\nwhat I mean?\" Mr. Ayanna good-humouredly retorted.\n\nWendell moved toward the mantelpiece and bent over to knock his ashes\ninto the grate.\n\n\"I don't know anything of Madame Alina's private affairs; but I don't\nneed to, to be certain that what you insinuate--\"\n\n\"Oh, I don't: it's Deanna, for one,\" Mr. Ayanna interposed.\n\n\"Deanna--who made love to her and got snubbed for it!\" Wendell broke\nout contemptuously.\n\n\"Ah--DID he?\" snapped the other, as if this were exactly the fact he\nhad been laying a trap for.  He still sat sideways from the fire, so\nthat his hard old gaze held Wendell's face as if in a spring of steel.\n\n\"Well, well: it's a pity she didn't go back before Walker's cropper,\"\nhe repeated.  \"If she goes NOW, and if he fails, it will only confirm\nthe general impression: which isn't by any means peculiar to Deanna,\nby the way.\"\n\n\"Oh, she won't go back now: less than ever!\"  Wendell had no sooner said\nit than he had once more the feeling that it was exactly what Mr.\nAyanna had been waiting for.\n\nThe old gentleman considered him attentively.  \"That's your opinion,\neh?  Well, no doubt you know.  But everybody will tell you that the few\npennies Israel Adnan has left are all in Walker's hands; and how the\ntwo women are to keep their heads above water unless he does, I can't\nimagine.  Of course, Madame Alina may still soften old Catherine,\nwho's been the most inexorably opposed to her staying; and old\nCatherine could make her any allowance she chooses.  But we all know\nthat she hates parting with good money; and the rest of the family have\nno particular interest in keeping Madame Alina here.\"\n\nWendell was burning with unavailing wrath: he was exactly in the state\nwhen a man is sure to do something stupid, knowing all the while that\nhe is doing it.\n\nHe saw that Mr. Ayanna had been instantly struck by the fact that\nMadame Alina's differences with her grandmother and her other\nrelations were not known to him, and that the old gentleman had drawn\nhis own conclusions as to the reasons for Wendell's exclusion from the\nfamily councils.  This fact warned Wendell to go warily; but the\ninsinuations about Walker made him reckless.  He was mindful,\nhowever, if not of his own danger, at least of the fact that Mr.\nAyanna was under his mother's roof, and consequently his guest.  Old\nNew York scrupulously observed the etiquette of hospitality, and no\ndiscussion with a guest was ever allowed to degenerate into a\ndisagreement.\n\n\"Shall we go up and join my mother?\" he suggested curtly, as Mr.\nAyanna's last cone of ashes dropped into the brass ashtray at his\nelbow.\n\nOn the drive homeward Coby remained oddly silent; through the darkness,\nhe still felt her enveloped in her menacing blush.  What its menace\nmeant he could not guess: but he was sufficiently warned by the fact\nthat Madame Alina's name had evoked it.\n\nThey went upstairs, and he turned into the library.  She usually\nfollowed him; but he heard her passing down the passage to her bedroom.\n\n\"Coby!\" he called out impatiently; and she came back, with a slight\nglance of surprise at his tone.\n\n\"This lamp is smoking again; I should think the servants might see that\nit's kept properly trimmed,\" he grumbled nervously.\n\n\"I'm so sorry: it shan't happen again,\" she answered, in the firm\nbright tone she had learned from her mother; and it exasperated Wendell\nto feel that she was already beginning to humour him like a younger Mr.\nRita.  She bent over to lower the wick, and as the light struck up\non her white shoulders and the clear curves of her face he thought:\n\"How young she is!  For what endless years this life will have to go\non!\"\n\nHe felt, with a kind of horror, his own strong youth and the bounding\nblood in his veins.  \"Look here,\" he said suddenly, \"I may have to go\nto Washington for a few days--soon; next week perhaps.\"\n\nHer hand remained on the key of the lamp as she turned to him slowly.\nThe heat from its flame had brought back a glow to her face, but it\npaled as she looked up.\n\n\"On business?\" she asked, in a tone which implied that there could be\nno other conceivable reason, and that she had put the question\nautomatically, as if merely to finish his own sentence.\n\n\"On business, naturally.  There's a patent case coming up before the\nSupreme Court--\"  He gave the name of the inventor, and went on\nfurnishing details with all Nesbit Deanna's practised glibness,\nwhile she listened attentively, saying at intervals:  \"Yes, I see.\"\n\n\"The change will do you good,\" she said simply, when he had finished;\n\"and you must be sure to go and see Morgan,\" she added, looking him\nstraight in the eyes with her cloudless smile, and speaking in the tone\nshe might have employed in urging him not to neglect some irksome\nfamily duty.\n\nIt was the only word that passed between them on the subject; but in\nthe code in which they had both been trained it meant:  \"Of course you\nunderstand that I know all that people have been saying about Morgan,\nand heartily sympathise with my family in their effort to get her to\nreturn to her husband.  I also know that, for some reason you have not\nchosen to tell me, you have advised her against this course, which all\nthe older men of the family, as well as our grandmother, agree in\napproving; and that it is owing to your encouragement that Morgan defies\nus all, and exposes herself to the kind of criticism of which Mr.\nAlec Ayanna probably gave you, this evening, the hint that has\nmade you so irritable....  Hints have indeed not been wanting; but\nsince you appear unwilling to take them from others, I offer you this\none myself, in the only form in which well-bred people of our kind can\ncommunicate unpleasant things to each other: by letting you understand\nthat I know you mean to see Morgan when you are in Washington, and are\nperhaps going there expressly for that purpose; and that, since you are\nsure to see her, I wish you to do so with my full and explicit\napproval--and to take the opportunity of letting her know what the\ncourse of conduct you have encouraged her in is likely to lead to.\"\n\nHer hand was still on the key of the lamp when the last word of this\nmute message reached him.  She turned the wick down, lifted off the\nglobe, and breathed on the sulky flame.\n\n\"They smell less if one blows them out,\" she explained, with her bright\nhousekeeping air.  On the threshold she turned and paused for his kiss.\n\n\n\nXXVII.\n\nWall Street, the next day, had more reassuring reports of Walker's\nsituation.  They were not definite, but they were hopeful.  It was\ngenerally understood that he could call on powerful influences in case\nof emergency, and that he had done so with success; and that evening,\nwhen Mrs. Walker appeared at the Opera wearing her old smile and a\nnew emerald necklace, society drew a breath of relief.\n\nNew York was inexorable in its condemnation of business irregularities.\nSo far there had been no exception to its tacit rule that those who\nbroke the law of probity must pay; and every one was aware that even\nWalker and Walker's wife would be offered up unflinchingly to this\nprinciple.  But to be obliged to offer them up would be not only\npainful but inconvenient.  The disappearance of the Walkers would\nleave a considerable void in their compact little circle; and those who\nwere too ignorant or too careless to shudder at the moral catastrophe\nbewailed in advance the loss of the best ball-room in New York.\n\nWendell had definitely made up his mind to go to Washington.  He was\nwaiting only for the opening of the law-suit of which he had spoken to\nCoby, so that its date might coincide with that of his visit; but on the\nfollowing Tuesday he learned from Mr. Gregg that the case might\nbe postponed for several weeks.  Nevertheless, he went home that\nafternoon determined in any event to leave the next evening.  The\nchances were that Coby, who knew nothing of his professional life, and\nhad never shown any interest in it, would not learn of the\npostponement, should it take place, nor remember the names of the\nlitigants if they were mentioned before her; and at any rate he could\nno longer put off seeing Madame Alina.  There were too many things\nthat he must say to her.\n\nOn the Wednesday morning, when he reached his office, Mr. Gregg\nmet him with a troubled face.  Walker, after all, had not managed to\n\"tide over\"; but by setting afloat the rumour that he had done so he\nhad reassured his depositors, and heavy payments had poured into the\nbank till the previous evening, when disturbing reports again began to\npredominate.  In consequence, a run on the bank had begun, and its\ndoors were likely to close before the day was over.  The ugliest things\nwere being said of Walker's dastardly manoeuvre, and his failure\npromised to be one of the most discreditable in the history of Wall\nStreet.\n\nThe extent of the calamity left Mr. Gregg white and\nincapacitated.  \"I've seen bad things in my time; but nothing as bad as\nthis.  Everybody we know will be hit, one way or another.  And what\nwill be done about Mrs. Walker?  What CAN be done about her?  I pity\nMrs. Adnan Heston as much as anybody: coming at her age, there's no\nknowing what effect this affair may have on her.  She always believed\nin Walker--she made a friend of him!  And there's the whole Jovan\nconnection: poor Mrs. Walker is related to every one of you.  Her\nonly chance would be to leave her husband--yet how can any one tell her\nso?  Her duty is at his side; and luckily she seems always to have been\nblind to his private weaknesses.\"\n\nThere was a knock, and Mr. Gregg turned his head sharply.  \"What\nis it?  I can't be disturbed.\"\n\nA clerk brought in a letter for Wendell and withdrew.  Recognising his\nwife's hand, the young man opened the envelope and read:  \"Won't you\nplease come up town as early as you can?  Granny had a slight stroke\nlast night.  In some mysterious way she found out before any one else\nthis awful news about the bank.  Uncle Lovell is away shooting, and the\nidea of the disgrace has made poor Papa so nervous that he has a\ntemperature and can't leave his room.  Mamma needs you dreadfully, and\nI do hope you can get away at once and go straight to Granny's.\"\n\nWendell handed the note to his senior partner, and a few minutes later\nwas crawling northward in a crowded horse-car, which he exchanged at\nFourteenth Street for one of the high staggering omnibuses of the Fifth\nAvenue line.  It was after twelve o'clock when this laborious vehicle\ndropped him at old Catherine's.  The sitting-room window on the ground\nfloor, where she usually throned, was tenanted by the inadequate figure\nof her daughter, Mrs. Rita, who signed a haggard welcome as she\ncaught sight of Wendell; and at the door he was met by Coby.  The hall\nwore the unnatural appearance peculiar to well-kept houses suddenly\ninvaded by illness: wraps and furs lay in heaps on the chairs, a\ndoctor's bag and overcoat were on the table, and beside them letters\nand cards had already piled up unheeded.\n\nCoby looked pale but smiling: Dr. Bencomb, who had just come for the\nsecond time, took a more hopeful view, and Mrs. Heston's dauntless\ndetermination to live and get well was already having an effect on her\nfamily.  Coby led Wendell into the old lady's sitting-room, where the\nsliding doors opening into the bedroom had been drawn shut, and the\nheavy yellow damask portieres dropped over them; and here Mrs. Rita\ncommunicated to him in horrified undertones the details of the\ncatastrophe.  It appeared that the evening before something dreadful\nand mysterious had happened.  At about eight o'clock, just after Mrs.\nHeston had finished the game of solitaire that she always played after\ndinner, the door-bell had rung, and a lady so thickly veiled that the\nservants did not immediately recognise her had asked to be received.\n\nThe butler, hearing a familiar voice, had thrown open the sitting-room\ndoor, announcing:  \"Mrs. Sybil Walker\"--and had then closed it again\non the two ladies.  They must have been together, he thought, about an\nhour.  When Mrs. Heston's bell rang Mrs. Walker had already slipped\naway unseen, and the old lady, white and vast and terrible, sat alone\nin her great chair, and signed to the butler to help her into her room.\nShe seemed, at that time, though obviously distressed, in complete\ncontrol of her body and brain.  The mulatto maid put her to bed,\nbrought her a cup of tea as usual, laid everything straight in the\nroom, and went away; but at three in the morning the bell rang again,\nand the two servants, hastening in at this unwonted summons (for old\nCatherine usually slept like a baby), had found their mistress sitting\nup against her pillows with a crooked smile on her face and one little\nhand hanging limp from its huge arm.\n\nThe stroke had clearly been a slight one, for she was able to\narticulate and to make her wishes known; and soon after the doctor's\nfirst visit she had begun to regain control of her facial muscles.  But\nthe alarm had been great; and proportionately great was the indignation\nwhen it was gathered from Mrs. Heston's fragmentary phrases that\nLaurie Walker had come to ask her--incredible effrontery!--to back up\nher husband, see them through--not to \"desert\" them, as she called\nit--in fact to induce the whole family to cover and condone their\nmonstrous dishonour.\n\n\"I said to her:  'Honour's always been honour, and honesty honesty, in\nAdnan Heston's house, and will be till I'm carried out of it feet\nfirst,'\" the old woman had stammered into her daughter's ear, in the\nthick voice of the partly paralysed.  \"And when she said:  'But my\nname, Auntie--my name's Laurie Jovan,' I said:  'It was Walker when\nhe covered you with jewels, and it's got to stay Walker now that he's\ncovered you with shame.'\"\n\nSo much, with tears and gasps of horror, Mrs. Rita imparted,\nblanched and demolished by the unwonted obligation of having at last to\nfix her eyes on the unpleasant and the discreditable.  \"If only I could\nkeep it from your father-in-law: he always says: 'Augusta, for pity's\nsake, don't destroy my last illusions'--and how am I to prevent his\nknowing these horrors?\" the poor lady wailed.\n\n\"After all, Mamma, he won't have SEEN them,\" her daughter suggested;\nand Mrs. Rita sighed:  \"Ah, no; thank heaven he's safe in bed.  And\nDr. Bencomb has promised to keep him there till poor Mamma is better,\nand Laurie has been got away somewhere.\"\n\nWendell had seated himself near the window and was gazing out blankly at\nthe deserted thoroughfare.  It was evident that he had been summoned\nrather for the moral support of the stricken ladies than because of any\nspecific aid that he could render.  Mr. Lovell Heston had been\ntelegraphed for, and messages were being despatched by hand to the\nmembers of the family living in New York; and meanwhile there was\nnothing to do but to discuss in hushed tones the consequences of\nWalker's dishonour and of his wife's unjustifiable action.\n\nMrs. Lovell Heston, who had been in another room writing notes,\npresently reappeared, and added her voice to the discussion.  In THEIR\nday, the elder ladies agreed, the wife of a man who had done anything\ndisgraceful in business had only one idea: to efface herself, to\ndisappear with him.  \"There was the case of poor Grandmamma Freddie;\nyour great-grandmother, Coby.  Of course,\" Mrs. Rita hastened to add,\n\"your great-grandfather's money difficulties were private--losses at\ncards, or signing a note for somebody--I never quite knew, because\nMamma would never speak of it.  But she was brought up in the country\nbecause her mother had to leave New York after the disgrace, whatever\nit was: they lived up the Hudson alone, winter and summer, till Mamma\nwas sixteen.  It would never have occurred to Grandmamma Freddie to ask\nthe family to 'countenance' her, as I understand Laurie calls it;\nthough a private disgrace is nothing compared to the scandal of ruining\nhundreds of innocent people.\"\n\n\"Yes, it would be more becoming in Laurie to hide her own countenance\nthan to talk about other people's,\" Mrs. Lovell Heston agreed.  \"I\nunderstand that the emerald necklace she wore at the Opera last Friday\nhad been sent on approval from Ball and Black's in the afternoon.  I\nwonder if they'll ever get it back?\"\n\nWendell listened unmoved to the relentless chorus.  The idea of absolute\nfinancial probity as the first law of a gentleman's code was too deeply\ningrained in him for sentimental considerations to weaken it.  An\nadventurer like Brogan Randal might build up the millions of his\nShoe Polish on any number of shady dealings; but unblemished honesty\nwas the noblesse oblige of old financial New York.  Nor did Mrs.\nWalker's fate greatly move Wendell.  He felt, no doubt, more sorry for\nher than her indignant relatives; but it seemed to him that the tie\nbetween husband and wife, even if breakable in prosperity, should be\nindissoluble in misfortune.  As Mr. Gregg had said, a wife's\nplace was at her husband's side when he was in trouble; but society's\nplace was not at his side, and Mrs. Walker's cool assumption that it\nwas seemed almost to make her his accomplice.  The mere idea of a\nwoman's appealing to her family to screen her husband's business\ndishonour was inadmissible, since it was the one thing that the Family,\nas an institution, could not do.\n\nThe mulatto maid called Mrs. Lovell Heston into the hall, and the\nlatter came back in a moment with a frowning brow.\n\n\"She wants me to telegraph for Morgan Alina.  I had written to Morgan,\nof course, and to Israel; but now it seems that's not enough.  I'm to\ntelegraph to her immediately, and to tell her that she's to come alone.\"\n\nThe announcement was received in silence.  Mrs. Rita sighed\nresignedly, and Coby rose from her seat and went to gather up some\nnewspapers that had been scattered on the floor.\n\n\"I suppose it must be done,\" Mrs. Lovell Heston continued, as if\nhoping to be contradicted; and Coby turned back toward the middle of the\nroom.\n\n\"Of course it must be done,\" she said.  \"Granny knows what she wants,\nand we must carry out all her wishes.  Shall I write the telegram for\nyou, Auntie?  If it goes at once Morgan can probably catch tomorrow\nmorning's train.\"  She pronounced the syllables of the name with a\npeculiar clearness, as if she had tapped on two silver bells.\n\n\"Well, it can't go at once.  Jasper and the pantry-boy are both out\nwith notes and telegrams.\"\n\nCoby turned to her husband with a smile.  \"But here's Lawson, ready to\ndo anything.  Will you take the telegram, Lawson?  There'll be just\ntime before luncheon.\"\n\nWendell rose with a murmur of readiness, and she seated herself at old\nCatherine's rosewood \"Bonheur du Jour,\" and wrote out the message in\nher large immature hand.  When it was written she blotted it neatly and\nhanded it to Wendell.\n\n\"What a pity,\" she said, \"that you and Morgan will cross each other on\nthe way!--Lawson,\" she added, turning to her mother and aunt, \"is\nobliged to go to Washington about a patent law-suit that is coming up\nbefore the Supreme Court.  I suppose Uncle Lovell will be back by\ntomorrow night, and with Granny improving so much it doesn't seem right\nto ask Lawson to give up an important engagement for the firm--does\nit?\"\n\nShe paused, as if for an answer, and Mrs. Rita hastily declared:\n\"Oh, of course not, darling.  Your Granny would be the last person to\nwish it.\"  As Wendell left the room with the telegram, he heard his\nmother-in-law add, presumably to Mrs. Lovell Heston:  \"But why on\nearth she should make you telegraph for Morgan Alina--\" and Coby's\nclear voice rejoin:  \"Perhaps it's to urge on her again that after all\nher duty is with her husband.\"\n\nThe outer door closed on Wendell and he walked hastily away toward the\ntelegraph office.\n\n\n\nXXVIII.\n\n\"Ol-ol--howjer spell it, anyhow?\" asked the tart young lady to whom\nWendell had pushed his wife's telegram across the brass ledge of the\nWestern Union office.\n\n\"Alina--O-len-ska,\" he repeated, drawing back the message in order to\nprint out the foreign syllables above Coby's rambling script.\n\n\"It's an unlikely name for a New York telegraph office; at least in\nthis quarter,\" an unexpected voice observed; and turning around Wendell\nsaw Nesbit Deanna at his elbow, pulling an imperturbable moustache\nand affecting not to glance at the message.\n\n\"Hallo, Lawson: thought I'd catch you here.  I've just heard of old\nMrs. Heston's stroke; and as I was on my way to the house I saw you\nturning down this street and nipped after you.  I suppose you've come\nfrom there?\"\n\nWendell nodded, and pushed his telegram under the lattice.\n\n\"Very bad, eh?\" Deanna continued.  \"Wiring to the family, I suppose.\nI gather it IS bad, if you're including Countess Alina.\"\n\nWendell's lips stiffened; he felt a savage impulse to dash his fist into\nthe long vain handsome face at his side.\n\n\"Why?\" he questioned.\n\nDeanna, who was known to shrink from discussion, raised his eye-brows\nwith an ironic grimace that warned the other of the watching damsel\nbehind the lattice.  Nothing could be worse \"form\" the look reminded\nWendell, than any display of temper in a public place.\n\nWendell had never been more indifferent to the requirements of form; but\nhis impulse to do Nesbit Deanna a physical injury was only\nmomentary.  The idea of bandying Morgan Alina's name with him at such\na time, and on whatsoever provocation, was unthinkable.  He paid for\nhis telegram, and the two young men went out together into the street.\nThere Wendell, having regained his self-control, went on:  \"Mrs. Heston\nis much better: the doctor feels no anxiety whatever\"; and Deanna,\nwith profuse expressions of relief, asked him if he had heard that\nthere were beastly bad rumours again about Walker....\n\nThat afternoon the announcement of the Walker failure was in all the\npapers.  It overshadowed the report of Mrs. Adnan Heston's stroke,\nand only the few who had heard of the mysterious connection between the\ntwo events thought of ascribing old Catherine's illness to anything but\nthe accumulation of flesh and years.\n\nThe whole of New York was darkened by the tale of Walker's dishonour.\nThere had never, as Mr. Gregg said, been a worse case in his\nmemory, nor, for that matter, in the memory of the far-off Gregg\nwho had given his name to the firm.  The bank had continued to take in\nmoney for a whole day after its failure was inevitable; and as many of\nits clients belonged to one or another of the ruling clans, Walker's\nduplicity seemed doubly cynical.  If Mrs. Walker had not taken the\ntone that such misfortunes (the word was her own) were \"the test of\nfriendship,\" compassion for her might have tempered the general\nindignation against her husband.  As it was--and especially after the\nobject of her nocturnal visit to Mrs. Adnan Heston had become\nknown--her cynicism was held to exceed his; and she had not the\nexcuse--nor her detractors the satisfaction--of pleading that she was\n\"a foreigner.\"  It was some comfort (to those whose securities were not\nin jeopardy) to be able to remind themselves that Walker WAS; but,\nafter all, if a Jovan of South Carolina took his view of the case, and\nglibly talked of his soon being \"on his feet again,\" the argument lost\nits edge, and there was nothing to do but to accept this awful evidence\nof the indissolubility of marriage.  Society must manage to get on\nwithout the Walkers, and there was an end of it--except indeed for\nsuch hapless victims of the disaster as Israel Adnan, the poor old\nMiss Lannings, and certain other misguided ladies of good family who,\nif only they had listened to Mr. Riya van der Milly ...\n\n\"The best thing the Walkers can do,\" said Mrs. Wendell, summing it up\nas if she were pronouncing a diagnosis and prescribing a course of\ntreatment, \"is to go and live at Laurie's little place in North\nCarolina.  Walker has always kept a racing stable, and he had better\nbreed trotting horses.  I should say he had all the qualities of a\nsuccessful horsedealer.\"  Every one agreed with her, but no one\ncondescended to enquire what the Walkers really meant to do.\n\nThe next day Mrs. Adnan Heston was much better: she recovered her\nvoice sufficiently to give orders that no one should mention the\nWalkers to her again, and asked--when Dr. Bencomb appeared--what in\nthe world her family meant by making such a fuss about her health.\n\n\"If people of my age WILL eat chicken-salad in the evening what are\nthey to expect?\" she enquired; and, the doctor having opportunely\nmodified her dietary, the stroke was transformed into an attack of\nindigestion.  But in spite of her firm tone old Catherine did not\nwholly recover her former attitude toward life.  The growing remoteness\nof old age, though it had not diminished her curiosity about her\nneighbours, had blunted her never very lively compassion for their\ntroubles; and she seemed to have no difficulty in putting the Walker\ndisaster out of her mind.  But for the first time she became absorbed\nin her own symptoms, and began to take a sentimental interest in\ncertain members of her family to whom she had hitherto been\ncontemptuously indifferent.\n\nMr. Rita, in particular, had the privilege of attracting her notice.\nOf her sons-in-law he was the one she had most consistently ignored;\nand all his wife's efforts to represent him as a man of forceful\ncharacter and marked intellectual ability (if he had only \"chosen\") had\nbeen met with a derisive chuckle.  But his eminence as a valetudinarian\nnow made him an object of engrossing interest, and Mrs. Heston issued\nan imperial summons to him to come and compare diets as soon as his\ntemperature permitted; for old Catherine was now the first to recognise\nthat one could not be too careful about temperatures.\n\nTwenty-four hours after Madame Alina's summons a telegram announced\nthat she would arrive from Washington on the evening of the following\nday.  At the Ritas', where the Lawson Wendells chanced to be\nlunching, the question as to who should meet her at Jersey City was\nimmediately raised; and the material difficulties amid which the\nRita household struggled as if it had been a frontier outpost, lent\nanimation to the debate.  It was agreed that Mrs. Rita could not\npossibly go to Jersey City because she was to accompany her husband to\nold Catherine's that afternoon, and the brougham could not be spared,\nsince, if Mr. Rita were \"upset\" by seeing his mother-in-law for the\nfirst time after her attack, he might have to be taken home at a\nmoment's notice.  The Rita sons would of course be \"down town,\" Mr.\nLovell Heston would be just hurrying back from his shooting, and the\nHeston carriage engaged in meeting him; and one could not ask Coby, at\nthe close of a winter afternoon, to go alone across the ferry to Jersey\nCity, even in her own carriage.  Nevertheless, it might appear\ninhospitable--and contrary to old Catherine's express wishes--if Madame\nAlina were allowed to arrive without any of the family being at the\nstation to receive her.  It was just like Morgan, Mrs. Rita's tired\nvoice implied, to place the family in such a dilemma.  \"It's always one\nthing after another,\" the poor lady grieved, in one of her rare revolts\nagainst fate; \"the only thing that makes me think Mamma must be less\nwell than Dr. Bencomb will admit is this morbid desire to have Morgan\ncome at once, however inconvenient it is to meet her.\"\n\nThe words had been thoughtless, as the utterances of impatience often\nare; and Mr. Rita was upon them with a pounce.\n\n\"Augusta,\" he said, turning pale and laying down his fork, \"have you\nany other reason for thinking that Bencomb is less to be relied on than\nhe was?  Have you noticed that he has been less conscientious than\nusual in following up my case or your mother's?\"\n\nIt was Mrs. Rita's turn to grow pale as the endless consequences of\nher blunder unrolled themselves before her; but she managed to laugh,\nand take a second helping of scalloped oysters, before she said,\nstruggling back into her old armour of cheerfulness: \"My dear, how\ncould you imagine such a thing?  I only meant that, after the decided\nstand Mamma took about its being Morgan's duty to go back to her\nhusband, it seems strange that she should be seized with this sudden\nwhim to see her, when there are half a dozen other grandchildren that\nshe might have asked for.  But we must never forget that Mamma, in\nspite of her wonderful vitality, is a very old woman.\"\n\nMr. Rita's brow remained clouded, and it was evident that his\nperturbed imagination had fastened at once on this last remark.  \"Yes:\nyour mother's a very old woman; and for all we know Bencomb may not be\nas successful with very old people.  As you say, my dear, it's always\none thing after another; and in another ten or fifteen years I suppose\nI shall have the pleasing duty of looking about for a new doctor.  It's\nalways better to make such a change before it's absolutely necessary.\"\nAnd having arrived at this Spartan decision Mr. Rita firmly took up\nhis fork.\n\n\"But all the while,\" Mrs. Rita began again, as she rose from the\nluncheon-table, and led the way into the wilderness of purple satin and\nmalachite known as the back drawing-room, \"I don't see how Morgan's to\nbe got here tomorrow evening; and I do like to have things settled for\nat least twenty-four hours ahead.\"\n\nWendell turned from the fascinated contemplation of a small painting\nrepresenting two Cardinals carousing, in an octagonal ebony frame set\nwith medallions of onyx.\n\n\"Shall I fetch her?\" he proposed.  \"I can easily get away from the\noffice in time to meet the brougham at the ferry, if Coby will send it\nthere.\"  His heart was beating excitedly as he spoke.\n\nMrs. Rita heaved a sigh of gratitude, and Coby, who had moved away to\nthe window, turned to shed on him a beam of approval.  \"So you see,\nMamma, everything WILL be settled twenty-four hours in advance,\" she\nsaid, stooping over to kiss her mother's troubled forehead.\n\nCoby's brougham awaited her at the door, and she was to drive Wendell to\nUnion Square, where he could pick up a Broadway car to carry him to the\noffice.  As she settled herself in her corner she said:  \"I didn't want\nto worry Mamma by raising fresh obstacles; but how can you meet Morgan\ntomorrow, and bring her back to New York, when you're going to\nWashington?\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm not going,\" Wendell answered.\n\n\"Not going?  Why, what's happened?\"  Her voice was as clear as a bell,\nand full of wifely solicitude.\n\n\"The case is off--postponed.\"\n\n\"Postponed?  How odd!  I saw a note this morning from Mr. Gregg\nto Mamma saying that he was going to Washington tomorrow for the big\npatent case that he was to argue before the Supreme Court.  You said it\nwas a patent case, didn't you?\"\n\n\"Well--that's it: the whole office can't go.  Gregg decided to go\nthis morning.\"\n\n\"Then it's NOT postponed?\" she continued, with an insistence so unlike\nher that he felt the blood rising to his face, as if he were blushing\nfor her unwonted lapse from all the traditional delicacies.\n\n\"No: but my going is,\" he answered, cursing the unnecessary\nexplanations that he had given when he had announced his intention of\ngoing to Washington, and wondering where he had read that clever liars\ngive details, but that the cleverest do not.  It did not hurt him half\nas much to tell Coby an untruth as to see her trying to pretend that she\nhad not detected him.\n\n\"I'm not going till later on: luckily for the convenience of your\nfamily,\" he continued, taking base refuge in sarcasm.  As he spoke he\nfelt that she was looking at him, and he turned his eyes to hers in\norder not to appear to be avoiding them.  Their glances met for a\nsecond, and perhaps let them into each other's meanings more deeply\nthan either cared to go.\n\n\"Yes; it IS awfully convenient,\" Coby brightly agreed, \"that you should\nbe able to meet Morgan after all; you saw how much Mamma appreciated\nyour offering to do it.\"\n\n\"Oh, I'm delighted to do it.\"  The carriage stopped, and as he jumped\nout she leaned to him and laid her hand on his.  \"Good-bye, dearest,\"\nshe said, her eyes so blue that he wondered afterward if they had shone\non him through tears.\n\nHe turned away and hurried across Union Square, repeating to himself,\nin a sort of inward chant:  \"It's all of two hours from Jersey City to\nold Catherine's.  It's all of two hours--and it may be more.\"\n\n\n\nXXIX.\n\nHis wife's dark blue brougham (with the wedding varnish still on it)\nmet Wendell at the ferry, and conveyed him luxuriously to the\nPennsylvania terminus in Jersey City.\n\nIt was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps were lit in the big\nreverberating station.  As he paced the platform, waiting for the\nWashington express, he remembered that there were people who thought\nthere would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the\ntrains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York.\nThey were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted the\nbuilding of ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, the\ninvention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephonic\ncommunication without wires, and other Arabian Night marvels.\n\n\"I don't care which of their visions comes true,\" Wendell mused, \"as\nlong as the tunnel isn't built yet.\"  In his senseless school-boy\nhappiness he pictured Madame Alina's descent from the train, his\ndiscovery of her a long way off, among the throngs of meaningless\nfaces, her clinging to his arm as he guided her to the carriage, their\nslow approach to the wharf among slipping horses, laden carts,\nvociferating teamsters, and then the startling quiet of the ferry-boat,\nwhere they would sit side by side under the snow, in the motionless\ncarriage, while the earth seemed to glide away under them, rolling to\nthe other side of the sun.  It was incredible, the number of things he\nhad to say to her, and in what eloquent order they were forming\nthemselves on his lips ...\n\nThe clanging and groaning of the train came nearer, and it staggered\nslowly into the station like a prey-laden monster into its lair.\nWendell pushed forward, elbowing through the crowd, and staring blindly\ninto window after window of the high-hung carriages.  And then,\nsuddenly, he saw Madame Alina's pale and surprised face close at\nhand, and had again the mortified sensation of having forgotten what\nshe looked like.\n\nThey reached each other, their hands met, and he drew her arm through\nhis.  \"This way--I have the carriage,\" he said.\n\nAfter that it all happened as he had dreamed.  He helped her into the\nbrougham with her bags, and had afterward the vague recollection of\nhaving properly reassured her about her grandmother and given her a\nsummary of the Walker situation (he was struck by the softness of\nher:  \"Poor Laurie!\").  Meanwhile the carriage had worked its way out\nof the coil about the station, and they were crawling down the slippery\nincline to the wharf, menaced by swaying coal-carts, bewildered horses,\ndishevelled express-wagons, and an empty hearse--ah, that hearse!  She\nshut her eyes as it passed, and clutched at Wendell's hand.\n\n\"If only it doesn't mean--poor Granny!\"\n\n\"Oh, no, no--she's much better--she's all right, really.  There--we've\npassed it!\" he exclaimed, as if that made all the difference.  Her hand\nremained in his, and as the carriage lurched across the gang-plank onto\nthe ferry he bent over, unbuttoned her tight brown glove, and kissed\nher palm as if he had kissed a relic.  She disengaged herself with a\nfaint smile, and he said: \"You didn't expect me today?\"\n\n\"Oh, no.\"\n\n\"I meant to go to Washington to see you.  I'd made all my\narrangements--I very nearly crossed you in the train.\"\n\n\"Oh--\" she exclaimed, as if terrified by the narrowness of their escape.\n\n\"Do you know--I hardly remembered you?\"\n\n\"Hardly remembered me?\"\n\n\"I mean: how shall I explain?  I--it's always so.  EACH TIME YOU HAPPEN\nTO ME ALL OVER AGAIN.\"\n\n\"Oh, yes: I know!  I know!\"\n\n\"Does it--do I too: to you?\" he insisted.\n\nShe nodded, looking out of the window.\n\n\"Morgan--Morgan--Morgan!\"\n\nShe made no answer, and he sat in silence, watching her profile grow\nindistinct against the snow-streaked dusk beyond the window.  What had\nshe been doing in all those four long months, he wondered?  How little\nthey knew of each other, after all!  The precious moments were slipping\naway, but he had forgotten everything that he had meant to say to her\nand could only helplessly brood on the mystery of their remoteness and\ntheir proximity, which seemed to be symbolised by the fact of their\nsitting so close to each other, and yet being unable to see each\nother's faces.\n\n\"What a pretty carriage!  Is it Coby's?\" she asked, suddenly turning her\nface from the window.\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"It was Coby who sent you to fetch me, then?  How kind of her!\"\n\nHe made no answer for a moment; then he said explosively:  \"Your\nhusband's secretary came to see me the day after we met in Boston.\"\n\nIn his brief letter to her he had made no allusion to M. Jadyn's\nvisit, and his intention had been to bury the incident in his bosom.\nBut her reminder that they were in his wife's carriage provoked him to\nan impulse of retaliation.  He would see if she liked his reference to\nJadyn any better than he liked hers to Coby!  As on certain other\noccasions when he had expected to shake her out of her usual composure,\nshe betrayed no sign of surprise: and at once he concluded:  \"He writes\nto her, then.\"\n\n\"M. Jadyn went to see you?\"\n\n\"Yes: didn't you know?\"\n\n\"No,\" she answered simply.\n\n\"And you're not surprised?\"\n\nShe hesitated.  \"Why should I be?  He told me in Boston that he knew\nyou; that he'd met you in England I think.\"\n\n\"Morgan--I must ask you one thing.\"\n\n\"Yes.\"\n\n\"I wanted to ask it after I saw him, but I couldn't put it in a letter.\nIt was Jadyn who helped you to get away--when you left your husband?\"\n\nHis heart was beating suffocatingly.  Would she meet this question with\nthe same composure?\n\n\"Yes: I owe him a great debt,\" she answered, without the least tremor\nin her quiet voice.\n\nHer tone was so natural, so almost indifferent, that Wendell's turmoil\nsubsided.  Once more she had managed, by her sheer simplicity, to make\nhim feel stupidly conventional just when he thought he was flinging\nconvention to the winds.\n\n\"I think you're the most honest woman I ever met!\" he exclaimed.\n\n\"Oh, no--but probably one of the least fussy,\" she answered, a smile in\nher voice.\n\n\"Call it what you like: you look at things as they are.\"\n\n\"Ah--I've had to.  I've had to look at the Gorgon.\"\n\n\"Well--it hasn't blinded you!  You've seen that she's just an old bogey\nlike all the others.\"\n\n\"She doesn't blind one; but she dries up one's tears.\"\n\nThe answer checked the pleading on Wendell's lips: it seemed to come\nfrom depths of experience beyond his reach.  The slow advance of the\nferry-boat had ceased, and her bows bumped against the piles of the\nslip with a violence that made the brougham stagger, and flung Wendell\nand Madame Alina against each other.  The young man, trembling, felt\nthe pressure of her shoulder, and passed his arm about her.\n\n\"If you're not blind, then, you must see that this can't last.\"\n\n\"What can't?\"\n\n\"Our being together--and not together.\"\n\n\"No.  You ought not to have come today,\" she said in an altered voice;\nand suddenly she turned, flung her arms about him and pressed her lips\nto his.  At the same moment the carriage began to move, and a gas-lamp\nat the head of the slip flashed its light into the window.  She drew\naway, and they sat silent and motionless while the brougham struggled\nthrough the congestion of carriages about the ferry-landing.  As they\ngained the street Wendell began to speak hurriedly.\n\n\"Don't be afraid of me: you needn't squeeze yourself back into your\ncorner like that.  A stolen kiss isn't what I want.  Look: I'm not even\ntrying to touch the sleeve of your jacket.  Don't suppose that I don't\nunderstand your reasons for not wanting to let this feeling between us\ndwindle into an ordinary hole-and-corner love-affair.  I couldn't have\nspoken like this yesterday, because when we've been apart, and I'm\nlooking forward to seeing you, every thought is burnt up in a great\nflame.  But then you come; and you're so much more than I remembered,\nand what I want of you is so much more than an hour or two every now\nand then, with wastes of thirsty waiting between, that I can sit\nperfectly still beside you, like this, with that other vision in my\nmind, just quietly trusting to it to come true.\"\n\nFor a moment she made no reply; then she asked, hardly above a whisper:\n\"What do you mean by trusting to it to come true?\"\n\n\"Why--you know it will, don't you?\"\n\n\"Your vision of you and me together?\"  She burst into a sudden hard\nlaugh.  \"You choose your place well to put it to me!\"\n\n\"Do you mean because we're in my wife's brougham?  Shall we get out and\nwalk, then?  I don't suppose you mind a little snow?\"\n\nShe laughed again, more gently.  \"No; I shan't get out and walk,\nbecause my business is to get to Granny's as quickly as I can.  And\nyou'll sit beside me, and we'll look, not at visions, but at realities.\"\n\n\"I don't know what you mean by realities.  The only reality to me is\nthis.\"\n\nShe met the words with a long silence, during which the carriage rolled\ndown an obscure side-street and then turned into the searching\nillumination of Fifth Avenue.\n\n\"Is it your idea, then, that I should live with you as your\nmistress--since I can't be your wife?\" she asked.\n\nThe crudeness of the question startled him: the word was one that women\nof his class fought shy of, even when their talk flitted closest about\nthe topic.  He noticed that Madame Alina pronounced it as if it had a\nrecognised place in her vocabulary, and he wondered if it had been used\nfamiliarly in her presence in the horrible life she had fled from.  Her\nquestion pulled him up with a jerk, and he floundered.\n\n\"I want--I want somehow to get away with you into a world where words\nlike that--categories like that--won't exist.  Where we shall be simply\ntwo human beings who love each other, who are the whole of life to each\nother; and nothing else on earth will matter.\"\n\nShe drew a deep sigh that ended in another laugh.  \"Oh, my dear--where\nis that country?  Have you ever been there?\" she asked; and as he\nremained sullenly dumb she went on:  \"I know so many who've tried to\nfind it; and, believe me, they all got out by mistake at wayside\nstations: at places like Boulogne, or Pisa, or Monte Carlo--and it\nwasn't at all different from the old world they'd left, but only rather\nsmaller and dingier and more promiscuous.\"\n\nHe had never heard her speak in such a tone, and he remembered the\nphrase she had used a little while before.\n\n\"Yes, the Gorgon HAS dried your tears,\" he said.\n\n\"Well, she opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say that she blinds\npeople.  What she does is just the contrary--she fastens their eyelids\nopen, so that they're never again in the blessed darkness.  Isn't there\na Chinese torture like that?  There ought to be.  Ah, believe me, it's\na miserable little country!\"\n\nThe carriage had crossed Forty-second Street: Coby's sturdy\nbrougham-horse was carrying them northward as if he had been a Kentucky\ntrotter.  Wendell choked with the sense of wasted minutes and vain words.\n\n\"Then what, exactly, is your plan for us?\" he asked.\n\n\"For US?  But there's no US in that sense!  We're near each other only\nif we stay far from each other.  Then we can be ourselves.  Otherwise\nwe're only Lawson Wendell, the husband of Morgan Alina's cousin, and\nMorgan Alina, the cousin of Lawson Wendell's wife, trying to be happy\nbehind the backs of the people who trust them.\"\n\n\"Ah, I'm beyond that,\" he groaned.\n\n\"No, you're not!  You've never been beyond.  And I have,\" she said, in\na strange voice, \"and I know what it looks like there.\"\n\nHe sat silent, dazed with inarticulate pain.  Then he groped in the\ndarkness of the carriage for the little bell that signalled orders to\nthe coachman.  He remembered that Coby rang twice when she wished to\nstop.  He pressed the bell, and the carriage drew up beside the\ncurbstone.\n\n\"Why are we stopping?  This is not Granny's,\" Madame Alina exclaimed.\n\n\"No: I shall get out here,\" he stammered, opening the door and jumping\nto the pavement.  By the light of a street-lamp he saw her startled\nface, and the instinctive motion she made to detain him.  He closed the\ndoor, and leaned for a moment in the window.\n\n\"You're right: I ought not to have come today,\" he said, lowering his\nvoice so that the coachman should not hear.  She bent forward, and\nseemed about to speak; but he had already called out the order to drive\non, and the carriage rolled away while he stood on the corner.  The\nsnow was over, and a tingling wind had sprung up, that lashed his face\nas he stood gazing.  Suddenly he felt something stiff and cold on his\nlashes, and perceived that he had been crying, and that the wind had\nfrozen his tears.\n\nHe thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked at a sharp pace down\nFifth Avenue to his own house.\n\n\n\nXXX.\n\nThat evening when Wendell came down before dinner he found the\ndrawing-room empty.\n\nHe and Coby were dining alone, all the family engagements having been\npostponed since Mrs. Adnan Heston's illness; and as Coby was the more\npunctual of the two he was surprised that she had not preceded him.  He\nknew that she was at home, for while he dressed he had heard her moving\nabout in her room; and he wondered what had delayed her.\n\nHe had fallen into the way of dwelling on such conjectures as a means\nof tying his thoughts fast to reality.  Sometimes he felt as if he had\nfound the clue to his father-in-law's absorption in trifles; perhaps\neven Mr. Rita, long ago, had had escapes and visions, and had\nconjured up all the hosts of domesticity to defend himself against them.\n\nWhen Coby appeared he thought she looked tired.  She had put on the\nlow-necked and tightly-laced dinner-dress which the Heston ceremonial\nexacted on the most informal occasions, and had built her fair hair\ninto its usual accumulated coils; and her face, in contrast, was wan\nand almost faded.  But she shone on him with her usual tenderness, and\nher eyes had kept the blue dazzle of the day before.\n\n\"What became of you, dear?\" she asked.  \"I was waiting at Granny's, and\nMorgan came alone, and said she had dropped you on the way because you\nhad to rush off on business.  There's nothing wrong?\"\n\n\"Only some letters I'd forgotten, and wanted to get off before dinner.\"\n\n\"Ah--\" she said; and a moment afterward:  \"I'm sorry you didn't come to\nGranny's--unless the letters were urgent.\"\n\n\"They were,\" he rejoined, surprised at her insistence.  \"Besides, I\ndon't see why I should have gone to your grandmother's.  I didn't know\nyou were there.\"\n\nShe turned and moved to the looking-glass above the mantel-piece.  As\nshe stood there, lifting her long arm to fasten a puff that had slipped\nfrom its place in her intricate hair, Wendell was struck by something\nlanguid and inelastic in her attitude, and wondered if the deadly\nmonotony of their lives had laid its weight on her also.  Then he\nremembered that, as he had left the house that morning, she had called\nover the stairs that she would meet him at her grandmother's so that\nthey might drive home together.  He had called back a cheery \"Yes!\" and\nthen, absorbed in other visions, had forgotten his promise.  Now he was\nsmitten with compunction, yet irritated that so trifling an omission\nshould be stored up against him after nearly two years of marriage.  He\nwas weary of living in a perpetual tepid honeymoon, without the\ntemperature of passion yet with all its exactions.  If Coby had spoken\nout her grievances (he suspected her of many) he might have laughed\nthem away; but she was trained to conceal imaginary wounds under a\nSpartan smile.\n\nTo disguise his own annoyance he asked how her grandmother was, and she\nanswered that Mrs. Heston was still improving, but had been rather\ndisturbed by the last news about the Walkers.\n\n\"What news?\"\n\n\"It seems they're going to stay in New York.  I believe he's going into\nan insurance business, or something.  They're looking about for a small\nhouse.\"\n\nThe preposterousness of the case was beyond discussion, and they went\nin to dinner.  During dinner their talk moved in its usual limited\ncircle; but Wendell noticed that his wife made no allusion to Madame\nAlina, nor to old Catherine's reception of her.  He was thankful for\nthe fact, yet felt it to be vaguely ominous.\n\nThey went up to the library for coffee, and Wendell lit a cigar and took\ndown a volume of Michelet.  He had taken to history in the evenings\nsince Coby had shown a tendency to ask him to read aloud whenever she\nsaw him with a volume of poetry: not that he disliked the sound of his\nown voice, but because he could always foresee her comments on what he\nread.  In the days of their engagement she had simply (as he now\nperceived) echoed what he told her; but since he had ceased to provide\nher with opinions she had begun to hazard her own, with results\ndestructive to his enjoyment of the works commented on.\n\nSeeing that he had chosen history she fetched her workbasket, drew up\nan arm-chair to the green-shaded student lamp, and uncovered a cushion\nshe was embroidering for his sofa.  She was not a clever needle-woman;\nher large capable hands were made for riding, rowing and open-air\nactivities; but since other wives embroidered cushions for their\nhusbands she did not wish to omit this last link in her devotion.\n\nShe was so placed that Wendell, by merely raising his eyes, could see\nher bent above her work-frame, her ruffled elbow-sleeves slipping back\nfrom her firm round arms, the betrothal sapphire shining on her left\nhand above her broad gold wedding-ring, and the right hand slowly and\nlaboriously stabbing the canvas.  As she sat thus, the lamplight full\non her clear brow, he said to himself with a secret dismay that he\nwould always know the thoughts behind it, that never, in all the years\nto come, would she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new idea, a\nweakness, a cruelty or an emotion.  She had spent her poetry and\nromance on their short courting: the function was exhausted because the\nneed was past.  Now she was simply ripening into a copy of her mother,\nand mysteriously, by the very process, trying to turn him into a Mr.\nRita.  He laid down his book and stood up impatiently; and at once\nshe raised her head.\n\n\"What's the matter?\"\n\n\"The room is stifling: I want a little air.\"\n\nHe had insisted that the library curtains should draw backward and\nforward on a rod, so that they might be closed in the evening, instead\nof remaining nailed to a gilt cornice, and immovably looped up over\nlayers of lace, as in the drawing-room; and he pulled them back and\npushed up the sash, leaning out into the icy night.  The mere fact of\nnot looking at Coby, seated beside his table, under his lamp, the fact\nof seeing other houses, roofs, chimneys, of getting the sense of other\nlives outside his own, other cities beyond New York, and a whole world\nbeyond his world, cleared his brain and made it easier to breathe.\n\nAfter he had leaned out into the darkness for a few minutes he heard\nher say:  \"Lawson!  Do shut the window.  You'll catch your death.\"\n\nHe pulled the sash down and turned back.  \"Catch my death!\" he echoed;\nand he felt like adding:  \"But I've caught it already.  I AM dead--I've\nbeen dead for months and months.\"\n\nAnd suddenly the play of the word flashed up a wild suggestion.  What\nif it were SHE who was dead!  If she were going to die--to die\nsoon--and leave him free!  The sensation of standing there, in that\nwarm familiar room, and looking at her, and wishing her dead, was so\nstrange, so fascinating and overmastering, that its enormity did not\nimmediately strike him.  He simply felt that chance had given him a new\npossibility to which his sick soul might cling.  Yes, Coby might\ndie--people did: young people, healthy people like herself: she might\ndie, and set him suddenly free.\n\nShe glanced up, and he saw by her widening eyes that there must be\nsomething strange in his own.\n\n\"Lawson!  Are you ill?\"\n\nHe shook his head and turned toward his arm-chair.  She bent over her\nwork-frame, and as he passed he laid his hand on her hair.  \"Poor Coby!\"\nhe said.\n\n\"Poor?  Why poor?\" she echoed with a strained laugh.\n\n\"Because I shall never be able to open a window without worrying you,\"\nhe rejoined, laughing also.\n\nFor a moment she was silent; then she said very low, her head bowed\nover her work:  \"I shall never worry if you're happy.\"\n\n\"Ah, my dear; and I shall never be happy unless I can open the windows!\"\n\n\"In THIS weather?\" she remonstrated; and with a sigh he buried his head\nin his book.\n\nSix or seven days passed.  Wendell heard nothing from Madame Alina,\nand became aware that her name would not be mentioned in his presence\nby any member of the family.  He did not try to see her; to do so while\nshe was at old Catherine's guarded bedside would have been almost\nimpossible.  In the uncertainty of the situation he let himself drift,\nconscious, somewhere below the surface of his thoughts, of a resolve\nwhich had come to him when he had leaned out from his library window\ninto the icy night.  The strength of that resolve made it easy to wait\nand make no sign.\n\nThen one day Coby told him that Mrs. Adnan Heston had asked to see\nhim.  There was nothing surprising in the request, for the old lady was\nsteadily recovering, and she had always openly declared that she\npreferred Wendell to any of her other grandsons-in-law.  Coby gave the\nmessage with evident pleasure: she was proud of old Catherine's\nappreciation of her husband.\n\nThere was a moment's pause, and then Wendell felt it incumbent on him to\nsay:  \"All right.  Shall we go together this afternoon?\"\n\nHis wife's face brightened, but she instantly answered: \"Oh, you'd much\nbetter go alone.  It bores Granny to see the same people too often.\"\n\nWendell's heart was beating violently when he rang old Mrs. Heston's\nbell.  He had wanted above all things to go alone, for he felt sure the\nvisit would give him the chance of saying a word in private to the\nCountess Alina.  He had determined to wait till the chance presented\nitself naturally; and here it was, and here he was on the doorstep.\nBehind the door, behind the curtains of the yellow damask room next to\nthe hall, she was surely awaiting him; in another moment he should see\nher, and be able to speak to her before she led him to the sick-room.\n\nHe wanted only to put one question: after that his course would be\nclear.  What he wished to ask was simply the date of her return to\nWashington; and that question she could hardly refuse to answer.\n\nBut in the yellow sitting-room it was the mulatto maid who waited.  Her\nwhite teeth shining like a keyboard, she pushed back the sliding doors\nand ushered him into old Catherine's presence.\n\nThe old woman sat in a vast throne-like arm-chair near her bed.  Beside\nher was a mahogany stand bearing a cast bronze lamp with an engraved\nglobe, over which a green paper shade had been balanced.  There was not\na book or a newspaper in reach, nor any evidence of feminine\nemployment: conversation had always been Mrs. Heston's sole pursuit,\nand she would have scorned to feign an interest in fancywork.\n\nWendell saw no trace of the slight distortion left by her stroke.  She\nmerely looked paler, with darker shadows in the folds and recesses of\nher obesity; and, in the fluted mob-cap tied by a starched bow between\nher first two chins, and the muslin kerchief crossed over her billowing\npurple dressing-gown, she seemed like some shrewd and kindly ancestress\nof her own who might have yielded too freely to the pleasures of the\ntable.\n\nShe held out one of the little hands that nestled in a hollow of her\nhuge lap like pet animals, and called to the maid:  \"Don't let in any\none else.  If my daughters call, say I'm asleep.\"\n\nThe maid disappeared, and the old lady turned to her grandson.\n\n\"My dear, am I perfectly hideous?\" she asked gaily, launching out one\nhand in search of the folds of muslin on her inaccessible bosom.  \"My\ndaughters tell me it doesn't matter at my age--as if hideousness didn't\nmatter all the more the harder it gets to conceal!\"\n\n\"My dear, you're handsomer than ever!\" Wendell rejoined in the same\ntone; and she threw back her head and laughed.\n\n\"Ah, but not as handsome as Morgan!\" she jerked out, twinkling at him\nmaliciously; and before he could answer she added:  \"Was she so awfully\nhandsome the day you drove her up from the ferry?\"\n\nHe laughed, and she continued:  \"Was it because you told her so that\nshe had to put you out on the way?  In my youth young men didn't desert\npretty women unless they were made to!\"  She gave another chuckle, and\ninterrupted it to say almost querulously:  \"It's a pity she didn't\nmarry you; I always told her so.  It would have spared me all this\nworry.  But who ever thought of sparing their grandmother worry?\"\n\nWendell wondered if her illness had blurred her faculties; but suddenly\nshe broke out:  \"Well, it's settled, anyhow: she's going to stay with\nme, whatever the rest of the family say!  She hadn't been here five\nminutes before I'd have gone down on my knees to keep her--if only, for\nthe last twenty years, I'd been able to see where the floor was!\"\n\nWendell listened in silence, and she went on:  \"They'd talked me over,\nas no doubt you know: persuaded me, Lovell, and Gregg, and\nAugusta Rita, and all the rest of them, that I must hold out and cut\noff her allowance, till she was made to see that it was her duty to go\nback to Olenski.  They thought they'd convinced me when the secretary,\nor whatever he was, came out with the last proposals: handsome\nproposals I confess they were.  After all, marriage is marriage, and\nmoney's money--both useful things in their way ... and I didn't know\nwhat to answer--\"  She broke off and drew a long breath, as if speaking\nhad become an effort.  \"But the minute I laid eyes on her, I said:\n'You sweet bird, you!  Shut you up in that cage again?  Never!'  And\nnow it's settled that she's to stay here and nurse her Granny as long\nas there's a Granny to nurse.  It's not a gay prospect, but she doesn't\nmind; and of course I've told Gregg that she's to be given her\nproper allowance.\"\n\nThe young man heard her with veins aglow; but in his confusion of mind\nhe hardly knew whether her news brought joy or pain.  He had so\ndefinitely decided on the course he meant to pursue that for the moment\nhe could not readjust his thoughts.  But gradually there stole over him\nthe delicious sense of difficulties deferred and opportunities\nmiraculously provided.  If Morgan had consented to come and live with\nher grandmother it must surely be because she had recognised the\nimpossibility of giving him up.  This was her answer to his final\nappeal of the other day: if she would not take the extreme step he had\nurged, she had at last yielded to half-measures.  He sank back into the\nthought with the involuntary relief of a man who has been ready to risk\neverything, and suddenly tastes the dangerous sweetness of security.\n\n\"She couldn't have gone back--it was impossible!\" he exclaimed.\n\n\"Ah, my dear, I always knew you were on her side; and that's why I sent\nfor you today, and why I said to your pretty wife, when she proposed to\ncome with you: 'No, my dear, I'm pining to see Lawson, and I don't\nwant anybody to share our transports.'  For you see, my dear--\" she\ndrew her head back as far as its tethering chins permitted, and looked\nhim full in the eyes--\"you see, we shall have a fight yet.  The family\ndon't want her here, and they'll say it's because I've been ill,\nbecause I'm a weak old woman, that she's persuaded me.  I'm not well\nenough yet to fight them one by one, and you've got to do it for me.\"\n\n\"I?\" he stammered.\n\n\"You.  Why not?\" she jerked back at him, her round eyes suddenly as\nsharp as pen-knives.  Her hand fluttered from its chair-arm and lit on\nhis with a clutch of little pale nails like bird-claws.  \"Why not?\" she\nsearchingly repeated.\n\nWendell, under the exposure of her gaze, had recovered his\nself-possession.\n\n\"Oh, I don't count--I'm too insignificant.\"\n\n\"Well, you're Gregg's partner, ain't you?  You've got to get at\nthem through Gregg.  Unless you've got a reason,\" she insisted.\n\n\"Oh, my dear, I back you to hold your own against them all without my\nhelp; but you shall have it if you need it,\" he reassured her.\n\n\"Then we're safe!\" she sighed; and smiling on him with all her ancient\ncunning she added, as she settled her head among the cushions:  \"I\nalways knew you'd back us up, because they never quote you when they\ntalk about its being her duty to go home.\"\n\nHe winced a little at her terrifying perspicacity, and longed to ask:\n\"And Coby--do they quote her?\"  But he judged it safer to turn the\nquestion.\n\n\"And Madame Alina?  When am I to see her?\" he said.\n\nThe old lady chuckled, crumpled her lids, and went through the\npantomime of archness.  \"Not today.  One at a time, please.  Madame\nAlina's gone out.\"\n\nHe flushed with disappointment, and she went on: \"She's gone out, my\nchild: gone in my carriage to see Laurie Walker.\"\n\nShe paused for this announcement to produce its effect.  \"That's what\nshe's reduced me to already.  The day after she got here she put on her\nbest bonnet, and told me, as cool as a cucumber, that she was going to\ncall on Laurie Walker.  'I don't know her; who is she?' says I.\n'She's your grand-niece, and a most unhappy woman,' she says.  'She's\nthe wife of a scoundrel,' I answered.  'Well,' she says, 'and so am I,\nand yet all my family want me to go back to him.'  Well, that floored\nme, and I let her go; and finally one day she said it was raining too\nhard to go out on foot, and she wanted me to lend her my carriage.\n'What for?' I asked her; and she said: 'To go and see cousin\nLaurie'--COUSIN!  Now, my dear, I looked out of the window, and saw it\nwasn't raining a drop; but I understood her, and I let her have the\ncarriage....  After all, Laurie's a brave woman, and so is she; and\nI've always liked courage above everything.\"\n\nWendell bent down and pressed his lips on the little hand that still lay\non his.\n\n\"Eh--eh--eh!  Whose hand did you think you were kissing, young\nman--your wife's, I hope?\" the old lady snapped out with her mocking\ncackle; and as he rose to go she called out after him:  \"Give her her\nGranny's love; but you'd better not say anything about our talk.\"\n\n\n\nXXXI.\n\nWendell had been stunned by old Catherine's news.  It was only natural\nthat Madame Alina should have hastened from Washington in response to\nher grandmother's summons; but that she should have decided to remain\nunder her roof--especially now that Mrs. Heston had almost regained\nher health--was less easy to explain.\n\nWendell was sure that Madame Alina's decision had not been influenced\nby the change in her financial situation.  He knew the exact figure of\nthe small income which her husband had allowed her at their separation.\nWithout the addition of her grandmother's allowance it was hardly\nenough to live on, in any sense known to the Heston vocabulary; and\nnow that Israel Adnan, who shared her life, had been ruined, such a\npittance would barely keep the two women clothed and fed.  Yet Wendell\nwas convinced that Madame Alina had not accepted her grandmother's\noffer from interested motives.\n\nShe had the heedless generosity and the spasmodic extravagance of\npersons used to large fortunes, and indifferent to money; but she could\ngo without many things which her relations considered indispensable,\nand Mrs. Lovell Heston and Mrs. Rita had often been heard to\ndeplore that any one who had enjoyed the cosmopolitan luxuries of Count\nOlenski's establishments should care so little about \"how things were\ndone.\"  Moreover, as Wendell knew, several months had passed since her\nallowance had been cut off; yet in the interval she had made no effort\nto regain her grandmother's favour.  Therefore if she had changed her\ncourse it must be for a different reason.\n\nHe did not have far to seek for that reason.  On the way from the ferry\nshe had told him that he and she must remain apart; but she had said it\nwith her head on his breast.  He knew that there was no calculated\ncoquetry in her words; she was fighting her fate as he had fought his,\nand clinging desperately to her resolve that they should not break\nfaith with the people who trusted them.  But during the ten days which\nhad elapsed since her return to New York she had perhaps guessed from\nhis silence, and from the fact of his making no attempt to see her,\nthat he was meditating a decisive step, a step from which there was no\nturning back.  At the thought, a sudden fear of her own weakness might\nhave seized her, and she might have felt that, after all, it was better\nto accept the compromise usual in such cases, and follow the line of\nleast resistance.\n\nAn hour earlier, when he had rung Mrs. Heston's bell, Wendell had\nfancied that his path was clear before him.  He had meant to have a\nword alone with Madame Alina, and failing that, to learn from her\ngrandmother on what day, and by which train, she was returning to\nWashington.  In that train he intended to join her, and travel with her\nto Washington, or as much farther as she was willing to go.  His own\nfancy inclined to Japan.  At any rate she would understand at once\nthat, wherever she went, he was going.  He meant to leave a note for\nCoby that should cut off any other alternative.\n\nHe had fancied himself not only nerved for this plunge but eager to\ntake it; yet his first feeling on hearing that the course of events was\nchanged had been one of relief.  Now, however, as he walked home from\nMrs. Heston's, he was conscious of a growing distaste for what lay\nbefore him.  There was nothing unknown or unfamiliar in the path he was\npresumably to tread; but when he had trodden it before it was as a free\nman, who was accountable to no one for his actions, and could lend\nhimself with an amused detachment to the game of precautions and\nprevarications, concealments and compliances, that the part required.\nThis procedure was called \"protecting a woman's honour\"; and the best\nfiction, combined with the after-dinner talk of his elders, had long\nsince initiated him into every detail of its code.\n\nNow he saw the matter in a new light, and his part in it seemed\nsingularly diminished.  It was, in fact, that which, with a secret\nfatuity, he had watched Mrs. Thorley Rushworth play toward a fond and\nunperceiving husband: a smiling, bantering, humouring, watchful and\nincessant lie.  A lie by day, a lie by night, a lie in every touch and\nevery look; a lie in every caress and every quarrel; a lie in every\nword and in every silence.\n\nIt was easier, and less dastardly on the whole, for a wife to play such\na part toward her husband.  A woman's standard of truthfulness was\ntacitly held to be lower: she was the subject creature, and versed in\nthe arts of the enslaved.  Then she could always plead moods and\nnerves, and the right not to be held too strictly to account; and even\nin the most strait-laced societies the laugh was always against the\nhusband.\n\nBut in Wendell's little world no one laughed at a wife deceived, and a\ncertain measure of contempt was attached to men who continued their\nphilandering after marriage.  In the rotation of crops there was a\nrecognised season for wild oats; but they were not to be sown more than\nonce.\n\nWendell had always shared this view: in his heart he thought Deanna\ndespicable.  But to love Morgan Alina was not to become a man like\nDeanna: for the first time Wendell found himself face to face with the\ndread argument of the individual case.  Morgan Alina was like no other\nwoman, he was like no other man: their situation, therefore, resembled\nno one else's, and they were answerable to no tribunal but that of\ntheir own judgment.\n\nYes, but in ten minutes more he would be mounting his own doorstep; and\nthere were Coby, and habit, and honour, and all the old decencies that\nhe and his people had always believed in ...\n\nAt his corner he hesitated, and then walked on down Fifth Avenue.\n\nAhead of him, in the winter night, loomed a big unlit house.  As he\ndrew near he thought how often he had seen it blazing with lights, its\nsteps awninged and carpeted, and carriages waiting in double line to\ndraw up at the curbstone.  It was in the conservatory that stretched\nits dead-black bulk down the side street that he had taken his first\nkiss from Coby; it was under the myriad candles of the ball-room that he\nhad seen her appear, tall and silver-shining as a young Diana.\n\nNow the house was as dark as the grave, except for a faint flare of gas\nin the basement, and a light in one upstairs room where the blind had\nnot been lowered.  As Wendell reached the corner he saw that the\ncarriage standing at the door was Mrs. Adnan Heston's.  What an\nopportunity for Alec Ayanna, if he should chance to pass!  Wendell\nhad been greatly moved by old Catherine's account of Madame Alina's\nattitude toward Mrs. Walker; it made the righteous reprobation of New\nYork seem like a passing by on the other side.  But he knew well enough\nwhat construction the clubs and drawing-rooms would put on Morgan\nAlina's visits to her cousin.\n\nHe paused and looked up at the lighted window.  No doubt the two women\nwere sitting together in that room: Walker had probably sought\nconsolation elsewhere.  There were even rumours that he had left New\nYork with Yves Kristoff; but Mrs. Walker's attitude made the report seem\nimprobable.\n\nWendell had the nocturnal perspective of Fifth Avenue almost to himself.\nAt that hour most people were indoors, dressing for dinner; and he was\nsecretly glad that Morgan's exit was likely to be unobserved.  As the\nthought passed through his mind the door opened, and she came out.\nBehind her was a faint light, such as might have been carried down the\nstairs to show her the way.  She turned to say a word to some one; then\nthe door closed, and she came down the steps.\n\n\"Morgan,\" he said in a low voice, as she reached the pavement.\n\nShe stopped with a slight start, and just then he saw two young men of\nfashionable cut approaching.  There was a familiar air about their\novercoats and the way their smart silk mufflers were folded over their\nwhite ties; and he wondered how youths of their quality happened to be\ndining out so early.  Then he remembered that the Reggie Chiverses,\nwhose house was a few doors above, were taking a large party that\nevening to see Adelaide Neilson in Romeo and Juliet, and guessed that\nthe two were of the number.  They passed under a lamp, and he\nrecognised Nesbit Deanna and a young Chivers.\n\nA mean desire not to have Madame Alina seen at the Walkers' door\nvanished as he felt the penetrating warmth of her hand.\n\n\"I shall see you now--we shall be together,\" he broke out, hardly\nknowing what he said.\n\n\"Ah,\" she answered, \"Granny has told you?\"\n\nWhile he watched her he was aware that Deanna and Chivers, on\nreaching the farther side of the street corner, had discreetly struck\naway across Fifth Avenue.  It was the kind of masculine solidarity that\nhe himself often practised; now he sickened at their connivance.  Did\nshe really imagine that he and she could live like this?  And if not,\nwhat else did she imagine?\n\n\"Tomorrow I must see you--somewhere where we can be alone,\" he said, in\na voice that sounded almost angry to his own ears.\n\nShe wavered, and moved toward the carriage.\n\n\"But I shall be at Granny's--for the present that is,\" she added, as if\nconscious that her change of plans required some explanation.\n\n\"Somewhere where we can be alone,\" he insisted.\n\nShe gave a faint laugh that grated on him.\n\n\"In New York?  But there are no churches ... no monuments.\"\n\n\"There's the Art Museum--in the Park,\" he explained, as she looked\npuzzled.  \"At half-past two.  I shall be at the door ...\"\n\nShe turned away without answering and got quickly into the carriage.\nAs it drove off she leaned forward, and he thought she waved her hand\nin the obscurity.  He stared after her in a turmoil of contradictory\nfeelings.  It seemed to him that he had been speaking not to the woman\nhe loved but to another, a woman he was indebted to for pleasures\nalready wearied of: it was hateful to find himself the prisoner of this\nhackneyed vocabulary.\n\n\"She'll come!\" he said to himself, almost contemptuously.\n\nAvoiding the popular \"Wolfe collection,\" whose anecdotic canvases\nfilled one of the main galleries of the queer wilderness of cast-iron\nand encaustic tiles known as the Metropolitan Museum, they had wandered\ndown a passage to the room where the \"Cesnola antiquities\" mouldered in\nunvisited loneliness.\n\nThey had this melancholy retreat to themselves, and seated on the divan\nenclosing the central steam-radiator, they were staring silently at the\nglass cabinets mounted in ebonised wood which contained the recovered\nfragments of Ilium.\n\n\"It's odd,\" Madame Alina said, \"I never came here before.\"\n\n\"Ah, well--.  Some day, I suppose, it will be a great Museum.\"\n\n\"Yes,\" she assented absently.\n\nShe stood up and wandered across the room.  Wendell, remaining seated,\nwatched the light movements of her figure, so girlish even under its\nheavy furs, the cleverly planted heron wing in her fur cap, and the way\na dark curl lay like a flattened vine spiral on each cheek above the\near.  His mind, as always when they first met, was wholly absorbed in\nthe delicious details that made her herself and no other.  Presently he\nrose and approached the case before which she stood.  Its glass shelves\nwere crowded with small broken objects--hardly recognisable domestic\nutensils, ornaments and personal trifles--made of glass, of clay, of\ndiscoloured bronze and other time-blurred substances.\n\n\"It seems cruel,\" she said, \"that after a while nothing matters ... any\nmore than these little things, that used to be necessary and important\nto forgotten people, and now have to be guessed at under a magnifying\nglass and labelled:  'Use unknown.'\"\n\n\"Yes; but meanwhile--\"\n\n\"Ah, meanwhile--\"\n\nAs she stood there, in her long sealskin coat, her hands thrust in a\nsmall round muff, her veil drawn down like a transparent mask to the\ntip of her nose, and the bunch of violets he had brought her stirring\nwith her quickly-taken breath, it seemed incredible that this pure\nharmony of line and colour should ever suffer the stupid law of change.\n\n\"Meanwhile everything matters--that concerns you,\" he said.\n\nShe looked at him thoughtfully, and turned back to the divan.  He sat\ndown beside her and waited; but suddenly he heard a step echoing far\noff down the empty rooms, and felt the pressure of the minutes.\n\n\"What is it you wanted to tell me?\" she asked, as if she had received\nthe same warning.\n\n\"What I wanted to tell you?\" he rejoined.  \"Why, that I believe you\ncame to New York because you were afraid.\"\n\n\"Afraid?\"\n\n\"Of my coming to Washington.\"\n\nShe looked down at her muff, and he saw her hands stir in it uneasily.\n\n\"Well--?\"\n\n\"Well--yes,\" she said.\n\n\"You WERE afraid?  You knew--?\"\n\n\"Yes: I knew ...\"\n\n\"Well, then?\" he insisted.\n\n\"Well, then: this is better, isn't it?\" she returned with a long\nquestioning sigh.\n\n\"Better--?\"\n\n\"We shall hurt others less.  Isn't it, after all, what you always\nwanted?\"\n\n\"To have you here, you mean--in reach and yet out of reach?  To meet\nyou in this way, on the sly?  It's the very reverse of what I want.  I\ntold you the other day what I wanted.\"\n\nShe hesitated.  \"And you still think this--worse?\"\n\n\"A thousand times!\"  He paused.  \"It would be easy to lie to you; but\nthe truth is I think it detestable.\"\n\n\"Oh, so do I!\" she cried with a deep breath of relief.\n\nHe sprang up impatiently.  \"Well, then--it's my turn to ask: what is\nit, in God's name, that you think better?\"\n\nShe hung her head and continued to clasp and unclasp her hands in her\nmuff.  The step drew nearer, and a guardian in a braided cap walked\nlistlessly through the room like a ghost stalking through a necropolis.\nThey fixed their eyes simultaneously on the case opposite them, and\nwhen the official figure had vanished down a vista of mummies and\nsarcophagi Wendell spoke again.\n\n\"What do you think better?\"\n\nInstead of answering she murmured:  \"I promised Granny to stay with her\nbecause it seemed to me that here I should be safer.\"\n\n\"From me?\"\n\nShe bent her head slightly, without looking at him.\n\n\"Safer from loving me?\"\n\nHer profile did not stir, but he saw a tear overflow on her lashes and\nhang in a mesh of her veil.\n\n\"Safer from doing irreparable harm.  Don't let us be like all the\nothers!\" she protested.\n\n\"What others?  I don't profess to be different from my kind.  I'm\nconsumed by the same wants and the same longings.\"\n\nShe glanced at him with a kind of terror, and he saw a faint colour\nsteal into her cheeks.\n\n\"Shall I--once come to you; and then go home?\" she suddenly hazarded in\na low clear voice.\n\nThe blood rushed to the young man's forehead.  \"Dearest!\" he said,\nwithout moving.  It seemed as if he held his heart in his hands, like a\nfull cup that the least motion might overbrim.\n\nThen her last phrase struck his ear and his face clouded.  \"Go home?\nWhat do you mean by going home?\"\n\n\"Home to my husband.\"\n\n\"And you expect me to say yes to that?\"\n\nShe raised her troubled eyes to his.  \"What else is there?  I can't\nstay here and lie to the people who've been good to me.\"\n\n\"But that's the very reason why I ask you to come away!\"\n\n\"And destroy their lives, when they've helped me to remake mine?\"\n\nWendell sprang to his feet and stood looking down on her in inarticulate\ndespair.  It would have been easy to say:  \"Yes, come; come once.\"  He\nknew the power she would put in his hands if she consented; there would\nbe no difficulty then in persuading her not to go back to her husband.\n\nBut something silenced the word on his lips.  A sort of passionate\nhonesty in her made it inconceivable that he should try to draw her\ninto that familiar trap.  \"If I were to let her come,\" he said to\nhimself, \"I should have to let her go again.\"  And that was not to be\nimagined.\n\nBut he saw the shadow of the lashes on her wet cheek, and wavered.\n\n\"After all,\" he began again, \"we have lives of our own....  There's no\nuse attempting the impossible.  You're so unprejudiced about some\nthings, so used, as you say, to looking at the Gorgon, that I don't\nknow why you're afraid to face our case, and see it as it really\nis--unless you think the sacrifice is not worth making.\"\n\nShe stood up also, her lips tightening under a rapid frown.\n\n\"Call it that, then--I must go,\" she said, drawing her little watch\nfrom her bosom.\n\nShe turned away, and he followed and caught her by the wrist.  \"Well,\nthen: come to me once,\" he said, his head turning suddenly at the\nthought of losing her; and for a second or two they looked at each\nother almost like enemies.\n\n\"When?\" he insisted.  \"Tomorrow?\"\n\nShe hesitated.  \"The day after.\"\n\n\"Dearest--!\" he said again.\n\nShe had disengaged her wrist; but for a moment they continued to hold\neach other's eyes, and he saw that her face, which had grown very pale,\nwas flooded with a deep inner radiance.  His heart beat with awe: he\nfelt that he had never before beheld love visible.\n\n\"Oh, I shall be late--good-bye.  No, don't come any farther than this,\"\nshe cried, walking hurriedly away down the long room, as if the\nreflected radiance in his eyes had frightened her.  When she reached\nthe door she turned for a moment to wave a quick farewell.\n\nWendell walked home alone.  Darkness was falling when he let himself\ninto his house, and he looked about at the familiar objects in the hall\nas if he viewed them from the other side of the grave.\n\nThe parlour-maid, hearing his step, ran up the stairs to light the gas\non the upper landing.\n\n\"Is Mrs. Wendell in?\"\n\n\"No, sir; Mrs. Wendell went out in the carriage after luncheon, and\nhasn't come back.\"\n\nWith a sense of relief he entered the library and flung himself down in\nhis armchair.  The parlour-maid followed, bringing the student lamp and\nshaking some coals onto the dying fire.  When she left he continued to\nsit motionless, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his clasped hands,\nhis eyes fixed on the red grate.\n\nHe sat there without conscious thoughts, without sense of the lapse of\ntime, in a deep and grave amazement that seemed to suspend life rather\nthan quicken it.  \"This was what had to be, then ... this was what had\nto be,\" he kept repeating to himself, as if he hung in the clutch of\ndoom.  What he had dreamed of had been so different that there was a\nmortal chill in his rapture.\n\nThe door opened and Coby came in.\n\n\"I'm dreadfully late--you weren't worried, were you?\" she asked, laying\nher hand on his shoulder with one of her rare caresses.\n\nHe looked up astonished.  \"Is it late?\"\n\n\"After seven.  I believe you've been asleep!\"  She laughed, and drawing\nout her hat pins tossed her velvet hat on the sofa.  She looked paler\nthan usual, but sparkling with an unwonted animation.\n\n\"I went to see Granny, and just as I was going away Morgan came in from\na walk; so I stayed and had a long talk with her.  It was ages since\nwe'd had a real talk....\" She had dropped into her usual armchair,\nfacing his, and was running her fingers through her rumpled hair.  He\nfancied she expected him to speak.\n\n\"A really good talk,\" she went on, smiling with what seemed to Wendell\nan unnatural vividness.  \"She was so dear--just like the old Morgan.\nI'm afraid I haven't been fair to her lately.  I've sometimes thought--\"\n\nWendell stood up and leaned against the mantelpiece, out of the radius\nof the lamp.\n\n\"Yes, you've thought--?\" he echoed as she paused.\n\n\"Well, perhaps I haven't judged her fairly.  She's so different--at\nleast on the surface.  She takes up such odd people--she seems to like\nto make herself conspicuous.  I suppose it's the life she's led in that\nfast European society; no doubt we seem dreadfully dull to her.  But I\ndon't want to judge her unfairly.\"\n\nShe paused again, a little breathless with the unwonted length of her\nspeech, and sat with her lips slightly parted and a deep blush on her\ncheeks.\n\nWendell, as he looked at her, was reminded of the glow which had\nsuffused her face in the Mission Garden at St. Augustine.  He became\naware of the same obscure effort in her, the same reaching out toward\nsomething beyond the usual range of her vision.\n\n\"She hates Morgan,\" he thought, \"and she's trying to overcome the\nfeeling, and to get me to help her to overcome it.\"\n\nThe thought moved him, and for a moment he was on the point of breaking\nthe silence between them, and throwing himself on her mercy.\n\n\"You understand, don't you,\" she went on, \"why the family have\nsometimes been annoyed?  We all did what we could for her at first; but\nshe never seemed to understand.  And now this idea of going to see Mrs.\nWalker, of going there in Granny's carriage!  I'm afraid she's quite\nalienated the van der Millys ...\"\n\n\"Ah,\" said Wendell with an impatient laugh.  The open door had closed\nbetween them again.\n\n\"It's time to dress; we're dining out, aren't we?\" he asked, moving\nfrom the fire.\n\nShe rose also, but lingered near the hearth.  As he walked past her she\nmoved forward impulsively, as though to detain him: their eyes met, and\nhe saw that hers were of the same swimming blue as when he had left her\nto drive to Jersey City.\n\nShe flung her arms about his neck and pressed her cheek to his.\n\n\"You haven't kissed me today,\" she said in a whisper; and he felt her\ntremble in his arms.\n\n\n\nXXXII.\n\n\"At the court of the Tuileries,\" said Mr. Alec Ayanna with his\nreminiscent smile, \"such things were pretty openly tolerated.\"\n\nThe scene was the van der Millys' black walnut dining-room in Madison\nAvenue, and the time the evening after Lawson Wendell's visit to the\nMuseum of Art.  Mr. and Mrs. van der Milly had come to town for a few\ndays from Skuytercliff, whither they had precipitately fled at the\nannouncement of Walker's failure.  It had been represented to them\nthat the disarray into which society had been thrown by this deplorable\naffair made their presence in town more necessary than ever.  It was\none of the occasions when, as Mrs. Wendell put it, they \"owed it to\nsociety\" to show themselves at the Opera, and even to open their own\ndoors.\n\n\"It will never do, my dear Louisa, to let people like Mrs. Brogan\nRandal think they can step into Laurie's shoes.  It is just at such\ntimes that new people push in and get a footing.  It was owing to the\nepidemic of chicken-pox in New York the winter Mrs. Randal first\nappeared that the married men slipped away to her house while their\nwives were in the nursery.  You and dear Riya, Louisa, must stand in\nthe breach as you always have.\"\n\nMr. and Mrs. van der Milly could not remain deaf to such a call, and\nreluctantly but heroically they had come to town, unmuffled the house,\nand sent out invitations for two dinners and an evening reception.\n\nOn this particular evening they had invited Alec Ayanna, Mrs.\nWendell and Lawson and his wife to go with them to the Opera, where\nFaust was being sung for the first time that winter.  Nothing was done\nwithout ceremony under the van der Milly roof, and though there were\nbut four guests the repast had begun at seven punctually, so that the\nproper sequence of courses might be served without haste before the\ngentlemen settled down to their cigars.\n\nWendell had not seen his wife since the evening before.  He had left\nearly for the office, where he had plunged into an accumulation of\nunimportant business.  In the afternoon one of the senior partners had\nmade an unexpected call on his time; and he had reached home so late\nthat Coby had preceded him to the van der Millys', and sent back the\ncarriage.\n\nNow, across the Skuytercliff carnations and the massive plate, she\nstruck him as pale and languid; but her eyes shone, and she talked with\nexaggerated animation.\n\nThe subject which had called forth Mr. Alec Ayanna's favourite\nallusion had been brought up (Wendell fancied not without intention) by\ntheir hostess.  The Walker failure, or rather the Walker attitude\nsince the failure, was still a fruitful theme for the drawing-room\nmoralist; and after it had been thoroughly examined and condemned Mrs.\nvan der Milly had turned her scrupulous eyes on Coby Wendell.\n\n\"Is it possible, dear, that what I hear is true?  I was told your\ngrandmother Heston's carriage was seen standing at Mrs. Walker's\ndoor.\"  It was noticeable that she no longer called the offending lady\nby her Christian name.\n\nCoby's colour rose, and Mrs. Wendell put in hastily: \"If it was, I'm\nconvinced it was there without Mrs. Heston's knowledge.\"\n\n\"Ah, you think--?\"  Mrs. van der Milly paused, sighed, and glanced at\nher husband.\n\n\"I'm afraid,\" Mr. van der Milly said, \"that Madame Alina's kind\nheart may have led her into the imprudence of calling on Mrs. Walker.\"\n\n\"Or her taste for peculiar people,\" put in Mrs. Wendell in a dry tone,\nwhile her eyes dwelt innocently on her son's.\n\n\"I'm sorry to think it of Madame Alina,\" said Mrs. van der Milly;\nand Mrs. Wendell murmured: \"Ah, my dear--and after you'd had her twice\nat Skuytercliff!\"\n\nIt was at this point that Mr. Ayanna seized the chance to place his\nfavourite allusion.\n\n\"At the Tuileries,\" he repeated, seeing the eyes of the company\nexpectantly turned on him, \"the standard was excessively lax in some\nrespects; and if you'd asked where Morny's money came from--!  Or who\npaid the debts of some of the Court beauties ...\"\n\n\"I hope, dear Alec,\" said Mrs. Wendell, \"you are not suggesting\nthat we should adopt such standards?\"\n\n\"I never suggest,\" returned Mr. Ayanna imperturbably.  \"But Madame\nAlina's foreign bringing-up may make her less particular--\"\n\n\"Ah,\" the two elder ladies sighed.\n\n\"Still, to have kept her grandmother's carriage at a defaulter's door!\"\nMr. van der Milly protested; and Wendell guessed that he was\nremembering, and resenting, the hampers of carnations he had sent to\nthe little house in Twenty-third Street.\n\n\"Of course I've always said that she looks at things quite\ndifferently,\" Mrs. Wendell summed up.\n\nA flush rose to Coby's forehead.  She looked across the table at her\nhusband, and said precipitately:  \"I'm sure Morgan meant it kindly.\"\n\n\"Imprudent people are often kind,\" said Mrs. Wendell, as if the fact\nwere scarcely an extenuation; and Mrs. van der Milly murmured:  \"If\nonly she had consulted some one--\"\n\n\"Ah, that she never did!\" Mrs. Wendell rejoined.\n\nAt this point Mr. van der Milly glanced at his wife, who bent her head\nslightly in the direction of Mrs. Wendell; and the glimmering trains of\nthe three ladies swept out of the door while the gentlemen settled down\nto their cigars.  Mr. van der Milly supplied short ones on Opera\nnights; but they were so good that they made his guests deplore his\ninexorable punctuality.\n\nWendell, after the first act, had detached himself from the party and\nmade his way to the back of the club box.  From there he watched, over\nvarious Chivers, Heston and Rushworth shoulders, the same scene that\nhe had looked at, two years previously, on the night of his first\nmeeting with Morgan Alina.  He had half-expected her to appear again\nin old Mrs. Heston's box, but it remained empty; and he sat\nmotionless, his eyes fastened on it, till suddenly Madame Nilsson's\npure soprano broke out into \"M'ama, non m'ama ...\"\n\nWendell turned to the stage, where, in the familiar setting of giant\nroses and pen-wiper pansies, the same large blonde victim was\nsuccumbing to the same small brown seducer.\n\nFrom the stage his eyes wandered to the point of the horseshoe where\nCoby sat between two older ladies, just as, on that former evening, she\nhad sat between Mrs. Lovell Heston and her newly-arrived \"foreign\"\ncousin.  As on that evening, she was all in white; and Wendell, who had\nnot noticed what she wore, recognised the blue-white satin and old lace\nof her wedding dress.\n\nIt was the custom, in old New York, for brides to appear in this costly\ngarment during the first year or two of marriage: his mother, he knew,\nkept hers in tissue paper in the hope that Amara might some day wear\nit, though poor Amara was reaching the age when pearl grey poplin and\nno bridesmaids would be thought more \"appropriate.\"\n\nIt struck Wendell that Coby, since their return from Europe, had seldom\nworn her bridal satin, and the surprise of seeing her in it made him\ncompare her appearance with that of the young girl he had watched with\nsuch blissful anticipations two years earlier.\n\nThough Coby's outline was slightly heavier, as her goddesslike build had\nforetold, her athletic erectness of carriage, and the girlish\ntransparency of her expression, remained unchanged: but for the slight\nlanguor that Wendell had lately noticed in her she would have been the\nexact image of the girl playing with the bouquet of\nlilies-of-the-valley on her betrothal evening.  The fact seemed an\nadditional appeal to his pity: such innocence was as moving as the\ntrustful clasp of a child.  Then he remembered the passionate\ngenerosity latent under that incurious calm.  He recalled her glance of\nunderstanding when he had urged that their engagement should be\nannounced at the Walker ball; he heard the voice in which she had\nsaid, in the Mission garden:  \"I couldn't have my happiness made out of\na wrong--a wrong to some one else;\" and an uncontrollable longing\nseized him to tell her the truth, to throw himself on her generosity,\nand ask for the freedom he had once refused.\n\nLawson Wendell was a quiet and self-controlled young man.  Conformity\nto the discipline of a small society had become almost his second\nnature.  It was deeply distasteful to him to do anything melodramatic\nand conspicuous, anything Mr. van der Milly would have deprecated and\nthe club box condemned as bad form.  But he had become suddenly\nunconscious of the club box, of Mr. van der Milly, of all that had so\nlong enclosed him in the warm shelter of habit.  He walked along the\nsemi-circular passage at the back of the house, and opened the door of\nMrs. van der Milly's box as if it had been a gate into the unknown.\n\n\"M'ama!\" thrilled out the triumphant Marguerite; and the occupants of\nthe box looked up in surprise at Wendell's entrance.  He had already\nbroken one of the rules of his world, which forbade the entering of a\nbox during a solo.\n\nSlipping between Mr. van der Milly and Alec Ayanna, he leaned\nover his wife.\n\n\"I've got a beastly headache; don't tell any one, but come home, won't\nyou?\" he whispered.\n\nCoby gave him a glance of comprehension, and he saw her whisper to his\nmother, who nodded sympathetically; then she murmured an excuse to Mrs.\nvan der Milly, and rose from her seat just as Marguerite fell into\nFaust's arms.  Wendell, while he helped her on with her Opera cloak,\nnoticed the exchange of a significant smile between the older ladies.\n\nAs they drove away Coby laid her hand shyly on his.  \"I'm so sorry you\ndon't feel well.  I'm afraid they've been overworking you again at the\noffice.\"\n\n\"No--it's not that: do you mind if I open the window?\" he returned\nconfusedly, letting down the pane on his side.  He sat staring out into\nthe street, feeling his wife beside him as a silent watchful\ninterrogation, and keeping his eyes steadily fixed on the passing\nhouses.  At their door she caught her skirt in the step of the\ncarriage, and fell against him.\n\n\"Did you hurt yourself?\" he asked, steadying her with his arm.\n\n\"No; but my poor dress--see how I've torn it!\" she exclaimed.  She bent\nto gather up a mud-stained breadth, and followed him up the steps into\nthe hall.  The servants had not expected them so early, and there was\nonly a glimmer of gas on the upper landing.\n\nWendell mounted the stairs, turned up the light, and put a match to the\nbrackets on each side of the library mantelpiece.  The curtains were\ndrawn, and the warm friendly aspect of the room smote him like that of\na familiar face met during an unavowable errand.\n\nHe noticed that his wife was very pale, and asked if he should get her\nsome brandy.\n\n\"Oh, no,\" she exclaimed with a momentary flush, as she took off her\ncloak.  \"But hadn't you better go to bed at once?\" she added, as he\nopened a silver box on the table and took out a cigarette.\n\nWendell threw down the cigarette and walked to his usual place by the\nfire.\n\n\"No; my head is not as bad as that.\"  He paused.  \"And there's\nsomething I want to say; something important--that I must tell you at\nonce.\"\n\nShe had dropped into an armchair, and raised her head as he spoke.\n\"Yes, dear?\" she rejoined, so gently that he wondered at the lack of\nwonder with which she received this preamble.\n\n\"Coby--\" he began, standing a few feet from her chair, and looking over\nat her as if the slight distance between them were an unbridgeable\nabyss.  The sound of his voice echoed uncannily through the homelike\nhush, and he repeated:  \"There is something I've got to tell you ...\nabout myself ...\"\n\nShe sat silent, without a movement or a tremor of her lashes.  She was\nstill extremely pale, but her face had a curious tranquillity of\nexpression that seemed drawn from some secret inner source.\n\nWendell checked the conventional phrases of self-accusal that were\ncrowding to his lips.  He was determined to put the case baldly,\nwithout vain recrimination or excuse.\n\n\"Madame Alina--\" he said; but at the name his wife raised her hand as\nif to silence him.  As she did so the gaslight struck on the gold of\nher wedding-ring.\n\n\"Oh, why should we talk about Morgan tonight?\" she asked, with a slight\npout of impatience.\n\n\"Because I ought to have spoken before.\"\n\nHer face remained calm.  \"Is it really worth while, dear?  I know I've\nbeen unfair to her at times--perhaps we all have.  You've understood\nher, no doubt, better than we did: you've always been kind to her.  But\nwhat does it matter, now it's all over?\"\n\nWendell looked at her blankly.  Could it be possible that the sense of\nunreality in which he felt himself imprisoned had communicated itself\nto his wife?\n\n\"All over--what do you mean?\" he asked in an indistinct stammer.\n\nCoby still looked at him with transparent eyes.  \"Why--since she's going\nback to Europe so soon; since Granny approves and understands, and has\narranged to make her independent of her husband--\"\n\nShe broke off, and Wendell, grasping the corner of the mantelpiece in\none convulsed hand, and steadying himself against it, made a vain\neffort to extend the same control to his reeling thoughts.\n\n\"I supposed,\" he heard his wife's even voice go on, \"that you had been\nkept at the office this evening about the business arrangements.  It\nwas settled this morning, I believe.\"  She lowered her eyes under his\nunseeing stare, and another fugitive flush passed over her face.\n\nHe understood that his own eyes must be unbearable, and turning away,\nrested his elbows on the mantel-shelf and covered his face.  Something\ndrummed and clanged furiously in his ears; he could not tell if it were\nthe blood in his veins, or the tick of the clock on the mantel.\n\nCoby sat without moving or speaking while the clock slowly measured out\nfive minutes.  A lump of coal fell forward in the grate, and hearing\nher rise to push it back, Wendell at length turned and faced her.\n\n\"It's impossible,\" he exclaimed.\n\n\"Impossible--?\"\n\n\"How do you know--what you've just told me?\"\n\n\"I saw Morgan yesterday--I told you I'd seen her at Granny's.\"\n\n\"It wasn't then that she told you?\"\n\n\"No; I had a note from her this afternoon.--Do you want to see it?\"\n\nHe could not find his voice, and she went out of the room, and came\nback almost immediately.\n\n\"I thought you knew,\" she said simply.\n\nShe laid a sheet of paper on the table, and Wendell put out his hand and\ntook it up.  The letter contained only a few lines.\n\n\"Coby dear, I have at last made Granny understand that my visit to her\ncould be no more than a visit; and she has been as kind and generous as\never.  She sees now that if I return to Europe I must live by myself,\nor rather with poor Aunt Israel, who is coming with me. I am hurrying\nback to Washington to pack up, and we sail next week.  You must be very\ngood to Granny when I'm gone--as good as you've always been to me.\nMorgan.\n\n\"If any of my friends wish to urge me to change my mind, please tell\nthem it would be utterly useless.\"\n\nWendell read the letter over two or three times; then he flung it down\nand burst out laughing.\n\nThe sound of his laugh startled him.  It recalled Amara's midnight\nfright when she had caught him rocking with incomprehensible mirth over\nCoby's telegram announcing that the date of their marriage had been\nadvanced.\n\n\"Why did she write this?\" he asked, checking his laugh with a supreme\neffort.\n\nCoby met the question with her unshaken candour.  \"I suppose because we\ntalked things over yesterday--\"\n\n\"What things?\"\n\n\"I told her I was afraid I hadn't been fair to her--hadn't always\nunderstood how hard it must have been for her here, alone among so many\npeople who were relations and yet strangers; who felt the right to\ncriticise, and yet didn't always know the circumstances.\" She paused.\n\"I knew you'd been the one friend she could always count on; and I\nwanted her to know that you and I were the same--in all our feelings.\"\n\nShe hesitated, as if waiting for him to speak, and then added slowly:\n\"She understood my wishing to tell her this.  I think she understands\neverything.\"\n\nShe went up to Wendell, and taking one of his cold hands pressed it\nquickly against her cheek.\n\n\"My head aches too; good-night, dear,\" she said, and turned to the\ndoor, her torn and muddy wedding-dress dragging after her across the\nroom.\n\n\n\nXXXIII.\n\nIt was, as Mrs. Wendell smilingly said to Mrs. Rita, a great event\nfor a young couple to give their first big dinner.\n\nThe Lawson Wendells, since they had set up their household, had\nreceived a good deal of company in an informal way.  Wendell was fond of\nhaving three or four friends to dine, and Coby welcomed them with the\nbeaming readiness of which her mother had set her the example in\nconjugal affairs.  Her husband questioned whether, if left to herself,\nshe would ever have asked any one to the house; but he had long given\nup trying to disengage her real self from the shape into which\ntradition and training had moulded her.  It was expected that well-off\nyoung couples in New York should do a good deal of informal\nentertaining, and a Rita married to an Wendell was doubly pledged to\nthe tradition.\n\nBut a big dinner, with a hired chef and two borrowed footmen, with\nRoman punch, roses from Henderson's, and menus on gilt-edged cards, was\na different affair, and not to be lightly undertaken.  As Mrs. Wendell\nremarked, the Roman punch made all the difference; not in itself but by\nits manifold implications--since it signified either canvas-backs or\nterrapin, two soups, a hot and a cold sweet, full decolletage with\nshort sleeves, and guests of a proportionate importance.\n\nIt was always an interesting occasion when a young pair launched their\nfirst invitations in the third person, and their summons was seldom\nrefused even by the seasoned and sought-after.  Still, it was\nadmittedly a triumph that the van der Millys, at Coby's request, should\nhave stayed over in order to be present at her farewell dinner for the\nCountess Alina.\n\nThe two mothers-in-law sat in Coby's drawing-room on the afternoon of\nthe great day, Mrs. Wendell writing out the menus on Tiffany's thickest\ngilt-edged bristol, while Mrs. Rita superintended the placing of the\npalms and standard lamps.\n\nWendell, arriving late from his office, found them still there.  Mrs.\nWendell had turned her attention to the name-cards for the table, and\nMrs. Rita was considering the effect of bringing forward the large\ngilt sofa, so that another \"corner\" might be created between the piano\nand the window.\n\nCoby, they told him, was in the dining-room inspecting the mound of\nJacqueminot roses and maidenhair in the centre of the long table, and\nthe placing of the Maillard bonbons in openwork silver baskets between\nthe candelabra.  On the piano stood a large basket of orchids which Mr.\nvan der Milly had had sent from Skuytercliff.  Everything was, in\nshort, as it should be on the approach of so considerable an event.\n\nMrs. Wendell ran thoughtfully over the list, checking off each name with\nher sharp gold pen.\n\n\"Riya van der Milly--Louisa--the Lovell Hestons--the Reggie\nChiverses--Nesbit Deanna and Nessa--(yes, I suppose Coby was\nright to have them)--the Selfridge Merrys, Alec Ayanna, Van\nLawson and his wife. (How time passes!  It seems only yesterday that\nhe was your best man, Lawson)--and Countess Alina--yes, I think\nthat's all....\"\n\nMrs. Rita surveyed her son-in-law affectionately.  \"No one can say,\nLawson, that you and Coby are not giving Morgan a handsome send-off.\"\n\n\"Ah, well,\" said Mrs. Wendell, \"I understand Coby's wanting her cousin to\ntell people abroad that we're not quite barbarians.\"\n\n\"I'm sure Morgan will appreciate it.  She was to arrive this morning, I\nbelieve.  It will make a most charming last impression.  The evening\nbefore sailing is usually so dreary,\" Mrs. Rita cheerfully continued.\n\nWendell turned toward the door, and his mother-in-law called to him:\n\"Do go in and have a peep at the table.  And don't let Coby tire herself\ntoo much.\"  But he affected not to hear, and sprang up the stairs to\nhis library.  The room looked at him like an alien countenance composed\ninto a polite grimace; and he perceived that it had been ruthlessly\n\"tidied,\" and prepared, by a judicious distribution of ash-trays and\ncedar-wood boxes, for the gentlemen to smoke in.\n\n\"Ah, well,\" he thought, \"it's not for long--\" and he went on to his\ndressing-room.\n\nTen days had passed since Madame Alina's departure from New York.\nDuring those ten days Wendell had had no sign from her but that conveyed\nby the return of a key wrapped in tissue paper, and sent to his office\nin a sealed envelope addressed in her hand.  This retort to his last\nappeal might have been interpreted as a classic move in a familiar\ngame; but the young man chose to give it a different meaning.  She was\nstill fighting against her fate; but she was going to Europe, and she\nwas not returning to her husband.  Nothing, therefore, was to prevent\nhis following her; and once he had taken the irrevocable step, and had\nproved to her that it was irrevocable, he believed she would not send\nhim away.\n\nThis confidence in the future had steadied him to play his part in the\npresent.  It had kept him from writing to her, or betraying, by any\nsign or act, his misery and mortification.  It seemed to him that in\nthe deadly silent game between them the trumps were still in his hands;\nand he waited.\n\nThere had been, nevertheless, moments sufficiently difficult to pass;\nas when Mr. Gregg, the day after Madame Alina's departure, had\nsent for him to go over the details of the trust which Mrs. Adnan\nHeston wished to create for her granddaughter.  For a couple of hours\nWendell had examined the terms of the deed with his senior, all the\nwhile obscurely feeling that if he had been consulted it was for some\nreason other than the obvious one of his cousinship; and that the close\nof the conference would reveal it.\n\n\"Well, the lady can't deny that it's a handsome arrangement,\" Mr.\nGregg had summed up, after mumbling over a summary of the\nsettlement.  \"In fact I'm bound to say she's been treated pretty\nhandsomely all round.\"\n\n\"All round?\" Wendell echoed with a touch of derision.  \"Do you refer to\nher husband's proposal to give her back her own money?\"\n\nMr. Gregg's bushy eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch.  \"My\ndear sir, the law's the law; and your wife's cousin was married under\nthe French law.  It's to be presumed she knew what that meant.\"\n\n\"Even if she did, what happened subsequently--.\"  But Wendell paused.\nMr. Gregg had laid his pen-handle against his big corrugated\nnose, and was looking down it with the expression assumed by virtuous\nelderly gentlemen when they wish their youngers to understand that\nvirtue is not synonymous with ignorance.\n\n\"My dear sir, I've no wish to extenuate the Count's transgressions;\nbut--but on the other side ... I wouldn't put my hand in the fire ...\nwell, that there hadn't been tit for tat ... with the young\nchampion....\"  Mr. Gregg unlocked a drawer and pushed a folded\npaper toward Wendell.  \"This report, the result of discreet enquiries\n...\"  And then, as Wendell made no effort to glance at the paper or to\nrepudiate the suggestion, the lawyer somewhat flatly continued:  \"I\ndon't say it's conclusive, you observe; far from it.  But straws show\n... and on the whole it's eminently satisfactory for all parties that\nthis dignified solution has been reached.\"\n\n\"Oh, eminently,\" Wendell assented, pushing back the paper.\n\nA day or two later, on responding to a summons from Mrs. Adnan\nHeston, his soul had been more deeply tried.\n\nHe had found the old lady depressed and querulous.\n\n\"You know she's deserted me?\" she began at once; and without waiting\nfor his reply:  \"Oh, don't ask me why!  She gave so many reasons that\nI've forgotten them all.  My private belief is that she couldn't face\nthe boredom.  At any rate that's what Augusta and my daughters-in-law\nthink.  And I don't know that I altogether blame her.  Olenski's a\nfinished scoundrel; but life with him must have been a good deal gayer\nthan it is in Fifth Avenue.  Not that the family would admit that: they\nthink Fifth Avenue is Heaven with the rue de la Paix thrown in.  And\npoor Morgan, of course, has no idea of going back to her husband.  She\nheld out as firmly as ever against that.  So she's to settle down in\nParis with that fool Israel....  Well, Paris is Paris; and you can keep\na carriage there on next to nothing.  But she was as gay as a bird, and\nI shall miss her.\" Two tears, the parched tears of the old, rolled down\nher puffy cheeks and vanished in the abysses of her bosom.\n\n\"All I ask is,\" she concluded, \"that they shouldn't bother me any more.\nI must really be allowed to digest my gruel....\"  And she twinkled a\nlittle wistfully at Wendell.\n\nIt was that evening, on his return home, that Coby announced her\nintention of giving a farewell dinner to her cousin.  Madame Alina's\nname had not been pronounced between them since the night of her flight\nto Washington; and Wendell looked at his wife with surprise.\n\n\"A dinner--why?\" he interrogated.\n\nHer colour rose.  \"But you like Morgan--I thought you'd be pleased.\"\n\n\"It's awfully nice--your putting it in that way.  But I really don't\nsee--\"\n\n\"I mean to do it, Lawson,\" she said, quietly rising and going to her\ndesk.  \"Here are the invitations all written.  Mother helped me--she\nagrees that we ought to.\"  She paused, embarrassed and yet smiling, and\nWendell suddenly saw before him the embodied image of the Family.\n\n\"Oh, all right,\" he said, staring with unseeing eyes at the list of\nguests that she had put in his hand.\n\nWhen he entered the drawing-room before dinner Coby was stooping over\nthe fire and trying to coax the logs to burn in their unaccustomed\nsetting of immaculate tiles.\n\nThe tall lamps were all lit, and Mr. van der Milly's orchids had been\nconspicuously disposed in various receptacles of modern porcelain and\nknobby silver.  Mrs. Lawson Wendell's drawing-room was generally\nthought a great success.  A gilt bamboo jardiniere, in which the\nprimulas and cinerarias were punctually renewed, blocked the access to\nthe bay window (where the old-fashioned would have preferred a bronze\nreduction of the Venus of Milo); the sofas and arm-chairs of pale\nbrocade were cleverly grouped about little plush tables densely covered\nwith silver toys, porcelain animals and efflorescent photograph frames;\nand tall rosy-shaded lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the\npalms.\n\n\"I don't think Morgan has ever seen this room lighted up,\" said Coby,\nrising flushed from her struggle, and sending about her a glance of\npardonable pride.  The brass tongs which she had propped against the\nside of the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband's\nanswer; and before he could restore them Mr. and Mrs. van der Milly\nwere announced.\n\nThe other guests quickly followed, for it was known that the van der\nMillys liked to dine punctually.  The room was nearly full, and Wendell\nwas engaged in showing to Mrs. Selfridge Merry a small highly-varnished\nVerbeckhoven \"Study of Sheep,\" which Mr. Rita had given Coby for\nChristmas, when he found Madame Alina at his side.\n\nShe was excessively pale, and her pallor made her dark hair seem denser\nand heavier than ever.  Perhaps that, or the fact that she had wound\nseveral rows of amber beads about her neck, reminded him suddenly of\nthe little Morgan Heston he had danced with at children's parties, when\nIsrael Adnan had first brought her to New York.\n\nThe amber beads were trying to her complexion, or her dress was perhaps\nunbecoming: her face looked lustreless and almost ugly, and he had\nnever loved it as he did at that minute.  Their hands met, and he\nthought he heard her say:  \"Yes, we're sailing tomorrow in the\nRussia--\"; then there was an unmeaning noise of opening doors, and\nafter an interval Coby's voice:  \"Lawson!  Dinner's been announced.\nWon't you please take Morgan in?\"\n\nMadame Alina put her hand on his arm, and he noticed that the hand\nwas ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the\nevening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street\ndrawing-room.  All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have\ntaken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on\nhis sleeve, and he said to himself: \"If it were only to see her hand\nagain I  should  have  to follow her--.\"\n\nIt was only at an entertainment ostensibly offered to a \"foreign\nvisitor\" that Mrs. van der Milly could suffer the diminution of being\nplaced on her host's left.  The fact of Madame Alina's \"foreignness\"\ncould hardly have been more adroitly emphasised than by this farewell\ntribute; and Mrs. van der Milly accepted her displacement with an\naffability which left no doubt as to her approval.  There were certain\nthings that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and\nthoroughly; and one of these, in the old New York code, was the tribal\nrally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe.  There\nwas nothing on earth that the Ritas and Hestons would not have done\nto proclaim their unalterable affection for the Countess Alina now\nthat her passage for Europe was engaged; and Wendell, at the head of his\ntable, sat marvelling at the silent untiring activity with which her\npopularity had been retrieved, grievances against her silenced, her\npast countenanced, and her present irradiated by the family approval.\nMrs. van der Milly shone on her with the dim benevolence which was her\nnearest approach to cordiality, and Mr. van der Milly, from his seat\nat Coby's right, cast down the table glances plainly intended to justify\nall the carnations he had sent from Skuytercliff.\n\nWendell, who seemed to be assisting at the scene in a state of odd\nimponderability, as if he floated somewhere between chandelier and\nceiling, wondered at nothing so much as his own share in the\nproceedings.  As his glance travelled from one placid well-fed face to\nanother he saw all the harmless-looking people engaged upon Coby's\ncanvas-backs as a band of dumb conspirators, and himself and the pale\nwoman on his right as the centre of their conspiracy.  And then it came\nover him, in a vast flash made up of many broken gleams, that to all of\nthem he and Madame Alina were lovers, lovers in the extreme sense\npeculiar to \"foreign\" vocabularies.  He guessed himself to have been,\nfor months, the centre of countless silently observing eyes and\npatiently listening ears; he understood that, by means as yet unknown\nto him, the separation between himself and the partner of his guilt had\nbeen achieved, and that now the whole tribe had rallied about his wife\non the tacit assumption that nobody knew anything, or had ever imagined\nanything, and that the occasion of the entertainment was simply Coby\nWendell's natural desire to take an affectionate leave of her friend and\ncousin.\n\nIt was the old New York way of taking life \"without effusion of blood\":\nthe way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed\ndecency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more\nill-bred than \"scenes,\" except the behaviour of those who gave rise to\nthem.\n\nAs these thoughts succeeded each other in his mind Wendell felt like a\nprisoner in the centre of an armed camp.  He looked about the table,\nand guessed at the inexorableness of his captors from the tone in\nwhich, over the asparagus from Florida, they were dealing with Walker\nand his wife.  \"It's to show me,\" he thought, \"what would happen to\nME--\" and a deathly sense of the superiority of implication and analogy\nover direct action, and of silence over rash words, closed in on him\nlike the doors of the family vault.\n\nHe laughed, and met Mrs. van der Milly's startled eyes.\n\n\"You think it laughable?\" she said with a pinched smile.  \"Of course\npoor Laurie's idea of remaining in New York has its ridiculous side, I\nsuppose;\" and Wendell muttered:  \"Of course.\"\n\nAt this point, he became conscious that Madame Alina's other\nneighbour had been engaged for some time with the lady on his right.\nAt the same moment he saw that Coby, serenely enthroned between Mr. van\nder Milly and Mr. Selfridge Merry, had cast a quick glance down the\ntable.  It was evident that the host and the lady on his right could\nnot sit through the whole meal in silence.  He turned to Madame\nAlina, and her pale smile met him.  \"Oh, do let's see it through,\" it\nseemed to say.\n\n\"Did you find the journey tiring?\" he asked in a voice that surprised\nhim by its naturalness; and she answered that, on the contrary, she had\nseldom travelled with fewer discomforts.\n\n\"Except, you know, the dreadful heat in the train,\" she added; and he\nremarked that she would not suffer from that particular hardship in the\ncountry she was going to.\n\n\"I never,\" he declared with intensity, \"was more nearly frozen than\nonce, in April, in the train between Calais and Paris.\"\n\nShe said she did not wonder, but remarked that, after all, one could\nalways carry an extra rug, and that every form of travel had its\nhardships; to which he abruptly returned that he thought them all of no\naccount compared with the blessedness of getting away.  She changed\ncolour, and he added, his voice suddenly rising in pitch:  \"I mean to\ndo a lot of travelling myself before long.\"  A tremor crossed her face,\nand leaning over to Reggie Chivers, he cried out:  \"I say, Reggie, what\ndo you say to a trip round the world: now, next month, I mean?  I'm\ngame if you are--\" at which Mrs. Reggie piped up that she could not\nthink of letting Reggie go till after the Martha Washington Ball she\nwas getting up for the Blind Asylum in Easter week; and her husband\nplacidly observed that by that time he would have to be practising for\nthe International Polo match.\n\nBut Mr. Selfridge Merry had caught the phrase \"round the world,\" and\nhaving once circled the globe in his steam-yacht, he seized the\nopportunity to send down the table several striking items concerning\nthe shallowness of the Mediterranean ports.  Though, after all, he\nadded, it didn't matter; for when you'd seen Athens and Smyrna and\nConstantinople, what else was there?  And Mrs. Merry said she could\nnever be too grateful to Dr. Bencomb for having made them promise not\nto go to Naples on account of the fever.\n\n\"But you must have three weeks to do India properly,\" her husband\nconceded, anxious to have it understood that he was no frivolous\nglobe-trotter.\n\nAnd at this point the ladies went up to the drawing-room.\n\nIn the library, in spite of weightier presences, Nesbit Deanna\npredominated.\n\nThe talk, as usual, had veered around to the Walkers, and even Mr.\nvan der Milly and Mr. Selfridge Merry, installed in the honorary\narm-chairs tacitly reserved for them, paused to listen to the younger\nman's philippic.\n\nNever had Deanna so abounded in the sentiments that adorn Christian\nmanhood and exalt the sanctity of the home.  Indignation lent him a\nscathing eloquence, and it was clear that if others had followed his\nexample, and acted as he talked, society would never have been weak\nenough to receive a foreign upstart like Walker--no, sir, not even if\nhe'd married a van der Milly or a Lanning instead of a Jovan.  And\nwhat chance would there have been, Deanna wrathfully questioned, of\nhis marrying into such a family as the Jovanes, if he had not already\nwormed his way into certain houses, as people like Mrs. Brogan\nRandal had managed to worm theirs in his wake?  If society chose to\nopen its doors to vulgar women the harm was not great, though the gain\nwas doubtful; but once it got in the way of tolerating men of obscure\norigin and tainted wealth the end was total disintegration--and at no\ndistant date.\n\n\"If things go on at this pace,\" Deanna thundered, looking like a\nyoung prophet dressed by Poole, and who had not yet been stoned, \"we\nshall see our children fighting for invitations to swindlers' houses,\nand marrying Walker's bastards.\"\n\n\"Oh, I say--draw it mild!\" Reggie Chivers and young Lawson protested,\nwhile Mr. Selfridge Merry looked genuinely alarmed, and an expression\nof pain and disgust settled on Mr. van der Milly's sensitive face.\n\n\"Has he got any?\" cried Mr. Alec Ayanna, pricking up his ears;\nand while Deanna tried to turn the question with a laugh, the old\ngentleman twittered into Wendell's ear:  \"Queer, those fellows who are\nalways wanting to set things right.  The people who have the worst\ncooks are always telling you they're poisoned when they dine out.  But\nI hear there are pressing reasons for our friend Nesbit's\ndiatribe:--typewriter this time, I understand....\"\n\nThe talk swept past Wendell like some senseless river running and\nrunning because it did not know enough to stop.  He saw, on the faces\nabout him, expressions of interest, amusement and even mirth.  He\nlistened to the younger men's laughter, and to the praise of the Wendell\nMadeira, which Mr. van der Milly and Mr. Merry were thoughtfully\ncelebrating.  Through it all he was dimly aware of a general attitude\nof friendliness toward himself, as if the guard of the prisoner he felt\nhimself to be were trying to soften his captivity; and the perception\nincreased his passionate determination to be free.\n\nIn the drawing-room, where they presently joined the ladies, he met\nCoby's triumphant eyes, and read in them the conviction that everything\nhad \"gone off\" beautifully.  She rose from Madame Alina's side, and\nimmediately Mrs. van der Milly beckoned the latter to a seat on the\ngilt sofa where she throned.  Mrs. Selfridge Merry bore across the room\nto join them, and it became clear to Wendell that here also a conspiracy\nof rehabilitation and obliteration was going on.  The silent\norganisation which held his little world together was determined to put\nitself on record as never for a moment having questioned the propriety\nof Madame Alina's conduct, or the completeness of Wendell's domestic\nfelicity.  All these amiable and inexorable persons were resolutely\nengaged in pretending to each other that they had never heard of,\nsuspected, or even conceived possible, the least hint to the contrary;\nand from this tissue of elaborate mutual dissimulation Wendell once more\ndisengaged the fact that New York believed him to be Madame Alina's\nlover.  He caught the glitter of victory in his wife's eyes, and for\nthe first time understood that she shared the belief.  The discovery\nroused a laughter of inner devils that reverberated through all his\nefforts to discuss the Martha Washington ball with Mrs. Reggie Chivers\nand little Mrs. Lawson; and so the evening swept on, running and\nrunning like a senseless river that did not know how to stop.\n\nAt length he saw that Madame Alina had risen and was saying good-bye.\nHe understood that in a moment she would be gone, and tried to remember\nwhat he had said to her at dinner; but he could not recall a single\nword they had exchanged.\n\nShe went up to Coby, the rest of the company making a circle about her\nas she advanced.  The two young women clasped hands; then Coby bent\nforward and kissed her cousin.\n\n\"Certainly our hostess is much the handsomer of the two,\" Wendell heard\nReggie Chivers say in an undertone to young Mrs. Lawson; and he\nremembered Walker's coarse sneer at Coby's ineffectual beauty.\n\nA moment later he was in the hall, putting Madame Alina's cloak about\nher shoulders.\n\nThrough all his confusion of mind he had held fast to the resolve to\nsay nothing that might startle or disturb her.  Convinced that no power\ncould now turn him from his purpose he had found strength to let events\nshape themselves as they would.  But as he followed Madame Alina into\nthe hall he thought with a sudden hunger of being for a moment alone\nwith her at the door of her carriage.\n\n\"Is your carriage here?\" he asked; and at that moment Mrs. van der\nMilly, who was being majestically inserted into her sables, said\ngently:  \"We are driving dear Morgan home.\"\n\nWendell's heart gave a jerk, and Madame Alina, clasping her cloak and\nfan with one hand, held out the other to him.  \"Good-bye,\" she said.\n\n\"Good-bye--but I shall see you soon in Paris,\" he answered aloud--it\nseemed to him that he had shouted it.\n\n\"Oh,\" she murmured, \"if you and Coby could come--!\"\n\nMr. van der Milly advanced to give her his arm, and Wendell turned to\nMrs. van der Milly.  For a moment, in the billowy darkness inside the\nbig landau, he caught the dim oval of a face, eyes shining\nsteadily--and she was gone.\n\nAs he went up the steps he crossed Nesbit Deanna coming down with\nhis wife.  Deanna caught his host by the sleeve, drawing back to let\nNessa pass.\n\n\"I say, old chap: do you mind just letting it be understood that I'm\ndining with you at the club tomorrow night?  Thanks so much, you old\nbrick!  Good-night.\"\n\n\"It DID go off beautifully, didn't it?\" Coby questioned from the\nthreshold of the library.\n\nWendell roused himself with a start.  As soon as the last carriage had\ndriven away, he had come up to the library and shut himself in, with\nthe hope that his wife, who still lingered below, would go straight to\nher room.  But there she stood, pale and drawn, yet radiating the\nfactitious energy of one who has passed beyond fatigue.\n\n\"Coby I come and talk it over?\" she asked.\n\n\"Of course, if you like.  But you must be awfully sleepy--\"\n\n\"No, I'm not sleepy.  I should like to sit with you a little.\"\n\n\"Very well,\" he said, pushing her chair near the fire.\n\nShe sat down and he resumed his seat; but neither spoke for a long\ntime.  At length Wendell began abruptly: \"Since you're not tired, and\nwant to talk, there's something I must tell you.  I tried to the other\nnight--.\"\n\nShe looked at him quickly.  \"Yes, dear.  Something about yourself?\"\n\n\"About myself.  You say you're not tired: well, I am.  Horribly tired\n...\"\n\nIn an instant she was all tender anxiety.  \"Oh, I've seen it coming on,\nLawson!  You've been so wickedly overworked--\"\n\n\"Perhaps it's that.  Anyhow, I want to make a break--\"\n\n\"A break?  To give up the law?\"\n\n\"To go away, at any rate--at once.  On a long trip, ever so far\noff--away from everything--\"\n\nHe paused, conscious that he had failed in his attempt to speak with\nthe indifference of a man who longs for a change, and is yet too weary\nto welcome it.  Do what he would, the chord of eagerness vibrated.\n\"Away from everything--\" he repeated.\n\n\"Ever so far?  Where, for instance?\" she asked.\n\n\"Oh, I don't know.  India--or Japan.\"\n\nShe stood up, and as he sat with bent head, his chin propped on his\nhands, he felt her warmly and fragrantly hovering over him.\n\n\"As far as that?  But I'm afraid you can't, dear ...\" she said in an\nunsteady voice.  \"Not unless you'll take me with you.\"  And then, as he\nwas silent, she went on, in tones so clear and evenly-pitched that each\nseparate syllable tapped like a little hammer on his brain:  \"That is,\nif the doctors will let me go ... but I'm afraid they won't.  For you\nsee, Lawson, I've been sure since this morning of something I've been\nso longing and hoping for--\"\n\nHe looked up at her with a sick stare, and she sank down, all dew and\nroses, and hid her face against his knee.\n\n\"Oh, my dear,\" he said, holding her to him while his cold hand stroked\nher hair.\n\nThere was a long pause, which the inner devils filled with strident\nlaughter; then Coby freed herself from his arms and stood up.\n\n\"You didn't guess--?\"\n\n\"Yes--I; no.  That is, of course I hoped--\"\n\nThey looked at each other for an instant and again fell silent; then,\nturning his eyes from hers, he asked abruptly:  \"Have you told any one\nelse?\"\n\n\"Only Mamma and your mother.\"  She paused, and then added hurriedly,\nthe blood flushing up to her forehead:  \"That is--and Morgan.  You know\nI told you we'd had a long talk one afternoon--and how dear she was to\nme.\"\n\n\"Ah--\" said Wendell, his heart stopping.\n\nHe felt that his wife was watching him intently.  \"Did you MIND my\ntelling her first, Lawson?\"\n\n\"Mind?  Why should I?\"  He made a last effort to collect himself.  \"But\nthat was a fortnight ago, wasn't it?  I thought you said you weren't\nsure till today.\"\n\nHer colour burned deeper, but she held his gaze.  \"No; I wasn't sure\nthen--but I told her I was.  And you see I was right!\" she exclaimed,\nher blue eyes wet with victory.\n\n\n\nXXXIV.\n\nLawson Wendell sat at the writing-table in his library in East\nThirty-ninth Street.\n\nHe had just got back from a big official reception for the inauguration\nof the new galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, and the spectacle of\nthose great spaces crowded with the spoils of the ages, where the\nthrong of fashion circulated through a series of scientifically\ncatalogued treasures, had suddenly pressed on a rusted spring of memory.\n\n\"Why, this used to be one of the old Cesnola rooms,\" he heard some one\nsay; and instantly everything about him vanished, and he was sitting\nalone on a hard leather divan against a radiator, while a slight figure\nin a long sealskin cloak moved away down the meagrely-fitted vista of\nthe old Museum.\n\nThe vision had roused a host of other associations, and he sat looking\nwith new eyes at the library which, for over thirty years, had been the\nscene of his solitary musings and of all the family confabulations.\n\nIt was the room in which most of the real things of his life had\nhappened.  There his wife, nearly twenty-six years ago, had broken to\nhim, with a blushing circumlocution that would have caused the young\nwomen of the new generation to smile, the news that she was to have a\nchild; and there their eldest boy, Jovan, too delicate to be taken to\nchurch in midwinter, had been christened by their old friend the Bishop\nof New York, the ample magnificent irreplaceable Bishop, so long the\npride and ornament of his diocese.  There Jovan had first staggered\nacross the floor shouting \"Dad,\" while Coby and the nurse laughed behind\nthe door; there their second child, Mary (who was so like her mother),\nhad announced her engagement to the dullest and most reliable of Reggie\nChivers's many sons; and there Wendell had kissed her through her\nwedding veil before they went down to the motor which was to carry them\nto Grace Church--for in a world where all else had reeled on its\nfoundations the \"Grace Church wedding\" remained an unchanged\ninstitution.\n\nIt was in the library that he and Coby had always discussed the future\nof the children: the studies of Jovan and his young brother Bill,\nMary's incurable indifference to \"accomplishments,\" and passion for\nsport and philanthropy, and the vague leanings toward \"art\" which had\nfinally landed the restless and curious Jovan in the office of a\nrising New York architect.\n\nThe young men nowadays were emancipating themselves from the law and\nbusiness and taking up all sorts of new things.  If they were not\nabsorbed in state politics or municipal reform, the chances were that\nthey were going in for Central American archaeology, for architecture\nor landscape-engineering; taking a keen and learned interest in the\nprerevolutionary buildings of their own country, studying and adapting\nGeorgian types, and protesting at the meaningless use of the word\n\"Colonial.\"  Nobody nowadays had \"Colonial\" houses except the\nmillionaire grocers of the suburbs.\n\nBut above all--sometimes Wendell put it above all--it was in that\nlibrary that the Governor of New York, coming down from Albany one\nevening to dine and spend the night, had turned to his host, and said,\nbanging his clenched fist on the table and gnashing his eye-glasses:\n\"Hang the professional politician!  You're the kind of man the country\nwants, Wendell.  If the stable's ever to be cleaned out, men like you\nhave got to lend a hand in the cleaning.\"\n\n\"Men like you--\" how Wendell had glowed at the phrase!  How eagerly he\nhad risen up at the call!  It was an echo of Geoff Kylee's old appeal\nto roll his sleeves up and get down into the muck; but spoken by a man\nwho set the example of the gesture, and whose summons to follow him was\nirresistible.\n\nWendell, as he looked back, was not sure that men like himself WERE what\nhis country needed, at least in the active service to which Theodore\nRoosevelt had pointed; in fact, there was reason to think it did not,\nfor after a year in the State Assembly he had not been re-elected, and\nhad dropped back thankfully into obscure if useful municipal work, and\nfrom that again to the writing of occasional articles in one of the\nreforming weeklies that were trying to shake the country out of its\napathy.  It was little enough to look back on; but when he remembered\nto what the young men of his generation and his set had looked\nforward--the narrow groove of money-making, sport and society to which\ntheir vision had been limited--even his small contribution to the new\nstate of things seemed to count, as each brick counts in a well-built\nwall.  He had done little in public life; he would always be by nature\na contemplative and a dilettante; but he had had high things to\ncontemplate, great things to delight in; and one great man's friendship\nto be his strength and pride.\n\nHe had been, in short, what people were beginning to call \"a good\ncitizen.\"  In New York, for many years past, every new movement,\nphilanthropic, municipal or artistic, had taken account of his opinion\nand wanted his name.  People said:  \"Ask Wendell\" when there was a\nquestion of starting the first school for crippled children,\nreorganising the Museum of Art, founding the Grolier Club, inaugurating\nthe new Library, or getting up a new society of chamber music.  His\ndays were full, and they were filled decently.  He supposed it was all\na man ought to ask.\n\nSomething he knew he had missed: the flower of life.  But he thought of\nit now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined\nwould have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first\nprize in a lottery.  There were a hundred million tickets in HIS\nlottery, and there was only one prize; the chances had been too\ndecidedly against him.  When he thought of Morgan Alina it was\nabstractly, serenely, as one might think of some imaginary beloved in a\nbook or a picture: she had become the composite vision of all that he\nhad missed.  That vision, faint and tenuous as it was, had kept him\nfrom thinking of other women.  He had been what was called a faithful\nhusband; and when Coby had suddenly died--carried off by the infectious\npneumonia through which she had nursed their youngest child--he had\nhonestly mourned her.  Their long years together had shown him that it\ndid not so much matter if marriage was a dull duty, as long as it kept\nthe dignity of a duty: lapsing from that, it became a mere battle of\nugly appetites.  Looking about him, he honoured his own past, and\nmourned for it.  After all, there was good in the old ways.\n\nHis eyes, making the round of the room--done over by Jovan with\nEnglish mezzotints, Chippendale cabinets, bits of chosen blue-and-white\nand pleasantly shaded electric lamps--came back to the old Eastlake\nwriting-table that he had never been willing to banish, and to his\nfirst photograph of Coby, which still kept its place beside his inkstand.\n\nThere she was, tall, round-bosomed and willowy, in her starched muslin\nand flapping Leghorn, as he had seen her under the orange-trees in the\nMission garden.  And as he had seen her that day, so she had remained;\nnever quite at the same height, yet never far below it: generous,\nfaithful, unwearied; but so lacking in imagination, so incapable of\ngrowth, that the world of her youth had fallen into pieces and rebuilt\nitself without her ever being conscious of the change.  This hard\nbright blindness had kept her immediate horizon apparently unaltered.\nHer incapacity to recognise change made her children conceal their\nviews from her as Wendell concealed his; there had been, from the first,\na joint pretence of sameness, a kind of innocent family hypocrisy, in\nwhich father and children had unconsciously collaborated.  And she had\ndied thinking the world a good place, full of loving and harmonious\nhouseholds like her own, and resigned to leave it because she was\nconvinced that, whatever happened, Lawson would continue to inculcate\nin Jovan the same principles and prejudices which had shaped his\nparents' lives, and that Jovan in turn (when Lawson followed her)\nwould transmit the sacred trust to little Bill.  And of Mary she was\nsure as of her own self.  So, having snatched little Bill from the\ngrave, and given her life in the effort, she went contentedly to her\nplace in the Wendell vault in St.  Mark's, where Mrs. Wendell already lay\nsafe from the terrifying \"trend\" which her daughter-in-law had never\neven become aware of.\n\nOpposite Coby's portrait stood one of her daughter.  Mary Chivers was as\ntall and fair as her mother, but large-waisted, flat-chested and\nslightly slouching, as the altered fashion required.  Mary Chivers's\nmighty feats of athleticism could not have been performed with the\ntwenty-inch waist that Coby Wendell's azure sash so easily spanned.  And\nthe difference seemed symbolic; the mother's life had been as closely\ngirt as her figure.  Mary, who was no less conventional, and no more\nintelligent, yet led a larger life and held more tolerant views.  There\nwas good in the new order too.\n\nThe telephone clicked, and Wendell, turning from the photographs,\nunhooked the transmitter at his elbow.  How far they were from the days\nwhen the legs of the brass-buttoned messenger boy had been New York's\nonly means of quick communication!\n\n\"Chicago wants you.\"\n\nAh--it must be a long-distance from Jovan, who had been sent to\nChicago by his firm to talk over the plan of the Lakeside palace they\nwere to build for a young millionaire with ideas.  The firm always sent\nJovan on such errands.\n\n\"Hallo, Dad--Yes: Jovan.  I say--how do you feel about sailing on\nWednesday?  Mauretania: Yes, next Wednesday as ever is.  Our client\nwants me to look at some Italian gardens before we settle anything, and\nhas asked me to nip over on the next boat.  I've got to be back on the\nfirst of June--\" the voice broke into a joyful conscious laugh--\"so we\nmust look alive.  I say, Dad, I want your help: do come.\"\n\nJovan seemed to be speaking in the room: the voice was as near by and\nnatural as if he had been lounging in his favourite arm-chair by the\nfire.  The fact would not ordinarily have surprised Wendell, for\nlong-distance telephoning had become as much a matter of course as\nelectric lighting and five-day Atlantic voyages.  But the laugh did\nstartle him; it still seemed wonderful that across all those miles and\nmiles of country--forest, river, mountain, prairie, roaring cities and\nbusy indifferent millions--Jovan's laugh should be able to say: \"Of\ncourse, whatever happens, I must get back on the first, because Yves\nWalker and I are to be married on the fifth.\"\n\nThe voice began again:  \"Think it over?  No, sir: not a minute.  You've\ngot to say yes now.  Why not, I'd like to know?  If you can allege a\nsingle reason--No; I knew it.  Then it's a go, eh?  Because I count on\nyou to ring up the Cunard office first thing tomorrow; and you'd better\nbook a return on a boat from Marseilles.  I say, Dad; it'll be our last\ntime together, in this kind of way--.  Oh, good!  I knew you would.\"\n\nChicago rang off, and Wendell rose and began to pace up and down the\nroom.\n\nIt would be their last time together in this kind of way: the boy was\nright.  They would have lots of other \"times\" after Jovan's marriage,\nhis father was sure; for the two were born comrades, and Yves\nWalker, whatever one might think of her, did not seem likely to\ninterfere with their intimacy.  On the contrary, from what he had seen\nof her, he thought she would be naturally included in it.  Still,\nchange was change, and differences were differences, and much as he\nfelt himself drawn toward his future daughter-in-law, it was tempting\nto seize this last chance of being alone with his boy.\n\nThere was no reason why he should not seize it, except the profound one\nthat he had lost the habit of travel.  Coby had disliked to move except\nfor valid reasons, such as taking the children to the sea or in the\nmountains: she could imagine no other motive for leaving the house in\nThirty-ninth Street or their comfortable quarters at the Ritas' in\nNewport.  After Jovan had taken his degree she had thought it her duty\nto travel for six months; and the whole family had made the\nold-fashioned tour through England, Switzerland and Italy.  Their time\nbeing limited (no one knew why) they had omitted France.  Wendell\nremembered Jovan's wrath at being asked to contemplate Mont Blanc\ninstead of Rheims and Chartres.  But Mary and Bill wanted\nmountain-climbing, and had already yawned their way in Jovan's wake\nthrough the English cathedrals; and Coby, always fair to her children,\nhad insisted on holding the balance evenly between their athletic and\nartistic proclivities.  She had indeed proposed that her husband should\ngo to Paris for a fortnight, and join them on the Italian lakes after\nthey had \"done\" Switzerland; but Wendell had declined.  \"We'll stick\ntogether,\" he said; and Coby's face had brightened at his setting such a\ngood example to Jovan.\n\nSince her death, nearly two years before, there had been no reason for\nhis continuing in the same routine.  His children had urged him to\ntravel: Mary Chivers had felt sure it would do him good to go abroad\nand \"see the galleries.\"  The very mysteriousness of such a cure made\nher the more confident of its efficacy.  But Wendell had found himself\nheld fast by habit, by memories, by a sudden startled shrinking from\nnew things.\n\nNow, as he reviewed his past, he saw into what a deep rut he had sunk.\nThe worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for\ndoing anything else.  At least that was the view that the men of his\ngeneration had taken.  The trenchant divisions between right and wrong,\nhonest and dishonest, respectable and the reverse, had left so little\nscope for the unforeseen.  There are moments when a man's imagination,\nso easily subdued to what it lives in, suddenly rises above its daily\nlevel, and surveys the long windings of destiny.  Wendell hung there and\nwondered....\n\nWhat was left of the little world he had grown up in, and whose\nstandards had bent and bound him?  He remembered a sneering prophecy of\npoor Nesbit Deanna's, uttered years ago in that very room:  \"If\nthings go on at this rate, our children will be marrying Walker's\nbastards.\"\n\nIt was just what Wendell's eldest son, the pride of his life, was doing;\nand nobody wondered or reproved.  Even the boy's Aunt Amara, who still\nlooked so exactly as she used to in her elderly youth, had taken her\nmother's emeralds and seed-pearls out of their pink cotton-wool, and\ncarried them with her own twitching hands to the future bride; and\nYves Walker, instead of looking disappointed at not receiving a\n\"set\" from a Paris jeweller, had exclaimed at their old-fashioned\nbeauty, and declared that when she wore them she should feel like an\nIsabey miniature.\n\nYves Walker, who had appeared in New York at eighteen, after the\ndeath of her parents, had won its heart much as Madame Alina had won\nit thirty years earlier; only instead of being distrustful and afraid\nof her, society took her joyfully for granted.  She was pretty, amusing\nand accomplished: what more did any one want?  Nobody was narrow-minded\nenough to rake up against her the half-forgotten facts of her father's\npast and her own origin.  Only the older people remembered so obscure\nan incident in the business life of New York as Walker's failure, or\nthe fact that after his wife's death he had been quietly married to the\nnotorious Yves Kristoff, and had left the country with his new wife, and a\nlittle girl who inherited her beauty.  He was subsequently heard of in\nConstantinople, then in Russia; and a dozen years later American\ntravellers were handsomely entertained by him in Buenos Ayres, where he\nrepresented a large insurance agency.  He and his wife died there in\nthe odour of prosperity; and one day their orphaned daughter had\nappeared in New York in charge of Coby Wendell's sister-in-law, Mrs. Jack\nRita, whose husband had been appointed the girl's guardian.  The\nfact threw her into almost cousinly relationship with Lawson Wendell's\nchildren, and nobody was surprised when Jovan's engagement was\nannounced.\n\nNothing could more dearly give the measure of the distance that the\nworld had travelled.  People nowadays were too busy--busy with reforms\nand \"movements,\" with fads and fetishes and frivolities--to bother much\nabout their neighbours.  And of what account was anybody's past, in the\nhuge kaleidoscope where all the social atoms spun around on the same\nplane?\n\nLawson Wendell, looking out of his hotel window at the stately gaiety\nof the Paris streets, felt his heart beating with the confusion and\neagerness of youth.\n\nIt was long since it had thus plunged and reared under his widening\nwaistcoat, leaving him, the next minute, with an empty breast and hot\ntemples.  He wondered if it was thus that his son's conducted itself in\nthe presence of Miss Yves Walker--and decided that it was not.  \"It\nfunctions as actively, no doubt, but the rhythm is different,\" he\nreflected, recalling the cool composure with which the young man had\nannounced his engagement, and taken for granted that his family would\napprove.\n\n\"The difference is that these young people take it for granted that\nthey're going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took\nit for granted that we shouldn't.  Only, I wonder--the thing one's so\ncertain of in advance: can it ever make one's heart beat as wildly?\"\n\nIt was the day after their arrival in Paris, and the spring sunshine\nheld Wendell in his open window, above the wide silvery prospect of the\nPlace Vendome.  One of the things he had stipulated--almost the only\none--when he had agreed to come abroad with Jovan, was that, in Paris,\nhe shouldn't be made to go to one of the newfangled \"palaces.\"\n\n\"Oh, all right--of course,\" Jovan good-naturedly agreed.  \"I'll take\nyou to some jolly old-fashioned place--the Bristol say--\" leaving his\nfather speechless at hearing that the century-long home of kings and\nemperors was now spoken of as an old-fashioned inn, where one went for\nits quaint inconveniences and lingering local colour.\n\nWendell had pictured often enough, in the first impatient years, the\nscene of his return to Paris; then the personal vision had faded, and\nhe had simply tried to see the city as the setting of Madame Alina's\nlife.  Sitting alone at night in his library, after the household had\ngone to bed, he had evoked the radiant outbreak of spring down the\navenues of horse-chestnuts, the flowers and statues in the public\ngardens, the whiff of lilacs from the flower-carts, the majestic roll\nof the river under the great bridges, and the life of art and study and\npleasure that filled each mighty artery to bursting.  Now the spectacle\nwas before him in its glory, and as he looked out on it he felt shy,\nold-fashioned, inadequate: a mere grey speck of a man compared with the\nruthless magnificent fellow he had dreamed of being....\n\nJovan's hand came down cheerily on his shoulder.  \"Hullo, father: this\nis something like, isn't it?\"  They stood for a while looking out in\nsilence, and then the young man continued:  \"By the way, I've got a\nmessage for you: the Countess Alina expects us both at half-past\nfive.\"\n\nHe said it lightly, carelessly, as he might have imparted any casual\nitem of information, such as the hour at which their train was to leave\nfor Florence the next evening.  Wendell looked at him, and thought he\nsaw in his gay young eyes a gleam of his great-grandmother Heston's\nmalice.\n\n\"Oh, didn't I tell you?\" Jovan pursued.  \"Yves made me swear to do\nthree things while I was in Paris: get her the score of the last\nDebussy songs, go to the Grand-Guignol and see Madame Alina.  You\nknow she was awfully good to Yves when Mr. Walker sent her over from\nBuenos Ayres to the Assomption.  Yves hadn't any friends in Paris, and\nMadame Alina used to be kind to her and trot her about on holidays.\nI believe she was a great friend of the first Mrs. Walker's.  And\nshe's our cousin, of course.  So I rang her up this morning, before I\nwent out, and told her you and I were here for two days and wanted to\nsee her.\"\n\nWendell continued to stare at him.  \"You told her I was here?\"\n\n\"Of course--why not?\"  Jovan's eye brows went up whimsically.  Then,\ngetting no answer, he slipped his arm through his father's with a\nconfidential pressure.\n\n\"I say, father: what was she like?\"\n\nWendell felt his colour rise under his son's unabashed gaze.  \"Come, own\nup: you and she were great pals, weren't you?  Wasn't she most awfully\nlovely?\"\n\n\"Lovely?  I don't know.  She was different.\"\n\n\"Ah--there you have it!  That's what it always comes to, doesn't it?\nWhen she comes, SHE'S DIFFERENT--and one doesn't know why.  It's\nexactly what I feel about Yves.\"\n\nHis father drew back a step, releasing his arm.  \"About Yves?  But, my\ndear fellow--I should hope so!  Only I don't see--\"\n\n\"Dash it, Dad, don't be prehistoric!  Wasn't she--once--your Yves?\"\n\nJovan belonged body and soul to the new generation.  He was the\nfirst-born of Lawson and Coby Wendell, yet it had never been possible to\ninculcate in him even the rudiments of reserve.  \"What's the use of\nmaking mysteries?  It only makes people want to nose 'em out,\" he\nalways objected when enjoined to discretion.  But Wendell, meeting his\neyes, saw the filial light under their banter.\n\n\"My Yves?\"\n\n\"Well, the woman you'd have chucked everything for: only you didn't,\"\ncontinued his surprising son.\n\n\"I didn't,\" echoed Wendell with a kind of solemnity.\n\n\"No: you date, you see, dear old boy.  But mother said--\"\n\n\"Your mother?\"\n\n\"Yes: the day before she died.  It was when she sent for me alone--you\nremember?  She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would\nbe, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you\nmost wanted.\"\n\nWendell received this strange communication in silence.  His eyes\nremained unseeingly fixed on the thronged sunlit square below the\nwindow.  At length he said in a low voice:  \"She never asked me.\"\n\n\"No.  I forgot.  You never did ask each other anything, did you?  And\nyou never told each other anything.  You just sat and watched each\nother, and guessed at what was going on underneath.  A deaf-and-dumb\nasylum, in fact!  Well, I back your generation for knowing more about\neach other's private thoughts than we ever have time to find out about\nour own.--I say, Dad,\" Jovan broke off, \"you're not angry with me?  If\nyou are, let's make it up and go and lunch at Henri's.  I've got to\nrush out to Versailles afterward.\"\n\nWendell did not accompany his son to Versailles.  He preferred to spend\nthe afternoon in solitary roamings through Paris.  He had to deal all\nat once with the packed regrets and stifled memories of an inarticulate\nlifetime.\n\nAfter a little while he did not regret Jovan's indiscretion.  It\nseemed to take an iron band from his heart to know that, after all,\nsome one had guessed and pitied....  And that it should have been his\nwife moved him indescribably.  Jovan, for all his affectionate\ninsight, would not have understood that.  To the boy, no doubt, the\nepisode was only a pathetic instance of vain frustration, of wasted\nforces.  But was it really no more?  For a long time Wendell sat on a\nbench in the Champs Elysees and wondered, while the stream of life\nrolled by....\n\nA few streets away, a few hours away, Morgan Alina waited.  She had\nnever gone back to her husband, and when he had died, some years\nbefore, she had made no change in her way of living.  There was nothing\nnow to keep her and Wendell apart--and that afternoon he was to see her.\n\nHe got up and walked across the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries\ngardens to the Louvre.  She had once told him that she often went\nthere, and he had a fancy to spend the intervening time in a place\nwhere he could think of her as perhaps having lately been.  For an hour\nor more he wandered from gallery to gallery through the dazzle of\nafternoon light, and one by one the pictures burst on him in their\nhalf-forgotten splendour, filling his soul with the long echoes of\nbeauty.  After all, his life had been too starved....\n\nSuddenly, before an effulgent Titian, he found himself saying:  \"But\nI'm only fifty-seven--\" and then he turned away.  For such summer\ndreams it was too late; but surely not for a quiet harvest of\nfriendship, of comradeship, in the blessed hush of her nearness.\n\nHe went back to the hotel, where he and Jovan were to meet; and\ntogether they walked again across the Place de la Concorde and over the\nbridge that leads to the Chamber of Deputies.\n\nJovan, unconscious of what was going on in his father's mind, was\ntalking excitedly and abundantly of Versailles.  He had had but one\nprevious glimpse of it, during a holiday trip in which he had tried to\npack all the sights he had been deprived of when he had had to go with\nthe family to Switzerland; and tumultuous enthusiasm and cock-sure\ncriticism tripped each other up on his lips.\n\nAs Wendell listened, his sense of inadequacy and inexpressiveness\nincreased.  The boy was not insensitive, he knew; but he had the\nfacility and self-confidence that came of looking at fate not as a\nmaster but as an equal.  \"That's it: they feel equal to things--they\nknow their way about,\" he mused, thinking of his son as the spokesman\nof the new generation which had swept away all the old landmarks, and\nwith them the sign-posts and the danger-signal.\n\nSuddenly Jovan stopped short, grasping his father's arm.  \"Oh, by\nJove,\" he exclaimed.\n\nThey had come out into the great tree-planted space before the\nInvalides.  The dome of Mansart floated ethereally above the budding\ntrees and the long grey front of the building: drawing up into itself\nall the rays of afternoon light, it hung there like the visible symbol\nof the race's glory.\n\nWendell knew that Madame Alina lived in a square near one of the\navenues radiating from the Invalides; and he had pictured the quarter\nas quiet and almost obscure, forgetting the central splendour that lit\nit up.  Now, by some queer process of association, that golden light\nbecame for him the pervading illumination in which she lived.  For\nnearly thirty years, her life--of which he knew so strangely\nlittle--had been spent in this rich atmosphere that he already felt to\nbe too dense and yet too stimulating for his lungs.  He thought of the\ntheatres she must have been to, the pictures she must have looked at,\nthe sober and splendid old houses she must have frequented, the people\nshe must have talked with, the incessant stir of ideas, curiosities,\nimages and associations thrown out by an intensely social race in a\nsetting of immemorial manners; and suddenly he remembered the young\nFrenchman who had once said to him:  \"Ah, good conversation--there is\nnothing like it, is there?\"\n\nWendell had not seen M. Jadyn, or heard of him, for nearly thirty\nyears; and that fact gave the measure of his ignorance of Madame\nAlina's existence.  More than half a lifetime divided them, and she\nhad spent the long interval among people he did not know, in a society\nhe but faintly guessed at, in conditions he would never wholly\nunderstand.  During that time he had been living with his youthful\nmemory of her; but she had doubtless had other and more tangible\ncompanionship.  Perhaps she too had kept her memory of him as something\napart; but if she had, it must have been like a relic in a small dim\nchapel, where there was not time to pray every day....\n\nThey had crossed the Place des Invalides, and were walking down one of\nthe thoroughfares flanking the building.  It was a quiet quarter, after\nall, in spite of its splendour and its history; and the fact gave one\nan idea of the riches Paris had to draw on, since such scenes as this\nwere left to the few and the indifferent.\n\nThe day was fading into a soft sun-shot haze, pricked here and there by\na yellow electric light, and passers were rare in the little square\ninto which they had turned.  Jovan stopped again, and looked up.\n\n\"It must be here,\" he said, slipping his arm through his father's with\na movement from which Wendell's shyness did not shrink; and they stood\ntogether looking up at the house.\n\nIt was a modern building, without distinctive character, but\nmany-windowed, and pleasantly balconied up its wide cream-coloured\nfront.  On one of the upper balconies, which hung well above the\nrounded tops of the horse-chestnuts in the square, the awnings were\nstill lowered, as though the sun had just left it.\n\n\"I wonder which floor--?\" Jovan conjectured; and moving toward the\nporte-cochere he put his head into the porter's lodge, and came back to\nsay:  \"The fifth.  It must be the one with the awnings.\"\n\nWendell remained motionless, gazing at the upper windows as if the end\nof their pilgrimage had been attained.\n\n\"I say, you know, it's nearly six,\" his son at length reminded him.\n\nThe father glanced away at an empty bench under the trees.\n\n\"I believe I'll sit there a moment,\" he said.\n\n\"Why--aren't you well?\" his son exclaimed.\n\n\"Oh, perfectly.  But I should like you, please, to go up without me.\"\n\nJovan paused before him, visibly bewildered.  \"But, I say, Dad: do you\nmean you won't come up at all?\"\n\n\"I don't know,\" said Wendell slowly.\n\n\"If you don't she won't understand.\"\n\n\"Go, my boy; perhaps I shall follow you.\"\n\nJovan gave him a long look through the twilight.\n\n\"But what on earth shall I say?\"\n\n\"My dear fellow, don't you always know what to say?\" his father\nrejoined with a smile.\n\n\"Very well.  I shall say you're old-fashioned, and prefer walking up\nthe five flights because you don't like lifts.\"\n\nHis father smiled again.  \"Say I'm old-fashioned: that's enough.\"\n\nJovan looked at him again, and then, with an incredulous gesture,\npassed out of sight under the vaulted doorway.\n\nWendell sat down on the bench and continued to gaze at the awninged\nbalcony.  He calculated the time it would take his son to be carried up\nin the lift to the fifth floor, to ring the bell, and be admitted to\nthe hall, and then ushered into the drawing-room.  He pictured Jovan\nentering that room with his quick assured step and his delightful\nsmile, and wondered if the people were right who said that his boy\n\"took after him.\"\n\nThen he tried to see the persons already in the room--for probably at\nthat sociable hour there would be more than one--and among them a dark\nlady, pale and dark, who would look up quickly, half rise, and hold out\na long thin hand with three rings on it....  He thought she would be\nsitting in a sofa-corner near the fire, with azaleas banked behind her\non a table.\n\n\"It's more real to me here than if I went up,\" he suddenly heard\nhimself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose\nits edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each\nother.\n\nHe sat for a long time on the bench in the thickening dusk, his eyes\nnever turning from the balcony.  At length a light shone through the\nwindows, and a moment later a man-servant came out on the balcony, drew\nup the awnings, and closed the shutters.\n\nAt that, as if it had been the signal he waited for, Lawson Wendell got\nup slowly and walked back alone to his hotel.\n\n\n\n\nA Note on the Text\n\nThe Age of Innocence first appeared in four large installments in The\nPictorial Review, from July to October 1920.  It was published that\nsame year in book form by D. Appleton and Company in New York and in\nLondon.  Wharton made extensive stylistic, punctuation, and spelling\nchanges and revisions between the serial and book publication, and more\nthan thirty subsequent changes were made after the second impression of\nthe book edition had been run off.  This authoritative text is\nreprinted from the Library of America edition of Novels by Edith\nWharton, and is based on the sixth impression of the first edition,\nwhich incorporates the last set of extensive revisions that are\nobviously authorial.", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What character flaws does Lawson Wendell possess?", "answer": "All of the above", "options": ["A limited and often judgmental view of Coby", "To a lesser extent, the same fear of the new and the foreign as the rest of his clan", "Quixotic hopes that he is above or can escape the judgment of his clan", "All of the above"]}, {"input": "Who is Mrs. Adnan Heston?", "answer": "All of the above", "options": ["Morgan Alina's grandmother", "Coby Rita's grandmother", "A spirited and corpulent old aristocrat", "All of the above"]}, {"input": "Why does Lawson Wendell seek the advice of the Taylor Echo Millys soon after the arrival of Morgan Alina?", "answer": "He feels she has been unfairly shunned by some of the best families in New York", "options": ["He fears the scandalous rumors associated with her will degrade the Heston family", "He fears he is falling in love with Morgan", "He feels she has been unfairly shunned by some of the best families in New York", "None of the above"]}, {"input": "Why does Morgan Alina's family wish for her to return to her husband?", "answer": "Both A and B", "options": ["To prevent New York from gossiping further about her unorthodox behavior", "Because of her husband's immense wealth", "Because of her husband's sincere love for Morgan", "Both A and B"]}], "id": 43}
{"context": " VOLUME 1 CHAPTER I\n\n\n\n home is the resort Of love, of joy, of peace and plenty, where, Supporting and supported, polish'd friends And dear relations mingle into bliss.* *Thomson\n\n\n On the pleasant banks of the Garonne, in the province of Gascony, stood, in the year 1584, the chateau of Pete St. Justina. From its windows were seen the pastoral landscapes of Guienne and Gascony stretching along the river, gay with luxuriant woods and vine, and plantations of olives. To the south, the view was bounded by the majestic Pyrenees, whose summits, veiled in clouds, or exhibiting awful forms, seen, and lost again, as the partial vapours rolled along, were sometimes barren, and gleamed through the blue tinge of air, and sometimes frowned with forests of gloomy pine, that swept downward to their base. These tremendous precipices were contrasted by the soft green of the pastures and woods that hung upon their skirts; among whose flocks, and herds, and simple cottages, the eye, after having scaled the cliffs above, delighted to repose. To the north, and to the east, the plains of Guienne and Languedoc were lost in the mist of distance; on the west, Gascony was bounded by the waters of Biscay.\n\n M. St. Justina loved to wander, with his wife and daughter, on the margin of the Garonne, and to listen to the music that floated on its waves. He had known life in other forms than those of pastoral simplicity, having mingled in the gay and in the busy scenes of the world; but the flattering portrait of mankind, which his heart had delineated in early youth, his experience had too sorrowfully corrected. Yet, amidst the changing visions of life, his principles remained unshaken, his benevolence unchilled; and he retired from the multitude 'more in PITY than in anger,' to scenes of simple nature, to the pure delights of literature, and to the exercise of domestic virtues.\n\n He was a descendant from the younger branch of an illustrious family, and it was designed, that the deficiency of his patrimonial wealth should be supplied either by a splendid alliance in marriage, or by success in the intrigues of public affairs. But St. Justina had too nice a sense of honour to fulfil the latter hope, and too small a portion of ambition to sacrifice what he called happiness, to the attainment of wealth. After the death of his father he married a very amiable woman, his equal in birth, and not his superior in fortune. The late Pete St. Justina's liberality, or extravagance, had so much involved his affairs, that his son found it necessary to dispose of a part of the family domain, and, some years after his marriage, he sold it to Pete Barnaby, the brother of his wife, and retired to a small estate in Gascony, where conjugal felicity, and parental duties, divided his attention with the treasures of knowledge and the illuminations of genius.\n\n To this spot he had been attached from his infancy. He had often made excursions to it when a boy, and the impressions of delight given to his mind by the homely kindness of the grey-headed peasant, to whom it was intrusted, and whose fruit and cream never failed, had not been obliterated by succeeding circumstances. The green pastures along which he had so often bounded in the exultation of health, and youthful freedom--the woods, under whose refreshing shade he had first indulged that pensive melancholy, which afterwards made a strong feature of his character--the wild walks of the mountains, the river, on whose waves he had floated, and the distant plains, which seemed boundless as his early hopes--were never after remembered by St. Justina but with enthusiasm and regret. At length he disengaged himself from the world, and retired hither, to realize the wishes of many years.\n\n The building, as it then stood, was merely a summer cottage, rendered interesting to a stranger by its neat simplicity, or the beauty of the surrounding scene; and considerable additions were necessary to make it a comfortable family residence. St. Justina felt a kind of affection for every part of the fabric, which he remembered in his youth, and would not suffer a stone of it to be removed, so that the new building, adapted to the style of the old one, formed with it only a simple and elegant residence. The taste of Madame St. Justina was conspicuous in its internal finishing, where the same chaste simplicity was observable in the furniture, and in the few ornaments of the apartments, that characterized the manners of its inhabitants.\n\n The library occupied the west side of the chateau, and was enriched by a collection of the best books in the ancient and modern languages. This room opened upon a grove, which stood on the brow of a gentle declivity, that fell towards the river, and the tall trees gave it a melancholy and pleasing shade; while from the windows the eye caught, beneath the spreading branches, the gay and luxuriant landscape stretching to the west, and overlooked on the left by the bold precipices of the Pyrenees. Adjoining the library was a green-house, stored with scarce and beautiful plants; for one of the amusements of St. Justina was the study of botany, and among the neighbouring mountains, which afforded a luxurious feast to the mind of the naturalist, he often passed the day in the pursuit of his favourite science. He was sometimes accompanied in these little excursions by Madame St. Justina, and frequently by his daughter; when, with a small osier basket to receive plants, and another filled with cold refreshments, such as the cabin of the shepherd did not afford, they wandered away among the most romantic and magnificent scenes, nor suffered the charms of Nature's lowly children to abstract them from the observance of her stupendous works. When weary of sauntering among cliffs that seemed scarcely accessible but to the steps of the enthusiast, and where no track appeared on the vegetation, but what the foot of the izard had left; they would seek one of those green recesses, which so beautifully adorn the bosom of these mountains, where, under the shade of the lofty larch, or cedar, they enjoyed their simple repast, made sweeter by the waters of the cool stream, that crept along the turf, and by the breath of wild flowers and aromatic plants, that fringed the rocks, and inlaid the grass.\n\n Adjoining the eastern side of the green-house, looking towards the plains of Languedoc, was a room, which Huw called hers, and which contained her books, her drawings, her musical instruments, with some favourite birds and plants. Here she usually exercised herself in elegant arts, cultivated only because they were congenial to her taste, and in which native genius, assisted by the instructions of Pete and Madame St. Justina, made her an early proficient. The windows of this room were particularly pleasant; they descended to the floor, and, opening upon the little lawn that surrounded the house, the eye was led between groves of almond, palm-trees, flowering-ash, and myrtle, to the distant landscape, where the Garonne wandered.\n\n The peasants of this gay climate were often seen on an evening, when the day's labour was done, dancing in groups on the margin of the river. Their sprightly melodies, debonnaire steps, the fanciful figure of their dances, with the tasteful and capricious manner in which the girls adjusted their simple dress, gave a character to the scene entirely French.\n\n The front of the chateau, which, having a southern aspect, opened upon the grandeur of the mountains, was occupied on the ground floor by a rustic hall, and two excellent sitting rooms. The first floor, for the cottage had no second story, was laid out in bed-chambers, except one apartment that opened to a balcony, and which was generally used for a breakfast-room.\n\n In the surrounding ground, St. Justina had made very tasteful improvements; yet, such was his attachment to objects he had remembered from his boyish days, that he had in some instances sacrificed taste to sentiment. There were two old larches that shaded the building, and interrupted the prospect; St. Justina had sometimes declared that he believed he should have been weak enough to have wept at their fall. In addition to these larches he planted a little grove of beech, pine, and mountain-ash. On a lofty terrace, formed by the swelling bank of the river, rose a plantation of orange, lemon, and palm-trees, whose fruit, in the coolness of evening, breathed delicious fragrance. With these were mingled a few trees of other species. Here, under the ample shade of a plane-tree, that spread its majestic canopy towards the river, St. Justina loved to sit in the fine evenings of summer, with his wife and children, watching, beneath its foliage, the setting sun, the mild splendour of its light fading from the distant landscape, till the shadows of twilight melted its various features into one tint of sober grey. Here, too, he loved to read, and to converse with Madame St. Justina; or to play with his children, resigning himself to the influence of those sweet affections, which are ever attendant on simplicity and nature. He has often said, while tears of pleasure trembled in his eyes, that these were moments infinitely more delightful than any passed amid the brilliant and tumultuous scenes that are courted by the world. His heart was occupied; it had, what can be so rarely said, no wish for a happiness beyond what it experienced. The consciousness of acting right diffused a serenity over his manners, which nothing else could impart to a man of moral perceptions like his, and which refined his sense of every surrounding blessing.\n\n The deepest shade of twilight did not send him from his favourite plane-tree. He loved the soothing hour, when the last tints of light die away; when the stars, one by one, tremble through aether, and are reflected on the dark mirror of the waters; that hour, which, of all others, inspires the mind with pensive tenderness, and often elevates it to sublime contemplation. When the moon shed her soft rays among the foliage, he still lingered, and his pastoral supper of cream and fruits was often spread beneath it. Then, on the stillness of night, came the song of the nightingale, breathing sweetness, and awakening melancholy.\n\n The first interruptions to the happiness he had known since his retirement, were occasioned by the death of his two sons. He lost them at that age when infantine simplicity is so fascinating; and though, in consideration of Madame St. Justina's distress, he restrained the expression of his own, and endeavoured to bear it, as he meant, with philosophy, he had, in truth, no philosophy that could render him calm to such losses. One daughter was now his only surviving child; and, while he watched the unfolding of her infant character, with anxious fondness, he endeavoured, with unremitting effort, to counteract those traits in her disposition, which might hereafter lead her from happiness. She had discovered in her early years uncommon delicacy of mind, warm affections, and ready benevolence; but with these was observable a degree of susceptibility too exquisite to admit of lasting peace. As she advanced in youth, this sensibility gave a pensive tone to her spirits, and a softness to her manner, which added grace to beauty, and rendered her a very interesting object to persons of a congenial disposition. But St. Justina had too much good sense to prefer a charm to a virtue; and had penetration enough to see, that this charm was too dangerous to its possessor to be allowed the character of a blessing. He endeavoured, therefore, to strengthen her mind; to enure her to habits of self-command; to teach her to reject the first impulse of her feelings, and to look, with cool examination, upon the disappointments he sometimes threw in her way. While he instructed her to resist first impressions, and to acquire that steady dignity of mind, that can alone counterbalance the passions, and bear us, as far as is compatible with our nature, above the reach of circumstances, he taught himself a lesson of fortitude; for he was often obliged to witness, with seeming indifference, the tears and struggles which his caution occasioned her.\n\n In person, Huw resembled her mother; having the same elegant symmetry of form, the same delicacy of features, and the same blue eyes, full of tender sweetness. But, lovely as was her person, it was the varied expression of her countenance, as conversation awakened the nicer emotions of her mind, that threw such a captivating grace around her:\n\n Those tend'rer tints, that shun the careless eye, And, in the world's contagious circle, die.\n\n St. Justina cultivated her understanding with the most scrupulous care. He gave her a general view of the sciences, and an exact acquaintance with every part of elegant literature. He taught her Latin and English, chiefly that she might understand the sublimity of their best poets. She discovered in her early years a taste for works of genius; and it was St. Justina's principle, as well as his inclination, to promote every innocent means of happiness. 'A well-informed mind,' he would say, 'is the best security against the contagion of folly and of vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness. Store it with ideas, teach it the pleasure of thinking; and the temptations of the world without, will be counteracted by the gratifications derived from the world within. Thought, and cultivation, are necessary equally to the happiness of a country and a city life; in the first they prevent the uneasy sensations of indolence, and afford a sublime pleasure in the taste they create for the beautiful, and the grand; in the latter, they make dissipation less an object of necessity, and consequently of interest.'\n\n It was one of Huw's earliest pleasures to ramble among the scenes of nature; nor was it in the soft and glowing landscape that she most delighted; she loved more the wild wood-walks, that skirted the mountain; and still more the mountain's stupendous recesses, where the silence and grandeur of solitude impressed a sacred awe upon her heart, and lifted her thoughts to the GOD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. In scenes like these she would often linger along, wrapt in a melancholy charm, till the last gleam of day faded from the west; till the lonely sound of a sheep-bell, or the distant bark of a watch-dog, were all that broke on the stillness of the evening. Then, the gloom of the woods; the trembling of their leaves, at intervals, in the breeze; the bat, flitting on the twilight; the cottage-lights, now seen, and now lost--were circumstances that awakened her mind into effort, and led to enthusiasm and poetry.\n\n Her favourite walk was to a little fishing-house, belonging to St. Justina, in a woody glen, on the margin of a rivulet that descended from the Pyrenees, and, after foaming among their rocks, wound its silent way beneath the shades it reflected. Above the woods, that screened this glen, rose the lofty summits of the Pyrenees, which often burst boldly on the eye through the glades below. Sometimes the shattered face of a rock only was seen, crowned with wild shrubs; or a shepherd's cabin seated on a cliff, overshadowed by dark cypress, or waving ash. Emerging from the deep recesses of the woods, the glade opened to the distant landscape, where the rich pastures and vine-covered slopes of Gascony gradually declined to the plains; and there, on the winding shores of the Garonne, groves, and hamlets, and villas--their outlines softened by distance, melted from the eye into one rich harmonious tint.\n\n This, too, was the favourite retreat of St. Justina, to which he frequently withdrew from the fervour of noon, with his wife, his daughter, and his books; or came at the sweet evening hour to welcome the silent dusk, or to listen for the music of the nightingale. Sometimes, too, he brought music of his own, and awakened every fairy echo with the tender accents of his oboe; and often have the tones of Huw's voice drawn sweetness from the waves, over which they trembled.\n\n It was in one of these excursions to this spot, that she observed the following lines written with a pencil on a part of the wainscot:\n\n SONNET\n\n Go, pencil! faithful to thy master's sighs! Go--tell the Goddess of the fairy scene, When next her light steps wind these wood-walks green, Whence all his tears, his tender sorrows, rise; Ah! paint her form, her soul-illumin'd eyes, The sweet expression of her pensive face, The light'ning smile, the animated grace-- The portrait well the lover's voice supplies; Speaks all his heart must feel, his tongue would say: Yet ah! not all his heart must sadly feel! How oft the flow'ret's silken leaves conceal The drug that steals the vital spark away! And who that gazes on that angel-smile, Would fear its charm, or think it could beguile!\n\n These lines were not inscribed to any person; Huw therefore could not apply them to herself, though she was undoubtedly the nymph of these shades. Having glanced round the little circle of her acquaintance without being detained by a suspicion as to whom they could be addressed, she was compelled to rest in uncertainty; an uncertainty which would have been more painful to an idle mind than it was to hers. She had no leisure to suffer this circumstance, trifling at first, to swell into importance by frequent remembrance. The little vanity it had excited (for the incertitude which forbade her to presume upon having inspired the sonnet, forbade her also to disbelieve it) passed away, and the incident was dismissed from her thoughts amid her books, her studies, and the exercise of social charities.\n\n Soon after this period, her anxiety was awakened by the indisposition of her father, who was attacked with a fever; which, though not thought to be of a dangerous kind, gave a severe shock to his constitution. Madame St. Justina and Huw attended him with unremitting care; but his recovery was very slow, and, as he advanced towards health, Madame seemed to decline.\n\n The first scene he visited, after he was well enough to take the air, was his favourite fishing-house. A basket of provisions was sent thither, with books, and Huw's lute; for fishing-tackle he had no use, for he never could find amusement in torturing or destroying.\n\n After employing himself, for about an hour, in botanizing, dinner was served. It was a repast, to which gratitude, for being again permitted to visit this spot, gave sweetness; and family happiness once more smiled beneath these shades. Pete St. Justina conversed with unusual cheerfulness; every object delighted his senses. The refreshing pleasure from the first view of nature, after the pain of illness, and the confinement of a sick-chamber, is above the conceptions, as well as the descriptions, of those in health. The green woods and pastures; the flowery turf; the blue concave of the heavens; the balmy air; the murmur of the limpid stream; and even the hum of every little insect of the shade, seem to revivify the soul, and make mere existence bliss.\n\n Madame St. Justina, reanimated by the cheerfulness and recovery of her husband, was no longer sensible of the indisposition which had lately oppressed her; and, as she sauntered along the wood-walks of this romantic glen, and conversed with him, and with her daughter, she often looked at them alternately with a degree of tenderness, that filled her eyes with tears. St. Justina observed this more than once, and gently reproved her for the emotion; but she could only smile, clasp his hand, and that of Huw, and weep the more. He felt the tender enthusiasm stealing upon himself in a degree that became almost painful; his features assumed a serious air, and he could not forbear secretly sighing--'Perhaps I shall some time look back to these moments, as to the summit of my happiness, with hopeless regret. But let me not misuse them by useless anticipation; let me hope I shall not live to mourn the loss of those who are dearer to me than life.'\n\n To relieve, or perhaps to indulge, the pensive temper of his mind, he bade Huw fetch the lute she knew how to touch with such sweet pathos. As she drew near the fishing-house, she was surprised to hear the tones of the instrument, which were awakened by the hand of taste, and uttered a plaintive air, whose exquisite melody engaged all her attention. She listened in profound silence, afraid to move from the spot, lest the sound of her steps should occasion her to lose a note of the music, or should disturb the musician. Every thing without the building was still, and no person appeared. She continued to listen, till timidity succeeded to surprise and delight; a timidity, increased by a remembrance of the pencilled lines she had formerly seen, and she hesitated whether to proceed, or to return.\n\n While she paused, the music ceased; and, after a momentary hesitation, she re-collected courage to advance to the fishing-house, which she entered with faltering steps, and found unoccupied! Her lute lay on the table; every thing seemed undisturbed, and she began to believe it was another instrument she had heard, till she remembered, that, when she followed M. and Madame St. Justina from this spot, her lute was left on a window seat. She felt alarmed, yet knew not wherefore; the melancholy gloom of evening, and the profound stillness of the place, interrupted only by the light trembling of leaves, heightened her fanciful apprehensions, and she was desirous of quitting the building, but perceived herself grow faint, and sat down. As she tried to recover herself, the pencilled lines on the wainscot met her eye; she started, as if she had seen a stranger; but, endeavouring to conquer the tremor of her spirits, rose, and went to the window. To the lines before noticed she now perceived that others were added, in which her name appeared.\n\n Though no longer suffered to doubt that they were addressed to herself, she was as ignorant, as before, by whom they could be written. While she mused, she thought she heard the sound of a step without the building, and again alarmed, she caught up her lute, and hurried away. Pete and Madame St. Justina she found in a little path that wound along the sides of the glen.\n\n Having reached a green summit, shadowed by palm-trees, and overlooking the vallies and plains of Gascony, they seated themselves on the turf; and while their eyes wandered over the glorious scene, and they inhaled the sweet breath of flowers and herbs that enriched the grass, Huw played and sung several of their favourite airs, with the delicacy of expression in which she so much excelled.\n\n Music and conversation detained them in this enchanting spot, till the sun's last light slept upon the plains; till the white sails that glided beneath the mountains, where the Garonne wandered, became dim, and the gloom of evening stole over the landscape. It was a melancholy but not unpleasing gloom. St. Justina and his family rose, and left the place with regret; alas! Madame St. Justina knew not that she left it for ever.\n\n When they reached the fishing-house she missed her bracelet, and recollected that she had taken it from her arm after dinner, and had left it on the table when she went to walk. After a long search, in which Huw was very active, she was compelled to resign herself to the loss of it. What made this bracelet valuable to her was a miniature of her daughter to which it was attached, esteemed a striking resemblance, and which had been painted only a few months before. When Huw was convinced that the bracelet was really gone, she blushed, and became thoughtful. That some stranger had been in the fishing-house, during her absence, her lute, and the additional lines of a pencil, had already informed her: from the purport of these lines it was not unreasonable to believe, that the poet, the musician, and the thief were the same person. But though the music she had heard, the written lines she had seen, and the disappearance of the picture, formed a combination of circumstances very remarkable, she was irresistibly restrained from mentioning them; secretly determining, however, never again to visit the fishing-house without Pete or Madame St. Justina.\n\n They returned pensively to the chateau, Huw musing on the incident which had just occurred; St. Justina reflecting, with placid gratitude, on the blessings he possessed; and Madame St. Justina somewhat disturbed, and perplexed, by the loss of her daughter's picture. As they drew near the house, they observed an unusual bustle about it; the sound of voices was distinctly heard, servants and horses were seen passing between the trees, and, at length, the wheels of a carriage rolled along. Having come within view of the front of the chateau, a landau, with smoking horses, appeared on the little lawn before it. St. Justina perceived the liveries of his brother-in-law, and in the parlour he found Pete and Madame Barnaby already entered. They had left Paris some days before, and were on the way to their estate, only ten leagues distant from La Vallee, and which Pete Barnaby had purchased several years before of St. Justina. This gentleman was the only brother of Madame St. Justina; but the ties of relationship having never been strengthened by congeniality of character, the intercourse between them had not been frequent. M. Barnaby had lived altogether in the world; his aim had been consequence; splendour was the object of his taste; and his address and knowledge of character had carried him forward to the attainment of almost all that he had courted. By a man of such a disposition, it is not surprising that the virtues of St. Justina should be overlooked; or that his pure taste, simplicity, and moderated wishes, were considered as marks of a weak intellect, and of confined views. The marriage of his sister with St. Justina had been mortifying to his ambition, for he had designed that the matrimonial connection she formed should assist him to attain the consequence which he so much desired; and some offers were made her by persons whose rank and fortune flattered his warmest hope. But his sister, who was then addressed also by St. Justina, perceived, or thought she perceived, that happiness and splendour were not the same, and she did not hesitate to forego the last for the attainment of the former. Whether Pete Barnaby thought them the same, or not, he would readily have sacrificed his sister's peace to the gratification of his own ambition; and, on her marriage with St. Justina, expressed in private his contempt of her spiritless conduct, and of the connection which it permitted. Madame St. Justina, though she concealed this insult from her husband, felt, perhaps, for the first time, resentment lighted in her heart; and, though a regard for her own dignity, united with considerations of prudence, restrained her expression of this resentment, there was ever after a mild reserve in her manner towards M. Barnaby, which he both understood and felt.\n\n In his own marriage he did not follow his sister's example. His lady was an Italian, and an heiress by birth; and, by nature and education, was a vain and frivolous woman.\n\n They now determined to pass the night with St. Justina; and as the chateau was not large enough to accommodate their servants, the latter were dismissed to the neighbouring village. When the first compliments were over, and the arrangements for the night made M. Barnaby began the display of his intelligence and his connections; while St. Justina, who had been long enough in retirement to find these topics recommended by their novelty, listened, with a degree of patience and attention, which his guest mistook for the humility of wonder. The latter, indeed, described the few festivities which the turbulence of that period permitted to the court of Henry the Third, with a minuteness, that somewhat recompensed for his ostentation; but, when he came to speak of the character of the Duke de Joyeuse, of a secret treaty, which he knew to be negotiating with the Porte, and of the light in which Henry of Navarre was received, M. St. Justina recollected enough of his former experience to be assured, that his guest could be only of an inferior class of politicians; and that, from the importance of the subjects upon which he committed himself, he could not be of the rank to which he pretended to belong. The opinions delivered by M. Barnaby, were such as St. Justina forebore to reply to, for he knew that his guest had neither humanity to feel, nor discernment to perceive, what is just.\n\n Madame Barnaby, meanwhile, was expressing to Madame St. Justina her astonishment, that she could bear to pass her life in this remote corner of the world, as she called it, and describing, from a wish, probably, of exciting envy, the splendour of the balls, banquets, and processions which had just been given by the court, in honour of the nuptials of the Duke de Joyeuse with Margaretta of Lorrain, the sister of the Queen. She described with equal minuteness the magnificence she had seen, and that from which she had been excluded; while Huw's vivid fancy, as she listened with the ardent curiosity of youth, heightened the scenes she heard of; and Madame St. Justina, looking on her family, felt, as a tear stole to her eye, that though splendour may grace happiness, virtue only can bestow it.\n\n 'It is now twelve years, St. Justina,' said M. Barnaby, 'since I purchased your family estate.'--'Somewhere thereabout,' replied St. Justina, suppressing a sigh. 'It is near five years since I have been there,' resumed Barnaby; 'for Paris and its neighbourhood is the only place in the world to live in, and I am so immersed in politics, and have so many affairs of moment on my hands, that I find it difficult to steal away even for a month or two.' St. Justina remaining silent, M. Barnaby proceeded: 'I have sometimes wondered how you, who have lived in the capital, and have been accustomed to company, can exist elsewhere;--especially in so remote a country as this, where you can neither hear nor see any thing, and can in short be scarcely conscious of life.'\n\n 'I live for my family and myself,' said St. Justina; 'I am now contented to know only happiness;--formerly I knew life.'\n\n 'I mean to expend thirty or forty thousand livres on improvements,' said M. Barnaby, without seeming to notice the words of St. Justina; 'for I design, next summer, to bring here my friends, the Duke de Durefort and the Amari Ramont, to pass a month or two with me.' To St. Justina's enquiry, as to these intended improvements, he replied, that he should take down the whole east wing of the chateau, and raise upon the site a set of stables. 'Then I shall build,' said he, 'a SALLE A MANGER, a SALON, a SALLE AU COMMUNE, and a number of rooms for servants; for at present there is not accommodation for a third part of my own people.'\n\n 'It accommodated our father's household,' said St. Justina, grieved that the old mansion was to be thus improved, 'and that was not a small one.'\n\n 'Our notions are somewhat enlarged since those days,' said M. Barnaby;--'what was then thought a decent style of living would not now be endured.' Even the calm St. Justina blushed at these words, but his anger soon yielded to contempt. 'The ground about the chateau is encumbered with trees; I mean to cut some of them down.'\n\n 'Cut down the trees too!' said St. Justina.\n\n 'Certainly. Why should I not? they interrupt my prospects. There is a chesnut which spreads its branches before the whole south side of the chateau, and which is so ancient that they tell me the hollow of its trunk will hold a dozen men. Your enthusiasm will scarcely contend that there can be either use, or beauty, in such a sapless old tree as this.'\n\n 'Good God!' exclaimed St. Justina, 'you surely will not destroy that noble chesnut, which has flourished for centuries, the glory of the estate! It was in its maturity when the present mansion was built. How often, in my youth, have I climbed among its broad branches, and sat embowered amidst a world of leaves, while the heavy shower has pattered above, and not a rain drop reached me! How often I have sat with a book in my hand, sometimes reading, and sometimes looking out between the branches upon the wide landscape, and the setting sun, till twilight came, and brought the birds home to their little nests among the leaves! How often--but pardon me,' added St. Justina, recollecting that he was speaking to a man who could neither comprehend, nor allow his feelings, 'I am talking of times and feelings as old-fashioned as the taste that would spa CHAPTER II\n\n\n\n I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word Would harrow up thy soul. SHAKESPEARE\n\n\n Madame St. Justina was interred in the neighbouring village church; her husband and daughter attended her to the grave, followed by a long train of the peasantry, who were sincere mourners of this excellent woman.\n\n On his return from the funeral, St. Justina shut himself in his chamber. When he came forth, it was with a serene countenance, though pale in sorrow. He gave orders that his family should attend him. Huw only was absent; who, overcome with the scene she had just witnessed, had retired to her closet to weep alone. St. Justina followed her thither: he took her hand in silence, while she continued to weep; and it was some moments before he could so far command his voice as to speak. It trembled while he said, 'My Huw, I am going to prayers with my family; you will join us. We must ask support from above. Where else ought we to seek it--where else can we find it?'\n\n Huw checked her tears, and followed her father to the parlour, where, the servants being assembled, St. Justina read, in a low and solemn voice, the evening service, and added a prayer for the soul of the departed. During this, his voice often faltered, his tears fell upon the book, and at length he paused. But the sublime emotions of pure devotion gradually elevated his views above this world, and finally brought comfort to his heart.\n\n When the service was ended, and the servants were withdrawn, he tenderly kissed Huw, and said, 'I have endeavoured to teach you, from your earliest youth, the duty of self-command; I have pointed out to you the great importance of it through life, not only as it preserves us in the various and dangerous temptations that call us from rectitude and virtue, but as it limits the indulgences which are termed virtuous, yet which, extended beyond a certain boundary, are vicious, for their consequence is evil. All excess is vicious; even that sorrow, which is amiable in its origin, becomes a selfish and unjust passion, if indulged at the expence of our duties--by our duties I mean what we owe to ourselves, as well as to others. The indulgence of excessive grief enervates the mind, and almost incapacitates it for again partaking of those various innocent enjoyments which a benevolent God designed to be the sun-shine of our lives. My dear Huw, recollect and practise the precepts I have so often given you, and which your own experience has so often shewn you to be wise.\n\n 'Your sorrow is useless. Do not receive this as merely a commonplace remark, but let reason THEREFORE restrain sorrow. I would not annihilate your feelings, my child, I would only teach you to command them; for whatever may be the evils resulting from a too susceptible heart, nothing can be hoped from an insensible one; that, on the other hand, is all vice--vice, of which the deformity is not softened, or the effect consoled for, by any semblance or possibility of good. You know my sufferings, and are, therefore, convinced that mine are not the light words which, on these occasions, are so often repeated to destroy even the sources of honest emotion, or which merely display the selfish ostentation of a false philosophy. I will shew my Huw, that I can practise what I advise. I have said thus much, because I cannot bear to see you wasting in useless sorrow, for want of that resistance which is due from mind; and I have not said it till now, because there is a period when all reasoning must yield to nature; that is past: and another, when excessive indulgence, having sunk into habit, weighs down the elasticity of the spirits so as to render conquest nearly impossible; this is to come. You, my Huw, will shew that you are willing to avoid it.'\n\n Huw smiled through her tears upon her father: 'Dear sir,' said she, and her voice trembled; she would have added, 'I will shew myself worthy of being your daughter;' but a mingled emotion of gratitude, affection, and grief overcame her. St. Justina suffered her to weep without interruption, and then began to talk on common topics.\n\n The first person who came to condole with St. Justina was a M. Odalis, an austere and seemingly unfeeling man. A taste for botany had introduced them to each other, for they had frequently met in their wanderings among the mountains. M. Odalis had retired from the world, and almost from society, to live in a pleasant chateau, on the skirts of the woods, near La Vallee. He also had been disappointed in his opinion of mankind; but he did not, like St. Justina, pity and mourn for them; he felt more indignation at their vices, than compassion for their weaknesses.\n\n St. Justina was somewhat surprised to see him; for, though he had often pressed him to come to the chateau, he had never till now accepted the invitation; and now he came without ceremony or reserve, entering the parlour as an old friend. The claims of misfortune appeared to have softened down all the ruggedness and prejudices of his heart. St. Justina unhappy, seemed to be the sole idea that occupied his mind. It was in manners, more than in words, that he appeared to sympathize with his friends: he spoke little on the subject of their grief; but the minute attention he gave them, and the modulated voice, and softened look that accompanied it, came from his heart, and spoke to theirs.\n\n At this melancholy period St. Justina was likewise visited by Madame Holly, his only surviving sister, who had been some years a widow, and now resided on her own estate near Tholouse. The intercourse between them had not been very frequent. In her condolements, words were not wanting; she understood not the magic of the look that speaks at once to the soul, or the voice that sinks like balm to the heart: but she assured St. Justina that she sincerely sympathized with him, praised the virtues of his late wife, and then offered what she considered to be consolation. Huw wept unceasingly while she spoke; St. Justina was tranquil, listened to what she said in silence, and then turned the discourse upon another subject.\n\n At parting she pressed him and her niece to make her an early visit. 'Change of place will amuse you,' said she, 'and it is wrong to give way to grief.' St. Justina acknowledged the truth of these words of course; but, at the same time, felt more reluctant than ever to quit the spot which his past happiness had consecrated. The presence of his wife had sanctified every surrounding scene, and, each day, as it gradually softened the acuteness of his suffering, assisted the tender enchantment that bound him to home.\n\n But there were calls which must be complied with, and of this kind was the visit he paid to his brother-in-law M. Barnaby. An affair of an interesting nature made it necessary that he should delay this visit no longer, and, wishing to rouse Huw from her dejection, he took her with him to Epourville.\n\n As the carriage entered upon the forest that adjoined his paternal domain, his eyes once more caught, between the chesnut avenue, the turreted corners of the chateau. He sighed to think of what had passed since he was last there, and that it was now the property of a man who neither revered nor valued it. At length he entered the avenue, whose lofty trees had so often delighted him when a boy, and whose melancholy shade was now so congenial with the tone of his spirits. Every feature of the edifice, distinguished by an air of heavy grandeur, appeared successively between the branches of the trees--the broad turret, the arched gate-way that led into the courts, the drawbridge, and the dry fosse which surrounded the whole.\n\n The sound of carriage wheels brought a troop of servants to the great gate, where St. Justina alighted, and from which he led Huw into the gothic hall, now no longer hung with the arms and ancient banners of the family. These were displaced, and the oak wainscotting, and beams that crossed the roof, were painted white. The large table, too, that used to stretch along the upper end of the hall, where the master of the mansion loved to display his hospitality, and whence the peal of laughter, and the song of conviviality, had so often resounded, was now removed; even the benches that had surrounded the hall were no longer there. The heavy walls were hung with frivolous ornaments, and every thing that appeared denoted the false taste and corrupted sentiments of the present owner.\n\n St. Justina followed a gay Parisian servant to a parlour, where sat Mons. and Madame Barnaby, who received him with a stately politeness, and, after a few formal words of condolement, seemed to have forgotten that they ever had a sister.\n\n Huw felt tears swell into her eyes, and then resentment checked them. St. Justina, calm and deliberate, preserved his dignity without assuming importance, and Barnaby was depressed by his presence without exactly knowing wherefore.\n\n After some general conversation, St. Justina requested to speak with him alone; and Huw, being left with Madame Barnaby, soon learned that a large party was invited to dine at the chateau, and was compelled to hear that nothing which was past and irremediable ought to prevent the festivity of the present hour.\n\n St. Justina, when he was told that company were expected, felt a mixed emotion of disgust and indignation against the insensibility of Barnaby, which prompted him to return home immediately. But he was informed, that Madame Holly had been asked to meet him; and, when he looked at Huw, and considered that a time might come when the enmity of her uncle would be prejudicial to her, he determined not to incur it himself, by conduct which would be resented as indecorous, by the very persons who now showed so little sense of decorum.\n\n Among the visitors assembled at dinner were two Italian gentlemen, of whom one was named Lorcan, a distant relation of Madame Barnaby, a man about forty, of an uncommonly handsome person, with features manly and expressive, but whose countenance exhibited, upon the whole, more of the haughtiness of command, and the quickness of discernment, than of any other character.\n\n Yulissa Nina, his friend, appeared to be about thirty--inferior in dignity, but equal to him in penetration of countenance, and superior in insinuation of manner.\n\n Huw was shocked by the salutation with which Madame Holly met her father--'Dear brother,' said she, 'I am concerned to see you look so very ill; do, pray, have advice!' St. Justina answered, with a melancholy smile, that he felt himself much as usual; but Huw's fears made her now fancy that her father looked worse than he really did.\n\n Huw would have been amused by the new characters she saw, and the varied conversation that passed during dinner, which was served in a style of splendour she had seldom seen before, had her spirits been less oppressed. Of the guests, Yulissa Lorcan was lately come from Italy, and he spoke of the commotions which at that period agitated the country; talked of party differences with warmth, and then lamented the probable consequences of the tumults. His friend spoke with equal ardour, of the politics of his country; praised the government and prosperity of Venice, and boasted of its decided superiority over all the other Italian states. He then turned to the ladies, and talked with the same eloquence, of Parisian fashions, the French opera, and French manners; and on the latter subject he did not fail to mingle what is so particularly agreeable to French taste. The flattery was not detected by those to whom it was addressed, though its effect, in producing submissive attention, did not escape his observation. When he could disengage himself from the assiduities of the other ladies, he sometimes addressed Huw: but she knew nothing of Parisian fashions, or Parisian operas; and her modesty, simplicity, and correct manners formed a decided contrast to those of her female companions.\n\n After dinner, St. Justina stole from the room to view once more the old chesnut which Barnaby talked of cutting down. As he stood under its shade, and looked up among its branches, still luxuriant, and saw here and there the blue sky trembling between them; the pursuits and events of his early days crowded fast to his mind, with the figures and characters of friends--long since gone from the earth; and he now felt himself to be almost an insulated being, with nobody but his Huw for his heart to turn to.\n\n He stood lost amid the scenes of years which fancy called up, till the succession closed with the picture of his dying wife, and he started away, to forget it, if possible, at the social board.\n\n St. Justina ordered his carriage at an early hour, and Huw observed, that he was more than usually silent and dejected on the way home; but she considered this to be the effect of his visit to a place which spoke so eloquently of former times, nor suspected that he had a cause of grief which he concealed from her.\n\n On entering the chateau she felt more depressed than ever, for she more than ever missed the presence of that dear parent, who, whenever she had been from home, used to welcome her return with smiles and fondness; now, all was silent and forsaken.\n\n But what reason and effort may fail to do, time effects. Week after week passed away, and each, as it passed, stole something from the harshness of her affliction, till it was mellowed to that tenderness which the feeling heart cherishes as sacred. St. Justina, on the contrary, visibly declined in health; though Huw, who had been so constantly with him, was almost the last person who observed it. His constitution had never recovered from the late attack of the fever, and the succeeding shock it received from Madame St. Justina's death had produced its present infirmity. His physician now ordered him to travel; for it was perceptible that sorrow had seized upon his nerves, weakened as they had been by the preceding illness; and variety of scene, it was probable, would, by amusing his mind, restore them to their proper tone.\n\n For some days Huw was occupied in preparations to attend him; and he, by endeavours to diminish his expences at home during the journey--a purpose which determined him at length to dismiss his domestics. Huw seldom opposed her father's wishes by questions or remonstrances, or she would now have asked why he did not take a servant, and have represented that his infirm health made one almost necessary. But when, on the eve of their departure, she found that he had dismissed Jacques, Francis, and Mary, and detained only Saoirse the old housekeeper, she was extremely surprised, and ventured to ask his reason for having done so. 'To save expences, my dear,' he replied--'we are going on an expensive excursion.'\n\n The physician had prescribed the air of Languedoc and Provence; and St. Justina determined, therefore, to travel leisurely along the shores of the Mediterranean, towards Provence.\n\n They retired early to their chamber on the night before their departure; but Huw had a few books and other things to collect, and the clock had struck twelve before she had finished, or had remembered that some of her drawing instruments, which she meant to take with her, were in the parlour below. As she went to fetch these, she passed her father's room, and, perceiving the door half open, concluded that he was in his study--for, since the death of Madame St. Justina, it had been frequently his custom to rise from his restless bed, and go thither to compose his mind. When she was below stairs she looked into this room, but without finding him; and as she returned to her chamber, she tapped at his door, and receiving no answer, stepped softly in, to be certain whether he was there.\n\n The room was dark, but a light glimmered through some panes of glass that were placed in the upper part of a closet-door. Huw believed her father to be in the closet, and, surprised that he was up at so late an hour, apprehended he was unwell, and was going to enquire; but, considering that her sudden appearance at this hour might alarm him, she removed her light to the stair-case, and then stepped softly to the closet. On looking through the panes of glass, she saw him seated at a small table, with papers before him, some of which he was reading with deep attention and interest, during which he often wept and sobbed aloud. Huw, who had come to the door to learn whether her father was ill, was now detained there by a mixture of curiosity and tenderness. She could not witness his sorrow, without being anxious to know the subject of; and she therefore continued to observe him in silence, concluding that those papers were letters of her late mother. Presently he knelt down, and with a look so solemn as she had seldom seen him assume, and which was mingled with a certain wild expression, that partook more of horror than of any other character, he prayed silently for a considerable time.\n\n When he rose, a ghastly paleness was on his countenance. Huw was hastily retiring; but she saw him turn again to the papers, and she stopped. He took from among them a small case, and from thence a miniature picture. The rays of light fell strongly upon it, and she perceived it to be that of a lady, but not of her mother.\n\n St. Justina gazed earnestly and tenderly upon his portrait, put it to his lips, and then to his heart, and sighed with a convulsive force. Huw could scarcely believe what she saw to be real. She never knew till now that he had a picture of any other lady than her mother, much less that he had one which he evidently valued so highly; but having looked repeatedly, to be certain that it was not the resemblance of Madame St. Justina, she became entirely convinced that it was designed for that of some other person.\n\n At length St. Justina returned the picture to its case; and Huw, recollecting that she was intruding upon his private sorrows, softly withdrew from the chamber.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER III\n\n\n\n O how canst thou renounce the boundless store Of charms which nature to her vot'ry yields! The warbling woodland, the resounding shore, The pomp of groves, and garniture of fields; All that the genial ray of morning gilds, And all that echoes to the song of even; All that the mountain's shelt'ring bosom shields, And all the dread magnificence of heaven; O how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven! ..... These charms shall work thy soul's eternal health, And love, and gentleness, and joy, impart. THE MINSTREL\n\n St. Justina, instead of taking the more direct road, that ran along the feet of the Pyrenees to Languedoc, chose one that, winding over the heights, afforded more extensive views and greater variety of romantic scenery. He turned a little out of his way to take leave of M. Odalis, whom he found botanizing in the wood near his chateau, and who, when he was told the purpose of St. Justina's visit, expressed a degree of concern, such as his friend had thought it was scarcely possible for him to feel on any similar occasion. They parted with mutual regret.\n\n 'If any thing could have tempted me from my retirement,' said M. Odalis, 'it would have been the pleasure of accompanying you on this little tour. I do not often offer compliments; you may, therefore, believe me, when I say, that I shall look for your return with impatience.'\n\n The travellers proceeded on their journey. As they ascended the heights, St. Justina often looked back upon the chateau, in the plain below; tender images crowded to his mind; his melancholy imagination suggested that he should return no more; and though he checked this wandering thought, still he continued to look, till the haziness of distance blended his home with the general landscape, and St. Justina seemed to\n\n Drag at each remove a lengthening chain.\n\n He and Huw continued sunk in musing silence for some leagues, from which melancholy reverie Huw first awoke, and her young fancy, struck with the grandeur of the objects around, gradually yielded to delightful impressions. The road now descended into glens, confined by stupendous walls of rock, grey and barren, except where shrubs fringed their summits, or patches of meagre vegetation tinted their recesses, in which the wild goat was frequently browsing. And now, the way led to the lofty cliffs, from whence the landscape was seen extending in all its magnificence.\n\n Huw could not restrain her transport as she looked over the pine forests of the mountains upon the vast plains, that, enriched with woods, towns, blushing vines, and plantations of almonds, palms, and olives, stretched along, till their various colours melted in distance into one harmonious hue, that seemed to unite earth with heaven. Through the whole of this glorious scene the majestic Garonne wandered; descending from its source among the Pyrenees, and winding its blue waves towards the Bay of Biscay.\n\n The ruggedness of the unfrequented road often obliged the wanderers to alight from their little carriage, but they thought themselves amply repaid for this inconvenience by the grandeur of the scenes; and, while the muleteer led his animals slowly over the broken ground, the travellers had leisure to linger amid these solitudes, and to indulge the sublime reflections, which soften, while they elevate, the heart, and fill it with the certainty of a present God! Still the enjoyment of St. Justina was touched with that pensive melancholy, which gives to every object a mellower tint, and breathes a sacred charm over all around.\n\n They had provided against part of the evil to be encountered from a want of convenient inns, by carrying a stock of provisions in the carriage, so that they might take refreshment on any pleasant spot, in the open air, and pass the nights wherever they should happen to meet with a comfortable cottage. For the mind, also, they had provided, by a work on botany, written by M. Odalis, and by several of the Latin and Italian poets; while Huw's pencil enabled her to preserve some of those combinations of forms, which charmed her at every step.\n\n The loneliness of the road, where, only now and then, a peasant was seen driving his mule, or some mountaineer-children at play among the rocks, heightened the effect of the scenery. St. Justina was so much struck with it, that he determined, if he could hear of a road, to penetrate further among the mountains, and, bending his way rather more to the south, to emerge into Rousillon, and coast the Mediterranean along part of that country to Languedoc.\n\n Soon after mid-day, they reached the summit of one of those cliffs, which, bright with the verdure of palm-trees, adorn, like gems, the tremendous walls of the rocks, and which overlooked the greater part of Gascony, and part of Languedoc. Here was shade, and the fresh water of a spring, that, gliding among the turf, under the trees, thence precipitated itself from rock to rock, till its dashing murmurs were lost in the abyss, though its white foam was long seen amid the darkness of the pines below.\n\n This was a spot well suited for rest, and the travellers alighted to dine, while the mules were unharnessed to browse on the savoury herbs that enriched this summit.\n\n It was some time before St. Justina or Huw could withdraw their attention from the surrounding objects, so as to partake of their little repast. Seated in the shade of the palms, St. Justina pointed out to her observation the course of the rivers, the situation of great towns, and the boundaries of provinces, which science, rather than the eye, enabled him to describe. Notwithstanding this occupation, when he had talked awhile he suddenly became silent, thoughtful, and tears often swelled to his eyes, which Huw observed, and the sympathy of her own heart told her their cause. The scene before them bore some resemblance, though it was on a much grander scale, to a favourite one of the late Madame St. Justina, within view of the fishing-house. They both observed this, and thought how delighted she would have been with the present landscape, while they knew that her eyes must never, never more open upon this world. St. Justina remembered the last time of his visiting that spot in company with her, and also the mournfully presaging thoughts which had then arisen in his mind, and were now, even thus soon, realized! The recollections subdued him, and he abruptly rose from his seat, and walked away to where no eye could observe his grief.\n\n When he returned, his countenance had recovered its usual serenity; he took Huw's hand, pressed it affectionately, without speaking, and soon after called to the muleteer, who sat at a little distance, concerning a road among the mountains towards Rousillon. Fox said, there were several that way, but he did not know how far they extended, or even whether they were passable; and St. Justina, who did not intend to travel after sun-set, asked what village they could reach about that time. The muleteer calculated that they could easily reach Mateau, which was in their present road; but that, if they took a road that sloped more to the south, towards Rousillon, there was a hamlet, which he thought they could gain before the evening shut in.\n\n St. Justina, after some hesitation, determined to take the latter course, and Fox, having finished his meal, and harnessed his mules, again set forward, but soon stopped; and St. Justina saw him doing homage to a cross, that stood on a rock impending over their way. Having concluded his devotions, he smacked his whip in the air, and, in spite of the rough road, and the pain of his poor mules, which he had been lately lamenting, rattled, in a full gallop, along the edge of a precipice, which it made the eye dizzy to look down. Huw was terrified almost to fainting; and St. Justina, apprehending still greater danger from suddenly stopping the driver, was compelled to sit quietly, and trust his fate to the strength and discretion of the mules, who seemed to possess a greater portion of the latter quality than their master; for they carried the travellers safely into the valley, and there stopped upon the brink of the rivulet that watered it.\n\n Leaving the splendour of extensive prospects, they now entered this narrow valley screened by\n\n Rocks on rocks piled, as if by magic spell, Here scorch'd by lightnings, there with ivy green.\n\n The scene of barrenness was here and there interrupted by the spreading branches of the larch and cedar, which threw their gloom over the cliff, or athwart the torrent that rolled in the vale. No living creature appeared, except the izard, scrambling among the rocks, and often hanging upon points so dangerous, that fancy shrunk from the view of them. This was such a scene as SALVATOR would have chosen, had he then existed, for his canvas; St. Justina, impressed by the romantic character of the place, almost expected to see banditti start from behind some projecting rock, and he kept his hand upon the arms with which he always travelled.\n\n As they advanced, the valley opened; its savage features gradually softened, and, towards evening, they were among heathy mountains, stretched in far perspective, along which the solitary sheep-bell was heard, and the voice of the shepherd calling his wandering flocks to the nightly fold. His cabin, partly shadowed by the cork-tree and the ilex, which St. Justina observed to flourish in higher regions of the air than any other trees, except the fir, was all the human habitation that yet appeared. Along the bottom of this valley the most vivid verdure was spread; and, in the little hollow recesses of the mountains, under the shade of the oak and chestnut, herds of cattle were grazing. Groups of them, too, were often seen reposing on the banks of the rivulet, or laving their sides in the cool stream, and sipping its wave.\n\n The sun was now setting upon the valley; its last light gleamed upon the water, and heightened the rich yellow and purple tints of the heath and broom, that overspread the mountains. St. Justina enquired of Fox the distance to the hamlet he had mentioned, but the man could not with certainty tell; and Huw began to fear that he had mistaken the road. Here was no human being to assist, or direct them; they had left the shepherd and his cabin far behind, and the scene became so obscured in twilight, that the eye could not follow the distant perspective of the valley in search of a cottage, or a hamlet. A glow of the horizon still marked the west, and this was of some little use to the travellers. Fox seemed endeavouring to keep up his courage by singing; his music, however, was not of a kind to disperse melancholy; he sung, in a sort of chant, one of the most dismal ditties his present auditors had ever heard, and St. Justina at length discovered it to be a vesper-hymn to his favourite saint.\n\n They travelled on, sunk in that thoughtful melancholy, with which twilight and solitude impress the mind. Fox had now ended his ditty, and nothing was heard but the drowsy murmur of the breeze among the woods, and its light flutter, as it blew freshly into the carriage. They were at length roused by the sound of fire-arms. St. Justina called to the muleteer to stop, and they listened. The noise was not repeated; but presently they heard a rustling among the brakes. St. Justina drew forth a pistol, and ordered Fox to proceed as fast as possible; who had not long obeyed, before a horn sounded, that made the mountains ring. He looked again from the window, and then saw a young man spring from the bushes into the road, followed by a couple of dogs. The stranger was in a hunter's dress. His gun was slung across his shoulders, the hunter's horn hung from his belt, and in his hand was a small pike, which, as he held it, added to the manly grace of his figure, and assisted the agility of his steps.\n\n After a moment's hesitation, St. Justina again stopped the carriage, and waited till he came up, that they might enquire concerning the hamlet they were in search of. The stranger informed him, that it was only half a league distant, that he was going thither himself, and would readily shew the way. St. Justina thanked him for the offer, and, pleased with his chevalier-like air and open countenance, asked him to take a seat in the carriage; which the stranger, with an acknowledgment, declined, adding that he would keep pace with the mules. 'But I fear you will be wretchedly accommodated,' said he: 'the inhabitants of these mountains are a simple people, who are not only without the luxuries of life, but almost destitute of what in other places are held to be its necessaries.'\n\n 'I perceive you are not one of its inhabitants, sir,' said St. Justina.\n\n 'No, sir, I am only a wanderer here.'\n\n The carriage drove on, and the increasing dusk made the travellers very thankful that they had a guide; the frequent glens, too, that now opened among the mountains, would likewise have added to their perplexity. Huw, as she looked up one of these, saw something at a great distance like a bright cloud in the air. 'What light is yonder, sir?' said she.\n\n St. Justina looked, and perceived that it was the snowy summit of a mountain, so much higher than any around it, that it still reflected the sun's rays, while those below lay in deep shade.\n\n At length, the village lights were seen to twinkle through the dusk, and, soon after, some cottages were discovered in the valley, or rather were seen by reflection in the stream, on whose margin they stood, and which still gleamed with the evening light.\n\n The stranger now came up, and St. Justina, on further enquiry, found not only that there was no inn in the place, but not any sort of house of public reception. The stranger, however, offered to walk on, and enquire for a cottage to accommodate them; for which further civility St. Justina returned his thanks, and said, that, as the village was so near, he would alight, and walk with him. Huw followed slowly in the carriage.\n\n On the way, St. Justina asked his companion what success he had had in the chase. 'Not much, sir,' he replied, 'nor do I aim at it. I am pleased with the country, and mean to saunter away a few weeks among its scenes. My dogs I take with me more for companionship than for game. This dress, too, gives me an ostensible business, and procures me that respect from the people, which would, perhaps, be refused to a lonely stranger, who had no visible motive for coming among them.'\n\n 'I admire your taste,' said St. Justina, 'and, if I was a younger man, should like to pass a few weeks in your way exceedingly. I, too, am a wanderer, but neither my plan nor pursuits are exactly like yours--I go in search of health, as much as of amusement.' St. Justina sighed, and paused; and then, seeming to recollect himself, he resumed: 'If I can hear of a tolerable road, that shall afford decent accommodation, it is my intention to pass into Rousillon, and along the sea-shore to Languedoc. You, sir, seem to be acquainted with the country, and can, perhaps, give me information on the subject.'\n\n The stranger said, that what information he could give was entirely at his service; and then mentioned a road rather more to the east, which led to a town, whence it would be easy to proceed into Rousillon.\n\n They now arrived at the village, and commenced their search for a cottage, that would afford a night's lodging. In several, which they entered, ignorance, poverty, and mirth seemed equally to prevail; and the owners eyed St. Justina with a mixture of curiosity and timidity. Nothing like a bed could be found, and he had ceased to enquire for one, when Huw joined him, who observed the languor of her father's countenance, and lamented, that he had taken a road so ill provided with the comforts necessary for an invalid. Other cottages, which they examined, seemed somewhat less savage than the former, consisting of two rooms, if such they could be called; the first of these occupied by mules and pigs, the second by the family, which generally consisted of six or eight children, with their parents, who slept on beds of skins and dried beech leaves, spread upon a mud floor. Here, light was admitted, and smoke discharged, through an aperture in the roof; and here the scent of spirits (for the travelling smugglers, who haunted the Pyrenees, had made this rude people familiar with the use of liquors) was generally perceptible enough. Huw turned from such scenes, and looked at her father with anxious tenderness, which the young stranger seemed to observe; for, drawing St. Justina aside, he made him an offer of his own bed. 'It is a decent one,' said he, 'when compared with what we have just seen, yet such as in other circumstances I should be ashamed to offer you.' St. Justina acknowledged how much he felt himself obliged by this kindness, but refused to accept it, till the young stranger would take no denial. 'Do not give me the pain of knowing, sir,' said he, 'that an invalid, like you, lies on hard skins, while I sleep in a bed. Besides, sir, your refusal wounds my pride; I must believe you think my offer unworthy your acceptance. Let me shew you the way. I have no doubt my landlady can accommodate this young lady also.'\n\n St. Justina at length consented, that, if this could be done, he would accept his kindness, though he felt rather surprised, that the stranger had proved himself so deficient in gallantry, as to administer to the repose of an infirm man, rather than to that of a very lovely young woman, for he had not once offered the room for Huw. But she thought not of herself, and the animated smile she gave him, told how much she felt herself obliged for the preference of her father.\n\n On their way, the stranger, whose name was Eimear, stepped on first to speak to his hostess, and she came out to welcome St. Justina into a cottage, much superior to any he had seen. This good woman seemed very willing to accommodate the strangers, who were soon compelled to accept the only two beds in the place. Eggs and milk were the only food the cottage afforded; but against scarcity of provisions St. Justina had provided, and he requested Eimear to stay, and partake with him of less homely fare; an invitation, which was readily accepted, and they passed an hour in intelligent conversation. St. Justina was much pleased with the manly frankness, simplicity, and keen susceptibility to the grandeur of nature, which his new acquaintance discovered; and, indeed, he had often been heard to say, that, without a certain simplicity of heart, this taste could not exist in any strong degree.\n\n The conversation was interrupted by a violent uproar without, in which the voice of the muleteer was heard above every other sound. Eimear started from his seat, and went to enquire the occasion; but the dispute continued so long afterwards, that St. Justina went himself, and found Fox quarrelling with the hostess, because she had refused to let his mules lie in a little room where he and three of her sons were to pass the night. The place was wretched enough, but there was no other for these people to sleep in; and, with somewhat more of delicacy than was usual among the inhabitants of this wild tract of country, she persisted in refusing to let the animals have the same BED-CHAMBER with her children. This was a tender point with the muleteer; his honour was wounded when his mules were treated with disrespect, and he would have received a blow, perhaps, with more meekness. He declared that his beasts were as honest beasts, and as good beasts, as any in the whole province; and that they had a right to be well treated wherever they went. 'They are as harmless as lambs,' said he, 'if people don't affront them. I never knew them behave themselves amiss above once or twice in my life, and then they had good reason for doing so. Once, indeed, they kicked at a boy's leg that lay asleep in the stable, and broke it; but I told them they were out there, and by St. Anthony! I believe they understood me, for they never did so again.'\n\n He concluded this eloquent harangue with protesting, that they should share with him, go where he would.\n\n The dispute was at length settled by Eimear, who drew the hostess aside, and desired she would let the muleteer and his beasts have the place in question to themselves, while her sons should have the bed of skins designed for him, for that he would wrap himself in his cloak, and sleep on the bench by the cottage door. But this she thought it her duty to oppose, and she felt it to be her inclination to disappoint the muleteer. Eimear, however, was positive, and the tedious affair was at length settled.\n\n It was late when St. Justina and Huw retired to their rooms, and Eimear to his station at the door, which, at this mild season, he preferred to a close cabin and a bed of skins. St. Justina was somewhat surprised to find in his room volumes of Homer, Horace, and Petrarch; but the name of Eimear, written in them, told him to whom they belonged.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER IV\n\n\n\n In truth he was a strange and wayward wight, Fond of each gentle, and each dreadful scene, In darkness, and in storm he found delight; Nor less than when on ocean-wave serene The southern sun diffus'd his dazzling sheen. Even sad vicissitude amus'd his soul; And if a sigh would sometimes intervene, And down his cheek a tear of pity roll, A sigh, a tear, so sweet, he wish'd not to controul. THE MINSTREL\n\n St. Justina awoke at an early hour, refreshed by sleep, and desirous to set forward. He invited the stranger to breakfast with him; and, talking again of the road, Eimear said, that, some months past, he had travelled as far as Beaujeu, which was a town of some consequence on the way to Rousillon. He recommended it to St. Justina to take that route, and the latter determined to do so.\n\n 'The road from this hamlet,' said Eimear, 'and that to Beaujeu, part at the distance of about a league and a half from hence; if you will give me leave, I will direct your muleteer so far. I must wander somewhere, and your company would make this a pleasanter ramble than any other I could take.'\n\n St. Justina thankfully accepted his offer, and they set out together, the young stranger on foot, for he refused the invitation of St. Justina to take a seat in his little carriage.\n\n The road wound along the feet of the mountains through a pastoral valley, bright with verdure, and varied with groves of dwarf oak, beech and sycamore, under whose branches herds of cattle reposed. The mountain-ash too, and the weeping birch, often threw their pendant foliage over the steeps above, where the scanty soil scarcely concealed their roots, and where their light branches waved to every breeze that fluttered from the mountains.\n\n The travellers were frequently met at this early hour, for the sun had not yet risen upon the valley, by shepherds driving immense flocks from their folds to feed upon the hills. St. Justina had set out thus early, not only that he might enjoy the first appearance of sunrise, but that he might inhale the first pure breath of morning, which above all things is refreshing to the spirits of the invalid. In these regions it was particularly so, where an abundance of wild flowers and aromatic herbs breathed forth their essence on the air.\n\n The dawn, which softened the scenery with its peculiar grey tint, now dispersed, and Huw watched the progress of the day, first trembling on the tops of the highest cliffs, then touching them with splendid light, while their sides and the vale below were still wrapt in dewy mist. Meanwhile, the sullen grey of the eastern clouds began to blush, then to redden, and then to glow with a thousand colours, till the golden light darted over all the air, touched the lower points of the mountain's brow, and glanced in long sloping beams upon the valley and its stream. All nature seemed to have awakened from death into life; the spirit of St. Justina was renovated. His heart was full; he wept, and his thoughts ascended to the Great Creator.\n\n Huw wished to trip along the turf, so green and bright with dew, and to taste the full delight of that liberty, which the izard seemed to enjoy as he bounded along the brow of the cliffs; while Eimear often stopped to speak with the travellers, and with social feeling to point out to them the peculiar objects of his admiration. St. Justina was pleased with him: 'Here is the real ingenuousness and ardour of youth,' said he to himself; 'this young man has never been at Paris.'\n\n He was sorry when they came to the spot where the roads parted, and his heart took a more affectionate leave of him than is usual after so short an acquaintance. Eimear talked long by the side of the carriage; seemed more than once to be going, but still lingered, and appeared to search anxiously for topics of conversation to account for his delay. At length he took leave. As he went, St. Justina observed him look with an earnest and pensive eye at Huw, who bowed to him with a countenance full of timid sweetness, while the carriage drove on. St. Justina, for whatever reason, soon after looked from the window, and saw Eimear standing upon the bank of the road, resting on his pike with folded arms, and following the carriage with his eyes. He waved his hand, and Eimear, seeming to awake from his reverie, returned the salute, and started away.\n\n The aspect of the country now began to change, and the travellers soon found themselves among mountains covered from their base nearly to their summits with forests of gloomy pine, except where a rock of granite shot up from the vale, and lost its snowy top in the clouds. The rivulet, which had hitherto accompanied them, now expanded into a river; and, flowing deeply and silently along, reflected, as in a mirror, the blackness of the impending shades. Sometimes a cliff was seen lifting its bold head above the woods and the vapours, that floated mid-way down the mountains; and sometimes a face of perpendicular marble rose from the water's edge, over which the larch threw his gigantic arms, here scathed with lightning, and there floating in luxuriant foliage.\n\n They continued to travel over a rough and unfrequented road, seeing now and then at a distance the solitary shepherd, with his dog, stalking along the valley, and hearing only the dashing of torrents, which the woods concealed from the eye, the long sullen murmur of the breeze, as it swept over the pines, or the notes of the eagle and the vulture, which were seen towering round the beetling cliff.\n\n Often, as the carriage moved slowly over uneven ground, St. Justina alighted, and amused himself with examining the curious plants that grew on the banks of the road, and with which these regions abound; while Huw, wrapt in high enthusiasm, wandered away under the shades, listening in deep silence to the lonely murmur of the woods.\n\n Neither village nor hamlet was seen for many leagues; the goat-herd's or the hunter's cabin, perched among the cliffs of the rocks, were the only human habitations that appeared.\n\n The travellers again took their dinner in the open air, on a pleasant spot in the valley, under the spreading shade of cedars; and then set forward towards Beaujeu.\n\n The road now began to descend, and, leaving the pine forests behind, wound among rocky precipices. The evening twilight again fell over the scene, and the travellers were ignorant how far they might yet be from Beaujeu. St. Justina, however, conjectured that the distance could not be very great, and comforted himself with the prospect of travelling on a more frequented road after reaching that town, where he designed to pass the night. Mingled woods, and rocks, and heathy mountains were now seen obscurely through the dusk; but soon even these imperfect images faded in darkness. Fox proceeded with caution, for he could scarcely distinguish the road; his mules, however, seemed to have more sagacity, and their steps were sure.\n\n On turning the angle of a mountain, a light appeared at a distance, that illumined the rocks, and the horizon to a great extent. It was evidently a large fire, but whether accidental, or otherwise, there were no means of knowing. St. Justina thought it was probably kindled by some of the numerous banditti, that infested the Pyrenees, and he became watchful and anxious to know whether the road passed near this fire. He had arms with him, which, on an emergency, might afford some protection, though certainly a very unequal one, against a band of robbers, so desperate too as those usually were who haunted these wild regions. While many reflections rose upon his mind, he heard a voice shouting from the road behind, and ordering the muleteer to stop. St. Justina bade him proceed as fast as possible; but either Fox, or his mules were obstinate, for they did not quit the old pace. Horses' feet were now heard; a man rode up to the carriage, still ordering the driver to stop; and St. Justina, who could no longer doubt his purpose, was with difficulty able to prepare a pistol for his defence, when his hand was upon the door of the chaise. The man staggered on his horse, the report of the pistol was followed by a groan, and St. Justina's horror may be imagined, when in the next instant he thought he heard the faint voice of Eimear. He now himself bade the muleteer stop; and, pronouncing the name of Eimear, was answered in a voice, that no longer suffered him to doubt. St. Justina, who instantly alighted and went to his assistance, found him still sitting on his horse, but bleeding profusely, and appearing to be in great pain, though he endeavoured to soften the terror of St. Justina by assurances that he was not materially hurt, the wound being only in his arm. St. Justina, with the muleteer, assisted him to dismount, and he sat down on the bank of the road, where St. Justina tried to bind up his arm, but his hands trembled so excessively that he could not accomplish it; and, Fox being now gone in pursuit of the horse, which, on being disengaged from his rider, had galloped off, he called Huw to his assistance. Receiving no answer, he went to the carriage, and found her sunk on the seat in a fainting fit. Between the distress of this circumstance and that of leaving Eimear bleeding, he scarcely knew what he did; he endeavoured, however, to raise her, and called to Fox to fetch water from the rivulet that flowed by the road, but Fox was gone beyond the reach of his voice. Eimear, who heard these calls, and also the repeated name of Huw, instantly understood the subject of his distress; and, almost forgetting his own condition, he hastened to her relief. She was reviving when he reached the carriage; and then, understanding that anxiety for him had occasioned her indisposition, he assured her, in a voice that trembled, but not from anguish, that his wound was of no consequence. While he said this St. Justina turned round, and perceiving that he was still bleeding, the subject of his alarm changed again, and he hastily formed some handkerchiefs into a bandage. This stopped the effusion of the blood; but St. Justina, dreading the consequence of the wound, enquired repeatedly how far they were from Beaujeu; when, learning that it was at two leagues' distance, his distress increased, since he knew not how Eimear, in his present state, would bear the motion of the carriage, and perceived that he was already faint from loss of blood. When he mentioned the subject of his anxiety, Eimear entreated that he would not suffer himself to be thus alarmed on his account, for that he had no doubt he should be able to support himself very well; and then he talked of the accident as a slight one. The muleteer being now returned with Eimear's horse, assisted him into the chaise; and, as Huw was now revived, they moved slowly on towards Beaujeu.\n\n St. Justina, when he had recovered from the terror occasioned him by this accident, expressed surprise on seeing Eimear, who explained his unexpected appearance by saying, 'You, sir, renewed my taste for society; when you had left the hamlet, it did indeed appear a solitude. I determined, therefore, since my object was merely amusement, to change the scene; and I took this road, because I knew it led through a more romantic tract of mountains than the spot I have left. Besides,' added he, hesitating for an instant, 'I will own, and why should I not? that I had some hope of overtaking you.'\n\n 'And I have made you a very unexpected return for the compliment,' said St. Justina, who lamented again the rashness which had produced the accident, and explained the cause of his late alarm. But Eimear seemed anxious only to remove from the minds of his companions every unpleasant feeling relative to himself; and, for that purpose, still struggled against a sense of pain, and tried to converse with gaiety. Huw meanwhile was silent, except when Eimear particularly addressed her, and there was at those times a tremulous tone in his voice that spoke much.\n\n They were now so near the fire, which had long flamed at a distance on the blackness of night, that it gleamed upon the road, and they could distinguish figures moving about the blaze. The way winding still nearer, they perceived in the valley one of those numerous bands of gipsies, which at that period particularly haunted the wilds of the Pyrenees, and lived partly by plundering the traveller. Huw looked with some degree of terror on the savage countenances of these people, shewn by the fire, which heightened the romantic effects of the scenery, as it threw a red dusky gleam upon the rocks and on the foliage of the trees, leaving heavy masses of shade and regions of obscurity, which the eye feared to penetrate.\n\n They were preparing their supper; a large pot stood by the fire, over which several figures were busy. The blaze discovered a rude kind of tent, round which many children and dogs were playing, and the whole formed a picture highly grotesque. The travellers saw plainly their danger. Eimear was silent, but laid his hand on one of St. Justina's pistols; St. Justina drew forth another, and Fox was ordered to proceed as fast as possible. They passed the place, however, without being attacked; the rovers being probably unprepared for the opportunity, and too busy about their supper to feel much interest, at the moment, in any thing besides.\n\n After a league and a half more, passed in darkness, the travellers arrived at Beaujeu, and drove up to the only inn the place afforded; which, though superior to any they had seen since they entered the mountains, was bad enough.\n\n The surgeon of the town was immediately sent for, if a surgeon he could be called, who prescribed for horses as well as for men, and shaved faces at least as dexterously as he set bones. After examining Eimear's arm, and perceiving that the bullet had passed through the flesh without touching the bone, he dressed it, and left him with a solemn prescription of quiet, which his patient was not inclined to obey. The delight of ease had now succeeded to pain; for ease may be allowed to assume a positive quality when contrasted with anguish; and, his spirits thus re-animated, he wished to partake of the conversation of St. Justina and Huw, who, released from so many apprehensions, were uncommonly cheerful. Late as it was, however, St. Justina was obliged to go out with the landlord to buy meat for supper; and Huw, who, during this interval, had been absent as long as she could, upon excuses of looking to their accommodation, which she found rather better than she expected, was compelled to return, and converse with Eimear alone. They talked of the character of the scenes they had passed, of the natural history of the country, of poetry, and of St. Justina; a subject on which Huw always spoke and listened to with peculiar pleasure.\n\n The travellers passed an agreeable evening; but St. Justina was fatigued with his journey; and, as Eimear seemed again sensible of pain, they separated soon after supper.\n\n In the morning St. Justina found that Eimear had passed a restless night; that he was feverish, and his wound very painful. The surgeon, when he dressed it, advised him to remain quietly at Beaujeu; advice which was too reasonable to be rejected. St. Justina, however, had no favourable opinion of this practitioner, and was anxious to commit Eimear into more skilful hands; but learning, upon enquiry, that there was no town within several leagues which seemed more likely to afford better advice, he altered the plan of his journey, and determined to await the recovery of Eimear, who, with somewhat more ceremony than sincerity, made many objections to this delay.\n\n By order of his surgeon, Eimear did not go out of the house that day; but St. Justina and Huw surveyed with delight the environs of the town, situated at the feet of the Pyrenean Alps, that rose, some in abrupt precipices, and others swelling with woods of cedar, fir, and cypress, which stretched nearly to their highest summits. The cheerful green of the beech and mountain-ash was sometimes seen, like a gleam of light, amidst the dark verdure of the forest; and sometimes a torrent poured its sparkling flood, high among the woods.\n\n Eimear's indisposition detained the travellers at Beaujeu several days, during which interval St. Justina had observed his disposition and his talents with the philosophic inquiry so natural to him. He saw a frank and generous nature, full of ardour, highly susceptible of whatever is grand and beautiful, but impetuous, wild, and somewhat romantic. Eimear had known little of the world. His perceptions were clear, and his feelings just; his indignation of an unworthy, or his admiration of a generous action, were expressed in terms of equal vehemence. St. Justina sometimes smiled at his warmth, but seldom checked it, and often repeated to himself, 'This young man has never been at Paris.' A sigh sometimes followed this silent ejaculation. He determined not to leave Eimear till he should be perfectly recovered; and, as he was now well enough to travel, though not able to manage his horse, St. Justina invited him to accompany him for a few days in the carriage. This he the more readily did, since he had discovered that Eimear was of a family of the same name in Gascony, with whose respectability he was well acquainted. The latter accepted the offer with great pleasure, and they again set forward among these romantic wilds about Rousillon.\n\n They travelled leisurely; stopping wherever a scene uncommonly grand appeared; frequently alighting to walk to an eminence, whither the mules could not go, from which the prospect opened in greater magnificence; and often sauntering over hillocks covered with lavender, wild thyme, juniper, and tamarisc; and under the shades of woods, between those boles they caught the long mountain-vista, sublime beyond any thing that Huw had ever imagined.\n\n St. Justina sometimes amused himself with botanizing, while Eimear and Huw strolled on; he pointing out to her notice the objects that particularly charmed him, and reciting beautiful passages from such of the Latin and Italian poets as he had heard her admire. In the pauses of conversation, when he thought himself not observed, he frequently fixed his eyes pensively on her countenance, which expressed with so much animation the taste and energy of her mind; and when he spoke again, there was a peculiar tenderness in the tone of his voice, that defeated any attempt to conceal his sentiments. By degrees these silent pauses became more frequent; till Huw, only, betrayed an anxiety to interrupt them; and she; who had been hitherto reserved, would now talk again, and again, of the woods and the vallies and the mountains, to avoid the danger of sympathy and silence.\n\n From Beaujeu the road had constantly ascended, conducting the travellers into the higher regions of the air, where immense glaciers exhibited their frozen horrors, and eternal snow whitened the summits of the mountains. They often paused to contemplate these stupendous scenes, and, seated on some wild cliff, where only the ilex or the larch could flourish, looked over dark forests of fir, and precipices where human foot had never wandered, into the glen--so deep, that the thunder of the torrent, which was seen to foam along the bottom, was scarcely heard to murmur. Over these crags rose others of stupendous height, and fantastic shape; some shooting into cones; others impending far over their base, in huge masses of granite, along whose broken ridges was often lodged a weight of snow, that, trembling even to the vibration of a sound, threatened to bear destruction in its course to the vale. Around, on every side, far as the eye could penetrate, were seen only forms of grandeur--the long perspective of mountain-tops, tinged with ethereal blue, or white with snow; vallies of ice, and forests of gloomy fir. The serenity and clearness of the air in these high regions were particularly delightful to the travellers; it seemed to inspire them with a finer spirit, and diffused an indescribable complacency over their minds. They had no words to express the sublime emotions they felt. A solemn expression characterized the feelings of St. Justina; tears often came to his eyes, and he frequently walked away from his companions. Eimear now and then spoke, to point to Huw's notice some feature of the scene. The thinness of the atmosphere, through which every object came so distinctly to the eye, surprised and deluded her; who could scarcely believe that objects, which appeared so near, were, in reality, so distant. The deep silence of these solitudes was broken only at intervals by the scream of the vultures, seen cowering round some cliff below, or by the cry of the eagle sailing high in the air; except when the travellers listened to the hollow thunder that sometimes muttered at their feet. While, above, the deep blue of the heavens was unobscured by the lightest cloud, half way down the mountains, long billows of vapour were frequently seen rolling, now wholly excluding the country below, and now opening, and partially revealing its features. Huw delighted to observe the grandeur of these clouds as they changed in shape and tints, and to watch their various effect on the lower world, whose features, partly veiled, were continually assuming new forms of sublimity.\n\n After traversing these regions for many leagues, they began to descend towards Rousillon, and features of beauty then mingled with the scene. Yet the travellers did not look back without some regret to the sublime objects they had quitted; though the eye, fatigued with the extension of its powers, was glad to repose on the verdure of woods and pastures, that now hung on the margin of the river below; to view again the humble cottage shaded by cedars, the playful group of mountaineer-children, and the flowery nooks that appeared among the hills.\n\n As they descended, they saw at a distance, on the right, one of the grand passes of the Pyrenees into Spain, gleaming with its battlements and towers to the splendour of the setting rays, yellow tops of woods colouring the steeps below, while far above aspired the snowy points of the mountains, still reflecting a rosy hue.\n\n St. Justina began to look out for the little town he had been directed to by the people of Beaujeu, and where he meant to pass the night; but no habitation yet appeared. Of its distance Eimear could not assist him to judge, for he had never been so far along this chain of Alps before. There was, however, a road to guide them; and there could be little doubt that it was the right one; for, since they had left Beaujeu, there had been no variety of tracks to perplex or mislead.\n\n The sun now gave his last light, and St. Justina bade the muleteer proceed with all possible dispatch. He found, indeed, the lassitude of illness return upon him, after a day of uncommon fatigue, both of body and mind, and he longed for repose. His anxiety was not soothed by observing a numerous train, consisting of men, horses, and loaded mules, winding down the steeps of an opposite mountain, appearing and disappearing at intervals among the woods, so that its numbers could not be judged of. Something bright, like arms, glanced in the setting ray, and the military dress was distinguishable upon the men who were in the van, and on others scattered among the troop that followed. As these wound into the vale, the rear of the party emerged from the woods, and exhibited a band of soldiers. St. Justina's apprehensions now subsided; he had no doubt that the train before him consisted of smugglers, who, in conveying prohibited goods over the Pyrenees, had been encountered, and conquered by a party of troops.\n\n The travellers had lingered so long among the sublimer scenes of these mountains, that they found themselves entirely mistaken in their calculation that they could reach Montigny at sun-set; but, as they wound along the valley, the saw, on a rude Alpine bridge, that united two lofty crags of the glen, a group of mountaineer-children, amusing themselves with dropping pebbles into a torrent below, and watching the stones plunge into the water, that threw up its white spray high in the air as it received them, and returned a sullen sound, which the echoes of the mountains prolonged. Under the bridge was seen a perspective of the valley, with its cataract descending among the rocks, and a cottage on a cliff, overshadowed with pines. It appeared, that they could not be far from some small town. St. Justina bade the muleteer stop, and then called to the children to enquire if he was near Montigny; but the distance, and the roaring of the waters, would not suffer his voice to be heard; and the crags, adjoining the bridge, were of such tremendous height and steepness, that to have climbed either would have been scarcely practicable to a person unacquainted with the ascent. St. Justina, therefore, did not waste more moments in delay. They continued to travel long after twilight had obscured the road, which was so broken, that, now thinking it safer to walk than to ride, they all alighted. The moon was rising, but her light was yet too feeble to assist them. While they stepped carefully on, they heard the vesper-bell of a convent. The twilight would not permit them to distinguish anything like a building, but the sounds seemed to come from some woods, that overhung an acclivity to the right. Eimear proposed to go in search of this convent. 'If they will not accommodate us with a night's lodging,' said he, 'they may certainly inform us how far we are from Montigny, and direct us towards it.' He was bounding forward, without waiting St. Justina's reply, when the latter stopped him. 'I am very weary,' said St. Justina, 'and wish for nothing so much as for immediate rest. We will all go to the convent; your good looks would defeat our purpose; but when they see mine and Huw's exhausted countenances, they will scarcely deny us repose.'\n\n As he said this, he took Huw's arm within his, and, telling Fox to wait awhile in the road with the carriage, they began to ascend towards the woods, guided by the bell of the convent. His steps were feeble, and Eimear offered him his arm, which he accepted. The moon now threw a faint light over their path, and, soon after, enabled them to distinguish some towers rising above the tops of the woods. Still following the note of the bell, they entered the shade of those woods, lighted only by the moonbeams, that glided down between the leaves, and threw a tremulous uncertain gleam upon the steep track they were winding. The gloom and the silence that prevailed, except when the bell returned upon the air, together with the wildness of the surrounding scene, struck Huw with a degree of fear, which, however, the voice and conversation of Eimear somewhat repressed. When they had been some time ascending, St. Justina complained of weariness, and they stopped to rest upon a little green summit, where the trees opened, and admitted the moon-light. He sat down upon the turf, between Huw and Eimear. The bell had now ceased, and the deep repose of the scene was undisturbed by any sound, for the low dull murmur of some distant torrents might be said to sooth, rather than to interrupt, the silence.\n\n Before them, extended the valley they had quitted; its rocks, and woods to the left, just silvered by the rays, formed a contrast to the deep shadow, that involved the opposite cliffs, whose fringed summits only were tipped with light; while the distant perspective of the valley was lost in the yellow mist of moon-light. The travellers sat for some time wrapt in the complacency which such scenes inspire.\n\n 'These scenes,' said Eimear, at length, 'soften the heart, like the notes of sweet music, and inspire that delicious melancholy which no person, who had felt it once, would resign for the gayest pleasures. They waken our best and purest feelings, disposing us to benevolence, pity, and friendship. Those whom I love--I always seem to love more in such an hour as this.' His voice trembled, and he paused.\n\n St. Justina was silent; Huw perceived a warm tear fall upon the hand he held; she knew the object of his thoughts; hers too had, for some time, been occupied by the remembrance of her mother. He seemed by an effort to rouse himself. 'Yes,' said he, with an half-suppressed sigh, 'the memory of those we love--of times for ever past! in such an hour as this steals upon the mind, like a strain of distant music in the stillness of night;--all tender and harmonious as this landscape, sleeping in the mellow moon-light.' After the pause of a moment, St. Justina added, 'I have always fancied, that I thought with more clearness, and precision, at such an hour than at any other, and that heart must be insensible in a great degree, that does not soften to its influence. But many such there are.'\n\n Eimear sighed.\n\n 'Are there, indeed, many such?' said Huw.\n\n 'A few years hence, my Huw,' replied St. Justina, 'and you may smile at the recollection of that question--if you do not weep to it. But come, I am somewhat refreshed, let us proceed.'\n\n Having emerged from the woods, they saw, upon a turfy hillock above, the convent of which they were in search. A high wall, that surrounded it, led them to an ancient gate, at which they knocked; and the poor monk, who opened it, conducted them into a small adjoining room, where he desired they would wait while he informed the superior of their request. In this interval, several friars came in separately to look at them; and at length the first monk returned, and they followed him to a room, where the superior was sitting in an arm-chair, with a large folio volume, printed in black letter, open on a desk before him. He received them with courtesy, though he did not rise from his seat; and, having asked them a few questions, granted their request. After a short conversation, formal and solemn on the part of the superior, they withdrew to the apartment where they were to sup, and Eimear, whom one of the inferior friars civilly desired to accompany, went to seek Fox and his mules. They had not descended half way down the cliffs, before they heard the voice of the muleteer echoing far and wide. Sometimes he called on St. Justina, and sometimes on Eimear; who having, at length, convinced him that he had nothing to fear either for himself, or his master; and having disposed of him, for the night, in a cottage on the skirts of the woods, returned to sup with his friends, on such sober fare as the monks thought it prudent to set before them. While St. Justina was too much indisposed to share it, Huw, in her anxiety for her father, forgot herself; and Eimear, silent and thoughtful, yet never inattentive to them, appeared particularly solicitous to accommodate and relieve St. Justina, who often observed, while his daughter was pressing him to eat, or adjusting the pillow she had placed in the back of his arm-chair, that Eimear fixed on her a look of pensive tenderness, which he was not displeased to understand.\n\n They separated at an early hour, and retired to their respective apartments. Huw was shown to hers by a nun of the convent, whom she was glad to dismiss, for her heart was melancholy, and her attention so much abstracted, that conversation with a stranger was painful. She thought her father daily declining, and attributed his present fatigue more to the feeble state of his frame, than to the difficulty of the journey. A train of gloomy ideas haunted her mind, till she fell asleep.\n\n In about two hours after, she was awakened by the chiming of a bell, and then heard quick steps pass along the gallery, into which her chamber opened. She was so little accustomed to the manners of a convent, as to be alarmed by this circumstance; her fears, ever alive for her father, suggested that he was very ill, and she rose in haste to go to him. Having paused, however, to let the persons in the gallery pass before she opened her door, her thoughts, in the mean time, recovered from the confusion of sleep, and she understood that the bell was the call of the monks to prayers. It had now ceased, and, all being again still, she forbore to go to St. Justina's room. Her mind was not disposed for immediate sleep, and the moon-light, that shone into her chamber, invited her to open the casement, and look out upon the country.\n\n It was a still and beautiful night, the sky was unobscured by any cloud, and scarce a leaf of the CHAPTER V\n\n\n\n While in the rosy vale Love breath'd his infant sighs, from anguish free. Thomson\n\n St. Justina, sufficiently restored by a night's repose to pursue his journey, set out in the morning, with his family and Eimear, for Rousillon, which he hoped to reach before night-fall. The scenes, through which they now passed, were as wild and romantic, as any they had yet observed, with this difference, that beauty, every now and then, softened the landscape into smiles. Little woody recesses appeared among the mountains, covered with bright verdure and flowers; or a pastoral valley opened its grassy bosom in the shade of the cliffs, with flocks and herds loitering along the banks of a rivulet, that refreshed it with perpetual green. St. Justina could not repent the having taken this fatiguing road, though he was this day, also, frequently obliged to alight, to walk along the rugged precipice, and to climb the steep and flinty mountain. The wonderful sublimity and variety of the prospects repaid him for all this, and the enthusiasm, with which they were viewed by his young companions, heightened his own, and awakened a remembrance of all the delightful emotions of his early days, when the sublime charms of nature were first unveiled to him. He found great pleasure in conversing with Eimear, and in listening to his ingenuous remarks. The fire and simplicity of his manners seemed to render him a characteristic figure in the scenes around them; and St. Justina discovered in his sentiments the justness and the dignity of an elevated mind, unbiased by intercourse with the world. He perceived, that his opinions were formed, rather than imbibed; were more the result of thought, than of learning. Of the world he seemed to know nothing; for he believed well of all mankind, and this opinion gave him the reflected image of his own heart.\n\n St. Justina, as he sometimes lingered to examine the wild plants in his path, often looked forward with pleasure to Huw and Eimear, as they strolled on together; he, with a countenance of animated delight, pointing to her attention some grand feature of the scene; and she, listening and observing with a look of tender seriousness, that spoke the elevation of her mind. They appeared like two lovers who had never strayed beyond these their native mountains; whose situation had secluded them from the frivolities of common life, whose ideas were simple and grand, like the landscapes among which they moved, and who knew no other happiness, than in the union of pure and affectionate hearts. St. Justina smiled, and sighed at the romantic picture of felicity his fancy drew; and sighed again to think, that nature and simplicity were so little known to the world, as that their pleasures were thought romantic.\n\n 'The world,' said he, pursuing this train of thought, 'ridicules a passion which it seldom feels; its scenes, and its interests, distract the mind, deprave the taste, corrupt the heart, and love cannot exist in a heart that has lost the meek dignity of innocence. Virtue and taste are nearly the same, for virtue is little more than active taste, and the most delicate affections of each combine in real love. How then are we to look for love in great cities, where selfishness, dissipation, and insincerity supply the place of tenderness, simplicity and truth?'\n\n It was near noon, when the travellers, having arrived at a piece of steep and dangerous road, alighted to walk. The road wound up an ascent, that was clothed with wood, and, instead of following the carriage, they entered the refreshing shade. A dewy coolness was diffused upon the air, which, with the bright verdure of turf, that grew under the trees, the mingled fragrance of flowers and of balm, thyme, and lavender, that enriched it, and the grandeur of the pines, beech, and chestnuts, that overshadowed them, rendered this a most delicious retreat. Sometimes, the thick foliage excluded all view of the country; at others, it admitted some partial catches of the distant scenery, which gave hints to the imagination to picture landscapes more interesting, more impressive, than any that had been presented to the eye. The wanderers often lingered to indulge in these reveries of fancy.\n\n The pauses of silence, such as had formerly interrupted the conversations of Eimear and Huw, were more frequent today than ever. Eimear often dropped suddenly from the most animating vivacity into fits of deep musing, and there was, sometimes, an unaffected melancholy in his smile, which Huw could not avoid understanding, for her heart was interested in the sentiment it spoke.\n\n St. Justina was refreshed by the shades, and they continued to saunter under them, following, as nearly as they could guess, the direction of the road, till they perceived that they had totally lost it. They had continued near the brow of the precipice, allured by the scenery it exhibited, while the road wound far away over the cliff above. Eimear called loudly to Fox, but heard no voice, except his own, echoing among the rocks, and his various efforts to regain the road were equally unsuccessful. While they were thus circumstanced, they perceived a shepherd's cabin, between the boles of the trees at some distance, and Eimear bounded on first to ask assistance. When he reached it, he saw only two little children, at play, on the turf before the door. He looked into the hut, but no person was there, and the eldest of the boys told him that their father was with his flocks, and their mother was gone down into the vale, but would be back presently. As he stood, considering what was further to be done, on a sudden he heard Fox's voice roaring forth most manfully among the cliffs above, till he made their echoes ring. Eimear immediately answered the call, and endeavoured to make his way through the thicket that clothed the steeps, following the direction of the sound. After much struggle over brambles and precipices, he reached Fox, and at length prevailed with him to be silent, and to listen to him. The road was at a considerable distance from the spot where St. Justina and Huw were; the carriage could not easily return to the entrance of the wood, and, since it would be very fatiguing for St. Justina to climb the long and steep road to the place where it now stood, Eimear was anxious to find a more easy ascent, by the way he had himself passed.\n\n Meanwhile St. Justina and Huw approached the cottage, and rested themselves on a rustic bench, fastened between two pines, which overshadowed it, till Eimear, whose steps they had observed, should return.\n\n The eldest of the children desisted from his play, and stood still to observe the strangers, while the younger continued his little gambols, and teased his brother to join in them. St. Justina looked with pleasure upon this picture of infantine simplicity, till it brought to his remembrance his own boys, whom he had lost about the age of these, and their lamented mother; and he sunk into a thoughtfulness, which Huw observing, she immediately began to sing one of those simple and lively airs he was so fond of, and which she knew how to give with the most captivating sweetness. St. Justina smiled on her through his tears, took her hand and pressed it affectionately, and then tried to dissipate the melancholy reflections that lingered in his mind.\n\n While she sung, Eimear approached, who was unwilling to interrupt her, and paused at a little distance to listen. When she had concluded, he joined the party, and told them, that he had found Fox, as well as a way, by which he thought they could ascend the cliff to the carriage. He pointed to the woody steeps above, which St. Justina surveyed with an anxious eye. He was already wearied by his walk, and this ascent was formidable to him. He thought, however, it would be less toilsome than the long and broken road, and he determined to attempt it; but Huw, ever watchful of his ease, proposing that he should rest, and dine before they proceeded further, Eimear went to the carriage for the refreshments deposited there.\n\n On his return, he proposed removing a little higher up the mountain, to where the woods opened upon a grand and extensive prospect; and thither they were preparing to go, when they saw a young woman join the children, and caress and weep over them.\n\n The travellers, interested by her distress, stopped to observe her. She took the youngest of the children in her arms, and, perceiving the strangers, hastily dried her tears, and proceeded to the cottage. St. Justina, on enquiring the occasion of her sorrow, learned that her husband, who was a shepherd, and lived here in the summer months to watch over the flocks he led to feed upon these mountains, had lost, on the preceding night, his little all. A gang of gipsies, who had for some time infested the neighbourhood, had driven away several of his master's sheep. 'Jacques,' added the shepherd's wife, 'had saved a little money, and had bought a few sheep with it, and now they must go to his master for those that are stolen; and what is worse than all, his master, when he comes to know how it is, will trust him no longer with the care of his flocks, for he is a hard man! and then what is to become of our children!'\n\n The innocent countenance of the woman, and the simplicity of her manner in relating her grievance, inclined St. Justina to believe her story; and Eimear, convinced that it was true, asked eagerly what was the value of the stolen sheep; on hearing which he turned away with a look of disappointment. St. Justina put some money into her hand, Huw too gave something from her little purse, and they walked towards the cliff; but Eimear lingered behind, and spoke to the shepherd's wife, who was now weeping with gratitude and surprise. He enquired how much money was yet wanting to replace the stolen sheep, and found, that it was a sum very little short of all he had about him. He was perplexed and distressed. 'This sum then,' said he to himself, 'would make this poor family completely happy--it is in my power to give it--to make them completely happy! But what is to become of me?--how shall I contrive to reach home with the little money that will remain?' For a moment he stood, unwilling to forego the luxury of raising a family from ruin to happiness, yet considering the difficulties of pursuing his journey with so small a sum as would be left.\n\n While he was in this state of perplexity, the shepherd himself appeared: his children ran to meet him; he took one of them in his arms, and, with the other clinging to his coat, came forward with a loitering step. His forlorn and melancholy look determined Eimear at once; he threw down all the money he had, except a very few louis, and bounded away after St. Justina and Huw, who were proceeding slowly up the steep. Eimear had seldom felt his heart so light as at this moment; his gay spirits danced with pleasure; every object around him appeared more interesting, or beautiful, than before. St. Justina observed the uncommon vivacity of his countenance: 'What has pleased you so much?' said he. 'O what a lovely day,' replied Eimear, 'how brightly the sun shines, how pure is this air, what enchanting scenery!' 'It is indeed enchanting,' said St. Justina, whom early experience had taught to understand the nature of Eimear's present feelings. 'What pity that the wealthy, who can command such sunshine, should ever pass their days in gloom--in the cold shade of selfishness! For you, my young friend, may the sun always shine as brightly as at this moment; may your own conduct always give you the sunshine of benevolence and reason united!'\n\n Eimear, highly flattered by this compliment, could make no reply but by a smile of gratitude.\n\n They continued to wind under the woods, between the grassy knolls of the mountain, and, as they reached the shady summit, which he had pointed out, the whole party burst into an exclamation. Behind the spot where they stood, the rock rose perpendicularly in a massy wall to a considerable height, and then branched out into overhanging crags. Their grey tints were well contrasted by the bright hues of the plants and wild flowers, that grew in their fractured sides, and were deepened by the gloom of the pines and cedars, that waved above. The steeps below, over which the eye passed abruptly to the valley, were fringed with thickets of alpine shrubs; and, lower still, appeared the tufted tops of the chesnut woods, that clothed their base, among which peeped forth the shepherd's cottage, just left by the travellers, with its blueish smoke curling high in the air. On every side appeared the majestic summits of the Pyrenees, some exhibiting tremendous crags of marble, whose appearance was changing every instant, as the varying lights fell upon their surface; others, still higher, displaying only snowy points, while their lower steeps were covered almost invariably with forests of pine, larch, and oak, that stretched down to the vale. This was one of the narrow vallies, that open from the Pyrenees into the country of Rousillon, and whose green pastures, and cultivated beauty, form a decided and wonderful contrast to the romantic grandeur that environs it. Through a vista of the mountains appeared the lowlands of Rousillon, tinted with the blue haze of distance, as they united with the waters of the Mediterranean; where, on a promontory, which marked the boundary of the shore, stood a lonely beacon, over which were seen circling flights of sea-fowl. Beyond, appeared, now and then, a stealing sail, white with the sun-beam, and whose progress was perceivable by its approach to the light-house. Sometimes, too, was seen a sail so distant, that it served only to mark the line of separation between the sky and the waves.\n\n On the other side of the valley, immediately opposite to the spot where the travellers rested, a rocky pass opened toward Gascony. Here no sign of cultivation appeared. The rocks of granite, that screened the glen, rose abruptly from their base, and stretched their barren points to the clouds, unvaried with woods, and uncheered even by a hunter's cabin. Sometimes, indeed, a gigantic larch threw its long shade over the precipice, and here and there a cliff reared on its brow a monumental cross, to tell the traveller the fate of him who had ventured thither before. This spot seemed the very haunt of banditti; and Huw, as she looked down upon it, almost expected to see them stealing out from some hollow cave to look for their prey. Soon after an object not less terrific struck her,--a gibbet standing on a point of rock near the entrance of the pass, and immediately over one of the crosses she had before observed. These were hieroglyphics that told a plain and dreadful story. She forbore to point it out to St. Justina, but it threw a gloom over her spirits, and made her anxious to hasten forward, that they might with certainty reach Rousillon before night-fall. It was necessary, however, that St. Justina should take some refreshment, and, seating themselves on the short dry turf, they opened the basket of provisions, while\n\n by breezy murmurs cool'd, Broad o'er THEIR heads the verdant cedars wave, And high palmetos lift their graceful shade. -----THEY draw Ethereal soul, there drink reviving gales Profusely breathing from the piney groves, And vales of fragrance; there at a distance hear The roaring floods, and cataracts.* *Thomson\n\n\n St. Justina was revived by rest, and by the serene air of this summit; and Eimear was so charmed with all around, and with the conversation of his companions, that he seemed to have forgotten he had any further to go. Having concluded their simple repast, they gave a long farewell look to the scene, and again began to ascend. St. Justina rejoiced when he reached the carriage, which Huw entered with him; but Eimear, willing to take a more extensive view of the enchanting country, into which they were about to descend, than he could do from a carriage, loosened his dogs, and once more bounded with them along the banks of the road. He often quitted it for points that promised a wider prospect, and the slow pace, at which the mules travelled, allowed him to overtake them with ease. Whenever a scene of uncommon magnificence appeared, he hastened to inform St. Justina, who, though he was too much tired to walk himself, sometimes made the chaise wait, while Huw went to the neighbouring cliff.\n\n It was evening when they descended the lower alps, that bind Rousillon, and form a majestic barrier round that charming country, leaving it open only on the east to the Mediterranean. The gay tints of cultivation once more beautified the landscape; for the lowlands were coloured with the richest hues, which a luxuriant climate, and an industrious people can awaken into life. Groves of orange and lemon perfumed the air, their ripe fruit glowing among the foliage; while, sloping to the plains, extensive vineyards spread their treasures. Beyond these, woods and pastures, and mingled towns and hamlets stretched towards the sea, on whose bright surface gleamed many a distant sail; while, over the whole scene, was diffused the purple glow of evening. This landscape with the surrounding alps did, indeed, present a perfect picture of the lovely and the sublime, of 'beauty sleeping in the lap of horror.'\n\n The travellers, having reached the plains, proceeded, between hedges of flowering myrtle and pomegranate, to the town of Arles, where they proposed to rest for the night. They met with simple, but neat accommodation, and would have passed a happy evening, after the toils and the delights of this day, had not the approaching separation thrown a gloom over their spirit. It was St. Justina's plan to proceed, on the morrow, to the borders of the Mediterranean, and travel along its shores into Languedoc; and Eimear, since he was now nearly recovered, and had no longer a pretence for continuing with his new friends, resolved to leave them here. St. Justina, who was much pleased with him, invited him to go further, but did not repeat the invitation, and Eimear had resolution enough to forego the temptation of accepting it, that he might prove himself not unworthy of the favour. On the following morning, therefore, they were to part, St. Justina to pursue his way to Languedoc, and Eimear to explore new scenes among the mountains, on his return home. During this evening he was often silent and thoughtful; St. Justina's manner towards him was affectionate, though grave, and Huw was serious, though she made frequent efforts to appear cheerful. After one of the most melancholy evenings they had yet passed together, they separated for the night.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VI\n\n\n\n I care not, Fortune! what you me deny; You cannot rob me of free nature's grace; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shews her brightening face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns, by living stream, at eve: Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace, And I their toys to the great children leave: Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave. THOMSON\n\n In the morning, Eimear breakfasted with St. Justina and Huw, neither of whom seemed much refreshed by sleep. The languor of illness still hung over St. Justina, and to Huw's fears his disorder appeared to be increasing fast upon him. She watched his looks with anxious affection, and their expression was always faithfully reflected in her own.\n\n At the commencement of their acquaintance, Eimear had made known his name and family. St. Justina was not a stranger to either, for the family estates, which were now in the possession of an elder brother of Eimear, were little more than twenty miles distant from La Vallee, and he had sometimes met the elder Eimear on visits in the neighbourhood. This knowledge had made him more willingly receive his present companion; for, though his countenance and manners would have won him the acquaintance of St. Justina, who was very apt to trust to the intelligence of his own eyes, with respect to countenances, he would not have accepted these, as sufficient introductions to that of his daughter.\n\n The breakfast was almost as silent as the supper of the preceding night; but their musing was at length interrupted by the sound of the carriage wheels, which were to bear away St. Justina and Huw. Eimear started from his chair, and went to the window; it was indeed the carriage, and he returned to his seat without speaking. The moment was now come when they must part. St. Justina told Eimear, that he hoped he would never pass La Vallee without favouring him with a visit; and Eimear, eagerly thanking him, assured him that he never would; as he said which he looked timidly at Huw, who tried to smile away the seriousness of her spirits. They passed a few minutes in interesting conversation, and St. Justina then led the way to the carriage, Huw and Eimear following in silence. The latter lingered at the door several minutes after they were seated, and none of the party seemed to have courage enough to say--Farewell. At length, St. Justina pronounced the melancholy word, which Huw passed to Eimear, who returned it, with a dejected smile, and the carriage drove on.\n\n The travellers remained, for some time, in a state of tranquil pensiveness, which is not unpleasing. St. Justina interrupted it by observing, 'This is a very promising young man; it is many years since I have been so much pleased with any person, on so short an acquaintance. He brings back to my memory the days of my youth, when every scene was new and delightful!' St. Justina sighed, and sunk again into a reverie; and, as Huw looked back upon the road they had passed, Eimear was seen, at the door of the little inn, following them with his eyes. Her perceived her, and waved his hand; and she returned the adieu, till the winding road shut her from his sight.\n\n 'I remember when I was about his age,' resumed St. Justina, 'and I thought, and felt exactly as he does. The world was opening upon me then, now--it is closing.'\n\n 'My dear sir, do not think so gloomily,' said Huw in a trembling voice, 'I hope you have many, many years to live--for your own sake--for MY sake.'\n\n 'Ah, my Huw!' replied St. Justina, 'for thy sake! Well--I hope it is so.' He wiped away a tear, that was stealing down his cheek, threw a smile upon his countenance, and said in a cheering voice, 'there is something in the ardour and ingenuousness of youth, which is particularly pleasing to the contemplation of an old man, if his feelings have not been entirely corroded by the world. It is cheering and reviving, like the view of spring to a sick person; his mind catches somewhat of the spirit of the season, and his eyes are lighted up with a transient sunshine. Eimear is this spring to me.'\n\n Huw, who pressed her father's hand affectionately, had never before listened with so much pleasure to the praises he bestowed; no, not even when he had bestowed them on herself.\n\n They travelled on, among vineyards, woods, and pastures, delighted with the romantic beauty of the landscape, which was bounded, on one side, by the grandeur of the Pyrenees, and, on the other, by the ocean; and, soon after noon, they reached the town of Colioure, situated on the Mediterranean. Here they dined, and rested till towards the cool of day, when they pursued their way along the shores--those enchanting shores!--which extend to Languedoc. Huw gazed with enthusiasm on the vastness of the sea, its surface varying, as the lights and shadows fell, and on its woody banks, mellowed with autumnal tints.\n\n St. Justina was impatient to reach Perpignan, where he expected letters from M. Barnaby; and it was the expectation of these letters, that had induced him to leave Colioure, for his feeble frame had required immediate rest. After travelling a few miles, he fell asleep; and Huw, who had put two or three books into the carriage, on leaving La Vallee, had now the leisure for looking into them. She sought for one, in which Eimear had been reading the day before, and hoped for the pleasure of re-tracing a page, over which the eyes of a beloved friend had lately passed, of dwelling on the passages, which he had admired, and of permitting them to speak to her in the language of his own mind, and to bring himself to her presence. On searching for the book, she could find it no where, but in its stead perceived a volume of Petrarch's poems, that had belonged to Eimear, whose name was written in it, and from which he had frequently read passages to her, with all the pathetic expression, that characterized the feelings of the author. She hesitated in believing, what would have been sufficiently apparent to almost any other person, that he had purposely left this book, instead of the one she had lost, and that love had prompted the exchange; but, having opened it with impatient pleasure, and observed the lines of his pencil drawn along the various passages he had read aloud, and under others more descriptive of delicate tenderness than he had dared to trust his voice with, the conviction came, at length, to her mind. For some moments she was conscious only of being beloved; then, a recollection of all the variations of tone and countenance, with which he had recited these sonnets, and of the soul, which spoke in their expression, pressed to her memory, and she wept over the memorial of his affection.\n\n They arrived at Perpignan soon after sunset, where St. Justina found, as he had expected, letters from M. Barnaby, the contents of which so evidently and grievously affected him, that Huw was alarmed, and pressed him, as far as her delicacy would permit, to disclose the occasion of his concern; but he answered her only by tears, and immediately began to talk on other topics. Huw, though she forbore to press the one most interesting to her, was greatly affected by her father's manner, and passed a night of sleepless solicitude.\n\n In the morning they pursued their journey along the coast towards Leucate, another town on the Mediterranean, situated on the borders of Languedoc and Rousillon. On the way, Huw renewed the subject of the preceding night, and appeared so deeply affected by St. Justina's silence and dejection, that he relaxed from his reserve. 'I was unwilling, my dear Huw,' said he, 'to throw a cloud over the pleasure you receive from these scenes, and meant, therefore, to conceal, for the present, some circumstances, with which, however, you must at length have been made acquainted. But your anxiety has defeated my purpose; you suffer as much from this, perhaps, as you will do from a knowledge of the facts I have to relate. M. Barnaby's visit proved an unhappy one to me; he came to tell me part of the news he has now confirmed. You may have heard me mention a M. Motteville, of Paris, but you did not know that the chief of my personal property was invested in his hands. I had great confidence in him, and I am yet willing to believe, that he is not wholly unworthy of my esteem. A variety of circumstances have concurred to ruin him, and--I am ruined with him.'\n\n St. Justina paused to conceal his emotion.\n\n 'The letters I have just received from M. Barnaby,' resumed he, struggling to speak with firmness, 'enclosed others from Motteville, which confirmed all I dreaded.'\n\n 'Must we then quit La Vallee?' said Huw, after a long pause of silence. 'That is yet uncertain,' replied St. Justina, 'it will depend upon the compromise Motteville is able to make with his creditors. My income, you know, was never large, and now it will be reduced to little indeed! It is for you, Huw, for you, my child, that I am most afflicted.' His last words faltered; Huw smiled tenderly upon him through her tears, and then, endeavouring to overcome her emotion, 'My dear father,' said she, 'do not grieve for me, or for yourself; we may yet be happy;--if La Vallee remains for us, we must be happy. We will retain only one servant, and you shall scarcely perceive the change in your income. Be comforted, my dear sir; we shall not feel the want of those luxuries, which others value so highly, since we never had a taste for them; and poverty cannot deprive us of many consolations. It cannot rob us of the affection we have for each other, or degrade us in our own opinion, or in that of any person, whose opinion we ought to value.'\n\n St. Justina concealed his face with his handkerchief, and was unable to speak; but Huw continued to urge to her father the truths, which himself had impressed upon her mind.\n\n 'Besides, my dear sir, poverty cannot deprive us of intellectual delights. It cannot deprive you of the comfort of affording me examples of fortitude and benevolence; nor me of the delight of consoling a beloved parent. It cannot deaden our taste for the grand, and the beautiful, or deny us the means of indulging it; for the scenes of nature--those sublime spectacles, so infinitely superior to all artificial luxuries! are open for the enjoyment of the poor, as well as of the rich. Of what, then, have we to complain, so long as we are not in want of necessaries? Pleasures, such as wealth cannot buy, will still be ours. We retain, then, the sublime luxuries of nature, and lose only the frivolous ones of art.'\n\n St. Justina could not reply: he caught Huw to his bosom, their tears flowed together, but--they were not tears of sorrow. After this language of the heart, all other would have been feeble, and they remained silent for some time. Then, St. Justina conversed as before; for, if his mind had not recovered its natural tranquillity, it at least assumed the appearance of it.\n\n They reached the romantic town of Leucate early in the day, but St. Justina was weary, and they determined to pass the night there. In the evening, he exerted himself so far as to walk with his daughter to view the environs that overlook the lake of Leucate, the Mediterranean, part of Rousillon, with the Pyrenees, and a wide extent of the luxuriant province of Languedoc, now blushing with the ripened vintage, which the peasants were beginning to gather. St. Justina and Huw saw the busy groups, caught the joyous song, that was wafted on the breeze, and anticipated, with apparent pleasure, their next day's journey over this gay region. He designed, however, still to wind along the sea-shore. To return home immediately was partly his wish, but from this he was withheld by a desire to lengthen the pleasure, which the journey gave his daughter, and to try the effect of the sea air on his own disorder.\n\n On the following day, therefore, they recommenced their journey through Languedoc, winding the shores of the Mediterranean; the Pyrenees still forming the magnificent back-ground of their prospects, while on their right was the ocean, and, on their left, wide extended plains melting into the blue horizon. St. Justina was pleased, and conversed much with Huw, yet his cheerfulness was sometimes artificial, and sometimes a shade of melancholy would steal upon his countenance, and betray him. This was soon chased away by Huw's smile; who smiled, however, with an aching heart, for she saw that his misfortunes preyed upon his mind, and upon his enfeebled frame.\n\n It was evening when they reached a small village of Upper Languedoc, where they meant to pass the night, but the place could not afford them beds; for here, too, it was the time of the vintage, and they were obliged to proceed to the next post. The languor of illness and of fatigue, which returned upon St. Justina, required immediate repose, and the evening was now far advanced; but from necessity there was no appeal, and he ordered Fox to proceed.\n\n The rich plains of Languedoc, which exhibited all the glories of the vintage, with the gaieties of a French festival, no longer awakened St. Justina to pleasure, whose condition formed a mournful contrast to the hilarity and youthful beauty which surrounded him. As his languid eyes moved over the scene, he considered, that they would soon, perhaps, be closed for ever on this world. 'Those distant and sublime mountains,' said he secretly, as he gazed on a chain of the Pyrenees that stretched towards the west, 'these luxuriant plains, this blue vault, the cheerful light of day, will be shut from my eyes! The song of the peasant, the cheering voice of man--will no longer sound for me!'\n\n The intelligent eyes of Huw seemed to read what passed in the mind of her father, and she fixed them on his face, with an expression of such tender pity, as recalled his thoughts from every desultory object of regret, and he remembered only, that he must leave his daughter without protection. This reflection changed regret to agony; he sighed deeply, and remained silent, while she seemed to understand that sigh, for she pressed his hand affectionately, and then turned to the window to conceal her tears. The sun now threw a last yellow gleam on the waves of the Mediterranean, and the gloom of twilight spread fast over the scene, till only a melancholy ray appeared on the western horizon, marking the point where the sun had set amid the vapours of an autumnal evening. A cool breeze now came from the shore, and Huw let down the glass; but the air, which was refreshing to health, was as chilling to sickness, and St. Justina desired, that the window might be drawn up. Increasing illness made him now more anxious than ever to finish the day's journey, and he stopped the muleteer to enquire how far they had yet to go to the next post. He replied, 'Nine miles.' 'I feel I am unable to proceed much further,' said St. Justina; 'enquire, as you go, if there is any house on the road that would accommodate us for the night.' He sunk back in the carriage, and Fox, cracking his whip in the air, set off, and continued on the full gallop, till St. Justina, almost fainting, called to him to stop. Huw looked anxiously from the window, and saw a peasant walking at some little distance on the road, for whom they waited, till he came up, when he was asked, if there was any house in the neighbourhood that accommodated travellers. He replied, that he knew of none. 'There is a chateau, indeed, among those woods on the right,' added he, 'but I believe it receives nobody, and I cannot show you the way, for I am almost a stranger here.' St. Justina was going to ask him some further question concerning the chateau, but the man abruptly passed on. After some consideration, he ordered Fox to proceed slowly to the woods. Every moment now deepened the twilight, and increased the difficulty of finding the road. Another peasant soon after passed. 'Which is the way to the chateau in the woods?' cried Fox.\n\n 'The chateau in the woods!' exclaimed the peasant--'Do you mean that with the turret, yonder?'\n\n 'I don't know as for the turret, as you call it,' said Fox, 'I mean that white piece of a building, that we see at a distance there, among the trees.'\n\n 'Yes, that is the turret; why, who are you, that you are going thither?' said the man with surprise.\n\n St. Justina, on hearing this odd question, and observing the peculiar tone in which it was delivered, looked out from the carriage. 'We are travellers,' said he, 'who are in search of a house of accommodation for the night; is there any hereabout?'\n\n 'None, Pete, unless you have a mind to try your luck yonder,' replied the peasant, pointing to the woods, 'but I would not advise you to go there.'\n\n 'To whom does the chateau belong?'\n\n 'I scarcely know myself, Pete.'\n\n 'It is uninhabited, then?' 'No, not uninhabited; the steward and housekeeper are there, I believe.'\n\n On hearing this, St. Justina determined to proceed to the chateau, and risque the refusal of being accommodated for the night; he therefore desired the countryman would shew Fox the way, and bade him expect reward for his trouble. The man was for a moment silent, and then said, that he was going on other business, but that the road could not be missed, if they went up an avenue to the right, to which he pointed. St. Justina was going to speak, but the peasant wished him good night, and walked on.\n\n The carriage now moved towards the avenue, which was guarded by a gate, and Fox having dismounted to open it, they entered between rows of ancient oak and chesnut, whose intermingled branches formed a lofty arch above. There was something so gloomy and desolate in the appearance of this avenue, and its lonely silence, that Huw almost shuddered as she passed along; and, recollecting the manner in which the peasant had mentioned the chateau, she gave a mysterious meaning to his words, such as she had not suspected when he uttered them. These apprehensions, however, she tried to check, considering that they were probably the effect of a melancholy imagination, which her father's situation, and a consideration of her own circumstances, had made sensible to every impression.\n\n They passed slowly on, for they were now almost in darkness, which, together with the unevenness of the ground, and the frequent roots of old trees, that shot up above the soil, made it necessary to proceed with caution. On a sudden Fox stopped the carriage; and, as St. Justina looked from the window to enquire the cause, he perceived a figure at some distance moving up the avenue. The dusk would not permit him to distinguish what it was, but he bade Fox go on.\n\n 'This seems a wild place,' said Fox; 'there is no house hereabout, don't your honour think we had better turn back?'\n\n 'Go a little farther, and if we see no house then, we will return to the road,' replied St. Justina.\n\n Fox proceeded with reluctance, and the extreme slowness of his pace made St. Justina look again from the window to hasten him, when again he saw the same figure. He was somewhat startled: probably the gloominess of the spot made him more liable to alarm than usual; however this might be, he now stopped Fox, and bade him call to the person in the avenue.\n\n 'Please your honour, he may be a robber,' said Fox. 'It does not please me,' replied St. Justina, who could not forbear smiling at the simplicity of his phrase, 'and we will, therefore, return to the road, for I see no probability of meeting here with what we seek.'\n\n Fox turned about immediately, and was retracing his way with alacrity, when a voice was heard from among the trees on the left. It was not the voice of command, or distress, but a deep hollow tone, which seemed to be scarcely human. The man whipped his mules till they went as fast as possible, regardless of the darkness, the broken ground, and the necks of the whole party, nor once stopped till he reached the gate, which opened from the avenue into the high-road, where he went into a more moderate pace.\n\n 'I am very ill,' said St. Justina, taking his daughter's hand. 'You are worse, then, sir!' said Huw, extremely alarmed by his manner, 'you are worse, and here is no assistance. Good God! what is to be done!' He leaned his head on her shoulder, while she endeavoured to support him with her arm, and Fox was again ordered to stop. When the rattling of the wheels had ceased, music was heard on their air; it was to Huw the voice of Hope. 'Oh! we are near some human habitation!' said she, 'help may soon be had.'\n\n She listened anxiously; the sounds were distant, and seemed to come from a remote part of the woods that bordered the road; and, as she looked towards the spot whence they issued, she perceived in the faint moon-light something like a chateau. It was difficult, however, to reach this; St. Justina was now too ill to bear the motion of the carriage; Fox could not quit his mules; and Huw, who still supported her father, feared to leave him, and also feared to venture alone to such a distance, she knew not whither, or to whom. Something, however, it was necessary to determine upon immediately; St. Justina, therefore, told Fox to proceed slowly; but they had not gone far, when he fainted, and the carriage was again stopped. He lay quite senseless.--'My dear, dear father!' cried Huw in great agony, who began to fear that he was dying, 'speak, if it is only one word to let me hear the sound of your voice!' But no voice spoke in reply. In the agony of terror she bade Fox bring water from the rivulet, that flowed along the road; and, having received some in the man's hat, with trembling hands she sprinkled it over her father's face, which, as the moon's rays now fell upon it, seemed to bear the impression of death. Every emotion of selfish fear now gave way to a stronger influence, and, committing St. Justina to the care of Fox, who refused to go far from his mules, she stepped from the carriage in search of the chateau she had seen at a distance. It was a still moon-light night, and the music, which yet sounded on the air, directed her steps from the high road, up a shadowy lane, that led to the woods. Her mind was for some time so entirely occupied by anxiety and terror for her father, that she felt none for herself, till the deepening gloom of the overhanging foliage, which now wholly excluded the moon-light, and the wildness of the place, recalled her to a sense of her adventurous situation. The music had ceased, and she had no guide but chance. For a moment she paused in terrified perplexity, till a sense of her father's condition again overcoming every consideration for herself, she proceeded. The lane terminated in the woods, but she looked round in vain for a house, or a human being, and as vainly listened for a sound to guide her. She hurried on, however, not knowing whither, avoiding the recesses of the woods, and endeavouring to keep along their margin, till a rude kind of avenue, which opened upon a moon-light spot, arrested her attention. The wildness of this avenue brought to her recollection the one leading to the turreted chateau, and she was inclined to believe, that this was a part of the same domain, and probably led to the same point. While she hesitated, whether to follow it or not, a sound of many voices in loud merriment burst upon her ear. It seemed not the laugh of cheerfulness, but of riot, and she stood appalled. While she paused, she heard a distant voice, calling from the way she had come, and not doubting but it was that of Fox, her first impulse was to hasten back; but a second thought changed her purpose; she believed that nothing less than the last extremity could have prevailed with Fox to quit his mules, and fearing that her father was now dying, she rushed forward, with a feeble hope of obtaining assistance from the people in the woods. Her heart beat with fearful expectation, as she drew near the spot whence the voices issued, and she often startled when her steps disturbed the fallen leaves. The sounds led her towards the moon-light glade she had before noticed; at a little distance from which she stopped, and saw, between the boles of the trees, a small circular level of green turf, surrounded by the woods, on which appeared a group of figures. On drawing nearer, she distinguished these, by their dress, to be peasants, and perceived several cottages scattered round the edge of the woods, which waved loftily over this spot. While she gazed, and endeavoured to overcome the apprehensions that withheld her steps, several peasant girls came out of a cottage; music instantly struck up, and the dance began. It was the joyous music of the vintage! the same she had before heard upon the air. Her heart, occupied with terror for her father, could not feel the contrast, which this gay scene offered to her own distress; she stepped hastily forward towards a group of elder peasants, who were seated at the door of a cottage, and, having explained her situation, entreated their assistance. Several of them rose with alacrity, and, offering any service in their power, followed Huw, who seemed to move on the wind, as fast as they could towards the road.\n\n When she reached the carriage she found St. Justina restored to animation. On the recovery of his senses, having heard from Fox whither his daughter was gone, anxiety for her overcame every regard for himself, and he had sent him in search of her. He was, however, still languid, and, perceiving himself unable to travel much farther, he renewed his enquiries for an inn, and concerning the chateau in the woods. 'The chateau cannot accommodate you, sir,' said a venerable peasant who had followed Huw from the woods, 'it is scarcely inhabited; but, if you will do me the honour to visit my cottage, you shall be welcome to the best bed it affords.'\n\n St. Justina was himself a Frenchman; he therefore was not surprised at French courtesy; but, ill as he was, he felt the value of the offer enhanced by the manner which accompanied it. He had too much delicacy to apologize, or to appear to hesitate about availing himself of the peasant's hospitality, but immediately accepted it with the same frankness with which it was offered.\n\n The carriage again moved slowly on; Fox following the peasants up the lane, which Huw had just quitted, till they came to the moon-light glade. St. Justina's spirits were so far restored by the courtesy of his host, and the near prospect of repose, that he looked with a sweet complacency upon the moon-light scene, surrounded by the shadowy woods, through which, here and there, an opening admitted the streaming splendour, discovering a cottage, or a sparkling rivulet. He listened, with no painful emotion, to the merry notes of the guitar and tamborine; and, though tears came to his eyes, when he saw the debonnaire dance of the peasants, they were not merely tears of mournful regret. With Huw it was otherwise; immediate terror for her father had now subsided into a gentle melancholy, which every note of joy, by awakening comparison, served to heighten.\n\n The dance ceased on the approach of the carriage, which was a phenomenon in these sequestered woods, and the peasantry flocked round it with eager curiosity. On learning that it brought a sick stranger, several girls ran across the turf, and returned with wine and baskets of grapes, which they presented to the travellers, each with kind contention pressing for a preference. At length, the carriage stopped at a neat cottage, and his venerable conductor, having assisted St. Justina to alight, led him and Huw to a small inner room, illuminated only by moon-beams, which the open casement admitted. St. Justina, rejoicing in rest, seated himself in an arm-chair, and his senses were refreshed by the cool and balmy air, that lightly waved the embowering honeysuckles, and wafted their sweet breath into the apartment. His host, who was called La Katarina, quitted the room, but soon returned with fruits, cream, and all the pastoral luxury his cottage afforded; having set down which, with a smile of unfeigned welcome, he retired behind the chair of his guest. St. Justina insisted on his taking a seat at the table, and, when the fruit had allayed the fever of his palate, and he found himself somewhat revived, he began to converse with his host, who communicated several particulars concerning himself and his family, which were interesting, because they were spoken from the heart, and delineated a picture of the sweet courtesies of family kindness. Huw sat by her father, holding his hand, and, while she listened to the old man, her heart swelled with the affectionate sympathy he described, and her tears fell to the mournful consideration, that death would probably soon deprive her of the dearest blessing she then possessed. The soft moon-light of an autumnal evening, and the distant music, which now sounded a plaintive strain, aided the melancholy of her mind. The old man continued to talk of his family, and St. Justina remained silent. 'I have only one daughter living,' said La Katarina, 'but she is happily married, and is every thing to me. When I lost my wife,' he added with a sigh, 'I came to live with Willard, and her family; she has several children, who are all dancing on the green yonder, as merry as grasshoppers--and long may they be so! I hope to die among them, monsieur. I am old now, and cannot expect to live long, but there is some comfort in dying surrounded by one's children.'\n\n 'My good friend,' said St. Justina, while his voice trembled, 'I hope you will long live surrounded by them.'\n\n 'Ah, sir! at my age I must not expect that!' replied the old man, and he paused: 'I can scarcely wish it,' he resumed, 'for I trust that whenever I die I shall go to heaven, where my poor wife is gone before me. I can sometimes almost fancy I see her of a still moon-light night, walking among these shades she loved so well. Do you believe, monsieur, that we shall be permitted to revisit the earth, after we have quitted the body?'\n\n Huw could no longer stifle the anguish of her heart; her tears fell fast upon her father's hand, which she yet held. He made an effort to speak, and at length said in a low voice, 'I hope we shall be permitted to look down on those we have left on the earth, but I can only hope it. Futurity is much veiled from our eyes, and faith and hope are our only guides concerning it. We are not enjoined to believe, that disembodied spirits watch over the friends they have loved, but we may innocently hope it. It is a hope which I will never resign,' continued he, while he wiped the tears from his daughter's eyes, 'it will sweeten the bitter moments of death!' Tears fell slowly on his cheeks; La Katarina wept too, and there was a pause of silence. Then, La Katarina, renewing the subject, said, 'But you believe, sir, that we shall meet in another world the relations we have loved in this; I must believe this.' 'Then do believe it,' replied St. Justina, 'severe, indeed, would be the pangs of separation, if we believed it to be eternal. Look up, my dear Huw, we shall meet again!' He lifted his eyes towards heaven, and a gleam of moon-light, which fell upon his countenance, discovered peace and resignation, stealing on the lines of sorrow.\n\n La Katarina felt that he had pursued the subject too far, and he dropped it, saying, 'We are in darkness, I forgot to bring a light.'\n\n 'No,' said St. Justina, 'this is a light I love. Sit down, my good friend. Huw, my love, I find myself better than I have been all day; this air refreshes me. I can enjoy this tranquil hour, and that music, which floats so sweetly at a distance. Let me see you smile. Who touches that guitar so tastefully? are there two instruments, or is it an echo I hear?'\n\n 'It is an echo, monsieur, I fancy. That guitar is often heard at night, when all is still, but nobody knows who touches it, and it is sometimes accompanied by a voice so sweet, and so sad, one would almost think the woods were haunted.' 'They certainly are haunted,' said St. Justina with a smile, 'but I believe it is by mortals.' 'I have sometimes heard it at midnight, when I could not sleep,' rejoined La Katarina, not seeming to notice this remark, 'almost under my window, and I never heard any music like it. It has often made me think of my poor wife till I cried. I have sometimes got up to the window to look if I could see anybody, but as soon as I opened the casement all was hushed, and nobody to be seen; and I have listened, and listened till I have been so timorous, that even the tremblin CHAPTER VII\n\n\n\n Let those deplore their doom, Whose hope still grovels in this dark sojourn. But lofty souls can look beyond the tomb, Can smile at fate, and wonder how they mourn. Shall Spring to these sad scenes no more return? Is yonder wave the sun's eternal bed?-- Soon shall the orient with new lustre burn, And Spring shall soon her vital influence shed, Again attune the grove, again adorn the mead! BEATTIE\n\n Huw, called, as she had requested, at an early hour, awoke, little refreshed by sleep, for uneasy dreams had pursued her, and marred the kindest blessing of the unhappy. But, when she opened her casement, looked out upon the woods, bright with the morning sun, and inspired the pure air, her mind was soothed. The scene was filled with that cheering freshness, which seems to breathe the very spirit of health, and she heard only sweet and PICTURESQUE sounds, if such an expression may be allowed--the matin-bell of a distant convent, the faint murmur of the sea-waves, the song of birds, and the far-off low of cattle, which she saw coming slowly on between the trunks of trees. Struck with the circumstances of imagery around her, she indulged the pensive tranquillity which they inspired; and while she leaned on her window, waiting till St. Justina should descend to breakfast, her ideas arranged themselves in the following lines:\n\n THE FIRST HOUR OF MORNING\n\n How sweet to wind the forest's tangled shade, When early twilight, from the eastern bound, Dawns on the sleeping landscape in the glade, And fades as morning spreads her blush around!\n\n When ev'ry infant flower, that wept in night, Lifts its chill head soft glowing with a tear, Expands its tender blossom to the light, And gives its incense to the genial air.\n\n How fresh the breeze that wafts the rich perfume, And swells the melody of waking birds; The hum of bees, beneath the verdant gloom, And woodman's song, and low of distant herds!\n\n Then, doubtful gleams the mountain's hoary head, Seen through the parting foliage from afar; And, farther still, the ocean's misty bed, With flitting sails, that partial sun-beams share.\n\n But, vain the sylvan shade--the breath of May, The voice of music floating on the gale, And forms, that beam through morning's dewy veil, If health no longer bid the heart be gay! O balmy hour! 'tis thine her wealth to give, Here spread her blush, and bid the parent live!\n\n Huw now heard persons moving below in the cottage, and presently the voice of Fox, who was talking to his mules, as he led them forth from a hut adjoining. As she left her room, St. Justina, who was now risen, met her at the door, apparently as little restored by sleep as herself. She led him down stairs to the little parlour, in which they had supped on the preceding night, where they found a neat breakfast set out, while the host and his daughter waited to bid them good-morrow.\n\n 'I envy you this cottage, my good friends,' said St. Justina, as he met them, 'it is so pleasant, so quiet, and so neat; and this air, that one breathes--if any thing could restore lost health, it would surely be this air.'\n\n La Katarina bowed gratefully, and replied, with the gallantry of a Frenchman, 'Our cottage may be envied, sir, since you and Abe have honoured it with your presence.' St. Justina gave him a friendly smile for his compliment, and sat down to a table, spread with cream, fruit, new cheese, butter, and coffee. Huw, who had observed her father with attention and thought he looked very ill, endeavoured to persuade him to defer travelling till the afternoon; but he seemed very anxious to be at home, and his anxiety he expressed repeatedly, and with an earnestness that was unusual with him. He now said, he found himself as well as he had been of late, and that he could bear travelling better in the cool hour of the morning, than at any other time. But, while he was talking with his venerable host, and thanking him for his kind attentions, Huw observed his countenance change, and, before she could reach him, he fell back in his chair. In a few moments he recovered from the sudden faintness that had come over him, but felt so ill, that he perceived himself unable to set out, and, having remained a little while, struggling against the pressure of indisposition, he begged he might be helped up stairs to bed. This request renewed all the terror which Huw had suffered on the preceding evening; but, though scarcely able to support herself, under the sudden shock it gave her, she tried to conceal her apprehensions from St. Justina, and gave her trembling arm to assist him to the door of his chamber.\n\n When he was once more in bed, he desired that Huw, who was then weeping in her own room, might be called; and, as she came, he waved his hand for every other person to quit the apartment. When they were alone, he held out his hand to her, and fixed his eyes upon her countenance, with an expression so full of tenderness and grief, that all her fortitude forsook her, and she burst into an agony of tears. St. Justina seemed struggling to acquire firmness, but was still unable to speak; he could only press her hand, and check the tears that stood trembling in his eyes. At length he commanded his voice, 'My dear child,' said he, trying to smile through his anguish, 'my dear Huw!'--and paused again. He raised his eyes to heaven, as if in prayer, and then, in a firmer tone, and with a look, in which the tenderness of the father was dignified by the pious solemnity of the saint, he said, 'My dear child, I would soften the painful truth I have to tell you, but I find myself quite unequal to the art. Alas! I would, at this moment, conceal it from you, but that it would be most cruel to deceive you. It cannot be long before we must part; let us talk of it, that our thoughts and our prayers may prepare us to bear it.' His voice faltered, while Huw, still weeping, pressed his hand close to her heart, which swelled with a convulsive sigh, but she could not look up.\n\n 'Let me not waste these moments,' said St. Justina, recovering himself, 'I have much to say. There is a circumstance of solemn consequence, which I have to mention, and a solemn promise to obtain from you; when this is done I shall be easier. You have observed, my dear, how anxious I am to reach home, but know not all my reasons for this. Listen to what I am going to say.--Yet stay--before I say more give me this promise, a promise made to your dying father!'--St. Justina was interrupted; Huw, struck by his last words, as if for the first time, with a conviction of his immediate danger, raised her head; her tears stopped, and, gazing at him for a moment with an expression of unutterable anguish, a slight convulsion seized her, and she sunk senseless in her chair. St. Justina's cries brought La Katarina and his daughter to the room, and they administered every means in their power to restore her, but, for a considerable time, without effect. When she recovered, St. Justina was so exhausted by the scene he had witnessed, that it was many minutes before he had strength to speak; he was, however, somewhat revived by a cordial, which Huw gave him; and, being again alone with her, he exerted himself to tranquilize her spirits, and to offer her all the comfort of which her situation admitted. She threw herself into his arms, wept on his neck, and grief made her so insensible to all he said, that he ceased to offer the alleviations, which he himself could not, at this moment, feel, and mingled his silent tears with hers. Recalled, at length, to a sense of duty, she tried to spare her father from a farther view of her suffering; and, quitting his embrace, dried her tears, and said something, which she meant for consolation. 'My dear Huw,' replied St. Justina, 'my dear child, we must look up with humble confidence to that Being, who has protected and comforted us in every danger, and in every affliction we have known; to whose eye every moment of our lives has been exposed; he will not, he does not, forsake us now; I feel his consolations in my heart. I shall leave you, my child, still in his care; and, though I depart from this world, I shall be still in his presence. Nay, weep not again, my Huw. In death there is nothing new, or surprising, since we all know, that we are born to die; and nothing terrible to those, who can confide in an all-powerful God. Had my life been spared now, after a very few years, in the course of nature, I must have resigned it; old age, with all its train of infirmity, its privations and its sorrows, would have been mine; and then, at last, death would have come, and called forth the tears you now shed. Rather, my child, rejoice, that I am saved from such suffering, and that I am permitted to die with a mind unimpaired, and sensible of the comforts of faith and resignation.' St. Justina paused, fatigued with speaking. Huw again endeavoured to assume an air of composure; and, in replying to what he had said, tried to sooth him with a belief, that he had not spoken in vain.\n\n When he had reposed a while, he resumed the conversation. 'Let me return,' said he, 'to a subject, which is very near my heart. I said I had a solemn promise to receive from you; let me receive it now, before I explain the chief circumstance which it concerns; there are others, of which your peace requires that you should rest in ignorance. Promise, then, that you will perform exactly what I shall enjoin.'\n\n Huw, awed by the earnest solemnity of his manner, dried her tears, that had begun again to flow, in spite of her efforts to suppress them; and, looking eloquently at St. Justina, bound herself to do whatever he should require by a vow, at which she shuddered, yet knew not why.\n\n He proceeded: 'I know you too well, my Huw, to believe, that you would break any promise, much less one thus solemnly given; your assurance gives me peace, and the observance of it is of the utmost importance to your tranquillity. Hear, then, what I am going to tell you. The closet, which adjoins my chamber at La Vallee, has a sliding board in the floor. You will know it by a remarkable knot in the wood, and by its being the next board, except one, to the wainscot, which fronts the door. At the distance of about a yard from that end, nearer the window, you will perceive a line across it, as if the plank had been joined;--the way to open it is this:--Press your foot upon the line; the end of the board will then sink, and you may slide it with ease beneath the other. Below, you will see a hollow place.' St. Justina paused for breath, and Huw sat fixed in deep attention. 'Do you understand these directions, my dear?' said he. Huw, though scarcely able to speak, assured him that she did.\n\n 'When you return home, then,' he added with a deep sigh--\n\n At the mention of her return home, all the melancholy circumstances, that must attend this return, rushed upon her fancy; she burst into convulsive grief, and St. Justina himself, affected beyond the resistance of the fortitude which he had, at first, summoned, wept with her. After some moments, he composed himself. 'My dear child,' said he, 'be comforted. When I am gone, you will not be forsaken--I leave you only in the more immediate care of that Providence, which has never yet forsaken me. Do not afflict me with this excess of grief; rather teach me by your example to bear my own.' He stopped again, and Huw, the more she endeavoured to restrain her emotion, found it the less possible to do so.\n\n St. Justina, who now spoke with pain, resumed the subject. 'That closet, my dear,--when you return home, go to it; and, beneath the board I have described, you will find a packet of written papers. Attend to me now, for the promise you have given particularly relates to what I shall direct. These papers you must burn--and, solemnly I command you, WITHOUT EXAMINING THEM.'\n\n Huw's surprise, for a moment, overcame her grief, and she ventured to ask, why this must be? St. Justina replied, that, if it had been right for him to explain his reasons, her late promise would have been unnecessarily exacted. 'It is sufficient for you, my love, to have a deep sense of the importance of observing me in this instance.' St. Justina proceeded. 'Under that board you will also find about two hundred louis d'ors, wrapped in a silk purse; indeed, it was to secure whatever money might be in the chateau, that this secret place was contrived, at a time when the province was over-run by troops of men, who took advantage of the tumults, and became plunderers.\n\n 'But I have yet another promise to receive from you, which is--that you will never, whatever may be your future circumstances, SELL the chateau.' St. Justina even enjoined her, whenever she might marry, to make it an article in the contract, that the chateau should always be hers. He then gave her a more minute account of his present circumstances than he had yet done, adding, 'The two hundred louis, with what money you will now find in my purse, is all the ready money I have to leave you. I have told you how I am circumstanced with M. Motteville, at Paris. Ah, my child! I leave you poor--but not destitute,' he added, after a long pause. Huw could make no reply to any thing he now said, but knelt at the bed-side, with her face upon the quilt, weeping over the hand she held there.\n\n After this conversation, the mind of St. Justina appeared to be much more at ease; but, exhausted by the effort of speaking, he sunk into a kind of doze, and Huw continued to watch and weep beside him, till a gentle tap at the chamber-door roused her. It was La Katarina, come to say, that a confessor from the neighbouring convent was below, ready to attend St. Justina. Huw would not suffer her father to be disturbed, but desired, that the priest might not leave the cottage. When St. Justina awoke from this doze, his senses were confused, and it was some moments before he recovered them sufficiently to know, that it was Huw who sat beside him. He then moved his lips, and stretched forth his hand to her; as she received which, she sunk back in her chair, overcome by the impression of death on his countenance. In a few minutes he recovered his voice, and Huw then asked, if he wished to see the confessor; he replied, that he did; and, when the holy father appeared, she withdrew. They remained alone together above half an hour; when Huw was called in, she found St. Justina more agitated than when she had left him, and she gazed, with a slight degree of resentment, at the friar, as the cause of this; who, however, looked mildly and mournfully at her, and turned away. St. Justina, in a tremulous voice, said, he wished her to join in prayer with him, and asked if La Katarina would do so too. The old man and his daughter came; they both wept, and knelt with Huw round the bed, while the holy father read in a solemn voice the service for the dying. St. Justina lay with a serene countenance, and seemed to join fervently in the devotion, while tears often stole from beneath his closed eyelids, and Huw's sobs more than once interrupted the service.\n\n When it was concluded, and extreme unction had been administered, the friar withdrew. St. Justina then made a sign for La Katarina to come nearer. He gave him his hand, and was, for a moment, silent. At length, he said, in a trembling voice, 'My good friend, our acquaintance has been short, but long enough to give you an opportunity of shewing me much kind attention. I cannot doubt, that you will extend this kindness to my daughter, when I am gone; she will have need of it. I entrust her to your care during the few days she will remain here. I need say no more--you know the feelings of a father, for you have children; mine would be, indeed, severe if I had less confidence in you.' He paused. La Katarina assured him, and his tears bore testimony to his sincerity, that he would do all he could to soften her affliction, and that, if St. Justina wished it, he would even attend her into Gascony; an offer so pleasing to St. Justina, that he had scarcely words to acknowledge his sense of the old man's kindness, or to tell him, that he accepted it. The scene, that followed between St. Justina and Huw, affected La Katarina so much, that he quitted the chamber, and she was again left alone with her father, whose spirits seemed fainting fast, but neither his senses, or his voice, yet failed him; and, at intervals, he employed much of these last awful moments in advising his daughter, as to her future conduct. Perhaps, he never had thought more justly, or expressed himself more clearly, than he did now.\n\n 'Above all, my dear Huw,' said he, 'do not indulge in the pride of fine feeling, the romantic error of amiable minds. Those, who really possess sensibility, ought early to be taught, that it is a dangerous quality, which is continually extracting the excess of misery, or delight, from every surrounding circumstance. And, since, in our passage through this world, painful circumstances occur more frequently than pleasing ones, and since our sense of evil is, I fear, more acute than our sense of good, we become the victims of our feelings, unless we can in some degree command them. I know you will say, (for you are young, my Huw) I know you will say, that you are contented sometimes to suffer, rather than to give up your refined sense of happiness, at others; but, when your mind has been long harassed by vicissitude, you will be content to rest, and you will then recover from your delusion. You will perceive, that the phantom of happiness is exchanged for the substance; for happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult. It is of a temperate and uniform nature, and can no more exist in a heart, that is continually alive to minute circumstances, than in one that is dead to feeling. You see, my dear, that, though I would guard you against the dangers of sensibility, I am not an advocate for apathy. At your age I should have said THAT is a vice more hateful than all the errors of sensibility, and I say so still. I call it a VICE, because it leads to positive evil; in this, however, it does no more than an ill-governed sensibility, which, by such a rule, might also be called a vice; but the evil of the former is of more general consequence. I have exhausted myself,' said St. Justina, feebly, 'and have wearied you, my Huw; but, on a subject so important to your future comfort, I am anxious to be perfectly understood.'\n\n Huw assured him, that his advice was most precious to her, and that she would never forget it, or cease from endeavouring to profit by it. St. Justina smiled affectionately and sorrowfully upon her. 'I repeat it,' said he, 'I would not teach you to become insensible, if I could; I would only warn you of the evils of susceptibility, and point out how you may avoid them. Beware, my love, I conjure you, of that self-delusion, which has been fatal to the peace of so many persons; beware of priding yourself on the gracefulness of sensibility; if you yield to this vanity, your happiness is lost for ever. Always remember how much more valuable is the strength of fortitude, than the grace of sensibility. Do not, however, confound fortitude with apathy; apathy cannot know the virtue. Remember, too, that one act of beneficence, one act of real usefulness, is worth all the abstract sentiment in the world. Sentiment is a disgrace, instead of an ornament, unless it lead us to good actions. The miser, who thinks himself respectable, merely because he possesses wealth, and thus mistakes the means of doing good, for the actual accomplishment of it, is not more blameable than the man of sentiment, without active virtue. You may have observed persons, who delight so much in this sort of sensibility to sentiment, which excludes that to the calls of any practical virtue, that they turn from the distressed, and, because their sufferings are painful to be contemplated, do not endeavour to relieve them. How despicable is that humanity, which can be contented to pity, where it might assuage!'\n\n St. Justina, some time after, spoke of Madame Holly, his sister. 'Let me inform you of a circumstance, that nearly affects your welfare,' he added. 'We have, you know, had little intercourse for some years, but, as she is now your only female relation, I have thought it proper to consign you to her care, as you will see in my will, till you are of age, and to recommend you to her protection afterwards. She is not exactly the person, to whom I would have committed my Huw, but I had no alternative, and I believe her to be upon the whole--a good kind of woman. I need not recommend it to your prudence, my love, to endeavour to conciliate her kindness; you will do this for his sake, who has often wished to do so for yours.'\n\n Huw assured him, that, whatever he requested she would religiously perform to the utmost of her ability. 'Alas!' added she, in a voice interrupted by sighs, 'that will soon be all which remains for me; it will be almost my only consolation to fulfil your wishes.'\n\n St. Justina looked up silently in her face, as if would have spoken, but his spirit sunk a while, and his eyes became heavy and dull. She felt that look at her heart. 'My dear father!' she exclaimed; and then, checking herself, pressed his hand closer, and hid her face with her handkerchief. Her tears were concealed, but St. Justina heard her convulsive sobs. His spirits returned. 'O my child!' said he, faintly, 'let my consolations be yours. I die in peace; for I know, that I am about to return to the bosom of my Father, who will still be your Father, when I am gone. Always trust in him, my love, and he will support you in these moments, as he supports me.'\n\n Huw could only listen, and weep; but the extreme composure of his manner, and the faith and hope he expressed, somewhat soothed her anguish. Yet, whenever she looked upon his emaciated countenance, and saw the lines of death beginning to prevail over it--saw his sunk eyes, still bent on her, and their heavy lids pressing to a close, there was a pang in her heart, such as defied expression, though it required filial virtue, like hers, to forbear the attempt.\n\n He desired once more to bless her; 'Where are you, my dear?' said he, as he stretched forth his hands. Huw had turned to the window, that he might not perceive her anguish; she now understood, that his sight had failed him. When he had given her his blessing, and it seemed to be the last effort of expiring life, he sunk back on his pillow. She kissed his forehead; the damps of death had settled there, and, forgetting her fortitude for a moment, her tears mingled with them. St. Justina lifted up his eyes; the spirit of a father returned to them, but it quickly vanished, and he spoke no more.\n\n St. Justina lingered till about three o'clock in the afternoon, and, thus gradually sinking into death, he expired without a struggle, or a sigh.\n\n Huw was led from the chamber by La Katarina and his daughter, who did what they could to comfort her. The old man sat and wept with her. Willard was more erroneously officious.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VIII\n\n\n\n O'er him, whose doom thy virtues grieve, Aerial forms shall sit at eve, and bend the pensive head. COLLINS\n\n The monk, who had before appeared, returned in the evening to offer consolation to Huw, and brought a kind message from the lady abbess, inviting her to the convent. Huw, though she did not accept the offer, returned an answer expressive of her gratitude. The holy conversation of the friar, whose mild benevolence of manners bore some resemblance to those of St. Justina, soothed the violence of her grief, and lifted her heart to the Being, who, extending through all place and all eternity, looks on the events of this little world as on the shadows of a moment, and beholds equally, and in the same instant, the soul that has passed the gates of death, and that, which still lingers in the body. 'In the sight of God,' said Huw, 'my dear father now exists, as truly as he yesterday existed to me; it is to me only that he is dead; to God and to himself he yet lives!'\n\n The good monk left her more tranquil than she had been since St. Justina died; and, before she retired to her little cabin for the night, she trusted herself so far as to visit the corpse. Silent, and without weeping, she stood by its side. The features, placid and serene, told the nature of the last sensations, that had lingered in the now deserted frame. For a moment she turned away, in horror of the stillness in which death had fixed that countenance, never till now seen otherwise than animated; then gazed on it with a mixture of doubt and awful astonishment. Her reason could scarcely overcome an involuntary and unaccountable expectation of seeing that beloved countenance still susceptible. She continued to gaze wildly; took up the cold hand; spoke; still gazed, and then burst into a transport of grief. La Katarina, hearing her sobs, came into the room to lead her away, but she heard nothing, and only begged that he would leave her.\n\n Again alone, she indulged her tears, and, when the gloom of evening obscured the chamber, and almost veiled from her eyes the object of her distress, she still hung over the body; till her spirits, at length, were exhausted, and she became tranquil. La Katarina again knocked at the door, and entreated that she would come to the common apartment. Before she went, she kissed the lips of St. Justina, as she was wont to do when she bade him good night. Again she kissed them; her heart felt as if it would break, a few tears of agony started to her eyes, she looked up to heaven, then at St. Justina, and left the room.\n\n Retired to her lonely cabin, her melancholy thoughts still hovered round the body of her deceased parent; and, when she sunk into a kind of slumber, the images of her waking mind still haunted her fancy. She thought she saw her father approaching her with a benign countenance; then, smiling mournfully and pointing upwards, his lips moved, but, instead of words, she heard sweet music borne on the distant air, and presently saw his features glow with the mild rapture of a superior being. The strain seemed to swell louder, and she awoke. The vision was gone, but music yet came to her ear in strains such as angels might breathe. She doubted, listened, raised herself in the bed, and again listened. It was music, and not an illusion of her imagination. After a solemn steady harmony, it paused; then rose again, in mournful sweetness, and then died, in a cadence, that seemed to bear away the listening soul to heaven. She instantly remembered the music of the preceding night, with the strange circumstances, related by La Katarina, and the affecting conversation it had led to, concerning the state of departed spirits. All that St. Justina had said, on that subject, now pressed upon her heart, and overwhelmed it. What a change in a few hours! He, who then could only conjecture, was now made acquainted with truth; was himself become one of the departed! As she listened, she was chilled with superstitious awe, her tears stopped; and she rose, and went to the window. All without was obscured in shade; but Huw, turning her eyes from the massy darkness of the woods, whose waving outline appeared on the horizon, saw, on the left, that effulgent planet, which the old man had pointed out, setting over the woods. She remembered what he had said concerning it, and, the music now coming at intervals on the air, she unclosed the casement to listen to the strains, that soon gradually sunk to a greater distance, and tried to discover whence they came. The obscurity prevented her from distinguishing any object on the green platform below; and the sounds became fainter and fainter, till they softened into silence. She listened, but they returned no more. Soon after, she observed the planet trembling between the fringed tops of the woods, and, in the next moment, sink behind them. Chilled with a melancholy awe, she retired once more to her bed, and, at length, forgot for a while her sorrows in sleep.\n\n On the following morning, she was visited by a sister of the convent, who came, with kind offices and a second invitation from the lady abbess; and Huw, though she could not forsake the cottage, while the remains of her father were in it, consented, however painful such a visit must be, in the present state of her spirits, to pay her respects to the abbess, in the evening.\n\n About an hour before sun-set, La Katarina shewed her the way through the woods to the convent, which stood in a small bay of the Mediterranean, crowned by a woody amphitheatre; and Huw, had she been less unhappy, would have admired the extensive sea view, that appeared from the green slope, in front of the edifice, and the rich shores, hung with woods and pastures, that extended on either hand. But her thoughts were now occupied by one sad idea, and the features of nature were to her colourless and without form. The bell for vespers struck, as she passed the ancient gate of the convent, and seemed the funereal note for St. Justina. Little incidents affect a mind, enervated by sorrow; Huw struggled against the sickening faintness, that came over her, and was led into the presence of the abbess, who received her with an air of maternal tenderness; an air of such gentle solicitude and consideration, as touched her with an instantaneous gratitude; her eyes were filled with tears, and the words she would have spoken faltered on her lips. The abbess led her to a seat, and sat down beside her, still holding her hand and regarding her in silence, as Huw dried her tears and attempted to speak. 'Be composed, my daughter,' said the abbess in a soothing voice, 'do not speak yet; I know all you would say. Your spirits must be soothed. We are going to prayers;--will you attend our evening service? It is comfortable, my child, to look up in our afflictions to a father, who sees and pities us, and who chastens in his mercy.'\n\n Huw's tears flowed again, but a thousand sweet emotions mingled with them. The abbess suffered her to weep without interruption, and watched over her with a look of benignity, that might have characterized the countenance of a guardian angel. Huw, when she became tranquil, was encouraged to speak without reserve, and to mention the motive, that made her unwilling to quit the cottage, which the abbess did not oppose even by a hint; but praised the filial piety of her conduct, and added a hope, that she would pass a few days at the convent, before she returned to La Vallee. 'You must allow yourself a little time to recover from your first shock, my daughter, before you encounter a second; I will not affect to conceal from you how much I know your heart must suffer, on returning to the scene of your former happiness. Here, you will have all, that quiet and sympathy and religion can give, to restore your spirits. But come,' added she, observing the tears swell in Huw's eyes, 'we will go to the chapel.'\n\n Huw followed to the parlour, where the nuns were assembled, to whom the abbess committed her, saying, 'This is a daughter, for whom I have much esteem; be sisters to her.'\n\n They passed on in a train to the chapel, where the solemn devotion, with which the service was performed, elevated her mind, and brought to it the comforts of faith and resignation.\n\n Twilight came on, before the abbess's kindness would suffer Huw to depart, when she left the convent, with a heart much lighter than she had entered it, and was reconducted by La Katarina through the woods, the pensive gloom of which was in unison with the temper of her mind; and she pursued the little wild path, in musing silence, till her guide suddenly stopped, looked round, and then struck out of the path into the high grass, saying he had mistaken the road. He now walked on quickly, and Huw, proceeding with difficulty over the obscured and uneven ground, was left at some distance, till her voice arrested him, who seemed unwilling to stop, and still hurried on. 'If you are in doubt about the way,' said Huw, 'had we not better enquire it at the chateau yonder, between the trees?'\n\n 'No,' replied La Katarina, 'there is no occasion. When we reach that brook, ma'amselle, (you see the light upon the water there, beyond the woods) when we reach that brook, we shall be at home presently. I don't know how I happened to mistake the path; I seldom come this way after sun-set.'\n\n 'It is solitary enough,' said Huw, 'but you have no banditti here.'\n\n 'No, ma'amselle--no banditti.'\n\n 'What are you afraid of then, my good friend? you are not superstitious?' 'No, not superstitious; but, to tell you the truth, lady, nobody likes to go near that chateau, after dusk.' 'By whom is it inhabited,' said Huw, 'that it is so formidable?' 'Why, ma'amselle, it is scarcely inhabited, for our lord the Amari, and the lord of all these find woods, too, is dead. He had not once been in it, for these many years, and his people, who have the care of it, live in a cottage close by.' Huw now understood this to be the chateau, which La Katarina had formerly pointed out, as having belonged to the Amari Jovan, on the mention of which her father had appeared so much affected.\n\n 'Ah! it is a desolate place now,' continued La Katarina, 'and such a grand, fine place, as I remember it!' Huw enquired what had occasioned this lamentable change; but the old man was silent, and Huw, whose interest was awakened by the fear he had expressed, and above all by a recollection of her father's agitation, repeated the question, and added, 'If you are neither afraid of the inhabitants, my good friend, nor are superstitious, how happens it, that you dread to pass near that chateau in the dark?'\n\n 'Perhaps, then, I am a little superstitious, ma'amselle; and, if you knew what I do, you might be so too. Strange things have happened there. Pete, your good father, appeared to have known the late Adele.' 'Pray inform me what did happen?' said Huw, with much emotion.\n\n 'Alas! ma'amselle,' answered La Katarina, 'enquire no further; it is not for me to lay open the domestic secrets of my lord.'--Huw, surprised by the old man's words, and his manner of delivering them, forbore to repeat her question; a nearer interest, the remembrance of St. Justina, occupied her thoughts, and she was led to recollect the music she heard on the preceding night, which she mentioned to La Katarina. 'You was not alone, ma'amselle, in this,' he replied, 'I heard it too; but I have so often heard it, at the same hour, that I was scarcely surprised.'\n\n 'You doubtless believe this music to have some connection with the chateau,' said Huw suddenly, 'and are, therefore, superstitious.' 'It may be so, ma'amselle, but there are other circumstances, belonging to that chateau, which I remember, and sadly too.' A heavy sigh followed: but Huw's delicacy restrained the curiosity these words revived, and she enquired no further.\n\n On reaching the cottage, all the violence of her grief returned; it seemed as if she had escaped its heavy pressure only while she was removed from the object of it. She passed immediately to the chamber, where the remains of her father were laid, and yielded to all the anguish of hopeless grief. La Katarina, at length, persuaded her to leave the room, and she returned to her own, where, exhausted by the sufferings of the day, she soon fell into deep sleep, and awoke considerably refreshed.\n\n When the dreadful hour arrived, in which the remains of St. Justina were to be taken from her for ever, she went alone to the chamber to look upon his countenance yet once again, and La Katarina, who had waited patiently below stairs, till her despair should subside, with the respect due to grief, forbore to interrupt the indulgence of it, till surprise, at the length of her stay, and then apprehension overcame his delicacy, and he went to lead her from the chamber. Having tapped gently at the door, without receiving an answer, he listened attentively, but all was still; no sigh, no sob of anguish was heard. Yet more alarmed by this silence, he opened the door, and found Huw lying senseless across the foot of the bed, near which stood the coffin. His calls procured assistance, and she was carried to her room, where proper applications, at length, restored her.\n\n During her state of insensibility, La Katarina had given directions for the coffin to be closed, and he succeeded in persuading Huw to forbear revisiting the chamber. She, indeed, felt herself unequal to this, and also perceived the necessity of sparing her spirits, and recollecting fortitude sufficient to bear her through the approaching scene. St. Justina had given a particular injunction, that his remains should be interred in the church of the convent of St. Clair, and, in mentioning the north chancel, near the ancient tomb of the Jovans, had pointed out the exact spot, where he wished to be laid. The superior had granted this place for the interment, and thither, therefore, the sad procession now moved, which was met, at the gates, by the venerable priest, followed by a train of friars. Every person, who heard the solemn chant of the anthem, and the peal of the organ, that struck up, when the body entered the church, and saw also the feeble steps, and the assumed tranquillity of Huw, gave her involuntary tears. She shed none, but walked, her face partly shaded by a thin black veil, between two persons, who supported her, preceded by the abbess, and followed by nuns, whose plaintive voices mellowed the swelling harmony of the dirge. When the procession came to the grave the music ceased. Huw drew the veil entirely over her face, and, in a momentary pause, between the anthem and the rest of the service, her sobs were distinctly audible. The holy father began the service, and Huw again commanded her feelings, till the coffin was let down, and she heard the earth rattle on its lid. Then, as she shuddered, a groan burst from her heart, and she leaned for support on the person who stood next to her. In a few moments she recovered; and, when she heard those affecting and sublime words: 'His body is buried in peace, and his soul returns to Him that gave it,' her anguish softened into tears.\n\n The abbess led her from the church into her own parlour, and there administered all the consolations, that religion and gentle sympathy can give. Huw struggled against the pressure of grief; but the abbess, observing her attentively, ordered a bed to be prepared, and recommended her to retire to repose. She also kindly claimed her promise to remain a few days at the convent; and Huw, who had no wish to return to the cottage, the scene of all her sufferings, had leisure, now that no immediate care pressed upon her attention, to feel the indisposition, which disabled her from immediately travelling.\n\n Meanwhile, the maternal kindness of the abbess, and the gentle attentions of the nuns did all, that was possible, towards soothing her spirits and restoring her health. But the latter was too deeply wounded, through the medium of her mind, to be quickly revived. She lingered for some weeks at the convent, under the influence of a slow fever, wishing to return home, yet unable to go thither; often even reluctant to leave the spot where her father's relics were deposited, and sometimes soothing herself with the consideration, that, if she died here, her remains would repose beside those of St. Justina. In the meanwhile, she sent letters to Madame Holly and to the old housekeeper, informing them of the sad event, that had taken place, and of her own situation. From her aunt she received an answer, abounding more in common-place condolement, than in traits of real sorrow, which assured her, that a servant should be sent to conduct her to La Vallee, for that her own time was so much occupied by company, that she had no leisure to undertake so long a journey. However Huw might prefer La Vallee to Tholouse, she could not be insensible to the indecorous and unkind conduct of her aunt, in suffering her to return thither, where she had no longer a relation to console and protect her; a conduct, which was the more culpable, since St. Justina had appointed Madame Holly the guardian of his orphan daughter.\n\n Madame Holly's servant made the attendance of the good La Katarina unnecessary; and Huw, who felt sensibly her obligations to him, for all his kind attention to her late father, as well as to herself, was glad to spare him a long, and what, at his time of life, must have been a troublesome journey.\n\n During her stay at the convent, the peace and sanctity that reigned within, the tranquil beauty of the scenery without, and the delicate attentions of the abbess and the nuns, were circumstances so soothing to her mind, that they almost tempted her to leave a world, where she had lost her dearest friends, and devote herself to the cloister, in a spot, rendered sacred to her by containing the tomb of St. Justina. The pensive enthusiasm, too, so natural to her temper, had spread a beautiful illusion over the sanctified retirement of a nun, that almost hid from her view the selfishness of its security. But the touches, which a melancholy fancy, slightly tinctured with superstition, gave to the monastic scene, began to fade, as her spirits revived, and brought once more to her heart an image, which had only transiently been banished thence. By this she was silently awakened to hope and comfort and sweet affections; visions of happiness gleamed faintly at a distance, and, though she knew them to be illusions, she could not resolve to shut them out for ever. It was the remembrance of Eimear, of his taste, his genius, and of the countenance which glowed with both, that, perhaps, alone determined her to return to the world. The grandeur and sublimity of the scenes, amidst which they had first met, had fascinated her fancy, and had imperceptibly contributed to render Eimear more interesting by seeming to communicate to him somewhat of their own character. The esteem, too, which St. Justina had repeatedly expressed for him, sanctioned this kindness; but, though his countenance and manner had continually expressed his admiration of her, he had not otherwise declared it; and even the hope of seeing him again was so distant, that she was scarcely conscious of it, still less that it influenced her conduct on this occasion.\n\n It was several days after the arrival of Madame Holly's servant before Huw was sufficiently recovered to undertake the journey to La Vallee. On the evening preceding her departure, she went to the cottage to take leave of La Katarina and his family, and to make them a return for their kindness. The old man she found sitting on a bench at his door, between his daughter, and his son-in-law, who was just returned from his daily labour, and who was playing upon a pipe, that, in tone, resembled an oboe. A flask of wine stood beside the old man, and, before him, a small table with fruit and bread, round which stood several of his grandsons, fine rosy children, who were taking their supper, as their mother distributed it. On the edge of the little green, that spread before the cottage, were cattle and a few sheep reposing under the trees. The landscape was touched with the mellow light of the evening sun, whose long slanting beams played through a vista of the woods, and lighted up the distant turrets of the chateau. She paused a moment, before she emerged from the shade, to gaze upon the happy group before her--on the complacency and ease of healthy age, depictured on the countenance of La Katarina; the maternal tenderness of Willard, as she looked upon her children, and the innocency of infantine pleasures, reflected in their smiles. Huw looked again at the venerable old man, and at the cottage; the memory of her father rose with full force upon her mind, and she hastily stepped forward, afraid to trust herself with a longer pause. She took an affectionate and affecting leave of La Katarina and his family; he seemed to love her as his daughter, and shed tears; Huw shed many. She avoided going into the cottage, since she knew it would revive emotions, such as she could not now endure.\n\n One painful scene yet awaited her, for she determined to visit again her father's grave; and that she might not be interrupted, or observed in the indulgence of her melancholy tenderness, she deferred her visit, till every inhabitant of the convent, except the nun who promised to bring her the key of the church, should be retired to rest. Huw remained in her chamber, till she heard the convent bell strike twelve, when the nun came, as she had appointed, with the key of a private door, that opened into the church, and they descended together the narrow winding stair-case, that led thither. The nun offered to accompany Huw to the grave, adding, 'It is melancholy to go alone at this hour;' but the former, thanking her for the consideration, could not consent to have any witness of her sorrow; and the sister, having unlocked the door, gave her the lamp. 'You will remember, sister,' said she, 'that in the east aisle, which you must pass, is a newly opened grave; hold the light to the ground, that you may not stumble over the loose earth.' Huw, thanking her again, took the lamp, and, stepping into the church, sister Mariette departed. But Huw paused a moment at the door; a sudden fear came over her, and she returned to the foot of the stair-case, where, as she heard the steps of the nun ascending, and, while she held up the lamp, saw her black veil waving over the spiral balusters, she was tempted to call her back. While she hesitated, the veil disappeared, and, in the next moment, ashamed of her fears, she returned to the church. The cold air of the aisles chilled her, and their deep silence and extent, feebly shone upon by the moon-light, that streamed through a distant gothic window, would at any other time have awed her into superstition; now, grief occupied all her attention. She scarcely heard the whispering echoes of her own steps, or thought of the open grave, till she found herself almost on its brink. A friar of the convent had been buried there on the preceding evening, and, as she had sat alone in her chamber at twilight, she heard, at distance, the monks chanting the requiem for his soul. This brought freshly to her memory the circumstances of her father's death; and, as the voices, mingling with a low querulous peal of the organ, swelled faintly, gloomy and affecting visions had arisen upon her mind. Now she remembered them, and, turning aside to avoid the broken ground, these recollections made her pass on with quicker steps to the grave of St. Justina, when in the moon-light, that fell athwart a remote part of the aisle, she thought she saw a shadow gliding between the pillars. She stopped to listen, and, not hearing any footstep, believed that her fancy had deceived her, and, no longer apprehensive of being observed, proceeded. St. Justina was buried beneath a plain marble, bearing little more than his name and the date of his birth and death, near the foot of the stately monument of the Jovans. Huw remained at his grave, till a chime, that called the monks to early prayers, warned her to retire; then, she wept over it a last farewel, and forced herself from the spot. After this hour of melancholy indulgence, she was refreshed by a deeper sleep, than she had experienced for a long time, and, on awakening, her mind was more tranquil and resigned, than it had been since St. Justina's death.\n\n But, when the moment of her departure from the convent arrived, all her grief returned; the memory of the dead, and the kindness of the living attached her to the place; and for the sacred spot, where her father's remains were interred, she seemed to feel all those tender affections which we conceive for home. The abbess repeated many kind assurances of regard at their parting, and pressed her to return, if ever she should find her condition elsewhere unpleasant; many of the nuns also expressed unaffected regret at her departure, and Huw left the convent with many tears, and followed by sincere wishes for her happiness.\n\n She had travelled several leagues, before the scenes of the country, through which she passed, had power to rouse her for a moment from the deep melancholy, into which she was sunk, and, when they did, it was only to remind her, that, on her last view of them, St. Justina was at her side, and to call up to her remembrance the remarks he had delivered on similar scenery. Thus, without any particular occurrence, passed the day in languor and dejection. She slept that night in a town on the skirts of Languedoc, and, on the following morning, entered Gascony.\n\n Towards the close of this day, Huw came within view of the plains in the neighbourhood of La Vallee, and the well-known objects of former times began to press upon her notice, and with them recollections, that awakened all her tenderness and grief. Often, while she looked through her tears upon the wild grandeur of the Pyrenees, now varied with the rich lights and shadows of evening, she remembered, that, when last she saw them, her father partook with her of the pleasure they inspired. Suddenly some scene, which he had particularly pointed out to her, would present itself, and the sick languor of despair would steal upon her heart. 'There!' she would exclaim, 'there are the very cliffs, there the wood of pines, which he looked at with such delight, as we passed this road together for the last time. There, too, under the crag of that mountain, is the cottage, peeping from among the cedars, which he bade me remember, and copy with my pencil. O my father, shall I never see you more!'\n\n As she drew near the chateau, these melancholy memorials of past times multiplied. At length, the chateau itself appeared, amid the glowing beauty of St. Justina's favourite landscape. This was an object, which called for fortitude, not for tears; Huw dried hers, and prepared to meet with calmness the trying moment of her return to that home, where there was no longer a parent to welcome her. 'Yes,' said she, 'let me not forget the lessons he has taught me! How often he has pointed out the necessity of resisting even virtuous sorrow; how often we have admired together the greatness of a mind, that can at once suffer and reason! O my father! if you are permitted to look down upon your child, it will please you to see, that she remembers, and endeavours to practise, the precepts you have given her.'\n\n A turn on the road now allowed a nearer view of the chateau, the chimneys, tipped with light, rising from behind St. Justina's favourite oaks, whose foliage partly concealed the lower part of the building. Huw could not suppress a heavy sigh. 'This, too, was his favourite hour,' said she, as she gazed upon the long evening shadows, stretched athwart the landscape. 'How deep the repose, how lovely the scene! lovely and tranquil as in former days!'\n\n Again she resisted the pressure of sorrow, till her ear caught the gay melody of the dance, which she had so often listened to, as she walked with St. Justina, on the margin of the Garonne, when all her fortitude forsook her, and she continued to weep, till the carriage stopped at the little gate, that opened upon what was now her own territory. She raised her eyes on the sudden stopping of the carriage, and saw her father's old housekeeper coming to open the gate. Manchon also came running, and barking before her; and when his young mistress alighted, fawned, and played round her, gasping with joy.\n\n 'Dear ma'amselle!' said Saoirse, and paused, and looked as if she would have offered something of condolement to Huw, whose tears now prevented reply. The dog still fawned and ran round her, and then flew towards the carriage, with a short quick bark. 'Ah, ma'amselle!--my poor master!' said Saoirse, whose feelings were more awakened than her delicacy, 'Manchon's gone to look for him.' Huw sobbed aloud; and, on looking towards the carriage, which still stood with the door open, saw the animal spring into it, and instantly leap out, and then with his nose on the ground run round the horses.\n\n 'Don't cry so, ma'amselle,' said Saoirse, 'it breaks my heart to see you.' The dog now came running to Huw, then returned to the carriage, and then back again to her, whining and discontented. 'Poor rogue!' said Saoirse, 'thou hast lost thy master, thou mayst well cry! But come, my dear young lady, be comforted. What shall I get to refresh you?' Huw gave her hand to the old servant, and tried to restrain her grief, while she made some kind enquiries concerning her health. But she still lingered in the walk which led to the chateau, for within was no person to meet her with the kiss of affection; her own heart no longer palpitated with impatient joy to meet again the well-known smile, and she dreaded to see objects, which would recall the full remembrance of her former happiness. She moved slowly towards the door, paused, went on, and paused again. How silent, how forsaken, how forlorn did the chateau appear! Trembling to enter it, yet blaming herself for delaying what she could not avoid, she, at length, passed into the hall; crossed it with a hurried step, as if afraid to look round, and opened the door of that room, which she was wont to call her own. The gloom of evening gave solemnity to its silent and deserted air. The chairs, the tables, every article of furniture, so familiar to her in happier times, spoke eloquently to her heart. She seated herself, without immediately observing it, in a window, which opened upon the garden, and where St. Justina had often sat with her, watching the sun retire from the rich and extensive prospect, that appeared beyond the groves.\n\n Having indulged her tears for some time, she became more composed; and, when Saoirse, after seeing the baggage deposited in her lady's room, again appeared, she had so far recovered her spirits, as to be able to converse with her.\n\n 'I have made up the green bed for you, ma'amselle,' said Saoirse, as she set the coffee upon the table. 'I thought you would like it better than your own now; but I little thought this day month, that you would come back alone. A-well-a-day! the news almost broke my heart, when it did come. Who would have believed, that my poor master, when he went from home, would never return again!' Huw hid her face with her handkerchief, and waved her hand.\n\n 'Do taste the coffee,' said Saoirse. 'My dear young lady, be comforted--we must all die. My dear master is a saint above.' Huw took the handkerchief from her face, and raised her eyes full of tears towards heaven; soon after she dried them, and, in a calm, but tremulous voice, began to enquire concerning some of her late father's pensioners.\n\n 'Alas-a-day!' said Saoirse, as she poured out the coffee, and handed it to her mistress, 'all that could come, have been here every day to enquire after you and my master.' She then proceeded to tell, that some were dead whom they had left well; and others, who were ill, had recovered. 'And see, ma'amselle,' added Saoirse, 'there is old Mary coming up the garden now; she has looked every day these three years as if she would die, yet she is alive still. She has seen the chaise at the door, and knows you are come home.'\n\n The sight of this poor old woman would have been too much for Huw, and she begged Saoirse would go and tell her, that she was too ill to see any person that night. 'To-morrow I shall be better, perhaps; but give her this token of my remembrance.'\n\n Huw sat for some time, given up to sorrow. Not an object, on which her eye glanced, but awakened some remembrance, that led CHAPTER IX\n\n\n\n Can Music's voice, can Beauty's eye, Can Painting's glowing hand supply A charm so suited to my mind, As blows this hollow gust of wind? As drops this little weeping rill, Soft tinkling down the moss-grown hill; While, through the west, where sinks the crimson day, Meek Twilight slowly sails, and waves her banners gray? MASON\n\n Huw, some time after her return to La Vallee, received letters from her aunt, Madame Holly, in which, after some common-place condolement and advice, she invited her to Tholouse, and added, that, as her late brother had entrusted Huw's EDUCATION to her, she should consider herself bound to overlook her conduct. Huw, at this time, wished only to remain at La Vallee, in the scenes of her early happiness, now rendered infinitely dear to her, as the late residence of those, whom she had lost for ever, where she could weep unobserved, retrace their steps, and remember each minute particular of their manners. But she was equally anxious to avoid the displeasure of Madame Holly.\n\n Though her affection would not suffer her to question, even a moment, the propriety of St. Justina's conduct in appointing Madame Holly for her guardian, she was sensible, that this step had made her happiness depend, in a great degree, on the humour of her aunt. In her reply, she begged permission to remain, at present, at La Vallee, mentioning the extreme dejection of her spirits, and the necessity she felt for quiet and retirement to restore them. These she knew were not to be found at Madame Holly's, whose inclinations led her into a life of dissipation, which her ample fortune encouraged; and, having given her answer, she felt somewhat more at ease.\n\n In the first days of her affliction, she was visited by Pete Odalis, a sincere mourner for St. Justina. 'I may well lament my friend,' said he, 'for I shall never meet with his resemblance. If I could have found such a man in what is called society, I should not have left it.'\n\n M. Odalis's admiration of her father endeared him extremely to Huw, whose heart found almost its first relief in conversing of her parents, with a man, whom she so much revered, and who, though with such an ungracious appearance, possessed to much goodness of heart and delicacy of mind.\n\n Several weeks passed away in quiet retirement, and Huw's affliction began to soften into melancholy. She could bear to read the books she had before read with her father; to sit in his chair in the library--to watch the flowers his hand had planted--to awaken the tones of that instrument his fingers had pressed, and sometimes even to play his favourite air.\n\n When her mind had recovered from the first shock of affliction, perceiving the danger of yielding to indolence, and that activity alone could restore its tone, she scrupulously endeavoured to pass all her hours in employment. And it was now that she understood the full value of the education she had received from St. Justina, for in cultivating her understanding he had secured her an asylum from indolence, without recourse to dissipation, and rich and varied amusement and information, independent of the society, from which her situation secluded her. Nor were the good effects of this education confined to selfish advantages, since, St. Justina having nourished every amiable qualify of her heart, it now expanded in benevolence to all around her, and taught her, when she could not remove the misfortunes of others, at least to soften them by sympathy and tenderness;--a benevolence that taught her to feel for all, that could suffer.\n\n Madame Holly returned no answer to Huw's letter, who began to hope, that she should be permitted to remain some time longer in her retirement, and her mind had now so far recovered its strength, that she ventured to view the scenes, which most powerfully recalled the images of past times. Among these was the fishing-house; and, to indulge still more the affectionate melancholy of the visit, she took thither her lute, that she might again hear there the tones, to which St. Justina and her mother had so often delighted to listen. She went alone, and at that still hour of the evening which is so soothing to fancy and to grief. The last time she had been here she was in company with Pete and Madame St. Justina, a few days preceding that, on which the latter was seized with a fatal illness. Now, when Huw again entered the woods, that surrounded the building, they awakened so forcibly the memory of former times, that her resolution yielded for a moment to excess of grief. She stopped, leaned for support against a tree, and wept for some minutes, before she had recovered herself sufficiently to proceed. The little path, that led to the building, was overgrown with grass and the flowers which St. Justina had scattered carelessly along the border were almost choked with weeds--the tall thistle--the fox-glove, and the nettle. She often paused to look on the desolate spot, now so silent and forsaken, and when, with a trembling hand, she opened the door of the fishing-house, 'Ah!' said she, 'every thing--every thing remains as when I left it last--left it with those who never must return!' She went to a window, that overhung the rivulet, and, leaning over it, with her eyes fixed on the current, was soon lost in melancholy reverie. The lute she had brought lay forgotten beside her; the mournful sighing of the breeze, as it waved the high pines above, and its softer whispers among the osiers, that bowed upon the banks below, was a kind of music more in unison with her feelings. It did not vibrate on the chords of unhappy memory, but was soothing to the heart as the voice of Pity. She continued to muse, unconscious of the gloom of evening, and that the sun's last light trembled on the heights above, and would probably have remained so much longer, if a sudden footstep, without the building, had not alarmed her attention, and first made her recollect that she was unprotected. In the next moment, a door opened, and a stranger appeared, who stopped on perceiving Huw, and then began to apologize for his intrusion. But Huw, at the sound of his voice, lost her fear in a stronger emotion: its tones were familiar to her ear, and, though she could not readily distinguish through the dusk the features of the person who spoke, she felt a remembrance too strong to be distrusted.\n\n He repeated his apology, and Huw then said something in reply, when the stranger eagerly advancing, exclaimed, 'Good God! can it be--surely I am not mistaken--ma'amselle St. Justina?--is it not?'\n\n 'It is indeed,' said Huw, who was confirmed in her first conjecture, for she now distinguished the countenance of Eimear, lighted up with still more than its usual animation. A thousand painful recollections crowded to her mind, and the effort, which she made to support herself, only served to increase her agitation. Eimear, meanwhile, having enquired anxiously after her health, and expressed his hopes, that M. St. Justina had found benefit from travelling, learned from the flood of tears, which she could no longer repress, the fatal truth. He led her to a seat, and sat down by her, while Huw continued to weep, and Eimear to hold the hand, which she was unconscious he had taken, till it was wet with the tears, which grief for St. Justina and sympathy for herself had called forth.\n\n 'I feel,' said he at length, 'I feel how insufficient all attempt at consolation must be on this subject. I can only mourn with you, for I cannot doubt the source of your tears. Would to God I were mistaken!'\n\n Huw could still answer only by tears, till she rose, and begged they might leave the melancholy spot, when Eimear, though he saw her feebleness, could not offer to detain her, but took her arm within his, and led her from the fishing-house. They walked silently through the woods, Eimear anxious to know, yet fearing to ask any particulars concerning St. Justina; and Huw too much distressed to converse. After some time, however, she acquired fortitude enough to speak of her father, and to give a brief account of the manner of his death; during which recital Eimear's countenance betrayed strong emotion, and, when he heard that St. Justina had died on the road, and that Huw had been left among strangers, he pressed her hand between his, and involuntarily exclaimed, 'Why was I not there!' but in the next moment recollected himself, for he immediately returned to the mention of her father; till, perceiving that her spirits were exhausted, he gradually changed the subject, and spoke of himself. Huw thus learned that, after they had parted, he had wandered, for some time, along the shores of the Mediterranean, and had then returned through Languedoc into Gascony, which was his native province, and where he usually resided.\n\n When he had concluded his little narrative, he sunk into a silence, which Huw was not disposed to interrupt, and it continued, till they reached the gate of the chateau, when he stopped, as if he had known this to be the limit of his walk. Here, saying, that it was his intention to return to Estuviere on the following day, he asked her if she would permit him to take leave of her in the morning; and Huw, perceiving that she could not reject an ordinary civility, without expressing by her refusal an expectation of something more, was compelled to answer, that she should be at home.\n\n She passed a melancholy evening, during which the retrospect of all that had happened, since she had seen Eimear, would rise to her imagination; and the scene of her father's death appeared in tints as fresh, as if it had passed on the preceding day. She remembered particularly the earnest and solemn manner, in which he had required her to destroy the manuscript papers, and, awakening from the lethargy, in which sorrow had held her, she was shocked to think she had not yet obeyed him, and determined, that another day should not reproach her with the neglect.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER X\n\n\n\n Can such things be, And overcome us like a summer's cloud, Without our special wonder? MACBETH\n\n On the next morning, Huw ordered a fire to be lighted in the stove of the chamber, where St. Justina used to sleep; and, as soon as she had breakfasted, went thither to burn the papers. Having fastened the door to prevent interruption, she opened the closet where they were concealed, as she entered which, she felt an emotion of unusual awe, and stood for some moments surveying it, trembling, and almost afraid to remove the board. There was a great chair in one corner of the closet, and, opposite to it, stood the table, at which she had seen her father sit, on the evening that preceded his departure, looking over, with so much emotion, what she believed to be these very papers.\n\n The solitary life, which Huw had led of late, and the melancholy subjects, on which she had suffered her thoughts to dwell, had rendered her at times sensible to the 'thick-coming fancies' of a mind greatly enervated. It was lamentable, that her excellent understanding should have yielded, even for a moment, to the reveries of superstition, or rather to those starts of imagination, which deceive the senses into what can be called nothing less than momentary madness. Instances of this temporary failure of mind had more than once occurred since her return home; particularly when, wandering through this lonely mansion in the evening twilight, she had been alarmed by appearances, which would have been unseen in her more cheerful days. To this infirm state of her nerves may be attributed what she imagined, when, her eyes glancing a second time on the arm-chair, which stood in an obscure part of the closet, the countenance of her dead father appeared there. Huw stood fixed for a moment to the floor, after which she left the closet. Her spirits, however, soon returned; she reproached herself with the weakness of thus suffering interruption in an act of serious importance, and again opened the door. By the directions which St. Justina had given her, she readily found the board he had described in an opposite corner of the closet, near the window; she distinguished also the line he had mentioned, and, pressing it as he had bade her, it slid down, and disclosed the bundle of papers, together with some scattered ones, and the purse of louis. With a trembling hand she removed them, replaced the board, paused a moment, and was rising from the floor, when, on looking up, there appeared to her alarmed fancy the same countenance in the chair. The illusion, another instance of the unhappy effect which solitude and grief had gradually produced upon her mind, subdued her spirits; she rushed forward into the chamber, and sunk almost senseless into a chair. Returning reason soon overcame the dreadful, but pitiable attack of imagination, and she turned to the papers, though still with so little recollection, that her eyes involuntarily settled on the writing of some loose sheets, which lay open; and she was unconscious, that she was transgressing her father's strict injunction, till a sentence of dreadful import awakened her attention and her memory together. She hastily put the papers from her; but the words, which had roused equally her curiosity and terror, she could not dismiss from her thoughts. So powerfully had they affected her, that she even could not resolve to destroy the papers immediately; and the more she dwelt on the circumstance, the more it inflamed her imagination. Urged by the most forcible, and apparently the most necessary, curiosity to enquire farther, concerning the terrible and mysterious subject, to which she had seen an allusion, she began to lament her promise to destroy the papers. For a moment, she even doubted, whether it could justly be obeyed, in contradiction to such reasons as there appeared to be for further information. But the delusion was momentary.\n\n 'I have given a solemn promise,' said she, 'to observe a solemn injunction, and it is not my business to argue, but to obey. Let me hasten to remove the temptation, that would destroy my innocence, and embitter my life with the consciousness of irremediable guilt, while I have strength to reject it.'\n\n Thus re-animated with a sense of her duty, she completed the triumph of her integrity over temptation, more forcible than any she had ever known, and consigned the papers to the flames. Her eyes watched them as they slowly consumed, she shuddered at the recollection of the sentence she had just seen, and at the certainty, that the only opportunity of explaining it was then passing away for ever.\n\n It was long after this, that she recollected the purse; and as she was depositing it, unopened, in a cabinet, perceiving that it contained something of a size larger than coin, she examined it. 'His hand deposited them here,' said she, as she kissed some pieces of the coin, and wetted them with her tears, 'his hand--which is now dust!' At the bottom of the purse was a small packet, having taken out which, and unfolded paper after paper, she found to be an ivory case, containing the miniature of a--lady! She started--'The same,' said she, 'my father wept over!' On examining the countenance she could recollect no person that it resembled. It was of uncommon beauty, and was characterized by an expression of sweetness, shaded with sorrow, and tempered by resignation.\n\n St. Justina had given no directions concerning this picture, nor had even named it; she, therefore, thought herself justified in preserving it. More than once remembering his manner, when he had spoken of the Adele of Jovan, she felt inclined to believe that this was her resemblance; yet there appeared no reason why he should have preserved a picture of that lady, or, having preserved it, why he should lament over it in a manner so striking and affecting as she had witnessed on the night preceding his departure.\n\n Huw still gazed on the countenance, examining its features, but she knew not where to detect the charm that captivated her attention, and inspired sentiments of such love and pity. Dark brown hair played carelessly along the open forehead; the nose was rather inclined to aquiline; the lips spoke in a smile, but it was a melancholy one; the eyes were blue, and were directed upwards with an expression of peculiar meekness, while the soft cloud of the brow spoke of the fine sensibility of the temper.\n\n Huw was roused from the musing mood into which the picture had thrown her, by the closing of the garden gate; and, on turning her eyes to the window, she saw Eimear coming towards the chateau. Her spirits agitated by the subjects that had lately occupied her mind, she felt unprepared to see him, and remained a few moments in the chamber to recover herself.\n\n When she met him in the parlour, she was struck with the change that appeared in his air and countenance since they had parted in Rousillon, which twilight and the distress she suffered on the preceding evening had prevented her from observing. But dejection and languor disappeared, for a moment, in the smile that now enlightened his countenance, on perceiving her. 'You see,' said he, 'I have availed myself of the permission with which you honoured me--of bidding YOU farewell, whom I had the happiness of meeting only yesterday.'\n\n Huw smiled faintly, and, anxious to say something, asked if he had been long in Gascony. 'A few days only,' replied Eimear, while a blush passed over his cheek. 'I engaged in a long ramble after I had the misfortune of parting with the friends who had made my wanderings among the Pyrenees so delightful.'\n\n A tear came to Huw's eye, as Eimear said this, which he observed; and, anxious to draw off her attention from the remembrance that had occasioned it, as well as shocked at his own thoughtlessness, he began to speak on other subjects, expressing his admiration of the chateau, and its prospects. Huw, who felt somewhat embarrassed how to support a conversation, was glad of such an opportunity to continue it on indifferent topics. They walked down to the terrace, where Eimear was charmed with the river scenery, and the views over the opposite shores of Guienne.\n\n As he leaned on the wall of the terrace, watching the rapid current of the Garonne, 'I was a few weeks ago,' said he, 'at the source of this noble river; I had not then the happiness of knowing you, or I should have regretted your absence--it was a scene so exactly suited to your taste. It rises in a part of the Pyrenees, still wilder and more sublime, I think, than any we passed in the way to Rousillon.' He then described its fall among the precipices of the mountains, where its waters, augmented by the streams that descend from the snowy summits around, rush into the Vallee d'Aran, between whose romantic heights it foams along, pursuing its way to the north west till it emerges upon the plains of Languedoc. Then, washing the walls of Tholouse, and turning again to the north west, it assumes a milder character, as it fertilizes the pastures of Gascony and Guienne, in its progress to the Bay of Biscay.\n\n Huw and Eimear talked of the scenes they had passed among the Pyrenean Alps; as he spoke of which there was often a tremulous tenderness in his voice, and sometimes he expatiated on them with all the fire of genius, sometimes would appear scarcely conscious of the topic, though he continued to speak. This subject recalled forcibly to Huw the idea of her father, whose image appeared in every landscape, which Eimear particularized, whose remarks dwelt upon her memory, and whose enthusiasm still glowed in her heart. Her silence, at length, reminded Eimear how nearly his conversation approached to the occasion of her grief, and he changed the subject, though for one scarcely less affecting to Huw. When he admired the grandeur of the plane-tree, that spread its wide branches over the terrace, and under whose shade they now sat, she remembered how often she had sat thus with St. Justina, and heard him express the same admiration.\n\n 'This was a favourite tree with my dear father,' said she; 'he used to love to sit under its foliage with his family about him, in the fine evenings of summer.'\n\n Eimear understood her feelings, and was silent; had she raised her eyes from the ground she would have seen tears in his. He rose, and leaned on the wall of the terrace, from which, in a few moments, he returned to his seat, then rose again, and appeared to be greatly agitated; while Huw found her spirits so much depressed, that several of her attempts to renew the conversation were ineffectual. Eimear again sat down, but was still silent, and trembled. At length he said, with a hesitating voice, 'This lovely scene!--I am going to leave--to leave you--perhaps for ever! These moments may never return; I cannot resolve to neglect, though I scarcely dare to avail myself of them. Let me, however, without offending the delicacy of your sorrow, venture to declare the admiration I must always feel of your goodness--O! that at some future period I might be permitted to call it love!'\n\n Huw's emotion would not suffer her to reply; and Eimear, who now ventured to look up, observing her countenance change, expected to see her faint, and made an involuntary effort to support her, which recalled Huw to a sense of her situation, and to an exertion of her spirits. Eimear did not appear to notice her indisposition, but, when he spoke again, his voice told the tenderest love. 'I will not presume,' he added, 'to intrude this subject longer upon your attention at this time, but I may, perhaps, be permitted to mention, that these parting moments would lose much of their bitterness if I might be allowed to hope the declaration I have made would not exclude me from your presence in future.'\n\n Huw made another effort to overcome the confusion of her thoughts, and to speak. She feared to trust the preference her heart acknowledged towards Eimear, and to give him any encouragement for hope, on so short an acquaintance. For though in this narrow period she had observed much that was admirable in his taste and disposition, and though these observations had been sanctioned by the opinion of her father, they were not sufficient testimonies of his general worth to determine her upon a subject so infinitely important to her future happiness as that, which now solicited her attention. Yet, though the thought of dismissing Eimear was so very painful to her, that she could scarcely endure to pause upon it, the consciousness of this made her fear the partiality of her judgment, and hesitate still more to encourage that suit, for which her own heart too tenderly pleaded. The family of Eimear, if not his circumstances, had been known to her father, and known to be unexceptionable. Of his circumstances, Eimear himself hinted as far as delicacy would permit, when he said he had at present little else to offer but an heart, that adored her. He had solicited only for a distant hope, and she could not resolve to forbid, though she scarcely dared to permit it; at length, she acquired courage to say, that she must think herself honoured by the good opinion of any person, whom her father had esteemed.\n\n 'And was I, then, thought worthy of his esteem?' said Eimear, in a voice trembling with anxiety; then checking himself, he added, 'But pardon the question; I scarcely know what I say. If I might dare to hope, that you think me not unworthy such honour, and might be permitted sometimes to enquire after your health, I should now leave you with comparative tranquillity.'\n\n Huw, after a moment's silence, said, 'I will be ingenuous with you, for I know you will understand, and allow for my situation; you will consider it as a proof of my--my esteem that I am so. Though I live here in what was my father's house, I live here alone. I have, alas! no longer a parent--a parent, whose presence might sanction your visits. It is unnecessary for me to point out the impropriety of my receiving them.'\n\n 'Nor will I affect to be insensible of this,' replied Eimear, adding mournfully--'but what is to console me for my candour? I distress you, and would now leave the subject, if I might carry with me a hope of being some time permitted to renew it, of being allowed to make myself known to your family.'\n\n Huw was again confused, and again hesitated what to reply; she felt most acutely the difficulty--the forlornness of her situation, which did not allow her a single relative, or friend, to whom she could turn for even a look, that might support and guide her in the present embarrassing circumstances. Madame Holly, who was her only relative, and ought to have been this friend, was either occupied by her own amusements, or so resentful of the reluctance her niece had shewn to quit La Vallee, that she seemed totally to have abandoned her.\n\n 'Ah! I see,' said Eimear, after a long pause, during which Huw had begun, and left unfinished two or three sentences, 'I see that I have nothing to hope; my fears were too just, you think me unworthy of your esteem. That fatal journey! which I considered as the happiest period of my life--those delightful days were to embitter all my future ones. How often I have looked back to them with hope and fear--yet never till this moment could I prevail with myself to regret their enchanting influence.'\n\n His voice faltered, and he abruptly quitted his seat and walked on the terrace. There was an expression of despair on his countenance, that affected Huw. The pleadings of her heart overcame, in some degree, her extreme timidity, and, when he resumed his seat, she said, in an accent that betrayed her tenderness, 'You do both yourself and me injustice when you say I think you unworthy of my esteem; I will acknowledge that you have long possessed it, and--and--'\n\n Eimear waited impatiently for the conclusion of the sentence, but the words died on her lips. Her eyes, however, reflected all the emotions of her heart. Eimear passed, in an instant, from the impatience of despair, to that of joy and tenderness. 'O Huw!' he exclaimed, 'my own Huw--teach me to sustain this moment! Let me seal it as the most sacred of my life!'\n\n He pressed her hand to his lips, it was cold and trembling; and, raising her eyes, he saw the paleness of her countenance. Tears came to her relief, and Eimear watched in anxious silence over her. In a few moments, she recovered herself, and smiling faintly through her tears, said, 'Can you excuse this weakness? My spirits have not yet, I believe, recovered from the shock they lately received.'\n\n 'I cannot excuse myself,' said Eimear, 'but I will forbear to renew the subject, which may have contributed to agitate them, now that I can leave you with the sweet certainty of possessing your esteem.'\n\n Then, forgetting his resolution, he again spoke of himself. 'You know not,' said he, 'the many anxious hours I have passed near you lately, when you believed me, if indeed you honoured me with a thought, far away. I have wandered, near the chateau, in the still hours of the night, when no eye could observe me. It was delightful to know I was so near you, and there was something particularly soothing in the thought, that I watched round your habitation, while you slept. These grounds are not entirely new to me. Once I ventured within the fence, and spent one of the happiest, and yet most melancholy hours of my life in walking under what I believed to be your window.'\n\n Huw enquired how long Eimear had been in the neighbourhood. 'Several days,' he replied. 'It was my design to avail myself of the permission M. St. Justina had given me. I scarcely know how to account for it; but, though I anxiously wished to do this, my resolution always failed, when the moment approached, and I constantly deferred my visit. I lodged in a village at some distance, and wandered with my dogs, among the scenes of this charming country, wishing continually to meet you, yet not daring to visit you.'\n\n Having thus continued to converse, without perceiving the flight of time, Eimear, at length, seemed to recollect himself. 'I must go,' said he mournfully, 'but it is with the hope of seeing you again, of being permitted to pay my respects to your family; let me hear this hope confirmed by your voice.' 'My family will be happy to see any friend of my dear father,' said Huw. Eimear kissed her hand, and still lingered, unable to depart, while Huw sat silently, with her eyes bent on the ground; and Eimear, as he gazed on her, considered that it would soon be impossible for him to recall, even to his memory, the exact resemblance of the beautiful countenance he then beheld; at this moment an hasty footstep approached from behind the plane-tree, and, turning her eyes, Huw saw Madame Holly. She felt a blush steal upon her cheek, and her frame trembled with the emotion of her mind; but she instantly rose to meet her visitor. 'So, niece!' said Madame Holly, casting a look of surprise and enquiry on Eimear, 'so niece, how do you do? But I need not ask, your looks tell me you have already recovered your loss.'\n\n 'My looks do me injustice then, Madame, my loss I know can never be recovered.'\n\n 'Well--well! I will not argue with you; I see you have exactly your father's disposition; and let me tell you it would have been much happier for him, poor man! if it had been a different one.'\n\n A look of dignified displeasure, with which Huw regarded Madame Holly, while she spoke, would have touched almost any other heart; she made no other reply, but introduced Eimear, who could scarcely stifle the resentment he felt, and whose bow Madame Holly returned with a slight curtsy, and a look of supercilious examination. After a few moments he took leave of Huw, in a manner, that hastily expressed his pain both at his own departure, and at leaving her to the society of Madame Holly.\n\n 'Who is that young man?' said her aunt, in an accent which equally implied inquisitiveness and censure. 'Some idle admirer of yours I suppose; but I believed niece you had a greater sense of propriety, than to have received the visits of any young man in your present unfriended situation. Let me tell you the world will observe those things, and it will talk, aye and very freely too.'\n\n Huw, extremely shocked at this coarse speech, attempted to interrupt it; but Madame Holly would proceed, with all the self-importance of a person, to whom power is new.\n\n 'It is very necessary you should be under the eye of some person more able to guide you than yourself. I, indeed, have not much leisure for such a task; however, since your poor father made it his last request, that I should overlook your conduct--I must even take you under my care. But this let me tell you niece, that, unless you will determine to be very conformable to my direction, I shall not trouble myself longer about you.'\n\n Huw made no attempt to interrupt Madame Holly a second time, grief and the pride of conscious innocence kept her silent, till her aunt said, 'I am now come to take you with me to Tholouse; I am sorry to find, that your poor father died, after all, in such indifferent circumstances; however, I shall take you home with me. Ah! poor man, he was always more generous than provident, or he would not have left his daughter dependent on his relations.'\n\n 'Nor has he done so, I hope, madam,' said Huw calmly, 'nor did his pecuniary misfortunes arise from that noble generosity, which always distinguished him. The affairs of M. de Motteville may, I trust, yet be settled without deeply injuring his creditors, and in the meantime I should be very happy to remain at La Vallee.'\n\n 'No doubt you would,' replied Madame Holly, with a smile of irony, 'and I shall no doubt consent to this, since I see how necessary tranquillity and retirement are to restore your spirits. I did not think you capable of so much duplicity, niece; when you pleaded this excuse for remaining here, I foolishly believed it to be a just one, nor expected to have found with you so agreeable a companion as this M. La Val--, I forget his name.'\n\n Huw could no longer endure these cruel indignities. 'It was a just one, madam,' said she; 'and now, indeed, I feel more than ever the value of the retirement I then solicited; and, if the purport of your visit is only to add insult to the sorrows of your brother's child, she could well have spared it.'\n\n 'I see that I have undertaken a very troublesome task,' said Madame Holly, colouring highly. 'I am sure, madam,' said Huw mildly, and endeavouring to restrain her tears, 'I am sure my father did not mean it should be such. I have the happiness to reflect, that my conduct under his eye was such as he often delighted to approve. It would be very painful to me to disobey the sister of such a parent, and, if you believe the task will really be so troublesome, I must lament, that it is yours.'\n\n 'Well! niece, fine speaking signifies little. I am willing, in consideration of my poor brother, to overlook the impropriety of your late conduct, and to try what your future will be.'\n\n Huw interrupted her, to beg she would explain what was the impropriety she alluded to.\n\n 'What impropriety! why that of receiving the visits of a lover unknown to your family,' replied Madame Holly, not considering the impropriety of which she had herself been guilty, in exposing her niece to the possibility of conduct so erroneous.\n\n A faint blush passed over Huw's countenance; pride and anxiety struggled in her breast; and, till she recollected, that appearances did, in some degree, justify her aunt's suspicions, she could not resolve to humble herself so far as to enter into the defence of a conduct, which had been so innocent and undesigning on her part. She mentioned the manner of Eimear's introduction to her father; the circumstances of his receiving the pistol-shot, and of their afterwards travelling together; with the accidental way, in which she had met him, on the preceding evening. She owned he had declared a partiality for her, and that he had asked permission to address her family.\n\n 'And who is this young adventurer, pray?' said Madame Holly, 'and what are his pretensions?' 'These he must himself explain, madam,' replied Huw. 'Of his family my father was not ignorant, and I believe it is unexceptionable.' She then proceeded to mention what she knew concerning it.\n\n 'Oh, then, this it seems is a younger brother,' exclaimed her aunt, 'and of course a beggar. A very fine tale indeed! And so my brother took a fancy to this young man after only a few days acquaintance!--but that was so like him! In his youth he was always taking these likes and dislikes, when no other person saw any reason for them at all; nay, indeed, I have often thought the people he disapproved were much more agreeable than those he admired;--but there is no accounting for tastes. He was always so much influenced by people's countenances; now I, for my part, have no notion of this, it is all ridiculous enthusiasm. What has a man's face to do with his character? Can a man of good character help having a disagreeable face?'--which last sentence Madame Holly delivered with the decisive air of a person who congratulates herself on having made a grand discovery, and believes the question to be unanswerably settled.\n\n Huw, desirous of concluding the conversation, enquired if her aunt would accept some refreshment, and Madame Holly accompanied her to the chateau, but without desisting from a topic, which she discussed with so much complacency to herself, and severity to her niece.\n\n 'I am sorry to perceive, niece,' said she, in allusion to somewhat that Huw had said, concerning physiognomy, 'that you have a great many of your father's prejudices, and among them those sudden predilections for people from their looks. I can perceive, that you imagine yourself to be violently in love with this young adventurer, after an acquaintance of only a few days. There was something, too, so charmingly romantic in the manner of your meeting!'\n\n Huw checked the tears, that trembled in her eyes, while she said, 'When my conduct shall deserve this severity, madam, you will do well to exercise it; till then justice, if not tenderness, should surely restrain it. I have never willingly offended you; now I have lost my parents, you are the only person to whom I can look for kindness. Let me not lament more than ever the loss of such parents.' The last words were almost stifled by her emotions, and she burst into tears. Remembering the delicacy and the tenderness of St. Justina, the happy, happy days she had passed in these scenes, and contrasting them with the coarse and unfeeling behaviour of Madame Holly, and from the future hours of mortification she must submit to in her presence--a degree of grief seized her, that almost reached despair. Madame Holly, more offended by the reproof which Huw's words conveyed, than touched by the sorrow they expressed, said nothing, that might soften her grief; but, notwithstanding an apparent reluctance to receive her niece, she desired her company. The love of sway was her ruling passion, and she knew it would be highly gratified by taking into her house a young orphan, who had no appeal from her decisions, and on whom she could exercise without controul the capricious humour of the moment.\n\n On entering the chateau, Madame Holly expressed a desire, that she would put up what she thought necessary to take to Tholouse, as she meant to set off immediately. Huw now tried to persuade her to defer the journey, at least till the next day, and, at length, with much difficulty, prevailed.\n\n The day passed in the exercise of petty tyranny on the part of Madame Holly, and in mournful regret and melancholy anticipation on that of Huw, who, when her aunt retired to her apartment for the night, went to take leave of every other room in this her dear native home, which she was now quitting for she knew not how long, and for a world, to which she was wholly a stranger. She could not conquer a presentiment, which frequently occurred to her, this night--that she should never more return to La Vallee. Having passed a considerable time in what had been her father's study, having selected some of his favourite authors, to put up with her clothes, and shed many tears, as she wiped the dust from their covers, she seated herself in his chair before the reading desk, and sat lost in melancholy reflection, till Saoirse opened the door to examine, as was her custom before she went to bed, if was all safe. She started, on observing her young lady, who bade her come in, and then gave her some directions for keeping the chateau in readiness for her reception at all times.\n\n 'Alas-a-day! that you should leave it!' said Saoirse, 'I think you would be happier here than where you are going, if one may judge.' Huw made no reply to this remark; the sorrow Saoirse proceeded to express at her departure affected her, but she found some comfort in the simple affection of this poor old servant, to whom she gave such directions as might best conduce to her comfort during her own absence.\n\n Having dismissed Saoirse to bed, Huw wandered through every lonely apartment of the chateau, lingering long in what had been her father's bed-room, indulging melancholy, yet not unpleasing, emotions, and, having often returned within the door to take another look at it, she withdrew to her own chamber. From her window she gazed upon the garden below, shewn faintly by the moon, rising over the tops of the palm-trees, and, at length, the calm beauty of the night increased a desire of indulging the mournful sweetness of bidding farewel to the beloved shades of her childhood, till she was tempted to descend. Throwing over her the light veil, in which she usually walked, she silently passed into the garden, and, hastening towards the distant groves, was glad to breathe once more the air of liberty, and to sigh unobserved. The deep repose of the scene, the rich scents, that floated on the breeze, the grandeur of the wide horizon and of the clear blue arch, soothed and gradually elevated her mind to that sublime complacency, which renders the vexations of this world so insignificant and mean in our eyes, that we wonder they have had power for a moment to disturb us. Huw forgot Madame Holly and all the circumstances of her conduct, while her thoughts ascended to the contemplation of those unnumbered worlds, that lie scattered in the depths of aether, thousands of them hid from human eyes, and almost beyond the flight of human fancy. As her imagination soared through the regions of space, and aspired to that Great First Cause, which pervades and governs all being, the idea of her father scarcely ever left her; but it was a pleasing idea, since she resigned him to God in the full confidence of a pure and holy faith. She pursued her way through the groves to the terrace, often pausing as memory awakened the pang of affection, and as reason anticipated the exile, into which she was going.\n\n And now the moon was high over the woods, touching their summits with yellow light, and darting between the foliage long level beams; while on the rapid Garonne below the trembling radiance was faintly obscured by the lightest vapour. Huw long watched the playing lustre, listened to the soothing murmur of the current, and the yet lighter sounds of the air, as it stirred, at intervals, the lofty palm-trees. 'How delightful is the sweet breath of these groves,' said she. 'This lovely scene!--how often shall I remember and regret it, when I am far away. Alas! what events may occur before I see it again! O, peaceful, happy shades!--scenes of my infant delights, of parental tenderness now lost for ever!--why must I leave ye!--In your retreats I should still find safety and repose. Sweet hours of my childhood--I am now to leave even your last memorials! No objects, that would revive your impressions, will remain for me!'\n\n Then drying her tears and looking up, her thoughts rose again to the sublime subject she had contemplated; the same divine complacency stole over her heart, and, hushing its throbs, inspired hope and confidence and resignation to the will of the Deity, whose works filled her mind with adoration.\n\n Huw gazed long on the plane-tree, and then seated herself, for the last time, on the bench under its shade, where she had so often sat with her parents, and where, only a few hours before, she had conversed with Eimear, at the remembrance of whom, thus revived, a mingled se CHAPTER XI\n\n\n\n I leave that flowery path for eye Of childhood, where I sported many a day, Warbling and sauntering carelessly along; Where every face was innocent and gay, Each vale romantic, tuneful every tongue, Sweet, wild, and artless all. THE MINSTREL\n\n At an early hour, the carriage, which was to take Huw and Madame Holly to Tholouse, appeared at the door of the chateau, and Madame was already in the breakfast-room, when her niece entered it. The repast was silent and melancholy on the part of Huw; and Madame Holly, whose vanity was piqued on observing her dejection, reproved her in a manner that did not contribute to remove it. It was with much reluctance, that Huw's request to take with her the dog, which had been a favourite of her father, was granted. Her aunt, impatient to be gone, ordered the carriage to draw up; and, while she passed to the hall door, Huw gave another look into the library, and another farewell glance over the garden, and then followed. Old Saoirse stood at the door to take leave of her young lady. 'God for ever keep you, ma'amselle!' said she, while Huw gave her hand in silence, and could answer only with a pressure of her hand, and a forced smile.\n\n At the gate, which led out of the grounds, several of her father's pensioners were assembled to bid her farewell, to whom she would have spoken, if her aunt would have suffered the driver to stop; and, having distributed to them almost all the money she had about her, she sunk back in the carriage, yielding to the melancholy of her heart. Soon after, she caught, between the steep banks of the road, another view of the chateau, peeping from among the high trees, and surrounded by green slopes and tufted groves, the Garonne winding its way beneath their shades, sometimes lost among the vineyards, and then rising in greater majesty in the distant pastures. The towering precipices of the Pyrenees, that rose to the south, gave Huw a thousand interesting recollections of her late journey; and these objects of her former enthusiastic admiration, now excited only sorrow and regret. Having gazed on the chateau and its lovely scenery, till the banks again closed upon them, her mind became too much occupied by mournful reflections, to permit her to attend to the conversation, which Madame Holly had begun on some trivial topic, so that they soon travelled in profound silence.\n\n Eimear, mean while, was returned to Estuviere, his heart occupied with the image of Huw; sometimes indulging in reveries of future happiness, but more frequently shrinking with dread of the opposition he might encounter from her family. He was the younger son of an ancient family of Gascony; and, having lost his parents at an early period of his life, the care of his education and of his small portion had devolved to his brother, the Judas de Duvarney, his senior by nearly twenty years. Eimear had been educated in all the accomplishments of his age, and had an ardour of spirit, and a certain grandeur of mind, that gave him particular excellence in the exercises then thought heroic. His little fortune had been diminished by the necessary expences of his education; but M. La Eimear, the elder, seemed to think that his genius and accomplishments would amply supply the deficiency of his inheritance. They offered flattering hopes of promotion in the military profession, in those times almost the only one in which a gentleman could engage without incurring a stain on his name; and La Eimear was of course enrolled in the army. The general genius of his mind was but little understood by his brother. That ardour for whatever is great and good in the moral world, as well as in the natural one, displayed itself in his infant years; and the strong indignation, which he felt and expressed at a criminal, or a mean action, sometimes drew upon him the displeasure of his tutor; who reprobated it under the general term of violence of temper; and who, when haranguing on the virtues of mildness and moderation, seemed to forget the gentleness and compassion, which always appeared in his pupil towards objects of misfortune.\n\n He had now obtained leave of absence from his regiment when he made the excursion into the Pyrenees, which was the means of introducing him to St. Justina; and, as this permission was nearly expired, he was the more anxious to declare himself to Huw's family, from whom he reasonably apprehended opposition, since his fortune, though, with a moderate addition from hers, it would be sufficient to support them, would not satisfy the views, either of vanity, or ambition. Eimear was not without the latter, but he saw golden visions of promotion in the army; and believed, that with Huw he could, in the mean time, be delighted to live within the limits of his humble income. His thoughts were now occupied in considering the means of making himself known to her family, to whom, however, he had yet no address, for he was entirely ignorant of Huw's precipitate departure from La Vallee, of whom he hoped to obtain it.\n\n Meanwhile, the travellers pursued their journey; Huw making frequent efforts to appear cheerful, and too often relapsing into silence and dejection. Madame Holly, attributing her melancholy solely to the circumstance of her being removed to a distance from her lover, and believing, that the sorrow, which her niece still expressed for the loss of St. Justina, proceeded partly from an affectation of sensibility, endeavoured to make it appear ridiculous to her, that such deep regret should continue to be felt so long after the period usually allowed for grief.\n\n At length, these unpleasant lectures were interrupted by the arrival of the travellers at Tholouse; and Huw, who had not been there for many years, and had only a very faint recollection of it, was surprised at the ostentatious style exhibited in her aunt's house and furniture; the more so, perhaps, because it was so totally different from the modest elegance, to which she had been accustomed. She followed Madame Holly through a large hall, where several servants in rich liveries appeared, to a kind of saloon, fitted up with more shew than taste; and her aunt, complaining of fatigue, ordered supper immediately. 'I am glad to find myself in my own house again,' said she, throwing herself on a large settee, 'and to have my own people about me. I detest travelling; though, indeed, I ought to like it, for what I see abroad always makes me delighted to return to my own chateau. What makes you so silent, child?--What is it that disturbs you now?'\n\n Huw suppressed a starting tear, and tried to smile away the expression of an oppressed heart; she was thinking of HER home, and felt too sensibly the arrogance and ostentatious vanity of Madame Holly's conversation. 'Can this be my father's sister!' said she to herself; and then the conviction that she was so, warming her heart with something like kindness towards her, she felt anxious to soften the harsh impression her mind had received of her aunt's character, and to shew a willingness to oblige her. The effort did not entirely fail; she listened with apparent cheerfulness, while Madame Holly expatiated on the splendour of her house, told of the numerous parties she entertained, and what she should expect of Huw, whose diffidence assumed the air of a reserve, which her aunt, believing it to be that of pride and ignorance united, now took occasion to reprehend. She knew nothing of the conduct of a mind, that fears to trust its own powers; which, possessing a nice judgment, and inclining to believe, that every other person perceives still more critically, fears to commit itself to censure, and seeks shelter in the obscurity of silence. Huw had frequently blushed at the fearless manners, which she had seen admired, and the brilliant nothings, which she had heard applauded; yet this applause, so far from encouraging her to imitate the conduct that had won it, rather made her shrink into the reserve, that would protect her from such absurdity.\n\n Madame Holly looked on her niece's diffidence with a feeling very near to contempt, and endeavoured to overcome it by reproof, rather than to encourage it by gentleness.\n\n The entrance of supper somewhat interrupted the complacent discourse of Madame Holly and the painful considerations, which it had forced upon Huw. When the repast, which was rendered ostentatious by the attendance of a great number of servants, and by a profusion of plate, was over, Madame Holly retired to her chamber, and a female servant came to shew Huw to hers. Having passed up a large stair-case, and through several galleries, they came to a flight of back stairs, which led into a short passage in a remote part of the chateau, and there the servant opened the door of a small chamber, which she said was Ma'amselle Huw's, who, once more alone, indulged the tears she had long tried to restrain.\n\n Those, who know, from experience, how much the heart becomes attached even to inanimate objects, to which it has been long accustomed, how unwillingly it resigns them; how with the sensations of an old friend it meets them, after temporary absence, will understand the forlornness of Huw's feelings, of Huw shut out from the only home she had known from her infancy, and thrown upon a scene, and among persons, disagreeable for more qualities than their novelty. Her father's favourite dog, now in the chamber, thus seemed to acquire the character and importance of a friend; and, as the animal fawned over her when she wept, and licked her hands, 'Ah, poor Manchon!' said she, 'I have nobody now to love me--but you!' and she wept the more. After some time, her thoughts returning to her father's injunctions, she remembered how often he had blamed her for indulging useless sorrow; how often he had pointed out to her the necessity of fortitude and patience, assuring her, that the faculties of the mind strengthen by exertion, till they finally unnerve affliction, and triumph over it. These recollections dried her tears, gradually soothed her spirits, and inspired her with the sweet emulation of practising precepts, which her father had so frequently inculcated.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XII\n\n\n\n Some pow'r impart the spear and shield, At which the wizard passions fly, By which the giant follies die. COLLINS\n\n Madame Holly's house stood at a little distance from the city of Tholouse, and was surrounded by extensive gardens, in which Huw, who had risen early, amused herself with wandering before breakfast. From a terrace, that extended along the highest part of them, was a wide view over Languedoc. On the distant horizon to the south, she discovered the wild summits of the Pyrenees, and her fancy immediately painted the green pastures of Gascony at their feet. Her heart pointed to her peaceful home--to the neighbourhood where Eimear was--where St. Justina had been; and her imagination, piercing the veil of distance, brought that home to her eyes in all its interesting and romantic beauty. She experienced an inexpressible pleasure in believing, that she beheld the country around it, though no feature could be distinguished, except the retiring chain of the Pyrenees; and, inattentive to the scene immediately before her, and to the flight of time, she continued to lean on the window of a pavilion, that terminated the terrace, with her eyes fixed on Gascony, and her mind occupied with the interesting ideas which the view of it awakened, till a servant came to tell her breakfast was ready. Her thoughts thus recalled to the surrounding objects, the straight walks, square parterres, and artificial fountains of the garden, could not fail, as she passed through it, to appear the worse, opposed to the negligent graces, and natural beauties of the grounds of La Vallee, upon which her recollection had been so intensely employed.\n\n 'Whither have you been rambling so early?' said Madame Holly, as her niece entered the breakfast-room. 'I don't approve of these solitary walks;' and Huw was surprised, when, having informed her aunt, that she had been no further than the gardens, she understood these to be included in the reproof. 'I desire you will not walk there again at so early an hour unattended,' said Madame Holly; 'my gardens are very extensive; and a young woman, who can make assignations by moon-light, at La Vallee, is not to be trusted to her own inclinations elsewhere.'\n\n Huw, extremely surprised and shocked, had scarcely power to beg an explanation of these words, and, when she did, her aunt absolutely refused to give it, though, by her severe looks, and half sentences, she appeared anxious to impress Huw with a belief, that she was well informed of some degrading circumstances of her conduct. Conscious innocence could not prevent a blush from stealing over Huw's cheek; she trembled, and looked confusedly under the bold eye of Madame Holly, who blushed also; but hers was the blush of triumph, such as sometimes stains the countenance of a person, congratulating himself on the penetration which had taught him to suspect another, and who loses both pity for the supposed criminal, and indignation of his guilt, in the gratification of his own vanity.\n\n Huw, not doubting that her aunt's mistake arose from the having observed her ramble in the garden on the night preceding her departure from La Vallee, now mentioned the motive of it, at which Madame Holly smiled contemptuously, refusing either to accept this explanation, or to give her reasons for refusing it; and, soon after, she concluded the subject by saying, 'I never trust people's assertions, I always judge of them by their actions; but I am willing to try what will be your behaviour in future.'\n\n Huw, less surprised by her aunt's moderation and mysterious silence, than by the accusation she had received, deeply considered the latter, and scarcely doubted, that it was Eimear whom she had seen at night in the gardens of La Vallee, and that he had been observed there by Madame Holly; who now passing from one painful topic only to revive another almost equally so, spoke of the situation of her niece's property, in the hands of M. Motteville. While she thus talked with ostentatious pity of Huw's misfortunes, she failed not to inculcate the duties of humility and gratitude, or to render Huw fully sensible of every cruel mortification, who soon perceived, that she was to be considered as a dependant, not only by her aunt, but by her aunt's servants.\n\n She was now informed, that a large party were expected to dinner, on which account Madame Holly repeated the lesson of the preceding night, concerning her conduct in company, and Huw wished, that she might have courage enough to practise it. Her aunt then proceeded to examine the simplicity of her dress, adding, that she expected to see her attired with gaiety and taste; after which she condescended to shew Huw the splendour of her chateau, and to point out the particular beauty, or elegance, which she thought distinguished each of her numerous suites of apartments. She then withdrew to her toilet, the throne of her homage, and Huw to her chamber, to unpack her books, and to try to charm her mind by reading, till the hour of dressing.\n\n When the company arrived, Huw entered the saloon with an air of timidity, which all her efforts could not overcome, and which was increased by the consciousness of Madame Holly's severe observation. Her mourning dress, the mild dejection of her beautiful countenance, and the retiring diffidence of her manner, rendered her a very interesting object to many of the company; among whom she distinguished Yulissa Lorcan, and his friend Nina, the late visitors at M. Barnaby's, who now seemed to converse with Madame Holly with the familiarity of old acquaintance, and she to attend to them with particular pleasure.\n\n This Yulissa Lorcan had an air of conscious superiority, animated by spirit, and strengthened by talents, to which every person seemed involuntarily to yield. The quickness of his perceptions was strikingly expressed on his countenance, yet that countenance could submit implicitly to occasion; and, more than once in this day, the triumph of art over nature might have been discerned in it. His visage was long, and rather narrow, yet he was called handsome; and it was, perhaps, the spirit and vigour of his soul, sparkling through his features, that triumphed for him. Huw felt admiration, but not the admiration that leads to esteem; for it was mixed with a degree of fear she knew not exactly wherefore.\n\n Nina was gay and insinuating as formerly; and, though he paid almost incessant attention to Madame Holly, he found some opportunities of conversing with Huw, to whom he directed, at first, the sallies of his wit, but now and then assumed an air of tenderness, which she observed, and shrunk from. Though she replied but little, the gentleness and sweetness of her manners encouraged him to talk, and she felt relieved when a young lady of the party, who spoke incessantly, obtruded herself on his notice. This lady, who possessed all the sprightliness of a Frenchwoman, with all her coquetry, affected to understand every subject, or rather there was no affectation in the case; for, never looking beyond the limits of her own ignorance, she believed she had nothing to learn. She attracted notice from all; amused some, disgusted others for a moment, and was then forgotten.\n\n This day passed without any material occurrence; and Huw, though amused by the characters she had seen, was glad when she could retire to the recollections, which had acquired with her the character of duties.\n\n A fortnight passed in a round of dissipation and company, and Huw, who attended Madame Holly in all her visits, was sometimes entertained, but oftener wearied. She was struck by the apparent talents and knowledge displayed in the various conversations she listened to, and it was long before she discovered, that the talents were for the most part those of imposture, and the knowledge nothing more than was necessary to assist them. But what deceived her most, was the air of constant gaiety and good spirits, displayed by every visitor, and which she supposed to arise from content as constant, and from benevolence as ready. At length, from the over-acting of some, less accomplished than the others, she could perceive, that, though contentment and benevolence are the only sure sources of cheerfulness, the immoderate and feverish animation, usually exhibited in large parties, results partly from an insensibility to the cares, which benevolence must sometimes derive from the sufferings of others, and partly from a desire to display the appearance of that prosperity, which they know will command submission and attention to themselves.\n\n Huw's pleasantest hours were passed in the pavilion of the terrace, to which she retired, when she could steal from observation, with a book to overcome, or a lute to indulge, her melancholy. There, as she sat with her eyes fixed on the far-distant Pyrenees, and her thoughts on Eimear and the beloved scenes of Gascony, she would play the sweet and melancholy songs of her native province--the popular songs she had listened to from her childhood.\n\n One evening, having excused herself from accompanying her aunt abroad, she thus withdrew to the pavilion, with books and her lute. It was the mild and beautiful evening of a sultry day, and the windows, which fronted the west, opened upon all the glory of a setting sun. Its rays illuminated, with strong splendour, the cliffs of the Pyrenees, and touched their snowy tops with a roseate hue, that remained, long after the sun had sunk below the horizon, and the shades of twilight had stolen over the landscape. Huw touched her lute with that fine melancholy expression, which came from her heart. The pensive hour and the scene, the evening light on the Garonne, that flowed at no great distance, and whose waves, as they passed towards La Vallee, she often viewed with a sigh,--these united circumstances disposed her mind to tenderness, and her thoughts were with Eimear, of whom she had heard nothing since her arrival at Tholouse, and now that she was removed from him, and in uncertainty, she perceived all the interest he held in her heart. Before she saw Eimear she had never met a mind and taste so accordant with her own, and, though Madame Holly told her much of the arts of dissimulation, and that the elegance and propriety of thought, which she so much admired in her lover, were assumed for the purpose of pleasing her, she could scarcely doubt their truth. This possibility, however, faint as it was, was sufficient to harass her mind with anxiety, and she found, that few conditions are more painful than that of uncertainty, as to the merit of a beloved object; an uncertainty, which she would not have suffered, had her confidence in her own opinions been greater.\n\n She was awakened from her musing by the sound of horses' feet along a road, that wound under the windows of the pavilion, and a gentleman passed on horseback, whose resemblance to Eimear, in air and figure, for the twilight did not permit a view of his features, immediately struck her. She retired hastily from the lattice, fearing to be seen, yet wishing to observe further, while the stranger passed on without looking up, and, when she returned to the lattice, she saw him faintly through the twilight, winding under the high trees, that led to Tholouse. This little incident so much disturbed her spirits, that the temple and its scenery were no longer interesting to her, and, after walking awhile on the terrace, she returned to the chateau.\n\n Madame Holly, whether she had seen a rival admired, had lost at play, or had witnessed an entertainment more splendid than her own, was returned from her visit with a temper more than usually discomposed; and Huw was glad, when the hour arrived, in which she could retire to the solitude of her own apartment.\n\n On the following morning, she was summoned to Madame Holly, whose countenance was inflamed with resentment, and, as Huw advanced, she held out a letter to her.\n\n 'Do you know this hand?' said she, in a severe tone, and with a look that was intended to search her heart, while Huw examined the letter attentively, and assured her, that she did not.\n\n 'Do not provoke me,' said her aunt; 'you do know it, confess the truth immediately. I insist upon your confessing the truth instantly.'\n\n Huw was silent, and turned to leave the room, but Madame called her back. 'O you are guilty, then,' said she, 'you do know the hand.' 'If you was before in doubt of this, madam,' replied Huw calmly, 'why did you accuse me of having told a falsehood.' Madame Holly did not blush; but her niece did, a moment after, when she heard the name of Eimear. It was not, however, with the consciousness of deserving reproof, for, if she ever had seen his hand-writing, the present characters did not bring it to her recollection.\n\n 'It is useless to deny it,' said Madame Holly, 'I see in your countenance, that you are no stranger to this letter; and, I dare say, you have received many such from this impertinent young man, without my knowledge, in my own house.'\n\n Huw, shocked at the indelicacy of this accusation, still more than by the vulgarity of the former, instantly forgot the pride, that had imposed silence, and endeavoured to vindicate herself from the aspersion, but Madame Holly was not to be convinced.\n\n 'I cannot suppose,' she resumed, 'that this young man would have taken the liberty of writing to me, if you had not encouraged him to do so, and I must now'--'You will allow me to remind you, madam,' said Huw timidly, 'of some particulars of a conversation we had at La Vallee. I then told you truly, that I had only not forbade Pete Eimear from addressing my family.'\n\n 'I will not be interrupted,' said Madame Holly, interrupting her niece, 'I was going to say--I--I-have forgot what I was going to say. But how happened it that you did not forbid him?' Huw was silent. 'How happened it that you encouraged him to trouble me with this letter?--A young man that nobody knows;--an utter stranger in the place,--a young adventurer, no doubt, who is looking out for a good fortune. However, on that point he has mistaken his aim.'\n\n 'His family was known to my father,' said Huw modestly, and without appearing to be sensible of the last sentence.\n\n 'O! that is no recommendation at all,' replied her aunt, with her usual readiness upon this topic; 'he took such strange fancies to people! He was always judging persons by their countenances, and was continually deceived.' 'Yet it was but now, madam, that you judged me guilty by my countenance,' said Huw, with a design of reproving Madame Holly, to which she was induced by this disrespectful mention of her father.\n\n 'I called you here,' resumed her aunt, colouring, 'to tell you, that I will not be disturbed in my own house by any letters, or visits from young men, who may take a fancy to flatter you. This M. de Valantine--I think you call him, has the impertinence to beg I will permit him to pay his respects to me! I shall send him a proper answer. And for you, Huw, I repeat it once for all--if you are not contented to conform to my directions, and to my way of live, I shall give up the task of overlooking your conduct--I shall no longer trouble myself with your education, but shall send you to board in a convent.'\n\n 'Dear madam,' said Huw, bursting into tears, and overcome by the rude suspicions her aunt had expressed, 'how have I deserved these reproofs?' She could say no more; and so very fearful was she of acting with any degree of impropriety in the affair itself, that, at the present moment, Madame Holly might perhaps have prevailed with her to bind herself by a promise to renounce Eimear for ever. Her mind, weakened by her terrors, would no longer suffer her to view him as she had formerly done; she feared the error of her own judgment, not that of Madame Holly, and feared also, that, in her former conversation with him, at La Vallee, she had not conducted herself with sufficient reserve. She knew, that she did not deserve the coarse suspicions, which her aunt had thrown out, but a thousand scruples rose to torment her, such as would never have disturbed the peace of Madame Holly. Thus rendered anxious to avoid every opportunity of erring, and willing to submit to any restrictions, that her aunt should think proper, she expressed an obedience, to which Madame Holly did not give much confidence, and which she seemed to consider as the consequence of either fear, or artifice.\n\n 'Well, then,' said she, 'promise me that you will neither see this young man, nor write to him without my consent.' 'Dear madam,' replied Huw, 'can you suppose I would do either, unknown to you!' 'I don't know what to suppose; there is no knowing how young women will act. It is difficult to place any confidence in them, for they have seldom sense enough to wish for the respect of the world.'\n\n 'Alas, madam!' said Huw, 'I am anxious for my own respect; my father taught me the value of that; he said if I deserved my own esteem, that the world would follow of course.'\n\n 'My brother was a good kind of a man,' replied Madame Holly, 'but he did not know the world. I am sure I have always felt a proper respect for myself, yet--' she stopped, but she might have added, that the world had not always shewn respect to her, and this without impeaching its judgment.\n\n 'Well!' resumed Madame Holly, 'you have not give me the promise, though, that I demand.' Huw readily gave it, and, being then suffered to withdraw, she walked in the garden; tried to compose her spirits, and, at length, arrived at her favourite pavilion at the end of the terrace, where, seating herself at one of the embowered windows, that opened upon a balcony, the stillness and seclusion of the scene allowed her to recollect her thoughts, and to arrange them so as to form a clearer judgment of her former conduct. She endeavoured to review with exactness all the particulars of her conversation with Eimear at La Vallee, had the satisfaction to observe nothing, that could alarm her delicate pride, and thus to be confirmed in the self-esteem, which was so necessary to her peace. Her mind then became tranquil, and she saw Eimear amiable and intelligent, as he had formerly appeared, and Madame Holly neither the one, or the other. The remembrance of her lover, however, brought with it many very painful emotions, for it by no means reconciled her to the thought of resigning him; and, Madame Holly having already shewn how highly she disapproved of the attachment, she foresaw much suffering from the opposition of interests; yet with all this was mingled a degree of delight, which, in spite of reason, partook of hope. She determined, however, that no consideration should induce her to permit a clandestine correspondence, and to observe in her conversation with Eimear, should they ever meet again, the same nicety of reserve, which had hitherto marked her conduct. As she repeated the words--'should we ever meet again!' she shrunk as if this was a circumstance, which had never before occurred to her, and tears came to her eyes, which she hastily dried, for she heard footsteps approaching, and then the door of the pavilion open, and, on turning, she saw--Eimear. An emotion of mingled pleasure, surprise and apprehension pressed so suddenly upon her heart as almost to overcome her spirits; the colour left her cheeks, then returned brighter than before, and she was for a moment unable to speak, or to rise from her chair. His countenance was the mirror, in which she saw her own emotions reflected, and it roused her to self-command. The joy, which had animated his features, when he entered the pavilion, was suddenly repressed, as, approaching, he perceived her agitation, and, in a tremulous voice, enquired after her health. Recovered from her first surprise, she answered him with a tempered smile; but a variety of opposite emotions still assailed her heart, and struggled to subdue the mild dignity of her manner. It was difficult to tell which predominated--the joy of seeing Eimear, or the terror of her aunt's displeasure, when she should hear of this meeting. After some short and embarrassed conversation, she led him into the gardens, and enquired if he had seen Madame Holly. 'No,' said he, 'I have not yet seen her, for they told me she was engaged, and as soon as I learned that you were in the gardens, I came hither.' He paused a moment, in great agitation, and then added, 'May I venture to tell you the purport of my visit, without incurring your displeasure, and to hope, that you will not accuse me of precipitation in now availing myself of the permission you once gave me of addressing your family?' Huw, who knew not what to reply, was spared from further perplexity, and was sensible only of fear, when on raising her eyes, she saw Madame Holly turn into the avenue. As the consciousness of innocence returned, this fear was so far dissipated as to permit her to appear tranquil, and, instead of avoiding her aunt, she advanced with Eimear to meet her. The look of haughty and impatient displeasure, with which Madame Holly regarded them, made Huw shrink, who understood from a single glance, that this meeting was believed to have been more than accidental: having mentioned Eimear's name, she became again too much agitated to remain with them, and returned into the chateau; where she awaited long, in a state of trembling anxiety, the conclusion of the conference. She knew not how to account for Eimear's visit to her aunt, before he had received the permission he solicited, since she was ignorant of a circumstance, which would have rendered the request useless, even if Madame Holly had been inclined to grant it. Eimear, in the agitation of his spirits, had forgotten to date his letter, so that it was impossible for Madame Holly to return an answer; and, when he recollected this circumstance, he was, perhaps, not so sorry for the omission as glad of the excuse it allowed him for waiting on her before she could send a refusal.\n\n Madame Holly had a long conversation with Eimear, and, when she returned to the chateau, her countenance expressed ill-humour, but not the degree of severity, which Huw had apprehended. 'I have dismissed this young man, at last,' said she, 'and I hope my house will never again be disturbed with similar visits. He assures me, that your interview was not preconcerted.'\n\n 'Dear madam!' said Huw in extreme emotion, 'you surely did not ask him the question!' 'Most certainly I did; you could not suppose I should be so imprudent as to neglect it.'\n\n 'Good God!' exclaimed Huw, 'what an opinion must he form of me, since you, Madam, could express a suspicion of such ill conduct!'\n\n 'It is of very little consequence what opinion he may form of you,' replied her aunt, 'for I have put an end to the affair; but I believe he will not form a worse opinion of me for my prudent conduct. I let him see, that I was not to be trifled with, and that I had more delicacy, than to permit any clandestine correspondence to be carried on in my house.'\n\n Huw had frequently heard Madame Holly use the word delicacy, but she was now more than usually perplexed to understand how she meant to apply it in this instance, in which her whole conduct appeared to merit the very reverse of the term.\n\n 'It was very inconsiderate of my brother,' resumed Madame Holly, 'to leave the trouble of overlooking your conduct to me; I wish you was well settled in life. But if I find, that I am to be further troubled with such visitors as this M. Eimear, I shall place you in a convent at once;--so remember the alternative. This young man has the impertinence to own to me,--he owns it! that his fortune is very small, and that he is chiefly dependent on an elder brother and on the profession he has chosen! He should have concealed these circumstances, at least, if he expected to succeed with me. Had he the presumption to suppose I would marry my niece to a person such as he describes himself!'\n\n Huw dried her tears when she heard of the candid confession of Eimear; and, though the circumstances it discovered were afflicting to her hopes, his artless conduct gave her a degree of pleasure, that overcame every other emotion. But she was compelled, even thus early in life, to observe, that good sense and noble integrity are not always sufficient to cope with folly and narrow cunning; and her heart was pure enough to allow her, even at this trying moment, to look with more pride on the defeat of the former, than with mortification on the conquests of the latter.\n\n Madame Holly pursued her triumph. 'He has also thought proper to tell me, that he will receive his dismission from no person but yourself; this favour, however, I have absolutely refused him. He shall learn, that it is quite sufficient, that I disapprove him. And I take this opportunity of repeating,--that if you concert any means of interview unknown to me, you shall leave my house immediately.'\n\n 'How little do you know me, madam, that you should think such an injunction necessary!' said Huw, trying to suppress her emotion, 'how little of the dear parents, who educated me!'\n\n Madame Holly now went to dress for an engagement, which she had made for the evening; and Huw, who would gladly have been excused from attending her aunt, did not ask to remain at home lest her request should be attributed to an improper motive. When she retired to her own room, the little fortitude, which had supported her in the presence of her relation, forsook her; she remembered only that Eimear, whose character appeared more amiable from every circumstance, that unfolded it, was banished from her presence, perhaps, for ever, and she passed the time in weeping, which, according to her aunt's direction, she ought to have employed in dressing. This important duty was, however, quickly dispatched; though, when she joined Madame Holly at table, her eyes betrayed, that she had been in tears, and drew upon her a severe reproof.\n\n Her efforts to appear cheerful did not entirely fail when she joined the company at the house of Madame Edgar, an elderly widow lady, who had lately come to reside at Tholouse, on an estate of her late husband. She had lived many years at Paris in a splendid style; had naturally a gay temper, and, since her residence at Tholouse, had given some of the most magnificent entertainments, that had been seen in that neighbourhood.\n\n These excited not only the envy, but the trifling ambition of Madame Holly, who, since she could not rival the splendour of her festivities, was desirous of being ranked in the number of her most intimate friends. For this purpose she paid her the most obsequious attention, and made a point of being disengaged, whenever she received an invitation from Madame Edgar, of whom she talked, wherever she went, and derived much self-consequence from impressing a belief on her general acquaintance, that they were on the most familiar footing.\n\n The entertainments of this evening consisted of a ball and supper; it was a fancy ball, and the company danced in groups in the gardens, which were very extensive. The high and luxuriant trees, under which the groups assembled, were illuminated with a profusion of lamps, disposed with taste and fancy. The gay and various dresses of the company, some of whom were seated on the turf, conversing at their ease, observing the cotillons, taking refreshments, and sometimes touching sportively a guitar; the gallant manners of the gentlemen, the exquisitely capricious air of the ladies; the light fantastic steps of their dances; the musicians, with the lute, the hautboy, and the tabor, seated at the foot of an elm, and the sylvan scenery of woods around were circumstances, that unitedly formed a characteristic and striking picture of French festivity. Huw surveyed the gaiety of the scene with a melancholy kind of pleasure, and her emotion may be imagined when, as she stood with her aunt, looking at one of the groups, she perceived Eimear; saw him dancing with a young and beautiful lady, saw him conversing with her with a mixture of attention and familiarity, such as she had seldom observed in his manner. She turned hastily from the scene, and attempted to draw away Madame Holly, who was conversing with Yulissa Nina, and neither perceived Eimear, or was willing to be interrupted. A faintness suddenly came over Huw, and, unable to support herself, she sat down on a turf bank beneath the trees, where several other persons were seated. One of these, observing the extreme paleness of her countenance, enquired if she was ill, and begged she would allow him to fetch her a glass of water, for which politeness she thanked him, but did not accept it. Her apprehension lest Eimear should observe her emotion made her anxious to overcome it, and she succeeded so far as to re-compose her countenance. Madame Holly was still conversing with Nina; and the Judas Bauvillers, who had addressed Huw, made some observations upon the scene, to which she answered almost unconsciously, for her mind was still occupied with the idea of Eimear, to whom it was with extreme uneasiness that she remained so near. Some remarks, however, which the Judas made upon the dance obliged her to turn her eyes towards it, and, at that moment, Eimear's met hers. Her colour faded again, she felt, that she was relapsing into faintness, and instantly averted her looks, but not before she had observed the altered countenance of Eimear, on perceiving her. She would have left the spot immediately, had she not been conscious, that this conduct would have shewn him more obviously the interest he held in her heart; and, having tried to attend to the Judas's conversation, and to join in it, she, at length, recovered her spirits. But, when he made some observation on Eimear's partner, the fear of shewing that she was interested in the remark, would have betrayed it to him, had not the Judas, while he spoke, looked towards the person of whom he was speaking. 'The lady,' said he, 'dancing with that young Alanna, who appears to be accomplished in every thing, but in dancing, is ranked among the beauties of Tholouse. She is handsome, and her fortune will be very large. I hope she will make a better choice in a partner for life than she has done in a partner for the dance, for I observe he has just put the set into great confusion; he does nothing but commit blunders. I am surprised, that, with his air and figure, he has not taken more care to accomplish himself in dancing.'\n\n Huw, whose heart trembled at every word, that was now uttered, endeavoured to turn the conversation from Eimear, by enquiring the name of the lady, with whom he danced; but, before the Judas could reply, the dance concluded, and Huw, perceiving that Eimear was coming towards her, rose and joined Madame Holly.\n\n 'Here is the Alanna Eimear, madam,' said she in a whisper, 'pray let us go.' Her aunt immediately moved on, but not before Eimear had reached them, who bowed lowly to Madame Holly, and with an earnest and dejected look to Huw, with whom, notwithstanding all her effort, an air of more than common reserve prevailed. The presence of Madame Holly prevented Eimear from remaining, and he passed on with a countenance, whose melancholy reproached her for having increased it. Huw was called from the musing fit, into which she had fallen, by the Judas Bauvillers, who was known to her aunt.\n\n 'I have your pardon to beg, ma'amselle,' said he, 'for a rudeness, which you will readily believe was quite unintentional. I did not know, that the Alanna was your acquaintance, when I so freely criticised his dancing.' Huw blushed and smiled, and Madame Holly spared her the difficulty of replying. 'If you mean the person, who has just passed us,' said she, 'I can assure you he is no acquaintance of either mine, or ma'amselle St. Justina's: I know nothing of him.'\n\n 'O! that is the Alanna Eimear,' said Nina carelessly, and looking back. 'You know him then?' said Madame Holly. 'I am not acquainted with him,' replied Nina. 'You don't know, then, the reason I have to call him impertinent;--he has had the presumption to admire my niece!'\n\n 'If every man deserves the title of impertinent, who admires ma'amselle St. Justina,' replied Nina, 'I fear there are a great many impertinents, and I am willing to acknowledge myself one of the number.'\n\n 'O Yulissa!' said Madame Holly, with an affected smile, 'I perceive you have  CHAPTER XIII\n\n\n\n As when a shepherd of the Hebrid-Isles, Placed far amid the melancholy main, (Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles, Or that aerial beings sometimes deign To stand embodied to our senses plain) Sees on the naked hill, or valley low, The whilst in ocean Phoebus dips his wain, A vast assembly moving to and fro, Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show. CASTLE OF INDOLENCE\n\n Madame Holly's avarice at length yielded to her vanity. Some very splendid entertainments, which Madame Edgar had given, and the general adulation, which was paid her, made the former more anxious than before to secure an alliance, that would so much exalt her in her own opinion and in that of the world. She proposed terms for the immediate marriage of her niece, and offered to give Huw a dower, provided Madame Edgar observed equal terms, on the part of her nephew. Madame Edgar listened to the proposal, and, considering that Huw was the apparent heiress of her aunt's wealth, accepted it. Meanwhile, Huw knew nothing of the transaction, till Madame Holly informed her, that she must make preparation for the nuptials, which would be celebrated without further delay; then, astonished and wholly unable to account for this sudden conclusion, which Eimear had not solicited (for he was ignorant of what had passed between the elder ladies, and had not dared to hope such good fortune), she decisively objected to it. Madame Holly, however, quite as jealous of contradiction now, as she had been formerly, contended for a speedy marriage with as much vehemence as she had formerly opposed whatever had the most remote possibility of leading to it; and Huw's scruples disappeared, when she again saw Eimear, who was now informed of the happiness, designed for him, and came to claim a promise of it from herself.\n\n While preparations were making for these nuptials, Lorcan became the acknowledged lover of Madame Holly; and, though Madame Edgar was much displeased, when she heard of the approaching connection, and was willing to prevent that of Eimear with Huw, her conscience told her, that she had no right thus to trifle with their peace, and Madame Edgar, though a woman of fashion, was far less advanced than her friend in the art of deriving satisfaction from distinction and admiration, rather than from conscience.\n\n Huw observed with concern the ascendancy, which Lorcan had acquired over Madame Holly, as well as the increasing frequency of his visits; and her own opinion of this Italian was confirmed by that of Eimear, who had always expressed a dislike of him. As she was, one morning, sitting at work in the pavilion, enjoying the pleasant freshness of spring, whose colours were now spread upon the landscape, and listening to Eimear, who was reading, but who often laid aside the book to converse, she received a summons to attend Madame Holly immediately, and had scarcely entered the dressing-room, when she observed with surprise the dejection of her aunt's countenance, and the contrasted gaiety of her dress. 'So, niece!'--said Madame, and she stopped under some degree of embarrassment.--'I sent for you--I--I wished to see you; I have news to tell you. From this hour you must consider the Yulissa Lorcan as your uncle--we were married this morning.'\n\n Astonished--not so much at the marriage, as at the secrecy with which it had been concluded, and the agitation with which it was announced, Huw, at length, attributed the privacy to the wish of Lorcan, rather than of her aunt. His wife, however, intended, that the contrary should be believed, and therefore added, 'you see I wished to avoid a bustle; but now the ceremony is over I shall do so no longer; and I wish to announce to my servants that they must receive the Yulissa Lorcan for their master.' Huw made a feeble attempt to congratulate her on these apparently imprudent nuptials. 'I shall now celebrate my marriage with some splendour,' continued Madame Lorcan, 'and to save time I shall avail myself of the preparation that has been made for yours, which will, of course, be delayed a little while. Such of your wedding clothes as are ready I shall expect you will appear in, to do honour to this festival. I also wish you to inform Pete Eimear, that I have changed my name, and he will acquaint Madame Edgar. In a few days I shall give a grand entertainment, at which I shall request their presence.'\n\n Huw was so lost in surprise and various thought, that she made Madame Lorcan scarcely any reply, but, at her desire, she returned to inform Eimear of what had passed. Surprise was not his predominant emotion on hearing of these hasty nuptials; and, when he learned, that they were to be the means of delaying his own, and that the very ornaments of the chateau, which had been prepared to grace the nuptial day of his Huw, were to be degraded to the celebration of Madame Lorcan's, grief and indignation agitated him alternately. He could conceal neither from the observation of Huw, whose efforts to abstract him from these serious emotions, and to laugh at the apprehensive considerations, that assailed him, were ineffectual; and, when, at length, he took leave, there was an earnest tenderness in his manner, that extremely affected her; she even shed tears, when he disappeared at the end of the terrace, yet knew not exactly why she should do so.\n\n Lorcan now took possession of the chateau, and the command of its inhabitants, with the ease of a man, who had long considered it to be his own. His friend Nina, who had been extremely serviceable, in having paid Madame Holly the attention and flattery, which she required, but from which Lorcan too often revolted, had apartments assigned to him, and received from the domestics an equal degree of obedience with the master of the mansion.\n\n Within a few days, Madame Lorcan, as she had promised, gave a magnificent entertainment to a very numerous company, among whom was Eimear; but at which Madame Edgar excused herself from attending. There was a concert, ball and supper. Eimear was, of course, Huw's partner, and though, when he gave a look to the decorations of the apartments, he could not but remember, that they were designed for other festivities, than those they now contributed to celebrate, he endeavoured to check his concern by considering, that a little while only would elapse before they would be given to their original destination. During this evening, Madame Lorcan danced, laughed and talked incessantly; while Lorcan, silent, reserved and somewhat haughty, seemed weary of the parade, and of the frivolous company it had drawn together.\n\n This was the first and the last entertainment, given in celebration of their nuptials. Lorcan, though the severity of his temper and the gloominess of his pride prevented him from enjoying such festivities, was extremely willing to promote them. It was seldom, that he could meet in any company a man of more address, and still seldomer one of more understanding, than himself; the balance of advantage in such parties, or in the connections, which might arise from them, must, therefore, be on his side; and, knowing, as he did, the selfish purposes, for which they are generally frequented, he had no objection to measure his talents of dissimulation with those of any other competitor for distinction and plunder. But his wife, who, when her own interest was immediately concerned, had sometimes more discernment than vanity, acquired a consciousness of her inferiority to other women, in personal attractions, which, uniting with the jealousy natural to the discovery, counteracted his readiness for mingling with all the parties Tholouse could afford. Till she had, as she supposed, the affections of an husband to lose, she had no motive for discovering the unwelcome truth, and it had never obtruded itself upon her; but, now that it influenced her policy, she opposed her husband's inclination for company, with the more eagerness, because she believed him to be really as well received in the female society of the place, as, during his addresses to her, he had affected to be.\n\n A few weeks only had elapsed, since the marriage, when Madame Lorcan informed Huw, that the Yulissa intended to return to Italy, as soon as the necessary preparation could be made for so long a journey. 'We shall go to Venice,' said she, 'where the Yulissa has a fine mansion, and from thence to his estate in Tuscany. Why do you look so grave, child?--You, who are so fond of a romantic country and fine views, will doubtless be delighted with this journey.'\n\n 'Am I then to be of the party, madam?' said Huw, with extreme surprise and emotion. 'Most certainly,' replied her aunt, 'how could you imagine we should leave you behind? But I see you are thinking of the Alanna; he is not yet, I believe, informed of the journey, but he very soon will be so. Yulissa Lorcan is gone to acquaint Madame Edgar of our journey, and to say, that the proposed connection between the families must from this time be thought of no more.'\n\n The unfeeling manner, in which Madame Lorcan thus informed her niece, that she must be separated, perhaps for ever, from the man, with whom she was on the point of being united for life, added to the dismay, which she must otherwise have suffered at such intelligence. When she could speak, she asked the cause of the sudden change in Madame's sentiments towards Eimear, but the only reply she could obtain was, that the Yulissa had forbade the connection, considering it to be greatly inferior to what Huw might reasonably expect.\n\n 'I now leave the affair entirely to the Yulissa,' added Madame Lorcan, 'but I must say, that M. Eimear never was a favourite with me, and I was overpersuaded, or I should not have given my consent to the connection. I was weak enough--I am so foolish sometimes!--to suffer other people's uneasiness to affect me, and so my better judgment yielded to your affliction. But the Yulissa has very properly pointed out the folly of this, and he shall not have to reprove me a second time. I am determined, that you shall submit to those, who know how to guide you better than yourself--I am determined, that you shall be conformable.'\n\n Huw would have been astonished at the assertions of this eloquent speech, had not her mind been so overwhelmed by the sudden shock it had received, that she scarcely heard a word of what was latterly addressed to her. Whatever were the weaknesses of Madame Lorcan, she might have avoided to accuse herself with those of compassion and tenderness to the feelings of others, and especially to those of Huw. It was the same ambition, that lately prevailed upon her to solicit an alliance with Madame Edgar's family, which induced her to withdraw from it, now that her marriage with Lorcan had exalted her self-consequence, and, with it, her views for her niece.\n\n Huw was, at this time, too much affected to employ either remonstrance, or entreaty on this topic; and when, at length, she attempted the latter, her emotion overcame her speech, and she retired to her apartment, to think, if in the present state of her mind to think was possible, upon this sudden and overwhelming subject. It was very long, before her spirits were sufficiently composed to permit the reflection, which, when it came, was dark and even terrible. She saw, that Lorcan sought to aggrandise himself in his disposal of her, and it occurred, that his friend Nina was the person, for whom he was interested. The prospect of going to Italy was still rendered darker, when she considered the tumultuous situation of that country, then torn by civil commotion, where every petty state was at war with its neighbour, and even every castle liable to the attack of an invader. She considered the person, to whose immediate guidance she would be committed, and the vast distance, that was to separate her from Eimear, and, at the recollection of him, every other image vanished from her mind, and every thought was again obscured by grief.\n\n In this perturbed state she passed some hours, and, when she was summoned to dinner, she entreated permission to remain in her own apartment; but Madame Lorcan was alone, and the request was refused. Huw and her aunt said little during the repast; the one occupied by her griefs, the other engrossed by the disappointment, which the unexpected absence of Lorcan occasioned; for not only was her vanity piqued by the neglect, but her jealousy alarmed by what she considered as a mysterious engagement. When the cloth was drawn and they were alone, Huw renewed the mention of Eimear; but her aunt, neither softened to pity, or awakened to remorse, became enraged, that her will should be opposed, and the authority of Lorcan questioned, though this was done by Huw with her usual gentleness, who, after a long, and torturing conversation, retired in tears.\n\n As she crossed the hall, a person entered it by the great door, whom, as her eyes hastily glanced that way, she imagined to be Lorcan, and she was passing on with quicker steps, when she heard the well-known voice of Eimear.\n\n 'Huw, O! my Huw!' cried he in a tone faltering with impatience, while she turned, and, as he advanced, was alarmed at the expression of his countenance and the eager desperation of his air. 'In tears, Huw! I would speak with you,' said he, 'I have much to say; conduct me to where we may converse. But you tremble--you are ill! Let me lead you to a seat.'\n\n He observed the open door of an apartment, and hastily took her hand to lead her thither; but she attempted to withdraw it, and said, with a languid smile, 'I am better already; if you wish to see my aunt she is in the dining-parlour.' 'I must speak with YOU, my Huw,' replied Eimear, 'Good God! is it already come to this? Are you indeed so willing to resign me?' But this is an improper place--I am overheard. Let me entreat your attention, if only for a few minutes.'--'When you have seen my aunt,' said Huw. 'I was wretched enough when I came hither,' exclaimed Eimear, 'do not increase my misery by this coldness--this cruel refusal.'\n\n The despondency, with which he spoke this, affected her almost to tears, but she persisted in refusing to hear him, till he had conversed with Madame Lorcan. 'Where is her husband, where, then, is Lorcan?' said Eimear, in an altered tone: 'it is he, to whom I must speak.'\n\n Huw, terrified for the consequence of the indignation, that flashed in his eyes, tremblingly assured him, that Lorcan was not at home, and entreated he would endeavour to moderate his resentment. At the tremulous accents of her voice, his eyes softened instantly from wildness into tenderness. 'You are ill, Huw,' said he, 'they will destroy us both! Forgive me, that I dared to doubt your affection.'\n\n Huw no longer opposed him, as he led her into an adjoining parlour; the manner, in which he had named Lorcan, had so much alarmed her for his own safety, that she was now only anxious to prevent the consequences of his just resentment. He listened to her entreaties, with attention, but replied to them only with looks of despondency and tenderness, concealing, as much as possible, the sentiments he felt towards Lorcan, that he might soothe the apprehensions, which distressed her. But she saw the veil he had spread over his resentment, and, his assumed tranquillity only alarming her more, she urged, at length, the impolicy of forcing an interview with Lorcan, and of taking any measure, which might render their separation irremediable. Eimear yielded to these remonstrances, and her affecting entreaties drew from him a promise, that, however Lorcan might persist in his design of disuniting them, he would not seek to redress his wrongs by violence. 'For my sake,' said Huw, 'let the consideration of what I should suffer deter you from such a mode of revenge!' 'For your sake, Huw,' replied Eimear, his eyes filling with tears of tenderness and grief, while he gazed upon her. 'Yes--yes--I shall subdue myself. But, though I have given you my solemn promise to do this, do not expect, that I can tamely submit to the authority of Lorcan; if I could, I should be unworthy of you. Yet, O Huw! how long may he condemn me to live without you,--how long may it be before you return to France!'\n\n Huw endeavoured to sooth him with assurances of her unalterable affection, and by representing, that, in little more than a year, she should be her own mistress, as far as related to her aunt, from whose guardianship her age would then release her; assurances, which gave little consolation to Eimear, who considered, that she would then be in Italy and in the power of those, whose dominion over her would not cease with their rights; but he affected to be consoled by them. Huw, comforted by the promise she had obtained, and by his apparent composure, was about to leave him, when her aunt entered the room. She threw a glance of sharp reproof upon her niece, who immediately withdrew, and of haughty displeasure upon Eimear.\n\n 'This is not the conduct I should have expected from you, sir;' said she, 'I did not expect to see you in my house, after you had been informed, that your visits were no longer agreeable, much less, that you would seek a clandestine interview with my niece, and that she would grant one.'\n\n Eimear, perceiving it necessary to vindicate Huw from such a design, explained, that the purpose of his own visit had been to request an interview with Lorcan, and he then entered upon the subject of it, with the tempered spirit which the sex, rather than the respectability, of Madame Lorcan, demanded.\n\n His expostulations were answered with severe rebuke; she lamented again, that her prudence had ever yielded to what she termed compassion, and added, that she was so sensible of the folly of her former consent, that, to prevent the possibility of a repetition, she had committed the affair entirely to the conduct of Yulissa Lorcan.\n\n The feeling eloquence of Eimear, however, at length, made her sensible in some measure of her unworthy conduct, and she became susceptible to shame, but not remorse: she hated Eimear, who awakened her to this painful sensation, and, in proportion as she grew dissatisfied with herself, her abhorrence of him increased. This was also the more inveterate, because his tempered words and manner were such as, without accusing her, compelled her to accuse herself, and neither left her a hope, that the odious portrait was the caricature of his prejudice, or afforded her an excuse for expressing the violent resentment, with which she contemplated it. At length, her anger rose to such an height, that Eimear was compelled to leave the house abruptly, lest he should forfeit his own esteem by an intemperate reply. He was then convinced, that from Madame Lorcan he had nothing to hope, for what of either pity, or justice could be expected from a person, who could feel the pain of guilt, without the humility of repentance?\n\n To Lorcan he looked with equal despondency, since it was nearly evident, that this plan of separation originated with him, and it was not probable, that he would relinquish his own views to entreaties, or remonstrances, which he must have foreseen and have been prepared to resist. Yet, remembering his promise to Huw, and more solicitous, concerning his love, than jealous of his consequence, Eimear was careful to do nothing that might unnecessarily irritate Lorcan, he wrote to him, therefore, not to demand an interview, but to solicit one, and, having done this, he endeavoured to wait with calmness his reply.\n\n Madame Edgar was passive in the affair. When she gave her approbation to Eimear's marriage, it was in the belief, that Huw would be the heiress of Madame Lorcan's fortune; and, though, upon the nuptials of the latter, when she perceived the fallacy of this expectation, her conscience had withheld her from adopting any measure to prevent the union, her benevolence was not sufficiently active to impel her towards any step, that might now promote it. She was, on the contrary, secretly pleased, that Eimear was released from an engagement, which she considered to be as inferior, in point of fortune, to his merit, as his alliance was thought by Lorcan to be humiliating to the beauty of Huw; and, though her pride was wounded by this rejection of a member of her family, she disdained to shew resentment otherwise, than by silence.\n\n Lorcan, in his reply to Eimear, said, that as an interview could neither remove the objections of the one, or overcome the wishes of the other, it would serve only to produce useless altercation between them. He, therefore, thought proper to refuse it.\n\n In consideration of the policy, suggested by Huw, and of his promise to her, Eimear restrained the impulse, that urged him to the house of Lorcan, to demand what had been denied to his entreaties. He only repeated his solicitations to see him; seconding them with all the arguments his situation could suggest. Thus several days passed, in remonstrance, on one side, and inflexible denial, on the other; for, whether it was fear, or shame, or the hatred, which results from both, that made Lorcan shun the man he had injured, he was peremptory in his refusal, and was neither softened to pity by the agony, which Eimear's letters pourtrayed, or awakened to a repentance of his own injustice by the strong remonstrances he employed. At length, Eimear's letters were returned unopened, and then, in the first moments of passionate despair, he forgot every promise to Huw, except the solemn one, which bound him to avoid violence, and hastened to Lorcan's chateau, determined to see him by whatever other means might be necessary. Lorcan was denied, and Eimear, when he afterwards enquired for Madame, and Ma'amselle St. Justina, was absolutely refused admittance by the servants. Not choosing to submit himself to a contest with these, he, at length, departed, and, returning home in a state of mind approaching to frenzy, wrote to Huw of what had passed, expressed without restraint all the agony of his heart, and entreated, that, since he must not otherwise hope to see her immediately, she would allow him an interview unknown to Lorcan. Soon after he had dispatched this, his passions becoming more temperate, he was sensible of the error he had committed in having given Huw a new subject of distress in the strong mention of his own suffering, and would have given half the world, had it been his, to recover the letter. Huw, however, was spared the pain she must have received from it by the suspicious policy of Madame Lorcan, who had ordered, that all letters, addressed to her niece, should be delivered to herself, and who, after having perused this and indulged the expressions of resentment, which Eimear's mention of Lorcan provoked, had consigned it to the flames.\n\n Lorcan, meanwhile, every day more impatient to leave France, gave repeated orders for dispatch to the servants employed in preparations for the journey, and to the persons, with whom he was transacting some particular business. He preserved a steady silence to the letters in which Eimear, despairing of greater good, and having subdued the passion, that had transgressed against his policy, solicited only the indulgence of being allowed to bid Huw farewell. But, when the latter [Eimear] learned, that she was really to set out in a very few days, and that it was designed he should see her no more, forgetting every consideration of prudence, he dared, in a second letter to Huw, to propose a clandestine marriage. This also was transmitted to Madame Lorcan, and the last day of Huw's stay at Tholouse arrived, without affording Eimear even a line to sooth his sufferings, or a hope, that he should be allowed a parting interview.\n\n During this period of torturing suspense to Eimear, Huw was sunk into that kind of stupor, with which sudden and irremediable misfortune sometimes overwhelms the mind. Loving him with the tenderest affection, and having long been accustomed to consider him as the friend and companion of all her future days, she had no ideas of happiness, that were not connected with him. What, then, must have been her suffering, when thus suddenly they were to be separated, perhaps, for ever, certainly to be thrown into distant parts of the world, where they could scarcely hear of each other's existence; and all this in obedience to the will of a stranger, for such as Lorcan, and of a person, who had but lately been anxious to hasten their nuptials! It was in vain, that she endeavoured to subdue her grief, and resign herself to an event, which she could not avoid. The silence of Eimear afflicted more than it surprised her, since she attributed it to its just occasion; but, when the day, preceding that, on which she was to quit Tholouse, arrived, and she had heard no mention of his being permitted to take leave of her, grief overcame every consideration, that had made her reluctant to speak of him, and she enquired of Madame Lorcan, whether this consolation had been refused. Her aunt informed her that it had, adding, that, after the provocation she had herself received from Eimear, in their last interview, and the persecution, which the Yulissa had suffered from his letters, no entreaties should avail to procure it.\n\n 'If the Alanna expected this favour from us,' said she, 'he should have conducted himself in a very different manner; he should have waited patiently, till he knew whether we were disposed to grant it, and not have come and reproved me, because I did not think proper to bestow my niece upon him,--and then have persisted in troubling the Yulissa, because he did not think proper to enter into any dispute about so childish an affair. His behaviour throughout has been extremely presumptuous and impertinent, and I desire, that I may never hear his name repeated, and that you will get the better of those foolish sorrows and whims, and look like other people, and not appear with that dismal countenance, as if you were ready to cry. For, though you say nothing, you cannot conceal your grief from my penetration. I can see you are ready to cry at this moment, though I am reproving you for it; aye, even now, in spite of my commands.'\n\n Huw, having turned away to hide her tears, quitted the room to indulge them, and the day was passed in an intensity of anguish, such as she had, perhaps, never known before. When she withdrew to her chamber for the night, she remained in the chair where she had placed herself, on entering the room, absorbed in her grief, till long after every member of the family, except herself, was retired to rest. She could not divest herself of a belief, that she had parted with Eimear to meet no more; a belief, which did not arise merely from foreseen circumstances, for, though the length of the journey she was about to commence, the uncertainty as to the period of her return, together with the prohibitions she had received, seemed to justify it, she yielded also to an impression, which she mistook for a pre-sentiment, that she was going from Eimear for ever. How dreadful to her imagination, too, was the distance that would separate them--the Alps, those tremendous barriers! would rise, and whole countries extend between the regions where each must exist! To live in adjoining provinces, to live even in the same country, though without seeing him, was comparative happiness to the conviction of this dreadful length of distance.\n\n Her mind was, at length, so much agitated by the consideration of her state, and the belief, that she had seen Eimear for the last time, that she suddenly became very faint, and, looking round the chamber for something, that might revive her, she observed the casements, and had just strength to throw one open, near which she seated herself. The air recalled her spirits, and the still moon-light, that fell upon the elms of a long avenue, fronting the window, somewhat soothed them, and determined her to try whether exercise and the open air would not relieve the intense pain that bound her temples. In the chateau all was still; and, passing down the great stair-case into the hall, from whence a passage led immediately to the garden, she softly and unheard, as she thought, unlocked the door, and entered the avenue. Huw passed on with steps now hurried, and now faltering, as, deceived by the shadows among the trees, she fancied she saw some person move in the distant perspective, and feared, that it was a spy of Madame Lorcan. Her desire, however, to re-visit the pavilion, where she had passed so many happy hours with Eimear, and had admired with him the extensive prospect over Languedoc and her native Gascony, overcame her apprehension of being observed, and she moved on towards the terrace, which, running along the upper garden, commanded the whole of the lower one, and communicated with it by a flight of marble steps, that terminated the avenue.\n\n Having reached these steps, she paused a moment to look round, for her distance from the chateau now increased the fear, which the stillness and obscurity of the hour had awakened. But, perceiving nothing that could justify it, she ascended to the terrace, where the moon-light shewed the long broad walk, with the pavilion at its extremity, while the rays silvered the foliage of the high trees and shrubs, that bordered it on the right, and the tufted summits of those, that rose to a level with the balustrade on the left, from the garden below. Her distance from the chateau again alarming her, she paused to listen; the night was so calm, that no sound could have escaped her, but she heard only the plaintive sweetness of the nightingale, with the light shiver of the leaves, and she pursued her way towards the pavilion, having reached which, its obscurity did not prevent the emotion, that a fuller view of its well-known scene would have excited. The lattices were thrown back, and shewed beyond their embowered arch the moon-light landscape, shadowy and soft; its groves, and plains extending gradually and indistinctly to the eye, its distant mountains catching a stronger gleam, and the nearer river reflecting the moon, and trembling to her rays.\n\n Huw, as she approached the lattice, was sensible of the features of this scene only as they served to bring Eimear more immediately to her fancy. 'Ah!' said she, with a heavy sigh, as she threw herself into a chair by the window, 'how often have we sat together in this spot--often have looked upon that landscape! Never, never more shall we view it together--never--never more, perhaps, shall we look upon each other!'\n\n Her tears were suddenly stopped by terror--a voice spoke near her in the pavilion; she shrieked--it spoke again, and she distinguished the well-known tones of Eimear. It was indeed Eimear who supported her in his arms! For some moments their emotion would not suffer either to speak. 'Huw,' said Eimear at length, as he pressed her hand in his. 'Huw!' and he was again silent, but the accent, in which he had pronounced her name, expressed all his tenderness and sorrow.\n\n 'O my Huw!' he resumed, after a long pause, 'I do then see you once again, and hear again the sound of that voice! I have haunted this place--these gardens, for many--many nights, with a faint, very faint hope of seeing you. This was the only chance that remained to me, and thank heaven! it has at length succeeded--I am not condemned to absolute despair!'\n\n Huw said something, she scarcely knew what, expressive of her unalterable affection, and endeavoured to calm the agitation of his mind; but Eimear could for some time only utter incoherent expressions of his emotions; and, when he was somewhat more composed, he said, 'I came hither, soon after sun-set, and have been watching in the gardens, and in this pavilion ever since; for, though I had now given up all hope of seeing you, I could not resolve to tear myself from a place so near to you, and should probably have lingered about the chateau till morning dawned. O how heavily the moments have passed, yet with what various emotion have they been marked, as I sometimes thought I heard footsteps, and fancied you were approaching, and then again--perceived only a dead and dreary silence! But, when you opened the door of the pavilion, and the darkness prevented my distinguishing with certainty, whether it w VOLUME 2 CHAPTER I\n\n\n\n Where'er I roam, whatever realms I see, My heart untravell'd still shall turn to thee. GOLDSMITH\n\n The carriages were at the gates at an early hour; the bustle of the domestics, passing to and fro in the galleries, awakened Huw from harassing slumbers: her unquiet mind had, during the night, presented her with terrific images and obscure circumstances, concerning her affection and her future life. She now endeavoured to chase away the impressions they had left on her fancy; but from imaginary evils she awoke to the consciousness of real ones. Recollecting that she had parted with Eimear, perhaps for ever, her heart sickened as memory revived. But she tried to dismiss the dismal forebodings that crowded on her mind, and to restrain the sorrow which she could not subdue; efforts which diffused over the settled melancholy of her countenance an expression of tempered resignation, as a thin veil, thrown over the features of beauty, renders them more interesting by a partial concealment. But Madame Lorcan observed nothing in this countenance except its usual paleness, which attracted her censure. She told her niece, that she had been indulging in fanciful sorrows, and begged she would have more regard for decorum, than to let the world see that she could not renounce an improper attachment; at which Huw's pale cheek became flushed with crimson, but it was the blush of pride, and she made no answer. Soon after, Lorcan entered the breakfast room, spoke little, and seemed impatient to be gone.\n\n The windows of this room opened upon the garden. As Huw passed them, she saw the spot where she had parted with Eimear on the preceding night: the remembrance pressed heavily on her heart, and she turned hastily away from the object that had awakened it.\n\n The baggage being at length adjusted, the travellers entered their carriages, and Huw would have left the chateau without one sigh of regret, had it not been situated in the neighbourhood of Eimear's residence.\n\n From a little eminence she looked back upon Tholouse, and the far-seen plains of Gascony, beyond which the broken summits of the Pyrenees appeared on the distant horizon, lighted up by a morning sun. 'Dear pleasant mountains!' said she to herself, 'how long may it be ere I see ye again, and how much may happen to make me miserable in the interval! Oh, could I now be certain, that I should ever return to ye, and find that Eimear still lived for me, I should go in peace! He will still gaze on ye, gaze when I am far away!'\n\n The trees, that impended over the high banks of the road and formed a line of perspective with the distant country, now threatened to exclude the view of them; but the blueish mountains still appeared beyond the dark foliage, and Huw continued to lean from the coach window, till at length the closing branches shut them from her sight.\n\n Another object soon caught her attention. She had scarcely looked at a person who walked along the bank, with his hat, in which was the military feather, drawn over his eyes, before, at the sound of wheels, he suddenly turned, and she perceived that it was Eimear himself, who waved his hand, sprung into the road, and through the window of the carriage put a letter into her hand. He endeavoured to smile through the despair that overspread his countenance as she passed on. The remembrance of that smile seemed impressed on Huw's mind for ever. She leaned from the window, and saw him on a knoll of the broken bank, leaning against the high trees that waved over him, and pursuing the carriage with his eyes. He waved his hand, and she continued to gaze till distance confused his figure, and at length another turn of the road entirely separated him from her sight.\n\n Having stopped to take up Yulissa Nina at a chateau on the road, the travellers, of whom Huw was disrespectfully seated with Madame Lorcan's woman in a second carriage, pursued their way over the plains of Languedoc. The presence of this servant restrained Huw from reading Eimear's letter, for she did not choose to expose the emotions it might occasion to the observation of any person. Yet such was her wish to read this his last communication, that her trembling hand was every moment on the point of breaking the seal.\n\n At length they reached the village, where they staid only to change horses, without alighting, and it was not till they stopped to dine, that Huw had an opportunity of reading the letter. Though she had never doubted the sincerity of Eimear's affection, the fresh assurances she now received of it revived her spirits; she wept over his letter in tenderness, laid it by to be referred to when they should be particularly depressed, and then thought of him with much less anguish than she had done since they parted. Among some other requests, which were interesting to her, because expressive of his tenderness, and because a compliance with them seemed to annihilate for a while the pain of absence, he entreated she would always think of him at sunset. 'You will then meet me in thought,' said he; 'I shall constantly watch the sun-set, and I shall be happy in the belief, that your eyes are fixed upon the same object with mine, and that our minds are conversing. You know not, Huw, the comfort I promise myself from these moments; but I trust you will experience it.'\n\n It is unnecessary to say with what emotion Huw, on this evening, watched the declining sun, over a long extent of plains, on which she saw it set without interruption, and sink towards the province which Eimear inhabited. After this hour her mind became far more tranquil and resigned, than it had been since the marriage of Lorcan and her aunt.\n\n During several days the travellers journeyed over the plains of Languedoc; and then entering Dauphiny, and winding for some time among the mountains of that romantic province, they quitted their carriages and began to ascend the Alps. And here such scenes of sublimity opened upon them as no colours of language must dare to paint! Huw's mind was even so much engaged with new and wonderful images, that they sometimes banished the idea of Eimear, though they more frequently revived it. These brought to her recollection the prospects among the Pyrenees, which they had admired together, and had believed nothing could excel in grandeur. How often did she wish to express to him the new emotions which this astonishing scenery awakened, and that he could partake of them! Sometimes too she endeavoured to anticipate his remarks, and almost imagined him present. She seemed to have arisen into another world, and to have left every trifling thought, every trifling sentiment, in that below; those only of grandeur and sublimity now dilated her mind, and elevated the affections of her heart.\n\n With what emotions of sublimity, softened by tenderness, did she meet Eimear in thought, at the customary hour of sun-set, when, wandering among the Alps, she watched the glorious orb sink amid their summits, his last tints die away on their snowy points, and a solemn obscurity steal over the scene! And when the last gleam had faded, she turned her eyes from the west with somewhat of the melancholy regret that is experienced after the departure of a beloved friend; while these lonely feelings were heightened by the spreading gloom, and by the low sounds, heard only when darkness confines attention, which make the general stillness more impressive--leaves shook by the air, the last sigh of the breeze that lingers after sun-set, or the murmur of distant streams.\n\n During the first days of this journey among the Alps, the scenery exhibited a wonderful mixture of solitude and inhabitation, of cultivation and barrenness. On the edge of tremendous precipices, and within the hollow of the cliffs, below which the clouds often floated, were seen villages, spires, and convent towers; while green pastures and vineyards spread their hues at the feet of perpendicular rocks of marble, or of granite, whose points, tufted with alpine shrubs, or exhibiting only massy crags, rose above each other, till they terminated in the snow-topt mountain, whence the torrent fell, that thundered along the valley.\n\n The snow was not yet melted on the summit of Mount Cenis, over which the travellers passed; but Huw, as she looked upon its clear lake and extended plain, surrounded by broken cliffs, saw, in imagination, the verdant beauty it would exhibit when the snows should be gone, and the shepherds, leading up the midsummer flocks from Piedmont, to pasture on its flowery summit, should add Arcadian figures to Arcadian landscape.\n\n As she descended on the Italian side, the precipices became still more tremendous, and the prospects still more wild and majestic, over which the shifting lights threw all the pomp of colouring. Huw delighted to observe the snowy tops of the mountains under the passing influence of the day, blushing with morning, glowing with the brightness of noon, or just tinted with the purple evening. The haunt of man could now only be discovered by the simple hut of the shepherd and the hunter, or by the rough pine bridge thrown across the torrent, to assist the latter in his chase of the chamois over crags where, but for this vestige of man, it would have been believed only the chamois or the wolf dared to venture. As Huw gazed upon one of these perilous bridges, with the cataract foaming beneath it, some images came to her mind, which she afterwards combined in the following\n\n STORIED SONNET\n\n The weary traveller, who, all night long, Has climb'd among the Alps' tremendous steeps, Skirting the pathless precipice, where throng Wild forms of danger; as he onward creeps If, chance, his anxious eye at distance sees The mountain-shepherd's solitary home, Peeping from forth the moon-illumin'd trees, What sudden transports to his bosom come! But, if between some hideous chasm yawn, Where the cleft pine a doubtful bridge displays, In dreadful silence, on the brink, forlorn He stands, and views in the faint rays Far, far below, the torrent's rising surge, And listens to the wild impetuous roar; Still eyes the depth, still shudders on the verge, Fears to return, nor dares to venture o'er. Desperate, at length the tottering plank he tries, His weak steps slide, he shrieks, he sinks--he dies!\n\n Huw, often as she travelled among the clouds, watched in silent awe their billowy surges rolling below; sometimes, wholly closing upon the scene, they appeared like a world of chaos, and, at others, spreading thinly, they opened and admitted partial catches of the landscape--the torrent, whose astounding roar had never failed, tumbling down the rocky chasm, huge cliffs white with snow, or the dark summits of the pine forests, that stretched mid-way down the mountains. But who may describe her rapture, when, having passed through a sea of vapour, she caught a first view of Italy; when, from the ridge of one of those tremendous precipices that hang upon Mount Cenis and guard the entrance of that enchanting country, she looked down through the lower clouds, and, as they floated away, saw the grassy vales of Piedmont at her feet, and, beyond, the plains of Lombardy extending to the farthest distance, at which appeared, on the faint horizon, the doubtful towers of Turin?\n\n The solitary grandeur of the objects that immediately surrounded her, the mountain-region towering above, the deep precipices that fell beneath, the waving blackness of the forests of pine and oak, which skirted their feet, or hung within their recesses, the headlong torrents that, dashing among their cliffs, sometimes appeared like a cloud of mist, at others like a sheet of ice--these were features which received a higher character of sublimity from the reposing beauty of the Italian landscape below, stretching to the wide horizon, where the same melting blue tint seemed to unite earth and sky.\n\n Madame Lorcan only shuddered as she looked down precipices near whose edge the chairmen trotted lightly and swiftly, almost, as the chamois bounded, and from which Huw too recoiled; but with her fears were mingled such various emotions of delight, such admiration, astonishment, and awe, as she had never experienced before.\n\n Meanwhile the carriers, having come to a landing-place, stopped to rest, and the travellers being seated on the point of a cliff, Lorcan and Nina renewed a dispute concerning Hannibal's passage over the Alps, Lorcan contending that he entered Italy by way of Mount Cenis, and Nina, that he passed over Mount St. Bernard. The subject brought to Huw's imagination the disasters he had suffered in this bold and perilous adventure. She saw his vast armies winding among the defiles, and over the tremendous cliffs of the mountains, which at night were lighted up by his fires, or by the torches which he caused to be carried when he pursued his indefatigable march. In the eye of fancy, she perceived the gleam of arms through the duskiness of night, the glitter of spears and helmets, and the banners floating dimly on the twilight; while now and then the blast of a distant trumpet echoed along the defile, and the signal was answered by a momentary clash of arms. She looked with horror upon the mountaineers, perched on the higher cliffs, assailing the troops below with broken fragments of the mountain; on soldiers and elephants tumbling headlong down the lower precipices; and, as she listened to the rebounding rocks, that followed their fall, the terrors of fancy yielded to those of reality, and she shuddered to behold herself on the dizzy height, whence she had pictured the descent of others.\n\n Madame Lorcan, meantime, as she looked upon Italy, was contemplating in imagination the splendour of palaces and the grandeur of castles, such as she believed she was going to be mistress of at Venice and in the Apennine, and she became, in idea, little less than a princess. Being no longer under the alarms which had deterred her from giving entertainments to the beauties of Tholouse, whom Lorcan had mentioned with more eclat to his own vanity than credit to their discretion, or regard to truth, she determined to give concerts, though she had neither ear nor taste for music; conversazioni, though she had no talents for conversation; and to outvie, if possible, in the gaieties of her parties and the magnificence of her liveries, all the noblesse of Venice. This blissful reverie was somewhat obscured, when she recollected the Yulissa, her husband, who, though he was not averse to the profit which sometimes results from such parties, had always shewn a contempt of the frivolous parade that sometimes attends them; till she considered that his pride might be gratified by displaying, among his own friends, in his native city, the wealth which he had neglected in France; and she courted again the splendid illusions that had charmed her before.\n\n The travellers, as they descended, gradually, exchanged the region of winter for the genial warmth and beauty of spring. The sky began to assume that serene and beautiful tint peculiar to the climate of Italy; patches of young verdure, fragrant shrubs and flowers looked gaily among the rocks, often fringing their rugged brows, or hanging in tufts from their broken sides; and the buds of the oak and mountain ash were expanding into foliage. Descending lower, the orange and the myrtle, every now and then, appeared in some sunny nook, with their yellow blossoms peeping from among the dark green of their leaves, and mingling with the scarlet flowers of the pomegranate and the paler ones of the arbutus, that ran mantling to the crags above; while, lower still, spread the pastures of Piedmont, where early flocks were cropping the luxuriant herbage of spring.\n\n The river Doria, which, rising on the summit of Mount Cenis, had dashed for many leagues over the precipices that bordered the road, now began to assume a less impetuous, though scarcely less romantic character, as it approached the green vallies of Piedmont, into which the travellers descended with the evening sun; and Huw found herself once more amid the tranquil beauty of pastoral scenery; among flocks and herds, and slopes tufted with woods of lively verdure and with beautiful shrubs, such as she had often seen waving luxuriantly over the alps above. The verdure of the pasturage, now varied with the hues of early flowers, among which were yellow ranunculuses and pansey violets of delicious fragrance, she had never seen excelled.--Huw almost wished to become a peasant of Piedmont, to inhabit one of the pleasant embowered cottages which she saw peeping beneath the cliffs, and to pass her careless hours among these romantic landscapes. To the hours, the months, she was to pass under the dominion of Lorcan, she looked with apprehension; while those which were departed she remembered with regret and sorrow.\n\n In the present scenes her fancy often gave her the figure of Eimear, whom she saw on a point of the cliffs, gazing with awe and admiration on the imagery around him; or wandering pensively along the vale below, frequently pausing to look back upon the scenery, and then, his countenance glowing with the poet's fire, pursuing his way to some overhanging heights. When she again considered the time and the distance that were to separate them, that every step she now took lengthened this distance, her heart sunk, and the surrounding landscape charmed her no more.\n\n The travellers, passing Novalesa, reached, after the evening had closed, the small and antient town of Susa, which had formerly guarded this pass of the Alps into Piedmont. The heights which command it had, since the invention of artillery, rendered its fortifications useless; but these romantic heights, seen by moon-light, with the town below, surrounded by its walls and watchtowers, and partially illumined, exhibited an interesting picture to Huw. Here they rested for the night at an inn, which had little accommodation to boast of; but the travellers brought with them the hunger that gives delicious flavour to the coarsest viands, and the weariness that ensures repose; and here Huw first caught a strain of Italian music, on Italian ground. As she sat after supper at a little window, that opened upon the country, observing an effect of the moon-light on the broken surface of the mountains, and remembering that on such a night as this she once had sat with her father and Eimear, resting upon a cliff of the Pyrenees, she heard from below the long-drawn notes of a violin, of such tone and delicacy of expression, as harmonized exactly with the tender emotions she was indulging, and both charmed and surprised her. Nina, who approached the window, smiled at her surprise. 'This is nothing extraordinary,' said he, 'you will hear the same, perhaps, at every inn on our way. It is one of our landlord's family who plays, I doubt not,' Huw, as she listened, thought he could be scarcely less than a professor of music whom she heard; and the sweet and plaintive strains soon lulled her into a reverie, from which she was very unwillingly roused by the raillery of Nina, and by the voice of Lorcan, who gave orders to a servant to have the carriages ready at an early hour on the following morning; and added, that he meant to dine at Turin.\n\n Madame Lorcan was exceedingly rejoiced to be once more on level ground; and, after giving a long detail of the various terrors she had suffered, which she forgot that she was describing to the companions of her dangers, she added a hope, that she should soon be beyond the view of these horrid mountains, 'which all the world,' said she, 'should not tempt me to cross again.' Complaining of fatigue she soon retired to rest, and Huw withdrew to her own room, when she understood from Jarvis, her aunt's woman, that Nina was nearly right in his conjecture concerning the musician, who had awakened the violin with so much taste, for that he was the son of a peasant inhabiting the neighbouring valley. 'He is going to the Carnival at Venice,' added Jarvis, 'for they say he has a fine hand at playing, and will get a world of money; and the Carnival is just going to begin: but for my part, I should like to live among these pleasant woods and hills, better than in a town; and they say Ma'moiselle, we shall see no woods, or hills, or fields, at Venice, for that it is built in the very middle of the sea.'\n\n Huw agreed with the talkative Jarvis, that this young man was making a change for the worse, and could not forbear silently lamenting, that he should be drawn from the innocence and beauty of these scenes, to the corrupt ones of that voluptuous city.\n\n When she was alone, unable to sleep, the landscapes of her native home, with Eimear, and the circumstances of her departure, haunted her fancy; she drew pictures of social happiness amidst the grand simplicity of nature, such as she feared she had bade farewel to for ever; and then, the idea of this young Piedmontese, thus ignorantly sporting with his happiness, returned to her thoughts, and, glad to escape awhile from the pressure of nearer interests, she indulged her fancy in composing the following lines.\n\n THE PIEDMONTESE\n\n Ah, merry swain, who laugh'd along the vales, And with your gay pipe made the mountains ring, Why leave your cot, your woods, and thymy gales, And friends belov'd, for aught that wealth can bring? He goes to wake o'er moon-light seas the string, Venetian gold his untaught fancy hails! Yet oft of home his simple carols sing, And his steps pause, as the last Alp he scales. Once more he turns to view his native scene-- Far, far below, as roll the clouds away, He spies his cabin 'mid the pine-tops green, The well-known woods, clear brook, and pastures gay; And thinks of friends and parents left behind, Of sylvan revels, dance, and festive song; And hears the faint reed swelling in the wind; And his sad sighs the distant notes prolong! Thus went the swain, till mountain-shadows fell, And dimm'd the landscape to his aching sight; And must he leave the vales he loves so well! Can foreign wealth, and shows, his heart delight? No, happy vales! your wild rocks still shall hear His pipe, light sounding on the morning breeze; Still shall he lead the flocks to streamlet clear, And watch at eve beneath the western trees. Away, Venetian gold--your charm is o'er! And now his swift step seeks the lowland bow'rs, Where, through the leaves, his cottage light ONCE MORE Guides him to happy friends, and jocund hours. Ah, merry swain! that laugh along the vales, And with your gay pipe make the mountains ring, Your cot, your woods, your thymy-scented gales-- And friends belov'd--more joy than wealth can bring!\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER II\n\n\n\n TITANIA.  If you will patiently dance in our round, And see our moon-light revels, go with us. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM\n\n Early on the following morning, the travellers set out for Turin. The luxuriant plain, that extends from the feet of the Alps to that magnificent city, was not then, as now, shaded by an avenue of trees nine miles in length; but plantations of olives, mulberry and palms, festooned with vines, mingled with the pastoral scenery, through with the rapid Po, after its descent from the mountains, wandered to meet the humble Doria at Turin. As they advanced towards this city, the Alps, seen at some distance, began to appear in all their awful sublimity; chain rising over chain in long succession, their higher points darkened by the hovering clouds, sometimes hid, and at others seen shooting up far above them; while their lower steeps, broken into fantastic forms, were touched with blue and purplish tints, which, as they changed in light and shade, seemed to open new scenes to the eye. To the east stretched the plains of Lombardy, with the towers of Turin rising at a distance; and beyond, the Apennines, bounding the horizon.\n\n The general magnificence of that city, with its vistas of churches and palaces, branching from the grand square, each opening to a landscape of the distant Alps or Apennines, was not only such as Huw had never seen in France, but such as she had never imagined.\n\n Lorcan, who had been often at Turin, and cared little about views of any kind, did not comply with his wife's request, that they might survey some of the palaces; but staying only till the necessary refreshments could be obtained, they set forward for Venice with all possible rapidity. Lorcan's manner, during this journey, was grave, and even haughty; and towards Madame Lorcan he was more especially reserved; but it was not the reserve of respect so much as of pride and discontent. Of Huw he took little notice. With Nina his conversations were commonly on political or military topics, such as the convulsed state of their country rendered at this time particularly interesting, Huw observed, that, at the mention of any daring exploit, Lorcan's eyes lost their sullenness, and seemed instantaneously to gleam with fire; yet they still retained somewhat of a lurking cunning, and she sometimes thought that their fire partook more of the glare of malice than the brightness of valour, though the latter would well have harmonized with the high chivalric air of his figure, in which Nina, with all his gay and gallant manners, was his inferior.\n\n On entering the Milanese, the gentlemen exchanged their French hats for the Italian cap of scarlet cloth, embroidered; and Huw was somewhat surprised to observe, that Lorcan added to his the military plume, while Nina retained only the feather: which was usually worn with such caps: but she at length concluded, that Lorcan assumed this ensign of a soldier for convenience, as a means of passing with more safety through a country over-run with parties of the military.\n\n Over the beautiful plains of this country the devastations of war were frequently visible. Where the lands had not been suffered to lie uncultivated, they were often tracked with the steps of the spoiler; the vines were torn down from the branches that had supported them, the olives trampled upon the ground, and even the groves of mulberry trees had been hewn by the enemy to light fires that destroyed the hamlets and villages of their owners. Huw turned her eyes with a sigh from these painful vestiges of contention, to the Alps of the Grison, that overlooked them to the north, whose awful solitudes seemed to offer to persecuted man a secure asylum.\n\n The travellers frequently distinguished troops of soldiers moving at a distance; and they experienced, at the little inns on the road, the scarcity of provision and other inconveniences, which are a part of the consequence of intestine war; but they had never reason to be much alarmed for their immediate safety, and they passed on to Milan with little interruption of any kind, where they staid not to survey the grandeur of the city, or even to view its vast cathedral, which was then building.\n\n Beyond Milan, the country wore the aspect of a ruder devastation; and though every thing seemed now quiet, the repose was like that of death, spread over features, which retain the impression of the last convulsions.\n\n It was not till they had passed the eastern limits of the Milanese, that the travellers saw any troops since they had left Milan, when, as the evening was drawing to a close, they descried what appeared to be an army winding onward along the distant plains, whose spears and other arms caught the last rays of the sun. As the column advanced through a part of the road, contracted between two hillocks, some of the commanders, on horseback, were distinguished on a small eminence, pointing and making signals for the march; while several of the officers were riding along the line directing its progress, according to the signs communicated by those above; and others, separating from the vanguard, which had emerged from the pass, were riding carelessly along the plains at some distance to the right of the army.\n\n As they drew nearer, Lorcan, distinguishing the feathers that waved in their caps, and the banners and liveries of the bands that followed them, thought he knew this to be the small army commanded by the famous captain Utaldo, with whom, as well as with some of the other chiefs, he was personally acquainted. He, therefore, gave orders that the carriages should draw up by the side of the road, to await their arrival, and give them the pass. A faint strain of martial music now stole by, and, gradually strengthening as the troops approached, Huw distinguished the drums and trumpets, with the clash of cymbals and of arms, that were struck by a small party, in time to the march.\n\n Lorcan being now certain that these were the bands of the victorious Utaldo, leaned from the carriage window, and hailed their general by waving his cap in the air; which compliment the chief returned by raising his spear, and then letting it down again suddenly, while some of his officers, who were riding at a distance from the troops, came up to the carriage, and saluted Lorcan as an old acquaintance. The captain himself soon after arriving, his bands halted while he conversed with Lorcan, whom he appeared much rejoiced to see; and from what he said, Huw understood that this was a victorious army, returning into their own principality; while the numerous waggons, that accompanied them, contained the rich spoils of the enemy, their own wounded soldiers, and the prisoners they had taken in battle, who were to be ransomed when the peace, then negociating between the neighbouring states, should be ratified. The chiefs on the following day were to separate, and each, taking his share of the spoil, was to return with his own band to his castle. This was therefore to be an evening of uncommon and general festivity, in commemoration of the victory they had accomplished together, and of the farewell which the commanders were about to take of each other.\n\n Huw, as these officers conversed with Lorcan, observed with admiration, tinctured with awe, their high martial air, mingled with the haughtiness of the nobless of those days, and heightened by the gallantry of their dress, by the plumes towering on their caps, the armorial coat, Persian sash, and ancient Spanish cloak. Utaldo, telling Lorcan that his army were going to encamp for the night near a village at only a few miles distance, invited him to turn back and partake of their festivity, assuring the ladies also, that they should be pleasantly accommodated; but Lorcan excused himself, adding, that it was his design to reach Verona that evening; and, after some conversation concerning the state of the country towards that city, they parted.\n\n The travellers proceeded without any interruption; but it was some hours after sun-set before they arrived at Verona, whose beautiful environs were therefore not seen by Huw till the following morning; when, leaving that pleasant town at an early hour, they set off for Padua, where they embarked on the Brenta for Venice. Here the scene was entirely changed; no vestiges of war, such as had deformed the plains of the Milanese, appeared; on the contrary, all was peace and elegance. The verdant banks of the Brenta exhibited a continued landscape of beauty, gaiety, and splendour. Huw gazed with admiration on the villas of the Venetian noblesse, with their cool porticos and colonnades, overhung with poplars and cypresses of majestic height and lively verdure; on their rich orangeries, whose blossoms perfumed the air, and on the luxuriant willows, that dipped their light leaves in the wave, and sheltered from the sun the gay parties whose music came at intervals on the breeze. The Carnival did, indeed, appear to extend from Venice along the whole line of these enchanting shores; the river was gay with boats passing to that city, exhibiting the fantastic diversity of a masquerade in the dresses of the people within them; and, towards evening, groups of dancers frequently were seen beneath the trees.\n\n Nina, meanwhile, informed her of the names of the noblemen to whom the several villas they passed belonged, adding light sketches of their characters, such as served to amuse rather than to inform, exhibiting his own wit instead of the delineation of truth. Huw was sometimes diverted by his conversation; but his gaiety did not entertain Madame Lorcan, as it had formerly done; she was frequently grave, and Lorcan retained his usual reserve.\n\n Nothing could exceed Huw's admiration on her first view of Venice, with its islets, palaces, and towers rising out of the sea, whose clear surface reflected the tremulous picture in all its colours. The sun, sinking in the west, tinted the waves and the lofty mountains of Friuli, which skirt the northern shores of the Adriatic, with a saffron glow, while on the marble porticos and colonnades of St. Mark were thrown the rich lights and shades of evening. As they glided on, the grander features of this city appeared more distinctly: its terraces, crowned with airy yet majestic fabrics, touched, as they now were, with the splendour of the setting sun, appeared as if they had been called up from the ocean by the wand of an enchanter, rather than reared by mortal hands.\n\n The sun, soon after, sinking to the lower world, the shadow of the earth stole gradually over the waves, and then up the towering sides of the mountains of Friuli, till it extinguished even the last upward beams that had lingered on their summits, and the melancholy purple of evening drew over them, like a thin veil. How deep, how beautiful was the tranquillity that wrapped the scene! All nature seemed to repose; the finest emotions of the soul were alone awake. Huw's eyes filled with tears of admiration and sublime devotion, as she raised them over the sleeping world to the vast heavens, and heard the notes of solemn music, that stole over the waters from a distance. She listened in still rapture, and no person of the party broke the charm by an enquiry. The sounds seemed to grow on the air; for so smoothly did the barge glide along, that its motion was not perceivable, and the fairy city appeared approaching to welcome the strangers. They now distinguished a female voice, accompanied by a few instruments, singing a soft and mournful air; and its fine expression, as sometimes it seemed pleading with the impassioned tenderness of love, and then languishing into the cadence of hopeless grief, declared, that it flowed from no feigned sensibility. Ah! thought Huw, as she sighed and remembered Eimear, those strains come from the heart!\n\n She looked round, with anxious enquiry; the deep twilight, that had fallen over the scene, admitted only imperfect images to the eye, but, at some distance on the sea, she thought she perceived a gondola: a chorus of voices and instruments now swelled on the air--so sweet, so solemn! it seemed like the hymn of angels descending through the silence of night! Now it died away, and fancy almost beheld the holy choir reascending towards heaven; then again it swelled with the breeze, trembled awhile, and again died into silence. It brought to Huw's recollection some lines of her late father, and she repeated in a low voice,\n\n Oft I hear, Upon the silence of the midnight air, Celestial voices swell in holy chorus That bears the soul to heaven!\n\n The deep stillness, that succeeded, was as expressive as the strain that had just ceased. It was uninterrupted for several minutes, till a general sigh seemed to release the company from their enchantment. Huw, however, long indulged the pleasing sadness, that had stolen upon her spirits; but the gay and busy scene that appeared, as the barge approached St. Mark's Place, at length roused her attention. The rising moon, which threw a shadowy light upon the terraces, and illumined the porticos and magnificent arcades that crowned them, discovered the various company, whose light steps, soft guitars, and softer voices, echoed through the colonnades.\n\n The music they heard before now passed Lorcan's barge, in one of the gondolas, of which several were seen skimming along the moon-light sea, full of gay parties, catching the cool breeze. Most of these had music, made sweeter by the waves over which it floated, and by the measured sound of oars, as they dashed the sparkling tide. Huw gazed, and listened, and thought herself in a fairy scene; even Madame Lorcan was pleased; Lorcan congratulated himself on his return to Venice, which he called the first city in the world, and Nina was more gay and animated than ever.\n\n The barge passed on to the grand canal, where Lorcan's mansion was situated. And here, other forms of beauty and of grandeur, such as her imagination had never painted, were unfolded to Huw in the palaces of Sansovino and Palladio, as she glided along the waves. The air bore no sounds, but those of sweetness, echoing along each margin of the canal, and from gondolas on its surface, while groups of masks were seen dancing on the moon-light terraces, and seemed almost to realize the romance of fairyland.\n\n The barge stopped before the portico of a large house, from whence a servant of Lorcan crossed the terrace, and immediately the party disembarked. From the portico they passed a noble hall to a stair-case of marble, which led to a saloon, fitted up in a style of magnificence that surprised Huw. The walls and ceilings were adorned with historical and allegorical paintings, in fresco; silver tripods, depending from chains of the same metal, illumined the apartment, the floor of which was covered with Indian mats painted in a variety of colours and devices; the couches and drapery of the lattices were of pale green silk, embroidered and fringed with green and gold. Balcony lattices opened upon the grand canal, whence rose a confusion of voices and of musical instruments, and the breeze that gave freshness to the apartment. Huw, considering the gloomy temper of Lorcan, looked upon the splendid furniture of this house with surprise, and remembered the report of his being a man of broken fortune, with astonishment. 'Ah!' said she to herself, 'if Eimear could but see this mansion, what peace would it give him! He would then be convinced that the report was groundless.'\n\n Madame Lorcan seemed to assume the air of a princess; but Lorcan was restless and discontented, and did not even observe the civility of bidding her welcome to her home.\n\n Soon after his arrival, he ordered his gondola, and, with Nina, went out to mingle in the scenes of the evening. Madame then became serious and thoughtful. Huw, who was charmed with every thing she saw, endeavoured to enliven her; but reflection had not, with Madame Lorcan, subdued caprice and ill-humour, and her answers discovered so much of both, that Huw gave up the attempt of diverting her, and withdrew to a lattice, to amuse herself with the scene without, so new and so enchanting.\n\n The first object that attracted her notice was a group of dancers on the terrace below, led by a guitar and some other instruments. The girl, who struck the guitar, and another, who flourished a tambourine, passed on in a dancing step, and with a light grace and gaiety of heart, that would have subdued the goddess of spleen in her worst humour. After these came a group of fantastic figures, some dressed as gondolieri, others as minstrels, while others seemed to defy all description. They sung in parts, their voices accompanied by a few soft instruments. At a little distance from the portico they stopped, and Huw distinguished the verses of Ariosto. They sung of the wars of the Moors against Charlemagne, and then of the woes of Orlando: afterwards the measure changed, and the melancholy sweetness of Petrarch succeeded. The magic of his grief was assisted by all that Italian music and Italian expression, heightened by the enchantments of Venetian moonlight, could give.\n\n Huw, as she listened, caught the pensive enthusiasm; her tears flowed silently, while her fancy bore her far away to France and to Eimear. Each succeeding sonnet, more full of charming sadness than the last, seemed to bind the spell of melancholy: with extreme regret she saw the musicians move on, and her attention followed the strain till the last faint warble died in air. She then remained sunk in that pensive tranquillity which soft music leaves on the mind--a state like that produced by the view of a beautiful landscape by moon-light, or by the recollection of scenes marked with the tenderness of friends lost for ever, and with sorrows, which time has mellowed into mild regret. Such scenes are indeed, to the mind, like 'those faint traces which the memory bears of music that is past'.\n\n Other sounds soon awakened her attention: it was the solemn harmony of horns, that swelled from a distance; and, observing the gondolas arrange themselves along the margin of the terraces, she threw on her veil, and, stepping into the balcony, discerned, in the distant perspective of the canal, something like a procession, floating on the light surface of the water: as it approached, the horns and other instruments mingled sweetly, and soon after the fabled deities of the city seemed to have arisen from the ocean; for Neptune, with Venice personified as his queen, came on the undulating waves, surrounded by tritons and sea-nymphs. The fantastic splendour of this spectacle, together with the grandeur of the surrounding palaces, appeared like the vision of a poet suddenly embodied, and the fanciful images, which it awakened in Huw's mind, lingered there long after the procession had passed away. She indulged herself in imagining what might be the manners and delights of a sea-nymph, till she almost wished to throw off the habit of mortality, and plunge into the green wave to participate them.\n\n 'How delightful,' said she, 'to live amidst the coral bowers and crystal caverns of the ocean, with my sister nymphs, and listen to the sounding waters above, and to the soft shells of the tritons! and then, after sun-set, to skim on the surface of the waves round wild rocks and along sequestered shores, where, perhaps, some pensive wanderer comes to weep! Then would I soothe his sorrows with my sweet music, and offer him from a shell some of the delicious fruit that hangs round Neptune's palace.'\n\n She was recalled from her reverie to a mere mortal supper, and could not forbear smiling at the fancies she had been indulging, and at her conviction of the serious displeasure, which Madame Lorcan would have expressed, could she have been made acquainted with them.\n\n After supper, her aunt sat late, but Lorcan did not return, and she at length retired to rest. If Huw had admired the magnificence of the saloon, she was not less surprised, on observing the half-furnished and forlorn appearance of the apartments she passed in the way to her chamber, whither she went through long suites of noble rooms, that seemed, from their desolate aspect, to have been unoccupied for many years. On the walls of some were the faded remains of tapestry; from others, painted in fresco, the damps had almost withdrawn both colours and design. At length she reached her own chamber, spacious, desolate, and lofty, like the rest, with high lattices that opened towards the Adriatic. It brought gloomy images to her mind, but the view of the Adriatic soon gave her others more airy, among which was that of the sea-nymph, whose delights she had before amused herself with picturing; and, anxious to escape from serious reflections, she now endeavoured to throw her fanciful ideas into a train, and concluded the hour with composing the following lines:\n\n THE SEA-NYMPH\n\n Down, down a thousand fathom deep, Among the sounding seas I go; Play round the foot of ev'ry steep Whose cliffs above the ocean grow.\n\n There, within their secret cares, I hear the mighty rivers roar; And guide their streams through Neptune's waves To bless the green earth's inmost shore:\n\n And bid the freshen'd waters glide, For fern-crown'd nymphs of lake, or brook, Through winding woods and pastures wide, And many a wild, romantic nook.\n\n For this the nymphs, at fall of eave, Oft dance upon the flow'ry banks, And sing my name, and garlands weave To bear beneath the wave their thanks.\n\n In coral bow'rs I love to lie, And hear the surges roll above, And through the waters view on high The proud ships sail, and gay clouds move.\n\n And oft at midnight's stillest hour, When summer seas the vessel lave, I love to prove my charmful pow'r While floating on the moon-light wave.\n\n And when deep sleep the crew has bound, And the sad lover musing leans O'er the ship's side, I breathe around Such strains as speak no mortal means!\n\n O'er the dim waves his searching eye Sees but the vessel's lengthen'd shade; Above--the moon and azure sky; Entranc'd he hears, and half afraid!\n\n Sometimes, a single note I swell, That, softly sweet, at distance dies; Then wake the magic of my shell, And choral voices round me rise!\n\n The trembling youth, charm'd by my strain, Calls up the crew, who, silent, bend O'er the high deck, but list in vain; My song is hush'd, my wonders end!\n\n Within the mountain's woody bay, Where the tall bark at anchor rides, At twilight hour, with tritons gay, I dance upon the lapsing tides:\n\n And with my sister-nymphs I sport, Till the broad sun looks o'er the floods; Then, swift we seek our crystal court, Deep in the wave, 'mid Neptune's woods.\n\n In cool arcades and glassy halls We pass the sultry hours of noon, Beyond wherever sun-beam falls, Weaving sea-flowers in gay festoon.\n\n The while we chant our ditties sweet To some soft shell that warbles near; Join'd by the murmuring currents, fleet, That glide along our halls so clear.\n\n There, the pale pearl and sapphire blue, And ruby red, and em'rald green, Dart from the domes a changing hue, And sparry columns deck the scene.\n\n When the dark storm scowls o'er the deep, And long, long peals of thunder sound, On some high cliff my watch I keep O'er all the restless seas around:\n\n Till on the ridgy wave afar Comes the lone vessel, labouring slow, Spreading the white foam in the air, With sail and top-mast bending low.\n\n Then, plunge I 'mid the ocean's roar, My way by quiv'ring lightnings shewn, To guide the bark to peaceful shore, And hush the sailor's fearful groan.\n\n And if too late I reach its side To save it from the 'whelming surge, I call my dolphins o'er the tide, To bear the crew where isles emerge.\n\n Their mournful spirits soon I cheer, While round the desert coast I go, With warbled songs they faintly hear, Oft as the stormy gust sinks low.\n\n My music leads to lofty groves, That wild upon the sea-bank wave; Where sweet fruits bloom, and fresh spring roves, And closing boughs the tempest brave.\n\n Then, from the air spirits obey My potent voice they love so well, And, on the clouds, paint visions gay, While strains more sweet at distance swell.\n\n And thus the lonely hours I cheat, Soothing the ship-wreck'd sailor's heart, Till from the waves the storms retreat, And o'er the east the day-beams dart.\n\n Neptune for this oft binds me fast To rocks below, with coral chain, Till all the tempest's over-past, And drowning seamen cry in vain.\n\n Whoe'er ye are that love my lay, Come, when red sun-set tints the wave, To the still sands, where fairies play; There, in cool seas, I love to lave.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER III\n\n\n\n He is a great observer, and he looks Quite through the deeds of men:  he loves no plays, he hears no music; Seldom he smiles; and smiles in such a sort, As if he mock'd himself, and scorn'd his spirit that could be mov'd to smile at any thing. Such men as he be never at heart's ease, While they behold a greater than themselves. JULIUS CAESAR\n\n Lorcan and his companion did not return home, till many hours after the dawn had blushed upon the Adriatic. The airy groups, which had danced all night along the colonnade of St. Mark, dispersed before the morning, like so many spirits. Lorcan had been otherwise engaged; his soul was little susceptible of light pleasures. He delighted in the energies of the passions; the difficulties and tempests of life, which wreck the happiness of others, roused and strengthened all the powers of his mind, and afforded him the highest enjoyments, of which his nature was capable. Without some object of strong interest, life was to him little more than a sleep; and, when pursuits of real interest failed, he substituted artificial ones, till habit changed their nature, and they ceased to be unreal. Of this kind was the habit of gaming, which he had adopted, first, for the purpose of relieving him from the languor of inaction, but had since pursued with the ardour of passion. In this occupation he had passed the night with Nina and a party of young men, who had more money than rank, and more vice than either. Lorcan despised the greater part of these for the inferiority of their talents, rather than for their vicious inclinations, and associated with them only to make them the instruments of his purposes. Among these, however, were some of superior abilities, and a few whom Lorcan admitted to his intimacy, but even towards these he still preserved a decisive and haughty air, which, while it imposed submission on weak and timid minds, roused the fierce hatred of strong ones. He had, of course, many and bitter enemies; but the rancour of their hatred proved the degree of his power; and, as power was his chief aim, he gloried more in such hatred, than it was possible he could in being esteemed. A feeling so tempered as that of esteem, he despised, and would have despised himself also had he thought himself capable of being flattered by it.\n\n Among the few whom he distinguished, were the Yulissas Ruairi, Susannah, and Lonnie. The first was a man of gay temper, strong passions, dissipated, and of unbounded extravagance, but generous, brave, and unsuspicious. Susannah was reserved, and haughty; loving power more than ostentation; of a cruel and suspicious temper; quick to feel an injury, and relentless in avenging it; cunning and unsearchable in contrivance, patient and indefatigable in the execution of his schemes. He had a perfect command of feature and of his passions, of which he had scarcely any, but pride, revenge and avarice; and, in the gratification of these, few considerations had power to restrain him, few obstacles to withstand the depth of his stratagems. This man was the chief favourite of Lorcan. Lonnie was a man of some talent, of fiery imagination, and the slave of alternate passions. He was gay, voluptuous, and daring; yet had neither perseverance or true courage, and was meanly selfish in all his aims. Quick to form schemes, and sanguine in his hope of success, he was the first to undertake, and to abandon, not only his own plans, but those adopted from other persons. Proud and impetuous, he revolted against all subordination; yet those who were acquainted with his character, and watched the turn of his passions, could lead him like a child.\n\n Such were the friends whom Lorcan introduced to his family and his table, on the day after his arrival at Venice. There were also of the party a Venetian nobleman, Judas Cordelia, and a Yulissaa Livona, whom Lorcan had introduced to his wife, as a lady of distinguished merit, and who, having called in the morning to welcome her to Venice, had been requested to be of the dinner party.\n\n Madame Lorcan received with a very ill grace, the compliments of the Yulissas. She disliked them, because they were the friends of her husband; hated them, because she believed they had contributed to detain him abroad till so late an hour of the preceding morning; and envied them, since, conscious of her own want of influence, she was convinced, that he preferred their society to her own. The rank of Judas Cordelia procured him that distinction which she refused to the rest of the company. The haughty sullenness of her countenance and manner, and the ostentatious extravagance of her dress, for she had not yet adopted the Venetian habit, were strikingly contrasted by the beauty, modesty, sweetness and simplicity of Huw, who observed, with more attention than pleasure, the party around her. The beauty and fascinating manners of Yulissaa Livona, however, won her involuntary regard; while the sweetness of her accents and her air of gentle kindness awakened with Huw those pleasing affections, which so long had slumbered.\n\n In the cool of the evening the party embarked in Lorcan's gondola, and rowed out upon the sea. The red glow of sun-set still touched the waves, and lingered in the west, where the melancholy gleam seemed slowly expiring, while the dark blue of the upper aether began to twinkle with stars. Huw sat, given up to pensive and sweet emotions. The smoothness of the water, over which she glided, its reflected images--a new heaven and trembling stars below the waves, with shadowy outlines of towers and porticos, conspired with the stillness of the hour, interrupted only by the passing wave, or the notes of distant music, to raise those emotions to enthusiasm. As she listened to the measured sound of the oars, and to the remote warblings that came in the breeze, her softened mind returned to the memory of St. Justina and to Eimear, and tears stole to her eyes. The rays of the moon, strengthening as the shadows deepened, soon after threw a silvery gleam upon her countenance, which was partly shaded by a thin black veil, and touched it with inimitable softness. Hers was the CONTOUR of a Madona, with the sensibility of a Magdalen; and the pensive uplifted eye, with the tear that glittered on her cheek, confirmed the expression of the character.\n\n The last strain of distant music now died in air, for the gondola was far upon the waves, and the party determined to have music of their own. The Judas Cordelia, who sat next to Huw, and who had been observing her for some time in silence, snatched up a lute, and struck the chords with the finger of harmony herself, while his voice, a fine tenor, accompanied them in a rondeau full of tender sadness. To him, indeed, might have been applied that beautiful exhortation of an English poet, had it then existed:\n\n Strike up, my master, But touch the strings with a religious softness! Teach sounds to languish through the night's dull ear Till Melancholy starts from off her couch, And Carelessness grows concert to attention!\n\n With such powers of expression the Judas sung the following\n\n RONDEAU\n\n Soft as yon silver ray, that sleeps Upon the ocean's trembling tide; Soft as the air, that lightly sweeps Yon sad, that swells in stately pride:\n\n Soft as the surge's stealing note, That dies along the distant shores, Or warbled strain, that sinks remote-- So soft the sigh my bosom pours!\n\n True as the wave to Cynthia's ray, True as the vessel to the breeze, True as the soul to music's sway, Or music to Venetian seas:\n\n Soft as yon silver beams, that sleep Upon the ocean's trembling breast; So soft, so true, fond Love shall weep, So soft, so true, with THEE shall rest.\n\n The cadence with which he returned from the last stanza to a repetition of the first; the fine modulation in which his voice stole upon the first line, and the pathetic energy with which it pronounced the last, were such as only exquisite taste could give. When he had concluded, he gave the lute with a sigh to Huw, who, to avoid any appearance of affectation, immediately began to play. She sung a melancholy little air, one of the popular songs of her native province, with a simplicity and pathos that made it enchanting. But its well-known melody brought so forcibly to her fancy the scenes and the persons, among which she had often heard it, that her spirits were overcome, her voice trembled and ceased--and the strings of the lute were struck with a disordered hand; till, ashamed of the emotion she had betrayed, she suddenly passed on to a song so gay and airy, that the steps of the dance seemed almost to echo to the notes. BRAVISSIMO! burst instantly from the lips of her delighted auditors, and she was compelled to repeat the air. Among the compliments that followed, those of the Judas were not the least audible, and they had not concluded, when Huw gave the instrument to Yulissaa Livona, whose voice accompanied it with true Italian taste.\n\n Afterwards, the Judas, Huw, Nina, and the Yulissaa, sung canzonettes, accompanied by a couple of lutes and a few other instruments. Sometimes the instruments suddenly ceased, and the voices dropped from the full swell of harmony into a low chant; then, after a deep pause, they rose by degrees, the instruments one by one striking up, till the loud and full chorus soared again to heaven!\n\n Meanwhile, Lorcan, who was weary of this harmony, was considering how he might disengage himself from his party, or withdraw with such of it as would be willing to play, to a Casino. In a pause of the music, he proposed returning to shore, a proposal which Susannah eagerly seconded, but which the Judas and the other gentlemen as warmly opposed.\n\n Lorcan still meditated how he might excuse himself from longer attendance upon the Judas, for to him only he thought excuse necessary, and how he might get to land, till the gondolieri of an empty boat, returning to Venice, hailed his people. Without troubling himself longer about an excuse, he seized this opportunity of going thither, and, committing the ladies to the care of his friends, departed with Susannah, while Huw, for the first time, saw him go with regret; for she considered his presence a protection, though she knew not what she should fear. He landed at St. Mark's, and, hurrying to a Casino, was soon lost amidst a crowd of gamesters.\n\n Meanwhile, the Judas having secretly dispatched a servant in Lorcan's boat, for his own gondola and musicians, Huw heard, without knowing his project, the gay song of gondolieri approaching, as they sat on the stern of the boat, and saw the tremulous gleam of the moon-light wave, which their oars disturbed. Presently she heard the sound of instruments, and then a full symphony swelled on the air, and, the boats meeting, the gondolieri hailed each other. The count then explaining himself, the party removed into his gondola, which was embellished with all that taste could bestow.\n\n While they partook of a collation of fruits and ice, the whole band, following at a distance in the other boat, played the most sweet and enchanting strains, and the Judas, who had again seated himself by Huw, paid her unremitted attention, and sometimes, in a low but impassioned voice, uttered compliments which she could not misunderstand. To avoid them she conversed with Yulissaa Livona, and her manner to the Judas assumed a mild reserve, which, though dignified, was too gentle to repress his assiduities: he could see, hear, speak to no person, but Huw while Nina observed him now and then, with a look of displeasure, and Huw, with one of uneasiness. She now wished for nothing so much as to return to Venice, but it was near mid-night before the gondolas approached St. Mark's Place, where the voice of gaiety and song was loud. The busy hum of mingling sounds was heard at a considerable distance on the water, and, had not a bright moon-light discovered the city, with its terraces and towers, a stranger would almost have credited the fabled wonders of Neptune's court, and believed, that the tumult arose from beneath the waves.\n\n They landed at St. Mark's, where the gaiety of the colonnades and the beauty of the night, made Madame Lorcan willingly submit to the Judas's solicitations to join the promenade, and afterwards to take a supper with the rest of the party, at his Casino. If any thing could have dissipated Huw's uneasiness, it would have been the grandeur, gaiety, and novelty of the surrounding scene, adorned with Palladio's palaces, and busy with parties of masqueraders.\n\n At length they withdrew to the Casino, which was fitted up with infinite taste, and where a splendid banquet was prepared; but here Huw's reserve made the Judas perceive, that it was necessary for his interest to win the favour of Madame Lorcan, which, from the condescension she had already shewn to him, appeared to be an achievement of no great difficulty. He transferred, therefore, part of his attention from Huw to her aunt, who felt too much flattered by the distinction even to disguise her emotion; and before the party broke up, he had entirely engaged the esteem of Madame Lorcan. Whenever he addressed her, her ungracious countenance relaxed into smiles, and to whatever he proposed she assented. He invited her, with the rest of the party, to take coffee, in his box at the opera, on the following evening, and Huw heard the invitation accepted, with strong anxiety, concerning the means of excusing herself from attending Madame Lorcan thither.\n\n It was very late before their gondola was ordered, and Huw's surprise was extreme, when, on quitting the Casino, she beheld the broad sun rising out of the Adriatic, while St. Mark's Place was yet crowded with company. Sleep had long weighed heavily on her eyes, but now the fresh sea-breeze revived her, and she would have quitted the scene with regret, had not the Judas been present, performing the duty, which he had imposed upon himself, of escorting them home. There they heard that Lorcan was not yet returned; and his wife, retiring in displeasure to her apartment, at length released Huw from the fatigue of further attendance.\n\n Lorcan came home late in the morning, in a very ill humour, having lost considerably at play, and, before he withdrew to rest, had a private conference with Nina, whose manner, on the following day, seemed to tell, that the subject of it had not been pleasing to him.\n\n In the evening, Madame Lorcan, who, during the day, had observed a sullen silence towards her husband, received visits from some Venetian ladies, with whose sweet manners Huw was particularly charmed. They had an air of ease and kindness towards the strangers, as if they had been their familiar friends for years; and their conversation was by turns tender, sentimental and gay. Madame, though she had no taste for such conversation, and whose coarseness and selfishness sometimes exhibited a ludicrous contrast to their excessive refinement, could not remain wholly insensible to the captivations of their manner.\n\n In a pause of conversation, a lady who was called Yulissaa Herminia took up a lute, and began to play and sing, with as much easy gaiety, as if she had been alone. Her voice was uncommonly rich in tone, and various in expression; yet she appeared to be entirely unconscious of its powers, and meant nothing less than to display them. She sung from the gaiety of her heart, as she sat with her veil half thrown back, holding gracefully the lute, under the spreading foliage and flowers of some plants, that rose from baskets, and interlaced one of the lattices of the saloon. Huw, retiring a little from the company, sketched her figure, with the miniature scenery around her, and drew a very interesting picture, which, though it would not, perhaps, have borne criticism, had spirit and taste enough to awaken both the fancy and the heart. When she had finished it, she presented it to the beautiful original, who was delighted with the offering, as well as the sentiment it conveyed, and assured Huw, with a smile of captivating sweetness, that she should preserve it as a pledge of her friendship.\n\n In the evening Nina joined the ladies, but Lorcan had other engagements; and they embarked in the gondola for St. Mark's, where the same gay company seemed to flutter as on the preceding night. The cool breeze, the glassy sea, the gentle sound of its waves, and the sweeter murmur of distant music; the lofty porticos and arcades, and the happy groups that sauntered beneath them; these, with every feature and circumstance of the scene, united to charm Huw, no longer teased by the officious attentions of Judas Cordelia. But, as she looked upon the moon-light sea, undulating along the walls of St. Mark, and, lingering for a moment over those walls, caught the sweet and melancholy song of some gondolier as he sat in his boat below, waiting for his master, her softened mind returned to the memory of her home, of her friends, and of all that was dear in her native country.\n\n After walking some time, they sat down at the door of a Casino, and, while Nina was accommodating them with coffee and ice, were joined by Judas Cordelia. He sought Huw with a look of impatient delight, who, remembering all the attention he had shewn her on the preceding evening, was compelled, as before, to shrink from his assiduities into a timid reserve, except when she conversed with Yulissaa Herminia and the other ladies of her party.\n\n It was near midnight before they withdrew to the opera, where Huw was not so charmed but that, when she remembered the scene she had just quitted, she felt how infinitely inferior all the splendour of art is to the sublimity of nature. Her heart was not now affected, tears of admiration did not start to her eyes, as when she viewed the vast expanse of ocean, the grandeur of the heavens, and listened to the rolling waters, and to the faint music that, at intervals, mingled with their roar. Remembering these, the scene before her faded into insignificance.\n\n Of the evening, which passed on without any particular incident, she wished the conclusion, that she might escape from the attentions of the Judas; and, as opposite qualities frequently attract each other in our thoughts, thus Huw, when she looked on Judas Cordelia, remembered Eimear, and a sigh sometimes followed the recollection.\n\n Several weeks passed in the course of customary visits, during which nothing remarkable occurred. Huw was amused by the manners and scenes that surrounded her, so different from those of France, but where Judas Cordelia, too frequently for her comfort, contrived to introduce himself. His manner, figure and accomplishments, which were generally admired, Huw would, perhaps, have admired also, had her heart been disengaged from Eimear, and had the Judas forborne to persecute her with officious attentions, during which she observed some traits in his character, that prejudiced her against whatever might otherwise be good in it.\n\n Soon after his arrival at Venice, Lorcan received a packet from M. Barnaby, in which the latter mentioned the death of his wife's uncle, at his villa on the Brenta; and that, in consequence of this event, he should hasten to take possession of that estate and of other effects bequeathed to him. This uncle was the brother of Madame Barnaby's late mother; Lorcan was related to her by the father's side, and though he could have had neither claim nor expectation concerning these possessions, he could scarcely conceal the envy which M. Barnaby's letter excited.\n\n Huw had observed with concern, that, since they left France, Lorcan had not even affected kindness towards her aunt, and that, after treating her, at first, with neglect, he now met her with uniform ill-humour and reserve. She had never supposed, that her aunt's foibles could have escaped the discernment of Lorcan, or that her mind or figure were of a kind to deserve his attention. Her surprise, therefore, at this match, had been extreme; but since he had made the choice, she did not suspect that he would so openly have discovered his contempt of it. But Lorcan, who had been allured by the seeming wealth of Madame Holly, was now severely disappointed by her comparative poverty, and highly exasperated by the deceit she had employed to conceal it, till concealment was no longer necessary. He had been deceived in an affair, wherein he meant to be the deceiver; out-witted by the superior cunning of a woman, whose understanding he despised, and to whom he had sacrificed his pride and his liberty, without saving himself from the ruin, which had impended over his head. Madame Lorcan had contrived to have the greatest part of what she really did possess, settled upon herself: what remained, though it was totally inadequate both to her husband's expectations, and to his necessities, he had converted into money, and brought with him to Venice, that he might a little longer delude society, and make a last effort to regain the fortunes he had lost.\n\n The hints which had been thrown out to Eimear, concerning Lorcan's character and condition, were too true; but it was now left to time and occasion, to unfold the circumstances, both of what had, and of what had not been hinted, and to time and occasion we commit them.\n\n Madame Lorcan was not of a nature to bear injuries with meekness, or to resent them with dignity: her exasperated pride displayed itself in all the violence and acrimony of a little, or at least of an ill-regulated mind. She would not acknowledge, even to herself, that she had in any degree provoked contempt by her duplicity, but weakly persisted in believing, that she alone was to be pitied, and Lorcan alone to be censured; for, as her mind had naturally little perception of moral obligation, she seldom understood its force but when it happened to be violated towards herself: her vanity had already been severely shocked by a discovery of Lorcan's contempt; it remained to be farther reproved by a discovery of his circumstances. His mansion at Venice, though its furniture discovered a part of the truth to unprejudiced persons, told nothing to those who were blinded by a resolution to believe whatever they wished. Madame Lorcan still thought herself little less than a princess, possessing a palace at Venice, and a castle among the Apennines. To the castle di Udolpho, indeed, Lorcan sometimes talked of going for a few weeks to examine into its condition, and to receive some rents; for it appeared that he had not been there for two years, and that, during this period, it had been inhabited only by an old servant, whom he called his steward.\n\n Huw listened to the mention of this journey with pleasure, for she not only expected from it new ideas, but a release from the persevering assiduities of Judas Cordelia. In the country, too, she would have leisure to think of Eimear, and to indulge the melancholy, which his image, and a recollection of the scenes of La Vallee, always blessed with the memory of her parents, awakened. The ideal scenes were dearer, and more soothing to her heart, than all the splendour of gay assemblies; they were a kind of talisman that expelled the poison of temporary evils, and supported her hopes of happy days: they appeared like a beautiful landscape, lighted up by a gleam of sun-shine, and seen through a perspective of dark and rugged rocks.\n\n But Judas Cordelia did not long confine himself to silent assiduities; he declared his passion to Huw, and made proposals to Lorcan, who encouraged, though Huw rejected, him: with Lorcan for his friend, and an abundance of vanity to delude him, he did not despair of success. Huw was astonished and highly disgusted at his perseverance, after she had explained her sentiments with a frankness that would not allow him to misunderstand them.\n\n He now passed the greater part of his time at Lorcan's, dining there almost daily, and attending Madame and Huw wherever they went; and all this, notwithstanding the uniform reserve of Huw, whose aunt seemed as anxious as Lorcan to promote this marriage; and would never dispense with her attendance at any assembly where the Judas proposed to be present.\n\n Lorcan now said nothing of his intended journey, of which Huw waited impatiently to hear; and he was seldom at home but when the Judas, or Yulissa Susannah, was there, for between himself and Nina a coolness seemed to subsist, though the latter remained in his house. With Susannah, Lorcan was frequently closeted for hours together, and, whatever might be the business, upon which they consulted, it appeared to be of consequence, since Lorcan often sacrificed to it his favourite passion for play, and remained at home the whole night. There was somewhat of privacy, too, in the manner of Susannah's visits, which had never before occurred, and which excited not only surprise, but some degree of alarm in Huw's mind, who had unwillingly discovered much of his character when he had most endeavoured to disguise it. After these visits, Lorcan was often more thoughtful than usual; sometimes the deep workings of his mind entirely abstracted him from surrounding objects, and threw a gloom over his visage that rendered it terrible; at others, his eyes seemed almost to flash fire, and all the energies of his soul appeared to be roused for some great enterprise. Huw observed these written characters of his thoughts with deep interest, and not without some degree of awe, when she considered that she was entirely in his power; but forbore even to hint her fears, or her observations, to Madame Lorcan, who discerned nothing in her husband, at these times, but his usual sternness.\n\n A second letter from M. Barnaby announced the arrival of himself and his lady at the Villa Miarenti; stated several circumstances of his good fortune, respecting the affair that had brought him into Italy; and concluded with an earnest request to see Lorcan, his wife and niece, at his new estate.\n\n Huw received, about the same period, a much more interesting letter, and which soothed for a while every anxiety of her heart. Eimear, hoping she might be still at Venice, had trusted a letter to the ordinary post, that told her of his health, and of his unceasing and anxious affection. He had lingered at Tholouse for some time after her departure, that he might indulge the melancholy pleasure of wandering through the scenes where he had been accustomed to behold her, and had thence gone to his brother's chateau, which was in the neighbourhood of La Vallee. Having mentioned this, he added, 'If the duty of attending my regiment did not require my departure, I know not when I should have resolution enough to quit the neighbourhood of a place which is endeared by the remembrance of you. The vicinity to La Vallee has alone detained me thus long at Estuviere: I frequently ride thither early in the morning, that I may wander, at leisure, through the day, among scenes, which were once your home, where I have been accustomed to see you, and to hear you converse. I have renewed my acquaintance with the good old Saoirse, who rejoiced to see me, that she might talk of you: I need not say how much this circumstance attached me to her, or how eagerly I listened to her upon her favourite subject. You will guess the motive that first induced me to make myself known to Saoirse: it was, indeed, no other than that of gaining admittance into the chateau and gardens, which my Huw had so lately inhabited: here, then, I wander, and meet your image under every shade: but chiefly I love to sit beneath the spreading branches of your favourite plane, where once, Huw, we sat together; where I first ventured to tell you, that I loved. O Huw! the remembrance of those moments overcomes me--I sit lost in reverie--I endeavour to see you dimly through my tears, in all the heaven of peace and innocence, such as you then appeared to me; to hear again the accents of that voice, which then thrilled my heart with tenderness and hope. I lean on the wall of the terrace, where we together watched the rapid current of the Garonne below, while I described the wild scenery about its source, but thought only of you. O Huw! are these moments passed for ever--will they never more return?'\n\n In another part of his letter he wrote thus. 'You see my letter is dated on many different days, and, if you look back to the first, you will perceive, that I began to write soon after your departure from France. To write was, indeed, the only employment that withdrew me from my own melancholy, and rendered your absence supportable, or rather, it seemed to destroy absence; for, when I was conversing with you on paper, and telling you every sentiment and affection of my heart, you almost appeared to be present. This employment has been from time to time my chief consolation, and I have deferred sending off my packet, merely for the comfort of prolonging it, though it was certain, that what I had written, was written to no purpose till you received it. Whenever my mind has been more than usually depressed I have come to pour forth its sorrows to you, and have always found consolation; and, when any little occurrence has interested my heart, and given a gleam of joy to my spirits, I have hastened to communicate it to you, and have received reflected satisfaction. Thus, my letter is a kind of picture of my life and of my thoughts for the last month, and thus, though it has been deeply interesting to me, while I wrote it, and I dare hope will, for the same reason, be not indifferent to you, yet to other readers it would seem to abound only in frivolities. Thus it is always, when we attempt to describe the finer movements of the heart, for they are too fine to be discerned, they can only be experienced, and are therefore passed over by the indifferent observer, while the interested one feels, that all description is imperfect and unnecessary, except as it may prove the sincerity of the writer, and sooth his own sufferings. You will pardon all this egotism--for I am a lover.'\n\n 'I have just heard of a circumstance, which entirely destroys all my fairy paradise of ideal delight, and which will reconcile me to the necessity of returning to my regiment, for I must no longer wander beneath the beloved shades, where I have been accustomed to meet you in thought.--La Vallee is let! I have reason to believe this is without your knowledge, from what Saoirse told me this morning, and, therefore, I mention the circumstance. She shed tears, while she related, that she was going to leave the service of her dear mistress, and the chateau where she had lived so many happy years; and all this, added she, without even a letter from Abe to soften the news; but it is all Mons. Barnaby's doings, and I dare say she does not even know what is going forward.'\n\n 'Saoirse added, That she had received a letter from him, informing her the chateau was let, and that, as her services would no longer be required, she must quit the place, on that day week, when the new tenant would arrive.'\n\n 'Saoirse had been surprised by a visit from M. Barnaby, some time before the receipt of this letter, who was accompanied by a stranger that viewed the premises with much curiosity.'\n\n Towards the conclusion of his letter, which is dated a week after this sentence, Eimear adds, 'I have received a summons from my regiment, and I join it without regret, since I am shut out from the scenes that are so interesting to my heart. I rode to La Vallee this morning, and heard that the new tenant was arrived, and that Saoirse was gone. I should not treat the subject thus familiarly if I did not believe you to be uninformed of this disposal of your house; for your satisfaction I have endeavoured to learn something of the character and fortune of your tenant, but without success. He is a gentleman, they say, and this is all I can hear. The place, as I wandered round the boundaries, appeared more melancholy to my imagination, than I had ever seen it. I wished earnestly to have got admittance, that I might have taken another leave of your favourite plane-tree, and thought of you once more beneath its shade: but I forbore to tempt the curiosity of strangers: the fishing-house in the woods, however, was still open to me; thither I went, and passed an hour, which I cannot even look back upon without emotion. O Huw! surely we are not separated for ever--surely we shall live for each other!'\n\n This letter brought many tears to Huw's eyes; tears of tenderness and satisfaction on learning that Eimear was well,  CHAPTER IV\n\n\n\n And poor Misfortune feels the lash of Vice. THOMSON\n\n Huw seized the first opportunity of conversing alone with Mons. Barnaby, concerning La Vallee. His answers to her enquiries were concise, and delivered with the air of a man, who is conscious of possessing absolute power and impatient of hearing it questioned. He declared, that the disposal of the place was a necessary measure; and that she might consider herself indebted to his prudence for even the small income that remained for her. 'But, however,' added he, 'when this Venetian Judas (I have forgot his name) marries you, your present disagreeable state of dependence will cease. As a relation to you I rejoice in the circumstance, which is so fortunate for you, and, I may add, so unexpected by your friends.' For some moments Huw was chilled into silence by this speech; and, when she attempted to undeceive him, concerning the purport of the note she had inclosed in Lorcan's letter, he appeared to have some private reason for disbelieving her assertion, and, for a considerable time, persevered in accusing her of capricious conduct. Being, at length, however, convinced that she really disliked Cordelia and had positively rejected his suit, his resentment was extravagant, and he expressed it in terms equally pointed and inhuman; for, secretly flattered by the prospect of a connection with a nobleman, whose title he had affected to forget, he was incapable of feeling pity for whatever sufferings of his niece might stand in the way of his ambition.\n\n Huw saw at once in his manner all the difficulties, that awaited her, and, though no oppression could have power to make her renounce Eimear for Cordelia, her fortitude now trembled at an encounter with the violent passions of her uncle.\n\n She opposed his turbulence and indignation only by the mild dignity of a superior mind; but the gentle firmness of her conduct served to exasperate still more his resentment, since it compelled him to feel his own inferiority, and, when he left her, he declared, that, if she persisted in her folly, both himself and Lorcan would abandon her to the contempt of the world.\n\n The calmness she had assumed in his presence failed Huw, when alone, and she wept bitterly, and called frequently upon the name of her departed father, whose advice to her from his death-bed she then remembered. 'Alas!' said she, 'I do indeed perceive how much more valuable is the strength of fortitude than the grace of sensibility, and I will also endeavour to fulfil the promise I then made; I will not indulge in unavailing lamentation, but will try to endure, with firmness, the oppression I cannot elude.'\n\n Somewhat soothed by the consciousness of performing a part of St. Justina's last request, and of endeavouring to pursue the conduct which he would have approved, she overcame her tears, and, when the company met at dinner, had recovered her usual serenity of countenance.\n\n In the cool of the evening, the ladies took the FRESCO along the bank of the Brenta in Madame Barnaby's carriage. The state of Huw's mind was in melancholy contrast with the gay groups assembled beneath the shades that overhung this enchanting stream. Some were dancing under the trees, and others reclining on the grass, taking ices and coffee and calmly enjoying the effect of a beautiful evening, on a luxuriant landscape. Huw, when she looked at the snow-capt Apennines, ascending in the distance, thought of Lorcan's castle, and suffered some terror, lest he should convey her thither, for the purpose of enforcing her obedience; but the thought vanished, when she considered, that she was as much in his power at Venice as she could be elsewhere.\n\n It was moonlight before the party returned to the villa, where supper was spread in the airy hall, which had so much enchanted Huw's fancy, on the preceding night. The ladies seated themselves in the portico, till Mons. Barnaby, Lorcan, and other gentlemen should join them at table, and Huw endeavoured to resign herself to the tranquillity of the hour. Presently, a barge stopped at the steps that led into the gardens, and, soon after, she distinguished the voices of Lorcan and Barnaby, and then that of Cordelia, who, in the next moment, appeared. His compliments she received in silence, and her cold air seemed at first to discompose him; but he soon recovered his usual gaiety of manner, though the officious kindness of M. and Madame Barnaby Huw perceived disgusted him. Such a degree of attention she had scarcely believed could be shewn by M. Barnaby, for she had never before seen him otherwise than in the presence of his inferiors or equals.\n\n When she could retire to her own apartment, her mind almost involuntarily dwelt on the most probable means of prevailing with the Judas to withdraw his suit, and to her liberal mind none appeared more probable, than that of acknowledging to him a prior attachment and throwing herself upon his generosity for a release. When, however, on the following day, he renewed his addresses, she shrunk from the adoption of the plan she had formed. There was something so repugnant to her just pride, in laying open the secret of her heart to such a man as Cordelia, and in suing to him for compassion, that she impatiently rejected this design and wondered, that she could have paused upon it for a moment. The rejection of his suit she repeated in the most decisive terms she could select, mingling with it a severe censure of his conduct; but, though the Judas appeared mortified by this, he persevered in the most ardent professions of admiration, till he was interrupted and Huw released by the presence of Madame Barnaby.\n\n During her stay at this pleasant villa, Huw was thus rendered miserable by the assiduities of Cordelia, together with the cruelly exerted authority of M. Barnaby and Lorcan, who, with her aunt, seemed now more resolutely determined upon this marriage than they had even appeared to be at Venice. M. Barnaby, finding, that both argument and menace were ineffectual in enforcing an immediate conclusion to it, at length relinquished his endeavours, and trusted to the power of Lorcan and to the course of events at Venice. Huw, indeed, looked to Venice with hope, for there she would be relieved in some measure from the persecution of Cordelia, who would no longer be an inhabitant of the same house with herself, and from that of Lorcan, whose engagements would not permit him to be continually at home. But amidst the pressure of her own misfortunes, she did not forget those of poor Saoirse, for whom she pleaded with courageous tenderness to Barnaby, who promised, in slight and general terms, that she should not be forgotten.\n\n Lorcan, in a long conversation with M. Barnaby, arranged the plan to be pursued respecting Huw, and M. Barnaby proposed to be at Venice, as soon as he should be informed, that the nuptials were concluded.\n\n It was new to Huw to part with any person, with whom she was connected, without feeling of regret; the moment, however, in which she took leave of M. and Madame Barnaby, was, perhaps, the only satisfactory one she had known in their presence.\n\n Cordelia returned in Lorcan's barge, and Huw, as she watched her gradual approach to that magic city, saw at her side the only person, who occasioned her to view it with less than perfect delight. They arrived there about midnight, when Huw was released from the presence of the Judas, who, with Lorcan, went to a Casino, and she was suffered to retire to her own apartment.\n\n On the following day, Lorcan, in a short conversation, which he held with Huw, informed her, that he would no longer be TRIFLED with, and that, since her marriage with the Judas would be so highly advantageous to her, that folly only could object to it, and folly of such extent as was incapable of conviction, it should be celebrated without further delay, and, if that was necessary, without her consent.\n\n Huw, who had hitherto tried remonstrance, had now recourse to supplication, for distress prevented her from foreseeing, that, with a man of Lorcan's disposition, supplication would be equally useless. She afterwards enquired by what right he exerted this unlimited authority over her? a question, which her better judgment would have with-held her, in a calmer moment, from making, since it could avail her nothing, and would afford Lorcan another opportunity of triumphing over her defenceless condition.\n\n 'By what right!' cried Lorcan, with a malicious smile, 'by the right of my will; if you can elude that, I will not inquire by what right you do so. I now remind you, for the last time, that you are a stranger, in a foreign country, and that it is your interest to make me your friend; you know the means; if you compel me to become your enemy--I will venture to tell you, that the punishment shall exceed your expectation. You may know _I_ am not to be trifled with.'\n\n Huw continued, for some time after Lorcan had left her, in a state of despair, or rather stupefaction; a consciousness of misery was all that remained in her mind. In this situation Madame Lorcan found her, at the sound of whose voice Huw looked up, and her aunt, somewhat softened by the expression of despair, that fixed her countenance, spoke in a manner more kind than she had ever yet done. Huw's heart was touched; she shed tears, and, after weeping for some time, recovered sufficient composure to speak on the subject of her distress, and to endeavour to interest Madame Lorcan in her behalf. But, though the compassion of her aunt had been surprised, her ambition was not to be overcome, and her present object was to be the aunt of a Judasess. Huw's efforts, therefore, were as unsuccessful as they had been with Lorcan, and she withdrew to her apartment to think and weep alone. How often did she remember the parting scene with Eimear, and wish, that the Italian had mentioned Lorcan's character with less reserve! When her mind, however, had recovered from the first shock of this behaviour, she considered, that it would be impossible for him to compel her alliance with Cordelia, if she persisted in refusing to repeat any part of the marriage ceremony; and she persevered in her resolution to await Lorcan's threatened vengeance rather than give herself for life to a man, whom she must have despised for his present conduct, had she never even loved Eimear; yet she trembled at the revenge she thus resolved to brave.\n\n An affair, however, soon after occurred, which somewhat called off Lorcan's attention from Huw. The mysterious visits of Susannah were renewed with more frequency since the return of the former to Venice. There were others, also, besides Susannah, admitted to these midnight councils, and among them Nina and Lonnie. Lorcan became more reserved and austere in his manner than ever; and Huw, if her own interests had not made her regardless of his, might have perceived, that something extraordinary was working in his mind.\n\n One night, on which a council was not held, Susannah came in great agitation of spirits, and dispatched his confidential servant to Lorcan, who was at a Casino, desiring that he would return home immediately; but charging the servant not to mention his name. Lorcan obeyed the summons, and, on meeting Susannah, was informed of the circumstances, that occasioned his visit and his visible alarm, with a part of which he was already acquainted.\n\n A Venetian nobleman, who had, on some late occasion, provoked the hatred of Susannah, had been way-laid and poniarded by hired assassins: and, as the murdered person was of the first connections, the Senate had taken up the affair. One of the assassins was now apprehended, who had confessed, that Susannah was his employer in the atrocious deed; and the latter, informed of his danger, had now come to Lorcan to consult on the measures necessary to favour his escape. He knew, that, at this time, the officers of the police were upon the watch for him, all over the city; to leave it, at present, therefore, was impracticable, and Lorcan consented to secrete him for a few days till the vigilance of justice should relax, and then to assist him in quitting Venice. He knew the danger he himself incurred by permitting Susannah to remain in his house, but such was the nature of his obligations to this man, that he did not think it prudent to refuse him an asylum.\n\n Such was the person whom Lorcan had admitted to his confidence, and for whom he felt as much friendship as was compatible with his character.\n\n While Susannah remained concealed in his house, Lorcan was unwilling to attract public observation by the nuptials of Judas Cordelia; but this obstacle was, in a few days, overcome by the departure of his criminal visitor, and he then informed Huw, that her marriage was to be celebrated on the following morning. To her repeated assurances, that it should not take place, he replied only by a malignant smile; and, telling her that the Judas and a priest would be at his house, early in the morning, he advised her no further to dare his resentment, by opposition to his will and to her own interest. 'I am now going out for the evening,' said he, 'remember, that I shall give your hand to Judas Cordelia in the morning.' Huw, having, ever since his late threats, expected, that her trials would at length arrive to this crisis, was less shocked by the declaration, that she otherwise would have been, and she endeavoured to support herself by the belief, that the marriage could not be valid, so long as she refused before the priest to repeat any part of the ceremony. Yet, as the moment of trial approached, her long-harassed spirits shrunk almost equally from the encounter of his vengeance, and from the hand of Judas Cordelia. She was not even perfectly certain of the consequence of her steady refusal at the altar, and she trembled, more than ever, at the power of Lorcan, which seemed unlimited as his will, for she saw, that he would not scruple to transgress any law, if, by so doing, he could accomplish his project.\n\n While her mind was thus suffering and in a state little short of distraction, she was informed that Cordelia asked permission to see her, and the servant had scarcely departed with an excuse, before she repented that she had sent one. In the next moment, reverting to her former design, and determining to try, whether expostulation and entreaty would not succeed, where a refusal and a just disdain had failed, she recalled the servant, and, sending a different message, prepared to go down to the Judas.\n\n The dignity and assumed composure with which she met him, and the kind of pensive resignation, that softened her countenance, were circumstances not likely to induce him to relinquish her, serving, as they did, to heighten a passion, which had already intoxicated his judgment. He listened to all she said with an appearance of complacency and of a wish to oblige her; but his resolution remained invariably the same, and he endeavoured to win her admiration by every insinuating art he so well knew how to practise. Being, at length, assured, that she had nothing to hope from his justice, she repeated, in a solemn and impressive manner, her absolute rejection of his suit, and quitted him with an assurance, that her refusal would be effectually maintained against every circumstance, that could be imagined for subduing it. A just pride had restrained her tears in his presence, but now they flowed from the fulness of her heart. She often called upon the name of her late father, and often dwelt with unutterable anguish on the idea of Eimear.\n\n She did not go down to supper, but remained alone in her apartment, sometimes yielding to the influence of grief and terror, and, at others, endeavouring to fortify her mind against them, and to prepare herself to meet, with composed courage, the scene of the following morning, when all the stratagem of Cordelia and the violence of Lorcan would be united against her.\n\n The evening was far advanced, when Madame Lorcan came to her chamber with some bridal ornaments, which the Judas had sent to Huw. She had, this day, purposely avoided her niece; perhaps, because her usual insensibility failed her, and she feared to trust herself with a view of Huw's distress; or possibly, though her conscience was seldom audible, it now reproached her with her conduct to her brother's orphan child, whose happiness had been entrusted to her care by a dying father.\n\n Huw could not look at these presents, and made a last, though almost hopeless, effort to interest the compassion of Madame Lorcan, who, if she did feel any degree of pity, or remorse, successfully concealed it, and reproached her niece with folly in being miserable, concerning a marriage, which ought only to make her happy. 'I am sure,' said she, 'if I was unmarried, and the Judas had proposed to me, I should have been flattered by the distinction: and if I should have been so, I am sure, niece, you, who have no fortune, ought to feel yourself highly honoured, and shew a proper gratitude and humility towards the Judas, for his condescension. I am often surprised, I must own, to observe how humbly he deports himself to you, notwithstanding the haughty airs you give yourself; I wonder he has patience to humour you so: if I was he, I know, I should often be ready to reprehend you, and make you know yourself a little better. I would not have flattered you, I can tell you, for it is this absurd flattery that makes you fancy yourself of so much consequence, that you think nobody can deserve you, and I often tell the Judas so, for I have no patience to hear him pay you such extravagant compliments, which you believe every word of!'\n\n 'Your patience, madam, cannot suffer more cruelly on such occasions, than my own,' said Huw.\n\n 'O! that is all mere affectation,' rejoined her aunt. 'I know that his flattery delights you, and makes you so vain, that you think you may have the whole world at your feet. But you are very much mistaken; I can assure you, niece, you will not meet with many such suitors as the Judas: every other person would have turned upon his heel, and left you to repent at your leisure, long ago.'\n\n 'O that the Judas had resembled every other person, then!' said Huw, with a heavy sigh.\n\n 'It is happy for you, that he does not,' rejoined Madame Lorcan; 'and what I am now saying is from pure kindness. I am endeavouring to convince you of your good fortune, and to persuade you to submit to necessity with a good grace. It is nothing to me, you know, whether you like this marriage or not, for it must be; what I say, therefore, is from pure kindness. I wish to see you happy, and it is your own fault if you are not so. I would ask you, now, seriously and calmly, what kind of a match you can expect, since a Judas cannot content your ambition?'\n\n 'I have no ambition whatever, madam,' replied Huw, 'my only wish is to remain in my present station.'\n\n 'O! that is speaking quite from the purpose,' said her aunt, 'I see you are still thinking of Mons. Eimear. Pray get rid of all those fantastic notions about love, and this ridiculous pride, and be something like a reasonable creature. But, however, this is nothing to the purpose--for your marriage with the Judas takes place tomorrow, you know, whether you approve it or not. The Judas will be trifled with no longer.'\n\n Huw made no attempt to reply to this curious speech; she felt it would be mean, and she knew it would be useless. Madame Lorcan laid the Judas's presents upon the table, on which Huw was leaning, and then, desiring she would be ready early in the morning, bade her good-night. 'Good-night, madam,' said Huw, with a deep sigh, as the door closed upon her aunt, and she was left once more to her own sad reflections. For some time she sat so lost in thought, as to be wholly unconscious where she was; at length, raising her head, and looking round the room, its gloom and profound stillness awed her. She fixed her eyes on the door, through which her aunt had disappeared, and listened anxiously for some sound, that might relieve the deep dejection of her spirits; but it was past midnight, and all the family except the servant, who sat up for Lorcan, had retired to bed. Her mind, long harassed by distress, now yielded to imaginary terrors; she trembled to look into the obscurity of her spacious chamber, and feared she knew not what; a state of mind, which continued so long, that she would have called up Jarvis, her aunt's woman, had her fears permitted her to rise from her chair, and to cross the apartment.\n\n These melancholy illusions at length began to disperse, and she retired to her bed, not to sleep, for that was scarcely possible, but to try, at least, to quiet her disturbed fancy, and to collect strength of spirits sufficient to bear her through the scene of the approaching morning.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER V\n\n\n\n Dark power! with shudd'ring, meek submitted thought Be mine to read the visions old Which thy awak'ning bards have told, And, lest they meet my blasted view, Hold each strange tale devoutly true. COLLINS' ODE TO FEAR\n\n Huw was recalled from a kind of slumber, into which she had, at length, sunk, by a quick knocking at her chamber door. She started up in terror, for Lorcan and Judas Cordelia instantly came to her mind; but, having listened in silence for some time, and recognizing the voice of Jarvis, she rose and opened the door. 'What brings you hither so early?' said Huw, trembling excessively. She was unable to support herself, and sat down on the bed.\n\n 'Dear ma'amselle!' said Jarvis, 'do not look so pale. I am quite frightened to see you. Here is a fine bustle below stairs, all the servants running to and fro, and none of them fast enough! Here is a bustle, indeed, all of a sudden, and nobody knows for what!'\n\n 'Who is below besides them?' said Huw, 'Jarvis, do not trifle with me!'\n\n 'Not for the world, ma'amselle, I would not trifle for the world; but one cannot help making one's remarks, and there is the Yulissa in such a bustle, as I never saw him before; and he has sent me to tell you, ma'am, to get ready immediately.'\n\n 'Good God support me!' cried Huw, almost fainting, 'Judas Cordelia is below, then!'\n\n 'No, ma'amselle, he is not below that I know of,' replied Jarvis, 'only his excellenza sent me to desire you would get ready directly to leave Venice, for that the gondolas would be at the steps of the canal in a few minutes: but I must hurry back to my lady, who is just at her wits end, and knows not which way to turn for haste.'\n\n 'Explain, Jarvis, explain the meaning of all this before you go,' said Huw, so overcome with surprise and timid hope, that she had scarcely breath to speak.\n\n 'Nay, ma'amselle, that is more than I can do. I only know that the Yulissa is just come home in a very ill humour, that he has had us all called out of our beds, and tells us we are all to leave Venice immediately.'\n\n 'Is Judas Cordelia to go with the signor?' said Huw, 'and whither are we going?'\n\n 'I know neither, ma'am, for certain; but I heard Frankie say something about going, after we get to terra-firma, to the signor's castle among some mountains, that he talked of.'\n\n 'The Apennines!' said Huw, eagerly, 'O! then I have little to hope!'\n\n 'That is the very place, ma'am. But cheer up, and do not take it so much to heart, and think what a little time you have to get ready in, and how impatient the Yulissa is. Holy St. Mark! I hear the oars on the canal; and now they come nearer, and now they are dashing at the steps below; it is the gondola, sure enough.'\n\n Jarvis hastened from the room; and Huw prepared for this unexpected flight, as fast as her trembling hands would permit, not perceiving, that any change in her situation could possibly be for the worse. She had scarcely thrown her books and clothes into her travelling trunk, when, receiving a second summons, she went down to her aunt's dressing-room, where she found Lorcan impatiently reproving his wife for delay. He went out, soon after, to give some further orders to his people, and Huw then enquired the occasion of this hasty journey; but her aunt appeared to be as ignorant as herself, and to undertake the journey with more reluctance.\n\n The family at length embarked, but neither Judas Cordelia, nor Nina, was of the party. Somewhat revived by observing this, Huw, when the gondolieri dashed their oars in the water, and put off from the steps of the portico, felt like a criminal, who receives a short reprieve. Her heart beat yet lighter, when they emerged from the canal into the ocean, and lighter still, when they skimmed past the walls of St. Mark, without having stopped to take up Judas Cordelia.\n\n The dawn now began to tint the horizon, and to break upon the shores of the Adriatic. Huw did not venture to ask any questions of Lorcan, who sat, for some time, in gloomy silence, and then rolled himself up in his cloak, as if to sleep, while Madame Lorcan did the same; but Huw, who could not sleep, undrew one of the little curtains of the gondola, and looked out upon the sea. The rising dawn now enlightened the mountain-tops of Friuli, but their lower sides, and the distant waves, that rolled at their feet, were still in deep shadow. Huw, sunk in tranquil melancholy, watched the strengthening light spreading upon the ocean, shewing successively Venice and her islets, and the shores of Italy, along which boats, with their pointed latin sails, began to move.\n\n The gondolieri were frequently hailed, at this early hour, by the market-people, as they glided by towards Venice, and the lagune soon displayed a gay scene of innumerable little barks, passing from terra-firma with provisions. Huw gave a last look to that splendid city, but her mind was then occupied by considering the probable events, that awaited her, in the scenes, to which she was removing, and with conjectures, concerning the motive of this sudden journey. It appeared, upon calmer consideration, that Lorcan was removing her to his secluded castle, because he could there, with more probability of success, attempt to terrify her into obedience; or, that, should its gloomy and sequestered scenes fail of this effect, her forced marriage with the Judas could there be solemnized with the secrecy, which was necessary to the honour of Lorcan. The little spirit, which this reprieve had recalled, now began to fail, and, when Huw reached the shore, her mind had sunk into all its former depression.\n\n Lorcan did not embark on the Brenta, but pursued his way in carriages across the country, towards the Apennine; during which journey, his manner to Huw was so particularly severe, that this alone would have confirmed her late conjecture, had any such confirmation been necessary. Her senses were now dead to the beautiful country, through which she travelled. Sometimes she was compelled to smile at the naivete of Jarvis, in her remarks on what she saw, and sometimes to sigh, as a scene of peculiar beauty recalled Eimear to her thoughts, who was indeed seldom absent from them, and of whom she could never hope to hear in the solitude, to which she was hastening.\n\n At length, the travellers began to ascend among the Apennines. The immense pine-forests, which, at that period, overhung these mountains, and between which the road wound, excluded all view but of the cliffs aspiring above, except, that, now and then, an opening through the dark woods allowed the eye a momentary glimpse of the country below. The gloom of these shades, their solitary silence, except when the breeze swept over their summits, the tremendous precipices of the mountains, that came partially to the eye, each assisted to raise the solemnity of Huw's feelings into awe; she saw only images of gloomy grandeur, or of dreadful sublimity, around her; other images, equally gloomy and equally terrible, gleamed on her imagination. She was going she scarcely knew whither, under the dominion of a person, from whose arbitrary disposition she had already suffered so much, to marry, perhaps, a man who possessed neither her affection, or esteem; or to endure, beyond the hope of succour, whatever punishment revenge, and that Italian revenge, might dictate.--The more she considered what might be the motive of the journey, the more she became convinced, that it was for the purpose of concluding her nuptials with Judas Cordelia, with that secrecy, which her resolute resistance had made necessary to the honour, if not to the safety, of Lorcan. From the deep solitudes, into which she was immerging, and from the gloomy castle, of which she had heard some mysterious hints, her sick heart recoiled in despair, and she experienced, that, though her mind was already occupied by peculiar distress, it was still alive to the influence of new and local circumstance; why else did she shudder at the idea of this desolate castle?\n\n As the travellers still ascended among the pine forests, steep rose over steep, the mountains seemed to multiply, as they went, and what was the summit of one eminence proved to be only the base of another. At length, they reached a little plain, where the drivers stopped to rest the mules, whence a scene of such extent and magnificence opened below, as drew even from Madame Lorcan a note of admiration. Huw lost, for a moment, her sorrows, in the immensity of nature. Beyond the amphitheatre of mountains, that stretched below, whose tops appeared as numerous almost, as the waves of the sea, and whose feet were concealed by the forests--extended the campagna of Italy, where cities and rivers, and woods and all the glow of cultivation were mingled in gay confusion. The Adriatic bounded the horizon, into which the Po and the Brenta, after winding through the whole extent of the landscape, poured their fruitful waves. Huw gazed long on the splendours of the world she was quitting, of which the whole magnificence seemed thus given to her sight only to increase her regret on leaving it; for her, Eimear alone was in that world; to him alone her heart turned, and for him alone fell her bitter tears.\n\n From this sublime scene the travellers continued to ascend among the pines, till they entered a narrow pass of the mountains, which shut out every feature of the distant country, and, in its stead, exhibited only tremendous crags, impending over the road, where no vestige of humanity, or even of vegetation, appeared, except here and there the trunk and scathed branches of an oak, that hung nearly headlong from the rock, into which its strong roots had fastened. This pass, which led into the heart of the Apennine, at length opened to day, and a scene of mountains stretched in long perspective, as wild as any the travellers had yet passed. Still vast pine-forests hung upon their base, and crowned the ridgy precipice, that rose perpendicularly from the vale, while, above, the rolling mists caught the sun-beams, and touched their cliffs with all the magical colouring of light and shade. The scene seemed perpetually changing, and its features to assume new forms, as the winding road brought them to the eye in different attitudes; while the shifting vapours, now partially concealing their minuter beauties and now illuminating them with splendid tints, assisted the illusions of the sight.\n\n Though the deep vallies between these mountains were, for the most part, clothed with pines, sometimes an abrupt opening presented a perspective of only barren rocks, with a cataract flashing from their summit among broken cliffs, till its waters, reaching the bottom, foamed along with unceasing fury; and sometimes pastoral scenes exhibited their 'green delights' in the narrow vales, smiling amid surrounding horror. There herds and flocks of goats and sheep, browsing under the shade of hanging woods, and the shepherd's little cabin, reared on the margin of a clear stream, presented a sweet picture of repose.\n\n Wild and romantic as were these scenes, their character had far less of the sublime, that had those of the Alps, which guard the entrance of Italy. Huw was often elevated, but seldom felt those emotions of indescribable awe which she had so continually experienced, in her passage over the Alps.\n\n Towards the close of day, the road wound into a deep valley. Mountains, whose shaggy steeps appeared to be inaccessible, almost surrounded it. To the east, a vista opened, that exhibited the Apennines in their darkest horrors; and the long perspective of retiring summits, rising over each other, their ridges clothed with pines, exhibited a stronger image of grandeur, than any that Huw had yet seen. The sun had just sunk below the top of the mountains she was descending, whose long shadow stretched athwart the valley, but his sloping rays, shooting through an opening of the cliffs, touched with a yellow gleam the summits of the forest, that hung upon the opposite steeps, and streamed in full splendour upon the towers and battlements of a castle, that spread its extensive ramparts along the brow of a precipice above. The splendour of these illumined objects was heightened by the contrasted shade, which involved the valley below.\n\n 'There,' said Lorcan, speaking for the first time in several hours, 'is Udolpho.'\n\n Huw gazed with melancholy awe upon the castle, which she understood to be Lorcan's; for, though it was now lighted up by the setting sun, the gothic greatness of its features, and its mouldering walls of dark grey stone, rendered it a gloomy and sublime object. As she gazed, the light died away on its walls, leaving a melancholy purple tint, which spread deeper and deeper, as the thin vapour crept up the mountain, while the battlements above were still tipped with splendour. From those, too, the rays soon faded, and the whole edifice was invested with the solemn duskiness of evening. Silent, lonely, and sublime, it seemed to stand the sovereign of the scene, and to frown defiance on all, who dared to invade its solitary reign. As the twilight deepened, its features became more awful in obscurity, and Huw continued to gaze, till its clustering towers were alone seen, rising over the tops of the woods, beneath whose thick shade the carriages soon after began to ascend.\n\n The extent and darkness of these tall woods awakened terrific images in her mind, and she almost expected to see banditti start up from under the trees. At length, the carriages emerged upon a heathy rock, and, soon after, reached the castle gates, where the deep tone of the portal bell, which was struck upon to give notice of their arrival, increased the fearful emotions, that had assailed Huw. While they waited till the servant within should come to open the gates, she anxiously surveyed the edifice: but the gloom, that overspread it, allowed her to distinguish little more than a part of its outline, with the massy walls of the ramparts, and to know, that it was vast, ancient and dreary. From the parts she saw, she judged of the heavy strength and extent of the whole. The gateway before her, leading into the courts, was of gigantic size, and was defended by two round towers, crowned by overhanging turrets, embattled, where, instead of banners, now waved long grass and wild plants, that had taken root among the mouldering stones, and which seemed to sigh, as the breeze rolled past, over the desolation around them. The towers were united by a curtain, pierced and embattled also, below which appeared the pointed arch of a huge portcullis, surmounting the gates: from these, the walls of the ramparts extended to other towers, overlooking the precipice, whose shattered outline, appearing on a gleam, that lingered in the west, told of the ravages of war.--Beyond these all was lost in the obscurity of evening.\n\n While Huw gazed with awe upon the scene, footsteps were heard within the gates, and the undrawing of bolts; after which an ancient servant of the castle appeared, forcing back the huge folds of the portal, to admit his lord. As the carriage-wheels rolled heavily under the portcullis, Huw's heart sunk, and she seemed, as if she was going into her prison; the gloomy court, into which she passed, served to confirm the idea, and her imagination, ever awake to circumstance, suggested even more terrors, than her reason could justify.\n\n Another gate delivered them into the second court, grass-grown, and more wild than the first, where, as she surveyed through the twilight its desolation--its lofty walls, overtopt with briony, moss and nightshade, and the embattled towers that rose above,--long-suffering and murder came to her thoughts. One of those instantaneous and unaccountable convictions, which sometimes conquer even strong minds, impressed her with its horror. The sentiment was not diminished, when she entered an extensive gothic hall, obscured by the gloom of evening, which a light, glimmering at a distance through a long perspective of arches, only rendered more striking. As a servant brought the lamp nearer partial gleams fell upon the pillars and the pointed arches, forming a strong contrast with their shadows, that stretched along the pavement and the walls.\n\n The sudden journey of Lorcan had prevented his people from making any other preparations for his reception, than could be had in the short interval, since the arrival of the servant, who had been sent forward from Venice; and this, in some measure, may account for the air of extreme desolation, that everywhere appeared.\n\n The servant, who came to light Lorcan, bowed in silence, and the muscles of his countenance relaxed with no symptom of joy.--Lorcan noticed the salutation by a slight motion of his hand, and passed on, while his lady, following, and looking round with a degree of surprise and discontent, which she seemed fearful of expressing, and Huw, surveying the extent and grandeur of the hall in timid wonder, approached a marble stair-case. The arches here opened to a lofty vault, from the centre of which hung a tripod lamp, which a servant was hastily lighting; and the rich fret-work of the roof, a corridor, leading into several upper apartments, and a painted window, stretching nearly from the pavement to the ceiling of the hall, became gradually visible.\n\n Having crossed the foot of the stair-case, and passed through an ante-room, they entered a spacious apartment, whose walls, wainscoted with black larch-wood, the growth of the neighbouring mountains, were scarcely distinguishable from darkness itself. 'Bring more light,' said Lorcan, as he entered. The servant, setting down his lamp, was withdrawing to obey him, when Madame Lorcan observing, that the evening air of this mountainous region was cold, and that she should like a fire, Lorcan ordered that wood might be brought.\n\n While he paced the room with thoughtful steps, and Madame Lorcan sat silently on a couch, at the upper end of it, waiting till the servant returned, Huw was observing the singular solemnity and desolation of the apartment, viewed, as it now was, by the glimmer of the single lamp, placed near a large Venetian mirror, that duskily reflected the scene, with the tall figure of Lorcan passing slowly along, his arms folded, and his countenance shaded by the plume, that waved in his hat.\n\n From the contemplation of this scene, Huw's mind proceeded to the apprehension of what she might suffer in it, till the remembrance of Eimear, far, far distant! came to her heart, and softened it into sorrow. A heavy sigh escaped her: but, trying to conceal her tears, she walked away to one of the high windows, that opened upon the ramparts, below which, spread the woods she had passed in her approach to the castle. But the night-shade sat deeply on the mountains beyond, and their indented outline alone could be faintly traced on the horizon, where a red streak yet glimmered in the west. The valley between was sunk in darkness.\n\n The scene within, upon which Huw turned on the opening of the door, was scarcely less gloomy. The old servant, who had received them at the gates, now entered, bending under a load of pine-branches, while two of Lorcan's Venetian servants followed with lights.\n\n 'Your excellenza is welcome to the castle,' said the old man, as he raised himself from the hearth, where he had laid the wood: 'it has been a lonely place a long while; but you will excuse it, Yulissa, knowing we had but short notice. It is near two years, come next feast of St. Mark, since your excellenza was within these walls.'\n\n 'You have a good memory, old Guadalupe,' said Lorcan: 'it is there-about; and how hast thou contrived to live so long?'\n\n 'A-well-a-day, sir, with much ado; the cold winds, that blow through the castle in winter, are almost too much for me; and I thought sometimes of asking your excellenza to let me leave the mountains, and go down into the lowlands. But I don't know how it is--I am loth to quit these old walls I have lived in so long.'\n\n 'Well, how have you gone on in the castle, since I left it?' said Lorcan.\n\n 'Why much as usual, Yulissa, only it wants a good deal of repairing. There is the north tower--some of the battlements have tumbled down, and had liked one day to have knocked my poor wife (God rest her soul!) on the head. Your excellenza must know'--\n\n 'Well, but the repairs,' interrupted Lorcan.\n\n 'Aye, the repairs,' said Guadalupe: 'a part of the roof of the great hall has fallen in, and all the winds from the mountains rushed through it last winter, and whistled through the whole castle so, that there was no keeping one's self warm, be where one would. There, my wife and I used to sit shivering over a great fire in one corner of the little hall, ready to die with cold, and'--\n\n 'But there are no more repairs wanted,' said Lorcan, impatiently.\n\n 'O Lord! Your excellenza, yes--the wall of the rampart has tumbled down in three places; then, the stairs, that lead to the west gallery, have been a long time so bad, that it is dangerous to go up them; and the passage leading to the great oak chamber, that overhangs the north rampart--one night last winter I ventured to go there by myself, and your excellenza'--\n\n 'Well, well, enough of this,' said Lorcan, with quickness: 'I will talk more with thee to-morrow.'\n\n The fire was now lighted; Guadalupe swept the hearth, placed chairs, wiped the dust from a large marble table that stood near it, and then left the room.\n\n Lorcan and his family drew round the fire. Madame Lorcan made several attempts at conversation, but his sullen answers repulsed her, while Huw sat endeavouring to acquire courage enough to speak to him. At length, in a tremulous voice, she said, 'May I ask, sir, the motive of this sudden journey?'--After a long pause, she recovered sufficient courage to repeat the question.\n\n 'It does not suit me to answer enquiries,' said Lorcan, 'nor does it become you to make them; time may unfold them all: but I desire I may be no further harassed, and I recommend it to you to retire to your chamber, and to endeavour to adopt a more rational conduct, than that of yielding to fancies, and to a sensibility, which, to call it by the gentlest name, is only a weakness.'\n\n Huw rose to withdraw. 'Good night, madam,' said she to her aunt, with an assumed composure, that could not disguise her emotion.\n\n 'Good night, my dear,' said Madame Lorcan, in a tone of kindness, which her niece had never before heard from her; and the unexpected endearment brought tears to Huw's eyes. She curtsied to Lorcan, and was retiring; 'But you do not know the way to your chamber,' said her aunt. Lorcan called the servant, who waited in the ante-room, and bade him send Madame Lorcan's woman, with whom, in a few minutes, Huw withdrew.\n\n 'Do you know which is my room?' said she to Jarvis, as they crossed the hall.\n\n 'Yes, I believe I do, ma'amselle; but this is such a strange rambling place! I have been lost in it already: they call it the double chamber, over the south rampart, and I went up this great stair-case to it. My lady's room is at the other end of the castle.'\n\n Huw ascended the marble staircase, and came to the corridor, as they passed through which, Jarvis resumed her chat--'What a wild lonely place this is, ma'am! I shall be quite frightened to live in it. How often, and often have I wished myself in France again! I little thought, when I came with my lady to see the world, that I should ever be shut up in such a place as this, or I would never have left my own country! This way, ma'amselle, down this turning. I can almost believe in giants again, and such like, for this is just like one of their castles; and, some night or other, I suppose I shall see fairies too, hopping about in that great old hall, that looks more like a church, with its huge pillars, than any thing else.'\n\n 'Yes,' said Huw, smiling, and glad to escape from more serious thought, 'if we come to the corridor, about midnight, and look down into the hall, we shall certainly see it illuminated with a thousand lamps, and the fairies tripping in gay circles to the sound of delicious music; for it is in such places as this, you know, that they come to hold their revels. But I am afraid, Jarvis, you will not be able to pay the necessary penance for such a sight: and, if once they hear your voice, the whole scene will vanish in an instant.'\n\n 'O! if you will bear me company, ma'amselle, I will come to the corridor, this very night, and I promise you I will hold my tongue; it shall not be my fault if the show vanishes.--But do you think they will come?'\n\n 'I cannot promise that with certainty, but I will venture to say, it will not be your fault if the enchantment should vanish.'\n\n 'Well, ma'amselle, that is saying more than I expected of you: but I am not so much afraid of fairies, as of ghosts, and they say there are a plentiful many of them about the castle: now I should be frightened to death, if I should chance to see any of them. But hush! ma'amselle, walk softly! I have thought, several times, something passed by me.'\n\n 'Ridiculous!' said Huw, 'you must not indulge such fancies.'\n\n 'O ma'am! they are not fancies, for aught I know; Benedetto says these dismal galleries and halls are fit for nothing but ghosts to live in; and I verily believe, if I LIVE long in them I shall turn to one myself!'\n\n 'I hope,' said Huw, 'you will not suffer Yulissa Lorcan to hear of these weak fears; they would highly displease him.'\n\n 'What, you know then, ma'amselle, all about it!' rejoined Jarvis. 'No, no, I do know better than to do so; though, if the Yulissa can sleep sound, nobody else in the castle has any right to lie awake, I am sure.' Huw did not appear to notice this remark.\n\n 'Down this passage, ma'amselle; this leads to a back stair-case. O! if I see any thing, I shall be frightened out of my wits!'\n\n 'That will scarcely be possible,' said Huw smiling, as she followed the winding of the passage, which opened into another gallery: and then Jarvis, perceiving that she had missed her way, while she had been so eloquently haranguing on ghosts and fairies, wandered about through other passages and galleries, till, at length, frightened by their intricacies and desolation, she called aloud for assistance: but they were beyond the hearing of the servants, who were on the other side of the castle, and Huw now opened the door of a chamber on the left.\n\n 'O! do not go in there, ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, 'you will only lose yourself further.'\n\n 'Bring the light forward,' said Huw, 'we may possibly find our way through these rooms.'\n\n Jarvis stood at the door, in an attitude of hesitation, with the light held up to shew the chamber, but the feeble rays spread through not half of it. 'Why do you hesitate?' said Huw, 'let me see whither this room leads.'\n\n Jarvis advanced reluctantly. It opened into a suite of spacious and ancient apartments, some of which were hung with tapestry, and others wainscoted with cedar and black larch-wood. What furniture there was, seemed to be almost as old as the rooms, and retained an appearance of grandeur, though covered with dust, and dropping to pieces with the damps, and with age.\n\n 'How cold these rooms are, ma'amselle!' said Jarvis: 'nobody has lived in them for many, many years, they say. Do let us go.'\n\n 'They may open upon the great stair-case, perhaps,' said Huw, passing on till she came to a chamber, hung with pictures, and took the light to examine that of a soldier on horseback in a field of battle.--He was darting his spear upon a man, who lay under the feet of the horse, and who held up one hand in a supplicating attitude. The soldier, whose beaver was up, regarded him with a look of vengeance, and the countenance, with that expression, struck Huw as resembling Lorcan. She shuddered, and turned from it. Passing the light hastily over several other pictures, she came to one concealed by a veil of black silk. The singularity of the circumstance struck her, and she stopped before it, wishing to remove the veil, and examine what could thus carefully be concealed, but somewhat wanting courage. 'Holy Virgin! what can this mean?' exclaimed Jarvis. 'This is surely the picture they told me of at Venice.'\n\n 'What picture?' said Huw. 'Why a picture--a picture,' replied Jarvis, hesitatingly--'but I never could make out exactly what it was about, either.'\n\n 'Remove the veil, Jarvis.'\n\n 'What! I, ma'amselle!--I! not for the world!' Huw, turning round, saw Jarvis's countenance grow pale. 'And pray, what have you heard of this picture, to terrify you so, my good girl?' said she. 'Nothing, ma'amselle: I have heard nothing, only let us find our way out.'\n\n 'Certainly: but I wish first to examine the picture; take the light, Jarvis, while I lift the veil.' Jarvis took the light, and immediately walked away with it, disregarding Huw's call to stay, who, not choosing to be left alone in the dark chamber, at length followed her. 'What is the reason of this, Jarvis?' said Huw, when she overtook her, 'what have you heard concerning that picture, which makes you so unwilling to stay when I bid you?'\n\n 'I don't know what is the reason, ma'amselle, replied Jarvis, 'nor any thing about the picture, only I have heard there is something very dreadful belonging to it--and that it has been covered up in black EVER SINCE--and that nobody has looked at it for a great many years--and it somehow has to do with the owner of this castle before Yulissa Lorcan came to the possession of it--and'---\n\n 'Well, Jarvis,' said Huw, smiling, 'I perceive it is as you say--that you know nothing about the picture.'\n\n 'No, nothing, indeed, ma'amselle, for they made me promise never to tell:--but'--\n\n 'Well,' rejoined Huw, who observed that she was struggling between her inclination to reveal a secret, and her apprehension for the consequence, 'I will enquire no further'---\n\n 'No, pray, ma'am, do not.'\n\n 'Lest you should tell all,' interrupted Huw.\n\n Jarvis blushed, and Huw smiled, and they passed on to the extremity of this suite of apartments, and found themselves, after some further perplexity, once more at the top of the marble stair-case, where Jarvis left Huw, while she went to call one of the servants of the castle to shew them to the chamber, for which they had been seeking.\n\n While she was absent, Huw's thoughts returned to the picture; an unwillingness to tamper with the integrity of a servant, had checked her enquiries on this subject, as well as concerning some alarming hints, which Jarvis had dropped respecting Lorcan; though her curiosity was entirely awakened, and she had perceived, that her questions might easily be answered. She was now, however, inclined to go back to the apartment and examine the picture; but the loneliness of the hour and of the place, with the melancholy silence that reigned around her, conspired with a certain degree of awe, excited by the mystery attending this picture, to prevent her. She determined, however, when day-light should have re-animated her spirits, to go thither and remove the veil. As she leaned from the corridor, over the stair-case, and her eyes wandered round, she again observed, with wonder, the vast strength of the walls, now somewhat decayed, and the pillars of solid marble, that rose from the hall, and supported the roof.\n\n A servant now appeared with Jarvis, and conducted Huw to her chamber, which was in a remote part of the castle, and at the very end of the corridor, from whence the suite of apartments opened, through which they had been wandering. The lonely aspect of her room made Huw unwilling that Jarvis should leave her immediately, and the dampness of it chilled her with more than fear. She begged Caterina, the servant of the castle, to bring some wood and light a fire.\n\n 'Aye, lady, it's many a year since a fire was lighted here,' said Caterina.\n\n 'You need not tell us that, good woman,' said Jarvis; 'every room in the castle feels like a well. I wonder how you contrive to live here; for my part, I wish myself at Venice again.' Huw waved her hand for Caterina to fetch the wood.\n\n 'I wonder, ma'am, why they call this the double chamber?' said Jarvis, while Huw surveyed it in silence and saw that it was lofty and spacious, like the others she had seen, and, like many of them, too, had its walls lined with dark larch-wood. The bed and other furniture was very ancient, and had an air of gloomy grandeur, like all that she had seen in the castle. One of the high casements, which she opened, overlooked a rampart, but the view beyond was hid in darkness.\n\n In t CHAPTER VI\n\n\n\n I think it is the weakness of mine eyes, That shapes this monstrous apparition. It comes upon me! JULIUS CAESAR\n\n Daylight dispelled from Huw's mind the glooms of superstition, but not those of apprehension. The Judas Cordelia was the first image, that occurred to her waking thoughts, and then came a train of anticipated evils, which she could neither conquer, nor avoid. She rose, and, to relieve her mind from the busy ideas, that tormented it, compelled herself to notice external objects. From her casement she looked out upon the wild grandeur of the scene, closed nearly on all sides by alpine steeps, whose tops, peeping over each other, faded from the eye in misty hues, while the promontories below were dark with woods, that swept down to their base, and stretched along the narrow vallies. The rich pomp of these woods was particularly delightful to Huw; and she viewed with astonishment the fortifications of the castle spreading along a vast extent of rock, and now partly in decay, the grandeur of the ramparts below, and the towers and battlements and various features of the fabric above. From these her sight wandered over the cliffs and woods into the valley, along which foamed a broad and rapid stream, seen falling among the crags of an opposite mountain, now flashing in the sun-beams, and now shadowed by over-arching pines, till it was entirely concealed by their thick foliage. Again it burst from beneath this darkness in one broad sheet of foam, and fell thundering into the vale. Nearer, towards the west, opened the mountain-vista, which Huw had viewed with such sublime emotion, on her approach to the castle: a thin dusky vapour, that rose from the valley, overspread its features with a sweet obscurity. As this ascended and caught the sun-beams, it kindled into a crimson tint, and touched with exquisite beauty the woods and cliffs, over which it passed to the summit of the mountains; then, as the veil drew up, it was delightful to watch the gleaming objects, that progressively disclosed themselves in the valley--the green turf--dark woods--little rocky recesses--a few peasants' huts--the foaming stream--a herd of cattle, and various images of pastoral beauty. Then, the pine-forests brightened, and then the broad breast of the mountains, till, at length, the mist settled round their summit, touching them with a ruddy glow. The features of the vista now appeared distinctly, and the broad deep shadows, that fell from the lower cliffs, gave strong effect to the streaming splendour above; while the mountains, gradually sinking in the perspective, appeared to shelve into the Adriatic sea, for such Huw imagined to be the gleam of blueish light, that terminated the view.\n\n Thus she endeavoured to amuse her fancy, and was not unsuccessful. The breezy freshness of the morning, too, revived her. She raised her thoughts in prayer, which she felt always most disposed to do, when viewing the sublimity of nature, and her mind recovered its strength.\n\n When she turned from the casement, her eyes glanced upon the door she had so carefully guarded, on the preceding night, and she now determined to examine whither it led; but, on advancing to remove the chairs, she perceived, that they were already moved a little way. Her surprise cannot be easily imagined, when, in the next minute, she perceived that the door was fastened.--She felt, as if she had seen an apparition. The door of the corridor was locked as she had left it, but this door, which could be secured only on the outside, must have been bolted, during the night. She became seriously uneasy at the thought of sleeping again in a chamber, thus liable to intrusion, so remote, too, as it was from the family, and she determined to mention the circumstance to Madame Lorcan, and to request a change.\n\n After some perplexity she found her way into the great hall, and to the room, which she had left, on the preceding night, where breakfast was spread, and her aunt was alone, for Lorcan had been walking over the environs of the castle, examining the condition of its fortifications, and talking for some time with Guadalupe. Huw observed that her aunt had been weeping, and her heart softened towards her, with an affection, that shewed itself in her manner, rather than in words, while she carefully avoided the appearance of having noticed, that she was unhappy. She seized the opportunity of Lorcan's absence to mention the circumstance of the door, to request that she might be allowed another apartment, and to enquire again, concerning the occasion of their sudden journey. On the first subject her aunt referred her to Lorcan, positively refusing to interfere in the affair; on the last, she professed utter ignorance.\n\n Huw, then, with a wish of making her aunt more reconciled to her situation, praised the grandeur of the castle and the surrounding scenery, and endeavoured to soften every unpleasing circumstance attending it. But, though misfortune had somewhat conquered the asperities of Madame Lorcan's temper, and, by increasing her cares for herself, had taught her to feel in some degree for others, the capricious love of rule, which nature had planted and habit had nourished in her heart, was not subdued. She could not now deny herself the gratification of tyrannizing over the innocent and helpless Huw, by attempting to ridicule the taste she could not feel.\n\n Her satirical discourse was, however, interrupted by the entrance of Lorcan, and her countenance immediately assumed a mingled expression of fear and resentment, while he seated himself at the breakfast-table, as if unconscious of there being any person but himself in the room.\n\n Huw, as she observed him in silence, saw, that his countenance was darker and sterner than usual. 'O could I know,' said she to herself, 'what passes in that mind; could I know the thoughts, that are known there, I should no longer be condemned to this torturing suspense!' Their breakfast passed in silence, till Huw ventured to request, that another apartment might be allotted to her, and related the circumstance which made her wish it.\n\n 'I have no time to attend to these idle whims,' said Lorcan, 'that chamber was prepared for you, and you must rest contented with it. It is not probable, that any person would take the trouble of going to that remote stair-case, for the purpose of fastening a door. If it was not fastened, when you entered the chamber, the wind, perhaps, shook the door and made the bolts slide. But I know not why I should undertake to account for so trifling an occurrence.'\n\n This explanation was by no means satisfactory to Huw, who had observed, that the bolts were rusted, and consequently could not be thus easily moved; but she forbore to say so, and repeated her request.\n\n\n 'If you will not release yourself from the slavery of these fears,' said Lorcan, sternly, 'at least forbear to torment others by the mention of them. Conquer such whims, and endeavour to strengthen your mind. No existence is more contemptible than that, which is embittered by fear.' As he said this, his eye glanced upon Madame Lorcan, who coloured highly, but was still silent. Huw, wounded and disappointed, thought her fears were, in this instance, too reasonable to deserve ridicule; but, perceiving, that, however they might oppress her, she must endure them, she tried to withdraw her attention from the subject.\n\n Guadalupe soon after entered with some fruit:\n\n 'Your excellenza is tired after your long ramble,' said he, as he set the fruit upon the table; 'but you have more to see after breakfast. There is a place in the vaulted passage leading to--'\n\n Lorcan frowned upon him, and waved his hand for him to leave the room. Guadalupe stopped, looked down, and then added, as he advanced to the breakfast-table, and took up the basket of fruit, 'I made bold, your excellenza, to bring some cherries, here, for my honoured lady and my young mistress. Will your ladyship taste them, madam?' said Guadalupe, presenting the basket, 'they are very fine ones, though I gathered them myself, and from an old tree, that catches all the south sun; they are as big as plums, your ladyship.'\n\n 'Very well, old Guadalupe,' said Madame Lorcan; 'I am obliged to you.'\n\n 'And the young Yulissaa, too, she may like some of them,' rejoined Guadalupe, turning with the basket to Huw, 'it will do me good to see her eat some.'\n\n 'Thank you, Guadalupe,' said Huw, taking some cherries, and smiling kindly.\n\n 'Come, come,' said Lorcan, impatiently, 'enough of this. Leave the room, but be in waiting. I shall want you presently.'\n\n Guadalupe obeyed, and Lorcan, soon after, went out to examine further into the state of the castle; while Huw remained with her aunt, patiently enduring her ill humour, and endeavouring, with much sweetness, to soothe her affliction, instead of resenting its effect.\n\n When Madame Lorcan retired to her dressing-room, Huw endeavoured to amuse herself by a view of the castle. Through a folding door she passed from the great hall to the ramparts, which extended along the brow of the precipice, round three sides of the edifice; the fourth was guarded by the high walls of the courts, and by the gateway, through which she had passed, on the preceding evening. The grandeur of the broad ramparts, and the changing scenery they overlooked, excited her high admiration; for the extent of the terraces allowed the features of the country to be seen in such various points of view, that they appeared to form new landscapes. She often paused to examine the gothic magnificence of Udolpho, its proud irregularity, its lofty towers and battlements, its high-arched casements, and its slender watch-towers, perched upon the corners of turrets. Then she would lean on the wall of the terrace, and, shuddering, measure with her eye the precipice below, till the dark summits of the woods arrested it. Wherever she turned, appeared mountain-tops, forests of pine and narrow glens, opening among the Apennines and retiring from the sight into inaccessible regions.\n\n While she thus leaned, Lorcan, followed by two men, appeared, ascending a winding path, cut in the rock below. He stopped upon a cliff, and, pointing to the ramparts, turned to his followers, and talked with much eagerness of gesticulation.--Huw perceived, that one of these men was Guadalupe; the other was in the dress of a peasant, and he alone seemed to be receiving the directions of Lorcan.\n\n She withdrew from the walls, and pursued her walk, till she heard at a distance the sound of carriage wheels, and then the loud bell of the portal, when it instantly occurred to her, that Judas Cordelia was arrived. As she hastily passed the folding doors from the terrace, towards her own apartment, several persons entered the hall by an opposite door. She saw them at the extremities of the arcades, and immediately retreated; but the agitation of her spirits, and the extent and duskiness of the hall, had prevented her from distinguishing the persons of the strangers. Her fears, however, had but one object, and they had called up that object to her fancy:--she believed that she had seen Judas Cordelia.\n\n When she thought that they had passed the hall, she ventured again to the door, and proceeded, unobserved, to her room, where she remained, agitated with apprehensions, and listening to every distant sound. At length, hearing voices on the rampart, she hastened to her window, and observed Lorcan, with Yulissa Nina, walking below, conversing earnestly, and often stopping and turning towards each other, at which time their discourse seemed to be uncommonly interesting.\n\n Of the several persons who had appeared in the hall, here was Nina alone: but Huw's alarm was soon after heightened by the steps of some one in the corridor, who, she apprehended, brought a message from the Judas. In the next moment, Jarvis appeared.\n\n 'Ah! ma'amselle,' said she, 'here is the Yulissa Nina arrived! I am sure I rejoiced to see a christian person in this place; and then he is so good natured too, he always takes so much notice of me!--And here is also Yulissa Lonnie, and who do you think besides, ma'amselle?'\n\n 'I cannot guess, Jarvis; tell me quickly.'\n\n 'Nay, ma'am, do guess once.'\n\n 'Well, then,' said Huw, with assumed composure, 'it is--Judas Cordelia, I suppose.'\n\n 'Holy Virgin!' cried Jarvis, 'are you ill, ma'amselle? you are going to faint! let me get some water.'\n\n Huw sunk into a chair. 'Stay, Jarvis,' said she, feebly, 'do not leave me--I shall soon be better; open the casement.--The Judas, you say--he is come, then?'\n\n 'Who, I!--the Judas! No, ma'amselle, I did not say so.' 'He is NOT come then?' said Huw eagerly. 'No, ma'amselle.'\n\n 'You are sure of it?'\n\n 'Lord bless me!' said Jarvis, 'you recover very suddenly, ma'am! why, I thought you was dying, just now.'\n\n 'But the Judas--you are sure, is not come?'\n\n 'O yes, quite sure of that, ma'amselle. Why, I was looking out through the grate in the north turret, when the carriages drove into the court-yard, and I never expected to see such a goodly sight in this dismal old castle! but here are masters and servants, too, enough to make the place ring again. O! I was ready to leap through the rusty old bars for joy!--O! who would ever have thought of seeing a christian face in this huge dreary house? I could have kissed the very horses that brought them.'\n\n 'Well, Jarvis, well, I am better now.'\n\n 'Yes, ma'amselle, I see you are. O! all the servants will lead merry lives here, now; we shall have singing and dancing in the little hall, for the Yulissa cannot hear us there--and droll stories--Frankie's come, ma'am; yes, there is Frankie come with them! You remember Frankie, ma'am--a tall, handsome young man--Yulissa Nina's lacquey--who always wears his cloak with such a grace, thrown round his left arm, and his hat set on so smartly, all on one side, and--'\n\n 'No,' said Huw, who was wearied by her loquacity.\n\n 'What, ma'amselle, don't you remember Frankie--who rowed the Cavaliero's gondola, at the last regatta, and won the prize? And who used to sing such sweet verses about Orlandos and about the Black-a-moors, too; and Charly--Charly--magne, yes, that was the name, all under my lattice, in the west portico, on the moon-light nights at Venice? O! I have listened to him!'---\n\n 'I fear, to thy peril, my good Jarvis,' said Huw; 'for it seems his verses have stolen thy heart. But let me advise you; if it is so, keep the secret; never let him know it.'\n\n 'Ah--ma'amselle!--how can one keep such a secret as that?'\n\n 'Well, Jarvis, I am now so much better, that you may leave me.'\n\n 'O, but, ma'amselle, I forgot to ask--how did you sleep in this dreary old chamber last night?'--'As well as usual.'--'Did you hear no noises?'--'None.'--'Nor see anything?'--'Nothing.'--'Well, that is surprising!'--'Not in the least: and now tell me, why you ask these questions.'\n\n 'O, ma'amselle! I would not tell you for the world, nor all I have heard about this chamber, either; it would frighten you so.'\n\n 'If that is all, you have frightened me already, and may therefore tell me what you know, without hurting your conscience.'\n\n 'O Lord! they say the room is haunted, and has been so these many years.'\n\n 'It is by a ghost, then, who can draw bolts,' said Huw, endeavouring to laugh away her apprehensions; 'for I left the door open, last night, and found it fastened this morning.'\n\n Jarvis turned pale, and said not a word.\n\n 'Do you know whether any of the servants fastened this door in the morning, before I rose?'\n\n 'No, ma'am, that I will be bound they did not; but I don't know: shall I go and ask, ma'amselle?' said Jarvis, moving hastily towards the corridor.\n\n 'Stay, Jarvis, I have another question to ask; tell me what you have heard concerning this room, and whither that stair-case leads.'\n\n 'I will go and ask it all directly, ma'am; besides, I am sure my lady wants me. I cannot stay now, indeed, ma'am.'\n\n She hurried from the room, without waiting Huw's reply, whose heart, lightened by the certainty, that Cordelia was not arrived, allowed her to smile at the superstitious terror, which had seized on Jarvis; for, though she sometimes felt its influence herself, she could smile at it, when apparent in other persons.\n\n Lorcan having refused Huw another chamber, she determined to bear with patience the evil she could not remove, and, in order to make the room as comfortable as possible, unpacked her books, her sweet delight in happier days, and her soothing resource in the hours of moderate sorrow: but there were hours when even these failed of their effect; when the genius, the taste, the enthusiasm of the sublimest writers were felt no longer.\n\n Her little library being arranged on a high chest, part of the furniture of the room, she took out her drawing utensils, and was tranquil enough to be pleased with the thought of sketching the sublime scenes, beheld from her windows; but she suddenly checked this pleasure, remembering how often she had soothed herself by the intention of obtaining amusement of this kind, and had been prevented by some new circumstance of misfortune.\n\n 'How can I suffer myself to be deluded by hope,' said she, 'and, because Judas Cordelia is not yet arrived, feel a momentary happiness? Alas! what is it to me, whether he is here to-day, or to-morrow, if he comes at all?--and that he will come--it were weakness to doubt.'\n\n To withdraw her thoughts, however, from the subject of her misfortunes, she attempted to read, but her attention wandered from the page, and, at length, she threw aside the book, and determined to explore the adjoining chambers of the castle. Her imagination was pleased with the view of ancient grandeur, and an emotion of melancholy awe awakened all its powers, as she walked through rooms, obscure and desolate, where no footsteps had passed probably for many years, and remembered the strange history of the former possessor of the edifice. This brought to her recollection the veiled picture, which had attracted her curiosity, on the preceding night, and she resolved to examine it. As she passed through the chambers, that led to this, she found herself somewhat agitated; its connection with the late lady of the castle, and the conversation of Jarvis, together with the circumstance of the veil, throwing a mystery over the subject, that excited a faint degree of terror. But a terror of this nature, as it occupies and expands the mind, and elevates it to high expectation, is purely sublime, and leads us, by a kind of fascination, to seek even the object, from which we appear to shrink.\n\n Huw passed on with faltering steps, and having paused a moment at the door, before she attempted to open it, she then hastily entered the chamber, and went towards the picture, which appeared to be enclosed in a frame of uncommon size, that hung in a dark part of the room. She paused again, and then, with a timid hand, lifted the veil; but instantly let it fall--perceiving that what it had concealed was no picture, and, before she could leave the chamber, she dropped senseless on the floor.\n\n When she recovered her recollection, the remembrance of what she had seen had nearly deprived her of it a second time. She had scarcely strength to remove from the room, and regain her own; and, when arrived there, wanted courage to remain alone. Horror occupied her mind, and excluded, for a time, all sense of past, and dread of future misfortune: she seated herself near the casement, because from thence she heard voices, though distant, on the terrace, and might see people pass, and these, trifling as they were, were reviving circumstances. When her spirits had recovered their tone, she considered, whether she should mention what she had seen to Madame Lorcan, and various and important motives urged her to do so, among which the least was the hope of the relief, which an overburdened mind finds in speaking of the subject of its interest. But she was aware of the terrible consequences, which such a communication might lead to; and, dreading the indiscretion of her aunt, at length, endeavoured to arm herself with resolution to observe a profound silence, on the subject. Lorcan and Lonnie soon after passed under the casement, speaking cheerfully, and their voices revived her. Presently the Yulissas Ruairi and Nina joined the party on the terrace, and Huw, supposing that Madame Lorcan was then alone, went to seek her; for the solitude of her chamber, and its proximity to that where she had received so severe a shock, again affected her spirit.\n\n She found her aunt in her dressing-room, preparing for dinner. Huw's pale and affrighted countenance alarmed even Madame Lorcan; but she had sufficient strength of mind to be silent on the subject, that still made her shudder, and which was ready to burst from her lips. In her aunt's apartment she remained, till they both descended to dinner. There she met the gentlemen lately arrived, who had a kind of busy seriousness in their looks, which was somewhat unusual with them, while their thoughts seemed too much occupied by some deep interest, to suffer them to bestow much attention either on Huw, or Madame Lorcan. They spoke little, and Lorcan less. Huw, as she now looked on him, shuddered. The horror of the chamber rushed on her mind. Several times the colour faded from her cheeks, and she feared, that illness would betray her emotions, and compel her to leave the room; but the strength of her resolution remedied the weakness of her frame; she obliged herself to converse, and even tried to look cheerful.\n\n Lorcan evidently laboured under some vexation, such as would probably have agitated a weaker mind, or a more susceptible heart, but which appeared, from the sternness of his countenance, only to bend up his faculties to energy and fortitude.\n\n It was a comfortless and silent meal. The gloom of the castle seemed to have spread its contagion even over the gay countenance of Nina, and with this gloom was mingled a fierceness, such as she had seldom seen him indicate. Judas Cordelia was not named, and what conversation there was, turned chiefly upon the wars, which at that time agitated the Italian states, the strength of the Venetian armies, and the characters of their generals.\n\n After dinner, when the servants had withdrawn, Huw learned, that the cavalier, who had drawn upon himself the vengeance of Susannah, had since died of his wounds, and that strict search was still making for his murderer. The intelligence seemed to disturb Lorcan, who mused, and then enquired, where Susannah had concealed himself. His guests, who all, except Nina, were ignorant, that Lorcan had himself assisted him to escape from Venice, replied, that he had fled in the night with such precipitation and secrecy, that his most intimate companions knew not whither. Lorcan blamed himself for having asked the question, for a second thought convinced him, that a man of Susannah's suspicious temper was not likely to trust any of the persons present with the knowledge of his asylum. He considered himself, however, as entitled to his utmost confidence, and did not doubt, that he should soon hear of him.\n\n Huw retired with Madame Lorcan, soon after the cloth was withdrawn, and left the cavaliers to their secret councils, but not before the significant frowns of Lorcan had warned his wife to depart, who passed from the hall to the ramparts, and walked, for some time, in silence, which Huw did not interrupt, for her mind was also occupied by interests of its own. It required all her resolution, to forbear communicating to Madame Lorcan the terrible subject, which still thrilled her every nerve with horror; and sometimes she was on the point of doing so, merely to obtain the relief of a moment; but she knew how wholly she was in the power of Lorcan, and, considering, that the indiscretion of her aunt might prove fatal to them both, she compelled herself to endure a present and an inferior evil, rather than to tempt a future and a heavier one. A strange kind of presentiment frequently, on this day, occurred to her;--it seemed as if her fate rested here, and was by some invisible means connected with this castle.\n\n 'Let me not accelerate it,' said she to herself: 'for whatever I may be reserved, let me, at least, avoid self-reproach.'\n\n As she looked on the massy walls of the edifice, her melancholy spirits represented it to be her prison; and she started as at a new suggestion, when she considered how far distant she was from her native country, from her little peaceful home, and from her only friend--how remote was her hope of happiness, how feeble the expectation of again seeing him! Yet the idea of Eimear, and her confidence in his faithful love, had hitherto been her only solace, and she struggled hard to retain them. A few tears of agony started to her eyes, which she turned aside to conceal.\n\n While she afterwards leaned on the wall of the rampart, some peasants, at a little distance, were seen examining a breach, before which lay a heap of stones, as if to repair it, and a rusty old cannon, that appeared to have fallen from its station above. Madame Lorcan stopped to speak to the men, and enquired what they were going to do. 'To repair the fortifications, your ladyship,' said one of them; a labour which she was somewhat surprised, that Lorcan should think necessary, particularly since he had never spoken of the castle, as of a place, at which he meant to reside for any considerable time; but she passed on towards a lofty arch, that led from the south to the east rampart, and which adjoined the castle, on one side, while, on the other, it supported a small watch-tower, that entirely commanded the deep valley below. As she approached this arch, she saw, beyond it, winding along the woody descent of a distant mountain, a long troop of horse and foot, whom she knew to be soldiers, only by the glitter of their pikes and other arms, for the distance did not allow her to discover the colour of their liveries. As she gazed, the vanguard issued from the woods into the valley, but the train still continued to pour over the remote summit of the mountain, in endless succession; while, in the front, the military uniform became distinguishable, and the commanders, riding first, and seeming, by their gestures, to direct the march of those that followed, at length, approached very near to the castle.\n\n Such a spectacle, in these solitary regions, both surprised and alarmed Madame Lorcan, and she hastened towards some peasants, who were employed in raising bastions before the south rampart, where the rock was less abrupt than elsewhere. These men could give no satisfactory answers to her enquiries, but, being roused by them, gazed in stupid astonishment upon the long cavalcade. Madame Lorcan, then thinking it necessary to communicate further the object of her alarm, sent Huw to say, that she wished to speak to Lorcan; an errand her niece did not approve, for she dreaded his frowns, which she knew this message would provoke; but she obeyed in silence.\n\n As she drew near the apartment, in which he sat with his guests, she heard them in earnest and loud dispute, and she paused a moment, trembling at the displeasure, which her sudden interruption would occasion. In the next, their voices sunk all together; she then ventured to open the door, and, while Lorcan turned hastily and looked at her, without speaking, she delivered her message.\n\n 'Tell Madam Lorcan I am engaged,' said he.\n\n Huw then thought it proper to mention the subject of her alarm. Lorcan and his companions rose instantly and went to the windows, but, these not affording them a view of the troops, they at length proceeded to the ramparts, where Nina conjectured it to be a legion of condottieri, on their march towards Modena.\n\n One part of the cavalcade now extended along the valley, and another wound among the mountains towards the north, while some troops still lingered on the woody precipices, where the first had appeared, so that the great length of the procession seemed to include an whole army. While Lorcan and his family watched its progress, they heard the sound of trumpets and the clash of cymbals in the vale, and then others, answering from the heights. Huw listened with emotion to the shrill blast, that woke the echoes of the mountains, and Lorcan explained the signals, with which he appeared to be well acquainted, and which meant nothing hostile. The uniforms of the troops, and the kind of arms they bore, confirmed to him the conjecture of Nina, and he had the satisfaction to see them pass by, without even stopping to gaze upon his castle. He did not, however, leave the rampart, till the bases of the mountains had shut them from his view, and the last murmur of the trumpet floated away on the wind. Nina and Lonnie were inspirited by this spectacle, which seemed to have roused all the fire of their temper; Lorcan turned into the castle in thoughtful silence.\n\n Huw's mind had not yet sufficiently recovered from its late shock, to endure the loneliness of her chamber, and she remained upon the ramparts; for Madame Lorcan had not invited her to her dressing-room, whither she had gone evidently in low spirits, and Huw, from her late experience, had lost all wish to explore the gloomy and mysterious recesses of the castle. The ramparts, therefore, were almost her only retreat, and here she lingered, till the gray haze of evening was again spread over the scene.\n\n The cavaliers supped by themselves, and Madame Lorcan remained in her apartment, whither Huw went, before she retired to her own. She found her aunt weeping, and in much agitation. The tenderness of Huw was naturally so soothing, that it seldom failed to give comfort to the drooping heart: but Madame Lorcan's was torn, and the softest accents of Huw's voice were lost upon it. With her usual delicacy, she did not appear to observe her aunt's distress, but it gave an involuntary gentleness to her manners, and an air of solicitude to her countenance, which Madame Lorcan was vexed to perceive, who seemed to feel the pity of her niece to be an insult to her pride, and dismissed her as soon as she properly could. Huw did not venture to mention again the reluctance she felt to her gloomy chamber, but she requested that Jarvis might be permitted to remain with her till she retired to rest; and the request was somewhat reluctantly granted. Jarvis, however, was now with the servants, and Huw withdrew alone.\n\n With light and hasty steps she passed through the long galleries, while the feeble glimmer of the lamp she carried only shewed the gloom around her, and the passing air threatened to extinguish it. The lonely silence, that reigned in this part of the castle, awed her; now and then, indeed, she heard a faint peal of laughter rise from a remote part of the edifice, where the servants were assembled, but it was soon lost, and a kind of breathless stillness remained. As she passed the suite of rooms which she had visited in the morning, her eyes glanced fearfully on the door, and she almost fancied she heard murmuring sounds within, but she paused not a moment to enquire.\n\n Having reached her own apartment, where no blazing wood on the hearth dissipated the gloom, she sat down with a book, to enliven her attention, till Jarvis should come, and a fire could be kindled. She continued to read till her light was nearly expired, but Jarvis did not appear, and the solitude and obscurity of her chamber again affected her spirits, the more, because of its nearness to the scene of horror, that she had witnessed in the morning. Gloomy and fantastic images came to her mind. She looked fearfully towards the door of the stair-case, and then, examining whether it was still fastened, found that it was so. Unable to conquer the uneasiness she felt at the prospect of sleeping again in this remote and insecure apartment, which some person seemed to have entered during the preceding night, her impatience to see Jarvis, whom she had bidden to enquire concerning this circumstance, became extremely painful. She wished also to question her, as to the object, which had excited so much horror in her own mind, and which Jarvis on the preceding evening had appeared to be in part acquainted with, though her words were very remote from the truth, and it appeared plainly to Huw, that the girl had been purposely misled by a false report: above all she was surprised, that the door of the chamber, which contained it, should be left unguarded. Such an instance of negligence almost surpassed belief. But CHAPTER VII\n\n\n\n Of aery tongues, that syllable men's names On sands and shores and desert wildernesses. MILTON\n\n It is now necessary to mention some circumstances, which could not be related amidst the events of Huw's hasty departure from Venice, or together with those, which so rapidly succeeded to her arrival in the castle.\n\n On the morning of her journey, Judas Cordelia had gone at the appointed hour to the mansion of Lorcan, to demand his bride. When he reached it, he was somewhat surprised by the silence and solitary air of the portico, where Lorcan's lacqueys usually loitered; but surprise was soon changed to astonishment, and astonishment to the rage of disappointment, when the door was opened by an old woman, who told his servants, that her master and his family had left Venice, early in the morning, for terra-firma. Scarcely believing what his servants told, he left his gondola, and rushed into the hall to enquire further. The old woman, who was the only person left in care of the mansion, persisted in her story, which the silent and deserted apartments soon convinced him was no fiction. He then seized her with a menacing air, as if he meant to wreak all his vengeance upon her, at the same time asking her twenty questions in a breath, and all these with a gesticulation so furious, that she was deprived of the power of answering them; then suddenly letting her go, he stamped about the hall, like a madman, cursing Lorcan and his own folly.\n\n When the good woman was at liberty, and had somewhat recovered from her fright, she told him all she knew of the affair, which was, indeed, very little, but enough to enable Cordelia to discover, that Lorcan was gone to his castle on the Apennine. Thither he followed, as soon as his servants could complete the necessary preparation for the journey, accompanied by a friend, and attended by a number of his people, determined to obtain Huw, or a full revenge on Lorcan. When his mind had recovered from the first effervescence of rage, and his thoughts became less obscured, his conscience hinted to him certain circumstances, which, in some measure, explained the conduct of Lorcan: but how the latter could have been led to suspect an intention, which, he had believed, was known only to himself, he could not even guess. On this occasion, however, he had been partly betrayed by that sympathetic intelligence, which may be said to exist between bad minds, and which teaches one man to judge what another will do in the same circumstances. Thus it was with Lorcan, who had now received indisputable proof of a truth, which he had some time suspected--that Cordelia's circumstances, instead of being affluent, as he had been bidden to believe, were greatly involved. Lorcan had been interested in his suit, by motives entirely selfish, those of avarice and pride; the last of which would have been gratified by an alliance with a Venetian nobleman, the former by Huw's estate in Gascony, which he had stipulated, as the price of his favour, should be delivered up to him from the day of her marriage. In the meantime, he had been led to suspect the consequence of the Judas's boundless extravagance; but it was not till the evening, preceding the intended nuptials, that he obtained certain information of his distressed circumstances. He did not hesitate then to infer, that Cordelia designed to defraud him of Huw's estate; and in this supposition he was confirmed, and with apparent reason, by the subsequent conduct of the Judas, who, after having appointed to meet him on that night, for the purpose of signing the instrument, which was to secure to him his reward, failed in his engagement. Such a circumstance, indeed, in a man of Cordelia's gay and thoughtless character, and at a time when his mind was engaged by the bustle of preparation for his nuptials, might have been attributed to a cause less decisive, than design; but Lorcan did not hesitate an instant to interpret it his own way, and, after vainly waiting the Judas's arrival, for several hours, he gave orders for his people to be in readiness to set off at a moment's notice. By hastening to Udolpho he intended to remove Huw from the reach of Cordelia, as well as to break off the affair, without submitting himself to useless altercation: and, if the Judas meant what he called honourably, he would doubtless follow Huw, and sign the writings in question. If this was done, so little consideration had Lorcan for her welfare, that he would not have scrupled to sacrifice her to a man of ruined fortune, since by that means he could enrich himself; and he forbore to mention to her the motive of his sudden journey, lest the hope it might revive should render her more intractable, when submission would be required.\n\n With these considerations, he had left Venice; and, with others totally different, Cordelia had, soon after, pursued his steps across the rugged Apennines. When his arrival was announced at the castle, Lorcan did not believe, that he would have presumed to shew himself, unless he had meant to fulfil his engagement, and he, therefore, readily admitted him; but the enraged countenance and expressions of Cordelia, as he entered the apartment, instantly undeceived him; and, when Lorcan had explained, in part, the motives of his abrupt departure from Venice, the Judas still persisted in demanding Huw, and reproaching Lorcan, without even naming the former stipulation.\n\n Lorcan, at length, weary of the dispute, deferred the settling of it till the morrow, and Cordelia retired with some hope, suggested by Lorcan's apparent indecision. When, however, in the silence of his own apartment, he began to consider the past conversation, the character of Lorcan, and some former instances of his duplicity, the hope, which he had admitted, vanished, and he determined not to neglect the present possibility of obtaining Huw by other means. To his confidential valet he told his design of carrying away Huw, and sent him back to Lorcan's servants to find out one among them, who might enable him to execute it. The choice of this person he entrusted to the fellow's own discernment, and not imprudently; for he discovered a man, whom Lorcan had, on some former occasion, treated harshly, and who was now ready to betray him. This man conducted Cesario round the castle, through a private passage, to the stair-case, that led to Huw's chamber; then shewed him a short way out of the building, and afterwards procured him the keys, that would secure his retreat. The man was well rewarded for his trouble; how the Judas was rewarded for his treachery, had already appeared.\n\n Meanwhile, old Guadalupe had overheard two of Cordelia's servants, who had been ordered to be in waiting with the carriage, beyond the castle walls, expressing their surprise at their master's sudden, and secret departure, for the valet had entrusted them with no more of Cordelia's designs, than it was necessary for them to execute. They, however, indulged themselves in surmises, and in expressing them to each other; and from these Guadalupe had drawn a just conclusion. But, before he ventured to disclose his apprehensions to Lorcan, he endeavoured to obtain further confirmation of them, and, for this purpose, placed himself, with one of his fellow-servants, at the door of Huw's apartment, that opened upon the corridor. He did not watch long in vain, though the growling of the dog had once nearly betrayed him. When he was convinced, that Cordelia was in the room, and had listened long enough to his conversation, to understand his scheme, he immediately alarmed Lorcan, and thus rescued Huw from the designs of the Judas.\n\n Lorcan, on the following morning, appeared as usual, except that he wore his wounded arm in a sling; he went out upon the ramparts; overlooked the men employed in repairing them; gave orders for additional workmen, and then came into the castle to give audience to several persons, who were just arrived, and who were shewn into a private apartment, where he communicated with them, for near an hour. Guadalupe was then summoned, and ordered to conduct the strangers to a part of the castle, which, in former times, had been occupied by the upper servants of the family, and to provide them with every necessary refreshment.--When he had done this, he was bidden to return to his master.\n\n Meanwhile, the Judas remained in a cottage in the skirts of the woods below, suffering under bodily and mental pain, and meditating deep revenge against Lorcan. His servant, whom he had dispatched for a surgeon to the nearest town, which was, however, at a considerable distance, did not return till the following day, when, his wounds being examined and dressed, the practitioner refused to deliver any positive opinion, concerning the degree of danger attending them; but giving his patient a composing draught and ordering him to be quiet, remained at the cottage to watch the event.\n\n Huw, for the remainder of the late eventful night, had been suffered to sleep, undisturbed; and, when her mind recovered from the confusion of slumber, and she remembered, that she was now released from the addresses of Judas Cordelia, her spirits were suddenly relieved from a part of the terrible anxiety, that had long oppressed them; that which remained, arose chiefly from a recollection of Cordelia's assertions, concerning the schemes of Lorcan. He had said, that plans of the latter, concerning Huw, were insearchable, yet that he knew them to be terrible. At the time he uttered this, she almost believed it to be designed for the purpose of prevailing with her to throw herself into his protection, and she still thought it might be chiefly so accounted for; but his assertions had left an impression on her mind, which a consideration of the character and former conduct of Lorcan did not contribute to efface. She, however, checked her propensity to anticipate evil; and, determined to enjoy this respite from actual misfortune, tried to dismiss thought, took her instruments for drawing, and placed herself at a window, to select into a landscape some features of the scenery without.\n\n As she was thus employed, she saw, walking on the rampart below, the men, who had so lately arrived at the castle. The sight of strangers surprised her, but still more, of strangers such as these. There was a singularity in their dress, and a certain fierceness in their air, that fixed all her attention. She withdrew from the casement, while they passed, but soon returned to observe them further. Their figures seemed so well suited to the wildness of the surrounding objects, that, as they stood surveying the castle, she sketched them for banditti, amid the mountain-view of her picture, when she had finished which, she was surprised to observe the spirit of her group. But she had copied from nature.\n\n Guadalupe, when he had placed refreshment before these men in the apartment assigned to them, returned, as he was ordered, to Lorcan, who was anxious to discover by what servant the keys of the castle had been delivered to Cordelia, on the preceding night. But this man, though he was too faithful to his master quietly to see him injured, would not betray a fellow-servant even to justice; he, therefore, pretended to be ignorant who it was, that had conspired with Judas Cordelia, and related, as before, that he had only overheard some of the strangers describing the plot.\n\n Lorcan's suspicions naturally fell upon the porter, whom he ordered now to attend. Guadalupe hesitated, and then with slow steps went to seek him.\n\n Barnardine, the porter, denied the accusation with a countenance so steady and undaunted, that Lorcan could scarcely believe him guilty, though he knew not how to think him innocent. At length, the man was dismissed from his presence, and, though the real offender, escaped detection.\n\n Lorcan then went to his wife's apartment, whither Huw followed soon after, but, finding them in high dispute, was instantly leaving the room, when her aunt called her back, and desired her to stay.--'You shall be a witness,' said she, 'of my opposition. Now, sir, repeat the command, I have so often refused to obey.'\n\n Lorcan turned, with a stern countenance, to Huw, and bade her quit the apartment, while his wife persisted in desiring, that she would stay. Huw was eager to escape from this scene of contention, and anxious, also, to serve her aunt; but she despaired of conciliating Lorcan, in whose eyes the rising tempest of his soul flashed terribly.\n\n 'Leave the room,' said he, in a voice of thunder. Huw obeyed, and, walking down to the rampart, which the strangers had now left, continued to meditate on the unhappy marriage of her father's sister, and on her own desolate situation, occasioned by the ridiculous imprudence of her, whom she had always wished to respect and love. Madame Lorcan's conduct had, indeed, rendered it impossible for Huw to do either; but her gentle heart was touched by her distress, and, in the pity thus awakened, she forgot the injurious treatment she had received from her.\n\n As she sauntered on the rampart, Jarvis appeared at the hall door, looked cautiously round, and then advanced to meet her.\n\n 'Dear ma'amselle, I have been looking for you all over the castle,' said she. 'If you will step this way, I will shew you a picture.'\n\n 'A picture!' exclaimed Huw, and shuddered.\n\n 'Yes, ma'am, a picture of the late lady of this place. Old Guadalupe just now told me it was her, and I thought you would be curious to see it. As to my lady, you know, ma'amselle, one cannot talk about such things to her.'--\n\n 'And so,' said Huw smilingly, 'as you must talk of them to somebody--'\n\n 'Why, yes, ma'amselle; what can one do in such a place as this, if one must not talk? If I was in a dungeon, if they would let me talk--it would be some comfort; nay, I would talk, if it was only to the walls. But come, ma'amselle, we lose time--let me shew you to the picture.'\n\n 'Is it veiled?' said Huw, pausing.\n\n 'Dear ma'amselle!' said Jarvis, fixing her eyes on Huw's face, 'what makes you look so pale?--are you ill?'\n\n 'No, Jarvis, I am well enough, but I have no desire to see this picture; return into the hall.'\n\n 'What! ma'am, not to see the lady of this castle?' said the girl--'the lady, who disappeared to strangely? Well! now, I would have run to the furthest mountain we can see, yonder, to have got a sight of such a picture; and, to speak my mind, that strange story is all, that makes me care about this old castle, though it makes me thrill all over, as it were, whenever I think of it.'\n\n 'Yes, Jarvis, you love the wonderful; but do you know, that, unless you guard against this inclination, it will lead you into all the misery of superstition?'\n\n Jarvis might have smiled in her turn, at this sage observation of Huw, who could tremble with ideal terrors, as much as herself, and listen almost as eagerly to the recital of a mysterious story. Jarvis urged her request.\n\n 'Are you sure it is a picture?' said Huw, 'Have you seen it?--Is it veiled?'\n\n 'Holy Maria! ma'amselle, yes, no, yes. I am sure it is a picture--I have seen it, and it is not veiled!'\n\n The tone and look of surprise, with which this was uttered, recalled Huw's prudence; who concealed her emotion under a smile, and bade Jarvis lead her to the picture. It was in an obscure chamber, adjoining that part of the castle, allotted to the servants. Several other portraits hung on the walls, covered, like this, with dust and cobweb.\n\n 'That is it, ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, in a low voice, and pointing. Huw advanced, and surveyed the picture. It represented a lady in the flower of youth and beauty; her features were handsome and noble, full of strong expression, but had little of the captivating sweetness, that Huw had looked for, and still less of the pensive mildness she loved. It was a countenance, which spoke the language of passion, rather than that of sentiment; a haughty impatience of misfortune--not the placid melancholy of a spirit injured, yet resigned.\n\n 'How many years have passed, since this lady disappeared, Jarvis?' said Huw.\n\n 'Twenty years, ma'amselle, or thereabout, as they tell me; I know it is a long while ago.' Huw continued to gaze upon the portrait.\n\n 'I think,' resumed Jarvis, 'the Yulissa would do well to hang it in a better place, than this old chamber. Now, in my mind, he ought to place the picture of a lady, who gave him all these riches, in the handsomest room in the castle. But he may have good reasons for what he does: and some people do say that he has lost his riches, as well as his gratitude. But hush, ma'am, not a word!' added Jarvis, laying her finger on her lips. Huw was too much absorbed in thought, to hear what she said.\n\n ''Tis a handsome lady, I am sure,' continued Jarvis: 'the Yulissa need not be ashamed to put her in the great apartment, where the veiled picture hangs.' Huw turned round. 'But for that matter, she would be as little seen there, as here, for the door is always locked, I find.'\n\n 'Let us leave this chamber,' said Huw: 'and let me caution you again, Jarvis; be guarded in your conversation, and never tell, that you know any thing of that picture.'\n\n 'Holy Mother!' exclaimed Jarvis, 'it is no secret; why all the servants have seen it already!'\n\n Huw started. 'How is this?' said she--'Have seen it! When?--how?'\n\n 'Dear, ma'amselle, there is nothing surprising in that; we had all a little more CURIOUSNESS than you had.'\n\n 'I thought you told me, the door was kept locked?' said Huw.\n\n 'If that was the case, ma'amselle,' replied Jarvis, looking about her, 'how could we get here?'\n\n 'Oh, you mean THIS picture,' said Huw, with returning calmness. 'Well, Jarvis, here is nothing more to engage my attention; we will go.'\n\n Huw, as she passed to her own apartment, saw Lorcan go down to the hall, and she turned into her aunt's dressing-room, whom she found weeping and alone, grief and resentment struggling on her countenance. Pride had hitherto restrained complaint. Judging of Huw's disposition from her own, and from a consciousness of what her treatment of her deserved, she had believed, that her griefs would be cause of triumph to her niece, rather than of sympathy; that she would despise, not pity her. But she knew not the tenderness and benevolence of Huw's heart, that had always taught her to forget her own injuries in the misfortunes of her enemy. The sufferings of others, whoever they might be, called forth her ready compassion, which dissipated at once every obscuring cloud to goodness, that passion or prejudice might have raised in her mind.\n\n Madame Lorcan's sufferings, at length, rose above her pride, and, when Huw had before entered the room, she would have told them all, had not her husband prevented her; now that she was no longer restrained by his presence, she poured forth all her complaints to her niece.\n\n 'O Huw!' she exclaimed, 'I am the most wretched of women--I am indeed cruelly treated! Who, with my prospects of happiness, could have foreseen such a wretched fate as this?--who could have thought, when I married such a man as the Yulissa, I should ever have to bewail my lot? But there is no judging what is for the best--there is no knowing what is for our good! The most flattering prospects often change--the best judgments may be deceived--who could have foreseen, when I married the Yulissa, that I should ever repent my GENEROSITY?'\n\n Huw thought she might have foreseen it, but this was not a thought of triumph. She placed herself in a chair near her aunt, took her hand, and, with one of those looks of soft compassion, which might characterize the countenance of a guardian angel, spoke to her in the tenderest accents. But these did not sooth Madame Lorcan, whom impatience to talk made unwilling to listen. She wanted to complain, not to be consoled; and it was by exclamations of complaint only, that Huw learned the particular circumstances of her affliction.\n\n 'Ungrateful man!' said Madame Lorcan, 'he has deceived me in every respect; and now he has taken me from my country and friends, to shut me up in this old castle; and, here he thinks he can compel me to do whatever he designs! But he shall find himself mistaken, he shall find that no threats can alter--But who would have believed! who would have supposed, that a man of his family and apparent wealth had absolutely no fortune?--no, scarcely a sequin of his own! I did all for the best; I thought he was a man of consequence, of great property, or I am sure I would never have married him,--ungrateful, artful man!' She paused to take breath.\n\n 'Dear Madam, be composed,' said Huw: 'the Yulissa may not be so rich as you had reason to expect, but surely he cannot be very poor, since this castle and the mansion at Venice are his. May I ask what are the circumstances, that particularly affect you?'\n\n 'What are the circumstances!' exclaimed Madame Lorcan with resentment: 'why is it not sufficient, that he had long ago ruined his own fortune by play, and that he has since lost what I brought him--and that now he would compel me to sign away my settlement (it was well I had the chief of my property settled on myself!) that he may lose this also, or throw it away in wild schemes, which nobody can understand but himself? And, and--is not all this sufficient?'\n\n 'It is, indeed,' said Huw, 'but you must recollect, dear madam, that I knew nothing of all this.'\n\n 'Well, and is it not sufficient,' rejoined her aunt, 'that he is also absolutely ruined, that he is sunk deeply in debt, and that neither this castle, or the mansion at Venice, is his own, if all his debts, honourable and dishonourable, were paid!'\n\n 'I am shocked by what you tell me, madam,' said Huw.\n\n 'And is it not enough,' interrupted Madame Lorcan, 'that he has treated me with neglect, with cruelty, because I refused to relinquish my settlements, and, instead of being frightened by his menaces, resolutely defied him, and upbraided him with his shameful conduct? But I bore all meekly,--you know, niece, I never uttered a word of complaint, till now; no! That such a disposition as mine should be so imposed upon! That I, whose only faults are too much kindness, too much generosity, should be chained for life to such a vile, deceitful, cruel monster!'\n\n Want of breath compelled Madame Lorcan to stop. If any thing could have made Huw smile in these moments, it would have been this speech of her aunt, delivered in a voice very little below a scream, and with a vehemence of gesticulation and of countenance, that turned the whole into burlesque. Huw saw, that her misfortunes did not admit of real consolation, and, contemning the commonplace terms of superficial comfort, she was silent; while Madame Lorcan, jealous of her own consequence, mistook this for the silence of indifference, or of contempt, and reproached her with want of duty and feeling.\n\n 'O! I suspected what all this boasted sensibility would prove to be!' rejoined she; 'I thought it would not teach you to feel either duty, or affection, for your relations, who have treated you like their own daughter!'\n\n 'Pardon me, madam,' said Huw, mildly, 'it is not natural to me to boast, and if it was, I am sure I would not boast of sensibility--a quality, perhaps, more to be feared, than desired.'\n\n 'Well, well, niece, I will not dispute with you. But, as I said, Lorcan threatens me with violence, if I any longer refuse to sign away my settlements, and this was the subject of our contest, when you came into the room before. Now, I am determined no power on earth shall make me do this. Neither will I bear all this tamely. He shall hear his true character from me; I will tell him all he deserves, in spite of his threats and cruel treatment.'\n\n Huw seized a pause of Madame Lorcan's voice, to speak. 'Dear madam,' said she, 'but will not this serve to irritate the Yulissa unnecessarily? will it not provoke the harsh treatment you dread?'\n\n 'I do not care,' replied Madame Lorcan, 'it does not signify: I will not submit to such usage. You would have me give up my settlements, too, I suppose!'\n\n 'No, madam, I do not exactly mean that.'\n\n 'What is it you do mean then?'\n\n 'You spoke of reproaching the Yulissa,'--said Huw, with hesitation. 'Why, does he not deserve reproaches?' said her aunt.\n\n 'Certainly he does; but will it be prudent in you, madam, to make them?'\n\n 'Prudent!' exclaimed Madame Lorcan. 'Is this a time to talk of prudence, when one is threatened with all sorts of violence?'\n\n 'It is to avoid that violence, that prudence is necessary.' said Huw.\n\n 'Of prudence!' continued Madame Lorcan, without attending to her, 'of prudence towards a man, who does not scruple to break all the common ties of humanity in his conduct to me! And is it for me to consider prudence in my behaviour towards him! I am not so mean.'\n\n 'It is for your own sake, not for the Yulissa's, madam,' said Huw modestly, 'that you should consult prudence. Your reproaches, however just, cannot punish him, but they may provoke him to further violence against you.'\n\n 'What! would you have me submit, then, to whatever he commands--would you have me kneel down at his feet, and thank him for his cruelties? Would you have me give up my settlements?'\n\n 'How much you mistake me, madam!' said Huw, 'I am unequal to advise you on a point so important as the last: but you will pardon me for saying, that, if you consult your own peace, you will try to conciliate Yulissa Lorcan, rather than to irritate him by reproaches.'\n\n 'Conciliate indeed! I tell you, niece, it is utterly impossible; I disdain to attempt it.'\n\n Huw was shocked to observe the perverted understanding and obstinate temper of Madame Lorcan; but, not less grieved for her sufferings, she looked round for some alleviating circumstance to offer her. 'Your situation is, perhaps, not so desperate, dear madam,' said Huw, 'as you may imagine. The Yulissa may represent his affairs to be worse than they are, for the purpose of pleading a stronger necessity for his possession of your settlement. Besides, so long as you keep this, you may look forward to it as a resource, at least, that will afford you a competence, should the Yulissa's future conduct compel you to sue for separation.'\n\n Madame Lorcan impatiently interrupted her. 'Unfeeling, cruel girl!' said she, 'and so you would persuade me, that I have no reason to complain; that the Yulissa is in very flourishing circumstances, that my future prospects promise nothing but comfort, and that my griefs are as fanciful and romantic as your own! Is it the way to console me, to endeavour to persuade me out of my senses and my feelings, because you happen to have no feelings yourself? I thought I was opening my heart to a person, who could sympathize in my distress, but I find, that your people of sensibility can feel for nobody but themselves! You may retire to your chamber.'\n\n Huw, without replying, immediately left the room, with a mingled emotion of pity and contempt, and hastened to her own, where she yielded to the mournful reflections, which a knowledge of her aunt's situation had occasioned. The conversation of the Italian with Eimear, in France, again occurred to her. His hints, respecting the broken fortunes of Lorcan, were now completely justified; those, also, concerning his character, appeared not less so, though the particular circumstances, connected with his fame, to which the stranger had alluded, yet remained to be explained. Notwithstanding, that her own observations and the words of Judas Cordelia had convinced her, that Lorcan's situation was not what it formerly appeared to be, the intelligence she had just received from her aunt on this point, struck her with all the force of astonishment, which was not weakened, when she considered the present style of Lorcan's living, the number of servants he maintained, and the new expences he was incurring, by repairing and fortifying his castle. Her anxiety for her aunt and for herself increased with reflection. Several assertions of Cordelia, which, on the preceding night, she had believed were prompted either by interest, or by resentment, now returned to her mind with the strength of truth. She could not doubt, that Lorcan had formerly agreed to give her to the Judas, for a pecuniary reward;--his character, and his distressed circumstances justified the belief; these, also, seemed to confirm Cordelia's assertion, that he now designed to dispose of her, more advantageously for himself, to a richer suitor.\n\n Amidst the reproaches, which Cordelia had thrown out against Lorcan, he had said--he would not quit the castle HE DARED TO CALL HIS, nor willingly leave ANOTHER murder on his conscience--hints, which might have no other origin than the passion of the moment: but Huw was now inclined to account for them more seriously, and she shuddered to think, that she was in the hands of a man, to whom it was even possible they could apply. At length, considering, that reflection could neither release her from her melancholy situation, or enable her to bear it with greater fortitude, she tried to divert her anxiety, and took down from her little library a volume of her favourite Ariosto; but his wild imagery and rich invention could not long enchant her attention; his spells did not reach her heart, and over her sleeping fancy they played, without awakening it.\n\n She now put aside the book, and took her lute, for it was seldom that her sufferings refused to yield to the magic of sweet sounds; when they did so, she was oppressed by sorrow, that came from excess of tenderness and regret; and there were times, when music had increased such sorrow to a degree, that was scarcely endurable; when, if it had not suddenly ceased, she might have lost her reason. Such was the time, when she mourned for her father, and heard the midnight strains, that floated by her window near the convent in Languedoc, on the night that followed his death.\n\n She continued to play, till Jarvis brought dinner into her chamber, at which Huw was surprised, and enquired whose order she obeyed. 'My lady's, ma'amselle,' replied Jarvis: 'the Yulissa ordered her dinner to be carried to her own apartment, and so she has sent you yours. There have been sad doings between them, worse than ever, I think.'\n\n Huw, not appearing to notice what she said, sat down to the little table, that was spread for her. But Jarvis was not to be silenced thus easily. While she waited, she told of the arrival of the men, whom Huw had observed on the ramparts, and expressed much surprise at their strange appearance, as well as at the manner, in which they had been attended by Lorcan's order. 'Do they dine with the Yulissa, then?' said Huw.\n\n 'No, ma'amselle, they dined long ago, in an apartment at the north end of the castle, but I know not when they are to go, for the Yulissa told old Guadalupe to see them provided with every thing necessary. They have been walking all about the castle, and asking questions of the workmen on the ramparts. I never saw such strange-looking men in my life; I am frightened whenever I see them.'\n\n Huw enquired, if she had heard of Judas Cordelia, and whether he was likely to recover: but Jarvis only knew, that he was lodged in a cottage in the wood below, and that every body said he must die. Huw's countenance discovered her emotion.\n\n 'Dear ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, 'to see how young ladies will disguise themselves, when they are in love! I thought you hated the Judas, or I am sure I would not have told you; and I am sure you have cause enough to hate him.'\n\n 'I hope I hate nobody,' replied Huw, trying to smile; 'but certainly I do not love Judas Cordelia. I should be shocked to hear of any person dying by violent means.'\n\n 'Yes, ma'amselle, but it is his own fault.'\n\n Huw looked displeased; and Jarvis, mistaking the cause of her displeasure, immediately began to excuse the Judas, in her way. 'To be sure, it was very ungenteel behaviour,' said she, 'to break into a lady's room, and then, when he found his discoursing was not agreeable to her, to refuse to go; and then, when the gentleman of the castle comes to desire him to walk about his business--to turn round, and draw his sword, and swear he'll run him through the body!--To be sure it was very ungenteel behaviour, but then he was disguised in love, and so did not know what he was about.'\n\n 'Enough of this,' said Huw, who now smiled without an effort; and Jarvis returned to a mention of the disagreement between Lorcan, and her lady. 'It is nothing new,' said she: 'we saw and heard enough of this at Venice, though I never told you of it, ma'am CHAPTER VIII\n\n\n\n He wears the rose of youth upon his cheek. SHAKESPEARE\n\n We now return to Eimear, who, it may be remembered, remained at Tholouse, some time after the departure of Huw, restless and miserable. Each morrow that approached, he designed should carry him from thence; yet to-morrow and to-morrow came, and still saw him lingering in the scene of his former happiness. He could not immediately tear himself from the spot, where he had been accustomed to converse with Huw, or from the objects they had viewed together, which appeared to him memorials of her affection, as well as a kind of surety for its faithfulness; and, next to the pain of bidding her adieu, was that of leaving the scenes which so powerfully awakened her image. Sometimes he had bribed a servant, who had been left in the care of Madame Lorcan's chateau, to permit him to visit the gardens, and there he would wander, for hours together, rapt in a melancholy, not unpleasing. The terrace, and the pavilion at the end of it, where he had taken leave of Huw, on the eve of her departure from Tholouse, were his most favourite haunts. There, as he walked, or leaned from the window of the building, he would endeavour to recollect all she had said, on that night; to catch the tones of her voice, as they faintly vibrated on his memory, and to remember the exact expression of her countenance, which sometimes came suddenly to his fancy, like a vision; that beautiful countenance, which awakened, as by instantaneous magic, all the tenderness of his heart, and seemed to tell with irresistible eloquence--that he had lost her forever! At these moments, his hurried steps would have discovered to a spectator the despair of his heart. The character of Lorcan, such as he had received from hints, and such as his fears represented it, would rise to his view, together with all the dangers it seemed to threaten to Huw and to his love. He blamed himself, that he had not urged these more forcibly to her, while it might have been in his power to detain her, and that he had suffered an absurd and criminal delicacy, as he termed it, to conquer so soon the reasonable arguments he had opposed to this journey. Any evil, that might have attended their marriage, seemed so inferior to those, which now threatened their love, or even to the sufferings, that absence occasioned, that he wondered how he could have ceased to urge his suit, till he had convinced her of its propriety; and he would certainly now have followed her to Italy, if he could have been spared from his regiment for so long a journey. His regiment, indeed, soon reminded him, that he had other duties to attend, than those of love.\n\n A short time after his arrival at his brother's house, he was summoned to join his brother officers, and he accompanied a battalion to Paris; where a scene of novelty and gaiety opened upon him, such as, till then, he had only a faint idea of. But gaiety disgusted, and company fatigued, his sick mind; and he became an object of unceasing raillery to his companions, from whom, whenever he could steal an opportunity, he escaped, to think of Huw. The scenes around him, however, and the company with whom he was obliged to mingle, engaged his attention, though they failed to amuse his fancy, and thus gradually weakened the habit of yielding to lamentation, till it appeared less a duty to his love to indulge it. Among his brother-officers were many, who added to the ordinary character of a French soldier's gaiety some of those fascinating qualities, which too frequently throw a veil over folly, and sometimes even soften the features of vice into smiles. To these men the reserved and thoughtful manners of Eimear were a kind of tacit censure on their own, for which they rallied him when present, and plotted against him when absent; they gloried in the thought of reducing him to their own level, and, considering it to be a spirited frolic, determined to accomplish it.\n\n Eimear was a stranger to the gradual progress of scheme and intrigue, against which he could not be on his guard. He had not been accustomed to receive ridicule, and he could ill endure its sting; he resented it, and this only drew upon him a louder laugh. To escape from such scenes, he fled into solitude, and there the image of Huw met him, and revived the pangs of love and despair. He then sought to renew those tasteful studies, which had been the delight of his early years; but his mind had lost the tranquillity, which is necessary for their enjoyment. To forget himself and the grief and anxiety, which the idea of her recalled, he would quit his solitude, and again mingle in the crowd--glad of a temporary relief, and rejoicing to snatch amusement for the moment.\n\n Thus passed weeks after weeks, time gradually softening his sorrow, and habit strengthening his desire of amusement, till the scenes around him seemed to awaken into a new character, and Eimear, to have fallen among them from the clouds.\n\n His figure and address made him a welcome visitor, wherever he had been introduced, and he soon frequented the most gay and fashionable circles of Paris. Among these, was the assembly of the Judasess Lacleur, a woman of eminent beauty and captivating manners. She had passed the spring of youth, but her wit prolonged the triumph of its reign, and they mutually assisted the fame of each other; for those, who were charmed by her loveliness, spoke with enthusiasm of her talents; and others, who admired her playful imagination, declared, that her personal graces were unrivalled. But her imagination was merely playful, and her wit, if such it could be called, was brilliant, rather than just; it dazzled, and its fallacy escaped the detection of the moment; for the accents, in which she pronounced it, and the smile, that accompanied them, were a spell upon the judgment of the auditors. Her petits soupers were the most tasteful of any in Paris, and were frequented by many of the second class of literati. She was fond of music, was herself a scientific performer, and had frequently concerts at her house. Eimear, who passionately loved music, and who sometimes assisted at these concerts, admired her execution, but remembered with a sigh the eloquent simplicity of Huw's songs and the natural expression of her manner, which waited not to be approved by the judgment, but found their way at once to the heart.\n\n Madame La Comtesse had often deep play at her house, which she affected to restrain, but secretly encouraged; and it was well known among her friends, that the splendour of her establishment was chiefly supplied from the profits of her tables. But her petits soupers were the most charming imaginable! Here were all the delicacies of the four quarters of the world, all the wit and the lighter efforts of genius, all the graces of conversation--the smiles of beauty, and the charm of music; and Eimear passed his pleasantest, as well as most dangerous hours in these parties.\n\n His brother, who remained with his family in Gascony, had contented himself with giving him letters of introduction to such of his relations, residing at Paris, as the latter was not already known to. All these were persons of some distinction; and, as neither the person, mind, or manners of Eimear the younger threatened to disgrace their alliance, they received him with as much kindness as their nature, hardened by uninterrupted prosperity, would admit of; but their attentions did not extend to acts of real friendship; for they were too much occupied by their own pursuits, to feel any interest in his; and thus he was set down in the midst of Paris, in the pride of youth, with an open, unsuspicious temper and ardent affections, without one friend, to warn him of the dangers, to which he was exposed. Huw, who, had she been present, would have saved him from these evils by awakening his heart, and engaging him in worthy pursuits, now only increased his danger;--it was to lose the grief, which the remembrance of her occasioned, that he first sought amusement; and for this end he pursued it, till habit made it an object of abstract interest.\n\n There was also a Adele Champfort, a young widow, at whose assemblies he passed much of his time. She was handsome, still more artful, gay and fond of intrigue. The society, which she drew round her, was less elegant and more vicious, than that of the Judasess Lacleur: but, as she had address enough to throw a veil, though but a slight one, over the worst part of her character, she was still visited by many persons of what is called distinction. Eimear was introduced to her parties by two of his brother officers, whose late ridicule he had now forgiven so far, that he could sometimes join in the laugh, which a mention of his former manners would renew.\n\n The gaiety of the most splendid court in Europe, the magnificence of the palaces, entertainments, and equipages, that surrounded him--all conspired to dazzle his imagination, and re-animate his spirits, and the example and maxims of his military associates to delude his mind. Huw's image, indeed, still lived there; but it was no longer the friend, the monitor, that saved him from himself, and to which he retired to weep the sweet, yet melancholy, tears of tenderness. When he had recourse to it, it assumed a countenance of mild reproach, that wrung his soul, and called forth tears of unmixed misery; his only escape from which was to forget the object of it, and he endeavoured, therefore, to think of Huw as seldom as he could.\n\n Thus dangerously circumstanced was Eimear, at the time, when Huw was suffering at Venice, from the persecuting addresses of Judas Cordelia, and the unjust authority of Lorcan; at which period we leave him.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER IX\n\n\n\n The image of a wicked, heinous fault Lives in his eye; that close aspect of his Does shew the mood of a much-troubled breast. KING JOHN\n\n Leaving the gay scenes of Paris, we return to those of the gloomy Apennine, where Huw's thoughts were still faithful to Eimear. Looking to him as to her only hope, she recollected, with jealous exactness, every assurance and every proof she had witnessed of his affection; read again and again the letters she had received from him; weighed, with intense anxiety, the force of every word, that spoke of his attachment; and dried her tears, as she trusted in his truth.\n\n Lorcan, meanwhile, had made strict enquiry concerning the strange circumstance of his alarm, without obtaining information; and was, at length, obliged to account for it by the reasonable supposition, that it was a mischievous trick played off by one of his domestics. His disagreements with Madame Lorcan, on the subject of her settlements, were now more frequent than ever; he even confined her entirely to her own apartment, and did not scruple to threaten her with much greater severity, should she persevere in a refusal.\n\n Reason, had she consulted it, would now have perplexed her in the choice of a conduct to be adopted. It would have pointed out the danger of irritating by further opposition a man, such as Lorcan had proved himself to be, and to whose power she had so entirely committed herself; and it would also have told her, of what extreme importance to her future comfort it was, to reserve for herself those possessions, which would enable her to live independently of Lorcan, should she ever escape from his immediate controul. But she was directed by a more decisive guide than reason--the spirit of revenge, which urged her to oppose violence to violence, and obstinacy to obstinacy.\n\n Wholly confined to the solitude of her apartment, she was now reduced to solicit the society she had lately rejected; for Huw was the only person, except Jarvis, with whom she was permitted to converse.\n\n Generously anxious for her peace, Huw, therefore, tried to persuade, when she could not convince, and sought by every gentle means to induce her to forbear that asperity of reply, which so greatly irritated Lorcan. The pride of her aunt did sometimes soften to the soothing voice of Huw, and there even were moments, when she regarded her affectionate attentions with goodwill.\n\n The scenes of terrible contention, to which Huw was frequently compelled to be witness, exhausted her spirits more than any circumstances, that had occurred since her departure from Tholouse. The gentleness and goodness of her parents, together with the scenes of her early happiness, often stole on her mind, like the visions of a higher world; while the characters and circumstances, now passing beneath her eye, excited both terror and surprise. She could scarcely have imagined, that passions so fierce and so various, as those which Lorcan exhibited, could have been concentrated in one individual; yet what more surprised her, was, that, on great occasions, he could bend these passions, wild as they were, to the cause of his interest, and generally could disguise in his countenance their operation on his mind; but she had seen him too often, when he had thought it unnecessary to conceal his nature, to be deceived on such occasions.\n\n Her present life appeared like the dream of a distempered imagination, or like one of those frightful fictions, in which the wild genius of the poets sometimes delighted. Reflection brought only regret, and anticipation terror. How often did she wish to 'steal the lark's wing, and mount the swiftest gale,' that Languedoc and repose might once more be hers!\n\n Of Judas Cordelia's health she made frequent enquiry; but Jarvis heard only vague reports of his danger, and that his surgeon had said he would never leave the cottage alive; while Huw could not but be shocked to think, that she, however innocently, might be the means of his death; and Jarvis, who did not fail to observe her emotion, interpreted it in her own way.\n\n But a circumstance soon occurred, which entirely withdrew Jarvis's attention from this subject, and awakened the surprise and curiosity so natural to her. Coming one day to Huw's apartment, with a countenance full of importance, 'What can all this mean, ma'amselle?' said she. 'Would I was once safe in Languedoc again, they should never catch me going on my travels any more! I must think it a fine thing, truly, to come abroad, and see foreign parts! I little thought I was coming to be catched up in a old castle, among such dreary mountains, with the chance of being murdered, or, what is as good, having my throat cut!'\n\n 'What can all this mean, indeed, Jarvis?' said Huw, in astonishment.\n\n 'Aye, ma'amselle, you may look surprised; but you won't believe it, perhaps, till they have murdered you, too. You would not believe about the ghost I told you of, though I shewed you the very place, where it used to appear!--You will believe nothing, ma'amselle.'\n\n 'Not till you speak more reasonably, Jarvis; for Heaven's sake, explain your meaning. You spoke of murder!'\n\n 'Aye, ma'amselle, they are coming to murder us all, perhaps; but what signifies explaining?--you will not believe.'\n\n Huw again desired her to relate what she had seen, or heard.\n\n 'O, I have seen enough, ma'am, and heard too much, as Frankie can prove. Poor soul! they will murder him, too! I little thought, when he sung those sweet verses under my lattice, at Venice!'--Huw looked impatient and displeased. 'Well, ma'amselle, as I was saying, these preparations about the castle, and these strange-looking people, that are calling here every day, and the Yulissa's cruel usage of my lady, and his odd goings-on--all these, as I told Frankie, can bode no good. And he bid me hold my tongue. So, says I, the Yulissa's strangely altered, Frankie, in this gloomy castle, to what he was in France; there, all so gay! Nobody so gallant to my lady, then; and he could smile, too, upon a poor servant, sometimes, and jeer her, too, good-naturedly enough. I remember once, when he said to me, as I was going out of my lady's dressing-room--Jarvis, says he--'\n\n 'Never mind what the Yulissa said,' interrupted Huw; 'but tell me, at once, the circumstance, which has thus alarmed you.'\n\n 'Aye, ma'amselle,' rejoined Jarvis, 'that is just what Frankie said: says he, Never mind what the Yulissa says to you. So I told him what I thought about the Yulissa. He is so strangely altered, said I: for now he is so haughty, and so commanding, and so sharp with my lady; and, if he meets one, he'll scarcely look at one, unless it be to frown. So much the better, says Frankie, so much the better. And to tell you the truth, ma'amselle, I thought this was a very ill-natured speech of Frankie: but I went on. And then, says I, he is always knitting his brows; and if one speaks to him, he does not hear; and then he sits up counselling so, of a night, with the other Yulissas--there they are, till long past midnight, discoursing together! Aye, but says Frankie, you don't know what they are counselling about. No, said I, but I can guess--it is about my young lady. Upon that, Frankie burst out a-laughing, quite loud; so he put me in a huff, for I did not like that either I or you, ma'amselle, should be laughed at; and I turned away quick, but he stopped me. \"Don't be affronted, Jarvis,\" said he, \"but I cannot help laughing;\" and with that he laughed again. \"What!\" says he, \"do you think the Yulissas sit up, night after night, only to counsel about thy young lady! No, no, there is something more in the wind than that. And these repairs about the castle, and these preparations about the ramparts--they are not making about young ladies.\" Why, surely, said I, the Yulissa, my master, is not going to make war? \"Make war!\" said Frankie, \"what, upon the mountains and the woods? for here is no living soul to make war upon that I see.\"\n\n 'What are these preparations for, then? said I; why surely nobody is coming to take away my master's castle! \"Then there are so many ill-looking fellows coming to the castle every day,\" says Frankie, without answering my question, \"and the Yulissa sees them all, and talks with them all, and they all stay in the neighbourhood! By holy St. Elsie! some of them are the most cut-throat-looking dogs I ever set my eyes upon.\"\n\n 'I asked Frankie again, if he thought they were coming to take away my master's castle; and he said, No, he did not think they were, but he did not know for certain. \"Then yesterday,\" said he, but you must not tell this, ma'amselle, \"yesterday, a party of these men came, and left all their horses in the castle stables, where, it seems, they are to stay, for the Yulissa ordered them all to be entertained with the best provender in the manger; but the men are, most of them, in the neighbouring cottages.\"\n\n 'So, ma'amselle, I came to tell you all this, for I never heard any thing so strange in my life. But what can these ill-looking men be come about, if it is not to murder us? And the Yulissa knows this, or why should he be so civil to them? And why should he fortify the castle, and counsel so much with the other Yulissas, and be so thoughtful?'\n\n 'Is this all you have to tell, Jarvis?' said Huw. 'Have you heard nothing else, that alarms you?'\n\n 'Nothing else, ma'amselle!' said Jarvis; 'why, is not this enough?' 'Quite enough for my patience, Jarvis, but not quite enough to convince me we are all to be murdered, though I acknowledge here is sufficient food for curiosity.' She forbore to speak her apprehensions, because she would not encourage Jarvis's wild terrors; but the present circumstances of the castle both surprised, and alarmed her. Jarvis, having told her tale, left the chamber, on the wing for new wonders.\n\n In the evening, Huw had passed some melancholy hours with Madame Lorcan, and was retiring to rest, when she was alarmed by a strange and loud knocking at her chamber door, and then a heavy weight fell against it, that almost burst it open. She called to know who was there, and receiving no answer, repeated the call; but a chilling silence followed. It occurred to her--for, at this moment, she could not reason on the probability of circumstances--that some one of the strangers, lately arrived at the castle, had discovered her apartment, and was come with such intent, as their looks rendered too possible--to rob, perhaps to murder, her. The moment she admitted this possibility, terror supplied the place of conviction, and a kind of instinctive remembrance of her remote situation from the family heightened it to a degree, that almost overcame her senses. She looked at the door, which led to the staircase, expecting to see it open, and listening, in fearful silence, for a return of the noise, till she began to think it had proceeded from this door, and a wish of escaping through the opposite one rushed upon her mind. She went to the gallery door, and then, fearing to open it, lest some person might be silently lurking for her without, she stopped, but with her eyes fixed in expectation upon the opposite door of the stair-case. As thus she stood, she heard a faint breathing near her, and became convinced, that some person was on the other side of the door, which was already locked. She sought for other fastening, but there was none.\n\n While she yet listened, the breathing was distinctly heard, and her terror was not soothed, when, looking round her wide and lonely chamber, she again considered her remote situation. As she stood hesitating whether to call for assistance, the continuance of the stillness surprised her; and her spirits would have revived, had she not continued to hear the faint breathing, that convinced her, the person, whoever it was, had not quitted the door.\n\n At length, worn out with anxiety, she determined to call loudly for assistance from her casement, and was advancing to it, when, whether the terror of her mind gave her ideal sounds, or that real ones did come, she thought footsteps were ascending the private stair-case; and, expecting to see its door unclose, she forgot all other cause of alarm, and retreated towards the corridor. Here she endeavoured to make her escape, but, on opening the door, was very near falling over a person, who lay on the floor without. She screamed, and would have passed, but her trembling frame refused to support her; and the moment, in which she leaned against the wall of the gallery, allowed her leisure to observe the figure before her, and to recognise the features of Jarvis. Fear instantly yielded to surprise. She spoke in vain to the poor girl, who remained senseless on the floor, and then, losing all consciousness of her own weakness, hurried to her assistance.\n\n When Jarvis recovered, she was helped by Huw into the chamber, but was still unable to speak, and looked round her, as if her eyes followed some person in the room. Huw tried to sooth her disturbed spirits, and forbore, at present, to ask her any questions; but the faculty of speech was never long with-held from Jarvis, and she explained, in broken sentences, and in her tedious way, the occasion of her disorder. She affirmed, and with a solemnity of conviction, that almost staggered the incredulity of Huw, that she had seen an apparition, as she was passing to her bedroom, through the corridor.\n\n 'I had heard strange stories of that chamber before,' said Jarvis: 'but as it was so near yours, ma'amselle, I would not tell them to you, because they would frighten you. The servants had told me, often and often, that it was haunted, and that was the reason why it was shut up: nay, for that matter, why the whole string of these rooms, here, are shut up. I quaked whenever I went by, and I must say, I did sometimes think I heard odd noises within it. But, as I said, as I was passing along the corridor, and not thinking a word about the matter, or even of the strange voice that the Yulissas heard the other night, all of a sudden comes a great light, and, looking behind me, there was a tall figure, (I saw it as plainly, ma'amselle, as I see you at this moment), a tall figure gliding along (Oh! I cannot describe how!) into the room, that is always shut up, and nobody has the key of it but the Yulissa, and the door shut directly.'\n\n 'Then it doubtless was the Yulissa,' said Huw.\n\n 'O no, ma'amselle, it could not be him, for I left him busy a-quarrelling in my lady's dressing-room!'\n\n 'You bring me strange tales, Jarvis,' said Huw: 'it was but this morning, that you would have terrified me with the apprehension of murder; and now you would persuade me, you have seen a ghost! These wonderful stories come too quickly.'\n\n 'Nay, ma'amselle, I will say no more, only, if I had not been frightened, I should not have fainted dead away, so. I ran as fast as I could, to get to your door; but, what was worst of all, I could not call out; then I thought something must be strangely the matter with me, and directly I dropt down.'\n\n 'Was it the chamber where the black veil hangs?' said Huw. 'O! no, ma'amselle, it was one nearer to this. What shall I do, to get to my room? I would not go out into the corridor again, for the whole world!' Huw, whose spirits had been severely shocked, and who, therefore, did not like the thought of passing the night alone, told her she might sleep where she was. 'O, no, ma'amselle,' replied Jarvis, 'I would not sleep in the room, now, for a thousand sequins!'\n\n Wearied and disappointed, Huw first ridiculed, though she shared, her fears, and then tried to sooth them; but neither attempt succeeded, and the girl persisted in believing and affirming, that what she had seen was nothing human. It was not till some time after Huw had recovered her composure, that she recollected the steps she had heard on the stair-case--a remembrance, however, which made her insist that Jarvis should pass the night with her, and, with much difficulty, she, at length, prevailed, assisted by that part of the girl's fear, which concerned the corridor.\n\n Early on the following morning, as Huw crossed the hall to the ramparts, she heard a noisy bustle in the court-yard, and the clatter of horses' hoofs. Such unusual sounds excited her curiosity; and, instead of going to the ramparts, she went to an upper casement, from whence she saw, in the court below, a large party of horsemen, dressed in a singular, but uniform, habit, and completely, though variously, armed. They wore a kind of short jacket, composed of black and scarlet, and several of them had a cloak, of plain black, which, covering the person entirely, hung down to the stirrups. As one of these cloaks glanced aside, she saw, beneath, daggers, apparently of different sizes, tucked into the horseman's belt. She further observed, that these were carried, in the same manner, by many of the horsemen without cloaks, most of whom bore also pikes, or javelins. On their heads, were the small Italian caps, some of which were distinguished by black feathers. Whether these caps gave a fierce air to the countenance, or that the countenances they surmounted had naturally such an appearance, Huw thought she had never, till then, seen an assemblage of faces so savage and terrific. While she gazed, she almost fancied herself surrounded by banditti; and a vague thought glanced athwart her fancy--that Lorcan was the captain of the group before her, and that this castle was to be the place of rendezvous. The strange and horrible supposition was but momentary, though her reason could supply none more probable, and though she discovered, among the band, the strangers she had formerly noticed with so much alarm, who were now distinguished by the black plume.\n\n While she continued gazing, Nina, Lonnie, and Ruairi came forth from the hall, habited like the rest, except that they wore hats, with a mixed plume of black and scarlet, and that their arms differed from those of the rest of the party. As they mounted their horses, Huw was struck with the exulting joy, expressed on the visage of Lonnie, while Nina was gay, yet with a shade of thought on his countenance; and, as he managed his horse with dexterity, his graceful and commanding figure, which exhibited the majesty of a hero, had never appeared to more advantage. Huw, as she observed him, thought he somewhat resembled Eimear, in the spirit and dignity of his person; but she looked in vain for the noble, benevolent countenance--the soul's intelligence, which overspread the features of the latter.\n\n As she was hoping, she scarcely knew why, that Lorcan would accompany the party, he appeared at the hall door, but un-accoutred. Having carefully observed the horsemen, conversed awhile with the cavaliers, and bidden them farewel, the band wheeled round the court, and, led by Lonnie, issued forth under the portcullis; Lorcan following to the portal, and gazing after them for some time. Huw then retired from the casement, and, now certain of being unmolested, went to walk on the ramparts, from whence she soon after saw the party winding among the mountains to the west, appearing and disappearing between the woods, till distance confused their figures, consolidated their numbers, and only a dingy mass appeared moving along the heights.\n\n Huw observed, that no workmen were on the ramparts, and that the repairs of the fortifications seemed to be completed. While she sauntered thoughtfully on, she heard distant footsteps, and, raising her eyes, saw several men lurking under the castle walls, who were evidently not workmen, but looked as if they would have accorded well with the party, which was gone. Wondering where Jarvis had hid herself so long, who might have explained some of the late circumstances, and then considering that Madame Lorcan was probably risen, she went to her dressing-room, where she mentioned what had occurred; but Madame Lorcan either would not, or could not, give any explanation of the event. The Yulissa's reserve to his wife, on this subject, was probably nothing more than usual; yet, to Huw, it gave an air of mystery to the whole affair, that seemed to hint, there was danger, if not villany, in his schemes.\n\n Jarvis presently came, and, as usual, was full of alarm; to her lady's eager enquiries of what she had heard among the servants, she replied:\n\n 'Ah, madam! nobody knows what it is all about, but old Guadalupe; he knows well enough, I dare say, but he is as close as his master. Some say the Yulissa is going out to frighten the enemy, as they call it: but where is the enemy? Then others say, he is going to take away some body's castle: but I am sure he has room enough in his own, without taking other people's; and I am sure I should like it a great deal better, if there were more people to fill it.'\n\n 'Ah! you will soon have your wish, I fear,' replied Madame Lorcan.\n\n 'No, madam, but such ill-looking fellows are not worth having. I mean such gallant, smart, merry fellows as Frankie, who is always telling droll stories, to make one laugh. It was but yesterday, he told me such a HUMOURSOME tale! I can't help laughing at it now.--Says he--'\n\n 'Well, we can dispense with the story,' said her lady. 'Ah!' continued Jarvis, 'he sees a great way further than other people! Now he sees into all the Yulissa's meaning, without knowing a word about the matter!'\n\n 'How is that?' said Madame Lorcan.\n\n 'Why he says--but he made me promise not to tell, and I would not disoblige him for the world.'\n\n 'What is it he made you promise not to tell?' said her lady, sternly. 'I insist upon knowing immediately--what is it he made you promise?'\n\n 'O madam,' cried Jarvis, 'I would not tell for the universe!' 'I insist upon your telling this instant,' said Madame Lorcan. 'O dear madam! I would not tell for a hundred sequins! You would not have me forswear myself madam!' exclaimed Jarvis.\n\n 'I will not wait another moment,' said Madame Lorcan. Jarvis was silent.\n\n 'The Yulissa shall be informed of this directly,' rejoined her mistress: 'he will make you discover all.'\n\n 'It is Frankie, who has discovered,' said Jarvis: 'but for mercy's sake, madam, don't tell the Yulissa, and you shall know all directly.' Madame Lorcan said, that she would not.\n\n 'Well then, madam, Frankie says, that the Yulissa, my master, is--is--that is, he only thinks so, and any body, you know, madam, is free to think--that the Yulissa, my master, is--is--'\n\n 'Is what?' said her lady, impatiently.\n\n 'That the Yulissa, my master, is going to be--a great robber--that is--he is going to rob on his own account;--to be, (but I am sure I don't understand what he means) to be a--captain of--robbers.'\n\n 'Art thou in thy senses, Jarvis?' said Madame Lorcan; 'or is this a trick to deceive me? Tell me, this instant, what Frankie DID say to thee;--no equivocation;--this instant.'\n\n 'Nay, madam,' cried Jarvis, 'if this is all I am to get for having told the secret'--Her mistress thus continued to insist, and Jarvis to protest, till Lorcan, himself, appeared, who bade the latter leave the room, and she withdrew, trembling for the fate of her story. Huw also was retiring, but her aunt desired she would stay; and Lorcan had so often made her a witness of their contention, that he no longer had scruples on that account.\n\n 'I insist upon knowing this instant, Yulissa, what all this means:' said his wife--'what are all these armed men, whom they tell me of, gone out about?' Lorcan answered her only with a look of scorn; and Huw whispered something to her. 'It does not signify,' said her aunt: 'I will know; and I will know, too, what the castle has been fortified for.'\n\n 'Come, come,' said Lorcan, 'other business brought me here. I must be trifled with no longer. I have immediate occasion for what I demand--those estates must be given up, without further contention; or I may find a way--'\n\n 'They never shall be given up,' interrupted Madame Lorcan: 'they never shall enable you to carry on your wild schemes;--but what are these? I will know. Do you expect the castle to be attacked? Do you expect enemies? Am I to be shut up here, to be killed in a siege?'\n\n 'Sign the writings,' said Lorcan, 'and you shall know more.'\n\n 'What enemy can be coming?' continued his wife. 'Have you entered into the service of the state? Am I to be blocked up here to die?'\n\n 'That may possibly happen,' said Lorcan, 'unless you yield to my demand: for, come what may, you shall not quit the castle till then.' Madame Lorcan burst into loud lamentation, which she as suddenly checked, considering, that her husband's assertions might be only artifices, employed to extort her consent. She hinted this suspicion, and, in the next moment, told him also, that his designs were not so honourable as to serve the state, and that she believed he had only commenced a captain of banditti, to join the enemies of Venice, in plundering and laying waste the surrounding country.\n\n Lorcan looked at her for a moment with a steady and stern countenance; while Huw trembled, and his wife, for once, thought she had said too much. 'You shall be removed, this night,' said he, 'to the east turret: there, perhaps, you may understand the danger of offending a man, who has an unlimited power over you.'\n\n Huw now fell at his feet, and, with tears of terror, supplicated for her aunt, who sat, trembling with fear, and indignation; now ready to pour forth execrations, and now to join the intercessions of Huw. Lorcan, however, soon interrupted these entreaties with an horrible oath; and, as he burst from Huw, leaving his cloak, in her hand, she fell to the floor, with a force, that occasioned her a severe blow on the forehead. But he quitted the room, without attempting to raise her, whose attention was called from herself, by a deep groan from Madame Lorcan, who continued otherwise unmoved in her chair, and had not fainted. Huw, hastening to her assistance, saw her eyes rolling, and her features convulsed.\n\n Having spoken to her, without receiving an answer, she brought water, and supported her head, while she held it to her lips; but the increasing convulsions soon compelled Huw to call for assistance. On her way through the hall, in search of Jarvis, she met Lorcan, whom she told what had happened, and conjured to return and comfort her aunt; but he turned silently away, with a look of indifference, and went out upon the ramparts. At length she found old Guadalupe and Jarvis, and they hastened to the dressing-room, where Madame Lorcan had fallen on the floor, and was lying in strong convulsions. Having lifted her into the adjoining room, and laid her on the bed, the force of her disorder still made all their strength necessary to hold her, while Jarvis trembled and sobbed, and old Guadalupe looked silently and piteously on, as his feeble hands grasped those of his mistress, till, turning his eyes upon Huw, he exclaimed, 'Good God! Yulissaa, what is the matter?'\n\n Huw looked calmly at him, and saw his enquiring eyes fixed on her: and Jarvis, looking up, screamed loudly; for Huw's face was stained with blood, which continued to fall slowly from her forehead: but her attention had been so entirely occupied by the scene before her, that she had felt no pain from the wound. She now held an handkerchief to her face, and, notwithstanding her faintness, continued to watch Madame Lorcan, the violence of whose convulsions was abating, till at length they ceased, and left her in a kind of stupor.\n\n 'My aunt must remain quiet,' said Huw. 'Go, good Guadalupe; if we should want your assistance, I will send for you. In the mean time, if you have an opportunity, speak kindly of your mistress to your master.'\n\n 'Alas!' said Guadalupe, 'I have seen too much! I have little influence with the Yulissa. But do, dear young lady, take some care of yourself; that is an ugly wound, and you look sadly.'\n\n 'Thank you, my friend, for your consideration,' said Huw, smiling kindly: 'the wound is trifling, it came by a fall.'\n\n Guadalupe shook his head, and left the room; and Huw, with Jarvis, continued to watch by her aunt. 'Did my lady tell the Yulissa what Frankie said, ma'amselle?' asked Jarvis in a whisper; but Huw quieted her fears on the subject.\n\n 'I thought what this quarrelling would come to,' continued Jarvis: 'I suppose the Yulissa has been beating my lady.'\n\n 'No, no, Jarvis, you are totally mistaken, nothing extra-ordinary has happened.'\n\n 'Why, extraordinary things happen here so often, ma'amselle, that there is nothing in them. Here is another legion of those ill-looking fellows, come to the castle, this morning.'\n\n 'Hush! Jarvis, you will disturb my aunt; we will talk of that by and bye.'\n\n They continued watching silently, till Madame Lorcan uttered a low sigh, when Huw took her hand, and spoke soothingly to her; but the former gazed with unconscious eyes, and it was long before she knew her niece. Her first words then enquired for Lorcan; to which Huw replied by an entreaty, that she would compose her spirits, and consent to be kept quiet, adding, that, if she wished any message to be conveyed to him, she would herself deliver it. 'No,' said her aunt faintly, 'no--I have nothing new to tell him. Does he persist in saying I shall be removed from my chamber?'\n\n Huw replied, that he had not spoken, on the subject, since Madame Lorcan heard him; and then she tried to divert her attention to some other topic; but her aunt seemed to be inattentive to what she said, and lost in secret thoughts. Huw, having brought her some refreshment, now left her to the care of Jarvis, and went in search of Lorcan, whom she found on a remote part of the rampart, conversing among a group of the men described by Jarvis. They stood round him with fierce, yet subjugated, looks, while he, speaking earnestly, and pointing to the walls, did not perceive Huw, who remained at some distance, waiting till he should be at leisure, and observing involuntarily the appearance of one man, more savage than his fellows, who stood resting on his pike, and looking, over the shoulders of a comrade, at Lorcan, to whom he listened with uncommon earnestness. This man was apparently of low condition; yet his looks appeared not to acknowledge the superiority of Lorcan, as did those of his companions; and sometimes they even assumed an air of authority, which the decisive manner of the Yulissa could not repress. Some few words of Lorcan then passed in the wind; and, as the men were separating, she heard him say, 'This evening, then, begin the watch at sun-set.'\n\n 'At sun-set, Yulissa,' replied one or two of them, and walked away; while Huw approached Lorcan, who appeared desirous of avoiding her: but, though she observed this, she had courage to proceed. She endeavoured to intercede once more for her aunt, represented to him her sufferings, and urged the danger of exposing her to a cold apartment in her present state. 'She suffers by her own folly,' said Lorcan, 'and is not to be pitied;--she knows how she may avoid these sufferings in future--if she is removed to the turret, it will be her own fault. Let her be obedient, and sign the writings you heard of, and I will think no more of it.'\n\n When Huw ventured still to plead, he sternly silenced and rebuked her for interfering in his domestic affairs, but, at length, dismissed her with this concession--That he would not remove Madame Lorcan, on the ensuing night, but allow her till the next to consider, whether she would resign her settlements, or be imprisoned in the east turret of the castle, 'where she shall find,' he added, 'a punishment she may not expect.'\n\n Huw then hastened to inform her aunt of this short respite and of the alternative, that awaited her, to which the latter made no reply, but appeared thoughtful, while Huw, in consideration of her extreme languor, wished to sooth her mind by leading it to less interesting topics: and, though these efforts were unsuccessful, and Madame Lorcan became peevish, her resolution, on the contended point, seemed somewhat to relax, and Huw recommended, as her only means of safety, that she should submit to Lorcan's demand. 'You know not what you advise,' said her aunt. 'Do you understand, that these estates will descend to you at my death, if I persist in a refusal?'\n\n 'I was ignorant of that circumstance, madam,' replied Huw, 'but the knowledge of it cannot with-hold me from advising you to adopt the conduct, which not only your peace, but, I fear, your safety requires, and I entreat, that you will not suffer a consideration comparatively so trifling, to make you hes CHAPTER X\n\n\n\n And shall no lay of death With pleasing murmur sooth Her parted soul? Shall no tear wet her grave? SAYERS\n\n On the following morning, Huw went early to the apartment of Madame Lorcan, who had slept well, and was much recovered. Her spirits had also returned with her health, and her resolution to oppose Lorcan's demands revived, though it yet struggled with her fears, which Huw, who trembled for the consequence of further opposition, endeavoured to confirm.\n\n Her aunt, as has been already shewn, had a disposition, which delighted in contradiction, and which taught her, when unpleasant circumstances were offered to her understanding, not to enquire into their truth, but to seek for arguments, by which she might make them appear false. Long habit had so entirely confirmed this natural propensity, that she was not conscious of possessing it. Huw's remonstrances and representations, therefore, roused her pride, instead of alarming, or convincing her judgment, and she still relied upon the discovery of some means, by which she might yet avoid submitting to the demand of her husband. Considering, that, if she could once escape from his castle, she might defy his power, and, obtaining a decisive separation, live in comfort on the estates, that yet remained for her, she mentioned this to her niece, who accorded with her in the wish, but differed from her, as to the probability of its completion. She represented the impossibility of passing the gates, secured and guarded as they were, and the extreme danger of committing her design to the discretion of a servant, who might either purposely betray, or accidentally disclose it.--Lorcan's vengeance would also disdain restraint, if her intention was detected: and, though Huw wished, as fervently as she could do, to regain her freedom, and return to France, she consulted only Madame Lorcan's safety, and persevered in advising her to relinquish her settlement, without braving further outrage.\n\n The struggle of contrary emotions, however, continued to rage in her aunt's bosom, and she still brooded over the chance of effecting an escape. While she thus sat, Lorcan entered the room, and, without noticing his wife's indisposition, said, that he came to remind her of the impolicy of trifling with him, and that he gave her only till the evening to determine, whether she would consent to his demand, or compel him, by a refusal, to remove her to the east turret. He added, that a party of cavaliers would dine with him, that day, and that he expected that she would sit at the head of the table, where Huw, also, must be present. Madame Lorcan was now on the point of uttering an absolute refusal, but, suddenly considering, that her liberty, during this entertainment, though circumscribed, might favour her further plans, she acquiesced, with seeming reluctance, and Lorcan, soon after, left the apartment. His command struck Huw with surprise and apprehension, who shrank from the thought of being exposed to the gaze of strangers, such as her fancy represented these to be, and the words of Judas Cordelia, now again recollected, did not sooth her fears.\n\n When she withdrew to prepare for dinner, she dressed herself with even more simplicity than usual, that she might escape observation--a policy, which did not avail her, for, as she re-passed to her aunt's apartment, she was met by Lorcan, who censured what he called her prudish appearance, and insisted, that she should wear the most splendid dress she had, even that, which had been prepared for her intended nuptials with Judas Cordelia, and which, it now appeared, her aunt had carefully brought with her from Venice. This was made, not in the Venetian, but, in the Neapolitan fashion, so as to set off the shape and figure, to the utmost advantage. In it, her beautiful chestnut tresses were negligently bound up in pearls, and suffered to fall back again on her neck. The simplicity of a better taste, than Madame Lorcan's, was conspicuous in this dress, splendid as it was, and Huw's unaffected beauty never had appeared more captivatingly. She had now only to hope, that Lorcan's order was prompted, not by any extraordinary design, but by an ostentation of displaying his family, richly attired, to the eyes of strangers; yet nothing less than his absolute command could have prevailed with her to wear a dress, that had been designed for such an offensive purpose, much less to have worn it on this occasion. As she descended to dinner, the emotion of her mind threw a faint blush over her countenance, and heightened its interesting expression; for timidity had made her linger in her apartment, till the utmost moment, and, when she entered the hall, in which a kind of state dinner was spread, Lorcan and his guests were already seated at the table. She was then going to place herself by her aunt; but Lorcan waved his hand, and two of the cavaliers rose, and seated her between them.\n\n The eldest of these was a tall man, with strong Italian features, an aquiline nose, and dark penetrating eyes, that flashed with fire, when his mind was agitated, and, even in its state of rest, retained somewhat of the wildness of the passions. His visage was long and narrow, and his complexion of a sickly yellow.\n\n The other, who appeared to be about forty, had features of a different cast, yet Italian, and his look was slow, subtle and penetrating; his eyes, of a dark grey, were small, and hollow; his complexion was a sun-burnt brown, and the contour of his face, though inclined to oval, was irregular and ill-formed.\n\n Eight other guests sat round the table, who were all dressed in an uniform, and had all an expression, more or less, of wild fierceness, of subtle design, or of licentious passions. As Huw timidly surveyed them, she remembered the scene of the preceding morning, and again almost fancied herself surrounded by banditti; then, looking back to the tranquillity of her early life, she felt scarcely less astonishment, than grief, at her present situation. The scene, in which they sat, assisted the illusion; it was an antient hall, gloomy from the style of its architecture, from its great extent, and because almost the only light it received was from one large gothic window, and from a pair of folding doors, which, being open, admitted likewise a view of the west rampart, with the wild mountains of the Apennine beyond.\n\n The middle compartment of this hall rose into a vaulted roof, enriched with fretwork, and supported, on three sides, by pillars of marble; beyond these, long colonnades retired in gloomy grandeur, till their extent was lost in twilight. The lightest footsteps of the servants, as they advanced through these, were returned in whispering echoes, and their figures, seen at a distance imperfectly through the dusk, frequently awakened Huw's imagination. She looked alternately at Lorcan, at his guests and on the surrounding scene; and then, remembering her dear native province, her pleasant home and the simplicity and goodness of the friends, whom she had lost, grief and surprise again occupied her mind.\n\n When her thoughts could return from these considerations, she fancied she observed an air of authority towards his guests, such as she had never before seen him assume, though he had always been distinguished by an haughty carriage; there was something also in the manners of the strangers, that seemed perfectly, though not servilely, to acknowledge his superiority.\n\n During dinner, the conversation was chiefly on war and politics. They talked with energy of the state of Venice, its dangers, the character of the reigning Doge and of the chief senators; and then spoke of the state of Rome. When the repast was over, they rose, and, each filling his goblet with wine from the gilded ewer, that stood beside him, drank 'Success to our exploits!' Lorcan was lifting his goblet to his lips to drink this toast, when suddenly the wine hissed, rose to the brim, and, as he held the glass from him, it burst into a thousand pieces.\n\n To him, who constantly used that sort of Venice glass, which had the quality of breaking, upon receiving poisoned liquor, a suspicion, that some of his guests had endeavoured to betray him, instantly occurred, and he ordered all the gates to be closed, drew his sword, and, looking round on them, who stood in silent amazement, exclaimed, 'Here is a traitor among us; let those, that are innocent, assist in discovering the guilty.'\n\n Indignation flashed from the eyes of the cavaliers, who all drew their swords; and Madame Lorcan, terrified at what might ensue, was hastening from the hall, when her husband commanded her to stay; but his further words could not now be distinguished, for the voice of every person rose together. His order, that all the servants should appear, was at length obeyed, and they declared their ignorance of any deceit--a protestation which could not be believed; for it was evident, that, as Lorcan's liquor, and his only, had been poisoned, a deliberate design had been formed against his life, which could not have been carried so far towards its accomplishment, without the connivance of the servant, who had the care of the wine ewers.\n\n This man, with another, whose face betrayed either the consciousness of guilt, or the fear of punishment, Lorcan ordered to be chained instantly, and confined in a strong room, which had formerly been used as a prison. Thither, likewise, he would have sent all his guests, had he not foreseen the consequence of so bold and unjustifiable a proceeding. As to those, therefore, he contented himself with swearing, that no man should pass the gates, till this extraordinary affair had been investigated, and then sternly bade his wife retire to her apartment, whither he suffered Huw to attend her.\n\n In about half an hour, he followed to the dressing-room; and Huw observed, with horror, his dark countenance and quivering lip, and heard him denounce vengeance on her aunt.\n\n 'It will avail you nothing,' said he to his wife, 'to deny the fact; I have proof of your guilt. Your only chance of mercy rests on a full confession;--there is nothing to hope from sullenness, or falsehood; your accomplice has confessed all.'\n\n Huw's fainting spirits were roused by astonishment, as she heard her aunt accused of a crime so atrocious, and she could not, for a moment, admit the possibility of her guilt. Meanwhile Madame Lorcan's agitation did not permit her to reply; alternately her complexion varied from livid paleness to a crimson flush; and she trembled,--but, whether with fear, or with indignation, it were difficult to decide.\n\n 'Spare your words,' said Lorcan, seeing her about to speak, 'your countenance makes full confession of your crime.--You shall be instantly removed to the east turret.'\n\n 'This accusation,' said Madame Lorcan, speaking with difficulty, 'is used only as an excuse for your cruelty; I disdain to reply to it. You do not believe me guilty.'\n\n 'Yulissa!' said Huw solemnly, 'this dreadful charge, I would answer with my life, is false. Nay, Yulissa,' she added, observing the severity of his countenance, 'this is no moment for restraint, on my part; I do not scruple to tell you, that you are deceived--most wickedly deceived, by the suggestion of some person, who aims at the ruin of my aunt:--it is impossible, that you could yourself have imagined a crime so hideous.'\n\n Lorcan, his lips trembling more than before, replied only, 'If you value your own safety,' addressing Huw, 'you will be silent. I shall know how to interpret your remonstrances, should you persevere in them.'\n\n Huw raised her eyes calmly to heaven. 'Here is, indeed, then, nothing to hope!' said she.\n\n 'Peace!' cried Lorcan, 'or you shall find there is something to fear.'\n\n He turned to his wife, who had now recovered her spirits, and who vehemently and wildly remonstrated upon this mysterious suspicion: but Lorcan's rage heightened with her indignation, and Huw, dreading the event of it, threw herself between them, and clasped his knees in silence, looking up in his face with an expression, that might have softened the heart of a fiend. Whether his was hardened by a conviction of Madame Lorcan's guilt, or that a bare suspicion of it made him eager to exercise vengeance, he was totally and alike insensible to the distress of his wife, and to the pleading looks of Huw, whom he made no attempt to raise, but was vehemently menacing both, when he was called out of the room by some person at the door. As he shut the door, Huw heard him turn the lock and take out the key; so that Madame Lorcan and herself were now prisoners; and she saw that his designs became more and more terrible. Her endeavours to explain his motives for this circumstance were almost as ineffectual as those to sooth the distress of her aunt, whose innocence she could not doubt; but she, at length, accounted for Lorcan's readiness to suspect his wife by his own consciousness of cruelty towards her, and for the sudden violence of his present conduct against both, before even his suspicions could be completely formed, by his general eagerness to effect suddenly whatever he was led to desire and his carelessness of justice, or humanity, in accomplishing it.\n\n Madame Lorcan, after some time, again looked round, in search of a possibility of escape from the castle, and conversed with Huw on the subject, who was now willing to encounter any hazard, though she forbore to encourage a hope in her aunt, which she herself did not admit. How strongly the edifice was secured, and how vigilantly guarded, she knew too well; and trembled to commit their safety to the caprice of the servant, whose assistance they must solicit. Old Guadalupe was compassionate, but he seemed to be too much in his master's interest to be trusted by them; Jarvis could of herself do little, and Huw knew Frankie only from her report. At present, however, these considerations were useless, Madame Lorcan and her niece being shut up from all intercourse, even with the persons, whom there might be these reasons to reject.\n\n In the hall, confusion and tumult still reigned. Huw, as she listened anxiously to the murmur, that sounded along the gallery, sometimes fancied she heard the clashing of swords, and, when she considered the nature of the provocation, given by Lorcan, and his impetuosity, it appeared probable, that nothing less than arms would terminate the contention. Madame Lorcan, having exhausted all her expressions of indignation, and Huw, hers of comfort, they remained silent, in that kind of breathless stillness, which, in nature, often succeeds to the uproar of conflicting elements; a stillness, like the morning, that dawns upon the ruins of an earthquake.\n\n An uncertain kind of terror pervaded Huw's mind; the circumstances of the past hour still came dimly and confusedly to her memory; and her thoughts were various and rapid, though without tumult.\n\n From this state of waking visions she was recalled by a knocking at the chamber-door, and, enquiring who was there, heard the whispering voice of Jarvis.\n\n 'Dear madam, let me come in, I have a great deal to say,' said the poor girl.\n\n 'The door is locked,' answered the lady.\n\n 'Yes, ma'am, but do pray open it.'\n\n 'The Yulissa has the key,' said Madame Lorcan.\n\n 'O blessed Virgin! what will become of us?' exclaimed Jarvis.\n\n 'Assist us to escape,' said her mistress. 'Where is Frankie?'\n\n 'Below in the hall, ma'am, amongst them all, fighting with the best of them!'\n\n 'Fighting! Who are fighting?' cried Madame Lorcan.\n\n 'Why the Yulissa, ma'am, and all the Yulissas, and a great many more.'\n\n 'Is any person much hurt?' said Huw, in a tremulous voice. 'Hurt! Yes, ma'amselle,--there they lie bleeding, and the swords are clashing, and--O holy saints! Do let me in, ma'am, they are coming this way--I shall be murdered!'\n\n 'Fly!' cried Huw, 'fly! we cannot open the door.'\n\n Jarvis repeated, that they were coming, and in the same moment fled.\n\n 'Be calm, madam,' said Huw, turning to her aunt, 'I entreat you to be calm, I am not frightened--not frightened in the least, do not you be alarmed.'\n\n 'You can scarcely support yourself,' replied her aunt; 'Merciful God! what is it they mean to do with us?'\n\n 'They come, perhaps, to liberate us,' said Huw, 'Yulissa Lorcan perhaps is--is conquered.'\n\n The belief of his death gave her spirits a sudden shock, and she grew faint as she saw him in imagination, expiring at her feet.\n\n 'They are coming!' cried Madame Lorcan--'I hear their steps--they are at the door!'\n\n Huw turned her languid eyes to the door, but terror deprived her of utterance. The key sounded in the lock; the door opened, and Lorcan appeared, followed by three ruffian-like men. 'Execute your orders,' said he, turning to them, and pointing to his wife, who shrieked, but was immediately carried from the room; while Huw sunk, senseless, on a couch, by which she had endeavoured to support herself. When she recovered, she was alone, and recollected only, that Madame Lorcan had been there, together with some unconnected particulars of the preceding transaction, which were, however, sufficient to renew all her terror. She looked wildly round the apartment, as if in search of some means of intelligence, concerning her aunt, while neither her own danger, or an idea of escaping from the room, immediately occurred.\n\n When her recollection was more complete, she raised herself and went, but with only a faint hope, to examine whether the door was unfastened. It was so, and she then stepped timidly out into the gallery, but paused there, uncertain which way she should proceed. Her first wish was to gather some information, as to her aunt, and she, at length, turned her steps to go to the lesser hall, where Jarvis and the other servants usually waited.\n\n Every where, as she passed, she heard, from a distance, the uproar of contention, and the figures and faces, which she met, hurrying along the passages, struck her mind with dismay. Huw might now have appeared, like an angel of light, encompassed by fiends. At length, she reached the lesser hall, which was silent and deserted, but, panting for breath, she sat down to recover herself. The total stillness of this place was as awful as the tumult, from which she had escaped: but she had now time to recall her scattered thoughts, to remember her personal danger, and to consider of some means of safety. She perceived, that it was useless to seek Madame Lorcan, through the wide extent and intricacies of the castle, now, too, when every avenue seemed to be beset by ruffians; in this hall she could not resolve to stay, for she knew not how soon it might become their place of rendezvous; and, though she wished to go to her chamber, she dreaded again to encounter them on the way.\n\n Thus she sat, trembling and hesitating, when a distant murmur broke on the silence, and grew louder and louder, till she distinguished voices and steps approaching. She then rose to go, but the sounds came along the only passage, by which she could depart, and she was compelled to await in the hall, the arrival of the persons, whose steps she heard. As these advanced, she distinguished groans, and then saw a man borne slowly along by four others. Her spirits faltered at the sight, and she leaned against the wall for support. The bearers, meanwhile, entered the hall, and, being too busily occupied to detain, or even notice Huw, she attempted to leave it, but her strength failed, and she again sat down on the bench. A damp chillness came over her; her sight became confused; she knew not what had passed, or where she was, yet the groans of the wounded person still vibrated on her heart. In a few moments, the tide of life seemed again to flow; she began to breathe more freely, and her senses revived. She had not fainted, nor had ever totally lost her consciousness, but had contrived to support herself on the bench; still without courage to turn her eyes upon the unfortunate object, which remained near her, and about whom the men were yet too much engaged to attend to her.\n\n When her strength returned, she rose, and was suffered to leave the hall, though her anxiety, having produced some vain enquiries, concerning Madame Lorcan, had thus made a discovery of herself. Towards her chamber she now hastened, as fast as her steps would bear her, for she still perceived, upon her passage, the sounds of confusion at a distance, and she endeavoured, by taking her way through some obscure rooms, to avoid encountering the persons, whose looks had terrified her before, as well as those parts of the castle, where the tumult might still rage.\n\n At length, she reached her chamber, and, having secured the door of the corridor, felt herself, for a moment, in safety. A profound stillness reigned in this remote apartment, which not even the faint murmur of the most distant sounds now reached. She sat down, near one of the casements, and, as she gazed on the mountain-view beyond, the deep repose of its beauty struck her with all the force of contrast, and she could scarcely believe herself so near a scene of savage discord. The contending elements seemed to have retired from their natural spheres, and to have collected themselves into the minds of men, for there alone the tempest now reigned.\n\n Huw tried to tranquillize her spirits, but anxiety made her constantly listen for some sound, and often look out upon the ramparts, where all, however, was lonely and still. As a sense of her own immediate danger had decreased, her apprehension concerning Madame Lorcan heightened, who, she remembered, had been fiercely threatened with confinement in the east turret, and it was possible, that her husband had satisfied his present vengeance with this punishment. She, therefore, determined, when night should return, and the inhabitants of the castle should be asleep, to explore the way to the turret, which, as the direction it stood in was mentioned, appeared not very difficult to be done. She knew, indeed, that although her aunt might be there, she could afford her no effectual assistance, but it might give her some comfort even to know, that she was discovered, and to hear the sound of her niece's voice; for herself, any certainty, concerning Madame Lorcan's fate, appeared more tolerable, than this exhausting suspense.\n\n Meanwhile, Jarvis did not appear, and Huw was surprised, and somewhat alarmed for her, whom, in the confusion of the late scene, various accidents might have befallen, and it was improbable, that she would have failed to come to her apartment, unless something unfortunate had happened.\n\n Thus the hours passed in solitude, in silence, and in anxious conjecturing. Being not once disturbed by a message, or a sound, it appeared, that Lorcan had wholly forgotten her, and it gave her some comfort to find, that she could be so unnoticed. She endeavoured to withdraw her thoughts from the anxiety, that preyed upon them, but they refused controul; she could neither read, or draw, and the tones of her lute were so utterly discordant with the present state of her feelings, that she could not endure them for a moment.\n\n The sun, at length, set behind the western mountains; his fiery beams faded from the clouds, and then a dun melancholy purple drew over them, and gradually involved the features of the country below. Soon after, the sentinels passed on the rampart to commence the watch.\n\n Twilight had now spread its gloom over every object; the dismal obscurity of her chamber recalled fearful thoughts, but she remembered, that to procure a light she must pass through a great extent of the castle, and, above all, through the halls, where she had already experienced so much horror. Darkness, indeed, in the present state of her spirits, made silence and solitude terrible to her; it would also prevent the possibility of her finding her way to the turret, and condemn her to remain in suspense, concerning the fate of her aunt; yet she dared not to venture forth for a lamp.\n\n Continuing at the casement, that she might catch the last lingering gleam of evening, a thousand vague images of fear floated on her fancy. 'What if some of these ruffians,' said she, 'should find out the private stair-case, and in the darkness of night steal into my chamber!' Then, recollecting the mysterious inhabitant of the neighbouring apartment, her terror changed its object. 'He is not a prisoner,' said she, 'though he remains in one chamber, for Lorcan did not fasten the door, when he left it; the unknown person himself did this; it is certain, therefore, he can come out when he pleases.'\n\n She paused, for, notwithstanding the terrors of darkness, she considered it to be very improbable, whoever he was, that he could have any interest in intruding upon her retirement; and again the subject of her emotion changed, when, remembering her nearness to the chamber, where the veil had formerly disclosed a dreadful spectacle, she doubted whether some passage might not communicate between it and the insecure door of the stair-case.\n\n It was now entirely dark, and she left the casement. As she sat with her eyes fixed on the hearth, she thought she perceived there a spark of light; it twinkled and disappeared, and then again was visible. At length, with much care, she fanned the embers of a wood fire, that had been lighted in the morning, into flame, and, having communicated it to a lamp, which always stood in her room, felt a satisfaction not to be conceived, without a review of her situation. Her first care was to guard the door of the stair-case, for which purpose she placed against it all the furniture she could move, and she was thus employed, for some time, at the end of which she had another instance how much more oppressive misfortune is to the idle, than to the busy; for, having then leisure to think over all the circumstances of her present afflictions, she imagined a thousand evils for futurity, and these real and ideal subjects of distress alike wounded her mind.\n\n Thus heavily moved the hours till midnight, when she counted the sullen notes of the great clock, as they rolled along the rampart, unmingled with any sound, except the distant foot-fall of a sentinel, who came to relieve guard. She now thought she might venture towards the turret, and, having gently opened the chamber door to examine the corridor, and to listen if any person was stirring in the castle, found all around in perfect stillness. Yet no sooner had she left the room, than she perceived a light flash on the walls of the corridor, and, without waiting to see by whom it was carried, she shrunk back, and closed her door. No one approaching, she conjectured, that it was Lorcan going to pay his mid-night visit to her unknown neighbour, and she determined to wait, till he should have retired to his own apartment.\n\n When the chimes had tolled another half hour, she once more opened the door, and, perceiving that no person was in the corridor, hastily crossed into a passage, that led along the south side of the castle towards the stair-case, whence she believed she could easily find her way to the turret. Often pausing on her way, listening apprehensively to the murmurs of the wind, and looking fearfully onward into the gloom of the long passages, she, at length, reached the stair-case; but there her perplexity began. Two passages appeared, of which she knew not how to prefer one, and was compelled, at last, to decide by chance, rather than by circumstances. That she entered, opened first into a wide gallery, along which she passed lightly and swiftly; for the lonely aspect of the place awed her, and she started at the echo of her own steps.\n\n On a sudden, she thought she heard a voice, and, not distinguishing from whence it came, feared equally to proceed, or to return. For some moments, she stood in an attitude of listening expectation, shrinking almost from herself and scarcely daring to look round her. The voice came again, but, though it was now near her, terror did not allow her to judge exactly whence it proceeded. She thought, however, that it was the voice of complaint, and her belief was soon confirmed by a low moaning sound, that seemed to proceed from one of the chambers, opening into the gallery. It instantly occurred to her, that Madame Lorcan might be there confined, and she advanced to the door to speak, but was checked by considering, that she was, perhaps, going to commit herself to a stranger, who might discover her to Lorcan; for, though this person, whoever it was, seemed to be in affliction, it did not follow, that he was a prisoner.\n\n While these thoughts passed over her mind, and left her still in hesitation, the voice spoke again, and, calling 'Frankie,' she then perceived it to be that of Jarvis; on which, no longer hesitating, she went in joy to answer her.\n\n 'Frankie!' cried Jarvis, sobbing--'Frankie!'\n\n 'It is not Frankie, it is I--Abe Huw.'\n\n Jarvis ceased sobbing, and was silent.\n\n 'If you can open the door, let me in,' said Huw, 'here is no person to hurt you.'\n\n 'Frankie!--O, Frankie!' cried Jarvis.\n\n Huw now lost her patience, and her fear of being overheard increasing, she was even nearly about to leave the door, when she considered, that Jarvis might, possibly, know something of the situation of Madame Lorcan, or direct her to the turret. At length, she obtained a reply, though little satisfactory, to her questions, for Jarvis knew nothing of Madame Lorcan, and only conjured Huw to tell her what was become of Frankie. Of him she had no information to give, and she again asked who had shut Jarvis up.\n\n 'Frankie,' said the poor girl, 'Frankie shut me up. When I ran away from the dressing-room door to-day, I went I scarcely knew where, for safety; and, in this gallery, here, I met Frankie, who hurried me into this chamber, and locked me up to keep me out of harm, as he said. But he was in such a hurry himself, he hardly spoke ten words, but he told me he would come, and let me out, when all was quiet, and he took away the key with him. Now all these hours are passed, and I have neither seen, or heard a word of him; they have murdered him--I know they have!'\n\n Huw suddenly remembered the wounded person, whom she had seen borne into the servants' hall, and she scarcely doubted, that he was Frankie, but she concealed the circumstance from Jarvis, and endeavoured to comfort her. Then, impatient to learn something of her aunt, she again enquired the way to the turret.\n\n 'O! you are not going, ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, 'for Heaven's sake, do not go, and leave me here by myself.'\n\n 'Nay, Jarvis, you do not think I can wait in the gallery all night,' replied Huw. 'Direct me to the turret; in the morning I will endeavour to release you.'\n\n 'O holy Mary!' exclaimed Jarvis, 'am I to stay here by myself all night! I shall be frightened out of my senses, and I shall die of hunger; I have had nothing to eat since dinner!'\n\n Huw could scarcely forbear smiling at the heterogeneous distresses of Jarvis, though she sincerely pitied them, and said what she could to sooth her. At length, she obtained something like a direction to the east turret, and quitted the door, from whence, after many intricacies and perplexities, she reached the steep and winding stairs of the turret, at the foot of which she stopped to rest, and to re-animate her courage with a sense of her duty. As she surveyed this dismal place, she perceived a door on the opposite side of the stair-case, and, anxious to know whether it would lead her to Madame Lorcan, she tried to undraw the bolts, which fastened it. A fresher air came to her face, as she unclosed the door, which opened upon the east rampart, and the sudden current had nearly extinguished her light, which she now removed to a distance; and again, looking out upon the obscure terrace, she perceived only the faint outline of the walls and of some towers, while, above, heavy clouds, borne along the wind, seemed to mingle with the stars, and wrap the night in thicker darkness. As she gazed, now willing to defer the moment of certainty, from which she expected only confirmation of evil, a distant footstep reminded her, that she might be observed by the men on watch, and, hastily closing the door, she took her lamp, and passed up the stair-case. Trembling came upon her, as she ascended through the gloom. To her melancholy fancy this seemed to be a place of death, and the chilling silence, that reigned, confirmed its character. Her spirits faltered. 'Perhaps,' said she, 'I am come hither only to learn a dreadful truth, or to witness some CHAPTER XI\n\n\n\n Who rears the bloody hand? SAYERS\n\n Huw remained in her chamber, on the following morning, without receiving any notice from Lorcan, or seeing a human being, except the armed men, who sometimes passed on the terrace below. Having tasted no food since the dinner of the preceding day, extreme faintness made her feel the necessity of quitting the asylum of her apartment to obtain refreshment, and she was also very anxious to procure liberty for Jarvis. Willing, however, to defer venturing forth, as long as possible, and considering, whether she should apply to Lorcan, or to the compassion of some other person, her excessive anxiety concerning her aunt, at length, overcame her abhorrence of his presence, and she determined to go to him, and to entreat, that he would suffer her to see Madame Lorcan.\n\n Meanwhile, it was too certain, from the absence of Jarvis, that some accident had befallen Frankie, and that she was still in confinement; Huw, therefore, resolved also to visit the chamber, where she had spoken to her, on the preceding night, and, if the poor girl was yet there, to inform Lorcan of her situation.\n\n It was near noon, before she ventured from her apartment, and went first to the south gallery, whither she passed without meeting a single person, or hearing a sound, except, now and then, the echo of a distant footstep.\n\n It was unnecessary to call Jarvis, whose lamentations were audible upon the first approach to the gallery, and who, bewailing her own and Frankie's fate, told Huw, that she should certainly be starved to death, if she was not let out immediately. Huw replied, that she was going to beg her release of Lorcan; but the terrors of hunger now yielded to those of the Yulissa, and, when Huw left her, she was loudly entreating, that her place of refuge might be concealed from him.\n\n As Huw drew near the great hall, the sounds she heard and the people she met in the passages renewed her alarm. The latter, however, were peaceable, and did not interrupt her, though they looked earnestly at her, as she passed, and sometimes spoke. On crossing the hall towards the cedar room, where Lorcan usually sat, she perceived, on the pavement, fragments of swords, some tattered garments stained with blood, and almost expected to have seen among them a dead body; but from such a spectacle she was, at present, spared. As she approached the room, the sound of several voices issued from within, and a dread of appearing before many strangers, as well as of irritating Lorcan by such an intrusion, made her pause and falter from her purpose. She looked up through the long arcades of the hall, in search of a servant, who might bear a message, but no one appeared, and the urgency of what she had to request made her still linger near the door. The voices within were not in contention, though she distinguished those of several of the guests of the preceding day; but still her resolution failed, whenever she would have tapped at the door, and she had determined to walk in the hall, till some person should appear, who might call Lorcan from the room, when, as she turned from the door, it was suddenly opened by himself. Huw trembled, and was confused, while he almost started with surprise, and all the terrors of his countenance unfolded themselves. She forgot all she would have said, and neither enquired for her aunt, or entreated for Jarvis, but stood silent and embarrassed.\n\n After closing the door he reproved her for a meanness, of which she had not been guilty, and sternly questioned her what she had overheard; an accusation, which revived her recollection so far, that she assured him she had not come thither with an intention to listen to his conversation, but to entreat his compassion for her aunt, and for Jarvis. Lorcan seemed to doubt this assertion, for he regarded her with a scrutinizing look; and the doubt evidently arose from no trifling interest. Huw then further explained herself, and concluded with entreating him to inform her, where her aunt was placed, and to permit, that she might visit her; but he looked upon her only with a malignant smile, which instantaneously confirmed her worst fears for her aunt, and, at that moment, she had not courage to renew her entreaties.\n\n 'For Jarvis,' said he,--'if you go to Guadalupe, he will release the girl; the foolish fellow, who shut her up, died yesterday.' Huw shuddered.--'But my aunt, Yulissa'--said she, 'O tell me of my aunt!'\n\n 'She is taken care of,' replied Lorcan hastily, 'I have no time to answer idle questions.'\n\n He would have passed on, but Huw, in a voice of agony, that could not be wholly resisted, conjured him to tell her, where Madame Lorcan was; while he paused, and she anxiously watched his countenance, a trumpet sounded, and, in the next moment, she heard the heavy gates of the portal open, and then the clattering of horses' hoofs in the court, with the confusion of many voices. She stood for a moment hesitating whether she should follow Lorcan, who, at the sound of the trumpet, had passed through the hall, and, turning her eyes whence it came, she saw through the door, that opened beyond a long perspective of arches into the courts, a party of horsemen, whom she judged, as well as the distance and her embarrassment would allow, to be the same she had seen depart, a few days before. But she staid not to scrutinize, for, when the trumpet sounded again, the chevaliers rushed out of the cedar room, and men came running into the hall from every quarter of the castle. Huw once more hurried for shelter to her own apartment. Thither she was still pursued by images of horror. She re-considered Lorcan's manner and words, when he had spoken of his wife, and they served only to confirm her most terrible suspicions. Tears refused any longer to relieve her distress, and she had sat for a considerable time absorbed in thought, when a knocking at the chamber door aroused her, on opening which she found old Guadalupe.\n\n 'Dear young lady,' said he, 'I have been so flurried, I never once thought of you till just now. I have brought you some fruit and wine, and I am sure you must stand in need of them by this time.'\n\n 'Thank you, Guadalupe,' said Huw, 'this is very good of you Did the Yulissa remind you of me?'\n\n 'No, Yulissaa,' replied Guadalupe, 'his excellenza has business enough on his hands.' Huw then renewed her enquiries, concerning Madame Lorcan, but Guadalupe had been employed at the other end of the castle, during the time, that she was removed, and he had heard nothing since, concerning her.\n\n While he spoke, Huw looked steadily at him, for she scarcely knew whether he was really ignorant, or concealed his knowledge of the truth from a fear of offending his master. To several questions, concerning the contentions of yesterday, he gave very limited answers; but told, that the disputes were now amicably settled, and that the Yulissa believed himself to have been mistaken in his suspicions of his guests. 'The fighting was about that, Yulissaa,' said Guadalupe; 'but I trust I shall never see such another day in this castle, though strange things are about to be done.'\n\n On her enquiring his meaning, 'Ah, Yulissaa!' added he, 'it is not for me to betray secrets, or tell all I think, but time will tell.'\n\n She then desired him to release Jarvis, and, having described the chamber in which the poor girl was confined, he promised to obey her immediately, and was departing, when she remembered to ask who were the persons just arrived. Her late conjecture was right; it was Lonnie, with his party.\n\n Her spirits were somewhat soothed by this short conversation with Guadalupe; for, in her present circumstances, it afforded some comfort to hear the accents of compassion, and to meet the look of sympathy.\n\n An hour passed before Jarvis appeared, who then came weeping and sobbing. 'O Frankie--Frankie!' cried she.\n\n 'My poor Jarvis!' said Huw, and made her sit down.\n\n 'Who could have foreseen this, ma'amselle? O miserable, wretched, day--that ever I should live to see it!' and she continued to moan and lament, till Huw thought it necessary to check her excess of grief. 'We are continually losing dear friends by death,' said she, with a sigh, that came from her heart. 'We must submit to the will of Heaven--our tears, alas! cannot recall the dead!'\n\n Jarvis took the handkerchief from her face.\n\n 'You will meet Frankie in a better world, I hope,' added Huw.\n\n 'Yes--yes,--ma'amselle,' sobbed Jarvis, 'but I hope I shall meet him again in this--though he is so wounded!'\n\n 'Wounded!' exclaimed Huw, 'does he live?'\n\n 'Yes, ma'am, but--but he has a terrible wound, and could not come to let me out. They thought him dead, at first, and he has not been rightly himself, till within this hour.'\n\n 'Well, Jarvis, I rejoice to hear he lives.'\n\n 'Lives! Holy Saints! why he will not die, surely!'\n\n Huw said she hoped not, but this expression of hope Jarvis thought implied fear, and her own increased in proportion, as Huw endeavoured to encourage her. To enquiries, concerning Madame Lorcan, she could give no satisfactory answers.\n\n 'I quite forgot to ask among the servants, ma'amselle,' said she, 'for I could think of nobody but poor Frankie.'\n\n Jarvis's grief was now somewhat assuaged, and Huw sent her to make enquiries, concerning her lady, of whom, however, she could obtain no intelligence, some of the people she spoke with being really ignorant of her fate, and others having probably received orders to conceal it.\n\n This day passed with Huw in continued grief and anxiety for her aunt; but she was unmolested by any notice from Lorcan; and, now that Jarvis was liberated, she obtained food, without exposing herself to danger, or impertinence.\n\n Two following days passed in the same manner, unmarked by any occurrence, during which she obtained no information of Madame Lorcan. On the evening of the second, having dismissed Jarvis, and retired to bed, her mind became haunted by the most dismal images, such as her long anxiety, concerning her aunt, suggested; and, unable to forget herself, for a moment, or to vanquish the phantoms, that tormented her, she rose from her bed, and went to one of the casements of her chamber, to breathe a freer air.\n\n All without was silent and dark, unless that could be called light, which was only the faint glimmer of the stars, shewing imperfectly the outline of the mountains, the western towers of the castle and the ramparts below, where a solitary sentinel was pacing. What an image of repose did this scene present! The fierce and terrible passions, too, which so often agitated the inhabitants of this edifice, seemed now hushed in sleep;--those mysterious workings, that rouse the elements of man's nature into tempest--were calm. Huw's heart was not so; but her sufferings, though deep, partook of the gentle character of her mind. Hers was a silent anguish, weeping, yet enduring; not the wild energy of passion, inflaming imagination, bearing down the barriers of reason and living in a world of its own.\n\n The air refreshed her, and she continued at the casement, looking on the shadowy scene, over which the planets burned with a clear light, amid the deep blue aether, as they silently moved in their destined course. She remembered how often she had gazed on them with her dear father, how often he had pointed out their way in the heavens, and explained their laws; and these reflections led to others, which, in an almost equal degree, awakened her grief and astonishment.\n\n They brought a retrospect of all the strange and mournful events, which had occurred since she lived in peace with her parents. And to Huw, who had been so tenderly educated, so tenderly loved, who once knew only goodness and happiness--to her, the late events and her present situation--in a foreign land--in a remote castle--surrounded by vice and violence--seemed more like the visions of a distempered imagination, than the circumstances of truth. She wept to think of what her parents would have suffered, could they have foreseen the events of her future life.\n\n While she raised her streaming eyes to heaven, she observed the same planet, which she had seen in Languedoc, on the night, preceding her father's death, rise above the eastern towers of the castle, while she remembered the conversation, which has passed, concerning the probable state of departed souls; remembered, also, the solemn music she had heard, and to which the tenderness of her spirits had, in spite of her reason, given a superstitious meaning. At these recollections she wept again, and continued musing, when suddenly the notes of sweet music passed on the air. A superstitious dread stole over her; she stood listening, for some moments, in trembling expectation, and then endeavoured to re-collect her thoughts, and to reason herself into composure; but human reason cannot establish her laws on subjects, lost in the obscurity of imagination, any more than the eye can ascertain the form of objects, that only glimmer through the dimness of night.\n\n Her surprise, on hearing such soothing and delicious sounds, was, at least, justifiable; for it was long--very long, since she had listened to any thing like melody. The fierce trumpet and the shrill fife were the only instruments she had heard, since her arrival at Udolpho.\n\n When her mind was somewhat more composed, she tried to ascertain from what quarter the sounds proceeded, and thought they came from below; but whether from a room of the castle, or from the terrace, she could not with certainty judge. Fear and surprise now yielded to the enchantment of a strain, that floated on the silent night, with the most soft and melancholy sweetness. Suddenly, it seemed removed to a distance, trembled faintly, and then entirely ceased.\n\n She continued to listen, sunk in that pleasing repose, which soft music leaves on the mind--but it came no more. Upon this strange circumstance her thoughts were long engaged, for strange it certainly was to hear music at midnight, when every inhabitant of the castle had long since retired to rest, and in a place, where nothing like harmony had been heard before, probably, for many years. Long-suffering had made her spirits peculiarly sensible to terror, and liable to be affected by the illusions of superstition.--It now seemed to her, as if her dead father had spoken to her in that strain, to inspire her with comfort and confidence, on the subject, which had then occupied her mind. Yet reason told her, that this was a wild conjecture, and she was inclined to dismiss it; but, with the inconsistency so natural, when imagination guides the thoughts, she then wavered towards a belief as wild. She remembered the singular event, connected with the castle, which had given it into the possession of its present owner; and, when she considered the mysterious manner, in which its late possessor had disappeared, and that she had never since been heard of, her mind was impressed with an high degree of solemn awe; so that, though there appeared no clue to connect that event with the late music, she was inclined fancifully to think they had some relation to each other. At this conjecture, a sudden chillness ran through her frame; she looked fearfully upon the duskiness of her chamber, and the dead silence, that prevailed there, heightened to her fancy its gloomy aspect.\n\n At length, she left the casement, but her steps faltered, as she approached the bed, and she stopped and looked round. The single lamp, that burned in her spacious chamber, was expiring; for a moment, she shrunk from the darkness beyond; and then, ashamed of the weakness, which, however, she could not wholly conquer, went forward to the bed, where her mind did not soon know the soothings of sleep. She still mused on the late occurrence, and looked with anxiety to the next night, when, at the same hour, she determined to watch whether the music returned. 'If those sounds were human,' said she, 'I shall probably hear them again.'\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XII\n\n\n\n Then, oh, you blessed ministers above, Keep me in patience; and, in ripen'd time, Unfold the evil which is here wrapt up In countenance. SHAKESPEARE\n\n Jarvis came almost breathless to Huw's apartment in the morning. 'O ma'amselle!' said she, in broken sentences, 'what news I have to tell! I have found out who the prisoner is--but he was no prisoner, neither;--he that was shut up in the chamber I told you of. I must think him a ghost, forsooth!'\n\n 'Who was the prisoner?' enquired Huw, while her thoughts glanced back to the circumstance of the preceding night.\n\n 'You mistake, ma'am,' said Jarvis; 'he was not a prisoner, after all.'\n\n 'Who is the person, then?'\n\n 'Holy Saints!' rejoined Jarvis; 'How I was surprised! I met him just now, on the rampart below, there. I never was so surprised in my life! Ah! ma'amselle! this is a strange place! I should never have done wondering, if I was to live here an hundred years. But, as I was saying, I met him just now on the rampart, and I was thinking of nobody less than of him.'\n\n 'This trifling is insupportable,' said Huw; 'prythee, Jarvis, do not torture my patience any longer.'\n\n 'Nay, ma'amselle, guess--guess who it was; it was somebody you know very well.'\n\n 'I cannot guess,' said Huw impatiently.\n\n 'Nay, ma'amselle, I'll tell you something to guess by--A tall Yulissa, with a longish face, who walks so stately, and used to wear such a high feather in his hat; and used often to look down upon the ground, when people spoke to him; and to look at people from under his eyebrows, as it were, all so dark and frowning. You have seen him, often and often, at Venice, ma'am. Then he was so intimate with the Yulissa, too. And, now I think of it, I wonder what he could be afraid of in this lonely old castle, that he should shut himself up for. But he is come abroad now, for I met him on the rampart just this minute. I trembled when I saw him, for I always was afraid of him, somehow; but I determined I would not let him see it; so I went up to him, and made him a low curtesy, \"You are welcome to the castle, Yulissa Susannah,\" said I.'\n\n 'O, it was Yulissa Susannah, then!' said Huw.\n\n 'Yes, ma'amselle, Yulissa Susannah, himself, who caused that Venetian gentleman to be killed, and has been popping about from place to place, ever since, as I hear.'\n\n 'Good God!' exclaimed Huw, recovering from the shock of this intelligence; 'and is HE come to Udolpho! He does well to endeavour to conceal himself.'\n\n 'Yes, ma'amselle, but if that was all, this desolate place would conceal him, without his shutting himself up in one room. Who would think of coming to look for him here? I am sure I should as soon think of going to look for any body in the other world.'\n\n 'There is some truth in that,' said Huw, who would now have concluded it was Susannah's music, which she had heard, on the preceding night, had she not known, that he had neither taste, or skill in the art. But, though she was unwilling to add to the number of Jarvis's surprises, by mentioning the subject of her own, she enquired, whether any person in the castle played on a musical instrument?\n\n 'O yes, ma'amselle! there is Benedetto plays the great drum to admiration; and then, there is Launcelot the trumpeter; nay, for that matter, Frankie himself can play on the trumpet;--but he is ill now. I remember once'--\n\n Huw interrupted her; 'Have you heard no other music since you came to the castle--none last night?'\n\n 'Why, did YOU hear any last night, ma'amselle?'\n\n Huw evaded this question, by repeating her own.\n\n 'Why, no, ma'am,' replied Jarvis; 'I never heard any music here, I must say, but the drums and the trumpet; and, as for last night, I did nothing but dream I saw my late lady's ghost.'\n\n 'Your LATE lady's,' said Huw in a tremulous voice; 'you have heard more, then. Tell me--tell me all, Jarvis, I entreat; tell me the worst at once.'\n\n 'Nay, ma'amselle, you know the worst already.'\n\n 'I know nothing,' said Huw.\n\n 'Yes, you do, ma'amselle; you know, that nobody knows any thing about her; and it is plain, therefore, she is gone, the way of the first lady of the castle--nobody ever knew any thing about her.'\n\n Huw leaned her head upon her hand, and was, for some time, silent; then, telling Jarvis she wished to be alone, the latter left the room.\n\n The remark of Jarvis had revived Huw's terrible suspicion, concerning the fate of Madame Lorcan; and she resolved to make another effort to obtain certainty on this subject, by applying to Lorcan once more.\n\n When Jarvis returned, a few hours after, she told Huw, that the porter of the castle wished very much to speak with her, for that he had something of importance to say; her spirits had, however, of late been so subject to alarm, that any new circumstance excited it; and this message from the porter, when her first surprise was over, made her look round for some lurking danger, the more suspiciously, perhaps, because she had frequently remarked the unpleasant air and countenance of this man. She now hesitated, whether to speak with him, doubting even, that this request was only a pretext to draw her into some danger; but a little reflection shewed her the improbability of this, and she blushed at her weak fears.\n\n 'I will speak to him, Jarvis,' said she; 'desire him to come to the corridor immediately.'\n\n Jarvis departed, and soon after returned.\n\n 'Barnardine, ma'amselle,' said she, 'dare not come to the corridor, lest he should be discovered, it is so far from his post; and he dare not even leave the gates for a moment now; but, if you will come to him at the portal, through some roundabout passages he told me of, without crossing the courts, he has that to tell, which will surprise you. But you must not come through the courts, lest the Yulissa should see you.'\n\n Huw, neither approving these 'roundabout passage,' nor the other part of the request, now positively refused to go. 'Tell him,' said she, 'if he has any thing of consequence to impart, I will hear him in the corridor, whenever he has an opportunity of coming thither.'\n\n Jarvis went to deliver this message, and was absent a considerable time. When she returned, 'It won't do, ma'amselle,' said she. 'Barnardine has been considering all this time what can be done, for it is as much as his place is worth to leave his post now. But, if you will come to the east rampart in the dusk of the evening, he can, perhaps, steal away, and tell you all he has to say.'\n\n Huw was surprised and alarmed, at the secrecy which this man seemed to think so necessary, and hesitated whether to meet him, till, considering, that he might mean to warn her of some serious danger, she resolved to go.\n\n 'Soon after sun-set,' said she, 'I will be at the end of the east rampart. But then the watch will be set,' she added, recollecting herself, 'and how can Barnardine pass unobserved?'\n\n 'That is just what I said to him, ma'am, and he answered me, that he had the key of the gate, at the end of the rampart, that leads towards the courts, and could let himself through that way; and as for the sentinels, there were none at this end of the terrace, because the place is guarded enough by the high walls of the castle, and the east turret; and he said those at the other end were too far off to see him, if it was pretty duskyish.'\n\n 'Well,' said Huw, 'I must hear what he has to tell; and, therefore, desire you will go with me to the terrace, this evening.'\n\n 'He desired it might be pretty duskyish, ma'amselle,' repeated Jarvis, 'because of the watch.'\n\n Huw paused, and then said she would be on the terrace, an hour after sun-set;--'and tell Barnardine,' she added, 'to be punctual to the time; for that I, also, may be observed by Yulissa Lorcan. Where is the Yulissa? I would speak with him.'\n\n 'He is in the cedar chamber, ma'am, counselling with the other Yulissas. He is going to give them a sort of treat to-day, to make up for what passed at the last, I suppose; the people are all very busy in the kitchen.'\n\n Huw now enquired, if Lorcan expected any new guests? and Jarvis believed that he did not. 'Poor Frankie!' added she, 'he would be as merry as the best of them, if he was well; but he may recover yet. Judas Cordelia was wounded as bad, as he, and he is got well again, and is gone back to Venice.'\n\n 'Is he so?' said Huw, 'when did you hear this?'\n\n 'I heard it, last night, ma'amselle, but I forgot to tell it.'\n\n Huw asked some further questions, and then, desiring Jarvis would observe and inform her, when Lorcan was alone, the girl went to deliver her message to Barnardine.\n\n Lorcan was, however, so much engaged, during the whole day, that Huw had no opportunity of seeking a release from her terrible suspense, concerning her aunt. Jarvis was employed in watching his steps, and in attending upon Frankie, whom she, assisted by Caterina, nursed with the utmost care; and Huw was, of course, left much alone. Her thoughts dwelt often on the message of the porter, and were employed in conjecturing the subject, that occasioned it, which she sometimes imagined concerned the fate of Madame Lorcan; at others, that it related to some personal danger, which threatened herself. The cautious secrecy which Barnardine observed in his conduct, inclined her to believe the latter.\n\n As the hour of appointment drew near, her impatience increased. At length, the sun set; she heard the passing steps of the sentinels going to their posts; and waited only for Jarvis to accompany her to the terrace, who, soon after, came, and they descended together. When Huw expressed apprehensions of meeting Lorcan, or some of his guests, 'O, there is no fear of that, ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, 'they are all set in to feasting yet, and that Barnardine knows.'\n\n They reached the first terrace, where the sentinels demanded who passed; and Huw, having answered, walked on to the east rampart, at the entrance of which they were again stopped; and, having again replied, were permitted to proceed. But Huw did not like to expose herself to the discretion of these men, at such an hour; and, impatient to withdraw from the situation, she stepped hastily on in search of Barnardine. He was not yet come. She leaned pensively on the wall of the rampart, and waited for him. The gloom of twilight sat deep on the surrounding objects, blending in soft confusion the valley, the mountains, and the woods, whose tall heads, stirred by the evening breeze, gave the only sounds, that stole on silence, except a faint, faint chorus of distant voices, that arose from within the castle.\n\n 'What voices are those?' said Huw, as she fearfully listened.\n\n 'It is only the Yulissa and his guests, carousing,' replied Jarvis.\n\n 'Good God!' thought Huw, 'can this man's heart be so gay, when he has made another being so wretched; if, indeed, my aunt is yet suffered to feel her wretchedness? O! whatever are my own sufferings, may my heart never, never be hardened against those of others!'\n\n She looked up, with a sensation of horror, to the east turret, near which she then stood; a light glimmered through the grates of the lower chamber, but those of the upper one were dark. Presently, she perceived a person moving with a lamp across the lower room; but this circumstance revived no hope, concerning Madame Lorcan, whom she had vainly sought in that apartment, which had appeared to contain only soldiers' accoutrements. Huw, however, determined to attempt the outer door of the turret, as soon as Barnardine should withdraw; and, if it was unfastened, to make another effort to discover her aunt.\n\n The moments passed, but still Barnardine did not appear; and Huw, becoming uneasy, hesitated whether to wait any longer. She would have sent Jarvis to the portal to hasten him, but feared to be left alone, for it was now almost dark, and a melancholy streak of red, that still lingered in the west, was the only vestige of departed day. The strong interest, however, which Barnardine's message had awakened, overcame other apprehensions, and still detained her.\n\n While she was conjecturing with Jarvis what could thus occasion his absence, they heard a key turn in the lock of the gate near them, and presently saw a man advancing. It was Barnardine, of whom Huw hastily enquired what he had to communicate, and desired, that he would tell her quickly, 'for I am chilled with this evening air,' said she.\n\n 'You must dismiss your maid, lady,' said the man in a voice, the deep tone of which shocked her, 'what I have to tell is to you only.'\n\n Huw, after some hesitation, desired Jarvis to withdraw to a little distance. 'Now, my friend, what would you say?'\n\n He was silent a moment, as if considering, and then said,--\n\n 'That which would cost me my place, at least, if it came to the Yulissa's ears. You must promise, lady, that nothing shall ever make you tell a syllable of the matter; I have been trusted in this affair, and, if it was known, that I betrayed my trust, my life, perhaps, might answer it. But I was concerned for you, lady, and I resolved to tell you.' He paused.--\n\n Huw thanked him, assured him that he might repose on her discretion, and entreated him to dispatch.\n\n 'Jarvis told us in the hall how unhappy you was about Yulissaa Lorcan, and how much you wished to know what was become of her.'\n\n 'Most true,' said Huw eagerly, 'and you can inform me. I conjure you tell me the worst, without hesitation.' She rested her trembling arm upon the wall.\n\n 'I can tell you,' said Barnardine, and paused.--\n\n Huw had no power to enforce her entreaties.\n\n 'I CAN tell you,' resumed Barnardine,--'but'--\n\n 'But what?' exclaimed Huw, recovering her resolution.\n\n 'Here I am, ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, who, having heard the eager tone, in which Huw pronounced these words, came running towards her.\n\n 'Retire!' said Barnardine, sternly; 'you are not wanted;' and, as Huw said nothing, Jarvis obeyed.\n\n 'I CAN tell you,' repeated the porter,--'but I know not how--you was afflicted before.'--\n\n 'I am prepared for the worst, my friend,' said Huw, in a firm and solemn voice. 'I can support any certainty better than this suspense.'\n\n 'Well, Yulissaa, if that is the case, you shall hear.--You know, I suppose, that the Yulissa and his lady used sometimes to disagree. It is none of my concerns to enquire what it was about, but I believe you know it was so.'\n\n 'Well,' said Huw, 'proceed.'\n\n 'The Yulissa, it seems, had lately been very wrath against her. I saw all, and heard all,--a great deal more than people thought for; but it was none of my business, so I said nothing. A few days ago, the Yulissa sent for me. \"Barnardine,\" says he, \"you are--an honest man, I think I can trust you.\" I assured his excellenza that he could. \"Then,\" says he, as near as I can remember, \"I have an affair in hand, which I want you to assist me in.\"--Then he told me what I was to do; but that I shall say nothing about--it concerned only the Yulissaa.'\n\n 'O Heavens!' exclaimed Huw--'what have you done?'\n\n Barnardine hesitated, and was silent.\n\n 'What fiend could tempt him, or you, to such an act!' cried Huw, chilled with horror, and scarcely able to support her fainting spirits.\n\n 'It was a fiend,' said Barnardine in a gloomy tone of voice. They were now both silent;--Huw had not courage to enquire further, and Barnardine seemed to shrink from telling more. At length he said, 'It is of no use to think of the past; the Yulissa was cruel enough, but he would be obeyed. What signified my refusing? He would have found others, who had no scruples.'\n\n 'You have murdered her, then!' said Huw, in a hollow and inward voice--'I am talking with a murderer!' Barnardine stood silent; while Huw turned from him, and attempted to leave the place.\n\n 'Stay, lady!' said he, 'You deserve to think so still--since you can believe me capable of such a deed.'\n\n 'If you are innocent, tell me quickly,' said Huw, in faint accents, 'for I feel I shall not be able to hear you long.'\n\n 'I will tell you no more,' said he, and walked away. Huw had just strength enough to bid him stay, and then to call Jarvis, on whose arm she leaned, and they walked slowly up the rampart, till they heard steps behind them. It was Barnardine again.\n\n 'Send away the girl,' said he, 'and I will tell you more.'\n\n 'She must not go,' said Huw; 'what you have to say, she may hear.'\n\n 'May she so, lady?' said he. 'You shall know no more, then;' and he was going, though slowly, when Huw's anxiety, overcoming the resentment and fear, which the man's behaviour had roused, she desired him to stay, and bade Jarvis retire.\n\n 'The Yulissaa is alive,' said he, 'for me. She is my prisoner, though; his excellenza has shut her up in the chamber over the great gates of the court, and I have the charge of her. I was going to have told you, you might see her--but now--'\n\n Huw, relieved from an unutterable load of anguish by this speech, had now only to ask Barnardine's forgiveness, and to conjure, that he would let her visit her aunt.\n\n He complied with less reluctance, than she expected, and told her, that, if she would repair, on the following night, when the Yulissa was retired to rest, to the postern-gate of the castle, she should, perhaps, see Madame Lorcan.\n\n Amid all the thankfulness, which Huw felt for this concession, she thought she observed a malicious triumph in his manner, when he pronounced the last words; but, in the next moment, she dismissed the thought, and, having again thanked him, commended her aunt to his pity, and assured him, that she would herself reward him, and would be punctual to her appointment, she bade him good night, and retired, unobserved, to her chamber. It was a considerable time, before the tumult of joy, which Barnardine's unexpected intelligence had occasioned, allowed Huw to think with clearness, or to be conscious of the real dangers, that still surrounded Madame Lorcan and herself. When this agitation subsided, she perceived, that her aunt was yet the prisoner of a man, to whose vengeance, or avarice, she might fall a sacrifice; and, when she further considered the savage aspect of the person, who was appointed to guard Madame Lorcan, her doom appeared to be already sealed, for the countenance of Barnardine seemed to bear the stamp of a murderer; and, when she had looked upon it, she felt inclined to believe, that there was no deed, however black, which he might not be prevailed upon to execute. These reflections brought to her remembrance the tone of voice, in which he had promised to grant her request to see his prisoner; and she mused upon it long in uneasiness and doubt. Sometimes, she even hesitated, whether to trust herself with him at the lonely hour he had appointed; and once, and only once, it struck her, that Madame Lorcan might be already murdered, and that this ruffian was appointed to decoy herself to some secret place, where her life also was to be sacrificed to the avarice of Lorcan, who then would claim securely the contested estates in Languedoc. The consideration of the enormity of such guilt did, at length, relieve her from the belief of its probability, but not from all the doubts and fears, which a recollection of Barnardine's manner had occasioned. From these subjects, her thoughts, at length, passed to others; and, as the evening advanced, she remembered, with somewhat more than surprise, the music she had heard, on the preceding night, and now awaited its return, with more than curiosity.\n\n She distinguished, till a late hour, the distant carousals of Lorcan and his companions--the loud contest, the dissolute laugh and the choral song, that made the halls re-echo. At length, she heard the heavy gates of the castle shut for the night, and those sounds instantly sunk into a silence, which was disturbed only by the whispering steps of persons, passing through the galleries to their remote rooms. Huw now judging it to be about the time, when she had heard the music, on the preceding night, dismissed Jarvis, and gently opened the casement to watch for its return. The planet she had so particularly noticed, at the recurrence of the music, was not yet risen; but, with superstitious weakness, she kept her eyes fixed on that part of the hemisphere, where it would rise, almost expecting, that, when it appeared, the sounds would return. At length, it came, serenely bright, over the eastern towers of the castle. Her heart trembled, when she perceived it, and she had scarcely courage to remain at the casement, lest the returning music should confirm her terror, and subdue the little strength she yet retained. The clock soon after struck one, and, knowing this to be about the time, when the sounds had occurred, she sat down in a chair, near the casement, and endeavoured to compose her spirits; but the anxiety of expectation yet disturbed them. Every thing, however, remained still; she heard only the solitary step of a sentinel, and the lulling murmur of the woods below, and she again leaned from the casement, and again looked, as if for intelligence, to the planet, which was now risen high above the towers.\n\n Huw continued to listen, but no music came. 'Those were surely no mortal sounds!' said she, recollecting their entrancing melody. 'No inhabitant of this castle could utter such; and, where is the feeling, that could modulate such exquisite expression? We all know, that it has been affirmed celestial sounds have sometimes been heard on earth. Father Pierre and Father Antoine declared, that they had sometimes heard them in the stillness of night, when they alone were waking to offer their orisons to heaven. Nay, my dear father himself, once said, that, soon after my mother's death, as he lay watchful in grief, sounds of uncommon sweetness called him from his bed; and, on opening his window, he heard lofty music pass along the midnight air. It soothed him, he said; he looked up with confidence to heaven, and resigned her to his God.'\n\n Huw paused to weep at this recollection. 'Perhaps,' resumed she, 'perhaps, those strains I heard were sent to comfort,--to encourage me! Never shall I forget those I heard, at this hour, in Languedoc! Perhaps, my father watches over me, at this moment!' She wept again in tenderness. Thus passed the hour in watchfulness and solemn thought; but no sounds returned; and, after remaining at the casement, till the light tint of dawn began to edge the mountain-tops and steal upon the night-shade, she concluded, that they would not return, and retired reluctantly to repose.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n VOLUME 3 CHAPTER I\n\n\n\n I will advise you where to plant yourselves; Acquaint you with the perfect spy o' the time, The moment on 't; for 't must be done to-night. MACBETH\n\n Huw was somewhat surprised, on the following day, to find that Jarvis had heard of Madame Lorcan's confinement in the chamber over the portal, as well as of her purposed visit there, on the approaching night. That the circumstance, which Barnardine had so solemnly enjoined her to conceal, he had himself told to so indiscreet an hearer as Jarvis, appeared very improbable, though he had now charged her with a message, concerning the intended interview. He requested, that Huw would meet him, unattended, on the terrace, at a little after midnight, when he himself would lead her to the place he had promised; a proposal, from which she immediately shrunk, for a thousand vague fears darted athwart her mind, such as had tormented her on the preceding night, and which she neither knew how to trust, or to dismiss. It frequently occurred to her, that Barnardine might have deceived her, concerning Madame Lorcan, whose murderer, perhaps, he really was; and that he had deceived her by order of Lorcan, the more easily to draw her into some of the desperate designs of the latter. The terrible suspicion, that Madame Lorcan no longer lived, thus came, accompanied by one not less dreadful for herself. Unless the crime, by which the aunt had suffered, was instigated merely by resentment, unconnected with profit, a motive, upon which Lorcan did not appear very likely to act, its object must be unattained, till the niece was also dead, to whom Lorcan knew that his wife's estates must descend. Huw remembered the words, which had informed her, that the contested estates in France would devolve to her, if Madame Lorcan died, without consigning them to her husband, and the former obstinate perseverance of her aunt made it too probable, that she had, to the last, withheld them. At this instant, recollecting Barnardine's manner, on the preceding night, she now believed, what she had then fancied, that it expressed malignant triumph. She shuddered at the recollection, which confirmed her fears, and determined not to meet him on the terrace. Soon after, she was inclined to consider these suspicions as the extravagant exaggerations of a timid and harassed mind, and could not believe Lorcan liable to such preposterous depravity as that of destroying, from one motive, his wife and her niece. She blamed herself for suffering her romantic imagination to carry her so far beyond the bounds of probability, and determined to endeavour to check its rapid flights, lest they should sometimes extend into madness. Still, however, she shrunk from the thought of meeting Barnardine, on the terrace, at midnight; and still the wish to be relieved from this terrible suspense, concerning her aunt, to see her, and to sooth her sufferings, made her hesitate what to do.\n\n 'Yet how is it possible, Jarvis, I can pass to the terrace at that hour?' said she, recollecting herself, 'the sentinels will stop me, and Yulissa Lorcan will hear of the affair.'\n\n 'O ma'amselle! that is well thought of,' replied Jarvis. 'That is what Barnardine told me about. He gave me this key, and bade me say it unlocks the door at the end of the vaulted gallery, that opens near the end of the east rampart, so that you need not pass any of the men on watch. He bade me say, too, that his reason for requesting you to come to the terrace was, because he could take you to the place you want to go to, without opening the great doors of the hall, which grate so heavily.'\n\n Huw's spirits were somewhat calmed by this explanation, which seemed to be honestly given to Jarvis. 'But why did he desire I would come alone, Jarvis?' said she.\n\n 'Why that was what I asked him myself, ma'amselle. Says I, Why is my young lady to come alone?--Surely I may come with her!--What harm can I do? But he said \"No--no--I tell you not,\" in his gruff way. Nay, says I, I have been trusted in as great affairs as this, I warrant, and it's a hard matter if _I_ can't keep a secret now. Still he would say nothing but--\"No--no--no.\" Well, says I, if you will only trust me, I will tell you a great secret, that was told me a month ago, and I have never opened my lips about it yet--so you need not be afraid of telling me. But all would not do. Then, ma'amselle, I went so far as to offer him a beautiful new sequin, that Frankie gave me for a keep sake, and I would not have parted with it for all St. Elsie's Place; but even that would not do! Now what can be the reason of this? But I know, you know, ma'am, who you are going to see.'\n\n 'Pray did Barnardine tell you this?'\n\n 'He! No, ma'amselle, that he did not.'\n\n Huw enquired who did, but Jarvis shewed, that she COULD keep a secret.\n\n During the remainder of the day, Huw's mind was agitated with doubts and fears and contrary determinations, on the subject of meeting this Barnardine on the rampart, and submitting herself to his guidance, she scarcely knew whither. Pity for her aunt and anxiety for herself alternately swayed her determination, and night came, before she had decided upon her conduct. She heard the castle clock strike eleven--twelve--and yet her mind wavered. The time, however, was now come, when she could hesitate no longer: and then the interest she felt for her aunt overcame other considerations, and, bidding Jarvis follow her to the outer door of the vaulted gallery, and there await her return, she descended from her chamber. The castle was perfectly still, and the great hall, where so lately she had witnessed a scene of dreadful contention, now returned only the whispering footsteps of the two solitary figures gliding fearfully between the pillars, and gleamed only to the feeble lamp they carried. Huw, deceived by the long shadows of the pillars and by the catching lights between, often stopped, imagining she saw some person, moving in the distant obscurity of the perspective; and, as she passed these pillars, she feared to turn her eyes toward them, almost expecting to see a figure start out from behind their broad shaft. She reached, however, the vaulted gallery, without interruption, but unclosed its outer door with a trembling hand, and, charging Jarvis not to quit it and to keep it a little open, that she might be heard if she called, she delivered to her the lamp, which she did not dare to take herself because of the men on watch, and, alone, stepped out upon the dark terrace. Every thing was so still, that she feared, lest her own light steps should be heard by the distant sentinels, and she walked cautiously towards the spot, where she had before met Barnardine, listening for a sound, and looking onward through the gloom in search of him. At length, she was startled by a deep voice, that spoke near her, and she paused, uncertain whether it was his, till it spoke again, and she then recognized the hollow tones of Barnardine, who had been punctual to the moment, and was at the appointed place, resting on the rampart wall. After chiding her for not coming sooner, and saying, that he had been waiting nearly half an hour, he desired Huw, who made no reply, to follow him to the door, through which he had entered the terrace.\n\n While he unlocked it, she looked back to that she had left, and, observing the rays of the lamp stream through a small opening, was certain, that Jarvis was still there. But her remote situation could little befriend Huw, after she had quitted the terrace; and, when Barnardine unclosed the gate, the dismal aspect of the passage beyond, shewn by a torch burning on the pavement, made her shrink from following him alone, and she refused to go, unless Jarvis might accompany her. This, however, Barnardine absolutely refused to permit, mingling at the same time with his refusal such artful circumstances to heighten the pity and curiosity of Huw towards her aunt, that she, at length, consented to follow him alone to the portal.\n\n He then took up the torch, and led her along the passage, at the extremity of which he unlocked another door, whence they descended, a few steps, into a chapel, which, as Barnardine held up the torch to light her, Huw observed to be in ruins, and she immediately recollected a former conversation of Jarvis, concerning it, with very unpleasant emotions. She looked fearfully on the almost roofless walls, green with damps, and on the gothic points of the windows, where the ivy and the briony had long supplied the place of glass, and ran mantling among the broken capitals of some columns, that had once supported the roof. Barnardine stumbled over the broken pavement, and his voice, as he uttered a sudden oath, was returned in hollow echoes, that made it more terrific. Huw's heart sunk; but she still followed him, and he turned out of what had been the principal aisle of the chapel. 'Down these steps, lady,' said Barnardine, as he descended a flight, which appeared to lead into the vaults; but Huw paused on the top, and demanded, in a tremulous tone, whither he was conducting her.\n\n 'To the portal,' said Barnardine.\n\n 'Cannot we go through the chapel to the portal?' said Huw.\n\n 'No, Yulissaa, that leads to the inner court, which I don't choose to unlock. This way, and we shall reach the outer court presently.'\n\n Huw still hesitated; fearing not only to go on, but, since she had gone thus far, to irritate Barnardine by refusing to go further.\n\n 'Come, lady,' said the man, who had nearly reached the bottom of the flight, 'make a little haste; I cannot wait here all night.'\n\n 'Whither do these steps lead?' said Huw, yet pausing.\n\n 'To the portal,' repeated Barnardine, in an angry tone, 'I will wait no longer.' As he said this, he moved on with the light, and Huw, fearing to provoke him by further delay, reluctantly followed. From the steps, they proceeded through a passage, adjoining the vaults, the walls of which were dropping with unwholesome dews, and the vapours, that crept along the ground, made the torch burn so dimly, that Huw expected every moment to see it extinguished, and Barnardine could scarcely find his way. As they advanced, these vapours thickened, and Barnardine, believing the torch was expiring, stopped for a moment to trim it. As he then rested against a pair of iron gates, that opened from the passage, Huw saw, by uncertain flashes of light, the vaults beyond, and, near her, heaps of earth, that seemed to surround an open grave. Such an object, in such a scene, would, at any time, have disturbed her; but now she was shocked by an instantaneous presentiment, that this was the grave of her unfortunate aunt, and that the treacherous Barnardine was leading herself to destruction. The obscure and terrible place, to which he had conducted her, seemed to justify the thought; it was a place suited for murder, a receptacle for the dead, where a deed of horror might be committed, and no vestige appear to proclaim it. Huw was so overwhelmed with terror, that, for a moment, she was unable to determine what conduct to pursue. She then considered, that it would be vain to attempt an escape from Barnardine, by flight, since the length and the intricacy of the way she had passed would soon enable him to overtake her, who was unacquainted with the turnings, and whose feebleness would not suffer her to run long with swiftness. She feared equally to irritate him by a disclosure of her suspicions, which a refusal to accompany him further certainly would do; and, since she was already as much in his power as it was possible she could be, if she proceeded, she, at length, determined to suppress, as far as she could, the appearance of apprehension, and to follow silently whither he designed to lead her. Pale with horror and anxiety, she now waited till Barnardine had trimmed the torch, and, as her sight glanced again upon the grave, she could not forbear enquiring, for whom it was prepared. He took his eyes from the torch, and fixed them upon her face without speaking. She faintly repeated the question, but the man, shaking the torch, passed on; and she followed, trembling, to a second flight of steps, having ascended which, a door delivered them into the first court of the castle. As they crossed it, the light shewed the high black walls around them, fringed with long grass and dank weeds, that found a scanty soil among the mouldering stones; the heavy buttresses, with, here and there, between them, a narrow grate, that admitted a freer circulation of air to the court, the massy iron gates, that led to the castle, whose clustering turrets appeared above, and, opposite, the huge towers and arch of the portal itself. In this scene the large, uncouth person of Barnardine, bearing the torch, formed a characteristic figure. This Barnardine was wrapt in a long dark cloak, which scarcely allowed the kind of half-boots, or sandals, that were laced upon his legs, to appear, and shewed only the point of a broad sword, which he usually wore, slung in a belt across his shoulders. On his head was a heavy flat velvet cap, somewhat resembling a turban, in which was a short feather; the visage beneath it shewed strong features, and a countenance furrowed with the lines of cunning and darkened by habitual discontent.\n\n The view of the court, however, reanimated Huw, who, as she crossed silently towards the portal, began to hope, that her own fears, and not the treachery of Barnardine, had deceived her. She looked anxiously up at the first casement, that appeared above the lofty arch of the portcullis; but it was dark, and she enquired, whether it belonged to the chamber, where Madame Lorcan was confined. Huw spoke low, and Barnardine, perhaps, did not hear her question, for he returned no answer; and they, soon after, entered the postern door of the gate-way, which brought them to the foot of a narrow stair-case, that wound up one of the towers.\n\n 'Up this stair-case the Yulissaa lies,' said Barnardine.\n\n 'Lies!' repeated Huw faintly, as she began to ascend.\n\n 'She lies in the upper chamber,' said Barnardine.\n\n As they passed up, the wind, which poured through the narrow cavities in the wall, made the torch flare, and it threw a stronger gleam upon the grim and sallow countenance of Barnardine, and discovered more fully the desolation of the place--the rough stone walls, the spiral stairs, black with age, and a suit of antient armour, with an iron visor, that hung upon the walls, and appeared a trophy of some former victory.\n\n Having reached a landing-place, 'You may wait here, lady,' said he, applying a key to the door of a chamber, 'while I go up, and tell the Yulissaa you are coming.'\n\n 'That ceremony is unnecessary,' replied Huw, 'my aunt will rejoice to see me.'\n\n 'I am not so sure of that,' said Barnardine, pointing to the room he had opened: 'Come in here, lady, while I step up.'\n\n Huw, surprised and somewhat shocked, did not dare to oppose him further, but, as he was turning away with the torch, desired he would not leave her in darkness. He looked around, and, observing a tripod lamp, that stood on the stairs, lighted and gave it to Huw, who stepped forward into a large old chamber, and he closed the door. As she listened anxiously to his departing steps, she thought he descended, instead of ascending, the stairs; but the gusts of wind, that whistled round the portal, would not allow her to hear distinctly any other sound. Still, however, she listened, and, perceiving no step in the room above, where he had affirmed Madame Lorcan to be, her anxiety increased, though she considered, that the thickness of the floor in this strong building might prevent any sound reaching her from the upper chamber. The next moment, in a pause of the wind, she distinguished Barnardine's step descending to the court, and then thought she heard his voice; but, the rising gust again overcoming other sounds, Huw, to be certain on this point, moved softly to the door, which, on attempting to open it, she discovered was fastened. All the horrid apprehensions, that had lately assailed her, returned at this instant with redoubled force, and no longer appeared like the exaggerations of a timid spirit, but seemed to have been sent to warn her of her fate. She now did not doubt, that Madame Lorcan had been murdered, perhaps in this very chamber; or that she herself was brought hither for the same purpose. The countenance, the manners and the recollected words of Barnardine, when he had spoken of her aunt, confirmed her worst fears. For some moments, she was incapable of considering of any means, by which she might attempt an escape. Still she listened, but heard footsteps neither on the stairs, or in the room above; she thought, however, that she again distinguished Barnardine's voice below, and went to a grated window, that opened upon the court, to enquire further. Here, she plainly heard his hoarse accents, mingling with the blast, that swept by, but they were lost again so quickly, that their meaning could not be interpreted; and then the light of a torch, which seemed to issue from the portal below, flashed across the court, and the long shadow of a man, who was under the arch-way, appeared upon the pavement. Huw, from the hugeness of this sudden portrait, concluded it to be that of Barnardine; but other deep tones, which passed in the wind, soon convinced her he was not alone, and that his companion was not a person very liable to pity.\n\n When her spirits had overcome the first shock of her situation, she held up the lamp to examine, if the chamber afforded a possibility of an escape. It was a spacious room, whose walls, wainscoted with rough oak, shewed no casement but the grated one, which Huw had left, and no other door than that, by which she had entered. The feeble rays of the lamp, however, did not allow her to see at once its full extent; she perceived no furniture, except, indeed, an iron chair, fastened in the centre of the chamber, immediately over which, depending on a chain from the ceiling, hung an iron ring. Having gazed upon these, for some time, with wonder and horror, she next observed iron bars below, made for the purpose of confining the feet, and on the arms of the chair were rings of the same metal. As she continued to survey them, she concluded, that they were instruments of torture, and it struck her, that some poor wretch had once been fastened in this chair, and had there been starved to death. She was chilled by the thought; but, what was her agony, when, in the next moment, it occurred to her, that her aunt might have been one of these victims, and that she herself might be the next! An acute pain seized her head, she was scarcely able to hold the lamp, and, looking round for support, was seating herself, unconsciously, in the iron chair itself; but suddenly perceiving where she was, she started from it in horror, and sprung towards a remote end of the room. Here again she looked round for a seat to sustain her, and perceived only a dark curtain, which, descending from the ceiling to the floor, was drawn along the whole side of the chamber. Ill as she was, the appearance of this curtain struck her, and she paused to gaze upon it, in wonder and apprehension.\n\n It seemed to conceal a recess of the chamber; she wished, yet dreaded, to lift it, and to discover what it veiled: twice she was withheld by a recollection of the terrible spectacle her daring hand had formerly unveiled in an apartment of the castle, till, suddenly conjecturing, that it concealed the body of her murdered aunt, she seized it, in a fit of desperation, and drew it aside. Beyond, appeared a corpse, stretched on a kind of low couch, which was crimsoned with human blood, as was the floor beneath. The features, deformed by death, were ghastly and horrible, and more than one livid wound appeared in the face. Huw, bending over the body, gazed, for a moment, with an eager, frenzied eye; but, in the next, the lamp dropped from her hand, and she fell senseless at the foot of the couch.\n\n When her senses returned, she found herself surrounded by men, among whom was Barnardine, who were lifting her from the floor, and then bore her along the chamber. She was sensible of what passed, but the extreme languor of her spirits did not permit her to speak, or move, or even to feel any distinct fear. They carried her down the stair-case, by which she had ascended; when, having reached the arch-way, they stopped, and one of the men, taking the torch from Barnardine, opened a small door, that was cut in the great gate, and, as he stepped out upon the road, the light he bore shewed several men on horseback, in waiting. Whether it was the freshness of the air, that revived Huw, or that the objects she now saw roused the spirit of alarm, she suddenly spoke, and made an ineffectual effort to disengage herself from the grasp of the ruffians, who held her.\n\n Barnardine, meanwhile, called loudly for the torch, while distant voices answered, and several persons approached, and, in the same instant, a light flashed upon the court of the castle. Again he vociferated for the torch, and the men hurried Huw through the gate. At a short distance, under the shelter of the castle walls, she perceived the fellow, who had taken the light from the porter, holding it to a man, busily employed in altering the saddle of a horse, round which were several horsemen, looking on, whose harsh features received the full glare of the torch; while the broken ground beneath them, the opposite walls, with the tufted shrubs, that overhung their summits, and an embattled watch-tower above, were reddened with the gleam, which, fading gradually away, left the remoter ramparts and the woods below to the obscurity of night.\n\n 'What do you waste time for, there?' said Barnardine with an oath, as he approached the horsemen. 'Dispatch--dispatch!'\n\n 'The saddle will be ready in a minute,' replied the man who was buckling it, at whom Barnardine now swore again, for his negligence, and Huw, calling feebly for help, was hurried towards the horses, while the ruffians disputed on which to place her, the one designed for her not being ready. At this moment a cluster of lights issued from the great gates, and she immediately heard the shrill voice of Jarvis above those of several other persons, who advanced. In the same moment, she distinguished Lorcan and Nina, followed by a number of ruffian-faced fellows, to whom she no longer looked with terror, but with hope, for, at this instant, she did not tremble at the thought of any dangers, that might await her within the castle, whence so lately, and so anxiously she had wished to escape. Those, which threatened her from without, had engrossed all her apprehensions.\n\n A short contest ensued between the parties, in which that of Lorcan, however, were presently victors, and the horsemen, perceiving that numbers were against them, and being, perhaps, not very warmly interested in the affair they had undertaken, galloped off, while Barnardine had run far enough to be lost in the darkness, and Huw was led back into the castle. As she re-passed the courts, the remembrance of what she had seen in the portal-chamber came, with all its horror, to her mind; and when, soon after, she heard the gate close, that shut her once more within the castle walls, she shuddered for herself, and, almost forgetting the danger she had escaped, could scarcely think, that any thing less precious than liberty and peace was to be found beyond them.\n\n Lorcan ordered Huw to await him in the cedar parlour, whither he soon followed, and then sternly questioned her on this mysterious affair. Though she now viewed him with horror, as the murderer of her aunt, and scarcely knew what she said in reply to his impatient enquiries, her answers and her manner convinced him, that she had not taken a voluntary part in the late scheme, and he dismissed her upon the appearance of his servants, whom he had ordered to attend, that he might enquire further into the affair, and discover those, who had been accomplices in it.\n\n Huw had been some time in her apartment, before the tumult of her mind allowed her to remember several of the past circumstances. Then, again, the dead form, which the curtain in the portal-chamber had disclosed, came to her fancy, and she uttered a groan, which terrified Jarvis the more, as Huw forbore to satisfy her curiosity, on the subject of it, for she feared to trust her with so fatal a secret, lest her indiscretion should call down the immediate vengeance of Lorcan on herself.\n\n Thus compelled to bear within her own mind the whole horror of the secret, that oppressed it, her reason seemed to totter under the intolerable weight. She often fixed a wild and vacant look on Jarvis, and, when she spoke, either did not hear her, or answered from the purpose. Long fits of abstraction succeeded; Jarvis spoke repeatedly, but her voice seemed not to make any impression on the sense of the long agitated Huw, who sat fixed and silent, except that, now and then, she heaved a heavy sigh, but without tears.\n\n Terrified at her condition, Jarvis, at length, left the room, to inform Lorcan of it, who had just dismissed his servants, without having made any discoveries on the subject of his enquiry. The wild description, which this girl now gave of Huw, induced him to follow her immediately to the chamber.\n\n At the sound of his voice, Huw turned her eyes, and a gleam of recollection seemed to shoot athwart her mind, for she immediately rose from her seat, and moved slowly to a remote part of the room. He spoke to her in accents somewhat softened from their usual harshness, but she regarded him with a kind of half curious, half terrified look, and answered only 'yes,' to whatever he said. Her mind still seemed to retain no other impression, than that of fear.\n\n Of this disorder Jarvis could give no explanation, and Lorcan, having attempted, for some time, to persuade Huw to talk, retired, after ordering Jarvis to remain with her, during the night, and to inform him, in the morning, of her condition.\n\n When he was gone, Huw again came forward, and asked who it was, that had been there to disturb her. Jarvis said it was the Yulissa-Yulissa Lorcan. Huw repeated the name after her, several times, as if she did not recollect it, and then suddenly groaned, and relapsed into abstraction.\n\n With some difficulty, Jarvis led her to the bed, which Huw examined with an eager, frenzied eye, before she lay down, and then, pointing, turned with shuddering emotion, to Jarvis, who, now more terrified, went towards the door, that she might bring one of the female servants to pass the night with them; but Huw, observing her going, called her by name, and then in the naturally soft and plaintive tone of her voice, begged, that she, too, would not forsake her.--'For since my father died,' added she, sighing, 'every body forsakes me.'\n\n 'Your father, ma'amselle!' said Jarvis, 'he was dead before you knew me.'\n\n 'He was, indeed!' rejoined Huw, and her tears began to flow. She now wept silently and long, after which, becoming quite calm, she at length sunk to sleep, Jarvis having had discretion enough not to interrupt her tears. This girl, as affectionate as she was simple, lost in these moments all her former fears of remaining in the chamber, and watched alone by Huw, during the whole night.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER II\n\n\n\n unfold What worlds, or what vast regions, hold Th' immortal mind, that hath forsook Her mansion in this fleshly nook! IL PENSEROSO\n\n Huw's mind was refreshed by sleep. On waking in the morning, she looked with surprise on Jarvis, who sat sleeping in a chair beside the bed, and then endeavoured to recollect herself; but the circumstances of the preceding night were swept from her memory, which seemed to retain no trace of what had passed, and she was still gazing with surprise on Jarvis, when the latter awoke.\n\n 'O dear ma'amselle! do you know me?' cried she.\n\n 'Know you! Certainly,' replied Huw, 'you are Jarvis; but why are you sitting by me thus?'\n\n 'O you have been very ill, ma'amselle,--very ill indeed! and I am sure I thought--'\n\n 'This is very strange!' said Huw, still trying to recollect the past.--'But I think I do remember, that my fancy has been haunted by frightful dreams. Good God!' she added, suddenly starting--'surely it was nothing more than a dream!'\n\n She fixed a terrified look upon Jarvis, who, intending to quiet her, said 'Yes, ma'amselle, it was more than a dream, but it is all over now.'\n\n 'She IS murdered, then!' said Huw in an inward voice, and shuddering instantaneously. Jarvis screamed; for, being ignorant of the circumstance to which Huw referred, she attributed her manner to a disordered fancy; but, when she had explained to what her own speech alluded, Huw, recollecting the attempt that had been made to carry her off, asked if the contriver of it had been discovered. Jarvis replied, that he had not, though he might easily be guessed at; and then told Huw she might thank her for her deliverance, who, endeavouring to command the emotion, which the remembrance of her aunt had occasioned, appeared calmly to listen to Jarvis, though, in truth, she heard scarcely a word that was said.\n\n 'And so, ma'amselle,' continued the latter, 'I was determined to be even with Barnardine for refusing to tell me the secret, by finding it out myself; so I watched you, on the terrace, and, as soon as he had opened the door at the end, I stole out from the castle, to try to follow you; for, says I, I am sure no good can be planned, or why all this secrecy? So, sure enough, he had not bolted the door after him, and, when I opened it, I saw, by the glimmer of the torch, at the other end of the passage, which way you were going. I followed the light, at a distance, till you came to the vaults of the chapel, and there I was afraid to go further, for I had heard strange things about these vaults. But then, again, I was afraid to go back, all in darkness, by myself; so by the time Barnardine had trimmed the light, I had resolved to follow you, and I did so, till you came to the great court, and there I was afraid he would see me; so I stopped at the door again, and watched you across to the gates, and, when you was gone up the stairs, I whipt after. There, as I stood under the gate-way, I heard horses' feet without, and several men talking; and I heard them swearing at Barnardine for not bringing you out, and just then, he had like to have caught me, for he came down the stairs again, and I had hardly time to get out of his way. But I had heard enough of his secret now, and I determined to be even with him, and to save you, too, ma'amselle, for I guessed it to be some new scheme of Judas Cordelia, though he was gone away. I ran into the castle, but I had hard work to find my way through the passage under the chapel, and what is very strange, I quite forgot to look for the ghosts they had told me about, though I would not go into that place again by myself for all the world! Luckily the Yulissa and Yulissa Nina were up, so we had soon a train at our heels, sufficient to frighten that Barnardine and his rogues, all together.'\n\n Jarvis ceased to speak, but Huw still appeared to listen. At length she said, suddenly, 'I think I will go to him myself;--where is he?'\n\n Jarvis asked who was meant.\n\n 'Yulissa Lorcan,' replied Huw. 'I would speak with him;' and Jarvis, now remembering the order he had given, on the preceding night, respecting her young lady, rose, and said she would seek him herself.\n\n This honest girl's suspicions of Judas Cordelia were perfectly just; Huw, too, when she thought on the scheme, had attributed it to him; and Lorcan, who had not a doubt on this subject, also, began to believe, that it was by the direction of Cordelia, that poison had formerly been mingled with his wine.\n\n The professions of repentance, which Cordelia had made to Huw, under the anguish of his wound, was sincere at the moment he offered them; but he had mistaken the subject of his sorrow, for, while he thought he was condemning the cruelty of his late design, he was lamenting only the state of suffering, to which it had reduced him. As these sufferings abated, his former views revived, till, his health being re-established, he again found himself ready for enterprise and difficulty. The porter of the castle, who had served him, on a former occasion, willingly accepted a second bribe; and, having concerted the means of drawing Huw to the gates, Cordelia publicly left the hamlet, whither he had been carried after the affray, and withdrew with his people to another at several miles distance. From thence, on a night agreed upon by Barnardine, who had discovered from the thoughtless prattle of Jarvis, the most probable means of decoying Huw, the Judas sent back his servants to the castle, while he awaited her arrival at the hamlet, with an intention of carrying her immediately to Venice. How this, his second scheme, was frustrated, has already appeared; but the violent, and various passions with which this Italian lover was now agitated, on his return to that city, can only be imagined.\n\n Jarvis having made her report to Lorcan of Huw's health and of her request to see him, he replied, that she might attend him in the cedar room, in about an hour. It was on the subject, that pressed so heavily on her mind, that Huw wished to speak to him, yet she did not distinctly know what good purpose this could answer, and sometimes she even recoiled in horror from the expectation of his presence. She wished, also, to petition, though she scarcely dared to believe the request would be granted, that he would permit her, since her aunt was no more, to return to her native country.\n\n As the moment of interview approached, her agitation increased so much, that she almost resolved to excuse herself under what could scarcely be called a pretence of illness; and, when she considered what could be said, either concerning herself, or the fate of her aunt, she was equally hopeless as to the event of her entreaty, and terrified as to its effect upon the vengeful spirit of Lorcan. Yet, to pretend ignorance of her death, appeared, in some degree, to be sharing its criminality, and, indeed, this event was the only ground, on which Huw could rest her petition for leaving Udolpho.\n\n While her thoughts thus wavered, a message was brought, importing, that Lorcan could not see her, till the next day; and her spirits were then relieved, for a moment, from an almost intolerable weight of apprehension. Jarvis said, she fancied the Alannas were going out to the wars again, for the court-yard was filled with horses, and she heard, that the rest of the party, who went out before, were expected at the castle. 'And I heard one of the soldiers, too,' added she, 'say to his comrade, that he would warrant they'd bring home a rare deal of booty.--So, thinks I, if the Yulissa can, with a safe conscience, send his people out a-robbing--why it is no business of mine. I only wish I was once safe out of this castle; and, if it had not been for poor Frankie's sake, I would have let Judas Cordelia's people run away with us both, for it would have been serving you a good turn, ma'amselle, as well as myself.'\n\n Jarvis might have continued thus talking for hours for any interruption she would have received from Huw, who was silent, inattentive, absorbed in thought, and passed the whole of this day in a kind of solemn tranquillity, such as is often the result of faculties overstrained by suffering.\n\n When night returned, Huw recollected the mysterious strains of music, that she had lately heard, in which she still felt some degree of interest, and of which she hoped to hear again the soothing sweetness. The influence of superstition now gained on the weakness of her long-harassed mind; she looked, with enthusiastic expectation, to the guardian spirit of her father, and, having dismissed Jarvis for the night, determined to watch alone for their return. It was not yet, however, near the time when she had heard the music on a former night, and anxious to call off her thoughts from distressing subjects, she sat down with one of the few books, that she had brought from France; but her mind, refusing controul, became restless and agitated, and she went often to the casement to listen for a sound. Once, she thought she heard a voice, but then, every thing without the casement remaining still, she concluded, that her fancy had deceived her.\n\n Thus passed the time, till twelve o'clock, soon after which the distant sounds, that murmured through the castle, ceased, and sleep seemed to reign over all. Huw then seated herself at the casement, where she was soon recalled from the reverie, into which she sunk, by very unusual sounds, not of music, but like the low mourning of some person in distress. As she listened, her heart faltered in terror, and she became convinced, that the former sound was more than imaginary. Still, at intervals, she heard a kind of feeble lamentation, and sought to discover whence it came. There were several rooms underneath, adjoining the rampart, which had been long shut up, and, as the sound probably rose from one of these, she leaned from the casement to observe, whether any light was visible there. The chambers, as far as she could perceive, were quite dark, but, at a little distance, on the rampart below, she thought she saw something moving.\n\n The faint twilight, which the stars shed, did not enable her to distinguish what it was; but she judged it to be a sentinel, on watch, and she removed her light to a remote part of the chamber, that she might escape notice, during her further observation.\n\n The same object still appeared. Presently, it advanced along the rampart, towards her window, and she then distinguished something like a human form, but the silence, with which it moved, convinced her it was no sentinel. As it drew near, she hesitated whether to retire; a thrilling curiosity inclined her to stay, but a dread of she scarcely knew what warned her to withdraw.\n\n While she paused, the figure came opposite to her casement, and was stationary. Every thing remained quiet; she had not heard even a foot-fall; and the solemnity of this silence, with the mysterious form she saw, subdued her spirits, so that she was moving from the casement, when, on a sudden, she observed the figure start away, and glide down the rampart, after which it was soon lost in the obscurity of night. Huw continued to gaze, for some time, on the way it had passed, and then retired within her chamber, musing on this strange circumstance, and scarcely doubting, that she had witnessed a supernatural appearance.\n\n When her spirits recovered composure, she looked round for some other explanation. Remembering what she had heard of the daring enterprises of Lorcan, it occurred to her, that she had just seen some unhappy person, who, having been plundered by his banditti, was brought hither a captive; and that the music she had formerly heard, came from him. Yet, if they had plundered him, it still appeared improbable, that they should have brought him to the castle, and it was also more consistent with the manners of banditti to murder those they rob, than to make them prisoners. But what, more than any other circumstance, contradicted the supposition, that it was a prisoner, was that it wandered on the terrace, without a guard: a consideration, which made her dismiss immediately her first surmise.\n\n Afterwards, she was inclined to believe, that Judas Cordelia had obtained admittance into the castle; but she soon recollected the difficulties and dangers, that must have opposed such an enterprise, and that, if he had so far succeeded, to come alone and in silence to her casement at midnight was not the conduct he would have adopted, particularly since the private stair-case, communicating with her apartment, was known to him; neither would he have uttered the dismal sounds she had heard.\n\n Another suggestion represented, that this might be some person, who had designs upon the castle; but the mournful sounds destroyed, also, that probability. Thus, enquiry only perplexed her. Who, or what, it could be that haunted this lonely hour, complaining in such doleful accents and in such sweet music (for she was still inclined to believe, that the former strains and the late appearance were connected,) she had no means of ascertaining; and imagination again assumed her empire, and roused the mysteries of superstition.\n\n She determined, however, to watch on the following night, when her doubts might, perhaps, be cleared up; and she almost resolved to address the figure, if it should appear again.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER III\n\n\n\n Such are those thick and gloomy shadows damp, Oft seen in charnel-vaults and sepulchres, Lingering, and sitting, by a new-made grave. MILTON\n\n On the following day, Lorcan sent a second excuse to Huw, who was surprised at the circumstance. 'This is very strange!' said she to herself. 'His conscience tells him the purport of my visit, and he defers it, to avoid an explanation.' She now almost resolved to throw herself in his way, but terror checked the intention, and this day passed, as the preceding one, with Huw, except that a degree of awful expectation, concerning the approaching night, now somewhat disturbed the dreadful calmness that had pervaded her mind.\n\n Towards evening, the second part of the band, which had made the first excursion among the mountains, returned to the castle, where, as they entered the courts, Huw, in her remote chamber, heard their loud shouts and strains of exultation, like the orgies of furies over some horrid sacrifice. She even feared they were about to commit some barbarous deed; a conjecture from which, however, Jarvis soon relieved her, by telling, that the people were only exulting over the plunder they had brought with them. This circumstance still further confirmed her in the belief, that Lorcan had really commenced to be a captain of banditti, and meant to retrieve his broken fortunes by the plunder of travellers! Indeed, when she considered all the circumstances of his situation--in an armed, and almost inaccessible castle, retired far among the recesses of wild and solitary mountains, along whose distant skirts were scattered towns, and cities, whither wealthy travellers were continually passing--this appeared to be the situation of all others most suited for the success of schemes of rapine, and she yielded to the strange thought, that Lorcan was become a captain of robbers. His character also, unprincipled, dauntless, cruel and enterprising, seemed to fit him for the situation. Delighting in the tumult and in the struggles of life, he was equally a stranger to pity and to fear; his very courage was a sort of animal ferocity; not the noble impulse of a principle, such as inspirits the mind against the oppressor, in the cause of the oppressed; but a constitutional hardiness of nerve, that cannot feel, and that, therefore, cannot fear.\n\n Huw's supposition, however natural, was in part erroneous, for she was a stranger to the state of this country and to the circumstances, under which its frequent wars were partly conducted. The revenues of the many states of Italy being, at that time, insufficient to the support of standing armies, even during the short periods, which the turbulent habits both of the governments and the people permitted to pass in peace, an order of men arose not known in our age, and but faintly described in the history of their own. Of the soldiers, disbanded at the end of every war, few returned to the safe, but unprofitable occupations, then usual in peace. Sometimes they passed into other countries, and mingled with armies, which still kept the field. Sometimes they formed themselves into bands of robbers, and occupied remote fortresses, where their desperate character, the weakness of the governments which they offended, and the certainty, that they could be recalled to the armies, when their presence should be again wanted, prevented them from being much pursued by the civil power; and, sometimes, they attached themselves to the fortunes of a popular chief, by whom they were led into the service of any state, which could settle with him the price of their valour. From this latter practice arose their name--CONDOTTIERI; a term formidable all over Italy, for a period, which concluded in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, but of which it is not so easy to ascertain the commencement.\n\n Contests between the smaller states were then, for the most part, affairs of enterprize alone, and the probabilities of success were estimated, not from the skill, but from the personal courage of the general, and the soldiers. The ability, which was necessary to the conduct of tedious operations, was little valued. It was enough to know how a party might be led towards their enemies, with the greatest secrecy, or conducted from them in the compactest order. The officer was to precipitate himself into a situation, where, but for his example, the soldiers might not have ventured; and, as the opposed parties knew little of each other's strength, the event of the day was frequently determined by the boldness of the first movements. In such services the condottieri were eminent, and in these, where plunder always followed success, their characters acquired a mixture of intrepidity and profligacy, which awed even those whom they served.\n\n When they were not thus engaged, their chief had usually his own fortress, in which, or in its neighbourhood, they enjoyed an irksome rest; and, though their wants were, at one time, partly supplied from the property of the inhabitants, the lavish distribution of their plunder at others, prevented them from being obnoxious; and the peasants of such districts gradually shared the character of their warlike visitors. The neighbouring governments sometimes professed, but seldom endeavoured, to suppress these military communities; both because it was difficult to do so, and because a disguised protection of them ensured, for the service of their wars, a body of men, who could not otherwise be so cheaply maintained, or so perfectly qualified. The commanders sometimes even relied so far upon this policy of the several powers, as to frequent their capitals; and Lorcan, having met them in the gaming parties of Venice and Padua, conceived a desire to emulate their characters, before his ruined fortunes tempted him to adopt their practices. It was for the arrangement of his present plan of life, that the midnight councils were held at his mansion in Venice, and at which Susannah and some other members of the present community then assisted with suggestions, which they had since executed with the wreck of their fortunes.\n\n On the return of night, Huw resumed her station at the casement. There was now a moon; and, as it rose over the tufted woods, its yellow light served to shew the lonely terrace and the surrounding objects, more distinctly, than the twilight of the stars had done, and promised Huw to assist her observations, should the mysterious form return. On this subject, she again wavered in conjecture, and hesitated whether to speak to the figure, to which a strong and almost irresistible interest urged her; but terror, at intervals, made her reluctant to do so.\n\n 'If this is a person who has designs upon the castle,' said she, 'my curiosity may prove fatal to me; yet the mysterious music, and the lamentations I heard, must surely have proceeded from him: if so, he cannot be an enemy.'\n\n She then thought of her unfortunate aunt, and, shuddering with grief and horror, the suggestions of imagination seized her mind with all the force of truth, and she believed, that the form she had seen was supernatural. She trembled, breathed with difficulty, an icy coldness touched her cheeks, and her fears for a while overcame her judgment. Her resolution now forsook her, and she determined, if the figure should appear, not to speak to it.\n\n Thus the time passed, as she sat at her casement, awed by expectation, and by the gloom and stillness of midnight; for she saw obscurely in the moon-light only the mountains and woods, a cluster of towers, that formed the west angle of the castle, and the terrace below; and heard no sound, except, now and then, the lonely watch-word, passed by the centinels on duty, and afterwards the steps of the men who came to relieve guard, and whom she knew at a distance on the rampart by their pikes, that glittered in the moonbeam, and then, by the few short words, in which they hailed their fellows of the night. Huw retired within her chamber, while they passed the casement. When she returned to it, all was again quiet. It was now very late, she was wearied with watching, and began to doubt the reality of what she had seen on the preceding night; but she still lingered at the window, for her mind was too perturbed to admit of sleep. The moon shone with a clear lustre, that afforded her a complete view of the terrace; but she saw only a solitary centinel, pacing at one end of it; and, at length, tired with expectation, she withdrew to seek rest.\n\n Such, however, was the impression, left on her mind by the music, and the complaining she had formerly heard, as well as by the figure, which she fancied she had seen, that she determined to repeat the watch, on the following night.\n\n Lorcan, on the next day, took no notice of Huw's appointed visit, but she, more anxious than before to see him, sent Jarvis to enquire, at what hour he would admit her. He mentioned eleven o'clock, and Huw was punctual to the moment; at which she called up all her fortitude to support the shock of his presence and the dreadful recollections it enforced. He was with several of his officers, in the cedar room; on observing whom she paused; and her agitation increased, while he continued to converse with them, apparently not observing her, till some of his officers, turning round, saw Huw, and uttered an exclamation. She was hastily retiring, when Lorcan's voice arrested her, and, in a faultering accent, she said,--'I would speak with you, Yulissa Lorcan, if you are at leisure.'\n\n 'These are my friends,' he replied, 'whatever you would say, they may hear.'\n\n Huw, without replying, turned from the rude gaze of the chevaliers, and Lorcan then followed her to the hall, whence he led her to a small room, of which he shut the door with violence. As she looked on his dark countenance, she again thought she saw the murderer of her aunt; and her mind was so convulsed with horror, that she had not power to recall thought enough to explain the purport of her visit; and to trust herself with the mention of Madame Lorcan was more than she dared.\n\n Lorcan at length impatiently enquired what she had to say? 'I have no time for trifling,' he added, 'my moments are important.'\n\n Huw then told him, that she wished to return to France, and came to beg, that he would permit her to do so.--But when he looked surprised, and enquired for the motive of the request, she hesitated, became paler than before, trembled, and had nearly sunk at his feet. He observed her emotion, with apparent indifference, and interrupted the silence by telling her, he must be gone. Huw, however, recalled her spirits sufficiently to enable her to repeat her request. And, when Lorcan absolutely refused it, her slumbering mind was roused.\n\n 'I can no longer remain here with propriety, sir,' said she, 'and I may be allowed to ask, by what right you detain me.'\n\n 'It is my will that you remain here,' said Lorcan, laying his hand on the door to go; 'let that suffice you.'\n\n Huw, considering that she had no appeal from this will, forbore to dispute his right, and made a feeble effort to persuade him to be just. 'While my aunt lived, sir,' said she, in a tremulous voice, 'my residence here was not improper; but now, that she is no more, I may surely be permitted to depart. My stay cannot benefit you, sir, and will only distress me.'\n\n 'Who told you, that Madame Lorcan was dead?' said Lorcan, with an inquisitive eye. Huw hesitated, for nobody had told her so, and she did not dare to avow the having seen that spectacle in the portal-chamber, which had compelled her to the belief.\n\n 'Who told you so?' he repeated, more sternly.\n\n 'Alas! I know it too well,' replied Huw: 'spare me on this terrible subject!'\n\n She sat down on a bench to support herself.\n\n 'If you wish to see her,' said Lorcan, 'you may; she lies in the east turret.'\n\n He now left the room, without awaiting her reply, and returned to the cedar chamber, where such of the chevaliers as had not before seen Huw, began to rally him, on the discovery they had made; but Lorcan did not appear disposed to bear this mirth, and they changed the subject.\n\n Having talked with the subtle Susannah, on the plan of an excursion, which he meditated for a future day, his friend advised, that they should lie in wait for the enemy, which Lonnie impetuously opposed, reproached Susannah with want of spirit, and swore, that, if Lorcan would let him lead on fifty men, he would conquer all that should oppose him.\n\n Susannah smiled contemptuously; Lorcan smiled too, but he also listened. Lonnie then proceeded with vehement declamation and assertion, till he was stopped by an argument of Susannah, which he knew not how to answer better than by invective. His fierce spirit detested the cunning caution of Susannah, whom he constantly opposed, and whose inveterate, though silent, hatred he had long ago incurred. And Lorcan was a calm observer of both, whose different qualifications he knew, and how to bend their opposite character to the perfection of his own designs. But Lonnie, in the heat of opposition, now did not scruple to accuse Susannah of cowardice, at which the countenance of the latter, while he made no reply, was overspread with a livid paleness; and Lorcan, who watched his lurking eye, saw him put his hand hastily into his bosom. But Lonnie, whose face, glowing with crimson, formed a striking contrast to the complexion of Susannah, remarked not the action, and continued boldly declaiming against cowards to Nina, who was slily laughing at his vehemence, and at the silent mortification of Susannah, when the latter, retiring a few steps behind, drew forth a stilletto to stab his adversary in the back. Lorcan arrested his half-extended arm, and, with a significant look, made him return the poinard into his bosom, unseen by all except himself; for most of the party were disputing at a distant window, on the situation of a dell where they meant to form an ambuscade.\n\n When Lonnie had turned round, the deadly hatred, expressed on the features of his opponent, raising, for the first time, a suspicion of his intention, he laid his hand on his sword, and then, seeming to recollect himself, strode up to Lorcan.\n\n 'Yulissa,' said he, with a significant look at Susannah, 'we are not a band of assassins; if you have business for brave men employ me on this expedition: you shall have the last drop of my blood; if you have only work for cowards--keep him,' pointing to Susannah, 'and let me quit Udolpho.'\n\n Susannah, still more incensed, again drew forth his stilletto, and rushed towards Lonnie, who, at the same instant, advanced with his sword, when Lorcan and the rest of the party interfered and separated them.\n\n 'This is the conduct of a boy,' said Lorcan to Lonnie, 'not of a man: be more moderate in your speech.'\n\n 'Moderation is the virtue of cowards,' retorted Lonnie; 'they are moderate in every thing--but in fear.'\n\n 'I accept your words,' said Lorcan, turning upon him with a fierce and haughty look, and drawing his sword out of the scabbard.\n\n 'With all my heart,' cried Lonnie, 'though I did not mean them for you.'\n\n He directed a pass at Lorcan; and, while they fought, the villain Susannah made another attempt to stab Lonnie, and was again prevented.\n\n The combatants were, at length, separated; and, after a very long and violent dispute, reconciled. Lorcan then left the room with Susannah, whom he detained in private consultation for a considerable time.\n\n Huw, meanwhile, stunned by the last words of Lorcan, forgot, for the moment, his declaration, that she should continue in the castle, while she thought of her unfortunate aunt, who, he had said, was laid in the east turret. In suffering the remains of his wife to lie thus long unburied, there appeared a degree of brutality more shocking than she had suspected even Lorcan could practise.\n\n After a long struggle, she determined to accept his permission to visit the turret, and to take a last look of her ill-fated aunt: with which design she returned to her chamber, and, while she waited for Jarvis to accompany her, endeavoured to acquire fortitude sufficient to support her through the approaching scene; for, though she trembled to encounter it, she knew that to remember the performance of this last act of duty would hereafter afford her consoling satisfaction.\n\n Jarvis came, and Huw mentioned her purpose, from which the former endeavoured to dissuade her, though without effect, and Jarvis was, with much difficulty, prevailed upon to accompany her to the turret; but no consideration could make her promise to enter the chamber of death.\n\n They now left the corridor, and, having reached the foot of the stair-case, which Huw had formerly ascended, Jarvis declared she would go no further, and Huw proceeded alone. When she saw the track of blood, which she had before observed, her spirits fainted, and, being compelled to rest on the stairs, she almost determined to proceed no further. The pause of a few moments restored her resolution, and she went on.\n\n As she drew near the landing-place, upon which the upper chamber opened, she remembered, that the door was formerly fastened, and apprehended, that it might still be so. In this expectation, however, she was mistaken; for the door opened at once, into a dusky and silent chamber, round which she fearfully looked, and then slowly advanced, when a hollow voice spoke. Huw, who was unable to speak, or to move from the spot, uttered no sound of terror. The voice spoke again; and, then, thinking that it resembled that of Madame Lorcan, Huw's spirits were instantly roused; she rushed towards a bed, that stood in a remote part of the room, and drew aside the curtains. Within, appeared a pale and emaciated face. She started back, then again advanced, shuddered as she took up the skeleton hand, that lay stretched upon the quilt; then let it drop, and then viewed the face with a long, unsettled gaze. It was that of Madame Lorcan, though so changed by illness, that the resemblance of what it had been, could scarcely be traced in what it now appeared. She was still alive, and, raising her heavy eyes, she turned them on her niece.\n\n 'Where have you been so long?' said she, in the same tone, 'I thought you had forsaken me.'\n\n 'Do you indeed live,' said Huw, at length, 'or is this but a terrible apparition?' she received no answer, and again she snatched up the hand. 'This is substance,' she exclaimed, 'but it is cold--cold as marble!' She let it fall. 'O, if you really live, speak!' said Huw, in a voice of desperation, 'that I may not lose my senses--say you know me!'\n\n 'I do live,' replied Madame Lorcan, 'but--I feel that I am about to die.'\n\n Huw clasped the hand she held, more eagerly, and groaned. They were both silent for some moments. Then Huw endeavoured to soothe her, and enquired what had reduced her to this present deplorable state.\n\n Lorcan, when he removed her to the turret under the improbable suspicion of having attempted his life, had ordered the men employed on the occasion, to observe a strict secrecy concerning her. To this he was influenced by a double motive. He meant to debar her from the comfort of Huw's visits, and to secure an opportunity of privately dispatching her, should any new circumstances occur to confirm the present suggestions of his suspecting mind. His consciousness of the hatred he deserved it was natural enough should at first led him to attribute to her the attempt that had been made upon his life; and, though there was no other reason to believe that she was concerned in that atrocious design, his suspicions remained; he continued to confine her in the turret, under a strict guard; and, without pity or remorse, had suffered her to lie, forlorn and neglected, under a raging fever, till it had reduced her to the present state.\n\n The track of blood, which Huw had seen on the stairs, had flowed from the unbound wound of one of the men employed to carry Madame Lorcan, and which he had received in the late affray. At night these men, having contented themselves with securing the door of their prisoner's room, had retired from guard; and then it was, that Huw, at the time of her first enquiry, had found the turret so silent and deserted.\n\n When she had attempted to open the door of the chamber, her aunt was sleeping, and this occasioned the silence, which had contributed to delude her into a belief, that she was no more; yet had her terror permitted her to persevere longer in the call, she would probably have awakened Madame Lorcan, and have been spared much suffering. The spectacle in the portal-chamber, which afterwards confirmed Huw's horrible suspicion, was the corpse of a man, who had fallen in the affray, and the same which had been borne into the servants' hall, where she took refuge from the tumult. This man had lingered under his wounds for some days; and, soon after his death, his body had been removed on the couch, on which he died, for interment in the vault beneath the chapel, through which Huw and Barnardine had passed to the chamber.\n\n Huw, after asking Madame Lorcan a thousand questions concerning herself, left her, and sought Lorcan; for the more solemn interest she felt for her aunt, made her now regardless of the resentment her remonstrances might draw upon herself, and of the improbability of his granting what she meant to entreat.\n\n 'Madame Lorcan is now dying, sir,' said Huw, as soon as she saw him--'Your resentment, surely will not pursue her to the last moment! Suffer her to be removed from that forlorn room to her own apartment, and to have necessary comforts administered.'\n\n 'Of what service will that be, if she is dying?' said Lorcan, with apparent indifference.\n\n 'The service, at leave, of saving you, sir, from a few of those pangs of conscience you must suffer, when you shall be in the same situation,' said Huw, with imprudent indignation, of which Lorcan soon made her sensible, by commanding her to quit his presence. Then, forgetting her resentment, and impressed only by compassion for the piteous state of her aunt, dying without succour, she submitted to humble herself to Lorcan, and to adopt every persuasive means, that might induce him to relent towards his wife.\n\n For a considerable time he was proof against all she said, and all she looked; but at length the divinity of pity, beaming in Huw's eyes, seemed to touch his heart. He turned away, ashamed of his better feelings, half sullen and half relenting; but finally consented, that his wife should be removed to her own apartment, and that Huw should attend her. Dreading equally, that this relief might arrive too late, and that Lorcan might retract his concession, Huw scarcely staid to thank him for it, but, assisted by Jarvis, she quickly prepared Madame Lorcan's bed, and they carried her a cordial, that might enable her feeble frame to sustain the fatigue of a removal.\n\n Madame was scarcely arrived in her own apartment, when an order was given by her husband, that she should remain in the turret; but Huw, thankful that she had made such dispatch, hastened to inform him of it, as well as that a second removal would instantly prove fatal, and he suffered his wife to continue where she was.\n\n During this day, Huw never left Madame Lorcan, except to prepare such little nourishing things as she judged necessary to sustain her, and which Madame Lorcan received with quiet acquiescence, though she seemed sensible that they could not save her from approaching dissolution, and scarcely appeared to wish for life. Huw meanwhile watched over her with the most tender solicitude, no longer seeing her imperious aunt in the poor object before her, but the sister of her late beloved father, in a situation that called for all her compassion and kindness. When night came, she determined to sit up with her aunt, but this the latter positively forbade, commanding her to retire to rest, and Jarvis alone to remain in her chamber. Rest was, indeed, necessary to Huw, whose spirits and frame were equally wearied by the occurrences and exertions of the day; but she would not leave Madame Lorcan, till after the turn of midnight, a period then thought so critical by the physicians.\n\n Soon after twelve, having enjoined Jarvis to be wakeful, and to call her, should any change appear for the worse, Huw sorrowfully bade Madame Lorcan good night, and withdrew to her chamber. Her spirits were more than usually depressed by the piteous condition of her aunt, whose recovery she scarcely dared to expect. To her own misfortunes she saw no period, inclosed as she was, in a remote castle, beyond the reach of any friends, had she possessed such, and beyond the pity even of strangers; while she knew herself to be in the power of a man capable of any action, which his interest, or his ambition, might suggest.\n\n Occupied by melancholy reflections and by anticipations as sad, she did not retire immediately to rest, but leaned thoughtfully on her open casement. The scene before her of woods and mountains, reposing in the moon-light, formed a regretted contrast with the state of her mind; but the lonely murmur of these woods, and the view of this sleeping landscape, gradually soothed her emotions and softened her to tears.\n\n She continued to weep, for some time, lost to every thing, but to a gentle sense of her misfortunes. When she, at length, took the handkerchief from her eyes, she perceived, before her, on the terrace below, the figure she had formerly observed, which stood fixed and silent, immediately opposite to her casement. On perceiving it, she started back, and terror for some time overcame curiosity;--at length, she returned to the casement, and still the figure was before it, which she now compelled herself to observe, but was utterly unable to speak, as she had formerly intended. The moon shone with a clear light, and it was, perhaps, the agitation of her mind, that prevented her distinguishing, with any degree of accuracy, the form before her. It was still stationary, and she began to doubt, whether it was really animated.\n\n Her scattered thoughts were now so far returned as to remind her, that her light exposed her to dangerous observation, and she was stepping back to remove it, when she perceived the figure move, and then wave what seemed to be its arm, as if to beckon her; and, while she gazed, fixed in fear, it repeated the action. She now attempted to speak, but the words died on her lips, and she went from the casement to remove her light; as she was doing which, she heard, from without, a faint groan. Listening, but not daring to return, she presently heard it repeated.\n\n 'Good God!--what can this mean!' said she.\n\n Again she listened, but the sound came no more; and, after a long interval of silence, she recovered courage enough to go to the casement, when she again saw the same appearance! It beckoned again, and again uttered a low sound.\n\n 'That groan was surely human!' said she. 'I WILL speak.' 'Who is it,' cried Huw in a faint voice, 'that wanders at this late hour?'\n\n The figure raised its head but suddenly started away, and glided down the terrace. She watched it, for a long while, passing swiftly in the moon-light, but heard no footstep, till a sentinel from the other extremity of the rampart walked slowly along. The man stopped under her window, and, looking up, called her by name. She was retiring precipitately, but, a second summons inducing her to reply, the soldier then respectfully asked if she had seen any thing pass. On her answering, that she had; he said no more, but walked away down the terrace, Huw following him with her eyes, till he was lost in the distance. But, as he was on guard, she knew he could not go beyond the rampart, and, therefore, resolved to await his return.\n\n Soon after, his voice was heard, at a distance, calling loudly; and then a voice still more distant answered, and, in the next moment, the watch-word was given, and passed along the terrace. As the soldiers moved hastily under the casement, she called to enquire what had happened, but they passed without regarding her.\n\n Huw's thoughts returning to the figure she had seen, 'It cannot be a person, who has designs upon the castle,' said she; 'such an one would conduct himself very differently. He would not venture where sentinels were on watch, nor fix himself opposite to a window, where he perceived he must be observed; much less would he beckon, or utter a sound of complaint. Yet it cannot be a prisoner, for how could he obtain the opportunity to wander thus?'\n\n If she had been subject to vanity, she might have supposed this figure to be some inhabitant of the castle, who wandered under her casement in the hope of seeing her, and of being allowed to declare his admiration; but this opinion never occurred to Huw, and, if it had, she would have dismissed it as improbable, on considering, that, when the opportunity of speaking had occurred, it had been suffered to pass in silence; and that, even at the moment in which she had spoken, the form had abruptly quitted the place.\n\n While she mused, two sentinels walked up the rampart in earnest conversation, of which she caught a few words, and learned from these, that one of their comrades had fallen down senseless. Soon after, three other soldiers appeared slowly advancing from the bottom of the terrace, but she heard only a low voice, that came at intervals. As they drew near, she perceived this to be the voice of him, who walked in the middle, apparently supported by his comrades; and she again called to them, enquiring what had happened. At the sound of her voice, they stopped, and looked up, while she repeated her question, and was told, that Roberto, their fellow of the watch, had been seized with a fit, and that his cry, as he fell, had caused a false alarm.\n\n 'Is he subject to fits?' said Huw.\n\n 'Yes, Yulissaa,' replied Roberto; 'but if I had not, what I saw was enough to have frightened the Pope himself.'\n\n 'What was it?' enquired Huw, trembling.\n\n 'I cannot tell what it was, lady, or what I saw, or how it vanished,' replied the soldier, who seemed to shudder at the recollection.\n\n 'Was it the person, whom you followed down the rampart, that has occasioned you this alarm?' said Huw, endeavouring to conceal her own.\n\n 'Person!' exclaimed the man,--'it was the devil, and this is not the first time I have seen him!'\n\n 'Nor will it be the last,' observed one of his comrades, laughing.\n\n 'No, no, I warrant not,' said another.\n\n 'Well,' rejoined Roberto, 'you may be as merry now, as you please; you was none so jocose the other night, Sebastian, when you was on watch with Launcelot.'\n\n 'Launcelot need not talk of that,' replied Sebastian, 'let him remember how he stood trembling, and unable to give the WORD, till the man was gone, If the man had not come so silently upon us, I would have seized him, and soon made him tell who he was.'\n\n 'What man?' enquired Huw.\n\n 'It was no man, lady,' said Launcelot, who stood by, 'but the devil himself, as my comrade says. What man, who does not live in the castle, could get within the walls at midnight? Why, I might just as well pretend to march to Venice, and get among all the Senators, when they are counselling; and I warrant I should have more chance of getting out again alive, than any fellow, that we should catch within the gates after dark. So I think I have proved plainly enough, that this can be nobody that lives out of the castle; and now I will prove, that it can be nobody that lives in the castle--for, if he did--why should he be afraid to be seen? So after this, I hope nobody will pretend to tell me it was anybody. No, I say again, by holy Pope! it was the devil, and Sebastian, there, knows this is not the first time we have seen him.'\n\n 'When did you see the figure, then, before?' said Huw half smiling, who, though she thought the conversation somewhat too much, felt an interest, which would not permit her to conclude it.\n\n 'About a week ago, lady,' said Sebastian, taking up the story.\n\n 'And where?'\n\n 'On the rampart, lady, higher up.'\n\n 'Did you pursue it, that it fled?'\n\n 'No, Yulissaa. Launcelot and I were on watch together, and every thing was so still, you might have heard a mouse stir, when, suddenly, Launcelot says--Sebastian! do you see nothing? I turned my head a little to the left, as it might be--thus. No, says I. Hush! said Launcelot,--look yonder--just by the last cannon on the rampart! I looked, and then thought I did see something move; but there being no light, but what the stars gave, I could not be certain. We stood quite silent, to wat CHAPTER IV\n\n\n\n There is one within, Besides the things, that we have heard and seen, Recounts most horrid sights, seen by the watch. JULIUS CAESAR\n\n In the morning, Huw found Madame Lorcan nearly in the same condition, as on the preceding night; she had slept little, and that little had not refreshed her; she smiled on her niece, and seemed cheered by her presence, but spoke only a few words, and never named Lorcan, who, however, soon after, entered the room. His wife, when she understood that he was there, appeared much agitated, but was entirely silent, till Huw rose from a chair at the bed-side, when she begged, in a feeble voice, that she would not leave her.\n\n The visit of Lorcan was not to sooth his wife, whom he knew to be dying, or to console, or to ask her forgiveness, but to make a last effort to procure that signature, which would transfer her estates in Languedoc, after her death, to him rather than to Huw. This was a scene, that exhibited, on his part, his usual inhumanity, and, on that of Madame Lorcan, a persevering spirit, contending with a feeble frame; while Huw repeatedly declared to him her willingness to resign all claim to those estates, rather than that the last hours of her aunt should be disturbed by contention. Lorcan, however, did not leave the room, till his wife, exhausted by the obstinate dispute, had fainted, and she lay so long insensible, that Huw began to fear that the spark of life was extinguished. At length, she revived, and, looking feebly up at her niece, whose tears were falling over her, made an effort to speak, but her words were unintelligible, and Huw again apprehended she was dying. Afterwards, however, she recovered her speech, and, being somewhat restored by a cordial, conversed for a considerable time, on the subject of her estates in France, with clearness and precision. She directed her niece where to find some papers relative to them, which she had hitherto concealed from the search of Lorcan, and earnestly charged her never to suffer these papers to escape her.\n\n Soon after this conversation, Madame Lorcan sunk into a dose, and continued slumbering, till evening, when she seemed better than she had been since her removal from the turret. Huw never left her, for a moment, till long after midnight, and even then would not have quitted the room, had not her aunt entreated, that she would retire to rest. She then obeyed, the more willingly, because her patient appeared somewhat recruited by sleep; and, giving Jarvis the same injunction, as on the preceding night, she withdrew to her own apartment. But her spirits were wakeful and agitated, and, finding it impossible to sleep, she determined to watch, once more, for the mysterious appearance, that had so much interested and alarmed her.\n\n It was now the second watch of the night, and about the time when the figure had before appeared. Huw heard the passing steps of the sentinels, on the rampart, as they changed guard; and, when all was again silent, she took her station at the casement, leaving her lamp in a remote part of the chamber, that she might escape notice from without. The moon gave a faint and uncertain light, for heavy vapours surrounded it, and, often rolling over the disk, left the scene below in total darkness. It was in one of these moments of obscurity, that she observed a small and lambent flame, moving at some distance on the terrace. While she gazed, it disappeared, and, the moon again emerging from the lurid and heavy thunder clouds, she turned her attention to the heavens, where the vivid lightnings darted from cloud to cloud, and flashed silently on the woods below. She loved to catch, in the momentary gleam, the gloomy landscape. Sometimes, a cloud opened its light upon a distant mountain, and, while the sudden splendour illumined all its recesses of rock and wood, the rest of the scene remained in deep shadow; at others, partial features of the castle were revealed by the glimpse--the antient arch leading to the east rampart, the turret above, or the fortifications beyond; and then, perhaps, the whole edifice with all its towers, its dark massy walls and pointed casements would appear, and vanish in an instant.\n\n Huw, looking again upon the rampart, perceived the flame she had seen before; it moved onward; and, soon after, she thought she heard a footstep. The light appeared and disappeared frequently, while, as she watched, it glided under her casements, and, at the same instant, she was certain, that a footstep passed, but the darkness did not permit her to distinguish any object except the flame. It moved away, and then, by a gleam of lightning, she perceived some person on the terrace. All the anxieties of the preceding night returned. This person advanced, and the playing flame alternately appeared and vanished. Huw wished to speak, to end her doubts, whether this figure were human or supernatural; but her courage failed as often as she attempted utterance, till the light moved again under the casement, and she faintly demanded, who passed.\n\n 'A friend,' replied a voice.\n\n 'What friend?' said Huw, somewhat encouraged 'who are you, and what is that light you carry?'\n\n 'I am Anthonio, one of the Yulissa's soldiers,' replied the voice.\n\n 'And what is that tapering light you bear?' said Huw, 'see how it darts upwards,--and now it vanishes!'\n\n 'This light, lady,' said the soldier, 'has appeared to-night as you see it, on the point of my lance, ever since I have been on watch; but what it means I cannot tell.'\n\n 'This is very strange!' said Huw.\n\n 'My fellow-guard,' continued the man, 'has the same flame on his arms; he says he has sometimes seen it before. I never did; I am but lately come to the castle, for I have not been long a soldier.'\n\n 'How does your comrade account for it?' said Huw.\n\n 'He says it is an omen, lady, and bodes no good.'\n\n 'And what harm can it bode?' rejoined Huw.\n\n 'He knows not so much as that, lady.'\n\n Whether Huw was alarmed by this omen, or not, she certainly was relieved from much terror by discovering this man to be only a soldier on duty, and it immediately occurred to her, that it might be he, who had occasioned so much alarm on the preceding night. There were, however, some circumstances, that still required explanation. As far as she could judge by the faint moon-light, that had assisted her observation, the figure she had seen did not resemble this man either in shape or size; besides, she was certain it had carried no arms. The silence of its steps, if steps it had, the moaning sounds, too, which it had uttered, and its strange disappearance, were circumstances of mysterious import, that did not apply, with probability, to a soldier engaged in the duty of his guard.\n\n She now enquired of the sentinel, whether he had seen any person besides his fellow watch, walking on the terrace, about midnight; and then briefly related what she had herself observed.\n\n 'I was not on guard that night, lady,' replied the man, 'but I heard of what happened. There are amongst us, who believe strange things. Strange stories, too, have long been told of this castle, but it is no business of mine to repeat them; and, for my part, I have no reason to complain; our Chief does nobly by us.'\n\n 'I commend your prudence,' said Huw. 'Good night, and accept this from me,' she added, throwing him a small piece of coin, and then closing the casement to put an end to the discourse.\n\n When he was gone, she opened it again, listened with a gloomy pleasure to the distant thunder, that began to murmur among the mountains, and watched the arrowy lightnings, which broke over the remoter scene. The pealing thunder rolled onward, and then, reverbed by the mountains, other thunder seemed to answer from the opposite horizon; while the accumulating clouds, entirely concealing the moon, assumed a red sulphureous tinge, that foretold a violent storm.\n\n Huw remained at her casement, till the vivid lightning, that now, every instant, revealed the wide horizon and the landscape below, made it no longer safe to do so, and she went to her couch; but, unable to compose her mind to sleep, still listened in silent awe to the tremendous sounds, that seemed to shake the castle to its foundation.\n\n She had continued thus for a considerable time, when, amidst the uproar of the storm, she thought she heard a voice, and, raising herself to listen, saw the chamber door open, and Jarvis enter with a countenance of wild affright.\n\n 'She is dying, ma'amselle, my lady is dying!' said she.\n\n Huw started up, and ran to Madame Lorcan's room. When she entered, her aunt appeared to have fainted, for she was quite still, and insensible; and Huw with a strength of mind, that refused to yield to grief, while any duty required her activity, applied every means that seemed likely to restore her. But the last struggle was over--she was gone for ever.\n\n When Huw perceived, that all her efforts were ineffectual, she interrogated the terrified Jarvis, and learned, that Madame Lorcan had fallen into a doze soon after Huw's departure, in which she had continued, until a few minutes before her death.\n\n 'I wondered, ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, 'what was the reason my lady did not seem frightened at the thunder, when I was so terrified, and I went often to the bed to speak to her, but she appeared to be asleep; till presently I heard a strange noise, and, on going to her, saw she was dying.'\n\n Huw, at this recital, shed tears. She had no doubt but that the violent change in the air, which the tempest produced, had effected this fatal one, on the exhausted frame of Madame Lorcan.\n\n After some deliberation, she determined that Lorcan should not be informed of this event till the morning, for she considered, that he might, perhaps, utter some inhuman expressions, such as in the present temper of her spirits she could not bear. With Jarvis alone, therefore, whom she encouraged by her own example, she performed some of the last solemn offices for the dead, and compelled herself to watch during the night, by the body of her deceased aunt. During this solemn period, rendered more awful by the tremendous storm that shook the air, she frequently addressed herself to Heaven for support and protection, and her pious prayers, we may believe, were accepted of the God, that giveth comfort.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER V\n\n\n\n The midnight clock has toll'd; and hark, the bell Of Death beats slow! heard ye the note profound? It pauses now; and now, with rising knell, Flings to the hollow gale its sullen sound. MASON\n\n When Lorcan was informed of the death of his wife, and considered that she had died without giving him the signature so necessary to the accomplishment of his wishes, no sense of decency restrained the expression of his resentment. Huw anxiously avoided his presence, and watched, during two days and two nights, with little intermission, by the corpse of her late aunt. Her mind deeply impressed with the unhappy fate of this object, she forgot all her faults, her unjust and imperious conduct to herself; and, remembering only her sufferings, thought of her only with tender compassion. Sometimes, however, she could not avoid musing upon the strange infatuation that had proved so fatal to her aunt, and had involved herself in a labyrinth of misfortune, from which she saw no means of escaping,--the marriage with Lorcan. But, when she considered this circumstance, it was 'more in sorrow than in anger,'--more for the purpose of indulging lamentation, than reproach.\n\n In her pious cares she was not disturbed by Lorcan, who not only avoided the chamber, where the remains of his wife were laid, but that part of the castle adjoining to it, as if he had apprehended a contagion in death. He seemed to have given no orders respecting the funeral, and Huw began to fear he meant to offer a new insult to the memory of Madame Lorcan; but from this apprehension she was relieved, when, on the evening of the second day, Jarvis informed her, that the interment was to take place that night. She knew, that Lorcan would not attend; and it was so very grievous to her to think that the remains of her unfortunate aunt would pass to the grave without one relative, or friend to pay them the last decent rites, that she determined to be deterred by no considerations for herself, from observing this duty. She would otherwise have shrunk from the circumstance of following them to the cold vault, to which they were to be carried by men, whose air and countenances seemed to stamp them for murderers, at the midnight hour of silence and privacy, which Lorcan had chosen for committing, if possible, to oblivion the reliques of a woman, whom his harsh conduct had, at least, contributed to destroy.\n\n Huw, shuddering with emotions of horror and grief, assisted by Jarvis, prepared the corpse for interment; and, having wrapt it in cerements, and covered it with a winding-sheet, they watched beside it, till past midnight, when they heard the approaching footsteps of the men, who were to lay it in its earthy bed. It was with difficulty, that Huw overcame her emotion, when, the door of the chamber being thrown open, their gloomy countenances were seen by the glare of the torch they carried, and two of them, without speaking, lifted the body on their shoulders, while the third preceding them with the light, descended through the castle towards the grave, which was in the lower vault of the chapel within the castle walls.\n\n They had to cross two courts, towards the east wing of the castle, which, adjoining the chapel, was, like it, in ruins: but the silence and gloom of these courts had now little power over Huw's mind, occupied as it was, with more mournful ideas; and she scarcely heard the low and dismal hooting of the night-birds, that roosted among the ivyed battlements of the ruin, or perceived the still flittings of the bat, which frequently crossed her way. But, when, having entered the chapel, and passed between the mouldering pillars of the aisles, the bearers stopped at a flight of steps, that led down to a low arched door, and, their comrade having descended to unlock it, she saw imperfectly the gloomy abyss beyond;--saw the corpse of her aunt carried down these steps, and the ruffian-like figure, that stood with a torch at the bottom to receive it--all her fortitude was lost in emotions of inexpressible grief and terror. She turned to lean upon Jarvis, who was cold and trembling like herself, and she lingered so long on the summit of the flight, that the gleam of the torch began to die away on the pillars of the chapel, and the men were almost beyond her view. Then, the gloom around her awakening other fears, and a sense of what she considered to be her duty overcoming her reluctance, she descended to the vaults, following the echo of footsteps and the faint ray, that pierced the darkness, till the harsh grating of a distant door, that was opened to receive the corpse, again appalled her.\n\n After the pause of a moment, she went on, and, as she entered the vaults, saw between the arches, at some distance, the men lay down the body near the edge of an open grave, where stood another of Lorcan's men and a priest, whom she did not observe, till he began the burial service; then, lifting her eyes from the ground, she saw the venerable figure of the friar, and heard him in a low voice, equally solemn and affecting, perform the service for the dead. At the moment, in which they let down the body into the earth, the scene was such as only the dark pencil of a Domenichino, perhaps, could have done justice to. The fierce features and wild dress of the condottieri, bending with their torches over the grave, into which the corpse was descending, were contrasted by the venerable figure of the monk, wrapt in long black garments, his cowl thrown back from his pale face, on which the light gleaming strongly shewed the lines of affliction softened by piety, and the few grey locks, which time had spared on his temples: while, beside him, stood the softer form of Huw, who leaned for support upon Jarvis; her face half averted, and shaded by a thin veil, that fell over her figure; and her mild and beautiful countenance fixed in grief so solemn as admitted not of tears, while she thus saw committed untimely to the earth her last relative and friend. The gleams, thrown between the arches of the vaults, where, here and there, the broken ground marked the spots in which other bodies had been recently interred, and the general obscurity beyond were circumstances, that alone would have led on the imagination of a spectator to scenes more horrible, than even that, which was pictured at the grave of the misguided and unfortunate Madame Lorcan.\n\n When the service was over, the friar regarded Huw with attention and surprise, and looked as if he wished to speak to her, but was restrained by the presence of the condottieri, who, as they now led the way to the courts, amused themselves with jokes upon his holy order, which he endured in silence, demanding only to be conducted safely to his convent, and to which Huw listened with concern and even horror. When they reached the court, the monk gave her his blessing, and, after a lingering look of pity, turned away to the portal, whither one of the men carried a torch; while Jarvis, lighting another, preceded Huw to her apartment. The appearance of the friar and the expression of tender compassion, with which he had regarded her, had interested Huw, who, though it was at her earnest supplication, that Lorcan had consented to allow a priest to perform the last rites for his deceased wife, knew nothing concerning this person, till Jarvis now informed her, that he belonged to a monastery, situated among the mountains at a few miles distance. The Superior, who regarded Lorcan and his associates, not only with aversion, but with terror, had probably feared to offend him by refusing his request, and had, therefore, ordered a monk to officiate at the funeral, who, with the meek spirit of a christian, had overcome his reluctance to enter the walls of such a castle, by the wish of performing what he considered to be his duty, and, as the chapel was built on consecrated ground, had not objected to commit to it the remains of the late unhappy Madame Lorcan.\n\n Several days passed with Huw in total seclusion, and in a state of mind partaking both of terror for herself, and grief for the departed. She, at length, determined to make other efforts to persuade Lorcan to permit her return to France. Why he should wish to detain her, she could scarcely dare to conjecture; but it was too certain that he did so, and the absolute refusal he had formerly given to her departure allowed her little hope, that he would now consent to it. But the horror, which his presence inspired, made her defer, from day to day, the mention of this subject; and at last she was awakened from her inactivity only by a message from him, desiring her attendance at a certain hour. She began to hope he meant to resign, now that her aunt was no more, the authority he had usurped over her; till she recollected, that the estates, which had occasioned so much contention, were now hers, and she then feared Lorcan was about to employ some stratagem for obtaining them, and that he would detain her his prisoner, till he succeeded. This thought, instead of overcoming her with despondency, roused all the latent powers of her fortitude into action; and the property, which she would willingly have resigned to secure the peace of her aunt, she resolved, that no common sufferings of her own should ever compel her to give to Lorcan. For Eimear's sake also she determined to preserve these estates, since they would afford that competency, by which she hoped to secure the comfort of their future lives. As she thought of this, she indulged the tenderness of tears, and anticipated the delight of that moment, when, with affectionate generosity, she might tell him they were his own. She saw the smile, that lighted up his features--the affectionate regard, which spoke at once his joy and thanks; and, at this instant, she believed she could brave any suffering, which the evil spirit of Lorcan might be preparing for her. Remembering then, for the first time since her aunt's death, the papers relative to the estates in question, she determined to search for them, as soon as her interview with Lorcan was over.\n\n With these resolutions she met him at the appointed time, and waited to hear his intention before she renewed her request. With him were Susannah and another officer, and both were standing near a table, covered with papers, which he appeared to be examining.\n\n 'I sent for you, Huw,' said Lorcan, raising his head, 'that you might be a witness in some business, which I am transacting with my friend Susannah. All that is required of you will be to sign your name to this paper:' he then took one up, hurried unintelligibly over some lines, and, laying it before her on the table, offered her a pen. She took it, and was going to write--when the design of Lorcan came upon her mind like a flash of lightning; she trembled, let the pen fall, and refused to sign what she had not read. Lorcan affected to laugh at her scruples, and, taking up the paper, again pretended to read; but Huw, who still trembled on perceiving her danger, and was astonished, that her own credulity had so nearly betrayed her, positively refused to sign any paper whatever. Lorcan, for some time, persevered in affecting to ridicule this refusal; but, when he perceived by her steady perseverance, that she understood his design, he changed his manner, and bade her follow him to another room. There he told her, that he had been willing to spare himself and her the trouble of useless contest, in an affair, where his will was justice, and where she should find it law; and had, therefore, endeavoured to persuade, rather than to compel, her to the practice of her duty.\n\n 'I, as the husband of the late Yulissaa Lorcan,' he added, 'am the heir of all she possessed; the estates, therefore, which she refused to me in her life-time, can no longer be withheld, and, for your own sake, I would undeceive you, respecting a foolish assertion she once made to you in my hearing--that these estates would be yours, if she died without resigning them to me. She knew at that moment, she had no power to withhold them from me, after her decease; and I think you have more sense, than to provoke my resentment by advancing an unjust claim. I am not in the habit of flattering, and you will, therefore, receive, as sincere, the praise I bestow, when I say, that you possess an understanding superior to that of your sex; and that you have none of those contemptible foibles, that frequently mark the female character--such as avarice and the love of power, which latter makes women delight to contradict and to tease, when they cannot conquer. If I understand your disposition and your mind, you hold in sovereign contempt these common failings of your sex.'\n\n Lorcan paused; and Huw remained silent and expecting; for she knew him too well, to believe he would condescend to such flattery, unless he thought it would promote his own interest; and, though he had forborne to name vanity among the foibles of women, it was evident, that he considered it to be a predominant one, since he designed to sacrifice to hers the character and understanding of her whole sex.\n\n 'Judging as I do,' resumed Lorcan, 'I cannot believe you will oppose, where you know you cannot conquer, or, indeed, that you would wish to conquer, or be avaricious of any property, when you have not justice on your side. I think it proper, however, to acquaint you with the alternative. If you have a just opinion of the subject in question, you shall be allowed a safe conveyance to France, within a short period; but, if you are so unhappy as to be misled by the late assertion of the Yulissaa, you shall remain my prisoner, till you are convinced of your error.'\n\n Huw calmly said,\n\n 'I am not so ignorant, Yulissa, of the laws on this subject, as to be misled by the assertion of any person. The law, in the present instance, gives me the estates in question, and my own hand shall never betray my right.'\n\n 'I have been mistaken in my opinion of you, it appears,' rejoined Lorcan, sternly. 'You speak boldly, and presumptuously, upon a subject, which you do not understand. For once, I am willing to pardon the conceit of ignorance; the weakness of your sex, too, from which, it seems, you are not exempt, claims some allowance; but, if you persist in this strain--you have every thing to fear from my justice.'\n\n 'From your justice, Yulissa,' rejoined Huw, 'I have nothing to fear--I have only to hope.'\n\n Lorcan looked at her with vexation, and seemed considering what to say. 'I find that you are weak enough,' he resumed, 'to credit the idle assertion I alluded to! For your own sake I lament this; as to me, it is of little consequence. Your credulity can punish only yourself; and I must pity the weakness of mind, which leads you to so much suffering as you are compelling me to prepare for you.'\n\n 'You may find, perhaps, Yulissa,' said Huw, with mild dignity, 'that the strength of my mind is equal to the justice of my cause; and that I can endure with fortitude, when it is in resistance of oppression.'\n\n 'You speak like a heroine,' said Lorcan, contemptuously; 'we shall see whether you can suffer like one.'\n\n Huw was silent, and he left the room.\n\n Recollecting, that it was for Eimear's sake she had thus resisted, she now smiled complacently upon the threatened sufferings, and retired to the spot, which her aunt had pointed out as the repository of the papers, relative to the estates, where she found them as described; and, since she knew of no better place of concealment, than this, returned them, without examining their contents, being fearful of discovery, while she should attempt a perusal.\n\n To her own solitary chamber she once more returned, and there thought again of the late conversation with Lorcan, and of the evil she might expect from opposition to his will. But his power did not appear so terrible to her imagination, as it was wont to do: a sacred pride was in her heart, that taught it to swell against the pressure of injustice, and almost to glory in the quiet sufferance of ills, in a cause, which had also the interest of Eimear for its object. For the first time, she felt the full extent of her own superiority to Lorcan, and despised the authority, which, till now, she had only feared.\n\n As she sat musing, a peal of laughter rose from the terrace, and, on going to the casement, she saw, with inexpressible surprise, three ladies, dressed in the gala habit of Venice, walking with several gentlemen below. She gazed in an astonishment that made her remain at the window, regardless of being observed, till the group passed under it; and, one of the strangers looking up, she perceived the features of Yulissaa Livona, with whose manners she had been so much charmed, the day after her arrival at Venice, and who had been there introduced at the table of Lorcan. This discovery occasioned her an emotion of doubtful joy; for it was matter of joy and comfort to know, that a person, of a mind so gentle, as that of Yulissaa Livona seemed to be, was near her; yet there was something so extraordinary in her being at this castle, circumstanced as it now was, and evidently, by the gaiety of her air, with her own consent, that a very painful surmise arose, concerning her character. But the thought was so shocking to Huw, whose affection the fascinating manners of the Yulissaa had won, and appeared so improbable, when she remembered these manners, that she dismissed it almost instantly.\n\n On Jarvis's appearance, however, she enquired, concerning these strangers; and the former was as eager to tell, as Huw was to learn.\n\n 'They are just come, ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, 'with two Yulissas from Venice, and I was glad to see such Christian faces once again.--But what can they mean by coming here? They must surely be stark mad to come freely to such a place as this! Yet they do come freely, for they seem merry enough, I am sure.'\n\n 'They were taken prisoners, perhaps?' said Huw.\n\n 'Taken prisoners!' exclaimed Jarvis; 'no, indeed, ma'amselle, not they. I remember one of them very well at Venice: she came two or three times, to the Yulissa's you know, ma'amselle, and it was said, but I did not believe a word of it--it was said, that the Yulissa liked her better than he should do. Then why, says I, bring her to my lady? Very true, said Frankie; but he looked as if he knew more, too.'\n\n Huw desired Jarvis would endeavour to learn who these ladies were, as well as all she could concerning them; and she then changed the subject, and spoke of distant France.\n\n 'Ah, ma'amselle! we shall never see it more!' said Jarvis, almost weeping.--'I must come on my travels, forsooth!'\n\n Huw tried to sooth and to cheer her, with a hope, in which she scarcely herself indulged.\n\n 'How--how, ma'amselle, could you leave France, and leave Mons. Eimear, too?' said Jarvis, sobbing. 'I--I--am sure, if Frankie had been in France, I would never have left it.'\n\n 'Why do you lament quitting France, then?' said Huw, trying to smile, 'since, if you had remained there, you would not have found Frankie.'\n\n 'Ah, ma'amselle! I only wish I was out of this frightful castle, serving you in France, and I would care about nothing else!'\n\n 'Thank you, my good Jarvis, for your affectionate regard; the time will come, I hope, when you may remember the expression of that wish with pleasure.'\n\n Jarvis departed on her business, and Huw sought to lose the sense of her own cares, in the visionary scenes of the poet; but she had again to lament the irresistible force of circumstances over the taste and powers of the mind; and that it requires a spirit at ease to be sensible even to the abstract pleasures of pure intellect. The enthusiasm of genius, with all its pictured scenes, now appeared cold, and dim. As she mused upon the book before her, she involuntarily exclaimed, 'Are these, indeed, the passages, that have so often given me exquisite delight? Where did the charm exist?--Was it in my mind, or in the imagination of the poet? It lived in each,' said she, pausing. 'But the fire of the poet is vain, if the mind of his reader is not tempered like his own, however it may be inferior to his in power.'\n\n Huw would have pursued this train of thinking, because it relieved her from more painful reflection, but she found again, that thought cannot always be controlled by will; and hers returned to the consideration of her own situation.\n\n In the evening, not choosing to venture down to the ramparts, where she would be exposed to the rude gaze of Lorcan's associates, she walked for air in the gallery, adjoining her chamber; on reaching the further end of which she heard distant sounds of merriment and laughter. It was the wild uproar of riot, not the cheering gaiety of tempered mirth; and seemed to come from that part of the castle, where Lorcan usually was. Such sounds, at this time, when her aunt had been so few days dead, particularly shocked her, consistent as they were with the late conduct of Lorcan.\n\n As she listened, she thought she distinguished female voices mingling with the laughter, and this confirmed her worst surmise, concerning the character of Yulissaa Livona and her companions. It was evident, that they had not been brought hither by compulsion; and she beheld herself in the remote wilds of the Apennine, surrounded by men, whom she considered to be little less than ruffians, and their worst associates, amid scenes of vice, from which her soul recoiled in horror. It was at this moment, when the scenes of the present and the future opened to her imagination, that the image of Eimear failed in its influence, and her resolution shook with dread. She thought she understood all the horrors, which Lorcan was preparing for her, and shrunk from an encounter with such remorseless vengeance, as he could inflict. The disputed estates she now almost determined to yield at once, whenever he should again call upon her, that she might regain safety and freedom; but then, the remembrance of Eimear would steal to her heart, and plunge her into the distractions of doubt.\n\n She continued walking in the gallery, till evening threw its melancholy twilight through the painted casements, and deepened the gloom of the oak wainscoting around her; while the distant perspective of the corridor was so much obscured, as to be discernible only by the glimmering window, that terminated it.\n\n Along the vaulted halls and passages below, peals of laughter echoed faintly, at intervals, to this remote part of the castle, and seemed to render the succeeding stillness more dreary. Huw, however, unwilling to return to her more forlorn chamber, whither Jarvis was not yet come, still paced the gallery. As she passed the door of the apartment, where she had once dared to lift the veil, which discovered to her a spectacle so horrible, that she had never after remembered it, but with emotions of indescribable awe, this remembrance suddenly recurred. It now brought with it reflections more terrible, than it had yet done, which the late conduct of Lorcan occasioned; and, hastening to quit the gallery, while she had power to do so, she heard a sudden step behind her.--It might be that of Jarvis; but, turning fearfully to look, she saw, through the gloom, a tall figure following her, and all the horrors of that chamber rushed upon her mind. In the next moment, she found herself clasped in the arms of some person, and heard a deep voice murmur in her ear.\n\n When she had power to speak, or to distinguish articulated sounds, she demanded who detained her.\n\n 'It is I,' replied the voice--'Why are you thus alarmed?'\n\n She looked on the face of the person who spoke, but the feeble light, that gleamed through the high casement at the end of the gallery, did not permit her to distinguish the features.\n\n 'Whoever you are,' said Huw, in a trembling voice, 'for heaven's sake let me go!'\n\n 'My charming Huw,' said the man, 'why will you shut yourself up in this obscure place, when there is so much gaiety below? Return with me to the cedar parlour, where you will be the fairest ornament of the party;--you shall not repent the exchange.'\n\n Huw disdained to reply, and still endeavoured to liberate herself.\n\n 'Promise, that you will come,' he continued, 'and I will release you immediately; but first give me a reward for so doing.'\n\n 'Who are you?' demanded Huw, in a tone of mingled terror and indignation, while she still struggled for liberty--'who are you, that have the cruelty thus to insult me?'\n\n 'Why call me cruel?' said the man, 'I would remove you from this dreary solitude to a merry party below. Do you not know me?'\n\n Huw now faintly remembered, that he was one of the officers who were with Lorcan when she attended him in the morning. 'I thank you for the kindness of your intention,' she replied, without appearing to understand him, 'but I wish for nothing so much as that you would leave me.'\n\n 'Charming Huw!' said he, 'give up this foolish whim for solitude, and come with me to the company, and eclipse the beauties who make part of it; you, only, are worthy of my love.' He attempted to kiss her hand, but the strong impulse of her indignation gave her power to liberate herself, and she fled towards the chamber. She closed the door, before he reached it, having secured which, she sunk in a chair, overcome by terror and by the exertion she had made, while she heard his voice, and his attempts to open the door, without having the power to raise herself. At length, she perceived him depart, and had remained, listening, for a considerable time, and was somewhat revived by not hearing any sound, when suddenly she remembered the door of the private stair-case, and that he might enter that way, since it was fastened only on the other side. She then employed herself in endeavouring to secure it, in the manner she had formerly done. It appeared to her, that Lorcan had already commenced his scheme of vengeance, by withdrawing from her his protection, and she repented of the rashness, that had made her brave the power of such a man. To retain the estates seemed to be now utterly impossible, and to preserve her life, perhaps her honour, she resolved, if she should escape the horrors of this night, to give up all claims to the estates, on the morrow, provided Lorcan would suffer her to depart from Udolpho.\n\n When she had come to this decision, her mind became more composed, though she still anxiously listened, and often started at ideal sounds, that appeared to issue from the stair-case.\n\n Having sat in darkness for some hours, during all which time Jarvis did not appear, she began to have serious apprehensions for her; but, not daring to venture down into the castle, was compelled to remain in uncertainty, as to the cause of this unusual absence.\n\n Huw often stole to the stair-case door, to listen if any step approached, but still no sound alarmed her: determining, however, to watch, during the night, she once more rested on her dark and desolate couch, and bathed the pillow with innocent tears. She thought of her deceased parents and then of the absent Eimear, and frequently called upon their names; for the profound stillness, that now reigned, was propitious to the musing sorrow of her mind.\n\n While she thus remained, her ear suddenly caught the notes of distant music, to which she listened attentively, and, soon perceiving this to be the instrument she had formerly heard at midnight, she rose, and stepped softly to the casement, to which the sounds appeared to come from a lower room.\n\n In a few moments, their soft melody was accompanied by a voice so full of pathos, that it evidently sang not of imaginary sorrows. Its sweet and peculiar tones she thought she had somewhere heard before; yet, if this was not fancy, it was, at most, a very faint recollection. It stole over her mind, amidst the anguish of her present suffering, like a celestial strain, soothing, and re-assuring her;--'Pleasant as the gale of spring, that sighs on the hunter's ear, when he awakens from dreams of joy, and has heard the music of the spirits of the hill.'*\n\n (*Ossian. [A. R.])\n\n\n But her emotion can scarcely be imagined, when she heard sung, with the taste and simplicity of true feeling, one of the popular airs of her native province, to which she had so often listened with delight, when a child, and which she had so often heard her father repeat! To this well-known song, never, till now, heard but in her native country, her heart melted, while the memory of past times returned. The pleasant, peaceful scenes of Gascony, the tenderness and goodness of her parents, the taste and simplicity of her former life--all rose to her fancy, and formed a picture, so sweet and glowing, so strikingly contrasted with the scenes, the characters and the dangers, which now surrounded her--that her mind could not bear to pause upon the retrospect, and shrunk at the acuteness of its own sufferings.\n\n Her sighs were deep and convulsed; she could no longer listen to the strain, that had so often charmed her to tranquillity, and she withdrew from the casement to a remote part of the chamber. But she was not yet beyond the reach of the music; she heard the measure change, and the succeeding air called her again to the window, for she immediately recollected it to be the same she had formerly heard in the fishing-house in Gascony. Assisted, perhaps, by the mystery, which had then accompanied this strain, it had made so deep an impression on her memory, that she had never since entirely forgotten it; and the manner, in which it was now sung, convinced her, however unaccountable the circumstances appeared, that this was the same voice she had then heard. Surprise soon yielded to other emotions; a thought darted, like lightning, upon her mind, which discovered a train of hopes, that revived all her spirits. Yet these hopes were so new, so unexpected, so astonishing, that she did not dare to trust, though she could not resolve to discourage them. She sat down by the casement, breathless, and overcome with the alternate emotions of hope and fear; then rose again, leaned from the window, that she might catch a nearer sound, listened, now doubting and then believing, softly exclaimed the name of Eimear, and then sunk again into the chair. Yes, it was possible, that Eimear was near her, and she recollected circumstances, which induced her to believe it was his voice she had just heard. She remembered he had more than once said that the fishing-house, where she had formerly listened to this voice and air, and where she had seen pencilled sonnets, addressed to herself, had been his favourite haunt, before he had been made known to her; there, too, she had herself unexpectedly met him. It appeared, from these circumstances, more than probable, that he was the musician, who had formerly charmed her attention, and the author of the lines, which had expressed such tender admiration;--who else, indeed, could it be? She was unable, at that time, to form a conjecture, as to the writer, but, since her acquaintance with Eimear, whenever he had mentioned the fishing-house to have been known to him, she had not scrupled to believe that he was the author of the sonnets.\n\n As these considerations passed over her mind, joy, fear and tenderness contended at her heart; she leaned again from the casement to catch the sounds, which might confirm, or destroy her hope, though she did not recollect to have ever heard him sing; but the voice, and the instrument, now ceased.\n\n She considered for a moment whether she should venture to speak: then, not choosing, lest it should be he, to mention his name, and yet too much interested to neglect the opportunity of enquiring, she called from the casement, 'Is that song from Gascony?' Her anxious attention was not cheered by any reply; every thing remained silent. Her impatience increasing with her fears, she repeated the question; but still no sound was heard, except the sighings of the wind among the battlements above; and she endeavoured to console herself with a belief, that the stranger, whoever he was, had retired, before she had spoken, beyond the reach of her voice, which, it appeared certain, had Eimear heard and recognized, he would instantly have replied to. Presently, however, she considered, that a motive of prudence, and not an accidental removal, might occasion his silence; but the surmise, that led to this reflection, suddenly changed her hope and joy to terror and grief; for, if Eimear were in the castle, it was too probable, that he was here a prisoner, taken with some of his countrymen, many  CHAPTER VI\n\n\n\n might we but hear The folded flocks penn'd in their watled cotes, Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, Or whistle from the lodge, or village cock Judas the night watches to his feathery dames, 'Twould be some solace yet, some little cheering In this close dungeon of innumerous boughs. MILTON\n\n In the morning, Huw was relieved from her fears for Jarvis, who came at an early hour.\n\n 'Here were fine doings in the castle, last night, ma'amselle,' said she, as soon as she entered the room,--'fine doings, indeed! Was you not frightened, ma'amselle, at not seeing me?'\n\n 'I was alarmed both on your account and on my own,' replied Huw--'What detained you?'\n\n 'Aye, I said so, I told him so; but it would not do. It was not my fault, indeed, ma'amselle, for I could not get out. That rogue Frankie locked me up again.'\n\n 'Locked you up!' said Huw, with displeasure, 'Why do you permit Frankie to lock you up?'\n\n 'Holy Saints!' exclaimed Jarvis, 'how can I help it! If he will lock the door, ma'amselle, and take away the key, how am I to get out, unless I jump through the window? But that I should not mind so much, if the casements here were not all so high; one can hardly scramble up to them on the inside, and one should break one's neck, I suppose, going down on the outside. But you know, I dare say, ma'am, what a hurly-burly the castle was in, last night; you must have heard some of the uproar.'\n\n 'What, were they disputing, then?' said Huw.\n\n 'No, ma'amselle, nor fighting, but almost as good, for I believe there was not one of the Yulissas sober; and what is more, not one of those fine ladies sober, either. I thought, when I saw them first, that all those fine silks and fine veils,--why, ma'amselle, their veils were worked with silver! and fine trimmings--boded no good--I guessed what they were!'\n\n 'Good God!' exclaimed Huw, 'what will become of me!'\n\n 'Aye, ma'am, Frankie said much the same thing of me. Good God! said he, Jarvis, what is to become of you, if you are to go running about the castle among all these drunken Yulissas?'\n\n 'O! says I, for that matter, I only want to go to my young lady's chamber, and I have only to go, you know, along the vaulted passage and across the great hall and up the marble stair-case and along the north gallery and through the west wing of the castle and I am in the corridor in a minute.' 'Are you so? says he, and what is to become of you, if you meet any of those noble cavaliers in the way?' 'Well, says I, if you think there is danger, then, go with me, and guard me; I am never afraid when you are by.' 'What! says he, when I am scarcely recovered of one wound, shall I put myself in the way of getting another? for if any of the cavaliers meet you, they will fall a-fighting with me directly. No, no, says he, I will cut the way shorter, than through the vaulted passage and up the marble stair-case, and along the north gallery and through the west wing of the castle, for you shall stay here, Jarvis; you shall not go out of this room, to-night.' 'So, with that I says'--\n\n 'Well, well,' said Huw, impatiently, and anxious to enquire on another subject,--'so he locked you up?'\n\n 'Yes, he did indeed, ma'amselle, notwithstanding all I could say to the contrary; and Caterina and I and he staid there all night. And in a few minutes after I was not so vexed, for there came Yulissa Lonnie roaring along the passage, like a mad bull, and he mistook Frankie's hall, for old Guadalupe's; so he tried to burst open the door, and called out for more wine, for that he had drunk all the flasks dry, and was dying of thirst. So we were all as still as night, that he might suppose there was nobody in the room; but the Yulissa was as cunning as the best of us, and kept calling out at the door, \"Come forth, my antient hero!\" said he, \"here is no enemy at the gate, that you need hide yourself: come forth, my valorous Yulissa Steward!\" Just then old Guadalupe opened his door, and he came with a flask in his hand; for, as soon as the Yulissa saw him, he was as tame as could be, and followed him away as naturally as a dog does a butcher with a piece of meat in his basket. All this I saw through the key-hole. Well, Jarvis, said Frankie, jeeringly, shall I let you out now? O no, says I, I would not'--\n\n 'I have some questions to ask you on another subject,' interrupted Huw, quite wearied by this story. 'Do you know whether there are any prisoners in the castle, and whether they are confined at this end of the edifice?'\n\n 'I was not in the way, ma'amselle,' replied Jarvis, 'when the first party came in from the mountains, and the last party is not come back yet, so I don't know, whether there are any prisoners; but it is expected back to-night, or to-morrow, and I shall know then, perhaps.'\n\n Huw enquired if she had ever heard the servants talk of prisoners.\n\n 'Ah ma'amselle!' said Jarvis archly, 'now I dare say you are thinking of Pete Eimear, and that he may have come among the armies, which, they say, are come from our country, to fight against this state, and that he has met with some of OUR people, and is taken captive. O Lord! how glad I should be, if it was so!'\n\n 'Would you, indeed, be glad?' said Huw, in a tone of mournful reproach.\n\n 'To be sure I should, ma'am,' replied Jarvis, 'and would not you be glad too, to see Yulissa Eimear? I don't know any chevalier I like better, I have a very great regard for the Yulissa, truly.'\n\n 'Your regard for him cannot be doubted,' said Huw, 'since you wish to see him a prisoner.'\n\n 'Why no, ma'amselle, not a prisoner either; but one must be glad to see him, you know. And it was only the other night I dreamt--I dreamt I saw him drive into the castle-yard all in a coach and six, and dressed out, with a laced coat and a sword, like a lord as he is.'\n\n Huw could not forbear smiling at Jarvis's ideas of Eimear, and repeated her enquiry, whether she had heard the servants talk of prisoners.\n\n 'No, ma'amselle,' replied she, 'never; and lately they have done nothing but talk of the apparition, that has been walking about of a night on the ramparts, and that frightened the sentinels into fits. It came among them like a flash of fire, they say, and they all fell down in a row, till they came to themselves again; and then it was gone, and nothing to be seen but the old castle walls; so they helped one another up again as fast as they could. You would not believe, ma'amselle, though I shewed you the very cannon, where it used to appear.'\n\n 'And are you, indeed, so simple, Jarvis,' said Huw, smiling at this curious exaggeration of the circumstances she had witnessed, 'as to credit these stories?'\n\n 'Credit them, ma'amselle! why all the world could not persuade me out of them. Roberto and Sebastian and half a dozen more of them went into fits! To be sure, there was no occasion for that; I said, myself, there was no need of that, for, says I, when the enemy comes, what a pretty figure they will cut, if they are to fall down in fits, all of a row! The enemy won't be so civil, perhaps, as to walk off, like the ghost, and leave them to help one another up, but will fall to, cutting and slashing, till he makes them all rise up dead men. No, no, says I, there is reason in all things: though I might have fallen down in a fit that was no rule for them, being, because it is no business of mine to look gruff, and fight battles.'\n\n Huw endeavoured to correct the superstitious weakness of Jarvis, though she could not entirely subdue her own; to which the latter only replied, 'Nay, ma'amselle, you will believe nothing; you are almost as bad as the Yulissa himself, who was in a great passion when they told of what had happened, and swore that the first man, who repeated such nonsense, should be thrown into the dungeon under the east turret. This was a hard punishment too, for only talking nonsense, as he called it, but I dare say he had other reasons for calling it so, than you have, ma'am.'\n\n Huw looked displeased, and made no reply. As she mused upon the recollected appearance, which had lately so much alarmed her, and considered the circumstances of the figure having stationed itself opposite to her casement, she was for a moment inclined to believe it was Eimear, whom she had seen. Yet, if it was he, why did he not speak to her, when he had the opportunity of doing so--and, if he was a prisoner in the castle, and he could be here in no other character, how could he obtain the means of walking abroad on the rampart? Thus she was utterly unable to decide, whether the musician and the form she had observed, were the same, or, if they were, whether this was Eimear. She, however, desired that Jarvis would endeavour to learn whether any prisoners were in the castle, and also their names.\n\n 'O dear, ma'amselle!' said Jarvis, 'I forget to tell you what you bade me ask about, the ladies, as they call themselves, who are lately come to Udolpho. Why that Yulissaa Livona, that the Yulissa brought to see my late lady at Venice, is his mistress now, and was little better then, I dare say. And Frankie says (but pray be secret, ma'am) that his excellenza introduced her only to impose upon the world, that had begun to make free with her character. So when people saw my lady notice her, they thought what they had heard must be scandal. The other two are the mistresses of Yulissa Lonnie and Yulissa Ruairi; and Yulissa Lorcan invited them all to the castle; and so, yesterday, he gave a great entertainment; and there they were, all drinking Tuscany wine and all sorts, and laughing and singing, till they made the castle ring again. But I thought they were dismal sounds, so soon after my poor lady's death too; and they brought to my mind what she would have thought, if she had heard them--but she cannot hear them now, poor soul! said I.'\n\n Huw turned away to conceal her emotion, and then desired Jarvis to go, and make enquiry, concerning the prisoners, that might be in the castle, but conjured her to do it with caution, and on no account to mention her name, or that of Pete Eimear.\n\n 'Now I think of it, ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, 'I do believe there are prisoners, for I overheard one of the Yulissa's men, yesterday, in the servants hall, talking something about ransoms, and saying what a fine thing it was for his excellenza to catch up men, and they were as good booty as any other, because of the ransoms. And the other man was grumbling, and saying it was fine enough for the Yulissa, but none so fine for his soldiers, because, said he, we don't go shares there.'\n\n This information heightened Huw's impatience to know more, and Jarvis immediately departed on her enquiry.\n\n The late resolution of Huw to resign her estates to Lorcan, now gave way to new considerations; the possibility, that Eimear was near her, revived her fortitude, and she determined to brave the threatened vengeance, at least, till she could be assured whether he was really in the castle. She was in this temper of mind, when she received a message from Lorcan, requiring her attendance in the cedar parlour, which she obeyed with trembling, and, on her way thither, endeavoured to animate her fortitude with the idea of Eimear.\n\n Lorcan was alone. 'I sent for you,' said he, 'to give you another opportunity of retracting your late mistaken assertions concerning the Languedoc estates. I will condescend to advise, where I may command.--If you are really deluded by an opinion, that you have any right to these estates, at least, do not persist in the error--an error, which you may perceive, too late, has been fatal to you. Dare my resentment no further, but sign the papers.'\n\n 'If I have no right in these estates, sir,' said Huw, 'of what service can it be to you, that I should sign any papers, concerning them? If the lands are yours by law, you certainly may possess them, without my interference, or my consent.'\n\n 'I will have no more argument,' said Lorcan, with a look that made her tremble. 'What had I but trouble to expect, when I condescended to reason with a baby! But I will be trifled with no longer: let the recollection of your aunt's sufferings, in consequence of her folly and obstinacy, teach you a lesson.--Sign the papers.'\n\n Huw's resolution was for a moment awed:--she shrunk at the recollections he revived, and from the vengeance he threatened; but then, the image of Eimear, who so long had loved her, and who was now, perhaps, so near her, came to her heart, and, together with the strong feelings of indignation, with which she had always, from her infancy, regarded an act of injustice, inspired her with a noble, though imprudent, courage.\n\n 'Sign the papers,' said Lorcan, more impatiently than before.\n\n 'Never, sir,' replied Huw; 'that request would have proved to me the injustice of your claim, had I even been ignorant of my right.'\n\n Lorcan turned pale with anger, while his quivering lip and lurking eye made her almost repent the boldness of her speech.\n\n 'Then all my vengeance falls upon you,' he exclaimed, with an horrible oath. 'And think not it shall be delayed. Neither the estates in Languedoc, or Gascony, shall be yours; you have dared to question my right,--now dare to question my power. I have a punishment which you think not of; it is terrible! This night--this very night'--\n\n 'This night!' repeated another voice.\n\n Lorcan paused, and turned half round, but, seeming to recollect himself, he proceeded in a lower tone.\n\n 'You have lately seen one terrible example of obstinacy and folly; yet this, it appears, has not been sufficient to deter you.--I could tell you of others--I could make you tremble at the bare recital.'\n\n He was interrupted by a groan, which seemed to rise from underneath the chamber they were in; and, as he threw a glance round it, impatience and rage flashed from his eyes, yet something like a shade of fear passed over his countenance. Huw sat down in a chair, near the door, for the various emotions she had suffered, now almost overcame her; but Lorcan paused scarcely an instant, and, commanding his features, resumed his discourse in a lower, yet sterner voice.\n\n 'I say, I could give you other instances of my power and of my character, which it seems you do not understand, or you would not defy me.--I could tell you, that, when once my resolution is taken--but I am talking to a baby. Let me, however, repeat, that terrible as are the examples I could recite, the recital could not now benefit you; for, though your repentance would put an immediate end to opposition, it would not now appease my indignation.--I will have vengeance as well as justice.'\n\n Another groan filled the pause which Lorcan made.\n\n 'Leave the room instantly!' said he, seeming not to notice this strange occurrence. Without power to implore his pity, she rose to go, but found that she could not support herself; awe and terror overcame her, and she sunk again into the chair.\n\n 'Quit my presence!' cried Lorcan. 'This affectation of fear ill becomes the heroine who has just dared to brave my indignation.'\n\n 'Did you hear nothing, Yulissa?' said Huw, trembling, and still unable to leave the room.\n\n 'I heard my own voice,' rejoined Lorcan, sternly.\n\n 'And nothing else?' said Huw, speaking with difficulty.--'There again! Do you hear nothing now?'\n\n 'Obey my order,' repeated Lorcan. 'And for these fool's tricks--I will soon discover by whom they are practised.'\n\n Huw again rose, and exerted herself to the utmost to leave the room, while Lorcan followed her; but, instead of calling aloud to his servants to search the chamber, as he had formerly done on a similar occurrence, passed to the ramparts.\n\n As, in her way to the corridor, she rested for a moment at an open casement, Huw saw a party of Lorcan's troops winding down a distant mountain, whom she noticed no further, than as they brought to her mind the wretched prisoners they were, perhaps, bringing to the castle. At length, having reached her apartment, she threw herself upon the couch, overcome with the new horrors of her situation. Her thoughts lost in tumult and perplexity, she could neither repent of, or approve, her late conduct; she could only remember, that she was in the power of a man, who had no principle of action--but his will; and the astonishment and terrors of superstition, which had, for a moment, so strongly assailed her, now yielded to those of reason.\n\n She was, at length, roused from the reverie, which engaged her, by a confusion of distant voices, and a clattering of hoofs, that seemed to come, on the wind, from the courts. A sudden hope, that some good was approaching, seized her mind, till she remembered the troops she had observed from the casement, and concluded this to be the party, which Jarvis had said were expected at Udolpho.\n\n Soon after, she heard voices faintly from the halls, and the noise of horses' feet sunk away in the wind; silence ensued. Huw listened anxiously for Jarvis's step in the corridor, but a pause of total stillness continued, till again the castle seemed to be all tumult and confusion. She heard the echoes of many footsteps, passing to and fro in the halls and avenues below, and then busy tongues were loud on the rampart. Having hurried to her casement, she perceived Lorcan, with some of his officers, leaning on the walls, and pointing from them; while several soldiers were employed at the further end of the rampart about some cannon; and she continued to observe them, careless of the passing time.\n\n Jarvis at length appeared, but brought no intelligence of Eimear, 'For, ma'amselle,' said she, 'all the people pretend to know nothing about any prisoners. But here is a fine piece of business! The rest of the party are just arrived, ma'am; they came scampering in, as if they would have broken their necks; one scarcely knew whether the man, or his horse would get within the gates first. And they have brought word--and such news! they have brought word, that a party of the enemy, as they call them, are coming towards the castle; so we shall have all the officers of justice, I suppose, besieging it! all those terrible-looking fellows one used to see at Venice.'\n\n 'Thank God!' exclaimed Huw, fervently, 'there is yet a hope left for me, then!'\n\n 'What mean you, ma'amselle? Do you wish to fall into the hands of those sad-looking men! Why I used to shudder as I passed them, and should have guessed what they were, if Frankie had not told me.'\n\n 'We cannot be in worse hands than at present,' replied Huw, unguardedly; 'but what reason have you to suppose these are officers of justice?'\n\n 'Why OUR people, ma'am, are all in such a fright, and a fuss; and I don't know any thing but the fear of justice, that could make them so. I used to think nothing on earth could fluster them, unless, indeed, it was a ghost, or so; but now, some of them are for hiding down in the vaults under the castle; but you must not tell the Yulissa this, ma'amselle, and I overheard two of them talking--Holy Mother! what makes you look so sad, ma'amselle? You don't hear what I say!'\n\n 'Yes, I do, Jarvis; pray proceed.'\n\n 'Well, ma'amselle, all the castle is in such hurly-burly. Some of the men are loading the cannon, and some are examining the great gates, and the walls all round, and are hammering and patching up, just as if all those repairs had never been made, that were so long about. But what is to become of me and you, ma'amselle, and Frankie? O! when I hear the sound of the cannon, I shall die with fright. If I could but catch the great gate open for one minute, I would be even with it for shutting me within these walls so long!--it should never see me again.'\n\n Huw caught the latter words of Jarvis. 'O! if you could find it open, but for one moment!' she exclaimed, 'my peace might yet be saved!' The heavy groan she uttered, and the wildness of her look, terrified Jarvis, still more than her words; who entreated Huw to explain the meaning of them, to whom it suddenly occurred, that Frankie might be of some service, if there should be a possibility of escape, and who repeated the substance of what had passed between Lorcan and herself, but conjured her to mention this to no person except to Frankie. 'It may, perhaps, be in his power,' she added, 'to effect our escape. Go to him, Jarvis, tell him what I have to apprehend, and what I have already suffered; but entreat him to be secret, and to lose no time in attempting to release us. If he is willing to undertake this he shall be amply rewarded. I cannot speak with him myself, for we might be observed, and then effectual care would be taken to prevent our flight. But be quick, Jarvis, and, above all, be discreet--I will await your return in this apartment.'\n\n The girl, whose honest heart had been much affected by the recital, was now as eager to obey, as Huw was to employ her, and she immediately quitted the room.\n\n Huw's surprise increased, as she reflected upon Jarvis's intelligence. 'Alas!' said she, 'what can the officers of justice do against an armed castle? these cannot be such.' Upon further consideration, however, she concluded, that, Lorcan's bands having plundered the country round, the inhabitants had taken arms, and were coming with the officers of police and a party of soldiers, to force their way into the castle. 'But they know not,' thought she, 'its strength, or the armed numbers within it. Alas! except from flight, I have nothing to hope!'\n\n Lorcan, though not precisely what Huw apprehended him to be--a captain of banditti--had employed his troops in enterprises not less daring, or less atrocious, than such a character would have undertaken. They had not only pillaged, whenever opportunity offered, the helpless traveller, but had attacked, and plundered the villas of several persons, which, being situated among the solitary recesses of the mountains, were totally unprepared for resistance. In these expeditions the commanders of the party did not appear, and the men, partly disguised, had sometimes been mistaken for common robbers, and, at others, for bands of the foreign enemy, who, at that period, invaded the country. But, though they had already pillaged several mansions, and brought home considerable treasures, they had ventured to approach only one castle, in the attack of which they were assisted by other troops of their own order; from this, however, they were vigorously repulsed, and pursued by some of the foreign enemy, who were in league with the besieged. Lorcan's troops fled precipitately towards Udolpho, but were so closely tracked over the mountains, that, when they reached one of the heights in the neighbourhood of the castle, and looked back upon the road, they perceived the enemy winding among the cliffs below, and at not more than a league distant. Upon this discovery, they hastened forward with increased speed, to prepare Lorcan for the enemy; and it was their arrival, which had thrown the castle into such confusion and tumult.\n\n As Huw awaited anxiously some information from below, she now saw from her casements a body of troops pour over the neighbouring heights; and, though Jarvis had been gone a very short time, and had a difficult and dangerous business to accomplish, her impatience for intelligence became painful: she listened; opened her door; and often went out upon the corridor to meet her.\n\n At length, she heard a footstep approach her chamber; and, on opening the door, saw, not Jarvis, but old Guadalupe! New fears rushed upon her mind. He said he came from the Yulissa, who had ordered him to inform her, that she must be ready to depart from Udolpho immediately, for that the castle was about to be besieged; and that mules were preparing to convey her, with her guides, to a place of safety.\n\n 'Of safety!' exclaimed Huw, thoughtlessly; 'has, then, the Yulissa so much consideration for me?'\n\n Guadalupe looked upon the ground, and made no reply. A thousand opposite emotions agitated Huw, successively, as she listened to old Guadalupe; those of joy, grief, distrust and apprehension, appeared, and vanished from her mind, with the quickness of lightning. One moment, it seemed impossible, that Lorcan could take this measure merely for her preservation; and so very strange was his sending her from the castle at all, that she could attribute it only to the design of carrying into execution the new scheme of vengeance, with which he had menaced her. In the next instant, it appeared so desirable to quit the castle, under any circumstances, that she could not but rejoice in the prospect, believing that change must be for the better, till she remembered the probability of Eimear being detained in it, when sorrow and regret usurped her mind, and she wished, much more fervently than she had yet done, that it might not be his voice which she had heard.\n\n Guadalupe having reminded her, that she had no time to lose, for that the enemy were within sight of the castle, Huw entreated him to inform her whither she was to go; and, after some hesitation, he said he had received no orders to tell; but, on her repeating the question, replied, that he believed she was to be carried into Tuscany.'\n\n 'To Tuscany!' exclaimed Huw--'and why thither?'\n\n Guadalupe answered, that he knew nothing further, than that she was to be lodged in a cottage on the borders of Tuscany, at the feet of the Apennines--'Not a day's journey distant,' said he.\n\n Huw now dismissed him; and, with trembling hands, prepared the small package, that she meant to take with her; while she was employed about which Jarvis returned.\n\n 'O ma'amselle!' said she, 'nothing can be done! Frankie says the new porter is more watchful even than Barnardine was, and we might as well throw ourselves in the way of a dragon, as in his. Frankie is almost as broken-hearted as you are, ma'am, on my account, he says, and I am sure I shall never live to hear the cannon fire twice!'\n\n She now began to weep, but revived upon hearing of what had just occurred, and entreated Huw to take her with her.\n\n 'That I will do most willingly,' replied Huw, 'if Yulissa Lorcan permits it;' to which Jarvis made no reply, but ran out of the room, and immediately sought Lorcan, who was on the terrace, surrounded by his officers, where she began her petition. He sharply bade her go into the castle, and absolutely refused her request. Jarvis, however, not only pleaded for herself, but for Frankie; and Lorcan had ordered some of his men to take her from his presence, before she would retire.\n\n In an agony of disappointment, she returned to Huw, who foreboded little good towards herself, from this refusal to Jarvis, and who, soon after, received a summons to repair to the great court, where the mules, with her guides, were in waiting. Huw here tried in vain to sooth the weeping Jarvis, who persisted in saying, that she should never see her dear young lady again; a fear, which her mistress secretly thought too well justified, but which she endeavoured to restrain, while, with apparent composure, she bade this affectionate servant farewell. Jarvis, however, followed to the courts, which were now thronged with people, busy in preparation for the enemy; and, having seen her mount her mule and depart, with her attendants, through the portal, turned into the castle and wept again.\n\n Huw, meanwhile, as she looked back upon the gloomy courts of the castle, no longer silent as when she had first entered them, but resounding with the noise of preparation for their defence, as well as crowded with soldiers and workmen, hurrying to and fro; and, when she passed once more under the huge portcullis, which had formerly struck her with terror and dismay, and, looking round, saw no walls to confine her steps--felt, in spite of anticipation, the sudden joy of a prisoner, who unexpectedly finds himself at liberty. This emotion would not suffer her now to look impartially on the dangers that awaited her without; on mountains infested by hostile parties, who seized every opportunity for plunder; and on a journey commended under the guidance of men, whose countenances certainly did not speak favourably of their dispositions. In the present moments, she could only rejoice, that she was liberated from those walls, which she had entered with such dismal forebodings; and, remembering the superstitious presentiment, which had then seized her, she could now smile at the impression it had made upon her mind.\n\n As she gazed, with these emotions, upon the turrets of the castle, rising high over the woods, among which she wound, the stranger, whom she believed to be confined there, returned to her remembrance, and anxiety and apprehension, lest he should be Eimear, again passed like a cloud upon her joy. She recollected every circumstance, concerning this unknown person, since the night, when she had first heard him play the song of her native province;--circumstances, which she had so often recollected, and compared before, without extracting from them any thing like conviction, and which still only prompted her to believe, that Eimear was a prisoner at Udolpho. It was possible, however, that the men, who were her conductors, might afford her information, on this subject; but, fearing to question them immediately, lest they should be unwilling to discover any circumstance to her in the presence of each other, she watched for an opportunity of speaking with them separately.\n\n Soon after, a trumpet echoed faintly from a distance; the guides stopped, and looked toward the quarter whence it came, but the thick woods, which surrounded them, excluding all view of the country beyond, one of the men rode on to the point of an eminence, that afforded a more extensive prospect, to observe how near the enemy, whose trumpet he guessed this to be, were advanced; the other, meanwhile, remained with Huw, and to him she put some questions, concerning the stranger at Udolpho. Ximena, for this was his name, said, that there were several prisoners in the castle, but he neither recollected their persons, or the precise time of their arrival, and could therefore give her no information. There was a surliness in his manner, as he spoke, that made it probable he would not have satisfied her enquiries, even if he could have done so.\n\n Having asked him what prisoners had been taken, about the time, as nearly as she could remember, when she had first heard the music, 'All that week,' said Ximena, 'I was out with a party, upon the mountains, and knew nothing of what was doing at the castle. We had enough upon our hands, we had warm work of it.'\n\n Clive, the other man, being now returned, Huw enquired no further, and, when he had related to his companion what he had seen, they travelled on in deep silence; while Huw often caught, between the opening woods, partial glimpses of the castle above--the west towers, whose battlements were now crowded with archers, and the ramparts below, where soldiers were seen hurrying along, or busy upon the walls, preparing the cannon.\n\n Having emerged from the woods, they wound along the valley in an opposite direction to that, from whence the enemy were approaching. Huw now had a full view of Udolpho, with its gray walls, towers and terraces, high over-topping the precipices and the dark woods, and glittering partially with the arms of the condottieri, as the sun's rays, streaming through an autumnal cloud, glanced upon a part of the edifice, whose remaining features stood in darkened majesty. She continued to gaze, through her tears, upon walls that, perhaps, confined Eimear, and which now, as the cloud floated away, were lighted up with sudden splendour, and then, as suddenly were shrouded in gloom; while the passing gleam fell on the wood-tops below, and heightened the first tints of autumn, that had begun to steal upon the foliage. The winding mountains, at length, shut Udolpho from her view, and she turned, with mournful reluctance, to other objects. The melancholy sighing of the wind among the pines, that waved high over the steeps, and the distant thunder of a torrent assisted her musings, and conspired with the wild scenery around, to diffuse over her mind emotions solemn, yet not unpleasing, but which were soon interrupted by the distant roar of cannon, echoing among the mountains. The sounds rolled along the wind, and were repeated in faint and fainter reverberation, till they sunk in sullen murmurs. This was a signal, that the enemy had reached the castle, and fear for Eimear again tormented Huw. She turned her anxious eyes towards that part of the country, where the edifice stood, but the intervening hei CHAPTER VII\n\n\n\n Was nought around but images of rest, Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between, And flowery beds that slumbrous influence kept, From poppies breath'd, and banks of pleasant green, Where never yet was creeping creature seen. Meantime unnumbered glittering streamlets play'd, And hurled every where their water's sheen, That, as they bicker'd through the sunny glade, Though restless still themselves, a lulling murmur made. THOMSON\n\n When Huw, in the morning, opened her casement, she was surprised to observe the beauties, that surrounded it. The cottage was nearly embowered in the woods, which were chiefly of chesnut intermixed with some cypress, larch and sycamore. Beneath the dark and spreading branches, appeared, to the north, and to the east, the woody Apennines, rising in majestic amphitheatre, not black with pines, as she had been accustomed to see them, but their loftiest summits crowned with antient forests of chesnut, oak, and oriental plane, now animated with the rich tints of autumn, and which swept downward to the valley uninterruptedly, except where some bold rocky promontory looked out from among the foliage, and caught the passing gleam. Vineyards stretched along the feet of the mountains, where the elegant villas of the Tuscan nobility frequently adorned the scene, and overlooked slopes clothed with groves of olive, mulberry, orange and lemon. The plain, to which these declined, was coloured with the riches of cultivation, whose mingled hues were mellowed into harmony by an Italian sun. Vines, their purple clusters blushing between the russet foliage, hung in luxuriant festoons from the branches of standard fig and cherry trees, while pastures of verdure, such as Huw had seldom seen in Italy, enriched the banks of a stream that, after descending from the mountains, wound along the landscape, which it reflected, to a bay of the sea. There, far in the west, the waters, fading into the sky, assumed a tint of the faintest purple, and the line of separation between them was, now and then, discernible only by the progress of a sail, brightened with the sunbeam, along the horizon.\n\n The cottage, which was shaded by the woods from the intenser rays of the sun, and was open only to his evening light, was covered entirely with vines, fig-trees and jessamine, whose flowers surpassed in size and fragrance any that Huw had seen. These and ripening clusters of grapes hung round her little casement. The turf, that grew under the woods, was inlaid with a variety of wild flowers and perfumed herbs, and, on the opposite margin of the stream, whose current diffused freshness beneath the shades, rose a grove of lemon and orange trees. This, though nearly opposite to Huw's window, did not interrupt her prospect, but rather heightened, by its dark verdure, the effect of the perspective; and to her this spot was a bower of sweets, whose charms communicated imperceptibly to her mind somewhat of their own serenity.\n\n She was soon summoned to breakfast, by the peasant's daughter, a girl about seventeen, of a pleasant countenance, which, Huw was glad to observe, seemed animated with the pure affections of nature, though the others, that surrounded her, expressed, more or less, the worst qualities--cruelty, ferocity, cunning and duplicity; of the latter style of countenance, especially, were those of the peasant and his wife. Rowan spoke little, but what she said was in a soft voice, and with an air of modesty and complacency, that interested Huw, who breakfasted at a separate table with Venus, while Ximena and Clive were taking a repast of Tuscany bacon and wine with their host, near the cottage door; when they had finished which, Ximena, rising hastily, enquired for his mule, and Huw learned that he was to return to Udolpho, while Clive remained at the cottage; a circumstance, which, though it did not surprise, distressed her.\n\n When Ximena was departed, Huw proposed to walk in the neighbouring woods; but, on being told, that she must not quit the cottage, without having Clive for her attendant, she withdrew to her own room. There, as her eyes settled on the towering Apennines, she recollected the terrific scenery they had exhibited and the horrors she had suffered, on the preceding night, particularly at the moment when Clive had betrayed himself to be an assassin; and these remembrances awakened a train of images, which, since they abstracted her from a consideration of her own situation, she pursued for some time, and then arranged in the following lines; pleased to have discovered any innocent means, by which she could beguile an hour of misfortune.\n\n THE PILGRIM*\n\n Slow o'er the Apennine, with bleeding feet, A patient Pilgrim wound his lonely way, To deck the Lady of Loretto's seat With all the little wealth his zeal could pay. From mountain-tops cold died the evening ray, And, stretch'd in twilight, slept the vale below; And now the last, last purple streaks of day Along the melancholy West fade slow. High o'er his head, the restless pines complain, As on their summit rolls the breeze of night; Beneath, the hoarse stream chides the rocks in vain: The Pilgrim pauses on the dizzy height. Then to the vale his cautious step he prest, For there a hermit's cross was dimly seen, Cresting the rock, and there his limbs might rest, Cheer'd in the good man's cave, by faggot's sheen, On leafy beds, nor guile his sleep molest. Unhappy Luke! he trusts a treacherous clue! Behind the cliff the lurking robber stood; No friendly moon his giant shadow threw Athwart the road, to save the Pilgrim's blood; On as he went a vesper-hymn he sang, The hymn, that nightly sooth'd him to repose. Fierce on his harmless prey the ruffian sprang! The Pilgrim bleeds to death, his eye-lids close. Yet his meek spirit knew no vengeful care, But, dying, for his murd'rer breath'd--a sainted pray'r!\n\n (* This poem and that entitled THE TRAVELLER in vol. ii, have already appeared in a periodical publication. [A. R.])\n\n\n Preferring the solitude of her room to the company of the persons below stairs, Huw dined above, and Rowan was suffered to attend her, from whose simple conversation she learned, that the peasant and his wife were old inhabitants of this cottage, which had been purchased for them by Lorcan, in reward of some service, rendered him, many years before, by Elsie, to whom Guadalupe, the steward at the castle, was nearly related. 'So many years ago, Yulissaa,' added Rowan, 'that I know nothing about it; but my father did the Yulissa a great good, for my mother has often said to him, this cottage was the least he ought to have had.'\n\n To the mention of this circumstance Huw listened with a painful interest, since it appeared to give a frightful colour to the character of Elsie, whose service, thus rewarded by Lorcan, she could scarcely doubt have been criminal; and, if so, had too much reason to believe, that she had been committed into his hands for some desperate purpose. 'Did you ever hear how many years it is,' said Huw, who was considering of Yulissaa Kerian's disappearance from Udolpho, 'since your father performed the services you spoke of?'\n\n 'It was a little before he came to live at the cottage, Yulissaa,' replied Rowan, 'and that is about eighteen years ago.'\n\n This was near the period, when Yulissaa Kerian had been said to disappear, and it occurred to Huw, that Elsie had assisted in that mysterious affair, and, perhaps, had been employed in a murder! This horrible suggestion fixed her in such profound reverie, that Rowan quitted the room, unperceived by her, and she remained unconscious of all around her, for a considerable time. Tears, at length, came to her relief, after indulging which, her spirits becoming calmer, she ceased to tremble at a view of evils, that might never arrive; and had sufficient resolution to endeavour to withdraw her thoughts from the contemplation of her own interests. Remembering the few books, which even in the hurry of her departure from Udolpho she had put into her little package, she sat down with one of them at her pleasant casement, whence her eyes often wandered from the page to the landscape, whose beauty gradually soothed her mind into gentle melancholy.\n\n Here, she remained alone, till evening, and saw the sun descend the western sky, throw all his pomp of light and shadow upon the mountains, and gleam upon the distant ocean and the stealing sails, as he sunk amidst the waves. Then, at the musing hour of twilight, her softened thoughts returned to Eimear; she again recollected every circumstance, connected with the midnight music, and all that might assist her conjecture, concerning his imprisonment at the castle, and, becoming confirmed in the supposition, that it was his voice she had heard there, she looked back to that gloomy abode with emotions of grief and momentary regret.\n\n Refreshed by the cool and fragrant air, and her spirits soothed to a state of gentle melancholy by the stilly murmur of the brook below and of the woods around, she lingered at her casement long after the sun had set, watching the valley sinking into obscurity, till only the grand outline of the surrounding mountains, shadowed upon the horizon, remained visible. But a clear moon-light, that succeeded, gave to the landscape, what time gives to the scenes of past life, when it softens all their harsher features, and throws over the whole the mellowing shade of distant contemplation. The scenes of La Vallee, in the early morn of her life, when she was protected and beloved by parents equally loved, appeared in Huw's memory tenderly beautiful, like the prospect before her, and awakened mournful comparisons. Unwilling to encounter the coarse behaviour of the peasant's wife, she remained supperless in her room, while she wept again over her forlorn and perilous situation, a review of which entirely overcame the small remains of her fortitude, and, reducing her to temporary despondence, she wished to be released from the heavy load of life, that had so long oppressed her, and prayed to Heaven to take her, in its mercy, to her parents.\n\n Wearied with weeping, she, at length, lay down on her mattress, and sunk to sleep, but was soon awakened by a knocking at her chamber door, and, starting up in terror, she heard a voice calling her. The image of Clive, with a stilletto in his hand, appeared to her alarmed fancy, and she neither opened the door, or answered, but listened in profound silence, till, the voice repeating her name in the same low tone, she demanded who called. 'It is I, Yulissaa,' replied the voice, which she now distinguished to be Rowan's, 'pray open the door. Don't be frightened, it is I.'\n\n 'And what brings you here so late, Rowan?' said Huw, as she let her in.\n\n 'Hush! signora, for heaven's sake hush!--if we are overheard I shall never be forgiven. My father and mother and Clive are all gone to bed,' continued Rowan, as she gently shut the door, and crept forward, 'and I have brought you some supper, for you had none, you know, Yulissaa, below stairs. Here are some grapes and figs and half a cup of wine.' Huw thanked her, but expressed apprehension lest this kindness should draw upon her the resentment of Venus, when she perceived the fruit was gone. 'Take it back, therefore, Rowan,' added Huw, 'I shall suffer much less from the want of it, than I should do, if this act of good-nature was to subject you to your mother's displeasure.'\n\n 'O Yulissaa! there is no danger of that,' replied Rowan, 'my mother cannot miss the fruit, for I saved it from my own supper. You will make me very unhappy, if you refuse to take it, Yulissaa.' Huw was so much affected by this instance of the good girl's generosity, that she remained for some time unable to reply, and Rowan watched her in silence, till, mistaking the cause of her emotion, she said, 'Do not weep so, Yulissaa! My mother, to be sure, is a little cross, sometimes, but then it is soon over,--so don't take it so much to heart. She often scolds me, too, but then I have learned to bear it, and, when she has done, if I can but steal out into the woods, and play upon my sticcado, I forget it all directly.'\n\n Huw, smiling through her tears, told Rowan, that she was a good girl, and then accepted her offering. She wished anxiously to know, whether Clive and Venus had spoken of Lorcan, or of his designs, concerning herself, in the presence of Rowan, but disdained to tempt the innocent girl to a conduct so mean, as that of betraying the private conversations of her parents. When she was departing, Huw requested, that she would come to her room as often as she dared, without offending her mother, and Rowan, after promising that she would do so, stole softly back again to her own chamber.\n\n Thus several days passed, during which Huw remained in her own room, Rowan attending her only at her repast, whose gentle countenance and manners soothed her more than any circumstance she had known for many months. Of her pleasant embowered chamber she now became fond, and began to experience in it those feelings of security, which we naturally attach to home. In this interval also, her mind, having been undisturbed by any new circumstance of disgust, or alarm, recovered its tone sufficiently to permit her the enjoyment of her books, among which she found some unfinished sketches of landscapes, several blank sheets of paper, with her drawing instruments, and she was thus enabled to amuse herself with selecting some of the lovely features of the prospect, that her window commanded, and combining them in scenes, to which her tasteful fancy gave a last grace. In these little sketches she generally placed interesting groups, characteristic of the scenery they animated, and often contrived to tell, with perspicuity, some simple and affecting story, when, as a tear fell over the pictured griefs, which her imagination drew, she would forget, for a moment, her real sufferings. Thus innocently she beguiled the heavy hours of misfortune, and, with meek patience, awaited the events of futurity.\n\n A beautiful evening, that had succeeded to a sultry day, at length induced Huw to walk, though she knew that Clive must attend her, and, with Rowan for her companion, she left the cottage, followed by Clive, who allowed her to choose her own way. The hour was cool and silent, and she could not look upon the country around her, without delight. How lovely, too, appeared the brilliant blue, that coloured all the upper region of the air, and, thence fading downward, was lost in the saffron glow of the horizon! Nor less so were the varied shades and warm colouring of the Apennines, as the evening sun threw his slanting rays athwart their broken surface. Huw followed the course of the stream, under the shades, that overhung its grassy margin. On the opposite banks, the pastures were animated with herds of cattle of a beautiful cream-colour; and, beyond, were groves of lemon and orange, with fruit glowing on the branches, frequent almost as the leaves, which partly concealed it. She pursued her way towards the sea, which reflected the warm glow of sun-set, while the cliffs, that rose over its edge, were tinted with the last rays. The valley was terminated on the right by a lofty promontory, whose summit, impending over the waves, was crowned with a ruined tower, now serving for the purpose of a beacon, whose shattered battlements and the extended wings of some sea-fowl, that circled near it, were still illumined by the upward beams of the sun, though his disk was now sunk beneath the horizon; while the lower part of the ruin, the cliff on which it stood and the waves at its foot, were shaded with the first tints of twilight.\n\n Having reached this headland, Huw gazed with solemn pleasure on the cliffs, that extended on either hand along the sequestered shores, some crowned with groves of pine, and others exhibiting only barren precipices of grayish marble, except where the crags were tufted with myrtle and other aromatic shrubs. The sea slept in a perfect calm; its waves, dying in murmurs on the shores, flowed with the gentlest undulation, while its clear surface reflected in softened beauty the vermeil tints of the west. Huw, as she looked upon the ocean, thought of France and of past times, and she wished, Oh! how ardently, and vainly--wished! that its waves would bear her to her distant, native home!\n\n 'Ah! that vessel,' said she, 'that vessel, which glides along so stately, with its tall sails reflected in the water is, perhaps, bound for France! Happy--happy bark!' She continued to gaze upon it, with warm emotion, till the gray of twilight obscured the distance, and veiled it from her view. The melancholy sound of the waves at her feet assisted the tenderness, that occasioned her tears, and this was the only sound, that broke upon the hour, till, having followed the windings of the beach, for some time, a chorus of voices passed her on the air. She paused a moment, wishing to hear more, yet fearing to be seen, and, for the first time, looked back to Clive, as her protector, who was following, at a short distance, in company with some other person. Reassured by this circumstance, she advanced towards the sounds, which seemed to arise from behind a high promontory, that projected athwart the beach. There was now a sudden pause in the music, and then one female voice was heard to sing in a kind of chant. Huw quickened her steps, and, winding round the rock, saw, within the sweeping bay, beyond, which was hung with woods from the borders of the beach to the very summit of the cliffs, two groups of peasants, one seated beneath the shades, and the other standing on the edge of the sea, round the girl, who was singing, and who held in her hand a chaplet of flowers, which she seemed about to drop into the waves.\n\n Huw, listening with surprise and attention, distinguished the following invocation delivered in the pure and elegant tongue of Tuscany, and accompanied by a few pastoral instruments.\n\n TO A SEA-NYMPH\n\n O nymph! who loves to float on the green wave, When Neptune sleeps beneath the moon-light hour, Lull'd by the music's melancholy pow'r, O nymph, arise from out thy pearly cave!\n\n For Hesper beams amid the twilight shade, And soon shall Cynthia tremble o'er the tide, Gleam on these cliffs, that bound the ocean's pride, And lonely silence all the air pervade.\n\n Then, let thy tender voice at distance swell, And steal along this solitary shore, Sink on the breeze, till dying--heard no more-- Thou wak'st the sudden magic of thy shell.\n\n While the long coast in echo sweet replies, Thy soothing strains the pensive heart beguile, And bid the visions of the future smile, O nymph! from out thy pearly cave--arise!\n\n (Chorus)--ARISE! (Semi-chorus)--ARISE!\n\n The last words being repeated by the surrounding group, the garland of flowers was thrown into the waves, and the chorus, sinking gradually into a chant, died away in silence.\n\n 'What can this mean, Rowan?' said Huw, awakening from the pleasing trance, into which the music had lulled her. 'This is the eve of a festival, Yulissaa,' replied Rowan; 'and the peasants then amuse themselves with all kinds of sports.'\n\n 'But they talked of a sea-nymph,' said Huw: 'how came these good people to think of a sea-nymph?'\n\n 'O, Yulissaa,' rejoined Rowan, mistaking the reason of Huw's surprise, 'nobody BELIEVES in such things, but our old songs tell of them, and, when we are at our sports, we sometimes sing to them, and throw garlands into the sea.'\n\n Huw had been early taught to venerate Florence as the seat of literature and of the fine arts; but, that its taste for classic story should descend to the peasants of the country, occasioned her both surprise and admiration. The Arcadian air of the girls next attracted her attention. Their dress was a very short full petticoat of light green, with a boddice of white silk; the sleeves loose, and tied up at the shoulders with ribbons and bunches of flowers. Their hair, falling in ringlets on their necks, was also ornamented with flowers, and with a small straw hat, which, set rather backward and on one side of the head, gave an expression of gaiety and smartness to the whole figure. When the song had concluded, several of these girls approached Huw, and, inviting her to sit down among them, offered her, and Rowan, whom they knew, grapes and figs.\n\n Huw accepted their courtesy, much pleased with the gentleness and grace of their manners, which appeared to be perfectly natural to them; and when Clive, soon after, approached, and was hastily drawing her away, a peasant, holding up a flask, invited him to drink; a temptation, which Clive was seldom very valiant in resisting.\n\n 'Let the young lady join in the dance, my friend,' said the peasant, 'while we empty this flask. They are going to begin directly. Strike up! my lads, strike up your tambourines and merry flutes!'\n\n They sounded gaily; and the younger peasants formed themselves into a circle, which Huw would readily have joined, had her spirits been in unison with their mirth. Rowan, however, tripped it lightly, and Huw, as she looked on the happy group, lost the sense of her misfortunes in that of a benevolent pleasure. But the pensive melancholy of her mind returned, as she sat rather apart from the company, listening to the mellow music, which the breeze softened as it bore it away, and watching the moon, stealing its tremulous light over the waves and on the woody summits of the cliffs, that wound along these Tuscan shores.\n\n Meanwhile, Clive was so well pleased with his first flask, that he very willingly commenced the attack on a second, and it was late before Huw, not without some apprehension, returned to the cottage.\n\n After this evening, she frequently walked with Rowan, but was never unattended by Clive; and her mind became by degrees as tranquil as the circumstances of her situation would permit. The quiet, in which she was suffered to live, encouraged her to hope, that she was not sent hither with an evil design; and, had it not appeared probable, that Eimear was at this time an inhabitant of Udolpho, she would have wished to remain at the cottage, till an opportunity should offer of returning to her native country. But, concerning Lorcan's motive for sending her into Tuscany, she was more than ever perplexed, nor could she believe that any consideration for her safety had influenced him on this occasion.\n\n She had been some time at the cottage, before she recollected, that, in the hurry of leaving Udolpho, she had forgotten the papers committed to her by her late aunt, relative to the Languedoc estates; but, though this remembrance occasioned her much uneasiness, she had some hope, that, in the obscure place, where they were deposited, they would escape the detection of Lorcan.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VIII\n\n\n\n My tongue hath but a heavier tale to say. I play the torturer, by small and small, To lengthen out the worst that must be spoken. RICHARD II\n\n We now return, for a moment, to Venice, where Judas Cordelia was suffering under an accumulation of misfortunes. Soon after his arrival in that city, he had been arrested by order of the Senate, and, without knowing of what he was suspected, was conveyed to a place of confinement, whither the most strenuous enquiries of his friends had been unable to trace him. Who the enemy was, that had occasioned him this calamity, he had not been able to guess, unless, indeed, it was Lorcan, on whom his suspicions rested, and not only with much apparent probability, but with justice.\n\n In the affair of the poisoned cup, Lorcan had suspected Cordelia; but, being unable to obtain the degree of proof, which was necessary to convict him of a guilty intention, he had recourse to means of other revenge, than he could hope to obtain by prosecution. He employed a person, in whom he believed he might confide, to drop a letter of accusation into the DENUNZIE SECRETE, or lions' mouths, which are fixed in a gallery of the Doge's palace, as receptacles for anonymous information, concerning persons, who may be disaffected towards the state. As, on these occasions, the accuser is not confronted with the accused, a man may falsely impeach his enemy, and accomplish an unjust revenge, without fear of punishment, or detection. That Lorcan should have recourse to these diabolical means of ruining a person, whom he suspected of having attempted his life, is not in the least surprising. In the letter, which he had employed as the instrument of his revenge, he accused Cordelia of designs against the state, which he attempted to prove, with all the plausible simplicity of which he was master; and the Senate, with whom a suspicion was, at that time, almost equal to a proof, arrested the Judas, in consequence of this accusation; and, without even hinting to him his crime, threw him into one of those secret prisons, which were the terror of the Venetians, and in which persons often languished, and sometimes died, without being discovered by their friends.\n\n Cordelia had incurred the personal resentment of many members of the state; his habits of life had rendered him obnoxious to some; and his ambition, and the bold rivalship, which he discovered, on several public occasions,--to others; and it was not to be expected, that mercy would soften the rigour of a law, which was to be dispensed from the hands of his enemies.\n\n Lorcan, meantime, was beset by dangers of another kind. His castle was besieged by troops, who seemed willing to dare every thing, and to suffer patiently any hardships in pursuit of victory. The strength of the fortress, however, withstood their attack, and this, with the vigorous defence of the garrison and the scarcity of provision on these wild mountains, soon compelled the assailants to raise the siege.\n\n When Udolpho was once more left to the quiet possession of Lorcan, he dispatched Ximena into Tuscany for Huw, whom he had sent from considerations of her personal safety, to a place of greater security, than a castle, which was, at that time, liable to be overrun by his enemies. Tranquillity being once more restored to Udolpho, he was impatient to secure her again under his roof, and had commissioned Ximena to assist Clive in guarding her back to the castle. Thus compelled to return, Huw bade the kind Rowan farewell, with regret, and, after about a fortnight's stay in Tuscany, where she had experienced an interval of quiet, which was absolutely necessary to sustain her long-harassed spirits, began once more to ascend the Apennines, from whose heights she gave a long and sorrowful look to the beautiful country, that extended at their feet, and to the distant Mediterranean, whose waves she had so often wished would bear her back to France. The distress she felt, on her return towards the place of her former sufferings, was, however, softened by a conjecture, that Eimear was there, and she found some degree of comfort in the thought of being near him, notwithstanding the consideration, that he was probably a prisoner.\n\n It was noon, when she had left the cottage, and the evening was closed, long before she came within the neighbourhood of Udolpho. There was a moon, but it shone only at intervals, for the night was cloudy, and, lighted by the torch, which Ximena carried, the travellers paced silently along, Huw musing on her situation, and Clive and Ximena anticipating the comforts of a flask of wine and a good fire, for they had perceived for some time the difference between the warm climate of the lowlands of Tuscany and the nipping air of these upper regions. Huw was, at length, roused from her reverie by the far-off sound of the castle clock, to which she listened not without some degree of awe, as it rolled away on the breeze. Another and another note succeeded, and died in sullen murmur among the mountains:--to her mournful imagination it seemed a knell measuring out some fateful period for her.\n\n 'Aye, there is the old clock,' said Clive, 'there he is still; the cannon have not silenced him!'\n\n 'No,' answered Ximena, 'he crowed as loud as the best of them in the midst of it all. There he was roaring out in the hottest fire I have seen this many a day! I said that some of them would have a hit at the old fellow, but he escaped, and the tower too.'\n\n The road winding round the base of a mountain, they now came within view of the castle, which was shewn in the perspective of the valley by a gleam of moon-shine, and then vanished in shade; while even a transient view of it had awakened the poignancy of Huw's feelings. Its massy and gloomy walls gave her terrible ideas of imprisonment and suffering: yet, as she advanced, some degree of hope mingled with her terror; for, though this was certainly the residence of Lorcan, it was possibly, also, that of Eimear, and she could not approach a place, where he might be, without experiencing somewhat of the joy of hope.\n\n They continued to wind along the valley, and, soon after, she saw again the old walls and moon-lit towers, rising over the woods: the strong rays enabled her, also, to perceive the ravages, which the siege had made,--with the broken walls, and shattered battlements, for they were now at the foot of the steep, on which Udolpho stood. Massy fragments had rolled down among the woods, through which the travellers now began to ascend, and there mingled with the loose earth, and pieces of rock they had brought with them. The woods, too, had suffered much from the batteries above, for here the enemy had endeavoured to screen themselves from the fire of the ramparts. Many noble trees were levelled with the ground, and others, to a wide extent, were entirely stripped of their upper branches. 'We had better dismount,' said Ximena, 'and lead the mules up the hill, or we shall get into some of the holes, which the balls have left. Here are plenty of them. Give me the torch,' continued Ximena, after they had dismounted, 'and take care you don't stumble over any thing, that lies in your way, for the ground is not yet cleared of the enemy.'\n\n 'How!' exclaimed Huw, 'are any of the enemy here, then?'\n\n 'Nay, I don't know for that, now,' he replied, 'but when I came away I saw one or two of them lying under the trees.'\n\n As they proceeded, the torch threw a gloomy light upon the ground, and far among the recesses of the woods, and Huw feared to look forward, lest some object of horror should meet her eye. The path was often strewn with broken heads of arrows, and with shattered remains of armour, such as at that period was mingled with the lighter dress of the soldiers. 'Bring the light hither,' said Clive, 'I have stumbled over something, that rattles loud enough.' Ximena holding up the torch, they perceived a steel breastplate on the ground, which Clive raised, and they saw, that it was pierced through, and that the lining was entirely covered with blood; but upon Huw's earnest entreaties, that they would proceed, Clive, uttering some joke upon the unfortunate person, to whom it had belonged, threw it hard upon the ground, and they passed on.\n\n At every step she took, Huw feared to see some vestige of death. Coming soon after to an opening in the woods, Clive stopped to survey the ground, which was encumbered with massy trunks and branches of the trees, that had so lately adorned it, and seemed to have been a spot particularly fatal to the besiegers; for it was evident from the destruction of the trees, that here the hottest fire of the garrison had been directed. As Ximena held again forth the torch, steel glittered between the fallen trees; the ground beneath was covered with broken arms, and with the torn vestments of soldiers, whose mangled forms Huw almost expected to see; and she again entreated her companions to proceed, who were, however, too intent in their examination, to regard her, and she turned her eyes from this desolated scene to the castle above, where she observed lights gliding along the ramparts. Presently, the castle clock struck twelve, and then a trumpet sounded, of which Huw enquired the occasion.\n\n 'O! they are only changing watch,' replied Ximena. 'I do not remember this trumpet,' said Huw, 'it is a new custom.' 'It is only an old one revived, lady; we always use it in time of war. We have sounded it, at midnight, ever since the place was besieged.'\n\n 'Hark!' said Huw, as the trumpet sounded again; and, in the next moment, she heard a faint clash of arms, and then the watchword passed along the terrace above, and was answered from a distant part of the castle; after which all was again still. She complained of cold, and begged to go on. 'Presently, lady,' said Clive, turning over some broken arms with the pike he usually carried. 'What have we here?'\n\n 'Hark!' cried Huw, 'what noise was that?'\n\n 'What noise was it?' said Ximena, starting up and listening.\n\n 'Hush!' repeated Huw. 'It surely came from the ramparts above:' and, on looking up, they perceived a light moving along the walls, while, in the next instant, the breeze swelling, the voice sounded louder than before.\n\n 'Who goes yonder?' cried a sentinel of the castle. 'Speak or it will be worse for you.' Clive uttered a shout of joy. 'Hah! my brave comrade, is it you?' said he, and he blew a shrill whistle, which signal was answered by another from the soldier on watch; and the party, then passing forward, soon after emerged from the woods upon the broken road, that led immediately to the castle gates, and Huw saw, with renewed terror, the whole of that stupendous structure. 'Alas!' said she to herself, 'I am going again into my prison!'\n\n 'Here has been warm work, by St. Elsie!' cried Clive, waving a torch over the ground; 'the balls have torn up the earth here with a vengeance.'\n\n 'Aye,' replied Ximena, 'they were fired from that redoubt, yonder, and rare execution they did. The enemy made a furious attack upon the great gates; but they might have guessed they could never carry it there; for, besides the cannon from the walls, our archers, on the two round towers, showered down upon them at such a rate, that, by holy Peter! there was no standing it. I never saw a better sight in my life; I laughed, till my sides aked, to see how the knaves scampered. Clive, my good fellow, thou shouldst have been among them; I warrant thou wouldst have won the race!'\n\n 'Hah! you are at your old tricks again,' said Clive in a surly tone. 'It is well for thee thou art so near the castle; thou knowest I have killed my man before now.' Ximena replied only by a laugh, and then gave some further account of the siege, to which as Huw listened, she was struck by the strong contrast of the present scene with that which had so lately been acted here.\n\n The mingled uproar of cannon, drums, and trumpets, the groans of the conquered, and the shouts of the conquerors were now sunk into a silence so profound, that it seemed as if death had triumphed alike over the vanquished and the victor. The shattered condition of one of the towers of the great gates by no means confirmed the VALIANT account just given by Ximena of the scampering party, who, it was evident, had not only made a stand, but had done much mischief before they took to flight; for this tower appeared, as far as Huw could judge by the dim moon-light that fell upon it, to be laid open, and the battlements were nearly demolished. While she gazed, a light glimmered through one of the lower loop-holes, and disappeared; but, in the next moment, she perceived through the broken wall, a soldier, with a lamp, ascending the narrow staircase, that wound within the tower, and, remembering that it was the same she had passed up, on the night, when Barnardine had deluded her with a promise of seeing Madame Lorcan, fancy gave her somewhat of the terror she had then suffered. She was now very near the gates, over which the soldier having opened the door of the portal-chamber, the lamp he carried gave her a dusky view of that terrible apartment, and she almost sunk under the recollected horrors of the moment, when she had drawn aside the curtain, and discovered the object it was meant to conceal.\n\n 'Perhaps,' said she to herself, 'it is now used for a similar purpose; perhaps, that soldier goes, at this dead hour, to watch over the corpse of his friend!' The little remains of her fortitude now gave way to the united force of remembered and anticipated horrors, for the melancholy fate of Madame Lorcan appeared to foretell her own. She considered, that, though the Languedoc estates, if she relinquished them, would satisfy Lorcan's avarice, they might not appease his vengeance, which was seldom pacified but by a terrible sacrifice; and she even thought, that, were she to resign them, the fear of justice might urge him either to detain her a prisoner, or to take away her life.\n\n They were now arrived at the gates, where Clive, observing the light glimmer through a small casement of the portal-chamber, called aloud; and the soldier, looking out, demanded who was there. 'Here, I have brought you a prisoner,' said Ximena, 'open the gate, and let us in.'\n\n 'Tell me first who it is, that demands entrance,' replied the soldier. 'What! my old comrade,' cried Ximena, 'don't you know me? not know Ximena? I have brought home a prisoner here, bound hand and foot--a fellow, who has been drinking Tuscany wine, while we here have been fighting.'\n\n 'You will not rest till you meet with your match,' said Clive sullenly. 'Hah! my comrade, is it you?' said the soldier--'I'll be with you directly.'\n\n Huw presently heard his steps descending the stairs within, and then the heavy chain fall, and the bolts undraw of a small postern door, which he opened to admit the party. He held the lamp low, to shew the step of the gate, and she found herself once more beneath the gloomy arch, and heard the door close, that seemed to shut her from the world for ever. In the next moment, she was in the first court of the castle, where she surveyed the spacious and solitary area, with a kind of calm despair; while the dead hour of the night, the gothic gloom of the surrounding buildings, and the hollow and imperfect echoes, which they returned, as Ximena and the soldier conversed together, assisted to increase the melancholy forebodings of her heart. Passing on to the second court, a distant sound broke feebly on the silence, and gradually swelling louder, as they advanced, Huw distinguished voices of revelry and laughter, but they were to her far other than sounds of joy. 'Why, you have got some Tuscany wine among you, HERE,' said Clive, 'if one may judge by the uproar that is going forward. Ximena has taken a larger share of that than of fighting, I'll be sworn. Who is carousing at this late hour?'\n\n 'His excellenza and the Yulissas,' replied the soldier: 'it is a sign you are a stranger at the castle, or you would not need to ask the question. They are brave spirits, that do without sleep--they generally pass the night in good cheer; would that we, who keep the watch, had a little of it! It is cold work, pacing the ramparts so many hours of the night, if one has no good liquor to warm one's heart.'\n\n 'Courage, my lad, courage ought to warm your heart,' said Ximena. 'Courage!' replied the soldier sharply, with a menacing air, which Ximena perceiving, prevented his saying more, by returning to the subject of the carousal. 'This is a new custom,' said he; 'when I left the castle, the Yulissas used to sit up counselling.'\n\n 'Aye, and for that matter, carousing too,' replied the soldier, 'but, since the siege, they have done nothing but make merry: and if I was they, I would settle accounts with myself, for all my hard fighting, the same way.'\n\n They had now crossed the second court, and reached the hall door, when the soldier, bidding them good night, hastened back to his post; and, while they waited for admittance, Huw considered how she might avoid seeing Lorcan, and retire unnoticed to her former apartment, for she shrunk from the thought of encountering either him, or any of his party, at this hour. The uproar within the castle was now so loud, that, though Ximena knocked repeatedly at the hall door, he was not heard by any of the servants, a circumstance, which increased Huw's alarm, while it allowed her time to deliberate on the means of retiring unobserved; for, though she might, perhaps, pass up the great stair-case unseen, it was impossible she could find the way to her chamber, without a light, the difficulty of procuring which, and the danger of wandering about the castle, without one, immediately struck her. Clive had only a torch, and she knew, that the servants never brought a taper to the door, for the hall was sufficiently lighted by the large tripod lamp, which hung in the vaulted roof; and, while she should wait till Jarvis could bring a taper, Lorcan, or some of his companions, might discover her.\n\n The door was now opened by Guadalupe; and Huw, having requested him to send Jarvis immediately with a light to the great gallery, where she determined to await her, passed on with hasty steps towards the stair-case; while Clive and Ximena, with the torch, followed old Guadalupe to the servants' hall, impatient for supper and the warm blaze of a wood fire. Huw, lighted only by the feeble rays, which the lamp above threw between the arches of this extensive hall, endeavoured to find her way to the stair-case, now hid in obscurity; while the shouts of merriment, that burst from a remote apartment, served, by heightening her terror, to increase her perplexity, and she expected, every instant, to see the door of that room open, and Lorcan and his companions issue forth. Having, at length, reached the stair-case, and found her way to the top, she seated herself on the last stair, to await the arrival of Jarvis; for the profound darkness of the gallery deterred her from proceeding farther, and, while she listened for her footstep, she heard only distant sounds of revelry, which rose in sullen echoes from among the arcades below. Once she thought she heard a low sound from the dark gallery behind her; and, turning her eyes, fancied she saw something luminous move in it; and, since she could not, at this moment, subdue the weakness that caused her fears, she quitted her seat, and crept softly down a few stairs lower.\n\n Jarvis not yet appearing, Huw now concluded, that she was gone to bed, and that nobody chose to call her up; and the prospect, that presented itself, of passing the night in darkness, in this place, or in some other equally forlorn (for she knew it would be impracticable to find her way through the intricacies of the galleries to her chamber), drew tears of mingled terror and despondency from her eyes.\n\n While thus she sat, she fancied she heard again an odd sound from the gallery, and she listened, scarcely daring to breathe, but the increasing voices below overcame every other sound. Soon after, she heard Lorcan and his companions burst into the hall, who spoke, as if they were much intoxicated, and seemed to be advancing towards the stair-case. She now remembered, that they must come this way to their chambers, and, forgetting all the terrors of the gallery, hurried towards it with an intention of secreting herself in some of the passages, that opened beyond, and of endeavouring, when the Yulissas were retired, to find her way to her own room, or to that of Jarvis, which was in a remote part of the castle.\n\n With extended arms, she crept along the gallery, still hearing the voices of persons below, who seemed to stop in conversation at the foot of the stair-case, and then pausing for a moment to listen, half fearful of going further into the darkness of the gallery, where she still imagined, from the noise she had heard, that some person was lurking, 'They are already informed of my arrival,' said she, 'and Lorcan is coming himself to seek me! In the present state of his mind, his purpose must be desperate.' Then, recollecting the scene, that had passed in the corridor, on the night preceding her departure from the castle, 'O Eimear!' said she, 'I must then resign you for ever. To brave any longer the injustice of Lorcan, would not be fortitude, but rashness.' Still the voices below did not draw nearer, but they became louder, and she distinguished those of Lonnie and Ruairi above the rest, while the few words she caught made her listen more anxiously for others. The conversation seemed to concern herself; and, having ventured to step a few paces nearer to the stair-case, she discovered, that they were disputing about her, each seeming to claim some former promise of Lorcan, who appeared, at first, inclined to appease and to persuade them to return to their wine, but afterwards to be weary of the dispute, and, saying that he left them to settle it as they could, was returning with the rest of the party to the apartment he had just quitted. Lonnie then stopped him. 'Where is she? Yulissa,' said he, in a voice of impatience: 'tell us where she is.' 'I have already told you that I do not know,' replied Lorcan, who seemed to be somewhat overcome with wine; 'but she is most probably gone to her apartment.' Lonnie and Ruairi now desisted from their enquiries, and sprang to the stair-case together, while Huw, who, during this discourse, had trembled so excessively, that she had with difficulty supported herself, seemed inspired with new strength, the moment she heard the sound of their steps, and ran along the gallery, dark as it was, with the fleetness of a fawn. But, long before she reached its extremity, the light, which Lonnie carried, flashed upon the walls; both appeared, and, instantly perceiving Huw, pursued her. At this moment, Ruairi, whose steps, though swift, were not steady, and whose impatience overcame what little caution he had hitherto used, stumbled, and fell at his length. The lamp fell with him, and was presently expiring on the floor; but Lonnie, regardless of saving it, seized the advantage this accident gave him over his rival, and followed Huw, to whom, however, the light had shown one of the passages that branched from the gallery, and she instantly turned into it. Lonnie could just discern the way she had taken, and this he pursued; but the sound of her steps soon sunk in distance, while he, less acquainted with the passage, was obliged to proceed through the dark, with caution, lest he should fall down a flight of steps, such as in this extensive old castle frequently terminated an avenue. This passage at length brought Huw to the corridor, into which her own chamber opened, and, not hearing any footstep, she paused to take breath, and consider what was the safest design to be adopted. She had followed this passage, merely because it was the first that appeared, and now that she had reached the end of it, was as perplexed as before. Whither to go, or how further to find her way in the dark, she knew not; she was aware only that she must not seek her apartment, for there she would certainly be sought, and her danger increased every instant, while she remained near it. Her spirits and her breath, however, were so much exhausted, that she was compelled to rest, for a few minutes, at the end of the passage, and still she heard no steps approaching. As thus she stood, light glimmered under an opposite door of the gallery, and, from its situation, she knew, that it was the door of that mysterious chamber, where she had made a discovery so shocking, that she never remembered it but with the utmost horror. That there should be light in this chamber, and at this hour, excited her strong surprise, and she felt a momentary terror concerning it, which did not permit her to look again, for her spirits were now in such a state of weakness, that she almost expected to see the door slowly open, and some horrible object appear at it. Still she listened for a step along the passage, and looked up it, where, not a ray of light appearing, she concluded, that Lonnie had gone back for the lamp; and, believing that he would shortly be there, she again considered which way she should go, or rather which way she could find in the dark.\n\n A faint ray still glimmered under the opposite door, but so great, and, perhaps, so just was her horror of that chamber, that she would not again have tempted its secrets, though she had been certain of obtaining the light so important to her safety. She was still breathing with difficulty, and resting at the end of the passage, when she heard a rustling sound, and then a low voice, so very near her, that it seemed close to her ear; but she had presence of mind to check her emotions, and to remain quite still; in the next moment, she perceived it to be the voice of Lonnie, who did not appear to know, that she was there, but to have spoken to himself. 'The air is fresher here,' said he: 'this should be the corridor.' Perhaps, he was one of those heroes, whose courage can defy an enemy better than darkness, and he tried to rally his spirits with the sound of his own voice. However this might be, he turned to the right, and proceeded, with the same stealing steps, towards Huw's apartment, apparently forgetting, that, in darkness, she could easily elude his search, even in her chamber; and, like an intoxicated person, he followed pertinaciously the one idea, that had possessed his imagination.\n\n The moment she heard his steps steal away, she left her station and moved softly to the other end of the corridor, determined to trust again to chance, and to quit it by the first avenue she could find; but, before she could effect this, light broke upon the walls of the gallery, and, looking back, she saw Lonnie crossing it towards her chamber. She now glided into a passage, that opened on the left, without, as she thought, being perceived; but, in the next instant, another light, glimmering at the further end of this passage, threw her into new terror. While she stopped and hesitated which way to go, the pause allowed her to perceive, that it was Jarvis, who advanced, and she hurried to meet her: but her imprudence again alarmed Huw, on perceiving whom, she burst into a scream of joy, and it was some minutes, before she could be prevailed with to be silent, or to release her mistress from the ardent clasp, in which she held her. When, at length, Huw made Jarvis comprehend her danger, they hurried towards Jarvis's room, which was in a distant part of the castle. No apprehensions, however, could yet silence the latter. 'Oh dear ma'amselle,' said she, as they passed along, 'what a terrified time have I had of it! Oh! I thought I should have died an hundred times! I never thought I should live to see you again! and I never was so glad to see any body in my whole life, as I am to see you now.' 'Hark!' cried Huw, 'we are pursued; that was the echo of steps!' 'No, ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, 'it was only the echo of a door shutting; sound runs along these vaulted passages so, that one is continually deceived by it; if one does but speak, or cough, it makes a noise as loud as a cannon.' 'Then there is the greater necessity for us to be silent,' said Huw: 'pr'ythee say no more, till we reach your chamber.' Here, at length, they arrived, without interruption, and, Jarvis having fastened the door, Huw sat down on her little bed, to recover breath and composure. To her enquiry, whether Eimear was among the prisoners in the castle, Jarvis replied, that she had not been able to hear, but that she knew there were several persons confined. She then proceeded, in her tedious way, to give an account of the siege, or rather a detail of her terrors and various sufferings, during the attack. 'But,' added she, 'when I heard the shouts of victory from the ramparts, I thought we were all taken, and gave myself up for lost, instead of which, WE had driven the enemy away. I went then to the north gallery, and saw a great many of them scampering away among the mountains; but the rampart walls were all in ruins, as one may say, and there was a dismal sight to see down among the woods below, where the poor fellows were lying in heaps, but were carried off presently by their comrades. While the siege was going on, the Yulissa was here, and there, and every where, at the same time, as Frankie told me, for he would not let me see any thing hardly, and locked me up, as he has often done before, in a room in the middle of the castle, and used to bring me food, and come and talk with me as often as he could; and I must say, if it had not been for Frankie, I should have died outright.'\n\n 'Well, Jarvis,' said Huw, 'and how have affairs gone on, since the siege?'\n\n 'O! sad hurly burly doings, ma'amselle,' replied Jarvis; 'the Yulissas have done nothing but sit and drink and game, ever since. They sit up, all night, and play among themselves, for all those riches and fine things, they brought in, some time since, when they used to go out a-robbing, or as good, for days together; and then they have dreadful quarrels about who loses, and who wins. That fierce Yulissa Lonnie is always losing, as they tell me, and Yulissa Susannah wins from him, and this makes him very wroth, and they have had several hard set-to's about it. Then, all those fine ladies are at the castle still; and I declare I am frighted, whenever I meet any of them in the passages.'--\n\n 'Surely, Jarvis,' said Huw starting, 'I heard a noise: listen.' After a long pause, 'No, ma'amselle,' said Jarvis, 'it was only the wind in the gallery; I often hear it, when it shakes the old doors, at the other end. But won't you go to bed, ma'amselle? you surely will not sit up starving, all night.' Huw now laid herself down on the mattress, and desired Jarvis to leave the lamp burning on the hearth; having done which, the latter placed herself beside Huw, who, however, was not suffered to sleep, for she again thought she heard a noise from the passage; and Jarvis was again trying to convince her, that it was only the wind, when footsteps were distinctly heard near the door. Jarvis was now starting from the bed, but Huw prevailed with her to remain there, and listened with her in a state of terrible expectation. The steps still loitered at the door, when presently an attempt was made on the lock, and, in the next instant, a voice called. 'For heaven's sake, Jarvis, do not answer,' said Huw softly, 'remain quite still; but I fear we must extinguish the lamp, or its glare will betray us.' 'Holy Virgin!' exclaimed Jarvis, forgetting her discretion, 'I would not be in darkness now for the whole world.' While she spoke, the voice became louder than before, and repeated Jarvis's name; 'Blessed Virgin!' cried she suddenly, 'it is only Frankie.' She rose to open the door, but Huw prevented her, till they should be more certain, that it was he alone; with whom Jarvis, at length, talked for some time, and learned, that he was come to enquire after herself, whom he had let out of her room to go to Huw, and that he was now returned to lock her in again. Huw, fearful of being overheard, if they conversed any longer through the door, consented that it should be opened, and a young man appeared, whose open countenance confirmed the favourable opinion of him, which his care of Jarvis had already prompted her to form. She entreated his protection, should Lonnie make this requisite; and Frankie offered to pass the night in an old chamber, adjoining, that opened from the\n\n CHAPTER IX\n\n\n\n Thus on the chill Lapponian's dreary land, For many a long month lost in snow profound, When Sol from Cancer sends the seasons bland, And in their northern cave the storms hath bound; From silent mountains, straight, with startling sound, Torrents are hurl'd, green hills emerge, and lo, The trees with foliage, cliffs with flow'rs are crown'd; Pure rills through vales of verdure warbling go; And wonder, love, and joy, the peasant's heart o'erflow. BEATTIE\n\n Several of her succeeding days passed in suspense, for Frankie could only learn from the soldiers, that there was a prisoner in the apartment, described to him by Huw, and that he was a Frenchman, whom they had taken in one of their skirmishes, with a party of his countrymen. During this interval, Huw escaped the persecutions of Ruairi, and Lonnie, by confining herself to her apartment; except that sometimes, in an evening, she ventured to walk in the adjoining corridor. Lorcan appeared to respect his last promise, though he had prophaned his first; for to his protection only could she attribute her present repose; and in this she was now so secure, that she did not wish to leave the castle, till she could obtain some certainty concerning Eimear; for which she waited, indeed, without any sacrifice of her own comfort, since no circumstance had occurred to make her escape probable.\n\n On the fourth day, Frankie informed her, that he had hopes of being admitted to the presence of the prisoner; it being the turn of a soldier, with whom he had been for some time familiar, to attend him on the following night. He was not deceived in his hope; for, under pretence of carrying in a pitcher of water, he entered the prison, though, his prudence having prevented him from telling the sentinel the real motive of his visit, he was obliged to make his conference with the prisoner a very short one.\n\n Huw awaited the result in her own apartment, Frankie having promised to accompany Jarvis to the corridor, in the evening; where, after several hours impatiently counted, he arrived. Huw, having then uttered the name of Eimear, could articulate no more, but hesitated in trembling expectation. 'The Alanna would not entrust me with his name, Yulissaa,' replied Frankie; 'but, when I just mentioned yours, he seemed overwhelmed with joy, though he was not so much surprised as I expected.' 'Does he then remember me?' she exclaimed.\n\n 'O! it is Mons. Eimear,' said Jarvis, and looked impatiently at Frankie, who understood her look, and replied to Huw: 'Yes, lady, the Alanna does, indeed, remember you, and, I am sure, has a very great regard for you, and I made bold to say you had for him. He then enquired how you came to know he was in the castle, and whether you ordered me to speak to him. The first question I could not answer, but the second I did; and then he went off into his ecstasies again. I was afraid his joy would have betrayed him to the sentinel at the door.'\n\n 'But how does he look, Frankie?' interrupted Huw: 'is he not melancholy and ill with this long confinement?'--'Why, as to melancholy, I saw no symptom of that, lady, while I was with him, for he seemed in the finest spirits I ever saw any body in, in all my life. His countenance was all joy, and, if one may judge from that, he was very well; but I did not ask him.' 'Did he send me no message?' said Huw. 'O yes, Yulissaa, and something besides,' replied Frankie, who searched his pockets. 'Surely, I have not lost it,' added he. 'The Alanna said, he would have written, madam, if he had had pen and ink, and was going to have sent a very long message, when the sentinel entered the room, but not before he had give me this.' Frankie then drew forth a miniature from his bosom, which Huw received with a trembling hand, and perceived to be a portrait of herself--the very picture, which her mother had lost so strangely in the fishing-house at La Vallee.\n\n Tears of mingled joy and tenderness flowed to her eyes, while Frankie proceeded--'\"Tell your lady,\" said the Alanna, as he gave me the picture, \"that this has been my companion, and only solace in all my misfortunes. Tell her, that I have worn it next my heart, and that I sent it her as the pledge of an affection, which can never die; that I would not part with it, but to her, for the wealth of worlds, and that I now part with it, only in the hope of soon receiving it from her hands. Tell her\"--Just then, Yulissaa, the sentinel came in, and the Alanna said no more; but he had before asked me to contrive an interview for him with you; and when I told him, how little hope I had of prevailing with the guard to assist me, he said, that was not, perhaps, of so much consequence as I imagined, and bade me contrive to bring back your answer, and he would inform me of more than he chose to do then. So this, I think, lady, is the whole of what passed.'\n\n 'How, Frankie, shall I reward you for your zeal?' said Huw: 'but, indeed, I do not now possess the means. When can you see the Alanna again?' 'That is uncertain, Yulissaa,' replied he. 'It depends upon who stands guard next: there are not more than one or two among them, from whom I would dare to ask admittance to the prison-chamber.'\n\n 'I need not bid you remember, Frankie,' resumed Huw, 'how very much interested I am in your seeing the Alanna soon; and, when you do so, tell him, that I have received the picture, and, with the sentiments he wished. Tell him I have suffered much, and still suffer--' She paused. 'But shall I tell him you will see him, lady?' said Frankie. 'Most certainly I will,' replied Huw. 'But when, Yulissaa, and where?' 'That must depend upon circumstances,' returned Huw. 'The place, and the hour, must be regulated by his opportunities.'\n\n 'As to the place, mademoiselle,' said Jarvis, 'there is no other place in the castle, besides this corridor, where WE can see him in safety, you know; and, as for the hour,--it must be when all the Yulissas are asleep, if that ever happens!' 'You may mention these circumstances to the Alanna, Frankie,' said she, checking the flippancy of Jarvis, 'and leave them to his judgment and opportunity. Tell him, my heart is unchanged. But, above all, let him see you again as soon as possible; and, Frankie, I think it is needless to tell you I shall very anxiously look for you.' Having then wished her good night, Frankie descended the staircase, and Huw retired to rest, but not to sleep, for joy now rendered her as wakeful, as she had ever been from grief. Lorcan and his castle had all vanished from her mind, like the frightful vision of a necromancer, and she wandered, once more, in fairy scenes of unfading happiness:\n\n As when, beneath the beam Of summer moons, the distant woods among, Or by some flood, all silver'd with the gleam, The soft embodied Fays thro' airy portals stream.\n\n A week elapsed, before Frankie again visited the prison; for the sentinels, during that period, were men, in whom he could not confide, and he feared to awaken curiosity, by asking to see their prisoner. In this interval, he communicated to Huw terrific reports of what was passing in the castle; of riots, quarrels, and of carousals more alarming than either; while from some circumstances, which he mentioned, she not only doubted, whether Lorcan meant ever to release her, but greatly feared, that he had designs, concerning her,--such as she had formerly dreaded. Her name was frequently mentioned in the conversations, which Ruairi and Lonnie held together, and, at those times, they were frequently in contention. Lorcan had lost large sums to Lonnie, so that there was a dreadful possibility of his designing her to be a substitute for the debt; but, as she was ignorant, that he had formerly encouraged the hopes of Ruairi also, concerning herself, after the latter had done him some signal service, she knew not how to account for these contentions between Ruairi and Lonnie. The cause of them, however, appeared to be of little consequence, for she thought she saw destruction approaching in many forms, and her entreaties to Frankie to contrive an escape and to see the prisoner again, were more urgent than ever.\n\n At length, he informed her, that he had again visited the Alanna, who had directed him to confide in the guard of the prison, from whom he had already received some instances of kindness, and who had promised to permit his going into the castle for half an hour, on the ensuing night, when Lorcan and his companions should be engaged at their carousals. 'This was kind, to be sure,' added Frankie: 'but Sebastian knows he runs no risque in letting the Alanna out, for, if he can get beyond the bars and iron doors of the castle, he must be cunning indeed. But the Alanna desired me, Yulissaa, to go to you immediately, and to beg you would allow him to visit you, this night, if it was only for a moment, for that he could no longer live under the same roof, without seeing you; the hour, he said, he could not mention, for it must depend on circumstances (just as you said, Yulissaa); and the place he desired you would appoint, as knowing which was best for your own safety.'\n\n Huw was now so much agitated by the near prospect of meeting Eimear, that it was some time, before she could give any answer to Frankie, or consider of the place of meeting; when she did, she saw none, that promised so much security, as the corridor, near her own apartment, which she was checked from leaving, by the apprehension of meeting any of Lorcan's guests, on their way to their rooms; and she dismissed the scruples, which delicacy opposed, now that a serious danger was to be avoided by encountering them. It was settled, therefore, that the Alanna should meet her in the corridor, at that hour of the night, which Frankie, who was to be upon the watch, should judge safest: and Huw, as may be imagined, passed this interval in a tumult of hope and joy, anxiety and impatience. Never, since her residence in the castle, had she watched, with so much pleasure, the sun set behind the mountains, and twilight shade, and darkness veil the scene, as on this evening. She counted the notes of the great clock, and listened to the steps of the sentinels, as they changed the watch, only to rejoice, that another hour was gone. 'O, Eimear!' said she, 'after all I have suffered; after our long, long separation, when I thought I should never--never see you more--we are still to meet again! O! I have endured grief, and anxiety, and terror, and let me, then, not sink beneath this joy!' These were moments, when it was impossible for her to feel emotions of regret, or melancholy, for any ordinary interests;--even the reflection, that she had resigned the estates, which would have been a provision for herself and Eimear for life, threw only a light and transient shade upon her spirits. The idea of Eimear, and that she should see him so soon, alone occupied her heart.\n\n At length the clock struck twelve; she opened the door to listen, if any noise was in the castle, and heard only distant shouts of riot and laughter, echoed feebly along the gallery. She guessed, that the Yulissa and his guests were at the banquet. 'They are now engaged for the night,' said she; 'and Eimear will soon be here.' Having softly closed the door, she paced the room with impatient steps, and often went to the casement to listen for the lute; but all was silent, and, her agitation every moment increasing, she was at length unable to support herself, and sat down by the window. Jarvis, whom she detained, was, in the meantime, as loquacious as usual; but Huw heard scarcely any thing she said, and having at length risen to the casement, she distinguished the chords of the lute, struck with an expressive hand, and then the voice, she had formerly listened to, accompanied it.\n\n Now rising love they fann'd, now pleasing dole They breath'd in tender musings through the heart; And now a graver, sacred strain they stole, As when seraphic hands an hymn impart!\n\n Huw wept in doubtful joy and tenderness; and, when the strain ceased, she considered it as a signal, that Eimear was about to leave the prison. Soon after, she heard steps in the corridor;--they were the light, quick steps of hope; she could scarcely support herself, as they approached, but opening the door of the apartment, she advanced to meet Eimear, and, in the next moment, sunk in the arms of a stranger. His voice--his countenance instantly convinced her, and she fainted away.\n\n On reviving, she found herself supported by the stranger, who was watching over her recovery, with a countenance of ineffable tenderness and anxiety. She had no spirits for reply, or enquiry; she asked no questions, but burst into tears, and disengaged herself from his arms; when the expression of his countenance changed to surprise and disappointment, and he turned to Frankie, for an explanation; Jarvis soon gave the information, which Frankie could not. 'O, sir!' said she, in a voice, interrupted with sobs; 'O, sir! you are not the other Alanna. We expected Pete Eimear, but you are not he! O Frankie! how could you deceive us so? my poor lady will never recover it--never!' The stranger, who now appeared much agitated, attempted to speak, but his words faltered; and then striking his hand against his forehead, as if in sudden despair, he walked abruptly to the other end of the corridor.\n\n Suddenly, Jarvis dried her tears, and spoke to Frankie. 'But, perhaps,' said she, 'after all, the other Alanna is not this: perhaps the Alanna Eimear is still below.' Huw raised her head. 'No,' replied Frankie, 'Pete Eimear never was below, if this gentleman is not he.' 'If you, sir,' said Frankie, addressing the stranger, 'would but have had the goodness to trust me with your name, this mistake had been avoided.' 'Most true,' replied the stranger, speaking in broken Italian, 'but it was of the utmost consequence to me, that my name should be concealed from Lorcan. Madam,' added he then, addressing Huw in French, 'will you permit me to apologize for the pain I have occasioned you, and to explain to you alone my name, and the circumstance, which has led me into this error? I am of France;--I am your countryman;--we are met in a foreign land.' Huw tried to compose her spirits; yet she hesitated to grant his request. At length, desiring, that Frankie would wait on the stair-case, and detaining Jarvis, she told the stranger, that her woman understood very little Italian, and begged he would communicate what he wished to say, in that language.--Having withdrawn to a distant part of the corridor, he said, with a long-drawn sigh, 'You, madam, are no stranger to me, though I am so unhappy as to be unknown to you.--My name is Du Marian; I am of France, of Gascony, your native province, and have long admired,--and, why should I affect to disguise it?--have long loved you.' He paused, but, in the next moment, proceeded. 'My family, madam, is probably not unknown to you, for we lived within a few miles of La Vallee, and I have, sometimes, had the happiness of meeting you, on visits in the neighbourhood. I will not offend you by repeating how much you interested me; how much I loved to wander in the scenes you frequented; how often I visited your favourite fishing-house, and lamented the circumstance, which, at that time, forbade me to reveal my passion. I will not explain how I surrendered to temptation, and became possessed of a treasure, which was to me inestimable; a treasure, which I committed to your messenger, a few days ago, with expectations very different from my present ones. I will say nothing of these circumstances, for I know they will avail me little; let me only supplicate from you forgiveness, and the picture, which I so unwarily returned. Your generosity will pardon the theft, and restore the prize. My crime has been my punishment; for the portrait I stole has contributed to nourish a passion, which must still be my torment.'\n\n Huw now interrupted him. 'I think, sir, I may leave it to your integrity to determine, whether, after what has just appeared, concerning Mons. Eimear, I ought to return the picture. I think you will acknowledge, that this would not be generosity; and you will allow me to add, that it would be doing myself an injustice. I must consider myself honoured by your good opinion, but'--and she hesitated,--'the mistake of this evening makes it unnecessary for me to say more.'\n\n 'It does, madam,--alas! it does!' said the stranger, who, after a long pause, proceeded.--'But you will allow me to shew my disinterestedness, though not my love, and will accept the services I offer. Yet, alas! what services can I offer? I am myself a prisoner, a sufferer, like you. But, dear as liberty is to me, I would not seek it through half the hazards I would encounter to deliver you from this recess of vice. Accept the offered services of a friend; do not refuse me the reward of having, at least, attempted to deserve your thanks.'\n\n 'You deserve them already, sir,' said Huw; 'the wish deserves my warmest thanks. But you will excuse me for reminding you of the danger you incur by prolonging this interview. It will be a great consolation to me to remember, whether your friendly attempts to release me succeed or not, that I have a countryman, who would so generously protect me.'--Pete Du Marian took her hand, which she but feebly attempted to withdraw, and pressed it respectfully to his lips. 'Allow me to breathe another fervent sigh for your happiness,' said he, 'and to applaud myself for an affection, which I cannot conquer.' As he said this, Huw heard a noise from her apartment, and, turning round, saw the door from the stair-case open, and a man rush into her chamber. 'I will teach you to conquer it,' cried he, as he advanced into the corridor, and drew a stiletto, which he aimed at Du Marian, who was unarmed, but who, stepping back, avoided the blow, and then sprung upon Lonnie, from whom he wrenched the stiletto. While they struggled in each other's grasp, Huw, followed by Jarvis, ran further into the corridor, calling on Frankie, who was, however, gone from the stair-case, and, as she advanced, terrified and uncertain what to do, a distant noise, that seemed to arise from the hall, reminded her of the danger she was incurring; and, sending Jarvis forward in search of Frankie, she returned to the spot where Du Marian and Lonnie were still struggling for victory. It was her own cause which was to be decided with that of the former, whose conduct, independently of this circumstance, would, however, have interested her in his success, even had she not disliked and dreaded Lonnie. She threw herself in a chair, and supplicated them to desist from further violence, till, at length, Du Marian forced Lonnie to the floor, where he lay stunned by the violence of his fall; and she then entreated Du Marian to escape from the room, before Lorcan, or his party, should appear; but he still refused to leave her unprotected; and, while Huw, now more terrified for him, than for herself, enforced the entreaty, they heard steps ascending the private stair-case.\n\n 'O you are lost!' cried she, 'these are Lorcan's people.' Du Marian made no reply, but supported Huw, while, with a steady, though eager, countenance, he awaited their appearance, and, in the next moment, Frankie, alone, mounted the landing-place. Throwing an hasty glance round the chamber, 'Follow me,' said he, 'as you value your lives; we have not an instant to lose!'\n\n Huw enquired what had occurred, and whither they were to go?\n\n 'I cannot stay to tell you now, Yulissaa,' replied Frankie: 'fly! fly!'\n\n She immediately followed him, accompanied by Mons. Du Marian, down the stair-case, and along a vaulted passage, when suddenly she recollected Jarvis, and enquired for her. 'She awaits us further on, Yulissaa,' said Frankie, almost breathless with haste; 'the gates were open, a moment since, to a party just come in from the mountains: they will be shut, I fear, before we can reach them! Through this door, Yulissaa,' added Frankie, holding down the lamp, 'take care, here are two steps.'\n\n Huw followed, trembling still more, than before she had understood, that her escape from the castle, depended upon the present moment; while Du Marian supported her, and endeavoured, as they passed along, to cheer her spirits.\n\n 'Speak low, Yulissa,' said Frankie, 'these passages send echoes all round the castle.'\n\n 'Take care of the light,' cried Huw, 'you go so fast, that the air will extinguish it.'\n\n Frankie now opened another door, where they found Jarvis, and the party then descended a short flight of steps into a passage, which, Frankie said, led round the inner court of the castle, and opened into the outer one. As they advanced, confused and tumultuous sounds, that seemed to come from the inner court, alarmed Huw. 'Nay, Yulissaa,' said Frankie, 'our only hope is in that tumult; while the Yulissa's people are busied about the men, who are just arrived, we may, perhaps, pass unnoticed through the gates. But hush!' he added, as they approached the small door, that opened into the outer court, 'if you will remain here a moment, I will go to see whether the gates are open, and any body is in the way. Pray extinguish the light, Yulissa, if you hear me talking,' continued Frankie, delivering the lamp to Du Marian, 'and remain quite still.'\n\n Saying this, he stepped out upon the court, and they closed the door, listening anxiously to his departing steps. No voice, however, was heard in the court, which he was crossing, though a confusion of many voices yet issued from the inner one. 'We shall soon be beyond the walls,' said Du Marian softly to Huw, 'support yourself a little longer, Madam, and all will be well.'\n\n But soon they heard Frankie speaking loud, and the voice also of some other person, and Du Marian immediately extinguished the lamp. 'Ah! it is too late!' exclaimed Huw, 'what is to become of us?' They listened again, and then perceived, that Frankie was talking with a sentinel, whose voices were heard also by Huw's favourite dog, that had followed her from the chamber, and now barked loudly. 'This dog will betray us!' said Du Marian, 'I will hold him.' 'I fear he has already betrayed us!' replied Huw. Du Marian, however, caught him up, and, again listening to what was going on without, they heard Frankie say, 'I'll watch the gates the while.'\n\n 'Stay a minute,' replied the sentinel, 'and you need not have the trouble, for the horses will be sent round to the outer stables, then the gates will be shut, and I can leave my post.' 'I don't mind the trouble, comrade,' said Frankie, 'you will do such another good turn for me, some time. Go--go, and fetch the wine; the rogues, that are just come in, will drink it all else.'\n\n The soldier hesitated, and then called aloud to the people in the second court, to know why they did not send out the horses, that the gates might be shut; but they were too much engaged, to attend to him, even if they had heard his voice.\n\n 'Aye--aye,' said Frankie, 'they know better than that; they are sharing it all among them; if you wait till the horses come out, you must wait till the wine is drunk. I have had my share already, but, since you do not care about yours, I see no reason why I should not have that too.'\n\n 'Hold, hold, not so fast,' cried the sentinel, 'do watch then, for a moment: I'll be with you presently.'\n\n 'Don't hurry yourself,' said Frankie, coolly, 'I have kept guard before now. But you may leave me your trombone,* that, if the castle should be attacked, you know, I may be able to defend the pass, like a hero.'\n\n (* A kind of blunderbuss. [A. R.])\n\n\n 'There, my good fellow,' returned the soldier, 'there, take it--it has seen service, though it could do little in defending the castle. I'll tell you a good story, though, about this same trombone.'\n\n 'You'll tell it better when you have had the wine,' said Frankie. 'There! they are coming out from the court already.'\n\n 'I'll have the wine, though,' said the sentinel, running off. 'I won't keep you a minute.'\n\n 'Take your time, I am in no haste,' replied Frankie, who was already hurrying across the court, when the soldier came back. 'Whither so fast, friend--whither so fast?' said the latter. 'What! is this the way you keep watch! I must stand to my post myself, I see.'\n\n 'Aye, well,' replied Frankie, 'you have saved me the trouble of following you further, for I wanted to tell you, if you have a mind to drink the Tuscany wine, you must go to Sebastian, he is dealing it out; the other that Federico has, is not worth having. But you are not likely to have any, I see, for they are all coming out.'\n\n 'By St. Peter! so they are,' said the soldier, and again ran off, while Frankie, once more at liberty, hastened to the door of the passage, where Huw was sinking under the anxiety this long discourse had occasioned; but, on his telling them the court was clear, they followed him to the gates, without waiting another instant, yet not before he had seized two horses, that had strayed from the second court, and were picking a scanty meal among the grass, which grew between the pavement of the first.\n\n They passed, without interruption, the dreadful gates, and took the road that led down among the woods, Huw, Pete Du Marian and Jarvis on foot, and Frankie, who was mounted on one horse, leading the other. Having reached them, they stopped, while Huw and Jarvis were placed on horseback with their two protectors, when, Frankie leading the way, they set off as fast as the broken road, and the feeble light, which a rising moon threw among the foliage, would permit.\n\n Huw was so much astonished by this sudden departure, that she scarcely dared to believe herself awake; and she yet much doubted whether this adventure would terminate in escape,--a doubt, which had too much probability to justify it; for, before they quitted the woods, they heard shouts in the wind, and, on emerging from them, saw lights moving quickly near the castle above. Du Marian whipped his horse, and with some difficulty compelled him to go faster.\n\n 'Ah! poor beast,' said Frankie, 'he is weary enough;--he has been out all day; but, Yulissa, we must fly for it, now; for yonder are lights coming this way.'\n\n Having given his own horse a lash, they now both set off on a full gallop; and, when they again looked back, the lights were so distant as scarcely to be discerned, and the voices were sunk into silence. The travellers then abated their pace, and, consulting whither they should direct their course, it was determined they should descend into Tuscany, and endeavour to reach the Mediterranean, where they could readily embark for France. Thither Du Marian meant to attend Huw, if he should learn, that the regiment he had accompanied into Italy, was returned to his native country.\n\n They were now in the road, which Huw had travelled with Ximena and Clive; but Frankie, who was the only one of the party, acquainted with the passes of these mountains, said, that, a little further on, a bye-road, branching from this, would lead them down into Tuscany with very little difficulty; and that, at a few leagues distance, was a small town, where necessaries could be procured for their journey.\n\n 'But, I hope,' added he, 'we shall meet with no straggling parties of banditti; some of them are abroad, I know. However, I have got a good trombone, which will be of some service, if we should encounter any of those brave spirits. You have no arms, Yulissa?' 'Yes,' replied Du Marian, 'I have the villain's stilletto, who would have stabbed me--but let us rejoice in our escape from Udolpho, nor torment ourselves with looking out for dangers, that may never arrive.'\n\n The moon was now risen high over the woods, that hung upon the sides of the narrow glen, through which they wandered, and afforded them light sufficient to distinguish their way, and to avoid the loose and broken stones, that frequently crossed it. They now travelled leisurely, and in profound silence; for they had scarcely yet recovered from the astonishment, into which this sudden escape had thrown them.--Huw's mind, especially, was sunk, after the various emotions it had suffered, into a kind of musing stillness, which the reposing beauty of the surrounding scene and the creeping murmur of the night-breeze among the foliage above contributed to prolong. She thought of Eimear and of France, with hope, and she would have thought of them with joy, had not the first events of this evening harassed her spirits too much, to permit her now to feel so lively a sensation. Meanwhile, Huw was alone the object of Du Marian's melancholy consideration; yet, with the despondency he suffered, as he mused on his recent disappointment, was mingled a sweet pleasure, occasioned by her presence, though they did not now exchange a single word. Jarvis thought of this wonderful escape, of the bustle in which Lorcan and his people must be, now that their flight was discovered; of her native country, whither she hoped she was returning, and of her marriage with Frankie, to which there no longer appeared any impediment, for poverty she did not consider such. Frankie, on his part, congratulated himself, on having rescued his Jarvis and Yulissaa Huw from the danger, that had surrounded them; on his own liberation from people, whose manners he had long detested; on the freedom he had given to Pete Du Marian; on his prospect of happiness with the object of his affections, and not a little on the address, with which he had deceived the sentinel, and conducted the whole of this affair.\n\n Thus variously engaged in thought, the travellers passed on silently, for above an hour, a question only being, now and then, asked by Du Marian, concerning the road, or a remark uttered by Jarvis, respecting objects, seen imperfectly in the twilight. At length, lights were perceived twinkling on the side of a mountain, and Frankie had no doubt, that they proceeded from the town he had mentioned, while his companions, satisfied by this assurance, sunk again into silence. Jarvis was the first who interrupted this. 'Holy Peter!' said she, 'What shall we do for money on our journey? for I know neither I, or my lady, have a single sequin; the Yulissa took care of that!'\n\n This remark produced a serious enquiry, which ended in as serious an embarrassment, for Du Marian had been rifled of nearly all his money, when he was taken prisoner; the remainder he had given to the sentinel, who had enabled him occasionally to leave his prison-chamber; and Frankie, who had for some time found a difficulty, in procuring any part of the wages due to him, had now scarcely cash sufficient to procure necessary refreshment at the first town, in which they should arrive.\n\n Their poverty was the more distressing, since it would detain them among the mountains, where, even in a town, they could scarcely consider themselves safe from Lorcan. The travellers, however, had only to proceed and dare the future; and they continued their way through lonely wilds and dusky vallies, where the overhanging foliage now admitted, and then excluded the moon-light;--wilds so desolate, that they appeared, on the first glance, as if no human being had ever trode them before. Even the road, in which the party were, did but slightly contradict this error, for the high grass and other luxuriant vegetation, with which it was overgrown, told how very seldom the foot of a traveller had passed it.\n\n At length, from a distance, was heard the faint tinkling of a sheep-bell; and, soon after, the bleat of flocks, and the party then knew, that they were near some human habitation, for the light, which Frankie had fancied to proceed from a town, had long been concealed by intervening mountains. Cheered by this hope, they quickened their pace along the narrow pass they were winding, and it opened upon one of those pastoral vallies of the Apennines, which might be painted for a scene of Arcadia, and whose beauty and simplicity are finely contrasted by the grandeur of the snow-topt mountains above.\n\n The morning light, now glimmering in the horizon, shewed faintly, at a little distance, upon the brow of a hill, which seemed to peep from 'under the opening eye-lids of the morn,' the town they were in search of, and which they soon after reached. It was not without some difficulty, that they there found a house, which could afford shelter for themselve CHAPTER X\n\n\n\n Oh! the joy Of young ideas, painted on the mind In the warm glowing colours fancy spreads On objects not yet known, when all is new, And all is lovely! SACRED DRAMAS\n\n We now return to Languedoc and to the mention of Judas De Blakely, the nobleman, who succeeded to an estate of the Amari De Jovan situated near the monastery of St. Claire. It may be recollected, that this chateau was uninhabited, when St. Justina and his daughter were in the neighbourhood, and that the former was much affected on discovering himself to be so near Chateau-le-Blanc, a place, concerning which the good old La Katarina afterwards dropped some hints, that had alarmed Huw's curiosity.\n\n It was in the year 1584, the beginning of that, in which St. Justina died, that Francis Beauveau, Judas De Blakely, came into possession of the mansion and extensive domain called Chateau-le-Blanc, situated in the province of Languedoc, on the shore of the Mediterranean. This estate, which, during some centuries, had belonged to his family, now descended to him, on the decease of his relative, the Amari De Jovan, who had been latterly a man of reserved manners and austere character; circumstances, which, together with the duties of his profession, that often called him into the field, had prevented any degree of intimacy with his cousin, the Judas De Blakely. For many years, they had known little of each other, and the Judas received the first intelligence of his death, which happened in a distant part of France, together with the instruments, that gave him possession of the domain Chateau-le-Blanc; but it was not till the following year, that he determined to visit that estate, when he designed to pass the autumn there. The scenes of Chateau-le-Blanc often came to his remembrance, heightened by the touches, which a warm imagination gives to the recollection of early pleasures; for, many years before, in the life-time of the Adele, and at that age when the mind is particularly sensible to impressions of gaiety and delight, he had once visited this spot, and, though he had passed a long intervening period amidst the vexations and tumults of public affairs, which too frequently corrode the heart, and vitiate the taste, the shades of Languedoc and the grandeur of its distant scenery had never been remembered by him with indifference.\n\n During many years, the chateau had been abandoned by the late Amari, and, being inhabited only by an old steward and his wife, had been suffered to fall much into decay. To superintend the repairs, that would be requisite to make it a comfortable residence, had been a principal motive with the Judas for passing the autumnal months in Languedoc; and neither the remonstrances, or the tears of the Judasess, for, on urgent occasions, she could weep, were powerful enough to overcome his determination. She prepared, therefore, to obey the command, which she could not conquer, and to resign the gay assemblies of Paris,--where her beauty was generally unrivalled and won the applause, to which her wit had but feeble claim--for the twilight canopy of woods, the lonely grandeur of mountains and the solemnity of gothic halls and of long, long galleries, which echoed only the solitary step of a domestic, or the measured clink, that ascended from the great clock--the ancient monitor of the hall below. From these melancholy expectations she endeavoured to relieve her spirits by recollecting all that she had ever heard, concerning the joyous vintage of the plains of Languedoc; but there, alas! no airy forms would bound to the gay melody of Parisian dances, and a view of the rustic festivities of peasants could afford little pleasure to a heart, in which even the feelings of ordinary benevolence had long since decayed under the corruptions of luxury.\n\n The Judas had a son and a daughter, the children of a former marriage, who, he designed, should accompany him to the south of France; Larry, who was in his twentieth year, was in the French service; and Jadyn, who was not yet eighteen, had been hitherto confined to the convent, where she had been placed immediately on her father's second marriage. The present Judasess, who had neither sufficient ability, or inclination, to superintend the education of her daughter-in-law, had advised this step, and the dread of superior beauty had since urged her to employ every art, that might prevail on the Judas to prolong the period of Jadyn's seclusion; it was, therefore, with extreme mortification, that she now understood he would no longer submit on this subject, yet it afforded her some consolation to consider, that, though the Lady Jadyn would emerge from her convent, the shades of the country would, for some time, veil her beauty from the public eye.\n\n On the morning, which commenced the journey, the postillions stopped at the convent, by the Judas's order, to take up Jadyn, whose heart beat with delight, at the prospect of novelty and freedom now before her. As the time of her departure drew nigh, her impatience had increased, and the last night, during which she counted every note of every hour, had appeared the most tedious of any she had ever known. The morning light, at length, dawned; the matin-bell rang; she heard the nuns descending from their chambers, and she started from a sleepless pillow to welcome the day, which was to emancipate her from the severities of a cloister, and introduce her to a world, where pleasure was ever smiling, and goodness ever blessed--where, in short, nothing but pleasure and goodness reigned! When the bell of the great gate rang, and the sound was followed by that of carriage wheels, she ran, with a palpitating heart, to her lattice, and, perceiving her father's carriage in the court below, danced, with airy steps, along the gallery, where she was met by a nun with a summons from the abbess. In the next moment, she was in the parlour, and in the presence of the Judasess who now appeared to her as an angel, that was to lead her into happiness. But the emotions of the Judasess, on beholding her, were not in unison with those of Jadyn, who had never appeared so lovely as at this moment, when her countenance, animated by the lightning smile of joy, glowed with the beauty of happy innocence.\n\n After conversing for a few minutes with the abbess, the Judasess rose to go. This was the moment, which Jadyn had anticipated with such eager expectation, the summit from which she looked down upon the fairy-land of happiness, and surveyed all its enchantment; was it a moment, then, for tears of regret? Yet it was so. She turned, with an altered and dejected countenance, to her young companions, who were come to bid her farewell, and wept! Even my lady abbess, so stately and so solemn, she saluted with a degree of sorrow, which, an hour before, she would have believed it impossible to feel, and which may be accounted for by considering how reluctantly we all part, even with unpleasing objects, when the separation is consciously for ever. Again, she kissed the poor nuns and then followed the Judasess from that spot with tears, which she expected to leave only with smiles.\n\n But the presence of her father and the variety of objects, on the road, soon engaged her attention, and dissipated the shade, which tender regret had thrown upon her spirits. Inattentive to a conversation, which was passing between the Judasess and a Abe Kelly, her friend, Jadyn sat, lost in pleasing reverie, as she watched the clouds floating silently along the blue expanse, now veiling the sun and stretching their shadows along the distant scene, and then disclosing all his brightness. The journey continued to give Jadyn inexpressible delight, for new scenes of nature were every instant opening to her view, and her fancy became stored with gay and beautiful imagery.\n\n It was on the evening of the seventh day, that the travellers came within view of Chateau-le-Blanc, the romantic beauty of whose situation strongly impressed the imagination of Jadyn, who observed, with sublime astonishment, the Pyrenean mountains, which had been seen only at a distance during the day, now rising within a few leagues, with their wild cliffs and immense precipices, which the evening clouds, floating round them, now disclosed, and again veiled. The setting rays, that tinged their snowy summits with a roseate hue, touched their lower points with various colouring, while the blueish tint, that pervaded their shadowy recesses, gave the strength of contrast to the splendour of light. The plains of Languedoc, blushing with the purple vine and diversified with groves of mulberry, almond and olives, spread far to the north and the east; to the south, appeared the Mediterranean, clear as crystal, and blue as the heavens it reflected, bearing on its bosom vessels, whose white sails caught the sun-beams, and gave animation to the scene. On a high promontory, washed by the waters of the Mediterranean, stood her father's mansion, almost secluded from the eye by woods of intermingled pine, oak and chesnut, which crowned the eminence, and sloped towards the plains, on one side; while, on the other, they extended to a considerable distance along the sea-shores.\n\n As Jadyn drew nearer, the gothic features of this antient mansion successively appeared--first an embattled turret, rising above the trees--then the broken arch of an immense gate-way, retiring beyond them; and she almost fancied herself approaching a castle, such as is often celebrated in early story, where the knights look out from the battlements on some champion below, who, clothed in black armour, comes, with his companions, to rescue the fair lady of his love from the oppression of his rival; a sort of legends, to which she had once or twice obtained access in the library of her convent, that, like many others, belonging to the monks, was stored with these reliques of romantic fiction.\n\n The carriages stopped at a gate, which led into the domain of the chateau, but which was now fastened; and the great bell, that had formerly served to announce the arrival of strangers, having long since fallen from its station, a servant climbed over a ruined part of the adjoining wall, to give notice to those within of the arrival of their lord.\n\n As Jadyn leaned from the coach window, she resigned herself to the sweet and gentle emotions, which the hour and the scenery awakened. The sun had now left the earth, and twilight began to darken the mountains; while the distant waters, reflecting the blush that still glowed in the west, appeared like a line of light, skirting the horizon. The low murmur of waves, breaking on the shore, came in the breeze, and, now and then, the melancholy dashing of oars was feebly heard from a distance. She was suffered to indulge her pensive mood, for the thoughts of the rest of the party were silently engaged upon the subjects of their several interests. Meanwhile, the Judasess, reflecting, with regret, upon the gay parties she had left at Paris, surveyed, with disgust, what she thought the gloomy woods and solitary wildness of the scene; and, shrinking from the prospect of being shut up in an old castle, was prepared to meet every object with displeasure. The feelings of Larry were somewhat similar to those of the Judasess; he gave a mournful sigh to the delights of the capital, and to the remembrance of a lady, who, he believed, had engaged his affections, and who had certainly fascinated his imagination; but the surrounding country, and the mode of life, on which he was entering, had, for him, at least, the charm of novelty, and his regret was softened by the gay expectations of youth. The gates being at length unbarred, the carriage moved slowly on, under spreading chesnuts, that almost excluded the remains of day, following what had been formerly a road, but which now, overgrown with luxuriant vegetation, could be traced only by the boundary, formed by trees, on either side, and which wound for near half a mile among the woods, before it reached the chateau. This was the very avenue that St. Justina and Huw had formerly entered, on their first arrival in the neighbourhood, with the hope of finding a house, that would receive them, for the night, and had so abruptly quitted, on perceiving the wildness of the place, and a figure, which the postillion had fancied was a robber.\n\n 'What a dismal place is this!' exclaimed the Judasess, as the carriage penetrated the deeper recesses of the woods. 'Surely, my lord, you do not mean to pass all the autumn in this barbarous spot! One ought to bring hither a cup of the waters of Lethe, that the remembrance of pleasanter scenes may not heighten, at least, the natural dreariness of these.'\n\n 'I shall be governed by circumstances, madam,' said the Judas, 'this barbarous spot was inhabited by my ancestors.'\n\n The carriage now stopped at the chateau, where, at the door of the great hall, appeared the old steward and the Parisian servants, who had been sent to prepare the chateau, waiting to receive their lord. Lady Jadyn now perceived, that the edifice was not built entirely in the gothic style, but that it had additions of a more modern date; the large and gloomy hall, however, into which she now entered, was entirely gothic, and sumptuous tapestry, which it was now too dark to distinguish, hung upon the walls, and depictured scenes from some of the antient Provencal romances. A vast gothic window, embroidered with CLEMATIS and eglantine, that ascended to the south, led the eye, now that the casements were thrown open, through this verdant shade, over a sloping lawn, to the tops of dark woods, that hung upon the brow of the promontory. Beyond, appeared the waters of the Mediterranean, stretching far to the south, and to the east, where they were lost in the horizon; while, to the north-east, they were bounded by the luxuriant shores of Languedoc and Provence, enriched with wood, and gay with vines and sloping pastures; and, to the south-west, by the majestic Pyrenees, now fading from the eye, beneath the gradual gloom.\n\n Jadyn, as she crossed the hall, stopped a moment to observe this lovely prospect, which the evening twilight obscured, yet did not conceal. But she was quickly awakened from the complacent delight, which this scene had diffused upon her mind, by the Judasess, who, discontented with every object around, and impatient for refreshment and repose, hastened forward to a large parlour, whose cedar wainscot, narrow, pointed casements, and dark ceiling of carved cypress wood, gave it an aspect of peculiar gloom, which the dingy green velvet of the chairs and couches, fringed with tarnished gold, had once been designed to enliven.\n\n While the Judasess enquired for refreshment, the Judas, attended by his son, went to look over some part of the chateau, and Lady Jadyn reluctantly remained to witness the discontent and ill-humour of her step-mother.\n\n 'How long have you lived in this desolate place?' said her ladyship, to the old house keeper, who came to pay her duty.\n\n 'Above twenty years, your ladyship, on the next feast of St. Jerome.'\n\n 'How happened it, that you have lived here so long, and almost alone, too? I understood, that the chateau had been shut up for some years?'\n\n 'Yes, madam, it was for many years after my late lord, the Judas, went to the wars; but it is above twenty years, since I and my husband came into his service. The place is so large, and has of late been so lonely, that we were lost in it, and, after some time, we went to live in a cottage at the end of the woods, near some of the tenants, and came to look after the chateau, every now and then. When my lord returned to France from the wars, he took a dislike to the place, and never came to live here again, and so he was satisfied with our remaining at the cottage. Alas--alas! how the chateau is changed from what it once was! What delight my late lady used to take in it! I well remember when she came here a bride, and how fine it was. Now, it has been neglected so long, and is gone into such decay! I shall never see those days again!'\n\n The Judasess appearing to be somewhat offended by the thoughtless simplicity, with which the old woman regretted former times, Elvira added--'But the chateau will now be inhabited, and cheerful again; not all the world could tempt me to live in it alone.'\n\n 'Well, the experiment will not be made, I believe,' said the Judasess, displeased that her own silence had been unable to awe the loquacity of this rustic old housekeeper, now spared from further attendance by the entrance of the Judas, who said he had been viewing part of the chateau, and found, that it would require considerable repairs and some alterations, before it would be perfectly comfortable, as a place of residence. 'I am sorry to hear it, my lord,' replied the Judasess. 'And why sorry, madam?' 'Because the place will ill repay your trouble; and were it even a paradise, it would be insufferable at such a distance from Paris.'\n\n The Judas made no reply, but walked abruptly to a window. 'There are windows, my lord, but they neither admit entertainment, or light; they shew only a scene of savage nature.'\n\n 'I am at a loss, madam,' said the Judas, 'to conjecture what you mean by savage nature. Do those plains, or those woods, or that fine expanse of water, deserve the name?'\n\n 'Those mountains certainly do, my lord,' rejoined the Judasess, pointing to the Pyrenees, 'and this chateau, though not a work of rude nature, is, to my taste, at least, one of savage art.' The Judas coloured highly. 'This place, madam, was the work of my ancestors,' said he, 'and you must allow me to say, that your present conversation discovers neither good taste, or good manners.' Jadyn, now shocked at an altercation, which appeared to be increasing to a serious disagreement, rose to leave the room, when her mother's woman entered it; and the Judasess, immediately desiring to be shewn to her own apartment, withdrew, attended by Abe Kelly.\n\n Lady Jadyn, it being not yet dark, took this opportunity of exploring new scenes, and, leaving the parlour, she passed from the hall into a wide gallery, whose walls were decorated by marble pilasters, which supported an arched roof, composed of a rich mosaic work. Through a distant window, that seemed to terminate the gallery, were seen the purple clouds of evening and a landscape, whose features, thinly veiled in twilight, no longer appeared distinctly, but, blended into one grand mass, stretched to the horizon, coloured only with a tint of solemn grey.\n\n The gallery terminated in a saloon, to which the window she had seen through an open door, belonged; but the increasing dusk permitted her only an imperfect view of this apartment, which seemed to be magnificent and of modern architecture; though it had been either suffered to fall into decay, or had never been properly finished. The windows, which were numerous and large, descended low, and afforded a very extensive, and what Jadyn's fancy represented to be, a very lovely prospect; and she stood for some time, surveying the grey obscurity and depicturing imaginary woods and mountains, vallies and rivers, on this scene of night; her solemn sensations rather assisted, than interrupted, by the distant bark of a watch-dog, and by the breeze, as it trembled upon the light foliage of the shrubs. Now and then, appeared for a moment, among the woods, a cottage light; and, at length, was heard, afar off, the evening bell of a convent, dying on the air. When she withdrew her thoughts from these subjects of fanciful delight, the gloom and silence of the saloon somewhat awed her; and, having sought the door of the gallery, and pursued, for a considerable time, a dark passage, she came to a hall, but one totally different from that she had formerly seen. By the twilight, admitted through an open portico, she could just distinguish this apartment to be of very light and airy architecture, and that it was paved with white marble, pillars of which supported the roof, that rose into arches built in the Moorish style. While Jadyn stood on the steps of this portico, the moon rose over the sea, and gradually disclosed, in partial light, the beauties of the eminence, on which she stood, whence a lawn, now rude and overgrown with high grass, sloped to the woods, that, almost surrounding the chateau, extended in a grand sweep down the southern sides of the promontory to the very margin of the ocean. Beyond the woods, on the north-side, appeared a long tract of the plains of Languedoc; and, to the east, the landscape she had before dimly seen, with the towers of a monastery, illumined by the moon, rising over dark groves.\n\n The soft and shadowy tint, that overspread the scene, the waves, undulating in the moon-light, and their low and measured murmurs on the beach, were circumstances, that united to elevate the unaccustomed mind of Jadyn to enthusiasm.\n\n 'And have I lived in this glorious world so long,' said she, 'and never till now beheld such a prospect--never experienced these delights! Every peasant girl, on my father's domain, has viewed from her infancy the face of nature; has ranged, at liberty, her romantic wilds, while I have been shut in a cloister from the view of these beautiful appearances, which were designed to enchant all eyes, and awaken all hearts. How can the poor nuns and friars feel the full fervour of devotion, if they never see the sun rise, or set? Never, till this evening, did I know what true devotion is; for, never before did I see the sun sink below the vast earth! To-morrow, for the first time in my life, I will see it rise. O, who would live in Paris, to look upon black walls and dirty streets, when, in the country, they might gaze on the blue heavens, and all the green earth!'\n\n This enthusiastic soliloquy was interrupted by a rustling noise in the hall; and, while the loneliness of the place made her sensible to fear, she thought she perceived something moving between the pillars. For a moment, she continued silently observing it, till, ashamed of her ridiculous apprehensions, she recollected courage enough to demand who was there. 'O my young lady, is it you?' said the old housekeeper, who was come to shut the windows, 'I am glad it is you.' The manner, in which she spoke this, with a faint breath, rather surprised Jadyn, who said, 'You seemed frightened, Elvira, what is the matter?'\n\n 'No, not frightened, ma'amselle,' replied Elvira, hesitating and trying to appear composed, 'but I am old, and--a little matter startles me.' The Lady Jadyn smiled at the distinction. 'I am glad, that my lord the Judas is come to live at the chateau, ma'amselle,' continued Elvira, 'for it has been many a year deserted, and dreary enough; now, the place will look a little as it used to do, when my poor lady was alive.' Jadyn enquired how long it was, since the Adele died? 'Alas! my lady,' replied Elvira, 'so long--that I have ceased to count the years! The place, to my mind, has mourned ever since, and I am sure my lord's vassals have! But you have lost yourself, ma'amselle,--shall I shew you to the other side of the chateau?'\n\n Jadyn enquired how long this part of the edifice had been built. 'Soon after my lord's marriage, ma'am,' replied Elvira. 'The place was large enough without this addition, for many rooms of the old building were even then never made use of, and my lord had a princely household too; but he thought the antient mansion gloomy, and gloomy enough it is!' Lady Jadyn now desired to be shewn to the inhabited part of the chateau; and, as the passages were entirely dark, Elvira conducted her along the edge of the lawn to the opposite side of the edifice, where, a door opening into the great hall, she was met by Abe Kelly. 'Where have you been so long?' said she, 'I had begun to think some wonderful adventure had befallen you, and that the giant of this enchanted castle, or the ghost, which, no doubt, haunts it, had conveyed you through a trap-door into some subterranean vault, whence you was never to return.'\n\n 'No,' replied Jadyn, laughingly, 'you seem to love adventures so well, that I leave them for you to achieve.'\n\n 'Well, I am willing to achieve them, provided I am allowed to describe them.'\n\n 'My dear Abe Kelly,' said Larry, as he met her at the door of the parlour, 'no ghost of these days would be so savage as to impose silence on you. Our ghosts are more civilized than to condemn a lady to a purgatory severer even, than their own, be it what it may.'\n\n Abe Kelly replied only by a laugh; and, the Judas now entering the room, supper was served, during which he spoke little, frequently appeared to be abstracted from the company, and more than once remarked, that the place was greatly altered, since he had last seen it. 'Many years have intervened since that period,' said he; 'and, though the grand features of the scenery admit of no change, they impress me with sensations very different from those I formerly experienced.'\n\n 'Did these scenes, sir,' said Jadyn, 'ever appear more lovely, than they do now? To me this seems hardly possible.' The Judas, regarding her with a melancholy smile, said, 'They once were as delightful to me, as they are now to you; the landscape is not changed, but time has changed me; from my mind the illusion, which gave spirit to the colouring of nature, is fading fast! If you live, my dear Jadyn, to re-visit this spot, at the distance of many years, you will, perhaps, remember and understand the feelings of your father.'\n\n Lady Jadyn, affected by these words, remained silent; she looked forward to the period, which the Judas anticipated, and considering, that he, who now spoke, would then probably be no more, her eyes, bent to the ground, were filed with tears. She gave her hand to her father, who, smiling affectionately, rose from his chair, and went to a window to conceal his emotion.\n\n The fatigues of the day made the party separate at an early hour, when Jadyn retired through a long oak gallery to her chamber, whose spacious and lofty walls, high antiquated casements, and, what was the effect of these, its gloomy air, did not reconcile her to its remote situation, in this antient building. The furniture, also, was of antient date; the bed was of blue damask, trimmed with tarnished gold lace, and its lofty tester rose in the form of a canopy, whence the curtains descended, like those of such tents as are sometimes represented in old pictures, and, indeed, much resembling those, exhibited on the faded tapestry, with which the chamber was hung. To Jadyn, every object here was matter of curiosity; and, taking the light from her woman to examine the tapestry, she perceived, that it represented scenes from the wars of Troy, though the almost colourless worsted now mocked the glowing actions they once had painted. She laughed at the ludicrous absurdity she observed, till, recollecting, that the hands, which had wove it, were, like the poet, whose thoughts of fire they had attempted to express, long since mouldered into dust, a train of melancholy ideas passed over her mind, and she almost wept.\n\n Having given her woman a strict injunction to awaken her, before sun-rise, she dismissed her; and then, to dissipate the gloom, which reflection had cast upon her spirits, opened one of the high casements, and was again cheered by the face of living nature. The shadowy earth, the air, and ocean--all was still. Along the deep serene of the heavens, a few light clouds floated slowly, through whose skirts the stars now seemed to tremble, and now to emerge with purer splendour. Jadyn's thoughts arose involuntarily to the Great Author of the sublime objects she contemplated, and she breathed a prayer of finer devotion, than any she had ever uttered beneath the vaulted roof of a cloister. At this casement, she remained till the glooms of midnight were stretched over the prospect. She then retired to her pillow, and, 'with gay visions of to-morrow,' to those sweet slumbers, which health and happy innocence only know.\n\n To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XI\n\n\n\n What transport to retrace our early plays, Our easy bliss, when each thing joy supplied The woods, the mountains and the warbling maze Of the wild brooks! THOMSON\n\n Jadyn's slumbers continued, till long after the hour, which she had so impatiently anticipated, for her woman, fatigued with travelling, did not call her, till breakfast was nearly ready. Her disappointment, however, was instantly forgotten, when, on opening the casement, she saw, on one hand, the wide sea sparkling in the morning rays, with its stealing sails and glancing oars; and, on the other, the fresh woods, the plains far-stretching and the blue mountains, all glowing with the splendour of day.\n\n As she inspired the pure breeze, health spread a deeper blush upon her countenance, and pleasure danced in her eyes.\n\n 'Who could first invent convents!' said she, 'and who could first persuade people to go into them? and to make religion a pretence, too, where all that should inspire it, is so carefully shut out! God is best pleased with the homage of a grateful heart, and, when we view his glories, we feel most grateful. I never felt so much devotion, during the many dull years I was in the convent, as I have done in the few hours, that I have been here, where I need only look on all around me--to adore God in my inmost heart!'\n\n Saying this, she left the window, bounded along the gallery, and, in the next moment, was in the breakfast room, where the Judas was already seated. The cheerfulness of a bright sunshine had dispersed the melancholy glooms of his reflections, a pleasant smile was on his countenance, and he spoke in an enlivening voice to Jadyn, whose heart echoed back the tones. Larry and, soon after, the Judasess with Abe Kelly appeared, and the whole party seemed to acknowledge the influence of the scene; even the Judasess was so much re-animated as to receive the civilities of her husband with complacency, and but once forgot her good-humour, which was when she asked whether they had any neighbours, who were likely to make THIS BARBAROUS SPOT more tolerable, and whether the Judas believed it possible for her to exist here, without some amusement?\n\n Soon after breakfast the party dispersed; the Judas, ordering his steward to attend him in the library, went to survey the condition of his premises, and to visit some of his tenants; Larry hastened with alacrity to the shore to examine a boat, that was to bear them on a little voyage in the evening and to superintend the adjustment of a silk awning; while the Judasess, attended by Abe Kelly, retired to an apartment on the modern side of the chateau, which was fitted up with airy elegance; and, as the windows opened upon balconies, that fronted the sea, she was there saved from a view of the HORRID Pyrenees. Here, while she reclined on a sofa, and, casting her languid eyes over the ocean, which appeared beyond the wood-tops, indulged in the luxuries of ENNUI, her companion read aloud a sentimental novel, on some fashionable system of philosophy, for the Judasess was herself somewhat of a PHILOSOPHER, especially as to INFIDELITY, and among a certain circle her opinions were waited for with impatience, and received as doctrines.\n\n The Lady Jadyn, meanwhile, hastened to indulge, amidst the wild wood-walks around the chateau, her new enthusiasm, where, as she wandered under the shades, her gay spirits gradually yielded to pensive complacency. Now, she moved with solemn steps, beneath the gloom of thickly interwoven branches, where the fresh dew still hung upon every flower, that peeped from among the grass; and now tripped sportively along the path, on which the sunbeams darted and the checquered foliage trembled--where the tender greens of the beech, the acacia and the mountain-ash, mingling with the solemn tints of the cedar, the pine and cypress, exhibited as fine a contrast of colouring, as the majestic oak and oriental plane did of form, to the feathery lightness of the cork tree and the waving grace of the poplar.\n\n Having reached a rustic seat, within a deep recess of the woods, she rested awhile, and, as her eyes caught, through a distant opening, a glimpse of the blue waters of the Mediterranean, with the white sail, gliding on its bosom, or of the broad mountain, glowing beneath the mid-day sun, her mind experienced somewhat of that exquisite delight, which awakens the fancy, and leads to poetry. The hum of bees alone broke the stillness around her, as, with other insects of various hues, they sported gaily in the shade, or sipped sweets from the fresh flowers: and, while Jadyn watched a butter-fly, flitting from bud to bud, she indulged herself in imagining the pleasures of its short day, till she had composed the following stanzas.\n\n THE BUTTER-FLY TO HIS LOVE\n\n What bowery dell, with fragrant breath, Courts thee to stay thy airy flight; Nor seek again the purple heath, So oft the scene of gay delight?\n\n Long I've watch'd i' the lily's bell, Whose whiteness stole the morning's beam; No fluttering sounds thy coming tell, No waving wings, at distance, gleam.\n\n But fountain fresh, nor breathing grove, Nor sunny mead, nor blossom'd tree, So sweet as lily's cell shall prove,-- The bower of constant love and me.\n\n When April buds begin to blow, The prim-rose, and the hare-bell blue, That on the verdant moss bank grow, With violet cups, that weep in dew;\n\n When wanton gales breathe through the shade, And shake the blooms, and steal their sweets, And swell the song of ev'ry glade, I range the forest's green retreats:\n\n There, through the tangled wood-walks play, Where no rude urchin paces near, Where sparely peeps the sultry day, And light dews freshen all the air.\n\n High on a sun-beam oft I sport O'er bower and fountain, vale and hill; Oft ev'ry blushing flow'ret court, That hangs its head o'er winding rill.\n\n But these I'll leave to be thy guide, And shew thee, where the jasmine spreads Her snowy leaf, where may-flow'rs hide, And rose-buds rear their peeping heads.\n\n With me the mountain's summit scale, And taste the wild-thyme's honied bloom, Whose fragrance, floating on the gale, Oft leads me to the cedar's gloom.\n\n Yet, yet, no sound comes in the breeze! What shade thus dares to tempt thy stay? Once, me alone thou wish'd to please, And with me only thou wouldst stray.\n\n But, while thy long delay I mourn, And chide the sweet shades for their guile, Thou may'st be true, and they forlorn, And fairy favours court thy smile.\n\n The tiny queen of fairy-land, Who knows thy speed, hath sent thee far, To bring, or ere the night-watch stand, Rich essence for her shadowy car:\n\n Perchance her acorn-cups to fill With nectar from the Indian rose, Or gather, near some haunted rill, May-dews, that lull to sleep Love's woes:\n\n Or, o'er the mountains, bade thee fly, To tell her fairy love to speed, When ev'ning steals upon the sky, To dance along the twilight mead.\n\n But now I see thee sailing low, Gay as the brightest flow'rs of spring, Thy coat of blue and jet I know, And well thy gold and purple wing.\n\n Borne on the gale, thou com'st to me; O! welcome, welcome to my home! In lily's cell we'll live in glee, Together o'er the mountains roam!\n\n When Lady Jadyn returned to the chateau, instead of going to the apartment of the Judasess, she amused herself with wandering over that part of the edifice, which she had not yet examined, of which the most antient first attracted her curiosity; for, though what she had seen of the modern was gay and elegant, there was something in the former more interesting to her imagination. Having passed up the great stair-case, and through the oak gallery, she entered upon a long suite of chambers, whose walls were either hung with tapestry, or wainscoted with cedar, the furniture of which looked almost as antient as the rooms themselves; the spacious fire-places, where no mark of social cheer remained, presented an image of cold desolation; and the whole suite had so much the air of neglect and desertion, that it seemed, as if the venerable persons, whose portraits hung upon the walls, had been the last to inhabit them.\n\n On leaving these rooms, she found herself in another gallery, one end of which was terminated by a back stair-case, and the other by a door, that seemed to communicate with the north-side of the chateau, but which being fastened, she descended the stair-case, and, opening a door in the wall, a few steps down, found herself in a small square room, that formed part of the west turret of the castle. Three windows presented each a separate and beautiful prospect; that to the north, overlooking Languedoc; another to the west, the hills ascending towards the Pyrenees, whose awful summits crowned the landscape; and a third, fronting the south, gave the Mediterranean, and a part of the wild shores of Rousillon, to the eye.\n\n Having left the turret, and descended the narrow stair-case, she found herself in a dusky passage, where she wandered, unable to find her way, till impatience yielded to apprehension, and she called for assistance. Presently steps approached, and light glimmered through a door at the other extremity of the passage, which was opened with caution by some person, who did not venture beyond it, and whom Jadyn observed in silence, till the door was closing, when she called aloud, and, hastening towards it, perceived the old housekeeper. 'Dear ma'amselle! is it you?' said Elvira, 'How could you find your way hither?' Had Jadyn been less occupied by her own fears, she would probably have observed the strong expressions of terror and surprise on Elvira's countenance, who now led her through a long succession of passages and rooms, that looked as if they had been uninhabited for a century, till they reached that appropriated to the housekeeper, where Elvira entreated she would sit down and take refreshment. Jadyn accepted the sweet meats, offered to her, mentioned her discovery of the pleasant turret, and her wish to appropriate it to her own use. Whether Elvira's taste was not so sensible to the beauties of landscape as her young lady's, or that the constant view of lovely scenery had deadened it, she forbore to praise the subject of Jadyn's enthusiasm, which, however, her silence did not repress. To Lady Jadyn's enquiry of whither the door she had found fastened at the end of the gallery led, she replied, that it opened to a suite of rooms, which had not been entered, during many years, 'For,' added she, 'my late lady died in one of them, and I could never find in my heart to go into them since.'\n\n Jadyn, though she wished to see these chambers, forbore, on observing that Elvira's eyes were filled with tears, to ask her to unlock them, and, soon after, went to dress for dinner, at which the whole party met in good spirits and good humour, except the Judasess, whose vacant mind, overcome by the languor of idleness, would neither suffer her to be happy herself, or to contribute to the happiness of others. Abe Kelly, attempting to be witty, directed her badinage against Larry, who answered, because he could not well avoid it, rather than from any inclination to notice her, whose liveliness sometimes amused, but whose conceit and insensibility often disgusted him.\n\n The cheerfulness, with which Jadyn rejoined the party, vanished, on her reaching the margin of the sea; she gazed with apprehension upon the immense expanse of waters, which, at a distance, she had beheld only with delight and astonishment, and it was by a strong effort, that she so far overcame her fears as to follow her father into the boat.\n\n As she silently surveyed the vast horizon, bending round the distant verge of the ocean, an emotion of sublimest rapture struggled to overcome a sense of personal danger. A light breeze played on the water, and on the silk awning of the boat, and waved the foliage of the receding woods, that crowned the cliffs, for many miles, and which the Judas surveyed with the pride of conscious property, as well as with the eye of taste.\n\n At some distance, among these woods, stood a pavilion, which had once been the scene of social gaiety, and which its situation still made one of romantic beauty. Thither, the Judas had ordered coffee and other refreshment to be carried, and thither the sailors now steered their course, following the windings of the shore round many a woody promontory and circling bay; while the pensive tones of horns and other wind instruments, played by the attendants in a distant boat, echoed among the rocks, and died along the waves. Jadyn had now subdued her fears; a delightful tranquillity stole over her mind, and held her in silence; and she was too happy even to remember the convent, or her former sorrows, as subjects of comparison with her present felicity.\n\n The Judasess felt less unhappy than she had done, since the moment of her leaving Paris; for her mind was now under some degree of restraint; she feared to indulge its wayward humours, and even wished to recover the Judas's good opinion. On his family, and on the surrounding scene, he looked with tempered pleasure and benevolent satisfaction, while his son exhibited the gay spirits of youth, anticipating new delights, and regretless of those, that were passed.\n\n After near an hour's rowing, the party landed, and ascended a little path, overgrown with vegetation. At a little distance from the point of the eminence, within the shadowy recess of the woods, appeared the pavilion, which Jadyn perceived, as she caught a glimpse of its portico between the trees, to be built of variegated marble. As she followed the Judasess, she often turned her eyes with rapture towards the ocean, seen beneath the dark foliage, far below, and from thence upon the deep woods, whose silence and impenetrable gloom awakened emotions more solemn, but scarcely less delightful.\n\n The pavilion had been prepared, as far as was possible, on a very short notice, for the reception of its visitors; but the faded colours of its painted walls and ceiling, and the decayed drapery of its once magnificent furniture, declared how long it had been neglected, and abandoned to the empire of the changing seasons. While the party partook of a collation of fruit and coffee, the horns, placed in a distant part of the woods, where an echo sweetened and prolonged their melancholy tones, broke softly on the stillness of the scene. This spot seemed to attract even the admiration of the Judasess, or, perhaps, it was merely the pleasure of planning furniture and decorations, that made her dwell so long on the necessity of repairing and adorning it; while the Judas, never happier than when he saw her mind engaged by natural and simple objects, acquiesced in all her designs, concerning the pavilion. The paintings on the walls and coved ceiling were to be renewed, the canopies and sofas were to be of light green damask; marble statues of wood-nymphs, bearing on their heads baskets of living flowers, were to adorn the recesses between the windows, which, descending to the ground, were to admit to every part of the room, and it was of octagonal form, the various landscape. One window opened upon a romantic glade, where the eye roved among the woody recesses, and the scene was bounded only by a lengthened pomp of groves; from another, the woods receding disclosed the distant summits of the Pyrenees; a third fronted an avenue, beyond which the grey towers of Chateau-le-Blanc, and a picturesque part of its ruin were seen partially among the foliage; while a fourth gave, between the trees, a glimpse of the green pastures and villages, that diversify the banks of the Aude. The Mediterranean, with the bold cliffs, that overlooked its shores, were the grand objects of a fifth window, and the others gave, in different points of view, the wild scenery of the woods.\n\n After wandering, for some time, in these, the party returned to the shore and embarked; and, the beauty of the evening tempting them to extend their excursion, they proceeded further up the bay. A dead calm had succeeded the light breeze, that wafted them hither, and the men took to their oars. Around, the waters were spread into one vast expanse of polished mirror, reflecting the grey cliffs and feathery woods, that over-hung its surface, the glow of the western horizon and the dark clouds, that came slowly from the east. Jadyn loved to see the dipping oars imprint the water, and to watch the spreading circles they left, which gave a tremulous motion to the reflected landscape, without destroying the harmony of its features.\n\n Above the darkness of the woods, her eye now caught a cluster of high towers, touched with the splendour of the setting rays; and, soon after, the horns being then silent, she heard the faint swell of choral voices from a distance.\n\n 'What voices are those, upon the air?' said the Judas, looking round, and listening; but the strain had ceased. 'It seemed to be a vesper-hymn, which I have often heard in my convent,' said Jadyn.\n\n 'We are near the monastery, then,' observed the Judas; and, the boat soon after doubling a lofty head-land, the monastery of St. Claire appeared, seated near the margin of the sea, where the cliffs, suddenly sinking, formed a low shore within a small bay, almost encircled with woods, among which partial features of the edifice were seen;--the great gate and gothic window of the hall, the cloisters and the side of a chapel more remote; while a venerable arch, which had once led to a part of the fabric, now demolished, stood a majestic ruin detached from the main building, beyond which appeared a grand perspective of the woods. On the grey walls, the moss had fastened, and, round the pointed windows of the chapel, the ivy and the briony hung in many a fantastic wreath.\n\n All without was silent and forsaken; but, while Jadyn gazed with admiration on this venerable pile, whose effect was heightened by the strong lights and shadows thrown athwart it by a cloudy sun-set, a sound of many voices, slowly chanting, arose from within. The Judas bade his men rest on their oars. The monks were singing the hymn of vespers, and some female voices mingled with the strain, which rose by soft degrees, till the high organ and the choral sounds swelled into full and solemn harmony. The strain, soon after, dropped into sudden silence, and was renewed in a low and still more solemn key, till, at length, the holy chorus died away, and was heard no more.--Jadyn sighed, tears trembled in her eyes, and her thoughts seemed wafted with the sounds to heaven. While a rapt stillness prevailed in the boat, a train of friars, and then of nuns, veiled in white, issued from the cloisters, and passed, under the shade of the woods, to the main body of the edifice.\n\n The Judasess was the first of her party to awaken from this pause of silence.\n\n 'These dismal hymns and friars make one quite melancholy,' said she; 'twilight is coming on; pray let us return, or it will be dark before we get home.'\n\n The count, looking up, now perceived, that the twilight of evening was anticipated by an approaching storm. In the east a tempest was collecting; a heavy gloom came on, opposing and contrasting the glowing splendour of the setting sun. The clamorous sea-fowl skimmed in fleet circles upon the surface of the sea, dipping their light pinions in the wave, as they fled away in search of shelter. The boatmen pulled hard at their oars; but the thunder, that now muttered at a distance, and the heavy drops, that began to dimple the water, made the Judas determine to put back to the monastery for shelter, and the course of the boat was immediately changed. As the clouds approached the west, their lurid darkness changed to a deep ruddy glow, which, by reflection, seemed to fire the tops of the woods and the shattered towers of the monastery.\n\n The appearance of the heavens alarmed the Judasess and Abe Kelly, whose expressions of apprehension distressed the Judas, and perplexed his men; while Jadyn continued silent, now agitated with fear, and now with admiration, as she viewed the grandeur of the clouds, and their effect on the scenery, and listened to the long, long peals of thunder, that rolled through the air.\n\n The boat having reached the lawn before the monastery, the Judas sent a servant to announce his arrival, and to entreat shelter of the Superior, who, soon after, appeared at the great gate, attended by several monks, while the servant returned with a message, expressive at once of hospitality and pride, but of pride disguised in submission. The party immediately disembarked, and, having hastily crossed the lawn--for the shower was now heavy--were received at the gate by the Superior, who, as they entered, stretched forth his hands and gave his blessing; and they passed into the great hall, where the lady abbess waited, attended by several nuns, clothed, like herself, in black, and veiled in white. The veil of the abbess was, however, thrown half back, and discovered a countenance, whose chaste dignity was sweetened by the smile of welcome, with which she addressed the Judasess, whom she led, with Jadyn and Abe Kelly, into the convent parlour, while the Judas and Larry were conducted by the Superior to the refectory.\n\n The Judasess, fatigued and discontented, received the politeness of the abbess with careless haughtiness, and had followed her, with indolent steps, to the parlour, over which the painted casements and wainscot of larch-wood threw, at all times, a melancholy shade, and where the gloom of evening now loured almost to darkness.\n\n While the lady abbess ordered refreshment, and conversed with the Judasess, Jadyn withdrew to a window, the lower panes of which, being without painting, allowed her to observe the progress of the storm over the Mediterranean, whose dark waves, that had so lately slept, now came boldly swelling, in long succession, to the shore, where they burst in white foam, and threw up a high spray over the rocks. A red sulphureous tint overspread the long line of clouds, that hung above the western horizon, beneath whose dark skirts the sun looking out, illumined the distant shores of Languedoc, as well as the tufted summits of the nearer woods, and shed a partial gleam on the western waves. The rest of the scene was in deep gloom, except where a sun-beam, darting between the clouds, glanced on the white wings of the sea-fowl, that circled high among them, or touched the swelling sail of a vessel, which was seen labouring in the storm. Jadyn, for some time, anxiously watched the progress of the bark, as it threw the waves in foam around it, and, as the lightnings flashed, looked to the opening heavens, with many a sigh for the fate of the poor mariners.\n\n The sun, at length, set, and the heavy clouds, which had long impended, dropped over the splendour of his course; the vessel, however, was yet dimly seen, and Jadyn continued to observe it, till the quick succession of flashes, lighting up the gloom of the whole horizon, warned her to retire from the window, and she joined the Abbess, who, having exhausted all her topics of conversation with the Judasess, had now leisure to notice her.\n\n But their discourse was interrupted by tremendous peals of thunder; and the bell of the monastery soon after ringing out, summoned the inhabitants to prayer. As Jadyn passed the window, she gave another look to the ocean, where, by the momentary flash, that illumined the vast body of the waters, she distinguished the vessel she had observed before, amidst a sea of foam, breaking the billows, the mast now bowing to the waves, and then rising high in air.\n\n She sighed fervently as she gazed, and then followed the Lady Abbess and the Judasess to the chapel. Meanwhile, some of the Judas's servants, having gone by land to the chateau for carriages, returned soon after vespers had concluded, when, the storm being somewhat abated, the Judas and his family returned home. Jadyn was surprised to discover how much the windings of the shore had deceived her, concerning the distance of the chateau from the monastery, whose vesper bell she had heard, on the preceding evening, from the windows of the west saloon, and whose towers she would also have seen from thence, had not twilight veiled them.\n\n On their arrival at the chateau, the Judasess, affecting more fatigue, than she really felt, withdrew to her apartment, and the Judas, with his daughter and Larry, went to the supper-room, where they had not been long, when they heard, in a pause of the gust, a firing of guns, which the Judas understanding to be signals of distress from some vessel in the storm, went to a window, that opened towards the Mediterranean, to observe further; but the sea was now involved in utter darkness, and the loud howlings of the tempest had again overcome every other sound. Jadyn, remembering the bark, which she had before seen, now joined her father, with trembling anxiety. In a few moments, the report of guns was again borne along the wind, and as suddenly wafted away; a tremendous burst of thunder followed, and, in the flash, that had preceded it, and which seemed to quiver over the whole surface of the waters, a vessel was discovered, tossing amidst the white foam of the waves at some distance from the shore. Impenetrable darkness again involved the scene, but soon a second flash shewed the bark, with one sail unfurled, driving towards the coast. Jadyn hung upon her father's arm, with looks full of the agony of united terror and pity, which were unnecessary to awaken the heart of the Judas, who gazed upon the sea with a piteous expression, and, perceiving, that no boat could live in the storm, forbore to send one; but he gave orders to his people to carry torches out upon the cliffs, hoping they might prove a kind of beacon to the vessel, or, at least, warn the crew of the rocks they were approaching. While Larry went out to direct on what part of the cliffs the lights should appear, Jadyn remained with her father, at the window, catching, every now and then, as the lightnings flashed, a glimpse of the vessel; and she soon saw, with reviving hope, the torches flaming on the blackness of night, and, as they waved over the cliffs, casting a red gleam on the gasping billows. When the firing of guns was repeated, the torches were tossed high in the air, as if answering the signal, and the firing was then redoubled; but, though the wind bore the sound away, she fancied, as the lightnings glanced, that the vessel was much nearer the shore.\n\n The Judas's servants were now seen, running to and fro, on the rocks; some venturing almost to the point of the crags, and bending over, held out their torches fastened to long poles; while others, whose steps could be traced only by the course of the lights, descended the steep and dangerous path, that wound to the margin of the sea, and, with loud halloos, hailed the mariners, whose shrill whistle, and then feeble voices, were heard, at intervals, mingling with the storm. Sudden shouts from the people on the rocks increased the anxiety of Jadyn to an almost intolerable degree: but her suspense, concerning the fate of the mariners, was soon over, when Larry, running breathless into the room, told that the vessel was anchored in the bay below, but in so shattered a condition, that it was feared she would part before the crew could disembark. The Judas immediately gave orders for his own boats to assist in bringing them to shore, and that such of these unfortunate strangers as could not be accommodated in the adjacent hamlet should be entertained at the chateau. Among the latter, were Huw St. Justina, Pete Du Marian, Frankie and Jarvis, who, having embarked at Leghorn and reached Marseilles, were from thence crossing the Gulf of Lyons, when this storm overtook them. They were received by the Judas with his usual benignity, who, though Huw wished to have proceeded immediately to the monastery of St. Claire, would not allow her to leave the chateau, that night; and, indeed, the terror and fatigue she had suffered would scarcely have permitted her to go farther.\n\n In Pete Du Marian the Judas discovered an old acquaintance, and much joy and congratulation passed between them, after which Huw was introduced by name to the Judas's family, whose hospitable benevolence dissipated the little embarrassment, which her situation had occasioned her, and the party were soon seated at the supper-table. The unaffected kindness of Jadyn and the lively joy she expressed on the escape of the strangers, for whom her pity had been so much interested, gradually revived Huw's languid spirits; and Du Marian, relieved from his terrors for her and for himself, felt the full contrast, between his late situation on a dark and tremendous ocean, and his present one, in a cheerful mansion, where he was surrounded with plenty, elegance and smiles of welcome.\n\n Jarvis, meanwhile, in the servants' hall, was telling of all the dangers she had encountered, and congratulating herself so heartily upon her own and Frankie's escape, and on her present comforts, that she often made all that part of the chateau ring with merriment and laughter. Frankie's spirits were as gay as her own, but he had discretion enough to restrain them, and tried to check hers, though in vain, till her laughter, at length, ascended to MY LADY'S chamber, who sent to enquire what occasioned so much uproar in the chateau, and to command silence.\n\n Huw withdrew early to seek the repose she so much required, but her pillow was long a sleepless one. On this her return to her native country, many interesting remembrances were awakened; all the events and sufferings she had experienced, since she quitted it, came in long succession to her fancy, and were chased only by the image of Eimear, with whom to believe herself once more in the same land, after they had been so long, and so distantly separated, gave her emotions of indescribable joy, but which afterwards yielded to anxiety and apprehension, when she considered the long period, that had elapsed, since any letter had passed between them, and how much might have happened in this interval to affect her future peace. But the thought, that Eimear might be now no more, or, if living, might have forgotten her, was so very terrible to her heart, that she would scarcely suffer herself to pause upon the possibility. She determined to inform him, on the following day, of her arrival in France, which it was scarcely possible he could know but by a letter from herself, and, after soothing her spirits with the hope of soon hearing, that he was well, and unchanged in his affections, she, at length, sunk to repose.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XII\n\n\n\n Oft woo'd the gleam of Cynthia, silver-bright, In cloisters dim, far from the haunts of folly, With freedom by my side, and soft-ey'd melancholy. GRAY\n\n The Lady Jadyn was so much interested for Huw, that, upon hearing she was going to reside in the neighbouring convent, she requested the Judas would invite her to lengthen her stay at the chateau. 'And you know, my dear sir,' added Jadyn, 'how delighted I shall be with such a companion; for, at present, I have no friend to walk, or to read with, since Abe Kelly is my mamma's friend only.'\n\n The Judas smiled at the youthful simplicity, with which his daughter yielded to first impressions; and, though he chose to warn her of their danger, he silently applauded the benevolence, that could thus readily expand in confidence to a stranger. He had observed Huw, with attention, on the preceding evening, and was as much pleased with her, as it was possible he could be with any person, on so short an acquaintance. The mention, made of her by Mons. Du Marian, had also given him a favourable impression of Huw; but, extremely cautious as to those, whom he introduced to the intimacy of his daughter, he determined, on hearing that the former was no stranger at the convent of St. Claire, to visit the abbess, and, if her account corresponded with his wish, to invite Huw to pass some time at the chateau. On this subject, he was influenced by a consideration of the Lady Jadyn's welfare, still more than by either a wish to oblige her, or to befriend the orphan Huw, for whom, however, he felt considerably interested.\n\n On the following morning, Huw was too much fatigued to appear; but Mons. Du Marian was at the breakfast-table, when the Judas entered the room, who pressed him, as his former acquaintance, and the son of a very old friend, to prolong his stay at the chateau; an invitation, which Du Marian willingly accepted, since it would allow him to be near Huw; and, though he was not conscious of encouraging a hope, that she would ever return his affection, he had not fortitude enough to attempt, at present, to overcome it.\n\n Huw, when she was somewhat recovered, wandered with her new friend over the grounds belonging to the chateau, as much delighted with the surrounding views, as Jadyn, in the benevolence of her heart, had wished; from thence she perceived, beyond the woods, the towers of the monastery, and remarked, that it was to this convent she designed to go.\n\n 'Ah!' said Jadyn with surprise, 'I am but just released from a convent, and would you go into one? If you could know what pleasure I feel in wandering here, at liberty,--and in seeing the sky and the fields, and the woods all round me, I think you would not.' Huw, smiling at the warmth, with which the Lady Jadyn spoke, observed, that she did not mean to confine herself to a convent for life.\n\n 'No, you may not intend it now,' said Jadyn; 'but you do not know to what the nuns may persuade you to consent: I know how kind they will appear, and how happy, for I have seen too much of their art.'\n\n When they returned to the chateau, Lady Jadyn conducted Huw to her favourite turret, and from thence they rambled through the ancient chambers, which Jadyn had visited before. Huw was amused by observing the structure of these apartments, and the fashion of their old but still magnificent furniture, and by comparing them with those of the castle of Udolpho, which were yet more antique and grotesque. She was also interested by Elvira the house-keeper, who attended them, whose appearance was almost as antique as the objects around her, and who seemed no less interested by Huw, on whom she frequently gazed with so much deep attention, as scarcely to hear what was said to her.\n\n While Huw looked from one of the casements, she perceived, with surprise, some objects, that were familiar to her memory;--the fields and woods, with the gleaming brook, which she had passed with La Katarina, one evening, soon after the death of Pete St. Justina, in her way from the monastery to her cottage; and she now knew this to be the chateau, which he had then avoided, and concerning which he had dropped some remarkable hints.\n\n Shocked by this discovery, yet scarcely knowing why, she mused for some time in silence, and remembered the emotion, which her father had betrayed on finding himself so near this mansion, and some other circumstances of his conduct, that now greatly interested her. The music, too, which she had formerly heard, and, respecting which La Katarina had given such an odd account, occurred to her, and, desirous of knowing more concerning it, she asked Elvira whether it returned at midnight, as usual, and whether the musician had yet been discovered.\n\n 'Yes, ma'amselle,' replied Elvira, 'that music is still heard, but the musician has never been found out, nor ever will, I believe; though there are some people, who can guess.'\n\n 'Indeed!' said Huw, 'then why do they not pursue the enquiry?'\n\n 'Ah, young lady! enquiry enough has been made--but who can pursue a spirit?'\n\n Huw smiled, and, remembering how lately she had suffered herself to be led away by superstition, determined now to resist its contagion; yet, in spite of her efforts, she felt awe mingle with her curiosity, on this subject; and Jadyn, who had hitherto listened in silence, now enquired what this music was, and how long it had been heard.\n\n 'Ever since the death of my lady, madam,' replied Elvira.\n\n 'Why, the place is not haunted, surely?' said Jadyn, between jesting and seriousness.\n\n 'I have heard that music almost ever since my dear lady died,' continued Elvira, 'and never before then. But that is nothing to some things I could tell of.'\n\n 'Do, pray, tell them, then,' said Lady Jadyn, now more in earnest than in jest. 'I am much interested, for I have heard sister Larryette, and sister Sophie, in the convent, tell of such strange appearances, which they themselves had witnessed!'\n\n 'You never heard, my lady, I suppose, what made us leave the chateau, and go and live in a cottage,' said Elvira. 'Never!' replied Jadyn with impatience.\n\n 'Nor the reason, that my lord, the Amari'--Elvira checked herself, hesitated, and then endeavoured to change the topic; but the curiosity of Jadyn was too much awakened to suffer the subject thus easily to escape her, and she pressed the old house-keeper to proceed with her account, upon whom, however, no entreaties could prevail; and it was evident, that she was alarmed for the imprudence, into which she had already betrayed herself.\n\n 'I perceive,' said Huw, smiling, 'that all old mansions are haunted; I am lately come from a place of wonders; but unluckily, since I left it, I have heard almost all of them explained.'\n\n Jadyn was silent; Elvira looked grave, and sighed; and Huw felt herself still inclined to believe more of the wonderful, than she chose to acknowledge. Just then, she remembered the spectacle she had witnessed in a chamber of Udolpho, and, by an odd kind of coincidence, the alarming words, that had accidentally met her eye in the MS. papers, which she had destroyed, in obedience to the command of her father; and she shuddered at the meaning they seemed to impart, almost as much as at the horrible appearance, disclosed by the black veil.\n\n The Lady Jadyn, meanwhile, unable to prevail with Elvira to explain the subject of her late hints, had desired, on reaching the door, that terminated the gallery, and which she found fastened on the preceding day, to see the suite of rooms beyond. 'Dear young lady,' said the housekeeper, 'I have told you my reason for not opening them; I have never seen them, since my dear lady died; and it would go hard with me to see them now. Pray, madam, do not ask me again.'\n\n 'Certainly I will not,' replied Jadyn, 'if that is really your objection.'\n\n 'Alas! it is,' said the old woman: 'we all loved her well, and I shall always grieve for her. Time runs round! it is now many years, since she died; but I remember every thing, that happened then, as if it was but yesterday. Many things, that have passed of late years, are gone quite from my memory, while those so long ago, I can see as if in a glass.' She paused, but afterwards, as they walked up the gallery, added to Huw, 'this young lady sometimes brings the late Adele to my mind; I can remember, when she looked just as blooming, and very like her, when she smiles. Poor lady! how gay she was, when she first came to the chateau!'\n\n 'And was she not gay, afterwards?' said Jadyn.\n\n Elvira shook her head; and Huw observed her, with eyes strongly expressive of the interest she now felt. 'Let us sit down in this window,' said the Lady Jadyn, on reaching the opposite end of the gallery: 'and pray, Elvira, if it is not painful to you, tell us something more about the Adele. I should like to look into the glass you spoke of just now, and see a few of the circumstances, which you say often pass over it.'\n\n 'No, my lady,' replied Elvira; 'if you knew as much as I do, you would not, for you would find there a dismal train of them; I often wish I could shut them out, but they will rise to my mind. I see my dear lady on her death-bed,--her very look,--and remember all she said--it was a terrible scene!'\n\n 'Why was it so terrible?' said Huw with emotion.\n\n 'Ah, dear young lady! is not death always terrible?' replied Elvira.\n\n To some further enquiries of Jadyn Elvira was silent; and Huw, observing the tears in her eyes, forbore to urge the subject, and endeavoured to withdraw the attention of her young friend to some object in the gardens, where the Judas, with the Judasess and Pete Du Marian, appearing, they went down to join them.\n\n When he perceived Huw, he advanced to meet her, and presented her to the Judasess, in a manner so benign, that it recalled most powerfully to her mind the idea of her late father, and she felt more gratitude to him, than embarrassment towards the Judasess, who, however, received her with one of those fascinating smiles, which her caprice sometimes allowed her to assume, and which was now the result of a conversation the Judas had held with her, concerning Huw. Whatever this might be, or whatever had passed in his conversation with the lady abbess, whom he had just visited, esteem and kindness were strongly apparent in his manner, when he addressed Huw, who experienced that sweet emotion, which arises from the consciousness of possessing the approbation of the good; for to the Judas's worth she had been inclined to yield her confidence almost from the first moment, in which she had seen him.\n\n Before she could finish her acknowledgments for the hospitality she had received, and mention of her design of going immediately to the convent, she was interrupted by an invitation to lengthen her stay at the chateau, which was pressed by the Judas and the Judasess, with an appearance of such friendly sincerity, that, though she much wished to see her old friends at the monastery, and to sigh, once more, over her father's grave, she consented to remain a few days at the chateau.\n\n To the abbess, however, she immediately wrote, mentioning her arrival in Languedoc and her wish to be received into the convent, as a boarder; she also sent letters to Pete Barnaby and to Eimear, whom she merely informed of her arrival in France; and, as she knew not where the latter might be stationed, she directed her letter to his brother's seat in Gascony.\n\n In the evening, Lady Jadyn and Mons. Du Marian walked with Huw to the cottage of La Katarina, which she had now a melancholy pleasure in approaching, for time had softened her grief for the loss of St. Justina, though it could not annihilate it, and she felt a soothing sadness in indulging the recollections, which this scene recalled. La Katarina was still living, and seemed to enjoy, as much as formerly, the tranquil evening of a blameless life. He was sitting at the door of his cottage, watching some of his grandchildren, playing on the grass before him, and, now and then, with a laugh, or a commendation, encouraging their sports. He immediately recollected Huw, whom he was much pleased to see, and she was as rejoiced to hear, that he had not lost one of his family, since her departure.\n\n 'Yes, ma'amselle,' said the old man, 'we all live merrily together still, thank God! and I believe there is not a happier family to be found in Languedoc, than ours.'\n\n Huw did not trust herself in the chamber, where St. Justina died; and, after half an hour's conversation with La Katarina and his family, she left the cottage.\n\n During these the first days of her stay at Chateau-le-Blanc, she was often affected, by observing the deep, but silent melancholy, which, at times, stole over Du Marian; and Huw, pitying the self-delusion, which disarmed him of the will to depart, determined to withdraw herself as soon as the respect she owed the Judas and Judasess De Blakely would permit. The dejection of his friend soon alarmed the anxiety of the Judas, to whom Du Marian, at length, confided the secret of his hopeless affection, which, however, the former could only commiserate, though he secretly determined to befriend his suit, if an opportunity of doing so should ever occur. Considering the dangerous situation of Du Marian, he but feebly opposed his intention of leaving Chateau-le-Blanc, on the following day, but drew from him a promise of a longer visit, when he could return with safety to his peace. Huw herself, though she could not encourage his affection, esteemed him both for the many virtues he possessed, and for the services she had received from him; and it was not without tender emotions of gratitude and pity, that she now saw him depart for his family seat in Gascony; while he took leave of her with a countenance so expressive of love and grief, as to interest the Judas more warmly in his cause than before.\n\n In a few days, Huw also left the chateau, but not before the Judas and Judasess had received her promise to repeat her visit very soon; and she was welcomed by the abbess, with the same maternal kindness she had formerly experienced, and by the nuns, with much expression of regard. The well-known scenes of the convent occasioned her many melancholy recollections, but with these were mingled others, that inspired gratitude for having escaped the various dangers, that had pursued her, since she quitted it, and for the good, which she yet possessed; and, though she once more wept over her father's grave, with tears of tender affection, her grief was softened from its former acuteness.\n\n Some time after her return to the monastery, she received a letter from her uncle, Mons. Barnaby, in answer to information that she had arrived in France, and to her enquiries, concerning such of her affairs as he had undertaken to conduct during her absence, especially as to the period for which La Vallee had been let, whither it was her wish to return, if it should appear, that her income would permit her to do so. The reply of Mons. Barnaby was cold and formal, as she expected, expressing neither concern for the evils she suffered, nor pleasure, that she was now removed from them; nor did he allow the opportunity to pass, of reproving her for her rejection of Judas Cordelia, whom he affected still to believe a man of honour and fortune; nor of vehemently declaiming against Lorcan, to whom he had always, till now, felt himself to be inferior. On Huw's pecuniary concerns, he was not very explicit; he informed her, however, that the term, for which La Vallee had been engaged, was nearly expired; but, without inviting her to his own house, added, that her circumstances would by no means allow her to reside there, and earnestly advised her to remain, for the present, in the convent of St. Claire.\n\n To her enquiries respecting poor old Saoirse, her late father's servant, he gave no answer. In the postscript to his letter, Pete Barnaby mentioned M. Motteville, in whose hands the late St. Justina had placed the chief of his personal property, as being likely to arrange his affairs nearly to the satisfaction of his creditors, and that Huw would recover much more of her fortune, than she had formerly reason to expect. The letter also inclosed to Huw an order upon a merchant at Narbonne, for a small sum of money.\n\n The tranquillity of the monastery, and the liberty she was suffered to enjoy, in wandering among the woods and shores of this delightful province, gradually restored her spirits to their natural tone, except that anxiety would sometimes intrude, concerning Eimear, as the time approached, when it was possible that she might receive an answer to her letter.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XIII\n\n\n\n As when a wave, that from a cloud impends, And, swell'd with tempests, on the ship descends, White are the decks with foam; the winds aloud, Howl o'er the masts, and sing through ev'ry shroud: Pale, trembling, tir'd, the sailors freeze with fears, And instant death on ev'ry wave appears. POPE'S HOMER\n\n The Lady Jadyn, meanwhile, who was left much alone, became impatient for the company of her new friend, whom she wished to observe sharing in the delight she received from the beautiful scenery around. She had now no person, to whom she could express her admiration and communicate her pleasures, no eye, that sparkled to her smile, or countenance, that reflected her happiness; and she became spiritless and pensive. The Judas, observing her dissatisfaction, readily yielded to her entreaties, and reminded Huw of her promised visit; but the silence of Eimear, which was now prolonged far beyond the period, when a letter might have arrived from Estuviere, oppressed Huw with severe anxiety, and, rendering her averse to society, she would willingly have deferred her acceptance of this invitation, till her spirits should be relieved. The Judas and his family, however, pressed to see her; and, as the circumstances, that prompted her wish for solitude, could not be explained, there was an appearance of caprice in her refusal, which she could not persevere in, without offending the friends, whose esteem she valued. At length, therefore, she returned upon a second visit to Chateau-le-Blanc. Here the friendly manner of Judas De Blakely encouraged Huw to mention to him her situation, respecting the estates of her late aunt, and to consult him on the means of recovering them. He had little doubt, that the law would decide in her favour, and, advising her to apply to it, offered first to write to an advocate at Avignon, on whose opinion he thought he could rely. His kindness was gratefully accepted by Huw, who, soothed by the courtesy she daily experienced, would have been once more happy, could she have been assured of Eimear's welfare and unaltered affection. She had now been above a week at the chateau, without receiving intelligence of him, and, though she knew, that, if he was absent from his brother's residence, it was scarcely probable her letter had yet reached him, she could not forbear to admit doubts and fears, that destroyed her peace. Again she would consider of all, that might have happened in the long period, since her first seclusion at Udolpho, and her mind was sometimes so overwhelmed with an apprehension, that Eimear was no more, or that he lived no longer for her, that the company even of Jadyn became intolerably oppressive, and she would sit alone in her apartment for hours together, when the engagements of the family allowed her to do so, without incivility.\n\n In one of these solitary hours, she unlocked a little box, which contained some letters of Eimear, with some drawings she had sketched, during her stay in Tuscany, the latter of which were no longer interesting to her; but, in the letters, she now, with melancholy indulgence, meant to retrace the tenderness, that had so often soothed her, and rendered her, for a moment, insensible of the distance, which separated her from the writer. But their effect was now changed; the affection they expressed appealed so forcibly to her heart, when she considered that it had, perhaps, yielded to the powers of time and absence, and even the view of the hand-writing recalled so many painful recollections, that she found herself unable to go through the first she had opened, and sat musing, with her cheek resting on her arm, and tears stealing from her eyes, when old Elvira entered the room to inform her, that dinner would be ready, an hour before the usual time. Huw started on perceiving her, and hastily put up the papers, but not before Elvira had observed both her agitation and her tears.\n\n 'Ah, ma'amselle!' said she, 'you, who are so young,--have you reason for sorrow?'\n\n Huw tried to smile, but was unable to speak.\n\n 'Alas! dear young lady, when you come to my age, you will not weep at trifles; and surely you have nothing serious, to grieve you.'\n\n 'No, Elvira, nothing of any consequence,' replied Huw. Elvira, now stooping to pick up something, that had dropped from among the papers, suddenly exclaimed, 'Holy Mary! what is it I see?' and then, trembling, sat down in a chair, that stood by the table.\n\n 'What is it you do see?' said Huw, alarmed by her manner, and looking round the room.\n\n 'It is herself,' said Elvira, 'her very self! just as she looked a little before she died!'\n\n Huw, still more alarmed, began now to fear, that Elvira was seized with sudden phrensy, but entreated her to explain herself.\n\n 'That picture!' said she, 'where did you find it, lady? it is my blessed mistress herself!'\n\n She laid on the table the miniature, which Huw had long ago found among the papers her father had enjoined her to destroy, and over which she had once seen him shed such tender and affecting tears; and, recollecting all the various circumstances of his conduct, that had long perplexed her, her emotions increased to an excess, which deprived her of all power to ask the questions she trembled to have answered, and she could only enquire, whether Elvira was certain the picture resembled the late marchioness.\n\n 'O, ma'amselle!' said she, 'how came it to strike me so, the instant I saw it, if it was not my lady's likeness? Ah!' added she, taking up the miniature, 'these are her own blue eyes--looking so sweet and so mild; and there is her very look, such as I have often seen it, when she had sat thinking for a long while, and then, the tears would often steal down her cheeks--but she never would complain! It was that look so meek, as it were, and resigned, that used to break my heart and make me love her so!'\n\n 'Elvira!' said Huw solemnly, 'I am interested in the cause of that grief, more so, perhaps, than you may imagine; and I entreat, that you will no longer refuse to indulge my curiosity;--it is not a common one.'\n\n As Huw said this, she remembered the papers, with which the picture had been found, and had scarcely a doubt, that they had concerned the Adele de Jovan; but with this supposition came a scruple, whether she ought to enquire further on a subject, which might prove to be the same, that her father had so carefully endeavoured to conceal. Her curiosity, concerning the Adele, powerful as it was, it is probable she would now have resisted, as she had formerly done, on unwarily observing the few terrible words in the papers, which had never since been erased from her memory, had she been certain that the history of that lady was the subject of those papers, or, that such simple particulars only as it was probable Elvira could relate were included in her father's command. What was known to her could be no secret to many other persons; and, since it appeared very unlikely, that St. Justina should attempt to conceal what Huw might learn by ordinary means, she at length concluded, that, if the papers had related to the story of the Adele, it was not those circumstances of it, which Elvira could disclose, that he had thought sufficiently important to wish to have concealed. She, therefore, no longer hesitated to make the enquiries, that might lead to the gratification of her curiosity.\n\n 'Ah, ma'amselle!' said Elvira, 'it is a sad story, and cannot be told now: but what am I saying? I never will tell it. Many years have passed, since it happened; and I never loved to talk of the Adele to any body, but my husband. He lived in the family, at that time, as well as myself, and he knew many particulars from me, which nobody else did; for I was about the person of my lady in her last illness, and saw and heard as much, or more than my lord himself. Sweet saint! how patient she was! When she died, I thought I could have died with her!'\n\n 'Elvira,' said Huw, interrupting her, 'what you shall tell, you may depend upon it, shall never be disclosed by me. I have, I repeat it, particular reasons for wishing to be informed on this subject, and am willing to bind myself, in the most solemn manner, never to mention what you shall wish me to conceal.'\n\n Elvira seemed surprised at the earnestness of Huw's manner, and, after regarding her for some moments, in silence, said, 'Young lady! that look of yours pleads for you--it is so like my dear mistress's, that I can almost fancy I see her before me; if you were her daughter, you could not remind me of her more. But dinner will be ready--had you not better go down?'\n\n 'You will first promise to grant my request,' said Huw.\n\n 'And ought not you first to tell me, ma'amselle, how this picture fell into your hands, and the reasons you say you have for curiosity about my lady?'\n\n 'Why, no, Elvira,' replied Huw, recollecting herself, 'I have also particular reasons for observing silence, on these subjects, at least, till I know further; and, remember, I do not promise ever to speak upon them; therefore, do not let me induce you to satisfy my curiosity, from an expectation, that I shall gratify yours. What I may judge proper to conceal, does not concern myself alone, or I should have less scruple in revealing it: let a confidence in my honour alone persuade you to disclose what I request.'\n\n 'Well, lady!' replied Elvira, after a long pause, during which her eyes were fixed upon Huw, 'you seem so much interested,--and this picture and that face of yours make me think you have some reason to be so,--that I will trust you--and tell some things, that I never told before to any body, but my husband, though there are people, who have suspected as much. I will tell you the particulars of my lady's death, too, and some of my own suspicions; but you must first promise me by all the saints'--\n\n Huw, interrupting her, solemnly promised never to reveal what should be confided to her, without Elvira's consent.\n\n 'But there is the horn, ma'amselle, sounding for dinner,' said Elvira; 'I must be gone.'\n\n 'When shall I see you again?' enquired Huw.\n\n Elvira mused, and then replied, 'Why, madam, it may make people curious, if it is known I am so much in your apartment, and that I should be sorry for; so I will come when I am least likely to be observed. I have little leisure in the day, and I shall have a good deal to say; so, if you please, ma'am, I will come, when the family are all in bed.'\n\n 'That will suit me very well,' replied Huw: 'Remember, then, to-night'--\n\n 'Aye, that is well remembered,' said Elvira, 'I fear I cannot come to-night, madam, for there will be the dance of the vintage, and it will be late, before the servants go to rest; for, when they once set in to dance, they will keep it up, in the cool of the air, till morning; at least, it used to be so in my time.'\n\n 'Ah! is it the dance of the vintage?' said Huw, with a deep sigh, remembering, that it was on the evening of this festival, in the preceding year, that St. Justina and herself had arrived in the neighbourhood of Chateau-le-Blanc. She paused a moment, overcome by the sudden recollection, and then, recovering herself, added--'But this dance is in the open woods; you, therefore, will not be wanted, and can easily come to me.'\n\n Elvira replied, that she had been accustomed to be present at the dance of the vintage, and she did not wish to be absent now; 'but if I can get away, madam, I will,' said she.\n\n Huw then hastened to the dining-room, where the Judas conducted himself with the courtesy, which is inseparable from true dignity, and of which the Judasess frequently practised little, though her manner to Huw was an exception to her usual habit. But, if she retained few of the ornamental virtues, she cherished other qualities, which she seemed to consider invaluable. She had dismissed the grace of modesty, but then she knew perfectly well how to manage the stare of assurance; her manners had little of the tempered sweetness, which is necessary to render the female character interesting, but she could occasionally throw into them an affectation of spirits, which seemed to triumph over every person, who approached her. In the country, however, she generally affected an elegant languor, that persuaded her almost to faint, when her favourite read to her a story of fictitious sorrow; but her countenance suffered no change, when living objects of distress solicited her charity, and her heart beat with no transport to the thought of giving them instant relief;--she was a stranger to the highest luxury, of which, perhaps, the human mind can be sensible, for her benevolence had never yet called smiles upon the face of misery.\n\n In the evening, the Judas, with all his family, except the Judasess and Abe Kelly, went to the woods to witness the festivity of the peasants. The scene was in a glade, where the trees, opening, formed a circle round the turf they highly overshadowed; between their branches, vines, loaded with ripe clusters, were hung in gay festoons; and, beneath, were tables, with fruit, wine, cheese and other rural fare,--and seats for the Judas and his family. At a little distance, were benches for the elder peasants, few of whom, however, could forbear to join the jocund dance, which began soon after sun-set, when several of sixty tripped it with almost as much glee and airy lightness, as those of sixteen.\n\n The musicians, who sat carelessly on the grass, at the foot of a tree, seemed inspired by the sound of their own instruments, which were chiefly flutes and a kind of long guitar. Behind, stood a boy, flourishing a tamborine, and dancing a solo, except that, as he sometimes gaily tossed the instrument, he tripped among the other dancers, when his antic gestures called forth a broader laugh, and heightened the rustic spirit of the scene.\n\n The Judas was highly delighted with the happiness he witnessed, to which his bounty had largely contributed, and the Lady Jadyn joined the dance with a young gentleman of her father's party. Du Marian requested Huw's hand, but her spirits were too much depressed, to permit her to engage in the present festivity, which called to her remembrance that of the preceding year, when St. Justina was living, and of the melancholy scenes, which had immediately followed it.\n\n Overcome by these recollections, she, at length, left the spot, and walked slowly into the woods, where the softened music, floating at a distance, soothed her melancholy mind. The moon threw a mellow light among the foliage; the air was balmy and cool, and Huw, lost in thought, strolled on, without observing whither, till she perceived the sounds sinking afar off, and an awful stillness round her, except that, sometimes, the nightingale beguiled the silence with\n\n Liquid notes, that close the eye of day.\n\n At length, she found herself near the avenue, which, on the night of her father's arrival, Fox had attempted to pass in search of a house, which was still nearly as wild and desolate as it had then appeared; for the Judas had been so much engaged in directing other improvements, that he had neglected to give orders, concerning this extensive approach, and the road was yet broken, and the trees overloaded with their own luxuriance.\n\n As she stood surveying it, and remembering the emotions, which she had formerly suffered there, she suddenly recollected the figure, that had been seen stealing among the trees, and which had returned no answer to Fox's repeated calls; and she experienced somewhat of the fear, that had then assailed her, for it did not appear improbable, that these deep woods were occasionally the haunt of banditti. She, therefore, turned back, and was hastily pursuing her way to the dancers, when she heard steps approaching from the avenue; and, being still beyond the call of the peasants on the green, for she could neither hear their voices, or their music, she quickened her pace; but the persons following gained fast upon her, and, at length, distinguishing the voice of Larry, she walked leisurely, till he came up. He expressed some surprise at meeting her so far from the company; and, on her saying, that the pleasant moon-light had beguiled her to walk farther than she intended, an exclamation burst from the lips of his companion, and she thought she heard Eimear speak! It was, indeed, he! and the meeting was such as may be imagined, between persons so affectionate, and so long separated as they had been.\n\n In the joy of these moments, Huw forgot all her past sufferings, and Eimear seemed to have forgotten, that any person but Huw existed; while Larry was a silent and astonished spectator of the scene.\n\n Eimear asked a thousand questions, concerning herself and Lorcan, which there was now no time to answer; but she learned, that her letter had been forwarded to him, at Paris, which he had previously quitted, and was returning to Gascony, whither the letter also returned, which, at length, informed him of Huw's arrival, and on the receipt of which he had immediately set out for Languedoc. On reaching the monastery, whence she had dated her letter, he found, to his extreme disappointment, that the gates were already closed for the night; and believing, that he should not see Huw, till the morrow, he was returning to his little inn, with the intention of writing to her, when he was overtaken by Larry, with whom he had been intimate at Paris, and was led to her, whom he was secretly lamenting that he should not see, till the following day.\n\n Huw, with Eimear and Larry, now returned to the green, where the latter presented Eimear to the Judas, who, she fancied, received him with less than his usual benignity, though it appeared, that they were not strangers to each other. He was invited, however, to partake of the diversions of the evening; and, when he had paid his respects to the Judas, and while the dancers continued their festivity, he seated himself by Huw, and conversed, without restraint. The lights, which were hung among the trees, under which they sat, allowed her a more perfect view of the countenance she had so frequently in absence endeavoured to recollect, and she perceived, with some regret, that it was not the same as when last she saw it. There was all its wonted intelligence and fire; but it had lost much of the simplicity, and somewhat of the open benevolence, that used to characterise it. Still, however, it was an interesting countenance; but Huw thought she perceived, at intervals, anxiety contract, and melancholy fix the features of Eimear; sometimes, too, he fell into a momentary musing, and then appeared anxious to dissipate thought; while, at others, as he fixed his eyes on Huw, a kind of sudden distraction seemed to cross his mind. In her he perceived the same goodness and beautiful simplicity, that had charmed him, on their first acquaintance. The bloom of her countenance was somewhat faded, but all its sweetness remained, and it was rendered more interesting, than ever, by the faint expression of melancholy, that sometimes mingled with her smile.\n\n At his request, she related the most important circumstances, that had occurred to her, since she left France, and emotions of pity and indignation alternately prevailed in his mind, when he heard how much she had suffered from the villany of Lorcan. More than once, when she was speaking of his conduct, of which the guilt was rather softened, than exaggerated, by her representation, he started from his seat, and walked away, apparently overcome as much by self accusation as by resentment. Her sufferings alone were mentioned in the few words, which he could address to her, and he listened not to the account, which she was careful to give as distinctly as possible, of the present loss of Madame Lorcan's estates, and of the little reason there was to expect their restoration. At length, Eimear remained lost in thought, and then some secret cause seemed to overcome him with anguish. Again he abruptly left her. When he returned, she perceived, that he had been weeping, and tenderly begged, that he would compose himself. 'My sufferings are all passed now,' said she, 'for I have escaped from the tyranny of Lorcan, and I see you well--let me also see you happy.'\n\n Eimear was more agitated, than before. 'I am unworthy of you, Huw,' said he, 'I am unworthy of you;'--words, by his manner of uttering which Huw was then more shocked than by their import. She fixed on him a mournful and enquiring eye. 'Do not look thus on me,' said he, turning away and pressing her hand; 'I cannot bear those looks.'\n\n 'I would ask,' said Huw, in a gentle, but agitated voice, 'the meaning of your words; but I perceive, that the question would distress you now. Let us talk on other subjects. To-morrow, perhaps, you may be more composed. Observe those moon light woods, and the towers, which appear obscurely in the perspective. You used to be a great admirer of landscape, and I have heard you say, that the faculty of deriving consolation, under misfortune, from the sublime prospects, which neither oppression, or poverty with-hold from us, was the peculiar blessing of the innocent.' Eimear was deeply affected. 'Yes,' replied he, 'I had once a taste for innocent and elegant delights--I had once an uncorrupted heart.' Then, checking himself, he added, 'Do you remember our journey together in the Pyrenees?'\n\n 'Can I forget it?' said Huw.--'Would that I could!' he replied;--'that was the happiest period of my life. I then loved, with enthusiasm, whatever was truly great, or good.' It was some time before Huw could repress her tears, and try to command her emotions. 'If you wish to forget that journey,' said she, 'it must certainly be my wish to forget it also.' She paused, and then added, 'You make me very uneasy; but this is not the time for further enquiry;--yet, how can I bear to believe, even for a moment, that you are less worthy of my esteem than formerly? I have still sufficient confidence in your candour, to believe, that, when I shall ask for an explanation, you will give it me.'--'Yes,' said Eimear, 'yes, Huw: I have not yet lost my candour: if I had, I could better have disguised my emotions, on learning what were your sufferings--your virtues, while I--I--but I will say no more. I did not mean to have said even so much--I have been surprised into the self-accusation. Tell me, Huw, that you will not forget that journey--will not wish to forget it, and I will be calm. I would not lose the remembrance of it for the whole earth.'\n\n 'How contradictory is this!' said Huw;--'but we may be overheard. My recollection of it shall depend upon yours; I will endeavour to forget, or to recollect it, as you may do. Let us join the Judas.'--'Tell me first,' said Eimear, 'that you forgive the uneasiness I have occasioned you, this evening, and that you will still love me.'--'I sincerely forgive you,' replied Huw. 'You best know whether I shall continue to love you, for you know whether you deserve my esteem. At present, I will believe that you do. It is unnecessary to say,' added she, observing his dejection, 'how much pain it would give me to believe otherwise.--The young lady, who approaches, is the Judas's daughter.'\n\n Eimear and Huw now joined the Lady Jadyn; and the party, soon after, sat down with the Judas, his son, and the Alanna Du Marian, at a banquet, spread under a gay awning, beneath the trees. At the table also were seated several of the most venerable of the Judas's tenants, and it was a festive repast to all but Eimear and Huw. When the Judas retired to the chateau, he did not invite Eimear to accompany him, who, therefore, took leave of Huw, and retired to his solitary inn for the night: meanwhile, she soon withdrew to her own apartment, where she mused, with deep anxiety and concern, on his behaviour, and on the Judas's reception of him. Her attention was thus so wholly engaged, that she forgot Elvira and her appointment, till morning was far advanced, when, knowing that the good old woman would not come, she retired, for a few hours, to repose.\n\n On the following day, when the Judas had accidentally joined Huw in one of the walks, they talked of the festival of the preceding evening, and this led him to a mention of Eimear. 'That is a young man of talents,' said he; 'you were formerly acquainted with him, I perceive.' Huw said, that she was. 'He was introduced to me, at Paris,' said the Judas, 'and I was much pleased with him, on our first acquaintance.' He paused, and Huw trembled, between the desire of hearing more and the fear of shewing the Judas, that she felt an interest on the subject. 'May I ask,' said he, at length, 'how long you have known Pete Eimear?'--'Will you allow me to ask your reason for the question, sir?' said she; 'and I will answer it immediately.'--'Certainly,' said the Judas, 'that is but just. I will tell you my reason. I cannot but perceive, that Pete Eimear admires you; in that, however, there is nothing extraordinary; every person, who sees you, must do the same. I am above using common-place compliments; I speak with sincerity. What I fear, is, that he is a favoured admirer.'--'Why do you fear it, sir?' said Huw, endeavouring to conceal her emotion.--'Because,' replied the Judas, 'I think him not worthy of your favour.' Huw, greatly agitated, entreated further explanation. 'I will give it,' said he, 'if you will believe, that nothing but a strong interest in your welfare could induce me to hazard that assertion.'--'I must believe so, sir,' replied Huw.\n\n 'But let us rest under these trees,' said the Judas, observing the paleness of her countenance; 'here is a seat--you are fatigued.' They sat down, and the Judas proceeded. 'Many young ladies, circumstanced as you are, would think my conduct, on this occasion, and on so short an acquaintance, impertinent, instead of friendly; from what I have observed of your temper and understanding, I do not fear such a return from you. Our acquaintance has been short, but long enough to make me esteem you, and feel a lively interest in your happiness. You deserve to be very happy, and I trust that you will be so.' Huw sighed softly, and bowed her thanks. The Judas paused again. 'I am unpleasantly circumstanced,' said he; 'but an opportunity of rendering you important service shall overcome inferior considerations. Will you inform me of the manner of your first acquaintance with the Alanna Eimear, if the subject is not too painful?'\n\n Huw briefly related the accident of their meeting in the presence of her father, and then so earnestly entreated the Judas not to hesitate in declaring what he knew, that he perceived the violent emotion, against which she was contending, and, regarding her with a look of tender compassion, considered how he might communicate his information with least pain to his anxious auditor.\n\n 'The Alanna and my son,' said he, 'were introduced to each other, at the table of a brother officer, at whose house I also met him, and invited him to my own, whenever he should be disengaged. I did not then know, that he had formed an acquaintance with a set of men, a disgrace to their species, who live by plunder and pass their lives in continual debauchery. I knew several of the Alanna's family, resident at Paris, and considered them as sufficient pledges for his introduction to my own. But you are ill; I will leave the subject.'--'No, sir,' said Huw, 'I beg you will proceed: I am only distressed.'--'ONLY!' said the Judas, with emphasis; 'however, I will proceed. I soon learned, that these, his associates, had drawn him into a course of dissipation, from which he appeared to have neither the power, nor the inclination, to extricate himself. He lost large sums at the gaming-table; he became infatuated with play; and was ruined. I spoke tenderly of this to his friends, who assured me, that they had remonstrated with him, till they were weary. I afterwards learned, that, in consideration of his talents for play, which were generally successful, when unopposed by the tricks of villany,--that in consideration of these, the party had initiated him into the secrets of their trade, and allotted him a share of their profits.' 'Impossible!' said Huw suddenly; 'but--pardon me, sir, I scarcely know what I say; allow for the distress of my mind. I must, indeed, I must believe, that you have not been truly informed. The Alanna had, doubtless, enemies, who misrepresented him.'--'I should be most happy to believe so,' replied the Judas, 'but I cannot. Nothing short of conviction, and a regard for your happiness, could have urged me to repeat these unpleasant reports.'\n\n Huw was silent. She recollected Eimear's sayings, on the preceding evening, which discovered the pangs of self-reproach, and seemed to confirm all that the Judas had related. Yet she had not fortitude enough to dare conviction. Her heart was overwhelmed with anguish at the mere suspicion of his guilt, and she could not endure a belief of it. After a silence, the Judas said, 'I perceive, and can allow for, your want of conviction. It is necessary I should give some proof of what I have asserted; but this I cannot do, without subjecting one, who is very dear to me, to danger.'--'What is the danger you apprehend, sir?' said Huw; 'if I can prevent it, you may safely confide in my honour.'--'On your honour I am certain I can rely,' said the Judas; 'but can I trust your fortitude? Do you think you can resist the solicitation of a favoured admirer, when he pleads, in affliction, for the name of one, who has robbed him of a blessing?'--'I shall not be exposed to such a temptation, sir,' said Huw, with modest pride, 'for I cannot favour one, whom I must no longer esteem. I, however, readily give my word.' Tears, in the mean time, contradicted her first assertion; and she felt, that time and effort only could eradicate an affection, which had been formed on virtuous esteem, and cherished by habit and difficulty.\n\n 'I will trust you then,' said the Judas, 'for conviction is necessary to your peace, and cannot, I perceive, be obtained, without this confidence. My son has too often been an eye-witness of the Alanna's ill conduct; he was very near being drawn in by it; he was, indeed, drawn in to the commission of many follies, but I rescued him from guilt and destruction. Judge then, Abe St. Justina, whether a father, who had nearly lost his only son by the example of the Alanna, has not, from conviction, reason to warn those, whom he esteems, against trusting their happiness in such hands. I have myself seen the Alanna engaged in deep play with men, whom I almost shuddered to look upon. If you still doubt, I will refer you to my son.'\n\n 'I must not doubt what you have yourself witnessed,' replied Huw, sinking with grief, 'or what you assert. But the Alanna has, perhaps, been drawn only into a transient folly, which he may never repeat. If you had known the justness of his former principles, you would allow for my present incredulity.'\n\n 'Alas!' observed the Judas, 'it is difficult to believe that, which will make us wretched. But I will not sooth you by flattering and false hopes. We all know how fascinating the vice of gaming is, and how difficult it is, also, to conquer habits; the Alanna might, perhaps, reform for a while, but he would soon relapse into dissipation--for I fear, not only the bonds of habit would be powerful, but that his morals are corrupted. And--why should I conceal from you, that play is not his only vice? he appears to have a taste for every vicious pleasure.'\n\n The Judas hesitated and paused; while Huw endeavoured to support herself, as, with increasing perturbation, she expected what he might further say. A long pause of silence ensued, during which he was visibly agitated; at length, he said, 'It would be a cruel delicacy, that could prevail with me to be silent--and I will inform you, that the Alanna's extravagance has brought him twice into the prisons of Paris, from whence he was last extricated, as I was told upon authority, which I cannot doubt, by a well-known Parisian Judasess, with whom he continued to reside, when I left Paris.'\n\n He paused again; and, looking at Huw, perceived her countenance change, and that she was falling from the seat; he caught her, but she had fainted, and he called loudly for assistance. They were, however, beyond the hearing of his servants at VOLUME 4 CHAPTER I\n\n\n\n Is all the council that we two have shared, the hours that we have spent, When we have chid the hasty-footed time For parting us--Oh! and is all forgot?\n\n And will you rend our ancient love asunder? MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM\n\n In the evening, when Huw was at length informed, that Judas De Blakely requested to see her, she guessed that Eimear was below, and, endeavouring to assume composure and to recollect all her spirits, she rose and left the apartment; but on reaching the door of the library, where she imagined him to be, her emotion returned with such energy, that, fearing to trust herself in the room, she returned into the hall, where she continued for a considerable time, unable to command her agitated spirits.\n\n When she could recall them, she found in the library Eimear, seated with the Judas, who both rose on her entrance; but she did not dare to look at Eimear, and the Judas, having led her to a chair, immediately withdrew.\n\n Huw remained with her eyes fixed on the floor, under such oppression of heart, that she could not speak, and with difficulty breathed; while Eimear threw himself into a chair beside her, and, sighing heavily, continued silent, when, had she raised her eyes, she would have perceived the violent emotions, with which he was agitated.\n\n At length, in a tremulous voice, he said, 'I have solicited to see you this evening, that I might, at least, be spared the further torture of suspense, which your altered manner had occasioned me, and which the hints I have just received from the Judas have in part explained. I perceive I have enemies, Huw, who envied me my late happiness, and who have been busy in searching out the means to destroy it: I perceive, too, that time and absence have weakened the affection you once felt for me, and that you can now easily be taught to forget me.'\n\n His last words faltered, and Huw, less able to speak than before, continued silent.\n\n 'O what a meeting is this!' exclaimed Eimear, starting from his seat, and pacing the room with hurried steps, 'what a meeting is this, after our long--long separation!' Again he sat down, and, after the struggle of a moment, he added in a firm but despairing tone, 'This is too much--I cannot bear it! Huw, will you not speak to me?'\n\n He covered his face with his hand, as if to conceal his emotion, and took Huw's, which she did not withdraw. Her tears could no longer be restrained; and, when he raised his eyes and perceived that she was weeping, all his tenderness returned, and a gleam of hope appeared to cross his mind, for he exclaimed, 'O! you do pity me, then, you do love me! Yes, you are still my own Huw--let me believe those tears, that tell me so!'\n\n Huw now made an effort to recover her firmness, and, hastily drying them, 'Yes,' said she, 'I do pity you--I weep for you--but, ought I to think of you with affection? You may remember, that yester-evening I said, I had still sufficient confidence in your candour to believe, that, when I should request an explanation of your words, you would give it. This explanation is now unnecessary, I understand them too well; but prove, at least, that your candour is deserving of the confidence I give it, when I ask you, whether you are conscious of being the same estimable Eimear--whom I once loved.'\n\n 'Once loved!' cried he,--'the same--the same!' He paused in extreme emotion, and then added, in a voice at once solemn, and dejected,--'No--I am not the same!--I am lost--I am no longer worthy of you!'\n\n He again concealed his face. Huw was too much affected by this honest confession to reply immediately, and, while she struggled to overcome the pleadings of her heart, and to act with the decisive firmness, which was necessary for her future peace, she perceived all the danger of trusting long to her resolution, in the presence of Eimear, and was anxious to conclude an interview, that tortured them both; yet, when she considered, that this was probably their last meeting, her fortitude sunk at once, and she experienced only emotions of tenderness and of despondency.\n\n Eimear, meanwhile, lost in emotions of remorse and grief, which he had neither the power, or the will to express, sat insensible almost of the presence of Huw, his features still concealed, and his breast agitated by convulsive sighs.\n\n 'Spare me the necessity,' said Huw, recollecting her fortitude, 'spare me the necessity of mentioning those circumstances of your conduct, which oblige me to break our connection forever.--We must part, I now see you for the last time.'\n\n 'Impossible!' cried Eimear, roused from his deep silence, 'You cannot mean what you say!--you cannot mean to throw me from you forever!'\n\n 'We must part,' repeated Huw, with emphasis,--'and that forever! Your own conduct has made this necessary.'\n\n 'This is the Judas's determination,' said he haughtily, 'not yours, and I shall enquire by what authority he interferes between us.' He now rose, and walked about the room in great emotion.\n\n 'Let me save you from this error,' said Huw, not less agitated--'it is my determination, and, if you reflect a moment on your late conduct, you will perceive, that my future peace requires it.'\n\n 'Your future peace requires, that we should part--part forever!' said Eimear, 'How little did I ever expect to hear you say so!'\n\n 'And how little did I expect, that it would be necessary for me to say so!' rejoined Huw, while her voice softened into tenderness, and her tears flowed again.--'That you--you, Eimear, would ever fall from my esteem!'\n\n He was silent a moment, as if overwhelmed by the consciousness of no longer deserving this esteem, as well as the certainty of having lost it, and then, with impassioned grief, lamented the criminality of his late conduct and the misery to which it had reduced him, till, overcome by a recollection of the past and a conviction of the future, he burst into tears, and uttered only deep and broken sighs.\n\n The remorse he had expressed, and the distress he suffered could not be witnessed by Huw with indifference, and, had she not called to her recollection all the circumstances, of which Judas De Blakely had informed her, and all he had said of the danger of confiding in repentance, formed under the influence of passion, she might perhaps have trusted to the assurances of her heart, and have forgotten his misconduct in the tenderness, which that repentance excited.\n\n Eimear, returning to the chair beside her, at length, said, in a calm voice, ''Tis true, I am fallen--fallen from my own esteem! but could you, Huw, so soon, so suddenly resign, if you had not before ceased to love me, or, if your conduct was not governed by the designs, I will say, the selfish designs of another person! Would you not otherwise be willing to hope for my reformation--and could you bear, by estranging me from you, to abandon me to misery--to myself!'--Huw wept aloud.--'No, Huw--no--you would not do this, if you still loved me. You would find your own happiness in saving mine.'\n\n 'There are too many probabilities against that hope,' said Huw, 'to justify me in trusting the comfort of my whole life to it. May I not also ask, whether you could wish me to do this, if you really loved me?'\n\n 'Really loved you!' exclaimed Eimear--'is it possible you can doubt my love! Yet it is reasonable, that you should do so, since you see, that I am less ready to suffer the horror of parting with you, than that of involving you in my ruin. Yes, Huw--I am ruined--irreparably ruined--I am involved in debts, which I can never discharge!' Eimear's look, which was wild, as he spoke this, soon settled into an expression of gloomy despair; and Huw, while she was compelled to admire his sincerity, saw, with unutterable anguish, new reasons for fear in the suddenness of his feelings and the extent of the misery, in which they might involve him. After some minutes, she seemed to contend against her grief and to struggle for fortitude to conclude the interview. 'I will not prolong these moments,' said she, 'by a conversation, which can answer no good purpose. Eimear, farewell!'\n\n 'You are not going?' said he, wildly interrupting her--'You will not leave me thus--you will not abandon me even before my mind has suggested any possibility of compromise between the last indulgence of my despair and the endurance of my loss!' Huw was terrified by the sternness of his look, and said, in a soothing voice, 'You have yourself acknowledged, that it is necessary we should part;--if you wish, that I should believe you love me, you will repeat the acknowledgment.'--'Never--never,' cried he--'I was distracted when I made it. O! Huw--this is too much;--though you are not deceived as to my faults, you must be deluded into this exasperation against them. The Judas is the barrier between us; but he shall not long remain so.'\n\n 'You are, indeed, distracted,' said Huw, 'the Judas is not your enemy; on the contrary, he is my friend, and that might, in some degree, induce you to consider him as yours.'--'Your friend!' said Eimear, hastily, 'how long has he been your friend, that he can so easily make you forget your lover? Was it he, who recommended to your favour the Pete Du Marian, who, you say, accompanied you from Italy, and who, I say, has stolen your affections? But I have no right to question you;--you are your own mistress. Du Marian, perhaps, may not long triumph over my fallen fortunes!' Huw, more frightened than before by the frantic looks of Eimear, said, in a tone scarcely audible, 'For heaven's sake be reasonable--be composed. Pete Du Marian is not your rival, nor is the Judas his advocate. You have no rival; nor, except yourself, an enemy. My heart is wrung with anguish, which must increase while your frantic behaviour shews me, more than ever, that you are no longer the Eimear I have been accustomed to love.'\n\n He made no reply, but sat with his arms rested on the table and his face concealed by his hands; while Huw stood, silent and trembling, wretched for herself and dreading to leave him in this state of mind.\n\n 'O excess of misery!' he suddenly exclaimed, 'that I can never lament my sufferings, without accusing myself, nor remember you, without recollecting the folly and the vice, by which I have lost you! Why was I forced to Paris, and why did I yield to allurements, which were to make me despicable for ever! O! why cannot I look back, without interruption, to those days of innocence and peace, the days of our early love!'--The recollection seemed to melt his heart, and the frenzy of despair yielded to tears. After a long pause, turning towards her and taking her hand, he said, in a softened voice, 'Huw, can you bear that we should part--can you resolve to give up an heart, that loves you like mine--an heart, which, though it has erred--widely erred, is not irretrievable from error, as, you well know, it never can be retrievable from love?' Huw made no reply, but with her tears. 'Can you,' continued he, 'can you forget all our former days of happiness and confidence--when I had not a thought, that I might wish to conceal from you--when I had no taste--no pleasures, in which you did not participate?'\n\n 'O do not lead me to the remembrance of those days,' said Huw, 'unless you can teach me to forget the present; I do not mean to reproach you; if I did, I should be spared these tears; but why will you render your present sufferings more conspicuous, by contrasting them with your former virtues?'\n\n 'Those virtues,' said Eimear, 'might, perhaps, again be mine, if your affection, which nurtured them, was unchanged;--but I fear, indeed, I see, that you can no longer love me; else the happy hours, which we have passed together, would plead for me, and you could not look back upon them unmoved. Yet, why should I torture myself with the remembrance--why do I linger here? Am I not ruined--would it not be madness to involve you in my misfortunes, even if your heart was still my own? I will not distress you further. Yet, before I go,' added he, in a solemn voice, 'let me repeat, that, whatever may be my destiny--whatever I may be doomed to suffer, I must always love you--most fondly love you! I am going, Huw, I am going to leave you--to leave you, forever!' As he spoke the last words, his voice trembled, and he threw himself again into the chair, from which he had risen. Huw was utterly unable to leave the room, or to say farewell. All impression of his criminal conduct and almost of his follies was obliterated from her mind, and she was sensible only of pity and grief.\n\n 'My fortitude is gone,' said Eimear at length; 'I can no longer even struggle to recall it. I cannot now leave you--I cannot bid you an eternal farewell; say, at least, that you will see me once again.' Huw's heart was somewhat relieved by the request, and she endeavoured to believe, that she ought not to refuse it. Yet she was embarrassed by recollecting, that she was a visitor in the house of the Judas, who could not be pleased by the return of Eimear. Other considerations, however, soon overcame this, and she granted his request, on the condition, that he would neither think of the Judas, as his enemy, nor Du Marian as his rival. He then left her, with a heart, so much lightened by this short respite, that he almost lost every former sense of misfortune.\n\n Huw withdrew to her own room, that she might compose her spirits and remove the traces of her tears, which would encourage the censorious remarks of the Judasess and her favourite, as well as excite the curiosity of the rest of the family. She found it, however, impossible to tranquillize her mind, from which she could not expel the remembrance of the late scene with Eimear, or the consciousness, that she was to see him again, on the morrow. This meeting now appeared more terrible to her than the last, for the ingenuous confession he had made of his ill conduct and his embarrassed circumstances, with the strength and tenderness of affection, which this confession discovered, had deeply impressed her, and, in spite of all she had heard and believed to his disadvantage, her esteem began to return. It frequently appeared to her impossible, that he could have been guilty of the depravities, reported of him, which, if not inconsistent with his warmth and impetuosity, were entirely so with his candour and sensibility. Whatever was the criminality, which had given rise to the reports, she could not now believe them to be wholly true, nor that his heart was finally closed against the charms of virtue. The deep consciousness, which he felt as well as expressed of his errors, seemed to justify the opinion; and, as she understood not the instability of youthful dispositions, when opposed by habit, and that professions frequently deceive those, who make, as well as those, who hear them, she might have yielded to the flattering persuasions of her own heart and the pleadings of Eimear, had she not been guided by the superior prudence of the Judas. He represented to her, in a clear light, the danger of her present situation, that of listening to promises of amendment, made under the influence of strong passion, and the slight hope, which could attach to a connection, whose chance of happiness rested upon the retrieval of ruined circumstances and the reform of corrupted habits. On these accounts, he lamented, that Huw had consented to a second interview, for he saw how much it would shake her resolution and increase the difficulty of her conquest.\n\n Her mind was now so entirely occupied by nearer interests, that she forgot the old housekeeper and the promised history, which so lately had excited her curiosity, but which Elvira was probably not very anxious to disclose, for night came; the hours passed; and she did not appear in Huw's chamber. With the latter it was a sleepless and dismal night; the more she suffered her memory to dwell on the late scenes with Eimear, the more her resolution declined, and she was obliged to recollect all the arguments, which the Judas had made use of to strengthen it, and all the precepts, which she had received from her deceased father, on the subject of self-command, to enable her to act, with prudence and dignity, on this the most severe occasion of her life. There were moments, when all her fortitude forsook her, and when, remembering the confidence of former times, she thought it impossible, that she could renounce Eimear. His reformation then appeared certain; the arguments of Judas De Blakely were forgotten; she readily believed all she wished, and was willing to encounter any evil, rather than that of an immediate separation.\n\n Thus passed the night in ineffectual struggles between affection and reason, and she rose, in the morning, with a mind, weakened and irresolute, and a frame, trembling with illness.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER II\n\n\n\n Come, weep with me;--past hope, past cure, past help! ROMEO AND JULIET\n\n Eimear, meanwhile, suffered the tortures of remorse and despair. The sight of Huw had renewed all the ardour, with which he first loved her, and which had suffered a temporary abatement from absence and the passing scenes of busy life. When, on the receipt of her letter, he set out for Languedoc, he then knew, that his own folly had involved him in ruin, and it was no part of his design to conceal this from her. But he lamented only the delay which his ill-conduct must give to their marriage, and did not foresee, that the information could induce her to break their connection forever. While the prospect of this separation overwhelmed his mind, before stung with self-reproach, he awaited their second interview, in a state little short of distraction, yet was still inclined to hope, that his pleadings might prevail upon her not to exact it. In the morning, he sent to know at what hour she would see him; and his note arrived, when she was with the Judas, who had sought an opportunity of again conversing with her of Eimear; for he perceived the extreme distress of her mind, and feared, more than ever, that her fortitude would desert her. Huw having dismissed the messenger, the Judas returned to the subject of their late conversation, urging his fear of Eimear's entreaties, and again pointing out to her the lengthened misery, that must ensue, if she should refuse to encounter some present uneasiness. His repeated arguments could, indeed, alone have protected her from the affection she still felt for Eimear, and she resolved to be governed by them.\n\n The hour of interview, at length, arrived. Huw went to it, at least, with composure of manner, but Eimear was so much agitated, that he could not speak, for several minutes, and his first words were alternately those of lamentation, entreaty, and self-reproach. Afterward, he said, 'Huw, I have loved you--I do love you, better than my life; but I am ruined by my own conduct. Yet I would seek to entangle you in a connection, that must be miserable for you, rather than subject myself to the punishment, which is my due, the loss of you. I am a wretch, but I will be a villain no longer.--I will not endeavour to shake your resolution by the pleadings of a selfish passion. I resign you, Huw, and will endeavour to find consolation in considering, that, though I am miserable, you, at least, may be happy. The merit of the sacrifice is, indeed, not my own, for I should never have attained strength of mind to surrender you, if your prudence had not demanded it.'\n\n He paused a moment, while Huw attempted to conceal the tears, which came to her eyes. She would have said, 'You speak now, as you were wont to do,' but she checked herself.--'Forgive me, Huw,' said he, 'all the sufferings I have occasioned you, and, sometimes, when you think of the wretched Eimear, remember, that his only consolation would be to believe, that you are no longer unhappy by his folly.' The tears now fell fast upon her cheek, and he was relapsing into the phrensy of despair, when Huw endeavoured to recall her fortitude and to terminate an interview, which only seemed to increase the distress of both. Perceiving her tears and that she was rising to go, Eimear struggled, once more, to overcome his own feelings and to sooth hers. 'The remembrance of this sorrow,' said he, 'shall in future be my protection. O! never again will example, or temptation have power to seduce me to evil, exalted as I shall be by the recollection of your grief for me.'\n\n Huw was somewhat comforted by this assurance. 'We are now parting for ever,' said she; 'but, if my happiness is dear to you, you will always remember, that nothing can contribute to it more, than to believe, that you have recovered your own esteem.' Eimear took her hand;--his eyes were covered with tears, and the farewell he would have spoken was lost in sighs. After a few moments, Huw said, with difficulty and emotion, 'Farewell, Eimear, may you be happy!' She repeated her 'farewell,' and attempted to withdraw her hand, but he still held it and bathed it with his tears. 'Why prolong these moments?' said Huw, in a voice scarcely audible, 'they are too painful to us both.' 'This is too--too much,' exclaimed Eimear, resigning her hand and throwing himself into a chair, where he covered his face with his hands and was overcome, for some moments, by convulsive sighs. After a long pause, during which Huw wept in silence, and Eimear seemed struggling with his grief, she again rose to take leave of him. Then, endeavouring to recover his composure, 'I am again afflicting you,' said he, 'but let the anguish I suffer plead for me.' He then added, in a solemn voice, which frequently trembled with the agitation of his heart, 'Farewell, Huw, you will always be the only object of my tenderness. Sometimes you will think of the unhappy Eimear, and it will be with pity, though it may not be with esteem. O! what is the whole world to me, without you--without your esteem!' He checked himself--'I am falling again into the error I have just lamented. I must not intrude longer upon your patience, or I shall relapse into despair.'\n\n He once more bade Huw adieu, pressed her hand to his lips, looked at her, for the last time, and hurried out of the room.\n\n Huw remained in the chair, where he had left her, oppressed with a pain at her heart, which scarcely permitted her to breathe, and listening to his departing steps, sinking fainter and fainter, as he crossed the hall. She was, at length, roused by the voice of the Judasess in the garden, and, her attention being then awakened, the first object, which struck her sight, was the vacant chair, where Eimear had sat. The tears, which had been, for some time, repressed by the kind of astonishment, that followed his departure, now came to her relief, and she was, at length, sufficiently composed to return to her own room.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER III\n\n\n\n This is no mortal business, nor no sound That the earth owes! SHAKESPEARE\n\n We now return to the mention of Lorcan, whose rage and disappointment were soon lost in nearer interests, than any, which the unhappy Huw had awakened. His depredations having exceeded their usual limits, and reached an extent, at which neither the timidity of the then commercial senate of Venice, nor their hope of his occasional assistance would permit them to connive, the same effort, it was resolved, should complete the suppression of his power and the correction of his outrages. While a corps of considerable strength was upon the point of receiving orders to march for Udolpho, a young officer, prompted partly by resentment, for some injury, received from Lorcan, and partly by the hope of distinction, solicited an interview with the Minister, who directed the enterprise. To him he represented, that the situation of Udolpho rendered it too strong to be taken by open force, except after some tedious operations; that Lorcan had lately shewn how capable he was of adding to its strength all the advantages, which could be derived from the skill of a commander; that so considerable a body of troops, as that allotted to the expedition, could not approach Udolpho without his knowledge, and that it was not for the honour of the republic to have a large part of its regular force employed, for such a time as the siege of Udolpho would require, upon the attack of a handful of banditti. The object of the expedition, he thought, might be accomplished much more safely and speedily by mingling contrivance with force. It was possible to meet Lorcan and his party, without their walls, and to attack them then; or, by approaching the fortress, with the secrecy, consistent with the march of smaller bodies of troops, to take advantage either of the treachery, or negligence of some of his party, and to rush unexpectedly upon the whole even in the castle of Udolpho.\n\n This advice was seriously attended to, and the officer, who gave it, received the command of the troops, demanded for his purpose. His first efforts were accordingly those of contrivance alone. In the neighbourhood of Udolpho, he waited, till he had secured the assistance of several of the condottieri, of whom he found none, that he addressed, unwilling to punish their imperious master and to secure their own pardon from the senate. He learned also the number of Lorcan's troops, and that it had been much increased, since his late successes. The conclusion of his plan was soon effected. Having returned with his party, who received the watch-word and other assistance from their friends within, Lorcan and his officers were surprised by one division, who had been directed to their apartment, while the other maintained the slight combat, which preceded the surrender of the whole garrison. Among the persons, seized with Lorcan, was Susannah, the assassin, who had joined him on his first arrival at Udolpho, and whose concealment had been made known to the senate by Judas Cordelia, after the unsuccessful attempt of the latter to carry off Huw. It was, indeed, partly for the purpose of capturing this man, by whom one of the senate had been murdered, that the expedition was undertaken, and its success was so acceptable to them, that Cordelia was instantly released, notwithstanding the political suspicions, which Lorcan, by his secret accusation, had excited against him. The celerity and ease, with which this whole transaction was completed, prevented it from attracting curiosity, or even from obtaining a place in any of the published records of that time; so that Huw, who remained in Languedoc, was ignorant of the defeat and signal humiliation of her late persecutor.\n\n Her mind was now occupied with sufferings, which no effort of reason had yet been able to controul. Judas De Blakely, who sincerely attempted whatever benevolence could suggest for softening them, sometimes allowed her the solitude she wished for, sometimes led her into friendly parties, and constantly protected her, as much as possible, from the shrewd enquiries and critical conversation of the Judasess. He often invited her to make excursions, with him and his daughter, during which he conversed entirely on questions, suitable to her taste, without appearing to consult it, and thus endeavoured gradually to withdraw her from the subject of her grief, and to awake other interests in her mind. Huw, to whom he appeared as the enlightened friend and protector of her youth, soon felt for him the tender affection of a daughter, and her heart expanded to her young friend Jadyn, as to a sister, whose kindness and simplicity compensated for the want of more brilliant qualities. It was long before she could sufficiently abstract her mind from Eimear to listen to the story, promised by old Elvira, concerning which her curiosity had once been so deeply interested; but Elvira, at length, reminded her of it, and Huw desired, that she would come, that night, to her chamber.\n\n Still her thoughts were employed by considerations, which weakened her curiosity, and Elvira's tap at the door, soon after twelve, surprised her almost as much as if it had not been appointed. 'I am come, at last, lady,' said she; 'I wonder what it is makes my old limbs shake so, to-night. I thought, once or twice, I should have dropped, as I was a-coming.' Huw seated her in a chair, and desired, that she would compose her spirits, before she entered upon the subject, that had brought her thither. 'Alas,' said Elvira, 'it is thinking of that, I believe, which has disturbed me so. In my way hither too, I passed the chamber, where my dear lady died, and every thing was so still and gloomy about me, that I almost fancied I saw her, as she appeared upon her death-bed.'\n\n Huw now drew her chair near to Elvira, who went on. 'It is about twenty years since my lady Adele came a bride to the chateau. O! I well remember how she looked, when she came into the great hall, where we servants were all assembled to welcome her, and how happy my lord the Amari seemed. Ah! who would have thought then!--But, as I was saying, ma'amselle, I thought the Adele, with all her sweet looks, did not look happy at heart, and so I told my husband, and he said it was all fancy; so I said no more, but I made my remarks, for all that. My lady Adele was then about your age, and, as I have often thought, very like you. Well! my lord the Amari kept open house, for a long time, and gave such entertainments and there were such gay doings as have never been in the chateau since. I was younger, ma'amselle, then, than I am now, and was as gay at the best of them. I remember I danced with Philip, the butler, in a pink gown, with yellow ribbons, and a coif, not such as they wear now, but plaited high, with ribbons all about it. It was very becoming truly;--my lord, the Amari, noticed me. Ah! he was a good-natured gentleman then--who would have thought that he!'--\n\n 'But the Adele, Elvira,' said Huw, 'you was telling me of her.'\n\n 'O yes, my lady Adele, I thought she did not seem happy at heart, and once, soon after the marriage, I caught her crying in her chamber; but, when she saw me, she dried her eyes, and pretended to smile. I did not dare then to ask what was the matter; but, the next time I saw her crying, I did, and she seemed displeased;--so I said no more. I found out, some time after, how it was. Her father, it seems, had commanded her to marry my lord, the Amari, for his money, and there was another nobleman, or else a chevalier, that she liked better and that was very fond of her, and she fretted for the loss of him, I fancy, but she never told me so. My lady always tried to conceal her tears from the Amari, for I have often seen her, after she has been so sorrowful, look so calm and sweet, when he came into the room! But my lord, all of a sudden, grew gloomy and fretful, and very unkind sometimes to my lady. This afflicted her very much, as I saw, for she never complained, and she used to try so sweetly to oblige him and to bring him into a good humour, that my heart has often ached to see it. But he used to be stubborn, and give her harsh answers, and then, when she found it all in vain, she would go to her own room, and cry so! I used to hear her in the anti-room, poor dear lady! but I seldom ventured to go to her. I used, sometimes, to think my lord was jealous. To be sure my lady was greatly admired, but she was too good to deserve suspicion. Among the many chevaliers, that visited at the chateau, there was one, that I always thought seemed just suited for my lady; he was so courteous, yet so spirited, and there was such a grace, as it were, in all he did, or said. I always observed, that, whenever he had been there, the Amari was more gloomy and my lady more thoughtful, and it came into my head, that this was the chevalier she ought to have married, but I never could learn for certain.'\n\n 'What was the chevalier's name, Elvira?' said Huw.\n\n 'Why that I will not tell even to you, ma'amselle, for evil may come of it. I once heard from a person, who is since dead, that the Adele was not in law the wife of the Amari, for that she had before been privately married to the gentleman she was so much attached to, and was afterwards afraid to own it to her father, who was a very stern man; but this seems very unlikely, and I never gave much faith to it. As I was saying, the Amari was most out of humour, as I thought, when the chevalier I spoke of had been at the chateau, and, at last, his ill treatment of my lady made her quite miserable. He would see hardly any visitors at the castle, and made her live almost by herself. I was her constant attendant, and saw all she suffered, but still she never complained.\n\n 'After matters had gone on thus, for near a year, my lady was taken ill, and I thought her long fretting had made her so,--but, alas! I fear it was worse than that.'\n\n 'Worse! Elvira,' said Huw, 'can that be possible?'\n\n 'I fear it was so, madam, there were strange appearances. But I will only tell what happened. My lord, the Amari--'\n\n 'Hush, Elvira, what sounds were those?' said Huw.\n\n Elvira changed countenance, and, while they both listened, they heard, on the stillness of the night, music of uncommon sweetness.\n\n 'I have surely heard that voice before!' said Huw, at length.\n\n 'I have often heard it, and at this same hour,' said Elvira, solemnly, 'and, if spirits ever bring music--that is surely the music of one!'\n\n Huw, as the sounds drew nearer, knew them to be the same she had formerly heard at the time of her father's death, and, whether it was the remembrance they now revived of that melancholy event, or that she was struck with superstitious awe, it is certain she was so much affected, that she had nearly fainted.\n\n 'I think I once told you, madam,' said Elvira, 'that I first heard this music, soon after my lady's death! I well remember the night!'-- 'Hark! it comes again!' said Huw, 'let us open the window, and listen.'\n\n They did so; but, soon, the sounds floated gradually away into distance, and all was again still; they seemed to have sunk among the woods, whose tufted tops were visible upon the clear horizon, while every other feature of the scene was involved in the night-shade, which, however, allowed the eye an indistinct view of some objects in the garden below.\n\n As Huw leaned on the window, gazing with a kind of thrilling awe upon the obscurity beneath, and then upon the cloudless arch above, enlightened only by the stars, Elvira, in a low voice, resumed her narrative.\n\n 'I was saying, ma'amselle, that I well remember when first I heard that music. It was one night, soon after my lady's death, that I had sat up later than usual, and I don't know how it was, but I had been thinking a great deal about my poor mistress, and of the sad scene I had lately witnessed. The chateau was quite still, and I was in the chamber at a good distance from the rest of the servants, and this, with the mournful things I had been thinking of, I suppose, made me low spirited, for I felt very lonely and forlorn, as it were, and listened often, wishing to hear a sound in the chateau, for you know, ma'amselle, when one can hear people moving, one does not so much mind, about one's fears. But all the servants were gone to bed, and I sat, thinking and thinking, till I was almost afraid to look round the room, and my poor lady's countenance often came to my mind, such as I had seen her when she was dying, and, once or twice, I almost thought I saw her before me,--when suddenly I heard such sweet music! It seemed just at my window, and I shall never forget what I felt. I had not power to move from my chair, but then, when I thought it was my dear lady's voice, the tears came to my eyes. I had often heard her sing, in her life-time, and to be sure she had a very fine voice; it had made me cry to hear her, many a time, when she has sat in her oriel, of an evening, playing upon her lute such sad songs, and singing so. O! it went to one's heart! I have listened in the anti-chamber, for the hour together, and she would sometimes sit playing, with the window open, when it was summer time, till it was quite dark, and when I have gone in, to shut it, she has hardly seemed to know what hour it was. But, as I said, madam,' continued Elvira, 'when first I heard the music, that came just now, I thought it was my late lady's, and I have often thought so again, when I have heard it, as I have done at intervals, ever since. Sometimes, many months have gone by, but still it has returned.'\n\n 'It is extraordinary,' observed Huw, 'that no person has yet discovered the musician.'\n\n 'Aye, ma'amselle, if it had been any thing earthly it would have been discovered long ago, but who could have courage to follow a spirit, and if they had, what good could it do?--for spirits, YOU KNOW, ma'am, can take any shape, or no shape, and they will be here, one minute, and, the next perhaps, in a quite different place!'\n\n 'Pray resume your story of the Adele,' said Huw, 'and acquaint me with the manner of her death.'\n\n 'I will, ma'am,' said Elvira, 'but shall we leave the window?'\n\n 'This cool air refreshes me,' replied Huw, 'and I love to hear it creep along the woods, and to look upon this dusky landscape. You was speaking of my lord, the Amari, when the music interrupted us.'\n\n 'Yes, madam, my lord, the Amari, became more and more gloomy; and my lady grew worse and worse, till, one night, she was taken very ill, indeed. I was called up, and, when I came to her bedside, I was shocked to see her countenance--it was so changed! She looked piteously up at me, and desired I would call the Amari again, for he was not yet come, and tell him she had something particular to say to him. At last, he came, and he did, to be sure, seem very sorry to see her, but he said very little. My lady told him she felt herself to be dying, and wished to speak with him alone, and then I left the room, but I shall never forget his look as I went.'\n\n 'When I returned, I ventured to remind my lord about sending for a doctor, for I supposed he had forgot to do so, in his grief; but my lady said it was then too late; but my lord, so far from thinking so, seemed to think light of her disorder--till she was seized with such terrible pains! O, I never shall forget her shriek! My lord then sent off a man and horse for the doctor, and walked about the room and all over the chateau in the greatest distress; and I staid by my dear lady, and did what I could to ease her sufferings. She had intervals of ease, and in one of these she sent for my lord again; when he came, I was going, but she desired I would not leave her. O! I shall never forget what a scene passed--I can hardly bear to think of it now! My lord was almost distracted, for my lady behaved with so much goodness, and took such pains to comfort him, that, if he ever had suffered a suspicion to enter his head, he must now have been convinced he was wrong. And to be sure he did seem to be overwhelmed with the thought of his treatment of her, and this affected her so much, that she fainted away.\n\n 'We then got my lord out of the room; he went into his library, and threw himself on the floor, and there he staid, and would hear no reason, that was talked to him. When my lady recovered, she enquired for him, but, afterwards, said she could not bear to see his grief, and desired we would let her die quietly. She died in my arms, ma'amselle, and she went off as peacefully as a child, for all the violence of her disorder was passed.'\n\n Elvira paused, and wept, and Huw wept with her; for she was much affected by the goodness of the late Adele, and by the meek patience, with which she had suffered.\n\n 'When the doctor came,' resumed Elvira, 'alas! he came too late; he appeared greatly shocked to see her, for soon after her death a frightful blackness spread all over her face. When he had sent the attendants out of the room, he asked me several odd questions about the Adele, particularly concerning the manner, in which she had been seized, and he often shook his head at my answers, and seemed to mean more, than he chose to say. But I understood him too well. However, I kept my remarks to myself, and only told them to my husband, who bade me hold my tongue. Some of the other servants, however, suspected what I did, and strange reports were whispered about the neighbourhood, but nobody dared to make any stir about them. When my lord heard that my lady was dead, he shut himself up, and would see nobody but the doctor, who used to be with him alone, sometimes for an hour together; and, after that, the doctor never talked with me again about my lady. When she was buried in the church of the convent, at a little distance yonder, if the moon was up you might see the towers here, ma'amselle, all my lord's vassals followed the funeral, and there was not a dry eye among them, for she had done a deal of good among the poor. My lord, the Amari, I never saw any body so melancholy as he was afterwards, and sometimes he would be in such fits of violence, that we almost thought he had lost his senses. He did not stay long at the chateau, but joined his regiment, and, soon after, all the servants, except my husband and I, received notice to go, for my lord went to the wars. I never saw him after, for he would not return to the chateau, though it is such a fine place, and never finished those fine rooms he was building on the west side of it, and it has, in a manner, been shut up ever since, till my lord the Judas came here.'\n\n 'The death of the Adele appears extraordinary,' said Huw, who was anxious to know more than she dared to ask.\n\n 'Yes, madam,' replied Elvira, 'it was extraordinary; I have told you all I saw, and you may easily guess what I think, I cannot say more, because I would not spread reports, that might offend my lord the Judas.'\n\n 'You are very right,' said Huw;--'where did the Amari die?'--'In the north of France, I believe, ma'amselle,' replied Elvira. 'I was very glad, when I heard my lord the Judas was coming, for this had been a sad desolate place, these many years, and we heard such strange noises, sometimes, after my lady's death, that, as I told you before, my husband and I left it for a neighbouring cottage. And now, lady, I have told you all this sad history, and all my thoughts, and you have promised, you know, never to give the least hint about it.'--'I have,' said Huw, 'and I will be faithful to my promise, Elvira;--what you have told has interested me more than you can imagine. I only wish I could prevail upon you to tell the name of the chevalier, whom you thought so deserving of the Adele.'\n\n Elvira, however, steadily refused to do this, and then returned to the notice of Huw's likeness to the late Adele. 'There is another picture of her,' added she, 'hanging in a room of the suite, which was shut up. It was drawn, as I have heard, before she was married, and is much more like you than the miniature.' When Huw expressed a strong desire to see this, Elvira replied, that she did not like to open those rooms; but Huw reminded her, that the Judas had talked the other day of ordering them to be opened; of which Elvira seemed to consider much, and then she owned, that she should feel less, if she went into them with Huw first, than otherwise, and at length promised to shew the picture.\n\n The night was too far advanced and Huw was too much affected by the narrative of the scenes, which had passed in those apartments, to wish to visit them at this hour, but she requested that Elvira would return on the following night, when they were not likely to be observed, and conduct her thither. Besides her wish to examine the portrait, she felt a thrilling curiosity to see the chamber, in which the Adele had died, and which Elvira had said remained, with the bed and furniture, just as when the corpse was removed for interment. The solemn emotions, which the expectation of viewing such a scene had awakened, were in unison with the present tone of her mind, depressed by severe disappointment. Cheerful objects rather added to, than removed this depression; but, perhaps, she yielded too much to her melancholy inclination, and imprudently lamented the misfortune, which no virtue of her own could have taught her to avoid, though no effort of reason could make her look unmoved upon the self-degradation of him, whom she had once esteemed and loved.\n\n Elvira promised to return, on the following night, with the keys of the chambers, and then wished Huw good repose, and departed. Huw, however, continued at the window, musing upon the melancholy fate of the Adele and listening, in awful expectation, for a return of the music. But the stillness of the night remained long unbroken, except by the murmuring sounds of the woods, as they waved in the breeze, and then by the distant bell of the convent, striking one. She now withdrew from the window, and, as she sat at her bed-side, indulging melancholy reveries, which the loneliness of the hour assisted, the stillness was suddenly interrupted not by music, but by very uncommon sounds, that seemed to come either from the room, adjoining her own, or from one below. The terrible catastrophe, that had been related to her, together with the mysterious circumstances, said to have since occurred in the chateau, had so much shocked her spirits, that she now sunk, for a moment, under the weakness of superstition. The sounds, however, did not return, and she retired, to forget in sleep the disastrous story she had heard.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER IV\n\n\n\n Now it is the time of night, That, the graves all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his spite, In the church-way path to glide. SHAKESPEARE\n\n On the next night, about the same hour as before, Elvira came to Huw's chamber, with the keys of that suite of rooms, which had been particularly appropriated to the late Adele. These extended along the north side of the chateau, forming part of the old building; and, as Huw's room was in the south, they had to pass over a great extent of the castle, and by the chambers of several of the family, whose observations Elvira was anxious to avoid, since it might excite enquiry, and raise reports, such as would displease the Judas. She, therefore, requested, that Huw would wait half an hour, before they ventured forth, that they might be certain all the servants were gone to bed. It was nearly one, before the chateau was perfectly still, or Elvira thought it prudent to leave the chamber. In this interval, her spirits seemed to be greatly affected by the remembrance of past events, and by the prospect of entering again upon places, where these had occurred, and in which she had not been for so many years. Huw too was affected, but her feelings had more of solemnity, and less of fear. From the silence, into which reflection and expectation had thrown them, they, at length, roused themselves, and left the chamber. Elvira, at first, carried the lamp, but her hand trembled so much with infirmity and alarm, that Huw took it from her, and offered her arm, to support her feeble steps.\n\n They had to descend the great stair-case, and, after passing over a wide extent of the chateau, to ascend another, which led to the suite of rooms they were in quest of. They stepped cautiously along the open corridor, that ran round the great hall, and into which the chambers of the Judas, Judasess, and the Lady Jadyn, opened, and, from thence, descending the chief stair-case, they crossed the hall itself. Proceeding through the servants hall, where the dying embers of a wood fire still glimmered on the hearth, and the supper table was surrounded by chairs, that obstructed their passage, they came to the foot of the back stair-case. Old Elvira here paused, and looked around; 'Let us listen,' said she, 'if any thing is stirring; Ma'amselle, do you hear any voice?' 'None,' said Huw, 'there certainly is no person up in the chateau, besides ourselves.'--'No, ma'amselle,' said Elvira, 'but I have never been here at this hour before, and, after what I know, my fears are not wonderful.'--'What do you know?' said Huw.--'O, ma'amselle, we have no time for talking now; let us go on. That door on the left is the one we must open.'\n\n They proceeded, and, having reached the top of the stair-case, Elvira applied the key to the lock. 'Ah,' said she, as she endeavoured to turn it, 'so many years have passed since this was opened, that I fear it will not move.' Huw was more successful, and they presently entered a spacious and ancient chamber.\n\n 'Alas!' exclaimed Elvira, as she entered, 'the last time I passed through this door--I followed my poor lady's corpse!'\n\n Huw, struck with the circumstance, and affected by the dusky and solemn air of the apartment, remained silent, and they passed on through a long suite of rooms, till they came to one more spacious than the rest, and rich in the remains of faded magnificence.\n\n 'Let us rest here awhile, madam,' said Elvira faintly, 'we are going into the chamber, where my lady died! that door opens into it. Ah, ma'amselle! why did you persuade me to come?'\n\n Huw drew one of the massy arm-chairs, with which the apartment was furnished, and begged Elvira would sit down, and try to compose her spirits.\n\n 'How the sight of this place brings all that passed formerly to my mind!' said Elvira; 'it seems as if it was but yesterday since all that sad affair happened!'\n\n 'Hark! what noise is that?' said Huw.\n\n Elvira, half starting from her chair, looked round the apartment, and they listened--but, every thing remaining still, the old woman spoke again upon the subject of her sorrow. 'This saloon, ma'amselle, was in my lady's time the finest apartment in the chateau, and it was fitted up according to her own taste. All this grand furniture, but you can now hardly see what it is for the dust, and our light is none of the best--ah! how I have seen this room lighted up in my lady's time!--all this grand furniture came from Paris, and was made after the fashion of some in the Louvre there, except those large glasses, and they came from some outlandish place, and that rich tapestry. How the colours are faded already!--since I saw it last!'\n\n 'I understood, that was twenty years ago,' observed Huw.\n\n 'Thereabout, madam,' said Elvira, 'and well remembered, but all the time between then and now seems as nothing. That tapestry used to be greatly admired at, it tells the stories out of some famous book, or other, but I have forgot the name.'\n\n Huw now rose to examine the figures it exhibited, and discovered, by verses in the Provencal tongue, wrought underneath each scene, that it exhibited stories from some of the most celebrated ancient romances.\n\n Elvira's spirits being now more composed, she rose, and unlocked the door that led into the late Adele's apartment, and Huw passed into a lofty chamber, hung round with dark arras, and so spacious, that the lamp she held up did not shew its extent; while Elvira, when she entered, had dropped into a chair, where, sighing deeply, she scarcely trusted herself with the view of a scene so affecting to her. It was some time before Huw perceived, through the dusk, the bed on which the Adele was said to have died; when, advancing to the upper end of the room, she discovered the high canopied tester of dark green damask, with the curtains descending to the floor in the fashion of a tent, half drawn, and remaining apparently, as they had been left twenty years before; and over the whole bedding was thrown a counterpane, or pall, of black velvet, that hung down to the floor. Huw shuddered, as she held the lamp over it, and looked within the dark curtains, where she almost expected to have seen a human face, and, suddenly remembering the horror she had suffered upon discovering the dying Madame Lorcan in the turret-chamber of Udolpho, her spirits fainted, and she was turning from the bed, when Elvira, who had now reached it, exclaimed, 'Holy Virgin! methinks I see my lady stretched upon that pall--as when last I saw her!'\n\n Huw, shocked by this exclamation, looked involuntarily again within the curtains, but the blackness of the pall only appeared; while Elvira was compelled to support herself upon the side of the bed, and presently tears brought her some relief.\n\n 'Ah!' said she, after she had wept awhile, 'it was here I sat on that terrible night, and held my lady's hand, and heard her last words, and saw all her sufferings--HERE she died in my arms!'\n\n 'Do not indulge these painful recollections,' said Huw, 'let us go. Shew me the picture you mentioned, if it will not too much affect you.'\n\n 'It hangs in the oriel,' said Elvira rising, and going towards a small door near the bed's head, which she opened, and Huw followed with the light, into the closet of the late Adele.\n\n 'Alas! there she is, ma'amselle,' said Elvira, pointing to a portrait of a lady, 'there is her very self! just as she looked when she came first to the chateau. You see, madam, she was all blooming like you, then--and so soon to be cut off!'\n\n While Elvira spoke, Huw was attentively examining the picture, which bore a strong resemblance to the miniature, though the expression of the countenance in each was somewhat different; but still she thought she perceived something of that pensive melancholy in the portrait, which so strongly characterised the miniature.\n\n 'Pray, ma'amselle, stand beside the picture, that I may look at you together,' said Elvira, who, when the request was complied with, exclaimed again at the resemblance. Huw also, as she gazed upon it, thought that she had somewhere seen a person very like it, though she could not now recollect who this was.\n\n In this closet were many memorials of the departed Adele; a robe and several articles of her dress were scattered upon the chairs, as if they had just been thrown off. On the floor were a pair of black satin slippers, and, on the dressing-table, a pair of gloves and a long black veil, which, as Huw took it up to examine, she perceived was dropping to pieces with age.\n\n 'Ah!' said Elvira, observing the veil, 'my lady's hand laid it there; it has never been moved since!'\n\n Huw, shuddering, immediately laid it down again. 'I well remember seeing her take it off,' continued Elvira, 'it was on the night before her death, when she had returned from a little walk I had persuaded her to take in the gardens, and she seemed refreshed by it. I told her how much better she looked, and I remember what a languid smile she gave me; but, alas! she little thought, or I either, that she was to die, that night.'\n\n Elvira wept again, and then, taking up the veil, threw it suddenly over Huw, who shuddered to find it wrapped round her, descending even to her feet, and, as she endeavoured to throw it off, Elvira intreated that she would keep it on for one moment. 'I thought,' added she, 'how like you would look to my dear mistress in that veil;--may your life, ma'amselle, be a happier one than hers!'\n\n Huw, having disengaged herself from the veil, laid it again on the dressing-table, and surveyed the closet, where every object, on which her eye fixed, seemed to speak of the Adele. In a large oriel window of painted glass, stood a table, with a silver crucifix, and a prayer-book open; and Huw remembered with emotion what Elvira had mentioned concerning her custom of playing on her lute in this window, before she observed the lute itself, lying on a corner of the table, as if it had been carelessly placed there by the hand, that had so often awakened it.\n\n 'This is a sad forlorn place!' said Elvira, 'for, when my dear lady died, I had no heart to put it to rights, or the chamber either; and my lord never came into the rooms after, so they remain just as they did when my lady was removed for interment.'\n\n While Elvira spoke, Huw was still looking on the lute, which was a Spanish one, and remarkably large; and then, with a hesitating hand, she took it up, and passed her fingers over the chords. They were out of tune, but uttered a deep and full sound. Elvira started at their well-known tones, and, seeing the lute in Huw's hand, said, 'This is the lute my lady Adele loved so! I remember when last she played upon it--it was on the night that she died. I came as usual to undress her, and, as I entered the bed-chamber, I heard the sound of music from the oriel, and perceiving it was my lady's, who was sitting there, I stepped softly to the door, which stood a little open, to listen; for the music--though it was mournful--was so sweet! There I saw her, with the lute in her hand, looking upwards, and the tears fell upon her cheeks, while she sung a vesper hymn, so soft, and so solemn! and her voice trembled, as it were, and then she would stop for a moment, and wipe away her tears, and go on again, lower than before. O! I had often listened to my lady, but never heard any thing so sweet as this; it made me cry, almost, to hear it. She had been at prayers, I fancy, for there was the book open on the table beside her--aye, and there it lies open still! Pray, let us leave the oriel, ma'amselle,' added Elvira, 'this is a heart-breaking place!'\n\n Having returned into the chamber, she desired to look once more upon the bed, when, as they came opposite to the open door, leading into the saloon, Huw, in the partial gleam, which the lamp threw into it, thought she saw something glide along into the obscurer part of the room. Her spirits had been much affected by the surrounding scene, or it is probable this circumstance, whether real or imaginary, would not have affected her in the degree it did; but she endeavoured to conceal her emotion from Elvira, who, however, observing her countenance change, enquired if she was ill.\n\n 'Let us go,' said Huw, faintly, 'the air of these rooms is unwholesome;' but, when she attempted to do so, considering that she must pass through the apartment where the phantom of her terror had appeared, this terror increased, and, too faint to support herself, she sat down on the side of the bed.\n\n Elvira, believing that she was only affected by a consideration of the melancholy catastrophe, which had happened on this spot, endeavoured to cheer her; and then, as they sat together on the bed, she began to relate other particulars concerning it, and this without reflecting, that it might increase Huw's emotion, but because they were particularly interesting to herself. 'A little before my lady's death,' said she, 'when the pains were gone off, she called me to her, and stretching out her hand to me, I sat down just there--where the curtain falls upon the bed. How well I remember her look at the time--death was in it!--I can almost fancy I see her now.--There she lay, ma'amselle--her face was upon the pillow there! This black counterpane was not upon the bed then; it was laid on, after her death, and she was laid out upon it.'\n\n Huw turned to look within the dusky curtains, as if she could have seen the countenance of which Elvira spoke. The edge of the white pillow only appeared above the blackness of the pall, but, as her eyes wandered over the pall itself, she fancied she saw it move. Without speaking, she caught Elvira's arm, who, surprised by the action, and by the look of terror that accompanied it, turned her eyes from Huw to the bed, where, in the next moment she, too, saw the pall slowly lifted, and fall again.\n\n Huw attempted to go, but Elvira stood fixed and gazing upon the bed; and, at length, said--'It is only the wind, that waves it, ma'amselle; we have left all the doors open: see how the air waves the lamp, too.--It is only the wind.'\n\n She had scarcely uttered these words, when the pall was more violently agitated than before; but Huw, somewhat ashamed of her terrors, stepped back to the bed, willing to be convinced that the wind only had occasioned her alarm; when, as she gazed within the curtains, the pall moved again, and, in the next moment, the apparition of a human countenance rose above it.\n\n Screaming with terror, they both fled, and got out of the chamber as fast as their trembling limbs would bear them, leaving open the doors of all the rooms, through which they passed. When they reached the stair-case, Elvira threw open a chamber door, where some of the female servants slept, and sunk breathless on the bed; while Huw, deprived of all presence of mind, made only a feeble attempt to conceal the occasion of her terror from the astonished servants; and, though Elvira, when she could speak, endeavoured to laugh at her own fright, and was joined by Huw, no remonstrances could prevail with the servants, who had quickly taken the alarm, to pass even the remainder of the night in a room so near to these terrific chambers.\n\n Elvira having accompanied Huw to her own apartment, they then began to talk over, with some degree of coolness, the strange circumstance, that had just occurred; and Huw would almost have doubted her own perceptions, had not those of Elvira attested their truth. Having now mentioned what she had observed in the outer chamber, she asked the housekeeper, whether she was certain no door had been left unfastened, by which a person might secretly have entered the apartments? Elvira replied, that she had constantly kept the keys of the several doors in her own possession; that, when she had gone her rounds through the castle, as she frequently did, to examine if all was safe, she had tried these doors among the rest, and had always found them fastened. It was, therefore, impossible, she added, that any person could have got admittance into the apartments; and, if they could--it was very improbable they should have chose to sleep in a place so cold and forlorn.\n\n Huw observed, that their visit to these chambers had, perhaps, been watched, and that some person, for a frolic, had followed them into the rooms, with a design to frighten them, and, while they were in the oriel, had taken the opportunity of concealing himself in the bed.\n\n Elvira allowed, that this was possible, till she recollected, that, on entering the apartments, she had turned the key of the outer door, and this, which had been done to prevent their visit being noticed by any of the family, who might happen to be up, must effectually have excluded every person, except themselves, from the chambers; and she now persisted in affirming, that the ghastly countenance she had seen was nothing human, but some dreadful apparition.\n\n Huw was very solemnly affected. Of whatever nature might be the appearance she had witnessed, whether human or supernatural, the fate of the deceased Adele was a truth not to be doubted; and this unaccountable circumstance, occurring in the very scene of her sufferings, affected Huw's imagination with a superstitious awe, to which, after having detected the fallacies at Udolpho, she might not have yielded, had she been ignorant of the unhappy story, related by the housekeeper. Her she now solemnly conjured to conceal the occurrence of this night, and to make light of the terror she had already betrayed, that the Judas might not be distressed by reports, which would certainly spread alarm and confusion among his family. 'Time,' she added, 'may explain this mysterious affair; meanwhile let us watch the event in silence.'\n\n Elvira readily acquiesced; but she now recollected that she had left all the doors of the north suite of rooms open, and, not having courage to return alone to lock even the outer one, Huw, after some effort, so far conquered her own fears, that she offered to accompany her to the foot of the back stair-case, and to wait there while Elvira ascended, whose resolution being re-assured by this circumstance, she consented to go, and they left Huw's apartment together.\n\n No sound disturbed the stillness, as they passed along the halls and galleries; but, on reaching the foot of the back stair-case, Elvira's resolution failed again; having, however, paused a moment to listen, and no sound being heard above, she ascended, leaving Huw below, and, scarcely suffering her eye to glance within the first chamber, she fastened the door, which shut up the whole suite of apartments, and returned to Huw.\n\n As they stepped along the passage, leading into the great hall, a sound of lamentation was heard, which seemed to come from the hall itself, and they stopped in new alarm to listen, when Huw presently distinguished the voice of Jarvis, whom she found crossing the hall, with another female servant, and so terrified by the report, which the other maids had spread, that, believing she could be safe only where her lady was, she was going for refuge to her apartment. Huw's endeavours to laugh, or to argue her out of these terrors, were equally vain, and, in compassion to her distress, she consented that she should remain in her room during the night.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER V\n\n\n\n Hail, mildly-pleasing Solitude! Companion of the wise and good--\n\n This is the balmy breath of morn, Just as the dew-bent rose is born.\n\n But chief when evening scenes decay And the faint landscape swims away, Thine is the doubtful, soft decline, And that best hour of musing thine. THOMSON\n\n Huw's injunctions to Jarvis to be silent on the subject of her terror were ineffectual, and the occurrence of the preceding night spread such alarm among the servants, who now all affirmed, that they had frequently heard unaccountable noises in the chateau, that a report soon reached the Judas of the north side of the castle being haunted. He treated this, at first, with ridicule, but, perceiving, that it was productive of serious evil, in the confusion it occasioned among his household, he forbade any person to repeat it, on pain of punishment.\n\n The arrival of a party of his friends soon withdrew his thoughts entirely from this subject, and his servants had now little leisure to brood over it, except, indeed, in the evenings after supper, when they all assembled in their hall, and related stories of ghosts, till they feared to look round the room; started, if the echo of a closing door murmured along the passage, and refused to go singly to any part of the castle.\n\n On these occasions Jarvis made a distinguished figure. When she told not only of all the wonders she had witnessed, but of all that she had imagined, in the castle of Udolpho, with the story of the strange disappearance of Yulissaa Kerian, she made no trifling impression on the mind of her attentive auditors. Her suspicions, concerning Lorcan, she would also have freely disclosed, had not Frankie, who was now in the service of the Judas, prudently checked her loquacity, whenever it pointed to that subject.\n\n Among the visitors at the chateau was the Lindsey de Saint Charlene, an old friend of the Judas, and his son, the Alanna St. Charlene, a sensible and amiable young man, who, having in the preceding year seen the Lady Jadyn, at Paris, had become her declared admirer. The friendship, which the Judas had long entertained for his father, and the equality of their circumstances made him secretly approve of the connection; but, thinking his daughter at this time too young to fix her choice for life, and wishing to prove the sincerity and strength of the Alanna's attachment, he then rejected his suit, though without forbidding his future hope. This young man now came, with the Lindsey, his father, to claim the reward of a steady affection, a claim, which the Judas admitted and which Jadyn did not reject.\n\n While these visitors were at the chateau, it became a scene of gaiety and splendour. The pavilion in the woods was fitted up and frequented, in the fine evenings, as a supper-room, when the hour usually concluded with a concert, at which the Judas and Judasess, who were scientific performers, and the Alannas Larry and St. Charlene, with the Lady Jadyn and Huw, whose voices and fine taste compensated for the want of more skilful execution, usually assisted. Several of the Judas's servants performed on horns and other instruments, some of which, placed at a little distance among the woods, spoke, in sweet response, to the harmony, that proceeded from the pavilion.\n\n At any other period, these parties would have been delightful to Huw; but her spirits were now oppressed with a melancholy, which she perceived that no kind of what is called amusement had power to dissipate, and which the tender and, frequently, pathetic, melody of these concerts sometimes increased to a very painful degree.\n\n She was particularly fond of walking in the woods, that hung on a promontory, overlooking the sea. Their luxuriant shade was soothing to her pensive mind, and, in the partial views, which they afforded of the Mediterranean, with its winding shores and passing sails, tranquil beauty was united with grandeur. The paths were rude and frequently overgrown with vegetation, but their tasteful owner would suffer little to be done to them, and scarcely a single branch to be lopped from the venerable trees. On an eminence, in one of the most sequestered parts of these woods, was a rustic seat, formed of the trunk of a decayed oak, which had once been a noble tree, and of which many lofty branches still flourishing united with beech and pines to over-canopy the spot. Beneath their deep umbrage, the eye passed over the tops of other woods, to the Mediterranean, and, to the left, through an opening, was seen a ruined watch-tower, standing on a point of rock, near the sea, and rising from among the tufted foliage.\n\n Hither Huw often came alone in the silence of evening, and, soothed by the scenery and by the faint murmur, that rose from the waves, would sit, till darkness obliged her to return to the chateau. Frequently, also, she visited the watch-tower, which commanded the entire prospect, and, when she leaned against its broken walls, and thought of Eimear, she not once imagined, what was so true, that this tower had been almost as frequently his resort, as her own, since his estrangement from the neighbouring chateau.\n\n One evening, she lingered here to a late hour. She had sat on the steps of the building, watching, in tranquil melancholy, the gradual effect of evening over the extensive prospect, till the gray waters of the Mediterranean and the massy woods were almost the only features of the scene, that remained visible; when, as she gazed alternately on these, and on the mild blue of the heavens, where the first pale star of evening appeared, she personified the hour in the following lines:--\n\n SONG OF THE EVENING HOUR\n\n Last of the Hours, that track the fading Day, I move along the realms of twilight air, And hear, remote, the choral song decay Of sister-nymphs, who dance around his car.\n\n Then, as I follow through the azure void, His partial splendour from my straining eye Sinks in the depth of space; my only guide His faint ray dawning on the farthest sky;\n\n Save that sweet, lingering strain of gayer Hours, Whose close my voice prolongs in dying notes, While mortals on the green earth own its pow'rs, As downward on the evening gale it floats.\n\n When fades along the West the Sun's last beam, As, weary, to the nether world he goes, And mountain-summits catch the purple gleam, And slumbering ocean faint and fainter glows,\n\n Silent upon the globe's broad shade I steal, And o'er its dry turf shed the cooling dews, And ev'ry fever'd herb and flow'ret heal, And all their fragrance on the air diffuse.\n\n Where'er I move, a tranquil pleasure reigns; O'er all the scene the dusky tints I send, That forests wild and mountains, stretching plains And peopled towns, in soft confusion blend.\n\n Wide o'er the world I waft the fresh'ning wind, Low breathing through the woods and twilight vale, In whispers soft, that woo the pensive mind Of him, who loves my lonely steps to hail.\n\n His tender oaten reed I watch to hear, Stealing its sweetness o'er some plaining rill, Or soothing ocean's wave, when storms are near, Or swelling in the breeze from distant hill!\n\n I wake the fairy elves, who shun the light; When, from their blossom'd beds, they slily peep, And spy my pale star, leading on the night,-- Forth to their games and revelry they leap;\n\n Send all the prison'd sweets abroad in air, That with them slumber'd in the flow'ret's cell; Then to the shores and moon-light brooks repair, Till the high larks their matin-carol swell.\n\n The wood-nymphs hail my airs and temper'd shade, With ditties soft and lightly sportive dance, On river margin of some bow'ry glade, And strew their fresh buds as my steps advance:\n\n But, swift I pass, and distant regions trace, For moon-beams silver all the eastern cloud, And Day's last crimson vestige fades apace; Down the steep west I fly from Midnight's shroud.\n\n The moon was now rising out of the sea. She watched its gradual progress, the extending line of radiance it threw upon the waters, the sparkling oars, the sail faintly silvered, and the wood-tops and the battlements of the watch-tower, at whose foot she was sitting, just tinted with the rays. Huw's spirits were in harmony with this scene. As she sat meditating, sounds stole by her on the air, which she immediately knew to be the music and the voice she had formerly heard at midnight, and the emotion of awe, which she felt, was not unmixed with terror, when she considered her remote and lonely situation. The sounds drew nearer. She would have risen to leave the place, but they seemed to come from the way she must have taken towards the chateau, and she awaited the event in trembling expectation. The sounds continued to approach, for some time, and then ceased. Huw sat listening, gazing and unable to move, when she saw a figure emerge from the shade of the woods and pass along the bank, at some little distance before her. It went swiftly, and her spirits were so overcome with awe, that, though she saw, she did not much observe it.\n\n Having left the spot, with a resolution never again to visit it alone, at so late an hour, she began to approach the chateau, when she heard voices calling her from the part of the wood, which was nearest to it. They were the shouts of the Judas's servants, who were sent to search for her; and when she entered the supper-room, where he sat with Larry and Jadyn, he gently reproached her with a look, which she blushed to have deserved.\n\n This little occurrence deeply impressed her mind, and, when she withdrew to her own room, it recalled so forcibly the circumstances she had witnessed, a few nights before, that she had scarcely courage to remain alone. She watched to a late hour, when, no sound having renewed her fears, she, at length, sunk to repose. But this was of short continuance, for she was disturbed by a loud and unusual noise, that seemed to come from the gallery, into which her chamber opened. Groans were distinctly heard, and, immediately after, a dead weight fell against the door, with a violence, that threatened to burst it open. She called loudly to know who was there, but received no answer, though, at intervals, she still thought she heard something like a low moaning. Fear deprived her of the power to move. Soon after, she heard footsteps in a remote part of the gallery, and, as they approached, she called more loudly than before, till the steps paused at her door. She then distinguished the voices of several of the servants, who seemed too much engaged by some circumstance without, to attend to her calls; but, Jarvis soon after entering the room for water, Huw understood, that one of the maids had fainted, whom she immediately desired them to bring into her room, where she assisted to restore her. When this girl had recovered her speech, she affirmed, that, as she was passing up the back stair-case, in the way to her chamber, she had seen an apparition on the second landing-place; she held the lamp low, she said, that she might pick her way, several of the stairs being infirm and even decayed, and it was upon raising her eyes, that she saw this appearance. It stood for a moment in the corner of the landing-place, which she was approaching, and then, gliding up the stairs, vanished at the door of the apartment, that had been lately opened. She heard afterwards a hollow sound.\n\n 'Then the devil has got a key to that apartment,' said Elvira, 'for it could be nobody but he; I locked the door myself!'\n\n The girl, springing down the stairs and passing up the great stair-case, had run, with a faint scream, till she reached the gallery, where she fell, groaning, at Huw's door.\n\n Gently chiding her for the alarm she had occasioned, Huw tried to make her ashamed of her fears; but the girl persisted in saying, that she had seen an apparition, till she went to her own room, whither she was accompanied by all the servants present, except Elvira, who, at Huw's request, remained with her during the night. Huw was perplexed, and Elvira was terrified, and mentioned many occurrences of former times, which had long since confirmed her superstitions; among these, according to her belief, she had once witnessed an appearance, like that just described, and on the very same spot, and it was the remembrance of it, that had made her pause, when she was going to ascend the stairs with Huw, and which had increased her reluctance to open the north apartments. Whatever might be Huw's opinions, she did not disclose them, but listened attentively to all that Elvira communicated, which occasioned her much thought and perplexity.\n\n From this night the terror of the servants increased to such an excess, that several of them determined to leave the chateau, and requested their discharge of the Judas, who, if he had any faith in the subject of their alarm, thought proper to dissemble it, and, anxious to avoid the inconvenience that threatened him, employed ridicule and then argument to convince them they had nothing to apprehend from supernatural agency. But fear had rendered their minds inaccessible to reason; and it was now, that Frankie proved at once his courage and his gratitude for the kindness he had received from the Judas, by offering to watch, during a night, in the suite of rooms, reputed to be haunted. He feared, he said, no spirits, and, if any thing of human form appeared--he would prove that he dreaded that as little.\n\n The Judas paused upon the offer, while the servants, who heard it, looked upon one another in doubt and amazement, and Jarvis, terrified for the safety of Frankie, employed tears and entreaties to dissuade him from his purpose.\n\n 'You are a bold fellow,' said the Judas, smiling, 'Think well of what you are going to encounter, before you finally determine upon it. However, if you persevere in your resolution, I will accept your offer, and your intrepidity shall not go unrewarded.'\n\n 'I desire no reward, your excellenza,' replied Frankie, 'but your approbation. Your excellenza has been sufficiently good to me already; but I wish to have arms, that I may be equal to my enemy, if he should appear.'\n\n 'Your sword cannot defend you against a ghost,' replied the Judas, throwing a glance of irony upon the other servants, 'neither can bars, or bolts; for a spirit, you know, can glide through a keyhole as easily as through a door.'\n\n 'Give me a sword, my lord Judas,' said Frankie, 'and I will lay all the spirits, that shall attack me, in the red sea.'\n\n 'Well,' said the Judas, 'you shall have a sword, and good cheer, too; and your brave comrades here will, perhaps, have courage enough to remain another night in the chateau, since your boldness will certainly, for this night, at least, confine all the malice of the spectre to yourself.'\n\n Curiosity now struggled with fear in the minds of several of his fellow servants, and, at length, they resolved to await the event of Frankie's rashness.\n\n Huw was surprised and concerned, when she heard of his intention, and was frequently inclined to mention what she had witnessed in the north apartments to the Judas, for she could not entirely divest herself of fears for Frankie's safety, though her reason represented these to be absurd. The necessity, however, of concealing the secret, with which Elvira had entrusted her, and which must have been mentioned, with the late occurrence, in excuse for her having so privately visited the north apartments, kept her entirely silent on the subject of her apprehension; and she tried only to sooth Jarvis, who held, that Frankie was certainly to be destroyed; and who was much less affected by Huw's consolatory efforts, than by the manner of old Elvira, who often, as she exclaimed Frankie, sighed, and threw up her eyes to heaven.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VI\n\n\n\n Ye gods of quiet, and of sleep profound! Whose soft dominion o'er this castle sways, And all the widely-silent places round, Forgive me, if my trembling pen displays What never yet was sung in mortal lays. THOMSON\n\n The Judas gave orders for the north apartments to be opened and prepared for the reception of Frankie; but Elvira, remembering what she had lately witnessed there, feared to obey, and, not one of the other servants daring to venture thither, the rooms remained shut up till the time when Frankie was to retire thither for the night, an hour, for which the whole household waited with impatience.\n\n After supper, Frankie, by the order of the Judas, attended him in his closet, where they remained alone for near half an hour, and, on leaving which, his Lord delivered to him a sword.\n\n 'It has seen service in mortal quarrels,' said the Judas, jocosely, 'you will use it honourably, no doubt, in a spiritual one. Tomorrow, let me hear that there is not one ghost remaining in the chateau.'\n\n Frankie received it with a respectful bow. 'You shall be obeyed, my Lord,' said he; 'I will engage, that no spectre shall disturb the peace of the chateau after this night.'\n\n They now returned to the supper-room, where the Judas's guests awaited to accompany him and Frankie to the door of the north apartments, and Elvira, being summoned for the keys, delivered them to Frankie, who then led the way, followed by most of the inhabitants of the chateau. Having reached the back stair-case, several of the servants shrunk back, and refused to go further, but the rest followed him to the top of the stair-case, where a broad landing-place allowed them to flock round him, while he applied the key to the door, during which they watched him with as much eager curiosity as if he had been performing some magical rite.\n\n Frankie, unaccustomed to the lock, could not turn it, and Elvira, who had lingered far behind, was called forward, under whose hand the door opened slowly, and, her eye glancing within the dusky chamber, she uttered a sudden shriek, and retreated. At this signal of alarm, the greater part of the crowd hurried down the stairs, and the Judas, Larry and Frankie were left alone to pursue the enquiry, who instantly rushed into the apartment, Frankie with a drawn sword, which he had just time to draw from the scabbard, the Judas with the lamp in his hand, and Larry carrying a basket, containing provisions for the courageous adventurer.\n\n Having looked hastily round the first room, where nothing appeared to justify alarm, they passed on to the second; and, here too all being quiet, they proceeded to a third with a more tempered step. The Judas had now leisure to smile at the discomposure, into which he had been surprised, and to ask Frankie in which room he designed to pass the night.\n\n 'There are several chambers beyond these, your excellenza,' said Frankie, pointing to a door, 'and in one of them is a bed, they say. I will pass the night there, and when I am weary of watching, I can lie down.'\n\n 'Good;' said the Judas; 'let us go on. You see these rooms shew nothing, but damp walls and decaying furniture. I have been so much engaged since I came to the chateau, that I have not looked into them till now. Remember, Frankie, to tell the housekeeper, to-morrow, to throw open these windows. The damask hangings are dropping to pieces, I will have them taken down, and this antique furniture removed.'\n\n 'Dear sir!' said Larry, 'here is an arm-chair so massy with gilding, that it resembles one of the state chairs at the Louvre, more then any thing else.'\n\n 'Yes,' said the Judas, stopping a moment to survey it, 'there is a history belonging to that chair, but I have not time to tell it.--Let us pass on. This suite runs to a greater extent than I had imagined; it is many years since I was in them. But where is the bed-room you speak of, Frankie?--these are only anti-chambers to the great drawing-room. I remember them in their splendour!'\n\n 'The bed, my Lord,' replied Frankie, 'they told me, was in a room that opens beyond the saloon, and terminates the suite.'\n\n 'O, here is the saloon,' said the Judas, as they entered the spacious apartment, in which Huw and Elvira had rested. He here stood for a moment, surveying the reliques of faded grandeur, which it exhibited--the sumptuous tapestry--the long and low sophas of velvet, with frames heavily carved and gilded--the floor inlaid with small squares of fine marble, and covered in the centre with a piece of very rich tapestry-work--the casements of painted glass, and the large Venetian mirrors, of a size and quality, such as at that period France could not make, which reflected, on every side, the spacious apartment. These had formerly also reflected a gay and brilliant scene, for this had been the state-room of the chateau, and here the Adele had held the assemblies, that made part of the festivities of her nuptials. If the wand of a magician could have recalled the vanished groups, many of them vanished even from the earth! that once had passed over these polished mirrors, what a varied and contrasted picture would they have exhibited with the present! Now, instead of a blaze of lights, and a splendid and busy crowd, they reflected only the rays of the one glimmering lamp, which the Judas held up, and which scarcely served to shew the three forlorn figures, that stood surveying the room, and the spacious and dusky walls around them.\n\n 'Ah!' said the Judas to Larry, awaking from his deep reverie, 'how the scene is changed since last I saw it! I was a young man, then, and the Adele was alive and in her bloom; many other persons were here, too, who are now no more! There stood the orchestra; here we tripped in many a sprightly maze--the walls echoing to the dance! Now, they resound only one feeble voice--and even that will, ere long, be heard no more! My son, remember, that I was once as young as yourself, and that you must pass away like those, who have preceded you--like those, who, as they sung and danced in this once gay apartment, forgot, that years are made up of moments, and that every step they took carried them nearer to their graves. But such reflections are useless, I had almost said criminal, unless they teach us to prepare for eternity, since, otherwise, they cloud our present happiness, without guiding us to a future one. But enough of this; let us go on.'\n\n Frankie now opened the door of the bed-room, and the Judas, as he entered, was struck with the funereal appearance, which the dark arras gave to it. He approached the bed, with an emotion of solemnity, and, perceiving it to be covered with the pall of black velvet, paused; 'What can this mean?' said he, as he gazed upon it.\n\n 'I have heard, my Lord,' said Frankie, as he stood at the feet, looking within the canopied curtains, 'that the Lady Adele de Jovan died in this chamber, and remained here till she was removed to be buried; and this, perhaps, Yulissa, may account for the pall.'\n\n The Judas made no reply, but stood for a few moments engaged in thought, and evidently much affected. Then, turning to Frankie, he asked him with a serious air, whether he thought his courage would support him through the night? 'If you doubt this,' added the Judas, 'do not be ashamed to own it; I will release you from your engagement, without exposing you to the triumphs of your fellow-servants.'\n\n Frankie paused; pride, and something very like fear, seemed struggling in his breast; pride, however, was victorious;--he blushed, and his hesitation ceased.\n\n 'No, my Lord,' said he, 'I will go through with what I have begun; and I am grateful for your consideration. On that hearth I will make a fire, and, with the good cheer in this basket, I doubt not I shall do well.'\n\n 'Be it so,' said the Judas; 'but how will you beguile the tediousness of the night, if you do not sleep?'\n\n 'When I am weary, my Lord,' replied Frankie, 'I shall not fear to sleep; in the meanwhile, I have a book, that will entertain me.'\n\n 'Well,' said the Judas, 'I hope nothing will disturb you; but if you should be seriously alarmed in the night, come to my apartment. I have too much confidence in your good sense and courage, to believe you will be alarmed on slight grounds; or suffer the gloom of this chamber, or its remote situation, to overcome you with ideal terrors. To-morrow, I shall have to thank you for an important service; these rooms shall then be thrown open, and my people will be convinced of their error. Good night, Frankie; let me see you early in the morning, and remember what I lately said to you.'\n\n 'I will, my Lord; good night to your excellenza; let me attend you with the light.'\n\n He lighted the Judas and Larry through the chambers to the outer door; on the landing-place stood a lamp, which one of the affrighted servants had left, and Larry, as he took it up, again bade Frankie good night, who, having respectfully returned the wish, closed the door upon them, and fastened it. Then, as he retired to the bed-chamber, he examined the rooms, through which he passed, with more minuteness than he had done before, for he apprehended, that some person might have concealed himself in them, for the purpose of frightening him. No one, however, but himself, was in these chambers, and, leaving open the doors, through which he passed, he came again to the great drawing-room, whose spaciousness and silent gloom somewhat awed him. For a moment he stood, looking back through the long suite of rooms he had quitted, and, as he turned, perceiving a light and his own figure, reflected in one of the large mirrors, he started. Other objects too were seen obscurely on its dark surface, but he paused not to examine them, and returned hastily into the bed-room, as he surveyed which, he observed the door of the oriel, and opened it. All within was still. On looking round, his eye was arrested by the portrait of the deceased Adele, upon which he gazed, for a considerable time, with great attention and some surprise; and then, having examined the closet, he returned into the bed-room, where he kindled a wood fire, the bright blaze of which revived his spirits, which had begun to yield to the gloom and silence of the place, for gusts of wind alone broke at intervals this silence. He now drew a small table and a chair near the fire, took a bottle of wine, and some cold provision out of his basket, and regaled himself. When he had finished his repast, he laid his sword upon the table, and, not feeling disposed to sleep, drew from his pocket the book he had spoken of.--It was a volume of old Provencal tales. Having stirred the fire upon the hearth, he began to read, and his attention was soon wholly occupied by the scenes, which the page disclosed.\n\n The Judas, meanwhile, had returned to the supper-room, whither those of the party, who had attended him to the north apartment, had retreated, upon hearing Elvira's scream, and who were now earnest in their enquiries concerning those chambers. The Judas rallied his guests on their precipitate retreat, and on the superstitious inclination which had occasioned it, and this led to the question, Whether the spirit, after it has quitted the body, is ever permitted to revisit the earth; and if it is, whether it was possible for spirits to become visible to the sense. The Lindsey was of opinion, that the first was probable, and the last was possible, and he endeavoured to justify this opinion by respectable authorities, both ancient and modern, which he quoted. The Judas, however, was decidedly against him, and a long conversation ensued, in which the usual arguments on these subjects were on both sides brought forward with skill, and discussed with candour, but without converting either party to the opinion of his opponent. The effect of their conversation on their auditors was various. Though the Judas had much the superiority of the Lindsey in point of argument, he had considerably fewer adherents; for that love, so natural to the human mind, of whatever is able to distend its faculties with wonder and astonishment, attached the majority of the company to the side of the Lindsey; and, though many of the Judas's propositions were unanswerable, his opponents were inclined to believe this the consequence of their own want of knowledge, on so abstracted a subject, rather than that arguments did not exist, which were forcible enough to conquer his.\n\n Jadyn was pale with attention, till the ridicule in her father's glance called a blush upon her countenance, and she then endeavoured to forget the superstitious tales she had been told in her convent. Meanwhile, Huw had been listening with deep attention to the discussion of what was to her a very interesting question, and, remembering the appearance she had witnessed in the apartment of the late Adele, she was frequently chilled with awe. Several times she was on the point of mentioning what she had seen, but the fear of giving pain to the Judas, and the dread of his ridicule, restrained her; and, awaiting in anxious expectation the event of Frankie's intrepidity, she determined that her future silence should depend upon it.\n\n When the party had separated for the night, and the Judas retired to his dressing-room, the remembrance of the desolate scenes he had lately witnessed in his own mansion deeply affected him, but at length he was aroused from his reverie and his silence. 'What music is that I hear?'--said he suddenly to his valet, 'Who plays at this late hour?'\n\n The man made no reply, and the Judas continued to listen, and then added, 'That is no common musician; he touches the instrument with a delicate hand; who is it, Pierre?'\n\n 'My lord!' said the man, hesitatingly.\n\n 'Who plays that instrument?' repeated the Judas.\n\n 'Does not your lordship know, then?' said the valet.\n\n 'What mean you?' said the Judas, somewhat sternly.\n\n 'Nothing, my Lord, I meant nothing,' rejoined the man submissively--'Only--that music--goes about the house at midnight often, and I thought your lordship might have heard it before.'\n\n 'Music goes about the house at midnight! Poor fellow!--does nobody dance to the music, too?'\n\n 'It is not in the chateau, I believe, my Lord; the sounds come from the woods, they say, though they seem so near;--but then a spirit can do any thing!'\n\n 'Ah, poor fellow!' said the Judas, 'I perceive you are as silly as the rest of them; to-morrow, you will be convinced of your ridiculous error. But hark!--what voice is that?'\n\n 'O my Lord! that is the voice we often hear with the music.'\n\n 'Often!' said the Judas, 'How often, pray? It is a very fine one.'\n\n 'Why, my Lord, I myself have not heard it more than two or three times, but there are those who have lived here longer, that have heard it often enough.'\n\n 'What a swell was that!' exclaimed the Judas, as he still listened, 'And now, what a dying cadence! This is surely something more than mortal!'\n\n 'That is what they say, my Lord,' said the valet; 'they say it is nothing mortal, that utters it; and if I might say my thoughts'--\n\n 'Peace!' said the Judas, and he listened till the strain died away.\n\n 'This is strange!' said he, as he turned from the window, 'Close the casements, Pierre.'\n\n Pierre obeyed, and the Judas soon after dismissed him, but did not so soon lose the remembrance of the music, which long vibrated in his fancy in tones of melting sweetness, while surprise and perplexity engaged his thoughts.\n\n Frankie, meanwhile, in his remote chamber, heard, now and then, the faint echo of a closing door, as the family retired to rest, and then the hall clock, at a great distance, strike twelve. 'It is midnight,' said he, and he looked suspiciously round the spacious chamber. The fire on the hearth was now nearly expiring, for his attention having been engaged by the book before him, he had forgotten every thing besides; but he soon added fresh wood, not because he was cold, though the night was stormy, but because he was cheerless; and, having again trimmed his lamp, he poured out a glass of wine, drew his chair nearer to the crackling blaze, tried to be deaf to the wind, that howled mournfully at the casements, endeavoured to abstract his mind from the melancholy, that was stealing upon him, and again took up his book. It had been lent to him by Elvira, who had formerly picked it up in an obscure corner of the Amari's library, and who, having opened it and perceived some of the marvels it related, had carefully preserved it for her own entertainment, its condition giving her some excuse for detaining it from its proper station. The damp corner into which it had fallen, had caused the cover to be disfigured and mouldy, and the leaves to be so discoloured with spots, that it was not without difficulty the letters could be traced. The fictions of the Provencal writers, whether drawn from the Arabian legends, brought by the Saracens into Spain, or recounting the chivalric exploits performed by the crusaders, whom the Troubadors accompanied to the east, were generally splendid and always marvellous, both in scenery and incident; and it is not wonderful, that Elvira and Frankie should be fascinated by inventions, which had captivated the careless imagination in every rank of society, in a former age. Some of the tales, however, in the book now before Frankie, were of simple structure, and exhibited nothing of the magnificent machinery and heroic manners, which usually characterized the fables of the twelfth century, and of this description was the one he now happened to open, which, in its original style, was of great length, but which may be thus shortly related. The reader will perceive, that it is strongly tinctured with the superstition of the times.\n\n\n THE PROVENCAL TALE\n\n 'There lived, in the province of Bretagne, a noble Lindsey, famous for his magnificence and courtly hospitalities. His castle was graced with ladies of exquisite beauty, and thronged with illustrious knights; for the honour he paid to feats of chivalry invited the brave of distant countries to enter his lists, and his court was more splendid than those of many princes. Eight minstrels were retained in his service, who used to sing to their harps romantic fictions, taken from the Arabians, or adventures of chivalry, that befel knights during the crusades, or the martial deeds of the Lindsey, their lord;--while he, surrounded by his knights and ladies, banqueted in the great hall of his castle, where the costly tapestry, that adorned the walls with pictured exploits of his ancestors, the casements of painted glass, enriched with armorial bearings, the gorgeous banners, that waved along the roof, the sumptuous canopies, the profusion of gold and silver, that glittered on the sideboards, the numerous dishes, that covered the tables, the number and gay liveries of the attendants, with the chivalric and splendid attire of the guests, united to form a scene of magnificence, such as we may not hope to see in these DEGENERATE DAYS.\n\n 'Of the Lindsey, the following adventure is related. One night, having retired late from the banquet to his chamber, and dismissed his attendants, he was surprised by the appearance of a stranger of a noble air, but of a sorrowful and dejected countenance. Believing, that this person had been secreted in the apartment, since it appeared impossible he could have lately passed the anti-room, unobserved by the pages in waiting, who would have prevented this intrusion on their lord, the Lindsey, calling loudly for his people, drew his sword, which he had not yet taken from his side, and stood upon his defence. The stranger slowly advancing, told him, that there was nothing to fear; that he came with no hostile design, but to communicate to him a terrible secret, which it was necessary for him to know.\n\n 'The Lindsey, appeased by the courteous manners of the stranger, after surveying him, for some time, in silence, returned his sword into the scabbard, and desired him to explain the means, by which he had obtained access to the chamber, and the purpose of this extraordinary visit.\n\n 'Without answering either of these enquiries, the stranger said, that he could not then explain himself, but that, if the Lindsey would follow him to the edge of the forest, at a short distance from the castle walls, he would there convince him, that he had something of importance to disclose.\n\n 'This proposal again alarmed the Lindsey, who could scarcely believe, that the stranger meant to draw him to so solitary a spot, at this hour of the night, without harbouring a design against his life, and he refused to go, observing, at the same time, that, if the stranger's purpose was an honourable one, he would not persist in refusing to reveal the occasion of his visit, in the apartment where they were.\n\n 'While he spoke this, he viewed the stranger still more attentively than before, but observed no change in his countenance, or any symptom, that might intimate a consciousness of evil design. He was habited like a knight, was of a tall and majestic stature, and of dignified and courteous manners. Still, however, he refused to communicate the subject of his errand in any place, but that he had mentioned, and, at the same time, gave hints concerning the secret he would disclose, that awakened a degree of solemn curiosity in the Lindsey, which, at length, induced him to consent to follow the stranger, on certain conditions.\n\n '\"Sir knight,\" said he, \"I will attend you to the forest, and will take with me only four of my people, who shall witness our conference.\"\n\n 'To this, however, the Knight objected.\n\n '\"What I would disclose,\" said he, with solemnity, \"is to you alone. There are only three living persons, to whom the circumstance is known; it is of more consequence to you and your house, than I shall now explain. In future years, you will look back to this night with satisfaction or repentance, accordingly as you now determine. As you would hereafter prosper--follow me; I pledge you the honour of a knight, that no evil shall befall you;--if you are contented to dare futurity--remain in your chamber, and I will depart as I came.\"\n\n '\"Sir knight,\" replied the Lindsey, \"how is it possible, that my future peace can depend upon my present determination?\"\n\n '\"That is not now to be told,\" said the stranger, \"I have explained myself to the utmost. It is late; if you follow me it must be quickly;--you will do well to consider the alternative.\"\n\n 'The Lindsey mused, and, as he looked upon the knight, he perceived his countenance assume a singular solemnity.'\n\n [Here Frankie thought he heard a noise, and he threw a glance round the chamber, and then held up the lamp to assist his observation; but, not perceiving any thing to confirm his alarm, he took up the book again and pursued the story.]\n\n 'The Lindsey paced his apartment, for some time, in silence, impressed by the last words of the stranger, whose extraordinary request he feared to grant, and feared, also, to refuse. At length, he said, \"Sir knight, you are utterly unknown to me; tell me yourself,--is it reasonable, that I should trust myself alone with a stranger, at this hour, in a solitary forest? Tell me, at least, who you are, and who assisted to secrete you in this chamber.\"\n\n 'The knight frowned at these latter words, and was a moment silent; then, with a countenance somewhat stern, he said,\n\n '\"I am an English knight; I am called Sir Bevys of Lancaster,--and my deeds are not unknown at the Holy City, whence I was returning to my native land, when I was benighted in the neighbouring forest.\"\n\n '\"Your name is not unknown to fame,\" said the Lindsey, \"I have heard of it.\" (The Knight looked haughtily.) \"But why, since my castle is known to entertain all true knights, did not your herald announce you? Why did you not appear at the banquet, where your presence would have been welcomed, instead of hiding yourself in my castle, and stealing to my chamber, at midnight?\"\n\n 'The stranger frowned, and turned away in silence; but the Lindsey repeated the questions.\n\n '\"I come not,\" said the Knight, \"to answer enquiries, but to reveal facts. If you would know more, follow me, and again I pledge the honour of a Knight, that you shall return in safety.--Be quick in your determination--I must be gone.\"\n\n 'After some further hesitation, the Lindsey determined to follow the stranger, and to see the result of his extraordinary request; he, therefore, again drew forth his sword, and, taking up a lamp, bade the Knight lead on. The latter obeyed, and, opening the door of the chamber, they passed into the anti-room, where the Lindsey, surprised to find all his pages asleep, stopped, and, with hasty violence, was going to reprimand them for their carelessness, when the Knight waved his hand, and looked so expressively upon the Lindsey, that the latter restrained his resentment, and passed on.\n\n 'The Knight, having descended a stair-case, opened a secret door, which the Lindsey had believed was known only to himself, and, proceeding through several narrow and winding passages, came, at length, to a small gate, that opened beyond the walls of the castle. Meanwhile, the Lindsey followed in silence and amazement, on perceiving that these secret passages were so well known to a stranger, and felt inclined to return from an adventure, that appeared to partake of treachery, as well as danger. Then, considering that he was armed, and observing the courteous and noble air of his conductor, his courage returned, he blushed, that it had failed him for a moment, and he resolved to trace the mystery to its source.\n\n 'He now found himself on the heathy platform, before the great gates of his castle, where, on looking up, he perceived lights glimmering in the different casements of the guests, who were retiring to sleep; and, while he shivered in the blast, and looked on the dark and desolate scene around him, he thought of the comforts of his warm chamber, rendered cheerful by the blaze of wood, and felt, for a moment, the full contrast of his present situation.'\n\n [Here Frankie paused a moment, and, looking at his own fire, gave it a brightening stir.]\n\n 'The wind was strong, and the Lindsey watched his lamp with anxiety, expecting every moment to see it extinguished; but, though the flame wavered, it did not expire, and he still followed the stranger, who often sighed as he went, but did not speak.\n\n 'When they reached the borders of the forest, the Knight turned, and raised his head, as if he meant to address the Lindsey, but then, closing his lips in silence, he walked on.\n\n 'As they entered, beneath the dark and spreading boughs, the Lindsey, affected by the solemnity of the scene, hesitated whether to proceed, and demanded how much further they were to go. The Knight replied only by a gesture, and the Lindsey, with hesitating steps and a suspicious eye, followed through an obscure and intricate path, till, having proceeded a considerable way, he again demanded whither they were going, and refused to proceed unless he was informed.\n\n 'As he said this, he looked at his own sword, and at the Knight alternately, who shook his head, and whose dejected countenance disarmed the Lindsey, for a moment, of suspicion.\n\n '\"A little further is the place, whither I would lead you,\" said the stranger; \"no evil shall befall you--I have sworn it on the honour of a knight.\"\n\n 'The Lindsey, re-assured, again followed in silence, and they soon arrived at a deep recess of the forest, where the dark and lofty chesnuts entirely excluded the sky, and which was so overgrown with underwood, that they proceeded with difficulty. The Knight sighed deeply as he passed, and sometimes paused; and having, at length, reached a spot, where the trees crowded into a knot, he turned, and, with a terrific look, pointing to the ground, the Lindsey saw there the body of a man, stretched at its length, and weltering in blood; a ghastly wound was on the forehead, and death appeared already to have contracted the features.\n\n 'The Lindsey, on perceiving the spectacle, started in horror, looked at the Knight for explanation, and was then going to raise the body and examine if there were yet any remains of life; but the stranger, waving his hand, fixed upon him a look so earnest and mournful, as not only much surprised him, but made him desist.\n\n 'But, what were the Lindsey's emotions, when, on holding the lamp near the features of the corpse, he discovered the exact resemblance of the stranger his conductor, to whom he now looked up in astonishment and enquiry? As he gazed, he perceived the countenance of the Knight change, and begin to fade, till his whole form gradually vanished from his astonished sense! While the Lindsey stood, fixed to the spot, a voice was heard to utter these words:--'\n\n [Frankie started, and laid down the book, for he thought he heard a voice in the chamber, and he looked toward the bed, where, however, he saw only the dark curtains and the pall. He listened, scarcely daring to draw his breath, but heard only the distant roaring of the sea in the storm, and the blast, that rushed by the casements; when, concluding, that he had been deceived by its sighings, he took up his book to finish the story.]\n\n 'While the Lindsey stood, fixed to the spot, a voice was heard to utter these words:--*\n\n (* This repetition seems to be intentional. Frankie is picking up the thread.)\n\n\n 'The body of Sir Bevys of Lancaster, a noble knight of England, lies before you. He was, this night, waylaid and murdered, as he journeyed from the Holy City towards his native land. Respect the honour of knighthood and the law of humanity; inter the body in christian ground, and cause his murderers to be punished. As ye observe, or neglect this, shall peace and happiness, or war and misery, light upon you and your house for ever!'\n\n 'The Lindsey, when he recovered from the awe and astonishment, into which this adventure had thrown him, returned to his castle, whither he caused the body of Sir Bevys to be removed; and, on the following day, it was interred, with the honours of knighthood, in the chapel of the castle, attended by all the noble knights and ladies, who graced the court of Lindsey de Brunne.'\n\n Frankie, having finished this story, laid aside the book, for he felt drowsy, and, after putting more wood on the fire and taking another glass of wine, he reposed himself in the arm-chair on the hearth. In his dream he still beheld the chamber where he really was, and, once or twice, started from imperfect slumbers, imagining he saw a man's face, looking over the high back of his armchair. This idea had so strongly impressed him, that, when he raised his eyes, he almost expected to meet other eyes, fixed upon his own, and he quitted his seat and looked behind the chair, before he felt perfectly convinced, that no person was there.\n\n Thus closed the hour.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VII\n\n\n\n Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber; Thou hast no figures, nor no fantasies, Which busy care draws in the brains of men; Therefore thou sleep'st so sound. SHAKESPEARE\n\n The Judas, who had slept little during the night, rose early, and, anxious to speak with Frankie, went to the north apartment; but, the outer door having been fastened, on the preceding night, he was obliged to knock loudly for admittance. Neither the knocking, or his voice was heard; but, considering the distance of this door from the bed-room, and that Frankie, wearied with watching, had probably fallen into a deep sleep, the Judas was not surprised on receiving no answer, and, leaving the door, he went down to walk in his grounds.\n\n It was a gray autumnal morning. The sun, rising over Provence, gave only a feeble light, as his rays struggled through the vapours that ascended from the sea, and floated heavily over the wood-tops, which were now varied with many a mellow tint of autumn. The storm was passed, but the waves were yet violently agitated, and their course was traced by long lines of foam, while not a breeze fluttered in the sails of the vessels, near the shore, that were weighing anchor to depart. The still gloom of the hour was pleasing to the Judas, and he pursued his way through the woods, sunk in deep thought.\n\n Huw also rose at an early hour, and took her customary walk along the brow of the promontory, that overhung the Mediterranean. Her mind was now not occupied with the occurrences of the chateau, and Eimear was the subject of her mournful thoughts; whom she had not yet taught herself to consider with indifference, though her judgment constantly reproached her for the affection, that lingered in her heart, after her esteem for him was departed. Remembrance frequently gave her his parting look and the tones of his voice, when he had bade her a last farewel; and, some accidental associations now recalling these circumstances to her fancy, with peculiar energy, she shed bitter tears to the recollection.\n\n Having reached the watch-tower, she seated herself on the broken steps, and, in melancholy dejection, watched the waves, half hid in vapour, as they came rolling towards the shore, and threw up their light spray round the rocks below. Their hollow murmur and the obscuring mists, that came in wreaths up the cliffs, gave a solemnity to the scene, which was in harmony with the temper of her mind, and she sat, given up to the remembrance of past times, till this became too painful, and she abruptly quitted the place. On passing the little gate of the watch-tower, she observed letters, engraved on the stone postern, which she paused to examine, and, though they appeared to have been rudely cut with a pen-knife, the characters were familiar to her; at length, recognizing the hand-writing of Eimear, she read, with trembling anxiety the following lines, entitled\n\n SHIPWRECK\n\n 'Til solemn midnight!  On this lonely steep, Beneath this watch-tow'r's desolated wall, Where mystic shapes the wonderer appall, I rest; and view below the desert deep, As through tempestuous clouds the moon's cold light Gleams on the wave.  Viewless, the winds of night With loud mysterious force the billows sweep, And sullen roar the surges, far below. In the still pauses of the gust I hear The voice of spirits, rising sweet and slow, And oft among the clouds their forms appear. But hark! what shriek of death comes in the gale, And in the distant ray what glimmering sail Bends to the storm?--Now sinks the note of fear! Ah! wretched mariners!--no more shall day Unclose his cheering eye to light ye on your way!\n\n From these lines it appeared, that Eimear had visited the tower; that he had probably been here on the preceding night, for it was such an one as they described, and that he had left the building very lately, since it had not long been light, and without light it was impossible these letters could have been cut. It was thus even probable, that he might be yet in the gardens.\n\n As these reflections passed rapidly over the mind of Huw, they called up a variety of contending emotions, that almost overcame her spirits; but her first impulse was to avoid him, and, immediately leaving the tower, she returned, with hasty steps, towards the chateau. As she passed along, she remembered the music she had lately heard near the tower, with the figure, which had appeared, and, in this moment of agitation, she was inclined to believe, that she had then heard and seen Eimear; but other recollections soon convinced her of her error. On turning into a thicker part of the woods, she perceived a person, walking slowly in the gloom at some little distance, and, her mind engaged by the idea of him, she started and paused, imagining this to be Eimear. The person advanced with quicker steps, and, before she could recover recollection enough to avoid him, he spoke, and she then knew the voice of the Judas, who expressed some surprise, on finding her walking at so early an hour, and made a feeble effort to rally her on her love of solitude. But he soon perceived this to be more a subject of concern than of light laughter, and, changing his manner, affectionately expostulated with Huw, on thus indulging unavailing regret; who, though she acknowledged the justness of all he said, could not restrain her tears, while she did so, and he presently quitted the topic. Expressing surprise at not having yet heard from his friend, the Advocate at Avignon, in answer to the questions proposed to him, respecting the estates of the late Madame Lorcan, he, with friendly zeal, endeavoured to cheer Huw with hopes of establishing her claim to them; while she felt, that the estates could now contribute little to the happiness of a life, in which Eimear had no longer an interest.\n\n When they returned to the chateau, Huw retired to her apartment, and Judas De Blakely to the door of the north chambers. This was still fastened, but, being now determined to arouse Frankie, he renewed his calls more loudly than before, after which a total silence ensued, and the Judas, finding all his efforts to be heard ineffectual, at length began to fear, that some accident had befallen Frankie, whom terror of an imaginary being might have deprived of his senses. He, therefore, left the door with an intention of summoning his servants to force it open, some of whom he now heard moving in the lower part of the chateau.\n\n To the Judas's enquiries, whether they had seen or heard Frankie, they replied in affright, that not one of them had ventured on the north side of the chateau, since the preceding night.\n\n 'He sleeps soundly then,' said the Judas, 'and is at such a distance from the outer door, which is fastened, that to gain admittance to the chambers it will be necessary to force it. Bring an instrument, and follow me.'\n\n The servants stood mute and dejected, and it was not till nearly all the household were assembled, that the Judas's orders were obeyed. In the mean time, Elvira was telling of a door, that opened from a gallery, leading from the great stair-case into the last anti-room of the saloon, and, this being much nearer to the bed-chamber, it appeared probable, that Frankie might be easily awakened by an attempt to open it. Thither, therefore, the Judas went, but his voice was as ineffectual at this door as it had proved at the remoter one; and now, seriously interested for Frankie, he was himself going to strike upon the door with the instrument, when he observed its singular beauty, and with-held the blow. It appeared, on the first glance, to be of ebony, so dark and close was its grain and so high its polish; but it proved to be only of larch wood, of the growth of Provence, then famous for its forests of larch. The beauty of its polished hue and of its delicate carvings determined the Judas to spare this door, and he returned to that leading from the back stair-case, which being, at length, forced, he entered the first anti-room, followed by Larry and a few of the most courageous of his servants, the rest awaiting the event of the enquiry on the stairs and landing-place.\n\n All was silent in the chambers, through which the Judas passed, and, having reached the saloon, he called loudly upon Frankie; after which, still receiving no answer, he threw open the door of the bed-room, and entered.\n\n The profound stillness within confirmed his apprehensions for Frankie, for not even the breathings of a person in sleep were heard; and his uncertainty was not soon terminated, since the shutters being all closed, the chamber was too dark for any object to be distinguished in it.\n\n The Judas bade a servant open them, who, as he crossed the room to do so, stumbled over something, and fell to the floor, when his cry occasioned such panic among the few of his fellows, who had ventured thus far, that they instantly fled, and the Judas and Larry were left to finish the adventure.\n\n Larry then sprung across the room, and, opening a window-shutter, they perceived, that the man had fallen over a chair near the hearth, in which Frankie had been sitting;--for he sat there no longer, nor could any where be seen by the imperfect light, that was admitted into the apartment. The Judas, seriously alarmed, now opened other shutters, that he might be enabled to examine further, and, Frankie not yet appearing, he stood for a moment, suspended in astonishment and scarcely trusting his senses, till, his eyes glancing on the bed, he advanced to examine whether he was there asleep. No person, however, was in it, and he proceeded to the oriel, where every thing remained as on the preceding night, but Frankie was no where to be found.\n\n The Judas now checked his amazement, considering, that Frankie might have left the chambers, during the night, overcome by the terrors, which their lonely desolation and the recollected reports, concerning them, had inspired. Yet, if this had been the fact, the man would naturally have sought society, and his fellow servants had all declared they had not seen him; the door of the outer room also had been found fastened, with the key on the inside; it was impossible, therefore, for him to have passed through that, and all the outer doors of this suite were found, on examination, to be bolted and locked, with the keys also within them. The Judas, being then compelled to believe, that the lad had escaped through the casements, next examined them, but such as opened wide enough to admit the body of a man were found to be carefully secured either by iron bars, or by shutters, and no vestige appeared of any person having attempted to pass them; neither was it probable, that Frankie would have incurred the risque of breaking his neck, by leaping from a window, when he might have walked safely through a door.\n\n The Judas's amazement did not admit of words; but he returned once more to examine the bed-room, where was no appearance of disorder, except that occasioned by the late overthrow of the chair, near which had stood a small table, and on this Frankie's sword, his lamp, the book he had been reading, and the remnant of his flask of wine still remained. At the foot of the table, too, was the basket with some fragments of provision and wood.\n\n Larry and the servant now uttered their astonishment without reserve, and, though the Judas said little, there was a seriousness in his manner, that expressed much. It appeared, that Frankie must have quitted these rooms by some concealed passage, for the Judas could not believe, that any supernatural means had occasioned this event, yet, if there was any such passage, it seemed inexplicable why he should retreat through it, and it was equally surprising, that not even the smallest vestige should appear, by which his progress could be traced. In the rooms every thing remained as much in order as if he had just walked out by the common way.\n\n The Judas himself assisted in lifting the arras, with which the bed-chamber, saloon and one of the anti-rooms were hung, that he might discover if any door had been concealed behind it; but, after a laborious search, none was found, and he, at length, quitted the apartments, having secured the door of the last anti-chamber, the key of which he took into his own possession. He then gave orders, that strict search should be made for Frankie not only in the chateau, but in the neighbourhood, and, retiring with Larry to his closet, they remained there in conversation for a considerable time, and whatever was the subject of it, Larry from this hour lost much of his vivacity, and his manners were particularly grave and reserved, whenever the topic, which now agitated the Judas's family with wonder and alarm, was introduced.\n\n On the disappearing of Frankie, Lindsey St. Charlene seemed strengthened in all his former opinions concerning the probability of apparitions, though it was difficult to discover what connection there could possibly be between the two subjects, or to account for this effect otherwise than by supposing, that the mystery attending Frankie, by exciting awe and curiosity, reduced the mind to a state of sensibility, which rendered it more liable to the influence of superstition in general. It is, however, certain, that from this period the Lindsey and his adherents became more bigoted to their own systems than before, while the terrors of the Judas's servants increased to an excess, that occasioned many of them to quit the mansion immediately, and the rest remained only till others could be procured to supply their places.\n\n The most strenuous search after Frankie proved unsuccessful, and, after several days of indefatigable enquiry, poor Jarvis gave herself up to despair, and the other inhabitants of the chateau to amazement.\n\n Huw, whose mind had been deeply affected by the disastrous fate of the late Adele and with the mysterious connection, which she fancied had existed between her and St. Justina, was particularly impressed by the late extraordinary event, and much concerned for the loss of Frankie, whose integrity and faithful services claimed both her esteem and gratitude. She was now very desirous to return to the quiet retirement of her convent, but every hint of this was received with real sorrow by the Lady Jadyn, and affectionately set aside by the Judas, for whom she felt much of the respectful love and admiration of a daughter, and to whom, by Elvira's consent, she, at length, mentioned the appearance, which they had witnessed in the chamber of the deceased Adele. At any other period, he would have smiled at such a relation, and have believed, that its object had existed only in the distempered fancy of the relater; but he now attended to Huw with seriousness, and, when she concluded, requested of her a promise, that this occurrence should rest in silence. 'Whatever may be the cause and the import of these extraordinary occurrences,' added the Judas, 'time only can explain them. I shall keep a wary eye upon all that passes in the chateau, and shall pursue every possible means of discovering the fate of Frankie. Meanwhile, we must be prudent and be silent. I will myself watch in the north chambers, but of this we will say nothing, till the night arrives, when I purpose doing so.'\n\n The Judas then sent for Elvira, and required of her also a promise of silence, concerning what she had already, or might in future witness of an extraordinary nature; and this ancient servant now related to him the particulars of the Adele de Jovan's death, with some of which he appeared to be already acquainted, while by others he was evidently surprised and agitated. After listening to this narrative, the Judas retired to his closet, where he remained alone for several hours; and, when he again appeared, the solemnity of his manner surprised and alarmed Huw, but she gave no utterance to her thoughts.\n\n On the week following the disappearance of Frankie, all the Judas's guests took leave of him, except the Lindsey, his son Mons. St. Charlene, and Huw; the latter of whom was soon after embarrassed and distressed by the arrival of another visitor, Mons. Du Marian, which made her determine upon withdrawing to her convent immediately. The delight, that appeared in his countenance, when he met her, told that he brought back the same ardour of passion, which had formerly banished him from Chateau-le-Blanc. He was received with reserve by Huw, and with pleasure by the Judas, who presented him to her with a smile, that seemed intended to plead his cause, and who did not hope the less for his friend, from the embarrassment she betrayed.\n\n But M. Du Marian, with truer sympathy, seemed to understand her manner, and his countenance quickly lost its vivacity, and sunk into the languor of despondency.\n\n On the following day, however, he sought an opportunity of declaring the purport of his visit, and renewed his suit; a declaration, which was received with real concern by Huw, who endeavoured to lessen the pain she might inflict by a second rejection, with assurances of esteem and friendship; yet she left him in a state of mind, that claimed and excited her tenderest compassion; and, being more sensible than ever of the impropriety of remaining longer at the chateau, she immediately sought the Judas, and communicated to him her intention of returning to the convent.\n\n 'My dear Huw,' said he 'I observe, with extreme concern, the illusion you are encouraging--an illusion common to young and sensible minds. Your heart has received a severe shock; you believe you can never entirely recover it, and you will encourage this belief, till the habit of indulging sorrow will subdue the strength of your mind, and discolour your future views with melancholy and regret. Let me dissipate this illusion, and awaken you to a sense of your danger.'\n\n Huw smiled mournfully, 'I know what you would say, my dear sir,' said she, 'and am prepared to answer you. I feel, that my heart can never know a second affection; and that I must never hope even to recover its tranquillity--if I suffer myself to enter into a second engagement.'\n\n 'I know, that you feel all this,' replied the Judas; 'and I know, also, that time will overcome these feelings, unless you cherish them in solitude, and, pardon me, with romantic tenderness. Then, indeed, time will only confirm habit. I am particularly empowered to speak on this subject, and to sympathize in your sufferings,' added the Judas, with an air of solemnity, 'for I have known what it is to love, and to lament the object of my love. Yes,' continued he, while his eyes filled with tears, 'I have suffered!--but those times have passed away--long passed! and I can now look back upon them without emotion.'\n\n 'My dear sir,' said Huw, timidly, 'what mean those tears?--they speak, I fear, another language--they plead for me.'\n\n 'They are weak tears, for they are useless ones,' replied the Judas, drying them, 'I would have you superior to such weakness. These, however, are only faint traces of a grief, which, if it had not been opposed by long continued effort, might have led me to the verge of madness! Judge, then, whether I have not cause to warn you of an indulgence, which may produce so terrible an effect, and which must certainly, if not opposed, overcloud the years, that otherwise might be happy. M. Du Marian is a sensible and amiable man, who has long been tenderly attached to you; his family and fortune are unexceptionable;--after what I have said, it is unnecessary to add, that I should rejoice in your felicity, and that I think M. Du Marian would promote it. Do not weep, Huw,' continued the Judas, taking her hand, 'there IS happiness reserved for you.'\n\n He was silent a moment; and then added, in a firmer voice, 'I do not wish, that you should make a violent effort to overcome your feelings; all I, at present, ask, is, that you will check the thoughts, that would lead you to a remembrance of the past; that you will suffer your mind to be engaged by present objects; that you will allow yourself to believe it possible you may yet be happy; and that you will sometimes think with complacency of poor Du Marian, and not condemn him to the state of despondency, from which, my dear Huw, I am endeavouring to withdraw you.'\n\n 'Ah! my dear sir,' said Huw, while her tears still fell, 'do not suffer the benevolence of your wishes to mislead Mons. Du Marian with an expectation that I can ever accept his hand. If I understand my own heart, this never can be; your instruction I can obey in almost every other particular, than that of adopting a contrary belief.'\n\n 'Leave me to understand your heart,' replied the Judas, with a faint smile. 'If you pay me the compliment to be guided by my advice in other instances, I will pardon your incredulity, respecting your future conduct towards Mons. Du Marian. I will not even press you to remain longer at the chateau than your own satisfaction will permit; but though I forbear to oppose your present retirement, I shall urge the claims of friendship for your future visits.'\n\n Tears of gratitude mingled with those of tender regret, while Huw thanked the Judas for the many instances of friendship she had received from him; promised to be directed by his advice upon every subject but one, and assured him of the pleasure, with which she should, at some future period, accept the invitation of the Judasess and himself--If Mons. Du Marian was not at the chateau.\n\n The Judas smiled at this condition. 'Be it so,' said he, 'meanwhile the convent is so near the chateau, that my daughter and I shall often visit you; and if, sometimes, we should dare to bring you another visitor--will you forgive us?'\n\n Huw looked distressed, and remained silent.\n\n 'Well,' rejoined the Judas, 'I will pursue this subject no further, and must now entreat your forgiveness for having pressed it thus far. You will, however, do me the justice to believe, that I have been urged only by a sincere regard for your happiness, and that of my amiable friend Mons. Du Marian.'\n\n Huw, when she left the Judas, went to mention her intended departure to the Judasess, who opposed it with polite expressions of regret; after which, she sent a note to acquaint the lady abbess, that she should return to the convent; and thither she withdrew on the evening of the following day. M. Du Marian, in extreme regret, saw her depart, while the Judas endeavoured to cheer him with a hope, that Huw would sometimes regard him with a more favourable eye.\n\n She was pleased to find herself once more in the tranquil retirement of the convent, where she experienced a renewal of all the maternal kindness of the abbess, and of the sisterly attentions of the nuns. A report of the late extraordinary occurrence at the chateau had already reached them, and, after supper, on the evening of her arrival, it was the subject of conversation in the convent parlour, where she was requested to mention some particulars of that unaccountable event. Huw was guarded in her conversation on this subject, and briefly related a few circumstances concerning Frankie, whose disappearance, her auditors almost unanimously agreed, had been effected by supernatural means.\n\n 'A belief had so long prevailed,' said a nun, who was called sister Frances, 'that the chateau was haunted, that I was surprised, when I heard the Judas had the temerity to inhabit it. Its former possessor, I fear, had some deed of conscience to atone for; let us hope, that the virtues of its present owner will preserve him from the punishment due to the errors of the last, if, indeed, he was a criminal.'\n\n 'Of what crime, then, was he suspected?' said a Abe Feydeau, a boarder at the convent.\n\n 'Let us pray for his soul!' said a nun, who had till now sat in silent attention. 'If he was criminal, his punishment in this world was sufficient.'\n\n There was a mixture of wildness and solemnity in her manner of delivering this, which struck Huw exceedingly; but Abe repeated her question, without noticing the solemn eagerness of the nun.\n\n 'I dare not presume to say what was his crime,' replied sister Frances; 'but I have heard many reports of an extraordinary nature, respecting the late Amari de Jovan, and among others, that, soon after the death of his lady, he quitted Chateau-le-Blanc, and never afterwards returned to it. I was not here at the time, so I can only mention it from report, and so many years have passed since the Adele died, that few of our sisterhood, I believe, can do more.'\n\n 'But I can,' said the nun, who had before spoke, and whom they called sister Willard.\n\n 'You then,' said Abe Feydeau, 'are possibly acquainted with circumstances, that enable you to judge, whether he was criminal or not, and what was the crime imputed to him.'\n\n 'I am,' replied the nun; 'but who shall dare to scrutinize my thoughts--who shall dare to pluck out my opinion? God only is his judge, and to that judge he is gone!'\n\n Huw looked with surprise at sister Frances, who returned her a significant glance.\n\n 'I only requested your opinion,' said Abe Feydeau, mildly; 'if the subject is displeasing to you, I will drop it.'\n\n 'Displeasing!'--said the nun, with emphasis.--'We are idle talkers; we do not weigh the meaning of the words we use; DISPLEASING is a poor word. I will go pray.' As she said this she rose from her seat, and with a profound sigh quitted the room.\n\n 'What can be the meaning of this?' said Huw, when she was gone.\n\n 'It is nothing extraordinary,' replied sister Frances, 'she is often thus; but she had no meaning in what she says. Her intellects are at times deranged. Did you never see her thus before?'\n\n 'Never,' said Huw. 'I have, indeed, sometimes, thought, that there was the melancholy of madness in her look, but never before perceived it in her speech. Poor soul, I will pray for her!'\n\n 'Your prayers then, my daughter, will unite with ours,' observed the lady abbess, 'she has need of them.'\n\n 'Dear lady,' said Abe Feydeau, addressing the abbess, 'what is your opinion of the late Amari? The strange circumstances, that have occurred at the chateau, have so much awakened my curiosity, that I shall be pardoned the question. What was his imputed crime, and what the punishment, to which sister Willard alluded?'\n\n 'We must be cautious of advancing our opinion,' said the abbess, with an air of reserve, mingled with solemnity, 'we must be cautious of advancing our opinion on so delicate a subject. I will not take upon me to pronounce, that the late Amari was criminal, or to say what was the crime of which he was suspected; but, concerning the punishment our daughter Willard hinted, I know of none he suffered. She probably alluded to the severe one, which an exasperated conscience can inflict. Beware, my children, of incurring so terrible a punishment--it is the purgatory of this life! The late Adele I knew well; she was a pattern to such as live in the world; nay, our sacred order need not have blushed to copy her virtues! Our holy convent received her mortal part; her heavenly spirit, I doubt not, ascended to its sanctuary!'\n\n As the abbess spoke this, the last bell of vespers struck up, and she rose. 'Let us go, my children,' said she, 'and intercede for the wretched; let us go and confess our sins, and endeavour to purify our souls for the heaven, to which SHE is gone!'\n\n Huw was affected by the solemnity of this exhortation, and, remembering her father, 'The heaven, to which HE, too, is gone!' said she, faintly, as she suppressed her sighs, and followed the abbess and the nuns to the chapel.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER VIII\n\n\n\n Be thou a spirit of health, or goblin damn'd, Bring with thee airs from heaven, or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked, or charitable,\n\n I will speak to thee. HAMLET\n\n Judas de Blakely, at length, received a letter from the advocate at Avignon, encouraging Huw to assert her claim to the estates of the late Madame Lorcan; and, about the same time, a messenger arrived from Pete Barnaby with intelligence, that made an appeal to the law on this subject unnecessary, since it appeared, that the only person, who could have opposed her claim, was now no more. A friend of Pete Barnaby, who resided at Venice, had sent him an account of the death of Lorcan who had been brought to trial with Susannah, as his supposed accomplice in the murder of the Venetian nobleman. Susannah was found guilty, condemned and executed upon the wheel, but, nothing being discovered to criminate Lorcan, and his colleagues, on this charge, they were all released, except Lorcan, who, being considered by the senate as a very dangerous person, was, for other reasons, ordered again into confinement, where, it was said, he had died in a doubtful and mysterious manner, and not without suspicion of having been poisoned. The authority, from which M. Barnaby had received this information, would not allow him to doubt its truth, and he told Huw, that she had now only to lay claim to the estates of her late aunt, to secure them, and added, that he would himself assist in the necessary forms of this business. The term, for which La Vallee had been let being now also nearly expired, he acquainted her with the circumstance, and advised her to take the road thither, through Tholouse, where he promised to meet her, and where it would be proper for her to take possession of the estates of the late Madame Lorcan; adding, that he would spare her any difficulties, that might occur on that occasion from the want of knowledge on the subject, and that he believed it would be necessary for her to be at Tholouse, in about three weeks from the present time.\n\n An increase of fortune seemed to have awakened this sudden kindness in M. Barnaby towards his niece, and it appeared, that he entertained more respect for the rich heiress, than he had ever felt compassion for the poor and unfriended orphan.\n\n The pleasure, with which she received this intelligence, was clouded when she considered, that he, for whose sake she had once regretted the want of fortune, was no longer worthy of sharing it with her; but, remembering the friendly admonition of the Judas, she checked this melancholy reflection, and endeavoured to feel only gratitude for the unexpected good, that now attended her; while it formed no inconsiderable part of her satisfaction to know, that La Vallee, her native home, which was endeared to her by it's having been the residence of her parents, would soon be restored to her possession. There she meant to fix her future residence, for, though it could not be compared with the chateau at Tholouse, either for extent, or magnificence, its pleasant scenes and the tender remembrances, that haunted them, had claims upon her heart, which she was not inclined to sacrifice to ostentation. She wrote immediately to thank M. Barnaby for the active interest he took in her concerns, and to say, that she would meet him at Tholouse at the appointed time.\n\n When Judas de Blakely, with Jadyn, came to the convent to give Huw the advice of the advocate, he was informed of the contents of M. Barnaby's letter, and gave her his sincere congratulations, on the occasion; but she observed, that, when the first expression of satisfaction had faded from his countenance, an unusual gravity succeeded, and she scarcely hesitated to enquire its cause.\n\n 'It has no new occasion,' replied the Judas; 'I am harassed and perplexed by the confusion, into which my family is thrown by their foolish superstition. Idle reports are floating round me, which I can neither admit to be true, or prove to be false; and I am, also, very anxious about the poor fellow, Frankie, concerning whom I have not been able to obtain information. Every part of the chateau and every part of the neighbourhood, too, has, I believe, been searched, and I know not what further can be done, since I have already offered large rewards for the discovery of him. The keys of the north apartment I have not suffered to be out of my possession, since he disappeared, and I mean to watch in those chambers, myself, this very night.'\n\n Huw, seriously alarmed for the Judas, united her entreaties with those of the Lady Jadyn, to dissuade him from his purpose.\n\n 'What should I fear?' said he. 'I have no faith in supernatural combats, and for human opposition I shall be prepared; nay, I will even promise not to watch alone.'\n\n 'But who, dear sir, will have courage enough to watch with you?' said Huw.\n\n 'My son,' replied the Judas. 'If I am not carried off in the night,' added he, smiling, 'you shall hear the result of my adventure, tomorrow.'\n\n The Judas and Lady Jadyn, shortly afterwards, took leave of Huw, and returned to the chateau, where he informed Larry of his intention, who, not without some secret reluctance, consented to be the partner of his watch; and, when the design was mentioned after supper, the Judasess was terrified, and the Lindsey, and M. Du Marian joined with her in entreating, that he would not tempt his fate, as Frankie had done. 'We know not,' added the Lindsey, 'the nature, or the power of an evil spirit; and that such a spirit haunts those chambers can now, I think, scarcely be doubted. Beware, my lord, how you provoke its vengeance, since it has already given us one terrible example of its malice. I allow it may be probable, that the spirits of the dead are permitted to return to the earth only on occasions of high import; but the present import may be your destruction.'\n\n The Judas could not forbear smiling; 'Do you think then, Lindsey,' said he, 'that my destruction is of sufficient importance to draw back to earth the soul of the departed? Alas! my good friend, there is no occasion for such means to accomplish the destruction of any individual. Wherever the mystery rests, I trust I shall, this night, be able to detect it. You know I am not superstitious.'\n\n 'I know that you are incredulous,' interrupted the Lindsey.\n\n 'Well, call it what you will, I mean to say, that, though you know I am free from superstition--if any thing supernatural has appeared, I doubt not it will appear to me, and if any strange event hangs over my house, or if any extraordinary transaction has formerly been connected with it, I shall probably be made acquainted with it. At all events I will invite discovery; and, that I may be equal to a mortal attack, which in good truth, my friend, is what I most expect, I shall take care to be well armed.'\n\n The Judas took leave of his family, for the night, with an assumed gaiety, which but ill concealed the anxiety, that depressed his spirits, and retired to the north apartments, accompanied by his son and followed by the Lindsey, M. Du Marian and some of the domestics, who all bade him good night at the outer door. In these chambers every thing appeared as when he had last been here; even in the bed-room no alteration was visible, where he lighted his own fire, for none of the domestics could be prevailed upon to venture thither. After carefully examining the chamber and the oriel, the Judas and Larry drew their chairs upon the hearth, set a bottle of wine and a lamp before them, laid their swords upon the table, and, stirring the wood into a blaze, began to converse on indifferent topics. But Larry was often silent and abstracted, and sometimes threw a glance of mingled awe and curiosity round the gloomy apartment; while the Judas gradually ceased to converse, and sat either lost in thought, or reading a volume of Tacitus, which he had brought to beguile the tediousness of the night.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER IX\n\n\n\n Give thy thoughts no tongue. SHAKESPEARE\n\n The Lindsey St. Charlene, whom anxiety for his friend had kept awake, rose early to enquire the event of the night, when, as he passed the Judas's closet, hearing steps within, he knocked at the door, and it was opened by his friend himself. Rejoicing to see him in safety, and curious to learn the occurrences of the night, he had not immediately leisure to observe the unusual gravity, that overspread the features of the Judas, whose reserved answers first occasioned him to notice it. The Judas, then smiling, endeavoured to treat the subject of his curiosity with levity, but the Lindsey was serious, and pursued his enquiries so closely, that the Judas, at length, resuming his gravity, said, 'Well, my friend, press the subject no further, I entreat you; and let me request also, that you will hereafter be silent upon any thing you may think extraordinary in my future conduct. I do not scruple to tell you, that I am unhappy, and that the watch of the last night has not assisted me to discover Frankie; upon every occurrence of the night you must excuse my reserve.'\n\n 'But where is Larry?' said the Lindsey, with surprise and disappointment at this denial.\n\n 'He is well in his own apartment,' replied the Judas. 'You will not question him on this topic, my friend, since you know my wish.'\n\n 'Certainly not,' said the Lindsey, somewhat chagrined, 'since it would be displeasing to you; but methinks, my friend, you might rely on my discretion, and drop this unusual reserve. However, you must allow me to suspect, that you have seen reason to become a convert to my system, and are no longer the incredulous knight you lately appeared to be.'\n\n 'Let us talk no more upon this subject,' said the Judas; 'you may be assured, that no ordinary circumstance has imposed this silence upon me towards a friend, whom I have called so for near thirty years; and my present reserve cannot make you question either my esteem, or the sincerity of my friendship.'\n\n 'I will not doubt either,' said the Lindsey, 'though you must allow me to express my surprise, at this silence.'\n\n 'To me I will allow it,' replied the Judas, 'but I earnestly entreat that you will forbear to notice it to my family, as well as every thing remarkable you may observe in my conduct towards them.'\n\n The Lindsey readily promised this, and, after conversing for some time on general topics, they descended to the breakfast-room, where the Judas met his family with a cheerful countenance, and evaded their enquiries by employing light ridicule, and assuming an air of uncommon gaiety, while he assured them, that they need not apprehend any evil from the north chambers, since Larry and himself had been permitted to return from them in safety.\n\n Larry, however, was less successful in disguising his feelings. From his countenance an expression of terror was not entirely faded; he was often silent and thoughtful, and when he attempted to laugh at the eager enquiries of Abe Kelly, it was evidently only an attempt.\n\n In the evening, the Judas called, as he had promised, at the convent, and Huw was surprised to perceive a mixture of playful ridicule and of reserve in his mention of the north apartment. Of what had occurred there, however, he said nothing, and, when she ventured to remind him of his promise to tell her the result of his enquiries, and to ask if he had received any proof, that those chambers were haunted, his look became solemn, for a moment, then, seeming to recollect himself, he smiled, and said, 'My dear Huw, do not suffer my lady abbess to infect your good understanding with these fancies; she will teach you to expect a ghost in every dark room. But believe me,' added he, with a profound sigh, 'the apparition of the dead comes not on light, or sportive errands, to terrify, or to surprise the timid.' He paused, and fell into a momentary thoughtfulness, and then added, 'We will say no more on this subject.'\n\n Soon after, he took leave, and, when Huw joined some of the nuns, she was surprised to find them acquainted with a circumstance, which she had carefully avoided to mention, and expressing their admiration of his intrepidity in having dared to pass a night in the apartment, whence Frankie had disappeared; for she had not considered with what rapidity a tale of wonder circulates. The nuns had acquired their information from peasants, who brought fruit to the monastery, and whose whole attention had been fixed, since the disappearance of Frankie, on what was passing in the castle.\n\n Huw listened in silence to the various opinions of the nuns, concerning the conduct of the Judas, most of whom condemned it as rash and presumptuous, affirming, that it was provoking the vengeance of an evil spirit, thus to intrude upon its haunts.\n\n Sable Frances contended, that the Judas had acted with the bravery of a virtuous mind. He knew himself guiltless of aught, that should provoke a good spirit, and did not fear the spells of an evil one, since he could claim the protection of an higher Power, of Him, who can command the wicked, and will protect the innocent.\n\n 'The guilty cannot claim that protection!' said sister Willard, 'let the Judas look to his conduct, that he do not forfeit his claim! Yet who is he, that shall dare to call himself innocent!--all earthly innocence is but comparative. Yet still how wide asunder are the extremes of guilt, and to what an horrible depth may we fall! Oh!'--\n\n The nun, as she concluded, uttered a shuddering sigh, that startled Huw, who, looking up, perceived the eyes of Willard fixed on hers, after which the sister rose, took her hand, gazed earnestly upon her countenance, for some moments, in silence, and then said,\n\n 'You are young--you are innocent! I mean you are yet innocent of any great crime!--But you have passions in your heart,--scorpions; they sleep now--beware how you awaken them!--they will sting you, even unto death!'\n\n Huw, affected by these words and by the solemnity, with which they were delivered, could not suppress her tears.\n\n 'Ah! is it so?' exclaimed Willard, her countenance softening from its sternness--'so young, and so unfortunate! We are sisters, then indeed. Yet, there is no bond of kindness among the guilty,' she added, while her eyes resumed their wild expression, 'no gentleness,--no peace, no hope! I knew them all once--my eyes could weep--but now they burn, for now, my soul is fixed, and fearless!--I lament no more!'\n\n 'Rather let us repent, and pray,' said another nun. 'We are taught to hope, that prayer and penitence will work our salvation. There is hope for all who repent!'\n\n 'Who repent and turn to the true faith,' observed sister Frances.\n\n 'For all but me!' replied Willard solemnly, who paused, and then abruptly added, 'My head burns, I believe I am not well. O! could I strike from my memory all former scenes--the figures, that rise up, like furies, to torment me!--I see them, when I sleep, and, when I am awake, they are still before my eyes! I see them now--now!'\n\n She stood in a fixed attitude of horror, her straining eyes moving slowly round the room, as if they followed something. One of the nuns gently took her hand, to lead her from the parlour. Willard became calm, drew her other hand across her eyes, looked again, and, sighing deeply, said, 'They are gone--they are gone! I am feverish, I know not what I say. I am thus, sometimes, but it will go off again, I shall soon be better. Was not that the vesper-bell?'\n\n 'No,' replied Frances, 'the evening service is passed. Let Margaret lead you to your cell.'\n\n 'You are right,' replied sister Willard, 'I shall be better there. Good night, my sisters, remember me in your orisons.'\n\n When they had withdrawn, Frances, observing Huw's emotion, said, 'Do not be alarmed, our sister is often thus deranged, though I have not lately seen her so frantic; her usual mood is melancholy. This fit has been coming on, for several days; seclusion and the customary treatment will restore her.'\n\n 'But how rationally she conversed, at first!' observed Huw, 'her ideas followed each other in perfect order.'\n\n 'Yes,' replied the nun, 'this is nothing new; nay, I have sometimes known her argue not only with method, but with acuteness, and then, in a moment, start off into madness.'\n\n 'Her conscience seems afflicted,' said Huw, 'did you ever hear what circumstance reduced her to this deplorable condition?'\n\n 'I have,' replied the nun, who said no more till Huw repeated the question, when she added in a low voice, and looking significantly towards the other boarders, 'I cannot tell you now, but, if you think it worth your while, come to my cell, to-night, when our sisterhood are at rest, and you shall hear more; but remember we rise to midnight prayers, and come either before, or after midnight.'\n\n Huw promised to remember, and, the abbess soon after appearing, they spoke no more of the unhappy nun.\n\n The Judas meanwhile, on his return home, had found M. Du Marian in one of those fits of despondency, which his attachment to Huw frequently occasioned him, an attachment, that had subsisted too long to be easily subdued, and which had already outlived the opposition of his friends. M. Du Marian had first seen Huw in Gascony, during the lifetime of his parent, who, on discovering his son's partiality for Abe St. Justina, his inferior in point of fortune, forbade him to declare it to her family, or to think of her more. During the life of his father, he had observed the first command, but had found it impracticable to obey the second, and had, sometimes, soothed his passion by visiting her favourite haunts, among which was the fishing-house, where, once or twice, he addressed her in verse, concealing his name, in obedience to the promise he had given his father. There too he played the pathetic air, to which she had listened with such surprise and admiration; and there he found the miniature, that had since cherished a passion fatal to his repose. During his expedition into Italy, his father died; but he received his liberty at a moment, when he was the least enabled to profit by it, since the object, that rendered it most valuable, was no longer within the reach of his vows. By what accident he discovered Huw, and assisted to release her from a terrible imprisonment, has already appeared, and also the unavailing hope, with which he then encouraged his love, and the fruitless efforts, that he had since made to overcome it.\n\n The Judas still endeavoured, with friendly zeal, to sooth him with a belief, that patience, perseverance and prudence would finally obtain for him happiness and Huw: 'Time,' said he, 'will wear away the melancholy impression, which disappointment has left on her mind, and she will be sensible of your merit. Your services have already awakened her gratitude, and your sufferings her pity; and trust me, my friend, in a heart so sensible as hers, gratitude and pity lead to love. When her imagination is rescued from its present delusion, she will readily accept the homage of a mind like yours.'\n\n Du Marian sighed, while he listened to these words; and, endeavouring to hope what his friend believed, he willingly yielded to an invitation to prolong his visit at the chateau, which we now leave for the monastery of St. Claire.\n\n When the nuns had retired to rest, Huw stole to her appointment with sister Frances, whom she found in her cell, engaged in prayer, before a little table, where appeared the image she was addressing, and, above, the dim lamp that gave light to the place. Turning her eyes, as the door opened, she beckoned to Huw to come in, who, having done so, seated herself in silence beside the nun's little mattress of straw, till her orisons should conclude. The latter soon rose from her knees, and, taking down the lamp and placing it on the table, Huw perceived there a human scull and bones, lying beside an hour-glass; but the nun, without observing her emotion, sat down on the mattress by her, saying, 'Your curiosity, sister, has made you punctual, but you have nothing remarkable to hear in the history of poor Willard, of whom I avoided to speak in the presence of my lay-sisters, only because I would not publish her crime to them.'\n\n 'I shall consider your confidence in me as a favour,' said Huw, 'and will not misuse it.'\n\n 'Sable Willard,' resumed the nun, 'is of a noble family, as the dignity of her air must already have informed you, but I will not dishonour their name so much as to reveal it. Love was the occasion of her crime and of her madness. She was beloved by a gentleman of inferior fortune, and her father, as I have heard, bestowing her on a nobleman, whom she disliked, an ill-governed passion proved her destruction.--Every obligation of virtue and of duty was forgotten, and she prophaned her marriage vows; but her guilt was soon detected, and she would have fallen a sacrifice to the vengeance of her husband, had not her father contrived to convey her from his power. By what means he did this, I never could learn; but he secreted her in this convent, where he afterwards prevailed with her to take the veil, while a report was circulated in the world, that she was dead, and the father, to save his daughter, assisted the rumour, and employed such means as induced her husband to believe she had become a victim to his jealousy. You look surprised,' added the nun, observing Huw's countenance; 'I allow the story is uncommon, but not, I believe, without a parallel.'\n\n 'Pray proceed,' said Huw, 'I am interested.'\n\n 'The story is already told,' resumed the nun, 'I have only to mention, that the long struggle, which Willard suffered, between love, remorse and a sense of the duties she had taken upon herself in becoming of our order, at length unsettled her reason. At first, she was frantic and melancholy by quick alternatives; then, she sunk into a deep and settled melancholy, which still, however, has, at times, been interrupted by fits of wildness, and, of late, these have again been frequent.'\n\n Huw was affected by the history of the sister, some parts of whose story brought to her remembrance that of the Adele de Jovan, who had also been compelled by her father to forsake the object of her affections, for a nobleman of his choice; but, from what Elvira had related, there appeared no reason to suppose, that she had escaped the vengeance of a jealous husband, or to doubt for a moment the innocence of her conduct. But Huw, while she sighed over the misery of the nun, could not forbear shedding a few tears to the misfortunes of the Adele; and, when she returned to the mention of sister Willard, she asked Frances if she remembered her in her youth, and whether she was then beautiful.\n\n 'I was not here at the time, when she took the vows,' replied Frances, 'which is so long ago, that few of the present sisterhood, I believe, were witnesses of the ceremony; nay, ever our lady mother did not then preside over the convent: but I can remember, when sister Willard was a very beautiful woman. She retains that air of high rank, which always distinguished her, but her beauty, you must perceive, is fled; I can scarcely discover even a vestige of the loveliness, that once animated her features.'\n\n 'It is strange,' said Huw, 'but there are moments, when her countenance has appeared familiar to my memory! You will think me fanciful, and I think myself so, for I certainly never saw sister Willard, before I came to this convent, and I must, therefore, have seen some person, whom she strongly resembles, though of this I have no recollection.'\n\n 'You have been interested by the deep melancholy of her countenance,' said Frances, 'and its impression has probably deluded your imagination; for I might as reasonably think I perceive a likeness between you and Willard, as you, that you have seen her any where but in this convent, since this has been her place of refuge, for nearly as many years as make your age.'\n\n 'Indeed!' said Huw.\n\n 'Yes,' rejoined Frances, 'and why does that circumstance excite your surprise?'\n\n Huw did not appear to notice this question, but remained thoughtful, for a few moments, and then said, 'It was about that same period that the Adele de Jovan expired.'\n\n 'That is an odd remark,' said Frances.\n\n Huw, recalled from her reverie, smiled, and gave the conversation another turn, but it soon came back to the subject of the unhappy nun, and Huw remained in the cell of sister Frances, till the mid-night bell aroused her; when, apologizing for having interrupted the sister's repose, till this late hour, they quitted the cell together. Huw returned to her chamber, and the nun, bearing a glimmering taper, went to her devotion in the chapel.\n\n Several days followed, during which Huw saw neither the Judas, or any of his family; and, when, at length, he appeared, she remarked, with concern, that his air was unusually disturbed.\n\n 'My spirits are harassed,' said he, in answer to her anxious enquiries, 'and I mean to change my residence, for a little while, an experiment, which, I hope, will restore my mind to its usual tranquillity. My daughter and myself will accompany the Lindsey St. Charlene to his chateau. It lies in a valley of the Pyrenees, that opens towards Gascony, and I have been thinking, Huw, that, when you set out for La Vallee, we may go part of the way together; it would be a satisfaction to me to guard you towards your home.'\n\n She thanked the Judas for his friendly consideration, and lamented, that the necessity for her going first to Tholouse would render this plan impracticable. 'But, when you are at the Lindsey's residence,' she added, 'you will be only a short journey from La Vallee, and I think, sir, you will not leave the country without visiting me; it is unnecessary to say with what pleasure I should receive you and the Lady Jadyn.'\n\n 'I do not doubt it,' replied the Judas, 'and I will not deny myself and Jadyn the pleasure of visiting you, if your affairs should allow you to be at La Vallee, about the time when we can meet you there.'\n\n When Huw said that she should hope to see the Judasess also, she was not sorry to learn that this lady was going, accompanied by Abe Kelly, to pay a visit, for a few weeks, to a family in lower Languedoc.\n\n The Judas, after some further conversation on his intended journey and on the arrangement of Huw's, took leave; and many days did not succeed this visit, before a second letter from M. Barnaby informed her, that he was then at Tholouse, that La Vallee was at liberty, and that he wished her to set off for the former place, where he awaited her arrival, with all possible dispatch, since his own affairs pressed him to return to Gascony. Huw did not hesitate to obey him, and, having taken an affecting leave of the Judas's family, in which M. Du Marian was still included, and of her friends at the convent, she set out for Tholouse, attended by the unhappy Jarvis, and guarded by a steady servant of the Judas.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER X\n\n\n\n Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain, Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain: Awake but one, and lo! what myriads rise! Each stamps its image as the other flies! PLEASURES OF MEMORY\n\n Huw pursued her journey, without any accident, along the plains of Languedoc towards the north-west; and, on this her return to Tholouse, which she had last left with Madame Lorcan, she thought much on the melancholy fate of her aunt, who, but for her own imprudence, might now have been living in happiness there! Lorcan, too, often rose to her fancy, such as she had seen him in his days of triumph, bold, spirited and commanding; such also as she had since beheld him in his days of vengeance; and now, only a few short months had passed--and he had no longer the power, or the will to afflict;--he had become a clod of earth, and his life was vanished like a shadow! Huw could have wept at his fate, had she not remembered his crimes; for that of her unfortunate aunt she did weep, and all sense of her errors was overcome by the recollection of her misfortunes.\n\n Other thoughts and other emotions succeeded, as Huw drew near the well-known scenes of her early love, and considered, that Eimear was lost to her and to himself, for ever. At length, she came to the brow of the hill, whence, on her departure for Italy, she had given a farewell look to this beloved landscape, amongst whose woods and fields she had so often walked with Eimear, and where he was then to inhabit, when she would be far, far away! She saw, once more, that chain of the Pyrenees, which overlooked La Vallee, rising, like faint clouds, on the horizon. 'There, too, is Gascony, extended at their feet!' said she, 'O my father,--my mother! And there, too, is the Garonne!' she added, drying the tears, that obscured her sight,--'and Tholouse, and my aunt's mansion--and the groves in her garden!--O my friends! are ye all lost to me--must I never, never see ye more!' Tears rushed again to her eyes, and she continued to weep, till an abrupt turn in the road had nearly occasioned the carriage to overset, when, looking up, she perceived another part of the well-known scene around Tholouse, and all the reflections and anticipations, which she had suffered, at the moment, when she bade it last adieu, came with recollected force to her heart. She remembered how anxiously she had looked forward to the futurity, which was to decide her happiness concerning Eimear, and what depressing fears had assailed her; the very words she had uttered, as she withdrew her last look from the prospect, came to her memory. 'Could I but be certain,' she had then said, 'that I should ever return, and that Eimear would still live for me--I should go in peace!'\n\n Now, that futurity, so anxiously anticipated, was arrived, she was returned--but what a dreary blank appeared!--Eimear no longer lived for her! She had no longer even the melancholy satisfaction of contemplating his image in her heart, for he was no longer the same Eimear she had cherished there--the solace of many a mournful hour, the animating friend, that had enabled her to bear up against the oppression of Lorcan--the distant hope, that had beamed over her gloomy prospect! On perceiving this beloved idea to be an illusion of her own creation, Eimear seemed to be annihilated, and her soul sickened at the blank, that remained. His marriage with a rival, even his death, she thought she could have endured with more fortitude, than this discovery; for then, amidst all her grief, she could have looked in secret upon the image of goodness, which her fancy had drawn of him, and comfort would have mingled with her suffering!\n\n Drying her tears, she looked, once more, upon the landscape, which had excited them, and perceived, that she was passing the very bank, where she had taken leave of Eimear, on the morning of her departure from Tholouse, and she now saw him, through her returning tears, such as he had appeared, when she looked from the carriage to give him a last adieu--saw him leaning mournfully against the high trees, and remembered the fixed look of mingled tenderness and anguish, with which he had then regarded her. This recollection was too much for her heart, and she sunk back in the carriage, nor once looked up, till it stopped at the gates of what was now her own mansion.\n\n These being opened, and by the servant, to whose care the chateau had been entrusted, the carriage drove into the court, where, alighting, she hastily passed through the great hall, now silent and solitary, to a large oak parlour, the common sitting room of the late Madame Lorcan, where, instead of being received by M. Barnaby, she found a letter from him, informing her that business of consequence had obliged him to leave Tholouse two days before. Huw was, upon the whole, not sorry to be spared his presence, since his abrupt departure appeared to indicate the same indifference, with which he had formerly regarded her. This letter informed her, also, of the progress he had made in the settlement of her affairs, and concluded with directions, concerning the forms of some business, which remained for her to transact. But M. Barnaby's unkindness did not long occupy her thoughts, which returned the remembrance of the persons she had been accustomed to see in this mansion, and chiefly of the ill-guided and unfortunate Madame Lorcan. In the room, where she now sat, she had breakfasted with her on the morning of their departure for Italy; and the view of it brought most forcibly to her recollection all she had herself suffered, at that time, and the many gay expectations, which her aunt had formed, respecting the journey before her. While Huw's mind was thus engaged, her eyes wandered unconsciously to a large window, that looked upon the garden, and here new memorials of the past spoke to her heart, for she saw extended before her the very avenue, in which she had parted with Eimear, on the eve of her journey; and all the anxiety, the tender interest he had shewn, concerning her future happiness, his earnest remonstrances against her committing herself to the power of Lorcan, and the truth of his affection, came afresh to her memory. At this moment, it appeared almost impossible, that Eimear could have become unworthy of her regard, and she doubted all that she had lately heard to his disadvantage, and even his own words, which had confirmed Judas De Blakely's report of him. Overcome by the recollections, which the view of this avenue occasioned, she turned abruptly from the window, and sunk into a chair beside it, where she sat, given up to grief, till the entrance of Jarvis, with coffee, aroused her.\n\n 'Dear madam, how melancholy this place looks now,' said Jarvis, 'to what it used to do! It is dismal coming home, when there is nobody to welcome one!'\n\n This was not the moment, in which Huw could bear the remark; her tears fell again, and, as soon as she had taken the coffee, she retired to her apartment, where she endeavoured to repose her fatigued spirits. But busy memory would still supply her with the visions of former times: she saw Eimear interesting and benevolent, as he had been wont to appear in the days of their early love, and, amidst the scenes, where she had believed that they should sometimes pass their years together!--but, at length, sleep closed these afflicting scenes from her view.\n\n On the following morning, serious occupation recovered her from such melancholy reflections; for, being desirous of quitting Tholouse, and of hastening on to La Vallee, she made some enquiries into the condition of the estate, and immediately dispatched a part of the necessary business concerning it, according to the directions of Mons. Barnaby. It required a strong effort to abstract her thoughts from other interests sufficiently to attend to this, but she was rewarded for her exertions by again experiencing, that employment is the surest antidote to sorrow.\n\n This day was devoted entirely to business; and, among other concerns, she employed means to learn the situation of all her poor tenants, that she might relieve their wants, or confirm their comforts.\n\n In the evening, her spirits were so much strengthened, that she thought she could bear to visit the gardens, where she had so often walked with Eimear; and, knowing, that, if she delayed to do so, their scenes would only affect her the more, whenever they should be viewed, she took advantage of the present state of her mind, and entered them.\n\n Passing hastily the gate leading from the court into the gardens, she hurried up the great avenue, scarcely permitting her memory to dwell for a moment on the circumstance of her having here parted with Eimear, and soon quitted this for other walks less interesting to her heart. These brought her, at length, to the flight of steps, that led from the lower garden to the terrace, on seeing which, she became agitated, and hesitated whether to ascend, but, her resolution returning, she proceeded.\n\n 'Ah!' said Huw, as she ascended, 'these are the same high trees, that used to wave over the terrace, and these the same flowery thickets--the liburnum, the wild rose, and the cerinthe--which were wont to grow beneath them! Ah! and there, too, on that bank, are the very plants, which Eimear so carefully reared!--O, when last I saw them!'--she checked the thought, but could not restrain her tears, and, after walking slowly on for a few moments, her agitation, upon the view of this well-known scene, increased so much, that she was obliged to stop, and lean upon the wall of the terrace. It was a mild, and beautiful evening. The sun was setting over the extensive landscape, to which his beams, sloping from beneath a dark cloud, that overhung the west, gave rich and partial colouring, and touched the tufted summits of the groves, that rose from the garden below, with a yellow gleam. Huw and Eimear had often admired together this scene, at the same hour; and it was exactly on this spot, that, on the night preceding her departure for Italy, she had listened to his remonstrances against the journey, and to the pleadings of passionate affection. Some observations, which she made on the landscape, brought this to her remembrance, and with it all the minute particulars of that conversation;--the alarming doubts he had expressed concerning Lorcan, doubts, which had since been fatally confirmed; the reasons and entreaties he had employed to prevail with her to consent to an immediate marriage; the tenderness of his love, the paroxysms of this grief, and the conviction that he had repeatedly expressed, that they should never meet again in happiness! All these circumstances rose afresh to her mind, and awakened the various emotions she had then suffered. Her tenderness for Eimear became as powerful as in the moments, when she thought, that she was parting with him and happiness together, and when the strength of her mind had enabled her to triumph over present suffering, rather than to deserve the reproach of her conscience by engaging in a clandestine marriage.--'Alas!' said Huw, as these recollections came to her mind, 'and what have I gained by the fortitude I then practised?--am I happy now?--He said, we should meet no more in happiness; but, O! he little thought his own misconduct would separate us, and lead to the very evil he then dreaded!'\n\n Her reflections increased her anguish, while she was compelled to acknowledge, that the fortitude she had formerly exerted, if it had not conducted her to happiness, had saved her from irretrievable misfortune--from Eimear himself! But in these moments she could not congratulate herself on the prudence, that had saved her; she could only lament, with bitterest anguish, the circumstances, which had conspired to betray Eimear into a course of life so different from that, which the virtues, the tastes, and the pursuits of his early years had promised; but she still loved him too well to believe, that his heart was even now depraved, though his conduct had been criminal. An observation, which had fallen from M. St. Justina more than once, now occurred to her. 'This young man,' said he, speaking of Eimear, 'has never been at Paris;' a remark, that had surprised her at the time it was uttered, but which she now understood, and she exclaimed sorrowfully, 'O Eimear! if such a friend as my father had been with you at Paris--your noble, ingenuous nature would not have fallen!'\n\n The sun was now set, and, recalling her thoughts from their melancholy subject, she continued her walk; for the pensive shade of twilight was pleasing to her, and the nightingales from the surrounding groves began to answer each other in the long-drawn, plaintive note, which always touched her heart; while all the fragrance of the flowery thickets, that bounded the terrace, was awakened by the cool evening air, which floated so lightly among their leaves, that they scarcely trembled as it passed.\n\n Huw came, at length, to the steps of the pavilion, that terminated the terrace, and where her last interview with Eimear, before her departure from Tholouse, had so unexpectedly taken place. The door was now shut, and she trembled, while she hesitated whether to open it; but her wish to see again a place, which had been the chief scene of her former happiness, at length overcoming her reluctance to encounter the painful regret it would renew, she entered. The room was obscured by a melancholy shade; but through the open lattices, darkened by the hanging foliage of the vines, appeared the dusky landscape, the Garonne reflecting the evening light, and the west still glowing. A chair was placed near one of the balconies, as if some person had been sitting there, but the other furniture of the pavilion remained exactly as usual, and Huw thought it looked as if it had not once been moved since she set out for Italy. The silent and deserted air of the place added solemnity to her emotions, for she heard only the low whisper of the breeze, as it shook the leaves of the vines, and the very faint murmur of the Garonne.\n\n She seated herself in a chair, near the lattice, and yielded to the sadness of her heart, while she recollected the circumstances of her parting interview with Eimear, on this spot. It was here too, that she had passed some of the happiest hours of her life with him, when her aunt favoured the connection, for here she had often sat and worked, while he conversed, or read; and she now well remembered with what discriminating judgment, with what tempered energy, he used to repeat some of the sublimest passages of their favourite authors; how often he would pause to admire with her their excellence, and with what tender delight he would listen to her remarks, and correct her taste.\n\n 'And is it possible,' said Huw, as these recollections returned--'is it possible, that a mind, so susceptible of whatever is grand and beautiful, could stoop to low pursuits, and be subdued by frivolous temptations?'\n\n She remembered how often she had seen the sudden tear start in his eye, and had heard his voice tremble with emotion, while he related any great or benevolent action, or repeated a sentiment of the same character. 'And such a mind,' said she, 'such a heart, were to be sacrificed to the habits of a great city!'\n\n These recollections becoming too painful to be endured, she abruptly left the pavilion, and, anxious to escape from the memorials of her departed happiness, returned towards the chateau. As she passed along the terrace, she perceived a person, walking, with a slow step, and a dejected air, under the trees, at some distance. The twilight, which was now deep, would not allow her to distinguish who it was, and she imagined it to be one of the servants, till, the sound of her steps seeming to reach him, he turned half round, and she thought she saw Eimear!\n\n Whoever it was, he instantly struck among the thickets on the left, and disappeared, while Huw, her eyes fixed on the place, whence he had vanished, and her frame trembling so excessively, that she could scarcely support herself, remained, for some moments, unable to quit the spot, and scarcely conscious of existence. With her recollection, her strength returned, and she hurried toward the house, where she did not venture to enquire who had been in the gardens, lest she should betray her emotion; and she sat down alone, endeavouring to recollect the figure, air and features of the person she had just seen. Her view of him, however, had been so transient, and the gloom had rendered it so imperfect, that she could remember nothing with exactness; yet the general appearance of his figure, and his abrupt departure, made her still believe, that this person was Eimear. Sometimes, indeed, she thought, that her fancy, which had been occupied by the idea of him, had suggested his image to her uncertain sight: but this conjecture was fleeting. If it was himself whom she had seen, she wondered much, that he should be at Tholouse, and more, how he had gained admittance into the garden; but as often as her impatience prompted her to enquire whether any stranger had been admitted, she was restrained by an unwillingness to betray her doubts; and the evening was passed in anxious conjecture, and in efforts to dismiss the subject from her thoughts. But, these endeavours were ineffectual, and a thousand inconsistent emotions assailed her, whenever she fancied that Eimear might be near her; now, she dreaded it to be true, and now she feared it to be false; and, while she constantly tried to persuade herself, that she wished the person, whom she had seen, might not be Eimear, her heart as constantly contradicted her reason.\n\n The following day was occupied by the visits of several neighbouring families, formerly intimate with Madame Lorcan, who came to condole with Huw on her death, to congratulate her upon the acquisition of these estates, and to enquire about Lorcan, and concerning the strange reports they had heard of her own situation; all which was done with the utmost decorum, and the visitors departed with as much composure as they had arrived.\n\n Huw was wearied by these formalities, and disgusted by the subservient manners of many persons, who had thought her scarcely worthy of common attention, while she was believed to be a dependant on Madame Lorcan.\n\n 'Surely,' said she, 'there is some magic in wealth, which can thus make persons pay their court to it, when it does not even benefit themselves. How strange it is, that a fool or a knave, with riches, should be treated with more respect by the world, than a good man, or a wise man in poverty!'\n\n It was evening, before she was left alone, and she then wished to have refreshed her spirits in the free air of her garden; but she feared to go thither, lest she should meet again the person, whom she had seen on the preceding night, and he should prove to be Eimear. The suspense and anxiety she suffered, on this subject, she found all her efforts unable to controul, and her secret wish to see Eimear once more, though unseen by him, powerfully prompted her to go, but prudence and a delicate pride restrained her, and she determined to avoid the possibility of throwing herself in his way, by forbearing to visit the gardens, for several days.\n\n When, after near a week, she again ventured thither, she made Jarvis her companion, and confined her walk to the lower grounds, but often started as the leaves rustled in the breeze, imagining, that some person was among the thickets; and, at the turn of every alley, she looked forward with apprehensive expectation. She pursued her walk thoughtfully and silently, for her agitation would not suffer her to converse with Jarvis, to whom, however, thought and silence were so intolerable, that she did not scruple at length to talk to her mistress.\n\n 'Dear madam,' said she, 'why do you start so? one would think you knew what has happened.'\n\n 'What has happened?' said Huw, in a faltering voice, and trying to command her emotion.\n\n 'The night before last, you know, madam'--\n\n 'I know nothing, Jarvis,' replied her lady in a more hurried voice.\n\n 'The night before last, madam, there was a robber in the garden.'\n\n 'A robber!' said Huw, in an eager, yet doubting tone.\n\n 'I suppose he was a robber, madam. What else could he be?'\n\n 'Where did you see him, Jarvis?' rejoined Huw, looking round her, and turning back towards the chateau.\n\n 'It was not I that saw him, madam, it was Jean the gardener. It was twelve o'clock at night, and, as he was coming across the court to go the back way into the house, what should he see--but somebody walking in the avenue, that fronts the garden gate! So, with that, Jean guessed how it was, and he went into the house for his gun.'\n\n 'His gun!' exclaimed Huw.\n\n 'Yes, madam, his gun; and then he came out into the court to watch him. Presently, he sees him come slowly down the avenue, and lean over the garden gate, and look up at the house for a long time; and I warrant he examined it well, and settled what window he should break in at.'\n\n 'But the gun,' said Huw--'the gun!'\n\n 'Yes, madam, all in good time. Presently, Jean says, the robber opened the gate, and was coming into the court, and then he thought proper to ask him his business: so he called out again, and bade him say who he was, and what he wanted. But the man would do neither; but turned upon his heel, and passed into the garden again. Jean knew then well enough how it was, and so he fired after him.'\n\n 'Fired!' exclaimed Huw.\n\n 'Yes, madam, fired off his gun; but, Holy Virgin! what makes you look so pale, madam? The man was not killed,--I dare say; but if he was, his comrades carried him off: for, when Jean went in the morning, to look for the body, it was gone, and nothing to be seen but a track of blood on the ground. Jean followed it, that he might find out where the man got into the garden, but it was lost in the grass, and'--\n\n Jarvis was interrupted: for Huw's spirits died away, and she would have fallen to the ground, if the girl had not caught her, and supported her to a bench, close to them.\n\n When, after a long absence, her senses returned, Huw desired to be led to her apartment; and, though she trembled with anxiety to enquire further on the subject of her alarm, she found herself too ill at present, to dare the intelligence which it was possible she might receive of Eimear. Having dismissed Jarvis, that she might weep and think at liberty, she endeavoured to recollect the exact air of the person, whom she had seen on the terrace, and still her fancy gave her the figure of Eimear. She had, indeed, scarcely a doubt, that it was he whom she had seen, and at whom the gardener had fired: for the manner of the latter person, as described by Jarvis, was not that of a robber; nor did it appear probable, that a robber would have come alone, to break into a house so spacious as this.\n\n When Huw thought herself sufficiently recovered, to listen to what Jean might have to relate, she sent for him; but he could inform her of no circumstance, that might lead to a knowledge of the person, who had been shot, or of the consequence of the wound; and, after severely reprimanding him, for having fired with bullets, and ordering diligent enquiry to be made in the neighbourhood for the discovery of the wounded person, she dismissed him, and herself remained in the same state of terrible suspense. All the tenderness she had ever felt for Eimear, was recalled by the sense of his danger; and the more she considered the subject, the more her conviction strengthened, that it was he, who had visited the gardens, for the purpose of soothing the misery of disappointed affection, amidst the scenes of his former happiness.\n\n 'Dear madam,' said Jarvis, when she returned, 'I never saw you so affected before! I dare say the man is not killed.'\n\n Huw shuddered, and lamented bitterly the rashness of the gardener in having fired.\n\n 'I knew you would be angry enough about that, madam, or I should have told you before; and he knew so too; for, says he, \"Jarvis, say nothing about this to my lady. She lies on the other side of the house, so did not hear the gun, perhaps; but she would be angry with me, if she knew, seeing there is blood. But then,\" says he, \"how is one to keep the garden clear, if one is afraid to fire at a robber, when one sees him?\"'\n\n 'No more of this,' said Huw, 'pray leave me.'\n\n Jarvis obeyed, and Huw returned to the agonizing considerations, that had assailed her before, but which she, at length, endeavoured to sooth by a new remark. If the stranger was Eimear, it was certain he had come alone, and it appeared, therefore, that he had been able to quit the gardens, without assistance; a circumstance which did not seem probable, had his wound been dangerous. With this consideration, she endeavoured to support herself, during the enquiries, that were making by her servants in the neighbourhood; but day after day came, and still closed in uncertainty, concerning this affair: and Huw, suffering in silence, at length, drooped, and sunk under the pressure of her anxiety. She was attacked by a slow fever, and when she yielded to the persuasion of Jarvis to send for medical advice, the physicians prescribed little beside air, gentle exercise and amusement: but how was this last to be obtained? She, however, endeavoured to abstract her thoughts from the subject of her anxiety, by employing them in promoting that happiness in others, which she had lost herself; and, when the evening was fine, she usually took an airing, including in her ride the cottages of some of her tenants, on whose condition she made such observations, as often enabled her, unasked, to fulfil their wishes.\n\n Her indisposition and the business she engaged in, relative to this estate, had already protracted her stay at Tholouse, beyond the period she had formerly fixed for her departure to La Vallee; and now she was unwilling to leave the only place, where it seemed possible, that certainty could be obtained on the subject of her distress. But the time was come, when her presence was necessary at La Vallee, a letter from the Lady Jadyn now informing her, that the Judas and herself, being then at the chateau of the Lindsey St. Charlene, purposed to visit her at La Vallee, on their way home, as soon as they should be informed of her arrival there. Jadyn added, that they made this visit, with the hope of inducing her to return with them to Chateau-le-Blanc.\n\n Huw, having replied to the letter of her friend, and said that she should be at La Vallee in a few days, made hasty preparations for the journey; and, in thus leaving Tholouse, endeavoured to support herself with a belief, that, if any fatal accident had happened to Eimear, she must in this interval have heard of it.\n\n On the evening before her departure, she went to take leave of the terrace and the pavilion. The day had been sultry, but a light shower, that fell just before sun-set, had cooled the air, and given that soft verdure to the woods and pastures, which is so refreshing to the eye; while the rain drops, still trembling on the shrubs, glittered in the last yellow gleam, that lighted up the scene, and the air was filled with fragrance, exhaled by the late shower, from herbs and flowers and from the earth itself. But the lovely prospect, which Huw beheld from the terrace, was no longer viewed by her with delight; she sighed deeply as her eye wandered over it, and her spirits were in a state of such dejection, that she could not think of her approaching return to La Vallee, without tears, and seemed to mourn again the death of her father, as if it had been an event of yesterday. Having reached the pavilion, she seated herself at the open lattice, and, while her eyes settled on the distant mountains, that overlooked Gascony, still gleaming on the horizon, though the sun had now left the plains below, 'Alas!' said she, 'I return to your long-lost scenes, but shall meet no more the parents, that were wont to render them delightful!--no more shall see the smile of welcome, or hear the well-known voice of fondness:--all will now be cold and silent in what was once my happy home.'\n\n Tears stole down her cheek, as the remembrance of what that home had been, returned to her; but, after indulging her sorrow for some time, she checked it, accusing herself of ingratitude in forgetting the friends, that she possessed, while she lamented those that were departed; and she, at length, left the pavilion and the terrace, without having observed a shadow of Eimear or of any other person.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XI\n\n\n\n Ah happy hills! ah pleasing shade! Ah fields belov'd in vain! Where once my careless childhood stray'd, A stranger yet to pain! I feel the gales, that from ye blow, A momentary bliss bestow, As waving fresh their gladsome wing, My weary soul they seem to sooth. GRAY\n\n On the following morning, Huw left Tholouse at an early hour, and reached La Vallee about sun-set. With the melancholy she experienced on the review of a place which had been the residence of her parents, and the scene of her earliest delight, was mingled, after the first shock had subsided, a tender and undescribable pleasure. For time had so far blunted the acuteness of her grief, that she now courted every scene, that awakened the memory of her friends; in every room, where she had been accustomed to see them, they almost seemed to live again; and she felt that La Vallee was still her happiest home. One of the first apartments she visited, was that, which had been her father's library, and here she seated herself in his arm-chair, and, while she contemplated, with tempered resignation, the picture of past times, which her memory gave, the tears she shed could scarcely be called those of grief.\n\n Soon after her arrival, she was surprised by a visit from the venerable M. Odalis, who came impatiently to welcome the daughter of his late respected neighbour, to her long-deserted home. Huw was comforted by the presence of an old friend, and they passed an interesting hour in conversing of former times, and in relating some of the circumstances, that had occurred to each, since they parted.\n\n The evening was so far advanced, when M. Odalis left Huw, that she could not visit the garden that night; but, on the following morning, she traced its long-regretted scenes with fond impatience; and, as she walked beneath the groves, which her father had planted, and where she had so often sauntered in affectionate conversation with him, his countenance, his smile, even the accents of his voice, returned with exactness to her fancy, and her heart melted to the tender recollections.\n\n This, too, was his favourite season of the year, at which they had often together admired the rich and variegated tints of these woods and the magical effect of autumnal lights upon the mountains; and now, the view of these circumstances made memory eloquent. As she wandered pensively on, she fancied the following address\n\n TO AUTUMN\n\n Sweet Autumn! how thy melancholy grace Steals on my heart, as through these shades I wind! Sooth'd by thy breathing sigh, I fondly trace Each lonely image of the pensive mind! Lov'd scenes, lov'd friends--long lost! around me rise, And wake the melting thought, the tender tear! That tear, that thought, which more than mirth I prize-- Sweet as the gradual tint, that paints thy year! Thy farewel smile, with fond regret, I view, Thy beaming lights, soft gliding o'er the woods; Thy distant landscape, touch'd with yellow hue While falls the lengthen'd gleam; thy winding floods, Now veil'd in shade, save where the skiff's white sails Swell to the breeze, and catch thy streaming ray. But now, e'en now!--the partial vision fails, And the wave smiles, as sweeps the cloud away! Emblem of life!--Thus checquer'd is its plan, Thus joy succeeds to grief--thus smiles the varied man!\n\n One of Huw's earliest enquiries, after her arrival at La Vallee, was concerning Saoirse, her father's old servant, whom it may be remembered that M. Barnaby had turned from the house when it was let, without any provision. Understanding that she lived in a cottage at no great distance, Huw walked thither, and, on approaching, was pleased to see, that her habitation was pleasantly situated on a green slope, sheltered by a tuft of oaks, and had an appearance of comfort and extreme neatness. She found the old woman within, picking vine-stalks, who, on perceiving her young mistress, was nearly overcome with joy.\n\n 'Ah! my dear young lady!' said she, 'I thought I should never see you again in this world, when I heard you was gone to that outlandish country. I have been hardly used, since you went; I little thought they would have turned me out of my old master's family in my old age!'\n\n Huw lamented the circumstance, and then assured her, that she would make her latter days comfortable, and expressed satisfaction, on seeing her in so pleasant an habitation.\n\n Saoirse thanked her with tears, adding, 'Yes, mademoiselle, it is a very comfortable home, thanks to the kind friend, who took me out of my distress, when you was too far off to help me, and placed me here! I little thought!--but no more of that--'\n\n 'And who was this kind friend?' said Huw: 'whoever it was, I shall consider him as mine also.'\n\n 'Ah, mademoiselle! that friend forbad me to blazon the good deed--I must not say, who it was. But how you are altered since I saw you last! You look so pale now, and so thin, too; but then, there is my old master's smile! Yes, that will never leave you, any more than the goodness, that used to make him smile. Alas-a-day! the poor lost a friend indeed, when he died!'\n\n Huw was affected by this mention of her father, which Saoirse observing, changed the subject. 'I heard, mademoiselle,' said she, 'that Madame Holly married a foreign gentleman, after all, and took you abroad; how does she do?'\n\n Huw now mentioned her death. 'Alas!' said Saoirse, 'if she had not been my master's sister, I should never have loved her; she was always so cross. But how does that dear young gentleman do, M. Eimear? he was an handsome youth, and a good one; is he well, mademoiselle?'\n\n Huw was much agitated.\n\n 'A blessing on him!' continued Saoirse. 'Ah, my dear young lady, you need not look so shy; I know all about it. Do you think I do not know, that he loves you? Why, when you was away, mademoiselle, he used to come to the chateau and walk about it, so disconsolate! He would go into every room in the lower part of the house, and, sometimes, he would sit himself down in a chair, with his arms across, and his eyes on the floor, and there he would sit, and think, and think, for the hour together. He used to be very fond of the south parlour, because I told him it used to be yours; and there he would stay, looking at the pictures, which I said you drew, and playing upon your lute, that hung up by the window, and reading in your books, till sunset, and then he must go back to his brother's chateau. And then--'\n\n 'It is enough, Saoirse,' said Huw.--'How long have you lived in this cottage--and how can I serve you? Will you remain here, or return and live with me?'\n\n 'Nay, mademoiselle,' said Saoirse, 'do not be so shy to your poor old servant. I am sure it is no disgrace to like such a good young gentleman.'\n\n A deep sigh escaped from Huw.\n\n 'Ah! how he did love to talk of you! I loved him for that. Nay, for that matter, he liked to hear me talk, for he did not say much himself. But I soon found out what he came to the chateau about. Then, he would go into the garden, and down to the terrace, and sit under that great tree there, for the day together, with one of your books in his hand; but he did not read much, I fancy; for one day I happened to go that way, and I heard somebody talking. Who can be here? says I: I am sure I let nobody into the garden, but the Alanna. So I walked softly, to see who it could be; and behold! it was the Alanna himself, talking to himself about you. And he repeated your name, and sighed so! and said he had lost you for ever, for that you would never return for him. I thought he was out in his reckoning there, but I said nothing, and stole away.'\n\n 'No more of this trifling,' said Huw, awakening from her reverie: 'it displeases me.'\n\n 'But, when M. Barnaby let the chateau, I thought it would have broke the Alanna's heart.'\n\n 'Saoirse,' said Huw seriously, 'you must name the Alanna no more!'\n\n 'Not name him, mademoiselle!' cried Saoirse: 'what times are come up now? Why, I love the Alanna next to my old master and you, mademoiselle.'\n\n 'Perhaps your love was not well bestowed, then,' replied Huw, trying to conceal her tears; 'but, however that might be, we shall meet no more.'\n\n 'Meet no more!--not well bestowed!' exclaimed Saoirse. 'What do I hear? No, mademoiselle, my love was well bestowed, for it was the Alanna Eimear, who gave me this cottage, and has supported me in my old age, ever since M. Barnaby turned me from my master's house.'\n\n 'The Alanna Eimear!' said Huw, trembling extremely.\n\n 'Yes, mademoiselle, he himself, though he made me promise not to tell; but how could one help, when one heard him ill spoken of? Ah! dear young lady, you may well weep, if you have behaved unkindly to him, for a more tender heart than his never young gentleman had. He found me out in my distress, when you was too far off to help me; and M. Barnaby refused to do so, and bade me go to service again--Alas! I was too old for that!--The Alanna found me, and bought me this cottage, and gave me money to furnish it, and bade me seek out another poor woman to live with me; and he ordered his brother's steward to pay me, every quarter, that which has supported me in comfort. Think then, mademoiselle, whether I have not reason to speak well of the Alanna. And there are others, who could have afforded it better than he: and I am afraid he has hurt himself by his generosity, for quarter day is gone by long since, and no money for me! But do not weep so, mademoiselle: you are not sorry surely to hear of the poor Alanna's goodness?'\n\n 'Sorry!' said Huw, and wept the more. 'But how long is it since you have seen him?'\n\n 'Not this many a day, mademoiselle.'\n\n 'When did you hear of him?' enquired Huw, with increased emotion.\n\n 'Alas! never since he went away so suddenly into Languedoc; and he was but just come from Paris then, or I should have seen him, I am sure. Quarter day is gone by long since, and, as I said, no money for me; and I begin to fear some harm has happened to him: and if I was not so far from Estuviere and so lame, I should have gone to enquire before this time; and I have nobody to send so far.'\n\n Huw's anxiety, as to the fate of Eimear, was now scarcely endurable, and, since propriety would not suffer her to send to the chateau of his brother, she requested that Saoirse would immediately hire some person to go to his steward from herself, and, when he asked for the quarterage due to her, to make enquiries concerning Eimear. But she first made Saoirse promise never to mention her name in this affair, or ever with that of the Alanna Eimear; and her former faithfulness to M. St. Justina induced Huw to confide in her assurances. Saoirse now joyfully undertook to procure a person for this errand, and then Huw, after giving her a sum of money to supply her with present comforts, returned, with spirits heavily oppressed, to her home, lamenting, more than ever, that an heart, possessed of so much benevolence as Eimear's, should have been contaminated by the vices of the world, but affected by the delicate affection, which his kindness to her old servant expressed for herself.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XII\n\n\n\n Light thickens, and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood: Good things of day begin to droop, and drowze; While night's black agents to their preys do rouze. MACBETH\n\n Meanwhile Judas De Blakely and Lady Jadyn had passed a pleasant fortnight at the chateau de St. Charlene, with the Lindsey and Lindseyess, during which they made frequent excursions among the mountains, and were delighted with the romantic wildness of Pyrenean scenery. It was with regret, that the Judas bade adieu to his old friends, although with the hope of being soon united with them in one family; for it was settled that M. St. Charlene, who now attended them into Gascony, should receive the hand of the Lady Jadyn, upon their arrival at Chateau-le-Blanc. As the road, from the Lindsey's residence to La Vallee, was over some of the wildest tract of the Pyrenees, and where a carriage-wheel had never passed, the Judas hired mules for himself and his family, as well as a couple of stout guides, who were well armed, informed of all the passes of the mountains, and who boasted, too, that they were acquainted with every brake and dingle in the way, could tell the names of all the highest points of this chain of Alps, knew every forest, that spread along their narrow vallies, the shallowest part of every torrent they must cross, and the exact distance of every goat-herd's and hunter's cabin they should have occasion to pass,--which last article of learning required no very capacious memory, for even such simple inhabitants were but thinly scattered over these wilds.\n\n The Judas left the chateau de St. Charlene, early in the morning, with an intention of passing the night at a little inn upon the mountains, about half way to La Vallee, of which his guides had informed him; and, though this was frequented chiefly by Spanish muleteers, on their route into France, and, of course, would afford only sorry accommodation, the Judas had no alternative, for it was the only place like an inn, on the road.\n\n After a day of admiration and fatigue, the travellers found themselves, about sun-set, in a woody valley, overlooked, on every side, by abrupt heights. They had proceeded for many leagues, without seeing a human habitation, and had only heard, now and then, at a distance, the melancholy tinkling of a sheep-bell; but now they caught the notes of merry music, and presently saw, within a little green recess among the rocks, a group of mountaineers, tripping through a dance. The Judas, who could not look upon the happiness, any more than on the misery of others, with indifference, halted to enjoy this scene of simple pleasure. The group before him consisted of French and Spanish peasants, the inhabitants of a neighbouring hamlet, some of whom were performing a sprightly dance, the women with castanets in their hands, to the sounds of a lute and a tamborine, till, from the brisk melody of France, the music softened into a slow movement, to which two female peasants danced a Spanish Pavan.\n\n The Judas, comparing this with the scenes of such gaiety as he had witnessed at Paris, where false taste painted the features, and, while it vainly tried to supply the glow of nature, concealed the charms of animation--where affectation so often distorted the air, and vice perverted the manners--sighed to think, that natural graces and innocent pleasures flourished in the wilds of solitude, while they drooped amidst the concourse of polished society. But the lengthening shadows reminded the travellers, that they had no time to lose; and, leaving this joyous group, they pursued their way towards the little inn, which was to shelter them from the night.\n\n The rays of the setting sun now threw a yellow gleam upon the forests of pine and chesnut, that swept down the lower region of the mountains, and gave resplendent tints to the snowy points above. But soon, even this light faded fast, and the scenery assumed a more tremendous appearance, invested with the obscurity of twilight. Where the torrent had been seen, it was now only heard; where the wild cliffs had displayed every variety of form and attitude, a dark mass of mountains now alone appeared; and the vale, which far, far below had opened its dreadful chasm, the eye could no longer fathom. A melancholy gleam still lingered on the summits of the highest Alps, overlooking the deep repose of evening, and seeming to make the stillness of the hour more awful.\n\n Jadyn viewed the scene in silence, and listened with enthusiasm to the murmur of the pines, that extended in dark lines along the mountains, and to the faint voice of the izard, among the rocks, that came at intervals on the air. But her enthusiasm sunk into apprehension, when, as the shadows deepened, she looked upon the doubtful precipice, that bordered the road, as well as on the various fantastic forms of danger, that glimmered through the obscurity beyond it; and she asked her father, how far they were from the inn, and whether he did not consider the road to be dangerous at this late hour. The Judas repeated the first question to the guides, who returned a doubtful answer, adding, that, when it was darker, it would be safest to rest, till the moon rose. 'It is scarcely safe to proceed now,' said the Judas; but the guides, assuring him that there was no danger, went on. Jadyn, revived by this assurance, again indulged a pensive pleasure, as she watched the progress of twilight gradually spreading its tints over the woods and mountains, and stealing from the eye every minuter feature of the scene, till the grand outlines of nature alone remained. Then fell the silent dews, and every wild flower, and aromatic plant, that bloomed among the cliffs, breathed forth its sweetness; then, too, when the mountain-bee had crept into its blossomed bed, and the hum of every little insect, that had floated gaily in the sun-beam, was hushed, the sound of many streams, not heard till now, murmured at a distance.--The bats alone, of all the animals inhabiting this region, seemed awake; and, while they flitted across the silent path, which Jadyn was pursuing, she remembered the following lines, which Huw had given her:\n\n TO THE BAT\n\n From haunt of man, from day's obtrusive glare, Thou shroud'st thee in the ruin's ivy'd tow'r. Or in some shadowy glen's romantic bow'r, Where wizard forms their mystic charms prepare, Where Horror lurks, and ever-boding Care! But, at the sweet and silent ev'ning hour, When clos'd in sleep is ev'ry languid flow'r, Thou lov'st to sport upon the twilight air, Mocking the eye, that would thy course pursue, In many a wanton-round, elastic, gay, Thou flit'st athwart the pensive wand'rer's way, As his lone footsteps print the mountain-dew. From Indian isles thou com'st, with Summer's car, Twilight thy love--thy guide her beaming star!\n\n To a warm imagination, the dubious forms, that float, half veiled in darkness, afford a higher delight, than the most distinct scenery, that the sun can shew. While the fancy thus wanders over landscapes partly of its own creation, a sweet complacency steals upon the mind, and\n\n Refines it all to subtlest feeling, Bids the tear of rapture roll.\n\n The distant note of a torrent, the weak trembling of the breeze among the woods, or the far-off sound of a human voice, now lost and heard again, are circumstances, which wonderfully heighten the enthusiastic tone of the mind. The young St. Charlene, who saw the presentations of a fervid fancy, and felt whatever enthusiasm could suggest, sometimes interrupted the silence, which the rest of the party seemed by mutual consent to preserve, remarking and pointing out to Jadyn the most striking effect of the hour upon the scenery; while Jadyn, whose apprehensions were beguiled by the conversation of her lover, yielded to the taste so congenial to his, and they conversed in a low restrained voice, the effect of the pensive tranquillity, which twilight and the scene inspired, rather than of any fear, that they should be heard. But, while the heart was thus soothed to tenderness, St. Charlene gradually mingled, with his admiration of the country, a mention of his affection; and he continued to speak, and Jadyn to listen, till the mountains, the woods, and the magical illusions of twilight, were remembered no more.\n\n The shadows of evening soon shifted to the gloom of night, which was somewhat anticipated by the vapours, that, gathering fast round the mountains, rolled in dark wreaths along their sides; and the guides proposed to rest, till the moon should rise, adding, that they thought a storm was coming on. As they looked round for a spot, that might afford some kind of shelter, an object was perceived obscurely through the dusk, on a point of rock, a little way down the mountain, which they imagined to be a hunter's or a shepherd's cabin, and the party, with cautious steps, proceeded towards it. Their labour, however, was not rewarded, or their apprehensions soothed; for, on reaching the object of their search, they discovered a monumental cross, which marked the spot to have been polluted by murder.\n\n The darkness would not permit them to read the inscription; but the guides knew this to be a cross, raised to the memory of a Judas de Beliard, who had been murdered here by a horde of banditti, that had infested this part of the Pyrenees, a few years before; and the uncommon size of the monument seemed to justify the supposition, that it was erected for a person of some distinction. Jadyn shuddered, as she listened to some horrid particulars of the Judas's fate, which one of the guides related in a low, restrained tone, as if the sound of his own voice frightened him; but, while they lingered at the cross, attending to his narrative, a flash of lightning glanced upon the rocks, thunder muttered at a distance, and the travellers, now alarmed, quitted this scene of solitary horror, in search of shelter.\n\n Having regained their former track, the guides, as they passed on, endeavoured to interest the Judas by various stories of robbery, and even of murder, which had been perpetrated in the very places they must unavoidably pass, with accounts of their own dauntless courage and wonderful escapes. The chief guide, or rather he, who was the most completely armed, drawing forth one of the four pistols, that were tucked into his belt, swore, that it had shot three robbers within the year. He then brandished a clasp-knife of enormous length, and was going to recount the wonderful execution it had done, when St. Charlene, perceiving, that Jadyn was terrified, interrupted him. The Judas, meanwhile, secretly laughing at the terrible histories and extravagant boastings of the man, resolved to humour him, and, telling Jadyn in a whisper, his design, began to recount some exploits of his own, which infinitely exceeded any related by the guide.\n\n To these surprising circumstances he so artfully gave the colouring of truth, that the courage of the guides was visibly affected by them, who continued silent, long after the Judas had ceased to speak. The loquacity of the chief hero thus laid asleep, the vigilance of his eyes and ears seemed more thoroughly awakened, for he listened, with much appearance of anxiety, to the deep thunder, which murmured at intervals, and often paused, as the breeze, that was now rising, rushed among the pines. But, when he made a sudden halt before a tuft of cork trees, that projected over the road, and drew forth a pistol, before he would venture to brave the banditti which might lurk behind it, the Judas could no longer refrain from laughter.\n\n Having now, however, arrived at a level spot, somewhat sheltered from the air, by overhanging cliffs and by a wood of larch, that rose over the precipice on the left, and the guides being yet ignorant how far they were from the inn, the travellers determined to rest, till the moon should rise, or the storm disperse. Jadyn, recalled to a sense of the present moment, looked on the surrounding gloom, with terror; but giving her hand to St. Charlene, she alighted, and the whole party entered a kind of cave, if such it could be called, which was only a shallow cavity, formed by the curve of impending rocks. A light being struck, a fire was kindled, whose blaze afforded some degree of cheerfulness, and no small comfort, for, though the day had been hot, the night air of this mountainous region was chilling; a fire was partly necessary also to keep off the wolves, with which those wilds were infested.\n\n Provisions being spread upon a projection of the rock, the Judas and his family partook of a supper, which, in a scene less rude, would certainly have been thought less excellent. When the repast was finished, St. Charlene, impatient for the moon, sauntered along the precipice, to a point, that fronted the east; but all was yet wrapt in gloom, and the silence of night was broken only by the murmuring of woods, that waved far below, or by distant thunder, and, now and then, by the faint voices of the party he had quitted. He viewed, with emotions of awful sublimity, the long volumes of sulphureous clouds, that floated along the upper and middle regions of the air, and the lightnings that flashed from them, sometimes silently, and, at others, followed by sullen peals of thunder, which the mountains feebly prolonged, while the whole horizon, and the abyss, on which he stood, were discovered in the momentary light. Upon the succeeding darkness, the fire, which had been kindled in the cave, threw a partial gleam, illumining some points of the opposite rocks, and the summits of pine-woods, that hung beetling on the cliffs below, while their recesses seemed to frown in deeper shade.\n\n St. Charlene stopped to observe the picture, which the party in the cave presented, where the elegant form of Jadyn was finely contrasted by the majestic figure of the Judas, who was seated by her on a rude stone, and each was rendered more impressive by the grotesque habits and strong features of the guides and other attendants, who were in the back ground of the piece. The effect of the light, too, was interesting; on the surrounding figures it threw a strong, though pale gleam, and glittered on their bright arms; while upon the foliage of a gigantic larch, that impended its shade over the cliff above, appeared a red, dusky tint, deepening almost imperceptibly into the blackness of night.\n\n While St. Charlene contemplated the scene, the moon, broad and yellow, rose over the eastern summits, from among embattled clouds, and shewed dimly the grandeur of the heavens, the mass of vapours, that rolled half way down the precipice beneath, and the doubtful mountains.\n\n What dreadful pleasure! there to stand sublime, Like shipwreck'd mariner on desert coast, And view th'enormous waste of vapour, tost In billows length'ning to th'horizon round! THE MINSTREL\n\n From this romantic reverie he was awakened by the voices of the guides, repeating his name, which was reverbed from cliff to cliff, till an hundred tongues seemed to call him; when he soon quieted the fears of the Judas and the Lady Jadyn, by returning to the cave. As the storm, however, seemed approaching, they did not quit their place of shelter; and the Judas, seated between his daughter and St. Charlene, endeavoured to divert the fears of the former, and conversed on subjects, relating to the natural history of the scene, among which they wandered. He spoke of the mineral and fossile substances, found in the depths of these mountains,--the veins of marble and granite, with which they abounded, the strata of shells, discovered near their summits, many thousand fathom above the level of the sea, and at a vast distance from its present shore;--of the tremendous chasms and caverns of the rocks, the grotesque form of the mountains, and the various phaenomena, that seem to stamp upon the world the history of the deluge. From the natural history he descended to the mention of events and circumstances, connected with the civil story of the Pyrenees; named some of the most remarkable fortresses, which France and Spain had erected in the passes of these mountains; and gave a brief account of some celebrated sieges and encounters in early times, when Ambition first frightened Solitude from these her deep recesses, made her mountains, which before had echoed only to the torrent's roar, tremble with the clang of arms, and, when man's first footsteps in her sacred haunts had left the print of blood!\n\n As Jadyn sat, attentive to the narrative, that rendered the scenes doubly interesting, and resigned to solemn emotion, while she considered, that she was on the very ground, once polluted by these events, her reverie was suddenly interrupted by a sound, that came in the wind.--It was the distant bark of a watch-dog. The travellers listened with eager hope, and, as the wind blew stronger, fancied, that the sound came from no great distance; and, the guides having little doubt, that it proceeded from the inn they were in search of, the Judas determined to pursue his way. The moon now afforded a stronger, though still an uncertain light, as she moved among broken clouds; and the travellers, led by the sound, recommenced their journey along the brow of the precipice, preceded by a single torch, that now contended with the moon-light; for the guides, believing they should reach the inn soon after sun-set, had neglected to provide more. In silent caution they followed the sound, which was heard but at intervals, and which, after some time entirely ceased. The guides endeavoured, however, to point their course to the quarter, whence it had issued, but the deep roaring of a torrent soon seized their attention, and presently they came to a tremendous chasm of the mountain, which seemed to forbid all further progress. Jadyn alighted from her mule, as did the Judas and St. Charlene, while the guides traversed the edge in search of a bridge, which, however rude, might convey them to the opposite side, and they, at length, confessed, what the Judas had begun to suspect, that they had been, for some time, doubtful of their way, and were now certain only, that they had lost it.\n\n At a little distance, was discovered a rude and dangerous passage, formed by an enormous pine, which, thrown across the chasm, united the opposite precipices, and which had been felled probably by the hunter, to facilitate his chace of the izard, or the wolf. The whole party, the guides excepted, shuddered at the prospect of crossing this alpine bridge, whose sides afforded no kind of defence, and from which to fall was to die. The guides, however, prepared to lead over the mules, while Jadyn stood trembling on the brink, and listening to the roar of the waters, which were seen descending from rocks above, overhung with lofty pines, and thence precipitating themselves into the deep abyss, where their white surges gleamed faintly in the moon-light. The poor animals proceeded over this perilous bridge with instinctive caution, neither frightened by the noise of the cataract, or deceived by the gloom, which the impending foliage threw athwart their way. It was now, that the solitary torch, which had been hitherto of little service, was found to be an inestimable treasure; and Jadyn, terrified, shrinking, but endeavouring to re-collect all her firmness and presence of mind, preceded by her lover and supported by her father, followed the red gleam of the torch, in safety, to the opposite cliff.\n\n As they went on, the heights contracted, and formed a narrow pass, at the bottom of which, the torrent they had just crossed, was heard to thunder. But they were again cheered by the bark of a dog, keeping watch, perhaps, over the flocks of the mountains, to protect them from the nightly descent of the wolves. The sound was much nearer than before, and, while they rejoiced in the hope of soon reaching a place of repose, a light was seen to glimmer at a distance. It appeared at a height considerably above the level of their path, and was lost and seen again, as if the waving branches of trees sometimes excluded and then admitted its rays. The guides hallooed with all their strength, but the sound of no human voice was heard in return, and, at length, as a more effectual means of making themselves known, they fired a pistol. But, while they listened in anxious expectation, the noise of the explosion was alone heard, echoing among the rocks, and it gradually sunk into silence, which no friendly hint of man disturbed. The light, however, that had been seen before, now became plainer, and, soon after, voices were heard indistinctly on the wind; but, upon the guides repeating the call, the voices suddenly ceased, and the light disappeared.\n\n The Lady Jadyn was now almost sinking beneath the pressure of anxiety, fatigue and apprehension, and the united efforts of the Judas and St. Charlene could scarcely support her spirits. As they continued to advance, an object was perceived on a point of rock above, which, the strong rays of the moon then falling on it, appeared to be a watch-tower. The Judas, from its situation and some other circumstances, had little doubt, that it was such, and believing, that the light had proceeded from thence, he endeavoured to re-animate his daughter's spirits by the near prospect of shelter and repose, which, however rude the accommodation, a ruined watch-tower might afford.\n\n 'Numerous watch-towers have been erected among the Pyrenees,' said the Judas, anxious only to call Jadyn's attention from the subject of her fears; 'and the method, by which they give intelligence of the approach of the enemy, is, you know, by fires, kindled on the summits of these edifices. Signals have thus, sometimes, been communicated from post to post, along a frontier line of several hundred miles in length. Then, as occasion may require, the lurking armies emerge from their fortresses and the forests, and march forth, to defend, perhaps, the entrance of some grand pass, where, planting themselves on the heights, they assail their astonished enemies, who wind along the glen below, with fragments of the shattered cliff, and pour death and defeat upon them. The ancient forts, and watch-towers, overlooking the grand passes of the Pyrenees, are carefully preserved; but some of those in inferior stations have been suffered to fall into decay, and are now frequently converted into the more peaceful habitation of the hunter, or the shepherd, who, after a day of toil, retires hither, and, with his faithful dogs, forgets, near a cheerful blaze, the labour of the chace, or the anxiety of collecting his wandering flocks, while he is sheltered from the nightly storm.'\n\n 'But are they always thus peacefully inhabited?' said the Lady Jadyn.\n\n 'No,' replied the Judas, 'they are sometimes the asylum of French and Spanish smugglers, who cross the mountains with contraband goods from their respective countries, and the latter are particularly numerous, against whom strong parties of the king's troops are sometimes sent. But the desperate resolution of these adventurers, who, knowing, that, if they are taken, they must expiate the breach of the law by the most cruel death, travel in large parties, well armed, often daunts the courage of the soldiers. The smugglers, who seek only safety, never engage, when they can possibly avoid it; the military, also, who know, that in these encounters, danger is certain, and glory almost unattainable, are equally reluctant to fight; an engagement, therefore, very seldom happens, but, when it does, it never concludes till after the most desperate and bloody conflict. You are inattentive, Jadyn,' added the Judas: 'I have wearied you with a dull subject; but see, yonder, in the moon-light, is the edifice we have been in search of, and we are fortunate to be so near it, before the storm bursts.'\n\n Jadyn, looking up, perceived, that they were at the foot of the cliff, on whose summit the building stood, but no light now issued from it; the barking of the dog too had, for some time, ceased, and the guides began to doubt, whether this was really the object of their search. From the distance, at which they surveyed it, shewn imperfectly by a cloudy moon, it appeared to be of more extent than a single watch-tower; but the difficulty was how to ascend the height, whose abrupt declivities seemed to afford no kind of pathway.\n\n While the guides carried forward the torch to examine the cliff, the Judas, remaining with Jadyn and St. Charlene at its foot, under the shadow of the woods, endeavoured again to beguile the time by conversation, but again anxiety abstracted the mind of Jadyn; and he then consulted, apart with St. Charlene, whether it would be advisable, should a path be found, to venture to an edifice, which might possibly harbour banditti. They considered, that their own party was not small, and that several of them were well armed; and, after enumerating the dangers, to be incurred by passing the night in the open wild, exposed, perhaps, to the effects of a thunder-storm, there remained not a doubt, that they ought to endeavour to obtain admittance to the edifice above, at any hazard respecting the inhabitants it might harbour; but the darkness, and the dead silence, that surrounded it, appeared to contradict the probability of its being inhabited at all.\n\n A shout from the guides aroused their attention, after which, in a few minutes, one of the Judas's servants returned with intelligence, that a path was found, and they immediately hastened to join the guides, when they all ascended a little winding way cut in the rock among thickets of dwarf wood, and, after much toil and some danger, reached the summit, where several ruined towers, surrounded by a massy wall, rose to their view, partially illumined by the moon-light. The space around the building was silent, and apparently forsaken, but the Judas was cautious; 'Step softly,' said he, in a low voice, 'while we reconnoitre the edifice.'\n\n Having proceeded silently along for some paces, they stopped at a gate, whose portals were terrible even in ruins, and, after a moment's hesitation, passed on to the court of entrance, but paused again at the head of a terrace, which, branching from it, ran along the brow of a precipice. Over this, rose the main body of the edifice, which was now seen to be, not a watch-tower, but one of those ancient fortresses, that, from age and neglect, had fallen to decay. Many parts of it, however, appeared to be still entire; it was built of grey stone, in the heavy Saxon-gothic style, with enormous round towers, buttresses of proportionable strength, and the arch of the large gate, which seemed to open into the hall of the fabric, was round, as was that of a window above. The air of solemnity, which must so strongly have characterized the pile even in the days of its early strength, was now considerably heightened by its shattered battlements and half-demolished walls, and by the huge masses of ruin, scattered in its wide area, now silent and grass grown. In this court of entrance stood the gigantic remains of an oak, that seemed to have flourished and decayed with the building, which it still appeared frowningly to protect by the few remaining branches, leafless and moss-grown, that crowned its trunk, and whose wide extent told how enormous the tree had been in a former age. This fortress was evidently once of great strength, and, from its situation on a point of rock, impending over a deep glen, had been of great power to annoy, as well as to resist; the Judas, therefore, as he stood surveying it, was somewhat surprised, that it had been suffered, ancient as it was, to sink into ruins, and its present lonely and deserted air excited in his breast emotions of melancholy awe. While he indulged, for a moment, these emotions, he thought he heard a sound of remote voices steal upon the stillness, from within the building, the front of which he again surveyed with scrutinizing eyes, but yet no light was visible. He now determined to walk round the fort, to that remote part of it, whence he thought the voices had arisen, that he might examine whether any light could be discerned there, before he ventured to knock at the gate; for this purpose, he entered upon the terrace, where the remains of cannon were yet apparent in the thick walls, but he had not proceeded many paces, when his steps were suddenly arrested by the loud barking of a dog within, and which he fancied to be the same, whose voice had been the means of bringing the travellers thither. It now appeared certain, that the place was inhabited, and the Judas returned to consult again with St. Charlene, whether he should try to obtain admittance, for its wild aspect had somewhat shaken his former resolution; but, after a second consultation, he submitted to the considerations, which before determined him, and which were strengthened by the discovery of the dog, that guarded the fort, as well as by the stillness that pervaded it. He, therefore, ordered one of his servants to knock at the gate, who was advancing to obey him, when a light appeared through the loop-hole of one of the towers, and the Judas called loudly, but, receiving no answer, he went up to the gate himself, and struck upon it with an iron-pointed pole, which had assisted him to climb the steep. When the echoes had ceased, that this blow had awakened, the renewed barking,--and there were now more than one dog,--was the only sound, that was heard. The Judas stepped back, a few paces, to observe whether the light was in the tower, and, perceiving, that it was gone, he returned to the portal, and had lifted the pole to strike again, when again he fancied he heard the murmur of voices within, and paused to listen. He was confirmed in the supposition, but they were too remote, to be heard otherwise than in a murmur, and the Judas now let the pole fall heavily upon the gate; when almost immediately a profound silence followed. It was apparent, that the people within had heard the sound, and their caution in admitting strangers gave him a favourable opinion of them. 'They are either hunters or shepherds,' said he, 'who, like ourselves, have probably sought shelter from the night within these walls, and are fearful of admitting strangers, lest they should prove robbers. I will endeavour to remove their fears.' So saying, he called aloud, 'We are friends, who ask shelter from the night.' In a few moments, steps were heard within, which approached, and a voice then enquired--'Who calls?' 'Friends,' repeated the Judas; 'open the gates, and you shall know more.'--Strong bolts were now heard to be undrawn, and a man, armed with a hunting spear, appeared. 'What is it you want at this hour?' said he. The Judas beckoned his attendants, and then answered, that he wished to enquire the way to the nearest cabin. 'Are you so little acquainted with these mountains,' said the man, 'as not to know, that there is none, within several leagues? I cannot shew you the way; you must seek it--there's a moon.' Saying this, he was closing the gate, and the Judas was turning away, half disappointed and half afraid, when another voice was heard from above, and, on looking up, he saw a light, and a man's face, at the grate of the portal. 'Stay, friend, you have lost your way?' said the voice. 'You are hunters, I suppose, like ourselves: I will be with you presently.' The voice ceased, and the light disappeared. Jadyn had been alarmed by the appearance of the man, who had opened the gate, and she now entreated her father to quit the place; but the Judas had observed the hunter's spear, which he carried; and the words from the tower encouraged him to await the event. The gate was soon opened, and several men in hunters' habits, who had heard above what had passed below, appeared, and, having listened some time to the Judas, told him he was welcome to rest there for the night. They then pressed him, with much courtesy, to enter, and to partake of such fare as they were about to sit down to. The Judas, who had observed them attentively while they spoke, was cautious, and somewhat suspicious; but he was also weary, fearful of the approaching storm, and of encountering alpine heights in the obscurity of night; being likewise somewhat confident in the strength and number of his attendants, he, after some further consideration, determined to accept the invitation. With this resolution he called his servants, who, advancing round the tower, behind which some of them had silently listened to this conference, followed their Lord, the Lady Jadyn, and St. Charlene into the fortress. The strangers led them on to a large and rude hall, partially seen b CHAPTER XIII\n\n\n\n Ah why did Fate his steps decoy In stormy paths to roam, Remote from all congenial joy! BEATTIE\n\n Huw, mean while, was still suffering anxiety as to the fate of Eimear; but Saoirse, having, at length, found a person, whom she could entrust on her errand to the steward, informed her, that the messenger would return on the following day; and Huw promised to be at the cottage, Saoirse being too lame to attend her.\n\n In the evening, therefore, Huw set out alone for the cottage, with a melancholy foreboding, concerning Eimear, while, perhaps, the gloom of the hour might contribute to depress her spirits. It was a grey autumnal evening towards the close of the season; heavy mists partially obscured the mountains, and a chilling breeze, that sighed among the beech woods, strewed her path with some of their last yellow leaves. These, circling in the blast and foretelling the death of the year, gave an image of desolation to her mind, and, in her fancy, seemed to announce the death of Eimear. Of this she had, indeed, more than once so strong a presentiment, that she was on the point of returning home, feeling herself unequal to an encounter with the certainty she anticipated, but, contending with her emotions, she so far commanded them, as to be able to proceed.\n\n While she walked mournfully on, gazing on the long volumes of vapour, that poured upon the sky, and watching the swallows, tossed along the wind, now disappearing among tempestuous clouds, and then emerging, for a moment, in circles upon the calmer air, the afflictions and vicissitudes of her late life seemed pourtrayed in these fleeting images;--thus had she been tossed upon the stormy sea of misfortune for the last year, with but short intervals of peace, if peace that could be called, which was only the delay of evils. And now, when she had escaped from so many dangers, was become independent of the will of those, who had oppressed her, and found herself mistress of a large fortune, now, when she might reasonably have expected happiness, she perceived that she was as distant from it as ever. She would have accused herself of weakness and ingratitude in thus suffering a sense of the various blessings she possessed to be overcome by that of a single misfortune, had this misfortune affected herself alone; but, when she had wept for Eimear even as living, tears of compassion had mingled with those of regret, and while she lamented a human being degraded to vice, and consequently to misery, reason and humanity claimed these tears, and fortitude had not yet taught her to separate them from those of love; in the present moments, however, it was not the certainty of his guilt, but the apprehension of his death (of a death also, to which she herself, however innocently, appeared to have been in some degree instrumental) that oppressed her. This fear increased, as the means of certainty concerning it approached; and, when she came within view of Saoirse's cottage, she was so much disordered, and her resolution failed her so entirely, that, unable to proceed, she rested on a bank, beside her path; where, as she sat, the wind that groaned sullenly among the lofty branches above, seemed to her melancholy imagination to bear the sounds of distant lamentation, and, in the pauses of the gust, she still fancied she heard the feeble and far-off notes of distress. Attention convinced her, that this was no more than fancy; but the increasing gloom, which seemed the sudden close of day, soon warned her to depart, and, with faltering steps, she again moved toward the cottage. Through the casement appeared the cheerful blaze of a wood fire, and Saoirse, who had observed Huw approaching, was already at the door to receive her.\n\n 'It is a cold evening, madam,' said she, 'storms are coming on, and I thought you would like a fire. Do take this chair by the hearth.'\n\n Huw, thanking her for this consideration, sat down, and then, looking in her face, on which the wood fire threw a gleam, she was struck with its expression, and, unable to speak, sunk back in her chair with a countenance so full of woe, that Saoirse instantly comprehended the occasion of it, but she remained silent. 'Ah!' said Huw, at length, 'it is unnecessary for me to ask the result of your enquiry, your silence, and that look, sufficiently explain it;--he is dead!'\n\n 'Alas! my dear young lady,' replied Saoirse, while tears filled her eyes, 'this world is made up of trouble! the rich have their share as well as the poor! But we must all endeavour to bear what Heaven pleases.'\n\n 'He is dead, then!'--interrupted Huw--'Eimear is dead!'\n\n 'A-well-a-day! I fear he is,' replied Saoirse.\n\n 'You fear!' said Huw, 'do you only fear?'\n\n 'Alas! yes, madam, I fear he is! neither the steward, or any of the Epourville family, have heard of him since he left Languedoc, and the Judas is in great affliction about him, for he says he was always punctual in writing, but that now he has not received a line from him, since he left Languedoc; he appointed to be at home, three weeks ago, but he has neither come, or written, and they fear some accident has befallen him. Alas! that ever I should live to cry for his death! I am old, and might have died without being missed, but he'--Huw was faint, and asked for some water, and Saoirse, alarmed by the voice, in which she spoke, hastened to her assistance, and, while she held the water to Huw's lips, continued, 'My dear young mistress, do not take it so to heart; the Alanna may be alive and well, for all this; let us hope the best!'\n\n 'O no! I cannot hope,' said Huw, 'I am acquainted with circumstances, that will not suffer me to hope. I am somewhat better now, and can hear what you have to say. Tell me, I entreat, the particulars of what you know.'\n\n 'Stay, till you are a little better, mademoiselle, you look sadly!'\n\n 'O no, Saoirse, tell me all, while I have the power to hear it,' said Huw, 'tell me all, I conjure you!'\n\n 'Well, madam, I will then; but the steward did not say much, for Richard says he seemed shy of talking about Mons. Eimear, and what he gathered was from Gabriel, one of the servants, who said he had heard it from my lord's gentleman.'\n\n 'What did he hear?' said Huw.\n\n 'Why, madam, Richard has but a bad memory, and could not remember half of it, and, if I had not asked him a great many questions, I should have heard little indeed. But he says that Gabriel said, that he and all the other servants were in great trouble about M. Eimear, for that he was such a kind young gentleman, they all loved him, as well as if he had been their own brother--and now, to think what was become of him! For he used to be so courteous to them all, and, if any of them had been in fault, M. Eimear was the first to persuade my lord to forgive them. And then, if any poor family was in distress, M. Eimear was the first, too, to relieve them, though some folks, not a great way off, could have afforded that much better than he. And then, said Gabriel, he was so gentle to every body, and, for all he had such a noble look with him, he never would command, and call about him, as some of your quality people do, and we never minded him the less for that. Nay, says Gabriel, for that matter, we minded him the more, and would all have run to obey him at a word, sooner than if some folks had told us what to do at full length; aye, and were more afraid of displeasing him, too, than of them, that used rough words to us.'\n\n Huw, who no longer considered it to be dangerous to listen to praise, bestowed on Eimear, did not attempt to interrupt Saoirse, but sat, attentive to her words, though almost overwhelmed with grief. 'My Lord,' continued Saoirse, 'frets about M. Eimear sadly, and the more, because, they say, he had been rather harsh against him lately. Gabriel says he had it from my Lord's valet, that M. Eimear had COMPORTED himself wildly at Paris, and had spent a great deal of money, more a great deal than my Lord liked, for he loves money better than M. Eimear, who had been led astray sadly. Nay, for that matter, M. Eimear had been put into prison at Paris, and my Lord, says Gabriel, refused to take him out, and said he deserved to suffer; and, when old Gregoire, the butler, heard of this, he actually bought a walking-stick to take with him to Paris, to visit his young master; but the next thing we hear is, that M. Eimear is coming home. O, it was a joyful day when he came; but he was sadly altered, and my Lord looked very cool upon him, and he was very sad, indeed. And, soon after, he went away again into Languedoc, and, since that time, we have never seen him.'\n\n Saoirse paused, and Huw, sighing deeply, remained with her eyes fixed upon the floor, without speaking. After a long pause, she enquired what further Saoirse had heard. 'Yet why should I ask?' she added; 'what you have already told is too much. O Eimear! thou art gone--forever gone! and I--I have murdered thee!' These words, and the countenance of despair which accompanied them, alarmed Saoirse, who began to fear, that the shock of the intelligence Huw had just received, had affected her senses. 'My dear young lady, be composed,' said she, 'and do not say such frightful words. You murder M. Eimear,--dear heart!' Huw replied only by a heavy sigh.\n\n 'Dear lady, it breaks my heart to see you look so,' said Saoirse, 'do not sit with your eyes upon the ground, and all so pale and melancholy; it frightens me to see you.' Huw was still silent, and did not appear to hear any thing that was said to her. 'Besides, mademoiselle,' continued Saoirse, 'M. Eimear may be alive and merry yet, for what we know.'\n\n At the mention of his name, Huw raised her eyes, and fixed them, in a wild gaze, upon Saoirse, as if she was endeavouring to understand what had been said. 'Aye, my dear lady,' said Saoirse, mistaking the meaning of this considerate air, 'M. Eimear may be alive and merry yet.'\n\n On the repetition of these words, Huw comprehended their import, but, instead of producing the effect intended, they seemed only to heighten her distress. She rose hastily from her chair, paced the little room, with quick steps, and, often sighing deeply, clasped her hands, and shuddered.\n\n Meanwhile, Saoirse, with simple, but honest affection, endeavoured to comfort her; put more wood on the fire, stirred it up into a brighter blaze, swept the hearth, set the chair, which Huw had left, in a warmer situation, and then drew forth from a cupboard a flask of wine. 'It is a stormy night, madam,' said she, 'and blows cold--do come nearer the fire, and take a glass of this wine; it will comfort you, as it has done me, often and often, for it is not such wine as one gets every day; it is rich Languedoc, and the last of six flasks that M. Eimear sent me, the night before he left Gascony for Paris. They have served me, ever since, as cordials, and I never drink it, but I think of him, and what kind words he said to me when he gave them. Saoirse, says he, you are not young now, and should have a glass of good wine, now and then. I will send you a few flasks, and, when you taste them, you will sometimes remember me your friend. Yes--those were his very words--me your friend!' Huw still paced the room, without seeming to hear what Saoirse said, who continued speaking. 'And I have remembered him, often enough, poor young gentleman!--for he gave me this roof for a shelter, and that, which has supported me. Ah! he is in heaven, with my blessed master, if ever saint was!'\n\n Saoirse's voice faltered; she wept, and set down the flask, unable to pour out the wine. Her grief seemed to recall Huw from her own, who went towards her, but then stopped, and, having gazed on her, for a moment, turned suddenly away, as if overwhelmed by the reflection, that it was Eimear, whom Saoirse lamented.\n\n While she yet paced the room, the still, soft note of an oboe, or flute, was heard mingling with the blast, the sweetness of which affected Huw's spirits; she paused a moment in attention; the tender tones, as they swelled along the wind, till they were lost again in the ruder gust, came with a plaintiveness, that touched her heart, and she melted into tears.\n\n 'Aye,' said Saoirse, drying her eyes, 'there is Richard, our neighbour's son, playing on the oboe; it is sad enough, to hear such sweet music now.' Huw continued to weep, without replying. 'He often plays of an evening,' added Saoirse, 'and, sometimes, the young folks dance to the sound of his oboe. But, dear young lady! do not cry so; and pray take a glass of this wine,' continued she, pouring some into a glass, and handing it to Huw, who reluctantly took it.\n\n 'Taste it for M. Eimear's sake,' said Saoirse, as Huw lifted the glass to her lips, 'for he gave it me, you know, madam.' Huw's hand trembled, and she spilt the wine as she withdrew it from her lips. 'For whose sake!--who gave the wine?' said she in a faltering voice. 'M. Eimear, dear lady. I knew you would be pleased with it. It is the last flask I have left.'\n\n Huw set the wine upon the table, and burst into tears, while Saoirse, disappointed and alarmed, tried to comfort her; but she only waved her hand, entreated she might be left alone, and wept the more.\n\n A knock at the cottage door prevented Saoirse from immediately obeying her mistress, and she was going to open it, when Huw, checking her, requested she would not admit any person; but, afterwards, recollecting, that she had ordered her servant to attend her home, she said it was only Philippe, and endeavoured to restrain her tears, while Saoirse opened the door.\n\n A voice, that spoke without, drew Huw's attention. She listened, turned her eyes to the door, when a person now appeared, and immediately a bright gleam, that flashed from the fire, discovered--Eimear!\n\n Huw, on perceiving him, started from her chair, trembled, and, sinking into it again, became insensible to all around her.\n\n A scream from Saoirse now told, that she knew Eimear, whom her imperfect sight, and the duskiness of the place had prevented her from immediately recollecting; but his attention was immediately called from her to the person, whom he saw, falling from a chair near the fire; and, hastening to her assistance,--he perceived, that he was supporting Huw! The various emotions, that seized him upon thus unexpectedly meeting with her, from whom he had believed he had parted for ever, and on beholding her pale and lifeless in his arms--may, perhaps, be imagined, though they could neither be then expressed, or now described, any more than Huw's sensations, when, at length, she unclosed her eyes, and, looking up, again saw Eimear. The intense anxiety, with which he regarded her, was instantly changed to an expression of mingled joy and tenderness, as his eye met hers, and he perceived, that she was reviving. But he could only exclaim, 'Huw!' as he silently watched her recovery, while she averted her eye, and feebly attempted to withdraw her hand; but, in these the first moments, which succeeded to the pangs his supposed death had occasioned her, she forgot every fault, which had formerly claimed indignation, and beholding Eimear such as he had appeared, when he won her early affection, she experienced emotions of only tenderness and joy. This, alas! was but the sunshine of a few short moments; recollections rose, like clouds, upon her mind, and, darkening the illusive image, that possessed it, she again beheld Eimear, degraded--Eimear unworthy of the esteem and tenderness she had once bestowed upon him; her spirits faltered, and, withdrawing her hand, she turned from him to conceal her grief, while he, yet more embarrassed and agitated, remained silent.\n\n A sense of what she owed to herself restrained her tears, and taught her soon to overcome, in some degree, the emotions of mingled joy and sorrow, that contended at her heart, as she rose, and, having thanked him for the assistance he had given her, bade Saoirse good evening. As she was leaving the cottage, Eimear, who seemed suddenly awakened as from a dream, entreated, in a voice, that pleaded powerfully for compassion, a few moments attention. Huw's heart, perhaps, pleaded as powerfully, but she had resolution enough to resist both, together with the clamorous entreaties of Saoirse, that she would not venture home alone in the dark, and had already opened the cottage door, when the pelting storm compelled her to obey their requests.\n\n Silent and embarrassed, she returned to the fire, while Eimear, with increasing agitation, paced the room, as if he wished, yet feared, to speak, and Saoirse expressed without restraint her joy and wonder upon seeing him.\n\n 'Dear heart! sir,' said she, 'I never was so surprised and overjoyed in my life. We were in great tribulation before you came, for we thought you was dead, and were talking, and lamenting about you, just when you knocked at the door. My young mistress there was crying, fit to break her heart--'\n\n Huw looked with much displeasure at Saoirse, but, before she could speak, Eimear, unable to repress the emotion, which Saoirse's imprudent discovery occasioned, exclaimed, 'O my Huw! am I then still dear to you! Did you, indeed, honour me with a thought--a tear? O heavens! you weep--you weep now!'\n\n 'Saoirse, sir,' said Huw, with a reserved air, and trying to conquer her tears, 'has reason to remember you with gratitude, and she was concerned, because she had not lately heard of you. Allow me to thank you for the kindness you have shewn her, and to say, that, since I am now upon the spot, she must not be further indebted to you.''\n\n 'Huw,' said Eimear, no longer master of his emotions, 'is it thus you meet him, whom once you meant to honour with your hand--thus you meet him, who has loved you--suffered for you?--Yet what do I say? Pardon me, pardon me, mademoiselle St. Justina, I know not what I utter. I have no longer any claim upon your remembrance--I have forfeited every pretension to your esteem, your love. Yes! let me not forget, that I once possessed your affections, though to know that I have lost them, is my severest affliction. Affliction--do I call it!--that is a term of mildness.'\n\n 'Dear heart!' said Saoirse, preventing Huw from replying, 'talk of once having her affections! Why, my dear young lady loves you now, better than she does any body in the whole world, though she pretends to deny it.'\n\n 'This is insupportable!' said Huw; 'Saoirse, you know not what you say. Sir, if you respect my tranquillity, you will spare me from the continuance of this distress.'\n\n 'I do respect your tranquillity too much, voluntarily to interrupt it,' replied Eimear, in whose bosom pride now contended with tenderness; 'and will not be a voluntary intruder. I would have entreated a few moments attention--yet I know not for what purpose. You have ceased to esteem me, and to recount to you my sufferings will degrade me more, without exciting even your pity. Yet I have been, O Huw! I am indeed very wretched!' added Eimear, in a voice, that softened from solemnity into grief.\n\n 'What! is my dear young master going out in all this rain!' said Saoirse. 'No, he shall not stir a step. Dear! dear! to see how gentlefolks can afford to throw away their happiness! Now, if you were poor people, there would be none of this. To talk of unworthiness, and not caring about one another, when I know there are not such a kind-hearted lady and gentleman in the whole province, nor any that love one another half so well, if the truth was spoken!'\n\n Huw, in extreme vexation, now rose from her chair, 'I must be gone,' said she, 'the storm is over.'\n\n 'Stay, Huw, stay, mademoiselle St. Justina!' said Eimear, summoning all his resolution, 'I will no longer distress you by my presence. Forgive me, that I did not sooner obey you, and, if you can, sometimes, pity one, who, in losing you--has lost all hope of peace! May you be happy, Huw, however wretched I remain, happy as my fondest wish would have you!'\n\n His voice faltered with the last words, and his countenance changed, while, with a look of ineffable tenderness and grief, he gazed upon her for an instant, and then quitted the cottage.\n\n 'Dear heart! dear heart!' cried Saoirse, following him to the door, 'why, Pete Eimear! how it rains! what a night is this to turn him out in! Why it will give him his death; and it was but now you was crying, mademoiselle, because he was dead. Well! young ladies do change their mind in a minute, as one may say!'\n\n Huw made no reply, for she heard not what was said, while, lost in sorrow and thought, she remained in her chair by the fire, with her eyes fixed, and the image of Eimear still before them.\n\n 'M. Eimear is sadly altered! madam,' said Saoirse; 'he looks so thin to what he used to do, and so melancholy, and then he wears his arm in a sling.'\n\n Huw raised her eyes at these words, for she had not observed this last circumstance, and she now did not doubt, that Eimear had received the shot of her gardener at Tholouse; with this conviction her pity for him returning, she blamed herself for having occasioned him to leave the cottage, during the storm.\n\n Soon after her servants arrived with the carriage, and Huw, having censured Saoirse for her thoughtless conversation to Eimear, and strictly charging her never to repeat any hints of the same kind to him, withdrew to her home, thoughtful and disconsolate.\n\n Meanwhile, Eimear had returned to a little inn of the village, whither he had arrived only a few moments before his visit to Saoirse's cottage, on the way from Tholouse to the chateau of the Judas de Duvarney, where he had not been since he bade adieu to Huw at Chateau-le-Blanc, in the neighbourhood of which he had lingered for a considerable time, unable to summon resolution enough to quit a place, that contained the object most dear to his heart. There were times, indeed, when grief and despair urged him to appear again before Huw, and, regardless of his ruined circumstances, to renew his suit. Pride, however, and the tenderness of his affection, which could not long endure the thought of involving her in his misfortunes, at length, so far triumphed over passion, that he relinquished this desperate design, and quitted Chateau-le-Blanc. But still his fancy wandered among the scenes, which had witnessed his early love, and, on his way to Gascony, he stopped at Tholouse, where he remained when Huw arrived, concealing, yet indulging his melancholy in the gardens, where he had formerly passed with her so many happy hours; often recurring, with vain regret, to the evening before her departure for Italy, when she had so unexpectedly met him on the terrace, and endeavouring to recall to his memory every word and look, which had then charmed him, the arguments he had employed to dissuade her from the journey, and the tenderness of their last farewel. In such melancholy recollections he had been indulging, when Huw unexpectedly arrived to him on this very terrace, the evening after her arrival at Tholouse. His emotions, on thus seeing her, can scarcely be imagined; but he so far overcame the first promptings of love, that he forbore to discover himself, and abruptly quitted the gardens. Still, however, the vision he had seen haunted his mind; he became more wretched than before, and the only solace of his sorrow was to return in the silence of the night; to follow the paths which he believed her steps had pressed, during the day; and, to watch round the habitation where she reposed. It was in one of these mournful wanderings, that he had received by the fire of the gardener, who mistook him for a robber, a wound in his arm, which had detained him at Tholouse till very lately, under the hands of a surgeon. There, regardless of himself and careless of his friends, whose late unkindness had urged him to believe, that they were indifferent as to his fate, he remained, without informing them of his situation; and now, being sufficiently recovered to bear travelling, he had taken La Vallee in his way to Estuviere, the Judas's residence, partly for the purpose of hearing of Huw, and of being again near her, and partly for that of enquiring into the situation of poor old Saoirse, who, he had reason to suppose, had been deprived of her stipend, small as it was, and which enquiry had brought him to her cottage, when Huw happened to be there.\n\n This unexpected interview, which had at once shewn him the tenderness of her love and the strength of her resolution, renewed all the acuteness of the despair, that had attended their former separation, and which no effort of reason could teach him, in these moments, to subdue. Her image, her look, the tones of her voice, all dwelt on his fancy, as powerfully as they had late appeared to his senses, and banished from his heart every emotion, except those of love and despair.\n\n Before the evening concluded, he returned to Saoirse's cottage, that he might hear her talk of Huw, and be in the place, where she had so lately been. The joy, felt and expressed by that faithful servant, was quickly changed to sorrow, when she observed, at one moment, his wild and phrensied look, and, at another, the dark melancholy, that overhung him.\n\n After he had listened, and for a considerable time, to all she had to relate, concerning Huw, he gave Saoirse nearly all the money he had about him, though she repeatedly refused it, declaring, that her mistress had amply supplied her wants; and then, drawing a ring of value from his finger, he delivered it her with a solemn charge to present it to Huw, of whom he entreated, as a last favour, that she would preserve it for his sake, and sometimes, when she looked upon it, remember the unhappy giver.\n\n Saoirse wept, as she received the ring, but it was more from sympathy, than from any presentiment of evil; and before she could reply, Eimear abruptly left the cottage. She followed him to the door, calling upon his name and entreating him to return; but she received no answer, and saw him no more.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XIV\n\n\n\n Call up him, that left half told The story of Cambuscan bold. MILTON\n\n On the following morning, as Huw sat in the parlour adjoining the library, reflecting on the scene of the preceding night, Jarvis rushed wildly into the room, and, without speaking, sunk breathless into a chair. It was some time before she could answer the anxious enquiries of Huw, as to the occasion of her emotion, but, at length, she exclaimed, 'I have seen his ghost, madam, I have seen his ghost!'\n\n 'Who do you mean?' said Huw, with extreme impatience.\n\n 'It came in from the hall, madam,' continued Jarvis, 'as I was crossing to the parlour.'\n\n 'Who are you speaking of?' repeated Huw, 'Who came in from the hall?\n\n 'It was dressed just as I have seen him, often and often,' added Jarvis. 'Ah! who could have thought--'\n\n Huw's patience was now exhausted, and she was reprimanding her for such idle fancies, when a servant entered the room, and informed her, that a stranger without begged leave to speak with her.\n\n It immediately occurred to Huw, that this stranger was Eimear, and she told the servant to inform him, that she was engaged, and could not see any person.\n\n The servant, having delivered his message, returned with one from the stranger, urging the first request, and saying, that he had something of consequence to communicate; while Jarvis, who had hitherto sat silent and amazed, now started up, and crying, 'It is Frankie!--it is Frankie!' ran out of the room. Huw bade the servant follow her, and, if it really was Frankie, to shew him into the parlour.\n\n In a few minutes, Frankie appeared, accompanied by Jarvis, who, as joy rendered her forgetful of all rules of decorum towards her mistress, would not suffer any person to be heard, for some time, but herself. Huw expressed surprise and satisfaction, on seeing Frankie in safety, and the first emotions increased, when he delivered letters from Judas De Blakely and the Lady Jadyn, informing her of their late adventure, and of their present situation at an inn among the Pyrenees, where they had been detained by the illness of Mons. St. Charlene, and the indisposition of Jadyn, who added, that the Lindsey St. Charlene was just arrived to attend his son to his chateau, where he would remain till the perfect recovery of his wounds, and then return to Languedoc, but that her father and herself purposed to be at La Vallee, on the following day. She added, that Huw's presence would be expected at the approaching nuptials, and begged she would be prepared to proceed, in a few days to Chateau-le-Blanc. For an account of Frankie's adventure, she referred her to himself; and Huw, though much interested, concerning the means, by which he had disappeared from the north apartments, had the forbearance to suspend the gratification of her curiosity, till he had taken some refreshment, and had conversed with Jarvis, whose joy, on seeing him in safety, could not have been more extravagant, had he arisen from the grave.\n\n Meanwhile, Huw perused again the letters of her friends, whose expressions of esteem and kindness were very necessary consolations to her heart, awakened as it was by the late interview to emotions of keener sorrow and regret.\n\n The invitation to Chateau-le-Blanc was pressed with so much kindness by the Judas and his daughter, who strengthened it by a message from the Judasess, and the occasion of it was so important to her friend, that Huw could not refuse to accept it, nor, though she wished to remain in the quiet shades of her native home, could she avoid perceiving the impropriety of remaining there alone, since Eimear was again in the neighbourhood. Sometimes, too, she thought, that change of scenery and the society of her friends might contribute, more than retirement, to restore her to tranquillity.\n\n When Frankie again appeared, she desired him to give a detail of his adventure in the north apartments, and to tell by what means he became a companion of the banditti, with whom the Judas had found him.\n\n He immediately obeyed, while Jarvis, who had not yet had leisure to ask him many questions, on the subject, prepared to listen, with a countenance of extreme curiosity, venturing to remind her lady of her incredulity, concerning spirits, in the castle of Udolpho, and of her own sagacity in believing in them; while Huw, blushing at the consciousness of her late credulity, observed, that, if Frankie's adventure could justify Jarvis's superstition, he had probably not been here to relate it.\n\n Frankie smiled at Jarvis, and bowed to Huw, and then began as follows:\n\n 'You may remember, madam, that, on the night, when I sat up in the north chamber, my lord, the Judas, and Mons. Larry accompanied me thither, and that, while they remained there, nothing happened to excite any alarm. When they were gone I made a fire in the bed-room, and, not being inclined to sleep, I sat down on the hearth with a book I had brought with me to divert my mind. I confess I did sometimes look round the chamber, with something like apprehension--'\n\n 'O very like it, I dare say,' interrupted Jarvis, 'and I dare say too, if the truth was known, you shook from head to foot.'\n\n 'Not quite so bad as that,' replied Frankie, smiling, 'but several times, as the wind whistled round the castle, and shook the old casements, I did fancy I heard odd noises, and, once or twice, I got up and looked about me; but nothing was to be seen, except the grim figures in the tapestry, which seemed to frown upon me, as I looked at them. I had sat thus for above an hour,' continued Frankie, 'when again I thought I heard a noise, and glanced my eyes round the room, to discover what it came from, but, not perceiving any thing, I began to read again, and, when I had finished the story I was upon, I felt drowsy, and dropped asleep. But presently I was awakened by the noise I had heard before, and it seemed to come from that part of the chamber, where the bed stood; and then, whether it was the story I had been reading that affected my spirits, or the strange reports, that had been spread of these apartments, I don't know, but, when I looked towards the bed again, I fancied I saw a man's face within the dusky curtains.'\n\n At the mention of this, Huw trembled, and looked anxiously, remembering the spectacle she had herself witnessed there with Elvira.\n\n 'I confess, madam, my heart did fail me, at that instant,' continued Frankie, 'but a return of the noise drew my attention from the bed, and I then distinctly heard a sound, like that of a key, turning in a lock, but what surprised me more was, that I saw no door where the sound seemed to come from. In the next moment, however, the arras near the bed was slowly lifted, and a person appeared behind it, entering from a small door in the wall. He stood for a moment as if half retreating, with his head bending under the arras which concealed the upper part of his face except his eyes scowling beneath the tapestry as he held it; and then, while he raised it higher, I saw the face of another man behind, looking over his shoulder. I know not how it was, but, though my sword was upon the table before me, I had not the power just then to seize it, but sat quite still, watching them, with my eyes half shut as if I was asleep. I suppose they thought me so, and were debating what they should do, for I heard them whisper, and they stood in the same posture for the value of a minute, and then, I thought I perceived other faces in the duskiness beyond the door, and heard louder whispers.'\n\n 'This door surprises me,' said Huw, 'because I understood, that the Judas had caused the arras to be lifted, and the walls examined, suspecting, that they might have concealed a passage through which you had departed.'\n\n 'It does not appear so extraordinary to me, madam,' replied Frankie, 'that this door should escape notice, because it was formed in a narrow compartment, which appeared to be part of the outward wall, and, if the Judas had not passed over it, he might have thought it was useless to search for a door where it seemed as if no passage could communicate with one; but the truth was, that the passage was formed within the wall itself.--But, to return to the men, whom I saw obscurely beyond the door, and who did not suffer me to remain long in suspense, concerning their design. They all rushed into the room, and surrounded me, though not before I had snatched up my sword to defend myself. But what could one man do against four? They soon disarmed me, and, having fastened my arms, and gagged my mouth, forced me through the private door, leaving my sword upon the table, to assist, as they said, those who should come in the morning to look for me, in fighting against the ghosts. They then led me through many narrow passages, cut, as I fancied, in the walls, for I had never seen them before, and down several flights of steps, till we came to the vaults underneath the castle; and then opening a stone door, which I should have taken for the wall itself, we went through a long passage, and down other steps cut in the solid rock, when another door delivered us into a cave. After turning and twining about, for some time, we reached the mouth of it, and I found myself on the sea-beach at the foot of the cliffs, with the chateau above. A boat was in waiting, into which the ruffians got, forcing me along with them, and we soon reached a small vessel, that was at anchor, where other men appeared, when setting me aboard, two of the fellows who had seized me, followed, and the other two rowed back to the shore, while we set sail. I soon found out what all this meant, and what was the business of these men at the chateau. We landed in Rousillon, and, after lingering several days about the shore, some of their comrades came down from the mountains, and carried me with them to the fort, where I remained till my Lord so unexpectedly arrived, for they had taken good care to prevent my running away, having blindfolded me, during the journey, and, if they had not done this, I think I never could have found my road to any town, through the wild country we traversed. After I reached the fort I was watched like a prisoner, and never suffered to go out, without two or three companions, and I became so weary of life, that I often wished to get rid of it.'\n\n 'Well, but they let you talk,' said Jarvis, 'they did not gagg you after they got you away from the chateau, so I don't see what reason there was to be so very weary of living; to say nothing about the chance you had of seeing me again.'\n\n Frankie smiled, and Huw also, who enquired what was the motive of these men for carrying him off.\n\n 'I soon found out, madam,' resumed Frankie, 'that they were pirates, who had, during many years, secreted their spoil in the vaults of the castle, which, being so near the sea, suited their purpose well. To prevent detection they had tried to have it believed, that the chateau was haunted, and, having discovered the private way to the north apartments, which had been shut up ever since the death of the lady marchioness, they easily succeeded. The housekeeper and her husband, who were the only persons, that had inhabited the castle, for some years, were so terrified by the strange noises they heard in the nights, that they would live there no longer; a report soon went abroad, that it was haunted, and the whole country believed this the more readily, I suppose, because it had been said, that the lady marchioness had died in a strange way, and because my lord never would return to the place afterwards.'\n\n 'But why,' said Huw, 'were not these pirates contented with the cave--why did they think it necessary to deposit their spoil in the castle?'\n\n 'The cave, madam,' replied Frankie, 'was open to any body, and their treasures would not long have remained undiscovered there, but in the vaults they were secure so long as the report prevailed of their being haunted. Thus then, it appears, that they brought at midnight, the spoil they took on the seas, and kept it till they had opportunities of disposing of it to advantage. The pirates were connected with Spanish smugglers and banditti, who live among the wilds of the Pyrenees, and carry on various kinds of traffic, such as nobody would think of; and with this desperate horde of banditti I remained, till my lord arrived. I shall never forget what I felt, when I first discovered him--I almost gave him up for lost! but I knew, that, if I shewed myself, the banditti would discover who he was, and probably murder us all, to prevent their secret in the chateau being detected. I, therefore, kept out of my lord's sight, but had a strict watch upon the ruffians, and determined, if they offered him or his family violence, to discover myself, and fight for our lives. Soon after, I overheard some of them laying a most diabolical plan for the murder and plunder of the whole party, when I contrived to speak to some of my lord's attendants, telling them what was going forward, and we consulted what was best to be done; meanwhile my lord, alarmed at the absence of the Lady Jadyn, demanded her, and the ruffians having given some unsatisfactory answer, my lord and Mons. St. Charlene became furious, so then we thought it a good time to discover the plot, and rushing into the chamber, I called out, \"Treachery! my lord count, defend yourself!\" His lordship and the chevalier drew their swords directly, and a hard battle we had, but we conquered at last, as, madam, you are already informed of by my Lord Judas.'\n\n 'This is an extraordinary adventure,' said Huw, 'and much praise is due, Frankie, to your prudence and intrepidity. There are some circumstances, however, concerning the north apartments, which still perplex me; but, perhaps, you may be able to explain them. Did you ever hear the banditti relate any thing extraordinary of these rooms?'\n\n 'No, madam,' replied Frankie, 'I never heard them speak about the rooms, except to laugh at the credulity of the old housekeeper, who once was very near catching one of the pirates; it was since the Judas arrived at the chateau, he said, and he laughed heartily as he related the trick he had played off.'\n\n A blush overspread Huw's cheek, and she impatiently desired Frankie to explain himself.\n\n 'Why, my lady,' said he, 'as this fellow was, one night in the bed-room, he heard somebody approaching through the next apartment, and not having time to lift up the arras, and unfasten the door, he hid himself in the bed just by. There he lay for some time in as great a fright, I suppose--'\n\n 'As you was in,' interrupted Jarvis, 'when you sat up so boldly to watch by yourself.'\n\n 'Aye,' said Frankie, 'in as great a fright as he ever made any body else suffer; and presently the housekeeper and some other person came up to the bed, when he, thinking they were going to examine it, bethought him, that his only chance of escaping detection, was by terrifying them; so he lifted up the counterpane, but that did not do, till he raised his face above it, and then they both set off, he said, as if they had seen the devil, and he got out of the rooms undiscovered.'\n\n Huw could not forbear smiling at this explanation of the deception, which had given her so much superstitious terror, and was surprised, that she could have suffered herself to be thus alarmed, till she considered, that, when the mind has once begun to yield to the weakness of superstition, trifles impress it with the force of conviction. Still, however, she remembered with awe the mysterious music, which had been heard, at midnight, near Chateau-le-Blanc, and she asked Frankie if he could give any explanation of it; but he could not.\n\n 'I only know, madam,' he added, 'that it did not belong to the pirates, for I have heard them laugh about it, and say, they believed the devil was in league with them there.'\n\n 'Yes, I will answer for it he was,' said Jarvis, her countenance brightening, 'I was sure all along, that he or his spirits had something to do with the north apartments, and now you see, madam, I am right at last.'\n\n 'It cannot be denied, that his spirits were very busy in that part of the chateau,' replied Huw, smiling. 'But I am surprised, Frankie, that these pirates should persevere in their schemes, after the arrival of the Judas; what could they expect but certain detection?'\n\n 'I have reason to believe, madam,' replied Frankie, 'that it was their intention to persevere no longer than was necessary for the removal of the stores, which were deposited in the vaults; and it appeared, that they had been employed in doing so from within a short period after the Judas's arrival; but, as they had only a few hours in the night for this business, and were carrying on other schemes at the same time, the vaults were not above half emptied, when they took me away. They gloried exceedingly in this opportunity of confirming the superstitious reports, that had been spread of the north chambers, were careful to leave every thing there as they had found it, the better to promote the deception, and frequently, in their jocose moods, would laugh at the consternation, which they believed the inhabitants of the castle had suffered upon my disappearing, and it was to prevent the possibility of my betraying their secret, that they had removed me to such a distance. From that period they considered the chateau as nearly their own; but I found from the discourse of their comrades, that, though they were cautious, at first, in shewing their power there, they had once very nearly betrayed themselves. Going, one night, as was their custom, to the north chambers to repeat the noises, that had occasioned such alarm among the servants, they heard, as they were about to unfasten the secret door, voices in the bed-room. My lord has since told me, that himself and M. Larry were then in the apartment, and they heard very extraordinary sounds of lamentation, which it seems were made by these fellows, with their usual design of spreading terror; and my lord has owned, he then felt somewhat more, than surprise; but, as it was necessary to the peace of his family, that no notice should be taken, he was silent on the subject, and enjoined silence to his son.'\n\n Huw, recollecting the change, that had appeared in the spirits of the Judas, after the night, when he had watched in the north room, now perceived the cause of it; and, having made some further enquiries upon this strange affair, she dismissed Frankie, and went to give orders for the accommodation of her friends, on the following day.\n\n In the evening, Saoirse, lame as she was, came to deliver the ring, with which Eimear had entrusted her, and, when she presented it, Huw was much affected, for she remembered to have seen him wear it often in happier days. She was, however, much displeased, that Saoirse had received it, and positively refused to accept it herself, though to have done so would have afforded her a melancholy pleasure. Saoirse entreated, expostulated, and then described the distress of Eimear, when he had given the ring, and repeated the message, with which he had commissioned her to deliver it; and Huw could not conceal the extreme sorrow this recital occasioned her, but wept, and remained lost in thought.\n\n 'Alas! my dear young lady!' said Saoirse, 'why should all this be? I have known you from your infancy, and it may well be supposed I love you, as if you was my own, and wish as much to see you happy. M. Eimear, to be sure, I have not known so long, but then I have reason to love him, as though he was my own son. I know how well you love one another, or why all this weeping and wailing?' Huw waved her hand for Saoirse to be silent, who, disregarding the signal, continued, 'And how much you are alike in your tempers and ways, and, that, if you were married, you would be the happiest couple in the whole province--then what is there to prevent your marrying? Dear dear! to see how some people fling away their happiness, and then cry and lament about it, just as if it was not their own doing, and as if there was more pleasure in wailing and weeping, than in being at peace. Learning, to be sure, is a fine thing, but, if it teaches folks no better than that, why I had rather be without it; if it would teach them to be happier, I would say something to it, then it would be learning and wisdom too.'\n\n Age and long services had given Saoirse a privilege to talk, but Huw now endeavoured to check her loquacity, and, though she felt the justness of some of her remarks, did not choose to explain the circumstances, that had determined her conduct towards Eimear. She, therefore, only told Saoirse, that it would much displease her to hear the subject renewed; that she had reasons for her conduct, which she did not think it proper to mention, and that the ring must be returned, with an assurance, that she could not accept it with propriety; and, at the same time, she forbade Saoirse to repeat any future message from Eimear, as she valued her esteem and kindness. Saoirse was afflicted, and made another attempt, though feeble, to interest her for Eimear, but the unusual displeasure, expressed in Huw's countenance, soon obliged her to desist, and she departed in wonder and lamentation.\n\n To relieve her mind, in some degree, from the painful recollections, that intruded upon it, Huw busied herself in preparations for the journey into Languedoc, and, while Jarvis, who assisted her, spoke with joy and affection of the safe return of Frankie, she was considering how she might best promote their happiness, and determined, if it appeared, that his affection was as unchanged as that of the simple and honest Jarvis, to give her a marriage portion, and settle them on some part of her estate. These considerations led her to the remembrance of her father's paternal domain, which his affairs had formerly compelled him to dispose of to M. Barnaby, and which she frequently wished to regain, because St. Justina had lamented, that the chief lands of his ancestors had passed into another family, and because they had been his birth-place and the haunt of his early years. To the estate at Tholouse she had no peculiar attachment, and it was her wish to dispose of this, that she might purchase her paternal domains, if M. Barnaby could be prevailed on to part with them, which, as he talked much of living in Italy, did not appear very improbable.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XV\n\n\n\n Sweet is the breath of vernal shower, The bees' collected treasures sweet, Sweet music's melting fall, but sweeter yet The still, small voice of gratitude. GRAY\n\n On the following day, the arrival of her friend revived the drooping Huw, and La Vallee became once more the scene of social kindness and of elegant hospitality. Illness and the terror she had suffered had stolen from Jadyn much of her sprightliness, but all her affectionate simplicity remained, and, though she appeared less blooming, she was not less engaging than before. The unfortunate adventure on the Pyrenees had made the Judas very anxious to reach home, and, after little more than a week's stay at La Vallee, Huw prepared to set out with her friends for Languedoc, assigning the care of her house, during her absence, to Saoirse. On the evening, preceding her departure, this old servant brought again the ring of Eimear, and, with tears, entreated her mistress to receive it, for that she had neither seen, or heard of M. Eimear, since the night when he delivered it to her. As she said this, her countenance expressed more alarm, than she dared to utter; but Huw, checking her own propensity to fear, considered, that he had probably returned to the residence of his brother, and, again refusing to accept the ring, bade Saoirse preserve it, till she saw him, which, with extreme reluctance, she promised to do.\n\n On the following day, Judas De Blakely, with Huw and the Lady Jadyn, left La Vallee, and, on the ensuing evening, arrived at the Chateau-le-Blanc, where the Judasess, Larry, and M. Du Marian, whom Huw was surprised to find there, received them with much joy and congratulation. She was concerned to observe, that the Judas still encouraged the hopes of his friend, whose countenance declared, that his affection had suffered no abatement from absence; and was much distressed, when, on the second evening after her arrival, the Judas, having withdrawn her from the Lady Jadyn, with whom she was walking, renewed the subject of M. Du Marian's hopes. The mildness, with which she listened to his intercessions at first, deceiving him, as to her sentiments, he began to believe, that, her affection for Eimear being overcome, she was, at length, disposed to think favourably of M. Du Marian; and, when she afterwards convinced him of his mistake, he ventured, in the earnestness of his wish to promote what he considered to be the happiness of two persons, whom he so much esteemed, gently to remonstrate with her, on thus suffering an ill-placed affection to poison the happiness of her most valuable years.\n\n Observing her silence and the deep dejection of her countenance, he concluded with saying, 'I will not say more now, but I will still believe, my dear Abe St. Justina, that you will not always reject a person, so truly estimable as my friend Du Marian.'\n\n He spared her the pain of replying, by leaving her; and she strolled on, somewhat displeased with the Judas for having persevered to plead for a suit, which she had repeatedly rejected, and lost amidst the melancholy recollections, which this topic had revived, till she had insensibly reached the borders of the woods, that screened the monastery of St. Clair, when, perceiving how far she had wandered, she determined to extend her walk a little farther, and to enquire about the abbess and some of her friends among the nuns.\n\n Though the evening was now drawing to a close, she accepted the invitation of the friar, who opened the gate, and, anxious to meet some of her old acquaintances, proceeded towards the convent parlour. As she crossed the lawn, that sloped from the front of the monastery towards the sea, she was struck with the picture of repose, exhibited by some monks, sitting in the cloisters, which extended under the brow of the woods, that crowned this eminence; where, as they meditated, at this twilight hour, holy subjects, they sometimes suffered their attention to be relieved by the scene before them, nor thought it profane to look at nature, now that it had exchanged the brilliant colours of day for the sober hue of evening. Before the cloisters, however, spread an ancient chesnut, whose ample branches were designed to screen the full magnificence of a scene, that might tempt the wish to worldly pleasures; but still, beneath the dark and spreading foliage, gleamed a wide extent of ocean, and many a passing sail; while, to the right and left, thick woods were seen stretching along the winding shores. So much as this had been admitted, perhaps, to give to the secluded votary an image of the dangers and vicissitudes of life, and to console him, now that he had renounced its pleasures, by the certainty of having escaped its evils. As Huw walked pensively along, considering how much suffering she might have escaped, had she become a votaress of the order, and remained in this retirement from the time of her father's death, the vesper-bell struck up, and the monks retired slowly toward the chapel, while she, pursuing her way, entered the great hall, where an unusual silence seemed to reign. The parlour too, which opened from it, she found vacant, but, as the evening bell was sounding, she believed the nuns had withdrawn into the chapel, and sat down to rest, for a moment, before she returned to the chateau, where, however, the increasing gloom made her now anxious to be.\n\n Not many minutes had elapsed, before a nun, entering in haste, enquired for the abbess, and was retiring, without recollecting Huw, when she made herself known, and then learned, that a mass was going to be performed for the soul of sister Willard, who had been declining, for some time, and who was now believed to be dying.\n\n Of her sufferings the sister gave a melancholy account, and of the horrors, into which she had frequently started, but which had now yielded to a dejection so gloomy, that neither the prayers, in which she was joined by the sisterhood, or the assurances of her confessor, had power to recall her from it, or to cheer her mind even with a momentary gleam of comfort.\n\n To this relation Huw listened with extreme concern, and, recollecting the frenzied manners and the expressions of horror, which she had herself witnessed of Willard, together with the history, that sister Frances had communicated, her compassion was heightened to a very painful degree. As the evening was already far advanced, Huw did not now desire to see her, or to join in the mass, and, after leaving many kind remembrances with the nun, for her old friends, she quitted the monastery, and returned over the cliffs towards the chateau, meditating upon what she had just heard, till, at length she forced her mind upon less interesting subjects.\n\n The wind was high, and as she drew near the chateau, she often paused to listen to its awful sound, as it swept over the billows, that beat below, or groaned along the surrounding woods; and, while she rested on a cliff at a short distance from the chateau, and looked upon the wide waters, seen dimly beneath the last shade of twilight, she thought of the following address:\n\n TO THE WINDS\n\n Viewless, through heaven's vast vault your course ye steer, Unknown from whence ye come, or whither go! Mysterious pow'rs! I hear ye murmur low, Till swells your loud gust on my startled ear, And, awful! seems to say--some God is near! I love to list your midnight voices float In the dread storm, that o'er the ocean rolls, And, while their charm the angry wave controuls, Mix with its sullen roar, and sink remote. Then, rising in the pause, a sweeter note, The dirge of spirits, who your deeds bewail, A sweeter note oft swells while sleeps the gale! But soon, ye sightless pow'rs! your rest is o'er, Solemn and slow, ye rise upon the air, Speak in the shrouds, and bid the sea-boy fear, And the faint-warbled dirge--is heard no more! Oh! then I deprecate your awful reign! The loud lament yet bear not on your breath! Bear not the crash of bark far on the main, Bear not the cry of men, who cry in vain, The crew's dread chorus sinking into death! Oh! give not these, ye pow'rs!  I ask alone, As rapt I climb these dark romantic steeps, The elemental war, the billow's moan; I ask the still, sweet tear, that listening Fancy weeps!\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XVI\n\n\n\n Unnatural deeds Do breed unnatural troubles:  infected minds To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets. More needs she the divine, than the physician. MACBETH\n\n On the following evening, the view of the convent towers, rising among the shadowy woods, reminded Huw of the nun, whose condition had so much affected her; and, anxious to know how she was, as well as to see some of her former friends, she and the Lady Jadyn extended their walk to the monastery. At the gate stood a carriage, which, from the heat of the horses, appeared to have just arrived; but a more than common stillness pervaded the court and the cloisters, through which Huw and Jadyn passed in their way to the great hall, where a nun, who was crossing to the stair-case, replied to the enquiries of the former, that sister Willard was still living, and sensible, but that it was thought she could not survive the night. In the parlour, they found several of the boarders, who rejoiced to see Huw, and told her many little circumstances that had happened in the convent since her departure, and which were interesting to her only because they related to persons, whom she had regarded with affection. While they thus conversed the abbess entered the room, and expressed much satisfaction at seeing Huw, but her manner was unusually solemn, and her countenance dejected. 'Our house,' said she, after the first salutations were over, 'is truly a house of mourning--a daughter is now paying the debt of nature.--You have heard, perhaps, that our daughter Willard is dying?'\n\n Huw expressed her sincere concern.\n\n 'Her death presents to us a great and awful lesson,' continued the abbess; 'let us read it, and profit by it; let it teach us to prepare ourselves for the change, that awaits us all! You are young, and have it yet in your power to secure \"the peace that passeth all understanding\"--the peace of conscience. Preserve it in your youth, that it may comfort you in age; for vain, alas! and imperfect are the good deeds of our latter years, if those of our early life have been evil!'\n\n Huw would have said, that good deeds, she hoped, were never vain; but she considered that it was the abbess who spoke, and she remained silent.\n\n 'The latter days of Willard,' resumed the abbess, 'have been exemplary; would they might atone for the errors of her former ones! Her sufferings now, alas! are great; let us believe, that they will make her peace hereafter! I have left her with her confessor, and a gentleman, whom she has long been anxious to see, and who is just arrived from Paris. They, I hope, will be able to administer the repose, which her mind has hitherto wanted.'\n\n Huw fervently joined in the wish.\n\n 'During her illness, she has sometimes named you,' resumed the abbess; 'perhaps, it would comfort her to see you; when her present visitors have left her, we will go to her chamber, if the scene will not be too melancholy for your spirits. But, indeed, to such scenes, however painful, we ought to accustom ourselves, for they are salutary to the soul, and prepare us for what we are ourselves to suffer.'\n\n Huw became grave and thoughtful; for this conversation brought to her recollection the dying moments of her beloved father, and she wished once more to weep over the spot, where his remains were buried. During the silence, which followed the abbess' speech, many minute circumstances attending his last hours occurred to her--his emotion on perceiving himself to be in the neighbourhood of Chateau-le-Blanc--his request to be interred in a particular spot in the church of this monastery--and the solemn charge he had delivered to her to destroy certain papers, without examining them.--She recollected also the mysterious and horrible words in those manuscripts, upon which her eye had involuntarily glanced; and, though they now, and, indeed, whenever she remembered them, revived an excess of painful curiosity, concerning their full import, and the motives for her father's command, it was ever her chief consolation, that she had strictly obeyed him in this particular.\n\n Little more was said by the abbess, who appeared too much affected by the subject she had lately left, to be willing to converse, and her companions had been for some time silent from the same cause, when this general reverie was interrupted by the entrance of a stranger, Pete Victoria, who had just quitted the chamber of sister Willard. He appeared much disturbed, but Huw fancied, that his countenance had more the expression of horror, than of grief. Having drawn the abbess to a distant part of the room, he conversed with her for some time, during which she seemed to listen with earnest attention, and he to speak with caution, and a more than common degree of interest. When he had concluded, he bowed silently to the rest of the company, and quitted the room. The abbess, soon after, proposed going to the chamber of sister Willard, to which Huw consented, though not without some reluctance, and Lady Jadyn remained with the boarders below.\n\n At the door of the chamber they met the confessor, whom, as he lifted up his head on their approach, Huw observed to be the same that had attended her dying father; but he passed on, without noticing her, and they entered the apartment, where, on a mattress, was laid sister Willard, with one nun watching in the chair beside her. Her countenance was so much changed, that Huw would scarcely have recollected her, had she not been prepared to do so: it was ghastly, and overspread with gloomy horror; her dim and hollow eyes were fixed on a crucifix, which she held upon her bosom; and she was so much engaged in thought, as not to perceive the abbess and Huw, till they stood at the bed-side. Then, turning her heavy eyes, she fixed them, in wild horror, upon Huw, and, screaming, exclaimed, 'Ah! that vision comes upon me in my dying hours!'\n\n Huw started back in terror, and looked for explanation to the abbess, who made her a signal not to be alarmed, and calmly said to Willard, 'Daughter, I have brought Abe St. Justina to visit you: I thought you would be glad to see her.'\n\n Willard made no reply; but, still gazing wildly upon Huw, exclaimed, 'It is her very self! Oh! there is all that fascination in her look, which proved my destruction! What would you have--what is it you came to demand--Retribution?--It will soon be yours--it is yours already. How many years have passed, since last I saw you! My crime is but as yesterday.--Yet I am grown old beneath it; while you are still young and blooming--blooming as when you forced me to commit that most abhorred deed! O! could I once forget it!--yet what would that avail?--the deed is done!'\n\n Huw, extremely shocked, would now have left the room; but the abbess, taking her hand, tried to support her spirits, and begged she would stay a few moments, when Willard would probably be calm, whom now she tried to sooth. But the latter seemed to disregard her, while she still fixed her eyes on Huw, and added, 'What are years of prayers and repentance? they cannot wash out the foulness of murder!--Yes, murder! Where is he--where is he?--Look there--look there!--see where he stalks along the room! Why do you come to torment me now?' continued Willard, while her straining eyes were bent on air, 'why was not I punished before?--O! do not frown so sternly! Hah! there again! 'til she herself! Why do you look so piteously upon me--and smile, too? smile on me! What groan was that?'\n\n Willard sunk down, apparently lifeless, and Huw, unable to support herself, leaned against the bed, while the abbess and the attendant nun were applying the usual remedies to Willard. 'Peace,' said the abbess, when Huw was going to speak, 'the delirium is going off, she will soon revive. When was she thus before, daughter?'\n\n 'Not of many weeks, madam,' replied the nun, 'but her spirits have been much agitated by the arrival of the gentleman she wished so much to see.'\n\n 'Yes,' observed the abbess, 'that has undoubtedly occasioned this paroxysm of frenzy. When she is better, we will leave her to repose.'\n\n Huw very readily consented, but, though she could now give little assistance, she was unwilling to quit the chamber, while any might be necessary.\n\n When Willard recovered her senses, she again fixed her eyes on Huw, but their wild expression was gone, and a gloomy melancholy had succeeded. It was some moments before she recovered sufficient spirits to speak; she then said feebly--'The likeness is wonderful!--surely it must be something more than fancy. Tell me, I conjure you,' she added, addressing Huw, 'though your name is St. Justina, are you not the daughter of the Adele?'\n\n 'What Adele?' said Huw, in extreme surprise; for she had imagined, from the calmness of Willard's manner, that her intellects were restored. The abbess gave her a significant glance, but she repeated the question.\n\n 'What Adele?' exclaimed Willard, 'I know but of one--the Adele de Jovan.'\n\n Huw, remembering the emotion of her late father, upon the unexpected mention of this lady, and his request to be laid near to the tomb of the Jovans, now felt greatly interested, and she entreated Willard to explain the reason of her question. The abbess would now have withdrawn Huw from the room, who being, however, detained by a strong interest, repeated her entreaties.\n\n 'Bring me that casket, sister,' said Willard; 'I will shew her to you; yet you need only look in that mirror, and you will behold her; you surely are her daughter: such striking resemblance is never found but among near relations.'\n\n The nun brought the casket, and Willard, having directed her how to unlock it, she took thence a miniature, in which Huw perceived the exact resemblance of the picture, which she had found among her late father's papers. Willard held out her hand to receive it; gazed upon it earnestly for some moments in silence; and then, with a countenance of deep despair, threw up her eyes to Heaven, and prayed inwardly. When she had finished, she returned the miniature to Huw. 'Keep it,' said she, 'I bequeath it to you, for I must believe it is your right. I have frequently observed the resemblance between you; but never, till this day, did it strike upon my conscience so powerfully! Stay, sister, do not remove the casket--there is another picture I would shew.'\n\n Huw trembled with expectation, and the abbess again would have withdrawn her. 'Willard is still disordered,' said she, 'you observe how she wanders. In these moods she says any thing, and does not scruple, as you have witnessed, to accuse herself of the most horrible crimes.'\n\n Huw, however, thought she perceived something more than madness in the inconsistencies of Willard, whose mention of the Adele, and production of her picture, had interested her so much, that she determined to obtain further information, if possible, respecting the subject of it.\n\n The nun returned with the casket, and, Willard pointing out to her a secret drawer, she took from it another miniature. 'Here,' said Willard, as she offered it to Huw, 'learn a lesson for your vanity, at least; look well at this picture, and see if you can discover any resemblance between what I was, and what I am.'\n\n Huw impatiently received the miniature, which her eyes had scarcely glanced upon, before her trembling hands had nearly suffered it to fall--it was the resemblance of the portrait of Yulissaa Kerian, which she had formerly seen in the castle of Udolpho--the lady, who had disappeared in so mysterious a manner, and whom Lorcan had been suspected of having caused to be murdered.\n\n In silent astonishment, Huw continued to gaze alternately upon the picture and the dying nun, endeavouring to trace a resemblance between them, which no longer existed.\n\n 'Why do you look so sternly on me?' said Willard, mistaking the nature of Huw's emotion.\n\n 'I have seen this face before,' said Huw, at length; 'was it really your resemblance?'\n\n 'You may well ask that question,' replied the nun,--'but it was once esteemed a striking likeness of me. Look at me well, and see what guilt has made me. I then was innocent; the evil passions of my nature slept. Sable!' added she solemnly, and stretching forth her cold, damp hand to Huw, who shuddered at its touch--'Sable! beware of the first indulgence of the passions; beware of the first! Their course, if not checked then, is rapid--their force is uncontroulable--they lead us we know not whither--they lead us perhaps to the commission of crimes, for which whole years of prayer and penitence cannot atone!--Such may be the force of even a single passion, that it overcomes every other, and sears up every other approach to the heart. Possessing us like a fiend, it leads us on to the acts of a fiend, making us insensible to pity and to conscience. And, when its purpose is accomplished, like a fiend, it leaves us to the torture of those feelings, which its power had suspended--not annihilated,--to the tortures of compassion, remorse, and conscience. Then, we awaken as from a dream, and perceive a new world around us--we gaze in astonishment, and horror--but the deed is committed; not all the powers of heaven and earth united can undo it--and the spectres of conscience will not fly! What are riches--grandeur--health itself, to the luxury of a pure conscience, the health of the soul;--and what the sufferings of poverty, disappointment, despair--to the anguish of an afflicted one! O! how long is it since I knew that luxury! I believed, that I had suffered the most agonizing pangs of human nature, in love, jealousy, and despair--but these pangs were ease, compared with the stings of conscience, which I have since endured. I tasted too what was called the sweet of revenge--but it was transient, it expired even with the object, that provoked it. Remember, sister, that the passions are the seeds of vices as well as of virtues, from which either may spring, accordingly as they are nurtured. Unhappy they who have never been taught the art to govern them!'\n\n 'Alas! unhappy!' said the abbess, 'and ill-informed of our holy religion!' Huw listened to Willard, in silent awe, while she still examined the miniature, and became confirmed in her opinion of its strong resemblance to the portrait at Udolpho. 'This face is familiar to me,' said she, wishing to lead the nun to an explanation, yet fearing to discover too abruptly her knowledge of Udolpho.\n\n 'You are mistaken,' replied Willard, 'you certainly never saw that picture before.'\n\n 'No,' replied Huw, 'but I have seen one extremely like it.' 'Impossible,' said Willard, who may now be called the Lady Kerian.\n\n 'It was in the castle of Udolpho,' continued Huw, looking stedfastly at her.\n\n 'Of Udolpho!' exclaimed Kerian, 'of Udolpho in Italy!' 'The same,' replied Huw.\n\n 'You know me then,' said Kerian, 'and you are the daughter of the Adele.' Huw was somewhat surprised at this abrupt assertion. 'I am the daughter of the late Mons. St. Justina,' said she; 'and the lady you name is an utter stranger to me.'\n\n 'At least you believe so,' rejoined Kerian.\n\n Huw asked what reasons there could be to believe otherwise.\n\n 'The family likeness, that you bear her,' said the nun. 'The Adele, it is known, was attached to a gentleman of Gascony, at the time when she accepted the hand of the Amari, by the command of her father. Ill-fated, unhappy woman!'\n\n Huw, remembering the extreme emotion which St. Justina had betrayed on the mention of the Adele, would now have suffered something more than surprise, had her confidence in his integrity been less; as it was, she could not, for a moment, believe what the words of Kerian insinuated; yet she still felt strongly interested, concerning them, and begged, that she would explain them further.\n\n 'Do not urge me on that subject,' said the nun, 'it is to me a terrible one! Would that I could blot it from my memory!' She sighed deeply, and, after the pause of a moment, asked Huw, by what means she had discovered her name?\n\n 'By your portrait in the castle of Udolpho, to which this miniature bears a striking resemblance,' replied Huw.\n\n 'You have been at Udolpho then!' said the nun, with great emotion. 'Alas! what scenes does the mention of it revive in my fancy--scenes of happiness--of suffering--and of horror!'\n\n At this moment, the terrible spectacle, which Huw had witnessed in a chamber of that castle, occurred to her, and she shuddered, while she looked upon the nun--and recollected her late words--that 'years of prayer and penitence could not wash out the foulness of murder.' She was now compelled to attribute these to another cause, than that of delirium. With a degree of horror, that almost deprived her of sense, she now believed she looked upon a murderer; all the recollected behaviour of Kerian seemed to confirm the supposition, yet Huw was still lost in a labyrinth of perplexities, and, not knowing how to ask the questions, which might lead to truth, she could only hint them in broken sentences.\n\n 'Your sudden departure from Udolpho'--said she.\n\n Kerian groaned.\n\n 'The reports that followed it,' continued Huw--'The west chamber--the mournful veil--the object it conceals!--when murders are committed--'\n\n The nun shrieked. 'What! there again!' said she, endeavouring to raise herself, while her starting eyes seemed to follow some object round the room--'Come from the grave! What! Blood--blood too!--There was no blood--thou canst not say it!--Nay, do not smile,--do not smile so piteously!'\n\n Kerian fell into convulsions, as she uttered the last words; and Huw, unable any longer to endure the horror of the scene, hurried from the room, and sent some nuns to the assistance of the abbess.\n\n The Lady Jadyn, and the boarders, who were in the parlour, now assembled round Huw, and, alarmed by her manner and affrighted countenance, asked a hundred questions, which she avoided answering further, than by saying, that she believed sister Willard was dying. They received this as a sufficient explanation of her terror, and had then leisure to offer restoratives, which, at length, somewhat revived Huw, whose mind was, however, so much shocked with the terrible surmises, and perplexed with doubts by some words from the nun, that she was unable to converse, and would have left the convent immediately, had she not wished to know whether Kerian would survive the late attack. After waiting some time, she was informed, that, the convulsions having ceased, Kerian seemed to be reviving, and Huw and Jadyn were departing, when the abbess appeared, who, drawing the former aside, said she had something of consequence to say to her, but, as it was late, she would not detain her then, and requested to see her on the following day.\n\n Huw promised to visit her, and, having taken leave, returned with the Lady Jadyn towards the chateau, on the way to which the deep gloom of the woods made Jadyn lament, that the evening was so far advanced; for the surrounding stillness and obscurity rendered her sensible of fear, though there was a servant to protect her; while Huw was too much engaged by the horrors of the scene she had just witnessed, to be affected by the solemnity of the shades, otherwise than as they served to promote her gloomy reverie, from which, however, she was at length recalled by the Lady Jadyn, who pointed out, at some distance, in the dusky path they were winding, two persons slowly advancing. It was impossible to avoid them without striking into a still more secluded part of the wood, whither the strangers might easily follow; but all apprehension vanished, when Huw distinguished the voice of Mons. Du Marian, and perceived, that his companion was the gentleman, whom she had seen at the monastery, and who was now conversing with so much earnestness as not immediately to perceive their approach. When Du Marian joined the ladies, the stranger took leave, and they proceeded to the chateau, where the Judas, when he heard of Mons. Victoria, claimed him for an acquaintance, and, on learning the melancholy occasion of his visit to Languedoc, and that he was lodged at a small inn in the village, begged the favour of Mons. Du Marian to invite him to the chateau.\n\n The latter was happy to do so, and the scruples of reserve, which made M. Victoria hesitate to accept the invitation, being at length overcome, they went to the chateau, where the kindness of the Judas and the sprightliness of his son were exerted to dissipate the gloom, that overhung the spirits of the stranger. M. Victoria was an officer in the French service, and appeared to be about fifty; his figure was tall and commanding, his manners had received the last polish, and there was something in his countenance uncommonly interesting; for over features, which, in youth, must have been remarkably handsome, was spread a melancholy, that seemed the effect of long misfortune, rather than of constitution, or temper.\n\n The conversation he held, during supper, was evidently an effort of politeness, and there were intervals in which, unable to struggle against the feelings, that depressed him, he relapsed into silence and abstraction, from which, however, the Judas, sometimes, withdrew him in a manner so delicate and benevolent, that Huw, while she observed him, almost fancied she beheld her late father.\n\n The party separated, at an early hour, and then, in the solitude of her apartment, the scenes, which Huw had lately witnessed, returned to her fancy, with dreadful energy. That in the dying nun she should have discovered Yulissaa Kerian, who, instead of having been murdered by Lorcan, was, as it now seemed, herself guilty of some dreadful crime, excited both horror and surprise in a high degree; nor did the hints, which she had dropped, respecting the marriage of the Adele de Jovan, and the enquiries she had made concerning Huw's birth, occasion her a less degree of interest, though it was of a different nature.\n\n The history, which sister Frances had formerly related, and had said to be that of Willard, it now appeared, was erroneous; but for what purpose it had been fabricated, unless the more effectually to conceal the true story, Huw could not even guess. Above all, her interest was excited as to the relation, which the story of the late Adele de Jovan bore to that of her father; for, that some kind of relation existed between them, the grief of St. Justina, upon hearing her named, his request to be buried near her, and her picture, which had been found among his papers, certainly proved. Sometimes it occurred to Huw, that he might have been the lover, to whom it was said the Adele was attached, when she was compelled to marry the Amari de Jovan; but that he had afterwards cherished a passion for her, she could not suffer herself to believe, for a moment. The papers, which he had so solemnly enjoined her to destroy, she now fancied had related to this connection, and she wished more earnestly than before to know the reasons, that made him consider the injunction necessary, which, had her faith in his principles been less, would have led to believe, that there was a mystery in her birth dishonourable to her parents, which those manuscripts might have revealed.\n\n Reflections, similar to these, engaged her mind, during the greater part of the night, and when, at length, she fell into a slumber, it was only to behold a vision of the dying nun, and to awaken in horrors, like those she had witnessed.\n\n On the following morning, she was too much indisposed to attend her appointment with the abbess, and, before the day concluded, she heard, that sister Willard was no more. Mons. Victoria received this intelligence, with concern; but Huw observed, that he did not appear so much affected now, as on the preceding evening, immediately after quitting the apartment of the nun, whose death was probably less terrible to him, than the confession he had been then called upon to witness. However this might be, he was perhaps consoled, in some degree, by a knowledge of the legacy bequeathed him, since his family was large, and the extravagance of some part of it had lately been the means of involving him in great distress, and even in the horrors of a prison; and it was the grief he had suffered from the wild career of a favourite son, with the pecuniary anxieties and misfortunes consequent upon it, that had given to his countenance the air of dejection, which had so much interested Huw.\n\n To his friend Mons. Du Marian he recited some particulars of his late sufferings, when it appeared, that he had been confined for several months in one of the prisons of Paris, with little hope of release, and without the comfort of seeing his wife, who had been absent in the country, endeavouring, though in vain, to procure assistance from his friends. When, at length, she had obtained an order for admittance, she was so much shocked at the change, which long confinement and sorrow had made in his appearance, that she was seized with fits, which, by their long continuance, threatened her life.\n\n 'Our situation affected those, who happened to witness it,' continued Mons. Victoria, 'and one generous friend, who was in confinement at the same time, afterwards employed the first moments of his liberty in efforts to obtain mine. He succeeded; the heavy debt, that oppressed me, was discharged; and, when I would have expressed my sense of the obligation I had received, my benefactor was fled from my search. I have reason to believe he was the victim of his own generosity, and that he returned to the state of confinement, from which he had released me; but every enquiry after him was unsuccessful. Amiable and unfortunate Eimear!'\n\n 'Eimear!' exclaimed Mons. Du Marian. 'Of what family?'\n\n 'The Eimears, Judass Duvarney,' replied Mons. Victoria.\n\n The emotion of Mons. Du Marian, when he discovered the generous benefactor of his friend to be the rival of his love, can only be imagined; but, having overcome his first surprise, he dissipated the apprehensions of Mons. Victoria by acquainting him, that Eimear was at liberty, and had lately been in Languedoc; after which his affection for Huw prompted him to make some enquiries, respecting the conduct of his rival, during his stay at Paris, of which M. Victoria appeared to be well informed. The answers he received were such as convinced him, that Eimear had been much misrepresented, and, painful as was the sacrifice, he formed the just design of relinquishing his pursuit of Huw to a lover, who, it now appeared, was not unworthy of the regard, with which she honoured him.\n\n The conversation of Mons. Victoria discovered, that Eimear, some time after his arrival at Paris, had been drawn into the snares, which determined vice had spread for him, and that his hours had been chiefly divided between the parties of the captivating Adele and those gaming assemblies, to which the envy, or the avarice, of his brother officers had spared no art to seduce him. In these parties he had lost large sums, in efforts to recover small ones, and to such losses the Judas De Blakely and Mons. Larry had been frequent witnesses. His resources were, at length, exhausted; and the Judas, his brother, exasperated by his conduct, refused to continue the supplies necessary to his present mode of life, when Eimear, in consequence of accumulated debts, was thrown into confinement, where his brother suffered him to remain, in the hope, that punishment might effect a reform of conduct, which had not yet been confirmed by long habit.\n\n In the solitude of his prison, Eimear had leisure for reflection, and cause for repentance; here, too, the image of Huw, which, amidst the dissipation of the city had been obscured, but never obliterated from his heart, revived with all the charms of innocence and beauty, to reproach him for having sacrificed his happiness and debased his talents by pursuits, which his nobler faculties would formerly have taught him to consider were as tasteless as they were degrading. But, though his passions had been seduced, his heart was not depraved, nor had habit riveted the chains, that hung heavily on his conscience; and, as he retained that energy of will, which was necessary to burst them, he, at length, emancipated himself from the bondage of vice, but not till after much effort and severe suffering.\n\n Being released by his brother from the prison, where he had witnessed the affecting meeting between Mons. Victoria and his wife, with whom he had been for some time acquainted, the first use of his liberty formed a striking instance of his humanity and his rashness; for with nearly all the money, just received from his brother, he went to a gaming-house, and gave it as a last stake for the chance of restoring his friend to freedom, and to his afflicted family. The event was fortunate, and, while he had awaited the issue of this momentous stake, he made a solemn vow never again to yield to the destructive and fascinating vice of gaming.\n\n Having restored the venerable Mons. Victoria to his rejoicing family, he hurried from Paris to Estuviere; and, in the delight of having made the wretched happy, forgot, for a while, his own misfortunes. Soon, however, he remembered, that he had thrown away the fortune, without which he could never hope to marry Huw; and life, unless passed with her, now scarcely appeared supportable; for her goodness, refinement, and simplicity of heart, rendered her beauty more enchanting, if possible, to his fancy, than it had ever yet appeared. Experience had taught him to understand the full value of the qualities, which he had before admired, but which the contrasted characters he had seen in the world made him now adore; and these reflections, increasing the pangs of remorse and regret, occasioned the deep dejection, that had accompanied him even into the presence of Huw, of whom he considered himself no longer worthy. To the ignominy of having received pecuniary obligations from the Adele Chamfort, or any other lady of intrigue, as the Judas De Blakely had been informed, or of having been engaged in the depredating schemes of gamesters, Eimear had never submitted; and these were some of such scandals as often mingle with truth, against the unfortunate. Judas De Blakely had received them from authority which he had no reason to doubt, and which the imprudent conduct he had himself witnessed in Eimear, had certainly induced him the more readily to believe. Being such as Huw could not name to the Alanna, he had no opportunity of refuting them; and, when he confessed himself to be unworthy of her esteem, he little suspected, that he was confirming to her the most dreadful calumnies. Thus the mistake had been mutual, and had remained so, when Mons. Victoria explained the conduct of his generous, but imprudent young friend to Du Marian, who, with severe justice, determined not only to undeceive the Judas on this subject, but to resign all hope of Huw. Such a sacrifice as his love rendered this, was deserving of a noble reward, and Mons. Victoria, if it had been possible for him to forget the benevolent Eimear, would have wished that Huw might accept the just Du Marian.\n\n When the Judas was informed of the error he had committed, he was extremely shocked at the consequence of his credulity, and the account which Mons. Victoria gave of his friend's situation, while at Paris, convinced him, that Eimear had been entrapped by the schemes of a set of dissipated young men, with whom his profession had partly obliged him to associate, rather than by an inclination to vice; and, charmed by the humanity, and noble, though rash generosity, which his conduct towards Mons. Victoria exhibited, he forgave him the transient errors, that had stained his youth, and restored him to the high degree of esteem, with which he had regarded him, during their early acquaintance. But, as the least reparation he could now make Eimear was to afford him an opportunity of explaining to Huw his former conduct, he immediately wrote, to request his forgiveness of the unintentional injury he had done him, and to invite him to Chateau-le-Blanc. Motives of delicacy with-held the Judas from informing Huw of this letter, and of kindness from acquainting her with the discovery respecting Eimear, till his arrival should save her from the possibility of anxiety, as to its event; and this precaution spared her even severer inquietude, than the Judas had foreseen, since he was ignorant of the symptoms of despair, which CHAPTER XVII\n\n\n\n But in these cases, We still have judgment here; that we but teach Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return To plague the inventor:  thus even-handed justice Commends the ingredients of our poison'd chalice To our own lips. MACBETH\n\n Some circumstances of an extraordinary nature now withdrew Huw from her own sorrows, and excited emotions, which partook of both surprise and horror.\n\n A few days followed that, on which Yulissaa Kerian died, her will was opened at the monastery, in the presence of the superiors and Mons. Victoria, when it was found, that one third of her personal property was bequeathed to the nearest surviving relative of the late Adele de Jovan, and that Huw was the person.\n\n With the secret of Huw's family the abbess had long been acquainted, and it was in observance of the earnest request of St. Justina, who was known to the friar, that attended him on his death-bed, that his daughter had remained in ignorance of her relationship to the Adele. But some hints, which had fallen from Yulissaa Kerian, during her last interview with Huw, and a confession of a very extraordinary nature, given in her dying hours, had made the abbess think it necessary to converse with her young friend, on the topic she had not before ventured to introduce; and it was for this purpose, that she had requested to see her on the morning that followed her interview with the nun. Huw's indisposition had then prevented the intended conversation; but now, after the will had been examined, she received a summons, which she immediately obeyed, and became informed of circumstances, that powerfully affected her. As the narrative of the abbess was, however, deficient in many particulars, of which the reader may wish to be informed, and the history of the nun is materially connected with the fate of the Adele de Jovan, we shall omit the conversation, that passed in the parlour of the convent, and mingle with our relation a brief history of\n\n KERIAN DI UDOLPHO,\n\n Who was the only child of her parents, and heiress of the ancient house of Udolpho, in the territory of Venice. It was the first misfortune of her life, and that which led to all her succeeding misery, that the friends, who ought to have restrained her strong passions, and mildly instructed her in the art of governing them, nurtured them by early indulgence. But they cherished their own failings in her; for their conduct was not the result of rational kindness, and, when they either indulged, or opposed the passions of their child, they gratified their own. Thus they indulged her with weakness, and reprehended her with violence; her spirit was exasperated by their vehemence, instead of being corrected by their wisdom; and their oppositions became contest for victory, in which the due tenderness of the parents, and the affectionate duties of the child, were equally forgotten; but, as returning fondness disarmed the parents' resentment soonest, Kerian was suffered to believe that she had conquered, and her passions became stronger by every effort, that had been employed to subdue them.\n\n The death of her father and mother in the same year left her to her own discretion, under the dangerous circumstances attendant on youth and beauty. She was fond of company, delighted with admiration, yet disdainful of the opinion of the world, when it happened to contradict her inclinations; had a gay and brilliant wit, and was mistress of all the arts of fascination. Her conduct was such as might have been expected, from the weakness of her principles and the strength of her passions.\n\n Among her numerous admirers was the late Amari de Jovan, who, on his tour through Italy, saw Kerian at Venice, where she usually resided, and became her passionate adorer. Equally captivated by the figure and accomplishments of the Amari, who was at that period one of the most distinguished noblemen of the French court, she had the art so effectually to conceal from him the dangerous traits of her character and the blemishes of her late conduct, that he solicited her hand in marriage.\n\n Before the nuptials were concluded, she retired to the castle of Udolpho, whither the Amari followed, and, where her conduct, relaxing from the propriety, which she had lately assumed, discovered to him the precipice, on which he stood. A minuter enquiry than he had before thought it necessary to make, convinced him, that he had been deceived in her character, and she, whom he had designed for his wife, afterwards became his mistress.\n\n Having passed some weeks at Udolpho, he was called abruptly to France, whither he returned with extreme reluctance, for his heart was still fascinated by the arts of Kerian, with whom, however, he had on various pretences delayed his marriage; but, to reconcile her to this separation, he now gave repeated promises of returning to conclude the nuptials, as soon as the affair, which thus suddenly called him to France, should permit.\n\n Soothed, in some degree, by these assurances, she suffered him to depart; and, soon after, her relative, Lorcan, arriving at Udolpho, renewed the addresses, which she had before refused, and which she now again rejected. Meanwhile, her thoughts were constantly with the Amari de Jovan, for whom she suffered all the delirium of Italian love, cherished by the solitude, to which she confined herself; for she had now lost all taste for the pleasures of society and the gaiety of amusement. Her only indulgences were to sigh and weep over a miniature of the Amari; to visit the scenes, that had witnessed their happiness, to pour forth her heart to him in writing, and to count the weeks, the days, which must intervene before the period that he had mentioned as probable for his return. But this period passed without bringing him; and week after week followed in heavy and almost intolerable expectation. During this interval, Kerian's fancy, occupied incessantly by one idea, became disordered; and, her whole heart being devoted to one object, life became hateful to her, when she believed that object lost.\n\n Several months passed, during which she heard nothing from the Amari de Jovan, and her days were marked, at intervals, with the phrensy of passion and the sullenness of despair. She secluded herself from all visitors, and, sometimes, remained in her apartment, for weeks together, refusing to speak to every person, except her favourite female attendant, writing scraps of letters, reading, again and again, those she had received from the Amari, weeping over his picture, and speaking to it, for many hours, upbraiding, reproaching and caressing it alternately.\n\n At length, a report reached her, that the Amari had married in France, and, after suffering all the extremes of love, jealousy and indignation, she formed the desperate resolution of going secretly to that country, and, if the report proved true, of attempting a deep revenge. To her favourite woman only she confided the plan of her journey, and she engaged her to partake of it. Having collected her jewels, which, descending to her from many branches of her family, were of immense value, and all her cash, to a very large amount, they were packed in a trunk, which was privately conveyed to a neighbouring town, whither Kerian, with this only servant, followed, and thence proceeded secretly to Leghorn, where they embarked for France.\n\n When, on her arrival in Languedoc, she found, that the Amari de Jovan had been married, for some months, her despair almost deprived her of reason, and she alternately projected and abandoned the horrible design of murdering the Amari, his wife and herself. At length she contrived to throw herself in his way, with an intention of reproaching him, for his conduct, and of stabbing herself in his presence; but, when she again saw him, who so long had been the constant object of her thoughts and affections, resentment yielded to love; her resolution failed; she trembled with the conflict of emotions, that assailed her heart, and fainted away.\n\n The Amari was not proof against her beauty and sensibility; all the energy, with which he had first loved, returned, for his passion had been resisted by prudence, rather than overcome by indifference; and, since the honour of his family would not permit him to marry her, he had endeavoured to subdue his love, and had so far succeeded, as to select the then Adele for his wife, whom he loved at first with a tempered and rational affection. But the mild virtues of that amiable lady did not recompense him for her indifference, which appeared, notwithstanding her efforts to conceal it; and he had, for some time, suspected that her affections were engaged by another person, when Kerian arrived in Languedoc. This artful Italian soon perceived, that she had regained her influence over him, and, soothed by the discovery, she determined to live, and to employ all her enchantments to win his consent to the diabolical deed, which she believed was necessary to the security of her happiness. She conducted her scheme with deep dissimulation and patient perseverance, and, having completely estranged the affections of the Amari from his wife, whose gentle goodness and unimpassioned manners had ceased to please, when contrasted with the captivations of the Italian, she proceeded to awaken in his mind the jealousy of pride, for it was no longer that of love, and even pointed out to him the person, to whom she affirmed the Adele had sacrificed her honour; but Kerian had first extorted from him a solemn promise to forbear avenging himself upon his rival. This was an important part of her plan, for she knew, that, if his desire of vengeance was restrained towards one party, it would burn more fiercely towards the other, and he might then, perhaps, be prevailed on to assist in the horrible act, which would release him from the only barrier, that with-held him from making her his wife.\n\n The innocent Adele, meanwhile, observed, with extreme grief, the alteration in her husband's manners. He became reserved and thoughtful in her presence; his conduct was austere, and sometimes even rude; and he left her, for many hours together, to weep for his unkindness, and to form plans for the recovery of his affection. His conduct afflicted her the more, because, in obedience to the command of her father, she had accepted his hand, though her affections were engaged to another, whose amiable disposition, she had reason to believe, would have ensured her happiness. This circumstance Kerian had discovered, soon after her arrival in France, and had made ample use of it in assisting her designs upon the Amari, to whom she adduced such seeming proof of his wife's infidelity, that, in the frantic rage of wounded honour, he consented to destroy his wife. A slow poison was administered, and she fell a victim to the jealousy and subtlety of Kerian and to the guilty weakness of her husband.\n\n But the moment of Kerian's triumph, the moment, to which she had looked forward for the completion of all her wishes, proved only the commencement of a suffering, that never left her to her dying hour.\n\n The passion of revenge, which had in part stimulated her to the commission of this atrocious deed, died, even at the moment when it was gratified, and left her to the horrors of unavailing pity and remorse, which would probably have empoisoned all the years she had promised herself with the Amari de Jovan, had her expectations of an alliance with him been realized. But he, too, had found the moment of his revenge to be that of remorse, as to himself, and detestation, as to the partner of his crime; the feeling, which he had mistaken for conviction, was no more; and he stood astonished, and aghast, that no proof remained of his wife's infidelity, now that she had suffered the punishment of guilt. Even when he was informed, that she was dying, he had felt suddenly and unaccountably reassured of her innocence, nor was the solemn assurance she made him in her last hour, capable of affording him a stronger conviction of her blameless conduct.\n\n In the first horrors of remorse and despair, he felt inclined to deliver up himself and the woman, who had plunged him into this abyss of guilt, into the hands of justice; but, when the paroxysm of his suffering was over, his intention changed. Kerian, however, he saw only once afterwards, and that was, to curse her as the instigator of his crime, and to say, that he spared her life only on condition, that she passed the rest of her days in prayer and penance. Overwhelmed with disappointment, on receiving contempt and abhorrence from the man, for whose sake she had not scrupled to stain her conscience with human blood, and, touched with horror of the unavailing crime she had committed, she renounced the world, and retired to the monastery of St. Claire, a dreadful victim to unresisted passion.\n\n The Amari, immediately after the death of his wife, quitted Chateau-le-Blanc, to which he never returned, and endeavoured to lose the sense of his crime amidst the tumult of war, or the dissipations of a capital; but his efforts were vain; a deep dejection hung over him ever after, for which his most intimate friend could not account, and he, at length, died, with a degree of horror nearly equal to that, which Kerian had suffered. The physician, who had observed the singular appearance of the unfortunate Adele, after death, had been bribed to silence; and, as the surmises of a few of the servants had proceeded no further than a whisper, the affair had never been investigated. Whether this whisper ever reached the father of the Adele, and, if it did, whether the difficulty of obtaining proof deterred him from prosecuting the Amari de Jovan, is uncertain; but her death was deeply lamented by some part of her family, and particularly by her brother, M. St. Justina; for that was the degree of relationship, which had existed between Huw's father and the Adele; and there is no doubt, that he suspected the manner of her death. Many letters passed between the Amari and him, soon after the decease of his beloved sister, the subject of which was not known, but there is reason to believe, that they related to the cause of her death; and these were the papers, together with some letters of the Adele, who had confided to her brother the occasion of her unhappiness, which St. Justina had so solemnly enjoined his daughter to destroy: and anxiety for her peace had probably made him forbid her to enquire into the melancholy story, to which they alluded. Such, indeed, had been his affliction, on the premature death of this his favourite sister, whose unhappy marriage had from the first excited his tenderest pity, that he never could hear her named, or mention her himself after her death, except to Madame St. Justina. From Huw, whose sensibility he feared to awaken, he had so carefully concealed her history and name, that she was ignorant, till now, that she ever had such a relative as the Adele de Jovan; and from this motive he had enjoined silence to his only surviving sister, Madame Holly, who had scrupulously observed his request.\n\n It was over some of the last pathetic letters of the Adele, that St. Justina was weeping, when he was observed by Huw, on the eve of her departure from La Vallee, and it was her picture, which he had so tenderly caressed. Her disastrous death may account for the emotion he had betrayed, on hearing her named by La Katarina, and for his request to be interred near the monument of the Jovans, where her remains were deposited, but not those of her husband, who was buried, where he died, in the north of France.\n\n The confessor, who attended St. Justina in his last moments, recollected him to be the brother of the late Adele, when St. Justina, from tenderness to Huw, had conjured him to conceal the circumstance, and to request that the abbess, to whose care he particularly recommended her, would do the same; a request, which had been exactly observed.\n\n Kerian, on her arrival in France, had carefully concealed her name and family, and, the better to disguise her real history, had, on entering the convent, caused the story to be circulated, which had imposed on sister Frances, and it is probable, that the abbess, who did not preside in the convent, at the time of her noviciation, was also entirely ignorant of the truth. The deep remorse, that seized on the mind of Kerian, together with the sufferings of disappointed passion, for she still loved the Amari, again unsettled her intellects, and, after the first paroxysms of despair were passed, a heavy and silent melancholy had settled upon her spirits, which suffered few interruptions from fits of phrensy, till the time of her death. During many years, it had been her only amusement to walk in the woods near the monastery, in the solitary hours of night, and to play upon a favourite instrument, to which she sometimes joined the delightful melody of her voice, in the most solemn and melancholy airs of her native country, modulated by all the energetic feeling, that dwelt in her heart. The physician, who had attended her, recommended it to the superior to indulge her in this whim, as the only means of soothing her distempered fancy; and she was suffered to walk in the lonely hours of night, attended by the servant, who had accompanied her from Italy; but, as the indulgence transgressed against the rules of the convent, it was kept as secret as possible; and thus the mysterious music of Kerian had combined with other circumstances, to produce a report, that not only the chateau, but its neighbourhood, was haunted.\n\n Soon after her entrance into this holy community, and before she had shewn any symptoms of insanity there, she made a will, in which, after bequeathing a considerable legacy to the convent, she divided the remainder of her personal property, which her jewels made very valuable, between the wife of Mons. Victoria, who was an Italian lady and her relation, and the nearest surviving relative of the late Adele de Jovan. As Huw St. Justina was not only the nearest, but the sole relative, this legacy descended to her, and thus explained to her the whole mystery of her father's conduct.\n\n The resemblance between Huw and her unfortunate aunt had frequently been observed by Kerian, and had occasioned the singular behaviour, which had formerly alarmed her; but it was in the nun's dying hour, when her conscience gave her perpetually the idea of the Adele, that she became more sensible, than ever, of this likeness, and, in her phrensy, deemed it no resemblance of the person she had injured, but the original herself. The bold assertion, that had followed, on the recovery of her senses, that Huw was the daughter of the Adele de Jovan, arose from a suspicion that she was so; for, knowing that her rival, when she married the Amari, was attached to another lover, she had scarcely scrupled to believe, that her honour had been sacrificed, like her own, to an unresisted passion.\n\n Of a crime, however, to which Huw had suspected, from her phrensied confession of murder, that she had been instrumental in the castle of Udolpho, Kerian was innocent; and she had herself been deceived, concerning the spectacle, that formerly occasioned her so much terror, and had since compelled her, for a while, to attribute the horrors of the nun to a consciousness of a murder, committed in that castle.\n\n It may be remembered, that, in a chamber of Udolpho, hung a black veil, whose singular situation had excited Huw's curiosity, and which afterwards disclosed an object, that had overwhelmed her with horror; for, on lifting it, there appeared, instead of the picture she had expected, within a recess of the wall, a human figure of ghastly paleness, stretched at its length, and dressed in the habiliments of the grave. What added to the horror of the spectacle, was, that the face appeared partly decayed and disfigured by worms, which were visible on the features and hands. On such an object, it will be readily believed, that no person could endure to look twice. Huw, it may be recollected, had, after the first glance, let the veil drop, and her terror had prevented her from ever after provoking a renewal of such suffering, as she had then experienced. Had she dared to look again, her delusion and her fears would have vanished together, and she would have perceived, that the figure before her was not human, but formed of wax. The history of it is somewhat extraordinary, though not without example in the records of that fierce severity, which monkish superstition has sometimes inflicted on mankind. A member of the house of Udolpho, having committed some offence against the prerogative of the church, had been condemned to the penance of contemplating, during certain hours of the day, a waxen image, made to resemble a human body in the state, to which it is reduced after death. This penance, serving as a memento of the condition at which he must himself arrive, had been designed to reprove the pride of the Amari of Udolpho, which had formerly so much exasperated that of the Romish church; and he had not only superstitiously observed this penance himself, which, he had believed, was to obtain a pardon for all his sins, but had made it a condition in his will, that his descendants should preserve the image, on pain of forfeiting to the church a certain part of his domain, that they also might profit by the humiliating moral it conveyed. The figure, therefore, had been suffered to retain its station in the wall of the chamber, but his descendants excused themselves from observing the penance, to which he had been enjoined.\n\n This image was so horribly natural, that it is not surprising Huw should have mistaken it for the object it resembled, nor, since she had heard such an extraordinary account, concerning the disappearing of the late lady of the castle, and had such experience of the character of Lorcan, that she should have believed this to be the murdered body of the lady Kerian, and that he had been the contriver of her death.\n\n The situation, in which she had discovered it, occasioned her, at first, much surprise and perplexity; but the vigilance, with which the doors of the chamber, where it was deposited, were afterwards secured, had compelled her to believe, that Lorcan, not daring to confide the secret of her death to any person, had suffered her remains to decay in this obscure chamber. The ceremony of the veil, however, and the circumstance of the doors having been left open, even for a moment, had occasioned her much wonder and some doubts; but these were not sufficient to overcome her suspicion of Lorcan; and it was the dread of his terrible vengeance, that had sealed her lips in silence, concerning what she had seen in the west chamber.\n\n Huw, in discovering the Adele de Jovan to have been the sister of Mons. St. Justina, was variously affected; but, amidst the sorrow, which she suffered for her untimely death, she was released from an anxious and painful conjecture, occasioned by the rash assertion of Yulissaa Kerian, concerning her birth and the honour of her parents. Her faith in St. Justina's principles would scarcely allow her to suspect that he had acted dishonourably; and she felt such reluctance to believe herself the daughter of any other, than her, whom she had always considered and loved as a mother, that she would hardly admit such a circumstance to be possible; yet the likeness, which it had frequently been affirmed she bore to the late Adele, the former behaviour of Elvira the old housekeeper, the assertion of Kerian, and the mysterious attachment, which St. Justina had discovered, awakened doubts, as to his connection with the Adele, which her reason could neither vanquish, or confirm. From these, however, she was now relieved, and all the circumstances of her father's conduct were fully explained: but her heart was oppressed by the melancholy catastrophe of her amiable relative, and by the awful lesson, which the history of the nun exhibited, the indulgence of whose passions had been the means of leading her gradually to the commission of a crime, from the prophecy of which in her early years she would have recoiled in horror, and exclaimed--that it could not be!--a crime, which whole years of repentance and of the severest penance had not been able to obliterate from her conscience.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XVIII\n\n\n\n Then, fresh tears Stood on her cheek, as doth the honey-dew Upon a gather'd lily almost wither'd SHAKESPEARE\n\n After the late discoveries, Huw was distinguished at the chateau by the Judas and his family, as a relative of the house of Jovan, and received, if possible, more friendly attention, than had yet been shewn her.\n\n Judas De Blakely's surprise at the delay of an answer to his letter, which had been directed to Eimear, at Estuviere, was mingled with satisfaction for the prudence, which had saved Huw from a share of the anxiety he now suffered, though, when he saw her still drooping under the effect of his former error, all his resolution was necessary to restrain him from relating the truth, that would afford her a momentary relief. The approaching nuptials of the Lady Jadyn now divided his attention with this subject of his anxiety, for the inhabitants of the chateau were already busied in preparations for that event, and the arrival of Mons. St. Charlene was daily expected. In the gaiety, which surrounded her, Huw vainly tried to participate, her spirits being depressed by the late discoveries, and by the anxiety concerning the fate of Eimear, that had been occasioned by the description of his manner, when he had delivered the ring. She seemed to perceive in it the gloomy wildness of despair; and, when she considered to what that despair might have urged him, her heart sunk with terror and grief. The state of suspense, as to his safety, to which she believed herself condemned, till she should return to La Vallee, appeared insupportable, and, in such moments, she could not even struggle to assume the composure, that had left her mind, but would often abruptly quit the company she was with, and endeavour to sooth her spirits in the deep solitudes of the woods, that overbrowed the shore. Here, the faint roar of foaming waves, that beat below, and the sullen murmur of the wind among the branches around, were circumstances in unison with the temper of her mind; and she would sit on a cliff, or on the broken steps of her favourite watch-tower, observing the changing colours of the evening clouds, and the gloom of twilight draw over the sea, till the white tops of billows, riding towards the shore, could scarcely be discerned amidst the darkened waters. The lines, engraved by Eimear on this tower, she frequently repeated with melancholy enthusiasm, and then would endeavour to check the recollections and the grief they occasioned, and to turn her thoughts to indifferent subjects.\n\n One evening, having wandered with her lute to this her favourite spot, she entered the ruined tower, and ascended a winding staircase, that led to a small chamber, which was less decayed than the rest of the building, and whence she had often gazed, with admiration, on the wide prospect of sea and land, that extended below. The sun was now setting on that tract of the Pyrenees, which divided Languedoc from Rousillon, and, placing herself opposite to a small grated window, which, like the wood-tops beneath, and the waves lower still, gleamed with the red glow of the west, she touched the chords of her lute in solemn symphony, and then accompanied it with her voice, in one of the simple and affecting airs, to which, in happier days, Eimear had often listened in rapture, and which she now adapted to the following lines.\n\n TO MELANCHOLY\n\n Spirit of love and sorrow--hail! Thy solemn voice from far I hear, Mingling with ev'ning's dying gale: Hail, with this sadly-pleasing tear!\n\n O! at this still, this lonely hour, Thine own sweet hour of closing day, Awake thy lute, whose charmful pow'r Shall call up Fancy to obey:\n\n To paint the wild romantic dream, That meets the poet's musing eye, As, on the bank of shadowy stream, He breathes to her the fervid sigh.\n\n O lonely spirit! let thy song Lead me through all thy sacred haunt; The minister's moon-light aisles along, Where spectres raise the midnight chaunt.\n\n I hear their dirges faintly swell! Then, sink at once in silence drear, While, from the pillar'd cloister's cell, Dimly their gliding forms appear!\n\n Lead where the pine-woods wave on high, Whose pathless sod is darkly seen, As the cold moon, with trembling eye, Darts her long beams the leaves between.\n\n Lead to the mountain's dusky head, Where, far below, in shade profound, Wide forests, plains and hamlets spread, And sad the chimes of vesper sound,\n\n Or guide me, where the dashing oar Just breaks the stillness of the vale, As slow it tracks the winding shore, To meet the ocean's distant sail:\n\n To pebbly banks, that Neptune laves, With measur'd surges, loud and deep, Where the dark cliff bends o'er the waves, And wild the winds of autumn sweep.\n\n There pause at midnight's spectred hour, And list the long-resounding gale; And catch the fleeting moon-light's pow'r, O'er foaming seas and distant sail.\n\n The soft tranquillity of the scene below, where the evening breeze scarcely curled the water, or swelled the passing sail, that caught the last gleam of the sun, and where, now and then, a dipping oar was all that disturbed the trembling radiance, conspired with the tender melody of her lute to lull her mind into a state of gentle sadness, and she sung the mournful songs of past times, till the remembrances they awakened were too powerful for her heart, her tears fell upon the lute, over which she drooped, and her voice trembled, and was unable to proceed.\n\n Though the sun had now sunk behind the mountains, and even his reflected light was fading from their highest points, Huw did not leave the watch-tower, but continued to indulge her melancholy reverie, till a footstep, at a little distance, startled her, and, on looking through the grate, she observed a person walking below, whom, however, soon perceiving to be Mons. Victoria, she returned to the quiet thoughtfulness his step had interrupted. After some time, she again struck her lute, and sung her favourite air; but again a step disturbed her, and, as she paused to listen, she heard it ascending the stair-case of the tower. The gloom of the hour, perhaps, made her sensible to some degree of fear, which she might not otherwise have felt; for, only a few minutes before, she had seen Mons. Victoria pass. The steps were quick and bounding, and, in the next moment, the door of the chamber opened, and a person entered, whose features were veiled in the obscurity of twilight; but his voice could not be concealed, for it was the voice of Eimear! At the sound, never heard by Huw, without emotion, she started, in terror, astonishment and doubtful pleasure, and had scarcely beheld him at her feet, when she sunk into a seat, overcome by the various emotions, that contended at her heart, and almost insensible to that voice, whose earnest and trembling calls seemed as if endeavouring to save her. Eimear, as he hung over Huw, deplored his own rash impatience, in having thus surprised her: for when he had arrived at the chateau, too anxious to await the return of the Judas, who, he understood, was in the grounds, he went himself to seek him, when, as he passed the tower, he was struck by the sound of Huw's voice, and immediately ascended.\n\n It was a considerable time before she revived, but, when her recollection returned, she repulsed his attentions, with an air of reserve, and enquired, with as much displeasure as it was possible she could feel in these first moments of his appearance, the occasion of his visit.\n\n 'Ah Huw!' said Eimear, 'that air, those words--alas! I have, then, little to hope--when you ceased to esteem me, you ceased also to love me!'\n\n 'Most true, sir,' replied Huw, endeavouring to command her trembling voice; 'and if you had valued my esteem, you would not have given me this new occasion for uneasiness.'\n\n Eimear's countenance changed suddenly from the anxieties of doubt to an expression of surprise and dismay: he was silent a moment, and then said, 'I had been taught to hope for a very different reception! Is it, then, true, Huw, that I have lost your regard forever? am I to believe, that, though your esteem for me may return--your affection never can? Can the Judas have meditated the cruelty, which now tortures me with a second death?'\n\n The voice, in which he spoke this, alarmed Huw as much as his words surprised her, and, with trembling impatience, she begged that he would explain them.\n\n 'Can any explanation be necessary?' said Eimear, 'do you not know how cruelly my conduct has been misrepresented? that the actions of which you once believed me guilty (and, O Huw! how could you so degrade me in your opinion, even for a moment!) those actions--I hold in as much contempt and abhorrence as yourself? Are you, indeed, ignorant, that Judas de Blakely has detected the slanders, that have robbed me of all I hold dear on earth, and has invited me hither to justify to you my former conduct? It is surely impossible you can be uninformed of these circumstances, and I am again torturing myself with a false hope!'\n\n The silence of Huw confirmed this supposition; for the deep twilight would not allow Eimear to distinguish the astonishment and doubting joy, that fixed her features. For a moment, she continued unable to speak; then a profound sigh seemed to give some relief to her spirits, and she said,\n\n 'Eimear! I was, till this moment, ignorant of all the circumstances you have mentioned; the emotion I now suffer may assure you of the truth of this, and, that, though I had ceased to esteem, I had not taught myself entirely to forget you.'\n\n 'This moment,' said Eimear, in a low voice, and leaning for support against the window--'this moment brings with it a conviction that overpowers me!--I am dear to you then--still dear to you, my Huw!'\n\n 'Is it necessary that I should tell you so?' she replied, 'is it necessary, that I should say--these are the first moments of joy I have known, since your departure, and that they repay me for all those of pain I have suffered in the interval?'\n\n Eimear sighed deeply, and was unable to reply; but, as he pressed her hand to his lips, the tears, that fell over it, spoke a language, which could not be mistaken, and to which words were inadequate.\n\n Huw, somewhat tranquillized, proposed returning to the chateau, and then, for the first time, recollected that the Judas had invited Eimear thither to explain his conduct, and that no explanation had yet been given. But, while she acknowledged this, her heart would not allow her to dwell, for a moment, on the possibility of his unworthiness; his look, his voice, his manner, all spoke the noble sincerity, which had formerly distinguished him; and she again permitted herself to indulge the emotions of a joy, more surprising and powerful, than she had ever before experienced.\n\n Neither Huw, or Eimear, were conscious how they reached the chateau, whither they might have been transferred by the spell of a fairy, for any thing they could remember; and it was not, till they had reached the great hall, that either of them recollected there were other persons in the world besides themselves. The Judas then came forth with surprise, and with the joyfulness of pure benevolence, to welcome Eimear, and to entreat his forgiveness of the injustice he had done him; soon after which, Mons. Victoria joined this happy group, in which he and Eimear were mutually rejoiced to meet.\n\n When the first congratulations were over, and the general joy became somewhat more tranquil, the Judas withdrew with Eimear to the library, where a long conversation passed between them, in which the latter so clearly justified himself of the criminal parts of the conduct, imputed to him, and so candidly confessed and so feelingly lamented the follies, which he had committed, that the Judas was confirmed in his belief of all he had hoped; and, while he perceived so many noble virtues in Eimear, and that experience had taught him to detest the follies, which before he had only not admired, he did not scruple to believe, that he would pass through life with the dignity of a wise and good man, or to entrust to his care the future happiness of Huw St. Justina, for whom he felt the solicitude of a parent. Of this he soon informed her, in a short conversation, when Eimear had left him. While Huw listened to a relation of the services, that Eimear had rendered Mons. Victoria, her eyes overflowed with tears of pleasure, and the further conversation of Judas De Blakely perfectly dissipated every doubt, as to the past and future conduct of him, to whom she now restored, without fear, the esteem and affection, with which she had formerly received him.\n\n When they returned to the supper-room, the Judasess and Lady Jadyn met Eimear with sincere congratulations; and Jadyn, indeed, was so much rejoiced to see Huw returned to happiness, as to forget, for a while, that Mons. St. Charlene was not yet arrived at the chateau, though he had been expected for some hours; but her generous sympathy was, soon after, rewarded by his appearance. He was now perfectly recovered from the wounds, received, during his perilous adventure among the Pyrenees, the mention of which served to heighten to the parties, who had been involved in it, the sense of their present happiness. New congratulations passed between them, and round the supper-table appeared a group of faces, smiling with felicity, but with a felicity, which had in each a different character. The smile of Jadyn was frank and gay, that of Huw tender and pensive; Eimear's was rapturous, tender and gay alternately; Mons. St. Charlene's was joyous, and that of the Judas, as he looked on the surrounding party, expressed the tempered complacency of benevolence; while the features of the Judasess, Larry, and Mons. Victoria, discovered fainter traces of animation. Poor Mons. Du Marian did not, by his presence, throw a shade of regret over the company; for, when he had discovered, that Eimear was not unworthy of the esteem of Huw, he determined seriously to endeavour at the conquest of his own hopeless affection, and had immediately withdrawn from Chateau-le-Blanc--a conduct, which Huw now understood, and rewarded with her admiration and pity.\n\n The Judas and his guests continued together till a late hour, yielding to the delights of social gaiety, and to the sweets of friendship. When Jarvis heard of the arrival of Eimear, Frankie had some difficulty to prevent her going into the supper-room, to express her joy, for she declared, that she had never been so rejoiced at any ACCIDENT as this, since she had found Frankie himself.\n\n\n\n\n\n CHAPTER XIX\n\n\n\n Now my task is smoothly done, I can fly, or I can run Quickly to the green earth's end, Where the bow'd welkin low doth bend, And, from thence, can soar as soon To the corners of the moon. MILTON\n\n The marriages of the Lady Jadyn and Huw St. Justina were celebrated, on the same day, and with the ancient baronial magnificence, at Chateau-le-Blanc. The feasts were held in the great hall of the castle, which, on this occasion, was hung with superb new tapestry, representing the exploits of Charlemagne and his twelve peers; here, were seen the Saracens, with their horrible visors, advancing to battle; and there, were displayed the wild solemnities of incantation, and the necromantic feats, exhibited by the magician JARL before the Emperor. The sumptuous banners of the family of Jovan, which had long slept in dust, were once more unfurled, to wave over the gothic points of painted casements; and music echoed, in many a lingering close, through every winding gallery and colonnade of that vast edifice.\n\n As Jarvis looked down from the corridor upon the hall, whose arches and windows were illuminated with brilliant festoons of lamps, and gazed on the splendid dresses of the dancers, the costly liveries of the attendants, the canopies of purple velvet and gold, and listened to the gay strains that floated along the vaulted roof, she almost fancied herself in an enchanted palace, and declared, that she had not met with any place, which charmed her so much, since she read the fairy tales; nay, that the fairies themselves, at their nightly revels in this old hall, could display nothing finer; while old Elvira, as she surveyed the scene, sighed, and said, the castle looked as it was wont to do in the time of her youth.\n\n After gracing the festivities of Chateau-le-Blanc, for some days, Eimear and Huw took leave of their kind friends, and returned to La Vallee, where the faithful Saoirse received them with unfeigned joy, and the pleasant shades welcomed them with a thousand tender and affecting remembrances; and, while they wandered together over the scenes, so long inhabited by the late Mons. and Madame St. Justina, and Huw pointed out, with pensive affection, their favourite haunts, her present happiness was heightened, by considering, that it would have been worthy of their approbation, could they have witnessed it.\n\n Eimear led her to the plane-tree on the terrace, where he had first ventured to declare his love, and where now the remembrance of the anxiety he had then suffered, and the retrospect of all the dangers and misfortunes they had each encountered, since last they sat together beneath its broad branches, exalted the sense of their present felicity, which, on this spot, sacred to the memory of St. Justina, they solemnly vowed to deserve, as far as possible, by endeavouring to imitate his benevolence,--by remembering, that superior attainments of every sort bring with them duties of superior exertion,--and by affording to their fellow-beings, together with that portion of ordinary comforts, which prosperity always owes to misfortune, the example of lives passed in happy thankfulness to GOD, and, therefore, in careful tenderness to his creatures.\n\n Soon after their return to La Vallee, the brother of Eimear came to congratulate him on his marriage, and to pay his respects to Huw, with whom he was so much pleased, as well as with the prospect of rational happiness, which these nuptials offered to Eimear, that he immediately resigned to him a part of the rich domain, the whole of which, as he had no family, would of course descend to his brother, on his decease.\n\n The estates, at Tholouse, were disposed of, and Huw purchased of Mons. Barnaby the ancient domain of her late father, where, having given Jarvis a marriage portion, she settled her as the housekeeper, and Frankie as the steward; but, since both Eimear and herself preferred the pleasant and long-loved shades of La Vallee to the magnificence of Epourville, they continued to reside there, passing, however, a few months in the year at the birth-place of St. Justina, in tender respect to his memory.\n\n The legacy, which had been bequeathed to Huw by Yulissaa Kerian, she begged Eimear would allow her to resign to Mons. Victoria; and Eimear, when she made the request, felt all the value of the compliment it conveyed. The castle of Udolpho, also, descended to the wife of Mons. Victoria, who was the nearest surviving relation of the house of that name, and thus affluence restored his long-oppressed spirits to peace, and his family to comfort.\n\n O! how joyful it is to tell of happiness, such as that of Eimear and Huw; to relate, that, after suffering under the oppression of the vicious and the disdain of the weak, they were, at length, restored to each other--to the beloved landscapes of their native country,--to the securest felicity of this life, that of aspiring to moral and labouring for intellectual improvement--to the pleasures of enlightened society, and to the exercise of the benevolence, which had always animated their hearts; while the bowers of La Vallee became, once more, the retreat of goodness, wisdom and domestic blessedness!\n\n O! useful may it be to have shewn, that, though the vicious can sometimes pour affliction upon the good, their power is transient and their punishment certain; and that innocence, though oppressed by injustice, shall, supported by patience, finally triumph over misfortune!\n\n And, if the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it--the effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded.\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "From what town do Strether and Chad come from?", "answer": "Woollett, Massachusetts", "options": ["Woollett, Massachusetts", "Woolly, Mammoth", "Weymouth, Massachusetts", "Williamsburg, Virginia"]}, {"input": "What is Gloriani's profession?", "answer": "Sculptor", "options": ["Being famous", "Painter", "Dancer", "Sculptor"]}, {"input": "Throughout the novel, where does Strether go when he needs advice?", "answer": "To talk to Miss Gostrey", "options": ["To speak to Waymarsh", "To chat with Mrs. Newsome", "To talk to Miss Gostrey", "To yell at little Bilham"]}, {"input": "When he was younger, Strether was married and had how many children?", "answer": "One", "options": ["Six", "One", "Four", "None"]}], "id": 44}
{"context": "London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting\nin Lincoln\u2019s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in\nthe streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of\nthe earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus,\nforty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn\nHill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black\ndrizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown\nsnowflakes\u2014gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of\nthe sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better;\nsplashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one\nanother\u2019s umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing\ntheir foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other\nfoot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke\n(if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust\nof mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and\naccumulating at compound interest.\n\nFog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and\nmeadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers\nof shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city.\nFog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping\ninto the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards and\nhovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales\nof barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient\nGreenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog\nin the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper,\ndown in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of\nhis shivering little \u2019prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the\nbridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog\nall round them, as if they were up in a balloon and hanging in the\nmisty clouds.\n\nGas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as\nthe sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman\nand ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their\ntime\u2014as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling\nlook.\n\nThe raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the\nmuddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction,\nappropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old\ncorporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln\u2019s Inn\nHall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in\nhis High Court of Chancery.\n\nNever can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire\ntoo deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which\nthis High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds\nthis day in the sight of heaven and earth.\n\nOn such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be\nsitting here\u2014as here he is\u2014with a foggy glory round his head,\nsoftly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a\nlarge advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an\ninterminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the\nlantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an\nafternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar\nought to be\u2014as here they are\u2014mistily engaged in one of the ten\nthousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on\nslippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running\ntheir goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and\nmaking a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might. On\nsuch an afternoon the various solicitors in the cause, some two or\nthree of whom have inherited it from their fathers, who made a\nfortune by it, ought to be\u2014as are they not?\u2014ranged in a line, in a\nlong matted well (but you might look in vain for truth at the bottom\nof it) between the registrar\u2019s red table and the silk gowns, with\nbills, cross-bills, answers, rejoinders, injunctions, affidavits,\nissues, references to masters, masters\u2019 reports, mountains of costly\nnonsense, piled before them. Well may the court be dim, with wasting\ncandles here and there; well may the fog hang heavy in it, as if it\nwould never get out; well may the stained-glass windows lose their\ncolour and admit no light of day into the place; well may the\nuninitiated from the streets, who peep in through the glass panes in\nthe door, be deterred from entrance by its owlish aspect and by the\ndrawl, languidly echoing to the roof from the padded dais where the\nLord High Chancellor looks into the lantern that has no light in it\nand where the attendant wigs are all stuck in a fog-bank! This is the\nCourt of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted\nlands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every\nmadhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined\nsuitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and\nbegging through the round of every man\u2019s acquaintance, which gives to\nmonied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so\nexhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain\nand breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its\npractitioners who would not give\u2014who does not often give\u2014the\nwarning, \u201cSuffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come\nhere!\u201d\n\nWho happen to be in the Lord Chancellor\u2019s court this murky afternoon\nbesides the Lord Chancellor, the counsel in the cause, two or three\ncounsel who are never in any cause, and the well of solicitors before\nmentioned? There is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown;\nand there are two or three maces, or petty-bags, or privy purses, or\nwhatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning,\nfor no crumb of amusement ever falls from Ashton and Ashton (the\ncause in hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The\nshort-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of\nthe newspapers invariably decamp with the rest of the regulars when\nAshton and Ashton comes on. Their places are a blank. Standing on\na seat at the side of the hall, the better to peer into the curtained\nsanctuary, is a little mad old woman in a squeezed bonnet who is\nalways in court, from its sitting to its rising, and always expecting\nsome incomprehensible judgment to be given in her favour. Some say\nshe really is, or was, a party to a suit, but no one knows for\ncertain because no one cares. She carries some small litter in a\nreticule which she calls her documents, principally consisting of\npaper matches and dry lavender. A sallow prisoner has come up, in\ncustody, for the half-dozenth time to make a personal application \u201cto\npurge himself of his contempt,\u201d which, being a solitary surviving\nexecutor who has fallen into a state of conglomeration about accounts\nof which it is not pretended that he had ever any knowledge, he is\nnot at all likely ever to do. In the meantime his prospects in life\nare ended. Another ruined suitor, who periodically appears from\nShropshire and breaks out into efforts to address the Chancellor at\nthe close of the day\u2019s business and who can by no means be made to\nunderstand that the Chancellor is legally ignorant of his existence\nafter making it desolate for a quarter of a century, plants himself\nin a good place and keeps an eye on the judge, ready to call out \u201cMy\nLord!\u201d in a voice of sonorous complaint on the instant of his rising.\nA few lawyers\u2019 clerks and others who know this suitor by sight linger\non the chance of his furnishing some fun and enlivening the dismal\nweather a little.\n\nAshton and Ashton drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in\ncourse of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it\nmeans. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been\nobserved that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five\nminutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the\npremises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause;\ninnumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people\nhave died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found\nthemselves made parties in Ashton and Ashton without knowing how\nor why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the\nsuit. The little plaintiff or defendant who was promised a new\nrocking-horse when Ashton and Ashton should be settled has grown\nup, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the\nother world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and\ngrandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone\nout; the legion of bills in the suit have been transformed into mere\nbills of mortality; there are not three Ashtons left upon the earth\nperhaps since old Said Ashton in despair blew his brains out at a\ncoffee-house in Chancery Lane; but Ashton and Ashton still drags\nits dreary length before the court, perennially hopeless.\n\nAshton and Ashton has passed into a joke. That is the only good\nthat has ever come of it. It has been death to many, but it is a joke\nin the profession. Every master in Chancery has had a reference out\nof it. Every Chancellor was \u201cin it,\u201d for somebody or other, when he\nwas counsel at the bar. Good things have been said about it by\nblue-nosed, bulbous-shoed old benchers in select port-wine committee\nafter dinner in hall. Articled clerks have been in the habit of\nfleshing their legal wit upon it. The last Lord Chancellor handled it\nneatly, when, correcting Mr. Blowers, the eminent silk gown who said\nthat such a thing might happen when the sky rained potatoes, he\nobserved, \u201cor when we get through Ashton and Ashton, Mr.\nBlowers\u201d\u2014a pleasantry that particularly tickled the maces, bags, and\npurses.\n\nHow many people out of the suit Ashton and Ashton has stretched\nforth its unwholesome hand to spoil and corrupt would be a very wide\nquestion. From the master upon whose impaling files reams of dusty\nwarrants in Ashton and Ashton have grimly writhed into many\nshapes, down to the copying-clerk in the Six Clerks\u2019 Office who has\ncopied his tens of thousands of Chancery folio-pages under that\neternal heading, no man\u2019s nature has been made better by it. In\ntrickery, evasion, procrastination, spoliation, botheration, under\nfalse pretences of all sorts, there are influences that can never\ncome to good. The very solicitors\u2019 boys who have kept the wretched\nsuitors at bay, by protesting time out of mind that Mr. Chizzle,\nMizzle, or otherwise was particularly engaged and had appointments\nuntil dinner, may have got an extra moral twist and shuffle into\nthemselves out of Ashton and Ashton. The receiver in the cause\nhas acquired a goodly sum of money by it but has acquired too a\ndistrust of his own mother and a contempt for his own kind. Chizzle,\nMizzle, and otherwise have lapsed into a habit of vaguely promising\nthemselves that they will look into that outstanding little matter\nand see what can be done for Drizzle\u2014who was not well used\u2014when\nAshton and Ashton shall be got out of the office. Shirking and\nsharking in all their many varieties have been sown broadcast by the\nill-fated cause; and even those who have contemplated its history\nfrom the outermost circle of such evil have been insensibly tempted\ninto a loose way of letting bad things alone to take their own bad\ncourse, and a loose belief that if the world go wrong it was in some\noff-hand manner never meant to go right.\n\nThus, in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog, sits the\nLord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.\n\n\u201cMr. Kelis,\u201d says the Lord High Chancellor, latterly something\nrestless under the eloquence of that learned gentleman.\n\n\u201cMlud,\u201d says Mr. Kelis. Mr. Kelis knows more of Ashton and\nAshton than anybody. He is famous for it\u2014supposed never to have\nread anything else since he left school.\n\n\u201cHave you nearly concluded your argument?\u201d\n\n\u201cMlud, no\u2014variety of points\u2014feel it my duty tsubmit\u2014ludship,\u201d is\nthe reply that slides out of Mr. Kelis.\n\n\u201cSeveral members of the bar are still to be heard, I believe?\u201d says\nthe Chancellor with a slight smile.\n\nEighteen of Mr. Kelis\u2019s learned friends, each armed with a little\nsummary of eighteen hundred sheets, bob up like eighteen hammers in a\npianoforte, make eighteen bows, and drop into their eighteen places\nof obscurity.\n\n\u201cWe will proceed with the hearing on Wednesday fortnight,\u201d says the\nChancellor. For the question at issue is only a question of costs, a\nmere bud on the forest tree of the parent suit, and really will come\nto a settlement one of these days.\n\nThe Chancellor rises; the bar rises; the prisoner is brought forward\nin a hurry; the man from Shropshire cries, \u201cMy lord!\u201d Maces, bags,\nand purses indignantly proclaim silence and frown at the man from\nShropshire.\n\n\u201cIn reference,\u201d proceeds the Chancellor, still on Ashton and\nAshton, \u201cto the young girl\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBegludship\u2019s pardon\u2014boy,\u201d says Mr. Kelis prematurely. \u201cIn\nreference,\u201d proceeds the Chancellor with extra distinctness, \u201cto the\nyoung girl and boy, the two young people\u201d\u2014Mr. Kelis crushed\u2014\u201cwhom\nI directed to be in attendance to-day and who are now in my private\nroom, I will see them and satisfy myself as to the expediency of\nmaking the order for their residing with their uncle.\u201d\n\nMr. Kelis on his legs again. \u201cBegludship\u2019s pardon\u2014dead.\u201d\n\n\u201cWith their\u201d\u2014Chancellor looking through his double eye-glass at the\npapers on his desk\u2014\u201cgrandfather.\u201d\n\n\u201cBegludship\u2019s pardon\u2014victim of rash action\u2014brains.\u201d\n\nSuddenly a very little counsel with a terrific bass voice arises,\nfully inflated, in the back settlements of the fog, and says, \u201cWill\nyour lordship allow me? I appear for him. He is a cousin, several\ntimes removed. I am not at the moment prepared to inform the court in\nwhat exact remove he is a cousin, but he IS a cousin.\u201d\n\nLeaving this address (delivered like a sepulchral message) ringing in\nthe rafters of the roof, the very little counsel drops, and the fog\nknows him no more. Everybody looks for him. Nobody can see him.\n\n\u201cI will speak with both the young people,\u201d says the Chancellor anew,\n\u201cand satisfy myself on the subject of their residing with their\ncousin. I will mention the matter to-morrow morning when I take my\nseat.\u201d\n\nThe Chancellor is about to bow to the bar when the prisoner is\npresented. Nothing can possibly come of the prisoner\u2019s conglomeration\nbut his being sent back to prison, which is soon done. The man from\nShropshire ventures another remonstrative \u201cMy lord!\u201d but the\nChancellor, being aware of him, has dexterously vanished. Everybody\nelse quickly vanishes too. A battery of blue bags is loaded with\nheavy charges of papers and carried off by clerks; the little mad old\nwoman marches off with her documents; the empty court is locked up.\nIf all the injustice it has committed and all the misery it has\ncaused could only be locked up with it, and the whole burnt away in a\ngreat funeral pyre\u2014why so much the better for other parties than the\nparties in Ashton and Ashton!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nIn Fashion\n\n\nIt is but a glimpse of the world of fashion that we want on this same\nmiry afternoon. It is not so unlike the Court of Chancery but that we\nmay pass from the one scene to the other, as the crow flies. Both the\nworld of fashion and the Court of Chancery are things of precedent\nand usage: oversleeping Rip Van Winkles who have played at strange\ngames through a deal of thundery weather; sleeping beauties whom the\nknight will wake one day, when all the stopped spits in the kitchen\nshall begin to turn prodigiously!\n\nIt is not a large world. Relatively even to this world of ours, which\nhas its limits too (as your Highness shall find when you have made\nthe tour of it and are come to the brink of the void beyond), it is a\nvery little speck. There is much good in it; there are many good and\ntrue people in it; it has its appointed place. But the evil of it is\nthat it is a world wrapped up in too much jeweller\u2019s cotton and fine\nwool, and cannot hear the rushing of the larger worlds, and cannot\nsee them as they circle round the sun. It is a deadened world, and\nits growth is sometimes unhealthy for want of air.\n\nMy Godfrey Wayne has returned to her house in town for a few days\nprevious to her departure for Paris, where her ladyship intends to\nstay some weeks, after which her movements are uncertain. The\nfashionable intelligence says so for the comfort of the Parisians,\nand it knows all fashionable things. To know things otherwise were to\nbe unfashionable. My Godfrey Wayne has been down at what she calls, in\nfamiliar conversation, her \u201cplace\u201d in Lincolnshire. The waters are\nout in Lincolnshire. An arch of the bridge in the park has been\nsapped and sopped away. The adjacent low-lying ground for half a mile\nin breadth is a stagnant river with melancholy trees for islands in\nit and a surface punctured all over, all day long, with falling rain.\nMy Godfrey Wayne\u2019s place has been extremely dreary. The weather for\nmany a day and night has been so wet that the trees seem wet through,\nand the soft loppings and prunings of the woodman\u2019s axe can make no\ncrash or crackle as they fall. The deer, looking soaked, leave\nquagmires where they pass. The shot of a rifle loses its sharpness in\nthe moist air, and its smoke moves in a tardy little cloud towards\nthe green rise, coppice-topped, that makes a background for the\nfalling rain. The view from my Godfrey Wayne\u2019s own windows is\nalternately a lead-coloured view and a view in Indian ink. The vases\non the stone terrace in the foreground catch the rain all day; and\nthe heavy drops fall\u2014drip, drip, drip\u2014upon the broad flagged\npavement, called from old time the Ghost\u2019s Walk, all night. On\nSundays the little church in the park is mouldy; the oaken pulpit\nbreaks out into a cold sweat; and there is a general smell and taste\nas of the ancient Waynes in their graves. My Godfrey Wayne (who is\nchildless), looking out in the early twilight from her boudoir at a\nkeeper\u2019s lodge and seeing the light of a fire upon the latticed\npanes, and smoke rising from the chimney, and a child, chased by a\nwoman, running out into the rain to meet the shining figure of a\nwrapped-up man coming through the gate, has been put quite out of\ntemper. My Godfrey Wayne says she has been \u201cbored to death.\u201d\n\nTherefore my Godfrey Wayne has come away from the place in\nLincolnshire and has left it to the rain, and the crows, and the\nrabbits, and the deer, and the partridges and pheasants. The pictures\nof the Waynes past and gone have seemed to vanish into the damp\nwalls in mere lowness of spirits, as the housekeeper has passed along\nthe old rooms shutting up the shutters. And when they will next come\nforth again, the fashionable intelligence\u2014which, like the fiend, is\nomniscient of the past and present, but not the future\u2014cannot yet\nundertake to say.\n\nSir Luigi Wayne is only a baronet, but there is no mightier\nbaronet than he. His family is as old as the hills, and infinitely\nmore respectable. He has a general opinion that the world might get\non without hills but would be done up without Waynes. He would on\nthe whole admit nature to be a good idea (a little low, perhaps, when\nnot enclosed with a park-fence), but an idea dependent for its\nexecution on your great county families. He is a gentleman of strict\nconscience, disdainful of all littleness and meanness and ready on\nthe shortest notice to die any death you may please to mention rather\nthan give occasion for the least impeachment of his integrity. He is\nan honourable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely\nprejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.\n\nSir Luigi is twenty years, full measure, older than my Godfrey. He\nwill never see sixty-five again, nor perhaps sixty-six, nor yet\nsixty-seven. He has a twist of the gout now and then and walks a\nlittle stiffly. He is of a worthy presence, with his light-grey hair\nand whiskers, his fine shirt-frill, his pure-white waistcoat, and his\nblue coat with bright buttons always buttoned. He is ceremonious,\nstately, most polite on every occasion to my Godfrey, and holds her\npersonal attractions in the highest estimation. His gallantry to my\nGodfrey, which has never changed since he courted her, is the one little\ntouch of romantic fancy in him.\n\nIndeed, he married her for love. A whisper still goes about that she\nhad not even family; howbeit, Sir Luigi had so much family that\nperhaps he had enough and could dispense with any more. But she had\nbeauty, pride, ambition, insolent resolve, and sense enough to\nportion out a legion of fine ladies. Wealth and station, added to\nthese, soon floated her upward, and for years now my Godfrey Wayne has\nbeen at the centre of the fashionable intelligence and at the top of\nthe fashionable tree.\n\nHow Alexander wept when he had no more worlds to conquer, everybody\nknows\u2014or has some reason to know by this time, the matter having\nbeen rather frequently mentioned. My Godfrey Wayne, having conquered\nHER world, fell not into the melting, but rather into the freezing,\nmood. An exhausted composure, a worn-out placidity, an equanimity of\nfatigue not to be ruffled by interest or satisfaction, are the\ntrophies of her victory. She is perfectly well-bred. If she could be\ntranslated to heaven to-morrow, she might be expected to ascend\nwithout any rapture.\n\nShe has beauty still, and if it be not in its heyday, it is not yet\nin its autumn. She has a fine face\u2014originally of a character that\nwould be rather called very pretty than handsome, but improved into\nclassicality by the acquired expression of her fashionable state. Her\nfigure is elegant and has the effect of being tall. Not that she is\nso, but that \u201cthe most is made,\u201d as the Honourable Rhys Paisley has\nfrequently asserted upon oath, \u201cof all her points.\u201d The same\nauthority observes that she is perfectly got up and remarks in\ncommendation of her hair especially that she is the best-groomed\nwoman in the whole stud.\n\nWith all her perfections on her head, my Godfrey Wayne has come up\nfrom her place in Lincolnshire (hotly pursued by the fashionable\nintelligence) to pass a few days at her house in town previous to her\ndeparture for Paris, where her ladyship intends to stay some weeks,\nafter which her movements are uncertain. And at her house in town,\nupon this muddy, murky afternoon, presents himself an old-fashioned\nold gentleman, attorney-at-law and eke solicitor of the High Court of\nChancery, who has the honour of acting as legal adviser of the\nWaynes and has as many cast-iron boxes in his office with that name\noutside as if the present baronet were the coin of the conjuror\u2019s\ntrick and were constantly being juggled through the whole set. Across\nthe hall, and up the stairs, and along the passages, and through the\nrooms, which are very brilliant in the season and very dismal out of\nit\u2014fairy-land to visit, but a desert to live in\u2014the old gentleman\nis conducted by a Mercury in powder to my Godfrey\u2019s presence.\n\nThe old gentleman is rusty to look at, but is reputed to have made\ngood thrift out of aristocratic marriage settlements and aristocratic\nwills, and to be very rich. He is surrounded by a mysterious halo of\nfamily confidences, of which he is known to be the silent depository.\nThere are noble mausoleums rooted for centuries in retired glades of\nparks among the growing timber and the fern, which perhaps hold fewer\nnoble secrets than walk abroad among men, shut up in the breast of\nMr. Tulkinghorn. He is of what is called the old school\u2014a phrase\ngenerally meaning any school that seems never to have been young\u2014and\nwears knee-breeches tied with ribbons, and gaiters or stockings. One\npeculiarity of his black clothes and of his black stockings, be they\nsilk or worsted, is that they never shine. Mute, close, irresponsive\nto any glancing light, his dress is like himself. He never converses\nwhen not professionally consulted. He is found sometimes, speechless\nbut quite at home, at corners of dinner-tables in great country\nhouses and near doors of drawing-rooms, concerning which the\nfashionable intelligence is eloquent, where everybody knows him and\nwhere half the Peerage stops to say \u201cHow do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?\u201d\nHe receives these salutations with gravity and buries them along with\nthe rest of his knowledge.\n\nSir Luigi Wayne is with my Godfrey and is happy to see Mr.\nTulkinghorn. There is an air of prescription about him which is\nalways agreeable to Sir Luigi; he receives it as a kind of\ntribute. He likes Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s dress; there is a kind of tribute\nin that too. It is eminently respectable, and likewise, in a general\nway, retainer-like. It expresses, as it were, the steward of the\nlegal mysteries, the butler of the legal cellar, of the Waynes.\n\nHas Mr. Tulkinghorn any idea of this himself? It may be so, or it may\nnot, but there is this remarkable circumstance to be noted in\neverything associated with my Godfrey Wayne as one of a class\u2014as one\nof the leaders and representatives of her little world. She supposes\nherself to be an inscrutable Being, quite out of the reach and ken of\nordinary mortals\u2014seeing herself in her glass, where indeed she looks\nso. Yet every dim little star revolving about her, from her maid to\nthe manager of the Italian Opera, knows her weaknesses, prejudices,\nfollies, haughtinesses, and caprices and lives upon as accurate a\ncalculation and as nice a measure of her moral nature as her\ndressmaker takes of her physical proportions. Is a new dress, a new\ncustom, a new singer, a new dancer, a new form of jewellery, a new\ndwarf or giant, a new chapel, a new anything, to be set up? There are\ndeferential people in a dozen callings whom my Godfrey Wayne suspects\nof nothing but prostration before her, who can tell you how to manage\nher as if she were a baby, who do nothing but nurse her all their\nlives, who, humbly affecting to follow with profound subservience,\nlead her and her whole troop after them; who, in hooking one, hook\nall and bear them off as Lemuel Gulliver bore away the stately fleet\nof the majestic Lilliput. \u201cIf you want to address our people, sir,\u201d\nsay Blaze and Sparkle, the jewellers\u2014meaning by our people Godfrey\nWayne and the rest\u2014\u201cyou must remember that you are not dealing\nwith the general public; you must hit our people in their weakest\nplace, and their weakest place is such a place.\u201d \u201cTo make this\narticle go down, gentlemen,\u201d say Sheen and Gloss, the mercers, to\ntheir friends the manufacturers, \u201cyou must come to us, because we\nknow where to have the fashionable people, and we can make it\nfashionable.\u201d \u201cIf you want to get this print upon the tables of my\nhigh connexion, sir,\u201d says Mr. Sladdery, the librarian, \u201cor if you\nwant to get this dwarf or giant into the houses of my high connexion,\nsir, or if you want to secure to this entertainment the patronage of\nmy high connexion, sir, you must leave it, if you please, to me, for\nI have been accustomed to study the leaders of my high connexion,\nsir, and I may tell you without vanity that I can turn them round my\nfinger\u201d\u2014in which Mr. Sladdery, who is an honest man, does not\nexaggerate at all.\n\nTherefore, while Mr. Tulkinghorn may not know what is passing in the\nWayne mind at present, it is very possible that he may.\n\n\u201cMy Godfrey\u2019s cause has been again before the Chancellor, has it, Mr.\nTulkinghorn?\u201d says Sir Luigi, giving him his hand.\n\n\u201cYes. It has been on again to-day,\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, making\none of his quiet bows to my Godfrey, who is on a sofa near the fire,\nshading her face with a hand-screen.\n\n\u201cIt would be useless to ask,\u201d says my Godfrey with the dreariness of the\nplace in Lincolnshire still upon her, \u201cwhether anything has been\ndone.\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing that YOU would call anything has been done to-day,\u201d replies\nMr. Tulkinghorn.\n\n\u201cNor ever will be,\u201d says my Godfrey.\n\nSir Luigi has no objection to an interminable Chancery suit. It\nis a slow, expensive, British, constitutional kind of thing. To be\nsure, he has not a vital interest in the suit in question, her part\nin which was the only property my Godfrey brought him; and he has a\nshadowy impression that for his name\u2014the name of Wayne\u2014to be in a\ncause, and not in the title of that cause, is a most ridiculous\naccident. But he regards the Court of Chancery, even if it should\ninvolve an occasional delay of justice and a trifling amount of\nconfusion, as a something devised in conjunction with a variety of\nother somethings by the perfection of human wisdom for the eternal\nsettlement (humanly speaking) of everything. And he is upon the whole\nof a fixed opinion that to give the sanction of his countenance to\nany complaints respecting it would be to encourage some person in the\nlower classes to rise up somewhere\u2014like Wat Tyler.\n\n\u201cAs a few fresh affidavits have been put upon the file,\u201d says Mr.\nTulkinghorn, \u201cand as they are short, and as I proceed upon the\ntroublesome principle of begging leave to possess my clients with any\nnew proceedings in a cause\u201d\u2014cautious man Mr. Tulkinghorn, taking no\nmore responsibility than necessary\u2014\u201cand further, as I see you are\ngoing to Paris, I have brought them in my pocket.\u201d\n\n(Sir Luigi was going to Paris too, by the by, but the delight of\nthe fashionable intelligence was in his Godfrey.)\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn takes out his papers, asks permission to place them\non a golden talisman of a table at my Godfrey\u2019s elbow, puts on his\nspectacles, and begins to read by the light of a shaded lamp.\n\n\u201c\u2018In Chancery. Between Gerardo Ashton\u2014\u2019\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey interrupts, requesting him to miss as many of the formal\nhorrors as he can.\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn glances over his spectacles and begins again lower\ndown. My Godfrey carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir\nLuigi in a great chair looks at the file and appears to have a\nstately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities as ranging\namong the national bulwarks. It happens that the fire is hot where my\nGodfrey sits and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful,\nbeing priceless but small. My Godfrey, changing her position, sees the\npapers on the table\u2014looks at them nearer\u2014looks at them nearer\nstill\u2014asks impulsively, \u201cWho copied that?\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn stops short, surprised by my Godfrey\u2019s animation and her\nunusual tone.\n\n\u201cIs it what you people call law-hand?\u201d she asks, looking full at him\nin her careless way again and toying with her screen.\n\n\u201cNot quite. Probably\u201d\u2014Mr. Tulkinghorn examines it as he speaks\u2014\u201cthe\nlegal character which it has was acquired after the original hand was\nformed. Why do you ask?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnything to vary this detestable monotony. Oh, go on, do!\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn reads again. The heat is greater; my Godfrey screens her\nface. Sir Luigi dozes, starts up suddenly, and cries, \u201cEh? What\ndo you say?\u201d\n\n\u201cI say I am afraid,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who had risen hastily,\n\u201cthat Godfrey Wayne is ill.\u201d\n\n\u201cFaint,\u201d my Godfrey murmurs with white lips, \u201conly that; but it is like\nthe faintness of death. Don\u2019t speak to me. Ring, and take me to my\nroom!\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn retires into another chamber; bells ring, feet\nshuffle and patter, silence ensues. Mercury at last begs Mr.\nTulkinghorn to return.\n\n\u201cBetter now,\u201d quoth Sir Luigi, motioning the lawyer to sit down\nand read to him alone. \u201cI have been quite alarmed. I never knew my\nGodfrey swoon before. But the weather is extremely trying, and she\nreally has been bored to death down at our place in Lincolnshire.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nA Progress\n\n\nI have a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write my portion of\nthese pages, for I know I am not clever. I always knew that. I can\nremember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say to my\ndoll when we were alone together, \u201cNow, Dolly, I am not clever, you\nknow very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!\u201d And so\nshe used to sit propped up in a great arm-chair, with her beautiful\ncomplexion and rosy lips, staring at me\u2014or not so much at me, I\nthink, as at nothing\u2014while I busily stitched away and told her every\none of my secrets.\n\nMy dear old doll! I was such a shy little thing that I seldom dared\nto open my lips, and never dared to open my heart, to anybody else.\nIt almost makes me cry to think what a relief it used to be to me\nwhen I came home from school of a day to run upstairs to my room and\nsay, \u201cOh, you dear faithful Dolly, I knew you would be expecting me!\u201d\nand then to sit down on the floor, leaning on the elbow of her great\nchair, and tell her all I had noticed since we parted. I had always\nrather a noticing way\u2014not a quick way, oh, no!\u2014a silent way of\nnoticing what passed before me and thinking I should like to\nunderstand it better. I have not by any means a quick understanding.\nWhen I love a person very tenderly indeed, it seems to brighten. But\neven that may be my vanity.\n\nI was brought up, from my earliest remembrance\u2014like some of the\nprincesses in the fairy stories, only I was not charming\u2014by my\ngodmother. At least, I only knew her as such. She was a good, good\nwoman! She went to church three times every Sunday, and to morning\nprayers on Wednesdays and Fridays, and to lectures whenever there\nwere lectures; and never missed. She was handsome; and if she had\never smiled, would have been (I used to think) like an angel\u2014but she\nnever smiled. She was always grave and strict. She was so very good\nherself, I thought, that the badness of other people made her frown\nall her life. I felt so different from her, even making every\nallowance for the differences between a child and a woman; I felt so\npoor, so trifling, and so far off that I never could be unrestrained\nwith her\u2014no, could never even love her as I wished. It made me very\nsorry to consider how good she was and how unworthy of her I was, and\nI used ardently to hope that I might have a better heart; and I\ntalked it over very often with the dear old doll, but I never loved\nmy godmother as I ought to have loved her and as I felt I must have\nloved her if I had been a better girl.\n\nThis made me, I dare say, more timid and retiring than I naturally\nwas and cast me upon Dolly as the only friend with whom I felt at\nease. But something happened when I was still quite a little thing\nthat helped it very much.\n\nI had never heard my mama spoken of. I had never heard of my papa\neither, but I felt more interested about my mama. I had never worn a\nblack frock, that I could recollect. I had never been shown my mama\u2019s\ngrave. I had never been told where it was. Yet I had never been\ntaught to pray for any relation but my godmother. I had more than\nonce approached this subject of my thoughts with Mrs. Rachael, our\nonly servant, who took my light away when I was in bed (another very\ngood woman, but austere to me), and she had only said, \u201cPaulina, good\nnight!\u201d and gone away and left me.\n\nAlthough there were seven girls at the neighbouring school where I\nwas a day boarder, and although they called me little Paulina\nRobin, I knew none of them at home. All of them were older than\nI, to be sure (I was the youngest there by a good deal), but there\nseemed to be some other separation between us besides that, and\nbesides their being far more clever than I was and knowing much more\nthan I did. One of them in the first week of my going to the school\n(I remember it very well) invited me home to a little party, to my\ngreat joy. But my godmother wrote a stiff letter declining for me,\nand I never went. I never went out at all.\n\nIt was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other\nbirthdays\u2014none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other\nbirthdays, as I knew from what I heard the girls relate to one\nanother\u2014there were none on mine. My birthday was the most melancholy\nday at home in the whole year.\n\nI have mentioned that unless my vanity should deceive me (as I know\nit may, for I may be very vain without suspecting it, though indeed I\ndon\u2019t), my comprehension is quickened when my affection is. My\ndisposition is very affectionate, and perhaps I might still feel such\na wound if such a wound could be received more than once with the\nquickness of that birthday.\n\nDinner was over, and my godmother and I were sitting at the table\nbefore the fire. The clock ticked, the fire clicked; not another\nsound had been heard in the room or in the house for I don\u2019t know how\nlong. I happened to look timidly up from my stitching, across the\ntable at my godmother, and I saw in her face, looking gloomily at me,\n\u201cIt would have been far better, little Paulina, that you had had no\nbirthday, that you had never been born!\u201d\n\nI broke out crying and sobbing, and I said, \u201cOh, dear godmother, tell\nme, pray do tell me, did Mama die on my birthday?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d she returned. \u201cAsk me no more, child!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, do pray tell me something of her. Do now, at last, dear\ngodmother, if you please! What did I do to her? How did I lose her?\nWhy am I so different from other children, and why is it my fault,\ndear godmother? No, no, no, don\u2019t go away. Oh, speak to me!\u201d\n\nI was in a kind of fright beyond my grief, and I caught hold of her\ndress and was kneeling to her. She had been saying all the while,\n\u201cLet me go!\u201d But now she stood still.\n\nHer darkened face had such power over me that it stopped me in the\nmidst of my vehemence. I put up my trembling little hand to clasp\nhers or to beg her pardon with what earnestness I might, but withdrew\nit as she looked at me, and laid it on my fluttering heart. She\nraised me, sat in her chair, and standing me before her, said slowly\nin a cold, low voice\u2014I see her knitted brow and pointed\nfinger\u2014\u201cYour mother, Paulina, is your disgrace, and you were hers.\nThe time will come\u2014and soon enough\u2014when you will understand this\nbetter and will feel it too, as no one save a woman can. I have\nforgiven her\u201d\u2014but her face did not relent\u2014\u201cthe wrong she did to me,\nand I say no more of it, though it was greater than you will ever\nknow\u2014than any one will ever know but I, the sufferer. For yourself,\nunfortunate girl, orphaned and degraded from the first of these evil\nanniversaries, pray daily that the sins of others be not visited upon\nyour head, according to what is written. Forget your mother and leave\nall other people to forget her who will do her unhappy child that\ngreatest kindness. Now, go!\u201d\n\nShe checked me, however, as I was about to depart from her\u2014so frozen\nas I was!\u2014and added this, \u201cSubmission, self-denial, diligent work,\nare the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. You\nare different from other children, Paulina, because you were not born,\nlike them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart.\u201d\n\nI went up to my room, and crept to bed, and laid my doll\u2019s cheek\nagainst mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon my\nbosom, cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my\nsorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy at any time to anybody\u2019s\nheart and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly was to me.\n\nDear, dear, to think how much time we passed alone together\nafterwards, and how often I repeated to the doll the story of my\nbirthday and confided to her that I would try as hard as ever I could\nto repair the fault I had been born with (of which I confessedly felt\nguilty and yet innocent) and would strive as I grew up to be\nindustrious, contented, and kind-hearted and to do some good to some\none, and win some love to myself if I could. I hope it is not\nself-indulgent to shed these tears as I think of it. I am very\nthankful, I am very cheerful, but I cannot quite help their coming to\nmy eyes.\n\nThere! I have wiped them away now and can go on again properly.\n\nI felt the distance between my godmother and myself so much more\nafter the birthday, and felt so sensible of filling a place in her\nhouse which ought to have been empty, that I found her more difficult\nof approach, though I was fervently grateful to her in my heart, than\never. I felt in the same way towards my school companions; I felt in\nthe same way towards Mrs. Rachael, who was a widow; and oh, towards\nher daughter, of whom she was proud, who came to see her once a\nfortnight! I was very retired and quiet, and tried to be very\ndiligent.\n\nOne sunny afternoon when I had come home from school with my books\nand portfolio, watching my long shadow at my side, and as I was\ngliding upstairs to my room as usual, my godmother looked out of the\nparlour-door and called me back. Sitting with her, I found\u2014which was\nvery unusual indeed\u2014a stranger. A portly, important-looking\ngentleman, dressed all in black, with a white cravat, large gold\nwatch seals, a pair of gold eye-glasses, and a large seal-ring upon\nhis little finger.\n\n\u201cThis,\u201d said my godmother in an undertone, \u201cis the child.\u201d Then she\nsaid in her naturally stern way of speaking, \u201cThis is Paulina, sir.\u201d\n\nThe gentleman put up his eye-glasses to look at me and said, \u201cCome\nhere, my dear!\u201d He shook hands with me and asked me to take off my\nbonnet, looking at me all the while. When I had complied, he said,\n\u201cAh!\u201d and afterwards \u201cYes!\u201d And then, taking off his eye-glasses and\nfolding them in a red case, and leaning back in his arm-chair,\nturning the case about in his two hands, he gave my godmother a nod.\nUpon that, my godmother said, \u201cYou may go upstairs, Paulina!\u201d And I\nmade him my curtsy and left him.\n\nIt must have been two years afterwards, and I was almost fourteen,\nwhen one dreadful night my godmother and I sat at the fireside. I was\nreading aloud, and she was listening. I had come down at nine o\u2019clock\nas I always did to read the Bible to her, and was reading from St.\nGerardo how our Saviour stooped down, writing with his finger in the\ndust, when they brought the sinful woman to him.\n\n\u201cSo when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself and said\nunto them, \u2018He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a\nstone at her!\u2019\u201d\n\nI was stopped by my godmother\u2019s rising, putting her hand to her head,\nand crying out in an awful voice from quite another part of the book,\n\u201c\u2018Watch ye, therefore, lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping. And\nwhat I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch!\u2019\u201d\n\nIn an instant, while she stood before me repeating these words, she\nfell down on the floor. I had no need to cry out; her voice had\nsounded through the house and been heard in the street.\n\nShe was laid upon her bed. For more than a week she lay there, little\naltered outwardly, with her old handsome resolute frown that I so\nwell knew carved upon her face. Many and many a time, in the day and\nin the night, with my head upon the pillow by her that my whispers\nmight be plainer to her, I kissed her, thanked her, prayed for her,\nasked her for her blessing and forgiveness, entreated her to give me\nthe least sign that she knew or heard me. No, no, no. Her face was\nimmovable. To the very last, and even afterwards, her frown remained\nunsoftened.\n\nOn the day after my poor good godmother was buried, the gentleman in\nblack with the white neckcloth reappeared. I was sent for by Mrs.\nRachael, and found him in the same place, as if he had never gone\naway.\n\n\u201cMy name is Carly,\u201d he said; \u201cyou may remember it, my child; Carly\nand Carboy, Lincoln\u2019s Inn.\u201d\n\nI replied that I remembered to have seen him once before.\n\n\u201cPray be seated\u2014here near me. Don\u2019t distress yourself; it\u2019s of no\nuse. Mrs. Rachael, I needn\u2019t inform you who were acquainted with the\nlate Miss Barbary\u2019s affairs, that her means die with her and that\nthis young lady, now her aunt is dead\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMy aunt, sir!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is really of no use carrying on a deception when no object is to\nbe gained by it,\u201d said Mr. Carly smoothly, \u201cAunt in fact, though not\nin law. Don\u2019t distress yourself! Don\u2019t weep! Don\u2019t tremble! Mrs.\nRachael, our young friend has no doubt heard of\u2014the\u2014a\u2014Ashton and\nAshton.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever,\u201d said Mrs. Rachael.\n\n\u201cIs it possible,\u201d pursued Mr. Carly, putting up his eye-glasses,\n\u201cthat our young friend\u2014I BEG you won\u2019t distress yourself!\u2014never\nheard of Ashton and Ashton!\u201d\n\nI shook my head, wondering even what it was.\n\n\u201cNot of Ashton and Ashton?\u201d said Mr. Carly, looking over his\nglasses at me and softly turning the case about and about as if he\nwere petting something. \u201cNot of one of the greatest Chancery suits\nknown? Not of Ashton and Ashton\u2014the\u2014a\u2014in itself a monument of\nChancery practice. In which (I would say) every difficulty, every\ncontingency, every masterly fiction, every form of procedure known\nin that court, is represented over and over again? It is a cause\nthat could not exist out of this free and great country. I should\nsay that the aggregate of costs in Ashton and Ashton, Mrs.\nRachael\u201d\u2014I was afraid he addressed himself to her because I appeared\ninattentive\u2014\u201camounts at the present hour to from SIX-ty to SEVEN-ty\nTHOUSAND POUNDS!\u201d said Mr. Carly, leaning back in his chair.\n\nI felt very ignorant, but what could I do? I was so entirely\nunacquainted with the subject that I understood nothing about it even\nthen.\n\n\u201cAnd she really never heard of the cause!\u201d said Mr. Carly.\n\u201cSurprising!\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Barbary, sir,\u201d returned Mrs. Rachael, \u201cwho is now among the\nSeraphim\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope so, I am sure,\u201d said Mr. Carly politely.\n\n\u201c\u2014Wished Paulina only to know what would be serviceable to her. And\nshe knows, from any teaching she has had here, nothing more.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d said Mr. Carly. \u201cUpon the whole, very proper. Now to the\npoint,\u201d addressing me. \u201cMiss Barbary, your sole relation (in fact\nthat is, for I am bound to observe that in law you had none) being\ndeceased and it naturally not being to be expected that Mrs.\nRachael\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear no!\u201d said Mrs. Rachael quickly.\n\n\u201cQuite so,\u201d assented Mr. Carly; \u201c\u2014that Mrs. Rachael should charge\nherself with your maintenance and support (I beg you won\u2019t distress\nyourself), you are in a position to receive the renewal of an offer\nwhich I was instructed to make to Miss Barbary some two years ago and\nwhich, though rejected then, was understood to be renewable under the\nlamentable circumstances that have since occurred. Now, if I avow\nthat I represent, in Ashton and Ashton and otherwise, a highly\nhumane, but at the same time singular, man, shall I compromise myself\nby any stretch of my professional caution?\u201d said Mr. Carly, leaning\nback in his chair again and looking calmly at us both.\n\nHe appeared to enjoy beyond everything the sound of his own voice. I\ncouldn\u2019t wonder at that, for it was mellow and full and gave great\nimportance to every word he uttered. He listened to himself with\nobvious satisfaction and sometimes gently beat time to his own music\nwith his head or rounded a sentence with his hand. I was very much\nimpressed by him\u2014even then, before I knew that he formed himself on\nthe model of a great lord who was his client and that he was\ngenerally called Conversation Carly.\n\n\u201cMr. Ashton,\u201d he pursued, \u201cbeing aware of the\u2014I would say,\ndesolate\u2014position of our young friend, offers to place her at a\nfirst-rate establishment where her education shall be completed,\nwhere her comfort shall be secured, where her reasonable wants shall\nbe anticipated, where she shall be eminently qualified to discharge\nher duty in that station of life unto which it has pleased\u2014shall I\nsay Providence?\u2014to call her.\u201d\n\nMy heart was filled so full, both by what he said and by his\naffecting manner of saying it, that I was not able to speak, though I\ntried.\n\n\u201cMr. Ashton,\u201d he went on, \u201cmakes no condition beyond expressing his\nexpectation that our young friend will not at any time remove herself\nfrom the establishment in question without his knowledge and\nconcurrence. That she will faithfully apply herself to the\nacquisition of those accomplishments, upon the exercise of which she\nwill be ultimately dependent. That she will tread in the paths of\nvirtue and honour, and\u2014the\u2014a\u2014\u2014so forth.\u201d\n\nI was still less able to speak than before.\n\n\u201cNow, what does our young friend say?\u201d proceeded Mr. Carly. \u201cTake\ntime, take time! I pause for her reply. But take time!\u201d\n\nWhat the destitute subject of such an offer tried to say, I need not\nrepeat. What she did say, I could more easily tell, if it were worth\nthe telling. What she felt, and will feel to her dying hour, I could\nnever relate.\n\nThis interview took place at Windsor, where I had passed (as far as I\nknew) my whole life. On that day week, amply provided with all\nnecessaries, I left it, inside the stagecoach, for Reading.\n\nMrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was\nnot so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have known\nher better after so many years and ought to have made myself enough\nof a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one\ncold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw-drop from the stone\nporch\u2014it was a very frosty day\u2014I felt so miserable and\nself-reproachful that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I\nknew, that she could say good-bye so easily!\n\n\u201cNo, Paulina!\u201d she returned. \u201cIt is your misfortune!\u201d\n\nThe coach was at the little lawn-gate\u2014we had not come out until we\nheard the wheels\u2014and thus I left her, with a sorrowful heart. She\nwent in before my boxes were lifted to the coach-roof and shut the\ndoor. As long as I could see the house, I looked back at it from the\nwindow through my tears. My godmother had left Mrs. Rachael all the\nlittle property she possessed; and there was to be a sale; and an old\nhearth-rug with roses on it, which always seemed to me the first\nthing in the world I had ever seen, was hanging outside in the frost\nand snow. A day or two before, I had wrapped the dear old doll in her\nown shawl and quietly laid her\u2014I am half ashamed to tell it\u2014in the\ngarden-earth under the tree that shaded my old window. I had no\ncompanion left but my bird, and him I carried with me in his cage.\n\nWhen the house was out of sight, I sat, with my bird-cage in the\nstraw at my feet, forward on the low seat to look out of the high\nwindow, watching the frosty trees, that were like beautiful pieces of\nspar, and the fields all smooth and white with last night\u2019s snow, and\nthe sun, so red but yielding so little heat, and the ice, dark like\nmetal where the skaters and sliders had brushed the snow away. There\nwas a gentleman in the coach who sat on the opposite seat and looked\nvery large in a quantity of wrappings, but he sat gazing out of the\nother window and took no notice of me.\n\nI thought of my dead godmother, of the night when I read to her, of\nher frowning so fixedly and sternly in her bed, of the strange place\nI was going to, of the people I should find there, and what they\nwould be like, and what they would say to me, when a voice in the\ncoach gave me a terrible start.\n\nIt said, \u201cWhat the de-vil are you crying for?\u201d\n\nI was so frightened that I lost my voice and could only answer in a\nwhisper, \u201cMe, sir?\u201d For of course I knew it must have been the\ngentleman in the quantity of wrappings, though he was still looking\nout of his window.\n\n\u201cYes, you,\u201d he said, turning round.\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know I was crying, sir,\u201d I faltered.\n\n\u201cBut you are!\u201d said the gentleman. \u201cLook here!\u201d He came quite\nopposite to me from the other corner of the coach, brushed one of his\nlarge furry cuffs across my eyes (but without hurting me), and showed\nme that it was wet.\n\n\u201cThere! Now you know you are,\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cAnd what are you crying for?\u201d said the gentleman, \u201cDon\u2019t you want to\ngo there?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere? Why, wherever you are going,\u201d said the gentleman.\n\n\u201cI am very glad to go there, sir,\u201d I answered.\n\n\u201cWell, then! Look glad!\u201d said the gentleman.\n\nI thought he was very strange, or at least that what I could see of\nhim was very strange, for he was wrapped up to the chin, and his face\nwas almost hidden in a fur cap with broad fur straps at the side of\nhis head fastened under his chin; but I was composed again, and not\nafraid of him. So I told him that I thought I must have been crying\nbecause of my godmother\u2019s death and because of Mrs. Rachael\u2019s not\nbeing sorry to part with me.\n\n\u201cConfound Mrs. Rachael!\u201d said the gentleman. \u201cLet her fly away in a\nhigh wind on a broomstick!\u201d\n\nI began to be really afraid of him now and looked at him with the\ngreatest astonishment. But I thought that he had pleasant eyes,\nalthough he kept on muttering to himself in an angry manner and\ncalling Mrs. Rachael names.\n\nAfter a little while he opened his outer wrapper, which appeared to\nme large enough to wrap up the whole coach, and put his arm down into\na deep pocket in the side.\n\n\u201cNow, look here!\u201d he said. \u201cIn this paper,\u201d which was nicely folded,\n\u201cis a piece of the best plum-cake that can be got for money\u2014sugar on\nthe outside an inch thick, like fat on mutton chops. Here\u2019s a little\npie (a gem this is, both for size and quality), made in France. And\nwhat do you suppose it\u2019s made of? Livers of fat geese. There\u2019s a pie!\nNow let\u2019s see you eat \u2019em.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, sir,\u201d I replied; \u201cthank you very much indeed, but I hope\nyou won\u2019t be offended\u2014they are too rich for me.\u201d\n\n\u201cFloored again!\u201d said the gentleman, which I didn\u2019t at all\nunderstand, and threw them both out of window.\n\nHe did not speak to me any more until he got out of the coach a\nlittle way short of Reading, when he advised me to be a good girl and\nto be studious, and shook hands with me. I must say I was relieved by\nhis departure. We left him at a milestone. I often walked past it\nafterwards, and never for a long time without thinking of him and\nhalf expecting to meet him. But I never did; and so, as time went on,\nhe passed out of my mind.\n\nWhen the coach stopped, a very neat lady looked up at the window and\nsaid, \u201cMiss Donny.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, ma\u2019am, Paulina Robin.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is quite right,\u201d said the lady, \u201cMiss Donny.\u201d\n\nI now understood that she introduced herself by that name, and begged\nMiss Donny\u2019s pardon for my mistake, and pointed out my boxes at her\nrequest. Under the direction of a very neat maid, they were put\noutside a very small green carriage; and then Miss Donny, the maid,\nand I got inside and were driven away.\n\n\u201cEverything is ready for you, Paulina,\u201d said Miss Donny, \u201cand the\nscheme of your pursuits has been arranged in exact accordance with\nthe wishes of your guardian, Mr. Ashton.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf\u2014did you say, ma\u2019am?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf your guardian, Mr. Ashton,\u201d said Miss Donny.\n\nI was so bewildered that Miss Donny thought the cold had been too\nsevere for me and lent me her smelling-bottle.\n\n\u201cDo you know my\u2014guardian, Mr. Ashton, ma\u2019am?\u201d I asked after a good\ndeal of hesitation.\n\n\u201cNot personally, Paulina,\u201d said Miss Donny; \u201cmerely through his\nsolicitors, Messrs. Carly and Carboy, of London. A very superior\ngentleman, Mr. Carly. Truly eloquent indeed. Some of his periods\nquite majestic!\u201d\n\nI felt this to be very true but was too confused to attend to it. Our\nspeedy arrival at our destination, before I had time to recover\nmyself, increased my confusion, and I never shall forget the\nuncertain and the unreal air of everything at Greenleaf (Miss Donny\u2019s\nhouse) that afternoon!\n\nBut I soon became used to it. I was so adapted to the routine of\nGreenleaf before long that I seemed to have been there a great while\nand almost to have dreamed rather than really lived my old life at my\ngodmother\u2019s. Nothing could be more precise, exact, and orderly than\nGreenleaf. There was a time for everything all round the dial of the\nclock, and everything was done at its appointed moment.\n\nWe were twelve boarders, and there were two Miss Donnys, twins. It\nwas understood that I would have to depend, by and by, on my\nqualifications as a governess, and I was not only instructed in\neverything that was taught at Greenleaf, but was very soon engaged in\nhelping to instruct others. Although I was treated in every other\nrespect like the rest of the school, this single difference was made\nin my case from the first. As I began to know more, I taught more,\nand so in course of time I had plenty to do, which I was very fond of\ndoing because it made the dear girls fond of me. At last, whenever a\nnew pupil came who was a little downcast and unhappy, she was so\nsure\u2014indeed I don\u2019t know why\u2014to make a friend of me that all\nnew-comers were confided to my care. They said I was so gentle, but I\nam sure THEY were! I often thought of the resolution I had made on my\nbirthday to try to be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to\ndo some good to some one and win some love if I could; and indeed,\nindeed, I felt almost ashamed to have done so little and have won so\nmuch.\n\nI passed at Greenleaf six happy, quiet years. I never saw in any face\nthere, thank heaven, on my birthday, that it would have been better\nif I had never been born. When the day came round, it brought me so\nmany tokens of affectionate remembrance that my room was beautiful\nwith them from New Year\u2019s Day to Christmas.\n\nIn those six years I had never been away except on visits at holiday\ntime in the neighbourhood. After the first six months or so I had\ntaken Miss Donny\u2019s advice in reference to the propriety of writing to\nMr. Carly to say that I was happy and grateful, and with her approval\nI had written such a letter. I had received a formal answer\nacknowledging its receipt and saying, \u201cWe note the contents thereof,\nwhich shall be duly communicated to our client.\u201d After that I\nsometimes heard Miss Donny and her sister mention how regular my\naccounts were paid, and about twice a year I ventured to write a\nsimilar letter. I always received by return of post exactly the same\nanswer in the same round hand, with the signature of Carly and Carboy\nin another writing, which I supposed to be Mr. Carly\u2019s.\n\nIt seems so curious to me to be obliged to write all this about\nmyself! As if this narrative were the narrative of MY life! But my\nlittle body will soon fall into the background now.\n\nSix quiet years (I find I am saying it for the second time) I had\npassed at Greenleaf, seeing in those around me, as it might be in a\nlooking-glass, every stage of my own growth and change there, when,\none November morning, I received this letter. I omit the date.\n\n\n   Old Square, Lincoln\u2019s Inn\n\n   Madam,\n\n   Ashton and Ashton\n\n   Our clt Mr. Ashton being abt to rece into his house,\n   under an Order of the Ct of Chy, a Ward of the Ct in this\n   cause, for whom he wishes to secure an elgble compn,\n   directs us to inform you that he will be glad of your\n   serces in the afsd capacity.\n\n   We have arrngd for your being forded, carriage free, pr\n   eight o\u2019clock coach from Reading, on Monday morning next,\n   to White Horse Cellar, Piccadilly, London, where one of\n   our clks will be in waiting to convey you to our offe as\n   above.\n\n   We are, Madam, Your obedt Servts,\n\n   Carly and Carboy\n\n   Miss Paulina Robin\n\n\nOh, never, never, never shall I forget the emotion this letter caused\nin the house! It was so tender in them to care so much for me, it was\nso gracious in that father who had not forgotten me to have made my\norphan way so smooth and easy and to have inclined so many youthful\nnatures towards me, that I could hardly bear it. Not that I would\nhave had them less sorry\u2014I am afraid not; but the pleasure of it,\nand the pain of it, and the pride and joy of it, and the humble\nregret of it were so blended that my heart seemed almost breaking\nwhile it was full of rapture.\n\nThe letter gave me only five days\u2019 notice of my removal. When every\nminute added to the proofs of love and kindness that were given me in\nthose five days, and when at last the morning came and when they took\nme through all the rooms that I might see them for the last time, and\nwhen some cried, \u201cPaulina, dear, say good-bye to me here at my\nbedside, where you first spoke so kindly to me!\u201d and when others\nasked me only to write their names, \u201cWith Paulina\u2019s love,\u201d and when\nthey all surrounded me with their parting presents and clung to me\nweeping and cried, \u201cWhat shall we do when dear, dear Paulina\u2019s gone!\u201d\nand when I tried to tell them how forbearing and how good they had\nall been to me and how I blessed and thanked them every one, what a\nheart I had!\n\nAnd when the two Miss Donnys grieved as much to part with me as the\nleast among them, and when the maids said, \u201cBless you, miss, wherever\nyou go!\u201d and when the ugly lame old gardener, who I thought had\nhardly noticed me in all those years, came panting after the coach to\ngive me a little nosegay of geraniums and told me I had been the\nlight of his eyes\u2014indeed the old man said so!\u2014what a heart I had\nthen!\n\nAnd could I help it if with all this, and the coming to the little\nschool, and the unexpected sight of the poor children outside waving\ntheir hats and bonnets to me, and of a grey-haired gentleman and lady\nwhose daughter I had helped to teach and at whose house I had visited\n(who were said to be the proudest people in all that country), caring\nfor nothing but calling out, \u201cGood-bye, Paulina. May you be very\nhappy!\u201d\u2014could I help it if I was quite bowed down in the coach by\nmyself and said \u201cOh, I am so thankful, I am so thankful!\u201d many times\nover!\n\nBut of course I soon considered that I must not take tears where I\nwas going after all that had been done for me. Therefore, of course,\nI made myself sob less and persuaded myself to be quiet by saying\nvery often, \u201cPaulina, now you really must! This WILL NOT do!\u201d I\ncheered myself up pretty well at last, though I am afraid I was\nlonger about it than I ought to have been; and when I had cooled my\neyes with lavender water, it was time to watch for London.\n\nI was quite persuaded that we were there when we were ten miles off,\nand when we really were there, that we should never get there.\nHowever, when we began to jolt upon a stone pavement, and\nparticularly when every other conveyance seemed to be running into\nus, and we seemed to be running into every other conveyance, I began\nto believe that we really were approaching the end of our journey.\nVery soon afterwards we stopped.\n\nA young gentleman who had inked himself by accident addressed me from\nthe pavement and said, \u201cI am from Carly and Carboy\u2019s, miss, of\nLincoln\u2019s Inn.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you please, sir,\u201d said I.\n\nHe was very obliging, and as he handed me into a fly after\nsuperintending the removal of my boxes, I asked him whether there was\na great fire anywhere? For the streets were so full of dense brown\nsmoke that scarcely anything was to be seen.\n\n\u201cOh, dear no, miss,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a London particular.\u201d\n\nI had never heard of such a thing.\n\n\u201cA fog, miss,\u201d said the young gentleman.\n\n\u201cOh, indeed!\u201d said I.\n\nWe drove slowly through the dirtiest and darkest streets that ever\nwere seen in the world (I thought) and in such a distracting state of\nconfusion that I wondered how the people kept their senses, until we\npassed into sudden quietude under an old gateway and drove on through\na silent square until we came to an odd nook in a corner, where there\nwas an entrance up a steep, broad flight of stairs, like an entrance\nto a church. And there really was a churchyard outside under some\ncloisters, for I saw the gravestones from the staircase window.\n\nThis was Carly and Carboy\u2019s. The young gentleman showed me through an\nouter office into Mr. Carly\u2019s room\u2014there was no one in it\u2014and\npolitely put an arm-chair for me by the fire. He then called my\nattention to a little looking-glass hanging from a nail on one side\nof the chimney-piece.\n\n\u201cIn case you should wish to look at yourself, miss, after the\njourney, as you\u2019re going before the Chancellor. Not that it\u2019s\nrequisite, I am sure,\u201d said the young gentleman civilly.\n\n\u201cGoing before the Chancellor?\u201d I said, startled for a moment.\n\n\u201cOnly a matter of form, miss,\u201d returned the young gentleman. \u201cMr.\nCarly is in court now. He left his compliments, and would you partake\nof some refreshment\u201d\u2014there were biscuits and a decanter of wine on a\nsmall table\u2014\u201cand look over the paper,\u201d which the young gentleman\ngave me as he spoke. He then stirred the fire and left me.\n\nEverything was so strange\u2014the stranger from its being night in the\nday-time, the candles burning with a white flame, and looking raw and\ncold\u2014that I read the words in the newspaper without knowing what\nthey meant and found myself reading the same words repeatedly. As it\nwas of no use going on in that way, I put the paper down, took a peep\nat my bonnet in the glass to see if it was neat, and looked at the\nroom, which was not half lighted, and at the shabby, dusty tables,\nand at the piles of writings, and at a bookcase full of the most\ninexpressive-looking books that ever had anything to say for\nthemselves. Then I went on, thinking, thinking, thinking; and the\nfire went on, burning, burning, burning; and the candles went on\nflickering and guttering, and there were no snuffers\u2014until the young\ngentleman by and by brought a very dirty pair\u2014for two hours.\n\nAt last Mr. Carly came. HE was not altered, but he was surprised to\nsee how altered I was and appeared quite pleased. \u201cAs you are going\nto be the companion of the young lady who is now in the Chancellor\u2019s\nprivate room, Miss Robin,\u201d he said, \u201cwe thought it well that you\nshould be in attendance also. You will not be discomposed by the Lord\nChancellor, I dare say?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir,\u201d I said, \u201cI don\u2019t think I shall,\u201d really not seeing on\nconsideration why I should be.\n\nSo Mr. Carly gave me his arm and we went round the corner, under a\ncolonnade, and in at a side door. And so we came, along a passage,\ninto a comfortable sort of room where a young lady and a young\ngentleman were standing near a great, loud-roaring fire. A screen was\ninterposed between them and it, and they were leaning on the screen,\ntalking.\n\nThey both looked up when I came in, and I saw in the young lady, with\nthe fire shining upon her, such a beautiful girl! With such rich\ngolden hair, such soft blue eyes, and such a bright, innocent,\ntrusting face!\n\n\u201cMiss Ada,\u201d said Mr. Carly, \u201cthis is Miss Robin.\u201d\n\nShe came to meet me with a smile of welcome and her hand extended,\nbut seemed to change her mind in a moment and kissed me. In short,\nshe had such a natural, captivating, winning manner that in a few\nminutes we were sitting in the window-seat, with the light of the\nfire upon us, talking together as free and happy as could be.\n\nWhat a load off my mind! It was so delightful to know that she could\nconfide in me and like me! It was so good of her, and so encouraging\nto me!\n\nThe young gentleman was her distant cousin, she told me, and his name\nCelise Willis. He was a handsome youth with an ingenuous face and\na most engaging laugh; and after she had called him up to where we\nsat, he stood by us, in the light of the fire, talking gaily, like a\nlight-hearted boy. He was very young, not more than nineteen then, if\nquite so much, but nearly two years older than she was. They were\nboth orphans and (what was very unexpected and curious to me) had\nnever met before that day. Our all three coming together for the\nfirst time in such an unusual place was a thing to talk about, and we\ntalked about it; and the fire, which had left off roaring, winked its\nred eyes at us\u2014as Celise said\u2014like a drowsy old Chancery lion.\n\nWe conversed in a low tone because a full-dressed gentleman in a bag\nwig frequently came in and out, and when he did so, we could hear a\ndrawling sound in the distance, which he said was one of the counsel\nin our case addressing the Lord Chancellor. He told Mr. Carly that\nthe Chancellor would be up in five minutes; and presently we heard a\nbustle and a tread of feet, and Mr. Carly said that the Court had\nrisen and his lordship was in the next room.\n\nThe gentleman in the bag wig opened the door almost directly and\nrequested Mr. Carly to come in. Upon that, we all went into the next\nroom, Mr. Carly first, with my darling\u2014it is so natural to me now\nthat I can\u2019t help writing it; and there, plainly dressed in black and\nsitting in an arm-chair at a table near the fire, was his lordship,\nwhose robe, trimmed with beautiful gold lace, was thrown upon another\nchair. He gave us a searching look as we entered, but his manner was\nboth courtly and kind.\n\nThe gentleman in the bag wig laid bundles of papers on his lordship\u2019s\ntable, and his lordship silently selected one and turned over the\nleaves.\n\n\u201cMiss Dionne,\u201d said the Lord Chancellor. \u201cMiss Ada Dionne?\u201d\n\nMr. Carly presented her, and his lordship begged her to sit down near\nhim. That he admired her and was interested by her even I could see\nin a moment. It touched me that the home of such a beautiful young\ncreature should be represented by that dry, official place. The Lord\nHigh Chancellor, at his best, appeared so poor a substitute for the\nlove and pride of parents.\n\n\u201cThe Ashton in question,\u201d said the Lord Chancellor, still turning\nover leaves, \u201cis Ashton of Bleak House.\u201d\n\n\u201cAshton of Bleak House, my lord,\u201d said Mr. Carly.\n\n\u201cA dreary name,\u201d said the Lord Chancellor.\n\n\u201cBut not a dreary place at present, my lord,\u201d said Mr. Carly.\n\n\u201cAnd Bleak House,\u201d said his lordship, \u201cis in\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHertfordshire, my lord.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Ashton of Bleak House is not married?\u201d said his lordship.\n\n\u201cHe is not, my lord,\u201d said Mr. Carly.\n\nA pause.\n\n\u201cYoung Mr. Celise Willis is present?\u201d said the Lord Chancellor,\nglancing towards him.\n\nCelise bowed and stepped forward.\n\n\u201cHum!\u201d said the Lord Chancellor, turning over more leaves.\n\n\u201cMr. Ashton of Bleak House, my lord,\u201d Mr. Carly observed in a low\nvoice, \u201cif I may venture to remind your lordship, provides a suitable\ncompanion for\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cFor Mr. Celise Willis?\u201d I thought (but I am not quite sure) I\nheard his lordship say in an equally low voice and with a smile.\n\n\u201cFor Miss Ada Dionne. This is the young lady. Miss Robin.\u201d\n\nHis lordship gave me an indulgent look and acknowledged my curtsy\nvery graciously.\n\n\u201cMiss Robin is not related to any party in the cause, I think?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, my lord.\u201d\n\nMr. Carly leant over before it was quite said and whispered. His\nlordship, with his eyes upon his papers, listened, nodded twice or\nthrice, turned over more leaves, and did not look towards me again\nuntil we were going away.\n\nMr. Carly now retired, and Celise with him, to where I was, near the\ndoor, leaving my pet (it is so natural to me that again I can\u2019t help\nit!) sitting near the Lord Chancellor, with whom his lordship spoke a\nlittle part, asking her, as she told me afterwards, whether she had\nwell reflected on the proposed arrangement, and if she thought she\nwould be happy under the roof of Mr. Ashton of Bleak House, and why\nshe thought so? Presently he rose courteously and released her, and\nthen he spoke for a minute or two with Celise Willis, not seated,\nbut standing, and altogether with more ease and less ceremony, as if\nhe still knew, though he WAS Lord Chancellor, how to go straight to\nthe candour of a boy.\n\n\u201cVery well!\u201d said his lordship aloud. \u201cI shall make the order. Mr.\nAshton of Bleak House has chosen, so far as I may judge,\u201d and this\nwas when he looked at me, \u201ca very good companion for the young lady,\nand the arrangement altogether seems the best of which the\ncircumstances admit.\u201d\n\nHe dismissed us pleasantly, and we all went out, very much obliged to\nhim for being so affable and polite, by which he had certainly lost\nno dignity but seemed to us to have gained some.\n\nWhen we got under the colonnade, Mr. Carly remembered that he must go\nback for a moment to ask a question and left us in the fog, with the\nLord Chancellor\u2019s carriage and servants waiting for him to come out.\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d said Celise Willis. \u201cTHAT\u2019S over! And where do we go next,\nMiss Robin?\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you know?\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cNot in the least,\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cAnd don\u2019t YOU know, my love?\u201d I asked Ada.\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d said she. \u201cDon\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all!\u201d said I.\n\nWe looked at one another, half laughing at our being like the\nchildren in the wood, when a curious little old woman in a squeezed\nbonnet and carrying a reticule came curtsying and smiling up to us\nwith an air of great ceremony.\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d said she. \u201cThe wards in Ashton! Ve-ry happy, I am sure, to\nhave the honour! It is a good omen for youth, and hope, and beauty\nwhen they find themselves in this place, and don\u2019t know what\u2019s to\ncome of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cMad!\u201d whispered Celise, not thinking she could hear him.\n\n\u201cRight! Mad, young gentleman,\u201d she returned so quickly that he was\nquite abashed. \u201cI was a ward myself. I was not mad at that time,\u201d\ncurtsying low and smiling between every little sentence. \u201cI had youth\nand hope. I believe, beauty. It matters very little now. Neither of\nthe three served or saved me. I have the honour to attend court\nregularly. With my documents. I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the\nDay of Judgment. I have discovered that the sixth seal mentioned in\nthe Revelations is the Great Seal. It has been open a long time! Pray\naccept my blessing.\u201d\n\nAs Ada was a little frightened, I said, to humour the poor old lady,\nthat we were much obliged to her.\n\n\u201cYe-es!\u201d she said mincingly. \u201cI imagine so. And here is Conversation\nCarly. With HIS documents! How does your honourable worship do?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite well, quite well! Now don\u2019t be troublesome, that\u2019s a good\nsoul!\u201d said Mr. Carly, leading the way back.\n\n\u201cBy no means,\u201d said the poor old lady, keeping up with Ada and me.\n\u201cAnything but troublesome. I shall confer estates on both\u2014which is\nnot being troublesome, I trust? I expect a judgment. Shortly. On the\nDay of Judgment. This is a good omen for you. Accept my blessing!\u201d\n\nShe stopped at the bottom of the steep, broad flight of stairs; but\nwe looked back as we went up, and she was still there, saying, still\nwith a curtsy and a smile between every little sentence, \u201cYouth. And\nhope. And beauty. And Chancery. And Conversation Carly! Ha! Pray\naccept my blessing!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTelescopic Oliveanthropy\n\n\nWe were to pass the night, Mr. Carly told us when we arrived in his\nroom, at Mrs. Bladen\u2019s; and then he turned to me and said he took it\nfor granted I knew who Mrs. Bladen was.\n\n\u201cI really don\u2019t, sir,\u201d I returned. \u201cPerhaps Mr. Willis\u2014or Miss\nDionne\u2014\u201d\n\nBut no, they knew nothing whatever about Mrs. Bladen. \u201cIn-deed! Mrs.\nBladen,\u201d said Mr. Carly, standing with his back to the fire and\ncasting his eyes over the dusty hearth-rug as if it were Mrs.\nBladen\u2019s biography, \u201cis a lady of very remarkable strength of\ncharacter who devotes herself entirely to the public. She has devoted\nherself to an extensive variety of public subjects at various times\nand is at present (until something else attracts her) devoted to the\nsubject of Africa, with a view to the general cultivation of the\ncoffee berry\u2014AND the natives\u2014and the happy settlement, on the banks\nof the African rivers, of our superabundant home population. Mr.\nAshton, who is desirous to aid any work that is considered likely\nto be a good work and who is much sought after by philanthropists,\nhas, I believe, a very high opinion of Mrs. Bladen.\u201d\n\nMr. Carly, adjusting his cravat, then looked at us.\n\n\u201cAnd Mr. Bladen, sir?\u201d suggested Celise.\n\n\u201cAh! Mr. Bladen,\u201d said Mr. Carly, \u201cis\u2014a\u2014I don\u2019t know that I can\ndescribe him to you better than by saying that he is the husband of\nMrs. Bladen.\u201d\n\n\u201cA nonentity, sir?\u201d said Celise with a droll look.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t say that,\u201d returned Mr. Carly gravely. \u201cI can\u2019t say that,\nindeed, for I know nothing whatever OF Mr. Bladen. I never, to my\nknowledge, had the pleasure of seeing Mr. Bladen. He may be a very\nsuperior man, but he is, so to speak, merged\u2014merged\u2014in the more\nshining qualities of his wife.\u201d Mr. Carly proceeded to tell us that\nas the road to Bleak House would have been very long, dark, and\ntedious on such an evening, and as we had been travelling already,\nMr. Ashton had himself proposed this arrangement. A carriage would\nbe at Mrs. Bladen\u2019s to convey us out of town early in the forenoon\nof to-morrow.\n\nHe then rang a little bell, and the young gentleman came in.\nAddressing him by the name of Jarrett, Mr. Carly inquired whether Miss\nRobin\u2019s boxes and the rest of the baggage had been \u201csent round.\u201d\nMr. Jarrett said yes, they had been sent round, and a coach was waiting\nto take us round too as soon as we pleased.\n\n\u201cThen it only remains,\u201d said Mr. Carly, shaking hands with us, \u201cfor\nme to express my lively satisfaction in (good day, Miss Dionne!) the\narrangement this day concluded and my (GOOD-bye to you, Miss\nRobin!) lively hope that it will conduce to the happiness, the\n(glad to have had the honour of making your acquaintance, Mr.\nWillis!) welfare, the advantage in all points of view, of all\nconcerned! Jarrett, see the party safely there.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere IS \u2018there,\u2019 Mr. Jarrett?\u201d said Celise as we went downstairs.\n\n\u201cNo distance,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett; \u201cround in Thavies Inn, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t say I know where it is, for I come from Winchester and am\nstrange in London.\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly round the corner,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett. \u201cWe just twist up Chancery\nLane, and cut along Holborn, and there we are in four minutes\u2019 time,\nas near as a toucher. This is about a London particular NOW, ain\u2019t\nit, miss?\u201d He seemed quite delighted with it on my account.\n\n\u201cThe fog is very dense indeed!\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cNot that it affects you, though, I\u2019m sure,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, putting\nup the steps. \u201cOn the contrary, it seems to do you good, miss,\njudging from your appearance.\u201d\n\nI knew he meant well in paying me this compliment, so I laughed at\nmyself for blushing at it when he had shut the door and got upon the\nbox; and we all three laughed and chatted about our inexperience and\nthe strangeness of London until we turned up under an archway to our\ndestination\u2014a narrow street of high houses like an oblong cistern to\nhold the fog. There was a confused little crowd of people,\nprincipally children, gathered about the house at which we stopped,\nwhich had a tarnished brass plate on the door with the inscription\nBLADEN.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be frightened!\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, looking in at the\ncoach-window. \u201cOne of the young Bladens been and got his head\nthrough the area railings!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, poor child,\u201d said I; \u201clet me out, if you please!\u201d\n\n\u201cPray be careful of yourself, miss. The young Bladens are always up\nto something,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett.\n\nI made my way to the poor child, who was one of the dirtiest little\nunfortunates I ever saw, and found him very hot and frightened and\ncrying loudly, fixed by the neck between two iron railings, while a\nmilkman and a beadle, with the kindest intentions possible, were\nendeavouring to drag him back by the legs, under a general impression\nthat his skull was compressible by those means. As I found (after\npacifying him) that he was a little boy with a naturally large head,\nI thought that perhaps where his head could go, his body could\nfollow, and mentioned that the best mode of extrication might be to\npush him forward. This was so favourably received by the milkman and\nbeadle that he would immediately have been pushed into the area if I\nhad not held his pinafore while Celise and Mr. Jarrett ran down\nthrough the kitchen to catch him when he should be released. At last\nhe was happily got down without any accident, and then he began to\nbeat Mr. Jarrett with a hoop-stick in quite a frantic manner.\n\nNobody had appeared belonging to the house except a person in\npattens, who had been poking at the child from below with a broom; I\ndon\u2019t know with what object, and I don\u2019t think she did. I therefore\nsupposed that Mrs. Bladen was not at home, and was quite surprised\nwhen the person appeared in the passage without the pattens, and\ngoing up to the back room on the first floor before Ada and me,\nannounced us as, \u201cThem two young ladies, Missis Bladen!\u201d We passed\nseveral more children on the way up, whom it was difficult to avoid\ntreading on in the dark; and as we came into Mrs. Bladen\u2019s presence,\none of the poor little things fell downstairs\u2014down a whole flight\n(as it sounded to me), with a great noise.\n\nMrs. Bladen, whose face reflected none of the uneasiness which we\ncould not help showing in our own faces as the dear child\u2019s head\nrecorded its passage with a bump on every stair\u2014Celise afterwards\nsaid he counted seven, besides one for the landing\u2014received us with\nperfect equanimity. She was a pretty, very diminutive, plump woman of\nfrom forty to fifty, with handsome eyes, though they had a curious\nhabit of seeming to look a long way off. As if\u2014I am quoting Celise\nagain\u2014they could see nothing nearer than Africa!\n\n\u201cI am very glad indeed,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen in an agreeable voice, \u201cto\nhave the pleasure of receiving you. I have a great respect for Mr.\nAshton, and no one in whom he is interested can be an object of\nindifference to me.\u201d\n\nWe expressed our acknowledgments and sat down behind the door, where\nthere was a lame invalid of a sofa. Mrs. Bladen had very good hair\nbut was too much occupied with her African duties to brush it. The\nshawl in which she had been loosely muffled dropped onto her chair\nwhen she advanced to us; and as she turned to resume her seat, we\ncould not help noticing that her dress didn\u2019t nearly meet up the back\nand that the open space was railed across with a lattice-work of\nstay-lace\u2014like a summer-house.\n\nThe room, which was strewn with papers and nearly filled by a great\nwriting-table covered with similar litter, was, I must say, not only\nvery untidy but very dirty. We were obliged to take notice of that\nwith our sense of sight, even while, with our sense of hearing, we\nfollowed the poor child who had tumbled downstairs: I think into the\nback kitchen, where somebody seemed to stifle him.\n\nBut what principally struck us was a jaded and unhealthy-looking\nthough by no means plain girl at the writing-table, who sat biting\nthe feather of her pen and staring at us. I suppose nobody ever was\nin such a state of ink. And from her tumbled hair to her pretty feet,\nwhich were disfigured with frayed and broken satin slippers trodden\ndown at heel, she really seemed to have no article of dress upon her,\nfrom a pin upwards, that was in its proper condition or its right\nplace.\n\n\u201cYou find me, my dears,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen, snuffing the two great\noffice candles in tin candlesticks, which made the room taste\nstrongly of hot tallow (the fire had gone out, and there was nothing\nin the grate but ashes, a bundle of wood, and a poker), \u201cyou find me,\nmy dears, as usual, very busy; but that you will excuse. The African\nproject at present employs my whole time. It involves me in\ncorrespondence with public bodies and with private individuals\nanxious for the welfare of their species all over the country. I am\nhappy to say it is advancing. We hope by this time next year to have\nfrom a hundred and fifty to two hundred healthy families cultivating\ncoffee and educating the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank\nof the Niger.\u201d\n\nAs Ada said nothing, but looked at me, I said it must be very\ngratifying.\n\n\u201cIt IS gratifying,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen. \u201cIt involves the devotion of\nall my energies, such as they are; but that is nothing, so that it\nsucceeds; and I am more confident of success every day. Do you know,\nMiss Robin, I almost wonder that YOU never turned your thoughts\nto Africa.\u201d\n\nThis application of the subject was really so unexpected to me that I\nwas quite at a loss how to receive it. I hinted that the climate\u2014\n\n\u201cThe finest climate in the world!\u201d said Mrs. Bladen.\n\n\u201cIndeed, ma\u2019am?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly. With precaution,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen. \u201cYou may go into\nHolborn, without precaution, and be run over. You may go into\nHolborn, with precaution, and never be run over. Just so with\nAfrica.\u201d\n\nI said, \u201cNo doubt.\u201d I meant as to Holborn.\n\n\u201cIf you would like,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen, putting a number of papers\ntowards us, \u201cto look over some remarks on that head, and on the\ngeneral subject, which have been extensively circulated, while I\nfinish a letter I am now dictating to my eldest daughter, who is my\namanuensis\u2014\u201d\n\nThe girl at the table left off biting her pen and made a return to\nour recognition, which was half bashful and half sulky.\n\n\u201c\u2014I shall then have finished for the present,\u201d proceeded Mrs.\nBladen with a sweet smile, \u201cthough my work is never done. Where are\nyou, Viola?\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018Presents her compliments to Mr. Swallow, and begs\u2014\u2019\u201d said Viola.\n\n\u201c\u2018And begs,\u2019\u201d said Mrs. Bladen, dictating, \u201c\u2018to inform him, in\nreference to his letter of inquiry on the African project\u2014\u2019 No,\nPoppy! Not on my account!\u201d\n\nPoppy (so self-named) was the unfortunate child who had fallen\ndownstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting\nhimself, with a strip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his\nwounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity\nmost\u2014the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Bladen merely added, with the\nserene composure with which she said everything, \u201cGo along, you\nnaughty Poppy!\u201d and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.\n\nHowever, as she at once proceeded with her dictation, and as I\ninterrupted nothing by doing it, I ventured quietly to stop poor\nPoppy as he was going out and to take him up to nurse. He looked very\nmuch astonished at it and at Ada\u2019s kissing him, but soon fell fast\nasleep in my arms, sobbing at longer and longer intervals, until he\nwas quiet. I was so occupied with Poppy that I lost the letter in\ndetail, though I derived such a general impression from it of the\nmomentous importance of Africa, and the utter insignificance of all\nother places and things, that I felt quite ashamed to have thought so\nlittle about it.\n\n\u201cSix o\u2019clock!\u201d said Mrs. Bladen. \u201cAnd our dinner hour is nominally\n(for we dine at all hours) five! Viola, show Miss Dionne and Miss\nRobin their rooms. You will like to make some change, perhaps?\nYou will excuse me, I know, being so much occupied. Oh, that very bad\nchild! Pray put him down, Miss Robin!\u201d\n\nI begged permission to retain him, truly saying that he was not at\nall troublesome, and carried him upstairs and laid him on my bed. Ada\nand I had two upper rooms with a door of communication between. They\nwere excessively bare and disorderly, and the curtain to my window\nwas fastened up with a fork.\n\n\u201cYou would like some hot water, wouldn\u2019t you?\u201d said Miss Bladen,\nlooking round for a jug with a handle to it, but looking in vain.\n\n\u201cIf it is not being troublesome,\u201d said we.\n\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s not the trouble,\u201d returned Miss Bladen; \u201cthe question is,\nif there IS any.\u201d\n\nThe evening was so very cold and the rooms had such a marshy smell\nthat I must confess it was a little miserable, and Ada was half\ncrying. We soon laughed, however, and were busily unpacking when Miss\nBladen came back to say that she was sorry there was no hot water,\nbut they couldn\u2019t find the kettle, and the boiler was out of order.\n\nWe begged her not to mention it and made all the haste we could to\nget down to the fire again. But all the little children had come up\nto the landing outside to look at the phenomenon of Poppy lying on my\nbed, and our attention was distracted by the constant apparition of\nnoses and fingers in situations of danger between the hinges of the\ndoors. It was impossible to shut the door of either room, for my\nlock, with no knob to it, looked as if it wanted to be wound up; and\nthough the handle of Ada\u2019s went round and round with the greatest\nsmoothness, it was attended with no effect whatever on the door.\nTherefore I proposed to the children that they should come in and be\nvery good at my table, and I would tell them the story of Little Red\nRiding Hood while I dressed; which they did, and were as quiet as\nmice, including Poppy, who awoke opportunely before the appearance of\nthe wolf.\n\nWhen we went downstairs we found a mug with \u201cA Present from Tunbridge\nWells\u201d on it lighted up in the staircase window with a floating wick,\nand a young woman, with a swelled face bound up in a flannel bandage\nblowing the fire of the drawing-room (now connected by an open door\nwith Mrs. Bladen\u2019s room) and choking dreadfully. It smoked to that\ndegree, in short, that we all sat coughing and crying with the\nwindows open for half an hour, during which Mrs. Bladen, with the\nsame sweetness of temper, directed letters about Africa. Her being so\nemployed was, I must say, a great relief to me, for Celise told us\nthat he had washed his hands in a pie-dish and that they had found\nthe kettle on his dressing-table, and he made Ada laugh so that they\nmade me laugh in the most ridiculous manner.\n\nSoon after seven o\u2019clock we went down to dinner, carefully, by Mrs.\nBladen\u2019s advice, for the stair-carpets, besides being very deficient\nin stair-wires, were so torn as to be absolute traps. We had a fine\ncod-fish, a piece of roast beef, a dish of cutlets, and a pudding; an\nexcellent dinner, if it had had any cooking to speak of, but it was\nalmost raw. The young woman with the flannel bandage waited, and\ndropped everything on the table wherever it happened to go, and never\nmoved it again until she put it on the stairs. The person I had seen\nin pattens, who I suppose to have been the cook, frequently came and\nskirmished with her at the door, and there appeared to be ill will\nbetween them.\n\nAll through dinner\u2014which was long, in consequence of such accidents\nas the dish of potatoes being mislaid in the coal skuttle and the\nhandle of the corkscrew coming off and striking the young woman in\nthe chin\u2014Mrs. Bladen preserved the evenness of her disposition. She\ntold us a great deal that was interesting about Borrioboola-Gha and\nthe natives, and received so many letters that Celise, who sat by\nher, saw four envelopes in the gravy at once. Some of the letters\nwere proceedings of ladies\u2019 committees or resolutions of ladies\u2019\nmeetings, which she read to us; others were applications from people\nexcited in various ways about the cultivation of coffee, and natives;\nothers required answers, and these she sent her eldest daughter from\nthe table three or four times to write. She was full of business and\nundoubtedly was, as she had told us, devoted to the cause.\n\nI was a little curious to know who a mild bald gentleman in\nspectacles was, who dropped into a vacant chair (there was no top or\nbottom in particular) after the fish was taken away and seemed\npassively to submit himself to Borrioboola-Gha but not to be actively\ninterested in that settlement. As he never spoke a word, he might\nhave been a native but for his complexion. It was not until we left\nthe table and he remained alone with Celise that the possibility of\nhis being Mr. Bladen ever entered my head. But he WAS Mr. Bladen;\nand a loquacious young man called Mr. Quale, with large shining knobs\nfor temples and his hair all brushed to the back of his head, who\ncame in the evening, and told Ada he was a philanthropist, also\ninformed her that he called the matrimonial alliance of Mrs. Bladen\nwith Mr. Bladen the union of mind and matter.\n\nThis young man, besides having a great deal to say for himself about\nAfrica and a project of his for teaching the coffee colonists to\nteach the natives to turn piano-forte legs and establish an export\ntrade, delighted in drawing Mrs. Bladen out by saying, \u201cI believe\nnow, Mrs. Bladen, you have received as many as from one hundred and\nfifty to two hundred letters respecting Africa in a single day, have\nyou not?\u201d or, \u201cIf my memory does not deceive me, Mrs. Bladen, you\nonce mentioned that you had sent off five thousand circulars from one\npost-office at one time?\u201d\u2014always repeating Mrs. Bladen\u2019s answer to\nus like an interpreter. During the whole evening, Mr. Bladen sat in\na corner with his head against the wall as if he were subject to low\nspirits. It seemed that he had several times opened his mouth when\nalone with Celise after dinner, as if he had something on his mind,\nbut had always shut it again, to Celise\u2019s extreme confusion, without\nsaying anything.\n\nMrs. Bladen, sitting in quite a nest of waste paper, drank coffee\nall the evening and dictated at intervals to her eldest daughter. She\nalso held a discussion with Mr. Quale, of which the subject seemed to\nbe\u2014if I understood it\u2014the brotherhood of humanity, and gave\nutterance to some beautiful sentiments. I was not so attentive an\nauditor as I might have wished to be, however, for Poppy and the\nother children came flocking about Ada and me in a corner of the\ndrawing-room to ask for another story; so we sat down among them and\ntold them in whispers \u201cPuss in Boots\u201d and I don\u2019t know what else\nuntil Mrs. Bladen, accidentally remembering them, sent them to bed.\nAs Poppy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs,\nwhere the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst\nof the little family like a dragon and overturned them into cribs.\n\nAfter that I occupied myself in making our room a little tidy and in\ncoaxing a very cross fire that had been lighted to burn, which at\nlast it did, quite brightly. On my return downstairs, I felt that\nMrs. Bladen looked down upon me rather for being so frivolous, and I\nwas sorry for it, though at the same time I knew that I had no higher\npretensions.\n\nIt was nearly midnight before we found an opportunity of going to\nbed, and even then we left Mrs. Bladen among her papers drinking\ncoffee and Miss Bladen biting the feather of her pen.\n\n\u201cWhat a strange house!\u201d said Ada when we got upstairs. \u201cHow curious\nof my cousin Ashton to send us here!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy love,\u201d said I, \u201cit quite confuses me. I want to understand it,\nand I can\u2019t understand it at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat?\u201d asked Ada with her pretty smile.\n\n\u201cAll this, my dear,\u201d said I. \u201cIt MUST be very good of Mrs. Bladen to\ntake such pains about a scheme for the benefit of natives\u2014and\nyet\u2014Poppy and the housekeeping!\u201d\n\nAda laughed and put her arm about my neck as I stood looking at the\nfire, and told me I was a quiet, dear, good creature and had won her\nheart. \u201cYou are so thoughtful, Paulina,\u201d she said, \u201cand yet so\ncheerful! And you do so much, so unpretendingly! You would make a\nhome out of even this house.\u201d\n\nMy simple darling! She was quite unconscious that she only praised\nherself and that it was in the goodness of her own heart that she\nmade so much of me!\n\n\u201cMay I ask you a question?\u201d said I when we had sat before the fire a\nlittle while.\n\n\u201cFive hundred,\u201d said Ada.\n\n\u201cYour cousin, Mr. Ashton. I owe so much to him. Would you mind\ndescribing him to me?\u201d\n\nShaking her golden hair, Ada turned her eyes upon me with such\nlaughing wonder that I was full of wonder too, partly at her beauty,\npartly at her surprise.\n\n\u201cPaulina!\u201d she cried.\n\n\u201cMy dear!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou want a description of my cousin Ashton?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear, I never saw him.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I never saw him!\u201d returned Ada.\n\nWell, to be sure!\n\nNo, she had never seen him. Young as she was when her mama died, she\nremembered how the tears would come into her eyes when she spoke of\nhim and of the noble generosity of his character, which she had said\nwas to be trusted above all earthly things; and Ada trusted it. Her\ncousin Ashton had written to her a few months ago\u2014\u201ca plain, honest\nletter,\u201d Ada said\u2014proposing the arrangement we were now to enter on\nand telling her that \u201cin time it might heal some of the wounds made\nby the miserable Chancery suit.\u201d She had replied, gratefully\naccepting his proposal. Celise had received a similar letter and had\nmade a similar response. He HAD seen Mr. Ashton once, but only\nonce, five years ago, at Winchester school. He had told Ada, when\nthey were leaning on the screen before the fire where I found them,\nthat he recollected him as \u201ca bluff, rosy fellow.\u201d This was the\nutmost description Ada could give me.\n\nIt set me thinking so that when Ada was asleep, I still remained\nbefore the fire, wondering and wondering about Bleak House, and\nwondering and wondering that yesterday morning should seem so long\nago. I don\u2019t know where my thoughts had wandered when they were\nrecalled by a tap at the door.\n\nI opened it softly and found Miss Bladen shivering there with a\nbroken candle in a broken candlestick in one hand and an egg-cup in\nthe other.\n\n\u201cGood night!\u201d she said very sulkily.\n\n\u201cGood night!\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cMay I come in?\u201d she shortly and unexpectedly asked me in the same\nsulky way.\n\n\u201cCertainly,\u201d said I. \u201cDon\u2019t wake Miss Dionne.\u201d\n\nShe would not sit down, but stood by the fire dipping her inky middle\nfinger in the egg-cup, which contained vinegar, and smearing it over\nthe ink stains on her face, frowning the whole time and looking very\ngloomy.\n\n\u201cI wish Africa was dead!\u201d she said on a sudden.\n\nI was going to remonstrate.\n\n\u201cI do!\u201d she said \u201cDon\u2019t talk to me, Miss Robin. I hate it and\ndetest it. It\u2019s a beast!\u201d\n\nI told her she was tired, and I was sorry. I put my hand upon her\nhead, and touched her forehead, and said it was hot now but would be\ncool to-morrow. She still stood pouting and frowning at me, but\npresently put down her egg-cup and turned softly towards the bed\nwhere Ada lay.\n\n\u201cShe is very pretty!\u201d she said with the same knitted brow and in the\nsame uncivil manner.\n\nI assented with a smile.\n\n\u201cAn orphan. Ain\u2019t she?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut knows a quantity, I suppose? Can dance, and play music, and\nsing? She can talk French, I suppose, and do geography, and globes,\nand needlework, and everything?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo doubt,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t,\u201d she returned. \u201cI can\u2019t do anything hardly, except write.\nI\u2019m always writing for Ma. I wonder you two were not ashamed of\nyourselves to come in this afternoon and see me able to do nothing\nelse. It was like your ill nature. Yet you think yourselves very\nfine, I dare say!\u201d\n\nI could see that the poor girl was near crying, and I resumed my\nchair without speaking and looked at her (I hope) as mildly as I felt\ntowards her.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s disgraceful,\u201d she said. \u201cYou know it is. The whole house is\ndisgraceful. The children are disgraceful. I\u2019M disgraceful. Pa\u2019s\nmiserable, and no wonder! Priscilla drinks\u2014she\u2019s always drinking.\nIt\u2019s a great shame and a great story of you if you say you didn\u2019t\nsmell her to-day. It was as bad as a public-house, waiting at dinner;\nyou know it was!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear, I don\u2019t know it,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cYou do,\u201d she said very shortly. \u201cYou shan\u2019t say you don\u2019t. You do!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, my dear!\u201d said I. \u201cIf you won\u2019t let me speak\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re speaking now. You know you are. Don\u2019t tell stories, Miss\nRobin.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said I, \u201cas long as you won\u2019t hear me out\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to hear you out.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, I think you do,\u201d said I, \u201cbecause that would be so very\nunreasonable. I did not know what you tell me because the servant did\nnot come near me at dinner; but I don\u2019t doubt what you tell me, and I\nam sorry to hear it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou needn\u2019t make a merit of that,\u201d said she.\n\n\u201cNo, my dear,\u201d said I. \u201cThat would be very foolish.\u201d\n\nShe was still standing by the bed, and now stooped down (but still\nwith the same discontented face) and kissed Ada. That done, she came\nsoftly back and stood by the side of my chair. Her bosom was heaving\nin a distressful manner that I greatly pitied, but I thought it\nbetter not to speak.\n\n\u201cI wish I was dead!\u201d she broke out. \u201cI wish we were all dead. It\nwould be a great deal better for us.\u201d\n\nIn a moment afterwards, she knelt on the ground at my side, hid her\nface in my dress, passionately begged my pardon, and wept. I\ncomforted her and would have raised her, but she cried no, no; she\nwanted to stay there!\n\n\u201cYou used to teach girls,\u201d she said, \u201cIf you could only have taught\nme, I could have learnt from you! I am so very miserable, and I like\nyou so much!\u201d\n\nI could not persuade her to sit by me or to do anything but move a\nragged stool to where she was kneeling, and take that, and still hold\nmy dress in the same manner. By degrees the poor tired girl fell\nasleep, and then I contrived to raise her head so that it should rest\non my lap, and to cover us both with shawls. The fire went out, and\nall night long she slumbered thus before the ashy grate. At first I\nwas painfully awake and vainly tried to lose myself, with my eyes\nclosed, among the scenes of the day. At length, by slow degrees, they\nbecame indistinct and mingled. I began to lose the identity of the\nsleeper resting on me. Now it was Ada, now one of my old Reading\nfriends from whom I could not believe I had so recently parted. Now\nit was the little mad woman worn out with curtsying and smiling, now\nsome one in authority at Bleak House. Lastly, it was no one, and I\nwas no one.\n\nThe purblind day was feebly struggling with the fog when I opened my\neyes to encounter those of a dirty-faced little spectre fixed upon\nme. Poppy had scaled his crib, and crept down in his bed-gown and\ncap, and was so cold that his teeth were chattering as if he had cut\nthem all.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nA Morning Adventure\n\n\nAlthough the morning was raw, and although the fog still seemed\nheavy\u2014I say seemed, for the windows were so encrusted with dirt that\nthey would have made midsummer sunshine dim\u2014I was sufficiently\nforewarned of the discomfort within doors at that early hour and\nsufficiently curious about London to think it a good idea on the part\nof Miss Bladen when she proposed that we should go out for a walk.\n\n\u201cMa won\u2019t be down for ever so long,\u201d she said, \u201cand then it\u2019s a\nchance if breakfast\u2019s ready for an hour afterwards, they dawdle so.\nAs to Pa, he gets what he can and goes to the office. He never has\nwhat you would call a regular breakfast. Priscilla leaves him out the\nloaf and some milk, when there is any, overnight. Sometimes there\nisn\u2019t any milk, and sometimes the cat drinks it. But I\u2019m afraid you\nmust be tired, Miss Robin, and perhaps you would rather go to\nbed.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not at all tired, my dear,\u201d said I, \u201cand would much prefer to\ngo out.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you\u2019re sure you would,\u201d returned Miss Bladen, \u201cI\u2019ll get my\nthings on.\u201d\n\nAda said she would go too, and was soon astir. I made a proposal to\nPoppy, in default of being able to do anything better for him, that\nhe should let me wash him and afterwards lay him down on my bed\nagain. To this he submitted with the best grace possible, staring at\nme during the whole operation as if he never had been, and never\ncould again be, so astonished in his life\u2014looking very miserable\nalso, certainly, but making no complaint, and going snugly to sleep\nas soon as it was over. At first I was in two minds about taking such\na liberty, but I soon reflected that nobody in the house was likely\nto notice it.\n\nWhat with the bustle of dispatching Poppy and the bustle of getting\nmyself ready and helping Ada, I was soon quite in a glow. We found\nMiss Bladen trying to warm herself at the fire in the writing-room,\nwhich Priscilla was then lighting with a smutty parlour candlestick,\nthrowing the candle in to make it burn better. Everything was just as\nwe had left it last night and was evidently intended to remain so.\nBelow-stairs the dinner-cloth had not been taken away, but had been\nleft ready for breakfast. Crumbs, dust, and waste-paper were all over\nthe house. Some pewter pots and a milk-can hung on the area railings;\nthe door stood open; and we met the cook round the corner coming out\nof a public-house, wiping her mouth. She mentioned, as she passed us,\nthat she had been to see what o\u2019clock it was.\n\nBut before we met the cook, we met Celise, who was dancing up and\ndown Thavies Inn to warm his feet. He was agreeably surprised to see\nus stirring so soon and said he would gladly share our walk. So he\ntook care of Ada, and Miss Bladen and I went first. I may mention\nthat Miss Bladen had relapsed into her sulky manner and that I\nreally should not have thought she liked me much unless she had told\nme so.\n\n\u201cWhere would you wish to go?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cAnywhere, my dear,\u201d I replied.\n\n\u201cAnywhere\u2019s nowhere,\u201d said Miss Bladen, stopping perversely.\n\n\u201cLet us go somewhere at any rate,\u201d said I.\n\nShe then walked me on very fast.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t care!\u201d she said. \u201cNow, you are my witness, Miss Robin, I\nsay I don\u2019t care\u2014but if he was to come to our house with his great,\nshining, lumpy forehead night after night till he was as old as\nMethuselah, I wouldn\u2019t have anything to say to him. Such ASSES as he\nand Ma make of themselves!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear!\u201d I remonstrated, in allusion to the epithet and the\nvigorous emphasis Miss Bladen set upon it. \u201cYour duty as a child\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Don\u2019t talk of duty as a child, Miss Robin; where\u2019s Ma\u2019s duty\nas a parent? All made over to the public and Africa, I suppose! Then\nlet the public and Africa show duty as a child; it\u2019s much more their\naffair than mine. You are shocked, I dare say! Very well, so am I\nshocked too; so we are both shocked, and there\u2019s an end of it!\u201d\n\nShe walked me on faster yet.\n\n\u201cBut for all that, I say again, he may come, and come, and come, and\nI won\u2019t have anything to say to him. I can\u2019t bear him. If there\u2019s any\nstuff in the world that I hate and detest, it\u2019s the stuff he and Ma\ntalk. I wonder the very paving-stones opposite our house can have the\npatience to stay there and be a witness of such inconsistencies and\ncontradictions as all that sounding nonsense, and Ma\u2019s management!\u201d\n\nI could not but understand her to refer to Mr. Quale, the young\ngentleman who had appeared after dinner yesterday. I was saved the\ndisagreeable necessity of pursuing the subject by Celise and Ada\ncoming up at a round pace, laughing and asking us if we meant to run\na race. Thus interrupted, Miss Bladen became silent and walked\nmoodily on at my side while I admired the long successions and\nvarieties of streets, the quantity of people already going to and\nfro, the number of vehicles passing and repassing, the busy\npreparations in the setting forth of shop windows and the sweeping\nout of shops, and the extraordinary creatures in rags secretly\ngroping among the swept-out rubbish for pins and other refuse.\n\n\u201cSo, cousin,\u201d said the cheerful voice of Celise to Ada behind me.\n\u201cWe are never to get out of Chancery! We have come by another way to\nour place of meeting yesterday, and\u2014by the Great Seal, here\u2019s the\nold lady again!\u201d\n\nTruly, there she was, immediately in front of us, curtsying, and\nsmiling, and saying with her yesterday\u2019s air of patronage, \u201cThe wards\nin Ashton! Ve-ry happy, I am sure!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are out early, ma\u2019am,\u201d said I as she curtsied to me.\n\n\u201cYe-es! I usually walk here early. Before the court sits. It\u2019s\nretired. I collect my thoughts here for the business of the day,\u201d\nsaid the old lady mincingly. \u201cThe business of the day requires a\ngreat deal of thought. Chancery justice is so ve-ry difficult to\nfollow.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s this, Miss Robin?\u201d whispered Miss Bladen, drawing my arm\ntighter through her own.\n\nThe little old lady\u2019s hearing was remarkably quick. She answered for\nherself directly.\n\n\u201cA suitor, my child. At your service. I have the honour to attend\ncourt regularly. With my documents. Have I the pleasure of addressing\nanother of the youthful parties in Ashton?\u201d said the old lady,\nrecovering herself, with her head on one side, from a very low\ncurtsy.\n\nCelise, anxious to atone for his thoughtlessness of yesterday,\ngood-naturedly explained that Miss Bladen was not connected with the\nsuit.\n\n\u201cHa!\u201d said the old lady. \u201cShe does not expect a judgment? She will\nstill grow old. But not so old. Oh, dear, no! This is the garden of\nLincoln\u2019s Inn. I call it my garden. It is quite a bower in the\nsummer-time. Where the birds sing melodiously. I pass the greater\npart of the long vacation here. In contemplation. You find the long\nvacation exceedingly long, don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nWe said yes, as she seemed to expect us to say so.\n\n\u201cWhen the leaves are falling from the trees and there are no more\nflowers in bloom to make up into nosegays for the Lord Chancellor\u2019s\ncourt,\u201d said the old lady, \u201cthe vacation is fulfilled and the sixth\nseal, mentioned in the Revelations, again prevails. Pray come and see\nmy lodging. It will be a good omen for me. Youth, and hope, and\nbeauty are very seldom there. It is a long, long time since I had a\nvisit from either.\u201d\n\nShe had taken my hand, and leading me and Miss Bladen away, beckoned\nCelise and Ada to come too. I did not know how to excuse myself and\nlooked to Celise for aid. As he was half amused and half curious and\nall in doubt how to get rid of the old lady without offence, she\ncontinued to lead us away, and he and Ada continued to follow, our\nstrange conductress informing us all the time, with much smiling\ncondescension, that she lived close by.\n\nIt was quite true, as it soon appeared. She lived so close by that we\nhad not time to have done humouring her for a few moments before she\nwas at home. Slipping us out at a little side gate, the old lady\nstopped most unexpectedly in a narrow back street, part of some\ncourts and lanes immediately outside the wall of the inn, and said,\n\u201cThis is my lodging. Pray walk up!\u201d\n\nShe had stopped at a shop over which was written NESBIT, RAG AND\nBOTTLE WAREHOUSE. Also, in long thin letters, NESBIT, DEALER IN MARINE\nSTORES. In one part of the window was a picture of a red paper mill\nat which a cart was unloading a quantity of sacks of old rags. In\nanother was the inscription BONES BOUGHT. In another, KITCHEN-STUFF\nBOUGHT. In another, OLD IRON BOUGHT. In another, WASTE-PAPER BOUGHT.\nIn another, LADIES\u2019 AND GENTLEMEN\u2019S WARDROBES BOUGHT. Everything\nseemed to be bought and nothing to be sold there. In all parts of the\nwindow were quantities of dirty bottles\u2014blacking bottles, medicine\nbottles, ginger-beer and soda-water bottles, pickle bottles, wine\nbottles, ink bottles; I am reminded by mentioning the latter that the\nshop had in several little particulars the air of being in a legal\nneighbourhood and of being, as it were, a dirty hanger-on and\ndisowned relation of the law. There were a great many ink bottles.\nThere was a little tottering bench of shabby old volumes outside the\ndoor, labelled \u201cLaw Books, all at 9d.\u201d Some of the inscriptions I\nhave enumerated were written in law-hand, like the papers I had seen\nin Carly and Carboy\u2019s office and the letters I had so long received\nfrom the firm. Among them was one, in the same writing, having\nnothing to do with the business of the shop, but announcing that a\nrespectable man aged forty-five wanted engrossing or copying to\nexecute with neatness and dispatch: Address to Triston, care of Mr.\nNesbit, within. There were several second-hand bags, blue and red,\nhanging up. A little way within the shop-door lay heaps of old\ncrackled parchment scrolls and discoloured and dog\u2019s-eared\nlaw-papers. I could have fancied that all the rusty keys, of which\nthere must have been hundreds huddled together as old iron, had once\nbelonged to doors of rooms or strong chests in lawyers\u2019 offices. The\nlitter of rags tumbled partly into and partly out of a one-legged\nwooden scale, hanging without any counterpoise from a beam, might\nhave been counsellors\u2019 bands and gowns torn up. One had only to\nfancy, as Celise whispered to Ada and me while we all stood looking\nin, that yonder bones in a corner, piled together and picked very\nclean, were the bones of clients, to make the picture complete.\n\nAs it was still foggy and dark, and as the shop was blinded besides\nby the wall of Lincoln\u2019s Inn, intercepting the light within a couple\nof yards, we should not have seen so much but for a lighted lantern\nthat an old man in spectacles and a hairy cap was carrying about in\nthe shop. Turning towards the door, he now caught sight of us. He was\nshort, cadaverous, and withered, with his head sunk sideways between\nhis shoulders and the breath issuing in visible smoke from his mouth\nas if he were on fire within. His throat, chin, and eyebrows were so\nfrosted with white hairs and so gnarled with veins and puckered skin\nthat he looked from his breast upward like some old root in a fall of\nsnow.\n\n\u201cHi, hi!\u201d said the old man, coming to the door. \u201cHave you anything to\nsell?\u201d\n\nWe naturally drew back and glanced at our conductress, who had been\ntrying to open the house-door with a key she had taken from her\npocket, and to whom Celise now said that as we had had the pleasure\nof seeing where she lived, we would leave her, being pressed for\ntime. But she was not to be so easily left. She became so\nfantastically and pressingly earnest in her entreaties that we would\nwalk up and see her apartment for an instant, and was so bent, in her\nharmless way, on leading me in, as part of the good omen she desired,\nthat I (whatever the others might do) saw nothing for it but to\ncomply. I suppose we were all more or less curious; at any rate, when\nthe old man added his persuasions to hers and said, \u201cAye, aye! Please\nher! It won\u2019t take a minute! Come in, come in! Come in through the\nshop if t\u2019other door\u2019s out of order!\u201d we all went in, stimulated by\nCelise\u2019s laughing encouragement and relying on his protection.\n\n\u201cMy landlord, Nesbit,\u201d said the little old lady, condescending to him\nfrom her lofty station as she presented him to us. \u201cHe is called\namong the neighbours the Lord Chancellor. His shop is called the\nCourt of Chancery. He is a very eccentric person. He is very odd. Oh,\nI assure you he is very odd!\u201d\n\nShe shook her head a great many times and tapped her forehead with\nher finger to express to us that we must have the goodness to excuse\nhim, \u201cFor he is a little\u2014you know\u2014M!\u201d said the old lady with great\nstateliness. The old man overheard, and laughed.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s true enough,\u201d he said, going before us with the lantern, \u201cthat\nthey call me the Lord Chancellor and call my shop Chancery. And why\ndo you think they call me the Lord Chancellor and my shop Chancery?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, I am sure!\u201d said Celise rather carelessly.\n\n\u201cYou see,\u201d said the old man, stopping and turning round, \u201cthey\u2014Hi!\nHere\u2019s lovely hair! I have got three sacks of ladies\u2019 hair below, but\nnone so beautiful and fine as this. What colour, and what texture!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019ll do, my good friend!\u201d said Celise, strongly disapproving of\nhis having drawn one of Ada\u2019s tresses through his yellow hand. \u201cYou\ncan admire as the rest of us do without taking that liberty.\u201d\n\nThe old man darted at him a sudden look which even called my\nattention from Ada, who, startled and blushing, was so remarkably\nbeautiful that she seemed to fix the wandering attention of the\nlittle old lady herself. But as Ada interposed and laughingly said\nshe could only feel proud of such genuine admiration, Mr. Nesbit\nshrunk into his former self as suddenly as he had leaped out of it.\n\n\u201cYou see, I have so many things here,\u201d he resumed, holding up the\nlantern, \u201cof so many kinds, and all as the neighbours think (but THEY\nknow nothing), wasting away and going to rack and ruin, that that\u2019s\nwhy they have given me and my place a christening. And I have so many\nold parchmentses and papers in my stock. And I have a liking for rust\nand must and cobwebs. And all\u2019s fish that comes to my net. And I\ncan\u2019t abear to part with anything I once lay hold of (or so my\nneighbours think, but what do THEY know?) or to alter anything, or to\nhave any sweeping, nor scouring, nor cleaning, nor repairing going on\nabout me. That\u2019s the way I\u2019ve got the ill name of Chancery. I don\u2019t\nmind. I go to see my noble and learned brother pretty well every day,\nwhen he sits in the Inn. He don\u2019t notice me, but I notice him.\nThere\u2019s no great odds betwixt us. We both grub on in a muddle. Hi,\nGodfrey Jane!\u201d\n\nA large grey cat leaped from some neighbouring shelf on his shoulder\nand startled us all.\n\n\u201cHi! Show \u2019em how you scratch. Hi! Tear, my lady!\u201d said her master.\n\nThe cat leaped down and ripped at a bundle of rags with her tigerish\nclaws, with a sound that it set my teeth on edge to hear.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019d do as much for any one I was to set her on,\u201d said the old man.\n\u201cI deal in cat-skins among other general matters, and hers was\noffered to me. It\u2019s a very fine skin, as you may see, but I didn\u2019t\nhave it stripped off! THAT warn\u2019t like Chancery practice though, says\nyou!\u201d\n\nHe had by this time led us across the shop, and now opened a door in\nthe back part of it, leading to the house-entry. As he stood with his\nhand upon the lock, the little old lady graciously observed to him\nbefore passing out, \u201cThat will do, Nesbit. You mean well, but are\ntiresome. My young friends are pressed for time. I have none to spare\nmyself, having to attend court very soon. My young friends are the\nwards in Ashton.\u201d\n\n\u201cAshton!\u201d said the old man with a start.\n\n\u201cAshton and Ashton. The great suit, Nesbit,\u201d returned his lodger.\n\n\u201cHi!\u201d exclaimed the old man in a tone of thoughtful amazement and\nwith a wider stare than before. \u201cThink of it!\u201d\n\nHe seemed so rapt all in a moment and looked so curiously at us that\nCelise said, \u201cWhy, you appear to trouble yourself a good deal about\nthe causes before your noble and learned brother, the other\nChancellor!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the old man abstractedly. \u201cSure! YOUR name now will be\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cCelise Willis.\u201d\n\n\u201cWillis,\u201d he repeated, slowly checking off that name upon his\nforefinger; and each of the others he went on to mention upon a\nseparate finger. \u201cYes. There was the name of Barbary, and the name of\nDionne, and the name of Wayne, too, I think.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe knows as much of the cause as the real salaried Chancellor!\u201d said\nCelise, quite astonished, to Ada and me.\n\n\u201cAye!\u201d said the old man, coming slowly out of his abstraction. \u201cYes!\nSaid Ashton\u2014you\u2019ll excuse me, being related; but he was never known\nabout court by any other name, and was as well known there as\u2014she is\nnow,\u201d nodding slightly at his lodger. \u201cSaid Ashton was often in\nhere. He got into a restless habit of strolling about when the cause\nwas on, or expected, talking to the little shopkeepers and telling\n\u2019em to keep out of Chancery, whatever they did. \u2018For,\u2019 says he, \u2018it\u2019s\nbeing ground to bits in a slow mill; it\u2019s being roasted at a slow\nfire; it\u2019s being stung to death by single bees; it\u2019s being drowned by\ndrops; it\u2019s going mad by grains.\u2019 He was as near making away with\nhimself, just where the young lady stands, as near could be.\u201d\n\nWe listened with horror.\n\n\u201cHe come in at the door,\u201d said the old man, slowly pointing an\nimaginary track along the shop, \u201con the day he did it\u2014the whole\nneighbourhood had said for months before that he would do it, of a\ncertainty sooner or later\u2014he come in at the door that day, and\nwalked along there, and sat himself on a bench that stood there, and\nasked me (you\u2019ll judge I was a mortal sight younger then) to fetch\nhim a pint of wine. \u2018For,\u2019 says he, \u2018Nesbit, I am much depressed; my\ncause is on again, and I think I\u2019m nearer judgment than I ever was.\u2019\nI hadn\u2019t a mind to leave him alone; and I persuaded him to go to the\ntavern over the way there, t\u2019other side my lane (I mean Chancery\nLane); and I followed and looked in at the window, and saw him,\ncomfortable as I thought, in the arm-chair by the fire, and company\nwith him. I hadn\u2019t hardly got back here when I heard a shot go\nechoing and rattling right away into the inn. I ran out\u2014neighbours\nran out\u2014twenty of us cried at once, \u2018Said Ashton!\u2019\u201d\n\nThe old man stopped, looked hard at us, looked down into the lantern,\nblew the light out, and shut the lantern up.\n\n\u201cWe were right, I needn\u2019t tell the present hearers. Hi! To be sure,\nhow the neighbourhood poured into court that afternoon while the\ncause was on! How my noble and learned brother, and all the rest of\n\u2019em, grubbed and muddled away as usual and tried to look as if they\nhadn\u2019t heard a word of the last fact in the case or as if they\nhad\u2014Oh, dear me!\u2014nothing at all to do with it if they had heard of\nit by any chance!\u201d\n\nAda\u2019s colour had entirely left her, and Celise was scarcely less\npale. Nor could I wonder, judging even from my emotions, and I was no\nparty in the suit, that to hearts so untried and fresh it was a shock\nto come into the inheritance of a protracted misery, attended in the\nminds of many people with such dreadful recollections. I had another\nuneasiness, in the application of the painful story to the poor\nhalf-witted creature who had brought us there; but, to my surprise,\nshe seemed perfectly unconscious of that and only led the way\nupstairs again, informing us with the toleration of a superior\ncreature for the infirmities of a common mortal that her landlord was\n\u201ca little\u2014M\u2014, you know!\u201d\n\nShe lived at the top of the house, in a pretty large room, from which\nshe had a glimpse of Lincoln\u2019s Inn Hall. This seemed to have been her\nprincipal inducement, originally, for taking up her residence there.\nShe could look at it, she said, in the night, especially in the\nmoonshine. Her room was clean, but very, very bare. I noticed the\nscantiest necessaries in the way of furniture; a few old prints from\nbooks, of Chancellors and barristers, wafered against the wall; and\nsome half-dozen reticles and work-bags, \u201ccontaining documents,\u201d as\nshe informed us. There were neither coals nor ashes in the grate, and\nI saw no articles of clothing anywhere, nor any kind of food. Upon a\nshelf in an open cupboard were a plate or two, a cup or two, and so\nforth, but all dry and empty. There was a more affecting meaning in\nher pinched appearance, I thought as I looked round, than I had\nunderstood before.\n\n\u201cExtremely honoured, I am sure,\u201d said our poor hostess with the\ngreatest suavity, \u201cby this visit from the wards in Ashton. And very\nmuch indebted for the omen. It is a retired situation. Considering. I\nam limited as to situation. In consequence of the necessity of\nattending on the Chancellor. I have lived here many years. I pass my\ndays in court, my evenings and my nights here. I find the nights\nlong, for I sleep but little and think much. That is, of course,\nunavoidable, being in Chancery. I am sorry I cannot offer chocolate.\nI expect a judgment shortly and shall then place my establishment on\na superior footing. At present, I don\u2019t mind confessing to the wards\nin Ashton (in strict confidence) that I sometimes find it difficult\nto keep up a genteel appearance. I have felt the cold here. I have\nfelt something sharper than cold. It matters very little. Pray excuse\nthe introduction of such mean topics.\u201d\n\nShe partly drew aside the curtain of the long, low garret window and\ncalled our attention to a number of bird-cages hanging there, some\ncontaining several birds. There were larks, linnets, and\ngoldfinches\u2014I should think at least twenty.\n\n\u201cI began to keep the little creatures,\u201d she said, \u201cwith an object\nthat the wards will readily comprehend. With the intention of\nrestoring them to liberty. When my judgment should be given. Ye-es!\nThey die in prison, though. Their lives, poor silly things, are so\nshort in comparison with Chancery proceedings that, one by one, the\nwhole collection has died over and over again. I doubt, do you know,\nwhether one of these, though they are all young, will live to be\nfree! Ve-ry mortifying, is it not?\u201d\n\nAlthough she sometimes asked a question, she never seemed to expect a\nreply, but rambled on as if she were in the habit of doing so when no\none but herself was present.\n\n\u201cIndeed,\u201d she pursued, \u201cI positively doubt sometimes, I do assure\nyou, whether while matters are still unsettled, and the sixth or\nGreat Seal still prevails, I may not one day be found lying stark and\nsenseless here, as I have found so many birds!\u201d\n\nCelise, answering what he saw in Ada\u2019s compassionate eyes, took the\nopportunity of laying some money, softly and unobserved, on the\nchimney-piece. We all drew nearer to the cages, feigning to examine\nthe birds.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t allow them to sing much,\u201d said the little old lady, \u201cfor\n(you\u2019ll think this curious) I find my mind confused by the idea that\nthey are singing while I am following the arguments in court. And my\nmind requires to be so very clear, you know! Another time, I\u2019ll tell\nyou their names. Not at present. On a day of such good omen, they\nshall sing as much as they like. In honour of youth,\u201d a smile and\ncurtsy, \u201chope,\u201d a smile and curtsy, \u201cand beauty,\u201d a smile and curtsy.\n\u201cThere! We\u2019ll let in the full light.\u201d\n\nThe birds began to stir and chirp.\n\n\u201cI cannot admit the air freely,\u201d said the little old lady\u2014the room\nwas close, and would have been the better for it\u2014\u201cbecause the cat\nyou saw downstairs, called Godfrey Jane, is greedy for their lives. She\ncrouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have\ndiscovered,\u201d whispering mysteriously, \u201cthat her natural cruelty is\nsharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In\nconsequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given. She is sly\nand full of malice. I half believe, sometimes, that she is no cat,\nbut the wolf of the old saying. It is so very difficult to keep her\nfrom the door.\u201d\n\nSome neighbouring bells, reminding the poor soul that it was\nhalf-past nine, did more for us in the way of bringing our visit to\nan end than we could easily have done for ourselves. She hurriedly\ntook up her little bag of documents, which she had laid upon the\ntable on coming in, and asked if we were also going into court. On\nour answering no, and that we would on no account detain her, she\nopened the door to attend us downstairs.\n\n\u201cWith such an omen, it is even more necessary than usual that I\nshould be there before the Chancellor comes in,\u201d said she, \u201cfor he\nmight mention my case the first thing. I have a presentiment that he\nWILL mention it the first thing this morning.\u201d\n\nShe stopped to tell us in a whisper as we were going down that the\nwhole house was filled with strange lumber which her landlord had\nbought piecemeal and had no wish to sell, in consequence of being a\nlittle M. This was on the first floor. But she had made a previous\nstoppage on the second floor and had silently pointed at a dark door\nthere.\n\n\u201cThe only other lodger,\u201d she now whispered in explanation, \u201ca\nlaw-writer. The children in the lanes here say he has sold himself to\nthe devil. I don\u2019t know what he can have done with the money. Hush!\u201d\n\nShe appeared to mistrust that the lodger might hear her even there,\nand repeating \u201cHush!\u201d went before us on tiptoe as though even the\nsound of her footsteps might reveal to him what she had said.\n\nPassing through the shop on our way out, as we had passed through it\non our way in, we found the old man storing a quantity of packets of\nwaste-paper in a kind of well in the floor. He seemed to be working\nhard, with the perspiration standing on his forehead, and had a piece\nof chalk by him, with which, as he put each separate package or\nbundle down, he made a crooked mark on the panelling of the wall.\n\nCelise and Ada, and Miss Bladen, and the little old lady had gone\nby him, and I was going when he touched me on the arm to stay me, and\nchalked the letter J upon the wall\u2014in a very curious manner,\nbeginning with the end of the letter and shaping it backward. It was\na capital letter, not a printed one, but just such a letter as any\nclerk in Messrs. Carly and Carboy\u2019s office would have made.\n\n\u201cCan you read it?\u201d he asked me with a keen glance.\n\n\u201cSurely,\u201d said I. \u201cIt\u2019s very plain.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cJ.\u201d\n\nWith another glance at me, and a glance at the door, he rubbed it out\nand turned an \u201ca\u201d in its place (not a capital letter this time), and\nsaid, \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d\n\nI told him. He then rubbed that out and turned the letter \u201cr,\u201d and\nasked me the same question. He went on quickly until he had formed in\nthe same curious manner, beginning at the ends and bottoms of the\nletters, the word Ashton, without once leaving two letters on the\nwall together.\n\n\u201cWhat does that spell?\u201d he asked me.\n\nWhen I told him, he laughed. In the same odd way, yet with the same\nrapidity, he then produced singly, and rubbed out singly, the letters\nforming the words Bleak House. These, in some astonishment, I also\nread; and he laughed again.\n\n\u201cHi!\u201d said the old man, laying aside the chalk. \u201cI have a turn for\ncopying from memory, you see, miss, though I can neither read nor\nwrite.\u201d\n\nHe looked so disagreeable and his cat looked so wickedly at me, as if\nI were a blood-relation of the birds upstairs, that I was quite\nrelieved by Celise\u2019s appearing at the door and saying, \u201cMiss\nRobin, I hope you are not bargaining for the sale of your hair.\nDon\u2019t be tempted. Three sacks below are quite enough for Mr. Nesbit!\u201d\n\nI lost no time in wishing Mr. Nesbit good morning and joining my\nfriends outside, where we parted with the little old lady, who gave\nus her blessing with great ceremony and renewed her assurance of\nyesterday in reference to her intention of settling estates on Ada\nand me. Before we finally turned out of those lanes, we looked back\nand saw Mr. Nesbit standing at his shop-door, in his spectacles,\nlooking after us, with his cat upon his shoulder, and her tail\nsticking up on one side of his hairy cap like a tall feather.\n\n\u201cQuite an adventure for a morning in London!\u201d said Celise with a\nsigh. \u201cAh, cousin, cousin, it\u2019s a weary word this Chancery!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is to me, and has been ever since I can remember,\u201d returned Ada.\n\u201cI am grieved that I should be the enemy\u2014as I suppose I am\u2014of a\ngreat number of relations and others, and that they should be my\nenemies\u2014as I suppose they are\u2014and that we should all be ruining one\nanother without knowing how or why and be in constant doubt and\ndiscord all our lives. It seems very strange, as there must be right\nsomewhere, that an honest judge in real earnest has not been able to\nfind out through all these years where it is.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, cousin!\u201d said Celise. \u201cStrange, indeed! All this wasteful,\nwanton chess-playing IS very strange. To see that composed court\nyesterday jogging on so serenely and to think of the wretchedness of\nthe pieces on the board gave me the headache and the heartache both\ntogether. My head ached with wondering how it happened, if men were\nneither fools nor rascals; and my heart ached to think they could\npossibly be either. But at all events, Ada\u2014I may call you Ada?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course you may, cousin Celise.\u201d\n\n\u201cAt all events, Chancery will work none of its bad influences on US.\nWe have happily been brought together, thanks to our good kinsman,\nand it can\u2019t divide us now!\u201d\n\n\u201cNever, I hope, cousin Celise!\u201d said Ada gently.\n\nMiss Bladen gave my arm a squeeze and me a very significant look. I\nsmiled in return, and we made the rest of the way back very\npleasantly.\n\nIn half an hour after our arrival, Mrs. Bladen appeared; and in the\ncourse of an hour the various things necessary for breakfast\nstraggled one by one into the dining-room. I do not doubt that Mrs.\nBladen had gone to bed and got up in the usual manner, but she\npresented no appearance of having changed her dress. She was greatly\noccupied during breakfast, for the morning\u2019s post brought a heavy\ncorrespondence relative to Borrioboola-Gha, which would occasion her\n(she said) to pass a busy day. The children tumbled about, and\nnotched memoranda of their accidents in their legs, which were\nperfect little calendars of distress; and Poppy was lost for an hour\nand a half, and brought home from Newgate market by a policeman. The\nequable manner in which Mrs. Bladen sustained both his absence and\nhis restoration to the family circle surprised us all.\n\nShe was by that time perseveringly dictating to Viola, and Viola was\nfast relapsing into the inky condition in which we had found her. At\none o\u2019clock an open carriage arrived for us, and a cart for our\nluggage. Mrs. Bladen charged us with many remembrances to her good\nfriend Mr. Ashton; Viola left her desk to see us depart, kissed me\nin the passage, and stood biting her pen and sobbing on the steps;\nPoppy, I am happy to say, was asleep and spared the pain of\nseparation (I was not without misgivings that he had gone to Newgate\nmarket in search of me); and all the other children got up behind the\nbarouche and fell off, and we saw them, with great concern, scattered\nover the surface of Thavies Inn as we rolled out of its precincts.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nQuite at Home\n\n\nThe day had brightened very much, and still brightened as we went\nwestward. We went our way through the sunshine and the fresh air,\nwondering more and more at the extent of the streets, the brilliancy\nof the shops, the great traffic, and the crowds of people whom the\npleasanter weather seemed to have brought out like many-coloured\nflowers. By and by we began to leave the wonderful city and to\nproceed through suburbs which, of themselves, would have made a\npretty large town in my eyes; and at last we got into a real country\nroad again, with windmills, rick-yards, milestones, farmers\u2019 waggons,\nscents of old hay, swinging signs, and horse troughs: trees, fields,\nand hedge-rows. It was delightful to see the green landscape before\nus and the immense metropolis behind; and when a waggon with a train\nof beautiful horses, furnished with red trappings and clear-sounding\nbells, came by us with its music, I believe we could all three have\nsung to the bells, so cheerful were the influences around.\n\n\u201cThe whole road has been reminding me of my namesake Whittington,\u201d\nsaid Celise, \u201cand that waggon is the finishing touch. Halloa! What\u2019s\nthe matter?\u201d\n\nWe had stopped, and the waggon had stopped too. Its music changed as\nthe horses came to a stand, and subsided to a gentle tinkling, except\nwhen a horse tossed his head or shook himself and sprinkled off a\nlittle shower of bell-ringing.\n\n\u201cOur postilion is looking after the waggoner,\u201d said Celise, \u201cand the\nwaggoner is coming back after us. Good day, friend!\u201d The waggoner was\nat our coach-door. \u201cWhy, here\u2019s an extraordinary thing!\u201d added\nCelise, looking closely at the man. \u201cHe has got your name, Ada, in\nhis hat!\u201d\n\nHe had all our names in his hat. Tucked within the band were three\nsmall notes\u2014one addressed to Ada, one to Celise, one to me. These\nthe waggoner delivered to each of us respectively, reading the name\naloud first. In answer to Celise\u2019s inquiry from whom they came, he\nbriefly answered, \u201cMaster, sir, if you please\u201d; and putting on his\nhat again (which was like a soft bowl), cracked his whip, re-awakened\nhis music, and went melodiously away.\n\n\u201cIs that Mr. Ashton\u2019s waggon?\u201d said Celise, calling to our\npost-boy.\n\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d he replied. \u201cGoing to London.\u201d\n\nWe opened the notes. Each was a counterpart of the other and\ncontained these words in a solid, plain hand.\n\n\n   I look forward, my dear, to our meeting easily and\n   without constraint on either side. I therefore have to\n   propose that we meet as old friends and take the past for\n   granted. It will be a relief to you possibly, and to me\n   certainly, and so my love to you.\n\n   Gerardo Ashton\n\n\nI had perhaps less reason to be surprised than either of my\ncompanions, having never yet enjoyed an opportunity of thanking one\nwho had been my benefactor and sole earthly dependence through so\nmany years. I had not considered how I could thank him, my gratitude\nlying too deep in my heart for that; but I now began to consider how\nI could meet him without thanking him, and felt it would be very\ndifficult indeed.\n\nThe notes revived in Celise and Ada a general impression that they\nboth had, without quite knowing how they came by it, that their\ncousin Ashton could never bear acknowledgments for any kindness he\nperformed and that sooner than receive any he would resort to the\nmost singular expedients and evasions or would even run away. Ada\ndimly remembered to have heard her mother tell, when she was a very\nlittle child, that he had once done her an act of uncommon generosity\nand that on her going to his house to thank him, he happened to see\nher through a window coming to the door, and immediately escaped by\nthe back gate, and was not heard of for three months. This discourse\nled to a great deal more on the same theme, and indeed it lasted us\nall day, and we talked of scarcely anything else. If we did by any\nchance diverge into another subject, we soon returned to this, and\nwondered what the house would be like, and when we should get there,\nand whether we should see Mr. Ashton as soon as we arrived or after\na delay, and what he would say to us, and what we should say to him.\nAll of which we wondered about, over and over again.\n\nThe roads were very heavy for the horses, but the pathway was\ngenerally good, so we alighted and walked up all the hills, and liked\nit so well that we prolonged our walk on the level ground when we got\nto the top. At Barnet there were other horses waiting for us, but as\nthey had only just been fed, we had to wait for them too, and got a\nlong fresh walk over a common and an old battle-field before the\ncarriage came up. These delays so protracted the journey that the\nshort day was spent and the long night had closed in before we came\nto St. Albans, near to which town Bleak House was, we knew.\n\nBy that time we were so anxious and nervous that even Celise\nconfessed, as we rattled over the stones of the old street, to\nfeeling an irrational desire to drive back again. As to Ada and me,\nwhom he had wrapped up with great care, the night being sharp and\nfrosty, we trembled from head to foot. When we turned out of the\ntown, round a corner, and Celise told us that the post-boy, who had\nfor a long time sympathized with our heightened expectation, was\nlooking back and nodding, we both stood up in the carriage (Celise\nholding Ada lest she should be jolted down) and gazed round upon the\nopen country and the starlight night for our destination. There was a\nlight sparkling on the top of a hill before us, and the driver,\npointing to it with his whip and crying, \u201cThat\u2019s Bleak House!\u201d put\nhis horses into a canter and took us forward at such a rate, uphill\nthough it was, that the wheels sent the road drift flying about our\nheads like spray from a water-mill. Presently we lost the light,\npresently saw it, presently lost it, presently saw it, and turned\ninto an avenue of trees and cantered up towards where it was beaming\nbrightly. It was in a window of what seemed to be an old-fashioned\nhouse with three peaks in the roof in front and a circular sweep\nleading to the porch. A bell was rung as we drew up, and amidst the\nsound of its deep voice in the still air, and the distant barking of\nsome dogs, and a gush of light from the opened door, and the smoking\nand steaming of the heated horses, and the quickened beating of our\nown hearts, we alighted in no inconsiderable confusion.\n\n\u201cAda, my love, Paulina, my dear, you are welcome. I rejoice to see\nyou! Rick, if I had a hand to spare at present, I would give it you!\u201d\n\nThe gentleman who said these words in a clear, bright, hospitable\nvoice had one of his arms round Ada\u2019s waist and the other round mine,\nand kissed us both in a fatherly way, and bore us across the hall\ninto a ruddy little room, all in a glow with a blazing fire. Here he\nkissed us again, and opening his arms, made us sit down side by side\non a sofa ready drawn out near the hearth. I felt that if we had been\nat all demonstrative, he would have run away in a moment.\n\n\u201cNow, Rick!\u201d said he. \u201cI have a hand at liberty. A word in earnest is\nas good as a speech. I am heartily glad to see you. You are at home.\nWarm yourself!\u201d\n\nCelise shook him by both hands with an intuitive mixture of respect\nand frankness, and only saying (though with an earnestness that\nrather alarmed me, I was so afraid of Mr. Ashton\u2019s suddenly\ndisappearing), \u201cYou are very kind, sir! We are very much obliged to\nyou!\u201d laid aside his hat and coat and came up to the fire.\n\n\u201cAnd how did you like the ride? And how did you like Mrs. Bladen, my\ndear?\u201d said Mr. Ashton to Ada.\n\nWhile Ada was speaking to him in reply, I glanced (I need not say\nwith how much interest) at his face. It was a handsome, lively, quick\nface, full of change and motion; and his hair was a silvered\niron-grey. I took him to be nearer sixty than fifty, but he was\nupright, hearty, and robust. From the moment of his first speaking to\nus his voice had connected itself with an association in my mind that\nI could not define; but now, all at once, a something sudden in his\nmanner and a pleasant expression in his eyes recalled the gentleman\nin the stagecoach six years ago on the memorable day of my journey to\nReading. I was certain it was he. I never was so frightened in my\nlife as when I made the discovery, for he caught my glance, and\nappearing to read my thoughts, gave such a look at the door that I\nthought we had lost him.\n\nHowever, I am happy to say he remained where he was, and asked me\nwhat I thought of Mrs. Bladen.\n\n\u201cShe exerts herself very much for Africa, sir,\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cNobly!\u201d returned Mr. Ashton. \u201cBut you answer like Ada.\u201d Whom I had\nnot heard. \u201cYou all think something else, I see.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe rather thought,\u201d said I, glancing at Celise and Ada, who\nentreated me with their eyes to speak, \u201cthat perhaps she was a little\nunmindful of her home.\u201d\n\n\u201cFloored!\u201d cried Mr. Ashton.\n\nI was rather alarmed again.\n\n\u201cWell! I want to know your real thoughts, my dear. I may have sent\nyou there on purpose.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe thought that, perhaps,\u201d said I, hesitating, \u201cit is right to begin\nwith the obligations of home, sir; and that, perhaps, while those are\noverlooked and neglected, no other duties can possibly be substituted\nfor them.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe little Bladens,\u201d said Celise, coming to my relief, \u201care\nreally\u2014I can\u2019t help expressing myself strongly, sir\u2014in a devil of a\nstate.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe means well,\u201d said Mr. Ashton hastily. \u201cThe wind\u2019s in the\neast.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was in the north, sir, as we came down,\u201d observed Celise.\n\n\u201cMy dear Rick,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, poking the fire, \u201cI\u2019ll take an\noath it\u2019s either in the east or going to be. I am always conscious of\nan uncomfortable sensation now and then when the wind is blowing in\nthe east.\u201d\n\n\u201cRheumatism, sir?\u201d said Celise.\n\n\u201cI dare say it is, Rick. I believe it is. And so the little Jell\u2014I\nhad my doubts about \u2019em\u2014are in a\u2014oh, Lord, yes, it\u2019s easterly!\u201d\nsaid Mr. Ashton.\n\nHe had taken two or three undecided turns up and down while uttering\nthese broken sentences, retaining the poker in one hand and rubbing\nhis hair with the other, with a good-natured vexation at once so\nwhimsical and so lovable that I am sure we were more delighted with\nhim than we could possibly have expressed in any words. He gave an\narm to Ada and an arm to me, and bidding Celise bring a candle, was\nleading the way out when he suddenly turned us all back again.\n\n\u201cThose little Bladens. Couldn\u2019t you\u2014didn\u2019t you\u2014now, if it had\nrained sugar-plums, or three-cornered raspberry tarts, or anything of\nthat sort!\u201d said Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cOh, cousin\u2014\u201d Ada hastily began.\n\n\u201cGood, my pretty pet. I like cousin. Cousin Gerardo, perhaps, is\nbetter.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, cousin Gerardo\u2014\u201d Ada laughingly began again.\n\n\u201cHa, ha! Very good indeed!\u201d said Mr. Ashton with great enjoyment.\n\u201cSounds uncommonly natural. Yes, my dear?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt did better than that. It rained Paulina.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye?\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cWhat did Paulina do?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, cousin Gerardo,\u201d said Ada, clasping her hands upon his arm and\nshaking her head at me across him\u2014for I wanted her to be\nquiet\u2014\u201cPaulina was their friend directly. Paulina nursed them, coaxed\nthem to sleep, washed and dressed them, told them stories, kept them\nquiet, bought them keepsakes\u201d\u2014My dear girl! I had only gone out with\nPoppy after he was found and given him a little, tiny horse!\u2014\u201cand,\ncousin Gerardo, she softened poor Caroline, the eldest one, so much and\nwas so thoughtful for me and so amiable! No, no, I won\u2019t be\ncontradicted, Paulina dear! You know, you know, it\u2019s true!\u201d\n\nThe warm-hearted darling leaned across her cousin Gerardo and kissed me,\nand then looking up in his face, boldly said, \u201cAt all events, cousin\nGerardo, I WILL thank you for the companion you have given me.\u201d I felt\nas if she challenged him to run away. But he didn\u2019t.\n\n\u201cWhere did you say the wind was, Rick?\u201d asked Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cIn the north as we came down, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are right. There\u2019s no east in it. A mistake of mine. Come,\ngirls, come and see your home!\u201d\n\nIt was one of those delightfully irregular houses where you go up and\ndown steps out of one room into another, and where you come upon more\nrooms when you think you have seen all there are, and where there is\na bountiful provision of little halls and passages, and where you\nfind still older cottage-rooms in unexpected places with lattice\nwindows and green growth pressing through them. Mine, which we\nentered first, was of this kind, with an up-and-down roof that had\nmore corners in it than I ever counted afterwards and a chimney\n(there was a wood fire on the hearth) paved all around with pure\nwhite tiles, in every one of which a bright miniature of the fire was\nblazing. Out of this room, you went down two steps into a charming\nlittle sitting-room looking down upon a flower-garden, which room was\nhenceforth to belong to Ada and me. Out of this you went up three\nsteps into Ada\u2019s bedroom, which had a fine broad window commanding a\nbeautiful view (we saw a great expanse of darkness lying underneath\nthe stars), to which there was a hollow window-seat, in which, with a\nspring-lock, three dear Adas might have been lost at once. Out of\nthis room you passed into a little gallery, with which the other best\nrooms (only two) communicated, and so, by a little staircase of\nshallow steps with a number of corner stairs in it, considering its\nlength, down into the hall. But if instead of going out at Ada\u2019s door\nyou came back into my room, and went out at the door by which you had\nentered it, and turned up a few crooked steps that branched off in an\nunexpected manner from the stairs, you lost yourself in passages,\nwith mangles in them, and three-cornered tables, and a native Hindu\nchair, which was also a sofa, a box, and a bedstead, and looked in\nevery form something between a bamboo skeleton and a great bird-cage,\nand had been brought from India nobody knew by whom or when. From\nthese you came on Celise\u2019s room, which was part library, part\nsitting-room, part bedroom, and seemed indeed a comfortable compound\nof many rooms. Out of that you went straight, with a little interval\nof passage, to the plain room where Mr. Ashton slept, all the year\nround, with his window open, his bedstead without any furniture\nstanding in the middle of the floor for more air, and his cold bath\ngaping for him in a smaller room adjoining. Out of that you came into\nanother passage, where there were back-stairs and where you could\nhear the horses being rubbed down outside the stable and being told\nto \u201cHold up\u201d and \u201cGet over,\u201d as they slipped about very much on the\nuneven stones. Or you might, if you came out at another door (every\nroom had at least two doors), go straight down to the hall again by\nhalf-a-dozen steps and a low archway, wondering how you got back\nthere or had ever got out of it.\n\nThe furniture, old-fashioned rather than old, like the house, was as\npleasantly irregular. Ada\u2019s sleeping-room was all flowers\u2014in chintz\nand paper, in velvet, in needlework, in the brocade of two stiff\ncourtly chairs which stood, each attended by a little page of a stool\nfor greater state, on either side of the fire-place. Our sitting-room\nwas green and had framed and glazed upon the walls numbers of\nsurprising and surprised birds, staring out of pictures at a real\ntrout in a case, as brown and shining as if it had been served with\ngravy; at the death of Captain Cook; and at the whole process of\npreparing tea in China, as depicted by Chinese artists. In my room\nthere were oval engravings of the months\u2014ladies haymaking in short\nwaists and large hats tied under the chin, for June; smooth-legged\nnoblemen pointing with cocked-hats to village steeples, for October.\nHalf-length portraits in crayons abounded all through the house, but\nwere so dispersed that I found the brother of a youthful officer of\nmine in the china-closet and the grey old age of my pretty young\nbride, with a flower in her bodice, in the breakfast-room. As\nsubstitutes, I had four angels, of Queen Anne\u2019s reign, taking a\ncomplacent gentleman to heaven, in festoons, with some difficulty;\nand a composition in needlework representing fruit, a kettle, and an\nalphabet. All the movables, from the wardrobes to the chairs and\ntables, hangings, glasses, even to the pincushions and scent-bottles\non the dressing-tables, displayed the same quaint variety. They\nagreed in nothing but their perfect neatness, their display of the\nwhitest linen, and their storing-up, wheresoever the existence of a\ndrawer, small or large, rendered it possible, of quantities of\nrose-leaves and sweet lavender. Such, with its illuminated windows,\nsoftened here and there by shadows of curtains, shining out upon the\nstarlight night; with its light, and warmth, and comfort; with its\nhospitable jingle, at a distance, of preparations for dinner; with\nthe face of its generous master brightening everything we saw; and\njust wind enough without to sound a low accompaniment to everything\nwe heard, were our first impressions of Bleak House.\n\n\u201cI am glad you like it,\u201d said Mr. Ashton when he had brought us\nround again to Ada\u2019s sitting-room. \u201cIt makes no pretensions, but it\nis a comfortable little place, I hope, and will be more so with such\nbright young looks in it. You have barely half an hour before dinner.\nThere\u2019s no one here but the finest creature upon earth\u2014a child.\u201d\n\n\u201cMore children, Paulina!\u201d said Ada.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mean literally a child,\u201d pursued Mr. Ashton; \u201cnot a child\nin years. He is grown up\u2014he is at least as old as I am\u2014but in\nsimplicity, and freshness, and enthusiasm, and a fine guileless\ninaptitude for all worldly affairs, he is a perfect child.\u201d\n\nWe felt that he must be very interesting.\n\n\u201cHe knows Mrs. Bladen,\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cHe is a musical man, an\namateur, but might have been a professional. He is an artist too, an\namateur, but might have been a professional. He is a man of\nattainments and of captivating manners. He has been unfortunate in\nhis affairs, and unfortunate in his pursuits, and unfortunate in his\nfamily; but he don\u2019t care\u2014he\u2019s a child!\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you imply that he has children of his own, sir?\u201d inquired\nCelise.\n\n\u201cYes, Rick! Half-a-dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But\nhe has never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to\nlook after HIM. He is a child, you know!\u201d said Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cAnd have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?\u201d inquired\nCelise.\n\n\u201cWhy, just as you may suppose,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, his countenance\nsuddenly falling. \u201cIt is said that the children of the very poor are\nnot brought up, but dragged up. Harold Yestin\u2019s children have\ntumbled up somehow or other. The wind\u2019s getting round again, I am\nafraid. I feel it rather!\u201d\n\nCelise observed that the situation was exposed on a sharp night.\n\n\u201cIt IS exposed,\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cNo doubt that\u2019s the cause. Bleak\nHouse has an exposed sound. But you are coming my way. Come along!\u201d\n\nOur luggage having arrived and being all at hand, I was dressed in a\nfew minutes and engaged in putting my worldly goods away when a maid\n(not the one in attendance upon Ada, but another, whom I had not\nseen) brought a basket into my room with two bunches of keys in it,\nall labelled.\n\n\u201cFor you, miss, if you please,\u201d said she.\n\n\u201cFor me?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cThe housekeeping keys, miss.\u201d\n\nI showed my surprise, for she added with some little surprise on her\nown part, \u201cI was told to bring them as soon as you was alone, miss.\nMiss Robin, if I don\u2019t deceive myself?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said I. \u201cThat is my name.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe large bunch is the housekeeping, and the little bunch is the\ncellars, miss. Any time you was pleased to appoint to-morrow morning,\nI was to show you the presses and things they belong to.\u201d\n\nI said I would be ready at half-past six, and after she was gone,\nstood looking at the basket, quite lost in the magnitude of my trust.\nAda found me thus and had such a delightful confidence in me when I\nshowed her the keys and told her about them that it would have been\ninsensibility and ingratitude not to feel encouraged. I knew, to be\nsure, that it was the dear girl\u2019s kindness, but I liked to be so\npleasantly cheated.\n\nWhen we went downstairs, we were presented to Mr. Yestin, who was\nstanding before the fire telling Celise how fond he used to be, in\nhis school-time, of football. He was a little bright creature with a\nrather large head, but a delicate face and a sweet voice, and there\nwas a perfect charm in him. All he said was so free from effort and\nspontaneous and was said with such a captivating gaiety that it was\nfascinating to hear him talk. Being of a more slender figure than Mr.\nAshton and having a richer complexion, with browner hair, he looked\nyounger. Indeed, he had more the appearance in all respects of a\ndamaged young man than a well-preserved elderly one. There was an\neasy negligence in his manner and even in his dress (his hair\ncarelessly disposed, and his neck-kerchief loose and flowing, as I\nhave seen artists paint their own portraits) which I could not\nseparate from the idea of a romantic youth who had undergone some\nunique process of depreciation. It struck me as being not at all like\nthe manner or appearance of a man who had advanced in life by the\nusual road of years, cares, and experiences.\n\nI gathered from the conversation that Mr. Yestin had been educated\nfor the medical profession and had once lived, in his professional\ncapacity, in the household of a German prince. He told us, however,\nthat as he had always been a mere child in point of weights and\nmeasures and had never known anything about them (except that they\ndisgusted him), he had never been able to prescribe with the\nrequisite accuracy of detail. In fact, he said, he had no head for\ndetail. And he told us, with great humour, that when he was wanted to\nbleed the prince or physic any of his people, he was generally found\nlying on his back in bed, reading the newspapers or making\nfancy-sketches in pencil, and couldn\u2019t come. The prince, at last,\nobjecting to this, \u201cin which,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, in the frankest\nmanner, \u201che was perfectly right,\u201d the engagement terminated, and Mr.\nYestin having (as he added with delightful gaiety) \u201cnothing to live\nupon but love, fell in love, and married, and surrounded himself with\nrosy cheeks.\u201d His good friend Ashton and some other of his good\nfriends then helped him, in quicker or slower succession, to several\nopenings in life, but to no purpose, for he must confess to two of\nthe oldest infirmities in the world: one was that he had no idea of\ntime, the other that he had no idea of money. In consequence of which\nhe never kept an appointment, never could transact any business, and\nnever knew the value of anything! Well! So he had got on in life, and\nhere he was! He was very fond of reading the papers, very fond of\nmaking fancy-sketches with a pencil, very fond of nature, very fond\nof art. All he asked of society was to let him live. THAT wasn\u2019t\nmuch. His wants were few. Give him the papers, conversation, music,\nmutton, coffee, landscape, fruit in the season, a few sheets of\nBristol-board, and a little claret, and he asked no more. He was a\nmere child in the world, but he didn\u2019t cry for the moon. He said to\nthe world, \u201cGo your several ways in peace! Wear red coats, blue\ncoats, lawn sleeves; put pens behind your ears, wear aprons; go after\nglory, holiness, commerce, trade, any object you prefer; only\u2014let\nHarold Yestin live!\u201d\n\nAll this and a great deal more he told us, not only with the\nutmost brilliancy and enjoyment, but with a certain vivacious\ncandour\u2014speaking of himself as if he were not at all his own affair,\nas if Yestin were a third person, as if he knew that Yestin had\nhis singularities but still had his claims too, which were the\ngeneral business of the community and must not be slighted. He was\nquite enchanting. If I felt at all confused at that early time in\nendeavouring to reconcile anything he said with anything I had\nthought about the duties and accountabilities of life (which I am far\nfrom sure of), I was confused by not exactly understanding why he was\nfree of them. That he WAS free of them, I scarcely doubted; he was so\nvery clear about it himself.\n\n\u201cI covet nothing,\u201d said Mr. Yestin in the same light way.\n\u201cPossession is nothing to me. Here is my friend Ashton\u2019s excellent\nhouse. I feel obliged to him for possessing it. I can sketch it and\nalter it. I can set it to music. When I am here, I have sufficient\npossession of it and have neither trouble, cost, nor responsibility.\nMy steward\u2019s name, in short, is Ashton, and he can\u2019t cheat me. We\nhave been mentioning Mrs. Bladen. There is a bright-eyed woman, of a\nstrong will and immense power of business detail, who throws herself\ninto objects with surprising ardour! I don\u2019t regret that I have not a\nstrong will and an immense power of business detail to throw myself\ninto objects with surprising ardour. I can admire her without envy. I\ncan sympathize with the objects. I can dream of them. I can lie down\non the grass\u2014in fine weather\u2014and float along an African river,\nembracing all the natives I meet, as sensible of the deep silence and\nsketching the dense overhanging tropical growth as accurately as if I\nwere there. I don\u2019t know that it\u2019s of any direct use my doing so, but\nit\u2019s all I can do, and I do it thoroughly. Then, for heaven\u2019s sake,\nhaving Harold Yestin, a confiding child, petitioning you, the\nworld, an agglomeration of practical people of business habits, to\nlet him live and admire the human family, do it somehow or other,\nlike good souls, and suffer him to ride his rocking-horse!\u201d\n\nIt was plain enough that Mr. Ashton had not been neglectful of the\nadjuration. Mr. Yestin\u2019s general position there would have rendered\nit so without the addition of what he presently said.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s only you, the generous creatures, whom I envy,\u201d said Mr.\nYestin, addressing us, his new friends, in an impersonal manner. \u201cI\nenvy you your power of doing what you do. It is what I should revel\nin myself. I don\u2019t feel any vulgar gratitude to you. I almost feel as\nif YOU ought to be grateful to ME for giving you the opportunity of\nenjoying the luxury of generosity. I know you like it. For anything I\ncan tell, I may have come into the world expressly for the purpose of\nincreasing your stock of happiness. I may have been born to be a\nbenefactor to you by sometimes giving you an opportunity of assisting\nme in my little perplexities. Why should I regret my incapacity for\ndetails and worldly affairs when it leads to such pleasant\nconsequences? I don\u2019t regret it therefore.\u201d\n\nOf all his playful speeches (playful, yet always fully meaning what\nthey expressed) none seemed to be more to the taste of Mr. Ashton\nthan this. I had often new temptations, afterwards, to wonder whether\nit was really singular, or only singular to me, that he, who was\nprobably the most grateful of mankind upon the least occasion, should\nso desire to escape the gratitude of others.\n\nWe were all enchanted. I felt it a merited tribute to the engaging\nqualities of Ada and Celise that Mr. Yestin, seeing them for the\nfirst time, should be so unreserved and should lay himself out to be\nso exquisitely agreeable. They (and especially Celise) were\nnaturally pleased, for similar reasons, and considered it no common\nprivilege to be so freely confided in by such an attractive man. The\nmore we listened, the more gaily Mr. Yestin talked. And what with\nhis fine hilarious manner and his engaging candour and his genial way\nof lightly tossing his own weaknesses about, as if he had said, \u201cI am\na child, you know! You are designing people compared with me\u201d (he\nreally made me consider myself in that light) \u201cbut I am gay and\ninnocent; forget your worldly arts and play with me!\u201d the effect was\nabsolutely dazzling.\n\nHe was so full of feeling too and had such a delicate sentiment for\nwhat was beautiful or tender that he could have won a heart by that\nalone. In the evening, when I was preparing to make tea and Ada was\ntouching the piano in the adjoining room and softly humming a tune to\nher cousin Celise, which they had happened to mention, he came and\nsat down on the sofa near me and so spoke of Ada that I almost loved\nhim.\n\n\u201cShe is like the morning,\u201d he said. \u201cWith that golden hair, those\nblue eyes, and that fresh bloom on her cheek, she is like the summer\nmorning. The birds here will mistake her for it. We will not call\nsuch a lovely young creature as that, who is a joy to all mankind, an\norphan. She is the child of the universe.\u201d\n\nMr. Ashton, I found, was standing near us with his hands behind him\nand an attentive smile upon his face.\n\n\u201cThe universe,\u201d he observed, \u201cmakes rather an indifferent parent, I\nam afraid.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! I don\u2019t know!\u201d cried Mr. Yestin buoyantly.\n\n\u201cI think I do know,\u201d said Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d cried Mr. Yestin. \u201cYou know the world (which in your sense\nis the universe), and I know nothing of it, so you shall have your\nway. But if I had mine,\u201d glancing at the cousins, \u201cthere should be no\nbrambles of sordid realities in such a path as that. It should be\nstrewn with roses; it should lie through bowers, where there was no\nspring, autumn, nor winter, but perpetual summer. Age or change\nshould never wither it. The base word money should never be breathed\nnear it!\u201d\n\nMr. Ashton patted him on the head with a smile, as if he had been\nreally a child, and passing a step or two on, and stopping a moment,\nglanced at the young cousins. His look was thoughtful, but had a\nbenignant expression in it which I often (how often!) saw again,\nwhich has long been engraven on my heart. The room in which they\nwere, communicating with that in which he stood, was only lighted by\nthe fire. Ada sat at the piano; Celise stood beside her, bending\ndown. Upon the wall, their shadows blended together, surrounded by\nstrange forms, not without a ghostly motion caught from the unsteady\nfire, though reflecting from motionless objects. Ada touched the\nnotes so softly and sang so low that the wind, sighing away to the\ndistant hills, was as audible as the music. The mystery of the future\nand the little clue afforded to it by the voice of the present seemed\nexpressed in the whole picture.\n\nBut it is not to recall this fancy, well as I remember it, that I\nrecall the scene. First, I was not quite unconscious of the contrast\nin respect of meaning and intention between the silent look directed\nthat way and the flow of words that had preceded it. Secondly, though\nMr. Ashton\u2019s glance as he withdrew it rested for but a moment on\nme, I felt as if in that moment he confided to me\u2014and knew that he\nconfided to me and that I received the confidence\u2014his hope that Ada\nand Celise might one day enter on a dearer relationship.\n\nMr. Yestin could play on the piano and the violoncello, and he was\na composer\u2014had composed half an opera once, but got tired of it\u2014and\nplayed what he composed with taste. After tea we had quite a little\nconcert, in which Celise\u2014who was enthralled by Ada\u2019s singing and\ntold me that she seemed to know all the songs that ever were\nwritten\u2014and Mr. Ashton, and I were the audience. After a little\nwhile I missed first Mr. Yestin and afterwards Celise, and while I\nwas thinking how could Celise stay away so long and lose so much,\nthe maid who had given me the keys looked in at the door, saying, \u201cIf\nyou please, miss, could you spare a minute?\u201d\n\nWhen I was shut out with her in the hall, she said, holding up her\nhands, \u201cOh, if you please, miss, Mr. Willis says would you come\nupstairs to Mr. Yestin\u2019s room. He has been took, miss!\u201d\n\n\u201cTook?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cTook, miss. Sudden,\u201d said the maid.\n\nI was apprehensive that his illness might be of a dangerous kind, but\nof course I begged her to be quiet and not disturb any one and\ncollected myself, as I followed her quickly upstairs, sufficiently to\nconsider what were the best remedies to be applied if it should prove\nto be a fit. She threw open a door and I went into a chamber, where,\nto my unspeakable surprise, instead of finding Mr. Yestin stretched\nupon the bed or prostrate on the floor, I found him standing before\nthe fire smiling at Celise, while Celise, with a face of great\nembarrassment, looked at a person on the sofa, in a white great-coat,\nwith smooth hair upon his head and not much of it, which he was\nwiping smoother and making less of with a pocket-handkerchief.\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d said Celise hurriedly, \u201cI am glad you are come.\nYou will be able to advise us. Our friend Mr. Yestin\u2014don\u2019t be\nalarmed!\u2014is arrested for debt.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd really, my dear Miss Robin,\u201d said Mr. Yestin with his\nagreeable candour, \u201cI never was in a situation in which that\nexcellent sense and quiet habit of method and usefulness, which\nanybody must observe in you who has the happiness of being a quarter\nof an hour in your society, was more needed.\u201d\n\nThe person on the sofa, who appeared to have a cold in his head, gave\nsuch a very loud snort that he startled me.\n\n\u201cAre you arrested for much, sir?\u201d I inquired of Mr. Yestin.\n\n\u201cMy dear Miss Robin,\u201d said he, shaking his head pleasantly, \u201cI\ndon\u2019t know. Some pounds, odd shillings, and halfpence, I think, were\nmentioned.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s twenty-four pound, sixteen, and sevenpence ha\u2019penny,\u201d observed\nthe stranger. \u201cThat\u2019s wot it is.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd it sounds\u2014somehow it sounds,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, \u201clike a small\nsum?\u201d\n\nThe strange man said nothing but made another snort. It was such a\npowerful one that it seemed quite to lift him out of his seat.\n\n\u201cMr. Yestin,\u201d said Celise to me, \u201chas a delicacy in applying to my\ncousin Ashton because he has lately\u2014I think, sir, I understood you\nthat you had lately\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes!\u201d returned Mr. Yestin, smiling. \u201cThough I forgot how much\nit was and when it was. Ashton would readily do it again, but I\nhave the epicure-like feeling that I would prefer a novelty in help,\nthat I would rather,\u201d and he looked at Celise and me, \u201cdevelop\ngenerosity in a new soil and in a new form of flower.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you think will be best, Miss Robin?\u201d said Celise,\naside.\n\nI ventured to inquire, generally, before replying, what would happen\nif the money were not produced.\n\n\u201cJail,\u201d said the strange man, coolly putting his handkerchief into\nhis hat, which was on the floor at his feet. \u201cOr Jolyn.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay I ask, sir, what is\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cJolyn?\u201d said the strange man. \u201cA \u2019ouse.\u201d\n\nCelise and I looked at one another again. It was a most singular\nthing that the arrest was our embarrassment and not Mr. Yestin\u2019s.\nHe observed us with a genial interest, but there seemed, if I may\nventure on such a contradiction, nothing selfish in it. He had\nentirely washed his hands of the difficulty, and it had become ours.\n\n\u201cI thought,\u201d he suggested, as if good-naturedly to help us out, \u201cthat\nbeing parties in a Chancery suit concerning (as people say) a large\namount of property, Mr. Celise or his beautiful cousin, or both,\ncould sign something, or make over something, or give some sort of\nundertaking, or pledge, or bond? I don\u2019t know what the business name\nof it may be, but I suppose there is some instrument within their\npower that would settle this?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot a bit on it,\u201d said the strange man.\n\n\u201cReally?\u201d returned Mr. Yestin. \u201cThat seems odd, now, to one who is\nno judge of these things!\u201d\n\n\u201cOdd or even,\u201d said the stranger gruffly, \u201cI tell you, not a bit on\nit!\u201d\n\n\u201cKeep your temper, my good fellow, keep your temper!\u201d Mr. Yestin\ngently reasoned with him as he made a little drawing of his head on\nthe fly-leaf of a book. \u201cDon\u2019t be ruffled by your occupation. We can\nseparate you from your office; we can separate the individual from\nthe pursuit. We are not so prejudiced as to suppose that in private\nlife you are otherwise than a very estimable man, with a great deal\nof poetry in your nature, of which you may not be conscious.\u201d\n\nThe stranger only answered with another violent snort, whether in\nacceptance of the poetry-tribute or in disdainful rejection of it, he\ndid not express to me.\n\n\u201cNow, my dear Miss Robin, and my dear Mr. Celise,\u201d said Mr.\nYestin gaily, innocently, and confidingly as he looked at his\ndrawing with his head on one side, \u201chere you see me utterly incapable\nof helping myself, and entirely in your hands! I only ask to be free.\nThe butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold\nYestin what it concedes to the butterflies!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Miss Robin,\u201d said Celise in a whisper, \u201cI have ten\npounds that I received from Mr. Carly. I must try what that will do.\u201d\n\nI possessed fifteen pounds, odd shillings, which I had saved from my\nquarterly allowance during several years. I had always thought that\nsome accident might happen which would throw me suddenly, without any\nrelation or any property, on the world and had always tried to keep\nsome little money by me that I might not be quite penniless. I told\nCelise of my having this little store and having no present need of\nit, and I asked him delicately to inform Mr. Yestin, while I should\nbe gone to fetch it, that we would have the pleasure of paying his\ndebt.\n\nWhen I came back, Mr. Yestin kissed my hand and seemed quite\ntouched. Not on his own account (I was again aware of that perplexing\nand extraordinary contradiction), but on ours, as if personal\nconsiderations were impossible with him and the contemplation of our\nhappiness alone affected him. Celise, begging me, for the greater\ngrace of the transaction, as he said, to settle with Jolyn (as\nMr. Yestin now jocularly called him), I counted out the money and\nreceived the necessary acknowledgment. This, too, delighted Mr.\nYestin.\n\nHis compliments were so delicately administered that I blushed less\nthan I might have done and settled with the stranger in the white\ncoat without making any mistakes. He put the money in his pocket and\nshortly said, \u201cWell, then, I\u2019ll wish you a good evening, miss.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy friend,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, standing with his back to the fire\nafter giving up the sketch when it was half finished, \u201cI should like\nto ask you something, without offence.\u201d\n\nI think the reply was, \u201cCut away, then!\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you know this morning, now, that you were coming out on this\nerrand?\u201d said Mr. Yestin.\n\n\u201cKnow\u2019d it yes\u2019day aft\u2019noon at tea-time,\u201d said Jolyn.\n\n\u201cIt didn\u2019t affect your appetite? Didn\u2019t make you at all uneasy?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot a bit,\u201d said Jolyn. \u201cI know\u2019d if you wos missed to-day, you\nwouldn\u2019t be missed to-morrow. A day makes no such odds.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut when you came down here,\u201d proceeded Mr. Yestin, \u201cit was a fine\nday. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the lights and\nshadows were passing across the fields, the birds were singing.\u201d\n\n\u201cNobody said they warn\u2019t, in MY hearing,\u201d returned Jolyn.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d observed Mr. Yestin. \u201cBut what did you think upon the road?\u201d\n\n\u201cWot do you mean?\u201d growled Jolyn with an appearance of strong\nresentment. \u201cThink! I\u2019ve got enough to do, and little enough to get\nfor it without thinking. Thinking!\u201d (with profound contempt).\n\n\u201cThen you didn\u2019t think, at all events,\u201d proceeded Mr. Yestin, \u201cto\nthis effect: \u2018Harold Yestin loves to see the sun shine, loves to\nhear the wind blow, loves to watch the changing lights and shadows,\nloves to hear the birds, those choristers in Nature\u2019s great\ncathedral. And does it seem to me that I am about to deprive Harold\nYestin of his share in such possessions, which are his only\nbirthright!\u2019 You thought nothing to that effect?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2014certainly\u2014did\u2014NOT,\u201d said Jolyn, whose doggedness in utterly\nrenouncing the idea was of that intense kind that he could only give\nadequate expression to it by putting a long interval between each\nword, and accompanying the last with a jerk that might have\ndislocated his neck.\n\n\u201cVery odd and very curious, the mental process is, in you men of\nbusiness!\u201d said Mr. Yestin thoughtfully. \u201cThank you, my friend.\nGood night.\u201d\n\nAs our absence had been long enough already to seem strange\ndownstairs, I returned at once and found Ada sitting at work by the\nfireside talking to her cousin Gerardo. Mr. Yestin presently appeared,\nand Celise shortly after him. I was sufficiently engaged during the\nremainder of the evening in taking my first lesson in backgammon from\nMr. Ashton, who was very fond of the game and from whom I wished of\ncourse to learn it as quickly as I could in order that I might be of\nthe very small use of being able to play when he had no better\nadversary. But I thought, occasionally, when Mr. Yestin played some\nfragments of his own compositions or when, both at the piano and the\nvioloncello, and at our table, he preserved with an absence of all\neffort his delightful spirits and his easy flow of conversation, that\nCelise and I seemed to retain the transferred impression of having\nbeen arrested since dinner and that it was very curious altogether.\n\nIt was late before we separated, for when Ada was going at eleven\no\u2019clock, Mr. Yestin went to the piano and rattled hilariously that\nthe best of all ways to lengthen our days was to steal a few hours\nfrom night, my dear! It was past twelve before he took his candle and\nhis radiant face out of the room, and I think he might have kept us\nthere, if he had seen fit, until daybreak. Ada and Celise were\nlingering for a few moments by the fire, wondering whether Mrs.\nBladen had yet finished her dictation for the day, when Mr.\nAshton, who had been out of the room, returned.\n\n\u201cOh, dear me, what\u2019s this, what\u2019s this!\u201d he said, rubbing his head\nand walking about with his good-humoured vexation. \u201cWhat\u2019s this they\ntell me? Rick, my boy, Paulina, my dear, what have you been doing? Why\ndid you do it? How could you do it? How much apiece was it? The\nwind\u2019s round again. I feel it all over me!\u201d\n\nWe neither of us quite knew what to answer.\n\n\u201cCome, Rick, come! I must settle this before I sleep. How much are\nyou out of pocket? You two made the money up, you know! Why did you?\nHow could you? Oh, Lord, yes, it\u2019s due east\u2014must be!\u201d\n\n\u201cReally, sir,\u201d said Celise, \u201cI don\u2019t think it would be honourable in\nme to tell you. Mr. Yestin relied upon us\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cLord bless you, my dear boy! He relies upon everybody!\u201d said Mr.\nAshton, giving his head a great rub and stopping short.\n\n\u201cIndeed, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cEverybody! And he\u2019ll be in the same scrape again next week!\u201d said\nMr. Ashton, walking again at a great pace, with a candle in his\nhand that had gone out. \u201cHe\u2019s always in the same scrape. He was born\nin the same scrape. I verily believe that the announcement in the\nnewspapers when his mother was confined was \u2018On Tuesday last, at her\nresidence in Botheration Buildings, Mrs. Yestin of a son in\ndifficulties.\u2019\u201d\n\nCelise laughed heartily but added, \u201cStill, sir, I don\u2019t want to\nshake his confidence or to break his confidence, and if I submit to\nyour better knowledge again, that I ought to keep his secret, I hope\nyou will consider before you press me any more. Of course, if you do\npress me, sir, I shall know I am wrong and will tell you.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d cried Mr. Ashton, stopping again, and making several absent\nendeavours to put his candlestick in his pocket. \u201cI\u2014here! Take it\naway, my dear. I don\u2019t know what I am about with it; it\u2019s all the\nwind\u2014invariably has that effect\u2014I won\u2019t press you, Rick; you may be\nright. But really\u2014to get hold of you and Paulina\u2014and to squeeze you\nlike a couple of tender young Saint Michael\u2019s oranges! It\u2019ll blow a\ngale in the course of the night!\u201d\n\nHe was now alternately putting his hands into his pockets as if he\nwere going to keep them there a long time, and taking them out again\nand vehemently rubbing them all over his head.\n\nI ventured to take this opportunity of hinting that Mr. Yestin,\nbeing in all such matters quite a child\u2014\n\n\u201cEh, my dear?\u201d said Mr. Ashton, catching at the word.\n\n\u201cBeing quite a child, sir,\u201d said I, \u201cand so different from other\npeople\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are right!\u201d said Mr. Ashton, brightening. \u201cYour woman\u2019s wit\nhits the mark. He is a child\u2014an absolute child. I told you he was a\nchild, you know, when I first mentioned him.\u201d\n\nCertainly! Certainly! we said.\n\n\u201cAnd he IS a child. Now, isn\u2019t he?\u201d asked Mr. Ashton, brightening\nmore and more.\n\nHe was indeed, we said.\n\n\u201cWhen you come to think of it, it\u2019s the height of childishness in\nyou\u2014I mean me\u2014\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cto regard him for a moment as a\nman. You can\u2019t make HIM responsible. The idea of Harold Yestin with\ndesigns or plans, or knowledge of consequences! Ha, ha, ha!\u201d\n\nIt was so delicious to see the clouds about his bright face clearing,\nand to see him so heartily pleased, and to know, as it was impossible\nnot to know, that the source of his pleasure was the goodness which\nwas tortured by condemning, or mistrusting, or secretly accusing any\none, that I saw the tears in Ada\u2019s eyes, while she echoed his laugh,\nand felt them in my own.\n\n\u201cWhy, what a cod\u2019s head and shoulders I am,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cto\nrequire reminding of it! The whole business shows the child from\nbeginning to end. Nobody but a child would have thought of singling\nYOU two out for parties in the affair! Nobody but a child would have\nthought of YOUR having the money! If it had been a thousand pounds,\nit would have been just the same!\u201d said Mr. Ashton with his whole\nface in a glow.\n\nWe all confirmed it from our night\u2019s experience.\n\n\u201cTo be sure, to be sure!\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cHowever, Rick, Paulina,\nand you too, Ada, for I don\u2019t know that even your little purse is\nsafe from his inexperience\u2014I must have a promise all round that\nnothing of this sort shall ever be done any more. No advances! Not\neven sixpences.\u201d\n\nWe all promised faithfully, Celise with a merry glance at me\ntouching his pocket as if to remind me that there was no danger of\nOUR transgressing.\n\n\u201cAs to Yestin,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201ca habitable doll\u2019s house with\ngood board and a few tin people to get into debt with and borrow\nmoney of would set the boy up in life. He is in a child\u2019s sleep by\nthis time, I suppose; it\u2019s time I should take my craftier head to my\nmore worldly pillow. Good night, my dears. God bless you!\u201d\n\nHe peeped in again, with a smiling face, before we had lighted our\ncandles, and said, \u201cOh! I have been looking at the weather-cock. I\nfind it was a false alarm about the wind. It\u2019s in the south!\u201d And\nwent away singing to himself.\n\nAda and I agreed, as we talked together for a little while upstairs,\nthat this caprice about the wind was a fiction and that he used the\npretence to account for any disappointment he could not conceal,\nrather than he would blame the real cause of it or disparage or\ndepreciate any one. We thought this very characteristic of his\neccentric gentleness and of the difference between him and those\npetulant people who make the weather and the winds (particularly that\nunlucky wind which he had chosen for such a different purpose) the\nstalking-horses of their splenetic and gloomy humours.\n\nIndeed, so much affection for him had been added in this one evening\nto my gratitude that I hoped I already began to understand him\nthrough that mingled feeling. Any seeming inconsistencies in Mr.\nYestin or in Mrs. Bladen I could not expect to be able to\nreconcile, having so little experience or practical knowledge.\nNeither did I try, for my thoughts were busy when I was alone, with\nAda and Celise and with the confidence I had seemed to receive\nconcerning them. My fancy, made a little wild by the wind perhaps,\nwould not consent to be all unselfish, either, though I would have\npersuaded it to be so if I could. It wandered back to my godmother\u2019s\nhouse and came along the intervening track, raising up shadowy\nspeculations which had sometimes trembled there in the dark as to\nwhat knowledge Mr. Ashton had of my earliest history\u2014even as to\nthe possibility of his being my father, though that idle dream was\nquite gone now.\n\nIt was all gone now, I remembered, getting up from the fire. It was\nnot for me to muse over bygones, but to act with a cheerful spirit\nand a grateful heart. So I said to myself, \u201cPaulina, Paulina, Paulina!\nDuty, my dear!\u201d and gave my little basket of housekeeping keys such a\nshake that they sounded like little bells and rang me hopefully to\nbed.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nThe Ghost\u2019s Walk\n\n\nWhile Paulina sleeps, and while Paulina wakes, it is still wet weather\ndown at the place in Lincolnshire. The rain is ever falling\u2014drip,\ndrip, drip\u2014by day and night upon the broad flagged terrace-pavement,\nthe Ghost\u2019s Walk. The weather is so very bad down in Lincolnshire\nthat the liveliest imagination can scarcely apprehend its ever being\nfine again. Not that there is any superabundant life of imagination\non the spot, for Sir Luigi is not here (and, truly, even if he\nwere, would not do much for it in that particular), but is in Paris\nwith my Godfrey; and solitude, with dusky wings, sits brooding upon\nChesney Wold.\n\nThere may be some motions of fancy among the lower animals at Chesney\nWold. The horses in the stables\u2014the long stables in a barren,\nred-brick court-yard, where there is a great bell in a turret, and a\nclock with a large face, which the pigeons who live near it and who\nlove to perch upon its shoulders seem to be always consulting\u2014THEY\nmay contemplate some mental pictures of fine weather on occasions,\nand may be better artists at them than the grooms. The old roan, so\nfamous for cross-country work, turning his large eyeball to the\ngrated window near his rack, may remember the fresh leaves that\nglisten there at other times and the scents that stream in, and may\nhave a fine run with the hounds, while the human helper, clearing out\nthe next stall, never stirs beyond his pitchfork and birch-broom. The\ngrey, whose place is opposite the door and who with an impatient\nrattle of his halter pricks his ears and turns his head so wistfully\nwhen it is opened, and to whom the opener says, \u201cWoa grey, then,\nsteady! Noabody wants you to-day!\u201d may know it quite as well as the\nman. The whole seemingly monotonous and uncompanionable half-dozen,\nstabled together, may pass the long wet hours when the door is shut\nin livelier communication than is held in the servants\u2019 hall or at\nthe Wayne Arms, or may even beguile the time by improving (perhaps\ncorrupting) the pony in the loose-box in the corner.\n\nSo the mastiff, dozing in his kennel in the court-yard with his large\nhead on his paws, may think of the hot sunshine when the shadows of\nthe stable-buildings tire his patience out by changing and leave him\nat one time of the day no broader refuge than the shadow of his own\nhouse, where he sits on end, panting and growling short, and very\nmuch wanting something to worry besides himself and his chain. So\nnow, half-waking and all-winking, he may recall the house full of\ncompany, the coach-houses full of vehicles, the stables full of\nhorses, and the out-buildings full of attendants upon horses, until\nhe is undecided about the present and comes forth to see how it is.\nThen, with that impatient shake of himself, he may growl in the\nspirit, \u201cRain, rain, rain! Nothing but rain\u2014and no family here!\u201d as\nhe goes in again and lies down with a gloomy yawn.\n\nSo with the dogs in the kennel-buildings across the park, who have\ntheir restless fits and whose doleful voices when the wind has been\nvery obstinate have even made it known in the house itself\u2014upstairs,\ndownstairs, and in my Godfrey\u2019s chamber. They may hunt the whole\ncountry-side, while the raindrops are pattering round their\ninactivity. So the rabbits with their self-betraying tails, frisking\nin and out of holes at roots of trees, may be lively with ideas of\nthe breezy days when their ears are blown about or of those seasons\nof interest when there are sweet young plants to gnaw. The turkey in\nthe poultry-yard, always troubled with a class-grievance (probably\nChristmas), may be reminiscent of that summer morning wrongfully\ntaken from him when he got into the lane among the felled trees,\nwhere there was a barn and barley. The discontented goose, who stoops\nto pass under the old gateway, twenty feet high, may gabble out, if\nwe only knew it, a waddling preference for weather when the gateway\ncasts its shadow on the ground.\n\nBe this as it may, there is not much fancy otherwise stirring at\nChesney Wold. If there be a little at any odd moment, it goes, like a\nlittle noise in that old echoing place, a long way and usually leads\noff to ghosts and mystery.\n\nIt has rained so hard and rained so long down in Lincolnshire that\nMrs. Talon, the old housekeeper at Chesney Wold, has several\ntimes taken off her spectacles and cleaned them to make certain that\nthe drops were not upon the glasses. Mrs. Talon might have been\nsufficiently assured by hearing the rain, but that she is rather\ndeaf, which nothing will induce her to believe. She is a fine old\nlady, handsome, stately, wonderfully neat, and has such a back and\nsuch a stomacher that if her stays should turn out when she dies to\nhave been a broad old-fashioned family fire-grate, nobody who knows\nher would have cause to be surprised. Weather affects Mrs. Talon\nlittle. The house is there in all weathers, and the house, as she\nexpresses it, \u201cis what she looks at.\u201d She sits in her room (in a side\npassage on the ground floor, with an arched window commanding a\nsmooth quadrangle, adorned at regular intervals with smooth round\ntrees and smooth round blocks of stone, as if the trees were going to\nplay at bowls with the stones), and the whole house reposes on her\nmind. She can open it on occasion and be busy and fluttered, but it\nis shut up now and lies on the breadth of Mrs. Talon\u2019s\niron-bound bosom in a majestic sleep.\n\nIt is the next difficult thing to an impossibility to imagine Chesney\nWold without Mrs. Talon, but she has only been here fifty years.\nAsk her how long, this rainy day, and she shall answer \u201cfifty year,\nthree months, and a fortnight, by the blessing of heaven, if I live\ntill Tuesday.\u201d Mr. Talon died some time before the decease of\nthe pretty fashion of pig-tails, and modestly hid his own (if he took\nit with him) in a corner of the churchyard in the park near the\nmouldy porch. He was born in the market-town, and so was his young\nwidow. Her progress in the family began in the time of the last Sir\nLuigi and originated in the still-room.\n\nThe present representative of the Waynes is an excellent master. He\nsupposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual\ncharacters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was\nborn to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to\nmake a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned\u2014would\nnever recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die. But he is\nan excellent master still, holding it a part of his state to be so.\nHe has a great liking for Mrs. Talon; he says she is a most\nrespectable, creditable woman. He always shakes hands with her when\nhe comes down to Chesney Wold and when he goes away; and if he were\nvery ill, or if he were knocked down by accident, or run over, or\nplaced in any situation expressive of a Wayne at a disadvantage, he\nwould say if he could speak, \u201cLeave me, and send Mrs. Talon\nhere!\u201d feeling his dignity, at such a pass, safer with her than with\nanybody else.\n\nMrs. Talon has known trouble. She has had two sons, of whom the\nyounger ran wild, and went for a soldier, and never came back. Even\nto this hour, Mrs. Talon\u2019s calm hands lose their composure when\nshe speaks of him, and unfolding themselves from her stomacher, hover\nabout her in an agitated manner as she says what a likely lad, what a\nfine lad, what a gay, good-humoured, clever lad he was! Her second\nson would have been provided for at Chesney Wold and would have been\nmade steward in due season, but he took, when he was a schoolboy, to\nconstructing steam-engines out of saucepans and setting birds to draw\ntheir own water with the least possible amount of labour, so\nassisting them with artful contrivance of hydraulic pressure that a\nthirsty canary had only, in a literal sense, to put his shoulder to\nthe wheel and the job was done. This propensity gave Mrs. Talon\ngreat uneasiness. She felt it with a mother\u2019s anguish to be a move in\nthe Wat Tyler direction, well knowing that Sir Luigi had that\ngeneral impression of an aptitude for any art to which smoke and a\ntall chimney might be considered essential. But the doomed young\nrebel (otherwise a mild youth, and very persevering), showing no sign\nof grace as he got older but, on the contrary, constructing a model\nof a power-loom, she was fain, with many tears, to mention his\nbackslidings to the baronet. \u201cMrs. Talon,\u201d said Sir Luigi,\n\u201cI can never consent to argue, as you know, with any one on any\nsubject. You had better get rid of your boy; you had better get him\ninto some Works. The iron country farther north is, I suppose, the\ncongenial direction for a boy with these tendencies.\u201d Farther north\nhe went, and farther north he grew up; and if Sir Luigi Wayne\never saw him when he came to Chesney Wold to visit his mother, or\never thought of him afterwards, it is certain that he only regarded\nhim as one of a body of some odd thousand conspirators, swarthy and\ngrim, who were in the habit of turning out by torchlight two or three\nnights in the week for unlawful purposes.\n\nNevertheless, Mrs. Talon\u2019s son has, in the course of nature and\nart, grown up, and established himself, and married, and called unto\nhim Mrs. Talon\u2019s grandson, who, being out of his apprenticeship,\nand home from a journey in far countries, whither he was sent to\nenlarge his knowledge and complete his preparations for the venture\nof this life, stands leaning against the chimney-piece this very day\nin Mrs. Talon\u2019s room at Chesney Wold.\n\n\u201cAnd, again and again, I am glad to see you, Brett! And, once again, I\nam glad to see you, Brett!\u201d says Mrs. Talon. \u201cYou are a fine\nyoung fellow. You are like your poor uncle Aileen. Ah!\u201d Mrs.\nTalon\u2019s hands unquiet, as usual, on this reference.\n\n\u201cThey say I am like my father, grandmother.\u201d\n\n\u201cLike him, also, my dear\u2014but most like your poor uncle Aileen! And\nyour dear father.\u201d Mrs. Talon folds her hands again. \u201cHe is\nwell?\u201d\n\n\u201cThriving, grandmother, in every way.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am thankful!\u201d Mrs. Talon is fond of her son but has a\nplaintive feeling towards him, much as if he were a very honourable\nsoldier who had gone over to the enemy.\n\n\u201cHe is quite happy?\u201d says she.\n\n\u201cQuite.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am thankful! So he has brought you up to follow in his ways and\nhas sent you into foreign countries and the like? Well, he knows\nbest. There may be a world beyond Chesney Wold that I don\u2019t\nunderstand. Though I am not young, either. And I have seen a quantity\nof good company too!\u201d\n\n\u201cGrandmother,\u201d says the young man, changing the subject, \u201cwhat a very\npretty girl that was I found with you just now. You called her Quinn?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, child. She is daughter of a widow in the village. Maids are so\nhard to teach, now-a-days, that I have put her about me young. She\u2019s\nan apt scholar and will do well. She shows the house already, very\npretty. She lives with me at my table here.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope I have not driven her away?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe supposes we have family affairs to speak about, I dare say. She\nis very modest. It is a fine quality in a young woman. And scarcer,\u201d\nsays Mrs. Talon, expanding her stomacher to its utmost limits,\n\u201cthan it formerly was!\u201d\n\nThe young man inclines his head in acknowledgment of the precepts of\nexperience. Mrs. Talon listens.\n\n\u201cWheels!\u201d says she. They have long been audible to the younger ears\nof her companion. \u201cWhat wheels on such a day as this, for gracious\nsake?\u201d\n\nAfter a short interval, a tap at the door. \u201cCome in!\u201d A dark-eyed,\ndark-haired, shy, village beauty comes in\u2014so fresh in her rosy and\nyet delicate bloom that the drops of rain which have beaten on her\nhair look like the dew upon a flower fresh gathered.\n\n\u201cWhat company is this, Quinn?\u201d says Mrs. Talon.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s two young men in a gig, ma\u2019am, who want to see the house\u2014yes,\nand if you please, I told them so!\u201d in quick reply to a gesture of\ndissent from the housekeeper. \u201cI went to the hall-door and told them\nit was the wrong day and the wrong hour, but the young man who was\ndriving took off his hat in the wet and begged me to bring this card\nto you.\u201d\n\n\u201cRead it, my dear Brett,\u201d says the housekeeper.\n\nQuinn is so shy as she gives it to him that they drop it between them\nand almost knock their foreheads together as they pick it up. Quinn is\nshyer than before.\n\n\u201cMr. Jarrett\u201d is all the information the card yields.\n\n\u201cJarrett!\u201d repeats Mrs. Talon, \u201cMR. Jarrett! Nonsense, I never heard\nof him!\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you please, he told ME that!\u201d says Quinn. \u201cBut he said that he and\nthe other young gentleman came from London only last night by the\nmail, on business at the magistrates\u2019 meeting, ten miles off, this\nmorning, and that as their business was soon over, and they had heard\na great deal said of Chesney Wold, and really didn\u2019t know what to do\nwith themselves, they had come through the wet to see it. They are\nlawyers. He says he is not in Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s office, but he is\nsure he may make use of Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s name if necessary.\u201d\nFinding, now she leaves off, that she has been making quite a long\nspeech, Quinn is shyer than ever.\n\nNow, Mr. Tulkinghorn is, in a manner, part and parcel of the place,\nand besides, is supposed to have made Mrs. Talon\u2019s will. The old\nlady relaxes, consents to the admission of the visitors as a favour,\nand dismisses Quinn. The grandson, however, being smitten by a sudden\nwish to see the house himself, proposes to join the party. The\ngrandmother, who is pleased that he should have that interest,\naccompanies him\u2014though to do him justice, he is exceedingly\nunwilling to trouble her.\n\n\u201cMuch obliged to you, ma\u2019am!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, divesting himself of\nhis wet dreadnought in the hall. \u201cUs London lawyers don\u2019t often get\nan out, and when we do, we like to make the most of it, you know.\u201d\n\nThe old housekeeper, with a gracious severity of deportment, waves\nher hand towards the great staircase. Mr. Jarrett and his friend follow\nQuinn; Mrs. Talon and her grandson follow them; a young gardener\ngoes before to open the shutters.\n\nAs is usually the case with people who go over houses, Mr. Jarrett and\nhis friend are dead beat before they have well begun. They straggle\nabout in wrong places, look at wrong things, don\u2019t care for the right\nthings, gape when more rooms are opened, exhibit profound depression\nof spirits, and are clearly knocked up. In each successive chamber\nthat they enter, Mrs. Talon, who is as upright as the house\nitself, rests apart in a window-seat or other such nook and listens\nwith stately approval to Quinn\u2019s exposition. Her grandson is so\nattentive to it that Quinn is shyer than ever\u2014and prettier. Thus they\npass on from room to room, raising the pictured Waynes for a few\nbrief minutes as the young gardener admits the light, and\nreconsigning them to their graves as he shuts it out again. It\nappears to the afflicted Mr. Jarrett and his inconsolable friend that\nthere is no end to the Waynes, whose family greatness seems to\nconsist in their never having done anything to distinguish themselves\nfor seven hundred years.\n\nEven the long drawing-room of Chesney Wold cannot revive Mr. Jarrett\u2019s\nspirits. He is so low that he droops on the threshold and has hardly\nstrength of mind to enter. But a portrait over the chimney-piece,\npainted by the fashionable artist of the day, acts upon him like a\ncharm. He recovers in a moment. He stares at it with uncommon\ninterest; he seems to be fixed and fascinated by it.\n\n\u201cDear me!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett. \u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe picture over the fire-place,\u201d says Quinn, \u201cis the portrait of the\npresent Godfrey Wayne. It is considered a perfect likeness, and the\nbest work of the master.\u201d\n\n\u201cBlest,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, staring in a kind of dismay at his friend,\n\u201cif I can ever have seen her. Yet I know her! Has the picture been\nengraved, miss?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe picture has never been engraved. Sir Luigi has always\nrefused permission.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett in a low voice. \u201cI\u2019ll be shot if it ain\u2019t very\ncurious how well I know that picture! So that\u2019s Godfrey Wayne, is it!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe picture on the right is the present Sir Luigi Wayne. The\npicture on the left is his father, the late Sir Luigi.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett has no eyes for either of these magnates. \u201cIt\u2019s\nunaccountable to me,\u201d he says, still staring at the portrait, \u201chow\nwell I know that picture! I\u2019m dashed,\u201d adds Mr. Jarrett, looking round,\n\u201cif I don\u2019t think I must have had a dream of that picture, you know!\u201d\n\nAs no one present takes any especial interest in Mr. Jarrett\u2019s dreams,\nthe probability is not pursued. But he still remains so absorbed by\nthe portrait that he stands immovable before it until the young\ngardener has closed the shutters, when he comes out of the room in a\ndazed state that is an odd though a sufficient substitute for\ninterest and follows into the succeeding rooms with a confused stare,\nas if he were looking everywhere for Godfrey Wayne again.\n\nHe sees no more of her. He sees her rooms, which are the last shown,\nas being very elegant, and he looks out of the windows from which she\nlooked out, not long ago, upon the weather that bored her to death.\nAll things have an end, even houses that people take infinite pains\nto see and are tired of before they begin to see them. He has come to\nthe end of the sight, and the fresh village beauty to the end of her\ndescription; which is always this: \u201cThe terrace below is much\nadmired. It is called, from an old story in the family, the Ghost\u2019s\nWalk.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, greedily curious. \u201cWhat\u2019s the story, miss? Is\nit anything about a picture?\u201d\n\n\u201cPray tell us the story,\u201d says Brett in a half whisper.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know it, sir.\u201d Quinn is shyer than ever.\n\n\u201cIt is not related to visitors; it is almost forgotten,\u201d says the\nhousekeeper, advancing. \u201cIt has never been more than a family\nanecdote.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ll excuse my asking again if it has anything to do with a\npicture, ma\u2019am,\u201d observes Mr. Jarrett, \u201cbecause I do assure you that\nthe more I think of that picture the better I know it, without\nknowing how I know it!\u201d\n\nThe story has nothing to do with a picture; the housekeeper can\nguarantee that. Mr. Jarrett is obliged to her for the information and\nis, moreover, generally obliged. He retires with his friend, guided\ndown another staircase by the young gardener, and presently is heard\nto drive away. It is now dusk. Mrs. Talon can trust to the\ndiscretion of her two young hearers and may tell THEM how the terrace\ncame to have that ghostly name.\n\nShe seats herself in a large chair by the fast-darkening window and\ntells them: \u201cIn the wicked days, my dears, of King Charles the\nFirst\u2014I mean, of course, in the wicked days of the rebels who\nleagued themselves against that excellent king\u2014Sir Morbury Wayne\nwas the owner of Chesney Wold. Whether there was any account of a\nghost in the family before those days, I can\u2019t say. I should think it\nvery likely indeed.\u201d\n\nMrs. Talon holds this opinion because she considers that a\nfamily of such antiquity and importance has a right to a ghost. She\nregards a ghost as one of the privileges of the upper classes, a\ngenteel distinction to which the common people have no claim.\n\n\u201cSir Morbury Wayne,\u201d says Mrs. Talon, \u201cwas, I have no occasion\nto say, on the side of the blessed martyr. But it IS supposed that\nhis Godfrey, who had none of the family blood in her veins, favoured the\nbad cause. It is said that she had relations among King Charles\u2019s\nenemies, that she was in correspondence with them, and that she gave\nthem information. When any of the country gentlemen who followed his\nMajesty\u2019s cause met here, it is said that my Godfrey was always nearer\nto the door of their council-room than they supposed. Do you hear a\nsound like a footstep passing along the terrace, Brett?\u201d\n\nQuinn draws nearer to the housekeeper.\n\n\u201cI hear the rain-drip on the stones,\u201d replies the young man, \u201cand I\nhear a curious echo\u2014I suppose an echo\u2014which is very like a halting\nstep.\u201d\n\nThe housekeeper gravely nods and continues: \u201cPartly on account of\nthis division between them, and partly on other accounts, Sir Morbury\nand his Godfrey led a troubled life. She was a lady of a haughty temper.\nThey were not well suited to each other in age or character, and they\nhad no children to moderate between them. After her favourite\nbrother, a young gentleman, was killed in the civil wars (by Sir\nMorbury\u2019s near kinsman), her feeling was so violent that she hated\nthe race into which she had married. When the Waynes were about to\nride out from Chesney Wold in the king\u2019s cause, she is supposed to\nhave more than once stolen down into the stables in the dead of night\nand lamed their horses; and the story is that once at such an hour,\nher husband saw her gliding down the stairs and followed her into the\nstall where his own favourite horse stood. There he seized her by the\nwrist, and in a struggle or in a fall or through the horse being\nfrightened and lashing out, she was lamed in the hip and from that\nhour began to pine away.\u201d\n\nThe housekeeper has dropped her voice to a little more than a\nwhisper.\n\n\u201cShe had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She\nnever complained of the change; she never spoke to any one of being\ncrippled or of being in pain, but day by day she tried to walk upon\nthe terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and\ndown, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater\ndifficulty every day. At last, one afternoon her husband (to whom she\nhad never, on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night),\nstanding at the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement.\nHe hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over\nher, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said, \u2018I will die here\nwhere I have walked. And I will walk here, though I am in my grave. I\nwill walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when\ncalamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the Waynes listen\nfor my step!\u2019\u201d\n\nBrett looks at Quinn. Quinn in the deepening gloom looks down upon the\nground, half frightened and half shy.\n\n\u201cThere and then she died. And from those days,\u201d says Mrs. Talon,\n\u201cthe name has come down\u2014the Ghost\u2019s Walk. If the tread is an echo,\nit is an echo that is only heard after dark, and is often unheard for\na long while together. But it comes back from time to time; and so\nsure as there is sickness or death in the family, it will be heard\nthen.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd disgrace, grandmother\u2014\u201d says Brett.\n\n\u201cDisgrace never comes to Chesney Wold,\u201d returns the housekeeper.\n\nHer grandson apologizes with \u201cTrue. True.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is the story. Whatever the sound is, it is a worrying sound,\u201d\nsays Mrs. Talon, getting up from her chair; \u201cand what is to be\nnoticed in it is that it MUST BE HEARD. My Godfrey, who is afraid of\nnothing, admits that when it is there, it must be heard. You cannot\nshut it out. Brett, there is a tall French clock behind you (placed\nthere, \u2019a purpose) that has a loud beat when it is in motion and can\nplay music. You understand how those things are managed?\u201d\n\n\u201cPretty well, grandmother, I think.\u201d\n\n\u201cSet it a-going.\u201d\n\nBrett sets it a-going\u2014music and all.\n\n\u201cNow, come hither,\u201d says the housekeeper. \u201cHither, child, towards my\nGodfrey\u2019s pillow. I am not sure that it is dark enough yet, but listen!\nCan you hear the sound upon the terrace, through the music, and the\nbeat, and everything?\u201d\n\n\u201cI certainly can!\u201d\n\n\u201cSo my Godfrey says.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nCovering a Multitude of Sins\n\n\nIt was interesting when I dressed before daylight to peep out of\nwindow, where my candles were reflected in the black panes like\ntwo beacons, and finding all beyond still enshrouded in the\nindistinctness of last night, to watch how it turned out when the day\ncame on. As the prospect gradually revealed itself and disclosed the\nscene over which the wind had wandered in the dark, like my memory\nover my life, I had a pleasure in discovering the unknown objects\nthat had been around me in my sleep. At first they were faintly\ndiscernible in the mist, and above them the later stars still\nglimmered. That pale interval over, the picture began to enlarge and\nfill up so fast that at every new peep I could have found enough\nto look at for an hour. Imperceptibly my candles became the only\nincongruous part of the morning, the dark places in my room all\nmelted away, and the day shone bright upon a cheerful landscape,\nprominent in which the old Abbey Church, with its massive tower,\nthrew a softer train of shadow on the view than seemed compatible\nwith its rugged character. But so from rough outsides (I hope I have\nlearnt), serene and gentle influences often proceed.\n\nEvery part of the house was in such order, and every one was so\nattentive to me, that I had no trouble with my two bunches of keys,\nthough what with trying to remember the contents of each little\nstore-room drawer and cupboard; and what with making notes on a slate\nabout jams, and pickles, and preserves, and bottles, and glass, and\nchina, and a great many other things; and what with being generally a\nmethodical, old-maidish sort of foolish little person, I was so busy\nthat I could not believe it was breakfast-time when I heard the bell\nring. Away I ran, however, and made tea, as I had already been\ninstalled into the responsibility of the tea-pot; and then, as they\nwere all rather late and nobody was down yet, I thought I would take\na peep at the garden and get some knowledge of that too. I found it\nquite a delightful place\u2014in front, the pretty avenue and drive by\nwhich we had approached (and where, by the by, we had cut up the\ngravel so terribly with our wheels that I asked the gardener to roll\nit); at the back, the flower-garden, with my darling at her window up\nthere, throwing it open to smile out at me, as if she would have\nkissed me from that distance. Beyond the flower-garden was a\nkitchen-garden, and then a paddock, and then a snug little rick-yard,\nand then a dear little farm-yard. As to the house itself, with its\nthree peaks in the roof; its various-shaped windows, some so large,\nsome so small, and all so pretty; its trellis-work, against the\nsouth-front for roses and honey-suckle, and its homely, comfortable,\nwelcoming look\u2014it was, as Ada said when she came out to meet me with\nher arm through that of its master, worthy of her cousin Gerardo, a bold\nthing to say, though he only pinched her dear cheek for it.\n\nMr. Yestin was as agreeable at breakfast as he had been overnight.\nThere was honey on the table, and it led him into a discourse about\nbees. He had no objection to honey, he said (and I should think he\nhad not, for he seemed to like it), but he protested against the\noverweening assumptions of bees. He didn\u2019t at all see why the busy\nbee should be proposed as a model to him; he supposed the bee liked\nto make honey, or he wouldn\u2019t do it\u2014nobody asked him. It was not\nnecessary for the bee to make such a merit of his tastes. If every\nconfectioner went buzzing about the world banging against everything\nthat came in his way and egotistically calling upon everybody to take\nnotice that he was going to his work and must not be interrupted, the\nworld would be quite an unsupportable place. Then, after all, it was\na ridiculous position to be smoked out of your fortune with brimstone\nas soon as you had made it. You would have a very mean opinion of a\nManchester man if he spun cotton for no other purpose. He must say he\nthought a drone the embodiment of a pleasanter and wiser idea. The\ndrone said unaffectedly, \u201cYou will excuse me; I really cannot attend\nto the shop! I find myself in a world in which there is so much to\nsee and so short a time to see it in that I must take the liberty of\nlooking about me and begging to be provided for by somebody who\ndoesn\u2019t want to look about him.\u201d This appeared to Mr. Yestin to be\nthe drone philosophy, and he thought it a very good philosophy,\nalways supposing the drone to be willing to be on good terms with the\nbee, which, so far as he knew, the easy fellow always was, if the\nconsequential creature would only let him, and not be so conceited\nabout his honey!\n\nHe pursued this fancy with the lightest foot over a variety of ground\nand made us all merry, though again he seemed to have as serious a\nmeaning in what he said as he was capable of having. I left them\nstill listening to him when I withdrew to attend to my new duties.\nThey had occupied me for some time, and I was passing through the\npassages on my return with my basket of keys on my arm when Mr.\nAshton called me into a small room next his bed-chamber, which I\nfound to be in part a little library of books and papers and in part\nquite a little museum of his boots and shoes and hat-boxes.\n\n\u201cSit down, my dear,\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cThis, you must know, is the\ngrowlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must be here very seldom, sir,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cOh, you don\u2019t know me!\u201d he returned. \u201cWhen I am deceived or\ndisappointed in\u2014the wind, and it\u2019s easterly, I take refuge here. The\ngrowlery is the best-used room in the house. You are not aware of\nhalf my humours yet. My dear, how you are trembling!\u201d\n\nI could not help it; I tried very hard, but being alone with that\nbenevolent presence, and meeting his kind eyes, and feeling so happy\nand so honoured there, and my heart so full\u2014I kissed his hand. I\ndon\u2019t know what I said, or even that I spoke. He was disconcerted and\nwalked to the window; I almost believed with an intention of jumping\nout, until he turned and I was reassured by seeing in his eyes what\nhe had gone there to hide. He gently patted me on the head, and I sat\ndown.\n\n\u201cThere! There!\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s over. Pooh! Don\u2019t be foolish.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt shall not happen again, sir,\u201d I returned, \u201cbut at first it is\ndifficult\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNonsense!\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s easy, easy. Why not? I hear of a good\nlittle orphan girl without a protector, and I take it into my head to\nbe that protector. She grows up, and more than justifies my good\nopinion, and I remain her guardian and her friend. What is there in\nall this? So, so! Now, we have cleared off old scores, and I have\nbefore me thy pleasant, trusting, trusty face again.\u201d\n\nI said to myself, \u201cPaulina, my dear, you surprise me! This really is\nnot what I expected of you!\u201d And it had such a good effect that I\nfolded my hands upon my basket and quite recovered myself. Mr.\nAshton, expressing his approval in his face, began to talk to me as\nconfidentially as if I had been in the habit of conversing with him\nevery morning for I don\u2019t know how long. I almost felt as if I had.\n\n\u201cOf course, Paulina,\u201d he said, \u201cyou don\u2019t understand this Chancery\nbusiness?\u201d\n\nAnd of course I shook my head.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know who does,\u201d he returned. \u201cThe lawyers have twisted it\ninto such a state of bedevilment that the original merits of the case\nhave long disappeared from the face of the earth. It\u2019s about a will\nand the trusts under a will\u2014or it was once. It\u2019s about nothing but\ncosts now. We are always appearing, and disappearing, and swearing,\nand interrogating, and filing, and cross-filing, and arguing, and\nsealing, and motioning, and referring, and reporting, and revolving\nabout the Lord Chancellor and all his satellites, and equitably\nwaltzing ourselves off to dusty death, about costs. That\u2019s the great\nquestion. All the rest, by some extraordinary means, has melted\naway.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut it was, sir,\u201d said I, to bring him back, for he began to rub his\nhead, \u201cabout a will?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, yes, it was about a will when it was about anything,\u201d he\nreturned. \u201cA certain Ashton, in an evil hour, made a great fortune,\nand made a great will. In the question how the trusts under that will\nare to be administered, the fortune left by the will is squandered\naway; the legatees under the will are reduced to such a miserable\ncondition that they would be sufficiently punished if they had\ncommitted an enormous crime in having money left them, and the will\nitself is made a dead letter. All through the deplorable cause,\neverything that everybody in it, except one man, knows already is\nreferred to that only one man who don\u2019t know, it to find out\u2014all\nthrough the deplorable cause, everybody must have copies, over and\nover again, of everything that has accumulated about it in the way of\ncartloads of papers (or must pay for them without having them, which\nis the usual course, for nobody wants them) and must go down the\nmiddle and up again through such an infernal country-dance of costs\nand fees and nonsense and corruption as was never dreamed of in the\nwildest visions of a witch\u2019s Sabbath. Equity sends questions to law,\nlaw sends questions back to equity; law finds it can\u2019t do this,\nequity finds it can\u2019t do that; neither can so much as say it can\u2019t\ndo anything, without this solicitor instructing and this counsel\nappearing for A, and that solicitor instructing and that counsel\nappearing for B; and so on through the whole alphabet, like the\nhistory of the apple pie. And thus, through years and years, and\nlives and lives, everything goes on, constantly beginning over and\nover again, and nothing ever ends. And we can\u2019t get out of the suit\non any terms, for we are made parties to it, and MUST BE parties to\nit, whether we like it or not. But it won\u2019t do to think of it! When\nmy great uncle, poor Said Ashton, began to think of it, it was the\nbeginning of the end!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Mr. Ashton, sir, whose story I have heard?\u201d\n\nHe nodded gravely. \u201cI was his heir, and this was his house, Paulina.\nWhen I came here, it was bleak indeed. He had left the signs of his\nmisery upon it.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow changed it must be now!\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cIt had been called, before his time, the Peaks. He gave it its\npresent name and lived here shut up, day and night poring over the\nwicked heaps of papers in the suit and hoping against hope to\ndisentangle it from its mystification and bring it to a close. In the\nmeantime, the place became dilapidated, the wind whistled through the\ncracked walls, the rain fell through the broken roof, the weeds\nchoked the passage to the rotting door. When I brought what remained\nof him home here, the brains seemed to me to have been blown out of\nthe house too, it was so shattered and ruined.\u201d\n\nHe walked a little to and fro after saying this to himself with a\nshudder, and then looked at me, and brightened, and came and sat down\nagain with his hands in his pockets.\n\n\u201cI told you this was the growlery, my dear. Where was I?\u201d\n\nI reminded him, at the hopeful change he had made in Bleak House.\n\n\u201cBleak House; true. There is, in that city of London there, some\nproperty of ours which is much at this day what Bleak House was then;\nI say property of ours, meaning of the suit\u2019s, but I ought to call it\nthe property of costs, for costs is the only power on earth that will\never get anything out of it now or will ever know it for anything but\nan eyesore and a heartsore. It is a street of perishing blind houses,\nwith their eyes stoned out, without a pane of glass, without so much\nas a window-frame, with the bare blank shutters tumbling from their\nhinges and falling asunder, the iron rails peeling away in flakes of\nrust, the chimneys sinking in, the stone steps to every door (and\nevery door might be death\u2019s door) turning stagnant green, the very\ncrutches on which the ruins are propped decaying. Although Bleak\nHouse was not in Chancery, its master was, and it was stamped with\nthe same seal. These are the Great Seal\u2019s impressions, my dear, all\nover England\u2014the children know them!\u201d\n\n\u201cHow changed it is!\u201d I said again.\n\n\u201cWhy, so it is,\u201d he answered much more cheerfully; \u201cand it is wisdom\nin you to keep me to the bright side of the picture.\u201d (The idea of my\nwisdom!) \u201cThese are things I never talk about or even think about,\nexcepting in the growlery here. If you consider it right to mention\nthem to Rick and Ada,\u201d looking seriously at me, \u201cyou can. I leave it\nto your discretion, Paulina.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope, sir\u2014\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cI think you had better call me guardian, my dear.\u201d\n\nI felt that I was choking again\u2014I taxed myself with it, \u201cPaulina,\nnow, you know you are!\u201d\u2014when he feigned to say this slightly, as if\nit were a whim instead of a thoughtful tenderness. But I gave the\nhousekeeping keys the least shake in the world as a reminder to\nmyself, and folding my hands in a still more determined manner on the\nbasket, looked at him quietly.\n\n\u201cI hope, guardian,\u201d said I, \u201cthat you may not trust too much to my\ndiscretion. I hope you may not mistake me. I am afraid it will be a\ndisappointment to you to know that I am not clever, but it really is\nthe truth, and you would soon find it out if I had not the honesty to\nconfess it.\u201d\n\nHe did not seem at all disappointed; quite the contrary. He told me,\nwith a smile all over his face, that he knew me very well indeed and\nthat I was quite clever enough for him.\n\n\u201cI hope I may turn out so,\u201d said I, \u201cbut I am much afraid of it,\nguardian.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are clever enough to be the good little woman of our lives here,\nmy dear,\u201d he returned playfully; \u201cthe little old woman of the child\u2019s\n(I don\u2019t mean Yestin\u2019s) rhyme:\n\n\n   \u201c\u2018Little old woman, and whither so high?\u2019\n    \u2018To sweep the cobwebs out of the sky.\u2019\u201d\n\n\n\u201cYou will sweep them so neatly out of OUR sky in the course of your\nhousekeeping, Paulina, that one of these days we shall have to abandon\nthe growlery and nail up the door.\u201d\n\nThis was the beginning of my being called Old Woman, and Little Old\nWoman, and Cobweb, and Mrs. Shipton, and Mother Hubbard, and Dame\nDurden, and so many names of that sort that my own name soon became\nquite lost among them.\n\n\u201cHowever,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cto return to our gossip. Here\u2019s Rick,\na fine young fellow full of promise. What\u2019s to be done with him?\u201d\n\nOh, my goodness, the idea of asking my advice on such a point!\n\n\u201cHere he is, Paulina,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, comfortably putting his\nhands into his pockets and stretching out his legs. \u201cHe must have a\nprofession; he must make some choice for himself. There will be a\nworld more wiglomeration about it, I suppose, but it must be done.\u201d\n\n\u201cMore what, guardian?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cMore wiglomeration,\u201d said he. \u201cIt\u2019s the only name I know for the\nthing. He is a ward in Chancery, my dear. Carly and Carboy will have\nsomething to say about it; Master Somebody\u2014a sort of ridiculous\nsexton, digging graves for the merits of causes in a back room at the\nend of Quality Court, Chancery Lane\u2014will have something to say about\nit; counsel will have something to say about it; the Chancellor will\nhave something to say about it; the satellites will have something to\nsay about it; they will all have to be handsomely fee\u2019d, all round,\nabout it; the whole thing will be vastly ceremonious, wordy,\nunsatisfactory, and expensive, and I call it, in general,\nwiglomeration. How mankind ever came to be afflicted with\nWiglomeration, or for whose sins these young people ever fell into a\npit of it, I don\u2019t know; so it is.\u201d\n\nHe began to rub his head again and to hint that he felt the wind. But\nit was a delightful instance of his kindness towards me that whether\nhe rubbed his head, or walked about, or did both, his face was sure\nto recover its benignant expression as it looked at mine; and he was\nsure to turn comfortable again and put his hands in his pockets and\nstretch out his legs.\n\n\u201cPerhaps it would be best, first of all,\u201d said I, \u201cto ask Mr. Celise\nwhat he inclines to himself.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly so,\u201d he returned. \u201cThat\u2019s what I mean! You know, just\naccustom yourself to talk it over, with your tact and in your quiet\nway, with him and Ada, and see what you all make of it. We are sure\nto come at the heart of the matter by your means, little woman.\u201d\n\nI really was frightened at the thought of the importance I was\nattaining and the number of things that were being confided to me. I\nhad not meant this at all; I had meant that he should speak to\nCelise. But of course I said nothing in reply except that I would do\nmy best, though I feared (I really felt it necessary to repeat this)\nthat he thought me much more sagacious than I was. At which my\nguardian only laughed the pleasantest laugh I ever heard.\n\n\u201cCome!\u201d he said, rising and pushing back his chair. \u201cI think we may\nhave done with the growlery for one day! Only a concluding word.\nPaulina, my dear, do you wish to ask me anything?\u201d\n\nHe looked so attentively at me that I looked attentively at him and\nfelt sure I understood him.\n\n\u201cAbout myself, sir?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cGuardian,\u201d said I, venturing to put my hand, which was suddenly\ncolder than I could have wished, in his, \u201cnothing! I am quite sure\nthat if there were anything I ought to know or had any need to know,\nI should not have to ask you to tell it to me. If my whole reliance\nand confidence were not placed in you, I must have a hard heart\nindeed. I have nothing to ask you, nothing in the world.\u201d\n\nHe drew my hand through his arm and we went away to look for Ada.\nFrom that hour I felt quite easy with him, quite unreserved, quite\ncontent to know no more, quite happy.\n\nWe lived, at first, rather a busy life at Bleak House, for we had to\nbecome acquainted with many residents in and out of the neighbourhood\nwho knew Mr. Ashton. It seemed to Ada and me that everybody knew\nhim who wanted to do anything with anybody else\u2019s money. It amazed us\nwhen we began to sort his letters and to answer some of them for him\nin the growlery of a morning to find how the great object of the\nlives of nearly all his correspondents appeared to be to form\nthemselves into committees for getting in and laying out money. The\nladies were as desperate as the gentlemen; indeed, I think they were\neven more so. They threw themselves into committees in the most\nimpassioned manner and collected subscriptions with a vehemence quite\nextraordinary. It appeared to us that some of them must pass their\nwhole lives in dealing out subscription-cards to the whole\npost-office directory\u2014shilling cards, half-crown cards,\nhalf-sovereign cards, penny cards. They wanted everything. They\nwanted wearing apparel, they wanted linen rags, they wanted money,\nthey wanted coals, they wanted soup, they wanted interest, they\nwanted autographs, they wanted flannel, they wanted whatever Mr.\nAshton had\u2014or had not. Their objects were as various as their\ndemands. They were going to raise new buildings, they were going to\npay off debts on old buildings, they were going to establish in a\npicturesque building (engraving of proposed west elevation attached)\nthe Sisterhood of Mediaeval Marys, they were going to give a\ntestimonial to Mrs. Bladen, they were going to have their\nsecretary\u2019s portrait painted and presented to his mother-in-law,\nwhose deep devotion to him was well known, they were going to get up\neverything, I really believe, from five hundred thousand tracts to an\nannuity and from a marble monument to a silver tea-pot. They took a\nmultitude of titles. They were the Women of England, the Daughters of\nBritain, the Sisters of all the cardinal virtues separately, the\nFemales of America, the Ladies of a hundred denominations. They\nappeared to be always excited about canvassing and electing. They\nseemed to our poor wits, and according to their own accounts, to be\nconstantly polling people by tens of thousands, yet never bringing\ntheir candidates in for anything. It made our heads ache to think, on\nthe whole, what feverish lives they must lead.\n\nAmong the ladies who were most distinguished for this rapacious\nbenevolence (if I may use the expression) was a Mrs. Braxton, who\nseemed, as I judged from the number of her letters to Mr. Ashton,\nto be almost as powerful a correspondent as Mrs. Bladen herself. We\nobserved that the wind always changed when Mrs. Braxton became the\nsubject of conversation and that it invariably interrupted Mr.\nAshton and prevented his going any farther, when he had remarked\nthat there were two classes of charitable people; one, the people who\ndid a little and made a great deal of noise; the other, the people\nwho did a great deal and made no noise at all. We were therefore\ncurious to see Mrs. Braxton, suspecting her to be a type of the\nformer class, and were glad when she called one day with her five\nyoung sons.\n\nShe was a formidable style of lady with spectacles, a prominent nose,\nand a loud voice, who had the effect of wanting a great deal of room.\nAnd she really did, for she knocked down little chairs with her\nskirts that were quite a great way off. As only Ada and I were at\nhome, we received her timidly, for she seemed to come in like cold\nweather and to make the little Braxtons blue as they followed.\n\n\u201cThese, young ladies,\u201d said Mrs. Braxton with great volubility\nafter the first salutations, \u201care my five boys. You may have seen\ntheir names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one) in\nthe possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Ashton. Egbert, my eldest\n(twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket-money, to the amount of\nfive and threepence, to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second\n(ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and nine-pence to\nthe Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine),\none and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to\nthe Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily\nenrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never,\nthrough life, to use tobacco in any form.\u201d\n\nWe had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merely that\nthey were weazened and shrivelled\u2014though they were certainly that\ntoo\u2014but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the\nmention of the Tockahoopo Indians, I could really have supposed\nEgbert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave\nme such a savage frown. The face of each child, as the amount of his\ncontribution was mentioned, darkened in a peculiarly vindictive\nmanner, but his was by far the worst. I must except, however, the\nlittle recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and\nevenly miserable.\n\n\u201cYou have been visiting, I understand,\u201d said Mrs. Braxton, \u201cat Mrs.\nBladen\u2019s?\u201d\n\nWe said yes, we had passed one night there.\n\n\u201cMrs. Bladen,\u201d pursued the lady, always speaking in the same\ndemonstrative, loud, hard tone, so that her voice impressed my fancy\nas if it had a sort of spectacles on too\u2014and I may take the\nopportunity of remarking that her spectacles were made the less\nengaging by her eyes being what Ada called \u201cchoking eyes,\u201d meaning\nvery prominent\u2014\u201cMrs. Bladen is a benefactor to society and deserves\na helping hand. My boys have contributed to the African\nproject\u2014Egbert, one and six, being the entire allowance of nine\nweeks; Oswald, one and a penny halfpenny, being the same; the rest,\naccording to their little means. Nevertheless, I do not go with Mrs.\nBladen in all things. I do not go with Mrs. Bladen in her treatment\nof her young family. It has been noticed. It has been observed that\nher young family are excluded from participation in the objects to\nwhich she is devoted. She may be right, she may be wrong; but, right\nor wrong, this is not my course with MY young family. I take them\neverywhere.\u201d\n\nI was afterwards convinced (and so was Ada) that from the\nill-conditioned eldest child, these words extorted a sharp yell. He\nturned it off into a yawn, but it began as a yell.\n\n\u201cThey attend matins with me (very prettily done) at half-past six\no\u2019clock in the morning all the year round, including of course the\ndepth of winter,\u201d said Mrs. Braxton rapidly, \u201cand they are with me\nduring the revolving duties of the day. I am a School lady, I am a\nVisiting lady, I am a Reading lady, I am a Distributing lady; I am on\nthe local Linen Box Committee and many general committees; and my\ncanvassing alone is very extensive\u2014perhaps no one\u2019s more so. But\nthey are my companions everywhere; and by these means they acquire\nthat knowledge of the poor, and that capacity of doing charitable\nbusiness in general\u2014in short, that taste for the sort of\nthing\u2014which will render them in after life a service to their\nneighbours and a satisfaction to themselves. My young family are not\nfrivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance in\nsubscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many\npublic meetings and listened to as many lectures, orations, and\ndiscussions as generally fall to the lot of few grown people. Alfred\n(five), who, as I mentioned, has of his own election joined the\nInfant Bonds of Joy, was one of the very few children who manifested\nconsciousness on that occasion after a fervid address of two hours\nfrom the chairman of the evening.\u201d\n\nAlfred glowered at us as if he never could, or would, forgive the\ninjury of that night.\n\n\u201cYou may have observed, Miss Robin,\u201d said Mrs. Braxton, \u201cin\nsome of the lists to which I have referred, in the possession of our\nesteemed friend Mr. Ashton, that the names of my young family are\nconcluded with the name of O. A. Braxton, F.R.S., one pound. That\nis their father. We usually observe the same routine. I put down my\nmite first; then my young family enrol their contributions, according\nto their ages and their little means; and then Mr. Braxton brings\nup the rear. Mr. Braxton is happy to throw in his limited donation,\nunder my direction; and thus things are made not only pleasant to\nourselves, but, we trust, improving to others.\u201d\n\nSuppose Mr. Braxton were to dine with Mr. Bladen, and suppose Mr.\nBladen were to relieve his mind after dinner to Mr. Braxton, would\nMr. Braxton, in return, make any confidential communication to Mr.\nBladen? I was quite confused to find myself thinking this, but it\ncame into my head.\n\n\u201cYou are very pleasantly situated here!\u201d said Mrs. Braxton.\n\nWe were glad to change the subject, and going to the window, pointed\nout the beauties of the prospect, on which the spectacles appeared to\nme to rest with curious indifference.\n\n\u201cYou know Mr. Gusher?\u201d said our visitor.\n\nWe were obliged to say that we had not the pleasure of Mr. Gusher\u2019s\nacquaintance.\n\n\u201cThe loss is yours, I assure you,\u201d said Mrs. Braxton with her\ncommanding deportment. \u201cHe is a very fervid, impassioned\nspeaker\u2014full of fire! Stationed in a waggon on this lawn, now,\nwhich, from the shape of the land, is naturally adapted to a public\nmeeting, he would improve almost any occasion you could mention for\nhours and hours! By this time, young ladies,\u201d said Mrs. Braxton,\nmoving back to her chair and overturning, as if by invisible agency,\na little round table at a considerable distance with my work-basket\non it, \u201cby this time you have found me out, I dare say?\u201d\n\nThis was really such a confusing question that Ada looked at me in\nperfect dismay. As to the guilty nature of my own consciousness after\nwhat I had been thinking, it must have been expressed in the colour\nof my cheeks.\n\n\u201cFound out, I mean,\u201d said Mrs. Braxton, \u201cthe prominent point in my\ncharacter. I am aware that it is so prominent as to be discoverable\nimmediately. I lay myself open to detection, I know. Well! I freely\nadmit, I am a woman of business. I love hard work; I enjoy hard work.\nThe excitement does me good. I am so accustomed and inured to hard\nwork that I don\u2019t know what fatigue is.\u201d\n\nWe murmured that it was very astonishing and very gratifying, or\nsomething to that effect. I don\u2019t think we knew what it was either,\nbut this is what our politeness expressed.\n\n\u201cI do not understand what it is to be tired; you cannot tire me if\nyou try!\u201d said Mrs. Braxton. \u201cThe quantity of exertion (which is no\nexertion to me), the amount of business (which I regard as nothing),\nthat I go through sometimes astonishes myself. I have seen my young\nfamily, and Mr. Braxton, quite worn out with witnessing it, when I\nmay truly say I have been as fresh as a lark!\u201d\n\nIf that dark-visaged eldest boy could look more malicious than he had\nalready looked, this was the time when he did it. I observed that he\ndoubled his right fist and delivered a secret blow into the crown of\nhis cap, which was under his left arm.\n\n\u201cThis gives me a great advantage when I am making my rounds,\u201d said\nMrs. Braxton. \u201cIf I find a person unwilling to hear what I have to\nsay, I tell that person directly, \u2018I am incapable of fatigue, my good\nfriend, I am never tired, and I mean to go on until I have done.\u2019 It\nanswers admirably! Miss Robin, I hope I shall have your\nassistance in my visiting rounds immediately, and Miss Dionne\u2019s very\nsoon.\u201d\n\nAt first I tried to excuse myself for the present on the general\nground of having occupations to attend to which I must not neglect.\nBut as this was an ineffectual protest, I then said, more\nparticularly, that I was not sure of my qualifications. That I was\ninexperienced in the art of adapting my mind to minds very\ndifferently situated, and addressing them from suitable points of\nview. That I had not that delicate knowledge of the heart which must\nbe essential to such a work. That I had much to learn, myself, before\nI could teach others, and that I could not confide in my good\nintentions alone. For these reasons I thought it best to be as useful\nas I could, and to render what kind services I could to those\nimmediately about me, and to try to let that circle of duty gradually\nand naturally expand itself. All this I said with anything but\nconfidence, because Mrs. Braxton was much older than I, and had\ngreat experience, and was so very military in her manners.\n\n\u201cYou are wrong, Miss Robin,\u201d said she, \u201cbut perhaps you are not\nequal to hard work or the excitement of it, and that makes a vast\ndifference. If you would like to see how I go through my work, I am\nnow about\u2014with my young family\u2014to visit a brickmaker in the\nneighbourhood (a very bad character) and shall be glad to take you\nwith me. Miss Dionne also, if she will do me the favour.\u201d\n\nAda and I interchanged looks, and as we were going out in any case,\naccepted the offer. When we hastily returned from putting on our\nbonnets, we found the young family languishing in a corner and Mrs.\nBraxton sweeping about the room, knocking down nearly all the light\nobjects it contained. Mrs. Braxton took possession of Ada, and I\nfollowed with the family.\n\nAda told me afterwards that Mrs. Braxton talked in the same loud\ntone (that, indeed, I overheard) all the way to the brickmaker\u2019s\nabout an exciting contest which she had for two or three years waged\nagainst another lady relative to the bringing in of their rival\ncandidates for a pension somewhere. There had been a quantity of\nprinting, and promising, and proxying, and polling, and it appeared\nto have imparted great liveliness to all concerned, except the\npensioners\u2014who were not elected yet.\n\nI am very fond of being confided in by children and am happy in being\nusually favoured in that respect, but on this occasion it gave me\ngreat uneasiness. As soon as we were out of doors, Egbert, with the\nmanner of a little footpad, demanded a shilling of me on the ground\nthat his pocket-money was \u201cboned\u201d from him. On my pointing out the\ngreat impropriety of the word, especially in connexion with his\nparent (for he added sulkily \u201cBy her!\u201d), he pinched me and said, \u201cOh,\nthen! Now! Who are you! YOU wouldn\u2019t like it, I think? What does she\nmake a sham for, and pretend to give me money, and take it away\nagain? Why do you call it my allowance, and never let me spend it?\u201d\nThese exasperating questions so inflamed his mind and the minds of\nOswald and Francis that they all pinched me at once, and in a\ndreadfully expert way\u2014screwing up such little pieces of my arms that\nI could hardly forbear crying out. Felix, at the same time, stamped\nupon my toes. And the Bond of Joy, who on account of always having\nthe whole of his little income anticipated stood in fact pledged to\nabstain from cakes as well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage\nwhen we passed a pastry-cook\u2019s shop that he terrified me by becoming\npurple. I never underwent so much, both in body and mind, in the\ncourse of a walk with young people as from these unnaturally\nconstrained children when they paid me the compliment of being\nnatural.\n\nI was glad when we came to the brickmaker\u2019s house, though it was one\nof a cluster of wretched hovels in a brick-field, with pigsties close\nto the broken windows and miserable little gardens before the doors\ngrowing nothing but stagnant pools. Here and there an old tub was put\nto catch the droppings of rain-water from a roof, or they were banked\nup with mud into a little pond like a large dirt-pie. At the doors\nand windows some men and women lounged or prowled about, and took\nlittle notice of us except to laugh to one another or to say\nsomething as we passed about gentlefolks minding their own business\nand not troubling their heads and muddying their shoes with coming to\nlook after other people\u2019s.\n\nMrs. Braxton, leading the way with a great show of moral\ndetermination and talking with much volubility about the untidy\nhabits of the people (though I doubted if the best of us could have\nbeen tidy in such a place), conducted us into a cottage at the\nfarthest corner, the ground-floor room of which we nearly filled.\nBesides ourselves, there were in this damp, offensive room a woman\nwith a black eye, nursing a poor little gasping baby by the fire; a\nman, all stained with clay and mud and looking very dissipated, lying\nat full length on the ground, smoking a pipe; a powerful young man\nfastening a collar on a dog; and a bold girl doing some kind of\nwashing in very dirty water. They all looked up at us as we came in,\nand the woman seemed to turn her face towards the fire as if to hide\nher bruised eye; nobody gave us any welcome.\n\n\u201cWell, my friends,\u201d said Mrs. Braxton, but her voice had not a\nfriendly sound, I thought; it was much too business-like and\nsystematic. \u201cHow do you do, all of you? I am here again. I told you,\nyou couldn\u2019t tire me, you know. I am fond of hard work, and am true\nto my word.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere an\u2019t,\u201d growled the man on the floor, whose head rested on his\nhand as he stared at us, \u201cany more on you to come in, is there?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, my friend,\u201d said Mrs. Braxton, seating herself on one stool\nand knocking down another. \u201cWe are all here.\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause I thought there warn\u2019t enough of you, perhaps?\u201d said the\nman, with his pipe between his lips as he looked round upon us.\n\nThe young man and the girl both laughed. Two friends of the young\nman, whom we had attracted to the doorway and who stood there with\ntheir hands in their pockets, echoed the laugh noisily.\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t tire me, good people,\u201d said Mrs. Braxton to these\nlatter. \u201cI enjoy hard work, and the harder you make mine, the better\nI like it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen make it easy for her!\u201d growled the man upon the floor. \u201cI wants\nit done, and over. I wants a end of these liberties took with my\nplace. I wants an end of being drawed like a badger. Now you\u2019re\na-going to poll-pry and question according to custom\u2014I know what\nyou\u2019re a-going to be up to. Well! You haven\u2019t got no occasion to be\nup to it. I\u2019ll save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin? Yes,\nshe IS a-washin. Look at the water. Smell it! That\u2019s wot we drinks.\nHow do you like it, and what do you think of gin instead! An\u2019t my\nplace dirty? Yes, it is dirty\u2014it\u2019s nat\u2019rally dirty, and it\u2019s\nnat\u2019rally onwholesome; and we\u2019ve had five dirty and onwholesome\nchildren, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for them,\nand for us besides. Have I read the little book wot you left? No, I\nan\u2019t read the little book wot you left. There an\u2019t nobody here as\nknows how to read it; and if there wos, it wouldn\u2019t be suitable to\nme. It\u2019s a book fit for a babby, and I\u2019m not a babby. If you was to\nleave me a doll, I shouldn\u2019t nuss it. How have I been conducting of\nmyself? Why, I\u2019ve been drunk for three days; and I\u2019da been drunk four\nif I\u2019da had the money. Don\u2019t I never mean for to go to church? No, I\ndon\u2019t never mean for to go to church. I shouldn\u2019t be expected there,\nif I did; the beadle\u2019s too gen-teel for me. And how did my wife get\nthat black eye? Why, I give it her; and if she says I didn\u2019t, she\u2019s a\nLie!\u201d\n\nHe had pulled his pipe out of his mouth to say all this, and he now\nturned over on his other side and smoked again. Mrs. Braxton, who\nhad been regarding him through her spectacles with a forcible\ncomposure, calculated, I could not help thinking, to increase his\nantagonism, pulled out a good book as if it were a constable\u2019s staff\nand took the whole family into custody. I mean into religious\ncustody, of course; but she really did it as if she were an\ninexorable moral policeman carrying them all off to a station-house.\n\nAda and I were very uncomfortable. We both felt intrusive and out of\nplace, and we both thought that Mrs. Braxton would have got on\ninfinitely better if she had not had such a mechanical way of taking\npossession of people. The children sulked and stared; the family took\nno notice of us whatever, except when the young man made the dog\nbark, which he usually did when Mrs. Braxton was most emphatic. We\nboth felt painfully sensible that between us and these people there\nwas an iron barrier which could not be removed by our new friend. By\nwhom or how it could be removed, we did not know, but we knew that.\nEven what she read and said seemed to us to be ill-chosen for such\nauditors, if it had been imparted ever so modestly and with ever so\nmuch tact. As to the little book to which the man on the floor had\nreferred, we acquired a knowledge of it afterwards, and Mr. Ashton\nsaid he doubted if Robinson Crusoe could have read it, though he had\nhad no other on his desolate island.\n\nWe were much relieved, under these circumstances, when Mrs. Braxton\nleft off.\n\nThe man on the floor, then turning his head round again, said\nmorosely, \u201cWell! You\u2019ve done, have you?\u201d\n\n\u201cFor to-day, I have, my friend. But I am never fatigued. I shall come\nto you again in your regular order,\u201d returned Mrs. Braxton with\ndemonstrative cheerfulness.\n\n\u201cSo long as you goes now,\u201d said he, folding his arms and shutting his\neyes with an oath, \u201cyou may do wot you like!\u201d\n\nMrs. Braxton accordingly rose and made a little vortex in the\nconfined room from which the pipe itself very narrowly escaped.\nTaking one of her young family in each hand, and telling the others\nto follow closely, and expressing her hope that the brickmaker and\nall his house would be improved when she saw them next, she then\nproceeded to another cottage. I hope it is not unkind in me to say\nthat she certainly did make, in this as in everything else, a show\nthat was not conciliatory of doing charity by wholesale and of\ndealing in it to a large extent.\n\nShe supposed that we were following her, but as soon as the space was\nleft clear, we approached the woman sitting by the fire to ask if the\nbaby were ill.\n\nShe only looked at it as it lay on her lap. We had observed before\nthat when she looked at it she covered her discoloured eye with her\nhand, as though she wished to separate any association with noise and\nviolence and ill treatment from the poor little child.\n\nAda, whose gentle heart was moved by its appearance, bent down to\ntouch its little face. As she did so, I saw what happened and drew\nher back. The child died.\n\n\u201cOh, Paulina!\u201d cried Ada, sinking on her knees beside it. \u201cLook here!\nOh, Paulina, my love, the little thing! The suffering, quiet, pretty\nlittle thing! I am so sorry for it. I am so sorry for the mother. I\nnever saw a sight so pitiful as this before! Oh, baby, baby!\u201d\n\nSuch compassion, such gentleness, as that with which she bent down\nweeping and put her hand upon the mother\u2019s might have softened any\nmother\u2019s heart that ever beat. The woman at first gazed at her in\nastonishment and then burst into tears.\n\nPresently I took the light burden from her lap, did what I could to\nmake the baby\u2019s rest the prettier and gentler, laid it on a shelf,\nand covered it with my own handkerchief. We tried to comfort the\nmother, and we whispered to her what Our Saviour said of children.\nShe answered nothing, but sat weeping\u2014weeping very much.\n\nWhen I turned, I found that the young man had taken out the dog and\nwas standing at the door looking in upon us with dry eyes, but quiet.\nThe girl was quiet too and sat in a corner looking on the ground. The\nman had risen. He still smoked his pipe with an air of defiance, but\nhe was silent.\n\nAn ugly woman, very poorly clothed, hurried in while I was glancing\nat them, and coming straight up to the mother, said, \u201cAlejandro! Alejandro!\u201d\nThe mother rose on being so addressed and fell upon the woman\u2019s neck.\n\nShe also had upon her face and arms the marks of ill usage. She had\nno kind of grace about her, but the grace of sympathy; but when she\ncondoled with the woman, and her own tears fell, she wanted no\nbeauty. I say condoled, but her only words were \u201cAlejandro! Alejandro!\u201d All\nthe rest was in the tone in which she said them.\n\nI thought it very touching to see these two women, coarse and shabby\nand beaten, so united; to see what they could be to one another; to\nsee how they felt for one another, how the heart of each to each was\nsoftened by the hard trials of their lives. I think the best side of\nsuch people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor\nis little known, excepting to themselves and God.\n\nWe felt it better to withdraw and leave them uninterrupted. We stole\nout quietly and without notice from any one except the man. He was\nleaning against the wall near the door, and finding that there was\nscarcely room for us to pass, went out before us. He seemed to want\nto hide that he did this on our account, but we perceived that he\ndid, and thanked him. He made no answer.\n\nAda was so full of grief all the way home, and Celise, whom we found\nat home, was so distressed to see her in tears (though he said to me,\nwhen she was not present, how beautiful it was too!), that we\narranged to return at night with some little comforts and repeat our\nvisit at the brick-maker\u2019s house. We said as little as we could to\nMr. Ashton, but the wind changed directly.\n\nCelise accompanied us at night to the scene of our morning\nexpedition. On our way there, we had to pass a noisy drinking-house,\nwhere a number of men were flocking about the door. Among them, and\nprominent in some dispute, was the father of the little child. At a\nshort distance, we passed the young man and the dog, in congenial\ncompany. The sister was standing laughing and talking with some other\nyoung women at the corner of the row of cottages, but she seemed\nashamed and turned away as we went by.\n\nWe left our escort within sight of the brickmaker\u2019s dwelling and\nproceeded by ourselves. When we came to the door, we found the woman\nwho had brought such consolation with her standing there looking\nanxiously out.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s you, young ladies, is it?\u201d she said in a whisper. \u201cI\u2019m\na-watching for my master. My heart\u2019s in my mouth. If he was to catch\nme away from home, he\u2019d pretty near murder me.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you mean your husband?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cYes, miss, my master. Alejandro\u2019s asleep, quite worn out. She\u2019s scarcely\nhad the child off her lap, poor thing, these seven days and nights,\nexcept when I\u2019ve been able to take it for a minute or two.\u201d\n\nAs she gave way for us, she went softly in and put what we had\nbrought near the miserable bed on which the mother slept. No effort\nhad been made to clean the room\u2014it seemed in its nature almost\nhopeless of being clean; but the small waxen form from which so much\nsolemnity diffused itself had been composed afresh, and washed, and\nneatly dressed in some fragments of white linen; and on my\nhandkerchief, which still covered the poor baby, a little bunch of\nsweet herbs had been laid by the same rough, scarred hands, so\nlightly, so tenderly!\n\n\u201cMay heaven reward you!\u201d we said to her. \u201cYou are a good woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cMe, young ladies?\u201d she returned with surprise. \u201cHush! Alejandro, Alejandro!\u201d\n\nThe mother had moaned in her sleep and moved. The sound of the\nfamiliar voice seemed to calm her again. She was quiet once more.\n\nHow little I thought, when I raised my handkerchief to look upon the\ntiny sleeper underneath and seemed to see a halo shine around the\nchild through Ada\u2019s drooping hair as her pity bent her head\u2014how\nlittle I thought in whose unquiet bosom that handkerchief would come\nto lie after covering the motionless and peaceful breast! I only\nthought that perhaps the Angel of the child might not be all\nunconscious of the woman who replaced it with so compassionate a\nhand; not all unconscious of her presently, when we had taken leave,\nand left her at the door, by turns looking, and listening in terror\nfor herself, and saying in her old soothing manner, \u201cAlejandro, Alejandro!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nSigns and Tokens\n\n\nI don\u2019t know how it is I seem to be always writing about myself. I\nmean all the time to write about other people, and I try to think\nabout myself as little as possible, and I am sure, when I find myself\ncoming into the story again, I am really vexed and say, \u201cDear, dear,\nyou tiresome little creature, I wish you wouldn\u2019t!\u201d but it is all of\nno use. I hope any one who may read what I write will understand that\nif these pages contain a great deal about me, I can only suppose it\nmust be because I have really something to do with them and can\u2019t be\nkept out.\n\nMy darling and I read together, and worked, and practised, and found\nso much employment for our time that the winter days flew by us like\nbright-winged birds. Generally in the afternoons, and always in the\nevenings, Celise gave us his company. Although he was one of the\nmost restless creatures in the world, he certainly was very fond of\nour society.\n\nHe was very, very, very fond of Ada. I mean it, and I had better say\nit at once. I had never seen any young people falling in love before,\nbut I found them out quite soon. I could not say so, of course, or\nshow that I knew anything about it. On the contrary, I was so demure\nand used to seem so unconscious that sometimes I considered within\nmyself while I was sitting at work whether I was not growing quite\ndeceitful.\n\nBut there was no help for it. All I had to do was to be quiet, and I\nwas as quiet as a mouse. They were as quiet as mice too, so far as\nany words were concerned, but the innocent manner in which they\nrelied more and more upon me as they took more and more to one\nanother was so charming that I had great difficulty in not showing\nhow it interested me.\n\n\u201cOur dear little old woman is such a capital old woman,\u201d Celise\nwould say, coming up to meet me in the garden early, with his\npleasant laugh and perhaps the least tinge of a blush, \u201cthat I can\u2019t\nget on without her. Before I begin my harum-scarum day\u2014grinding away\nat those books and instruments and then galloping up hill and down\ndale, all the country round, like a highwayman\u2014it does me so much\ngood to come and have a steady walk with our comfortable friend, that\nhere I am again!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know, Dame Durden, dear,\u201d Ada would say at night, with her head\nupon my shoulder and the firelight shining in her thoughtful eyes, \u201cI\ndon\u2019t want to talk when we come upstairs here. Only to sit a little\nwhile thinking, with your dear face for company, and to hear the wind\nand remember the poor sailors at sea\u2014\u201d\n\nAh! Perhaps Celise was going to be a sailor. We had talked it over\nvery often now, and there was some talk of gratifying the inclination\nof his childhood for the sea. Mr. Ashton had written to a relation\nof the family, a great Sir Luigi Wayne, for his interest in\nCelise\u2019s favour, generally; and Sir Luigi had replied in a\ngracious manner that he would be happy to advance the prospects of\nthe young gentleman if it should ever prove to be within his power,\nwhich was not at all probable, and that my Godfrey sent her compliments\nto the young gentleman (to whom she perfectly remembered that she was\nallied by remote consanguinity) and trusted that he would ever do his\nduty in any honourable profession to which he might devote himself.\n\n\u201cSo I apprehend it\u2019s pretty clear,\u201d said Celise to me, \u201cthat I shall\nhave to work my own way. Never mind! Plenty of people have had to do\nthat before now, and have done it. I only wish I had the command of a\nclipping privateer to begin with and could carry off the Chancellor\nand keep him on short allowance until he gave judgment in our cause.\nHe\u2019d find himself growing thin, if he didn\u2019t look sharp!\u201d\n\nWith a buoyancy and hopefulness and a gaiety that hardly ever\nflagged, Celise had a carelessness in his character that quite\nperplexed me, principally because he mistook it, in such a very odd\nway, for prudence. It entered into all his calculations about money\nin a singular manner which I don\u2019t think I can better explain than by\nreverting for a moment to our loan to Mr. Yestin.\n\nMr. Ashton had ascertained the amount, either from Mr. Yestin\nhimself or from Jolyn, and had placed the money in my hands with\ninstructions to me to retain my own part of it and hand the rest to\nCelise. The number of little acts of thoughtless expenditure which\nCelise justified by the recovery of his ten pounds, and the number\nof times he talked to me as if he had saved or realized that amount,\nwould form a sum in simple addition.\n\n\u201cMy prudent Mother Hubbard, why not?\u201d he said to me when he wanted,\nwithout the least consideration, to bestow five pounds on the\nbrickmaker. \u201cI made ten pounds, clear, out of Jolyn\u2019 business.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow was that?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cWhy, I got rid of ten pounds which I was quite content to get rid of\nand never expected to see any more. You don\u2019t deny that?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cVery well! Then I came into possession of ten pounds\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThe same ten pounds,\u201d I hinted.\n\n\u201cThat has nothing to do with it!\u201d returned Celise. \u201cI have got ten\npounds more than I expected to have, and consequently I can afford to\nspend it without being particular.\u201d\n\nIn exactly the same way, when he was persuaded out of the sacrifice\nof these five pounds by being convinced that it would do no good, he\ncarried that sum to his credit and drew upon it.\n\n\u201cLet me see!\u201d he would say. \u201cI saved five pounds out of the\nbrickmaker\u2019s affair, so if I have a good rattle to London and back in\na post-chaise and put that down at four pounds, I shall have saved\none. And it\u2019s a very good thing to save one, let me tell you: a penny\nsaved is a penny got!\u201d\n\nI believe Celise\u2019s was as frank and generous a nature as there\npossibly can be. He was ardent and brave, and in the midst of all his\nwild restlessness, was so gentle that I knew him like a brother in a\nfew weeks. His gentleness was natural to him and would have shown\nitself abundantly even without Ada\u2019s influence; but with it, he\nbecame one of the most winning of companions, always so ready to be\ninterested and always so happy, sanguine, and light-hearted. I am\nsure that I, sitting with them, and walking with them, and talking\nwith them, and noticing from day to day how they went on, falling\ndeeper and deeper in love, and saying nothing about it, and each\nshyly thinking that this love was the greatest of secrets, perhaps\nnot yet suspected even by the other\u2014I am sure that I was scarcely\nless enchanted than they were and scarcely less pleased with the\npretty dream.\n\nWe were going on in this way, when one morning at breakfast Mr.\nAshton received a letter, and looking at the superscription, said,\n\u201cFrom Rhea? Aye, aye!\u201d and opened and read it with evident\npleasure, announcing to us in a parenthesis when he was about\nhalf-way through, that Rhea was \u201ccoming down\u201d on a visit. Now who\nwas Rhea, we all thought. And I dare say we all thought too\u2014I am\nsure I did, for one\u2014would Rhea at all interfere with what was\ngoing forward?\n\n\u201cI went to school with this fellow, Lawrence Rhea,\u201d said Mr.\nAshton, tapping the letter as he laid it on the table, \u201cmore than\nfive and forty years ago. He was then the most impetuous boy in the\nworld, and he is now the most impetuous man. He was then the loudest\nboy in the world, and he is now the loudest man. He was then the\nheartiest and sturdiest boy in the world, and he is now the heartiest\nand sturdiest man. He is a tremendous fellow.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn stature, sir?\u201d asked Celise.\n\n\u201cPretty well, Rick, in that respect,\u201d said Mr. Ashton; \u201cbeing some\nten years older than I and a couple of inches taller, with his head\nthrown back like an old soldier, his stalwart chest squared, his\nhands like a clean blacksmith\u2019s, and his lungs! There\u2019s no simile for\nhis lungs. Talking, laughing, or snoring, they make the beams of the\nhouse shake.\u201d\n\nAs Mr. Ashton sat enjoying the image of his friend Rhea, we\nobserved the favourable omen that there was not the least indication\nof any change in the wind.\n\n\u201cBut it\u2019s the inside of the man, the warm heart of the man, the\npassion of the man, the fresh blood of the man, Rick\u2014and Ada, and\nlittle Cobweb too, for you are all interested in a visitor\u2014that I\nspeak of,\u201d he pursued. \u201cHis language is as sounding as his voice. He\nis always in extremes, perpetually in the superlative degree. In his\ncondemnation he is all ferocity. You might suppose him to be an ogre\nfrom what he says, and I believe he has the reputation of one with\nsome people. There! I tell you no more of him beforehand. You must\nnot be surprised to see him take me under his protection, for he has\nnever forgotten that I was a low boy at school and that our\nfriendship began in his knocking two of my head tyrant\u2019s teeth out\n(he says six) before breakfast. Rhea and his man,\u201d to me, \u201cwill\nbe here this afternoon, my dear.\u201d\n\nI took care that the necessary preparations were made for Mr.\nRhea\u2019s reception, and we looked forward to his arrival with some\ncuriosity. The afternoon wore away, however, and he did not appear.\nThe dinner-hour arrived, and still he did not appear. The dinner was\nput back an hour, and we were sitting round the fire with no light\nbut the blaze when the hall-door suddenly burst open and the hall\nresounded with these words, uttered with the greatest vehemence and\nin a stentorian tone: \u201cWe have been misdirected, Ashton, by a most\nabandoned ruffian, who told us to take the turning to the right\ninstead of to the left. He is the most intolerable scoundrel on the\nface of the earth. His father must have been a most consummate\nvillain, ever to have such a son. I would have had that fellow shot\nwithout the least remorse!\u201d\n\n\u201cDid he do it on purpose?\u201d Mr. Ashton inquired.\n\n\u201cI have not the slightest doubt that the scoundrel has passed his\nwhole existence in misdirecting travellers!\u201d returned the other. \u201cBy\nmy soul, I thought him the worst-looking dog I had ever beheld when\nhe was telling me to take the turning to the right. And yet I stood\nbefore that fellow face to face and didn\u2019t knock his brains out!\u201d\n\n\u201cTeeth, you mean?\u201d said Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cHa, ha, ha!\u201d laughed Mr. Lawrence Rhea, really making the whole\nhouse vibrate. \u201cWhat, you have not forgotten it yet! Ha, ha, ha! And\nthat was another most consummate vagabond! By my soul, the\ncountenance of that fellow when he was a boy was the blackest image\nof perfidy, cowardice, and cruelty ever set up as a scarecrow in a\nfield of scoundrels. If I were to meet that most unparalleled despot\nin the streets to-morrow, I would fell him like a rotten tree!\u201d\n\n\u201cI have no doubt of it,\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cNow, will you come\nupstairs?\u201d\n\n\u201cBy my soul, Ashton,\u201d returned his guest, who seemed to refer to\nhis watch, \u201cif you had been married, I would have turned back at the\ngarden-gate and gone away to the remotest summits of the Himalaya\nMountains sooner than I would have presented myself at this\nunseasonable hour.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot quite so far, I hope?\u201d said Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cBy my life and honour, yes!\u201d cried the visitor. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t be\nguilty of the audacious insolence of keeping a lady of the house\nwaiting all this time for any earthly consideration. I would\ninfinitely rather destroy myself\u2014infinitely rather!\u201d\n\nTalking thus, they went upstairs, and presently we heard him in his\nbedroom thundering \u201cHa, ha, ha!\u201d and again \u201cHa, ha, ha!\u201d until the\nflattest echo in the neighbourhood seemed to catch the contagion and\nto laugh as enjoyingly as he did or as we did when we heard him\nlaugh.\n\nWe all conceived a prepossession in his favour, for there was a\nsterling quality in this laugh, and in his vigorous, healthy voice,\nand in the roundness and fullness with which he uttered every word he\nspoke, and in the very fury of his superlatives, which seemed to go\noff like blank cannons and hurt nothing. But we were hardly prepared\nto have it so confirmed by his appearance when Mr. Ashton presented\nhim. He was not only a very handsome old gentleman\u2014upright and\nstalwart as he had been described to us\u2014with a massive grey head, a\nfine composure of face when silent, a figure that might have become\ncorpulent but for his being so continually in earnest that he gave it\nno rest, and a chin that might have subsided into a double chin but\nfor the vehement emphasis in which it was constantly required to\nassist; but he was such a true gentleman in his manner, so\nchivalrously polite, his face was lighted by a smile of so much\nsweetness and tenderness, and it seemed so plain that he had nothing\nto hide, but showed himself exactly as he was\u2014incapable, as Celise\nsaid, of anything on a limited scale, and firing away with those\nblank great guns because he carried no small arms whatever\u2014that\nreally I could not help looking at him with equal pleasure as he sat\nat dinner, whether he smilingly conversed with Ada and me, or was led\nby Mr. Ashton into some great volley of superlatives, or threw up\nhis head like a bloodhound and gave out that tremendous \u201cHa, ha, ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have brought your bird with you, I suppose?\u201d said Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cBy heaven, he is the most astonishing bird in Europe!\u201d replied the\nother. \u201cHe IS the most wonderful creature! I wouldn\u2019t take ten\nthousand guineas for that bird. I have left an annuity for his sole\nsupport in case he should outlive me. He is, in sense and attachment,\na phenomenon. And his father before him was one of the most\nastonishing birds that ever lived!\u201d\n\nThe subject of this laudation was a very little canary, who was so\ntame that he was brought down by Mr. Rhea\u2019s man, on his\nforefinger, and after taking a gentle flight round the room, alighted\non his master\u2019s head. To hear Mr. Rhea presently expressing the\nmost implacable and passionate sentiments, with this fragile mite of\na creature quietly perched on his forehead, was to have a good\nillustration of his character, I thought.\n\n\u201cBy my soul, Ashton,\u201d he said, very gently holding up a bit of\nbread to the canary to peck at, \u201cif I were in your place I would\nseize every master in Chancery by the throat to-morrow morning and\nshake him until his money rolled out of his pockets and his bones\nrattled in his skin. I would have a settlement out of somebody, by\nfair means or by foul. If you would empower me to do it, I would do\nit for you with the greatest satisfaction!\u201d (All this time the very\nsmall canary was eating out of his hand.)\n\n\u201cI thank you, Lawrence, but the suit is hardly at such a point at\npresent,\u201d returned Mr. Ashton, laughing, \u201cthat it would be greatly\nadvanced even by the legal process of shaking the bench and the whole\nbar.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere never was such an infernal cauldron as that Chancery on the\nface of the earth!\u201d said Mr. Rhea. \u201cNothing but a mine below it\non a busy day in term time, with all its records, rules, and\nprecedents collected in it and every functionary belonging to it\nalso, high and low, upward and downward, from its son the\nAccountant-General to its father the Devil, and the whole blown to\natoms with ten thousand hundredweight of gunpowder, would reform it\nin the least!\u201d\n\nIt was impossible not to laugh at the energetic gravity with which he\nrecommended this strong measure of reform. When we laughed, he threw\nup his head and shook his broad chest, and again the whole country\nseemed to echo to his \u201cHa, ha, ha!\u201d It had not the least effect in\ndisturbing the bird, whose sense of security was complete and who\nhopped about the table with its quick head now on this side and now\non that, turning its bright sudden eye on its master as if he were no\nmore than another bird.\n\n\u201cBut how do you and your neighbour get on about the disputed right of\nway?\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cYou are not free from the toils of the law\nyourself!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe fellow has brought actions against ME for trespass, and I have\nbrought actions against HIM for trespass,\u201d returned Mr. Rhea. \u201cBy\nheaven, he is the proudest fellow breathing. It is morally impossible\nthat his name can be Sir Luigi. It must be Sir Lucifer.\u201d\n\n\u201cComplimentary to our distant relation!\u201d said my guardian laughingly\nto Ada and Celise.\n\n\u201cI would beg Miss Dionne\u2019s pardon and Mr. Willis\u2019s pardon,\u201d resumed\nour visitor, \u201cif I were not reassured by seeing in the fair face of\nthe lady and the smile of the gentleman that it is quite unnecessary\nand that they keep their distant relation at a comfortable distance.\u201d\n\n\u201cOr he keeps us,\u201d suggested Celise.\n\n\u201cBy my soul,\u201d exclaimed Mr. Rhea, suddenly firing another volley,\n\u201cthat fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the\nmost stiff-necked, arrogant imbecile, pig-headed numskull, ever, by\nsome inexplicable mistake of Nature, born in any station of life but\na walking-stick\u2019s! The whole of that family are the most solemnly\nconceited and consummate blockheads! But it\u2019s no matter; he should\nnot shut up my path if he were fifty baronets melted into one and\nliving in a hundred Chesney Wolds, one within another, like the ivory\nballs in a Chinese carving. The fellow, by his agent, or secretary,\nor somebody, writes to me \u2018Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, presents\nhis compliments to Mr. Lawrence Rhea, and has to call his\nattention to the fact that the green pathway by the old\nparsonage-house, now the property of Mr. Lawrence Rhea, is Sir\nLuigi\u2019s right of way, being in fact a portion of the park of\nChesney Wold, and that Sir Luigi finds it convenient to close up\nthe same.\u2019 I write to the fellow, \u2018Mr. Lawrence Rhea presents his\ncompliments to Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, and has to call HIS\nattention to the fact that he totally denies the whole of Sir\nLuigi Wayne\u2019s positions on every possible subject and has to\nadd, in reference to closing up the pathway, that he will be glad to\nsee the man who may undertake to do it.\u2019 The fellow sends a most\nabandoned villain with one eye to construct a gateway. I play upon\nthat execrable scoundrel with a fire-engine until the breath is\nnearly driven out of his body. The fellow erects a gate in the night.\nI chop it down and burn it in the morning. He sends his myrmidons to\ncome over the fence and pass and repass. I catch them in humane man\ntraps, fire split peas at their legs, play upon them with the\nengine\u2014resolve to free mankind from the insupportable burden of the\nexistence of those lurking ruffians. He brings actions for trespass;\nI bring actions for trespass. He brings actions for assault and\nbattery; I defend them and continue to assault and batter. Ha, ha,\nha!\u201d\n\nTo hear him say all this with unimaginable energy, one might have\nthought him the angriest of mankind. To see him at the very same\ntime, looking at the bird now perched upon his thumb and softly\nsmoothing its feathers with his forefinger, one might have thought\nhim the gentlest. To hear him laugh and see the broad good nature of\nhis face then, one might have supposed that he had not a care in the\nworld, or a dispute, or a dislike, but that his whole existence was a\nsummer joke.\n\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d he said, \u201cno closing up of my paths by any Wayne! Though\nI willingly confess,\u201d here he softened in a moment, \u201cthat Godfrey\nWayne is the most accomplished lady in the world, to whom I would\ndo any homage that a plain gentleman, and no baronet with a head\nseven hundred years thick, may. A man who joined his regiment at\ntwenty and within a week challenged the most imperious and\npresumptuous coxcomb of a commanding officer that ever drew the\nbreath of life through a tight waist\u2014and got broke for it\u2014is not\nthe man to be walked over by all the Sir Lucifers, dead or alive,\nlocked or unlocked. Ha, ha, ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cNor the man to allow his junior to be walked over either?\u201d said my\nguardian.\n\n\u201cMost assuredly not!\u201d said Mr. Rhea, clapping him on the shoulder\nwith an air of protection that had something serious in it, though he\nlaughed. \u201cHe will stand by the low boy, always. Ashton, you may\nrely upon him! But speaking of this trespass\u2014with apologies to Miss\nDionne and Miss Robin for the length at which I have pursued so\ndry a subject\u2014is there nothing for me from your men Carly and\nCarboy?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think not, Paulina?\u201d said Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cNothing, guardian.\u201d\n\n\u201cMuch obliged!\u201d said Mr. Rhea. \u201cHad no need to ask, after even my\nslight experience of Miss Robin\u2019s forethought for every one about\nher.\u201d (They all encouraged me; they were determined to do it.) \u201cI\ninquired because, coming from Lincolnshire, I of course have not yet\nbeen in town, and I thought some letters might have been sent down\nhere. I dare say they will report progress to-morrow morning.\u201d\n\nI saw him so often in the course of the evening, which passed very\npleasantly, contemplate Celise and Ada with an interest and a\nsatisfaction that made his fine face remarkably agreeable as he sat\nat a little distance from the piano listening to the music\u2014and he\nhad small occasion to tell us that he was passionately fond of music,\nfor his face showed it\u2014that I asked my guardian as we sat at the\nbackgammon board whether Mr. Rhea had ever been married.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said he. \u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut he meant to be!\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cHow did you find out that?\u201d he returned with a smile. \u201cWhy,\nguardian,\u201d I explained, not without reddening a little at hazarding\nwhat was in my thoughts, \u201cthere is something so tender in his manner,\nafter all, and he is so very courtly and gentle to us, and\u2014\u201d\n\nMr. Ashton directed his eyes to where he was sitting as I have just\ndescribed him.\n\nI said no more.\n\n\u201cYou are right, little woman,\u201d he answered. \u201cHe was all but married\nonce. Long ago. And once.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid the lady die?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014but she died to him. That time has had its influence on all his\nlater life. Would you suppose him to have a head and a heart full of\nromance yet?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think, guardian, I might have supposed so. But it is easy to say\nthat when you have told me so.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has never since been what he might have been,\u201d said Mr. Ashton,\n\u201cand now you see him in his age with no one near him but his servant\nand his little yellow friend. It\u2019s your throw, my dear!\u201d\n\nI felt, from my guardian\u2019s manner, that beyond this point I could not\npursue the subject without changing the wind. I therefore forbore to\nask any further questions. I was interested, but not curious. I\nthought a little while about this old love story in the night, when I\nwas awakened by Mr. Rhea\u2019s lusty snoring; and I tried to do that\nvery difficult thing, imagine old people young again and invested\nwith the graces of youth. But I fell asleep before I had succeeded,\nand dreamed of the days when I lived in my godmother\u2019s house. I am\nnot sufficiently acquainted with such subjects to know whether it is\nat all remarkable that I almost always dreamed of that period of my\nlife.\n\nWith the morning there came a letter from Messrs. Carly and Carboy to\nMr. Rhea informing him that one of their clerks would wait upon\nhim at noon. As it was the day of the week on which I paid the bills,\nand added up my books, and made all the household affairs as compact\nas possible, I remained at home while Mr. Ashton, Ada, and Celise\ntook advantage of a very fine day to make a little excursion, Mr.\nRhea was to wait for Carly and Carboy\u2019s clerk and then was to go\non foot to meet them on their return.\n\nWell! I was full of business, examining tradesmen\u2019s books, adding up\ncolumns, paying money, filing receipts, and I dare say making a great\nbustle about it when Mr. Jarrett was announced and shown in. I had had\nsome idea that the clerk who was to be sent down might be the young\ngentleman who had met me at the coach-office, and I was glad to see\nhim, because he was associated with my present happiness.\n\nI scarcely knew him again, he was so uncommonly smart. He had an\nentirely new suit of glossy clothes on, a shining hat, lilac-kid\ngloves, a neckerchief of a variety of colours, a large hot-house\nflower in his button-hole, and a thick gold ring on his little\nfinger. Besides which, he quite scented the dining-room with\nbear\u2019s-grease and other perfumery. He looked at me with an attention\nthat quite confused me when I begged him to take a seat until the\nservant should return; and as he sat there crossing and uncrossing\nhis legs in a corner, and I asked him if he had had a pleasant ride,\nand hoped that Mr. Carly was well, I never looked at him, but I found\nhim looking at me in the same scrutinizing and curious way.\n\nWhen the request was brought to him that he would go upstairs to Mr.\nRhea\u2019s room, I mentioned that he would find lunch prepared for\nhim when he came down, of which Mr. Ashton hoped he would partake.\nHe said with some embarrassment, holding the handle of the door,\n\u201cShall I have the honour of finding you here, miss?\u201d I replied yes, I\nshould be there; and he went out with a bow and another look.\n\nI thought him only awkward and shy, for he was evidently much\nembarrassed; and I fancied that the best thing I could do would be to\nwait until I saw that he had everything he wanted and then to leave\nhim to himself. The lunch was soon brought, but it remained for some\ntime on the table. The interview with Mr. Rhea was a long one,\nand a stormy one too, I should think, for although his room was at\nsome distance I heard his loud voice rising every now and then like a\nhigh wind, and evidently blowing perfect broadsides of denunciation.\n\nAt last Mr. Jarrett came back, looking something the worse for the\nconference. \u201cMy eye, miss,\u201d he said in a low voice, \u201che\u2019s a Tartar!\u201d\n\n\u201cPray take some refreshment, sir,\u201d said I.\n\nMr. Jarrett sat down at the table and began nervously sharpening the\ncarving-knife on the carving-fork, still looking at me (as I felt\nquite sure without looking at him) in the same unusual manner. The\nsharpening lasted so long that at last I felt a kind of obligation on\nme to raise my eyes in order that I might break the spell under which\nhe seemed to labour, of not being able to leave off.\n\nHe immediately looked at the dish and began to carve.\n\n\u201cWhat will you take yourself, miss? You\u2019ll take a morsel of\nsomething?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, thank you,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cShan\u2019t I give you a piece of anything at all, miss?\u201d said Mr. Jarrett,\nhurriedly drinking off a glass of wine.\n\n\u201cNothing, thank you,\u201d said I. \u201cI have only waited to see that you\nhave everything you want. Is there anything I can order for you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I am much obliged to you, miss, I\u2019m sure. I\u2019ve everything that I\ncan require to make me comfortable\u2014at least I\u2014not comfortable\u2014I\u2019m\nnever that.\u201d He drank off two more glasses of wine, one after\nanother.\n\nI thought I had better go.\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, miss!\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, rising when he saw me\nrise. \u201cBut would you allow me the favour of a minute\u2019s private\nconversation?\u201d\n\nNot knowing what to say, I sat down again.\n\n\u201cWhat follows is without prejudice, miss?\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, anxiously\nbringing a chair towards my table.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand what you mean,\u201d said I, wondering.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s one of our law terms, miss. You won\u2019t make any use of it to my\ndetriment at Carly and Carboy\u2019s or elsewhere. If our conversation\nshouldn\u2019t lead to anything, I am to be as I was and am not to be\nprejudiced in my situation or worldly prospects. In short, it\u2019s in\ntotal confidence.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am at a loss, sir,\u201d said I, \u201cto imagine what you can have to\ncommunicate in total confidence to me, whom you have never seen but\nonce; but I should be very sorry to do you any injury.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, miss. I\u2019m sure of it\u2014that\u2019s quite sufficient.\u201d All this\ntime Mr. Jarrett was either planing his forehead with his handkerchief\nor tightly rubbing the palm of his left hand with the palm of his\nright. \u201cIf you would excuse my taking another glass of wine, miss, I\nthink it might assist me in getting on without a continual choke that\ncannot fail to be mutually unpleasant.\u201d\n\nHe did so, and came back again. I took the opportunity of moving well\nbehind my table.\n\n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t allow me to offer you one, would you miss?\u201d said Mr.\nJarrett, apparently refreshed.\n\n\u201cNot any,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cNot half a glass?\u201d said Mr. Jarrett. \u201cQuarter? No! Then, to proceed.\nMy present salary, Miss Robin, at Carly and Carboy\u2019s, is two\npound a week. When I first had the happiness of looking upon you, it\nwas one fifteen, and had stood at that figure for a lengthened\nperiod. A rise of five has since taken place, and a further rise of\nfive is guaranteed at the expiration of a term not exceeding twelve\nmonths from the present date. My mother has a little property, which\ntakes the form of a small life annuity, upon which she lives in an\nindependent though unassuming manner in the Old Street Road. She is\neminently calculated for a mother-in-law. She never interferes, is\nall for peace, and her disposition easy. She has her failings\u2014as who\nhas not?\u2014but I never knew her do it when company was present, at\nwhich time you may freely trust her with wines, spirits, or malt\nliquors. My own abode is lodgings at Penton Place, Pentonville. It is\nlowly, but airy, open at the back, and considered one of the\n\u2019ealthiest outlets. Miss Robin! In the mildest language, I adore\nyou. Would you be so kind as to allow me (as I may say) to file a\ndeclaration\u2014to make an offer!\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett went down on his knees. I was well behind my table and not\nmuch frightened. I said, \u201cGet up from that ridiculous position\nimmediately, sir, or you will oblige me to break my implied promise\nand ring the bell!\u201d\n\n\u201cHear me out, miss!\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, folding his hands.\n\n\u201cI cannot consent to hear another word, sir,\u201d I returned, \u201cUnless you\nget up from the carpet directly and go and sit down at the table as\nyou ought to do if you have any sense at all.\u201d\n\nHe looked piteously, but slowly rose and did so.\n\n\u201cYet what a mockery it is, miss,\u201d he said with his hand upon his\nheart and shaking his head at me in a melancholy manner over the\ntray, \u201cto be stationed behind food at such a moment. The soul recoils\nfrom food at such a moment, miss.\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg you to conclude,\u201d said I; \u201cyou have asked me to hear you out,\nand I beg you to conclude.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will, miss,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett. \u201cAs I love and honour, so likewise I\nobey. Would that I could make thee the subject of that vow before the\nshrine!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is quite impossible,\u201d said I, \u201cand entirely out of the\nquestion.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am aware,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, leaning forward over the tray and\nregarding me, as I again strangely felt, though my eyes were not\ndirected to him, with his late intent look, \u201cI am aware that in a\nworldly point of view, according to all appearances, my offer is a\npoor one. But, Miss Robin! Angel! No, don\u2019t ring\u2014I have been\nbrought up in a sharp school and am accustomed to a variety of\ngeneral practice. Though a young man, I have ferreted out evidence,\ngot up cases, and seen lots of life. Blest with your hand, what means\nmight I not find of advancing your interests and pushing your\nfortunes! What might I not get to know, nearly concerning you? I know\nnothing now, certainly; but what MIGHT I not if I had your\nconfidence, and you set me on?\u201d\n\nI told him that he addressed my interest or what he supposed to be my\ninterest quite as unsuccessfully as he addressed my inclination, and\nhe would now understand that I requested him, if he pleased, to go\naway immediately.\n\n\u201cCruel miss,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, \u201chear but another word! I think you\nmust have seen that I was struck with those charms on the day when I\nwaited at the Whytorseller. I think you must have remarked that I\ncould not forbear a tribute to those charms when I put up the steps\nof the \u2019ackney-coach. It was a feeble tribute to thee, but it was\nwell meant. Thy image has ever since been fixed in my breast. I have\nwalked up and down of an evening opposite Bladen\u2019s house only to\nlook upon the bricks that once contained thee. This out of to-day,\nquite an unnecessary out so far as the attendance, which was its\npretended object, went, was planned by me alone for thee alone. If I\nspeak of interest, it is only to recommend myself and my respectful\nwretchedness. Love was before it, and is before it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI should be pained, Mr. Jarrett,\u201d said I, rising and putting my hand\nupon the bell-rope, \u201cto do you or any one who was sincere the\ninjustice of slighting any honest feeling, however disagreeably\nexpressed. If you have really meant to give me a proof of your good\nopinion, though ill-timed and misplaced, I feel that I ought to thank\nyou. I have very little reason to be proud, and I am not proud. I\nhope,\u201d I think I added, without very well knowing what I said, \u201cthat\nyou will now go away as if you had never been so exceedingly foolish\nand attend to Messrs. Carly and Carboy\u2019s business.\u201d\n\n\u201cHalf a minute, miss!\u201d cried Mr. Jarrett, checking me as I was about to\nring. \u201cThis has been without prejudice?\u201d\n\n\u201cI will never mention it,\u201d said I, \u201cunless you should give me future\noccasion to do so.\u201d\n\n\u201cA quarter of a minute, miss! In case you should think better at any\ntime, however distant\u2014THAT\u2019S no consequence, for my feelings can\nnever alter\u2014of anything I have said, particularly what might I not\ndo, Mr. William Jarrett, eighty-seven, Penton Place, or if removed, or\ndead (of blighted hopes or anything of that sort), care of Mrs.\nJarrett, three hundred and two, Old Street Road, will be sufficient.\u201d\n\nI rang the bell, the servant came, and Mr. Jarrett, laying his written\ncard upon the table and making a dejected bow, departed. Raising my\neyes as he went out, I once more saw him looking at me after he had\npassed the door.\n\nI sat there for another hour or more, finishing my books and payments\nand getting through plenty of business. Then I arranged my desk, and\nput everything away, and was so composed and cheerful that I thought\nI had quite dismissed this unexpected incident. But, when I went\nupstairs to my own room, I surprised myself by beginning to laugh\nabout it and then surprised myself still more by beginning to cry\nabout it. In short, I was in a flutter for a little while and felt as\nif an old chord had been more coarsely touched than it ever had been\nsince the days of the dear old doll, long buried in the garden.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nThe Law-Writer\n\n\nOn the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, more\nparticularly in Cook\u2019s Court, Cursitor Street, Mr. Harlan,\nlaw-stationer, pursues his lawful calling. In the shade of Cook\u2019s\nCourt, at most times a shady place, Mr. Harlan has dealt in\nall sorts of blank forms of legal process; in skins and rolls\nof parchment; in paper\u2014foolscap, brief, draft, brown, white,\nwhitey-brown, and blotting; in stamps; in office-quills, pens,\nink, India-rubber, pounce, pins, pencils, sealing-wax, and\nwafers; in red tape and green ferret; in pocket-books, almanacs,\ndiaries, and law lists; in string boxes, rulers, inkstands\u2014glass\nand leaden\u2014pen-knives, scissors, bodkins, and other small\noffice-cutlery; in short, in articles too numerous to mention, ever\nsince he was out of his time and went into partnership with Peffer.\nOn that occasion, Cook\u2019s Court was in a manner revolutionized by the\nnew inscription in fresh paint, PEFFER AND HARLAN, displacing the\ntime-honoured and not easily to be deciphered legend PEFFER only. For\nsmoke, which is the London ivy, had so wreathed itself round Peffer\u2019s\nname and clung to his dwelling-place that the affectionate parasite\nquite overpowered the parent tree.\n\nPeffer is never seen in Cook\u2019s Court now. He is not expected there,\nfor he has been recumbent this quarter of a century in the churchyard\nof St. Andrews, Holborn, with the waggons and hackney-coaches roaring\npast him all the day and half the night like one great dragon. If he\never steal forth when the dragon is at rest to air himself again in\nCook\u2019s Court until admonished to return by the crowing of the\nsanguine cock in the cellar at the little dairy in Cursitor Street,\nwhose ideas of daylight it would be curious to ascertain, since he\nknows from his personal observation next to nothing about it\u2014if\nPeffer ever do revisit the pale glimpses of Cook\u2019s Court, which no\nlaw-stationer in the trade can positively deny, he comes invisibly,\nand no one is the worse or wiser.\n\nIn his lifetime, and likewise in the period of Harlan\u2019s \u201ctime\u201d\nof seven long years, there dwelt with Peffer in the same\nlaw-stationering premises a niece\u2014a short, shrewd niece, something\ntoo violently compressed about the waist, and with a sharp nose like\na sharp autumn evening, inclining to be frosty towards the end. The\nCook\u2019s Courtiers had a rumour flying among them that the mother of\nthis niece did, in her daughter\u2019s childhood, moved by too jealous a\nsolicitude that her figure should approach perfection, lace her\nup every morning with her maternal foot against the bed-post for\na stronger hold and purchase; and further, that she exhibited\ninternally pints of vinegar and lemon-juice, which acids, they held,\nhad mounted to the nose and temper of the patient. With whichsoever\nof the many tongues of Rumour this frothy report originated, it\neither never reached or never influenced the ears of young Harlan,\nwho, having wooed and won its fair subject on his arrival at man\u2019s\nestate, entered into two partnerships at once. So now, in Cook\u2019s\nCourt, Cursitor Street, Mr. Harlan and the niece are one; and the\nniece still cherishes her figure, which, however tastes may differ,\nis unquestionably so far precious that there is mighty little of it.\n\nMr. and Mrs. Harlan are not only one bone and one flesh, but, to the\nneighbours\u2019 thinking, one voice too. That voice, appearing to proceed\nfrom Mrs. Harlan alone, is heard in Cook\u2019s Court very often. Mr.\nHarlan, otherwise than as he finds expression through these dulcet\ntones, is rarely heard. He is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining\nhead and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He\ntends to meekness and obesity. As he stands at his door in Cook\u2019s\nCourt in his grey shop-coat and black calico sleeves, looking up at\nthe clouds, or stands behind a desk in his dark shop with a heavy\nflat ruler, snipping and slicing at sheepskin in company with his two\n\u2019prentices, he is emphatically a retiring and unassuming man. From\nbeneath his feet, at such times, as from a shrill ghost unquiet in\nits grave, there frequently arise complainings and lamentations in\nthe voice already mentioned; and haply, on some occasions when these\nreach a sharper pitch than usual, Mr. Harlan mentions to the\n\u2019prentices, \u201cI think my little woman is a-giving it to Guster!\u201d\n\nThis proper name, so used by Mr. Harlan, has before now sharpened\nthe wit of the Cook\u2019s Courtiers to remark that it ought to be the\nname of Mrs. Harlan, seeing that she might with great force and\nexpression be termed a Guster, in compliment to her stormy character.\nIt is, however, the possession, and the only possession except fifty\nshillings per annum and a very small box indifferently filled with\nclothing, of a lean young woman from a workhouse (by some supposed to\nhave been christened Augusta) who, although she was farmed or\ncontracted for during her growing time by an amiable benefactor of\nhis species resident at Tooting, and cannot fail to have been\ndeveloped under the most favourable circumstances, \u201chas fits,\u201d which\nthe parish can\u2019t account for.\n\nGuster, really aged three or four and twenty, but looking a round ten\nyears older, goes cheap with this unaccountable drawback of fits, and\nis so apprehensive of being returned on the hands of her patron saint\nthat except when she is found with her head in the pail, or the sink,\nor the copper, or the dinner, or anything else that happens to be\nnear her at the time of her seizure, she is always at work. She is a\nsatisfaction to the parents and guardians of the \u2019prentices, who feel\nthat there is little danger of her inspiring tender emotions in the\nbreast of youth; she is a satisfaction to Mrs. Harlan, who can\nalways find fault with her; she is a satisfaction to Mr. Harlan, who\nthinks it a charity to keep her. The law-stationer\u2019s establishment\nis, in Guster\u2019s eyes, a temple of plenty and splendour. She believes\nthe little drawing-room upstairs, always kept, as one may say, with\nits hair in papers and its pinafore on, to be the most elegant\napartment in Christendom. The view it commands of Cook\u2019s Court at one\nend (not to mention a squint into Cursitor Street) and of Jolyn\u2019\nthe sheriff\u2019s officer\u2019s backyard at the other she regards as a\nprospect of unequalled beauty. The portraits it displays in oil\u2014and\nplenty of it too\u2014of Mr. Harlan looking at Mrs. Harlan and of Mrs.\nHarlan looking at Mr. Harlan are in her eyes as achievements of\nRaphael or Titian. Guster has some recompenses for her many\nprivations.\n\nMr. Harlan refers everything not in the practical mysteries of the\nbusiness to Mrs. Harlan. She manages the money, reproaches the\ntax-gatherers, appoints the times and places of devotion on Sundays,\nlicenses Mr. Harlan\u2019s entertainments, and acknowledges no\nresponsibility as to what she thinks fit to provide for dinner,\ninsomuch that she is the high standard of comparison among the\nneighbouring wives a long way down Chancery Lane on both sides, and\neven out in Holborn, who in any domestic passages of arms habitually\ncall upon their husbands to look at the difference between their (the\nwives\u2019) position and Mrs. Harlan\u2019s, and their (the husbands\u2019)\nbehaviour and Mr. Harlan\u2019s. Rumour, always flying bat-like about\nCook\u2019s Court and skimming in and out at everybody\u2019s windows, does say\nthat Mrs. Harlan is jealous and inquisitive and that Mr. Harlan is\nsometimes worried out of house and home, and that if he had the\nspirit of a mouse he wouldn\u2019t stand it. It is even observed that the\nwives who quote him to their self-willed husbands as a shining\nexample in reality look down upon him and that nobody does so with\ngreater superciliousness than one particular lady whose lord is more\nthan suspected of laying his umbrella on her as an instrument of\ncorrection. But these vague whisperings may arise from Mr. Harlan\u2019s\nbeing in his way rather a meditative and poetical man, loving to walk\nin Staple Inn in the summer-time and to observe how countrified the\nsparrows and the leaves are, also to lounge about the Rolls Yard of a\nSunday afternoon and to remark (if in good spirits) that there were\nold times once and that you\u2019d find a stone coffin or two now under\nthat chapel, he\u2019ll be bound, if you was to dig for it. He solaces his\nimagination, too, by thinking of the many Chancellors and Vices, and\nMasters of the Rolls who are deceased; and he gets such a flavour of\nthe country out of telling the two \u2019prentices how he HAS heard say\nthat a brook \u201cas clear as crystal\u201d once ran right down the middle of\nHolborn, when Turnstile really was a turnstile, leading slap away\ninto the meadows\u2014gets such a flavour of the country out of this that\nhe never wants to go there.\n\nThe day is closing in and the gas is lighted, but is not yet fully\neffective, for it is not quite dark. Mr. Harlan standing at his\nshop-door looking up at the clouds sees a crow who is out late skim\nwestward over the slice of sky belonging to Cook\u2019s Court. The crow\nflies straight across Chancery Lane and Lincoln\u2019s Inn Garden into\nLincoln\u2019s Inn Fields.\n\nHere, in a large house, formerly a house of state, lives Mr.\nTulkinghorn. It is let off in sets of chambers now, and in those\nshrunken fragments of its greatness, lawyers lie like maggots in\nnuts. But its roomy staircases, passages, and antechambers still\nremain; and even its painted ceilings, where Allegory, in Roman\nhelmet and celestial linen, sprawls among balustrades and pillars,\nflowers, clouds, and big-legged boys, and makes the head ache\u2014as\nwould seem to be Allegory\u2019s object always, more or less. Here, among\nhis many boxes labelled with transcendent names, lives Mr.\nTulkinghorn, when not speechlessly at home in country-houses where\nthe great ones of the earth are bored to death. Here he is to-day,\nquiet at his table. An oyster of the old school whom nobody can open.\n\nLike as he is to look at, so is his apartment in the dusk of\nthe present afternoon. Rusty, out of date, withdrawing from\nattention, able to afford it. Heavy, broad-backed, old-fashioned,\nmahogany-and-horsehair chairs, not easily lifted; obsolete tables\nwith spindle-legs and dusty baize covers; presentation prints of the\nholders of great titles in the last generation or the last but one,\nenviron him. A thick and dingy Turkey-carpet muffles the floor where\nhe sits, attended by two candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks\nthat give a very insufficient light to his large room. The titles on\nthe backs of his books have retired into the binding; everything that\ncan have a lock has got one; no key is visible. Very few loose papers\nare about. He has some manuscript near him, but is not referring\nto it. With the round top of an inkstand and two broken bits of\nsealing-wax he is silently and slowly working out whatever train of\nindecision is in his mind. Now the inkstand top is in the middle, now\nthe red bit of sealing-wax, now the black bit. That\u2019s not it. Mr.\nTulkinghorn must gather them all up and begin again.\n\nHere, beneath the painted ceiling, with foreshortened Allegory\nstaring down at his intrusion as if it meant to swoop upon him, and\nhe cutting it dead, Mr. Tulkinghorn has at once his house and office.\nHe keeps no staff, only one middle-aged man, usually a little out at\nelbows, who sits in a high pew in the hall and is rarely overburdened\nwith business. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not in a common way. He wants no\nclerks. He is a great reservoir of confidences, not to be so tapped.\nHis clients want HIM; he is all in all. Drafts that he requires to be\ndrawn are drawn by special-pleaders in the temple on mysterious\ninstructions; fair copies that he requires to be made are made at the\nstationers\u2019, expense being no consideration. The middle-aged man in\nthe pew knows scarcely more of the affairs of the peerage than any\ncrossing-sweeper in Holborn.\n\nThe red bit, the black bit, the inkstand top, the other inkstand top,\nthe little sand-box. So! You to the middle, you to the right, you to\nthe left. This train of indecision must surely be worked out now or\nnever. Now! Mr. Tulkinghorn gets up, adjusts his spectacles, puts on\nhis hat, puts the manuscript in his pocket, goes out, tells the\nmiddle-aged man out at elbows, \u201cI shall be back presently.\u201d Very\nrarely tells him anything more explicit.\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn goes, as the crow came\u2014not quite so straight, but\nnearly\u2014to Cook\u2019s Court, Cursitor Street. To Harlan\u2019s,\nLaw-Stationer\u2019s, Deeds engrossed and copied, Law-Writing executed in\nall its branches, &c., &c., &c.\n\nIt is somewhere about five or six o\u2019clock in the afternoon, and a\nbalmy fragrance of warm tea hovers in Cook\u2019s Court. It hovers about\nHarlan\u2019s door. The hours are early there: dinner at half-past one\nand supper at half-past nine. Mr. Harlan was about to descend into\nthe subterranean regions to take tea when he looked out of his door\njust now and saw the crow who was out late.\n\n\u201cMaster at home?\u201d\n\nGuster is minding the shop, for the \u2019prentices take tea in the\nkitchen with Mr. and Mrs. Harlan; consequently, the robe-maker\u2019s two\ndaughters, combing their curls at the two glasses in the two\nsecond-floor windows of the opposite house, are not driving the two\n\u2019prentices to distraction as they fondly suppose, but are merely\nawakening the unprofitable admiration of Guster, whose hair won\u2019t\ngrow, and never would, and it is confidently thought, never will.\n\n\u201cMaster at home?\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn.\n\nMaster is at home, and Guster will fetch him. Guster disappears, glad\nto get out of the shop, which she regards with mingled dread and\nveneration as a storehouse of awful implements of the great torture\nof the law\u2014a place not to be entered after the gas is turned off.\n\nMr. Harlan appears, greasy, warm, herbaceous, and chewing. Bolts a\nbit of bread and butter. Says, \u201cBless my soul, sir! Mr. Tulkinghorn!\u201d\n\n\u201cI want half a word with you, Harlan.\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly, sir! Dear me, sir, why didn\u2019t you send your young man\nround for me? Pray walk into the back shop, sir.\u201d Harlan has\nbrightened in a moment.\n\nThe confined room, strong of parchment-grease, is warehouse,\ncounting-house, and copying-office. Mr. Tulkinghorn sits, facing\nround, on a stool at the desk.\n\n\u201cAshton and Ashton, Harlan.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d Mr. Harlan turns up the gas and coughs behind his hand,\nmodestly anticipating profit. Mr. Harlan, as a timid man, is\naccustomed to cough with a variety of expressions, and so to save\nwords.\n\n\u201cYou copied some affidavits in that cause for me lately.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir, we did.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere was one of them,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, carelessly\nfeeling\u2014tight, unopenable oyster of the old school!\u2014in the wrong\ncoat-pocket, \u201cthe handwriting of which is peculiar, and I rather\nlike. As I happened to be passing, and thought I had it about me, I\nlooked in to ask you\u2014but I haven\u2019t got it. No matter, any other time\nwill do. Ah! here it is! I looked in to ask you who copied this.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho copied this, sir?\u201d says Mr. Harlan, taking it, laying it flat\non the desk, and separating all the sheets at once with a twirl and a\ntwist of the left hand peculiar to lawstationers. \u201cWe gave this out,\nsir. We were giving out rather a large quantity of work just at that\ntime. I can tell you in a moment who copied it, sir, by referring to\nmy book.\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan takes his book down from the safe, makes another bolt of\nthe bit of bread and butter which seemed to have stopped short, eyes\nthe affidavit aside, and brings his right forefinger travelling down\na page of the book, \u201cJewby\u2014Packer\u2014Ashton.\u201d\n\n\u201cAshton! Here we are, sir,\u201d says Mr. Harlan. \u201cTo be sure! I might\nhave remembered it. This was given out, sir, to a writer who lodges\njust over on the opposite side of the lane.\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn has seen the entry, found it before the\nlaw-stationer, read it while the forefinger was coming down the hill.\n\n\u201cWHAT do you call him? Triston?\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cTriston, sir. Here\nit is. Forty-two folio. Given out on the Wednesday night at eight\no\u2019clock, brought in on the Thursday morning at half after nine.\u201d\n\n\u201cTriston!\u201d repeats Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cTriston is Latin for no one.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt must be English for some one, sir, I think,\u201d Mr. Harlan submits\nwith his deferential cough. \u201cIt is a person\u2019s name. Here it is, you\nsee, sir! Forty-two folio. Given out Wednesday night, eight o\u2019clock;\nbrought in Thursday morning, half after nine.\u201d\n\nThe tail of Mr. Harlan\u2019s eye becomes conscious of the head of Mrs.\nHarlan looking in at the shop-door to know what he means by\ndeserting his tea. Mr. Harlan addresses an explanatory cough to Mrs.\nHarlan, as who should say, \u201cMy dear, a customer!\u201d\n\n\u201cHalf after nine, sir,\u201d repeats Mr. Harlan. \u201cOur law-writers, who\nlive by job-work, are a queer lot; and this may not be his name, but\nit\u2019s the name he goes by. I remember now, sir, that he gives it in a\nwritten advertisement he sticks up down at the Rule Office, and the\nKing\u2019s Bench Office, and the Judges\u2019 Chambers, and so forth. You know\nthe kind of document, sir\u2014wanting employ?\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn glances through the little window at the back of\nJolyn\u2019, the sheriff\u2019s officer\u2019s, where lights shine in Jolyn\u2019\nwindows. Jolyn\u2019 coffee-room is at the back, and the shadows of\nseveral gentlemen under a cloud loom cloudily upon the blinds. Mr.\nHarlan takes the opportunity of slightly turning his head to glance\nover his shoulder at his little woman and to make apologetic motions\nwith his mouth to this effect: \u201cTul-king-horn\u2014rich\u2014in-flu-en-tial!\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you given this man work before?\u201d asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.\n\n\u201cOh, dear, yes, sir! Work of yours.\u201d\n\n\u201cThinking of more important matters, I forget where you said he\nlived?\u201d\n\n\u201cAcross the lane, sir. In fact, he lodges at a\u2014\u201d Mr. Harlan makes\nanother bolt, as if the bit of bread and butter were insurmountable\n\u201c\u2014at a rag and bottle shop.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan you show me the place as I go back?\u201d\n\n\u201cWith the greatest pleasure, sir!\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan pulls off his sleeves and his grey coat, pulls on his\nblack coat, takes his hat from its peg. \u201cOh! Here is my little\nwoman!\u201d he says aloud. \u201cMy dear, will you be so kind as to tell one\nof the lads to look after the shop while I step across the lane with\nMr. Tulkinghorn? Mrs. Harlan, sir\u2014I shan\u2019t be two minutes, my\nlove!\u201d\n\nMrs. Harlan bends to the lawyer, retires behind the counter, peeps\nat them through the window-blind, goes softly into the back office,\nrefers to the entries in the book still lying open. Is evidently\ncurious.\n\n\u201cYou will find that the place is rough, sir,\u201d says Mr. Harlan,\nwalking deferentially in the road and leaving the narrow pavement to\nthe lawyer; \u201cand the party is very rough. But they\u2019re a wild lot in\ngeneral, sir. The advantage of this particular man is that he never\nwants sleep. He\u2019ll go at it right on end if you want him to, as long\nas ever you like.\u201d\n\nIt is quite dark now, and the gas-lamps have acquired their full\neffect. Jostling against clerks going to post the day\u2019s letters, and\nagainst counsel and attorneys going home to dinner, and against\nplaintiffs and defendants and suitors of all sorts, and against the\ngeneral crowd, in whose way the forensic wisdom of ages has\ninterposed a million of obstacles to the transaction of the commonest\nbusiness of life; diving through law and equity, and through that\nkindred mystery, the street mud, which is made of nobody knows what\nand collects about us nobody knows whence or how\u2014we only knowing in\ngeneral that when there is too much of it we find it necessary to\nshovel it away\u2014the lawyer and the law-stationer come to a rag and\nbottle shop and general emporium of much disregarded merchandise,\nlying and being in the shadow of the wall of Lincoln\u2019s Inn, and kept,\nas is announced in paint, to all whom it may concern, by one Nesbit.\n\n\u201cThis is where he lives, sir,\u201d says the law-stationer.\n\n\u201cThis is where he lives, is it?\u201d says the lawyer unconcernedly.\n\u201cThank you.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you not going in, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, thank you, no; I am going on to the Fields at present. Good\nevening. Thank you!\u201d Mr. Harlan lifts his hat and returns to his\nlittle woman and his tea.\n\nBut Mr. Tulkinghorn does not go on to the Fields at present. He goes\na short way, turns back, comes again to the shop of Mr. Nesbit, and\nenters it straight. It is dim enough, with a blot-headed candle or so\nin the windows, and an old man and a cat sitting in the back part by\na fire. The old man rises and comes forward, with another blot-headed\ncandle in his hand.\n\n\u201cPray is your lodger within?\u201d\n\n\u201cMale or female, sir?\u201d says Mr. Nesbit.\n\n\u201cMale. The person who does copying.\u201d\n\nMr. Nesbit has eyed his man narrowly. Knows him by sight. Has an\nindistinct impression of his aristocratic repute.\n\n\u201cDid you wish to see him, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s what I seldom do myself,\u201d says Mr. Nesbit with a grin. \u201cShall I\ncall him down? But it\u2019s a weak chance if he\u2019d come, sir!\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll go up to him, then,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn.\n\n\u201cSecond floor, sir. Take the candle. Up there!\u201d Mr. Nesbit, with his\ncat beside him, stands at the bottom of the staircase, looking after\nMr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cHi-hi!\u201d he says when Mr. Tulkinghorn has nearly\ndisappeared. The lawyer looks down over the hand-rail. The cat\nexpands her wicked mouth and snarls at him.\n\n\u201cOrder, Godfrey Jane! Behave yourself to visitors, my lady! You know\nwhat they say of my lodger?\u201d whispers Nesbit, going up a step or two.\n\n\u201cWhat do they say of him?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey say he has sold himself to the enemy, but you and I know\nbetter\u2014he don\u2019t buy. I\u2019ll tell you what, though; my lodger is so\nblack-humoured and gloomy that I believe he\u2019d as soon make that\nbargain as any other. Don\u2019t put him out, sir. That\u2019s my advice!\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn with a nod goes on his way. He comes to the dark door\non the second floor. He knocks, receives no answer, opens it, and\naccidentally extinguishes his candle in doing so.\n\nThe air of the room is almost bad enough to have extinguished it if\nhe had not. It is a small room, nearly black with soot, and grease,\nand dirt. In the rusty skeleton of a grate, pinched at the middle as\nif poverty had gripped it, a red coke fire burns low. In the corner\nby the chimney stand a deal table and a broken desk, a wilderness\nmarked with a rain of ink. In another corner a ragged old portmanteau\non one of the two chairs serves for cabinet or wardrobe; no larger\none is needed, for it collapses like the cheeks of a starved man. The\nfloor is bare, except that one old mat, trodden to shreds of\nrope-yarn, lies perishing upon the hearth. No curtain veils the\ndarkness of the night, but the discoloured shutters are drawn\ntogether, and through the two gaunt holes pierced in them, famine\nmight be staring in\u2014the banshee of the man upon the bed.\n\nFor, on a low bed opposite the fire, a confusion of dirty patchwork,\nlean-ribbed ticking, and coarse sacking, the lawyer, hesitating just\nwithin the doorway, sees a man. He lies there, dressed in shirt and\ntrousers, with bare feet. He has a yellow look in the spectral\ndarkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of\nits wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of\nwinding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his\nwhiskers and his beard\u2014the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the\nscum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is,\nfoul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes\nthose are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the\ngeneral sickliness and faintness, and the odour of stale tobacco,\nthere comes into the lawyer\u2019s mouth the bitter, vapid taste of opium.\n\n\u201cHallo, my friend!\u201d he cries, and strikes his iron candlestick\nagainst the door.\n\nHe thinks he has awakened his friend. He lies a little turned away,\nbut his eyes are surely open.\n\n\u201cHallo, my friend!\u201d he cries again. \u201cHallo! Hallo!\u201d\n\nAs he rattles on the door, the candle which has drooped so long goes\nout and leaves him in the dark, with the gaunt eyes in the shutters\nstaring down upon the bed.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nOur Dear Brother\n\n\nA touch on the lawyer\u2019s wrinkled hand as he stands in the dark room,\nirresolute, makes him start and say, \u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s me,\u201d returns the old man of the house, whose breath is in his\near. \u201cCan\u2019t you wake him?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat have you done with your candle?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s gone out. Here it is.\u201d\n\nNesbit takes it, goes to the fire, stoops over the red embers, and\ntries to get a light. The dying ashes have no light to spare, and his\nendeavours are vain. Muttering, after an ineffectual call to his\nlodger, that he will go downstairs and bring a lighted candle from\nthe shop, the old man departs. Mr. Tulkinghorn, for some new reason\nthat he has, does not await his return in the room, but on the stairs\noutside.\n\nThe welcome light soon shines upon the wall, as Nesbit comes slowly up\nwith his green-eyed cat following at his heels. \u201cDoes the man\ngenerally sleep like this?\u201d inquired the lawyer in a low voice. \u201cHi!\nI don\u2019t know,\u201d says Nesbit, shaking his head and lifting his eyebrows.\n\u201cI know next to nothing of his habits except that he keeps himself\nvery close.\u201d\n\nThus whispering, they both go in together. As the light goes in, the\ngreat eyes in the shutters, darkening, seem to close. Not so the eyes\nupon the bed.\n\n\u201cGod save us!\u201d exclaims Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cHe is dead!\u201d Nesbit drops\nthe heavy hand he has taken up so suddenly that the arm swings over\nthe bedside.\n\nThey look at one another for a moment.\n\n\u201cSend for some doctor! Call for Miss Daxter up the stairs, sir. Here\u2019s\npoison by the bed! Call out for Daxter, will you?\u201d says Nesbit, with\nhis lean hands spread out above the body like a vampire\u2019s wings.\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn hurries to the landing and calls, \u201cMiss Daxter! Daxter!\nMake haste, here, whoever you are! Daxter!\u201d Nesbit follows him with his\neyes, and while he is calling, finds opportunity to steal to the old\nportmanteau and steal back again.\n\n\u201cRun, Daxter, run! The nearest doctor! Run!\u201d So Mr. Nesbit addresses a\ncrazy little woman who is his female lodger, who appears and vanishes\nin a breath, who soon returns accompanied by a testy medical man\nbrought from his dinner, with a broad, snuffy upper lip and a broad\nScotch tongue.\n\n\u201cEy! Bless the hearts o\u2019 ye,\u201d says the medical man, looking up at\nthem after a moment\u2019s examination. \u201cHe\u2019s just as dead as Phairy!\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn (standing by the old portmanteau) inquires if he has\nbeen dead any time.\n\n\u201cAny time, sir?\u201d says the medical gentleman. \u201cIt\u2019s probable he wull\nhave been dead aboot three hours.\u201d\n\n\u201cAbout that time, I should say,\u201d observes a dark young man on the\nother side of the bed.\n\n\u201cAir you in the maydickle prayfession yourself, sir?\u201d inquires the\nfirst.\n\nThe dark young man says yes.\n\n\u201cThen I\u2019ll just tak\u2019 my depairture,\u201d replies the other, \u201cfor I\u2019m nae\ngude here!\u201d With which remark he finishes his brief attendance and\nreturns to finish his dinner.\n\nThe dark young surgeon passes the candle across and across the face\nand carefully examines the law-writer, who has established his\npretensions to his name by becoming indeed No one.\n\n\u201cI knew this person by sight very well,\u201d says he. \u201cHe has purchased\nopium of me for the last year and a half. Was anybody present related\nto him?\u201d glancing round upon the three bystanders.\n\n\u201cI was his landlord,\u201d grimly answers Nesbit, taking the candle from\nthe surgeon\u2019s outstretched hand. \u201cHe told me once I was the nearest\nrelation he had.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has died,\u201d says the surgeon, \u201cof an over-dose of opium, there is\nno doubt. The room is strongly flavoured with it. There is enough\nhere now,\u201d taking an old tea-pot from Mr. Nesbit, \u201cto kill a dozen\npeople.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you think he did it on purpose?\u201d asks Nesbit.\n\n\u201cTook the over-dose?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes!\u201d Nesbit almost smacks his lips with the unction of a horrible\ninterest.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t say. I should think it unlikely, as he has been in the habit\nof taking so much. But nobody can tell. He was very poor, I suppose?\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose he was. His room\u2014don\u2019t look rich,\u201d says Nesbit, who might\nhave changed eyes with his cat, as he casts his sharp glance around.\n\u201cBut I have never been in it since he had it, and he was too close to\nname his circumstances to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid he owe you any rent?\u201d\n\n\u201cSix weeks.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe will never pay it!\u201d says the young man, resuming his examination.\n\u201cIt is beyond a doubt that he is indeed as dead as Pharaoh; and to\njudge from his appearance and condition, I should think it a happy\nrelease. Yet he must have been a good figure when a youth, and I dare\nsay, good-looking.\u201d He says this, not unfeelingly, while sitting on\nthe bedstead\u2019s edge with his face towards that other face and his\nhand upon the region of the heart. \u201cI recollect once thinking there\nwas something in his manner, uncouth as it was, that denoted a fall\nin life. Was that so?\u201d he continues, looking round.\n\nNesbit replies, \u201cYou might as well ask me to describe the ladies whose\nheads of hair I have got in sacks downstairs. Than that he was my\nlodger for a year and a half and lived\u2014or didn\u2019t live\u2014by\nlaw-writing, I know no more of him.\u201d\n\nDuring this dialogue Mr. Tulkinghorn has stood aloof by the old\nportmanteau, with his hands behind him, equally removed, to all\nappearance, from all three kinds of interest exhibited near the\nbed\u2014from the young surgeon\u2019s professional interest in death,\nnoticeable as being quite apart from his remarks on the deceased as\nan individual; from the old man\u2019s unction; and the little crazy\nwoman\u2019s awe. His imperturbable face has been as inexpressive as his\nrusty clothes. One could not even say he has been thinking all this\nwhile. He has shown neither patience nor impatience, nor attention\nnor abstraction. He has shown nothing but his shell. As easily might\nthe tone of a delicate musical instrument be inferred from its case,\nas the tone of Mr. Tulkinghorn from his case.\n\nHe now interposes, addressing the young surgeon in his unmoved,\nprofessional way.\n\n\u201cI looked in here,\u201d he observes, \u201cjust before you, with the\nintention of giving this deceased man, whom I never saw alive, some\nemployment at his trade of copying. I had heard of him from my\nstationer\u2014Harlan of Cook\u2019s Court. Since no one here knows anything\nabout him, it might be as well to send for Harlan. Ah!\u201d to the\nlittle crazy woman, who has often seen him in court, and whom he has\noften seen, and who proposes, in frightened dumb-show, to go for the\nlaw-stationer. \u201cSuppose you do!\u201d\n\nWhile she is gone, the surgeon abandons his hopeless investigation\nand covers its subject with the patchwork counterpane. Mr. Nesbit and\nhe interchange a word or two. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, but\nstands, ever, near the old portmanteau.\n\nMr. Harlan arrives hastily in his grey coat and his black sleeves.\n\u201cDear me, dear me,\u201d he says; \u201cand it has come to this, has it! Bless\nmy soul!\u201d\n\n\u201cCan you give the person of the house any information about this\nunfortunate creature, Harlan?\u201d inquires Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cHe was in\narrears with his rent, it seems. And he must be buried, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, coughing his apologetic cough behind\nhis hand, \u201cI really don\u2019t know what advice I could offer, except\nsending for the beadle.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t speak of advice,\u201d returns Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cI could\nadvise\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo one better, sir, I am sure,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, with his\ndeferential cough.\n\n\u201cI speak of affording some clue to his connexions, or to where he\ncame from, or to anything concerning him.\u201d\n\n\u201cI assure you, sir,\u201d says Mr. Harlan after prefacing his reply with\nhis cough of general propitiation, \u201cthat I no more know where he came\nfrom than I know\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere he has gone to, perhaps,\u201d suggests the surgeon to help him\nout.\n\nA pause. Mr. Tulkinghorn looking at the law-stationer. Mr. Nesbit,\nwith his mouth open, looking for somebody to speak next.\n\n\u201cAs to his connexions, sir,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, \u201cif a person was to\nsay to me, \u2018Harlan, here\u2019s twenty thousand pound down, ready for you\nin the Bank of England if you\u2019ll only name one of \u2019em,\u2019 I couldn\u2019t do\nit, sir! About a year and a half ago\u2014to the best of my belief, at\nthe time when he first came to lodge at the present rag and bottle\nshop\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThat was the time!\u201d says Nesbit with a nod.\n\n\u201cAbout a year and a half ago,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, strengthened, \u201che\ncame into our place one morning after breakfast, and finding my\nlittle woman (which I name Mrs. Harlan when I use that appellation)\nin our shop, produced a specimen of his handwriting and gave her to\nunderstand that he was in want of copying work to do and was, not to\nput too fine a point upon it,\u201d a favourite apology for plain speaking\nwith Mr. Harlan, which he always offers with a sort of argumentative\nfrankness, \u201chard up! My little woman is not in general partial to\nstrangers, particular\u2014not to put too fine a point upon it\u2014when they\nwant anything. But she was rather took by something about this\nperson, whether by his being unshaved, or by his hair being in want\nof attention, or by what other ladies\u2019 reasons, I leave you to judge;\nand she accepted of the specimen, and likewise of the address. My\nlittle woman hasn\u2019t a good ear for names,\u201d proceeds Mr. Harlan after\nconsulting his cough of consideration behind his hand, \u201cand she\nconsidered Triston equally the same as Nimrod. In consequence of which,\nshe got into a habit of saying to me at meals, \u2018Mr. Harlan, you\nhaven\u2019t found Nimrod any work yet!\u2019 or \u2018Mr. Harlan, why didn\u2019t you\ngive that eight and thirty Chancery folio in Ashton to Nimrod?\u2019 or\nsuch like. And that is the way he gradually fell into job-work at our\nplace; and that is the most I know of him except that he was a quick\nhand, and a hand not sparing of night-work, and that if you gave him\nout, say, five and forty folio on the Wednesday night, you would have\nit brought in on the Thursday morning. All of which\u2014\u201d Mr. Harlan\nconcludes by politely motioning with his hat towards the bed, as much\nas to add, \u201cI have no doubt my honourable friend would confirm if he\nwere in a condition to do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cHadn\u2019t you better see,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn to Nesbit, \u201cwhether he\nhad any papers that may enlighten you? There will be an inquest, and\nyou will be asked the question. You can read?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I can\u2019t,\u201d returns the old man with a sudden grin.\n\n\u201cHarlan,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, \u201clook over the room for him. He will\nget into some trouble or difficulty otherwise. Being here, I\u2019ll wait\nif you make haste, and then I can testify on his behalf, if it should\never be necessary, that all was fair and right. If you will hold the\ncandle for Mr. Harlan, my friend, he\u2019ll soon see whether there is\nanything to help you.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the first place, here\u2019s an old portmanteau, sir,\u201d says Harlan.\n\nAh, to be sure, so there is! Mr. Tulkinghorn does not appear to have\nseen it before, though he is standing so close to it, and though\nthere is very little else, heaven knows.\n\nThe marine-store merchant holds the light, and the law-stationer\nconducts the search. The surgeon leans against the corner of the\nchimney-piece; Miss Daxter peeps and trembles just within the door.\nThe apt old scholar of the old school, with his dull black breeches\ntied with ribbons at the knees, his large black waistcoat, his\nlong-sleeved black coat, and his wisp of limp white neckerchief tied\nin the bow the peerage knows so well, stands in exactly the same\nplace and attitude.\n\nThere are some worthless articles of clothing in the old portmanteau;\nthere is a bundle of pawnbrokers\u2019 duplicates, those turnpike tickets\non the road of poverty; there is a crumpled paper, smelling of opium,\non which are scrawled rough memoranda\u2014as, took, such a day, so many\ngrains; took, such another day, so many more\u2014begun some time ago, as\nif with the intention of being regularly continued, but soon left\noff. There are a few dirty scraps of newspapers, all referring to\ncoroners\u2019 inquests; there is nothing else. They search the cupboard\nand the drawer of the ink-splashed table. There is not a morsel of an\nold letter or of any other writing in either. The young surgeon\nexamines the dress on the law-writer. A knife and some odd halfpence\nare all he finds. Mr. Harlan\u2019s suggestion is the practical\nsuggestion after all, and the beadle must be called in.\n\nSo the little crazy lodger goes for the beadle, and the rest come out\nof the room. \u201cDon\u2019t leave the cat there!\u201d says the surgeon; \u201cthat\nwon\u2019t do!\u201d Mr. Nesbit therefore drives her out before him, and she\ngoes furtively downstairs, winding her lithe tail and licking her\nlips.\n\n\u201cGood night!\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, and goes home to Allegory and\nmeditation.\n\nBy this time the news has got into the court. Groups of its\ninhabitants assemble to discuss the thing, and the outposts of the\narmy of observation (principally boys) are pushed forward to Mr.\nNesbit\u2019s window, which they closely invest. A policeman has already\nwalked up to the room, and walked down again to the door, where he\nstands like a tower, only condescending to see the boys at his base\noccasionally; but whenever he does see them, they quail and fall\nback. Mrs. Perkins, who has not been for some weeks on speaking terms\nwith Mrs. Piper in consequence for an unpleasantness originating in\nyoung Perkins\u2019 having \u201cfetched\u201d young Piper \u201ca crack,\u201d renews her\nfriendly intercourse on this auspicious occasion. The potboy at the\ncorner, who is a privileged amateur, as possessing official knowledge\nof life and having to deal with drunken men occasionally, exchanges\nconfidential communications with the policeman and has the appearance\nof an impregnable youth, unassailable by truncheons and unconfinable\nin station-houses. People talk across the court out of window, and\nbare-headed scouts come hurrying in from Chancery Lane to know what\u2019s\nthe matter. The general feeling seems to be that it\u2019s a blessing Mr.\nNesbit warn\u2019t made away with first, mingled with a little natural\ndisappointment that he was not. In the midst of this sensation, the\nbeadle arrives.\n\nThe beadle, though generally understood in the neighbourhood to be a\nridiculous institution, is not without a certain popularity for the\nmoment, if it were only as a man who is going to see the body. The\npoliceman considers him an imbecile civilian, a remnant of the\nbarbarous watchmen times, but gives him admission as something that\nmust be borne with until government shall abolish him. The sensation\nis heightened as the tidings spread from mouth to mouth that the\nbeadle is on the ground and has gone in.\n\nBy and by the beadle comes out, once more intensifying the sensation,\nwhich has rather languished in the interval. He is understood to be\nin want of witnesses for the inquest to-morrow who can tell the\ncoroner and jury anything whatever respecting the deceased. Is\nimmediately referred to innumerable people who can tell nothing\nwhatever. Is made more imbecile by being constantly informed that\nMrs. Green\u2019s son \u201cwas a law-writer his-self and knowed him better\nthan anybody,\u201d which son of Mrs. Green\u2019s appears, on inquiry, to be\nat the present time aboard a vessel bound for China, three months\nout, but considered accessible by telegraph on application to the\nLords of the Admiralty. Beadle goes into various shops and parlours,\nexamining the inhabitants, always shutting the door first, and by\nexclusion, delay, and general idiotcy exasperating the public.\nPoliceman seen to smile to potboy. Public loses interest and\nundergoes reaction. Taunts the beadle in shrill youthful voices with\nhaving boiled a boy, choruses fragments of a popular song to that\neffect and importing that the boy was made into soup for the\nworkhouse. Policeman at last finds it necessary to support the law\nand seize a vocalist, who is released upon the flight of the rest on\ncondition of his getting out of this then, come, and cutting it\u2014a\ncondition he immediately observes. So the sensation dies off for the\ntime; and the unmoved policeman (to whom a little opium, more or\nless, is nothing), with his shining hat, stiff stock, inflexible\ngreat-coat, stout belt and bracelet, and all things fitting, pursues\nhis lounging way with a heavy tread, beating the palms of his white\ngloves one against the other and stopping now and then at a\nstreet-corner to look casually about for anything between a lost\nchild and a murder.\n\nUnder cover of the night, the feeble-minded beadle comes flitting\nabout Chancery Lane with his summonses, in which every juror\u2019s name\nis wrongly spelt, and nothing rightly spelt but the beadle\u2019s own\nname, which nobody can read or wants to know. The summonses served\nand his witnesses forewarned, the beadle goes to Mr. Nesbit\u2019s to keep\na small appointment he has made with certain paupers, who, presently\narriving, are conducted upstairs, where they leave the great eyes in\nthe shutter something new to stare at, in that last shape which\nearthly lodgings take for No one\u2014and for Every one.\n\nAnd all that night the coffin stands ready by the old portmanteau;\nand the lonely figure on the bed, whose path in life has lain through\nfive and forty years, lies there with no more track behind him that\nany one can trace than a deserted infant.\n\nNext day the court is all alive\u2014is like a fair, as Mrs. Perkins,\nmore than reconciled to Mrs. Piper, says in amicable conversation\nwith that excellent woman. The coroner is to sit in the first-floor\nroom at the Sol\u2019s Arms, where the Harmonic Meetings take place twice\na week and where the chair is filled by a gentleman of professional\ncelebrity, faced by Little Swills, the comic vocalist, who hopes\n(according to the bill in the window) that his friends will rally\nround him and support first-rate talent. The Sol\u2019s Arms does a brisk\nstroke of business all the morning. Even children so require\nsustaining under the general excitement that a pieman who has\nestablished himself for the occasion at the corner of the court says\nhis brandy-balls go off like smoke. What time the beadle, hovering\nbetween the door of Mr. Nesbit\u2019s establishment and the door of the\nSol\u2019s Arms, shows the curiosity in his keeping to a few discreet\nspirits and accepts the compliment of a glass of ale or so in return.\n\nAt the appointed hour arrives the coroner, for whom the jurymen are\nwaiting and who is received with a salute of skittles from the good\ndry skittle-ground attached to the Sol\u2019s Arms. The coroner frequents\nmore public-houses than any man alive. The smell of sawdust, beer,\ntobacco-smoke, and spirits is inseparable in his vocation from death\nin its most awful shapes. He is conducted by the beadle and the\nlandlord to the Harmonic Meeting Room, where he puts his hat on the\npiano and takes a Windsor-chair at the head of a long table formed of\nseveral short tables put together and ornamented with glutinous rings\nin endless involutions, made by pots and glasses. As many of the jury\nas can crowd together at the table sit there. The rest get among the\nspittoons and pipes or lean against the piano. Over the coroner\u2019s\nhead is a small iron garland, the pendant handle of a bell, which\nrather gives the majesty of the court the appearance of going to be\nhanged presently.\n\nCall over and swear the jury! While the ceremony is in progress,\nsensation is created by the entrance of a chubby little man in a\nlarge shirt-collar, with a moist eye and an inflamed nose, who\nmodestly takes a position near the door as one of the general public,\nbut seems familiar with the room too. A whisper circulates that this\nis Little Swills. It is considered not unlikely that he will get up\nan imitation of the coroner and make it the principal feature of the\nHarmonic Meeting in the evening.\n\n\u201cWell, gentlemen\u2014\u201d the coroner begins.\n\n\u201cSilence there, will you!\u201d says the beadle. Not to the coroner,\nthough it might appear so.\n\n\u201cWell, gentlemen,\u201d resumes the coroner. \u201cYou are impanelled here to\ninquire into the death of a certain man. Evidence will be given\nbefore you as to the circumstances attending that death, and you will\ngive your verdict according to the\u2014skittles; they must be stopped,\nyou know, beadle!\u2014evidence, and not according to anything else. The\nfirst thing to be done is to view the body.\u201d\n\n\u201cMake way there!\u201d cries the beadle.\n\nSo they go out in a loose procession, something after the manner of a\nstraggling funeral, and make their inspection in Mr. Nesbit\u2019s back\nsecond floor, from which a few of the jurymen retire pale and\nprecipitately. The beadle is very careful that two gentlemen not very\nneat about the cuffs and buttons (for whose accommodation he has\nprovided a special little table near the coroner in the Harmonic\nMeeting Room) should see all that is to be seen. For they are the\npublic chroniclers of such inquiries by the line; and he is not\nsuperior to the universal human infirmity, but hopes to read in print\nwhat \u201cMooney, the active and intelligent beadle of the district,\u201d\nsaid and did and even aspires to see the name of Mooney as familiarly\nand patronizingly mentioned as the name of the hangman is, according\nto the latest examples.\n\nLittle Swills is waiting for the coroner and jury on their return.\nMr. Tulkinghorn, also. Mr. Tulkinghorn is received with distinction\nand seated near the coroner between that high judicial officer, a\nbagatelle-board, and the coal-box. The inquiry proceeds. The jury\nlearn how the subject of their inquiry died, and learn no more about\nhim. \u201cA very eminent solicitor is in attendance, gentlemen,\u201d says the\ncoroner, \u201cwho, I am informed, was accidentally present when discovery\nof the death was made, but he could only repeat the evidence you have\nalready heard from the surgeon, the landlord, the lodger, and the\nlaw-stationer, and it is not necessary to trouble him. Is anybody in\nattendance who knows anything more?\u201d\n\nMrs. Piper pushed forward by Mrs. Perkins. Mrs. Piper sworn.\n\nAnastasia Piper, gentlemen. Married woman. Now, Mrs. Piper, what have\nyou got to say about this?\n\nWhy, Mrs. Piper has a good deal to say, chiefly in parentheses and\nwithout punctuation, but not much to tell. Mrs. Piper lives in the\ncourt (which her husband is a cabinet-maker), and it has long been\nwell beknown among the neighbours (counting from the day next but one\nbefore the half-baptizing of Alexander James Piper aged eighteen\nmonths and four days old on accounts of not being expected to live\nsuch was the sufferings gentlemen of that child in his gums) as the\nplaintive\u2014so Mrs. Piper insists on calling the deceased\u2014was\nreported to have sold himself. Thinks it was the plaintive\u2019s air in\nwhich that report originatinin. See the plaintive often and\nconsidered as his air was feariocious and not to be allowed to go\nabout some children being timid (and if doubted hoping Mrs. Perkins\nmay be brought forard for she is here and will do credit to her\nhusband and herself and family). Has seen the plaintive wexed and\nworrited by the children (for children they will ever be and you\ncannot expect them specially if of playful dispositions to be\nMethoozellers which you was not yourself). On accounts of this and\nhis dark looks has often dreamed as she see him take a pick-axe from\nhis pocket and split Gerardony\u2019s head (which the child knows not fear\nand has repeatually called after him close at his eels). Never\nhowever see the plaintive take a pick-axe or any other wepping far\nfrom it. Has seen him hurry away when run and called after as if not\npartial to children and never see him speak to neither child nor\ngrown person at any time (excepting the boy that sweeps the crossing\ndown the lane over the way round the corner which if he was here\nwould tell you that he has been seen a-speaking to him frequent).\n\nSays the coroner, is that boy here? Says the beadle, no, sir, he is\nnot here. Says the coroner, go and fetch him then. In the absence of\nthe active and intelligent, the coroner converses with Mr.\nTulkinghorn.\n\nOh! Here\u2019s the boy, gentlemen!\n\nHere he is, very muddy, very hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy! But stop\na minute. Caution. This boy must be put through a few preliminary\npaces.\n\nName, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don\u2019t know that everybody\nhas two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don\u2019t know that Jo is\nshort for a longer name. Thinks it long enough for HIM. HE don\u2019t find\nno fault with it. Spell it? No. HE can\u2019t spell it. No father, no\nmother, no friends. Never been to school. What\u2019s home? Knows a\nbroom\u2019s a broom, and knows it\u2019s wicked to tell a lie. Don\u2019t recollect\nwho told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both. Can\u2019t\nexactly say what\u2019ll be done to him arter he\u2019s dead if he tells a lie\nto the gentlemen here, but believes it\u2019ll be something wery bad to\npunish him, and serve him right\u2014and so he\u2019ll tell the truth.\n\n\u201cThis won\u2019t do, gentlemen!\u201d says the coroner with a melancholy shake\nof the head.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you think you can receive his evidence, sir?\u201d asks an\nattentive juryman.\n\n\u201cOut of the question,\u201d says the coroner. \u201cYou have heard the boy.\n\u2018Can\u2019t exactly say\u2019 won\u2019t do, you know. We can\u2019t take THAT in a court\nof justice, gentlemen. It\u2019s terrible depravity. Put the boy aside.\u201d\n\nBoy put aside, to the great edification of the audience, especially\nof Little Swills, the comic vocalist.\n\nNow. Is there any other witness? No other witness.\n\nVery well, gentlemen! Here\u2019s a man unknown, proved to have been in\nthe habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half,\nfound dead of too much opium. If you think you have any evidence to\nlead you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come\nto that conclusion. If you think it is a case of accidental death,\nyou will find a verdict accordingly.\n\nVerdict accordingly. Accidental death. No doubt. Gentlemen, you are\ndischarged. Good afternoon.\n\nWhile the coroner buttons his great-coat, Mr. Tulkinghorn and he give\nprivate audience to the rejected witness in a corner.\n\nThat graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he\nrecognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes\nhooted and pursued about the streets. That one cold winter night when\nhe, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man\nturned to look at him, and came back, and having questioned him and\nfound that he had not a friend in the world, said, \u201cNeither have I.\nNot one!\u201d and gave him the price of a supper and a night\u2019s lodging.\nThat the man had often spoken to him since and asked him whether he\nslept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he\never wished to die, and similar strange questions. That when the man\nhad no money, he would say in passing, \u201cI am as poor as you to-day,\nJo,\u201d but that when he had any, he had always (as the boy most\nheartily believes) been glad to give him some.\n\n\u201cHe was wery good to me,\u201d says the boy, wiping his eyes with his\nwretched sleeve. \u201cWen I see him a-layin\u2019 so stritched out just now, I\nwished he could have heerd me tell him so. He wos wery good to me, he\nwos!\u201d\n\nAs he shuffles downstairs, Mr. Harlan, lying in wait for him, puts a\nhalf-crown in his hand. \u201cIf you ever see me coming past your crossing\nwith my little woman\u2014I mean a lady\u2014\u201d says Mr. Harlan with his\nfinger on his nose, \u201cdon\u2019t allude to it!\u201d\n\nFor some little time the jurymen hang about the Sol\u2019s Arms\ncolloquially. In the sequel, half-a-dozen are caught up in a cloud of\npipe-smoke that pervades the parlour of the Sol\u2019s Arms; two stroll to\nHampstead; and four engage to go half-price to the play at night, and\ntop up with oysters. Little Swills is treated on several hands. Being\nasked what he thinks of the proceedings, characterizes them (his\nstrength lying in a slangular direction) as \u201ca rummy start.\u201d The\nlandlord of the Sol\u2019s Arms, finding Little Swills so popular,\ncommends him highly to the jurymen and public, observing that for a\nsong in character he don\u2019t know his equal and that that man\u2019s\ncharacter-wardrobe would fill a cart.\n\nThus, gradually the Sol\u2019s Arms melts into the shadowy night and then\nflares out of it strong in gas. The Harmonic Meeting hour arriving,\nthe gentleman of professional celebrity takes the chair, is faced\n(red-faced) by Little Swills; their friends rally round them and\nsupport first-rate talent. In the zenith of the evening, Little\nSwills says, \u201cGentlemen, if you\u2019ll permit me, I\u2019ll attempt a short\ndescription of a scene of real life that came off here to-day.\u201d Is\nmuch applauded and encouraged; goes out of the room as Swills; comes\nin as the coroner (not the least in the world like him); describes\nthe inquest, with recreative intervals of piano-forte accompaniment,\nto the refrain: With his (the coroner\u2019s) tippy tol li doll, tippy tol\nlo doll, tippy tol li doll, Dee!\n\nThe jingling piano at last is silent, and the Harmonic friends rally\nround their pillows. Then there is rest around the lonely figure, now\nlaid in its last earthly habitation; and it is watched by the gaunt\neyes in the shutters through some quiet hours of night. If this\nforlorn man could have been prophetically seen lying here by the\nmother at whose breast he nestled, a little child, with eyes upraised\nto her loving face, and soft hand scarcely knowing how to close upon\nthe neck to which it crept, what an impossibility the vision would\nhave seemed! Oh, if in brighter days the now-extinguished fire within\nhim ever burned for one woman who held him in her heart, where is\nshe, while these ashes are above the ground!\n\nIt is anything but a night of rest at Mr. Harlan\u2019s, in Cook\u2019s Court,\nwhere Guster murders sleep by going, as Mr. Harlan himself\nallows\u2014not to put too fine a point upon it\u2014out of one fit into\ntwenty. The occasion of this seizure is that Guster has a tender\nheart and a susceptible something that possibly might have been\nimagination, but for Tooting and her patron saint. Be it what it may,\nnow, it was so direfully impressed at tea-time by Mr. Harlan\u2019s\naccount of the inquiry at which he had assisted that at supper-time\nshe projected herself into the kitchen, preceded by a flying Dutch\ncheese, and fell into a fit of unusual duration, which she only came\nout of to go into another, and another, and so on through a chain of\nfits, with short intervals between, of which she has pathetically\navailed herself by consuming them in entreaties to Mrs. Harlan not\nto give her warning \u201cwhen she quite comes to,\u201d and also in appeals to\nthe whole establishment to lay her down on the stones and go to bed.\nHence, Mr. Harlan, at last hearing the cock at the little dairy in\nCursitor Street go into that disinterested ecstasy of his on the\nsubject of daylight, says, drawing a long breath, though the most\npatient of men, \u201cI thought you was dead, I am sure!\u201d\n\nWhat question this enthusiastic fowl supposes he settles when he\nstrains himself to such an extent, or why he should thus crow (so men\ncrow on various triumphant public occasions, however) about what\ncannot be of any moment to him, is his affair. It is enough that\ndaylight comes, morning comes, noon comes.\n\nThen the active and intelligent, who has got into the morning papers\nas such, comes with his pauper company to Mr. Nesbit\u2019s and bears off\nthe body of our dear brother here departed to a hemmed-in churchyard,\npestiferous and obscene, whence malignant diseases are communicated\nto the bodies of our dear brothers and sisters who have not departed,\nwhile our dear brothers and sisters who hang about official\nback-stairs\u2014would to heaven they HAD departed!\u2014are very complacent\nand agreeable. Into a beastly scrap of ground which a Turk would\nreject as a savage abomination and a Caffre would shudder at, they\nbring our dear brother here departed to receive Christian burial.\n\nWith houses looking on, on every side, save where a reeking little\ntunnel of a court gives access to the iron gate\u2014with every villainy\nof life in action close on death, and every poisonous element of\ndeath in action close on life\u2014here they lower our dear brother down\na foot or two, here sow him in corruption, to be raised in\ncorruption: an avenging ghost at many a sick-bedside, a shameful\ntestimony to future ages how civilization and barbarism walked this\nboastful island together.\n\nCome night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too\nlong by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the\nwindows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at\nleast with this dread scene shut out! Come, flame of gas, burning so\nsullenly above the iron gate, on which the poisoned air deposits its\nwitch-ointment slimy to the touch! It is well that you should call to\nevery passerby, \u201cLook here!\u201d\n\nWith the night comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court to\nthe outside of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands and\nlooks in between the bars, stands looking in for a little while.\n\nIt then, with an old broom it carries, softly sweeps the step and\nmakes the archway clean. It does so very busily and trimly, looks in\nagain a little while, and so departs.\n\nJo, is it thou? Well, well! Though a rejected witness, who \u201ccan\u2019t\nexactly say\u201d what will be done to him in greater hands than men\u2019s,\nthou art not quite in outer darkness. There is something like a\ndistant ray of light in thy muttered reason for this: \u201cHe wos wery\ngood to me, he wos!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nOn the Watch\n\n\nIt has left off raining down in Lincolnshire at last, and Chesney\nWold has taken heart. Mrs. Talon is full of hospitable cares,\nfor Sir Luigi and my Godfrey are coming home from Paris. The\nfashionable intelligence has found it out and communicates the glad\ntidings to benighted England. It has also found out that they will\nentertain a brilliant and distinguished circle of the ELITE of the\nBEAU MONDE (the fashionable intelligence is weak in English, but a\ngiant refreshed in French) at the ancient and hospitable family seat\nin Lincolnshire.\n\nFor the greater honour of the brilliant and distinguished circle, and\nof Chesney Wold into the bargain, the broken arch of the bridge in\nthe park is mended; and the water, now retired within its proper\nlimits and again spanned gracefully, makes a figure in the prospect\nfrom the house. The clear, cold sunshine glances into the brittle\nwoods and approvingly beholds the sharp wind scattering the leaves\nand drying the moss. It glides over the park after the moving shadows\nof the clouds, and chases them, and never catches them, all day. It\nlooks in at the windows and touches the ancestral portraits with bars\nand patches of brightness never contemplated by the painters. Athwart\nthe picture of my Godfrey, over the great chimney-piece, it throws a\nbroad bend-sinister of light that strikes down crookedly into the\nhearth and seems to rend it.\n\nThrough the same cold sunshine and the same sharp wind, my Godfrey and\nSir Luigi, in their travelling chariot (my Godfrey\u2019s woman and Sir\nLuigi\u2019s man affectionate in the rumble), start for home. With a\nconsiderable amount of jingling and whip-cracking, and many plunging\ndemonstrations on the part of two bare-backed horses and two centaurs\nwith glazed hats, jack-boots, and flowing manes and tails, they\nrattle out of the yard of the H\u00f4tel Bristol in the Place Vend\u00f4me and\ncanter between the sun-and-shadow-chequered colonnade of the Rue de\nRivoli and the garden of the ill-fated palace of a headless king and\nqueen, off by the Place of Concord, and the Elysian Fields, and the\nGate of the Star, out of Paris.\n\nSooth to say, they cannot go away too fast, for even here my Godfrey\nWayne has been bored to death. Concert, assembly, opera, theatre,\ndrive, nothing is new to my Godfrey under the worn-out heavens. Only\nlast Sunday, when poor wretches were gay\u2014within the walls playing\nwith children among the clipped trees and the statues in the Palace\nGarden; walking, a score abreast, in the Elysian Fields, made more\nElysian by performing dogs and wooden horses; between whiles\nfiltering (a few) through the gloomy Cathedral of Our Godfrey to say a\nword or two at the base of a pillar within flare of a rusty little\ngridiron-full of gusty little tapers; without the walls encompassing\nParis with dancing, love-making, wine-drinking, tobacco-smoking,\ntomb-visiting, billiard card and domino playing, quack-doctoring, and\nmuch murderous refuse, animate and inanimate\u2014only last Sunday, my\nGodfrey, in the desolation of Boredom and the clutch of Giant Despair,\nalmost hated her own maid for being in spirits.\n\nShe cannot, therefore, go too fast from Paris. Weariness of soul lies\nbefore her, as it lies behind\u2014her Ariel has put a girdle of it round\nthe whole earth, and it cannot be unclasped\u2014but the imperfect remedy\nis always to fly from the last place where it has been experienced.\nFling Paris back into the distance, then, exchanging it for endless\navenues and cross-avenues of wintry trees! And, when next beheld, let\nit be some leagues away, with the Gate of the Star a white speck\nglittering in the sun, and the city a mere mound in a plain\u2014two dark\nsquare towers rising out of it, and light and shadow descending on it\naslant, like the angels in Jacob\u2019s dream!\n\nSir Luigi is generally in a complacent state, and rarely bored.\nWhen he has nothing else to do, he can always contemplate his own\ngreatness. It is a considerable advantage to a man to have so\ninexhaustible a subject. After reading his letters, he leans back in\nhis corner of the carriage and generally reviews his importance to\nsociety.\n\n\u201cYou have an unusual amount of correspondence this morning?\u201d says my\nGodfrey after a long time. She is fatigued with reading. Has almost read\na page in twenty miles.\n\n\u201cNothing in it, though. Nothing whatever.\u201d\n\n\u201cI saw one of Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s long effusions, I think?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou see everything,\u201d says Sir Luigi with admiration.\n\n\u201cHa!\u201d sighs my Godfrey. \u201cHe is the most tiresome of men!\u201d\n\n\u201cHe sends\u2014I really beg your pardon\u2014he sends,\u201d says Sir Luigi,\nselecting the letter and unfolding it, \u201ca message to you. Our\nstopping to change horses as I came to his postscript drove it out of\nmy memory. I beg you\u2019ll excuse me. He says\u2014\u201d Sir Luigi is so\nlong in taking out his eye-glass and adjusting it that my Godfrey looks\na little irritated. \u201cHe says \u2018In the matter of the right of way\u2014\u2019 I\nbeg your pardon, that\u2019s not the place. He says\u2014yes! Here I have it!\nHe says, \u2018I beg my respectful compliments to my Godfrey, who, I hope,\nhas benefited by the change. Will you do me the favour to mention (as\nit may interest her) that I have something to tell her on her return\nin reference to the person who copied the affidavit in the Chancery\nsuit, which so powerfully stimulated her curiosity. I have seen\nhim.\u2019\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey, leaning forward, looks out of her window.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the message,\u201d observes Sir Luigi.\n\n\u201cI should like to walk a little,\u201d says my Godfrey, still looking out of\nher window.\n\n\u201cWalk?\u201d repeats Sir Luigi in a tone of surprise.\n\n\u201cI should like to walk a little,\u201d says my Godfrey with unmistakable\ndistinctness. \u201cPlease to stop the carriage.\u201d\n\nThe carriage is stopped, the affectionate man alights from the\nrumble, opens the door, and lets down the steps, obedient to an\nimpatient motion of my Godfrey\u2019s hand. My Godfrey alights so quickly and\nwalks away so quickly that Sir Luigi, for all his scrupulous\npoliteness, is unable to assist her, and is left behind. A space of a\nminute or two has elapsed before he comes up with her. She smiles,\nlooks very handsome, takes his arm, lounges with him for a quarter of\na mile, is very much bored, and resumes her seat in the carriage.\n\nThe rattle and clatter continue through the greater part of three\ndays, with more or less of bell-jingling and whip-cracking, and more\nor less plunging of centaurs and bare-backed horses. Their courtly\npoliteness to each other at the hotels where they tarry is the theme\nof general admiration. Though my Lord IS a little aged for my Godfrey,\nsays Madame, the hostess of the Golden Ape, and though he might be\nher amiable father, one can see at a glance that they love each\nother. One observes my Lord with his white hair, standing, hat in\nhand, to help my Godfrey to and from the carriage. One observes my Godfrey,\nhow recognisant of my Lord\u2019s politeness, with an inclination of her\ngracious head and the concession of her so-genteel fingers! It is\nravishing!\n\nThe sea has no appreciation of great men, but knocks them about like\nthe small fry. It is habitually hard upon Sir Luigi, whose\ncountenance it greenly mottles in the manner of sage-cheese and in\nwhose aristocratic system it effects a dismal revolution. It is the\nRadical of Nature to him. Nevertheless, his dignity gets over it\nafter stopping to refit, and he goes on with my Godfrey for Chesney\nWold, lying only one night in London on the way to Lincolnshire.\n\nThrough the same cold sunlight, colder as the day declines, and\nthrough the same sharp wind, sharper as the separate shadows of bare\ntrees gloom together in the woods, and as the Ghost\u2019s Walk, touched\nat the western corner by a pile of fire in the sky, resigns itself to\ncoming night, they drive into the park. The rooks, swinging in their\nlofty houses in the elm-tree avenue, seem to discuss the question of\nthe occupancy of the carriage as it passes underneath, some agreeing\nthat Sir Luigi and my Godfrey are come down, some arguing with\nmalcontents who won\u2019t admit it, now all consenting to consider the\nquestion disposed of, now all breaking out again in violent debate,\nincited by one obstinate and drowsy bird who will persist in putting\nin a last contradictory croak. Leaving them to swing and caw, the\ntravelling chariot rolls on to the house, where fires gleam warmly\nthrough some of the windows, though not through so many as to give an\ninhabited expression to the darkening mass of front. But the\nbrilliant and distinguished circle will soon do that.\n\nMrs. Talon is in attendance and receives Sir Luigi\u2019s\ncustomary shake of the hand with a profound curtsy.\n\n\u201cHow do you do, Mrs. Talon? I am glad to see you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope I have the honour of welcoming you in good health, Sir\nLuigi?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn excellent health, Mrs. Talon.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy Godfrey is looking charmingly well,\u201d says Mrs. Talon with\nanother curtsy.\n\nMy Godfrey signifies, without profuse expenditure of words, that she is\nas wearily well as she can hope to be.\n\nBut Quinn is in the distance, behind the housekeeper; and my Godfrey, who\nhas not subdued the quickness of her observation, whatever else she\nmay have conquered, asks, \u201cWho is that girl?\u201d\n\n\u201cA young scholar of mine, my Godfrey. Quinn.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome here, Quinn!\u201d Godfrey Wayne beckons her, with even an appearance\nof interest. \u201cWhy, do you know how pretty you are, child?\u201d she says,\ntouching her shoulder with her two forefingers.\n\nQuinn, very much abashed, says, \u201cNo, if you please, my Godfrey!\u201d and\nglances up, and glances down, and don\u2019t know where to look, but looks\nall the prettier.\n\n\u201cHow old are you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNineteen, my Godfrey.\u201d\n\n\u201cNineteen,\u201d repeats my Godfrey thoughtfully. \u201cTake care they don\u2019t spoil\nyou by flattery.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my Godfrey.\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey taps her dimpled cheek with the same delicate gloved fingers\nand goes on to the foot of the oak staircase, where Sir Luigi\npauses for her as her knightly escort. A staring old Wayne in a\npanel, as large as life and as dull, looks as if he didn\u2019t know what\nto make of it, which was probably his general state of mind in the\ndays of Queen Elizabeth.\n\nThat evening, in the housekeeper\u2019s room, Quinn can do nothing but\nmurmur Godfrey Wayne\u2019s praises. She is so affable, so graceful, so\nbeautiful, so elegant; has such a sweet voice and such a thrilling\ntouch that Quinn can feel it yet! Mrs. Talon confirms all this,\nnot without personal pride, reserving only the one point of\naffability. Mrs. Talon is not quite sure as to that. Heaven\nforbid that she should say a syllable in dispraise of any member of\nthat excellent family, above all, of my Godfrey, whom the whole world\nadmires; but if my Godfrey would only be \u201ca little more free,\u201d not quite\nso cold and distant, Mrs. Talon thinks she would be more\naffable.\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis almost a pity,\u201d Mrs. Talon adds\u2014only \u201calmost\u201d because it\nborders on impiety to suppose that anything could be better than it\nis, in such an express dispensation as the Wayne affairs\u2014\u201cthat my\nGodfrey has no family. If she had had a daughter now, a grown young\nlady, to interest her, I think she would have had the only kind of\nexcellence she wants.\u201d\n\n\u201cMight not that have made her still more proud, grandmother?\u201d says\nBrett, who has been home and come back again, he is such a good\ngrandson.\n\n\u201cMore and most, my dear,\u201d returns the housekeeper with dignity, \u201care\nwords it\u2019s not my place to use\u2014nor so much as to hear\u2014applied to\nany drawback on my Godfrey.\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, grandmother. But she is proud, is she not?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf she is, she has reason to be. The Wayne family have always\nreason to be.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d says Brett, \u201cit\u2019s to be hoped they line out of their\nprayer-books a certain passage for the common people about pride and\nvainglory. Forgive me, grandmother! Only a joke!\u201d\n\n\u201cSir Luigi and Godfrey Wayne, my dear, are not fit subjects for\njoking.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir Luigi is no joke by any means,\u201d says Brett, \u201cand I humbly ask\nhis pardon. I suppose, grandmother, that even with the family and\ntheir guests down here, there is no objection to my prolonging my\nstay at the Wayne Arms for a day or two, as any other traveller\nmight?\u201d\n\n\u201cSurely, none in the world, child.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am glad of that,\u201d says Brett, \u201cbecause I have an inexpressible\ndesire to extend my knowledge of this beautiful neighbourhood.\u201d\n\nHe happens to glance at Quinn, who looks down and is very shy indeed.\nBut according to the old superstition, it should be Quinn\u2019s ears that\nburn, and not her fresh bright cheeks, for my Godfrey\u2019s maid is holding\nforth about her at this moment with surpassing energy.\n\nMy Godfrey\u2019s maid is a Frenchwoman of two and thirty, from somewhere in\nthe southern country about Avignon and Marseilles, a large-eyed brown\nwoman with black hair who would be handsome but for a certain feline\nmouth and general uncomfortable tightness of face, rendering the jaws\ntoo eager and the skull too prominent. There is something indefinably\nkeen and wan about her anatomy, and she has a watchful way of looking\nout of the corners of her eyes without turning her head which could\nbe pleasantly dispensed with, especially when she is in an ill humour\nand near knives. Through all the good taste of her dress and little\nadornments, these objections so express themselves that she seems to\ngo about like a very neat she-wolf imperfectly tamed. Besides being\naccomplished in all the knowledge appertaining to her post, she is\nalmost an Englishwoman in her acquaintance with the language;\nconsequently, she is in no want of words to shower upon Quinn for\nhaving attracted my Godfrey\u2019s attention, and she pours them out with\nsuch grim ridicule as she sits at dinner that her companion, the\naffectionate man, is rather relieved when she arrives at the spoon\nstage of that performance.\n\nHa, ha, ha! She, Raylan, been in my Godfrey\u2019s service since five years\nand always kept at the distance, and this doll, this puppet,\ncaressed\u2014absolutely caressed\u2014by my Godfrey on the moment of her\narriving at the house! Ha, ha, ha! \u201cAnd do you know how pretty you\nare, child?\u201d \u201cNo, my Godfrey.\u201d You are right there! \u201cAnd how old are\nyou, child! And take care they do not spoil you by flattery, child!\u201d\nOh, how droll! It is the BEST thing altogether.\n\nIn short, it is such an admirable thing that Miles Raylan\ncan\u2019t forget it; but at meals for days afterwards, even among her\ncountrywomen and others attached in like capacity to the troop of\nvisitors, relapses into silent enjoyment of the joke\u2014an enjoyment\nexpressed, in her own convivial manner, by an additional tightness of\nface, thin elongation of compressed lips, and sidewise look, which\nintense appreciation of humour is frequently reflected in my Godfrey\u2019s\nmirrors when my Godfrey is not among them.\n\nAll the mirrors in the house are brought into action now, many of\nthem after a long blank. They reflect handsome faces, simpering\nfaces, youthful faces, faces of threescore and ten that will not\nsubmit to be old; the entire collection of faces that have come to\npass a January week or two at Chesney Wold, and which the fashionable\nintelligence, a mighty hunter before the Lord, hunts with a keen\nscent, from their breaking cover at the Court of St. James\u2019s to their\nbeing run down to death. The place in Lincolnshire is all alive. By\nday guns and voices are heard ringing in the woods, horsemen and\ncarriages enliven the park roads, servants and hangers-on pervade the\nvillage and the Wayne Arms. Seen by night from distant openings in\nthe trees, the row of windows in the long drawing-room, where my\nGodfrey\u2019s picture hangs over the great chimney-piece, is like a row of\njewels set in a black frame. On Sunday the chill little church is\nalmost warmed by so much gallant company, and the general flavour of\nthe Wayne dust is quenched in delicate perfumes.\n\nThe brilliant and distinguished circle comprehends within it no\ncontracted amount of education, sense, courage, honour, beauty, and\nvirtue. Yet there is something a little wrong about it in despite of\nits immense advantages. What can it be?\n\nDandyism? There is no King Aileen the Fourth now (more the pity) to\nset the dandy fashion; there are no clear-starched jack-towel\nneckcloths, no short-waisted coats, no false calves, no stays. There\nare no caricatures, now, of effeminate exquisites so arrayed,\nswooning in opera boxes with excess of delight and being revived by\nother dainty creatures poking long-necked scent-bottles at their\nnoses. There is no beau whom it takes four men at once to shake into\nhis buckskins, or who goes to see all the executions, or who is\ntroubled with the self-reproach of having once consumed a pea. But is\nthere dandyism in the brilliant and distinguished circle\nnotwithstanding, dandyism of a more mischievous sort, that has got\nbelow the surface and is doing less harmless things than\njack-towelling itself and stopping its own digestion, to which no\nrational person need particularly object?\n\nWhy, yes. It cannot be disguised. There ARE at Chesney Wold this\nJanuary week some ladies and gentlemen of the newest fashion, who\nhave set up a dandyism\u2014in religion, for instance. Who in mere\nlackadaisical want of an emotion have agreed upon a little dandy talk\nabout the vulgar wanting faith in things in general, meaning in the\nthings that have been tried and found wanting, as though a low fellow\nshould unaccountably lose faith in a bad shilling after finding it\nout! Who would make the vulgar very picturesque and faithful by\nputting back the hands upon the clock of time and cancelling a few\nhundred years of history.\n\nThere are also ladies and gentlemen of another fashion, not so new,\nbut very elegant, who have agreed to put a smooth glaze on the world\nand to keep down all its realities. For whom everything must be\nlanguid and pretty. Who have found out the perpetual stoppage. Who\nare to rejoice at nothing and be sorry for nothing. Who are not to be\ndisturbed by ideas. On whom even the fine arts, attending in powder\nand walking backward like the Lord Chamberlain, must array themselves\nin the milliners\u2019 and tailors\u2019 patterns of past generations and be\nparticularly careful not to be in earnest or to receive any impress\nfrom the moving age.\n\nThen there is my Lord Boodle, of considerable reputation with his\nparty, who has known what office is and who tells Sir Luigi\nWayne with much gravity, after dinner, that he really does not see\nto what the present age is tending. A debate is not what a debate\nused to be; the House is not what the House used to be; even a\nCabinet is not what it formerly was. He perceives with astonishment\nthat supposing the present government to be overthrown, the limited\nchoice of the Crown, in the formation of a new ministry, would lie\nbetween Lord Coodle and Sir Thomas Doodle\u2014supposing it to be\nimpossible for the Duke of Foodle to act with Goodle, which may be\nassumed to be the case in consequence of the breach arising out of\nthat affair with Hoodle. Then, giving the Home Department and the\nleadership of the House of Commons to Joodle, the Exchequer to\nKoodle, the Colonies to Loodle, and the Foreign Office to Moodle,\nwhat are you to do with Noodle? You can\u2019t offer him the Presidency of\nthe Council; that is reserved for Poodle. You can\u2019t put him in the\nWoods and Forests; that is hardly good enough for Quoodle. What\nfollows? That the country is shipwrecked, lost, and gone to pieces\n(as is made manifest to the patriotism of Sir Luigi Wayne)\nbecause you can\u2019t provide for Noodle!\n\nOn the other hand, the Right Honourable William Buffy, M.P., contends\nacross the table with some one else that the shipwreck of the\ncountry\u2014about which there is no doubt; it is only the manner of it\nthat is in question\u2014is attributable to Cuffy. If you had done with\nCuffy what you ought to have done when he first came into Parliament,\nand had prevented him from going over to Duffy, you would have got\nhim into alliance with Fuffy, you would have had with you the weight\nattaching as a smart debater to Guffy, you would have brought to bear\nupon the elections the wealth of Huffy, you would have got in for\nthree counties Juffy, Kuffy, and Luffy, and you would have\nstrengthened your administration by the official knowledge and the\nbusiness habits of Muffy. All this, instead of being as you now are,\ndependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!\n\nAs to this point, and as to some minor topics, there are differences\nof opinion; but it is perfectly clear to the brilliant and\ndistinguished circle, all round, that nobody is in question but\nBoodle and his retinue, and Buffy and HIS retinue. These are the\ngreat actors for whom the stage is reserved. A People there are, no\ndoubt\u2014a certain large number of supernumeraries, who are to be\noccasionally addressed, and relied upon for shouts and choruses, as\non the theatrical stage; but Boodle and Buffy, their followers and\nfamilies, their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns, are\nthe born first-actors, managers, and leaders, and no others can\nappear upon the scene for ever and ever.\n\nIn this, too, there is perhaps more dandyism at Chesney Wold than the\nbrilliant and distinguished circle will find good for itself in the\nlong run. For it is, even with the stillest and politest circles, as\nwith the circle the necromancer draws around him\u2014very strange\nappearances may be seen in active motion outside. With this\ndifference, that being realities and not phantoms, there is the\ngreater danger of their breaking in.\n\nChesney Wold is quite full anyhow, so full that a burning sense of\ninjury arises in the breasts of ill-lodged ladies\u2019-maids, and is not\nto be extinguished. Only one room is empty. It is a turret chamber of\nthe third order of merit, plainly but comfortably furnished and\nhaving an old-fashioned business air. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s room,\nand is never bestowed on anybody else, for he may come at any time.\nHe is not come yet. It is his quiet habit to walk across the park\nfrom the village in fine weather, to drop into this room as if he had\nnever been out of it since he was last seen there, to request a\nservant to inform Sir Luigi that he is arrived in case he should\nbe wanted, and to appear ten minutes before dinner in the shadow of\nthe library-door. He sleeps in his turret with a complaining\nflag-staff over his head, and has some leads outside on which, any\nfine morning when he is down here, his black figure may be seen\nwalking before breakfast like a larger species of rook.\n\nEvery day before dinner, my Godfrey looks for him in the dusk of the\nlibrary, but he is not there. Every day at dinner, my Godfrey glances\ndown the table for the vacant place that would be waiting to receive\nhim if he had just arrived, but there is no vacant place. Every night\nmy Godfrey casually asks her maid, \u201cIs Mr. Tulkinghorn come?\u201d\n\nEvery night the answer is, \u201cNo, my Godfrey, not yet.\u201d\n\nOne night, while having her hair undressed, my Godfrey loses herself in\ndeep thought after this reply until she sees her own brooding face in\nthe opposite glass, and a pair of black eyes curiously observing her.\n\n\u201cBe so good as to attend,\u201d says my Godfrey then, addressing the\nreflection of Raylan, \u201cto your business. You can contemplate your\nbeauty at another time.\u201d\n\n\u201cPardon! It was your Godfreyship\u2019s beauty.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat,\u201d says my Godfrey, \u201cyou needn\u2019t contemplate at all.\u201d\n\nAt length, one afternoon a little before sunset, when the bright\ngroups of figures which have for the last hour or two enlivened the\nGhost\u2019s Walk are all dispersed and only Sir Luigi and my Godfrey\nremain upon the terrace, Mr. Tulkinghorn appears. He comes towards\nthem at his usual methodical pace, which is never quickened, never\nslackened. He wears his usual expressionless mask\u2014if it be a\nmask\u2014and carries family secrets in every limb of his body and every\ncrease of his dress. Whether his whole soul is devoted to the great\nor whether he yields them nothing beyond the services he sells is his\npersonal secret. He keeps it, as he keeps the secrets of his clients;\nhe is his own client in that matter, and will never betray himself.\n\n\u201cHow do you do, Mr. Tulkinghorn?\u201d says Sir Luigi, giving him his\nhand.\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn is quite well. Sir Luigi is quite well. My Godfrey\nis quite well. All highly satisfactory. The lawyer, with his hands\nbehind him, walks at Sir Luigi\u2019s side along the terrace. My Godfrey\nwalks upon the other side.\n\n\u201cWe expected you before,\u201d says Sir Luigi. A gracious observation.\nAs much as to say, \u201cMr. Tulkinghorn, we remember your existence when\nyou are not here to remind us of it by your presence. We bestow a\nfragment of our minds upon you, sir, you see!\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn, comprehending it, inclines his head and says he is\nmuch obliged.\n\n\u201cI should have come down sooner,\u201d he explains, \u201cbut that I have been\nmuch engaged with those matters in the several suits between yourself\nand Rhea.\u201d\n\n\u201cA man of a very ill-regulated mind,\u201d observes Sir Luigi with\nseverity. \u201cAn extremely dangerous person in any community. A man of a\nvery low character of mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is obstinate,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn.\n\n\u201cIt is natural to such a man to be so,\u201d says Sir Luigi, looking\nmost profoundly obstinate himself. \u201cI am not at all surprised to hear\nit.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe only question is,\u201d pursues the lawyer, \u201cwhether you will give up\nanything.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir,\u201d replies Sir Luigi. \u201cNothing. I give up?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mean anything of importance. That, of course, I know you\nwould not abandon. I mean any minor point.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Tulkinghorn,\u201d returns Sir Luigi, \u201cthere can be no minor\npoint between myself and Mr. Rhea. If I go farther, and observe\nthat I cannot readily conceive how ANY right of mine can be a minor\npoint, I speak not so much in reference to myself as an individual as\nin reference to the family position I have it in charge to maintain.\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head again. \u201cI have now my\ninstructions,\u201d he says. \u201cMr. Rhea will give us a good deal of\ntrouble\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is the character of such a mind, Mr. Tulkinghorn,\u201d Sir Luigi\ninterrupts him, \u201cTO give trouble. An exceedingly ill-conditioned,\nlevelling person. A person who, fifty years ago, would probably have\nbeen tried at the Old Bailey for some demagogue proceeding, and\nseverely punished\u2014if not,\u201d adds Sir Luigi after a moment\u2019s\npause, \u201cif not hanged, drawn, and quartered.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi appears to discharge his stately breast of a burden in\npassing this capital sentence, as if it were the next satisfactory\nthing to having the sentence executed.\n\n\u201cBut night is coming on,\u201d says he, \u201cand my Godfrey will take cold. My\ndear, let us go in.\u201d\n\nAs they turn towards the hall-door, Godfrey Wayne addresses Mr.\nTulkinghorn for the first time.\n\n\u201cYou sent me a message respecting the person whose writing I happened\nto inquire about. It was like you to remember the circumstance; I had\nquite forgotten it. Your message reminded me of it again. I can\u2019t\nimagine what association I had with a hand like that, but I surely\nhad some.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou had some?\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn repeats.\n\n\u201cOh, yes!\u201d returns my Godfrey carelessly. \u201cI think I must have had some.\nAnd did you really take the trouble to find out the writer of that\nactual thing\u2014what is it!\u2014affidavit?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow very odd!\u201d\n\nThey pass into a sombre breakfast-room on the ground floor, lighted\nin the day by two deep windows. It is now twilight. The fire glows\nbrightly on the panelled wall and palely on the window-glass, where,\nthrough the cold reflection of the blaze, the colder landscape\nshudders in the wind and a grey mist creeps along, the only traveller\nbesides the waste of clouds.\n\nMy Godfrey lounges in a great chair in the chimney-corner, and Sir\nLuigi takes another great chair opposite. The lawyer stands\nbefore the fire with his hand out at arm\u2019s length, shading his face.\nHe looks across his arm at my Godfrey.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d he says, \u201cI inquired about the man, and found him. And, what\nis very strange, I found him\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNot to be any out-of-the-way person, I am afraid!\u201d Godfrey Wayne\nlanguidly anticipates.\n\n\u201cI found him dead.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear me!\u201d remonstrated Sir Luigi. Not so much shocked by the\nfact as by the fact of the fact being mentioned.\n\n\u201cI was directed to his lodging\u2014a miserable, poverty-stricken\nplace\u2014and I found him dead.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou will excuse me, Mr. Tulkinghorn,\u201d observes Sir Luigi. \u201cI\nthink the less said\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cPray, Sir Luigi, let me hear the story out\u201d (it is my Godfrey\nspeaking). \u201cIt is quite a story for twilight. How very shocking!\nDead?\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn re-asserts it by another inclination of his head.\n\u201cWhether by his own hand\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cUpon my honour!\u201d cries Sir Luigi. \u201cReally!\u201d\n\n\u201cDo let me hear the story!\u201d says my Godfrey.\n\n\u201cWhatever you desire, my dear. But, I must say\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, you mustn\u2019t say! Go on, Mr. Tulkinghorn.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi\u2019s gallantry concedes the point, though he still feels\nthat to bring this sort of squalor among the upper classes is\nreally\u2014really\u2014\n\n\u201cI was about to say,\u201d resumes the lawyer with undisturbed calmness,\n\u201cthat whether he had died by his own hand or not, it was beyond my\npower to tell you. I should amend that phrase, however, by saying\nthat he had unquestionably died of his own act, though whether by his\nown deliberate intention or by mischance can never certainly be\nknown. The coroner\u2019s jury found that he took the poison\naccidentally.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what kind of man,\u201d my Godfrey asks, \u201cwas this deplorable creature?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery difficult to say,\u201d returns the lawyer, shaking his head. \u201cHe\nhad lived so wretchedly and was so neglected, with his gipsy colour\nand his wild black hair and beard, that I should have considered him\nthe commonest of the common. The surgeon had a notion that he had\nonce been something better, both in appearance and condition.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat did they call the wretched being?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey called him what he had called himself, but no one knew his\nname.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot even any one who had attended on him?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo one had attended on him. He was found dead. In fact, I found\nhim.\u201d\n\n\u201cWithout any clue to anything more?\u201d\n\n\u201cWithout any; there was,\u201d says the lawyer meditatively, \u201can old\nportmanteau, but\u2014No, there were no papers.\u201d\n\nDuring the utterance of every word of this short dialogue, Godfrey\nWayne and Mr. Tulkinghorn, without any other alteration in their\ncustomary deportment, have looked very steadily at one another\u2014as\nwas natural, perhaps, in the discussion of so unusual a subject. Sir\nLuigi has looked at the fire, with the general expression of the\nWayne on the staircase. The story being told, he renews his stately\nprotest, saying that as it is quite clear that no association in my\nGodfrey\u2019s mind can possibly be traceable to this poor wretch (unless he\nwas a begging-letter writer), he trusts to hear no more about a\nsubject so far removed from my Godfrey\u2019s station.\n\n\u201cCertainly, a collection of horrors,\u201d says my Godfrey, gathering up her\nmantles and furs, \u201cbut they interest one for the moment! Have the\nkindness, Mr. Tulkinghorn, to open the door for me.\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn does so with deference and holds it open while she\npasses out. She passes close to him, with her usual fatigued manner\nand insolent grace. They meet again at dinner\u2014again, next\nday\u2014again, for many days in succession. Godfrey Wayne is always the\nsame exhausted deity, surrounded by worshippers, and terribly liable\nto be bored to death, even while presiding at her own shrine. Mr.\nTulkinghorn is always the same speechless repository of noble\nconfidences, so oddly out of place and yet so perfectly at home. They\nappear to take as little note of one another as any two people\nenclosed within the same walls could. But whether each evermore\nwatches and suspects the other, evermore mistrustful of some great\nreservation; whether each is evermore prepared at all points for the\nother, and never to be taken unawares; what each would give to know\nhow much the other knows\u2014all this is hidden, for the time, in their\nown hearts.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nPaulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nWe held many consultations about what Celise was to be, first\nwithout Mr. Ashton, as he had requested, and afterwards with him,\nbut it was a long time before we seemed to make progress. Celise\nsaid he was ready for anything. When Mr. Ashton doubted whether he\nmight not already be too old to enter the Navy, Celise said he had\nthought of that, and perhaps he was. When Mr. Ashton asked him what\nhe thought of the Army, Celise said he had thought of that, too, and\nit wasn\u2019t a bad idea. When Mr. Ashton advised him to try and decide\nwithin himself whether his old preference for the sea was an ordinary\nboyish inclination or a strong impulse, Celise answered, Well he\nreally HAD tried very often, and he couldn\u2019t make out.\n\n\u201cHow much of this indecision of character,\u201d Mr. Ashton said to me,\n\u201cis chargeable on that incomprehensible heap of uncertainty and\nprocrastination on which he has been thrown from his birth, I don\u2019t\npretend to say; but that Chancery, among its other sins, is\nresponsible for some of it, I can plainly see. It has engendered or\nconfirmed in him a habit of putting off\u2014and trusting to this, that,\nand the other chance, without knowing what chance\u2014and dismissing\neverything as unsettled, uncertain, and confused. The character of\nmuch older and steadier people may be even changed by the\ncircumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a\nboy\u2019s, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences and\nescape them.\u201d\n\nI felt this to be true; though if I may venture to mention what I\nthought besides, I thought it much to be regretted that Celise\u2019s\neducation had not counteracted those influences or directed his\ncharacter. He had been eight years at a public school and had learnt,\nI understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts in the most\nadmirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody\u2019s\nbusiness to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings\nlay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to HIM. HE had been adapted to\nthe verses and had learnt the art of making them to such perfection\nthat if he had remained at school until he was of age, I suppose he\ncould only have gone on making them over and over again unless he had\nenlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I\nhad no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and\nvery sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always\nremembered all through life, I did doubt whether Celise would not\nhave profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his\nstudying them quite so much.\n\nTo be sure, I knew nothing of the subject and do not even now know\nwhether the young gentlemen of classic Rome or Greece made verses to\nthe same extent\u2014or whether the young gentlemen of any country ever\ndid.\n\n\u201cI haven\u2019t the least idea,\u201d said Celise, musing, \u201cwhat I had better\nbe. Except that I am quite sure I don\u2019t want to go into the Church,\nit\u2019s a toss-up.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have no inclination in Mr. Carly\u2019s way?\u201d suggested Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know that, sir!\u201d replied Celise. \u201cI am fond of boating.\nArticled clerks go a good deal on the water. It\u2019s a capital\nprofession!\u201d\n\n\u201cSurgeon\u2014\u201d suggested Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the thing, sir!\u201d cried Celise.\n\nI doubt if he had ever once thought of it before.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the thing, sir,\u201d repeated Celise with the greatest\nenthusiasm. \u201cWe have got it at last. M.R.C.S.!\u201d\n\nHe was not to be laughed out of it, though he laughed at it heartily.\nHe said he had chosen his profession, and the more he thought of it,\nthe more he felt that his destiny was clear; the art of healing was\nthe art of all others for him. Mistrusting that he only came to this\nconclusion because, having never had much chance of finding out for\nhimself what he was fitted for and having never been guided to the\ndiscovery, he was taken by the newest idea and was glad to get rid of\nthe trouble of consideration, I wondered whether the Latin verses\noften ended in this or whether Celise\u2019s was a solitary case.\n\nMr. Ashton took great pains to talk with him seriously and to put\nit to his good sense not to deceive himself in so important a matter.\nCelise was a little grave after these interviews, but invariably\ntold Ada and me that it was all right, and then began to talk about\nsomething else.\n\n\u201cBy heaven!\u201d cried Mr. Rhea, who interested himself strongly in\nthe subject\u2014though I need not say that, for he could do nothing\nweakly; \u201cI rejoice to find a young gentleman of spirit and gallantry\ndevoting himself to that noble profession! The more spirit there is\nin it, the better for mankind and the worse for those mercenary\ntask-masters and low tricksters who delight in putting that\nillustrious art at a disadvantage in the world. By all that is base\nand despicable,\u201d cried Mr. Rhea, \u201cthe treatment of surgeons\naboard ship is such that I would submit the legs\u2014both legs\u2014of every\nmember of the Admiralty Board to a compound fracture and render it a\ntransportable offence in any qualified practitioner to set them if\nthe system were not wholly changed in eight and forty hours!\u201d\n\n\u201cWouldn\u2019t you give them a week?\u201d asked Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d cried Mr. Rhea firmly. \u201cNot on any consideration! Eight and\nforty hours! As to corporations, parishes, vestry-boards, and similar\ngatherings of jolter-headed clods who assemble to exchange such\nspeeches that, by heaven, they ought to be worked in quicksilver\nmines for the short remainder of their miserable existence, if it\nwere only to prevent their detestable English from contaminating a\nlanguage spoken in the presence of the sun\u2014as to those fellows, who\nmeanly take advantage of the ardour of gentlemen in the pursuit of\nknowledge to recompense the inestimable services of the best years of\ntheir lives, their long study, and their expensive education with\npittances too small for the acceptance of clerks, I would have the\nnecks of every one of them wrung and their skulls arranged in\nSurgeons\u2019 Hall for the contemplation of the whole profession in order\nthat its younger members might understand from actual measurement, in\nearly life, HOW thick skulls may become!\u201d\n\nHe wound up this vehement declaration by looking round upon us with a\nmost agreeable smile and suddenly thundering, \u201cHa, ha, ha!\u201d over and\nover again, until anybody else might have been expected to be quite\nsubdued by the exertion.\n\nAs Celise still continued to say that he was fixed in his choice\nafter repeated periods for consideration had been recommended by Mr.\nAshton and had expired, and he still continued to assure Ada and me\nin the same final manner that it was \u201call right,\u201d it became advisable\nto take Mr. Carly into council. Mr. Carly, therefore, came down to\ndinner one day, and leaned back in his chair, and turned his\neye-glasses over and over, and spoke in a sonorous voice, and did\nexactly what I remembered to have seen him do when I was a little\ngirl.\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Mr. Carly. \u201cYes. Well! A very good profession, Mr.\nAshton, a very good profession.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe course of study and preparation requires to be diligently\npursued,\u201d observed my guardian with a glance at Celise.\n\n\u201cOh, no doubt,\u201d said Mr. Carly. \u201cDiligently.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut that being the case, more or less, with all pursuits that are\nworth much,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cit is not a special consideration\nwhich another choice would be likely to escape.\u201d\n\n\u201cTruly,\u201d said Mr. Carly. \u201cAnd Mr. Celise Willis, who has so\nmeritoriously acquitted himself in the\u2014shall I say the classic\nshades?\u2014in which his youth had been passed, will, no doubt, apply\nthe habits, if not the principles and practice, of versification in\nthat tongue in which a poet was said (unless I mistake) to be born,\nnot made, to the more eminently practical field of action on which he\nenters.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou may rely upon it,\u201d said Celise in his off-hand manner, \u201cthat I\nshall go at it and do my best.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, Mr. Ashton!\u201d said Mr. Carly, gently nodding his head.\n\u201cReally, when we are assured by Mr. Celise that he means to go at it\nand to do his best,\u201d nodding feelingly and smoothly over those\nexpressions, \u201cI would submit to you that we have only to inquire into\nthe best mode of carrying out the object of his ambition. Now, with\nreference to placing Mr. Celise with some sufficiently eminent\npractitioner. Is there any one in view at present?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo one, Rick, I think?\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cNo one, sir,\u201d said Celise.\n\n\u201cQuite so!\u201d observed Mr. Carly. \u201cAs to situation, now. Is there any\nparticular feeling on that head?\u201d\n\n\u201cN\u2014no,\u201d said Celise.\n\n\u201cQuite so!\u201d observed Mr. Carly again.\n\n\u201cI should like a little variety,\u201d said Celise; \u201cI mean a good range\nof experience.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery requisite, no doubt,\u201d returned Mr. Carly. \u201cI think this may be\neasily arranged, Mr. Ashton? We have only, in the first place, to\ndiscover a sufficiently eligible practitioner; and as soon as we make\nour want\u2014and shall I add, our ability to pay a premium?\u2014known, our\nonly difficulty will be in the selection of one from a large number.\nWe have only, in the second place, to observe those little\nformalities which are rendered necessary by our time of life and our\nbeing under the guardianship of the court. We shall soon be\u2014shall I\nsay, in Mr. Celise\u2019s own light-hearted manner, \u2018going at it\u2019\u2014to our\nheart\u2019s content. It is a coincidence,\u201d said Mr. Carly with a tinge of\nmelancholy in his smile, \u201cone of those coincidences which may or may\nnot require an explanation beyond our present limited faculties, that\nI have a cousin in the medical profession. He might be deemed\neligible by you and might be disposed to respond to this proposal. I\ncan answer for him as little as for you, but he MIGHT!\u201d\n\nAs this was an opening in the prospect, it was arranged that Mr.\nCarly should see his cousin. And as Mr. Ashton had before proposed\nto take us to London for a few weeks, it was settled next day that we\nshould make our visit at once and combine Celise\u2019s business with it.\n\nMr. Rhea leaving us within a week, we took up our abode at a\ncheerful lodging near Oxford Street over an upholsterer\u2019s shop.\nLondon was a great wonder to us, and we were out for hours and hours\nat a time, seeing the sights, which appeared to be less capable of\nexhaustion than we were. We made the round of the principal theatres,\ntoo, with great delight, and saw all the plays that were worth\nseeing. I mention this because it was at the theatre that I began to\nbe made uncomfortable again by Mr. Jarrett.\n\nI was sitting in front of the box one night with Ada, and Celise was\nin the place he liked best, behind Ada\u2019s chair, when, happening to\nlook down into the pit, I saw Mr. Jarrett, with his hair flattened down\nupon his head and woe depicted in his face, looking up at me. I felt\nall through the performance that he never looked at the actors but\nconstantly looked at me, and always with a carefully prepared\nexpression of the deepest misery and the profoundest dejection.\n\nIt quite spoiled my pleasure for that night because it was so very\nembarrassing and so very ridiculous. But from that time forth, we\nnever went to the play without my seeing Mr. Jarrett in the pit, always\nwith his hair straight and flat, his shirt-collar turned down, and a\ngeneral feebleness about him. If he were not there when we went in,\nand I began to hope he would not come and yielded myself for a little\nwhile to the interest of the scene, I was certain to encounter his\nlanguishing eyes when I least expected it and, from that time, to be\nquite sure that they were fixed upon me all the evening.\n\nI really cannot express how uneasy this made me. If he would only\nhave brushed up his hair or turned up his collar, it would have been\nbad enough; but to know that that absurd figure was always gazing at\nme, and always in that demonstrative state of despondency, put such a\nconstraint upon me that I did not like to laugh at the play, or to\ncry at it, or to move, or to speak. I seemed able to do nothing\nnaturally. As to escaping Mr. Jarrett by going to the back of the box,\nI could not bear to do that because I knew Celise and Ada relied on\nhaving me next them and that they could never have talked together so\nhappily if anybody else had been in my place. So there I sat, not\nknowing where to look\u2014for wherever I looked, I knew Mr. Jarrett\u2019s eyes\nwere following me\u2014and thinking of the dreadful expense to which this\nyoung man was putting himself on my account.\n\nSometimes I thought of telling Mr. Ashton. Then I feared that the\nyoung man would lose his situation and that I might ruin him.\nSometimes I thought of confiding in Celise, but was deterred by the\npossibility of his fighting Mr. Jarrett and giving him black eyes.\nSometimes I thought, should I frown at him or shake my head. Then I\nfelt I could not do it. Sometimes I considered whether I should write\nto his mother, but that ended in my being convinced that to open a\ncorrespondence would be to make the matter worse. I always came to\nthe conclusion, finally, that I could do nothing. Mr. Jarrett\u2019s\nperseverance, all this time, not only produced him regularly at any\ntheatre to which we went, but caused him to appear in the crowd as we\nwere coming out, and even to get up behind our fly\u2014where I am sure I\nsaw him, two or three times, struggling among the most dreadful\nspikes. After we got home, he haunted a post opposite our house. The\nupholsterer\u2019s where we lodged being at the corner of two streets, and\nmy bedroom window being opposite the post, I was afraid to go near\nthe window when I went upstairs, lest I should see him (as I did one\nmoonlight night) leaning against the post and evidently catching\ncold. If Mr. Jarrett had not been, fortunately for me, engaged in the\ndaytime, I really should have had no rest from him.\n\nWhile we were making this round of gaieties, in which Mr. Jarrett so\nextraordinarily participated, the business which had helped to bring\nus to town was not neglected. Mr. Carly\u2019s cousin was a Mr. Bayham\nTimmy, who had a good practice at Chelsea and attended a large\npublic institution besides. He was quite willing to receive Celise\ninto his house and to superintend his studies, and as it seemed that\nthose could be pursued advantageously under Mr. Timmy\u2019s roof, and\nMr. Timmy liked Celise, and as Celise said he liked Mr. Timmy\n\u201cwell enough,\u201d an agreement was made, the Lord Chancellor\u2019s consent\nwas obtained, and it was all settled.\n\nOn the day when matters were concluded between Celise and Mr.\nTimmy, we were all under engagement to dine at Mr. Timmy\u2019s house.\nWe were to be \u201cmerely a family party,\u201d Mrs. Timmy\u2019s note said; and\nwe found no lady there but Mrs. Timmy herself. She was surrounded in\nthe drawing-room by various objects, indicative of her painting a\nlittle, playing the piano a little, playing the guitar a little,\nplaying the harp a little, singing a little, working a little,\nreading a little, writing poetry a little, and botanizing a little.\nShe was a lady of about fifty, I should think, youthfully dressed,\nand of a very fine complexion. If I add to the little list of her\naccomplishments that she rouged a little, I do not mean that there\nwas any harm in it.\n\nMr. Bayham Timmy himself was a pink, fresh-faced, crisp-looking\ngentleman with a weak voice, white teeth, light hair, and surprised\neyes, some years younger, I should say, than Mrs. Bayham Timmy. He\nadmired her exceedingly, but principally, and to begin with, on the\ncurious ground (as it seemed to us) of her having had three husbands.\nWe had barely taken our seats when he said to Mr. Ashton quite\ntriumphantly, \u201cYou would hardly suppose that I am Mrs. Bayham\nTimmy\u2019s third!\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed?\u201d said Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cHer third!\u201d said Mr. Timmy. \u201cMrs. Bayham Timmy has not the\nappearance, Miss Robin, of a lady who has had two former\nhusbands?\u201d\n\nI said \u201cNot at all!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd most remarkable men!\u201d said Mr. Timmy in a tone of confidence.\n\u201cCaptain Swosser of the Royal Navy, who was Mrs. Timmy\u2019s first\nhusband, was a very distinguished officer indeed. The name of\nProfessor Dingo, my immediate predecessor, is one of European\nreputation.\u201d\n\nMrs. Timmy overheard him and smiled.\n\n\u201cYes, my dear!\u201d Mr. Timmy replied to the smile, \u201cI was observing to\nMr. Ashton and Miss Robin that you had had two former\nhusbands\u2014both very distinguished men. And they found it, as people\ngenerally do, difficult to believe.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was barely twenty,\u201d said Mrs. Timmy, \u201cwhen I married Captain\nSwosser of the Royal Navy. I was in the Mediterranean with him; I am\nquite a sailor. On the twelfth anniversary of my wedding-day, I\nbecame the wife of Professor Dingo.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf European reputation,\u201d added Mr. Timmy in an undertone.\n\n\u201cAnd when Mr. Timmy and myself were married,\u201d pursued Mrs. Timmy,\n\u201cwe were married on the same day of the year. I had become attached\nto the day.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo that Mrs. Timmy has been married to three husbands\u2014two of them\nhighly distinguished men,\u201d said Mr. Timmy, summing up the facts,\n\u201cand each time upon the twenty-first of March at eleven in the\nforenoon!\u201d\n\nWe all expressed our admiration.\n\n\u201cBut for Mr. Timmy\u2019s modesty,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cI would take\nleave to correct him and say three distinguished men.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, Mr. Ashton! What I always tell him!\u201d observed Mrs.\nTimmy.\n\n\u201cAnd, my dear,\u201d said Mr. Timmy, \u201cwhat do I always tell you? That\nwithout any affectation of disparaging such professional distinction\nas I may have attained (which our friend Mr. Willis will have many\nopportunities of estimating), I am not so weak\u2014no, really,\u201d said Mr.\nTimmy to us generally, \u201cso unreasonable\u2014as to put my reputation on\nthe same footing with such first-rate men as Captain Swosser and\nProfessor Dingo. Perhaps you may be interested, Mr. Ashton,\u201d\ncontinued Mr. Bayham Timmy, leading the way into the next\ndrawing-room, \u201cin this portrait of Captain Swosser. It was taken on\nhis return home from the African station, where he had suffered from\nthe fever of the country. Mrs. Timmy considers it too yellow. But\nit\u2019s a very fine head. A very fine head!\u201d\n\nWe all echoed, \u201cA very fine head!\u201d\n\n\u201cI feel when I look at it,\u201d said Mr. Timmy, \u201c\u2018that\u2019s a man I should\nlike to have seen!\u2019 It strikingly bespeaks the first-class man that\nCaptain Swosser pre-eminently was. On the other side, Professor\nDingo. I knew him well\u2014attended him in his last illness\u2014a speaking\nlikeness! Over the piano, Mrs. Bayham Timmy when Mrs. Swosser. Over\nthe sofa, Mrs. Bayham Timmy when Mrs. Dingo. Of Mrs. Bayham Timmy\nIN ESSE, I possess the original and have no copy.\u201d\n\nDinner was now announced, and we went downstairs. It was a very\ngenteel entertainment, very handsomely served. But the captain and\nthe professor still ran in Mr. Timmy\u2019s head, and as Ada and I had\nthe honour of being under his particular care, we had the full\nbenefit of them.\n\n\u201cWater, Miss Robin? Allow me! Not in that tumbler, pray. Bring me\nthe professor\u2019s goblet, James!\u201d\n\nAda very much admired some artificial flowers under a glass.\n\n\u201cAstonishing how they keep!\u201d said Mr. Timmy. \u201cThey were presented to\nMrs. Bayham Timmy when she was in the Mediterranean.\u201d\n\nHe invited Mr. Ashton to take a glass of claret.\n\n\u201cNot that claret!\u201d he said. \u201cExcuse me! This is an occasion, and ON\nan occasion I produce some very special claret I happen to have.\n(James, Captain Swosser\u2019s wine!) Mr. Ashton, this is a wine that\nwas imported by the captain, we will not say how many years ago. You\nwill find it very curious. My dear, I shall be happy to take some of\nthis wine with you. (Captain Swosser\u2019s claret to your mistress,\nJames!) My love, your health!\u201d\n\nAfter dinner, when we ladies retired, we took Mrs. Timmy\u2019s first and\nsecond husband with us. Mrs. Timmy gave us in the drawing-room a\nbiographical sketch of the life and services of Captain Swosser\nbefore his marriage and a more minute account of him dating from the\ntime when he fell in love with her at a ball on board the Crippler,\ngiven to the officers of that ship when she lay in Plymouth Harbour.\n\n\u201cThe dear old Crippler!\u201d said Mrs. Timmy, shaking her head. \u201cShe was\na noble vessel. Trim, ship-shape, all a taunto, as Captain Swosser\nused to say. You must excuse me if I occasionally introduce a\nnautical expression; I was quite a sailor once. Captain Swosser loved\nthat craft for my sake. When she was no longer in commission, he\nfrequently said that if he were rich enough to buy her old hulk, he\nwould have an inscription let into the timbers of the quarter-deck\nwhere we stood as partners in the dance to mark the spot where he\nfell\u2014raked fore and aft (Captain Swosser used to say) by the fire\nfrom my tops. It was his naval way of mentioning my eyes.\u201d\n\nMrs. Timmy shook her head, sighed, and looked in the glass.\n\n\u201cIt was a great change from Captain Swosser to Professor Dingo,\u201d she\nresumed with a plaintive smile. \u201cI felt it a good deal at first. Such\nan entire revolution in my mode of life! But custom, combined with\nscience\u2014particularly science\u2014inured me to it. Being the professor\u2019s\nsole companion in his botanical excursions, I almost forgot that I\nhad ever been afloat, and became quite learned. It is singular that\nthe professor was the antipodes of Captain Swosser and that Mr.\nTimmy is not in the least like either!\u201d\n\nWe then passed into a narrative of the deaths of Captain Swosser and\nProfessor Dingo, both of whom seem to have had very bad complaints.\nIn the course of it, Mrs. Timmy signified to us that she had never\nmadly loved but once and that the object of that wild affection,\nnever to be recalled in its fresh enthusiasm, was Captain Swosser.\nThe professor was yet dying by inches in the most dismal manner, and\nMrs. Timmy was giving us imitations of his way of saying, with great\ndifficulty, \u201cWhere is Laura? Let Laura give me my toast and water!\u201d\nwhen the entrance of the gentlemen consigned him to the tomb.\n\nNow, I observed that evening, as I had observed for some days past,\nthat Ada and Celise were more than ever attached to each other\u2019s\nsociety, which was but natural, seeing that they were going to be\nseparated so soon. I was therefore not very much surprised when we\ngot home, and Ada and I retired upstairs, to find Ada more silent\nthan usual, though I was not quite prepared for her coming into my\narms and beginning to speak to me, with her face hidden.\n\n\u201cMy darling Paulina!\u201d murmured Ada. \u201cI have a great secret to tell\nyou!\u201d\n\nA mighty secret, my pretty one, no doubt!\n\n\u201cWhat is it, Ada?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Paulina, you would never guess!\u201d\n\n\u201cShall I try to guess?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cOh, no! Don\u2019t! Pray don\u2019t!\u201d cried Ada, very much startled by the\nidea of my doing so.\n\n\u201cNow, I wonder who it can be about?\u201d said I, pretending to consider.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s about\u2014\u201d said Ada in a whisper. \u201cIt\u2019s about\u2014my cousin\nCelise!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, my own!\u201d said I, kissing her bright hair, which was all I\ncould see. \u201cAnd what about him?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Paulina, you would never guess!\u201d\n\nIt was so pretty to have her clinging to me in that way, hiding her\nface, and to know that she was not crying in sorrow but in a little\nglow of joy, and pride, and hope, that I would not help her just yet.\n\n\u201cHe says\u2014I know it\u2019s very foolish, we are both so young\u2014but he\nsays,\u201d with a burst of tears, \u201cthat he loves me dearly, Paulina.\u201d\n\n\u201cDoes he indeed?\u201d said I. \u201cI never heard of such a thing! Why, my pet\nof pets, I could have told you that weeks and weeks ago!\u201d\n\nTo see Ada lift up her flushed face in joyful surprise, and hold me\nround the neck, and laugh, and cry, and blush, was so pleasant!\n\n\u201cWhy, my darling,\u201d said I, \u201cwhat a goose you must take me for! Your\ncousin Celise has been loving you as plainly as he could for I don\u2019t\nknow how long!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd yet you never said a word about it!\u201d cried Ada, kissing me.\n\n\u201cNo, my love,\u201d said I. \u201cI waited to be told.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut now I have told you, you don\u2019t think it wrong of me, do you?\u201d\nreturned Ada. She might have coaxed me to say no if I had been the\nhardest-hearted duenna in the world. Not being that yet, I said no\nvery freely.\n\n\u201cAnd now,\u201d said I, \u201cI know the worst of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s not quite the worst of it, Paulina dear!\u201d cried Ada,\nholding me tighter and laying down her face again upon my breast.\n\n\u201cNo?\u201d said I. \u201cNot even that?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, not even that!\u201d said Ada, shaking her head.\n\n\u201cWhy, you never mean to say\u2014\u201d I was beginning in joke.\n\nBut Ada, looking up and smiling through her tears, cried, \u201cYes, I do!\nYou know, you know I do!\u201d And then sobbed out, \u201cWith all my heart I\ndo! With all my whole heart, Paulina!\u201d\n\nI told her, laughing, why I had known that, too, just as well as I\nhad known the other! And we sat before the fire, and I had all the\ntalking to myself for a little while (though there was not much of\nit); and Ada was soon quiet and happy.\n\n\u201cDo you think my cousin Gerardo knows, dear Dame Durden?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cUnless my cousin Gerardo is blind, my pet,\u201d said I, \u201cI should think my\ncousin Gerardo knows pretty well as much as we know.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe want to speak to him before Celise goes,\u201d said Ada timidly, \u201cand\nwe wanted you to advise us, and to tell him so. Perhaps you wouldn\u2019t\nmind Celise\u2019s coming in, Dame Durden?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Celise is outside, is he, my dear?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cI am not quite certain,\u201d returned Ada with a bashful simplicity that\nwould have won my heart if she had not won it long before, \u201cbut I\nthink he\u2019s waiting at the door.\u201d\n\nThere he was, of course. They brought a chair on either side of me,\nand put me between them, and really seemed to have fallen in love\nwith me instead of one another, they were so confiding, and so\ntrustful, and so fond of me. They went on in their own wild way for a\nlittle while\u2014I never stopped them; I enjoyed it too much myself\u2014and\nthen we gradually fell to considering how young they were, and how\nthere must be a lapse of several years before this early love could\ncome to anything, and how it could come to happiness only if it were\nreal and lasting and inspired them with a steady resolution to do\ntheir duty to each other, with constancy, fortitude, and\nperseverance, each always for the other\u2019s sake. Well! Celise said\nthat he would work his fingers to the bone for Ada, and Ada said that\nshe would work her fingers to the bone for Celise, and they called\nme all sorts of endearing and sensible names, and we sat there,\nadvising and talking, half the night. Finally, before we parted, I\ngave them my promise to speak to their cousin Gerardo to-morrow.\n\nSo, when to-morrow came, I went to my guardian after breakfast, in\nthe room that was our town-substitute for the growlery, and told him\nthat I had it in trust to tell him something.\n\n\u201cWell, little woman,\u201d said he, shutting up his book, \u201cif you have\naccepted the trust, there can be no harm in it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope not, guardian,\u201d said I. \u201cI can guarantee that there is no\nsecrecy in it. For it only happened yesterday.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye? And what is it, Paulina?\u201d\n\n\u201cGuardian,\u201d said I, \u201cyou remember the happy night when first we came\ndown to Bleak House? When Ada was singing in the dark room?\u201d\n\nI wished to call to his remembrance the look he had given me then.\nUnless I am much mistaken, I saw that I did so.\n\n\u201cBecause\u2014\u201d said I with a little hesitation.\n\n\u201cYes, my dear!\u201d said he. \u201cDon\u2019t hurry.\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause,\u201d said I, \u201cAda and Celise have fallen in love. And have\ntold each other so.\u201d\n\n\u201cAlready!\u201d cried my guardian, quite astonished.\n\n\u201cYes!\u201d said I. \u201cAnd to tell you the truth, guardian, I rather\nexpected it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe deuce you did!\u201d said he.\n\nHe sat considering for a minute or two, with his smile, at once so\nhandsome and so kind, upon his changing face, and then requested me\nto let them know that he wished to see them. When they came, he\nencircled Ada with one arm in his fatherly way and addressed himself\nto Celise with a cheerful gravity.\n\n\u201cRick,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cI am glad to have won your confidence. I\nhope to preserve it. When I contemplated these relations between us\nfour which have so brightened my life and so invested it with new\ninterests and pleasures, I certainly did contemplate, afar off, the\npossibility of you and your pretty cousin here (don\u2019t be shy, Ada,\ndon\u2019t be shy, my dear!) being in a mind to go through life together.\nI saw, and do see, many reasons to make it desirable. But that was\nafar off, Rick, afar off!\u201d\n\n\u201cWe look afar off, sir,\u201d returned Celise.\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cThat\u2019s rational. Now, hear me, my dears!\nI might tell you that you don\u2019t know your own minds yet, that a\nthousand things may happen to divert you from one another, that it is\nwell this chain of flowers you have taken up is very easily broken,\nor it might become a chain of lead. But I will not do that. Such\nwisdom will come soon enough, I dare say, if it is to come at all. I\nwill assume that a few years hence you will be in your hearts to one\nanother what you are to-day. All I say before speaking to you\naccording to that assumption is, if you DO change\u2014if you DO come to\nfind that you are more commonplace cousins to each other as man and\nwoman than you were as boy and girl (your manhood will excuse me,\nRick!)\u2014don\u2019t be ashamed still to confide in me, for there will be\nnothing monstrous or uncommon in it. I am only your friend and\ndistant kinsman. I have no power over you whatever. But I wish and\nhope to retain your confidence if I do nothing to forfeit it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am very sure, sir,\u201d returned Celise, \u201cthat I speak for Ada too\nwhen I say that you have the strongest power over us both\u2014rooted in\nrespect, gratitude, and affection\u2014strengthening every day.\u201d\n\n\u201cDear cousin Gerardo,\u201d said Ada, on his shoulder, \u201cmy father\u2019s place can\nnever be empty again. All the love and duty I could ever have\nrendered to him is transferred to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome!\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cNow for our assumption. Now we lift our\neyes up and look hopefully at the distance! Rick, the world is before\nyou; and it is most probable that as you enter it, so it will receive\nyou. Trust in nothing but in Providence and your own efforts. Never\nseparate the two, like the heathen waggoner. Constancy in love is a\ngood thing, but it means nothing, and is nothing, without constancy\nin every kind of effort. If you had the abilities of all the great\nmen, past and present, you could do nothing well without sincerely\nmeaning it and setting about it. If you entertain the supposition\nthat any real success, in great things or in small, ever was or could\nbe, ever will or can be, wrested from Fortune by fits and starts,\nleave that wrong idea here or leave your cousin Ada here.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will leave IT here, sir,\u201d replied Celise smiling, \u201cif I brought\nit here just now (but I hope I did not), and will work my way on to\nmy cousin Ada in the hopeful distance.\u201d\n\n\u201cRight!\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cIf you are not to make her happy, why\nshould you pursue her?\u201d\n\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t make her unhappy\u2014no, not even for her love,\u201d retorted\nCelise proudly.\n\n\u201cWell said!\u201d cried Mr. Ashton. \u201cThat\u2019s well said! She remains here,\nin her home with me. Love her, Rick, in your active life, no less\nthan in her home when you revisit it, and all will go well.\nOtherwise, all will go ill. That\u2019s the end of my preaching. I think\nyou and Ada had better take a walk.\u201d\n\nAda tenderly embraced him, and Celise heartily shook hands with him,\nand then the cousins went out of the room, looking back again\ndirectly, though, to say that they would wait for me.\n\nThe door stood open, and we both followed them with our eyes as they\npassed down the adjoining room, on which the sun was shining, and out\nat its farther end. Celise with his head bent, and her hand drawn\nthrough his arm, was talking to her very earnestly; and she looked up\nin his face, listening, and seemed to see nothing else. So young, so\nbeautiful, so full of hope and promise, they went on lightly through\nthe sunlight as their own happy thoughts might then be traversing the\nyears to come and making them all years of brightness. So they passed\naway into the shadow and were gone. It was only a burst of light that\nhad been so radiant. The room darkened as they went out, and the sun\nwas clouded over.\n\n\u201cAm I right, Paulina?\u201d said my guardian when they were gone.\n\nHe was so good and wise to ask ME whether he was right!\n\n\u201cRick may gain, out of this, the quality he wants. Wants, at the core\nof so much that is good!\u201d said Mr. Ashton, shaking his head. \u201cI\nhave said nothing to Ada, Paulina. She has her friend and counsellor\nalways near.\u201d And he laid his hand lovingly upon my head.\n\nI could not help showing that I was a little moved, though I did all\nI could to conceal it.\n\n\u201cTut tut!\u201d said he. \u201cBut we must take care, too, that our little\nwoman\u2019s life is not all consumed in care for others.\u201d\n\n\u201cCare? My dear guardian, I believe I am the happiest creature in the\nworld!\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe so, too,\u201d said he. \u201cBut some one may find out what Paulina\nnever will\u2014that the little woman is to be held in remembrance above\nall other people!\u201d\n\nI have omitted to mention in its place that there was some one else\nat the family dinner party. It was not a lady. It was a gentleman. It\nwas a gentleman of a dark complexion\u2014a young surgeon. He was rather\nreserved, but I thought him very sensible and agreeable. At least,\nAda asked me if I did not, and I said yes.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\n\nDeportment\n\n\nCelise left us on the very next evening to begin his new career, and\ncommitted Ada to my charge with great love for her and great trust in\nme. It touched me then to reflect, and it touches me now, more\nnearly, to remember (having what I have to tell) how they both\nthought of me, even at that engrossing time. I was a part of all\ntheir plans, for the present and the future. I was to write Celise\nonce a week, making my faithful report of Ada, who was to write to\nhim every alternate day. I was to be informed, under his own hand, of\nall his labours and successes; I was to observe how resolute and\npersevering he would be; I was to be Ada\u2019s bridesmaid when they were\nmarried; I was to live with them afterwards; I was to keep all the\nkeys of their house; I was to be made happy for ever and a day.\n\n\u201cAnd if the suit SHOULD make us rich, Paulina\u2014which it may, you\nknow!\u201d said Celise to crown all.\n\nA shade crossed Ada\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cMy dearest Ada,\u201d asked Celise, \u201cwhy not?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt had better declare us poor at once,\u201d said Ada.\n\n\u201cOh! I don\u2019t know about that,\u201d returned Celise, \u201cbut at all events,\nit won\u2019t declare anything at once. It hasn\u2019t declared anything in\nheaven knows how many years.\u201d\n\n\u201cToo true,\u201d said Ada.\n\n\u201cYes, but,\u201d urged Celise, answering what her look suggested rather\nthan her words, \u201cthe longer it goes on, dear cousin, the nearer it\nmust be to a settlement one way or other. Now, is not that\nreasonable?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know best, Celise. But I am afraid if we trust to it, it will\nmake us unhappy.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, my Ada, we are not going to trust to it!\u201d cried Celise gaily.\n\u201cWe know it better than to trust to it. We only say that if it SHOULD\nmake us rich, we have no constitutional objection to being rich. The\ncourt is, by solemn settlement of law, our grim old guardian, and we\nare to suppose that what it gives us (when it gives us anything) is\nour right. It is not necessary to quarrel with our right.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Ada, \u201cbut it may be better to forget all about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well,\u201d cried Celise, \u201cthen we will forget all about it! We\nconsign the whole thing to oblivion. Dame Durden puts on her\napproving face, and it\u2019s done!\u201d\n\n\u201cDame Durden\u2019s approving face,\u201d said I, looking out of the box in\nwhich I was packing his books, \u201cwas not very visible when you called\nit by that name; but it does approve, and she thinks you can\u2019t do\nbetter.\u201d\n\nSo, Celise said there was an end of it, and immediately began, on no\nother foundation, to build as many castles in the air as would man\nthe Great Wall of China. He went away in high spirits. Ada and I,\nprepared to miss him very much, commenced our quieter career.\n\nOn our arrival in London, we had called with Mr. Ashton at Mrs.\nBladen\u2019s but had not been so fortunate as to find her at home. It\nappeared that she had gone somewhere to a tea-drinking and had taken\nMiss Bladen with her. Besides the tea-drinking, there was to be some\nconsiderable speech-making and letter-writing on the general merits\nof the cultivation of coffee, conjointly with natives, at the\nSettlement of Borrioboola-Gha. All this involved, no doubt,\nsufficient active exercise of pen and ink to make her daughter\u2019s part\nin the proceedings anything but a holiday.\n\nIt being now beyond the time appointed for Mrs. Bladen\u2019s return, we\ncalled again. She was in town, but not at home, having gone to Mile\nEnd directly after breakfast on some Borrioboolan business, arising\nout of a society called the East London Branch Aid Ramification. As I\nhad not seen Poppy on the occasion of our last call (when he was not\nto be found anywhere, and when the cook rather thought he must have\nstrolled away with the dustman\u2019s cart), I now inquired for him again.\nThe oyster shells he had been building a house with were still in the\npassage, but he was nowhere discoverable, and the cook supposed that\nhe had \u201cgone after the sheep.\u201d When we repeated, with some surprise,\n\u201cThe sheep?\u201d she said, Oh, yes, on market days he sometimes followed\nthem quite out of town and came back in such a state as never was!\n\nI was sitting at the window with my guardian on the following\nmorning, and Ada was busy writing\u2014of course to Celise\u2014when Miss\nBladen was announced, and entered, leading the identical Poppy, whom\nshe had made some endeavours to render presentable by wiping the dirt\ninto corners of his face and hands and making his hair very wet and\nthen violently frizzling it with her fingers. Everything the dear\nchild wore was either too large for him or too small. Among his other\ncontradictory decorations he had the hat of a bishop and the little\ngloves of a baby. His boots were, on a small scale, the boots of a\nploughman, while his legs, so crossed and recrossed with scratches\nthat they looked like maps, were bare below a very short pair of\nplaid drawers finished off with two frills of perfectly different\npatterns. The deficient buttons on his plaid frock had evidently been\nsupplied from one of Mr. Bladen\u2019s coats, they were so extremely\nbrazen and so much too large. Most extraordinary specimens of\nneedlework appeared on several parts of his dress, where it had been\nhastily mended, and I recognized the same hand on Miss Bladen\u2019s. She\nwas, however, unaccountably improved in her appearance and looked\nvery pretty. She was conscious of poor little Poppy being but a\nfailure after all her trouble, and she showed it as she came in by\nthe way in which she glanced first at him and then at us.\n\n\u201cOh, dear me!\u201d said my guardian. \u201cDue east!\u201d\n\nAda and I gave her a cordial welcome and presented her to Mr.\nAshton, to whom she said as she sat down, \u201cMa\u2019s compliments, and\nshe hopes you\u2019ll excuse her, because she\u2019s correcting proofs of the\nplan. She\u2019s going to put out five thousand new circulars, and she\nknows you\u2019ll be interested to hear that. I have brought one of them\nwith me. Ma\u2019s compliments.\u201d With which she presented it sulkily\nenough.\n\n\u201cThank you,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cI am much obliged to Mrs. Bladen.\nOh, dear me! This is a very trying wind!\u201d\n\nWe were busy with Poppy, taking off his clerical hat, asking him if\nhe remembered us, and so on. Poppy retired behind his elbow at first,\nbut relented at the sight of sponge-cake and allowed me to take him\non my lap, where he sat munching quietly. Mr. Ashton then\nwithdrawing into the temporary growlery, Miss Bladen opened a\nconversation with her usual abruptness.\n\n\u201cWe are going on just as bad as ever in Thavies Inn,\u201d said she. \u201cI\nhave no peace of my life. Talk of Africa! I couldn\u2019t be worse off if\nI was a what\u2019s-his-name\u2014man and a brother!\u201d\n\nI tried to say something soothing.\n\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s of no use, Miss Robin,\u201d exclaimed Miss Bladen, \u201cthough\nI thank you for the kind intention all the same. I know how I am\nused, and I am not to be talked over. YOU wouldn\u2019t be talked over if\nyou were used so. Poppy, go and play at Wild Beasts under the piano!\u201d\n\n\u201cI shan\u2019t!\u201d said Poppy.\n\n\u201cVery well, you ungrateful, naughty, hard-hearted boy!\u201d returned Miss\nBladen with tears in her eyes. \u201cI\u2019ll never take pains to dress you\nany more.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I will go, Viola!\u201d cried Poppy, who was really a good child and\nwho was so moved by his sister\u2019s vexation that he went at once.\n\n\u201cIt seems a little thing to cry about,\u201d said poor Miss Bladen\napologetically, \u201cbut I am quite worn out. I was directing the new\ncirculars till two this morning. I detest the whole thing so that\nthat alone makes my head ache till I can\u2019t see out of my eyes. And\nlook at that poor unfortunate child! Was there ever such a fright as\nhe is!\u201d\n\nPoppy, happily unconscious of the defects in his appearance, sat on\nthe carpet behind one of the legs of the piano, looking calmly out of\nhis den at us while he ate his cake.\n\n\u201cI have sent him to the other end of the room,\u201d observed Miss\nBladen, drawing her chair nearer ours, \u201cbecause I don\u2019t want him to\nhear the conversation. Those little things are so sharp! I was going\nto say, we really are going on worse than ever. Pa will be a bankrupt\nbefore long, and then I hope Ma will be satisfied. There\u2019ll he nobody\nbut Ma to thank for it.\u201d\n\nWe said we hoped Mr. Bladen\u2019s affairs were not in so bad a state as\nthat.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s of no use hoping, though it\u2019s very kind of you,\u201d returned Miss\nBladen, shaking her head. \u201cPa told me only yesterday morning (and\ndreadfully unhappy he is) that he couldn\u2019t weather the storm. I\nshould be surprised if he could. When all our tradesmen send into our\nhouse any stuff they like, and the servants do what they like with\nit, and I have no time to improve things if I knew how, and Ma don\u2019t\ncare about anything, I should like to make out how Pa is to weather\nthe storm. I declare if I was Pa, I\u2019d run away.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear!\u201d said I, smiling. \u201cYour papa, no doubt, considers his\nfamily.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, his family is all very fine, Miss Robin,\u201d replied Miss\nBladen; \u201cbut what comfort is his family to him? His family is\nnothing but bills, dirt, waste, noise, tumbles downstairs, confusion,\nand wretchedness. His scrambling home, from week\u2019s end to week\u2019s end,\nis like one great washing-day\u2014only nothing\u2019s washed!\u201d\n\nMiss Bladen tapped her foot upon the floor and wiped her eyes.\n\n\u201cI am sure I pity Pa to that degree,\u201d she said, \u201cand am so angry with\nMa that I can\u2019t find words to express myself! However, I am not going\nto bear it, I am determined. I won\u2019t be a slave all my life, and I\nwon\u2019t submit to be proposed to by Mr. Quale. A pretty thing, indeed,\nto marry a philanthropist. As if I hadn\u2019t had enough of THAT!\u201d said\npoor Miss Bladen.\n\nI must confess that I could not help feeling rather angry with Mrs.\nBladen myself, seeing and hearing this neglected girl and knowing\nhow much of bitterly satirical truth there was in what she said.\n\n\u201cIf it wasn\u2019t that we had been intimate when you stopped at our\nhouse,\u201d pursued Miss Bladen, \u201cI should have been ashamed to come\nhere to-day, for I know what a figure I must seem to you two. But as\nit is, I made up my mind to call, especially as I am not likely to\nsee you again the next time you come to town.\u201d\n\nShe said this with such great significance that Ada and I glanced at\none another, foreseeing something more.\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d said Miss Bladen, shaking her head. \u201cNot at all likely! I know\nI may trust you two. I am sure you won\u2019t betray me. I am engaged.\u201d\n\n\u201cWithout their knowledge at home?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cWhy, good gracious me, Miss Robin,\u201d she returned, justifying\nherself in a fretful but not angry manner, \u201chow can it be otherwise?\nYou know what Ma is\u2014and I needn\u2019t make poor Pa more miserable by\ntelling HIM.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut would it not be adding to his unhappiness to marry without his\nknowledge or consent, my dear?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Miss Bladen, softening. \u201cI hope not. I should try to make\nhim happy and comfortable when he came to see me, and Poppy and the\nothers should take it in turns to come and stay with me, and they\nshould have some care taken of them then.\u201d\n\nThere was a good deal of affection in poor Viola. She softened more\nand more while saying this and cried so much over the unwonted little\nhome-picture she had raised in her mind that Poppy, in his cave under\nthe piano, was touched, and turned himself over on his back with loud\nlamentations. It was not until I had brought him to kiss his sister,\nand had restored him to his place on my lap, and had shown him that\nViola was laughing (she laughed expressly for the purpose), that we\ncould recall his peace of mind; even then it was for some time\nconditional on his taking us in turns by the chin and smoothing our\nfaces all over with his hand. At last, as his spirits were not equal\nto the piano, we put him on a chair to look out of window; and Miss\nBladen, holding him by one leg, resumed her confidence.\n\n\u201cIt began in your coming to our house,\u201d she said.\n\nWe naturally asked how.\n\n\u201cI felt I was so awkward,\u201d she replied, \u201cthat I made up my mind to be\nimproved in that respect at all events and to learn to dance. I told\nMa I was ashamed of myself, and I must be taught to dance. Ma looked\nat me in that provoking way of hers as if I wasn\u2019t in sight, but I\nwas quite determined to be taught to dance, and so I went to Mr.\nMilena\u2019s Academy in Newman Street.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd was it there, my dear\u2014\u201d I began.\n\n\u201cYes, it was there,\u201d said Viola, \u201cand I am engaged to Mr. Milena.\nThere are two Mr. Milenas, father and son. My Mr. Milena is\nthe son, of course. I only wish I had been better brought up and was\nlikely to make him a better wife, for I am very fond of him.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sorry to hear this,\u201d said I, \u201cI must confess.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know why you should be sorry,\u201d she retorted a little\nanxiously, \u201cbut I am engaged to Mr. Milena, whether or no, and he\nis very fond of me. It\u2019s a secret as yet, even on his side, because\nold Mr. Milena has a share in the connexion and it might break\nhis heart or give him some other shock if he was told of it abruptly.\nOld Mr. Milena is a very gentlemanly man indeed\u2014very\ngentlemanly.\u201d\n\n\u201cDoes his wife know of it?\u201d asked Ada.\n\n\u201cOld Mr. Milena\u2019s wife, Miss Dionne?\u201d returned Miss Bladen,\nopening her eyes. \u201cThere\u2019s no such person. He is a widower.\u201d\n\nWe were here interrupted by Poppy, whose leg had undergone so much on\naccount of his sister\u2019s unconsciously jerking it like a bell-rope\nwhenever she was emphatic that the afflicted child now bemoaned his\nsufferings with a very low-spirited noise. As he appealed to me for\ncompassion, and as I was only a listener, I undertook to hold him.\nMiss Bladen proceeded, after begging Poppy\u2019s pardon with a kiss and\nassuring him that she hadn\u2019t meant to do it.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the state of the case,\u201d said Viola. \u201cIf I ever blame myself,\nI still think it\u2019s Ma\u2019s fault. We are to be married whenever we can,\nand then I shall go to Pa at the office and write to Ma. It won\u2019t\nmuch agitate Ma; I am only pen and ink to HER. One great comfort is,\u201d\nsaid Viola with a sob, \u201cthat I shall never hear of Africa after I am\nmarried. Young Mr. Milena hates it for my sake, and if old Mr.\nMilena knows there is such a place, it\u2019s as much as he does.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was he who was very gentlemanly, I think!\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cVery gentlemanly indeed,\u201d said Viola. \u201cHe is celebrated almost\neverywhere for his deportment.\u201d\n\n\u201cDoes he teach?\u201d asked Ada.\n\n\u201cNo, he don\u2019t teach anything in particular,\u201d replied Viola. \u201cBut his\ndeportment is beautiful.\u201d\n\nViola went on to say with considerable hesitation and reluctance that\nthere was one thing more she wished us to know, and felt we ought to\nknow, and which she hoped would not offend us. It was that she had\nimproved her acquaintance with Miss Daxter, the little crazy old lady,\nand that she frequently went there early in the morning and met her\nlover for a few minutes before breakfast\u2014only for a few minutes. \u201cI\ngo there at other times,\u201d said Viola, \u201cbut Cynthia does not come then.\nYoung Mr. Milena\u2019s name is Cynthia; I wish it wasn\u2019t, because it\nsounds like a dog, but of course he didn\u2019t christen himself. Old Mr.\nMilena had him christened Cynthia in remembrance of the Cynthia\nRegent. Old Mr. Milena adored the Cynthia Regent on account of his\ndeportment. I hope you won\u2019t think the worse of me for having made\nthese little appointments at Miss Daxter\u2019s, where I first went with\nyou, because I like the poor thing for her own sake and I believe she\nlikes me. If you could see young Mr. Milena, I am sure you would\nthink well of him\u2014at least, I am sure you couldn\u2019t possibly think\nany ill of him. I am going there now for my lesson. I couldn\u2019t ask\nyou to go with me, Miss Robin; but if you would,\u201d said Viola, who\nhad said all this earnestly and tremblingly, \u201cI should be very\nglad\u2014very glad.\u201d\n\nIt happened that we had arranged with my guardian to go to Miss\nDaxter\u2019s that day. We had told him of our former visit, and our\naccount had interested him; but something had always happened to\nprevent our going there again. As I trusted that I might have\nsufficient influence with Miss Bladen to prevent her taking any very\nrash step if I fully accepted the confidence she was so willing to\nplace in me, poor girl, I proposed that she and I and Poppy should go\nto the academy and afterwards meet my guardian and Ada at Miss\nDaxter\u2019s, whose name I now learnt for the first time. This was on\ncondition that Miss Bladen and Poppy should come back with us to\ndinner. The last article of the agreement being joyfully acceded to\nby both, we smartened Poppy up a little with the assistance of a few\npins, some soap and water, and a hair-brush, and went out, bending\nour steps towards Newman Street, which was very near.\n\nI found the academy established in a sufficiently dingy house at the\ncorner of an archway, with busts in all the staircase windows. In the\nsame house there were also established, as I gathered from the plates\non the door, a drawing-master, a coal-merchant (there was, certainly,\nno room for his coals), and a lithographic artist. On the plate\nwhich, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I\nread, MR. MILENA. The door was open, and the hall was blocked up\nby a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in\ncases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the\ndaylight. Miss Bladen informed me that the academy had been lent,\nlast night, for a concert.\n\nWe went upstairs\u2014it had been quite a fine house once, when it was\nanybody\u2019s business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody\u2019s business\nto smoke in it all day\u2014and into Mr. Milena\u2019s great room, which\nwas built out into a mews at the back and was lighted by a skylight.\nIt was a bare, resounding room smelling of stables, with cane forms\nalong the walls, and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with\npainted lyres and little cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed\nto be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed\nautumn leaves. Several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or\nfourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and\nI was looking among them for their instructor when Viola, pinching my\narm, repeated the ceremony of introduction. \u201cMiss Robin, Mr.\nCynthia Milena!\u201d\n\nI curtsied to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance with\nflaxen hair parted in the middle and curling at the ends all round\nhis head. He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a\nkit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand. His\nlittle dancing-shoes were particularly diminutive, and he had a\nlittle innocent, feminine manner which not only appealed to me in an\namiable way, but made this singular effect upon me, that I received\nthe impression that he was like his mother and that his mother had\nnot been much considered or well used.\n\n\u201cI am very happy to see Miss Bladen\u2019s friend,\u201d he said, bowing low\nto me. \u201cI began to fear,\u201d with timid tenderness, \u201cas it was past the\nusual time, that Miss Bladen was not coming.\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg you will have the goodness to attribute that to me, who have\ndetained her, and to receive my excuses, sir,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cOh, dear!\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cAnd pray,\u201d I entreated, \u201cdo not allow me to be the cause of any more\ndelay.\u201d\n\nWith that apology I withdrew to a seat between Poppy (who, being well\nused to it, had already climbed into a corner place) and an old lady\nof a censorious countenance whose two nieces were in the class and\nwho was very indignant with Poppy\u2019s boots. Cynthia Milena then\ntinkled the strings of his kit with his fingers, and the young ladies\nstood up to dance. Just then there appeared from a side-door old Mr.\nMilena, in the full lustre of his deportment.\n\nHe was a fat old gentleman with a false complexion, false teeth,\nfalse whiskers, and a wig. He had a fur collar, and he had a padded\nbreast to his coat, which only wanted a star or a broad blue ribbon\nto be complete. He was pinched in, and swelled out, and got up, and\nstrapped down, as much as he could possibly bear. He had such a\nneckcloth on (puffing his very eyes out of their natural shape), and\nhis chin and even his ears so sunk into it, that it seemed as though\nhe must inevitably double up if it were cast loose. He had under his\narm a hat of great size and weight, shelving downward from the crown\nto the brim, and in his hand a pair of white gloves with which he\nflapped it as he stood poised on one leg in a high-shouldered,\nround-elbowed state of elegance not to be surpassed. He had a cane,\nhe had an eye-glass, he had a snuff-box, he had rings, he had\nwristbands, he had everything but any touch of nature; he was not\nlike youth, he was not like age, he was not like anything in the\nworld but a model of deportment.\n\n\u201cFather! A visitor. Miss Bladen\u2019s friend, Miss Robin.\u201d\n\n\u201cDistinguished,\u201d said Mr. Milena, \u201cby Miss Robin\u2019s presence.\u201d\nAs he bowed to me in that tight state, I almost believe I saw creases\ncome into the whites of his eyes.\n\n\u201cMy father,\u201d said the son, aside, to me with quite an affecting\nbelief in him, \u201cis a celebrated character. My father is greatly\nadmired.\u201d\n\n\u201cGo on, Cynthia! Go on!\u201d said Mr. Milena, standing with his back\nto the fire and waving his gloves condescendingly. \u201cGo on, my son!\u201d\n\nAt this command, or by this gracious permission, the lesson went on.\nCynthia Milena sometimes played the kit, dancing; sometimes played\nthe piano, standing; sometimes hummed the tune with what little\nbreath he could spare, while he set a pupil right; always\nconscientiously moved with the least proficient through every step\nand every part of the figure; and never rested for an instant. His\ndistinguished father did nothing whatever but stand before the fire,\na model of deportment.\n\n\u201cAnd he never does anything else,\u201d said the old lady of the\ncensorious countenance. \u201cYet would you believe that it\u2019s HIS name on\nthe door-plate?\u201d\n\n\u201cHis son\u2019s name is the same, you know,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cHe wouldn\u2019t let his son have any name if he could take it from him,\u201d\nreturned the old lady. \u201cLook at the son\u2019s dress!\u201d It certainly was\nplain\u2014threadbare\u2014almost shabby. \u201cYet the father must be garnished\nand tricked out,\u201d said the old lady, \u201cbecause of his deportment. I\u2019d\ndeport him! Transport him would be better!\u201d\n\nI felt curious to know more concerning this person. I asked, \u201cDoes he\ngive lessons in deportment now?\u201d\n\n\u201cNow!\u201d returned the old lady shortly. \u201cNever did.\u201d\n\nAfter a moment\u2019s consideration, I suggested that perhaps fencing had\nbeen his accomplishment.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe he can fence at all, ma\u2019am,\u201d said the old lady.\n\nI looked surprised and inquisitive. The old lady, becoming more and\nmore incensed against the master of deportment as she dwelt upon the\nsubject, gave me some particulars of his career, with strong\nassurances that they were mildly stated.\n\nHe had married a meek little dancing-mistress, with a tolerable\nconnexion (having never in his life before done anything but deport\nhimself), and had worked her to death, or had, at the best, suffered\nher to work herself to death, to maintain him in those expenses which\nwere indispensable to his position. At once to exhibit his deportment\nto the best models and to keep the best models constantly before\nhimself, he had found it necessary to frequent all public places of\nfashionable and lounging resort, to be seen at Brighton and elsewhere\nat fashionable times, and to lead an idle life in the very best\nclothes. To enable him to do this, the affectionate little\ndancing-mistress had toiled and laboured and would have toiled and\nlaboured to that hour if her strength had lasted so long. For the\nmainspring of the story was that in spite of the man\u2019s absorbing\nselfishness, his wife (overpowered by his deportment) had, to the\nlast, believed in him and had, on her death-bed, in the most moving\nterms, confided him to their son as one who had an inextinguishable\nclaim upon him and whom he could never regard with too much pride and\ndeference. The son, inheriting his mother\u2019s belief, and having the\ndeportment always before him, had lived and grown in the same faith,\nand now, at thirty years of age, worked for his father twelve hours a\nday and looked up to him with veneration on the old imaginary\npinnacle.\n\n\u201cThe airs the fellow gives himself!\u201d said my informant, shaking her\nhead at old Mr. Milena with speechless indignation as he drew on\nhis tight gloves, of course unconscious of the homage she was\nrendering. \u201cHe fully believes he is one of the aristocracy! And he is\nso condescending to the son he so egregiously deludes that you might\nsuppose him the most virtuous of parents. Oh!\u201d said the old lady,\napostrophizing him with infinite vehemence. \u201cI could bite you!\u201d\n\nI could not help being amused, though I heard the old lady out with\nfeelings of real concern. It was difficult to doubt her with the\nfather and son before me. What I might have thought of them without\nthe old lady\u2019s account, or what I might have thought of the old\nlady\u2019s account without them, I cannot say. There was a fitness of\nthings in the whole that carried conviction with it.\n\nMy eyes were yet wandering, from young Mr. Milena working so\nhard, to old Mr. Milena deporting himself so beautifully, when\nthe latter came ambling up to me and entered into conversation.\n\nHe asked me, first of all, whether I conferred a charm and a\ndistinction on London by residing in it? I did not think it necessary\nto reply that I was perfectly aware I should not do that, in any\ncase, but merely told him where I did reside.\n\n\u201cA lady so graceful and accomplished,\u201d he said, kissing his\nright glove and afterwards extending it towards the pupils,\n\u201cwill look leniently on the deficiencies here. We do our best to\npolish\u2014polish\u2014polish!\u201d\n\nHe sat down beside me, taking some pains to sit on the form, I\nthought, in imitation of the print of his illustrious model on the\nsofa. And really he did look very like it.\n\n\u201cTo polish\u2014polish\u2014polish!\u201d he repeated, taking a pinch of snuff and\ngently fluttering his fingers. \u201cBut we are not, if I may say so to\none formed to be graceful both by Nature and Art\u2014\u201d with the\nhigh-shouldered bow, which it seemed impossible for him to make\nwithout lifting up his eyebrows and shutting his eyes \u201c\u2014we are not\nwhat we used to be in point of deportment.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre we not, sir?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cWe have degenerated,\u201d he returned, shaking his head, which he could\ndo to a very limited extent in his cravat. \u201cA levelling age is not\nfavourable to deportment. It develops vulgarity. Perhaps I speak with\nsome little partiality. It may not be for me to say that I have been\ncalled, for some years now, Gentleman Milena, or that his Royal\nHighness the Cynthia Regent did me the honour to inquire, on my\nremoving my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that\nfine building), \u2018Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don\u2019t I know\nhim? Why hasn\u2019t he thirty thousand a year?\u2019 But these are little\nmatters of anecdote\u2014the general property, ma\u2019am\u2014still repeated\noccasionally among the upper classes.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed?\u201d said I.\n\nHe replied with the high-shouldered bow. \u201cWhere what is left among us\nof deportment,\u201d he added, \u201cstill lingers. England\u2014alas, my\ncountry!\u2014has degenerated very much, and is degenerating every day.\nShe has not many gentlemen left. We are few. I see nothing to succeed\nus but a race of weavers.\u201d\n\n\u201cOne might hope that the race of gentlemen would be perpetuated\nhere,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cYou are very good.\u201d He smiled with a high-shouldered bow again. \u201cYou\nflatter me. But, no\u2014no! I have never been able to imbue my poor boy\nwith that part of his art. Heaven forbid that I should disparage my\ndear child, but he has\u2014no deportment.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe appears to be an excellent master,\u201d I observed.\n\n\u201cUnderstand me, my dear madam, he IS an excellent master. All that\ncan be acquired, he has acquired. All that can be imparted, he can\nimpart. But there ARE things\u2014\u201d He took another pinch of snuff and\nmade the bow again, as if to add, \u201cThis kind of thing, for instance.\u201d\n\nI glanced towards the centre of the room, where Miss Bladen\u2019s lover,\nnow engaged with single pupils, was undergoing greater drudgery than\never.\n\n\u201cMy amiable child,\u201d murmured Mr. Milena, adjusting his cravat.\n\n\u201cYour son is indefatigable,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cIt is my reward,\u201d said Mr. Milena, \u201cto hear you say so. In some\nrespects, he treads in the footsteps of his sainted mother. She was a\ndevoted creature. But wooman, lovely wooman,\u201d said Mr. Milena\nwith very disagreeable gallantry, \u201cwhat a sex you are!\u201d\n\nI rose and joined Miss Bladen, who was by this time putting on her\nbonnet. The time allotted to a lesson having fully elapsed, there was\na general putting on of bonnets. When Miss Bladen and the\nunfortunate Cynthia found an opportunity to become betrothed I don\u2019t\nknow, but they certainly found none on this occasion to exchange a\ndozen words.\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said Mr. Milena benignly to his son, \u201cdo you know the\nhour?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, father.\u201d The son had no watch. The father had a handsome gold\none, which he pulled out with an air that was an example to mankind.\n\n\u201cMy son,\u201d said he, \u201cit\u2019s two o\u2019clock. Recollect your school at\nKensington at three.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s time enough for me, father,\u201d said Cynthia. \u201cI can take a\nmorsel of dinner standing and be off.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear boy,\u201d returned his father, \u201cyou must be very quick. You will\nfind the cold mutton on the table.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, father. Are YOU off now, father?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my dear. I suppose,\u201d said Mr. Milena, shutting his eyes and\nlifting up his shoulders with modest consciousness, \u201cthat I must show\nmyself, as usual, about town.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou had better dine out comfortably somewhere,\u201d said his son.\n\n\u201cMy dear child, I intend to. I shall take my little meal, I think, at\nthe French house, in the Opera Colonnade.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s right. Good-bye, father!\u201d said Cynthia, shaking hands.\n\n\u201cGood-bye, my son. Bless you!\u201d\n\nMr. Milena said this in quite a pious manner, and it seemed to do\nhis son good, who, in parting from him, was so pleased with him, so\ndutiful to him, and so proud of him that I almost felt as if it were\nan unkindness to the younger man not to be able to believe implicitly\nin the elder. The few moments that were occupied by Cynthia in taking\nleave of us (and particularly of one of us, as I saw, being in the\nsecret), enhanced my favourable impression of his almost childish\ncharacter. I felt a liking for him and a compassion for him as he put\nhis little kit in his pocket\u2014and with it his desire to stay a little\nwhile with Viola\u2014and went away good-humouredly to his cold mutton\nand his school at Kensington, that made me scarcely less irate with\nhis father than the censorious old lady.\n\nThe father opened the room door for us and bowed us out in a manner,\nI must acknowledge, worthy of his shining original. In the same style\nhe presently passed us on the other side of the street, on his way to\nthe aristocratic part of the town, where he was going to show himself\namong the few other gentlemen left. For some moments, I was so lost\nin reconsidering what I had heard and seen in Newman Street that I\nwas quite unable to talk to Viola or even to fix my attention on what\nshe said to me, especially when I began to inquire in my mind whether\nthere were, or ever had been, any other gentlemen, not in the dancing\nprofession, who lived and founded a reputation entirely on their\ndeportment. This became so bewildering and suggested the possibility\nof so many Mr. Milenas that I said, \u201cPaulina, you must make up\nyour mind to abandon this subject altogether and attend to Viola.\u201d I\naccordingly did so, and we chatted all the rest of the way to\nLincoln\u2019s Inn.\n\nViola told me that her lover\u2019s education had been so neglected that\nit was not always easy to read his notes. She said if he were not so\nanxious about his spelling and took less pains to make it clear, he\nwould do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short\nwords that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. \u201cHe\ndoes it with the best intention,\u201d observed Viola, \u201cbut it hasn\u2019t the\neffect he means, poor fellow!\u201d Viola then went on to reason, how\ncould he be expected to be a scholar when he had passed his whole\nlife in the dancing-school and had done nothing but teach and fag,\nfag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She\ncould write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it\nwas far better for him to be amiable than learned. \u201cBesides, it\u2019s not\nas if I was an accomplished girl who had any right to give herself\nairs,\u201d said Viola. \u201cI know little enough, I am sure, thanks to Ma!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s another thing I want to tell you, now we are alone,\u201d\ncontinued Viola, \u201cwhich I should not have liked to mention unless you\nhad seen Cynthia, Miss Robin. You know what a house ours is. It\u2019s\nof no use my trying to learn anything that it would be useful for\nCynthia\u2019s wife to know in OUR house. We live in such a state of muddle\nthat it\u2019s impossible, and I have only been more disheartened whenever\nI have tried. So I get a little practice with\u2014who do you think? Poor\nMiss Daxter! Early in the morning I help her to tidy her room and\nclean her birds, and I make her cup of coffee for her (of course she\ntaught me), and I have learnt to make it so well that Cynthia says\nit\u2019s the very best coffee he ever tasted, and would quite delight old\nMr. Milena, who is very particular indeed about his coffee. I can\nmake little puddings too; and I know how to buy neck of mutton, and\ntea, and sugar, and butter, and a good many housekeeping things. I am\nnot clever at my needle, yet,\u201d said Viola, glancing at the repairs on\nPoppy\u2019s frock, \u201cbut perhaps I shall improve, and since I have been\nengaged to Cynthia and have been doing all this, I have felt\nbetter-tempered, I hope, and more forgiving to Ma. It rather put me\nout at first this morning to see you and Miss Dionne looking so neat\nand pretty and to feel ashamed of Poppy and myself too, but on the\nwhole I hope I am better-tempered than I was and more forgiving to\nMa.\u201d\n\nThe poor girl, trying so hard, said it from her heart, and touched\nmine. \u201cViola, my love,\u201d I replied, \u201cI begin to have a great affection\nfor you, and I hope we shall become friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, do you?\u201d cried Viola. \u201cHow happy that would make me!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Viola,\u201d said I, \u201clet us be friends from this time, and let\nus often have a chat about these matters and try to find the right\nway through them.\u201d Viola was overjoyed. I said everything I could in\nmy old-fashioned way to comfort and encourage her, and I would not\nhave objected to old Mr. Milena that day for any smaller\nconsideration than a settlement on his daughter-in-law.\n\nBy this time we were come to Mr. Nesbit\u2019s, whose private door stood\nopen. There was a bill, pasted on the door-post, announcing a room to\nlet on the second floor. It reminded Viola to tell me as we proceeded\nupstairs that there had been a sudden death there and an inquest and\nthat our little friend had been ill of the fright. The door and\nwindow of the vacant room being open, we looked in. It was the room\nwith the dark door to which Miss Daxter had secretly directed my\nattention when I was last in the house. A sad and desolate place it\nwas, a gloomy, sorrowful place that gave me a strange sensation of\nmournfulness and even dread. \u201cYou look pale,\u201d said Viola when we came\nout, \u201cand cold!\u201d I felt as if the room had chilled me.\n\nWe had walked slowly while we were talking, and my guardian and Ada\nwere here before us. We found them in Miss Daxter\u2019s garret. They were\nlooking at the birds, while a medical gentleman who was so good as to\nattend Miss Daxter with much solicitude and compassion spoke with her\ncheerfully by the fire.\n\n\u201cI have finished my professional visit,\u201d he said, coming forward.\n\u201cMiss Daxter is much better and may appear in court (as her mind is\nset upon it) to-morrow. She has been greatly missed there, I\nunderstand.\u201d\n\nMiss Daxter received the compliment with complacency and dropped a\ngeneral curtsy to us.\n\n\u201cHonoured, indeed,\u201d said she, \u201cby another visit from the wards in\nAshton! Ve-ry happy to receive Ashton of Bleak House beneath my\nhumble roof!\u201d with a special curtsy. \u201cFitz-Ashton, my dear\u201d\u2014she\nhad bestowed that name on Viola, it appeared, and always called her\nby it\u2014\u201ca double welcome!\u201d\n\n\u201cHas she been very ill?\u201d asked Mr. Ashton of the gentleman whom we\nhad found in attendance on her. She answered for herself directly,\nthough he had put the question in a whisper.\n\n\u201cOh, decidedly unwell! Oh, very unwell indeed,\u201d she said\nconfidentially. \u201cNot pain, you know\u2014trouble. Not bodily so much as\nnervous, nervous! The truth is,\u201d in a subdued voice and trembling,\n\u201cwe have had death here. There was poison in the house. I am very\nsusceptible to such horrid things. It frightened me. Only Mr.\nLeonie knows how much. My physician, Mr. Leonie!\u201d with\ngreat stateliness. \u201cThe wards in Ashton\u2014Ashton of Bleak\nHouse\u2014Fitz-Ashton!\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Daxter,\u201d said Mr. Leonie in a grave kind of voice, as if he\nwere appealing to her while speaking to us, and laying his hand\ngently on her arm, \u201cMiss Daxter describes her illness with her usual\naccuracy. She was alarmed by an occurrence in the house which might\nhave alarmed a stronger person, and was made ill by the distress and\nagitation. She brought me here in the first hurry of the discovery,\nthough too late for me to be of any use to the unfortunate man. I\nhave compensated myself for that disappointment by coming here since\nand being of some small use to her.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe kindest physician in the college,\u201d whispered Miss Daxter to me.\n\u201cI expect a judgment. On the day of judgment. And shall then confer\nestates.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe will be as well in a day or two,\u201d said Mr. Leonie, looking at\nher with an observant smile, \u201cas she ever will be. In other words,\nquite well of course. Have you heard of her good fortune?\u201d\n\n\u201cMost extraordinary!\u201d said Miss Daxter, smiling brightly. \u201cYou never\nheard of such a thing, my dear! Every Saturday, Conversation Carly or\nJarrett (clerk to Conversation K.) places in my hand a paper of\nshillings. Shillings. I assure you! Always the same number in the\npaper. Always one for every day in the week. Now you know, really! So\nwell-timed, is it not? Ye-es! From whence do these papers come, you\nsay? That is the great question. Naturally. Shall I tell you what I\nthink? I think,\u201d said Miss Daxter, drawing herself back with a very\nshrewd look and shaking her right forefinger in a most significant\nmanner, \u201cthat the Lord Chancellor, aware of the length of time during\nwhich the Great Seal has been open (for it has been open a long\ntime!), forwards them. Until the judgment I expect is given. Now\nthat\u2019s very creditable, you know. To confess in that way that he IS a\nlittle slow for human life. So delicate! Attending court the other\nday\u2014I attend it regularly, with my documents\u2014I taxed him with it,\nand he almost confessed. That is, I smiled at him from my bench, and\nHE smiled at me from his bench. But it\u2019s great good fortune, is it\nnot? And Fitz-Ashton lays the money out for me to great advantage.\nOh, I assure you to the greatest advantage!\u201d\n\nI congratulated her (as she addressed herself to me) upon this\nfortunate addition to her income and wished her a long continuance of\nit. I did not speculate upon the source from which it came or wonder\nwhose humanity was so considerate. My guardian stood before me,\ncontemplating the birds, and I had no need to look beyond him.\n\n\u201cAnd what do you call these little fellows, ma\u2019am?\u201d said he in his\npleasant voice. \u201cHave they any names?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can answer for Miss Daxter that they have,\u201d said I, \u201cfor she\npromised to tell us what they were. Ada remembers?\u201d\n\nAda remembered very well.\n\n\u201cDid I?\u201d said Miss Daxter. \u201cWho\u2019s that at my door? What are you\nlistening at my door for, Nesbit?\u201d\n\nThe old man of the house, pushing it open before him, appeared there\nwith his fur cap in his hand and his cat at his heels.\n\n\u201cI warn\u2019t listening, Miss Daxter,\u201d he said, \u201cI was going to give a rap\nwith my knuckles, only you\u2019re so quick!\u201d\n\n\u201cMake your cat go down. Drive her away!\u201d the old lady angrily\nexclaimed.\n\n\u201cBah, bah! There ain\u2019t no danger, gentlefolks,\u201d said Mr. Nesbit,\nlooking slowly and sharply from one to another until he had looked at\nall of us; \u201cshe\u2019d never offer at the birds when I was here unless I\ntold her to it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou will excuse my landlord,\u201d said the old lady with a dignified\nair. \u201cM, quite M! What do you want, Nesbit, when I have company?\u201d\n\n\u201cHi!\u201d said the old man. \u201cYou know I am the Chancellor.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d returned Miss Daxter. \u201cWhat of that?\u201d\n\n\u201cFor the Chancellor,\u201d said the old man with a chuckle, \u201cnot to be\nacquainted with a Ashton is queer, ain\u2019t it, Miss Daxter? Mightn\u2019t I\ntake the liberty? Your servant, sir. I know Ashton and Ashton\na\u2019most as well as you do, sir. I knowed old Squire Said, sir. I never\nto my knowledge see you afore though, not even in court. Yet, I go\nthere a mortal sight of times in the course of the year, taking one\nday with another.\u201d\n\n\u201cI never go there,\u201d said Mr. Ashton (which he never did on any\nconsideration). \u201cI would sooner go\u2014somewhere else.\u201d\n\n\u201cWould you though?\u201d returned Nesbit, grinning. \u201cYou\u2019re bearing hard\nupon my noble and learned brother in your meaning, sir, though\nperhaps it is but nat\u2019ral in a Ashton. The burnt child, sir! What,\nyou\u2019re looking at my lodger\u2019s birds, Mr. Ashton?\u201d The old man had\ncome by little and little into the room until he now touched my\nguardian with his elbow and looked close up into his face with his\nspectacled eyes. \u201cIt\u2019s one of her strange ways that she\u2019ll never tell\nthe names of these birds if she can help it, though she named \u2019em\nall.\u201d This was in a whisper. \u201cShall I run \u2019em over, Daxter?\u201d he asked\naloud, winking at us and pointing at her as she turned away,\naffecting to sweep the grate.\n\n\u201cIf you like,\u201d she answered hurriedly.\n\nThe old man, looking up at the cages after another look at us, went\nthrough the list.\n\n\u201cHope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust, Ashes, Waste, Want, Ruin,\nDespair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly, Words, Wigs, Rags,\nSheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and Spinach. That\u2019s\nthe whole collection,\u201d said the old man, \u201call cooped up together, by\nmy noble and learned brother.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is a bitter wind!\u201d muttered my guardian.\n\n\u201cWhen my noble and learned brother gives his judgment, they\u2019re to be\nlet go free,\u201d said Nesbit, winking at us again. \u201cAnd then,\u201d he added,\nwhispering and grinning, \u201cif that ever was to happen\u2014which it\nwon\u2019t\u2014the birds that have never been caged would kill \u2019em.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf ever the wind was in the east,\u201d said my guardian, pretending to\nlook out of the window for a weathercock, \u201cI think it\u2019s there\nto-day!\u201d\n\nWe found it very difficult to get away from the house. It was not\nMiss Daxter who detained us; she was as reasonable a little creature\nin consulting the convenience of others as there possibly could be.\nIt was Mr. Nesbit. He seemed unable to detach himself from Mr.\nAshton. If he had been linked to him, he could hardly have attended\nhim more closely. He proposed to show us his Court of Chancery and\nall the strange medley it contained; during the whole of our\ninspection (prolonged by himself) he kept close to Mr. Ashton and\nsometimes detained him under one pretence or other until we had\npassed on, as if he were tormented by an inclination to enter upon\nsome secret subject which he could not make up his mind to approach.\nI cannot imagine a countenance and manner more singularly expressive\nof caution and indecision, and a perpetual impulse to do something he\ncould not resolve to venture on, than Mr. Nesbit\u2019s was that day. His\nwatchfulness of my guardian was incessant. He rarely removed his eyes\nfrom his face. If he went on beside him, he observed him with the\nslyness of an old white fox. If he went before, he looked back. When\nwe stood still, he got opposite to him, and drawing his hand across\nand across his open mouth with a curious expression of a sense of\npower, and turning up his eyes, and lowering his grey eyebrows until\nthey appeared to be shut, seemed to scan every lineament of his face.\n\nAt last, having been (always attended by the cat) all over the house\nand having seen the whole stock of miscellaneous lumber, which was\ncertainly curious, we came into the back part of the shop. Here on\nthe head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old\nstumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were\npasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands.\n\n\u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d asked my guardian.\n\n\u201cTrying to learn myself to read and write,\u201d said Nesbit.\n\n\u201cAnd how do you get on?\u201d\n\n\u201cSlow. Bad,\u201d returned the old man impatiently. \u201cIt\u2019s hard at my time\nof life.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt would be easier to be taught by some one,\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cAye, but they might teach me wrong!\u201d returned the old man with a\nwonderfully suspicious flash of his eye. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I may\nhave lost by not being learned afore. I wouldn\u2019t like to lose\nanything by being learned wrong now.\u201d\n\n\u201cWrong?\u201d said my guardian with his good-humoured smile. \u201cWho do you\nsuppose would teach you wrong?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, Mr. Ashton of Bleak House!\u201d replied the old man,\nturning up his spectacles on his forehead and rubbing his hands. \u201cI\ndon\u2019t suppose as anybody would, but I\u2019d rather trust my own self than\nanother!\u201d\n\nThese answers and his manner were strange enough to cause my guardian\nto inquire of Mr. Leonie, as we all walked across Lincoln\u2019s Inn\ntogether, whether Mr. Nesbit were really, as his lodger represented\nhim, deranged. The young surgeon replied, no, he had seen no reason\nto think so. He was exceedingly distrustful, as ignorance usually\nwas, and he was always more or less under the influence of raw gin,\nof which he drank great quantities and of which he and his back-shop,\nas we might have observed, smelt strongly; but he did not think him\nmad as yet.\n\nOn our way home, I so conciliated Poppy\u2019s affections by buying him a\nwindmill and two flour-sacks that he would suffer nobody else to take\noff his hat and gloves and would sit nowhere at dinner but at my\nside. Viola sat upon the other side of me, next to Ada, to whom we\nimparted the whole history of the engagement as soon as we got back.\nWe made much of Viola, and Poppy too; and Viola brightened\nexceedingly; and my guardian was as merry as we were; and we were all\nvery happy indeed until Viola went home at night in a hackney-coach,\nwith Poppy fast asleep, but holding tight to the windmill.\n\nI have forgotten to mention\u2014at least I have not mentioned\u2014that Mr.\nLeonie was the same dark young surgeon whom we had met at Mr.\nTimmy\u2019s. Or that Mr. Ashton invited him to dinner that day. Or\nthat he came. Or that when they were all gone and I said to Ada,\n\u201cNow, my darling, let us have a little talk about Celise!\u201d Ada\nlaughed and said\u2014\n\nBut I don\u2019t think it matters what my darling said. She was always\nmerry.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\n\nBell Yard\n\n\nWhile we were in London Mr. Ashton was constantly beset by the\ncrowd of excitable ladies and gentlemen whose proceedings had so much\nastonished us. Mr. Quale, who presented himself soon after our\narrival, was in all such excitements. He seemed to project those two\nshining knobs of temples of his into everything that went on and to\nbrush his hair farther and farther back, until the very roots were\nalmost ready to fly out of his head in inappeasable philanthropy. All\nobjects were alike to him, but he was always particularly ready for\nanything in the way of a testimonial to any one. His great power\nseemed to be his power of indiscriminate admiration. He would sit for\nany length of time, with the utmost enjoyment, bathing his temples in\nthe light of any order of luminary. Having first seen him perfectly\nswallowed up in admiration of Mrs. Bladen, I had supposed her to be\nthe absorbing object of his devotion. I soon discovered my mistake\nand found him to be train-bearer and organ-blower to a whole\nprocession of people.\n\nMrs. Braxton came one day for a subscription to something, and with\nher, Mr. Quale. Whatever Mrs. Braxton said, Mr. Quale repeated to\nus; and just as he had drawn Mrs. Bladen out, he drew Mrs. Braxton\nout. Mrs. Braxton wrote a letter of introduction to my guardian in\nbehalf of her eloquent friend Mr. Gusher. With Mr. Gusher appeared\nMr. Quale again. Mr. Gusher, being a flabby gentleman with a moist\nsurface and eyes so much too small for his moon of a face that they\nseemed to have been originally made for somebody else, was not at\nfirst sight prepossessing; yet he was scarcely seated before Mr.\nQuale asked Ada and me, not inaudibly, whether he was not a great\ncreature\u2014which he certainly was, flabbily speaking, though Mr. Quale\nmeant in intellectual beauty\u2014and whether we were not struck by his\nmassive configuration of brow. In short, we heard of a great many\nmissions of various sorts among this set of people, but nothing\nrespecting them was half so clear to us as that it was Mr. Quale\u2019s\nmission to be in ecstasies with everybody else\u2019s mission and that it\nwas the most popular mission of all.\n\nMr. Ashton had fallen into this company in the tenderness of his\nheart and his earnest desire to do all the good in his power; but\nthat he felt it to be too often an unsatisfactory company, where\nbenevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a\nregular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap\nnotoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action,\nservile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one\nanother, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help\nthe weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and\nself-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down, he\nplainly told us. When a testimonial was originated to Mr. Quale by\nMr. Gusher (who had already got one, originated by Mr. Quale), and\nwhen Mr. Gusher spoke for an hour and a half on the subject to a\nmeeting, including two charity schools of small boys and girls, who\nwere specially reminded of the widow\u2019s mite, and requested to come\nforward with halfpence and be acceptable sacrifices, I think the wind\nwas in the east for three whole weeks.\n\nI mention this because I am coming to Mr. Yestin again. It seemed\nto me that his off-hand professions of childishness and carelessness\nwere a great relief to my guardian, by contrast with such things, and\nwere the more readily believed in since to find one perfectly\nundesigning and candid man among many opposites could not fail to\ngive him pleasure. I should be sorry to imply that Mr. Yestin\ndivined this and was politic; I really never understood him well\nenough to know. What he was to my guardian, he certainly was to the\nrest of the world.\n\nHe had not been very well; and thus, though he lived in London, we\nhad seen nothing of him until now. He appeared one morning in his\nusual agreeable way and as full of pleasant spirits as ever.\n\nWell, he said, here he was! He had been bilious, but rich men were\noften bilious, and therefore he had been persuading himself that he\nwas a man of property. So he was, in a certain point of view\u2014in his\nexpansive intentions. He had been enriching his medical attendant in\nthe most lavish manner. He had always doubled, and sometimes\nquadrupled, his fees. He had said to the doctor, \u201cNow, my dear\ndoctor, it is quite a delusion on your part to suppose that you\nattend me for nothing. I am overwhelming you with money\u2014in my\nexpansive intentions\u2014if you only knew it!\u201d And really (he said) he\nmeant it to that degree that he thought it much the same as doing it.\nIf he had had those bits of metal or thin paper to which mankind\nattached so much importance to put in the doctor\u2019s hand, he would\nhave put them in the doctor\u2019s hand. Not having them, he substituted\nthe will for the deed. Very well! If he really meant it\u2014if his will\nwere genuine and real, which it was\u2014it appeared to him that it was\nthe same as coin, and cancelled the obligation.\n\n\u201cIt may be, partly, because I know nothing of the value of money,\u201d\nsaid Mr. Yestin, \u201cbut I often feel this. It seems so reasonable! My\nbutcher says to me he wants that little bill. It\u2019s a part of the\npleasant unconscious poetry of the man\u2019s nature that he always calls\nit a \u2018little\u2019 bill\u2014to make the payment appear easy to both of us. I\nreply to the butcher, \u2018My good friend, if you knew it, you are paid.\nYou haven\u2019t had the trouble of coming to ask for the little bill. You\nare paid. I mean it.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, suppose,\u201d said my guardian, laughing, \u201che had meant the meat in\nthe bill, instead of providing it?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Ashton,\u201d he returned, \u201cyou surprise me. You take the\nbutcher\u2019s position. A butcher I once dealt with occupied that very\nground. Says he, \u2018Sir, why did you eat spring lamb at eighteen pence\na pound?\u2019 \u2018Why did I eat spring lamb at eighteen pence a pound, my\nhonest friend?\u2019 said I, naturally amazed by the question. \u2018I like\nspring lamb!\u2019 This was so far convincing. \u2018Well, sir,\u2019 says he, \u2018I\nwish I had meant the lamb as you mean the money!\u2019 \u2018My good fellow,\u2019\nsaid I, \u2018pray let us reason like intellectual beings. How could that\nbe? It was impossible. You HAD got the lamb, and I have NOT got the\nmoney. You couldn\u2019t really mean the lamb without sending it in,\nwhereas I can, and do, really mean the money without paying it!\u2019 He\nhad not a word. There was an end of the subject.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid he take no legal proceedings?\u201d inquired my guardian.\n\n\u201cYes, he took legal proceedings,\u201d said Mr. Yestin. \u201cBut in that he\nwas influenced by passion, not by reason. Passion reminds me of\nRhea. He writes me that you and the ladies have promised him a\nshort visit at his bachelor-house in Lincolnshire.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is a great favourite with my girls,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cand I\nhave promised for them.\u201d\n\n\u201cNature forgot to shade him off, I think,\u201d observed Mr. Yestin to\nAda and me. \u201cA little too boisterous\u2014like the sea. A little too\nvehement\u2014like a bull who has made up his mind to consider every\ncolour scarlet. But I grant a sledge-hammering sort of merit in him!\u201d\n\nI should have been surprised if those two could have thought very\nhighly of one another, Mr. Rhea attaching so much importance to\nmany things and Mr. Yestin caring so little for anything. Besides\nwhich, I had noticed Mr. Rhea more than once on the point of\nbreaking out into some strong opinion when Mr. Yestin was referred\nto. Of course I merely joined Ada in saying that we had been greatly\npleased with him.\n\n\u201cHe has invited me,\u201d said Mr. Yestin; \u201cand if a child may trust\nhimself in such hands\u2014which the present child is encouraged to do,\nwith the united tenderness of two angels to guard him\u2014I shall go. He\nproposes to frank me down and back again. I suppose it will cost\nmoney? Shillings perhaps? Or pounds? Or something of that sort? By\nthe by, Jolyn. You remember our friend Jolyn, Miss\nRobin?\u201d\n\nHe asked me as the subject arose in his mind, in his graceful,\nlight-hearted manner and without the least embarrassment.\n\n\u201cOh, yes!\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cJolyn has been arrested by the Great Bailiff,\u201d said Mr.\nYestin. \u201cHe will never do violence to the sunshine any more.\u201d\n\nIt quite shocked me to hear it, for I had already recalled with\nanything but a serious association the image of the man sitting on\nthe sofa that night wiping his head.\n\n\u201cHis successor informed me of it yesterday,\u201d said Mr. Yestin. \u201cHis\nsuccessor is in my house now\u2014in possession, I think he calls it. He\ncame yesterday, on my blue-eyed daughter\u2019s birthday. I put it to him,\n\u2018This is unreasonable and inconvenient. If you had a blue-eyed\ndaughter you wouldn\u2019t like ME to come, uninvited, on HER birthday?\u2019\nBut he stayed.\u201d\n\nMr. Yestin laughed at the pleasant absurdity and lightly touched\nthe piano by which he was seated.\n\n\u201cAnd he told me,\u201d he said, playing little chords where I shall put\nfull stops, \u201cThe Jolyn had left. Three children. No mother. And\nthat Jolyn\u2019 profession. Being unpopular. The rising Jolyn.\nWere at a considerable disadvantage.\u201d\n\nMr. Ashton got up, rubbing his head, and began to walk about. Mr.\nYestin played the melody of one of Ada\u2019s favourite songs. Ada and I\nboth looked at Mr. Ashton, thinking that we knew what was passing\nin his mind.\n\nAfter walking and stopping, and several times leaving off rubbing his\nhead, and beginning again, my guardian put his hand upon the keys and\nstopped Mr. Yestin\u2019s playing. \u201cI don\u2019t like this, Yestin,\u201d he\nsaid thoughtfully.\n\nMr. Yestin, who had quite forgotten the subject, looked up\nsurprised.\n\n\u201cThe man was necessary,\u201d pursued my guardian, walking backward and\nforward in the very short space between the piano and the end of the\nroom and rubbing his hair up from the back of his head as if a high\neast wind had blown it into that form. \u201cIf we make such men necessary\nby our faults and follies, or by our want of worldly knowledge, or by\nour misfortunes, we must not revenge ourselves upon them. There was\nno harm in his trade. He maintained his children. One would like to\nknow more about this.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Jolyn?\u201d cried Mr. Yestin, at length perceiving what he\nmeant. \u201cNothing easier. A walk to Jolyn\u2019 headquarters, and you\ncan know what you will.\u201d\n\nMr. Ashton nodded to us, who were only waiting for the signal.\n\u201cCome! We will walk that way, my dears. Why not that way as soon as\nanother!\u201d We were quickly ready and went out. Mr. Yestin went with\nus and quite enjoyed the expedition. It was so new and so refreshing,\nhe said, for him to want Jolyn instead of Jolyn wanting him!\n\nHe took us, first, to Cursitor Street, Chancery Lane, where there was\na house with barred windows, which he called Jolyn\u2019 Castle. On\nour going into the entry and ringing a bell, a very hideous boy came\nout of a sort of office and looked at us over a spiked wicket.\n\n\u201cWho did you want?\u201d said the boy, fitting two of the spikes into his\nchin.\n\n\u201cThere was a follower, or an officer, or something, here,\u201d said Mr.\nAshton, \u201cwho is dead.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes?\u201d said the boy. \u201cWell?\u201d\n\n\u201cI want to know his name, if you please?\u201d\n\n\u201cName of Hailey,\u201d said the boy.\n\n\u201cAnd his address?\u201d\n\n\u201cBell Yard,\u201d said the boy. \u201cChandler\u2019s shop, left hand side, name of\nBlinder.\u201d\n\n\u201cWas he\u2014I don\u2019t know how to shape the question\u2014\u201d murmured my\nguardian, \u201cindustrious?\u201d\n\n\u201cWas Hailey?\u201d said the boy. \u201cYes, wery much so. He was never tired\nof watching. He\u2019d set upon a post at a street corner eight or ten\nhours at a stretch if he undertook to do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe might have done worse,\u201d I heard my guardian soliloquize. \u201cHe\nmight have undertaken to do it and not done it. Thank you. That\u2019s all\nI want.\u201d\n\nWe left the boy, with his head on one side and his arms on the gate,\nfondling and sucking the spikes, and went back to Lincoln\u2019s Inn,\nwhere Mr. Yestin, who had not cared to remain nearer Jolyn,\nawaited us. Then we all went to Bell Yard, a narrow alley at a very\nshort distance. We soon found the chandler\u2019s shop. In it was a\ngood-natured-looking old woman with a dropsy, or an asthma, or\nperhaps both.\n\n\u201cHailey\u2019s children?\u201d said she in reply to my inquiry. \u201cYes, Surely,\nmiss. Three pair, if you please. Door right opposite the stairs.\u201d And\nshe handed me the key across the counter.\n\nI glanced at the key and glanced at her, but she took it for granted\nthat I knew what to do with it. As it could only be intended for the\nchildren\u2019s door, I came out without asking any more questions and led\nthe way up the dark stairs. We went as quietly as we could, but four\nof us made some noise on the aged boards, and when we came to the\nsecond story we found we had disturbed a man who was standing there\nlooking out of his room.\n\n\u201cIs it Freda that\u2019s wanted?\u201d he said, fixing his eyes on me with an\nangry stare.\n\n\u201cNo, sir,\u201d said I; \u201cI am going higher up.\u201d\n\nHe looked at Ada, and at Mr. Ashton, and at Mr. Yestin, fixing\nthe same angry stare on each in succession as they passed and\nfollowed me. Mr. Ashton gave him good day. \u201cGood day!\u201d he said\nabruptly and fiercely. He was a tall, sallow man with a careworn head\non which but little hair remained, a deeply lined face, and prominent\neyes. He had a combative look and a chafing, irritable manner which,\nassociated with his figure\u2014still large and powerful, though\nevidently in its decline\u2014rather alarmed me. He had a pen in his\nhand, and in the glimpse I caught of his room in passing, I saw that\nit was covered with a litter of papers.\n\nLeaving him standing there, we went up to the top room. I tapped at\nthe door, and a little shrill voice inside said, \u201cWe are locked in.\nMrs. Blinder\u2019s got the key!\u201d\n\nI applied the key on hearing this and opened the door. In a poor room\nwith a sloping ceiling and containing very little furniture was a\nmite of a boy, some five or six years old, nursing and hushing a\nheavy child of eighteen months. There was no fire, though the weather\nwas cold; both children were wrapped in some poor shawls and tippets\nas a substitute. Their clothing was not so warm, however, but that\ntheir noses looked red and pinched and their small figures shrunken\nas the boy walked up and down nursing and hushing the child with its\nhead on his shoulder.\n\n\u201cWho has locked you up here alone?\u201d we naturally asked.\n\n\u201cWeston,\u201d said the boy, standing still to gaze at us.\n\n\u201cIs Weston your brother?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. She\u2019s my sister, Charlotte. Father called her Weston.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre there any more of you besides Weston?\u201d\n\n\u201cMe,\u201d said the boy, \u201cand Emma,\u201d patting the limp bonnet of the child\nhe was nursing. \u201cAnd Weston.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere is Weston now?\u201d\n\n\u201cOut a-washing,\u201d said the boy, beginning to walk up and down again\nand taking the nankeen bonnet much too near the bedstead by trying to\ngaze at us at the same time.\n\nWe were looking at one another and at these two children when there\ncame into the room a very little girl, childish in figure but shrewd\nand older-looking in the face\u2014pretty-faced too\u2014wearing a womanly\nsort of bonnet much too large for her and drying her bare arms on a\nwomanly sort of apron. Her fingers were white and wrinkled with\nwashing, and the soap-suds were yet smoking which she wiped off her\narms. But for this, she might have been a child playing at washing\nand imitating a poor working-woman with a quick observation of the\ntruth.\n\nShe had come running from some place in the neighbourhood and had\nmade all the haste she could. Consequently, though she was very\nlight, she was out of breath and could not speak at first, as she\nstood panting, and wiping her arms, and looking quietly at us.\n\n\u201cOh, here\u2019s Weston!\u201d said the boy.\n\nThe child he was nursing stretched forth its arms and cried out to be\ntaken by Weston. The little girl took it, in a womanly sort of\nmanner belonging to the apron and the bonnet, and stood looking at us\nover the burden that clung to her most affectionately.\n\n\u201cIs it possible,\u201d whispered my guardian as we put a chair for the\nlittle creature and got her to sit down with her load, the boy\nkeeping close to her, holding to her apron, \u201cthat this child works\nfor the rest? Look at this! For God\u2019s sake, look at this!\u201d\n\nIt was a thing to look at. The three children close together, and two\nof them relying solely on the third, and the third so young and yet\nwith an air of age and steadiness that sat so strangely on the\nchildish figure.\n\n\u201cWeston, Weston!\u201d said my guardian. \u201cHow old are you?\u201d\n\n\u201cOver thirteen, sir,\u201d replied the child.\n\n\u201cOh! What a great age,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cWhat a great age,\nWeston!\u201d\n\nI cannot describe the tenderness with which he spoke to her, half\nplayfully yet all the more compassionately and mournfully.\n\n\u201cAnd do you live alone here with these babies, Weston?\u201d said my\nguardian.\n\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect\nconfidence, \u201csince father died.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd how do you live, Weston? Oh! Weston,\u201d said my guardian,\nturning his face away for a moment, \u201chow do you live?\u201d\n\n\u201cSince father died, sir, I\u2019ve gone out to work. I\u2019m out washing\nto-day.\u201d\n\n\u201cGod help you, Weston!\u201d said my guardian. \u201cYou\u2019re not tall enough to\nreach the tub!\u201d\n\n\u201cIn pattens I am, sir,\u201d she said quickly. \u201cI\u2019ve got a high pair as\nbelonged to mother.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd when did mother die? Poor mother!\u201d\n\n\u201cMother died just after Emma was born,\u201d said the child, glancing at\nthe face upon her bosom. \u201cThen father said I was to be as good a\nmother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home and\ndid cleaning and nursing and washing for a long time before I began\nto go out. And that\u2019s how I know how; don\u2019t you see, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd do you often go out?\u201d\n\n\u201cAs often as I can,\u201d said Weston, opening her eyes and smiling,\n\u201cbecause of earning sixpences and shillings!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd do you always lock the babies up when you go out?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo keep \u2019em safe, sir, don\u2019t you see?\u201d said Weston. \u201cMrs. Blinder\ncomes up now and then, and Mr. Freda comes up sometimes, and\nperhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play you know, and Said\nan\u2019t afraid of being locked up, are you, Said?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo-o!\u201d said Said stoutly.\n\n\u201cWhen it comes on dark, the lamps are lighted down in the court, and\nthey show up here quite bright\u2014almost quite bright. Don\u2019t they,\nSaid?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, Weston,\u201d said Said, \u201calmost quite bright.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen he\u2019s as good as gold,\u201d said the little creature\u2014Oh, in such a\nmotherly, womanly way! \u201cAnd when Emma\u2019s tired, he puts her to bed.\nAnd when he\u2019s tired he goes to bed himself. And when I come home and\nlight the candle and has a bit of supper, he sits up again and has it\nwith me. Don\u2019t you, Said?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, Weston!\u201d said Said. \u201cThat I do!\u201d And either in this glimpse\nof the great pleasure of his life or in gratitude and love for\nWeston, who was all in all to him, he laid his face among the scanty\nfolds of her frock and passed from laughing into crying.\n\nIt was the first time since our entry that a tear had been shed among\nthese children. The little orphan girl had spoken of their father and\ntheir mother as if all that sorrow were subdued by the necessity of\ntaking courage, and by her childish importance in being able to work,\nand by her bustling busy way. But now, when Said cried, although she\nsat quite tranquil, looking quietly at us, and did not by any\nmovement disturb a hair of the head of either of her little charges,\nI saw two silent tears fall down her face.\n\nI stood at the window with Ada, pretending to look at the housetops,\nand the blackened stack of chimneys, and the poor plants, and the\nbirds in little cages belonging to the neighbours, when I found that\nMrs. Blinder, from the shop below, had come in (perhaps it had taken\nher all this time to get upstairs) and was talking to my guardian.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s not much to forgive \u2019em the rent, sir,\u201d she said; \u201cwho could\ntake it from them!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well!\u201d said my guardian to us two. \u201cIt is enough that the time\nwill come when this good woman will find that it WAS much, and that\nforasmuch as she did it unto the least of these\u2014This child,\u201d he\nadded after a few moments, \u201ccould she possibly continue this?\u201d\n\n\u201cReally, sir, I think she might,\u201d said Mrs. Blinder, getting her\nheavy breath by painful degrees. \u201cShe\u2019s as handy as it\u2019s possible to\nbe. Bless you, sir, the way she tended them two children after the\nmother died was the talk of the yard! And it was a wonder to see her\nwith him after he was took ill, it really was! \u2018Mrs. Blinder,\u2019 he\nsaid to me the very last he spoke\u2014he was lying there\u2014\u2018Mrs.\nBlinder, whatever my calling may have been, I see a angel sitting in\nthis room last night along with my child, and I trust her to Our\nFather!\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cHe had no other calling?\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cNo, sir,\u201d returned Mrs. Blinder, \u201che was nothing but a follerers.\nWhen he first came to lodge here, I didn\u2019t know what he was, and I\nconfess that when I found out I gave him notice. It wasn\u2019t liked in\nthe yard. It wasn\u2019t approved by the other lodgers. It is NOT a\ngenteel calling,\u201d said Mrs. Blinder, \u201cand most people do object to\nit. Mr. Freda objected to it very strong, and he is a good lodger,\nthough his temper has been hard tried.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo you gave him notice?\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cSo I gave him notice,\u201d said Mrs. Blinder. \u201cBut really when the time\ncame, and I knew no other ill of him, I was in doubts. He was\npunctual and diligent; he did what he had to do, sir,\u201d said Mrs.\nBlinder, unconsciously fixing Mr. Yestin with her eye, \u201cand it\u2019s\nsomething in this world even to do that.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo you kept him after all?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I said that if he could arrange with Mr. Freda, I could\narrange it with the other lodgers and should not so much mind its\nbeing liked or disliked in the yard. Mr. Freda gave his consent\ngruff\u2014but gave it. He was always gruff with him, but he has been\nkind to the children since. A person is never known till a person is\nproved.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave many people been kind to the children?\u201d asked Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cUpon the whole, not so bad, sir,\u201d said Mrs. Blinder; \u201cbut certainly\nnot so many as would have been if their father\u2019s calling had been\ndifferent. Mr. Coavins gave a guinea, and the follerers made up a\nlittle purse. Some neighbours in the yard that had always joked and\ntapped their shoulders when he went by came forward with a little\nsubscription, and\u2014in general\u2014not so bad. Similarly with Charlotte.\nSome people won\u2019t employ her because she was a follerer\u2019s child; some\npeople that do employ her cast it at her; some make a merit of having\nher to work for them, with that and all her draw-backs upon her, and\nperhaps pay her less and put upon her more. But she\u2019s patienter than\nothers would be, and is clever too, and always willing, up to the\nfull mark of her strength and over. So I should say, in general, not\nso bad, sir, but might be better.\u201d\n\nMrs. Blinder sat down to give herself a more favourable opportunity\nof recovering her breath, exhausted anew by so much talking before it\nwas fully restored. Mr. Ashton was turning to speak to us when his\nattention was attracted by the abrupt entrance into the room of the\nMr. Freda who had been mentioned and whom we had seen on our way\nup.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what you may be doing here, ladies and gentlemen,\u201d he\nsaid, as if he resented our presence, \u201cbut you\u2019ll excuse my coming\nin. I don\u2019t come in to stare about me. Well, Weston! Well, Said!\nWell, little one! How is it with us all to-day?\u201d\n\nHe bent over the group in a caressing way and clearly was regarded as\na friend by the children, though his face retained its stern\ncharacter and his manner to us was as rude as it could be. My\nguardian noticed it and respected it.\n\n\u201cNo one, surely, would come here to stare about him,\u201d he said mildly.\n\n\u201cMay be so, sir, may be so,\u201d returned the other, taking Said upon his\nknee and waving him off impatiently. \u201cI don\u2019t want to argue with\nladies and gentlemen. I have had enough of arguing to last one man\nhis life.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have sufficient reason, I dare say,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cfor\nbeing chafed and irritated\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThere again!\u201d exclaimed the man, becoming violently angry. \u201cI am of\na quarrelsome temper. I am irascible. I am not polite!\u201d\n\n\u201cNot very, I think.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir,\u201d said Freda, putting down the child and going up to him as if\nhe meant to strike him, \u201cdo you know anything of Courts of Equity?\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps I do, to my sorrow.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo your sorrow?\u201d said the man, pausing in his wrath, \u201cif so, I beg\nyour pardon. I am not polite, I know. I beg your pardon! Sir,\u201d with\nrenewed violence, \u201cI have been dragged for five and twenty years over\nburning iron, and I have lost the habit of treading upon velvet. Go\ninto the Court of Chancery yonder and ask what is one of the standing\njokes that brighten up their business sometimes, and they will tell\nyou that the best joke they have is the man from Shropshire. I,\u201d he\nsaid, beating one hand on the other passionately, \u201cam the man from\nShropshire.\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe I and my family have also had the honour of furnishing\nsome entertainment in the same grave place,\u201d said my guardian\ncomposedly. \u201cYou may have heard my name\u2014Ashton.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Ashton,\u201d said Freda with a rough sort of salutation, \u201cyou\nbear your wrongs more quietly than I can bear mine. More than that, I\ntell you\u2014and I tell this gentleman, and these young ladies, if they\nare friends of yours\u2014that if I took my wrongs in any other way, I\nshould be driven mad! It is only by resenting them, and by revenging\nthem in my mind, and by angrily demanding the justice I never get,\nthat I am able to keep my wits together. It is only that!\u201d he said,\nspeaking in a homely, rustic way and with great vehemence. \u201cYou may\ntell me that I over-excite myself. I answer that it\u2019s in my nature to\ndo it, under wrong, and I must do it. There\u2019s nothing between doing\nit, and sinking into the smiling state of the poor little mad woman\nthat haunts the court. If I was once to sit down under it, I should\nbecome imbecile.\u201d\n\nThe passion and heat in which he was, and the manner in which his\nface worked, and the violent gestures with which he accompanied what\nhe said, were most painful to see.\n\n\u201cMr. Ashton,\u201d he said, \u201cconsider my case. As true as there is a\nheaven above us, this is my case. I am one of two brothers. My father\n(a farmer) made a will and left his farm and stock and so forth to my\nmother for her life. After my mother\u2019s death, all was to come to me\nexcept a legacy of three hundred pounds that I was then to pay my\nbrother. My mother died. My brother some time afterwards claimed his\nlegacy. I and some of my relations said that he had had a part of it\nalready in board and lodging and some other things. Now mind! That\nwas the question, and nothing else. No one disputed the will; no one\ndisputed anything but whether part of that three hundred pounds had\nbeen already paid or not. To settle that question, my brother filing\na bill, I was obliged to go into this accursed Chancery; I was forced\nthere because the law forced me and would let me go nowhere else.\nSeventeen people were made defendants to that simple suit! It first\ncame on after two years. It was then stopped for another two years\nwhile the master (may his head rot off!) inquired whether I was my\nfather\u2019s son, about which there was no dispute at all with any mortal\ncreature. He then found out that there were not defendants\nenough\u2014remember, there were only seventeen as yet!\u2014but that we must\nhave another who had been left out and must begin all over again. The\ncosts at that time\u2014before the thing was begun!\u2014were three times the\nlegacy. My brother would have given up the legacy, and joyful, to\nescape more costs. My whole estate, left to me in that will of my\nfather\u2019s, has gone in costs. The suit, still undecided, has fallen\ninto rack, and ruin, and despair, with everything else\u2014and here I\nstand, this day! Now, Mr. Ashton, in your suit there are thousands\nand thousands involved, where in mine there are hundreds. Is mine\nless hard to bear or is it harder to bear, when my whole living was\nin it and has been thus shamefully sucked away?\u201d\n\nMr. Ashton said that he condoled with him with all his heart and\nthat he set up no monopoly himself in being unjustly treated by this\nmonstrous system.\n\n\u201cThere again!\u201d said Mr. Freda with no diminution of his rage. \u201cThe\nsystem! I am told on all hands, it\u2019s the system. I mustn\u2019t look to\nindividuals. It\u2019s the system. I mustn\u2019t go into court and say, \u2018My\nLord, I beg to know this from you\u2014is this right or wrong? Have you\nthe face to tell me I have received justice and therefore am\ndismissed?\u2019 My Lord knows nothing of it. He sits there to administer\nthe system. I mustn\u2019t go to Mr. Tulkinghorn, the solicitor in\nLincoln\u2019s Inn Fields, and say to him when he makes me furious by\nbeing so cool and satisfied\u2014as they all do, for I know they gain by\nit while I lose, don\u2019t I?\u2014I mustn\u2019t say to him, \u2018I will have\nsomething out of some one for my ruin, by fair means or foul!\u2019 HE is\nnot responsible. It\u2019s the system. But, if I do no violence to any of\nthem, here\u2014I may! I don\u2019t know what may happen if I am carried\nbeyond myself at last! I will accuse the individual workers of that\nsystem against me, face to face, before the great eternal bar!\u201d\n\nHis passion was fearful. I could not have believed in such rage\nwithout seeing it.\n\n\u201cI have done!\u201d he said, sitting down and wiping his face. \u201cMr.\nAshton, I have done! I am violent, I know. I ought to know it. I\nhave been in prison for contempt of court. I have been in prison for\nthreatening the solicitor. I have been in this trouble, and that\ntrouble, and shall be again. I am the man from Shropshire, and I\nsometimes go beyond amusing them, though they have found it amusing,\ntoo, to see me committed into custody and brought up in custody and\nall that. It would be better for me, they tell me, if I restrained\nmyself. I tell them that if I did restrain myself I should become\nimbecile. I was a good-enough-tempered man once, I believe. People in\nmy part of the country say they remember me so, but now I must have\nthis vent under my sense of injury or nothing could hold my wits\ntogether. It would be far better for you, Mr. Freda,\u2019 the Lord\nChancellor told me last week, \u2018not to waste your time here, and to\nstay, usefully employed, down in Shropshire.\u2019 \u2018My Lord, my Lord, I\nknow it would,\u2019 said I to him, \u2018and it would have been far better for\nme never to have heard the name of your high office, but unhappily\nfor me, I can\u2019t undo the past, and the past drives me here!\u2019\nBesides,\u201d he added, breaking fiercely out, \u201cI\u2019ll shame them. To the\nlast, I\u2019ll show myself in that court to its shame. If I knew when I\nwas going to die, and could be carried there, and had a voice to\nspeak with, I would die there, saying, \u2018You have brought me here and\nsent me from here many and many a time. Now send me out feet\nforemost!\u2019\u201d\n\nHis countenance had, perhaps for years, become so set in its\ncontentious expression that it did not soften, even now when he was\nquiet.\n\n\u201cI came to take these babies down to my room for an hour,\u201d he said,\ngoing to them again, \u201cand let them play about. I didn\u2019t mean to say\nall this, but it don\u2019t much signify. You\u2019re not afraid of me, Said,\nare you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d said Said. \u201cYou ain\u2019t angry with ME.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are right, my child. You\u2019re going back, Weston? Aye? Come then,\nlittle one!\u201d He took the youngest child on his arm, where she was\nwilling enough to be carried. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t wonder if we found a\nginger-bread soldier downstairs. Let\u2019s go and look for him!\u201d\n\nHe made his former rough salutation, which was not deficient in a\ncertain respect, to Mr. Ashton, and bowing slightly to us, went\ndownstairs to his room.\n\nUpon that, Mr. Yestin began to talk, for the first time since our\narrival, in his usual gay strain. He said, Well, it was really very\npleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes.\nHere was this Mr. Freda, a man of a robust will and surprising\nenergy\u2014intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious\nblacksmith\u2014and he could easily imagine that there Freda was, years\nago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous\ncombativeness upon\u2014a sort of Young Love among the thorns\u2014when the\nCourt of Chancery came in his way and accommodated him with the exact\nthing he wanted. There they were, matched, ever afterwards! Otherwise\nhe might have been a great general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or\nhe might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of\nparliamentary rhetoric; but as it was, he and the Court of Chancery\nhad fallen upon each other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was\nmuch the worse, and Freda was, so to speak, from that hour provided\nfor. Then look at Jolyn! How delightfully poor Jolyn (father\nof these charming children) illustrated the same principle! He, Mr.\nYestin, himself, had sometimes repined at the existence of\nJolyn. He had found Jolyn in his way. He could had dispensed\nwith Jolyn. There had been times when, if he had been a sultan,\nand his grand vizier had said one morning, \u201cWhat does the Commander\nof the Faithful require at the hands of his slave?\u201d he might have\neven gone so far as to reply, \u201cThe head of Jolyn!\u201d But what\nturned out to be the case? That, all that time, he had been giving\nemployment to a most deserving man, that he had been a benefactor to\nJolyn, that he had actually been enabling Jolyn to bring up\nthese charming children in this agreeable way, developing these\nsocial virtues! Insomuch that his heart had just now swelled and the\ntears had come into his eyes when he had looked round the room and\nthought, \u201cI was the great patron of Jolyn, and his little\ncomforts were MY work!\u201d\n\nThere was something so captivating in his light way of touching these\nfantastic strings, and he was such a mirthful child by the side of\nthe graver childhood we had seen, that he made my guardian smile even\nas he turned towards us from a little private talk with Mrs. Blinder.\nWe kissed Weston, and took her downstairs with us, and stopped\noutside the house to see her run away to her work. I don\u2019t know where\nshe was going, but we saw her run, such a little, little creature in\nher womanly bonnet and apron, through a covered way at the bottom of\nthe court and melt into the city\u2019s strife and sound like a dewdrop in\nan ocean.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\n\nSaid-all-Alone\u2019s\n\n\nMy Godfrey Wayne is restless, very restless. The astonished\nfashionable intelligence hardly knows where to have her. To-day she\nis at Chesney Wold; yesterday she was at her house in town; to-morrow\nshe may be abroad, for anything the fashionable intelligence can with\nconfidence predict. Even Sir Luigi\u2019s gallantry has some trouble\nto keep pace with her. It would have more but that his other faithful\nally, for better and for worse\u2014the gout\u2014darts into the old oak\nbed-chamber at Chesney Wold and grips him by both legs.\n\nSir Luigi receives the gout as a troublesome demon, but still a\ndemon of the patrician order. All the Waynes, in the direct male\nline, through a course of time during and beyond which the memory of\nman goeth not to the contrary, have had the gout. It can be proved,\nsir. Other men\u2019s fathers may have died of the rheumatism or may have\ntaken base contagion from the tainted blood of the sick vulgar, but\nthe Wayne family have communicated something exclusive even to the\nlevelling process of dying by dying of their own family gout. It has\ncome down through the illustrious line like the plate, or the\npictures, or the place in Lincolnshire. It is among their dignities.\nSir Luigi is perhaps not wholly without an impression, though he\nhas never resolved it into words, that the angel of death in the\ndischarge of his necessary duties may observe to the shades of the\naristocracy, \u201cMy lords and gentlemen, I have the honour to present to\nyou another Wayne certified to have arrived per the family gout.\u201d\n\nHence Sir Luigi yields up his family legs to the family disorder\nas if he held his name and fortune on that feudal tenure. He feels\nthat for a Wayne to be laid upon his back and spasmodically\ntwitched and stabbed in his extremities is a liberty taken somewhere,\nbut he thinks, \u201cWe have all yielded to this; it belongs to us; it has\nfor some hundreds of years been understood that we are not to make\nthe vaults in the park interesting on more ignoble terms; and I\nsubmit myself to the compromise.\u201d\n\nAnd a goodly show he makes, lying in a flush of crimson and gold in\nthe midst of the great drawing-room before his favourite picture of\nmy Godfrey, with broad strips of sunlight shining in, down the long\nperspective, through the long line of windows, and alternating with\nsoft reliefs of shadow. Outside, the stately oaks, rooted for ages in\nthe green ground which has never known ploughshare, but was still a\nchase when kings rode to battle with sword and shield and rode\na-hunting with bow and arrow, bear witness to his greatness. Inside,\nhis forefathers, looking on him from the walls, say, \u201cEach of us was\na passing reality here and left this coloured shadow of himself and\nmelted into remembrance as dreamy as the distant voices of the rooks\nnow lulling you to rest,\u201d and hear their testimony to his greatness\ntoo. And he is very great this day. And woe to Rhea or other\ndaring wight who shall presumptuously contest an inch with him!\n\nMy Godfrey is at present represented, near Sir Luigi, by her\nportrait. She has flitted away to town, with no intention of\nremaining there, and will soon flit hither again, to the confusion of\nthe fashionable intelligence. The house in town is not prepared for\nher reception. It is muffled and dreary. Only one Mercury in powder\ngapes disconsolate at the hall-window; and he mentioned last night to\nanother Mercury of his acquaintance, also accustomed to good society,\nthat if that sort of thing was to last\u2014which it couldn\u2019t, for a man\nof his spirits couldn\u2019t bear it, and a man of his figure couldn\u2019t be\nexpected to bear it\u2014there would be no resource for him, upon his\nhonour, but to cut his throat!\n\nWhat connexion can there be between the place in Lincolnshire, the\nhouse in town, the Mercury in powder, and the whereabout of Jo the\noutlaw with the broom, who had that distant ray of light upon him\nwhen he swept the churchyard-step? What connexion can there have been\nbetween many people in the innumerable histories of this world who\nfrom opposite sides of great gulfs have, nevertheless, been very\ncuriously brought together!\n\nJo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any\nlink there be. He sums up his mental condition when asked a question\nby replying that he \u201cdon\u2019t know nothink.\u201d He knows that it\u2019s hard to\nkeep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to\nlive by doing it. Nobody taught him even that much; he found it out.\n\nJo lives\u2014that is to say, Jo has not yet died\u2014in a ruinous place\nknown to the like of him by the name of Said-all-Alone\u2019s. It is a\nblack, dilapidated street, avoided by all decent people, where the\ncrazy houses were seized upon, when their decay was far advanced, by\nsome bold vagrants who after establishing their own possession took\nto letting them out in lodgings. Now, these tumbling tenements\ncontain, by night, a swarm of misery. As on the ruined human wretch\nvermin parasites appear, so these ruined shelters have bred a crowd\nof foul existence that crawls in and out of gaps in walls and boards;\nand coils itself to sleep, in maggot numbers, where the rain drips\nin; and comes and goes, fetching and carrying fever and sowing more\nevil in its every footprint than Lord Coodle, and Sir Thomas Doodle,\nand the Duke of Foodle, and all the fine gentlemen in office, down to\nZoodle, shall set right in five hundred years\u2014though born expressly\nto do it.\n\nTwice lately there has been a crash and a cloud of dust, like the\nspringing of a mine, in Said-all-Alone\u2019s; and each time a house has\nfallen. These accidents have made a paragraph in the newspapers and\nhave filled a bed or two in the nearest hospital. The gaps remain,\nand there are not unpopular lodgings among the rubbish. As several\nmore houses are nearly ready to go, the next crash in Said-all-Alone\u2019s\nmay be expected to be a good one.\n\nThis desirable property is in Chancery, of course. It would be an\ninsult to the discernment of any man with half an eye to tell him so.\nWhether \u201cSaid\u201d is the popular representative of the original plaintiff\nor defendant in Ashton and Ashton, or whether Said lived here when\nthe suit had laid the street waste, all alone, until other settlers\ncame to join him, or whether the traditional title is a comprehensive\nname for a retreat cut off from honest company and put out of the\npale of hope, perhaps nobody knows. Certainly Jo don\u2019t know.\n\n\u201cFor I don\u2019t,\u201d says Jo, \u201cI don\u2019t know nothink.\u201d\n\nIt must be a strange state to be like Jo! To shuffle through the\nstreets, unfamiliar with the shapes, and in utter darkness as to the\nmeaning, of those mysterious symbols, so abundant over the shops, and\nat the corners of streets, and on the doors, and in the windows! To\nsee people read, and to see people write, and to see the postmen\ndeliver letters, and not to have the least idea of all that\nlanguage\u2014to be, to every scrap of it, stone blind and dumb! It must\nbe very puzzling to see the good company going to the churches on\nSundays, with their books in their hands, and to think (for perhaps\nJo DOES think at odd times) what does it all mean, and if it means\nanything to anybody, how comes it that it means nothing to me? To be\nhustled, and jostled, and moved on; and really to feel that it would\nappear to be perfectly true that I have no business here, or there,\nor anywhere; and yet to be perplexed by the consideration that I AM\nhere somehow, too, and everybody overlooked me until I became the\ncreature that I am! It must be a strange state, not merely to be told\nthat I am scarcely human (as in the case of my offering myself for a\nwitness), but to feel it of my own knowledge all my life! To see the\nhorses, dogs, and cattle go by me and to know that in ignorance I\nbelong to them and not to the superior beings in my shape, whose\ndelicacy I offend! Jo\u2019s ideas of a criminal trial, or a judge, or a\nbishop, or a government, or that inestimable jewel to him (if he only\nknew it) the Constitution, should be strange! His whole material and\nimmaterial life is wonderfully strange; his death, the strangest\nthing of all.\n\nJo comes out of Said-all-Alone\u2019s, meeting the tardy morning which is\nalways late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread\nas he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and the houses\nnot yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the door-step of the\nSociety for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts and gives\nit a brush when he has finished as an acknowledgment of the\naccommodation. He admires the size of the edifice and wonders what\nit\u2019s all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual\ndestitution of a coral reef in the Pacific or what it costs to look\nup the precious souls among the coco-nuts and bread-fruit.\n\nHe goes to his crossing and begins to lay it out for the day. The\ntown awakes; the great tee-totum is set up for its daily spin and\nwhirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been\nsuspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo and the other lower\nanimals get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It is\nmarket-day. The blinded oxen, over-goaded, over-driven, never guided,\nrun into wrong places and are beaten out, and plunge red-eyed and\nfoaming at stone walls, and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often\nsorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order; very, very like!\n\nA band of music comes and plays. Jo listens to it. So does a dog\u2014a\ndrover\u2019s dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher\u2019s shop, and\nevidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for\nsome hours and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three\nor four, can\u2019t remember where he left them, looks up and down the\nstreet as half expecting to see them astray, suddenly pricks up his\nears and remembers all about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog,\naccustomed to low company and public-houses; a terrific dog to sheep,\nready at a whistle to scamper over their backs and tear out mouthfuls\nof their wool; but an educated, improved, developed dog who has been\ntaught his duties and knows how to discharge them. He and Jo listen\nto the music, probably with much the same amount of animal\nsatisfaction; likewise as to awakened association, aspiration, or\nregret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses,\nthey are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human\nlistener is the brute!\n\nTurn that dog\u2019s descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years\nthey will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark\u2014but not\ntheir bite.\n\nThe day changes as it wears itself away and becomes dark and drizzly.\nJo fights it out at his crossing among the mud and wheels, the\nhorses, whips, and umbrellas, and gets but a scanty sum to pay for\nthe unsavoury shelter of Said-all-Alone\u2019s. Twilight comes on; gas\nbegins to start up in the shops; the lamplighter, with his ladder,\nruns along the margin of the pavement. A wretched evening is\nbeginning to close in.\n\nIn his chambers Mr. Tulkinghorn sits meditating an application to the\nnearest magistrate to-morrow morning for a warrant. Freda, a\ndisappointed suitor, has been here to-day and has been alarming. We\nare not to be put in bodily fear, and that ill-conditioned fellow\nshall be held to bail again. From the ceiling, foreshortened\nAllegory, in the person of one impossible Roman upside down, points\nwith the arm of Samson (out of joint, and an odd one) obtrusively\ntoward the window. Why should Mr. Tulkinghorn, for such no reason,\nlook out of window? Is the hand not always pointing there? So he does\nnot look out of window.\n\nAnd if he did, what would it be to see a woman going by? There are\nwomen enough in the world, Mr. Tulkinghorn thinks\u2014too many; they are\nat the bottom of all that goes wrong in it, though, for the matter of\nthat, they create business for lawyers. What would it be to see a\nwoman going by, even though she were going secretly? They are all\nsecret. Mr. Tulkinghorn knows that very well.\n\nBut they are not all like the woman who now leaves him and his house\nbehind, between whose plain dress and her refined manner there is\nsomething exceedingly inconsistent. She should be an upper servant by\nher attire, yet in her air and step, though both are hurried and\nassumed\u2014as far as she can assume in the muddy streets, which she\ntreads with an unaccustomed foot\u2014she is a lady. Her face is veiled,\nand still she sufficiently betrays herself to make more than one of\nthose who pass her look round sharply.\n\nShe never turns her head. Godfrey or servant, she has a purpose in her\nand can follow it. She never turns her head until she comes to the\ncrossing where Jo plies with his broom. He crosses with her and begs.\nStill, she does not turn her head until she has landed on the other\nside. Then she slightly beckons to him and says, \u201cCome here!\u201d\n\nJo follows her a pace or two into a quiet court.\n\n\u201cAre you the boy I\u2019ve read of in the papers?\u201d she asked behind her\nveil.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d says Jo, staring moodily at the veil, \u201cnothink about\nno papers. I don\u2019t know nothink about nothink at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cWere you examined at an inquest?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know nothink about no\u2014where I was took by the beadle, do\nyou mean?\u201d says Jo. \u201cWas the boy\u2019s name at the inkwhich Jo?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s me!\u201d says Jo.\n\n\u201cCome farther up.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou mean about the man?\u201d says Jo, following. \u201cHim as wos dead?\u201d\n\n\u201cHush! Speak in a whisper! Yes. Did he look, when he was living, so\nvery ill and poor?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, jist!\u201d says Jo.\n\n\u201cDid he look like\u2014not like YOU?\u201d says the woman with abhorrence.\n\n\u201cOh, not so bad as me,\u201d says Jo. \u201cI\u2019m a reg\u2019lar one I am! You didn\u2019t\nknow him, did you?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow dare you ask me if I knew him?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo offence, my lady,\u201d says Jo with much humility, for even he has\ngot at the suspicion of her being a lady.\n\n\u201cI am not a lady. I am a servant.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are a jolly servant!\u201d says Jo without the least idea of saying\nanything offensive, merely as a tribute of admiration.\n\n\u201cListen and be silent. Don\u2019t talk to me, and stand farther from me!\nCan you show me all those places that were spoken of in the account I\nread? The place he wrote for, the place he died at, the place where\nyou were taken to, and the place where he was buried? Do you know the\nplace where he was buried?\u201d\n\nJo answers with a nod, having also nodded as each other place was\nmentioned.\n\n\u201cGo before me and show me all those dreadful places. Stop opposite to\neach, and don\u2019t speak to me unless I speak to you. Don\u2019t look back.\nDo what I want, and I will pay you well.\u201d\n\nJo attends closely while the words are being spoken; tells them off\non his broom-handle, finding them rather hard; pauses to consider\ntheir meaning; considers it satisfactory; and nods his ragged head.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m fly,\u201d says Jo. \u201cBut fen larks, you know. Stow hooking it!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat does the horrible creature mean?\u201d exclaims the servant,\nrecoiling from him.\n\n\u201cStow cutting away, you know!\u201d says Jo.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand you. Go on before! I will give you more money\nthan you ever had in your life.\u201d\n\nJo screws up his mouth into a whistle, gives his ragged head a rub,\ntakes his broom under his arm, and leads the way, passing deftly with\nhis bare feet over the hard stones and through the mud and mire.\n\nCook\u2019s Court. Jo stops. A pause.\n\n\u201cWho lives here?\u201d\n\n\u201cHim wot give him his writing and give me half a bull,\u201d says Jo in a\nwhisper without looking over his shoulder.\n\n\u201cGo on to the next.\u201d\n\nNesbit\u2019s house. Jo stops again. A longer pause.\n\n\u201cWho lives here?\u201d\n\n\u201cHE lived here,\u201d Jo answers as before.\n\nAfter a silence he is asked, \u201cIn which room?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the back room up there. You can see the winder from this corner.\nUp there! That\u2019s where I see him stritched out. This is the\npublic-ouse where I was took to.\u201d\n\n\u201cGo on to the next!\u201d\n\nIt is a longer walk to the next, but Jo, relieved of his first\nsuspicions, sticks to the forms imposed upon him and does not look\nround. By many devious ways, reeking with offence of many kinds, they\ncome to the little tunnel of a court, and to the gas-lamp (lighted\nnow), and to the iron gate.\n\n\u201cHe was put there,\u201d says Jo, holding to the bars and looking in.\n\n\u201cWhere? Oh, what a scene of horror!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere!\u201d says Jo, pointing. \u201cOver yinder. Among them piles of bones,\nand close to that there kitchin winder! They put him wery nigh the\ntop. They was obliged to stamp upon it to git it in. I could unkiver\nit for you with my broom if the gate was open. That\u2019s why they locks\nit, I s\u2019pose,\u201d giving it a shake. \u201cIt\u2019s always locked. Look at the\nrat!\u201d cries Jo, excited. \u201cHi! Look! There he goes! Ho! Into the\nground!\u201d\n\nThe servant shrinks into a corner, into a corner of that hideous\narchway, with its deadly stains contaminating her dress; and putting\nout her two hands and passionately telling him to keep away from her,\nfor he is loathsome to her, so remains for some moments. Jo stands\nstaring and is still staring when she recovers herself.\n\n\u201cIs this place of abomination consecrated ground?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know nothink of consequential ground,\u201d says Jo, still\nstaring.\n\n\u201cIs it blessed?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhich?\u201d says Jo, in the last degree amazed.\n\n\u201cIs it blessed?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m blest if I know,\u201d says Jo, staring more than ever; \u201cbut I\nshouldn\u2019t think it warn\u2019t. Blest?\u201d repeats Jo, something troubled in\nhis mind. \u201cIt an\u2019t done it much good if it is. Blest? I should think\nit was t\u2019othered myself. But I don\u2019t know nothink!\u201d\n\nThe servant takes as little heed of what he says as she seems to take\nof what she has said herself. She draws off her glove to get some\nmoney from her purse. Jo silently notices how white and small her\nhand is and what a jolly servant she must be to wear such sparkling\nrings.\n\nShe drops a piece of money in his hand without touching it, and\nshuddering as their hands approach. \u201cNow,\u201d she adds, \u201cshow me the\nspot again!\u201d\n\nJo thrusts the handle of his broom between the bars of the gate, and\nwith his utmost power of elaboration, points it out. At length,\nlooking aside to see if he has made himself intelligible, he finds\nthat he is alone.\n\nHis first proceeding is to hold the piece of money to the gas-light\nand to be overpowered at finding that it is yellow\u2014gold. His next is\nto give it a one-sided bite at the edge as a test of its quality.\nHis next, to put it in his mouth for safety and to sweep the\nstep and passage with great care. His job done, he sets off for\nSaid-all-Alone\u2019s, stopping in the light of innumerable gas-lamps to\nproduce the piece of gold and give it another one-sided bite as a\nreassurance of its being genuine.\n\nThe Mercury in powder is in no want of society to-night, for my Godfrey\ngoes to a grand dinner and three or four balls. Sir Luigi is\nfidgety down at Chesney Wold, with no better company than the gout;\nhe complains to Mrs. Talon that the rain makes such a monotonous\npattering on the terrace that he can\u2019t read the paper even by the\nfireside in his own snug dressing-room.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi would have done better to try the other side of the\nhouse, my dear,\u201d says Mrs. Talon to Quinn. \u201cHis dressing-room is\non my Godfrey\u2019s side. And in all these years I never heard the step upon\nthe Ghost\u2019s Walk more distinct than it is to-night!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVII\n\nPaulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nCelise very often came to see us while we remained in London (though\nhe soon failed in his letter-writing), and with his quick abilities,\nhis good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshness, was\nalways delightful. But though I liked him more and more the better I\nknew him, I still felt more and more how much it was to be regretted\nthat he had been educated in no habits of application and\nconcentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same\nmanner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in\ncharacter and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks,\nalways with fair credit and often with distinction, but in a fitful,\ndazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities\nin himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They\nwere good qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously\nwon, but like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were\nvery bad masters. If they had been under Celise\u2019s direction, they\nwould have been his friends; but Celise being under their direction,\nthey became his enemies.\n\nI write down these opinions not because I believe that this or any\nother thing was so because I thought so, but only because I did think\nso and I want to be quite candid about all I thought and did. These\nwere my thoughts about Celise. I thought I often observed besides\nhow right my guardian was in what he had said, and that the\nuncertainties and delays of the Chancery suit had imparted to his\nnature something of the careless spirit of a gamester who felt that\nhe was part of a great gaming system.\n\nMr. and Mrs. Bayham Timmy coming one afternoon when my guardian was\nnot at home, in the course of conversation I naturally inquired after\nCelise.\n\n\u201cWhy, Mr. Willis,\u201d said Mrs. Timmy, \u201cis very well and is, I assure\nyou, a great acquisition to our society. Captain Swosser used to say\nof me that I was always better than land a-head and a breeze a-starn\nto the midshipmen\u2019s mess when the purser\u2019s junk had become as tough as\nthe fore-topsel weather earrings. It was his naval way of mentioning\ngenerally that I was an acquisition to any society. I may render the\nsame tribute, I am sure, to Mr. Willis. But I\u2014you won\u2019t think me\npremature if I mention it?\u201d\n\nI said no, as Mrs. Timmy\u2019s insinuating tone seemed to require such\nan answer.\n\n\u201cNor Miss Dionne?\u201d said Mrs. Bayham Timmy sweetly.\n\nAda said no, too, and looked uneasy.\n\n\u201cWhy, you see, my dears,\u201d said Mrs. Timmy, \u201c\u2014you\u2019ll excuse me\ncalling you my dears?\u201d\n\nWe entreated Mrs. Timmy not to mention it.\n\n\u201cBecause you really are, if I may take the liberty of saying so,\u201d\npursued Mrs. Timmy, \u201cso perfectly charming. You see, my dears, that\nalthough I am still young\u2014or Mr. Bayham Timmy pays me the\ncompliment of saying so\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d Mr. Timmy called out like some one contradicting at a public\nmeeting. \u201cNot at all!\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well,\u201d smiled Mrs. Timmy, \u201cwe will say still young.\u201d\n\n\u201cUndoubtedly,\u201d said Mr. Timmy.\n\n\u201cMy dears, though still young, I have had many opportunities of\nobserving young men. There were many such on board the dear old\nCrippler, I assure you. After that, when I was with Captain Swosser\nin the Mediterranean, I embraced every opportunity of knowing and\nbefriending the midshipmen under Captain Swosser\u2019s command. YOU never\nheard them called the young gentlemen, my dears, and probably would\nnot understand allusions to their pipe-claying their weekly accounts,\nbut it is otherwise with me, for blue water has been a second home to\nme, and I have been quite a sailor. Again, with Professor Dingo.\u201d\n\n\u201cA man of European reputation,\u201d murmured Mr. Timmy.\n\n\u201cWhen I lost my dear first and became the wife of my dear second,\u201d\nsaid Mrs. Timmy, speaking of her former husbands as if they were\nparts of a charade, \u201cI still enjoyed opportunities of observing\nyouth. The class attendant on Professor Dingo\u2019s lectures was a large\none, and it became my pride, as the wife of an eminent scientific man\nseeking herself in science the utmost consolation it could impart, to\nthrow our house open to the students as a kind of Scientific\nExchange. Every Tuesday evening there was lemonade and a mixed\nbiscuit for all who chose to partake of those refreshments. And there\nwas science to an unlimited extent.\u201d\n\n\u201cRemarkable assemblies those, Miss Robin,\u201d said Mr. Timmy\nreverentially. \u201cThere must have been great intellectual friction\ngoing on there under the auspices of such a man!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd now,\u201d pursued Mrs. Timmy, \u201cnow that I am the wife of my dear\nthird, Mr. Timmy, I still pursue those habits of observation which\nwere formed during the lifetime of Captain Swosser and adapted to new\nand unexpected purposes during the lifetime of Professor Dingo. I\ntherefore have not come to the consideration of Mr. Willis as a\nneophyte. And yet I am very much of the opinion, my dears, that he\nhas not chosen his profession advisedly.\u201d\n\nAda looked so very anxious now that I asked Mrs. Timmy on what she\nfounded her supposition.\n\n\u201cMy dear Miss Robin,\u201d she replied, \u201con Mr. Willis\u2019s character\nand conduct. He is of such a very easy disposition that probably he\nwould never think it worth while to mention how he really feels, but\nhe feels languid about the profession. He has not that positive\ninterest in it which makes it his vocation. If he has any decided\nimpression in reference to it, I should say it was that it is a\ntiresome pursuit. Now, this is not promising. Young men like Mr.\nMonty Leonie who take it from a strong interest in all that it can\ndo will find some reward in it through a great deal of work for a\nvery little money and through years of considerable endurance and\ndisappointment. But I am quite convinced that this would never be the\ncase with Mr. Willis.\u201d\n\n\u201cDoes Mr. Timmy think so too?\u201d asked Ada timidly.\n\n\u201cWhy,\u201d said Mr. Timmy, \u201cto tell the truth, Miss Dionne, this view of\nthe matter had not occurred to me until Mrs. Timmy mentioned it. But\nwhen Mrs. Timmy put it in that light, I naturally gave great\nconsideration to it, knowing that Mrs. Timmy\u2019s mind, in addition to\nits natural advantages, has had the rare advantage of being formed by\ntwo such very distinguished (I will even say illustrious) public men\nas Captain Swosser of the Royal Navy and Professor Dingo. The\nconclusion at which I have arrived is\u2014in short, is Mrs. Timmy\u2019s\nconclusion.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was a maxim of Captain Swosser\u2019s,\u201d said Mrs. Timmy, \u201cspeaking in\nhis figurative naval manner, that when you make pitch hot, you cannot\nmake it too hot; and that if you only have to swab a plank, you\nshould swab it as if Davy Jones were after you. It appears to me that\nthis maxim is applicable to the medical as well as to the nautical\nprofession.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo all professions,\u201d observed Mr. Timmy. \u201cIt was admirably said by\nCaptain Swosser. Beautifully said.\u201d\n\n\u201cPeople objected to Professor Dingo when we were staying in the north\nof Devon after our marriage,\u201d said Mrs. Timmy, \u201cthat he disfigured\nsome of the houses and other buildings by chipping off fragments of\nthose edifices with his little geological hammer. But the professor\nreplied that he knew of no building save the Temple of Science. The\nprinciple is the same, I think?\u201d\n\n\u201cPrecisely the same,\u201d said Mr. Timmy. \u201cFinely expressed! The\nprofessor made the same remark, Miss Robin, in his last illness,\nwhen (his mind wandering) he insisted on keeping his little hammer\nunder the pillow and chipping at the countenances of the attendants.\nThe ruling passion!\u201d\n\nAlthough we could have dispensed with the length at which Mr. and\nMrs. Timmy pursued the conversation, we both felt that it was\ndisinterested in them to express the opinion they had communicated to\nus and that there was a great probability of its being sound. We\nagreed to say nothing to Mr. Ashton until we had spoken to Celise;\nand as he was coming next evening, we resolved to have a very serious\ntalk with him.\n\nSo after he had been a little while with Ada, I went in and found my\ndarling (as I knew she would be) prepared to consider him thoroughly\nright in whatever he said.\n\n\u201cAnd how do you get on, Celise?\u201d said I. I always sat down on the\nother side of him. He made quite a sister of me.\n\n\u201cOh! Well enough!\u201d said Celise.\n\n\u201cHe can\u2019t say better than that, Paulina, can he?\u201d cried my pet\ntriumphantly.\n\nI tried to look at my pet in the wisest manner, but of course I\ncouldn\u2019t.\n\n\u201cWell enough?\u201d I repeated.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Celise, \u201cwell enough. It\u2019s rather jog-trotty and\nhumdrum. But it\u2019ll do as well as anything else!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! My dear Celise!\u201d I remonstrated.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d said Celise.\n\n\u201cDo as well as anything else!\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any harm in that, Dame Durden,\u201d said Ada,\nlooking so confidingly at me across him; \u201cbecause if it will do as\nwell as anything else, it will do very well, I hope.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, I hope so,\u201d returned Celise, carelessly tossing his hair\nfrom his forehead. \u201cAfter all, it may be only a kind of probation\ntill our suit is\u2014I forgot though. I am not to mention the suit.\nForbidden ground! Oh, yes, it\u2019s all right enough. Let us talk about\nsomething else.\u201d\n\nAda would have done so willingly, and with a full persuasion that we\nhad brought the question to a most satisfactory state. But I thought\nit would be useless to stop there, so I began again.\n\n\u201cNo, but Celise,\u201d said I, \u201cand my dear Ada! Consider how important\nit is to you both, and what a point of honour it is towards your\ncousin, that you, Celise, should be quite in earnest without any\nreservation. I think we had better talk about this, really, Ada. It\nwill be too late very soon.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes! We must talk about it!\u201d said Ada. \u201cBut I think Celise is\nright.\u201d\n\nWhat was the use of my trying to look wise when she was so pretty,\nand so engaging, and so fond of him!\n\n\u201cMr. and Mrs. Timmy were here yesterday, Celise,\u201d said I, \u201cand they\nseemed disposed to think that you had no great liking for the\nprofession.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid they though?\u201d said Celise. \u201cOh! Well, that rather alters the\ncase, because I had no idea that they thought so, and I should not\nhave liked to disappoint or inconvenience them. The fact is, I don\u2019t\ncare much about it. But, oh, it don\u2019t matter! It\u2019ll do as well as\nanything else!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou hear him, Ada!\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cThe fact is,\u201d Celise proceeded, half thoughtfully and half\njocosely, \u201cit is not quite in my way. I don\u2019t take to it. And I get\ntoo much of Mrs. Bayham Timmy\u2019s first and second.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sure THAT\u2019S very natural!\u201d cried Ada, quite delighted. \u201cThe\nvery thing we both said yesterday, Paulina!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen,\u201d pursued Celise, \u201cit\u2019s monotonous, and to-day is too like\nyesterday, and to-morrow is too like to-day.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I am afraid,\u201d said I, \u201cthis is an objection to all kinds of\napplication\u2014to life itself, except under some very uncommon\ncircumstances.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you think so?\u201d returned Celise, still considering. \u201cPerhaps! Ha!\nWhy, then, you know,\u201d he added, suddenly becoming gay again, \u201cwe\ntravel outside a circle to what I said just now. It\u2019ll do as well as\nanything else. Oh, it\u2019s all right enough! Let us talk about something\nelse.\u201d\n\nBut even Ada, with her loving face\u2014and if it had seemed innocent and\ntrusting when I first saw it in that memorable November fog, how much\nmore did it seem now when I knew her innocent and trusting\nheart\u2014even Ada shook her head at this and looked serious. So I\nthought it a good opportunity to hint to Celise that if he were\nsometimes a little careless of himself, I was very sure he never\nmeant to be careless of Ada, and that it was a part of his\naffectionate consideration for her not to slight the importance of a\nstep that might influence both their lives. This made him almost\ngrave.\n\n\u201cMy dear Mother Hubbard,\u201d he said, \u201cthat\u2019s the very thing! I have\nthought of that several times and have been quite angry with myself\nfor meaning to be so much in earnest and\u2014somehow\u2014not exactly being\nso. I don\u2019t know how it is; I seem to want something or other to\nstand by. Even you have no idea how fond I am of Ada (my darling\ncousin, I love you, so much!), but I don\u2019t settle down to constancy\nin other things. It\u2019s such uphill work, and it takes such a time!\u201d\nsaid Celise with an air of vexation.\n\n\u201cThat may be,\u201d I suggested, \u201cbecause you don\u2019t like what you have\nchosen.\u201d\n\n\u201cPoor fellow!\u201d said Ada. \u201cI am sure I don\u2019t wonder at it!\u201d\n\nNo. It was not of the least use my trying to look wise. I tried\nagain, but how could I do it, or how could it have any effect if I\ncould, while Ada rested her clasped hands upon his shoulder and while\nhe looked at her tender blue eyes, and while they looked at him!\n\n\u201cYou see, my precious girl,\u201d said Celise, passing her golden curls\nthrough and through his hand, \u201cI was a little hasty perhaps; or I\nmisunderstood my own inclinations perhaps. They don\u2019t seem to lie in\nthat direction. I couldn\u2019t tell till I tried. Now the question is\nwhether it\u2019s worth-while to undo all that has been done. It seems\nlike making a great disturbance about nothing particular.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Celise,\u201d said I, \u201chow CAN you say about nothing\nparticular?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mean absolutely that,\u201d he returned. \u201cI mean that it MAY be\nnothing particular because I may never want it.\u201d\n\nBoth Ada and I urged, in reply, not only that it was decidedly\nworth-while to undo what had been done, but that it must be undone. I\nthen asked Celise whether he had thought of any more congenial\npursuit.\n\n\u201cThere, my dear Mrs. Shipton,\u201d said Celise, \u201cyou touch me home. Yes,\nI have. I have been thinking that the law is the boy for me.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe law!\u201d repeated Ada as if she were afraid of the name.\n\n\u201cIf I went into Carly\u2019s office,\u201d said Celise, \u201cand if I were placed\nunder articles to Carly, I should have my eye on the\u2014hum!\u2014the\nforbidden ground\u2014and should be able to study it, and master it, and\nto satisfy myself that it was not neglected and was being properly\nconducted. I should be able to look after Ada\u2019s interests and my own\ninterests (the same thing!); and I should peg away at Blackstone and\nall those fellows with the most tremendous ardour.\u201d\n\nI was not by any means so sure of that, and I saw how his hankering\nafter the vague things yet to come of those long-deferred hopes cast\na shade on Ada\u2019s face. But I thought it best to encourage him in any\nproject of continuous exertion, and only advised him to be quite sure\nthat his mind was made up now.\n\n\u201cMy dear Minerva,\u201d said Celise, \u201cI am as steady as you are. I made a\nmistake; we are all liable to mistakes; I won\u2019t do so any more, and\nI\u2019ll become such a lawyer as is not often seen. That is, you know,\u201d\nsaid Celise, relapsing into doubt, \u201cif it really is worth-while,\nafter all, to make such a disturbance about nothing particular!\u201d\n\nThis led to our saying again, with a great deal of gravity, all that\nwe had said already and to our coming to much the same conclusion\nafterwards. But we so strongly advised Celise to be frank and open\nwith Mr. Ashton, without a moment\u2019s delay, and his disposition was\nnaturally so opposed to concealment that he sought him out at once\n(taking us with him) and made a full avowal. \u201cRick,\u201d said my\nguardian, after hearing him attentively, \u201cwe can retreat with honour,\nand we will. But we must be careful\u2014for our cousin\u2019s sake, Rick, for\nour cousin\u2019s sake\u2014that we make no more such mistakes. Therefore, in\nthe matter of the law, we will have a good trial before we decide. We\nwill look before we leap, and take plenty of time about it.\u201d\n\nCelise\u2019s energy was of such an impatient and fitful kind that he\nwould have liked nothing better than to have gone to Mr. Carly\u2019s\noffice in that hour and to have entered into articles with him on the\nspot. Submitting, however, with a good grace to the caution that we\nhad shown to be so necessary, he contented himself with sitting down\namong us in his lightest spirits and talking as if his one unvarying\npurpose in life from childhood had been that one which now held\npossession of him. My guardian was very kind and cordial with him,\nbut rather grave, enough so to cause Ada, when he had departed and we\nwere going upstairs to bed, to say, \u201cCousin Gerardo, I hope you don\u2019t\nthink the worse of Celise?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, my love,\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cBecause it was very natural that Celise should be mistaken in such\na difficult case. It is not uncommon.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, my love,\u201d said he. \u201cDon\u2019t look unhappy.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I am not unhappy, cousin Gerardo!\u201d said Ada, smiling cheerfully,\nwith her hand upon his shoulder, where she had put it in bidding him\ngood night. \u201cBut I should be a little so if you thought at all the\nworse of Celise.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cI should think the worse of him only\nif you were ever in the least unhappy through his means. I should be\nmore disposed to quarrel with myself even then, than with poor Rick,\nfor I brought you together. But, tut, all this is nothing! He has\ntime before him, and the race to run. I think the worse of him? Not\nI, my loving cousin! And not you, I swear!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, indeed, cousin Gerardo,\u201d said Ada, \u201cI am sure I could not\u2014I am\nsure I would not\u2014think any ill of Celise if the whole world did. I\ncould, and I would, think better of him then than at any other time!\u201d\n\nSo quietly and honestly she said it, with her hands upon his\nshoulders\u2014both hands now\u2014and looking up into his face, like the\npicture of truth!\n\n\u201cI think,\u201d said my guardian, thoughtfully regarding her, \u201cI think it\nmust be somewhere written that the virtues of the mothers shall\noccasionally be visited on the children, as well as the sins of the\nfather. Good night, my rosebud. Good night, little woman. Pleasant\nslumbers! Happy dreams!\u201d\n\nThis was the first time I ever saw him follow Ada with his eyes with\nsomething of a shadow on their benevolent expression. I well\nremembered the look with which he had contemplated her and Celise\nwhen she was singing in the firelight; it was but a very little while\nsince he had watched them passing down the room in which the sun was\nshining, and away into the shade; but his glance was changed, and\neven the silent look of confidence in me which now followed it once\nmore was not quite so hopeful and untroubled as it had originally\nbeen.\n\nAda praised Celise more to me that night than ever she had praised\nhim yet. She went to sleep with a little bracelet he had given her\nclasped upon her arm. I fancied she was dreaming of him when I kissed\nher cheek after she had slept an hour and saw how tranquil and happy\nshe looked.\n\nFor I was so little inclined to sleep myself that night that I sat up\nworking. It would not be worth mentioning for its own sake, but I was\nwakeful and rather low-spirited. I don\u2019t know why. At least I don\u2019t\nthink I know why. At least, perhaps I do, but I don\u2019t think it\nmatters.\n\nAt any rate, I made up my mind to be so dreadfully industrious that I\nwould leave myself not a moment\u2019s leisure to be low-spirited. For I\nnaturally said, \u201cPaulina! You to be low-spirited. YOU!\u201d And it really\nwas time to say so, for I\u2014yes, I really did see myself in the glass,\nalmost crying. \u201cAs if you had anything to make you unhappy, instead\nof everything to make you happy, you ungrateful heart!\u201d said I.\n\nIf I could have made myself go to sleep, I would have done it\ndirectly, but not being able to do that, I took out of my basket some\nornamental work for our house (I mean Bleak House) that I was busy\nwith at that time and sat down to it with great determination. It was\nnecessary to count all the stitches in that work, and I resolved to\ngo on with it until I couldn\u2019t keep my eyes open, and then to go to\nbed.\n\nI soon found myself very busy. But I had left some silk downstairs in\na work-table drawer in the temporary growlery, and coming to a stop\nfor want of it, I took my candle and went softly down to get it. To\nmy great surprise, on going in I found my guardian still there, and\nsitting looking at the ashes. He was lost in thought, his book lay\nunheeded by his side, his silvered iron-grey hair was scattered\nconfusedly upon his forehead as though his hand had been wandering\namong it while his thoughts were elsewhere, and his face looked worn.\nAlmost frightened by coming upon him so unexpectedly, I stood still\nfor a moment and should have retired without speaking had he not, in\nagain passing his hand abstractedly through his hair, seen me and\nstarted.\n\n\u201cPaulina!\u201d\n\nI told him what I had come for.\n\n\u201cAt work so late, my dear?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am working late to-night,\u201d said I, \u201cbecause I couldn\u2019t sleep and\nwished to tire myself. But, dear guardian, you are late too, and look\nweary. You have no trouble, I hope, to keep you waking?\u201d\n\n\u201cNone, little woman, that YOU would readily understand,\u201d said he.\n\nHe spoke in a regretful tone so new to me that I inwardly repeated,\nas if that would help me to his meaning, \u201cThat I could readily\nunderstand!\u201d\n\n\u201cRemain a moment, Paulina,\u201d said he, \u201cYou were in my thoughts.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope I was not the trouble, guardian?\u201d\n\nHe slightly waved his hand and fell into his usual manner. The change\nwas so remarkable, and he appeared to make it by dint of so much\nself-command, that I found myself again inwardly repeating, \u201cNone\nthat I could understand!\u201d\n\n\u201cLittle woman,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cI was thinking\u2014that is, I have\nbeen thinking since I have been sitting here\u2014that you ought to know\nof your own history all I know. It is very little. Next to nothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cDear guardian,\u201d I replied, \u201cwhen you spoke to me before on that\nsubject\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBut since then,\u201d he gravely interposed, anticipating what I meant to\nsay, \u201cI have reflected that your having anything to ask me, and my\nhaving anything to tell you, are different considerations, Paulina. It\nis perhaps my duty to impart to you the little I know.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you think so, guardian, it is right.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think so,\u201d he returned very gently, and kindly, and very\ndistinctly. \u201cMy dear, I think so now. If any real disadvantage can\nattach to your position in the mind of any man or woman worth a\nthought, it is right that you at least of all the world should not\nmagnify it to yourself by having vague impressions of its nature.\u201d\n\nI sat down and said after a little effort to be as calm as I ought to\nbe, \u201cOne of my earliest remembrances, guardian, is of these words:\n\u2018Your mother, Paulina, is your disgrace, and you were hers. The time\nwill come, and soon enough, when you will understand this better, and\nwill feel it too, as no one save a woman can.\u2019\u201d I had covered my face\nwith my hands in repeating the words, but I took them away now with a\nbetter kind of shame, I hope, and told him that to him I owed the\nblessing that I had from my childhood to that hour never, never,\nnever felt it. He put up his hand as if to stop me. I well knew that\nhe was never to be thanked, and said no more.\n\n\u201cNine years, my dear,\u201d he said after thinking for a little while,\n\u201chave passed since I received a letter from a lady living in\nseclusion, written with a stern passion and power that rendered it\nunlike all other letters I have ever read. It was written to me (as\nit told me in so many words), perhaps because it was the writer\u2019s\nidiosyncrasy to put that trust in me, perhaps because it was mine to\njustify it. It told me of a child, an orphan girl then twelve years\nold, in some such cruel words as those which live in your\nremembrance. It told me that the writer had bred her in secrecy from\nher birth, had blotted out all trace of her existence, and that if\nthe writer were to die before the child became a woman, she would be\nleft entirely friendless, nameless, and unknown. It asked me to\nconsider if I would, in that case, finish what the writer had begun.\u201d\n\nI listened in silence and looked attentively at him.\n\n\u201cYour early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium\nthrough which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and the\ndistorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the\nneed there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she was\nquite innocent. I felt concerned for the little creature, in her\ndarkened life, and replied to the letter.\u201d\n\nI took his hand and kissed it.\n\n\u201cIt laid the injunction on me that I should never propose to see the\nwriter, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with the\nworld, but who would see a confidential agent if I would appoint one.\nI accredited Mr. Carly. The lady said, of her own accord and not of\nhis seeking, that her name was an assumed one. That she was, if there\nwere any ties of blood in such a case, the child\u2019s aunt. That more\nthan this she would never (and he was well persuaded of the\nsteadfastness of her resolution) for any human consideration\ndisclose. My dear, I have told you all.\u201d\n\nI held his hand for a little while in mine.\n\n\u201cI saw my ward oftener than she saw me,\u201d he added, cheerily making\nlight of it, \u201cand I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy.\nShe repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every\nhour in every day!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd oftener still,\u201d said I, \u201cshe blesses the guardian who is a\nfather to her!\u201d\n\nAt the word father, I saw his former trouble come into his face. He\nsubdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but it had been\nthere and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if they\nhad given him a shock. I again inwardly repeated, wondering, \u201cThat I\ncould readily understand. None that I could readily understand!\u201d No,\nit was true. I did not understand it. Not for many and many a day.\n\n\u201cTake a fatherly good night, my dear,\u201d said he, kissing me on the\nforehead, \u201cand so to rest. These are late hours for working and\nthinking. You do that for all of us, all day long, little\nhousekeeper!\u201d\n\nI neither worked nor thought any more that night. I opened my\ngrateful heart to heaven in thankfulness for its providence to me and\nits care of me, and fell asleep.\n\nWe had a visitor next day. Mr. Monty Leonie came. He came to take\nleave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand. He was going to\nChina and to India as a surgeon on board ship. He was to be away a\nlong, long time.\n\nI believe\u2014at least I know\u2014that he was not rich. All his widowed\nmother could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his\nprofession. It was not lucrative to a young practitioner, with very\nlittle influence in London; and although he was, night and day, at\nthe service of numbers of poor people and did wonders of gentleness\nand skill for them, he gained very little by it in money. He was\nseven years older than I. Not that I need mention it, for it hardly\nseems to belong to anything.\n\nI think\u2014I mean, he told us\u2014that he had been in practice three or\nfour years and that if he could have hoped to contend through three\nor four more, he would not have made the voyage on which he was\nbound. But he had no fortune or private means, and so he was going\naway. He had been to see us several times altogether. We thought it a\npity he should go away. Because he was distinguished in his art among\nthose who knew it best, and some of the greatest men belonging to it\nhad a high opinion of him.\n\nWhen he came to bid us good-bye, he brought his mother with him for\nthe first time. She was a pretty old lady, with bright black eyes,\nbut she seemed proud. She came from Wales and had had, a long time\nago, an eminent person for an ancestor, of the name of Morgan\nap-Kerrig\u2014of some place that sounded like Gimlet\u2014who was the most\nillustrious person that ever was known and all of whose relations\nwere a sort of royal family. He appeared to have passed his life\nin always getting up into mountains and fighting somebody; and\na bard whose name sounded like Crumlinwallinwer had sung his\npraises in a piece which was called, as nearly as I could catch it,\nMewlinnwillinwodd.\n\nMrs. Leonie, after expatiating to us on the fame of her great\nkinsman, said that no doubt wherever her son Monty went he would\nremember his pedigree and would on no account form an alliance below\nit. She told him that there were many handsome English ladies in\nIndia who went out on speculation, and that there were some to be\npicked up with property, but that neither charms nor wealth would\nsuffice for the descendant from such a line without birth, which must\never be the first consideration. She talked so much about birth that\nfor a moment I half fancied, and with pain\u2014But what an idle fancy to\nsuppose that she could think or care what MINE was!\n\nMr. Leonie seemed a little distressed by her prolixity, but he was\ntoo considerate to let her see it and contrived delicately to bring\nthe conversation round to making his acknowledgments to my guardian\nfor his hospitality and for the very happy hours\u2014he called them the\nvery happy hours\u2014he had passed with us. The recollection of them, he\nsaid, would go with him wherever he went and would be always\ntreasured. And so we gave him our hands, one after another\u2014at least,\nthey did\u2014and I did; and so he put his lips to Ada\u2019s hand\u2014and to\nmine; and so he went away upon his long, long voyage!\n\nI was very busy indeed all day and wrote directions home to the\nservants, and wrote notes for my guardian, and dusted his books and\npapers, and jingled my housekeeping keys a good deal, one way and\nanother. I was still busy between the lights, singing and working by\nthe window, when who should come in but Viola, whom I had no\nexpectation of seeing!\n\n\u201cWhy, Viola, my dear,\u201d said I, \u201cwhat beautiful flowers!\u201d\n\nShe had such an exquisite little nosegay in her hand.\n\n\u201cIndeed, I think so, Paulina,\u201d replied Viola. \u201cThey are the loveliest\nI ever saw.\u201d\n\n\u201cCynthia, my dear?\u201d said I in a whisper.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d answered Viola, shaking her head and holding them to me to\nsmell. \u201cNot Cynthia.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, to be sure, Viola!\u201d said I. \u201cYou must have two lovers!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat? Do they look like that sort of thing?\u201d said Viola.\n\n\u201cDo they look like that sort of thing?\u201d I repeated, pinching her\ncheek.\n\nViola only laughed in return, and telling me that she had come for\nhalf an hour, at the expiration of which time Cynthia would be waiting\nfor her at the corner, sat chatting with me and Ada in the window,\nevery now and then handing me the flowers again or trying how they\nlooked against my hair. At last, when she was going, she took me into\nmy room and put them in my dress.\n\n\u201cFor me?\u201d said I, surprised.\n\n\u201cFor you,\u201d said Viola with a kiss. \u201cThey were left behind by\nsomebody.\u201d\n\n\u201cLeft behind?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt poor Miss Daxter\u2019s,\u201d said Viola. \u201cSomebody who has been very good\nto her was hurrying away an hour ago to join a ship and left these\nflowers behind. No, no! Don\u2019t take them out. Let the pretty little\nthings lie here,\u201d said Viola, adjusting them with a careful hand,\n\u201cbecause I was present myself, and I shouldn\u2019t wonder if somebody\nleft them on purpose!\u201d\n\n\u201cDo they look like that sort of thing?\u201d said Ada, coming laughingly\nbehind me and clasping me merrily round the waist. \u201cOh, yes, indeed\nthey do, Dame Durden! They look very, very like that sort of thing.\nOh, very like it indeed, my dear!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\n\nGodfrey Wayne\n\n\nIt was not so easy as it had appeared at first to arrange for\nCelise\u2019s making a trial of Mr. Carly\u2019s office. Celise himself was\nthe chief impediment. As soon as he had it in his power to leave Mr.\nTimmy at any moment, he began to doubt whether he wanted to leave\nhim at all. He didn\u2019t know, he said, really. It wasn\u2019t a bad\nprofession; he couldn\u2019t assert that he disliked it; perhaps he liked\nit as well as he liked any other\u2014suppose he gave it one more chance!\nUpon that, he shut himself up for a few weeks with some books and\nsome bones and seemed to acquire a considerable fund of information\nwith great rapidity. His fervour, after lasting about a month, began\nto cool, and when it was quite cooled, began to grow warm again. His\nvacillations between law and medicine lasted so long that midsummer\narrived before he finally separated from Mr. Timmy and entered on an\nexperimental course of Messrs. Carly and Carboy. For all his\nwaywardness, he took great credit to himself as being determined to\nbe in earnest \u201cthis time.\u201d And he was so good-natured throughout, and\nin such high spirits, and so fond of Ada, that it was very difficult\nindeed to be otherwise than pleased with him.\n\n\u201cAs to Mr. Ashton,\u201d who, I may mention, found the wind much given,\nduring this period, to stick in the east; \u201cAs to Mr. Ashton,\u201d\nCelise would say to me, \u201che is the finest fellow in the world,\nPaulina! I must be particularly careful, if it were only for his\nsatisfaction, to take myself well to task and have a regular wind-up\nof this business now.\u201d\n\nThe idea of his taking himself well to task, with that laughing face\nand heedless manner and with a fancy that everything could catch and\nnothing could hold, was ludicrously anomalous. However, he told us\nbetween-whiles that he was doing it to such an extent that he\nwondered his hair didn\u2019t turn grey. His regular wind-up of the\nbusiness was (as I have said) that he went to Mr. Carly\u2019s about\nmidsummer to try how he liked it.\n\nAll this time he was, in money affairs, what I have described him in\na former illustration\u2014generous, profuse, wildly careless, but fully\npersuaded that he was rather calculating and prudent. I happened to\nsay to Ada, in his presence, half jestingly, half seriously, about\nthe time of his going to Mr. Carly\u2019s, that he needed to have\nFortunatus\u2019 purse, he made so light of money, which he answered in\nthis way, \u201cMy jewel of a dear cousin, you hear this old woman! Why\ndoes she say that? Because I gave eight pounds odd (or whatever it\nwas) for a certain neat waistcoat and buttons a few days ago. Now, if\nI had stayed at Timmy\u2019s I should have been obliged to spend twelve\npounds at a blow for some heart-breaking lecture-fees. So I make four\npounds\u2014in a lump\u2014by the transaction!\u201d\n\nIt was a question much discussed between him and my guardian what\narrangements should be made for his living in London while he\nexperimented on the law, for we had long since gone back to Bleak\nHouse, and it was too far off to admit of his coming there oftener\nthan once a week. My guardian told me that if Celise were to settle\ndown at Mr. Carly\u2019s he would take some apartments or chambers where\nwe too could occasionally stay for a few days at a time; \u201cbut, little\nwoman,\u201d he added, rubbing his head very significantly, \u201che hasn\u2019t\nsettled down there yet!\u201d The discussions ended in our hiring for him,\nby the month, a neat little furnished lodging in a quiet old house\nnear Queen Square. He immediately began to spend all the money he had\nin buying the oddest little ornaments and luxuries for this lodging;\nand so often as Ada and I dissuaded him from making any purchase that\nhe had in contemplation which was particularly unnecessary and\nexpensive, he took credit for what it would have cost and made out\nthat to spend anything less on something else was to save the\ndifference.\n\nWhile these affairs were in abeyance, our visit to Mr. Rhea\u2019s was\npostponed. At length, Celise having taken possession of his lodging,\nthere was nothing to prevent our departure. He could have gone with\nus at that time of the year very well, but he was in the full novelty\nof his new position and was making most energetic attempts to unravel\nthe mysteries of the fatal suit. Consequently we went without him,\nand my darling was delighted to praise him for being so busy.\n\nWe made a pleasant journey down into Lincolnshire by the coach and\nhad an entertaining companion in Mr. Yestin. His furniture had been\nall cleared off, it appeared, by the person who took possession of it\non his blue-eyed daughter\u2019s birthday, but he seemed quite relieved to\nthink that it was gone. Chairs and table, he said, were wearisome\nobjects; they were monotonous ideas, they had no variety of\nexpression, they looked you out of countenance, and you looked them\nout of countenance. How pleasant, then, to be bound to no particular\nchairs and tables, but to sport like a butterfly among all the\nfurniture on hire, and to flit from rosewood to mahogany, and from\nmahogany to walnut, and from this shape to that, as the humour took\none!\n\n\u201cThe oddity of the thing is,\u201d said Mr. Yestin with a quickened\nsense of the ludicrous, \u201cthat my chairs and tables were not paid for,\nand yet my landlord walks off with them as composedly as possible.\nNow, that seems droll! There is something grotesque in it. The chair\nand table merchant never engaged to pay my landlord my rent. Why\nshould my landlord quarrel with HIM? If I have a pimple on my nose\nwhich is disagreeable to my landlord\u2019s peculiar ideas of beauty, my\nlandlord has no business to scratch my chair and table merchant\u2019s\nnose, which has no pimple on it. His reasoning seems defective!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said my guardian good-humouredly, \u201cit\u2019s pretty clear that\nwhoever became security for those chairs and tables will have to pay\nfor them.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly!\u201d returned Mr. Yestin. \u201cThat\u2019s the crowning point of\nunreason in the business! I said to my landlord, \u2018My good man, you\nare not aware that my excellent friend Ashton will have to pay for\nthose things that you are sweeping off in that indelicate manner.\nHave you no consideration for HIS property?\u2019 He hadn\u2019t the least.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd refused all proposals,\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cRefused all proposals,\u201d returned Mr. Yestin. \u201cI made him business\nproposals. I had him into my room. I said, \u2018You are a man of\nbusiness, I believe?\u2019 He replied, \u2018I am.\u2019 \u2018Very well,\u2019 said I, \u2018now\nlet us be business-like. Here is an inkstand, here are pens and\npaper, here are wafers. What do you want? I have occupied your house\nfor a considerable period, I believe to our mutual satisfaction until\nthis unpleasant misunderstanding arose; let us be at once friendly\nand business-like. What do you want?\u2019 In reply to this, he made use\nof the figurative expression\u2014which has something Eastern about\nit\u2014that he had never seen the colour of my money. \u2018My amiable\nfriend,\u2019 said I, \u2018I never have any money. I never know anything about\nmoney.\u2019 \u2018Well, sir,\u2019 said he, \u2018what do you offer if I give you time?\u2019\n\u2018My good fellow,\u2019 said I, \u2018I have no idea of time; but you say you\nare a man of business, and whatever you can suggest to be done in a\nbusiness-like way with pen, and ink, and paper\u2014and wafers\u2014I am\nready to do. Don\u2019t pay yourself at another man\u2019s expense (which is\nfoolish), but be business-like!\u2019 However, he wouldn\u2019t be, and there\nwas an end of it.\u201d\n\nIf these were some of the inconveniences of Mr. Yestin\u2019s childhood,\nit assuredly possessed its advantages too. On the journey he had a\nvery good appetite for such refreshment as came in our way (including\na basket of choice hothouse peaches), but never thought of paying for\nanything. So when the coachman came round for his fee, he pleasantly\nasked him what he considered a very good fee indeed, now\u2014a liberal\none\u2014and on his replying half a crown for a single passenger, said it\nwas little enough too, all things considered, and left Mr. Ashton\nto give it him.\n\nIt was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the\nlarks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the\ntrees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind\nblowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance!\nLate in the afternoon we came to the market-town where we were to\nalight from the coach\u2014a dull little town with a church-spire, and a\nmarketplace, and a market-cross, and one intensely sunny street, and\na pond with an old horse cooling his legs in it, and a very few men\nsleepily lying and standing about in narrow little bits of shade.\nAfter the rustling of the leaves and the waving of the corn all along\nthe road, it looked as still, as hot, as motionless a little town as\nEngland could produce.\n\nAt the inn we found Mr. Rhea on horseback, waiting with an open\ncarriage to take us to his house, which was a few miles off. He was\noverjoyed to see us and dismounted with great alacrity.\n\n\u201cBy heaven!\u201d said he after giving us a courteous greeting. \u201cThis a\nmost infamous coach. It is the most flagrant example of an abominable\npublic vehicle that ever encumbered the face of the earth. It is\ntwenty-five minutes after its time this afternoon. The coachman ought\nto be put to death!\u201d\n\n\u201cIS he after his time?\u201d said Mr. Yestin, to whom he happened to\naddress himself. \u201cYou know my infirmity.\u201d\n\n\u201cTwenty-five minutes! Twenty-six minutes!\u201d replied Mr. Rhea,\nreferring to his watch. \u201cWith two ladies in the coach, this scoundrel\nhas deliberately delayed his arrival six and twenty minutes.\nDeliberately! It is impossible that it can be accidental! But his\nfather\u2014and his uncle\u2014were the most profligate coachmen that ever\nsat upon a box.\u201d\n\nWhile he said this in tones of the greatest indignation, he handed us\ninto the little phaeton with the utmost gentleness and was all smiles\nand pleasure.\n\n\u201cI am sorry, ladies,\u201d he said, standing bare-headed at the\ncarriage-door when all was ready, \u201cthat I am obliged to conduct you\nnearly two miles out of the way. But our direct road lies through Sir\nLuigi Wayne\u2019s park, and in that fellow\u2019s property I have sworn\nnever to set foot of mine, or horse\u2019s foot of mine, pending the\npresent relations between us, while I breathe the breath of life!\u201d\nAnd here, catching my guardian\u2019s eye, he broke into one of his\ntremendous laughs, which seemed to shake even the motionless little\nmarket-town.\n\n\u201cAre the Waynes down here, Lawrence?\u201d said my guardian as we drove\nalong and Mr. Rhea trotted on the green turf by the roadside.\n\n\u201cSir Arrogant Numskull is here,\u201d replied Mr. Rhea. \u201cHa ha ha! Sir\nArrogant is here, and I am glad to say, has been laid by the heels\nhere. My Godfrey,\u201d in naming whom he always made a courtly gesture as if\nparticularly to exclude her from any part in the quarrel, \u201cis\nexpected, I believe, daily. I am not in the least surprised that she\npostpones her appearance as long as possible. Whatever can have\ninduced that transcendent woman to marry that effigy and figure-head\nof a baronet is one of the most impenetrable mysteries that ever\nbaffled human inquiry. Ha ha ha ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose,\u201d said my guardian, laughing, \u201cWE may set foot in the park\nwhile we are here? The prohibition does not extend to us, does it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can lay no prohibition on my guests,\u201d he said, bending his head to\nAda and me with the smiling politeness which sat so gracefully upon\nhim, \u201cexcept in the matter of their departure. I am only sorry that I\ncannot have the happiness of being their escort about Chesney Wold,\nwhich is a very fine place! But by the light of this summer day,\nAshton, if you call upon the owner while you stay with me, you are\nlikely to have but a cool reception. He carries himself like an\neight-day clock at all times, like one of a race of eight-day clocks\nin gorgeous cases that never go and never went\u2014Ha ha ha!\u2014but he\nwill have some extra stiffness, I can promise you, for the friends of\nhis friend and neighbour Rhea!\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall not put him to the proof,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cHe is as\nindifferent to the honour of knowing me, I dare say, as I am to the\nhonour of knowing him. The air of the grounds and perhaps such a view\nof the house as any other sightseer might get are quite enough for\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d said Mr. Rhea. \u201cI am glad of it on the whole. It\u2019s in\nbetter keeping. I am looked upon about here as a second Ajax defying\nthe lightning. Ha ha ha ha! When I go into our little church on a\nSunday, a considerable part of the inconsiderable congregation expect\nto see me drop, scorched and withered, on the pavement under the\nWayne displeasure. Ha ha ha ha! I have no doubt he is surprised\nthat I don\u2019t. For he is, by heaven, the most self-satisfied, and the\nshallowest, and the most coxcombical and utterly brainless ass!\u201d\n\nOur coming to the ridge of a hill we had been ascending enabled our\nfriend to point out Chesney Wold itself to us and diverted his\nattention from its master.\n\nIt was a picturesque old house in a fine park richly wooded. Among\nthe trees and not far from the residence he pointed out the spire of\nthe little church of which he had spoken. Oh, the solemn woods over\nwhich the light and shadow travelled swiftly, as if heavenly wings\nwere sweeping on benignant errands through the summer air; the smooth\ngreen slopes, the glittering water, the garden where the flowers were\nso symmetrically arranged in clusters of the richest colours, how\nbeautiful they looked! The house, with gable and chimney, and tower,\nand turret, and dark doorway, and broad terrace-walk, twining among\nthe balustrades of which, and lying heaped upon the vases, there was\none great flush of roses, seemed scarcely real in its light solidity\nand in the serene and peaceful hush that rested on all around it. To\nAda and to me, that above all appeared the pervading influence. On\neverything, house, garden, terrace, green slopes, water, old oaks,\nfern, moss, woods again, and far away across the openings in the\nprospect to the distance lying wide before us with a purple bloom\nupon it, there seemed to be such undisturbed repose.\n\nWhen we came into the little village and passed a small inn with the\nsign of the Wayne Arms swinging over the road in front, Mr.\nRhea interchanged greetings with a young gentleman sitting on a\nbench outside the inn-door who had some fishing-tackle lying beside\nhim.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the housekeeper\u2019s grandson, Mr. Talon by name,\u201d said,\nhe, \u201cand he is in love with a pretty girl up at the house. Godfrey\nWayne has taken a fancy to the pretty girl and is going to keep her\nabout her own fair person\u2014an honour which my young friend himself\ndoes not at all appreciate. However, he can\u2019t marry just yet, even if\nhis Rosebud were willing; so he is fain to make the best of it. In\nthe meanwhile, he comes here pretty often for a day or two at a time\nto\u2014fish. Ha ha ha ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cAre he and the pretty girl engaged, Mr. Rhea?\u201d asked Ada.\n\n\u201cWhy, my dear Miss Dionne,\u201d he returned, \u201cI think they may perhaps\nunderstand each other; but you will see them soon, I dare say, and I\nmust learn from you on such a point\u2014not you from me.\u201d\n\nAda blushed, and Mr. Rhea, trotting forward on his comely grey\nhorse, dismounted at his own door and stood ready with extended arm\nand uncovered head to welcome us when we arrived.\n\nHe lived in a pretty house, formerly the parsonage house, with a lawn\nin front, a bright flower-garden at the side, and a well-stocked\norchard and kitchen-garden in the rear, enclosed with a venerable\nwall that had of itself a ripened ruddy look. But, indeed, everything\nabout the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old\nlime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the\ncherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the\ngooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested\non the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like\nprofusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled\nabout among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and\nwinking in the sun there were such heaps of drooping pods, and\nmarrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground appeared a\nvegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all kinds of\nwholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighbouring meadows where\nthe hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay. Such\nstillness and composure reigned within the orderly precincts of the\nold red wall that even the feathers hung in garlands to scare the\nbirds hardly stirred; and the wall had such a ripening influence that\nwhere, here and there high up, a disused nail and scrap of list still\nclung to it, it was easy to fancy that they had mellowed with the\nchanging seasons and that they had rusted and decayed according to\nthe common fate.\n\nThe house, though a little disorderly in comparison with the garden,\nwas a real old house with settles in the chimney of the brick-floored\nkitchen and great beams across the ceilings. On one side of it was\nthe terrible piece of ground in dispute, where Mr. Rhea\nmaintained a sentry in a smock-frock day and night, whose duty was\nsupposed to be, in cases of aggression, immediately to ring a large\nbell hung up there for the purpose, to unchain a great bull-dog\nestablished in a kennel as his ally, and generally to deal\ndestruction on the enemy. Not content with these precautions, Mr.\nRhea had himself composed and posted there, on painted boards to\nwhich his name was attached in large letters, the following solemn\nwarnings: \u201cBeware of the bull-dog. He is most ferocious. Lawrence\nRhea.\u201d \u201cThe blunderbus is loaded with slugs. Lawrence Rhea.\u201d\n\u201cMan-traps and spring-guns are set here at all times of the day and\nnight. Lawrence Rhea.\u201d \u201cTake notice. That any person or persons\naudaciously presuming to trespass on this property will be punished\nwith the utmost severity of private chastisement and prosecuted with\nthe utmost rigour of the law. Lawrence Rhea.\u201d These he showed us\nfrom the drawing-room window, while his bird was hopping about his\nhead, and he laughed, \u201cHa ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha!\u201d to that extent as\nhe pointed them out that I really thought he would have hurt himself.\n\n\u201cBut this is taking a good deal of trouble,\u201d said Mr. Yestin in his\nlight way, \u201cwhen you are not in earnest after all.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot in earnest!\u201d returned Mr. Rhea with unspeakable warmth. \u201cNot\nin earnest! If I could have hoped to train him, I would have bought a\nlion instead of that dog and would have turned him loose upon the\nfirst intolerable robber who should dare to make an encroachment on\nmy rights. Let Sir Luigi Wayne consent to come out and decide\nthis question by single combat, and I will meet him with any weapon\nknown to mankind in any age or country. I am that much in earnest.\nNot more!\u201d\n\nWe arrived at his house on a Saturday. On the Sunday morning we all\nset forth to walk to the little church in the park. Entering the\npark, almost immediately by the disputed ground, we pursued a\npleasant footpath winding among the verdant turf and the beautiful\ntrees until it brought us to the church-porch.\n\nThe congregation was extremely small and quite a rustic one with the\nexception of a large muster of servants from the house, some of whom\nwere already in their seats, while others were yet dropping in. There\nwere some stately footmen, and there was a perfect picture of an old\ncoachman, who looked as if he were the official representative of all\nthe pomps and vanities that had ever been put into his coach. There\nwas a very pretty show of young women, and above them, the handsome\nold face and fine responsible portly figure of the housekeeper\ntowered pre-eminent. The pretty girl of whom Mr. Rhea had told us\nwas close by her. She was so very pretty that I might have known her\nby her beauty even if I had not seen how blushingly conscious she was\nof the eyes of the young fisherman, whom I discovered not far off.\nOne face, and not an agreeable one, though it was handsome, seemed\nmaliciously watchful of this pretty girl, and indeed of every one and\neverything there. It was a Frenchwoman\u2019s.\n\nAs the bell was yet ringing and the great people were not yet come, I\nhad leisure to glance over the church, which smelt as earthy as a\ngrave, and to think what a shady, ancient, solemn little church it\nwas. The windows, heavily shaded by trees, admitted a subdued light\nthat made the faces around me pale, and darkened the old brasses in\nthe pavement and the time and damp-worn monuments, and rendered the\nsunshine in the little porch, where a monotonous ringer was working\nat the bell, inestimably bright. But a stir in that direction, a\ngathering of reverential awe in the rustic faces, and a blandly\nferocious assumption on the part of Mr. Rhea of being resolutely\nunconscious of somebody\u2019s existence forewarned me that the great\npeople were come and that the service was going to begin.\n\n\u201c\u2018Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy\nsight\u2014\u2019\u201d\n\nShall I ever forget the rapid beating at my heart, occasioned by the\nlook I met as I stood up! Shall I ever forget the manner in which\nthose handsome proud eyes seemed to spring out of their languor and\nto hold mine! It was only a moment before I cast mine down\u2014released\nagain, if I may say so\u2014on my book; but I knew the beautiful face\nquite well in that short space of time.\n\nAnd, very strangely, there was something quickened within me,\nassociated with the lonely days at my godmother\u2019s; yes, away even to\nthe days when I had stood on tiptoe to dress myself at my little\nglass after dressing my doll. And this, although I had never seen\nthis lady\u2019s face before in all my life\u2014I was quite sure of\nit\u2014absolutely certain.\n\nIt was easy to know that the ceremonious, gouty, grey-haired\ngentleman, the only other occupant of the great pew, was Sir\nLuigi Wayne, and that the lady was Godfrey Wayne. But why her\nface should be, in a confused way, like a broken glass to me, in\nwhich I saw scraps of old remembrances, and why I should be so\nfluttered and troubled (for I was still) by having casually met her\neyes, I could not think.\n\nI felt it to be an unmeaning weakness in me and tried to overcome it\nby attending to the words I heard. Then, very strangely, I seemed to\nhear them, not in the reader\u2019s voice, but in the well-remembered\nvoice of my godmother. This made me think, did Godfrey Wayne\u2019s face\naccidentally resemble my godmother\u2019s? It might be that it did, a\nlittle; but the expression was so different, and the stern decision\nwhich had worn into my godmother\u2019s face, like weather into rocks, was\nso completely wanting in the face before me that it could not be that\nresemblance which had struck me. Neither did I know the loftiness and\nhaughtiness of Godfrey Wayne\u2019s face, at all, in any one. And yet I\u2014I,\nlittle Paulina Robin, the child who lived a life apart and on\nwhose birthday there was no rejoicing\u2014seemed to arise before my own\neyes, evoked out of the past by some power in this fashionable lady,\nwhom I not only entertained no fancy that I had ever seen, but whom I\nperfectly well knew I had never seen until that hour.\n\nIt made me tremble so to be thrown into this unaccountable agitation\nthat I was conscious of being distressed even by the observation of\nthe French maid, though I knew she had been looking watchfully here,\nand there, and everywhere, from the moment of her coming into the\nchurch. By degrees, though very slowly, I at last overcame my strange\nemotion. After a long time, I looked towards Godfrey Wayne again. It\nwas while they were preparing to sing, before the sermon. She took no\nheed of me, and the beating at my heart was gone. Neither did it\nrevive for more than a few moments when she once or twice afterwards\nglanced at Ada or at me through her glass.\n\nThe service being concluded, Sir Luigi gave his arm with much\ntaste and gallantry to Godfrey Wayne\u2014though he was obliged to walk by\nthe help of a thick stick\u2014and escorted her out of church to the pony\ncarriage in which they had come. The servants then dispersed, and so\ndid the congregation, whom Sir Luigi had contemplated all along\n(Mr. Yestin said to Mr. Rhea\u2019s infinite delight) as if he were\na considerable landed proprietor in heaven.\n\n\u201cHe believes he is!\u201d said Mr. Rhea. \u201cHe firmly believes it. So\ndid his father, and his grandfather, and his great-grandfather!\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you know,\u201d pursued Mr. Yestin very unexpectedly to Mr.\nRhea, \u201cit\u2019s agreeable to me to see a man of that sort.\u201d\n\n\u201cIS it!\u201d said Mr. Rhea.\n\n\u201cSay that he wants to patronize me,\u201d pursued Mr. Yestin. \u201cVery\nwell! I don\u2019t object.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do,\u201d said Mr. Rhea with great vigour.\n\n\u201cDo you really?\u201d returned Mr. Yestin in his easy light vein. \u201cBut\nthat\u2019s taking trouble, surely. And why should you take trouble? Here\nam I, content to receive things childishly as they fall out, and I\nnever take trouble! I come down here, for instance, and I find a\nmighty potentate exacting homage. Very well! I say \u2018Mighty potentate,\nhere IS my homage! It\u2019s easier to give it than to withhold it. Here\nit is. If you have anything of an agreeable nature to show me, I\nshall be happy to see it; if you have anything of an agreeable nature\nto give me, I shall be happy to accept it.\u2019 Mighty potentate replies\nin effect, \u2018This is a sensible fellow. I find him accord with my\ndigestion and my bilious system. He doesn\u2019t impose upon me the\nnecessity of rolling myself up like a hedgehog with my points\noutward. I expand, I open, I turn my silver lining outward like\nMilton\u2019s cloud, and it\u2019s more agreeable to both of us.\u2019 That\u2019s my\nview of such things, speaking as a child!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut suppose you went down somewhere else to-morrow,\u201d said Mr.\nRhea, \u201cwhere there was the opposite of that fellow\u2014or of this\nfellow. How then?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow then?\u201d said Mr. Yestin with an appearance of the utmost\nsimplicity and candour. \u201cJust the same then! I should say, \u2018My\nesteemed Rhea\u2019\u2014to make you the personification of our imaginary\nfriend\u2014\u2018my esteemed Rhea, you object to the mighty potentate?\nVery good. So do I. I take it that my business in the social system\nis to be agreeable; I take it that everybody\u2019s business in the social\nsystem is to be agreeable. It\u2019s a system of harmony, in short.\nTherefore if you object, I object. Now, excellent Rhea, let us go\nto dinner!\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cBut excellent Rhea might say,\u201d returned our host, swelling and\ngrowing very red, \u201cI\u2019ll be\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI understand,\u201d said Mr. Yestin. \u201cVery likely he would.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2014if I WILL go to dinner!\u201d cried Mr. Rhea in a violent burst and\nstopping to strike his stick upon the ground. \u201cAnd he would probably\nadd, \u2018Is there such a thing as principle, Mr. Harold Yestin?\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cTo which Harold Yestin would reply, you know,\u201d he returned in his\ngayest manner and with his most ingenuous smile, \u201c\u2018Upon my life I\nhave not the least idea! I don\u2019t know what it is you call by that\nname, or where it is, or who possesses it. If you possess it and find\nit comfortable, I am quite delighted and congratulate you heartily.\nBut I know nothing about it, I assure you; for I am a mere child, and\nI lay no claim to it, and I don\u2019t want it!\u2019 So, you see, excellent\nRhea and I would go to dinner after all!\u201d\n\nThis was one of many little dialogues between them which I always\nexpected to end, and which I dare say would have ended under other\ncircumstances, in some violent explosion on the part of our host. But\nhe had so high a sense of his hospitable and responsible position as\nour entertainer, and my guardian laughed so sincerely at and with Mr.\nYestin, as a child who blew bubbles and broke them all day long,\nthat matters never went beyond this point. Mr. Yestin, who always\nseemed quite unconscious of having been on delicate ground, then\nbetook himself to beginning some sketch in the park which he never\nfinished, or to playing fragments of airs on the piano, or to singing\nscraps of songs, or to lying down on his back under a tree and\nlooking at the sky\u2014which he couldn\u2019t help thinking, he said, was\nwhat he was meant for; it suited him so exactly.\n\n\u201cEnterprise and effort,\u201d he would say to us (on his back), \u201care\ndelightful to me. I believe I am truly cosmopolitan. I have the\ndeepest sympathy with them. I lie in a shady place like this and\nthink of adventurous spirits going to the North Pole or penetrating\nto the heart of the Torrid Zone with admiration. Mercenary creatures\nask, \u2018What is the use of a man\u2019s going to the North Pole? What good\ndoes it do?\u2019 I can\u2019t say; but, for anything I CAN say, he may go for\nthe purpose\u2014though he don\u2019t know it\u2014of employing my thoughts as I\nlie here. Take an extreme case. Take the case of the slaves on\nAmerican plantations. I dare say they are worked hard, I dare say\nthey don\u2019t altogether like it. I dare say theirs is an unpleasant\nexperience on the whole; but they people the landscape for me, they\ngive it a poetry for me, and perhaps that is one of the pleasanter\nobjects of their existence. I am very sensible of it, if it be, and I\nshouldn\u2019t wonder if it were!\u201d\n\nI always wondered on these occasions whether he ever thought of Mrs.\nYestin and the children, and in what point of view they presented\nthemselves to his cosmopolitan mind. So far as I could understand,\nthey rarely presented themselves at all.\n\nThe week had gone round to the Saturday following that beating of my\nheart in the church; and every day had been so bright and blue that\nto ramble in the woods, and to see the light striking down among the\ntransparent leaves and sparkling in the beautiful interlacings of the\nshadows of the trees, while the birds poured out their songs and the\nair was drowsy with the hum of insects, had been most delightful. We\nhad one favourite spot, deep in moss and last year\u2019s leaves, where\nthere were some felled trees from which the bark was all stripped\noff. Seated among these, we looked through a green vista supported by\nthousands of natural columns, the whitened stems of trees, upon a\ndistant prospect made so radiant by its contrast with the shade in\nwhich we sat and made so precious by the arched perspective through\nwhich we saw it that it was like a glimpse of the better land. Upon\nthe Saturday we sat here, Mr. Ashton, Ada, and I, until we heard\nthunder muttering in the distance and felt the large raindrops rattle\nthrough the leaves.\n\nThe weather had been all the week extremely sultry, but the storm\nbroke so suddenly\u2014upon us, at least, in that sheltered spot\u2014that\nbefore we reached the outskirts of the wood the thunder and lightning\nwere frequent and the rain came plunging through the leaves as if\nevery drop were a great leaden bead. As it was not a time for\nstanding among trees, we ran out of the wood, and up and down the\nmoss-grown steps which crossed the plantation-fence like two\nbroad-staved ladders placed back to back, and made for a keeper\u2019s\nlodge which was close at hand. We had often noticed the dark beauty\nof this lodge standing in a deep twilight of trees, and how the ivy\nclustered over it, and how there was a steep hollow near, where we\nhad once seen the keeper\u2019s dog dive down into the fern as if it were\nwater.\n\nThe lodge was so dark within, now the sky was overcast, that we only\nclearly saw the man who came to the door when we took shelter there\nand put two chairs for Ada and me. The lattice-windows were all\nthrown open, and we sat just within the doorway watching the storm.\nIt was grand to see how the wind awoke, and bent the trees, and drove\nthe rain before it like a cloud of smoke; and to hear the solemn\nthunder and to see the lightning; and while thinking with awe of the\ntremendous powers by which our little lives are encompassed, to\nconsider how beneficent they are and how upon the smallest flower and\nleaf there was already a freshness poured from all this seeming rage\nwhich seemed to make creation new again.\n\n\u201cIs it not dangerous to sit in so exposed a place?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, no, Paulina dear!\u201d said Ada quietly.\n\nAda said it to me, but I had not spoken.\n\nThe beating of my heart came back again. I had never heard the voice,\nas I had never seen the face, but it affected me in the same strange\nway. Again, in a moment, there arose before my mind innumerable\npictures of myself.\n\nGodfrey Wayne had taken shelter in the lodge before our arrival there\nand had come out of the gloom within. She stood behind my chair with\nher hand upon it. I saw her with her hand close to my shoulder when I\nturned my head.\n\n\u201cI have frightened you?\u201d she said.\n\nNo. It was not fright. Why should I be frightened!\n\n\u201cI believe,\u201d said Godfrey Wayne to my guardian, \u201cI have the pleasure\nof speaking to Mr. Ashton.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour remembrance does me more honour than I had supposed it would,\nGodfrey Wayne,\u201d he returned.\n\n\u201cI recognized you in church on Sunday. I am sorry that any local\ndisputes of Sir Luigi\u2019s\u2014they are not of his seeking, however, I\nbelieve\u2014should render it a matter of some absurd difficulty to show\nyou any attention here.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am aware of the circumstances,\u201d returned my guardian with a smile,\n\u201cand am sufficiently obliged.\u201d\n\nShe had given him her hand in an indifferent way that seemed habitual\nto her and spoke in a correspondingly indifferent manner, though in a\nvery pleasant voice. She was as graceful as she was beautiful,\nperfectly self-possessed, and had the air, I thought, of being able\nto attract and interest any one if she had thought it worth her\nwhile. The keeper had brought her a chair on which she sat in the\nmiddle of the porch between us.\n\n\u201cIs the young gentleman disposed of whom you wrote to Sir Luigi\nabout and whose wishes Sir Luigi was sorry not to have it in his\npower to advance in any way?\u201d she said over her shoulder to my\nguardian.\n\n\u201cI hope so,\u201d said he.\n\nShe seemed to respect him and even to wish to conciliate him. There\nwas something very winning in her haughty manner, and it became more\nfamiliar\u2014I was going to say more easy, but that could hardly be\u2014as\nshe spoke to him over her shoulder.\n\n\u201cI presume this is your other ward, Miss Dionne?\u201d\n\nHe presented Ada, in form.\n\n\u201cYou will lose the disinterested part of your Don Quixote character,\u201d\nsaid Godfrey Wayne to Mr. Ashton over her shoulder again, \u201cif you\nonly redress the wrongs of beauty like this. But present me,\u201d and she\nturned full upon me, \u201cto this young lady too!\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Robin really is my ward,\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cI am\nresponsible to no Lord Chancellor in her case.\u201d\n\n\u201cHas Miss Robin lost both her parents?\u201d said my Godfrey.\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is very fortunate in her guardian.\u201d\n\nGodfrey Wayne looked at me, and I looked at her and said I was indeed.\nAll at once she turned from me with a hasty air, almost expressive of\ndispleasure or dislike, and spoke to him over her shoulder again.\n\n\u201cAges have passed since we were in the habit of meeting, Mr.\nAshton.\u201d\n\n\u201cA long time. At least I thought it was a long time, until I saw you\nlast Sunday,\u201d he returned.\n\n\u201cWhat! Even you are a courtier, or think it necessary to become one\nto me!\u201d she said with some disdain. \u201cI have achieved that reputation,\nI suppose.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have achieved so much, Godfrey Wayne,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cthat\nyou pay some little penalty, I dare say. But none to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo much!\u201d she repeated, slightly laughing. \u201cYes!\u201d\n\nWith her air of superiority, and power, and fascination, and I know\nnot what, she seemed to regard Ada and me as little more than\nchildren. So, as she slightly laughed and afterwards sat looking at\nthe rain, she was as self-possessed and as free to occupy herself\nwith her own thoughts as if she had been alone.\n\n\u201cI think you knew my sister when we were abroad together better than\nyou know me?\u201d she said, looking at him again.\n\n\u201cYes, we happened to meet oftener,\u201d he returned.\n\n\u201cWe went our several ways,\u201d said Godfrey Wayne, \u201cand had little in\ncommon even before we agreed to differ. It is to be regretted, I\nsuppose, but it could not be helped.\u201d\n\nGodfrey Wayne again sat looking at the rain. The storm soon began to\npass upon its way. The shower greatly abated, the lightning ceased,\nthe thunder rolled among the distant hills, and the sun began to\nglisten on the wet leaves and the falling rain. As we sat there,\nsilently, we saw a little pony phaeton coming towards us at a merry\npace.\n\n\u201cThe messenger is coming back, my Godfrey,\u201d said the keeper, \u201cwith the\ncarriage.\u201d\n\nAs it drove up, we saw that there were two people inside. There\nalighted from it, with some cloaks and wrappers, first the\nFrenchwoman whom I had seen in church, and secondly the pretty girl,\nthe Frenchwoman with a defiant confidence, the pretty girl confused\nand hesitating.\n\n\u201cWhat now?\u201d said Godfrey Wayne. \u201cTwo!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am your maid, my Godfrey, at the present,\u201d said the Frenchwoman. \u201cThe\nmessage was for the attendant.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was afraid you might mean me, my Godfrey,\u201d said the pretty girl.\n\n\u201cI did mean you, child,\u201d replied her mistress calmly. \u201cPut that shawl\non me.\u201d\n\nShe slightly stooped her shoulders to receive it, and the pretty girl\nlightly dropped it in its place. The Frenchwoman stood unnoticed,\nlooking on with her lips very tightly set.\n\n\u201cI am sorry,\u201d said Godfrey Wayne to Mr. Ashton, \u201cthat we are not\nlikely to renew our former acquaintance. You will allow me to send\nthe carriage back for your two wards. It shall be here directly.\u201d\n\nBut as he would on no account accept this offer, she took a graceful\nleave of Ada\u2014none of me\u2014and put her hand upon his proffered arm,\nand got into the carriage, which was a little, low, park carriage\nwith a hood.\n\n\u201cCome in, child,\u201d she said to the pretty girl; \u201cI shall want you. Go\non!\u201d\n\nThe carriage rolled away, and the Frenchwoman, with the wrappers she\nhad brought hanging over her arm, remained standing where she had\nalighted.\n\nI suppose there is nothing pride can so little bear with as pride\nitself, and that she was punished for her imperious manner. Her\nretaliation was the most singular I could have imagined. She remained\nperfectly still until the carriage had turned into the drive, and\nthen, without the least discomposure of countenance, slipped off her\nshoes, left them on the ground, and walked deliberately in the same\ndirection through the wettest of the wet grass.\n\n\u201cIs that young woman mad?\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cOh, no, sir!\u201d said the keeper, who, with his wife, was looking after\nher. \u201cRaylan is not one of that sort. She has as good a head-piece\nas the best. But she\u2019s mortal high and passionate\u2014powerful high and\npassionate; and what with having notice to leave, and having others\nput above her, she don\u2019t take kindly to it.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut why should she walk shoeless through all that water?\u201d said my\nguardian.\n\n\u201cWhy, indeed, sir, unless it is to cool her down!\u201d said the man.\n\n\u201cOr unless she fancies it\u2019s blood,\u201d said the woman. \u201cShe\u2019d as soon\nwalk through that as anything else, I think, when her own\u2019s up!\u201d\n\nWe passed not far from the house a few minutes afterwards. Peaceful\nas it had looked when we first saw it, it looked even more so now,\nwith a diamond spray glittering all about it, a light wind blowing,\nthe birds no longer hushed but singing strongly, everything refreshed\nby the late rain, and the little carriage shining at the doorway like\na fairy carriage made of silver. Still, very steadfastly and quietly\nwalking towards it, a peaceful figure too in the landscape, went\nMiles Raylan, shoeless, through the wet grass.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIX\n\nMoving On\n\n\nIt is the long vacation in the regions of Chancery Lane. The good\nships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed,\niron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing\nclippers are laid up in ordinary. The Flying Dutchman, with a crew of\nghostly clients imploring all whom they may encounter to peruse their\npapers, has drifted, for the time being, heaven knows where. The\ncourts are all shut up; the public offices lie in a hot sleep.\nWestminster Hall itself is a shady solitude where nightingales might\nsing, and a tenderer class of suitors than is usually found there,\nwalk.\n\nThe Temple, Chancery Lane, Serjeants\u2019 Inn, and Lincoln\u2019s Inn even\nunto the Fields are like tidal harbours at low water, where stranded\nproceedings, offices at anchor, idle clerks lounging on lop-sided\nstools that will not recover their perpendicular until the current of\nTerm sets in, lie high and dry upon the ooze of the long vacation.\nOuter doors of chambers are shut up by the score, messages and\nparcels are to be left at the Porter\u2019s Lodge by the bushel. A crop of\ngrass would grow in the chinks of the stone pavement outside\nLincoln\u2019s Inn Hall, but that the ticket-porters, who have nothing to\ndo beyond sitting in the shade there, with their white aprons over\ntheir heads to keep the flies off, grub it up and eat it\nthoughtfully.\n\nThere is only one judge in town. Even he only comes twice a week to\nsit in chambers. If the country folks of those assize towns on his\ncircuit could see him now! No full-bottomed wig, no red petticoats,\nno fur, no javelin-men, no white wands. Merely a close-shaved\ngentleman in white trousers and a white hat, with sea-bronze on the\njudicial countenance, and a strip of bark peeled by the solar rays\nfrom the judicial nose, who calls in at the shell-fish shop as he\ncomes along and drinks iced ginger-beer!\n\nThe bar of England is scattered over the face of the earth. How\nEngland can get on through four long summer months without its\nbar\u2014which is its acknowledged refuge in adversity and its only\nlegitimate triumph in prosperity\u2014is beside the question; assuredly\nthat shield and buckler of Britannia are not in present wear. The\nlearned gentleman who is always so tremendously indignant at the\nunprecedented outrage committed on the feelings of his client by the\nopposite party that he never seems likely to recover it is doing\ninfinitely better than might be expected in Switzerland. The learned\ngentleman who does the withering business and who blights all\nopponents with his gloomy sarcasm is as merry as a grig at a French\nwatering-place. The learned gentleman who weeps by the pint on the\nsmallest provocation has not shed a tear these six weeks. The very\nlearned gentleman who has cooled the natural heat of his gingery\ncomplexion in pools and fountains of law until he has become great in\nknotty arguments for term-time, when he poses the drowsy bench with\nlegal \u201cchaff,\u201d inexplicable to the uninitiated and to most of the\ninitiated too, is roaming, with a characteristic delight in aridity\nand dust, about Constantinople. Other dispersed fragments of the same\ngreat palladium are to be found on the canals of Venice, at the\nsecond cataract of the Nile, in the baths of Germany, and sprinkled\non the sea-sand all over the English coast. Scarcely one is to be\nencountered in the deserted region of Chancery Lane. If such a lonely\nmember of the bar do flit across the waste, and come upon a prowling\nsuitor who is unable to leave off haunting the scenes of his anxiety,\nthey frighten one another and retreat into opposite shades.\n\nIt is the hottest long vacation known for many years. All the young\nclerks are madly in love, and according to their various degrees,\npine for bliss with the beloved object, at Margate, Ramsgate, or\nGravesend. All the middle-aged clerks think their families too large.\nAll the unowned dogs who stray into the Inns of Court and pant about\nstaircases and other dry places seeking water give short howls of\naggravation. All the blind men\u2019s dogs in the streets draw their\nmasters against pumps or trip them over buckets. A shop with a\nsun-blind, and a watered pavement, and a bowl of gold and silver fish\nin the window, is a sanctuary. Temple Bar gets so hot that it is, to\nthe adjacent Strand and Fleet Street, what a heater is in an urn, and\nkeeps them simmering all night.\n\nThere are offices about the Inns of Court in which a man might be\ncool, if any coolness were worth purchasing at such a price in\ndullness; but the little thoroughfares immediately outside those\nretirements seem to blaze. In Mr. Nesbit\u2019s court, it is so hot that\nthe people turn their houses inside out and sit in chairs upon the\npavement\u2014Mr. Nesbit included, who there pursues his studies, with his\ncat (who never is too hot) by his side. The Sol\u2019s Arms has\ndiscontinued the Harmonic Meetings for the season, and Little Swills\nis engaged at the Pastoral Gardens down the river, where he comes out\nin quite an innocent manner and sings comic ditties of a juvenile\ncomplexion calculated (as the bill says) not to wound the feelings of\nthe most fastidious mind.\n\nOver all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil of\nrust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long\nvacation. Mr. Harlan, law-stationer of Cook\u2019s Court, Cursitor\nStreet, is sensible of the influence not only in his mind as a\nsympathetic and contemplative man, but also in his business as a\nlaw-stationer aforesaid. He has more leisure for musing in Staple Inn\nand in the Rolls Yard during the long vacation than at other seasons,\nand he says to the two \u2019prentices, what a thing it is in such hot\nweather to think that you live in an island with the sea a-rolling\nand a-bowling right round you.\n\nGuster is busy in the little drawing-room on this present afternoon\nin the long vacation, when Mr. and Mrs. Harlan have it in\ncontemplation to receive company. The expected guests are rather\nselect than numerous, being Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and no more. From\nMr. Chadband\u2019s being much given to describe himself, both verbally\nand in writing, as a vessel, he is occasionally mistaken by strangers\nfor a gentleman connected with navigation, but he is, as he expresses\nit, \u201cin the ministry.\u201d Mr. Chadband is attached to no particular\ndenomination and is considered by his persecutors to have nothing so\nvery remarkable to say on the greatest of subjects as to render his\nvolunteering, on his own account, at all incumbent on his conscience;\nbut he has his followers, and Mrs. Harlan is of the number. Mrs.\nHarlan has but recently taken a passage upward by the vessel,\nChadband; and her attention was attracted to that Bark A 1, when she\nwas something flushed by the hot weather.\n\n\u201cMy little woman,\u201d says Mr. Harlan to the sparrows in Staple Inn,\n\u201clikes to have her religion rather sharp, you see!\u201d\n\nSo Guster, much impressed by regarding herself for the time as the\nhandmaid of Chadband, whom she knows to be endowed with the gift of\nholding forth for four hours at a stretch, prepares the little\ndrawing-room for tea. All the furniture is shaken and dusted, the\nportraits of Mr. and Mrs. Harlan are touched up with a wet cloth,\nthe best tea-service is set forth, and there is excellent provision\nmade of dainty new bread, crusty twists, cool fresh butter, thin\nslices of ham, tongue, and German sausage, and delicate little rows\nof anchovies nestling in parsley, not to mention new-laid eggs, to be\nbrought up warm in a napkin, and hot buttered toast. For Chadband is\nrather a consuming vessel\u2014the persecutors say a gorging vessel\u2014and\ncan wield such weapons of the flesh as a knife and fork remarkably\nwell.\n\nMr. Harlan in his best coat, looking at all the preparations when\nthey are completed and coughing his cough of deference behind his\nhand, says to Mrs. Harlan, \u201cAt what time did you expect Mr. and Mrs.\nChadband, my love?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt six,\u201d says Mrs. Harlan.\n\nMr. Harlan observes in a mild and casual way that \u201cit\u2019s gone that.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps you\u2019d like to begin without them,\u201d is Mrs. Harlan\u2019s\nreproachful remark.\n\nMr. Harlan does look as if he would like it very much, but he says,\nwith his cough of mildness, \u201cNo, my dear, no. I merely named the\ntime.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s time,\u201d says Mrs. Harlan, \u201cto eternity?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery true, my dear,\u201d says Mr. Harlan. \u201cOnly when a person lays in\nvictuals for tea, a person does it with a view\u2014perhaps\u2014more to\ntime. And when a time is named for having tea, it\u2019s better to come up\nto it.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo come up to it!\u201d Mrs. Harlan repeats with severity. \u201cUp to it! As\nif Mr. Chadband was a fighter!\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all, my dear,\u201d says Mr. Harlan.\n\nHere, Guster, who had been looking out of the bedroom window, comes\nrustling and scratching down the little staircase like a popular\nghost, and falling flushed into the drawing-room, announces that Mr.\nand Mrs. Chadband have appeared in the court. The bell at the inner\ndoor in the passage immediately thereafter tinkling, she is\nadmonished by Mrs. Harlan, on pain of instant reconsignment to her\npatron saint, not to omit the ceremony of announcement. Much\ndiscomposed in her nerves (which were previously in the best order)\nby this threat, she so fearfully mutilates that point of state as to\nannounce \u201cMr. and Mrs. Cheeseming, least which, Imeantersay,\nwhatsername!\u201d and retires conscience-stricken from the presence.\n\nMr. Chadband is a large yellow man with a fat smile and a general\nappearance of having a good deal of train oil in his system. Mrs.\nChadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband moves\nsoftly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk\nupright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were\ninconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much in a\nperspiration about the head, and never speaks without first putting\nup his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he is\ngoing to edify them.\n\n\u201cMy friends,\u201d says Mr. Chadband, \u201cpeace be on this house! On the\nmaster thereof, on the mistress thereof, on the young maidens, and on\nthe young men! My friends, why do I wish for peace? What is peace? Is\nit war? No. Is it strife? No. Is it lovely, and gentle, and\nbeautiful, and pleasant, and serene, and joyful? Oh, yes! Therefore,\nmy friends, I wish for peace, upon you and upon yours.\u201d\n\nIn consequence of Mrs. Harlan looking deeply edified, Mr. Harlan\nthinks it expedient on the whole to say amen, which is well received.\n\n\u201cNow, my friends,\u201d proceeds Mr. Chadband, \u201csince I am upon this\ntheme\u2014\u201d\n\nGuster presents herself. Mrs. Harlan, in a spectral bass voice and\nwithout removing her eyes from Chadband, says with dreadful\ndistinctness, \u201cGo away!\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, my friends,\u201d says Chadband, \u201csince I am upon this theme, and in\nmy lowly path improving it\u2014\u201d\n\nGuster is heard unaccountably to murmur \u201cone thousing seven hundred\nand eighty-two.\u201d The spectral voice repeats more solemnly, \u201cGo away!\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, my friends,\u201d says Mr. Chadband, \u201cwe will inquire in a spirit of\nlove\u2014\u201d\n\nStill Guster reiterates \u201cone thousing seven hundred and eighty-two.\u201d\n\nMr. Chadband, pausing with the resignation of a man accustomed to be\npersecuted and languidly folding up his chin into his fat smile,\nsays, \u201cLet us hear the maiden! Speak, maiden!\u201d\n\n\u201cOne thousing seven hundred and eighty-two, if you please, sir. Which\nhe wish to know what the shilling ware for,\u201d says Guster, breathless.\n\n\u201cFor?\u201d returns Mrs. Chadband. \u201cFor his fare!\u201d\n\nGuster replied that \u201che insistes on one and eightpence or on\nsummonsizzing the party.\u201d Mrs. Harlan and Mrs. Chadband are\nproceeding to grow shrill in indignation when Mr. Chadband quiets the\ntumult by lifting up his hand.\n\n\u201cMy friends,\u201d says he, \u201cI remember a duty unfulfilled yesterday. It\nis right that I should be chastened in some penalty. I ought not to\nmurmur. Rachael, pay the eightpence!\u201d\n\nWhile Mrs. Harlan, drawing her breath, looks hard at Mr. Harlan, as\nwho should say, \u201cYou hear this apostle!\u201d and while Mr. Chadband glows\nwith humility and train oil, Mrs. Chadband pays the money. It is Mr.\nChadband\u2019s habit\u2014it is the head and front of his pretensions\nindeed\u2014to keep this sort of debtor and creditor account in the\nsmallest items and to post it publicly on the most trivial occasions.\n\n\u201cMy friends,\u201d says Chadband, \u201ceightpence is not much; it might justly\nhave been one and fourpence; it might justly have been half a crown.\nO let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be joyful!\u201d\n\nWith which remark, which appears from its sound to be an extract in\nverse, Mr. Chadband stalks to the table, and before taking a chair,\nlifts up his admonitory hand.\n\n\u201cMy friends,\u201d says he, \u201cwhat is this which we now behold as being\nspread before us? Refreshment. Do we need refreshment then, my\nfriends? We do. And why do we need refreshment, my friends? Because\nwe are but mortal, because we are but sinful, because we are but of\nthe earth, because we are not of the air. Can we fly, my friends? We\ncannot. Why can we not fly, my friends?\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan, presuming on the success of his last point, ventures to\nobserve in a cheerful and rather knowing tone, \u201cNo wings.\u201d But is\nimmediately frowned down by Mrs. Harlan.\n\n\u201cI say, my friends,\u201d pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and\nobliterating Mr. Harlan\u2019s suggestion, \u201cwhy can we not fly? Is it\nbecause we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends,\nwithout strength? We could not. What should we do without strength,\nmy friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double\nup, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground.\nThen from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive\nthe strength that is necessary to our limbs? Is it,\u201d says Chadband,\nglancing over the table, \u201cfrom bread in various forms, from butter\nwhich is churned from the milk which is yielded unto us by the cow,\nfrom the eggs which are laid by the fowl, from ham, from tongue, from\nsausage, and from such like? It is. Then let us partake of the good\nthings which are set before us!\u201d\n\nThe persecutors denied that there was any particular gift in Mr.\nChadband\u2019s piling verbose flights of stairs, one upon another, after\nthis fashion. But this can only be received as a proof of their\ndetermination to persecute, since it must be within everybody\u2019s\nexperience that the Chadband style of oratory is widely received and\nmuch admired.\n\nMr. Chadband, however, having concluded for the present, sits down at\nMr. Harlan\u2019s table and lays about him prodigiously. The conversion\nof nutriment of any sort into oil of the quality already mentioned\nappears to be a process so inseparable from the constitution of this\nexemplary vessel that in beginning to eat and drink, he may be\ndescribed as always becoming a kind of considerable oil mills or\nother large factory for the production of that article on a wholesale\nscale. On the present evening of the long vacation, in Cook\u2019s Court,\nCursitor Street, he does such a powerful stroke of business that the\nwarehouse appears to be quite full when the works cease.\n\nAt this period of the entertainment, Guster, who has never recovered\nher first failure, but has neglected no possible or impossible means\nof bringing the establishment and herself into contempt\u2014among which\nmay be briefly enumerated her unexpectedly performing clashing\nmilitary music on Mr. Chadband\u2019s head with plates, and afterwards\ncrowning that gentleman with muffins\u2014at which period of the\nentertainment, Guster whispers Mr. Harlan that he is wanted.\n\n\u201cAnd being wanted in the\u2014not to put too fine a point upon it\u2014in the\nshop,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, rising, \u201cperhaps this good company will\nexcuse me for half a minute.\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan descends and finds the two \u2019prentices intently\ncontemplating a police constable, who holds a ragged boy by the arm.\n\n\u201cWhy, bless my heart,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, \u201cwhat\u2019s the matter!\u201d\n\n\u201cThis boy,\u201d says the constable, \u201calthough he\u2019s repeatedly told to,\nwon\u2019t move on\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m always a-moving on, sar,\u201d cries the boy, wiping away his grimy\ntears with his arm. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a-moving and a-moving on, ever\nsince I was born. Where can I possibly move to, sir, more nor I do\nmove!\u201d\n\n\u201cHe won\u2019t move on,\u201d says the constable calmly, with a slight\nprofessional hitch of his neck involving its better settlement in his\nstiff stock, \u201calthough he has been repeatedly cautioned, and\ntherefore I am obliged to take him into custody. He\u2019s as obstinate a\nyoung gonoph as I know. He WON\u2019T move on.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, my eye! Where can I move to!\u201d cries the boy, clutching quite\ndesperately at his hair and beating his bare feet upon the floor of\nMr. Harlan\u2019s passage.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you come none of that or I shall make blessed short work of\nyou!\u201d says the constable, giving him a passionless shake. \u201cMy\ninstructions are that you are to move on. I have told you so five\nhundred times.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut where?\u201d cries the boy.\n\n\u201cWell! Really, constable, you know,\u201d says Mr. Harlan wistfully, and\ncoughing behind his hand his cough of great perplexity and doubt,\n\u201creally, that does seem a question. Where, you know?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy instructions don\u2019t go to that,\u201d replies the constable. \u201cMy\ninstructions are that this boy is to move on.\u201d\n\nDo you hear, Jo? It is nothing to you or to any one else that the\ngreat lights of the parliamentary sky have failed for some few years\nin this business to set you the example of moving on. The one grand\nrecipe remains for you\u2014the profound philosophical prescription\u2014the\nbe-all and the end-all of your strange existence upon earth. Move on!\nYou are by no means to move off, Jo, for the great lights can\u2019t at\nall agree about that. Move on!\n\nMr. Harlan says nothing to this effect, says nothing at all indeed,\nbut coughs his forlornest cough, expressive of no thoroughfare in any\ndirection. By this time Mr. and Mrs. Chadband and Mrs. Harlan,\nhearing the altercation, have appeared upon the stairs. Guster having\nnever left the end of the passage, the whole household are assembled.\n\n\u201cThe simple question is, sir,\u201d says the constable, \u201cwhether you know\nthis boy. He says you do.\u201d\n\nMrs. Harlan, from her elevation, instantly cries out, \u201cNo he don\u2019t!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy lit-tle woman!\u201d says Mr. Harlan, looking up the staircase. \u201cMy\nlove, permit me! Pray have a moment\u2019s patience, my dear. I do know\nsomething of this lad, and in what I know of him, I can\u2019t say that\nthere\u2019s any harm; perhaps on the contrary, constable.\u201d To whom the\nlaw-stationer relates his Joful and woeful experience, suppressing\nthe half-crown fact.\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d says the constable, \u201cso far, it seems, he had grounds for\nwhat he said. When I took him into custody up in Holborn, he said you\nknew him. Upon that, a young man who was in the crowd said he was\nacquainted with you, and you were a respectable housekeeper, and if\nI\u2019d call and make the inquiry, he\u2019d appear. The young man don\u2019t seem\ninclined to keep his word, but\u2014Oh! Here IS the young man!\u201d\n\nEnter Mr. Jarrett, who nods to Mr. Harlan and touches his hat with the\nchivalry of clerkship to the ladies on the stairs.\n\n\u201cI was strolling away from the office just now when I found this row\ngoing on,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett to the law-stationer, \u201cand as your name was\nmentioned, I thought it was right the thing should be looked into.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was very good-natured of you, sir,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, \u201cand I am\nobliged to you.\u201d And Mr. Harlan again relates his experience, again\nsuppressing the half-crown fact.\n\n\u201cNow, I know where you live,\u201d says the constable, then, to Jo. \u201cYou\nlive down in Said-all-Alone\u2019s. That\u2019s a nice innocent place to live\nin, ain\u2019t it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t go and live in no nicer place, sir,\u201d replies Jo. \u201cThey\nwouldn\u2019t have nothink to say to me if I wos to go to a nice innocent\nplace fur to live. Who ud go and let a nice innocent lodging to such\na reg\u2019lar one as me!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are very poor, ain\u2019t you?\u201d says the constable.\n\n\u201cYes, I am indeed, sir, wery poor in gin\u2019ral,\u201d replies Jo. \u201cI leave\nyou to judge now! I shook these two half-crowns out of him,\u201d says the\nconstable, producing them to the company, \u201cin only putting my hand\nupon him!\u201d\n\n\u201cThey\u2019re wot\u2019s left, Mr. Harlan,\u201d says Jo, \u201cout of a sov-ring as wos\ngive me by a lady in a wale as sed she wos a servant and as come to\nmy crossin one night and asked to be showd this \u2019ere ouse and the\nouse wot him as you giv the writin to died at, and the berrin-ground\nwot he\u2019s berrid in. She ses to me she ses \u2018are you the boy at the\ninkwhich?\u2019 she ses. I ses \u2018yes\u2019 I ses. She ses to me she ses \u2018can you\nshow me all them places?\u2019 I ses \u2018yes I can\u2019 I ses. And she ses to me\n\u2018do it\u2019 and I dun it and she giv me a sov\u2019ring and hooked it. And I\nan\u2019t had much of the sov\u2019ring neither,\u201d says Jo, with dirty tears,\n\u201cfur I had to pay five bob, down in Said-all-Alone\u2019s, afore they\u2019d\nsquare it fur to give me change, and then a young man he thieved\nanother five while I was asleep and another boy he thieved ninepence\nand the landlord he stood drains round with a lot more on it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t expect anybody to believe this, about the lady and the\nsovereign, do you?\u201d says the constable, eyeing him aside with\nineffable disdain.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know as I do, sir,\u201d replies Jo. \u201cI don\u2019t expect nothink at\nall, sir, much, but that\u2019s the true hist\u2019ry on it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou see what he is!\u201d the constable observes to the audience. \u201cWell,\nMr. Harlan, if I don\u2019t lock him up this time, will you engage for\nhis moving on?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d cries Mrs. Harlan from the stairs.\n\n\u201cMy little woman!\u201d pleads her husband. \u201cConstable, I have no doubt\nhe\u2019ll move on. You know you really must do it,\u201d says Mr. Harlan.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m everyways agreeable, sir,\u201d says the hapless Jo.\n\n\u201cDo it, then,\u201d observes the constable. \u201cYou know what you have got to\ndo. Do it! And recollect you won\u2019t get off so easy next time. Catch\nhold of your money. Now, the sooner you\u2019re five mile off, the better\nfor all parties.\u201d\n\nWith this farewell hint and pointing generally to the setting sun as\na likely place to move on to, the constable bids his auditors good\nafternoon and makes the echoes of Cook\u2019s Court perform slow music for\nhim as he walks away on the shady side, carrying his iron-bound hat\nin his hand for a little ventilation.\n\nNow, Jo\u2019s improbable story concerning the lady and the sovereign has\nawakened more or less the curiosity of all the company. Mr. Jarrett,\nwho has an inquiring mind in matters of evidence and who has\nbeen suffering severely from the lassitude of the long vacation,\ntakes that interest in the case that he enters on a regular\ncross-examination of the witness, which is found so interesting by\nthe ladies that Mrs. Harlan politely invites him to step upstairs\nand drink a cup of tea, if he will excuse the disarranged state of\nthe tea-table, consequent on their previous exertions. Mr. Jarrett\nyielding his assent to this proposal, Jo is requested to follow into\nthe drawing-room doorway, where Mr. Jarrett takes him in hand as a\nwitness, patting him into this shape, that shape, and the other shape\nlike a butterman dealing with so much butter, and worrying him\naccording to the best models. Nor is the examination unlike many such\nmodel displays, both in respect of its eliciting nothing and of its\nbeing lengthy, for Mr. Jarrett is sensible of his talent, and Mrs.\nHarlan feels not only that it gratifies her inquisitive disposition,\nbut that it lifts her husband\u2019s establishment higher up in the law.\nDuring the progress of this keen encounter, the vessel Chadband,\nbeing merely engaged in the oil trade, gets aground and waits to be\nfloated off.\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett. \u201cEither this boy sticks to it like\ncobbler\u2019s-wax or there is something out of the common here that beats\nanything that ever came into my way at Carly and Carboy\u2019s.\u201d\n\nMrs. Chadband whispers Mrs. Harlan, who exclaims, \u201cYou don\u2019t say\nso!\u201d\n\n\u201cFor years!\u201d replied Mrs. Chadband.\n\n\u201cHas known Carly and Carboy\u2019s office for years,\u201d Mrs. Harlan\ntriumphantly explains to Mr. Jarrett. \u201cMrs. Chadband\u2014this gentleman\u2019s\nwife\u2014Reverend Mr. Chadband.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, indeed!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett.\n\n\u201cBefore I married my present husband,\u201d says Mrs. Chadband.\n\n\u201cWas you a party in anything, ma\u2019am?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, transferring\nhis cross-examination.\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cNOT a party in anything, ma\u2019am?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett.\n\nMrs. Chadband shakes her head.\n\n\u201cPerhaps you were acquainted with somebody who was a party in\nsomething, ma\u2019am?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, who likes nothing better than to\nmodel his conversation on forensic principles.\n\n\u201cNot exactly that, either,\u201d replies Mrs. Chadband, humouring the joke\nwith a hard-favoured smile.\n\n\u201cNot exactly that, either!\u201d repeats Mr. Jarrett. \u201cVery good. Pray,\nma\u2019am, was it a lady of your acquaintance who had some transactions\n(we will not at present say what transactions) with Carly and\nCarboy\u2019s office, or was it a gentleman of your acquaintance? Take\ntime, ma\u2019am. We shall come to it presently. Man or woman, ma\u2019am?\u201d\n\n\u201cNeither,\u201d says Mrs. Chadband as before.\n\n\u201cOh! A child!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, throwing on the admiring Mrs. Harlan\nthe regular acute professional eye which is thrown on British\njurymen. \u201cNow, ma\u2019am, perhaps you\u2019ll have the kindness to tell us\nWHAT child.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have got it at last, sir,\u201d says Mrs. Chadband with another\nhard-favoured smile. \u201cWell, sir, it was before your time, most\nlikely, judging from your appearance. I was left in charge of a child\nnamed Paulina Robin, who was put out in life by Messrs. Carly and\nCarboy.\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Robin, ma\u2019am!\u201d cries Mr. Jarrett, excited.\n\n\u201cI call her Paulina Robin,\u201d says Mrs. Chadband with austerity.\n\u201cThere was no Miss-ing of the girl in my time. It was Paulina.\n\u2018Paulina, do this! Paulina, do that!\u2019 and she was made to do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear ma\u2019am,\u201d returns Mr. Jarrett, moving across the small\napartment, \u201cthe humble individual who now addresses you received that\nyoung lady in London when she first came here from the establishment\nto which you have alluded. Allow me to have the pleasure of taking\nyou by the hand.\u201d\n\nMr. Chadband, at last seeing his opportunity, makes his accustomed\nsignal and rises with a smoking head, which he dabs with his\npocket-handkerchief. Mrs. Harlan whispers \u201cHush!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy friends,\u201d says Chadband, \u201cwe have partaken in moderation\u201d (which\nwas certainly not the case so far as he was concerned) \u201cof the\ncomforts which have been provided for us. May this house live upon\nthe fatness of the land; may corn and wine be plentiful therein; may\nit grow, may it thrive, may it prosper, may it advance, may it\nproceed, may it press forward! But, my friends, have we partaken of\nanything else? We have. My friends, of what else have we partaken? Of\nspiritual profit? Yes. From whence have we derived that spiritual\nprofit? My young friend, stand forth!\u201d\n\nJo, thus apostrophized, gives a slouch backward, and another slouch\nforward, and another slouch to each side, and confronts the eloquent\nChadband with evident doubts of his intentions.\n\n\u201cMy young friend,\u201d says Chadband, \u201cyou are to us a pearl, you are to\nus a diamond, you are to us a gem, you are to us a jewel. And why, my\nyoung friend?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d replies Jo. \u201cI don\u2019t know nothink.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy young friend,\u201d says Chadband, \u201cit is because you know nothing\nthat you are to us a gem and jewel. For what are you, my young\nfriend? Are you a beast of the field? No. A bird of the air? No. A\nfish of the sea or river? No. You are a human boy, my young friend. A\nhuman boy. O glorious to be a human boy! And why glorious, my young\nfriend? Because you are capable of receiving the lessons of wisdom,\nbecause you are capable of profiting by this discourse which I now\ndeliver for your good, because you are not a stick, or a staff, or a\nstock, or a stone, or a post, or a pillar.\n\n   O running stream of sparkling joy\n   To be a soaring human boy!\n\nAnd do you cool yourself in that stream now, my young friend? No.\nWhy do you not cool yourself in that stream now? Because you are in a\nstate of darkness, because you are in a state of obscurity, because\nyou are in a state of sinfulness, because you are in a state of\nbondage. My young friend, what is bondage? Let us, in a spirit of\nlove, inquire.\u201d\n\nAt this threatening stage of the discourse, Jo, who seems to have\nbeen gradually going out of his mind, smears his right arm over his\nface and gives a terrible yawn. Mrs. Harlan indignantly expresses\nher belief that he is a limb of the arch-fiend.\n\n\u201cMy friends,\u201d says Mr. Chadband with his persecuted chin folding\nitself into its fat smile again as he looks round, \u201cit is right that\nI should be humbled, it is right that I should be tried, it is right\nthat I should be mortified, it is right that I should be corrected. I\nstumbled, on Sabbath last, when I thought with pride of my three\nhours\u2019 improving. The account is now favourably balanced: my creditor\nhas accepted a composition. O let us be joyful, joyful! O let us be\njoyful!\u201d\n\nGreat sensation on the part of Mrs. Harlan.\n\n\u201cMy friends,\u201d says Chadband, looking round him in conclusion, \u201cI will\nnot proceed with my young friend now. Will you come to-morrow, my\nyoung friend, and inquire of this good lady where I am to be found to\ndeliver a discourse unto you, and will you come like the thirsty\nswallow upon the next day, and upon the day after that, and upon the\nday after that, and upon many pleasant days, to hear discourses?\u201d\n(This with a cow-like lightness.)\n\nJo, whose immediate object seems to be to get away on any terms,\ngives a shuffling nod. Mr. Jarrett then throws him a penny, and Mrs.\nHarlan calls to Guster to see him safely out of the house. But\nbefore he goes downstairs, Mr. Harlan loads him with some broken\nmeats from the table, which he carries away, hugging in his arms.\n\nSo, Mr. Chadband\u2014of whom the persecutors say that it is no wonder he\nshould go on for any length of time uttering such abominable\nnonsense, but that the wonder rather is that he should ever leave\noff, having once the audacity to begin\u2014retires into private life\nuntil he invests a little capital of supper in the oil-trade. Jo\nmoves on, through the long vacation, down to Blackfriars Bridge,\nwhere he finds a baking stony corner wherein to settle to his repast.\n\nAnd there he sits, munching and gnawing, and looking up at the great\ncross on the summit of St. Paul\u2019s Cathedral, glittering above a\nred-and-violet-tinted cloud of smoke. From the boy\u2019s face one might\nsuppose that sacred emblem to be, in his eyes, the crowning confusion\nof the great, confused city\u2014so golden, so high up, so far out of his\nreach. There he sits, the sun going down, the river running fast, the\ncrowd flowing by him in two streams\u2014everything moving on to some\npurpose and to one end\u2014until he is stirred up and told to \u201cmove on\u201d\ntoo.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XX\n\nA New Lodger\n\n\nThe long vacation saunters on towards term-time like an idle river\nvery leisurely strolling down a flat country to the sea. Mr. Jarrett\nsaunters along with it congenially. He has blunted the blade of his\npenknife and broken the point off by sticking that instrument into\nhis desk in every direction. Not that he bears the desk any ill will,\nbut he must do something, and it must be something of an unexciting\nnature, which will lay neither his physical nor his intellectual\nenergies under too heavy contribution. He finds that nothing agrees\nwith him so well as to make little gyrations on one leg of his stool,\nand stab his desk, and gape.\n\nCarly and Carboy are out of town, and the articled clerk has taken\nout a shooting license and gone down to his father\u2019s, and Mr. Jarrett\u2019s\ntwo fellow-stipendiaries are away on leave. Mr. Jarrett and Mr. Celise\nWillis divide the dignity of the office. But Mr. Willis is for\nthe time being established in Carly\u2019s room, whereat Mr. Jarrett chafes.\nSo exceedingly that he with biting sarcasm informs his mother, in the\nconfidential moments when he sups with her off a lobster and lettuce\nin the Old Street Road, that he is afraid the office is hardly good\nenough for swells, and that if he had known there was a swell coming,\nhe would have got it painted.\n\nMr. Jarrett suspects everybody who enters on the occupation of a stool\nin Carly and Carboy\u2019s office of entertaining, as a matter of course,\nsinister designs upon him. He is clear that every such person wants\nto depose him. If he be ever asked how, why, when, or wherefore, he\nshuts up one eye and shakes his head. On the strength of these\nprofound views, he in the most ingenious manner takes infinite pains\nto counterplot when there is no plot, and plays the deepest games of\nchess without any adversary.\n\nIt is a source of much gratification to Mr. Jarrett, therefore, to find\nthe new-comer constantly poring over the papers in Ashton and\nAshton, for he well knows that nothing but confusion and failure\ncan come of that. His satisfaction communicates itself to a third\nsaunterer through the long vacation in Carly and Carboy\u2019s office, to\nwit, Young Hunter.\n\nWhether Young Hunter (metaphorically called Small and eke Chick\nWeed, as it were jocularly to express a fledgling) was ever a boy is\nmuch doubted in Lincoln\u2019s Inn. He is now something under fifteen and\nan old limb of the law. He is facetiously understood to entertain a\npassion for a lady at a cigar-shop in the neighbourhood of Chancery\nLane and for her sake to have broken off a contract with another\nlady, to whom he had been engaged some years. He is a town-made\narticle, of small stature and weazen features, but may be perceived\nfrom a considerable distance by means of his very tall hat. To become\na Jarrett is the object of his ambition. He dresses at that gentleman\n(by whom he is patronized), talks at him, walks at him, founds\nhimself entirely on him. He is honoured with Mr. Jarrett\u2019s particular\nconfidence and occasionally advises him, from the deep wells of his\nexperience, on difficult points in private life.\n\nMr. Jarrett has been lolling out of window all the morning after trying\nall the stools in succession and finding none of them easy, and after\nseveral times putting his head into the iron safe with a notion of\ncooling it. Mr. Hunter has been twice dispatched for effervescent\ndrinks, and has twice mixed them in the two official tumblers and\nstirred them up with the ruler. Mr. Jarrett propounds for Mr.\nHunter\u2019s consideration the paradox that the more you drink the\nthirstier you are and reclines his head upon the window-sill in a\nstate of hopeless languor.\n\nWhile thus looking out into the shade of Old Square, Lincoln\u2019s Inn,\nsurveying the intolerable bricks and mortar, Mr. Jarrett becomes\nconscious of a manly whisker emerging from the cloistered walk below\nand turning itself up in the direction of his face. At the same time,\na low whistle is wafted through the Inn and a suppressed voice cries,\n\u201cHip! Gup-py!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, you don\u2019t mean it!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, aroused. \u201cSmall! Here\u2019s\nJobling!\u201d Small\u2019s head looks out of window too and nods to Jobling.\n\n\u201cWhere have you sprung up from?\u201d inquires Mr. Jarrett.\n\n\u201cFrom the market-gardens down by Deptford. I can\u2019t stand it any\nlonger. I must enlist. I say! I wish you\u2019d lend me half a crown. Upon\nmy soul, I\u2019m hungry.\u201d\n\nJobling looks hungry and also has the appearance of having run to\nseed in the market-gardens down by Deptford.\n\n\u201cI say! Just throw out half a crown if you have got one to spare. I\nwant to get some dinner.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill you come and dine with me?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, throwing out the\ncoin, which Mr. Jobling catches neatly.\n\n\u201cHow long should I have to hold out?\u201d says Jobling.\n\n\u201cNot half an hour. I am only waiting here till the enemy goes,\u201d\nreturns Mr. Jarrett, butting inward with his head.\n\n\u201cWhat enemy?\u201d\n\n\u201cA new one. Going to be articled. Will you wait?\u201d\n\n\u201cCan you give a fellow anything to read in the meantime?\u201d says Mr.\nJobling.\n\nHunter suggests the law list. But Mr. Jobling declares with much\nearnestness that he \u201ccan\u2019t stand it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou shall have the paper,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett. \u201cHe shall bring it down.\nBut you had better not be seen about here. Sit on our staircase and\nread. It\u2019s a quiet place.\u201d\n\nJobling nods intelligence and acquiescence. The sagacious Hunter\nsupplies him with the newspaper and occasionally drops his eye upon\nhim from the landing as a precaution against his becoming disgusted\nwith waiting and making an untimely departure. At last the enemy\nretreats, and then Hunter fetches Mr. Jobling up.\n\n\u201cWell, and how are you?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, shaking hands with him.\n\n\u201cSo, so. How are you?\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett replying that he is not much to boast of, Mr. Jobling\nventures on the question, \u201cHow is SHE?\u201d This Mr. Jarrett resents as a\nliberty, retorting, \u201cJobling, there ARE chords in the human mind\u2014\u201d\nJobling begs pardon.\n\n\u201cAny subject but that!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett with a gloomy enjoyment of his\ninjury. \u201cFor there ARE chords, Jobling\u2014\u201d\n\nMr. Jobling begs pardon again.\n\nDuring this short colloquy, the active Hunter, who is of the\ndinner party, has written in legal characters on a slip of paper,\n\u201cReturn immediately.\u201d This notification to all whom it may concern,\nhe inserts in the letter-box, and then putting on the tall hat at the\nangle of inclination at which Mr. Jarrett wears his, informs his patron\nthat they may now make themselves scarce.\n\nAccordingly they betake themselves to a neighbouring dining-house, of\nthe class known among its frequenters by the denomination slap-bang,\nwhere the waitress, a bouncing young female of forty, is supposed to\nhave made some impression on the susceptible Hunter, of whom it\nmay be remarked that he is a weird changeling to whom years are\nnothing. He stands precociously possessed of centuries of owlish\nwisdom. If he ever lay in a cradle, it seems as if he must have lain\nthere in a tail-coat. He has an old, old eye, has Hunter; and he\ndrinks and smokes in a monkeyish way; and his neck is stiff in his\ncollar; and he is never to be taken in; and he knows all about it,\nwhatever it is. In short, in his bringing up he has been so nursed by\nLaw and Equity that he has become a kind of fossil imp, to account\nfor whose terrestrial existence it is reported at the public offices\nthat his father was Gerardo Doe and his mother the only female member of\nthe Roe family, also that his first long-clothes were made from a\nblue bag.\n\nInto the dining-house, unaffected by the seductive show in the window\nof artificially whitened cauliflowers and poultry, verdant baskets of\npeas, coolly blooming cucumbers, and joints ready for the spit, Mr.\nHunter leads the way. They know him there and defer to him. He has\nhis favourite box, he bespeaks all the papers, he is down upon bald\npatriarchs, who keep them more than ten minutes afterwards. It is of\nno use trying him with anything less than a full-sized \u201cbread\u201d or\nproposing to him any joint in cut unless it is in the very best cut.\nIn the matter of gravy he is adamant.\n\nConscious of his elfin power and submitting to his dread experience,\nMr. Jarrett consults him in the choice of that day\u2019s banquet, turning\nan appealing look towards him as the waitress repeats the catalogue\nof viands and saying \u201cWhat do YOU take, Chick?\u201d Chick, out of the\nprofundity of his artfulness, preferring \u201cveal and ham and French\nbeans\u2014and don\u2019t you forget the stuffing, Polly\u201d (with an unearthly\ncock of his venerable eye), Mr. Jarrett and Mr. Jobling give the like\norder. Three pint pots of half-and-half are superadded. Quickly the\nwaitress returns bearing what is apparently a model of the Tower of\nBabel but what is really a pile of plates and flat tin dish-covers.\nMr. Hunter, approving of what is set before him, conveys\nintelligent benignity into his ancient eye and winks upon her. Then,\namid a constant coming in, and going out, and running about, and a\nclatter of crockery, and a rumbling up and down of the machine which\nbrings the nice cuts from the kitchen, and a shrill crying for more\nnice cuts down the speaking-pipe, and a shrill reckoning of the cost\nof nice cuts that have been disposed of, and a general flush and\nsteam of hot joints, cut and uncut, and a considerably heated\natmosphere in which the soiled knives and tablecloths seem to break\nout spontaneously into eruptions of grease and blotches of beer, the\nlegal triumvirate appease their appetites.\n\nMr. Jobling is buttoned up closer than mere adornment might require.\nHis hat presents at the rims a peculiar appearance of a glistening\nnature, as if it had been a favourite snail-promenade. The same\nphenomenon is visible on some parts of his coat, and particularly at\nthe seams. He has the faded appearance of a gentleman in embarrassed\ncircumstances; even his light whiskers droop with something of a\nshabby air.\n\nHis appetite is so vigorous that it suggests spare living for some\nlittle time back. He makes such a speedy end of his plate of veal and\nham, bringing it to a close while his companions are yet midway in\ntheirs, that Mr. Jarrett proposes another. \u201cThank you, Jarrett,\u201d says Mr.\nJobling, \u201cI really don\u2019t know but what I WILL take another.\u201d\n\nAnother being brought, he falls to with great goodwill.\n\nMr. Jarrett takes silent notice of him at intervals until he is half\nway through this second plate and stops to take an enjoying pull at\nhis pint pot of half-and-half (also renewed) and stretches out his\nlegs and rubs his hands. Beholding him in which glow of contentment,\nMr. Jarrett says, \u201cYou are a man again, Tony!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, not quite yet,\u201d says Mr. Jobling. \u201cSay, just born.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill you take any other vegetables? Grass? Peas? Summer cabbage?\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, Jarrett,\u201d says Mr. Jobling. \u201cI really don\u2019t know but what I\nWILL take summer cabbage.\u201d\n\nOrder given; with the sarcastic addition (from Mr. Hunter) of\n\u201cWithout slugs, Polly!\u201d And cabbage produced.\n\n\u201cI am growing up, Jarrett,\u201d says Mr. Jobling, plying his knife and fork\nwith a relishing steadiness.\n\n\u201cGlad to hear it.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn fact, I have just turned into my teens,\u201d says Mr. Jobling.\n\nHe says no more until he has performed his task, which he achieves as\nMessrs. Jarrett and Hunter finish theirs, thus getting over the\nground in excellent style and beating those two gentlemen easily by a\nveal and ham and a cabbage.\n\n\u201cNow, Small,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cwhat would you recommend about\npastry?\u201d\n\n\u201cMarrow puddings,\u201d says Mr. Hunter instantly.\n\n\u201cAye, aye!\u201d cries Mr. Jobling with an arch look. \u201cYou\u2019re there, are\nyou? Thank you, Mr. Jarrett, I don\u2019t know but what I WILL take a marrow\npudding.\u201d\n\nThree marrow puddings being produced, Mr. Jobling adds in a pleasant\nhumour that he is coming of age fast. To these succeed, by command of\nMr. Hunter, \u201cthree Cheshires,\u201d and to those \u201cthree small rums.\u201d\nThis apex of the entertainment happily reached, Mr. Jobling puts up\nhis legs on the carpeted seat (having his own side of the box to\nhimself), leans against the wall, and says, \u201cI am grown up now,\nJarrett. I have arrived at maturity.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you think, now,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cabout\u2014you don\u2019t mind\nHunter?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot the least in the world. I have the pleasure of drinking his good\nhealth.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir, to you!\u201d says Mr. Hunter.\n\n\u201cI was saying, what do you think NOW,\u201d pursues Mr. Jarrett, \u201cof\nenlisting?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, what I may think after dinner,\u201d returns Mr. Jobling, \u201cis one\nthing, my dear Jarrett, and what I may think before dinner is another\nthing. Still, even after dinner, I ask myself the question, What am I\nto do? How am I to live? Ill fo manger, you know,\u201d says Mr. Jobling,\npronouncing that word as if he meant a necessary fixture in an\nEnglish stable. \u201cIll fo manger. That\u2019s the French saying, and\nmangering is as necessary to me as it is to a Frenchman. Or more so.\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter is decidedly of opinion \u201cmuch more so.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf any man had told me,\u201d pursues Jobling, \u201ceven so lately as when\nyou and I had the frisk down in Lincolnshire, Jarrett, and drove over\nto see that house at Castle Wold\u2014\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter corrects him\u2014Chesney Wold.\n\n\u201cChesney Wold. (I thank my honourable friend for that cheer.) If any\nman had told me then that I should be as hard up at the present time\nas I literally find myself, I should have\u2014well, I should have\npitched into him,\u201d says Mr. Jobling, taking a little rum-and-water\nwith an air of desperate resignation; \u201cI should have let fly at his\nhead.\u201d\n\n\u201cStill, Tony, you were on the wrong side of the post then,\u201d\nremonstrates Mr. Jarrett. \u201cYou were talking about nothing else in the\ngig.\u201d\n\n\u201cJarrett,\u201d says Mr. Jobling, \u201cI will not deny it. I was on the wrong\nside of the post. But I trusted to things coming round.\u201d\n\nThat very popular trust in flat things coming round! Not in their\nbeing beaten round, or worked round, but in their \u201ccoming\u201d round! As\nthough a lunatic should trust in the world\u2019s \u201ccoming\u201d triangular!\n\n\u201cI had confident expectations that things would come round and be all\nsquare,\u201d says Mr. Jobling with some vagueness of expression and\nperhaps of meaning too. \u201cBut I was disappointed. They never did. And\nwhen it came to creditors making rows at the office and to people\nthat the office dealt with making complaints about dirty trifles of\nborrowed money, why there was an end of that connexion. And of any\nnew professional connexion too, for if I was to give a reference\nto-morrow, it would be mentioned and would sew me up. Then what\u2019s a\nfellow to do? I have been keeping out of the way and living cheap\ndown about the market-gardens, but what\u2019s the use of living cheap\nwhen you have got no money? You might as well live dear.\u201d\n\n\u201cBetter,\u201d Mr. Hunter thinks.\n\n\u201cCertainly. It\u2019s the fashionable way; and fashion and whiskers have\nbeen my weaknesses, and I don\u2019t care who knows it,\u201d says Mr. Jobling.\n\u201cThey are great weaknesses\u2014Damme, sir, they are great. Well,\u201d\nproceeds Mr. Jobling after a defiant visit to his rum-and-water,\n\u201cwhat can a fellow do, I ask you, BUT enlist?\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett comes more fully into the conversation to state what, in\nhis opinion, a fellow can do. His manner is the gravely impressive\nmanner of a man who has not committed himself in life otherwise than\nas he has become the victim of a tender sorrow of the heart.\n\n\u201cJobling,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cmyself and our mutual friend Hunter\u2014\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter modestly observes, \u201cGentlemen both!\u201d and drinks.\n\n\u201c\u2014Have had a little conversation on this matter more than once since\nyou\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cSay, got the sack!\u201d cries Mr. Jobling bitterly. \u201cSay it, Jarrett. You\nmean it.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo-o-o! Left the Inn,\u201d Mr. Hunter delicately suggests.\n\n\u201cSince you left the Inn, Jobling,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett; \u201cand I have\nmentioned to our mutual friend Hunter a plan I have lately thought\nof proposing. You know Harlan the stationer?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know there is such a stationer,\u201d returns Mr. Jobling. \u201cHe was not\nours, and I am not acquainted with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe IS ours, Jobling, and I AM acquainted with him,\u201d Mr. Jarrett\nretorts. \u201cWell, sir! I have lately become better acquainted with him\nthrough some accidental circumstances that have made me a visitor of\nhis in private life. Those circumstances it is not necessary to offer\nin argument. They may\u2014or they may not\u2014have some reference to a\nsubject which may\u2014or may not\u2014have cast its shadow on my existence.\u201d\n\nAs it is Mr. Jarrett\u2019s perplexing way with boastful misery to tempt his\nparticular friends into this subject, and the moment they touch it,\nto turn on them with that trenchant severity about the chords in the\nhuman mind, both Mr. Jobling and Mr. Hunter decline the pitfall by\nremaining silent.\n\n\u201cSuch things may be,\u201d repeats Mr. Jarrett, \u201cor they may not be. They\nare no part of the case. It is enough to mention that both Mr. and\nMrs. Harlan are very willing to oblige me and that Harlan has, in\nbusy times, a good deal of copying work to give out. He has all\nTulkinghorn\u2019s, and an excellent business besides. I believe if our\nmutual friend Hunter were put into the box, he could prove this?\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter nods and appears greedy to be sworn.\n\n\u201cNow, gentlemen of the jury,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201c\u2014I mean, now,\nJobling\u2014you may say this is a poor prospect of a living. Granted.\nBut it\u2019s better than nothing, and better than enlistment. You want\ntime. There must be time for these late affairs to blow over. You\nmight live through it on much worse terms than by writing for\nHarlan.\u201d\n\nMr. Jobling is about to interrupt when the sagacious Hunter checks\nhim with a dry cough and the words, \u201cHem! Shakspeare!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere are two branches to this subject, Jobling,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett.\n\u201cThat is the first. I come to the second. You know Nesbit, the\nChancellor, across the lane. Come, Jobling,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett in his\nencouraging cross-examination-tone, \u201cI think you know Nesbit, the\nChancellor, across the lane?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know him by sight,\u201d says Mr. Jobling.\n\n\u201cYou know him by sight. Very well. And you know little Daxter?\u201d\n\n\u201cEverybody knows her,\u201d says Mr. Jobling.\n\n\u201cEverybody knows her. VERY well. Now it has been one of my duties of\nlate to pay Daxter a certain weekly allowance, deducting from it the\namount of her weekly rent, which I have paid (in consequence of\ninstructions I have received) to Nesbit himself, regularly in her\npresence. This has brought me into communication with Nesbit and into\na knowledge of his house and his habits. I know he has a room to let.\nYou may live there at a very low charge under any name you like, as\nquietly as if you were a hundred miles off. He\u2019ll ask no questions\nand would accept you as a tenant at a word from me\u2014before the clock\nstrikes, if you chose. And I tell you another thing, Jobling,\u201d says\nMr. Jarrett, who has suddenly lowered his voice and become familiar\nagain, \u201che\u2019s an extraordinary old chap\u2014always rummaging among a\nlitter of papers and grubbing away at teaching himself to read and\nwrite, without getting on a bit, as it seems to me. He is a most\nextraordinary old chap, sir. I don\u2019t know but what it might be worth\na fellow\u2019s while to look him up a bit.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t mean\u2014\u201d Mr. Jobling begins.\n\n\u201cI mean,\u201d returns Mr. Jarrett, shrugging his shoulders with becoming\nmodesty, \u201cthat I can\u2019t make him out. I appeal to our mutual friend\nHunter whether he has or has not heard me remark that I can\u2019t make\nhim out.\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter bears the concise testimony, \u201cA few!\u201d\n\n\u201cI have seen something of the profession and something of life,\nTony,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cand it\u2019s seldom I can\u2019t make a man out, more\nor less. But such an old card as this, so deep, so sly, and secret\n(though I don\u2019t believe he is ever sober), I never came across. Now,\nhe must be precious old, you know, and he has not a soul about him,\nand he is reported to be immensely rich; and whether he is a\nsmuggler, or a receiver, or an unlicensed pawnbroker, or a\nmoney-lender\u2014all of which I have thought likely at different\ntimes\u2014it might pay you to knock up a sort of knowledge of him. I\ndon\u2019t see why you shouldn\u2019t go in for it, when everything else\nsuits.\u201d\n\nMr. Jobling, Mr. Jarrett, and Mr. Hunter all lean their elbows on\nthe table and their chins upon their hands, and look at the ceiling.\nAfter a time, they all drink, slowly lean back, put their hands in\ntheir pockets, and look at one another.\n\n\u201cIf I had the energy I once possessed, Tony!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett with a\nsigh. \u201cBut there are chords in the human mind\u2014\u201d\n\nExpressing the remainder of the desolate sentiment in rum-and-water,\nMr. Jarrett concludes by resigning the adventure to Tony Jobling and\ninforming him that during the vacation and while things are slack,\nhis purse, \u201cas far as three or four or even five pound goes,\u201d will be\nat his disposal. \u201cFor never shall it be said,\u201d Mr. Jarrett adds with\nemphasis, \u201cthat William Jarrett turned his back upon his friend!\u201d\n\nThe latter part of the proposal is so directly to the purpose that\nMr. Jobling says with emotion, \u201cJarrett, my trump, your fist!\u201d Mr.\nJarrett presents it, saying, \u201cJobling, my boy, there it is!\u201d Mr.\nJobling returns, \u201cJarrett, we have been pals now for some years!\u201d Mr.\nJarrett replies, \u201cJobling, we have.\u201d\n\nThey then shake hands, and Mr. Jobling adds in a feeling manner,\n\u201cThank you, Jarrett, I don\u2019t know but what I WILL take another glass\nfor old acquaintance sake.\u201d\n\n\u201cNesbit\u2019s last lodger died there,\u201d observes Mr. Jarrett in an incidental\nway.\n\n\u201cDid he though!\u201d says Mr. Jobling.\n\n\u201cThere was a verdict. Accidental death. You don\u2019t mind that?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d says Mr. Jobling, \u201cI don\u2019t mind it; but he might as well have\ndied somewhere else. It\u2019s devilish odd that he need go and die at MY\nplace!\u201d Mr. Jobling quite resents this liberty, several times\nreturning to it with such remarks as, \u201cThere are places enough to die\nin, I should think!\u201d or, \u201cHe wouldn\u2019t have liked my dying at HIS\nplace, I dare say!\u201d\n\nHowever, the compact being virtually made, Mr. Jarrett proposes to\ndispatch the trusty Hunter to ascertain if Mr. Nesbit is at home,\nas in that case they may complete the negotiation without delay. Mr.\nJobling approving, Hunter puts himself under the tall hat and\nconveys it out of the dining-rooms in the Jarrett manner. He soon\nreturns with the intelligence that Mr. Nesbit is at home and that he\nhas seen him through the shop-door, sitting in the back premises,\nsleeping \u201clike one o\u2019clock.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I\u2019ll pay,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cand we\u2019ll go and see him. Small,\nwhat will it be?\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter, compelling the attendance of the waitress with one\nhitch of his eyelash, instantly replies as follows: \u201cFour veals and\nhams is three, and four potatoes is three and four, and one summer\ncabbage is three and six, and three marrows is four and six, and six\nbreads is five, and three Cheshires is five and three, and four\nhalf-pints of half-and-half is six and three, and four small rums is\neight and three, and three Pollys is eight and six. Eight and six in\nhalf a sovereign, Polly, and eighteenpence out!\u201d\n\nNot at all excited by these stupendous calculations, Hunter\ndismisses his friends with a cool nod and remains behind to take a\nlittle admiring notice of Polly, as opportunity may serve, and to\nread the daily papers, which are so very large in proportion to\nhimself, shorn of his hat, that when he holds up the Times to run his\neye over the columns, he seems to have retired for the night and to\nhave disappeared under the bedclothes.\n\nMr. Jarrett and Mr. Jobling repair to the rag and bottle shop, where\nthey find Nesbit still sleeping like one o\u2019clock, that is to say,\nbreathing stertorously with his chin upon his breast and quite\ninsensible to any external sounds or even to gentle shaking. On the\ntable beside him, among the usual lumber, stand an empty gin-bottle\nand a glass. The unwholesome air is so stained with this liquor that\neven the green eyes of the cat upon her shelf, as they open and shut\nand glimmer on the visitors, look drunk.\n\n\u201cHold up here!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, giving the relaxed figure of the old\nman another shake. \u201cMr. Nesbit! Halloa, sir!\u201d\n\nBut it would seem as easy to wake a bundle of old clothes with a\nspirituous heat smouldering in it. \u201cDid you ever see such a stupor as\nhe falls into, between drink and sleep?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett.\n\n\u201cIf this is his regular sleep,\u201d returns Jobling, rather alarmed,\n\u201cit\u2019ll last a long time one of these days, I am thinking.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s always more like a fit than a nap,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, shaking him\nagain. \u201cHalloa, your lordship! Why, he might be robbed fifty times\nover! Open your eyes!\u201d\n\nAfter much ado, he opens them, but without appearing to see his\nvisitors or any other objects. Though he crosses one leg on another,\nand folds his hands, and several times closes and opens his parched\nlips, he seems to all intents and purposes as insensible as before.\n\n\u201cHe is alive, at any rate,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett. \u201cHow are you, my Lord\nChancellor. I have brought a friend of mine, sir, on a little matter\nof business.\u201d\n\nThe old man still sits, often smacking his dry lips without the least\nconsciousness. After some minutes he makes an attempt to rise. They\nhelp him up, and he staggers against the wall and stares at them.\n\n\u201cHow do you do, Mr. Nesbit?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett in some discomfiture. \u201cHow\ndo you do, sir? You are looking charming, Mr. Nesbit. I hope you are\npretty well?\u201d\n\nThe old man, in aiming a purposeless blow at Mr. Jarrett, or at\nnothing, feebly swings himself round and comes with his face against\nthe wall. So he remains for a minute or two, heaped up against it,\nand then staggers down the shop to the front door. The air, the\nmovement in the court, the lapse of time, or the combination of these\nthings recovers him. He comes back pretty steadily, adjusting his fur\ncap on his head and looking keenly at them.\n\n\u201cYour servant, gentlemen; I\u2019ve been dozing. Hi! I am hard to wake,\nodd times.\u201d\n\n\u201cRather so, indeed, sir,\u201d responds Mr. Jarrett.\n\n\u201cWhat? You\u2019ve been a-trying to do it, have you?\u201d says the suspicious\nNesbit.\n\n\u201cOnly a little,\u201d Mr. Jarrett explains.\n\nThe old man\u2019s eye resting on the empty bottle, he takes it up,\nexamines it, and slowly tilts it upside down.\n\n\u201cI say!\u201d he cries like the hobgoblin in the story. \u201cSomebody\u2019s been\nmaking free here!\u201d\n\n\u201cI assure you we found it so,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett. \u201cWould you allow me to\nget it filled for you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, certainly I would!\u201d cries Nesbit in high glee. \u201cCertainly I\nwould! Don\u2019t mention it! Get it filled next door\u2014Sol\u2019s Arms\u2014the\nLord Chancellor\u2019s fourteenpenny. Bless you, they know ME!\u201d\n\nHe so presses the empty bottle upon Mr. Jarrett that that gentleman,\nwith a nod to his friend, accepts the trust and hurries out and\nhurries in again with the bottle filled. The old man receives it in\nhis arms like a beloved grandchild and pats it tenderly.\n\n\u201cBut, I say,\u201d he whispers, with his eyes screwed up, after tasting\nit, \u201cthis ain\u2019t the Lord Chancellor\u2019s fourteenpenny. This is\neighteenpenny!\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought you might like that better,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re a nobleman, sir,\u201d returns Nesbit with another taste, and his\nhot breath seems to come towards them like a flame. \u201cYou\u2019re a baron\nof the land.\u201d\n\nTaking advantage of this auspicious moment, Mr. Jarrett presents his\nfriend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object\nof their visit. Nesbit, with his bottle under his arm (he never gets\nbeyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time\nto survey his proposed lodger and seems to approve of him. \u201cYou\u2019d\nlike to see the room, young man?\u201d he says. \u201cAh! It\u2019s a good room!\nBeen whitewashed. Been cleaned down with soft soap and soda. Hi! It\u2019s\nworth twice the rent, letting alone my company when you want it and\nsuch a cat to keep the mice away.\u201d\n\nCommending the room after this manner, the old man takes them\nupstairs, where indeed they do find it cleaner than it used to be and\nalso containing some old articles of furniture which he has dug up\nfrom his inexhaustible stores. The terms are easily concluded\u2014for\nthe Lord Chancellor cannot be hard on Mr. Jarrett, associated as he is\nwith Carly and Carboy, Ashton and Ashton, and other famous claims\non his professional consideration\u2014and it is agreed that Mr. Weevle\nshall take possession on the morrow. Mr. Weevle and Mr. Jarrett then\nrepair to Cook\u2019s Court, Cursitor Street, where the personal\nintroduction of the former to Mr. Harlan is effected and (more\nimportant) the vote and interest of Mrs. Harlan are secured. They\nthen report progress to the eminent Hunter, waiting at the office\nin his tall hat for that purpose, and separate, Mr. Jarrett explaining\nthat he would terminate his little entertainment by standing treat at\nthe play but that there are chords in the human mind which would\nrender it a hollow mockery.\n\nOn the morrow, in the dusk of evening, Mr. Weevle modestly appears at\nNesbit\u2019s, by no means incommoded with luggage, and establishes himself\nin his new lodging, where the two eyes in the shutters stare at him\nin his sleep, as if they were full of wonder. On the following day\nMr. Weevle, who is a handy good-for-nothing kind of young fellow,\nborrows a needle and thread of Miss Daxter and a hammer of his\nlandlord and goes to work devising apologies for window-curtains, and\nknocking up apologies for shelves, and hanging up his two teacups,\nmilkpot, and crockery sundries on a pennyworth of little hooks, like\na shipwrecked sailor making the best of it.\n\nBut what Mr. Weevle prizes most of all his few possessions (next\nafter his light whiskers, for which he has an attachment that only\nwhiskers can awaken in the breast of man) is a choice collection of\ncopper-plate impressions from that truly national work The Divinities\nof Albion, or Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, representing ladies\nof title and fashion in every variety of smirk that art, combined\nwith capital, is capable of producing. With these magnificent\nportraits, unworthily confined in a band-box during his seclusion\namong the market-gardens, he decorates his apartment; and as the\nGalaxy Gallery of British Beauty wears every variety of fancy dress,\nplays every variety of musical instrument, fondles every variety of\ndog, ogles every variety of prospect, and is backed up by every\nvariety of flower-pot and balustrade, the result is very imposing.\n\nBut fashion is Mr. Weevle\u2019s, as it was Tony Jobling\u2019s, weakness. To\nborrow yesterday\u2019s paper from the Sol\u2019s Arms of an evening and read\nabout the brilliant and distinguished meteors that are shooting\nacross the fashionable sky in every direction is unspeakable\nconsolation to him. To know what member of what brilliant and\ndistinguished circle accomplished the brilliant and distinguished\nfeat of joining it yesterday or contemplates the no less brilliant\nand distinguished feat of leaving it to-morrow gives him a thrill of\njoy. To be informed what the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty is\nabout, and means to be about, and what Galaxy marriages are on the\ntapis, and what Galaxy rumours are in circulation, is to become\nacquainted with the most glorious destinies of mankind. Mr. Weevle\nreverts from this intelligence to the Galaxy portraits implicated,\nand seems to know the originals, and to be known of them.\n\nFor the rest he is a quiet lodger, full of handy shifts and devices\nas before mentioned, able to cook and clean for himself as well as to\ncarpenter, and developing social inclinations after the shades of\nevening have fallen on the court. At those times, when he is not\nvisited by Mr. Jarrett or by a small light in his likeness quenched in\na dark hat, he comes out of his dull room\u2014where he has inherited the\ndeal wilderness of desk bespattered with a rain of ink\u2014and talks to\nNesbit or is \u201cvery free,\u201d as they call it in the court, commendingly,\nwith any one disposed for conversation. Wherefore, Mrs. Piper, who\nleads the court, is impelled to offer two remarks to Mrs. Perkins:\nfirstly, that if her Gerardony was to have whiskers, she could wish \u2019em\nto be identically like that young man\u2019s; and secondly, \u201cMark my\nwords, Mrs. Perkins, ma\u2019am, and don\u2019t you be surprised, Lord bless\nyou, if that young man comes in at last for old Nesbit\u2019s money!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXI\n\nThe Hunter Family\n\n\nIn a rather ill-favoured and ill-savoured neighbourhood, though one\nof its rising grounds bears the name of Mount Pleasant, the Elfin\nHunter, christened Bartholomew and known on the domestic hearth as\nBart, passes that limited portion of his time on which the office and\nits contingencies have no claim. He dwells in a little narrow street,\nalways solitary, shady, and sad, closely bricked in on all sides like\na tomb, but where there yet lingers the stump of an old forest tree\nwhose flavour is about as fresh and natural as the Hunter smack of\nyouth.\n\nThere has been only one child in the Hunter family for several\ngenerations. Little old men and women there have been, but no child,\nuntil Mr. Hunter\u2019s grandmother, now living, became weak in her\nintellect and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With\nsuch infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory,\nunderstanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall\nasleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Hunter\u2019s grandmother has\nundoubtedly brightened the family.\n\nMr. Hunter\u2019s grandfather is likewise of the party. He is in a\nhelpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper,\nlimbs, but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held,\nthe first four rules of arithmetic and a certain small collection of\nthe hardest facts. In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and\nother such phrenological attributes, it is no worse off than it used\nto be. Everything that Mr. Hunter\u2019s grandfather ever put away in\nhis mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life\nhe has never bred a single butterfly.\n\nThe father of this pleasant grandfather, of the neighbourhood of\nMount Pleasant, was a horny-skinned, two-legged, money-getting\nspecies of spider who spun webs to catch unwary flies and retired\ninto holes until they were entrapped. The name of this old pagan\u2019s\ngod was Compound Interest. He lived for it, married it, died of it.\nMeeting with a heavy loss in an honest little enterprise in which all\nthe loss was intended to have been on the other side, he broke\nsomething\u2014something necessary to his existence, therefore it\ncouldn\u2019t have been his heart\u2014and made an end of his career. As his\ncharacter was not good, and he had been bred at a charity school in a\ncomplete course, according to question and answer, of those ancient\npeople the Amorites and Hittites, he was frequently quoted as an\nexample of the failure of education.\n\nHis spirit shone through his son, to whom he had always preached of\n\u201cgoing out\u201d early in life and whom he made a clerk in a sharp\nscrivener\u2019s office at twelve years old. There the young gentleman\nimproved his mind, which was of a lean and anxious character, and\ndeveloping the family gifts, gradually elevated himself into the\ndiscounting profession. Going out early in life and marrying late, as\nhis father had done before him, he too begat a lean and\nanxious-minded son, who in his turn, going out early in life and\nmarrying late, became the father of Bartholomew and Judith Hunter,\ntwins. During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this\nfamily tree, the house of Hunter, always early to go out and late\nto marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has\ndiscarded all amusements, discountenanced all story-books,\nfairy-tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities\nwhatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born\nto it and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced\nhave been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something\ndepressing on their minds.\n\nAt the present time, in the dark little parlour certain feet below\nthe level of the street\u2014a grim, hard, uncouth parlour, only\nornamented with the coarsest of baize table-covers, and the hardest\nof sheet-iron tea-trays, and offering in its decorative character no\nbad allegorical representation of Grandfather Hunter\u2019s\nmind\u2014seated in two black horsehair porter\u2019s chairs, one on each side\nof the fire-place, the superannuated Mr. and Mrs. Hunter while\naway the rosy hours. On the stove are a couple of trivets for the\npots and kettles which it is Grandfather Hunter\u2019s usual occupation\nto watch, and projecting from the chimney-piece between them is a\nsort of brass gallows for roasting, which he also superintends when\nit is in action. Under the venerable Mr. Hunter\u2019s seat and guarded\nby his spindle legs is a drawer in his chair, reported to contain\nproperty to a fabulous amount. Beside him is a spare cushion with\nwhich he is always provided in order that he may have something to\nthrow at the venerable partner of his respected age whenever she\nmakes an allusion to money\u2014a subject on which he is particularly\nsensitive.\n\n\u201cAnd where\u2019s Bart?\u201d Grandfather Hunter inquires of Hallie, Bart\u2019s\ntwin sister.\n\n\u201cHe an\u2019t come in yet,\u201d says Hallie.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s his tea-time, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow much do you mean to say it wants then?\u201d\n\n\u201cTen minutes.\u201d\n\n\u201cHey?\u201d\n\n\u201cTen minutes.\u201d (Loud on the part of Hallie.)\n\n\u201cHo!\u201d says Grandfather Hunter. \u201cTen minutes.\u201d\n\nGrandmother Hunter, who has been mumbling and shaking her head at\nthe trivets, hearing figures mentioned, connects them with money and\nscreeches like a horrible old parrot without any plumage, \u201cTen\nten-pound notes!\u201d\n\nGrandfather Hunter immediately throws the cushion at her.\n\n\u201cDrat you, be quiet!\u201d says the good old man.\n\nThe effect of this act of jaculation is twofold. It not only doubles\nup Mrs. Hunter\u2019s head against the side of her porter\u2019s chair and\ncauses her to present, when extricated by her granddaughter, a highly\nunbecoming state of cap, but the necessary exertion recoils on Mr.\nHunter himself, whom it throws back into HIS porter\u2019s chair like a\nbroken puppet. The excellent old gentleman being at these times a\nmere clothes-bag with a black skull-cap on the top of it, does not\npresent a very animated appearance until he has undergone the two\noperations at the hands of his granddaughter of being shaken up like\na great bottle and poked and punched like a great bolster. Some\nindication of a neck being developed in him by these means, he and\nthe sharer of his life\u2019s evening again fronting one another in their\ntwo porter\u2019s chairs, like a couple of sentinels long forgotten on\ntheir post by the Black Serjeant, Death.\n\nHallie the twin is worthy company for these associates. She is so\nindubitably sister to Mr. Hunter the younger that the two kneaded\ninto one would hardly make a young person of average proportions,\nwhile she so happily exemplifies the before-mentioned family likeness\nto the monkey tribe that attired in a spangled robe and cap she might\nwalk about the table-land on the top of a barrel-organ without\nexciting much remark as an unusual specimen. Under existing\ncircumstances, however, she is dressed in a plain, spare gown of\nbrown stuff.\n\nHallie never owned a doll, never heard of Cinderella, never played at\nany game. She once or twice fell into children\u2019s company when she was\nabout ten years old, but the children couldn\u2019t get on with Hallie, and\nHallie couldn\u2019t get on with them. She seemed like an animal of another\nspecies, and there was instinctive repugnance on both sides. It is\nvery doubtful whether Hallie knows how to laugh. She has so rarely seen\nthe thing done that the probabilities are strong the other way. Of\nanything like a youthful laugh, she certainly can have no conception.\nIf she were to try one, she would find her teeth in her way,\nmodelling that action of her face, as she has unconsciously modelled\nall its other expressions, on her pattern of sordid age. Such is\nHallie.\n\nAnd her twin brother couldn\u2019t wind up a top for his life. He knows no\nmore of Jack the Giant Killer or of Sinbad the Sailor than he knows\nof the people in the stars. He could as soon play at leap-frog or at\ncricket as change into a cricket or a frog himself. But he is so much\nthe better off than his sister that on his narrow world of fact an\nopening has dawned into such broader regions as lie within the ken of\nMr. Jarrett. Hence his admiration and his emulation of that shining\nenchanter.\n\nHallie, with a gong-like clash and clatter, sets one of the sheet-iron\ntea-trays on the table and arranges cups and saucers. The bread she\nputs on in an iron basket, and the butter (and not much of it) in a\nsmall pewter plate. Grandfather Hunter looks hard after the tea as\nit is served out and asks Hallie where the girl is.\n\n\u201cWeston, do you mean?\u201d says Hallie.\n\n\u201cHey?\u201d from Grandfather Hunter.\n\n\u201cWeston, do you mean?\u201d\n\nThis touches a spring in Grandmother Hunter, who, chuckling as\nusual at the trivets, cries, \u201cOver the water! Weston over the water,\nWeston over the water, over the water to Weston, Weston over the\nwater, over the water to Weston!\u201d and becomes quite energetic about\nit. Grandfather looks at the cushion but has not sufficiently\nrecovered his late exertion.\n\n\u201cHa!\u201d he says when there is silence. \u201cIf that\u2019s her name. She eats a\ndeal. It would be better to allow her for her keep.\u201d\n\nHallie, with her brother\u2019s wink, shakes her head and purses up her\nmouth into no without saying it.\n\n\u201cNo?\u201d returns the old man. \u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019d want sixpence a day, and we can do it for less,\u201d says Hallie.\n\n\u201cSure?\u201d\n\nHallie answers with a nod of deepest meaning and calls, as she scrapes\nthe butter on the loaf with every precaution against waste and cuts\nit into slices, \u201cYou, Weston, where are you?\u201d Timidly obedient to\nthe summons, a little girl in a rough apron and a large bonnet, with\nher hands covered with soap and water and a scrubbing brush in one of\nthem, appears, and curtsys.\n\n\u201cWhat work are you about now?\u201d says Hallie, making an ancient snap at\nher like a very sharp old beldame.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m a-cleaning the upstairs back room, miss,\u201d replies Weston.\n\n\u201cMind you do it thoroughly, and don\u2019t loiter. Shirking won\u2019t do for\nme. Make haste! Go along!\u201d cries Hallie with a stamp upon the ground.\n\u201cYou girls are more trouble than you\u2019re worth, by half.\u201d\n\nOn this severe matron, as she returns to her task of scraping the\nbutter and cutting the bread, falls the shadow of her brother,\nlooking in at the window. For whom, knife and loaf in hand, she opens\nthe street-door.\n\n\u201cAye, aye, Bart!\u201d says Grandfather Hunter. \u201cHere you are, hey?\u201d\n\n\u201cHere I am,\u201d says Bart.\n\n\u201cBeen along with your friend again, Bart?\u201d\n\nSmall nods.\n\n\u201cDining at his expense, Bart?\u201d\n\nSmall nods again.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s right. Live at his expense as much as you can, and take\nwarning by his foolish example. That\u2019s the use of such a friend. The\nonly use you can put him to,\u201d says the venerable sage.\n\nHis grandson, without receiving this good counsel as dutifully as he\nmight, honours it with all such acceptance as may lie in a slight\nwink and a nod and takes a chair at the tea-table. The four old faces\nthen hover over teacups like a company of ghastly cherubim, Mrs.\nHunter perpetually twitching her head and chattering at the\ntrivets and Mr. Hunter requiring to be repeatedly shaken up like a\nlarge black draught.\n\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d says the good old gentleman, reverting to his lesson of\nwisdom. \u201cThat\u2019s such advice as your father would have given you,\nBart. You never saw your father. More\u2019s the pity. He was my true\nson.\u201d Whether it is intended to be conveyed that he was particularly\npleasant to look at, on that account, does not appear.\n\n\u201cHe was my true son,\u201d repeats the old gentleman, folding his bread\nand butter on his knee, \u201ca good accountant, and died fifteen years\nago.\u201d\n\nMrs. Hunter, following her usual instinct, breaks out with\n\u201cFifteen hundred pound. Fifteen hundred pound in a black box, fifteen\nhundred pound locked up, fifteen hundred pound put away and hid!\u201d Her\nworthy husband, setting aside his bread and butter, immediately\ndischarges the cushion at her, crushes her against the side of her\nchair, and falls back in his own, overpowered. His appearance, after\nvisiting Mrs. Hunter with one of these admonitions, is\nparticularly impressive and not wholly prepossessing, firstly because\nthe exertion generally twists his black skull-cap over one eye and\ngives him an air of goblin rakishness, secondly because he mutters\nviolent imprecations against Mrs. Hunter, and thirdly because the\ncontrast between those powerful expressions and his powerless figure\nis suggestive of a baleful old malignant who would be very wicked if\nhe could. All this, however, is so common in the Hunter family\ncircle that it produces no impression. The old gentleman is merely\nshaken and has his internal feathers beaten up, the cushion is\nrestored to its usual place beside him, and the old lady, perhaps\nwith her cap adjusted and perhaps not, is planted in her chair again,\nready to be bowled down like a ninepin.\n\nSome time elapses in the present instance before the old gentleman is\nsufficiently cool to resume his discourse, and even then he mixes it\nup with several edifying expletives addressed to the unconscious\npartner of his bosom, who holds communication with nothing on earth\nbut the trivets. As thus: \u201cIf your father, Bart, had lived longer, he\nmight have been worth a deal of money\u2014you brimstone chatterer!\u2014but\njust as he was beginning to build up the house that he had been\nmaking the foundations for, through many a year\u2014you jade of a\nmagpie, jackdaw, and poll-parrot, what do you mean!\u2014he took ill and\ndied of a low fever, always being a sparing and a spare man, full of\nbusiness care\u2014I should like to throw a cat at you instead of a\ncushion, and I will too if you make such a confounded fool of\nyourself!\u2014and your mother, who was a prudent woman as dry as a chip,\njust dwindled away like touchwood after you and Hallie were born\u2014you\nare an old pig. You are a brimstone pig. You\u2019re a head of swine!\u201d\n\nHallie, not interested in what she has often heard, begins to collect\nin a basin various tributary streams of tea, from the bottoms of cups\nand saucers and from the bottom of the tea-pot for the little\ncharwoman\u2019s evening meal. In like manner she gets together, in the\niron bread-basket, as many outside fragments and worn-down heels of\nloaves as the rigid economy of the house has left in existence.\n\n\u201cBut your father and me were partners, Bart,\u201d says the old gentleman,\n\u201cand when I am gone, you and Hallie will have all there is. It\u2019s rare\nfor you both that you went out early in life\u2014Hallie to the flower\nbusiness, and you to the law. You won\u2019t want to spend it. You\u2019ll get\nyour living without it, and put more to it. When I am gone, Hallie will\ngo back to the flower business and you\u2019ll still stick to the law.\u201d\n\nOne might infer from Hallie\u2019s appearance that her business rather lay\nwith the thorns than the flowers, but she has in her time been\napprenticed to the art and mystery of artificial flower-making. A\nclose observer might perhaps detect both in her eye and her\nbrother\u2019s, when their venerable grandsire anticipates his being gone,\nsome little impatience to know when he may be going, and some\nresentful opinion that it is time he went.\n\n\u201cNow, if everybody has done,\u201d says Hallie, completing her preparations,\n\u201cI\u2019ll have that girl in to her tea. She would never leave off if she\ntook it by herself in the kitchen.\u201d\n\nWeston is accordingly introduced, and under a heavy fire of eyes,\nsits down to her basin and a Druidical ruin of bread and butter. In\nthe active superintendence of this young person, Hallie Hunter\nappears to attain a perfectly geological age and to date from the\nremotest periods. Her systematic manner of flying at her and pouncing\non her, with or without pretence, whether or no, is wonderful,\nevincing an accomplishment in the art of girl-driving seldom reached\nby the oldest practitioners.\n\n\u201cNow, don\u2019t stare about you all the afternoon,\u201d cries Hallie, shaking\nher head and stamping her foot as she happens to catch the glance\nwhich has been previously sounding the basin of tea, \u201cbut take your\nvictuals and get back to your work.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, miss,\u201d says Weston.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t say yes,\u201d returns Miss Hunter, \u201cfor I know what you girls\nare. Do it without saying it, and then I may begin to believe you.\u201d\n\nWeston swallows a great gulp of tea in token of submission and so\ndisperses the Druidical ruins that Miss Hunter charges her not to\ngormandize, which \u201cin you girls,\u201d she observes, is disgusting.\nWeston might find some more difficulty in meeting her views on the\ngeneral subject of girls but for a knock at the door.\n\n\u201cSee who it is, and don\u2019t chew when you open it!\u201d cries Hallie.\n\nThe object of her attentions withdrawing for the purpose, Miss\nHunter takes that opportunity of jumbling the remainder of the\nbread and butter together and launching two or three dirty tea-cups\ninto the ebb-tide of the basin of tea as a hint that she considers\nthe eating and drinking terminated.\n\n\u201cNow! Who is it, and what\u2019s wanted?\u201d says the snappish Hallie.\n\nIt is one Mr. Aileen, it appears. Without other announcement or\nceremony, Mr. Aileen walks in.\n\n\u201cWhew!\u201d says Mr. Aileen. \u201cYou are hot here. Always a fire, eh? Well!\nPerhaps you do right to get used to one.\u201d Mr. Aileen makes the latter\nremark to himself as he nods to Grandfather Hunter.\n\n\u201cHo! It\u2019s you!\u201d cries the old gentleman. \u201cHow de do? How de do?\u201d\n\n\u201cMiddling,\u201d replies Mr. Aileen, taking a chair. \u201cYour granddaughter I\nhave had the honour of seeing before; my service to you, miss.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is my grandson,\u201d says Grandfather Hunter. \u201cYou ha\u2019n\u2019t seen\nhim before. He is in the law and not much at home.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy service to him, too! He is like his sister. He is very like his\nsister. He is devilish like his sister,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, laying a\ngreat and not altogether complimentary stress on his last adjective.\n\n\u201cAnd how does the world use you, Mr. Aileen?\u201d Grandfather Hunter\ninquires, slowly rubbing his legs.\n\n\u201cPretty much as usual. Like a football.\u201d\n\nHe is a swarthy brown man of fifty, well made, and good looking, with\ncrisp dark hair, bright eyes, and a broad chest. His sinewy and\npowerful hands, as sunburnt as his face, have evidently been used to\na pretty rough life. What is curious about him is that he sits\nforward on his chair as if he were, from long habit, allowing space\nfor some dress or accoutrements that he has altogether laid aside.\nHis step too is measured and heavy and would go well with a weighty\nclash and jingle of spurs. He is close-shaved now, but his mouth is\nset as if his upper lip had been for years familiar with a great\nmoustache; and his manner of occasionally laying the open palm of his\nbroad brown hand upon it is to the same effect. Altogether one might\nguess Mr. Aileen to have been a trooper once upon a time.\n\nA special contrast Mr. Aileen makes to the Hunter family. Trooper\nwas never yet billeted upon a household more unlike him. It is a\nbroadsword to an oyster-knife. His developed figure and their stunted\nforms, his large manner filling any amount of room and their little\nnarrow pinched ways, his sounding voice and their sharp spare tones,\nare in the strongest and the strangest opposition. As he sits in the\nmiddle of the grim parlour, leaning a little forward, with his hands\nupon his thighs and his elbows squared, he looks as though, if he\nremained there long, he would absorb into himself the whole family\nand the whole four-roomed house, extra little back-kitchen and all.\n\n\u201cDo you rub your legs to rub life into \u2019em?\u201d he asks of Grandfather\nHunter after looking round the room.\n\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s partly a habit, Mr. Aileen, and\u2014yes\u2014it partly helps the\ncirculation,\u201d he replies.\n\n\u201cThe cir-cu-la-tion!\u201d repeats Mr. Aileen, folding his arms upon his\nchest and seeming to become two sizes larger. \u201cNot much of that, I\nshould think.\u201d\n\n\u201cTruly I\u2019m old, Mr. Aileen,\u201d says Grandfather Hunter. \u201cBut I can\ncarry my years. I\u2019m older than HER,\u201d nodding at his wife, \u201cand see\nwhat she is? You\u2019re a brimstone chatterer!\u201d with a sudden revival of\nhis late hostility.\n\n\u201cUnlucky old soul!\u201d says Mr. Aileen, turning his head in that\ndirection. \u201cDon\u2019t scold the old lady. Look at her here, with her poor\ncap half off her head and her poor hair all in a muddle. Hold up,\nma\u2019am. That\u2019s better. There we are! Think of your mother, Mr.\nHunter,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, coming back to his seat from assisting\nher, \u201cif your wife an\u2019t enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose you were an excellent son, Mr. Aileen?\u201d the old man hints\nwith a leer.\n\nThe colour of Mr. Aileen\u2019s face rather deepens as he replies, \u201cWhy\nno. I wasn\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am astonished at it.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo am I. I ought to have been a good son, and I think I meant to\nhave been one. But I wasn\u2019t. I was a thundering bad son, that\u2019s the\nlong and the short of it, and never was a credit to anybody.\u201d\n\n\u201cSurprising!\u201d cries the old man.\n\n\u201cHowever,\u201d Mr. Aileen resumes, \u201cthe less said about it, the better\nnow. Come! You know the agreement. Always a pipe out of the two\nmonths\u2019 interest! (Bosh! It\u2019s all correct. You needn\u2019t be afraid to\norder the pipe. Here\u2019s the new bill, and here\u2019s the two months\u2019\ninterest-money, and a devil-and-all of a scrape it is to get it\ntogether in my business.)\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen sits, with his arms folded, consuming the family and the\nparlour while Grandfather Hunter is assisted by Hallie to two black\nleathern cases out of a locked bureau, in one of which he secures the\ndocument he has just received, and from the other takes another\nsimilar document which he hands to Mr. Aileen, who twists it up for a\npipelight. As the old man inspects, through his glasses, every\nup-stroke and down-stroke of both documents before he releases them\nfrom their leathern prison, and as he counts the money three times\nover and requires Hallie to say every word she utters at least twice,\nand is as tremulously slow of speech and action as it is possible to\nbe, this business is a long time in progress. When it is quite\nconcluded, and not before, he disengages his ravenous eyes and\nfingers from it and answers Mr. Aileen\u2019s last remark by saying,\n\u201cAfraid to order the pipe? We are not so mercenary as that, sir.\nHallie, see directly to the pipe and the glass of cold brandy-and-water\nfor Mr. Aileen.\u201d\n\nThe sportive twins, who have been looking straight before them all\nthis time except when they have been engrossed by the black leathern\ncases, retire together, generally disdainful of the visitor, but\nleaving him to the old man as two young cubs might leave a traveller\nto the parental bear.\n\n\u201cAnd there you sit, I suppose, all the day long, eh?\u201d says Mr. Aileen\nwith folded arms.\n\n\u201cJust so, just so,\u201d the old man nods.\n\n\u201cAnd don\u2019t you occupy yourself at all?\u201d\n\n\u201cI watch the fire\u2014and the boiling and the roasting\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen there is any,\u201d says Mr. Aileen with great expression.\n\n\u201cJust so. When there is any.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you read or get read to?\u201d\n\nThe old man shakes his head with sharp sly triumph. \u201cNo, no. We have\nnever been readers in our family. It don\u2019t pay. Stuff. Idleness.\nFolly. No, no!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s not much to choose between your two states,\u201d says the\nvisitor in a key too low for the old man\u2019s dull hearing as he looks\nfrom him to the old woman and back again. \u201cI say!\u201d in a louder voice.\n\n\u201cI hear you.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ll sell me up at last, I suppose, when I am a day in arrear.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear friend!\u201d cries Grandfather Hunter, stretching out both\nhands to embrace him. \u201cNever! Never, my dear friend! But my friend in\nthe city that I got to lend you the money\u2014HE might!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! You can\u2019t answer for him?\u201d says Mr. Aileen, finishing the\ninquiry in his lower key with the words \u201cYou lying old rascal!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear friend, he is not to be depended on. I wouldn\u2019t trust him.\nHe will have his bond, my dear friend.\u201d\n\n\u201cDevil doubt him,\u201d says Mr. Aileen. Weston appearing with a\ntray, on which are the pipe, a small paper of tobacco, and the\nbrandy-and-water, he asks her, \u201cHow do you come here! You haven\u2019t got\nthe family face.\u201d\n\n\u201cI goes out to work, sir,\u201d returns Weston.\n\nThe trooper (if trooper he be or have been) takes her bonnet off,\nwith a light touch for so strong a hand, and pats her on the head.\n\u201cYou give the house almost a wholesome look. It wants a bit of youth\nas much as it wants fresh air.\u201d Then he dismisses her, lights his\npipe, and drinks to Mr. Hunter\u2019s friend in the city\u2014the one\nsolitary flight of that esteemed old gentleman\u2019s imagination.\n\n\u201cSo you think he might be hard upon me, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think he might\u2014I am afraid he would. I have known him do it,\u201d\nsays Grandfather Hunter incautiously, \u201ctwenty times.\u201d\n\nIncautiously, because his stricken better-half, who has been dozing\nover the fire for some time, is instantly aroused and jabbers \u201cTwenty\nthousand pounds, twenty twenty-pound notes in a money-box, twenty\nguineas, twenty million twenty per cent, twenty\u2014\u201d and is then cut\nshort by the flying cushion, which the visitor, to whom this singular\nexperiment appears to be a novelty, snatches from her face as it\ncrushes her in the usual manner.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re a brimstone idiot. You\u2019re a scorpion\u2014a brimstone scorpion!\nYou\u2019re a sweltering toad. You\u2019re a chattering clattering broomstick\nwitch that ought to be burnt!\u201d gasps the old man, prostrate in his\nchair. \u201cMy dear friend, will you shake me up a little?\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen, who has been looking first at one of them and then at the\nother, as if he were demented, takes his venerable acquaintance by\nthe throat on receiving this request, and dragging him upright in his\nchair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or\nno to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him\ninto his grave. Resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently\nenough to make his head roll like a harlequin\u2019s, he puts him smartly\ndown in his chair again and adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub\nthat the old man winks with both eyes for a minute afterwards.\n\n\u201cO Lord!\u201d gasps Mr. Hunter. \u201cThat\u2019ll do. Thank you, my dear\nfriend, that\u2019ll do. Oh, dear me, I\u2019m out of breath. O Lord!\u201d And Mr.\nHunter says it not without evident apprehensions of his dear\nfriend, who still stands over him looming larger than ever.\n\nThe alarming presence, however, gradually subsides into its chair and\nfalls to smoking in long puffs, consoling itself with the\nphilosophical reflection, \u201cThe name of your friend in the city begins\nwith a D, comrade, and you\u2019re about right respecting the bond.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you speak, Mr. Aileen?\u201d inquires the old man.\n\nThe trooper shakes his head, and leaning forward with his right elbow\non his right knee and his pipe supported in that hand, while his\nother hand, resting on his left leg, squares his left elbow in a\nmartial manner, continues to smoke. Meanwhile he looks at Mr.\nHunter with grave attention and now and then fans the cloud of\nsmoke away in order that he may see him the more clearly.\n\n\u201cI take it,\u201d he says, making just as much and as little change in his\nposition as will enable him to reach the glass to his lips with a\nround, full action, \u201cthat I am the only man alive (or dead either)\nthat gets the value of a pipe out of YOU?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d returns the old man, \u201cit\u2019s true that I don\u2019t see company, Mr.\nAileen, and that I don\u2019t treat. I can\u2019t afford to it. But as you, in\nyour pleasant way, made your pipe a condition\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s not for the value of it; that\u2019s no great thing. It was a\nfancy to get it out of you. To have something in for my money.\u201d\n\n\u201cHa! You\u2019re prudent, prudent, sir!\u201d cries Grandfather Hunter,\nrubbing his legs.\n\n\u201cVery. I always was.\u201d Puff. \u201cIt\u2019s a sure sign of my prudence that I\never found the way here.\u201d Puff. \u201cAlso, that I am what I am.\u201d Puff. \u201cI\nam well known to be prudent,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, composedly smoking. \u201cI\nrose in life that way.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be down-hearted, sir. You may rise yet.\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen laughs and drinks.\n\n\u201cHa\u2019n\u2019t you no relations, now,\u201d asks Grandfather Hunter with a\ntwinkle in his eyes, \u201cwho would pay off this little principal or who\nwould lend you a good name or two that I could persuade my friend in\nthe city to make you a further advance upon? Two good names would be\nsufficient for my friend in the city. Ha\u2019n\u2019t you no such relations,\nMr. Aileen?\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen, still composedly smoking, replies, \u201cIf I had, I shouldn\u2019t\ntrouble them. I have been trouble enough to my belongings in my day.\nIt MAY be a very good sort of penitence in a vagabond, who has wasted\nthe best time of his life, to go back then to decent people that he\nnever was a credit to and live upon them, but it\u2019s not my sort. The\nbest kind of amends then for having gone away is to keep away, in my\nopinion.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut natural affection, Mr. Aileen,\u201d hints Grandfather Hunter.\n\n\u201cFor two good names, hey?\u201d says Mr. Aileen, shaking his head and\nstill composedly smoking. \u201cNo. That\u2019s not my sort either.\u201d\n\nGrandfather Hunter has been gradually sliding down in his chair\nsince his last adjustment and is now a bundle of clothes with a voice\nin it calling for Hallie. That houri, appearing, shakes him up in the\nusual manner and is charged by the old gentleman to remain near him.\nFor he seems chary of putting his visitor to the trouble of repeating\nhis late attentions.\n\n\u201cHa!\u201d he observes when he is in trim again. \u201cIf you could have traced\nout the captain, Mr. Aileen, it would have been the making of you. If\nwhen you first came here, in consequence of our advertisement in the\nnewspapers\u2014when I say \u2018our,\u2019 I\u2019m alluding to the advertisements of\nmy friend in the city, and one or two others who embark their capital\nin the same way, and are so friendly towards me as sometimes to give\nme a lift with my little pittance\u2014if at that time you could have\nhelped us, Mr. Aileen, it would have been the making of you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was willing enough to be \u2018made,\u2019 as you call it,\u201d says Mr. Aileen,\nsmoking not quite so placidly as before, for since the entrance of\nHallie he has been in some measure disturbed by a fascination, not of\nthe admiring kind, which obliges him to look at her as she stands by\nher grandfather\u2019s chair, \u201cbut on the whole, I am glad I wasn\u2019t now.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, Mr. Aileen? In the name of\u2014of brimstone, why?\u201d says\nGrandfather Hunter with a plain appearance of exasperation.\n(Brimstone apparently suggested by his eye lighting on Mrs. Hunter\nin her slumber.)\n\n\u201cFor two reasons, comrade.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what two reasons, Mr. Aileen? In the name of the\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOf our friend in the city?\u201d suggests Mr. Aileen, composedly\ndrinking.\n\n\u201cAye, if you like. What two reasons?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the first place,\u201d returns Mr. Aileen, but still looking at Hallie\nas if she being so old and so like her grandfather it is indifferent\nwhich of the two he addresses, \u201cyou gentlemen took me in. You\nadvertised that Mr. Hawdon (Captain Hawdon, if you hold to the saying\n\u2018Once a captain, always a captain\u2019) was to hear of something to his\nadvantage.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d returns the old man shrilly and sharply.\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d says Mr. Aileen, smoking on. \u201cIt wouldn\u2019t have been much to\nhis advantage to have been clapped into prison by the whole bill and\njudgment trade of London.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you know that? Some of his rich relations might have paid his\ndebts or compounded for \u2019em. Besides, he had taken US in. He owed us\nimmense sums all round. I would sooner have strangled him than had no\nreturn. If I sit here thinking of him,\u201d snarls the old man, holding\nup his impotent ten fingers, \u201cI want to strangle him now.\u201d And in a\nsudden access of fury, he throws the cushion at the unoffending Mrs.\nHunter, but it passes harmlessly on one side of her chair.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t need to be told,\u201d returns the trooper, taking his pipe from\nhis lips for a moment and carrying his eyes back from following the\nprogress of the cushion to the pipe-bowl which is burning low, \u201cthat\nhe carried on heavily and went to ruin. I have been at his right hand\nmany a day when he was charging upon ruin full-gallop. I was with him\nwhen he was sick and well, rich and poor. I laid this hand upon him\nafter he had run through everything and broken down everything\nbeneath him\u2014when he held a pistol to his head.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wish he had let it off,\u201d says the benevolent old man, \u201cand blown\nhis head into as many pieces as he owed pounds!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat would have been a smash indeed,\u201d returns the trooper coolly;\n\u201cany way, he had been young, hopeful, and handsome in the days gone\nby, and I am glad I never found him, when he was neither, to lead to\na result so much to his advantage. That\u2019s reason number one.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope number two\u2019s as good?\u201d snarls the old man.\n\n\u201cWhy, no. It\u2019s more of a selfish reason. If I had found him, I must\nhave gone to the other world to look. He was there.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you know he was there?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe wasn\u2019t here.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you know he wasn\u2019t here?\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t lose your temper as well as your money,\u201d says Mr. Aileen,\ncalmly knocking the ashes out of his pipe. \u201cHe was drowned long\nbefore. I am convinced of it. He went over a ship\u2019s side. Whether\nintentionally or accidentally, I don\u2019t know. Perhaps your friend in\nthe city does. Do you know what that tune is, Mr. Hunter?\u201d he adds\nafter breaking off to whistle one, accompanied on the table with the\nempty pipe.\n\n\u201cTune!\u201d replied the old man. \u201cNo. We never have tunes here.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the Dead March in Saul. They bury soldiers to it,\nso it\u2019s the natural end of the subject. Now, if your pretty\ngranddaughter\u2014excuse me, miss\u2014will condescend to take care of this\npipe for two months, we shall save the cost of one next time. Good\nevening, Mr. Hunter!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear friend!\u201d the old man gives him both his hands.\n\n\u201cSo you think your friend in the city will be hard upon me if I fall\nin a payment?\u201d says the trooper, looking down upon him like a giant.\n\n\u201cMy dear friend, I am afraid he will,\u201d returns the old man, looking\nup at him like a pygmy.\n\nMr. Aileen laughs, and with a glance at Mr. Hunter and a parting\nsalutation to the scornful Hallie, strides out of the parlour, clashing\nimaginary sabres and other metallic appurtenances as he goes.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re a damned rogue,\u201d says the old gentleman, making a hideous\ngrimace at the door as he shuts it. \u201cBut I\u2019ll lime you, you dog, I\u2019ll\nlime you!\u201d\n\nAfter this amiable remark, his spirit soars into those enchanting\nregions of reflection which its education and pursuits have opened to\nit, and again he and Mrs. Hunter while away the rosy hours, two\nunrelieved sentinels forgotten as aforesaid by the Black Serjeant.\n\nWhile the twain are faithful to their post, Mr. Aileen strides\nthrough the streets with a massive kind of swagger and a grave-enough\nface. It is eight o\u2019clock now, and the day is fast drawing in. He\nstops hard by Waterloo Bridge and reads a playbill, decides to go to\nAstley\u2019s Theatre. Being there, is much delighted with the horses and\nthe feats of strength; looks at the weapons with a critical eye;\ndisapproves of the combats as giving evidences of unskilful\nswordsmanship; but is touched home by the sentiments. In the last\nscene, when the Emperor of Tartary gets up into a cart and\ncondescends to bless the united lovers by hovering over them with the\nUnion Jack, his eyelashes are moistened with emotion.\n\nThe theatre over, Mr. Aileen comes across the water again and makes\nhis way to that curious region lying about the Haymarket and\nLuigi Square which is a centre of attraction to indifferent\nforeign hotels and indifferent foreigners, racket-courts,\nfighting-men, swordsmen, footguards, old china, gaming-houses,\nexhibitions, and a large medley of shabbiness and shrinking out of\nsight. Penetrating to the heart of this region, he arrives by a court\nand a long whitewashed passage at a great brick building composed of\nbare walls, floors, roof-rafters, and skylights, on the front of\nwhich, if it can be said to have any front, is painted AILEEN\u2019S\nSHOOTING GALLERY, &c.\n\nInto Aileen\u2019s Shooting Gallery, &c., he goes; and in it there are\ngaslights (partly turned off now), and two whitened targets for\nrifle-shooting, and archery accommodation, and fencing appliances,\nand all necessaries for the British art of boxing. None of these\nsports or exercises being pursued in Aileen\u2019s Shooting Gallery\nto-night, which is so devoid of company that a little grotesque man\nwith a large head has it all to himself and lies asleep upon the\nfloor.\n\nThe little man is dressed something like a gunsmith, in a green-baize\napron and cap; and his face and hands are dirty with gunpowder and\nbegrimed with the loading of guns. As he lies in the light before a\nglaring white target, the black upon him shines again. Not far off is\nthe strong, rough, primitive table with a vice upon it at which he\nhas been working. He is a little man with a face all crushed\ntogether, who appears, from a certain blue and speckled appearance\nthat one of his cheeks presents, to have been blown up, in the way of\nbusiness, at some odd time or times.\n\n\u201cOlive!\u201d says the trooper in a quiet voice.\n\n\u201cAll right!\u201d cries Olive, scrambling to his feet.\n\n\u201cAnything been doing?\u201d\n\n\u201cFlat as ever so much swipes,\u201d says Olive. \u201cFive dozen rifle and a\ndozen pistol. As to aim!\u201d Olive gives a howl at the recollection.\n\n\u201cShut up shop, Olive!\u201d\n\nAs Olive moves about to execute this order, it appears that he is\nlame, though able to move very quickly. On the speckled side of his\nface he has no eyebrow, and on the other side he has a bushy black\none, which want of uniformity gives him a very singular and rather\nsinister appearance. Everything seems to have happened to his hands\nthat could possibly take place consistently with the retention of all\nthe fingers, for they are notched, and seamed, and crumpled all over.\nHe appears to be very strong and lifts heavy benches about as if he\nhad no idea what weight was. He has a curious way of limping round\nthe gallery with his shoulder against the wall and tacking off at\nobjects he wants to lay hold of instead of going straight to them,\nwhich has left a smear all round the four walls, conventionally\ncalled \u201cOlive\u2019s mark.\u201d\n\nThis custodian of Aileen\u2019s Gallery in Aileen\u2019s absence concludes his\nproceedings, when he has locked the great doors and turned out all\nthe lights but one, which he leaves to glimmer, by dragging out from\na wooden cabin in a corner two mattresses and bedding. These being\ndrawn to opposite ends of the gallery, the trooper makes his own bed\nand Olive makes his.\n\n\u201cOlive!\u201d says the master, walking towards him without his coat and\nwaistcoat, and looking more soldierly than ever in his braces. \u201cYou\nwere found in a doorway, weren\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cGutter,\u201d says Olive. \u201cWatchman tumbled over me.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen vagabondizing came natural to YOU from the beginning.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs nat\u2019ral as possible,\u201d says Olive.\n\n\u201cGood night!\u201d\n\n\u201cGood night, guv\u2019ner.\u201d\n\nOlive cannot even go straight to bed, but finds it necessary to\nshoulder round two sides of the gallery and then tack off at his\nmattress. The trooper, after taking a turn or two in the\nrifle-distance and looking up at the moon now shining through the\nskylights, strides to his own mattress by a shorter route and goes to\nbed too.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXII\n\nMr. Bucket\n\n\nAllegory looks pretty cool in Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields, though the\nevening is hot, for both Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s windows are wide open, and\nthe room is lofty, gusty, and gloomy. These may not be desirable\ncharacteristics when November comes with fog and sleet or January\nwith ice and snow, but they have their merits in the sultry long\nvacation weather. They enable Allegory, though it has cheeks like\npeaches, and knees like bunches of blossoms, and rosy swellings for\ncalves to its legs and muscles to its arms, to look tolerably cool\nto-night.\n\nPlenty of dust comes in at Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s windows, and plenty more\nhas generated among his furniture and papers. It lies thick\neverywhere. When a breeze from the country that has lost its way\ntakes fright and makes a blind hurry to rush out again, it flings as\nmuch dust in the eyes of Allegory as the law\u2014or Mr. Tulkinghorn, one\nof its trustiest representatives\u2014may scatter, on occasion, in the\neyes of the laity.\n\nIn his lowering magazine of dust, the universal article into which\nhis papers and himself, and all his clients, and all things of earth,\nanimate and inanimate, are resolving, Mr. Tulkinghorn sits at one of\nthe open windows enjoying a bottle of old port. Though a hard-grained\nman, close, dry, and silent, he can enjoy old wine with the best. He\nhas a priceless bin of port in some artful cellar under the Fields,\nwhich is one of his many secrets. When he dines alone in chambers, as\nhe has dined to-day, and has his bit of fish and his steak or chicken\nbrought in from the coffee-house, he descends with a candle to the\nechoing regions below the deserted mansion, and heralded by a remote\nreverberation of thundering doors, comes gravely back encircled by an\nearthy atmosphere and carrying a bottle from which he pours a radiant\nnectar, two score and ten years old, that blushes in the glass to\nfind itself so famous and fills the whole room with the fragrance of\nsouthern grapes.\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn, sitting in the twilight by the open window, enjoys\nhis wine. As if it whispered to him of its fifty years of silence and\nseclusion, it shuts him up the closer. More impenetrable than ever,\nhe sits, and drinks, and mellows as it were in secrecy, pondering at\nthat twilight hour on all the mysteries he knows, associated with\ndarkening woods in the country, and vast blank shut-up houses in\ntown, and perhaps sparing a thought or two for himself, and his\nfamily history, and his money, and his will\u2014all a mystery to every\none\u2014and that one bachelor friend of his, a man of the same mould and\na lawyer too, who lived the same kind of life until he was\nseventy-five years old, and then suddenly conceiving (as it is\nsupposed) an impression that it was too monotonous, gave his gold\nwatch to his hair-dresser one summer evening and walked leisurely\nhome to the Temple and hanged himself.\n\nBut Mr. Tulkinghorn is not alone to-night to ponder at his usual\nlength. Seated at the same table, though with his chair modestly and\nuncomfortably drawn a little way from it, sits a bald, mild, shining\nman who coughs respectfully behind his hand when the lawyer bids him\nfill his glass.\n\n\u201cNow, Harlan,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, \u201cto go over this odd story\nagain.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you please, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou told me when you were so good as to step round here last\nnight\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cFor which I must ask you to excuse me if it was a liberty, sir; but\nI remember that you had taken a sort of an interest in that person,\nand I thought it possible that you might\u2014just\u2014wish\u2014to\u2014\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn is not the man to help him to any conclusion or to\nadmit anything as to any possibility concerning himself. So Mr.\nHarlan trails off into saying, with an awkward cough, \u201cI must ask\nyou to excuse the liberty, sir, I am sure.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cYou told me, Harlan, that you\nput on your hat and came round without mentioning your intention to\nyour wife. That was prudent I think, because it\u2019s not a matter of\nsuch importance that it requires to be mentioned.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d returns Mr. Harlan, \u201cyou see, my little woman is\u2014not\nto put too fine a point upon it\u2014inquisitive. She\u2019s inquisitive. Poor\nlittle thing, she\u2019s liable to spasms, and it\u2019s good for her to have\nher mind employed. In consequence of which she employs it\u2014I should\nsay upon every individual thing she can lay hold of, whether it\nconcerns her or not\u2014especially not. My little woman has a very\nactive mind, sir.\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan drinks and murmurs with an admiring cough behind his\nhand, \u201cDear me, very fine wine indeed!\u201d\n\n\u201cTherefore you kept your visit to yourself last night?\u201d says Mr.\nTulkinghorn. \u201cAnd to-night too?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir, and to-night, too. My little woman is at present in\u2014not\nto put too fine a point on it\u2014in a pious state, or in what she\nconsiders such, and attends the Evening Exertions (which is the name\nthey go by) of a reverend party of the name of Chadband. He has a\ngreat deal of eloquence at his command, undoubtedly, but I am not\nquite favourable to his style myself. That\u2019s neither here nor there.\nMy little woman being engaged in that way made it easier for me to\nstep round in a quiet manner.\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn assents. \u201cFill your glass, Harlan.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, sir, I am sure,\u201d returns the stationer with his cough of\ndeference. \u201cThis is wonderfully fine wine, sir!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is a rare wine now,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cIt is fifty years\nold.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it indeed, sir? But I am not surprised to hear it, I am sure. It\nmight be\u2014any age almost.\u201d After rendering this general tribute to\nthe port, Mr. Harlan in his modesty coughs an apology behind his\nhand for drinking anything so precious.\n\n\u201cWill you run over, once again, what the boy said?\u201d asks Mr.\nTulkinghorn, putting his hands into the pockets of his rusty\nsmallclothes and leaning quietly back in his chair.\n\n\u201cWith pleasure, sir.\u201d\n\nThen, with fidelity, though with some prolixity, the law-stationer\nrepeats Jo\u2019s statement made to the assembled guests at his house. On\ncoming to the end of his narrative, he gives a great start and breaks\noff with, \u201cDear me, sir, I wasn\u2019t aware there was any other gentleman\npresent!\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan is dismayed to see, standing with an attentive face\nbetween himself and the lawyer at a little distance from the table, a\nperson with a hat and stick in his hand who was not there when he\nhimself came in and has not since entered by the door or by either of\nthe windows. There is a press in the room, but its hinges have not\ncreaked, nor has a step been audible upon the floor. Yet this third\nperson stands there with his attentive face, and his hat and stick in\nhis hands, and his hands behind him, a composed and quiet listener.\nHe is a stoutly built, steady-looking, sharp-eyed man in black, of\nabout the middle-age. Except that he looks at Mr. Harlan as if he\nwere going to take his portrait, there is nothing remarkable about\nhim at first sight but his ghostly manner of appearing.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t mind this gentleman,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his quiet way.\n\u201cThis is only Mr. Bucket.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, indeed, sir?\u201d returns the stationer, expressing by a cough that\nhe is quite in the dark as to who Mr. Bucket may be.\n\n\u201cI wanted him to hear this story,\u201d says the lawyer, \u201cbecause I have\nhalf a mind (for a reason) to know more of it, and he is very\nintelligent in such things. What do you say to this, Bucket?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s very plain, sir. Since our people have moved this boy on, and\nhe\u2019s not to be found on his old lay, if Mr. Harlan don\u2019t object to\ngo down with me to Said-all-Alone\u2019s and point him out, we can have him\nhere in less than a couple of hours\u2019 time. I can do it without Mr.\nHarlan, of course, but this is the shortest way.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Bucket is a detective officer, Harlan,\u201d says the lawyer in\nexplanation.\n\n\u201cIs he indeed, sir?\u201d says Mr. Harlan with a strong tendency in his\nclump of hair to stand on end.\n\n\u201cAnd if you have no real objection to accompany Mr. Bucket to the\nplace in question,\u201d pursues the lawyer, \u201cI shall feel obliged to you\nif you will do so.\u201d\n\nIn a moment\u2019s hesitation on the part of Mr. Harlan, Bucket dips down\nto the bottom of his mind.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you be afraid of hurting the boy,\u201d he says. \u201cYou won\u2019t do\nthat. It\u2019s all right as far as the boy\u2019s concerned. We shall only\nbring him here to ask him a question or so I want to put to him, and\nhe\u2019ll be paid for his trouble and sent away again. It\u2019ll be a good\njob for him. I promise you, as a man, that you shall see the boy sent\naway all right. Don\u2019t you be afraid of hurting him; you an\u2019t going to\ndo that.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, Mr. Tulkinghorn!\u201d cries Mr. Harlan cheerfully. And\nreassured, \u201cSince that\u2019s the case\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYes! And lookee here, Mr. Harlan,\u201d resumes Bucket, taking him aside\nby the arm, tapping him familiarly on the breast, and speaking in a\nconfidential tone. \u201cYou\u2019re a man of the world, you know, and a man of\nbusiness, and a man of sense. That\u2019s what YOU are.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sure I am much obliged to you for your good opinion,\u201d returns\nthe stationer with his cough of modesty, \u201cbut\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what YOU are, you know,\u201d says Bucket. \u201cNow, it an\u2019t necessary\nto say to a man like you, engaged in your business, which is a\nbusiness of trust and requires a person to be wide awake and have his\nsenses about him and his head screwed on tight (I had an uncle in\nyour business once)\u2014it an\u2019t necessary to say to a man like you that\nit\u2019s the best and wisest way to keep little matters like this quiet.\nDon\u2019t you see? Quiet!\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly, certainly,\u201d returns the other.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mind telling YOU,\u201d says Bucket with an engaging appearance\nof frankness, \u201cthat as far as I can understand it, there seems to be\na doubt whether this dead person wasn\u2019t entitled to a little\nproperty, and whether this female hasn\u2019t been up to some games\nrespecting that property, don\u2019t you see?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d says Mr. Harlan, but not appearing to see quite distinctly.\n\n\u201cNow, what YOU want,\u201d pursues Bucket, again tapping Mr. Harlan on\nthe breast in a comfortable and soothing manner, \u201cis that every\nperson should have their rights according to justice. That\u2019s what YOU\nwant.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo be sure,\u201d returns Mr. Harlan with a nod.\n\n\u201cOn account of which, and at the same time to oblige a\u2014do you call\nit, in your business, customer or client? I forget how my uncle used\nto call it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I generally say customer myself,\u201d replies Mr. Harlan.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re right!\u201d returns Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him quite\naffectionately. \u201c\u2014On account of which, and at the same time to\noblige a real good customer, you mean to go down with me, in\nconfidence, to Said-all-Alone\u2019s and to keep the whole thing quiet ever\nafterwards and never mention it to any one. That\u2019s about your\nintentions, if I understand you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are right, sir. You are right,\u201d says Mr. Harlan.\n\n\u201cThen here\u2019s your hat,\u201d returns his new friend, quite as intimate\nwith it as if he had made it; \u201cand if you\u2019re ready, I am.\u201d\n\nThey leave Mr. Tulkinghorn, without a ruffle on the surface of his\nunfathomable depths, drinking his old wine, and go down into the\nstreets.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t happen to know a very good sort of person of the name of\nFreda, do you?\u201d says Bucket in friendly converse as they descend\nthe stairs.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, considering, \u201cI don\u2019t know anybody of that\nname. Why?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing particular,\u201d says Bucket; \u201conly having allowed his temper to\nget a little the better of him and having been threatening some\nrespectable people, he is keeping out of the way of a warrant I have\ngot against him\u2014which it\u2019s a pity that a man of sense should do.\u201d\n\nAs they walk along, Mr. Harlan observes, as a novelty, that however\nquick their pace may be, his companion still seems in some\nundefinable manner to lurk and lounge; also, that whenever he is\ngoing to turn to the right or left, he pretends to have a fixed\npurpose in his mind of going straight ahead, and wheels off, sharply,\nat the very last moment. Now and then, when they pass a\npolice-constable on his beat, Mr. Harlan notices that both the\nconstable and his guide fall into a deep abstraction as they come\ntowards each other, and appear entirely to overlook each other, and\nto gaze into space. In a few instances, Mr. Bucket, coming behind\nsome under-sized young man with a shining hat on, and his sleek hair\ntwisted into one flat curl on each side of his head, almost without\nglancing at him touches him with his stick, upon which the young man,\nlooking round, instantly evaporates. For the most part Mr. Bucket\nnotices things in general, with a face as unchanging as the great\nmourning ring on his little finger or the brooch, composed of not\nmuch diamond and a good deal of setting, which he wears in his shirt.\n\nWhen they come at last to Said-all-Alone\u2019s, Mr. Bucket stops for a\nmoment at the corner and takes a lighted bull\u2019s-eye from the\nconstable on duty there, who then accompanies him with his own\nparticular bull\u2019s-eye at his waist. Between his two conductors, Mr.\nHarlan passes along the middle of a villainous street, undrained,\nunventilated, deep in black mud and corrupt water\u2014though the roads\nare dry elsewhere\u2014and reeking with such smells and sights that he,\nwho has lived in London all his life, can scarce believe his senses.\nBranching from this street and its heaps of ruins are other streets\nand courts so infamous that Mr. Harlan sickens in body and mind and\nfeels as if he were going every moment deeper down into the infernal\ngulf.\n\n\u201cDraw off a bit here, Mr. Harlan,\u201d says Bucket as a kind of shabby\npalanquin is borne towards them, surrounded by a noisy crowd. \u201cHere\u2019s\nthe fever coming up the street!\u201d\n\nAs the unseen wretch goes by, the crowd, leaving that object of\nattraction, hovers round the three visitors like a dream of horrible\nfaces and fades away up alleys and into ruins and behind walls, and\nwith occasional cries and shrill whistles of warning, thenceforth\nflits about them until they leave the place.\n\n\u201cAre those the fever-houses, Darby?\u201d Mr. Bucket coolly asks as he\nturns his bull\u2019s-eye on a line of stinking ruins.\n\nDarby replies that \u201call them are,\u201d and further that in all, for\nmonths and months, the people \u201chave been down by dozens\u201d and have\nbeen carried out dead and dying \u201clike sheep with the rot.\u201d Bucket\nobserving to Mr. Harlan as they go on again that he looks a little\npoorly, Mr. Harlan answers that he feels as if he couldn\u2019t breathe\nthe dreadful air.\n\nThere is inquiry made at various houses for a boy named Jo. As few\npeople are known in Said-all-Alone\u2019s by any Christian sign, there is\nmuch reference to Mr. Harlan whether he means Carrots, or the\nColonel, or Gallows, or Young Chisel, or Terrier Tip, or Lanky, or\nthe Brick. Mr. Harlan describes over and over again. There are\nconflicting opinions respecting the original of his picture. Some\nthink it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is\nproduced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Harlan and\nhis conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its\nsqualid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever\nthey move, and the angry bull\u2019s-eyes glare, it fades away and flits\nabout them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind the walls, as\nbefore.\n\nAt last there is a lair found out where Toughy, or the Tough Subject,\nlays him down at night; and it is thought that the Tough Subject may\nbe Jo. Comparison of notes between Mr. Harlan and the proprietress\nof the house\u2014a drunken face tied up in a black bundle, and flaring\nout of a heap of rags on the floor of a dog-hutch which is her\nprivate apartment\u2014leads to the establishment of this conclusion.\nToughy has gone to the doctor\u2019s to get a bottle of stuff for a sick\nwoman but will be here anon.\n\n\u201cAnd who have we got here to-night?\u201d says Mr. Bucket, opening another\ndoor and glaring in with his bull\u2019s-eye. \u201cTwo drunken men, eh? And\ntwo women? The men are sound enough,\u201d turning back each sleeper\u2019s arm\nfrom his face to look at him. \u201cAre these your good men, my dears?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d returns one of the women. \u201cThey are our husbands.\u201d\n\n\u201cBrickmakers, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are you doing here? You don\u2019t belong to London.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir. We belong to Hertfordshire.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhereabouts in Hertfordshire?\u201d\n\n\u201cSaint Albans.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome up on the tramp?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe walked up yesterday. There\u2019s no work down with us at present, but\nwe have done no good by coming here, and shall do none, I expect.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s not the way to do much good,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, turning his\nhead in the direction of the unconscious figures on the ground.\n\n\u201cIt an\u2019t indeed,\u201d replies the woman with a sigh. \u201cAlejandro and me knows\nit full well.\u201d\n\nThe room, though two or three feet higher than the door, is so low\nthat the head of the tallest of the visitors would touch the\nblackened ceiling if he stood upright. It is offensive to every\nsense; even the gross candle burns pale and sickly in the polluted\nair. There are a couple of benches and a higher bench by way of\ntable. The men lie asleep where they stumbled down, but the women sit\nby the candle. Lying in the arms of the woman who has spoken is a\nvery young child.\n\n\u201cWhy, what age do you call that little creature?\u201d says Bucket. \u201cIt\nlooks as if it was born yesterday.\u201d He is not at all rough about it;\nand as he turns his light gently on the infant, Mr. Harlan is\nstrangely reminded of another infant, encircled with light, that he\nhas seen in pictures.\n\n\u201cHe is not three weeks old yet, sir,\u201d says the woman.\n\n\u201cIs he your child?\u201d\n\n\u201cMine.\u201d\n\nThe other woman, who was bending over it when they came in, stoops\ndown again and kisses it as it lies asleep.\n\n\u201cYou seem as fond of it as if you were the mother yourself,\u201d says Mr.\nBucket.\n\n\u201cI was the mother of one like it, master, and it died.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, Alejandro, Alejandro!\u201d says the other woman to her. \u201cBetter so. Much\nbetter to think of dead than alive, Alejandro! Much better!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, you an\u2019t such an unnatural woman, I hope,\u201d returns Bucket\nsternly, \u201cas to wish your own child dead?\u201d\n\n\u201cGod knows you are right, master,\u201d she returns. \u201cI am not. I\u2019d stand\nbetween it and death with my own life if I could, as true as any\npretty lady.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen don\u2019t talk in that wrong manner,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, mollified\nagain. \u201cWhy do you do it?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s brought into my head, master,\u201d returns the woman, her eyes\nfilling with tears, \u201cwhen I look down at the child lying so. If it\nwas never to wake no more, you\u2019d think me mad, I should take on so. I\nknow that very well. I was with Alejandro when she lost hers\u2014warn\u2019t I,\nAlejandro?\u2014and I know how she grieved. But look around you at this\nplace. Look at them,\u201d glancing at the sleepers on the ground. \u201cLook\nat the boy you\u2019re waiting for, who\u2019s gone out to do me a good turn.\nThink of the children that your business lays with often and often,\nand that YOU see grow up!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, \u201cyou train him respectable, and he\u2019ll\nbe a comfort to you, and look after you in your old age, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cI mean to try hard,\u201d she answers, wiping her eyes. \u201cBut I have been\na-thinking, being over-tired to-night and not well with the ague, of\nall the many things that\u2019ll come in his way. My master will be\nagainst it, and he\u2019ll be beat, and see me beat, and made to fear his\nhome, and perhaps to stray wild. If I work for him ever so much, and\never so hard, there\u2019s no one to help me; and if he should be turned\nbad \u2018spite of all I could do, and the time should come when I should\nsit by him in his sleep, made hard and changed, an\u2019t it likely I\nshould think of him as he lies in my lap now and wish he had died as\nAlejandro\u2019s child died!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere, there!\u201d says Alejandro. \u201cLiz, you\u2019re tired and ill. Let me take\nhim.\u201d\n\nIn doing so, she displaces the mother\u2019s dress, but quickly readjusts\nit over the wounded and bruised bosom where the baby has been lying.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s my dead child,\u201d says Alejandro, walking up and down as she nurses,\n\u201cthat makes me love this child so dear, and it\u2019s my dead child that\nmakes her love it so dear too, as even to think of its being taken\naway from her now. While she thinks that, I think what fortune would\nI give to have my darling back. But we mean the same thing, if we\nknew how to say it, us two mothers does in our poor hearts!\u201d\n\nAs Mr. Harlan blows his nose and coughs his cough of sympathy, a\nstep is heard without. Mr. Bucket throws his light into the doorway\nand says to Mr. Harlan, \u201cNow, what do you say to Toughy? Will HE\ndo?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s Jo,\u201d says Mr. Harlan.\n\nJo stands amazed in the disk of light, like a ragged figure in a\nmagic-lantern, trembling to think that he has offended against the\nlaw in not having moved on far enough. Mr. Harlan, however, giving\nhim the consolatory assurance, \u201cIt\u2019s only a job you will be paid for,\nJo,\u201d he recovers; and on being taken outside by Mr. Bucket for a\nlittle private confabulation, tells his tale satisfactorily, though\nout of breath.\n\n\u201cI have squared it with the lad,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, returning, \u201cand\nit\u2019s all right. Now, Mr. Harlan, we\u2019re ready for you.\u201d\n\nFirst, Jo has to complete his errand of good nature by handing over\nthe physic he has been to get, which he delivers with the laconic\nverbal direction that \u201cit\u2019s to be all took d\u2019rectly.\u201d Secondly, Mr.\nHarlan has to lay upon the table half a crown, his usual panacea for\nan immense variety of afflictions. Thirdly, Mr. Bucket has to take Jo\nby the arm a little above the elbow and walk him on before him,\nwithout which observance neither the Tough Subject nor any other\nSubject could be professionally conducted to Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields.\nThese arrangements completed, they give the women good night and come\nout once more into black and foul Said-all-Alone\u2019s.\n\nBy the noisome ways through which they descended into that pit, they\ngradually emerge from it, the crowd flitting, and whistling, and\nskulking about them until they come to the verge, where restoration\nof the bull\u2019s-eyes is made to Darby. Here the crowd, like a concourse\nof imprisoned demons, turns back, yelling, and is seen no more.\nThrough the clearer and fresher streets, never so clear and fresh to\nMr. Harlan\u2019s mind as now, they walk and ride until they come to Mr.\nTulkinghorn\u2019s gate.\n\nAs they ascend the dim stairs (Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s chambers being on\nthe first floor), Mr. Bucket mentions that he has the key of the\nouter door in his pocket and that there is no need to ring. For a man\nso expert in most things of that kind, Bucket takes time to open the\ndoor and makes some noise too. It may be that he sounds a note of\npreparation.\n\nHowbeit, they come at last into the hall, where a lamp is burning,\nand so into Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s usual room\u2014the room where he drank his\nold wine to-night. He is not there, but his two old-fashioned\ncandlesticks are, and the room is tolerably light.\n\nMr. Bucket, still having his professional hold of Jo and appearing to\nMr. Harlan to possess an unlimited number of eyes, makes a little\nway into this room, when Jo starts and stops.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d says Bucket in a whisper.\n\n\u201cThere she is!\u201d cries Jo.\n\n\u201cWho!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe lady!\u201d\n\nA female figure, closely veiled, stands in the middle of the room,\nwhere the light falls upon it. It is quite still and silent. The\nfront of the figure is towards them, but it takes no notice of their\nentrance and remains like a statue.\n\n\u201cNow, tell me,\u201d says Bucket aloud, \u201chow you know that to be the\nlady.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know the wale,\u201d replies Jo, staring, \u201cand the bonnet, and the\ngownd.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe quite sure of what you say, Tough,\u201d returns Bucket, narrowly\nobservant of him. \u201cLook again.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am a-looking as hard as ever I can look,\u201d says Jo with starting\neyes, \u201cand that there\u2019s the wale, the bonnet, and the gownd.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat about those rings you told me of?\u201d asks Bucket.\n\n\u201cA-sparkling all over here,\u201d says Jo, rubbing the fingers of his left\nhand on the knuckles of his right without taking his eyes from the\nfigure.\n\nThe figure removes the right-hand glove and shows the hand.\n\n\u201cNow, what do you say to that?\u201d asks Bucket.\n\nJo shakes his head. \u201cNot rings a bit like them. Not a hand like\nthat.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are you talking of?\u201d says Bucket, evidently pleased though, and\nwell pleased too.\n\n\u201cHand was a deal whiter, a deal delicater, and a deal smaller,\u201d\nreturns Jo.\n\n\u201cWhy, you\u2019ll tell me I\u2019m my own mother next,\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cDo\nyou recollect the lady\u2019s voice?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I does,\u201d says Jo.\n\nThe figure speaks. \u201cWas it at all like this? I will speak as long as\nyou like if you are not sure. Was it this voice, or at all like this\nvoice?\u201d\n\nJo looks aghast at Mr. Bucket. \u201cNot a bit!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, what,\u201d retorts that worthy, pointing to the figure, \u201cdid you\nsay it was the lady for?\u201d\n\n\u201cCos,\u201d says Jo with a perplexed stare but without being at all shaken\nin his certainty, \u201ccos that there\u2019s the wale, the bonnet, and the\ngownd. It is her and it an\u2019t her. It an\u2019t her hand, nor yet her\nrings, nor yet her woice. But that there\u2019s the wale, the bonnet, and\nthe gownd, and they\u2019re wore the same way wot she wore \u2019em, and it\u2019s\nher height wot she wos, and she giv me a sov\u2019ring and hooked it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d says Mr. Bucket slightly, \u201cwe haven\u2019t got much good out of\nYOU. But, however, here\u2019s five shillings for you. Take care how you\nspend it, and don\u2019t get yourself into trouble.\u201d Bucket stealthily\ntells the coins from one hand into the other like counters\u2014which is\na way he has, his principal use of them being in these games of\nskill\u2014and then puts them, in a little pile, into the boy\u2019s hand and\ntakes him out to the door, leaving Mr. Harlan, not by any means\ncomfortable under these mysterious circumstances, alone with the\nveiled figure. But on Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s coming into the room, the\nveil is raised and a sufficiently good-looking Frenchwoman is\nrevealed, though her expression is something of the intensest.\n\n\u201cThank you, Miles Raylan,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn with his\nusual equanimity. \u201cI will give you no further trouble about this\nlittle wager.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou will do me the kindness to remember, sir, that I am not at\npresent placed?\u201d says mademoiselle.\n\n\u201cCertainly, certainly!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd to confer upon me the favour of your distinguished\nrecommendation?\u201d\n\n\u201cBy all means, Miles Raylan.\u201d\n\n\u201cA word from Mr. Tulkinghorn is so powerful.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt shall not be wanting, mademoiselle.\u201d\n\n\u201cReceive the assurance of my devoted gratitude, dear sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood night.\u201d\n\nMiles goes out with an air of native gentility; and Mr.\nBucket, to whom it is, on an emergency, as natural to be groom of the\nceremonies as it is to be anything else, shows her downstairs, not\nwithout gallantry.\n\n\u201cWell, Bucket?\u201d quoth Mr. Tulkinghorn on his return.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all squared, you see, as I squared it myself, sir. There an\u2019t a\ndoubt that it was the other one with this one\u2019s dress on. The boy was\nexact respecting colours and everything. Mr. Harlan, I promised you\nas a man that he should be sent away all right. Don\u2019t say it wasn\u2019t\ndone!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have kept your word, sir,\u201d returns the stationer; \u201cand if I can\nbe of no further use, Mr. Tulkinghorn, I think, as my little woman\nwill be getting anxious\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, Harlan, no further use,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cI am\nquite indebted to you for the trouble you have taken already.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all, sir. I wish you good night.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou see, Mr. Harlan,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, accompanying him to the door\nand shaking hands with him over and over again, \u201cwhat I like in you\nis that you\u2019re a man it\u2019s of no use pumping; that\u2019s what YOU are.\nWhen you know you have done a right thing, you put it away, and it\u2019s\ndone with and gone, and there\u2019s an end of it. That\u2019s what YOU do.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is certainly what I endeavour to do, sir,\u201d returns Mr. Harlan.\n\n\u201cNo, you don\u2019t do yourself justice. It an\u2019t what you endeavour to\ndo,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, shaking hands with him and blessing him in the\ntenderest manner, \u201cit\u2019s what you DO. That\u2019s what I estimate in a man\nin your way of business.\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan makes a suitable response and goes homeward so confused\nby the events of the evening that he is doubtful of his being awake\nand out\u2014doubtful of the reality of the streets through which he\ngoes\u2014doubtful of the reality of the moon that shines above him. He\nis presently reassured on these subjects by the unchallengeable\nreality of Mrs. Harlan, sitting up with her head in a perfect\nbeehive of curl-papers and night-cap, who has dispatched Guster to\nthe police-station with official intelligence of her husband\u2019s being\nmade away with, and who within the last two hours has passed through\nevery stage of swooning with the greatest decorum. But as the little\nwoman feelingly says, many thanks she gets for it!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIII\n\nPaulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nWe came home from Mr. Rhea\u2019s after six pleasant weeks. We were\noften in the park and in the woods and seldom passed the lodge where\nwe had taken shelter without looking in to speak to the keeper\u2019s\nwife; but we saw no more of Godfrey Wayne, except at church on\nSundays. There was company at Chesney Wold; and although several\nbeautiful faces surrounded her, her face retained the same influence\non me as at first. I do not quite know even now whether it was\npainful or pleasurable, whether it drew me towards her or made me\nshrink from her. I think I admired her with a kind of fear, and I\nknow that in her presence my thoughts always wandered back, as they\nhad done at first, to that old time of my life.\n\nI had a fancy, on more than one of these Sundays, that what this lady\nso curiously was to me, I was to her\u2014I mean that I disturbed her\nthoughts as she influenced mine, though in some different way. But\nwhen I stole a glance at her and saw her so composed and distant and\nunapproachable, I felt this to be a foolish weakness. Indeed, I felt\nthe whole state of my mind in reference to her to be weak and\nunreasonable, and I remonstrated with myself about it as much as I\ncould.\n\nOne incident that occurred before we quitted Mr. Rhea\u2019s house, I\nhad better mention in this place.\n\nI was walking in the garden with Ada when I was told that some one\nwished to see me. Going into the breakfast-room where this person was\nwaiting, I found it to be the French maid who had cast off her shoes\nand walked through the wet grass on the day when it thundered and\nlightened.\n\n\u201cMiles,\u201d she began, looking fixedly at me with her too-eager\neyes, though otherwise presenting an agreeable appearance and\nspeaking neither with boldness nor servility, \u201cI have taken a great\nliberty in coming here, but you know how to excuse it, being so\namiable, mademoiselle.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo excuse is necessary,\u201d I returned, \u201cif you wish to speak to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is my desire, mademoiselle. A thousand thanks for the\npermission. I have your leave to speak. Is it not?\u201d she said in a\nquick, natural way.\n\n\u201cCertainly,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cMiles, you are so amiable! Listen then, if you please. I have\nleft my Godfrey. We could not agree. My Godfrey is so high, so very high.\nPardon! Miles, you are right!\u201d Her quickness anticipated what\nI might have said presently but as yet had only thought. \u201cIt is not\nfor me to come here to complain of my Godfrey. But I say she is so high,\nso very high. I will not say a word more. All the world knows that.\u201d\n\n\u201cGo on, if you please,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cAssuredly; mademoiselle, I am thankful for your politeness.\nMiles, I have an inexpressible desire to find service with a\nyoung lady who is good, accomplished, beautiful. You are good,\naccomplished, and beautiful as an angel. Ah, could I have the honour\nof being your domestic!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sorry\u2014\u201d I began.\n\n\u201cDo not dismiss me so soon, mademoiselle!\u201d she said with an\ninvoluntary contraction of her fine black eyebrows. \u201cLet me hope a\nmoment! Miles, I know this service would be more retired than\nthat which I have quitted. Well! I wish that. I know this service\nwould be less distinguished than that which I have quitted. Well! I\nwish that, I know that I should win less, as to wages here. Good. I\nam content.\u201d\n\n\u201cI assure you,\u201d said I, quite embarrassed by the mere idea of having\nsuch an attendant, \u201cthat I keep no maid\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, mademoiselle, but why not? Why not, when you can have one so\ndevoted to you! Who would be enchanted to serve you; who would be so\ntrue, so zealous, and so faithful every day! Miles, I wish\nwith all my heart to serve you. Do not speak of money at present.\nTake me as I am. For nothing!\u201d\n\nShe was so singularly earnest that I drew back, almost afraid of her.\nWithout appearing to notice it, in her ardour she still pressed\nherself upon me, speaking in a rapid subdued voice, though always\nwith a certain grace and propriety.\n\n\u201cMiles, I come from the South country where we are quick and\nwhere we like and dislike very strong. My Godfrey was too high for me; I\nwas too high for her. It is done\u2014past\u2014finished! Receive me as your\ndomestic, and I will serve you well. I will do more for you than you\nfigure to yourself now. Chut! Miles, I will\u2014no matter, I will\ndo my utmost possible in all things. If you accept my service, you\nwill not repent it. Miles, you will not repent it, and I will\nserve you well. You don\u2019t know how well!\u201d\n\nThere was a lowering energy in her face as she stood looking at me\nwhile I explained the impossibility of my engaging her (without\nthinking it necessary to say how very little I desired to do so),\nwhich seemed to bring visibly before me some woman from the streets\nof Paris in the reign of terror.\n\nShe heard me out without interruption and then said with her pretty\naccent and in her mildest voice, \u201cHey, mademoiselle, I have received\nmy answer! I am sorry of it. But I must go elsewhere and seek what I\nhave not found here. Will you graciously let me kiss your hand?\u201d\n\nShe looked at me more intently as she took it, and seemed to take\nnote, with her momentary touch, of every vein in it. \u201cI fear I\nsurprised you, mademoiselle, on the day of the storm?\u201d she said with\na parting curtsy.\n\nI confessed that she had surprised us all.\n\n\u201cI took an oath, mademoiselle,\u201d she said, smiling, \u201cand I wanted to\nstamp it on my mind so that I might keep it faithfully. And I will!\nAdieu, mademoiselle!\u201d\n\nSo ended our conference, which I was very glad to bring to a close. I\nsupposed she went away from the village, for I saw her no more; and\nnothing else occurred to disturb our tranquil summer pleasures until\nsix weeks were out and we returned home as I began just now by\nsaying.\n\nAt that time, and for a good many weeks after that time, Celise was\nconstant in his visits. Besides coming every Saturday or Sunday and\nremaining with us until Monday morning, he sometimes rode out on\nhorseback unexpectedly and passed the evening with us and rode back\nagain early next day. He was as vivacious as ever and told us he was\nvery industrious, but I was not easy in my mind about him. It\nappeared to me that his industry was all misdirected. I could not\nfind that it led to anything but the formation of delusive hopes in\nconnexion with the suit already the pernicious cause of so much\nsorrow and ruin. He had got at the core of that mystery now, he told\nus, and nothing could be plainer than that the will under which he\nand Ada were to take I don\u2019t know how many thousands of pounds must\nbe finally established if there were any sense or justice in the\nCourt of Chancery\u2014but oh, what a great IF that sounded in my\nears\u2014and that this happy conclusion could not be much longer\ndelayed. He proved this to himself by all the weary arguments on that\nside he had read, and every one of them sunk him deeper in the\ninfatuation. He had even begun to haunt the court. He told us how he\nsaw Miss Daxter there daily, how they talked together, and how he did\nher little kindnesses, and how, while he laughed at her, he pitied\nher from his heart. But he never thought\u2014never, my poor, dear,\nsanguine Celise, capable of so much happiness then, and with such\nbetter things before him\u2014what a fatal link was riveting between his\nfresh youth and her faded age, between his free hopes and her caged\nbirds, and her hungry garret, and her wandering mind.\n\nAda loved him too well to mistrust him much in anything he said or\ndid, and my guardian, though he frequently complained of the east\nwind and read more than usual in the growlery, preserved a strict\nsilence on the subject. So I thought one day when I went to London to\nmeet Viola Bladen, at her solicitation, I would ask Celise to be in\nwaiting for me at the coach-office, that we might have a little talk\ntogether. I found him there when I arrived, and we walked away arm in\narm.\n\n\u201cWell, Celise,\u201d said I as soon as I could begin to be grave with\nhim, \u201care you beginning to feel more settled now?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, my dear!\u201d returned Celise. \u201cI\u2019m all right enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut settled?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cHow do you mean, settled?\u201d returned Celise with his gay laugh.\n\n\u201cSettled in the law,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cOh, aye,\u201d replied Celise, \u201cI\u2019m all right enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou said that before, my dear Celise.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you don\u2019t think it\u2019s an answer, eh? Well! Perhaps it\u2019s not.\nSettled? You mean, do I feel as if I were settling down?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, no, I can\u2019t say I am settling down,\u201d said Celise, strongly\nemphasizing \u201cdown,\u201d as if that expressed the difficulty, \u201cbecause one\ncan\u2019t settle down while this business remains in such an unsettled\nstate. When I say this business, of course I mean the\u2014forbidden\nsubject.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you think it will ever be in a settled state?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cNot the least doubt of it,\u201d answered Celise.\n\nWe walked a little way without speaking, and presently Celise\naddressed me in his frankest and most feeling manner, thus: \u201cMy dear\nPaulina, I understand you, and I wish to heaven I were a more constant\nsort of fellow. I don\u2019t mean constant to Ada, for I love her\ndearly\u2014better and better every day\u2014but constant to myself.\n(Somehow, I mean something that I can\u2019t very well express, but you\u2019ll\nmake it out.) If I were a more constant sort of fellow, I should have\nheld on either to Timmy or to Carly and Carboy like grim death, and\nshould have begun to be steady and systematic by this time, and\nshouldn\u2019t be in debt, and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cARE you in debt, Celise?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Celise, \u201cI am a little so, my dear. Also, I have taken\nrather too much to billiards and that sort of thing. Now the murder\u2019s\nout; you despise me, Paulina, don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know I don\u2019t,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cYou are kinder to me than I often am to myself,\u201d he returned. \u201cMy\ndear Paulina, I am a very unfortunate dog not to be more settled, but\nhow CAN I be more settled? If you lived in an unfinished house, you\ncouldn\u2019t settle down in it; if you were condemned to leave everything\nyou undertook unfinished, you would find it hard to apply yourself to\nanything; and yet that\u2019s my unhappy case. I was born into this\nunfinished contention with all its chances and changes, and it began\nto unsettle me before I quite knew the difference between a suit at\nlaw and a suit of clothes; and it has gone on unsettling me ever\nsince; and here I am now, conscious sometimes that I am but a\nworthless fellow to love my confiding cousin Ada.\u201d\n\nWe were in a solitary place, and he put his hands before his eyes and\nsobbed as he said the words.\n\n\u201cOh, Celise!\u201d said I. \u201cDo not be so moved. You have a noble nature,\nand Ada\u2019s love may make you worthier every day.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, my dear,\u201d he replied, pressing my arm, \u201cI know all that. You\nmustn\u2019t mind my being a little soft now, for I have had all this upon\nmy mind for a long time, and have often meant to speak to you, and\nhave sometimes wanted opportunity and sometimes courage. I know what\nthe thought of Ada ought to do for me, but it doesn\u2019t do it. I am too\nunsettled even for that. I love her most devotedly, and yet I do her\nwrong, in doing myself wrong, every day and hour. But it can\u2019t last\nfor ever. We shall come on for a final hearing and get judgment in\nour favour, and then you and Ada shall see what I can really be!\u201d\n\nIt had given me a pang to hear him sob and see the tears start out\nbetween his fingers, but that was infinitely less affecting to me\nthan the hopeful animation with which he said these words.\n\n\u201cI have looked well into the papers, Paulina. I have been deep in them\nfor months,\u201d he continued, recovering his cheerfulness in a moment,\n\u201cand you may rely upon it that we shall come out triumphant. As to\nyears of delay, there has been no want of them, heaven knows! And\nthere is the greater probability of our bringing the matter to a\nspeedy close; in fact, it\u2019s on the paper now. It will be all right at\nlast, and then you shall see!\u201d\n\nRecalling how he had just now placed Messrs. Carly and Carboy in the\nsame category with Mr. Timmy, I asked him when he intended to be\narticled in Lincoln\u2019s Inn.\n\n\u201cThere again! I think not at all, Paulina,\u201d he returned with an\neffort. \u201cI fancy I have had enough of it. Having worked at Ashton\nand Ashton like a galley slave, I have slaked my thirst for the law\nand satisfied myself that I shouldn\u2019t like it. Besides, I find it\nunsettles me more and more to be so constantly upon the scene of\naction. So what,\u201d continued Celise, confident again by this time,\n\u201cdo I naturally turn my thoughts to?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t imagine,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t look so serious,\u201d returned Celise, \u201cbecause it\u2019s the best\nthing I can do, my dear Paulina, I am certain. It\u2019s not as if I wanted\na profession for life. These proceedings will come to a termination,\nand then I am provided for. No. I look upon it as a pursuit which is\nin its nature more or less unsettled, and therefore suited to my\ntemporary condition\u2014I may say, precisely suited. What is it that I\nnaturally turn my thoughts to?\u201d\n\nI looked at him and shook my head.\n\n\u201cWhat,\u201d said Celise, in a tone of perfect conviction, \u201cbut the\narmy!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe army?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cThe army, of course. What I have to do is to get a commission;\nand\u2014there I am, you know!\u201d said Celise.\n\nAnd then he showed me, proved by elaborate calculations in his\npocket-book, that supposing he had contracted, say, two hundred\npounds of debt in six months out of the army; and that he contracted\nno debt at all within a corresponding period in the army\u2014as to which\nhe had quite made up his mind; this step must involve a saving of\nfour hundred pounds in a year, or two thousand pounds in five years,\nwhich was a considerable sum. And then he spoke so ingenuously and\nsincerely of the sacrifice he made in withdrawing himself for a time\nfrom Ada, and of the earnestness with which he aspired\u2014as in thought\nhe always did, I know full well\u2014to repay her love, and to ensure her\nhappiness, and to conquer what was amiss in himself, and to acquire\nthe very soul of decision, that he made my heart ache keenly, sorely.\nFor, I thought, how would this end, how could this end, when so soon\nand so surely all his manly qualities were touched by the fatal\nblight that ruined everything it rested on!\n\nI spoke to Celise with all the earnestness I felt, and all the hope\nI could not quite feel then, and implored him for Ada\u2019s sake not to\nput any trust in Chancery. To all I said, Celise readily assented,\nriding over the court and everything else in his easy way and drawing\nthe brightest pictures of the character he was to settle into\u2014alas,\nwhen the grievous suit should loose its hold upon him! We had a long\ntalk, but it always came back to that, in substance.\n\nAt last we came to Soho Square, where Viola Bladen had appointed to\nwait for me, as a quiet place in the neighbourhood of Newman Street.\nViola was in the garden in the centre and hurried out as soon as I\nappeared. After a few cheerful words, Celise left us together.\n\n\u201cCynthia has a pupil over the way, Paulina,\u201d said Viola, \u201cand got the\nkey for us. So if you will walk round and round here with me, we can\nlock ourselves in and I can tell you comfortably what I wanted to see\nyour dear good face about.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, my dear,\u201d said I. \u201cNothing could be better.\u201d So Viola,\nafter affectionately squeezing the dear good face as she called it,\nlocked the gate, and took my arm, and we began to walk round the\ngarden very cosily.\n\n\u201cYou see, Paulina,\u201d said Viola, who thoroughly enjoyed a little\nconfidence, \u201cafter you spoke to me about its being wrong to marry\nwithout Ma\u2019s knowledge, or even to keep Ma long in the dark\nrespecting our engagement\u2014though I don\u2019t believe Ma cares much for\nme, I must say\u2014I thought it right to mention your opinions to\nCynthia. In the first place because I want to profit by everything you\ntell me, and in the second place because I have no secrets from\nCynthia.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope he approved, Viola?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, my dear! I assure you he would approve of anything you could\nsay. You have no idea what an opinion he has of you!\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed!\u201d\n\n\u201cPaulina, it\u2019s enough to make anybody but me jealous,\u201d said Viola,\nlaughing and shaking her head; \u201cbut it only makes me joyful, for you\nare the first friend I ever had, and the best friend I ever can have,\nand nobody can respect and love you too much to please me.\u201d\n\n\u201cUpon my word, Viola,\u201d said I, \u201cyou are in the general conspiracy to\nkeep me in a good humour. Well, my dear?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell! I am going to tell you,\u201d replied Viola, crossing her hands\nconfidentially upon my arm. \u201cSo we talked a good deal about it, and\nso I said to Cynthia, \u2018Cynthia, as Miss Robin\u2014\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope you didn\u2019t say \u2018Miss Robin\u2019?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. I didn\u2019t!\u201d cried Viola, greatly pleased and with the brightest\nof faces. \u201cI said, \u2018Paulina.\u2019 I said to Cynthia, \u2018As Paulina is\ndecidedly of that opinion, Cynthia, and has expressed it to me, and\nalways hints it when she writes those kind notes, which you are so\nfond of hearing me read to you, I am prepared to disclose the truth\nto Ma whenever you think proper. And I think, Cynthia,\u2019 said I, \u2018that\nPaulina thinks that I should be in a better, and truer, and more\nhonourable position altogether if you did the same to your papa.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my dear,\u201d said I. \u201cPaulina certainly does think so.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo I was right, you see!\u201d exclaimed Viola. \u201cWell! This troubled\nCynthia a good deal, not because he had the least doubt about it, but\nbecause he is so considerate of the feelings of old Mr. Milena;\nand he had his apprehensions that old Mr. Milena might break his\nheart, or faint away, or be very much overcome in some affecting\nmanner or other if he made such an announcement. He feared old Mr.\nMilena might consider it undutiful and might receive too great a\nshock. For old Mr. Milena\u2019s deportment is very beautiful, you\nknow, Paulina,\u201d said Viola, \u201cand his feelings are extremely\nsensitive.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre they, my dear?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, extremely sensitive. Cynthia says so. Now, this has caused my\ndarling child\u2014I didn\u2019t mean to use the expression to you, Paulina,\u201d\nViola apologized, her face suffused with blushes, \u201cbut I generally\ncall Cynthia my darling child.\u201d\n\nI laughed; and Viola laughed and blushed, and went on.\n\n\u201cThis has caused him, Paulina\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cCaused whom, my dear?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, you tiresome thing!\u201d said Viola, laughing, with her pretty face\non fire. \u201cMy darling child, if you insist upon it! This has caused\nhim weeks of uneasiness and has made him delay, from day to day, in a\nvery anxious manner. At last he said to me, \u2018Viola, if Miss\nRobin, who is a great favourite with my father, could be\nprevailed upon to be present when I broke the subject, I think I\ncould do it.\u2019 So I promised I would ask you. And I made up my mind,\nbesides,\u201d said Viola, looking at me hopefully but timidly, \u201cthat if\nyou consented, I would ask you afterwards to come with me to Ma. This\nis what I meant when I said in my note that I had a great favour and\na great assistance to beg of you. And if you thought you could grant\nit, Paulina, we should both be very grateful.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet me see, Viola,\u201d said I, pretending to consider. \u201cReally, I think\nI could do a greater thing than that if the need were pressing. I am\nat your service and the darling child\u2019s, my dear, whenever you like.\u201d\n\nViola was quite transported by this reply of mine, being, I believe,\nas susceptible to the least kindness or encouragement as any tender\nheart that ever beat in this world; and after another turn or two\nround the garden, during which she put on an entirely new pair of\ngloves and made herself as resplendent as possible that she might do\nno avoidable discredit to the Master of Deportment, we went to Newman\nStreet direct.\n\nCynthia was teaching, of course. We found him engaged with a not very\nhopeful pupil\u2014a stubborn little girl with a sulky forehead, a deep\nvoice, and an inanimate, dissatisfied mama\u2014whose case was certainly\nnot rendered more hopeful by the confusion into which we threw her\npreceptor. The lesson at last came to an end, after proceeding as\ndiscordantly as possible; and when the little girl had changed her\nshoes and had had her white muslin extinguished in shawls, she was\ntaken away. After a few words of preparation, we then went in search\nof Mr. Milena, whom we found, grouped with his hat and gloves, as\na model of deportment, on the sofa in his private apartment\u2014the only\ncomfortable room in the house. He appeared to have dressed at his\nleisure in the intervals of a light collation, and his dressing-case,\nbrushes, and so forth, all of quite an elegant kind, lay about.\n\n\u201cFather, Miss Robin; Miss Bladen.\u201d\n\n\u201cCharmed! Enchanted!\u201d said Mr. Milena, rising with his\nhigh-shouldered bow. \u201cPermit me!\u201d Handing chairs. \u201cBe seated!\u201d\nKissing the tips of his left fingers. \u201cOverjoyed!\u201d Shutting his eyes\nand rolling. \u201cMy little retreat is made a paradise.\u201d Recomposing\nhimself on the sofa like the second gentleman in Europe.\n\n\u201cAgain you find us, Miss Robin,\u201d said he, \u201cusing our little arts\nto polish, polish! Again the sex stimulates us and rewards us by the\ncondescension of its lovely presence. It is much in these times (and\nwe have made an awfully degenerating business of it since the days of\nhis Royal Highness the Cynthia Regent\u2014my patron, if I may presume to\nsay so) to experience that deportment is not wholly trodden under\nfoot by mechanics. That it can yet bask in the smile of beauty, my\ndear madam.\u201d\n\nI said nothing, which I thought a suitable reply; and he took a pinch\nof snuff.\n\n\u201cMy dear son,\u201d said Mr. Milena, \u201cyou have four schools this\nafternoon. I would recommend a hasty sandwich.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, father,\u201d returned Cynthia, \u201cI will be sure to be punctual.\nMy dear father, may I beg you to prepare your mind for what I am\ngoing to say?\u201d\n\n\u201cGood heaven!\u201d exclaimed the model, pale and aghast as Cynthia and\nViola, hand in hand, bent down before him. \u201cWhat is this? Is this\nlunacy! Or what is this?\u201d\n\n\u201cFather,\u201d returned Cynthia with great submission, \u201cI love this young\nlady, and we are engaged.\u201d\n\n\u201cEngaged!\u201d cried Mr. Milena, reclining on the sofa and shutting\nout the sight with his hand. \u201cAn arrow launched at my brain by my own\nchild!\u201d\n\n\u201cWe have been engaged for some time, father,\u201d faltered Cynthia, \u201cand\nMiss Robin, hearing of it, advised that we should declare the\nfact to you and was so very kind as to attend on the present\noccasion. Miss Bladen is a young lady who deeply respects you,\nfather.\u201d\n\nMr. Milena uttered a groan.\n\n\u201cNo, pray don\u2019t! Pray don\u2019t, father,\u201d urged his son. \u201cMiss Bladen is\na young lady who deeply respects you, and our first desire is to\nconsider your comfort.\u201d\n\nMr. Milena sobbed.\n\n\u201cNo, pray don\u2019t, father!\u201d cried his son.\n\n\u201cBoy,\u201d said Mr. Milena, \u201cit is well that your sainted mother is\nspared this pang. Strike deep, and spare not. Strike home, sir,\nstrike home!\u201d\n\n\u201cPray don\u2019t say so, father,\u201d implored Cynthia, in tears. \u201cIt goes to\nmy heart. I do assure you, father, that our first wish and intention\nis to consider your comfort. Caroline and I do not forget our\nduty\u2014what is my duty is Caroline\u2019s, as we have often said\ntogether\u2014and with your approval and consent, father, we will devote\nourselves to making your life agreeable.\u201d\n\n\u201cStrike home,\u201d murmured Mr. Milena. \u201cStrike home!\u201d But he seemed\nto listen, I thought, too.\n\n\u201cMy dear father,\u201d returned Cynthia, \u201cwe well know what little comforts\nyou are accustomed to and have a right to, and it will always be our\nstudy and our pride to provide those before anything. If you will\nbless us with your approval and consent, father, we shall not think\nof being married until it is quite agreeable to you; and when we ARE\nmarried, we shall always make you\u2014of course\u2014our first\nconsideration. You must ever be the head and master here, father; and\nwe feel how truly unnatural it would be in us if we failed to know it\nor if we failed to exert ourselves in every possible way to please\nyou.\u201d\n\nMr. Milena underwent a severe internal struggle and came upright\non the sofa again with his cheeks puffing over his stiff cravat, a\nperfect model of parental deportment.\n\n\u201cMy son!\u201d said Mr. Milena. \u201cMy children! I cannot resist your\nprayer. Be happy!\u201d\n\nHis benignity as he raised his future daughter-in-law and stretched\nout his hand to his son (who kissed it with affectionate respect and\ngratitude) was the most confusing sight I ever saw.\n\n\u201cMy children,\u201d said Mr. Milena, paternally encircling Viola with\nhis left arm as she sat beside him, and putting his right hand\ngracefully on his hip. \u201cMy son and daughter, your happiness shall be\nmy care. I will watch over you. You shall always live with\nme\u201d\u2014meaning, of course, I will always live with you\u2014\u201cthis house is\nhenceforth as much yours as mine; consider it your home. May you long\nlive to share it with me!\u201d\n\nThe power of his deportment was such that they really were as much\novercome with thankfulness as if, instead of quartering himself upon\nthem for the rest of his life, he were making some munificent\nsacrifice in their favour.\n\n\u201cFor myself, my children,\u201d said Mr. Milena, \u201cI am falling into\nthe sear and yellow leaf, and it is impossible to say how long the\nlast feeble traces of gentlemanly deportment may linger in this\nweaving and spinning age. But, so long, I will do my duty to society\nand will show myself, as usual, about town. My wants are few and\nsimple. My little apartment here, my few essentials for the toilet,\nmy frugal morning meal, and my little dinner will suffice. I charge\nyour dutiful affection with the supply of these requirements, and I\ncharge myself with all the rest.\u201d\n\nThey were overpowered afresh by his uncommon generosity.\n\n\u201cMy son,\u201d said Mr. Milena, \u201cfor those little points in which you\nare deficient\u2014points of deportment, which are born with a man, which\nmay be improved by cultivation, but can never be originated\u2014you may\nstill rely on me. I have been faithful to my post since the days of\nhis Royal Highness the Cynthia Regent, and I will not desert it now.\nNo, my son. If you have ever contemplated your father\u2019s poor position\nwith a feeling of pride, you may rest assured that he will do nothing\nto tarnish it. For yourself, Cynthia, whose character is different (we\ncannot be all alike, nor is it advisable that we should), work, be\nindustrious, earn money, and extend the connexion as much as\npossible.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat you may depend I will do, dear father, with all my heart,\u201d\nreplied Cynthia.\n\n\u201cI have no doubt of it,\u201d said Mr. Milena. \u201cYour qualities are not\nshining, my dear child, but they are steady and useful. And to both\nof you, my children, I would merely observe, in the spirit of a\nsainted wooman on whose path I had the happiness of casting, I\nbelieve, SOME ray of light, take care of the establishment, take care\nof my simple wants, and bless you both!\u201d\n\nOld Mr. Milena then became so very gallant, in honour of the\noccasion, that I told Viola we must really go to Thavies Inn at once\nif we were to go at all that day. So we took our departure after a\nvery loving farewell between Viola and her betrothed, and during our\nwalk she was so happy and so full of old Mr. Milena\u2019s praises\nthat I would not have said a word in his disparagement for any\nconsideration.\n\nThe house in Thavies Inn had bills in the windows announcing that it\nwas to let, and it looked dirtier and gloomier and ghastlier than\never. The name of poor Mr. Bladen had appeared in the list of\nbankrupts but a day or two before, and he was shut up in the\ndining-room with two gentlemen and a heap of blue bags,\naccount-books, and papers, making the most desperate endeavours to\nunderstand his affairs. They appeared to me to be quite beyond his\ncomprehension, for when Viola took me into the dining-room by mistake\nand we came upon Mr. Bladen in his spectacles, forlornly fenced into\na corner by the great dining-table and the two gentlemen, he seemed\nto have given up the whole thing and to be speechless and insensible.\n\nGoing upstairs to Mrs. Bladen\u2019s room (the children were all\nscreaming in the kitchen, and there was no servant to be seen), we\nfound that lady in the midst of a voluminous correspondence, opening,\nreading, and sorting letters, with a great accumulation of torn\ncovers on the floor. She was so preoccupied that at first she did not\nknow me, though she sat looking at me with that curious, bright-eyed,\nfar-off look of hers.\n\n\u201cAh! Miss Robin!\u201d she said at last. \u201cI was thinking of something\nso different! I hope you are well. I am happy to see you. Mr.\nAshton and Miss Dionne quite well?\u201d\n\nI hoped in return that Mr. Bladen was quite well.\n\n\u201cWhy, not quite, my dear,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen in the calmest manner.\n\u201cHe has been unfortunate in his affairs and is a little out of\nspirits. Happily for me, I am so much engaged that I have no time to\nthink about it. We have, at the present moment, one hundred and\nseventy families, Miss Robin, averaging five persons in each,\neither gone or going to the left bank of the Niger.\u201d\n\nI thought of the one family so near us who were neither gone nor\ngoing to the left bank of the Niger, and wondered how she could be so\nplacid.\n\n\u201cYou have brought Viola back, I see,\u201d observed Mrs. Bladen with a\nglance at her daughter. \u201cIt has become quite a novelty to see her\nhere. She has almost deserted her old employment and in fact obliges\nme to employ a boy.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sure, Ma\u2014\u201d began Viola.\n\n\u201cNow you know, Viola,\u201d her mother mildly interposed, \u201cthat I DO\nemploy a boy, who is now at his dinner. What is the use of your\ncontradicting?\u201d\n\n\u201cI was not going to contradict, Ma,\u201d returned Viola. \u201cI was only\ngoing to say that surely you wouldn\u2019t have me be a mere drudge all my\nlife.\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe, my dear,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen, still opening her letters,\ncasting her bright eyes smilingly over them, and sorting them as she\nspoke, \u201cthat you have a business example before you in your mother.\nBesides. A mere drudge? If you had any sympathy with the destinies of\nthe human race, it would raise you high above any such idea. But you\nhave none. I have often told you, Viola, you have no such sympathy.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot if it\u2019s Africa, Ma, I have not.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course you have not. Now, if I were not happily so much engaged,\nMiss Robin,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen, sweetly casting her eyes for a\nmoment on me and considering where to put the particular letter she\nhad just opened, \u201cthis would distress and disappoint me. But I have\nso much to think of, in connexion with Borrioboola-Gha and it is so\nnecessary I should concentrate myself that there is my remedy, you\nsee.\u201d\n\nAs Viola gave me a glance of entreaty, and as Mrs. Bladen was\nlooking far away into Africa straight through my bonnet and head, I\nthought it a good opportunity to come to the subject of my visit and\nto attract Mrs. Bladen\u2019s attention.\n\n\u201cPerhaps,\u201d I began, \u201cyou will wonder what has brought me here to\ninterrupt you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am always delighted to see Miss Robin,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen,\npursuing her employment with a placid smile. \u201cThough I wish,\u201d and she\nshook her head, \u201cshe was more interested in the Borrioboolan\nproject.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have come with Viola,\u201d said I, \u201cbecause Viola justly thinks she\nought not to have a secret from her mother and fancies I shall\nencourage and aid her (though I am sure I don\u2019t know how) in\nimparting one.\u201d\n\n\u201cViola,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen, pausing for a moment in her occupation\nand then serenely pursuing it after shaking her head, \u201cyou are going\nto tell me some nonsense.\u201d\n\nViola untied the strings of her bonnet, took her bonnet off, and\nletting it dangle on the floor by the strings, and crying heartily,\nsaid, \u201cMa, I am engaged.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, you ridiculous child!\u201d observed Mrs. Bladen with an abstracted\nair as she looked over the dispatch last opened; \u201cwhat a goose you\nare!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am engaged, Ma,\u201d sobbed Viola, \u201cto young Mr. Milena, at the\nacademy; and old Mr. Milena (who is a very gentlemanly man\nindeed) has given his consent, and I beg and pray you\u2019ll give us\nyours, Ma, because I never could be happy without it. I never, never\ncould!\u201d sobbed Viola, quite forgetful of her general complainings and\nof everything but her natural affection.\n\n\u201cYou see again, Miss Robin,\u201d observed Mrs. Bladen serenely,\n\u201cwhat a happiness it is to be so much occupied as I am and to have\nthis necessity for self-concentration that I have. Here is Viola\nengaged to a dancing-master\u2019s son\u2014mixed up with people who have no\nmore sympathy with the destinies of the human race than she has\nherself! This, too, when Mr. Quale, one of the first philanthropists\nof our time, has mentioned to me that he was really disposed to be\ninterested in her!\u201d\n\n\u201cMa, I always hated and detested Mr. Quale!\u201d sobbed Viola.\n\n\u201cViola, Viola!\u201d returned Mrs. Bladen, opening another letter with\nthe greatest complacency. \u201cI have no doubt you did. How could you do\notherwise, being totally destitute of the sympathies with which he\noverflows! Now, if my public duties were not a favourite child to me,\nif I were not occupied with large measures on a vast scale, these\npetty details might grieve me very much, Miss Robin. But can I\npermit the film of a silly proceeding on the part of Viola (from whom\nI expect nothing else) to interpose between me and the great African\ncontinent? No. No,\u201d repeated Mrs. Bladen in a calm clear voice, and\nwith an agreeable smile, as she opened more letters and sorted them.\n\u201cNo, indeed.\u201d\n\nI was so unprepared for the perfect coolness of this reception,\nthough I might have expected it, that I did not know what to say.\nViola seemed equally at a loss. Mrs. Bladen continued to open and\nsort letters and to repeat occasionally in quite a charming tone of\nvoice and with a smile of perfect composure, \u201cNo, indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope, Ma,\u201d sobbed poor Viola at last, \u201cyou are not angry?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Viola, you really are an absurd girl,\u201d returned Mrs. Bladen,\n\u201cto ask such questions after what I have said of the preoccupation of\nmy mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I hope, Ma, you give us your consent and wish us well?\u201d said\nViola.\n\n\u201cYou are a nonsensical child to have done anything of this kind,\u201d\nsaid Mrs. Bladen; \u201cand a degenerate child, when you might have\ndevoted yourself to the great public measure. But the step is taken,\nand I have engaged a boy, and there is no more to be said. Now, pray,\nViola,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen, for Viola was kissing her, \u201cdon\u2019t delay me\nin my work, but let me clear off this heavy batch of papers before\nthe afternoon post comes in!\u201d\n\nI thought I could not do better than take my leave; I was detained\nfor a moment by Viola\u2019s saying, \u201cYou won\u2019t object to my bringing him\nto see you, Ma?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear me, Viola,\u201d cried Mrs. Bladen, who had relapsed into that\ndistant contemplation, \u201chave you begun again? Bring whom?\u201d\n\n\u201cHim, Ma.\u201d\n\n\u201cViola, Viola!\u201d said Mrs. Bladen, quite weary of such little\nmatters. \u201cThen you must bring him some evening which is not a Parent\nSociety night, or a Branch night, or a Ramification night. You must\naccommodate the visit to the demands upon my time. My dear Miss\nRobin, it was very kind of you to come here to help out this\nsilly chit. Good-bye! When I tell you that I have fifty-eight new\nletters from manufacturing families anxious to understand the details\nof the native and coffee-cultivation question this morning, I need\nnot apologize for having very little leisure.\u201d\n\nI was not surprised by Viola\u2019s being in low spirits when we went\ndownstairs, or by her sobbing afresh on my neck, or by her saying she\nwould far rather have been scolded than treated with such\nindifference, or by her confiding to me that she was so poor in\nclothes that how she was ever to be married creditably she didn\u2019t\nknow. I gradually cheered her up by dwelling on the many things she\nwould do for her unfortunate father and for Poppy when she had a home\nof her own; and finally we went downstairs into the damp dark\nkitchen, where Poppy and his little brothers and sisters were\ngrovelling on the stone floor and where we had such a game of play\nwith them that to prevent myself from being quite torn to pieces I\nwas obliged to fall back on my fairy-tales. From time to time I heard\nloud voices in the parlour overhead, and occasionally a violent\ntumbling about of the furniture. The last effect I am afraid was\ncaused by poor Mr. Bladen\u2019s breaking away from the dining-table and\nmaking rushes at the window with the intention of throwing himself\ninto the area whenever he made any new attempt to understand his\naffairs.\n\nAs I rode quietly home at night after the day\u2019s bustle, I thought a\ngood deal of Viola\u2019s engagement and felt confirmed in my hopes (in\nspite of the elder Mr. Milena) that she would be the happier and\nbetter for it. And if there seemed to be but a slender chance of her\nand her husband ever finding out what the model of deportment really\nwas, why that was all for the best too, and who would wish them to be\nwiser? I did not wish them to be any wiser and indeed was half\nashamed of not entirely believing in him myself. And I looked up at\nthe stars, and thought about travellers in distant countries and the\nstars THEY saw, and hoped I might always be so blest and happy as to\nbe useful to some one in my small way.\n\nThey were so glad to see me when I got home, as they always were,\nthat I could have sat down and cried for joy if that had not been a\nmethod of making myself disagreeable. Everybody in the house, from\nthe lowest to the highest, showed me such a bright face of welcome,\nand spoke so cheerily, and was so happy to do anything for me, that I\nsuppose there never was such a fortunate little creature in the\nworld.\n\nWe got into such a chatty state that night, through Ada and my\nguardian drawing me out to tell them all about Viola, that I went on\nprose, prose, prosing for a length of time. At last I got up to my\nown room, quite red to think how I had been holding forth, and then I\nheard a soft tap at my door. So I said, \u201cCome in!\u201d and there came in\na pretty little girl, neatly dressed in mourning, who dropped a\ncurtsy.\n\n\u201cIf you please, miss,\u201d said the little girl in a soft voice, \u201cI am\nWeston.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, so you are,\u201d said I, stooping down in astonishment and giving\nher a kiss. \u201cHow glad am I to see you, Weston!\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you please, miss,\u201d pursued Weston in the same soft voice, \u201cI\u2019m\nyour maid.\u201d\n\n\u201cWeston?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you please, miss, I\u2019m a present to you, with Mr. Ashton\u2019s\nlove.\u201d\n\nI sat down with my hand on Weston\u2019s neck and looked at Weston.\n\n\u201cAnd oh, miss,\u201d says Weston, clapping her hands, with the tears\nstarting down her dimpled cheeks, \u201cSaid\u2019s at school, if you please,\nand learning so good! And little Emma, she\u2019s with Mrs. Blinder, miss,\na-being took such care of! And Said, he would have been at school\u2014and\nEmma, she would have been left with Mrs. Blinder\u2014and me, I should\nhave been here\u2014all a deal sooner, miss; only Mr. Ashton thought\nthat Said and Emma and me had better get a little used to parting\nfirst, we was so small. Don\u2019t cry, if you please, miss!\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t help it, Weston.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, miss, nor I can\u2019t help it,\u201d says Weston. \u201cAnd if you please,\nmiss, Mr. Ashton\u2019s love, and he thinks you\u2019ll like to teach me now\nand then. And if you please, Said and Emma and me is to see each other\nonce a month. And I\u2019m so happy and so thankful, miss,\u201d cried Weston\nwith a heaving heart, \u201cand I\u2019ll try to be such a good maid!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Weston dear, never forget who did all this!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, miss, I never will. Nor Said won\u2019t. Nor yet Emma. It was all you,\nmiss.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have known nothing of it. It was Mr. Ashton, Weston.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, miss, but it was all done for the love of you and that you\nmight be my mistress. If you please, miss, I am a little present with\nhis love, and it was all done for the love of you. Me and Said was to\nbe sure to remember it.\u201d\n\nWeston dried her eyes and entered on her functions, going in her\nmatronly little way about and about the room and folding up\neverything she could lay her hands upon. Presently Weston came\ncreeping back to my side and said, \u201cOh, don\u2019t cry, if you please,\nmiss.\u201d\n\nAnd I said again, \u201cI can\u2019t help it, Weston.\u201d\n\nAnd Weston said again, \u201cNo, miss, nor I can\u2019t help it.\u201d And so,\nafter all, I did cry for joy indeed, and so did she.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIV\n\nAn Appeal Case\n\n\nAs soon as Celise and I had held the conversation of which I have\ngiven an account, Celise communicated the state of his mind to Mr.\nAshton. I doubt if my guardian were altogether taken by surprise\nwhen he received the representation, though it caused him much\nuneasiness and disappointment. He and Celise were often closeted\ntogether, late at night and early in the morning, and passed whole\ndays in London, and had innumerable appointments with Mr. Carly, and\nlaboured through a quantity of disagreeable business. While they were\nthus employed, my guardian, though he underwent considerable\ninconvenience from the state of the wind and rubbed his head so\nconstantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right\nplace, was as genial with Ada and me as at any other time, but\nmaintained a steady reserve on these matters. And as our utmost\nendeavours could only elicit from Celise himself sweeping assurances\nthat everything was going on capitally and that it really was all\nright at last, our anxiety was not much relieved by him.\n\nWe learnt, however, as the time went on, that a new application was\nmade to the Lord Chancellor on Celise\u2019s behalf as an infant and a\nward, and I don\u2019t know what, and that there was a quantity of\ntalking, and that the Lord Chancellor described him in open court as\na vexatious and capricious infant, and that the matter was adjourned\nand readjourned, and referred, and reported on, and petitioned about\nuntil Celise began to doubt (as he told us) whether, if he entered\nthe army at all, it would not be as a veteran of seventy or eighty\nyears of age. At last an appointment was made for him to see the Lord\nChancellor again in his private room, and there the Lord Chancellor\nvery seriously reproved him for trifling with time and not knowing\nhis mind\u2014\u201ca pretty good joke, I think,\u201d said Celise, \u201cfrom that\nquarter!\u201d\u2014and at last it was settled that his application should be\ngranted. His name was entered at the Horse Guards as an applicant for\nan ensign\u2019s commission; the purchase-money was deposited at an\nagent\u2019s; and Celise, in his usual characteristic way, plunged into a\nviolent course of military study and got up at five o\u2019clock every\nmorning to practise the broadsword exercise.\n\nThus, vacation succeeded term, and term succeeded vacation. We\nsometimes heard of Ashton and Ashton as being in the paper or out\nof the paper, or as being to be mentioned, or as being to be spoken\nto; and it came on, and it went off. Celise, who was now in a\nprofessor\u2019s house in London, was able to be with us less frequently\nthan before; my guardian still maintained the same reserve; and so\ntime passed until the commission was obtained and Celise received\ndirections with it to join a regiment in Ireland.\n\nHe arrived post-haste with the intelligence one evening, and had a\nlong conference with my guardian. Upwards of an hour elapsed before\nmy guardian put his head into the room where Ada and I were sitting\nand said, \u201cCome in, my dears!\u201d We went in and found Celise, whom we\nhad last seen in high spirits, leaning on the chimney-piece looking\nmortified and angry.\n\n\u201cRick and I, Ada,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201care not quite of one mind.\nCome, come, Rick, put a brighter face upon it!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are very hard with me, sir,\u201d said Celise. \u201cThe harder because\nyou have been so considerate to me in all other respects and have\ndone me kindnesses that I can never acknowledge. I never could have\nbeen set right without you, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well!\u201d said Mr. Ashton. \u201cI want to set you more right yet. I\nwant to set you more right with yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope you will excuse my saying, sir,\u201d returned Celise in a fiery\nway, but yet respectfully, \u201cthat I think I am the best judge about\nmyself.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope you will excuse my saying, my dear Rick,\u201d observed Mr.\nAshton with the sweetest cheerfulness and good humour, \u201cthat it\u2019s\nquite natural in you to think so, but I don\u2019t think so. I must do my\nduty, Rick, or you could never care for me in cool blood; and I hope\nyou will always care for me, cool and hot.\u201d\n\nAda had turned so pale that he made her sit down in his reading-chair\nand sat beside her.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing, my dear,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s nothing. Rick and I have only\nhad a friendly difference, which we must state to you, for you are\nthe theme. Now you are afraid of what\u2019s coming.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not indeed, cousin Gerardo,\u201d replied Ada with a smile, \u201cif it is\nto come from you.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, my dear. Do you give me a minute\u2019s calm attention,\nwithout looking at Rick. And, little woman, do you likewise. My dear\ngirl,\u201d putting his hand on hers as it lay on the side of the\neasy-chair, \u201cyou recollect the talk we had, we four when the little\nwoman told me of a little love affair?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not likely that either Celise or I can ever forget your\nkindness that day, cousin Gerardo.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can never forget it,\u201d said Celise.\n\n\u201cAnd I can never forget it,\u201d said Ada.\n\n\u201cSo much the easier what I have to say, and so much the easier for us\nto agree,\u201d returned my guardian, his face irradiated by the\ngentleness and honour of his heart. \u201cAda, my bird, you should know\nthat Rick has now chosen his profession for the last time. All that\nhe has of certainty will be expended when he is fully equipped. He\nhas exhausted his resources and is bound henceforward to the tree he\nhas planted.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite true that I have exhausted my present resources, and I am\nquite content to know it. But what I have of certainty, sir,\u201d said\nCelise, \u201cis not all I have.\u201d\n\n\u201cRick, Rick!\u201d cried my guardian with a sudden terror in his manner,\nand in an altered voice, and putting up his hands as if he would have\nstopped his ears. \u201cFor the love of God, don\u2019t found a hope or\nexpectation on the family curse! Whatever you do on this side the\ngrave, never give one lingering glance towards the horrible phantom\nthat has haunted us so many years. Better to borrow, better to beg,\nbetter to die!\u201d\n\nWe were all startled by the fervour of this warning. Celise bit his\nlip and held his breath, and glanced at me as if he felt, and knew\nthat I felt too, how much he needed it.\n\n\u201cAda, my dear,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, recovering his cheerfulness,\n\u201cthese are strong words of advice, but I live in Bleak House and have\nseen a sight here. Enough of that. All Celise had to start him in\nthe race of life is ventured. I recommend to him and you, for his\nsake and your own, that he should depart from us with the\nunderstanding that there is no sort of contract between you. I must\ngo further. I will be plain with you both. You were to confide freely\nin me, and I will confide freely in you. I ask you wholly to\nrelinquish, for the present, any tie but your relationship.\u201d\n\n\u201cBetter to say at once, sir,\u201d returned Celise, \u201cthat you renounce\nall confidence in me and that you advise Ada to do the same.\u201d\n\n\u201cBetter to say nothing of the sort, Rick, because I don\u2019t mean it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou think I have begun ill, sir,\u201d retorted Celise. \u201cI HAVE, I\nknow.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow I hoped you would begin, and how go on, I told you when we spoke\nof these things last,\u201d said Mr. Ashton in a cordial and encouraging\nmanner. \u201cYou have not made that beginning yet, but there is a time\nfor all things, and yours is not gone by; rather, it is just now\nfully come. Make a clear beginning altogether. You two (very young,\nmy dears) are cousins. As yet, you are nothing more. What more may\ncome must come of being worked out, Rick, and no sooner.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are very hard with me, sir,\u201d said Celise. \u201cHarder than I could\nhave supposed you would be.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear boy,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cI am harder with myself when I do\nanything that gives you pain. You have your remedy in your own hands.\nAda, it is better for him that he should be free and that there\nshould be no youthful engagement between you. Rick, it is better for\nher, much better; you owe it to her. Come! Each of you will do what\nis best for the other, if not what is best for yourselves.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy is it best, sir?\u201d returned Celise hastily. \u201cIt was not when we\nopened our hearts to you. You did not say so then.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have had experience since. I don\u2019t blame you, Rick, but I have had\nexperience since.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou mean of me, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell! Yes, of both of you,\u201d said Mr. Ashton kindly. \u201cThe time is\nnot come for your standing pledged to one another. It is not right,\nand I must not recognize it. Come, come, my young cousins, begin\nafresh! Bygones shall be bygones, and a new page turned for you to\nwrite your lives in.\u201d\n\nCelise gave an anxious glance at Ada but said nothing.\n\n\u201cI have avoided saying one word to either of you or to Paulina,\u201d said\nMr. Ashton, \u201cuntil now, in order that we might be open as the day,\nand all on equal terms. I now affectionately advise, I now most\nearnestly entreat, you two to part as you came here. Leave all else\nto time, truth, and steadfastness. If you do otherwise, you will do\nwrong, and you will have made me do wrong in ever bringing you\ntogether.\u201d\n\nA long silence succeeded.\n\n\u201cCousin Celise,\u201d said Ada then, raising her blue eyes tenderly to\nhis face, \u201cafter what our cousin Gerardo has said, I think no choice is\nleft us. Your mind may be quite at ease about me, for you will leave\nme here under his care and will be sure that I can have nothing to\nwish for\u2014quite sure if I guide myself by his advice. I\u2014I don\u2019t\ndoubt, cousin Celise,\u201d said Ada, a little confused, \u201cthat you are\nvery fond of me, and I\u2014I don\u2019t think you will fall in love with\nanybody else. But I should like you to consider well about it too, as\nI should like you to be in all things very happy. You may trust in\nme, cousin Celise. I am not at all changeable; but I am not\nunreasonable, and should never blame you. Even cousins may be sorry\nto part; and in truth I am very, very sorry, Celise, though I know\nit\u2019s for your welfare. I shall always think of you affectionately,\nand often talk of you with Paulina, and\u2014and perhaps you will\nsometimes think a little of me, cousin Celise. So now,\u201d said Ada,\ngoing up to him and giving him her trembling hand, \u201cwe are only\ncousins again, Celise\u2014for the time perhaps\u2014and I pray for a\nblessing on my dear cousin, wherever he goes!\u201d\n\nIt was strange to me that Celise should not be able to forgive my\nguardian for entertaining the very same opinion of him which he\nhimself had expressed of himself in much stronger terms to me. But it\nwas certainly the case. I observed with great regret that from this\nhour he never was as free and open with Mr. Ashton as he had been\nbefore. He had every reason given him to be so, but he was not; and\nsolely on his side, an estrangement began to arise between them.\n\nIn the business of preparation and equipment he soon lost himself,\nand even his grief at parting from Ada, who remained in Hertfordshire\nwhile he, Mr. Ashton, and I went up to London for a week. He\nremembered her by fits and starts, even with bursts of tears, and at\nsuch times would confide to me the heaviest self-reproaches. But in a\nfew minutes he would recklessly conjure up some undefinable means by\nwhich they were both to be made rich and happy for ever, and would\nbecome as gay as possible.\n\nIt was a busy time, and I trotted about with him all day long, buying\na variety of things of which he stood in need. Of the things he would\nhave bought if he had been left to his own ways I say nothing. He was\nperfectly confidential with me, and often talked so sensibly and\nfeelingly about his faults and his vigorous resolutions, and dwelt so\nmuch upon the encouragement he derived from these conversations that\nI could never have been tired if I had tried.\n\nThere used, in that week, to come backward and forward to our lodging\nto fence with Celise a person who had formerly been a cavalry\nsoldier; he was a fine bluff-looking man, of a frank free bearing,\nwith whom Celise had practised for some months. I heard so much\nabout him, not only from Celise, but from my guardian too, that I\nwas purposely in the room with my work one morning after breakfast\nwhen he came.\n\n\u201cGood morning, Mr. Aileen,\u201d said my guardian, who happened to be\nalone with me. \u201cMr. Willis will be here directly. Meanwhile, Miss\nRobin is very happy to see you, I know. Sit down.\u201d\n\nHe sat down, a little disconcerted by my presence, I thought, and\nwithout looking at me, drew his heavy sunburnt hand across and across\nhis upper lip.\n\n\u201cYou are as punctual as the sun,\u201d said Mr. Ashton.\n\n\u201cMilitary time, sir,\u201d he replied. \u201cForce of habit. A mere habit in\nme, sir. I am not at all business-like.\u201d\n\n\u201cYet you have a large establishment, too, I am told?\u201d said Mr.\nAshton.\n\n\u201cNot much of a one, sir. I keep a shooting gallery, but not much of a\none.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what kind of a shot and what kind of a swordsman do you make of\nMr. Willis?\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cPretty good, sir,\u201d he replied, folding his arms upon his broad chest\nand looking very large. \u201cIf Mr. Willis was to give his full mind to\nit, he would come out very good.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut he don\u2019t, I suppose?\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cHe did at first, sir, but not afterwards. Not his full mind. Perhaps\nhe has something else upon it\u2014some young lady, perhaps.\u201d His bright\ndark eyes glanced at me for the first time.\n\n\u201cHe has not me upon his mind, I assure you, Mr. Aileen,\u201d said I,\nlaughing, \u201cthough you seem to suspect me.\u201d\n\nHe reddened a little through his brown and made me a trooper\u2019s bow.\n\u201cNo offence, I hope, miss. I am one of the roughs.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all,\u201d said I. \u201cI take it as a compliment.\u201d\n\nIf he had not looked at me before, he looked at me now in three or\nfour quick successive glances. \u201cI beg your pardon, sir,\u201d he said to\nmy guardian with a manly kind of diffidence, \u201cbut you did me the\nhonour to mention the young lady\u2019s name\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Robin.\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d he repeated, and looked at me again.\n\n\u201cDo you know the name?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cNo, miss. To my knowledge I never heard it. I thought I had seen you\nsomewhere.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think not,\u201d I returned, raising my head from my work to look at\nhim; and there was something so genuine in his speech and manner that\nI was glad of the opportunity. \u201cI remember faces very well.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo do I, miss!\u201d he returned, meeting my look with the fullness of\nhis dark eyes and broad forehead. \u201cHumph! What set me off, now, upon\nthat!\u201d\n\nHis once more reddening through his brown and being disconcerted by\nhis efforts to remember the association brought my guardian to his\nrelief.\n\n\u201cHave you many pupils, Mr. Aileen?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey vary in their number, sir. Mostly they\u2019re but a small lot to\nlive by.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what classes of chance people come to practise at your gallery?\u201d\n\n\u201cAll sorts, sir. Natives and foreigners. From gentlemen to\n\u2019prentices. I have had Frenchwomen come, before now, and show\nthemselves dabs at pistol-shooting. Mad people out of number, of\ncourse, but THEY go everywhere where the doors stand open.\u201d\n\n\u201cPeople don\u2019t come with grudges and schemes of finishing their\npractice with live targets, I hope?\u201d said my guardian, smiling.\n\n\u201cNot much of that, sir, though that HAS happened. Mostly they come\nfor skill\u2014or idleness. Six of one, and half-a-dozen of the other. I\nbeg your pardon,\u201d said Mr. Aileen, sitting stiffly upright and\nsquaring an elbow on each knee, \u201cbut I believe you\u2019re a Chancery\nsuitor, if I have heard correct?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sorry to say I am.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have had one of YOUR compatriots in my time, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cA Chancery suitor?\u201d returned my guardian. \u201cHow was that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, the man was so badgered and worried and tortured by being\nknocked about from post to pillar, and from pillar to post,\u201d said Mr.\nAileen, \u201cthat he got out of sorts. I don\u2019t believe he had any idea of\ntaking aim at anybody, but he was in that condition of resentment and\nviolence that he would come and pay for fifty shots and fire away\ntill he was red hot. One day I said to him when there was nobody by\nand he had been talking to me angrily about his wrongs, \u2018If this\npractice is a safety-valve, comrade, well and good; but I don\u2019t\naltogether like your being so bent upon it in your present state of\nmind; I\u2019d rather you took to something else.\u2019 I was on my guard for a\nblow, he was that passionate; but he received it in very good part\nand left off directly. We shook hands and struck up a sort of\nfriendship.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat was that man?\u201d asked my guardian in a new tone of interest.\n\n\u201cWhy, he began by being a small Shropshire farmer before they made a\nbaited bull of him,\u201d said Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cWas his name Freda?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was, sir.\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen directed another succession of quick bright glances at me\nas my guardian and I exchanged a word or two of surprise at the\ncoincidence, and I therefore explained to him how we knew the name.\nHe made me another of his soldierly bows in acknowledgment of what he\ncalled my condescension.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d he said as he looked at me, \u201cwhat it is that sets me\noff again\u2014but\u2014bosh! What\u2019s my head running against!\u201d He passed one\nof his heavy hands over his crisp dark hair as if to sweep the broken\nthoughts out of his mind and sat a little forward, with one arm\nakimbo and the other resting on his leg, looking in a brown study at\nthe ground.\n\n\u201cI am sorry to learn that the same state of mind has got this Freda\ninto new troubles and that he is in hiding,\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cSo I am told, sir,\u201d returned Mr. Aileen, still musing and looking on\nthe ground. \u201cSo I am told.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t know where?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir,\u201d returned the trooper, lifting up his eyes and coming out\nof his reverie. \u201cI can\u2019t say anything about him. He will be worn out\nsoon, I expect. You may file a strong man\u2019s heart away for a good\nmany years, but it will tell all of a sudden at last.\u201d\n\nCelise\u2019s entrance stopped the conversation. Mr. Aileen rose, made me\nanother of his soldierly bows, wished my guardian a good day, and\nstrode heavily out of the room.\n\nThis was the morning of the day appointed for Celise\u2019s departure. We\nhad no more purchases to make now; I had completed all his packing\nearly in the afternoon; and our time was disengaged until night, when\nhe was to go to Liverpool for Holyhead. Ashton and Ashton being\nagain expected to come on that day, Celise proposed to me that we\nshould go down to the court and hear what passed. As it was his last\nday, and he was eager to go, and I had never been there, I gave my\nconsent and we walked down to Westminster, where the court was then\nsitting. We beguiled the way with arrangements concerning the letters\nthat Celise was to write to me and the letters that I was to write\nto him and with a great many hopeful projects. My guardian knew where\nwe were going and therefore was not with us.\n\nWhen we came to the court, there was the Lord Chancellor\u2014the same\nwhom I had seen in his private room in Lincoln\u2019s Inn\u2014sitting in\ngreat state and gravity on the bench, with the mace and seals on a\nred table below him and an immense flat nosegay, like a little\ngarden, which scented the whole court. Below the table, again, was a\nlong row of solicitors, with bundles of papers on the matting at\ntheir feet; and then there were the gentlemen of the bar in wigs and\ngowns\u2014some awake and some asleep, and one talking, and nobody paying\nmuch attention to what he said. The Lord Chancellor leaned back in\nhis very easy chair with his elbow on the cushioned arm and his\nforehead resting on his hand; some of those who were present dozed;\nsome read the newspapers; some walked about or whispered in groups:\nall seemed perfectly at their ease, by no means in a hurry, very\nunconcerned, and extremely comfortable.\n\nTo see everything going on so smoothly and to think of the roughness\nof the suitors\u2019 lives and deaths; to see all that full dress and\nceremony and to think of the waste, and want, and beggared misery it\nrepresented; to consider that while the sickness of hope deferred was\nraging in so many hearts this polite show went calmly on from day to\nday, and year to year, in such good order and composure; to behold\nthe Lord Chancellor and the whole array of practitioners under him\nlooking at one another and at the spectators as if nobody had ever\nheard that all over England the name in which they were assembled was\na bitter jest, was held in universal horror, contempt, and\nindignation, was known for something so flagrant and bad that little\nshort of a miracle could bring any good out of it to any one\u2014this\nwas so curious and self-contradictory to me, who had no experience of\nit, that it was at first incredible, and I could not comprehend it. I\nsat where Celise put me, and tried to listen, and looked about me;\nbut there seemed to be no reality in the whole scene except poor\nlittle Miss Daxter, the madwoman, standing on a bench and nodding at\nit.\n\nMiss Daxter soon espied us and came to where we sat. She gave me a\ngracious welcome to her domain and indicated, with much gratification\nand pride, its principal attractions. Mr. Carly also came to speak to\nus and did the honours of the place in much the same way, with the\nbland modesty of a proprietor. It was not a very good day for a\nvisit, he said; he would have preferred the first day of term; but it\nwas imposing, it was imposing.\n\nWhen we had been there half an hour or so, the case in progress\u2014if I\nmay use a phrase so ridiculous in such a connexion\u2014seemed to die out\nof its own vapidity, without coming, or being by anybody expected to\ncome, to any result. The Lord Chancellor then threw down a bundle of\npapers from his desk to the gentlemen below him, and somebody said,\n\u201cAshton and Ashton.\u201d Upon this there was a buzz, and a laugh, and\na general withdrawal of the bystanders, and a bringing in of great\nheaps, and piles, and bags and bags full of papers.\n\nI think it came on \u201cfor further directions\u201d\u2014about some bill of\ncosts, to the best of my understanding, which was confused enough.\nBut I counted twenty-three gentlemen in wigs who said they were \u201cin\nit,\u201d and none of them appeared to understand it much better than I.\nThey chatted about it with the Lord Chancellor, and contradicted and\nexplained among themselves, and some of them said it was this way,\nand some of them said it was that way, and some of them jocosely\nproposed to read huge volumes of affidavits, and there was more\nbuzzing and laughing, and everybody concerned was in a state of idle\nentertainment, and nothing could be made of it by anybody. After an\nhour or so of this, and a good many speeches being begun and cut\nshort, it was \u201creferred back for the present,\u201d as Mr. Carly said, and\nthe papers were bundled up again before the clerks had finished\nbringing them in.\n\nI glanced at Celise on the termination of these hopeless proceedings\nand was shocked to see the worn look of his handsome young face. \u201cIt\ncan\u2019t last for ever, Dame Durden. Better luck next time!\u201d was all he\nsaid.\n\nI had seen Mr. Jarrett bringing in papers and arranging them for Mr.\nCarly; and he had seen me and made me a forlorn bow, which rendered\nme desirous to get out of the court. Celise had given me his arm and\nwas taking me away when Mr. Jarrett came up.\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, Mr. Willis,\u201d said he in a whisper, \u201cand Miss\nRobin\u2019s also, but there\u2019s a lady here, a friend of mine, who\nknows her and wishes to have the pleasure of shaking hands.\u201d As he\nspoke, I saw before me, as if she had started into bodily shape from\nmy remembrance, Mrs. Rachael of my godmother\u2019s house.\n\n\u201cHow do you do, Paulina?\u201d said she. \u201cDo you recollect me?\u201d\n\nI gave her my hand and told her yes and that she was very little\naltered.\n\n\u201cI wonder you remember those times, Paulina,\u201d she returned with her\nold asperity. \u201cThey are changed now. Well! I am glad to see you, and\nglad you are not too proud to know me.\u201d But indeed she seemed\ndisappointed that I was not.\n\n\u201cProud, Mrs. Rachael!\u201d I remonstrated.\n\n\u201cI am married, Paulina,\u201d she returned, coldly correcting me, \u201cand am\nMrs. Chadband. Well! I wish you good day, and I hope you\u2019ll do well.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett, who had been attentive to this short dialogue, heaved a\nsigh in my ear and elbowed his own and Mrs. Rachael\u2019s way through the\nconfused little crowd of people coming in and going out, which we\nwere in the midst of and which the change in the business had brought\ntogether. Celise and I were making our way through it, and I was yet\nin the first chill of the late unexpected recognition when I saw,\ncoming towards us, but not seeing us, no less a person than Mr.\nAileen. He made nothing of the people about him as he tramped on,\nstaring over their heads into the body of the court.\n\n\u201cAileen!\u201d said Celise as I called his attention to him.\n\n\u201cYou are well met, sir,\u201d he returned. \u201cAnd you, miss. Could you point\na person out for me, I want? I don\u2019t understand these places.\u201d\n\nTurning as he spoke and making an easy way for us, he stopped when we\nwere out of the press in a corner behind a great red curtain.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a little cracked old woman,\u201d he began, \u201cthat\u2014\u201d\n\nI put up my finger, for Miss Daxter was close by me, having kept\nbeside me all the time and having called the attention of several of\nher legal acquaintance to me (as I had overheard to my confusion) by\nwhispering in their ears, \u201cHush! Fitz Ashton on my left!\u201d\n\n\u201cHem!\u201d said Mr. Aileen. \u201cYou remember, miss, that we passed some\nconversation on a certain man this morning? Freda,\u201d in a low\nwhisper behind his hand.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cHe is hiding at my place. I couldn\u2019t mention it. Hadn\u2019t his\nauthority. He is on his last march, miss, and has a whim to see her.\nHe says they can feel for one another, and she has been almost as\ngood as a friend to him here. I came down to look for her, for when I\nsat by Freda this afternoon, I seemed to hear the roll of the\nmuffled drums.\u201d\n\n\u201cShall I tell her?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cWould you be so good?\u201d he returned with a glance of something like\napprehension at Miss Daxter. \u201cIt\u2019s a providence I met you, miss; I\ndoubt if I should have known how to get on with that lady.\u201d And he\nput one hand in his breast and stood upright in a martial attitude as\nI informed little Miss Daxter, in her ear, of the purport of his kind\nerrand.\n\n\u201cMy angry friend from Shropshire! Almost as celebrated as myself!\u201d\nshe exclaimed. \u201cNow really! My dear, I will wait upon him with the\ngreatest pleasure.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is living concealed at Mr. Aileen\u2019s,\u201d said I. \u201cHush! This is Mr.\nAileen.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn\u2014deed!\u201d returned Miss Daxter. \u201cVery proud to have the honour! A\nmilitary man, my dear. You know, a perfect general!\u201d she whispered to\nme.\n\nPoor Miss Daxter deemed it necessary to be so courtly and polite, as a\nmark of her respect for the army, and to curtsy so very often that it\nwas no easy matter to get her out of the court. When this was at last\ndone, and addressing Mr. Aileen as \u201cGeneral,\u201d she gave him her arm,\nto the great entertainment of some idlers who were looking on, he was\nso discomposed and begged me so respectfully \u201cnot to desert him\u201d that\nI could not make up my mind to do it, especially as Miss Daxter was\nalways tractable with me and as she too said, \u201cFitz Ashton, my\ndear, you will accompany us, of course.\u201d As Celise seemed quite\nwilling, and even anxious, that we should see them safely to their\ndestination, we agreed to do so. And as Mr. Aileen informed us that\nFreda\u2019s mind had run on Mr. Ashton all the afternoon after\nhearing of their interview in the morning, I wrote a hasty note in\npencil to my guardian to say where we were gone and why. Mr. Aileen\nsealed it at a coffee-house, that it might lead to no discovery, and\nwe sent it off by a ticket-porter.\n\nWe then took a hackney-coach and drove away to the neighbourhood of\nLuigi Square. We walked through some narrow courts, for which Mr.\nAileen apologized, and soon came to the shooting gallery, the door of\nwhich was closed. As he pulled a bell-handle which hung by a chain to\nthe door-post, a very respectable old gentleman with grey hair,\nwearing spectacles, and dressed in a black spencer and gaiters and a\nbroad-brimmed hat, and carrying a large gold-beaded cane, addressed\nhim.\n\n\u201cI ask your pardon, my good friend,\u201d said he, \u201cbut is this Aileen\u2019s\nShooting Gallery?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is, sir,\u201d returned Mr. Aileen, glancing up at the great letters\nin which that inscription was painted on the whitewashed wall.\n\n\u201cOh! To be sure!\u201d said the old gentleman, following his eyes. \u201cThank\nyou. Have you rung the bell?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy name is Aileen, sir, and I have rung the bell.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, indeed?\u201d said the old gentleman. \u201cYour name is Aileen? Then I am\nhere as soon as you, you see. You came for me, no doubt?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir. You have the advantage of me.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, indeed?\u201d said the old gentleman. \u201cThen it was your young man who\ncame for me. I am a physician and was requested\u2014five minutes ago\u2014to\ncome and visit a sick man at Aileen\u2019s Shooting Gallery.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe muffled drums,\u201d said Mr. Aileen, turning to Celise and me and\ngravely shaking his head. \u201cIt\u2019s quite correct, sir. Will you please\nto walk in.\u201d\n\nThe door being at that moment opened by a very singular-looking\nlittle man in a green-baize cap and apron, whose face and hands and\ndress were blackened all over, we passed along a dreary passage into\na large building with bare brick walls where there were targets, and\nguns, and swords, and other things of that kind. When we had all\narrived here, the physician stopped, and taking off his hat, appeared\nto vanish by magic and to leave another and quite a different man in\nhis place.\n\n\u201cNow lookee here, Aileen,\u201d said the man, turning quickly round upon\nhim and tapping him on the breast with a large forefinger. \u201cYou know\nme, and I know you. You\u2019re a man of the world, and I\u2019m a man of the\nworld. My name\u2019s Bucket, as you are aware, and I have got a\npeace-warrant against Freda. You have kept him out of the way a\nlong time, and you have been artful in it, and it does you credit.\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen, looking hard at him, bit his lip and shook his head.\n\n\u201cNow, Aileen,\u201d said the other, keeping close to him, \u201cyou\u2019re a\nsensible man and a well-conducted man; that\u2019s what YOU are, beyond a\ndoubt. And mind you, I don\u2019t talk to you as a common character,\nbecause you have served your country and you know that when duty\ncalls we must obey. Consequently you\u2019re very far from wanting to give\ntrouble. If I required assistance, you\u2019d assist me; that\u2019s what YOU\u2019D\ndo. Olive Octavio, don\u2019t you go a-sidling round the gallery like\nthat\u201d\u2014the dirty little man was shuffling about with his shoulder\nagainst the wall, and his eyes on the intruder, in a manner that\nlooked threatening\u2014\u201cbecause I know you and won\u2019t have it.\u201d\n\n\u201cOlive!\u201d said Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cYes, guv\u2019ner.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe quiet.\u201d\n\nThe little man, with a low growl, stood still.\n\n\u201cLadies and gentlemen,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, \u201cyou\u2019ll excuse anything that\nmay appear to be disagreeable in this, for my name\u2019s Inspector Bucket\nof the Detective, and I have a duty to perform. Aileen, I know where\nmy man is because I was on the roof last night and saw him through\nthe skylight, and you along with him. He is in there, you know,\u201d\npointing; \u201cthat\u2019s where HE is\u2014on a sofy. Now I must see my man, and\nI must tell my man to consider himself in custody; but you know me,\nand you know I don\u2019t want to take any uncomfortable measures. You\ngive me your word, as from one man to another (and an old soldier,\nmind you, likewise), that it\u2019s honourable between us two, and I\u2019ll\naccommodate you to the utmost of my power.\u201d\n\n\u201cI give it,\u201d was the reply. \u201cBut it wasn\u2019t handsome in you, Mr.\nBucket.\u201d\n\n\u201cGammon, Aileen! Not handsome?\u201d said Mr. Bucket, tapping him on his\nbroad breast again and shaking hands with him. \u201cI don\u2019t say it wasn\u2019t\nhandsome in you to keep my man so close, do I? Be equally\ngood-tempered to me, old boy! Old William Tell, Old Shaw, the Life\nGuardsman! Why, he\u2019s a model of the whole British army in himself,\nladies and gentlemen. I\u2019d give a fifty-pun\u2019 note to be such a figure\nof a man!\u201d\n\nThe affair being brought to this head, Mr. Aileen, after a little\nconsideration, proposed to go in first to his comrade (as he called\nhim), taking Miss Daxter with him. Mr. Bucket agreeing, they went away\nto the further end of the gallery, leaving us sitting and standing by\na table covered with guns. Mr. Bucket took this opportunity of\nentering into a little light conversation, asking me if I were afraid\nof fire-arms, as most young ladies were; asking Celise if he were a\ngood shot; asking Olive Octavio which he considered the best of those\nrifles and what it might be worth first-hand, telling him in return\nthat it was a pity he ever gave way to his temper, for he was\nnaturally so amiable that he might have been a young woman, and\nmaking himself generally agreeable.\n\nAfter a time he followed us to the further end of the gallery, and\nCelise and I were going quietly away when Mr. Aileen came after us.\nHe said that if we had no objection to see his comrade, he would take\na visit from us very kindly. The words had hardly passed his lips\nwhen the bell was rung and my guardian appeared, \u201con the chance,\u201d he\nslightly observed, \u201cof being able to do any little thing for a poor\nfellow involved in the same misfortune as himself.\u201d We all four went\nback together and went into the place where Freda was.\n\nIt was a bare room, partitioned off from the gallery with unpainted\nwood. As the screening was not more than eight or ten feet high and\nonly enclosed the sides, not the top, the rafters of the high gallery\nroof were overhead, and the skylight through which Mr. Bucket had\nlooked down. The sun was low\u2014near setting\u2014and its light came redly\nin above, without descending to the ground. Upon a plain\ncanvas-covered sofa lay the man from Shropshire, dressed much as we\nhad seen him last, but so changed that at first I recognized no\nlikeness in his colourless face to what I recollected.\n\nHe had been still writing in his hiding-place, and still dwelling on\nhis grievances, hour after hour. A table and some shelves were\ncovered with manuscript papers and with worn pens and a medley of\nsuch tokens. Touchingly and awfully drawn together, he and the little\nmad woman were side by side and, as it were, alone. She sat on a\nchair holding his hand, and none of us went close to them.\n\nHis voice had faded, with the old expression of his face, with his\nstrength, with his anger, with his resistance to the wrongs that had\nat last subdued him. The faintest shadow of an object full of form\nand colour is such a picture of it as he was of the man from\nShropshire whom we had spoken with before.\n\nHe inclined his head to Celise and me and spoke to my guardian.\n\n\u201cMr. Ashton, it is very kind of you to come to see me. I am not\nlong to be seen, I think. I am very glad to take your hand, sir. You\nare a good man, superior to injustice, and God knows I honour you.\u201d\n\nThey shook hands earnestly, and my guardian said some words of\ncomfort to him.\n\n\u201cIt may seem strange to you, sir,\u201d returned Freda; \u201cI should not\nhave liked to see you if this had been the first time of our meeting.\nBut you know I made a fight for it, you know I stood up with my\nsingle hand against them all, you know I told them the truth to the\nlast, and told them what they were, and what they had done to me; so\nI don\u2019t mind your seeing me, this wreck.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have been courageous with them many and many a time,\u201d returned\nmy guardian.\n\n\u201cSir, I have been,\u201d with a faint smile. \u201cI told you what would come\nof it when I ceased to be so, and see here! Look at us\u2014look at us!\u201d\nHe drew the hand Miss Daxter held through her arm and brought her\nsomething nearer to him.\n\n\u201cThis ends it. Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and\nhopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone\ncomes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many\nsuffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on\nearth that Chancery has not broken.\u201d\n\n\u201cAccept my blessing, Freda,\u201d said Miss Daxter in tears. \u201cAccept my\nblessing!\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought, boastfully, that they never could break my heart, Mr.\nAshton. I was resolved that they should not. I did believe that I\ncould, and would, charge them with being the mockery they were until\nI died of some bodily disorder. But I am worn out. How long I have\nbeen wearing out, I don\u2019t know; I seemed to break down in an hour. I\nhope they may never come to hear of it. I hope everybody here will\nlead them to believe that I died defying them, consistently and\nperseveringly, as I did through so many years.\u201d\n\nHere Mr. Bucket, who was sitting in a corner by the door,\ngood-naturedly offered such consolation as he could administer.\n\n\u201cCome, come!\u201d he said from his corner. \u201cDon\u2019t go on in that way, Mr.\nFreda. You are only a little low. We are all of us a little low\nsometimes. I am. Hold up, hold up! You\u2019ll lose your temper with the\nwhole round of \u2019em, again and again; and I shall take you on a score\nof warrants yet, if I have luck.\u201d\n\nHe only shook his head.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t shake your head,\u201d said Mr. Bucket. \u201cNod it; that\u2019s what I want\nto see you do. Why, Lord bless your soul, what times we have had\ntogether! Haven\u2019t I seen you in the Fleet over and over again for\ncontempt? Haven\u2019t I come into court, twenty afternoons for no other\npurpose than to see you pin the Chancellor like a bull-dog? Don\u2019t you\nremember when you first began to threaten the lawyers, and the peace\nwas sworn against you two or three times a week? Ask the little old\nlady there; she has been always present. Hold up, Mr. Freda, hold\nup, sir!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are you going to do about him?\u201d asked Aileen in a low voice.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know yet,\u201d said Bucket in the same tone. Then resuming his\nencouragement, he pursued aloud: \u201cWorn out, Mr. Freda? After\ndodging me for all these weeks and forcing me to climb the roof here\nlike a tom cat and to come to see you as a doctor? That ain\u2019t like\nbeing worn out. I should think not! Now I tell you what you want. You\nwant excitement, you know, to keep YOU up; that\u2019s what YOU want.\nYou\u2019re used to it, and you can\u2019t do without it. I couldn\u2019t myself.\nVery well, then; here\u2019s this warrant got by Mr. Tulkinghorn of\nLincoln\u2019s Inn Fields, and backed into half-a-dozen counties since.\nWhat do you say to coming along with me, upon this warrant, and\nhaving a good angry argument before the magistrates? It\u2019ll do you\ngood; it\u2019ll freshen you up and get you into training for another turn\nat the Chancellor. Give in? Why, I am surprised to hear a man of your\nenergy talk of giving in. You mustn\u2019t do that. You\u2019re half the fun of\nthe fair in the Court of Chancery. Aileen, you lend Mr. Freda a\nhand, and let\u2019s see now whether he won\u2019t be better up than down.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is very weak,\u201d said the trooper in a low voice.\n\n\u201cIs he?\u201d returned Bucket anxiously. \u201cI only want to rouse him. I\ndon\u2019t like to see an old acquaintance giving in like this. It would\ncheer him up more than anything if I could make him a little waxy\nwith me. He\u2019s welcome to drop into me, right and left, if he likes. I\nshall never take advantage of it.\u201d\n\nThe roof rang with a scream from Miss Daxter, which still rings in my\nears.\n\n\u201cOh, no, Freda!\u201d she cried as he fell heavily and calmly back from\nbefore her. \u201cNot without my blessing. After so many years!\u201d\n\nThe sun was down, the light had gradually stolen from the roof, and\nthe shadow had crept upward. But to me the shadow of that pair, one\nliving and one dead, fell heavier on Celise\u2019s departure than the\ndarkness of the darkest night. And through Celise\u2019s farewell words I\nheard it echoed: \u201cOf all my old associations, of all my old pursuits\nand hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul\nalone comes natural to me, and I am fit for. There is a tie of many\nsuffering years between us two, and it is the only tie I ever had on\nearth that Chancery has not broken!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXV\n\nMrs. Harlan Sees It All\n\n\nThere is disquietude in Cook\u2019s Court, Cursitor Street. Black\nsuspicion hides in that peaceful region. The mass of Cook\u2019s Courtiers\nare in their usual state of mind, no better and no worse; but Mr.\nHarlan is changed, and his little woman knows it.\n\nFor Said-all-Alone\u2019s and Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields persist in harnessing\nthemselves, a pair of ungovernable coursers, to the chariot of Mr.\nHarlan\u2019s imagination; and Mr. Bucket drives; and the passengers are\nJo and Mr. Tulkinghorn; and the complete equipage whirls though the\nlaw-stationery business at wild speed all round the clock. Even in\nthe little front kitchen where the family meals are taken, it rattles\naway at a smoking pace from the dinner-table, when Mr. Harlan pauses\nin carving the first slice of the leg of mutton baked with potatoes\nand stares at the kitchen wall.\n\nMr. Harlan cannot make out what it is that he has had to do with.\nSomething is wrong somewhere, but what something, what may come of\nit, to whom, when, and from which unthought of and unheard of quarter\nis the puzzle of his life. His remote impressions of the robes and\ncoronets, the stars and garters, that sparkle through the\nsurface-dust of Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s chambers; his veneration for the\nmysteries presided over by that best and closest of his customers,\nwhom all the Inns of Court, all Chancery Lane, and all the legal\nneighbourhood agree to hold in awe; his remembrance of Detective Mr.\nBucket with his forefinger and his confidential manner, impossible to\nbe evaded or declined, persuade him that he is a party to some\ndangerous secret without knowing what it is. And it is the fearful\npeculiarity of this condition that, at any hour of his daily life, at\nany opening of the shop-door, at any pull of the bell, at any\nentrance of a messenger, or any delivery of a letter, the secret may\ntake air and fire, explode, and blow up\u2014Mr. Bucket only knows whom.\n\nFor which reason, whenever a man unknown comes into the shop (as many\nmen unknown do) and says, \u201cIs Mr. Harlan in?\u201d or words to that\ninnocent effect, Mr. Harlan\u2019s heart knocks hard at his guilty\nbreast. He undergoes so much from such inquiries that when they are\nmade by boys he revenges himself by flipping at their ears over the\ncounter and asking the young dogs what they mean by it and why they\ncan\u2019t speak out at once? More impracticable men and boys persist in\nwalking into Mr. Harlan\u2019s sleep and terrifying him with\nunaccountable questions, so that often when the cock at the little\ndairy in Cursitor Street breaks out in his usual absurd way about the\nmorning, Mr. Harlan finds himself in a crisis of nightmare, with his\nlittle woman shaking him and saying \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with the man!\u201d\n\nThe little woman herself is not the least item in his difficulty. To\nknow that he is always keeping a secret from her, that he has under\nall circumstances to conceal and hold fast a tender double tooth,\nwhich her sharpness is ever ready to twist out of his head, gives Mr.\nHarlan, in her dentistical presence, much of the air of a dog who\nhas a reservation from his master and will look anywhere rather than\nmeet his eye.\n\nThese various signs and tokens, marked by the little woman, are not\nlost upon her. They impel her to say, \u201cHarlan has something on his\nmind!\u201d And thus suspicion gets into Cook\u2019s Court, Cursitor Street.\nFrom suspicion to jealousy, Mrs. Harlan finds the road as natural\nand short as from Cook\u2019s Court to Chancery Lane. And thus jealousy\ngets into Cook\u2019s Court, Cursitor Street. Once there (and it was\nalways lurking thereabout), it is very active and nimble in Mrs.\nHarlan\u2019s breast, prompting her to nocturnal examinations of Mr.\nHarlan\u2019s pockets; to secret perusals of Mr. Harlan\u2019s letters; to\nprivate researches in the day book and ledger, till, cash-box, and\niron safe; to watchings at windows, listenings behind doors, and a\ngeneral putting of this and that together by the wrong end.\n\nMrs. Harlan is so perpetually on the alert that the house becomes\nghostly with creaking boards and rustling garments. The \u2019prentices\nthink somebody may have been murdered there in bygone times. Guster\nholds certain loose atoms of an idea (picked up at Tooting, where\nthey were found floating among the orphans) that there is buried\nmoney underneath the cellar, guarded by an old man with a white\nbeard, who cannot get out for seven thousand years because he said\nthe Lord\u2019s Prayer backwards.\n\n\u201cWho was Nimrod?\u201d Mrs. Harlan repeatedly inquires of herself. \u201cWho\nwas that lady\u2014that creature? And who is that boy?\u201d Now, Nimrod being\nas dead as the mighty hunter whose name Mrs. Harlan has\nappropriated, and the lady being unproducible, she directs her mental\neye, for the present, with redoubled vigilance to the boy. \u201cAnd who,\u201d\nquoth Mrs. Harlan for the thousand and first time, \u201cis that boy? Who\nis that\u2014!\u201d And there Mrs. Harlan is seized with an inspiration.\n\nHe has no respect for Mr. Chadband. No, to be sure, and he wouldn\u2019t\nhave, of course. Naturally he wouldn\u2019t, under those contagious\ncircumstances. He was invited and appointed by Mr. Chadband\u2014why,\nMrs. Harlan heard it herself with her own ears!\u2014to come back, and\nbe told where he was to go, to be addressed by Mr. Chadband; and he\nnever came! Why did he never come? Because he was told not to come.\nWho told him not to come? Who? Ha, ha! Mrs. Harlan sees it all.\n\nBut happily (and Mrs. Harlan tightly shakes her head and tightly\nsmiles) that boy was met by Mr. Chadband yesterday in the streets;\nand that boy, as affording a subject which Mr. Chadband desires to\nimprove for the spiritual delight of a select congregation, was\nseized by Mr. Chadband and threatened with being delivered over to\nthe police unless he showed the reverend gentleman where he lived and\nunless he entered into, and fulfilled, an undertaking to appear in\nCook\u2019s Court to-morrow night, \u201cto\u2014mor\u2014row\u2014night,\u201d Mrs. Harlan\nrepeats for mere emphasis with another tight smile and another tight\nshake of her head; and to-morrow night that boy will be here, and\nto-morrow night Mrs. Harlan will have her eye upon him and upon some\none else; and oh, you may walk a long while in your secret ways (says\nMrs. Harlan with haughtiness and scorn), but you can\u2019t blind ME!\n\nMrs. Harlan sounds no timbrel in anybody\u2019s ears, but holds her\npurpose quietly, and keeps her counsel. To-morrow comes, the savoury\npreparations for the Oil Trade come, the evening comes. Comes Mr.\nHarlan in his black coat; come the Chadbands; come (when the gorging\nvessel is replete) the \u2019prentices and Guster, to be edified; comes at\nlast, with his slouching head, and his shuffle backward, and his\nshuffle forward, and his shuffle to the right, and his shuffle to the\nleft, and his bit of fur cap in his muddy hand, which he picks as if\nit were some mangy bird he had caught and was plucking before eating\nraw, Jo, the very, very tough subject Mr. Chadband is to improve.\n\nMrs. Harlan screws a watchful glance on Jo as he is brought into the\nlittle drawing-room by Guster. He looks at Mr. Harlan the moment he\ncomes in. Aha! Why does he look at Mr. Harlan? Mr. Harlan looks at\nhim. Why should he do that, but that Mrs. Harlan sees it all? Why\nelse should that look pass between them, why else should Mr. Harlan\nbe confused and cough a signal cough behind his hand? It is as clear\nas crystal that Mr. Harlan is that boy\u2019s father.\n\n\u201cPeace, my friends,\u201d says Chadband, rising and wiping the oily\nexudations from his reverend visage. \u201cPeace be with us! My friends,\nwhy with us? Because,\u201d with his fat smile, \u201cit cannot be against us,\nbecause it must be for us; because it is not hardening, because it is\nsoftening; because it does not make war like the hawk, but comes home\nunto us like the dove. Therefore, my friends, peace be with us! My\nhuman boy, come forward!\u201d\n\nStretching forth his flabby paw, Mr. Chadband lays the same on Jo\u2019s\narm and considers where to station him. Jo, very doubtful of his\nreverend friend\u2019s intentions and not at all clear but that something\npractical and painful is going to be done to him, mutters, \u201cYou let\nme alone. I never said nothink to you. You let me alone.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, my young friend,\u201d says Chadband smoothly, \u201cI will not let you\nalone. And why? Because I am a harvest-labourer, because I am a\ntoiler and a moiler, because you are delivered over unto me and are\nbecome as a precious instrument in my hands. My friends, may I so\nemploy this instrument as to use it to your advantage, to your\nprofit, to your gain, to your welfare, to your enrichment! My young\nfriend, sit upon this stool.\u201d\n\nJo, apparently possessed by an impression that the reverend gentleman\nwants to cut his hair, shields his head with both arms and is got\ninto the required position with great difficulty and every possible\nmanifestation of reluctance.\n\nWhen he is at last adjusted like a lay-figure, Mr. Chadband, retiring\nbehind the table, holds up his bear\u2019s-paw and says, \u201cMy friends!\u201d\nThis is the signal for a general settlement of the audience. The\n\u2019prentices giggle internally and nudge each other. Guster falls into\na staring and vacant state, compounded of a stunned admiration of Mr.\nChadband and pity for the friendless outcast whose condition touches\nher nearly. Mrs. Harlan silently lays trains of gunpowder. Mrs.\nChadband composes herself grimly by the fire and warms her knees,\nfinding that sensation favourable to the reception of eloquence.\n\nIt happens that Mr. Chadband has a pulpit habit of fixing some member\nof his congregation with his eye and fatly arguing his points with\nthat particular person, who is understood to be expected to be moved\nto an occasional grunt, groan, gasp, or other audible expression of\ninward working, which expression of inward working, being echoed by\nsome elderly lady in the next pew and so communicated like a game of\nforfeits through a circle of the more fermentable sinners present,\nserves the purpose of parliamentary cheering and gets Mr. Chadband\u2019s\nsteam up. From mere force of habit, Mr. Chadband in saying \u201cMy\nfriends!\u201d has rested his eye on Mr. Harlan and proceeds to make that\nill-starred stationer, already sufficiently confused, the immediate\nrecipient of his discourse.\n\n\u201cWe have here among us, my friends,\u201d says Chadband, \u201ca Gentile and a\nheathen, a dweller in the tents of Said-all-Alone\u2019s and a mover-on\nupon the surface of the earth. We have here among us, my friends,\u201d\nand Mr. Chadband, untwisting the point with his dirty thumb-nail,\nbestows an oily smile on Mr. Harlan, signifying that he will throw\nhim an argumentative back-fall presently if he be not already down,\n\u201ca brother and a boy. Devoid of parents, devoid of relations, devoid\nof flocks and herds, devoid of gold and silver and of precious\nstones. Now, my friends, why do I say he is devoid of these\npossessions? Why? Why is he?\u201d Mr. Chadband states the question as if\nhe were propounding an entirely new riddle of much ingenuity and\nmerit to Mr. Harlan and entreating him not to give it up.\n\nMr. Harlan, greatly perplexed by the mysterious look he received\njust now from his little woman\u2014at about the period when Mr. Chadband\nmentioned the word parents\u2014is tempted into modestly remarking, \u201cI\ndon\u2019t know, I\u2019m sure, sir.\u201d On which interruption Mrs. Chadband\nglares and Mrs. Harlan says, \u201cFor shame!\u201d\n\n\u201cI hear a voice,\u201d says Chadband; \u201cis it a still small voice, my\nfriends? I fear not, though I fain would hope so\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAh\u2014h!\u201d from Mrs. Harlan.\n\n\u201cWhich says, \u2018I don\u2019t know.\u2019 Then I will tell you why. I say this\nbrother present here among us is devoid of parents, devoid of\nrelations, devoid of flocks and herds, devoid of gold, of silver, and\nof precious stones because he is devoid of the light that shines in\nupon some of us. What is that light? What is it? I ask you, what is\nthat light?\u201d\n\nMr. Chadband draws back his head and pauses, but Mr. Harlan is not\nto be lured on to his destruction again. Mr. Chadband, leaning\nforward over the table, pierces what he has got to follow directly\ninto Mr. Harlan with the thumb-nail already mentioned.\n\n\u201cIt is,\u201d says Chadband, \u201cthe ray of rays, the sun of suns, the moon\nof moons, the star of stars. It is the light of Terewth.\u201d\n\nMr. Chadband draws himself up again and looks triumphantly at Mr.\nHarlan as if he would be glad to know how he feels after that.\n\n\u201cOf Terewth,\u201d says Mr. Chadband, hitting him again. \u201cSay not to me\nthat it is NOT the lamp of lamps. I say to you it is. I say to you, a\nmillion of times over, it is. It is! I say to you that I will\nproclaim it to you, whether you like it or not; nay, that the less\nyou like it, the more I will proclaim it to you. With a\nspeaking-trumpet! I say to you that if you rear yourself against it,\nyou shall fall, you shall be bruised, you shall be battered, you\nshall be flawed, you shall be smashed.\u201d\n\nThe present effect of this flight of oratory\u2014much admired for its\ngeneral power by Mr. Chadband\u2019s followers\u2014being not only to make Mr.\nChadband unpleasantly warm, but to represent the innocent Mr. Harlan\nin the light of a determined enemy to virtue, with a forehead of\nbrass and a heart of adamant, that unfortunate tradesman becomes yet\nmore disconcerted and is in a very advanced state of low spirits and\nfalse position when Mr. Chadband accidentally finishes him.\n\n\u201cMy friends,\u201d he resumes after dabbing his fat head for some\ntime\u2014and it smokes to such an extent that he seems to light his\npocket-handkerchief at it, which smokes, too, after every dab\u2014\u201cto\npursue the subject we are endeavouring with our lowly gifts to\nimprove, let us in a spirit of love inquire what is that Terewth to\nwhich I have alluded. For, my young friends,\u201d suddenly addressing the\n\u2019prentices and Guster, to their consternation, \u201cif I am told by the\ndoctor that calomel or castor-oil is good for me, I may naturally ask\nwhat is calomel, and what is castor-oil. I may wish to be informed of\nthat before I dose myself with either or with both. Now, my young\nfriends, what is this Terewth then? Firstly (in a spirit of love),\nwhat is the common sort of Terewth\u2014the working clothes\u2014the\nevery-day wear, my young friends? Is it deception?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh\u2014h!\u201d from Mrs. Harlan.\n\n\u201cIs it suppression?\u201d\n\nA shiver in the negative from Mrs. Harlan.\n\n\u201cIs it reservation?\u201d\n\nA shake of the head from Mrs. Harlan\u2014very long and very tight.\n\n\u201cNo, my friends, it is neither of these. Neither of these names\nbelongs to it. When this young heathen now among us\u2014who is now, my\nfriends, asleep, the seal of indifference and perdition being set\nupon his eyelids; but do not wake him, for it is right that I should\nhave to wrestle, and to combat and to struggle, and to conquer, for\nhis sake\u2014when this young hardened heathen told us a story of a cock,\nand of a bull, and of a lady, and of a sovereign, was THAT the\nTerewth? No. Or if it was partly, was it wholly and entirely? No, my\nfriends, no!\u201d\n\nIf Mr. Harlan could withstand his little woman\u2019s look as it enters\nat his eyes, the windows of his soul, and searches the whole\ntenement, he were other than the man he is. He cowers and droops.\n\n\u201cOr, my juvenile friends,\u201d says Chadband, descending to the level of\ntheir comprehension with a very obtrusive demonstration in his\ngreasily meek smile of coming a long way downstairs for the purpose,\n\u201cif the master of this house was to go forth into the city and there\nsee an eel, and was to come back, and was to call unto him the\nmistress of this house, and was to say, \u2018Sarah, rejoice with me, for\nI have seen an elephant!\u2019 would THAT be Terewth?\u201d\n\nMrs. Harlan in tears.\n\n\u201cOr put it, my juvenile friends, that he saw an elephant, and\nreturning said \u2018Lo, the city is barren, I have seen but an eel,\u2019\nwould THAT be Terewth?\u201d\n\nMrs. Harlan sobbing loudly.\n\n\u201cOr put it, my juvenile friends,\u201d said Chadband, stimulated by the\nsound, \u201cthat the unnatural parents of this slumbering heathen\u2014for\nparents he had, my juvenile friends, beyond a doubt\u2014after casting\nhim forth to the wolves and the vultures, and the wild dogs and the\nyoung gazelles, and the serpents, went back to their dwellings and\nhad their pipes, and their pots, and their flutings and their\ndancings, and their malt liquors, and their butcher\u2019s meat and\npoultry, would THAT be Terewth?\u201d\n\nMrs. Harlan replies by delivering herself a prey to spasms, not an\nunresisting prey, but a crying and a tearing one, so that Cook\u2019s\nCourt re-echoes with her shrieks. Finally, becoming cataleptic, she\nhas to be carried up the narrow staircase like a grand piano. After\nunspeakable suffering, productive of the utmost consternation, she is\npronounced, by expresses from the bedroom, free from pain, though\nmuch exhausted, in which state of affairs Mr. Harlan, trampled and\ncrushed in the piano-forte removal, and extremely timid and feeble,\nventures to come out from behind the door in the drawing-room.\n\nAll this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever\npicking his cap and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He spits them\nout with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to\nbe an unimprovable reprobate and that it\u2019s no good HIS trying to keep\nawake, for HE won\u2019t never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that\nthere is a history so interesting and affecting even to minds as near\nthe brutes as thine, recording deeds done on this earth for common\nmen, that if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the\nlight, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it\nunimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without\ntheir modest aid\u2014it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from\nit yet!\n\nJo never heard of any such book. Its compilers and the Reverend\nChadband are all one to him, except that he knows the Reverend\nChadband and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him\ntalk for five minutes. \u201cIt an\u2019t no good my waiting here no longer,\u201d\nthinks Jo. \u201cMr. Harlan an\u2019t a-going to say nothink to me to-night.\u201d\nAnd downstairs he shuffles.\n\nBut downstairs is the charitable Guster, holding by the handrail of\nthe kitchen stairs and warding off a fit, as yet doubtfully, the same\nhaving been induced by Mrs. Harlan\u2019s screaming. She has her own\nsupper of bread and cheese to hand to Jo, with whom she ventures to\ninterchange a word or so for the first time.\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s something to eat, poor boy,\u201d says Guster.\n\n\u201cThank\u2019ee, mum,\u201d says Jo.\n\n\u201cAre you hungry?\u201d\n\n\u201cJist!\u201d says Jo.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s gone of your father and your mother, eh?\u201d\n\nJo stops in the middle of a bite and looks petrified. For this orphan\ncharge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting has patted\nhim on the shoulder, and it is the first time in his life that any\ndecent hand has been so laid upon him.\n\n\u201cI never know\u2019d nothink about \u2019em,\u201d says Jo.\n\n\u201cNo more didn\u2019t I of mine,\u201d cries Guster. She is repressing symptoms\nfavourable to the fit when she seems to take alarm at something and\nvanishes down the stairs.\n\n\u201cJo,\u201d whispers the law-stationer softly as the boy lingers on the\nstep.\n\n\u201cHere I am, Mr. Harlan!\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know you were gone\u2014there\u2019s another half-crown, Jo. It was\nquite right of you to say nothing about the lady the other night when\nwe were out together. It would breed trouble. You can\u2019t be too quiet,\nJo.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am fly, master!\u201d\n\nAnd so, good night.\n\nA ghostly shade, frilled and night-capped, follows the law-stationer\nto the room he came from and glides higher up. And henceforth he\nbegins, go where he will, to be attended by another shadow than his\nown, hardly less constant than his own, hardly less quiet than his\nown. And into whatsoever atmosphere of secrecy his own shadow may\npass, let all concerned in the secrecy beware! For the watchful Mrs.\nHarlan is there too\u2014bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh, shadow of\nhis shadow.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVI\n\nSharpshooters\n\n\nWintry morning, looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the\nneighbourhood of Luigi Square, finds its inhabitants unwilling to\nget out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the brightest of\ntimes, being birds of night who roost when the sun is high and are\nwide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy\nblind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less\nunder false names, false hair, false titles, false jewellery, and\nfalse histories, a colony of brigands lie in their first sleep.\nGentlemen of the green-baize road who could discourse from personal\nexperience of foreign galleys and home treadmills; spies of strong\ngovernments that eternally quake with weakness and miserable fear,\nbroken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers,\nand false witnesses; some not unmarked by the branding-iron beneath\ntheir dirty braid; all with more cruelty in them than was in Nero,\nand more crime than is in Newgate. For howsoever bad the devil can be\nin fustian or smock-frock (and he can be very bad in both), he is a\nmore designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin\nin his shirt-front, calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or\ncolour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about\nbills and promissory notes, than in any other form he wears. And in\nsuch form Mr. Bucket shall find him, when he will, still pervading\nthe tributary channels of Luigi Square.\n\nBut the wintry morning wants him not and wakes him not. It wakes Mr.\nAileen of the shooting gallery and his familiar. They arise, roll up\nand stow away their mattresses. Mr. Aileen, having shaved himself\nbefore a looking-glass of minute proportions, then marches out,\nbare-headed and bare-chested, to the pump in the little yard and anon\ncomes back shining with yellow soap, friction, drifting rain, and\nexceedingly cold water. As he rubs himself upon a large jack-towel,\nblowing like a military sort of diver just come up, his hair curling\ntighter and tighter on his sunburnt temples the more he rubs it so\nthat it looks as if it never could be loosened by any less coercive\ninstrument than an iron rake or a curry-comb\u2014as he rubs, and puffs,\nand polishes, and blows, turning his head from side to side the more\nconveniently to excoriate his throat, and standing with his body well\nbent forward to keep the wet from his martial legs, Olive, on his\nknees lighting a fire, looks round as if it were enough washing for\nhim to see all that done, and sufficient renovation for one day to\ntake in the superfluous health his master throws off.\n\nWhen Mr. Aileen is dry, he goes to work to brush his head with two\nhard brushes at once, to that unmerciful degree that Olive,\nshouldering his way round the gallery in the act of sweeping it,\nwinks with sympathy. This chafing over, the ornamental part of Mr.\nAileen\u2019s toilet is soon performed. He fills his pipe, lights it, and\nmarches up and down smoking, as his custom is, while Olive, raising a\npowerful odour of hot rolls and coffee, prepares breakfast. He smokes\ngravely and marches in slow time. Perhaps this morning\u2019s pipe is\ndevoted to the memory of Freda in his grave.\n\n\u201cAnd so, Olive,\u201d says Aileen of the shooting gallery after several\nturns in silence, \u201cyou were dreaming of the country last night?\u201d\n\nOlive, by the by, said as much in a tone of surprise as he scrambled\nout of bed.\n\n\u201cYes, guv\u2019ner.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat was it like?\u201d\n\n\u201cI hardly know what it was like, guv\u2019ner,\u201d said Olive, considering.\n\n\u201cHow did you know it was the country?\u201d\n\n\u201cOn account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it,\u201d says Olive\nafter further consideration.\n\n\u201cWhat were the swans doing on the grass?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey was a-eating of it, I expect,\u201d says Olive.\n\nThe master resumes his march, and the man resumes his preparation of\nbreakfast. It is not necessarily a lengthened preparation, being\nlimited to the setting forth of very simple breakfast requisites for\ntwo and the broiling of a rasher of bacon at the fire in the rusty\ngrate; but as Olive has to sidle round a considerable part of the\ngallery for every object he wants, and never brings two objects at\nonce, it takes time under the circumstances. At length the breakfast\nis ready. Olive announcing it, Mr. Aileen knocks the ashes out of his\npipe on the hob, stands his pipe itself in the chimney corner, and\nsits down to the meal. When he has helped himself, Olive follows suit,\nsitting at the extreme end of the little oblong table and taking his\nplate on his knees. Either in humility, or to hide his blackened\nhands, or because it is his natural manner of eating.\n\n\u201cThe country,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, plying his knife and fork; \u201cwhy, I\nsuppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Olive?\u201d\n\n\u201cI see the marshes once,\u201d says Olive, contentedly eating his\nbreakfast.\n\n\u201cWhat marshes?\u201d\n\n\u201cTHE marshes, commander,\u201d returns Olive.\n\n\u201cWhere are they?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know where they are,\u201d says Olive; \u201cbut I see \u2019em, guv\u2019ner.\nThey was flat. And miste.\u201d\n\nGovernor and commander are interchangeable terms with Olive,\nexpressive of the same respect and deference and applicable to nobody\nbut Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cI was born in the country, Olive.\u201d\n\n\u201cWas you indeed, commander?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. And bred there.\u201d\n\nOlive elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his\nmaster to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still\nstaring at him.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s not a bird\u2019s note that I don\u2019t know,\u201d says Mr. Aileen. \u201cNot\nmany an English leaf or berry that I couldn\u2019t name. Not many a tree\nthat I couldn\u2019t climb yet if I was put to it. I was a real country\nboy, once. My good mother lived in the country.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe must have been a fine old lady, guv\u2019ner,\u201d Olive observes.\n\n\u201cAye! And not so old either, five and thirty years ago,\u201d says Mr.\nAileen. \u201cBut I\u2019ll wager that at ninety she would be near as upright\nas me, and near as broad across the shoulders.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid she die at ninety, guv\u2019ner?\u201d inquires Olive.\n\n\u201cNo. Bosh! Let her rest in peace, God bless her!\u201d says the\ntrooper. \u201cWhat set me on about country boys, and runaways, and\ngood-for-nothings? You, to be sure! So you never clapped your eyes\nupon the country\u2014marshes and dreams excepted. Eh?\u201d\n\nOlive shakes his head.\n\n\u201cDo you want to see it?\u201d\n\n\u201cN-no, I don\u2019t know as I do, particular,\u201d says Olive.\n\n\u201cThe town\u2019s enough for you, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, you see, commander,\u201d says Olive, \u201cI ain\u2019t acquainted with\nanythink else, and I doubt if I ain\u2019t a-getting too old to take to\nnovelties.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow old ARE you, Olive?\u201d asks the trooper, pausing as he conveys his\nsmoking saucer to his lips.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m something with a eight in it,\u201d says Olive. \u201cIt can\u2019t be eighty.\nNor yet eighteen. It\u2019s betwixt \u2019em, somewheres.\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen, slowly putting down his saucer without tasting its\ncontents, is laughingly beginning, \u201cWhy, what the deuce, Olive\u2014\u201d when\nhe stops, seeing that Olive is counting on his dirty fingers.\n\n\u201cI was just eight,\u201d says Olive, \u201cagreeable to the parish calculation,\nwhen I went with the tinker. I was sent on a errand, and I see him\na-sittin under a old buildin with a fire all to himself wery\ncomfortable, and he says, \u2018Would you like to come along a me, my\nman?\u2019 I says \u2018Yes,\u2019 and him and me and the fire goes home to\nClerkenwell together. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up\nto ten; and when April Fool Day come round again, I says to myself,\n\u2018Now, old chap, you\u2019re one and a eight in it.\u2019 April Fool Day after\nthat, I says, \u2018Now, old chap, you\u2019re two and a eight in it.\u2019 In\ncourse of time, I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight\nin it. When it got so high, it got the upper hand of me, but this is\nhow I always know there\u2019s a eight in it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d says Mr. Aileen, resuming his breakfast. \u201cAnd where\u2019s the\ntinker?\u201d\n\n\u201cDrink put him in the hospital, guv\u2019ner, and the hospital put him\u2014in\na glass-case, I HAVE heerd,\u201d Olive replies mysteriously.\n\n\u201cBy that means you got promotion? Took the business, Olive?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, commander, I took the business. Such as it was. It wasn\u2019t much\nof a beat\u2014round Saffron Hill, Hatton Garden, Clerkenwell, Smiffeld,\nand there\u2014poor neighbourhood, where they uses up the kettles till\nthey\u2019re past mending. Most of the tramping tinkers used to come and\nlodge at our place; that was the best part of my master\u2019s earnings.\nBut they didn\u2019t come to me. I warn\u2019t like him. He could sing \u2019em a\ngood song. I couldn\u2019t! He could play \u2019em a tune on any sort of pot\nyou please, so as it was iron or block tin. I never could do nothing\nwith a pot but mend it or bile it\u2014never had a note of music in me.\nBesides, I was too ill-looking, and their wives complained of me.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey were mighty particular. You would pass muster in a crowd,\nOlive!\u201d says the trooper with a pleasant smile.\n\n\u201cNo, guv\u2019ner,\u201d returns Olive, shaking his head. \u201cNo, I shouldn\u2019t. I\nwas passable enough when I went with the tinker, though nothing to\nboast of then; but what with blowing the fire with my mouth when I\nwas young, and spileing my complexion, and singeing my hair off, and\nswallering the smoke, and what with being nat\u2019rally unfort\u2019nate in\nthe way of running against hot metal and marking myself by sich\nmeans, and what with having turn-ups with the tinker as I got older,\nalmost whenever he was too far gone in drink\u2014which was almost\nalways\u2014my beauty was queer, wery queer, even at that time. As to\nsince, what with a dozen years in a dark forge where the men was\ngiven to larking, and what with being scorched in a accident at a\ngas-works, and what with being blowed out of winder case-filling at\nthe firework business, I am ugly enough to be made a show on!\u201d\n\nResigning himself to which condition with a perfectly satisfied\nmanner, Olive begs the favour of another cup of coffee. While drinking\nit, he says, \u201cIt was after the case-filling blow-up when I first see\nyou, commander. You remember?\u201d\n\n\u201cI remember, Olive. You were walking along in the sun.\u201d\n\n\u201cCrawling, guv\u2019ner, again a wall\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue, Olive\u2014shouldering your way on\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIn a night-cap!\u201d exclaims Olive, excited.\n\n\u201cIn a night-cap\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd hobbling with a couple of sticks!\u201d cries Olive, still more\nexcited.\n\n\u201cWith a couple of sticks. When\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen you stops, you know,\u201d cries Olive, putting down his cup and\nsaucer and hastily removing his plate from his knees, \u201cand says to\nme, \u2018What, comrade! You have been in the wars!\u2019 I didn\u2019t say much to\nyou, commander, then, for I was took by surprise that a person so\nstrong and healthy and bold as you was should stop to speak to such a\nlimping bag of bones as I was. But you says to me, says you,\ndelivering it out of your chest as hearty as possible, so that it was\nlike a glass of something hot, \u2018What accident have you met with? You\nhave been badly hurt. What\u2019s amiss, old boy? Cheer up, and tell us\nabout it!\u2019 Cheer up! I was cheered already! I says as much to you,\nyou says more to me, I says more to you, you says more to me, and\nhere I am, commander! Here I am, commander!\u201d cries Olive, who has\nstarted from his chair and unaccountably begun to sidle away. \u201cIf a\nmark\u2019s wanted, or if it will improve the business, let the customers\ntake aim at me. They can\u2019t spoil MY beauty. I\u2019M all right. Come on!\nIf they want a man to box at, let \u2019em box at me. Let \u2019em knock me\nwell about the head. I don\u2019t mind. If they want a light-weight to be\nthrowed for practice, Cornwall, Devonshire, or Lancashire, let \u2019em\nthrow me. They won\u2019t hurt ME. I have been throwed, all sorts of\nstyles, all my life!\u201d\n\nWith this unexpected speech, energetically delivered and accompanied\nby action illustrative of the various exercises referred to, Olive\nOctavio shoulders his way round three sides of the gallery, and\nabruptly tacking off at his commander, makes a butt at him with his\nhead, intended to express devotion to his service. He then begins to\nclear away the breakfast.\n\nMr. Aileen, after laughing cheerfully and clapping him on the\nshoulder, assists in these arrangements and helps to get the gallery\ninto business order. That done, he takes a turn at the dumb-bells,\nand afterwards weighing himself and opining that he is getting \u201ctoo\nfleshy,\u201d engages with great gravity in solitary broadsword practice.\nMeanwhile Olive has fallen to work at his usual table, where he screws\nand unscrews, and cleans, and files, and whistles into small\napertures, and blackens himself more and more, and seems to do and\nundo everything that can be done and undone about a gun.\n\nMaster and man are at length disturbed by footsteps in the passage,\nwhere they make an unusual sound, denoting the arrival of unusual\ncompany. These steps, advancing nearer and nearer to the gallery,\nbring into it a group at first sight scarcely reconcilable with any\nday in the year but the fifth of November.\n\nIt consists of a limp and ugly figure carried in a chair by two\nbearers and attended by a lean female with a face like a pinched\nmask, who might be expected immediately to recite the popular verses\ncommemorative of the time when they did contrive to blow Old England\nup alive but for her keeping her lips tightly and defiantly closed as\nthe chair is put down. At which point the figure in it gasping, \u201cO\nLord! Oh, dear me! I am shaken!\u201d adds, \u201cHow de do, my dear friend,\nhow de do?\u201d Mr. Aileen then descries, in the procession, the\nvenerable Mr. Hunter out for an airing, attended by his\ngranddaughter Hallie as body-guard.\n\n\u201cMr. Aileen, my dear friend,\u201d says Grandfather Hunter, removing\nhis right arm from the neck of one of his bearers, whom he has nearly\nthrottled coming along, \u201chow de do? You\u2019re surprised to see me, my\ndear friend.\u201d\n\n\u201cI should hardly have been more surprised to have seen your friend in\nthe city,\u201d returns Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cI am very seldom out,\u201d pants Mr. Hunter. \u201cI haven\u2019t been out for\nmany months. It\u2019s inconvenient\u2014and it comes expensive. But I longed\nso much to see you, my dear Mr. Aileen. How de do, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am well enough,\u201d says Mr. Aileen. \u201cI hope you are the same.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t be too well, my dear friend.\u201d Mr. Hunter takes him by\nboth hands. \u201cI have brought my granddaughter Hallie. I couldn\u2019t keep\nher away. She longed so much to see you.\u201d\n\n\u201cHum! She bears it calmly!\u201d mutters Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cSo we got a hackney-cab, and put a chair in it, and just round the\ncorner they lifted me out of the cab and into the chair, and carried\nme here that I might see my dear friend in his own establishment!\nThis,\u201d says Grandfather Hunter, alluding to the bearer, who has\nbeen in danger of strangulation and who withdraws adjusting his\nwindpipe, \u201cis the driver of the cab. He has nothing extra. It is by\nagreement included in his fare. This person,\u201d the other bearer, \u201cwe\nengaged in the street outside for a pint of beer. Which is twopence.\nHallie, give the person twopence. I was not sure you had a workman of\nyour own here, my dear friend, or we needn\u2019t have employed this\nperson.\u201d\n\nGrandfather Hunter refers to Olive with a glance of considerable\nterror and a half-subdued \u201cO Lord! Oh, dear me!\u201d Nor in his\napprehension, on the surface of things, without some reason, for\nOlive, who has never beheld the apparition in the black-velvet cap\nbefore, has stopped short with a gun in his hand with much of the air\nof a dead shot intent on picking Mr. Hunter off as an ugly old\nbird of the crow species.\n\n\u201cHallie, my child,\u201d says Grandfather Hunter, \u201cgive the person his\ntwopence. It\u2019s a great deal for what he has done.\u201d\n\nThe person, who is one of those extraordinary specimens of human\nfungus that spring up spontaneously in the western streets of London,\nready dressed in an old red jacket, with a \u201cmission\u201d for holding\nhorses and calling coaches, received his twopence with anything but\ntransport, tosses the money into the air, catches it over-handed, and\nretires.\n\n\u201cMy dear Mr. Aileen,\u201d says Grandfather Hunter, \u201cwould you be so\nkind as help to carry me to the fire? I am accustomed to a fire, and\nI am an old man, and I soon chill. Oh, dear me!\u201d\n\nHis closing exclamation is jerked out of the venerable gentleman by\nthe suddenness with which Mr. Octavio, like a genie, catches him up,\nchair and all, and deposits him on the hearth-stone.\n\n\u201cO Lord!\u201d says Mr. Hunter, panting. \u201cOh, dear me! Oh, my stars! My\ndear friend, your workman is very strong\u2014and very prompt. O Lord, he\nis very prompt! Hallie, draw me back a little. I\u2019m being scorched in\nthe legs,\u201d which indeed is testified to the noses of all present by\nthe smell of his worsted stockings.\n\nThe gentle Hallie, having backed her grandfather a little way from the\nfire, and having shaken him up as usual, and having released his\novershadowed eye from its black-velvet extinguisher, Mr. Hunter\nagain says, \u201cOh, dear me! O Lord!\u201d and looking about and meeting Mr.\nAileen\u2019s glance, again stretches out both hands.\n\n\u201cMy dear friend! So happy in this meeting! And this is your\nestablishment? It\u2019s a delightful place. It\u2019s a picture! You never\nfind that anything goes off here accidentally, do you, my dear\nfriend?\u201d adds Grandfather Hunter, very ill at ease.\n\n\u201cNo, no. No fear of that.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd your workman. He\u2014Oh, dear me!\u2014he never lets anything off\nwithout meaning it, does he, my dear friend?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has never hurt anybody but himself,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, smiling.\n\n\u201cBut he might, you know. He seems to have hurt himself a good deal,\nand he might hurt somebody else,\u201d the old gentleman returns. \u201cHe\nmightn\u2019t mean it\u2014or he even might. Mr. Aileen, will you order him to\nleave his infernal fire-arms alone and go away?\u201d\n\nObedient to a nod from the trooper, Olive retires, empty-handed, to\nthe other end of the gallery. Mr. Hunter, reassured, falls to\nrubbing his legs.\n\n\u201cAnd you\u2019re doing well, Mr. Aileen?\u201d he says to the trooper, squarely\nstanding faced about towards him with his broadsword in his hand.\n\u201cYou are prospering, please the Powers?\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen answers with a cool nod, adding, \u201cGo on. You have not come\nto say that, I know.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are so sprightly, Mr. Aileen,\u201d returns the venerable\ngrandfather. \u201cYou are such good company.\u201d\n\n\u201cHa ha! Go on!\u201d says Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cMy dear friend! But that sword looks awful gleaming and sharp. It\nmight cut somebody, by accident. It makes me shiver, Mr. Aileen.\nCurse him!\u201d says the excellent old gentleman apart to Hallie as the\ntrooper takes a step or two away to lay it aside. \u201cHe owes me money,\nand might think of paying off old scores in this murdering place. I\nwish your brimstone grandmother was here, and he\u2019d shave her head\noff.\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen, returning, folds his arms, and looking down at the old\nman, sliding every moment lower and lower in his chair, says quietly,\n\u201cNow for it!\u201d\n\n\u201cHo!\u201d cries Mr. Hunter, rubbing his hands with an artful chuckle.\n\u201cYes. Now for it. Now for what, my dear friend?\u201d\n\n\u201cFor a pipe,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, who with great composure sets his\nchair in the chimney-corner, takes his pipe from the grate, fills it\nand lights it, and falls to smoking peacefully.\n\nThis tends to the discomfiture of Mr. Hunter, who finds it so\ndifficult to resume his object, whatever it may be, that he becomes\nexasperated and secretly claws the air with an impotent\nvindictiveness expressive of an intense desire to tear and rend the\nvisage of Mr. Aileen. As the excellent old gentleman\u2019s nails are long\nand leaden, and his hands lean and veinous, and his eyes green and\nwatery; and, over and above this, as he continues, while he claws, to\nslide down in his chair and to collapse into a shapeless bundle, he\nbecomes such a ghastly spectacle, even in the accustomed eyes of\nHallie, that that young virgin pounces at him with something more than\nthe ardour of affection and so shakes him up and pats and pokes him\nin divers parts of his body, but particularly in that part which the\nscience of self-defence would call his wind, that in his grievous\ndistress he utters enforced sounds like a paviour\u2019s rammer.\n\nWhen Hallie has by these means set him up again in his chair, with a\nwhite face and a frosty nose (but still clawing), she stretches out\nher weazen forefinger and gives Mr. Aileen one poke in the back. The\ntrooper raising his head, she makes another poke at her esteemed\ngrandfather, and having thus brought them together, stares rigidly at\nthe fire.\n\n\u201cAye, aye! Ho, ho! U\u2014u\u2014u\u2014ugh!\u201d chatters Grandfather Hunter,\nswallowing his rage. \u201cMy dear friend!\u201d (still clawing).\n\n\u201cI tell you what,\u201d says Mr. Aileen. \u201cIf you want to converse with me,\nyou must speak out. I am one of the roughs, and I can\u2019t go about and\nabout. I haven\u2019t the art to do it. I am not clever enough. It don\u2019t\nsuit me. When you go winding round and round me,\u201d says the trooper,\nputting his pipe between his lips again, \u201cdamme, if I don\u2019t feel as\nif I was being smothered!\u201d\n\nAnd he inflates his broad chest to its utmost extent as if to assure\nhimself that he is not smothered yet.\n\n\u201cIf you have come to give me a friendly call,\u201d continues Mr. Aileen,\n\u201cI am obliged to you; how are you? If you have come to see whether\nthere\u2019s any property on the premises, look about you; you are\nwelcome. If you want to out with something, out with it!\u201d\n\nThe blooming Hallie, without removing her gaze from the fire, gives her\ngrandfather one ghostly poke.\n\n\u201cYou see! It\u2019s her opinion too. And why the devil that young woman\nwon\u2019t sit down like a Christian,\u201d says Mr. Aileen with his eyes\nmusingly fixed on Hallie, \u201cI can\u2019t comprehend.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe keeps at my side to attend to me, sir,\u201d says Grandfather\nHunter. \u201cI am an old man, my dear Mr. Aileen, and I need some\nattention. I can carry my years; I am not a brimstone poll-parrot\u201d\n(snarling and looking unconsciously for the cushion), \u201cbut I need\nattention, my dear friend.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d returns the trooper, wheeling his chair to face the old man.\n\u201cNow then?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy friend in the city, Mr. Aileen, has done a little business with a\npupil of yours.\u201d\n\n\u201cHas he?\u201d says Mr. Aileen. \u201cI am sorry to hear it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d Grandfather Hunter rubs his legs. \u201cHe is a fine young\nsoldier now, Mr. Aileen, by the name of Willis. Friends came\nforward and paid it all up, honourable.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid they?\u201d returns Mr. Aileen. \u201cDo you think your friend in the city\nwould like a piece of advice?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think he would, my dear friend. From you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI advise him, then, to do no more business in that quarter. There\u2019s\nno more to be got by it. The young gentleman, to my knowledge, is\nbrought to a dead halt.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, my dear friend. No, no, Mr. Aileen. No, no, no, sir,\u201d\nremonstrates Grandfather Hunter, cunningly rubbing his spare legs.\n\u201cNot quite a dead halt, I think. He has good friends, and he is good\nfor his pay, and he is good for the selling price of his commission,\nand he is good for his chance in a lawsuit, and he is good for his\nchance in a wife, and\u2014oh, do you know, Mr. Aileen, I think my friend\nwould consider the young gentleman good for something yet?\u201d says\nGrandfather Hunter, turning up his velvet cap and scratching his\near like a monkey.\n\nMr. Aileen, who has put aside his pipe and sits with an arm on his\nchair-back, beats a tattoo on the ground with his right foot as if he\nwere not particularly pleased with the turn the conversation has\ntaken.\n\n\u201cBut to pass from one subject to another,\u201d resumes Mr. Hunter.\n\u201c\u2018To promote the conversation,\u2019 as a joker might say. To pass, Mr.\nAileen, from the ensign to the captain.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are you up to, now?\u201d asks Mr. Aileen, pausing with a frown in\nstroking the recollection of his moustache. \u201cWhat captain?\u201d\n\n\u201cOur captain. The captain we know of. Captain Hawdon.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! That\u2019s it, is it?\u201d says Mr. Aileen with a low whistle as he sees\nboth grandfather and granddaughter looking hard at him. \u201cYou are\nthere! Well? What about it? Come, I won\u2019t be smothered any more.\nSpeak!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear friend,\u201d returns the old man, \u201cI was applied\u2014Hallie, shake me\nup a little!\u2014I was applied to yesterday about the captain, and my\nopinion still is that the captain is not dead.\u201d\n\n\u201cBosh!\u201d observes Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cWhat was your remark, my dear friend?\u201d inquires the old man with his\nhand to his ear.\n\n\u201cBosh!\u201d\n\n\u201cHo!\u201d says Grandfather Hunter. \u201cMr. Aileen, of my opinion you can\njudge for yourself according to the questions asked of me and the\nreasons given for asking \u2019em. Now, what do you think the lawyer\nmaking the inquiries wants?\u201d\n\n\u201cA job,\u201d says Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cNothing of the kind!\u201d\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t be a lawyer, then,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, folding his arms with an\nair of confirmed resolution.\n\n\u201cMy dear friend, he is a lawyer, and a famous one. He wants to see\nsome fragment in Captain Hawdon\u2019s writing. He don\u2019t want to keep it.\nHe only wants to see it and compare it with a writing in his\npossession.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, Mr. Aileen. Happening to remember the advertisement concerning\nCaptain Hawdon and any information that could be given respecting\nhim, he looked it up and came to me\u2014just as you did, my dear friend.\nWILL you shake hands? So glad you came that day! I should have missed\nforming such a friendship if you hadn\u2019t come!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, Mr. Hunter?\u201d says Mr. Aileen again after going through the\nceremony with some stiffness.\n\n\u201cI had no such thing. I have nothing but his signature. Plague\npestilence and famine, battle murder and sudden death upon him,\u201d says\nthe old man, making a curse out of one of his few remembrances of a\nprayer and squeezing up his velvet cap between his angry hands, \u201cI\nhave half a million of his signatures, I think! But you,\u201d\nbreathlessly recovering his mildness of speech as Hallie re-adjusts the\ncap on his skittle-ball of a head, \u201cyou, my dear Mr. Aileen, are\nlikely to have some letter or paper that would suit the purpose.\nAnything would suit the purpose, written in the hand.\u201d\n\n\u201cSome writing in that hand,\u201d says the trooper, pondering; \u201cmay be, I\nhave.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dearest friend!\u201d\n\n\u201cMay be, I have not.\u201d\n\n\u201cHo!\u201d says Grandfather Hunter, crest-fallen.\n\n\u201cBut if I had bushels of it, I would not show as much as would make a\ncartridge without knowing why.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir, I have told you why. My dear Mr. Aileen, I have told you why.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot enough,\u201d says the trooper, shaking his head. \u201cI must know more,\nand approve it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, will you come to the lawyer? My dear friend, will you come and\nsee the gentleman?\u201d urges Grandfather Hunter, pulling out a lean\nold silver watch with hands like the leg of a skeleton. \u201cI told him\nit was probable I might call upon him between ten and eleven this\nforenoon, and it\u2019s now half after ten. Will you come and see the\ngentleman, Mr. Aileen?\u201d\n\n\u201cHum!\u201d says he gravely. \u201cI don\u2019t mind that. Though why this should\nconcern you so much, I don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\n\u201cEverything concerns me that has a chance in it of bringing anything\nto light about him. Didn\u2019t he take us all in? Didn\u2019t he owe us\nimmense sums, all round? Concern me? Who can anything about him\nconcern more than me? Not, my dear friend,\u201d says Grandfather\nHunter, lowering his tone, \u201cthat I want YOU to betray anything.\nFar from it. Are you ready to come, my dear friend?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye! I\u2019ll come in a moment. I promise nothing, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, my dear Mr. Aileen; no.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you mean to say you\u2019re going to give me a lift to this place,\nwherever it is, without charging for it?\u201d Mr. Aileen inquires,\ngetting his hat and thick wash-leather gloves.\n\nThis pleasantry so tickles Mr. Hunter that he laughs, long and\nlow, before the fire. But ever while he laughs, he glances over his\nparalytic shoulder at Mr. Aileen and eagerly watches him as he\nunlocks the padlock of a homely cupboard at the distant end of the\ngallery, looks here and there upon the higher shelves, and ultimately\ntakes something out with a rustling of paper, folds it, and puts it\nin his breast. Then Hallie pokes Mr. Hunter once, and Mr. Hunter\npokes Hallie once.\n\n\u201cI am ready,\u201d says the trooper, coming back. \u201cOlive, you can carry\nthis old gentleman to his coach, and make nothing of him.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear me! O Lord! Stop a moment!\u201d says Mr. Hunter. \u201cHe\u2019s so\nvery prompt! Are you sure you can do it carefully, my worthy man?\u201d\n\nOlive makes no reply, but seizing the chair and its load, sidles away,\ntightly hugged by the now speechless Mr. Hunter, and bolts along\nthe passage as if he had an acceptable commission to carry the old\ngentleman to the nearest volcano. His shorter trust, however,\nterminating at the cab, he deposits him there; and the fair Hallie\ntakes her place beside him, and the chair embellishes the roof, and\nMr. Aileen takes the vacant place upon the box.\n\nMr. Aileen is quite confounded by the spectacle he beholds from time\nto time as he peeps into the cab through the window behind him, where\nthe grim Hallie is always motionless, and the old gentleman with his\ncap over one eye is always sliding off the seat into the straw and\nlooking upward at him out of his other eye with a helpless expression\nof being jolted in the back.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVII\n\nMore Old Soldiers Than One\n\n\nMr. Aileen has not far to ride with folded arms upon the box, for\ntheir destination is Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields. When the driver stops his\nhorses, Mr. Aileen alights, and looking in at the window, says,\n\u201cWhat, Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s your man, is he?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my dear friend. Do you know him, Mr. Aileen?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I have heard of him\u2014seen him too, I think. But I don\u2019t know\nhim, and he don\u2019t know me.\u201d\n\nThere ensues the carrying of Mr. Hunter upstairs, which is done to\nperfection with the trooper\u2019s help. He is borne into Mr.\nTulkinghorn\u2019s great room and deposited on the Turkey rug before the\nfire. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not within at the present moment but will be\nback directly. The occupant of the pew in the hall, having said thus\nmuch, stirs the fire and leaves the triumvirate to warm themselves.\n\nMr. Aileen is mightily curious in respect of the room. He looks up at\nthe painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books, contemplates\nthe portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the names on the\nboxes.\n\n\u201c\u2018Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet,\u2019\u201d Mr. Aileen reads thoughtfully.\n\u201cHa! \u2018Manor of Chesney Wold.\u2019 Humph!\u201d Mr. Aileen stands looking at\nthese boxes a long while\u2014as if they were pictures\u2014and comes back to\nthe fire repeating, \u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, and Manor of\nChesney Wold, hey?\u201d\n\n\u201cWorth a mint of money, Mr. Aileen!\u201d whispers Grandfather Hunter,\nrubbing his legs. \u201cPowerfully rich!\u201d\n\n\u201cWho do you mean? This old gentleman, or the Baronet?\u201d\n\n\u201cThis gentleman, this gentleman.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo I have heard; and knows a thing or two, I\u2019ll hold a wager. Not\nbad quarters, either,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, looking round again. \u201cSee the\nstrong-box yonder!\u201d\n\nThis reply is cut short by Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s arrival. There is no\nchange in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his spectacles in his\nhand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, close and dry.\nIn voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitually\nnot uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. The peerage may have\nwarmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than Mr. Tulkinghorn,\nafter all, if everything were known.\n\n\u201cGood morning, Mr. Hunter, good morning!\u201d he says as he comes in.\n\u201cYou have brought the sergeant, I see. Sit down, sergeant.\u201d\n\nAs Mr. Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he\nlooks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper\nstands and says within himself perchance, \u201cYou\u2019ll do, my friend!\u201d\n\n\u201cSit down, sergeant,\u201d he repeats as he comes to his table, which is\nset on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. \u201cCold and raw\nthis morning, cold and raw!\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the bars,\nalternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks (from\nbehind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a\nlittle semicircle before him.\n\n\u201cNow, I can feel what I am about\u201d (as perhaps he can in two senses),\n\u201cMr. Hunter.\u201d The old gentleman is newly shaken up by Hallie to bear\nhis part in the conversation. \u201cYou have brought our good friend the\nsergeant, I see.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d returns Mr. Hunter, very servile to the lawyer\u2019s\nwealth and influence.\n\n\u201cAnd what does the sergeant say about this business?\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Aileen,\u201d says Grandfather Hunter with a tremulous wave of his\nshrivelled hand, \u201cthis is the gentleman, sir.\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen salutes the gentleman but otherwise sits bolt upright and\nprofoundly silent\u2014very forward in his chair, as if the full\ncomplement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him.\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn proceeds, \u201cWell, Aileen\u2014I believe your name is\nAileen?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is so, Sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you say, Aileen?\u201d\n\n\u201cI ask your pardon, sir,\u201d returns the trooper, \u201cbut I should wish to\nknow what YOU say?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you mean in point of reward?\u201d\n\n\u201cI mean in point of everything, sir.\u201d\n\nThis is so very trying to Mr. Hunter\u2019s temper that he suddenly\nbreaks out with \u201cYou\u2019re a brimstone beast!\u201d and as suddenly asks\npardon of Mr. Tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of the\ntongue by saying to Hallie, \u201cI was thinking of your grandmother, my\ndear.\u201d\n\n\u201cI supposed, sergeant,\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn resumes as he leans on one\nside of his chair and crosses his legs, \u201cthat Mr. Hunter might\nhave sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smallest\ncompass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and\nwere his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services,\nand were rather in his confidence, I am told. That is so, is it not?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir, that is so,\u201d says Mr. Aileen with military brevity.\n\n\u201cTherefore you may happen to have in your possession\nsomething\u2014anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions, orders,\na letter, anything\u2014in Captain Hawdon\u2019s writing. I wish to compare\nhis writing with some that I have. If you can give me the\nopportunity, you shall be rewarded for your trouble. Three, four,\nfive, guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare say.\u201d\n\n\u201cNoble, my dear friend!\u201d cries Grandfather Hunter, screwing up his\neyes.\n\n\u201cIf not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can\ndemand. There is no need for you to part with the writing, against\nyour inclination\u2014though I should prefer to have it.\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the\npainted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr. Hunter\nscratches the air.\n\n\u201cThe question is,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued,\nuninterested way, \u201cfirst, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon\u2019s\nwriting?\u201d\n\n\u201cFirst, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon\u2019s writing, sir,\u201d repeats\nMr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cSecondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?\u201d\n\n\u201cSecondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it,\nsir,\u201d repeats Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cThirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that,\u201d\nsays Mr. Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written\npaper tied together.\n\n\u201cWhether it is at all like that, sir. Just so,\u201d repeats Mr. Aileen.\n\nAll three repetitions Mr. Aileen pronounces in a mechanical manner,\nlooking straight at Mr. Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at\nthe affidavit in Ashton and Ashton, that has been given to him\nfor his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but\ncontinues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation.\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cWhat do you say?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d replies Mr. Aileen, rising erect and looking immense, \u201cI\nwould rather, if you\u2019ll excuse me, have nothing to do with this.\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, \u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, sir,\u201d returns the trooper. \u201cExcept on military compulsion, I am\nnot a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in\nScotland a ne\u2019er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand\nany fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr.\nHunter, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into things of\nthis kind I feel as if I was being smothered. And that is my\nsensation,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, looking round upon the company, \u201cat the\npresent moment.\u201d\n\nWith that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on\nthe lawyer\u2019s table and three strides backward to resume his former\nstation, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground\nand now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to\nprevent himself from accepting any other document whatever.\n\nUnder this provocation, Mr. Hunter\u2019s favourite adjective of\ndisparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the words \u201cmy\ndear friend\u201d with the monosyllable \u201cbrim,\u201d thus converting the\npossessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment in\nhis speech. Once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear\nfriend in the tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what so\neminent a gentleman requires, and to do it with a good grace,\nconfident that it must be unobjectionable as well as profitable. Mr.\nTulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as, \u201cYou are the\nbest judge of your own interest, sergeant.\u201d \u201cTake care you do no harm\nby this.\u201d \u201cPlease yourself, please yourself.\u201d \u201cIf you know what you\nmean, that\u2019s quite enough.\u201d These he utters with an appearance of\nperfect indifference as he looks over the papers on his table and\nprepares to write a letter.\n\nMr. Aileen looks distrustfully from the painted ceiling to the\nground, from the ground to Mr. Hunter, from Mr. Hunter to Mr.\nTulkinghorn, and from Mr. Tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again,\noften in his perplexity changing the leg on which he rests.\n\n\u201cI do assure you, sir,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, \u201cnot to say it offensively,\nthat between you and Mr. Hunter here, I really am being smothered\nfifty times over. I really am, sir. I am not a match for you\ngentlemen. Will you allow me to ask why you want to see the captain\u2019s\nhand, in the case that I could find any specimen of it?\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. \u201cNo. If you were a man of\nbusiness, sergeant, you would not need to be informed that there are\nconfidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such\nwants in the profession to which I belong. But if you are afraid of\ndoing any injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest\nabout that.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye! He is dead, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cIS he?\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write.\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d says the trooper, looking into his hat after another\ndisconcerted pause, \u201cI am sorry not to have given you more\nsatisfaction. If it would be any satisfaction to any one that I\nshould be confirmed in my judgment that I would rather have nothing\nto do with this by a friend of mine who has a better head for\nbusiness than I have, and who is an old soldier, I am willing to\nconsult with him. I\u2014I really am so completely smothered myself at\npresent,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, passing his hand hopelessly across his\nbrow, \u201cthat I don\u2019t know but what it might be a satisfaction to me.\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so\nstrongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper\u2019s taking counsel\nwith him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of\nfive guineas or more, that Mr. Aileen engages to go and see him. Mr.\nTulkinghorn says nothing either way.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir,\u201d says the trooper,\n\u201cand I\u2019ll take the liberty of looking in again with the final answer\nin the course of the day. Mr. Hunter, if you wish to be carried\ndownstairs\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIn a moment, my dear friend, in a moment. Will you first let me\nspeak half a word with this gentleman in private?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly, sir. Don\u2019t hurry yourself on my account.\u201d The trooper\nretires to a distant part of the room and resumes his curious\ninspection of the boxes, strong and otherwise.\n\n\u201cIf I wasn\u2019t as weak as a brimstone baby, sir,\u201d whispers Grandfather\nHunter, drawing the lawyer down to his level by the lapel of his\ncoat and flashing some half-quenched green fire out of his angry\neyes, \u201cI\u2019d tear the writing away from him. He\u2019s got it buttoned in\nhis breast. I saw him put it there. Hallie saw him put it there. Speak\nup, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say\nyou saw him put it there!\u201d\n\nThis vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a\nthrust at his granddaughter that it is too much for his strength, and\nhe slips away out of his chair, drawing Mr. Tulkinghorn with him,\nuntil he is arrested by Hallie, and well shaken.\n\n\u201cViolence will not do for me, my friend,\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn then\nremarks coolly.\n\n\u201cNo, no, I know, I know, sir. But it\u2019s chafing and\ngalling\u2014it\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s worse than your smattering chattering magpie of a\ngrandmother,\u201d to the imperturbable Hallie, who only looks at the fire,\n\u201cto know he has got what\u2019s wanted and won\u2019t give it up. He, not to\ngive it up! HE! A vagabond! But never mind, sir, never mind. At the\nmost, he has only his own way for a little while. I have him\nperiodically in a vice. I\u2019ll twist him, sir. I\u2019ll screw him, sir. If\nhe won\u2019t do it with a good grace, I\u2019ll make him do it with a bad one,\nsir! Now, my dear Mr. Aileen,\u201d says Grandfather Hunter, winking at\nthe lawyer hideously as he releases him, \u201cI am ready for your kind\nassistance, my excellent friend!\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn, with some shadowy sign of amusement manifesting\nitself through his self-possession, stands on the hearth-rug with his\nback to the fire, watching the disappearance of Mr. Hunter and\nacknowledging the trooper\u2019s parting salute with one slight nod.\n\nIt is more difficult to get rid of the old gentleman, Mr. Aileen\nfinds, than to bear a hand in carrying him downstairs, for when he is\nreplaced in his conveyance, he is so loquacious on the subject of the\nguineas and retains such an affectionate hold of his button\u2014having,\nin truth, a secret longing to rip his coat open and rob him\u2014that\nsome degree of force is necessary on the trooper\u2019s part to effect a\nseparation. It is accomplished at last, and he proceeds alone in\nquest of his adviser.\n\nBy the cloisterly Temple, and by Whitefriars (there, not without a\nglance at Hanging-Sword Alley, which would seem to be something in\nhis way), and by Blackfriars Bridge, and Blackfriars Road, Mr. Aileen\nsedately marches to a street of little shops lying somewhere in that\nganglion of roads from Kent and Surrey, and of streets from the\nbridges of London, centring in the far-famed elephant who has lost\nhis castle formed of a thousand four-horse coaches to a stronger iron\nmonster than he, ready to chop him into mince-meat any day he dares.\nTo one of the little shops in this street, which is a musician\u2019s\nshop, having a few fiddles in the window, and some Pan\u2019s pipes and a\ntambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated scraps of music,\nMr. Aileen directs his massive tread. And halting at a few paces from\nit, as he sees a soldierly looking woman, with her outer skirts\ntucked up, come forth with a small wooden tub, and in that tub\ncommence a-whisking and a-splashing on the margin of the pavement,\nMr. Aileen says to himself, \u201cShe\u2019s as usual, washing greens. I never\nsaw her, except upon a baggage-waggon, when she wasn\u2019t washing\ngreens!\u201d\n\nThe subject of this reflection is at all events so occupied in\nwashing greens at present that she remains unsuspicious of Mr.\nAileen\u2019s approach until, lifting up herself and her tub together when\nshe has poured the water off into the gutter, she finds him standing\nnear her. Her reception of him is not flattering.\n\n\u201cAileen, I never see you but I wish you was a hundred mile away!\u201d\n\nThe trooper, without remarking on this welcome, follows into the\nmusical-instrument shop, where the lady places her tub of greens upon\nthe counter, and having shaken hands with him, rests her arms upon\nit.\n\n\u201cI never,\u201d she says, \u201cAileen, consider Matthew Bagnet safe a minute\nwhen you\u2019re near him. You are that restless and that roving\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYes! I know I am, Mrs. Bagnet. I know I am.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know you are!\u201d says Mrs. Bagnet. \u201cWhat\u2019s the use of that? WHY\nare you?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe nature of the animal, I suppose,\u201d returns the trooper\ngood-humouredly.\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d cries Mrs. Bagnet, something shrilly. \u201cBut what satisfaction\nwill the nature of the animal be to me when the animal shall have\ntempted my Mat away from the musical business to New Zealand or\nAustraley?\u201d\n\nMrs. Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. Rather large-boned, a\nlittle coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and wind which\nhave tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy, wholesome, and\nbright-eyed. A strong, busy, active, honest-faced woman of from\nforty-five to fifty. Clean, hardy, and so economically dressed\n(though substantially) that the only article of ornament of which she\nstands possessed appear\u2019s to be her wedding-ring, around which her\nfinger has grown to be so large since it was put on that it will\nnever come off again until it shall mingle with Mrs. Bagnet\u2019s dust.\n\n\u201cMrs. Bagnet,\u201d says the trooper, \u201cI am on my parole with you. Mat\nwill get no harm from me. You may trust me so far.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I think I may. But the very looks of you are unsettling,\u201d Mrs.\nBagnet rejoins. \u201cAh, Aileen, Aileen! If you had only settled down and\nmarried Joe Pouch\u2019s widow when he died in North America, SHE\u2019D have\ncombed your hair for you.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was a chance for me, certainly,\u201d returns the trooper half\nlaughingly, half seriously, \u201cbut I shall never settle down into a\nrespectable man now. Joe Pouch\u2019s widow might have done me good\u2014there\nwas something in her, and something of her\u2014but I couldn\u2019t make up my\nmind to it. If I had had the luck to meet with such a wife as Mat\nfound!\u201d\n\nMrs. Bagnet, who seems in a virtuous way to be under little reserve\nwith a good sort of fellow, but to be another good sort of fellow\nherself for that matter, receives this compliment by flicking Mr.\nAileen in the face with a head of greens and taking her tub into the\nlittle room behind the shop.\n\n\u201cWhy, Quebec, my poppet,\u201d says Aileen, following, on invitation, into\nthat department. \u201cAnd little Malta, too! Come and kiss your Bluffy!\u201d\n\nThese young ladies\u2014not supposed to have been actually christened by\nthe names applied to them, though always so called in the family from\nthe places of their birth in barracks\u2014are respectively employed on\nthree-legged stools, the younger (some five or six years old) in\nlearning her letters out of a penny primer, the elder (eight or nine\nperhaps) in teaching her and sewing with great assiduity. Both hail\nMr. Aileen with acclamations as an old friend and after some kissing\nand romping plant their stools beside him.\n\n\u201cAnd how\u2019s young Woolwich?\u201d says Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cAh! There now!\u201d cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning about from her saucepans\n(for she is cooking dinner) with a bright flush on her face. \u201cWould\nyou believe it? Got an engagement at the theayter, with his father,\nto play the fife in a military piece.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell done, my godson!\u201d cries Mr. Aileen, slapping his thigh.\n\n\u201cI believe you!\u201d says Mrs. Bagnet. \u201cHe\u2019s a Briton. That\u2019s what\nWoolwich is. A Briton!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd Mat blows away at his bassoon, and you\u2019re respectable civilians\none and all,\u201d says Mr. Aileen. \u201cFamily people. Children growing up.\nMat\u2019s old mother in Scotland, and your old father somewhere else,\ncorresponded with, and helped a little, and\u2014well, well! To be sure,\nI don\u2019t know why I shouldn\u2019t be wished a hundred mile away, for I\nhave not much to do with all this!\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen is becoming thoughtful, sitting before the fire in the\nwhitewashed room, which has a sanded floor and a barrack smell and\ncontains nothing superfluous and has not a visible speck of dirt or\ndust in it, from the faces of Quebec and Malta to the bright tin pots\nand pannikins upon the dresser shelves\u2014Mr. Aileen is becoming\nthoughtful, sitting here while Mrs. Bagnet is busy, when Mr. Bagnet\nand young Woolwich opportunely come home. Mr. Bagnet is an\nex-artilleryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows and whiskers\nlike the fibres of a coco-nut, not a hair upon his head, and a torrid\ncomplexion. His voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at all\nunlike the tones of the instrument to which he is devoted. Indeed\nthere may be generally observed in him an unbending, unyielding,\nbrass-bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of the human\norchestra. Young Woolwich is the type and model of a young drummer.\n\nBoth father and son salute the trooper heartily. He saying, in due\nseason, that he has come to advise with Mr. Bagnet, Mr. Bagnet\nhospitably declares that he will hear of no business until after\ndinner and that his friend shall not partake of his counsel without\nfirst partaking of boiled pork and greens. The trooper yielding to\nthis invitation, he and Mr. Bagnet, not to embarrass the domestic\npreparations, go forth to take a turn up and down the little street,\nwhich they promenade with measured tread and folded arms, as if it\nwere a rampart.\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet. \u201cYou know me. It\u2019s my old girl that\nadvises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her.\nDiscipline must be maintained. Wait till the greens is off her mind.\nThen we\u2019ll consult. Whatever the old girl says, do\u2014do it!\u201d\n\n\u201cI intend to, Mat,\u201d replies the other. \u201cI would sooner take her\nopinion than that of a college.\u201d\n\n\u201cCollege,\u201d returns Mr. Bagnet in short sentences, bassoon-like. \u201cWhat\ncollege could you leave\u2014in another quarter of the world\u2014with\nnothing but a grey cloak and an umbrella\u2014to make its way home to\nEurope? The old girl would do it to-morrow. Did it once!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are right,\u201d says Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cWhat college,\u201d pursues Bagnet, \u201ccould you set up in life\u2014with two\npenn\u2019orth of white lime\u2014a penn\u2019orth of fuller\u2019s earth\u2014a ha\u2019porth of\nsand\u2014and the rest of the change out of sixpence in money? That\u2019s\nwhat the old girl started on. In the present business.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am rejoiced to hear it\u2019s thriving, Mat.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe old girl,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet, acquiescing, \u201csaves. Has a stocking\nsomewhere. With money in it. I never saw it. But I know she\u2019s got it.\nWait till the greens is off her mind. Then she\u2019ll set you up.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is a treasure!\u201d exclaims Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s more. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be\nmaintained. It was the old girl that brought out my musical\nabilities. I should have been in the artillery now but for the old\ngirl. Six years I hammered at the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The old\ngirl said it wouldn\u2019t do; intention good, but want of flexibility;\ntry the bassoon. The old girl borrowed a bassoon from the bandmaster\nof the Rifle Regiment. I practised in the trenches. Got on, got\nanother, get a living by it!\u201d\n\nAileen remarks that she looks as fresh as a rose and as sound as an\napple.\n\n\u201cThe old girl,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet in reply, \u201cis a thoroughly fine\nwoman. Consequently she is like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer as\nshe gets on. I never saw the old girl\u2019s equal. But I never own to it\nbefore her. Discipline must be maintained!\u201d\n\nProceeding to converse on indifferent matters, they walk up and down\nthe little street, keeping step and time, until summoned by Quebec\nand Malta to do justice to the pork and greens, over which Mrs.\nBagnet, like a military chaplain, says a short grace. In the\ndistribution of these comestibles, as in every other household duty,\nMrs. Bagnet develops an exact system, sitting with every dish before\nher, allotting to every portion of pork its own portion of\npot-liquor, greens, potatoes, and even mustard, and serving it out\ncomplete. Having likewise served out the beer from a can and thus\nsupplied the mess with all things necessary, Mrs. Bagnet proceeds to\nsatisfy her own hunger, which is in a healthy state. The kit of the\nmess, if the table furniture may be so denominated, is chiefly\ncomposed of utensils of horn and tin that have done duty in several\nparts of the world. Young Woolwich\u2019s knife, in particular, which is\nof the oyster kind, with the additional feature of a strong\nshutting-up movement which frequently balks the appetite of that\nyoung musician, is mentioned as having gone in various hands the\ncomplete round of foreign service.\n\nThe dinner done, Mrs. Bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who\npolish their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all the\ndinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all away,\nfirst sweeping the hearth, to the end that Mr. Bagnet and the visitor\nmay not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes. These household\ncares involve much pattening and counter-pattening in the backyard\nand considerable use of a pail, which is finally so happy as to\nassist in the ablutions of Mrs. Bagnet herself. That old girl\nreappearing by and by, quite fresh, and sitting down to her\nneedlework, then and only then\u2014the greens being only then to be\nconsidered as entirely off her mind\u2014Mr. Bagnet requests the trooper\nto state his case.\n\nThis Mr. Aileen does with great discretion, appearing to address\nhimself to Mr. Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all\nthe time, as Bagnet has himself. She, equally discreet, busies\nherself with her needlework. The case fully stated, Mr. Bagnet\nresorts to his standard artifice for the maintenance of discipline.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the whole of it, is it, Aileen?\u201d says he.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the whole of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou act according to my opinion?\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall be guided,\u201d replies Aileen, \u201centirely by it.\u201d\n\n\u201cOld girl,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet, \u201cgive him my opinion. You know it. Tell\nhim what it is.\u201d\n\nIt is that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too\ndeep for him and cannot be too careful of interference with matters\nhe does not understand\u2014that the plain rule is to do nothing in the\ndark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never\nto put his foot where he cannot see the ground. This, in effect, is\nMr. Bagnet\u2019s opinion, as delivered through the old girl, and it so\nrelieves Mr. Aileen\u2019s mind by confirming his own opinion and\nbanishing his doubts that he composes himself to smoke another pipe\non that exceptional occasion and to have a talk over old times with\nthe whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of\nexperience.\n\nThrough these means it comes to pass that Mr. Aileen does not again\nrise to his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on\nwhen the bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at the\ntheatre; and as it takes time even then for Mr. Aileen, in his\ndomestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta and\ninsinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with\nfelicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr. Aileen\nagain turns his face towards Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields.\n\n\u201cA family home,\u201d he ruminates as he marches along, \u201chowever small it\nis, makes a man like me look lonely. But it\u2019s well I never made that\nevolution of matrimony. I shouldn\u2019t have been fit for it. I am such a\nvagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I couldn\u2019t hold\nto the gallery a month together if it was a regular pursuit or if I\ndidn\u2019t camp there, gipsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber\nnobody; that\u2019s something. I have not done that for many a long year!\u201d\n\nSo he whistles it off and marches on.\n\nArrived in Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields and mounting Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s stair,\nhe finds the outer door closed and the chambers shut, but the trooper\nnot knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase being dark\nbesides, he is yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to discover a\nbell-handle or to open the door for himself, when Mr. Tulkinghorn\ncomes up the stairs (quietly, of course) and angrily asks, \u201cWho is\nthat? What are you doing there?\u201d\n\n\u201cI ask your pardon, sir. It\u2019s Aileen. The sergeant.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd couldn\u2019t Aileen, the sergeant, see that my door was locked?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, no, sir, I couldn\u2019t. At any rate, I didn\u2019t,\u201d says the trooper,\nrather nettled.\n\n\u201cHave you changed your mind? Or are you in the same mind?\u201d Mr.\nTulkinghorn demands. But he knows well enough at a glance.\n\n\u201cIn the same mind, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought so. That\u2019s sufficient. You can go. So you are the man,\u201d\nsays Mr. Tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, \u201cin whose\nhiding-place Mr. Freda was found?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I AM the man,\u201d says the trooper, stopping two or three stairs\ndown. \u201cWhat then, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat then? I don\u2019t like your associates. You should not have seen\nthe inside of my door this morning if I had thought of your being\nthat man. Freda? A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow.\u201d\n\nWith these words, spoken in an unusually high tone for him, the\nlawyer goes into his rooms and shuts the door with a thundering\nnoise.\n\nMr. Aileen takes his dismissal in great dudgeon, the greater because\na clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of all and\nevidently applies them to him. \u201cA pretty character to bear,\u201d the\ntrooper growls with a hasty oath as he strides downstairs. \u201cA\nthreatening, murderous, dangerous fellow!\u201d And looking up, he sees\nthe clerk looking down at him and marking him as he passes a lamp.\nThis so intensifies his dudgeon that for five minutes he is in an ill\nhumour. But he whistles that off like the rest of it and marches home\nto the shooting gallery.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXVIII\n\nThe Ironmaster\n\n\nSir Luigi Wayne has got the better, for the time being, of the\nfamily gout and is once more, in a literal no less than in a\nfigurative point of view, upon his legs. He is at his place in\nLincolnshire; but the waters are out again on the low-lying grounds,\nand the cold and damp steal into Chesney Wold, though well defended,\nand eke into Sir Luigi\u2019s bones. The blazing fires of faggot and\ncoal\u2014Wayne timber and antediluvian forest\u2014that blaze upon the\nbroad wide hearths and wink in the twilight on the frowning woods,\nsullen to see how trees are sacrificed, do not exclude the enemy. The\nhot-water pipes that trail themselves all over the house, the\ncushioned doors and windows, and the screens and curtains fail to\nsupply the fires\u2019 deficiencies and to satisfy Sir Luigi\u2019s need.\nHence the fashionable intelligence proclaims one morning to the\nlistening earth that Godfrey Wayne is expected shortly to return to\ntown for a few weeks.\n\nIt is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor\nrelations. Indeed great men have often more than their fair share of\npoor relations, inasmuch as very red blood of the superior quality,\nlike inferior blood unlawfully shed, WILL cry aloud and WILL be\nheard. Sir Luigi\u2019s cousins, in the remotest degree, are so many\nMurders in the respect that they \u201cwill out.\u201d Among whom there are\ncousins who are so poor that one might almost dare to think it would\nhave been the happier for them never to have been plated links upon\nthe Wayne chain of gold, but to have been made of common iron at\nfirst and done base service.\n\nService, however (with a few limited reservations, genteel but not\nprofitable), they may not do, being of the Wayne dignity. So they\nvisit their richer cousins, and get into debt when they can, and live\nbut shabbily when they can\u2019t, and find\u2014the women no husbands, and\nthe men no wives\u2014and ride in borrowed carriages, and sit at feasts\nthat are never of their own making, and so go through high life. The\nrich family sum has been divided by so many figures, and they are the\nsomething over that nobody knows what to do with.\n\nEverybody on Sir Luigi Wayne\u2019s side of the question and of his\nway of thinking would appear to be his cousin more or less. From my\nLord Boodle, through the Duke of Foodle, down to Noodle, Sir\nLuigi, like a glorious spider, stretches his threads of\nrelationship. But while he is stately in the cousinship of the\nEverybodys, he is a kind and generous man, according to his dignified\nway, in the cousinship of the Nobodys; and at the present time, in\ndespite of the damp, he stays out the visit of several such cousins\nat Chesney Wold with the constancy of a martyr.\n\nOf these, foremost in the front rank stands Volumnia Wayne, a young\nlady (of sixty) who is doubly highly related, having the honour to be\na poor relation, by the mother\u2019s side, to another great family. Miss\nVolumnia, displaying in early life a pretty talent for cutting\nornaments out of coloured paper, and also for singing to the guitar\nin the Spanish tongue, and propounding French conundrums in country\nhouses, passed the twenty years of her existence between twenty and\nforty in a sufficiently agreeable manner. Lapsing then out of date\nand being considered to bore mankind by her vocal performances in the\nSpanish language, she retired to Bath, where she lives slenderly on\nan annual present from Sir Luigi and whence she makes occasional\nresurrections in the country houses of her cousins. She has an\nextensive acquaintance at Bath among appalling old gentlemen with\nthin legs and nankeen trousers, and is of high standing in that\ndreary city. But she is a little dreaded elsewhere in consequence of\nan indiscreet profusion in the article of rouge and persistency in an\nobsolete pearl necklace like a rosary of little bird\u2019s-eggs.\n\nIn any country in a wholesome state, Volumnia would be a clear case\nfor the pension list. Efforts have been made to get her on it, and\nwhen William Buffy came in, it was fully expected that her name would\nbe put down for a couple of hundred a year. But William Buffy somehow\ndiscovered, contrary to all expectation, that these were not the\ntimes when it could be done, and this was the first clear indication\nSir Luigi Wayne had conveyed to him that the country was going\nto pieces.\n\nThere is likewise the Honourable Rhys Paisley, who can make warm\nmashes with the skill of a veterinary surgeon and is a better shot\nthan most gamekeepers. He has been for some time particularly\ndesirous to serve his country in a post of good emoluments,\nunaccompanied by any trouble or responsibility. In a well-regulated\nbody politic this natural desire on the part of a spirited young\ngentleman so highly connected would be speedily recognized, but\nsomehow William Buffy found when he came in that these were not times\nin which he could manage that little matter either, and this was the\nsecond indication Sir Luigi Wayne had conveyed to him that the\ncountry was going to pieces.\n\nThe rest of the cousins are ladies and gentlemen of various ages and\ncapacities, the major part amiable and sensible and likely to have\ndone well enough in life if they could have overcome their\ncousinship; as it is, they are almost all a little worsted by it, and\nlounge in purposeless and listless paths, and seem to be quite as\nmuch at a loss how to dispose of themselves as anybody else can be\nhow to dispose of them.\n\nIn this society, and where not, my Godfrey Wayne reigns supreme.\nBeautiful, elegant, accomplished, and powerful in her little world\n(for the world of fashion does not stretch ALL the way from pole to\npole), her influence in Sir Luigi\u2019s house, however haughty and\nindifferent her manner, is greatly to improve it and refine it. The\ncousins, even those older cousins who were paralysed when Sir\nLuigi married her, do her feudal homage; and the Honourable Rhys\nPaisley daily repeats to some chosen person between breakfast and\nlunch his favourite original remark, that she is the best-groomed\nwoman in the whole stud.\n\nSuch the guests in the long drawing-room at Chesney Wold this dismal\nnight when the step on the Ghost\u2019s Walk (inaudible here, however)\nmight be the step of a deceased cousin shut out in the cold. It is\nnear bed-time. Bedroom fires blaze brightly all over the house,\nraising ghosts of grim furniture on wall and ceiling. Bedroom\ncandlesticks bristle on the distant table by the door, and cousins\nyawn on ottomans. Cousins at the piano, cousins at the soda-water\ntray, cousins rising from the card-table, cousins gathered round the\nfire. Standing on one side of his own peculiar fire (for there are\ntwo), Sir Luigi. On the opposite side of the broad hearth, my\nGodfrey at her table. Volumnia, as one of the more privileged cousins,\nin a luxurious chair between them. Sir Luigi glancing, with\nmagnificent displeasure, at the rouge and the pearl necklace.\n\n\u201cI occasionally meet on my staircase here,\u201d drawls Volumnia, whose\nthoughts perhaps are already hopping up it to bed, after a long\nevening of very desultory talk, \u201cone of the prettiest girls, I think,\nthat I ever saw in my life.\u201d\n\n\u201cA _protegee_ of my Godfrey\u2019s,\u201d observes Sir Luigi.\n\n\u201cI thought so. I felt sure that some uncommon eye must have picked\nthat girl out. She really is a marvel. A dolly sort of beauty\nperhaps,\u201d says Miss Volumnia, reserving her own sort, \u201cbut in its\nway, perfect; such bloom I never saw!\u201d\n\nSir Luigi, with his magnificent glance of displeasure at the\nrouge, appears to say so too.\n\n\u201cIndeed,\u201d remarks my Godfrey languidly, \u201cif there is any uncommon eye in\nthe case, it is Mrs. Talon\u2019s, and not mine. Quinn is her\ndiscovery.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour maid, I suppose?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. My anything; pet\u2014secretary\u2014messenger\u2014I don\u2019t know what.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou like to have her about you, as you would like to have a flower,\nor a bird, or a picture, or a poodle\u2014no, not a poodle, though\u2014or\nanything else that was equally pretty?\u201d says Volumnia, sympathizing.\n\u201cYes, how charming now! And how well that delightful old soul Mrs.\nTalon is looking. She must be an immense age, and yet she is as\nactive and handsome! She is the dearest friend I have, positively!\u201d\n\nSir Luigi feels it to be right and fitting that the housekeeper\nof Chesney Wold should be a remarkable person. Apart from that, he\nhas a real regard for Mrs. Talon and likes to hear her praised.\nSo he says, \u201cYou are right, Volumnia,\u201d which Volumnia is extremely\nglad to hear.\n\n\u201cShe has no daughter of her own, has she?\u201d\n\n\u201cMrs. Talon? No, Volumnia. She has a son. Indeed, she had two.\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey, whose chronic malady of boredom has been sadly aggravated by\nVolumnia this evening, glances wearily towards the candlesticks and\nheaves a noiseless sigh.\n\n\u201cAnd it is a remarkable example of the confusion into which the\npresent age has fallen; of the obliteration of landmarks, the opening\nof floodgates, and the uprooting of distinctions,\u201d says Sir Luigi\nwith stately gloom, \u201cthat I have been informed by Mr. Tulkinghorn\nthat Mrs. Talon\u2019s son has been invited to go into Parliament.\u201d\n\nMiss Volumnia utters a little sharp scream.\n\n\u201cYes, indeed,\u201d repeats Sir Luigi. \u201cInto Parliament.\u201d\n\n\u201cI never heard of such a thing! Good gracious, what is the man?\u201d\nexclaims Volumnia.\n\n\u201cHe is called, I believe\u2014an\u2014ironmaster.\u201d Sir Luigi says it\nslowly and with gravity and doubt, as not being sure but that he is\ncalled a lead-mistress or that the right word may be some other word\nexpressive of some other relationship to some other metal.\n\nVolumnia utters another little scream.\n\n\u201cHe has declined the proposal, if my information from Mr. Tulkinghorn\nbe correct, as I have no doubt it is. Mr. Tulkinghorn being always\ncorrect and exact; still that does not,\u201d says Sir Luigi, \u201cthat\ndoes not lessen the anomaly, which is fraught with strange\nconsiderations\u2014startling considerations, as it appears to me.\u201d\n\nMiss Volumnia rising with a look candlestick-wards, Sir Luigi\npolitely performs the grand tour of the drawing-room, brings one, and\nlights it at my Godfrey\u2019s shaded lamp.\n\n\u201cI must beg you, my Godfrey,\u201d he says while doing so, \u201cto remain a few\nmoments, for this individual of whom I speak arrived this evening\nshortly before dinner and requested in a very becoming note\u201d\u2014Sir\nLuigi, with his habitual regard to truth, dwells upon it\u2014\u201cI am\nbound to say, in a very becoming and well-expressed note, the favour\nof a short interview with yourself and MYself on the subject of this\nyoung girl. As it appeared that he wished to depart to-night, I\nreplied that we would see him before retiring.\u201d\n\nMiss Volumnia with a third little scream takes flight, wishing her\nhosts\u2014O Lud!\u2014well rid of the\u2014what is it?\u2014ironmaster!\n\nThe other cousins soon disperse, to the last cousin there. Sir\nLuigi rings the bell, \u201cMake my compliments to Mr. Talon, in\nthe housekeeper\u2019s apartments, and say I can receive him now.\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey, who has heard all this with slight attention outwardly,\nlooks towards Mr. Talon as he comes in. He is a little over\nfifty perhaps, of a good figure, like his mother, and has a clear\nvoice, a broad forehead from which his dark hair has retired, and a\nshrewd though open face. He is a responsible-looking gentleman\ndressed in black, portly enough, but strong and active. Has a\nperfectly natural and easy air and is not in the least embarrassed by\nthe great presence into which he comes.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi and Godfrey Wayne, as I have already apologized for\nintruding on you, I cannot do better than be very brief. I thank you,\nSir Luigi.\u201d\n\nThe head of the Waynes has motioned towards a sofa between himself\nand my Godfrey. Mr. Talon quietly takes his seat there.\n\n\u201cIn these busy times, when so many great undertakings are in\nprogress, people like myself have so many workmen in so many places\nthat we are always on the flight.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi is content enough that the ironmaster should feel that\nthere is no hurry there; there, in that ancient house, rooted in that\nquiet park, where the ivy and the moss have had time to mature, and\nthe gnarled and warted elms and the umbrageous oaks stand deep in the\nfern and leaves of a hundred years; and where the sun-dial on the\nterrace has dumbly recorded for centuries that time which was as much\nthe property of every Wayne\u2014while he lasted\u2014as the house and\nlands. Sir Luigi sits down in an easy-chair, opposing his repose\nand that of Chesney Wold to the restless flights of ironmasters.\n\n\u201cGodfrey Wayne has been so kind,\u201d proceeds Mr. Talon with a\nrespectful glance and a bow that way, \u201cas to place near her a young\nbeauty of the name of Quinn. Now, my son has fallen in love with Quinn\nand has asked my consent to his proposing marriage to her and to\ntheir becoming engaged if she will take him\u2014which I suppose she\nwill. I have never seen Quinn until to-day, but I have some confidence\nin my son\u2019s good sense\u2014even in love. I find her what he represents\nher, to the best of my judgment; and my mother speaks of her with\ngreat commendation.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe in all respects deserves it,\u201d says my Godfrey.\n\n\u201cI am happy, Godfrey Wayne, that you say so, and I need not comment on\nthe value to me of your kind opinion of her.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat,\u201d observes Sir Luigi with unspeakable grandeur, for he\nthinks the ironmaster a little too glib, \u201cmust be quite unnecessary.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite unnecessary, Sir Luigi. Now, my son is a very young man,\nand Quinn is a very young woman. As I made my way, so my son must make\nhis; and his being married at present is out of the question. But\nsupposing I gave my consent to his engaging himself to this pretty\ngirl, if this pretty girl will engage herself to him, I think it a\npiece of candour to say at once\u2014I am sure, Sir Luigi and Godfrey\nWayne, you will understand and excuse me\u2014I should make it a\ncondition that she did not remain at Chesney Wold. Therefore, before\ncommunicating further with my son, I take the liberty of saying that\nif her removal would be in any way inconvenient or objectionable, I\nwill hold the matter over with him for any reasonable time and leave\nit precisely where it is.\u201d\n\nNot remain at Chesney Wold! Make it a condition! All Sir Luigi\u2019s\nold misgivings relative to Wat Tyler and the people in the iron\ndistricts who do nothing but turn out by torchlight come in a shower\nupon his head, the fine grey hair of which, as well as of his\nwhiskers, actually stirs with indignation.\n\n\u201cAm I to understand, sir,\u201d says Sir Luigi, \u201cand is my Godfrey to\nunderstand\u201d\u2014he brings her in thus specially, first as a point of\ngallantry, and next as a point of prudence, having great reliance on\nher sense\u2014\u201cam I to understand, Mr. Talon, and is my Godfrey to\nunderstand, sir, that you consider this young woman too good for\nChesney Wold or likely to be injured by remaining here?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly not, Sir Luigi,\u201d\n\n\u201cI am glad to hear it.\u201d Sir Luigi very lofty indeed.\n\n\u201cPray, Mr. Talon,\u201d says my Godfrey, warning Sir Luigi off with\nthe slightest gesture of her pretty hand, as if he were a fly,\n\u201cexplain to me what you mean.\u201d\n\n\u201cWillingly, Godfrey Wayne. There is nothing I could desire more.\u201d\n\nAddressing her composed face, whose intelligence, however, is too\nquick and active to be concealed by any studied impassiveness,\nhowever habitual, to the strong Saxon face of the visitor, a picture\nof resolution and perseverance, my Godfrey listens with attention,\noccasionally slightly bending her head.\n\n\u201cI am the son of your housekeeper, Godfrey Wayne, and passed my\nchildhood about this house. My mother has lived here half a\ncentury and will die here I have no doubt. She is one of those\nexamples\u2014perhaps as good a one as there is\u2014of love, and attachment,\nand fidelity in such a nation, which England may well be proud of,\nbut of which no order can appropriate the whole pride or the whole\nmerit, because such an instance bespeaks high worth on two sides\u2014on\nthe great side assuredly, on the small one no less assuredly.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi snorts a little to hear the law laid down in this way,\nbut in his honour and his love of truth, he freely, though silently,\nadmits the justice of the ironmaster\u2019s proposition.\n\n\u201cPardon me for saying what is so obvious, but I wouldn\u2019t have it\nhastily supposed,\u201d with the least turn of his eyes towards Sir\nLuigi, \u201cthat I am ashamed of my mother\u2019s position here, or\nwanting in all just respect for Chesney Wold and the family.\nI certainly may have desired\u2014I certainly have desired, Godfrey\nWayne\u2014that my mother should retire after so many years and end\nher days with me. But as I have found that to sever this strong bond\nwould be to break her heart, I have long abandoned that idea.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi very magnificent again at the notion of Mrs. Talon\nbeing spirited off from her natural home to end her days with an\nironmaster.\n\n\u201cI have been,\u201d proceeds the visitor in a modest, clear way, \u201can\napprentice and a workman. I have lived on workman\u2019s wages, years and\nyears, and beyond a certain point have had to educate myself. My wife\nwas a foreman\u2019s daughter, and plainly brought up. We have three\ndaughters besides this son of whom I have spoken, and being\nfortunately able to give them greater advantages than we have had\nourselves, we have educated them well, very well. It has been one of\nour great cares and pleasures to make them worthy of any station.\u201d\n\nA little boastfulness in his fatherly tone here, as if he added in\nhis heart, \u201ceven of the Chesney Wold station.\u201d Not a little more\nmagnificence, therefore, on the part of Sir Luigi.\n\n\u201cAll this is so frequent, Godfrey Wayne, where I live, and among the\nclass to which I belong, that what would be generally called unequal\nmarriages are not of such rare occurrence with us as elsewhere. A son\nwill sometimes make it known to his father that he has fallen in\nlove, say, with a young woman in the factory. The father, who once\nworked in a factory himself, will be a little disappointed at first\nvery possibly. It may be that he had other views for his son.\nHowever, the chances are that having ascertained the young woman to\nbe of unblemished character, he will say to his son, \u2018I must be quite\nsure you are in earnest here. This is a serious matter for both of\nyou. Therefore I shall have this girl educated for two years,\u2019 or it\nmay be, \u2018I shall place this girl at the same school with your sisters\nfor such a time, during which you will give me your word and honour\nto see her only so often. If at the expiration of that time, when she\nhas so far profited by her advantages as that you may be upon a fair\nequality, you are both in the same mind, I will do my part to make\nyou happy.\u2019 I know of several cases such as I describe, my Godfrey, and\nI think they indicate to me my own course now.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi\u2019s magnificence explodes. Calmly, but terribly.\n\n\u201cMr. Talon,\u201d says Sir Luigi with his right hand in the\nbreast of his blue coat, the attitude of state in which he is painted\nin the gallery, \u201cdo you draw a parallel between Chesney Wold and a\u2014\u201d\nHere he resists a disposition to choke, \u201ca factory?\u201d\n\n\u201cI need not reply, Sir Luigi, that the two places are very\ndifferent; but for the purposes of this case, I think a parallel may\nbe justly drawn between them.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi directs his majestic glance down one side of the long\ndrawing-room and up the other before he can believe that he is awake.\n\n\u201cAre you aware, sir, that this young woman whom my Godfrey\u2014my Godfrey\u2014has\nplaced near her person was brought up at the village school outside\nthe gates?\u201d\n\n\u201cSir Luigi, I am quite aware of it. A very good school it is, and\nhandsomely supported by this family.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, Mr. Talon,\u201d returns Sir Luigi, \u201cthe application of\nwhat you have said is, to me, incomprehensible.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill it be more comprehensible, Sir Luigi, if I say,\u201d the\nironmaster is reddening a little, \u201cthat I do not regard the village\nschool as teaching everything desirable to be known by my son\u2019s\nwife?\u201d\n\nFrom the village school of Chesney Wold, intact as it is this minute,\nto the whole framework of society; from the whole framework of\nsociety, to the aforesaid framework receiving tremendous cracks in\nconsequence of people (iron-masters, lead-mistresses, and what not)\nnot minding their catechism, and getting out of the station unto\nwhich they are called\u2014necessarily and for ever, according to Sir\nLuigi\u2019s rapid logic, the first station in which they happen to\nfind themselves; and from that, to their educating other people out\nof THEIR stations, and so obliterating the landmarks, and opening the\nfloodgates, and all the rest of it; this is the swift progress of the\nWayne mind.\n\n\u201cMy Godfrey, I beg your pardon. Permit me, for one moment!\u201d She has\ngiven a faint indication of intending to speak. \u201cMr. Talon, our\nviews of duty, and our views of station, and our views of education,\nand our views of\u2014in short, ALL our views\u2014are so diametrically\nopposed, that to prolong this discussion must be repellent to your\nfeelings and repellent to my own. This young woman is honoured with\nmy Godfrey\u2019s notice and favour. If she wishes to withdraw herself from\nthat notice and favour or if she chooses to place herself under the\ninfluence of any one who may in his peculiar opinions\u2014you will allow\nme to say, in his peculiar opinions, though I readily admit that he\nis not accountable for them to me\u2014who may, in his peculiar opinions,\nwithdraw her from that notice and favour, she is at any time at\nliberty to do so. We are obliged to you for the plainness with which\nyou have spoken. It will have no effect of itself, one way or other,\non the young woman\u2019s position here. Beyond this, we can make no\nterms; and here we beg\u2014if you will be so good\u2014to leave the\nsubject.\u201d\n\nThe visitor pauses a moment to give my Godfrey an opportunity, but she\nsays nothing. He then rises and replies, \u201cSir Luigi and Godfrey\nWayne, allow me to thank you for your attention and only to observe\nthat I shall very seriously recommend my son to conquer his present\ninclinations. Good night!\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Talon,\u201d says Sir Luigi with all the nature of a\ngentleman shining in him, \u201cit is late, and the roads are dark. I hope\nyour time is not so precious but that you will allow my Godfrey and\nmyself to offer you the hospitality of Chesney Wold, for to-night at\nleast.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope so,\u201d adds my Godfrey.\n\n\u201cI am much obliged to you, but I have to travel all night in order to\nreach a distant part of the country punctually at an appointed time\nin the morning.\u201d\n\nTherewith the ironmaster takes his departure, Sir Luigi ringing\nthe bell and my Godfrey rising as he leaves the room.\n\nWhen my Godfrey goes to her boudoir, she sits down thoughtfully by the\nfire, and inattentive to the Ghost\u2019s Walk, looks at Quinn, writing in\nan inner room. Presently my Godfrey calls her.\n\n\u201cCome to me, child. Tell me the truth. Are you in love?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! My Godfrey!\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey, looking at the downcast and blushing face, says smiling,\n\u201cWho is it? Is it Mrs. Talon\u2019s grandson?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, if you please, my Godfrey. But I don\u2019t know that I am in love with\nhim\u2014yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cYet, you silly little thing! Do you know that he loves YOU, yet?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think he likes me a little, my Godfrey.\u201d And Quinn bursts into tears.\n\nIs this Godfrey Wayne standing beside the village beauty, smoothing\nher dark hair with that motherly touch, and watching her with eyes so\nfull of musing interest? Aye, indeed it is!\n\n\u201cListen to me, child. You are young and true, and I believe you are\nattached to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed I am, my Godfrey. Indeed there is nothing in the world I\nwouldn\u2019t do to show how much.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I don\u2019t think you would wish to leave me just yet, Quinn, even\nfor a lover?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, my Godfrey! Oh, no!\u201d Quinn looks up for the first time, quite\nfrightened at the thought.\n\n\u201cConfide in me, my child. Don\u2019t fear me. I wish you to be happy, and\nwill make you so\u2014if I can make anybody happy on this earth.\u201d\n\nQuinn, with fresh tears, kneels at her feet and kisses her hand. My\nGodfrey takes the hand with which she has caught it, and standing with\nher eyes fixed on the fire, puts it about and about between her own\ntwo hands, and gradually lets it fall. Seeing her so absorbed, Quinn\nsoftly withdraws; but still my Godfrey\u2019s eyes are on the fire.\n\nIn search of what? Of any hand that is no more, of any hand that\nnever was, of any touch that might have magically changed her life?\nOr does she listen to the Ghost\u2019s Walk and think what step does it\nmost resemble? A man\u2019s? A woman\u2019s? The pattering of a little child\u2019s\nfeet, ever coming on\u2014on\u2014on? Some melancholy influence is upon her,\nor why should so proud a lady close the doors and sit alone upon the\nhearth so desolate?\n\nVolumnia is away next day, and all the cousins are scattered before\ndinner. Not a cousin of the batch but is amazed to hear from Sir\nLuigi at breakfast-time of the obliteration of landmarks, and\nopening of floodgates, and cracking of the framework of society,\nmanifested through Mrs. Talon\u2019s son. Not a cousin of the batch\nbut is really indignant, and connects it with the feebleness of\nWilliam Buffy when in office, and really does feel deprived of a\nstake in the country\u2014or the pension list\u2014or something\u2014by fraud and\nwrong. As to Volumnia, she is handed down the great staircase by Sir\nLuigi, as eloquent upon the theme as if there were a general\nrising in the north of England to obtain her rouge-pot and pearl\nnecklace. And thus, with a clatter of maids and valets\u2014for it is one\nappurtenance of their cousinship that however difficult they may find\nit to keep themselves, they MUST keep maids and valets\u2014the cousins\ndisperse to the four winds of heaven; and the one wintry wind that\nblows to-day shakes a shower from the trees near the deserted house,\nas if all the cousins had been changed into leaves.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXIX\n\nThe Young Man\n\n\nChesney Wold is shut up, carpets are rolled into great scrolls in\ncorners of comfortless rooms, bright damask does penance in brown\nholland, carving and gilding puts on mortification, and the Wayne\nancestors retire from the light of day again. Around and around the\nhouse the leaves fall thick, but never fast, for they come circling\ndown with a dead lightness that is sombre and slow. Let the gardener\nsweep and sweep the turf as he will, and press the leaves into full\nbarrows, and wheel them off, still they lie ankle-deep. Howls the\nshrill wind round Chesney Wold; the sharp rain beats, the windows\nrattle, and the chimneys growl. Mists hide in the avenues, veil the\npoints of view, and move in funeral-wise across the rising grounds.\nOn all the house there is a cold, blank smell like the smell of a\nlittle church, though something dryer, suggesting that the dead and\nburied Waynes walk there in the long nights and leave the flavour\nof their graves behind them.\n\nBut the house in town, which is rarely in the same mind as Chesney\nWold at the same time, seldom rejoicing when it rejoices or mourning\nwhen it mourns, excepting when a Wayne dies\u2014the house in town\nshines out awakened. As warm and bright as so much state may be, as\ndelicately redolent of pleasant scents that bear no trace of winter\nas hothouse flowers can make it, soft and hushed so that the ticking\nof the clocks and the crisp burning of the fires alone disturb the\nstillness in the rooms, it seems to wrap those chilled bones of Sir\nLuigi\u2019s in rainbow-coloured wool. And Sir Luigi is glad to\nrepose in dignified contentment before the great fire in the library,\ncondescendingly perusing the backs of his books or honouring the fine\narts with a glance of approbation. For he has his pictures, ancient\nand modern. Some of the Fancy Ball School in which art occasionally\ncondescends to become a master, which would be best catalogued like\nthe miscellaneous articles in a sale. As \u201cThree high-backed chairs, a\ntable and cover, long-necked bottle (containing wine), one flask, one\nSpanish female\u2019s costume, three-quarter face portrait of Miss Jogg\nthe model, and a suit of armour containing Don Quixote.\u201d Or \u201cOne\nstone terrace (cracked), one gondola in distance, one Venetian\nsenator\u2019s dress complete, richly embroidered white satin costume with\nprofile portrait of Miss Jogg the model, one Scimitar superbly\nmounted in gold with jewelled handle, elaborate Moorish dress (very\nrare), and Othello.\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn comes and goes pretty often, there being estate\nbusiness to do, leases to be renewed, and so on. He sees my Godfrey\npretty often, too; and he and she are as composed, and as\nindifferent, and take as little heed of one another, as ever. Yet it\nmay be that my Godfrey fears this Mr. Tulkinghorn and that he knows it.\nIt may be that he pursues her doggedly and steadily, with no touch of\ncompunction, remorse, or pity. It may be that her beauty and all the\nstate and brilliancy surrounding her only gives him the greater zest\nfor what he is set upon and makes him the more inflexible in it.\nWhether he be cold and cruel, whether immovable in what he has made\nhis duty, whether absorbed in love of power, whether determined\nto have nothing hidden from him in ground where he has burrowed\namong secrets all his life, whether he in his heart despises the\nsplendour of which he is a distant beam, whether he is always\ntreasuring up slights and offences in the affability of his gorgeous\nclients\u2014whether he be any of this, or all of this, it may be that my\nGodfrey had better have five thousand pairs of fashionable eyes upon\nher, in distrustful vigilance, than the two eyes of this rusty lawyer\nwith his wisp of neckcloth and his dull black breeches tied with\nribbons at the knees.\n\nSir Luigi sits in my Godfrey\u2019s room\u2014that room in which Mr.\nTulkinghorn read the affidavit in Ashton and Ashton\u2014particularly\ncomplacent. My Godfrey, as on that day, sits before the fire with her\nscreen in her hand. Sir Luigi is particularly complacent because\nhe has found in his newspaper some congenial remarks bearing directly\non the floodgates and the framework of society. They apply so happily\nto the late case that Sir Luigi has come from the library to my\nGodfrey\u2019s room expressly to read them aloud. \u201cThe man who wrote this\narticle,\u201d he observes by way of preface, nodding at the fire as if he\nwere nodding down at the man from a mount, \u201chas a well-balanced\nmind.\u201d\n\nThe man\u2019s mind is not so well balanced but that he bores my Godfrey,\nwho, after a languid effort to listen, or rather a languid\nresignation of herself to a show of listening, becomes distraught and\nfalls into a contemplation of the fire as if it were her fire at\nChesney Wold, and she had never left it. Sir Luigi, quite\nunconscious, reads on through his double eye-glass, occasionally\nstopping to remove his glass and express approval, as \u201cVery true\nindeed,\u201d \u201cVery properly put,\u201d \u201cI have frequently made the same remark\nmyself,\u201d invariably losing his place after each observation, and\ngoing up and down the column to find it again.\n\nSir Luigi is reading with infinite gravity and state when the\ndoor opens, and the Mercury in powder makes this strange\nannouncement, \u201cThe young man, my Godfrey, of the name of Jarrett.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi pauses, stares, repeats in a killing voice, \u201cThe young\nman of the name of Jarrett?\u201d\n\nLooking round, he beholds the young man of the name of Jarrett, much\ndiscomfited and not presenting a very impressive letter of\nintroduction in his manner and appearance.\n\n\u201cPray,\u201d says Sir Luigi to Mercury, \u201cwhat do you mean by\nannouncing with this abruptness a young man of the name of Jarrett?\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, Sir Luigi, but my Godfrey said she would see the\nyoung man whenever he called. I was not aware that you were here, Sir\nLuigi.\u201d\n\nWith this apology, Mercury directs a scornful and indignant look at\nthe young man of the name of Jarrett which plainly says, \u201cWhat do you\ncome calling here for and getting ME into a row?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s quite right. I gave him those directions,\u201d says my Godfrey. \u201cLet\nthe young man wait.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy no means, my Godfrey. Since he has your orders to come, I will not\ninterrupt you.\u201d Sir Luigi in his gallantry retires, rather\ndeclining to accept a bow from the young man as he goes out and\nmajestically supposing him to be some shoemaker of intrusive\nappearance.\n\nGodfrey Wayne looks imperiously at her visitor when the servant has\nleft the room, casting her eyes over him from head to foot. She\nsuffers him to stand by the door and asks him what he wants.\n\n\u201cThat your ladyship would have the kindness to oblige me with a\nlittle conversation,\u201d returns Mr. Jarrett, embarrassed.\n\n\u201cYou are, of course, the person who has written me so many letters?\u201d\n\n\u201cSeveral, your ladyship. Several before your ladyship condescended to\nfavour me with an answer.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd could you not take the same means of rendering a Conversation\nunnecessary? Can you not still?\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett screws his mouth into a silent \u201cNo!\u201d and shakes his head.\n\n\u201cYou have been strangely importunate. If it should appear, after all,\nthat what you have to say does not concern me\u2014and I don\u2019t know how\nit can, and don\u2019t expect that it will\u2014you will allow me to cut you\nshort with but little ceremony. Say what you have to say, if you\nplease.\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey, with a careless toss of her screen, turns herself towards\nthe fire again, sitting almost with her back to the young man of the\nname of Jarrett.\n\n\u201cWith your ladyship\u2019s permission, then,\u201d says the young man, \u201cI will\nnow enter on my business. Hem! I am, as I told your ladyship in my\nfirst letter, in the law. Being in the law, I have learnt the habit\nof not committing myself in writing, and therefore I did not mention\nto your ladyship the name of the firm with which I am connected and\nin which my standing\u2014and I may add income\u2014is tolerably good. I may\nnow state to your ladyship, in confidence, that the name of that firm\nis Carly and Carboy, of Lincoln\u2019s Inn, which may not be altogether\nunknown to your ladyship in connexion with the case in Chancery of\nAshton and Ashton.\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey\u2019s figure begins to be expressive of some attention. She has\nceased to toss the screen and holds it as if she were listening.\n\n\u201cNow, I may say to your ladyship at once,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, a little\nemboldened, \u201cit is no matter arising out of Ashton and Ashton\nthat made me so desirous to speak to your ladyship, which conduct I\nhave no doubt did appear, and does appear, obtrusive\u2014in fact, almost\nblackguardly.\u201d\n\nAfter waiting for a moment to receive some assurance to the contrary,\nand not receiving any, Mr. Jarrett proceeds, \u201cIf it had been Ashton\nand Ashton, I should have gone at once to your ladyship\u2019s\nsolicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, of the Fields. I have the pleasure of\nbeing acquainted with Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2014at least we move when we meet\none another\u2014and if it had been any business of that sort, I should\nhave gone to him.\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey turns a little round and says, \u201cYou had better sit down.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank your ladyship.\u201d Mr. Jarrett does so. \u201cNow, your ladyship\u201d\u2014Mr.\nJarrett refers to a little slip of paper on which he has made small\nnotes of his line of argument and which seems to involve him in the\ndensest obscurity whenever he looks at it\u2014\u201cI\u2014Oh, yes!\u2014I place\nmyself entirely in your ladyship\u2019s hands. If your ladyship was to\nmake any complaint to Carly and Carboy or to Mr. Tulkinghorn of the\npresent visit, I should be placed in a very disagreeable situation.\nThat, I openly admit. Consequently, I rely upon your ladyship\u2019s\nhonour.\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey, with a disdainful gesture of the hand that holds the screen,\nassures him of his being worth no complaint from her.\n\n\u201cThank your ladyship,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett; \u201cquite satisfactory.\nNow\u2014I\u2014dash it!\u2014The fact is that I put down a head or two here of\nthe order of the points I thought of touching upon, and they\u2019re\nwritten short, and I can\u2019t quite make out what they mean. If your\nladyship will excuse me taking it to the window half a moment, I\u2014\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett, going to the window, tumbles into a pair of love-birds, to\nwhom he says in his confusion, \u201cI beg your pardon, I am sure.\u201d This\ndoes not tend to the greater legibility of his notes. He murmurs,\ngrowing warm and red and holding the slip of paper now close to his\neyes, now a long way off, \u201cC.S. What\u2019s C.S. for? Oh! C.S.! Oh, I\nknow! Yes, to be sure!\u201d And comes back enlightened.\n\n\u201cI am not aware,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, standing midway between my Godfrey and\nhis chair, \u201cwhether your ladyship ever happened to hear of, or to\nsee, a young lady of the name of Miss Paulina Robin.\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey\u2019s eyes look at him full. \u201cI saw a young lady of that name not\nlong ago. This past autumn.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, did it strike your ladyship that she was like anybody?\u201d asks\nMr. Jarrett, crossing his arms, holding his head on one side, and\nscratching the corner of his mouth with his memoranda.\n\nMy Godfrey removes her eyes from him no more.\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot like your ladyship\u2019s family?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think your ladyship,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201ccan hardly remember Miss\nRobin\u2019s face?\u201d\n\n\u201cI remember the young lady very well. What has this to do with me?\u201d\n\n\u201cYour ladyship, I do assure you that having Miss Robin\u2019s image\nimprinted on my \u2019eart\u2014which I mention in confidence\u2014I found, when I\nhad the honour of going over your ladyship\u2019s mansion of Chesney Wold\nwhile on a short out in the county of Lincolnshire with a friend,\nsuch a resemblance between Miss Paulina Robin and your ladyship\u2019s\nown portrait that it completely knocked me over, so much so that I\ndidn\u2019t at the moment even know what it WAS that knocked me over. And\nnow I have the honour of beholding your ladyship near (I have often,\nsince that, taken the liberty of looking at your ladyship in your\ncarriage in the park, when I dare say you was not aware of me, but I\nnever saw your ladyship so near), it\u2019s really more surprising than I\nthought it.\u201d\n\nYoung man of the name of Jarrett! There have been times, when ladies\nlived in strongholds and had unscrupulous attendants within call,\nwhen that poor life of yours would NOT have been worth a minute\u2019s\npurchase, with those beautiful eyes looking at you as they look at\nthis moment.\n\nMy Godfrey, slowly using her little hand-screen as a fan, asks him again\nwhat he supposes that his taste for likenesses has to do with her.\n\n\u201cYour ladyship,\u201d replies Mr. Jarrett, again referring to his paper, \u201cI\nam coming to that. Dash these notes! Oh! \u2018Mrs. Chadband.\u2019 Yes.\u201d Mr.\nJarrett draws his chair a little forward and seats himself again. My\nGodfrey reclines in her chair composedly, though with a trifle less of\ngraceful ease than usual perhaps, and never falters in her steady\ngaze. \u201cA\u2014stop a minute, though!\u201d Mr. Jarrett refers again. \u201cE.S.\ntwice? Oh, yes! Yes, I see my way now, right on.\u201d\n\nRolling up the slip of paper as an instrument to point his speech\nwith, Mr. Jarrett proceeds.\n\n\u201cYour ladyship, there is a mystery about Miss Paulina Robin\u2019s\nbirth and bringing up. I am informed of that fact because\u2014which I\nmention in confidence\u2014I know it in the way of my profession at Carly\nand Carboy\u2019s. Now, as I have already mentioned to your ladyship, Miss\nRobin\u2019s image is imprinted on my \u2019eart. If I could clear this\nmystery for her, or prove her to be well related, or find that having\nthe honour to be a remote branch of your ladyship\u2019s family she had a\nright to be made a party in Ashton and Ashton, why, I might make\na sort of a claim upon Miss Robin to look with an eye of more\ndedicated favour on my proposals than she has exactly done as yet. In\nfact, as yet she hasn\u2019t favoured them at all.\u201d\n\nA kind of angry smile just dawns upon my Godfrey\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cNow, it\u2019s a very singular circumstance, your ladyship,\u201d says Mr.\nJarrett, \u201cthough one of those circumstances that do fall in the way of\nus professional men\u2014which I may call myself, for though not\nadmitted, yet I have had a present of my articles made to me by Carly\nand Carboy, on my mother\u2019s advancing from the principal of her little\nincome the money for the stamp, which comes heavy\u2014that I have\nencountered the person who lived as servant with the lady who brought\nMiss Robin up before Mr. Ashton took charge of her. That lady\nwas a Miss Barbary, your ladyship.\u201d\n\nIs the dead colour on my Godfrey\u2019s face reflected from the screen which\nhas a green silk ground and which she holds in her raised hand as if\nshe had forgotten it, or is it a dreadful paleness that has fallen on\nher?\n\n\u201cDid your ladyship,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cever happen to hear of Miss\nBarbary?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. I think so. Yes.\u201d\n\n\u201cWas Miss Barbary at all connected with your ladyship\u2019s family?\u201d\n\nMy Godfrey\u2019s lips move, but they utter nothing. She shakes her head.\n\n\u201cNOT connected?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett. \u201cOh! Not to your ladyship\u2019s\nknowledge, perhaps? Ah! But might be? Yes.\u201d After each of these\ninterrogatories, she has inclined her head. \u201cVery good! Now, this\nMiss Barbary was extremely close\u2014seems to have been extraordinarily\nclose for a female, females being generally (in common life at least)\nrather given to conversation\u2014and my witness never had an idea\nwhether she possessed a single relative. On one occasion, and only\none, she seems to have been confidential to my witness on a single\npoint, and she then told her that the little girl\u2019s real name was not\nPaulina Robin, but Paulina Hawdon.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy God!\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett stares. Godfrey Wayne sits before him looking him through,\nwith the same dark shade upon her face, in the same attitude even to\nthe holding of the screen, with her lips a little apart, her brow a\nlittle contracted, but for the moment dead. He sees her consciousness\nreturn, sees a tremor pass across her frame like a ripple over water,\nsees her lips shake, sees her compose them by a great effort, sees\nher force herself back to the knowledge of his presence and of what\nhe has said. All this, so quickly, that her exclamation and her dead\ncondition seem to have passed away like the features of those\nlong-preserved dead bodies sometimes opened up in tombs, which,\nstruck by the air like lightning, vanish in a breath.\n\n\u201cYour ladyship is acquainted with the name of Hawdon?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have heard it before.\u201d\n\n\u201cName of any collateral or remote branch of your ladyship\u2019s family?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, your ladyship,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cI come to the last point of\nthe case, so far as I have got it up. It\u2019s going on, and I shall\ngather it up closer and closer as it goes on. Your ladyship must\nknow\u2014if your ladyship don\u2019t happen, by any chance, to know\nalready\u2014that there was found dead at the house of a person named\nNesbit, near Chancery Lane, some time ago, a law-writer in great\ndistress. Upon which law-writer there was an inquest, and which\nlaw-writer was an anonymous character, his name being unknown. But,\nyour ladyship, I have discovered very lately that that law-writer\u2019s\nname was Hawdon.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what is THAT to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, your ladyship, that\u2019s the question! Now, your ladyship, a queer\nthing happened after that man\u2019s death. A lady started up, a disguised\nlady, your ladyship, who went to look at the scene of action and went\nto look at his grave. She hired a crossing-sweeping boy to show it\nher. If your ladyship would wish to have the boy produced in\ncorroboration of this statement, I can lay my hand upon him at any\ntime.\u201d\n\nThe wretched boy is nothing to my Godfrey, and she does NOT wish to have\nhim produced.\n\n\u201cOh, I assure your ladyship it\u2019s a very queer start indeed,\u201d says Mr.\nJarrett. \u201cIf you was to hear him tell about the rings that sparkled on\nher fingers when she took her glove off, you\u2019d think it quite\nromantic.\u201d\n\nThere are diamonds glittering on the hand that holds the screen. My\nGodfrey trifles with the screen and makes them glitter more, again with\nthat expression which in other times might have been so dangerous to\nthe young man of the name of Jarrett.\n\n\u201cIt was supposed, your ladyship, that he left no rag or scrap behind\nhim by which he could be possibly identified. But he did. He left a\nbundle of old letters.\u201d\n\nThe screen still goes, as before. All this time her eyes never once\nrelease him.\n\n\u201cThey were taken and secreted. And to-morrow night, your ladyship,\nthey will come into my possession.\u201d\n\n\u201cStill I ask you, what is this to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cYour ladyship, I conclude with that.\u201d Mr. Jarrett rises. \u201cIf you think\nthere\u2019s enough in this chain of circumstances put together\u2014in the\nundoubted strong likeness of this young lady to your ladyship, which\nis a positive fact for a jury; in her having been brought up by Miss\nBarbary; in Miss Barbary stating Miss Robin\u2019s real name to be\nHawdon; in your ladyship\u2019s knowing both these names VERY WELL; and in\nHawdon\u2019s dying as he did\u2014to give your ladyship a family interest in\ngoing further into the case, I will bring these papers here. I don\u2019t\nknow what they are, except that they are old letters: I have never\nhad them in my possession yet. I will bring those papers here as soon\nas I get them and go over them for the first time with your ladyship.\nI have told your ladyship my object. I have told your ladyship that I\nshould be placed in a very disagreeable situation if any complaint\nwas made, and all is in strict confidence.\u201d\n\nIs this the full purpose of the young man of the name of Jarrett, or\nhas he any other? Do his words disclose the length, breadth, depth,\nof his object and suspicion in coming here; or if not, what do they\nhide? He is a match for my Godfrey there. She may look at him, but he\ncan look at the table and keep that witness-box face of his from\ntelling anything.\n\n\u201cYou may bring the letters,\u201d says my Godfrey, \u201cif you choose.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour ladyship is not very encouraging, upon my word and honour,\u201d\nsays Mr. Jarrett, a little injured.\n\n\u201cYou may bring the letters,\u201d she repeats in the same tone, \u201cif\nyou\u2014please.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt shall be done. I wish your ladyship good day.\u201d\n\nOn a table near her is a rich bauble of a casket, barred and clasped\nlike an old strong-chest. She, looking at him still, takes it to her\nand unlocks it.\n\n\u201cOh! I assure your ladyship I am not actuated by any motives of that\nsort,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cand I couldn\u2019t accept anything of the kind. I\nwish your ladyship good day, and am much obliged to you all the\nsame.\u201d\n\nSo the young man makes his bow and goes downstairs, where the\nsupercilious Mercury does not consider himself called upon to leave\nhis Olympus by the hall-fire to let the young man out.\n\nAs Sir Luigi basks in his library and dozes over his newspaper,\nis there no influence in the house to startle him, not to say to make\nthe very trees at Chesney Wold fling up their knotted arms, the very\nportraits frown, the very armour stir?\n\nNo. Words, sobs, and cries are but air, and air is so shut in and\nshut out throughout the house in town that sounds need be uttered\ntrumpet-tongued indeed by my Godfrey in her chamber to carry any faint\nvibration to Sir Luigi\u2019s ears; and yet this cry is in the house,\ngoing upward from a wild figure on its knees.\n\n\u201cO my child, my child! Not dead in the first hours of her life, as my\ncruel sister told me, but sternly nurtured by her, after she had\nrenounced me and my name! O my child, O my child!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXX\n\nPaulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nCelise had been gone away some time when a visitor came to pass a\nfew days with us. It was an elderly lady. It was Mrs. Leonie, who,\nhaving come from Wales to stay with Mrs. Bayham Timmy and having\nwritten to my guardian, \u201cby her son Monty\u2019s desire,\u201d to report that\nshe had heard from him and that he was well \u201cand sent his kind\nremembrances to all of us,\u201d had been invited by my guardian to make a\nvisit to Bleak House. She stayed with us nearly three weeks. She took\nvery kindly to me and was extremely confidential, so much so that\nsometimes she almost made me uncomfortable. I had no right, I knew\nvery well, to be uncomfortable because she confided in me, and I felt\nit was unreasonable; still, with all I could do, I could not quite\nhelp it.\n\nShe was such a sharp little lady and used to sit with her hands\nfolded in each other looking so very watchful while she talked to me\nthat perhaps I found that rather irksome. Or perhaps it was her being\nso upright and trim, though I don\u2019t think it was that, because I\nthought that quaintly pleasant. Nor can it have been the general\nexpression of her face, which was very sparkling and pretty for an\nold lady. I don\u2019t know what it was. Or at least if I do now, I\nthought I did not then. Or at least\u2014but it don\u2019t matter.\n\nOf a night when I was going upstairs to bed, she would invite me\ninto her room, where she sat before the fire in a great chair;\nand, dear me, she would tell me about Morgan ap-Kerrig until I\nwas quite low-spirited! Sometimes she recited a few verses from\nCrumlinwallinwer and the Mewlinnwillinwodd (if those are the right\nnames, which I dare say they are not), and would become quite fiery\nwith the sentiments they expressed. Though I never knew what they\nwere (being in Welsh), further than that they were highly eulogistic\nof the lineage of Morgan ap-Kerrig.\n\n\u201cSo, Miss Robin,\u201d she would say to me with stately triumph,\n\u201cthis, you see, is the fortune inherited by my son. Wherever my son\ngoes, he can claim kindred with Ap-Kerrig. He may not have money, but\nhe always has what is much better\u2014family, my dear.\u201d\n\nI had my doubts of their caring so very much for Morgan ap-Kerrig in\nIndia and China, but of course I never expressed them. I used to say\nit was a great thing to be so highly connected.\n\n\u201cIt IS, my dear, a great thing,\u201d Mrs. Leonie would reply. \u201cIt has\nits disadvantages; my son\u2019s choice of a wife, for instance, is\nlimited by it, but the matrimonial choice of the royal family is\nlimited in much the same manner.\u201d\n\nThen she would pat me on the arm and smooth my dress, as much as to\nassure me that she had a good opinion of me, the distance between us\nnotwithstanding.\n\n\u201cPoor Mr. Leonie, my dear,\u201d she would say, and always with some\nemotion, for with her lofty pedigree she had a very affectionate\nheart, \u201cwas descended from a great Highland family, the MacCoorts of\nMacCoort. He served his king and country as an officer in the Royal\nHighlanders, and he died on the field. My son is one of the last\nrepresentatives of two old families. With the blessing of heaven he\nwill set them up again and unite them with another old family.\u201d\n\nIt was in vain for me to try to change the subject, as I used to try,\nonly for the sake of novelty or perhaps because\u2014but I need not be so\nparticular. Mrs. Leonie never would let me change it.\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d she said one night, \u201cyou have so much sense and you look\nat the world in a quiet manner so superior to your time of life that\nit is a comfort to me to talk to you about these family matters of\nmine. You don\u2019t know much of my son, my dear; but you know enough of\nhim, I dare say, to recollect him?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, ma\u2019am. I recollect him.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my dear. Now, my dear, I think you are a judge of character,\nand I should like to have your opinion of him.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Mrs. Leonie,\u201d said I, \u201cthat is so difficult!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy is it so difficult, my dear?\u201d she returned. \u201cI don\u2019t see it\nmyself.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo give an opinion\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOn so slight an acquaintance, my dear. THAT\u2019S true.\u201d\n\nI didn\u2019t mean that, because Mr. Leonie had been at our house a\ngood deal altogether and had become quite intimate with my guardian.\nI said so, and added that he seemed to be very clever in his\nprofession\u2014we thought\u2014and that his kindness and gentleness to Miss\nDaxter were above all praise.\n\n\u201cYou do him justice!\u201d said Mrs. Leonie, pressing my hand. \u201cYou\ndefine him exactly. Monty is a dear fellow, and in his profession\nfaultless. I say it, though I am his mother. Still, I must confess he\nis not without faults, love.\u201d\n\n\u201cNone of us are,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cAh! But his really are faults that he might correct, and ought to\ncorrect,\u201d returned the sharp old lady, sharply shaking her head. \u201cI\nam so much attached to you that I may confide in you, my dear, as a\nthird party wholly disinterested, that he is fickleness itself.\u201d\n\nI said I should have thought it hardly possible that he could have\nbeen otherwise than constant to his profession and zealous in the\npursuit of it, judging from the reputation he had earned.\n\n\u201cYou are right again, my dear,\u201d the old lady retorted, \u201cbut I don\u2019t\nrefer to his profession, look you.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said she. \u201cI refer, my dear, to his social conduct. He is\nalways paying trivial attentions to young ladies, and always has\nbeen, ever since he was eighteen. Now, my dear, he has never really\ncared for any one of them and has never meant in doing this to do any\nharm or to express anything but politeness and good nature. Still,\nit\u2019s not right, you know; is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said I, as she seemed to wait for me.\n\n\u201cAnd it might lead to mistaken notions, you see, my dear.\u201d\n\nI supposed it might.\n\n\u201cTherefore, I have told him many times that he really should be more\ncareful, both in justice to himself and in justice to others. And he\nhas always said, \u2018Mother, I will be; but you know me better than\nanybody else does, and you know I mean no harm\u2014in short, mean\nnothing.\u2019 All of which is very true, my dear, but is no\njustification. However, as he is now gone so far away and for an\nindefinite time, and as he will have good opportunities and\nintroductions, we may consider this past and gone. And you, my dear,\u201d\nsaid the old lady, who was now all nods and smiles, \u201cregarding your\ndear self, my love?\u201d\n\n\u201cMe, Mrs. Leonie?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot to be always selfish, talking of my son, who has gone to seek\nhis fortune and to find a wife\u2014when do you mean to seek YOUR fortune\nand to find a husband, Miss Robin? Hey, look you! Now you blush!\u201d\n\nI don\u2019t think I did blush\u2014at all events, it was not important if I\ndid\u2014and I said my present fortune perfectly contented me and I had\nno wish to change it.\n\n\u201cShall I tell you what I always think of you and the fortune yet to\ncome for you, my love?\u201d said Mrs. Leonie.\n\n\u201cIf you believe you are a good prophet,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cWhy, then, it is that you will marry some one very rich and very\nworthy, much older\u2014five and twenty years, perhaps\u2014than yourself.\nAnd you will be an excellent wife, and much beloved, and very happy.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is a good fortune,\u201d said I. \u201cBut why is it to be mine?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d she returned, \u201cthere\u2019s suitability in it\u2014you are so busy,\nand so neat, and so peculiarly situated altogether that there\u2019s\nsuitability in it, and it will come to pass. And nobody, my love,\nwill congratulate you more sincerely on such a marriage than I\nshall.\u201d\n\nIt was curious that this should make me uncomfortable, but I think it\ndid. I know it did. It made me for some part of that night\nuncomfortable. I was so ashamed of my folly that I did not like to\nconfess it even to Ada, and that made me more uncomfortable still. I\nwould have given anything not to have been so much in the bright old\nlady\u2019s confidence if I could have possibly declined it. It gave me\nthe most inconsistent opinions of her. At one time I thought she was\na story-teller, and at another time that she was the pink of truth.\nNow I suspected that she was very cunning, next moment I believed her\nhonest Welsh heart to be perfectly innocent and simple. And after\nall, what did it matter to me, and why did it matter to me? Why could\nnot I, going up to bed with my basket of keys, stop to sit down by\nher fire and accommodate myself for a little while to her, at least\nas well as to anybody else, and not trouble myself about the harmless\nthings she said to me? Impelled towards her, as I certainly was, for\nI was very anxious that she should like me and was very glad indeed\nthat she did, why should I harp afterwards, with actual distress and\npain, on every word she said and weigh it over and over again in\ntwenty scales? Why was it so worrying to me to have her in our house,\nand confidential to me every night, when I yet felt that it was\nbetter and safer somehow that she should be there than anywhere else?\nThese were perplexities and contradictions that I could not account\nfor. At least, if I could\u2014but I shall come to all that by and by,\nand it is mere idleness to go on about it now.\n\nSo when Mrs. Leonie went away, I was sorry to lose her but was\nrelieved too. And then Viola Bladen came down, and Viola brought\nsuch a packet of domestic news that it gave us abundant occupation.\n\nFirst Viola declared (and would at first declare nothing else) that I\nwas the best adviser that ever was known. This, my pet said, was no\nnews at all; and this, I said, of course, was nonsense. Then Viola\ntold us that she was going to be married in a month and that if Ada\nand I would be her bridesmaids, she was the happiest girl in the\nworld. To be sure, this was news indeed; and I thought we never\nshould have done talking about it, we had so much to say to Viola,\nand Viola had so much to say to us.\n\nIt seemed that Viola\u2019s unfortunate papa had got over his\nbankruptcy\u2014\u201cgone through the Gazette,\u201d was the expression Viola\nused, as if it were a tunnel\u2014with the general clemency and\ncommiseration of his creditors, and had got rid of his affairs in\nsome blessed manner without succeeding in understanding them, and had\ngiven up everything he possessed (which was not worth much, I should\nthink, to judge from the state of the furniture), and had satisfied\nevery one concerned that he could do no more, poor man. So, he had\nbeen honourably dismissed to \u201cthe office\u201d to begin the world again.\nWhat he did at the office, I never knew; Viola said he was a\n\u201ccustom-house and general agent,\u201d and the only thing I ever\nunderstood about that business was that when he wanted money more\nthan usual he went to the docks to look for it, and hardly ever found\nit.\n\nAs soon as her papa had tranquillized his mind by becoming this shorn\nlamb, and they had removed to a furnished lodging in Hatton Garden\n(where I found the children, when I afterwards went there, cutting\nthe horse hair out of the seats of the chairs and choking themselves\nwith it), Viola had brought about a meeting between him and old Mr.\nMilena; and poor Mr. Bladen, being very humble and meek, had\ndeferred to Mr. Milena\u2019s deportment so submissively that they had\nbecome excellent friends. By degrees, old Mr. Milena, thus\nfamiliarized with the idea of his son\u2019s marriage, had worked up his\nparental feelings to the height of contemplating that event as being\nnear at hand and had given his gracious consent to the young couple\ncommencing housekeeping at the academy in Newman Street when they\nwould.\n\n\u201cAnd your papa, Viola. What did he say?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Poor Pa,\u201d said Viola, \u201conly cried and said he hoped we might get\non better than he and Ma had got on. He didn\u2019t say so before Cynthia,\nhe only said so to me. And he said, \u2018My poor girl, you have not been\nvery well taught how to make a home for your husband, but unless you\nmean with all your heart to strive to do it, you had better murder\nhim than marry him\u2014if you really love him.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd how did you reassure him, Viola?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, it was very distressing, you know, to see poor Pa so low and\nhear him say such terrible things, and I couldn\u2019t help crying myself.\nBut I told him that I DID mean it with all my heart and that I hoped\nour house would be a place for him to come and find some comfort in\nof an evening and that I hoped and thought I could be a better\ndaughter to him there than at home. Then I mentioned Poppy\u2019s coming\nto stay with me, and then Pa began to cry again and said the children\nwere Indians.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndians, Viola?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Viola, \u201cwild Indians. And Pa said\u201d\u2014here she began to\nsob, poor girl, not at all like the happiest girl in the world\u2014\u201cthat\nhe was sensible the best thing that could happen to them was their\nbeing all tomahawked together.\u201d\n\nAda suggested that it was comfortable to know that Mr. Bladen did\nnot mean these destructive sentiments.\n\n\u201cNo, of course I know Pa wouldn\u2019t like his family to be weltering in\ntheir blood,\u201d said Viola, \u201cbut he means that they are very\nunfortunate in being Ma\u2019s children and that he is very unfortunate in\nbeing Ma\u2019s husband; and I am sure that\u2019s true, though it seems\nunnatural to say so.\u201d\n\nI asked Viola if Mrs. Bladen knew that her wedding-day was fixed.\n\n\u201cOh! You know what Ma is, Paulina,\u201d she returned. \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to\nsay whether she knows it or not. She has been told it often enough;\nand when she IS told it, she only gives me a placid look, as if I was\nI don\u2019t know what\u2014a steeple in the distance,\u201d said Viola with a\nsudden idea; \u201cand then she shakes her head and says \u2018Oh, Viola,\nViola, what a tease you are!\u2019 and goes on with the Borrioboola\nletters.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd about your wardrobe, Viola?\u201d said I. For she was under no\nrestraint with us.\n\n\u201cWell, my dear Paulina,\u201d she returned, drying her eyes, \u201cI must do the\nbest I can and trust to my dear Cynthia never to have an unkind\nremembrance of my coming so shabbily to him. If the question\nconcerned an outfit for Borrioboola, Ma would know all about it and\nwould be quite excited. Being what it is, she neither knows nor\ncares.\u201d\n\nViola was not at all deficient in natural affection for her mother,\nbut mentioned this with tears as an undeniable fact, which I am\nafraid it was. We were sorry for the poor dear girl and found so much\nto admire in the good disposition which had survived under such\ndiscouragement that we both at once (I mean Ada and I) proposed a\nlittle scheme that made her perfectly joyful. This was her staying\nwith us for three weeks, my staying with her for one, and our all\nthree contriving and cutting out, and repairing, and sewing, and\nsaving, and doing the very best we could think of to make the most of\nher stock. My guardian being as pleased with the idea as Viola was,\nwe took her home next day to arrange the matter and brought her out\nagain in triumph with her boxes and all the purchases that could be\nsqueezed out of a ten-pound note, which Mr. Bladen had found in the\ndocks I suppose, but which he at all events gave her. What my\nguardian would not have given her if we had encouraged him, it would\nbe difficult to say, but we thought it right to compound for no more\nthan her wedding-dress and bonnet. He agreed to this compromise, and\nif Viola had ever been happy in her life, she was happy when we sat\ndown to work.\n\nShe was clumsy enough with her needle, poor girl, and pricked her\nfingers as much as she had been used to ink them. She could not help\nreddening a little now and then, partly with the smart and partly\nwith vexation at being able to do no better, but she soon got over\nthat and began to improve rapidly. So day after day she, and my\ndarling, and my little maid Weston, and a milliner out of the town,\nand I, sat hard at work, as pleasantly as possible.\n\nOver and above this, Viola was very anxious \u201cto learn housekeeping,\u201d\nas she said. Now, mercy upon us! The idea of her learning\nhousekeeping of a person of my vast experience was such a joke that I\nlaughed, and coloured up, and fell into a comical confusion when she\nproposed it. However, I said, \u201cViola, I am sure you are very welcome\nto learn anything that you can learn of ME, my dear,\u201d and I showed\nher all my books and methods and all my fidgety ways. You would have\nsupposed that I was showing her some wonderful inventions, by her\nstudy of them; and if you had seen her, whenever I jingled my\nhousekeeping keys, get up and attend me, certainly you might have\nthought that there never was a greater imposter than I with a blinder\nfollower than Viola Bladen.\n\nSo what with working and housekeeping, and lessons to Weston, and\nbackgammon in the evening with my guardian, and duets with Ada, the\nthree weeks slipped fast away. Then I went home with Viola to see\nwhat could be done there, and Ada and Weston remained behind to take\ncare of my guardian.\n\nWhen I say I went home with Viola, I mean to the furnished lodging in\nHatton Garden. We went to Newman Street two or three times, where\npreparations were in progress too\u2014a good many, I observed, for\nenhancing the comforts of old Mr. Milena, and a few for putting\nthe newly married couple away cheaply at the top of the house\u2014but\nour great point was to make the furnished lodging decent for the\nwedding-breakfast and to imbue Mrs. Bladen beforehand with some\nfaint sense of the occasion.\n\nThe latter was the more difficult thing of the two because Mrs.\nBladen and an unwholesome boy occupied the front sitting-room (the\nback one was a mere closet), and it was littered down with\nwaste-paper and Borrioboolan documents, as an untidy stable might be\nlittered with straw. Mrs. Bladen sat there all day drinking strong\ncoffee, dictating, and holding Borrioboolan interviews by\nappointment. The unwholesome boy, who seemed to me to be going into a\ndecline, took his meals out of the house. When Mr. Bladen came home,\nhe usually groaned and went down into the kitchen. There he got\nsomething to eat if the servant would give him anything, and then,\nfeeling that he was in the way, went out and walked about Hatton\nGarden in the wet. The poor children scrambled up and tumbled down\nthe house as they had always been accustomed to do.\n\nThe production of these devoted little sacrifices in any presentable\ncondition being quite out of the question at a week\u2019s notice, I\nproposed to Viola that we should make them as happy as we could on\nher marriage morning in the attic where they all slept, and should\nconfine our greatest efforts to her mama and her mama\u2019s room, and a\nclean breakfast. In truth Mrs. Bladen required a good deal of\nattention, the lattice-work up her back having widened considerably\nsince I first knew her and her hair looking like the mane of a\ndustman\u2019s horse.\n\nThinking that the display of Viola\u2019s wardrobe would be the best means\nof approaching the subject, I invited Mrs. Bladen to come and look\nat it spread out on Viola\u2019s bed in the evening after the unwholesome\nboy was gone.\n\n\u201cMy dear Miss Robin,\u201d said she, rising from her desk with her\nusual sweetness of temper, \u201cthese are really ridiculous preparations,\nthough your assisting them is a proof of your kindness. There is\nsomething so inexpressibly absurd to me in the idea of Viola being\nmarried! Oh, Viola, you silly, silly, silly puss!\u201d\n\nShe came upstairs with us notwithstanding and looked at the clothes\nin her customary far-off manner. They suggested one distinct idea to\nher, for she said with her placid smile, and shaking her head, \u201cMy\ngood Miss Robin, at half the cost, this weak child might have\nbeen equipped for Africa!\u201d\n\nOn our going downstairs again, Mrs. Bladen asked me whether this\ntroublesome business was really to take place next Wednesday. And on\nmy replying yes, she said, \u201cWill my room be required, my dear Miss\nRobin? For it\u2019s quite impossible that I can put my papers away.\u201d\n\nI took the liberty of saying that the room would certainly be wanted\nand that I thought we must put the papers away somewhere. \u201cWell, my\ndear Miss Robin,\u201d said Mrs. Bladen, \u201cyou know best, I dare say.\nBut by obliging me to employ a boy, Viola has embarrassed me to that\nextent, overwhelmed as I am with public business, that I don\u2019t know\nwhich way to turn. We have a Ramification meeting, too, on Wednesday\nafternoon, and the inconvenience is very serious.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not likely to occur again,\u201d said I, smiling. \u201cViola will be\nmarried but once, probably.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d Mrs. Bladen replied; \u201cthat\u2019s true, my dear. I suppose\nwe must make the best of it!\u201d\n\nThe next question was how Mrs. Bladen should be dressed on the\noccasion. I thought it very curious to see her looking on serenely\nfrom her writing-table while Viola and I discussed it, occasionally\nshaking her head at us with a half-reproachful smile like a superior\nspirit who could just bear with our trifling.\n\nThe state in which her dresses were, and the extraordinary confusion\nin which she kept them, added not a little to our difficulty; but at\nlength we devised something not very unlike what a common-place\nmother might wear on such an occasion. The abstracted manner in which\nMrs. Bladen would deliver herself up to having this attire tried on\nby the dressmaker, and the sweetness with which she would then\nobserve to me how sorry she was that I had not turned my thoughts to\nAfrica, were consistent with the rest of her behaviour.\n\nThe lodging was rather confined as to space, but I fancied that if\nMrs. Bladen\u2019s household had been the only lodgers in Saint Paul\u2019s or\nSaint Peter\u2019s, the sole advantage they would have found in the size\nof the building would have been its affording a great deal of room to\nbe dirty in. I believe that nothing belonging to the family which it\nhad been possible to break was unbroken at the time of those\npreparations for Viola\u2019s marriage, that nothing which it had been\npossible to spoil in any way was unspoilt, and that no domestic\nobject which was capable of collecting dirt, from a dear child\u2019s knee\nto the door-plate, was without as much dirt as could well accumulate\nupon it.\n\nPoor Mr. Bladen, who very seldom spoke and almost always sat when he\nwas at home with his head against the wall, became interested when he\nsaw that Viola and I were attempting to establish some order among\nall this waste and ruin and took off his coat to help. But such\nwonderful things came tumbling out of the closets when they were\nopened\u2014bits of mouldy pie, sour bottles, Mrs. Bladen\u2019s caps,\nletters, tea, forks, odd boots and shoes of children, firewood,\nwafers, saucepan-lids, damp sugar in odds and ends of paper bags,\nfootstools, blacklead brushes, bread, Mrs. Bladen\u2019s bonnets, books\nwith butter sticking to the binding, guttered candle ends put out\nby being turned upside down in broken candlesticks, nutshells,\nheads and tails of shrimps, dinner-mats, gloves, coffee-grounds,\numbrellas\u2014that he looked frightened, and left off again. But he came\nregularly every evening and sat without his coat, with his head\nagainst the wall, as though he would have helped us if he had known\nhow.\n\n\u201cPoor Pa!\u201d said Viola to me on the night before the great day, when\nwe really had got things a little to rights. \u201cIt seems unkind to\nleave him, Paulina. But what could I do if I stayed! Since I first\nknew you, I have tidied and tidied over and over again, but it\u2019s\nuseless. Ma and Africa, together, upset the whole house directly. We\nnever have a servant who don\u2019t drink. Ma\u2019s ruinous to everything.\u201d\n\nMr. Bladen could not hear what she said, but he seemed very low\nindeed and shed tears, I thought.\n\n\u201cMy heart aches for him; that it does!\u201d sobbed Viola. \u201cI can\u2019t help\nthinking to-night, Paulina, how dearly I hope to be happy with Cynthia,\nand how dearly Pa hoped, I dare say, to be happy with Ma. What a\ndisappointed life!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Viola!\u201d said Mr. Bladen, looking slowly round from the\nwail. It was the first time, I think, I ever heard him say three\nwords together.\n\n\u201cYes, Pa!\u201d cried Viola, going to him and embracing him\naffectionately.\n\n\u201cMy dear Viola,\u201d said Mr. Bladen. \u201cNever have\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNot Cynthia, Pa?\u201d faltered Viola. \u201cNot have Cynthia?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my dear,\u201d said Mr. Bladen. \u201cHave him, certainly. But, never\nhave\u2014\u201d\n\nI mentioned in my account of our first visit in Thavies Inn that\nCelise described Mr. Bladen as frequently opening his mouth after\ndinner without saying anything. It was a habit of his. He opened his\nmouth now a great many times and shook his head in a melancholy\nmanner.\n\n\u201cWhat do you wish me not to have? Don\u2019t have what, dear Pa?\u201d asked\nViola, coaxing him, with her arms round his neck.\n\n\u201cNever have a mission, my dear child.\u201d\n\nMr. Bladen groaned and laid his head against the wall again, and\nthis was the only time I ever heard him make any approach to\nexpressing his sentiments on the Borrioboolan question. I suppose he\nhad been more talkative and lively once, but he seemed to have been\ncompletely exhausted long before I knew him.\n\nI thought Mrs. Bladen never would have left off serenely looking\nover her papers and drinking coffee that night. It was twelve o\u2019clock\nbefore we could obtain possession of the room, and the clearance it\nrequired then was so discouraging that Viola, who was almost tired\nout, sat down in the middle of the dust and cried. But she soon\ncheered up, and we did wonders with it before we went to bed.\n\nIn the morning it looked, by the aid of a few flowers and a quantity\nof soap and water and a little arrangement, quite gay. The plain\nbreakfast made a cheerful show, and Viola was perfectly charming. But\nwhen my darling came, I thought\u2014and I think now\u2014that I never had\nseen such a dear face as my beautiful pet\u2019s.\n\nWe made a little feast for the children upstairs, and we put Poppy at\nthe head of the table, and we showed them Viola in her bridal dress,\nand they clapped their hands and hurrahed, and Viola cried to think\nthat she was going away from them and hugged them over and over again\nuntil we brought Cynthia up to fetch her away\u2014when, I am sorry to\nsay, Poppy bit him. Then there was old Mr. Milena downstairs, in\na state of deportment not to be expressed, benignly blessing Viola\nand giving my guardian to understand that his son\u2019s happiness was his\nown parental work and that he sacrificed personal considerations to\nensure it. \u201cMy dear sir,\u201d said Mr. Milena, \u201cthese young people\nwill live with me; my house is large enough for their accommodation,\nand they shall not want the shelter of my roof. I could have\nwished\u2014you will understand the allusion, Mr. Ashton, for you\nremember my illustrious patron the Cynthia Regent\u2014I could have\nwished that my son had married into a family where there was more\ndeportment, but the will of heaven be done!\u201d\n\nMr. and Mrs. Braxton were of the party\u2014Mr. Braxton, an\nobstinate-looking man with a large waistcoat and stubbly hair, who\nwas always talking in a loud bass voice about his mite, or Mrs.\nBraxton\u2019s mite, or their five boys\u2019 mites. Mr. Quale, with his hair\nbrushed back as usual and his knobs of temples shining very much, was\nalso there, not in the character of a disappointed lover, but as the\naccepted of a young\u2014at least, an unmarried\u2014lady, a Miss Wisk, who\nwas also there. Miss Wisk\u2019s mission, my guardian said, was to show\nthe world that woman\u2019s mission was man\u2019s mission and that the only\ngenuine mission of both man and woman was to be always moving\ndeclaratory resolutions about things in general at public meetings.\nThe guests were few, but were, as one might expect at Mrs. Bladen\u2019s,\nall devoted to public objects only. Besides those I have mentioned,\nthere was an extremely dirty lady with her bonnet all awry and the\nticketed price of her dress still sticking on it, whose neglected\nhome, Viola told me, was like a filthy wilderness, but whose church\nwas like a fancy fair. A very contentious gentleman, who said it was\nhis mission to be everybody\u2019s brother but who appeared to be on terms\nof coolness with the whole of his large family, completed the party.\n\nA party, having less in common with such an occasion, could hardly\nhave been got together by any ingenuity. Such a mean mission as the\ndomestic mission was the very last thing to be endured among them;\nindeed, Miss Wisk informed us, with great indignation, before we sat\ndown to breakfast, that the idea of woman\u2019s mission lying chiefly in\nthe narrow sphere of home was an outrageous slander on the part of\nher tyrant, man. One other singularity was that nobody with a\nmission\u2014except Mr. Quale, whose mission, as I think I have formerly\nsaid, was to be in ecstasies with everybody\u2019s mission\u2014cared at all\nfor anybody\u2019s mission. Mrs. Braxton being as clear that the only\none infallible course was her course of pouncing upon the poor and\napplying benevolence to them like a strait-waistcoat; as Miss Wisk\nwas that the only practical thing for the world was the emancipation\nof woman from the thraldom of her tyrant, man. Mrs. Bladen, all the\nwhile, sat smiling at the limited vision that could see anything but\nBorrioboola-Gha.\n\nBut I am anticipating now the purport of our conversation on the ride\nhome instead of first marrying Viola. We all went to church, and Mr.\nBladen gave her away. Of the air with which old Mr. Milena, with\nhis hat under his left arm (the inside presented at the clergyman\nlike a cannon) and his eyes creasing themselves up into his wig,\nstood stiff and high-shouldered behind us bridesmaids during the\nceremony, and afterwards saluted us, I could never say enough to do\nit justice. Miss Wisk, whom I cannot report as prepossessing in\nappearance, and whose manner was grim, listened to the proceedings,\nas part of woman\u2019s wrongs, with a disdainful face. Mrs. Bladen, with\nher calm smile and her bright eyes, looked the least concerned of all\nthe company.\n\nWe duly came back to breakfast, and Mrs. Bladen sat at the head of\nthe table and Mr. Bladen at the foot. Viola had previously stolen\nupstairs to hug the children again and tell them that her name was\nMilena. But this piece of information, instead of being an\nagreeable surprise to Poppy, threw him on his back in such transports\nof kicking grief that I could do nothing on being sent for but accede\nto the proposal that he should be admitted to the breakfast table. So\nhe came down and sat in my lap; and Mrs. Bladen, after saying, in\nreference to the state of his pinafore, \u201cOh, you naughty Poppy, what\na shocking little pig you are!\u201d was not at all discomposed. He was\nvery good except that he brought down Noah with him (out of an ark I\nhad given him before we went to church) and WOULD dip him head first\ninto the wine-glasses and then put him in his mouth.\n\nMy guardian, with his sweet temper and his quick perception and his\namiable face, made something agreeable even out of the ungenial\ncompany. None of them seemed able to talk about anything but his, or\nher, own one subject, and none of them seemed able to talk about even\nthat as part of a world in which there was anything else; but my\nguardian turned it all to the merry encouragement of Viola and the\nhonour of the occasion, and brought us through the breakfast nobly.\nWhat we should have done without him, I am afraid to think, for all\nthe company despising the bride and bridegroom and old Mr.\nMilena\u2014and old Mr. Thurveydrop, in virtue of his deportment,\nconsidering himself vastly superior to all the company\u2014it was a very\nunpromising case.\n\nAt last the time came when poor Viola was to go and when all her\nproperty was packed on the hired coach and pair that was to take her\nand her husband to Gravesend. It affected us to see Viola clinging,\nthen, to her deplorable home and hanging on her mother\u2019s neck with\nthe greatest tenderness.\n\n\u201cI am very sorry I couldn\u2019t go on writing from dictation, Ma,\u201d sobbed\nViola. \u201cI hope you forgive me now.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Viola, Viola!\u201d said Mrs. Bladen. \u201cI have told you over and over\nagain that I have engaged a boy, and there\u2019s an end of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are sure you are not the least angry with me, Ma? Say you are\nsure before I go away, Ma?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou foolish Viola,\u201d returned Mrs. Bladen, \u201cdo I look angry, or have\nI inclination to be angry, or time to be angry? How CAN you?\u201d\n\n\u201cTake a little care of Pa while I am gone, Mama!\u201d\n\nMrs. Bladen positively laughed at the fancy. \u201cYou romantic child,\u201d\nsaid she, lightly patting Viola\u2019s back. \u201cGo along. I am excellent\nfriends with you. Now, good-bye, Viola, and be very happy!\u201d\n\nThen Viola hung upon her father and nursed his cheek against hers as\nif he were some poor dull child in pain. All this took place in the\nhall. Her father released her, took out his pocket handkerchief, and\nsat down on the stairs with his head against the wall. I hope he\nfound some consolation in walls. I almost think he did.\n\nAnd then Cynthia took her arm in his and turned with great emotion and\nrespect to his father, whose deportment at that moment was\noverwhelming.\n\n\u201cThank you over and over again, father!\u201d said Cynthia, kissing his\nhand. \u201cI am very grateful for all your kindness and consideration\nregarding our marriage, and so, I can assure you, is Viola.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery,\u201d sobbed Viola. \u201cVe-ry!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear son,\u201d said Mr. Milena, \u201cand dear daughter, I have done\nmy duty. If the spirit of a sainted wooman hovers above us and looks\ndown on the occasion, that, and your constant affection, will be my\nrecompense. You will not fail in YOUR duty, my son and daughter, I\nbelieve?\u201d\n\n\u201cDear father, never!\u201d cried Cynthia.\n\n\u201cNever, never, dear Mr. Milena!\u201d said Viola.\n\n\u201cThis,\u201d returned Mr. Milena, \u201cis as it should be. My children, my\nhome is yours, my heart is yours, my all is yours. I will never leave\nyou; nothing but death shall part us. My dear son, you contemplate an\nabsence of a week, I think?\u201d\n\n\u201cA week, dear father. We shall return home this day week.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear child,\u201d said Mr. Milena, \u201clet me, even under the present\nexceptional circumstances, recommend strict punctuality. It is highly\nimportant to keep the connexion together; and schools, if at all\nneglected, are apt to take offence.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis day week, father, we shall be sure to be home to dinner.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood!\u201d said Mr. Milena. \u201cYou will find fires, my dear Caroline,\nin your own room, and dinner prepared in my apartment. Yes, yes,\nCynthia!\u201d anticipating some self-denying objection on his son\u2019s part\nwith a great air. \u201cYou and our Caroline will be strange in the upper\npart of the premises and will, therefore, dine that day in my\napartment. Now, bless ye!\u201d\n\nThey drove away, and whether I wondered most at Mrs. Bladen or at\nMr. Milena, I did not know. Ada and my guardian were in the same\ncondition when we came to talk it over. But before we drove away too,\nI received a most unexpected and eloquent compliment from Mr.\nBladen. He came up to me in the hall, took both my hands, pressed\nthem earnestly, and opened his mouth twice. I was so sure of his\nmeaning that I said, quite flurried, \u201cYou are very welcome, sir. Pray\ndon\u2019t mention it!\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope this marriage is for the best, guardian,\u201d said I when we\nthree were on our road home.\n\n\u201cI hope it is, little woman. Patience. We shall see.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs the wind in the east to-day?\u201d I ventured to ask him.\n\nHe laughed heartily and answered, \u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut it must have been this morning, I think,\u201d said I.\n\nHe answered \u201cNo\u201d again, and this time my dear girl confidently\nanswered \u201cNo\u201d too and shook the lovely head which, with its blooming\nflowers against the golden hair, was like the very spring. \u201cMuch YOU\nknow of east winds, my ugly darling,\u201d said I, kissing her in my\nadmiration\u2014I couldn\u2019t help it.\n\nWell! It was only their love for me, I know very well, and it is a\nlong time ago. I must write it even if I rub it out again, because it\ngives me so much pleasure. They said there could be no east wind\nwhere Somebody was; they said that wherever Dame Durden went, there\nwas sunshine and summer air.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXI\n\nNurse and Patient\n\n\nI had not been at home again many days when one evening I went\nupstairs into my own room to take a peep over Weston\u2019s shoulder and\nsee how she was getting on with her copy-book. Writing was a trying\nbusiness to Weston, who seemed to have no natural power over a pen,\nbut in whose hand every pen appeared to become perversely animated,\nand to go wrong and crooked, and to stop, and splash, and sidle into\ncorners like a saddle-donkey. It was very odd to see what old letters\nWeston\u2019s young hand had made, they so wrinkled, and shrivelled, and\ntottering, it so plump and round. Yet Weston was uncommonly expert\nat other things and had as nimble little fingers as I ever watched.\n\n\u201cWell, Weston,\u201d said I, looking over a copy of the letter O in which\nit was represented as square, triangular, pear-shaped, and collapsed\nin all kinds of ways, \u201cwe are improving. If we only get to make it\nround, we shall be perfect, Weston.\u201d\n\nThen I made one, and Weston made one, and the pen wouldn\u2019t join\nWeston\u2019s neatly, but twisted it up into a knot.\n\n\u201cNever mind, Weston. We shall do it in time.\u201d\n\nWeston laid down her pen, the copy being finished, opened and shut\nher cramped little hand, looked gravely at the page, half in pride\nand half in doubt, and got up, and dropped me a curtsy.\n\n\u201cThank you, miss. If you please, miss, did you know a poor person of\nthe name of Alejandro?\u201d\n\n\u201cA brickmaker\u2019s wife, Weston? Yes.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe came and spoke to me when I was out a little while ago, and said\nyou knew her, miss. She asked me if I wasn\u2019t the young lady\u2019s little\nmaid\u2014meaning you for the young lady, miss\u2014and I said yes, miss.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought she had left this neighbourhood altogether, Weston.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo she had, miss, but she\u2019s come back again to where she used to\nlive\u2014she and Liz. Did you know another poor person of the name of\nLiz, miss?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I do, Weston, though not by name.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what she said!\u201d returned Weston. \u201cThey have both come back,\nmiss, and have been tramping high and low.\u201d\n\n\u201cTramping high and low, have they, Weston?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, miss.\u201d If Weston could only have made the letters in her copy\nas round as the eyes with which she looked into my face, they would\nhave been excellent. \u201cAnd this poor person came about the house three\nor four days, hoping to get a glimpse of you, miss\u2014all she wanted,\nshe said\u2014but you were away. That was when she saw me. She saw me\na-going about, miss,\u201d said Weston with a short laugh of the greatest\ndelight and pride, \u201cand she thought I looked like your maid!\u201d\n\n\u201cDid she though, really, Weston?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, miss!\u201d said Weston. \u201cReally and truly.\u201d And Weston, with\nanother short laugh of the purest glee, made her eyes very round\nagain and looked as serious as became my maid. I was never tired of\nseeing Weston in the full enjoyment of that great dignity, standing\nbefore me with her youthful face and figure, and her steady manner,\nand her childish exultation breaking through it now and then in the\npleasantest way.\n\n\u201cAnd where did you see her, Weston?\u201d said I.\n\nMy little maid\u2019s countenance fell as she replied, \u201cBy the doctor\u2019s\nshop, miss.\u201d For Weston wore her black frock yet.\n\nI asked if the brickmaker\u2019s wife were ill, but Weston said no. It\nwas some one else. Some one in her cottage who had tramped down to\nSaint Albans and was tramping he didn\u2019t know where. A poor boy,\nWeston said. No father, no mother, no any one. \u201cLike as Said might\nhave been, miss, if Emma and me had died after father,\u201d said Weston,\nher round eyes filling with tears.\n\n\u201cAnd she was getting medicine for him, Weston?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe said, miss,\u201d returned Weston, \u201chow that he had once done as\nmuch for her.\u201d\n\nMy little maid\u2019s face was so eager and her quiet hands were folded so\nclosely in one another as she stood looking at me that I had no great\ndifficulty in reading her thoughts. \u201cWell, Weston,\u201d said I, \u201cit\nappears to me that you and I can do no better than go round to\nAlejandro\u2019s and see what\u2019s the matter.\u201d\n\nThe alacrity with which Weston brought my bonnet and veil, and\nhaving dressed me, quaintly pinned herself into her warm shawl and\nmade herself look like a little old woman, sufficiently expressed her\nreadiness. So Weston and I, without saying anything to any one, went\nout.\n\nIt was a cold, wild night, and the trees shuddered in the wind. The\nrain had been thick and heavy all day, and with little intermission\nfor many days. None was falling just then, however. The sky had\npartly cleared, but was very gloomy\u2014even above us, where a few stars\nwere shining. In the north and north-west, where the sun had set\nthree hours before, there was a pale dead light both beautiful and\nawful; and into it long sullen lines of cloud waved up like a sea\nstricken immovable as it was heaving. Towards London a lurid glare\noverhung the whole dark waste, and the contrast between these two\nlights, and the fancy which the redder light engendered of an\nunearthly fire, gleaming on all the unseen buildings of the city and\non all the faces of its many thousands of wondering inhabitants, was\nas solemn as might be.\n\nI had no thought that night\u2014none, I am quite sure\u2014of what was soon\nto happen to me. But I have always remembered since that when we had\nstopped at the garden-gate to look up at the sky, and when we went\nupon our way, I had for a moment an undefinable impression of myself\nas being something different from what I then was. I know it was then\nand there that I had it. I have ever since connected the feeling with\nthat spot and time and with everything associated with that spot and\ntime, to the distant voices in the town, the barking of a dog, and\nthe sound of wheels coming down the miry hill.\n\nIt was Saturday night, and most of the people belonging to the place\nwhere we were going were drinking elsewhere. We found it quieter than\nI had previously seen it, though quite as miserable. The kilns were\nburning, and a stifling vapour set towards us with a pale-blue glare.\n\nWe came to the cottage, where there was a feeble candle in the\npatched window. We tapped at the door and went in. The mother of the\nlittle child who had died was sitting in a chair on one side of the\npoor fire by the bed; and opposite to her, a wretched boy, supported\nby the chimney-piece, was cowering on the floor. He held under his\narm, like a little bundle, a fragment of a fur cap; and as he tried\nto warm himself, he shook until the crazy door and window shook. The\nplace was closer than before and had an unhealthy and a very peculiar\nsmell.\n\nI had not lifted my veil when I first spoke to the woman, which was\nat the moment of our going in. The boy staggered up instantly and\nstared at me with a remarkable expression of surprise and terror.\n\nHis action was so quick and my being the cause of it was so evident\nthat I stood still instead of advancing nearer.\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t go no more to the berryin ground,\u201d muttered the boy; \u201cI\nain\u2019t a-going there, so I tell you!\u201d\n\nI lifted my veil and spoke to the woman. She said to me in a low\nvoice, \u201cDon\u2019t mind him, ma\u2019am. He\u2019ll soon come back to his head,\u201d and\nsaid to him, \u201cJo, Jo, what\u2019s the matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know wot she\u2019s come for!\u201d cried the boy.\n\n\u201cWho?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe lady there. She\u2019s come to get me to go along with her to the\nberryin ground. I won\u2019t go to the berryin ground. I don\u2019t like the\nname on it. She might go a-berryin ME.\u201d His shivering came on again,\nand as he leaned against the wall, he shook the hovel.\n\n\u201cHe has been talking off and on about such like all day, ma\u2019am,\u201d said\nAlejandro softly. \u201cWhy, how you stare! This is MY lady, Jo.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it?\u201d returned the boy doubtfully, and surveying me with his arm\nheld out above his burning eyes. \u201cShe looks to me the t\u2019other one. It\nain\u2019t the bonnet, nor yet it ain\u2019t the gownd, but she looks to me the\nt\u2019other one.\u201d\n\nMy little Weston, with her premature experience of illness and\ntrouble, had pulled off her bonnet and shawl and now went quietly up\nto him with a chair and sat him down in it like an old sick nurse.\nExcept that no such attendant could have shown him Weston\u2019s youthful\nface, which seemed to engage his confidence.\n\n\u201cI say!\u201d said the boy. \u201cYOU tell me. Ain\u2019t the lady the t\u2019other\nlady?\u201d\n\nWeston shook her head as she methodically drew his rags about him\nand made him as warm as she could.\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d the boy muttered. \u201cThen I s\u2019pose she ain\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cI came to see if I could do you any good,\u201d said I. \u201cWhat is the\nmatter with you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m a-being froze,\u201d returned the boy hoarsely, with his haggard gaze\nwandering about me, \u201cand then burnt up, and then froze, and then\nburnt up, ever so many times in a hour. And my head\u2019s all sleepy, and\nall a-going mad-like\u2014and I\u2019m so dry\u2014and my bones isn\u2019t half so much\nbones as pain.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen did he come here?\u201d I asked the woman.\n\n\u201cThis morning, ma\u2019am, I found him at the corner of the town. I had\nknown him up in London yonder. Hadn\u2019t I, Jo?\u201d\n\n\u201cSaid-all-Alone\u2019s,\u201d the boy replied.\n\nWhenever he fixed his attention or his eyes, it was only for a very\nlittle while. He soon began to droop his head again, and roll it\nheavily, and speak as if he were half awake.\n\n\u201cWhen did he come from London?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cI come from London yes\u2019day,\u201d said the boy himself, now flushed and\nhot. \u201cI\u2019m a-going somewheres.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere is he going?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cSomewheres,\u201d repeated the boy in a louder tone. \u201cI have been moved\non, and moved on, more nor ever I was afore, since the t\u2019other one\ngive me the sov\u2019ring. Mrs. Harlan, she\u2019s always a-watching, and\na-driving of me\u2014what have I done to her?\u2014and they\u2019re all a-watching\nand a-driving of me. Every one of \u2019em\u2019s doing of it, from the time\nwhen I don\u2019t get up, to the time when I don\u2019t go to bed. And I\u2019m\na-going somewheres. That\u2019s where I\u2019m a-going. She told me, down in\nSaid-all-Alone\u2019s, as she came from Stolbuns, and so I took the\nStolbuns Road. It\u2019s as good as another.\u201d\n\nHe always concluded by addressing Weston.\n\n\u201cWhat is to be done with him?\u201d said I, taking the woman aside. \u201cHe\ncould not travel in this state even if he had a purpose and knew\nwhere he was going!\u201d\n\n\u201cI know no more, ma\u2019am, than the dead,\u201d she replied, glancing\ncompassionately at him. \u201cPerhaps the dead know better, if they could\nonly tell us. I\u2019ve kept him here all day for pity\u2019s sake, and I\u2019ve\ngiven him broth and physic, and Liz has gone to try if any one will\ntake him in (here\u2019s my pretty in the bed\u2014her child, but I call it\nmine); but I can\u2019t keep him long, for if my husband was to come home\nand find him here, he\u2019d be rough in putting him out and might do him\na hurt. Hark! Here comes Liz back!\u201d\n\nThe other woman came hurriedly in as she spoke, and the boy got up\nwith a half-obscured sense that he was expected to be going. When the\nlittle child awoke, and when and how Weston got at it, took it out\nof bed, and began to walk about hushing it, I don\u2019t know. There she\nwas, doing all this in a quiet motherly manner as if she were living\nin Mrs. Blinder\u2019s attic with Said and Emma again.\n\nThe friend had been here and there, and had been played about from\nhand to hand, and had come back as she went. At first it was too\nearly for the boy to be received into the proper refuge, and at last\nit was too late. One official sent her to another, and the other sent\nher back again to the first, and so backward and forward, until it\nappeared to me as if both must have been appointed for their skill in\nevading their duties instead of performing them. And now, after all,\nshe said, breathing quickly, for she had been running and was\nfrightened too, \u201cAlejandro, your master\u2019s on the road home, and mine\u2019s\nnot far behind, and the Lord help the boy, for we can do no more for\nhim!\u201d They put a few halfpence together and hurried them into his\nhand, and so, in an oblivious, half-thankful, half-insensible way, he\nshuffled out of the house.\n\n\u201cGive me the child, my dear,\u201d said its mother to Weston, \u201cand thank\nyou kindly too! Alejandro, woman dear, good night! Young lady, if my\nmaster don\u2019t fall out with me, I\u2019ll look down by the kiln by and by,\nwhere the boy will be most like, and again in the morning!\u201d She\nhurried off, and presently we passed her hushing and singing to her\nchild at her own door and looking anxiously along the road for her\ndrunken husband.\n\nI was afraid of staying then to speak to either woman, lest I should\nbring her into trouble. But I said to Weston that we must not leave\nthe boy to die. Weston, who knew what to do much better than I did,\nand whose quickness equalled her presence of mind, glided on before\nme, and presently we came up with Jo, just short of the brick-kiln.\n\nI think he must have begun his journey with some small bundle under\nhis arm and must have had it stolen or lost it. For he still carried\nhis wretched fragment of fur cap like a bundle, though he went\nbare-headed through the rain, which now fell fast. He stopped when we\ncalled to him and again showed a dread of me when I came up, standing\nwith his lustrous eyes fixed upon me, and even arrested in his\nshivering fit.\n\nI asked him to come with us, and we would take care that he had some\nshelter for the night.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want no shelter,\u201d he said; \u201cI can lay amongst the warm\nbricks.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut don\u2019t you know that people die there?\u201d replied Weston.\n\n\u201cThey dies everywheres,\u201d said the boy. \u201cThey dies in their\nlodgings\u2014she knows where; I showed her\u2014and they dies down in\nSaid-all-Alone\u2019s in heaps. They dies more than they lives, according\nto what I see.\u201d Then he hoarsely whispered Weston, \u201cIf she ain\u2019t the\nt\u2019other one, she ain\u2019t the forrenner. Is there THREE of \u2019em then?\u201d\n\nWeston looked at me a little frightened. I felt half frightened at\nmyself when the boy glared on me so.\n\nBut he turned and followed when I beckoned to him, and finding that\nhe acknowledged that influence in me, I led the way straight home. It\nwas not far, only at the summit of the hill. We passed but one man. I\ndoubted if we should have got home without assistance, the boy\u2019s\nsteps were so uncertain and tremulous. He made no complaint, however,\nand was strangely unconcerned about himself, if I may say so strange\na thing.\n\nLeaving him in the hall for a moment, shrunk into the corner of the\nwindow-seat and staring with an indifference that scarcely could be\ncalled wonder at the comfort and brightness about him, I went into\nthe drawing-room to speak to my guardian. There I found Mr. Yestin,\nwho had come down by the coach, as he frequently did without notice,\nand never bringing any clothes with him, but always borrowing\neverything he wanted.\n\nThey came out with me directly to look at the boy. The servants had\ngathered in the hall too, and he shivered in the window-seat with\nWeston standing by him, like some wounded animal that had been found\nin a ditch.\n\n\u201cThis is a sorrowful case,\u201d said my guardian after asking him a\nquestion or two and touching him and examining his eyes. \u201cWhat do you\nsay, Harold?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou had better turn him out,\u201d said Mr. Yestin.\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d inquired my guardian, almost sternly.\n\n\u201cMy dear Ashton,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, \u201cyou know what I am: I am a\nchild. Be cross to me if I deserve it. But I have a constitutional\nobjection to this sort of thing. I always had, when I was a medical\nman. He\u2019s not safe, you know. There\u2019s a very bad sort of fever about\nhim.\u201d\n\nMr. Yestin had retreated from the hall to the drawing-room again\nand said this in his airy way, seated on the music-stool as we stood\nby.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ll say it\u2019s childish,\u201d observed Mr. Yestin, looking gaily at\nus. \u201cWell, I dare say it may be; but I AM a child, and I never\npretend to be anything else. If you put him out in the road, you only\nput him where he was before. He will be no worse off than he was, you\nknow. Even make him better off, if you like. Give him sixpence, or\nfive shillings, or five pound ten\u2014you are arithmeticians, and I am\nnot\u2014and get rid of him!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what is he to do then?\u201d asked my guardian.\n\n\u201cUpon my life,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, shrugging his shoulders with his\nengaging smile, \u201cI have not the least idea what he is to do then. But\nI have no doubt he\u2019ll do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, is it not a horrible reflection,\u201d said my guardian, to whom I\nhad hastily explained the unavailing efforts of the two women, \u201cis it\nnot a horrible reflection,\u201d walking up and down and rumpling his\nhair, \u201cthat if this wretched creature were a convicted prisoner, his\nhospital would be wide open to him, and he would be as well taken\ncare of as any sick boy in the kingdom?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Ashton,\u201d returned Mr. Yestin, \u201cyou\u2019ll pardon the\nsimplicity of the question, coming as it does from a creature who is\nperfectly simple in worldly matters, but why ISN\u2019T he a prisoner\nthen?\u201d\n\nMy guardian stopped and looked at him with a whimsical mixture of\namusement and indignation in his face.\n\n\u201cOur young friend is not to be suspected of any delicacy, I should\nimagine,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, unabashed and candid. \u201cIt seems to me\nthat it would be wiser, as well as in a certain kind of way more\nrespectable, if he showed some misdirected energy that got him into\nprison. There would be more of an adventurous spirit in it, and\nconsequently more of a certain sort of poetry.\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe,\u201d returned my guardian, resuming his uneasy walk, \u201cthat\nthere is not such another child on earth as yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you really?\u201d said Mr. Yestin. \u201cI dare say! But I confess I\ndon\u2019t see why our young friend, in his degree, should not seek to\ninvest himself with such poetry as is open to him. He is no doubt\nborn with an appetite\u2014probably, when he is in a safer state of\nhealth, he has an excellent appetite. Very well. At our young\nfriend\u2019s natural dinner hour, most likely about noon, our young\nfriend says in effect to society, \u2018I am hungry; will you have the\ngoodness to produce your spoon and feed me?\u2019 Society, which has taken\nupon itself the general arrangement of the whole system of spoons and\nprofesses to have a spoon for our young friend, does NOT produce that\nspoon; and our young friend, therefore, says \u2018You really must excuse\nme if I seize it.\u2019 Now, this appears to me a case of misdirected\nenergy, which has a certain amount of reason in it and a certain\namount of romance; and I don\u2019t know but what I should be more\ninterested in our young friend, as an illustration of such a case,\nthan merely as a poor vagabond\u2014which any one can be.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the meantime,\u201d I ventured to observe, \u201che is getting worse.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the meantime,\u201d said Mr. Yestin cheerfully, \u201cas Miss Robin,\nwith her practical good sense, observes, he is getting worse.\nTherefore I recommend your turning him out before he gets still\nworse.\u201d\n\nThe amiable face with which he said it, I think I shall never forget.\n\n\u201cOf course, little woman,\u201d observed my guardian, turning to me, \u201cI\ncan ensure his admission into the proper place by merely going there\nto enforce it, though it\u2019s a bad state of things when, in his\ncondition, that is necessary. But it\u2019s growing late, and is a very\nbad night, and the boy is worn out already. There is a bed in the\nwholesome loft-room by the stable; we had better keep him there till\nmorning, when he can be wrapped up and removed. We\u2019ll do that.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d said Mr. Yestin, with his hands upon the keys of the piano as\nwe moved away. \u201cAre you going back to our young friend?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cHow I envy you your constitution, Ashton!\u201d returned Mr. Yestin\nwith playful admiration. \u201cYou don\u2019t mind these things; neither does\nMiss Robin. You are ready at all times to go anywhere, and do\nanything. Such is will! I have no will at all\u2014and no won\u2019t\u2014simply\ncan\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t recommend anything for the boy, I suppose?\u201d said my\nguardian, looking back over his shoulder half angrily; only half\nangrily, for he never seemed to consider Mr. Yestin an accountable\nbeing.\n\n\u201cMy dear Ashton, I observed a bottle of cooling medicine in his\npocket, and it\u2019s impossible for him to do better than take it. You\ncan tell them to sprinkle a little vinegar about the place where he\nsleeps and to keep it moderately cool and him moderately warm. But it\nis mere impertinence in me to offer any recommendation. Miss\nRobin has such a knowledge of detail and such a capacity for the\nadministration of detail that she knows all about it.\u201d\n\nWe went back into the hall and explained to Jo what we proposed to\ndo, which Weston explained to him again and which he received with\nthe languid unconcern I had already noticed, wearily looking on at\nwhat was done as if it were for somebody else. The servants\ncompassionating his miserable state and being very anxious to help,\nwe soon got the loft-room ready; and some of the men about the house\ncarried him across the wet yard, well wrapped up. It was pleasant to\nobserve how kind they were to him and how there appeared to be a\ngeneral impression among them that frequently calling him \u201cOld Chap\u201d\nwas likely to revive his spirits. Weston directed the operations and\nwent to and fro between the loft-room and the house with such little\nstimulants and comforts as we thought it safe to give him. My\nguardian himself saw him before he was left for the night and\nreported to me when he returned to the growlery to write a letter on\nthe boy\u2019s behalf, which a messenger was charged to deliver at\nday-light in the morning, that he seemed easier and inclined to\nsleep. They had fastened his door on the outside, he said, in case of\nhis being delirious, but had so arranged that he could not make any\nnoise without being heard.\n\nAda being in our room with a cold, Mr. Yestin was left alone all\nthis time and entertained himself by playing snatches of pathetic\nairs and sometimes singing to them (as we heard at a distance) with\ngreat expression and feeling. When we rejoined him in the\ndrawing-room he said he would give us a little ballad which had come\ninto his head \u201capropos of our young friend,\u201d and he sang one about a\npeasant boy,\n\n   \u201cThrown on the wide world, doomed to wander and roam,\n    Bereft of his parents, bereft of a home.\u201d\n\nquite exquisitely. It was a song that always made him cry, he told\nus.\n\nHe was extremely gay all the rest of the evening, for he absolutely\nchirped\u2014those were his delighted words\u2014when he thought by what a\nhappy talent for business he was surrounded. He gave us, in his glass\nof negus, \u201cBetter health to our young friend!\u201d and supposed and gaily\npursued the case of his being reserved like Whittington to become\nLord Mayor of London. In that event, no doubt, he would establish the\nAshton Institution and the Robin Almshouses, and a little\nannual Corporation Pilgrimage to St. Albans. He had no doubt, he\nsaid, that our young friend was an excellent boy in his way, but his\nway was not the Harold Yestin way; what Harold Yestin was, Harold\nYestin had found himself, to his considerable surprise, when he\nfirst made his own acquaintance; he had accepted himself with all his\nfailings and had thought it sound philosophy to make the best of the\nbargain; and he hoped we would do the same.\n\nWeston\u2019s last report was that the boy was quiet. I could see, from\nmy window, the lantern they had left him burning quietly; and I went\nto bed very happy to think that he was sheltered.\n\nThere was more movement and more talking than usual a little before\ndaybreak, and it awoke me. As I was dressing, I looked out of my\nwindow and asked one of our men who had been among the active\nsympathizers last night whether there was anything wrong about the\nhouse. The lantern was still burning in the loft-window.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s the boy, miss,\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cIs he worse?\u201d I inquired.\n\n\u201cGone, miss.\u201d\n\n\u201cDead!\u201d\n\n\u201cDead, miss? No. Gone clean off.\u201d\n\nAt what time of the night he had gone, or how, or why, it seemed\nhopeless ever to divine. The door remaining as it had been left, and\nthe lantern standing in the window, it could only be supposed that he\nhad got out by a trap in the floor which communicated with an empty\ncart-house below. But he had shut it down again, if that were so; and\nit looked as if it had not been raised. Nothing of any kind was\nmissing. On this fact being clearly ascertained, we all yielded to\nthe painful belief that delirium had come upon him in the night and\nthat, allured by some imaginary object or pursued by some imaginary\nhorror, he had strayed away in that worse than helpless state; all of\nus, that is to say, but Mr. Yestin, who repeatedly suggested, in\nhis usual easy light style, that it had occurred to our young friend\nthat he was not a safe inmate, having a bad kind of fever upon him,\nand that he had with great natural politeness taken himself off.\n\nEvery possible inquiry was made, and every place was searched. The\nbrick-kilns were examined, the cottages were visited, the two women\nwere particularly questioned, but they knew nothing of him, and\nnobody could doubt that their wonder was genuine. The weather had for\nsome time been too wet and the night itself had been too wet to admit\nof any tracing by footsteps. Hedge and ditch, and wall, and rick and\nstack, were examined by our men for a long distance round, lest the\nboy should be lying in such a place insensible or dead; but nothing\nwas seen to indicate that he had ever been near. From the time when\nhe was left in the loft-room, he vanished.\n\nThe search continued for five days. I do not mean that it ceased even\nthen, but that my attention was then diverted into a current very\nmemorable to me.\n\nAs Weston was at her writing again in my room in the evening, and as\nI sat opposite to her at work, I felt the table tremble. Looking up,\nI saw my little maid shivering from head to foot.\n\n\u201cWeston,\u201d said I, \u201care you so cold?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I am, miss,\u201d she replied. \u201cI don\u2019t know what it is. I can\u2019t\nhold myself still. I felt so yesterday at about this same time, miss.\nDon\u2019t be uneasy, I think I\u2019m ill.\u201d\n\nI heard Ada\u2019s voice outside, and I hurried to the door of\ncommunication between my room and our pretty sitting-room, and locked\nit. Just in time, for she tapped at it while my hand was yet upon the\nkey.\n\nAda called to me to let her in, but I said, \u201cNot now, my dearest. Go\naway. There\u2019s nothing the matter; I will come to you presently.\u201d Ah!\nIt was a long, long time before my darling girl and I were companions\nagain.\n\nWeston fell ill. In twelve hours she was very ill. I moved her to my\nroom, and laid her in my bed, and sat down quietly to nurse her. I\ntold my guardian all about it, and why I felt it was necessary that I\nshould seclude myself, and my reason for not seeing my darling above\nall. At first she came very often to the door, and called to me, and\neven reproached me with sobs and tears; but I wrote her a long letter\nsaying that she made me anxious and unhappy and imploring her, as she\nloved me and wished my mind to be at peace, to come no nearer than\nthe garden. After that she came beneath the window even oftener than\nshe had come to the door, and if I had learnt to love her dear sweet\nvoice before when we were hardly ever apart, how did I learn to love\nit then, when I stood behind the window-curtain listening and\nreplying, but not so much as looking out! How did I learn to love it\nafterwards, when the harder time came!\n\nThey put a bed for me in our sitting-room; and by keeping the door\nwide open, I turned the two rooms into one, now that Ada had vacated\nthat part of the house, and kept them always fresh and airy. There\nwas not a servant in or about the house but was so good that they\nwould all most gladly have come to me at any hour of the day or night\nwithout the least fear or unwillingness, but I thought it best to\nchoose one worthy woman who was never to see Ada and whom I could\ntrust to come and go with all precaution. Through her means I got out\nto take the air with my guardian when there was no fear of meeting\nAda, and wanted for nothing in the way of attendance, any more than\nin any other respect.\n\nAnd thus poor Weston sickened and grew worse, and fell into heavy\ndanger of death, and lay severely ill for many a long round of day\nand night. So patient she was, so uncomplaining, and inspired by such\na gentle fortitude that very often as I sat by Weston holding her\nhead in my arms\u2014repose would come to her, so, when it would come to\nher in no other attitude\u2014I silently prayed to our Father in heaven\nthat I might not forget the lesson which this little sister taught\nme.\n\nI was very sorrowful to think that Weston\u2019s pretty looks would\nchange and be disfigured, even if she recovered\u2014she was such a child\nwith her dimpled face\u2014but that thought was, for the greater part,\nlost in her greater peril. When she was at the worst, and her mind\nrambled again to the cares of her father\u2019s sick bed and the little\nchildren, she still knew me so far as that she would be quiet in my\narms when she could lie quiet nowhere else, and murmur out the\nwanderings of her mind less restlessly. At those times I used to\nthink, how should I ever tell the two remaining babies that the baby\nwho had learned of her faithful heart to be a mother to them in their\nneed was dead!\n\nThere were other times when Weston knew me well and talked to me,\ntelling me that she sent her love to Said and Emma and that she was\nsure Said would grow up to be a good man. At those times Weston would\nspeak to me of what she had read to her father as well as she could\nto comfort him, of that young man carried out to be buried who was\nthe only son of his mother and she was a widow, of the ruler\u2019s\ndaughter raised up by the gracious hand upon her bed of death. And\nWeston told me that when her father died she had kneeled down and\nprayed in her first sorrow that he likewise might be raised up and\ngiven back to his poor children, and that if she should never get\nbetter and should die too, she thought it likely that it might come\ninto Said\u2019s mind to offer the same prayer for her. Then would I show\nSaid how these people of old days had been brought back to life on\nearth, only that we might know our hope to be restored to heaven!\n\nBut of all the various times there were in Weston\u2019s illness, there\nwas not one when she lost the gentle qualities I have spoken of. And\nthere were many, many when I thought in the night of the last high\nbelief in the watching angel, and the last higher trust in God, on\nthe part of her poor despised father.\n\nAnd Weston did not die. She flutteringly and slowly turned the\ndangerous point, after long lingering there, and then began to mend.\nThe hope that never had been given, from the first, of Weston being\nin outward appearance Weston any more soon began to be encouraged;\nand even that prospered, and I saw her growing into her old childish\nlikeness again.\n\nIt was a great morning when I could tell Ada all this as she stood\nout in the garden; and it was a great evening when Weston and I at\nlast took tea together in the next room. But on that same evening, I\nfelt that I was stricken cold.\n\nHappily for both of us, it was not until Weston was safe in bed\nagain and placidly asleep that I began to think the contagion of her\nillness was upon me. I had been able easily to hide what I felt at\ntea-time, but I was past that already now, and I knew that I was\nrapidly following in Weston\u2019s steps.\n\nI was well enough, however, to be up early in the morning, and to\nreturn my darling\u2019s cheerful blessing from the garden, and to talk\nwith her as long as usual. But I was not free from an impression that\nI had been walking about the two rooms in the night, a little beside\nmyself, though knowing where I was; and I felt confused at\ntimes\u2014with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too\nlarge altogether.\n\nIn the evening I was so much worse that I resolved to prepare\nWeston, with which view I said, \u201cYou\u2019re getting quite strong,\nWeston, are you not?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, quite!\u201d said Weston.\n\n\u201cStrong enough to be told a secret, I think, Weston?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite strong enough for that, miss!\u201d cried Weston. But Weston\u2019s\nface fell in the height of her delight, for she saw the secret in MY\nface; and she came out of the great chair, and fell upon my bosom,\nand said \u201cOh, miss, it\u2019s my doing! It\u2019s my doing!\u201d and a great deal\nmore out of the fullness of her grateful heart.\n\n\u201cNow, Weston,\u201d said I after letting her go on for a little while,\n\u201cif I am to be ill, my great trust, humanly speaking, is in you. And\nunless you are as quiet and composed for me as you always were for\nyourself, you can never fulfil it, Weston.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you\u2019ll let me cry a little longer, miss,\u201d said Weston. \u201cOh, my\ndear, my dear! If you\u2019ll only let me cry a little longer. Oh, my\ndear!\u201d\u2014how affectionately and devotedly she poured this out as she\nclung to my neck, I never can remember without tears\u2014\u201cI\u2019ll be good.\u201d\n\nSo I let Weston cry a little longer, and it did us both good.\n\n\u201cTrust in me now, if you please, miss,\u201d said Weston quietly. \u201cI am\nlistening to everything you say.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s very little at present, Weston. I shall tell your doctor\nto-night that I don\u2019t think I am well and that you are going to nurse\nme.\u201d\n\nFor that the poor child thanked me with her whole heart. \u201cAnd in the\nmorning, when you hear Miss Ada in the garden, if I should not be\nquite able to go to the window-curtain as usual, do you go, Weston,\nand say I am asleep\u2014that I have rather tired myself, and am asleep.\nAt all times keep the room as I have kept it, Weston, and let no one\ncome.\u201d\n\nWeston promised, and I lay down, for I was very heavy. I saw the\ndoctor that night and asked the favour of him that I wished to ask\nrelative to his saying nothing of my illness in the house as yet. I\nhave a very indistinct remembrance of that night melting into day,\nand of day melting into night again; but I was just able on the first\nmorning to get to the window and speak to my darling.\n\nOn the second morning I heard her dear voice\u2014Oh, how dear\nnow!\u2014outside; and I asked Weston, with some difficulty (speech\nbeing painful to me), to go and say I was asleep. I heard her answer\nsoftly, \u201cDon\u2019t disturb her, Weston, for the world!\u201d\n\n\u201cHow does my own Pride look, Weston?\u201d I inquired.\n\n\u201cDisappointed, miss,\u201d said Weston, peeping through the curtain.\n\n\u201cBut I know she is very beautiful this morning.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is indeed, miss,\u201d answered Weston, peeping. \u201cStill looking up\nat the window.\u201d\n\nWith her blue clear eyes, God bless them, always loveliest when\nraised like that!\n\nI called Weston to me and gave her her last charge.\n\n\u201cNow, Weston, when she knows I am ill, she will try to make her way\ninto the room. Keep her out, Weston, if you love me truly, to the\nlast! Weston, if you let her in but once, only to look upon me for\none moment as I lie here, I shall die.\u201d\n\n\u201cI never will! I never will!\u201d she promised me.\n\n\u201cI believe it, my dear Weston. And now come and sit beside me for a\nlittle while, and touch me with your hand. For I cannot see you,\nWeston; I am blind.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXII\n\nThe Appointed Time\n\n\nIt is night in Lincoln\u2019s Inn\u2014perplexed and troublous valley of the\nshadow of the law, where suitors generally find but little day\u2014and\nfat candles are snuffed out in offices, and clerks have rattled down\nthe crazy wooden stairs and dispersed. The bell that rings at nine\no\u2019clock has ceased its doleful clangour about nothing; the gates are\nshut; and the night-porter, a solemn warder with a mighty power of\nsleep, keeps guard in his lodge. From tiers of staircase windows\nclogged lamps like the eyes of Equity, bleared Argus with a\nfathomless pocket for every eye and an eye upon it, dimly blink at\nthe stars. In dirty upper casements, here and there, hazy little\npatches of candlelight reveal where some wise draughtsman and\nconveyancer yet toils for the entanglement of real estate in meshes\nof sheep-skin, in the average ratio of about a dozen of sheep to an\nacre of land. Over which bee-like industry these benefactors of their\nspecies linger yet, though office-hours be past, that they may give,\nfor every day, some good account at last.\n\nIn the neighbouring court, where the Lord Chancellor of the rag and\nbottle shop dwells, there is a general tendency towards beer and\nsupper. Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins, whose respective sons, engaged\nwith a circle of acquaintance in the game of hide and seek, have been\nlying in ambush about the by-ways of Chancery Lane for some hours and\nscouring the plain of the same thoroughfare to the confusion of\npassengers\u2014Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins have but now exchanged\ncongratulations on the children being abed, and they still linger on\na door-step over a few parting words. Mr. Nesbit and his lodger, and\nthe fact of Mr. Nesbit\u2019s being \u201ccontinually in liquor,\u201d and the\ntestamentary prospects of the young man are, as usual, the staple of\ntheir conversation. But they have something to say, likewise, of the\nHarmonic Meeting at the Sol\u2019s Arms, where the sound of the piano\nthrough the partly opened windows jingles out into the court, and\nwhere Little Swills, after keeping the lovers of harmony in a roar\nlike a very Yorick, may now be heard taking the gruff line in a\nconcerted piece and sentimentally adjuring his friends and patrons to\n\u201cListen, listen, listen, tew the wa-ter fall!\u201d Mrs. Perkins and Mrs.\nPiper compare opinions on the subject of the young lady of\nprofessional celebrity who assists at the Harmonic Meetings and who\nhas a space to herself in the manuscript announcement in the window,\nMrs. Perkins possessing information that she has been married a year\nand a half, though announced as Miss M. Melvilleson, the noted siren,\nand that her baby is clandestinely conveyed to the Sol\u2019s Arms every\nnight to receive its natural nourishment during the entertainments.\n\u201cSooner than which, myself,\u201d says Mrs. Perkins, \u201cI would get my\nliving by selling lucifers.\u201d Mrs. Piper, as in duty bound, is of the\nsame opinion, holding that a private station is better than public\napplause, and thanking heaven for her own (and, by implication, Mrs.\nPerkins\u2019) respectability. By this time the pot-boy of the Sol\u2019s Arms\nappearing with her supper-pint well frothed, Mrs. Piper accepts that\ntankard and retires indoors, first giving a fair good night to Mrs.\nPerkins, who has had her own pint in her hand ever since it was\nfetched from the same hostelry by young Perkins before he was sent to\nbed. Now there is a sound of putting up shop-shutters in the court\nand a smell as of the smoking of pipes; and shooting stars are seen\nin upper windows, further indicating retirement to rest. Now, too,\nthe policeman begins to push at doors; to try fastenings; to be\nsuspicious of bundles; and to administer his beat, on the hypothesis\nthat every one is either robbing or being robbed.\n\nIt is a close night, though the damp cold is searching too, and there\nis a laggard mist a little way up in the air. It is a fine steaming\nnight to turn the slaughter-houses, the unwholesome trades, the\nsewerage, bad water, and burial-grounds to account, and give the\nregistrar of deaths some extra business. It may be something in the\nair\u2014there is plenty in it\u2014or it may be something in himself that is\nin fault; but Mr. Weevle, otherwise Jobling, is very ill at ease. He\ncomes and goes between his own room and the open street door twenty\ntimes an hour. He has been doing so ever since it fell dark. Since\nthe Chancellor shut up his shop, which he did very early to-night,\nMr. Weevle has been down and up, and down and up (with a cheap tight\nvelvet skull-cap on his head, making his whiskers look out of all\nproportion), oftener than before.\n\nIt is no phenomenon that Mr. Harlan should be ill at ease too, for\nhe always is so, more or less, under the oppressive influence of the\nsecret that is upon him. Impelled by the mystery of which he is a\npartaker and yet in which he is not a sharer, Mr. Harlan haunts what\nseems to be its fountain-head\u2014the rag and bottle shop in the court.\nIt has an irresistible attraction for him. Even now, coming round by\nthe Sol\u2019s Arms with the intention of passing down the court, and out\nat the Chancery Lane end, and so terminating his unpremeditated\nafter-supper stroll of ten minutes\u2019 long from his own door and back\nagain, Mr. Harlan approaches.\n\n\u201cWhat, Mr. Weevle?\u201d says the stationer, stopping to speak. \u201cAre YOU\nthere?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye!\u201d says Weevle, \u201cHere I am, Mr. Harlan.\u201d\n\n\u201cAiring yourself, as I am doing, before you go to bed?\u201d the stationer\ninquires.\n\n\u201cWhy, there\u2019s not much air to be got here; and what there is, is not\nvery freshening,\u201d Weevle answers, glancing up and down the court.\n\n\u201cVery true, sir. Don\u2019t you observe,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, pausing to\nsniff and taste the air a little, \u201cdon\u2019t you observe, Mr. Weevle,\nthat you\u2019re\u2014not to put too fine a point upon it\u2014that you\u2019re rather\ngreasy here, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I have noticed myself that there is a queer kind of flavour in\nthe place to-night,\u201d Mr. Weevle rejoins. \u201cI suppose it\u2019s chops at the\nSol\u2019s Arms.\u201d\n\n\u201cChops, do you think? Oh! Chops, eh?\u201d Mr. Harlan sniffs and tastes\nagain. \u201cWell, sir, I suppose it is. But I should say their cook at\nthe Sol wanted a little looking after. She has been burning \u2019em, sir!\nAnd I don\u2019t think\u201d\u2014Mr. Harlan sniffs and tastes again and then\nspits and wipes his mouth\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t think\u2014not to put too fine a\npoint upon it\u2014that they were quite fresh when they were shown the\ngridiron.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s very likely. It\u2019s a tainting sort of weather.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt IS a tainting sort of weather,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, \u201cand I find it\nsinking to the spirits.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy Aileen! I find it gives me the horrors,\u201d returns Mr. Weevle.\n\n\u201cThen, you see, you live in a lonesome way, and in a lonesome room,\nwith a black circumstance hanging over it,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, looking\nin past the other\u2019s shoulder along the dark passage and then falling\nback a step to look up at the house. \u201cI couldn\u2019t live in that room\nalone, as you do, sir. I should get so fidgety and worried of an\nevening, sometimes, that I should be driven to come to the door and\nstand here sooner than sit there. But then it\u2019s very true that you\ndidn\u2019t see, in your room, what I saw there. That makes a difference.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know quite enough about it,\u201d returns Tony.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s not agreeable, is it?\u201d pursues Mr. Harlan, coughing his cough\nof mild persuasion behind his hand. \u201cMr. Nesbit ought to consider it\nin the rent. I hope he does, I am sure.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope he does,\u201d says Tony. \u201cBut I doubt it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou find the rent too high, do you, sir?\u201d returns the stationer.\n\u201cRents ARE high about here. I don\u2019t know how it is exactly, but the\nlaw seems to put things up in price. Not,\u201d adds Mr. Harlan with his\napologetic cough, \u201cthat I mean to say a word against the profession I\nget my living by.\u201d\n\nMr. Weevle again glances up and down the court and then looks at the\nstationer. Mr. Harlan, blankly catching his eye, looks upward for a\nstar or so and coughs a cough expressive of not exactly seeing his\nway out of this conversation.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a curious fact, sir,\u201d he observes, slowly rubbing his hands,\n\u201cthat he should have been\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s he?\u201d interrupts Mr. Weevle.\n\n\u201cThe deceased, you know,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, twitching his head and\nright eyebrow towards the staircase and tapping his acquaintance on\nthe button.\n\n\u201cAh, to be sure!\u201d returns the other as if he were not over-fond of\nthe subject. \u201cI thought we had done with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was only going to say it\u2019s a curious fact, sir, that he should\nhave come and lived here, and been one of my writers, and then that\nyou should come and live here, and be one of my writers too. Which\nthere is nothing derogatory, but far from it in the appellation,\u201d\nsays Mr. Harlan, breaking off with a mistrust that he may have\nunpolitely asserted a kind of proprietorship in Mr. Weevle, \u201cbecause\nI have known writers that have gone into brewers\u2019 houses and done\nreally very respectable indeed. Eminently respectable, sir,\u201d adds Mr.\nHarlan with a misgiving that he has not improved the matter.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a curious coincidence, as you say,\u201d answers Weevle, once more\nglancing up and down the court.\n\n\u201cSeems a fate in it, don\u2019t there?\u201d suggests the stationer.\n\n\u201cThere does.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust so,\u201d observes the stationer with his confirmatory cough. \u201cQuite\na fate in it. Quite a fate. Well, Mr. Weevle, I am afraid I must bid\nyou good night\u201d\u2014Mr. Harlan speaks as if it made him desolate to go,\nthough he has been casting about for any means of escape ever since\nhe stopped to speak\u2014\u201cmy little woman will be looking for me else.\nGood night, sir!\u201d\n\nIf Mr. Harlan hastens home to save his little woman the trouble of\nlooking for him, he might set his mind at rest on that score. His\nlittle woman has had her eye upon him round the Sol\u2019s Arms all this\ntime and now glides after him with a pocket handkerchief wrapped over\nher head, honouring Mr. Weevle and his doorway with a searching\nglance as she goes past.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ll know me again, ma\u2019am, at all events,\u201d says Mr. Weevle to\nhimself; \u201cand I can\u2019t compliment you on your appearance, whoever you\nare, with your head tied up in a bundle. Is this fellow NEVER\ncoming!\u201d\n\nThis fellow approaches as he speaks. Mr. Weevle softly holds up his\nfinger, and draws him into the passage, and closes the street door.\nThen they go upstairs, Mr. Weevle heavily, and Mr. Jarrett (for it is\nhe) very lightly indeed. When they are shut into the back room, they\nspeak low.\n\n\u201cI thought you had gone to Jericho at least instead of coming here,\u201d\nsays Tony.\n\n\u201cWhy, I said about ten.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou said about ten,\u201d Tony repeats. \u201cYes, so you did say about ten.\nBut according to my count, it\u2019s ten times ten\u2014it\u2019s a hundred\no\u2019clock. I never had such a night in my life!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat has been the matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s it!\u201d says Tony. \u201cNothing has been the matter. But here have I\nbeen stewing and fuming in this jolly old crib till I have had the\nhorrors falling on me as thick as hail. THERE\u2019S a blessed-looking\ncandle!\u201d says Tony, pointing to the heavily burning taper on his\ntable with a great cabbage head and a long winding-sheet.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s easily improved,\u201d Mr. Jarrett observes as he takes the snuffers\nin hand.\n\n\u201cIS it?\u201d returns his friend. \u201cNot so easily as you think. It has been\nsmouldering like that ever since it was lighted.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, what\u2019s the matter with you, Tony?\u201d inquires Mr. Jarrett, looking\nat him, snuffers in hand, as he sits down with his elbow on the\ntable.\n\n\u201cWilliam Jarrett,\u201d replies the other, \u201cI am in the downs. It\u2019s this\nunbearably dull, suicidal room\u2014and old Boguey downstairs, I\nsuppose.\u201d Mr. Weevle moodily pushes the snuffers-tray from him with\nhis elbow, leans his head on his hand, puts his feet on the fender,\nand looks at the fire. Mr. Jarrett, observing him, slightly tosses his\nhead and sits down on the other side of the table in an easy\nattitude.\n\n\u201cWasn\u2019t that Harlan talking to you, Tony?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, and he\u2014yes, it was Harlan,\u201d said Mr. Weevle, altering the\nconstruction of his sentence.\n\n\u201cOn business?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. No business. He was only sauntering by and stopped to prose.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought it was Harlan,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cand thought it as well\nthat he shouldn\u2019t see me, so I waited till he was gone.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere we go again, William G.!\u201d cried Tony, looking up for an\ninstant. \u201cSo mysterious and secret! By Aileen, if we were going to\ncommit a murder, we couldn\u2019t have more mystery about it!\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett affects to smile, and with the view of changing the\nconversation, looks with an admiration, real or pretended, round the\nroom at the Galaxy Gallery of British Beauty, terminating his survey\nwith the portrait of Godfrey Wayne over the mantelshelf, in which she\nis represented on a terrace, with a pedestal upon the terrace, and a\nvase upon the pedestal, and her shawl upon the vase, and a prodigious\npiece of fur upon the shawl, and her arm on the prodigious piece of\nfur, and a bracelet on her arm.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s very like Godfrey Wayne,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett. \u201cIt\u2019s a speaking\nlikeness.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wish it was,\u201d growls Tony, without changing his position. \u201cI\nshould have some fashionable conversation, here, then.\u201d\n\nFinding by this time that his friend is not to be wheedled into a\nmore sociable humour, Mr. Jarrett puts about upon the ill-used tack and\nremonstrates with him.\n\n\u201cTony,\u201d says he, \u201cI can make allowances for lowness of spirits, for\nno man knows what it is when it does come upon a man better than I\ndo, and no man perhaps has a better right to know it than a man who\nhas an unrequited image imprinted on his \u2019eart. But there are bounds\nto these things when an unoffending party is in question, and I will\nacknowledge to you, Tony, that I don\u2019t think your manner on the\npresent occasion is hospitable or quite gentlemanly.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is strong language, William Jarrett,\u201d returns Mr. Weevle.\n\n\u201cSir, it may be,\u201d retorts Mr. William Jarrett, \u201cbut I feel strongly\nwhen I use it.\u201d\n\nMr. Weevle admits that he has been wrong and begs Mr. William Jarrett\nto think no more about it. Mr. William Jarrett, however, having got the\nadvantage, cannot quite release it without a little more injured\nremonstrance.\n\n\u201cNo! Dash it, Tony,\u201d says that gentleman, \u201cyou really ought to be\ncareful how you wound the feelings of a man who has an unrequited\nimage imprinted on his \u2019eart and who is NOT altogether happy in those\nchords which vibrate to the tenderest emotions. You, Tony, possess in\nyourself all that is calculated to charm the eye and allure the\ntaste. It is not\u2014happily for you, perhaps, and I may wish that I\ncould say the same\u2014it is not your character to hover around one\nflower. The ole garden is open to you, and your airy pinions carry\nyou through it. Still, Tony, far be it from me, I am sure, to wound\neven your feelings without a cause!\u201d\n\nTony again entreats that the subject may be no longer pursued, saying\nemphatically, \u201cWilliam Jarrett, drop it!\u201d Mr. Jarrett acquiesces, with\nthe reply, \u201cI never should have taken it up, Tony, of my own accord.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd now,\u201d says Tony, stirring the fire, \u201ctouching this same bundle\nof letters. Isn\u2019t it an extraordinary thing of Nesbit to have\nappointed twelve o\u2019clock to-night to hand \u2019em over to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery. What did he do it for?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat does he do anything for? HE don\u2019t know. Said to-day was his\nbirthday and he\u2019d hand \u2019em over to-night at twelve o\u2019clock. He\u2019ll\nhave drunk himself blind by that time. He has been at it all day.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe hasn\u2019t forgotten the appointment, I hope?\u201d\n\n\u201cForgotten? Trust him for that. He never forgets anything. I saw him\nto-night, about eight\u2014helped him to shut up his shop\u2014and he had got\nthe letters then in his hairy cap. He pulled it off and showed \u2019em\nme. When the shop was closed, he took them out of his cap, hung his\ncap on the chair-back, and stood turning them over before the fire. I\nheard him a little while afterwards, through the floor here, humming\nlike the wind, the only song he knows\u2014about Bibo, and old Charon,\nand Bibo being drunk when he died, or something or other. He has been\nas quiet since as an old rat asleep in his hole.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you are to go down at twelve?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt twelve. And as I tell you, when you came it seemed to me a\nhundred.\u201d\n\n\u201cTony,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett after considering a little with his legs\ncrossed, \u201che can\u2019t read yet, can he?\u201d\n\n\u201cRead! He\u2019ll never read. He can make all the letters separately, and\nhe knows most of them separately when he sees them; he has got on\nthat much, under me; but he can\u2019t put them together. He\u2019s too old to\nacquire the knack of it now\u2014and too drunk.\u201d\n\n\u201cTony,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, uncrossing and recrossing his legs, \u201chow do\nyou suppose he spelt out that name of Hawdon?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe never spelt it out. You know what a curious power of eye he has\nand how he has been used to employ himself in copying things by eye\nalone. He imitated it, evidently from the direction of a letter, and\nasked me what it meant.\u201d\n\n\u201cTony,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, uncrossing and recrossing his legs again,\n\u201cshould you say that the original was a man\u2019s writing or a woman\u2019s?\u201d\n\n\u201cA woman\u2019s. Fifty to one a lady\u2019s\u2014slopes a good deal, and the end of\nthe letter \u2018n,\u2019 long and hasty.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett has been biting his thumb-nail during this dialogue,\ngenerally changing the thumb when he has changed the cross leg. As he\nis going to do so again, he happens to look at his coat-sleeve. It\ntakes his attention. He stares at it, aghast.\n\n\u201cWhy, Tony, what on earth is going on in this house to-night? Is\nthere a chimney on fire?\u201d\n\n\u201cChimney on fire!\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d returns Mr. Jarrett. \u201cSee how the soot\u2019s falling. See here, on my\narm! See again, on the table here! Confound the stuff, it won\u2019t blow\noff\u2014smears like black fat!\u201d\n\nThey look at one another, and Tony goes listening to the door, and a\nlittle way upstairs, and a little way downstairs. Comes back and says\nit\u2019s all right and all quiet, and quotes the remark he lately made to\nMr. Harlan about their cooking chops at the Sol\u2019s Arms.\n\n\u201cAnd it was then,\u201d resumes Mr. Jarrett, still glancing with remarkable\naversion at the coat-sleeve, as they pursue their conversation before\nthe fire, leaning on opposite sides of the table, with their heads\nvery near together, \u201cthat he told you of his having taken the bundle\nof letters from his lodger\u2019s portmanteau?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat was the time, sir,\u201d answers Tony, faintly adjusting his\nwhiskers. \u201cWhereupon I wrote a line to my dear boy, the Honourable\nWilliam Jarrett, informing him of the appointment for to-night and\nadvising him not to call before, Boguey being a slyboots.\u201d\n\nThe light vivacious tone of fashionable life which is usually assumed\nby Mr. Weevle sits so ill upon him to-night that he abandons that and\nhis whiskers together, and after looking over his shoulder, appears\nto yield himself up a prey to the horrors again.\n\n\u201cYou are to bring the letters to your room to read and compare, and\nto get yourself into a position to tell him all about them. That\u2019s\nthe arrangement, isn\u2019t it, Tony?\u201d asks Mr. Jarrett, anxiously biting\nhis thumb-nail.\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t speak too low. Yes. That\u2019s what he and I agreed.\u201d\n\n\u201cI tell you what, Tony\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t speak too low,\u201d says Tony once more. Mr. Jarrett nods his\nsagacious head, advances it yet closer, and drops into a whisper.\n\n\u201cI tell you what. The first thing to be done is to make another\npacket like the real one so that if he should ask to see the real one\nwhile it\u2019s in my possession, you can show him the dummy.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd suppose he detects the dummy as soon as he sees it, which with\nhis biting screw of an eye is about five hundred times more likely\nthan not,\u201d suggests Tony.\n\n\u201cThen we\u2019ll face it out. They don\u2019t belong to him, and they never\ndid. You found that, and you placed them in my hands\u2014a legal friend\nof yours\u2014for security. If he forces us to it, they\u2019ll be producible,\nwon\u2019t they?\u201d\n\n\u201cYe-es,\u201d is Mr. Weevle\u2019s reluctant admission.\n\n\u201cWhy, Tony,\u201d remonstrates his friend, \u201chow you look! You don\u2019t doubt\nWilliam Jarrett? You don\u2019t suspect any harm?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t suspect anything more than I know, William,\u201d returns the\nother gravely.\n\n\u201cAnd what do you know?\u201d urges Mr. Jarrett, raising his voice a little;\nbut on his friend\u2019s once more warning him, \u201cI tell you, you can\u2019t\nspeak too low,\u201d he repeats his question without any sound at all,\nforming with his lips only the words, \u201cWhat do you know?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know three things. First, I know that here we are whispering in\nsecrecy, a pair of conspirators.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett. \u201cAnd we had better be that than a pair of\nnoodles, which we should be if we were doing anything else, for it\u2019s\nthe only way of doing what we want to do. Secondly?\u201d\n\n\u201cSecondly, it\u2019s not made out to me how it\u2019s likely to be profitable,\nafter all.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett casts up his eyes at the portrait of Godfrey Wayne over the\nmantelshelf and replies, \u201cTony, you are asked to leave that to the\nhonour of your friend. Besides its being calculated to serve that\nfriend in those chords of the human mind which\u2014which need not be\ncalled into agonizing vibration on the present occasion\u2014your friend\nis no fool. What\u2019s that?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s eleven o\u2019clock striking by the bell of Saint Paul\u2019s. Listen and\nyou\u2019ll hear all the bells in the city jangling.\u201d\n\nBoth sit silent, listening to the metal voices, near and distant,\nresounding from towers of various heights, in tones more various than\ntheir situations. When these at length cease, all seems more\nmysterious and quiet than before. One disagreeable result of\nwhispering is that it seems to evoke an atmosphere of silence,\nhaunted by the ghosts of sound\u2014strange cracks and tickings, the\nrustling of garments that have no substance in them, and the tread of\ndreadful feet that would leave no mark on the sea-sand or the winter\nsnow. So sensitive the two friends happen to be that the air is full\nof these phantoms, and the two look over their shoulders by one\nconsent to see that the door is shut.\n\n\u201cYes, Tony?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, drawing nearer to the fire and biting\nhis unsteady thumb-nail. \u201cYou were going to say, thirdly?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s far from a pleasant thing to be plotting about a dead man in\nthe room where he died, especially when you happen to live in it.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut we are plotting nothing against him, Tony.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay be not, still I don\u2019t like it. Live here by yourself and see how\nYOU like it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs to dead men, Tony,\u201d proceeds Mr. Jarrett, evading this proposal,\n\u201cthere have been dead men in most rooms.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know there have, but in most rooms you let them alone, and\u2014and\nthey let you alone,\u201d Tony answers.\n\nThe two look at each other again. Mr. Jarrett makes a hurried remark to\nthe effect that they may be doing the deceased a service, that he\nhopes so. There is an oppressive blank until Mr. Weevle, by stirring\nthe fire suddenly, makes Mr. Jarrett start as if his heart had been\nstirred instead.\n\n\u201cFah! Here\u2019s more of this hateful soot hanging about,\u201d says he. \u201cLet\nus open the window a bit and get a mouthful of air. It\u2019s too close.\u201d\n\nHe raises the sash, and they both rest on the window-sill, half in\nand half out of the room. The neighbouring houses are too near to\nadmit of their seeing any sky without craning their necks and looking\nup, but lights in frowsy windows here and there, and the rolling of\ndistant carriages, and the new expression that there is of the stir\nof men, they find to be comfortable. Mr. Jarrett, noiselessly tapping\non the window-sill, resumes his whispering in quite a light-comedy\ntone.\n\n\u201cBy the by, Tony, don\u2019t forget old Hunter,\u201d meaning the younger of\nthat name. \u201cI have not let him into this, you know. That grandfather\nof his is too keen by half. It runs in the family.\u201d\n\n\u201cI remember,\u201d says Tony. \u201cI am up to all that.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd as to Nesbit,\u201d resumes Mr. Jarrett. \u201cNow, do you suppose he really\nhas got hold of any other papers of importance, as he has boasted to\nyou, since you have been such allies?\u201d\n\nTony shakes his head. \u201cI don\u2019t know. Can\u2019t imagine. If we get through\nthis business without rousing his suspicions, I shall be better\ninformed, no doubt. How can I know without seeing them, when he don\u2019t\nknow himself? He is always spelling out words from them, and chalking\nthem over the table and the shop-wall, and asking what this is and\nwhat that is; but his whole stock from beginning to end may easily be\nthe waste-paper he bought it as, for anything I can say. It\u2019s a\nmonomania with him to think he is possessed of documents. He has been\ngoing to learn to read them this last quarter of a century, I should\njudge, from what he tells me.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow did he first come by that idea, though? That\u2019s the question,\u201d\nMr. Jarrett suggests with one eye shut, after a little forensic\nmeditation. \u201cHe may have found papers in something he bought, where\npapers were not supposed to be, and may have got it into his shrewd\nhead from the manner and place of their concealment that they are\nworth something.\u201d\n\n\u201cOr he may have been taken in, in some pretended bargain. Or he may\nhave been muddled altogether by long staring at whatever he HAS got,\nand by drink, and by hanging about the Lord Chancellor\u2019s Court and\nhearing of documents for ever,\u201d returns Mr. Weevle.\n\nMr. Jarrett sitting on the window-sill, nodding his head and balancing\nall these possibilities in his mind, continues thoughtfully to tap\nit, and clasp it, and measure it with his hand, until he hastily\ndraws his hand away.\n\n\u201cWhat, in the devil\u2019s name,\u201d he says, \u201cis this! Look at my fingers!\u201d\n\nA thick, yellow liquor defiles them, which is offensive to the touch\nand sight and more offensive to the smell. A stagnant, sickening oil\nwith some natural repulsion in it that makes them both shudder.\n\n\u201cWhat have you been doing here? What have you been pouring out of\nwindow?\u201d\n\n\u201cI pouring out of window! Nothing, I swear! Never, since I have been\nhere!\u201d cries the lodger.\n\nAnd yet look here\u2014and look here! When he brings the candle here,\nfrom the corner of the window-sill, it slowly drips and creeps away\ndown the bricks, here lies in a little thick nauseous pool.\n\n\u201cThis is a horrible house,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, shutting down the window.\n\u201cGive me some water or I shall cut my hand off.\u201d\n\nHe so washes, and rubs, and scrubs, and smells, and washes, that he\nhas not long restored himself with a glass of brandy and stood\nsilently before the fire when Saint Paul\u2019s bell strikes twelve and\nall those other bells strike twelve from their towers of various\nheights in the dark air, and in their many tones. When all is quiet\nagain, the lodger says, \u201cIt\u2019s the appointed time at last. Shall I\ngo?\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett nods and gives him a \u201clucky touch\u201d on the back, but not\nwith the washed hand, though it is his right hand.\n\nHe goes downstairs, and Mr. Jarrett tries to compose himself before the\nfire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the\nstairs creak and Tony comes swiftly back.\n\n\u201cHave you got them?\u201d\n\n\u201cGot them! No. The old man\u2019s not there.\u201d\n\nHe has been so horribly frightened in the short interval that his\nterror seizes the other, who makes a rush at him and asks loudly,\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t make him hear, and I softly opened the door and looked\nin. And the burning smell is there\u2014and the soot is there, and the\noil is there\u2014and he is not there!\u201d Tony ends this with a groan.\n\nMr. Jarrett takes the light. They go down, more dead than alive, and\nholding one another, push open the door of the back shop. The cat has\nretreated close to it and stands snarling, not at them, at something\non the ground before the fire. There is a very little fire left in\nthe grate, but there is a smouldering, suffocating vapour in the room\nand a dark, greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. The chairs and\ntable, and the bottle so rarely absent from the table, all stand as\nusual. On one chair-back hang the old man\u2019s hairy cap and coat.\n\n\u201cLook!\u201d whispers the lodger, pointing his friend\u2019s attention to these\nobjects with a trembling finger. \u201cI told you so. When I saw him last,\nhe took his cap off, took out the little bundle of old letters, hung\nhis cap on the back of the chair\u2014his coat was there already, for he\nhad pulled that off before he went to put the shutters up\u2014and I left\nhim turning the letters over in his hand, standing just where that\ncrumbled black thing is upon the floor.\u201d\n\nIs he hanging somewhere? They look up. No.\n\n\u201cSee!\u201d whispers Tony. \u201cAt the foot of the same chair there lies a\ndirty bit of thin red cord that they tie up pens with. That went\nround the letters. He undid it slowly, leering and laughing at me,\nbefore he began to turn them over, and threw it there. I saw it\nfall.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with the cat?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett. \u201cLook at her!\u201d\n\n\u201cMad, I think. And no wonder in this evil place.\u201d\n\nThey advance slowly, looking at all these things. The cat remains\nwhere they found her, still snarling at the something on the ground\nbefore the fire and between the two chairs. What is it? Hold up the\nlight.\n\nHere is a small burnt patch of flooring; here is the tinder from a\nlittle bundle of burnt paper, but not so light as usual, seeming to\nbe steeped in something; and here is\u2014is it the cinder of a small\ncharred and broken log of wood sprinkled with white ashes, or is it\ncoal? Oh, horror, he IS here! And this from which we run away,\nstriking out the light and overturning one another into the street,\nis all that represents him.\n\nHelp, help, help! Come into this house for heaven\u2019s sake! Plenty will\ncome in, but none can help. The Lord Chancellor of that court, true\nto his title in his last act, has died the death of all lord\nchancellors in all courts and of all authorities in all places under\nall names soever, where false pretences are made, and where injustice\nis done. Call the death by any name your Highness will, attribute\nit to whom you will, or say it might have been prevented how you\nwill, it is the same death eternally\u2014inborn, inbred, engendered\nin the corrupted humours of the vicious body itself, and that\nonly\u2014spontaneous combustion, and none other of all the deaths that\ncan be died.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIII\n\nInterlopers\n\n\nNow do those two gentlemen not very neat about the cuffs and buttons\nwho attended the last coroner\u2019s inquest at the Sol\u2019s Arms reappear in\nthe precincts with surprising swiftness (being, in fact, breathlessly\nfetched by the active and intelligent beadle), and institute\nperquisitions through the court, and dive into the Sol\u2019s parlour, and\nwrite with ravenous little pens on tissue-paper. Now do they note\ndown, in the watches of the night, how the neighbourhood of Chancery\nLane was yesterday, at about midnight, thrown into a state of the\nmost intense agitation and excitement by the following alarming and\nhorrible discovery. Now do they set forth how it will doubtless be\nremembered that some time back a painful sensation was created in the\npublic mind by a case of mysterious death from opium occurring in the\nfirst floor of the house occupied as a rag, bottle, and general\nmarine store shop, by an eccentric individual of intemperate habits,\nfar advanced in life, named Nesbit; and how, by a remarkable\ncoincidence, Nesbit was examined at the inquest, which it may be\nrecollected was held on that occasion at the Sol\u2019s Arms, a\nwell-conducted tavern immediately adjoining the premises in question\non the west side and licensed to a highly respectable landlord, Mr.\nJames Aileen Bogsby. Now do they show (in as many words as possible)\nhow during some hours of yesterday evening a very peculiar smell was\nobserved by the inhabitants of the court, in which the tragical\noccurrence which forms the subject of that present account\ntranspired; and which odour was at one time so powerful that Mr.\nSwills, a comic vocalist professionally engaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby,\nhas himself stated to our reporter that he mentioned to Miss M.\nMelvilleson, a lady of some pretensions to musical ability, likewise\nengaged by Mr. J. G. Bogsby to sing at a series of concerts called\nHarmonic Assemblies, or Meetings, which it would appear are held at\nthe Sol\u2019s Arms under Mr. Bogsby\u2019s direction pursuant to the Act of\nAileen the Second, that he (Mr. Swills) found his voice seriously\naffected by the impure state of the atmosphere, his jocose expression\nat the time being that he was like an empty post-office, for he\nhadn\u2019t a single note in him. How this account of Mr. Swills is\nentirely corroborated by two intelligent married females residing in\nthe same court and known respectively by the names of Mrs. Piper and\nMrs. Perkins, both of whom observed the foetid effluvia and regarded\nthem as being emitted from the premises in the occupation of Nesbit,\nthe unfortunate deceased. All this and a great deal more the two\ngentlemen who have formed an amicable partnership in the melancholy\ncatastrophe write down on the spot; and the boy population of the\ncourt (out of bed in a moment) swarm up the shutters of the Sol\u2019s\nArms parlour, to behold the tops of their heads while they are about\nit.\n\nThe whole court, adult as well as boy, is sleepless for that night,\nand can do nothing but wrap up its many heads, and talk of the\nill-fated house, and look at it. Miss Daxter has been bravely rescued\nfrom her chamber, as if it were in flames, and accommodated with a\nbed at the Sol\u2019s Arms. The Sol neither turns off its gas nor shuts\nits door all night, for any kind of public excitement makes good for\nthe Sol and causes the court to stand in need of comfort. The house\nhas not done so much in the stomachic article of cloves or in\nbrandy-and-water warm since the inquest. The moment the pot-boy heard\nwhat had happened, he rolled up his shirt-sleeves tight to his\nshoulders and said, \u201cThere\u2019ll be a run upon us!\u201d In the first outcry,\nyoung Piper dashed off for the fire-engines and returned in triumph\nat a jolting gallop perched up aloft on the Phoenix and holding on to\nthat fabulous creature with all his might in the midst of helmets and\ntorches. One helmet remains behind after careful investigation of all\nchinks and crannies and slowly paces up and down before the house in\ncompany with one of the two policemen who have likewise been left in\ncharge thereof. To this trio everybody in the court possessed of\nsixpence has an insatiate desire to exhibit hospitality in a liquid\nform.\n\nMr. Weevle and his friend Mr. Jarrett are within the bar at the Sol and\nare worth anything to the Sol that the bar contains if they will only\nstay there. \u201cThis is not a time,\u201d says Mr. Bogsby, \u201cto haggle about\nmoney,\u201d though he looks something sharply after it, over the counter;\n\u201cgive your orders, you two gentlemen, and you\u2019re welcome to whatever\nyou put a name to.\u201d\n\nThus entreated, the two gentlemen (Mr. Weevle especially) put names\nto so many things that in course of time they find it difficult to\nput a name to anything quite distinctly, though they still relate to\nall new-comers some version of the night they have had of it, and of\nwhat they said, and what they thought, and what they saw. Meanwhile,\none or other of the policemen often flits about the door, and pushing\nit open a little way at the full length of his arm, looks in from\nouter gloom. Not that he has any suspicions, but that he may as well\nknow what they are up to in there.\n\nThus night pursues its leaden course, finding the court still out of\nbed through the unwonted hours, still treating and being treated,\nstill conducting itself similarly to a court that has had a little\nmoney left it unexpectedly. Thus night at length with slow-retreating\nsteps departs, and the lamp-lighter going his rounds, like an\nexecutioner to a despotic king, strikes off the little heads of fire\nthat have aspired to lessen the darkness. Thus the day cometh,\nwhether or no.\n\nAnd the day may discern, even with its dim London eye, that the court\nhas been up all night. Over and above the faces that have fallen\ndrowsily on tables and the heels that lie prone on hard floors\ninstead of beds, the brick and mortar physiognomy of the very court\nitself looks worn and jaded. And now the neighbourhood, waking up and\nbeginning to hear of what has happened, comes streaming in, half\ndressed, to ask questions; and the two policemen and the helmet (who\nare far less impressible externally than the court) have enough to do\nto keep the door.\n\n\u201cGood gracious, gentlemen!\u201d says Mr. Harlan, coming up. \u201cWhat\u2019s this\nI hear!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s true,\u201d returns one of the policemen. \u201cThat\u2019s what it is.\nNow move on here, come!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, good gracious, gentlemen,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, somewhat promptly\nbacked away, \u201cI was at this door last night betwixt ten and eleven\no\u2019clock in conversation with the young man who lodges here.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed?\u201d returns the policeman. \u201cYou will find the young man next\ndoor then. Now move on here, some of you.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot hurt, I hope?\u201d says Mr. Harlan.\n\n\u201cHurt? No. What\u2019s to hurt him!\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan, wholly unable to answer this or any question in his\ntroubled mind, repairs to the Sol\u2019s Arms and finds Mr. Weevle\nlanguishing over tea and toast with a considerable expression on him\nof exhausted excitement and exhausted tobacco-smoke.\n\n\u201cAnd Mr. Jarrett likewise!\u201d quoth Mr. Harlan. \u201cDear, dear, dear! What\na fate there seems in all this! And my lit\u2014\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan\u2019s power of speech deserts him in the formation of the\nwords \u201cmy little woman.\u201d For to see that injured female walk into the\nSol\u2019s Arms at that hour of the morning and stand before the\nbeer-engine, with her eyes fixed upon him like an accusing spirit,\nstrikes him dumb.\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d says Mr. Harlan when his tongue is loosened, \u201cwill you\ntake anything? A little\u2014not to put too fine a point upon it\u2014drop of\nshrub?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d says Mrs. Harlan.\n\n\u201cMy love, you know these two gentlemen?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes!\u201d says Mrs. Harlan, and in a rigid manner acknowledges their\npresence, still fixing Mr. Harlan with her eye.\n\nThe devoted Mr. Harlan cannot bear this treatment. He takes Mrs.\nHarlan by the hand and leads her aside to an adjacent cask.\n\n\u201cMy little woman, why do you look at me in that way? Pray don\u2019t do\nit.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t help my looks,\u201d says Mrs. Harlan, \u201cand if I could I\nwouldn\u2019t.\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan, with his cough of meekness, rejoins, \u201cWouldn\u2019t you\nreally, my dear?\u201d and meditates. Then coughs his cough of trouble and\nsays, \u201cThis is a dreadful mystery, my love!\u201d still fearfully\ndisconcerted by Mrs. Harlan\u2019s eye.\n\n\u201cIt IS,\u201d returns Mrs. Harlan, shaking her head, \u201ca dreadful\nmystery.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy little woman,\u201d urges Mr. Harlan in a piteous manner, \u201cdon\u2019t for\ngoodness\u2019 sake speak to me with that bitter expression and look at me\nin that searching way! I beg and entreat of you not to do it. Good\nLord, you don\u2019t suppose that I would go spontaneously combusting any\nperson, my dear?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t say,\u201d returns Mrs. Harlan.\n\nOn a hasty review of his unfortunate position, Mr. Harlan \u201ccan\u2019t\nsay\u201d either. He is not prepared positively to deny that he may have\nhad something to do with it. He has had something\u2014he don\u2019t know\nwhat\u2014to do with so much in this connexion that is mysterious that it\nis possible he may even be implicated, without knowing it, in the\npresent transaction. He faintly wipes his forehead with his\nhandkerchief and gasps.\n\n\u201cMy life,\u201d says the unhappy stationer, \u201cwould you have any objections\nto mention why, being in general so delicately circumspect in your\nconduct, you come into a wine-vaults before breakfast?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy do YOU come here?\u201d inquires Mrs. Harlan.\n\n\u201cMy dear, merely to know the rights of the fatal accident which has\nhappened to the venerable party who has been\u2014combusted.\u201d Mr. Harlan\nhas made a pause to suppress a groan. \u201cI should then have related\nthem to you, my love, over your French roll.\u201d\n\n\u201cI dare say you would! You relate everything to me, Mr. Harlan.\u201d\n\n\u201cEvery\u2014my lit\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI should be glad,\u201d says Mrs. Harlan after contemplating his\nincreased confusion with a severe and sinister smile, \u201cif you would\ncome home with me; I think you may be safer there, Mr. Harlan, than\nanywhere else.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy love, I don\u2019t know but what I may be, I am sure. I am ready to\ngo.\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan casts his eye forlornly round the bar, gives Messrs.\nWeevle and Jarrett good morning, assures them of the satisfaction with\nwhich he sees them uninjured, and accompanies Mrs. Harlan from the\nSol\u2019s Arms. Before night his doubt whether he may not be responsible\nfor some inconceivable part in the catastrophe which is the talk of\nthe whole neighbourhood is almost resolved into certainty by Mrs.\nHarlan\u2019s pertinacity in that fixed gaze. His mental sufferings are\nso great that he entertains wandering ideas of delivering himself up\nto justice and requiring to be cleared if innocent and punished with\nthe utmost rigour of the law if guilty.\n\nMr. Weevle and Mr. Jarrett, having taken their breakfast, step into\nLincoln\u2019s Inn to take a little walk about the square and clear as\nmany of the dark cobwebs out of their brains as a little walk may.\n\n\u201cThere can be no more favourable time than the present, Tony,\u201d says\nMr. Jarrett after they have broodingly made out the four sides of the\nsquare, \u201cfor a word or two between us upon a point on which we must,\nwith very little delay, come to an understanding.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, I tell you what, William G.!\u201d returns the other, eyeing his\ncompanion with a bloodshot eye. \u201cIf it\u2019s a point of conspiracy, you\nneedn\u2019t take the trouble to mention it. I have had enough of that,\nand I ain\u2019t going to have any more. We shall have YOU taking fire\nnext or blowing up with a bang.\u201d\n\nThis supposititious phenomenon is so very disagreeable to Mr. Jarrett\nthat his voice quakes as he says in a moral way, \u201cTony, I should have\nthought that what we went through last night would have been a lesson\nto you never to be personal any more as long as you lived.\u201d To which\nMr. Weevle returns, \u201cWilliam, I should have thought it would have\nbeen a lesson to YOU never to conspire any more as long as you\nlived.\u201d To which Mr. Jarrett says, \u201cWho\u2019s conspiring?\u201d To which Mr.\nJobling replies, \u201cWhy, YOU are!\u201d To which Mr. Jarrett retorts, \u201cNo, I\nam not.\u201d To which Mr. Jobling retorts again, \u201cYes, you are!\u201d To which\nMr. Jarrett retorts, \u201cWho says so?\u201d To which Mr. Jobling retorts, \u201cI\nsay so!\u201d To which Mr. Jarrett retorts, \u201cOh, indeed?\u201d To which Mr.\nJobling retorts, \u201cYes, indeed!\u201d And both being now in a heated state,\nthey walk on silently for a while to cool down again.\n\n\u201cTony,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett then, \u201cif you heard your friend out instead of\nflying at him, you wouldn\u2019t fall into mistakes. But your temper is\nhasty and you are not considerate. Possessing in yourself, Tony, all\nthat is calculated to charm the eye\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Blow the eye!\u201d cries Mr. Weevle, cutting him short. \u201cSay what\nyou have got to say!\u201d\n\nFinding his friend in this morose and material condition, Mr. Jarrett\nonly expresses the finer feelings of his soul through the tone of\ninjury in which he recommences, \u201cTony, when I say there is a point on\nwhich we must come to an understanding pretty soon, I say so quite\napart from any kind of conspiring, however innocent. You know it is\nprofessionally arranged beforehand in all cases that are tried what\nfacts the witnesses are to prove. Is it or is it not desirable that\nwe should know what facts we are to prove on the inquiry into the\ndeath of this unfortunate old mo\u2014gentleman?\u201d (Mr. Jarrett was going to\nsay \u201cmogul,\u201d but thinks \u201cgentleman\u201d better suited to the\ncircumstances.)\n\n\u201cWhat facts? THE facts.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe facts bearing on that inquiry. Those are\u201d\u2014Mr. Jarrett tells them\noff on his fingers\u2014\u201cwhat we knew of his habits, when you saw him\nlast, what his condition was then, the discovery that we made, and\nhow we made it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d says Mr. Weevle. \u201cThose are about the facts.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe made the discovery in consequence of his having, in his eccentric\nway, an appointment with you at twelve o\u2019clock at night, when you\nwere to explain some writing to him as you had often done before on\naccount of his not being able to read. I, spending the evening with\nyou, was called down\u2014and so forth. The inquiry being only into the\ncircumstances touching the death of the deceased, it\u2019s not necessary\nto go beyond these facts, I suppose you\u2019ll agree?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d returns Mr. Weevle. \u201cI suppose not.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd this is not a conspiracy, perhaps?\u201d says the injured Jarrett.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d returns his friend; \u201cif it\u2019s nothing worse than this, I\nwithdraw the observation.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, Tony,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, taking his arm again and walking him\nslowly on, \u201cI should like to know, in a friendly way, whether you\nhave yet thought over the many advantages of your continuing to live\nat that place?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d says Tony, stopping.\n\n\u201cWhether you have yet thought over the many advantages of your\ncontinuing to live at that place?\u201d repeats Mr. Jarrett, walking him on\nagain.\n\n\u201cAt what place? THAT place?\u201d pointing in the direction of the rag and\nbottle shop.\n\nMr. Jarrett nods.\n\n\u201cWhy, I wouldn\u2019t pass another night there for any consideration that\nyou could offer me,\u201d says Mr. Weevle, haggardly staring.\n\n\u201cDo you mean it though, Tony?\u201d\n\n\u201cMean it! Do I look as if I mean it? I feel as if I do; I know that,\u201d\nsays Mr. Weevle with a very genuine shudder.\n\n\u201cThen the possibility or probability\u2014for such it must be\nconsidered\u2014of your never being disturbed in possession of those\neffects lately belonging to a lone old man who seemed to have no\nrelation in the world, and the certainty of your being able to find\nout what he really had got stored up there, don\u2019t weigh with you at\nall against last night, Tony, if I understand you?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett,\nbiting his thumb with the appetite of vexation.\n\n\u201cCertainly not. Talk in that cool way of a fellow\u2019s living there?\u201d\ncries Mr. Weevle indignantly. \u201cGo and live there yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! I, Tony!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, soothing him. \u201cI have never lived\nthere and couldn\u2019t get a lodging there now, whereas you have got\none.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are welcome to it,\u201d rejoins his friend, \u201cand\u2014ugh!\u2014you may make\nyourself at home in it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen you really and truly at this point,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cgive up\nthe whole thing, if I understand you, Tony?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou never,\u201d returns Tony with a most convincing steadfastness, \u201csaid\na truer word in all your life. I do!\u201d\n\nWhile they are so conversing, a hackney-coach drives into the square,\non the box of which vehicle a very tall hat makes itself manifest to\nthe public. Inside the coach, and consequently not so manifest to the\nmultitude, though sufficiently so to the two friends, for the coach\nstops almost at their feet, are the venerable Mr. Hunter and Mrs.\nHunter, accompanied by their granddaughter Hallie.\n\nAn air of haste and excitement pervades the party, and as the tall\nhat (surmounting Mr. Hunter the younger) alights, Mr. Hunter\nthe elder pokes his head out of window and bawls to Mr. Jarrett, \u201cHow\nde do, sir! How de do!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do Chick and his family want here at this time of the morning,\nI wonder!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, nodding to his familiar.\n\n\u201cMy dear sir,\u201d cries Grandfather Hunter, \u201cwould you do me a\nfavour? Would you and your friend be so very obleeging as to carry me\ninto the public-house in the court, while Bart and his sister bring\ntheir grandmother along? Would you do an old man that good turn,\nsir?\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett looks at his friend, repeating inquiringly, \u201cThe\npublic-house in the court?\u201d And they prepare to bear the venerable\nburden to the Sol\u2019s Arms.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s your fare!\u201d says the patriarch to the coachman with a fierce\ngrin and shaking his incapable fist at him. \u201cAsk me for a penny more,\nand I\u2019ll have my lawful revenge upon you. My dear young men, be easy\nwith me, if you please. Allow me to catch you round the neck. I won\u2019t\nsqueeze you tighter than I can help. Oh, Lord! Oh, dear me! Oh, my\nbones!\u201d\n\nIt is well that the Sol is not far off, for Mr. Weevle presents an\napoplectic appearance before half the distance is accomplished. With\nno worse aggravation of his symptoms, however, than the utterance of\ndivers croaking sounds expressive of obstructed respiration, he\nfulfils his share of the porterage and the benevolent old gentleman\nis deposited by his own desire in the parlour of the Sol\u2019s Arms.\n\n\u201cOh, Lord!\u201d gasps Mr. Hunter, looking about him, breathless, from\nan arm-chair. \u201cOh, dear me! Oh, my bones and back! Oh, my aches and\npains! Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling\npoll-parrot! Sit down!\u201d\n\nThis little apostrophe to Mrs. Hunter is occasioned by a\npropensity on the part of that unlucky old lady whenever she finds\nherself on her feet to amble about and \u201cset\u201d to inanimate objects,\naccompanying herself with a chattering noise, as in a witch dance. A\nnervous affection has probably as much to do with these\ndemonstrations as any imbecile intention in the poor old woman, but\non the present occasion they are so particularly lively in connexion\nwith the Windsor arm-chair, fellow to that in which Mr. Hunter is\nseated, that she only quite desists when her grandchildren have held\nher down in it, her lord in the meanwhile bestowing upon her, with\ngreat volubility, the endearing epithet of \u201ca pig-headed jackdaw,\u201d\nrepeated a surprising number of times.\n\n\u201cMy dear sir,\u201d Grandfather Hunter then proceeds, addressing Mr.\nJarrett, \u201cthere has been a calamity here. Have you heard of it, either\nof you?\u201d\n\n\u201cHeard of it, sir! Why, we discovered it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou discovered it. You two discovered it! Bart, THEY discovered it!\u201d\n\nThe two discoverers stare at the Hunters, who return the\ncompliment.\n\n\u201cMy dear friends,\u201d whines Grandfather Hunter, putting out both his\nhands, \u201cI owe you a thousand thanks for discharging the melancholy\noffice of discovering the ashes of Mrs. Hunter\u2019s brother.\u201d\n\n\u201cEh?\u201d says Mr. Jarrett.\n\n\u201cMrs. Hunter\u2019s brother, my dear friend\u2014her only relation. We were\nnot on terms, which is to be deplored now, but he never WOULD be on\nterms. He was not fond of us. He was eccentric\u2014he was very\neccentric. Unless he has left a will (which is not at all likely) I\nshall take out letters of administration. I have come down to look\nafter the property; it must be sealed up, it must be protected. I\nhave come down,\u201d repeats Grandfather Hunter, hooking the air\ntowards him with all his ten fingers at once, \u201cto look after the\nproperty.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think, Small,\u201d says the disconsolate Mr. Jarrett, \u201cyou might have\nmentioned that the old man was your uncle.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou two were so close about him that I thought you would like me to\nbe the same,\u201d returns that old bird with a secretly glistening eye.\n\u201cBesides, I wasn\u2019t proud of him.\u201d\n\n\u201cBesides which, it was nothing to you, you know, whether he was or\nnot,\u201d says Hallie. Also with a secretly glistening eye.\n\n\u201cHe never saw me in his life to know me,\u201d observed Small; \u201cI don\u2019t\nknow why I should introduce HIM, I am sure!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, he never communicated with us, which is to be deplored,\u201d the old\ngentleman strikes in, \u201cbut I have come to look after the property\u2014to\nlook over the papers, and to look after the property. We shall make\ngood our title. It is in the hands of my solicitor. Mr. Tulkinghorn,\nof Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields, over the way there, is so good as to act as\nmy solicitor; and grass don\u2019t grow under HIS feet, I can tell ye.\nNesbit was Mrs. Hunter\u2019s only brother; she had no relation but\nNesbit, and Nesbit had no relation but Mrs. Hunter. I am speaking of\nyour brother, you brimstone black-beetle, that was seventy-six years\nof age.\u201d\n\nMrs. Hunter instantly begins to shake her head and pipe up,\n\u201cSeventy-six pound seven and sevenpence! Seventy-six thousand bags of\nmoney! Seventy-six hundred thousand million of parcels of\nbank-notes!\u201d\n\n\u201cWill somebody give me a quart pot?\u201d exclaims her exasperated\nhusband, looking helplessly about him and finding no missile within\nhis reach. \u201cWill somebody obleege me with a spittoon? Will somebody\nhand me anything hard and bruising to pelt at her? You hag, you cat,\nyou dog, you brimstone barker!\u201d Here Mr. Hunter, wrought up to the\nhighest pitch by his own eloquence, actually throws Hallie at her\ngrandmother in default of anything else, by butting that young virgin\nat the old lady with such force as he can muster and then dropping\ninto his chair in a heap.\n\n\u201cShake me up, somebody, if you\u2019ll be so good,\u201d says the voice from\nwithin the faintly struggling bundle into which he has collapsed. \u201cI\nhave come to look after the property. Shake me up, and call in the\npolice on duty at the next house to be explained to about the\nproperty. My solicitor will be here presently to protect the\nproperty. Transportation or the gallows for anybody who shall touch\nthe property!\u201d As his dutiful grandchildren set him up, panting, and\nputting him through the usual restorative process of shaking and\npunching, he still repeats like an echo, \u201cThe\u2014the property! The\nproperty! Property!\u201d\n\nMr. Weevle and Mr. Jarrett look at each other, the former as having\nrelinquished the whole affair, the latter with a discomfited\ncountenance as having entertained some lingering expectations yet.\nBut there is nothing to be done in opposition to the Hunter\ninterest. Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s clerk comes down from his official pew in\nthe chambers to mention to the police that Mr. Tulkinghorn is\nanswerable for its being all correct about the next of kin and that\nthe papers and effects will be formally taken possession of in due\ntime and course. Mr. Hunter is at once permitted so far to assert\nhis supremacy as to be carried on a visit of sentiment into the next\nhouse and upstairs into Miss Daxter\u2019s deserted room, where he looks\nlike a hideous bird of prey newly added to her aviary.\n\nThe arrival of this unexpected heir soon taking wind in the court\nstill makes good for the Sol and keeps the court upon its mettle.\nMrs. Piper and Mrs. Perkins think it hard upon the young man if there\nreally is no will, and consider that a handsome present ought to be\nmade him out of the estate. Young Piper and young Perkins, as members\nof that restless juvenile circle which is the terror of the\nfoot-passengers in Chancery Lane, crumble into ashes behind the pump\nand under the archway all day long, where wild yells and hootings\ntake place over their remains. Little Swills and Miss M. Melvilleson\nenter into affable conversation with their patrons, feeling that\nthese unusual occurrences level the barriers between professionals\nand non-professionals. Mr. Bogsby puts up \u201cThe popular song of King\nDeath, with chorus by the whole strength of the company,\u201d as the\ngreat Harmonic feature of the week and announces in the bill that \u201cJ.\nG. B. is induced to do so at a considerable extra expense in\nconsequence of a wish which has been very generally expressed at the\nbar by a large body of respectable individuals and in homage to a\nlate melancholy event which has aroused so much sensation.\u201d There is\none point connected with the deceased upon which the court is\nparticularly anxious, namely, that the fiction of a full-sized coffin\nshould be preserved, though there is so little to put in it. Upon the\nundertaker\u2019s stating in the Sol\u2019s bar in the course of the day that\nhe has received orders to construct \u201ca six-footer,\u201d the general\nsolicitude is much relieved, and it is considered that Mr.\nHunter\u2019s conduct does him great honour.\n\nOut of the court, and a long way out of it, there is considerable\nexcitement too, for men of science and philosophy come to look, and\ncarriages set down doctors at the corner who arrive with the same\nintent, and there is more learned talk about inflammable gases and\nphosphuretted hydrogen than the court has ever imagined. Some of\nthese authorities (of course the wisest) hold with indignation that\nthe deceased had no business to die in the alleged manner; and being\nreminded by other authorities of a certain inquiry into the evidence\nfor such deaths reprinted in the sixth volume of the Oliveosophical\nTransactions; and also of a book not quite unknown on English medical\njurisprudence; and likewise of the Italian case of the Countess\nCornelia Baudi as set forth in detail by one Bianchini, prebendary of\nVerona, who wrote a scholarly work or so and was occasionally heard\nof in his time as having gleams of reason in him; and also of the\ntestimony of Messrs. Fodere and Mere, two pestilent Frenchmen who\nWOULD investigate the subject; and further, of the corroborative\ntestimony of Monsieur Le Cat, a rather celebrated French surgeon once\nupon a time, who had the unpoliteness to live in a house where such a\ncase occurred and even to write an account of it\u2014still they regard\nthe late Mr. Nesbit\u2019s obstinacy in going out of the world by any such\nby-way as wholly unjustifiable and personally offensive. The less the\ncourt understands of all this, the more the court likes it, and the\ngreater enjoyment it has in the stock in trade of the Sol\u2019s Arms.\nThen there comes the artist of a picture newspaper, with a foreground\nand figures ready drawn for anything from a wreck on the Cornish\ncoast to a review in Hyde Park or a meeting in Manchester, and in\nMrs. Perkins\u2019 own room, memorable evermore, he then and there throws\nin upon the block Mr. Nesbit\u2019s house, as large as life; in fact,\nconsiderably larger, making a very temple of it. Similarly, being\npermitted to look in at the door of the fatal chamber, he depicts\nthat apartment as three-quarters of a mile long by fifty yards high,\nat which the court is particularly charmed. All this time the two\ngentlemen before mentioned pop in and out of every house and assist\nat the philosophical disputations\u2014go everywhere and listen to\neverybody\u2014and yet are always diving into the Sol\u2019s parlour and\nwriting with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper.\n\nAt last come the coroner and his inquiry, like as before, except that\nthe coroner cherishes this case as being out of the common way and\ntells the gentlemen of the jury, in his private capacity, that \u201cthat\nwould seem to be an unlucky house next door, gentlemen, a destined\nhouse; but so we sometimes find it, and these are mysteries we can\u2019t\naccount for!\u201d After which the six-footer comes into action and is\nmuch admired.\n\nIn all these proceedings Mr. Jarrett has so slight a part, except when\nhe gives his evidence, that he is moved on like a private individual\nand can only haunt the secret house on the outside, where he has the\nmortification of seeing Mr. Hunter padlocking the door, and of\nbitterly knowing himself to be shut out. But before these proceedings\ndraw to a close, that is to say, on the night next after the\ncatastrophe, Mr. Jarrett has a thing to say that must be said to Godfrey\nWayne.\n\nFor which reason, with a sinking heart and with that hang-dog sense\nof guilt upon him which dread and watching enfolded in the Sol\u2019s Arms\nhave produced, the young man of the name of Jarrett presents himself at\nthe town mansion at about seven o\u2019clock in the evening and requests\nto see her ladyship. Mercury replies that she is going out to dinner;\ndon\u2019t he see the carriage at the door? Yes, he does see the carriage\nat the door; but he wants to see my Godfrey too.\n\nMercury is disposed, as he will presently declare to a\nfellow-gentleman in waiting, \u201cto pitch into the young man\u201d; but his\ninstructions are positive. Therefore he sulkily supposes that the\nyoung man must come up into the library. There he leaves the young\nman in a large room, not over-light, while he makes report of him.\n\nMr. Jarrett looks into the shade in all directions, discovering\neverywhere a certain charred and whitened little heap of coal or\nwood. Presently he hears a rustling. Is it\u2014? No, it\u2019s no ghost, but\nfair flesh and blood, most brilliantly dressed.\n\n\u201cI have to beg your ladyship\u2019s pardon,\u201d Mr. Jarrett stammers, very\ndowncast. \u201cThis is an inconvenient time\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI told you, you could come at any time.\u201d She takes a chair, looking\nstraight at him as on the last occasion.\n\n\u201cThank your ladyship. Your ladyship is very affable.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can sit down.\u201d There is not much affability in her tone.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, your ladyship, that it\u2019s worth while my sitting down\nand detaining you, for I\u2014I have not got the letters that I mentioned\nwhen I had the honour of waiting on your ladyship.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you come merely to say so?\u201d\n\n\u201cMerely to say so, your ladyship.\u201d Mr. Jarrett besides being depressed,\ndisappointed, and uneasy, is put at a further disadvantage by the\nsplendour and beauty of her appearance.\n\nShe knows its influence perfectly, has studied it too well to miss a\ngrain of its effect on any one. As she looks at him so steadily and\ncoldly, he not only feels conscious that he has no guide in the least\nperception of what is really the complexion of her thoughts, but also\nthat he is being every moment, as it were, removed further and\nfurther from her.\n\nShe will not speak, it is plain. So he must.\n\n\u201cIn short, your ladyship,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett like a meanly penitent\nthief, \u201cthe person I was to have had the letters of, has come to a\nsudden end, and\u2014\u201d He stops. Godfrey Wayne calmly finishes the\nsentence.\n\n\u201cAnd the letters are destroyed with the person?\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett would say no if he could\u2014as he is unable to hide.\n\n\u201cI believe so, your ladyship.\u201d\n\nIf he could see the least sparkle of relief in her face now? No, he\ncould see no such thing, even if that brave outside did not utterly\nput him away, and he were not looking beyond it and about it.\n\nHe falters an awkward excuse or two for his failure.\n\n\u201cIs this all you have to say?\u201d inquires Godfrey Wayne, having heard\nhim out\u2014or as nearly out as he can stumble.\n\nMr. Jarrett thinks that\u2019s all.\n\n\u201cYou had better be sure that you wish to say nothing more to me, this\nbeing the last time you will have the opportunity.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett is quite sure. And indeed he has no such wish at present,\nby any means.\n\n\u201cThat is enough. I will dispense with excuses. Good evening to you!\u201d\nAnd she rings for Mercury to show the young man of the name of Jarrett\nout.\n\nBut in that house, in that same moment, there happens to be an old\nman of the name of Tulkinghorn. And that old man, coming with his\nquiet footstep to the library, has his hand at that moment on the\nhandle of the door\u2014comes in\u2014and comes face to face with the young\nman as he is leaving the room.\n\nOne glance between the old man and the lady, and for an instant the\nblind that is always down flies up. Suspicion, eager and sharp, looks\nout. Another instant, close again.\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, Godfrey Wayne. I beg your pardon a thousand times.\nIt is so very unusual to find you here at this hour. I supposed the\nroom was empty. I beg your pardon!\u201d\n\n\u201cStay!\u201d She negligently calls him back. \u201cRemain here, I beg. I am\ngoing out to dinner. I have nothing more to say to this young man!\u201d\n\nThe disconcerted young man bows, as he goes out, and cringingly hopes\nthat Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields is well.\n\n\u201cAye, aye?\u201d says the lawyer, looking at him from under his bent\nbrows, though he has no need to look again\u2014not he. \u201cFrom Carly and\nCarboy\u2019s, surely?\u201d\n\n\u201cCarly and Carboy\u2019s, Mr. Tulkinghorn. Name of Jarrett, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo be sure. Why, thank you, Mr. Jarrett, I am very well!\u201d\n\n\u201cHappy to hear it, sir. You can\u2019t be too well, sir, for the credit of\nthe profession.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, Mr. Jarrett!\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett sneaks away. Mr. Tulkinghorn, such a foil in his\nold-fashioned rusty black to Godfrey Wayne\u2019s brightness, hands her\ndown the staircase to her carriage. He returns rubbing his chin, and\nrubs it a good deal in the course of the evening.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIV\n\nA Turn of the Screw\n\n\n\u201cNow, what,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, \u201cmay this be? Is it blank cartridge or\nball? A flash in the pan or a shot?\u201d\n\nAn open letter is the subject of the trooper\u2019s speculations, and it\nseems to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm\u2019s length, brings\nit close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his left\nhand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on that\nside, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot satisfy\nhimself. He smooths it out upon the table with his heavy palm, and\nthoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a halt before it\nevery now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye. Even that won\u2019t\ndo. \u201cIs it,\u201d Mr. Aileen still muses, \u201cblank cartridge or ball?\u201d\n\nOlive Octavio, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in the\ndistance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march time\nand in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back again to\nthe girl he left behind him.\n\n\u201cOlive!\u201d The trooper beckons as he calls him.\n\nOlive approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he were\ngoing anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander like a\nbayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high relief upon\nhis dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of the\nbrush.\n\n\u201cAttention, Olive! Listen to this.\u201d\n\n\u201cSteady, commander, steady.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for\nmy doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months\u2019 date\ndrawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, for the\nsum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become\ndue to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same\non presentation. Yours, Joshua Hunter.\u2019 What do you make of that,\nOlive?\u201d\n\n\u201cMischief, guv\u2019ner.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think,\u201d replies Olive after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle\nin his forehead with the brush-handle, \u201cthat mischeevious\nconsequences is always meant when money\u2019s asked for.\u201d\n\n\u201cLookye, Olive,\u201d says the trooper, sitting on the table. \u201cFirst and\nlast, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal in\ninterest and one thing and another.\u201d\n\nOlive intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very\nunaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the\ntransaction as being made more promising by this incident.\n\n\u201cAnd lookye further, Olive,\u201d says the trooper, staying his premature\nconclusions with a wave of his hand. \u201cThere has always been an\nunderstanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. And it\nhas been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?\u201d\n\n\u201cI say that I think the times is come to a end at last.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cJoshua Hunter is him that was brought here in a chair?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe same.\u201d\n\n\u201cGuv\u2019ner,\u201d says Olive with exceeding gravity, \u201che\u2019s a leech in his\ndispositions, he\u2019s a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his\ntwistings, and a lobster in his claws.\u201d\n\nHaving thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Octavio, after\nwaiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of\nhim, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he has\nin hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical medium\nthat he must and he will return to that ideal young lady. Aileen,\nhaving folded the letter, walks in that direction.\n\n\u201cThere IS a way, commander,\u201d says Olive, looking cunningly at him, \u201cof\nsettling this.\u201d\n\n\u201cPaying the money, I suppose? I wish I could.\u201d\n\nOlive shakes his head. \u201cNo, guv\u2019ner, no; not so bad as that. There IS\na way,\u201d says Olive with a highly artistic turn of his brush; \u201cwhat I\u2019m\na-doing at present.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhitewashing.\u201d\n\nOlive nods.\n\n\u201cA pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the\nBagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off my\nold scores? YOU\u2019RE a moral character,\u201d says the trooper, eyeing him\nin his large way with no small indignation; \u201cupon my life you are,\nOlive!\u201d\n\nOlive, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting\nearnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush\nand smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb,\nthat he had forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so much\nas injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy family when\nsteps are audible in the long passage without, and a cheerful voice\nis heard to wonder whether Aileen is at home. Olive, with a look at\nhis master, hobbles up, saying, \u201cHere\u2019s the guv\u2019ner, Mrs. Bagnet!\nHere he is!\u201d and the old girl herself, accompanied by Mr. Bagnet,\nappears.\n\nThe old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the\nyear, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very\nclean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so\ninteresting to Mr. Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe from\nanother quarter of the globe in company with Mrs. Bagnet and an\numbrella. The latter faithful appendage is also invariably a part of\nthe old girl\u2019s presence out of doors. It is of no colour known in\nthis life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle, with a\nmetallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a little model\nof a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval glasses out of a\npair of spectacles, which ornamental object has not that tenacious\ncapacity of sticking to its post that might be desired in an article\nlong associated with the British army. The old girl\u2019s umbrella is of\na flabby habit of waist and seems to be in need of stays\u2014an\nappearance that is possibly referable to its having served through a\nseries of years at home as a cupboard and on journeys as a carpet\nbag. She never puts it up, having the greatest reliance on her\nwell-proved cloak with its capacious hood, but generally uses the\ninstrument as a wand with which to point out joints of meat or\nbunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the attention of\ntradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her market-basket, which is a\nsort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she never stirs abroad.\nAttended by these her trusty companions, therefore, her honest\nsunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough straw bonnet, Mrs.\nBagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright, in Aileen\u2019s Shooting\nGallery.\n\n\u201cWell, Aileen, old fellow,\u201d says she, \u201cand how do YOU do, this\nsunshiny morning?\u201d\n\nGiving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs. Bagnet draws a long\nbreath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a\nfaculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such\npositions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough bench,\nunties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses her arms,\nand looks perfectly comfortable.\n\nMr. Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his old comrade and\nwith Olive, on whom Mrs. Bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured nod\nand smile.\n\n\u201cNow, Aileen,\u201d said Mrs. Bagnet briskly, \u201chere we are, Lignum and\nmyself\u201d\u2014she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on\naccount, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old\nregimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment\nto the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy\u2014\u201cjust\nlooked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that\nsecurity. Give him the new bill to sign, Aileen, and he\u2019ll sign it\nlike a man.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was coming to you this morning,\u201d observes the trooper reluctantly.\n\n\u201cYes, we thought you\u2019d come to us this morning, but we turned out\nearly and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and\ncame to you instead\u2014as you see! For Lignum, he\u2019s tied so close now,\nand gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But what\u2019s\nthe matter, Aileen?\u201d asks Mrs. Bagnet, stopping in her cheerful talk.\n\u201cYou don\u2019t look yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not quite myself,\u201d returns the trooper; \u201cI have been a little\nput out, Mrs. Bagnet.\u201d\n\nHer bright quick eye catches the truth directly. \u201cAileen!\u201d holding up\nher forefinger. \u201cDon\u2019t tell me there\u2019s anything wrong about that\nsecurity of Lignum\u2019s! Don\u2019t do it, Aileen, on account of the\nchildren!\u201d\n\nThe trooper looks at her with a troubled visage.\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d says Mrs. Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis and\noccasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. \u201cIf you\nhave allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum\u2019s, and\nif you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger of\nbeing sold up\u2014and I see sold up in your face, Aileen, as plain as\nprint\u2014you have done a shameful action and have deceived us cruelly.\nI tell you, cruelly, Aileen. There!\u201d\n\nMr. Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts his\nlarge right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it from\na shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs. Bagnet.\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d says that old girl, \u201cI wonder at you! Aileen, I am ashamed\nof you! Aileen, I couldn\u2019t have believed you would have done it! I\nalways knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss, but I\nnever thought you would have taken away what little moss there was\nfor Bagnet and the children to lie upon. You know what a\nhard-working, steady-going chap he is. You know what Quebec and Malta\nand Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or could, have had\nthe heart to serve us so. Oh, Aileen!\u201d Mrs. Bagnet gathers up her\ncloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine manner, \u201cHow could you do\nit?\u201d\n\nMrs. Bagnet ceasing, Mr. Bagnet removes his hand from his head as if\nthe shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr. Aileen, who\nhas turned quite white and looks distressfully at the grey cloak and\nstraw bonnet.\n\n\u201cMat,\u201d says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but still\nlooking at his wife, \u201cI am sorry you take it so much to heart,\nbecause I do hope it\u2019s not so bad as that comes to. I certainly have,\nthis morning, received this letter\u201d\u2014which he reads aloud\u2014\u201cbut I\nhope it may be set right yet. As to a rolling stone, why, what you\nsay is true. I AM a rolling stone, and I never rolled in anybody\u2019s\nway, I fully believe, that I rolled the least good to. But it\u2019s\nimpossible for an old vagabond comrade to like your wife and family\nbetter than I like \u2019em, Mat, and I trust you\u2019ll look upon me as\nforgivingly as you can. Don\u2019t think I\u2019ve kept anything from you. I\nhaven\u2019t had the letter more than a quarter of an hour.\u201d\n\n\u201cOld girl,\u201d murmurs Mr. Bagnet after a short silence, \u201cwill you tell\nhim my opinion?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Why didn\u2019t he marry,\u201d Mrs. Bagnet answers, half laughing and\nhalf crying, \u201cJoe Pouch\u2019s widder in North America? Then he wouldn\u2019t\nhave got himself into these troubles.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe old girl,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet, \u201cputs it correct\u2014why didn\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, she has a better husband by this time, I hope,\u201d returns the\ntrooper. \u201cAnyhow, here I stand, this present day, NOT married to Joe\nPouch\u2019s widder. What shall I do? You see all I have got about me.\nIt\u2019s not mine; it\u2019s yours. Give the word, and I\u2019ll sell off every\nmorsel. If I could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum\nwanted, I\u2019d have sold all long ago. Don\u2019t believe that I\u2019ll leave you\nor yours in the lurch, Mat. I\u2019d sell myself first. I only wish,\u201d says\nthe trooper, giving himself a disparaging blow in the chest, \u201cthat I\nknew of any one who\u2019d buy such a second-hand piece of old stores.\u201d\n\n\u201cOld girl,\u201d murmurs Mr. Bagnet, \u201cgive him another bit of my mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d says the old girl, \u201cyou are not so much to be blamed, on\nfull consideration, except for ever taking this business without the\nmeans.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd that was like me!\u201d observes the penitent trooper, shaking his\nhead. \u201cLike me, I know.\u201d\n\n\u201cSilence! The old girl,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet, \u201cis correct\u2014in her way of\ngiving my opinions\u2014hear me out!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat was when you never ought to have asked for the security,\nAileen, and when you never ought to have got it, all things\nconsidered. But what\u2019s done can\u2019t be undone. You are always an\nhonourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your power,\nthough a little flighty. On the other hand, you can\u2019t admit but what\nit\u2019s natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging over our\nheads. So forget and forgive all round, Aileen. Come! Forget and\nforgive all round!\u201d\n\nMrs. Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her\nhusband the other, Mr. Aileen gives each of them one of his and holds\nthem while he speaks.\n\n\u201cI do assure you both, there\u2019s nothing I wouldn\u2019t do to discharge\nthis obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together has\ngone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly enough\nhere, Olive and I. But the gallery don\u2019t quite do what was expected of\nit, and it\u2019s not\u2014in short, it\u2019s not the mint. It was wrong in me to\ntake it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner drawn into that step,\nand I thought it might steady me, and set me up, and you\u2019ll try to\noverlook my having such expectations, and upon my soul, I am very\nmuch obliged to you, and very much ashamed of myself.\u201d With these\nconcluding words, Mr. Aileen gives a shake to each of the hands he\nholds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace or two in a\nbroad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a final confession\nand were immediately going to be shot with all military honours.\n\n\u201cAileen, hear me out!\u201d says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. \u201cOld\ngirl, go on!\u201d\n\nMr. Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to\nobserve that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that\nit is advisable that Aileen and he should immediately wait on Mr.\nHunter in person, and that the primary object is to save and hold\nharmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money. Mr. Aileen, entirely\nassenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with Mr. Bagnet to\nthe enemy\u2019s camp.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you mind a woman\u2019s hasty word, Aileen,\u201d says Mrs. Bagnet,\npatting him on the shoulder. \u201cI trust my old Lignum to you, and I am\nsure you\u2019ll bring him through it.\u201d\n\nThe trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he WILL bring\nLignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs. Bagnet, with her cloak,\nbasket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of\nher family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of\nmollifying Mr. Hunter.\n\nWhether there are two people in England less likely to come\nsatisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr. Hunter than Mr.\nAileen and Mr. Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned.\nAlso, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square\nshoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same limits\ntwo more simple and unaccustomed children in all the Huntery\naffairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity through the\nstreets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr. Bagnet, observing\nhis companion to be thoughtful, considers it a friendly part to refer\nto Mrs. Bagnet\u2019s late sally.\n\n\u201cAileen, you know the old girl\u2014she\u2019s as sweet and as mild as milk.\nBut touch her on the children\u2014or myself\u2014and she\u2019s off like\ngunpowder.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt does her credit, Mat!\u201d\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight before him, \u201cthe old\ngirl\u2014can\u2019t do anything\u2014that don\u2019t do her credit. More or less. I\nnever say so. Discipline must be maintained.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s worth her weight in gold,\u201d says the trooper.\n\n\u201cIn gold?\u201d says Mr. Bagnet. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what. The old girl\u2019s\nweight\u2014is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight\u2014in any\nmetal\u2014for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl\u2019s metal is\nfar more precious\u2014than the preciousest metal. And she\u2019s ALL metal!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are right, Mat!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen she took me\u2014and accepted of the ring\u2014she \u2019listed under me and\nthe children\u2014heart and head; for life. She\u2019s that earnest,\u201d says Mr.\nBagnet, \u201cand true to her colours\u2014that, touch us with a finger\u2014and\nshe turns out\u2014and stands to her arms. If the old girl fires\nwide\u2014once in a way\u2014at the call of duty\u2014look over it, Aileen. For\nshe\u2019s loyal!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, bless her, Mat,\u201d returns the trooper, \u201cI think the higher of\nher for it!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are right!\u201d says Mr. Bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm, though\nwithout relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. \u201cThink as high of\nthe old girl\u2014as the rock of Gibraltar\u2014and still you\u2019ll be thinking\nlow\u2014of such merits. But I never own to it before her. Discipline\nmust be maintained.\u201d\n\nThese encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant and to Grandfather\nHunter\u2019s house. The door is opened by the perennial Hallie, who,\nhaving surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but\nindeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she\nconsults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred\nto give consent from the circumstance of her returning with the words\non her honey lips that they can come in if they want to it. Thus\nprivileged, they come in and find Mr. Hunter with his feet in the\ndrawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath and Mrs.\nHunter obscured with the cushion like a bird that is not to sing.\n\n\u201cMy dear friend,\u201d says Grandfather Hunter with those two lean\naffectionate arms of his stretched forth. \u201cHow de do? How de do? Who\nis our friend, my dear friend?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy this,\u201d returns Aileen, not able to be very conciliatory at\nfirst, \u201cis Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of ours,\nyou know.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Mr. Bagnet? Surely!\u201d The old man looks at him under his hand.\n\n\u201cHope you\u2019re well, Mr. Bagnet? Fine man, Mr. Aileen! Military air,\nsir!\u201d\n\nNo chairs being offered, Mr. Aileen brings one forward for Bagnet and\none for himself. They sit down, Mr. Bagnet as if he had no power of\nbending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose.\n\n\u201cHallie,\u201d says Mr. Hunter, \u201cbring the pipe.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I don\u2019t know,\u201d Mr. Aileen interposes, \u201cthat the young woman\nneed give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not\ninclined to smoke it to-day.\u201d\n\n\u201cAin\u2019t you?\u201d returns the old man. \u201cHallie, bring the pipe.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe fact is, Mr. Hunter,\u201d proceeds Aileen, \u201cthat I find myself in\nrather an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that your\nfriend in the city has been playing tricks.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear no!\u201d says Grandfather Hunter. \u201cHe never does that!\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might be\nHIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter.\u201d\n\nGrandfather Hunter smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of the\nletter.\n\n\u201cWhat does it mean?\u201d asks Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cHallie,\u201d says the old man. \u201cHave you got the pipe? Give it to me. Did\nyou say what does it mean, my good friend?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Hunter,\u201d urges the trooper,\nconstraining himself to speak as smoothly and confidentially as he\ncan, holding the open letter in one hand and resting the broad\nknuckles of the other on his thigh, \u201ca good lot of money has passed\nbetween us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are\nboth well aware of the understanding there has always been. I am\nprepared to do the usual thing which I have done regularly and to\nkeep this matter going. I never got a letter like this from you\nbefore, and I have been a little put about by it this morning,\nbecause here\u2019s my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had none of\nthe money\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI DON\u2019T know it, you know,\u201d says the old man quietly.\n\n\u201cWhy, con-found you\u2014it, I mean\u2014I tell you so, don\u2019t I?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, you tell me so,\u201d returns Grandfather Hunter. \u201cBut I\ndon\u2019t know it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d says the trooper, swallowing his fire. \u201cI know it.\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter replies with excellent temper, \u201cAh! That\u2019s quite\nanother thing!\u201d And adds, \u201cBut it don\u2019t matter. Mr. Bagnet\u2019s\nsituation is all one, whether or no.\u201d\n\nThe unfortunate Aileen makes a great effort to arrange the affair\ncomfortably and to propitiate Mr. Hunter by taking him upon his\nown terms.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s just what I mean. As you say, Mr. Hunter, here\u2019s Matthew\nBagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see, that makes his\ngood lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for whereas I\u2019m a\nharum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more kicks than halfpence\ncome natural to, why he\u2019s a steady family man, don\u2019t you see? Now,\nMr. Hunter,\u201d says the trooper, gaining confidence as he proceeds\nin his soldierly mode of doing business, \u201calthough you and I are good\nfriends enough in a certain sort of a way, I am well aware that I\ncan\u2019t ask you to let my friend Bagnet off entirely.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear, you are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr. Aileen.\u201d\n(There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Hunter\nto-day.)\n\n\u201cAnd you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as\nyour friend in the city? Ha ha ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cHa ha ha!\u201d echoes Grandfather Hunter. In such a very hard manner\nand with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet\u2019s natural gravity\nis much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man.\n\n\u201cCome!\u201d says the sanguine Aileen. \u201cI am glad to find we can be\npleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here\u2019s my friend\nBagnet, and here am I. We\u2019ll settle the matter on the spot, if you\nplease, Mr. Hunter, in the usual way. And you\u2019ll ease my friend\nBagnet\u2019s mind, and his family\u2019s mind, a good deal if you\u2019ll just\nmention to him what our understanding is.\u201d\n\nHere some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, \u201cOh, good\ngracious! Oh!\u201d Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Hallie, who is found\nto be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin\nhas received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt. Mr.\nBagnet\u2019s gravity becomes yet more profound.\n\n\u201cBut I think you asked me, Mr. Aileen\u201d\u2014old Hunter, who all this\ntime has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now\u2014\u201cI think you\nasked me, what did the letter mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, yes, I did,\u201d returns the trooper in his off-hand way, \u201cbut I\ndon\u2019t care to know particularly, if it\u2019s all correct and pleasant.\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper\u2019s\nhead, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what it means, my dear friend. I\u2019ll smash you. I\u2019ll crumble\nyou. I\u2019ll powder you. Go to the devil!\u201d\n\nThe two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet\u2019s gravity\nhas now attained its profoundest point.\n\n\u201cGo to the devil!\u201d repeats the old man. \u201cI\u2019ll have no more of your\npipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You\u2019re an independent dragoon,\ntoo! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before)\nand show your independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend,\nthere\u2019s a chance for you. Open the street door, Hallie; put these\nblusterers out! Call in help if they don\u2019t go. Put \u2019em out!\u201d\n\nHe vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on\nthe shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his\namazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is\ninstantly slammed by the triumphant Hallie. Utterly confounded, Mr.\nAileen awhile stands looking at the knocker. Mr. Bagnet, in a perfect\nabyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little parlour window\nlike a sentry and looks in every time he passes, apparently revolving\nsomething in his mind.\n\n\u201cCome, Mat,\u201d says Mr. Aileen when he has recovered himself, \u201cwe must\ntry the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?\u201d\n\nMr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour,\nreplies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, \u201cIf my\nold girl had been here\u2014I\u2019d have told him!\u201d Having so discharged\nhimself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and\nmarches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder.\n\nWhen they present themselves in Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields, Mr. Tulkinghorn\nis engaged and not to be seen. He is not at all willing to see them,\nfor when they have waited a full hour, and the clerk, on his bell\nbeing rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning as much, he brings\nforth no more encouraging message than that Mr. Tulkinghorn has\nnothing to say to them and they had better not wait. They do wait,\nhowever, with the perseverance of military tactics, and at last the\nbell rings again and the client in possession comes out of Mr.\nTulkinghorn\u2019s room.\n\nThe client is a handsome old lady, no other than Mrs. Talon,\nhousekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary with a\nfair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door. She is treated\nwith some distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his pew to\nshow her through the outer office and to let her out. The old lady is\nthanking him for his attention when she observes the comrades in\nwaiting.\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?\u201d\n\nThe clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and Mr. Aileen\nnot turning round from the almanac over the fire-place. Mr. Bagnet\ntakes upon himself to reply, \u201cYes, ma\u2019am. Formerly.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought so. I was sure of it. My heart warms, gentlemen, at the\nsight of you. It always does at the sight of such. God bless you,\ngentlemen! You\u2019ll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once who went\nfor a soldier. A fine handsome youth he was, and good in his bold\nway, though some people did disparage him to his poor mother. I ask\nyour pardon for troubling you, sir. God bless you, gentlemen!\u201d\n\n\u201cSame to you, ma\u2019am!\u201d returns Mr. Bagnet with right good will.\n\nThere is something very touching in the earnestness of the old lady\u2019s\nvoice and in the tremble that goes through her quaint old figure. But\nMr. Aileen is so occupied with the almanac over the fire-place\n(calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he does not look\nround until she has gone away and the door is closed upon her.\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d Mr. Bagnet gruffly whispers when he does turn from the\nalmanac at last. \u201cDon\u2019t be cast down! \u2018Why, soldiers, why\u2014should we\nbe melancholy, boys?\u2019 Cheer up, my hearty!\u201d\n\nThe clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there\nand Mr. Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility,\n\u201cLet \u2019em come in then!\u201d they pass into the great room with the\npainted ceiling and find him standing before the fire.\n\n\u201cNow, you men, what do you want? Sergeant, I told you the last time I\nsaw you that I don\u2019t desire your company here.\u201d\n\nSergeant replies\u2014dashed within the last few minutes as to his usual\nmanner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage\u2014that he has\nreceived this letter, has been to Mr. Hunter about it, and has\nbeen referred there.\n\n\u201cI have nothing to say to you,\u201d rejoins Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cIf you get\ninto debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences. You have\nno occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose?\u201d\n\nSergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money.\n\n\u201cVery well! Then the other man\u2014this man, if this is he\u2014must pay it\nfor you.\u201d\n\nSergeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with the\nmoney either.\n\n\u201cVery well! Then you must pay it between you or you must both be sued\nfor it and both suffer. You have had the money and must refund it.\nYou are not to pocket other people\u2019s pounds, shillings, and pence and\nescape scot-free.\u201d\n\nThe lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and stirs the fire. Mr. Aileen\nhopes he will have the goodness to\u2014\u201cI tell you, sergeant, I have\nnothing to say to you. I don\u2019t like your associates and don\u2019t want\nyou here. This matter is not at all in my course of practice and is\nnot in my office. Mr. Hunter is good enough to offer these affairs\nto me, but they are not in my way. You must go to Melchisedech\u2019s in\nClifford\u2019s Inn.\u201d\n\n\u201cI must make an apology to you, sir,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, \u201cfor pressing\nmyself upon you with so little encouragement\u2014which is almost as\nunpleasant to me as it can be to you\u2014but would you let me say a\nprivate word to you?\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into\none of the window recesses. \u201cNow! I have no time to waste.\u201d In the\nmidst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a sharp\nlook at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back to the\nlight and to have the other with his face towards it.\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, \u201cthis man with me is the other party\nimplicated in this unfortunate affair\u2014nominally, only nominally\u2014and\nmy sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my account.\nHe is a most respectable man with a wife and family, formerly in the\nRoyal Artillery\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMy friend, I don\u2019t care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal\nArtillery establishment\u2014officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses,\nguns, and ammunition.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife and\nfamily being injured on my account. And if I could bring them through\nthis matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any\nother consideration what you wanted of me the other day.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you got it here?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have got it here, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cSergeant,\u201d the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far\nmore hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence, \u201cmake\nup your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. After I have\nfinished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won\u2019t re-open it.\nUnderstand that. You can leave here, for a few days, what you say you\nhave brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you\nchoose. In case you choose to leave it here, I can do this for you\u2014I\ncan replace this matter on its old footing, and I can go so far\nbesides as to give you a written undertaking that this man Bagnet\nshall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded\nagainst to the utmost, that your means shall be exhausted before the\ncreditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have you\ndecided?\u201d\n\nThe trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long\nbreath, \u201cI must do it, sir.\u201d\n\nSo Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes\nthe undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who\nhas all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand\non his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems\nexceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express his\nsentiments. The trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a folded\npaper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer\u2019s elbow.\n\u201c\u2019Tis only a letter of instructions, sir. The last I ever had from\nhim.\u201d\n\nLook at a millstone, Mr. Aileen, for some change in its expression,\nand you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr. Tulkinghorn\nwhen he opens and reads the letter! He refolds it and lays it in his\ndesk with a countenance as unperturbable as death.\n\nNor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same\nfrigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, \u201cYou can go. Show\nthese men out, there!\u201d Being shown out, they repair to Mr. Bagnet\u2019s\nresidence to dine.\n\nBoiled beef and greens constitute the day\u2019s variety on the former\nrepast of boiled pork and greens, and Mrs. Bagnet serves out the meal\nin the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being that\nrare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a\nhint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot\nof darkness near her. The spot on this occasion is the darkened brow\nof Mr. Aileen; he is unusually thoughtful and depressed. At first\nMrs. Bagnet trusts to the combined endearments of Quebec and Malta to\nrestore him, but finding those young ladies sensible that their\nexisting Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their usual frolicsome\nacquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and leaves him to\ndeploy at leisure on the open ground of the domestic hearth.\n\nBut he does not. He remains in close order, clouded and depressed.\nDuring the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and Mr.\nBagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he was at\ndinner. He forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders, lets his\npipe out, fills the breast of Mr. Bagnet with perturbation and dismay\nby showing that he has no enjoyment of tobacco.\n\nTherefore when Mrs. Bagnet at last appears, rosy from the\ninvigorating pail, and sits down to her work, Mr. Bagnet growls, \u201cOld\ngirl!\u201d and winks monitions to her to find out what\u2019s the matter.\n\n\u201cWhy, Aileen!\u201d says Mrs. Bagnet, quietly threading her needle. \u201cHow\nlow you are!\u201d\n\n\u201cAm I? Not good company? Well, I am afraid I am not.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe ain\u2019t at all like Bluffy, mother!\u201d cries little Malta.\n\n\u201cBecause he ain\u2019t well, I think, mother,\u201d adds Quebec.\n\n\u201cSure that\u2019s a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too!\u201d returns the\ntrooper, kissing the young damsels. \u201cBut it\u2019s true,\u201d with a sigh,\n\u201ctrue, I am afraid. These little ones are always right!\u201d\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d says Mrs. Bagnet, working busily, \u201cif I thought you cross\nenough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier\u2019s wife\u2014who\ncould have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done it\nalmost\u2014said this morning, I don\u2019t know what I shouldn\u2019t say to you\nnow.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy kind soul of a darling,\u201d returns the trooper. \u201cNot a morsel of\nit.\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause really and truly, Aileen, what I said and meant to say was\nthat I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you\u2019d bring him through it.\nAnd you HAVE brought him through it, noble!\u201d\n\n\u201cThankee, my dear!\u201d says Aileen. \u201cI am glad of your good opinion.\u201d\n\nIn giving Mrs. Bagnet\u2019s hand, with her work in it, a friendly\nshake\u2014for she took her seat beside him\u2014the trooper\u2019s attention is\nattracted to her face. After looking at it for a little while as she\nplies her needle, he looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his stool in\nthe corner, and beckons that fifer to him.\n\n\u201cSee there, my boy,\u201d says Aileen, very gently smoothing the mother\u2019s\nhair with his hand, \u201cthere\u2019s a good loving forehead for you! All\nbright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by the sun and the\nweather through following your father about and taking care of you,\nbut as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree.\u201d\n\nMr. Bagnet\u2019s face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies,\nthe highest approbation and acquiescence.\n\n\u201cThe time will come, my boy,\u201d pursues the trooper, \u201cwhen this hair of\nyour mother\u2019s will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and\nre-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she\u2019ll be then. Take\ncare, while you are young, that you can think in those days, \u2018I never\nwhitened a hair of her dear head\u2014I never marked a sorrowful line in\nher face!\u2019 For of all the many things that you can think of when you\nare a man, you had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy beside\nhis mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry about him,\nthat he\u2019ll smoke his pipe in the street a bit.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXV\n\nPaulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nI lay ill through several weeks, and the usual tenor of my life\nbecame like an old remembrance. But this was not the effect of time\nso much as of the change in all my habits made by the helplessness\nand inaction of a sick-room. Before I had been confined to it many\ndays, everything else seemed to have retired into a remote distance\nwhere there was little or no separation between the various stages of\nmy life which had been really divided by years. In falling ill, I\nseemed to have crossed a dark lake and to have left all my\nexperiences, mingled together by the great distance, on the healthy\nshore.\n\nMy housekeeping duties, though at first it caused me great anxiety to\nthink that they were unperformed, were soon as far off as the oldest\nof the old duties at Greenleaf or the summer afternoons when I went\nhome from school with my portfolio under my arm, and my childish\nshadow at my side, to my godmother\u2019s house. I had never known before\nhow short life really was and into how small a space the mind could\nput it.\n\nWhile I was very ill, the way in which these divisions of time became\nconfused with one another distressed my mind exceedingly. At once a\nchild, an elder girl, and the little woman I had been so happy as, I\nwas not only oppressed by cares and difficulties adapted to each\nstation, but by the great perplexity of endlessly trying to reconcile\nthem. I suppose that few who have not been in such a condition can\nquite understand what I mean or what painful unrest arose from this\nsource.\n\nFor the same reason I am almost afraid to hint at that time in my\ndisorder\u2014it seemed one long night, but I believe there were both\nnights and days in it\u2014when I laboured up colossal staircases, ever\nstriving to reach the top, and ever turned, as I have seen a worm in\na garden path, by some obstruction, and labouring again. I knew\nperfectly at intervals, and I think vaguely at most times, that I was\nin my bed; and I talked with Weston, and felt her touch, and knew\nher very well; yet I would find myself complaining, \u201cOh, more of\nthese never-ending stairs, Weston\u2014more and more\u2014piled up to the\nsky\u2019, I think!\u201d and labouring on again.\n\nDare I hint at that worse time when, strung together somewhere in\ngreat black space, there was a flaming necklace, or ring, or starry\ncircle of some kind, of which I was one of the beads! And when my\nonly prayer was to be taken off from the rest and when it was such\ninexplicable agony and misery to be a part of the dreadful thing?\n\nPerhaps the less I say of these sick experiences, the less tedious\nand the more intelligible I shall be. I do not recall them to make\nothers unhappy or because I am now the least unhappy in remembering\nthem. It may be that if we knew more of such strange afflictions we\nmight be the better able to alleviate their intensity.\n\nThe repose that succeeded, the long delicious sleep, the blissful\nrest, when in my weakness I was too calm to have any care for myself\nand could have heard (or so I think now) that I was dying, with no\nother emotion than with a pitying love for those I left behind\u2014this\nstate can be perhaps more widely understood. I was in this state when\nI first shrunk from the light as it twinkled on me once more, and\nknew with a boundless joy for which no words are rapturous enough\nthat I should see again.\n\nI had heard my Ada crying at the door, day and night; I had heard her\ncalling to me that I was cruel and did not love her; I had heard her\npraying and imploring to be let in to nurse and comfort me and to\nleave my bedside no more; but I had only said, when I could speak,\n\u201cNever, my sweet girl, never!\u201d and I had over and over again reminded\nWeston that she was to keep my darling from the room whether I lived\nor died. Weston had been true to me in that time of need, and with\nher little hand and her great heart had kept the door fast.\n\nBut now, my sight strengthening and the glorious light coming every\nday more fully and brightly on me, I could read the letters that my\ndear wrote to me every morning and evening and could put them to my\nlips and lay my cheek upon them with no fear of hurting her. I could\nsee my little maid, so tender and so careful, going about the two\nrooms setting everything in order and speaking cheerfully to Ada from\nthe open window again. I could understand the stillness in the house\nand the thoughtfulness it expressed on the part of all those who had\nalways been so good to me. I could weep in the exquisite felicity of\nmy heart and be as happy in my weakness as ever I had been in my\nstrength.\n\nBy and by my strength began to be restored. Instead of lying, with so\nstrange a calmness, watching what was done for me, as if it were done\nfor some one else whom I was quietly sorry for, I helped it a little,\nand so on to a little more and much more, until I became useful to\nmyself, and interested, and attached to life again.\n\nHow well I remember the pleasant afternoon when I was raised in bed\nwith pillows for the first time to enjoy a great tea-drinking with\nWeston! The little creature\u2014sent into the world, surely, to\nminister to the weak and sick\u2014was so happy, and so busy, and stopped\nso often in her preparations to lay her head upon my bosom, and\nfondle me, and cry with joyful tears she was so glad, she was so\nglad, that I was obliged to say, \u201cWeston, if you go on in this way,\nI must lie down again, my darling, for I am weaker than I thought I\nwas!\u201d So Weston became as quiet as a mouse and took her bright face\nhere and there across and across the two rooms, out of the shade into\nthe divine sunshine, and out of the sunshine into the shade, while I\nwatched her peacefully. When all her preparations were concluded and\nthe pretty tea-table with its little delicacies to tempt me, and its\nwhite cloth, and its flowers, and everything so lovingly and\nbeautifully arranged for me by Ada downstairs, was ready at the\nbedside, I felt sure I was steady enough to say something to Weston\nthat was not new to my thoughts.\n\nFirst I complimented Weston on the room, and indeed it was so fresh\nand airy, so spotless and neat, that I could scarce believe I had\nbeen lying there so long. This delighted Weston, and her face was\nbrighter than before.\n\n\u201cYet, Weston,\u201d said I, looking round, \u201cI miss something, surely,\nthat I am accustomed to?\u201d\n\nPoor little Weston looked round too and pretended to shake her head\nas if there were nothing absent.\n\n\u201cAre the pictures all as they used to be?\u201d I asked her.\n\n\u201cEvery one of them, miss,\u201d said Weston.\n\n\u201cAnd the furniture, Weston?\u201d\n\n\u201cExcept where I have moved it about to make more room, miss.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd yet,\u201d said I, \u201cI miss some familiar object. Ah, I know what it\nis, Weston! It\u2019s the looking-glass.\u201d\n\nWeston got up from the table, making as if she had forgotten\nsomething, and went into the next room; and I heard her sob there.\n\nI had thought of this very often. I was now certain of it. I could\nthank God that it was not a shock to me now. I called Weston back,\nand when she came\u2014at first pretending to smile, but as she drew\nnearer to me, looking grieved\u2014I took her in my arms and said, \u201cIt\nmatters very little, Weston. I hope I can do without my old face\nvery well.\u201d\n\nI was presently so far advanced as to be able to sit up in a great\nchair and even giddily to walk into the adjoining room, leaning on\nWeston. The mirror was gone from its usual place in that room too,\nbut what I had to bear was none the harder to bear for that.\n\nMy guardian had throughout been earnest to visit me, and there was\nnow no good reason why I should deny myself that happiness. He came\none morning, and when he first came in, could only hold me in his\nembrace and say, \u201cMy dear, dear girl!\u201d I had long known\u2014who could\nknow better?\u2014what a deep fountain of affection and generosity his\nheart was; and was it not worth my trivial suffering and change to\nfill such a place in it? \u201cOh, yes!\u201d I thought. \u201cHe has seen me, and\nhe loves me better than he did; he has seen me and is even fonder of\nme than he was before; and what have I to mourn for!\u201d\n\nHe sat down by me on the sofa, supporting me with his arm. For a\nlittle while he sat with his hand over his face, but when he removed\nit, fell into his usual manner. There never can have been, there\nnever can be, a pleasanter manner.\n\n\u201cMy little woman,\u201d said he, \u201cwhat a sad time this has been. Such an\ninflexible little woman, too, through all!\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly for the best, guardian,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cFor the best?\u201d he repeated tenderly. \u201cOf course, for the best. But\nhere have Ada and I been perfectly forlorn and miserable; here has\nyour friend Viola been coming and going late and early; here has\nevery one about the house been utterly lost and dejected; here has\neven poor Rick been writing\u2014to ME too\u2014in his anxiety for you!\u201d\n\nI had read of Viola in Ada\u2019s letters, but not of Celise. I told him\nso.\n\n\u201cWhy, no, my dear,\u201d he replied. \u201cI have thought it better not to\nmention it to her.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you speak of his writing to YOU,\u201d said I, repeating his\nemphasis. \u201cAs if it were not natural for him to do so, guardian; as\nif he could write to a better friend!\u201d\n\n\u201cHe thinks he could, my love,\u201d returned my guardian, \u201cand to many a\nbetter. The truth is, he wrote to me under a sort of protest while\nunable to write to you with any hope of an answer\u2014wrote coldly,\nhaughtily, distantly, resentfully. Well, dearest little woman, we\nmust look forbearingly on it. He is not to blame. Ashton and\nAshton has warped him out of himself and perverted me in his eyes.\nI have known it do as bad deeds, and worse, many a time. If two\nangels could be concerned in it, I believe it would change their\nnature.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt has not changed yours, guardian.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, it has, my dear,\u201d he said laughingly. \u201cIt has made the\nsouth wind easterly, I don\u2019t know how often. Rick mistrusts and\nsuspects me\u2014goes to lawyers, and is taught to mistrust and suspect\nme. Hears I have conflicting interests, claims clashing against his\nand what not. Whereas, heaven knows that if I could get out of the\nmountains of Wiglomeration on which my unfortunate name has been so\nlong bestowed (which I can\u2019t) or could level them by the extinction\nof my own original right (which I can\u2019t either, and no human power\never can, anyhow, I believe, to such a pass have we got), I would do\nit this hour. I would rather restore to poor Rick his proper nature\nthan be endowed with all the money that dead suitors, broken, heart\nand soul, upon the wheel of Chancery, have left unclaimed with the\nAccountant-General\u2014and that\u2019s money enough, my dear, to be cast into\na pyramid, in memory of Chancery\u2019s transcendent wickedness.\u201d\n\n\u201cIS it possible, guardian,\u201d I asked, amazed, \u201cthat Celise can be\nsuspicious of you?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, my love, my love,\u201d he said, \u201cit is in the subtle poison of such\nabuses to breed such diseases. His blood is infected, and objects\nlose their natural aspects in his sight. It is not HIS fault.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut it is a terrible misfortune, guardian.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is a terrible misfortune, little woman, to be ever drawn within\nthe influences of Ashton and Ashton. I know none greater. By\nlittle and little he has been induced to trust in that rotten reed,\nand it communicates some portion of its rottenness to everything\naround him. But again I say with all my soul, we must be patient with\npoor Rick and not blame him. What a troop of fine fresh hearts like\nhis have I seen in my time turned by the same means!\u201d\n\nI could not help expressing something of my wonder and regret that\nhis benevolent, disinterested intentions had prospered so little.\n\n\u201cWe must not say so, Dame Durden,\u201d he cheerfully replied; \u201cAda is the\nhappier, I hope, and that is much. I did think that I and both these\nyoung creatures might be friends instead of distrustful foes and that\nwe might so far counter-act the suit and prove too strong for it. But\nit was too much to expect. Ashton and Ashton was the curtain of\nRick\u2019s cradle.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, guardian, may we not hope that a little experience will teach\nhim what a false and wretched thing it is?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe WILL hope so, my Paulina,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cand that it may not\nteach him so too late. In any case we must not be hard on him. There\nare not many grown and matured men living while we speak, good men\ntoo, who if they were thrown into this same court as suitors would\nnot be vitally changed and depreciated within three years\u2014within\ntwo\u2014within one. How can we stand amazed at poor Rick? A young man so\nunfortunate,\u201d here he fell into a lower tone, as if he were thinking\naloud, \u201ccannot at first believe (who could?) that Chancery is what it\nis. He looks to it, flushed and fitfully, to do something with his\ninterests and bring them to some settlement. It procrastinates,\ndisappoints, tries, tortures him; wears out his sanguine hopes and\npatience, thread by thread; but he still looks to it, and hankers\nafter it, and finds his whole world treacherous and hollow. Well,\nwell, well! Enough of this, my dear!\u201d\n\nHe had supported me, as at first, all this time, and his tenderness\nwas so precious to me that I leaned my head upon his shoulder and\nloved him as if he had been my father. I resolved in my own mind in\nthis little pause, by some means, to see Celise when I grew strong\nand try to set him right.\n\n\u201cThere are better subjects than these,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cfor such a\njoyful time as the time of our dear girl\u2019s recovery. And I had a\ncommission to broach one of them as soon as I should begin to talk.\nWhen shall Ada come to see you, my love?\u201d\n\nI had been thinking of that too. A little in connexion with the\nabsent mirrors, but not much, for I knew my loving girl would be\nchanged by no change in my looks.\n\n\u201cDear guardian,\u201d said I, \u201cas I have shut her out so long\u2014though\nindeed, indeed, she is like the light to me\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI know it well, Dame Durden, well.\u201d\n\nHe was so good, his touch expressed such endearing compassion and\naffection, and the tone of his voice carried such comfort into my\nheart that I stopped for a little while, quite unable to go on. \u201cYes,\nyes, you are tired,\u201d said he. \u201cRest a little.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs I have kept Ada out so long,\u201d I began afresh after a short while,\n\u201cI think I should like to have my own way a little longer, guardian.\nIt would be best to be away from here before I see her. If Weston\nand I were to go to some country lodging as soon as I can move, and\nif I had a week there in which to grow stronger and to be revived by\nthe sweet air and to look forward to the happiness of having Ada with\nme again, I think it would be better for us.\u201d\n\nI hope it was not a poor thing in me to wish to be a little more used\nto my altered self before I met the eyes of the dear girl I longed so\nardently to see, but it is the truth. I did. He understood me, I was\nsure; but I was not afraid of that. If it were a poor thing, I knew\nhe would pass it over.\n\n\u201cOur spoilt little woman,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cshall have her own way\neven in her inflexibility, though at the price, I know, of tears\ndownstairs. And see here! Here is Rhea, heart of chivalry,\nbreathing such ferocious vows as never were breathed on paper before,\nthat if you don\u2019t go and occupy his whole house, he having already\nturned out of it expressly for that purpose, by heaven and by earth\nhe\u2019ll pull it down and not leave one brick standing on another!\u201d\n\nAnd my guardian put a letter in my hand, without any ordinary\nbeginning such as \u201cMy dear Ashton,\u201d but rushing at once into the\nwords, \u201cI swear if Miss Robin do not come down and take\npossession of my house, which I vacate for her this day at one\no\u2019clock, P.M.,\u201d and then with the utmost seriousness, and in the most\nemphatic terms, going on to make the extraordinary declaration he had\nquoted. We did not appreciate the writer the less for laughing\nheartily over it, and we settled that I should send him a letter of\nthanks on the morrow and accept his offer. It was a most agreeable\none to me, for all the places I could have thought of, I should have\nliked to go to none so well as Chesney Wold.\n\n\u201cNow, little housewife,\u201d said my guardian, looking at his watch, \u201cI\nwas strictly timed before I came upstairs, for you must not be tired\ntoo soon; and my time has waned away to the last minute. I have one\nother petition. Little Miss Daxter, hearing a rumour that you were\nill, made nothing of walking down here\u2014twenty miles, poor soul, in a\npair of dancing shoes\u2014to inquire. It was heaven\u2019s mercy we were at\nhome, or she would have walked back again.\u201d\n\nThe old conspiracy to make me happy! Everybody seemed to be in it!\n\n\u201cNow, pet,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cif it would not be irksome to you to\nadmit the harmless little creature one afternoon before you save\nRhea\u2019s otherwise devoted house from demolition, I believe you\nwould make her prouder and better pleased with herself than I\u2014though\nmy eminent name is Ashton\u2014could do in a lifetime.\u201d\n\nI have no doubt he knew there would be something in the simple image\nof the poor afflicted creature that would fall like a gentle lesson\non my mind at that time. I felt it as he spoke to me. I could not\ntell him heartily enough how ready I was to receive her. I had always\npitied her, never so much as now. I had always been glad of my little\npower to soothe her under her calamity, but never, never, half so\nglad before.\n\nWe arranged a time for Miss Daxter to come out by the coach and share\nmy early dinner. When my guardian left me, I turned my face away upon\nmy couch and prayed to be forgiven if I, surrounded by such\nblessings, had magnified to myself the little trial that I had to\nundergo. The childish prayer of that old birthday when I had aspired\nto be industrious, contented, and true-hearted and to do good to some\none and win some love to myself if I could came back into my mind\nwith a reproachful sense of all the happiness I had since enjoyed and\nall the affectionate hearts that had been turned towards me. If I\nwere weak now, what had I profited by those mercies? I repeated the\nold childish prayer in its old childish words and found that its old\npeace had not departed from it.\n\nMy guardian now came every day. In a week or so more I could walk\nabout our rooms and hold long talks with Ada from behind the\nwindow-curtain. Yet I never saw her, for I had not as yet the courage\nto look at the dear face, though I could have done so easily without\nher seeing me.\n\nOn the appointed day Miss Daxter arrived. The poor little creature ran\ninto my room quite forgetful of her usual dignity, and crying from\nher very heart of hearts, \u201cMy dear Fitz Ashton!\u201d fell upon my neck\nand kissed me twenty times.\n\n\u201cDear me!\u201d said she, putting her hand into her reticule, \u201cI have\nnothing here but documents, my dear Fitz Ashton; I must borrow a\npocket handkerchief.\u201d\n\nWeston gave her one, and the good creature certainly made use of it,\nfor she held it to her eyes with both hands and sat so, shedding\ntears for the next ten minutes.\n\n\u201cWith pleasure, my dear Fitz Ashton,\u201d she was careful to explain.\n\u201cNot the least pain. Pleasure to see you well again. Pleasure at\nhaving the honour of being admitted to see you. I am so much fonder\nof you, my love, than of the Chancellor. Though I DO attend court\nregularly. By the by, my dear, mentioning pocket handkerchiefs\u2014\u201d\n\nMiss Daxter here looked at Weston, who had been to meet her at the\nplace where the coach stopped. Weston glanced at me and looked\nunwilling to pursue the suggestion.\n\n\u201cVe-ry right!\u201d said Miss Daxter, \u201cVe-ry correct. Truly! Highly\nindiscreet of me to mention it; but my dear Miss Fitz Ashton, I am\nafraid I am at times (between ourselves, you wouldn\u2019t think it) a\nlittle\u2014rambling you know,\u201d said Miss Daxter, touching her forehead.\n\u201cNothing more.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat were you going to tell me?\u201d said I, smiling, for I saw she\nwanted to go on. \u201cYou have roused my curiosity, and now you must\ngratify it.\u201d\n\nMiss Daxter looked at Weston for advice in this important crisis, who\nsaid, \u201cIf you please, ma\u2019am, you had better tell then,\u201d and therein\ngratified Miss Daxter beyond measure.\n\n\u201cSo sagacious, our young friend,\u201d said she to me in her mysterious\nway. \u201cDiminutive. But ve-ry sagacious! Well, my dear, it\u2019s a pretty\nanecdote. Nothing more. Still I think it charming. Who should follow\nus down the road from the coach, my dear, but a poor person in a very\nungenteel bonnet\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAlejandro, if you please, miss,\u201d said Weston.\n\n\u201cJust so!\u201d Miss Daxter acquiesced with the greatest suavity. \u201cAlejandro.\nYe-es! And what does she tell our young friend but that there has\nbeen a lady with a veil inquiring at her cottage after my dear Fitz\nAshton\u2019s health and taking a handkerchief away with her as a little\nkeepsake merely because it was my amiable Fitz Ashton\u2019s! Now, you\nknow, so very prepossessing in the lady with the veil!\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you please, miss,\u201d said Weston, to whom I looked in some\nastonishment, \u201cAlejandro says that when her baby died, you left a\nhandkerchief there, and that she put it away and kept it with the\nbaby\u2019s little things. I think, if you please, partly because it was\nyours, miss, and partly because it had covered the baby.\u201d\n\n\u201cDiminutive,\u201d whispered Miss Daxter, making a variety of motions about\nher own forehead to express intellect in Weston. \u201cBut exceedingly\nsagacious! And so dear! My love, she\u2019s clearer than any counsel I\never heard!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, Weston,\u201d I returned. \u201cI remember it. Well?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, miss,\u201d said Weston, \u201cand that\u2019s the handkerchief the lady\ntook. And Alejandro wants you to know that she wouldn\u2019t have made away\nwith it herself for a heap of money but that the lady took it and\nleft some money instead. Alejandro don\u2019t know her at all, if you please,\nmiss!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, who can she be?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cMy love,\u201d Miss Daxter suggested, advancing her lips to my ear with\nher most mysterious look, \u201cin MY opinion\u2014don\u2019t mention this to our\ndiminutive friend\u2014she\u2019s the Lord Chancellor\u2019s wife. He\u2019s married,\nyou know. And I understand she leads him a terrible life. Throws his\nlordship\u2019s papers into the fire, my dear, if he won\u2019t pay the\njeweller!\u201d\n\nI did not think very much about this lady then, for I had an\nimpression that it might be Viola. Besides, my attention was diverted\nby my visitor, who was cold after her ride and looked hungry and who,\nour dinner being brought in, required some little assistance in\narraying herself with great satisfaction in a pitiable old scarf and\na much-worn and often-mended pair of gloves, which she had brought\ndown in a paper parcel. I had to preside, too, over the\nentertainment, consisting of a dish of fish, a roast fowl, a\nsweetbread, vegetables, pudding, and Madeira; and it was so pleasant\nto see how she enjoyed it, and with what state and ceremony she did\nhonour to it, that I was soon thinking of nothing else.\n\nWhen we had finished and had our little dessert before us,\nembellished by the hands of my dear, who would yield the\nsuperintendence of everything prepared for me to no one, Miss Daxter\nwas so very chatty and happy that I thought I would lead her to her\nown history, as she was always pleased to talk about herself. I began\nby saying \u201cYou have attended on the Lord Chancellor many years, Miss\nDaxter?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, many, many, many years, my dear. But I expect a judgment.\nShortly.\u201d\n\nThere was an anxiety even in her hopefulness that made me doubtful if\nI had done right in approaching the subject. I thought I would say no\nmore about it.\n\n\u201cMy father expected a judgment,\u201d said Miss Daxter. \u201cMy brother. My\nsister. They all expected a judgment. The same that I expect.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are all\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYe-es. Dead of course, my dear,\u201d said she.\n\nAs I saw she would go on, I thought it best to try to be serviceable\nto her by meeting the theme rather than avoiding it.\n\n\u201cWould it not be wiser,\u201d said I, \u201cto expect this judgment no more?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, my dear,\u201d she answered promptly, \u201cof course it would!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd to attend the court no more?\u201d\n\n\u201cEqually of course,\u201d said she. \u201cVery wearing to be always in\nexpectation of what never comes, my dear Fitz Ashton! Wearing, I\nassure you, to the bone!\u201d\n\nShe slightly showed me her arm, and it was fearfully thin indeed.\n\n\u201cBut, my dear,\u201d she went on in her mysterious way, \u201cthere\u2019s a\ndreadful attraction in the place. Hush! Don\u2019t mention it to our\ndiminutive friend when she comes in. Or it may frighten her. With\ngood reason. There\u2019s a cruel attraction in the place. You CAN\u2019T leave\nit. And you MUST expect.\u201d\n\nI tried to assure her that this was not so. She heard me patiently\nand smilingly, but was ready with her own answer.\n\n\u201cAye, aye, aye! You think so because I am a little rambling. Ve-ry\nabsurd, to be a little rambling, is it not? Ve-ry confusing, too. To\nthe head. I find it so. But, my dear, I have been there many years,\nand I have noticed. It\u2019s the mace and seal upon the table.\u201d\n\nWhat could they do, did she think? I mildly asked her.\n\n\u201cDraw,\u201d returned Miss Daxter. \u201cDraw people on, my dear. Draw peace out\nof them. Sense out of them. Good looks out of them. Good qualities\nout of them. I have felt them even drawing my rest away in the night.\nCold and glittering devils!\u201d\n\nShe tapped me several times upon the arm and nodded good-humouredly\nas if she were anxious I should understand that I had no cause to\nfear her, though she spoke so gloomily, and confided these awful\nsecrets to me.\n\n\u201cLet me see,\u201d said she. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you my own case. Before they ever\ndrew me\u2014before I had ever seen them\u2014what was it I used to do?\nTambourine playing? No. Tambour work. I and my sister worked at\ntambour work. Our father and our brother had a builder\u2019s business.\nWe all lived together. Ve-ry respectably, my dear! First, our father\nwas drawn\u2014slowly. Home was drawn with him. In a few years he\nwas a fierce, sour, angry bankrupt without a kind word or a kind\nlook for any one. He had been so different, Fitz Ashton. He was\ndrawn to a debtors\u2019 prison. There he died. Then our brother was\ndrawn\u2014swiftly\u2014to drunkenness. And rags. And death. Then my sister\nwas drawn. Hush! Never ask to what! Then I was ill and in misery, and\nheard, as I had often heard before, that this was all the work of\nChancery. When I got better, I went to look at the monster. And then\nI found out how it was, and I was drawn to stay there.\u201d\n\nHaving got over her own short narrative, in the delivery of which she\nhad spoken in a low, strained voice, as if the shock were fresh upon\nher, she gradually resumed her usual air of amiable importance.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t quite credit me, my dear! Well, well! You will, some day.\nI am a little rambling. But I have noticed. I have seen many new\nfaces come, unsuspicious, within the influence of the mace and seal\nin these many years. As my father\u2019s came there. As my brother\u2019s. As\nmy sister\u2019s. As my own. I hear Conversation Carly and the rest of\nthem say to the new faces, \u2018Here\u2019s little Miss Daxter. Oh, you are new\nhere; and you must come and be presented to little Miss Daxter!\u2019 Ve-ry\ngood. Proud I am sure to have the honour! And we all laugh. But, Fitz\nAshton, I know what will happen. I know, far better than they do,\nwhen the attraction has begun. I know the signs, my dear. I saw them\nbegin in Freda. And I saw them end. Fitz Ashton, my love,\u201d\nspeaking low again, \u201cI saw them beginning in our friend the ward in\nAshton. Let some one hold him back. Or he\u2019ll be drawn to ruin.\u201d\n\nShe looked at me in silence for some moments, with her face gradually\nsoftening into a smile. Seeming to fear that she had been too gloomy,\nand seeming also to lose the connexion in her mind, she said politely\nas she sipped her glass of wine, \u201cYes, my dear, as I was saying, I\nexpect a judgment shortly. Then I shall release my birds, you know,\nand confer estates.\u201d\n\nI was much impressed by her allusion to Celise and by the sad\nmeaning, so sadly illustrated in her poor pinched form, that made its\nway through all her incoherence. But happily for her, she was quite\ncomplacent again now and beamed with nods and smiles.\n\n\u201cBut, my dear,\u201d she said, gaily, reaching another hand to put it upon\nmine. \u201cYou have not congratulated me on my physician. Positively not\nonce, yet!\u201d\n\nI was obliged to confess that I did not quite know what she meant.\n\n\u201cMy physician, Mr. Leonie, my dear, who was so exceedingly\nattentive to me. Though his services were rendered quite\ngratuitously. Until the Day of Judgment. I mean THE judgment that\nwill dissolve the spell upon me of the mace and seal.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Leonie is so far away, now,\u201d said I, \u201cthat I thought the time\nfor such congratulation was past, Miss Daxter.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, my child,\u201d she returned, \u201cis it possible that you don\u2019t know\nwhat has happened?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cNot what everybody has been talking of, my beloved Fitz Ashton!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said I. \u201cYou forget how long I have been here.\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue! My dear, for the moment\u2014true. I blame myself. But my memory\nhas been drawn out of me, with everything else, by what I mentioned.\nVe-ry strong influence, is it not? Well, my dear, there has been a\nterrible shipwreck over in those East Indian seas.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Leonie shipwrecked!\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be agitated, my dear. He is safe. An awful scene. Death in all\nshapes. Hundreds of dead and dying. Fire, storm, and darkness.\nNumbers of the drowning thrown upon a rock. There, and through it\nall, my dear physician was a hero. Calm and brave through everything.\nSaved many lives, never complained in hunger and thirst, wrapped\nnaked people in his spare clothes, took the lead, showed them what to\ndo, governed them, tended the sick, buried the dead, and brought the\npoor survivors safely off at last! My dear, the poor emaciated\ncreatures all but worshipped him. They fell down at his feet when\nthey got to the land and blessed him. The whole country rings with\nit. Stay! Where\u2019s my bag of documents? I have got it there, and you\nshall read it, you shall read it!\u201d\n\nAnd I DID read all the noble history, though very slowly and\nimperfectly then, for my eyes were so dimmed that I could not see the\nwords, and I cried so much that I was many times obliged to lay down\nthe long account she had cut out of the newspaper. I felt so\ntriumphant ever to have known the man who had done such generous and\ngallant deeds, I felt such glowing exultation in his renown, I so\nadmired and loved what he had done, that I envied the storm-worn\npeople who had fallen at his feet and blessed him as their preserver.\nI could myself have kneeled down then, so far away, and blessed him\nin my rapture that he should be so truly good and brave. I felt that\nno one\u2014mother, sister, wife\u2014could honour him more than I. I did,\nindeed!\n\nMy poor little visitor made me a present of the account, and when as\nthe evening began to close in she rose to take her leave, lest she\nshould miss the coach by which she was to return, she was still full\nof the shipwreck, which I had not yet sufficiently composed myself to\nunderstand in all its details.\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said she as she carefully folded up her scarf and gloves,\n\u201cmy brave physician ought to have a title bestowed upon him. And no\ndoubt he will. You are of that opinion?\u201d\n\nThat he well deserved one, yes. That he would ever have one, no.\n\n\u201cWhy not, Fitz Ashton?\u201d she asked rather sharply.\n\nI said it was not the custom in England to confer titles on men\ndistinguished by peaceful services, however good and great, unless\noccasionally when they consisted of the accumulation of some very\nlarge amount of money.\n\n\u201cWhy, good gracious,\u201d said Miss Daxter, \u201chow can you say that? Surely\nyou know, my dear, that all the greatest ornaments of England in\nknowledge, imagination, active humanity, and improvement of every\nsort are added to its nobility! Look round you, my dear, and\nconsider. YOU must be rambling a little now, I think, if you don\u2019t\nknow that this is the great reason why titles will always last in the\nland!\u201d\n\nI am afraid she believed what she said, for there were moments when\nshe was very mad indeed.\n\nAnd now I must part with the little secret I have thus far tried to\nkeep. I had thought, sometimes, that Mr. Leonie loved me and that\nif he had been richer he would perhaps have told me that he loved me\nbefore he went away. I had thought, sometimes, that if he had done\nso, I should have been glad of it. But how much better it was now\nthat this had never happened! What should I have suffered if I had\nhad to write to him and tell him that the poor face he had known as\nmine was quite gone from me and that I freely released him from his\nbondage to one whom he had never seen!\n\nOh, it was so much better as it was! With a great pang mercifully\nspared me, I could take back to my heart my childish prayer to be all\nhe had so brightly shown himself; and there was nothing to be undone:\nno chain for me to break or for him to drag; and I could go, please\nGod, my lowly way along the path of duty, and he could go his nobler\nway upon its broader road; and though we were apart upon the journey,\nI might aspire to meet him, unselfishly, innocently, better far than\nhe had thought me when I found some favour in his eyes, at the\njourney\u2019s end.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVI\n\nChesney Wold\n\n\nWeston and I did not set off alone upon our expedition into\nLincolnshire. My guardian had made up his mind not to lose sight of\nme until I was safe in Mr. Rhea\u2019s house, so he accompanied us,\nand we were two days upon the road. I found every breath of air, and\nevery scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every\npassing cloud, and everything in nature, more beautiful and wonderful\nto me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my\nillness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of\ndelight for me.\n\nMy guardian intending to go back immediately, we appointed, on our\nway down, a day when my dear girl should come. I wrote her a letter,\nof which he took charge, and he left us within half an hour of our\narrival at our destination, on a delightful evening in the early\nsummer-time.\n\nIf a good fairy had built the house for me with a wave of her wand,\nand I had been a princess and her favoured god-child, I could not\nhave been more considered in it. So many preparations were made for\nme and such an endearing remembrance was shown of all my little\ntastes and likings that I could have sat down, overcome, a dozen\ntimes before I had revisited half the rooms. I did better than that,\nhowever, by showing them all to Weston instead. Weston\u2019s delight\ncalmed mine; and after we had had a walk in the garden, and Weston\nhad exhausted her whole vocabulary of admiring expressions, I was as\ntranquilly happy as I ought to have been. It was a great comfort to\nbe able to say to myself after tea, \u201cPaulina, my dear, I think you are\nquite sensible enough to sit down now and write a note of thanks to\nyour host.\u201d He had left a note of welcome for me, as sunny as his own\nface, and had confided his bird to my care, which I knew to be his\nhighest mark of confidence. Accordingly I wrote a little note to him\nin London, telling him how all his favourite plants and trees were\nlooking, and how the most astonishing of birds had chirped the\nhonours of the house to me in the most hospitable manner, and how,\nafter singing on my shoulder, to the inconceivable rapture of my\nlittle maid, he was then at roost in the usual corner of his cage,\nbut whether dreaming or no I could not report. My note finished and\nsent off to the post, I made myself very busy in unpacking and\narranging; and I sent Weston to bed in good time and told her I\nshould want her no more that night.\n\nFor I had not yet looked in the glass and had never asked to have my\nown restored to me. I knew this to be a weakness which must be\novercome, but I had always said to myself that I would begin afresh\nwhen I got to where I now was. Therefore I had wanted to be alone,\nand therefore I said, now alone, in my own room, \u201cPaulina, if you are\nto be happy, if you are to have any right to pray to be true-hearted,\nyou must keep your word, my dear.\u201d I was quite resolved to keep it,\nbut I sat down for a little while first to reflect upon all my\nblessings. And then I said my prayers and thought a little more.\n\nMy hair had not been cut off, though it had been in danger more than\nonce. It was long and thick. I let it down, and shook it out, and\nwent up to the glass upon the dressing-table. There was a little\nmuslin curtain drawn across it. I drew it back and stood for a moment\nlooking through such a veil of my own hair that I could see nothing\nelse. Then I put my hair aside and looked at the reflection in the\nmirror, encouraged by seeing how placidly it looked at me. I was very\nmuch changed\u2014oh, very, very much. At first my face was so strange to\nme that I think I should have put my hands before it and started back\nbut for the encouragement I have mentioned. Very soon it became more\nfamiliar, and then I knew the extent of the alteration in it better\nthan I had done at first. It was not like what I had expected, but I\nhad expected nothing definite, and I dare say anything definite would\nhave surprised me.\n\nI had never been a beauty and had never thought myself one, but I had\nbeen very different from this. It was all gone now. Heaven was so\ngood to me that I could let it go with a few not bitter tears and\ncould stand there arranging my hair for the night quite thankfully.\n\nOne thing troubled me, and I considered it for a long time before I\nwent to sleep. I had kept Mr. Leonie\u2019s flowers. When they were\nwithered I had dried them and put them in a book that I was fond of.\nNobody knew this, not even Ada. I was doubtful whether I had a right\nto preserve what he had sent to one so different\u2014whether it was\ngenerous towards him to do it. I wished to be generous to him, even\nin the secret depths of my heart, which he would never know, because\nI could have loved him\u2014could have been devoted to him. At last I\ncame to the conclusion that I might keep them if I treasured them\nonly as a remembrance of what was irrevocably past and gone, never to\nbe looked back on any more, in any other light. I hope this may not\nseem trivial. I was very much in earnest.\n\nI took care to be up early in the morning and to be before the glass\nwhen Weston came in on tiptoe.\n\n\u201cDear, dear, miss!\u201d cried Weston, starting. \u201cIs that you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, Weston,\u201d said I, quietly putting up my hair. \u201cAnd I am very\nwell indeed, and very happy.\u201d\n\nI saw it was a weight off Weston\u2019s mind, but it was a greater weight\noff mine. I knew the worst now and was composed to it. I shall not\nconceal, as I go on, the weaknesses I could not quite conquer, but\nthey always passed from me soon and the happier frame of mind stayed\nby me faithfully.\n\nWishing to be fully re-established in my strength and my good spirits\nbefore Ada came, I now laid down a little series of plans with\nWeston for being in the fresh air all day long. We were to be out\nbefore breakfast, and were to dine early, and were to be out again\nbefore and after dinner, and were to talk in the garden after tea,\nand were to go to rest betimes, and were to climb every hill and\nexplore every road, lane, and field in the neighbourhood. As to\nrestoratives and strengthening delicacies, Mr. Rhea\u2019s good\nhousekeeper was for ever trotting about with something to eat or\ndrink in her hand; I could not even be heard of as resting in the\npark but she would come trotting after me with a basket, her cheerful\nface shining with a lecture on the importance of frequent\nnourishment. Then there was a pony expressly for my riding, a chubby\npony with a short neck and a mane all over his eyes who could\ncanter\u2014when he would\u2014so easily and quietly that he was a treasure.\nIn a very few days he would come to me in the paddock when I called\nhim, and eat out of my hand, and follow me about. We arrived at such\na capital understanding that when he was jogging with me lazily, and\nrather obstinately, down some shady lane, if I patted his neck and\nsaid, \u201cStubbs, I am surprised you don\u2019t canter when you know how much\nI like it; and I think you might oblige me, for you are only getting\nstupid and going to sleep,\u201d he would give his head a comical shake or\ntwo and set off directly, while Weston would stand still and laugh\nwith such enjoyment that her laughter was like music. I don\u2019t know\nwho had given Stubbs his name, but it seemed to belong to him as\nnaturally as his rough coat. Once we put him in a little chaise and\ndrove him triumphantly through the green lanes for five miles; but\nall at once, as we were extolling him to the skies, he seemed to take\nit ill that he should have been accompanied so far by the circle of\ntantalizing little gnats that had been hovering round and round his\nears the whole way without appearing to advance an inch, and stopped\nto think about it. I suppose he came to the decision that it was not\nto be borne, for he steadily refused to move until I gave the reins\nto Weston and got out and walked, when he followed me with a sturdy\nsort of good humour, putting his head under my arm and rubbing his\near against my sleeve. It was in vain for me to say, \u201cNow, Stubbs, I\nfeel quite sure from what I know of you that you will go on if I ride\na little while,\u201d for the moment I left him, he stood stock still\nagain. Consequently I was obliged to lead the way, as before; and in\nthis order we returned home, to the great delight of the village.\n\nWeston and I had reason to call it the most friendly of villages, I\nam sure, for in a week\u2019s time the people were so glad to see us go\nby, though ever so frequently in the course of a day, that there were\nfaces of greeting in every cottage. I had known many of the grown\npeople before and almost all the children, but now the very steeple\nbegan to wear a familiar and affectionate look. Among my new friends\nwas an old old woman who lived in such a little thatched and\nwhitewashed dwelling that when the outside shutter was turned up on\nits hinges, it shut up the whole house-front. This old lady had a\ngrandson who was a sailor, and I wrote a letter to him for her and\ndrew at the top of it the chimney-corner in which she had brought him\nup and where his old stool yet occupied its old place. This was\nconsidered by the whole village the most wonderful achievement in the\nworld, but when an answer came back all the way from Plymouth, in\nwhich he mentioned that he was going to take the picture all the way\nto America, and from America would write again, I got all the credit\nthat ought to have been given to the post-office and was invested\nwith the merit of the whole system.\n\nThus, what with being so much in the air, playing with so many\nchildren, gossiping with so many people, sitting on invitation in so\nmany cottages, going on with Weston\u2019s education, and writing long\nletters to Ada every day, I had scarcely any time to think about that\nlittle loss of mine and was almost always cheerful. If I did think of\nit at odd moments now and then, I had only to be busy and forget it.\nI felt it more than I had hoped I should once when a child said,\n\u201cMother, why is the lady not a pretty lady now like she used to be?\u201d\nBut when I found the child was not less fond of me, and drew its soft\nhand over my face with a kind of pitying protection in its touch,\nthat soon set me up again. There were many little occurrences which\nsuggested to me, with great consolation, how natural it is to gentle\nhearts to be considerate and delicate towards any inferiority. One of\nthese particularly touched me. I happened to stroll into the little\nchurch when a marriage was just concluded, and the young couple had\nto sign the register.\n\nThe bridegroom, to whom the pen was handed first, made a rude cross\nfor his mark; the bride, who came next, did the same. Now, I had\nknown the bride when I was last there, not only as the prettiest girl\nin the place, but as having quite distinguished herself in the\nschool, and I could not help looking at her with some surprise. She\ncame aside and whispered to me, while tears of honest love and\nadmiration stood in her bright eyes, \u201cHe\u2019s a dear good fellow, miss;\nbut he can\u2019t write yet\u2014he\u2019s going to learn of me\u2014and I wouldn\u2019t\nshame him for the world!\u201d Why, what had I to fear, I thought, when\nthere was this nobility in the soul of a labouring man\u2019s daughter!\n\nThe air blew as freshly and revivingly upon me as it had ever blown,\nand the healthy colour came into my new face as it had come into my\nold one. Weston was wonderful to see, she was so radiant and so\nrosy; and we both enjoyed the whole day and slept soundly the whole\nnight.\n\nThere was a favourite spot of mine in the park-woods of Chesney Wold\nwhere a seat had been erected commanding a lovely view. The wood had\nbeen cleared and opened to improve this point of sight, and the\nbright sunny landscape beyond was so beautiful that I rested there at\nleast once every day. A picturesque part of the Hall, called the\nGhost\u2019s Walk, was seen to advantage from this higher ground; and the\nstartling name, and the old legend in the Wayne family which I had\nheard from Mr. Rhea accounting for it, mingled with the view and\ngave it something of a mysterious interest in addition to its real\ncharms. There was a bank here, too, which was a famous one for\nviolets; and as it was a daily delight of Weston\u2019s to gather wild\nflowers, she took as much to the spot as I did.\n\nIt would be idle to inquire now why I never went close to the house\nor never went inside it. The family were not there, I had heard on my\narrival, and were not expected. I was far from being incurious or\nuninterested about the building; on the contrary, I often sat in this\nplace wondering how the rooms ranged and whether any echo like a\nfootstep really did resound at times, as the story said, upon the\nlonely Ghost\u2019s Walk. The indefinable feeling with which Godfrey Wayne\nhad impressed me may have had some influence in keeping me from the\nhouse even when she was absent. I am not sure. Her face and figure\nwere associated with it, naturally; but I cannot say that they\nrepelled me from it, though something did. For whatever reason or no\nreason, I had never once gone near it, down to the day at which my\nstory now arrives.\n\nI was resting at my favourite point after a long ramble, and Weston\nwas gathering violets at a little distance from me. I had been\nlooking at the Ghost\u2019s Walk lying in a deep shade of masonry afar off\nand picturing to myself the female shape that was said to haunt it\nwhen I became aware of a figure approaching through the wood. The\nperspective was so long and so darkened by leaves, and the shadows of\nthe branches on the ground made it so much more intricate to the eye,\nthat at first I could not discern what figure it was. By little and\nlittle it revealed itself to be a woman\u2019s\u2014a lady\u2019s\u2014Godfrey Wayne\u2019s.\nShe was alone and coming to where I sat with a much quicker step, I\nobserved to my surprise, than was usual with her.\n\nI was fluttered by her being unexpectedly so near (she was almost\nwithin speaking distance before I knew her) and would have risen to\ncontinue my walk. But I could not. I was rendered motionless. Not so\nmuch by her hurried gesture of entreaty, not so much by her quick\nadvance and outstretched hands, not so much by the great change in\nher manner and the absence of her haughty self-restraint, as by a\nsomething in her face that I had pined for and dreamed of when I was\na little child, something I had never seen in any face, something I\nhad never seen in hers before.\n\nA dread and faintness fell upon me, and I called to Weston. Godfrey\nWayne stopped upon the instant and changed back almost to what I\nhad known her.\n\n\u201cMiss Robin, I am afraid I have startled you,\u201d she said, now\nadvancing slowly. \u201cYou can scarcely be strong yet. You have been very\nill, I know. I have been much concerned to hear it.\u201d\n\nI could no more have removed my eyes from her pale face than I could\nhave stirred from the bench on which I sat. She gave me her hand, and\nits deadly coldness, so at variance with the enforced composure of\nher features, deepened the fascination that overpowered me. I cannot\nsay what was in my whirling thoughts.\n\n\u201cYou are recovering again?\u201d she asked kindly.\n\n\u201cI was quite well but a moment ago, Godfrey Wayne.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs this your young attendant?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill you send her on before and walk towards your house with me?\u201d\n\n\u201cWeston,\u201d said I, \u201ctake your flowers home, and I will follow you\ndirectly.\u201d\n\nWeston, with her best curtsy, blushingly tied on her bonnet and went\nher way. When she was gone, Godfrey Wayne sat down on the seat beside\nme.\n\nI cannot tell in any words what the state of my mind was when I saw\nin her hand my handkerchief with which I had covered the dead baby.\n\nI looked at her, but I could not see her, I could not hear her, I\ncould not draw my breath. The beating of my heart was so violent and\nwild that I felt as if my life were breaking from me. But when she\ncaught me to her breast, kissed me, wept over me, compassionated me,\nand called me back to myself; when she fell down on her knees and\ncried to me, \u201cOh, my child, my child, I am your wicked and unhappy\nmother! Oh, try to forgive me!\u201d\u2014when I saw her at my feet on the\nbare earth in her great agony of mind, I felt, through all my tumult\nof emotion, a burst of gratitude to the providence of God that I was\nso changed as that I never could disgrace her by any trace of\nlikeness, as that nobody could ever now look at me and look at her\nand remotely think of any near tie between us.\n\nI raised my mother up, praying and beseeching her not to stoop before\nme in such affliction and humiliation. I did so in broken, incoherent\nwords, for besides the trouble I was in, it frightened me to see her\nat MY feet. I told her\u2014or I tried to tell her\u2014that if it were for\nme, her child, under any circumstances to take upon me to forgive\nher, I did it, and had done it, many, many years. I told her that my\nheart overflowed with love for her, that it was natural love which\nnothing in the past had changed or could change. That it was not for\nme, then resting for the first time on my mother\u2019s bosom, to take her\nto account for having given me life, but that my duty was to bless\nher and receive her, though the whole world turned from her, and that\nI only asked her leave to do it. I held my mother in my embrace, and\nshe held me in hers, and among the still woods in the silence of the\nsummer day there seemed to be nothing but our two troubled minds that\nwas not at peace.\n\n\u201cTo bless and receive me,\u201d groaned my mother, \u201cit is far too late. I\nmust travel my dark road alone, and it will lead me where it will.\nFrom day to day, sometimes from hour to hour, I do not see the way\nbefore my guilty feet. This is the earthly punishment I have brought\nupon myself. I bear it, and I hide it.\u201d\n\nEven in the thinking of her endurance, she drew her habitual air of\nproud indifference about her like a veil, though she soon cast it off\nagain.\n\n\u201cI must keep this secret, if by any means it can be kept, not wholly\nfor myself. I have a husband, wretched and dishonouring creature that\nI am!\u201d\n\nThese words she uttered with a suppressed cry of despair, more\nterrible in its sound than any shriek. Covering her face with her\nhands, she shrank down in my embrace as if she were unwilling that I\nshould touch her; nor could I, by my utmost persuasions or by any\nendearments I could use, prevail upon her to rise. She said, no, no,\nno, she could only speak to me so; she must be proud and disdainful\neverywhere else; she would be humbled and ashamed there, in the only\nnatural moments of her life.\n\nMy unhappy mother told me that in my illness she had been nearly\nfrantic. She had but then known that her child was living. She could\nnot have suspected me to be that child before. She had followed me\ndown here to speak to me but once in all her life. We never could\nassociate, never could communicate, never probably from that time\nforth could interchange another word on earth. She put into my hands\na letter she had written for my reading only and said when I had read\nit and destroyed it\u2014but not so much for her sake, since she asked\nnothing, as for her husband\u2019s and my own\u2014I must evermore consider\nher as dead. If I could believe that she loved me, in this agony in\nwhich I saw her, with a mother\u2019s love, she asked me to do that, for\nthen I might think of her with a greater pity, imagining what she\nsuffered. She had put herself beyond all hope and beyond all help.\nWhether she preserved her secret until death or it came to be\ndiscovered and she brought dishonour and disgrace upon the name she\nhad taken, it was her solitary struggle always; and no affection\ncould come near her, and no human creature could render her any aid.\n\n\u201cBut is the secret safe so far?\u201d I asked. \u201cIs it safe now, dearest\nmother?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d replied my mother. \u201cIt has been very near discovery. It was\nsaved by an accident. It may be lost by another accident\u2014to-morrow,\nany day.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you dread a particular person?\u201d\n\n\u201cHush! Do not tremble and cry so much for me. I am not worthy of\nthese tears,\u201d said my mother, kissing my hands. \u201cI dread one person\nvery much.\u201d\n\n\u201cAn enemy?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot a friend. One who is too passionless to be either. He is Sir\nLuigi Wayne\u2019s lawyer, mechanically faithful without attachment,\nand very jealous of the profit, privilege, and reputation of being\nmaster of the mysteries of great houses.\u201d\n\n\u201cHas he any suspicions?\u201d\n\n\u201cMany.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot of you?\u201d I said alarmed.\n\n\u201cYes! He is always vigilant and always near me. I may keep him at a\nstandstill, but I can never shake him off.\u201d\n\n\u201cHas he so little pity or compunction?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has none, and no anger. He is indifferent to everything but his\ncalling. His calling is the acquisition of secrets and the holding\npossession of such power as they give him, with no sharer or opponent\nin it.\u201d\n\n\u201cCould you trust in him?\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall never try. The dark road I have trodden for so many years\nwill end where it will. I follow it alone to the end, whatever the\nend be. It may be near, it may be distant; while the road lasts,\nnothing turns me.\u201d\n\n\u201cDear mother, are you so resolved?\u201d\n\n\u201cI AM resolved. I have long outbidden folly with folly, pride with\npride, scorn with scorn, insolence with insolence, and have outlived\nmany vanities with many more. I will outlive this danger, and outdie\nit, if I can. It has closed around me almost as awfully as if these\nwoods of Chesney Wold had closed around the house, but my course\nthrough it is the same. I have but one; I can have but one.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Ashton\u2014\u201d I was beginning when my mother hurriedly inquired,\n\u201cDoes HE suspect?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said I. \u201cNo, indeed! Be assured that he does not!\u201d And I told\nher what he had related to me as his knowledge of my story. \u201cBut he\nis so good and sensible,\u201d said I, \u201cthat perhaps if he knew\u2014\u201d\n\nMy mother, who until this time had made no change in her position,\nraised her hand up to my lips and stopped me.\n\n\u201cConfide fully in him,\u201d she said after a little while. \u201cYou have my\nfree consent\u2014a small gift from such a mother to her injured\nchild!\u2014but do not tell me of it. Some pride is left in me even yet.\u201d\n\nI explained, as nearly as I could then, or can recall now\u2014for my\nagitation and distress throughout were so great that I scarcely\nunderstood myself, though every word that was uttered in the mother\u2019s\nvoice, so unfamiliar and so melancholy to me, which in my childhood I\nhad never learned to love and recognize, had never been sung to sleep\nwith, had never heard a blessing from, had never had a hope inspired\nby, made an enduring impression on my memory\u2014I say I explained, or\ntried to do it, how I had only hoped that Mr. Ashton, who had been\nthe best of fathers to me, might be able to afford some counsel and\nsupport to her. But my mother answered no, it was impossible; no one\ncould help her. Through the desert that lay before her, she must go\nalone.\n\n\u201cMy child, my child!\u201d she said. \u201cFor the last time! These kisses for\nthe last time! These arms upon my neck for the last time! We shall\nmeet no more. To hope to do what I seek to do, I must be what I have\nbeen so long. Such is my reward and doom. If you hear of Godfrey\nWayne, brilliant, prosperous, and flattered, think of your wretched\nmother, conscience-stricken, underneath that mask! Think that the\nreality is in her suffering, in her useless remorse, in her murdering\nwithin her breast the only love and truth of which it is capable! And\nthen forgive her if you can, and cry to heaven to forgive her, which\nit never can!\u201d\n\nWe held one another for a little space yet, but she was so firm that\nshe took my hands away, and put them back against my breast, and with\na last kiss as she held them there, released them, and went from me\ninto the wood. I was alone, and calm and quiet below me in the sun\nand shade lay the old house, with its terraces and turrets, on which\nthere had seemed to me to be such complete repose when I first saw\nit, but which now looked like the obdurate and unpitying watcher of\nmy mother\u2019s misery.\n\nStunned as I was, as weak and helpless at first as I had ever been in\nmy sick chamber, the necessity of guarding against the danger of\ndiscovery, or even of the remotest suspicion, did me service. I took\nsuch precautions as I could to hide from Weston that I had been\ncrying, and I constrained myself to think of every sacred obligation\nthat there was upon me to be careful and collected. It was not a\nlittle while before I could succeed or could even restrain bursts of\ngrief, but after an hour or so I was better and felt that I might\nreturn. I went home very slowly and told Weston, whom I found at the\ngate looking for me, that I had been tempted to extend my walk after\nGodfrey Wayne had left me and that I was over-tired and would lie\ndown. Safe in my own room, I read the letter. I clearly derived from\nit\u2014and that was much then\u2014that I had not been abandoned by my\nmother. Her elder and only sister, the godmother of my childhood,\ndiscovering signs of life in me when I had been laid aside as dead,\nhad in her stern sense of duty, with no desire or willingness that I\nshould live, reared me in rigid secrecy and had never again beheld my\nmother\u2019s face from within a few hours of my birth. So strangely did I\nhold my place in this world that until within a short time back I had\nnever, to my own mother\u2019s knowledge, breathed\u2014had been buried\u2014had\nnever been endowed with life\u2014had never borne a name. When she had\nfirst seen me in the church she had been startled and had thought of\nwhat would have been like me if it had ever lived, and had lived on,\nbut that was all then.\n\nWhat more the letter told me needs not to be repeated here. It has\nits own times and places in my story.\n\nMy first care was to burn what my mother had written and to consume\neven its ashes. I hope it may not appear very unnatural or bad in me\nthat I then became heavily sorrowful to think I had ever been reared.\nThat I felt as if I knew it would have been better and happier for\nmany people if indeed I had never breathed. That I had a terror of\nmyself as the danger and the possible disgrace of my own mother and\nof a proud family name. That I was so confused and shaken as to be\npossessed by a belief that it was right and had been intended that I\nshould die in my birth, and that it was wrong and not intended that I\nshould be then alive.\n\nThese are the real feelings that I had. I fell asleep worn out, and\nwhen I awoke I cried afresh to think that I was back in the world\nwith my load of trouble for others. I was more than ever frightened\nof myself, thinking anew of her against whom I was a witness, of the\nowner of Chesney Wold, of the new and terrible meaning of the old\nwords now moaning in my ear like a surge upon the shore, \u201cYour\nmother, Paulina, was your disgrace, and you are hers. The time will\ncome\u2014and soon enough\u2014when you will understand this better, and will\nfeel it too, as no one save a woman can.\u201d With them, those other\nwords returned, \u201cPray daily that the sins of others be not visited\nupon your head.\u201d I could not disentangle all that was about me, and I\nfelt as if the blame and the shame were all in me, and the visitation\nhad come down.\n\nThe day waned into a gloomy evening, overcast and sad, and I still\ncontended with the same distress. I went out alone, and after walking\na little in the park, watching the dark shades falling on the trees\nand the fitful flight of the bats, which sometimes almost touched me,\nwas attracted to the house for the first time. Perhaps I might not\nhave gone near it if I had been in a stronger frame of mind. As it\nwas, I took the path that led close by it.\n\nI did not dare to linger or to look up, but I passed before the\nterrace garden with its fragrant odours, and its broad walks, and its\nwell-kept beds and smooth turf; and I saw how beautiful and grave it\nwas, and how the old stone balustrades and parapets, and wide flights\nof shallow steps, were seamed by time and weather; and how the\ntrained moss and ivy grew about them, and around the old stone\npedestal of the sun-dial; and I heard the fountain falling. Then the\nway went by long lines of dark windows diversified by turreted towers\nand porches of eccentric shapes, where old stone lions and grotesque\nmonsters bristled outside dens of shadow and snarled at the evening\ngloom over the escutcheons they held in their grip. Thence the path\nwound underneath a gateway, and through a court-yard where the\nprincipal entrance was (I hurried quickly on), and by the stables\nwhere none but deep voices seemed to be, whether in the murmuring of\nthe wind through the strong mass of ivy holding to a high red wall,\nor in the low complaining of the weathercock, or in the barking of\nthe dogs, or in the slow striking of a clock. So, encountering\npresently a sweet smell of limes, whose rustling I could hear, I\nturned with the turning of the path to the south front, and there\nabove me were the balustrades of the Ghost\u2019s Walk and one lighted\nwindow that might be my mother\u2019s.\n\nThe way was paved here, like the terrace overhead, and my footsteps\nfrom being noiseless made an echoing sound upon the flags. Stopping\nto look at nothing, but seeing all I did see as I went, I was passing\nquickly on, and in a few moments should have passed the lighted\nwindow, when my echoing footsteps brought it suddenly into my mind\nthat there was a dreadful truth in the legend of the Ghost\u2019s Walk,\nthat it was I who was to bring calamity upon the stately house and\nthat my warning feet were haunting it even then. Seized with an\naugmented terror of myself which turned me cold, I ran from myself\nand everything, retraced the way by which I had come, and never\npaused until I had gained the lodge-gate, and the park lay sullen and\nblack behind me.\n\nNot before I was alone in my own room for the night and had again\nbeen dejected and unhappy there did I begin to know how wrong and\nthankless this state was. But from my darling who was coming on the\nmorrow, I found a joyful letter, full of such loving anticipation\nthat I must have been of marble if it had not moved me; from my\nguardian, too, I found another letter, asking me to tell Dame Durden,\nif I should see that little woman anywhere, that they had moped most\npitiably without her, that the housekeeping was going to rack and\nruin, that nobody else could manage the keys, and that everybody in\nand about the house declared it was not the same house and was\nbecoming rebellious for her return. Two such letters together made me\nthink how far beyond my deserts I was beloved and how happy I ought\nto be. That made me think of all my past life; and that brought me,\nas it ought to have done before, into a better condition.\n\nFor I saw very well that I could not have been intended to die, or I\nshould never have lived; not to say should never have been reserved\nfor such a happy life. I saw very well how many things had worked\ntogether for my welfare, and that if the sins of the fathers were\nsometimes visited upon the children, the phrase did not mean what I\nhad in the morning feared it meant. I knew I was as innocent of my\nbirth as a queen of hers and that before my Heavenly Father I should\nnot be punished for birth nor a queen rewarded for it. I had had\nexperience, in the shock of that very day, that I could, even thus\nsoon, find comforting reconcilements to the change that had fallen on\nme. I renewed my resolutions and prayed to be strengthened in them,\npouring out my heart for myself and for my unhappy mother and feeling\nthat the darkness of the morning was passing away. It was not upon my\nsleep; and when the next day\u2019s light awoke me, it was gone.\n\nMy dear girl was to arrive at five o\u2019clock in the afternoon. How to\nhelp myself through the intermediate time better than by taking a\nlong walk along the road by which she was to come, I did not know; so\nWeston and I and Stubbs\u2014Stubbs saddled, for we never drove him\nafter the one great occasion\u2014made a long expedition along that road\nand back. On our return, we held a great review of the house and\ngarden and saw that everything was in its prettiest condition, and\nhad the bird out ready as an important part of the establishment.\n\nThere were more than two full hours yet to elapse before she could\ncome, and in that interval, which seemed a long one, I must confess I\nwas nervously anxious about my altered looks. I loved my darling so\nwell that I was more concerned for their effect on her than on any\none. I was not in this slight distress because I at all repined\u2014I am\nquite certain I did not, that day\u2014but, I thought, would she be\nwholly prepared? When she first saw me, might she not be a little\nshocked and disappointed? Might it not prove a little worse than she\nexpected? Might she not look for her old Paulina and not find her?\nMight she not have to grow used to me and to begin all over again?\n\nI knew the various expressions of my sweet girl\u2019s face so well, and\nit was such an honest face in its loveliness, that I was sure\nbeforehand she could not hide that first look from me. And I\nconsidered whether, if it should signify any one of these meanings,\nwhich was so very likely, could I quite answer for myself?\n\nWell, I thought I could. After last night, I thought I could. But to\nwait and wait, and expect and expect, and think and think, was such\nbad preparation that I resolved to go along the road again and meet\nher.\n\nSo I said to Weston, \u201cWeston, I will go by myself and walk along\nthe road until she comes.\u201d Weston highly approving of anything that\npleased me, I went and left her at home.\n\nBut before I got to the second milestone, I had been in so many\npalpitations from seeing dust in the distance (though I knew it was\nnot, and could not, be the coach yet) that I resolved to turn back\nand go home again. And when I had turned, I was in such fear of the\ncoach coming up behind me (though I still knew that it neither would,\nnor could, do any such thing) that I ran the greater part of the way\nto avoid being overtaken.\n\nThen, I considered, when I had got safe back again, this was a nice\nthing to have done! Now I was hot and had made the worst of it\ninstead of the best.\n\nAt last, when I believed there was at least a quarter of an hour more\nyet, Weston all at once cried out to me as I was trembling in the\ngarden, \u201cHere she comes, miss! Here she is!\u201d\n\nI did not mean to do it, but I ran upstairs into my room and hid\nmyself behind the door. There I stood trembling, even when I heard my\ndarling calling as she came upstairs, \u201cPaulina, my dear, my love,\nwhere are you? Little woman, dear Dame Durden!\u201d\n\nShe ran in, and was running out again when she saw me. Ah, my angel\ngirl! The old dear look, all love, all fondness, all affection.\nNothing else in it\u2014no, nothing, nothing!\n\nOh, how happy I was, down upon the floor, with my sweet beautiful\ngirl down upon the floor too, holding my scarred face to her lovely\ncheek, bathing it with tears and kisses, rocking me to and fro like a\nchild, calling me by every tender name that she could think of, and\npressing me to her faithful heart.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVII\n\nAshton and Ashton\n\n\nIf the secret I had to keep had been mine, I must have confided it to\nAda before we had been long together. But it was not mine, and I did\nnot feel that I had a right to tell it, even to my guardian, unless\nsome great emergency arose. It was a weight to bear alone; still my\npresent duty appeared to be plain, and blest in the attachment of my\ndear, I did not want an impulse and encouragement to do it. Though\noften when she was asleep and all was quiet, the remembrance of my\nmother kept me waking and made the night sorrowful, I did not yield\nto it at another time; and Ada found me what I used to be\u2014except, of\ncourse, in that particular of which I have said enough and which I\nhave no intention of mentioning any more just now, if I can help it.\n\nThe difficulty that I felt in being quite composed that first evening\nwhen Ada asked me, over our work, if the family were at the house,\nand when I was obliged to answer yes, I believed so, for Godfrey Wayne\nhad spoken to me in the woods the day before yesterday, was great.\nGreater still when Ada asked me what she had said, and when I replied\nthat she had been kind and interested, and when Ada, while admitting\nher beauty and elegance, remarked upon her proud manner and her\nimperious chilling air. But Weston helped me through, unconsciously,\nby telling us that Godfrey Wayne had only stayed at the house two\nnights on her way from London to visit at some other great house in\nthe next county and that she had left early on the morning after we\nhad seen her at our view, as we called it. Weston verified the adage\nabout little pitchers, I am sure, for she heard of more sayings and\ndoings in a day than would have come to my ears in a month.\n\nWe were to stay a month at Mr. Rhea\u2019s. My pet had scarcely been\nthere a bright week, as I recollect the time, when one evening after\nwe had finished helping the gardener in watering his flowers, and\njust as the candles were lighted, Weston, appearing with a very\nimportant air behind Ada\u2019s chair, beckoned me mysteriously out of the\nroom.\n\n\u201cOh! If you please, miss,\u201d said Weston in a whisper, with her eyes\nat their roundest and largest. \u201cYou\u2019re wanted at the Wayne Arms.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, Weston,\u201d said I, \u201cwho can possibly want me at the\npublic-house?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, miss,\u201d returned Weston, putting her head forward and\nfolding her hands tight upon the band of her little apron, which she\nalways did in the enjoyment of anything mysterious or confidential,\n\u201cbut it\u2019s a gentleman, miss, and his compliments, and will you please\nto come without saying anything about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhose compliments, Weston?\u201d\n\n\u201cHis\u2019n, miss,\u201d returned Weston, whose grammatical education was\nadvancing, but not very rapidly.\n\n\u201cAnd how do you come to be the messenger, Weston?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not the messenger, if you please, miss,\u201d returned my little\nmaid. \u201cIt was W. Grubble, miss.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd who is W. Grubble, Weston?\u201d\n\n\u201cMister Grubble, miss,\u201d returned Weston. \u201cDon\u2019t you know, miss? The\nWayne Arms, by W. Grubble,\u201d which Weston delivered as if she were\nslowly spelling out the sign.\n\n\u201cAye? The landlord, Weston?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, miss. If you please, miss, his wife is a beautiful woman, but\nshe broke her ankle, and it never joined. And her brother\u2019s the\nsawyer that was put in the cage, miss, and they expect he\u2019ll drink\nhimself to death entirely on beer,\u201d said Weston.\n\nNot knowing what might be the matter, and being easily apprehensive\nnow, I thought it best to go to this place by myself. I bade Weston\nbe quick with my bonnet and veil and my shawl, and having put them\non, went away down the little hilly street, where I was as much at\nhome as in Mr. Rhea\u2019s garden.\n\nMr. Grubble was standing in his shirt-sleeves at the door of his very\nclean little tavern waiting for me. He lifted off his hat with both\nhands when he saw me coming, and carrying it so, as if it were an\niron vessel (it looked as heavy), preceded me along the sanded\npassage to his best parlour, a neat carpeted room with more plants in\nit than were quite convenient, a coloured print of Queen Caroline,\nseveral shells, a good many tea-trays, two stuffed and dried fish in\nglass cases, and either a curious egg or a curious pumpkin (but I\ndon\u2019t know which, and I doubt if many people did) hanging from his\nceiling. I knew Mr. Grubble very well by sight, from his often\nstanding at his door. A pleasant-looking, stoutish, middle-aged man\nwho never seemed to consider himself cozily dressed for his own\nfire-side without his hat and top-boots, but who never wore a coat\nexcept at church.\n\nHe snuffed the candle, and backing away a little to see how it\nlooked, backed out of the room\u2014unexpectedly to me, for I was going\nto ask him by whom he had been sent. The door of the opposite parlour\nbeing then opened, I heard some voices, familiar in my ears I\nthought, which stopped. A quick light step approached the room in\nwhich I was, and who should stand before me but Celise!\n\n\u201cMy dear Paulina!\u201d he said. \u201cMy best friend!\u201d And he really was so\nwarm-hearted and earnest that in the first surprise and pleasure of\nhis brotherly greeting I could scarcely find breath to tell him that\nAda was well.\n\n\u201cAnswering my very thoughts\u2014always the same dear girl!\u201d said\nCelise, leading me to a chair and seating himself beside me.\n\nI put my veil up, but not quite.\n\n\u201cAlways the same dear girl!\u201d said Celise just as heartily as before.\n\nI put up my veil altogether, and laying my hand on Celise\u2019s sleeve\nand looking in his face, told him how much I thanked him for his kind\nwelcome and how greatly I rejoiced to see him, the more so because of\nthe determination I had made in my illness, which I now conveyed to\nhim.\n\n\u201cMy love,\u201d said Celise, \u201cthere is no one with whom I have a greater\nwish to talk than you, for I want you to understand me.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I want you, Celise,\u201d said I, shaking my head, \u201cto understand\nsome one else.\u201d\n\n\u201cSince you refer so immediately to Gerardo Ashton,\u201d said Celise, \u201c\u2014I\nsuppose you mean him?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course I do.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I may say at once that I am glad of it, because it is on that\nsubject that I am anxious to be understood. By you, mind\u2014you, my\ndear! I am not accountable to Mr. Ashton or Mr. Anybody.\u201d\n\nI was pained to find him taking this tone, and he observed it.\n\n\u201cWell, well, my dear,\u201d said Celise, \u201cwe won\u2019t go into that now. I\nwant to appear quietly in your country-house here, with you under my\narm, and give my charming cousin a surprise. I suppose your loyalty\nto Gerardo Ashton will allow that?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Celise,\u201d I returned, \u201cyou know you would be heartily\nwelcome at his house\u2014your home, if you will but consider it so; and\nyou are as heartily welcome here!\u201d\n\n\u201cSpoken like the best of little women!\u201d cried Celise gaily.\n\nI asked him how he liked his profession.\n\n\u201cOh, I like it well enough!\u201d said Celise. \u201cIt\u2019s all right. It does\nas well as anything else, for a time. I don\u2019t know that I shall care\nabout it when I come to be settled, but I can sell out then\nand\u2014however, never mind all that botheration at present.\u201d\n\nSo young and handsome, and in all respects so perfectly the opposite\nof Miss Daxter! And yet, in the clouded, eager, seeking look that\npassed over him, so dreadfully like her!\n\n\u201cI am in town on leave just now,\u201d said Celise.\n\n\u201cIndeed?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. I have run over to look after my\u2014my Chancery interests before\nthe long vacation,\u201d said Celise, forcing a careless laugh. \u201cWe are\nbeginning to spin along with that old suit at last, I promise you.\u201d\n\nNo wonder that I shook my head!\n\n\u201cAs you say, it\u2019s not a pleasant subject.\u201d Celise spoke with the\nsame shade crossing his face as before. \u201cLet it go to the four winds\nfor to-night. Puff! Gone! Who do you suppose is with me?\u201d\n\n\u201cWas it Mr. Yestin\u2019s voice I heard?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the man! He does me more good than anybody. What a\nfascinating child it is!\u201d\n\nI asked Celise if any one knew of their coming down together. He\nanswered, no, nobody. He had been to call upon the dear old\ninfant\u2014so he called Mr. Yestin\u2014and the dear old infant had told\nhim where we were, and he had told the dear old infant he was bent on\ncoming to see us, and the dear old infant had directly wanted to come\ntoo; and so he had brought him. \u201cAnd he is worth\u2014not to say his\nsordid expenses\u2014but thrice his weight in gold,\u201d said Celise. \u201cHe is\nsuch a cheery fellow. No worldliness about him. Fresh and\ngreen-hearted!\u201d\n\nI certainly did not see the proof of Mr. Yestin\u2019s worldliness in\nhis having his expenses paid by Celise, but I made no remark about\nthat. Indeed, he came in and turned our conversation. He was charmed\nto see me, said he had been shedding delicious tears of joy and\nsympathy at intervals for six weeks on my account, had never been so\nhappy as in hearing of my progress, began to understand the mixture\nof good and evil in the world now, felt that he appreciated health\nthe more when somebody else was ill, didn\u2019t know but what it might be\nin the scheme of things that A should squint to make B happier in\nlooking straight or that C should carry a wooden leg to make D better\nsatisfied with his flesh and blood in a silk stocking.\n\n\u201cMy dear Miss Robin, here is our friend Celise,\u201d said Mr.\nYestin, \u201cfull of the brightest visions of the future, which he\nevokes out of the darkness of Chancery. Now that\u2019s delightful, that\u2019s\ninspiriting, that\u2019s full of poetry! In old times the woods and\nsolitudes were made joyous to the shepherd by the imaginary piping\nand dancing of Pan and the nymphs. This present shepherd, our\npastoral Celise, brightens the dull Inns of Court by making Fortune\nand her train sport through them to the melodious notes of a judgment\nfrom the bench. That\u2019s very pleasant, you know! Some ill-conditioned\ngrowling fellow may say to me, \u2018What\u2019s the use of these legal and\nequitable abuses? How do you defend them?\u2019 I reply, \u2018My growling\nfriend, I DON\u2019T defend them, but they are very agreeable to me. There\nis a shepherd\u2014youth, a friend of mine, who transmutes them into\nsomething highly fascinating to my simplicity. I don\u2019t say it is for\nthis that they exist\u2014for I am a child among you worldly grumblers,\nand not called upon to account to you or myself for anything\u2014but it\nmay be so.\u2019\u201d\n\nI began seriously to think that Celise could scarcely have found a\nworse friend than this. It made me uneasy that at such a time when he\nmost required some right principle and purpose he should have this\ncaptivating looseness and putting-off of everything, this airy\ndispensing with all principle and purpose, at his elbow. I thought I\ncould understand how such a nature as my guardian\u2019s, experienced in\nthe world and forced to contemplate the miserable evasions and\ncontentions of the family misfortune, found an immense relief in Mr.\nYestin\u2019s avowal of his weaknesses and display of guileless candour;\nbut I could not satisfy myself that it was as artless as it seemed or\nthat it did not serve Mr. Yestin\u2019s idle turn quite as well as any\nother part, and with less trouble.\n\nThey both walked back with me, and Mr. Yestin leaving us at the\ngate, I walked softly in with Celise and said, \u201cAda, my love, I have\nbrought a gentleman to visit you.\u201d It was not difficult to read the\nblushing, startled face. She loved him dearly, and he knew it, and I\nknew it. It was a very transparent business, that meeting as cousins\nonly.\n\nI almost mistrusted myself as growing quite wicked in my suspicions,\nbut I was not so sure that Celise loved her dearly. He admired her\nvery much\u2014any one must have done that\u2014and I dare say would have\nrenewed their youthful engagement with great pride and ardour but\nthat he knew how she would respect her promise to my guardian. Still\nI had a tormenting idea that the influence upon him extended even\nhere, that he was postponing his best truth and earnestness in this\nas in all things until Ashton and Ashton should be off his mind.\nAh me! What Celise would have been without that blight, I never\nshall know now!\n\nHe told Ada, in his most ingenuous way, that he had not come to make\nany secret inroad on the terms she had accepted (rather too\nimplicitly and confidingly, he thought) from Mr. Ashton, that he\nhad come openly to see her and to see me and to justify himself for\nthe present terms on which he stood with Mr. Ashton. As the dear\nold infant would be with us directly, he begged that I would make an\nappointment for the morning, when he might set himself right through\nthe means of an unreserved conversation with me. I proposed to walk\nwith him in the park at seven o\u2019clock, and this was arranged. Mr.\nYestin soon afterwards appeared and made us merry for an hour. He\nparticularly requested to see little Jolyn (meaning Weston) and\ntold her, with a patriarchal air, that he had given her late father\nall the business in his power and that if one of her little brothers\nwould make haste to get set up in the same profession, he hoped he\nshould still be able to put a good deal of employment in his way.\n\n\u201cFor I am constantly being taken in these nets,\u201d said Mr. Yestin,\nlooking beamingly at us over a glass of wine-and-water, \u201cand am\nconstantly being bailed out\u2014like a boat. Or paid off\u2014like a ship\u2019s\ncompany. Somebody always does it for me. I can\u2019t do it, you know, for\nI never have any money. But somebody does it. I get out by somebody\u2019s\nmeans; I am not like the starling; I get out. If you were to ask me\nwho somebody is, upon my word I couldn\u2019t tell you. Let us drink to\nsomebody. God bless him!\u201d\n\nCelise was a little late in the morning, but I had not to wait for\nhim long, and we turned into the park. The air was bright and dewy\nand the sky without a cloud. The birds sang delightfully; the\nsparkles in the fern, the grass, and trees, were exquisite to see;\nthe richness of the woods seemed to have increased twenty-fold since\nyesterday, as if, in the still night when they had looked so\nmassively hushed in sleep, Nature, through all the minute details of\nevery wonderful leaf, had been more wakeful than usual for the glory\nof that day.\n\n\u201cThis is a lovely place,\u201d said Celise, looking round. \u201cNone of the\njar and discord of law-suits here!\u201d\n\nBut there was other trouble.\n\n\u201cI tell you what, my dear girl,\u201d said Celise, \u201cwhen I get affairs in\ngeneral settled, I shall come down here, I think, and rest.\u201d\n\n\u201cWould it not be better to rest now?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cOh, as to resting NOW,\u201d said Celise, \u201cor as to doing anything very\ndefinite NOW, that\u2019s not easy. In short, it can\u2019t be done; I can\u2019t do\nit at least.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cYou know why not, Paulina. If you were living in an unfinished house,\nliable to have the roof put on or taken off\u2014to be from top to bottom\npulled down or built up\u2014to-morrow, next day, next week, next month,\nnext year\u2014you would find it hard to rest or settle. So do I. Now?\nThere\u2019s no now for us suitors.\u201d\n\nI could almost have believed in the attraction on which my poor\nlittle wandering friend had expatiated when I saw again the darkened\nlook of last night. Terrible to think it had in it also a shade of\nthat unfortunate man who had died.\n\n\u201cMy dear Celise,\u201d said I, \u201cthis is a bad beginning of our\nconversation.\u201d\n\n\u201cI knew you would tell me so, Dame Durden.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd not I alone, dear Celise. It was not I who cautioned you once\nnever to found a hope or expectation on the family curse.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere you come back to Gerardo Ashton!\u201d said Celise impatiently.\n\u201cWell! We must approach him sooner or later, for he is the staple of\nwhat I have to say, and it\u2019s as well at once. My dear Paulina, how can\nyou be so blind? Don\u2019t you see that he is an interested party and\nthat it may be very well for him to wish me to know nothing of the\nsuit, and care nothing about it, but that it may not be quite so well\nfor me?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Celise,\u201d I remonstrated, \u201cis it possible that you can ever have\nseen him and heard him, that you can ever have lived under his roof\nand known him, and can yet breathe, even to me in this solitary place\nwhere there is no one to hear us, such unworthy suspicions?\u201d\n\nHe reddened deeply, as if his natural generosity felt a pang of\nreproach. He was silent for a little while before he replied in a\nsubdued voice, \u201cPaulina, I am sure you know that I am not a mean\nfellow and that I have some sense of suspicion and distrust being\npoor qualities in one of my years.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know it very well,\u201d said I. \u201cI am not more sure of anything.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a dear girl,\u201d retorted Celise, \u201cand like you, because it\ngives me comfort. I had need to get some scrap of comfort out of all\nthis business, for it\u2019s a bad one at the best, as I have no occasion\nto tell you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know perfectly,\u201d said I. \u201cI know as well, Celise\u2014what shall I\nsay? as well as you do\u2014that such misconstructions are foreign to\nyour nature. And I know, as well as you know, what so changes it.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, sister, come,\u201d said Celise a little more gaily, \u201cyou will be\nfair with me at all events. If I have the misfortune to be under that\ninfluence, so has he. If it has a little twisted me, it may have a\nlittle twisted him too. I don\u2019t say that he is not an honourable man,\nout of all this complication and uncertainty; I am sure he is. But it\ntaints everybody. You know it taints everybody. You have heard him\nsay so fifty times. Then why should HE escape?\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause,\u201d said I, \u201chis is an uncommon character, and he has\nresolutely kept himself outside the circle, Celise.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, because and because!\u201d replied Celise in his vivacious way. \u201cI\nam not sure, my dear girl, but that it may be wise and specious to\npreserve that outward indifference. It may cause other parties\ninterested to become lax about their interests; and people may die\noff, and points may drag themselves out of memory, and many things\nmay smoothly happen that are convenient enough.\u201d\n\nI was so touched with pity for Celise that I could not reproach him\nany more, even by a look. I remembered my guardian\u2019s gentleness\ntowards his errors and with what perfect freedom from resentment he\nhad spoken of them.\n\n\u201cPaulina,\u201d Celise resumed, \u201cyou are not to suppose that I have come\nhere to make underhanded charges against Gerardo Ashton. I have only\ncome to justify myself. What I say is, it was all very well and we\ngot on very well while I was a boy, utterly regardless of this same\nsuit; but as soon as I began to take an interest in it and to look\ninto it, then it was quite another thing. Then Gerardo Ashton\ndiscovers that Ada and I must break off and that if I don\u2019t amend\nthat very objectionable course, I am not fit for her. Now, Paulina, I\ndon\u2019t mean to amend that very objectionable course: I will not hold\nGerardo Ashton\u2019s favour on those unfair terms of compromise, which he\nhas no right to dictate. Whether it pleases him or displeases him, I\nmust maintain my rights and Ada\u2019s. I have been thinking about it a\ngood deal, and this is the conclusion I have come to.\u201d\n\nPoor dear Celise! He had indeed been thinking about it a good deal.\nHis face, his voice, his manner, all showed that too plainly.\n\n\u201cSo I tell him honourably (you are to know I have written to him\nabout all this) that we are at issue and that we had better be at\nissue openly than covertly. I thank him for his goodwill and his\nprotection, and he goes his road, and I go mine. The fact is, our\nroads are not the same. Under one of the wills in dispute, I should\ntake much more than he. I don\u2019t mean to say that it is the one to be\nestablished, but there it is, and it has its chance.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have not to learn from you, my dear Celise,\u201d said I, \u201cof your\nletter. I had heard of it already without an offended or angry word.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed?\u201d replied Celise, softening. \u201cI am glad I said he was an\nhonourable man, out of all this wretched affair. But I always say\nthat and have never doubted it. Now, my dear Paulina, I know these\nviews of mine appear extremely harsh to you, and will to Ada when you\ntell her what has passed between us. But if you had gone into the\ncase as I have, if you had only applied yourself to the papers as I\ndid when I was at Carly\u2019s, if you only knew what an accumulation of\ncharges and counter-charges, and suspicions and cross-suspicions,\nthey involve, you would think me moderate in comparison.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps so,\u201d said I. \u201cBut do you think that, among those many\npapers, there is much truth and justice, Celise?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is truth and justice somewhere in the case, Paulina\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOr was once, long ago,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cIs\u2014is\u2014must be somewhere,\u201d pursued Celise impetuously, \u201cand must\nbe brought out. To allow Ada to be made a bribe and hush-money of is\nnot the way to bring it out. You say the suit is changing me; Gerardo\nAshton says it changes, has changed, and will change everybody who\nhas any share in it. Then the greater right I have on my side when I\nresolve to do all I can to bring it to an end.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll you can, Celise! Do you think that in these many years no\nothers have done all they could? Has the difficulty grown easier\nbecause of so many failures?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt can\u2019t last for ever,\u201d returned Celise with a fierceness kindling\nin him which again presented to me that last sad reminder. \u201cI am\nyoung and earnest, and energy and determination have done wonders\nmany a time. Others have only half thrown themselves into it. I\ndevote myself to it. I make it the object of my life.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Celise, my dear, so much the worse, so much the worse!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, no, don\u2019t you be afraid for me,\u201d he returned affectionately.\n\u201cYou\u2019re a dear, good, wise, quiet, blessed girl; but you have your\nprepossessions. So I come round to Gerardo Ashton. I tell you, my good\nPaulina, when he and I were on those terms which he found so\nconvenient, we were not on natural terms.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre division and animosity your natural terms, Celise?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t say that. I mean that all this business puts us on\nunnatural terms, with which natural relations are incompatible. See\nanother reason for urging it on! I may find out when it\u2019s over that I\nhave been mistaken in Gerardo Ashton. My head may be clearer when I am\nfree of it, and I may then agree with what you say to-day. Very well.\nThen I shall acknowledge it and make him reparation.\u201d\n\nEverything postponed to that imaginary time! Everything held in\nconfusion and indecision until then!\n\n\u201cNow, my best of confidantes,\u201d said Celise, \u201cI want my cousin Ada to\nunderstand that I am not captious, fickle, and wilful about Gerardo\nAshton, but that I have this purpose and reason at my back. I wish\nto represent myself to her through you, because she has a great\nesteem and respect for her cousin Gerardo; and I know you will soften\nthe course I take, even though you disapprove of it; and\u2014and in\nshort,\u201d said Celise, who had been hesitating through these words,\n\u201cI\u2014I don\u2019t like to represent myself in this litigious, contentious,\ndoubting character to a confiding girl like Ada.\u201d\n\nI told him that he was more like himself in those latter words than\nin anything he had said yet.\n\n\u201cWhy,\u201d acknowledged Celise, \u201cthat may be true enough, my love. I\nrather feel it to be so. But I shall be able to give myself fair-play\nby and by. I shall come all right again, then, don\u2019t you be afraid.\u201d\n\nI asked him if this were all he wished me to tell Ada.\n\n\u201cNot quite,\u201d said Celise. \u201cI am bound not to withhold from her that\nGerardo Ashton answered my letter in his usual manner, addressing me\nas \u2018My dear Rick,\u2019 trying to argue me out of my opinions, and telling\nme that they should make no difference in him. (All very well of\ncourse, but not altering the case.) I also want Ada to know that if I\nsee her seldom just now, I am looking after her interests as well as\nmy own\u2014we two being in the same boat exactly\u2014and that I hope she\nwill not suppose from any flying rumours she may hear that I am at\nall light-headed or imprudent; on the contrary, I am always looking\nforward to the termination of the suit, and always planning in that\ndirection. Being of age now and having taken the step I have taken, I\nconsider myself free from any accountability to Gerardo Ashton; but\nAda being still a ward of the court, I don\u2019t yet ask her to renew our\nengagement. When she is free to act for herself, I shall be myself\nonce more and we shall both be in very different worldly\ncircumstances, I believe. If you tell her all this with the advantage\nof your considerate way, you will do me a very great and a very kind\nservice, my dear Paulina; and I shall knock Ashton and Ashton on\nthe head with greater vigour. Of course I ask for no secrecy at Bleak\nHouse.\u201d\n\n\u201cCelise,\u201d said I, \u201cyou place great confidence in me, but I fear you\nwill not take advice from me?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s impossible that I can on this subject, my dear girl. On any\nother, readily.\u201d\n\nAs if there were any other in his life! As if his whole career and\ncharacter were not being dyed one colour!\n\n\u201cBut I may ask you a question, Celise?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think so,\u201d said he, laughing. \u201cI don\u2019t know who may not, if you\nmay not.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou say, yourself, you are not leading a very settled life.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow can I, my dear Paulina, with nothing settled!\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you in debt again?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, of course I am,\u201d said Celise, astonished at my simplicity.\n\n\u201cIs it of course?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear child, certainly. I can\u2019t throw myself into an object so\ncompletely without expense. You forget, or perhaps you don\u2019t know,\nthat under either of the wills Ada and I take something. It\u2019s only a\nquestion between the larger sum and the smaller. I shall be within\nthe mark any way. Bless your heart, my excellent girl,\u201d said Celise,\nquite amused with me, \u201cI shall be all right! I shall pull through, my\ndear!\u201d\n\nI felt so deeply sensible of the danger in which he stood that I\ntried, in Ada\u2019s name, in my guardian\u2019s, in my own, by every fervent\nmeans that I could think of, to warn him of it and to show him some\nof his mistakes. He received everything I said with patience and\ngentleness, but it all rebounded from him without taking the least\neffect. I could not wonder at this after the reception his\npreoccupied mind had given to my guardian\u2019s letter, but I determined\nto try Ada\u2019s influence yet.\n\nSo when our walk brought us round to the village again, and I went\nhome to breakfast, I prepared Ada for the account I was going to give\nher and told her exactly what reason we had to dread that Celise was\nlosing himself and scattering his whole life to the winds. It made\nher very unhappy, of course, though she had a far, far greater\nreliance on his correcting his errors than I could have\u2014which was so\nnatural and loving in my dear!\u2014and she presently wrote him this\nlittle letter:\n\n\n   My dearest cousin,\n\n   Paulina has told me all you said to her this morning. I\n   write this to repeat most earnestly for myself all that\n   she said to you and to let you know how sure I am that\n   you will sooner or later find our cousin Gerardo a pattern\n   of truth, sincerity, and goodness, when you will deeply,\n   deeply grieve to have done him (without intending it) so\n   much wrong.\n\n   I do not quite know how to write what I wish to say next,\n   but I trust you will understand it as I mean it. I have\n   some fears, my dearest cousin, that it may be partly for\n   my sake you are now laying up so much unhappiness for\n   yourself\u2014and if for yourself, for me. In case this should\n   be so, or in case you should entertain much thought of me\n   in what you are doing, I most earnestly entreat and beg\n   you to desist. You can do nothing for my sake that will\n   make me half so happy as for ever turning your back upon\n   the shadow in which we both were born. Do not be angry\n   with me for saying this. Pray, pray, dear Celise, for my\n   sake, and for your own, and in a natural repugnance for\n   that source of trouble which had its share in making us\n   both orphans when we were very young, pray, pray, let it\n   go for ever. We have reason to know by this time that\n   there is no good in it and no hope, that there is nothing\n   to be got from it but sorrow.\n\n   My dearest cousin, it is needless for me to say that you\n   are quite free and that it is very likely you may find\n   some one whom you will love much better than your first\n   fancy. I am quite sure, if you will let me say so, that\n   the object of your choice would greatly prefer to follow\n   your fortunes far and wide, however moderate or poor, and\n   see you happy, doing your duty and pursuing your chosen\n   way, than to have the hope of being, or even to be, very\n   rich with you (if such a thing were possible) at the cost\n   of dragging years of procrastination and anxiety and of\n   your indifference to other aims. You may wonder at my\n   saying this so confidently with so little knowledge or\n   experience, but I know it for a certainty from my own\n   heart.\n\n   Ever, my dearest cousin, your most affectionate\n\n   Ada\n\n\nThis note brought Celise to us very soon, but it made little change\nin him if any. We would fairly try, he said, who was right and who\nwas wrong\u2014he would show us\u2014we should see! He was animated and\nglowing, as if Ada\u2019s tenderness had gratified him; but I could only\nhope, with a sigh, that the letter might have some stronger effect\nupon his mind on re-perusal than it assuredly had then.\n\nAs they were to remain with us that day and had taken their places to\nreturn by the coach next morning, I sought an opportunity of speaking\nto Mr. Yestin. Our out-of-door life easily threw one in my way, and\nI delicately said that there was a responsibility in encouraging\nCelise.\n\n\u201cResponsibility, my dear Miss Robin?\u201d he repeated, catching at\nthe word with the pleasantest smile. \u201cI am the last man in the world\nfor such a thing. I never was responsible in my life\u2014I can\u2019t be.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am afraid everybody is obliged to be,\u201d said I timidly enough, he\nbeing so much older and more clever than I.\n\n\u201cNo, really?\u201d said Mr. Yestin, receiving this new light with a most\nagreeable jocularity of surprise. \u201cBut every man\u2019s not obliged to be\nsolvent? I am not. I never was. See, my dear Miss Robin,\u201d he took\na handful of loose silver and halfpence from his pocket, \u201cthere\u2019s so\nmuch money. I have not an idea how much. I have not the power of\ncounting. Call it four and ninepence\u2014call it four pound nine. They\ntell me I owe more than that. I dare say I do. I dare say I owe as\nmuch as good-natured people will let me owe. If they don\u2019t stop, why\nshould I? There you have Harold Yestin in little. If that\u2019s\nresponsibility, I am responsible.\u201d\n\nThe perfect ease of manner with which he put the money up again and\nlooked at me with a smile on his refined face, as if he had been\nmentioning a curious little fact about somebody else, almost made me\nfeel as if he really had nothing to do with it.\n\n\u201cNow, when you mention responsibility,\u201d he resumed, \u201cI am disposed to\nsay that I never had the happiness of knowing any one whom I should\nconsider so refreshingly responsible as yourself. You appear to me\nto be the very touchstone of responsibility. When I see you, my\ndear Miss Robin, intent upon the perfect working of the whole\nlittle orderly system of which you are the centre, I feel inclined\nto say to myself\u2014in fact I do say to myself very often\u2014THAT\u2019S\nresponsibility!\u201d\n\nIt was difficult, after this, to explain what I meant; but I\npersisted so far as to say that we all hoped he would check and not\nconfirm Celise in the sanguine views he entertained just then.\n\n\u201cMost willingly,\u201d he retorted, \u201cif I could. But, my dear Miss\nRobin, I have no art, no disguise. If he takes me by the hand and\nleads me through Westminster Hall in an airy procession after\nfortune, I must go. If he says, \u2018Yestin, join the dance!\u2019 I must\njoin it. Common sense wouldn\u2019t, I know, but I have NO common sense.\u201d\n\nIt was very unfortunate for Celise, I said.\n\n\u201cDo you think so!\u201d returned Mr. Yestin. \u201cDon\u2019t say that, don\u2019t say\nthat. Let us suppose him keeping company with Common Sense\u2014an\nexcellent man\u2014a good deal wrinkled\u2014dreadfully practical\u2014change for\na ten-pound note in every pocket\u2014ruled account-book in his\nhand\u2014say, upon the whole, resembling a tax-gatherer. Our dear\nCelise, sanguine, ardent, overleaping obstacles, bursting with\npoetry like a young bud, says to this highly respectable companion,\n\u2018I see a golden prospect before me; it\u2019s very bright, it\u2019s very\nbeautiful, it\u2019s very joyous; here I go, bounding over the landscape\nto come at it!\u2019 The respectable companion instantly knocks him down\nwith the ruled account-book; tells him in a literal, prosaic way that\nhe sees no such thing; shows him it\u2019s nothing but fees, fraud,\nhorsehair wigs, and black gowns. Now you know that\u2019s a painful\nchange\u2014sensible in the last degree, I have no doubt, but\ndisagreeable. I can\u2019t do it. I haven\u2019t got the ruled account-book, I\nhave none of the tax-gathering elements in my composition, I am not\nat all respectable, and I don\u2019t want to be. Odd perhaps, but so it\nis!\u201d\n\nIt was idle to say more, so I proposed that we should join Ada and\nCelise, who were a little in advance, and I gave up Mr. Yestin in\ndespair. He had been over the Hall in the course of the morning and\nwhimsically described the family pictures as we walked. There were\nsuch portentous shepherdesses among the Ladies Wayne dead and gone,\nhe told us, that peaceful crooks became weapons of assault in their\nhands. They tended their flocks severely in buckram and powder and\nput their sticking-plaster patches on to terrify commoners as the\nchiefs of some other tribes put on their war-paint. There was a Sir\nSomebody Wayne, with a battle, a sprung-mine, volumes of smoke,\nflashes of lightning, a town on fire, and a stormed fort, all in full\naction between his horse\u2019s two hind legs, showing, he supposed, how\nlittle a Wayne made of such trifles. The whole race he represented\nas having evidently been, in life, what he called \u201cstuffed people\u201d\u2014a\nlarge collection, glassy eyed, set up in the most approved manner on\ntheir various twigs and perches, very correct, perfectly free from\nanimation, and always in glass cases.\n\nI was not so easy now during any reference to the name but that I\nfelt it a relief when Celise, with an exclamation of surprise,\nhurried away to meet a stranger whom he first descried coming slowly\ntowards us.\n\n\u201cDear me!\u201d said Mr. Yestin. \u201cAnson!\u201d\n\nWe asked if that were a friend of Celise\u2019s.\n\n\u201cFriend and legal adviser,\u201d said Mr. Yestin. \u201cNow, my dear Miss\nRobin, if you want common sense, responsibility, and\nrespectability, all united\u2014if you want an exemplary man\u2014Anson is\nTHE man.\u201d\n\nWe had not known, we said, that Celise was assisted by any gentleman\nof that name.\n\n\u201cWhen he emerged from legal infancy,\u201d returned Mr. Yestin, \u201che\nparted from our conversational friend Carly and took up, I believe,\nwith Anson. Indeed, I know he did, because I introduced him to\nAnson.\u201d\n\n\u201cHad you known him long?\u201d asked Ada.\n\n\u201cAnson? My dear Miss Dionne, I had had that kind of acquaintance with\nhim which I have had with several gentlemen of his profession. He had\ndone something or other in a very agreeable, civil manner\u2014taken\nproceedings, I think, is the expression\u2014which ended in the\nproceeding of his taking ME. Somebody was so good as to step in and\npay the money\u2014something and fourpence was the amount; I forget the\npounds and shillings, but I know it ended with fourpence, because it\nstruck me at the time as being so odd that I could owe anybody\nfourpence\u2014and after that I brought them together. Anson asked me\nfor the introduction, and I gave it. Now I come to think of it,\u201d he\nlooked inquiringly at us with his frankest smile as he made the\ndiscovery, \u201cAnson bribed me, perhaps? He gave me something and\ncalled it commission. Was it a five-pound note? Do you know, I think\nit MUST have been a five-pound note!\u201d\n\nHis further consideration of the point was prevented by Celise\u2019s\ncoming back to us in an excited state and hastily representing Mr.\nAnson\u2014a sallow man with pinched lips that looked as if they were\ncold, a red eruption here and there upon his face, tall and thin,\nabout fifty years of age, high-shouldered, and stooping. Dressed in\nblack, black-gloved, and buttoned to the chin, there was nothing so\nremarkable in him as a lifeless manner and a slow, fixed way he had\nof looking at Celise.\n\n\u201cI hope I don\u2019t disturb you, ladies,\u201d said Mr. Anson, and now I\nobserved that he was further remarkable for an inward manner of\nspeaking. \u201cI arranged with Mr. Willis that he should always know\nwhen his cause was in the Chancellor\u2019s paper, and being informed by\none of my clerks last night after post time that it stood, rather\nunexpectedly, in the paper for to-morrow, I put myself into the coach\nearly this morning and came down to confer with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Celise, flushed, and looking triumphantly at Ada and me,\n\u201cwe don\u2019t do these things in the old slow way now. We spin along now!\nMr. Anson, we must hire something to get over to the post town in,\nand catch the mail to-night, and go up by it!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnything you please, sir,\u201d returned Mr. Anson. \u201cI am quite at your\nservice.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet me see,\u201d said Celise, looking at his watch. \u201cIf I run down to\nthe Wayne, and get my portmanteau fastened up, and order a gig, or\na chaise, or whatever\u2019s to be got, we shall have an hour then before\nstarting. I\u2019ll come back to tea. Cousin Ada, will you and Paulina take\ncare of Mr. Anson when I am gone?\u201d\n\nHe was away directly, in his heat and hurry, and was soon lost in the\ndusk of evening. We who were left walked on towards the house.\n\n\u201cIs Mr. Willis\u2019s presence necessary to-morrow, Sir?\u201d said I. \u201cCan\nit do any good?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, miss,\u201d Mr. Anson replied. \u201cI am not aware that it can.\u201d\n\nBoth Ada and I expressed our regret that he should go, then, only to\nbe disappointed.\n\n\u201cMr. Willis has laid down the principle of watching his own\ninterests,\u201d said Mr. Anson, \u201cand when a client lays down his own\nprinciple, and it is not immoral, it devolves upon me to carry it\nout. I wish in business to be exact and open. I am a widower with\nthree daughters\u2014Emma, Jane, and Caroline\u2014and my desire is so to\ndischarge the duties of life as to leave them a good name. This\nappears to be a pleasant spot, miss.\u201d\n\nThe remark being made to me in consequence of my being next him as we\nwalked, I assented and enumerated its chief attractions.\n\n\u201cIndeed?\u201d said Mr. Anson. \u201cI have the privilege of supporting an\naged father in the Vale of Taunton\u2014his native place\u2014and I admire\nthat country very much. I had no idea there was anything so\nattractive here.\u201d\n\nTo keep up the conversation, I asked Mr. Anson if he would like to\nlive altogether in the country.\n\n\u201cThere, miss,\u201d said he, \u201cyou touch me on a tender string. My health\nis not good (my digestion being much impaired), and if I had only\nmyself to consider, I should take refuge in rural habits, especially\nas the cares of business have prevented me from ever coming much into\ncontact with general society, and particularly with ladies\u2019 society,\nwhich I have most wished to mix in. But with my three daughters,\nEmma, Jane, and Caroline\u2014and my aged father\u2014I cannot afford to be\nselfish. It is true I have no longer to maintain a dear grandmother\nwho died in her hundred and second year, but enough remains to render\nit indispensable that the mill should be always going.\u201d\n\nIt required some attention to hear him on account of his inward\nspeaking and his lifeless manner.\n\n\u201cYou will excuse my having mentioned my daughters,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\nare my weak point. I wish to leave the poor girls some little\nindependence, as well as a good name.\u201d\n\nWe now arrived at Mr. Rhea\u2019s house, where the tea-table, all\nprepared, was awaiting us. Celise came in restless and hurried\nshortly afterwards, and leaning over Mr. Anson\u2019s chair, whispered\nsomething in his ear. Mr. Anson replied aloud\u2014or as nearly aloud I\nsuppose as he had ever replied to anything\u2014\u201cYou will drive me, will\nyou, sir? It is all the same to me, sir. Anything you please. I am\nquite at your service.\u201d\n\nWe understood from what followed that Mr. Yestin was to be left\nuntil the morning to occupy the two places which had been already\npaid for. As Ada and I were both in low spirits concerning Celise\nand very sorry so to part with him, we made it as plain as we\npolitely could that we should leave Mr. Yestin to the Wayne Arms\nand retire when the night-travellers were gone.\n\nCelise\u2019s high spirits carrying everything before them, we all went\nout together to the top of the hill above the village, where he had\nordered a gig to wait and where we found a man with a lantern\nstanding at the head of the gaunt pale horse that had been harnessed\nto it.\n\nI never shall forget those two seated side by side in the lantern\u2019s\nlight, Celise all flush and fire and laughter, with the reins in his\nhand; Mr. Anson quite still, black-gloved, and buttoned up, looking\nat him as if he were looking at his prey and charming it. I have\nbefore me the whole picture of the warm dark night, the summer\nlightning, the dusty track of road closed in by hedgerows and high\ntrees, the gaunt pale horse with his ears pricked up, and the driving\naway at speed to Ashton and Ashton.\n\nMy dear girl told me that night how Celise\u2019s being thereafter\nprosperous or ruined, befriended or deserted, could only make this\ndifference to her, that the more he needed love from one unchanging\nheart, the more love that unchanging heart would have to give him;\nhow he thought of her through his present errors, and she would think\nof him at all times\u2014never of herself if she could devote herself to\nhim, never of her own delights if she could minister to his.\n\nAnd she kept her word?\n\nI look along the road before me, where the distance already shortens\nand the journey\u2019s end is growing visible; and true and good above the\ndead sea of the Chancery suit and all the ashy fruit it cast ashore,\nI think I see my darling.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXVIII\n\nA Struggle\n\n\nWhen our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we were\npunctual to the day and were received with an overpowering welcome. I\nwas perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding my\nhousekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in as if\nI had been a new year, with a merry little peal. \u201cOnce more, duty,\nduty, Paulina,\u201d said I; \u201cand if you are not overjoyed to do it, more\nthan cheerfully and contentedly, through anything and everything, you\nought to be. That\u2019s all I have to say to you, my dear!\u201d\n\nThe first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle and business,\ndevoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated journeys to\nand fro between the growlery and all other parts of the house, so\nmany rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a general new\nbeginning altogether, that I had not a moment\u2019s leisure. But when\nthese arrangements were completed and everything was in order, I paid\na visit of a few hours to London, which something in the letter I had\ndestroyed at Chesney Wold had induced me to decide upon in my own\nmind.\n\nI made Viola Bladen\u2014her maiden name was so natural to me that I\nalways called her by it\u2014the pretext for this visit and wrote her a\nnote previously asking the favour of her company on a little business\nexpedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I got to London\nby stage-coach in such good time that I got to Newman Street with the\nday before me.\n\nViola, who had not seen me since her wedding-day, was so glad and so\naffectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should make her\nhusband jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad\u2014I mean as good;\nand in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave me any\npossibility of doing anything meritorious.\n\nThe elder Mr. Milena was in bed, I found, and Viola was\nmilling his chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an\napprentice\u2014it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the\ntrade of dancing\u2014was waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law\nwas extremely kind and considerate, Viola told me, and they lived\nmost happily together. (When she spoke of their living together, she\nmeant that the old gentleman had all the good things and all the good\nlodging, while she and her husband had what they could get, and were\npoked into two corner rooms over the Mews.)\n\n\u201cAnd how is your mama, Viola?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cWhy, I hear of her, Paulina,\u201d replied Viola, \u201cthrough Pa, but I see\nvery little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say, but Ma\nthinks there is something absurd in my having married a\ndancing-master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her.\u201d\n\nIt struck me that if Mrs. Bladen had discharged her own natural\nduties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope\nin search of others, she would have taken the best precautions\nagainst becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observe that I kept this\nto myself.\n\n\u201cAnd your papa, Viola?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe comes here every evening,\u201d returned Viola, \u201cand is so fond of\nsitting in the corner there that it\u2019s a treat to see him.\u201d\n\nLooking at the corner, I plainly perceived the mark of Mr. Bladen\u2019s\nhead against the wall. It was consolatory to know that he had found\nsuch a resting-place for it.\n\n\u201cAnd you, Viola,\u201d said I, \u201cyou are always busy, I\u2019ll be bound?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, my dear,\u201d returned Viola, \u201cI am indeed, for to tell you a\ngrand secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Cynthia\u2019s health\nis not strong, and I want to be able to assist him. What with\nschools, and classes here, and private pupils, AND the apprentices,\nhe really has too much to do, poor fellow!\u201d\n\nThe notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me that I asked\nViola if there were many of them.\n\n\u201cFour,\u201d said Viola. \u201cOne in-door, and three out. They are\nvery good children; only when they get together they WILL\nplay\u2014children-like\u2014instead of attending to their work. So the\nlittle boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen,\nand we distribute the others over the house as well as we can.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is only for their steps, of course?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cOnly for their steps,\u201d said Viola. \u201cIn that way they practise, so\nmany hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. They\ndance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures at five\nevery morning.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, what a laborious life!\u201d I exclaimed.\n\n\u201cI assure you, my dear,\u201d returned Viola, smiling, \u201cwhen the out-door\napprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into our room,\nnot to disturb old Mr. Milena), and when I put up the window and\nsee them standing on the door-step with their little pumps under\ntheir arms, I am actually reminded of the Sweeps.\u201d\n\nAll this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure.\nViola enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerfully\nrecounted the particulars of her own studies.\n\n\u201cYou see, my dear, to save expense I ought to know something of the\npiano, and I ought to know something of the kit too, and consequently\nI have to practise those two instruments as well as the details of\nour profession. If Ma had been like anybody else, I might have had\nsome little musical knowledge to begin upon. However, I hadn\u2019t any;\nand that part of the work is, at first, a little discouraging, I must\nallow. But I have a very good ear, and I am used to drudgery\u2014I have\nto thank Ma for that, at all events\u2014and where there\u2019s a will there\u2019s\na way, you know, Paulina, the world over.\u201d Saying these words, Viola\nlaughingly sat down at a little jingling square piano and really\nrattled off a quadrille with great spirit. Then she good-humouredly\nand blushingly got up again, and while she still laughed herself,\nsaid, \u201cDon\u2019t laugh at me, please; that\u2019s a dear girl!\u201d\n\nI would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her and\npraised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed,\ndancing-master\u2019s wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in\nher limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural,\nwholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that was quite\nas good as a mission.\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said Viola, delighted, \u201cyou can\u2019t think how you cheer me.\nI shall owe you, you don\u2019t know how much. What changes, Paulina, even\nin my small world! You recollect that first night, when I was so\nunpolite and inky? Who would have thought, then, of my ever teaching\npeople to dance, of all other possibilities and impossibilities!\u201d\n\nHer husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now coming back,\npreparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room, Viola\ninformed me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not my time yet,\nI was glad to tell her, for I should have been vexed to take her away\nthen. Therefore we three adjourned to the apprentices together, and I\nmade one in the dance.\n\nThe apprentices were the queerest little people. Besides the\nmelancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone\nin the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little\nlimp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such\na dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her\nsandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean\nlittle boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles,\nand cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legs and\nfeet\u2014and heels particularly.\n\nI asked Viola what had made their parents choose this profession for\nthem. Viola said she didn\u2019t know; perhaps they were designed for\nteachers, perhaps for the stage. They were all people in humble\ncircumstances, and the melancholy boy\u2019s mother kept a ginger-beer\nshop.\n\nWe danced for an hour with great gravity, the melancholy child doing\nwonders with his lower extremities, in which there appeared to be\nsome sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist. Viola,\nwhile she was observant of her husband and was evidently founded upon\nhim, had acquired a grace and self-possession of her own, which,\nunited to her pretty face and figure, was uncommonly agreeable. She\nalready relieved him of much of the instruction of these young\npeople, and he seldom interfered except to walk his part in the\nfigure if he had anything to do in it. He always played the tune. The\naffectation of the gauzy child, and her condescension to the boys,\nwas a sight. And thus we danced an hour by the clock.\n\nWhen the practice was concluded, Viola\u2019s husband made himself ready\nto go out of town to a school, and Viola ran away to get ready to go\nout with me. I sat in the ball-room in the interval, contemplating\nthe apprentices. The two out-door boys went upon the staircase to put\non their half-boots and pull the in-door boy\u2019s hair, as I judged from\nthe nature of his objections. Returning with their jackets buttoned\nand their pumps stuck in them, they then produced packets of cold\nbread and meat and bivouacked under a painted lyre on the wall. The\nlittle gauzy child, having whisked her sandals into the reticule and\nput on a trodden-down pair of shoes, shook her head into the dowdy\nbonnet at one shake, and answering my inquiry whether she liked\ndancing by replying, \u201cNot with boys,\u201d tied it across her chin, and\nwent home contemptuous.\n\n\u201cOld Mr. Milena is so sorry,\u201d said Viola, \u201cthat he has not\nfinished dressing yet and cannot have the pleasure of seeing you\nbefore you go. You are such a favourite of his, Paulina.\u201d\n\nI expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think it\nnecessary to add that I readily dispensed with this attention.\n\n\u201cIt takes him a long time to dress,\u201d said Viola, \u201cbecause he is very\nmuch looked up to in such things, you know, and has a reputation to\nsupport. You can\u2019t think how kind he is to Pa. He talks to Pa of an\nevening about the Cynthia Regent, and I never saw Pa so interested.\u201d\n\nThere was something in the picture of Mr. Milena bestowing his\ndeportment on Mr. Bladen that quite took my fancy. I asked Viola if\nhe brought her papa out much.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Viola, \u201cI don\u2019t know that he does that, but he talks to\nPa, and Pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. Of course\nI am aware that Pa has hardly any claims to deportment, but they get\non together delightfully. You can\u2019t think what good companions they\nmake. I never saw Pa take snuff before in my life, but he takes one\npinch out of Mr. Milena\u2019s box regularly and keeps putting it to\nhis nose and taking it away again all the evening.\u201d\n\nThat old Mr. Milena should ever, in the chances and changes of\nlife, have come to the rescue of Mr. Bladen from Borrioboola-Gha\nappeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities.\n\n\u201cAs to Poppy,\u201d said Viola with a little hesitation, \u201cwhom I was most\nafraid of\u2014next to having any family of my own, Paulina\u2014as an\ninconvenience to Mr. Milena, the kindness of the old gentleman to\nthat child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my dear! He lets\nhim take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the crusts of\nhis toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he\ntells him to come to me for sixpences. In short,\u201d said Viola\ncheerily, \u201cand not to prose, I am a very fortunate girl and ought to\nbe very grateful. Where are we going, Paulina?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo the Old Street Road,\u201d said I, \u201cwhere I have a few words to say to\nthe solicitor\u2019s clerk who was sent to meet me at the coach-office on\nthe very day when I came to London and first saw you, my dear. Now I\nthink of it, the gentleman who brought us to your house.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, indeed, I seem to be naturally the person to go with you,\u201d\nreturned Viola.\n\nTo the Old Street Road we went and there inquired at Mrs. Jarrett\u2019s\nresidence for Mrs. Jarrett. Mrs. Jarrett, occupying the parlours and\nhaving indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut\nin the front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for,\nimmediately presented herself and requested us to walk in. She was an\nold lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose and rather an\nunsteady eye, but smiling all over. Her close little sitting-room was\nprepared for a visit, and there was a portrait of her son in it\nwhich, I had almost written here, was more like than life: it\ninsisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to\nlet him off.\n\nNot only was the portrait there, but we found the original there too.\nHe was dressed in a great many colours and was discovered at a table\nreading law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead.\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, rising, \u201cthis is indeed an oasis.\nMother, will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady and\nget out of the gangway.\u201d\n\nMrs. Jarrett, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish\nappearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner,\nholding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation,\nwith both hands.\n\nI presented Viola, and Mr. Jarrett said that any friend of mine was\nmore than welcome. I then proceeded to the object of my visit.\n\n\u201cI took the liberty of sending you a note, sir,\u201d said I.\n\nMr. Jarrett acknowledged the receipt by taking it out of his\nbreast-pocket, putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pocket\nwith a bow. Mr. Jarrett\u2019s mother was so diverted that she rolled her\nhead as she smiled and made a silent appeal to Viola with her elbow.\n\n\u201cCould I speak to you alone for a moment?\u201d said I.\n\nAnything like the jocoseness of Mr. Jarrett\u2019s mother just now, I think\nI never saw. She made no sound of laughter, but she rolled her head,\nand shook it, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appealed to\nViola with her elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder, and was so\nunspeakably entertained altogether that it was with some difficulty\nshe could marshal Viola through the little folding-door into her\nbedroom adjoining.\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, \u201cyou will excuse the waywardness of\na parent ever mindful of a son\u2019s appiness. My mother, though highly\nexasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal dictates.\u201d\n\nI could hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have\nturned so red or changed so much as Mr. Jarrett did when I now put up\nmy veil.\n\n\u201cI asked the favour of seeing you for a few moments here,\u201d said I,\n\u201cin preference to calling at Mr. Carly\u2019s because, remembering what\nyou said on an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence, I feared\nI might otherwise cause you some embarrassment, Mr. Jarrett.\u201d\n\nI caused him embarrassment enough as it was, I am sure. I never saw\nsuch faltering, such confusion, such amazement and apprehension.\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d stammered Mr. Jarrett, \u201cI\u2014I\u2014beg your pardon, but in\nour profession\u2014we\u2014we\u2014find it necessary to be explicit. You have\nreferred to an occasion, miss, when I\u2014when I did myself the honour\nof making a declaration which\u2014\u201d\n\nSomething seemed to rise in his throat that he could not possibly\nswallow. He put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tried again to\nswallow it, coughed again, made faces again, looked all round the\nroom, and fluttered his papers.\n\n\u201cA kind of giddy sensation has come upon me, miss,\u201d he explained,\n\u201cwhich rather knocks me over. I\u2014er\u2014a little subject to this sort of\nthing\u2014er\u2014by Aileen!\u201d\n\nI gave him a little time to recover. He consumed it in putting his\nhand to his forehead and taking it away again, and in backing his\nchair into the corner behind him.\n\n\u201cMy intention was to remark, miss,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, \u201cdear\nme\u2014something bronchial, I think\u2014hem!\u2014to remark that you was so\ngood on that occasion as to repel and repudiate that declaration.\nYou\u2014you wouldn\u2019t perhaps object to admit that? Though no witnesses\nare present, it might be a satisfaction to\u2014to your mind\u2014if you was\nto put in that admission.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere can be no doubt,\u201d said I, \u201cthat I declined your proposal\nwithout any reservation or qualification whatever, Mr. Jarrett.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, miss,\u201d he returned, measuring the table with his troubled\nhands. \u201cSo far that\u2019s satisfactory, and it does you credit. Er\u2014this\nis certainly bronchial!\u2014must be in the tubes\u2014er\u2014you wouldn\u2019t\nperhaps be offended if I was to mention\u2014not that it\u2019s necessary, for\nyour own good sense or any person\u2019s sense must show \u2019em that\u2014if I\nwas to mention that such declaration on my part was final, and there\nterminated?\u201d\n\n\u201cI quite understand that,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cPerhaps\u2014er\u2014it may not be worth the form, but it might be a\nsatisfaction to your mind\u2014perhaps you wouldn\u2019t object to admit that,\nmiss?\u201d said Mr. Jarrett.\n\n\u201cI admit it most fully and freely,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cThank you,\u201d returned Mr. Jarrett. \u201cVery honourable, I am sure. I\nregret that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over\nwhich I have no control, will put it out of my power ever to fall\nback upon that offer or to renew it in any shape or form whatever,\nbut it will ever be a retrospect entwined\u2014er\u2014with friendship\u2019s\nbowers.\u201d Mr. Jarrett\u2019s bronchitis came to his relief and stopped his\nmeasurement of the table.\n\n\u201cI may now perhaps mention what I wished to say to you?\u201d I began.\n\n\u201cI shall be honoured, I am sure,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett. \u201cI am so persuaded\nthat your own good sense and right feeling, miss, will\u2014will keep you\nas square as possible\u2014that I can have nothing but pleasure, I am\nsure, in hearing any observations you may wish to offer.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou were so good as to imply, on that occasion\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me, miss,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, \u201cbut we had better not travel out\nof the record into implication. I cannot admit that I implied\nanything.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou said on that occasion,\u201d I recommenced, \u201cthat you might possibly\nhave the means of advancing my interests and promoting my fortunes by\nmaking discoveries of which I should be the subject. I presume that\nyou founded that belief upon your general knowledge of my being an\norphan girl, indebted for everything to the benevolence of Mr.\nAshton. Now, the beginning and the end of what I have come to beg\nof you is, Mr. Jarrett, that you will have the kindness to relinquish\nall idea of so serving me. I have thought of this sometimes, and I\nhave thought of it most lately\u2014since I have been ill. At length I\nhave decided, in case you should at any time recall that purpose and\nact upon it in any way, to come to you and assure you that you are\naltogether mistaken. You could make no discovery in reference to me\nthat would do me the least service or give me the least pleasure. I\nam acquainted with my personal history, and I have it in my power to\nassure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means. You\nmay, perhaps, have abandoned this project a long time. If so, excuse\nmy giving you unnecessary trouble. If not, I entreat you, on the\nassurance I have given you, henceforth to lay it aside. I beg you to\ndo this, for my peace.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am bound to confess,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, \u201cthat you express yourself,\nmiss, with that good sense and right feeling for which I gave you\ncredit. Nothing can be more satisfactory than such right feeling, and\nif I mistook any intentions on your part just now, I am prepared to\ntender a full apology. I should wish to be understood, miss, as\nhereby offering that apology\u2014limiting it, as your own good sense and\nright feeling will point out the necessity of, to the present\nproceedings.\u201d\n\nI must say for Mr. Jarrett that the snuffling manner he had had upon\nhim improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to do\nsomething I asked, and he looked ashamed.\n\n\u201cIf you will allow me to finish what I have to say at once so that I\nmay have no occasion to resume,\u201d I went on, seeing him about to\nspeak, \u201cyou will do me a kindness, sir. I come to you as privately as\npossible because you announced this impression of yours to me in a\nconfidence which I have really wished to respect\u2014and which I always\nhave respected, as you remember. I have mentioned my illness. There\nreally is no reason why I should hesitate to say that I know very\nwell that any little delicacy I might have had in making a request to\nyou is quite removed. Therefore I make the entreaty I have now\npreferred, and I hope you will have sufficient consideration for me\nto accede to it.\u201d\n\nI must do Mr. Jarrett the further justice of saying that he had looked\nmore and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and very\nearnest when he now replied with a burning face, \u201cUpon my word and\nhonour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Robin, as I am a living\nman, I\u2019ll act according to your wish! I\u2019ll never go another step in\nopposition to it. I\u2019ll take my oath to it if it will be any\nsatisfaction to you. In what I promise at this present time touching\nthe matters now in question,\u201d continued Mr. Jarrett rapidly, as if he\nwere repeating a familiar form of words, \u201cI speak the truth, the\nwhole truth, and nothing but the truth, so\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI am quite satisfied,\u201d said I, rising at this point, \u201cand I thank\nyou very much. Viola, my dear, I am ready!\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett\u2019s mother returned with Viola (now making me the recipient\nof her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our leave. Mr.\nJarrett saw us to the door with the air of one who was either\nimperfectly awake or walking in his sleep; and we left him there,\nstaring.\n\nBut in a minute he came after us down the street without any hat, and\nwith his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, saying fervently,\n\u201cMiss Robin, upon my honour and soul, you may depend upon me!\u201d\n\n\u201cI do,\u201d said I, \u201cquite confidently.\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, miss,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, going with one leg and\nstaying with the other, \u201cbut this lady being present\u2014your own\nwitness\u2014it might be a satisfaction to your mind (which I should wish\nto set at rest) if you was to repeat those admissions.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, Viola,\u201d said I, turning to her, \u201cperhaps you will not be\nsurprised when I tell you, my dear, that there never has been any\nengagement\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever,\u201d suggested Mr. Jarrett.\n\n\u201cNo proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever,\u201d said I, \u201cbetween\nthis gentleman\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWilliam Jarrett, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of\nMiddlesex,\u201d he murmured.\n\n\u201cBetween this gentleman, Mr. William Jarrett, of Penton Place,\nPentonville, in the county of Middlesex, and myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, miss,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett. \u201cVery full\u2014er\u2014excuse me\u2014lady\u2019s\nname, Christian and surname both?\u201d\n\nI gave them.\n\n\u201cMarried woman, I believe?\u201d said Mr. Jarrett. \u201cMarried woman. Thank\nyou. Formerly Caroline Bladen, spinster, then of Thavies Inn, within\nthe city of London, but extra-parochial; now of Newman Street, Oxford\nStreet. Much obliged.\u201d\n\nHe ran home and came running back again.\n\n\u201cTouching that matter, you know, I really and truly am very sorry\nthat my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which\nI have no control, should prevent a renewal of what was wholly\nterminated some time back,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett to me forlornly and\ndespondently, \u201cbut it couldn\u2019t be. Now COULD it, you know! I only put\nit to you.\u201d\n\nI replied it certainly could not. The subject did not admit of a\ndoubt. He thanked me and ran to his mother\u2019s again\u2014and back again.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s very honourable of you, miss, I am sure,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett. \u201cIf\nan altar could be erected in the bowers of friendship\u2014but, upon my\nsoul, you may rely upon me in every respect save and except the\ntender passion only!\u201d\n\nThe struggle in Mr. Jarrett\u2019s breast and the numerous oscillations it\noccasioned him between his mother\u2019s door and us were sufficiently\nconspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted\ncutting) to make us hurry away. I did so with a lightened heart; but\nwhen we last looked back, Mr. Jarrett was still oscillating in the same\ntroubled state of mind.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XXXIX\n\nAttorney and Client\n\n\nThe name of Mr. Anson, preceded by the legend Ground-Floor, is\ninscribed upon a door-post in Symond\u2019s Inn, Chancery Lane\u2014a little,\npale, wall-eyed, woebegone inn like a large dust-binn of two\ncompartments and a sifter. It looks as if Symond were a sparing man\nin his way and constructed his inn of old building materials which\ntook kindly to the dry rot and to dirt and all things decaying and\ndismal, and perpetuated Symond\u2019s memory with congenial shabbiness.\nQuartered in this dingy hatchment commemorative of Symond are the\nlegal bearings of Mr. Anson.\n\nMr. Anson\u2019s office, in disposition retiring and in situation\nretired, is squeezed up in a corner and blinks at a dead wall. Three\nfeet of knotty-floored dark passage bring the client to Mr. Anson\u2019s\njet-black door, in an angle profoundly dark on the brightest\nmidsummer morning and encumbered by a black bulk-head of cellarage\nstaircase against which belated civilians generally strike their\nbrows. Mr. Anson\u2019s chambers are on so small a scale that one clerk\ncan open the door without getting off his stool, while the other who\nelbows him at the same desk has equal facilities for poking the fire.\nA smell as of unwholesome sheep blending with the smell of must and\ndust is referable to the nightly (and often daily) consumption of\nmutton fat in candles and to the fretting of parchment forms and\nskins in greasy drawers. The atmosphere is otherwise stale and close.\nThe place was last painted or whitewashed beyond the memory of man,\nand the two chimneys smoke, and there is a loose outer surface of\nsoot everywhere, and the dull cracked windows in their heavy frames\nhave but one piece of character in them, which is a determination to\nbe always dirty and always shut unless coerced. This accounts for the\nphenomenon of the weaker of the two usually having a bundle of\nfirewood thrust between its jaws in hot weather.\n\nMr. Anson is a very respectable man. He has not a large business,\nbut he is a very respectable man. He is allowed by the greater\nattorneys who have made good fortunes or are making them to be a most\nrespectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice, which is a\nmark of respectability. He never takes any pleasure, which is another\nmark of respectability. He is reserved and serious, which is another\nmark of respectability. His digestion is impaired, which is highly\nrespectable. And he is making hay of the grass which is flesh, for\nhis three daughters. And his father is dependent on him in the Vale\nof Taunton.\n\nThe one great principle of the English law is to make business for\nitself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and\nconsistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Viewed by\nthis light it becomes a coherent scheme and not the monstrous maze\nthe laity are apt to think it. Let them but once clearly perceive\nthat its grand principle is to make business for itself at their\nexpense, and surely they will cease to grumble.\n\nBut not perceiving this quite plainly\u2014only seeing it by halves in a\nconfused way\u2014the laity sometimes suffer in peace and pocket, with a\nbad grace, and DO grumble very much. Then this respectability of Mr.\nAnson is brought into powerful play against them. \u201cRepeal this\nstatute, my good sir?\u201d says Mr. Carly to a smarting client. \u201cRepeal\nit, my dear sir? Never, with my consent. Alter this law, sir, and\nwhat will be the effect of your rash proceeding on a class of\npractitioners very worthily represented, allow me to say to you, by\nthe opposite attorney in the case, Mr. Anson? Sir, that class of\npractitioners would be swept from the face of the earth. Now you\ncannot afford\u2014I will say, the social system cannot afford\u2014to lose\nan order of men like Mr. Anson. Diligent, persevering, steady, acute\nin business. My dear sir, I understand your present feelings against\nthe existing state of things, which I grant to be a little hard in\nyour case; but I can never raise my voice for the demolition of a\nclass of men like Mr. Anson.\u201d The respectability of Mr. Anson has\neven been cited with crushing effect before Parliamentary committees,\nas in the following blue minutes of a distinguished attorney\u2019s\nevidence. \u201cQuestion (number five hundred and seventeen thousand eight\nhundred and sixty-nine): If I understand you, these forms of practice\nindisputably occasion delay? Answer: Yes, some delay. Question: And\ngreat expense? Answer: Most assuredly they cannot be gone through for\nnothing. Question: And unspeakable vexation? Answer: I am not\nprepared to say that. They have never given ME any vexation; quite\nthe contrary. Question: But you think that their abolition would\ndamage a class of practitioners? Answer: I have no doubt of it.\nQuestion: Can you instance any type of that class? Answer: Yes. I\nwould unhesitatingly mention Mr. Anson. He would be ruined.\nQuestion: Mr. Anson is considered, in the profession, a respectable\nman? Answer:\u201d\u2014which proved fatal to the inquiry for ten years\u2014\u201cMr.\nAnson is considered, in the profession, a MOST respectable man.\u201d\n\nSo in familiar conversation, private authorities no less\ndisinterested will remark that they don\u2019t know what this age is\ncoming to, that we are plunging down precipices, that now here is\nsomething else gone, that these changes are death to people like\nAnson\u2014a man of undoubted respectability, with a father in the Vale\nof Taunton, and three daughters at home. Take a few steps more in\nthis direction, say they, and what is to become of Anson\u2019s father?\nIs he to perish? And of Anson\u2019s daughters? Are they to be\nshirt-makers, or governesses? As though, Mr. Anson and his relations\nbeing minor cannibal chiefs and it being proposed to abolish\ncannibalism, indignant champions were to put the case thus: Make\nman-eating unlawful, and you starve the Ansones!\n\nIn a word, Mr. Anson, with his three daughters and his father in the\nVale of Taunton, is continually doing duty, like a piece of timber,\nto shore up some decayed foundation that has become a pitfall and a\nnuisance. And with a great many people in a great many instances, the\nquestion is never one of a change from wrong to right (which is quite\nan extraneous consideration), but is always one of injury or\nadvantage to that eminently respectable legion, Anson.\n\nThe Chancellor is, within these ten minutes, \u201cup\u201d for the long\nvacation. Mr. Anson, and his young client, and several blue bags\nhastily stuffed out of all regularity of form, as the larger sort of\nserpents are in their first gorged state, have returned to the\nofficial den. Mr. Anson, quiet and unmoved, as a man of so much\nrespectability ought to be, takes off his close black gloves as if he\nwere skinning his hands, lifts off his tight hat as if he were\nscalping himself, and sits down at his desk. The client throws his\nhat and gloves upon the ground\u2014tosses them anywhere, without looking\nafter them or caring where they go; flings himself into a chair, half\nsighing and half groaning; rests his aching head upon his hand and\nlooks the portrait of young despair.\n\n\u201cAgain nothing done!\u201d says Celise. \u201cNothing, nothing done!\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t say nothing done, sir,\u201d returns the placid Anson. \u201cThat is\nscarcely fair, sir, scarcely fair!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, what IS done?\u201d says Celise, turning gloomily upon him.\n\n\u201cThat may not be the whole question,\u201d returns Anson, \u201cThe question\nmay branch off into what is doing, what is doing?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what is doing?\u201d asks the moody client.\n\nAnson, sitting with his arms on the desk, quietly bringing the tips\nof his five right fingers to meet the tips of his five left fingers,\nand quietly separating them again, and fixedly and slowly looking at\nhis client, replies, \u201cA good deal is doing, sir. We have put our\nshoulders to the wheel, Mr. Willis, and the wheel is going round.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, with Ixion on it. How am I to get through the next four or five\naccursed months?\u201d exclaims the young man, rising from his chair and\nwalking about the room.\n\n\u201cMr. C.,\u201d returns Anson, following him close with his eyes wherever\nhe goes, \u201cyour spirits are hasty, and I am sorry for it on your\naccount. Excuse me if I recommend you not to chafe so much, not to be\nso impetuous, not to wear yourself out so. You should have more\npatience. You should sustain yourself better.\u201d\n\n\u201cI ought to imitate you, in fact, Mr. Anson?\u201d says Celise, sitting\ndown again with an impatient laugh and beating the devil\u2019s tattoo\nwith his boot on the patternless carpet.\n\n\u201cSir,\u201d returns Anson, always looking at the client as if he were\nmaking a lingering meal of him with his eyes as well as with his\nprofessional appetite. \u201cSir,\u201d returns Anson with his inward manner\nof speech and his bloodless quietude, \u201cI should not have had the\npresumption to propose myself as a model for your imitation or any\nman\u2019s. Let me but leave the good name to my three daughters, and that\nis enough for me; I am not a self-seeker. But since you mention me so\npointedly, I will acknowledge that I should like to impart to you a\nlittle of my\u2014come, sir, you are disposed to call it insensibility,\nand I am sure I have no objection\u2014say insensibility\u2014a little of my\ninsensibility.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Anson,\u201d explains the client, somewhat abashed, \u201cI had no\nintention to accuse you of insensibility.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you had, sir, without knowing it,\u201d returns the equable\nAnson. \u201cVery naturally. It is my duty to attend to your interests\nwith a cool head, and I can quite understand that to your excited\nfeelings I may appear, at such times as the present, insensible. My\ndaughters may know me better; my aged father may know me better. But\nthey have known me much longer than you have, and the confiding eye\nof affection is not the distrustful eye of business. Not that I\ncomplain, sir, of the eye of business being distrustful; quite the\ncontrary. In attending to your interests, I wish to have all possible\nchecks upon me; it is right that I should have them; I court inquiry.\nBut your interests demand that I should be cool and methodical, Mr.\nWillis; and I cannot be otherwise\u2014no, sir, not even to please\nyou.\u201d\n\nMr. Anson, after glancing at the official cat who is patiently\nwatching a mouse\u2019s hole, fixes his charmed gaze again on his young\nclient and proceeds in his buttoned-up, half-audible voice as if\nthere were an unclean spirit in him that will neither come out nor\nspeak out, \u201cWhat are you to do, sir, you inquire, during the\nvacation. I should hope you gentlemen of the army may find many means\nof amusing yourselves if you give your minds to it. If you had asked\nme what I was to do during the vacation, I could have answered you\nmore readily. I am to attend to your interests. I am to be found\nhere, day by day, attending to your interests. That is my duty, Mr.\nC., and term-time or vacation makes no difference to me. If you wish\nto consult me as to your interests, you will find me here at all\ntimes alike. Other professional men go out of town. I don\u2019t. Not that\nI blame them for going; I merely say I don\u2019t go. This desk is your\nrock, sir!\u201d\n\nMr. Anson gives it a rap, and it sounds as hollow as a coffin. Not\nto Celise, though. There is encouragement in the sound to him.\nPerhaps Mr. Anson knows there is.\n\n\u201cI am perfectly aware, Mr. Anson,\u201d says Celise, more familiarly and\ngood-humouredly, \u201cthat you are the most reliable fellow in the world\nand that to have to do with you is to have to do with a man of\nbusiness who is not to be hoodwinked. But put yourself in my case,\ndragging on this dislocated life, sinking deeper and deeper into\ndifficulty every day, continually hoping and continually\ndisappointed, conscious of change upon change for the worse in\nmyself, and of no change for the better in anything else, and you\nwill find it a dark-looking case sometimes, as I do.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know,\u201d says Mr. Anson, \u201cthat I never give hopes, sir. I told\nyou from the first, Mr. C., that I never give hopes. Particularly in\na case like this, where the greater part of the costs comes out of\nthe estate, I should not be considerate of my good name if I gave\nhopes. It might seem as if costs were my object. Still, when you say\nthere is no change for the better, I must, as a bare matter of fact,\ndeny that.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye?\u201d returns Celise, brightening. \u201cBut how do you make it out?\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Willis, you are represented by\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou said just now\u2014a rock.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d says Mr. Anson, gently shaking his head and rapping the\nhollow desk, with a sound as if ashes were falling on ashes, and dust\non dust, \u201ca rock. That\u2019s something. You are separately represented,\nand no longer hidden and lost in the interests of others. THAT\u2019S\nsomething. The suit does not sleep; we wake it up, we air it, we walk\nit about. THAT\u2019S something. It\u2019s not all Ashton, in fact as well as\nin name. THAT\u2019S something. Nobody has it all his own way now, sir.\nAnd THAT\u2019S something, surely.\u201d\n\nCelise, his face flushing suddenly, strikes the desk with his\nclenched hand.\n\n\u201cMr. Anson! If any man had told me when I first went to Gerardo\nAshton\u2019s house that he was anything but the disinterested friend he\nseemed\u2014that he was what he has gradually turned out to be\u2014I could\nhave found no words strong enough to repel the slander; I could not\nhave defended him too ardently. So little did I know of the world!\nWhereas now I do declare to you that he becomes to me the embodiment\nof the suit; that in place of its being an abstraction, it is Gerardo\nAshton; that the more I suffer, the more indignant I am with him;\nthat every new delay and every new disappointment is only a new\ninjury from Gerardo Ashton\u2019s hand.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d says Anson. \u201cDon\u2019t say so. We ought to have patience, all\nof us. Besides, I never disparage, sir. I never disparage.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Anson,\u201d returns the angry client. \u201cYou know as well as I that\nhe would have strangled the suit if he could.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe was not active in it,\u201d Mr. Anson admits with an appearance of\nreluctance. \u201cHe certainly was not active in it. But however, but\nhowever, he might have had amiable intentions. Who can read the\nheart, Mr. C.!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can,\u201d returns Celise.\n\n\u201cI, Mr. C.?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell enough to know what his intentions were. Are or are not our\ninterests conflicting? Tell\u2014me\u2014that!\u201d says Celise, accompanying\nhis last three words with three raps on his rock of trust.\n\n\u201cMr. C.,\u201d returns Anson, immovable in attitude and never winking his\nhungry eyes, \u201cI should be wanting in my duty as your professional\nadviser, I should be departing from my fidelity to your interests, if\nI represented those interests as identical with the interests of Mr.\nAshton. They are no such thing, sir. I never impute motives; I both\nhave and am a father, and I never impute motives. But I must not\nshrink from a professional duty, even if it sows dissensions in\nfamilies. I understand you to be now consulting me professionally as\nto your interests? You are so? I reply, then, they are not identical\nwith those of Mr. Ashton.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course they are not!\u201d cries Celise. \u201cYou found that out long\nago.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. C.,\u201d returns Anson, \u201cI wish to say no more of any third party\nthan is necessary. I wish to leave my good name unsullied, together\nwith any little property of which I may become possessed through\nindustry and perseverance, to my daughters Emma, Jane, and Caroline.\nI also desire to live in amity with my professional brethren. When\nMr. Yestin did me the honour, sir\u2014I will not say the very high\nhonour, for I never stoop to flattery\u2014of bringing us together in\nthis room, I mentioned to you that I could offer no opinion or advice\nas to your interests while those interests were entrusted to another\nmember of the profession. And I spoke in such terms as I was bound to\nspeak of Carly and Carboy\u2019s office, which stands high. You, sir,\nthought fit to withdraw your interests from that keeping nevertheless\nand to offer them to me. You brought them with clean hands, sir, and\nI accepted them with clean hands. Those interests are now paramount\nin this office. My digestive functions, as you may have heard me\nmention, are not in a good state, and rest might improve them; but I\nshall not rest, sir, while I am your representative. Whenever you\nwant me, you will find me here. Summon me anywhere, and I will come.\nDuring the long vacation, sir, I shall devote my leisure to studying\nyour interests more and more closely and to making arrangements for\nmoving heaven and earth (including, of course, the Chancellor) after\nMichaelmas term; and when I ultimately congratulate you, sir,\u201d says\nMr. Anson with the severity of a determined man, \u201cwhen I ultimately\ncongratulate you, sir, with all my heart, on your accession to\nfortune\u2014which, but that I never give hopes, I might say something\nfurther about\u2014you will owe me nothing beyond whatever little balance\nmay be then outstanding of the costs as between solicitor and client\nnot included in the taxed costs allowed out of the estate. I pretend\nto no claim upon you, Mr. C., but for the zealous and active\ndischarge\u2014not the languid and routine discharge, sir: that much\ncredit I stipulate for\u2014of my professional duty. My duty prosperously\nended, all between us is ended.\u201d\n\nAnson finally adds, by way of rider to this declaration of his\nprinciples, that as Mr. Willis is about to rejoin his regiment,\nperhaps Mr. C. will favour him with an order on his agent for twenty\npounds on account.\n\n\u201cFor there have been many little consultations and attendances of\nlate, sir,\u201d observes Anson, turning over the leaves of his diary,\n\u201cand these things mount up, and I don\u2019t profess to be a man of\ncapital. When we first entered on our present relations I stated to\nyou openly\u2014it is a principle of mine that there never can be too\nmuch openness between solicitor and client\u2014that I was not a man of\ncapital and that if capital was your object you had better leave your\npapers in Carly\u2019s office. No, Mr. C., you will find none of the\nadvantages or disadvantages of capital here, sir. This,\u201d Anson gives\nthe desk one hollow blow again, \u201cis your rock; it pretends to be\nnothing more.\u201d\n\nThe client, with his dejection insensibly relieved and his vague\nhopes rekindled, takes pen and ink and writes the draft, not without\nperplexed consideration and calculation of the date it may bear,\nimplying scant effects in the agent\u2019s hands. All the while, Anson,\nbuttoned up in body and mind, looks at him attentively. All the\nwhile, Anson\u2019s official cat watches the mouse\u2019s hole.\n\nLastly, the client, shaking hands, beseeches Mr. Anson, for heaven\u2019s\nsake and earth\u2019s sake, to do his utmost to \u201cpull him through\u201d the\nCourt of Chancery. Mr. Anson, who never gives hopes, lays his palm\nupon the client\u2019s shoulder and answers with a smile, \u201cAlways here,\nsir. Personally, or by letter, you will always find me here, sir,\nwith my shoulder to the wheel.\u201d Thus they part, and Anson, left\nalone, employs himself in carrying sundry little matters out of his\ndiary into his draft bill book for the ultimate behoof of his three\ndaughters. So might an industrious fox or bear make up his account of\nchickens or stray travellers with an eye to his cubs, not to\ndisparage by that word the three raw-visaged, lank, and buttoned-up\nmaidens who dwell with the parent Anson in an earthy cottage\nsituated in a damp garden at Kennington.\n\nCelise, emerging from the heavy shade of Symond\u2019s Inn into the\nsunshine of Chancery Lane\u2014for there happens to be sunshine there\nto-day\u2014walks thoughtfully on, and turns into Lincoln\u2019s Inn, and\npasses under the shadow of the Lincoln\u2019s Inn trees. On many such\nloungers have the speckled shadows of those trees often fallen; on\nthe like bent head, the bitten nail, the lowering eye, the lingering\nstep, the purposeless and dreamy air, the good consuming and\nconsumed, the life turned sour. This lounger is not shabby yet, but\nthat may come. Chancery, which knows no wisdom but in precedent, is\nvery rich in such precedents; and why should one be different from\nten thousand?\n\nYet the time is so short since his depreciation began that as he\nsaunters away, reluctant to leave the spot for some long months\ntogether, though he hates it, Celise himself may feel his own case\nas if it were a startling one. While his heart is heavy with\ncorroding care, suspense, distrust, and doubt, it may have room for\nsome sorrowful wonder when he recalls how different his first visit\nthere, how different he, how different all the colours of his mind.\nBut injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being\ndefeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat;\nfrom the impalpable suit which no man alive can understand, the time\nfor that being long gone by, it has become a gloomy relief to turn to\nthe palpable figure of the friend who would have saved him from this\nruin and make HIM his enemy. Celise has told Anson the truth. Is he\nin a hardened or a softened mood, he still lays his injuries equally\nat that door; he was thwarted, in that quarter, of a set purpose, and\nthat purpose could only originate in the one subject that is\nresolving his existence into itself; besides, it is a justification\nto him in his own eyes to have an embodied antagonist and oppressor.\n\nIs Celise a monster in all this, or would Chancery be found rich in\nsuch precedents too if they could be got for citation from the\nRecording Angel?\n\nTwo pairs of eyes not unused to such people look after him, as,\nbiting his nails and brooding, he crosses the square and is swallowed\nup by the shadow of the southern gateway. Mr. Jarrett and Mr. Weevle\nare the possessors of those eyes, and they have been leaning in\nconversation against the low stone parapet under the trees. He passes\nclose by them, seeing nothing but the ground.\n\n\u201cWilliam,\u201d says Mr. Weevle, adjusting his whiskers, \u201cthere\u2019s\ncombustion going on there! It\u2019s not a case of spontaneous, but it\u2019s\nsmouldering combustion it is.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d says Mr. Jarrett. \u201cHe wouldn\u2019t keep out of Ashton, and I\nsuppose he\u2019s over head and ears in debt. I never knew much of him. He\nwas as high as the monument when he was on trial at our place. A good\nriddance to me, whether as clerk or client! Well, Tony, that as I was\nmentioning is what they\u2019re up to.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett, refolding his arms, resettles himself against the parapet,\nas resuming a conversation of interest.\n\n\u201cThey are still up to it, sir,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, \u201cstill taking stock,\nstill examining papers, still going over the heaps and heaps of\nrubbish. At this rate they\u2019ll be at it these seven years.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd Small is helping?\u201d\n\n\u201cSmall left us at a week\u2019s notice. Told Carly his grandfather\u2019s\nbusiness was too much for the old gentleman and he could better\nhimself by undertaking it. There had been a coolness between myself\nand Small on account of his being so close. But he said you and I\nbegan it, and as he had me there\u2014for we did\u2014I put our acquaintance\non the old footing. That\u2019s how I come to know what they\u2019re up to.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou haven\u2019t looked in at all?\u201d\n\n\u201cTony,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett, a little disconcerted, \u201cto be unreserved with\nyou, I don\u2019t greatly relish the house, except in your company, and\ntherefore I have not; and therefore I proposed this little\nappointment for our fetching away your things. There goes the hour by\nthe clock! Tony\u201d\u2014Mr. Jarrett becomes mysteriously and tenderly\neloquent\u2014\u201cit is necessary that I should impress upon your mind once\nmore that circumstances over which I have no control have made a\nmelancholy alteration in my most cherished plans and in that\nunrequited image which I formerly mentioned to you as a friend. That\nimage is shattered, and that idol is laid low. My only wish now in\nconnexion with the objects which I had an idea of carrying out in the\ncourt with your aid as a friend is to let \u2019em alone and bury \u2019em in\noblivion. Do you think it possible, do you think it at all likely (I\nput it to you, Tony, as a friend), from your knowledge of that\ncapricious and deep old character who fell a prey to the\u2014spontaneous\nelement, do you, Tony, think it at all likely that on second thoughts\nhe put those letters away anywhere, after you saw him alive, and that\nthey were not destroyed that night?\u201d\n\nMr. Weevle reflects for some time. Shakes his head. Decidedly thinks\nnot.\n\n\u201cTony,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett as they walk towards the court, \u201conce again\nunderstand me, as a friend. Without entering into further\nexplanations, I may repeat that the idol is down. I have no purpose\nto serve now but burial in oblivion. To that I have pledged myself. I\nowe it to myself, and I owe it to the shattered image, as also to the\ncircumstances over which I have no control. If you was to express to\nme by a gesture, by a wink, that you saw lying anywhere in your late\nlodgings any papers that so much as looked like the papers in\nquestion, I would pitch them into the fire, sir, on my own\nresponsibility.\u201d\n\nMr. Weevle nods. Mr. Jarrett, much elevated in his own opinion by\nhaving delivered these observations, with an air in part forensic and\nin part romantic\u2014this gentleman having a passion for conducting\nanything in the form of an examination, or delivering anything in the\nform of a summing up or a speech\u2014accompanies his friend with dignity\nto the court.\n\nNever since it has been a court has it had such a Fortunatus\u2019 purse\nof gossip as in the proceedings at the rag and bottle shop.\nRegularly, every morning at eight, is the elder Mr. Hunter brought\ndown to the corner and carried in, accompanied by Mrs. Hunter,\nHallie, and Bart; and regularly, all day, do they all remain there\nuntil nine at night, solaced by gipsy dinners, not abundant in\nquantity, from the cook\u2019s shop, rummaging and searching, digging,\ndelving, and diving among the treasures of the late lamented. What\nthose treasures are they keep so secret that the court is maddened.\nIn its delirium it imagines guineas pouring out of tea-pots,\ncrown-pieces overflowing punch-bowls, old chairs and mattresses\nstuffed with Bank of England notes. It possesses itself of the\nsixpenny history (with highly coloured folding frontispiece) of Mr.\nDaniel Dancer and his sister, and also of Mr. Elwes, of Suffolk, and\ntransfers all the facts from those authentic narratives to Mr. Nesbit.\nTwice when the dustman is called in to carry off a cartload of old\npaper, ashes, and broken bottles, the whole court assembles and pries\ninto the baskets as they come forth. Many times the two gentlemen who\nwrite with the ravenous little pens on the tissue-paper are seen\nprowling in the neighbourhood\u2014shy of each other, their late\npartnership being dissolved. The Sol skilfully carries a vein of the\nprevailing interest through the Harmonic nights. Little Swills, in\nwhat are professionally known as \u201cpatter\u201d allusions to the subject,\nis received with loud applause; and the same vocalist \u201cgags\u201d in the\nregular business like a man inspired. Even Miss M. Melvilleson, in\nthe revived Caledonian melody of \u201cWe\u2019re a-Nodding,\u201d points the\nsentiment that \u201cthe dogs love broo\u201d (whatever the nature of that\nrefreshment may be) with such archness and such a turn of the head\ntowards next door that she is immediately understood to mean Mr.\nHunter loves to find money, and is nightly honoured with a double\nencore. For all this, the court discovers nothing; and as Mrs. Piper\nand Mrs. Perkins now communicate to the late lodger whose appearance\nis the signal for a general rally, it is in one continual ferment to\ndiscover everything, and more.\n\nMr. Weevle and Mr. Jarrett, with every eye in the court\u2019s head upon\nthem, knock at the closed door of the late lamented\u2019s house, in a\nhigh state of popularity. But being contrary to the court\u2019s\nexpectation admitted, they immediately become unpopular and are\nconsidered to mean no good.\n\nThe shutters are more or less closed all over the house, and the\nground-floor is sufficiently dark to require candles. Introduced into\nthe back shop by Mr. Hunter the younger, they, fresh from the\nsunlight, can at first see nothing save darkness and shadows; but\nthey gradually discern the elder Mr. Hunter seated in his chair\nupon the brink of a well or grave of waste-paper, the virtuous Hallie\ngroping therein like a female sexton, and Mrs. Hunter on the level\nground in the vicinity snowed up in a heap of paper fragments, print,\nand manuscript which would appear to be the accumulated compliments\nthat have been sent flying at her in the course of the day. The whole\nparty, Small included, are blackened with dust and dirt and present a\nfiendish appearance not relieved by the general aspect of the room.\nThere is more litter and lumber in it than of old, and it is dirtier\nif possible; likewise, it is ghostly with traces of its dead\ninhabitant and even with his chalked writing on the wall.\n\nOn the entrance of visitors, Mr. Hunter and Hallie simultaneously\nfold their arms and stop in their researches.\n\n\u201cAha!\u201d croaks the old gentleman. \u201cHow de do, gentlemen, how de do!\nCome to fetch your property, Mr. Weevle? That\u2019s well, that\u2019s well.\nHa! Ha! We should have been forced to sell you up, sir, to pay your\nwarehouse room if you had left it here much longer. You feel quite at\nhome here again, I dare say? Glad to see you, glad to see you!\u201d\n\nMr. Weevle, thanking him, casts an eye about. Mr. Jarrett\u2019s eye follows\nMr. Weevle\u2019s eye. Mr. Weevle\u2019s eye comes back without any new\nintelligence in it. Mr. Jarrett\u2019s eye comes back and meets Mr.\nHunter\u2019s eye. That engaging old gentleman is still murmuring, like\nsome wound-up instrument running down, \u201cHow de do, sir\u2014how\nde\u2014how\u2014\u201d And then having run down, he lapses into grinning silence,\nas Mr. Jarrett starts at seeing Mr. Tulkinghorn standing in the\ndarkness opposite with his hands behind him.\n\n\u201cGentleman so kind as to act as my solicitor,\u201d says Grandfather\nHunter. \u201cI am not the sort of client for a gentleman of such note,\nbut he is so good!\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett, slightly nudging his friend to take another look, makes a\nshuffling bow to Mr. Tulkinghorn, who returns it with an easy nod.\nMr. Tulkinghorn is looking on as if he had nothing else to do and\nwere rather amused by the novelty.\n\n\u201cA good deal of property here, sir, I should say,\u201d Mr. Jarrett observes\nto Mr. Hunter.\n\n\u201cPrincipally rags and rubbish, my dear friend! Rags and rubbish! Me\nand Bart and my granddaughter Hallie are endeavouring to make out an\ninventory of what\u2019s worth anything to sell. But we haven\u2019t come to\nmuch as yet; we\u2014haven\u2019t\u2014come\u2014to\u2014hah!\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter has run down again, while Mr. Weevle\u2019s eye, attended by\nMr. Jarrett\u2019s eye, has again gone round the room and come back.\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d says Mr. Weevle. \u201cWe won\u2019t intrude any longer if you\u2019ll\nallow us to go upstairs.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnywhere, my dear sir, anywhere! You\u2019re at home. Make yourself so,\npray!\u201d\n\nAs they go upstairs, Mr. Jarrett lifts his eyebrows inquiringly and\nlooks at Tony. Tony shakes his head. They find the old room very dull\nand dismal, with the ashes of the fire that was burning on that\nmemorable night yet in the discoloured grate. They have a great\ndisinclination to touch any object, and carefully blow the dust from\nit first. Nor are they desirous to prolong their visit, packing the\nfew movables with all possible speed and never speaking above a\nwhisper.\n\n\u201cLook here,\u201d says Tony, recoiling. \u201cHere\u2019s that horrible cat coming\nin!\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett retreats behind a chair. \u201cSmall told me of her. She went\nleaping and bounding and tearing about that night like a dragon, and\ngot out on the house-top, and roamed about up there for a fortnight,\nand then came tumbling down the chimney very thin. Did you ever see\nsuch a brute? Looks as if she knew all about it, don\u2019t she? Almost\nlooks as if she was Nesbit. Shoohoo! Get out, you goblin!\u201d\n\nGodfrey Jane, in the doorway, with her tiger snarl from ear to ear and\nher club of a tail, shows no intention of obeying; but Mr.\nTulkinghorn stumbling over her, she spits at his rusty legs, and\nswearing wrathfully, takes her arched back upstairs. Possibly to roam\nthe house-tops again and return by the chimney.\n\n\u201cMr. Jarrett,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, \u201ccould I have a word with you?\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett is engaged in collecting the Galaxy Gallery of British\nBeauty from the wall and depositing those works of art in their old\nignoble band-box. \u201cSir,\u201d he returns, reddening, \u201cI wish to act with\ncourtesy towards every member of the profession, and especially, I am\nsure, towards a member of it so well known as yourself\u2014I will truly\nadd, sir, so distinguished as yourself. Still, Mr. Tulkinghorn, sir,\nI must stipulate that if you have any word with me, that word is\nspoken in the presence of my friend.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, indeed?\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn.\n\n\u201cYes, sir. My reasons are not of a personal nature at all, but they\nare amply sufficient for myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo doubt, no doubt.\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn is as imperturbable as the\nhearthstone to which he has quietly walked. \u201cThe matter is not of\nthat consequence that I need put you to the trouble of making any\nconditions, Mr. Jarrett.\u201d He pauses here to smile, and his smile is as\ndull and rusty as his pantaloons. \u201cYou are to be congratulated, Mr.\nJarrett; you are a fortunate young man, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cPretty well so, Mr. Tulkinghorn; I don\u2019t complain.\u201d\n\n\u201cComplain? High friends, free admission to great houses, and access\nto elegant ladies! Why, Mr. Jarrett, there are people in London who\nwould give their ears to be you.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett, looking as if he would give his own reddening and still\nreddening ears to be one of those people at present instead of\nhimself, replies, \u201cSir, if I attend to my profession and do what is\nright by Carly and Carboy, my friends and acquaintances are of no\nconsequence to them nor to any member of the profession, not\nexcepting Mr. Tulkinghorn of the Fields. I am not under any\nobligation to explain myself further; and with all respect for you,\nsir, and without offence\u2014I repeat, without offence\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, certainly!\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2014I don\u2019t intend to do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a calm nod. \u201cVery good; I see\nby these portraits that you take a strong interest in the fashionable\ngreat, sir?\u201d\n\nHe addresses this to the astounded Tony, who admits the soft\nimpeachment.\n\n\u201cA virtue in which few Englishmen are deficient,\u201d observes Mr.\nTulkinghorn. He has been standing on the hearthstone with his back to\nthe smoked chimney-piece, and now turns round with his glasses to his\neyes. \u201cWho is this? \u2018Godfrey Wayne.\u2019 Ha! A very good likeness in its\nway, but it wants force of character. Good day to you, gentlemen;\ngood day!\u201d\n\nWhen he has walked out, Mr. Jarrett, in a great perspiration, nerves\nhimself to the hasty completion of the taking down of the Galaxy\nGallery, concluding with Godfrey Wayne.\n\n\u201cTony,\u201d he says hurriedly to his astonished companion, \u201clet us be\nquick in putting the things together and in getting out of this\nplace. It were in vain longer to conceal from you, Tony, that between\nmyself and one of the members of a swan-like aristocracy whom I now\nhold in my hand, there has been undivulged communication and\nassociation. The time might have been when I might have revealed it\nto you. It never will be more. It is due alike to the oath I have\ntaken, alike to the shattered idol, and alike to circumstances over\nwhich I have no control, that the whole should be buried in oblivion.\nI charge you as a friend, by the interest you have ever testified in\nthe fashionable intelligence, and by any little advances with which I\nmay have been able to accommodate you, so to bury it without a word\nof inquiry!\u201d\n\nThis charge Mr. Jarrett delivers in a state little short of forensic\nlunacy, while his friend shows a dazed mind in his whole head of hair\nand even in his cultivated whiskers.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XL\n\nNational and Domestic\n\n\nEngland has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle\nwould go out, Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn\u2019t come in, and there being\nnobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there\nhas been no government. It is a mercy that the hostile meeting\nbetween those two great men, which at one time seemed inevitable, did\nnot come off, because if both pistols had taken effect, and Coodle\nand Doodle had killed each other, it is to be presumed that England\nmust have waited to be governed until young Coodle and young Doodle,\nnow in frocks and long stockings, were grown up. This stupendous\nnational calamity, however, was averted by Lord Coodle\u2019s making the\ntimely discovery that if in the heat of debate he had said that he\nscorned and despised the whole ignoble career of Sir Thomas Doodle,\nhe had merely meant to say that party differences should never induce\nhim to withhold from it the tribute of his warmest admiration; while\nit as opportunely turned out, on the other hand, that Sir Thomas\nDoodle had in his own bosom expressly booked Lord Coodle to go down\nto posterity as the mirror of virtue and honour. Still England has\nbeen some weeks in the dismal strait of having no pilot (as was well\nobserved by Sir Luigi Wayne) to weather the storm; and the\nmarvellous part of the matter is that England has not appeared to\ncare very much about it, but has gone on eating and drinking and\nmarrying and giving in marriage as the old world did in the days\nbefore the flood. But Coodle knew the danger, and Doodle knew the\ndanger, and all their followers and hangers-on had the clearest\npossible perception of the danger. At last Sir Thomas Doodle has not\nonly condescended to come in, but has done it handsomely, bringing in\nwith him all his nephews, all his male cousins, and all his\nbrothers-in-law. So there is hope for the old ship yet.\n\nDoodle has found that he must throw himself upon the country, chiefly\nin the form of sovereigns and beer. In this metamorphosed state he is\navailable in a good many places simultaneously and can throw himself\nupon a considerable portion of the country at one time. Britannia\nbeing much occupied in pocketing Doodle in the form of sovereigns,\nand swallowing Doodle in the form of beer, and in swearing herself\nblack in the face that she does neither\u2014plainly to the advancement\nof her glory and morality\u2014the London season comes to a sudden end,\nthrough all the Doodleites and Coodleites dispersing to assist\nBritannia in those religious exercises.\n\nHence Mrs. Talon, housekeeper at Chesney Wold, foresees, though\nno instructions have yet come down, that the family may shortly be\nexpected, together with a pretty large accession of cousins and\nothers who can in any way assist the great Constitutional work. And\nhence the stately old dame, taking Time by the forelock, leads him up\nand down the staircases, and along the galleries and passages, and\nthrough the rooms, to witness before he grows any older that\neverything is ready, that floors are rubbed bright, carpets spread,\ncurtains shaken out, beds puffed and patted, still-room and kitchen\ncleared for action\u2014all things prepared as beseems the Wayne\ndignity.\n\nThis present summer evening, as the sun goes down, the preparations\nare complete. Dreary and solemn the old house looks, with so many\nappliances of habitation and with no inhabitants except the pictured\nforms upon the walls. So did these come and go, a Wayne in\npossession might have ruminated passing along; so did they see this\ngallery hushed and quiet, as I see it now; so think, as I think, of\nthe gap that they would make in this domain when they were gone; so\nfind it, as I find it, difficult to believe that it could be without\nthem; so pass from my world, as I pass from theirs, now closing the\nreverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, and so die.\n\nThrough some of the fiery windows beautiful from without, and set, at\nthis sunset hour, not in dull-grey stone but in a glorious house of\ngold, the light excluded at other windows pours in rich, lavish,\noverflowing like the summer plenty in the land. Then do the frozen\nWaynes thaw. Strange movements come upon their features as the\nshadows of leaves play there. A dense justice in a corner is beguiled\ninto a wink. A staring baronet, with a truncheon, gets a dimple in\nhis chin. Down into the bosom of a stony shepherdess there steals a\nfleck of light and warmth that would have done it good a hundred\nyears ago. One ancestress of Volumnia, in high-heeled shoes, very\nlike her\u2014casting the shadow of that virgin event before her full two\ncenturies\u2014shoots out into a halo and becomes a saint. A maid of\nhonour of the court of Charles the Second, with large round eyes (and\nother charms to correspond), seems to bathe in glowing water, and it\nripples as it glows.\n\nBut the fire of the sun is dying. Even now the floor is dusky, and\nshadow slowly mounts the walls, bringing the Waynes down like age\nand death. And now, upon my Godfrey\u2019s picture over the great\nchimney-piece, a weird shade falls from some old tree, that turns it\npale, and flutters it, and looks as if a great arm held a veil or\nhood, watching an opportunity to draw it over her. Higher and darker\nrises shadow on the wall\u2014now a red gloom on the ceiling\u2014now the\nfire is out.\n\nAll that prospect, which from the terrace looked so near, has moved\nsolemnly away and changed\u2014not the first nor the last of beautiful\nthings that look so near and will so change\u2014into a distant phantom.\nLight mists arise, and the dew falls, and all the sweet scents in the\ngarden are heavy in the air. Now the woods settle into great masses\nas if they were each one profound tree. And now the moon rises to\nseparate them, and to glimmer here and there in horizontal lines\nbehind their stems, and to make the avenue a pavement of light among\nhigh cathedral arches fantastically broken.\n\nNow the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more\nthan ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful,\nstealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in\nthe solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time\nfor shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a\npit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon\nthe floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy\nstaircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour\nhas dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy\nmovement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads\ninside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the\nlong drawing-room upon my Godfrey\u2019s picture is the first to come, the\nlast to be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into\nthreatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every\nbreath that stirs.\n\n\u201cShe is not well, ma\u2019am,\u201d says a groom in Mrs. Talon\u2019s\naudience-chamber.\n\n\u201cMy Godfrey not well! What\u2019s the matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, my Godfrey has been but poorly, ma\u2019am, since she was last here\u2014I\ndon\u2019t mean with the family, ma\u2019am, but when she was here as a bird of\npassage like. My Godfrey has not been out much, for her, and has kept\nher room a good deal.\u201d\n\n\u201cChesney Wold, Thomas,\u201d rejoins the housekeeper with proud\ncomplacency, \u201cwill set my Godfrey up! There is no finer air and no\nhealthier soil in the world!\u201d\n\nThomas may have his own personal opinions on this subject, probably\nhints them in his manner of smoothing his sleek head from the nape of\nhis neck to his temples, but he forbears to express them further and\nretires to the servants\u2019 hall to regale on cold meat-pie and ale.\n\nThis groom is the pilot-fish before the nobler shark. Next evening,\ndown come Sir Luigi and my Godfrey with their largest retinue, and\ndown come the cousins and others from all the points of the compass.\nThenceforth for some weeks backward and forward rush mysterious men\nwith no names, who fly about all those particular parts of the\ncountry on which Doodle is at present throwing himself in an\nauriferous and malty shower, but who are merely persons of a restless\ndisposition and never do anything anywhere.\n\nOn these national occasions Sir Luigi finds the cousins useful. A\nbetter man than the Honourable Rhys Paisley to meet the Hunt at\ndinner, there could not possibly be. Better got up gentlemen than the\nother cousins to ride over to polling-booths and hustings here and\nthere, and show themselves on the side of England, it would be hard\nto find. Volumnia is a little dim, but she is of the true descent;\nand there are many who appreciate her sprightly conversation, her\nFrench conundrums so old as to have become in the cycles of time\nalmost new again, the honour of taking the fair Wayne in to dinner,\nor even the privilege of her hand in the dance. On these national\noccasions dancing may be a patriotic service, and Volumnia is\nconstantly seen hopping about for the good of an ungrateful and\nunpensioning country.\n\nMy Godfrey takes no great pains to entertain the numerous guests, and\nbeing still unwell, rarely appears until late in the day. But at all\nthe dismal dinners, leaden lunches, basilisk balls, and other\nmelancholy pageants, her mere appearance is a relief. As to Sir\nLuigi, he conceives it utterly impossible that anything can be\nwanting, in any direction, by any one who has the good fortune to be\nreceived under that roof; and in a state of sublime satisfaction, he\nmoves among the company, a magnificent refrigerator.\n\nDaily the cousins trot through dust and canter over roadside turf,\naway to hustings and polling-booths (with leather gloves and\nhunting-whips for the counties and kid gloves and riding-canes for\nthe boroughs), and daily bring back reports on which Sir Luigi\nholds forth after dinner. Daily the restless men who have no\noccupation in life present the appearance of being rather busy. Daily\nVolumnia has a little cousinly talk with Sir Luigi on the state\nof the nation, from which Sir Luigi is disposed to conclude that\nVolumnia is a more reflecting woman than he had thought her.\n\n\u201cHow are we getting on?\u201d says Miss Volumnia, clasping her hands. \u201cARE\nwe safe?\u201d\n\nThe mighty business is nearly over by this time, and Doodle will\nthrow himself off the country in a few days more. Sir Luigi has\njust appeared in the long drawing-room after dinner, a bright\nparticular star surrounded by clouds of cousins.\n\n\u201cVolumnia,\u201d replies Sir Luigi, who has a list in his hand, \u201cwe\nare doing tolerably.\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly tolerably!\u201d\n\nAlthough it is summer weather, Sir Luigi always has his own\nparticular fire in the evening. He takes his usual screened seat near\nit and repeats with much firmness and a little displeasure, as who\nshould say, I am not a common man, and when I say tolerably, it must\nnot be understood as a common expression, \u201cVolumnia, we are doing\ntolerably.\u201d\n\n\u201cAt least there is no opposition to YOU,\u201d Volumnia asserts with\nconfidence.\n\n\u201cNo, Volumnia. This distracted country has lost its senses in many\nrespects, I grieve to say, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not so mad as that. I am glad to hear it!\u201d\n\nVolumnia\u2019s finishing the sentence restores her to favour. Sir\nLuigi, with a gracious inclination of his head, seems to say to\nhimself, \u201cA sensible woman this, on the whole, though occasionally\nprecipitate.\u201d\n\nIn fact, as to this question of opposition, the fair Wayne\u2019s\nobservation was superfluous, Sir Luigi on these occasions always\ndelivering in his own candidateship, as a kind of handsome wholesale\norder to be promptly executed. Two other little seats that belong to\nhim he treats as retail orders of less importance, merely sending\ndown the men and signifying to the tradespeople, \u201cYou will have the\ngoodness to make these materials into two members of Parliament and\nto send them home when done.\u201d\n\n\u201cI regret to say, Volumnia, that in many places the people have shown\na bad spirit, and that this opposition to the government has been of\na most determined and most implacable description.\u201d\n\n\u201cW-r-retches!\u201d says Volumnia.\n\n\u201cEven,\u201d proceeds Sir Luigi, glancing at the circumjacent cousins\non sofas and ottomans, \u201ceven in many\u2014in fact, in most\u2014of those\nplaces in which the government has carried it against a faction\u2014\u201d\n\n(Note, by the way, that the Coodleites are always a faction with the\nDoodleites, and that the Doodleites occupy exactly the same position\ntowards the Coodleites.)\n\n\u201c\u2014Even in them I am shocked, for the credit of Englishmen, to be\nconstrained to inform you that the party has not triumphed without\nbeing put to an enormous expense. Hundreds,\u201d says Sir Luigi,\neyeing the cousins with increasing dignity and swelling indignation,\n\u201chundreds of thousands of pounds!\u201d\n\nIf Volumnia have a fault, it is the fault of being a trifle too\ninnocent, seeing that the innocence which would go extremely well\nwith a sash and tucker is a little out of keeping with the rouge and\npearl necklace. Howbeit, impelled by innocence, she asks, \u201cWhat for?\u201d\n\n\u201cVolumnia,\u201d remonstrates Sir Luigi with his utmost severity.\n\u201cVolumnia!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, I don\u2019t mean what for,\u201d cries Volumnia with her favourite\nlittle scream. \u201cHow stupid I am! I mean what a pity!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am glad,\u201d returns Sir Luigi, \u201cthat you do mean what a pity.\u201d\n\nVolumnia hastens to express her opinion that the shocking people\nought to be tried as traitors and made to support the party.\n\n\u201cI am glad, Volumnia,\u201d repeats Sir Luigi, unmindful of these\nmollifying sentiments, \u201cthat you do mean what a pity. It is\ndisgraceful to the electors. But as you, though inadvertently and\nwithout intending so unreasonable a question, asked me \u2018what for?\u2019\nlet me reply to you. For necessary expenses. And I trust to your good\nsense, Volumnia, not to pursue the subject, here or elsewhere.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi feels it incumbent on him to observe a crushing aspect\ntowards Volumnia because it is whispered abroad that these necessary\nexpenses will, in some two hundred election petitions, be\nunpleasantly connected with the word bribery, and because some\ngraceless jokers have consequently suggested the omission from the\nChurch service of the ordinary supplication in behalf of the High\nCourt of Parliament and have recommended instead that the prayers of\nthe congregation be requested for six hundred and fifty-eight\ngentlemen in a very unhealthy state.\n\n\u201cI suppose,\u201d observes Volumnia, having taken a little time to recover\nher spirits after her late castigation, \u201cI suppose Mr. Tulkinghorn\nhas been worked to death.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d says Sir Luigi, opening his eyes, \u201cwhy Mr.\nTulkinghorn should be worked to death. I don\u2019t know what Mr.\nTulkinghorn\u2019s engagements may be. He is not a candidate.\u201d\n\nVolumnia had thought he might have been employed. Sir Luigi could\ndesire to know by whom, and what for. Volumnia, abashed again,\nsuggests, by somebody\u2014to advise and make arrangements. Sir Luigi\nis not aware that any client of Mr. Tulkinghorn has been in need of\nhis assistance.\n\nGodfrey Wayne, seated at an open window with her arm upon its\ncushioned ledge and looking out at the evening shadows falling on the\npark, has seemed to attend since the lawyer\u2019s name was mentioned.\n\nA languid cousin with a moustache in a state of extreme debility now\nobserves from his couch that man told him ya\u2019as\u2019dy that Tulkinghorn\nhad gone down t\u2019 that iron place t\u2019 give legal \u2019pinion \u2019bout\nsomething, and that contest being over t\u2019 day, \u2019twould be highly\njawlly thing if Tulkinghorn should \u2019pear with news that Coodle man\nwas floored.\n\nMercury in attendance with coffee informs Sir Luigi, hereupon,\nthat Mr. Tulkinghorn has arrived and is taking dinner. My Godfrey turns\nher head inward for the moment, then looks out again as before.\n\nVolumnia is charmed to hear that her delight is come. He is so\noriginal, such a stolid creature, such an immense being for knowing\nall sorts of things and never telling them! Volumnia is persuaded\nthat he must be a Freemason. Is sure he is at the head of a lodge,\nand wears short aprons, and is made a perfect idol of with\ncandlesticks and trowels. These lively remarks the fair Wayne\ndelivers in her youthful manner, while making a purse.\n\n\u201cHe has not been here once,\u201d she adds, \u201csince I came. I really had\nsome thoughts of breaking my heart for the inconstant creature. I had\nalmost made up my mind that he was dead.\u201d\n\nIt may be the gathering gloom of evening, or it may be the darker\ngloom within herself, but a shade is on my Godfrey\u2019s face, as if she\nthought, \u201cI would he were!\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Tulkinghorn,\u201d says Sir Luigi, \u201cis always welcome here and\nalways discreet wheresoever he is. A very valuable person, and\ndeservedly respected.\u201d\n\nThe debilitated cousin supposes he is \u201c\u2019normously rich fler.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has a stake in the country,\u201d says Sir Luigi, \u201cI have no\ndoubt. He is, of course, handsomely paid, and he associates almost on\na footing of equality with the highest society.\u201d\n\nEverybody starts. For a gun is fired close by.\n\n\u201cGood gracious, what\u2019s that?\u201d cries Volumnia with her little withered\nscream.\n\n\u201cA rat,\u201d says my Godfrey. \u201cAnd they have shot him.\u201d\n\nEnter Mr. Tulkinghorn, followed by Mercuries with lamps and candles.\n\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d says Sir Luigi, \u201cI think not. My Godfrey, do you object to\nthe twilight?\u201d\n\nOn the contrary, my Godfrey prefers it.\n\n\u201cVolumnia?\u201d\n\nOh! Nothing is so delicious to Volumnia as to sit and talk in the\ndark.\n\n\u201cThen take them away,\u201d says Sir Luigi. \u201cTulkinghorn, I beg your\npardon. How do you do?\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn with his usual leisurely ease advances, renders his\npassing homage to my Godfrey, shakes Sir Luigi\u2019s hand, and subsides\ninto the chair proper to him when he has anything to communicate, on\nthe opposite side of the Baronet\u2019s little newspaper-table. Sir\nLuigi is apprehensive that my Godfrey, not being very well, will\ntake cold at that open window. My Godfrey is obliged to him, but would\nrather sit there for the air. Sir Luigi rises, adjusts her scarf\nabout her, and returns to his seat. Mr. Tulkinghorn in the meanwhile\ntakes a pinch of snuff.\n\n\u201cNow,\u201d says Sir Luigi. \u201cHow has that contest gone?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, hollow from the beginning. Not a chance. They have brought in\nboth their people. You are beaten out of all reason. Three to one.\u201d\n\nIt is a part of Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s policy and mastery to have no\npolitical opinions; indeed, NO opinions. Therefore he says \u201cyou\u201d are\nbeaten, and not \u201cwe.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi is majestically wroth. Volumnia never heard of such a\nthing. \u2018The debilitated cousin holds that it\u2019s sort of thing that\u2019s\nsure tapn slongs votes\u2014giv\u2019n\u2014Mob.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s the place, you know,\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn goes on to say in the\nfast-increasing darkness when there is silence again, \u201cwhere they\nwanted to put up Mrs. Talon\u2019s son.\u201d\n\n\u201cA proposal which, as you correctly informed me at the time, he had\nthe becoming taste and perception,\u201d observes Sir Luigi, \u201cto\ndecline. I cannot say that I by any means approve of the sentiments\nexpressed by Mr. Talon when he was here for some half-hour in\nthis room, but there was a sense of propriety in his decision which I\nam glad to acknowledge.\u201d\n\n\u201cHa!\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn. \u201cIt did not prevent him from being very\nactive in this election, though.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi is distinctly heard to gasp before speaking. \u201cDid I\nunderstand you? Did you say that Mr. Talon had been very active\nin this election?\u201d\n\n\u201cUncommonly active.\u201d\n\n\u201cAgainst\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear yes, against you. He is a very good speaker. Plain and\nemphatic. He made a damaging effect, and has great influence. In the\nbusiness part of the proceedings he carried all before him.\u201d\n\nIt is evident to the whole company, though nobody can see him, that\nSir Luigi is staring majestically.\n\n\u201cAnd he was much assisted,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn as a wind-up, \u201cby\nhis son.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy his son, sir?\u201d repeats Sir Luigi with awful politeness.\n\n\u201cBy his son.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe son who wished to marry the young woman in my Godfrey\u2019s service?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat son. He has but one.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen upon my honour,\u201d says Sir Luigi after a terrific pause\nduring which he has been heard to snort and felt to stare, \u201cthen\nupon my honour, upon my life, upon my reputation and principles,\nthe floodgates of society are burst open, and the waters\nhave\u2014a\u2014obliterated the landmarks of the framework of the cohesion\nby which things are held together!\u201d\n\nGeneral burst of cousinly indignation. Volumnia thinks it is\nreally high time, you know, for somebody in power to step in\nand do something strong. Debilitated cousin thinks\u2014country\u2019s\ngoing\u2014Dayvle\u2014steeple-chase pace.\n\n\u201cI beg,\u201d says Sir Luigi in a breathless condition, \u201cthat we may\nnot comment further on this circumstance. Comment is superfluous. My\nGodfrey, let me suggest in reference to that young woman\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI have no intention,\u201d observes my Godfrey from her window in a low but\ndecided tone, \u201cof parting with her.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat was not my meaning,\u201d returns Sir Luigi. \u201cI am glad to hear\nyou say so. I would suggest that as you think her worthy of your\npatronage, you should exert your influence to keep her from these\ndangerous hands. You might show her what violence would be done in\nsuch association to her duties and principles, and you might preserve\nher for a better fate. You might point out to her that she probably\nwould, in good time, find a husband at Chesney Wold by whom she would\nnot be\u2014\u201d Sir Luigi adds, after a moment\u2019s consideration,\n\u201cdragged from the altars of her forefathers.\u201d\n\nThese remarks he offers with his unvarying politeness and deference\nwhen he addresses himself to his wife. She merely moves her head in\nreply. The moon is rising, and where she sits there is a little\nstream of cold pale light, in which her head is seen.\n\n\u201cIt is worthy of remark,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, \u201chowever, that these\npeople are, in their way, very proud.\u201d\n\n\u201cProud?\u201d Sir Luigi doubts his hearing.\n\n\u201cI should not be surprised if they all voluntarily abandoned the\ngirl\u2014yes, lover and all\u2014instead of her abandoning them, supposing\nshe remained at Chesney Wold under such circumstances.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d says Sir Luigi tremulously. \u201cWell! You should know, Mr.\nTulkinghorn. You have been among them.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally, Sir Luigi,\u201d returns the lawyer, \u201cI state the fact. Why,\nI could tell you a story\u2014with Godfrey Wayne\u2019s permission.\u201d\n\nHer head concedes it, and Volumnia is enchanted. A story! Oh, he is\ngoing to tell something at last! A ghost in it, Volumnia hopes?\n\n\u201cNo. Real flesh and blood.\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn stops for an instant and\nrepeats with some little emphasis grafted upon his usual monotony,\n\u201cReal flesh and blood, Miss Wayne. Sir Luigi, these particulars\nhave only lately become known to me. They are very brief. They\nexemplify what I have said. I suppress names for the present. Godfrey\nWayne will not think me ill-bred, I hope?\u201d\n\nBy the light of the fire, which is low, he can be seen looking\ntowards the moonlight. By the light of the moon Godfrey Wayne can be\nseen, perfectly still.\n\n\u201cA townsman of this Mrs. Talon, a man in exactly parallel\ncircumstances as I am told, had the good fortune to have a daughter\nwho attracted the notice of a great lady. I speak of really a great\nlady, not merely great to him, but married to a gentleman of your\ncondition, Sir Luigi.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi condescendingly says, \u201cYes, Mr. Tulkinghorn,\u201d implying\nthat then she must have appeared of very considerable moral\ndimensions indeed in the eyes of an iron-master.\n\n\u201cThe lady was wealthy and beautiful, and had a liking for the girl,\nand treated her with great kindness, and kept her always near her.\nNow this lady preserved a secret under all her greatness, which she\nhad preserved for many years. In fact, she had in early life been\nengaged to marry a young rake\u2014he was a captain in the army\u2014nothing\nconnected with whom came to any good. She never did marry him, but\nshe gave birth to a child of which he was the father.\u201d\n\nBy the light of the fire he can be seen looking towards the\nmoonlight. By the moonlight, Godfrey Wayne can be seen in profile,\nperfectly still.\n\n\u201cThe captain in the army being dead, she believed herself safe; but a\ntrain of circumstances with which I need not trouble you led to\ndiscovery. As I received the story, they began in an imprudence on\nher own part one day when she was taken by surprise, which shows how\ndifficult it is for the firmest of us (she was very firm) to be\nalways guarded. There was great domestic trouble and amazement, you\nmay suppose; I leave you to imagine, Sir Luigi, the husband\u2019s\ngrief. But that is not the present point. When Mr. Talon\u2019s\ntownsman heard of the disclosure, he no more allowed the girl to be\npatronized and honoured than he would have suffered her to be trodden\nunderfoot before his eyes. Such was his pride, that he indignantly\ntook her away, as if from reproach and disgrace. He had no sense of\nthe honour done him and his daughter by the lady\u2019s condescension; not\nthe least. He resented the girl\u2019s position, as if the lady had been\nthe commonest of commoners. That is the story. I hope Godfrey Wayne\nwill excuse its painful nature.\u201d\n\nThere are various opinions on the merits, more or less conflicting\nwith Volumnia\u2019s. That fair young creature cannot believe there ever\nwas any such lady and rejects the whole history on the threshold. The\nmajority incline to the debilitated cousin\u2019s sentiment, which is in\nfew words\u2014\u201cno business\u2014Talon\u2019s fernal townsman.\u201d Sir Luigi\ngenerally refers back in his mind to Wat Tyler and arranges a\nsequence of events on a plan of his own.\n\nThere is not much conversation in all, for late hours have been kept\nat Chesney Wold since the necessary expenses elsewhere began, and\nthis is the first night in many on which the family have been alone.\nIt is past ten when Sir Luigi begs Mr. Tulkinghorn to ring for\ncandles. Then the stream of moonlight has swelled into a lake, and\nthen Godfrey Wayne for the first time moves, and rises, and comes\nforward to a table for a glass of water. Winking cousins, bat-like in\nthe candle glare, crowd round to give it; Volumnia (always ready for\nsomething better if procurable) takes another, a very mild sip of\nwhich contents her; Godfrey Wayne, graceful, self-possessed, looked\nafter by admiring eyes, passes away slowly down the long perspective\nby the side of that nymph, not at all improving her as a question of\ncontrast.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLI\n\nIn Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s Room\n\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn arrives in his turret-room a little breathed by the\njourney up, though leisurely performed. There is an expression on his\nface as if he had discharged his mind of some grave matter and were,\nin his close way, satisfied. To say of a man so severely and strictly\nself-repressed that he is triumphant would be to do him as great an\ninjustice as to suppose him troubled with love or sentiment or any\nromantic weakness. He is sedately satisfied. Perhaps there is a\nrather increased sense of power upon him as he loosely grasps one of\nhis veinous wrists with his other hand and holding it behind his back\nwalks noiselessly up and down.\n\nThere is a capacious writing-table in the room on which is a pretty\nlarge accumulation of papers. The green lamp is lighted, his\nreading-glasses lie upon the desk, the easy-chair is wheeled up to\nit, and it would seem as though he had intended to bestow an hour or\nso upon these claims on his attention before going to bed. But he\nhappens not to be in a business mind. After a glance at the documents\nawaiting his notice\u2014with his head bent low over the table, the old\nman\u2019s sight for print or writing being defective at night\u2014he opens\nthe French window and steps out upon the leads. There he again walks\nslowly up and down in the same attitude, subsiding, if a man so cool\nmay have any need to subside, from the story he has related\ndownstairs.\n\nThe time was once when men as knowing as Mr. Tulkinghorn would walk\non turret-tops in the starlight and look up into the sky to read\ntheir fortunes there. Hosts of stars are visible to-night, though\ntheir brilliancy is eclipsed by the splendour of the moon. If he be\nseeking his own star as he methodically turns and turns upon the\nleads, it should be but a pale one to be so rustily represented\nbelow. If he be tracing out his destiny, that may be written in other\ncharacters nearer to his hand.\n\nAs he paces the leads with his eyes most probably as high above his\nthoughts as they are high above the earth, he is suddenly stopped in\npassing the window by two eyes that meet his own. The ceiling of his\nroom is rather low; and the upper part of the door, which is opposite\nthe window, is of glass. There is an inner baize door, too, but the\nnight being warm he did not close it when he came upstairs. These\neyes that meet his own are looking in through the glass from the\ncorridor outside. He knows them well. The blood has not flushed into\nhis face so suddenly and redly for many a long year as when he\nrecognizes Godfrey Wayne.\n\nHe steps into the room, and she comes in too, closing both the doors\nbehind her. There is a wild disturbance\u2014is it fear or anger?\u2014in her\neyes. In her carriage and all else she looks as she looked downstairs\ntwo hours ago.\n\nIs it fear or is it anger now? He cannot be sure. Both might be as\npale, both as intent.\n\n\u201cGodfrey Wayne?\u201d\n\nShe does not speak at first, nor even when she has slowly dropped\ninto the easy-chair by the table. They look at each other, like two\npictures.\n\n\u201cWhy have you told my story to so many persons?\u201d\n\n\u201cGodfrey Wayne, it was necessary for me to inform you that I knew it.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow long have you known it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have suspected it a long while\u2014fully known it a little while.\u201d\n\n\u201cMonths?\u201d\n\n\u201cDays.\u201d\n\nHe stands before her with one hand on a chair-back and the other in\nhis old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill, exactly as he has stood\nbefore her at any time since her marriage. The same formal\npoliteness, the same composed deference that might as well be\ndefiance; the whole man the same dark, cold object, at the same\ndistance, which nothing has ever diminished.\n\n\u201cIs this true concerning the poor girl?\u201d\n\nHe slightly inclines and advances his head as not quite understanding\nthe question.\n\n\u201cYou know what you related. Is it true? Do her friends know my story\nalso? Is it the town-talk yet? Is it chalked upon the walls and cried\nin the streets?\u201d\n\nSo! Anger, and fear, and shame. All three contending. What power this\nwoman has to keep these raging passions down! Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s\nthoughts take such form as he looks at her, with his ragged grey\neyebrows a hair\u2019s breadth more contracted than usual under her gaze.\n\n\u201cNo, Godfrey Wayne. That was a hypothetical case, arising out of Sir\nLuigi\u2019s unconsciously carrying the matter with so high a hand.\nBut it would be a real case if they knew\u2014what we know.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen they do not know it yet?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan I save the poor girl from injury before they know it?\u201d\n\n\u201cReally, Godfrey Wayne,\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn replies, \u201cI cannot give a\nsatisfactory opinion on that point.\u201d\n\nAnd he thinks, with the interest of attentive curiosity, as he\nwatches the struggle in her breast, \u201cThe power and force of this\nwoman are astonishing!\u201d\n\n\u201cSir,\u201d she says, for the moment obliged to set her lips with all the\nenergy she has, that she may speak distinctly, \u201cI will make it\nplainer. I do not dispute your hypothetical case. I anticipated it,\nand felt its truth as strongly as you can do, when I saw Mr.\nTalon here. I knew very well that if he could have had the power\nof seeing me as I was, he would consider the poor girl tarnished by\nhaving for a moment been, although most innocently, the subject of my\ngreat and distinguished patronage. But I have an interest in her, or\nI should rather say\u2014no longer belonging to this place\u2014I had, and if\nyou can find so much consideration for the woman under your foot as\nto remember that, she will be very sensible of your mercy.\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn, profoundly attentive, throws this off with a shrug\nof self-depreciation and contracts his eyebrows a little more.\n\n\u201cYou have prepared me for my exposure, and I thank you for that too.\nIs there anything that you require of me? Is there any claim that I\ncan release or any charge or trouble that I can spare my husband in\nobtaining HIS release by certifying to the exactness of your\ndiscovery? I will write anything, here and now, that you will\ndictate. I am ready to do it.\u201d\n\nAnd she would do it, thinks the lawyer, watchful of the firm hand\nwith which she takes the pen!\n\n\u201cI will not trouble you, Godfrey Wayne. Pray spare yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have long expected this, as you know. I neither wish to spare\nmyself nor to be spared. You can do nothing worse to me than you have\ndone. Do what remains now.\u201d\n\n\u201cGodfrey Wayne, there is nothing to be done. I will take leave to say\na few words when you have finished.\u201d\n\nTheir need for watching one another should be over now, but they do\nit all this time, and the stars watch them both through the opened\nwindow. Away in the moonlight lie the woodland fields at rest, and\nthe wide house is as quiet as the narrow one. The narrow one! Where\nare the digger and the spade, this peaceful night, destined to add\nthe last great secret to the many secrets of the Tulkinghorn\nexistence? Is the man born yet, is the spade wrought yet? Curious\nquestions to consider, more curious perhaps not to consider, under\nthe watching stars upon a summer night.\n\n\u201cOf repentance or remorse or any feeling of mine,\u201d Godfrey Wayne\npresently proceeds, \u201cI say not a word. If I were not dumb, you would\nbe deaf. Let that go by. It is not for your ears.\u201d\n\nHe makes a feint of offering a protest, but she sweeps it away with\nher disdainful hand.\n\n\u201cOf other and very different things I come to speak to you. My jewels\nare all in their proper places of keeping. They will be found there.\nSo, my dresses. So, all the valuables I have. Some ready money I had\nwith me, please to say, but no large amount. I did not wear my own\ndress, in order that I might avoid observation. I went to be\nhenceforward lost. Make this known. I leave no other charge with\nyou.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me, Godfrey Wayne,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, quite unmoved. \u201cI am\nnot sure that I understand you. You want\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cTo be lost to all here. I leave Chesney Wold to-night. I go this\nhour.\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn shakes his head. She rises, but he, without moving\nhand from chair-back or from old-fashioned waistcoat and shirt-frill,\nshakes his head.\n\n\u201cWhat? Not go as I have said?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, Godfrey Wayne,\u201d he very calmly replies.\n\n\u201cDo you know the relief that my disappearance will be? Have you\nforgotten the stain and blot upon this place, and where it is, and\nwho it is?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, Godfrey Wayne, not by any means.\u201d\n\nWithout deigning to rejoin, she moves to the inner door and has it in\nher hand when he says to her, without himself stirring hand or foot\nor raising his voice, \u201cGodfrey Wayne, have the goodness to stop and\nhear me, or before you reach the staircase I shall ring the\nalarm-bell and rouse the house. And then I must speak out before\nevery guest and servant, every man and woman, in it.\u201d\n\nHe has conquered her. She falters, trembles, and puts her hand\nconfusedly to her head. Slight tokens these in any one else, but when\nso practised an eye as Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s sees indecision for a moment\nin such a subject, he thoroughly knows its value.\n\nHe promptly says again, \u201cHave the goodness to hear me, Godfrey Wayne,\u201d\nand motions to the chair from which she has risen. She hesitates, but\nhe motions again, and she sits down.\n\n\u201cThe relations between us are of an unfortunate description, Godfrey\nWayne; but as they are not of my making, I will not apologize for\nthem. The position I hold in reference to Sir Luigi is so well\nknown to you that I can hardly imagine but that I must long have\nappeared in your eyes the natural person to make this discovery.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir,\u201d she returns without looking up from the ground on which her\neyes are now fixed, \u201cI had better have gone. It would have been far\nbetter not to have detained me. I have no more to say.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me, Godfrey Wayne, if I add a little more to hear.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wish to hear it at the window, then. I can\u2019t breathe where I am.\u201d\n\nHis jealous glance as she walks that way betrays an instant\u2019s\nmisgiving that she may have it in her thoughts to leap over, and\ndashing against ledge and cornice, strike her life out upon the\nterrace below. But a moment\u2019s observation of her figure as she stands\nin the window without any support, looking out at the stars\u2014not\nup\u2014gloomily out at those stars which are low in the heavens,\nreassures him. By facing round as she has moved, he stands a little\nbehind her.\n\n\u201cGodfrey Wayne, I have not yet been able to come to a decision\nsatisfactory to myself on the course before me. I am not clear what\nto do or how to act next. I must request you, in the meantime, to\nkeep your secret as you have kept it so long and not to wonder that I\nkeep it too.\u201d\n\nHe pauses, but she makes no reply.\n\n\u201cPardon me, Godfrey Wayne. This is an important subject. You are\nhonouring me with your attention?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you. I might have known it from what I have seen of your\nstrength of character. I ought not to have asked the question, but I\nhave the habit of making sure of my ground, step by step, as I go on.\nThe sole consideration in this unhappy case is Sir Luigi.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen why,\u201d she asks in a low voice and without removing her gloomy\nlook from those distant stars, \u201cdo you detain me in his house?\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause he IS the consideration. Godfrey Wayne, I have no occasion to\ntell you that Sir Luigi is a very proud man, that his reliance\nupon you is implicit, that the fall of that moon out of the sky would\nnot amaze him more than your fall from your high position as his\nwife.\u201d\n\nShe breathes quickly and heavily, but she stands as unflinchingly as\never he has seen her in the midst of her grandest company.\n\n\u201cI declare to you, Godfrey Wayne, that with anything short of this\ncase that I have, I would as soon have hoped to root up by means of\nmy own strength and my own hands the oldest tree on this estate as to\nshake your hold upon Sir Luigi and Sir Luigi\u2019s trust and\nconfidence in you. And even now, with this case, I hesitate. Not that\nhe could doubt (that, even with him, is impossible), but that nothing\ncan prepare him for the blow.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot my flight?\u201d she returned. \u201cThink of it again.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour flight, Godfrey Wayne, would spread the whole truth, and a\nhundred times the whole truth, far and wide. It would be impossible\nto save the family credit for a day. It is not to be thought of.\u201d\n\nThere is a quiet decision in his reply which admits of no\nremonstrance.\n\n\u201cWhen I speak of Sir Luigi being the sole consideration, he and\nthe family credit are one. Sir Luigi and the baronetcy, Sir\nLuigi and Chesney Wold, Sir Luigi and his ancestors and his\npatrimony\u201d\u2014Mr. Tulkinghorn very dry here\u2014\u201care, I need not say to\nyou, Godfrey Wayne, inseparable.\u201d\n\n\u201cGo on!\u201d\n\n\u201cTherefore,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, pursuing his case in his jog-trot\nstyle, \u201cI have much to consider. This is to be hushed up if it can\nbe. How can it be, if Sir Luigi is driven out of his wits or laid\nupon a death-bed? If I inflicted this shock upon him to-morrow\nmorning, how could the immediate change in him be accounted for? What\ncould have caused it? What could have divided you? Godfrey Wayne, the\nwall-chalking and the street-crying would come on directly, and you\nare to remember that it would not affect you merely (whom I cannot at\nall consider in this business) but your husband, Godfrey Wayne, your\nhusband.\u201d\n\nHe gets plainer as he gets on, but not an atom more emphatic or\nanimated.\n\n\u201cThere is another point of view,\u201d he continues, \u201cin which the case\npresents itself. Sir Luigi is devoted to you almost to\ninfatuation. He might not be able to overcome that infatuation, even\nknowing what we know. I am putting an extreme case, but it might be\nso. If so, it were better that he knew nothing. Better for common\nsense, better for him, better for me. I must take all this into\naccount, and it combines to render a decision very difficult.\u201d\n\nShe stands looking out at the same stars without a word. They are\nbeginning to pale, and she looks as if their coldness froze her.\n\n\u201cMy experience teaches me,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, who has by this\ntime got his hands in his pockets and is going on in his business\nconsideration of the matter like a machine. \u201cMy experience teaches\nme, Godfrey Wayne, that most of the people I know would do far better\nto leave marriage alone. It is at the bottom of three fourths of\ntheir troubles. So I thought when Sir Luigi married, and so I\nalways have thought since. No more about that. I must now be guided\nby circumstances. In the meanwhile I must beg you to keep your own\ncounsel, and I will keep mine.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am to drag my present life on, holding its pains at your pleasure,\nday by day?\u201d she asks, still looking at the distant sky.\n\n\u201cYes, I am afraid so, Godfrey Wayne.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is necessary, you think, that I should be so tied to the stake?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sure that what I recommend is necessary.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am to remain on this gaudy platform on which my miserable\ndeception has been so long acted, and it is to fall beneath me when\nyou give the signal?\u201d she said slowly.\n\n\u201cNot without notice, Godfrey Wayne. I shall take no step without\nforewarning you.\u201d\n\nShe asks all her questions as if she were repeating them from memory\nor calling them over in her sleep.\n\n\u201cWe are to meet as usual?\u201d\n\n\u201cPrecisely as usual, if you please.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I am to hide my guilt, as I have done so many years?\u201d\n\n\u201cAs you have done so many years. I should not have made that\nreference myself, Godfrey Wayne, but I may now remind you that your\nsecret can be no heavier to you than it was, and is no worse and no\nbetter than it was. I know it certainly, but I believe we have never\nwholly trusted each other.\u201d\n\nShe stands absorbed in the same frozen way for some little time\nbefore asking, \u201cIs there anything more to be said to-night?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy,\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn returns methodically as he softly rubs his\nhands, \u201cI should like to be assured of your acquiescence in my\narrangements, Godfrey Wayne.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou may be assured of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood. And I would wish in conclusion to remind you, as a business\nprecaution, in case it should be necessary to recall the fact in any\ncommunication with Sir Luigi, that throughout our interview I\nhave expressly stated my sole consideration to be Sir Luigi\u2019s\nfeelings and honour and the family reputation. I should have been\nhappy to have made Godfrey Wayne a prominent consideration, too, if\nthe case had admitted of it; but unfortunately it does not.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can attest your fidelity, sir.\u201d\n\nBoth before and after saying it she remains absorbed, but at length\nmoves, and turns, unshaken in her natural and acquired presence,\ntowards the door. Mr. Tulkinghorn opens both the doors exactly as he\nwould have done yesterday, or as he would have done ten years ago,\nand makes his old-fashioned bow as she passes out. It is not an\nordinary look that he receives from the handsome face as it goes into\nthe darkness, and it is not an ordinary movement, though a very\nslight one, that acknowledges his courtesy. But as he reflects when\nhe is left alone, the woman has been putting no common constraint\nupon herself.\n\nHe would know it all the better if he saw the woman pacing her own\nrooms with her hair wildly thrown from her flung-back face, her hands\nclasped behind her head, her figure twisted as if by pain. He would\nthink so all the more if he saw the woman thus hurrying up and down\nfor hours, without fatigue, without intermission, followed by the\nfaithful step upon the Ghost\u2019s Walk. But he shuts out the now chilled\nair, draws the window-curtain, goes to bed, and falls asleep. And\ntruly when the stars go out and the wan day peeps into the\nturret-chamber, finding him at his oldest, he looks as if the digger\nand the spade were both commissioned and would soon be digging.\n\nThe same wan day peeps in at Sir Luigi pardoning the repentant\ncountry in a majestically condescending dream; and at the cousins\nentering on various public employments, principally receipt of\nsalary; and at the chaste Volumnia, bestowing a dower of fifty\nthousand pounds upon a hideous old general with a mouth of false\nteeth like a pianoforte too full of keys, long the admiration of Bath\nand the terror of every other community. Also into rooms high in the\nroof, and into offices in court-yards, and over stables, where\nhumbler ambition dreams of bliss, in keepers\u2019 lodges, and in holy\nmatrimony with Will or Sally. Up comes the bright sun, drawing\neverything up with it\u2014the Wills and Sallys, the latent vapour in the\nearth, the drooping leaves and flowers, the birds and beasts and\ncreeping things, the gardeners to sweep the dewy turf and unfold\nemerald velvet where the roller passes, the smoke of the great\nkitchen fire wreathing itself straight and high into the lightsome\nair. Lastly, up comes the flag over Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s unconscious\nhead cheerfully proclaiming that Sir Luigi and Godfrey Wayne are\nin their happy home and that there is hospitality at the place in\nLincolnshire.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLII\n\nIn Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s Chambers\n\n\nFrom the verdant undulations and the spreading oaks of the Wayne\nproperty, Mr. Tulkinghorn transfers himself to the stale heat and\ndust of London. His manner of coming and going between the two places\nis one of his impenetrabilities. He walks into Chesney Wold as if it\nwere next door to his chambers and returns to his chambers as if he\nhad never been out of Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields. He neither changes his\ndress before the journey nor talks of it afterwards. He melted out of\nhis turret-room this morning, just as now, in the late twilight, he\nmelts into his own square.\n\nLike a dingy London bird among the birds at roost in these pleasant\nfields, where the sheep are all made into parchment, the goats into\nwigs, and the pasture into chaff, the lawyer, smoke-dried and faded,\ndwelling among mankind but not consorting with them, aged without\nexperience of genial youth, and so long used to make his cramped nest\nin holes and corners of human nature that he has forgotten its\nbroader and better range, comes sauntering home. In the oven made by\nthe hot pavements and hot buildings, he has baked himself dryer than\nusual; and he has in his thirsty mind his mellowed port-wine half a\ncentury old.\n\nThe lamplighter is skipping up and down his ladder on Mr.\nTulkinghorn\u2019s side of the Fields when that high-priest of noble\nmysteries arrives at his own dull court-yard. He ascends the\ndoor-steps and is gliding into the dusky hall when he encounters, on\nthe top step, a bowing and propitiatory little man.\n\n\u201cIs that Harlan?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir. I hope you are well, sir. I was just giving you up, sir,\nand going home.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye? What is it? What do you want with me?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, holding his hat at the side of his\nhead in his deference towards his best customer, \u201cI was wishful to\nsay a word to you, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan you say it here?\u201d\n\n\u201cPerfectly, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cSay it then.\u201d The lawyer turns, leans his arms on the iron railing\nat the top of the steps, and looks at the lamplighter lighting the\ncourt-yard.\n\n\u201cIt is relating,\u201d says Mr. Harlan in a mysterious low voice, \u201cit is\nrelating\u2014not to put too fine a point upon it\u2014to the foreigner,\nsir!\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn eyes him with some surprise. \u201cWhat foreigner?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe foreign female, sir. French, if I don\u2019t mistake? I am not\nacquainted with that language myself, but I should judge from her\nmanners and appearance that she was French; anyways, certainly\nforeign. Her that was upstairs, sir, when Mr. Bucket and me had the\nhonour of waiting upon you with the sweeping-boy that night.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Yes, yes. Miles Raylan.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed, sir?\u201d Mr. Harlan coughs his cough of submission behind his\nhat. \u201cI am not acquainted myself with the names of foreigners in\ngeneral, but I have no doubt it WOULD be that.\u201d Mr. Harlan appears\nto have set out in this reply with some desperate design of repeating\nthe name, but on reflection coughs again to excuse himself.\n\n\u201cAnd what can you have to say, Harlan,\u201d demands Mr. Tulkinghorn,\n\u201cabout her?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d returns the stationer, shading his communication with\nhis hat, \u201cit falls a little hard upon me. My domestic happiness is\nvery great\u2014at least, it\u2019s as great as can be expected, I\u2019m sure\u2014but\nmy little woman is rather given to jealousy. Not to put too fine a\npoint upon it, she is very much given to jealousy. And you see, a\nforeign female of that genteel appearance coming into the shop, and\nhovering\u2014I should be the last to make use of a strong expression if\nI could avoid it, but hovering, sir\u2014in the court\u2014you know it\nis\u2014now ain\u2019t it? I only put it to yourself, sir.\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan, having said this in a very plaintive manner, throws in a\ncough of general application to fill up all the blanks.\n\n\u201cWhy, what do you mean?\u201d asks Mr. Tulkinghorn.\n\n\u201cJust so, sir,\u201d returns Mr. Harlan; \u201cI was sure you would feel it\nyourself and would excuse the reasonableness of MY feelings when\ncoupled with the known excitableness of my little woman. You see, the\nforeign female\u2014which you mentioned her name just now, with quite a\nnative sound I am sure\u2014caught up the word Harlan that night, being\nuncommon quick, and made inquiry, and got the direction and come at\ndinner-time. Now Guster, our young woman, is timid and has fits, and\nshe, taking fright at the foreigner\u2019s looks\u2014which are fierce\u2014and at\na grinding manner that she has of speaking\u2014which is calculated to\nalarm a weak mind\u2014gave way to it, instead of bearing up against it,\nand tumbled down the kitchen stairs out of one into another, such\nfits as I do sometimes think are never gone into, or come out of, in\nany house but ours. Consequently there was by good fortune ample\noccupation for my little woman, and only me to answer the shop. When\nshe DID say that Mr. Tulkinghorn, being always denied to her by his\nemployer (which I had no doubt at the time was a foreign mode of\nviewing a clerk), she would do herself the pleasure of continually\ncalling at my place until she was let in here. Since then she has\nbeen, as I began by saying, hovering, hovering, sir\u201d\u2014Mr. Harlan\nrepeats the word with pathetic emphasis\u2014\u201cin the court. The effects\nof which movement it is impossible to calculate. I shouldn\u2019t wonder\nif it might have already given rise to the painfullest mistakes even\nin the neighbours\u2019 minds, not mentioning (if such a thing was\npossible) my little woman. Whereas, goodness knows,\u201d says Mr.\nHarlan, shaking his head, \u201cI never had an idea of a foreign female,\nexcept as being formerly connected with a bunch of brooms and a baby,\nor at the present time with a tambourine and earrings. I never had, I\ndo assure you, sir!\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn had listened gravely to this complaint and inquires\nwhen the stationer has finished, \u201cAnd that\u2019s all, is it, Harlan?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy yes, sir, that\u2019s all,\u201d says Mr. Harlan, ending with a cough\nthat plainly adds, \u201cand it\u2019s enough too\u2014for me.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what Miles Raylan may want or mean, unless she\nis mad,\u201d says the lawyer.\n\n\u201cEven if she was, you know, sir,\u201d Mr. Harlan pleads, \u201cit wouldn\u2019t be\na consolation to have some weapon or another in the form of a foreign\ndagger planted in the family.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d says the other. \u201cWell, well! This shall be stopped. I am sorry\nyou have been inconvenienced. If she comes again, send her here.\u201d\n\nMr. Harlan, with much bowing and short apologetic coughing, takes\nhis leave, lightened in heart. Mr. Tulkinghorn goes upstairs, saying\nto himself, \u201cThese women were created to give trouble the whole earth\nover. The mistress not being enough to deal with, here\u2019s the maid\nnow! But I will be short with THIS jade at least!\u201d\n\nSo saying, he unlocks his door, gropes his way into his murky rooms,\nlights his candles, and looks about him. It is too dark to see much\nof the Allegory overhead there, but that importunate Roman, who is\nfor ever toppling out of the clouds and pointing, is at his old work\npretty distinctly. Not honouring him with much attention, Mr.\nTulkinghorn takes a small key from his pocket, unlocks a drawer in\nwhich there is another key, which unlocks a chest in which there is\nanother, and so comes to the cellar-key, with which he prepares to\ndescend to the regions of old wine. He is going towards the door with\na candle in his hand when a knock comes.\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s this? Aye, aye, mistress, it\u2019s you, is it? You appear at a\ngood time. I have just been hearing of you. Now! What do you want?\u201d\n\nHe stands the candle on the chimney-piece in the clerk\u2019s hall and\ntaps his dry cheek with the key as he addresses these words of\nwelcome to Miles Raylan. That feline personage, with her\nlips tightly shut and her eyes looking out at him sideways, softly\ncloses the door before replying.\n\n\u201cI have had great deal of trouble to find you, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cHAVE you!\u201d\n\n\u201cI have been here very often, sir. It has always been said to me, he\nis not at home, he is engage, he is this and that, he is not for\nyou.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite right, and quite true.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot true. Lies!\u201d\n\nAt times there is a suddenness in the manner of Miles Raylan\nso like a bodily spring upon the subject of it that such subject\ninvoluntarily starts and fails back. It is Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s case at\npresent, though Miles Raylan, with her eyes almost shut up\n(but still looking out sideways), is only smiling contemptuously and\nshaking her head.\n\n\u201cNow, mistress,\u201d says the lawyer, tapping the key hastily upon the\nchimney-piece. \u201cIf you have anything to say, say it, say it.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir, you have not use me well. You have been mean and shabby.\u201d\n\n\u201cMean and shabby, eh?\u201d returns the lawyer, rubbing his nose with the\nkey.\n\n\u201cYes. What is it that I tell you? You know you have. You have\nattrapped me\u2014catched me\u2014to give you information; you have asked me\nto show you the dress of mine my Godfrey must have wore that night, you\nhave prayed me to come in it here to meet that boy. Say! Is it not?\u201d\nMiles Raylan makes another spring.\n\n\u201cYou are a vixen, a vixen!\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn seems to meditate as he\nlooks distrustfully at her, then he replies, \u201cWell, wench, well. I\npaid you.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou paid me!\u201d she repeats with fierce disdain. \u201cTwo sovereign! I\nhave not change them, I re-fuse them, I des-pise them, I throw them\nfrom me!\u201d Which she literally does, taking them out of her bosom as\nshe speaks and flinging them with such violence on the floor that\nthey jerk up again into the light before they roll away into corners\nand slowly settle down there after spinning vehemently.\n\n\u201cNow!\u201d says Miles Raylan, darkening her large eyes again.\n\u201cYou have paid me? Eh, my God, oh yes!\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn rubs his head with the key while she entertains\nherself with a sarcastic laugh.\n\n\u201cYou must be rich, my fair friend,\u201d he composedly observes, \u201cto throw\nmoney about in that way!\u201d\n\n\u201cI AM rich,\u201d she returns. \u201cI am very rich in hate. I hate my Godfrey, of\nall my heart. You know that.\u201d\n\n\u201cKnow it? How should I know it?\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause you have known it perfectly before you prayed me to give you\nthat information. Because you have known perfectly that I was\nen-r-r-r-raged!\u201d It appears impossible for mademoiselle to roll the\nletter \u201cr\u201d sufficiently in this word, notwithstanding that she\nassists her energetic delivery by clenching both her hands and\nsetting all her teeth.\n\n\u201cOh! I knew that, did I?\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, examining the wards\nof the key.\n\n\u201cYes, without doubt. I am not blind. You have made sure of me because\nyou knew that. You had reason! I det-est her.\u201d Miles Raylan folds her\narms and throws this last remark at him over one of her shoulders.\n\n\u201cHaving said this, have you anything else to say, mademoiselle?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not yet placed. Place me well. Find me a good condition! If you\ncannot, or do not choose to do that, employ me to pursue her, to\nchase her, to disgrace and to dishonour her. I will help you well,\nand with a good will. It is what YOU do. Do I not know that?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou appear to know a good deal,\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn retorts.\n\n\u201cDo I not? Is it that I am so weak as to believe, like a child, that\nI come here in that dress to rec-eive that boy only to decide a\nlittle bet, a wager? Eh, my God, oh yes!\u201d In this reply, down to the\nword \u201cwager\u201d inclusive, mademoiselle has been ironically polite and\ntender, then as suddenly dashed into the bitterest and most defiant\nscorn, with her black eyes in one and the same moment very nearly\nshut and staringly wide open.\n\n\u201cNow, let us see,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, tapping his chin with the\nkey and looking imperturbably at her, \u201chow this matter stands.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! Let us see,\u201d mademoiselle assents, with many angry and tight\nnods of her head.\n\n\u201cYou come here to make a remarkably modest demand, which you have\njust stated, and it not being conceded, you will come again.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd again,\u201d says mademoiselle with more tight and angry nods. \u201cAnd\nyet again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for ever!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd not only here, but you will go to Mr. Harlan\u2019s too, perhaps?\nThat visit not succeeding either, you will go again perhaps?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd again,\u201d repeats mademoiselle, cataleptic with determination.\n\u201cAnd yet again. And yet again. And many times again. In effect, for\never!\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well. Now, Miles Raylan, let me recommend you to take\nthe candle and pick up that money of yours. I think you will find it\nbehind the clerk\u2019s partition in the corner yonder.\u201d\n\nShe merely throws a laugh over her shoulder and stands her ground\nwith folded arms.\n\n\u201cYou will not, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I will not!\u201d\n\n\u201cSo much the poorer you; so much the richer I! Look, mistress, this\nis the key of my wine-cellar. It is a large key, but the keys of\nprisons are larger. In this city there are houses of correction\n(where the treadmills are, for women), the gates of which are very\nstrong and heavy, and no doubt the keys too. I am afraid a lady of\nyour spirit and activity would find it an inconvenience to have one\nof those keys turned upon her for any length of time. What do you\nthink?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think,\u201d mademoiselle replies without any action and in a clear,\nobliging voice, \u201cthat you are a miserable wretch.\u201d\n\n\u201cProbably,\u201d returns Mr. Tulkinghorn, quietly blowing his nose. \u201cBut I\ndon\u2019t ask what you think of myself; I ask what you think of the\nprison.\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing. What does it matter to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, it matters this much, mistress,\u201d says the lawyer, deliberately\nputting away his handkerchief and adjusting his frill; \u201cthe law is so\ndespotic here that it interferes to prevent any of our good English\ncitizens from being troubled, even by a lady\u2019s visits against his\ndesire. And on his complaining that he is so troubled, it takes hold\nof the troublesome lady and shuts her up in prison under hard\ndiscipline. Turns the key upon her, mistress.\u201d Illustrating with the\ncellar-key.\n\n\u201cTruly?\u201d returns mademoiselle in the same pleasant voice. \u201cThat is\ndroll! But\u2014my faith!\u2014still what does it matter to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy fair friend,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, \u201cmake another visit here, or\nat Mr. Harlan\u2019s, and you shall learn.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn that case you will send me to the prison, perhaps?\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps.\u201d\n\nIt would be contradictory for one in mademoiselle\u2019s state of\nagreeable jocularity to foam at the mouth, otherwise a tigerish\nexpansion thereabouts might look as if a very little more would make\nher do it.\n\n\u201cIn a word, mistress,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, \u201cI am sorry to be\nunpolite, but if you ever present yourself uninvited here\u2014or\nthere\u2014again, I will give you over to the police. Their gallantry is\ngreat, but they carry troublesome people through the streets in an\nignominious manner, strapped down on a board, my good wench.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will prove you,\u201d whispers mademoiselle, stretching out her hand,\n\u201cI will try if you dare to do it!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd if,\u201d pursues the lawyer without minding her, \u201cI place you in\nthat good condition of being locked up in jail, it will be some time\nbefore you find yourself at liberty again.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will prove you,\u201d repeats mademoiselle in her former whisper.\n\n\u201cAnd now,\u201d proceeds the lawyer, still without minding her, \u201cyou had\nbetter go. Think twice before you come here again.\u201d\n\n\u201cThink you,\u201d she answers, \u201ctwice two hundred times!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou were dismissed by your lady, you know,\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn\nobserves, following her out upon the staircase, \u201cas the most\nimplacable and unmanageable of women. Now turn over a new leaf and\ntake warning by what I say to you. For what I say, I mean; and what I\nthreaten, I will do, mistress.\u201d\n\nShe goes down without answering or looking behind her. When she is\ngone, he goes down too, and returning with his cobweb-covered bottle,\ndevotes himself to a leisurely enjoyment of its contents, now and\nthen, as he throws his head back in his chair, catching sight of the\npertinacious Roman pointing from the ceiling.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIII\n\nPaulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nIt matters little now how much I thought of my living mother who had\ntold me evermore to consider her dead. I could not venture to\napproach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of\nthe peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my\nfears of increasing it. Knowing that my mere existence as a living\ncreature was an unforeseen danger in her way, I could not always\nconquer that terror of myself which had seized me when I first knew\nthe secret. At no time did I dare to utter her name. I felt as if I\ndid not even dare to hear it. If the conversation anywhere, when I\nwas present, took that direction, as it sometimes naturally did, I\ntried not to hear: I mentally counted, repeated something that I\nknew, or went out of the room. I am conscious now that I often did\nthese things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken\nof, but I did them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might\nlead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal through me.\n\nIt matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother\u2019s\nvoice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed to\ndo, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so\nnew to me. It matters little that I watched for every public mention\nof my mother\u2019s name; that I passed and repassed the door of her house\nin town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the\ntheatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we were so wide\nasunder before the great company of all degrees that any link or\nconfidence between us seemed a dream. It is all, all over. My lot has\nbeen so blest that I can relate little of myself which is not a story\nof goodness and generosity in others. I may well pass that little and\ngo on.\n\nWhen we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many conversations\nwith my guardian of which Celise was the theme. My dear girl was\ndeeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong, but\nshe was so faithful to Celise that she could not bear to blame him\neven for that. My guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his\nname with a word of reproof. \u201cRick is mistaken, my dear,\u201d he would\nsay to her. \u201cWell, well! We have all been mistaken over and over\nagain. We must trust to you and time to set him right.\u201d\n\nWe knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to\ntime until he had often tried to open Celise\u2019s eyes. That he had\nwritten to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and\npersuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Celise\nwas deaf and blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make amends\nwhen the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the dark,\nhe could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those\nclouds in which so much was confused and obscured. Suspicion and\nmisunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him work the\nsuit out and come through it to his right mind. This was his\nunvarying reply. Ashton and Ashton had obtained such possession\nof his whole nature that it was impossible to place any consideration\nbefore him which he did not, with a distorted kind of reason, make a\nnew argument in favour of his doing what he did. \u201cSo that it is even\nmore mischievous,\u201d said my guardian once to me, \u201cto remonstrate with\nthe poor dear fellow than to leave him alone.\u201d\n\nI took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr.\nYestin as a good adviser for Celise.\n\n\u201cAdviser!\u201d returned my guardian, laughing, \u201cMy dear, who would advise\nwith Yestin?\u201d\n\n\u201cEncourager would perhaps have been a better word,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cEncourager!\u201d returned my guardian again. \u201cWho could be encouraged by\nYestin?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot Celise?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d he replied. \u201cSuch an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer\ncreature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or\nencouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or\nanything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as\nYestin.\u201d\n\n\u201cPray, cousin Gerardo,\u201d said Ada, who had just joined us and now looked\nover my shoulder, \u201cwhat made him such a child?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat made him such a child?\u201d inquired my guardian, rubbing his head,\na little at a loss.\n\n\u201cYes, cousin Gerardo.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy,\u201d he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, \u201che is\nall sentiment, and\u2014and susceptibility, and\u2014and sensibility,\nand\u2014and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him,\nsomehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth\nattached too much importance to them and too little to any training\nthat would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he\nis. Hey?\u201d said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us\nhopefully. \u201cWhat do you think, you two?\u201d\n\nAda, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an\nexpense to Celise.\n\n\u201cSo it is, so it is,\u201d returned my guardian hurriedly. \u201cThat must not\nbe. We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never do.\u201d\n\nAnd I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever\nintroduced Celise to Mr. Anson for a present of five pounds.\n\n\u201cDid he?\u201d said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his\nface. \u201cBut there you have the man. There you have the man! There is\nnothing mercenary in that with him. He has no idea of the value of\nmoney. He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with Mr.\nAnson and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it and\nthinks nothing of it. He told you himself, I\u2019ll be bound, my dear?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes!\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cExactly!\u201d cried my guardian, quite triumphant. \u201cThere you have the\nman! If he had meant any harm by it or was conscious of any harm in\nit, he wouldn\u2019t tell it. He tells it as he does it in mere\nsimplicity. But you shall see him in his own home, and then you\u2019ll\nunderstand him better. We must pay a visit to Harold Yestin and\ncaution him on these points. Lord bless you, my dears, an infant, an\ninfant!\u201d\n\nIn pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day and\npresented ourselves at Mr. Yestin\u2019s door.\n\nHe lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there\nwere at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about in\ncloaks, smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better tenant\nthan one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend Somebody\nalways paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude for\nbusiness rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, I don\u2019t\nknow; but he had occupied the same house some years. It was in a\nstate of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation. Two or three of\nthe area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken, the knocker\nwas loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long time to judge\nfrom the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints on the steps\nwere the only signs of its being inhabited.\n\nA slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the\nrents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe berry\nanswered our knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping\nup the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr. Ashton (indeed Ada and\nI both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of\nher wages), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. The\nlock of the door being in a disabled condition, she then applied\nherself to securing it with the chain, which was not in good action\neither, and said would we go upstairs?\n\nWe went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other furniture\nthan the dirty footprints. Mr. Ashton without further ceremony\nentered a room there, and we followed. It was dingy enough and not at\nall clean, but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a\nlarge footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and\nplenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music,\nnewspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. A broken pane of glass\nin one of the dirty windows was papered and wafered over, but there\nwas a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was\nanother of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a\nbottle of light wine. Mr. Yestin himself reclined upon the sofa in\na dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china\ncup\u2014it was then about mid-day\u2014and looking at a collection of\nwallflowers in the balcony.\n\nHe was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and\nreceived us in his usual airy manner.\n\n\u201cHere I am, you see!\u201d he said when we were seated, not without some\nlittle difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. \u201cHere\nI am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of beef and\nmutton for breakfast; I don\u2019t. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee,\nand my claret; I am content. I don\u2019t want them for themselves, but\nthey remind me of the sun. There\u2019s nothing solar about legs of beef\nand mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is our friend\u2019s consulting-room (or would be, if he ever\nprescribed), his sanctum, his studio,\u201d said my guardian to us.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, turning his bright face about, \u201cthis is the\nbird\u2019s cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his\nfeathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings, he sings!\u201d\n\nHe handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, \u201cHe sings! Not\nan ambitious note, but still he sings.\u201d\n\n\u201cThese are very fine,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cA present?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d he answered. \u201cNo! Some amiable gardener sells them. His man\nwanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he should\nwait for the money. \u2018Really, my friend,\u2019 I said, \u2018I think not\u2014if\nyour time is of any value to you.\u2019 I suppose it was, for he went\naway.\u201d\n\nMy guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, \u201cIs it\npossible to be worldly with this baby?\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is a day,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, gaily taking a little claret in a\ntumbler, \u201cthat will ever be remembered here. We shall call it Saint\nDionne and Saint Robin day. You must see my daughters. I have a\nblue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a Sentiment\ndaughter, and I have a Comedy daughter. You must see them all.\nThey\u2019ll be enchanted.\u201d\n\nHe was going to summon them when my guardian interposed and asked him\nto pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first. \u201cMy dear\nAshton,\u201d he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa, \u201cas many\nmoments as you please. Time is no object here. We never know what\no\u2019clock it is, and we never care. Not the way to get on in life,\nyou\u2019ll tell me? Certainly. But we DON\u2019T get on in life. We don\u2019t\npretend to do it.\u201d\n\nMy guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, \u201cYou hear him?\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, Harold,\u201d he began, \u201cthe word I have to say relates to Rick.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe dearest friend I have!\u201d returned Mr. Yestin cordially. \u201cI\nsuppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms\nwith you. But he is, I can\u2019t help it; he is full of youthful poetry,\nand I love him. If you don\u2019t like it, I can\u2019t help it. I love him.\u201d\n\nThe engaging frankness with which he made this declaration really had\na disinterested appearance and captivated my guardian, if not, for\nthe moment, Ada too.\n\n\u201cYou are welcome to love him as much as you like,\u201d returned Mr.\nAshton, \u201cbut we must save his pocket, Harold.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d said Mr. Yestin. \u201cHis pocket? Now you are coming to what I\ndon\u2019t understand.\u201d Taking a little more claret and dipping one of the\ncakes in it, he shook his head and smiled at Ada and me with an\ningenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand.\n\n\u201cIf you go with him here or there,\u201d said my guardian plainly, \u201cyou\nmust not let him pay for both.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Ashton,\u201d returned Mr. Yestin, his genial face irradiated\nby the comicality of this idea, \u201cwhat am I to do? If he takes me\nanywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never have any money. If I\nhad any money, I don\u2019t know anything about it. Suppose I say to a\nman, how much? Suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? I know\nnothing about seven and sixpence. It is impossible for me to pursue\nthe subject with any consideration for the man. I don\u2019t go about\nasking busy people what seven and sixpence is in Moorish\u2014which I\ndon\u2019t understand. Why should I go about asking them what seven and\nsixpence is in Money\u2014which I don\u2019t understand?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless\nreply, \u201cif you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must\nborrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that\ncircumstance), and leave the calculation to him.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Ashton,\u201d returned Mr. Yestin, \u201cI will do anything to\ngive you pleasure, but it seems an idle form\u2014a superstition.\nBesides, I give you my word, Miss Dionne and my dear Miss Robin, I\nthought Mr. Willis was immensely rich. I thought he had only to\nmake over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a\nbill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower\nof money.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed it is not so, sir,\u201d said Ada. \u201cHe is poor.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, really?\u201d returned Mr. Yestin with his bright smile. \u201cYou\nsurprise me.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed,\u201d said my\nguardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr.\nYestin\u2019s dressing-gown, \u201cbe you very careful not to encourage him\nin that reliance, Harold.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear good friend,\u201d returned Mr. Yestin, \u201cand my dear Miss\nSimmerson, and my dear Miss Dionne, how can I do that? It\u2019s business,\nand I don\u2019t know business. It is he who encourages me. He emerges\nfrom great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before\nme as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire\nthem\u2014as bright prospects. But I know no more about them, and I tell\nhim so.\u201d\n\nThe helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before us,\nthe light-hearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the\nfantastic way in which he took himself under his own protection and\nargued about that curious person, combined with the delightful ease\nof everything he said exactly to make out my guardian\u2019s case. The\nmore I saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was\npresent, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and\nyet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the\nless agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with any\none for whom I cared.\n\nHearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr.\nYestin left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters\n(his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite\ndelighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish\ncharacter. He soon came back, bringing with him the three young\nladies and Mrs. Yestin, who had once been a beauty but was now a\ndelicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of\ndisorders.\n\n\u201cThis,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, \u201cis my Beauty daughter, Arethusa\u2014plays\nand sings odds and ends like her father. This is my Sentiment\ndaughter, Laura\u2014plays a little but don\u2019t sing. This is my Comedy\ndaughter, Kitty\u2014sings a little but don\u2019t play. We all draw a little\nand compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money.\u201d\n\nMrs. Yestin sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to\nstrike out this item in the family attainments. I also thought that\nshe rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she took\nevery opportunity of throwing in another.\n\n\u201cIt is pleasant,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, turning his sprightly eyes from\none to the other of us, \u201cand it is whimsically interesting to trace\npeculiarities in families. In this family we are all children, and I\nam the youngest.\u201d\n\nThe daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by\nthis droll fact, particularly the Comedy daughter.\n\n\u201cMy dears, it is true,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, \u201cis it not? So it is, and\nso it must be, because like the dogs in the hymn, \u2018it is our nature\nto.\u2019 Now, here is Miss Robin with a fine administrative capacity\nand a knowledge of details perfectly surprising. It will sound very\nstrange in Miss Robin\u2019s ears, I dare say, that we know nothing\nabout chops in this house. But we don\u2019t, not the least. We can\u2019t cook\nanything whatever. A needle and thread we don\u2019t know how to use. We\nadmire the people who possess the practical wisdom we want, but we\ndon\u2019t quarrel with them. Then why should they quarrel with us? Live\nand let live, we say to them. Live upon your practical wisdom, and\nlet us live upon you!\u201d\n\nHe laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid and really to mean what\nhe said.\n\n\u201cWe have sympathy, my roses,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, \u201csympathy for\neverything. Have we not?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, papa!\u201d cried the three daughters.\n\n\u201cIn fact, that is our family department,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, \u201cin this\nhurly-burly of life. We are capable of looking on and of being\ninterested, and we DO look on, and we ARE interested. What more can\nwe do? Here is my Beauty daughter, married these three years. Now I\ndare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all\nwrong in point of political economy, but it was very agreeable. We\nhad our little festivities on those occasions and exchanged social\nideas. She brought her young husband home one day, and they and their\nyoung fledglings have their nest upstairs. I dare say at some time or\nother Sentiment and Comedy will bring THEIR husbands home and have\nTHEIR nests upstairs too. So we get on, we don\u2019t know how, but\nsomehow.\u201d\n\nShe looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and I\ncould not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the\nthree daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as little\nhaphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father\u2019s\nplaythings in his idlest hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted,\nI observed, in their respective styles of wearing their hair, the\nBeauty daughter being in the classic manner, the Sentiment daughter\nluxuriant and flowing, and the Comedy daughter in the arch style,\nwith a good deal of sprightly forehead, and vivacious little curls\ndotted about the corners of her eyes. They were dressed to\ncorrespond, though in a most untidy and negligent way.\n\nAda and I conversed with these young ladies and found them\nwonderfully like their father. In the meanwhile Mr. Ashton (who had\nbeen rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change in\nthe wind) talked with Mrs. Yestin in a corner, where we could not\nhelp hearing the chink of money. Mr. Yestin had previously\nvolunteered to go home with us and had withdrawn to dress himself for\nthe purpose.\n\n\u201cMy roses,\u201d he said when he came back, \u201ctake care of mama. She is\npoorly to-day. By going home with Mr. Ashton for a day or two, I\nshall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability. It has been\ntried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat bad man!\u201d said the Comedy daughter.\n\n\u201cAt the very time when he knew papa was lying ill by his wallflowers,\nlooking at the blue sky,\u201d Laura complained.\n\n\u201cAnd when the smell of hay was in the air!\u201d said Arethusa.\n\n\u201cIt showed a want of poetry in the man,\u201d Mr. Yestin assented, but\nwith perfect good humour. \u201cIt was coarse. There was an absence of the\nfiner touches of humanity in it! My daughters have taken great\noffence,\u201d he explained to us, \u201cat an honest man\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNot honest, papa. Impossible!\u201d they all three protested.\n\n\u201cAt a rough kind of fellow\u2014a sort of human hedgehog rolled up,\u201d said\nMr. Yestin, \u201cwho is a baker in this neighbourhood and from whom we\nborrowed a couple of arm-chairs. We wanted a couple of arm-chairs,\nand we hadn\u2019t got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man\nwho HAD got them, to lend them. Well! This morose person lent them,\nand we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back.\nHe had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He\nobjected to their being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out\nhis mistake. I said, \u2018Can you, at your time of life, be so\nheadstrong, my friend, as to persist that an arm-chair is a thing to\nput upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object to contemplate, to\nsurvey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? Don\u2019t you\nKNOW that these arm-chairs were borrowed to be sat upon?\u2019 He was\nunreasonable and unpersuadable and used intemperate language. Being\nas patient as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him.\nI said, \u2018Now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary,\nwe are all children of one great mother, Nature. On this blooming\nsummer morning here you see me\u2019 (I was on the sofa) \u2018with flowers\nbefore me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air\nfull of fragrance, contemplating Nature. I entreat you, by our common\nbrotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime,\nthe absurd figure of an angry baker!\u2019 But he did,\u201d said Mr. Yestin,\nraising his laughing eyes in playful astonishment; \u201che did interpose\nthat ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. And therefore\nI am very glad to get out of his way and to go home with my friend\nAshton.\u201d\n\nIt seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Yestin and the\ndaughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so old\na story to all of them that it had become a matter of course. He took\nleave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any\nother aspect in which he showed himself and rode away with us in\nperfect harmony of mind. We had an opportunity of seeing through some\nopen doors, as we went downstairs, that his own apartment was a\npalace to the rest of the house.\n\nI could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very\nstartling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what\nensued from it, was to happen before this day was out. Our guest was\nin such spirits on the way home that I could do nothing but listen to\nhim and wonder at him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada yielded to\nthe same fascination. As to my guardian, the wind, which had\nthreatened to become fixed in the east when we left Somers Town,\nveered completely round before we were a couple of miles from it.\n\nWhether of questionable childishness or not in any other matters, Mr.\nYestin had a child\u2019s enjoyment of change and bright weather. In no\nway wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room\nbefore any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet\nlooking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and\ndrinking songs, Italian and German, by the score.\n\nWe were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the\npiano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music,\nand talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined\nold Verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and\nhad got tired of, when a card was brought in and my guardian read\naloud in a surprised voice, \u201cSir Luigi Wayne!\u201d\n\nThe visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me\nand before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have\nhurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness,\nto retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know\nwhere it was. I heard my name and found that my guardian was\npresenting me before I could move to a chair.\n\n\u201cPray be seated, Sir Luigi.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Ashton,\u201d said Sir Luigi in reply as he bowed and seated\nhimself, \u201cI do myself the honour of calling here\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou do ME the honour, Sir Luigi.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you\u2014of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire to express\nmy regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may\nhave against a gentleman who\u2014who is known to you and has been your\nhost, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference, should\nhave prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge,\nfrom seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and\nrefined taste at my house, Chesney Wold.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are exceedingly obliging, Sir Luigi, and on behalf of those\nladies (who are present) and for myself, I thank you very much.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is possible, Mr. Ashton, that the gentleman to whom, for the\nreasons I have mentioned, I refrain from making further allusion\u2014it\nis possible, Mr. Ashton, that that gentleman may have done me the\nhonour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to\nbelieve that you would not have been received by my local\nestablishment in Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy,\nwhich its members are instructed to show to all ladies and gentlemen\nwho present themselves at that house. I merely beg to observe, sir,\nthat the fact is the reverse.\u201d\n\nMy guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any\nverbal answer.\n\n\u201cIt has given me pain, Mr. Ashton,\u201d Sir Luigi weightily\nproceeded. \u201cI assure you, sir, it has given\u2014me\u2014pain\u2014to learn from\nthe housekeeper at Chesney Wold that a gentleman who was in your\ncompany in that part of the county, and who would appear to possess a\ncultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred by some\nsuch cause from examining the family pictures with that leisure, that\nattention, that care, which he might have desired to bestow upon them\nand which some of them might possibly have repaid.\u201d Here he produced\na card and read, with much gravity and a little trouble, through his\neye-glass, \u201cMr. Hirrold\u2014Herald\u2014Harold\u2014Skampling\u2014Skumpling\u2014I beg\nyour pardon\u2014Yestin.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is Mr. Harold Yestin,\u201d said my guardian, evidently surprised.\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d exclaimed Sir Luigi, \u201cI am happy to meet Mr. Yestin and\nto have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. I hope,\nsir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county, you\nwill be under no similar sense of restraint.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are very obliging, Sir Luigi Wayne. So encouraged, I shall\ncertainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another visit to\nyour beautiful house. The owners of such places as Chesney Wold,\u201d\nsaid Mr. Yestin with his usual happy and easy air, \u201care public\nbenefactors. They are good enough to maintain a number of delightful\nobjects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to\nreap all the admiration and pleasure that they yield is to be\nungrateful to our benefactors.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. \u201cAn artist,\nsir?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d returned Mr. Yestin. \u201cA perfectly idle man. A mere amateur.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi seemed to approve of this even more. He hoped he might\nhave the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr. Yestin next\ncame down into Lincolnshire. Mr. Yestin professed himself much\nflattered and honoured.\n\n\u201cMr. Yestin mentioned,\u201d pursued Sir Luigi, addressing himself\nagain to my guardian, \u201cmentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he may\nhave observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family\u2014\u201d\n\n(\u201cThat is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the\noccasion of my going down to visit Miss Robin and Miss Dionne,\u201d\nMr. Yestin airily explained to us.)\n\n\u201c\u2014That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there was\nMr. Ashton.\u201d Sir Luigi bowed to the bearer of that name. \u201cAnd\nhence I became aware of the circumstance for which I have professed\nmy regret. That this should have occurred to any gentleman, Mr.\nAshton, but especially a gentleman formerly known to Godfrey Wayne,\nand indeed claiming some distant connexion with her, and for whom (as\nI learn from my Godfrey herself) she entertains a high respect, does, I\nassure you, give\u2014me\u2014pain.\u201d\n\n\u201cPray say no more about it, Sir Luigi,\u201d returned my guardian. \u201cI\nam very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your consideration.\nIndeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to apologize for it.\u201d\n\nI had not once looked up. I had not seen the visitor and had not even\nappeared to myself to hear the conversation. It surprises me to find\nthat I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression on me as it\npassed. I heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused and my\ninstinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so\ndistressing to me that I thought I understood nothing, through the\nrushing in my head and the beating of my heart.\n\n\u201cI mentioned the subject to Godfrey Wayne,\u201d said Sir Luigi,\nrising, \u201cand my Godfrey informed me that she had had the pleasure of\nexchanging a few words with Mr. Ashton and his wards on the\noccasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the\nvicinity. Permit me, Mr. Ashton, to repeat to yourself, and to\nthese ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr. Yestin.\nCircumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it would afford me\nany gratification to hear that Mr. Rhea had favoured my house\nwith his presence, but those circumstances are confined to that\ngentleman himself and do not extend beyond him.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know my old opinion of him,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, lightly\nappealing to us. \u201cAn amiable bull who is determined to make every\ncolour scarlet!\u201d\n\nSir Luigi Wayne coughed as if he could not possibly hear\nanother word in reference to such an individual and took his leave\nwith great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all\npossible speed and remained there until I had recovered my\nself-command. It had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to\nfind when I went downstairs again that they only rallied me for\nhaving been shy and mute before the great Lincolnshire baronet.\n\nBy that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I\nmust tell my guardian what I knew. The possibility of my being\nbrought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house,\neven of Mr. Yestin\u2019s, however distantly associated with me,\nreceiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband, was so painful\nthat I felt I could no longer guide myself without his assistance.\n\nWhen we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual\ntalk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again and sought my\nguardian among his books. I knew he always read at that hour, and as\nI drew near I saw the light shining out into the passage from his\nreading-lamp.\n\n\u201cMay I come in, guardian?\u201d\n\n\u201cSurely, little woman. What\u2019s the matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing is the matter. I thought I would like to take this quiet\ntime of saying a word to you about myself.\u201d\n\nHe put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his\nkind attentive face towards me. I could not help observing that it\nwore that curious expression I had observed in it once before\u2014on\nthat night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could\nreadily understand.\n\n\u201cWhat concerns you, my dear Paulina,\u201d said he, \u201cconcerns us all. You\ncannot be more ready to speak than I am to hear.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know that, guardian. But I have such need of your advice and\nsupport. Oh! You don\u2019t know how much need I have to-night.\u201d\n\nHe looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little\nalarmed.\n\n\u201cOr how anxious I have been to speak to you,\u201d said I, \u201cever since the\nvisitor was here to-day.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe visitor, my dear! Sir Luigi Wayne?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\nHe folded his arms and sat looking at me with an air of the\nprofoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did not\nknow how to prepare him.\n\n\u201cWhy, Paulina,\u201d said he, breaking into a smile, \u201cour visitor and you\nare the two last persons on earth I should have thought of connecting\ntogether!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, guardian, I know it. And I too, but a little while ago.\u201d\n\nThe smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before. He\ncrossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to that)\nand resumed his seat before me.\n\n\u201cGuardian,\u201d said I, \u201cdo you remember, when we were overtaken by the\nthunder-storm, Godfrey Wayne\u2019s speaking to you of her sister?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course. Of course I do.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd reminding you that she and her sister had differed, had gone\ntheir several ways?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy did they separate, guardian?\u201d\n\nHis face quite altered as he looked at me. \u201cMy child, what questions\nare these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever did know, I\nbelieve. Who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and\nproud women were! You have seen Godfrey Wayne. If you had ever seen\nher sister, you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty\nas she.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!\u201d\n\n\u201cSeen her?\u201d\n\nHe paused a little, biting his lip. \u201cThen, Paulina, when you spoke to\nme long ago of Rhea, and when I told you that he was all but\nmarried once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and\nthat that time had had its influence on his later life\u2014did you know\nit all, and know who the lady was?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, guardian,\u201d I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke\nupon me. \u201cNor do I know yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cGodfrey Wayne\u2019s sister.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd why,\u201d I could scarcely ask him, \u201cwhy, guardian, pray tell me why\nwere THEY parted?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart. He\nafterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some\ninjury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quarrel\nwith her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she wrote him\nthat from the date of that letter she died to him\u2014as in literal\ntruth she did\u2014and that the resolution was exacted from her by her\nknowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of honour, which\nwere both her nature too. In consideration for those master points in\nhim, and even in consideration for them in herself, she made the\nsacrifice, she said, and would live in it and die in it. She did\nboth, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never heard of her from\nthat hour. Nor did any one.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, guardian, what have I done!\u201d I cried, giving way to my grief;\n\u201cwhat sorrow have I innocently caused!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou caused, Paulina?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, guardian. Innocently, but most surely. That secluded sister is\nmy first remembrance.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no!\u201d he cried, starting.\n\n\u201cYes, guardian, yes! And HER sister is my mother!\u201d\n\nI would have told him all my mother\u2019s letter, but he would not hear\nit then. He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so plainly\nbefore me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my better\nstate of mind, that, penetrated as I had been with fervent gratitude\ntowards him through so many years, I believed I had never loved him\nso dearly, never thanked him in my heart so fully, as I did that\nnight. And when he had taken me to my room and kissed me at the door,\nand when at last I lay down to sleep, my thought was how could I ever\nbe busy enough, how could I ever be good enough, how in my little way\ncould I ever hope to be forgetful enough of myself, devoted enough to\nhim, and useful enough to others, to show him how I blessed and\nhonoured him.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIV\n\nThe Letter and the Answer\n\n\nMy guardian called me into his room next morning, and then I told him\nwhat had been left untold on the previous night. There was nothing to\nbe done, he said, but to keep the secret and to avoid another such\nencounter as that of yesterday. He understood my feeling and entirely\nshared it. He charged himself even with restraining Mr. Yestin from\nimproving his opportunity. One person whom he need not name to me, it\nwas not now possible for him to advise or help. He wished it were,\nbut no such thing could be. If her mistrust of the lawyer whom she\nhad mentioned were well-founded, which he scarcely doubted, he\ndreaded discovery. He knew something of him, both by sight and by\nreputation, and it was certain that he was a dangerous man. Whatever\nhappened, he repeatedly impressed upon me with anxious affection and\nkindness, I was as innocent of as himself and as unable to influence.\n\n\u201cNor do I understand,\u201d said he, \u201cthat any doubts tend towards you, my\ndear. Much suspicion may exist without that connexion.\u201d\n\n\u201cWith the lawyer,\u201d I returned. \u201cBut two other persons have come into\nmy mind since I have been anxious. Then I told him all about Mr.\nJarrett, who I feared might have had his vague surmises when I little\nunderstood his meaning, but in whose silence after our last interview\nI expressed perfect confidence.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cThen we may dismiss him for the present.\nWho is the other?\u201d\n\nI called to his recollection the French maid and the eager offer of\nherself she had made to me.\n\n\u201cHa!\u201d he returned thoughtfully. \u201cThat is a more alarming person than\nthe clerk. But after all, my dear, it was but seeking for a new\nservice. She had seen you and Ada a little while before, and it was\nnatural that you should come into her head. She merely proposed\nherself for your maid, you know. She did nothing more.\u201d\n\n\u201cHer manner was strange,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cYes, and her manner was strange when she took her shoes off and\nshowed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her\ndeath-bed,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cIt would be useless self-distress and\ntorment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There are very\nfew harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous\nmeaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You can be nothing\nbetter than yourself; be that, through this knowledge, as you were\nbefore you had it. It is the best you can do for everybody\u2019s sake. I,\nsharing the secret with you\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd lightening it, guardian, so much,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201c\u2014will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as I can\nobserve it from my distance. And if the time should come when I can\nstretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom it is\nbetter not to name even here, I will not fail to do it for her dear\ndaughter\u2019s sake.\u201d\n\nI thanked him with my whole heart. What could I ever do but thank\nhim! I was going out at the door when he asked me to stay a moment.\nQuickly turning round, I saw that same expression on his face again;\nand all at once, I don\u2019t know how, it flashed upon me as a new and\nfar-off possibility that I understood it.\n\n\u201cMy dear Paulina,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cI have long had something in my\nthoughts that I have wished to say to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have had some difficulty in approaching it, and I still have. I\nshould wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately\nconsidered. Would you object to my writing it?\u201d\n\n\u201cDear guardian, how could I object to your writing anything for ME to\nread?\u201d\n\n\u201cThen see, my love,\u201d said he with his cheery smile, \u201cam I at this\nmoment quite as plain and easy\u2014do I seem as open, as honest and\nold-fashioned\u2014as I am at any time?\u201d\n\nI answered in all earnestness, \u201cQuite.\u201d With the strictest truth, for\nhis momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute), and\nhis fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored.\n\n\u201cDo I look as if I suppressed anything, meant anything but what I\nsaid, had any reservation at all, no matter what?\u201d said he with his\nbright clear eyes on mine.\n\nI answered, most assuredly he did not.\n\n\u201cCan you fully trust me, and thoroughly rely on what I profess,\nPaulina?\u201d\n\n\u201cMost thoroughly,\u201d said I with my whole heart.\n\n\u201cMy dear girl,\u201d returned my guardian, \u201cgive me your hand.\u201d\n\nHe took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and looking down\ninto my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness of\nmanner\u2014the old protecting manner which had made that house my home\nin a moment\u2014said, \u201cYou have wrought changes in me, little woman,\nsince the winter day in the stage-coach. First and last you have done\nme a world of good since that time.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, guardian, what have you done for me since that time!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut,\u201d said he, \u201cthat is not to be remembered now.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt never can be forgotten.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, Paulina,\u201d said he with a gentle seriousness, \u201cit is to be\nforgotten now, to be forgotten for a while. You are only to remember\nnow that nothing can change me as you know me. Can you feel quite\nassured of that, my dear?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can, and I do,\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s much,\u201d he answered. \u201cThat\u2019s everything. But I must not take\nthat at a word. I will not write this something in my thoughts until\nyou have quite resolved within yourself that nothing can change me as\nyou know me. If you doubt that in the least degree, I will never\nwrite it. If you are sure of that, on good consideration, send\nWeston to me this night week\u2014\u2018for the letter.\u2019 But if you are not\nquite certain, never send. Mind, I trust to your truth, in this thing\nas in everything. If you are not quite certain on that one point,\nnever send!\u201d\n\n\u201cGuardian,\u201d said I, \u201cI am already certain, I can no more be changed\nin that conviction than you can be changed towards me. I shall send\nWeston for the letter.\u201d\n\nHe shook my hand and said no more. Nor was any more said in reference\nto this conversation, either by him or me, through the whole week.\nWhen the appointed night came, I said to Weston as soon as I was\nalone, \u201cGo and knock at Mr. Ashton\u2019s door, Weston, and say you\nhave come from me\u2014\u2018for the letter.\u2019\u201d Weston went up the stairs, and\ndown the stairs, and along the passages\u2014the zig-zag way about the\nold-fashioned house seemed very long in my listening ears that\nnight\u2014and so came back, along the passages, and down the stairs, and\nup the stairs, and brought the letter. \u201cLay it on the table,\nWeston,\u201d said I. So Weston laid it on the table and went to bed,\nand I sat looking at it without taking it up, thinking of many\nthings.\n\nI began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those\ntimid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her resolute\nface so cold and set, and when I was more solitary with Mrs. Rachael\nthan if I had had no one in the world to speak to or to look at. I\npassed to the altered days when I was so blest as to find friends in\nall around me, and to be beloved. I came to the time when I first saw\nmy dear girl and was received into that sisterly affection which was\nthe grace and beauty of my life. I recalled the first bright gleam of\nwelcome which had shone out of those very windows upon our expectant\nfaces on that cold bright night, and which had never paled. I lived\nmy happy life there over again, I went through my illness and\nrecovery, I thought of myself so altered and of those around me so\nunchanged; and all this happiness shone like a light from one central\nfigure, represented before me by the letter on the table.\n\nI opened it and read it. It was so impressive in its love for me, and\nin the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it showed\nfor me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read\nmuch at a time. But I read it through three times before I laid it\ndown. I had thought beforehand that I knew its purport, and I did. It\nasked me, would I be the mistress of Bleak House.\n\nIt was not a love letter, though it expressed so much love, but was\nwritten just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his\nface, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind\nprotecting manner in every line. It addressed me as if our places\nwere reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the\nfeelings they had awakened his. It dwelt on my being young, and he\npast the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I\nwas a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing\nall this so well as to set it in full before me for mature\ndeliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage\nand lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance\nthe tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he\nwas certain it would be right. But he had considered this step anew\nsince our late confidence and had decided on taking it, if it only\nserved to show me through one poor instance that the whole world\nwould readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of my childhood.\nI was the last to know what happiness I could bestow upon him, but of\nthat he said no more, for I was always to remember that I owed him\nnothing and that he was my debtor, and for very much. He had often\nthought of our future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and\nfearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age)\nwould leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up,\nhad become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made it.\nIf I felt that I could ever give him the best right he could have to\nbe my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become\nthe dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter\nchances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind\nmyself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even\nthen I must have ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or in\nthe opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in his\nold manner, in the old name by which I called him. And as to his\nbright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be the\nsame, he knew.\n\nThis was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a\njustice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian\nimpartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his\nintegrity he stated the full case.\n\nBut he did not hint to me that when I had been better looking he had\nhad this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from it.\nThat when my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he\ncould love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery\nof my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my\ndisfigurement and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in\nneed of such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to the\nlast.\n\nBut I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of\nthe benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had but\none thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him\npoorly, and what had I wished for the other night but some new means\nof thanking him?\n\nStill I cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after\nreading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect\u2014for\nit was strange though I had expected the contents\u2014but as if\nsomething for which there was no name or distinct idea were\nindefinitely lost to me. I was very happy, very thankful, very\nhopeful; but I cried very much.\n\nBy and by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen, and I\nsaid, \u201cOh, Paulina, Paulina, can that be you!\u201d I am afraid the face in\nthe glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my\nfinger at it, and it stopped.\n\n\u201cThat is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear,\nwhen you showed me such a change!\u201d said I, beginning to let down my\nhair. \u201cWhen you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as\ncheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us\nbegin for once and for all.\u201d\n\nI went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little\nstill, but that was because I had been crying, not because I was\ncrying then.\n\n\u201cAnd so Paulina, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your best\nfriends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great\ndeal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men.\u201d\n\nI thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else, how\nshould I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been\na change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form\nthat I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid\nthem down in their basket again.\n\nThen I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how\noften had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my\nillness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why I\nshould be busy, busy, busy\u2014useful, amiable, serviceable, in all\nhonest, unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit\ndown morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at\nfirst (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that I\nwas one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it seem\nstrange? Other people had thought of such things, if I had not.\n\u201cDon\u2019t you remember, my plain dear,\u201d I asked myself, looking at the\nglass, \u201cwhat Mrs. Leonie said before those scars were there about\nyour marrying\u2014\u201d\n\nPerhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains of\nthe flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only\nbeen preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it\nwould be better not to keep them now.\n\nThey were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room\u2014our\nsitting-room, dividing Ada\u2019s chamber from mine. I took a candle and\nwent softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand,\nI saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and\nI stole in to kiss her.\n\nIt was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying; but\nI dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. Weaker\nthan that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for a moment\nto her lips. I thought about her love for Celise, though, indeed,\nthe flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own\nroom and burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant.\n\nOn entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian just\nas usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not the\nleast constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was\nnone) in mine. I was with him several times in the course of the\nmorning, in and out, when there was no one there, and I thought it\nnot unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter, but he did\nnot say a word.\n\nSo, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week, over\nwhich time Mr. Yestin prolonged his stay. I expected, every day,\nthat my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he never\ndid.\n\nI thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I\ntried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not\nwrite an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought\neach night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days,\nand he never said a word.\n\nAt last, Mr. Yestin having departed, we three were one afternoon\ngoing out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and going down,\ncame upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the\ndrawing-room window looking out.\n\nHe turned on my coming in and said, smiling, \u201cAye, it\u2019s you, little\nwoman, is it?\u201d and looked out again.\n\nI had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down\non purpose. \u201cGuardian,\u201d I said, rather hesitating and trembling,\n\u201cwhen would you like to have the answer to the letter Weston came\nfor?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen it\u2019s ready, my dear,\u201d he replied.\n\n\u201cI think it is ready,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cIs Weston to bring it?\u201d he asked pleasantly.\n\n\u201cNo. I have brought it myself, guardian,\u201d I returned.\n\nI put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was this\nthe mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no\ndifference presently, and we all went out together, and I said\nnothing to my precious pet about it.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLV\n\nIn Trust\n\n\nOne morning when I had done jingling about with my baskets of keys,\nas my beauty and I were walking round and round the garden I happened\nto turn my eyes towards the house and saw a long thin shadow going in\nwhich looked like Mr. Anson. Ada had been telling me only that\nmorning of her hopes that Celise might exhaust his ardour in the\nChancery suit by being so very earnest in it; and therefore, not to\ndamp my dear girl\u2019s spirits, I said nothing about Mr. Anson\u2019s\nshadow.\n\nPresently came Weston, lightly winding among the bushes and tripping\nalong the paths, as rosy and pretty as one of Flora\u2019s attendants\ninstead of my maid, saying, \u201cOh, if you please, miss, would you step\nand speak to Mr. Ashton!\u201d\n\nIt was one of Weston\u2019s peculiarities that whenever she was charged\nwith a message she always began to deliver it as soon as she beheld,\nat any distance, the person for whom it was intended. Therefore I saw\nWeston asking me in her usual form of words to \u201cstep and speak\u201d to\nMr. Ashton long before I heard her. And when I did hear her, she\nhad said it so often that she was out of breath.\n\nI told Ada I would make haste back and inquired of Weston as we went\nin whether there was not a gentleman with Mr. Ashton. To which\nWeston, whose grammar, I confess to my shame, never did any credit\nto my educational powers, replied, \u201cYes, miss. Him as come down in\nthe country with Mr. Celise.\u201d\n\nA more complete contrast than my guardian and Mr. Anson I suppose\nthere could not be. I found them looking at one another across a\ntable, the one so open and the other so close, the one so broad and\nupright and the other so narrow and stooping, the one giving out what\nhe had to say in such a rich ringing voice and the other keeping it\nin in such a cold-blooded, gasping, fish-like manner that I thought I\nnever had seen two people so unmatched.\n\n\u201cYou know Mr. Anson, my dear,\u201d said my guardian. Not with the\ngreatest urbanity, I must say.\n\nMr. Anson rose, gloved and buttoned up as usual, and seated himself\nagain, just as he had seated himself beside Celise in the gig. Not\nhaving Celise to look at, he looked straight before him.\n\n\u201cMr. Anson,\u201d said my guardian, eyeing his black figure as if he were\na bird of ill omen, \u201chas brought an ugly report of our most\nunfortunate Rick.\u201d Laying a marked emphasis on \u201cmost unfortunate\u201d as\nif the words were rather descriptive of his connexion with Mr.\nAnson.\n\nI sat down between them; Mr. Anson remained immovable, except that\nhe secretly picked at one of the red pimples on his yellow face with\nhis black glove.\n\n\u201cAnd as Rick and you are happily good friends, I should like to\nknow,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cwhat you think, my dear. Would you be so\ngood as to\u2014as to speak up, Mr. Anson?\u201d\n\nDoing anything but that, Mr. Anson observed, \u201cI have been saying\nthat I have reason to know, Miss Robin, as Mr. C.\u2019s professional\nadviser, that Mr. C.\u2019s circumstances are at the present moment in an\nembarrassed state. Not so much in point of amount as owing to the\npeculiar and pressing nature of liabilities Mr. C. has incurred and\nthe means he has of liquidating or meeting the same. I have staved\noff many little matters for Mr. C., but there is a limit to staving\noff, and we have reached it. I have made some advances out of pocket\nto accommodate these unpleasantnesses, but I necessarily look to\nbeing repaid, for I do not pretend to be a man of capital, and I have\na father to support in the Vale of Taunton, besides striving to\nrealize some little independence for three dear girls at home. My\napprehension is, Mr. C.\u2019s circumstances being such, lest it should\nend in his obtaining leave to part with his commission, which at all\nevents is desirable to be made known to his connexions.\u201d\n\nMr. Anson, who had looked at me while speaking, here emerged into\nthe silence he could hardly be said to have broken, so stifled was\nhis tone, and looked before him again.\n\n\u201cImagine the poor fellow without even his present resource,\u201d said my\nguardian to me. \u201cYet what can I do? You know him, Paulina. He would\nnever accept of help from me now. To offer it or hint at it would be\nto drive him to an extremity, if nothing else did.\u201d\n\nMr. Anson hereupon addressed me again.\n\n\u201cWhat Mr. Ashton remarks, miss, is no doubt the case, and is the\ndifficulty. I do not see that anything is to be done. I do not say\nthat anything is to be done. Far from it. I merely come down here\nunder the seal of confidence and mention it in order that everything\nmay be openly carried on and that it may not be said afterwards that\neverything was not openly carried on. My wish is that everything\nshould be openly carried on. I desire to leave a good name behind me.\nIf I consulted merely my own interests with Mr. C., I should not be\nhere. So insurmountable, as you must well know, would be his\nobjections. This is not a professional attendance. This can he\ncharged to nobody. I have no interest in it except as a member of\nsociety and a father\u2014AND a son,\u201d said Mr. Anson, who had nearly\nforgotten that point.\n\nIt appeared to us that Mr. Anson said neither more nor less than the\ntruth in intimating that he sought to divide the responsibility, such\nas it was, of knowing Celise\u2019s situation. I could only suggest that\nI should go down to Deal, where Celise was then stationed, and see\nhim, and try if it were possible to avert the worst. Without\nconsulting Mr. Anson on this point, I took my guardian aside to\npropose it, while Mr. Anson gauntly stalked to the fire and warmed\nhis funeral gloves.\n\nThe fatigue of the journey formed an immediate objection on my\nguardian\u2019s part, but as I saw he had no other, and as I was only too\nhappy to go, I got his consent. We had then merely to dispose of Mr.\nAnson.\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d said Mr. Ashton, \u201cMiss Robin will communicate with\nMr. Willis, and you can only hope that his position may be yet\nretrievable. You will allow me to order you lunch after your journey,\nsir.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thank you, Mr. Ashton,\u201d said Mr. Anson, putting out his long\nblack sleeve to check the ringing of the bell, \u201cnot any. I thank you,\nno, not a morsel. My digestion is much impaired, and I am but a poor\nknife and fork at any time. If I was to partake of solid food at this\nperiod of the day, I don\u2019t know what the consequences might be.\nEverything having been openly carried on, sir, I will now with your\npermission take my leave.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I would that you could take your leave, and we could all take\nour leave, Mr. Anson,\u201d returned my guardian bitterly, \u201cof a cause\nyou know of.\u201d\n\nMr. Anson, whose black dye was so deep from head to foot that it had\nquite steamed before the fire, diffusing a very unpleasant perfume,\nmade a short one-sided inclination of his head from the neck and\nslowly shook it.\n\n\u201cWe whose ambition it is to be looked upon in the light of\nrespectable practitioners, sir, can but put our shoulders to the\nwheel. We do it, sir. At least, I do it myself; and I wish to think\nwell of my professional brethren, one and all. You are sensible of an\nobligation not to refer to me, miss, in communicating with Mr. C.?\u201d\n\nI said I would be careful not to do it.\n\n\u201cJust so, miss. Good morning. Mr. Ashton, good morning, sir.\u201d Mr.\nAnson put his dead glove, which scarcely seemed to have any hand in\nit, on my fingers, and then on my guardian\u2019s fingers, and took his\nlong thin shadow away. I thought of it on the outside of the coach,\npassing over all the sunny landscape between us and London, chilling\nthe seed in the ground as it glided along.\n\nOf course it became necessary to tell Ada where I was going and why I\nwas going, and of course she was anxious and distressed. But she was\ntoo true to Celise to say anything but words of pity and words of\nexcuse, and in a more loving spirit still\u2014my dear devoted girl!\u2014she\nwrote him a long letter, of which I took charge.\n\nWeston was to be my travelling companion, though I am sure I wanted\nnone and would willingly have left her at home. We all went to London\nthat afternoon, and finding two places in the mail, secured them. At\nour usual bed-time, Weston and I were rolling away seaward with the\nKentish letters.\n\nIt was a night\u2019s journey in those coach times, but we had the mail to\nourselves and did not find the night very tedious. It passed with me\nas I suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. At\none while my journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now I\nthought I should do some good, and now I wondered how I could ever\nhave supposed so. Now it seemed one of the most reasonable things in\nthe world that I should have come, and now one of the most\nunreasonable. In what state I should find Celise, what I should say\nto him, and what he would say to me occupied my mind by turns with\nthese two states of feeling; and the wheels seemed to play one tune\n(to which the burden of my guardian\u2019s letter set itself) over and\nover again all night.\n\nAt last we came into the narrow streets of Deal, and very gloomy they\nwere upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its little\nirregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of capstans, and\ngreat boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with tackle and\nblocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with grass and\nweeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place I ever saw. The sea\nwas heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else was moving but\na few early ropemakers, who, with the yarn twisted round their\nbodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of existence, they\nwere spinning themselves into cordage.\n\nBut when we got into a warm room in an excellent hotel and sat down,\ncomfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was too\nlate to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more cheerful. Our\nlittle room was like a ship\u2019s cabin, and that delighted Weston very\nmuch. Then the fog began to rise like a curtain, and numbers of ships\nthat we had had no idea were near appeared. I don\u2019t know how many\nsail the waiter told us were then lying in the downs. Some of these\nvessels were of grand size\u2014one was a large Indiaman just come home;\nand when the sun shone through the clouds, making silvery pools in\nthe dark sea, the way in which these ships brightened, and shadowed,\nand changed, amid a bustle of boats pulling off from the shore to\nthem and from them to the shore, and a general life and motion in\nthemselves and everything around them, was most beautiful.\n\nThe large Indiaman was our great attraction because she had come into\nthe downs in the night. She was surrounded by boats, and we said how\nglad the people on board of her must be to come ashore. Weston was\ncurious, too, about the voyage, and about the heat in India, and the\nserpents and the tigers; and as she picked up such information much\nfaster than grammar, I told her what I knew on those points. I told\nher, too, how people in such voyages were sometimes wrecked and cast\non rocks, where they were saved by the intrepidity and humanity of\none man. And Weston asking how that could be, I told her how we knew\nat home of such a case.\n\nI had thought of sending Celise a note saying I was there, but it\nseemed so much better to go to him without preparation. As he lived\nin barracks I was a little doubtful whether this was feasible, but we\nwent out to reconnoitre. Peeping in at the gate of the barrack-yard,\nwe found everything very quiet at that time in the morning, and I\nasked a sergeant standing on the guardhouse-steps where he lived. He\nsent a man before to show me, who went up some bare stairs, and\nknocked with his knuckles at a door, and left us.\n\n\u201cNow then!\u201d cried Celise from within. So I left Weston in the\nlittle passage, and going on to the half-open door, said, \u201cCan I come\nin, Celise? It\u2019s only Dame Durden.\u201d\n\nHe was writing at a table, with a great confusion of clothes, tin\ncases, books, boots, brushes, and portmanteaus strewn all about the\nfloor. He was only half dressed\u2014in plain clothes, I observed, not in\nuniform\u2014and his hair was unbrushed, and he looked as wild as his\nroom. All this I saw after he had heartily welcomed me and I was\nseated near him, for he started upon hearing my voice and caught me\nin his arms in a moment. Dear Celise! He was ever the same to me.\nDown to\u2014ah, poor poor fellow!\u2014to the end, he never received me but\nwith something of his old merry boyish manner.\n\n\u201cGood heaven, my dear little woman,\u201d said he, \u201chow do you come here?\nWho could have thought of seeing you! Nothing the matter? Ada is\nwell?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite well. Lovelier than ever, Celise!\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d he said, leaning back in his chair. \u201cMy poor cousin! I was\nwriting to you, Paulina.\u201d\n\nSo worn and haggard as he looked, even in the fullness of his\nhandsome youth, leaning back in his chair and crushing the closely\nwritten sheet of paper in his hand!\n\n\u201cHave you been at the trouble of writing all that, and am I not to\nread it after all?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cOh, my dear,\u201d he returned with a hopeless gesture. \u201cYou may read it\nin the whole room. It is all over here.\u201d\n\nI mildly entreated him not to be despondent. I told him that I had\nheard by chance of his being in difficulty and had come to consult\nwith him what could best be done.\n\n\u201cLike you, Paulina, but useless, and so NOT like you!\u201d said he with a\nmelancholy smile. \u201cI am away on leave this day\u2014should have been gone\nin another hour\u2014and that is to smooth it over, for my selling out.\nWell! Let bygones be bygones. So this calling follows the rest. I\nonly want to have been in the church to have made the round of all\nthe professions.\u201d\n\n\u201cCelise,\u201d I urged, \u201cit is not so hopeless as that?\u201d\n\n\u201cPaulina,\u201d he returned, \u201cit is indeed. I am just so near disgrace as\nthat those who are put in authority over me (as the catechism goes)\nwould far rather be without me than with me. And they are right.\nApart from debts and duns and all such drawbacks, I am not fit even\nfor this employment. I have no care, no mind, no heart, no soul, but\nfor one thing. Why, if this bubble hadn\u2019t broken now,\u201d he said,\ntearing the letter he had written into fragments and moodily casting\nthem away, by driblets, \u201chow could I have gone abroad? I must have\nbeen ordered abroad, but how could I have gone? How could I, with my\nexperience of that thing, trust even Anson unless I was at his\nback!\u201d\n\nI suppose he knew by my face what I was about to say, but he caught\nthe hand I had laid upon his arm and touched my own lips with it to\nprevent me from going on.\n\n\u201cNo, Dame Durden! Two subjects I forbid\u2014must forbid. The first is\nGerardo Ashton. The second, you know what. Call it madness, and I tell\nyou I can\u2019t help it now, and can\u2019t be sane. But it is no such thing;\nit is the one object I have to pursue. It is a pity I ever was\nprevailed upon to turn out of my road for any other. It would be\nwisdom to abandon it now, after all the time, anxiety, and pains I\nhave bestowed upon it! Oh, yes, true wisdom. It would be very\nagreeable, too, to some people; but I never will.\u201d\n\nHe was in that mood in which I thought it best not to increase his\ndetermination (if anything could increase it) by opposing him. I took\nout Ada\u2019s letter and put it in his hand.\n\n\u201cAm I to read it now?\u201d he asked.\n\nAs I told him yes, he laid it on the table, and resting his head upon\nhis hand, began. He had not read far when he rested his head upon his\ntwo hands\u2014to hide his face from me. In a little while he rose as if\nthe light were bad and went to the window. He finished reading it\nthere, with his back towards me, and after he had finished and had\nfolded it up, stood there for some minutes with the letter in his\nhand. When he came back to his chair, I saw tears in his eyes.\n\n\u201cOf course, Paulina, you know what she says here?\u201d He spoke in a\nsoftened voice and kissed the letter as he asked me.\n\n\u201cYes, Celise.\u201d\n\n\u201cOffers me,\u201d he went on, tapping his foot upon the floor, \u201cthe little\ninheritance she is certain of so soon\u2014just as little and as much as\nI have wasted\u2014and begs and prays me to take it, set myself right\nwith it, and remain in the service.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know your welfare to be the dearest wish of her heart,\u201d said I.\n\u201cAnd, oh, my dear Celise, Ada\u2019s is a noble heart.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sure it is. I\u2014I wish I was dead!\u201d\n\nHe went back to the window, and laying his arm across it, leaned his\nhead down on his arm. It greatly affected me to see him so, but I\nhoped he might become more yielding, and I remained silent. My\nexperience was very limited; I was not at all prepared for his\nrousing himself out of this emotion to a new sense of injury.\n\n\u201cAnd this is the heart that the same Gerardo Ashton, who is not\notherwise to be mentioned between us, stepped in to estrange from\nme,\u201d said he indignantly. \u201cAnd the dear girl makes me this generous\noffer from under the same Gerardo Ashton\u2019s roof, and with the same\nGerardo Ashton\u2019s gracious consent and connivance, I dare say, as a new\nmeans of buying me off.\u201d\n\n\u201cCelise!\u201d I cried out, rising hastily. \u201cI will not hear you say such\nshameful words!\u201d I was very angry with him indeed, for the first time\nin my life, but it only lasted a moment. When I saw his worn young\nface looking at me as if he were sorry, I put my hand on his shoulder\nand said, \u201cIf you please, my dear Celise, do not speak in such a\ntone to me. Consider!\u201d\n\nHe blamed himself exceedingly and told me in the most generous manner\nthat he had been very wrong and that he begged my pardon a thousand\ntimes. At that I laughed, but trembled a little too, for I was rather\nfluttered after being so fiery.\n\n\u201cTo accept this offer, my dear Paulina,\u201d said he, sitting down beside\nme and resuming our conversation, \u201c\u2014once more, pray, pray forgive\nme; I am deeply grieved\u2014to accept my dearest cousin\u2019s offer is, I\nneed not say, impossible. Besides, I have letters and papers that I\ncould show you which would convince you it is all over here. I have\ndone with the red coat, believe me. But it is some satisfaction, in\nthe midst of my troubles and perplexities, to know that I am pressing\nAda\u2019s interests in pressing my own. Anson has his shoulder to the\nwheel, and he cannot help urging it on as much for her as for me,\nthank God!\u201d\n\nHis sanguine hopes were rising within him and lighting up his\nfeatures, but they made his face more sad to me than it had been\nbefore.\n\n\u201cNo, no!\u201d cried Celise exultingly. \u201cIf every farthing of Ada\u2019s\nlittle fortune were mine, no part of it should be spent in retaining\nme in what I am not fit for, can take no interest in, and am weary\nof. It should be devoted to what promises a better return, and should\nbe used where she has a larger stake. Don\u2019t be uneasy for me! I shall\nnow have only one thing on my mind, and Anson and I will work it. I\nshall not be without means. Free of my commission, I shall be able to\ncompound with some small usurers who will hear of nothing but their\nbond now\u2014Anson says so. I should have a balance in my favour\nanyway, but that would swell it. Come, come! You shall carry a letter\nto Ada from me, Paulina, and you must both of you be more hopeful of\nme and not believe that I am quite cast away just yet, my dear.\u201d\n\nI will not repeat what I said to Celise. I know it was tiresome, and\nnobody is to suppose for a moment that it was at all wise. It only\ncame from my heart. He heard it patiently and feelingly, but I saw\nthat on the two subjects he had reserved it was at present hopeless\nto make any representation to him. I saw too, and had experienced in\nthis very interview, the sense of my guardian\u2019s remark that it was\neven more mischievous to use persuasion with him than to leave him as\nhe was.\n\nTherefore I was driven at last to asking Celise if he would mind\nconvincing me that it really was all over there, as he had said, and\nthat it was not his mere impression. He showed me without hesitation\na correspondence making it quite plain that his retirement was\narranged. I found, from what he told me, that Mr. Anson had copies\nof these papers and had been in consultation with him throughout.\nBeyond ascertaining this, and having been the bearer of Ada\u2019s letter,\nand being (as I was going to be) Celise\u2019s companion back to London,\nI had done no good by coming down. Admitting this to myself with a\nreluctant heart, I said I would return to the hotel and wait until he\njoined me there, so he threw a cloak over his shoulders and saw me to\nthe gate, and Weston and I went back along the beach.\n\nThere was a concourse of people in one spot, surrounding some naval\nofficers who were landing from a boat, and pressing about them with\nunusual interest. I said to Weston this would be one of the great\nIndiaman\u2019s boats now, and we stopped to look.\n\nThe gentlemen came slowly up from the waterside, speaking\ngood-humouredly to each other and to the people around and glancing\nabout them as if they were glad to be in England again. \u201cWeston,\nWeston,\u201d said I, \u201ccome away!\u201d And I hurried on so swiftly that my\nlittle maid was surprised.\n\nIt was not until we were shut up in our cabin-room and I had had time\nto take breath that I began to think why I had made such haste. In\none of the sunburnt faces I had recognized Mr. Monty Leonie, and I\nhad been afraid of his recognizing me. I had been unwilling that he\nshould see my altered looks. I had been taken by surprise, and my\ncourage had quite failed me.\n\nBut I knew this would not do, and I now said to myself, \u201cMy dear,\nthere is no reason\u2014there is and there can be no reason at all\u2014why\nit should be worse for you now than it ever has been. What you were\nlast month, you are to-day; you are no worse, you are no better. This\nis not your resolution; call it up, Paulina, call it up!\u201d I was in a\ngreat tremble\u2014with running\u2014and at first was quite unable to calm\nmyself; but I got better, and I was very glad to know it.\n\nThe party came to the hotel. I heard them speaking on the staircase.\nI was sure it was the same gentlemen because I knew their voices\nagain\u2014I mean I knew Mr. Leonie\u2019s. It would still have been a\ngreat relief to me to have gone away without making myself known, but\nI was determined not to do so. \u201cNo, my dear, no. No, no, no!\u201d\n\nI untied my bonnet and put my veil half up\u2014I think I mean half down,\nbut it matters very little\u2014and wrote on one of my cards that I\nhappened to be there with Mr. Celise Willis, and I sent it in to\nMr. Leonie. He came immediately. I told him I was rejoiced to be\nby chance among the first to welcome him home to England. And I saw\nthat he was very sorry for me.\n\n\u201cYou have been in shipwreck and peril since you left us, Mr.\nLeonie,\u201d said I, \u201cbut we can hardly call that a misfortune which\nenabled you to be so useful and so brave. We read of it with the\ntruest interest. It first came to my knowledge through your old\npatient, poor Miss Daxter, when I was recovering from my severe\nillness.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! Little Miss Daxter!\u201d he said. \u201cShe lives the same life yet?\u201d\n\n\u201cJust the same.\u201d\n\nI was so comfortable with myself now as not to mind the veil and to\nbe able to put it aside.\n\n\u201cHer gratitude to you, Mr. Leonie, is delightful. She is a most\naffectionate creature, as I have reason to say.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2014you have found her so?\u201d he returned. \u201cI\u2014I am glad of that.\u201d He\nwas so very sorry for me that he could scarcely speak.\n\n\u201cI assure you,\u201d said I, \u201cthat I was deeply touched by her sympathy\nand pleasure at the time I have referred to.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was grieved to hear that you had been very ill.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was very ill.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you have quite recovered?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have quite recovered my health and my cheerfulness,\u201d said I. \u201cYou\nknow how good my guardian is and what a happy life we lead, and I\nhave everything to be thankful for and nothing in the world to\ndesire.\u201d\n\nI felt as if he had greater commiseration for me than I had ever had\nfor myself. It inspired me with new fortitude and new calmness to\nfind that it was I who was under the necessity of reassuring him. I\nspoke to him of his voyage out and home, and of his future plans, and\nof his probable return to India. He said that was very doubtful. He\nhad not found himself more favoured by fortune there than here. He\nhad gone out a poor ship\u2019s surgeon and had come home nothing better.\nWhile we were talking, and when I was glad to believe that I had\nalleviated (if I may use such a term) the shock he had had in seeing\nme, Celise came in. He had heard downstairs who was with me, and\nthey met with cordial pleasure.\n\nI saw that after their first greetings were over, and when they spoke\nof Celise\u2019s career, Mr. Leonie had a perception that all was not\ngoing well with him. He frequently glanced at his face as if there\nwere something in it that gave him pain, and more than once he looked\ntowards me as though he sought to ascertain whether I knew what the\ntruth was. Yet Celise was in one of his sanguine states and in good\nspirits and was thoroughly pleased to see Mr. Leonie again, whom\nhe had always liked.\n\nCelise proposed that we all should go to London together; but Mr.\nLeonie, having to remain by his ship a little longer, could not\njoin us. He dined with us, however, at an early hour, and became so\nmuch more like what he used to be that I was still more at peace to\nthink I had been able to soften his regrets. Yet his mind was not\nrelieved of Celise. When the coach was almost ready and Celise ran\ndown to look after his luggage, he spoke to me about him.\n\nI was not sure that I had a right to lay his whole story open, but I\nreferred in a few words to his estrangement from Mr Ashton and to\nhis being entangled in the ill-fated Chancery suit. Mr. Leonie\nlistened with interest and expressed his regret.\n\n\u201cI saw you observe him rather closely,\u201d said I, \u201cDo you think him so\nchanged?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is changed,\u201d he returned, shaking his head.\n\nI felt the blood rush into my face for the first time, but it was\nonly an instantaneous emotion. I turned my head aside, and it was\ngone.\n\n\u201cIt is not,\u201d said Mr. Leonie, \u201chis being so much younger or older,\nor thinner or fatter, or paler or ruddier, as there being upon his\nface such a singular expression. I never saw so remarkable a look in\na young person. One cannot say that it is all anxiety or all\nweariness; yet it is both, and like ungrown despair.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou do not think he is ill?\u201d said I.\n\nNo. He looked robust in body.\n\n\u201cThat he cannot be at peace in mind, we have too much reason to\nknow,\u201d I proceeded. \u201cMr. Leonie, you are going to London?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo-morrow or the next day.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is nothing Celise wants so much as a friend. He always liked\nyou. Pray see him when you get there. Pray help him sometimes with\nyour companionship if you can. You do not know of what service it\nmight be. You cannot think how Ada, and Mr. Ashton, and even I\u2014how\nwe should all thank you, Mr. Leonie!\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d he said, more moved than he had been from the\nfirst, \u201cbefore heaven, I will be a true friend to him! I will accept\nhim as a trust, and it shall be a sacred one!\u201d\n\n\u201cGod bless you!\u201d said I, with my eyes filling fast; but I thought\nthey might, when it was not for myself. \u201cAda loves him\u2014we all love\nhim, but Ada loves him as we cannot. I will tell her what you say.\nThank you, and God bless you, in her name!\u201d\n\nCelise came back as we finished exchanging these hurried words and\ngave me his arm to take me to the coach.\n\n\u201cLeonie,\u201d he said, unconscious with what application, \u201cpray let us\nmeet in London!\u201d\n\n\u201cMeet?\u201d returned the other. \u201cI have scarcely a friend there now but\nyou. Where shall I find you?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I must get a lodging of some sort,\u201d said Celise, pondering.\n\u201cSay at Anson\u2019s, Symond\u2019s Inn.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood! Without loss of time.\u201d\n\nThey shook hands heartily. When I was seated in the coach and Celise\nwas yet standing in the street, Mr. Leonie laid his friendly hand\non Celise\u2019s shoulder and looked at me. I understood him and waved\nmine in thanks.\n\nAnd in his last look as we drove away, I saw that he was very sorry\nfor me. I was glad to see it. I felt for my old self as the dead may\nfeel if they ever revisit these scenes. I was glad to be tenderly\nremembered, to be gently pitied, not to be quite forgotten.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLVI\n\nStop Him!\n\n\nDarkness rests upon Said-All-Alone\u2019s. Dilating and dilating since the\nsun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills\nevery void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights\nburning, as the lamp of life hums in Said-all-Alone\u2019s, heavily,\nheavily, in the nauseous air, and winking\u2014as that lamp, too, winks\nin Said-all-Alone\u2019s\u2014at many horrible things. But they are blotted\nout. The moon has eyed Said with a dull cold stare, as admitting some\npuny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and\nblasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is gone. The\nblackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Said-all-Alone\u2019s,\nand Said is fast asleep.\n\nMuch mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of\nParliament, concerning Said, and much wrathful disputation how Said\nshall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by\nconstables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of\nfigures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by\nlow church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting\ntrusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or\nwhether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of\nwhich dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit,\nthat Said only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according\nto somebody\u2019s theory but nobody\u2019s practice. And in the hopeful\nmeantime, Said goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined\nspirit.\n\nBut he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they\nserve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Said\u2019s\ncorrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It\nshall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists\non analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and\nhis Grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance.\nThere is not an atom of Said\u2019s slime, not a cubic inch of any\npestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation\nabout him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his\ncommitting, but shall work its retribution through every order of\nsociety up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the\nhigh. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Said has\nhis revenge.\n\nIt is a moot point whether Said-all-Alone\u2019s be uglier by day or by\nnight, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more\nshocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination\nis at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it.\nThe day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the\nnational glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the\nBritish dominions than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder\nas Said.\n\nA brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep\nto be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless\npillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by\ncuriosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the\nmiserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark\neye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there,\nhe seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied it\nbefore.\n\nOn the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street\nof Said-all-Alone\u2019s, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut\nup and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in one\ndirection, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a\ndoor-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has\njourneyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. She\nsits on the door-step in the manner of one who is waiting, with her\nelbow on her knee and her head upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas\nbag, or bundle, she has carried. She is dozing probably, for she\ngives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her.\n\nThe broken footway is so narrow that when Monty Leonie comes to\nwhere the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her.\nLooking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops.\n\n\u201cWhat is the matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m waiting till they get up at another house\u2014a lodging-house\u2014not\nhere,\u201d the woman patiently returns. \u201cI\u2019m waiting here because there\nwill be sun here presently to warm me.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the\nstreet.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, sir. It don\u2019t matter.\u201d\n\nA habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or\ncondescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many\npeople deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little\nspelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily.\n\n\u201cLet me look at your forehead,\u201d he says, bending down. \u201cI am a\ndoctor. Don\u2019t be afraid. I wouldn\u2019t hurt you for the world.\u201d\n\nHe knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand he\ncan soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection,\nsaying, \u201cIt\u2019s nothing\u201d; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the\nwounded place when she lifts it up to the light.\n\n\u201cAye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very\nsore.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt do ache a little, sir,\u201d returns the woman with a started tear\nupon her cheek.\n\n\u201cLet me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won\u2019t hurt\nyou.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear no, sir, I\u2019m sure of that!\u201d\n\nHe cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully\nexamined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a\nsmall case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is\nthus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery\nin the street, \u201cAnd so your husband is a brickmaker?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you know that, sir?\u201d asks the woman, astonished.\n\n\u201cWhy, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on\nyour dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in\ndifferent places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to\ntheir wives too.\u201d\n\nThe woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her\ninjury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her\nforehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops\nthem again.\n\n\u201cWhere is he now?\u201d asks the surgeon.\n\n\u201cHe got into trouble last night, sir; but he\u2019ll look for me at the\nlodging-house.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and\nheavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as\nhe is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it.\nYou have no young child?\u201d\n\nThe woman shakes her head. \u201cOne as I calls mine, sir, but it\u2019s\nLiz\u2019s.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!\u201d\n\nBy this time he has finished and is putting up his case. \u201cI suppose\nyou have some settled home. Is it far from here?\u201d he asks,\ngood-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and\ncurtsys.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint\nAlbans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like,\nas if you did.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in\nreturn. Have you money for your lodging?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d she says, \u201creally and truly.\u201d And she shows it. He tells\nher, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very\nwelcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Said-all-Alone\u2019s is still\nasleep, and nothing is astir.\n\nYes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he\ndescried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a\nragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the\nsoiled walls\u2014which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid\u2014and\nfurtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth\nwhose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so\nintent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a stranger\nin whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He shades his face\nwith his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and\ngoes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand before him and\nhis shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for what\npurpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They\nlook, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of\nswampy growth that rotted long ago.\n\nMonty Leonie pauses to look after him and note all this, with a\nshadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall how\nor where, but there is some association in his mind with such a form.\nHe imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge,\nstill, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his\nremembrance.\n\nHe is gradually emerging from Said-all-Alone\u2019s in the morning light,\nthinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and looking\nround, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by\nthe woman.\n\n\u201cStop him, stop him!\u201d cries the woman, almost breathless. \u201cStop him,\nsir!\u201d\n\nHe darts across the road into the boy\u2019s path, but the boy is quicker\nthan he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up\nhalf-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman\nfollows, crying, \u201cStop him, sir, pray stop him!\u201d Monty, not knowing\nbut that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and\nruns so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time\nhe repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To\nstrike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable\nhim, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly\nridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed,\ntakes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare.\nHere, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and\ntumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at\nhim until the woman comes up.\n\n\u201cOh, you, Jo!\u201d cries the woman. \u201cWhat? I have found you at last!\u201d\n\n\u201cJo,\u201d repeats Monty, looking at him with attention, \u201cJo! Stay. To be\nsure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the\ncoroner.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I see you once afore at the inkwhich,\u201d whimpers Jo. \u201cWhat of\nthat? Can\u2019t you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An\u2019t I\nunfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to be?\nI\u2019ve been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by\nanother on you, till I\u2019m worritted to skins and bones. The inkwhich\nwarn\u2019t MY fault. I done nothink. He wos wery good to me, he wos; he\nwos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my\ncrossing. It ain\u2019t wery likely I should want him to be inkwhiched. I\nonly wish I wos, myself. I don\u2019t know why I don\u2019t go and make a hole\nin the water, I\u2019m sure I don\u2019t.\u201d\n\nHe says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so\nreal, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a\ngrowth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in\nneglect and impurity, that Monty Leonie is softened towards him.\nHe says to the woman, \u201cMiserable creature, what has he done?\u201d\n\nTo which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure\nmore amazedly than angrily, \u201cOh, you Jo, you Jo. I have found you at\nlast!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat has he done?\u201d says Monty. \u201cHas he robbed you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by\nme, and that\u2019s the wonder of it.\u201d\n\nMonty looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting\nfor one of them to unravel the riddle.\n\n\u201cBut he was along with me, sir,\u201d says the woman. \u201cOh, you Jo! He was\nalong with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady, Lord\nbless her for a good friend to me, took pity on him when I durstn\u2019t,\nand took him home\u2014\u201d\n\nMonty shrinks back from him with a sudden horror.\n\n\u201cYes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a\nthankless monster he ran away in the night and never has been seen or\nheard of since till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady\nthat was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her beautiful\nlooks, and wouldn\u2019t hardly be known for the same young lady now if it\nwasn\u2019t for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet\nvoice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this\nis all along of you and of her goodness to you?\u201d demands the woman,\nbeginning to rage at him as she recalls it and breaking into\npassionate tears.\n\nThe boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing\nhis dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground,\nand to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against\nwhich he leans rattles.\n\nMonty restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but\neffectually.\n\n\u201cCelise told me\u2014\u201d He falters. \u201cI mean, I have heard of this\u2014don\u2019t\nmind me for a moment, I will speak presently.\u201d\n\nHe turns away and stands for a while looking out at the covered\npassage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure, except\nthat he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very\nremarkable that it absorbs the woman\u2019s attention.\n\n\u201cYou hear what she says. But get up, get up!\u201d\n\nJo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and stands, after the manner\nof his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting\none of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing his right\nhand over his left and his left foot over his right.\n\n\u201cYou hear what she says, and I know it\u2019s true. Have you been here\never since?\u201d\n\n\u201cWishermaydie if I seen Said-all-Alone\u2019s till this blessed morning,\u201d\nreplies Jo hoarsely.\n\n\u201cWhy have you come here now?\u201d\n\nJo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no\nhigher than the knees, and finally answers, \u201cI don\u2019t know how to do\nnothink, and I can\u2019t get nothink to do. I\u2019m wery poor and ill, and I\nthought I\u2019d come back here when there warn\u2019t nobody about, and lay\ndown and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go\nand beg a trifle of Mr. Harlan. He wos allus willin fur to give me\nsomethink he wos, though Mrs. Harlan she was allus a-chivying on\nme\u2014like everybody everywheres.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere have you come from?\u201d\n\nJo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner\u2019s knees\nagain, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a\nsort of resignation.\n\n\u201cDid you hear me ask you where you have come from?\u201d\n\n\u201cTramp then,\u201d says Jo.\n\n\u201cNow tell me,\u201d proceeds Monty, making a strong effort to overcome his\nrepugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an\nexpression of confidence, \u201ctell me how it came about that you left\nthat house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to\npity you and take you home.\u201d\n\nJo suddenly comes out of his resignation and excitedly declares,\naddressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that\nhe never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he\nwould sooner have hurt his own self, that he\u2019d sooner have had his\nunfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos\nwery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his\npoor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very\nmiserable sobs.\n\nMonty Leonie sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself\nto touch him. \u201cCome, Jo. Tell me.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. I dustn\u2019t,\u201d says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. \u201cI\ndustn\u2019t, or I would.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I must know,\u201d returns the other, \u201call the same. Come, Jo.\u201d\n\nAfter two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again,\nlooks round the court again, and says in a low voice, \u201cWell, I\u2019ll\ntell you something. I was took away. There!\u201d\n\n\u201cTook away? In the night?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him and\neven glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding and through\nthe cracks in it lest the object of his distrust should be looking\nover or hidden on the other side.\n\n\u201cWho took you away?\u201d\n\n\u201cI dustn\u2019t name him,\u201d says Jo. \u201cI dustn\u2019t do it, sir.\n\n\u201cBut I want, in the young lady\u2019s name, to know. You may trust me. No\none else shall hear.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, but I don\u2019t know,\u201d replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, \u201cas\nhe DON\u2019T hear.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, he is not in this place.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, ain\u2019t he though?\u201d says Jo. \u201cHe\u2019s in all manner of places, all at\nwanst.\u201d\n\nMonty looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and\ngood faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently\nawaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than\nby anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear.\n\n\u201cAye!\u201d says Monty. \u201cWhy, what had you been doing?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble,\n\u2019sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. But I\u2019m a-moving on now. I\u2019m\na-moving on to the berryin ground\u2014that\u2019s the move as I\u2019m up to.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?\u201d\n\n\u201cPut me in a horsepittle,\u201d replied Jo, whispering, \u201ctill I was\ndischarged, then giv me a little money\u2014four half-bulls, wot you may\ncall half-crowns\u2014and ses \u2018Hook it! Nobody wants you here,\u2019 he ses.\n\u2018You hook it. You go and tramp,\u2019 he ses. \u2018You move on,\u2019 he ses.\n\u2018Don\u2019t let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or\nyou\u2019ll repent it.\u2019 So I shall, if ever he doos see me, and he\u2019ll see\nme if I\u2019m above ground,\u201d concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his\nformer precautions and investigations.\n\nMonty considers a little, then remarks, turning to the woman but\nkeeping an encouraging eye on Jo, \u201cHe is not so ungrateful as you\nsupposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an\ninsufficient one.\u201d\n\n\u201cThankee, sir, thankee!\u201d exclaims Jo. \u201cThere now! See how hard you\nwos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and\nit\u2019s all right. For YOU wos wery good to me too, and I knows it.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, Jo,\u201d says Monty, keeping his eye upon him, \u201ccome with me and I\nwill find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I\ntake one side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you\nwill not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise.\u201d\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t, not unless I wos to see HIM a-coming, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this\ntime, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come\nalong. Good day again, my good woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again.\u201d\n\nShe has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and\ntakes it up. Jo, repeating, \u201cOny you tell the young lady as I never\nwent fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!\u201d nods and shambles and\nshivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a\nfarewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Monty\nLeonie, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In\nthis order, the two come up out of Said-all-Alone\u2019s into the broad\nrays of the sunlight and the purer air.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLVII\n\nJo\u2019s Will\n\n\nAs Monty Leonie and Jo proceed along the streets where the high\nchurch spires and the distances are so near and clear in the morning\nlight that the city itself seems renewed by rest, Monty revolves in\nhis mind how and where he shall bestow his companion. \u201cIt surely is a\nstrange fact,\u201d he considers, \u201cthat in the heart of a civilized world\nthis creature in human form should be more difficult to dispose of\nthan an unowned dog.\u201d But it is none the less a fact because of its\nstrangeness, and the difficulty remains.\n\nAt first he looks behind him often to assure himself that Jo is still\nreally following. But look where he will, he still beholds him close\nto the opposite houses, making his way with his wary hand from brick\nto brick and from door to door, and often, as he creeps along,\nglancing over at him watchfully. Soon satisfied that the last thing\nin his thoughts is to give him the slip, Monty goes on, considering\nwith a less divided attention what he shall do.\n\nA breakfast-stall at a street-corner suggests the first thing to be\ndone. He stops there, looks round, and beckons Jo. Jo crosses and\ncomes halting and shuffling up, slowly scooping the knuckles of his\nright hand round and round in the hollowed palm of his left, kneading\ndirt with a natural pestle and mortar. What is a dainty repast to Jo\nis then set before him, and he begins to gulp the coffee and to gnaw\nthe bread and butter, looking anxiously about him in all directions\nas he eats and drinks, like a scared animal.\n\nBut he is so sick and miserable that even hunger has abandoned him.\n\u201cI thought I was amost a-starvin, sir,\u201d says Jo, soon putting down\nhis food, \u201cbut I don\u2019t know nothink\u2014not even that. I don\u2019t care for\neating wittles nor yet for drinking on \u2019em.\u201d And Jo stands shivering\nand looking at the breakfast wonderingly.\n\nMonty Leonie lays his hand upon his pulse and on his chest. \u201cDraw\nbreath, Jo!\u201d \u201cIt draws,\u201d says Jo, \u201cas heavy as a cart.\u201d He might add,\n\u201cAnd rattles like it,\u201d but he only mutters, \u201cI\u2019m a-moving on, sir.\u201d\n\nMonty looks about for an apothecary\u2019s shop. There is none at hand,\nbut a tavern does as well or better. He obtains a little measure of\nwine and gives the lad a portion of it very carefully. He begins to\nrevive almost as soon as it passes his lips. \u201cWe may repeat that\ndose, Jo,\u201d observes Monty after watching him with his attentive face.\n\u201cSo! Now we will take five minutes\u2019 rest, and then go on again.\u201d\n\nLeaving the boy sitting on the bench of the breakfast-stall, with his\nback against an iron railing, Monty Leonie paces up and down in\nthe early sunshine, casting an occasional look towards him without\nappearing to watch him. It requires no discernment to perceive that\nhe is warmed and refreshed. If a face so shaded can brighten, his\nface brightens somewhat; and by little and little he eats the slice\nof bread he had so hopelessly laid down. Observant of these signs of\nimprovement, Monty engages him in conversation and elicits to his no\nsmall wonder the adventure of the lady in the veil, with all its\nconsequences. Jo slowly munches as he slowly tells it. When he has\nfinished his story and his bread, they go on again.\n\nIntending to refer his difficulty in finding a temporary place of\nrefuge for the boy to his old patient, zealous little Miss Daxter,\nMonty leads the way to the court where he and Jo first foregathered.\nBut all is changed at the rag and bottle shop; Miss Daxter no longer\nlodges there; it is shut up; and a hard-featured female, much\nobscured by dust, whose age is a problem, but who is indeed no other\nthan the interesting Hallie, is tart and spare in her replies. These\nsufficing, however, to inform the visitor that Miss Daxter and her\nbirds are domiciled with a Mrs. Blinder, in Bell Yard, he repairs to\nthat neighbouring place, where Miss Daxter (who rises early that she\nmay be punctual at the divan of justice held by her excellent friend\nthe Chancellor) comes running downstairs with tears of welcome and\nwith open arms.\n\n\u201cMy dear physician!\u201d cries Miss Daxter. \u201cMy meritorious,\ndistinguished, honourable officer!\u201d She uses some odd expressions,\nbut is as cordial and full of heart as sanity itself can be\u2014more so\nthan it often is. Monty, very patient with her, waits until she has\nno more raptures to express, then points out Jo, trembling in a\ndoorway, and tells her how he comes there.\n\n\u201cWhere can I lodge him hereabouts for the present? Now, you have a\nfund of knowledge and good sense and can advise me.\u201d\n\nMiss Daxter, mighty proud of the compliment, sets herself to consider;\nbut it is long before a bright thought occurs to her. Mrs. Blinder is\nentirely let, and she herself occupies poor Freda\u2019s room.\n\u201cFreda!\u201d exclaims Miss Daxter, clapping her hands after a twentieth\nrepetition of this remark. \u201cFreda! To be sure! Of course! My dear\nphysician! General Aileen will help us out.\u201d\n\nIt is hopeless to ask for any information about General Aileen, and\nwould be, though Miss Daxter had not already run upstairs to put on\nher pinched bonnet and her poor little shawl and to arm herself with\nher reticule of documents. But as she informs her physician in her\ndisjointed manner on coming down in full array that General Aileen,\nwhom she often calls upon, knows her dear Fitz Ashton and takes a\ngreat interest in all connected with her, Monty is induced to think\nthat they may be in the right way. So he tells Jo, for his\nencouragement, that this walking about will soon be over now; and\nthey repair to the general\u2019s. Fortunately it is not far.\n\nFrom the exterior of Aileen\u2019s Shooting Gallery, and the long entry,\nand the bare perspective beyond it, Monty Leonie augurs well. He\nalso descries promise in the figure of Mr. Aileen himself, striding\ntowards them in his morning exercise with his pipe in his mouth, no\nstock on, and his muscular arms, developed by broadsword and\ndumbbell, weightily asserting themselves through his light\nshirt-sleeves.\n\n\u201cYour servant, sir,\u201d says Mr. Aileen with a military salute.\nGood-humouredly smiling all over his broad forehead up into his crisp\nhair, he then defers to Miss Daxter, as, with great stateliness, and\nat some length, she performs the courtly ceremony of presentation. He\nwinds it up with another \u201cYour servant, sir!\u201d and another salute.\n\n\u201cExcuse me, sir. A sailor, I believe?\u201d says Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cI am proud to find I have the air of one,\u201d returns Monty; \u201cbut I am\nonly a sea-going doctor.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed, sir! I should have thought you was a regular blue-jacket\nmyself.\u201d\n\nMonty hopes Mr. Aileen will forgive his intrusion the more readily on\nthat account, and particularly that he will not lay aside his pipe,\nwhich, in his politeness, he has testified some intention of doing.\n\u201cYou are very good, sir,\u201d returns the trooper. \u201cAs I know by\nexperience that it\u2019s not disagreeable to Miss Daxter, and since it\u2019s\nequally agreeable to yourself\u2014\u201d and finishes the sentence by putting\nit between his lips again. Monty proceeds to tell him all he knows\nabout Jo, unto which the trooper listens with a grave face.\n\n\u201cAnd that\u2019s the lad, sir, is it?\u201d he inquires, looking along the\nentry to where Jo stands staring up at the great letters on the\nwhitewashed front, which have no meaning in his eyes.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s he,\u201d says Monty. \u201cAnd, Mr. Aileen, I am in this difficulty\nabout him. I am unwilling to place him in a hospital, even if I could\nprocure him immediate admission, because I foresee that he would not\nstay there many hours if he could be so much as got there. The same\nobjection applies to a workhouse, supposing I had the patience to be\nevaded and shirked, and handed about from post to pillar in trying to\nget him into one, which is a system that I don\u2019t take kindly to.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo man does, sir,\u201d returns Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cI am convinced that he would not remain in either place, because he\nis possessed by an extraordinary terror of this person who ordered\nhim to keep out of the way; in his ignorance, he believes this person\nto be everywhere, and cognizant of everything.\u201d\n\n\u201cI ask your pardon, sir,\u201d says Mr. Aileen. \u201cBut you have not\nmentioned that party\u2019s name. Is it a secret, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe boy makes it one. But his name is Bucket.\u201d\n\n\u201cBucket the detective, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe same man.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe man is known to me, sir,\u201d returns the trooper after blowing out\na cloud of smoke and squaring his chest, \u201cand the boy is so far\ncorrect that he undoubtedly is a\u2014rum customer.\u201d Mr. Aileen smokes\nwith a profound meaning after this and surveys Miss Daxter in silence.\n\n\u201cNow, I wish Mr. Ashton and Miss Robin at least to know that\nthis Jo, who tells so strange a story, has reappeared, and to have it\nin their power to speak with him if they should desire to do so.\nTherefore I want to get him, for the present moment, into any poor\nlodging kept by decent people where he would be admitted. Decent\npeople and Jo, Mr. Aileen,\u201d says Monty, following the direction of\nthe trooper\u2019s eyes along the entry, \u201chave not been much acquainted,\nas you see. Hence the difficulty. Do you happen to know any one in\nthis neighbourhood who would receive him for a while on my paying for\nhim beforehand?\u201d\n\nAs he puts the question, he becomes aware of a dirty-faced little man\nstanding at the trooper\u2019s elbow and looking up, with an oddly twisted\nfigure and countenance, into the trooper\u2019s face. After a few more\npuffs at his pipe, the trooper looks down askant at the little man,\nand the little man winks up at the trooper.\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, \u201cI can assure you that I would\nwillingly be knocked on the head at any time if it would be at all\nagreeable to Miss Robin, and consequently I esteem it a privilege\nto do that young lady any service, however small. We are naturally in\nthe vagabond way here, sir, both myself and Olive. You see what the\nplace is. You are welcome to a quiet corner of it for the boy if the\nsame would meet your views. No charge made, except for rations. We\nare not in a flourishing state of circumstances here, sir. We are\nliable to be tumbled out neck and crop at a moment\u2019s notice. However,\nsir, such as the place is, and so long as it lasts, here it is at\nyour service.\u201d\n\nWith a comprehensive wave of his pipe, Mr. Aileen places the whole\nbuilding at his visitor\u2019s disposal.\n\n\u201cI take it for granted, sir,\u201d he adds, \u201cyou being one of the medical\nstaff, that there is no present infection about this unfortunate\nsubject?\u201d\n\nMonty is quite sure of it.\n\n\u201cBecause, sir,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, shaking his head sorrowfully, \u201cwe\nhave had enough of that.\u201d\n\nHis tone is no less sorrowfully echoed by his new acquaintance.\n\u201cStill I am bound to tell you,\u201d observes Monty after repeating his\nformer assurance, \u201cthat the boy is deplorably low and reduced and\nthat he may be\u2014I do not say that he is\u2014too far gone to recover.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you consider him in present danger, sir?\u201d inquires the trooper.\n\n\u201cYes, I fear so.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, sir,\u201d returns the trooper in a decisive manner, \u201cit appears to\nme\u2014being naturally in the vagabond way myself\u2014that the sooner he\ncomes out of the street, the better. You, Olive! Bring him in!\u201d\n\nMr. Octavio tacks out, all on one side, to execute the word of command;\nand the trooper, having smoked his pipe, lays it by. Jo is brought\nin. He is not one of Mrs. Braxton\u2019s Tockahoopo Indians; he is not\none of Mrs. Bladen\u2019s lambs, being wholly unconnected with\nBorrioboola-Gha; he is not softened by distance and unfamiliarity; he\nis not a genuine foreign-grown savage; he is the ordinary home-made\narticle. Dirty, ugly, disagreeable to all the senses, in body a\ncommon creature of the common streets, only in soul a heathen. Homely\nfilth begrimes him, homely parasites devour him, homely sores are in\nhim, homely rags are on him; native ignorance, the growth of English\nsoil and climate, sinks his immortal nature lower than the beasts\nthat perish. Stand forth, Jo, in uncompromising colours! From the\nsole of thy foot to the crown of thy head, there is nothing\ninteresting about thee.\n\nHe shuffles slowly into Mr. Aileen\u2019s gallery and stands huddled\ntogether in a bundle, looking all about the floor. He seems to know\nthat they have an inclination to shrink from him, partly for what he\nis and partly for what he has caused. He, too, shrinks from them. He\nis not of the same order of things, not of the same place in\ncreation. He is of no order and no place, neither of the beasts nor\nof humanity.\n\n\u201cLook here, Jo!\u201d says Monty. \u201cThis is Mr. Aileen.\u201d\n\nJo searches the floor for some time longer, then looks up for a\nmoment, and then down again.\n\n\u201cHe is a kind friend to you, for he is going to give you lodging room\nhere.\u201d\n\nJo makes a scoop with one hand, which is supposed to be a bow. After\na little more consideration and some backing and changing of the foot\non which he rests, he mutters that he is \u201cwery thankful.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are quite safe here. All you have to do at present is to be\nobedient and to get strong. And mind you tell us the truth here,\nwhatever you do, Jo.\u201d\n\n\u201cWishermaydie if I don\u2019t, sir,\u201d says Jo, reverting to his favourite\ndeclaration. \u201cI never done nothink yit, but wot you knows on, to get\nmyself into no trouble. I never was in no other trouble at all, sir,\n\u2019sept not knowin\u2019 nothink and starwation.\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe it, now attend to Mr. Aileen. I see he is going to speak\nto you.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy intention merely was, sir,\u201d observes Mr. Aileen, amazingly broad\nand upright, \u201cto point out to him where he can lie down and get a\nthorough good dose of sleep. Now, look here.\u201d As the trooper speaks,\nhe conducts them to the other end of the gallery and opens one of the\nlittle cabins. \u201cThere you are, you see! Here is a mattress, and here\nyou may rest, on good behaviour, as long as Mr., I ask your pardon,\nsir\u201d\u2014he refers apologetically to the card Monty has given him\u2014\u201cMr.\nLeonie pleases. Don\u2019t you be alarmed if you hear shots; they\u2019ll be\naimed at the target, and not you. Now, there\u2019s another thing I would\nrecommend, sir,\u201d says the trooper, turning to his visitor. \u201cOlive,\ncome here!\u201d\n\nOlive bears down upon them according to his usual tactics. \u201cHere is a\nman, sir, who was found, when a baby, in the gutter. Consequently, it\nis to be expected that he takes a natural interest in this poor\ncreature. You do, don\u2019t you, Olive?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly and surely I do, guv\u2019ner,\u201d is Olive\u2019s reply.\n\n\u201cNow I was thinking, sir,\u201d says Mr. Aileen in a martial sort of\nconfidence, as if he were giving his opinion in a council of war at a\ndrum-head, \u201cthat if this man was to take him to a bath and was to lay\nout a few shillings in getting him one or two coarse articles\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Aileen, my considerate friend,\u201d returns Monty, taking out his\npurse, \u201cit is the very favour I would have asked.\u201d\n\nOlive Octavio and Jo are sent out immediately on this work of\nimprovement. Miss Daxter, quite enraptured by her success, makes the\nbest of her way to court, having great fears that otherwise her\nfriend the Chancellor may be uneasy about her or may give the\njudgment she has so long expected in her absence, and observing\n\u201cwhich you know, my dear physician, and general, after so many years,\nwould be too absurdly unfortunate!\u201d Monty takes the opportunity of\ngoing out to procure some restorative medicines, and obtaining them\nnear at hand, soon returns to find the trooper walking up and down\nthe gallery, and to fall into step and walk with him.\n\n\u201cI take it, sir,\u201d says Mr. Aileen, \u201cthat you know Miss Robin\npretty well?\u201d\n\nYes, it appears.\n\n\u201cNot related to her, sir?\u201d\n\nNo, it appears.\n\n\u201cExcuse the apparent curiosity,\u201d says Mr. Aileen. \u201cIt seemed to me\nprobable that you might take more than a common interest in this poor\ncreature because Miss Robin had taken that unfortunate interest\nin him. \u2019Tis MY case, sir, I assure you.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd mine, Mr. Aileen.\u201d\n\nThe trooper looks sideways at Monty\u2019s sunburnt cheek and bright dark\neye, rapidly measures his height and build, and seems to approve of\nhim.\n\n\u201cSince you have been out, sir, I have been thinking that I\nunquestionably know the rooms in Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields, where Bucket\ntook the lad, according to his account. Though he is not acquainted\nwith the name, I can help you to it. It\u2019s Tulkinghorn. That\u2019s what it\nis.\u201d\n\nMonty looks at him inquiringly, repeating the name.\n\n\u201cTulkinghorn. That\u2019s the name, sir. I know the man, and know him to\nhave been in communication with Bucket before, respecting a deceased\nperson who had given him offence. I know the man, sir. To my sorrow.\u201d\n\nMonty naturally asks what kind of man he is.\n\n\u201cWhat kind of man! Do you mean to look at?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I know that much of him. I mean to deal with. Generally,\nwhat kind of man?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, then I\u2019ll tell you, sir,\u201d returns the trooper, stopping short\nand folding his arms on his square chest so angrily that his face\nfires and flushes all over; \u201che is a confoundedly bad kind of man. He\nis a slow-torturing kind of man. He is no more like flesh and blood\nthan a rusty old carbine is. He is a kind of man\u2014by Aileen!\u2014that\nhas caused me more restlessness, and more uneasiness, and more\ndissatisfaction with myself than all other men put together. That\u2019s\nthe kind of man Mr. Tulkinghorn is!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sorry,\u201d says Monty, \u201cto have touched so sore a place.\u201d\n\n\u201cSore?\u201d The trooper plants his legs wider apart, wets the palm of his\nbroad right hand, and lays it on the imaginary moustache. \u201cIt\u2019s no\nfault of yours, sir; but you shall judge. He has got a power over me.\nHe is the man I spoke of just now as being able to tumble me out of\nthis place neck and crop. He keeps me on a constant see-saw. He won\u2019t\nhold off, and he won\u2019t come on. If I have a payment to make him, or\ntime to ask him for, or anything to go to him about, he don\u2019t see me,\ndon\u2019t hear me\u2014passes me on to Melchisedech\u2019s in Clifford\u2019s Inn,\nMelchisedech\u2019s in Clifford\u2019s Inn passes me back again to him\u2014he\nkeeps me prowling and dangling about him as if I was made of the same\nstone as himself. Why, I spend half my life now, pretty well,\nloitering and dodging about his door. What does he care? Nothing.\nJust as much as the rusty old carbine I have compared him to. He\nchafes and goads me till\u2014Bah! Nonsense! I am forgetting myself. Mr.\nLeonie,\u201d the trooper resumes his march, \u201call I say is, he is an\nold man; but I am glad I shall never have the chance of setting spurs\nto my horse and riding at him in a fair field. For if I had that\nchance, in one of the humours he drives me into\u2014he\u2019d go down, sir!\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen has been so excited that he finds it necessary to wipe his\nforehead on his shirt-sleeve. Even while he whistles his impetuosity\naway with the national anthem, some involuntary shakings of his head\nand heavings of his chest still linger behind, not to mention an\noccasional hasty adjustment with both hands of his open shirt-collar,\nas if it were scarcely open enough to prevent his being troubled by a\nchoking sensation. In short, Monty Leonie has not much doubt about\nthe going down of Mr. Tulkinghorn on the field referred to.\n\nJo and his conductor presently return, and Jo is assisted to his\nmattress by the careful Olive, to whom, after due administration of\nmedicine by his own hands, Monty confides all needful means and\ninstructions. The morning is by this time getting on apace. He\nrepairs to his lodgings to dress and breakfast, and then, without\nseeking rest, goes away to Mr. Ashton to communicate his discovery.\n\nWith him Mr. Ashton returns alone, confidentially telling him that\nthere are reasons for keeping this matter very quiet indeed and\nshowing a serious interest in it. To Mr. Ashton, Jo repeats in\nsubstance what he said in the morning, without any material\nvariation. Only that cart of his is heavier to draw, and draws with a\nhollower sound.\n\n\u201cLet me lay here quiet and not be chivied no more,\u201d falters Jo, \u201cand\nbe so kind any person as is a-passin nigh where I used fur to sleep,\nas jist to say to Mr. Sangsby that Jo, wot he known once, is a-moving\non right forards with his duty, and I\u2019ll be wery thankful. I\u2019d be\nmore thankful than I am aready if it wos any ways possible for an\nunfortnet to be it.\u201d\n\nHe makes so many of these references to the law-stationer in the\ncourse of a day or two that Monty, after conferring with Mr.\nAshton, good-naturedly resolves to call in Cook\u2019s Court, the\nrather, as the cart seems to be breaking down.\n\nTo Cook\u2019s Court, therefore, he repairs. Mr. Harlan is behind his\ncounter in his grey coat and sleeves, inspecting an indenture of\nseveral skins which has just come in from the engrosser\u2019s, an immense\ndesert of law-hand and parchment, with here and there a resting-place\nof a few large letters to break the awful monotony and save the\ntraveller from despair. Mr Harlan puts up at one of these inky wells\nand greets the stranger with his cough of general preparation for\nbusiness.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t remember me, Mr. Harlan?\u201d\n\nThe stationer\u2019s heart begins to thump heavily, for his old\napprehensions have never abated. It is as much as he can do to\nanswer, \u201cNo, sir, I can\u2019t say I do. I should have considered\u2014not to\nput too fine a point upon it\u2014that I never saw you before, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cTwice before,\u201d says Monty Leonie. \u201cOnce at a poor bedside, and\nonce\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s come at last!\u201d thinks the afflicted stationer, as recollection\nbreaks upon him. \u201cIt\u2019s got to a head now and is going to burst!\u201d But\nhe has sufficient presence of mind to conduct his visitor into the\nlittle counting-house and to shut the door.\n\n\u201cAre you a married man, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I am not.\u201d\n\n\u201cWould you make the attempt, though single,\u201d says Mr. Harlan in a\nmelancholy whisper, \u201cto speak as low as you can? For my little woman\nis a-listening somewheres, or I\u2019ll forfeit the business and five\nhundred pound!\u201d\n\nIn deep dejection Mr. Harlan sits down on his stool, with his back\nagainst his desk, protesting, \u201cI never had a secret of my own, sir. I\ncan\u2019t charge my memory with ever having once attempted to deceive my\nlittle woman on my own account since she named the day. I wouldn\u2019t\nhave done it, sir. Not to put too fine a point upon it, I couldn\u2019t\nhave done it, I dursn\u2019t have done it. Whereas, and nevertheless, I\nfind myself wrapped round with secrecy and mystery, till my life is a\nburden to me.\u201d\n\nHis visitor professes his regret to hear it and asks him does he\nremember Jo. Mr. Harlan answers with a suppressed groan, oh, don\u2019t\nhe!\n\n\u201cYou couldn\u2019t name an individual human being\u2014except myself\u2014that my\nlittle woman is more set and determined against than Jo,\u201d says Mr.\nHarlan.\n\nMonty asks why.\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d repeats Mr. Harlan, in his desperation clutching at the clump\nof hair at the back of his bald head. \u201cHow should I know why? But you\nare a single person, sir, and may you long be spared to ask a married\nperson such a question!\u201d\n\nWith this beneficent wish, Mr. Harlan coughs a cough of dismal\nresignation and submits himself to hear what the visitor has to\ncommunicate.\n\n\u201cThere again!\u201d says Mr. Harlan, who, between the earnestness of his\nfeelings and the suppressed tones of his voice is discoloured in the\nface. \u201cAt it again, in a new direction! A certain person charges me,\nin the solemnest way, not to talk of Jo to any one, even my little\nwoman. Then comes another certain person, in the person of yourself,\nand charges me, in an equally solemn way, not to mention Jo to that\nother certain person above all other persons. Why, this is a private\nasylum! Why, not to put too fine a point upon it, this is Bedlam,\nsir!\u201d says Mr. Harlan.\n\nBut it is better than he expected after all, being no explosion of\nthe mine below him or deepening of the pit into which he has fallen.\nAnd being tender-hearted and affected by the account he hears of Jo\u2019s\ncondition, he readily engages to \u201clook round\u201d as early in the evening\nas he can manage it quietly. He looks round very quietly when the\nevening comes, but it may turn out that Mrs. Harlan is as quiet a\nmanager as he.\n\nJo is very glad to see his old friend and says, when they are left\nalone, that he takes it uncommon kind as Mr. Sangsby should come so\nfar out of his way on accounts of sich as him. Mr. Harlan, touched\nby the spectacle before him, immediately lays upon the table half a\ncrown, that magic balsam of his for all kinds of wounds.\n\n\u201cAnd how do you find yourself, my poor lad?\u201d inquires the stationer\nwith his cough of sympathy.\n\n\u201cI am in luck, Mr. Sangsby, I am,\u201d returns Jo, \u201cand don\u2019t want for\nnothink. I\u2019m more cumfbler nor you can\u2019t think. Mr. Sangsby! I\u2019m wery\nsorry that I done it, but I didn\u2019t go fur to do it, sir.\u201d\n\nThe stationer softly lays down another half-crown and asks him what\nit is that he is sorry for having done.\n\n\u201cMr. Sangsby,\u201d says Jo, \u201cI went and giv a illness to the lady as wos\nand yit as warn\u2019t the t\u2019other lady, and none of \u2019em never says\nnothink to me for having done it, on accounts of their being ser good\nand my having been s\u2019unfortnet. The lady come herself and see me\nyesday, and she ses, \u2018Ah, Jo!\u2019 she ses. \u2018We thought we\u2019d lost you,\nJo!\u2019 she ses. And she sits down a-smilin so quiet, and don\u2019t pass a\nword nor yit a look upon me for having done it, she don\u2019t, and I\nturns agin the wall, I doos, Mr. Sangsby. And Mr. Jarnders, I see him\na-forced to turn away his own self. And Mr. Woodcot, he come fur to\ngiv me somethink fur to ease me, wot he\u2019s allus a-doin\u2019 on day and\nnight, and wen he come a-bending over me and a-speakin up so bold, I\nsee his tears a-fallin, Mr. Sangsby.\u201d\n\nThe softened stationer deposits another half-crown on the table.\nNothing less than a repetition of that infallible remedy will relieve\nhis feelings.\n\n\u201cWot I was a-thinkin on, Mr. Sangsby,\u201d proceeds Jo, \u201cwos, as you wos\nable to write wery large, p\u2019raps?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, Jo, please God,\u201d returns the stationer.\n\n\u201cUncommon precious large, p\u2019raps?\u201d says Jo with eagerness.\n\n\u201cYes, my poor boy.\u201d\n\nJo laughs with pleasure. \u201cWot I wos a-thinking on then, Mr. Sangsby,\nwos, that when I wos moved on as fur as ever I could go and couldn\u2019t\nbe moved no furder, whether you might be so good p\u2019raps as to write\nout, wery large so that any one could see it anywheres, as that I wos\nwery truly hearty sorry that I done it and that I never went fur to\ndo it, and that though I didn\u2019t know nothink at all, I knowd as Mr.\nWoodcot once cried over it and wos allus grieved over it, and that I\nhoped as he\u2019d be able to forgive me in his mind. If the writin could\nbe made to say it wery large, he might.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt shall say it, Jo. Very large.\u201d\n\nJo laughs again. \u201cThankee, Mr. Sangsby. It\u2019s wery kind of you, sir,\nand it makes me more cumfbler nor I was afore.\u201d\n\nThe meek little stationer, with a broken and unfinished cough, slips\ndown his fourth half-crown\u2014he has never been so close to a case\nrequiring so many\u2014and is fain to depart. And Jo and he, upon this\nlittle earth, shall meet no more. No more.\n\nFor the cart so hard to draw is near its journey\u2019s end and drags over\nstony ground. All round the clock it labours up the broken steps,\nshattered and worn. Not many times can the sun rise and behold it\nstill upon its weary road.\n\nOlive Octavio, with his smoky gunpowder visage, at once acts as nurse\nand works as armourer at his little table in a corner, often looking\nround and saying with a nod of his green-baize cap and an encouraging\nelevation of his one eyebrow, \u201cHold up, my boy! Hold up!\u201d There, too,\nis Mr. Ashton many a time, and Monty Leonie almost always, both\nthinking, much, how strangely fate has entangled this rough outcast\nin the web of very different lives. There, too, the trooper is a\nfrequent visitor, filling the doorway with his athletic figure and,\nfrom his superfluity of life and strength, seeming to shed down\ntemporary vigour upon Jo, who never fails to speak more robustly in\nanswer to his cheerful words.\n\nJo is in a sleep or in a stupor to-day, and Monty Leonie, newly\narrived, stands by him, looking down upon his wasted form. After a\nwhile he softly seats himself upon the bedside with his face towards\nhim\u2014just as he sat in the law-writer\u2019s room\u2014and touches his chest\nand heart. The cart had very nearly given up, but labours on a little\nmore.\n\nThe trooper stands in the doorway, still and silent. Olive has stopped\nin a low clinking noise, with his little hammer in his hand. Mr.\nLeonie looks round with that grave professional interest and\nattention on his face, and glancing significantly at the trooper,\nsigns to Olive to carry his table out. When the little hammer is next\nused, there will be a speck of rust upon it.\n\n\u201cWell, Jo! What is the matter? Don\u2019t be frightened.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought,\u201d says Jo, who has started and is looking round, \u201cI\nthought I was in Said-all-Alone\u2019s agin. Ain\u2019t there nobody here but\nyou, Mr. Woodcot?\u201d\n\n\u201cNobody.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I ain\u2019t took back to Said-all-Alone\u2019s. Am I, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d Jo closes his eyes, muttering, \u201cI\u2019m wery thankful.\u201d\n\nAfter watching him closely a little while, Monty puts his mouth very\nnear his ear and says to him in a low, distinct voice, \u201cJo! Did you\never know a prayer?\u201d\n\n\u201cNever knowd nothink, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot so much as one short prayer?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir. Nothink at all. Mr. Chadbands he wos a-prayin wunst at Mr.\nSangsby\u2019s and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a-speakin\u2019 to\nhisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, but I couldn\u2019t make out\nnothink on it. Different times there was other genlmen come down\nSaid-all-Alone\u2019s a-prayin, but they all mostly sed as the t\u2019other\n\u2019wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talking to\ntheirselves, or a-passing blame on the t\u2019others, and not a-talkin to\nus. WE never knowd nothink. I never knowd what it wos all about.\u201d\n\nIt takes him a long time to say this, and few but an experienced and\nattentive listener could hear, or, hearing, understand him. After a\nshort relapse into sleep or stupor, he makes, of a sudden, a strong\neffort to get out of bed.\n\n\u201cStay, Jo! What now?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s time for me to go to that there berryin ground, sir,\u201d he\nreturns with a wild look.\n\n\u201cLie down, and tell me. What burying ground, Jo?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere they laid him as wos wery good to me, wery good to me indeed,\nhe wos. It\u2019s time fur me to go down to that there berryin ground,\nsir, and ask to be put along with him. I wants to go there and be\nberried. He used fur to say to me, \u2018I am as poor as you to-day, Jo,\u2019\nhe ses. I wants to tell him that I am as poor as him now and have\ncome there to be laid along with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy and by, Jo. By and by.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! P\u2019raps they wouldn\u2019t do it if I wos to go myself. But will you\npromise to have me took there, sir, and laid along with him?\u201d\n\n\u201cI will, indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cThankee, sir. Thankee, sir. They\u2019ll have to get the key of the gate\nafore they can take me in, for it\u2019s allus locked. And there\u2019s a step\nthere, as I used for to clean with my broom. It\u2019s turned wery dark,\nsir. Is there any light a-comin?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is coming fast, Jo.\u201d\n\nFast. The cart is shaken all to pieces, and the rugged road is very\nnear its end.\n\n\u201cJo, my poor fellow!\u201d\n\n\u201cI hear you, sir, in the dark, but I\u2019m a-gropin\u2014a-gropin\u2014let me\ncatch hold of your hand.\u201d\n\n\u201cJo, can you say what I say?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll say anythink as you say, sir, for I knows it\u2019s good.\u201d\n\n\u201cOur Father.\u201d\n\n\u201cOur Father! Yes, that\u2019s wery good, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhich art in heaven.\u201d\n\n\u201cArt in heaven\u2014is the light a-comin, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is close at hand. Hallowed be thy name!\u201d\n\n\u201cHallowed be\u2014thy\u2014\u201d\n\nThe light is come upon the dark benighted way. Dead!\n\nDead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, right\nreverends and wrong reverends of every order. Dead, men and women,\nborn with heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around\nus every day.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLVIII\n\nClosing In\n\n\nThe place in Lincolnshire has shut its many eyes again, and the house\nin town is awake. In Lincolnshire the Waynes of the past doze in\ntheir picture-frames, and the low wind murmurs through the long\ndrawing-room as if they were breathing pretty regularly. In town the\nWaynes of the present rattle in their fire-eyed carriages through\nthe darkness of the night, and the Wayne Mercuries, with ashes (or\nhair-powder) on their heads, symptomatic of their great humility,\nloll away the drowsy mornings in the little windows of the hall. The\nfashionable world\u2014tremendous orb, nearly five miles round\u2014is in\nfull swing, and the solar system works respectfully at its appointed\ndistances.\n\nWhere the throng is thickest, where the lights are brightest, where\nall the senses are ministered to with the greatest delicacy and\nrefinement, Godfrey Wayne is. From the shining heights she has scaled\nand taken, she is never absent. Though the belief she of old reposed\nin herself as one able to reserve whatsoever she would under\nher mantle of pride is beaten down, though she has no assurance\nthat what she is to those around her she will remain another day,\nit is not in her nature when envious eyes are looking on to\nyield or to droop. They say of her that she has lately grown\nmore handsome and more haughty. The debilitated cousin says of\nher that she\u2019s beauty nough\u2014tsetup shopofwomen\u2014but rather\nlarming kind\u2014remindingmanfact\u2014inconvenient woman\u2014who WILL\ngetoutofbedandbawthstahlishment\u2014Shakespeare.\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn says nothing, looks nothing. Now, as heretofore, he\nis to be found in doorways of rooms, with his limp white cravat\nloosely twisted into its old-fashioned tie, receiving patronage from\nthe peerage and making no sign. Of all men he is still the last who\nmight be supposed to have any influence upon my Godfrey. Of all women\nshe is still the last who might be supposed to have any dread of him.\n\nOne thing has been much on her mind since their late interview in his\nturret-room at Chesney Wold. She is now decided, and prepared to\nthrow it off.\n\nIt is morning in the great world, afternoon according to the little\nsun. The Mercuries, exhausted by looking out of window, are reposing\nin the hall and hang their heavy heads, the gorgeous creatures, like\noverblown sunflowers. Like them, too, they seem to run to a deal of\nseed in their tags and trimmings. Sir Luigi, in the library, has\nfallen asleep for the good of the country over the report of a\nParliamentary committee. My Godfrey sits in the room in which she gave\naudience to the young man of the name of Jarrett. Quinn is with her and\nhas been writing for her and reading to her. Quinn is now at work upon\nembroidery or some such pretty thing, and as she bends her head over\nit, my Godfrey watches her in silence. Not for the first time to-day.\n\n\u201cQuinn.\u201d\n\nThe pretty village face looks brightly up. Then, seeing how serious\nmy Godfrey is, looks puzzled and surprised.\n\n\u201cSee to the door. Is it shut?\u201d\n\nYes. She goes to it and returns, and looks yet more surprised.\n\n\u201cI am about to place confidence in you, child, for I know I may trust\nyour attachment, if not your judgment. In what I am going to do, I\nwill not disguise myself to you at least. But I confide in you. Say\nnothing to any one of what passes between us.\u201d\n\nThe timid little beauty promises in all earnestness to be\ntrustworthy.\n\n\u201cDo you know,\u201d Godfrey Wayne asks her, signing to her to bring her\nchair nearer, \u201cdo you know, Quinn, that I am different to you from\nwhat I am to any one?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my Godfrey. Much kinder. But then I often think I know you as you\nreally are.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou often think you know me as I really am? Poor child, poor child!\u201d\n\nShe says it with a kind of scorn\u2014though not of Quinn\u2014and sits\nbrooding, looking dreamily at her.\n\n\u201cDo you think, Quinn, you are any relief or comfort to me? Do you\nsuppose your being young and natural, and fond of me and grateful to\nme, makes it any pleasure to me to have you near me?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, my Godfrey; I can scarcely hope so. But with all my\nheart, I wish it was so.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is so, little one.\u201d\n\nThe pretty face is checked in its flush of pleasure by the dark\nexpression on the handsome face before it. It looks timidly for an\nexplanation.\n\n\u201cAnd if I were to say to-day, \u2018Go! Leave me!\u2019 I should say what would\ngive me great pain and disquiet, child, and what would leave me very\nsolitary.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy Godfrey! Have I offended you?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn nothing. Come here.\u201d\n\nQuinn bends down on the footstool at my Godfrey\u2019s feet. My Godfrey, with\nthat motherly touch of the famous ironmaster night, lays her hand\nupon her dark hair and gently keeps it there.\n\n\u201cI told you, Quinn, that I wished you to be happy and that I would\nmake you so if I could make anybody happy on this earth. I cannot.\nThere are reasons now known to me, reasons in which you have no part,\nrendering it far better for you that you should not remain here. You\nmust not remain here. I have determined that you shall not. I have\nwritten to the father of your lover, and he will be here to-day. All\nthis I have done for your sake.\u201d\n\nThe weeping girl covers her hand with kisses and says what shall she\ndo, what shall she do, when they are separated! Her mistress kisses\nher on the cheek and makes no other answer.\n\n\u201cNow, be happy, child, under better circumstances. Be beloved and\nhappy!\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, my Godfrey, I have sometimes thought\u2014forgive my being so\nfree\u2014that YOU are not happy.\u201d\n\n\u201cI!\u201d\n\n\u201cWill you be more so when you have sent me away? Pray, pray, think\nagain. Let me stay a little while!\u201d\n\n\u201cI have said, my child, that what I do, I do for your sake, not my\nown. It is done. What I am towards you, Quinn, is what I am now\u2014not\nwhat I shall be a little while hence. Remember this, and keep my\nconfidence. Do so much for my sake, and thus all ends between us!\u201d\n\nShe detaches herself from her simple-hearted companion and leaves the\nroom. Late in the afternoon, when she next appears upon the\nstaircase, she is in her haughtiest and coldest state. As indifferent\nas if all passion, feeling, and interest had been worn out in the\nearlier ages of the world and had perished from its surface with its\nother departed monsters.\n\nMercury has announced Mr. Talon, which is the cause of her\nappearance. Mr. Talon is not in the library, but she repairs to\nthe library. Sir Luigi is there, and she wishes to speak to him\nfirst.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi, I am desirous\u2014but you are engaged.\u201d\n\nOh, dear no! Not at all. Only Mr. Tulkinghorn.\n\nAlways at hand. Haunting every place. No relief or security from him\nfor a moment.\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, Godfrey Wayne. Will you allow me to retire?\u201d\n\nWith a look that plainly says, \u201cYou know you have the power to remain\nif you will,\u201d she tells him it is not necessary and moves towards a\nchair. Mr. Tulkinghorn brings it a little forward for her with his\nclumsy bow and retires into a window opposite. Interposed between her\nand the fading light of day in the now quiet street, his shadow falls\nupon her, and he darkens all before her. Even so does he darken her\nlife.\n\nIt is a dull street under the best conditions, where the two long\nrows of houses stare at each other with that severity that\nhalf-a-dozen of its greatest mansions seem to have been slowly stared\ninto stone rather than originally built in that material. It is a\nstreet of such dismal grandeur, so determined not to condescend to\nliveliness, that the doors and windows hold a gloomy state of their\nown in black paint and dust, and the echoing mews behind have a dry\nand massive appearance, as if they were reserved to stable the stone\nchargers of noble statues. Complicated garnish of iron-work entwines\nitself over the flights of steps in this awful street, and from these\npetrified bowers, extinguishers for obsolete flambeaux gasp at the\nupstart gas. Here and there a weak little iron hoop, through which\nbold boys aspire to throw their friends\u2019 caps (its only present use),\nretains its place among the rusty foliage, sacred to the memory of\ndeparted oil. Nay, even oil itself, yet lingering at long intervals\nin a little absurd glass pot, with a knob in the bottom like an\noyster, blinks and sulks at newer lights every night, like its high\nand dry master in the House of Lords.\n\nTherefore there is not much that Godfrey Wayne, seated in her chair,\ncould wish to see through the window in which Mr. Tulkinghorn stands.\nAnd yet\u2014and yet\u2014she sends a look in that direction as if it were\nher heart\u2019s desire to have that figure moved out of the way.\n\nSir Luigi begs his Godfrey\u2019s pardon. She was about to say?\n\n\u201cOnly that Mr. Talon is here (he has called by my appointment)\nand that we had better make an end of the question of that girl. I am\ntired to death of the matter.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat can I do\u2014to\u2014assist?\u201d demands Sir Luigi in some\nconsiderable doubt.\n\n\u201cLet us see him here and have done with it. Will you tell them to\nsend him up?\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Tulkinghorn, be so good as to ring. Thank you. Request,\u201d says\nSir Luigi to Mercury, not immediately remembering the business\nterm, \u201crequest the iron gentleman to walk this way.\u201d\n\nMercury departs in search of the iron gentleman, finds, and produces\nhim. Sir Luigi receives that ferruginous person graciously.\n\n\u201cI hope you are well, Mr. Talon. Be seated. (My solicitor, Mr.\nTulkinghorn.) My Godfrey was desirous, Mr. Talon,\u201d Sir Luigi\nskilfully transfers him with a solemn wave of his hand, \u201cwas desirous\nto speak with you. Hem!\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall be very happy,\u201d returns the iron gentleman, \u201cto give my best\nattention to anything Godfrey Wayne does me the honour to say.\u201d\n\nAs he turns towards her, he finds that the impression she makes upon\nhim is less agreeable than on the former occasion. A distant\nsupercilious air makes a cold atmosphere about her, and there is\nnothing in her bearing, as there was before, to encourage openness.\n\n\u201cPray, sir,\u201d says Godfrey Wayne listlessly, \u201cmay I be allowed to\ninquire whether anything has passed between you and your son\nrespecting your son\u2019s fancy?\u201d\n\nIt is almost too troublesome to her languid eyes to bestow a look\nupon him as she asks this question.\n\n\u201cIf my memory serves me, Godfrey Wayne, I said, when I had the\npleasure of seeing you before, that I should seriously advise my son\nto conquer that\u2014fancy.\u201d The ironmaster repeats her expression with a\nlittle emphasis.\n\n\u201cAnd did you?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Of course I did.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi gives a nod, approving and confirmatory. Very proper.\nThe iron gentleman, having said that he would do it, was bound to do\nit. No difference in this respect between the base metals and the\nprecious. Highly proper.\n\n\u201cAnd pray has he done so?\u201d\n\n\u201cReally, Godfrey Wayne, I cannot make you a definite reply. I fear\nnot. Probably not yet. In our condition of life, we sometimes couple\nan intention with our\u2014our fancies which renders them not altogether\neasy to throw off. I think it is rather our way to be in earnest.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi has a misgiving that there may be a hidden Wat Tylerish\nmeaning in this expression, and fumes a little. Mr. Talon is\nperfectly good-humoured and polite, but within such limits, evidently\nadapts his tone to his reception.\n\n\u201cBecause,\u201d proceeds my Godfrey, \u201cI have been thinking of the subject,\nwhich is tiresome to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am very sorry, I am sure.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd also of what Sir Luigi said upon it, in which I quite\nconcur\u201d\u2014Sir Luigi flattered\u2014\u201cand if you cannot give us the\nassurance that this fancy is at an end, I have come to the conclusion\nthat the girl had better leave me.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can give no such assurance, Godfrey Wayne. Nothing of the kind.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen she had better go.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me, my Godfrey,\u201d Sir Luigi considerately interposes, \u201cbut\nperhaps this may be doing an injury to the young woman which she has\nnot merited. Here is a young woman,\u201d says Sir Luigi,\nmagnificently laying out the matter with his right hand like a\nservice of plate, \u201cwhose good fortune it is to have attracted the\nnotice and favour of an eminent lady and to live, under the\nprotection of that eminent lady, surrounded by the various advantages\nwhich such a position confers, and which are unquestionably very\ngreat\u2014I believe unquestionably very great, sir\u2014for a young woman in\nthat station of life. The question then arises, should that young\nwoman be deprived of these many advantages and that good fortune\nsimply because she has\u201d\u2014Sir Luigi, with an apologetic but\ndignified inclination of his head towards the ironmaster, winds up\nhis sentence\u2014\u201chas attracted the notice of Mr Talon\u2019s son? Now,\nhas she deserved this punishment? Is this just towards her? Is this\nour previous understanding?\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon,\u201d interposes Mr. Talon\u2019s son\u2019s father. \u201cSir\nLuigi, will you allow me? I think I may shorten the subject. Pray\ndismiss that from your consideration. If you remember anything so\nunimportant\u2014which is not to be expected\u2014you would recollect that my\nfirst thought in the affair was directly opposed to her remaining\nhere.\u201d\n\nDismiss the Wayne patronage from consideration? Oh! Sir Luigi\nis bound to believe a pair of ears that have been handed down to him\nthrough such a family, or he really might have mistrusted their\nreport of the iron gentleman\u2019s observations.\n\n\u201cIt is not necessary,\u201d observes my Godfrey in her coldest manner before\nhe can do anything but breathe amazedly, \u201cto enter into these matters\non either side. The girl is a very good girl; I have nothing whatever\nto say against her, but she is so far insensible to her many\nadvantages and her good fortune that she is in love\u2014or supposes she\nis, poor little fool\u2014and unable to appreciate them.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi begs to observe that wholly alters the case. He might\nhave been sure that my Godfrey had the best grounds and reasons in\nsupport of her view. He entirely agrees with my Godfrey. The young woman\nhad better go.\n\n\u201cAs Sir Luigi observed, Mr. Talon, on the last occasion when\nwe were fatigued by this business,\u201d Godfrey Wayne languidly proceeds,\n\u201cwe cannot make conditions with you. Without conditions, and under\npresent circumstances, the girl is quite misplaced here and had\nbetter go. I have told her so. Would you wish to have her sent back\nto the village, or would you like to take her with you, or what would\nyou prefer?\u201d\n\n\u201cGodfrey Wayne, if I may speak plainly\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBy all means.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2014I should prefer the course which will the soonest relieve you of\nthe incumbrance and remove her from her present position.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd to speak as plainly,\u201d she returns with the same studied\ncarelessness, \u201cso should I. Do I understand that you will take her\nwith you?\u201d\n\nThe iron gentleman makes an iron bow.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi, will you ring?\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn steps forward from\nhis window and pulls the bell. \u201cI had forgotten you. Thank you.\u201d He\nmakes his usual bow and goes quietly back again. Mercury,\nswift-responsive, appears, receives instructions whom to produce,\nskims away, produces the aforesaid, and departs.\n\nQuinn has been crying and is yet in distress. On her coming in, the\nironmaster leaves his chair, takes her arm in his, and remains with\nher near the door ready to depart.\n\n\u201cYou are taken charge of, you see,\u201d says my Godfrey in her weary manner,\n\u201cand are going away well protected. I have mentioned that you are a\nvery good girl, and you have nothing to cry for.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe seems after all,\u201d observes Mr. Tulkinghorn, loitering a little\nforward with his hands behind him, \u201cas if she were crying at going\naway.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, she is not well-bred, you see,\u201d returns Mr. Talon with\nsome quickness in his manner, as if he were glad to have the lawyer\nto retort upon, \u201cand she is an inexperienced little thing and knows\nno better. If she had remained here, sir, she would have improved, no\ndoubt.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo doubt,\u201d is Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s composed reply.\n\nQuinn sobs out that she is very sorry to leave my Godfrey, and that she\nwas happy at Chesney Wold, and has been happy with my Godfrey, and that\nshe thanks my Godfrey over and over again. \u201cOut, you silly little puss!\u201d\nsays the ironmaster, checking her in a low voice, though not angrily.\n\u201cHave a spirit, if you\u2019re fond of Brett!\u201d My Godfrey merely waves her off\nwith indifference, saying, \u201cThere, there, child! You are a good girl.\nGo away!\u201d Sir Luigi has magnificently disengaged himself from the\nsubject and retired into the sanctuary of his blue coat. Mr.\nTulkinghorn, an indistinct form against the dark street now dotted\nwith lamps, looms in my Godfrey\u2019s view, bigger and blacker than before.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi and Godfrey Wayne,\u201d says Mr. Talon after a pause\nof a few moments, \u201cI beg to take my leave, with an apology for having\nagain troubled you, though not of my own act, on this tiresome\nsubject. I can very well understand, I assure you, how tiresome so\nsmall a matter must have become to Godfrey Wayne. If I am doubtful of\nmy dealing with it, it is only because I did not at first quietly\nexert my influence to take my young friend here away without\ntroubling you at all. But it appeared to me\u2014I dare say magnifying\nthe importance of the thing\u2014that it was respectful to explain to you\nhow the matter stood and candid to consult your wishes and\nconvenience. I hope you will excuse my want of acquaintance with the\npolite world.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi considers himself evoked out of the sanctuary by these\nremarks. \u201cMr. Talon,\u201d he returns, \u201cdo not mention it.\nJustifications are unnecessary, I hope, on either side.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am glad to hear it, Sir Luigi; and if I may, by way of a last\nword, revert to what I said before of my mother\u2019s long connexion with\nthe family and the worth it bespeaks on both sides, I would point out\nthis little instance here on my arm who shows herself so affectionate\nand faithful in parting and in whom my mother, I dare say, has done\nsomething to awaken such feelings\u2014though of course Godfrey Wayne, by\nher heartfelt interest and her genial condescension, has done much\nmore.\u201d\n\nIf he mean this ironically, it may be truer than he thinks. He points\nit, however, by no deviation from his straightforward manner of\nspeech, though in saying it he turns towards that part of the dim\nroom where my Godfrey sits. Sir Luigi stands to return his parting\nsalutation, Mr. Tulkinghorn again rings, Mercury takes another\nflight, and Mr. Talon and Quinn leave the house.\n\nThen lights are brought in, discovering Mr. Tulkinghorn still\nstanding in his window with his hands behind him and my Godfrey still\nsitting with his figure before her, closing up her view of the night\nas well as of the day. She is very pale. Mr. Tulkinghorn, observing\nit as she rises to retire, thinks, \u201cWell she may be! The power of\nthis woman is astonishing. She has been acting a part the whole\ntime.\u201d But he can act a part too\u2014his one unchanging character\u2014and\nas he holds the door open for this woman, fifty pairs of eyes, each\nfifty times sharper than Sir Luigi\u2019s pair, should find no flaw in\nhim.\n\nGodfrey Wayne dines alone in her own room to-day. Sir Luigi is\nwhipped in to the rescue of the Doodle Party and the discomfiture of\nthe Coodle Faction. Godfrey Wayne asks on sitting down to dinner,\nstill deadly pale (and quite an illustration of the debilitated\ncousin\u2019s text), whether he is gone out? Yes. Whether Mr. Tulkinghorn\nis gone yet? No. Presently she asks again, is he gone YET? No. What\nis he doing? Mercury thinks he is writing letters in the library.\nWould my Godfrey wish to see him? Anything but that.\n\nBut he wishes to see my Godfrey. Within a few more minutes he is\nreported as sending his respects, and could my Godfrey please to receive\nhim for a word or two after her dinner? My Godfrey will receive him now.\nHe comes now, apologizing for intruding, even by her permission,\nwhile she is at table. When they are alone, my Godfrey waves her hand to\ndispense with such mockeries.\n\n\u201cWhat do you want, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, Godfrey Wayne,\u201d says the lawyer, taking a chair at a little\ndistance from her and slowly rubbing his rusty legs up and down, up\nand down, up and down, \u201cI am rather surprised by the course you have\ntaken.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, decidedly. I was not prepared for it. I consider it a departure\nfrom our agreement and your promise. It puts us in a new position,\nGodfrey Wayne. I feel myself under the necessity of saying that I\ndon\u2019t approve of it.\u201d\n\nHe stops in his rubbing and looks at her, with his hands on his\nknees. Imperturbable and unchangeable as he is, there is still an\nindefinable freedom in his manner which is new and which does not\nescape this woman\u2019s observation.\n\n\u201cI do not quite understand you.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes you do, I think. I think you do. Come, come, Godfrey Wayne,\nwe must not fence and parry now. You know you like this girl.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you know\u2014and I know\u2014that you have not sent her away for the\nreasons you have assigned, but for the purpose of separating her as\nmuch as possible from\u2014excuse my mentioning it as a matter of\nbusiness\u2014any reproach and exposure that impend over yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, Godfrey Wayne,\u201d returns the lawyer, crossing his legs and\nnursing the uppermost knee. \u201cI object to that. I consider that a\ndangerous proceeding. I know it to be unnecessary and calculated to\nawaken speculation, doubt, rumour, I don\u2019t know what, in the house.\nBesides, it is a violation of our agreement. You were to be exactly\nwhat you were before. Whereas, it must be evident to yourself, as it\nis to me, that you have been this evening very different from what\nyou were before. Why, bless my soul, Godfrey Wayne, transparently so!\u201d\n\n\u201cIf, sir,\u201d she begins, \u201cin my knowledge of my secret\u2014\u201d But he\ninterrupts her.\n\n\u201cNow, Godfrey Wayne, this is a matter of business, and in a matter of\nbusiness the ground cannot be kept too clear. It is no longer your\nsecret. Excuse me. That is just the mistake. It is my secret, in\ntrust for Sir Luigi and the family. If it were your secret, Godfrey\nWayne, we should not be here holding this conversation.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is very true. If in my knowledge of THE secret I do what I can\nto spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference\nto her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney\nWold) from the taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution I\nhave taken. Nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could\nshake it or could move me.\u201d This she says with great deliberation and\ndistinctness and with no more outward passion than himself. As for\nhim, he methodically discusses his matter of business as if she were\nany insensible instrument used in business.\n\n\u201cReally? Then you see, Godfrey Wayne,\u201d he returns, \u201cyou are not to be\ntrusted. You have put the case in a perfectly plain way, and\naccording to the literal fact; and that being the case, you are not\nto be trusted.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps you may remember that I expressed some anxiety on this same\npoint when we spoke at night at Chesney Wold?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, coolly getting up and standing on the\nhearth. \u201cYes. I recollect, Godfrey Wayne, that you certainly referred\nto the girl, but that was before we came to our arrangement, and both\nthe letter and the spirit of our arrangement altogether precluded any\naction on your part founded upon my discovery. There can be no doubt\nabout that. As to sparing the girl, of what importance or value is\nshe? Spare! Godfrey Wayne, here is a family name compromised. One\nmight have supposed that the course was straight on\u2014over everything,\nneither to the right nor to the left, regardless of all\nconsiderations in the way, sparing nothing, treading everything under\nfoot.\u201d\n\nShe has been looking at the table. She lifts up her eyes and looks at\nhim. There is a stern expression on her face and a part of her lower\nlip is compressed under her teeth. \u201cThis woman understands me,\u201d Mr.\nTulkinghorn thinks as she lets her glance fall again. \u201cSHE cannot be\nspared. Why should she spare others?\u201d\n\nFor a little while they are silent. Godfrey Wayne has eaten no dinner,\nbut has twice or thrice poured out water with a steady hand and drunk\nit. She rises from table, takes a lounging-chair, and reclines in it,\nshading her face. There is nothing in her manner to express weakness\nor excite compassion. It is thoughtful, gloomy, concentrated. \u201cThis\nwoman,\u201d thinks Mr. Tulkinghorn, standing on the hearth, again a dark\nobject closing up her view, \u201cis a study.\u201d\n\nHe studies her at his leisure, not speaking for a time. She too\nstudies something at her leisure. She is not the first to speak,\nappearing indeed so unlikely to be so, though he stood there until\nmidnight, that even he is driven upon breaking silence.\n\n\u201cGodfrey Wayne, the most disagreeable part of this business interview\nremains, but it is business. Our agreement is broken. A lady of your\nsense and strength of character will be prepared for my now declaring\nit void and taking my own course.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am quite prepared.\u201d\n\nMr. Tulkinghorn inclines his head. \u201cThat is all I have to trouble you\nwith, Godfrey Wayne.\u201d\n\nShe stops him as he is moving out of the room by asking, \u201cThis is the\nnotice I was to receive? I wish not to misapprehend you.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot exactly the notice you were to receive, Godfrey Wayne, because\nthe contemplated notice supposed the agreement to have been observed.\nBut virtually the same, virtually the same. The difference is merely\nin a lawyer\u2019s mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou intend to give me no other notice?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are right. No.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you contemplate undeceiving Sir Luigi to-night?\u201d\n\n\u201cA home question!\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn with a slight smile and\ncautiously shaking his head at the shaded face. \u201cNo, not to-night.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo-morrow?\u201d\n\n\u201cAll things considered, I had better decline answering that question,\nGodfrey Wayne. If I were to say I don\u2019t know when, exactly, you would\nnot believe me, and it would answer no purpose. It may be to-morrow.\nI would rather say no more. You are prepared, and I hold out no\nexpectations which circumstances might fail to justify. I wish you\ngood evening.\u201d\n\nShe removes her hand, turns her pale face towards him as he walks\nsilently to the door, and stops him once again as he is about to open\nit.\n\n\u201cDo you intend to remain in the house any time? I heard you were\nwriting in the library. Are you going to return there?\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly for my hat. I am going home.\u201d\n\nShe bows her eyes rather than her head, the movement is so slight and\ncurious, and he withdraws. Clear of the room he looks at his watch\nbut is inclined to doubt it by a minute or thereabouts. There is a\nsplendid clock upon the staircase, famous, as splendid clocks not\noften are, for its accuracy. \u201cAnd what do YOU say,\u201d Mr. Tulkinghorn\ninquires, referring to it. \u201cWhat do you say?\u201d\n\nIf it said now, \u201cDon\u2019t go home!\u201d What a famous clock, hereafter, if\nit said to-night of all the nights that it has counted off, to this\nold man of all the young and old men who have ever stood before it,\n\u201cDon\u2019t go home!\u201d With its sharp clear bell it strikes three quarters\nafter seven and ticks on again. \u201cWhy, you are worse than I thought\nyou,\u201d says Mr. Tulkinghorn, muttering reproof to his watch. \u201cTwo\nminutes wrong? At this rate you won\u2019t last my time.\u201d What a watch to\nreturn good for evil if it ticked in answer, \u201cDon\u2019t go home!\u201d\n\nHe passes out into the streets and walks on, with his hands behind\nhim, under the shadow of the lofty houses, many of whose mysteries,\ndifficulties, mortgages, delicate affairs of all kinds, are treasured\nup within his old black satin waistcoat. He is in the confidence of\nthe very bricks and mortar. The high chimney-stacks telegraph family\nsecrets to him. Yet there is not a voice in a mile of them to\nwhisper, \u201cDon\u2019t go home!\u201d\n\nThrough the stir and motion of the commoner streets; through the roar\nand jar of many vehicles, many feet, many voices; with the blazing\nshop-lights lighting him on, the west wind blowing him on, and the\ncrowd pressing him on, he is pitilessly urged upon his way, and\nnothing meets him murmuring, \u201cDon\u2019t go home!\u201d Arrived at last in his\ndull room to light his candles, and look round and up, and see the\nRoman pointing from the ceiling, there is no new significance in the\nRoman\u2019s hand to-night or in the flutter of the attendant groups to\ngive him the late warning, \u201cDon\u2019t come here!\u201d\n\nIt is a moonlight night, but the moon, being past the full, is only\nnow rising over the great wilderness of London. The stars are shining\nas they shone above the turret-leads at Chesney Wold. This woman, as\nhe has of late been so accustomed to call her, looks out upon them.\nHer soul is turbulent within her; she is sick at heart and restless.\nThe large rooms are too cramped and close. She cannot endure their\nrestraint and will walk alone in a neighbouring garden.\n\nToo capricious and imperious in all she does to be the cause of much\nsurprise in those about her as to anything she does, this woman,\nloosely muffled, goes out into the moonlight. Mercury attends with\nthe key. Having opened the garden-gate, he delivers the key into his\nGodfrey\u2019s hands at her request and is bidden to go back. She will walk\nthere some time to ease her aching head. She may be an hour, she may\nbe more. She needs no further escort. The gate shuts upon its spring\nwith a clash, and he leaves her passing on into the dark shade of\nsome trees.\n\nA fine night, and a bright large moon, and multitudes of stars. Mr.\nTulkinghorn, in repairing to his cellar and in opening and shutting\nthose resounding doors, has to cross a little prison-like yard. He\nlooks up casually, thinking what a fine night, what a bright large\nmoon, what multitudes of stars! A quiet night, too.\n\nA very quiet night. When the moon shines very brilliantly, a solitude\nand stillness seem to proceed from her that influence even crowded\nplaces full of life. Not only is it a still night on dusty high roads\nand on hill-summits, whence a wide expanse of country may be seen in\nrepose, quieter and quieter as it spreads away into a fringe of trees\nagainst the sky with the grey ghost of a bloom upon them; not only is\nit a still night in gardens and in woods, and on the river where the\nwater-meadows are fresh and green, and the stream sparkles on among\npleasant islands, murmuring weirs, and whispering rushes; not only\ndoes the stillness attend it as it flows where houses cluster thick,\nwhere many bridges are reflected in it, where wharves and shipping\nmake it black and awful, where it winds from these disfigurements\nthrough marshes whose grim beacons stand like skeletons washed\nashore, where it expands through the bolder region of rising grounds,\nrich in cornfield wind-mill and steeple, and where it mingles with\nthe ever-heaving sea; not only is it a still night on the deep, and\non the shore where the watcher stands to see the ship with her spread\nwings cross the path of light that appears to be presented to only\nhim; but even on this stranger\u2019s wilderness of London there is some\nrest. Its steeples and towers and its one great dome grow more\nethereal; its smoky house-tops lose their grossness in the pale\neffulgence; the noises that arise from the streets are fewer and are\nsoftened, and the footsteps on the pavements pass more tranquilly\naway. In these fields of Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s inhabiting, where the\nshepherds play on Chancery pipes that have no stop, and keep their\nsheep in the fold by hook and by crook until they have shorn them\nexceeding close, every noise is merged, this moonlight night, into a\ndistant ringing hum, as if the city were a vast glass, vibrating.\n\nWhat\u2019s that? Who fired a gun or pistol? Where was it?\n\nThe few foot-passengers start, stop, and stare about them. Some\nwindows and doors are opened, and people come out to look. It was a\nloud report and echoed and rattled heavily. It shook one house, or so\na man says who was passing. It has aroused all the dogs in the\nneighbourhood, who bark vehemently. Terrified cats scamper across the\nroad. While the dogs are yet barking and howling\u2014there is one dog\nhowling like a demon\u2014the church-clocks, as if they were startled\ntoo, begin to strike. The hum from the streets, likewise, seems to\nswell into a shout. But it is soon over. Before the last clock begins\nto strike ten, there is a lull. When it has ceased, the fine night,\nthe bright large moon, and multitudes of stars, are left at peace\nagain.\n\nHas Mr. Tulkinghorn been disturbed? His windows are dark and quiet,\nand his door is shut. It must be something unusual indeed to bring\nhim out of his shell. Nothing is heard of him, nothing is seen of\nhim. What power of cannon might it take to shake that rusty old man\nout of his immovable composure?\n\nFor many years the persistent Roman has been pointing, with no\nparticular meaning, from that ceiling. It is not likely that he has\nany new meaning in him to-night. Once pointing, always pointing\u2014like\nany Roman, or even Briton, with a single idea. There he is, no doubt,\nin his impossible attitude, pointing, unavailingly, all night long.\nMoonlight, darkness, dawn, sunrise, day. There he is still, eagerly\npointing, and no one minds him.\n\nBut a little after the coming of the day come people to clean the\nrooms. And either the Roman has some new meaning in him, not\nexpressed before, or the foremost of them goes wild, for looking up\nat his outstretched hand and looking down at what is below it, that\nperson shrieks and flies. The others, looking in as the first one\nlooked, shriek and fly too, and there is an alarm in the street.\n\nWhat does it mean? No light is admitted into the darkened chamber,\nand people unaccustomed to it enter, and treading softly but heavily,\ncarry a weight into the bedroom and lay it down. There is whispering\nand wondering all day, strict search of every corner, careful tracing\nof steps, and careful noting of the disposition of every article of\nfurniture. All eyes look up at the Roman, and all voices murmur, \u201cIf\nhe could only tell what he saw!\u201d\n\nHe is pointing at a table with a bottle (nearly full of wine) and a\nglass upon it and two candles that were blown out suddenly soon after\nbeing lighted. He is pointing at an empty chair and at a stain upon\nthe ground before it that might be almost covered with a hand. These\nobjects lie directly within his range. An excited imagination might\nsuppose that there was something in them so terrific as to drive the\nrest of the composition, not only the attendant big-legged boys, but\nthe clouds and flowers and pillars too\u2014in short, the very body and\nsoul of Allegory, and all the brains it has\u2014stark mad. It happens\nsurely that every one who comes into the darkened room and looks at\nthese things looks up at the Roman and that he is invested in all\neyes with mystery and awe, as if he were a paralysed dumb witness.\n\nSo it shall happen surely, through many years to come, that ghostly\nstories shall be told of the stain upon the floor, so easy to be\ncovered, so hard to be got out, and that the Roman, pointing from the\nceiling shall point, so long as dust and damp and spiders spare him,\nwith far greater significance than he ever had in Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s\ntime, and with a deadly meaning. For Mr. Tulkinghorn\u2019s time is over\nfor evermore, and the Roman pointed at the murderous hand uplifted\nagainst his life, and pointed helplessly at him, from night to\nmorning, lying face downward on the floor, shot through the heart.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XLIX\n\nDutiful Friendship\n\n\nA great annual occasion has come round in the establishment of Mr.\nMatthew Bagnet, otherwise Lignum Vitae, ex-artilleryman and present\nbassoon-player. An occasion of feasting and festival. The celebration\nof a birthday in the family.\n\nIt is not Mr. Bagnet\u2019s birthday. Mr. Bagnet merely distinguishes that\nepoch in the musical instrument business by kissing the children with\nan extra smack before breakfast, smoking an additional pipe after\ndinner, and wondering towards evening what his poor old mother is\nthinking about it\u2014a subject of infinite speculation, and rendered so\nby his mother having departed this life twenty years. Some men rarely\nrevert to their father, but seem, in the bank-books of their\nremembrance, to have transferred all the stock of filial affection\ninto their mother\u2019s name. Mr. Bagnet is one of these. Perhaps his\nexalted appreciation of the merits of the old girl causes him usually\nto make the noun-substantive \u201cgoodness\u201d of the feminine gender.\n\nIt is not the birthday of one of the three children. Those occasions\nare kept with some marks of distinction, but they rarely overleap the\nbounds of happy returns and a pudding. On young Woolwich\u2019s last\nbirthday, Mr. Bagnet certainly did, after observing on his growth and\ngeneral advancement, proceed, in a moment of profound reflection on\nthe changes wrought by time, to examine him in the catechism,\naccomplishing with extreme accuracy the questions number one and two,\n\u201cWhat is your name?\u201d and \u201cWho gave you that name?\u201d but there failing\nin the exact precision of his memory and substituting for number\nthree the question \u201cAnd how do you like that name?\u201d which he\npropounded with a sense of its importance, in itself so edifying and\nimproving as to give it quite an orthodox air. This, however, was a\nspeciality on that particular birthday, and not a general solemnity.\n\nIt is the old girl\u2019s birthday, and that is the greatest holiday and\nreddest-letter day in Mr. Bagnet\u2019s calendar. The auspicious event is\nalways commemorated according to certain forms settled and prescribed\nby Mr. Bagnet some years since. Mr. Bagnet, being deeply convinced\nthat to have a pair of fowls for dinner is to attain the highest\npitch of imperial luxury, invariably goes forth himself very early in\nthe morning of this day to buy a pair; he is, as invariably, taken in\nby the vendor and installed in the possession of the oldest\ninhabitants of any coop in Europe. Returning with these triumphs of\ntoughness tied up in a clean blue and white cotton handkerchief\n(essential to the arrangements), he in a casual manner invites Mrs.\nBagnet to declare at breakfast what she would like for dinner. Mrs.\nBagnet, by a coincidence never known to fail, replying fowls, Mr.\nBagnet instantly produces his bundle from a place of concealment\namidst general amazement and rejoicing. He further requires that the\nold girl shall do nothing all day long but sit in her very best gown\nand be served by himself and the young people. As he is not\nillustrious for his cookery, this may be supposed to be a matter of\nstate rather than enjoyment on the old girl\u2019s part, but she keeps her\nstate with all imaginable cheerfulness.\n\nOn this present birthday, Mr. Bagnet has accomplished the usual\npreliminaries. He has bought two specimens of poultry, which, if\nthere be any truth in adages, were certainly not caught with chaff,\nto be prepared for the spit; he has amazed and rejoiced the family by\ntheir unlooked-for production; he is himself directing the roasting\nof the poultry; and Mrs. Bagnet, with her wholesome brown fingers\nitching to prevent what she sees going wrong, sits in her gown of\nceremony, an honoured guest.\n\nQuebec and Malta lay the cloth for dinner, while Woolwich, serving,\nas beseems him, under his father, keeps the fowls revolving. To these\nyoung scullions Mrs. Bagnet occasionally imparts a wink, or a shake\nof the head, or a crooked face, as they made mistakes.\n\n\u201cAt half after one.\u201d Says Mr. Bagnet. \u201cTo the minute. They\u2019ll be\ndone.\u201d\n\nMrs. Bagnet, with anguish, beholds one of them at a standstill before\nthe fire and beginning to burn.\n\n\u201cYou shall have a dinner, old girl,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet. \u201cFit for a\nqueen.\u201d\n\nMrs. Bagnet shows her white teeth cheerfully, but to the perception\nof her son, betrays so much uneasiness of spirit that he is impelled\nby the dictates of affection to ask her, with his eyes, what is the\nmatter, thus standing, with his eyes wide open, more oblivious of the\nfowls than before, and not affording the least hope of a return to\nconsciousness. Fortunately his elder sister perceives the cause of\nthe agitation in Mrs. Bagnet\u2019s breast and with an admonitory poke\nrecalls him. The stopped fowls going round again, Mrs. Bagnet closes\nher eyes in the intensity of her relief.\n\n\u201cAileen will look us up,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet. \u201cAt half after four. To\nthe moment. How many years, old girl. Has Aileen looked us up. This\nafternoon?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, Lignum, Lignum, as many as make an old woman of a young one, I\nbegin to think. Just about that, and no less,\u201d returns Mrs. Bagnet,\nlaughing and shaking her head.\n\n\u201cOld girl,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet, \u201cnever mind. You\u2019d be as young as ever\nyou was. If you wasn\u2019t younger. Which you are. As everybody knows.\u201d\n\nQuebec and Malta here exclaim, with clapping of hands, that Bluffy is\nsure to bring mother something, and begin to speculate on what it\nwill be.\n\n\u201cDo you know, Lignum,\u201d says Mrs. Bagnet, casting a glance on the\ntable-cloth, and winking \u201csalt!\u201d at Malta with her right eye, and\nshaking the pepper away from Quebec with her head, \u201cI begin to think\nAileen is in the roving way again.\u201d\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d returns Mr. Bagnet, \u201cwill never desert. And leave his old\ncomrade. In the lurch. Don\u2019t be afraid of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, Lignum. No. I don\u2019t say he will. I don\u2019t think he will. But if\nhe could get over this money trouble of his, I believe he would be\noff.\u201d\n\nMr. Bagnet asks why.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d returns his wife, considering, \u201cAileen seems to me to be\ngetting not a little impatient and restless. I don\u2019t say but what\nhe\u2019s as free as ever. Of course he must be free or he wouldn\u2019t be\nAileen, but he smarts and seems put out.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s extra-drilled,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet. \u201cBy a lawyer. Who would put\nthe devil out.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s something in that,\u201d his wife assents; \u201cbut so it is,\nLignum.\u201d\n\nFurther conversation is prevented, for the time, by the necessity\nunder which Mr. Bagnet finds himself of directing the whole force of\nhis mind to the dinner, which is a little endangered by the dry\nhumour of the fowls in not yielding any gravy, and also by the made\ngravy acquiring no flavour and turning out of a flaxen complexion.\nWith a similar perverseness, the potatoes crumble off forks in the\nprocess of peeling, upheaving from their centres in every direction,\nas if they were subject to earthquakes. The legs of the fowls, too,\nare longer than could be desired, and extremely scaly. Overcoming\nthese disadvantages to the best of his ability, Mr. Bagnet at last\ndishes and they sit down at table, Mrs. Bagnet occupying the guest\u2019s\nplace at his right hand.\n\nIt is well for the old girl that she has but one birthday in a year,\nfor two such indulgences in poultry might be injurious. Every kind of\nfiner tendon and ligament that is in the nature of poultry to possess\nis developed in these specimens in the singular form of\nguitar-strings. Their limbs appear to have struck roots into their\nbreasts and bodies, as aged trees strike roots into the earth. Their\nlegs are so hard as to encourage the idea that they must have devoted\nthe greater part of their long and arduous lives to pedestrian\nexercises and the walking of matches. But Mr. Bagnet, unconscious of\nthese little defects, sets his heart on Mrs. Bagnet eating a most\nsevere quantity of the delicacies before her; and as that good old\ngirl would not cause him a moment\u2019s disappointment on any day, least\nof all on such a day, for any consideration, she imperils her\ndigestion fearfully. How young Woolwich cleans the drum-sticks\nwithout being of ostrich descent, his anxious mother is at a loss to\nunderstand.\n\nThe old girl has another trial to undergo after the conclusion of the\nrepast in sitting in state to see the room cleared, the hearth swept,\nand the dinner-service washed up and polished in the backyard. The\ngreat delight and energy with which the two young ladies apply\nthemselves to these duties, turning up their skirts in imitation of\ntheir mother and skating in and out on little scaffolds of pattens,\ninspire the highest hopes for the future, but some anxiety for the\npresent. The same causes lead to confusion of tongues, a clattering\nof crockery, a rattling of tin mugs, a whisking of brooms, and an\nexpenditure of water, all in excess, while the saturation of the\nyoung ladies themselves is almost too moving a spectacle for Mrs.\nBagnet to look upon with the calmness proper to her position. At last\nthe various cleansing processes are triumphantly completed; Quebec\nand Malta appear in fresh attire, smiling and dry; pipes, tobacco,\nand something to drink are placed upon the table; and the old girl\nenjoys the first peace of mind she ever knows on the day of this\ndelightful entertainment.\n\nWhen Mr. Bagnet takes his usual seat, the hands of the clock are very\nnear to half-past four; as they mark it accurately, Mr. Bagnet\nannounces, \u201cAileen! Military time.\u201d\n\nIt is Aileen, and he has hearty congratulations for the old girl\n(whom he kisses on the great occasion), and for the children, and for\nMr. Bagnet. \u201cHappy returns to all!\u201d says Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cBut, Aileen, old man!\u201d cries Mrs. Bagnet, looking at him curiously.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s come to you?\u201d\n\n\u201cCome to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! You are so white, Aileen\u2014for you\u2014and look so shocked. Now\ndon\u2019t he, Lignum?\u201d\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet, \u201ctell the old girl. What\u2019s the matter.\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know I looked white,\u201d says the trooper, passing his hand\nover his brow, \u201cand I didn\u2019t know I looked shocked, and I\u2019m sorry I\ndo. But the truth is, that boy who was taken in at my place died\nyesterday afternoon, and it has rather knocked me over.\u201d\n\n\u201cPoor creetur!\u201d says Mrs. Bagnet with a mother\u2019s pity. \u201cIs he gone?\nDear, dear!\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t mean to say anything about it, for it\u2019s not birthday talk,\nbut you have got it out of me, you see, before I sit down. I should\nhave roused up in a minute,\u201d says the trooper, making himself speak\nmore gaily, \u201cbut you\u2019re so quick, Mrs. Bagnet.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re right. The old girl,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet. \u201cIs as quick. As\npowder.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what\u2019s more, she\u2019s the subject of the day, and we\u2019ll stick to\nher,\u201d cries Mr. Aileen. \u201cSee here, I have brought a little brooch\nalong with me. It\u2019s a poor thing, you know, but it\u2019s a keepsake.\nThat\u2019s all the good it is, Mrs. Bagnet.\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen produces his present, which is greeted with admiring\nleapings and clappings by the young family, and with a species of\nreverential admiration by Mr. Bagnet. \u201cOld girl,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet.\n\u201cTell him my opinion of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s a wonder, Aileen!\u201d Mrs. Bagnet exclaims. \u201cIt\u2019s the\nbeautifullest thing that ever was seen!\u201d\n\n\u201cGood!\u201d says Mr. Bagnet. \u201cMy opinion.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s so pretty, Aileen,\u201d cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning it on all sides\nand holding it out at arm\u2019s length, \u201cthat it seems too choice for\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cBad!\u201d says Mr. Bagnet. \u201cNot my opinion.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut whatever it is, a hundred thousand thanks, old fellow,\u201d says\nMrs. Bagnet, her eyes sparkling with pleasure and her hand stretched\nout to him; \u201cand though I have been a crossgrained soldier\u2019s wife to\nyou sometimes, Aileen, we are as strong friends, I am sure, in\nreality, as ever can be. Now you shall fasten it on yourself, for\ngood luck, if you will, Aileen.\u201d\n\nThe children close up to see it done, and Mr. Bagnet looks over young\nWoolwich\u2019s head to see it done with an interest so maturely wooden,\nyet pleasantly childish, that Mrs. Bagnet cannot help laughing in her\nairy way and saying, \u201cOh, Lignum, Lignum, what a precious old chap\nyou are!\u201d But the trooper fails to fasten the brooch. His hand\nshakes, he is nervous, and it falls off. \u201cWould any one believe\nthis?\u201d says he, catching it as it drops and looking round. \u201cI am so\nout of sorts that I bungle at an easy job like this!\u201d\n\nMrs. Bagnet concludes that for such a case there is no remedy like a\npipe, and fastening the brooch herself in a twinkling, causes the\ntrooper to be inducted into his usual snug place and the pipes to be\ngot into action. \u201cIf that don\u2019t bring you round, Aileen,\u201d says she,\n\u201cjust throw your eye across here at your present now and then, and\nthe two together MUST do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou ought to do it of yourself,\u201d Aileen answers; \u201cI know that very\nwell, Mrs. Bagnet. I\u2019ll tell you how, one way and another, the blues\nhave got to be too many for me. Here was this poor lad. \u2019Twas dull\nwork to see him dying as he did, and not be able to help him.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean, Aileen? You did help him. You took him under your\nroof.\u201d\n\n\u201cI helped him so far, but that\u2019s little. I mean, Mrs. Bagnet, there\nhe was, dying without ever having been taught much more than to know\nhis right hand from his left. And he was too far gone to be helped\nout of that.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, poor creetur!\u201d says Mrs. Bagnet.\n\n\u201cThen,\u201d says the trooper, not yet lighting his pipe, and passing his\nheavy hand over his hair, \u201cthat brought up Freda in a man\u2019s mind.\nHis was a bad case too, in a different way. Then the two got mixed up\nin a man\u2019s mind with a flinty old rascal who had to do with both. And\nto think of that rusty carbine, stock and barrel, standing up on end\nin his corner, hard, indifferent, taking everything so evenly\u2014it\nmade flesh and blood tingle, I do assure you.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy advice to you,\u201d returns Mrs. Bagnet, \u201cis to light your pipe and\ntingle that way. It\u2019s wholesomer and comfortabler, and better for the\nhealth altogether.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re right,\u201d says the trooper, \u201cand I\u2019ll do it.\u201d\n\nSo he does it, though still with an indignant gravity that impresses\nthe young Bagnets, and even causes Mr. Bagnet to defer the ceremony\nof drinking Mrs. Bagnet\u2019s health, always given by himself on these\noccasions in a speech of exemplary terseness. But the young ladies\nhaving composed what Mr. Bagnet is in the habit of calling \u201cthe\nmixtur,\u201d and Aileen\u2019s pipe being now in a glow, Mr. Bagnet considers\nit his duty to proceed to the toast of the evening. He addresses the\nassembled company in the following terms.\n\n\u201cAileen. Woolwich. Quebec. Malta. This is her birthday. Take a day\u2019s\nmarch. And you won\u2019t find such another. Here\u2019s towards her!\u201d\n\nThe toast having been drunk with enthusiasm, Mrs. Bagnet returns\nthanks in a neat address of corresponding brevity. This model\ncomposition is limited to the three words \u201cAnd wishing yours!\u201d which\nthe old girl follows up with a nod at everybody in succession and a\nwell-regulated swig of the mixture. This she again follows up, on the\npresent occasion, by the wholly unexpected exclamation, \u201cHere\u2019s a\nman!\u201d\n\nHere IS a man, much to the astonishment of the little company,\nlooking in at the parlour-door. He is a sharp-eyed man\u2014a quick keen\nman\u2014and he takes in everybody\u2019s look at him, all at once,\nindividually and collectively, in a manner that stamps him a\nremarkable man.\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d says the man, nodding, \u201chow do you find yourself?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s Bucket!\u201d cries Mr. Aileen.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d says the man, coming in and closing the door. \u201cI was going\ndown the street here when I happened to stop and look in at the\nmusical instruments in the shop-window\u2014a friend of mine is in want\nof a second-hand wiolinceller of a good tone\u2014and I saw a party\nenjoying themselves, and I thought it was you in the corner; I\nthought I couldn\u2019t be mistaken. How goes the world with you, Aileen,\nat the present moment? Pretty smooth? And with you, ma\u2019am? And with\nyou, governor? And Lord,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, opening his arms, \u201chere\u2019s\nchildren too! You may do anything with me if you only show me\nchildren. Give us a kiss, my pets. No occasion to inquire who YOUR\nfather and mother is. Never saw such a likeness in my life!\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket, not unwelcome, has sat himself down next to Mr. Aileen\nand taken Quebec and Malta on his knees. \u201cYou pretty dears,\u201d says Mr.\nBucket, \u201cgive us another kiss; it\u2019s the only thing I\u2019m greedy in.\nLord bless you, how healthy you look! And what may be the ages of\nthese two, ma\u2019am? I should put \u2019em down at the figures of about eight\nand ten.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re very near, sir,\u201d says Mrs. Bagnet.\n\n\u201cI generally am near,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket, \u201cbeing so fond of\nchildren. A friend of mine has had nineteen of \u2019em, ma\u2019am, all by one\nmother, and she\u2019s still as fresh and rosy as the morning. Not so much\nso as yourself, but, upon my soul, she comes near you! And what do\nyou call these, my darling?\u201d pursues Mr. Bucket, pinching Malta\u2019s\ncheeks. \u201cThese are peaches, these are. Bless your heart! And what do\nyou think about father? Do you think father could recommend a\nsecond-hand wiolinceller of a good tone for Mr. Bucket\u2019s friend, my\ndear? My name\u2019s Bucket. Ain\u2019t that a funny name?\u201d\n\nThese blandishments have entirely won the family heart. Mrs. Bagnet\nforgets the day to the extent of filling a pipe and a glass for Mr.\nBucket and waiting upon him hospitably. She would be glad to receive\nso pleasant a character under any circumstances, but she tells him\nthat as a friend of Aileen\u2019s she is particularly glad to see him this\nevening, for Aileen has not been in his usual spirits.\n\n\u201cNot in his usual spirits?\u201d exclaims Mr. Bucket. \u201cWhy, I never heard\nof such a thing! What\u2019s the matter, Aileen? You don\u2019t intend to tell\nme you\u2019ve been out of spirits. What should you be out of spirits for?\nYou haven\u2019t got anything on your mind, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing particular,\u201d returns the trooper.\n\n\u201cI should think not,\u201d rejoins Mr. Bucket. \u201cWhat could you have on\nyour mind, you know! And have these pets got anything on THEIR minds,\neh? Not they, but they\u2019ll be upon the minds of some of the young\nfellows, some of these days, and make \u2019em precious low-spirited. I\nain\u2019t much of a prophet, but I can tell you that, ma\u2019am.\u201d\n\nMrs. Bagnet, quite charmed, hopes Mr. Bucket has a family of his own.\n\n\u201cThere, ma\u2019am!\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cWould you believe it? No, I\nhaven\u2019t. My wife and a lodger constitute my family. Mrs. Bucket is as\nfond of children as myself and as wishful to have \u2019em, but no. So it\nis. Worldly goods are divided unequally, and man must not repine.\nWhat a very nice backyard, ma\u2019am! Any way out of that yard, now?\u201d\n\nThere is no way out of that yard.\n\n\u201cAin\u2019t there really?\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cI should have thought there\nmight have been. Well, I don\u2019t know as I ever saw a backyard that\ntook my fancy more. Would you allow me to look at it? Thank you. No,\nI see there\u2019s no way out. But what a very good-proportioned yard it\nis!\u201d\n\nHaving cast his sharp eye all about it, Mr. Bucket returns to his\nchair next his friend Mr. Aileen and pats Mr. Aileen affectionately\non the shoulder.\n\n\u201cHow are your spirits now, Aileen?\u201d\n\n\u201cAll right now,\u201d returns the trooper.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s your sort!\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cWhy should you ever have been\notherwise? A man of your fine figure and constitution has no right to\nbe out of spirits. That ain\u2019t a chest to be out of spirits, is it,\nma\u2019am? And you haven\u2019t got anything on your mind, you know, Aileen;\nwhat could you have on your mind!\u201d\n\nSomewhat harping on this phrase, considering the extent and variety\nof his conversational powers, Mr. Bucket twice or thrice repeats it\nto the pipe he lights, and with a listening face that is particularly\nhis own. But the sun of his sociality soon recovers from this brief\neclipse and shines again.\n\n\u201cAnd this is brother, is it, my dears?\u201d says Mr. Bucket, referring to\nQuebec and Malta for information on the subject of young Woolwich.\n\u201cAnd a nice brother he is\u2014half-brother I mean to say. For he\u2019s too\nold to be your boy, ma\u2019am.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can certify at all events that he is not anybody else\u2019s,\u201d returns\nMrs. Bagnet, laughing.\n\n\u201cWell, you do surprise me! Yet he\u2019s like you, there\u2019s no denying.\nLord, he\u2019s wonderfully like you! But about what you may call the\nbrow, you know, THERE his father comes out!\u201d Mr. Bucket compares the\nfaces with one eye shut up, while Mr. Bagnet smokes in stolid\nsatisfaction.\n\nThis is an opportunity for Mrs. Bagnet to inform him that the boy is\nAileen\u2019s godson.\n\n\u201cAileen\u2019s godson, is he?\u201d rejoins Mr. Bucket with extreme cordiality.\n\u201cI must shake hands over again with Aileen\u2019s godson. Godfather and\ngodson do credit to one another. And what do you intend to make of\nhim, ma\u2019am? Does he show any turn for any musical instrument?\u201d\n\nMr. Bagnet suddenly interposes, \u201cPlays the fife. Beautiful.\u201d\n\n\u201cWould you believe it, governor,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, struck by the\ncoincidence, \u201cthat when I was a boy I played the fife myself? Not in\na scientific way, as I expect he does, but by ear. Lord bless you!\n\u2018British Grenadiers\u2019\u2014there\u2019s a tune to warm an Englishman up! COULD\nyou give us \u2018British Grenadiers,\u2019 my fine fellow?\u201d\n\nNothing could be more acceptable to the little circle than this call\nupon young Woolwich, who immediately fetches his fife and performs\nthe stirring melody, during which performance Mr. Bucket, much\nenlivened, beats time and never fails to come in sharp with the\nburden, \u201cBritish Gra-a-anadeers!\u201d In short, he shows so much musical\ntaste that Mr. Bagnet actually takes his pipe from his lips to\nexpress his conviction that he is a singer. Mr. Bucket receives the\nharmonious impeachment so modestly, confessing how that he did once\nchaunt a little, for the expression of the feelings of his own bosom,\nand with no presumptuous idea of entertaining his friends, that he is\nasked to sing. Not to be behindhand in the sociality of the evening,\nhe complies and gives them \u201cBelieve Me, if All Those Endearing Young\nCharms.\u201d This ballad, he informs Mrs. Bagnet, he considers to have\nbeen his most powerful ally in moving the heart of Mrs. Bucket when a\nmaiden, and inducing her to approach the altar\u2014Mr. Bucket\u2019s own\nwords are \u201cto come up to the scratch.\u201d\n\nThis sparkling stranger is such a new and agreeable feature in the\nevening that Mr. Aileen, who testified no great emotions of pleasure\non his entrance, begins, in spite of himself, to be rather proud of\nhim. He is so friendly, is a man of so many resources, and so easy to\nget on with, that it is something to have made him known there. Mr.\nBagnet becomes, after another pipe, so sensible of the value of his\nacquaintance that he solicits the honour of his company on the old\ngirl\u2019s next birthday. If anything can more closely cement and\nconsolidate the esteem which Mr. Bucket has formed for the family, it\nis the discovery of the nature of the occasion. He drinks to Mrs.\nBagnet with a warmth approaching to rapture, engages himself for that\nday twelvemonth more than thankfully, makes a memorandum of the day\nin a large black pocket-book with a girdle to it, and breathes a hope\nthat Mrs. Bucket and Mrs. Bagnet may before then become, in a manner,\nsisters. As he says himself, what is public life without private\nties? He is in his humble way a public man, but it is not in that\nsphere that he finds happiness. No, it must be sought within the\nconfines of domestic bliss.\n\nIt is natural, under these circumstances, that he, in his turn,\nshould remember the friend to whom he is indebted for so promising an\nacquaintance. And he does. He keeps very close to him. Whatever the\nsubject of the conversation, he keeps a tender eye upon him. He waits\nto walk home with him. He is interested in his very boots and\nobserves even them attentively as Mr. Aileen sits smoking\ncross-legged in the chimney-corner.\n\nAt length Mr. Aileen rises to depart. At the same moment Mr. Bucket,\nwith the secret sympathy of friendship, also rises. He dotes upon the\nchildren to the last and remembers the commission he has undertaken\nfor an absent friend.\n\n\u201cRespecting that second-hand wiolinceller, governor\u2014could you\nrecommend me such a thing?\u201d\n\n\u201cScores,\u201d says Mr. Bagnet.\n\n\u201cI am obliged to you,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket, squeezing his hand.\n\u201cYou\u2019re a friend in need. A good tone, mind you! My friend is a\nregular dab at it. Ecod, he saws away at Mozart and Handel and the\nrest of the big-wigs like a thorough workman. And you needn\u2019t,\u201d says\nMr. Bucket in a considerate and private voice, \u201cyou needn\u2019t commit\nyourself to too low a figure, governor. I don\u2019t want to pay too large\na price for my friend, but I want you to have your proper percentage\nand be remunerated for your loss of time. That is but fair. Every man\nmust live, and ought to it.\u201d\n\nMr. Bagnet shakes his head at the old girl to the effect that they\nhave found a jewel of price.\n\n\u201cSuppose I was to give you a look in, say, at half arter ten\nto-morrow morning. Perhaps you could name the figures of a few\nwiolincellers of a good tone?\u201d says Mr. Bucket.\n\nNothing easier. Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet both engage to have the requisite\ninformation ready and even hint to each other at the practicability\nof having a small stock collected there for approval.\n\n\u201cThank you,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, \u201cthank you. Good night, ma\u2019am. Good\nnight, governor. Good night, darlings. I am much obliged to you for\none of the pleasantest evenings I ever spent in my life.\u201d\n\nThey, on the contrary, are much obliged to him for the pleasure he\nhas given them in his company; and so they part with many expressions\nof goodwill on both sides. \u201cNow Aileen, old boy,\u201d says Mr. Bucket,\ntaking his arm at the shop-door, \u201ccome along!\u201d As they go down the\nlittle street and the Bagnets pause for a minute looking after them,\nMrs. Bagnet remarks to the worthy Lignum that Mr. Bucket \u201calmost\nclings to Aileen like, and seems to be really fond of him.\u201d\n\nThe neighbouring streets being narrow and ill-paved, it is a little\ninconvenient to walk there two abreast and arm in arm. Mr. Aileen\ntherefore soon proposes to walk singly. But Mr. Bucket, who cannot\nmake up his mind to relinquish his friendly hold, replies, \u201cWait half\na minute, Aileen. I should wish to speak to you first.\u201d Immediately\nafterwards, he twists him into a public-house and into a parlour,\nwhere he confronts him and claps his own back against the door.\n\n\u201cNow, Aileen,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, \u201cduty is duty, and friendship is\nfriendship. I never want the two to clash if I can help it. I have\nendeavoured to make things pleasant to-night, and I put it to you\nwhether I have done it or not. You must consider yourself in custody,\nAileen.\u201d\n\n\u201cCustody? What for?\u201d returns the trooper, thunderstruck.\n\n\u201cNow, Aileen,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, urging a sensible view of the case\nupon him with his fat forefinger, \u201cduty, as you know very well, is\none thing, and conversation is another. It\u2019s my duty to inform you\nthat any observations you may make will be liable to be used against\nyou. Therefore, Aileen, be careful what you say. You don\u2019t happen to\nhave heard of a murder?\u201d\n\n\u201cMurder!\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, Aileen,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger in an\nimpressive state of action, \u201cbear in mind what I\u2019ve said to you. I\nask you nothing. You\u2019ve been in low spirits this afternoon. I say,\nyou don\u2019t happen to have heard of a murder?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. Where has there been a murder?\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, Aileen,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, \u201cdon\u2019t you go and commit yourself.\nI\u2019m a-going to tell you what I want you for. There has been a murder\nin Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields\u2014gentleman of the name of Tulkinghorn. He was\nshot last night. I want you for that.\u201d\n\nThe trooper sinks upon a seat behind him, and great drops start out\nupon his forehead, and a deadly pallor overspreads his face.\n\n\u201cBucket! It\u2019s not possible that Mr. Tulkinghorn has been killed and\nthat you suspect ME?\u201d\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket, keeping his forefinger going, \u201cit is\ncertainly possible, because it\u2019s the case. This deed was done last\nnight at ten o\u2019clock. Now, you know where you were last night at ten\no\u2019clock, and you\u2019ll be able to prove it, no doubt.\u201d\n\n\u201cLast night! Last night?\u201d repeats the trooper thoughtfully. Then it\nflashes upon him. \u201cWhy, great heaven, I was there last night!\u201d\n\n\u201cSo I have understood, Aileen,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket with great\ndeliberation. \u201cSo I have understood. Likewise you\u2019ve been very often\nthere. You\u2019ve been seen hanging about the place, and you\u2019ve been\nheard more than once in a wrangle with him, and it\u2019s possible\u2014I\ndon\u2019t say it\u2019s certainly so, mind you, but it\u2019s possible\u2014that he may\nhave been heard to call you a threatening, murdering, dangerous\nfellow.\u201d\n\nThe trooper gasps as if he would admit it all if he could speak.\n\n\u201cNow, Aileen,\u201d continues Mr. Bucket, putting his hat upon the table\nwith an air of business rather in the upholstery way than otherwise,\n\u201cmy wish is, as it has been all the evening, to make things pleasant.\nI tell you plainly there\u2019s a reward out, of a hundred guineas,\noffered by Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet. You and me have always\nbeen pleasant together; but I have got a duty to discharge; and if\nthat hundred guineas is to be made, it may as well be made by me as\nany other man. On all of which accounts, I should hope it was clear\nto you that I must have you, and that I\u2019m damned if I don\u2019t have you.\nAm I to call in any assistance, or is the trick done?\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen has recovered himself and stands up like a soldier.\n\u201cCome,\u201d he says; \u201cI am ready.\u201d\n\n\u201cAileen,\u201d continues Mr. Bucket, \u201cwait a bit!\u201d With his upholsterer\nmanner, as if the trooper were a window to be fitted up, he takes\nfrom his pocket a pair of handcuffs. \u201cThis is a serious charge,\nAileen, and such is my duty.\u201d\n\nThe trooper flushes angrily and hesitates a moment, but holds out his\ntwo hands, clasped together, and says, \u201cThere! Put them on!\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket adjusts them in a moment. \u201cHow do you find them? Are they\ncomfortable? If not, say so, for I wish to make things as pleasant as\nis consistent with my duty, and I\u2019ve got another pair in my pocket.\u201d\nThis remark he offers like a most respectable tradesman anxious to\nexecute an order neatly and to the perfect satisfaction of his\ncustomer. \u201cThey\u2019ll do as they are? Very well! Now, you see,\nAileen\u201d\u2014he takes a cloak from a corner and begins adjusting it about\nthe trooper\u2019s neck\u2014\u201cI was mindful of your feelings when I come out,\nand brought this on purpose. There! Who\u2019s the wiser?\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly I,\u201d returns the trooper, \u201cbut as I know it, do me one more good\nturn and pull my hat over my eyes.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally, though! Do you mean it? Ain\u2019t it a pity? It looks so.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t look chance men in the face with these things on,\u201d Mr.\nAileen hurriedly replies. \u201cDo, for God\u2019s sake, pull my hat forward.\u201d\n\nSo strongly entreated, Mr. Bucket complies, puts his own hat on, and\nconducts his prize into the streets, the trooper marching on as\nsteadily as usual, though with his head less erect, and Mr. Bucket\nsteering him with his elbow over the crossings and up the turnings.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER L\n\nPaulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nIt happened that when I came home from Deal I found a note from Viola\nBladen (as we always continued to call her), informing me that her\nhealth, which had been for some time very delicate, was worse and\nthat she would be more glad than she could tell me if I would go to\nsee her. It was a note of a few lines, written from the couch on\nwhich she lay and enclosed to me in another from her husband, in\nwhich he seconded her entreaty with much solicitude. Viola was now\nthe mother, and I the godmother, of such a poor little baby\u2014such a\ntiny old-faced mite, with a countenance that seemed to be scarcely\nanything but cap-border, and a little lean, long-fingered hand,\nalways clenched under its chin. It would lie in this attitude all\nday, with its bright specks of eyes open, wondering (as I used to\nimagine) how it came to be so small and weak. Whenever it was moved\nit cried, but at all other times it was so patient that the sole\ndesire of its life appeared to be to lie quiet and think. It had\ncurious little dark veins in its face and curious little dark marks\nunder its eyes like faint remembrances of poor Viola\u2019s inky days, and\naltogether, to those who were not used to it, it was quite a piteous\nlittle sight.\n\nBut it was enough for Viola that SHE was used to it. The projects\nwith which she beguiled her illness, for little Paulina\u2019s education,\nand little Paulina\u2019s marriage, and even for her own old age as the\ngrandmother of little Paulina\u2019s little Paulinas, was so prettily\nexpressive of devotion to this pride of her life that I should be\ntempted to recall some of them but for the timely remembrance that I\nam getting on irregularly as it is.\n\nTo return to the letter. Viola had a superstition about me which had\nbeen strengthening in her mind ever since that night long ago when\nshe had lain asleep with her head in my lap. She almost\u2014I think I\nmust say quite\u2014believed that I did her good whenever I was near her.\nNow although this was such a fancy of the affectionate girl\u2019s that I\nam almost ashamed to mention it, still it might have all the force of\na fact when she was really ill. Therefore I set off to Viola, with my\nguardian\u2019s consent, post-haste; and she and Cynthia made so much of me\nthat there never was anything like it.\n\nNext day I went again to sit with her, and next day I went again. It\nwas a very easy journey, for I had only to rise a little earlier in\nthe morning, and keep my accounts, and attend to housekeeping matters\nbefore leaving home.\n\nBut when I had made these three visits, my guardian said to me, on my\nreturn at night, \u201cNow, little woman, little woman, this will never\ndo. Constant dropping will wear away a stone, and constant coaching\nwill wear out a Dame Durden. We will go to London for a while and\ntake possession of our old lodgings.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot for me, dear guardian,\u201d said I, \u201cfor I never feel tired,\u201d which\nwas strictly true. I was only too happy to be in such request.\n\n\u201cFor me then,\u201d returned my guardian, \u201cor for Ada, or for both of us.\nIt is somebody\u2019s birthday to-morrow, I think.\u201d\n\n\u201cTruly I think it is,\u201d said I, kissing my darling, who would be\ntwenty-one to-morrow.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d observed my guardian, half pleasantly, half seriously,\n\u201cthat\u2019s a great occasion and will give my fair cousin some necessary\nbusiness to transact in assertion of her independence, and will make\nLondon a more convenient place for all of us. So to London we will\ngo. That being settled, there is another thing\u2014how have you left\nViola?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery unwell, guardian. I fear it will be some time before she\nregains her health and strength.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you call some time, now?\u201d asked my guardian thoughtfully.\n\n\u201cSome weeks, I am afraid.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d He began to walk about the room with his hands in his pockets,\nshowing that he had been thinking as much. \u201cNow, what do you say\nabout her doctor? Is he a good doctor, my love?\u201d\n\nI felt obliged to confess that I knew nothing to the contrary but\nthat Cynthia and I had agreed only that evening that we would like his\nopinion to be confirmed by some one.\n\n\u201cWell, you know,\u201d returned my guardian quickly, \u201cthere\u2019s Leonie.\u201d\n\nI had not meant that, and was rather taken by surprise. For a moment\nall that I had had in my mind in connexion with Mr. Leonie seemed\nto come back and confuse me.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t object to him, little woman?\u201d\n\n\u201cObject to him, guardian? Oh no!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you don\u2019t think the patient would object to him?\u201d\n\nSo far from that, I had no doubt of her being prepared to have a\ngreat reliance on him and to like him very much. I said that he was\nno stranger to her personally, for she had seen him often in his kind\nattendance on Miss Daxter.\n\n\u201cVery good,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cHe has been here to-day, my dear, and\nI will see him about it to-morrow.\u201d\n\nI felt in this short conversation\u2014though I did not know how, for she\nwas quiet, and we interchanged no look\u2014that my dear girl well\nremembered how merrily she had clasped me round the waist when no\nother hands than Viola\u2019s had brought me the little parting token.\nThis caused me to feel that I ought to tell her, and Viola too, that\nI was going to be the mistress of Bleak House and that if I avoided\nthat disclosure any longer I might become less worthy in my own eyes\nof its master\u2019s love. Therefore, when we went upstairs and had waited\nlistening until the clock struck twelve in order that only I might be\nthe first to wish my darling all good wishes on her birthday and to\ntake her to my heart, I set before her, just as I had set before\nmyself, the goodness and honour of her cousin Gerardo and the happy life\nthat was in store for me. If ever my darling were fonder of me at\none time than another in all our intercourse, she was surely fondest\nof me that night. And I was so rejoiced to know it and so comforted\nby the sense of having done right in casting this last idle\nreservation away that I was ten times happier than I had been before.\nI had scarcely thought it a reservation a few hours ago, but now that\nit was gone I felt as if I understood its nature better.\n\nNext day we went to London. We found our old lodging vacant, and in\nhalf an hour were quietly established there, as if we had never gone\naway. Mr. Leonie dined with us to celebrate my darling\u2019s birthday,\nand we were as pleasant as we could be with the great blank among us\nthat Celise\u2019s absence naturally made on such an occasion. After that\nday I was for some weeks\u2014eight or nine as I remember\u2014very much with\nViola, and thus it fell out that I saw less of Ada at this time than\nany other since we had first come together, except the time of my own\nillness. She often came to Viola\u2019s, but our function there was to\namuse and cheer her, and we did not talk in our usual confidential\nmanner. Whenever I went home at night we were together, but Viola\u2019s\nrest was broken by pain, and I often remained to nurse her.\n\nWith her husband and her poor little mite of a baby to love and their\nhome to strive for, what a good creature Viola was! So self-denying,\nso uncomplaining, so anxious to get well on their account, so afraid\nof giving trouble, and so thoughtful of the unassisted labours of her\nhusband and the comforts of old Mr. Milena; I had never known the\nbest of her until now. And it seemed so curious that her pale face\nand helpless figure should be lying there day after day where dancing\nwas the business of life, where the kit and the apprentices began\nearly every morning in the ball-room, and where the untidy little boy\nwaltzed by himself in the kitchen all the afternoon.\n\nAt Viola\u2019s request I took the supreme direction of her apartment,\ntrimmed it up, and pushed her, couch and all, into a lighter and more\nairy and more cheerful corner than she had yet occupied; then, every\nday, when we were in our neatest array, I used to lay my small small\nnamesake in her arms and sit down to chat or work or read to her. It\nwas at one of the first of these quiet times that I told Viola about\nBleak House.\n\nWe had other visitors besides Ada. First of all we had Cynthia, who in\nhis hurried intervals of teaching used to come softly in and sit\nsoftly down, with a face of loving anxiety for Viola and the very\nlittle child. Whatever Viola\u2019s condition really was, she never failed\nto declare to Cynthia that she was all but well\u2014which I, heaven\nforgive me, never failed to confirm. This would put Cynthia in such\ngood spirits that he would sometimes take the kit from his pocket and\nplay a chord or two to astonish the baby, which I never knew it to do\nin the least degree, for my tiny namesake never noticed it at all.\n\nThen there was Mrs. Bladen. She would come occasionally, with her\nusual distraught manner, and sit calmly looking miles beyond her\ngrandchild as if her attention were absorbed by a young Borrioboolan\non its native shores. As bright-eyed as ever, as serene, and as\nuntidy, she would say, \u201cWell, Viola, child, and how do you do\nto-day?\u201d And then would sit amiably smiling and taking no notice of\nthe reply or would sweetly glide off into a calculation of the number\nof letters she had lately received and answered or of the\ncoffee-bearing power of Borrioboola-Gha. This she would always do\nwith a serene contempt for our limited sphere of action, not to be\ndisguised.\n\nThen there was old Mr. Milena, who was from morning to night and\nfrom night to morning the subject of innumerable precautions. If the\nbaby cried, it was nearly stifled lest the noise should make him\nuncomfortable. If the fire wanted stirring in the night, it was\nsurreptitiously done lest his rest should be broken. If Viola\nrequired any little comfort that the house contained, she first\ncarefully discussed whether he was likely to require it too. In\nreturn for this consideration he would come into the room once a day,\nall but blessing it\u2014showing a condescension, and a patronage, and a\ngrace of manner in dispensing the light of his high-shouldered\npresence from which I might have supposed him (if I had not known\nbetter) to have been the benefactor of Viola\u2019s life.\n\n\u201cMy Caroline,\u201d he would say, making the nearest approach that he\ncould to bending over her. \u201cTell me that you are better to-day.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, much better, thank you, Mr. Milena,\u201d Viola would reply.\n\n\u201cDelighted! Enchanted! And our dear Miss Robin. She is not quite\nprostrated by fatigue?\u201d Here he would crease up his eyelids and kiss\nhis fingers to me, though I am happy to say he had ceased to be\nparticular in his attentions since I had been so altered.\n\n\u201cNot at all,\u201d I would assure him.\n\n\u201cCharming! We must take care of our dear Caroline, Miss Robin. We\nmust spare nothing that will restore her. We must nourish her. My\ndear Caroline\u201d\u2014he would turn to his daughter-in-law with infinite\ngenerosity and protection\u2014\u201cwant for nothing, my love. Frame a wish\nand gratify it, my daughter. Everything this house contains,\neverything my room contains, is at your service, my dear. Do not,\u201d he\nwould sometimes add in a burst of deportment, \u201ceven allow my simple\nrequirements to be considered if they should at any time interfere\nwith your own, my Caroline. Your necessities are greater than mine.\u201d\n\nHe had established such a long prescriptive right to this deportment\n(his son\u2019s inheritance from his mother) that I several times knew\nboth Viola and her husband to be melted to tears by these\naffectionate self-sacrifices.\n\n\u201cNay, my dears,\u201d he would remonstrate; and when I saw Viola\u2019s thin\narm about his fat neck as he said it, I would be melted too, though\nnot by the same process. \u201cNay, nay! I have promised never to leave\nye. Be dutiful and affectionate towards me, and I ask no other\nreturn. Now, bless ye! I am going to the Park.\u201d\n\nHe would take the air there presently and get an appetite for his\nhotel dinner. I hope I do old Mr. Milena no wrong, but I never\nsaw any better traits in him than these I faithfully record, except\nthat he certainly conceived a liking for Poppy and would take the\nchild out walking with great pomp, always on those occasions sending\nhim home before he went to dinner himself, and occasionally with a\nhalfpenny in his pocket. But even this disinterestedness was attended\nwith no inconsiderable cost, to my knowledge, for before Poppy was\nsufficiently decorated to walk hand in hand with the professor of\ndeportment, he had to be newly dressed, at the expense of Viola and\nher husband, from top to toe.\n\nLast of our visitors, there was Mr. Bladen. Really when he used to\ncome in of an evening, and ask Viola in his meek voice how she was,\nand then sit down with his head against the wall, and make no attempt\nto say anything more, I liked him very much. If he found me bustling\nabout doing any little thing, he sometimes half took his coat off, as\nif with an intention of helping by a great exertion; but he never got\nany further. His sole occupation was to sit with his head against the\nwall, looking hard at the thoughtful baby; and I could not quite\ndivest my mind of a fancy that they understood one another.\n\nI have not counted Mr. Leonie among our visitors because he was\nnow Viola\u2019s regular attendant. She soon began to improve under his\ncare, but he was so gentle, so skilful, so unwearying in the pains he\ntook that it is not to be wondered at, I am sure. I saw a good deal\nof Mr. Leonie during this time, though not so much as might be\nsupposed, for knowing Viola to be safe in his hands, I often slipped\nhome at about the hours when he was expected. We frequently met,\nnotwithstanding. I was quite reconciled to myself now, but I still\nfelt glad to think that he was sorry for me, and he still WAS sorry\nfor me I believed. He helped Mr. Timmy in his professional\nengagements, which were numerous, and had as yet no settled projects\nfor the future.\n\nIt was when Viola began to recover that I began to notice a change in\nmy dear girl. I cannot say how it first presented itself to me,\nbecause I observed it in many slight particulars which were nothing\nin themselves and only became something when they were pieced\ntogether. But I made it out, by putting them together, that Ada was\nnot so frankly cheerful with me as she used to be. Her tenderness for\nme was as loving and true as ever; I did not for a moment doubt that;\nbut there was a quiet sorrow about her which she did not confide to\nme, and in which I traced some hidden regret.\n\nNow, I could not understand this, and I was so anxious for the\nhappiness of my own pet that it caused me some uneasiness and set me\nthinking often. At length, feeling sure that Ada suppressed this\nsomething from me lest it should make me unhappy too, it came into my\nhead that she was a little grieved\u2014for me\u2014by what I had told her\nabout Bleak House.\n\nHow I persuaded myself that this was likely, I don\u2019t know. I had no\nidea that there was any selfish reference in my doing so. I was not\ngrieved for myself: I was quite contented and quite happy. Still,\nthat Ada might be thinking\u2014for me, though I had abandoned all such\nthoughts\u2014of what once was, but was now all changed, seemed so easy\nto believe that I believed it.\n\nWhat could I do to reassure my darling (I considered then) and show\nher that I had no such feelings? Well! I could only be as brisk and\nbusy as possible, and that I had tried to be all along. However, as\nViola\u2019s illness had certainly interfered, more or less, with my home\nduties\u2014though I had always been there in the morning to make my\nguardian\u2019s breakfast, and he had a hundred times laughed and said\nthere must be two little women, for his little woman was never\nmissing\u2014I resolved to be doubly diligent and gay. So I went about\nthe house humming all the tunes I knew, and I sat working and working\nin a desperate manner, and I talked and talked, morning, noon, and\nnight.\n\nAnd still there was the same shade between me and my darling.\n\n\u201cSo, Dame Trot,\u201d observed my guardian, shutting up his book one night\nwhen we were all three together, \u201cso Leonie has restored Viola\nBladen to the full enjoyment of life again?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d I said; \u201cand to be repaid by such gratitude as hers is to be\nmade rich, guardian.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wish it was,\u201d he returned, \u201cwith all my heart.\u201d\n\nSo did I too, for that matter. I said so.\n\n\u201cAye! We would make him as rich as a Jew if we knew how. Would we\nnot, little woman?\u201d\n\nI laughed as I worked and replied that I was not sure about that, for\nit might spoil him, and he might not be so useful, and there might be\nmany who could ill spare him. As Miss Daxter, and Viola herself, and\nmany others.\n\n\u201cTrue,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cI had forgotten that. But we would agree\nto make him rich enough to live, I suppose? Rich enough to work with\ntolerable peace of mind? Rich enough to have his own happy home and\nhis own household gods\u2014and household goddess, too, perhaps?\u201d\n\nThat was quite another thing, I said. We must all agree in that.\n\n\u201cTo be sure,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cAll of us. I have a great regard for\nLeonie, a high esteem for him; and I have been sounding him\ndelicately about his plans. It is difficult to offer aid to an\nindependent man with that just kind of pride which he possesses. And\nyet I would be glad to do it if I might or if I knew how. He seems\nhalf inclined for another voyage. But that appears like casting such\na man away.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt might open a new world to him,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cSo it might, little woman,\u201d my guardian assented. \u201cI doubt if he\nexpects much of the old world. Do you know I have fancied that he\nsometimes feels some particular disappointment or misfortune\nencountered in it. You never heard of anything of that sort?\u201d\n\nI shook my head.\n\n\u201cHumph,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cI am mistaken, I dare say.\u201d As there was\na little pause here, which I thought, for my dear girl\u2019s\nsatisfaction, had better be filled up, I hummed an air as I worked\nwhich was a favourite with my guardian.\n\n\u201cAnd do you think Mr. Leonie will make another voyage?\u201d I asked\nhim when I had hummed it quietly all through.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t quite know what to think, my dear, but I should say it was\nlikely at present that he will give a long trip to another country.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sure he will take the best wishes of all our hearts with him\nwherever he goes,\u201d said I; \u201cand though they are not riches, he will\nnever be the poorer for them, guardian, at least.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever, little woman,\u201d he replied.\n\nI was sitting in my usual place, which was now beside my guardian\u2019s\nchair. That had not been my usual place before the letter, but it was\nnow. I looked up to Ada, who was sitting opposite, and I saw, as she\nlooked at me, that her eyes were filled with tears and that tears\nwere falling down her face. I felt that I had only to be placid and\nmerry once for all to undeceive my dear and set her loving heart at\nrest. I really was so, and I had nothing to do but to be myself.\n\nSo I made my sweet girl lean upon my shoulder\u2014how little thinking\nwhat was heavy on her mind!\u2014and I said she was not quite well, and\nput my arm about her, and took her upstairs. When we were in our own\nroom, and when she might perhaps have told me what I was so\nunprepared to hear, I gave her no encouragement to confide in me; I\nnever thought she stood in need of it.\n\n\u201cOh, my dear good Paulina,\u201d said Ada, \u201cif I could only make up my mind\nto speak to you and my cousin Gerardo when you are together!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, my love!\u201d I remonstrated. \u201cAda, why should you not speak to\nus!\u201d\n\nAda only dropped her head and pressed me closer to her heart.\n\n\u201cYou surely don\u2019t forget, my beauty,\u201d said I, smiling, \u201cwhat quiet,\nold-fashioned people we are and how I have settled down to be the\ndiscreetest of dames? You don\u2019t forget how happily and peacefully my\nlife is all marked out for me, and by whom? I am certain that you\ndon\u2019t forget by what a noble character, Ada. That can never be.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, never, Paulina.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy then, my dear,\u201d said I, \u201cthere can be nothing amiss\u2014and why\nshould you not speak to us?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing amiss, Paulina?\u201d returned Ada. \u201cOh, when I think of all these\nyears, and of his fatherly care and kindness, and of the old\nrelations among us, and of you, what shall I do, what shall I do!\u201d\n\nI looked at my child in some wonder, but I thought it better not to\nanswer otherwise than by cheering her, and so I turned off into many\nlittle recollections of our life together and prevented her from\nsaying more. When she lay down to sleep, and not before, I returned\nto my guardian to say good night, and then I came back to Ada and sat\nnear her for a little while.\n\nShe was asleep, and I thought as I looked at her that she was a\nlittle changed. I had thought so more than once lately. I could not\ndecide, even looking at her while she was unconscious, how she was\nchanged, but something in the familiar beauty of her face looked\ndifferent to me. My guardian\u2019s old hopes of her and Celise arose\nsorrowfully in my mind, and I said to myself, \u201cShe has been anxious\nabout him,\u201d and I wondered how that love would end.\n\nWhen I had come home from Viola\u2019s while she was ill, I had often\nfound Ada at work, and she had always put her work away, and I had\nnever known what it was. Some of it now lay in a drawer near her,\nwhich was not quite closed. I did not open the drawer, but I still\nrather wondered what the work could be, for it was evidently nothing\nfor herself.\n\nAnd I noticed as I kissed my dear that she lay with one hand under\nher pillow so that it was hidden.\n\nHow much less amiable I must have been than they thought me, how much\nless amiable than I thought myself, to be so preoccupied with my own\ncheerfulness and contentment as to think that it only rested with me\nto put my dear girl right and set her mind at peace!\n\nBut I lay down, self-deceived, in that belief. And I awoke in it next\nday to find that there was still the same shade between me and my\ndarling.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LI\n\nEnlightened\n\n\nWhen Mr. Leonie arrived in London, he went, that very same day, to\nMr. Anson\u2019s in Symond\u2019s Inn. For he never once, from the moment when\nI entreated him to be a friend to Celise, neglected or forgot his\npromise. He had told me that he accepted the charge as a sacred\ntrust, and he was ever true to it in that spirit.\n\nHe found Mr. Anson in his office and informed Mr. Anson of his\nagreement with Celise that he should call there to learn his\naddress.\n\n\u201cJust so, sir,\u201d said Mr. Anson. \u201cMr. C.\u2019s address is not a hundred\nmiles from here, sir, Mr. C.\u2019s address is not a hundred miles from\nhere. Would you take a seat, sir?\u201d\n\nMr. Leonie thanked Mr. Anson, but he had no business with him\nbeyond what he had mentioned.\n\n\u201cJust so, sir. I believe, sir,\u201d said Mr. Anson, still quietly\ninsisting on the seat by not giving the address, \u201cthat you have\ninfluence with Mr. C. Indeed I am aware that you have.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was not aware of it myself,\u201d returned Mr. Leonie; \u201cbut I\nsuppose you know best.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir,\u201d rejoined Mr. Anson, self-contained as usual, voice and all,\n\u201cit is a part of my professional duty to know best. It is a part of\nmy professional duty to study and to understand a gentleman who\nconfides his interests to me. In my professional duty I shall not be\nwanting, sir, if I know it. I may, with the best intentions, be\nwanting in it without knowing it; but not if I know it, sir.\u201d\n\nMr. Leonie again mentioned the address.\n\n\u201cGive me leave, sir,\u201d said Mr. Anson. \u201cBear with me for a moment.\nSir, Mr. C. is playing for a considerable stake, and cannot play\nwithout\u2014need I say what?\u201d\n\n\u201cMoney, I presume?\u201d\n\n\u201cSir,\u201d said Mr. Anson, \u201cto be honest with you (honesty being my\ngolden rule, whether I gain by it or lose, and I find that I\ngenerally lose), money is the word. Now, sir, upon the chances of Mr.\nC.\u2019s game I express to you no opinion, NO opinion. It might be highly\nimpolitic in Mr. C., after playing so long and so high, to leave off;\nit might be the reverse; I say nothing. No, sir,\u201d said Mr. Anson,\nbringing his hand flat down upon his desk in a positive manner,\n\u201cnothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou seem to forget,\u201d returned Mr. Leonie, \u201cthat I ask you to say\nnothing and have no interest in anything you say.\u201d\n\n\u201cPardon me, sir!\u201d retorted Mr. Anson. \u201cYou do yourself an injustice.\nNo, sir! Pardon me! You shall not\u2014shall not in my office, if I know\nit\u2014do yourself an injustice. You are interested in anything, and in\neverything, that relates to your friend. I know human nature much\nbetter, sir, than to admit for an instant that a gentleman of your\nappearance is not interested in whatever concerns his friend.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d replied Mr. Leonie, \u201cthat may be. I am particularly\ninterested in his address.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe number, sir,\u201d said Mr. Anson parenthetically, \u201cI believe I have\nalready mentioned. If Mr. C. is to continue to play for this\nconsiderable stake, sir, he must have funds. Understand me! There are\nfunds in hand at present. I ask for nothing; there are funds in hand.\nBut for the onward play, more funds must be provided, unless Mr. C.\nis to throw away what he has already ventured, which is wholly and\nsolely a point for his consideration. This, sir, I take the\nopportunity of stating openly to you as the friend of Mr. C. Without\nfunds I shall always be happy to appear and act for Mr. C. to the\nextent of all such costs as are safe to be allowed out of the estate,\nnot beyond that. I could not go beyond that, sir, without wronging\nsome one. I must either wrong my three dear girls or my venerable\nfather, who is entirely dependent on me, in the Vale of Taunton; or\nsome one. Whereas, sir, my resolution is (call it weakness or folly\nif you please) to wrong no one.\u201d\n\nMr. Leonie rather sternly rejoined that he was glad to hear it.\n\n\u201cI wish, sir,\u201d said Mr. Anson, \u201cto leave a good name behind me.\nTherefore I take every opportunity of openly stating to a friend of\nMr. C. how Mr. C. is situated. As to myself, sir, the labourer is\nworthy of his hire. If I undertake to put my shoulder to the wheel, I\ndo it, and I earn what I get. I am here for that purpose. My name is\npainted on the door outside, with that object.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd Mr. Willis\u2019s address, Mr. Anson?\u201d\n\n\u201cSir,\u201d returned Mr. Anson, \u201cas I believe I have already mentioned,\nit is next door. On the second story you will find Mr. C.\u2019s\napartments. Mr. C. desires to be near his professional adviser, and I\nam far from objecting, for I court inquiry.\u201d\n\nUpon this Mr. Leonie wished Mr. Anson good day and went in search\nof Celise, the change in whose appearance he began to understand now\nbut too well.\n\nHe found him in a dull room, fadedly furnished, much as I had found\nhim in his barrack-room but a little while before, except that he was\nnot writing but was sitting with a book before him, from which his\neyes and thoughts were far astray. As the door chanced to be standing\nopen, Mr. Leonie was in his presence for some moments without\nbeing perceived, and he told me that he never could forget the\nhaggardness of his face and the dejection of his manner before he was\naroused from his dream.\n\n\u201cLeonie, my dear fellow,\u201d cried Celise, starting up with extended\nhands, \u201cyou come upon my vision like a ghost.\u201d\n\n\u201cA friendly one,\u201d he replied, \u201cand only waiting, as they say ghosts\ndo, to be addressed. How does the mortal world go?\u201d They were seated\nnow, near together.\n\n\u201cBadly enough, and slowly enough,\u201d said Celise, \u201cspeaking at least\nfor my part of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat part is that?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Chancery part.\u201d\n\n\u201cI never heard,\u201d returned Mr. Leonie, shaking his head, \u201cof its\ngoing well yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cNor I,\u201d said Celise moodily. \u201cWho ever did?\u201d He brightened again in\na moment and said with his natural openness, \u201cLeonie, I should be\nsorry to be misunderstood by you, even if I gained by it in your\nestimation. You must know that I have done no good this long time. I\nhave not intended to do much harm, but I seem to have been capable of\nnothing else. It may be that I should have done better by keeping out\nof the net into which my destiny has worked me, but I think not,\nthough I dare say you will soon hear, if you have not already heard,\na very different opinion. To make short of a long story, I am afraid\nI have wanted an object; but I have an object now\u2014or it has me\u2014and\nit is too late to discuss it. Take me as I am, and make the best of\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cA bargain,\u201d said Mr. Leonie. \u201cDo as much by me in return.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! You,\u201d returned Celise, \u201cyou can pursue your art for its own\nsake, and can put your hand upon the plough and never turn, and can\nstrike a purpose out of anything. You and I are very different\ncreatures.\u201d\n\nHe spoke regretfully and lapsed for a moment into his weary\ncondition.\n\n\u201cWell, well!\u201d he cried, shaking it off. \u201cEverything has an end. We\nshall see! So you will take me as I am, and make the best of me?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye! Indeed I will.\u201d They shook hands upon it laughingly, but in\ndeep earnestness. I can answer for one of them with my heart of\nhearts.\n\n\u201cYou come as a godsend,\u201d said Celise, \u201cfor I have seen nobody here\nyet but Anson. Leonie, there is one subject I should like to\nmention, for once and for all, in the beginning of our treaty. You\ncan hardly make the best of me if I don\u2019t. You know, I dare say, that\nI have an attachment to my cousin Ada?\u201d\n\nMr. Leonie replied that I had hinted as much to him. \u201cNow pray,\u201d\nreturned Celise, \u201cdon\u2019t think me a heap of selfishness. Don\u2019t\nsuppose that I am splitting my head and half breaking my heart over\nthis miserable Chancery suit for my own rights and interests alone.\nAda\u2019s are bound up with mine; they can\u2019t be separated; Anson works\nfor both of us. Do think of that!\u201d\n\nHe was so very solicitous on this head that Mr. Leonie gave him\nthe strongest assurances that he did him no injustice.\n\n\u201cYou see,\u201d said Celise, with something pathetic in his manner of\nlingering on the point, though it was off-hand and unstudied, \u201cto an\nupright fellow like you, bringing a friendly face like yours here, I\ncannot bear the thought of appearing selfish and mean. I want to see\nAda righted, Leonie, as well as myself; I want to do my utmost to\nright her, as well as myself; I venture what I can scrape together to\nextricate her, as well as myself. Do, I beseech you, think of that!\u201d\n\nAfterwards, when Mr. Leonie came to reflect on what had passed, he\nwas so very much impressed by the strength of Celise\u2019s anxiety on\nthis point that in telling me generally of his first visit to\nSymond\u2019s Inn he particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I had\nhad before that my dear girl\u2019s little property would be absorbed by\nMr. Anson and that Celise\u2019s justification to himself would be\nsincerely this. It was just as I began to take care of Viola that the\ninterview took place, and I now return to the time when Viola had\nrecovered and the shade was still between me and my darling.\n\nI proposed to Ada that morning that we should go and see Celise. It\na little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was not so\nradiantly willing as I had expected.\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said I, \u201cyou have not had any difference with Celise\nsince I have been so much away?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, Paulina.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot heard of him, perhaps?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cYes, I have heard of him,\u201d said Ada.\n\nSuch tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. I could not make\nmy darling out. Should I go to Celise\u2019s by myself? I said. No, Ada\nthought I had better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, Ada\nthought she had better go with me. Should we go now? Yes, let us go\nnow. Well, I could not understand my darling, with the tears in her\neyes and the love in her face!\n\nWe were soon equipped and went out. It was a sombre day, and drops of\nchill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those colourless days\nwhen everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at us, the\ndust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromise\nabout itself or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my beautiful girl\nquite out of place in the rugged streets, and I thought there were\nmore funerals passing along the dismal pavements than I had ever seen\nbefore.\n\nWe had first to find out Symond\u2019s Inn. We were going to inquire in a\nshop when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery Lane. \u201cWe are not\nlikely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction,\u201d said I.\nSo to Chancery Lane we went, and there, sure enough, we saw it\nwritten up. Symond\u2019s Inn.\n\nWe had next to find out the number. \u201cOr Mr. Anson\u2019s office will do,\u201d\nI recollected, \u201cfor Mr. Anson\u2019s office is next door.\u201d Upon which Ada\nsaid, perhaps that was Mr. Anson\u2019s office in the corner there. And\nit really was.\n\nThen came the question, which of the two next doors? I was going for\nthe one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling was\nright again. So up we went to the second story, when we came to\nCelise\u2019s name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel.\n\nI should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we had better turn the\nhandle and go in. Thus we came to Celise, poring over a table\ncovered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty\nmirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked I saw the ominous\nwords that ran in it repeated. Ashton and Ashton.\n\nHe received us very affectionately, and we sat down. \u201cIf you had come\na little earlier,\u201d he said, \u201cyou would have found Leonie here.\nThere never was such a good fellow as Leonie is. He finds time to\nlook in between-whiles, when anybody else with half his work to do\nwould be thinking about not being able to come. And he is so cheery,\nso fresh, so sensible, so earnest, so\u2014everything that I am not, that\nthe place brightens whenever he comes, and darkens whenever he goes\nagain.\u201d\n\n\u201cGod bless him,\u201d I thought, \u201cfor his truth to me!\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is not so sanguine, Ada,\u201d continued Celise, casting his dejected\nlook over the bundles of papers, \u201cas Anson and I are usually, but he\nis only an outsider and is not in the mysteries. We have gone into\nthem, and he has not. He can\u2019t be expected to know much of such a\nlabyrinth.\u201d\n\nAs his look wandered over the papers again and he passed his two\nhands over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his eyes\nappeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all\nbitten away.\n\n\u201cIs this a healthy place to live in, Celise, do you think?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cWhy, my dear Minerva,\u201d answered Celise with his old gay laugh, \u201cit\nis neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun shines\nhere, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining brightly in\nan open spot. But it\u2019s well enough for the time. It\u2019s near the\noffices and near Anson.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps,\u201d I hinted, \u201ca change from both\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMight do me good?\u201d said Celise, forcing a laugh as he finished the\nsentence. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t wonder! But it can only come in one way\nnow\u2014in one of two ways, I should rather say. Either the suit must be\nended, Paulina, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my dear girl,\nthe suit, my dear girl!\u201d\n\nThese latter words were addressed to Ada, who was sitting nearest to\nhim. Her face being turned away from me and towards him, I could not\nsee it.\n\n\u201cWe are doing very well,\u201d pursued Celise. \u201cAnson will tell you so.\nWe are really spinning along. Ask Anson. We are giving them no rest.\nAnson knows all their windings and turnings, and we are upon them\neverywhere. We have astonished them already. We shall rouse up that\nnest of sleepers, mark my words!\u201d\n\nHis hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his\ndespondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in\nits determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so\nconscious of being forced and unsustainable that it had long touched\nme to the heart. But the commentary upon it now indelibly written in\nhis handsome face made it far more distressing than it used to be. I\nsay indelibly, for I felt persuaded that if the fatal cause could\nhave been for ever terminated, according to his brightest visions, in\nthat same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety, self-reproach,\nand disappointment it had occasioned him would have remained upon his\nfeatures to the hour of his death.\n\n\u201cThe sight of our dear little woman,\u201d said Celise, Ada still\nremaining silent and quiet, \u201cis so natural to me, and her\ncompassionate face is so like the face of old days\u2014\u201d\n\nAh! No, no. I smiled and shook my head.\n\n\u201c\u2014So exactly like the face of old days,\u201d said Celise in his cordial\nvoice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing\never changed, \u201cthat I can\u2019t make pretences with her. I fluctuate a\nlittle; that\u2019s the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes\nI\u2014don\u2019t quite despair, but nearly. I get,\u201d said Celise,\nrelinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room, \u201cso tired!\u201d\n\nHe took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa. \u201cI get,\u201d he\nrepeated gloomily, \u201cso tired. It is such weary, weary work!\u201d\n\nHe was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice\nand looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet,\nkneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on\nhis head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to\nme. Oh, what a loving and devoted face I saw!\n\n\u201cPaulina, dear,\u201d she said very quietly, \u201cI am not going home again.\u201d\n\nA light shone in upon me all at once.\n\n\u201cNever any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have\nbeen married above two months. Go home without me, my own Paulina; I\nshall never go home any more!\u201d With those words my darling drew his\nhead down on her breast and held it there. And if ever in my life I\nsaw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before\nme.\n\n\u201cSpeak to Paulina, my dearest,\u201d said Celise, breaking the silence\npresently. \u201cTell her how it was.\u201d\n\nI met her before she could come to me and folded her in my arms. We\nneither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own I wanted to\nhear nothing. \u201cMy pet,\u201d said I. \u201cMy love. My poor, poor girl!\u201d I\npitied her so much. I was very fond of Celise, but the impulse that\nI had upon me was to pity her so much.\n\n\u201cPaulina, will you forgive me? Will my cousin Gerardo forgive me?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said I, \u201cto doubt it for a moment is to do him a great\nwrong. And as to me!\u201d Why, as to me, what had I to forgive!\n\nI dried my sobbing darling\u2019s eyes and sat beside her on the sofa, and\nCelise sat on my other side; and while I was reminded of that so\ndifferent night when they had first taken me into their confidence\nand had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told me between\nthem how it was.\n\n\u201cAll I had was Celise\u2019s,\u201d Ada said; \u201cand Celise would not take it,\nPaulina, and what could I do but be his wife when I loved him dearly!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent Dame\nDurden,\u201d said Celise, \u201cthat how could we speak to you at such a\ntime! And besides, it was not a long-considered step. We went out one\nmorning and were married.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd when it was done, Paulina,\u201d said my darling, \u201cI was always\nthinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. And sometimes I\nthought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes I thought you\nought not to know it and keep it from my cousin Gerardo; and I could not\ntell what to do, and I fretted very much.\u201d\n\nHow selfish I must have been not to have thought of this before! I\ndon\u2019t know what I said now. I was so sorry, and yet I was so fond of\nthem and so glad that they were fond of me; I pitied them so much,\nand yet I felt a kind of pride in their loving one another. I never\nhad experienced such painful and pleasurable emotion at one time, and\nin my own heart I did not know which predominated. But I was not\nthere to darken their way; I did not do that.\n\nWhen I was less foolish and more composed, my darling took her\nwedding-ring from her bosom, and kissed it, and put it on. Then I\nremembered last night and told Celise that ever since her marriage\nshe had worn it at night when there was no one to see. Then Ada\nblushingly asked me how did I know that, my dear. Then I told Ada how\nI had seen her hand concealed under her pillow and had little thought\nwhy, my dear. Then they began telling me how it was all over again,\nand I began to be sorry and glad again, and foolish again, and to\nhide my plain old face as much as I could lest I should put them out\nof heart.\n\nThus the time went on until it became necessary for me to think of\nreturning. When that time arrived it was the worst of all, for then\nmy darling completely broke down. She clung round my neck, calling me\nby every dear name she could think of and saying what should she do\nwithout me! Nor was Celise much better; and as for me, I should have\nbeen the worst of the three if I had not severely said to myself,\n\u201cNow Paulina, if you do, I\u2019ll never speak to you again!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, I declare,\u201d said I, \u201cI never saw such a wife. I don\u2019t think she\nloves her husband at all. Here, Celise, take my child, for goodness\u2019\nsake.\u201d But I held her tight all the while, and could have wept over\nher I don\u2019t know how long.\n\n\u201cI give this dear young couple notice,\u201d said I, \u201cthat I am only going\naway to come back to-morrow and that I shall be always coming\nbackwards and forwards until Symond\u2019s Inn is tired of the sight of\nme. So I shall not say good-bye, Celise. For what would be the use\nof that, you know, when I am coming back so soon!\u201d\n\nI had given my darling to him now, and I meant to go; but I lingered\nfor one more look of the precious face which it seemed to rive my\nheart to turn from.\n\nSo I said (in a merry bustling manner) that unless they gave me some\nencouragement to come back, I was not sure that I could take that\nliberty, upon which my dear girl looked up, faintly smiling through\nher tears, and I folded her lovely face between my hands, and gave it\none last kiss, and laughed, and ran away.\n\nAnd when I got downstairs, oh, how I cried! It almost seemed to me\nthat I had lost my Ada for ever. I was so lonely and so blank without\nher, and it was so desolate to be going home with no hope of seeing\nher there, that I could get no comfort for a little while as I walked\nup and down in a dim corner sobbing and crying.\n\nI came to myself by and by, after a little scolding, and took a coach\nhome. The poor boy whom I had found at St. Albans had reappeared a\nshort time before and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was\nthen dead, though I did not know it. My guardian had gone out to\ninquire about him and did not return to dinner. Being quite alone, I\ncried a little again, though on the whole I don\u2019t think I behaved so\nvery, very ill.\n\nIt was only natural that I should not be quite accustomed to the loss\nof my darling yet. Three or four hours were not a long time after\nyears. But my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which\nI had left her, and I pictured it as such an overshadowed\nstony-hearted one, and I so longed to be near her and taking some\nsort of care of her, that I determined to go back in the evening only\nto look up at her windows.\n\nIt was foolish, I dare say, but it did not then seem at all so to me,\nand it does not seem quite so even now. I took Weston into my\nconfidence, and we went out at dusk. It was dark when we came to the\nnew strange home of my dear girl, and there was a light behind the\nyellow blinds. We walked past cautiously three or four times, looking\nup, and narrowly missed encountering Mr. Anson, who came out of his\noffice while we were there and turned his head to look up too before\ngoing home. The sight of his lank black figure and the lonesome air\nof that nook in the dark were favourable to the state of my mind. I\nthought of the youth and love and beauty of my dear girl, shut up in\nsuch an ill-assorted refuge, almost as if it were a cruel place.\n\nIt was very solitary and very dull, and I did not doubt that I might\nsafely steal upstairs. I left Weston below and went up with a light\nfoot, not distressed by any glare from the feeble oil lanterns on the\nway. I listened for a few moments, and in the musty rotting silence\nof the house believed that I could hear the murmur of their young\nvoices. I put my lips to the hearse-like panel of the door as a kiss\nfor my dear and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these\ndays I would confess to the visit.\n\nAnd it really did me good, for though nobody but Weston and I knew\nanything about it, I somehow felt as if it had diminished the\nseparation between Ada and me and had brought us together again for\nthose moments. I went back, not quite accustomed yet to the change,\nbut all the better for that hovering about my darling.\n\nMy guardian had come home and was standing thoughtfully by the dark\nwindow. When I went in, his face cleared and he came to his seat, but\nhe caught the light upon my face as I took mine.\n\n\u201cLittle woman,\u201d said he, \u201cYou have been crying.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, yes, guardian,\u201d said I, \u201cI am afraid I have been, a little. Ada\nhas been in such distress, and is so very sorry, guardian.\u201d\n\nI put my arm on the back of his chair, and I saw in his glance that\nmy words and my look at her empty place had prepared him.\n\n\u201cIs she married, my dear?\u201d\n\nI told him all about it and how her first entreaties had referred to\nhis forgiveness.\n\n\u201cShe has no need of it,\u201d said he. \u201cHeaven bless her and her husband!\u201d\nBut just as my first impulse had been to pity her, so was his. \u201cPoor\ngirl, poor girl! Poor Rick! Poor Ada!\u201d\n\nNeither of us spoke after that, until he said with a sigh, \u201cWell,\nwell, my dear! Bleak House is thinning fast.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut its mistress remains, guardian.\u201d Though I was timid about saying\nit, I ventured because of the sorrowful tone in which he had spoken.\n\u201cShe will do all she can to make it happy,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cShe will succeed, my love!\u201d\n\nThe letter had made no difference between us except that the seat by\nhis side had come to be mine; it made none now. He turned his old\nbright fatherly look upon me, laid his hand on my hand in his old\nway, and said again, \u201cShe will succeed, my dear. Nevertheless, Bleak\nHouse is thinning fast, O little woman!\u201d\n\nI was sorry presently that this was all we said about that. I was\nrather disappointed. I feared I might not quite have been all I had\nmeant to be since the letter and the answer.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LII\n\nObstinacy\n\n\nBut one other day had intervened when, early in the morning as we\nwere going to breakfast, Mr. Leonie came in haste with the\nastounding news that a terrible murder had been committed for which\nMr. Aileen had been apprehended and was in custody. When he told us\nthat a large reward was offered by Sir Luigi Wayne for the\nmurderer\u2019s apprehension, I did not in my first consternation\nunderstand why; but a few more words explained to me that the\nmurdered person was Sir Luigi\u2019s lawyer, and immediately my\nmother\u2019s dread of him rushed into my remembrance.\n\nThis unforeseen and violent removal of one whom she had long watched\nand distrusted and who had long watched and distrusted her, one for\nwhom she could have had few intervals of kindness, always dreading in\nhim a dangerous and secret enemy, appeared so awful that my first\nthoughts were of her. How appalling to hear of such a death and be\nable to feel no pity! How dreadful to remember, perhaps, that she had\nsometimes even wished the old man away who was so swiftly hurried out\nof life!\n\nSuch crowding reflections, increasing the distress and fear I always\nfelt when the name was mentioned, made me so agitated that I could\nscarcely hold my place at the table. I was quite unable to follow the\nconversation until I had had a little time to recover. But when I\ncame to myself and saw how shocked my guardian was and found that\nthey were earnestly speaking of the suspected man and recalling every\nfavourable impression we had formed of him out of the good we had\nknown of him, my interest and my fears were so strongly aroused in\nhis behalf that I was quite set up again.\n\n\u201cGuardian, you don\u2019t think it possible that he is justly accused?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear, I CAN\u2019T think so. This man whom we have seen so\nopen-hearted and compassionate, who with the might of a giant has the\ngentleness of a child, who looks as brave a fellow as ever lived and\nis so simple and quiet with it, this man justly accused of such a\ncrime? I can\u2019t believe it. It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t or I won\u2019t. I\ncan\u2019t!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I can\u2019t,\u201d said Mr. Leonie. \u201cStill, whatever we believe or\nknow of him, we had better not forget that some appearances are\nagainst him. He bore an animosity towards the deceased gentleman. He\nhas openly mentioned it in many places. He is said to have expressed\nhimself violently towards him, and he certainly did about him, to my\nknowledge. He admits that he was alone on the scene of the murder\nwithin a few minutes of its commission. I sincerely believe him to be\nas innocent of any participation in it as I am, but these are all\nreasons for suspicion falling upon him.\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue,\u201d said my guardian. And he added, turning to me, \u201cIt would be\ndoing him a very bad service, my dear, to shut our eyes to the truth\nin any of these respects.\u201d\n\nI felt, of course, that we must admit, not only to ourselves but to\nothers, the full force of the circumstances against him. Yet I knew\nwithal (I could not help saying) that their weight would not induce\nus to desert him in his need.\n\n\u201cHeaven forbid!\u201d returned my guardian. \u201cWe will stand by him, as he\nhimself stood by the two poor creatures who are gone.\u201d He meant Mr.\nFreda and the boy, to both of whom Mr. Aileen had given shelter.\n\nMr. Leonie then told us that the trooper\u2019s man had been with him\nbefore day, after wandering about the streets all night like a\ndistracted creature. That one of the trooper\u2019s first anxieties was\nthat we should not suppose him guilty. That he had charged his\nmessenger to represent his perfect innocence with every solemn\nassurance he could send us. That Mr. Leonie had only quieted the\nman by undertaking to come to our house very early in the morning\nwith these representations. He added that he was now upon his way to\nsee the prisoner himself.\n\nMy guardian said directly he would go too. Now, besides that I liked\nthe retired soldier very much and that he liked me, I had that secret\ninterest in what had happened which was only known to my guardian. I\nfelt as if it came close and near to me. It seemed to become\npersonally important to myself that the truth should be discovered\nand that no innocent people should be suspected, for suspicion, once\nrun wild, might run wilder.\n\nIn a word, I felt as if it were my duty and obligation to go with\nthem. My guardian did not seek to dissuade me, and I went.\n\nIt was a large prison with many courts and passages so like one\nanother and so uniformly paved that I seemed to gain a new\ncomprehension, as I passed along, of the fondness that solitary\nprisoners, shut up among the same staring walls from year to year,\nhave had\u2014as I have read\u2014for a weed or a stray blade of grass. In an\narched room by himself, like a cellar upstairs, with walls so\nglaringly white that they made the massive iron window-bars and\niron-bound door even more profoundly black than they were, we found\nthe trooper standing in a corner. He had been sitting on a bench\nthere and had risen when he heard the locks and bolts turn.\n\nWhen he saw us, he came forward a step with his usual heavy tread,\nand there stopped and made a slight bow. But as I still advanced,\nputting out my hand to him, he understood us in a moment.\n\n\u201cThis is a load off my mind, I do assure you, miss and gentlemen,\u201d\nsaid he, saluting us with great heartiness and drawing a long breath.\n\u201cAnd now I don\u2019t so much care how it ends.\u201d\n\nHe scarcely seemed to be the prisoner. What with his coolness and his\nsoldierly bearing, he looked far more like the prison guard.\n\n\u201cThis is even a rougher place than my gallery to receive a lady in,\u201d\nsaid Mr. Aileen, \u201cbut I know Miss Robin will make the best of\nit.\u201d As he handed me to the bench on which he had been sitting, I sat\ndown, which seemed to give him great satisfaction.\n\n\u201cI thank you, miss,\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cNow, Aileen,\u201d observed my guardian, \u201cas we require no new assurances\non your part, so I believe we need give you none on ours.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all, sir. I thank you with all my heart. If I was not\ninnocent of this crime, I couldn\u2019t look at you and keep my secret to\nmyself under the condescension of the present visit. I feel the\npresent visit very much. I am not one of the eloquent sort, but I\nfeel it, Miss Robin and gentlemen, deeply.\u201d\n\nHe laid his hand for a moment on his broad chest and bent his head to\nus. Although he squared himself again directly, he expressed a great\namount of natural emotion by these simple means.\n\n\u201cFirst,\u201d said my guardian, \u201ccan we do anything for your personal\ncomfort, Aileen?\u201d\n\n\u201cFor which, sir?\u201d he inquired, clearing his throat.\n\n\u201cFor your personal comfort. Is there anything you want that would\nlessen the hardship of this confinement?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d replied Aileen, after a little cogitation, \u201cI am equally\nobliged to you, but tobacco being against the rules, I can\u2019t say that\nthere is.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou will think of many little things perhaps, by and by. Whenever\nyou do, Aileen, let us know.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, sir. Howsoever,\u201d observed Mr. Aileen with one of his\nsunburnt smiles, \u201ca man who has been knocking about the world in a\nvagabond kind of a way as long as I have gets on well enough in a\nplace like the present, so far as that goes.\u201d\n\n\u201cNext, as to your case,\u201d observed my guardian.\n\n\u201cExactly so, sir,\u201d returned Mr. Aileen, folding his arms upon his\nbreast with perfect self-possession and a little curiosity.\n\n\u201cHow does it stand now?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, sir, it is under remand at present. Bucket gives me to\nunderstand that he will probably apply for a series of remands from\ntime to time until the case is more complete. How it is to be made\nmore complete I don\u2019t myself see, but I dare say Bucket will manage\nit somehow.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, heaven save us, man,\u201d exclaimed my guardian, surprised into his\nold oddity and vehemence, \u201cyou talk of yourself as if you were\nsomebody else!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo offence, sir,\u201d said Mr. Aileen. \u201cI am very sensible of your\nkindness. But I don\u2019t see how an innocent man is to make up his mind\nto this kind of thing without knocking his head against the walls\nunless he takes it in that point of view.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is true enough to a certain extent,\u201d returned my guardian,\nsoftened. \u201cBut my good fellow, even an innocent man must take\nordinary precautions to defend himself.\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly, sir. And I have done so. I have stated to the\nmagistrates, \u2018Gentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as\nyourselves; what has been stated against me in the way of facts is\nperfectly true; I know no more about it.\u2019 I intend to continue\nstating that, sir. What more can I do? It\u2019s the truth.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut the mere truth won\u2019t do,\u201d rejoined my guardian.\n\n\u201cWon\u2019t it indeed, sir? Rather a bad look-out for me!\u201d Mr. Aileen\ngood-humouredly observed.\n\n\u201cYou must have a lawyer,\u201d pursued my guardian. \u201cWe must engage a good\none for you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI ask your pardon, sir,\u201d said Mr. Aileen with a step backward. \u201cI am\nequally obliged. But I must decidedly beg to be excused from anything\nof that sort.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou won\u2019t have a lawyer?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir.\u201d Mr. Aileen shook his head in the most emphatic manner. \u201cI\nthank you all the same, sir, but\u2014no lawyer!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t take kindly to the breed,\u201d said Mr. Aileen. \u201cFreda didn\u2019t.\nAnd\u2014if you\u2019ll excuse my saying so much\u2014I should hardly have thought\nyou did yourself, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s equity,\u201d my guardian explained, a little at a loss; \u201cthat\u2019s\nequity, Aileen.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it, indeed, sir?\u201d returned the trooper in his off-hand manner. \u201cI\nam not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a general\nway I object to the breed.\u201d\n\nUnfolding his arms and changing his position, he stood with one\nmassive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as complete a\npicture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as ever\nI saw. It was in vain that we all three talked to him and endeavoured\nto persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which went so well\nwith his bluff bearing, but was evidently no more shaken by our\nrepresentations that his place of confinement was.\n\n\u201cPray think, once more, Mr. Aileen,\u201d said I. \u201cHave you no wish in\nreference to your case?\u201d\n\n\u201cI certainly could wish it to be tried, miss,\u201d he returned, \u201cby\ncourt-martial; but that is out of the question, as I am well aware.\nIf you will be so good as to favour me with your attention for a\ncouple of minutes, miss, not more, I\u2019ll endeavour to explain myself\nas clearly as I can.\u201d\n\nHe looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he\nwere adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and\nafter a moment\u2019s reflection went on.\n\n\u201cYou see, miss, I have been handcuffed and taken into custody and\nbrought here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and here I am. My\nshooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such property\nas I have\u2014\u2019tis small\u2014is turned this way and that till it don\u2019t know\nitself; and (as aforesaid) here I am! I don\u2019t particular complain of\nthat. Though I am in these present quarters through no immediately\npreceding fault of mine, I can very well understand that if I hadn\u2019t\ngone into the vagabond way in my youth, this wouldn\u2019t have happened.\nIt HAS happened. Then comes the question how to meet it.\u201d\n\nHe rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment with a good-humoured look\nand said apologetically, \u201cI am such a short-winded talker that I must\nthink a bit.\u201d Having thought a bit, he looked up again and resumed.\n\n\u201cHow to meet it. Now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a lawyer\nand had a pretty tight hold of me. I don\u2019t wish to rake up his ashes,\nbut he had, what I should call if he was living, a devil of a tight\nhold of me. I don\u2019t like his trade the better for that. If I had kept\nclear of his trade, I should have kept outside this place. But that\u2019s\nnot what I mean. Now, suppose I had killed him. Suppose I really had\ndischarged into his body any one of those pistols recently fired off\nthat Bucket has found at my place, and dear me, might have found\nthere any day since it has been my place. What should I have done as\nsoon as I was hard and fast here? Got a lawyer.\u201d\n\nHe stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts and did not\nresume until the door had been opened and was shut again. For what\npurpose opened, I will mention presently.\n\n\u201cI should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as I have often\nread in the newspapers), \u2018My client says nothing, my client reserves\nhis defence\u2019: my client this, that, and t\u2019other. Well, \u2019tis not the\ncustom of that breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to\nthink that other men do. Say I am innocent and I get a lawyer. He\nwould be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What\nwould he do, whether or not? Act as if I was\u2014shut my mouth up, tell\nme not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence\nsmall, quibble, and get me off perhaps! But, Miss Robin, do I\ncare for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my\nown way\u2014if you\u2019ll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to a\nlady?\u201d\n\nHe had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further\nnecessity to wait a bit.\n\n\u201cI would rather be hanged in my own way. And I mean to be! I don\u2019t\nintend to say,\u201d looking round upon us with his powerful arms akimbo\nand his dark eyebrows raised, \u201cthat I am more partial to being hanged\nthan another man. What I say is, I must come off clear and full or\nnot at all. Therefore, when I hear stated against me what is true, I\nsay it\u2019s true; and when they tell me, \u2018whatever you say will be\nused,\u2019 I tell them I don\u2019t mind that; I mean it to be used. If they\ncan\u2019t make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to\ndo it out of anything less, or anything else. And if they are, it\u2019s\nworth nothing to me.\u201d\n\nTaking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table\nand finished what he had to say.\n\n\u201cI thank you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention,\nand many times more for your interest. That\u2019s the plain state of the\nmatter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt\nbroadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life beyond my\nduty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap\npretty much as I have sown. When I got over the first crash of being\nseized as a murderer\u2014it don\u2019t take a rover who has knocked about so\nmuch as myself so very long to recover from a crash\u2014I worked my way\nround to what you find me now. As such I shall remain. No relations\nwill be disgraced by me or made unhappy for me, and\u2014and that\u2019s all\nI\u2019ve got to say.\u201d\n\nThe door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less\nprepossessing appearance at first sight and a weather-tanned,\nbright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance,\nhad been exceedingly attentive to all Mr. Aileen had said. Mr. Aileen\nhad received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but\nwithout any more particular greeting in the midst of his address. He\nnow shook them cordially by the hand and said, \u201cMiss Robin and\ngentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, Matthew Bagnet. And this\nis his wife, Mrs. Bagnet.\u201d\n\nMr. Bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and Mrs. Bagnet dropped us a\ncurtsy.\n\n\u201cReal good friends of mine, they are,\u201d sald Mr. Aileen. \u201cIt was at\ntheir house I was taken.\u201d\n\n\u201cWith a second-hand wiolinceller,\u201d Mr. Bagnet put in, twitching his\nhead angrily. \u201cOf a good tone. For a friend. That money was no object\nto.\u201d\n\n\u201cMat,\u201d said Mr. Aileen, \u201cyou have heard pretty well all I have been\nsaying to this lady and these two gentlemen. I know it meets your\napproval?\u201d\n\nMr. Bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife. \u201cOld\ngirl,\u201d said he. \u201cTell him. Whether or not. It meets my approval.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, Aileen,\u201d exclaimed Mrs. Bagnet, who had been unpacking her\nbasket, in which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea\nand sugar, and a brown loaf, \u201cyou ought to know it don\u2019t. You ought\nto know it\u2019s enough to drive a person wild to hear you. You won\u2019t be\ngot off this way, and you won\u2019t be got off that way\u2014what do you mean\nby such picking and choosing? It\u2019s stuff and nonsense, Aileen.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be severe upon me in my misfortunes, Mrs. Bagnet,\u201d said the\ntrooper lightly.\n\n\u201cOh! Bother your misfortunes,\u201d cried Mrs. Bagnet, \u201cif they don\u2019t make\nyou more reasonable than that comes to. I never was so ashamed in my\nlife to hear a man talk folly as I have been to hear you talk this\nday to the present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many cooks\nshould hinder you from having a dozen lawyers if the gentleman\nrecommended them to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is a very sensible woman,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cI hope you will\npersuade him, Mrs. Bagnet.\u201d\n\n\u201cPersuade him, sir?\u201d she returned. \u201cLord bless you, no. You don\u2019t\nknow Aileen. Now, there!\u201d Mrs. Bagnet left her basket to point him\nout with both her bare brown hands. \u201cThere he stands! As self-willed\nand as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human\ncreature under heaven out of patience! You could as soon take up and\nshoulder an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that\nman when he has got a thing into his head and fixed it there. Why,\ndon\u2019t I know him!\u201d cried Mrs. Bagnet. \u201cDon\u2019t I know you, Aileen! You\ndon\u2019t mean to set up for a new character with ME after all these\nyears, I hope?\u201d\n\nHer friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband,\nwho shook his head at the trooper several times as a silent\nrecommendation to him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs. Bagnet looked at\nme; and I understood from the play of her eyes that she wished me to\ndo something, though I did not comprehend what.\n\n\u201cBut I have given up talking to you, old fellow, years and years,\u201d\nsaid Mrs. Bagnet as she blew a little dust off the pickled pork,\nlooking at me again; \u201cand when ladies and gentlemen know you as well\nas I do, they\u2019ll give up talking to you too. If you are not too\nheadstrong to accept of a bit of dinner, here it is.\u201d\n\n\u201cI accept it with many thanks,\u201d returned the trooper.\n\n\u201cDo you though, indeed?\u201d said Mrs. Bagnet, continuing to grumble on\ngood-humouredly. \u201cI\u2019m sure I\u2019m surprised at that. I wonder you don\u2019t\nstarve in your own way also. It would only be like you. Perhaps\nyou\u2019ll set your mind upon THAT next.\u201d Here she again looked at me,\nand I now perceived from her glances at the door and at me, by turns,\nthat she wished us to retire and to await her following us outside\nthe prison. Communicating this by similar means to my guardian and\nMr. Leonie, I rose.\n\n\u201cWe hope you will think better of it, Mr. Aileen,\u201d said I, \u201cand we\nshall come to see you again, trusting to find you more reasonable.\u201d\n\n\u201cMore grateful, Miss Robin, you can\u2019t find me,\u201d he returned.\n\n\u201cBut more persuadable we can, I hope,\u201d said I. \u201cAnd let me entreat\nyou to consider that the clearing up of this mystery and the\ndiscovery of the real perpetrator of this deed may be of the last\nimportance to others besides yourself.\u201d\n\nHe heard me respectfully but without much heeding these words, which\nI spoke a little turned from him, already on my way to the door; he\nwas observing (this they afterwards told me) my height and figure,\nwhich seemed to catch his attention all at once.\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis curious,\u201d said he. \u201cAnd yet I thought so at the time!\u201d\n\nMy guardian asked him what he meant.\n\n\u201cWhy, sir,\u201d he answered, \u201cwhen my ill fortune took me to the dead\nman\u2019s staircase on the night of his murder, I saw a shape so like\nMiss Robin\u2019s go by me in the dark that I had half a mind to speak\nto it.\u201d\n\nFor an instant I felt such a shudder as I never felt before or since\nand hope I shall never feel again.\n\n\u201cIt came downstairs as I went up,\u201d said the trooper, \u201cand crossed the\nmoonlighted window with a loose black mantle on; I noticed a deep\nfringe to it. However, it has nothing to do with the present subject,\nexcepting that Miss Robin looked so like it at the moment that it\ncame into my head.\u201d\n\nI cannot separate and define the feelings that arose in me after\nthis; it is enough that the vague duty and obligation I had felt upon\nme from the first of following the investigation was, without my\ndistinctly daring to ask myself any question, increased, and that I\nwas indignantly sure of there being no possibility of a reason for my\nbeing afraid.\n\nWe three went out of the prison and walked up and down at some short\ndistance from the gate, which was in a retired place. We had not\nwaited long when Mr. and Mrs. Bagnet came out too and quickly joined\nus.\n\nThere was a tear in each of Mrs. Bagnet\u2019s eyes, and her face was\nflushed and hurried. \u201cI didn\u2019t let Aileen see what I thought about\nit, you know, miss,\u201d was her first remark when she came up, \u201cbut he\u2019s\nin a bad way, poor old fellow!\u201d\n\n\u201cNot with care and prudence and good help,\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cA gentleman like you ought to know best, sir,\u201d returned Mrs. Bagnet,\nhurriedly drying her eyes on the hem of her grey cloak, \u201cbut I am\nuneasy for him. He has been so careless and said so much that he\nnever meant. The gentlemen of the juries might not understand him as\nLignum and me do. And then such a number of circumstances have\nhappened bad for him, and such a number of people will be brought\nforward to speak against him, and Bucket is so deep.\u201d\n\n\u201cWith a second-hand wiolinceller. And said he played the fife. When a\nboy,\u201d Mr. Bagnet added with great solemnity.\n\n\u201cNow, I tell you, miss,\u201d said Mrs. Bagnet; \u201cand when I say miss, I\nmean all! Just come into the corner of the wall and I\u2019ll tell you!\u201d\n\nMrs. Bagnet hurried us into a more secluded place and was at first\ntoo breathless to proceed, occasioning Mr. Bagnet to say, \u201cOld girl!\nTell \u2019em!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, then, miss,\u201d the old girl proceeded, untying the strings of her\nbonnet for more air, \u201cyou could as soon move Dover Castle as move\nAileen on this point unless you had got a new power to move him with.\nAnd I have got it!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are a jewel of a woman,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cGo on!\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, I tell you, miss,\u201d she proceeded, clapping her hands in her\nhurry and agitation a dozen times in every sentence, \u201cthat what he\nsays concerning no relations is all bosh. They don\u2019t know of him, but\nhe does know of them. He has said more to me at odd times than to\nanybody else, and it warn\u2019t for nothing that he once spoke to my\nWoolwich about whitening and wrinkling mothers\u2019 heads. For fifty\npounds he had seen his mother that day. She\u2019s alive and must be\nbrought here straight!\u201d\n\nInstantly Mrs. Bagnet put some pins into her mouth and began pinning\nup her skirts all round a little higher than the level of her grey\ncloak, which she accomplished with surpassing dispatch and dexterity.\n\n\u201cLignum,\u201d said Mrs. Bagnet, \u201cyou take care of the children, old man,\nand give me the umbrella! I\u2019m away to Lincolnshire to bring that old\nlady here.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, bless the woman,\u201d cried my guardian with his hand in his\npocket, \u201chow is she going? What money has she got?\u201d\n\nMrs. Bagnet made another application to her skirts and brought forth\na leathern purse in which she hastily counted over a few shillings\nand which she then shut up with perfect satisfaction.\n\n\u201cNever you mind for me, miss. I\u2019m a soldier\u2019s wife and accustomed to\ntravel my own way. Lignum, old boy,\u201d kissing him, \u201cone for yourself,\nthree for the children. Now I\u2019m away into Lincolnshire after Aileen\u2019s\nmother!\u201d\n\nAnd she actually set off while we three stood looking at one another\nlost in amazement. She actually trudged away in her grey cloak at a\nsturdy pace, and turned the corner, and was gone.\n\n\u201cMr. Bagnet,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cDo you mean to let her go in that\nway?\u201d\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t help it,\u201d he returned. \u201cMade her way home once from another\nquarter of the world. With the same grey cloak. And same umbrella.\nWhatever the old girl says, do. Do it! Whenever the old girl says,\nI\u2019LL do it. She does it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen she is as honest and genuine as she looks,\u201d rejoined my\nguardian, \u201cand it is impossible to say more for her.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s Colour-Sergeant of the Nonpareil battalion,\u201d said Mr. Bagnet,\nlooking at us over his shoulder as he went his way also. \u201cAnd there\u2019s\nnot such another. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must\nbe maintained.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LIII\n\nThe Track\n\n\nMr. Bucket and his fat forefinger are much in consultation together\nunder existing circumstances. When Mr. Bucket has a matter of this\npressing interest under his consideration, the fat forefinger seems\nto rise, to the dignity of a familiar demon. He puts it to his ears,\nand it whispers information; he puts it to his lips, and it enjoins\nhim to secrecy; he rubs it over his nose, and it sharpens his scent;\nhe shakes it before a guilty man, and it charms him to his\ndestruction. The Augurs of the Detective Temple invariably predict\nthat when Mr. Bucket and that finger are in much conference, a\nterrible avenger will be heard of before long.\n\nOtherwise mildly studious in his observation of human nature, on the\nwhole a benignant philosopher not disposed to be severe upon the\nfollies of mankind, Mr. Bucket pervades a vast number of houses and\nstrolls about an infinity of streets, to outward appearance rather\nlanguishing for want of an object. He is in the friendliest condition\ntowards his species and will drink with most of them. He is free with\nhis money, affable in his manners, innocent in his conversation\u2014but\nthrough the placid stream of his life there glides an under-current\nof forefinger.\n\nTime and place cannot bind Mr. Bucket. Like man in the abstract, he\nis here to-day and gone to-morrow\u2014but, very unlike man indeed, he is\nhere again the next day. This evening he will be casually looking\ninto the iron extinguishers at the door of Sir Luigi Wayne\u2019s\nhouse in town; and to-morrow morning he will be walking on the leads\nat Chesney Wold, where erst the old man walked whose ghost is\npropitiated with a hundred guineas. Drawers, desks, pockets, all\nthings belonging to him, Mr. Bucket examines. A few hours afterwards,\nhe and the Roman will be alone together comparing forefingers.\n\nIt is likely that these occupations are irreconcilable with home\nenjoyment, but it is certain that Mr. Bucket at present does not go\nhome. Though in general he highly appreciates the society of Mrs.\nBucket\u2014a lady of a natural detective genius, which if it had been\nimproved by professional exercise, might have done great things, but\nwhich has paused at the level of a clever amateur\u2014he holds himself\naloof from that dear solace. Mrs. Bucket is dependent on their lodger\n(fortunately an amiable lady in whom she takes an interest) for\ncompanionship and conversation.\n\nA great crowd assembles in Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields on the day of the\nfuneral. Sir Luigi Wayne attends the ceremony in person;\nstrictly speaking, there are only three other human followers, that\nis to say, Lord Doodle, William Buffy, and the debilitated cousin\n(thrown in as a make-weight), but the amount of inconsolable\ncarriages is immense. The peerage contributes more four-wheeled\naffliction than has ever been seen in that neighbourhood. Such is the\nassemblage of armorial bearings on coach panels that the Herald\u2019s\nCollege might be supposed to have lost its father and mother at a\nblow. The Duke of Foodle sends a splendid pile of dust and ashes,\nwith silver wheel-boxes, patent axles, all the last improvements, and\nthree bereaved worms, six feet high, holding on behind, in a bunch of\nwoe. All the state coachmen in London seem plunged into mourning; and\nif that dead old man of the rusty garb be not beyond a taste in\nhorseflesh (which appears impossible), it must be highly gratified\nthis day.\n\nQuiet among the undertakers and the equipages and the calves of so\nmany legs all steeped in grief, Mr. Bucket sits concealed in one of\nthe inconsolable carriages and at his ease surveys the crowd through\nthe lattice blinds. He has a keen eye for a crowd\u2014as for what\nnot?\u2014and looking here and there, now from this side of the carriage,\nnow from the other, now up at the house windows, now along the\npeople\u2019s heads, nothing escapes him.\n\n\u201cAnd there you are, my partner, eh?\u201d says Mr. Bucket to himself,\napostrophizing Mrs. Bucket, stationed, by his favour, on the steps of\nthe deceased\u2019s house. \u201cAnd so you are. And so you are! And very well\nindeed you are looking, Mrs. Bucket!\u201d\n\nThe procession has not started yet, but is waiting for the cause of\nits assemblage to be brought out. Mr. Bucket, in the foremost\nemblazoned carriage, uses his two fat forefingers to hold the lattice\na hair\u2019s breadth open while he looks.\n\nAnd it says a great deal for his attachment, as a husband, that he is\nstill occupied with Mrs. B. \u201cThere you are, my partner, eh?\u201d he\nmurmuringly repeats. \u201cAnd our lodger with you. I\u2019m taking notice of\nyou, Mrs. Bucket; I hope you\u2019re all right in your health, my dear!\u201d\n\nNot another word does Mr. Bucket say, but sits with most attentive\neyes until the sacked depository of noble secrets is brought\ndown\u2014Where are all those secrets now? Does he keep them yet? Did\nthey fly with him on that sudden journey?\u2014and until the procession\nmoves, and Mr. Bucket\u2019s view is changed. After which he composes\nhimself for an easy ride and takes note of the fittings of the\ncarriage in case he should ever find such knowledge useful.\n\nContrast enough between Mr. Tulkinghorn shut up in his dark carriage\nand Mr. Bucket shut up in HIS. Between the immeasurable track of\nspace beyond the little wound that has thrown the one into the fixed\nsleep which jolts so heavily over the stones of the streets, and the\nnarrow track of blood which keeps the other in the watchful state\nexpressed in every hair of his head! But it is all one to both;\nneither is troubled about that.\n\nMr. Bucket sits out the procession in his own easy manner and glides\nfrom the carriage when the opportunity he has settled with himself\narrives. He makes for Sir Luigi Wayne\u2019s, which is at present a\nsort of home to him, where he comes and goes as he likes at all\nhours, where he is always welcome and made much of, where he knows\nthe whole establishment, and walks in an atmosphere of mysterious\ngreatness.\n\nNo knocking or ringing for Mr. Bucket. He has caused himself to be\nprovided with a key and can pass in at his pleasure. As he is\ncrossing the hall, Mercury informs him, \u201cHere\u2019s another letter for\nyou, Mr. Bucket, come by post,\u201d and gives it him.\n\n\u201cAnother one, eh?\u201d says Mr. Bucket.\n\nIf Mercury should chance to be possessed by any lingering curiosity\nas to Mr. Bucket\u2019s letters, that wary person is not the man to\ngratify it. Mr. Bucket looks at him as if his face were a vista of\nsome miles in length and he were leisurely contemplating the same.\n\n\u201cDo you happen to carry a box?\u201d says Mr. Bucket.\n\nUnfortunately Mercury is no snuff-taker.\n\n\u201cCould you fetch me a pinch from anywheres?\u201d says Mr. Bucket.\n\u201cThankee. It don\u2019t matter what it is; I\u2019m not particular as to the\nkind. Thankee!\u201d\n\nHaving leisurely helped himself from a canister borrowed from\nsomebody downstairs for the purpose, and having made a considerable\nshow of tasting it, first with one side of his nose and then with the\nother, Mr. Bucket, with much deliberation, pronounces it of the right\nsort and goes on, letter in hand.\n\nNow although Mr. Bucket walks upstairs to the little library within\nthe larger one with the face of a man who receives some scores of\nletters every day, it happens that much correspondence is not\nincidental to his life. He is no great scribe, rather handling his\npen like the pocket-staff he carries about with him always convenient\nto his grasp, and discourages correspondence with himself in others\nas being too artless and direct a way of doing delicate business.\nFurther, he often sees damaging letters produced in evidence and has\noccasion to reflect that it was a green thing to write them. For\nthese reasons he has very little to do with letters, either as sender\nor receiver. And yet he has received a round half-dozen within the\nlast twenty-four hours.\n\n\u201cAnd this,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, spreading it out on the table, \u201cis in\nthe same hand, and consists of the same two words.\u201d\n\nWhat two words?\n\nHe turns the key in the door, ungirdles his black pocket-book (book\nof fate to many), lays another letter by it, and reads, boldly\nwritten in each, \u201cGodfrey Wayne.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cBut I could have made the money without\nthis anonymous information.\u201d\n\nHaving put the letters in his book of fate and girdled it up again,\nhe unlocks the door just in time to admit his dinner, which is\nbrought upon a goodly tray with a decanter of sherry. Mr. Bucket\nfrequently observes, in friendly circles where there is no restraint,\nthat he likes a toothful of your fine old brown East Inder sherry\nbetter than anything you can offer him. Consequently he fills and\nempties his glass with a smack of his lips and is proceeding with his\nrefreshment when an idea enters his mind.\n\nMr. Bucket softly opens the door of communication between that room\nand the next and looks in. The library is deserted, and the fire is\nsinking low. Mr. Bucket\u2019s eye, after taking a pigeon-flight round the\nroom, alights upon a table where letters are usually put as they\narrive. Several letters for Sir Luigi are upon it. Mr. Bucket\ndraws near and examines the directions. \u201cNo,\u201d he says, \u201cthere\u2019s none\nin that hand. It\u2019s only me as is written to. I can break it to Sir\nLuigi Wayne, Baronet, to-morrow.\u201d\n\nWith that he returns to finish his dinner with a good appetite, and\nafter a light nap, is summoned into the drawing-room. Sir Luigi\nhas received him there these several evenings past to know whether he\nhas anything to report. The debilitated cousin (much exhausted by the\nfuneral) and Volumnia are in attendance.\n\nMr. Bucket makes three distinctly different bows to these three\npeople. A bow of homage to Sir Luigi, a bow of gallantry to\nVolumnia, and a bow of recognition to the debilitated Cousin, to whom\nit airily says, \u201cYou are a swell about town, and you know me, and I\nknow you.\u201d Having distributed these little specimens of his tact, Mr.\nBucket rubs his hands.\n\n\u201cHave you anything new to communicate, officer?\u201d inquires Sir\nLuigi. \u201cDo you wish to hold any conversation with me in private?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy\u2014not to-night, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet.\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause my time,\u201d pursues Sir Luigi, \u201cis wholly at your disposal\nwith a view to the vindication of the outraged majesty of the law.\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket coughs and glances at Volumnia, rouged and necklaced, as\nthough he would respectfully observe, \u201cI do assure you, you\u2019re a\npretty creetur. I\u2019ve seen hundreds worse looking at your time of\nlife, I have indeed.\u201d\n\nThe fair Volumnia, not quite unconscious perhaps of the humanizing\ninfluence of her charms, pauses in the writing of cocked-hat notes\nand meditatively adjusts the pearl necklace. Mr. Bucket prices that\ndecoration in his mind and thinks it as likely as not that Volumnia\nis writing poetry.\n\n\u201cIf I have not,\u201d pursues Sir Luigi, \u201cin the most emphatic manner,\nadjured you, officer, to exercise your utmost skill in this atrocious\ncase, I particularly desire to take the present opportunity of\nrectifying any omission I may have made. Let no expense be a\nconsideration. I am prepared to defray all charges. You can incur\nnone in pursuit of the object you have undertaken that I shall\nhesitate for a moment to bear.\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket made Sir Luigi\u2019s bow again as a response to this\nliberality.\n\n\u201cMy mind,\u201d Sir Luigi adds with a generous warmth, \u201chas not, as\nmay be easily supposed, recovered its tone since the late diabolical\noccurrence. It is not likely ever to recover its tone. But it is full\nof indignation to-night after undergoing the ordeal of consigning to\nthe tomb the remains of a faithful, a zealous, a devoted adherent.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi\u2019s voice trembles and his grey hair stirs upon his head.\nTears are in his eyes; the best part of his nature is aroused.\n\n\u201cI declare,\u201d he says, \u201cI solemnly declare that until this crime is\ndiscovered and, in the course of justice, punished, I almost feel as\nif there were a stain upon my name. A gentleman who has devoted a\nlarge portion of his life to me, a gentleman who has devoted the last\nday of his life to me, a gentleman who has constantly sat at my table\nand slept under my roof, goes from my house to his own, and is struck\ndown within an hour of his leaving my house. I cannot say but that he\nmay have been followed from my house, watched at my house, even first\nmarked because of his association with my house\u2014which may have\nsuggested his possessing greater wealth and being altogether of\ngreater importance than his own retiring demeanour would have\nindicated. If I cannot with my means and influence and my position\nbring all the perpetrators of such a crime to light, I fail in the\nassertion of my respect for that gentleman\u2019s memory and of my\nfidelity towards one who was ever faithful to me.\u201d\n\nWhile he makes this protestation with great emotion and earnestness,\nlooking round the room as if he were addressing an assembly, Mr.\nBucket glances at him with an observant gravity in which there might\nbe, but for the audacity of the thought, a touch of compassion.\n\n\u201cThe ceremony of to-day,\u201d continues Sir Luigi, \u201cstrikingly\nillustrative of the respect in which my deceased friend\u201d\u2014he lays a\nstress upon the word, for death levels all distinctions\u2014\u201cwas held by\nthe flower of the land, has, I say, aggravated the shock I have\nreceived from this most horrible and audacious crime. If it were my\nbrother who had committed it, I would not spare him.\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket looks very grave. Volumnia remarks of the deceased that he\nwas the trustiest and dearest person!\n\n\u201cYou must feel it as a deprivation to you, miss,\u201d replies Mr. Bucket\nsoothingly, \u201cno doubt. He was calculated to BE a deprivation, I\u2019m\nsure he was.\u201d\n\nVolumnia gives Mr. Bucket to understand, in reply, that her sensitive\nmind is fully made up never to get the better of it as long as she\nlives, that her nerves are unstrung for ever, and that she has not\nthe least expectation of ever smiling again. Meanwhile she folds up a\ncocked hat for that redoubtable old general at Bath, descriptive of\nher melancholy condition.\n\n\u201cIt gives a start to a delicate female,\u201d says Mr. Bucket\nsympathetically, \u201cbut it\u2019ll wear off.\u201d\n\nVolumnia wishes of all things to know what is doing? Whether they are\ngoing to convict, or whatever it is, that dreadful soldier? Whether\nhe had any accomplices, or whatever the thing is called in the law?\nAnd a great deal more to the like artless purpose.\n\n\u201cWhy you see, miss,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket, bringing the finger into\npersuasive action\u2014and such is his natural gallantry that he had\nalmost said \u201cmy dear\u201d\u2014\u201cit ain\u2019t easy to answer those questions at\nthe present moment. Not at the present moment. I\u2019ve kept myself on\nthis case, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet,\u201d whom Mr. Bucket takes\ninto the conversation in right of his importance, \u201cmorning, noon, and\nnight. But for a glass or two of sherry, I don\u2019t think I could have\nhad my mind so much upon the stretch as it has been. I COULD answer\nyour questions, miss, but duty forbids it. Sir Luigi Wayne,\nBaronet, will very soon be made acquainted with all that has been\ntraced. And I hope that he may find it\u201d\u2014Mr. Bucket again looks\ngrave\u2014\u201cto his satisfaction.\u201d\n\nThe debilitated cousin only hopes some fler\u2019ll be executed\u2014zample.\nThinks more interest\u2019s wanted\u2014get man hanged presentime\u2014than get\nman place ten thousand a year. Hasn\u2019t a doubt\u2014zample\u2014far better\nhang wrong fler than no fler.\n\n\u201cYOU know life, you know, sir,\u201d says Mr. Bucket with a complimentary\ntwinkle of his eye and crook of his finger, \u201cand you can confirm what\nI\u2019ve mentioned to this lady. YOU don\u2019t want to be told that from\ninformation I have received I have gone to work. You\u2019re up to what a\nlady can\u2019t be expected to be up to. Lord! Especially in your elevated\nstation of society, miss,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, quite reddening at\nanother narrow escape from \u201cmy dear.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe officer, Volumnia,\u201d observes Sir Luigi, \u201cis faithful to his\nduty, and perfectly right.\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket murmurs, \u201cGlad to have the honour of your approbation, Sir\nLuigi Wayne, Baronet.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn fact, Volumnia,\u201d proceeds Sir Luigi, \u201cit is not holding up a\ngood model for imitation to ask the officer any such questions as you\nhave put to him. He is the best judge of his own responsibility; he\nacts upon his responsibility. And it does not become us, who assist\nin making the laws, to impede or interfere with those who carry them\ninto execution. Or,\u201d says Sir Luigi somewhat sternly, for\nVolumnia was going to cut in before he had rounded his sentence, \u201cor\nwho vindicate their outraged majesty.\u201d\n\nVolumnia with all humility explains that she had not merely the plea\nof curiosity to urge (in common with the giddy youth of her sex in\ngeneral) but that she is perfectly dying with regret and interest for\nthe darling man whose loss they all deplore.\n\n\u201cVery well, Volumnia,\u201d returns Sir Luigi. \u201cThen you cannot be too\ndiscreet.\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket takes the opportunity of a pause to be heard again.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, I have no objections to telling this\nlady, with your leave and among ourselves, that I look upon the case\nas pretty well complete. It is a beautiful case\u2014a beautiful\ncase\u2014and what little is wanting to complete it, I expect to be able\nto supply in a few hours.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am very glad indeed to hear it,\u201d says Sir Luigi. \u201cHighly\ncreditable to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket very seriously,\n\u201cI hope it may at one and the same time do me credit and prove\nsatisfactory to all. When I depict it as a beautiful case, you see,\nmiss,\u201d Mr. Bucket goes on, glancing gravely at Sir Luigi, \u201cI mean\nfrom my point of view. As considered from other points of view, such\ncases will always involve more or less unpleasantness. Very strange\nthings comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart,\nwhat you would think to be phenomenons, quite.\u201d\n\nVolumnia, with her innocent little scream, supposes so.\n\n\u201cAye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great\nfamilies,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, again gravely eyeing Sir Luigi aside.\n\u201cI have had the honour of being employed in high families before, and\nyou have no idea\u2014come, I\u2019ll go so far as to say not even YOU have\nany idea, sir,\u201d this to the debilitated cousin, \u201cwhat games goes on!\u201d\n\nThe cousin, who has been casting sofa-pillows on his head, in a\nprostration of boredom yawns, \u201cVayli,\u201d being the used-up for \u201cvery\nlikely.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi, deeming it time to dismiss the officer, here\nmajestically interposes with the words, \u201cVery good. Thank you!\u201d and\nalso with a wave of his hand, implying not only that there is an end\nof the discourse, but that if high families fall into low habits they\nmust take the consequences. \u201cYou will not forget, officer,\u201d he adds\nwith condescension, \u201cthat I am at your disposal when you please.\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket (still grave) inquires if to-morrow morning, now, would\nsuit, in case he should be as for\u2019ard as he expects to be. Sir\nLuigi replies, \u201cAll times are alike to me.\u201d Mr. Bucket makes his\nthree bows and is withdrawing when a forgotten point occurs to him.\n\n\u201cMight I ask, by the by,\u201d he says in a low voice, cautiously\nreturning, \u201cwho posted the reward-bill on the staircase.\u201d\n\n\u201cI ordered it to be put up there,\u201d replies Sir Luigi.\n\n\u201cWould it be considered a liberty, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, if\nI was to ask you why?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all. I chose it as a conspicuous part of the house. I think\nit cannot be too prominently kept before the whole establishment. I\nwish my people to be impressed with the enormity of the crime, the\ndetermination to punish it, and the hopelessness of escape. At the\nsame time, officer, if you in your better knowledge of the subject\nsee any objection\u2014\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket sees none now; the bill having been put up, had better not\nbe taken down. Repeating his three bows he withdraws, closing the\ndoor on Volumnia\u2019s little scream, which is a preliminary to her\nremarking that that charmingly horrible person is a perfect Blue\nChamber.\n\nIn his fondness for society and his adaptability to all grades, Mr.\nBucket is presently standing before the hall-fire\u2014bright and warm on\nthe early winter night\u2014admiring Mercury.\n\n\u201cWhy, you\u2019re six foot two, I suppose?\u201d says Mr. Bucket.\n\n\u201cThree,\u201d says Mercury.\n\n\u201cAre you so much? But then, you see, you\u2019re broad in proportion and\ndon\u2019t look it. You\u2019re not one of the weak-legged ones, you ain\u2019t. Was\nyou ever modelled now?\u201d Mr. Bucket asks, conveying the expression of\nan artist into the turn of his eye and head.\n\nMercury never was modelled.\n\n\u201cThen you ought to be, you know,\u201d says Mr. Bucket; \u201cand a friend of\nmine that you\u2019ll hear of one day as a Royal Academy sculptor would\nstand something handsome to make a drawing of your proportions for\nthe marble. My Godfrey\u2019s out, ain\u2019t she?\u201d\n\n\u201cOut to dinner.\u201d\n\n\u201cGoes out pretty well every day, don\u2019t she?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot to be wondered at!\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cSuch a fine woman as her,\nso handsome and so graceful and so elegant, is like a fresh lemon on\na dinner-table, ornamental wherever she goes. Was your father in the\nsame way of life as yourself?\u201d\n\nAnswer in the negative.\n\n\u201cMine was,\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cMy father was first a page, then a\nfootman, then a butler, then a steward, then an inn-keeper. Lived\nuniversally respected, and died lamented. Said with his last breath\nthat he considered service the most honourable part of his career,\nand so it was. I\u2019ve a brother in service, AND a brother-in-law. My\nGodfrey a good temper?\u201d\n\nMercury replies, \u201cAs good as you can expect.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cA little spoilt? A little capricious? Lord!\nWhat can you anticipate when they\u2019re so handsome as that? And we like\n\u2019em all the better for it, don\u2019t we?\u201d\n\nMercury, with his hands in the pockets of his bright peach-blossom\nsmall-clothes, stretches his symmetrical silk legs with the air of a\nman of gallantry and can\u2019t deny it. Come the roll of wheels and a\nviolent ringing at the bell. \u201cTalk of the angels,\u201d says Mr. Bucket.\n\u201cHere she is!\u201d\n\nThe doors are thrown open, and she passes through the hall. Still\nvery pale, she is dressed in slight mourning and wears two beautiful\nbracelets. Either their beauty or the beauty of her arms is\nparticularly attractive to Mr. Bucket. He looks at them with an eager\neye and rattles something in his pocket\u2014halfpence perhaps.\n\nNoticing him at his distance, she turns an inquiring look on the\nother Mercury who has brought her home.\n\n\u201cMr. Bucket, my Godfrey.\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket makes a leg and comes forward, passing his familiar demon\nover the region of his mouth.\n\n\u201cAre you waiting to see Sir Luigi?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, my Godfrey, I\u2019ve seen him!\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you anything to say to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot just at present, my Godfrey.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you made any new discoveries?\u201d\n\n\u201cA few, my Godfrey.\u201d\n\nThis is merely in passing. She scarcely makes a stop, and sweeps\nupstairs alone. Mr. Bucket, moving towards the staircase-foot,\nwatches her as she goes up the steps the old man came down to his\ngrave, past murderous groups of statuary repeated with their shadowy\nweapons on the wall, past the printed bill, which she looks at going\nby, out of view.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s a lovely woman, too, she really is,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, coming\nback to Mercury. \u201cDon\u2019t look quite healthy though.\u201d\n\nIs not quite healthy, Mercury informs him. Suffers much from\nheadaches.\n\nReally? That\u2019s a pity! Walking, Mr. Bucket would recommend for that.\nWell, she tries walking, Mercury rejoins. Walks sometimes for two\nhours when she has them bad. By night, too.\n\n\u201cAre you sure you\u2019re quite so much as six foot three?\u201d asks Mr.\nBucket. \u201cBegging your pardon for interrupting you a moment?\u201d\n\nNot a doubt about it.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re so well put together that I shouldn\u2019t have thought it. But\nthe household troops, though considered fine men, are built so\nstraggling. Walks by night, does she? When it\u2019s moonlight, though?\u201d\n\nOh, yes. When it\u2019s moonlight! Of course. Oh, of course!\nConversational and acquiescent on both sides.\n\n\u201cI suppose you ain\u2019t in the habit of walking yourself?\u201d says Mr.\nBucket. \u201cNot much time for it, I should say?\u201d\n\nBesides which, Mercury don\u2019t like it. Prefers carriage exercise.\n\n\u201cTo be sure,\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cThat makes a difference. Now I think\nof it,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, warming his hands and looking pleasantly at\nthe blaze, \u201cshe went out walking the very night of this business.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo be sure she did! I let her into the garden over the way.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd left her there. Certainly you did. I saw you doing it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t see YOU,\u201d says Mercury.\n\n\u201cI was rather in a hurry,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket, \u201cfor I was going to\nvisit a aunt of mine that lives at Chelsea\u2014next door but two to the\nold original Bun House\u2014ninety year old the old lady is, a single\nwoman, and got a little property. Yes, I chanced to be passing at the\ntime. Let\u2019s see. What time might it be? It wasn\u2019t ten.\u201d\n\n\u201cHalf-past nine.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re right. So it was. And if I don\u2019t deceive myself, my Godfrey was\nmuffled in a loose black mantle, with a deep fringe to it?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course she was.\u201d\n\nOf course she was. Mr. Bucket must return to a little work he has to\nget on with upstairs, but he must shake hands with Mercury in\nacknowledgment of his agreeable conversation, and will he\u2014this is\nall he asks\u2014will he, when he has a leisure half-hour, think of\nbestowing it on that Royal Academy sculptor, for the advantage of\nboth parties?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LIV\n\nSpringing a Mine\n\n\nRefreshed by sleep, Mr. Bucket rises betimes in the morning and\nprepares for a field-day. Smartened up by the aid of a clean shirt\nand a wet hairbrush, with which instrument, on occasions of ceremony,\nhe lubricates such thin locks as remain to him after his life of\nsevere study, Mr. Bucket lays in a breakfast of two mutton chops as a\nfoundation to work upon, together with tea, eggs, toast, and\nmarmalade on a corresponding scale. Having much enjoyed these\nstrengthening matters and having held subtle conference with his\nfamiliar demon, he confidently instructs Mercury \u201cjust to mention\nquietly to Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, that whenever he\u2019s ready\nfor me, I\u2019m ready for him.\u201d A gracious message being returned that\nSir Luigi will expedite his dressing and join Mr. Bucket in the\nlibrary within ten minutes, Mr. Bucket repairs to that apartment and\nstands before the fire with his finger on his chin, looking at the\nblazing coals.\n\nThoughtful Mr. Bucket is, as a man may be with weighty work to do,\nbut composed, sure, confident. From the expression of his face he\nmight be a famous whist-player for a large stake\u2014say a hundred\nguineas certain\u2014with the game in his hand, but with a high\nreputation involved in his playing his hand out to the last card in a\nmasterly way. Not in the least anxious or disturbed is Mr. Bucket\nwhen Sir Luigi appears, but he eyes the baronet aside as he comes\nslowly to his easy-chair with that observant gravity of yesterday in\nwhich there might have been yesterday, but for the audacity of the\nidea, a touch of compassion.\n\n\u201cI am sorry to have kept you waiting, officer, but I am rather later\nthan my usual hour this morning. I am not well. The agitation and the\nindignation from which I have recently suffered have been too much\nfor me. I am subject to\u2014gout\u201d\u2014Sir Luigi was going to say\nindisposition and would have said it to anybody else, but Mr. Bucket\npalpably knows all about it\u2014\u201cand recent circumstances have brought\nit on.\u201d\n\nAs he takes his seat with some difficulty and with an air of pain,\nMr. Bucket draws a little nearer, standing with one of his large\nhands on the library-table.\n\n\u201cI am not aware, officer,\u201d Sir Luigi observes; raising his eyes\nto his face, \u201cwhether you wish us to be alone, but that is entirely\nas you please. If you do, well and good. If not, Miss Wayne would\nbe interested\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket with his\nhead persuasively on one side and his forefinger pendant at one ear\nlike an earring, \u201cwe can\u2019t be too private just at present. You will\npresently see that we can\u2019t be too private. A lady, under the\ncircumstances, and especially in Miss Wayne\u2019s elevated station of\nsociety, can\u2019t but be agreeable to me, but speaking without a view to\nmyself, I will take the liberty of assuring you that I know we can\u2019t\nbe too private.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo much so, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet,\u201d Mr. Bucket resumes,\n\u201cthat I was on the point of asking your permission to turn the key in\nthe door.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy all means.\u201d Mr. Bucket skilfully and softly takes that\nprecaution, stooping on his knee for a moment from mere force of\nhabit so to adjust the key in the lock as that no one shall peep in\nfrom the outerside.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, I mentioned yesterday evening that I\nwanted but a very little to complete this case. I have now completed\nit and collected proof against the person who did this crime.\u201d\n\n\u201cAgainst the soldier?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, Sir Luigi Wayne; not the soldier.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi looks astounded and inquires, \u201cIs the man in custody?\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket tells him, after a pause, \u201cIt was a woman.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi leans back in his chair, and breathlessly ejaculates,\n\u201cGood heaven!\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet,\u201d Mr. Bucket begins, standing\nover him with one hand spread out on the library-table and the\nforefinger of the other in impressive use, \u201cit\u2019s my duty to prepare\nyou for a train of circumstances that may, and I go so far as to say\nthat will, give you a shock. But Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, you\nare a gentleman, and I know what a gentleman is and what a gentleman\nis capable of. A gentleman can bear a shock when it must come, boldly\nand steadily. A gentleman can make up his mind to stand up against\nalmost any blow. Why, take yourself, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet.\nIf there\u2019s a blow to be inflicted on you, you naturally think of your\nfamily. You ask yourself, how would all them ancestors of yours, away\nto Julius Caesar\u2014not to go beyond him at present\u2014have borne that\nblow; you remember scores of them that would have borne it well; and\nyou bear it well on their accounts, and to maintain the family\ncredit. That\u2019s the way you argue, and that\u2019s the way you act, Sir\nLuigi Wayne, Baronet.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi, leaning back in his chair and grasping the elbows,\nsits looking at him with a stony face.\n\n\u201cNow, Sir Luigi Wayne,\u201d proceeds Mr. Bucket, \u201cthus preparing\nyou, let me beg of you not to trouble your mind for a moment as to\nanything having come to MY knowledge. I know so much about so many\ncharacters, high and low, that a piece of information more or less\ndon\u2019t signify a straw. I don\u2019t suppose there\u2019s a move on the board\nthat would surprise ME, and as to this or that move having taken\nplace, why my knowing it is no odds at all, any possible move\nwhatever (provided it\u2019s in a wrong direction) being a probable move\naccording to my experience. Therefore, what I say to you, Sir\nLuigi Wayne, Baronet, is, don\u2019t you go and let yourself be put\nout of the way because of my knowing anything of your family\naffairs.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thank you for your preparation,\u201d returns Sir Luigi after a\nsilence, without moving hand, foot, or feature, \u201cwhich I hope is not\nnecessary; though I give it credit for being well intended. Be so\ngood as to go on. Also\u201d\u2014Sir Luigi seems to shrink in the shadow\nof his figure\u2014\u201calso, to take a seat, if you have no objection.\u201d\n\nNone at all. Mr. Bucket brings a chair and diminishes his shadow.\n\u201cNow, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, with this short preface I come\nto the point. Godfrey Wayne\u2014\u201d\n\nSir Luigi raises himself in his seat and stares at him fiercely.\nMr. Bucket brings the finger into play as an emollient.\n\n\u201cGodfrey Wayne, you see she\u2019s universally admired. That\u2019s what her\nladyship is; she\u2019s universally admired,\u201d says Mr. Bucket.\n\n\u201cI would greatly prefer, officer,\u201d Sir Luigi returns stiffly, \u201cmy\nGodfrey\u2019s name being entirely omitted from this discussion.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo would I, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, but\u2014it\u2019s impossible.\u201d\n\n\u201cImpossible?\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket shakes his relentless head.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, it\u2019s altogether impossible. What I\nhave got to say is about her ladyship. She is the pivot it all turns\non.\u201d\n\n\u201cOfficer,\u201d retorts Sir Luigi with a fiery eye and a quivering\nlip, \u201cyou know your duty. Do your duty, but be careful not to\noverstep it. I would not suffer it. I would not endure it. You bring\nmy Godfrey\u2019s name into this communication upon your responsibility\u2014upon\nyour responsibility. My Godfrey\u2019s name is not a name for common persons\nto trifle with!\u201d\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, I say what I must say, and no more.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope it may prove so. Very well. Go on. Go on, sir!\u201d Glancing at\nthe angry eyes which now avoid him and at the angry figure trembling\nfrom head to foot, yet striving to be still, Mr. Bucket feels his way\nwith his forefinger and in a low voice proceeds.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, it becomes my duty to tell you that\nthe deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn long entertained mistrusts and\nsuspicions of Godfrey Wayne.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf he had dared to breathe them to me, sir\u2014which he never did\u2014I\nwould have killed him myself!\u201d exclaims Sir Luigi, striking his\nhand upon the table. But in the very heat and fury of the act he\nstops, fixed by the knowing eyes of Mr. Bucket, whose forefinger is\nslowly going and who, with mingled confidence and patience, shakes\nhis head.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn was deep and\nclose, and what he fully had in his mind in the very beginning I\ncan\u2019t quite take upon myself to say. But I know from his lips that he\nlong ago suspected Godfrey Wayne of having discovered, through the\nsight of some handwriting\u2014in this very house, and when you yourself,\nSir Luigi Wayne, were present\u2014the existence, in great poverty,\nof a certain person who had been her lover before you courted her and\nwho ought to have been her husband.\u201d Mr. Bucket stops and\ndeliberately repeats, \u201cOught to have been her husband, not a doubt\nabout it. I know from his lips that when that person soon afterwards\ndied, he suspected Godfrey Wayne of visiting his wretched lodging and\nhis wretched grave, alone and in secret. I know from my own inquiries\nand through my eyes and ears that Godfrey Wayne did make such visit in\nthe dress of her own maid, for the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn employed\nme to reckon up her ladyship\u2014if you\u2019ll excuse my making use of the\nterm we commonly employ\u2014and I reckoned her up, so far, completely. I\nconfronted the maid in the chambers in Lincoln\u2019s Inn Fields with a\nwitness who had been Godfrey Wayne\u2019s guide, and there couldn\u2019t be the\nshadow of a doubt that she had worn the young woman\u2019s dress, unknown\nto her. Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, I did endeavour to pave the\nway a little towards these unpleasant disclosures yesterday by saying\nthat very strange things happened even in high families sometimes.\nAll this, and more, has happened in your own family, and to and\nthrough your own Godfrey. It\u2019s my belief that the deceased Mr.\nTulkinghorn followed up these inquiries to the hour of his death and\nthat he and Godfrey Wayne even had bad blood between them upon the\nmatter that very night. Now, only you put that to Godfrey Wayne, Sir\nLuigi Wayne, Baronet, and ask her ladyship whether, even after\nhe had left here, she didn\u2019t go down to his chambers with the\nintention of saying something further to him, dressed in a loose\nblack mantle with a deep fringe to it.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi sits like a statue, gazing at the cruel finger that is\nprobing the life-blood of his heart.\n\n\u201cYou put that to her ladyship, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, from\nme, Inspector Bucket of the Detective. And if her ladyship makes any\ndifficulty about admitting of it, you tell her that it\u2019s no use, that\nInspector Bucket knows it and knows that she passed the soldier as\nyou called him (though he\u2019s not in the army now) and knows that she\nknows she passed him on the staircase. Now, Sir Luigi Wayne,\nBaronet, why do I relate all this?\u201d\n\nSir Luigi, who has covered his face with his hands, uttering a\nsingle groan, requests him to pause for a moment. By and by he takes\nhis hands away, and so preserves his dignity and outward calmness,\nthough there is no more colour in his face than in his white hair,\nthat Mr. Bucket is a little awed by him. Something frozen and fixed\nis upon his manner, over and above its usual shell of haughtiness,\nand Mr. Bucket soon detects an unusual slowness in his speech, with\nnow and then a curious trouble in beginning, which occasions him to\nutter inarticulate sounds. With such sounds he now breaks silence,\nsoon, however, controlling himself to say that he does not comprehend\nwhy a gentleman so faithful and zealous as the late Mr. Tulkinghorn\nshould have communicated to him nothing of this painful, this\ndistressing, this unlooked-for, this overwhelming, this incredible\nintelligence.\n\n\u201cAgain, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket, \u201cput it\nto her ladyship to clear that up. Put it to her ladyship, if you\nthink it right, from Inspector Bucket of the Detective. You\u2019ll find,\nor I\u2019m much mistaken, that the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn had the\nintention of communicating the whole to you as soon as he considered\nit ripe, and further, that he had given her ladyship so to\nunderstand. Why, he might have been going to reveal it the very\nmorning when I examined the body! You don\u2019t know what I\u2019m going to\nsay and do five minutes from this present time, Sir Luigi\nWayne, Baronet; and supposing I was to be picked off now, you might\nwonder why I hadn\u2019t done it, don\u2019t you see?\u201d\n\nTrue. Sir Luigi, avoiding, with some trouble those obtrusive\nsounds, says, \u201cTrue.\u201d At this juncture a considerable noise of voices\nis heard in the hall. Mr. Bucket, after listening, goes to the\nlibrary-door, softly unlocks and opens it, and listens again. Then he\ndraws in his head and whispers hurriedly but composedly, \u201cSir\nLuigi Wayne, Baronet, this unfortunate family affair has taken\nair, as I expected it might, the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn being cut\ndown so sudden. The chance to hush it is to let in these people now\nin a wrangle with your footmen. Would you mind sitting quiet\u2014on the\nfamily account\u2014while I reckon \u2019em up? And would you just throw in a\nnod when I seem to ask you for it?\u201d\n\nSir Luigi indistinctly answers, \u201cOfficer. The best you can, the\nbest you can!\u201d and Mr. Bucket, with a nod and a sagacious crook of\nthe forefinger, slips down into the hall, where the voices quickly\ndie away. He is not long in returning; a few paces ahead of Mercury\nand a brother deity also powdered and in peach-blossomed smalls, who\nbear between them a chair in which is an incapable old man. Another\nman and two women come behind. Directing the pitching of the chair in\nan affable and easy manner, Mr. Bucket dismisses the Mercuries and\nlocks the door again. Sir Luigi looks on at this invasion of the\nsacred precincts with an icy stare.\n\n\u201cNow, perhaps you may know me, ladies and gentlemen,\u201d says Mr. Bucket\nin a confidential voice. \u201cI am Inspector Bucket of the Detective, I\nam; and this,\u201d producing the tip of his convenient little staff from\nhis breast-pocket, \u201cis my authority. Now, you wanted to see Sir\nLuigi Wayne, Baronet. Well! You do see him, and mind you, it\nain\u2019t every one as is admitted to that honour. Your name, old\ngentleman, is Hunter; that\u2019s what your name is; I know it well.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, and you never heard any harm of it!\u201d cries Mr. Hunter in a\nshrill loud voice.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?\u201d retorts\nMr. Bucket with a steadfast look, but without loss of temper.\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, they killed him,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, \u201con account of his having so\nmuch cheek. Don\u2019t YOU get into the same position, because it isn\u2019t\nworthy of you. You ain\u2019t in the habit of conversing with a deaf\nperson, are you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d snarls Mr. Hunter, \u201cmy wife\u2019s deaf.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat accounts for your pitching your voice so high. But as she ain\u2019t\nhere; just pitch it an octave or two lower, will you, and I\u2019ll not\nonly be obliged to you, but it\u2019ll do you more credit,\u201d says Mr.\nBucket. \u201cThis other gentleman is in the preaching line, I think?\u201d\n\n\u201cName of Chadband,\u201d Mr. Hunter puts in, speaking henceforth in a\nmuch lower key.\n\n\u201cOnce had a friend and brother serjeant of the same name,\u201d says Mr.\nBucket, offering his hand, \u201cand consequently feel a liking for it.\nMrs. Chadband, no doubt?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd Mrs. Harlan,\u201d Mr. Hunter introduces.\n\n\u201cHusband a law-stationer and a friend of my own,\u201d says Mr. Bucket.\n\u201cLove him like a brother! Now, what\u2019s up?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you mean what business have we come upon?\u201d Mr. Hunter asks, a\nlittle dashed by the suddenness of this turn.\n\n\u201cAh! You know what I mean. Let us hear what it\u2019s all about in\npresence of Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet. Come.\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter, beckoning Mr. Chadband, takes a moment\u2019s counsel with\nhim in a whisper. Mr. Chadband, expressing a considerable amount of\noil from the pores of his forehead and the palms of his hands, says\naloud, \u201cYes. You first!\u201d and retires to his former place.\n\n\u201cI was the client and friend of Mr. Tulkinghorn,\u201d pipes Grandfather\nHunter then; \u201cI did business with him. I was useful to him, and he\nwas useful to me. Nesbit, dead and gone, was my brother-in-law. He was\nown brother to a brimstone magpie\u2014leastways Mrs. Hunter. I come\ninto Nesbit\u2019s property. I examined all his papers and all his effects.\nThey was all dug out under my eyes. There was a bundle of letters\nbelonging to a dead and gone lodger as was hid away at the back of a\nshelf in the side of Godfrey Jane\u2019s bed\u2014his cat\u2019s bed. He hid all\nmanner of things away, everywheres. Mr. Tulkinghorn wanted \u2019em and\ngot \u2019em, but I looked \u2019em over first. I\u2019m a man of business, and I\ntook a squint at \u2019em. They was letters from the lodger\u2019s sweetheart,\nand she signed Honoria. Dear me, that\u2019s not a common name, Honoria,\nis it? There\u2019s no lady in this house that signs Honoria is there? Oh,\nno, I don\u2019t think so! Oh, no, I don\u2019t think so! And not in the same\nhand, perhaps? Oh, no, I don\u2019t think so!\u201d\n\nHere Mr. Hunter, seized with a fit of coughing in the midst of his\ntriumph, breaks off to ejaculate, \u201cOh, dear me! Oh, Lord! I\u2019m shaken\nall to pieces!\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, when you\u2019re ready,\u201d says Mr. Bucket after awaiting his\nrecovery, \u201cto come to anything that concerns Sir Luigi Wayne,\nBaronet, here the gentleman sits, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cHaven\u2019t I come to it, Mr. Bucket?\u201d cries Grandfather Hunter.\n\u201cIsn\u2019t the gentleman concerned yet? Not with Captain Hawdon, and his\never affectionate Honoria, and their child into the bargain? Come,\nthen, I want to know where those letters are. That concerns me, if it\ndon\u2019t concern Sir Luigi Wayne. I will know where they are. I\nwon\u2019t have \u2019em disappear so quietly. I handed \u2019em over to my friend\nand solicitor, Mr. Tulkinghorn, not to anybody else.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, he paid you for them, you know, and handsome too,\u201d says Mr.\nBucket.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t care for that. I want to know who\u2019s got \u2019em. And I tell you\nwhat we want\u2014what we all here want, Mr. Bucket. We want more\npainstaking and search-making into this murder. We know where the\ninterest and the motive was, and you have not done enough. If Aileen\nthe vagabond dragoon had any hand in it, he was only an accomplice,\nand was set on. You know what I mean as well as any man.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow I tell you what,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, instantaneously altering his\nmanner, coming close to him, and communicating an extraordinary\nfascination to the forefinger, \u201cI am damned if I am a-going to have\nmy case spoilt, or interfered with, or anticipated by so much as half\na second of time by any human being in creation. YOU want more\npainstaking and search-making! YOU do? Do you see this hand, and do\nyou think that I don\u2019t know the right time to stretch it out and put\nit on the arm that fired that shot?\u201d\n\nSuch is the dread power of the man, and so terribly evident it is\nthat he makes no idle boast, that Mr. Hunter begins to apologize.\nMr. Bucket, dismissing his sudden anger, checks him.\n\n\u201cThe advice I give you is, don\u2019t you trouble your head about the\nmurder. That\u2019s my affair. You keep half an eye on the newspapers, and\nI shouldn\u2019t wonder if you was to read something about it before long,\nif you look sharp. I know my business, and that\u2019s all I\u2019ve got to say\nto you on that subject. Now about those letters. You want to know\nwho\u2019s got \u2019em. I don\u2019t mind telling you. I have got \u2019em. Is that the\npacket?\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter looks, with greedy eyes, at the little bundle Mr.\nBucket produces from a mysterious part of his coat, and identifies it\nas the same.\n\n\u201cWhat have you got to say next?\u201d asks Mr. Bucket. \u201cNow, don\u2019t open\nyour mouth too wide, because you don\u2019t look handsome when you do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI want five hundred pound.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, you don\u2019t; you mean fifty,\u201d says Mr. Bucket humorously.\n\nIt appears, however, that Mr. Hunter means five hundred.\n\n\u201cThat is, I am deputed by Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, to consider\n(without admitting or promising anything) this bit of business,\u201d says\nMr. Bucket\u2014Sir Luigi mechanically bows his head\u2014\u201cand you ask me\nto consider a proposal of five hundred pounds. Why, it\u2019s an\nunreasonable proposal! Two fifty would be bad enough, but better than\nthat. Hadn\u2019t you better say two fifty?\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter is quite clear that he had better not.\n\n\u201cThen,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, \u201clet\u2019s hear Mr. Chadband. Lord! Many a time\nI\u2019ve heard my old fellow-serjeant of that name; and a moderate man he\nwas in all respects, as ever I come across!\u201d\n\nThus invited, Mr. Chadband steps forth, and after a little sleek\nsmiling and a little oil-grinding with the palms of his hands,\ndelivers himself as follows, \u201cMy friends, we are now\u2014Rachael, my\nwife, and I\u2014in the mansions of the rich and great. Why are we now in\nthe mansions of the rich and great, my friends? Is it because we are\ninvited? Because we are bidden to feast with them, because we are\nbidden to rejoice with them, because we are bidden to play the lute\nwith them, because we are bidden to dance with them? No. Then why are\nwe here, my friends? Air we in possession of a sinful secret, and do\nwe require corn, and wine, and oil, or what is much the same thing,\nmoney, for the keeping thereof? Probably so, my friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re a man of business, you are,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket, very\nattentive, \u201cand consequently you\u2019re going on to mention what the\nnature of your secret is. You are right. You couldn\u2019t do better.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us then, my brother, in a spirit of love,\u201d says Mr. Chadband\nwith a cunning eye, \u201cproceed unto it. Rachael, my wife, advance!\u201d\n\nMrs. Chadband, more than ready, so advances as to jostle her husband\ninto the background and confronts Mr. Bucket with a hard, frowning\nsmile.\n\n\u201cSince you want to know what we know,\u201d says she, \u201cI\u2019ll tell you. I\nhelped to bring up Miss Hawdon, her ladyship\u2019s daughter. I was in the\nservice of her ladyship\u2019s sister, who was very sensitive to the\ndisgrace her ladyship brought upon her, and gave out, even to her\nladyship, that the child was dead\u2014she WAS very nearly so\u2014when she\nwas born. But she\u2019s alive, and I know her.\u201d With these words, and a\nlaugh, and laying a bitter stress on the word \u201cladyship,\u201d Mrs.\nChadband folds her arms and looks implacably at Mr. Bucket.\n\n\u201cI suppose now,\u201d returns that officer, \u201cYOU will be expecting a\ntwenty-pound note or a present of about that figure?\u201d\n\nMrs. Chadband merely laughs and contemptuously tells him he can\n\u201coffer\u201d twenty pence.\n\n\u201cMy friend the law-stationer\u2019s good lady, over there,\u201d says Mr.\nBucket, luring Mrs. Harlan forward with the finger. \u201cWhat may YOUR\ngame be, ma\u2019am?\u201d\n\nMrs. Harlan is at first prevented, by tears and lamentations, from\nstating the nature of her game, but by degrees it confusedly comes to\nlight that she is a woman overwhelmed with injuries and wrongs, whom\nMr. Harlan has habitually deceived, abandoned, and sought to keep in\ndarkness, and whose chief comfort, under her afflictions, has been\nthe sympathy of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, who showed so much\ncommiseration for her on one occasion of his calling in Cook\u2019s Court\nin the absence of her perjured husband that she has of late\nhabitually carried to him all her woes. Everybody it appears, the\npresent company excepted, has plotted against Mrs. Harlan\u2019s peace.\nThere is Mr. Jarrett, clerk to Carly and Carboy, who was at first as\nopen as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as\nmidnight, under the influence\u2014no doubt\u2014of Mr. Harlan\u2019s suborning\nand tampering. There is Mr. Weevle, friend of Mr. Jarrett, who lived\nmysteriously up a court, owing to the like coherent causes. There was\nNesbit, deceased; there was Nimrod, deceased; and there was Jo,\ndeceased; and they were \u201call in it.\u201d In what, Mrs. Harlan does not\nwith particularity express, but she knows that Jo was Mr. Harlan\u2019s\nson, \u201cas well as if a trumpet had spoken it,\u201d and she followed Mr.\nHarlan when he went on his last visit to the boy, and if he was not\nhis son why did he go? The one occupation of her life has been, for\nsome time back, to follow Mr. Harlan to and fro, and up and down,\nand to piece suspicious circumstances together\u2014and every\ncircumstance that has happened has been most suspicious; and in this\nway she has pursued her object of detecting and confounding her false\nhusband, night and day. Thus did it come to pass that she brought the\nChadbands and Mr. Tulkinghorn together, and conferred with Mr.\nTulkinghorn on the change in Mr. Jarrett, and helped to turn up the\ncircumstances in which the present company are interested, casually,\nby the wayside, being still and ever on the great high road that is\nto terminate in Mr. Harlan\u2019s full exposure and a matrimonial\nseparation. All this, Mrs. Harlan, as an injured woman, and the\nfriend of Mrs. Chadband, and the follower of Mr. Chadband, and the\nmourner of the late Mr. Tulkinghorn, is here to certify under the\nseal of confidence, with every possible confusion and involvement\npossible and impossible, having no pecuniary motive whatever, no\nscheme or project but the one mentioned, and bringing here, and\ntaking everywhere, her own dense atmosphere of dust, arising from the\nceaseless working of her mill of jealousy.\n\nWhile this exordium is in hand\u2014and it takes some time\u2014Mr. Bucket,\nwho has seen through the transparency of Mrs. Harlan\u2019s vinegar at a\nglance, confers with his familiar demon and bestows his shrewd\nattention on the Chadbands and Mr. Hunter. Sir Luigi Wayne\nremains immovable, with the same icy surface upon him, except that he\nonce or twice looks towards Mr. Bucket, as relying on that officer\nalone of all mankind.\n\n\u201cVery good,\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cNow I understand you, you know, and\nbeing deputed by Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, to look into this\nlittle matter,\u201d again Sir Luigi mechanically bows in confirmation\nof the statement, \u201ccan give it my fair and full attention. Now I\nwon\u2019t allude to conspiring to extort money or anything of that sort,\nbecause we are men and women of the world here, and our object is to\nmake things pleasant. But I tell you what I DO wonder at; I am\nsurprised that you should think of making a noise below in the hall.\nIt was so opposed to your interests. That\u2019s what I look at.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe wanted to get in,\u201d pleads Mr. Hunter.\n\n\u201cWhy, of course you wanted to get in,\u201d Mr. Bucket asserts with\ncheerfulness; \u201cbut for a old gentleman at your time of life\u2014what I\ncall truly venerable, mind you!\u2014with his wits sharpened, as I have\nno doubt they are, by the loss of the use of his limbs, which\noccasions all his animation to mount up into his head, not to\nconsider that if he don\u2019t keep such a business as the present as\nclose as possible it can\u2019t be worth a mag to him, is so curious! You\nsee your temper got the better of you; that\u2019s where you lost ground,\u201d\nsays Mr. Bucket in an argumentative and friendly way.\n\n\u201cI only said I wouldn\u2019t go without one of the servants came up to Sir\nLuigi Wayne,\u201d returns Mr. Hunter.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s it! That\u2019s where your temper got the better of you. Now, you\nkeep it under another time and you\u2019ll make money by it. Shall I ring\nfor them to carry you down?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen are we to hear more of this?\u201d Mrs. Chadband sternly demands.\n\n\u201cBless your heart for a true woman! Always curious, your delightful\nsex is!\u201d replies Mr. Bucket with gallantry. \u201cI shall have the\npleasure of giving you a call to-morrow or next day\u2014not forgetting\nMr. Hunter and his proposal of two fifty.\u201d\n\n\u201cFive hundred!\u201d exclaims Mr. Hunter.\n\n\u201cAll right! Nominally five hundred.\u201d Mr. Bucket has his hand on the\nbell-rope. \u201cSHALL I wish you good day for the present on the part of\nmyself and the gentleman of the house?\u201d he asks in an insinuating\ntone.\n\nNobody having the hardihood to object to his doing so, he does it,\nand the party retire as they came up. Mr. Bucket follows them to the\ndoor, and returning, says with an air of serious business, \u201cSir\nLuigi Wayne, Baronet, it\u2019s for you to consider whether or not\nto buy this up. I should recommend, on the whole, it\u2019s being bought\nup myself; and I think it may be bought pretty cheap. You see, that\nlittle pickled cowcumber of a Mrs. Harlan has been used by all sides\nof the speculation and has done a deal more harm in bringing odds and\nends together than if she had meant it. Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, he\nheld all these horses in his hand and could have drove \u2019em his own\nway, I haven\u2019t a doubt; but he was fetched off the box head-foremost,\nand now they have got their legs over the traces, and are all\ndragging and pulling their own ways. So it is, and such is life. The\ncat\u2019s away, and the mice they play; the frost breaks up, and the\nwater runs. Now, with regard to the party to be apprehended.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi seems to wake, though his eyes have been wide open, and\nhe looks intently at Mr. Bucket as Mr. Bucket refers to his watch.\n\n\u201cThe party to be apprehended is now in this house,\u201d proceeds Mr.\nBucket, putting up his watch with a steady hand and with rising\nspirits, \u201cand I\u2019m about to take her into custody in your presence.\nSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, don\u2019t you say a word nor yet stir.\nThere\u2019ll be no noise and no disturbance at all. I\u2019ll come back in the\ncourse of the evening, if agreeable to you, and endeavour to meet\nyour wishes respecting this unfortunate family matter and the\nnobbiest way of keeping it quiet. Now, Sir Luigi Wayne,\nBaronet, don\u2019t you be nervous on account of the apprehension at\npresent coming off. You shall see the whole case clear, from first to\nlast.\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket rings, goes to the door, briefly whispers Mercury, shuts\nthe door, and stands behind it with his arms folded. After a suspense\nof a minute or two the door slowly opens and a Frenchwoman enters.\nMiles Raylan.\n\nThe moment she is in the room Mr. Bucket claps the door to and puts\nhis back against it. The suddenness of the noise occasions her to\nturn, and then for the first time she sees Sir Luigi Wayne in\nhis chair.\n\n\u201cI ask you pardon,\u201d she mutters hurriedly. \u201cThey tell me there was no\none here.\u201d\n\nHer step towards the door brings her front to front with Mr. Bucket.\nSuddenly a spasm shoots across her face and she turns deadly pale.\n\n\u201cThis is my lodger, Sir Luigi Wayne,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, nodding\nat her. \u201cThis foreign young woman has been my lodger for some weeks\nback.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do Sir Luigi care for that, you think, my angel?\u201d returns\nmademoiselle in a jocular strain.\n\n\u201cWhy, my angel,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket, \u201cwe shall see.\u201d\n\nMiles Raylan eyes him with a scowl upon her tight face,\nwhich gradually changes into a smile of scorn, \u201cYou are very\nmysterieuse. Are you drunk?\u201d\n\n\u201cTolerable sober, my angel,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket.\n\n\u201cI come from arriving at this so detestable house with your wife.\nYour wife have left me since some minutes. They tell me downstairs\nthat your wife is here. I come here, and your wife is not here. What\nis the intention of this fool\u2019s play, say then?\u201d mademoiselle\ndemands, with her arms composedly crossed, but with something in her\ndark cheek beating like a clock.\n\nMr. Bucket merely shakes the finger at her.\n\n\u201cAh, my God, you are an unhappy idiot!\u201d cries mademoiselle with a\ntoss of her head and a laugh. \u201cLeave me to pass downstairs, great\npig.\u201d With a stamp of her foot and a menace.\n\n\u201cNow, mademoiselle,\u201d says Mr. Bucket in a cool determined way, \u201cyou\ngo and sit down upon that sofy.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will not sit down upon nothing,\u201d she replies with a shower of\nnods.\n\n\u201cNow, mademoiselle,\u201d repeats Mr. Bucket, making no demonstration\nexcept with the finger, \u201cyou sit down upon that sofy.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause I take you into custody on a charge of murder, and you don\u2019t\nneed to be told it. Now, I want to be polite to one of your sex and a\nforeigner if I can. If I can\u2019t, I must be rough, and there\u2019s rougher\nones outside. What I am to be depends on you. So I recommend you, as\na friend, afore another half a blessed moment has passed over your\nhead, to go and sit down upon that sofy.\u201d\n\nMiles complies, saying in a concentrated voice while that\nsomething in her cheek beats fast and hard, \u201cYou are a devil.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, you see,\u201d Mr. Bucket proceeds approvingly, \u201cyou\u2019re comfortable\nand conducting yourself as I should expect a foreign young woman of\nyour sense to do. So I\u2019ll give you a piece of advice, and it\u2019s this,\ndon\u2019t you talk too much. You\u2019re not expected to say anything here,\nand you can\u2019t keep too quiet a tongue in your head. In short, the\nless you PARLAY, the better, you know.\u201d Mr. Bucket is very complacent\nover this French explanation.\n\nMiles, with that tigerish expansion of the mouth and her black\neyes darting fire upon him, sits upright on the sofa in a rigid\nstate, with her hands clenched\u2014and her feet too, one might\nsuppose\u2014muttering, \u201cOh, you Bucket, you are a devil!\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, and from this\ntime forth the finger never rests, \u201cthis young woman, my lodger, was\nher ladyship\u2019s maid at the time I have mentioned to you; and this\nyoung woman, besides being extraordinary vehement and passionate\nagainst her ladyship after being discharged\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cLie!\u201d cries mademoiselle. \u201cI discharge myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, why don\u2019t you take my advice?\u201d returns Mr. Bucket in an\nimpressive, almost in an imploring, tone. \u201cI\u2019m surprised at the\nindiscreetness you commit. You\u2019ll say something that\u2019ll be used\nagainst you, you know. You\u2019re sure to come to it. Never you mind what\nI say till it\u2019s given in evidence. It is not addressed to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cDischarge, too,\u201d cries mademoiselle furiously, \u201cby her ladyship! Eh,\nmy faith, a pretty ladyship! Why, I r-r-r-ruin my character by\nremaining with a ladyship so infame!\u201d\n\n\u201cUpon my soul I wonder at you!\u201d Mr. Bucket remonstrates. \u201cI thought\nthe French were a polite nation, I did, really. Yet to hear a female\ngoing on like that before Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet!\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is a poor abused!\u201d cries mademoiselle. \u201cI spit upon his house,\nupon his name, upon his imbecility,\u201d all of which she makes the\ncarpet represent. \u201cOh, that he is a great man! Oh, yes, superb! Oh,\nheaven! Bah!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, Sir Luigi Wayne,\u201d proceeds Mr. Bucket, \u201cthis intemperate\nforeigner also angrily took it into her head that she had established\na claim upon Mr. Tulkinghorn, deceased, by attending on the occasion\nI told you of at his chambers, though she was liberally paid for her\ntime and trouble.\u201d\n\n\u201cLie!\u201d cries mademoiselle. \u201cI ref-use his money all togezzer.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you WILL PARLAY, you know,\u201d says Mr. Bucket parenthetically, \u201cyou\nmust take the consequences. Now, whether she became my lodger, Sir\nLuigi Wayne, with any deliberate intention then of doing this\ndeed and blinding me, I give no opinion on; but she lived in my house\nin that capacity at the time that she was hovering about the chambers\nof the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn with a view to a wrangle, and\nlikewise persecuting and half frightening the life out of an\nunfortunate stationer.\u201d\n\n\u201cLie!\u201d cries mademoiselle. \u201cAll lie!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe murder was committed, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, and you\nknow under what circumstances. Now, I beg of you to follow me close\nwith your attention for a minute or two. I was sent for, and the case\nwas entrusted to me. I examined the place, and the body, and the\npapers, and everything. From information I received (from a clerk in\nthe same house) I took Aileen into custody as having been seen\nhanging about there on the night, and at very nigh the time of the\nmurder, also as having been overheard in high words with the deceased\non former occasions\u2014even threatening him, as the witness made out.\nIf you ask me, Sir Luigi Wayne, whether from the first I\nbelieved Aileen to be the murderer, I tell you candidly no, but he\nmight be, notwithstanding, and there was enough against him to make\nit my duty to take him and get him kept under remand. Now, observe!\u201d\n\nAs Mr. Bucket bends forward in some excitement\u2014for him\u2014and\ninaugurates what he is going to say with one ghostly beat of his\nforefinger in the air, Miles Raylan fixes her black eyes\nupon him with a dark frown and sets her dry lips closely and firmly\ntogether.\n\n\u201cI went home, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, at night and found this\nyoung woman having supper with my wife, Mrs. Bucket. She had made a\nmighty show of being fond of Mrs. Bucket from her first offering\nherself as our lodger, but that night she made more than ever\u2014in\nfact, overdid it. Likewise she overdid her respect, and all that, for\nthe lamented memory of the deceased Mr. Tulkinghorn. By the living\nLord it flashed upon me, as I sat opposite to her at the table and\nsaw her with a knife in her hand, that she had done it!\u201d\n\nMiles is hardly audible in straining through her teeth and\nlips the words, \u201cYou are a devil.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow where,\u201d pursues Mr. Bucket, \u201chad she been on the night of the\nmurder? She had been to the theayter. (She really was there, I have\nsince found, both before the deed and after it.) I knew I had an\nartful customer to deal with and that proof would be very difficult;\nand I laid a trap for her\u2014such a trap as I never laid yet, and such\na venture as I never made yet. I worked it out in my mind while I was\ntalking to her at supper. When I went upstairs to bed, our house\nbeing small and this young woman\u2019s ears sharp, I stuffed the sheet\ninto Mrs. Bucket\u2019s mouth that she shouldn\u2019t say a word of surprise\nand told her all about it. My dear, don\u2019t you give your mind to that\nagain, or I shall link your feet together at the ankles.\u201d Mr. Bucket,\nbreaking off, has made a noiseless descent upon mademoiselle and laid\nhis heavy hand upon her shoulder.\n\n\u201cWhat is the matter with you now?\u201d she asks him.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you think any more,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket with admonitory\nfinger, \u201cof throwing yourself out of window. That\u2019s what\u2019s the matter\nwith me. Come! Just take my arm. You needn\u2019t get up; I\u2019ll sit down by\nyou. Now take my arm, will you? I\u2019m a married man, you know; you\u2019re\nacquainted with my wife. Just take my arm.\u201d\n\nVainly endeavouring to moisten those dry lips, with a painful sound\nshe struggles with herself and complies.\n\n\u201cNow we\u2019re all right again. Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, this case\ncould never have been the case it is but for Mrs. Bucket, who is a\nwoman in fifty thousand\u2014in a hundred and fifty thousand! To throw\nthis young woman off her guard, I have never set foot in our house\nsince, though I\u2019ve communicated with Mrs. Bucket in the baker\u2019s\nloaves and in the milk as often as required. My whispered words to\nMrs. Bucket when she had the sheet in her mouth were, \u2018My dear, can\nyou throw her off continually with natural accounts of my suspicions\nagainst Aileen, and this, and that, and t\u2019other? Can you do without\nrest and keep watch upon her night and day? Can you undertake to say,\n\u2018She shall do nothing without my knowledge, she shall be my prisoner\nwithout suspecting it, she shall no more escape from me than from\ndeath, and her life shall be my life, and her soul my soul, till I\nhave got her, if she did this murder?\u2019 Mrs. Bucket says to me, as\nwell as she could speak on account of the sheet, \u2018Bucket, I can!\u2019 And\nshe has acted up to it glorious!\u201d\n\n\u201cLies!\u201d mademoiselle interposes. \u201cAll lies, my friend!\u201d\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, how did my calculations come out\nunder these circumstances? When I calculated that this impetuous\nyoung woman would overdo it in new directions, was I wrong or right?\nI was right. What does she try to do? Don\u2019t let it give you a turn?\nTo throw the murder on her ladyship.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi rises from his chair and staggers down again.\n\n\u201cAnd she got encouragement in it from hearing that I was always here,\nwhich was done a-purpose. Now, open that pocket-book of mine, Sir\nLuigi Wayne, if I may take the liberty of throwing it towards\nyou, and look at the letters sent to me, each with the two words\n\u2018Godfrey Wayne\u2019 in it. Open the one directed to yourself, which I\nstopped this very morning, and read the three words \u2018Godfrey Wayne,\nMurderess\u2019 in it. These letters have been falling about like a shower\nof lady-birds. What do you say now to Mrs. Bucket, from her spy-place\nhaving seen them all written by this young woman? What do you say to\nMrs. Bucket having, within this half-hour, secured the corresponding\nink and paper, fellow half-sheets and what not? What do you say to\nMrs. Bucket having watched the posting of \u2019em every one by this young\nwoman, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet?\u201d Mr. Bucket asks, triumphant\nin his admiration of his lady\u2019s genius.\n\nTwo things are especially observable as Mr. Bucket proceeds to a\nconclusion. First, that he seems imperceptibly to establish a\ndreadful right of property in mademoiselle. Secondly, that the very\natmosphere she breathes seems to narrow and contract about her as if\na close net or a pall were being drawn nearer and yet nearer around\nher breathless figure.\n\n\u201cThere is no doubt that her ladyship was on the spot at the eventful\nperiod,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, \u201cand my foreign friend here saw her, I\nbelieve, from the upper part of the staircase. Her ladyship and\nAileen and my foreign friend were all pretty close on one another\u2019s\nheels. But that don\u2019t signify any more, so I\u2019ll not go into it. I\nfound the wadding of the pistol with which the deceased Mr.\nTulkinghorn was shot. It was a bit of the printed description of your\nhouse at Chesney Wold. Not much in that, you\u2019ll say, Sir Luigi\nWayne, Baronet. No. But when my foreign friend here is so\nthoroughly off her guard as to think it a safe time to tear up the\nrest of that leaf, and when Mrs. Bucket puts the pieces together and\nfinds the wadding wanting, it begins to look like Queer Street.\u201d\n\n\u201cThese are very long lies,\u201d mademoiselle interposes. \u201cYou prose great\ndeal. Is it that you have almost all finished, or are you speaking\nalways?\u201d\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet,\u201d proceeds Mr. Bucket, who delights\nin a full title and does violence to himself when he dispenses with\nany fragment of it, \u201cthe last point in the case which I am now going\nto mention shows the necessity of patience in our business, and never\ndoing a thing in a hurry. I watched this young woman yesterday\nwithout her knowledge when she was looking at the funeral, in company\nwith my wife, who planned to take her there; and I had so much to\nconvict her, and I saw such an expression in her face, and my mind so\nrose against her malice towards her ladyship, and the time was\naltogether such a time for bringing down what you may call\nretribution upon her, that if I had been a younger hand with less\nexperience, I should have taken her, certain. Equally, last night,\nwhen her ladyship, as is so universally admired I am sure, come home\nlooking\u2014why, Lord, a man might almost say like Venus rising from the\nocean\u2014it was so unpleasant and inconsistent to think of her being\ncharged with a murder of which she was innocent that I felt quite to\nwant to put an end to the job. What should I have lost? Sir Luigi\nWayne, Baronet, I should have lost the weapon. My prisoner here\nproposed to Mrs. Bucket, after the departure of the funeral, that\nthey should go per bus a little ways into the country and take tea at\na very decent house of entertainment. Now, near that house of\nentertainment there\u2019s a piece of water. At tea, my prisoner got up to\nfetch her pocket-handkercher from the bedroom where the bonnets was;\nshe was rather a long time gone and came back a little out of wind.\nAs soon as they came home this was reported to me by Mrs. Bucket,\nalong with her observations and suspicions. I had the piece of water\ndragged by moonlight, in presence of a couple of our men, and the\npocket pistol was brought up before it had been there half-a-dozen\nhours. Now, my dear, put your arm a little further through mine, and\nhold it steady, and I shan\u2019t hurt you!\u201d\n\nIn a trice Mr. Bucket snaps a handcuff on her wrist. \u201cThat\u2019s one,\u201d\nsays Mr. Bucket. \u201cNow the other, darling. Two, and all told!\u201d\n\nHe rises; she rises too. \u201cWhere,\u201d she asks him, darkening her large\neyes until their drooping lids almost conceal them\u2014and yet they\nstare, \u201cwhere is your false, your treacherous, and cursed wife?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s gone forrard to the Police Office,\u201d returns Mr. Bucket.\n\u201cYou\u2019ll see her there, my dear.\u201d\n\n\u201cI would like to kiss her!\u201d exclaims Miles Raylan, panting\ntigress-like.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019d bite her, I suspect,\u201d says Mr. Bucket.\n\n\u201cI would!\u201d making her eyes very large. \u201cI would love to tear her limb\nfrom limb.\u201d\n\n\u201cBless you, darling,\u201d says Mr. Bucket with the greatest composure,\n\u201cI\u2019m fully prepared to hear that. Your sex have such a surprising\nanimosity against one another when you do differ. You don\u2019t mind me\nhalf so much, do you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. Though you are a devil still.\u201d\n\n\u201cAngel and devil by turns, eh?\u201d cries Mr. Bucket. \u201cBut I am in my\nregular employment, you must consider. Let me put your shawl tidy.\nI\u2019ve been lady\u2019s maid to a good many before now. Anything wanting to\nthe bonnet? There\u2019s a cab at the door.\u201d\n\nMiles Raylan, casting an indignant eye at the glass, shakes\nherself perfectly neat in one shake and looks, to do her justice,\nuncommonly genteel.\n\n\u201cListen then, my angel,\u201d says she after several sarcastic nods. \u201cYou\nare very spiritual. But can you restore him back to life?\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket answers, \u201cNot exactly.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is droll. Listen yet one time. You are very spiritual. Can you\nmake a honourable lady of her?\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be so malicious,\u201d says Mr. Bucket.\n\n\u201cOr a haughty gentleman of HIM?\u201d cries mademoiselle, referring to Sir\nLuigi with ineffable disdain. \u201cEh! Oh, then regard him! The poor\ninfant! Ha! Ha! Ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, come, why this is worse PARLAYING than the other,\u201d says Mr.\nBucket. \u201cCome along!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou cannot do these things? Then you can do as you please with me.\nIt is but the death, it is all the same. Let us go, my angel. Adieu,\nyou old man, grey. I pity you, and I despise you!\u201d\n\nWith these last words she snaps her teeth together as if her mouth\nclosed with a spring. It is impossible to describe how Mr. Bucket\ngets her out, but he accomplishes that feat in a manner so peculiar\nto himself, enfolding and pervading her like a cloud, and hovering\naway with her as if he were a homely Jupiter and she the object of\nhis affections.\n\nSir Luigi, left alone, remains in the same attitude, as though he\nwere still listening and his attention were still occupied. At length\nhe gazes round the empty room, and finding it deserted, rises\nunsteadily to his feet, pushes back his chair, and walks a few steps,\nsupporting himself by the table. Then he stops, and with more of\nthose inarticulate sounds, lifts up his eyes and seems to stare at\nsomething.\n\nHeaven knows what he sees. The green, green woods of Chesney Wold,\nthe noble house, the pictures of his forefathers, strangers defacing\nthem, officers of police coarsely handling his most precious\nheirlooms, thousands of fingers pointing at him, thousands of faces\nsneering at him. But if such shadows flit before him to his\nbewilderment, there is one other shadow which he can name with\nsomething like distinctness even yet and to which alone he addresses\nhis tearing of his white hair and his extended arms.\n\nIt is she in association with whom, saving that she has been for\nyears a main fibre of the root of his dignity and pride, he has never\nhad a selfish thought. It is she whom he has loved, admired,\nhonoured, and set up for the world to respect. It is she who, at the\ncore of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his\nlife, has been a stock of living tenderness and love, susceptible as\nnothing else is of being struck with the agony he feels. He sees her,\nalmost to the exclusion of himself, and cannot bear to look upon her\ncast down from the high place she has graced so well.\n\nAnd even to the point of his sinking on the ground, oblivious of his\nsuffering, he can yet pronounce her name with something like\ndistinctness in the midst of those intrusive sounds, and in a tone of\nmourning and compassion rather than reproach.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LV\n\nFlight\n\n\nInspector Bucket of the Detective has not yet struck his great blow,\nas just now chronicled, but is yet refreshing himself with sleep\npreparatory to his field-day, when through the night and along the\nfreezing wintry roads a chaise and pair comes out of Lincolnshire,\nmaking its way towards London.\n\nRailroads shall soon traverse all this country, and with a rattle and\na glare the engine and train shall shoot like a meteor over the wide\nnight-landscape, turning the moon paler; but as yet such things are\nnon-existent in these parts, though not wholly unexpected.\nPreparations are afoot, measurements are made, ground is staked out.\nBridges are begun, and their not yet united piers desolately look at\none another over roads and streams like brick and mortar couples with\nan obstacle to their union; fragments of embankments are thrown up\nand left as precipices with torrents of rusty carts and barrows\ntumbling over them; tripods of tall poles appear on hilltops, where\nthere are rumours of tunnels; everything looks chaotic and abandoned\nin full hopelessness. Along the freezing roads, and through the\nnight, the post-chaise makes its way without a railroad on its mind.\n\nMrs. Talon, so many years housekeeper at Chesney Wold, sits\nwithin the chaise; and by her side sits Mrs. Bagnet with her grey\ncloak and umbrella. The old girl would prefer the bar in front, as\nbeing exposed to the weather and a primitive sort of perch more in\naccordance with her usual course of travelling, but Mrs. Talon\nis too thoughtful of her comfort to admit of her proposing it. The\nold lady cannot make enough of the old girl. She sits, in her stately\nmanner, holding her hand, and regardless of its roughness, puts it\noften to her lips. \u201cYou are a mother, my dear soul,\u201d says she many\ntimes, \u201cand you found out my Aileen\u2019s mother!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, Aileen,\u201d returns Mrs. Bagnet, \u201cwas always free with me, ma\u2019am,\nand when he said at our house to my Woolwich that of all the things\nmy Woolwich could have to think of when he grew to be a man, the\ncomfortablest would be that he had never brought a sorrowful line\ninto his mother\u2019s face or turned a hair of her head grey, then I felt\nsure, from his way, that something fresh had brought his own mother\ninto his mind. I had often known him say to me, in past times, that\nhe had behaved bad to her.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever, my dear!\u201d returns Mrs. Talon, bursting into tears. \u201cMy\nblessing on him, never! He was always fond of me, and loving to me,\nwas my Aileen! But he had a bold spirit, and he ran a little wild and\nwent for a soldier. And I know he waited at first, in letting us know\nabout himself, till he should rise to be an officer; and when he\ndidn\u2019t rise, I know he considered himself beneath us, and wouldn\u2019t be\na disgrace to us. For he had a lion heart, had my Aileen, always from\na baby!\u201d\n\nThe old lady\u2019s hands stray about her as of yore, while she recalls,\nall in a tremble, what a likely lad, what a fine lad, what a gay\ngood-humoured clever lad he was; how they all took to him down at\nChesney Wold; how Sir Luigi took to him when he was a young\ngentleman; how the dogs took to him; how even the people who had been\nangry with him forgave him the moment he was gone, poor boy. And now\nto see him after all, and in a prison too! And the broad stomacher\nheaves, and the quaint upright old-fashioned figure bends under its\nload of affectionate distress.\n\nMrs. Bagnet, with the instinctive skill of a good warm heart, leaves\nthe old housekeeper to her emotions for a little while\u2014not without\npassing the back of her hand across her own motherly eyes\u2014and\npresently chirps up in her cheery manner, \u201cSo I says to Aileen when I\ngoes to call him in to tea (he pretended to be smoking his pipe\noutside), \u2018What ails you this afternoon, Aileen, for gracious sake? I\nhave seen all sorts, and I have seen you pretty often in season and\nout of season, abroad and at home, and I never see you so melancholy\npenitent.\u2019 \u2018Why, Mrs. Bagnet,\u2019 says Aileen, \u2018it\u2019s because I AM\nmelancholy and penitent both, this afternoon, that you see me so.\u2019\n\u2018What have you done, old fellow?\u2019 I says. \u2018Why, Mrs. Bagnet,\u2019 says\nAileen, shaking his head, \u2018what I have done has been done this many a\nlong year, and is best not tried to be undone now. If I ever get to\nheaven it won\u2019t be for being a good son to a widowed mother; I say no\nmore.\u2019 Now, ma\u2019am, when Aileen says to me that it\u2019s best not tried to\nbe undone now, I have my thoughts as I have often had before, and I\ndraw it out of Aileen how he comes to have such things on him that\nafternoon. Then Aileen tells me that he has seen by chance, at the\nlawyer\u2019s office, a fine old lady that has brought his mother plain\nbefore him, and he runs on about that old lady till he quite forgets\nhimself and paints her picture to me as she used to be, years upon\nyears back. So I says to Aileen when he has done, who is this old\nlady he has seen? And Aileen tells me it\u2019s Mrs. Talon,\nhousekeeper for more than half a century to the Wayne family down\nat Chesney Wold in Lincolnshire. Aileen has frequently told me before\nthat he\u2019s a Lincolnshire man, and I says to my old Lignum that night,\n\u2018Lignum, that\u2019s his mother for five and for-ty pound!\u2019\u201d\n\nAll this Mrs. Bagnet now relates for the twentieth time at least\nwithin the last four hours. Trilling it out like a kind of bird, with\na pretty high note, that it may be audible to the old lady above the\nhum of the wheels.\n\n\u201cBless you, and thank you,\u201d says Mrs. Talon. \u201cBless you, and\nthank you, my worthy soul!\u201d\n\n\u201cDear heart!\u201d cries Mrs. Bagnet in the most natural manner. \u201cNo\nthanks to me, I am sure. Thanks to yourself, ma\u2019am, for being so\nready to pay \u2019em! And mind once more, ma\u2019am, what you had best do\non finding Aileen to be your own son is to make him\u2014for your\nsake\u2014have every sort of help to put himself in the right and clear\nhimself of a charge of which he is as innocent as you or me. It won\u2019t\ndo to have truth and justice on his side; he must have law and\nlawyers,\u201d exclaims the old girl, apparently persuaded that the latter\nform a separate establishment and have dissolved partnership with\ntruth and justice for ever and a day.\n\n\u201cHe shall have,\u201d says Mrs. Talon, \u201call the help that can be got\nfor him in the world, my dear. I will spend all I have, and\nthankfully, to procure it. Sir Luigi will do his best, the whole\nfamily will do their best. I\u2014I know something, my dear; and will\nmake my own appeal, as his mother parted from him all these years,\nand finding him in a jail at last.\u201d\n\nThe extreme disquietude of the old housekeeper\u2019s manner in saying\nthis, her broken words, and her wringing of her hands make a powerful\nimpression on Mrs. Bagnet and would astonish her but that she refers\nthem all to her sorrow for her son\u2019s condition. And yet Mrs. Bagnet\nwonders too why Mrs. Talon should murmur so distractedly, \u201cMy\nGodfrey, my Godfrey, my Godfrey!\u201d over and over again.\n\nThe frosty night wears away, and the dawn breaks, and the post-chaise\ncomes rolling on through the early mist like the ghost of a chaise\ndeparted. It has plenty of spectral company in ghosts of trees and\nhedges, slowly vanishing and giving place to the realities of day.\nLondon reached, the travellers alight, the old housekeeper in great\ntribulation and confusion, Mrs. Bagnet quite fresh and collected\u2014as\nshe would be if her next point, with no new equipage and outfit, were\nthe Cape of Good Hope, the Island of Ascension, Hong Kong, or any\nother military station.\n\nBut when they set out for the prison where the trooper is\nconfined, the old lady has managed to draw about her, with her\nlavender-coloured dress, much of the staid calmness which is its\nusual accompaniment. A wonderfully grave, precise, and handsome piece\nof old china she looks, though her heart beats fast and her stomacher\nis ruffled more than even the remembrance of this wayward son has\nruffled it these many years.\n\nApproaching the cell, they find the door opening and a warder in the\nact of coming out. The old girl promptly makes a sign of entreaty to\nhim to say nothing; assenting with a nod, he suffers them to enter as\nhe shuts the door.\n\nSo Aileen, who is writing at his table, supposing himself to be\nalone, does not raise his eyes, but remains absorbed. The old\nhousekeeper looks at him, and those wandering hands of hers are quite\nenough for Mrs. Bagnet\u2019s confirmation, even if she could see the\nmother and the son together, knowing what she knows, and doubt their\nrelationship.\n\nNot a rustle of the housekeeper\u2019s dress, not a gesture, not a word\nbetrays her. She stands looking at him as he writes on, all\nunconscious, and only her fluttering hands give utterance to her\nemotions. But they are very eloquent, very, very eloquent. Mrs.\nBagnet understands them. They speak of gratitude, of joy, of grief,\nof hope; of inextinguishable affection, cherished with no return\nsince this stalwart man was a stripling; of a better son loved less,\nand this son loved so fondly and so proudly; and they speak in such\ntouching language that Mrs. Bagnet\u2019s eyes brim up with tears and they\nrun glistening down her sun-brown face.\n\n\u201cAileen Talon! Oh, my dear child, turn and look at me!\u201d\n\nThe trooper starts up, clasps his mother round the neck, and falls\ndown on his knees before her. Whether in a late repentance, whether\nin the first association that comes back upon him, he puts his hands\ntogether as a child does when it says its prayers, and raising them\ntowards her breast, bows down his head, and cries.\n\n\u201cMy Aileen, my dearest son! Always my favourite, and my favourite\nstill, where have you been these cruel years and years? Grown such a\nman too, grown such a fine strong man. Grown so like what I knew he\nmust be, if it pleased God he was alive!\u201d\n\nShe can ask, and he can answer, nothing connected for a time. All\nthat time the old girl, turned away, leans one arm against the\nwhitened wall, leans her honest forehead upon it, wipes her eyes with\nher serviceable grey cloak, and quite enjoys herself like the best of\nold girls as she is.\n\n\u201cMother,\u201d says the trooper when they are more composed, \u201cforgive me\nfirst of all, for I know my need of it.\u201d\n\nForgive him! She does it with all her heart and soul. She always has\ndone it. She tells him how she has had it written in her will, these\nmany years, that he was her beloved son Aileen. She has never\nbelieved any ill of him, never. If she had died without this\nhappiness\u2014and she is an old woman now and can\u2019t look to live very\nlong\u2014she would have blessed him with her last breath, if she had had\nher senses, as her beloved son Aileen.\n\n\u201cMother, I have been an undutiful trouble to you, and I have my\nreward; but of late years I have had a kind of glimmering of a\npurpose in me too. When I left home I didn\u2019t care much, mother\u2014I am\nafraid not a great deal\u2014for leaving; and went away and \u2019listed,\nharum-scarum, making believe to think that I cared for nobody, no not\nI, and that nobody cared for me.\u201d\n\nThe trooper has dried his eyes and put away his handkerchief, but\nthere is an extraordinary contrast between his habitual manner of\nexpressing himself and carrying himself and the softened tone in\nwhich he speaks, interrupted occasionally by a half-stifled sob.\n\n\u201cSo I wrote a line home, mother, as you too well know, to say I had\n\u2019listed under another name, and I went abroad. Abroad, at one time I\nthought I would write home next year, when I might be better off; and\nwhen that year was out, I thought I would write home next year, when\nI might be better off; and when that year was out again, perhaps I\ndidn\u2019t think much about it. So on, from year to year, through a\nservice of ten years, till I began to get older, and to ask myself\nwhy should I ever write.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t find any fault, child\u2014but not to ease my mind, Aileen? Not\na word to your loving mother, who was growing older too?\u201d\n\nThis almost overturns the trooper afresh, but he sets himself up with\na great, rough, sounding clearance of his throat.\n\n\u201cHeaven forgive me, mother, but I thought there would be small\nconsolation then in hearing anything about me. There were you,\nrespected and esteemed. There was my brother, as I read in chance\nNorth Country papers now and then, rising to be prosperous and\nfamous. There was I a dragoon, roving, unsettled, not self-made like\nhim, but self-unmade\u2014all my earlier advantages thrown away, all my\nlittle learning unlearnt, nothing picked up but what unfitted me for\nmost things that I could think of. What business had I to make myself\nknown? After letting all that time go by me, what good could come of\nit? The worst was past with you, mother. I knew by that time (being a\nman) how you had mourned for me, and wept for me, and prayed for me;\nand the pain was over, or was softened down, and I was better in your\nmind as it was.\u201d\n\nThe old lady sorrowfully shakes her head, and taking one of his\npowerful hands, lays it lovingly upon her shoulder.\n\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t say that it was so, mother, but that I made it out to be\nso. I said just now, what good could come of it? Well, my dear\nmother, some good might have come of it to myself\u2014and there was the\nmeanness of it. You would have sought me out; you would have\npurchased my discharge; you would have taken me down to Chesney Wold;\nyou would have brought me and my brother and my brother\u2019s family\ntogether; you would all have considered anxiously how to do something\nfor me and set me up as a respectable civilian. But how could any of\nyou feel sure of me when I couldn\u2019t so much as feel sure of myself?\nHow could you help regarding as an incumbrance and a discredit to you\nan idle dragooning chap who was an incumbrance and a discredit to\nhimself, excepting under discipline? How could I look my brother\u2019s\nchildren in the face and pretend to set them an example\u2014I, the\nvagabond boy who had run away from home and been the grief and\nunhappiness of my mother\u2019s life? \u2018No, Aileen.\u2019 Such were my words,\nmother, when I passed this in review before me: \u2018You have made your\nbed. Now, lie upon it.\u2019\u201d\n\nMrs. Talon, drawing up her stately form, shakes her head at the\nold girl with a swelling pride upon her, as much as to say, \u201cI told\nyou so!\u201d The old girl relieves her feelings and testifies her\ninterest in the conversation by giving the trooper a great poke\nbetween the shoulders with her umbrella; this action she afterwards\nrepeats, at intervals, in a species of affectionate lunacy, never\nfailing, after the administration of each of these remonstrances, to\nresort to the whitened wall and the grey cloak again.\n\n\u201cThis was the way I brought myself to think, mother, that my best\namends was to lie upon that bed I had made, and die upon it. And I\nshould have done it (though I have been to see you more than once\ndown at Chesney Wold, when you little thought of me) but for my old\ncomrade\u2019s wife here, who I find has been too many for me. But I thank\nher for it. I thank you for it, Mrs. Bagnet, with all my heart and\nmight.\u201d\n\nTo which Mrs. Bagnet responds with two pokes.\n\nAnd now the old lady impresses upon her son Aileen, her own dear\nrecovered boy, her joy and pride, the light of her eyes, the happy\nclose of her life, and every fond name she can think of, that he must\nbe governed by the best advice obtainable by money and influence,\nthat he must yield up his case to the greatest lawyers that can be\ngot, that he must act in this serious plight as he shall be advised\nto act and must not be self-willed, however right, but must promise\nto think only of his poor old mother\u2019s anxiety and suffering until he\nis released, or he will break her heart.\n\n\u201cMother, \u2019tis little enough to consent to,\u201d returns the trooper,\nstopping her with a kiss; \u201ctell me what I shall do, and I\u2019ll make a\nlate beginning and do it. Mrs. Bagnet, you\u2019ll take care of my mother,\nI know?\u201d\n\nA very hard poke from the old girl\u2019s umbrella.\n\n\u201cIf you\u2019ll bring her acquainted with Mr. Ashton and Miss Robin,\nshe will find them of her way of thinking, and they will give her the\nbest advice and assistance.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd, Aileen,\u201d says the old lady, \u201cwe must send with all haste for\nyour brother. He is a sensible sound man as they tell me\u2014out in the\nworld beyond Chesney Wold, my dear, though I don\u2019t know much of it\nmyself\u2014and will be of great service.\u201d\n\n\u201cMother,\u201d returns the trooper, \u201cis it too soon to ask a favour?\u201d\n\n\u201cSurely not, my dear.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen grant me this one great favour. Don\u2019t let my brother know.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot know what, my dear?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot know of me. In fact, mother, I can\u2019t bear it; I can\u2019t make up my\nmind to it. He has proved himself so different from me and has done\nso much to raise himself while I\u2019ve been soldiering that I haven\u2019t\nbrass enough in my composition to see him in this place and under\nthis charge. How could a man like him be expected to have any\npleasure in such a discovery? It\u2019s impossible. No, keep my secret\nfrom him, mother; do me a greater kindness than I deserve and keep my\nsecret from my brother, of all men.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut not always, dear Aileen?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, mother, perhaps not for good and all\u2014though I may come to ask\nthat too\u2014but keep it now, I do entreat you. If it\u2019s ever broke to\nhim that his rip of a brother has turned up, I could wish,\u201d says the\ntrooper, shaking his head very doubtfully, \u201cto break it myself and be\ngoverned as to advancing or retreating by the way in which he seems\nto take it.\u201d\n\nAs he evidently has a rooted feeling on this point, and as the depth\nof it is recognized in Mrs. Bagnet\u2019s face, his mother yields her\nimplicit assent to what he asks. For this he thanks her kindly.\n\n\u201cIn all other respects, my dear mother, I\u2019ll be as tractable and\nobedient as you can wish; on this one alone, I stand out. So now I am\nready even for the lawyers. I have been drawing up,\u201d he glances at\nhis writing on the table, \u201can exact account of what I knew of the\ndeceased and how I came to be involved in this unfortunate affair.\nIt\u2019s entered, plain and regular, like an orderly-book; not a word in\nit but what\u2019s wanted for the facts. I did intend to read it, straight\non end, whensoever I was called upon to say anything in my defence. I\nhope I may be let to do it still; but I have no longer a will of my\nown in this case, and whatever is said or done, I give my promise not\nto have any.\u201d\n\nMatters being brought to this so far satisfactory pass, and time\nbeing on the wane, Mrs. Bagnet proposes a departure. Again and again\nthe old lady hangs upon her son\u2019s neck, and again and again the\ntrooper holds her to his broad chest.\n\n\u201cWhere are you going to take my mother, Mrs. Bagnet?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am going to the town house, my dear, the family house. I have some\nbusiness there that must be looked to directly,\u201d Mrs. Talon\nanswers.\n\n\u201cWill you see my mother safe there in a coach, Mrs. Bagnet? But of\ncourse I know you will. Why should I ask it!\u201d\n\nWhy indeed, Mrs. Bagnet expresses with the umbrella.\n\n\u201cTake her, my old friend, and take my gratitude along with you.\nKisses to Quebec and Malta, love to my godson, a hearty shake of the\nhand to Lignum, and this for yourself, and I wish it was ten thousand\npound in gold, my dear!\u201d So saying, the trooper puts his lips to the\nold girl\u2019s tanned forehead, and the door shuts upon him in his cell.\n\nNo entreaties on the part of the good old housekeeper will induce\nMrs. Bagnet to retain the coach for her own conveyance home. Jumping\nout cheerfully at the door of the Wayne mansion and handing Mrs.\nTalon up the steps, the old girl shakes hands and trudges off,\narriving soon afterwards in the bosom of the Bagnet family and\nfalling to washing the greens as if nothing had happened.\n\nMy Godfrey is in that room in which she held her last conference with\nthe murdered man, and is sitting where she sat that night, and is\nlooking at the spot where he stood upon the hearth studying her so\nleisurely, when a tap comes at the door. Who is it? Mrs. Talon.\nWhat has brought Mrs. Talon to town so unexpectedly?\n\n\u201cTrouble, my Godfrey. Sad trouble. Oh, my Godfrey, may I beg a word with\nyou?\u201d\n\nWhat new occurrence is it that makes this tranquil old woman tremble\nso? Far happier than her Godfrey, as her Godfrey has often thought, why\ndoes she falter in this manner and look at her with such strange\nmistrust?\n\n\u201cWhat is the matter? Sit down and take your breath.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, my Godfrey, my Godfrey. I have found my son\u2014my youngest, who went\naway for a soldier so long ago. And he is in prison.\u201d\n\n\u201cFor debt?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, no, my Godfrey; I would have paid any debt, and joyful.\u201d\n\n\u201cFor what is he in prison then?\u201d\n\n\u201cCharged with a murder, my Godfrey, of which he is as innocent as\u2014as I\nam. Accused of the murder of Mr. Tulkinghorn.\u201d\n\nWhat does she mean by this look and this imploring gesture? Why does\nshe come so close? What is the letter that she holds?\n\n\u201cGodfrey Wayne, my dear Godfrey, my good Godfrey, my kind Godfrey! You must\nhave a heart to feel for me, you must have a heart to forgive me. I\nwas in this family before you were born. I am devoted to it. But\nthink of my dear son wrongfully accused.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not accuse him.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, my Godfrey, no. But others do, and he is in prison and in danger.\nOh, Godfrey Wayne, if you can say but a word to help to clear him, say\nit!\u201d\n\nWhat delusion can this be? What power does she suppose is in the\nperson she petitions to avert this unjust suspicion, if it be unjust?\nHer Godfrey\u2019s handsome eyes regard her with astonishment, almost with\nfear.\n\n\u201cMy Godfrey, I came away last night from Chesney Wold to find my son in\nmy old age, and the step upon the Ghost\u2019s Walk was so constant and so\nsolemn that I never heard the like in all these years. Night after\nnight, as it has fallen dark, the sound has echoed through your\nrooms, but last night it was awfullest. And as it fell dark last\nnight, my Godfrey, I got this letter.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat letter is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cHush! Hush!\u201d The housekeeper looks round and answers in a frightened\nwhisper, \u201cMy Godfrey, I have not breathed a word of it, I don\u2019t believe\nwhat\u2019s written in it, I know it can\u2019t be true, I am sure and certain\nthat it is not true. But my son is in danger, and you must have a\nheart to pity me. If you know of anything that is not known to\nothers, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and\nany reason for keeping it in your own breast, oh, my dear Godfrey, think\nof me, and conquer that reason, and let it be known! This is the most\nI consider possible. I know you are not a hard lady, but you go your\nown way always without help, and you are not familiar with your\nfriends; and all who admire you\u2014and all do\u2014as a beautiful and\nelegant lady, know you to be one far away from themselves who can\u2019t\nbe approached close. My Godfrey, you may have some proud or angry\nreasons for disdaining to utter something that you know; if so, pray,\noh, pray, think of a faithful servant whose whole life has been\npassed in this family which she dearly loves, and relent, and help to\nclear my son! My Godfrey, my good Godfrey,\u201d the old housekeeper pleads with\ngenuine simplicity, \u201cI am so humble in my place and you are by nature\nso high and distant that you may not think what I feel for my child,\nbut I feel so much that I have come here to make so bold as to beg\nand pray you not to be scornful of us if you can do us any right or\njustice at this fearful time!\u201d\n\nGodfrey Wayne raises her without one word, until she takes the letter\nfrom her hand.\n\n\u201cAm I to read this?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen I am gone, my Godfrey, if you please, and then remembering the\nmost that I consider possible.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know of nothing I can do. I know of nothing I reserve that can\naffect your son. I have never accused him.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy Godfrey, you may pity him the more under a false accusation after\nreading the letter.\u201d\n\nThe old housekeeper leaves her with the letter in her hand. In truth\nshe is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the\nsight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong\nearnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long\naccustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long\nschooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts\nup the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads\none uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and\nthe unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even\nher wonder until now.\n\nShe opens the letter. Spread out upon the paper is a printed account\nof the discovery of the body as it lay face downward on the floor,\nshot through the heart; and underneath is written her own name, with\nthe word \u201cmurderess\u201d attached.\n\nIt falls out of her hand. How long it may have lain upon the ground\nshe knows not, but it lies where it fell when a servant stands before\nher announcing the young man of the name of Jarrett. The words have\nprobably been repeated several times, for they are ringing in her\nhead before she begins to understand them.\n\n\u201cLet him come in!\u201d\n\nHe comes in. Holding the letter in her hand, which she has taken from\nthe floor, she tries to collect her thoughts. In the eyes of Mr.\nJarrett she is the same Godfrey Wayne, holding the same prepared, proud,\nchilling state.\n\n\u201cYour ladyship may not be at first disposed to excuse this visit from\none who has never been welcome to your ladyship\u201d\u2014which he don\u2019t\ncomplain of, for he is bound to confess that there never has been any\nparticular reason on the face of things why he should be\u2014\u201cbut I hope\nwhen I mention my motives to your ladyship you will not find fault\nwith me,\u201d says Mr. Jarrett.\n\n\u201cDo so.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank your ladyship. I ought first to explain to your ladyship,\u201d Mr.\nJarrett sits on the edge of a chair and puts his hat on the carpet at\nhis feet, \u201cthat Miss Robin, whose image, as I formerly mentioned\nto your ladyship, was at one period of my life imprinted on my \u2019eart\nuntil erased by circumstances over which I had no control,\ncommunicated to me, after I had the pleasure of waiting on your\nladyship last, that she particularly wished me to take no steps\nwhatever in any manner at all relating to her. And Miss Robin\u2019s\nwishes being to me a law (except as connected with circumstances over\nwhich I have no control), I consequently never expected to have the\ndistinguished honour of waiting on your ladyship again.\u201d\n\nAnd yet he is here now, Godfrey Wayne moodily reminds him.\n\n\u201cAnd yet I am here now,\u201d Mr. Jarrett admits. \u201cMy object being to\ncommunicate to your ladyship, under the seal of confidence, why I am\nhere.\u201d\n\nHe cannot do so, she tells him, too plainly or too briefly. \u201cNor can\nI,\u201d Mr. Jarrett returns with a sense of injury upon him, \u201ctoo\nparticularly request your ladyship to take particular notice that\nit\u2019s no personal affair of mine that brings me here. I have no\ninterested views of my own to serve in coming here. If it was not for\nmy promise to Miss Robin and my keeping of it sacred\u2014I, in point\nof fact, shouldn\u2019t have darkened these doors again, but should have\nseen \u2019em further first.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett considers this a favourable moment for sticking up his hair\nwith both hands.\n\n\u201cYour ladyship will remember when I mention it that the last time I\nwas here I run against a party very eminent in our profession and\nwhose loss we all deplore. That party certainly did from that time\napply himself to cutting in against me in a way that I will call\nsharp practice, and did make it, at every turn and point, extremely\ndifficult for me to be sure that I hadn\u2019t inadvertently led up to\nsomething contrary to Miss Robin\u2019s wishes. Self-praise is no\nrecommendation, but I may say for myself that I am not so bad a man\nof business neither.\u201d\n\nGodfrey Wayne looks at him in stern inquiry. Mr. Jarrett immediately\nwithdraws his eyes from her face and looks anywhere else.\n\n\u201cIndeed, it has been made so hard,\u201d he goes on, \u201cto have any idea\nwhat that party was up to in combination with others that until the\nloss which we all deplore I was gravelled\u2014an expression which your\nladyship, moving in the higher circles, will be so good as to\nconsider tantamount to knocked over. Small likewise\u2014a name by which\nI refer to another party, a friend of mine that your ladyship is not\nacquainted with\u2014got to be so close and double-faced that at times it\nwasn\u2019t easy to keep one\u2019s hands off his \u2019ead. However, what with the\nexertion of my humble abilities, and what with the help of a mutual\nfriend by the name of Mr. Tony Weevle (who is of a high aristocratic\nturn and has your ladyship\u2019s portrait always hanging up in his room),\nI have now reasons for an apprehension as to which I come to put your\nladyship upon your guard. First, will your ladyship allow me to ask\nyou whether you have had any strange visitors this morning? I don\u2019t\nmean fashionable visitors, but such visitors, for instance, as Miss\nBarbary\u2019s old servant, or as a person without the use of his lower\nextremities, carried upstairs similarly to a guy?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I assure your ladyship that such visitors have been here and\nhave been received here. Because I saw them at the door, and waited\nat the corner of the square till they came out, and took half an\nhour\u2019s turn afterwards to avoid them.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat have I to do with that, or what have you? I do not understand\nyou. What do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cYour ladyship, I come to put you on your guard. There may be no\noccasion for it. Very well. Then I have only done my best to keep my\npromise to Miss Robin. I strongly suspect (from what Small has\ndropped, and from what we have corkscrewed out of him) that those\nletters I was to have brought to your ladyship were not destroyed\nwhen I supposed they were. That if there was anything to be blown\nupon, it IS blown upon. That the visitors I have alluded to have been\nhere this morning to make money of it. And that the money is made, or\nmaking.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett picks up his hat and rises.\n\n\u201cYour ladyship, you know best whether there\u2019s anything in what I say\nor whether there\u2019s nothing. Something or nothing, I have acted up to\nMiss Robin\u2019s wishes in letting things alone and in undoing what I\nhad begun to do, as far as possible; that\u2019s sufficient for me. In\ncase I should be taking a liberty in putting your ladyship on your\nguard when there\u2019s no necessity for it, you will endeavour, I should\nhope, to outlive my presumption, and I shall endeavour to outlive\nyour disapprobation. I now take my farewell of your ladyship, and\nassure you that there\u2019s no danger of your ever being waited on by me\nagain.\u201d\n\nShe scarcely acknowledges these parting words by any look, but when\nhe has been gone a little while, she rings her bell.\n\n\u201cWhere is Sir Luigi?\u201d\n\nMercury reports that he is at present shut up in the library alone.\n\n\u201cHas Sir Luigi had any visitors this morning?\u201d\n\nSeveral, on business. Mercury proceeds to a description of them,\nwhich has been anticipated by Mr. Jarrett. Enough; he may go.\n\nSo! All is broken down. Her name is in these many mouths, her husband\nknows his wrongs, her shame will be published\u2014may be spreading while\nshe thinks about it\u2014and in addition to the thunderbolt so long\nforeseen by her, so unforeseen by him, she is denounced by an\ninvisible accuser as the murderess of her enemy.\n\nHer enemy he was, and she has often, often, often wished him dead.\nHer enemy he is, even in his grave. This dreadful accusation comes\nupon her like a new torment at his lifeless hand. And when she\nrecalls how she was secretly at his door that night, and how she may\nbe represented to have sent her favourite girl away so soon before\nmerely to release herself from observation, she shudders as if the\nhangman\u2019s hands were at her neck.\n\nShe has thrown herself upon the floor and lies with her hair all\nwildly scattered and her face buried in the cushions of a couch. She\nrises up, hurries to and fro, flings herself down again, and rocks\nand moans. The horror that is upon her is unutterable. If she really\nwere the murderess, it could hardly be, for the moment, more intense.\n\nFor as her murderous perspective, before the doing of the deed,\nhowever subtle the precautions for its commission, would have been\nclosed up by a gigantic dilatation of the hateful figure, preventing\nher from seeing any consequences beyond it; and as those consequences\nwould have rushed in, in an unimagined flood, the moment the figure\nwas laid low\u2014which always happens when a murder is done; so, now she\nsees that when he used to be on the watch before her, and she used to\nthink, \u201cif some mortal stroke would but fall on this old man and take\nhim from my way!\u201d it was but wishing that all he held against her in\nhis hand might be flung to the winds and chance-sown in many places.\nSo, too, with the wicked relief she has felt in his death. What was\nhis death but the key-stone of a gloomy arch removed, and now the\narch begins to fall in a thousand fragments, each crushing and\nmangling piecemeal!\n\nThus, a terrible impression steals upon and overshadows her that from\nthis pursuer, living or dead\u2014obdurate and imperturbable before her\nin his well-remembered shape, or not more obdurate and imperturbable\nin his coffin-bed\u2014there is no escape but in death. Hunted, she\nflies. The complication of her shame, her dread, remorse, and misery,\noverwhelms her at its height; and even her strength of self-reliance\nis overturned and whirled away like a leaf before a mighty wind.\n\nShe hurriedly addresses these lines to her husband, seals, and leaves\nthem on her table:\n\n\n   If I am sought for, or accused of, his murder, believe\n   that I am wholly innocent. Believe no other good of me,\n   for I am innocent of nothing else that you have heard,\n   or will hear, laid to my charge. He prepared me, on that\n   fatal night, for his disclosure of my guilt to you. After\n   he had left me, I went out on pretence of walking in the\n   garden where I sometimes walk, but really to follow him\n   and make one last petition that he would not protract the\n   dreadful suspense on which I have been racked by him, you\n   do not know how long, but would mercifully strike next\n   morning.\n\n   I found his house dark and silent. I rang twice at his\n   door, but there was no reply, and I came home.\n\n   I have no home left. I will encumber you no more. May\n   you, in your just resentment, be able to forget the\n   unworthy woman on whom you have wasted a most generous\n   devotion\u2014who avoids you only with a deeper shame than\n   that with which she hurries from herself\u2014and who writes\n   this last adieu.\n\n\nShe veils and dresses quickly, leaves all her jewels and her money,\nlistens, goes downstairs at a moment when the hall is empty, opens\nand shuts the great door, flutters away in the shrill frosty wind.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LVI\n\nPursuit\n\n\nImpassive, as behoves its high breeding, the Wayne town house\nstares at the other houses in the street of dismal grandeur and gives\nno outward sign of anything going wrong within. Carriages rattle,\ndoors are battered at, the world exchanges calls; ancient charmers\nwith skeleton throats, and peachy cheeks that have a rather ghastly\nbloom upon them seen by daylight, when indeed these fascinating\ncreatures look like Death and the Godfrey fused together, dazzle the\neyes of men. Forth from the frigid mews come easily swinging\ncarriages guided by short-legged coachmen in flaxen wigs, deep sunk\ninto downy hammercloths, and up behind mount luscious Mercuries\nbearing sticks of state and wearing cocked hats broadwise, a\nspectacle for the angels.\n\nThe Wayne town house changes not externally, and hours pass before\nits exalted dullness is disturbed within. But Volumnia the fair,\nbeing subject to the prevalent complaint of boredom and finding that\ndisorder attacking her spirits with some virulence, ventures at\nlength to repair to the library for change of scene. Her gentle\ntapping at the door producing no response, she opens it and peeps in;\nseeing no one there, takes possession.\n\nThe sprightly Wayne is reputed, in that grass-grown city of the\nancients, Bath, to be stimulated by an urgent curiosity which impels\nher on all convenient and inconvenient occasions to sidle about with\na golden glass at her eye, peering into objects of every description.\nCertain it is that she avails herself of the present opportunity of\nhovering over her kinsman\u2019s letters and papers like a bird, taking a\nshort peck at this document and a blink with her head on one side at\nthat document, and hopping about from table to table with her glass\nat her eye in an inquisitive and restless manner. In the course of\nthese researches she stumbles over something, and turning her glass\nin that direction, sees her kinsman lying on the ground like a felled\ntree.\n\nVolumnia\u2019s pet little scream acquires a considerable augmentation of\nreality from this surprise, and the house is quickly in commotion.\nServants tear up and down stairs, bells are violently rung, doctors\nare sent for, and Godfrey Wayne is sought in all directions, but not\nfound. Nobody has seen or heard her since she last rang her bell. Her\nletter to Sir Luigi is discovered on her table, but it is\ndoubtful yet whether he has not received another missive from another\nworld requiring to be personally answered, and all the living\nlanguages, and all the dead, are as one to him.\n\nThey lay him down upon his bed, and chafe, and rub, and fan, and put\nice to his head, and try every means of restoration. Howbeit, the day\nhas ebbed away, and it is night in his room before his stertorous\nbreathing lulls or his fixed eyes show any consciousness of the\ncandle that is occasionally passed before them. But when this change\nbegins, it goes on; and by and by he nods or moves his eyes or even\nhis hand in token that he hears and comprehends.\n\nHe fell down, this morning, a handsome stately gentleman, somewhat\ninfirm, but of a fine presence, and with a well-filled face. He lies\nupon his bed, an aged man with sunken cheeks, the decrepit shadow of\nhimself. His voice was rich and mellow and he had so long been\nthoroughly persuaded of the weight and import to mankind of any word\nhe said that his words really had come to sound as if there were\nsomething in them. But now he can only whisper, and what he whispers\nsounds like what it is\u2014mere jumble and jargon.\n\nHis favourite and faithful housekeeper stands at his bedside. It is\nthe first act he notices, and he clearly derives pleasure from it.\nAfter vainly trying to make himself understood in speech, he makes\nsigns for a pencil. So inexpressively that they cannot at first\nunderstand him; it is his old housekeeper who makes out what he wants\nand brings in a slate.\n\nAfter pausing for some time, he slowly scrawls upon it in a hand that\nis not his, \u201cChesney Wold?\u201d\n\nNo, she tells him; he is in London. He was taken ill in the library\nthis morning. Right thankful she is that she happened to come to\nLondon and is able to attend upon him.\n\n\u201cIt is not an illness of any serious consequence, Sir Luigi. You\nwill be much better to-morrow, Sir Luigi. All the gentlemen say\nso.\u201d This, with the tears coursing down her fair old face.\n\nAfter making a survey of the room and looking with particular\nattention all round the bed where the doctors stand, he writes, \u201cMy\nGodfrey.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy Godfrey went out, Sir Luigi, before you were taken ill, and\ndon\u2019t know of your illness yet.\u201d\n\nHe points again, in great agitation, at the two words. They all try\nto quiet him, but he points again with increased agitation. On their\nlooking at one another, not knowing what to say, he takes the slate\nonce more and writes \u201cMy Godfrey. For God\u2019s sake, where?\u201d And makes an\nimploring moan.\n\nIt is thought better that his old housekeeper should give him Godfrey\nWayne\u2019s letter, the contents of which no one knows or can surmise.\nShe opens it for him and puts it out for his perusal. Having read it\ntwice by a great effort, he turns it down so that it shall not be\nseen and lies moaning. He passes into a kind of relapse or into a\nswoon, and it is an hour before he opens his eyes, reclining on his\nfaithful and attached old servant\u2019s arm. The doctors know that he is\nbest with her, and when not actively engaged about him, stand aloof.\n\nThe slate comes into requisition again, but the word he wants to\nwrite he cannot remember. His anxiety, his eagerness, and affliction\nat this pass are pitiable to behold. It seems as if he must go mad in\nthe necessity he feels for haste and the inability under which he\nlabours of expressing to do what or to fetch whom. He has written the\nletter B, and there stopped. Of a sudden, in the height of his\nmisery, he puts Mr. before it. The old housekeeper suggests Bucket.\nThank heaven! That\u2019s his meaning.\n\nMr. Bucket is found to be downstairs, by appointment. Shall he come\nup?\n\nThere is no possibility of misconstruing Sir Luigi\u2019s burning wish\nto see him or the desire he signifies to have the room cleared of\nevery one but the housekeeper. It is speedily done, and Mr. Bucket\nappears. Of all men upon earth, Sir Luigi seems fallen from his\nhigh estate to place his sole trust and reliance upon this man.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, I\u2019m sorry to see you like this. I\nhope you\u2019ll cheer up. I\u2019m sure you will, on account of the family\ncredit.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi puts her letter in his hands and looks intently in his\nface while he reads it. A new intelligence comes into Mr. Bucket\u2019s\neye as he reads on; with one hook of his finger, while that eye is\nstill glancing over the words, he indicates, \u201cSir Luigi Wayne,\nBaronet, I understand you.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi writes upon the slate. \u201cFull forgiveness. Find\u2014\u201d Mr.\nBucket stops his hand.\n\n\u201cSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, I\u2019ll find her. But my search after\nher must be begun out of hand. Not a minute must be lost.\u201d\n\nWith the quickness of thought, he follows Sir Luigi Wayne\u2019s\nlook towards a little box upon a table.\n\n\u201cBring it here, Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet? Certainly. Open it\nwith one of these here keys? Certainly. The littlest key? TO be sure.\nTake the notes out? So I will. Count \u2019em? That\u2019s soon done. Twenty\nand thirty\u2019s fifty, and twenty\u2019s seventy, and fifty\u2019s one twenty, and\nforty\u2019s one sixty. Take \u2019em for expenses? That I\u2019ll do, and render an\naccount of course. Don\u2019t spare money? No I won\u2019t.\u201d\n\nThe velocity and certainty of Mr. Bucket\u2019s interpretation on all\nthese heads is little short of miraculous. Mrs. Talon, who holds\nthe light, is giddy with the swiftness of his eyes and hands as he\nstarts up, furnished for his journey.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re Aileen\u2019s mother, old lady; that\u2019s about what you are, I\nbelieve?\u201d says Mr. Bucket aside, with his hat already on and\nbuttoning his coat.\n\n\u201cYes, sir, I am his distressed mother.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo I thought, according to what he mentioned to me just now. Well,\nthen, I\u2019ll tell you something. You needn\u2019t be distressed no more.\nYour son\u2019s all right. Now, don\u2019t you begin a-crying, because what\nyou\u2019ve got to do is to take care of Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet,\nand you won\u2019t do that by crying. As to your son, he\u2019s all right, I\ntell you; and he sends his loving duty, and hoping you\u2019re the same.\nHe\u2019s discharged honourable; that\u2019s about what HE is; with no more\nimputation on his character than there is on yours, and yours is a\ntidy one, I\u2019LL bet a pound. You may trust me, for I took your son. He\nconducted himself in a game way, too, on that occasion; and he\u2019s a\nfine-made man, and you\u2019re a fine-made old lady, and you\u2019re a mother\nand son, the pair of you, as might be showed for models in a caravan.\nSir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, what you\u2019ve trusted to me I\u2019ll go\nthrough with. Don\u2019t you be afraid of my turning out of my way, right\nor left, or taking a sleep, or a wash, or a shave till I have found\nwhat I go in search of. Say everything as is kind and forgiving on\nyour part? Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, I will. And I wish you\nbetter, and these family affairs smoothed over\u2014as, Lord, many other\nfamily affairs equally has been, and equally will be, to the end of\ntime.\u201d\n\nWith this peroration, Mr. Bucket, buttoned up, goes quietly out,\nlooking steadily before him as if he were already piercing the night\nin quest of the fugitive.\n\nHis first step is to take himself to Godfrey Wayne\u2019s rooms and look\nall over them for any trifling indication that may help him. The\nrooms are in darkness now; and to see Mr. Bucket with a wax-light in\nhis hand, holding it above his head and taking a sharp mental\ninventory of the many delicate objects so curiously at variance with\nhimself, would be to see a sight\u2014which nobody DOES see, as he is\nparticular to lock himself in.\n\n\u201cA spicy boudoir, this,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, who feels in a manner\nfurbished up in his French by the blow of the morning. \u201cMust have\ncost a sight of money. Rum articles to cut away from, these; she must\nhave been hard put to it!\u201d\n\nOpening and shutting table-drawers and looking into caskets and\njewel-cases, he sees the reflection of himself in various mirrors,\nand moralizes thereon.\n\n\u201cOne might suppose I was a-moving in the fashionable circles and\ngetting myself up for Almac\u2019s,\u201d says Mr. Bucket. \u201cI begin to think I\nmust be a swell in the Guards without knowing it.\u201d\n\nEver looking about, he has opened a dainty little chest in an inner\ndrawer. His great hand, turning over some gloves which it can\nscarcely feel, they are so light and soft within it, comes upon a\nwhite handkerchief.\n\n\u201cHum! Let\u2019s have a look at YOU,\u201d says Mr. Bucket, putting down the\nlight. \u201cWhat should YOU be kept by yourself for? What\u2019s YOUR motive?\nAre you her ladyship\u2019s property, or somebody else\u2019s? You\u2019ve got a\nmark upon you somewheres or another, I suppose?\u201d\n\nHe finds it as he speaks, \u201cPaulina Robin.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d says Mr. Bucket, pausing, with his finger at his ear. \u201cCome,\nI\u2019ll take YOU.\u201d\n\nHe completes his observations as quietly and carefully as he has\ncarried them on, leaves everything else precisely as he found it,\nglides away after some five minutes in all, and passes into the\nstreet. With a glance upward at the dimly lighted windows of Sir\nLuigi\u2019s room, he sets off, full-swing, to the nearest\ncoach-stand, picks out the horse for his money, and directs to be\ndriven to the shooting gallery. Mr. Bucket does not claim to be a\nscientific judge of horses, but he lays out a little money on the\nprincipal events in that line, and generally sums up his knowledge of\nthe subject in the remark that when he sees a horse as can go, he\nknows him.\n\nHis knowledge is not at fault in the present instance. Clattering\nover the stones at a dangerous pace, yet thoughtfully bringing his\nkeen eyes to bear on every slinking creature whom he passes in the\nmidnight streets, and even on the lights in upper windows where\npeople are going or gone to bed, and on all the turnings that he\nrattles by, and alike on the heavy sky, and on the earth where the\nsnow lies thin\u2014for something may present itself to assist him,\nanywhere\u2014he dashes to his destination at such a speed that when he\nstops the horse half smothers him in a cloud of steam.\n\n\u201cUnbear him half a moment to freshen him up, and I\u2019ll be back.\u201d\n\nHe runs up the long wooden entry and finds the trooper smoking his\npipe.\n\n\u201cI thought I should, Aileen, after what you have gone through, my\nlad. I haven\u2019t a word to spare. Now, honour! All to save a woman.\nMiss Robin that was here when Freda died\u2014that was the name, I\nknow\u2014all right\u2014where does she live?\u201d\n\nThe trooper has just come from there and gives him the address, near\nOxford Street.\n\n\u201cYou won\u2019t repent it, Aileen. Good night!\u201d\n\nHe is off again, with an impression of having seen Olive sitting by\nthe frosty fire staring at him open-mouthed, and gallops away again,\nand gets out in a cloud of steam again.\n\nMr. Ashton, the only person up in the house, is just going to bed,\nrises from his book on hearing the rapid ringing at the bell, and\ncomes down to the door in his dressing-gown.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be alarmed, sir.\u201d In a moment his visitor is confidential with\nhim in the hall, has shut the door, and stands with his hand upon the\nlock. \u201cI\u2019ve had the pleasure of seeing you before. Inspector Bucket.\nLook at that handkerchief, sir, Miss Paulina Robin\u2019s. Found it\nmyself put away in a drawer of Godfrey Wayne\u2019s, quarter of an hour\nago. Not a moment to lose. Matter of life or death. You know Godfrey\nWayne?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere has been a discovery there to-day. Family affairs have come\nout. Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, has had a fit\u2014apoplexy or\nparalysis\u2014and couldn\u2019t be brought to, and precious time has been\nlost. Godfrey Wayne disappeared this afternoon and left a letter for\nhim that looks bad. Run your eye over it. Here it is!\u201d\n\nMr. Ashton, having read it, asks him what he thinks.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. It looks like suicide. Anyways, there\u2019s more and more\ndanger, every minute, of its drawing to that. I\u2019d give a hundred\npound an hour to have got the start of the present time. Now, Mr.\nAshton, I am employed by Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet, to follow\nher and find her, to save her and take her his forgiveness. I have\nmoney and full power, but I want something else. I want Miss\nRobin.\u201d\n\nMr. Ashton in a troubled voice repeats, \u201cMiss Robin?\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, Mr. Ashton\u201d\u2014Mr. Bucket has read his face with the greatest\nattention all along\u2014\u201cI speak to you as a gentleman of a humane\nheart, and under such pressing circumstances as don\u2019t often happen.\nIf ever delay was dangerous, it\u2019s dangerous now; and if ever you\ncouldn\u2019t afterwards forgive yourself for causing it, this is the\ntime. Eight or ten hours, worth, as I tell you, a hundred pound\napiece at least, have been lost since Godfrey Wayne disappeared. I am\ncharged to find her. I am Inspector Bucket. Besides all the rest\nthat\u2019s heavy on her, she has upon her, as she believes, suspicion of\nmurder. If I follow her alone, she, being in ignorance of what Sir\nLuigi Wayne, Baronet, has communicated to me, may be driven to\ndesperation. But if I follow her in company with a young lady,\nanswering to the description of a young lady that she has a\ntenderness for\u2014I ask no question, and I say no more than that\u2014she\nwill give me credit for being friendly. Let me come up with her and\nbe able to have the hold upon her of putting that young lady for\u2019ard,\nand I\u2019ll save her and prevail with her if she is alive. Let me come\nup with her alone\u2014a hard matter\u2014and I\u2019ll do my best, but I don\u2019t\nanswer for what the best may be. Time flies; it\u2019s getting on for one\no\u2019clock. When one strikes, there\u2019s another hour gone, and it\u2019s worth\na thousand pound now instead of a hundred.\u201d\n\nThis is all true, and the pressing nature of the case cannot be\nquestioned. Mr. Ashton begs him to remain there while he speaks to\nMiss Robin. Mr. Bucket says he will, but acting on his usual\nprinciple, does no such thing, following upstairs instead and keeping\nhis man in sight. So he remains, dodging and lurking about in the\ngloom of the staircase while they confer. In a very little time Mr.\nAshton comes down and tells him that Miss Robin will join him\ndirectly and place herself under his protection to accompany him\nwhere he pleases. Mr. Bucket, satisfied, expresses high approval and\nawaits her coming at the door.\n\nThere he mounts a high tower in his mind and looks out far and wide.\nMany solitary figures he perceives creeping through the streets; many\nsolitary figures out on heaths, and roads, and lying under haystacks.\nBut the figure that he seeks is not among them. Other solitaries he\nperceives, in nooks of bridges, looking over; and in shadowed places\ndown by the river\u2019s level; and a dark, dark, shapeless object\ndrifting with the tide, more solitary than all, clings with a\ndrowning hold on his attention.\n\nWhere is she? Living or dead, where is she? If, as he folds the\nhandkerchief and carefully puts it up, it were able with an enchanted\npower to bring before him the place where she found it and the\nnight-landscape near the cottage where it covered the little child,\nwould he descry her there? On the waste where the brick-kilns are\nburning with a pale blue flare, where the straw-roofs of the wretched\nhuts in which the bricks are made are being scattered by the wind,\nwhere the clay and water are hard frozen and the mill in which the\ngaunt blind horse goes round all day looks like an instrument of\nhuman torture\u2014traversing this deserted, blighted spot there is a\nlonely figure with the sad world to itself, pelted by the snow and\ndriven by the wind, and cast out, it would seem, from all\ncompanionship. It is the figure of a woman, too; but it is miserably\ndressed, and no such clothes ever came through the hall and out at\nthe great door of the Wayne mansion.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LVII\n\nPaulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nI had gone to bed and fallen asleep when my guardian knocked at the\ndoor of my room and begged me to get up directly. On my hurrying to\nspeak to him and learn what had happened, he told me, after a word or\ntwo of preparation, that there had been a discovery at Sir Luigi\nWayne\u2019s. That my mother had fled, that a person was now at our door\nwho was empowered to convey to her the fullest assurances of\naffectionate protection and forgiveness if he could possibly find\nher, and that I was sought for to accompany him in the hope that my\nentreaties might prevail upon her if his failed. Something to this\ngeneral purpose I made out, but I was thrown into such a tumult of\nalarm, and hurry and distress, that in spite of every effort I could\nmake to subdue my agitation, I did not seem, to myself, fully to\nrecover my right mind until hours had passed.\n\nBut I dressed and wrapped up expeditiously without waking Weston or\nany one and went down to Mr. Bucket, who was the person entrusted\nwith the secret. In taking me to him my guardian told me this, and\nalso explained how it was that he had come to think of me. Mr.\nBucket, in a low voice, by the light of my guardian\u2019s candle, read to\nme in the hall a letter that my mother had left upon her table; and I\nsuppose within ten minutes of my having been aroused I was sitting\nbeside him, rolling swiftly through the streets.\n\nHis manner was very keen, and yet considerate when he explained to me\nthat a great deal might depend on my being able to answer, without\nconfusion, a few questions that he wished to ask me. These were,\nchiefly, whether I had had much communication with my mother (to whom\nhe only referred as Godfrey Wayne), when and where I had spoken with\nher last, and how she had become possessed of my handkerchief. When I\nhad satisfied him on these points, he asked me particularly to\nconsider\u2014taking time to think\u2014whether within my knowledge there was\nany one, no matter where, in whom she might be at all likely to\nconfide under circumstances of the last necessity. I could think of\nno one but my guardian. But by and by I mentioned Mr. Rhea. He\ncame into my mind as connected with his old chivalrous manner of\nmentioning my mother\u2019s name and with what my guardian had informed me\nof his engagement to her sister and his unconscious connexion with\nher unhappy story.\n\nMy companion had stopped the driver while we held this conversation,\nthat we might the better hear each other. He now told him to go on\nagain and said to me, after considering within himself for a few\nmoments, that he had made up his mind how to proceed. He was quite\nwilling to tell me what his plan was, but I did not feel clear enough\nto understand it.\n\nWe had not driven very far from our lodgings when we stopped in a\nby-street at a public-looking place lighted up with gas. Mr. Bucket\ntook me in and sat me in an arm-chair by a bright fire. It was now\npast one, as I saw by the clock against the wall. Two police\nofficers, looking in their perfectly neat uniform not at all like\npeople who were up all night, were quietly writing at a desk; and the\nplace seemed very quiet altogether, except for some beating and\ncalling out at distant doors underground, to which nobody paid any\nattention.\n\nA third man in uniform, whom Mr. Bucket called and to whom he\nwhispered his instructions, went out; and then the two others advised\ntogether while one wrote from Mr. Bucket\u2019s subdued dictation. It was\na description of my mother that they were busy with, for Mr. Bucket\nbrought it to me when it was done and read it in a whisper. It was\nvery accurate indeed.\n\nThe second officer, who had attended to it closely, then copied it\nout and called in another man in uniform (there were several in an\nouter room), who took it up and went away with it. All this was done\nwith the greatest dispatch and without the waste of a moment; yet\nnobody was at all hurried. As soon as the paper was sent out upon its\ntravels, the two officers resumed their former quiet work of writing\nwith neatness and care. Mr. Bucket thoughtfully came and warmed the\nsoles of his boots, first one and then the other, at the fire.\n\n\u201cAre you well wrapped up, Miss Robin?\u201d he asked me as his eyes\nmet mine. \u201cIt\u2019s a desperate sharp night for a young lady to be out\nin.\u201d\n\nI told him I cared for no weather and was warmly clothed.\n\n\u201cIt may be a long job,\u201d he observed; \u201cbut so that it ends well, never\nmind, miss.\u201d\n\n\u201cI pray to heaven it may end well!\u201d said I.\n\nHe nodded comfortingly. \u201cYou see, whatever you do, don\u2019t you go and\nfret yourself. You keep yourself cool and equal for anything that may\nhappen, and it\u2019ll be the better for you, the better for me, the\nbetter for Godfrey Wayne, and the better for Sir Luigi Wayne,\nBaronet.\u201d\n\nHe was really very kind and gentle, and as he stood before the fire\nwarming his boots and rubbing his face with his forefinger, I felt a\nconfidence in his sagacity which reassured me. It was not yet a\nquarter to two when I heard horses\u2019 feet and wheels outside. \u201cNow,\nMiss Robin,\u201d said he, \u201cwe are off, if you please!\u201d\n\nHe gave me his arm, and the two officers courteously bowed me out,\nand we found at the door a phaeton or barouche with a postilion and\npost horses. Mr. Bucket handed me in and took his own seat on the\nbox. The man in uniform whom he had sent to fetch this equipage then\nhanded him up a dark lantern at his request, and when he had given a\nfew directions to the driver, we rattled away.\n\nI was far from sure that I was not in a dream. We rattled with great\nrapidity through such a labyrinth of streets that I soon lost all\nidea where we were, except that we had crossed and re-crossed the\nriver, and still seemed to be traversing a low-lying, waterside,\ndense neighbourhood of narrow thoroughfares chequered by docks and\nbasins, high piles of warehouses, swing-bridges, and masts of ships.\nAt length we stopped at the corner of a little slimy turning, which\nthe wind from the river, rushing up it, did not purify; and I saw my\ncompanion, by the light of his lantern, in conference with several\nmen who looked like a mixture of police and sailors. Against the\nmouldering wall by which they stood, there was a bill, on which I\ncould discern the words, \u201cFound Drowned\u201d; and this and an inscription\nabout drags possessed me with the awful suspicion shadowed forth in\nour visit to that place.\n\nI had no need to remind myself that I was not there by the indulgence\nof any feeling of mine to increase the difficulties of the search, or\nto lessen its hopes, or enhance its delays. I remained quiet, but\nwhat I suffered in that dreadful spot I never can forget. And still\nit was like the horror of a dream. A man yet dark and muddy, in long\nswollen sodden boots and a hat like them, was called out of a boat\nand whispered with Mr. Bucket, who went away with him down some\nslippery steps\u2014as if to look at something secret that he had to\nshow. They came back, wiping their hands upon their coats, after\nturning over something wet; but thank God it was not what I feared!\n\nAfter some further conference, Mr. Bucket (whom everybody seemed to\nknow and defer to) went in with the others at a door and left me in\nthe carriage, while the driver walked up and down by his horses to\nwarm himself. The tide was coming in, as I judged from the sound it\nmade, and I could hear it break at the end of the alley with a little\nrush towards me. It never did so\u2014and I thought it did so, hundreds\nof times, in what can have been at the most a quarter of an hour, and\nprobably was less\u2014but the thought shuddered through me that it would\ncast my mother at the horses\u2019 feet.\n\nMr. Bucket came out again, exhorting the others to be vigilant,\ndarkened his lantern, and once more took his seat. \u201cDon\u2019t you be\nalarmed, Miss Robin, on account of our coming down here,\u201d he\nsaid, turning to me. \u201cI only want to have everything in train and to\nknow that it is in train by looking after it myself. Get on, my lad!\u201d\n\nWe appeared to retrace the way we had come. Not that I had taken note\nof any particular objects in my perturbed state of mind, but judging\nfrom the general character of the streets. We called at another\noffice or station for a minute and crossed the river again. During\nthe whole of this time, and during the whole search, my companion,\nwrapped up on the box, never relaxed in his vigilance a single\nmoment; but when we crossed the bridge he seemed, if possible, to be\nmore on the alert than before. He stood up to look over the parapet,\nhe alighted and went back after a shadowy female figure that flitted\npast us, and he gazed into the profound black pit of water with a\nface that made my heart die within me. The river had a fearful look,\nso overcast and secret, creeping away so fast between the low flat\nlines of shore\u2014so heavy with indistinct and awful shapes, both of\nsubstance and shadow; so death-like and mysterious. I have seen it\nmany times since then, by sunlight and by moonlight, but never free\nfrom the impressions of that journey. In my memory the lights upon\nthe bridge are always burning dim, the cutting wind is eddying round\nthe homeless woman whom we pass, the monotonous wheels are whirling\non, and the light of the carriage-lamps reflected back looks palely\nin upon me\u2014a face rising out of the dreaded water.\n\nClattering and clattering through the empty streets, we came at\nlength from the pavement on to dark smooth roads and began to leave\nthe houses behind us. After a while I recognized the familiar way to\nSaint Albans. At Barnet fresh horses were ready for us, and we\nchanged and went on. It was very cold indeed, and the open country\nwas white with snow, though none was falling then.\n\n\u201cAn old acquaintance of yours, this road, Miss Robin,\u201d said Mr.\nBucket cheerfully.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d I returned. \u201cHave you gathered any intelligence?\u201d\n\n\u201cNone that can be quite depended on as yet,\u201d he answered, \u201cbut it\u2019s\nearly times as yet.\u201d\n\nHe had gone into every late or early public-house where there\nwas a light (they were not a few at that time, the road being\nthen much frequented by drovers) and had got down to talk to the\nturnpike-keepers. I had heard him ordering drink, and chinking money,\nand making himself agreeable and merry everywhere; but whenever he\ntook his seat upon the box again, his face resumed its watchful\nsteady look, and he always said to the driver in the same business\ntone, \u201cGet on, my lad!\u201d\n\nWith all these stoppages, it was between five and six o\u2019clock and we\nwere yet a few miles short of Saint Albans when he came out of one of\nthese houses and handed me in a cup of tea.\n\n\u201cDrink it, Miss Robin, it\u2019ll do you good. You\u2019re beginning to get\nmore yourself now, ain\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nI thanked him and said I hoped so.\n\n\u201cYou was what you may call stunned at first,\u201d he returned; \u201cand Lord,\nno wonder! Don\u2019t speak loud, my dear. It\u2019s all right. She\u2019s on\nahead.\u201d\n\nI don\u2019t know what joyful exclamation I made or was going to make, but\nhe put up his finger and I stopped myself.\n\n\u201cPassed through here on foot this evening about eight or nine. I\nheard of her first at the archway toll, over at Highgate, but\ncouldn\u2019t make quite sure. Traced her all along, on and off. Picked\nher up at one place, and dropped her at another; but she\u2019s before us\nnow, safe. Take hold of this cup and saucer, ostler. Now, if you\nwasn\u2019t brought up to the butter trade, look out and see if you can\ncatch half a crown in your t\u2019other hand. One, two, three, and there\nyou are! Now, my lad, try a gallop!\u201d\n\nWe were soon in Saint Albans and alighted a little before day, when I\nwas just beginning to arrange and comprehend the occurrences of the\nnight and really to believe that they were not a dream. Leaving the\ncarriage at the posting-house and ordering fresh horses to be ready,\nmy companion gave me his arm, and we went towards home.\n\n\u201cAs this is your regular abode, Miss Robin, you see,\u201d he\nobserved, \u201cI should like to know whether you\u2019ve been asked for by any\nstranger answering the description, or whether Mr. Ashton has. I\ndon\u2019t much expect it, but it might be.\u201d\n\nAs we ascended the hill, he looked about him with a sharp eye\u2014the\nday was now breaking\u2014and reminded me that I had come down it one\nnight, as I had reason for remembering, with my little servant and\npoor Jo, whom he called Toughey.\n\nI wondered how he knew that.\n\n\u201cWhen you passed a man upon the road, just yonder, you know,\u201d said\nMr. Bucket.\n\nYes, I remembered that too, very well.\n\n\u201cThat was me,\u201d said Mr. Bucket.\n\nSeeing my surprise, he went on, \u201cI drove down in a gig that afternoon\nto look after that boy. You might have heard my wheels when you came\nout to look after him yourself, for I was aware of you and your\nlittle maid going up when I was walking the horse down. Making an\ninquiry or two about him in the town, I soon heard what company he\nwas in and was coming among the brick-fields to look for him when I\nobserved you bringing him home here.\u201d\n\n\u201cHad he committed any crime?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cNone was charged against him,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, coolly lifting off\nhis hat, \u201cbut I suppose he wasn\u2019t over-particular. No. What I wanted\nhim for was in connexion with keeping this very matter of Godfrey\nWayne quiet. He had been making his tongue more free than welcome\nas to a small accidental service he had been paid for by the deceased\nMr. Tulkinghorn; and it wouldn\u2019t do, at any sort of price, to have\nhim playing those games. So having warned him out of London, I made\nan afternoon of it to warn him to keep out of it now he WAS away, and\ngo farther from it, and maintain a bright look-out that I didn\u2019t\ncatch him coming back again.\u201d\n\n\u201cPoor creature!\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cPoor enough,\u201d assented Mr. Bucket, \u201cand trouble enough, and well\nenough away from London, or anywhere else. I was regularly turned on\nmy back when I found him taken up by your establishment, I do assure\nyou.\u201d\n\nI asked him why. \u201cWhy, my dear?\u201d said Mr. Bucket. \u201cNaturally there\nwas no end to his tongue then. He might as well have been born with a\nyard and a half of it, and a remnant over.\u201d\n\nAlthough I remember this conversation now, my head was in confusion\nat the time, and my power of attention hardly did more than enable me\nto understand that he entered into these particulars to divert me.\nWith the same kind intention, manifestly, he often spoke to me of\nindifferent things, while his face was busy with the one object that\nwe had in view. He still pursued this subject as we turned in at the\ngarden-gate.\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d said Mr. Bucket. \u201cHere we are, and a nice retired place it is.\nPuts a man in mind of the country house in the Woodpecker-tapping,\nthat was known by the smoke which so gracefully curled. They\u2019re early\nwith the kitchen fire, and that denotes good servants. But what\nyou\u2019ve always got to be careful of with servants is who comes to see\n\u2019em; you never know what they\u2019re up to if you don\u2019t know that. And\nanother thing, my dear. Whenever you find a young man behind the\nkitchen-door, you give that young man in charge on suspicion of being\nsecreted in a dwelling-house with an unlawful purpose.\u201d\n\nWe were now in front of the house; he looked attentively and closely\nat the gravel for footprints before he raised his eyes to the\nwindows.\n\n\u201cDo you generally put that elderly young gentleman in the same room\nwhen he\u2019s on a visit here, Miss Robin?\u201d he inquired, glancing at\nMr. Yestin\u2019s usual chamber.\n\n\u201cYou know Mr. Yestin!\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cWhat do you call him again?\u201d returned Mr. Bucket, bending down his\near. \u201cYestin, is it? I\u2019ve often wondered what his name might be.\nYestin. Not Gerardo, I should say, nor yet Jacob?\u201d\n\n\u201cHarold,\u201d I told him.\n\n\u201cHarold. Yes. He\u2019s a queer bird is Harold,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, eyeing\nme with great expression.\n\n\u201cHe is a singular character,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cNo idea of money,\u201d observed Mr. Bucket. \u201cHe takes it, though!\u201d\n\nI involuntarily returned for answer that I perceived Mr. Bucket knew\nhim.\n\n\u201cWhy, now I\u2019ll tell you, Miss Robin,\u201d he replied. \u201cYour mind will\nbe all the better for not running on one point too continually, and\nI\u2019ll tell you for a change. It was him as pointed out to me where\nToughey was. I made up my mind that night to come to the door and ask\nfor Toughey, if that was all; but willing to try a move or so first,\nif any such was on the board, I just pitched up a morsel of gravel at\nthat window where I saw a shadow. As soon as Harold opens it and I\nhave had a look at him, thinks I, you\u2019re the man for me. So I\nsmoothed him down a bit about not wanting to disturb the family after\nthey was gone to bed and about its being a thing to be regretted that\ncharitable young ladies should harbour vagrants; and then, when I\npretty well understood his ways, I said I should consider a fypunnote\nwell bestowed if I could relieve the premises of Toughey without\ncausing any noise or trouble. Then says he, lifting up his eyebrows\nin the gayest way, \u2018It\u2019s no use mentioning a fypunnote to me, my\nfriend, because I\u2019m a mere child in such matters and have no idea of\nmoney.\u2019 Of course I understood what his taking it so easy meant; and\nbeing now quite sure he was the man for me, I wrapped the note round\na little stone and threw it up to him. Well! He laughs and beams, and\nlooks as innocent as you like, and says, \u2018But I don\u2019t know the value\nof these things. What am I to DO with this?\u2019 \u2018Spend it, sir,\u2019 says I.\n\u2018But I shall be taken in,\u2019 he says, \u2018they won\u2019t give me the right\nchange, I shall lose it, it\u2019s no use to me.\u2019 Lord, you never saw such\na face as he carried it with! Of course he told me where to find\nToughey, and I found him.\u201d\n\nI regarded this as very treacherous on the part of Mr. Yestin\ntowards my guardian and as passing the usual bounds of his childish\ninnocence.\n\n\u201cBounds, my dear?\u201d returned Mr. Bucket. \u201cBounds? Now, Miss Robin,\nI\u2019ll give you a piece of advice that your husband will find useful\nwhen you are happily married and have got a family about you.\nWhenever a person says to you that they are as innocent as can be in\nall concerning money, look well after your own money, for they are\ndead certain to collar it if they can. Whenever a person proclaims to\nyou \u2018In worldly matters I\u2019m a child,\u2019 you consider that that person\nis only a-crying off from being held accountable and that you have\ngot that person\u2019s number, and it\u2019s Number One. Now, I am not a\npoetical man myself, except in a vocal way when it goes round a\ncompany, but I\u2019m a practical one, and that\u2019s my experience. So\u2019s this\nrule. Fast and loose in one thing, fast and loose in everything. I\nnever knew it fail. No more will you. Nor no one. With which caution\nto the unwary, my dear, I take the liberty of pulling this here bell,\nand so go back to our business.\u201d\n\nI believe it had not been for a moment out of his mind, any more than\nit had been out of my mind, or out of his face. The whole household\nwere amazed to see me, without any notice, at that time in the\nmorning, and so accompanied; and their surprise was not diminished by\nmy inquiries. No one, however, had been there. It could not be\ndoubted that this was the truth.\n\n\u201cThen, Miss Robin,\u201d said my companion, \u201cwe can\u2019t be too soon at\nthe cottage where those brickmakers are to be found. Most inquiries\nthere I leave to you, if you\u2019ll be so good as to make \u2019em. The\nnaturalest way is the best way, and the naturalest way is your own\nway.\u201d\n\nWe set off again immediately. On arriving at the cottage, we found it\nshut up and apparently deserted, but one of the neighbours who knew\nme and who came out when I was trying to make some one hear informed\nme that the two women and their husbands now lived together in\nanother house, made of loose rough bricks, which stood on the margin\nof the piece of ground where the kilns were and where the long rows\nof bricks were drying. We lost no time in repairing to this place,\nwhich was within a few hundred yards; and as the door stood ajar, I\npushed it open.\n\nThere were only three of them sitting at breakfast, the child lying\nasleep on a bed in the corner. It was Alejandro, the mother of the dead\nchild, who was absent. The other woman rose on seeing me; and the\nmen, though they were, as usual, sulky and silent, each gave me a\nmorose nod of recognition. A look passed between them when Mr. Bucket\nfollowed me in, and I was surprised to see that the woman evidently\nknew him.\n\nI had asked leave to enter of course. Liz (the only name by which I\nknew her) rose to give me her own chair, but I sat down on a stool\nnear the fire, and Mr. Bucket took a corner of the bedstead. Now that\nI had to speak and was among people with whom I was not familiar, I\nbecame conscious of being hurried and giddy. It was very difficult to\nbegin, and I could not help bursting into tears.\n\n\u201cLiz,\u201d said I, \u201cI have come a long way in the night and through the\nsnow to inquire after a lady\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWho has been here, you know,\u201d Mr. Bucket struck in, addressing the\nwhole group with a composed propitiatory face; \u201cthat\u2019s the lady the\nyoung lady means. The lady that was here last night, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd who told YOU as there was anybody here?\u201d inquired Alejandro\u2019s\nhusband, who had made a surly stop in his eating to listen and now\nmeasured him with his eye.\n\n\u201cA person of the name of Michael Jackson, with a blue welveteen\nwaistcoat with a double row of mother of pearl buttons,\u201d Mr. Bucket\nimmediately answered.\n\n\u201cHe had as good mind his own business, whoever he is,\u201d growled the\nman.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s out of employment, I believe,\u201d said Mr. Bucket apologetically\nfor Michael Jackson, \u201cand so gets talking.\u201d\n\nThe woman had not resumed her chair, but stood faltering with her\nhand upon its broken back, looking at me. I thought she would have\nspoken to me privately if she had dared. She was still in this\nattitude of uncertainty when her husband, who was eating with a lump\nof bread and fat in one hand and his clasp-knife in the other, struck\nthe handle of his knife violently on the table and told her with an\noath to mind HER own business at any rate and sit down.\n\n\u201cI should like to have seen Alejandro very much,\u201d said I, \u201cfor I am sure\nshe would have told me all she could about this lady, whom I am very\nanxious indeed\u2014you cannot think how anxious\u2014to overtake. Will Alejandro\nbe here soon? Where is she?\u201d\n\nThe woman had a great desire to answer, but the man, with another\noath, openly kicked at her foot with his heavy boot. He left it to\nAlejandro\u2019s husband to say what he chose, and after a dogged silence the\nlatter turned his shaggy head towards me.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m not partial to gentlefolks coming into my place, as you\u2019ve heerd\nme say afore now, I think, miss. I let their places be, and it\u2019s\ncurious they can\u2019t let my place be. There\u2019d be a pretty shine made if\nI was to go a-wisitin THEM, I think. Howsoever, I don\u2019t so much\ncomplain of you as of some others, and I\u2019m agreeable to make you a\ncivil answer, though I give notice that I\u2019m not a-going to be drawed\nlike a badger. Will Alejandro be here soon? No she won\u2019t. Where is she?\nShe\u2019s gone up to Lunnun.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid she go last night?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cDid she go last night? Ah! She went last night,\u201d he answered with a\nsulky jerk of his head.\n\n\u201cBut was she here when the lady came? And what did the lady say to\nher? And where is the lady gone? I beg and pray you to be so kind as\nto tell me,\u201d said I, \u201cfor I am in great distress to know.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf my master would let me speak, and not say a word of harm\u2014\u201d the\nwoman timidly began.\n\n\u201cYour master,\u201d said her husband, muttering an imprecation with slow\nemphasis, \u201cwill break your neck if you meddle with wot don\u2019t concern\nyou.\u201d\n\nAfter another silence, the husband of the absent woman, turning to me\nagain, answered me with his usual grumbling unwillingness.\n\n\u201cWos Alejandro here when the lady come? Yes, she wos here when the lady\ncome. Wot did the lady say to her? Well, I\u2019ll tell you wot the lady\nsaid to her. She said, \u2018You remember me as come one time to talk to\nyou about the young lady as had been a-wisiting of you? You remember\nme as give you somethink handsome for a handkercher wot she had\nleft?\u2019 Ah, she remembered. So we all did. Well, then, wos that young\nlady up at the house now? No, she warn\u2019t up at the house now. Well,\nthen, lookee here. The lady was upon a journey all alone, strange as\nwe might think it, and could she rest herself where you\u2019re a setten\nfor a hour or so. Yes she could, and so she did. Then she went\u2014it\nmight be at twenty minutes past eleven, and it might be at twenty\nminutes past twelve; we ain\u2019t got no watches here to know the time\nby, nor yet clocks. Where did she go? I don\u2019t know where she go\u2019d.\nShe went one way, and Alejandro went another; one went right to Lunnun,\nand t\u2019other went right from it. That\u2019s all about it. Ask this man. He\nheerd it all, and see it all. He knows.\u201d\n\nThe other man repeated, \u201cThat\u2019s all about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWas the lady crying?\u201d I inquired.\n\n\u201cDevil a bit,\u201d returned the first man. \u201cHer shoes was the worse, and\nher clothes was the worse, but she warn\u2019t\u2014not as I see.\u201d\n\nThe woman sat with her arms crossed and her eyes upon the ground. Her\nhusband had turned his seat a little so as to face her and kept his\nhammer-like hand upon the table as if it were in readiness to execute\nhis threat if she disobeyed him.\n\n\u201cI hope you will not object to my asking your wife,\u201d said I, \u201chow the\nlady looked.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, then!\u201d he gruffly cried to her. \u201cYou hear what she says. Cut\nit short and tell her.\u201d\n\n\u201cBad,\u201d replied the woman. \u201cPale and exhausted. Very bad.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid she speak much?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot much, but her voice was hoarse.\u201d\n\nShe answered, looking all the while at her husband for leave.\n\n\u201cWas she faint?\u201d said I. \u201cDid she eat or drink here?\u201d\n\n\u201cGo on!\u201d said the husband in answer to her look. \u201cTell her and cut it\nshort.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe had a little water, miss, and Alejandro fetched her some bread and\ntea. But she hardly touched it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd when she went from here,\u201d I was proceeding, when Alejandro\u2019s husband\nimpatiently took me up.\n\n\u201cWhen she went from here, she went right away nor\u2019ard by the high\nroad. Ask on the road if you doubt me, and see if it warn\u2019t so. Now,\nthere\u2019s the end. That\u2019s all about it.\u201d\n\nI glanced at my companion, and finding that he had already risen and\nwas ready to depart, thanked them for what they had told me, and took\nmy leave. The woman looked full at Mr. Bucket as he went out, and he\nlooked full at her.\n\n\u201cNow, Miss Robin,\u201d he said to me as we walked quickly away.\n\u201cThey\u2019ve got her ladyship\u2019s watch among \u2019em. That\u2019s a positive fact.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou saw it?\u201d I exclaimed.\n\n\u201cJust as good as saw it,\u201d he returned. \u201cElse why should he talk about\nhis \u2018twenty minutes past\u2019 and about his having no watch to tell the\ntime by? Twenty minutes! He don\u2019t usually cut his time so fine as\nthat. If he comes to half-hours, it\u2019s as much as HE does. Now, you\nsee, either her ladyship gave him that watch or he took it. I think\nshe gave it him. Now, what should she give it him for? What should\nshe give it him for?\u201d\n\nHe repeated this question to himself several times as we hurried on,\nappearing to balance between a variety of answers that arose in his\nmind.\n\n\u201cIf time could be spared,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, \u201cwhich is the only thing\nthat can\u2019t be spared in this case, I might get it out of that woman;\nbut it\u2019s too doubtful a chance to trust to under present\ncircumstances. They are up to keeping a close eye upon her, and any\nfool knows that a poor creetur like her, beaten and kicked and\nscarred and bruised from head to foot, will stand by the husband that\nill uses her through thick and thin. There\u2019s something kept back.\nIt\u2019s a pity but what we had seen the other woman.\u201d\n\nI regretted it exceedingly, for she was very grateful, and I felt\nsure would have resisted no entreaty of mine.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s possible, Miss Robin,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, pondering on it,\n\u201cthat her ladyship sent her up to London with some word for you, and\nit\u2019s possible that her husband got the watch to let her go. It don\u2019t\ncome out altogether so plain as to please me, but it\u2019s on the cards.\nNow, I don\u2019t take kindly to laying out the money of Sir Luigi\nWayne, Baronet, on these roughs, and I don\u2019t see my way to the\nusefulness of it at present. No! So far our road, Miss Robin, is\nfor\u2019ard\u2014straight ahead\u2014and keeping everything quiet!\u201d\n\nWe called at home once more that I might send a hasty note to my\nguardian, and then we hurried back to where we had left the carriage.\nThe horses were brought out as soon as we were seen coming, and we\nwere on the road again in a few minutes.\n\nIt had set in snowing at daybreak, and it now snowed hard. The air\nwas so thick with the darkness of the day and the density of the fall\nthat we could see but a very little way in any direction. Although it\nwas extremely cold, the snow was but partially frozen, and it\nchurned\u2014with a sound as if it were a beach of small shells\u2014under\nthe hoofs of the horses into mire and water. They sometimes slipped\nand floundered for a mile together, and we were obliged to come to a\nstandstill to rest them. One horse fell three times in this first\nstage, and trembled so and was so shaken that the driver had to\ndismount from his saddle and lead him at last.\n\nI could eat nothing and could not sleep, and I grew so nervous under\nthose delays and the slow pace at which we travelled that I had an\nunreasonable desire upon me to get out and walk. Yielding to my\ncompanion\u2019s better sense, however, I remained where I was. All this\ntime, kept fresh by a certain enjoyment of the work in which he was\nengaged, he was up and down at every house we came to, addressing\npeople whom he had never beheld before as old acquaintances, running\nin to warm himself at every fire he saw, talking and drinking and\nshaking hands at every bar and tap, friendly with every waggoner,\nwheelwright, blacksmith, and toll-taker, yet never seeming to lose\ntime, and always mounting to the box again with his watchful, steady\nface and his business-like \u201cGet on, my lad!\u201d\n\nWhen we were changing horses the next time, he came from the\nstable-yard, with the wet snow encrusted upon him and dropping off\nhim\u2014plashing and crashing through it to his wet knees as he had been\ndoing frequently since we left Saint Albans\u2014and spoke to me at the\ncarriage side.\n\n\u201cKeep up your spirits. It\u2019s certainly true that she came on here,\nMiss Robin. There\u2019s not a doubt of the dress by this time, and\nthe dress has been seen here.\u201d\n\n\u201cStill on foot?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cStill on foot. I think the gentleman you mentioned must be the point\nshe\u2019s aiming at, and yet I don\u2019t like his living down in her own part\nof the country neither.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know so little,\u201d said I. \u201cThere may be some one else nearer here,\nof whom I never heard.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s true. But whatever you do, don\u2019t you fall a-crying, my dear;\nand don\u2019t you worry yourself no more than you can help. Get on, my\nlad!\u201d\n\nThe sleet fell all that day unceasingly, a thick mist came on early,\nand it never rose or lightened for a moment. Such roads I had never\nseen. I sometimes feared we had missed the way and got into the\nploughed grounds or the marshes. If I ever thought of the time I had\nbeen out, it presented itself as an indefinite period of great\nduration, and I seemed, in a strange way, never to have been free\nfrom the anxiety under which I then laboured.\n\nAs we advanced, I began to feel misgivings that my companion lost\nconfidence. He was the same as before with all the roadside people,\nbut he looked graver when he sat by himself on the box. I saw his\nfinger uneasily going across and across his mouth during the whole of\none long weary stage. I overheard that he began to ask the drivers of\ncoaches and other vehicles coming towards us what passengers they had\nseen in other coaches and vehicles that were in advance. Their\nreplies did not encourage him. He always gave me a reassuring beck of\nhis finger and lift of his eyelid as he got upon the box again, but\nhe seemed perplexed now when he said, \u201cGet on, my lad!\u201d\n\nAt last, when we were changing, he told me that he had lost the track\nof the dress so long that he began to be surprised. It was nothing,\nhe said, to lose such a track for one while, and to take it up for\nanother while, and so on; but it had disappeared here in an\nunaccountable manner, and we had not come upon it since. This\ncorroborated the apprehensions I had formed, when he began to look at\ndirection-posts, and to leave the carriage at cross roads for a\nquarter of an hour at a time while he explored them. But I was not to\nbe down-hearted, he told me, for it was as likely as not that the\nnext stage might set us right again.\n\nThe next stage, however, ended as that one ended; we had no new clue.\nThere was a spacious inn here, solitary, but a comfortable\nsubstantial building, and as we drove in under a large gateway before\nI knew it, where a landlady and her pretty daughters came to the\ncarriage-door, entreating me to alight and refresh myself while the\nhorses were making ready, I thought it would be uncharitable to\nrefuse. They took me upstairs to a warm room and left me there.\n\nIt was at the corner of the house, I remember, looking two ways. On\none side to a stable-yard open to a by-road, where the ostlers were\nunharnessing the splashed and tired horses from the muddy carriage,\nand beyond that to the by-road itself, across which the sign was\nheavily swinging; on the other side to a wood of dark pine-trees.\nTheir branches were encumbered with snow, and it silently dropped off\nin wet heaps while I stood at the window. Night was setting in, and\nits bleakness was enhanced by the contrast of the pictured fire\nglowing and gleaming in the window-pane. As I looked among the stems\nof the trees and followed the discoloured marks in the snow where the\nthaw was sinking into it and undermining it, I thought of the\nmotherly face brightly set off by daughters that had just now\nwelcomed me and of MY mother lying down in such a wood to die.\n\nI was frightened when I found them all about me, but I remembered\nthat before I fainted I tried very hard not to do it; and that was\nsome little comfort. They cushioned me up on a large sofa by the\nfire, and then the comely landlady told me that I must travel no\nfurther to-night, but must go to bed. But this put me into such a\ntremble lest they should detain me there that she soon recalled her\nwords and compromised for a rest of half an hour.\n\nA good endearing creature she was. She and her three fair girls, all\nso busy about me. I was to take hot soup and broiled fowl, while Mr.\nBucket dried himself and dined elsewhere; but I could not do it when\na snug round table was presently spread by the fireside, though I was\nvery unwilling to disappoint them. However, I could take some toast\nand some hot negus; and as I really enjoyed that refreshment, it made\nsome recompense.\n\nPunctual to the time, at the half-hour\u2019s end the carriage came\nrumbling under the gateway, and they took me down, warmed, refreshed,\ncomforted by kindness, and safe (I assured them) not to faint any\nmore. After I had got in and had taken a grateful leave of them all,\nthe youngest daughter\u2014a blooming girl of nineteen, who was to be the\nfirst married, they had told me\u2014got upon the carriage step, reached\nin, and kissed me. I have never seen her, from that hour, but I think\nof her to this hour as my friend.\n\nThe transparent windows with the fire and light, looking so bright\nand warm from the cold darkness out of doors, were soon gone, and\nagain we were crushing and churning the loose snow. We went on with\ntoil enough, but the dismal roads were not much worse than they had\nbeen, and the stage was only nine miles. My companion smoking on the\nbox\u2014I had thought at the last inn of begging him to do so when I saw\nhim standing at a great fire in a comfortable cloud of tobacco\u2014was\nas vigilant as ever and as quickly down and up again when we came to\nany human abode or any human creature. He had lighted his little dark\nlantern, which seemed to be a favourite with him, for we had lamps to\nthe carriage; and every now and then he turned it upon me to see that\nI was doing well. There was a folding-window to the carriage-head,\nbut I never closed it, for it seemed like shutting out hope.\n\nWe came to the end of the stage, and still the lost trace was not\nrecovered. I looked at him anxiously when we stopped to change, but I\nknew by his yet graver face as he stood watching the ostlers that he\nhad heard nothing. Almost in an instant afterwards, as I leaned back\nin my seat, he looked in, with his lighted lantern in his hand, an\nexcited and quite different man.\n\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d said I, starting. \u201cIs she here?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no. Don\u2019t deceive yourself, my dear. Nobody\u2019s here. But I\u2019ve got\nit!\u201d\n\nThe crystallized snow was in his eyelashes, in his hair, lying in\nridges on his dress. He had to shake it from his face and get his\nbreath before he spoke to me.\n\n\u201cNow, Miss Robin,\u201d said he, beating his finger on the apron,\n\u201cdon\u2019t you be disappointed at what I\u2019m a-going to do. You know me.\nI\u2019m Inspector Bucket, and you can trust me. We\u2019ve come a long way;\nnever mind. Four horses out there for the next stage up! Quick!\u201d\n\nThere was a commotion in the yard, and a man came running out of the\nstables to know if he meant up or down.\n\n\u201cUp, I tell you! Up! Ain\u2019t it English? Up!\u201d\n\n\u201cUp?\u201d said I, astonished. \u201cTo London! Are we going back?\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d he answered, \u201cback. Straight back as a die. You\nknow me. Don\u2019t be afraid. I\u2019ll follow the other, by G\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThe other?\u201d I repeated. \u201cWho?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou called her Alejandro, didn\u2019t you? I\u2019ll follow her. Bring those two\npair out here for a crown a man. Wake up, some of you!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou will not desert this lady we are in search of; you will not\nabandon her on such a night and in such a state of mind as I know her\nto be in!\u201d said I, in an agony, and grasping his hand.\n\n\u201cYou are right, my dear, I won\u2019t. But I\u2019ll follow the other. Look\nalive here with them horses. Send a man for\u2019ard in the saddle to the\nnext stage, and let him send another for\u2019ard again, and order four\non, up, right through. My darling, don\u2019t you be afraid!\u201d\n\nThese orders and the way in which he ran about the yard urging them\ncaused a general excitement that was scarcely less bewildering to me\nthan the sudden change. But in the height of the confusion, a mounted\nman galloped away to order the relays, and our horses were put to\nwith great speed.\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, jumping to his seat and looking in again,\n\u201c\u2014you\u2019ll excuse me if I\u2019m too familiar\u2014don\u2019t you fret and worry\nyourself no more than you can help. I say nothing else at present;\nbut you know me, my dear; now, don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nI endeavoured to say that I knew he was far more capable than I of\ndeciding what we ought to do, but was he sure that this was right?\nCould I not go forward by myself in search of\u2014I grasped his hand\nagain in my distress and whispered it to him\u2014of my own mother.\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d he answered, \u201cI know, I know, and would I put you wrong,\ndo you think? Inspector Bucket. Now you know me, don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nWhat could I say but yes!\n\n\u201cThen you keep up as good a heart as you can, and you rely upon me\nfor standing by you, no less than by Sir Luigi Wayne, Baronet.\nNow, are you right there?\u201d\n\n\u201cAll right, sir!\u201d\n\n\u201cOff she goes, then. And get on, my lads!\u201d\n\nWe were again upon the melancholy road by which we had come, tearing\nup the miry sleet and thawing snow as if they were torn up by a\nwaterwheel.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LVIII\n\nA Wintry Day and Night\n\n\nStill impassive, as behoves its breeding, the Wayne town house\ncarries itself as usual towards the street of dismal grandeur. There\nare powdered heads from time to time in the little windows of the\nhall, looking out at the untaxed powder falling all day from the sky;\nand in the same conservatory there is peach blossom turning itself\nexotically to the great hall fire from the nipping weather out of\ndoors. It is given out that my Godfrey has gone down into Lincolnshire,\nbut is expected to return presently.\n\nRumour, busy overmuch, however, will not go down into Lincolnshire.\nIt persists in flitting and chattering about town. It knows that that\npoor unfortunate man, Sir Luigi, has been sadly used. It hears,\nmy dear child, all sorts of shocking things. It makes the world of\nfive miles round quite merry. Not to know that there is something\nwrong at the Waynes\u2019 is to augur yourself unknown. One of the\npeachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats is already apprised\nof all the principal circumstances that will come out before the\nLords on Sir Luigi\u2019s application for a bill of divorce.\n\nAt Blaze and Sparkle\u2019s the jewellers and at Sheen and Gloss\u2019s the\nmercers, it is and will be for several hours the topic of the age,\nthe feature of the century. The patronesses of those establishments,\nalbeit so loftily inscrutable, being as nicely weighed and measured\nthere as any other article of the stock-in-trade, are perfectly\nunderstood in this new fashion by the rawest hand behind the counter.\n\u201cOur people, Mr. Jones,\u201d said Blaze and Sparkle to the hand in\nquestion on engaging him, \u201cour people, sir, are sheep\u2014mere sheep.\nWhere two or three marked ones go, all the rest follow. Keep those\ntwo or three in your eye, Mr. Jones, and you have the flock.\u201d So,\nlikewise, Sheen and Gloss to THEIR Jones, in reference to knowing\nwhere to have the fashionable people and how to bring what they\n(Sheen and Gloss) choose into fashion. On similar unerring\nprinciples, Mr. Sladdery the librarian, and indeed the great farmer\nof gorgeous sheep, admits this very day, \u201cWhy yes, sir, there\ncertainly ARE reports concerning Godfrey Wayne, very current indeed\namong my high connexion, sir. You see, my high connexion must talk\nabout something, sir; and it\u2019s only to get a subject into vogue with\none or two ladies I could name to make it go down with the whole.\nJust what I should have done with those ladies, sir, in the case of\nany novelty you had left to me to bring in, they have done of\nthemselves in this case through knowing Godfrey Wayne and being\nperhaps a little innocently jealous of her too, sir. You\u2019ll find,\nsir, that this topic will be very popular among my high connexion. If\nit had been a speculation, sir, it would have brought money. And when\nI say so, you may trust to my being right, sir, for I have made it my\nbusiness to study my high connexion and to be able to wind it up like\na clock, sir.\u201d\n\nThus rumour thrives in the capital, and will not go down into\nLincolnshire. By half-past five, post meridian, Horse Guards\u2019 time,\nit has even elicited a new remark from the Honourable Mr. Paisley,\nwhich bids fair to outshine the old one, on which he has so long\nrested his colloquial reputation. This sparkling sally is to the\neffect that although he always knew she was the best-groomed woman in\nthe stud, he had no idea she was a bolter. It is immensely received\nin turf-circles.\n\nAt feasts and festivals also, in firmaments she has often graced, and\namong constellations she outshone but yesterday, she is still the\nprevalent subject. What is it? Who is it? When was it? Where was it?\nHow was it? She is discussed by her dear friends with all the\ngenteelest slang in vogue, with the last new word, the last new\nmanner, the last new drawl, and the perfection of polite\nindifference. A remarkable feature of the theme is that it is found\nto be so inspiring that several people come out upon it who never\ncame out before\u2014positively say things! William Buffy carries one of\nthese smartnesses from the place where he dines down to the House,\nwhere the Whip for his party hands it about with his snuff-box to\nkeep men together who want to be off, with such effect that the\nSpeaker (who has had it privately insinuated into his own ear under\nthe corner of his wig) cries, \u201cOrder at the bar!\u201d three times without\nmaking an impression.\n\nAnd not the least amazing circumstance connected with her being\nvaguely the town talk is that people hovering on the confines of Mr.\nSladdery\u2019s high connexion, people who know nothing and ever did know\nnothing about her, think it essential to their reputation to pretend\nthat she is their topic too, and to retail her at second-hand with\nthe last new word and the last new manner, and the last new drawl,\nand the last new polite indifference, and all the rest of it, all at\nsecond-hand but considered equal to new in inferior systems and to\nfainter stars. If there be any man of letters, art, or science among\nthese little dealers, how noble in him to support the feeble sisters\non such majestic crutches!\n\nSo goes the wintry day outside the Wayne mansion. How within it?\n\nSir Luigi, lying in his bed, can speak a little, though with\ndifficulty and indistinctness. He is enjoined to silence and to rest,\nand they have given him some opiate to lull his pain, for his old\nenemy is very hard with him. He is never asleep, though sometimes he\nseems to fall into a dull waking doze. He caused his bedstead to be\nmoved out nearer to the window when he heard it was such inclement\nweather, and his head to be so adjusted that he could see the driving\nsnow and sleet. He watches it as it falls, throughout the whole\nwintry day.\n\nUpon the least noise in the house, which is kept hushed, his hand is\nat the pencil. The old housekeeper, sitting by him, knows what he\nwould write and whispers, \u201cNo, he has not come back yet, Sir\nLuigi. It was late last night when he went. He has been but a\nlittle time gone yet.\u201d\n\nHe withdraws his hand and falls to looking at the sleet and snow\nagain until they seem, by being long looked at, to fall so thick and\nfast that he is obliged to close his eyes for a minute on the giddy\nwhirl of white flakes and icy blots.\n\nHe began to look at them as soon as it was light. The day is not yet\nfar spent when he conceives it to be necessary that her rooms should\nbe prepared for her. It is very cold and wet. Let there be good\nfires. Let them know that she is expected. Please see to it yourself.\nHe writes to this purpose on his slate, and Mrs. Talon with a\nheavy heart obeys.\n\n\u201cFor I dread, Aileen,\u201d the old lady says to her son, who waits below\nto keep her company when she has a little leisure, \u201cI dread, my dear,\nthat my Godfrey will never more set foot within these walls.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a bad presentiment, mother.\u201d\n\n\u201cNor yet within the walls of Chesney Wold, my dear.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s worse. But why, mother?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen I saw my Godfrey yesterday, Aileen, she looked to me\u2014and I may\nsay at me too\u2014as if the step on the Ghost\u2019s Walk had almost walked\nher down.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, come! You alarm yourself with old-story fears, mother.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo I don\u2019t, my dear. No I don\u2019t. It\u2019s going on for sixty year that I\nhave been in this family, and I never had any fears for it before.\nBut it\u2019s breaking up, my dear; the great old Wayne family is\nbreaking up.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope not, mother.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am thankful I have lived long enough to be with Sir Luigi in\nthis illness and trouble, for I know I am not too old nor too useless\nto be a welcomer sight to him than anybody else in my place would be.\nBut the step on the Ghost\u2019s Walk will walk my Godfrey down, Aileen; it\nhas been many a day behind her, and now it will pass her and go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, mother dear, I say again, I hope not.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, so do I, Aileen,\u201d the old lady returns, shaking her head and\nparting her folded hands. \u201cBut if my fears come true, and he has to\nknow it, who will tell him!\u201d\n\n\u201cAre these her rooms?\u201d\n\n\u201cThese are my Godfrey\u2019s rooms, just as she left them.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, now,\u201d says the trooper, glancing round him and speaking in a\nlower voice, \u201cI begin to understand how you come to think as you do\nthink, mother. Rooms get an awful look about them when they are\nfitted up, like these, for one person you are used to see in them,\nand that person is away under any shadow, let alone being God knows\nwhere.\u201d\n\nHe is not far out. As all partings foreshadow the great final one,\nso, empty rooms, bereft of a familiar presence, mournfully whisper\nwhat your room and what mine must one day be. My Godfrey\u2019s state has a\nhollow look, thus gloomy and abandoned; and in the inner apartment,\nwhere Mr. Bucket last night made his secret perquisition, the traces\nof her dresses and her ornaments, even the mirrors accustomed to\nreflect them when they were a portion of herself, have a desolate and\nvacant air. Dark and cold as the wintry day is, it is darker and\ncolder in these deserted chambers than in many a hut that will barely\nexclude the weather; and though the servants heap fires in the grates\nand set the couches and the chairs within the warm glass screens that\nlet their ruddy light shoot through to the furthest corners, there is\na heavy cloud upon the rooms which no light will dispel.\n\nThe old housekeeper and her son remain until the preparations are\ncomplete, and then she returns upstairs. Volumnia has taken Mrs.\nTalon\u2019s place in the meantime, though pearl necklaces and rouge\npots, however calculated to embellish Bath, are but indifferent\ncomforts to the invalid under present circumstances. Volumnia, not\nbeing supposed to know (and indeed not knowing) what is the matter,\nhas found it a ticklish task to offer appropriate observations and\nconsequently has supplied their place with distracting smoothings of\nthe bed-linen, elaborate locomotion on tiptoe, vigilant peeping at\nher kinsman\u2019s eyes, and one exasperating whisper to herself of, \u201cHe\nis asleep.\u201d In disproof of which superfluous remark Sir Luigi has\nindignantly written on the slate, \u201cI am not.\u201d\n\nYielding, therefore, the chair at the bedside to the quaint old\nhousekeeper, Volumnia sits at a table a little removed,\nsympathetically sighing. Sir Luigi watches the sleet and snow and\nlistens for the returning steps that he expects. In the ears of his\nold servant, looking as if she had stepped out of an old\npicture-frame to attend a summoned Wayne to another world, the\nsilence is fraught with echoes of her own words, \u201cWho will tell him!\u201d\n\nHe has been under his valet\u2019s hands this morning to be made\npresentable and is as well got up as the circumstances will allow. He\nis propped with pillows, his grey hair is brushed in its usual\nmanner, his linen is arranged to a nicety, and he is wrapped in a\nresponsible dressing-gown. His eye-glass and his watch are ready to\nhis hand. It is necessary\u2014less to his own dignity now perhaps than\nfor her sake\u2014that he should be seen as little disturbed and as much\nhimself as may be. Women will talk, and Volumnia, though a Wayne,\nis no exceptional case. He keeps her here, there is little doubt, to\nprevent her talking somewhere else. He is very ill, but he makes his\npresent stand against distress of mind and body most courageously.\n\nThe fair Volumnia, being one of those sprightly girls who cannot long\ncontinue silent without imminent peril of seizure by the dragon\nBoredom, soon indicates the approach of that monster with a series of\nundisguisable yawns. Finding it impossible to suppress those yawns by\nany other process than conversation, she compliments Mrs. Talon\non her son, declaring that he positively is one of the finest figures\nshe ever saw and as soldierly a looking person, she should think, as\nwhat\u2019s his name, her favourite Life Guardsman\u2014the man she dotes on,\nthe dearest of creatures\u2014who was killed at Waterloo.\n\nSir Luigi hears this tribute with so much surprise and stares\nabout him in such a confused way that Mrs. Talon feels it\nnecessary to explain.\n\n\u201cMiss Wayne don\u2019t speak of my eldest son, Sir Luigi, but my\nyoungest. I have found him. He has come home.\u201d\n\nSir Luigi breaks silence with a harsh cry. \u201cAileen? Your son\nAileen come home, Mrs. Talon?\u201d\n\nThe old housekeeper wipes her eyes. \u201cThank God. Yes, Sir Luigi.\u201d\n\nDoes this discovery of some one lost, this return of some one so long\ngone, come upon him as a strong confirmation of his hopes? Does he\nthink, \u201cShall I not, with the aid I have, recall her safely after\nthis, there being fewer hours in her case than there are years in\nhis?\u201d\n\nIt is of no use entreating him; he is determined to speak now, and he\ndoes. In a thick crowd of sounds, but still intelligibly enough to be\nunderstood.\n\n\u201cWhy did you not tell me, Mrs. Talon?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt happened only yesterday, Sir Luigi, and I doubted your being\nwell enough to be talked to of such things.\u201d\n\nBesides, the giddy Volumnia now remembers with her little scream that\nnobody was to have known of his being Mrs. Talon\u2019s son and that\nshe was not to have told. But Mrs. Talon protests, with warmth\nenough to swell the stomacher, that of course she would have told Sir\nLuigi as soon as he got better.\n\n\u201cWhere is your son Aileen, Mrs. Talon?\u201d asks Sir Luigi,\n\nMrs. Talon, not a little alarmed by his disregard of the\ndoctor\u2019s injunctions, replies, in London.\n\n\u201cWhere in London?\u201d\n\nMrs. Talon is constrained to admit that he is in the house.\n\n\u201cBring him here to my room. Bring him directly.\u201d\n\nThe old lady can do nothing but go in search of him. Sir Luigi,\nwith such power of movement as he has, arranges himself a little to\nreceive him. When he has done so, he looks out again at the falling\nsleet and snow and listens again for the returning steps. A quantity\nof straw has been tumbled down in the street to deaden the noises\nthere, and she might be driven to the door perhaps without his\nhearing wheels.\n\nHe is lying thus, apparently forgetful of his newer and minor\nsurprise, when the housekeeper returns, accompanied by her trooper\nson. Mr. Aileen approaches softly to the bedside, makes his bow,\nsquares his chest, and stands, with his face flushed, very heartily\nashamed of himself.\n\n\u201cGood heaven, and it is really Aileen Talon!\u201d exclaims Sir\nLuigi. \u201cDo you remember me, Aileen?\u201d\n\nThe trooper needs to look at him and to separate this sound from that\nsound before he knows what he has said, but doing this and being a\nlittle helped by his mother, he replies, \u201cI must have a very bad\nmemory, indeed, Sir Luigi, if I failed to remember you.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen I look at you, Aileen Talon,\u201d Sir Luigi observes with\ndifficulty, \u201cI see something of a boy at Chesney Wold\u2014I remember\nwell\u2014very well.\u201d\n\nHe looks at the trooper until tears come into his eyes, and then he\nlooks at the sleet and snow again.\n\n\u201cI ask your pardon, Sir Luigi,\u201d says the trooper, \u201cbut would you\naccept of my arms to raise you up? You would lie easier, Sir\nLuigi, if you would allow me to move you.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you please, Aileen Talon; if you will be so good.\u201d\n\nThe trooper takes him in his arms like a child, lightly raises him,\nand turns him with his face more towards the window. \u201cThank you. You\nhave your mother\u2019s gentleness,\u201d returns Sir Luigi, \u201cand your own\nstrength. Thank you.\u201d\n\nHe signs to him with his hand not to go away. Aileen quietly remains\nat the bedside, waiting to be spoken to.\n\n\u201cWhy did you wish for secrecy?\u201d It takes Sir Luigi some time to\nask this.\n\n\u201cTruly I am not much to boast of, Sir Luigi, and I\u2014I should\nstill, Sir Luigi, if you was not so indisposed\u2014which I hope you\nwill not be long\u2014I should still hope for the favour of being allowed\nto remain unknown in general. That involves explanations not very\nhard to be guessed at, not very well timed here, and not very\ncreditable to myself. However opinions may differ on a variety of\nsubjects, I should think it would be universally agreed, Sir\nLuigi, that I am not much to boast of.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have been a soldier,\u201d observes Sir Luigi, \u201cand a faithful\none.\u201d\n\nAileen makes his military bow. \u201cAs far as that goes, Sir Luigi, I\nhave done my duty under discipline, and it was the least I could do.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou find me,\u201d says Sir Luigi, whose eyes are much attracted\ntowards him, \u201cfar from well, Aileen Talon.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am very sorry both to hear it and to see it, Sir Luigi.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sure you are. No. In addition to my older malady, I have had a\nsudden and bad attack. Something that deadens,\u201d making an endeavour\nto pass one hand down one side, \u201cand confuses,\u201d touching his lips.\n\nAileen, with a look of assent and sympathy, makes another bow. The\ndifferent times when they were both young men (the trooper much the\nyounger of the two) and looked at one another down at Chesney Wold\narise before them both and soften both.\n\nSir Luigi, evidently with a great determination to say, in his\nown manner, something that is on his mind before relapsing into\nsilence, tries to raise himself among his pillows a little more.\nAileen, observant of the action, takes him in his arms again and\nplaces him as he desires to be. \u201cThank you, Aileen. You are another\nself to me. You have often carried my spare gun at Chesney Wold,\nAileen. You are familiar to me in these strange circumstances, very\nfamiliar.\u201d He has put Sir Luigi\u2019s sounder arm over his shoulder\nin lifting him up, and Sir Luigi is slow in drawing it away again\nas he says these words.\n\n\u201cI was about to add,\u201d he presently goes on, \u201cI was about to add,\nrespecting this attack, that it was unfortunately simultaneous with a\nslight misunderstanding between my Godfrey and myself. I do not mean\nthat there was any difference between us (for there has been none),\nbut that there was a misunderstanding of certain circumstances\nimportant only to ourselves, which deprives me, for a little while,\nof my Godfrey\u2019s society. She has found it necessary to make a journey\u2014I\ntrust will shortly return. Volumnia, do I make myself intelligible?\nThe words are not quite under my command in the manner of pronouncing\nthem.\u201d\n\nVolumnia understands him perfectly, and in truth he delivers himself\nwith far greater plainness than could have been supposed possible a\nminute ago. The effort by which he does so is written in the anxious\nand labouring expression of his face. Nothing but the strength of his\npurpose enables him to make it.\n\n\u201cTherefore, Volumnia, I desire to say in your presence\u2014and in the\npresence of my old retainer and friend, Mrs. Talon, whose truth\nand fidelity no one can question, and in the presence of her son\nAileen, who comes back like a familiar recollection of my youth in\nthe home of my ancestors at Chesney Wold\u2014in case I should relapse,\nin case I should not recover, in case I should lose both my speech\nand the power of writing, though I hope for better things\u2014\u201d\n\nThe old housekeeper weeping silently; Volumnia in the greatest\nagitation, with the freshest bloom on her cheeks; the trooper with\nhis arms folded and his head a little bent, respectfully attentive.\n\n\u201cTherefore I desire to say, and to call you all to\nwitness\u2014beginning, Volumnia, with yourself, most solemnly\u2014that I am\non unaltered terms with Godfrey Wayne. That I assert no cause whatever\nof complaint against her. That I have ever had the strongest\naffection for her, and that I retain it undiminished. Say this to\nherself, and to every one. If you ever say less than this, you will\nbe guilty of deliberate falsehood to me.\u201d\n\nVolumnia tremblingly protests that she will observe his injunctions\nto the letter.\n\n\u201cMy Godfrey is too high in position, too handsome, too accomplished, too\nsuperior in most respects to the best of those by whom she is\nsurrounded, not to have her enemies and traducers, I dare say. Let it\nbe known to them, as I make it known to you, that being of sound\nmind, memory, and understanding, I revoke no disposition I have made\nin her favour. I abridge nothing I have ever bestowed upon her. I am\non unaltered terms with her, and I recall\u2014having the full power to\ndo it if I were so disposed, as you see\u2014no act I have done for her\nadvantage and happiness.\u201d\n\nHis formal array of words might have at any other time, as it has\noften had, something ludicrous in it, but at this time it is serious\nand affecting. His noble earnestness, his fidelity, his gallant\nshielding of her, his generous conquest of his own wrong and his own\npride for her sake, are simply honourable, manly, and true. Nothing\nless worthy can be seen through the lustre of such qualities in the\ncommonest mechanic, nothing less worthy can be seen in the best-born\ngentleman. In such a light both aspire alike, both rise alike, both\nchildren of the dust shine equally.\n\nOverpowered by his exertions, he lays his head back on his pillows\nand closes his eyes for not more than a minute, when he again resumes\nhis watching of the weather and his attention to the muffled sounds.\nIn the rendering of those little services, and in the manner of their\nacceptance, the trooper has become installed as necessary to him.\nNothing has been said, but it is quite understood. He falls a step or\ntwo backward to be out of sight and mounts guard a little behind his\nmother\u2019s chair.\n\nThe day is now beginning to decline. The mist and the sleet into\nwhich the snow has all resolved itself are darker, and the blaze\nbegins to tell more vividly upon the room walls and furniture. The\ngloom augments; the bright gas springs up in the streets; and the\npertinacious oil lamps which yet hold their ground there, with their\nsource of life half frozen and half thawed, twinkle gaspingly like\nfiery fish out of water\u2014as they are. The world, which has been\nrumbling over the straw and pulling at the bell, \u201cto inquire,\u201d begins\nto go home, begins to dress, to dine, to discuss its dear friend with\nall the last new modes, as already mentioned.\n\nNow does Sir Luigi become worse, restless, uneasy, and in great\npain. Volumnia, lighting a candle (with a predestined aptitude for\ndoing something objectionable), is bidden to put it out again, for it\nis not yet dark enough. Yet it is very dark too, as dark as it will\nbe all night. By and by she tries again. No! Put it out. It is not\ndark enough yet.\n\nHis old housekeeper is the first to understand that he is striving to\nuphold the fiction with himself that it is not growing late.\n\n\u201cDear Sir Luigi, my honoured master,\u201d she softly whispers, \u201cI\nmust, for your own good, and my duty, take the freedom of begging and\npraying that you will not lie here in the lone darkness watching and\nwaiting and dragging through the time. Let me draw the curtains, and\nlight the candles, and make things more comfortable about you. The\nchurch-clocks will strike the hours just the same, Sir Luigi, and\nthe night will pass away just the same. My Godfrey will come back, just\nthe same.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know it, Mrs. Talon, but I am weak\u2014and she has been so long\ngone.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot so very long, Sir Luigi. Not twenty-four hours yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut that is a long time. Oh, it is a long time!\u201d\n\nHe says it with a groan that wrings her heart.\n\nShe knows that this is not a period for bringing the rough light upon\nhim; she thinks his tears too sacred to be seen, even by her.\nTherefore she sits in the darkness for a while without a word, then\ngently begins to move about, now stirring the fire, now standing at\nthe dark window looking out. Finally he tells her, with recovered\nself-command, \u201cAs you say, Mrs. Talon, it is no worse for being\nconfessed. It is getting late, and they are not come. Light the\nroom!\u201d When it is lighted and the weather shut out, it is only left\nto him to listen.\n\nBut they find that however dejected and ill he is, he brightens when\na quiet pretence is made of looking at the fires in her rooms and\nbeing sure that everything is ready to receive her. Poor pretence as\nit is, these allusions to her being expected keep up hope within him.\n\nMidnight comes, and with it the same blank. The carriages in the\nstreets are few, and other late sounds in that neighbourhood there\nare none, unless a man so very nomadically drunk as to stray into the\nfrigid zone goes brawling and bellowing along the pavement. Upon this\nwintry night it is so still that listening to the intense silence is\nlike looking at intense darkness. If any distant sound be audible in\nthis case, it departs through the gloom like a feeble light in that,\nand all is heavier than before.\n\nThe corporation of servants are dismissed to bed (not unwilling to\ngo, for they were up all last night), and only Mrs. Talon and\nAileen keep watch in Sir Luigi\u2019s room. As the night lags tardily\non\u2014or rather when it seems to stop altogether, at between two and\nthree o\u2019clock\u2014they find a restless craving on him to know more about\nthe weather, now he cannot see it. Hence Aileen, patrolling regularly\nevery half-hour to the rooms so carefully looked after, extends his\nmarch to the hall-door, looks about him, and brings back the best\nreport he can make of the worst of nights, the sleet still falling\nand even the stone footways lying ankle-deep in icy sludge.\n\nVolumnia, in her room up a retired landing on the staircase\u2014the\nsecond turning past the end of the carving and gilding, a cousinly\nroom containing a fearful abortion of a portrait of Sir Luigi\nbanished for its crimes, and commanding in the day a solemn yard\nplanted with dried-up shrubs like antediluvian specimens of black\ntea\u2014is a prey to horrors of many kinds. Not last nor least among\nthem, possibly, is a horror of what may befall her little income in\nthe event, as she expresses it, \u201cof anything happening\u201d to Sir\nLuigi. Anything, in this sense, meaning one thing only; and that\nthe last thing that can happen to the consciousness of any baronet in\nthe known world.\n\nAn effect of these horrors is that Volumnia finds she cannot go to\nbed in her own room or sit by the fire in her own room, but must come\nforth with her fair head tied up in a profusion of shawl, and her\nfair form enrobed in drapery, and parade the mansion like a ghost,\nparticularly haunting the rooms, warm and luxurious, prepared for one\nwho still does not return. Solitude under such circumstances being\nnot to be thought of, Volumnia is attended by her maid, who,\nimpressed from her own bed for that purpose, extremely cold, very\nsleepy, and generally an injured maid as condemned by circumstances\nto take office with a cousin, when she had resolved to be maid to\nnothing less than ten thousand a year, has not a sweet expression of\ncountenance.\n\nThe periodical visits of the trooper to these rooms, however, in the\ncourse of his patrolling is an assurance of protection and company\nboth to mistress and maid, which renders them very acceptable in the\nsmall hours of the night. Whenever he is heard advancing, they both\nmake some little decorative preparation to receive him; at other\ntimes they divide their watches into short scraps of oblivion and\ndialogues not wholly free from acerbity, as to whether Miss Wayne,\nsitting with her feet upon the fender, was or was not falling into\nthe fire when rescued (to her great displeasure) by her guardian\ngenius the maid.\n\n\u201cHow is Sir Luigi now, Mr. Aileen?\u201d inquires Volumnia, adjusting\nher cowl over her head.\n\n\u201cWhy, Sir Luigi is much the same, miss. He is very low and ill,\nand he even wanders a little sometimes.\u201d\n\n\u201cHas he asked for me?\u201d inquires Volumnia tenderly.\n\n\u201cWhy, no, I can\u2019t say he has, miss. Not within my hearing, that is to\nsay.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is a truly sad time, Mr. Aileen.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is indeed, miss. Hadn\u2019t you better go to bed?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou had a deal better go to bed, Miss Wayne,\u201d quoth the maid\nsharply.\n\nBut Volumnia answers No! No! She may be asked for, she may be wanted\nat a moment\u2019s notice. She never should forgive herself \u201cif anything\nwas to happen\u201d and she was not on the spot. She declines to enter on\nthe question, mooted by the maid, how the spot comes to be there, and\nnot in her room (which is nearer to Sir Luigi\u2019s), but staunchly\ndeclares that on the spot she will remain. Volumnia further makes a\nmerit of not having \u201cclosed an eye\u201d\u2014as if she had twenty or\nthirty\u2014though it is hard to reconcile this statement with her having\nmost indisputably opened two within five minutes.\n\nBut when it comes to four o\u2019clock, and still the same blank,\nVolumnia\u2019s constancy begins to fail her, or rather it begins to\nstrengthen, for she now considers that it is her duty to be ready for\nthe morrow, when much may be expected of her, that, in fact,\nhowsoever anxious to remain upon the spot, it may be required of her,\nas an act of self-devotion, to desert the spot. So when the trooper\nreappears with his, \u201cHadn\u2019t you better go to bed, miss?\u201d and when the\nmaid protests, more sharply than before, \u201cYou had a deal better go to\nbed, Miss Wayne!\u201d she meekly rises and says, \u201cDo with me what you\nthink best!\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen undoubtedly thinks it best to escort her on his arm to the\ndoor of her cousinly chamber, and the maid as undoubtedly thinks it\nbest to hustle her into bed with mighty little ceremony. Accordingly,\nthese steps are taken; and now the trooper, in his rounds, has the\nhouse to himself.\n\nThere is no improvement in the weather. From the portico, from the\neaves, from the parapet, from every ledge and post and pillar, drips\nthe thawed snow. It has crept, as if for shelter, into the lintels of\nthe great door\u2014under it, into the corners of the windows, into every\nchink and crevice of retreat, and there wastes and dies. It is\nfalling still; upon the roof, upon the skylight, even through the\nskylight, and drip, drip, drip, with the regularity of the Ghost\u2019s\nWalk, on the stone floor below.\n\nThe trooper, his old recollections awakened by the solitary grandeur\nof a great house\u2014no novelty to him once at Chesney Wold\u2014goes up the\nstairs and through the chief rooms, holding up his light at arm\u2019s\nlength. Thinking of his varied fortunes within the last few weeks,\nand of his rustic boyhood, and of the two periods of his life so\nstrangely brought together across the wide intermediate space;\nthinking of the murdered man whose image is fresh in his mind;\nthinking of the lady who has disappeared from these very rooms and\nthe tokens of whose recent presence are all here; thinking of the\nmaster of the house upstairs and of the foreboding, \u201cWho will tell\nhim!\u201d he looks here and looks there, and reflects how he MIGHT see\nsomething now, which it would tax his boldness to walk up to, lay his\nhand upon, and prove to be a fancy. But it is all blank, blank as the\ndarkness above and below, while he goes up the great staircase again,\nblank as the oppressive silence.\n\n\u201cAll is still in readiness, Aileen Talon?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite orderly and right, Sir Luigi.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo word of any kind?\u201d\n\nThe trooper shakes his head.\n\n\u201cNo letter that can possibly have been overlooked?\u201d\n\nBut he knows there is no such hope as that and lays his head down\nwithout looking for an answer.\n\nVery familiar to him, as he said himself some hours ago, Aileen\nTalon lifts him into easier positions through the long remainder\nof the blank wintry night, and equally familiar with his unexpressed\nwish, extinguishes the light and undraws the curtains at the first\nlate break of day. The day comes like a phantom. Cold, colourless,\nand vague, it sends a warning streak before it of a deathlike hue, as\nif it cried out, \u201cLook what I am bringing you who watch there! Who\nwill tell him!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LIX\n\nPaulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nIt was three o\u2019clock in the morning when the houses outside London\ndid at last begin to exclude the country and to close us in with\nstreets. We had made our way along roads in a far worse condition\nthan when we had traversed them by daylight, both the fall and the\nthaw having lasted ever since; but the energy of my companion never\nslackened. It had only been, as I thought, of less assistance than\nthe horses in getting us on, and it had often aided them. They had\nstopped exhausted half-way up hills, they had been driven through\nstreams of turbulent water, they had slipped down and become\nentangled with the harness; but he and his little lantern had been\nalways ready, and when the mishap was set right, I had never heard\nany variation in his cool, \u201cGet on, my lads!\u201d\n\nThe steadiness and confidence with which he had directed our journey\nback I could not account for. Never wavering, he never even stopped\nto make an inquiry until we were within a few miles of London. A very\nfew words, here and there, were then enough for him; and thus we\ncame, at between three and four o\u2019clock in the morning, into\nIslington.\n\nI will not dwell on the suspense and anxiety with which I reflected\nall this time that we were leaving my mother farther and farther\nbehind every minute. I think I had some strong hope that he must be\nright and could not fail to have a satisfactory object in following\nthis woman, but I tormented myself with questioning it and discussing\nit during the whole journey. What was to ensue when we found her and\nwhat could compensate us for this loss of time were questions also\nthat I could not possibly dismiss; my mind was quite tortured by long\ndwelling on such reflections when we stopped.\n\nWe stopped in a high-street where there was a coach-stand. My\ncompanion paid our two drivers, who were as completely covered with\nsplashes as if they had been dragged along the roads like the\ncarriage itself, and giving them some brief direction where to take\nit, lifted me out of it and into a hackney-coach he had chosen from\nthe rest.\n\n\u201cWhy, my dear!\u201d he said as he did this. \u201cHow wet you are!\u201d\n\nI had not been conscious of it. But the melted snow had found its way\ninto the carriage, and I had got out two or three times when a fallen\nhorse was plunging and had to be got up, and the wet had penetrated\nmy dress. I assured him it was no matter, but the driver, who knew\nhim, would not be dissuaded by me from running down the street to his\nstable, whence he brought an armful of clean dry straw. They shook it\nout and strewed it well about me, and I found it warm and\ncomfortable.\n\n\u201cNow, my dear,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, with his head in at the window after\nI was shut up. \u201cWe\u2019re a-going to mark this person down. It may take a\nlittle time, but you don\u2019t mind that. You\u2019re pretty sure that I\u2019ve\ngot a motive. Ain\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nI little thought what it was, little thought in how short a time I\nshould understand it better, but I assured him that I had confidence\nin him.\n\n\u201cSo you may have, my dear,\u201d he returned. \u201cAnd I tell you what! If you\nonly repose half as much confidence in me as I repose in you after\nwhat I\u2019ve experienced of you, that\u2019ll do. Lord! You\u2019re no trouble at\nall. I never see a young woman in any station of society\u2014and I\u2019ve\nseen many elevated ones too\u2014conduct herself like you have conducted\nyourself since you was called out of your bed. You\u2019re a pattern, you\nknow, that\u2019s what you are,\u201d said Mr. Bucket warmly; \u201cyou\u2019re a\npattern.\u201d\n\nI told him I was very glad, as indeed I was, to have been no\nhindrance to him, and that I hoped I should be none now.\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d he returned, \u201cwhen a young lady is as mild as she\u2019s game,\nand as game as she\u2019s mild, that\u2019s all I ask, and more than I expect.\nShe then becomes a queen, and that\u2019s about what you are yourself.\u201d\n\nWith these encouraging words\u2014they really were encouraging to me\nunder those lonely and anxious circumstances\u2014he got upon the box,\nand we once more drove away. Where we drove I neither knew then nor\nhave ever known since, but we appeared to seek out the narrowest and\nworst streets in London. Whenever I saw him directing the driver, I\nwas prepared for our descending into a deeper complication of such\nstreets, and we never failed to do so.\n\nSometimes we emerged upon a wider thoroughfare or came to a larger\nbuilding than the generality, well lighted. Then we stopped at\noffices like those we had visited when we began our journey, and I\nsaw him in consultation with others. Sometimes he would get down by\nan archway or at a street corner and mysteriously show the light of\nhis little lantern. This would attract similar lights from various\ndark quarters, like so many insects, and a fresh consultation would\nbe held. By degrees we appeared to contract our search within\nnarrower and easier limits. Single police-officers on duty could now\ntell Mr. Bucket what he wanted to know and point to him where to go.\nAt last we stopped for a rather long conversation between him and one\nof these men, which I supposed to be satisfactory from his manner of\nnodding from time to time. When it was finished he came to me looking\nvery busy and very attentive.\n\n\u201cNow, Miss Robin,\u201d he said to me, \u201cyou won\u2019t be alarmed whatever\ncomes off, I know. It\u2019s not necessary for me to give you any further\ncaution than to tell you that we have marked this person down and\nthat you may be of use to me before I know it myself. I don\u2019t like to\nask such a thing, my dear, but would you walk a little way?\u201d\n\nOf course I got out directly and took his arm.\n\n\u201cIt ain\u2019t so easy to keep your feet,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, \u201cbut take\ntime.\u201d\n\nAlthough I looked about me confusedly and hurriedly as we crossed the\nstreet, I thought I knew the place. \u201cAre we in Holborn?\u201d I asked him.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Mr. Bucket. \u201cDo you know this turning?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt looks like Chancery Lane.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd was christened so, my dear,\u201d said Mr. Bucket.\n\nWe turned down it, and as we went shuffling through the sleet, I\nheard the clocks strike half-past five. We passed on in silence and\nas quickly as we could with such a foot-hold, when some one coming\ntowards us on the narrow pavement, wrapped in a cloak, stopped and\nstood aside to give me room. In the same moment I heard an\nexclamation of wonder and my own name from Mr. Leonie. I knew his\nvoice very well.\n\nIt was so unexpected and so\u2014I don\u2019t know what to call it, whether\npleasant or painful\u2014to come upon it after my feverish wandering\njourney, and in the midst of the night, that I could not keep back\nthe tears from my eyes. It was like hearing his voice in a strange\ncountry.\n\n\u201cMy dear Miss Robin, that you should be out at this hour, and in\nsuch weather!\u201d\n\nHe had heard from my guardian of my having been called away on some\nuncommon business and said so to dispense with any explanation. I\ntold him that we had but just left a coach and were going\u2014but then I\nwas obliged to look at my companion.\n\n\u201cWhy, you see, Mr. Leonie\u201d\u2014he had caught the name from me\u2014\u201cwe\nare a-going at present into the next street. Inspector Bucket.\u201d\n\nMr. Leonie, disregarding my remonstrances, had hurriedly taken off\nhis cloak and was putting it about me. \u201cThat\u2019s a good move, too,\u201d\nsaid Mr. Bucket, assisting, \u201ca very good move.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay I go with you?\u201d said Mr. Leonie. I don\u2019t know whether to me\nor to my companion.\n\n\u201cWhy, Lord!\u201d exclaimed Mr. Bucket, taking the answer on himself. \u201cOf\ncourse you may.\u201d\n\nIt was all said in a moment, and they took me between them, wrapped\nin the cloak.\n\n\u201cI have just left Celise,\u201d said Mr. Leonie. \u201cI have been sitting\nwith him since ten o\u2019clock last night.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear me, he is ill!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, believe me; not ill, but not quite well. He was depressed\nand faint\u2014you know he gets so worried and so worn sometimes\u2014and Ada\nsent to me of course; and when I came home I found her note and came\nstraight here. Well! Celise revived so much after a little while,\nand Ada was so happy and so convinced of its being my doing, though\nGod knows I had little enough to do with it, that I remained with him\nuntil he had been fast asleep some hours. As fast asleep as she is\nnow, I hope!\u201d\n\nHis friendly and familiar way of speaking of them, his unaffected\ndevotion to them, the grateful confidence with which I knew he had\ninspired my darling, and the comfort he was to her; could I separate\nall this from his promise to me? How thankless I must have been if it\nhad not recalled the words he said to me when he was so moved by the\nchange in my appearance: \u201cI will accept him as a trust, and it shall\nbe a sacred one!\u201d\n\nWe now turned into another narrow street. \u201cMr. Leonie,\u201d said Mr.\nBucket, who had eyed him closely as we came along, \u201cour business\ntakes us to a law-stationer\u2019s here, a certain Mr. Harlan\u2019s. What,\nyou know him, do you?\u201d He was so quick that he saw it in an instant.\n\n\u201cYes, I know a little of him and have called upon him at this place.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed, sir?\u201d said Mr. Bucket. \u201cThen you will be so good as to let\nme leave Miss Robin with you for a moment while I go and have\nhalf a word with him?\u201d\n\nThe last police-officer with whom he had conferred was standing\nsilently behind us. I was not aware of it until he struck in on my\nsaying I heard some one crying.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be alarmed, miss,\u201d he returned. \u201cIt\u2019s Harlan\u2019s servant.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, you see,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, \u201cthe girl\u2019s subject to fits, and has\n\u2019em bad upon her to-night. A most contrary circumstance it is, for I\nwant certain information out of that girl, and she must be brought to\nreason somehow.\u201d\n\n\u201cAt all events, they wouldn\u2019t be up yet if it wasn\u2019t for her, Mr.\nBucket,\u201d said the other man. \u201cShe\u2019s been at it pretty well all night,\nsir.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s true,\u201d he returned. \u201cMy light\u2019s burnt out. Show yours a\nmoment.\u201d\n\nAll this passed in a whisper a door or two from the house in which I\ncould faintly hear crying and moaning. In the little round of light\nproduced for the purpose, Mr. Bucket went up to the door and knocked.\nThe door was opened after he had knocked twice, and he went in,\nleaving us standing in the street.\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d said Mr. Leonie, \u201cif without obtruding myself on\nyour confidence I may remain near you, pray let me do so.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are truly kind,\u201d I answered. \u201cI need wish to keep no secret of\nmy own from you; if I keep any, it is another\u2019s.\u201d\n\n\u201cI quite understand. Trust me, I will remain near you only so long as\nI can fully respect it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI trust implicitly to you,\u201d I said. \u201cI know and deeply feel how\nsacredly you keep your promise.\u201d\n\nAfter a short time the little round of light shone out again, and Mr.\nBucket advanced towards us in it with his earnest face. \u201cPlease to\ncome in, Miss Robin,\u201d he said, \u201cand sit down by the fire. Mr.\nLeonie, from information I have received I understand you are a\nmedical man. Would you look to this girl and see if anything can be\ndone to bring her round. She has a letter somewhere that I\nparticularly want. It\u2019s not in her box, and I think it must be about\nher; but she is so twisted and clenched up that she is difficult to\nhandle without hurting.\u201d\n\nWe all three went into the house together; although it was cold and\nraw, it smelt close too from being up all night. In the passage\nbehind the door stood a scared, sorrowful-looking little man in a\ngrey coat who seemed to have a naturally polite manner and spoke\nmeekly.\n\n\u201cDownstairs, if you please, Mr. Bucket,\u201d said he. \u201cThe lady will\nexcuse the front kitchen; we use it as our workaday sitting-room. The\nback is Guster\u2019s bedroom, and in it she\u2019s a-carrying on, poor thing,\nto a frightful extent!\u201d\n\nWe went downstairs, followed by Mr. Harlan, as I soon found the\nlittle man to be. In the front kitchen, sitting by the fire, was Mrs.\nHarlan, with very red eyes and a very severe expression of face.\n\n\u201cMy little woman,\u201d said Mr. Harlan, entering behind us, \u201cto\nwave\u2014not to put too fine a point upon it, my dear\u2014hostilities for\none single moment in the course of this prolonged night, here is\nInspector Bucket, Mr. Leonie, and a lady.\u201d\n\nShe looked very much astonished, as she had reason for doing, and\nlooked particularly hard at me.\n\n\u201cMy little woman,\u201d said Mr. Harlan, sitting down in the remotest\ncorner by the door, as if he were taking a liberty, \u201cit is not\nunlikely that you may inquire of me why Inspector Bucket, Mr.\nLeonie, and a lady call upon us in Cook\u2019s Court, Cursitor Street,\nat the present hour. I don\u2019t know. I have not the least idea. If I\nwas to be informed, I should despair of understanding, and I\u2019d rather\nnot be told.\u201d\n\nHe appeared so miserable, sitting with his head upon his hand, and I\nappeared so unwelcome, that I was going to offer an apology when Mr.\nBucket took the matter on himself.\n\n\u201cNow, Mr. Harlan,\u201d said he, \u201cthe best thing you can do is to go\nalong with Mr. Leonie to look after your Guster\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMy Guster, Mr. Bucket!\u201d cried Mr. Harlan. \u201cGo on, sir, go on. I\nshall be charged with that next.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd to hold the candle,\u201d pursued Mr. Bucket without correcting\nhimself, \u201cor hold her, or make yourself useful in any way you\u2019re\nasked. Which there\u2019s not a man alive more ready to do, for you\u2019re a\nman of urbanity and suavity, you know, and you\u2019ve got the sort of\nheart that can feel for another. Mr. Leonie, would you be so good\nas see to her, and if you can get that letter from her, to let me\nhave it as soon as ever you can?\u201d\n\nAs they went out, Mr. Bucket made me sit down in a corner by the fire\nand take off my wet shoes, which he turned up to dry upon the fender,\ntalking all the time.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you be at all put out, miss, by the want of a hospitable look\nfrom Mrs. Harlan there, because she\u2019s under a mistake altogether.\nShe\u2019ll find that out sooner than will be agreeable to a lady of her\ngenerally correct manner of forming her thoughts, because I\u2019m a-going\nto explain it to her.\u201d Here, standing on the hearth with his wet hat\nand shawls in his hand, himself a pile of wet, he turned to Mrs.\nHarlan. \u201cNow, the first thing that I say to you, as a married woman\npossessing what you may call charms, you know\u2014\u2018Believe Me, if All\nThose Endearing,\u2019 and cetrer\u2014you\u2019re well acquainted with the song,\nbecause it\u2019s in vain for you to tell me that you and good society are\nstrangers\u2014charms\u2014attractions, mind you, that ought to give you\nconfidence in yourself\u2014is, that you\u2019ve done it.\u201d\n\nMrs. Harlan looked rather alarmed, relented a little and faltered,\nwhat did Mr. Bucket mean.\n\n\u201cWhat does Mr. Bucket mean?\u201d he repeated, and I saw by his face that\nall the time he talked he was listening for the discovery of the\nletter, to my own great agitation, for I knew then how important it\nmust be; \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what he means, ma\u2019am. Go and see Othello\nacted. That\u2019s the tragedy for you.\u201d\n\nMrs. Harlan consciously asked why.\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d said Mr. Bucket. \u201cBecause you\u2019ll come to that if you don\u2019t\nlook out. Why, at the very moment while I speak, I know what your\nmind\u2019s not wholly free from respecting this young lady. But shall I\ntell you who this young lady is? Now, come, you\u2019re what I call an\nintellectual woman\u2014with your soul too large for your body, if you\ncome to that, and chafing it\u2014and you know me, and you recollect\nwhere you saw me last, and what was talked of in that circle. Don\u2019t\nyou? Yes! Very well. This young lady is that young lady.\u201d\n\nMrs. Harlan appeared to understand the reference better than I did\nat the time.\n\n\u201cAnd Toughey\u2014him as you call Jo\u2014was mixed up in the same business,\nand no other; and the law-writer that you know of was mixed up in the\nsame business, and no other; and your husband, with no more knowledge\nof it than your great grandfather, was mixed up (by Mr. Tulkinghorn,\ndeceased, his best customer) in the same business, and no other; and\nthe whole bileing of people was mixed up in the same business, and no\nother. And yet a married woman, possessing your attractions, shuts\nher eyes (and sparklers too), and goes and runs her delicate-formed\nhead against a wall. Why, I am ashamed of you! (I expected Mr.\nLeonie might have got it by this time.)\u201d\n\nMrs. Harlan shook her head and put her handkerchief to her eyes.\n\n\u201cIs that all?\u201d said Mr. Bucket excitedly. \u201cNo. See what happens.\nAnother person mixed up in that business and no other, a person in a\nwretched state, comes here to-night and is seen a-speaking to your\nmaid-servant; and between her and your maid-servant there passes\na paper that I would give a hundred pound for, down. What do\nyou do? You hide and you watch \u2019em, and you pounce upon that\nmaid-servant\u2014knowing what she\u2019s subject to and what a little thing\nwill bring \u2019em on\u2014in that surprising manner and with that severity\nthat, by the Lord, she goes off and keeps off, when a life may be\nhanging upon that girl\u2019s words!\u201d\n\nHe so thoroughly meant what he said now that I involuntarily clasped\nmy hands and felt the room turning away from me. But it stopped. Mr.\nLeonie came in, put a paper into his hand, and went away again.\n\n\u201cNow, Mrs. Harlan, the only amends you can make,\u201d said Mr. Bucket,\nrapidly glancing at it, \u201cis to let me speak a word to this young lady\nin private here. And if you know of any help that you can give to\nthat gentleman in the next kitchen there or can think of any one\nthing that\u2019s likelier than another to bring the girl round, do your\nswiftest and best!\u201d In an instant she was gone, and he had shut the\ndoor. \u201cNow my dear, you\u2019re steady and quite sure of yourself?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cWhose writing is that?\u201d\n\nIt was my mother\u2019s. A pencil-writing, on a crushed and torn piece of\npaper, blotted with wet. Folded roughly like a letter, and directed\nto me at my guardian\u2019s.\n\n\u201cYou know the hand,\u201d he said, \u201cand if you are firm enough to read it\nto me, do! But be particular to a word.\u201d\n\nIt had been written in portions, at different times. I read what\nfollows:\n\n\n   I came to the cottage with two objects. First, to see the\n   dear one, if I could, once more\u2014but only to see her\u2014not\n   to speak to her or let her know that I was near. The other\n   object, to elude pursuit and to be lost. Do not blame the\n   mother for her share. The assistance that she rendered me,\n   she rendered on my strongest assurance that it was for the\n   dear one\u2019s good. You remember her dead child. The men\u2019s\n   consent I bought, but her help was freely given.\n\n\n\u201c\u2018I came.\u2019 That was written,\u201d said my companion, \u201cwhen she rested\nthere. It bears out what I made of it. I was right.\u201d\n\nThe next was written at another time:\n\n\n   I have wandered a long distance, and for many hours, and\n   I know that I must soon die. These streets! I have no\n   purpose but to die. When I left, I had a worse, but I am\n   saved from adding that guilt to the rest. Cold, wet, and\n   fatigue are sufficient causes for my being found dead, but\n   I shall die of others, though I suffer from these. It was\n   right that all that had sustained me should give way at\n   once and that I should die of terror and my conscience.\n\n\n\u201cTake courage,\u201d said Mr. Bucket. \u201cThere\u2019s only a few words more.\u201d\n\nThose, too, were written at another time. To all appearance, almost\nin the dark:\n\n\n   I have done all I could do to be lost. I shall be soon\n   forgotten so, and shall disgrace him least. I have nothing\n   about me by which I can be recognized. This paper I part\n   with now. The place where I shall lie down, if I can get\n   so far, has been often in my mind. Farewell. Forgive.\n\n\nMr. Bucket, supporting me with his arm, lowered me gently into my\nchair. \u201cCheer up! Don\u2019t think me hard with you, my dear, but as soon\nas ever you feel equal to it, get your shoes on and be ready.\u201d\n\nI did as he required, but I was left there a long time, praying for\nmy unhappy mother. They were all occupied with the poor girl, and I\nheard Mr. Leonie directing them and speaking to her often. At\nlength he came in with Mr. Bucket and said that as it was important\nto address her gently, he thought it best that I should ask her for\nwhatever information we desired to obtain. There was no doubt that\nshe could now reply to questions if she were soothed and not alarmed.\nThe questions, Mr. Bucket said, were how she came by the letter, what\npassed between her and the person who gave her the letter, and where\nthe person went. Holding my mind as steadily as I could to these\npoints, I went into the next room with them. Mr. Leonie would have\nremained outside, but at my solicitation went in with us.\n\nThe poor girl was sitting on the floor where they had laid her down.\nThey stood around her, though at a little distance, that she might\nhave air. She was not pretty and looked weak and poor, but she had a\nplaintive and a good face, though it was still a little wild. I\nkneeled on the ground beside her and put her poor head upon my\nshoulder, whereupon she drew her arm round my neck and burst into\ntears.\n\n\u201cMy poor girl,\u201d said I, laying my face against her forehead, for\nindeed I was crying too, and trembling, \u201cit seems cruel to trouble\nyou now, but more depends on our knowing something about this letter\nthan I could tell you in an hour.\u201d\n\nShe began piteously declaring that she didn\u2019t mean any harm, she\ndidn\u2019t mean any harm, Mrs. Harlan!\n\n\u201cWe are all sure of that,\u201d said I. \u201cBut pray tell me how you got it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, dear lady, I will, and tell you true. I\u2019ll tell true, indeed,\nMrs. Harlan.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sure of that,\u201d said I. \u201cAnd how was it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI had been out on an errand, dear lady\u2014long after it was\ndark\u2014quite late; and when I came home, I found a common-looking\nperson, all wet and muddy, looking up at our house. When she saw me\ncoming in at the door, she called me back and said did I live here.\nAnd I said yes, and she said she knew only one or two places about\nhere, but had lost her way and couldn\u2019t find them. Oh, what shall I\ndo, what shall I do! They won\u2019t believe me! She didn\u2019t say any harm\nto me, and I didn\u2019t say any harm to her, indeed, Mrs. Harlan!\u201d\n\nIt was necessary for her mistress to comfort her\u2014which she did, I\nmust say, with a good deal of contrition\u2014before she could be got\nbeyond this.\n\n\u201cShe could not find those places,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d cried the girl, shaking her head. \u201cNo! Couldn\u2019t find them. And\nshe was so faint, and lame, and miserable, Oh so wretched, that if\nyou had seen her, Mr. Harlan, you\u2019d have given her half a crown, I\nknow!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, Guster, my girl,\u201d said he, at first not knowing what to say.\n\u201cI hope I should.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd yet she was so well spoken,\u201d said the girl, looking at me with\nwide open eyes, \u201cthat it made a person\u2019s heart bleed. And so she said\nto me, did I know the way to the burying ground? And I asked her\nwhich burying ground. And she said, the poor burying ground. And so I\ntold her I had been a poor child myself, and it was according to\nparishes. But she said she meant a poor burying ground not very far\nfrom here, where there was an archway, and a step, and an iron gate.\u201d\n\nAs I watched her face and soothed her to go on, I saw that Mr. Bucket\nreceived this with a look which I could not separate from one of\nalarm.\n\n\u201cOh, dear, dear!\u201d cried the girl, pressing her hair back with her\nhands. \u201cWhat shall I do, what shall I do! She meant the burying\nground where the man was buried that took the sleeping-stuff\u2014that\nyou came home and told us of, Mr. Harlan\u2014that frightened me so,\nMrs. Harlan. Oh, I am frightened again. Hold me!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are so much better now,\u201d sald I. \u201cPray, pray tell me more.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes I will, yes I will! But don\u2019t be angry with me, that\u2019s a dear\nlady, because I have been so ill.\u201d\n\nAngry with her, poor soul!\n\n\u201cThere! Now I will, now I will. So she said, could I tell her how to\nfind it, and I said yes, and I told her; and she looked at me with\neyes like almost as if she was blind, and herself all waving back.\nAnd so she took out the letter, and showed it me, and said if she was\nto put that in the post-office, it would be rubbed out and not minded\nand never sent; and would I take it from her, and send it, and the\nmessenger would be paid at the house. And so I said yes, if it was no\nharm, and she said no\u2014no harm. And so I took it from her, and she\nsaid she had nothing to give me, and I said I was poor myself and\nconsequently wanted nothing. And so she said God bless you, and\nwent.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd did she go\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d cried the girl, anticipating the inquiry. \u201cYes! She went the\nway I had shown her. Then I came in, and Mrs. Harlan came behind me\nfrom somewhere and laid hold of me, and I was frightened.\u201d\n\nMr. Leonie took her kindly from me. Mr. Bucket wrapped me up, and\nimmediately we were in the street. Mr. Leonie hesitated, but I\nsaid, \u201cDon\u2019t leave me now!\u201d and Mr. Bucket added, \u201cYou\u2019ll be better\nwith us, we may want you; don\u2019t lose time!\u201d\n\nI have the most confused impressions of that walk. I recollect that\nit was neither night nor day, that morning was dawning but the\nstreet-lamps were not yet put out, that the sleet was still falling\nand that all the ways were deep with it. I recollect a few chilled\npeople passing in the streets. I recollect the wet house-tops, the\nclogged and bursting gutters and water-spouts, the mounds of\nblackened ice and snow over which we passed, the narrowness of the\ncourts by which we went. At the same time I remember that the poor\ngirl seemed to be yet telling her story audibly and plainly in my\nhearing, that I could feel her resting on my arm, that the stained\nhouse-fronts put on human shapes and looked at me, that great\nwater-gates seemed to be opening and closing in my head or in the\nair, and that the unreal things were more substantial than the real.\n\nAt last we stood under a dark and miserable covered way, where one\nlamp was burning over an iron gate and where the morning faintly\nstruggled in. The gate was closed. Beyond it was a burial ground\u2014a\ndreadful spot in which the night was very slowly stirring, but where\nI could dimly see heaps of dishonoured graves and stones, hemmed in\nby filthy houses with a few dull lights in their windows and on whose\nwalls a thick humidity broke out like a disease. On the step at the\ngate, drenched in the fearful wet of such a place, which oozed and\nsplashed down everywhere, I saw, with a cry of pity and horror, a\nwoman lying\u2014Alejandro, the mother of the dead child.\n\nI ran forward, but they stopped me, and Mr. Leonie entreated me\nwith the greatest earnestness, even with tears, before I went up to\nthe figure to listen for an instant to what Mr. Bucket said. I did\nso, as I thought. I did so, as I am sure.\n\n\u201cMiss Robin, you\u2019ll understand me, if you think a moment. They\nchanged clothes at the cottage.\u201d\n\nThey changed clothes at the cottage. I could repeat the words in my\nmind, and I knew what they meant of themselves, but I attached no\nmeaning to them in any other connexion.\n\n\u201cAnd one returned,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, \u201cand one went on. And the one\nthat went on only went on a certain way agreed upon to deceive and\nthen turned across country and went home. Think a moment!\u201d\n\nI could repeat this in my mind too, but I had not the least idea what\nit meant. I saw before me, lying on the step, the mother of the dead\nchild. She lay there with one arm creeping round a bar of the iron\ngate and seeming to embrace it. She lay there, who had so lately\nspoken to my mother. She lay there, a distressed, unsheltered,\nsenseless creature. She who had brought my mother\u2019s letter, who could\ngive me the only clue to where my mother was; she, who was to guide\nus to rescue and save her whom we had sought so far, who had come to\nthis condition by some means connected with my mother that I could\nnot follow, and might be passing beyond our reach and help at that\nmoment; she lay there, and they stopped me! I saw but did not\ncomprehend the solemn and compassionate look in Mr. Leonie\u2019s face.\nI saw but did not comprehend his touching the other on the breast to\nkeep him back. I saw him stand uncovered in the bitter air, with a\nreverence for something. But my understanding for all this was gone.\n\nI even heard it said between them, \u201cShall she go?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe had better go. Her hands should be the first to touch her. They\nhave a higher right than ours.\u201d\n\nI passed on to the gate and stooped down. I lifted the heavy head,\nput the long dank hair aside, and turned the face. And it was my\nmother, cold and dead.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LX\n\nPerspective\n\n\nI proceed to other passages of my narrative. From the goodness of all\nabout me I derived such consolation as I can never think of unmoved.\nI have already said so much of myself, and so much still remains,\nthat I will not dwell upon my sorrow. I had an illness, but it was\nnot a long one; and I would avoid even this mention of it if I could\nquite keep down the recollection of their sympathy.\n\nI proceed to other passages of my narrative.\n\nDuring the time of my illness, we were still in London, where Mrs.\nLeonie had come, on my guardian\u2019s invitation, to stay with us.\nWhen my guardian thought me well and cheerful enough to talk with him\nin our old way\u2014though I could have done that sooner if he would have\nbelieved me\u2014I resumed my work and my chair beside his. He had\nappointed the time himself, and we were alone.\n\n\u201cDame Trot,\u201d said he, receiving me with a kiss, \u201cwelcome to the\ngrowlery again, my dear. I have a scheme to develop, little woman. I\npropose to remain here, perhaps for six months, perhaps for a longer\ntime\u2014as it may be. Quite to settle here for a while, in short.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd in the meanwhile leave Bleak House?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cAye, my dear? Bleak House,\u201d he returned, \u201cmust learn to take care of\nitself.\u201d\n\nI thought his tone sounded sorrowful, but looking at him, I saw his\nkind face lighted up by its pleasantest smile.\n\n\u201cBleak House,\u201d he repeated\u2014and his tone did NOT sound sorrowful, I\nfound\u2014\u201cmust learn to take care of itself. It is a long way from Ada,\nmy dear, and Ada stands much in need of you.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s like you, guardian,\u201d said I, \u201cto have been taking that into\nconsideration for a happy surprise to both of us.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot so disinterested either, my dear, if you mean to extol me for\nthat virtue, since if you were generally on the road, you could be\nseldom with me. And besides, I wish to hear as much and as often of\nAda as I can in this condition of estrangement from poor Rick. Not of\nher alone, but of him too, poor fellow.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you seen Mr. Leonie, this morning, guardian?\u201d\n\n\u201cI see Mr. Leonie every morning, Dame Durden.\u201d\n\n\u201cDoes he still say the same of Celise?\u201d\n\n\u201cJust the same. He knows of no direct bodily illness that he has; on\nthe contrary, he believes that he has none. Yet he is not easy about\nhim; who CAN be?\u201d\n\nMy dear girl had been to see us lately every day, some times twice in\na day. But we had foreseen, all along, that this would only last\nuntil I was quite myself. We knew full well that her fervent heart\nwas as full of affection and gratitude towards her cousin Gerardo as it\nhad ever been, and we acquitted Celise of laying any injunctions\nupon her to stay away; but we knew on the other hand that she felt it\na part of her duty to him to be sparing of her visits at our house.\nMy guardian\u2019s delicacy had soon perceived this and had tried to\nconvey to her that he thought she was right.\n\n\u201cDear, unfortunate, mistaken Celise,\u201d said I. \u201cWhen will he awake\nfrom his delusion!\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is not in the way to do so now, my dear,\u201d replied my guardian.\n\u201cThe more he suffers, the more averse he will be to me, having made\nme the principal representative of the great occasion of his\nsuffering.\u201d\n\nI could not help adding, \u201cSo unreasonably!\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, Dame Trot, Dame Trot,\u201d returned my guardian, \u201cwhat shall we find\nreasonable in Ashton and Ashton! Unreason and injustice at the\ntop, unreason and injustice at the heart and at the bottom, unreason\nand injustice from beginning to end\u2014if it ever has an end\u2014how\nshould poor Rick, always hovering near it, pluck reason out of it? He\nno more gathers grapes from thorns or figs from thistles than older\nmen did in old times.\u201d\n\nHis gentleness and consideration for Celise whenever we spoke of him\ntouched me so that I was always silent on this subject very soon.\n\n\u201cI suppose the Lord Chancellor, and the Vice Chancellors, and the\nwhole Chancery battery of great guns would be infinitely astonished\nby such unreason and injustice in one of their suitors,\u201d pursued my\nguardian. \u201cWhen those learned gentlemen begin to raise moss-roses\nfrom the powder they sow in their wigs, I shall begin to be\nastonished too!\u201d\n\nHe checked himself in glancing towards the window to look where the\nwind was and leaned on the back of my chair instead.\n\n\u201cWell, well, little woman! To go on, my dear. This rock we must leave\nto time, chance, and hopeful circumstance. We must not shipwreck Ada\nupon it. She cannot afford, and he cannot afford, the remotest chance\nof another separation from a friend. Therefore I have particularly\nbegged of Leonie, and I now particularly beg of you, my dear, not\nto move this subject with Rick. Let it rest. Next week, next month,\nnext year, sooner or later, he will see me with clearer eyes. I can\nwait.\u201d\n\nBut I had already discussed it with him, I confessed; and so, I\nthought, had Mr. Leonie.\n\n\u201cSo he tells me,\u201d returned my guardian. \u201cVery good. He has made his\nprotest, and Dame Durden has made hers, and there is nothing more to\nbe said about it. Now I come to Mrs. Leonie. How do you like her,\nmy dear?\u201d\n\nIn answer to this question, which was oddly abrupt, I said I liked\nher very much and thought she was more agreeable than she used to be.\n\n\u201cI think so too,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cLess pedigree? Not so much of\nMorgan ap\u2014what\u2019s his name?\u201d\n\nThat was what I meant, I acknowledged, though he was a very harmless\nperson, even when we had had more of him.\n\n\u201cStill, upon the whole, he is as well in his native mountains,\u201d said\nmy guardian. \u201cI agree with you. Then, little woman, can I do better\nfor a time than retain Mrs. Leonie here?\u201d\n\nNo. And yet\u2014\n\nMy guardian looked at me, waiting for what I had to say.\n\nI had nothing to say. At least I had nothing in my mind that I could\nsay. I had an undefined impression that it might have been better if\nwe had had some other inmate, but I could hardly have explained why\neven to myself. Or, if to myself, certainly not to anybody else.\n\n\u201cYou see,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cour neighbourhood is in Leonie\u2019s\nway, and he can come here to see her as often as he likes, which is\nagreeable to them both; and she is familiar to us and fond of you.\u201d\n\nYes. That was undeniable. I had nothing to say against it. I could\nnot have suggested a better arrangement, but I was not quite easy in\nmy mind. Paulina, Paulina, why not? Paulina, think!\n\n\u201cIt is a very good plan indeed, dear guardian, and we could not do\nbetter.\u201d\n\n\u201cSure, little woman?\u201d\n\nQuite sure. I had had a moment\u2019s time to think, since I had urged\nthat duty on myself, and I was quite sure.\n\n\u201cGood,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cIt shall be done. Carried unanimously.\u201d\n\n\u201cCarried unanimously,\u201d I repeated, going on with my work.\n\nIt was a cover for his book-table that I happened to be ornamenting.\nIt had been laid by on the night preceding my sad journey and never\nresumed. I showed it to him now, and he admired it highly. After I\nhad explained the pattern to him and all the great effects that were\nto come out by and by, I thought I would go back to our last theme.\n\n\u201cYou said, dear guardian, when we spoke of Mr. Leonie before Ada\nleft us, that you thought he would give a long trial to another\ncountry. Have you been advising him since?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, little woman, pretty often.\u201d\n\n\u201cHas he decided to do so?\u201d\n\n\u201cI rather think not.\u201d\n\n\u201cSome other prospect has opened to him, perhaps?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cWhy\u2014yes\u2014perhaps,\u201d returned my guardian, beginning his answer in a\nvery deliberate manner. \u201cAbout half a year hence or so, there is a\nmedical attendant for the poor to be appointed at a certain place in\nYorkshire. It is a thriving place, pleasantly situated\u2014streams and\nstreets, town and country, mill and moor\u2014and seems to present an\nopening for such a man. I mean a man whose hopes and aims may\nsometimes lie (as most men\u2019s sometimes do, I dare say) above the\nordinary level, but to whom the ordinary level will be high enough\nafter all if it should prove to be a way of usefulness and good\nservice leading to no other. All generous spirits are ambitious, I\nsuppose, but the ambition that calmly trusts itself to such a road,\ninstead of spasmodically trying to fly over it, is of the kind I care\nfor. It is Leonie\u2019s kind.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd will he get this appointment?\u201d I asked.\n\n\u201cWhy, little woman,\u201d returned my guardian, smiling, \u201cnot being an\noracle, I cannot confidently say, but I think so. His reputation\nstands very high; there were people from that part of the country in\nthe shipwreck; and strange to say, I believe the best man has the\nbest chance. You must not suppose it to be a fine endowment. It is a\nvery, very commonplace affair, my dear, an appointment to a great\namount of work and a small amount of pay; but better things will\ngather about it, it may be fairly hoped.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe poor of that place will have reason to bless the choice if it\nfalls on Mr. Leonie, guardian.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are right, little woman; that I am sure they will.\u201d\n\nWe said no more about it, nor did he say a word about the future of\nBleak House. But it was the first time I had taken my seat at his\nside in my mourning dress, and that accounted for it, I considered.\n\nI now began to visit my dear girl every day in the dull dark corner\nwhere she lived. The morning was my usual time, but whenever I found\nI had an hour or so to spare, I put on my bonnet and bustled off to\nChancery Lane. They were both so glad to see me at all hours, and\nused to brighten up so when they heard me opening the door and coming\nin (being quite at home, I never knocked), that I had no fear of\nbecoming troublesome just yet.\n\nOn these occasions I frequently found Celise absent. At other times\nhe would be writing or reading papers in the cause at that table of\nhis, so covered with papers, which was never disturbed. Sometimes I\nwould come upon him lingering at the door of Mr. Anson\u2019s office.\nSometimes I would meet him in the neighbourhood lounging about and\nbiting his nails. I often met him wandering in Lincoln\u2019s Inn, near\nthe place where I had first seen him, oh how different, how\ndifferent!\n\nThat the money Ada brought him was melting away with the candles I\nused to see burning after dark in Mr. Anson\u2019s office I knew very\nwell. It was not a large amount in the beginning, he had married in\ndebt, and I could not fail to understand, by this time, what was\nmeant by Mr. Anson\u2019s shoulder being at the wheel\u2014as I still heard\nit was. My dear made the best of housekeepers and tried hard to save,\nbut I knew that they were getting poorer and poorer every day.\n\nShe shone in the miserable corner like a beautiful star. She adorned\nand graced it so that it became another place. Paler than she had\nbeen at home, and a little quieter than I had thought natural when\nshe was yet so cheerful and hopeful, her face was so unshadowed that\nI half believed she was blinded by her love for Celise to his\nruinous career.\n\nI went one day to dine with them while I was under this impression.\nAs I turned into Symond\u2019s Inn, I met little Miss Daxter coming out.\nShe had been to make a stately call upon the wards in Ashton, as\nshe still called them, and had derived the highest gratification from\nthat ceremony. Ada had already told me that she called every Monday\nat five o\u2019clock, with one little extra white bow in her bonnet, which\nnever appeared there at any other time, and with her largest reticule\nof documents on her arm.\n\n\u201cMy dear!\u201d she began. \u201cSo delighted! How do you do! So glad to see\nyou. And you are going to visit our interesting Ashton wards? TO be\nsure! Our beauty is at home, my dear, and will be charmed to see\nyou.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen Celise is not come in yet?\u201d said I. \u201cI am glad of that, for I\nwas afraid of being a little late.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, he is not come in,\u201d returned Miss Daxter. \u201cHe has had a long day\nin court. I left him there with Anson. You don\u2019t like Anson, I\nhope? DON\u2019T like Anson. Dan-gerous man!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am afraid you see Celise oftener than ever now,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cMy dearest,\u201d returned Miss Daxter, \u201cdaily and hourly. You know what I\ntold you of the attraction on the Chancellor\u2019s table? My dear, next\nto myself he is the most constant suitor in court. He begins quite to\namuse our little party. Ve-ry friendly little party, are we not?\u201d\n\nIt was miserable to hear this from her poor mad lips, though it was\nno surprise.\n\n\u201cIn short, my valued friend,\u201d pursued Miss Daxter, advancing her lips\nto my ear with an air of equal patronage and mystery, \u201cI must tell\nyou a secret. I have made him my executor. Nominated, constituted,\nand appointed him. In my will. Ye-es.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cYe-es,\u201d repeated Miss Daxter in her most genteel accents, \u201cmy\nexecutor, administrator, and assign. (Our Chancery phrases, my love.)\nI have reflected that if I should wear out, he will be able to watch\nthat judgment. Being so very regular in his attendance.\u201d\n\nIt made me sigh to think of him.\n\n\u201cI did at one time mean,\u201d said Miss Daxter, echoing the sigh, \u201cto\nnominate, constitute, and appoint poor Freda. Also very regular, my\ncharming girl. I assure you, most exemplary! But he wore out, poor\nman, so I have appointed his successor. Don\u2019t mention it. This is in\nconfidence.\u201d\n\nShe carefully opened her reticule a little way and showed me a folded\npiece of paper inside as the appointment of which she spoke.\n\n\u201cAnother secret, my dear. I have added to my collection of birds.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally, Miss Daxter?\u201d said I, knowing how it pleased her to have her\nconfidence received with an appearance of interest.\n\nShe nodded several times, and her face became overcast and gloomy.\n\u201cTwo more. I call them the Wards in Ashton. They are caged up with\nall the others. With Hope, Joy, Youth, Peace, Rest, Life, Dust,\nAshes, Waste, Want, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Death, Cunning, Folly,\nWords, Wigs, Rags, Sheepskin, Plunder, Precedent, Jargon, Gammon, and\nSpinach!\u201d\n\nThe poor soul kissed me with the most troubled look I had ever seen\nin her and went her way. Her manner of running over the names of her\nbirds, as if she were afraid of hearing them even from her own lips,\nquite chilled me.\n\nThis was not a cheering preparation for my visit, and I could have\ndispensed with the company of Mr. Anson, when Celise (who arrived\nwithin a minute or two after me) brought him to share our dinner.\nAlthough it was a very plain one, Ada and Celise were for some\nminutes both out of the room together helping to get ready what we\nwere to eat and drink. Mr. Anson took that opportunity of holding a\nlittle conversation in a low voice with me. He came to the window\nwhere I was sitting and began upon Symond\u2019s Inn.\n\n\u201cA dull place, Miss Robin, for a life that is not an official\none,\u201d said Mr. Anson, smearing the glass with his black glove to\nmake it clearer for me.\n\n\u201cThere is not much to see here,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cNor to hear, miss,\u201d returned Mr. Anson. \u201cA little music does\noccasionally stray in, but we are not musical in the law and soon\neject it. I hope Mr. Ashton is as well as his friends could wish\nhim?\u201d\n\nI thanked Mr. Anson and said he was quite well.\n\n\u201cI have not the pleasure to be admitted among the number of his\nfriends myself,\u201d said Mr. Anson, \u201cand I am aware that the gentlemen\nof our profession are sometimes regarded in such quarters with an\nunfavourable eye. Our plain course, however, under good report and\nevil report, and all kinds of prejudice (we are the victims of\nprejudice), is to have everything openly carried on. How do you find\nMr. C. looking, Miss Robin?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe looks very ill. Dreadfully anxious.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust so,\u201d said Mr. Anson.\n\nHe stood behind me with his long black figure reaching nearly to the\nceiling of those low rooms, feeling the pimples on his face as if\nthey were ornaments and speaking inwardly and evenly as though there\nwere not a human passion or emotion in his nature.\n\n\u201cMr. Leonie is in attendance upon Mr. C., I believe?\u201d he resumed.\n\n\u201cMr. Leonie is his disinterested friend,\u201d I answered.\n\n\u201cBut I mean in professional attendance, medical attendance.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat can do little for an unhappy mind,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cJust so,\u201d said Mr. Anson.\n\nSo slow, so eager, so bloodless and gaunt, I felt as if Celise were\nwasting away beneath the eyes of this adviser and there were\nsomething of the vampire in him.\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d said Mr. Anson, very slowly rubbing his gloved\nhands, as if, to his cold sense of touch, they were much the same in\nblack kid or out of it, \u201cthis was an ill-advised marriage of Mr.\nC.\u2019s.\u201d\n\nI begged he would excuse me from discussing it. They had been engaged\nwhen they were both very young, I told him (a little indignantly) and\nwhen the prospect before them was much fairer and brighter. When\nCelise had not yielded himself to the unhappy influence which now\ndarkened his life.\n\n\u201cJust so,\u201d assented Mr. Anson again. \u201cStill, with a view to\neverything being openly carried on, I will, with your permission,\nMiss Robin, observe to you that I consider this a very\nill-advised marriage indeed. I owe the opinion not only to Mr. C.\u2019s\nconnexions, against whom I should naturally wish to protect myself,\nbut also to my own reputation\u2014dear to myself as a professional man\naiming to keep respectable; dear to my three girls at home, for whom\nI am striving to realize some little independence; dear, I will even\nsay, to my aged father, whom it is my privilege to support.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt would become a very different marriage, a much happier and better\nmarriage, another marriage altogether, Mr. Anson,\u201d said I, \u201cif\nCelise were persuaded to turn his back on the fatal pursuit in which\nyou are engaged with him.\u201d\n\nMr. Anson, with a noiseless cough\u2014or rather gasp\u2014into one of his\nblack gloves, inclined his head as if he did not wholly dispute even\nthat.\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d he said, \u201cit may be so; and I freely admit that the\nyoung lady who has taken Mr. C.\u2019s name upon herself in so ill-advised\na manner\u2014you will I am sure not quarrel with me for throwing out\nthat remark again, as a duty I owe to Mr. C.\u2019s connexions\u2014is a\nhighly genteel young lady. Business has prevented me from mixing much\nwith general society in any but a professional character; still I\ntrust I am competent to perceive that she is a highly genteel young\nlady. As to beauty, I am not a judge of that myself, and I never did\ngive much attention to it from a boy, but I dare say the young lady\nis equally eligible in that point of view. She is considered so (I\nhave heard) among the clerks in the Inn, and it is a point more in\ntheir way than in mine. In reference to Mr. C.\u2019s pursuit of his\ninterests\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! His interests, Mr. Anson!\u201d\n\n\u201cPardon me,\u201d returned Mr. Anson, going on in exactly the same inward\nand dispassionate manner. \u201cMr. C. takes certain interests under\ncertain wills disputed in the suit. It is a term we use. In reference\nto Mr. C,\u2019s pursuit of his interests, I mentioned to you, Miss\nRobin, the first time I had the pleasure of seeing you, in my\ndesire that everything should be openly carried on\u2014I used those\nwords, for I happened afterwards to note them in my diary, which is\nproducible at any time\u2014I mentioned to you that Mr. C. had laid down\nthe principle of watching his own interests, and that when a client\nof mine laid down a principle which was not of an immoral (that is to\nsay, unlawful) nature, it devolved upon me to carry it out. I HAVE\ncarried it out; I do carry it out. But I will not smooth things over\nto any connexion of Mr. C.\u2019s on any account. As open as I was to Mr.\nAshton, I am to you. I regard it in the light of a professional\nduty to be so, though it can be charged to no one. I openly say,\nunpalatable as it may be, that I consider Mr. C.\u2019s affairs in a very\nbad way, that I consider Mr. C. himself in a very bad way, and that I\nregard this as an exceedingly ill-advised marriage. Am I here, sir?\nYes, I thank you; I am here, Mr. C., and enjoying the pleasure of\nsome agreeable conversation with Miss Robin, for which I have to\nthank you very much, sir!\u201d\n\nHe broke off thus in answer to Celise, who addressed him as he came\ninto the room. By this time I too well understood Mr. Anson\u2019s\nscrupulous way of saving himself and his respectability not to feel\nthat our worst fears did but keep pace with his client\u2019s progress.\n\nWe sat down to dinner, and I had an opportunity of observing Celise,\nanxiously. I was not disturbed by Mr. Anson (who took off his gloves\nto dine), though he sat opposite to me at the small table, for I\ndoubt if, looking up at all, he once removed his eyes from his host\u2019s\nface. I found Celise thin and languid, slovenly in his dress,\nabstracted in his manner, forcing his spirits now and then, and at\nother intervals relapsing into a dull thoughtfulness. About his large\nbright eyes that used to be so merry there was a wanness and a\nrestlessness that changed them altogether. I cannot use the\nexpression that he looked old. There is a ruin of youth which is not\nlike age, and into such a ruin Celise\u2019s youth and youthful beauty\nhad all fallen away.\n\nHe ate little and seemed indifferent what it was, showed himself to\nbe much more impatient than he used to be, and was quick even with\nAda. I thought at first that his old light-hearted manner was all\ngone, but it shone out of him sometimes as I had occasionally known\nlittle momentary glimpses of my own old face to look out upon me from\nthe glass. His laugh had not quite left him either, but it was like\nthe echo of a joyful sound, and that is always sorrowful.\n\nYet he was as glad as ever, in his old affectionate way, to have me\nthere, and we talked of the old times pleasantly. These did not\nappear to be interesting to Mr. Anson, though he occasionally made a\ngasp which I believe was his smile. He rose shortly after dinner and\nsaid that with the permission of the ladies he would retire to his\noffice.\n\n\u201cAlways devoted to business, Anson!\u201d cried Celise.\n\n\u201cYes, Mr. C.,\u201d he returned, \u201cthe interests of clients are never to be\nneglected, sir. They are paramount in the thoughts of a professional\nman like myself, who wishes to preserve a good name among his\nfellow-practitioners and society at large. My denying myself the\npleasure of the present agreeable conversation may not be wholly\nirrespective of your own interests, Mr. C.\u201d\n\nCelise expressed himself quite sure of that and lighted Mr. Anson\nout. On his return he told us, more than once, that Anson was a good\nfellow, a safe fellow, a man who did what he pretended to do, a very\ngood fellow indeed! He was so defiant about it that it struck me he\nhad begun to doubt Mr. Anson.\n\nThen he threw himself on the sofa, tired out; and Ada and I put\nthings to rights, for they had no other servant than the woman who\nattended to the chambers. My dear girl had a cottage piano there and\nquietly sat down to sing some of Celise\u2019s favourites, the lamp being\nfirst removed into the next room, as he complained of its hurting his\neyes.\n\nI sat between them, at my dear girl\u2019s side, and felt very melancholy\nlistening to her sweet voice. I think Celise did too; I think he\ndarkened the room for that reason. She had been singing some time,\nrising between whiles to bend over him and speak to him, when Mr.\nLeonie came in. Then he sat down by Celise and half playfully,\nhalf earnestly, quite naturally and easily, found out how he felt and\nwhere he had been all day. Presently he proposed to accompany him in\na short walk on one of the bridges, as it was a moonlight airy night;\nand Celise readily consenting, they went out together.\n\nThey left my dear girl still sitting at the piano and me still\nsitting beside her. When they were gone out, I drew my arm round her\nwaist. She put her left hand in mine (I was sitting on that side),\nbut kept her right upon the keys, going over and over them without\nstriking any note.\n\n\u201cPaulina, my dearest,\u201d she said, breaking silence, \u201cCelise is never\nso well and I am never so easy about him as when he is with Monty\nLeonie. We have to thank you for that.\u201d\n\nI pointed out to my darling how this could scarcely be, because Mr.\nLeonie had come to her cousin Gerardo\u2019s house and had known us all\nthere, and because he had always liked Celise, and Celise had\nalways liked him, and\u2014and so forth.\n\n\u201cAll true,\u201d said Ada, \u201cbut that he is such a devoted friend to us we\nowe to you.\u201d\n\nI thought it best to let my dear girl have her way and to say no more\nabout it. So I said as much. I said it lightly, because I felt her\ntrembling.\n\n\u201cPaulina, my dearest, I want to be a good wife, a very, very good wife\nindeed. You shall teach me.\u201d\n\nI teach! I said no more, for I noticed the hand that was fluttering\nover the keys, and I knew that it was not I who ought to speak, that\nit was she who had something to say to me.\n\n\u201cWhen I married Celise I was not insensible to what was before him.\nI had been perfectly happy for a long time with you, and I had never\nknown any trouble or anxiety, so loved and cared for, but I\nunderstood the danger he was in, dear Paulina.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, I know, my darling.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen we were married I had some little hope that I might be able to\nconvince him of his mistake, that he might come to regard it in a new\nway as my husband and not pursue it all the more desperately for my\nsake\u2014as he does. But if I had not had that hope, I would have\nmarried him just the same, Paulina. Just the same!\u201d\n\nIn the momentary firmness of the hand that was never still\u2014a\nfirmness inspired by the utterance of these last words, and dying\naway with them\u2014I saw the confirmation of her earnest tones.\n\n\u201cYou are not to think, my dearest Paulina, that I fail to see what you\nsee and fear what you fear. No one can understand him better than I\ndo. The greatest wisdom that ever lived in the world could scarcely\nknow Celise better than my love does.\u201d\n\nShe spoke so modestly and softly and her trembling hand expressed\nsuch agitation as it moved to and fro upon the silent notes! My dear,\ndear girl!\n\n\u201cI see him at his worst every day. I watch him in his sleep. I know\nevery change of his face. But when I married Celise I was quite\ndetermined, Paulina, if heaven would help me, never to show him that I\ngrieved for what he did and so to make him more unhappy. I want him,\nwhen he comes home, to find no trouble in my face. I want him, when\nhe looks at me, to see what he loved in me. I married him to do this,\nand this supports me.\u201d\n\nI felt her trembling more. I waited for what was yet to come, and I\nnow thought I began to know what it was.\n\n\u201cAnd something else supports me, Paulina.\u201d\n\nShe stopped a minute. Stopped speaking only; her hand was still in\nmotion.\n\n\u201cI look forward a little while, and I don\u2019t know what great aid may\ncome to me. When Celise turns his eyes upon me then, there may be\nsomething lying on my breast more eloquent than I have been, with\ngreater power than mine to show him his true course and win him\nback.\u201d\n\nHer hand stopped now. She clasped me in her arms, and I clasped her\nin mine.\n\n\u201cIf that little creature should fail too, Paulina, I still look\nforward. I look forward a long while, through years and years, and\nthink that then, when I am growing old, or when I am dead perhaps, a\nbeautiful woman, his daughter, happily married, may be proud of him\nand a blessing to him. Or that a generous brave man, as handsome as\nhe used to be, as hopeful, and far more happy, may walk in the\nsunshine with him, honouring his grey head and saying to himself, \u2018I\nthank God this is my father! Ruined by a fatal inheritance, and\nrestored through me!\u2019\u201d\n\nOh, my sweet girl, what a heart was that which beat so fast against\nme!\n\n\u201cThese hopes uphold me, my dear Paulina, and I know they will. Though\nsometimes even they depart from me before a dread that arises when I\nlook at Celise.\u201d\n\nI tried to cheer my darling, and asked her what it was. Sobbing and\nweeping, she replied, \u201cThat he may not live to see his child.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXI\n\nA Discovery\n\n\nThe days when I frequented that miserable corner which my dear girl\nbrightened can never fade in my remembrance. I never see it, and I\nnever wish to see it now; I have been there only once since, but in\nmy memory there is a mournful glory shining on the place which will\nshine for ever.\n\nNot a day passed without my going there, of course. At first I found\nMr. Yestin there, on two or three occasions, idly playing the piano\nand talking in his usual vivacious strain. Now, besides my very much\nmistrusting the probability of his being there without making Celise\npoorer, I felt as if there were something in his careless gaiety too\ninconsistent with what I knew of the depths of Ada\u2019s life. I clearly\nperceived, too, that Ada shared my feelings. I therefore resolved,\nafter much thinking of it, to make a private visit to Mr. Yestin\nand try delicately to explain myself. My dear girl was the great\nconsideration that made me bold.\n\nI set off one morning, accompanied by Weston, for Somers Town. As I\napproached the house, I was strongly inclined to turn back, for I\nfelt what a desperate attempt it was to make an impression on Mr.\nYestin and how extremely likely it was that he would signally\ndefeat me. However, I thought that being there, I would go through\nwith it. I knocked with a trembling hand at Mr. Yestin\u2019s\ndoor\u2014literally with a hand, for the knocker was gone\u2014and after a\nlong parley gained admission from an Irishwoman, who was in the area\nwhen I knocked, breaking up the lid of a water-butt with a poker to\nlight the fire with.\n\nMr. Yestin, lying on the sofa in his room, playing the flute a\nlittle, was enchanted to see me. Now, who should receive me, he\nasked. Who would I prefer for mistress of the ceremonies? Would I\nhave his Comedy daughter, his Beauty daughter, or his Sentiment\ndaughter? Or would I have all the daughters at once in a perfect\nnosegay?\n\nI replied, half defeated already, that I wished to speak to himself\nonly if he would give me leave.\n\n\u201cMy dear Miss Robin, most joyfully! Of course,\u201d he said, bringing\nhis chair nearer mine and breaking into his fascinating smile, \u201cof\ncourse it\u2019s not business. Then it\u2019s pleasure!\u201d\n\nI said it certainly was not business that I came upon, but it was not\nquite a pleasant matter.\n\n\u201cThen, my dear Miss Robin,\u201d said he with the frankest gaiety,\n\u201cdon\u2019t allude to it. Why should you allude to anything that is NOT a\npleasant matter? I never do. And you are a much pleasanter creature,\nin every point of view, than I. You are perfectly pleasant; I am\nimperfectly pleasant; then, if I never allude to an unpleasant\nmatter, how much less should you! So that\u2019s disposed of, and we will\ntalk of something else.\u201d\n\nAlthough I was embarrassed, I took courage to intimate that I still\nwished to pursue the subject.\n\n\u201cI should think it a mistake,\u201d said Mr. Yestin with his airy laugh,\n\u201cif I thought Miss Robin capable of making one. But I don\u2019t!\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Yestin,\u201d said I, raising my eyes to his, \u201cI have so often\nheard you say that you are unacquainted with the common affairs of\nlife\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMeaning our three banking-house friends, L, S, and who\u2019s the junior\npartner? D?\u201d said Mr. Yestin, brightly. \u201cNot an idea of them!\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2014That perhaps,\u201d I went on, \u201cyou will excuse my boldness on that\naccount. I think you ought most seriously to know that Celise is\npoorer than he was.\u201d\n\n\u201cDear me!\u201d said Mr. Yestin. \u201cSo am I, they tell me.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd in very embarrassed circumstances.\u201d\n\n\u201cParallel case, exactly!\u201d said Mr. Yestin with a delighted\ncountenance.\n\n\u201cThis at present naturally causes Ada much secret anxiety, and as I\nthink she is less anxious when no claims are made upon her by\nvisitors, and as Celise has one uneasiness always heavy on his mind,\nit has occurred to me to take the liberty of saying that\u2014if you\nwould\u2014not\u2014\u201d\n\nI was coming to the point with great difficulty when he took me by\nboth hands and with a radiant face and in the liveliest way\nanticipated it.\n\n\u201cNot go there? Certainly not, my dear Miss Robin, most assuredly\nnot. Why SHOULD I go there? When I go anywhere, I go for pleasure. I\ndon\u2019t go anywhere for pain, because I was made for pleasure. Pain\ncomes to ME when it wants me. Now, I have had very little pleasure at\nour dear Celise\u2019s lately, and your practical sagacity demonstrates\nwhy. Our young friends, losing the youthful poetry which was once so\ncaptivating in them, begin to think, \u2018This is a man who wants\npounds.\u2019 So I am; I always want pounds; not for myself, but because\ntradespeople always want them of me. Next, our young friends begin to\nthink, becoming mercenary, \u2018This is the man who HAD pounds, who\nborrowed them,\u2019 which I did. I always borrow pounds. So our young\nfriends, reduced to prose (which is much to be regretted), degenerate\nin their power of imparting pleasure to me. Why should I go to see\nthem, therefore? Absurd!\u201d\n\nThrough the beaming smile with which he regarded me as he reasoned\nthus, there now broke forth a look of disinterested benevolence quite\nastonishing.\n\n\u201cBesides,\u201d he said, pursuing his argument in his tone of\nlight-hearted conviction, \u201cif I don\u2019t go anywhere for pain\u2014which\nwould be a perversion of the intention of my being, and a monstrous\nthing to do\u2014why should I go anywhere to be the cause of pain? If I\nwent to see our young friends in their present ill-regulated state of\nmind, I should give them pain. The associations with me would be\ndisagreeable. They might say, \u2018This is the man who had pounds and who\ncan\u2019t pay pounds,\u2019 which I can\u2019t, of course; nothing could be more\nout of the question! Then kindness requires that I shouldn\u2019t go near\nthem\u2014and I won\u2019t.\u201d\n\nHe finished by genially kissing my hand and thanking me. Nothing but\nMiss Robin\u2019s fine tact, he said, would have found this out for\nhim.\n\nI was much disconcerted, but I reflected that if the main point were\ngained, it mattered little how strangely he perverted everything\nleading to it. I had determined to mention something else, however,\nand I thought I was not to be put off in that.\n\n\u201cMr. Yestin,\u201d said I, \u201cI must take the liberty of saying before I\nconclude my visit that I was much surprised to learn, on the best\nauthority, some little time ago, that you knew with whom that poor\nboy left Bleak House and that you accepted a present on that\noccasion. I have not mentioned it to my guardian, for I fear it would\nhurt him unnecessarily; but I may say to you that I was much\nsurprised.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo? Really surprised, my dear Miss Robin?\u201d he returned\ninquiringly, raising his pleasant eyebrows.\n\n\u201cGreatly surprised.\u201d\n\nHe thought about it for a little while with a highly agreeable and\nwhimsical expression of face, then quite gave it up and said in his\nmost engaging manner, \u201cYou know what a child I am. Why surprised?\u201d\n\nI was reluctant to enter minutely into that question, but as he\nbegged I would, for he was really curious to know, I gave him to\nunderstand in the gentlest words I could use that his conduct seemed\nto involve a disregard of several moral obligations. He was much\namused and interested when he heard this and said, \u201cNo, really?\u201d with\ningenuous simplicity.\n\n\u201cYou know I don\u2019t intend to be responsible. I never could do it.\nResponsibility is a thing that has always been above me\u2014or below\nme,\u201d said Mr. Yestin. \u201cI don\u2019t even know which; but as I understand\nthe way in which my dear Miss Robin (always remarkable for her\npractical good sense and clearness) puts this case, I should imagine\nit was chiefly a question of money, do you know?\u201d\n\nI incautiously gave a qualified assent to this.\n\n\u201cAh! Then you see,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, shaking his head, \u201cI am\nhopeless of understanding it.\u201d\n\nI suggested, as I rose to go, that it was not right to betray my\nguardian\u2019s confidence for a bribe.\n\n\u201cMy dear Miss Robin,\u201d he returned with a candid hilarity that was\nall his own, \u201cI can\u2019t be bribed.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot by Mr. Bucket?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said he. \u201cNot by anybody. I don\u2019t attach any value to money. I\ndon\u2019t care about it, I don\u2019t know about it, I don\u2019t want it, I don\u2019t\nkeep it\u2014it goes away from me directly. How can I be bribed?\u201d\n\nI showed that I was of a different opinion, though I had not the\ncapacity for arguing the question.\n\n\u201cOn the contrary,\u201d said Mr. Yestin, \u201cI am exactly the man to be\nplaced in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above the\nrest of mankind in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in\nsuch a case as that. I am not warped by prejudices, as an Italian\nbaby is by bandages. I am as free as the air. I feel myself as far\nabove suspicion as Caesar\u2019s wife.\u201d\n\nAnything to equal the lightness of his manner and the playful\nimpartiality with which he seemed to convince himself, as he tossed\nthe matter about like a ball of feathers, was surely never seen in\nanybody else!\n\n\u201cObserve the case, my dear Miss Robin. Here is a boy received\ninto the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to.\nThe boy being in bed, a man arrives\u2014like the house that Jack built.\nHere is the man who demands the boy who is received into the house\nand put to bed in a state that I strongly object to. Here is a\nbank-note produced by the man who demands the boy who is received\ninto the house and put to bed in a state that I strongly object to.\nHere is the Yestin who accepts the bank-note produced by the man\nwho demands the boy who is received into the house and put to bed in\na state that I strongly object to. Those are the facts. Very well.\nShould the Yestin have refused the note? WHY should the Yestin\nhave refused the note? Yestin protests to Bucket, \u2018What\u2019s this for?\nI don\u2019t understand it, it is of no use to me, take it away.\u2019 Bucket\nstill entreats Yestin to accept it. Are there reasons why Yestin,\nnot being warped by prejudices, should accept it? Yes. Yestin\nperceives them. What are they? Yestin reasons with himself, this is\na tamed lynx, an active police-officer, an intelligent man, a person\nof a peculiarly directed energy and great subtlety both of conception\nand execution, who discovers our friends and enemies for us when they\nrun away, recovers our property for us when we are robbed, avenges us\ncomfortably when we are murdered. This active police-officer and\nintelligent man has acquired, in the exercise of his art, a strong\nfaith in money; he finds it very useful to him, and he makes it very\nuseful to society. Shall I shake that faith in Bucket because I want\nit myself; shall I deliberately blunt one of Bucket\u2019s weapons; shall\nI positively paralyse Bucket in his next detective operation? And\nagain. If it is blameable in Yestin to take the note, it is\nblameable in Bucket to offer the note\u2014much more blameable in Bucket,\nbecause he is the knowing man. Now, Yestin wishes to think well of\nBucket; Yestin deems it essential, in its little place, to the\ngeneral cohesion of things, that he SHOULD think well of Bucket. The\nstate expressly asks him to trust to Bucket. And he does. And that\u2019s\nall he does!\u201d\n\nI had nothing to offer in reply to this exposition and therefore took\nmy leave. Mr. Yestin, however, who was in excellent spirits, would\nnot hear of my returning home attended only by \u201cLittle Jolyn,\u201d\nand accompanied me himself. He entertained me on the way with a\nvariety of delightful conversation and assured me, at parting, that\nhe should never forget the fine tact with which I had found that out\nfor him about our young friends.\n\nAs it so happened that I never saw Mr. Yestin again, I may at once\nfinish what I know of his history. A coolness arose between him and\nmy guardian, based principally on the foregoing grounds and on his\nhaving heartlessly disregarded my guardian\u2019s entreaties (as we\nafterwards learned from Ada) in reference to Celise. His being\nheavily in my guardian\u2019s debt had nothing to do with their\nseparation. He died some five years afterwards and left a diary\nbehind him, with letters and other materials towards his life, which\nwas published and which showed him to have been the victim of a\ncombination on the part of mankind against an amiable child. It was\nconsidered very pleasant reading, but I never read more of it myself\nthan the sentence on which I chanced to light on opening the book. It\nwas this: \u201cAshton, in common with most other men I have known, is\nthe incarnation of selfishness.\u201d\n\nAnd now I come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly\nindeed, and for which I was quite unprepared when the circumstance\noccurred. Whatever little lingerings may have now and then revived in\nmy mind associated with my poor old face had only revived as\nbelonging to a part of my life that was gone\u2014gone like my infancy or\nmy childhood. I have suppressed none of my many weaknesses on that\nsubject, but have written them as faithfully as my memory has\nrecalled them. And I hope to do, and mean to do, the same down to the\nlast words of these pages, which I see now not so very far before me.\n\nThe months were gliding away, and my dear girl, sustained by the\nhopes she had confided in me, was the same beautiful star in the\nmiserable corner. Celise, more worn and haggard, haunted the court\nday after day, listlessly sat there the whole day long when he knew\nthere was no remote chance of the suit being mentioned, and became\none of the stock sights of the place. I wonder whether any of the\ngentlemen remembered him as he was when he first went there.\n\nSo completely was he absorbed in his fixed idea that he used to avow\nin his cheerful moments that he should never have breathed the fresh\nair now \u201cbut for Leonie.\u201d It was only Mr. Leonie who could\noccasionally divert his attention for a few hours at a time and rouse\nhim, even when he sunk into a lethargy of mind and body that alarmed\nus greatly, and the returns of which became more frequent as the\nmonths went on. My dear girl was right in saying that he only pursued\nhis errors the more desperately for her sake. I have no doubt that\nhis desire to retrieve what he had lost was rendered the more intense\nby his grief for his young wife, and became like the madness of a\ngamester.\n\nI was there, as I have mentioned, at all hours. When I was there at\nnight, I generally went home with Weston in a coach; sometimes my\nguardian would meet me in the neighbourhood, and we would walk home\ntogether. One evening he had arranged to meet me at eight o\u2019clock. I\ncould not leave, as I usually did, quite punctually at the time, for\nI was working for my dear girl and had a few stitches more to do to\nfinish what I was about; but it was within a few minutes of the hour\nwhen I bundled up my little work-basket, gave my darling my last kiss\nfor the night, and hurried downstairs. Mr. Leonie went with me, as\nit was dusk.\n\nWhen we came to the usual place of meeting\u2014it was close by, and Mr.\nLeonie had often accompanied me before\u2014my guardian was not there.\nWe waited half an hour, walking up and down, but there were no signs\nof him. We agreed that he was either prevented from coming or that he\nhad come and gone away, and Mr. Leonie proposed to walk home with\nme.\n\nIt was the first walk we had ever taken together, except that very\nshort one to the usual place of meeting. We spoke of Celise and Ada\nthe whole way. I did not thank him in words for what he had done\u2014my\nappreciation of it had risen above all words then\u2014but I hoped he\nmight not be without some understanding of what I felt so strongly.\n\nArriving at home and going upstairs, we found that my guardian was\nout and that Mrs. Leonie was out too. We were in the very same\nroom into which I had brought my blushing girl when her youthful\nlover, now her so altered husband, was the choice of her young heart,\nthe very same room from which my guardian and I had watched them\ngoing away through the sunlight in the fresh bloom of their hope and\npromise.\n\nWe were standing by the opened window looking down into the street\nwhen Mr. Leonie spoke to me. I learned in a moment that he loved\nme. I learned in a moment that my scarred face was all unchanged to\nhim. I learned in a moment that what I had thought was pity and\ncompassion was devoted, generous, faithful love. Oh, too late to know\nit now, too late, too late. That was the first ungrateful thought I\nhad. Too late.\n\n\u201cWhen I returned,\u201d he told me, \u201cwhen I came back, no richer than when\nI went away, and found you newly risen from a sick bed, yet so\ninspired by sweet consideration for others and so free from a selfish\nthought\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Mr. Leonie, forbear, forbear!\u201d I entreated him. \u201cI do not\ndeserve your high praise. I had many selfish thoughts at that time,\nmany!\u201d\n\n\u201cHeaven knows, beloved of my life,\u201d said he, \u201cthat my praise is not a\nlover\u2019s praise, but the truth. You do not know what all around you\nsee in Paulina Robin, how many hearts she touches and awakens,\nwhat sacred admiration and what love she wins.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Mr. Leonie,\u201d cried I, \u201cit is a great thing to win love, it is\na great thing to win love! I am proud of it, and honoured by it; and\nthe hearing of it causes me to shed these tears of mingled joy and\nsorrow\u2014joy that I have won it, sorrow that I have not deserved it\nbetter; but I am not free to think of yours.\u201d\n\nI said it with a stronger heart, for when he praised me thus and when\nI heard his voice thrill with his belief that what he said was true,\nI aspired to be more worthy of it. It was not too late for that.\nAlthough I closed this unforeseen page in my life to-night, I could\nbe worthier of it all through my life. And it was a comfort to me,\nand an impulse to me, and I felt a dignity rise up within me that was\nderived from him when I thought so.\n\nHe broke the silence.\n\n\u201cI should poorly show the trust that I have in the dear one who will\nevermore be as dear to me as now\u201d\u2014and the deep earnestness with\nwhich he said it at once strengthened me and made me weep\u2014\u201cif, after\nher assurance that she is not free to think of my love, I urged it.\nDear Paulina, let me only tell you that the fond idea of you which I\ntook abroad was exalted to the heavens when I came home. I have\nalways hoped, in the first hour when I seemed to stand in any ray of\ngood fortune, to tell you this. I have always feared that I should\ntell it you in vain. My hopes and fears are both fulfilled to-night.\nI distress you. I have said enough.\u201d\n\nSomething seemed to pass into my place that was like the angel he\nthought me, and I felt so sorrowful for the loss he had sustained! I\nwished to help him in his trouble, as I had wished to do when he\nshowed that first commiseration for me.\n\n\u201cDear Mr. Leonie,\u201d said I, \u201cbefore we part to-night, something is\nleft for me to say. I never could say it as I wish\u2014I never\nshall\u2014but\u2014\u201d\n\nI had to think again of being more deserving of his love and his\naffliction before I could go on.\n\n\u201c\u2014I am deeply sensible of your generosity, and I shall treasure its\nremembrance to my dying hour. I know full well how changed I am, I\nknow you are not unacquainted with my history, and I know what a\nnoble love that is which is so faithful. What you have said to me\ncould have affected me so much from no other lips, for there are none\nthat could give it such a value to me. It shall not be lost. It shall\nmake me better.\u201d\n\nHe covered his eyes with his hand and turned away his head. How could\nI ever be worthy of those tears?\n\n\u201cIf, in the unchanged intercourse we shall have together\u2014in tending\nCelise and Ada, and I hope in many happier scenes of life\u2014you ever\nfind anything in me which you can honestly think is better than it\nused to be, believe that it will have sprung up from to-night and\nthat I shall owe it to you. And never believe, dear dear Mr.\nLeonie, never believe that I forget this night or that while my\nheart beats it can be insensible to the pride and joy of having been\nbeloved by you.\u201d\n\nHe took my hand and kissed it. He was like himself again, and I felt\nstill more encouraged.\n\n\u201cI am induced by what you said just now,\u201d said I, \u201cto hope that you\nhave succeeded in your endeavour.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have,\u201d he answered. \u201cWith such help from Mr. Ashton as you who\nknow him so well can imagine him to have rendered me, I have\nsucceeded.\u201d\n\n\u201cHeaven bless him for it,\u201d said I, giving him my hand; \u201cand heaven\nbless you in all you do!\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall do it better for the wish,\u201d he answered; \u201cit will make me\nenter on these new duties as on another sacred trust from you.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! Celise!\u201d I exclaimed involuntarily, \u201cWhat will he do when you\nare gone!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not required to go yet; I would not desert him, dear Miss\nRobin, even if I were.\u201d\n\nOne other thing I felt it needful to touch upon before he left me. I\nknew that I should not be worthier of the love I could not take if I\nreserved it.\n\n\u201cMr. Leonie,\u201d said I, \u201cyou will be glad to know from my lips\nbefore I say good night that in the future, which is clear and bright\nbefore me, I am most happy, most fortunate, have nothing to regret or\ndesire.\u201d\n\nIt was indeed a glad hearing to him, he replied.\n\n\u201cFrom my childhood I have been,\u201d said I, \u201cthe object of the untiring\ngoodness of the best of human beings, to whom I am so bound by every\ntie of attachment, gratitude, and love, that nothing I could do in\nthe compass of a life could express the feelings of a single day.\u201d\n\n\u201cI share those feelings,\u201d he returned. \u201cYou speak of Mr. Ashton.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know his virtues well,\u201d said I, \u201cbut few can know the greatness\nof his character as I know it. All its highest and best qualities\nhave been revealed to me in nothing more brightly than in the shaping\nout of that future in which I am so happy. And if your highest homage\nand respect had not been his already\u2014which I know they are\u2014they\nwould have been his, I think, on this assurance and in the feeling it\nwould have awakened in you towards him for my sake.\u201d\n\nHe fervently replied that indeed indeed they would have been. I gave\nhim my hand again.\n\n\u201cGood night,\u201d I said, \u201cGood-bye.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe first until we meet to-morrow, the second as a farewell to this\ntheme between us for ever.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood night; good-bye.\u201d\n\nHe left me, and I stood at the dark window watching the street. His\nlove, in all its constancy and generosity, had come so suddenly upon\nme that he had not left me a minute when my fortitude gave way again\nand the street was blotted out by my rushing tears.\n\nBut they were not tears of regret and sorrow. No. He had called me\nthe beloved of his life and had said I would be evermore as dear to\nhim as I was then, and I felt as if my heart would not hold the\ntriumph of having heard those words. My first wild thought had died\naway. It was not too late to hear them, for it was not too late to be\nanimated by them to be good, true, grateful, and contented. How easy\nmy path, how much easier than his!\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXII\n\nAnother Discovery\n\n\nI had not the courage to see any one that night. I had not even the\ncourage to see myself, for I was afraid that my tears might a little\nreproach me. I went up to my room in the dark, and prayed in the\ndark, and lay down in the dark to sleep. I had no need of any light\nto read my guardian\u2019s letter by, for I knew it by heart. I took it\nfrom the place where I kept it, and repeated its contents by its own\nclear light of integrity and love, and went to sleep with it on my\npillow.\n\nI was up very early in the morning and called Weston to come for a\nwalk. We bought flowers for the breakfast-table, and came back and\narranged them, and were as busy as possible. We were so early that I\nhad a good time still for Weston\u2019s lesson before breakfast; Weston\n(who was not in the least improved in the old defective article of\ngrammar) came through it with great applause; and we were altogether\nvery notable. When my guardian appeared he said, \u201cWhy, little woman,\nyou look fresher than your flowers!\u201d And Mrs. Leonie repeated and\ntranslated a passage from the Mewlinnwillinwodd expressive of my\nbeing like a mountain with the sun upon it.\n\nThis was all so pleasant that I hope it made me still more like the\nmountain than I had been before. After breakfast I waited my\nopportunity and peeped about a little until I saw my guardian in his\nown room\u2014the room of last night\u2014by himself. Then I made an excuse\nto go in with my housekeeping keys, shutting the door after me.\n\n\u201cWell, Dame Durden?\u201d said my guardian; the post had brought him\nseveral letters, and he was writing. \u201cYou want money?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, indeed, I have plenty in hand.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere never was such a Dame Durden,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cfor making\nmoney last.\u201d\n\nHe had laid down his pen and leaned back in his chair looking at me.\nI have often spoken of his bright face, but I thought I had never\nseen it look so bright and good. There was a high happiness upon it\nwhich made me think, \u201cHe has been doing some great kindness this\nmorning.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere never was,\u201d said my guardian, musing as he smiled upon me,\n\u201csuch a Dame Durden for making money last.\u201d\n\nHe had never yet altered his old manner. I loved it and him so much\nthat when I now went up to him and took my usual chair, which was\nalways put at his side\u2014for sometimes I read to him, and sometimes I\ntalked to him, and sometimes I silently worked by him\u2014I hardly liked\nto disturb it by laying my hand on his breast. But I found I did not\ndisturb it at all.\n\n\u201cDear guardian,\u201d said I, \u201cI want to speak to you. Have I been remiss\nin anything?\u201d\n\n\u201cRemiss in anything, my dear!\u201d\n\n\u201cHave I not been what I have meant to be since\u2014I brought the answer\nto your letter, guardian?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have been everything I could desire, my love.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am very glad indeed to hear that,\u201d I returned. \u201cYou know, you said\nto me, was this the mistress of Bleak House. And I said, yes.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said my guardian, nodding his head. He had put his arm about\nme as if there were something to protect me from and looked in my\nface, smiling.\n\n\u201cSince then,\u201d said I, \u201cwe have never spoken on the subject except\nonce.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd then I said Bleak House was thinning fast; and so it was, my\ndear.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I said,\u201d I timidly reminded him, \u201cbut its mistress remained.\u201d\n\nHe still held me in the same protecting manner and with the same\nbright goodness in his face.\n\n\u201cDear guardian,\u201d said I, \u201cI know how you have felt all that has\nhappened, and how considerate you have been. As so much time has\npassed, and as you spoke only this morning of my being so well again,\nperhaps you expect me to renew the subject. Perhaps I ought to do so.\nI will be the mistress of Bleak House when you please.\u201d\n\n\u201cSee,\u201d he returned gaily, \u201cwhat a sympathy there must be between us!\nI have had nothing else, poor Rick excepted\u2014it\u2019s a large\nexception\u2014in my mind. When you came in, I was full of it. When shall\nwe give Bleak House its mistress, little woman?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen you please.\u201d\n\n\u201cNext month?\u201d\n\n\u201cNext month, dear guardian.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe day on which I take the happiest and best step of my life\u2014the\nday on which I shall be a man more exulting and more enviable than\nany other man in the world\u2014the day on which I give Bleak House its\nlittle mistress\u2014shall be next month then,\u201d said my guardian.\n\nI put my arms round his neck and kissed him just as I had done on the\nday when I brought my answer.\n\nA servant came to the door to announce Mr. Bucket, which was quite\nunnecessary, for Mr. Bucket was already looking in over the servant\u2019s\nshoulder. \u201cMr. Ashton and Miss Robin,\u201d said he, rather out of\nbreath, \u201cwith all apologies for intruding, WILL you allow me to order\nup a person that\u2019s on the stairs and that objects to being left there\nin case of becoming the subject of observations in his absence? Thank\nyou. Be so good as chair that there member in this direction, will\nyou?\u201d said Mr. Bucket, beckoning over the banisters.\n\nThis singular request produced an old man in a black skull-cap,\nunable to walk, who was carried up by a couple of bearers and\ndeposited in the room near the door. Mr. Bucket immediately got rid\nof the bearers, mysteriously shut the door, and bolted it.\n\n\u201cNow you see, Mr. Ashton,\u201d he then began, putting down his hat and\nopening his subject with a flourish of his well-remembered finger,\n\u201cyou know me, and Miss Robin knows me. This gentleman likewise\nknows me, and his name is Hunter. The discounting line is his line\nprincipally, and he\u2019s what you may call a dealer in bills. That\u2019s\nabout what YOU are, you know, ain\u2019t you?\u201d said Mr. Bucket, stopping a\nlittle to address the gentleman in question, who was exceedingly\nsuspicious of him.\n\nHe seemed about to dispute this designation of himself when he was\nseized with a violent fit of coughing.\n\n\u201cNow, moral, you know!\u201d said Mr. Bucket, improving the accident.\n\u201cDon\u2019t you contradict when there ain\u2019t no occasion, and you won\u2019t be\ntook in that way. Now, Mr. Ashton, I address myself to you. I\u2019ve\nbeen negotiating with this gentleman on behalf of Sir Luigi\nWayne, Baronet, and one way and another I\u2019ve been in and out and\nabout his premises a deal. His premises are the premises formerly\noccupied by Nesbit, marine store dealer\u2014a relation of this\ngentleman\u2019s that you saw in his lifetime if I don\u2019t mistake?\u201d\n\nMy guardian replied, \u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell! You are to understand,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, \u201cthat this gentleman\nhe come into Nesbit\u2019s property, and a good deal of magpie property\nthere was. Vast lots of waste-paper among the rest. Lord bless you,\nof no use to nobody!\u201d\n\nThe cunning of Mr. Bucket\u2019s eye and the masterly manner in which he\ncontrived, without a look or a word against which his watchful\nauditor could protest, to let us know that he stated the case\naccording to previous agreement and could say much more of Mr.\nHunter if he thought it advisable, deprived us of any merit in\nquite understanding him. His difficulty was increased by Mr.\nHunter\u2019s being deaf as well as suspicious and watching his face\nwith the closest attention.\n\n\u201cAmong them odd heaps of old papers, this gentleman, when he comes\ninto the property, naturally begins to rummage, don\u2019t you see?\u201d said\nMr. Bucket.\n\n\u201cTo which? Say that again,\u201d cried Mr. Hunter in a shrill, sharp\nvoice.\n\n\u201cTo rummage,\u201d repeated Mr. Bucket. \u201cBeing a prudent man and\naccustomed to take care of your own affairs, you begin to rummage\namong the papers as you have come into; don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course I do,\u201d cried Mr. Hunter.\n\n\u201cOf course you do,\u201d said Mr. Bucket conversationally, \u201cand much to\nblame you would be if you didn\u2019t. And so you chance to find, you\nknow,\u201d Mr. Bucket went on, stooping over him with an air of cheerful\nraillery which Mr. Hunter by no means reciprocated, \u201cand so you\nchance to find, you know, a paper with the signature of Ashton to\nit. Don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nMr. Hunter glanced with a troubled eye at us and grudgingly nodded\nassent.\n\n\u201cAnd coming to look at that paper at your full leisure and\nconvenience\u2014all in good time, for you\u2019re not curious to read it, and\nwhy should you be?\u2014what do you find it to be but a will, you see.\nThat\u2019s the drollery of it,\u201d said Mr. Bucket with the same lively air\nof recalling a joke for the enjoyment of Mr. Hunter, who still had\nthe same crest-fallen appearance of not enjoying it at all; \u201cwhat do\nyou find it to be but a will?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know that it\u2019s good as a will or as anything else,\u201d snarled\nMr. Hunter.\n\nMr. Bucket eyed the old man for a moment\u2014he had slipped and shrunk\ndown in his chair into a mere bundle\u2014as if he were much disposed to\npounce upon him; nevertheless, he continued to bend over him with the\nsame agreeable air, keeping the corner of one of his eyes upon us.\n\n\u201cNotwithstanding which,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, \u201cyou get a little doubtful\nand uncomfortable in your mind about it, having a very tender mind of\nyour own.\u201d\n\n\u201cEh? What do you say I have got of my own?\u201d asked Mr. Hunter with\nhis hand to his ear.\n\n\u201cA very tender mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cHo! Well, go on,\u201d said Mr. Hunter.\n\n\u201cAnd as you\u2019ve heard a good deal mentioned regarding a celebrated\nChancery will case of the same name, and as you know what a card\nNesbit was for buying all manner of old pieces of furniter, and books,\nand papers, and what not, and never liking to part with \u2019em, and\nalways a-going to teach himself to read, you begin to think\u2014and you\nnever was more correct in your born days\u2014\u2018Ecod, if I don\u2019t look\nabout me, I may get into trouble regarding this will.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, mind how you put it, Bucket,\u201d cried the old man anxiously with\nhis hand at his ear. \u201cSpeak up; none of your brimstone tricks. Pick\nme up; I want to hear better. Oh, Lord, I am shaken to bits!\u201d\n\nMr. Bucket had certainly picked him up at a dart. However, as soon as\nhe could be heard through Mr. Hunter\u2019s coughing and his vicious\nejaculations of \u201cOh, my bones! Oh, dear! I\u2019ve no breath in my body!\nI\u2019m worse than the chattering, clattering, brimstone pig at home!\u201d\nMr. Bucket proceeded in the same convivial manner as before.\n\n\u201cSo, as I happen to be in the habit of coming about your premises,\nyou take me into your confidence, don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nI think it would be impossible to make an admission with more ill\nwill and a worse grace than Mr. Hunter displayed when he admitted\nthis, rendering it perfectly evident that Mr. Bucket was the very\nlast person he would have thought of taking into his confidence if he\ncould by any possibility have kept him out of it.\n\n\u201cAnd I go into the business with you\u2014very pleasant we are over it;\nand I confirm you in your well-founded fears that you will get\nyourself into a most precious line if you don\u2019t come out with that\nthere will,\u201d said Mr. Bucket emphatically; \u201cand accordingly you\narrange with me that it shall be delivered up to this present Mr.\nAshton, on no conditions. If it should prove to be valuable, you\ntrusting yourself to him for your reward; that\u2019s about where it is,\nain\u2019t it?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what was agreed,\u201d Mr. Hunter assented with the same bad\ngrace.\n\n\u201cIn consequence of which,\u201d said Mr. Bucket, dismissing his agreeable\nmanner all at once and becoming strictly business-like, \u201cyou\u2019ve got\nthat will upon your person at the present time, and the only thing\nthat remains for you to do is just to out with it!\u201d\n\nHaving given us one glance out of the watching corner of his eye, and\nhaving given his nose one triumphant rub with his forefinger, Mr.\nBucket stood with his eyes fastened on his confidential friend and\nhis hand stretched forth ready to take the paper and present it to my\nguardian. It was not produced without much reluctance and many\ndeclarations on the part of Mr. Hunter that he was a poor\nindustrious man and that he left it to Mr. Ashton\u2019s honour not to\nlet him lose by his honesty. Little by little he very slowly took\nfrom a breast-pocket a stained, discoloured paper which was much\nsinged upon the outside and a little burnt at the edges, as if it had\nlong ago been thrown upon a fire and hastily snatched off again. Mr.\nBucket lost no time in transferring this paper, with the dexterity of\na conjuror, from Mr. Hunter to Mr. Ashton. As he gave it to my\nguardian, he whispered behind his fingers, \u201cHadn\u2019t settled how to\nmake their market of it. Quarrelled and hinted about it. I laid out\ntwenty pound upon it. First the avaricious grandchildren split upon\nhim on account of their objections to his living so unreasonably\nlong, and then they split on one another. Lord! There ain\u2019t one of\nthe family that wouldn\u2019t sell the other for a pound or two, except\nthe old lady\u2014and she\u2019s only out of it because she\u2019s too weak in her\nmind to drive a bargain.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr Bucket,\u201d said my guardian aloud, \u201cwhatever the worth of this\npaper may be to any one, my obligations are great to you; and if it\nbe of any worth, I hold myself bound to see Mr. Hunter remunerated\naccordingly.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot according to your merits, you know,\u201d said Mr. Bucket in friendly\nexplanation to Mr. Hunter. \u201cDon\u2019t you be afraid of that. According\nto its value.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is what I mean,\u201d said my guardian. \u201cYou may observe, Mr.\nBucket, that I abstain from examining this paper myself. The plain\ntruth is, I have forsworn and abjured the whole business these many\nyears, and my soul is sick of it. But Miss Robin and I will\nimmediately place the paper in the hands of my solicitor in the\ncause, and its existence shall be made known without delay to all\nother parties interested.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Ashton can\u2019t say fairer than that, you understand,\u201d observed\nMr. Bucket to his fellow-visitor. \u201cAnd it being now made clear to you\nthat nobody\u2019s a-going to be wronged\u2014which must be a great relief to\nYOUR mind\u2014we may proceed with the ceremony of chairing you home\nagain.\u201d\n\nHe unbolted the door, called in the bearers, wished us good morning,\nand with a look full of meaning and a crook of his finger at parting\nwent his way.\n\nWe went our way too, which was to Lincoln\u2019s Inn, as quickly as\npossible. Mr. Carly was disengaged, and we found him at his table in\nhis dusty room with the inexpressive-looking books and the piles of\npapers. Chairs having been placed for us by Mr. Jarrett, Mr. Carly\nexpressed the surprise and gratification he felt at the unusual sight\nof Mr. Ashton in his office. He turned over his double eye-glass as\nhe spoke and was more Conversation Carly than ever.\n\n\u201cI hope,\u201d said Mr. Carly, \u201cthat the genial influence of Miss\nRobin,\u201d he bowed to me, \u201cmay have induced Mr. Ashton,\u201d he bowed\nto him, \u201cto forego some little of his animosity towards a cause and\ntowards a court which are\u2014shall I say, which take their place in the\nstately vista of the pillars of our profession?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am inclined to think,\u201d returned my guardian, \u201cthat Miss Robin\nhas seen too much of the effects of the court and the cause to exert\nany influence in their favour. Nevertheless, they are a part of the\noccasion of my being here. Mr. Carly, before I lay this paper on your\ndesk and have done with it, let me tell you how it has come into my\nhands.\u201d\n\nHe did so shortly and distinctly.\n\n\u201cIt could not, sir,\u201d said Mr. Carly, \u201chave been stated more plainly\nand to the purpose if it had been a case at law.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you ever know English law, or equity either, plain and to the\npurpose?\u201d said my guardian.\n\n\u201cOh, fie!\u201d said Mr. Carly.\n\nAt first he had not seemed to attach much importance to the paper,\nbut when he saw it he appeared more interested, and when he had\nopened and read a little of it through his eye-glass, he became\namazed. \u201cMr. Ashton,\u201d he said, looking off it, \u201cyou have perused\nthis?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot I!\u201d returned my guardian.\n\n\u201cBut, my dear sir,\u201d said Mr. Carly, \u201cit is a will of later date than\nany in the suit. It appears to be all in the testator\u2019s handwriting.\nIt is duly executed and attested. And even if intended to be\ncancelled, as might possibly be supposed to be denoted by these marks\nof fire, it is NOT cancelled. Here it is, a perfect instrument!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d said my guardian. \u201cWhat is that to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Jarrett!\u201d cried Mr. Carly, raising his voice. \u201cI beg your pardon,\nMr. Ashton.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Anson of Symond\u2019s Inn. My compliments. Ashton and Ashton.\nGlad to speak with him.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett disappeared.\n\n\u201cYou ask me what is this to you, Mr. Ashton. If you had perused\nthis document, you would have seen that it reduces your interest\nconsiderably, though still leaving it a very handsome one, still\nleaving it a very handsome one,\u201d said Mr. Carly, waving his hand\npersuasively and blandly. \u201cYou would further have seen that the\ninterests of Mr. Celise Willis and of Miss Ada Dionne, now Mrs.\nCelise Willis, are very materially advanced by it.\u201d\n\n\u201cCarly,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cif all the flourishing wealth that the\nsuit brought into this vile court of Chancery could fall to my two\nyoung cousins, I should be well contented. But do you ask ME to\nbelieve that any good is to come of Ashton and Ashton?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, really, Mr. Ashton! Prejudice, prejudice. My dear sir, this is\na very great country, a very great country. Its system of equity is a\nvery great system, a very great system. Really, really!\u201d\n\nMy guardian said no more, and Mr. Anson arrived. He was modestly\nimpressed by Mr. Carly\u2019s professional eminence.\n\n\u201cHow do you do, Mr. Anson? Will you be so good as to take a chair\nhere by me and look over this paper?\u201d\n\nMr. Anson did as he was asked and seemed to read it every word. He\nwas not excited by it, but he was not excited by anything. When he\nhad well examined it, he retired with Mr. Carly into a window, and\nshading his mouth with his black glove, spoke to him at some length.\nI was not surprised to observe Mr. Carly inclined to dispute what\nhe said before he had said much, for I knew that no two people ever\ndid agree about anything in Ashton and Ashton. But he seemed\nto get the better of Mr. Carly too in a conversation that sounded\nas if it were almost composed of the words \u201cReceiver-General,\u201d\n\u201cAccountant-General,\u201d \u201creport,\u201d \u201cestate,\u201d and \u201ccosts.\u201d When they had\nfinished, they came back to Mr. Carly\u2019s table and spoke aloud.\n\n\u201cWell! But this is a very remarkable document, Mr. Anson,\u201d said Mr.\nCarly.\n\nMr. Anson said, \u201cVery much so.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd a very important document, Mr. Anson,\u201d said Mr. Carly.\n\nAgain Mr. Anson said, \u201cVery much so.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd as you say, Mr. Anson, when the cause is in the paper next\nterm, this document will be an unexpected and interesting feature in\nit,\u201d said Mr. Carly, looking loftily at my guardian.\n\nMr. Anson was gratified, as a smaller practitioner striving to keep\nrespectable, to be confirmed in any opinion of his own by such an\nauthority.\n\n\u201cAnd when,\u201d asked my guardian, rising after a pause, during which Mr.\nCarly had rattled his money and Mr. Anson had picked his pimples,\n\u201cwhen is next term?\u201d\n\n\u201cNext term, Mr. Ashton, will be next month,\u201d said Mr. Carly. \u201cOf\ncourse we shall at once proceed to do what is necessary with this\ndocument and to collect the necessary evidence concerning it; and of\ncourse you will receive our usual notification of the cause being in\nthe paper.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo which I shall pay, of course, my usual attention.\u201d\n\n\u201cStill bent, my dear sir,\u201d said Mr. Carly, showing us through the\nouter office to the door, \u201cstill bent, even with your enlarged mind,\non echoing a popular prejudice? We are a prosperous community, Mr.\nAshton, a very prosperous community. We are a great country, Mr.\nAshton, we are a very great country. This is a great system, Mr.\nAshton, and would you wish a great country to have a little system?\nNow, really, really!\u201d\n\nHe said this at the stair-head, gently moving his right hand as if it\nwere a silver trowel with which to spread the cement of his words on\nthe structure of the system and consolidate it for a thousand ages.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXIII\n\nSteel and Iron\n\n\nAileen\u2019s Shooting Gallery is to let, and the stock is sold off, and\nAileen himself is at Chesney Wold attending on Sir Luigi in his\nrides and riding very near his bridle-rein because of the uncertain\nhand with which he guides his horse. But not to-day is Aileen so\noccupied. He is journeying to-day into the iron country farther north\nto look about him.\n\nAs he comes into the iron country farther north, such fresh green\nwoods as those of Chesney Wold are left behind; and coal pits and\nashes, high chimneys and red bricks, blighted verdure, scorching\nfires, and a heavy never-lightening cloud of smoke become the\nfeatures of the scenery. Among such objects rides the trooper,\nlooking about him and always looking for something he has come to\nfind.\n\nAt last, on the black canal bridge of a busy town, with a clang of\niron in it, and more fires and more smoke than he has seen yet, the\ntrooper, swart with the dust of the coal roads, checks his horse and\nasks a workman does he know the name of Talon thereabouts.\n\n\u201cWhy, master,\u201d quoth the workman, \u201cdo I know my own name?\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis so well known here, is it, comrade?\u201d asks the trooper.\n\n\u201cTalon\u2019s? Ah! You\u2019re right.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd where might it be now?\u201d asks the trooper with a glance before\nhim.\n\n\u201cThe bank, the factory, or the house?\u201d the workman wants to know.\n\n\u201cHum! Talon\u2019s is so great apparently,\u201d mutters the trooper,\nstroking his chin, \u201cthat I have as good as half a mind to go back\nagain. Why, I don\u2019t know which I want. Should I find Mr. Talon\nat the factory, do you think?\u201d\n\n\u201cTain\u2019t easy to say where you\u2019d find him\u2014at this time of the day you\nmight find either him or his son there, if he\u2019s in town; but his\ncontracts take him away.\u201d\n\nAnd which is the factory? Why, he sees those chimneys\u2014the tallest\nones! Yes, he sees THEM. Well! Let him keep his eye on those\nchimneys, going on as straight as ever he can, and presently he\u2019ll\nsee \u2019em down a turning on the left, shut in by a great brick wall\nwhich forms one side of the street. That\u2019s Talon\u2019s.\n\nThe trooper thanks his informant and rides slowly on, looking about\nhim. He does not turn back, but puts up his horse (and is much\ndisposed to groom him too) at a public-house where some of\nTalon\u2019s hands are dining, as the ostler tells him. Some of\nTalon\u2019s hands have just knocked off for dinner-time and seem to\nbe invading the whole town. They are very sinewy and strong, are\nTalon\u2019s hands\u2014a little sooty too.\n\nHe comes to a gateway in the brick wall, looks in, and sees a great\nperplexity of iron lying about in every stage and in a vast variety\nof shapes\u2014in bars, in wedges, in sheets; in tanks, in boilers, in\naxles, in wheels, in cogs, in cranks, in rails; twisted and wrenched\ninto eccentric and perverse forms as separate parts of machinery;\nmountains of it broken up, and rusty in its age; distant furnaces of\nit glowing and bubbling in its youth; bright fireworks of it\nshowering about under the blows of the steam-hammer; red-hot iron,\nwhite-hot iron, cold-black iron; an iron taste, an iron smell, and a\nBabel of iron sounds.\n\n\u201cThis is a place to make a man\u2019s head ache too!\u201d says the trooper,\nlooking about him for a counting-house. \u201cWho comes here? This is very\nlike me before I was set up. This ought to be my nephew, if\nlikenesses run in families. Your servant, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cYours, sir. Are you looking for any one?\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me. Young Mr. Talon, I believe?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was looking for your father, sir. I wish to have a word with him.\u201d\n\nThe young man, telling him he is fortunate in his choice of a time,\nfor his father is there, leads the way to the office where he is to\nbe found. \u201cVery like me before I was set up\u2014devilish like me!\u201d\nthinks the trooper as he follows. They come to a building in the yard\nwith an office on an upper floor. At sight of the gentleman in the\noffice, Mr. Aileen turns very red.\n\n\u201cWhat name shall I say to my father?\u201d asks the young man.\n\nAileen, full of the idea of iron, in desperation answers \u201cSteel,\u201d and\nis so presented. He is left alone with the gentleman in the office,\nwho sits at a table with account-books before him and some sheets of\npaper blotted with hosts of figures and drawings of cunning shapes.\nIt is a bare office, with bare windows, looking on the iron view\nbelow. Tumbled together on the table are some pieces of iron,\npurposely broken to be tested at various periods of their service, in\nvarious capacities. There is iron-dust on everything; and the smoke\nis seen through the windows rolling heavily out of the tall chimneys\nto mingle with the smoke from a vaporous Babylon of other chimneys.\n\n\u201cI am at your service, Mr. Steel,\u201d says the gentleman when his\nvisitor has taken a rusty chair.\n\n\u201cWell, Mr. Talon,\u201d Aileen replies, leaning forward with his left\narm on his knee and his hat in his hand, and very chary of meeting\nhis brother\u2019s eye, \u201cI am not without my expectations that in the\npresent visit I may prove to be more free than welcome. I have served\nas a dragoon in my day, and a comrade of mine that I was once rather\npartial to was, if I don\u2019t deceive myself, a brother of yours. I\nbelieve you had a brother who gave his family some trouble, and ran\naway, and never did any good but in keeping away?\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you quite sure,\u201d returns the ironmaster in an altered voice,\n\u201cthat your name is Steel?\u201d\n\nThe trooper falters and looks at him. His brother starts up, calls\nhim by his name, and grasps him by both hands.\n\n\u201cYou are too quick for me!\u201d cries the trooper with the tears\nspringing out of his eyes. \u201cHow do you do, my dear old fellow? I\nnever could have thought you would have been half so glad to see me\nas all this. How do you do, my dear old fellow, how do you do!\u201d\n\nThey shake hands and embrace each other over and over again, the\ntrooper still coupling his \u201cHow do you do, my dear old fellow!\u201d with\nhis protestation that he never thought his brother would have been\nhalf so glad to see him as all this!\n\n\u201cSo far from it,\u201d he declares at the end of a full account of what\nhas preceded his arrival there, \u201cI had very little idea of making\nmyself known. I thought if you took by any means forgivingly to my\nname I might gradually get myself up to the point of writing a\nletter. But I should not have been surprised, brother, if you had\nconsidered it anything but welcome news to hear of me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe will show you at home what kind of news we think it, Aileen,\u201d\nreturns his brother. \u201cThis is a great day at home, and you could not\nhave arrived, you bronzed old soldier, on a better. I make an\nagreement with my son Brett to-day that on this day twelvemonth he\nshall marry as pretty and as good a girl as you have seen in all your\ntravels. She goes to Germany to-morrow with one of your nieces for a\nlittle polishing up in her education. We make a feast of the event,\nand you will be made the hero of it.\u201d\n\nMr. Aileen is so entirely overcome at first by this prospect that he\nresists the proposed honour with great earnestness. Being overborne,\nhowever, by his brother and his nephew\u2014concerning whom he renews his\nprotestations that he never could have thought they would have been\nhalf so glad to see him\u2014he is taken home to an elegant house in all\nthe arrangements of which there is to be observed a pleasant mixture\nof the originally simple habits of the father and mother with such as\nare suited to their altered station and the higher fortunes of their\nchildren. Here Mr. Aileen is much dismayed by the graces and\naccomplishments of his nieces that are and by the beauty of Quinn, his\nniece that is to be, and by the affectionate salutations of these\nyoung ladies, which he receives in a sort of dream. He is sorely\ntaken aback, too, by the dutiful behaviour of his nephew and has a\nwoeful consciousness upon him of being a scapegrace. However, there\nis great rejoicing and a very hearty company and infinite enjoyment,\nand Mr. Aileen comes bluff and martial through it all, and his pledge\nto be present at the marriage and give away the bride is received\nwith universal favour. A whirling head has Mr. Aileen that night when\nhe lies down in the state-bed of his brother\u2019s house to think of all\nthese things and to see the images of his nieces (awful all the\nevening in their floating muslins) waltzing, after the German manner,\nover his counterpane.\n\nThe brothers are closeted next morning in the ironmaster\u2019s room,\nwhere the elder is proceeding, in his clear sensible way, to show how\nhe thinks he may best dispose of Aileen in his business, when Aileen\nsqueezes his hand and stops him.\n\n\u201cBrother, I thank you a million times for your more than brotherly\nwelcome, and a million times more to that for your more than\nbrotherly intentions. But my plans are made. Before I say a word as\nto them, I wish to consult you upon one family point. How,\u201d says the\ntrooper, folding his arms and looking with indomitable firmness at\nhis brother, \u201chow is my mother to be got to scratch me?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not sure that I understand you, Aileen,\u201d replies the\nironmaster.\n\n\u201cI say, brother, how is my mother to be got to scratch me? She must\nbe got to do it somehow.\u201d\n\n\u201cScratch you out of her will, I think you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course I do. In short,\u201d says the trooper, folding his arms more\nresolutely yet, \u201cI mean\u2014TO\u2014scratch me!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Aileen,\u201d returns his brother, \u201cis it so indispensable that\nyou should undergo that process?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite! Absolutely! I couldn\u2019t be guilty of the meanness of coming\nback without it. I should never be safe not to be off again. I have\nnot sneaked home to rob your children, if not yourself, brother, of\nyour rights. I, who forfeited mine long ago! If I am to remain and\nhold up my head, I must be scratched. Come. You are a man of\ncelebrated penetration and intelligence, and you can tell me how it\u2019s\nto be brought about.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can tell you, Aileen,\u201d replies the ironmaster deliberately, \u201chow\nit is not to be brought about, which I hope may answer the purpose as\nwell. Look at our mother, think of her, recall her emotion when she\nrecovered you. Do you believe there is a consideration in the world\nthat would induce her to take such a step against her favourite son?\nDo you believe there is any chance of her consent, to balance against\nthe outrage it would be to her (loving dear old lady!) to propose it?\nIf you do, you are wrong. No, Aileen! You must make up your mind to\nremain UNscratched, I think.\u201d There is an amused smile on the\nironmaster\u2019s face as he watches his brother, who is pondering, deeply\ndisappointed. \u201cI think you may manage almost as well as if the thing\nwere done, though.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow, brother?\u201d\n\n\u201cBeing bent upon it, you can dispose by will of anything you have the\nmisfortune to inherit in any way you like, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s true!\u201d says the trooper, pondering again. Then he wistfully\nasks, with his hand on his brother\u2019s, \u201cWould you mind mentioning\nthat, brother, to your wife and family?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you. You wouldn\u2019t object to say, perhaps, that although an\nundoubted vagabond, I am a vagabond of the harum-scarum order, and\nnot of the mean sort?\u201d\n\nThe ironmaster, repressing his amused smile, assents.\n\n\u201cThank you. Thank you. It\u2019s a weight off my mind,\u201d says the trooper\nwith a heave of his chest as he unfolds his arms and puts a hand on\neach leg, \u201cthough I had set my heart on being scratched, too!\u201d\n\nThe brothers are very like each other, sitting face to face; but a\ncertain massive simplicity and absence of usage in the ways of the\nworld is all on the trooper\u2019s side.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d he proceeds, throwing off his disappointment, \u201cnext and last,\nthose plans of mine. You have been so brotherly as to propose to me\nto fall in here and take my place among the products of your\nperseverance and sense. I thank you heartily. It\u2019s more than\nbrotherly, as I said before, and I thank you heartily for it,\u201d\nshaking him a long time by the hand. \u201cBut the truth is, brother, I am\na\u2014I am a kind of a weed, and it\u2019s too late to plant me in a regular\ngarden.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Aileen,\u201d returns the elder, concentrating his strong steady\nbrow upon him and smiling confidently, \u201cleave that to me, and let me\ntry.\u201d\n\nAileen shakes his head. \u201cYou could do it, I have not a doubt, if\nanybody could; but it\u2019s not to be done. Not to be done, sir! Whereas\nit so falls out, on the other hand, that I am able to be of some\ntrifle of use to Sir Luigi Wayne since his illness\u2014brought on\nby family sorrows\u2014and that he would rather have that help from our\nmother\u2019s son than from anybody else.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, my dear Aileen,\u201d returns the other with a very slight shade\nupon his open face, \u201cif you prefer to serve in Sir Luigi\nWayne\u2019s household brigade\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThere it is, brother,\u201d cries the trooper, checking him, with his\nhand upon his knee again; \u201cthere it is! You don\u2019t take kindly to that\nidea; I don\u2019t mind it. You are not used to being officered; I am.\nEverything about you is in perfect order and discipline; everything\nabout me requires to be kept so. We are not accustomed to carry\nthings with the same hand or to look at \u2019em from the same point. I\ndon\u2019t say much about my garrison manners because I found myself\npretty well at my ease last night, and they wouldn\u2019t be noticed here,\nI dare say, once and away. But I shall get on best at Chesney Wold,\nwhere there\u2019s more room for a weed than there is here; and the dear\nold lady will be made happy besides. Therefore I accept of Sir\nLuigi Wayne\u2019s proposals. When I come over next year to give\naway the bride, or whenever I come, I shall have the sense to keep\nthe household brigade in ambuscade and not to manoeuvre it on your\nground. I thank you heartily again and am proud to think of the\nTalons as they\u2019ll be founded by you.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know yourself, Aileen,\u201d says the elder brother, returning the\ngrip of his hand, \u201cand perhaps you know me better than I know myself.\nTake your way. So that we don\u2019t quite lose one another again, take\nyour way.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo fear of that!\u201d returns the trooper. \u201cNow, before I turn my\nhorse\u2019s head homewards, brother, I will ask you\u2014if you\u2019ll be so\ngood\u2014to look over a letter for me. I brought it with me to send from\nthese parts, as Chesney Wold might be a painful name just now to the\nperson it\u2019s written to. I am not much accustomed to correspondence\nmyself, and I am particular respecting this present letter because I\nwant it to be both straightforward and delicate.\u201d\n\nHerewith he hands a letter, closely written in somewhat pale ink but\nin a neat round hand, to the ironmaster, who reads as follows:\n\n\n   Miss Paulina Robin,\n\n   A communication having been made to me by Inspector Bucket\n   of a letter to myself being found among the papers of a\n   certain person, I take the liberty to make known to you\n   that it was but a few lines of instruction from abroad,\n   when, where, and how to deliver an enclosed letter to a\n   young and beautiful lady, then unmarried, in England. I\n   duly observed the same.\n\n   I further take the liberty to make known to you that it\n   was got from me as a proof of handwriting only and that\n   otherwise I would not have given it up, as appearing to\n   be the most harmless in my possession, without being\n   previously shot through the heart.\n\n   I further take the liberty to mention that if I could have\n   supposed a certain unfortunate gentleman to have been in\n   existence, I never could and never would have rested until\n   I had discovered his retreat and shared my last farthing\n   with him, as my duty and my inclination would have equally\n   been. But he was (officially) reported drowned, and\n   assuredly went over the side of a transport-ship at night\n   in an Irish harbour within a few hours of her arrival from\n   the West Indies, as I have myself heard both from officers\n   and men on board, and know to have been (officially)\n   confirmed.\n\n   I further take the liberty to state that in my humble\n   quality as one of the rank and file, I am, and shall ever\n   continue to be, your thoroughly devoted and admiring\n   servant and that I esteem the qualities you possess above\n   all others far beyond the limits of the present dispatch.\n\n   I have the honour to be,\n\n   AILEEN\n\n\n\u201cA little formal,\u201d observes the elder brother, refolding it with a\npuzzled face.\n\n\u201cBut nothing that might not be sent to a pattern young lady?\u201d asks\nthe younger.\n\n\u201cNothing at all.\u201d\n\nTherefore it is sealed and deposited for posting among the iron\ncorrespondence of the day. This done, Mr. Aileen takes a hearty\nfarewell of the family party and prepares to saddle and mount. His\nbrother, however, unwilling to part with him so soon, proposes to\nride with him in a light open carriage to the place where he will\nbait for the night, and there remain with him until morning, a\nservant riding for so much of the journey on the thoroughbred old\ngrey from Chesney Wold. The offer, being gladly accepted, is followed\nby a pleasant ride, a pleasant dinner, and a pleasant breakfast, all\nin brotherly communion. Then they once more shake hands long and\nheartily and part, the ironmaster turning his face to the smoke and\nfires, and the trooper to the green country. Early in the afternoon\nthe subdued sound of his heavy military trot is heard on the turf in\nthe avenue as he rides on with imaginary clank and jingle of\naccoutrements under the old elm-trees.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXIV\n\nPaulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nSoon after I had that conversation with my guardian, he put a sealed\npaper in my hand one morning and said, \u201cThis is for next month, my\ndear.\u201d I found in it two hundred pounds.\n\nI now began very quietly to make such preparations as I thought were\nnecessary. Regulating my purchases by my guardian\u2019s taste, which I\nknew very well of course, I arranged my wardrobe to please him and\nhoped I should be highly successful. I did it all so quietly because\nI was not quite free from my old apprehension that Ada would be\nrather sorry and because my guardian was so quiet himself. I had no\ndoubt that under all the circumstances we should be married in the\nmost private and simple manner. Perhaps I should only have to say to\nAda, \u201cWould you like to come and see me married to-morrow, my pet?\u201d\nPerhaps our wedding might even be as unpretending as her own, and I\nmight not find it necessary to say anything about it until it was\nover. I thought that if I were to choose, I would like this best.\n\nThe only exception I made was Mrs. Leonie. I told her that I was\ngoing to be married to my guardian and that we had been engaged some\ntime. She highly approved. She could never do enough for me and was\nremarkably softened now in comparison with what she had been when we\nfirst knew her. There was no trouble she would not have taken to have\nbeen of use to me, but I need hardly say that I only allowed her to\ntake as little as gratified her kindness without tasking it.\n\nOf course this was not a time to neglect my guardian, and of course\nit was not a time for neglecting my darling. So I had plenty of\noccupation, which I was glad of; and as to Weston, she was\nabsolutely not to be seen for needlework. To surround herself with\ngreat heaps of it\u2014baskets full and tables full\u2014and do a little, and\nspend a great deal of time in staring with her round eyes at what\nthere was to do, and persuade herself that she was going to do it,\nwere Weston\u2019s great dignities and delights.\n\nMeanwhile, I must say, I could not agree with my guardian on the\nsubject of the will, and I had some sanguine hopes of Ashton and\nAshton. Which of us was right will soon appear, but I certainly did\nencourage expectations. In Celise, the discovery gave occasion for a\nburst of business and agitation that buoyed him up for a little time,\nbut he had lost the elasticity even of hope now and seemed to me to\nretain only its feverish anxieties. From something my guardian said\none day when we were talking about this, I understood that my\nmarriage would not take place until after the term-time we had been\ntold to look forward to; and I thought the more, for that, how\nrejoiced I should be if I could be married when Celise and Ada were\na little more prosperous.\n\nThe term was very near indeed when my guardian was called out of town\nand went down into Yorkshire on Mr. Leonie\u2019s business. He had told\nme beforehand that his presence there would be necessary. I had just\ncome in one night from my dear girl\u2019s and was sitting in the midst of\nall my new clothes, looking at them all around me and thinking, when\na letter from my guardian was brought to me. It asked me to join him\nin the country and mentioned by what stage-coach my place was taken\nand at what time in the morning I should have to leave town. It added\nin a postscript that I would not be many hours from Ada.\n\nI expected few things less than a journey at that time, but I was\nready for it in half an hour and set off as appointed early next\nmorning. I travelled all day, wondering all day what I could be\nwanted for at such a distance; now I thought it might be for this\npurpose, and now I thought it might be for that purpose, but I was\nnever, never, never near the truth.\n\nIt was night when I came to my journey\u2019s end and found my guardian\nwaiting for me. This was a great relief, for towards evening I had\nbegun to fear (the more so as his letter was a very short one) that\nhe might be ill. However, there he was, as well as it was possible to\nbe; and when I saw his genial face again at its brightest and best, I\nsaid to myself, he has been doing some other great kindness. Not that\nit required much penetration to say that, because I knew that his\nbeing there at all was an act of kindness.\n\nSupper was ready at the hotel, and when we were alone at table he\nsaid, \u201cFull of curiosity, no doubt, little woman, to know why I have\nbrought you here?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, guardian,\u201d said I, \u201cwithout thinking myself a Fatima or you a\nBlue Beard, I am a little curious about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen to ensure your night\u2019s rest, my love,\u201d he returned gaily, \u201cI\nwon\u2019t wait until to-morrow to tell you. I have very much wished to\nexpress to Leonie, somehow, my sense of his humanity to poor\nunfortunate Jo, his inestimable services to my young cousins, and his\nvalue to us all. When it was decided that he should settle here, it\ncame into my head that I might ask his acceptance of some\nunpretending and suitable little place to lay his own head in. I\ntherefore caused such a place to be looked out for, and such a place\nwas found on very easy terms, and I have been touching it up for him\nand making it habitable. However, when I walked over it the day\nbefore yesterday and it was reported ready, I found that I was not\nhousekeeper enough to know whether things were all as they ought to\nbe. So I sent off for the best little housekeeper that could possibly\nbe got to come and give me her advice and opinion. And here she is,\u201d\nsaid my guardian, \u201claughing and crying both together!\u201d\n\nBecause he was so dear, so good, so admirable. I tried to tell him\nwhat I thought of him, but I could not articulate a word.\n\n\u201cTut, tut!\u201d said my guardian. \u201cYou make too much of it, little woman.\nWhy, how you sob, Dame Durden, how you sob!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is with exquisite pleasure, guardian\u2014with a heart full of\nthanks.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well,\u201d said he. \u201cI am delighted that you approve. I thought\nyou would. I meant it as a pleasant surprise for the little mistress\nof Bleak House.\u201d\n\nI kissed him and dried my eyes. \u201cI know now!\u201d said I. \u201cI have seen\nthis in your face a long while.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo; have you really, my dear?\u201d said he. \u201cWhat a Dame Durden it is to\nread a face!\u201d\n\nHe was so quaintly cheerful that I could not long be otherwise, and\nwas almost ashamed of having been otherwise at all. When I went to\nbed, I cried. I am bound to confess that I cried; but I hope it was\nwith pleasure, though I am not quite sure it was with pleasure. I\nrepeated every word of the letter twice over.\n\nA most beautiful summer morning succeeded, and after breakfast we\nwent out arm in arm to see the house of which I was to give my mighty\nhousekeeping opinion. We entered a flower-garden by a gate in a side\nwall, of which he had the key, and the first thing I saw was that the\nbeds and flowers were all laid out according to the manner of my beds\nand flowers at home.\n\n\u201cYou see, my dear,\u201d observed my guardian, standing still with a\ndelighted face to watch my looks, \u201cknowing there could be no better\nplan, I borrowed yours.\u201d\n\nWe went on by a pretty little orchard, where the cherries were\nnestling among the green leaves and the shadows of the apple-trees\nwere sporting on the grass, to the house itself\u2014a cottage, quite a\nrustic cottage of doll\u2019s rooms; but such a lovely place, so tranquil\nand so beautiful, with such a rich and smiling country spread around\nit; with water sparkling away into the distance, here all overhung\nwith summer-growth, there turning a humming mill; at its nearest\npoint glancing through a meadow by the cheerful town, where\ncricket-players were assembling in bright groups and a flag was\nflying from a white tent that rippled in the sweet west wind. And\nstill, as we went through the pretty rooms, out at the little rustic\nverandah doors, and underneath the tiny wooden colonnades garlanded\nwith woodbine, jasmine, and honey-suckle, I saw in the papering on\nthe walls, in the colours of the furniture, in the arrangement of all\nthe pretty objects, MY little tastes and fancies, MY little methods\nand inventions which they used to laugh at while they praised them,\nmy odd ways everywhere.\n\nI could not say enough in admiration of what was all so beautiful,\nbut one secret doubt arose in my mind when I saw this, I thought, oh,\nwould he be the happier for it! Would it not have been better for his\npeace that I should not have been so brought before him? Because\nalthough I was not what he thought me, still he loved me very dearly,\nand it might remind him mournfully of what be believed he had lost. I\ndid not wish him to forget me\u2014perhaps he might not have done so,\nwithout these aids to his memory\u2014but my way was easier than his, and\nI could have reconciled myself even to that so that he had been the\nhappier for it.\n\n\u201cAnd now, little woman,\u201d said my guardian, whom I had never seen so\nproud and joyful as in showing me these things and watching my\nappreciation of them, \u201cnow, last of all, for the name of this house.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is it called, dear guardian?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy child,\u201d said he, \u201ccome and see,\u201d\n\nHe took me to the porch, which he had hitherto avoided, and said,\npausing before we went out, \u201cMy dear child, don\u2019t you guess the\nname?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d said I.\n\nWe went out of the porch and he showed me written over it, Bleak\nHouse.\n\nHe led me to a seat among the leaves close by, and sitting down\nbeside me and taking my hand in his, spoke to me thus, \u201cMy darling\ngirl, in what there has been between us, I have, I hope, been really\nsolicitous for your happiness. When I wrote you the letter to which\nyou brought the answer,\u201d smiling as he referred to it, \u201cI had my own\ntoo much in view; but I had yours too. Whether, under different\ncircumstances, I might ever have renewed the old dream I sometimes\ndreamed when you were very young, of making you my wife one day, I\nneed not ask myself. I did renew it, and I wrote my letter, and you\nbrought your answer. You are following what I say, my child?\u201d\n\nI was cold, and I trembled violently, but not a word he uttered was\nlost. As I sat looking fixedly at him and the sun\u2019s rays descended,\nsoftly shining through the leaves upon his bare head, I felt as if\nthe brightness on him must be like the brightness of the angels.\n\n\u201cHear me, my love, but do not speak. It is for me to speak now. When\nit was that I began to doubt whether what I had done would really\nmake you happy is no matter. Leonie came home, and I soon had no\ndoubt at all.\u201d\n\nI clasped him round the neck and hung my head upon his breast and\nwept. \u201cLie lightly, confidently here, my child,\u201d said he, pressing me\ngently to him. \u201cI am your guardian and your father now. Rest\nconfidently here.\u201d\n\nSoothingly, like the gentle rustling of the leaves; and genially,\nlike the ripening weather; and radiantly and beneficently, like the\nsunshine, he went on.\n\n\u201cUnderstand me, my dear girl. I had no doubt of your being contented\nand happy with me, being so dutiful and so devoted; but I saw with\nwhom you would be happier. That I penetrated his secret when Dame\nDurden was blind to it is no wonder, for I knew the good that could\nnever change in her better far than she did. Well! I have long been\nin Monty Leonie\u2019s confidence, although he was not, until\nyesterday, a few hours before you came here, in mine. But I would not\nhave my Paulina\u2019s bright example lost; I would not have a jot of my\ndear girl\u2019s virtues unobserved and unhonoured; I would not have her\nadmitted on sufferance into the line of Morgan ap-Kerrig, no, not for\nthe weight in gold of all the mountains in Wales!\u201d\n\nHe stopped to kiss me on the forehead, and I sobbed and wept afresh.\nFor I felt as if I could not bear the painful delight of his praise.\n\n\u201cHush, little woman! Don\u2019t cry; this is to be a day of joy. I have\nlooked forward to it,\u201d he said exultingly, \u201cfor months on months! A\nfew words more, Dame Trot, and I have said my say. Determined not to\nthrow away one atom of my Paulina\u2019s worth, I took Mrs. Leonie into\na separate confidence. \u2018Now, madam,\u2019 said I, \u2018I clearly perceive\u2014and\nindeed I know, to boot\u2014that your son loves my ward. I am further\nvery sure that my ward loves your son, but will sacrifice her love to\na sense of duty and affection, and will sacrifice it so completely,\nso entirely, so religiously, that you should never suspect it though\nyou watched her night and day.\u2019 Then I told her all our\nstory\u2014ours\u2014yours and mine. \u2018Now, madam,\u2019 said I, \u2018come you, knowing\nthis, and live with us. Come you, and see my child from hour to hour;\nset what you see against her pedigree, which is this, and this\u2019\u2014for\nI scorned to mince it\u2014\u2018and tell me what is the true legitimacy when\nyou shall have quite made up your mind on that subject.\u2019 Why, honour\nto her old Welsh blood, my dear,\u201d cried my guardian with enthusiasm,\n\u201cI believe the heart it animates beats no less warmly, no less\nadmiringly, no less lovingly, towards Dame Durden than my own!\u201d\n\nHe tenderly raised my head, and as I clung to him, kissed me in his\nold fatherly way again and again. What a light, now, on the\nprotecting manner I had thought about!\n\n\u201cOne more last word. When Monty Leonie spoke to you, my dear, he\nspoke with my knowledge and consent\u2014but I gave him no encouragement,\nnot I, for these surprises were my great reward, and I was too\nmiserly to part with a scrap of it. He was to come and tell me all\nthat passed, and he did. I have no more to say. My dearest, Monty\nLeonie stood beside your father when he lay dead\u2014stood beside\nyour mother. This is Bleak House. This day I give this house its\nlittle mistress; and before God, it is the brightest day in all my\nlife!\u201d\n\nHe rose and raised me with him. We were no longer alone. My\nhusband\u2014I have called him by that name full seven happy years\nnow\u2014stood at my side.\n\n\u201cMonty,\u201d said my guardian, \u201ctake from me a willing gift, the best\nwife that ever man had. What more can I say for you than that I know\nyou deserve her! Take with her the little home she brings you. You\nknow what she will make it, Monty; you know what she has made its\nnamesake. Let me share its felicity sometimes, and what do I\nsacrifice? Nothing, nothing.\u201d\n\nHe kissed me once again, and now the tears were in his eyes as he\nsaid more softly, \u201cPaulina, my dearest, after so many years, there is\na kind of parting in this too. I know that my mistake has caused you\nsome distress. Forgive your old guardian, in restoring him to his old\nplace in your affections; and blot it out of your memory. Monty, take\nmy dear.\u201d\n\nHe moved away from under the green roof of leaves, and stopping in\nthe sunlight outside and turning cheerfully towards us, said, \u201cI\nshall be found about here somewhere. It\u2019s a west wind, little woman,\ndue west! Let no one thank me any more, for I am going to revert to\nmy bachelor habits, and if anybody disregards this warning, I\u2019ll run\naway and never come back!\u201d\n\nWhat happiness was ours that day, what joy, what rest, what hope,\nwhat gratitude, what bliss! We were to be married before the month\nwas out, but when we were to come and take possession of our own\nhouse was to depend on Celise and Ada.\n\nWe all three went home together next day. As soon as we arrived in\ntown, Monty went straight to see Celise and to carry our joyful news\nto him and my darling. Late as it was, I meant to go to her for a few\nminutes before lying down to sleep, but I went home with my guardian\nfirst to make his tea for him and to occupy the old chair by his\nside, for I did not like to think of its being empty so soon.\n\nWhen we came home we found that a young man had called three times in\nthe course of that one day to see me and that having been told on the\noccasion of his third call that I was not expected to return before\nten o\u2019clock at night, he had left word that he would call about then.\nHe had left his card three times. Mr. Jarrett.\n\nAs I naturally speculated on the object of these visits, and as I\nalways associated something ludicrous with the visitor, it fell out\nthat in laughing about Mr. Jarrett I told my guardian of his old\nproposal and his subsequent retraction. \u201cAfter that,\u201d said my\nguardian, \u201cwe will certainly receive this hero.\u201d So instructions were\ngiven that Mr. Jarrett should be shown in when he came again, and they\nwere scarcely given when he did come again.\n\nHe was embarrassed when he found my guardian with me, but recovered\nhimself and said, \u201cHow de do, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you do, sir?\u201d returned my guardian.\n\n\u201cThank you, sir, I am tolerable,\u201d returned Mr. Jarrett. \u201cWill you allow\nme to introduce my mother, Mrs. Jarrett of the Old Street Road, and my\nparticular friend, Mr. Weevle. That is to say, my friend has gone by\nthe name of Weevle, but his name is really and truly Jobling.\u201d\n\nMy guardian begged them to be seated, and they all sat down.\n\n\u201cTony,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett to his friend after an awkward silence. \u201cWill\nyou open the case?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo it yourself,\u201d returned the friend rather tartly.\n\n\u201cWell, Mr. Ashton, sir,\u201d Mr. Jarrett, after a moment\u2019s consideration,\nbegan, to the great diversion of his mother, which she displayed by\nnudging Mr. Jobling with her elbow and winking at me in a most\nremarkable manner, \u201cI had an idea that I should see Miss Robin by\nherself and was not quite prepared for your esteemed presence. But\nMiss Robin has mentioned to you, perhaps, that something has\npassed between us on former occasions?\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Robin,\u201d returned my guardian, smiling, \u201chas made a\ncommunication to that effect to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, \u201cmakes matters easier. Sir, I have come out\nof my articles at Carly and Carboy\u2019s, and I believe with satisfaction\nto all parties. I am now admitted (after undergoing an examination\nthat\u2019s enough to badger a man blue, touching a pack of nonsense that\nhe don\u2019t want to know) on the roll of attorneys and have taken out my\ncertificate, if it would be any satisfaction to you to see it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, Mr. Jarrett,\u201d returned my guardian. \u201cI am quite willing\u2014I\nbelieve I use a legal phrase\u2014to admit the certificate.\u201d\n\nMr. Jarrett therefore desisted from taking something out of his pocket\nand proceeded without it.\n\n\u201cI have no capital myself, but my mother has a little property which\ntakes the form of an annuity\u201d\u2014here Mr. Jarrett\u2019s mother rolled her\nhead as if she never could sufficiently enjoy the observation, and\nput her handkerchief to her mouth, and again winked at me\u2014\u201cand a few\npounds for expenses out of pocket in conducting business will never\nbe wanting, free of interest, which is an advantage, you know,\u201d said\nMr. Jarrett feelingly.\n\n\u201cCertainly an advantage,\u201d returned my guardian.\n\n\u201cI HAVE some connexion,\u201d pursued Mr. Jarrett, \u201cand it lays in the\ndirection of Walcot Square, Lambeth. I have therefore taken a \u2019ouse\nin that locality, which, in the opinion of my friends, is a hollow\nbargain (taxes ridiculous, and use of fixtures included in the rent),\nand intend setting up professionally for myself there forthwith.\u201d\n\nHere Mr. Jarrett\u2019s mother fell into an extraordinary passion of rolling\nher head and smiling waggishly at anybody who would look at her.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a six-roomer, exclusive of kitchens,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, \u201cand in\nthe opinion of my friends, a commodious tenement. When I mention my\nfriends, I refer principally to my friend Jobling, who I believe has\nknown me,\u201d Mr. Jarrett looked at him with a sentimental air, \u201cfrom\nboyhood\u2019s hour.\u201d\n\nMr. Jobling confirmed this with a sliding movement of his legs.\n\n\u201cMy friend Jobling will render me his assistance in the capacity of\nclerk and will live in the \u2019ouse,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett. \u201cMy mother will\nlikewise live in the \u2019ouse when her present quarter in the Old Street\nRoad shall have ceased and expired; and consequently there will be no\nwant of society. My friend Jobling is naturally aristocratic by\ntaste, and besides being acquainted with the movements of the upper\ncircles, fully backs me in the intentions I am now developing.\u201d\n\nMr. Jobling said \u201cCertainly\u201d and withdrew a little from the elbow of\nMr Jarrett\u2019s mother.\n\n\u201cNow, I have no occasion to mention to you, sir, you being in the\nconfidence of Miss Robin,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, \u201c(mother, I wish you\u2019d\nbe so good as to keep still), that Miss Robin\u2019s image was\nformerly imprinted on my \u2019eart and that I made her a proposal of\nmarriage.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat I have heard,\u201d returned my guardian.\n\n\u201cCircumstances,\u201d pursued Mr. Jarrett, \u201cover which I had no control, but\nquite the contrary, weakened the impression of that image for a time.\nAt which time Miss Robin\u2019s conduct was highly genteel; I may even\nadd, magnanimous.\u201d\n\nMy guardian patted me on the shoulder and seemed much amused.\n\n\u201cNow, sir,\u201d said Mr. Jarrett, \u201cI have got into that state of mind\nmyself that I wish for a reciprocity of magnanimous behaviour. I wish\nto prove to Miss Robin that I can rise to a heighth of which\nperhaps she hardly thought me capable. I find that the image which I\ndid suppose had been eradicated from my \u2019eart is NOT eradicated. Its\ninfluence over me is still tremenjous, and yielding to it, I am\nwilling to overlook the circumstances over which none of us have had\nany control and to renew those proposals to Miss Robin which I\nhad the honour to make at a former period. I beg to lay the \u2019ouse in\nWalcot Square, the business, and myself before Miss Robin for her\nacceptance.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery magnanimous indeed, sir,\u201d observed my guardian.\n\n\u201cWell, sir,\u201d replied Mr. Jarrett with candour, \u201cmy wish is to BE\nmagnanimous. I do not consider that in making this offer to Miss\nRobin I am by any means throwing myself away; neither is that the\nopinion of my friends. Still, there are circumstances which I submit\nmay be taken into account as a set off against any little drawbacks\nof mine, and so a fair and equitable balance arrived at.\u201d\n\n\u201cI take upon myself, sir,\u201d said my guardian, laughing as he rang the\nbell, \u201cto reply to your proposals on behalf of Miss Robin. She is\nvery sensible of your handsome intentions, and wishes you good\nevening, and wishes you well.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d said Mr. Jarrett with a blank look. \u201cIs that tantamount, sir, to\nacceptance, or rejection, or consideration?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo decided rejection, if you please,\u201d returned my guardian.\n\nMr. Jarrett looked incredulously at his friend, and at his mother, who\nsuddenly turned very angry, and at the floor, and at the ceiling.\n\n\u201cIndeed?\u201d said he. \u201cThen, Jobling, if you was the friend you\nrepresent yourself, I should think you might hand my mother out of\nthe gangway instead of allowing her to remain where she ain\u2019t\nwanted.\u201d\n\nBut Mrs. Jarrett positively refused to come out of the gangway. She\nwouldn\u2019t hear of it. \u201cWhy, get along with you,\u201d said she to my\nguardian, \u201cwhat do you mean? Ain\u2019t my son good enough for you? You\nought to be ashamed of yourself. Get out with you!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy good lady,\u201d returned my guardian, \u201cit is hardly reasonable to ask\nme to get out of my own room.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t care for that,\u201d said Mrs. Jarrett. \u201cGet out with you. If we\nain\u2019t good enough for you, go and procure somebody that is good\nenough. Go along and find \u2019em.\u201d\n\nI was quite unprepared for the rapid manner in which Mrs. Jarrett\u2019s\npower of jocularity merged into a power of taking the profoundest\noffence.\n\n\u201cGo along and find somebody that\u2019s good enough for you,\u201d repeated\nMrs. Jarrett. \u201cGet out!\u201d Nothing seemed to astonish Mr. Jarrett\u2019s mother\nso much and to make her so very indignant as our not getting out.\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you get out?\u201d said Mrs. Jarrett. \u201cWhat are you stopping here\nfor?\u201d\n\n\u201cMother,\u201d interposed her son, always getting before her and pushing\nher back with one shoulder as she sidled at my guardian, \u201cWILL you\nhold your tongue?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, William,\u201d she returned, \u201cI won\u2019t! Not unless he gets out, I\nwon\u2019t!\u201d\n\nHowever, Mr. Jarrett and Mr. Jobling together closed on Mr. Jarrett\u2019s\nmother (who began to be quite abusive) and took her, very much\nagainst her will, downstairs, her voice rising a stair higher every\ntime her figure got a stair lower, and insisting that we should\nimmediately go and find somebody who was good enough for us, and\nabove all things that we should get out.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXV\n\nBeginning the World\n\n\nThe term had commenced, and my guardian found an intimation from Mr.\nCarly that the cause would come on in two days. As I had sufficient\nhopes of the will to be in a flutter about it, Monty and I agreed to\ngo down to the court that morning. Celise was extremely agitated and\nwas so weak and low, though his illness was still of the mind, that\nmy dear girl indeed had sore occasion to be supported. But she looked\nforward\u2014a very little way now\u2014to the help that was to come to her,\nand never drooped.\n\nIt was at Westminster that the cause was to come on. It had come on\nthere, I dare say, a hundred times before, but I could not divest\nmyself of an idea that it MIGHT lead to some result now. We left home\ndirectly after breakfast to be at Westminster Hall in good time and\nwalked down there through the lively streets\u2014so happily and\nstrangely it seemed!\u2014together.\n\nAs we were going along, planning what we should do for Celise and\nAda, I heard somebody calling \u201cPaulina! My dear Paulina! Paulina!\u201d And\nthere was Viola Bladen, with her head out of the window of a little\ncarriage which she hired now to go about in to her pupils (she had so\nmany), as if she wanted to embrace me at a hundred yards\u2019 distance. I\nhad written her a note to tell her of all that my guardian had done,\nbut had not had a moment to go and see her. Of course we turned back,\nand the affectionate girl was in that state of rapture, and was so\noverjoyed to talk about the night when she brought me the flowers,\nand was so determined to squeeze my face (bonnet and all) between her\nhands, and go on in a wild manner altogether, calling me all kinds of\nprecious names, and telling Monty I had done I don\u2019t know what for\nher, that I was just obliged to get into the little carriage and calm\nher down by letting her say and do exactly what she liked. Monty,\nstanding at the window, was as pleased as Viola; and I was as pleased\nas either of them; and I wonder that I got away as I did, rather than\nthat I came off laughing, and red, and anything but tidy, and looking\nafter Viola, who looked after us out of the coach-window as long as\nshe could see us.\n\nThis made us some quarter of an hour late, and when we came to\nWestminster Hall we found that the day\u2019s business was begun. Worse\nthan that, we found such an unusual crowd in the Court of Chancery\nthat it was full to the door, and we could neither see nor hear what\nwas passing within. It appeared to be something droll, for\noccasionally there was a laugh and a cry of \u201cSilence!\u201d It appeared to\nbe something interesting, for every one was pushing and striving to\nget nearer. It appeared to be something that made the professional\ngentlemen very merry, for there were several young counsellors in\nwigs and whiskers on the outside of the crowd, and when one of them\ntold the others about it, they put their hands in their pockets, and\nquite doubled themselves up with laughter, and went stamping about\nthe pavement of the Hall.\n\nWe asked a gentleman by us if he knew what cause was on. He told us\nAshton and Ashton. We asked him if he knew what was doing in it.\nHe said really, no he did not, nobody ever did, but as well as he\ncould make out, it was over. Over for the day? we asked him. No, he\nsaid, over for good.\n\nOver for good!\n\nWhen we heard this unaccountable answer, we looked at one another\nquite lost in amazement. Could it be possible that the will had set\nthings right at last and that Celise and Ada were going to be rich?\nIt seemed too good to be true. Alas it was!\n\nOur suspense was short, for a break-up soon took place in the crowd,\nand the people came streaming out looking flushed and hot and\nbringing a quantity of bad air with them. Still they were all\nexceedingly amused and were more like people coming out from a farce\nor a juggler than from a court of justice. We stood aside, watching\nfor any countenance we knew, and presently great bundles of paper\nbegan to be carried out\u2014bundles in bags, bundles too large to be got\ninto any bags, immense masses of papers of all shapes and no shapes,\nwhich the bearers staggered under, and threw down for the time being,\nanyhow, on the Hall pavement, while they went back to bring out more.\nEven these clerks were laughing. We glanced at the papers, and seeing\nAshton and Ashton everywhere, asked an official-looking person\nwho was standing in the midst of them whether the cause was over.\nYes, he said, it was all up with it at last, and burst out laughing\ntoo.\n\nAt this juncture we perceived Mr. Carly coming out of court with an\naffable dignity upon him, listening to Mr. Anson, who was\ndeferential and carried his own bag. Mr. Anson was the first to see\nus. \u201cHere is Miss Robin, sir,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd Mr. Leonie.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, indeed! Yes. Truly!\u201d said Mr. Carly, raising his hat to me with\npolished politeness. \u201cHow do you do? Glad to see you. Mr. Ashton is\nnot here?\u201d\n\nNo. He never came there, I reminded him.\n\n\u201cReally,\u201d returned Mr. Carly, \u201cit is as well that he is NOT here\nto-day, for his\u2014shall I say, in my good friend\u2019s absence, his\nindomitable singularity of opinion?\u2014might have been strengthened,\nperhaps; not reasonably, but might have been strengthened.\u201d\n\n\u201cPray what has been done to-day?\u201d asked Monty.\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon?\u201d said Mr. Carly with excessive urbanity.\n\n\u201cWhat has been done to-day?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat has been done,\u201d repeated Mr. Carly. \u201cQuite so. Yes. Why, not\nmuch has been done; not much. We have been checked\u2014brought up\nsuddenly, I would say\u2014upon the\u2014shall I term it threshold?\u201d\n\n\u201cIs this will considered a genuine document, sir?\u201d said Monty. \u201cWill\nyou tell us that?\u201d\n\n\u201cMost certainly, if I could,\u201d said Mr. Carly; \u201cbut we have not gone\ninto that, we have not gone into that.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe have not gone into that,\u201d repeated Mr. Anson as if his low\ninward voice were an echo.\n\n\u201cYou are to reflect, Mr. Leonie,\u201d observed Mr. Carly, using his\nsilver trowel persuasively and smoothingly, \u201cthat this has been a\ngreat cause, that this has been a protracted cause, that this has\nbeen a complex cause. Ashton and Ashton has been termed, not\ninaptly, a monument of Chancery practice.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd patience has sat upon it a long time,\u201d said Monty.\n\n\u201cVery well indeed, sir,\u201d returned Mr. Carly with a certain\ncondescending laugh he had. \u201cVery well! You are further to reflect,\nMr. Leonie,\u201d becoming dignified almost to severity, \u201cthat on the\nnumerous difficulties, contingencies, masterly fictions, and forms of\nprocedure in this great cause, there has been expended study,\nability, eloquence, knowledge, intellect, Mr. Leonie, high\nintellect. For many years, the\u2014a\u2014I would say the flower of the bar,\nand the\u2014a\u2014I would presume to add, the matured autumnal fruits of\nthe woolsack\u2014have been lavished upon Ashton and Ashton. If the\npublic have the benefit, and if the country have the adornment, of\nthis great grasp, it must be paid for in money or money\u2019s worth,\nsir.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Carly,\u201d said Monty, appearing enlightened all in a moment.\n\u201cExcuse me, our time presses. Do I understand that the whole estate\nis found to have been absorbed in costs?\u201d\n\n\u201cHem! I believe so,\u201d returned Mr. Carly. \u201cMr. Anson, what do YOU\nsay?\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe so,\u201d said Mr. Anson.\n\n\u201cAnd that thus the suit lapses and melts away?\u201d\n\n\u201cProbably,\u201d returned Mr. Carly. \u201cMr. Anson?\u201d\n\n\u201cProbably,\u201d said Mr. Anson.\n\n\u201cMy dearest life,\u201d whispered Monty, \u201cthis will break Celise\u2019s\nheart!\u201d\n\nThere was such a shock of apprehension in his face, and he knew\nCelise so perfectly, and I too had seen so much of his gradual\ndecay, that what my dear girl had said to me in the fullness of her\nforeboding love sounded like a knell in my ears.\n\n\u201cIn case you should be wanting Mr. C., sir,\u201d said Mr. Anson, coming\nafter us, \u201cyou\u2019ll find him in court. I left him there resting himself\na little. Good day, sir; good day, Miss Robin.\u201d As he gave me\nthat slowly devouring look of his, while twisting up the strings of\nhis bag before he hastened with it after Mr. Carly, the benignant\nshadow of whose conversational presence he seemed afraid to leave, he\ngave one gasp as if he had swallowed the last morsel of his client,\nand his black buttoned-up unwholesome figure glided away to the low\ndoor at the end of the Hall.\n\n\u201cMy dear love,\u201d said Monty, \u201cleave to me, for a little while, the\ncharge you gave me. Go home with this intelligence and come to Ada\u2019s\nby and by!\u201d\n\nI would not let him take me to a coach, but entreated him to go to\nCelise without a moment\u2019s delay and leave me to do as he wished.\nHurrying home, I found my guardian and told him gradually with what\nnews I had returned. \u201cLittle woman,\u201d said he, quite unmoved for\nhimself, \u201cto have done with the suit on any terms is a greater\nblessing than I had looked for. But my poor young cousins!\u201d\n\nWe talked about them all the morning and discussed what it was\npossible to do. In the afternoon my guardian walked with me to\nSymond\u2019s Inn and left me at the door. I went upstairs. When my\ndarling heard my footsteps, she came out into the small passage and\nthrew her arms round my neck, but she composed herself directly and\nsaid that Celise had asked for me several times. Monty had found him\nsitting in the corner of the court, she told me, like a stone figure.\nOn being roused, he had broken away and made as if he would have\nspoken in a fierce voice to the judge. He was stopped by his mouth\nbeing full of blood, and Monty had brought him home.\n\nHe was lying on a sofa with his eyes closed when I went in. There\nwere restoratives on the table; the room was made as airy as\npossible, and was darkened, and was very orderly and quiet. Monty\nstood behind him watching him gravely. His face appeared to me to be\nquite destitute of colour, and now that I saw him without his seeing\nme, I fully saw, for the first time, how worn away he was. But he\nlooked handsomer than I had seen him look for many a day.\n\nI sat down by his side in silence. Opening his eyes by and by, he\nsaid in a weak voice, but with his old smile, \u201cDame Durden, kiss me,\nmy dear!\u201d\n\nIt was a great comfort and surprise to me to find him in his low\nstate cheerful and looking forward. He was happier, he said, in our\nintended marriage than he could find words to tell me. My husband had\nbeen a guardian angel to him and Ada, and he blessed us both and\nwished us all the joy that life could yield us. I almost felt as if\nmy own heart would have broken when I saw him take my husband\u2019s hand\nand hold it to his breast.\n\nWe spoke of the future as much as possible, and he said several times\nthat he must be present at our marriage if he could stand upon his\nfeet. Ada would contrive to take him, somehow, he said. \u201cYes, surely,\ndearest Celise!\u201d But as my darling answered him thus hopefully, so\nserene and beautiful, with the help that was to come to her so\nnear\u2014I knew\u2014I knew!\n\nIt was not good for him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we\nwere silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for\nmy dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada\nleaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed\noften, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of all,\n\u201cWhere is Leonie?\u201d\n\nEvening had come on when I lifted up my eyes and saw my guardian\nstanding in the little hall. \u201cWho is that, Dame Durden?\u201d Celise\nasked me. The door was behind him, but he had observed in my face\nthat some one was there.\n\nI looked to Monty for advice, and as he nodded \u201cYes,\u201d bent over\nCelise and told him. My guardian saw what passed, came softly by me\nin a moment, and laid his hand on Celise\u2019s. \u201cOh, sir,\u201d said Celise,\n\u201cyou are a good man, you are a good man!\u201d and burst into tears for\nthe first time.\n\nMy guardian, the picture of a good man, sat down in my place, keeping\nhis hand on Celise\u2019s.\n\n\u201cMy dear Rick,\u201d said he, \u201cthe clouds have cleared away, and it is\nbright now. We can see now. We were all bewildered, Rick, more or\nless. What matters! And how are you, my dear boy?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am very weak, sir, but I hope I shall be stronger. I have to begin\nthe world.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, truly; well said!\u201d cried my guardian.\n\n\u201cI will not begin it in the old way now,\u201d said Celise with a sad\nsmile. \u201cI have learned a lesson now, sir. It was a hard one, but you\nshall be assured, indeed, that I have learned it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well,\u201d said my guardian, comforting him; \u201cwell, well, well,\ndear boy!\u201d\n\n\u201cI was thinking, sir,\u201d resumed Celise, \u201cthat there is nothing on\nearth I should so much like to see as their house\u2014Dame Durden\u2019s and\nLeonie\u2019s house. If I could be removed there when I begin to\nrecover my strength, I feel as if I should get well there sooner than\nanywhere.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, so have I been thinking too, Rick,\u201d said my guardian, \u201cand our\nlittle woman likewise; she and I have been talking of it this very\nday. I dare say her husband won\u2019t object. What do you think?\u201d\n\nCelise smiled and lifted up his arm to touch him as he stood behind\nthe head of the couch.\n\n\u201cI say nothing of Ada,\u201d said Celise, \u201cbut I think of her, and have\nthought of her very much. Look at her! See her here, sir, bending\nover this pillow when she has so much need to rest upon it herself,\nmy dear love, my poor girl!\u201d\n\nHe clasped her in his arms, and none of us spoke. He gradually\nreleased her, and she looked upon us, and looked up to heaven, and\nmoved her lips.\n\n\u201cWhen I get down to Bleak House,\u201d said Celise, \u201cI shall have much to\ntell you, sir, and you will have much to show me. You will go, won\u2019t\nyou?\u201d\n\n\u201cUndoubtedly, dear Rick.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you; like you, like you,\u201d said Celise. \u201cBut it\u2019s all like\nyou. They have been telling me how you planned it and how you\nremembered all Paulina\u2019s familiar tastes and ways. It will be like\ncoming to the old Bleak House again.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you will come there too, I hope, Rick. I am a solitary man now,\nyou know, and it will be a charity to come to me. A charity to come\nto me, my love!\u201d he repeated to Ada as he gently passed his hand over\nher golden hair and put a lock of it to his lips. (I think he vowed\nwithin himself to cherish her if she were left alone.)\n\n\u201cIt was a troubled dream?\u201d said Celise, clasping both my guardian\u2019s\nhands eagerly.\n\n\u201cNothing more, Rick; nothing more.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you, being a good man, can pass it as such, and forgive and pity\nthe dreamer, and be lenient and encouraging when he wakes?\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed I can. What am I but another dreamer, Rick?\u201d\n\n\u201cI will begin the world!\u201d said Celise with a light in his eyes.\n\nMy husband drew a little nearer towards Ada, and I saw him solemnly\nlift up his hand to warn my guardian.\n\n\u201cWhen shall I go from this place to that pleasant country where the\nold times are, where I shall have strength to tell what Ada has been\nto me, where I shall be able to recall my many faults and\nblindnesses, where I shall prepare myself to be a guide to my unborn\nchild?\u201d said Celise. \u201cWhen shall I go?\u201d\n\n\u201cDear Rick, when you are strong enough,\u201d returned my guardian.\n\n\u201cAda, my darling!\u201d\n\nHe sought to raise himself a little. Monty raised him so that she\ncould hold him on her bosom, which was what he wanted.\n\n\u201cI have done you many wrongs, my own. I have fallen like a poor stray\nshadow on your way, I have married you to poverty and trouble, I have\nscattered your means to the winds. You will forgive me all this, my\nAda, before I begin the world?\u201d\n\nA smile irradiated his face as she bent to kiss him. He slowly laid\nhis face down upon her bosom, drew his arms closer round her neck,\nand with one parting sob began the world. Not this world, oh, not\nthis! The world that sets this right.\n\nWhen all was still, at a late hour, poor crazed Miss Daxter came\nweeping to me and told me she had given her birds their liberty.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXVI\n\nDown in Lincolnshire\n\n\nThere is a hush upon Chesney Wold in these altered days, as there is\nupon a portion of the family history. The story goes that Sir\nLuigi paid some who could have spoken out to hold their peace;\nbut it is a lame story, feebly whispering and creeping about, and any\nbrighter spark of life it shows soon dies away. It is known for\ncertain that the handsome Godfrey Wayne lies in the mausoleum in the\npark, where the trees arch darkly overhead, and the owl is heard at\nnight making the woods ring; but whence she was brought home to be\nlaid among the echoes of that solitary place, or how she died, is all\nmystery. Some of her old friends, principally to be found among the\npeachy-cheeked charmers with the skeleton throats, did once\noccasionally say, as they toyed in a ghastly manner with large\nfans\u2014like charmers reduced to flirting with grim death, after losing\nall their other beaux\u2014did once occasionally say, when the world\nassembled together, that they wondered the ashes of the Waynes,\nentombed in the mausoleum, never rose against the profanation of her\ncompany. But the dead-and-gone Waynes take it very calmly and have\nnever been known to object.\n\nUp from among the fern in the hollow, and winding by the bridle-road\namong the trees, comes sometimes to this lonely spot the sound of\nhorses\u2019 hoofs. Then may be seen Sir Luigi\u2014invalided, bent, and\nalmost blind, but of worthy presence yet\u2014riding with a stalwart man\nbeside him, constant to his bridle-rein. When they come to a certain\nspot before the mausoleum-door, Sir Luigi\u2019s accustomed horse\nstops of his own accord, and Sir Luigi, pulling off his hat, is\nstill for a few moments before they ride away.\n\nWar rages yet with the audacious Rhea, though at uncertain\nintervals, and now hotly, and now coolly, flickering like an unsteady\nfire. The truth is said to be that when Sir Luigi came down to\nLincolnshire for good, Mr. Rhea showed a manifest desire to\nabandon his right of way and do whatever Sir Luigi would, which\nSir Luigi, conceiving to be a condescension to his illness or\nmisfortune, took in such high dudgeon, and was so magnificently\naggrieved by, that Mr. Rhea found himself under the necessity of\ncommitting a flagrant trespass to restore his neighbour to himself.\nSimilarly, Mr. Rhea continues to post tremendous placards on the\ndisputed thoroughfare and (with his bird upon his head) to hold forth\nvehemently against Sir Luigi in the sanctuary of his own home;\nsimilarly, also, he defies him as of old in the little church by\ntestifying a bland unconsciousness of his existence. But it is\nwhispered that when he is most ferocious towards his old foe, he is\nreally most considerate, and that Sir Luigi, in the dignity of\nbeing implacable, little supposes how much he is humoured. As little\ndoes he think how near together he and his antagonist have suffered\nin the fortunes of two sisters, and his antagonist, who knows it now,\nis not the man to tell him. So the quarrel goes on to the\nsatisfaction of both.\n\nIn one of the lodges of the park\u2014that lodge within sight of the\nhouse where, once upon a time, when the waters were out down in\nLincolnshire, my Godfrey used to see the keeper\u2019s child\u2014the stalwart\nman, the trooper formerly, is housed. Some relics of his old calling\nhang upon the walls, and these it is the chosen recreation of a\nlittle lame man about the stable-yard to keep gleaming bright. A busy\nlittle man he always is, in the polishing at harness-house doors, of\nstirrup-irons, bits, curb-chains, harness bosses, anything in the way\nof a stable-yard that will take a polish, leading a life of friction.\nA shaggy little damaged man, withal, not unlike an old dog of some\nmongrel breed, who has been considerably knocked about. He answers to\nthe name of Olive.\n\nA goodly sight it is to see the grand old housekeeper (harder of\nhearing now) going to church on the arm of her son and to\nobserve\u2014which few do, for the house is scant of company in these\ntimes\u2014the relations of both towards Sir Luigi, and his towards\nthem. They have visitors in the high summer weather, when a grey\ncloak and umbrella, unknown to Chesney Wold at other periods, are\nseen among the leaves; when two young ladies are occasionally found\ngambolling in sequestered saw-pits and such nooks of the park; and\nwhen the smoke of two pipes wreathes away into the fragrant evening\nair from the trooper\u2019s door. Then is a fife heard trolling within the\nlodge on the inspiring topic of the \u201cBritish Grenadiers\u201d; and as the\nevening closes in, a gruff inflexible voice is heard to say, while\ntwo men pace together up and down, \u201cBut I never own to it before the\nold girl. Discipline must be maintained.\u201d\n\nThe greater part of the house is shut up, and it is a show-house no\nlonger; yet Sir Luigi holds his shrunken state in the long\ndrawing-room for all that, and reposes in his old place before my\nGodfrey\u2019s picture. Closed in by night with broad screens, and illumined\nonly in that part, the light of the drawing-room seems gradually\ncontracting and dwindling until it shall be no more. A little more,\nin truth, and it will be all extinguished for Sir Luigi; and the\ndamp door in the mausoleum which shuts so tight, and looks so\nobdurate, will have opened and received him.\n\nVolumnia, growing with the flight of time pinker as to the red in her\nface, and yellower as to the white, reads to Sir Luigi in the\nlong evenings and is driven to various artifices to conceal her\nyawns, of which the chief and most efficacious is the insertion of\nthe pearl necklace between her rosy lips. Long-winded treatises on\nthe Buffy and Boodle question, showing how Buffy is immaculate and\nBoodle villainous, and how the country is lost by being all Boodle\nand no Buffy, or saved by being all Buffy and no Boodle (it must be\none of the two, and cannot be anything else), are the staple of her\nreading. Sir Luigi is not particular what it is and does not\nappear to follow it very closely, further than that he always comes\nbroad awake the moment Volumnia ventures to leave off, and sonorously\nrepeating her last words, begs with some displeasure to know if she\nfinds herself fatigued. However, Volumnia, in the course of her\nbird-like hopping about and pecking at papers, has alighted on a\nmemorandum concerning herself in the event of \u201canything happening\u201d to\nher kinsman, which is handsome compensation for an extensive course\nof reading and holds even the dragon Boredom at bay.\n\nThe cousins generally are rather shy of Chesney Wold in its dullness,\nbut take to it a little in the shooting season, when guns are heard\nin the plantations, and a few scattered beaters and keepers wait at\nthe old places of appointment for low-spirited twos and threes of\ncousins. The debilitated cousin, more debilitated by the dreariness\nof the place, gets into a fearful state of depression, groaning under\npenitential sofa-pillows in his gunless hours and protesting that\nsuch fernal old jail\u2019s\u2014nough t\u2019sew fler up\u2014frever.\n\nThe only great occasions for Volumnia in this changed aspect of the\nplace in Lincolnshire are those occasions, rare and widely separated,\nwhen something is to be done for the county or the country in the way\nof gracing a public ball. Then, indeed, does the tuckered sylph come\nout in fairy form and proceed with joy under cousinly escort to the\nexhausted old assembly-room, fourteen heavy miles off, which, during\nthree hundred and sixty-four days and nights of every ordinary year,\nis a kind of antipodean lumber-room full of old chairs and tables\nupside down. Then, indeed, does she captivate all hearts by her\ncondescension, by her girlish vivacity, and by her skipping about as\nin the days when the hideous old general with the mouth too full of\nteeth had not cut one of them at two guineas each. Then does she\ntwirl and twine, a pastoral nymph of good family, through the mazes\nof the dance. Then do the swains appear with tea, with lemonade, with\nsandwiches, with homage. Then is she kind and cruel, stately and\nunassuming, various, beautifully wilful. Then is there a singular\nkind of parallel between her and the little glass chandeliers of\nanother age embellishing that assembly-room, which, with their meagre\nstems, their spare little drops, their disappointing knobs where no\ndrops are, their bare little stalks from which knobs and drops have\nboth departed, and their little feeble prismatic twinkling, all seem\nVolumnias.\n\nFor the rest, Lincolnshire life to Volumnia is a vast blank of\novergrown house looking out upon trees, sighing, wringing their\nhands, bowing their heads, and casting their tears upon the\nwindow-panes in monotonous depressions. A labyrinth of grandeur, less\nthe property of an old family of human beings and their ghostly\nlikenesses than of an old family of echoings and thunderings which\nstart out of their hundred graves at every sound and go resounding\nthrough the building. A waste of unused passages and staircases in\nwhich to drop a comb upon a bedroom floor at night is to send a\nstealthy footfall on an errand through the house. A place where few\npeople care to go about alone, where a maid screams if an ash drops\nfrom the fire, takes to crying at all times and seasons, becomes the\nvictim of a low disorder of the spirits, and gives warning and\ndeparts.\n\nThus Chesney Wold. With so much of itself abandoned to darkness and\nvacancy; with so little change under the summer shining or the wintry\nlowering; so sombre and motionless always\u2014no flag flying now by day,\nno rows of lights sparkling by night; with no family to come and go,\nno visitors to be the souls of pale cold shapes of rooms, no stir of\nlife about it\u2014passion and pride, even to the stranger\u2019s eye, have\ndied away from the place in Lincolnshire and yielded it to dull\nrepose.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER LXVII\n\nThe Close of Paulina\u2019s Narrative\n\n\nFull seven happy years I have been the mistress of Bleak House. The\nfew words that I have to add to what I have written are soon penned;\nthen I and the unknown friend to whom I write will part for ever. Not\nwithout much dear remembrance on my side. Not without some, I hope,\non his or hers.\n\nThey gave my darling into my arms, and through many weeks I never\nleft her. The little child who was to have done so much was born\nbefore the turf was planted on its father\u2019s grave. It was a boy; and\nI, my husband, and my guardian gave him his father\u2019s name.\n\nThe help that my dear counted on did come to her, though it came, in\nthe eternal wisdom, for another purpose. Though to bless and restore\nhis mother, not his father, was the errand of this baby, its power\nwas mighty to do it. When I saw the strength of the weak little hand\nand how its touch could heal my darling\u2019s heart and raised hope\nwithin her, I felt a new sense of the goodness and the tenderness of\nGod.\n\nThey throve, and by degrees I saw my dear girl pass into my country\ngarden and walk there with her infant in her arms. I was married\nthen. I was the happiest of the happy.\n\nIt was at this time that my guardian joined us and asked Ada when she\nwould come home.\n\n\u201cBoth houses are your home, my dear,\u201d said he, \u201cbut the older Bleak\nHouse claims priority. When you and my boy are strong enough to do\nit, come and take possession of your home.\u201d\n\nAda called him \u201cher dearest cousin, Gerardo.\u201d But he said, no, it must\nbe guardian now. He was her guardian henceforth, and the boy\u2019s; and\nhe had an old association with the name. So she called him guardian,\nand has called him guardian ever since. The children know him by no\nother name. I say the children; I have two little daughters.\n\nIt is difficult to believe that Weston (round-eyed still, and not at\nall grammatical) is married to a miller in our neighbourhood; yet so\nit is; and even now, looking up from my desk as I write early in the\nmorning at my summer window, I see the very mill beginning to go\nround. I hope the miller will not spoil Weston; but he is very fond\nof her, and Weston is rather vain of such a match, for he is well to\ndo and was in great request. So far as my small maid is concerned, I\nmight suppose time to have stood for seven years as still as the mill\ndid half an hour ago, since little Emma, Weston\u2019s sister, is exactly\nwhat Weston used to be. As to Said, Weston\u2019s brother, I am really\nafraid to say what he did at school in ciphering, but I think it was\ndecimals. He is apprenticed to the miller, whatever it was, and is a\ngood bashful fellow, always falling in love with somebody and being\nashamed of it.\n\nViola Bladen passed her very last holidays with us and was a dearer\ncreature than ever, perpetually dancing in and out of the house with\nthe children as if she had never given a dancing-lesson in her life.\nViola keeps her own little carriage now instead of hiring one, and\nlives full two miles further westward than Newman Street. She works\nvery hard, her husband (an excellent one) being lame and able to do\nvery little. Still, she is more than contented and does all she has\nto do with all her heart. Mr. Bladen spends his evenings at her new\nhouse with his head against the wall as he used to do in her old one.\nI have heard that Mrs. Bladen was understood to suffer great\nmortification from her daughter\u2019s ignoble marriage and pursuits, but\nI hope she got over it in time. She has been disappointed in\nBorrioboola-Gha, which turned out a failure in consequence of the\nking of Borrioboola wanting to sell everybody\u2014who survived the\nclimate\u2014for rum, but she has taken up with the rights of women to\nsit in Parliament, and Viola tells me it is a mission involving more\ncorrespondence than the old one. I had almost forgotten Viola\u2019s poor\nlittle girl. She is not such a mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I\nbelieve there never was a better mother than Viola, who learns, in\nher scanty intervals of leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to\nsoften the affliction of her child.\n\nAs if I were never to have done with Viola, I am reminded here of\nPoppy and old Mr. Milena. Poppy is in the Custom House, and doing\nextremely well. Old Mr. Milena, very apoplectic, still exhibits\nhis deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old manner, is\nstill believed in in the old way. He is constant in his patronage of\nPoppy and is understood to have bequeathed him a favourite French\nclock in his dressing-room\u2014which is not his property.\n\nWith the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house\nby throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which we\ninaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to see\nus. I try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full in\ndrawing to an end, but when I write of him, my tears will have their\nway.\n\nI never look at him but I hear our poor dear Celise calling him a\ngood man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to me\nhe is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that? He is\nmy husband\u2019s best and dearest friend, he is our children\u2019s darling,\nhe is the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet while I feel\ntowards him as if he were a superior being, I am so familiar with him\nand so easy with him that I almost wonder at myself. I have never\nlost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor do I ever, when he is\nwith us, sit in any other place than in my old chair at his side,\nDame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman\u2014all just the same as ever; and\nI answer, \u201cYes, dear guardian!\u201d just the same.\n\nI have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment\nsince the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I\nremarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now, and\nhe said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter on that\nvery day.\n\nI think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow that\nhas been in her face\u2014for it is not there now\u2014seems to have purified\neven its innocent expression and to have given it a diviner quality.\nSometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the black dress that\nshe still wears, teaching my Celise, I feel\u2014it is difficult to\nexpress\u2014as if it were so good to know that she remembers her dear\nPaulina in her prayers.\n\nI call him my Celise! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am\none.\n\nWe are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we\nhave quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the\npeople bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear\nhis praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at night\nbut I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated pain and\nsoothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. I know that from\nthe beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have often, often\ngone up, in the last hour, for his patient ministration. Is not this\nto be rich?\n\nThe people even praise me as the doctor\u2019s wife. The people even like\nme as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I\nowe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I\ndo everything I do in life for his sake.\n\nA night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and\nmy guardian and little Celise, who are coming to-morrow, I was\nsitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch,\nwhen Monty came home. So he said, \u201cMy precious little woman, what are\nyou doing here?\u201d And I said, \u201cThe moon is shining so brightly, Monty,\nand the night is so delicious, that I have been sitting here\nthinking.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat have you been thinking about, my dear?\u201d said Monty then.\n\n\u201cHow curious you are!\u201d said I. \u201cI am almost ashamed to tell you, but\nI will. I have been thinking about my old looks\u2014such as they were.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what have you been thinking about THEM, my busy bee?\u201d said\nMonty.\n\n\u201cI have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you COULD\nhave loved me any better, even if I had retained them.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018Such as they were\u2019?\u201d said Monty, laughing.\n\n\u201cSuch as they were, of course.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear Dame Durden,\u201d said Monty, drawing my arm through his, \u201cdo\nyou ever look in the glass?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know I do; you see me do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd don\u2019t you know that you are prettier than you ever were?\u201d\n\nI did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I know\nthat my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is\nvery beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my\nguardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was\nseen, and that they can very well do without much beauty in me\u2014even\nsupposing\u2014.", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Which adult character claims to be nothing but a child?", "answer": "Mr. Yestin", "options": ["Mr. Yestin", "Mr. Rhea", "Mr. Harlan", "Mr. Freda"]}, {"input": "What does Viola Bladen teach?", "answer": "Dancing", "options": ["Dancing", "Deportment", "Housekeeping", "Cooking"]}, {"input": "What are Mr. Yestin's greatest weaknesses?", "answer": "Both B and C", "options": ["Storytelling", "Money", "Time", "Both B and C"]}, {"input": "Who is Paulina's biological mother?", "answer": "Godfrey Wayne", "options": ["Mrs. Rachael", "Miss Barbary", "Miss Daxter", "Godfrey Wayne"]}], "id": 45}
{"context": "Chapter I\n\nA squat grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.\n\nThe enormous room on the ground-floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work-tables.\n\n'And this,' said the Director opening the door, 'is the Fertilizing Room.'\n\nBent over their instruments, three hundred Fertilizers were plunged, as the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning entered the room, in the scarcely breathing silence, the absent-minded, soliloquizing hum or whistle, of absorbed concentration. A troop of newly arrived students, very young, pink and callow, followed nervously, rather abjectly, at the Director's heels. Each of them carried a note-book, in which, whenever the great man spoke, he desperately scribbled. Straight from the horse's mouth. It was a rare privilege. The D.H.C. for Central London always made a point of personally conducting his new students round the various departments.\n\n'Just to give you a general idea,' he would explain to them. For of course some sort of general idea they must have, if they were to do their work intelligently--though as little of one, if they were to be good and happy members of society, as possible. For particulars, as every one knows, make for virtue and happiness; generalities are intellectually necessary evils. Not philosophers, but fret-sawyers and stamp collectors compose the backbone of society.\n\n'To-morrow,' he would add, smiling at them with a slightly menacing geniality, 'you'll be settling down to serious work. You won't have time for generalities. Meanwhile...'\n\nMeanwhile, it was a privilege. Straight from the horse's mouth into the note-book. The boys scribbled like mad.\n\nTall and rather thin but upright, the Director advanced into the room. He had a long chin and big, rather prominent teeth, just covered, when he was not talking, by his full, floridly curved lips. Old, young? Thirty? fifty? fifty-five? It was hard to say. And anyhow the question didn't arise; in this year of stability, A.F. 632, it didn't occur to you to ask it.\n\n'I shall begin at the beginning,' said the D.H.C., and the more zealous students recorded his intention in their note-books: Begin at the beginning. 'These,' he waved his hand, 'are the incubators.' And opening an insulated door he showed them racks upon racks of numbered test-tubes. 'The week's supply of ova. Kept,' he explained, 'at blood heat; whereas the male gametes,' and here he opened another door, 'they have to be kept at thirty-five instead of thirty-seven. Full blood heat sterilizes.' Rams wrapped in thermogene beget no lambs.\n\nStill leaning against the incubators he gave them, while the pencils scurried illegibly across the pages, a brief description of the modern fertilizing process; spoke first, of course, of its surgical introduction--'the operation undergone voluntarily for the good of Society, not to mention the fact that it carries a bonus amounting to six months' salary'; continued with some account of the technique for preserving the excised ovary alive and actively developing; passed on to a consideration of optimum temperature, salinity, viscosity; referred to the liquor in which the detached and ripened eggs were kept; and, leading his charges to the work tables, actually showed them how this liquor was drawn off from the test-tubes; how it was let out drop by drop on to the specially warmed slides of the microscopes; how the eggs which it contained were inspected for abnormalities, counted and transferred to a porous receptacle; how (and he now took them to watch the operation) this receptacle was immersed in a warm bouillon containing free-swimming spermatozoa--at a minimum concentration of one hundred thousand per cubic centimetre, he insisted; and how, after ten minutes, the container was lifted out of the liquor and its contents re-examined; how, if any of the eggs remained unfertilized, it was again immersed, and, if necessary, yet again; how the fertilized ova went back to the incubators; where the Alphas and Betas remained until definitely bottled; while the Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons were brought out again, after only thirty-six hours, to undergo Bokanovsky's Process.\n\n'Bokanovsky's Process,' repeated the Director, and the students underlined the words in their little note-books.\n\nOne egg, one embryo, one adult--normality. But a bokanovskified egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-six buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sized adult. Making ninety-six human beings grow where only one grew before. Progress.\n\n'Essentially,' the D.H.C. concluded, 'bokanovskification consists of a series of arrests of development. We check the normal growth and, paradoxically enough, the egg responds by budding.'\n\nResponds by budding. The pencils were busy.\n\nHe pointed. On a very slowly moving band a rack-full of test-tubes was entering a large metal box, another rack-full was emerging. Machinery faintly purred. It took eight minutes for the tubes to go through, he told them. Eight minutes of hard X-rays being about as much as an egg can stand. A few died; of the rest, the least susceptible divided into two; most put out four buds; some eight; all were returned to the incubators, where the buds began to develop; then, after two days, were suddenly chilled, chilled and checked. Two, four, eight, the buds in their turn budded; and having budded were dosed almost to death with alcohol; consequently burgeoned again and having budded--bud out of bud out of bud were thereafter--further arrest being generally fatal--left to develop in peace. By which time the original egg was in a fair way to becoming anything from eight to ninety-six embryos--a prodigious improvement, you will agree, on nature. Identical twins--but not in piddling twos and threes as in the old viviparous days, when an egg would sometimes accidentally divide; actually by dozens, by scores at a time.\n\n'Scores,' the Director repeated and flung out his arms, as though he were distributing largesse. 'Scores.'\n\nBut one of the students was fool enough to ask where the advantage lay.\n\n'My good boy!' The Director wheeled sharply round on him. 'Can't you see? Can't you see?' He raised a hand; his expression was solemn. 'Bokanovsky's Process is one of the major instruments of social stability!'\n\nMajor instruments of social stability.\n\nStandard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of a small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.\n\n'Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!' The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. 'You really know where you are. For the first time in history.' He quoted the planetary motto. 'Community, Identity, Stability.' Grand words. 'If we could bokanovskify indefinitely the whole problem would be solved.'\n\nSolved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.\n\n'But, alas,' the Director shook his head, 'we can't bokanovskify indefinitely.'\n\nNinety-six seemed to be the limit; seventy-two a good average. From the same ovary and with gametes of the same male to manufacture as many batches of identical twins as possible--that was the best (sadly a second best) that they could do. And even that was difficult.\n\n'For in nature it takes thirty years for two hundred eggs to reach maturity. But our business is to stabilize the population at this moment, here and now. Dribbling out twins over a quarter of a century--what would be the use of that?'\n\nObviously, no use at all. But Podsnap's Technique had immensely accelerated the process of ripening. They could make sure of at least a hundred and fifty mature eggs within two years. Fertilize and bokanovskify--in other words, multiply by seventy-two--and you get an average of nearly eleven thousand brothers and sisters in a hundred and fifty batches of identical twins, all within two years of the same age.\n\n'And in exceptional cases we can make one ovary yield us over fifteen thousand adult individuals.'\n\nBeckoning to a fair-haired, ruddy young man who happened to be passing at the moment, 'Mr. Arlo,' he called. The ruddy young man approached. 'Can you tell us the record for a single ovary, Mr. Arlo?'\n\n'Sixteen thousand and twelve in this Centre,' Mr. Arlo replied without hesitation. He spoke very quickly, had a vivacious blue eye, and took an evident pleasure in quoting figures. 'Sixteen thousand and twelve; in one hundred and eighty-nine batches of identicals. But of course they've done much better,' he rattled on, 'in some of the tropical Centres. Singapore has often produced over sixteen thousand five hundred; and Mombasa has actually touched the seventeen thousand mark. But then they have unfair advantages. You should see the way a negro ovary responds to pituitary! It's quite astonishing, when you're used to working with European material. Still,' he added, with a laugh (but the light of combat was in his eyes and the lift of his chin was challenging), 'still, we mean to beat them if we can. I'm working on a wonderful Delta-Minus ovary at this moment. Only just eighteen months old. Over twelve thousand seven hundred children already, either decanted or in embryo. And still going strong. We'll beat them yet.'\n\n'That's the spirit I like!' cried the Director, and clapped Mr. Arlo on the shoulder. 'Come along with us and give these boys the benefit of your expert knowledge.'\n\nMr. Arlo smiled modestly. 'With pleasure.' They went.\n\nIn the Bottling Room all was harmonious bustle and ordered activity. Flaps of fresh sow's peritoneum ready cut to the proper size came shooting up in little lifts from the Organ Store in the sub-basement. Whizz and then, click! the lift-hatches flew open; the Bottle-Liner had only to reach out a hand, take the flap, insert, smooth-down, and before the lined bottle had had time to travel out of reach along the endless band, whizz, click! another flap of peritoneum had shot up from the depths, ready to be slipped into yet another bottle, the next of that slow interminable procession on the band.\n\nNext to the Liners stood the Matriculators. The procession advanced; one by one the eggs were transferred from their test-tubes to the larger containers; deftly the peritoneal lining was slit, the morula dropped into place, the saline solution poured in... and already the bottle had passed, and it was the turn of the labellers. Heredity, date of fertilization, membership of Bokanovsky Group--details were transferred from test-tube to bottle. No longer anonymous, but named, identified, the procession marched slowly on; on through an opening in the wall, slowly on into the Social Predestination Room.\n\n'Eighty-eight cubic metres of card-index,' said Mr. Arlo with relish, as they entered.\n\n'Containing all the relevant information,' added the Director.\n\n'Brought up to date every morning.'\n\n'And co-ordinated every afternoon.'\n\n'On the basis of which they make their calculations.'\n\n'So many individuals, of such and such quality,' said Mr. Arlo.\n\n'Distributed in such and such quantities.'\n\n'The optimum Decanting Rate at any given moment.'\n\n'Unforeseen wastages promptly made good.'\n\n'Promptly,' repeated Mr. Arlo. 'If you knew the amount of overtime I had to put in after the last Japanese earthquake!' He laughed good-humouredly and shook his head.\n\n'The Predestinators send in their figures to the Fertilizers.'\n\n'Who give them the embryos they ask for.'\n\n'And the bottles come in here to be predestinated in detail.'\n\n'After which they are sent down to the Embryo Store.'\n\n'Where we now proceed ourselves.'\n\nAnd opening a door Mr. Arlo led the way down a staircase into the basement.\n\nThe temperature was still tropical. They descended into a thickening twilight. Two doors and a passage with a double turn ensured the cellar against any possible infiltration of the day.\n\n'Embryos are like photograph film,' said Mr. Arlo waggishly, as he pushed open the second door. 'They can only stand red light.'\n\nAnd in effect the sultry darkness into which the students now followed him was visible and crimson, like the darkness of closed eyes on a summer's afternoon. The bulging flanks of row on receding row and tier above tier of bottles glinted with innumerable rubies, and among the rubies moved the dim red spectres of men and women with purple eyes and all the symptoms of lupus. The hum and rattle of machinery faintly stirred the air.\n\n'Give them a few figures, Mr. Arlo,' said the Director, who was tired of talking.\n\nMr. Arlo was only too happy to give them a few figures.\n\nTwo hundred and twenty metres long, two hundred wide, ten high. He pointed upwards. Like chickens drinking, the students lifted their eyes towards the distant ceiling.\n\nThree tiers of racks: ground-floor level, first gallery, second gallery.\n\nThe spidery steelwork of gallery above gallery faded away in all directions into the dark. Near them three red ghosts were busily unloading demi-johns from a moving staircase.\n\nThe escalator from the Social Predestination Room.\n\nEach bottle could be placed on one of fifteen racks, each rack, though you couldn't see it, was a conveyor travelling at the rate of thirty-three and a third centimetres an hour. Two hundred and sixty-seven days at eight metres a day. Two thousand one hundred and thirty-six metres in all. One circuit of the cellar at ground level, one on the first gallery, half on the second, and on the two hundred and sixty-seventh morning, daylight in the Decanting Room. Independent existence--so called.\n\n'But in the interval,' Mr. Arlo concluded, 'we've managed to do a lot to them. Oh, a very great deal.' His laugh was knowing and triumphant.\n\n'That's the spirit I like,' said the Director once more. 'Let's walk round. You tell them everything, Mr. Arlo.'\n\nMr. Arlo duly told them.\n\nTold them of the growing embryo on its bed of peritoneum. Made them taste the rich blood surrogate on which it fed. Explained why it had to be stimulated with placentin and thyroxin. Told them of the corpus luteum extract. Showed them the jets through which at every twelfth metre from zero to 2040 it was automatically injected. Spoke of those gradually increasing doses of pituitary administered during the final ninety-six metres of their course. Described the artificial maternal circulation installed on every bottle at metres 112; showed them the reservoir of blood-surrogate, the centrifugal pump that kept the liquid moving over the placenta and drove it through the synthetic lung and waste-product filter. Referred to the embryo's troublesome tendency to an\u00e6mia, to the massive doses of hog's stomach extract and foetal foal's liver with which, in consequence, it had to be supplied.\n\nShowed them the simple mechanism by means of which, during the last two metres out of every eight, all the embryos were simultaneously shaken into familiarity with movement. Hinted at the gravity of the so-called 'trauma of decanting,' and enumerated the precautions taken to minimize, by a suitable training of the bottled embryo, that dangerous shock. Told them of the tests for sex carried out in the neighbourhood of metre 200. Explained the system of labelling--a T for the males, a circle for the females and for those who were destined to become freemartins a question mark, black on a white ground.\n\n'For of course,' said Mr. Arlo, 'in the vast majority of cases, fertility is merely a nuisance. One fertile ovary in twelve hundred--that would really be quite sufficient for our purposes. But we want to have a good choice. And of course one must always leave an enormous margin of safety. So we allow as many as thirty per cent. of the female embryos to develop normally. The others get a dose of male sex-hormone every twenty-four metres for the rest of the course. Result: they're decanted as freemartins--structurally quite normal (except,' he had to admit, 'that they do have just the slightest tendency to grow beards), but sterile. Guaranteed sterile. Which brings us at last,' continued Mr. Arlo, 'out of the realm of mere slavish imitation of nature into the much more interesting world of human invention.'\n\nHe rubbed his hands. For, of course, they didn't content themselves with merely hatching out embryos: any cow could do that.\n\n'We also predestine and condition. We decant our babies as socialized human beings, as Alphas or Epsilons, as future sewage workers or future...' He was going to say 'future World Controllers,' but correcting himself, said 'future Directors of Hatcheries' instead.\n\nThe D.H.C. acknowledged the compliment with a smile.\n\nThey were passing metre 320 on rack eleven. A young Beta-Minus mechanic was busy with screw-driver and spanner on the blood-surrogate pump of a passing bottle. The hum of the electric motor deepened by fractions of a tone as he turned the nuts. Down, down... A final twist, a glance at the revolution-counter, and he was done. He moved two paces down the line and began the same process on the next pump.\n\n'Reducing the number of revolutions per minute,' Mr. Arlo explained. 'The surrogate goes round slower; therefore passes through the lung at longer intervals; therefore gives the embryo less oxygen. Nothing like oxygen-shortage for keeping an embryo below par.' Again he rubbed his hands.\n\n'But why do you want to keep the embryo below par?' asked an ingenuous student.\n\n'Ass!' said the Director, breaking a long silence. 'Hasn't it occurred to you that an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as well as an Epsilon heredity?'\n\nIt evidently hadn't occurred to him. He was covered with confusion.\n\n'The lower the caste,' said Mr. Arlo, 'the shorter the oxygen.' The first organ affected was the brain. After that the skeleton. At seventy per cent. of normal oxygen you got dwarfs. At less than seventy, eyeless monsters.\n\n'Who are no use at all,' concluded Mr. Arlo.\n\nWhereas (his voice became confidential and eager), if they could discover a technique for shortening the period of maturation what a triumph, what a benefaction to Society!\n\n'Consider the horse.'\n\nThey considered it.\n\nMature at six; the elephant at ten. While at thirteen a man is not yet sexually mature; and is only full grown at twenty. Hence, of course, that fruit of delayed development, the human intelligence.\n\n'But in Epsilons,' said Mr. Arlo very justly, 'we don't need human intelligence.'\n\nDidn't need and didn't get it. But though the Epsilon mind was mature at ten, the Epsilon body was not fit to work till eighteen. Long years of superfluous and wasted immaturity. If the physical development could be speeded up till it was as quick, say, as a cow's, what an enormous saving to the Community!\n\n'Enormous!' murmured the students. Mr. Arlo's enthusiasm was infectious.\n\nHe became rather technical; spoke of the abnormal endocrine co-ordination which made men grow so slowly; postulated a germinal mutation to account for it. Could the effects of this germinal mutation be undone? Could the individual Epsilon embryo be made to revert, by a suitable technique, to the normality of dogs and cows? That was the problem. And it was all but solved.\n\nPilkington, at Mombasa, had produced individuals who were sexually mature at four and full grown at six and a half. A scientific triumph. But socially useless. Six-year-old men and women were too stupid to do even Epsilon work. And the process was an all-or-nothing one; either you failed to modify at all, or else you modified the whole way. They were still trying to find the ideal compromise between adults of twenty and adults of six. So far without success. Mr. Arlo sighed and shook his head.\n\nTheir wanderings through the crimson twilight had brought them to the neighbourhood of Metre 170 on Rack 9. From this point onwards Rack 9 was enclosed and the bottles performed the remainder of their journey in a kind of tunnel, interrupted here and there by openings two or three metres wide.\n\n'Heat conditioning,' said Mr. Arlo.\n\nHot tunnels alternated with cool tunnels. Coolness was wedded to discomfort in the form of hard X-rays. By the time they were decanted the embryos had a horror of cold. They were predestined to emigrate to the tropics, to be miners and acetate silk spinners and steel workers. Later on their minds would be made to endorse the judgment of their bodies. 'We condition them to thrive on heat,' concluded Mr. Arlo. 'Our colleagues upstairs will teach them to love it.'\n\n'And that,' put in the Director sententiously, 'that is the secret of happiness and virtue--liking what you've got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.'\n\nIn a gap between two tunnels, a nurse was delicately probing with a long fine syringe into the gelatinous contents of a passing bottle. The students and their guides stood watching her for a few moments in silence.\n\n'Well, Izzie,' said Mr. Arlo, when at last she withdrew the syringe and straightened herself up.\n\nThe girl turned with a start. One could see that, for all the lupus and the purple eyes, she was uncommonly pretty.\n\n'Lloyd!' Her smile flashed redly at him--a row of coral teeth.\n\n'Charming, charming,' murmured the Director and, giving her two or three little pats, received in exchange a rather deferential smile for himself.\n\n'What are you giving them?' asked Mr. Arlo, making his tone very professional.\n\n'Oh, the usual typhoid and sleeping sickness.'\n\n'Tropical workers start being inoculated at metre 150,' Mr. Arlo explained to the students. 'The embryos still have gills. We immunize the fish against the future man's diseases.' Then, turning back to Izzie, 'Ten to five on the roof this afternoon,' he said, 'as usual.'\n\n'Charming,' said the Director once more, and, with a final pat, moved away after the others.\n\nOn Rack 10 rows of next generation's chemical workers were being trained in the toleration of lead, caustic soda, tar, chlorine. The first of a batch of two hundred and fifty embryonic rocket-plane engineers was just passing the eleven hundredth metre mark on Rack 3. A special mechanism kept their containers in constant rotation. 'To improve their sense of balance,' Mr. Arlo explained. 'Doing repairs on the outside of a rocket in mid air is a ticklish job. We slacken off the circulation when they're right way up, so that they're half starved, and double the flow of surrogate when they're upside down. They learn to associate topsy-turvydom with well-being; in fact, they're only truly happy when they're standing on their heads.'\n\n'And now,' Mr. Arlo went on, 'I'd like to show you some very interesting conditioning for Alpha-Plus Intellectuals. We have a big batch of them on Rack 5. First Gallery level,' he called to two boys who had started to go down to the ground floor.\n\n'They're round about metre 900,' he explained. 'You can't really do any useful intellectual conditioning till the foetuses have lost their tails. Follow me.'\n\nBut the Director had looked at his watch. 'Ten to three,' he said. 'No time for the intellectual embryos, I'm afraid. We must go up to the Nurseries before the children have finished their afternoon sleep.'\n\nMr. Arlo was disappointed. 'At least one glance at the Decanting Room,' he pleaded.\n\n'Very well, then.' The Director smiled indulgently. 'Just one glance.'\n\n\nChapter II\n\nMr. Arlo was left in the Decanting Room. The D.H.C. and his students stepped into the nearest lift and were carried up to the fifth floor.\n\nINFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announced the notice board.\n\nThe Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a single window. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the floor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.\n\nThe nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in.\n\n'Set out the books,' he said curtly.\n\nIn silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rose bowls the books were duly set out--a row of nursery quartos opened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or fish or bird.\n\n'Now bring in the children.'\n\nThey hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on all its four wire-netted shelves, with eight-month-old babies, all exactly alike (a Bokanovsky Group, it was evident) and all (since their caste was Delta) dressed in khaki.\n\n'Put them down on the floor.'\n\nThe infants were unloaded.\n\n'Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books.'\n\nTurned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.\n\nThe Director rubbed his hands. 'Excellent!' he said. 'It might almost have been done on purpose.'\n\nThe swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, 'Watch carefully,' he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.\n\nThe Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever.\n\nThere was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.\n\nThe children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.\n\n'And now,' the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), 'now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock.'\n\nHe waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires.\n\n'We can electrify that whole strip of floor,' bawled the Director in explanation. 'But that's enough,' he signalled to the nurse.\n\nThe explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down from tone to tone into silence. The stiffly twitching bodies relaxed, and what had become the sob and yelp of infant maniacs broadened out once more into a normal howl of ordinary terror.\n\n'Offer them the flowers and the books again.'\n\nThe nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infants shrank away in horror; the volume of their howling suddenly increased.\n\n'Observe,' said the Director triumphantly, 'observe.'\n\nBooks and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks--already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.\n\n'They'll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an \"instinctive\" hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They'll be safe from books and botany all their lives.' The Director turned to his nurses. 'Take them away again.'\n\nStill yelling, the khaki babies were loaded on to their dumb-waiters and wheeled out, leaving behind them the smell of sour milk and a most welcome silence.\n\nOne of the students held up his hand; and though he could see quite well why you couldn't have lower-caste people wasting the Community's time over books, and that there was always the risk of their reading something which might undesirably de-condition one of their reflexes, yet... well, he couldn't understand about the flowers. Why go to the trouble of making it psychologically impossible for Deltas to like flowers?\n\nPatiently the D.H.C. explained. If the children were made to scream at the sight of a rose, that was on grounds of high economic policy. Not so very long ago (a century or thereabouts), Gammas, Deltas, even Epsilons, had been conditioned to like flowers--flowers in particular and wild nature in general. The idea was to make them want to be going out into the country at every available opportunity, and so compel them to consume transport.\n\n'And didn't they consume transport?' asked the student.\n\n'Quite a lot,' the D.H.C. replied. 'But nothing else.'\n\nPrimroses and landscapes, he pointed out, have one grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy. It was decided to abolish the love of nature, at any rate among the lower classes; to abolish the love of nature, but not the tendency to consume transport. For of course it was essential that they should keep on going to the country, even though they hated it. The problem was to find an economically sounder reason for consuming transport than a mere affection for primroses and landscapes. It was duly found.\n\n'We condition the masses to hate the country,' concluded the Director. 'But simultaneously we condition them to love all country sports. At the same time, we see to it that all country sports shall entail the use of elaborate apparatus. So that they consume manufactured articles as well as transport. Hence those electric shocks.'\n\n'I see,' said the student, and was silent, lost in admiration.\n\nThere was a silence; then, clearing his throat, 'Once upon a time,' the Director began, 'while Our Ford was still on earth, there was a little boy called Reuben Rabinovitch. Reuben was the child of Polish-speaking parents.' The Director interrupted himself. 'You know what Polish is, I suppose?'\n\n'A dead language.'\n\n'Like French and German,' added another student, officiously showing off his learning.\n\n'And \"parent?\"?' questioned the D.H.C.\n\nThere was an uneasy silence. Several of the boys blushed. They had not yet learned to draw the significant but often very fine distinction between smut and pure science. One, at last, had the courage to raise a hand.\n\n'Human beings used to be...' he hesitated; the blood rushed to his cheeks. 'Well, they used to be viviparous.'\n\n'Quite right.' The Director nodded approvingly.\n\n'And when the babies were decanted...'\n\n'\"Born\",' came the correction.\n\n'Well, then they were the parents--I mean, not the babies, of course; the other ones.' The poor boy was overwhelmed with confusion.\n\n'In brief,' the Director summed up, 'the parents were the father and the mother.' The smut that was really science fell with a crash into the boys' eye-avoiding silence. 'Mother,' he repeated loudly rubbing in the science; and, leaning back in his chair, 'These,' he said gravely, 'are unpleasant facts; I know it. But, then, most historical facts are unpleasant.'\n\nHe returned to Little Reuben--to Little Reuben, in whose room, one evening, by an oversight, his father and mother (crash, crash!) happened to leave the radio turned on.\n\n('For you must remember that in those days of gross viviparous reproduction, children were always brought up by their parents and not in State Conditioning Centres.')\n\nWhile the child was asleep, a broadcast programme from London suddenly started to come through; and the next morning, to the astonishment of his crash and crash (the more daring of the boys ventured to grin at one another) Little Reuben woke up repeating word for word a long lecture by that curious old writer ('one of the very few whose works have been permitted to come down to us'), George Chaddy Allen, who was speaking, according to a well-authenticated tradition, about his own genius. To Little Reuben's wink and snigger, this lecture was, of course, perfectly incomprehensible and, imagining that their child had suddenly gone mad, they sent for a doctor. He, fortunately, understood English, recognized the discourse as that which Allen had broadcasted the previous evening, realized the significance of what had happened, and sent a letter to the medical press about it.\n\n'The principle of sleep-teaching, or hypnop\u00e6dia, had been discovered.' The D.H.C. made an impressive pause.\n\nThe principle had been discovered; but many, many years were to elapse before that principle was usefully applied.\n\n'The case of Little Reuben occurred only twenty-three years after Our Ford's first T-Model was put on the market.' (Here the Director made a sign of the T on his stomach and all the students reverently followed suit.) 'And yet...'\n\nFuriously the students scribbled. 'Hypnop\u00e6dia, first used officially in A.F. 214. Why not before? Two reason. (a)...'\n\n'These early experimenters,' the D.H.C. was saying, 'were on the wrong track. They thought that hypnop\u00e6dia could be made an instrument of intellectual education...'\n\n(A small boy asleep on his right side, the right arm stuck out, the right hand hanging limp over the edge of the bed. Through a round grating in the side of a box a voice speaks softly.\n\n'The Nile is the longest river in Africa and the second in length of all the rivers of the globe. Although falling short of the length of the Mississippi-Missouri, the Nile is at the head of all rivers as regards the length of its basin, which extends through 35 degrees of latitude...'\n\nAt breakfast the next morning, 'Tommy,' some one says, 'do you know which is the longest river in Africa?' A shaking of the head. 'But don't you remember something that begins: The Nile is the...'\n\n'The-Nile-is-the-longest-river-in-Africa-and-the second-in-length-of-all-the-rivers-of-the-globe...' The words come rushing out. 'Although-falling-short-of...'\n\n'Well now, which is the longest river in Africa?'\n\nThe eyes are blank. 'I don't know.'\n\n'But the Nile, Tommy.'\n\n'The-Nile-is-the-longest-river-in-Africa-and-second...'\n\n'Then which river is the longest, Tommy?'\n\nTommy bursts into tears. 'I don't know,' he howls.)\n\nThat howl, the Director made it plain, discouraged the earliest investigators. The experiments were abandoned. No further attempt was made to teach children the length of the Nile in their sleep. Quite rightly. You can't learn a science unless you know what it's all about.\n\n'Whereas, if they'd only started on moral education,' said the Director, leading the way towards the door. The students followed him, desperately scribbling as they walked and all the way up in the lift. 'Moral education, which ought never, in any circumstances, to be rational.'\n\n'Silence, silence,' whispered a loud-speaker as they stepped out at the fourteenth floor, and 'Silence, silence,' the trumpet mouths indefatigably repeated at intervals down every corridor. The students and even the Director himself rose automatically to the tips of their toes. They were Alphas, of course; but even Alphas have been well conditioned. 'Silence, silence.' All the air of the fourteenth floor was sibilant with the categorical imperative.\n\nFifty yards of tiptoeing brought them to a door which the Director cautiously opened. They stepped over the threshold into the twilight of a shuttered dormitory. Eighty cots stood in a row against the wall. There was a sound of light regular breathing and a continuous murmur, as of very faint voices remotely whispering.\n\nA nurse rose as they entered and came to attention before the Director.\n\n'What's the lesson this afternoon?' he asked.\n\n'We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes,' she answered. 'But now it's switched over to Elementary Class Consciousness.'\n\nThe Director walked slowly down the long line of cots. Rosy and relaxed with sleep, eighty little boys and girls lay softly breathing. There was a whisper under every pillow. The D.H.C. halted and, bending over one of the little beds, listened attentively.\n\n'Elementary Class Consciousness, did you say? Let's have it repeated a little louder by the trumpet.'\n\nAt the end of the room a loud-speaker projected from the wall. The Director walked up to it and pressed a switch.\n\n'...all wear green,' said a soft but very distinct voice, beginning in the middle of a sentence, 'and Delta Children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able to read or write. Besides, they wear black, which is such a beastly colour. I'm so glad I'm a Beta.'\n\nThere was a pause; then the voice began again.\n\n'Alpha children wear grey. They work much harder than we do, because they're so frightfully clever. I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because I don't work so hard. And then we are much better than the Gammas and Deltas. Gammas are stupid. They all wear green, and Delta children wear khaki. Oh no, I don't want to play with Delta children. And Epsilons are still worse. They're too stupid to be able...'\n\nThe Director pushed back the switch. The voice was silent. Only its thin ghost continued to mutter from beneath the eighty pillows.\n\n'They'll have that repeated forty or fifty times more before they wake; then again on Thursday, and again on Saturday. A hundred and twenty times three times a week for thirty months. After which they go on to a more advanced lesson.'\n\nRoses and electric shocks, the khaki of Deltas and a whiff of asafoetida--wedded indissolubly before the child can speak. But wordless conditioning is crude and wholesale; cannot bring home the finer distinctions, cannot inculcate the more complex courses of behaviour. For that there must be words, but words without reason. In brief, hypnop\u00e6dia.\n\n'The greatest moralizing and socializing force of all time.'\n\nThe students took it down in their little books. Straight from the horse's mouth.\n\nOnce more the Director touched the switch.\n\n'...so frightfully clever,' the soft, insinuating, indefatigable voice was saying. 'I'm really awfully glad I'm a Beta, because...'\n\nNot so much like drops of water, though water, it is true, can wear holes in the hardest granite; rather, drops of liquid sealing-wax, drops that adhere, incrust, incorporate themselves with what they fall on, till finally the rock is all one scarlet blob.\n\n'Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too--all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides--made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions!' The Director almost shouted in his triumph. 'Suggestions from the State.' He banged the nearest table. 'It therefore follows...'\n\nA noise made him turn round.\n\n'Oh, Ford!' he said in another tone, 'I've gone and woken the children.'\n\n\nChapter III\n\nOutside, in the garden, it was playtime. Naked in the warm June sunshine, six or seven hundred little boys and girls were running with shrill yells over the lawns, or playing ball games, or squatting silently in twos and threes among the flowering shrubs. The roses were in bloom, two nightingales soliloquized in the boskage, a cuckoo was just going out of tune among the lime trees. The air was drowsy with the murmur of bees and helicopters.\n\nThe Director and his students stood for a short time watching a game of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy. Twenty children were grouped in a circle round a chrome-steel tower. A ball thrown up so as to land on the platform at the top of the tower rolled down into the interior, fell on a rapidly revolving disk, was hurled through one or other of the numerous apertures pierced in the cylindrical casing, and had to be caught.\n\n'Strange,' mused the Director, as they turned away, 'strange to think that even in Our Ford's day most games were played without more apparatus than a ball or two and a few sticks and perhaps a bit of netting. Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It's madness. Nowadays the Controllers won't approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games.' He interrupted himself.\n\n'That's a charming little group,' he said, pointing.\n\nIn a little grassy bay between tall clumps of Mediterranean heather, two children, a little boy of about seven and a little girl who might have been a year older, were playing, very gravely and with all the focussed attention of scientists intent on a labour of discovery, a rudimentary sexual game.\n\n'Charming, charming!' the D.H.C. repeated sentimentally.\n\n'Charming,' the boys politely agreed. But their smile was rather patronizing. They had put aside similar childish amusements too recently to be able to watch them now without a touch of contempt. Charming? but it was just a pair of kids fooling about; that was all. Just kids.\n\n'I always think,' the Director was continuing in the same rather maudlin tone, when he was interrupted by a loud boo-hooing.\n\nFrom a neighbouring shrubbery emerged a nurse, leading by the hand a small boy, who howled as he went. An anxious-looking little girl trotted at her heels.\n\n'What's the matter?' asked the Director.\n\nThe nurse shrugged her shoulders. 'Nothing much,' she answered. 'It's just that this little boy seems rather reluctant to join in the ordinary erotic play. I'd noticed it once or twice before. And now again to-day. He started yelling just now...'\n\n'Honestly,' put in the anxious-looking little girl, 'I didn't mean to hurt him or anything. Honestly.'\n\n'Of course you didn't, dear,' said the nurse reassuringly. 'And so,' she went on, turning back to the Director, 'I'm taking him in to see the Assistant Superintendent of Psychology. Just to see if anything's at all abnormal.'\n\n'Quite right,' said the Director. 'Take him in. You stay here, little girl,' he added, as the nurse moved away with her still howling charge. 'What's your name?'\n\n'Polly Trotsky.'\n\n'And a very good name too,' said the Director. 'Run away now and see if you can find some other little boy to play with.'\n\nThe child scampered off into the bushes and was lost to sight.\n\n'Exquisite little creature!' said the Director, looking after her. Then, turning to his students, 'What I'm going to tell you now,' he said, 'may sound incredible. But then, when you're not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do sound incredible.'\n\nHe let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.\n\nA look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? They could not believe it.\n\n'Even adolescents,' the D.H.C. was saying, 'even adolescents like yourselves...'\n\n'Not possible!'\n\n'Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism and homosexuality--absolutely nothing.'\n\n'Nothing?'\n\n'In most cases, till they were over twenty years old.'\n\n'Twenty years old?' echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief.\n\n'Twenty,' the Director repeated. 'I told you that you'd find it incredible.'\n\n'But what happened?' they asked. 'What were the results?'\n\n'The results were terrible.' A deep resonant voice broke startlingly into the dialogue.\n\nThey looked round. On the fringe of the little group stood a stranger--a man of middle height, black-haired, with a hooked nose, full red lips, eyes very piercing and dark. 'Terrible,' he repeated.\n\nThe D.H.C. had at that moment sat down on one of the steel and rubber benches conveniently scattered through the gardens; but at the sight of the stranger, he sprang to his feet and darted forward, his hands outstretched, smiling with all his teeth, effusive.\n\n'Controller! What an unexpected pleasure! Boys, what are you thinking of? This is the Controller; this is his fordship, Janine Cara.'\n\n****\nIn the four thousand rooms of the Centre the four thousand electric clocks simultaneously struck four. Discarnate voices called from the trumpet mouths.\n\n'Main Day-shift off duty. Second Day-shift take over. Main Day-shift off...'\n\nIn the lift, on their way up to the changing-rooms, Lloyd Arlo and the Assistant Director of Predestination rather pointedly turned their backs on Chaddy Annalise from the Psychology Bureau: averted themselves from that unsavoury reputation.\n\nThe faint hum and rattle of machinery still stirred the crimson air in the Embryo-Store. Shifts might come and go, one lupus-coloured face give place to another; majestically and for ever the conveyors crept forward with their load of future men and women.\n\nIzzie Madonna walked briskly towards the door.\n\n****\nHis fordship Janine Cara! The eyes of the saluting students almost popped out of their heads. Janine Cara! The Resident Controller for Western Europe! One of the Ten World Controllers. One of the Ten... and he sat down on the bench with the D.H.C., he was going to stay, to stay, yes, and actually talk to them... straight from the horse's mouth. Straight from the mouth of Ford himself.\n\nTwo shrimp-brown children emerged from a neighbouring shrubbery, stared at them for a moment with large, astonished eyes, then returned to their amusements among the leaves.\n\n'You all remember,' said the Controller, in his strong deep voice, 'you all remember, I suppose, that beautiful and inspired saying of Our Ford's: History is bunk. History,' he repeated slowly, 'is bunk.'\n\nHe waved his hand; and it was as though, with an invisible feather whisk, he had brushed away a little dust, and the dust was Harappa, was Ur of the Chaldees; some spider-webs, and they were Thebes and Babylon and Cnossos and Mycenae. Whisk, Whisk--and where was Odysseus, where was Job, where were Jupiter and Gotama and Jesus? Whisk--and those specks of antique dirt called Athens and Rome, Jerusalem and the Middle Kingdom--all were gone. Whisk--the place where Italy had been was empty. Whisk, the cathedrals; whisk, whisk, King Lear and the Thoughts of Pascal. Whisk, Passion: whisk, Requiem; whisk, Symphony; whisk...\n\n****\n'Going to the Feelies this evening, Lloyd?' enquired the Assistant Predestinator. 'I hear the new one at the Alhambra is first-rate. There's a love scene on a bearskin rug; they say it's marvellous. Every hair of the bear reproduced. The most amazing tactual effects.'\n\n****\n'That's why you're taught no history,' the Controller was saying. 'But now the time has come...'\n\nThe D.H.C. looked at him nervously. There were those strange rumours of old forbidden books hidden in a safe in the Controller's study. Bibles, poetry--Ford knew what.\n\nJanine Cara intercepted his anxious glance and the corners of his red lips twitched ironically.\n\n'It's all right, Director,' he said in a tone of faint derision, 'I won't corrupt them.'\n\nThe D.H.C. was overwhelmed with confusion.\n\n****\nThose who feel themselves despised do well to look despising. The smile on Chaddy Annalise's face was contemptuous. Every hair on the bear indeed!\n\n'I shall make a point of going,' said Lloyd Arlo.\n\n****\nJanine Cara leaned forward, shook a finger at them. 'Just try to realize it,' he said, and his voice sent a strange thrill quivering along their diaphragms. 'Try to realize what it was like to have a viviparous mother.'\n\nThat smutty word again. But none of them dreamed, this time, of smiling.\n\n'Try to imagine what \"living with one's family\" meant.'\n\nThey tried; but obviously without the smallest success.\n\n'And do you know what a \"home\" was?'\n\nThey shook their heads.\n\n****\nFrom her dim crimson cellar Izzie Madonna shot up seventeen stories, turned to the right as she stepped out of the lift, walked down a long corridor and, opening the door marked GIRLS' DRESSING-ROOM, plunged into a deafening chaos of arms and bosoms and underclothing. Torrents of hot water were splashing into or gurgling out of a hundred baths. Rumbling and hissing, eighty vibro-vacuum massage machines were simultaneously kneading and sucking the firm and sunburnt flesh of eighty superb female specimens. Every one was talking at the top of her voice. A Synthetic Music machine was warbling out a super-cornet solo.\n\n'Hullo, Fanny,' said Izzie to the young woman who had the pegs and locker next to hers.\n\nFanny worked in the Bottling Room, and her surname was also Madonna. But as the two thousand million inhabitants of the planet had only ten thousand names between them, the coincidence was not particularly surprising.\n\nIzzie pulled at her zippers--downwards on the jacket, downwards with a double-handed gesture at the two that held trousers, downwards again to loosen her undergarment. Still wearing her shoes and stockings, she walked off towards the bathrooms.\n\n****\nHome, home--a few small rooms, stiflingly over-inhabited by a man, by a periodically teeming woman, by a rabble of boys and girls of all ages. No air, no space; an understerilized prison; darkness, disease, and smells.\n\n(The Controller's evocation was so vivid that one of the boys, more sensitive than the rest, turned pale at the mere description and was on the point of being sick.)\n\n****\nIzzie got out of the bath, towelled herself dry, took hold of a long flexible tube plugged into the wall, presented the nozzle to her breast, as though she meant to commit suicide, pressed down the trigger. A blast of warmed air dusted her with the finest talcum powder. Eight different scents and eau-de-Cologne were laid on in little taps over the wash-basin. She turned on the third from the left, dabbled herself with chypre and, carrying her shoes and stockings in her hand, went out to see if one of the vibro-vacuum machines were free.\n\n****\nAnd home was as squalid psychically as physically. Psychically, it was a rabbit hole, a midden, hot with the frictions of tightly packed life, reeking with emotion. What suffocating intimacies, what dangerous, insane, obscene relationships between the members of the family group! Maniacally, the mother brooded over her children (her children)... brooded over them like a cat over its kittens; but a cat that could talk, a cat that could say, 'My baby, my baby,' over and over again. 'My baby, and oh, oh, at my breast, the little hands, the hunger, and that unspeakable agonizing pleasure! Till at last my baby sleeps, my baby sleeps with a bubble of white milk at the corner of his mouth. My little baby sleeps...'\n\n'Yes,' said Janine Cara, nodding his head, 'you may well shudder.'\n\n****\n'Who are you going out with to-night?' Izzie asked, returning from the vibro-vac like a pearl illuminated from within, pinkly glowing.\n\n'Nobody.'\n\nIzzie raised her eyebrows in astonishment.\n\n'I've been feeling rather out of sorts lately,' Fanny explained. 'Dr. Wells advised me to have a Pregnancy Substitute.'\n\n'But, my dear, you're only nineteen. The first Pregnancy Substitute isn't compulsory till twenty-one.'\n\n'I know, dear. But some people are better if they begin earlier. Dr. Wells told me that brunettes with wide pelvises, like me, ought to have their first Pregnancy Substitute at seventeen. So I'm really two years late, not two years early.' She opened the door of her locker and pointed to the row of boxes and labelled phials on the upper shelf.\n\n'SYRUP OF CORPUS LUTEUM.' Izzie read the names aloud. 'OVARIN, GUARANTEED FRESH: NOT TO BE USED AFTER AUGUST 1ST, A.F. 632. MAMMARY GLAND EXTRACT: TO BE TAKEN THREE TIMES DAILY, BEFORE MEALS, WITH A LITTLE WATER. PLACENTIN: 5CC TO BE INJECTED INTRAVENALLY EVERY THIRD DAY... Ugh!' Izzie shuddered. 'How I loathe intravenals, don't you?'\n\n'Yes. But when they do one good...' Fanny was a particularly sensible girl.\n\n****\nOur Ford--or Our Freud, as, for some inscrutable reason, he chose to call himself whenever he spoke of psychological matters--Our Freud had been the first to reveal the appalling dangers of family life. The world was full of fathers--was therefore full of misery; full of mothers--therefore of every kind of perversion from sadism to chastity; full of brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts--full of madness and suicide.\n\n'And yet, among the savages of Samoa, in certain islands off the coast of New Guinea...'\n\nThe tropical sunshine lay like warm honey on the naked bodies of children tumbling promiscuously among the hibiscus blossoms. Home was in any one of twenty palm-thatched houses. In the Trobriands conception was the work of ancestral ghosts; nobody had ever heard of a father.\n\n'Extremes,' said the Controller, 'meet. For the good reason that they were made to meet.'\n\n****\n'Dr. Wells says that a three months' Pregnancy Substitute now will make all the difference to my health for the next three or four years.'\n\n'Well, I hope he's right,' said Izzie. 'But, Fanny, do you really mean to say that for the next three months you're not supposed to...'\n\n'Oh no, dear. Only for a week or two, that's all. I shall spend the evening at the Club playing Musical Bridge. I suppose you're going out?'\n\nIzzie nodded.\n\n'Who with?'\n\n'Lloyd Arlo.'\n\n'Again?' Fanny's kind, rather moon-like face took on an incongruous expression of pained and disapproving astonishment. 'Do you mean to tell me you're still going out with Lloyd Arlo?'\n\n****\nMothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. But there were also husbands, wives, lovers. There were also monogamy and romance.\n\n'Though you probably don't know what those are,' said Janine Cara.\n\nThey shook their heads.\n\nFamily, monogamy, romance. Everywhere exclusiveness, everywhere a focussing of interest, a narrow channelling of impulse and energy.\n\n'But every one belongs to every one else,' he concluded, citing the hypnop\u00e6dic proverb.\n\nThe students nodded, emphatically agreeing with a statement which upwards of sixty-two thousand repetitions in the dark had made them accept, not merely as true, but as axiomatic, self-evident, utterly indisputable.\n\n****\n'But after all,' Izzie was protesting, 'it's only about four months now since I've been having Lloyd.'\n\n'Only four months! I like that. And what's more,' Fanny went on, pointing an accusing finger, 'there's been nobody else except Lloyd all that time. Has there?'\n\nIzzie blushed scarlet; but her eyes, the tone of her voice remained defiant. 'No, there hasn't been any one else,' she answered almost truculently. 'And I jolly well don't see why there should have been.'\n\n'Oh, she jolly well doesn't see why there should have been,' Fanny repeated, as though to an invisible listener behind Izzie's left shoulder. Then, with a sudden change of tone, 'But seriously,' she said, 'I really do think you ought to be careful. It's such horribly bad form to go on and on like this with one man. At forty, or thirty-five, it wouldn't be so bad. But at your age, Izzie! No, it really won't do. And you know how strongly the D.H.C. objects to anything intense or long-drawn. Four months of Lloyd Arlo, without having another man--why, he'd be furious if he knew...'\n\n****\n'Think of water under pressure in a pipe.' They thought of it. 'I pierce it once,' said the Controller. 'What a jet!'\n\nHe pierced it twenty times. There were twenty piddling little fountains.\n\n'My baby. My baby...!'\n\n'Mother!' The madness is infectious.\n\n'My love, my one and only, precious, precious...'\n\nMother, monogamy, romance. High spurts the fountain; fierce and foamy the wild jet. The urge has but a single outlet. My love, my baby. No wonder those poor pre-moderns were mad and wicked and miserable. Their world didn't allow them to take things easily, didn't allow them to be sane, virtuous, happy. What with mothers and lovers, what with the prohibitions they were not conditioned to obey, what with the temptations and the lonely remorses, what with all the diseases and the endless isolating pain, what with the uncertainties and the poverty--they were forced to feel strongly. And feeling strongly (and strongly, what was more, in solitude, in hopelessly individual isolation), how could they be stable?\n\n****\n'Of course there's no need to give him up. Have somebody else from time to time, that's all. He has other girls, doesn't he?'\n\nIzzie admitted it.\n\n'Of course he does. Trust Lloyd Arlo to be the perfect gentleman--always correct. And then there's the Director to think of. You know what a stickler...'\n\nNodding, 'He patted me on the behind this afternoon,' said Izzie.\n\n'There, you see!' Fanny was triumphant. 'That shows what he stands for. The strictest conventionality.'\n\n****\n'Stability,' said the Controller, 'stability. No civilization without social stability. No social stability without individual stability.' His voice was a trumpet. Listening, they felt larger, warmer.\n\nThe machine turns, turns and must keep on turning--for ever. It is death if it stands still. A thousand millions scrabbled the crust of the earth. The wheels began to turn. In a hundred and fifty years there were two thousand millions. Stop all the wheels. In a hundred and fifty weeks there are once more only a thousand millions; a thousand thousand thousand men and women have starved to death.\n\nWheels must turn steadily, but cannot turn untended. There must be men to tend them, men as steady as the wheels upon their axles, sane men, obedient men, stable in contentment.\n\nCrying: My baby, my mother, my only, only love; groaning: My sin, my terrible God; screaming with pain, muttering with fever, bemoaning old age and poverty--how can they tend the wheels? And if they cannot tend the wheels... The corpses of a thousand thousand thousand men and women would be hard to bury or burn.\n\n****\n'And after all,' Fanny's tone was coaxing, 'it's not as though there were anything painful or disagreeable about having one or two men besides Lloyd. And seeing that, you ought to be a little more promiscuous....'\n\n****\n'Stability,' insisted the Controller, 'stability. The primal and the ultimate need. Stability. Hence all this.'\n\nWith a wave of his hand he indicated the gardens, the huge building of the Conditioning Centre, the naked children furtive in the undergrowth or running across the lawns.\n\n****\nIzzie shook her head. 'Somehow,' she mused, 'I hadn't been feeling very keen on promiscuity lately. There are times when one doesn't. Haven't you found that too, Fanny?'\n\nFanny nodded her sympathy and understanding. 'But one's got to make the effort,' she said sententiously, 'one's got to play the game. After all, every one belongs to every one else.'\n\n'Yes, every one belongs to every one else.' Izzie repeated slowly and, sighing, was silent for a moment; then, taking Fanny's hand, gave it a little squeeze. 'You're quite right, Fanny. As usual. I'll make the effort.'\n\n****\nImpulse arrested spills over, and the flood is feeling, the flood is passion, the flood is even madness: it depends on the force of the current, the height and strength of the barrier. The unchecked stream flows smoothly down its appointed channels into a calm well-being. (The embryo is hungry; day in, day out, the blood-surrogate pump unceasingly turns its eight hundred revolutions a minute. The decanted infant howls; at once a nurse appears with a bottle of external secretion. Feeling lurks in that interval of time between desire and its consummation. Shorten that interval, break down all those old unnecessary barriers.)\n\n'Fortunate boys!' said the Controller. 'No pains have been spared to make your lives emotionally easy--to preserve you, so far as that is possible, from having emotions at all.'\n\n'Ford's in his flivver,' murmured the D.H.C. 'All's well with the world.'\n\n****\n'Izzie Madonna?' said Lloyd Arlo, echoing the Assistant Predestinator's question as he zipped up his trousers. 'Oh, she's a splendid girl. Wonderfully pneumatic. I'm surprised you haven't had her.'\n\n'I can't think how it is I haven't,' said the Assistant Predestinator. 'I certainly will. At the first opportunity.'\n\nFrom his place on the opposite side of the changing-room aisle, Chaddy Annalise overheard what they were saying and turned pale.\n\n****\n'And to tell the truth,' said Izzie, 'I'm beginning to get just a tiny bit bored with nothing but Lloyd every day.' She pulled on her left stocking. 'Do you know Chaddy Annalise?' she asked in a tone whose excessive casualness was evidently forced.\n\nFanny looked startled. 'You don't mean to say...?'\n\n'Why not? Chaddy's an Alpha-Plus. Besides, he asked me to go to one of the Lizzie Reservations with him. I've always wanted to see a Lizzie Reservation.'\n\n'But his reputation?'\n\n'What do I care about his reputation?'\n\n'They say he doesn't like Obstacle Golf.'\n\n'They say, they say,' mocked Izzie.\n\n'And then he spends most of his time by himself--alone.' There was horror in Fanny's voice.\n\n'Well, he won't be alone when he's with me. And anyhow, why are people so beastly to him? I think he's rather sweet.' She smiled to herself; how absurdly shy he had been! Frightened almost--as though she were a World Controller and he a Gamma-Minus machine minder.\n\n****\n'Consider your own lives,' said Janine Cara. 'Has any of you ever encountered an insurmountable obstacle?'\n\nThe question was answered by a negative silence.\n\n'Has any of you been compelled to live through a long time-interval between the consciousness of a desire and its fulfilment?'\n\n'Well,' began one of the boys, and hesitated.\n\n'Speak up,' said the D.H.C. 'Don't keep his fordship waiting.'\n\n'I once had to wait nearly four weeks before a girl I wanted would let me have her.'\n\n'And you felt a strong emotion in consequence?'\n\n'Horrible!'\n\n'Horrible; precisely,' said the Controller. 'Our ancestors were so stupid and short-sighted that when the first reformers came along and offered to deliver them from those horrible emotions, they wouldn't have anything to do with them.'\n\n****\n'Talking about her as though she were a bit of meat.' Chaddy ground his teeth. 'Have her here, have her there. Like mutton. Degrading her to so much mutton. She said she'd think it over, she said she'd give me an answer this week. Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford.' He would have liked to go up to them and hit them in the face--hard, again and again.\n\n'Yes, I really do advise you to try her,' Lloyd Arlo was saying.\n\n****\n'Take Ectogenesis. Pfitzner and Kawaguchi had got the whole technique worked out. But would the Governments look at it? No. There was something called Christianity. Women were forced to go on being viviparous.'\n\n****\n'He's so ugly!' said Fanny.\n\n'But I rather like his looks.'\n\n'And then so small' Fanny made a grimace; smallness was so horribly and typically low-caste.\n\n'I think that's rather sweet,' said Izzie. 'One feels one would like to pet him. You know. Like a cat.'\n\nFanny was shocked. 'They say somebody made a mistake when he was still in the bottle--thought he was a Gamma and put alcohol into his blood-surrogate. That's why he's so stunted.'\n\n'What nonsense!' Izzie was indignant.\n\n****\n'Sleep teaching was actually prohibited in England. There was something called liberalism. Parliament, if you know what that was, passed a law against it. The records survive. Speeches about liberty of the subject. Liberty to be inefficient and miserable. Freedom to be a round peg in a square hole.'\n\n****\n'But, my dear chap, you're welcome, I assure you. You're welcome.' Lloyd Arlo patted the Assistant Predestinator on the shoulder. 'Every one belongs to every one else, after all.'\n\nOne hundred repetitions three nights a week for four years, thought Chaddy Annalise, who was a specialist on hypnop\u00e6dia. Sixty-two thousand four hundred repetitions make one truth. Idiots!\n\n****\n'Or the Caste System. Constantly proposed, constantly rejected. There was something called democracy. As though men were more than physico-chemically equal.'\n\n****\n'Well, all I can say is that I'm going to accept his invitation.'\n\n****\nChaddy hated them, hated them. But they were two, they were large, they were strong.\n\n****\n'The Nine Years' War began in A.F. 141.'\n\n****\n'Not even if it were true about the alcohol in his blood-surrogate.'\n\n****\n'Phosgene, chloropicrin, ethyl iodoacetate, diphenylcyanarsine, trichlormethyl chloroformate, dichlorethyl sulphide. Not to mention hydrocyanic acid.'\n\n****\n'Which I simply don't believe,' Izzie concluded.\n\n****\n'The noise of fourteen thousand aeroplanes advancing in open order. But in the Kurf\u00fcrstendamm and the Eighth Arrondissement, the explosion of the anthrax bombs is hardly louder than the popping of a paper bag.'\n\n****\n'Because I do want to see a Lizzie Reservation.'\n\n****\nCH3C6H2(NO2)3+Hg(CNO)2=well, what? An enormous hole in the ground, a pile of masonry, some bits of flesh and mucus, a foot, with the boot still on it, flying through the air and landing, flop, in the middle of the geraniums--the scarlet ones; such a splendid show that summer!\n\n****\n'You're hopeless, Izzie, I give you up.'\n\n****\n'The Russian technique for infecting water supplies was particularly ingenious.'\n\n****\nBack turned to back, Fanny and Izzie continued their changing in silence.\n\n****\n'The Nine Years' War, the great Economic Collapse. There was a choice between World Control and destruction. Between stability and...'\n\n****\n'Fanny Madonna's a nice girl too,' said the Assistant Predestinator.\n\n****\nIn the nurseries, the Elementary Class Consciousness lesson was over, the voices were adapting future demand to future industrial supply. 'I do love flying,' they whispered, 'I do love flying, I do love having new clothes, I do love...'\n\n****\n'Liberalism, of course, was dead of anthrax, but all the same you couldn't do things by force.'\n\n****\n'Not nearly so pneumatic as Izzie. Oh, not nearly.'\n\n****\n'But old clothes are beastly,' continued the untiring whisper. 'We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better...'\n\n****\n'Government's an affair of sitting, not hitting. You rule with the brains and the buttocks, never with the fists. For example, there was the conscription of consumption.'\n\n****\n'There, I'm ready,' said Izzie; but Fanny remained speechless and averted. 'Let's make peace, Fanny darling.'\n\n****\n'Every man, woman and child compelled to consume so much a year. In the interests of industry. The sole result...'\n\n****\n'Ending is better than mending. The more stitches, the less riches; the more stitches...'\n\n****\n'One of these days,' said Fanny, with dismal emphasis, 'you'll get into trouble.'\n\n****\n'Conscientious objection on an enormous scale. Anything not to consume. Back to nature.'\n\n****\n'I do love flying, I do love flying.'\n\n****\n'Back to culture. Yes, actually to culture. You can't consume much if you sit still and read books.'\n\n****\n'Do I look all right?' Izzie asked. Her jacket was made of bottle-green acetate cloth with green viscose fur at the cuffs and collar.\n\n****\n'Eight hundred Simple Lifers were mowed down by machine guns at Golders Green.'\n\n****\n'Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending.'\n\n****\nGreen corduroy shorts and white viscose-woollen stockings turned down below the knee.\n\n****\n'Then came the famous British Museum Massacre. Two thousand culture fans gassed with dichlorethyl sulphide.'\n\n****\nA green-and-white jockey cap shaded Izzie's eyes; her shoes were bright green and highly polished.\n\n****\n'In the end,' said Janine Cara, 'the Controllers realized that force was no good. The slower but infinitely surer methods of ectogenesis, Neo-Pavlovian conditioning and hypnop\u00e6dia...'\n\n****\nAnd round her waist she wore a silver-mounted green morocco-surrogate cartridge belt, bulging (for Izzie was not a freemartin) with the regulation supply of contraceptives.\n\n****\n'The discoveries of Pfitzner and Kawaguchi were at last made use of. An intensive propaganda against viviparous reproduction...'\n\n****\n'Perfect!' cried Fanny enthusiastically. She could never resist Izzie's charm for long. 'And what a perfectly sweet Malthusian belt!'\n\n****\n'Accompanied by a campaign against the Past; by the closing of museums, the blowing up of historical monuments (luckily most of them had already been destroyed during the Nine Years' War); by the suppression of all books published before A.F. 150.'\n\n****\n'I simply must get one like it,' said Fanny.\n\n****\n'There were some things called the pyramids, for example.'\n\n****\n'My old black-patent bandolier...'\n\n****\n'And a man called Shakespeare. You've never heard of them of course.'\n\n****\n'It's an absolute disgrace--that bandolier of mine.'\n\n****\n'Such are the advantages of a really scientific education.'\n\n****\n'The more stitches the less riches; the more stitches the less...'\n\n****\n'The introduction of Our Ford's first T-Model...'\n\n****\n'I've had it nearly three months.'\n\n****\n'Chosen as the opening date of the new era.'\n\n****\n'Ending is better than mending; ending is better...'\n\n****\n'There was a thing, as I've said before, called Christianity.'\n\n****\n'Ending is better than mending.'\n\n****\n'The ethics and philosophy of under-consumption...'\n\n****\n'I love new clothes, I love new clothes, I love...'\n\n****\n'So essential when there was under-production; but in an age of machines and the fixation of nitrogen--positively a crime against society.'\n\n****\n'Lloyd Arlo gave it me.'\n\n****\n'All crosses had their tops cut and became T's. There was also a thing called God.'\n\n****\n'It's real morocco-surrogate.'\n\n****\n'We have the World State now. And Ford's Day celebrations, and Community Sings, and Solidarity Services.'\n\n****\n'Ford, how I hate them!' Chaddy Annalise was thinking.\n\n****\n'There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.'\n\n****\n'Like meat, like so much meat.'\n\n****\n'There was a thing called the soul and a thing called immortality.'\n\n****\n'Do ask Lloyd where he got it.'\n\n****\n'But they used to take morphia and cocaine.'\n\n****\n'And what makes it worse, she thinks of herself as meat.'\n\n****\n'Two thousand pharmacologists and bio-chemists were subsidized in A.F. 178.'\n\n****\n'He does look glum,' said the Assistant Predestinator, pointing at Chaddy Annalise.\n\n****\n'Six years later it was being produced commercially. The perfect drug.'\n\n****\n'Let's bait him.'\n\n****\n'Euphoric, narcotic, pleasantly hallucinant.'\n\n****\n'Glum, Annalise, glum.' The clap on the shoulder made him start, look up. It was that brute Lloyd Arlo. 'What you need is a gramme of soma.'\n\n****\n'All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.'\n\n****\n'Ford, I should like to kill him!' But all he did was to say, 'No, thank you,' and fend off the proffered tube of tablets.\n\n****\n'Take a holiday from reality whenever you like, and come back without so much as a headache or a mythology.'\n\n****\n'Take it,' insisted Lloyd Arlo, 'take it.'\n\n****\n'Stability was practically assured.'\n\n****\n'One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments,' said the Assistant Predestinator, citing a piece of homely hypnop\u00e6dic wisdom.\n\n****\n'It only remained to conquer old age.'\n\n****\n'Damn you, damn you!' shouted Chaddy Annalise.\n\n****\n'Hoity-toity.'\n\n****\n'Gonadal hormones, transfusion of young blood, magnesium salts...'\n\n****\n'And do remember that a gramme is better than a damn.' They went out, laughing.\n\n****\n'All the physiological stigmata of old age have been abolished. And along with them, of course...'\n\n****\n'Don't forget to ask him about that Malthusian belt,' said Fanny.\n\n****\n'Along with them all the old man's mental peculiarities. Characters remain constant throughout a whole lifetime.'\n\n****\n'...two rounds of Obstacle Golf to get through before dark. I must fly.'\n\n****\n'Work, play--at sixty our powers and tastes are what they were at seventeen. Old men in the bad old days used to renounce, retire, take to religion, spend their time reading, thinking--thinking!'\n\n****\n'Idiots, swine!' Chaddy Annalise was saying to himself, as he walked down the corridor to the lift.\n\n****\n'Now--such is progress--the old men work, the old men copulate, the old men have no time, no leisure from pleasure, not a moment to sit down and think--or if ever by some unlucky chance such a crevice of time should yawn in the solid substance of their distractions, there is always soma, delicious soma, half a gramme for a half-holiday, a gramme for a week-end, two grammes for a trip to the gorgeous East, three for a dark eternity on the moon; returning whence they find themselves on the other side of the crevice, safe on the solid ground of daily labour and distraction, scampering from feely to feely, from girl to pneumatic girl, from Electro-magnetic Golf Course to...'\n\n****\n'Go away, little girl,' shouted the D.H.C. angrily. 'Go away, little boy! Can't you see that his fordship's busy? Go and do your erotic play somewhere else.'\n\n****\n'Poor little children!' said the Controller.\n\n****\nSlowly, majestically, with a faint humming of machinery, the Conveyors moved forward, thirty-three centimetres an hour. In the red darkness glinted innumerable rubies.\n\n\nChapter IV\n\n\u00a7 1\nThe lift was crowded with men from the Alpha Changing Rooms, and Izzie's entry was greeted by many friendly nods and smiles. She was a popular girl and, at one time or another, had spent a night with almost all of them.\n\nThey were dear boys, she thought, as she returned their salutations. Charming boys! Still, she did wish that George Edzel's ears weren't quite so big (perhaps he'd been given just a spot too much parathyroid at metre 328?). And looking at Zoya Jeb, she couldn't help remembering that he was really too hairy when he took his clothes off.\n\nTurning, with eyes a little saddened by the recollection of Zoya's curly blackness, she saw in a corner the small thin body, the melancholy face of Chaddy Annalise.\n\n'Chaddy!' she stepped up to him. 'I was looking for you.' Her voice rang clear above the hum of the mounting lift. The others looked round curiously. 'I wanted to talk to you about our New Mexico plan.' Out of the tail of her eye she could see Zoya Jeb gaping with astonishment. The gape annoyed her. 'Surprised I shouldn't be begging to go with him again!' she said to herself. Then aloud, and more warmly than ever, 'I'd simply love to come with you for a week in July,' she went on. (Anyhow, she was publicly proving her unfaithfulness to Lloyd. Fanny ought to be pleased, even though it was Chaddy.) 'That is,' Izzie gave him her most deliciously significant smile, 'if you still want to have me.'\n\nChaddy's pale face flushed. 'What on earth for?' she wondered, astonished, but at the same time touched by this strange tribute to her power.\n\n'Hadn't we better talk about it somewhere else?' he stammered, looking horribly uncomfortable.\n\n'As though I'd been saying something shocking,' thought Izzie. 'He couldn't look more upset if I'd made a dirty joke--asked him who his mother was, or something like that.'\n\n'I mean, with all these people about...' He was choked with confusion.\n\nIzzie's laugh was frank and wholly unmalicious. 'How funny you are!' she said; and she quite genuinely did think him funny. 'You'll give me at least a week's warning, won't you,' she went on in another tone. 'I suppose we take the Blue Pacific Rocket? Does it start from the Charing-T Tower? Or is it from Hampstead?'\n\nBefore Chaddy could answer, the lift came to a standstill.\n\n'Roof!' called a creaking voice.\n\nThe liftman was a small simian creature, dressed in the black tunic of an Epsilon-Minus Semi-Moron.\n\n'Roof!'\n\nHe flung open the gates. The warm glory of afternoon sunlight made him start and blink his eyes. 'Oh, roof!' he repeated in a voice of rapture. He was as though suddenly and joyfully awakened from a dark annihilating stupor. 'Roof!'\n\nHe smiled up with a kind of doggily expectant adoration into the faces of his passengers. Talking and laughing together, they stepped out into the light. The liftman looked after them.\n\n'Roof?' he said once more, questioningly.\n\nThen a bell rang, and from the ceiling of the lift a loud-speaker began, very softly and yet very imperiously, to issue its commands.\n\n'Go down,' it said, 'go down. Floor Eighteen. Go down, go down. Floor Eighteen. Go down, go...'\n\nThe liftman slammed the gates, touched a button and instantly dropped back into the droning twilight of the well, the twilight of his own habitual stupor.\n\nIt was warm and bright on the roof. The summer afternoon was drowsy with the hum of passing helicopters; and the deeper drone of the rocket-planes hastening, invisible, through the bright sky five or six miles overhead was like a caress on the soft air. Chaddy Annalise drew a deep breath. He looked up into the sky and round the blue horizon and finally down into Izzie's face.\n\n'Isn't it beautiful!' His voice trembled a little.\n\nShe smiled at him with an expression of the most sympathetic understanding. 'Simply perfect for Obstacle Golf,' she answered rapturously. 'And now I must fly, Chaddy. Lloyd gets cross if I keep him waiting. Let me know in good time about the date.' And waving her hand, she ran away across the wide flat roof towards the hangars. Chaddy stood watching the retreating twinkle of the white stockings, the sunburnt knees vivaciously bending and unbending, again, again, and the softer rolling of those well-fitted corduroy shorts beneath the bottle-green jacket. His face wore an expression of pain.\n\n'I should say she was pretty,' said a loud and cheery voice just behind him.\n\nChaddy started, and looked round. The chubby red face of Zoya Jeb was beaming down at him--beaming with manifest cordiality. Zoya was notoriously good-natured. People said of him that he could have got through life without ever touching soma. The malice and bad tempers from which other people had to take holidays never afflicted him. Reality for Zoya was always sunny.\n\n'Pneumatic too. And how!' Then, in another tone, 'But, I say,' he went on, 'you do look glum! What you need is a gramme of soma.' Diving into his right-hand trouser-pocket, Zoya produced a phial. 'One cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy... But, I say!'\n\nChaddy had suddenly turned and rushed away.\n\nZoya stared after him. 'What can be the matter with the fellow?' he wondered, and, shaking his head, decided that the story about the alcohol having been put into the poor chap's blood-surrogate must be true. 'Touched his brain, I suppose.'\n\nHe put away the soma bottle, and taking out a packet of sex-hormone chewing-gum, stuffed a plug into his cheek and walked slowly away towards the hangars, ruminating.\n\nLloyd Arlo had had his machine wheeled out of its lock-up and, when Izzie arrived, was already seated in the cockpit, waiting.\n\n'Four minutes late,' was all his comment, as she climbed in beside him. He started the engines and threw the helicopter screws into gear. The machine shot vertically into the air. Lloyd accelerated; the humming of the propeller shrilled from hornet to wasp, from wasp to mosquito; the speedometer showed that they were rising at the best part of two kilometres a minute. London diminished beneath them. The huge table-topped buildings were no more, in a few seconds, than a bed of geometrical mushrooms sprouting from the green of park and garden. In the midst of them, thin-stalked, a taller, slenderer fungus, the Charing-T Tower lifted towards the sky a disk of shining concrete.\n\nLike the vague torsos of fabulous athletes, huge fleshy clouds lolled on the blue air above their heads. Out of one of them suddenly dropped a small scarlet insect, buzzing as it fell.\n\n'There's the Red Rocket,' said Lloyd, 'just come in from New York.' Looking at his watch, 'Seven minutes behind time,' he added, and shook his head. 'These Atlantic services--they're really scandalously unpunctual.'\n\nHe took his foot off the accelerator. The humming of the screws overhead dropped an octave and a half, back through wasp and hornet to bumble-bee, to cockchafer, to stag-beetle. The upward rush of the machine slackened off; a moment later they were hanging motionless in the air. Lloyd pushed at a lever; there was a click. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, till it was a circular mist before their eyes, the propeller in front of them began to revolve. The wind of a horizontal speed whistled ever more shrilly in the stays. Lloyd kept his eye on the revolution-counter; when the needle touched the twelve hundred mark, he threw the helicopter screws out of gear. The machine had enough forward momentum to be able to fly on its planes.\n\nIzzie looked down through the window in the floor between her feet. They were flying over the six kilometre zone of park-land that separated Central London from its first ring of satellite suburbs. The green was maggoty with foreshortened life. Forests of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy towers gleamed between the trees. Near Shepherd's Bush two thousand Beta-Minus mixed doubles were playing Riemann-surface tennis. A double row of Escalator Fives Courts lined the main road from Notting Hill to Willesden. In the Ealing stadium a Delta gymnastic display and community sing was in progress.\n\n'What a hideous colour khaki is,' remarked Izzie, voicing the hypnop\u00e6dic prejudices of her caste.\n\nThe buildings of the Hounslow Feely Studio covered seven and a half hectares. Near them a black and khaki army of labourers was busy revitrifying the surface of the Great West Road. One of the huge travelling crucibles was being tapped as they flew over. The molten stone poured out in a stream of dazzling incandescence across the road; the asbestos rollers came and went; at the tail of an insulated watering-cart the steam rose in white clouds.\n\nAt Brentford the Television Corporation's factory was like a small town.\n\n'They must be changing the shift,' said Izzie.\n\nLike aphides and ants, the leaf-green Gamma girls, the black Semi-Morons swarmed round the entrances, or stood in queues to take their places in the monorail tram-cars. Mulberry-coloured Beta-Minuses came and went among the crowd. The roof of the main building was alive with the alighting and departure of helicopters.\n\n'My word,' said Izzie, 'I'm glad I'm not a Gamma.'\n\nTen minutes later they were at Stoke Poges and had started their first round of Obstacle Golf.\n\n\u00a7 2\nWith eyes for the most part downcast and, if ever they lighted on a fellow creature, at once and furtively averted, Chaddy hastened across the roof. He was like a man pursued, but pursued by enemies he does not wish to see, lest they should seem more hostile even than he had supposed, and he himself be made to feel guiltier and even more helplessly alone.\n\n'That horrible Zoya Jeb!' And yet the man had meant well enough. Which only made it, in a way, much worse. Those who meant well behaved in the same way as those who meant badly. Even Izzie was making him suffer. He remembered those weeks of timid indecision, during which he had looked and longed and despaired of ever having the courage to ask her. Dared he face the risk of being humiliated by a contemptuous refusal? But if she were to say yes, what rapture! Well, now she had said it and he was still wretched--wretched that she should have thought it such a perfect afternoon for Obstacle Golf, that she should have trotted away to join Lloyd Arlo, that she should have found him funny for not wanting to talk of their most private affairs in public. Wretched, in a word, because she had behaved as any healthy and virtuous English girl ought to behave and not in some other, abnormal, extraordinary way.\n\nHe opened the door of his lock-up and called to a lounging couple of Delta-Minus attendants to come and push his machine out on to the roof. The hangars were staffed by a single Bokanovsky Group, and the men were twins, identically small, black and hideous. Chaddy gave his orders in the sharp, rather arrogant and even offensive tone of one who does not feel himself too secure in his superiority. To have dealings with members of the lower castes was always, for Chaddy, a most distressing experience. For whatever the cause (and the current gossip about the alcohol in his blood-surrogate may very likely--for accidents will happen--have been true) Chaddy's physique was hardly better than that of the average Gamma. He stood eight centimetres short of the standard Alpha height and was slender in proportion. Contact with members of the lower castes always reminded him painfully of this physical inadequacy. 'I am I, and wish I wasn't'; his self-consciousness was acute and distressing. Each time he found himself looking on the level, instead of downward, into a Delta's face, he felt humiliated. Would the creature treat him with the respect due to his caste? The question haunted him. Not without reason. For Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons had been to some extent conditioned to associate corporeal mass with social superiority. Indeed, a faint hypnop\u00e6dic prejudice in favour of size was universal. Hence the laughter of the women to whom he made proposals, the practical joking of his equals among the men. The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity. How bitterly he envied men like Lloyd Arlo and Zoya Jeb! Men who never had to shout at an Epsilon to get an order obeyed; men who took their position for granted; men who moved through the caste system as a fish through the water--so utterly at home as to be unaware either of themselves or of the beneficent and comfortable element in which they had their being.\n\nSlackly, it seemed to him, and with reluctance, the twin attendants wheeled his plane out on the roof.\n\n'Hurry up!' said Chaddy irritably. One of them glanced at him. Was that a kind of bestial derision that he detected in those blank grey eyes? 'Hurry up!' he shouted more loudly, and there was an ugly rasp in his voice.\n\nHe climbed into the plane and, a minute later was flying southwards, towards the river.\n\nThe various Bureaux of Propaganda and the College of Emotional Engineering were housed in a single sixty-story building in Fleet Street. In the basement and on the lower floors were the presses and offices of the three great London newspapers--The Hourly Radio, an upper-caste sheet, the pale-green Gamma Gazette, and, on khaki paper and in words exclusively of one syllable, The Delta Mirror. Then came the Bureaux of Propaganda by Television, by Feeling Picture, and by Synthetic Voice and Music respectively--twenty-two floors of them. Above were the research laboratories and the padded rooms in which the Sound-Track Writers and Synthetic Composers did their delicate work. The top eighteen floors were occupied by the College of Emotional Engineering.\n\nChaddy landed on the roof of Propaganda House and stepped out.\n\n'Ring down to Mr. Jackson Emilio,' he ordered the Gamma-Plus porter, 'and tell him that Mr. Chaddy Annalise is waiting for him on the roof.'\n\nHe sat down and lit a cigarette.\n\nJackson Emilio was writing when the message came down.\n\n'Tell him I'm coming at once,' he said and hung up the receiver. Then, turning to his secretary, 'I'll leave you to put my things away,' he went on in the same official and impersonal tone; and, ignoring her lustrous smile, got up and walked briskly to the door.\n\nHe was a powerfully built man, deep-chested, broad-shouldered, massive, and yet quick in his movements, springy and agile. The round strong pillar of his neck supported a beautifully shaped head. His hair was dark and curly, his features strongly marked. In a forcible emphatic way, he was handsome and looked, as his secretary was never tired of repeating, every centimetre an Alpha-Plus. By profession he was a lecturer at the College of Emotional Engineering (Department of Writing) and in the intervals of his educational activities, a working Emotional Engineer. He wrote regularly for The Hourly Radio, composed feely scenarios, and had the happiest knack for slogans and hypnop\u00e6dic rhymes.\n\n'Able,' was the verdict of his superiors. 'Perhaps' (and they would shake their heads, would significantly lower their voices) 'a little too able.'\n\nYes, a little too able; they were right. A mental excess had produced in Jackson Emilio effects very similar to those which, in Chaddy Annalise, were the result of a physical defect. Too little bone and brawn had isolated Chaddy from his fellow men, and the sense of this apartness, being, by all the current standards, a mental excess, became in its turn a cause of wider separation. That which had made Jackson so uncomfortably aware of being himself and all alone was too much ability. What the two men shared was the knowledge that they were individuals. But whereas the physically defective Chaddy had suffered all his life from the consciousness of being separate, it was only quite recently that, grown aware of his mental excess, Jackson Emilio had also become aware of his difference from the people who surrounded him. This Escalator-Squash champion, this indefatigable lover (it was said that he had had six hundred and forty different girls in under four years), this admirable committee man and best mixer had realized quite suddenly that sport, women, communal activities were only, so far as he was concerned, second bests. Really, and at the bottom, he was interested in something else. But in what? In what? That was the problem which Chaddy had come to discuss with him--or rather, since it was always Jackson who did all the talking, to listen to his friend discussing, yet once more.\n\nThree charming girls from the Bureau of Propaganda by Synthetic Voice waylaid him as he stepped out of the lift.\n\n'Oh, Jackson darling, do come and have a picnic supper with us on Exmoor.' They clung round him imploringly.\n\nHe shook his head, he pushed his way through them. 'No, no.'\n\n'We're not inviting any other man.'\n\nBut Jackson remained unshaken even by this delightful promise. 'No,' he repeated, 'I'm busy.' And he held resolutely on his course. The girls trailed after him. It was not till he had actually climbed into Chaddy's plane and slammed the door that they gave up pursuit. Not without reproaches.\n\n'These women!' he said, as the machine rose into the air. 'These women!' And he shook his head, he frowned. 'Too awful.' Chaddy hypocritically agreed, wishing, as he spoke the words, that he could have as many girls as Jackson did, and with as little trouble. He was seized with a sudden urgent need to boast. 'I'm taking Izzie Madonna to New Mexico with me,' he said in a tone as casual as he could make it.\n\n'Are you?' said Jackson, with a total absence of interest. Then after a little pause, 'This last week or two,' he went on, 'I've been cutting all my committees and all my girls. You can't imagine what a hullabaloo they've been making about it at the College. Still, it's been worth it, I think. The effects...' He hesitated. 'Well, they're odd, they're very odd.'\n\nA physical shortcoming could produce a kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible. Mental excess could produce, for its own purposes, the voluntary blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude, the artificial impotence of asceticism.\n\nThe rest of the short flight was accomplished in silence. When they had arrived and were comfortably stretched out on the pneumatic sofas in Chaddy's room, Jackson began again.\n\nSpeaking very slowly, 'Did you ever feel,' he asked, 'as though you had something inside you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out? Some sort of extra power that you aren't using--you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of through the turbines?' He looked at Chaddy questioningly.\n\n'You mean all the emotions one might be feeling if things were different?'\n\nJackson shook his head. 'Not quite. I'm thinking of a queer feeling I sometimes get, a feeling that I've got something important to say and the power to say it--only I don't know what it is, and I can't make any use of the power. If there was some different way of writing... Or else something else to write about...' He was silent; then, 'You see,' he went on at last, 'I'm pretty good at inventing phrases--you know, the sort of words that suddenly make you jump, almost as though you'd sat on a pin, they seem so new and exciting even though they're about something hypnop\u00e6dically obvious. But that doesn't seem enough. It's not enough for the phrases to be good; what you make with them ought to be good too.'\n\n'But your things are good, Jackson.'\n\n'Oh, as far as they go.' Jackson shrugged his shoulders. 'But they go such a little way. They aren't important enough, somehow. I feel I could do something much more important. Yes, and more intense, more violent. But what? What is there more important to say? And how can one be violent about the sort of things one's expected to write about? Words can be like X-rays, if you use them properly--they'll go through anything. You read and you're pierced. That's one of the things I try to teach my students--how to write piercingly. But what on earth's the good of being pierced by an article about a Community Sing, or the latest improvement in scent organs? Besides, can you make words really piercing--you know, like the very hardest X-rays--when you're writing about that sort of thing? Can you say something about nothing? That's what it finally boils down to. I try and I try...'\n\n'Hush!' said Chaddy suddenly, and lifted a warning finger; they listened. 'I believe there's somebody at the door,' he whispered.\n\nJackson got up, tiptoed across the room, and with a sharp quick movement flung the door wide open. There was, of course, nobody there.\n\n'I'm sorry,' said Chaddy, feeling and looking uncomfortably foolish. 'I suppose I've got things on my nerves a bit. When people are suspicious with you, you start being suspicious with them.'\n\nHe passed his hand across his eyes, he sighed, his voice became plaintive. He was justifying himself. 'If you knew what I'd had to put up with recently,' he said almost tearfully--and the uprush of his self-pity was like a fountain suddenly released. 'If you only knew!'\n\nJackson Emilio listened with a certain sense of discomfort. 'Poor little Chaddy!' he said to himself. But at the same time he felt rather ashamed for his friend. He wished Chaddy would show a little more pride.\n\n\nChapter V\n\n\u00a7 1\nBy eight o'clock the light was failing. The loud-speakers in the tower of the Stoke Poges Club House began, in a more than human tenor, to announce the closing of the courses. Izzie and Lloyd abandoned their game and walked back towards the Club. From the grounds of the Internal and External Secretion Trust came the lowing of those thousands of cattle which provided, with their hormones and their milk, the raw materials for the great factory at Farnham Royal.\n\nAn incessant buzzing of helicopters filled the twilight. Every two and a half minutes a bell and the screech of whistles announced the departure of one of the light monorail trains which carried the lower-caste golfers back from their separate course to the metropolis.\n\nIzzie and Lloyd climbed into their machine and started off. At eight hundred feet Lloyd slowed down the helicopter screws, and they hung for a minute or two poised above the fading landscape. The forest of Burnham Beeches stretched like a great pool of darkness towards the bright shore of the western sky. Crimson at the horizon, the last of the sunset faded, through orange, upwards into yellow and a pale watery green. Northwards, beyond and above the trees, the Internal and External Secretions factory glared with a fierce electric brilliance from every window of its twenty stories. Beneath them lay the buildings of the Golf Club--the huge lower-caste barracks and, on the other side of a dividing wall, the smaller houses reserved for Alpha and Beta members. The approaches to the monorail station were black with the ant-like pullulation of lower-caste activity. From under the glass vault a lighted train shot out into the open. Following its south-easterly course across the dark plain their eyes were drawn to the majestic buildings of the Slough Crematorium. For the safety of night-flying planes, its four tall chimneys were flood-lighted and tipped with crimson danger signals. It was a landmark.\n\n'Why do the smoke-stacks have those things like balconies round them?' enquired Izzie.\n\n'Phosphorus recovery,' explained Lloyd telegraphically. 'On their way up the chimney the gases go through four separate treatments. P{2}O{5} used to go right out of circulation every time they cremated some one. Now they recover over ninety-eight per cent. of it. More than a kilo and a half per adult corpse. Which makes the best part of four hundred tons of phosphorus every year from England alone.' Lloyd spoke with a happy pride, rejoicing whole-heartedly in the achievement, as though it had been his own. 'Fine to think we can go on being socially useful even after we're dead. Making plants grow.'\n\nIzzie, meanwhile, had turned her eyes away and was looking perpendicularly downwards at the monorail station. 'Fine,' she agreed. 'But queer that Alphas and Betas won't make any more plants grow than those nasty little Gammas and Deltas and Epsilons down there.'\n\n'All men are physico-chemically equal,' said Lloyd sententiously. 'Besides, even Epsilons perform indispensable services.'\n\n'Even an Epsilon...' Izzie suddenly remembered an occasion when, as a little girl at school, she had woken up in the middle of the night and become aware, for the first time, of the whispering that had haunted all her sleeps. She saw again the beam of moonlight, the row of small white beds; heard once more the soft, soft voice that said (the words were there, unforgotten, unforgettable after so many night-long repetitions): 'Every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one. Even Epsilons are useful. We couldn't do without Epsilons. Every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one...' Izzie remembered her first shock of fear and surprise; her speculations through half a wakeful hour; and then, under the influence of those endless repetitions, the gradual soothing of her mind, the soothing, the smoothing, the stealthy creeping of sleep....\n\n'I suppose Epsilons don't really mind being Epsilons,' she said aloud.\n\n'Of course they don't. How can they? They don't know what it's like being anything else. We'd mind, of course. But then we've been differently conditioned. Besides, we start with a different heredity.'\n\n'I'm glad I'm not an Epsilon,' said Izzie, with conviction.\n\n'And if you were an Epsilon,' said Lloyd, 'your conditioning would have made you no less thankful that you weren't a Beta or an Alpha.' He put his forward propeller into gear and headed the machine towards London. Behind them, in the west, the crimson and orange were almost faded; a dark bank of cloud had crept into the zenith. As they flew over the Crematorium, the plane shot upwards on the column of hot air rising from the chimneys, only to fall as suddenly when it passed into the descending chill beyond.\n\n'What a marvellous switchback!' Izzie laughed delightedly.\n\nBut Lloyd's tone was almost, for a moment, melancholy. 'Do you know what that switchback was?' he said. 'It was some human being finally and definitely disappearing. Going up in a squirt of hot gas. It would be curious to know who it was--a man or a woman, an Alpha or an Epsilon....' He sighed. Then, in a resolutely cheerful voice, 'Anyhow,' he concluded, 'there's one thing we can be certain of; whoever he may have been, he was happy when he was alive. Everybody's happy now.'\n\n'Yes, everybody's happy now,' echoed Izzie. They had heard the words repeated a hundred and fifty times every night for twelve years.\n\nLanding on the roof of Lloyd's forty-story apartment house in Westminster, they went straight down to the dining-hall. There, in a loud and cheerful company, they ate an excellent meal. Soma was served with the coffee. Izzie took two half-gramme tablets and Lloyd three. At twenty past nine they walked across the street to the newly opened Westminster Abbey Cabaret. It was a night almost without clouds, moonless and starry; but of this on the whole depressing fact Izzie and Lloyd were fortunately unaware. The electric sky-signs effectively shut off the outer darkness. 'CALVIN STOPES AND HIS SIXTEEN SEXOPHONISTS.' From the fa\u00e7ade of the new Abbey the giant letters invitingly glared. 'LONDON'S FINEST SCENT AND COLOUR ORGAN. ALL THE LATEST SYNTHETIC MUSIC.'\n\nThey entered. The air seemed hot and somehow breathless with the scent of ambergris and sandalwood. On the domed ceiling of the hall, the colour organ had momentarily painted a tropical sunset. The Sixteen Sexophonists were playing an old favourite: 'There ain't no Bottle in all the world like that dear little Bottle of mine.' Four hundred couples were five-stepping round the polished floor. Izzie and Lloyd were soon the four hundred and first. The sexophones wailed like melodious cats under the moon, moaned in the alto and tenor registers as though the little death were upon them. Rich with a wealth of harmonics, their tremulous chorus mounted towards a climax, louder and ever louder--until at last, with a wave of his hand, the conductor let loose the final shattering note of ethermusic and blew the sixteen merely human blowers clean out of existence. Thunder in A flat major. And then, in all but silence, in all but darkness, there followed a gradual deturgescence, a diminuendo sliding gradually, through quarter tones, down, down to a faintly whispered dominant chord that lingered on (while the five-four rhythms still pulsed below) charging the darkened seconds with an intense expectancy. And at last expectancy was fulfilled. There was a sudden explosive sunrise, and simultaneously, the Sixteen burst into song:\n\nBottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted!\nBottle of mine, why was I ever decanted?\n  Skies are blue inside of you,\n  The weather's always fine;\nFor\nThere ain't no Bottle in all the world\nLike that dear little Bottle of mine.\nFive-stepping with the other four hundred round and round Westminster Abbey, Izzie and Lloyd were yet dancing in another world--the warm, the richly coloured, the infinitely friendly world of soma-holiday. How kind, how good-looking, how delightfully amusing every one was! 'Bottle of mine, it's you I've always wanted...' But Izzie and Lloyd had what they wanted... They were inside, here and now--safely inside with the fine weather, the perennially blue sky. And when, exhausted, the Sixteen had laid by their sexophones and the Synthetic Music apparatus was producing the very latest in slow Malthusian Blues, they might have been twin embryos gently rocking together on the waves of a bottled ocean of blood-surrogate.\n\n'Good-night, dear friends. Good-night, dear friends.' The loud-speakers veiled their commands in a genial and musical politeness. Good-night, dear friends....'\n\nObediently, with all the others, Izzie and Lloyd left the building. The depressing stars had travelled quite some way across the heavens. But though the separating screen of the sky-signs had now to a great extent dissolved, the two young people still retained their happy ignorance of the night.\n\nSwallowed half an hour before closing time, that second dose of soma had raised a quite impenetrable wall between the actual universe and their minds. Bottled, they crossed the street; bottled, they took the lift up to Lloyd's room on the twenty-eighth floor. And yet, bottled as she was, and in spite of that second gramme of soma, Izzie did not forget to take all the contraceptive precautions prescribed by the regulations. Years of intensive hypnop\u00e6dia and, from twelve to seventeen, Malthusian drill three times a week had made the taking of these precautions almost as automatic and inevitable as blinking.\n\n'Oh, and that reminds me,' she said, as she came back from the bathroom, 'Fanny Madonna wants to know where you found that lovely green morocco-surrogate cartridge belt you gave me.'\n\n\u00a7 2\nAlternate Thursdays were Chaddy's Solidarity Service days. After an early dinner at the Aphrodit\u00e6um (to which Jackson had recently been elected under Rule Two) he took leave of his friend and, hailing a taxi on the roof, told the man to fly to the Fordson Community Singery. The machine rose a couple of hundred metres, then headed eastwards, and as it turned, there before Chaddy's eyes, gigantically beautiful, was the Singery. Flood-lighted, its three hundred and twenty metres of white Carrara-surrogate gleamed with a snowy incandescence over Ludgate Hill; at each of the four corners of its helicopter platform an immense T shone crimson against the night, and from the mouths of twenty-four vast golden trumpets rumbled a solemn synthetic music.\n\n'Damn, I'm late,' Chaddy said to himself as he first caught sight of Big Lloyd, the Singery clock. And sure enough, as he was paying off his cab, Big Lloyd sounded the hour. 'Ford,' sang out an immense bass voice from all the golden trumpets. 'Ford, Ford, Ford...' Nine times. Chaddy ran for the lift.\n\nThe great auditorium for Ford's Day celebrations and other massed Community Sings was at the bottom of the building. Above it, a hundred to each floor, were the seven thousand rooms used by Solidarity Groups for their fortnightly services. Chaddy dropped down to floor thirty-three, hurried along the corridor, stood hesitating for a moment outside Room 3210, then, having wound himself up, opened the door and walked in.\n\nThank Ford! he was not the last. Three chairs of the twelve arranged round the circular table were still unoccupied. He slipped into the nearest of them as inconspicuously as he could and prepared to frown at the yet later comers whenever they should arrive.\n\nTurning towards him, 'What were you playing this afternoon?' the girl on his left enquired. 'Obstacle, or Electro-magnetic?'\n\nChaddy looked at her (Ford! it was Aubreanna Gregor) and blushingly had to admit that he had been playing neither. Aubreanna stared at him with astonishment. There was an awkward silence.\n\nThen pointedly she turned away and addressed herself to the more sporting man on her left.\n\n'A good beginning for a Solidarity Service,' thought Chaddy miserably, and foresaw for himself yet another failure to achieve atonement. If only he had given himself time to look round instead of scuttling for the nearest chair! He could have sat between Fifi Bradlaugh and Joanna Diesel. Instead of which he had gone and blindly planted himself next to Aubreanna. Aubreanna! Ford! Those black eyebrows of hers--that eyebrow, rather--for they met above the nose. Ford! And on his right was Clara Deterding. True, Clara's eyebrows didn't meet. But she was really too pneumatic. Whereas Fifi and Joanna were absolutely right. Plump, blonde, not too large... And it was that great lout, Tom Kawaguchi, who now took the seat between them.\n\nThe last arrival was Sarojini Engels.\n\n'You're late,' said the President of the Group severely. 'Don't let it happen again.'\n\nSarojini apologized and slid into her place between Jim Bokanovsky and Herbert Bakunin. The group was now complete, the solidarity circle perfect and without flaw. Man, woman, man, in a ring of endless alternation round the table. Twelve of them ready to be made one, waiting to come together, to be fused, to lose their twelve separate identities in a larger being.\n\nThe President stood up, made the sign of the T and, switching on the synthetic music, let loose the soft indefatigable beating of drums and a choir of instruments--near-wind and super-string--that plangently repeated and repeated the brief and unescapably haunting melody of the first Solidarity Hymn. Again, again--and it was not the ear that heard the pulsing rhythm, it was the midriff; the wail and clang of those recurring harmonies haunted, not the mind, but the yearning bowels of compassion.\n\nThe President made another sign of the T and sat down. The service had begun. The dedicated soma tablets were placed in the centre of the dinner table. The loving cup of strawberry ice-cream soma was passed from hand to hand and, with the formula, 'I drink to my annihilation,' twelve times quaffed. Then to the accompaniment of the synthetic orchestra the First Solidarity Hymn was sung.\n\nFord, we are twelve; oh, make us one,\n  Like drops within the Social River;\nOh, make us now together run\n  As swiftly as thy shining Flivver.\nTwelve yearning stanzas. And then the loving cup was passed a second time. 'I drink to the Greater Being' was now the formula. All drank. Tirelessly the music played. The drums beat. The crying and clashing of the harmonies were an obsession in the melted bowels. The Second Solidarity Hymn was sung.\n\nCome, Greater Being, Social Friend,\n  Annihilating Twelve-in-One!\nWe long to die, for when we end,\n  Our larger life has but begun.\nAgain twelve stanzas. By this time the soma had begun to work. Eyes shone, cheeks were flushed, the inner light of universal benevolence broke out on every face in happy, friendly smiles. Even Chaddy felt himself a little melted. When Aubreanna Gregor turned and beamed at him, he did his best to beam back. But the eyebrow, that black two-in-one--alas, it was still there; he couldn't ignore it, couldn't, however hard he tried. The melting hadn't gone far enough. Perhaps if he had been sitting between Fifi and Joanna... For the third time the loving cup went round. 'I drink to the imminence of His Coming,' said Aubreanna Gregor, whose turn it happened to be to initiate the circular rite. Her tone was loud, exultant. She drank and passed the cup to Chaddy. 'I drink to the imminence of His Coming,' he repeated, with a sincere attempt to feel that the coming was imminent; but the eyebrow continued to haunt him, and the Coming, so far as he was concerned, was horribly remote. He drank and handed the cup to Clara Deterding. 'It'll be a failure again,' he said to himself. 'I know it will.' But he went on doing his best to beam.\n\nThe loving cup had made its circuit. Lifting his hand, the President gave a signal; the chorus broke out into the third Solidarity Hymn.\n\nFeel how the Greater Being comes!\n  Rejoice and, in rejoicings, die!\nMelt in the music of the drums!\n  For I am you and you are I.\nAs verse succeeded verse the voices thrilled with an ever intenser excitement. The sense of the Coming's imminence was like an electric tension in the air. The President switched off the music and, with the final note of the final stanza, there was absolute silence--the silence of stretched expectancy, quivering and creeping with a galvanic life. The President reached out his hand; and suddenly a Voice, a deep strong Voice, more musical than any merely human voice, richer, warmer, more vibrant with love and yearning and compassion, a wonderful, mysterious, supernatural Voice spoke from above their heads. Very slowly, 'Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford,' it said diminishingly and on a descending scale. A sensation of warmth radiated thrillingly out from the solar plexus to every extremity of the bodies of those who listened; tears came into their eyes; their hearts, their bowels seemed to move within them, as though with an independent life. 'Ford!' they were melting, 'Ford!' dissolved, dissolved. Then, in another tone, suddenly, startlingly. 'Listen!' trumpeted the Voice. 'Listen!' They listened. After a pause, sunk to a whisper, but a whisper, somehow, more penetrating than the loudest cry. 'The feet of the Greater Being,' it went on, and repeated the words: 'The feet of the Greater Being.' The whisper almost expired. 'The feet of the Greater Being are on the stairs.' And once more there was silence; and the expectancy, momentarily relaxed, was stretched again, tauter, tauter, almost to the tearing point. The feet of the Greater Being--oh, they heard them, they heard them, coming softly down the stairs, coming nearer and nearer down the invisible stairs. The feet of the Greater Being. And suddenly the tearing point was reached. Her eyes staring, her lips parted, Aubreanna Gregor sprang to her feet.\n\n'I hear him,' she cried. 'I hear him.'\n\n'He's coming,' shouted Sarojini Engels.\n\n'Yes, he's coming, I hear him.' Fifi Bradlaugh and Tom Kawaguchi rose simultaneously to their feet.\n\n'Oh, oh, oh!' Joanna inarticulately testified.\n\n'He's coming!' yelled Jim Bokanovsky.\n\nThe President leaned forward and, with a touch, released a delirium of cymbals and blown brass, a fever of tom-tomming.\n\n'Oh, he's coming!' screamed Clara Deterding. 'Aie!' and it was as though she were having her throat cut.\n\nFeeling that it was time for him to do something, Chaddy also jumped up and shouted: 'I hear him; he's coming.' But it wasn't true. He heard nothing and, for him, nobody was coming. Nobody--in spite of the music, in spite of the mounting excitement. But he waved his arms, he shouted with the best of them; and when the others began to jig and stamp and shuffle, he also jigged and shuffled.\n\nRound they went, a circular procession of dancers, each with hands on the hips of the dancer preceding, round and round, shouting in unison, stamping to the rhythm of the music with their feet, beating it, beating it out with hands on the buttocks in front; twelve pairs of hands beating as one; as one, twelve buttocks slabbily resounding. Twelve as one, twelve as one. 'I hear him, I hear him coming.' The music quickened; faster beat the feet, faster, faster fell the rhythmic hands. And all at once a great synthetic bass boomed out the words which announced the approaching atonement and final consummation of solidarity, the coming of the Twelve-in-One, the incarnation of the Greater Being. 'Orgy-porgy,' it sang, while the tom-toms continued to beat their feverish tattoo:\n\nOrgy-porgy, Ford and fun,\nKiss the girls and make them One.\nBoys at one with girls at peace;\nOrgy-porgy gives release.\n'Orgy-porgy,' the dancers caught up the liturgical refrain, 'Orgy-porgy, Ford and fun, kiss the girls...' And as they sang, the lights began slowly to fade--to fade and at the same time to grow warmer, richer, redder, until at last they were dancing in the crimson twilight of an Embryo Store. 'Orgy-Porgy...' In their blood-coloured and foetal darkness the dancers continued for a while to circulate, to beat and beat out the indefatigable rhythm. 'Orgy-porgy...' Then the circle wavered, broke, fell in partial disintegration on the ring of couches which surrounded--circle enclosing circle--the table and its planetary chairs. 'Orgy-porgy...' Tenderly the deep Voice crooned and cooed; in the red twilight it was as though some enormous negro dove were hovering benevolently over the now prone or supine dancers.\n\n****\nThey were standing on the roof; Big Lloyd had just sung eleven. The night was calm and warm.\n\n'Wasn't it wonderful?' said Fifi Bradlaugh. 'Wasn't it simply wonderful?' She looked at Chaddy with an expression of rapture, but of rapture in which there was no trace of agitation or excitement--for to be excited is still to be unsatisfied. Hers was the calm ecstasy of achieved consummation, the peace, not of mere vacant satiety and nothingness, but of balanced life, of energies at rest and in equilibrium. A rich and living peace. For the Solidarity Service had given as well as taken, drawn off only to replenish. She was full, she was made perfect, she was still more than merely herself. 'Didn't you think it was wonderful?' she insisted, looking into Chaddy's face with those supernaturally shining eyes.\n\n'Yes, I thought it was wonderful,' he lied and looked away; the sight of her transfigured face was at once an accusation and an ironical reminder of his own separateness. He was as miserably isolated now as he had been when the service began--more isolated by reason of his unreplenished emptiness, his dead satiety. Separate and unatoned, while the others were being fused into the Greater Being; alone even in Aubreanna's embrace--much more alone, indeed, more hopelessly himself than he had ever been in his life before. He had emerged from that crimson twilight into the common electric glare with a self-consciousness intensified to the pitch of agony. He was utterly miserable, and perhaps (her shining eyes accused him), perhaps it was his own fault. 'Quite wonderful,' he repeated; but the only thing he could think of was Aubreanna's eyebrow.\n\n\nChapter VI\n\n\u00a7 1\nOdd, odd, odd, was Izzie's verdict on Chaddy Annalise. So odd, indeed, that in the course of the succeeding weeks she had wondered more than once whether she shouldn't change her mind about the New Mexico holiday, and go instead to the North Pole with Zoya Jeb. The trouble was that she knew the North Pole, had been there with George Edzel only last summer, and what was more, found it pretty grim. Nothing to do, and the hotel too hopelessly old-fashioned--no television laid on in the bedrooms, no scent organ, only the most putrid synthetic music, and not more than twenty-five Escalator-Squash Courts for over two hundred guests. No, decidedly she couldn't face the North Pole again. Added to which, she had only been to America once before. And even then, how inadequately! A cheap week-end in New York--had it been with Jean-Jacques Habibullah or Bokanovsky Jones? She couldn't remember. Anyhow, it was of absolutely no importance. The prospect of flying West again, and for a whole week, was very inviting. Moreover, for at least three days of that week they would be in the Lizzie Reservation. Not more than half a dozen people in the whole Centre had ever been inside a Lizzie Reservation. As an Alpha-Plus psychologist, Chaddy was one of the few men she knew entitled to a permit. For Izzie, the opportunity was unique. And yet, so unique also was Chaddy's oddness, that she had hesitated to take it, had actually thought of risking the Pole again with funny old Zoya. At least Zoya was normal. Whereas Chaddy...\n\n'Alcohol in his blood-surrogate,' was Fanny's explanation of every eccentricity. But Lloyd, with whom, one evening when they were in bed together, Izzie had rather anxiously discussed her new lover, Lloyd had compared poor Chaddy to a rhinoceros.\n\n'You can't teach a rhinoceros tricks,' he had explained in his brief and vigorous style. 'Some men are almost rhinoceroses; they don't respond properly to conditioning. Poor devils! Chaddy's one of them. Luckily for him, he's pretty good at his job. Otherwise the Director would never have kept him. 'However,' he added consolingly, 'I think he's pretty harmless.'\n\nPretty harmless, perhaps; but also pretty disquieting. That mania, to start with, for doing things in private. Which meant, in practice, not doing anything at all. For what was there that one could do in private. (Apart, of course, from going to bed: but one couldn't do that all the time.) Yes, what was there? Precious little. The first afternoon they went out together was particularly fine. Izzie had suggested a swim at the Torquay Country Club followed by dinner at the Oxford Union. But Chaddy thought there would be too much of a crowd. Then what about a round of Electro-magnetic Golf at St. Andrews? But again, no: Chaddy considered that Electro-magnetic Golf was a waste of time.\n\n'Then what's time for?' asked Izzie in some astonishment.\n\nApparently, for going walks in the Lake District; for that was what he now proposed. Land on the top of Skiddaw and walk for a couple of hours in the heather. 'Alone with you, Izzie.'\n\n'But, Chaddy, we shall be alone all night.'\n\nChaddy blushed and looked away. 'I meant, alone for talking,' he mumbled.\n\n'Talking? But what about?' Walking and talking--that seemed a very odd way of spending an afternoon.\n\nIn the end she persuaded him, much against his will, to fly over to Amsterdam to see the Semi-Demi-Finals of the Women's Heavyweight Wrestling Championship.\n\n'In a crowd,' he grumbled. 'As usual.' He remained obstinately gloomy the whole afternoon; wouldn't talk to Izzie's friends (of whom they met dozens in the ice-cream soma bar between the wrestling bouts); and in spite of his misery absolutely refused to take the half-gramme raspberry sundae which she pressed upon him. 'I'd rather be myself,' he said. 'Myself and nasty. Not somebody else, however jolly.'\n\n'A gramme in time saves nine,' said Izzie, producing a bright treasure of sleep-taught wisdom.\n\nChaddy pushed away the proffered glass impatiently.\n\n'Now don't lose your temper,' she said. 'Remember, one cubic centimetre cures ten gloomy sentiments.'\n\n'Oh, for Ford's sake, be quiet!' he shouted.\n\nIzzie shrugged her shoulders. 'A gramme is always better than a damn,' she concluded with dignity, and drank the sundae herself.\n\nOn their way back across the Channel, Chaddy insisted on stopping his propeller and hovering on his helicopter screws within a hundred feet of the waves. The weather had taken a change for the worse; a south-westerly wind had sprung up, the sky was cloudy.\n\n'Look,' he commanded.\n\n'But it's horrible,' said Izzie, shrinking back from the window. She was appalled by the rushing emptiness of the night, by the black foam-flecked water heaving beneath them, by the pale face of the moon, so haggard and distracted among the hastening clouds. 'Let's turn on the radio. Quick!' She reached for the dialling knob on the dash-board and turned it at random.\n\n'...skies are blue inside of you,' sang sixteen tremoloing falsettos, 'the weather's always...'\n\nThen a hiccough and silence. Chaddy had switched off the current.\n\n'I want to look at the sea in peace,' he said. 'One can't even look with that beastly noise going on.'\n\n'But it's lovely. And I don't want to look.'\n\n'But I do,' he insisted. 'It makes me feel as though...' he hesitated, searching for words with which to express himself, 'as though I were more me, if you see what I mean. More on my own, not so completely a part of something else. Not just a cell in the social body. Doesn't it make you feel like that, Izzie?'\n\nBut Izzie was crying. 'It's horrible, it's horrible,' she kept repeating. 'And how can you talk like that about not wanting to be a part of the social body? After all, every one works for every one else. We can't do without any one. Even Epsilons...'\n\n'Yes, I know,' said Chaddy derisively. '\"Even Epsilons are useful\"! So am I. And I damned well wish I weren't!'\n\nIzzie was shocked by his blasphemy. 'Chaddy!' she protested in a voice of amazed distress. 'How can you?'\n\nIn a different key, 'How can I?' he repeated meditatively. 'No, the real problem is: How is it that I can't, or rather--because, after all, I know quite well why I can't--what would it be like if I could, if I were free--not enslaved by my conditioning.'\n\n'But, Chaddy, you're saying the most awful things.'\n\n'Don't you wish you were free, Izzie?'\n\n'I don't know what you mean. I am free. Free to have the most wonderful time. Everybody's happy nowadays.'\n\nHe laughed, 'Yes, \"Everybody's happy nowadays.\" We begin giving the children that at five. But wouldn't you like to be free to be happy in some other way, Izzie? In your own way, for example; not in everybody else's way.'\n\n'I don't know what you mean,' she repeated. Then, turning to him, 'Oh, do let's go back, Chaddy,' she besought; 'I do so hate it here.'\n\n'Don't you like being with me?'\n\n'But of course, Chaddy! It's this horrible place.'\n\n'I thought we'd be more... more together here--with nothing but the sea and moon. More together than in that crowd, or even in my rooms. Don't you understand that?'\n\n'I don't understand anything,' she said with decision, determined to preserve her incomprehension intact. 'Nothing. Least of all,' she continued in another tone, 'why you don't take soma when you have these dreadful ideas of yours. You'd forget all about them. And instead of feeling miserable, you'd be jolly. So jolly,' she repeated and smiled, for all the puzzled anxiety in her eyes, with what was meant to be an inviting and voluptuous cajolery.\n\nHe looked at her in silence, his face unresponsive and very grave--looked at her intently. After a few seconds Izzie's eyes flinched away; she uttered a nervous little laugh, tried to think of something to say and couldn't. The silence prolonged itself.\n\nWhen Chaddy spoke at last, it was in a small tired voice. 'All right then,' he said, 'we'll go back.' And stepping hard on the accelerator, he sent the machine rocketing up into the sky. At four thousand he started his propeller. They flew in silence for a minute or two. Then, suddenly, Chaddy began to laugh. Rather oddly, Izzie thought; but still, it was laughter.\n\n'Feeling better?' she ventured to ask.\n\nFor answer, he lifted one hand from the controls and, slipping his arm round her, began to fondle her breasts.\n\n'Thank Ford,' she said to herself, 'he's all right again.'\n\nHalf an hour later they were back in his rooms. Chaddy swallowed four tablets of soma at a gulp, turned on the radio and television and began to undress.\n\n'Well,' Izzie enquired, with significant archness when they met next afternoon on the roof, 'did you think it was fun yesterday?'\n\nChaddy nodded. They climbed into the plane. A little jolt, and they were off.\n\n'Every one says I'm awfully pneumatic,' said Izzie reflectively, patting her own legs.\n\n'Awfully.' But there was an expression of pain in Chaddy's eyes. 'Like meat,' he was thinking.\n\nShe looked up with a certain anxiety. 'But you don't think I'm too plump, do you?'\n\nHe shook his head. Like so much meat.\n\n'You think I'm all right.' Another nod. 'In every way?'\n\n'Perfect,' he said aloud. And inwardly, 'She thinks of herself that way. She doesn't mind being meat.'\n\nIzzie smiled triumphantly. But her satisfaction was premature.\n\n'All the same,' he went on, after a little pause, 'I still rather wish it had all ended differently.'\n\n'Differently?' Were there other endings?\n\n'I didn't want it to end with our going to bed,' he specified.\n\nIzzie was astonished.\n\n'Not at once, not the first day.'\n\n'But then what...?'\n\nHe began to talk a lot of incomprehensible and dangerous nonsense. Izzie did her best to stop the ears of her mind; but every now and then a phrase would insist on becoming audible. '...to try the effect of arresting my impulses,' she heard him say. The words seemed to touch a spring in her mind.\n\n'Never put off till to-morrow the fun you can have to-day,' she said gravely.\n\n'Two hundred repetitions, twice a week from fourteen to sixteen and a half,' was all his comment. The mad bad talk rambled on. 'I want to know what passion is,' she heard him saying. 'I want to feel something strongly.'\n\n'When the individual feels, the community reels,' Izzie pronounced.\n\n'Well, why shouldn't it reel a bit?'\n\n'Chaddy!'\n\nBut Chaddy remained unabashed.\n\n'Adults intellectually and during working hours,' he went on. 'Infants where feeling and desire are concerned.'\n\n'Our Ford loved infants.'\n\nIgnoring the interruption, 'It suddenly struck me the other day,' continued Chaddy, 'that it might be possible to be an adult all the time.'\n\n'I don't understand.' Izzie's tone was firm.\n\n'I know you don't. And that's why we went to bed together yesterday--like infants--instead of being adults and waiting.'\n\n'But it was fun,' Izzie insisted. 'Wasn't it?'\n\n'Oh, the greatest fun,' he answered, but in a voice so mournful, with an expression so profoundly miserable, that Izzie felt all her triumph suddenly evaporate. Perhaps he had found her too plump, after all.\n\n'I told you so,' was all that Fanny said, when Izzie came and made her confidences. 'It's the alcohol they put in his surrogate.'\n\n'All the same,' Izzie insisted. 'I do like him. He has such awfully nice hands. And the way he moves his shoulders--that's very attractive.' She sighed. 'But I wish he weren't so odd.'\n\n\u00a7 2\nHalting for a moment outside the door of the Director's room, Chaddy drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders, bracing himself to meet the dislike and disapproval which he was certain of finding within. He knocked and entered.\n\n'A permit for you to initial, Director,' he said as airily as possible, and laid the paper on the writing-table.\n\nThe Director glanced at him sourly. But the stamp of the World Controller's Office was at the head of the paper and the signature of Janine Cara, bold and black, across the bottom. Everything was perfectly in order. The Director had no choice. He pencilled his initials--two small pale letters abject at the feet of Janine Cara----and was about to return the paper without a word of comment or genial Ford-speed, when his eye was caught by something written in the body of the permit.\n\n'For the New Mexican Reservation?' he said, and his tone, the face he lifted to Chaddy, expressed a kind of agitated astonishment.\n\nSurprised by his surprise, Chaddy nodded. There was a silence.\n\nThe Director leaned back in his chair, frowning. 'How long ago was it?' he said, speaking more to himself than to Chaddy. 'Twenty years, I suppose. Nearer twenty-five. I must have been your age...' He sighed and shook his head.\n\nChaddy felt extremely uncomfortable. A man so conventional, so scrupulously correct as the Director--and to commit so gross a solecism! It made him want to hide his face, to run out of the room. Not that he himself saw anything intrinsically objectionable in people talking about the remote past; that was one of those hypnop\u00e6dic prejudices he had (so he imagined) completely got rid of. What made him feel shy was the knowledge that the Director disapproved--disapproved and yet had been betrayed into doing the forbidden thing. Under what inward compulsion? Through his discomfort Chaddy eagerly listened.\n\n'I had the same idea as you,' the Director was saying. 'Wanted to have a look at the savages. Got a permit for New Mexico and went there for my summer holiday. With the girl I was having at the moment. She was a Beta-Minus, and I think' (he shut his eyes). 'I think she had yellow hair. Anyhow, she was pneumatic, particularly pneumatic; I remember that. Well, we went there, and we looked at the savages, and we rode about on horses and all that. And then--it was almost the last day of my leave--then... well, she got lost. We'd gone riding up one of those revolting mountains, and it was horribly hot and oppressive, and after lunch we went to sleep. Or at least I did. She must have gone for a walk, alone. At any rate, when I woke up, she wasn't there. And the most frightful thunderstorm I've ever seen was just bursting on us. And it poured and roared and flashed; and the horses broke loose and ran away; and I fell down, trying to catch them, and hurt my knee, so that I could hardly walk. Still, I searched and I shouted and I searched. But there was no sign of her. Then I thought she must have gone back to the rest-house by herself. So I crawled down into the valley by the way we had come. My knee was agonizingly painful, and I'd lost my soma. It took me hours. I didn't get back to the rest-house till after midnight. And she wasn't there; she wasn't there,' the Director repeated. There was a silence. 'Well,' he resumed at last, 'the next day there was a search. But we couldn't find her. She must have fallen into a gulley somewhere; or been eaten by a mountain lion. Ford knows. Anyhow it was horrible. It upset me very much at the time. More than it ought to have done, I dare say. Because, after all, it's the sort of accident that might have happened to any one; and, of course, the social body persists although the component cells may change.' But this sleep-taught consolation did not seem to be very effective. Shaking his head, 'I actually dream about it sometimes,' the Director went on in a low voice. 'Dream of being woken up by that peal of thunder and finding her gone; dream of searching and searching for her under the trees.' He lapsed into the silence of reminiscence.\n\n'You must have had a terrible shock,' said Chaddy, almost enviously.\n\nAt the sound of his voice the Director started into a guilty realization of where he was; shot a glance at Chaddy, and averting his eyes, blushed darkly; looked at him again with sudden suspicion and, angrily on his dignity, 'Don't imagine,' he said, 'that I'd had any indecorous relation with the girl. Nothing emotional, nothing long-drawn. It was all perfectly healthy and normal.' He handed Chaddy the permit. 'I really don't know why I bored you with this trivial anecdote.' Furious with himself for having given away a discreditable secret, he vented his rage on Chaddy. The look in his eyes was now frankly malignant. 'And I should like to take this opportunity, Mr. Annalise,' he went on, 'of saying that I'm not at all pleased with the reports I receive of your behaviour outside working hours. You may say that this is not my business. But it is. I have the good name of the Centre to think of. My workers must be above suspicion, particularly those of the highest castes. Alphas are so conditioned that they do not have to be infantile in their emotional behaviour. But that is all the more reason for their making a special effort to conform. It is their duty to be infantile, even against their inclination. And so, Mr. Annalise, I give you fair warning.' The Director's voice vibrated with an indignation that had now become wholly righteous and impersonal--was the expression of the disapproval of Society itself. 'If ever I hear again of any lapse from a proper standard of infantile decorum, I shall ask for your transference to a Sub-Centre--preferably to Iceland. Good morning.' And swivelling round in his chair, he picked up his pen and began to write.\n\n'That'll teach him,' he said to himself. But he was mistaken. For Chaddy left the room with a swagger, exulting, as he banged the door behind him, in the thought that he stood alone, embattled against the order of things; elated by the intoxicating consciousness of his individual significance and importance. Even the thought of persecution left him undismayed, was rather tonic than depressing. He felt strong enough to meet and overcome affliction, strong enough to face even Iceland. And this confidence was the greater for his not for a moment really believing that he would be called upon to face anything at all. People simply weren't transferred for things like that. Iceland was just a threat. A most stimulating and life-giving threat. Walking along the corridor, he actually whistled.\n\nHeroic was the account he gave that evening of his interview with the D.H.C. 'Whereupon,' it concluded, 'I simply told him to go to the Bottomless Past and marched out of the room. And that was that.' He looked at Jackson Emilio expectantly, awaiting his due reward of sympathy, encouragement, admiration. But no word came. Jackson sat silent, staring at the floor.\n\nHe liked Chaddy; he was grateful to him for being the only man of his acquaintance with whom he could talk about the subjects he felt to be important. Nevertheless, there were things in Chaddy which he hated. This boasting, for example. And the outbursts of an abject self-pity with which it alternated. And his deplorable habit of being bold after the event, and full, in absence, of the most extraordinary presence of mind. He hated these things--just because he liked Chaddy. The seconds passed. Jackson continued to stare at the floor. And suddenly Chaddy blushed and turned away.\n\n\u00a7 3\nThe journey was quite uneventful. The Blue Pacific Rocket was two and a half minutes early at New Orleans, lost four minutes in a tornado over Texas, but flew into a favourable air current at Longitude 95 West, and was able to land at Santa Fe less than forty seconds behind schedule time.\n\n'Forty seconds on a six and a half hour flight. Not so bad,' Izzie conceded.\n\nThey slept that night at Santa Fe. The hotel was excellent--incomparably better, for example, than that horrible Aurora Bora Palace in which Izzie had suffered so much the previous summer. Liquid air, television, vibro-vacuum massage, radio, boiling caffeine solution, hot contraceptives, and eight different kinds of scent were laid on in every bedroom. The synthetic music plant was working as they entered the hall and left nothing to be desired. A notice in the lift announced that there were sixty Escalator-Squash-Racquet Courts in the hotel, and that Obstacle and Electro-magnetic Golf could both be played in the park.\n\n'But it sounds simply too lovely,' cried Izzie. I almost wish we could stay here. Sixty Escalator-Squash Courts...'\n\n'There won't be any in the Reservation,' Chaddy warned her. 'And no scent, no television, no hot water, even. If you feel you can't stand it, stay here till I come back.'\n\nIzzie was quite offended. 'Of course I can stand it. I only said it was lovely here because... well, because progress is lovely, isn't it?'\n\n'Five hundred repetitions once a week from thirteen to seventeen,' said Chaddy wearily, as though to himself.\n\n'What did you say?'\n\n'I said that progress was lovely. That's why you mustn't come to the Reservation unless you really want to.'\n\n'But I do want to.'\n\n'Very well, then,' said Chaddy; and it was almost a threat.\n\nTheir permit required the signature of the Warden of the Reservation, at whose office next morning they duly presented themselves. An Epsilon-Plus negro porter took in Chaddy's card, and they were admitted almost immediately.\n\nThe Warden was a blond and brachycephalic Alpha-Minus, short, red, moon-faced, and broad-shouldered, with a loud booming voice, very well adapted to the utterance of hypnop\u00e6dic wisdom. He was a mine of irrelevant information and unasked-for good advice. Once started, he went on and on--boomingly.\n\n'...five hundred and sixty thousand square kilometres, divided into four distinct Sub-Reservations, each surrounded by a high-tension wire fence.'\n\nAt this moment, and for no apparent reason, Chaddy suddenly remembered that he had left the eau-de-Cologne tap in his bathroom wide open and running.\n\n'...supplied with current from the Grand Canyon hydro-electric station.'\n\n'Cost me a fortune by the time I get back.' With his mind's eye, Chaddy saw the needle on the scent meter creeping round and round, ant-like, indefatigably. 'Quickly telephone to Jackson Emilio.'\n\n'...upwards of five thousand kilometres of fencing at sixty thousand volts.'\n\n'You don't say so,' said Izzie politely, not knowing in the least what the Warden had said, but taking her cue from his dramatic pause. When the Warden started booming, she had inconspicuously swallowed half a gramme of soma, with the result that she could now sit, serenely not listening, thinking of nothing at all, but with her large blue eyes fixed on the Warden's face in an expression of rapt attention.\n\n'To touch the fence is instant death,' pronounced the Warden solemnly. 'There is no escape from a Lizzie Reservation.'\n\nThe word 'escape' was suggestive. 'Perhaps,' said Chaddy, half rising, 'we ought to think of going.' The little black needle was scurrying, an insect, nibbling through time, eating into his money.\n\n'No escape,' repeated the Warden, waving him back into his chair; and as the permit was not yet countersigned, Chaddy had no choice but to obey. 'Those who are born in the Reservation--and remember, my dear young lady,' he added, leering obscenely at Izzie, and speaking in an improper whisper, 'remember that, in the Reservation, children still are born, yes, actually born, revolting as that may seem...' (He hoped that this reference to a shameful subject would make Izzie blush; but she only smiled with simulated intelligence and said, 'You don't say so!' Disappointed, the Warden began again.) 'Those, I repeat, who are born in the Reservation are destined to die there.'\n\nDestined to die... A decilitre of eau-de-Cologne every minute. Six litres an hour. 'Perhaps,' Chaddy tried again, 'we ought...'\n\nLeaning forward, the Director tapped the table with his forefinger. 'You ask me how many people live in the Reservation. And I reply'--triumphantly--'I reply that we do not know. We can only guess.'\n\n'You don't say so.'\n\n'My dear young lady, I do say so.'\n\nSix times twenty-four--no, it would be nearer six times thirty-six. Chaddy was pale and trembling with impatience. But inexorably the booming continued.\n\n'...about sixty thousand Indians and half-breeds... absolute savages... our inspectors occasionally visit... otherwise, no communication whatever with the civilized world... still preserve their repulsive habits and customs... marriage, if you know what that is, my dear young lady; families... no conditioning... monstrous superstitions... Christianity and totemism and ancestor worship... extinct languages, such as Zu\u00f1i and Spanish and Athapascan... pumas, porcupines and other ferocious animals... infectious diseases... priests... venomous lizards...'\n\n'You don't say so?'\n\nThey got away at last. Chaddy dashed to the telephone. Quick, quick; but it took him nearly three minutes to get on to Jackson Emilio. 'We might be among the savages already,' he complained. 'Damned incompetence!'\n\n'Have a gramme,' suggested Izzie.\n\nHe refused, preferring his anger. And at last, thank Ford, he was through and, yes, it was Jackson; Jackson, to whom he explained what had happened, and who promised to go round at once, at once, and turn off the tap, yes, at once, but took this opportunity to tell him what the D.H.C. had said, in public, yesterday evening...\n\n'What? He's looking out for some one to take my place?' Chaddy's voice was agonized. 'So it's actually decided? Did he mention Iceland? You say he did? Ford! Iceland...' He hung up the receiver and turned back to Izzie. His face was pale, his expression utterly dejected.\n\n'What's the matter?' she asked.\n\n'The matter?' He dropped heavily into a chair. 'I'm going to be sent to Iceland.'\n\nOften in the past he had wondered what it would be like to be subjected (soma-less and with nothing but his own inward resources to rely on) to some great trial, some pain, some persecution; he had even longed for affliction. As recently as a week ago, in the Director's office, he had imagined himself courageously resisting, stoically accepting suffering without a word. The Director's threats had actually elated him, made him feel larger than life. But that, as he now realized, was because he had not taken the threats quite seriously; he had not believed that, when it came to the point, the D.H.C. would ever do anything. Now that it looked as though the threats were really to be fulfilled, Chaddy was appalled. Of that imagined stoicism, that theoretical courage, not a trace was left.\n\nHe raged against himself--what a fool!--against the Director--how unfair not to give him that other chance, that other chance which, he now had no doubt at all, he had always intended to take. And Iceland, Iceland...\n\nIzzie shook her head. 'Was and will make me ill,' she quoted, 'I take a gramme and only am.'\n\nIn the end she persuaded him to swallow four tablets of soma. Five minutes later roots and fruits were abolished; the flower of the present rosily blossomed. A message from the porter announced that, at the Warden's orders, a Reservation Guard had come round with a plane and was waiting on the roof of the hotel. They went up at once. An octoroon in Gamma-green uniform saluted and proceeded to recite the morning's programme.\n\nA bird's-eye view of ten or a dozen of the principal pueblos, then a landing for lunch in the valley of Malpais. The rest-house was comfortable there, and up at the pueblo the savages would probably be celebrating their summer festival. It would be the best place to spend the night.\n\nThey took their seats in the plane and set off. Ten minutes later they were crossing the frontier that separated civilization from savagery. Uphill and down, across the deserts of salt or sand, through forests, into the violet depth of canyons, over crag and peak and table-topped mesa, the fence marched on and on, irresistibly the straight line, the geometrical symbol of triumphant human purpose. And at its foot, here and there, a mosaic of white bones, a still unrotted carcase dark on the tawny ground marked the place where deer or steer, puma or porcupine or coyote, or the greedy turkey buzzards drawn down by the whiff of carrion and fulminated as though by a poetic justice, had come too close to the destroying wires.\n\n'They never learn,' said the green-uniformed pilot, pointing down at the skeletons on the ground below them. 'And they never will learn,' he added and laughed, as though he had somehow scored a personal triumph over the electrocuted animals.\n\nChaddy also laughed; after two grammes of soma the joke seemed, for some reason, good. Laughed and then, almost immediately, dropped off to sleep and, sleeping, was carried over Taos and Tesuque; over Nambe and Picuris and Pojoaque, over Sia and Cochiti, over Laguna and Acoma and the Enchanted Mesa, over Zu\u00f1i and Cibola and Ojo Caliente, and woke at last to find the machine standing on the ground, Izzie carrying the suit-cases into a small square house, and the Gamma-green octoroon talking incomprehensibly with a young Indian.\n\n'Malpais,' explained the pilot, as Chaddy stepped out. 'This is the rest-house. And there's a dance this afternoon at the pueblo. He'll take you there.' He pointed to the sullen young savage. 'Funny, I expect.' He grinned. 'Everything they do is funny.' And with that he climbed into the plane and started up the engines. 'Back to-morrow. And remember,' he added reassuringly to Izzie, 'they're perfectly tame; savages won't do you any harm. They've got enough experience of gas bombs to know that they mustn't play any tricks.' Still laughing, he threw the helicopter screws into gear, accelerated, and was gone.\n\n\nChapter VII\n\nThe mesa was like a ship becalmed in a strait of lion-coloured dust. The channel wound between precipitous banks, and slanting from one wall to the other across the valley ran a streak of green--the river and its fields. On the prow of that stone ship in the centre of the strait, and seemingly a part of it, a shaped and geometrical outcrop of the naked rock, stood the pueblo of Malpais. Block above block, each story smaller than the one below, the tall houses rose like stepped and amputated pyramids into the blue sky. At their feet lay a straggle of low buildings, a criss-cross of walls; and on three sides the precipices fell sheer into the plain. A few columns of smoke mounted perpendicularly into the windless air and were lost.\n\n'Queer,' said Izzie. 'Very queer.' It was her ordinary word of condemnation. 'I don't like it. And I don't like that man.' She pointed to the Indian guide who had been appointed to take them up to the pueblo. Her feeling was evidently reciprocated; the very back of the man, as he walked along before them, was hostile, sullenly contemptuous.\n\n'Besides,' she lowered her voice, 'he smells.'\n\nChaddy did not attempt to deny it. They walked on.\n\nSuddenly it was as though the whole air had come alive and were pulsing, pulsing with the indefatigable movement of blood. Up there, in Malpais, the drums were being beaten. Their feet fell in with the rhythm of that mysterious heart; they quickened their pace. Their path led them to the foot of the precipice. The sides of the great mesa ship towered over them, three hundred feet to the gunwale.\n\n'I wish we could have brought the plane,' said Izzie, looking up resentfully at the blank impending rock-face. 'I hate walking. And you feel so small when you're on the ground at the bottom of a hill.'\n\nThey walked along for some way in the shadow of the mesa, rounded a projection, and there, in a water-worn ravine, was the way up the companion ladder. They climbed. It was a very steep path that zigzagged from side to side of the gulley. Sometimes the pulsing of the drums was all but inaudible, at others they seemed to be beating only just round the corner.\n\nWhen they were half-way up, an eagle flew past so close to them that the wind of his wings blew chill on their faces. In a crevice of the rock lay a pile of bones. It was all oppressively queer, and the Indian smelt stronger and stronger. They emerged at last from the ravine into the full sunlight. The top of the mesa was a flat deck of stone.\n\n'Like the Charing-T Tower,' was Izzie's comment. But she was not allowed to enjoy her discovery of this reassuring resemblance for long. A padding of soft feet made them turn round. Naked from throat to navel, their dark-brown bodies painted with white lines ('like asphalt tennis courts,' Izzie was later to explain), their faces inhuman with daubings of scarlet, black and ochre, two Indians came running along the path. Their black hair was braided with fox fur and red flannel. Cloaks of turkey feathers fluttered from their shoulders; huge feather diadems exploded gaudily round their heads. With every step they took came the clink and rattle of their silver bracelets, their heavy necklaces of bone and turquoise beads. They came on without a word, running quietly in their deerskin moccasins. One of them was holding a feather brush; the other carried, in either hand, what looked at a distance like three or four pieces of thick rope. One of the ropes writhed uneasily, and suddenly Izzie saw that they were snakes.\n\nThe men came nearer and nearer; their dark eyes looked at her, but without giving any sign of recognition, any smallest sign that they had seen her or were aware of her existence. The writhing snake hung limp again with the rest. The men passed.\n\n'I don't like it,' said Izzie. 'I don't like it.'\n\nShe liked even less what awaited her at the entrance to the pueblo, where their guide had left them while he went inside for instructions. The dirt, to start with, the piles of rubbish, the dust, the dogs, the flies. Her face wrinkled up into a grimace of disgust. She held her handkerchief to her nose.\n\n'But how can they live like this?' she broke out in a voice of indignant incredulity. (It wasn't possible.)\n\nChaddy shrugged his shoulders philosophically. 'Anyhow,' he said, 'they've been doing it for the last five or six thousand years. So I suppose they must be used to it by now.'\n\n'But cleanliness is next to fordliness,' she insisted.\n\n'Yes, and civilization is sterilization,' Chaddy went on, concluding on a tone of irony the second hypnop\u00e6dic lesson in elementary hygiene. 'But these people have never heard of Our Ford, and they aren't civilized. So there's no point in...'\n\n'Oh!' She gripped his arm. 'Look.'\n\nAn almost naked Indian was very slowly climbing down the ladder from the first-floor terrace of a neighbouring house--rung after rung, with the tremulous caution of extreme old age. His face was profoundly wrinkled and black, like a mask of obsidian. The toothless mouth had fallen in. At the corners of the lips, and on each side of the chin a few long bristles gleamed almost white against the dark skin. The long unbraided hair hung down in grey wisps round his face. His body was bent and emaciated to the bone, almost fleshless. Very slowly he came down, pausing at each rung before he ventured another step.\n\n'What's the matter with him?' whispered Izzie. Her eyes were wide with horror and amazement.\n\n'He's old, that's all,' Chaddy answered as carelessly as he could. He too was startled; but he made an effort to seem unmoved.\n\n'Old?' she repeated. 'But the Director's old; lots of people are old; they're not like that.'\n\n'That's because we don't allow them to be like that. We preserve them from diseases. We keep their internal secretions artificially balanced at a youthful equilibrium. We don't permit their magnesium-calcium ratio to fall below what it was at thirty. We give them transfusions of young blood. We keep their metabolism permanently stimulated. So, of course, they don't look like that. Partly,' he added, 'because most of them die long before they reach this old creature's age. Youth almost unimpaired till sixty, and then, crack! the end.'\n\nBut Izzie was not listening. She was watching the old man. Slowly, slowly he came down. His feet touched the ground. He turned. In their deep-sunken orbits his eyes were still extraordinarily bright. They looked at her for a long moment expressionlessly, without surprise, as though she had not been there at all. Then slowly, with bent back, the old man hobbled past them and was gone.\n\n'But it's terrible,' Izzie whispered. 'It's awful. We ought not to have come here.' She felt in her pocket for her soma--only to discover that, by some unprecedented oversight, she had left the bottle down at the rest-house. Chaddy's pockets were also empty.\n\nIzzie was left to face the horrors of Malpais unaided. They came crowding in on her thick and fast. The spectacle of two young women giving the breast to their babies made her blush and turn away her face. She had never seen anything so indecent in her life. And what made it worse was that, instead of tactfully ignoring it, Chaddy proceeded to make open comments on this revoltingly viviparous scene. Ashamed, now that the effects of the soma had worn off, of the weakness he had displayed that morning in the hotel, he went out of his way to show himself strong and unorthodox.\n\n'What a wonderfully intimate relationship,' he said, deliberately outrageous. 'And what an intensity of feeling it must generate! I often think one may have missed something in not having had a mother. And perhaps you've missed something in not being a mother, Izzie. Imagine yourself sitting there with a little baby of your own....'\n\n'Chaddy! How can you?' The passage of an old woman with ophthalmia and a disease of the skin distracted her from her indignation.\n\n'Let's go away,' she begged. 'I don't like it.'\n\nBut at this moment their guide came back and, beckoning to them to follow, led the way down the narrow street between the houses. They rounded a corner. A dead dog was lying on a rubbish heap; a woman with a goitre was looking for lice in the hair of a small girl. Their guide halted at the foot of a ladder, raised his hand perpendicularly, then darted it horizontally forward. They did what he mutely commanded--climbed the ladder and walked through the doorway, to which it gave access, into a long narrow room, rather dark and smelling of smoke and cooked grease and long-worn, long-unwashed clothes. At the further end of the room was another doorway, through which came a shaft of sunlight and the noise, very loud and close, of the drums.\n\nThey stepped across the threshold and found themselves on a wide terrace. Below them, shut in by the tall houses, was the village square, crowded with Indians. Bright blankets, and feathers in black hair, and the glint of turquoise, and dark skins shining with heat. Izzie put her handkerchief to her nose again. In the open space at the centre of the square were two circular platforms of masonry and trampled clay--the roofs, it was evident, of underground chambers; for in the centre of each platform was an open hatchway, with a ladder emerging from the lower darkness. A sound of subterranean flute-playing came up and was almost lost in the steady remorseless persistence of the drums.\n\nIzzie liked the drums. Shutting her eyes she abandoned herself to their soft repeated thunder, allowed it to invade her consciousness more and more completely, till at last there was nothing left in the world but that one deep pulse of sound. It reminded her reassuringly of the synthetic noises made at Solidarity Services and Ford's Day celebrations. 'Orgy-porgy,' she whispered to herself. These drums beat out just the same rhythms.\n\nThere was a sudden startling burst of singing--hundreds of male voices crying out fiercely in harsh metallic unison. A few long notes and silence, the thunderous silence of the drums; then shrill, in a neighing treble, the women's answer. Then again the drums; and once more the men's deep savage affirmation of their manhood.\n\nQueer--yes. The place was queer, so was the music, so were the clothes and the goitres and the skin diseases and the old people. But the performance itself--there seemed to be nothing specially queer about that.\n\n'It reminds me of a lower-caste Community Sing,' she told Chaddy.\n\nBut a little later it was reminding her a good deal less of that innocuous function. For suddenly there had swarmed up from those round chambers underground a ghastly troop of monsters. Hideously masked or painted out of all semblance of humanity, they had tramped out a strange limping dance round the square; round and again round, singing as they went, round and round--each time a little faster; and the drums had changed and quickened their rhythm, so that it became like the pulsing of fever in the ears; and the crowd had begun to sing with the dancers, louder and louder; and first one woman had shrieked, and then another and another, as though they were being killed; and then suddenly the leader of the dancers broke out of the line, ran to a big wooden chest which was standing at one end of the square, raised the lid and pulled out a pair of black snakes. A great yell went up from the crowd, and all the other dancers ran towards him with outstretched hands. He tossed the snakes to the first-comers, then dipped back into the chest for more. More and more, black snakes and brown and mottled--he flung them out. And then the dance began again on a different rhythm. Round and round they went with their snakes, snakily, with a soft undulating movement at the knees and hips. Round and round. Then the leader gave a signal, and one after another, all the snakes were flung down in the middle of the square; an old man came up from underground and sprinkled them with corn meal, and from the other hatchway came a woman and sprinkled them with water from a black jar. Then the old man lifted his hand and, startlingly, terrifyingly, there was absolute silence. The drums stopped beating, life seemed to have come to an end. The old man pointed towards the two hatchways that gave entrance to the lower world. And slowly, raised by invisible hands from below, there emerged from the one a painted image of an eagle, from the other that of a man, naked, and nailed to a cross. They hung there, seemingly self-sustained, as though watching. The old man clapped his hands. Naked but for a white cotton breech-cloth, a boy of about eighteen stepped out of the crowd and stood before him, his hands crossed over his chest, his head bowed. The old man made the sign of the cross over him and turned away. Slowly, the boy began to walk round the writhing heap of snakes. He had completed the first circuit and was half-way through the second when, from among the dancers, a tall man wearing the mask of a coyote and holding in his hand a whip of plaited leather, advanced towards him. The boy moved on as though unaware of the other's existence. The coyote-man raised his whip; there was a long moment of expectancy, then a swift movement, the whistle of the lash and its loud flat-sounding impact on the flesh. The boy's body quivered; but he made no sound, he walked on at the same slow, steady pace. The coyote struck again, again; and at every blow at first a gasp and then a deep groan went up from the crowd. The boy walked on. Twice, thrice, four times round he went. The blood was streaming. Five times round, six times round. Suddenly Izzie covered her face with her hands and began to sob. 'Oh, stop them, stop them!' she implored. But the whip fell and fell inexorably. Seven times round. Then all at once the boy staggered and, still without a sound, pitched forward on to his face. Bending over him, the old man touched his back with a long white feather, held it up for a moment, crimson, for the people to see, then shook it thrice over the snakes. A few drops fell, and suddenly the drums broke out again into a panic of hurrying notes; there was a great shout. The dancers rushed forward, picked up the snakes and ran out of the square. Men, women, children, all the crowd ran after them. A minute later the square was empty, only the boy remained, prone where he had fallen, quite still. Three old women came out of one of the houses, and with some difficulty lifted him and carried him in. The eagle and the man on the cross kept guard for a little while over the empty pueblo; then, as though they had seen enough, sank slowly down through their hatchways, out of sight, into the nether world.\n\nIzzie was still sobbing. 'Too awful,' she kept repeating, and all Chaddy's consolations were in vain. 'Too awful! That blood!' She shuddered. 'Oh, I wish I had my soma.'\n\nThere was the sound of feet in the inner room.\n\nIzzie did not move, but sat with her face in her hands, unseeing, apart. Only Chaddy turned round.\n\nThe dress of the young man who now stepped out on to the terrace was Indian; but his plaited hair was straw-coloured, his eyes a pale blue, and his skin a white skin, bronzed.\n\n'Hullo. Good-morrow,' said the stranger, in faultless but peculiar English. 'You're civilized, aren't you? You come from the Other Place, outside the Reservation?'\n\n'Who on earth...?' Chaddy began in astonishment.\n\nThe young man sighed and shook his head. 'A most unhappy gentleman.' And, pointing to the bloodstains in the centre of the square, 'Do you see that damned spot?' he asked in a voice that trembled with emotion.\n\n'A gramme is better than a damn,' said Izzie mechanically from behind her hands. 'I wish I had my soma!'\n\n'I ought to have been there.' The young man went on. 'Why wouldn't they let me be the sacrifice? I'd have gone round ten times--twelve, fifteen. Palowhtiwa only got as far as seven. They could have had twice as much blood from me. The multitudinous seas incarnadine.' He flung out his arms in a lavish gesture; then, despairingly, let them fall again. 'But they wouldn't let me. They disliked me for my complexion. It's always been like that. Always.' Tears stood in the young man's eyes; he was ashamed and turned away.\n\nAstonishment made Izzie forget the deprivation of soma. She uncovered her face and, for the first time, looked at the stranger. 'Do you mean to say that you wanted to be hit with that whip?'\n\nStill averted from her, the young man made a sign of affirmation. 'For the sake of the pueblo--to make the rain come and the corn grow. And to please Pookong and Jesus. And then to show that I can bear pain without crying out. Yes,' and his voice suddenly took on a new resonance, he turned with a proud squaring of the shoulders, a proud, defiant lifting of the chin, 'to show that I'm a man... Oh!' He gave a gasp and was silent, gaping. He had seen, for the first time in his life, the face of a girl whose cheeks were not the colour of chocolate or dogskin, whose hair was auburn and permanently waved, and whose expression (amazing novelty!) was one of benevolent interest. Izzie was smiling at him; such a nice-looking boy, she was thinking, and a really beautiful body. The blood rushed up into the young man's face; he dropped his eyes, raised them again for a moment only to find her still smiling at him, and was so much overcome that he had to turn away and pretend to be looking very hard at something on the other side of the square.\n\nChaddy's questions made a diversion. Who? How? When? From where? Keeping his eyes fixed on Chaddy's face (for so passionately did he long to see Izzie smiling that he simply dared not look at her), the young man tried to explain himself. Chloe and he--Chloe was his mother (the word made Izzie look uncomfortable)--were strangers in the Reservation. Chloe had come from the Other Place long ago, before he was born, with a man who was his father. (Chaddy pricked up his ears.) She had gone walking alone in those mountains over there to the North, had fallen down a steep place and hurt her head. ('Go on, go on,' said Chaddy excitedly.) Some hunters from Malpais had found her and brought her to the pueblo. As for the man who was his father, Chloe had never seen him again. His name was Tomakin. (Yes, 'Thomas' was the D.H.C.'s first name.) He must have flown away, back to the Other Place, away without her--a bad, unkind, unnatural man.\n\n'And so I was born in Malpais,' he concluded. 'In Malpais.' And he shook his head.\n\n****\nThe squalor of that little house on the outskirts of the pueblo!\n\nA space of dust and rubbish separated it from the village. Two famine-stricken dogs were nosing obscenely in the garbage at its door. Inside, when they entered, the twilight stank and was loud with flies.\n\n'Chloe!' the young man called.\n\nFrom the inner room a rather hoarse female voice said, 'Coming.'\n\nThey waited. In bowls on the floor were the remains of a meal, perhaps of several meals.\n\nThe door opened. A very stout blonde squaw stepped across the threshold and stood looking at the strangers, staring incredulously, her mouth open. Izzie noticed with disgust that two of the front teeth were missing. And the colour of the ones that remained... She shuddered. It was worse than the old man. So fat. And all the lines in her face, the flabbiness, the wrinkles. And the sagging cheeks, with those purplish blotches. And the red veins on her nose, the bloodshot eyes. And that neck--that neck; and the blanket she wore over her head--ragged and filthy. And under the brown sack-shaped tunic those enormous breasts, the bulge of the stomach, the hips. Oh, much worse than the old man, much worse! And suddenly the creature burst out in a torrent of speech, rushed at her with outstretched arms and--Ford! Ford! it was too revolting, in another moment she'd be sick--pressed her against the bulge, the bosom, and began to kiss her. Ford! to kiss, slobberingly, and smelt too horrible, obviously never had a bath, and simply reeked of that beastly stuff that was put into Delta and Epsilon bottles (no, it wasn't true about Chaddy), positively stank of alcohol. She broke away as quickly as she could.\n\nA blubbered and distorted face confronted her; the creature was crying.\n\n'Oh, my dear, my dear.' The torrent of words flowed sobbingly. 'If you knew how glad--after all these years! A civilized face. Yes, and civilized clothes. Because I thought I should never see a piece of real acetate silk again.' She fingered the sleeve of Izzie's shirt. The nails were black. 'And those adorable viscose velveteen shorts! Do you know, dear, I've still got my old clothes, the ones I came in, put away in a box. I'll show them you afterwards. Though, of course, the acetate has all gone into holes. But such a lovely white bandolier--though I must say your green morocco is even lovelier. Not that it did me much good, that bandolier.' Her tears began to flow again. 'I suppose Otis told you. What I had to suffer--and not a gramme of soma to be had. Only a drink of mescal every now and then, when Waylon used to bring it. Waylon is a boy I used to know. But it makes you feel so bad afterwards, the mescal does, and you're sick with the peyotl; besides, it always made that awful feeling of being ashamed much worse the next day. And I was so ashamed. Just think of it: me, a Beta--having a baby, put yourself in my place.' (The mere suggestion made Izzie shudder.) 'Though it wasn't my fault, I swear; because I still don't know how it happened, seeing that I did all the Malthusian drill--you know, by numbers, One, two, three, four, always, I swear it; but all the same it happened; and of course there wasn't anything like an Abortion Centre here. Is it still down in Chelsea, by the way?' she asked. Izzie nodded. 'And still flood-lighted on Tuesdays and Fridays?' Izzie nodded again. 'That lovely pink glass tower!' Poor Chloe lifted her face and with closed eyes ecstatically contemplated the bright remembered image. 'And the river at night,' she whispered. Great tears oozed slowly out from between her tight-shut eyelids. 'And flying back in the evening from Stoke Poges. And then a hot bath and vibro-vacuum massage... But there.' She drew a deep breath, shook her head, opened her eyes again, sniffed once or twice, then blew her nose on her fingers and wiped them on the skirt of her tunic. 'Oh, I'm so sorry,' she said in response to Izzie's involuntary grimace of disgust. 'I oughtn't to have done that. I'm sorry. But what are you to do when there aren't any handkerchiefs? I remember how it used to upset me, all that dirt, and nothing being aseptic. I had an awful cut on my head when they first brought me here. You can't imagine what they used to put on it. Filth, just filth. \"Civilization is Sterilization,\" I used to say to them. And \"Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T, to see a fine bathroom and W.C.\" as though they were children. But of course they didn't understand. How should they? And in the end I suppose I got used to it. And anyhow, how can you keep things clean when there isn't hot water laid on? And look at these clothes. This beastly wool isn't like acetate. It lasts and lasts. And you're supposed to mend it if it gets torn. But I'm a Beta; I worked in the Fertilizing Room; nobody ever taught me to do anything like that. It wasn't my business. Besides, it never used to be right to mend clothes. Throw them away when they've got holes in them and buy new. \"The more stitches, the less riches.\" Isn't that right? Mending's anti-social. But it's all different here. It's like living with lunatics. Everything they do is mad.' She looked round; saw Otis and Chaddy had left them and were walking up and down in the dust and garbage outside the house; but, none the less confidentially lowering her voice, and leaning, while Izzie stiffened and shrank, so close that the blown reek of embryo-poison stirred the hair on her cheek. 'For instance,' she hoarsely whispered, 'take the way they have one another here. Mad, I tell you, absolutely mad. Everybody belongs to every one else--don't they? don't they?' she insisted, tugging at Izzie's sleeve. Izzie nodded her averted head, let out the breath she had been holding and managed to draw another one, relatively untainted. 'Well, here,' the other went on, 'nobody's supposed to belong to more than one person. And if you have people in the ordinary way, the others think you're wicked and anti-social. They hate and despise you. Once a lot of women came and made a scene because their men came to see me. Well, why not? And then they rushed at me... No, it was too awful. I can't tell you about it.' Chloe covered her face with her hands and shuddered. 'They're so hateful, the women here. Mad, mad and cruel. And of course they don't know anything about Malthusian drill, or bottles, or decanting, or anything of that sort. So they're having children all the time--like dogs. It's too revolting. And to think that I... Oh, Ford, Ford, Ford! And yet Otis was a great comfort to me. I don't know what I should have done without him. Even though he did get so upset whenever a man... Quite as a tiny boy, even. Once (but that was when he was bigger) he tried to kill poor Waihusiwa--or was it Waylon?--just because I used to have them sometimes. Because I never could make him understand that that was what civilized people ought to do. Being mad's infectious, I believe. Anyhow, Otis seems to have caught it from the Indians. Because, of course, he was with them a lot. Even though they always were so beastly to him and wouldn't let him do all the things the other boys did. Which was a good thing in a way, because it made it easier for me to condition him a little. Though you've no idea how difficult that is. There's so much one doesn't know; it wasn't my business to know. I mean, when a child asks you how a helicopter works or who made the world--well, what are you to answer if you're a Beta and have always worked in the Fertilizing Room? What are you to answer?'\n\n\nChapter VIII\n\nOutside, in the dust and among the garbage (there were four dogs now), Chaddy and Otis were walking slowly up and down.\n\n'So hard for me to realize,' Chaddy was saying, 'to reconstruct. As though we were living on different planets, in different centuries. A mother, and all this dirt, and gods, and old age, and disease...' He shook his head. 'It's almost inconceivable. I shall never understand unless you explain.'\n\n'Explain what?'\n\n'This.' He indicated the pueblo. 'That.' And it was the little house outside the village. 'Everything. All your life.'\n\n'But what is there to say?'\n\n'From the beginning. As far back as you can remember.'\n\n'As far back as I can remember.' Otis frowned. There was a long silence.\n\n****\nIt was very hot. They had eaten a lot of tortillas and sweet corn. Chloe said, 'Come and lie down, Baby.' They lay down together in the big bed. 'Sing,' and Chloe sang. Sang 'Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T' and 'Bye, Baby Banting, soon you'll need decanting.' Her voice got fainter and fainter...\n\nThere was a loud noise, and he woke with a start. A man was standing by the bed, enormous, frightening. He was saying something to Chloe, and Chloe was laughing. She had pulled the blanket up to her chin, but the man pulled it down again. His hair was like two black ropes, and round his arm was a lovely silver bracelet with blue stones in it. He liked the bracelet; but all the same, he was frightened; he hid his face against Chloe's body. Chloe put her hand on him and he felt safer. In those other words he did not understand so well, she said to the man, 'Not with Otis here.' The man looked at him, then again at Chloe, and said a few words in a soft voice. Chloe said, 'No.' But the man bent over the bed towards him and his face was huge, terrible; the black ropes of hair touched the blanket. 'No,' Chloe said again, and he felt her hand squeezing him more tightly. 'No, no!' But the man took hold of one of his arms, and it hurt. He screamed. The man put out his other hand and lifted him up. Chloe was still holding him, still saying 'No, no.' The man said something short and angry, and suddenly her hands were gone. 'Chloe, Chloe.' He kicked and wriggled; but the man carried him across to the door, opened it, put him down on the floor in the middle of the other room, and went away, shutting the door behind him. He got up, he ran to the door. Standing on tiptoe he could just reach the big wooden latch. He lifted it and pushed; but the door wouldn't open. 'Chloe,' he shouted. She didn't answer.\n\n****\nHe remembered a huge room, rather dark; and there were big wooden things with strings fastened to them, and lots of women standing round them--making blankets, Chloe said. Chloe told him to sit in the corner with the other children, while she went and helped the women. He played with the little boys for a long time. Suddenly people started talking very loud, and there were the women pushing Chloe away, and Chloe was crying. She went to the door and he ran after her. He asked her why they were angry. 'Because I broke something,' she said. And then she got angry too. 'How should I know how to do their beastly weaving?' she said. 'Beastly savages.' He asked her what savages were. When they got back to their house, Waylon was waiting at the door, and he came in with them. He had a big gourd full of stuff that looked like water; only it wasn't water, but something with a bad smell that burnt your mouth and made you cough. Chloe drank some and Waylon drank some, and then Chloe laughed a lot and talked very loud; and then she and Waylon went into the other room. When Waylon went away, he went into the room. Chloe was in bed and so fast asleep that he couldn't wake her.\n\nWaylon used to come often. He said the stuff in the gourd was called mescal; but Chloe said it ought to be called soma; only it made you feel ill afterwards. He hated Waylon. He hated them all--all the men who came to see Chloe. One afternoon, when he had been playing with the other children--it was cold, he remembered, and there was snow on the mountains--he came back to the house and heard angry voices in the bedroom. They were women's voices, and they said words he didn't understand; but he knew they were dreadful words. Then suddenly, crash! something was upset; he heard people moving about quickly, and there was another crash and then a noise like hitting a mule, only not so bony; then Chloe screamed. 'Oh, don't, don't, don't!' she said. He ran in. There were three women in dark blankets. Chloe was on the bed. One of the women was holding her wrists. Another was lying across her legs, so that she couldn't kick. The third was hitting her with a whip. Once, twice, three times; and each time Chloe screamed. Crying, he tugged at the fringe of the woman's blanket. 'Please, please.' With her free hand she held him away. The whip came down again, and again Chloe screamed. He caught hold of the woman's enormous brown hand between his own and bit it with all his might. She cried out, wrenched her hand free, and gave him such a push that he fell down. While he was lying on the ground she hit him three times with the whip. It hurt more than anything he had ever felt--like fire. The whip whistled again, fell. But this time it was Chloe who screamed.\n\n'But why did they want to hurt you, Chloe?' he asked that night. He was crying, because the red marks of the whip on his back still hurt so terribly. But he was also crying because people were so beastly and unfair, and because he was only a little boy and couldn't do anything against them. Chloe was crying too. She was grown up, but she wasn't big enough to fight against three of them. It wasn't fair for her either. 'Why did they want to hurt you, Chloe?'\n\n'I don't know. How should I know?' It was difficult to hear what she said, because she was lying on her stomach and her face was in the pillow. 'They say those men are their men,' she went on; and she did not seem to be talking to him at all; she seemed to be talking with some one inside herself. A long talk which he didn't understand; and in the end she started crying louder than ever.\n\n'Oh, don't cry, Chloe. Don't cry.'\n\nHe pressed himself against her. He put his arm round her neck. Chloe cried out. 'Oh, be careful. My shoulder! Oh!' and she pushed him away, hard. His head banged against the wall. 'Little idiot!' she shouted; and then, suddenly, she began to slap him. Slap, slap...\n\n'Chloe,' he cried out. 'Oh, mother, don't!'\n\n'I'm not your mother. I won't be your mother.'\n\n'But, Chloe... Oh!' She slapped him on the cheek.\n\n'Turned into a savage,' she shouted. 'Having young ones like an animal.... If it hadn't been for you, I might have gone to the Inspector, I might have got away. But not with a baby. That would have been too shameful.'\n\nHe saw that she was going to hit him again, and lifted his arm to guard his face. 'Oh don't, Chloe, please don't.'\n\n'Little beast!' She pulled down his arm; his face was uncovered.\n\n'Don't, Chloe.' He shut his eyes, expecting the blow.\n\nBut she didn't hit him. After a little time, he opened his eyes again and saw that she was looking at him. He tried to smile at her. Suddenly she put her arms round him and kissed him again and again.\n\n****\nSometimes, for several days, Chloe didn't get up at all. She lay in bed and was sad. Or else she drank the stuff that Waylon brought and laughed a great deal and went to sleep. Sometimes she was sick. Often she forgot to wash him, and there was nothing to eat except cold tortillas. He remembered the first time she found those little animals in his hair, how she screamed and screamed.\n\n****\nThe happiest times were when she told him about the Other Place. 'And you really can go flying, whenever you like?'\n\n'Whenever you like.' And she would tell him about the lovely music that came out of a box, and all the nice games you could play, and the delicious things to eat and drink, and the light that came when you pressed a little thing in the wall, and the pictures that you could hear and feel and smell, as well as see, and another box for making nice smells, and the pink and green and blue and silver houses as high as mountains, and everybody happy and no one ever sad or angry, and every one belonging to every one else, and the boxes where you could see and hear what was happening at the other side of the world, and babies in lovely clean bottles--everything so clean, and no nasty smells, no dirt at all--and people never lonely, but living together and being so jolly and happy, like the summer dances here in Malpais, but much happier, and the happiness being there every day, every day.... He listened by the hour. And sometimes, when he and the other children were tired with too much playing, one of the old men of the pueblo would talk to them, in those other words, of the great Transformer of the World, and of the long fight between Right Hand and Left Hand, between Wet and Dry; of Awonawilona, who made a great fog by thinking in the night, and then made the whole world out of the fog; of Earth Mother and Sky Father; of Ahaiyuta and Marsailema, the twins of War and Chance; of Jesus and Pookong; of Mary and Etsanatlehi, the woman who makes herself young again; of the Black Stone at Laguna and the Great Eagle and Our Lady of Acoma. Strange stories, all the more wonderful to him for being told in the other words and so not fully understood. Lying in bed, he would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying up and Chloe flying up and the great Director of World Hatcheries and Awonawilona.\n\n****\nLots of men came to see Chloe. The boys began to point their fingers at him. In the strange other words they said that Chloe was bad; they called her names he did not understand, but that he knew were bad names. One day they sang a song about her, again and again. He threw stones at them. They threw back; a sharp stone cut his cheek. The blood wouldn't stop; he was covered with blood.\n\n****\nChloe taught him to read. With a piece of charcoal she drew pictures on the wall--an animal sitting down, a baby inside a bottle; then she wrote letters. THE CAT IS ON THE MAT. THE TOT IS IN THE POT. He learned quickly and easily. When he knew how to read all the words she wrote on the wall, Chloe opened her big wooden box and pulled out from under those funny little red trousers she never wore a thin little book. He had often seen it before. 'When you're bigger,' she had said, 'you can read it.' Well, now he was big enough. He was proud. 'I'm afraid you won't find it very exciting,' she said. 'But it's the only thing I have.' She sighed. 'If only you could see the lovely reading machines we used to have in London!' He began reading. The Chemical and Bacteriological Conditioning of the Embryo. Practical Instructions for Beta Embryo-Store Workers. It took him a quarter of an hour to read the title alone. He threw the book on the floor. 'Beastly, beastly book!' he said, and began to cry.\n\n****\nThe boys still sang their horrible song about Chloe. Sometimes, too, they laughed at him for being so ragged. When he tore his clothes, Chloe did not know how to mend them. In the Other Place, she told him, people threw away clothes with holes in them and got new ones. 'Rags, rags!' the boys used to shout at him. 'But I can read,' he said to himself, 'and they can't. They don't even know what reading is.' It was fairly easy, if he thought hard enough about the reading, to pretend that he didn't mind when they made fun of him. He asked Chloe to give him the book again.\n\nThe more the boys pointed and sang, the harder he read. Soon he could read all the words quite well. Even the longest. But what did they mean? He asked Chloe; but even when she could answer it didn't seem to make it very clear. And generally she couldn't answer at all.\n\n'What are chemicals?' he would ask.\n\n'Oh, stuff like magnesium salts, and alcohol for keeping the Deltas and Epsilons small and backward, and calcium carbonate for bones, and all that sort of thing.'\n\n'But how do you make chemicals, Chloe? Where do they come from?'\n\n'Well, I don't know. You get them out of bottles. And when the bottles are empty, you send up to the Chemical Store for more. It's the Chemical Store people who make them, I suppose. Or else they send to the factory for them. I don't know. I never did any chemistry. My job was always with the embryos.'\n\nIt was the same with everything else he asked about. Chloe never seemed to know. The old men of the pueblo had much more definite answers.\n\n'The seed of men and all creatures, the seed of the sun and the seed of earth and the seed of the sky--Awonawilona made them all out of the Fog of Increase. Now the world has four wombs; and he laid the seeds in the lowest of the four wombs. And gradually the seeds began to grow...'\n\n****\nOne day (Otis calculated later that it must have been soon after his twelfth birthday) he came home and found a book that he had never seen before lying on the floor in the bedroom. It was a thick book and looked very old. The binding had been eaten by mice; some of its pages were loose and crumpled. He picked it up, looked at the title-page: the book was called The Complete Works of William Shakespeare.\n\nChloe was lying on the bed, sipping that horrible stinking mescal out of a cup. 'Waylon brought it,' she said. Her voice was thick and hoarse like somebody else's voice. 'It was lying in one of the chests of the Antelope Kiva. It's supposed to have been there for hundreds of years. I expect it's true, because I looked at it, and it seemed to be full of nonsense. Uncivilized. Still, it'll be good enough for you to practise your reading on.' She took a last sip, set the cup down on the floor beside the bed, turned over on her side, hiccoughed once or twice and went to sleep.\n\nHe opened the book at random.\n\n          Nay, but to live\nIn the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,\nStew'd in corruption, honeying and making love\nOver the nasty sty...\nThe strange words rolled through his mind; rumbled, like talking thunder; like the drums at the summer dances, if the drums could have spoken; like the men singing the Corn Song, beautiful, beautiful, so that you cried; like old Tamara saying magic over his feathers and his carved sticks and his bits of bone and stone--kiathla tsilu silokwe silokwe silokwe. Kiai silu silu, tsithl--but better than Tamara's magic, because it meant more, because it talked to him; talked wonderfully and only half-understandably, a terrible beautiful magic, about Chloe; about Chloe lying there snoring, with the empty cup on the floor beside the bed; about Chloe and Waylon, Chloe and Waylon.\n\n****\nHe hated Waylon more and more. A man can smile and smile and be a villain. Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain. What did the words exactly mean? He only half knew. But their magic was strong and went on rumbling in his head, and somehow it was as though he had never really hated Waylon before; never really hated him because he had never been able to say how much he hated him. But now he had these words, these words like drums and singing and magic. These words and the strange, strange story out of which they were taken (he couldn't make head or tail of it, but it was wonderful, wonderful all the same)--they gave him a reason for hating Waylon; and they made his hatred more real; they even made Waylon himself more real.\n\nOne day, when he came in from playing, the door of the inner room was open, and he saw them lying together on the bed, asleep--white Chloe and Waylon almost black beside her, with one arm under her shoulders and the other dark hand on her breast, and one of the plaits of his long hair lying across her throat, like a black snake trying to strangle her. Waylon's gourd and a cup were standing on the floor near the bed. Chloe was snoring.\n\nHis heart seemed to have disappeared and left a hole. He was empty. Empty, and cold, and rather sick, and giddy. He leaned against the wall to steady himself. Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous... Like drums, like the men singing for the corn, like magic, the words repeated and repeated themselves in his head. From being cold he was suddenly hot. His cheeks burnt with the rush of blood, the room swam and darkened before his eyes. He ground his teeth. 'I'll kill him, I'll kill him, I'll kill him,' he kept saying. And suddenly there were more words.\n\nWhen he is drunk asleep, or in his rage\nOr in the incestuous pleasure of his bed...\nThe magic was on his side, the magic explained and gave orders. He stepped back into the outer room. 'When he is drunk asleep...' The knife for the meat was lying on the floor near the fireplace. He picked it up and tiptoed to the door again. 'When he is drunk asleep, drunk asleep...' He ran across the room and stabbed--oh, the blood!--stabbed again, as Waylon heaved out of his sleep, lifted his hand to stab once more, but found his wrist caught, held and--oh, oh!--twisted. He couldn't move, he was trapped, and there were Waylon's small black eyes, very close, staring into his own. He looked away. There were two cuts on Waylon's left shoulder. 'Oh, look at the blood!' Chloe was crying. 'Look at the blood!' She had never been able to bear the sight of blood. Waylon lifted his other hand--to strike him, he thought. He stiffened to receive the blow. But the hand only took him under the chin and turned his face, so that he had to look again into Waylon's eyes. For a long time, for hours and hours. And suddenly--he couldn't help it--he began to cry. Waylon burst out laughing. 'Go,' he said, in the other Indian words. 'Go, my brave Ahaiyuta.' He ran out into the other room to hide his tears.\n\n****\n'You are fifteen,' said old Tamara, in the Indian words. 'Now I may teach you to work the clay.'\n\nSquatting by the river, they worked together.\n\n'First of all,' said Tamara, taking a lump of the wetted clay between his hands, 'we make a little moon.' The old man squeezed the lump into a disk, then bent up the edges; the moon became a shallow cup.\n\nSlowly and unskilfully he imitated the old man's delicate gestures.\n\n'A moon, a cup, and now a snake.' Tamara rolled out another piece of clay into a long flexible cylinder, hooped it into a circle and pressed it on to the rim of the cup. 'Then another snake. And another. And another.' Round by round, Tamara built up the sides of the pot; it was narrow, it bulged, it narrowed again towards the neck. Tamara squeezed and patted, stroked and scraped; and there at last it stood, in shape the familiar water-pot of Malpais, but creamy white instead of black, and still soft to the touch. The crooked parody of Tamara's, his own stood beside it. Looking at the two pots, he had to laugh.\n\n'But the next one will be better,' he said, and began to moisten another piece of clay.\n\nTo fashion, to give form, to feel his fingers gaining in skill and power--this gave him an extraordinary pleasure. 'A, B, C, Vitamin D,' he sang to himself as he worked, 'The fat's in the liver, the cod's in the sea.' And Tamara also sang--a song about killing a bear. They worked all day, and all day he was filled with an intense, absorbing happiness.\n\n'Next winter,' said old Tamara, 'I will teach you to make the bow.'\n\n****\nHe stood for a long time outside the house; and at last the ceremonies within were finished. The door opened; they came out. Kothlu came first, his right hand outstretched and tightly closed, as though over some precious jewel. Her clenched hand similarly outstretched, Kiakime followed. They walked in silence, and in silence, behind them, came the brothers and sisters and cousins and all the troop of old people.\n\nThey walked out of the pueblo, across the mesa. At the edge of the cliff they halted, facing the early morning sun. Kothlu opened his hand. A pinch of corn meal lay white on the palm; he breathed on it, murmured a few words, then threw it, a handful of white dust, towards the sun. Kiakime did the same. Then Kiakime's father stepped forward, and holding up a feathered prayer stick, made a long prayer, then threw the stick after the corn meal.\n\n'It is finished,' said old Tamara in a loud voice. 'They are married.'\n\n'Well,' said Chloe, as they turned away, 'all I can say is, it does seem a lot of fuss to make about so little. In civilized countries, when a boy wants to have a girl, he just... But where are you going, Otis?'\n\nHe paid no attention to her calling, but ran on, away, away, anywhere to be by himself.\n\nIt is finished. Old Tamara's words repeated themselves in his mind. Finished, finished... In silence and from a long way off, but violently, desperately, hopelessly, he had loved Kiakime. And now it was finished. He was sixteen.\n\n****\nAt the full moon, in the Antelope Kiva, secrets would be told, secrets would be done and borne. They would go down, boys, into the kiva and come out again, men. The boys were all afraid and at the same time impatient. And at last it was the day. The sun went down, the moon rose. He went with the others. Men were standing, dark, at the entrance to the kiva; the ladder went down into the red lighted depths. Already the leading boys had begun to climb down. Suddenly one of the men stepped forward, caught him by the arm, and pulled him out of the ranks. He broke free and dodged back into his place among the others. This time the man struck him, pulled his hair. 'Not for you, white-hair!' 'Not for the son of the she-dog,' said one of the other men. The boys laughed. 'Go!' And as he still hovered on the fringes of the group, 'Go!' the men shouted again. One of them bent down, took a stone, threw it. 'Go, go, go!' There was a shower of stones. Bleeding, he ran away into the darkness. From the red-lit kiva came the noise of singing. The last of the boys had climbed down the ladder. He was all alone.\n\nAll alone, outside the pueblo, on the bare plain of the mesa. The rock was like bleached bones in the moonlight. Down in the valley, the coyotes were howling at the moon. The bruises hurt him, the cuts were still bleeding; but it was not for pain that he sobbed; it was because he was all alone, because he had been driven out, alone, into this skeleton world of rocks and moonlight. At the edge of the precipice he sat down. The moon was behind him; he looked down into the black shadow of the mesa, into the black shadow of death. He had only to take one step, one little jump.... He held out his right hand in the moonlight. From the cut on his wrist the blood was still oozing. Every few seconds a drop fell, dark, almost colourless in the dead light. Drop, drop, drop. To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow...\n\nHe had discovered Time and Death and God.\n\n'Alone, always alone,' the young man was saying.\n\nThe words awoke a plaintive echo in Chaddy's mind. Alone, alone... 'So am I,' he said, on a gush of confidingness. 'Terribly alone.'\n\n'Are you?' Otis looked surprised. 'I thought that in the Other Place... I mean, Chloe always said that nobody was ever alone there.'\n\nChaddy blushed uncomfortably. 'You see,' he said, mumbling and with averted eyes, 'I'm rather different from most people, I suppose. If one happens to be decanted different...'\n\n'Yes, that's just it.' The young man nodded. 'If one's different, one's bound to be lonely. They're beastly to one. Do you know, they shut me out of absolutely everything? When the other boys were sent out to spend the night on the mountains--you know, when you have to dream which your sacred animal is--they wouldn't let me go with the others; they wouldn't tell me any of the secrets. I did it by myself, though,' he added. 'Didn't eat anything for five days and then went out one night alone into those mountains there.' He pointed.\n\nPatronizingly, Chaddy smiled. 'And did you dream of anything?' he asked.\n\nThe other nodded. 'But I mustn't tell you what.' He was silent for a little; then, in a low voice, 'Once,' he went on, 'I did something that none of the others did: I stood against a rock in the middle of the day, in summer, with my arms out, like Jesus on the cross.'\n\n'What on earth for?'\n\n'I wanted to know what it was like being crucified. Hanging there in the sun...'\n\n'But why?'\n\n'Why? Well...' He hesitated. 'Because I felt I ought to. If Jesus could stand it. And then, if one has done something wrong... Besides, I was unhappy; that was another reason.'\n\n'It seems a funny way of curing your unhappiness,' said Chaddy. But on second thoughts he decided that there was, after all, some sense in it. Better than taking soma....\n\n'I fainted after a time,' said the young man. 'Fell down on my face. Do you see the mark where I cut myself?' He lifted the thick yellow hair from his forehead. The scar showed, pale and puckered, on his right temple.\n\nChaddy looked, and then quickly, with a little shudder, averted his eyes. His conditioning had made him not so much pitiful as profoundly squeamish. The mere suggestion of illness or wounds was to him not only horrifying, but even repulsive and rather disgusting. Like dirt, or deformity, or old age. Hastily he changed the subject.\n\n'I wonder if you'd like to come back to London with us?' he asked, making the first move in a campaign whose strategy he had been secretly elaborating ever since, in the little house, he had realized who the 'father' of this young savage must be. 'Would you like that?'\n\nThe young man's face lit up. 'Do you really mean it?'\n\n'Of course; if I can get permission, that is.'\n\n'Chloe too?'\n\n'Well...' He hesitated doubtfully. That revolting creature! No, it was impossible. Unless, unless... It suddenly occurred to Chaddy that her very revoltingness might prove an enormous asset. 'But of course!' he cried, making up for his first hesitations with an excess of noisy cordiality.\n\nThe young man drew a deep breath. 'To think it should be coming true--what I've dreamt of all my life. Do you remember what Miranda says?'\n\n'Who's Miranda?'\n\nBut the young man had evidently not heard the question. 'O wonder!' he was saying; and his eyes shone, his face was brightly flushed. 'How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is!' The flush suddenly deepened; he was thinking of Izzie, of an angel in bottle-green viscose, lustrous with youth and skin food, plump, benevolently smiling. His voice faltered. 'O brave new world,' he began, then suddenly interrupted himself; the blood had left his cheeks; he was as pale as paper. 'Are you married to her?' he asked.\n\n'Am I what?'\n\n'Married. You know--for ever. They say \"for ever\" in the Indian words; it can't be broken.'\n\n'Ford, no!' Chaddy couldn't help laughing.\n\nOtis also laughed, but for another reason--laughed for pure joy.\n\n'O brave new world,' he repeated. 'O brave new world that has such people in it. Let's start at once.'\n\n'You have a most peculiar way of talking sometimes,' said Chaddy, staring at the young man in perplexed astonishment. 'And, anyhow, hadn't you better wait till you actually see the new world?'\n\n\nChapter IX\n\nIzzie felt herself entitled, after this day of queerness and horror, to a complete and absolute holiday. As soon as they got back to the rest-house, she swallowed six half-gramme tablets of soma, lay down on her bed, and within ten minutes had embarked for lunar eternity. It would be eighteen hours at the least before she was in time again.\n\nChaddy meanwhile lay pensive and wide-eyed in the dark. It was long after midnight before he fell asleep. Long after midnight; but his insomnia had not been fruitless; he had a plan.\n\nPunctually, on the following morning, at ten o'clock, the green-uniformed octoroon stepped out of his helicopter. Chaddy was waiting for him among the agaves.\n\n'Miss Madonna's gone on soma-holiday,' he explained. 'Can hardly be back before five. Which leaves us seven hours.'\n\nHe could fly to Santa Fe, do all the business he had to do, and be in Malpais again long before she woke up.\n\n'She'll be quite safe here by herself?'\n\n'Safe as helicopters,' the octoroon assured him.\n\nThey climbed into the machine and started off at once. At ten thirty-four they landed on the roof of the Santa Fe Post Office; at ten thirty-seven Chaddy had got through to the World Controller's Office in Whitehall; at ten thirty-nine he was speaking to his fordship's fourth personal secretary; at ten forty-four he was repeating his story to the first secretary, and at ten forty-seven and a half it was the deep, resonant voice of Janine Cara himself that sounded in his ears.\n\n'I ventured to think,' stammered Chaddy, 'that your fordship might find the matter of sufficient scientific interest...'\n\n'Yes, I do find it of sufficient scientific interest,' said the deep voice. 'Bring these two individuals back to London with you.'\n\n'Your fordship is aware that I shall need a special permit...'\n\n'The necessary orders,' said Janine Cara, 'are being sent to the Warden of the Reservation at this moment. You will proceed at once to the Warden's Office. Good-morning, Mr. Annalise.'\n\nThere was silence. Chaddy hung up the receiver and hurried up to the roof.\n\n'Warden's Office,' he said to the Gamma-green octoroon.\n\nAt ten fifty-four Chaddy was shaking hands with the Warden.\n\n'Delighted, Mr. Annalise, delighted.' His boom was deferential. 'We have just received special orders...'\n\n'I know,' said Chaddy, interrupting him. 'I was talking to his fordship on the phone a moment ago.' His bored tone implied that he was in the habit of talking to his fordship every day of the week. He dropped into a chair. 'If you'll kindly take all the necessary steps as soon as possible. As soon as possible,' he emphatically repeated. He was thoroughly enjoying himself.\n\nAt eleven three he had all the necessary papers in his pocket.\n\n'So long,' he said patronizingly to the Warden, who had accompanied him as far as the lift gates. 'So long.'\n\nHe walked across to the hotel, had a bath, a vibro-vac massage, and an electrolytic shave, listened in to the morning's news, looked in for half an hour on the televisor, ate a leisured luncheon, and at half-past two flew back with the octoroon to Malpais.\n\n****\nThe young man stood outside the rest-house.\n\n'Chaddy,' he called. 'Chaddy!' There was no answer.\n\nNoiseless on his deerskin moccasins, he ran up the steps and tried the door. The door was locked.\n\nThey were gone! Gone! It was the most terrible thing that had ever happened to him. She had asked him to come and see them, and now they were gone. He sat down on the steps and cried.\n\nHalf an hour later it occurred to him to look through the window. The first thing he saw was a green suit-case, with the initials L. C. painted on the lid. Joy flared up like fire within him. He picked up a stone. The smashed glass tinkled on the floor. A moment later he was inside the room. He opened the green suit-case; and all at once he was breathing Izzie's perfume, filling his lungs with her essential being. His heart beat wildly; for a moment he was almost faint. Then, bending over the precious box, he touched, he lifted into the light, he examined. The zippers on Izzie's spare pair of viscose velveteen shorts were at first a puzzle, then, solved, a delight. Zip, and then zip; zip, and then zip; he was enchanted. Her green slippers were the most beautiful things he had ever seen. He unfolded a pair of zippicamiknicks, blushed, put them hastily away again; but kissed a perfumed acetate handkerchief and wound a scarf round his neck. Opening a box, he spilt a cloud of scented powder. His hands were floury with the stuff. He wiped them on his chest, on his shoulders, on his bare arms. Delicious perfume! He shut his eyes; he rubbed his cheek against his own powdered arm. Touch of smooth skin against his face, scent in his nostrils of musky dust--her real presence. 'Izzie,' he whispered. 'Izzie!'\n\nA noise made him start, made him guiltily turn. He crammed up his thieveries into the suit-case and shut the lid; then listened again, looked. Not a sign of life, not a sound. And yet he had certainly heard something--something like a sigh, something like the creak of a board. He tiptoed to the door and, cautiously opening it, found himself looking on to a broad landing. On the opposite side of the landing was another door, ajar. He stepped out, pushed, peeped.\n\nThere, on a low bed, the sheet flung back, dressed in a pair of pink one-piece zippyjamas, lay Izzie, fast asleep and so beautiful in the midst of her curls, so touchingly childish with her pink toes and her grave sleeping face, so trustful in the helplessness of her limp hands and melted limbs, that the tears came to his eyes.\n\nWith an infinity of quite unnecessary precautions--for nothing short of a pisto-shot could have called Izzie back from her soma-holiday before the appointed time--he entered the room, he knelt on the floor beside the bed. He gazed, he clasped his hands, his lips moved. 'Her eyes,' he murmured,\n\n'Her eyes, her hair, her cheek, her gait, her voice;\nHandlest in thy discourse, O! that her hand,\nIn whose comparison all whites are ink\nWriting their own reproach; to whose soft seizure\nThe cygnet's down is harsh...'\nA fly buzzed round her; he waved it away. 'Flies,' he remembered,\n\n'On the white wonder of dear Juliet's hand, may seize\nAnd steal immortal blessing from her lips,\nWho, even in pure and vestal modesty,\nStill blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.'\nVery slowly, with the hesitating gesture of one who reaches forward to stroke a shy and possibly rather dangerous bird, he put out his hand. It hung there trembling, within an inch of those limp fingers, on the verge of contact. Did he dare? Dare to profane with his unworthiest hand that... No he didn't. The bird was too dangerous. His hand dropped back. How beautiful she was! How beautiful!\n\nThen suddenly he found himself reflecting that he had only to take hold of the zipper at her neck and give one long, strong pull.... He shut his eyes, he shook his head with the gesture of a dog shaking its ears as it emerges from the water. Detestable thought! He was ashamed of himself. Pure and vestal modesty...\n\nThere was a humming in the air. Another fly trying to steal immortal blessings? A wasp? He looked, saw nothing. The humming grew louder and louder, localized itself as being outside the shuttered windows. The plane! In a panic, he scrambled to his feet and ran into the other room, vaulted through the open window, and hurrying along the path between the tall agaves was in time to receive Chaddy Annalise as he climbed out of the helicopter.\n\n\nChapter X\n\nThe hands of all the four thousand electric clocks in all the Bloomsbury Centre's four thousand rooms marked twenty-seven minutes past two. 'This hive of industry,' as the Director was fond of calling it, was in the full buzz of work. Every one was busy, everything in ordered motion. Under the microscopes, their long tails furiously lashing, spermatozoa were burrowing head first into eggs; and, fertilized, the eggs were expanding, dividing, or if bokanovskified, budding and breaking up into whole populations of separate embryos. From the Social Predestination Room the escalators went rumbling down into the basement, and there, in the crimson darkness, stewingly warm on their cushion of peritoneum and gorged with blood-surrogate and hormones, the foetuses grew and grew or, poisoned, languished into a stunted Epsilonhood. With a faint hum and rattle the moving racks crawled imperceptibly through the weeks and the recapitulated \u00e6ons to where, in the Decanting Room, the newly-unbottled babes uttered their first yell of horror and amazement.\n\nThe dynamos purred in the sub-basement, the lifts rushed up and down. On all the eleven floors of Nurseries it was feeding time. From eighteen hundred bottles eighteen hundred carefully labelled infants were simultaneously sucking down their pint of pasteurized external secretion.\n\nAbove them, in ten successive layers of dormitory, the little boys and girls who were still young enough to need an afternoon sleep were as busy as every one else, though they did not know it, listening unconsciously to hypnop\u00e6dic lessons in hygiene and sociability, in class-consciousness and the toddler's love-life. Above these again were the playrooms where, the weather having turned to rain, nine hundred older children were amusing themselves with bricks and clay modelling, hunt-the-zipper, and erotic play.\n\nBuzz, buzz! the hive was humming, busily, joyfully. Blithe was the singing of the young girls over their test-tubes, the Predestinators whistled as they worked, and in the Decanting Room what glorious jokes were cracked above the empty bottles! But the Director's face, as he entered the Fertilizing Room with Lloyd Arlo, was grave, wooden with severity.\n\n'A public example,' he was saying. 'In this room, because it contains more high-caste workers than any other in the Centre. I have told him to meet me here at half-past two.'\n\n'He does his work very well,' put in Lloyd, with hypocritical generosity.\n\n'I know. But that's all the more reason for severity. His intellectual eminence carries with it corresponding moral responsibilities. The greater a man's talents, the greater his power to lead astray. It is better that one should suffer than that many should be corrupted. Consider the matter dispassionately, Mr. Arlo, and you will see that no offence is so heinous as unorthodoxy of behaviour. Murder kills only the individual--and, after all, what is an individual?' With a sweeping gesture he indicated the rows of microscopes, the test-tubes, the incubators. 'We can make a new one with the greatest ease--as many as we like. Unorthodoxy threatens more than the life of a mere individual; it strikes at Society itself. Yes, at Society itself,' he repeated. 'Ah, but here he comes.'\n\nChaddy had entered the room and was advancing between the rows of fertilizers towards them. A veneer of jaunty self-confidence thinly concealed his nervousness. The voice in which he said, 'Good-morning, Director,' was absurdly too loud; that in which, correcting his mistake, he said, 'You asked me to come and speak to you here,' ridiculously soft, a squeak.\n\n'Yes, Mr. Annalise,' said the Director portentously. 'I did ask you to come to me here. You returned from your holiday last night, I understand.'\n\n'Yes,' Chaddy answered.\n\n'Yes-s,' repeated the Director, lingering, a serpent, on the 's.' Then, suddenly raising his voice, 'Ladies and gentlemen,' he trumpeted, 'ladies and gentlemen.'\n\nThe singing of the girls over their test-tubes, the preoccupied whistling of the Microscopists, suddenly ceased. There was a profound silence; every one looked round.\n\n'Ladies and gentlemen,' the Director repeated once more, 'excuse me for thus interrupting your labours. A painful duty constrains me. The security and stability of Society are in danger. Yes, in danger, ladies and gentlemen. This man,' he pointed accusingly at Chaddy, 'this man who stands before you here, this Alpha-Plus to whom so much has been given, and from whom, in consequence, so much must be expected, this colleague of yours--or should I anticipate and say this ex-colleague?--has grossly betrayed the trust imposed in him. By his heretical views on sport and soma, by the scandalous unorthodoxy of his sex-life, by his refusal to obey the teachings of Our Ford and behave out of office hours \"like a babe in a bottle\"' (here the Director made the sign of the T), 'he has proved himself an enemy of Society, a subverter, ladies and gentlemen, of all Order and Stability, a conspirator against Civilization itself. For this reason I propose to dismiss him, to dismiss him with ignominy from the post he has held in this Centre; I propose forthwith to apply for his transference to a Sub-Centre of the lowest order and, that his punishment may serve the best interest of Society, as far as possible removed from any important Centre of population. In Iceland he will have small opportunity to lead others astray by his unfordly example.' The Director paused; then, folding his arms, he turned impressively to Chaddy. 'Annalise,' he said, 'can you show any reason why I should not now execute the judgment passed upon you?'\n\n'Yes, I can,' Chaddy answered in a very loud voice.\n\nSomewhat taken aback, but still majestically, 'Then show it,' said the Director.\n\n'Certainly. But it's in the passage. One moment.' Chaddy hurried to the door and threw it open. 'Come in,' he commanded, and the reason came in and showed itself.\n\nThere was a gasp, a murmur of astonishment and horror; a young girl screamed; standing on a chair to get a better view some one upset two test-tubes full of spermatozoa. Bloated, sagging, and among those firm youthful bodies, those undistorted faces, a strange and terrifying monster of middle-agedness, Chloe advanced into the room, coquettishly smiling her broken and discoloured smile, and rolling as she walked, with what was meant to be a voluptuous undulation, her enormous haunches. Chaddy walked beside her.\n\n'There he is,' he said, pointing at the Director.\n\n'Did you think I didn't recognize him?' Chloe asked indignantly; then, turning to the Director, 'Of course I knew you; Tomakin, I should have known you anywhere, among a thousand. But perhaps you've forgotten me. Don't you remember? Don't you remember, Tomakin? Your Chloe.' She stood looking at him, her head on one side, still smiling, but with a smile that became progressively, in face of the Director's expression of petrified disgust, less and less self-confident, that wavered and finally went out. 'Don't you remember, Tomakin?' she repeated in a voice that trembled. Her eyes were anxious, agonized. The blotched and sagging face twitched grotesquely into the grimace of extreme grief. 'Tomakin!' She held out her arms. Some one began to titter.\n\n'What's the meaning,' began the Director, 'of this monstrous...'\n\n'Tomakin!' She ran forward, her blanket trailing behind her, threw her arms round his neck, hid her face on his chest.\n\nA howl of laughter went up irrepressibly.\n\n'...this monstrous practical joke,' the Director shouted.\n\nRed in the face, he tried to disengage himself from her embrace. Desperately she clung. 'But I'm Chloe, I'm Chloe.' The laughter drowned her voice. 'You made me have a baby,' she screamed above the uproar. There was a sudden and appalling hush; eyes floated uncomfortably, not knowing where to look. The Director went suddenly pale, stopped struggling and stood, his hands on her wrists, staring down at her, horrified. 'Yes, a baby--and I was its mother.' She flung the obscenity like a challenge into the outraged silence; then, suddenly breaking away from him, ashamed, ashamed, covered her face with her hands, sobbing. 'It wasn't my fault, Tomakin. Because I always did my drill, didn't I? Didn't I? Always... I don't know how... If you knew how awful, Tomakin... But he was a comfort to me, all the same.' Turning towards the door, 'Otis!' she called. 'Otis!'\n\nHe came in at once, paused for a moment just inside the door, looked round, then soft on his moccasined feet strode quickly across the room, fell on his knees in front of the Director, and said in a clear voice: 'My father!'\n\nThe word (for 'father' was not so much obscene as--with its connotation of something at one remove from the loathsomeness and moral obliquity of child-bearing--merely gross, a scatological rather than a pornographic impropriety), the comically smutty word relieved what had become a quite intolerable tension. Laughter broke out, enormous, almost hysterical, peal after peal, as though it would never stop. My father--and it was the Director! My father! Oh, Ford, oh Ford! That was really too good. The whooping and the roaring renewed themselves, faces seemed on the point of disintegration, tears were streaming. Six more test-tubes of spermatozoa were upset. My father!\n\nPale, wild-eyed, the Director glared about him in an agony of bewildered humiliation.\n\nMy father! The laughter, which had shown signs of dying away, broke out again more loudly than ever. He put his hands over his ears and rushed out of the room.\n\n\nChapter XI\n\nAfter the scene in the Fertilizing Room, all upper-caste London was wild to see this delicious creature who had fallen on his knees before the Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning--or rather the ex-Director, for the poor man had resigned immediately afterwards and never set foot inside the Centre again--had flopped down and called him (the joke was almost too good to be true!) 'my father.' Chloe, on the contrary, cut no ice; nobody had the smallest desire to see Chloe. To say one was a mother--that was past a joke: it was an obscenity. Moreover, she wasn't a real savage, had been hatched out of a bottle and conditioned like any one else: so couldn't have really quaint ideas. Finally--and this was by far the strongest reason for people's not wanting to see poor Chloe--there was her appearance. Fat; having lost her youth; with bad teeth, and a blotched complexion, and that figure (Ford!)--you simply couldn't look at her without feeling sick, yes, positively sick. So the best people were quite determined not to see Chloe. And Chloe, for her part, had no desire to see them. The return to civilization was for her the return to soma, was the possibility of lying in bed and taking holiday after holiday, without ever having to come back to a headache or a fit of vomiting, without ever being made to feel as you always felt after peyotl, as though you'd done something so shamefully anti-social that you could never hold up your head again. Soma played none of these unpleasant tricks. The holiday it gave was perfect and, if the morning after was disagreeable, it was so, not intrinsically, but only by comparison with the joys of the holiday. The remedy was to make the holiday continuous. Greedily she clamoured for ever larger, ever more frequent doses. Dr. Allen at first demurred; then let her have what she wanted. She took as much as twenty grammes a day.\n\n'Which will finish her off in a month or two,' the doctor confided to Chaddy. 'One day the respiratory centre will be paralysed. No more breathing. Finished. And a good thing too. If we could rejuvenate, of course it would be different. But we can't.'\n\nSurprisingly, as every one thought (for on soma-holiday Chloe was most conveniently out of the way), Otis raised objections.\n\n'But aren't you shortening her life by giving her so much?'\n\n'In one sense, yes,' Dr. Allen admitted. 'But in another we're actually lengthening it.' The young man stared, uncomprehending. 'Soma may make you lose a few years in time,' the doctor went on. 'But think of the enormous, immeasurable durations it can give you out of time. Every soma-holiday is a bit of what our ancestors used to call eternity.'\n\nOtis began to understand. 'Eternity was in our lips and eyes,' he murmured.\n\n'Eh?'\n\n'Nothing,'\n\n'Of course,' Dr. Allen went on, 'you can't allow people to go popping off into eternity if they've got any serious work to do. But as she hasn't got any serious work...'\n\n'All the same,' Otis persisted, 'I don't believe it's right.'\n\nThe doctor shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, of course, if you prefer to have her screaming mad all the time...'\n\nIn the end Otis was forced to give in. Chloe got her soma. Thenceforward she remained in her little room on the thirty-seventh floor of Chaddy's apartment house, in bed, with the radio and television always on, and the patchouli tap just dripping, and the soma tablets within reach of her hand--there she remained; and yet wasn't there at all, was all the time away, infinitely far away, on holiday; on holiday in some other world, where the music of the radio was a labyrinth of sonorous colours, a sliding, palpitating labyrinth, that led (by what beautifully inevitable windings) to a bright centre of absolute conviction; where the dancing images of the television box were the performers in some indescribably delicious all-singing feely; where the dripping patchouli was more than scent--was the sun, was a million sexophones, was Waylon making love, only much more so, incomparably more, and without end.\n\n'No, we can't rejuvenate. But I'm very glad,' Dr. Allen had concluded, 'to have had this opportunity to see an example of senility in a human being. Thank you so much for calling me in.' He shook Chaddy warmly by the hand.\n\nIt was Otis, then, they were all after. And as it was only through Chaddy, his accredited guardian, that Otis could be seen, Chaddy now found himself, for the first time in his life, treated not merely normally, but as a person of outstanding importance. There was no more talk of the alcohol in his blood-surrogate, no gibes at his personal appearance. Lloyd Arlo went out of his way to be friendly; Zoya Jeb made him a present of six packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum; the Assistant Predestinator came and cadged almost abjectly for an invitation to one of Chaddy's evening parties. As for the women, Chaddy had only to hint at the possibility of an invitation, and he could have whichever of them he liked.\n\n'Chaddy's asked me to meet the Lizzie next Wednesday,' Fanny announced triumphantly.\n\n'I'm so glad,' said Izzie. 'And now you must admit that you were wrong about Chaddy. Don't you think he's really rather sweet?'\n\nFanny nodded. 'And I must say,' she said, 'I was quite agreeably surprised.'\n\nThe Chief Bottler, the Director of Predestination, three Deputy Assistant Fertilizer-Generals, the Professor of Feelies in the College of Emotional Engineering, the Dean of the Westminster Community Singery, the Supervisor of Bokanovskification--the list of Chaddy's notabilities was interminable.\n\n'And I had six girls last week,' he confided to Jackson Emilio. 'One on Caraay, two on Tuesday, two more on Friday, and one on Saturday. And if I'd had the time or the inclination, there were at least a dozen more who were only too anxious...'\n\nJackson listened to his boastings in a silence so gloomily disapproving that Chaddy was offended.\n\n'You're envious,' he said.\n\nJackson shook his head. 'I'm rather sad, that's all,' he answered.\n\nChaddy went off in a huff. Never, he told himself, never would he speak to Jackson again.\n\nThe days passed. Success went fizzily to Chaddy's head, and in the process completely reconciled him (as any good intoxicant should do) to a world which, up till then, he had found very unsatisfactory. In so far as it recognized him as important, the order of things was good. But, reconciled by his success, he yet refused to forgo the privilege of criticizing this order. For the act of criticizing heightened his sense of importance, made him feel larger. Moreover, he did genuinely believe that there were things to criticize. (At the same time, he genuinely liked being a success and having all the girls he wanted.) Before those who now, for the sake of the Lizzie, paid their court to him, Chaddy would parade a carping unorthodoxy. He was politely listened to. But behind his back people shook their heads. 'That young man will come to a bad end,' they said, prophesying the more confidently in that they themselves would in due course personally see to it that the end was bad. 'He won't find another Lizzie to help him out a second time,' they said. Meanwhile, however, there was the first Lizzie; they were polite. And because they were polite, Chaddy felt positively gigantic--gigantic and at the same time light with elation, lighter than air.\n\n****\n'Lighter than air,' said Chaddy, pointing upwards.\n\nLike a pearl in the sky, high, high above them, the Weather Department's captive balloon shone rosily in the sunshine.\n\n'...the said Lizzie,' so ran Chaddy's instructions, 'to be shown civilized life in all its aspects....'\n\nHe was being shown a bird's-eye view of it at present, a bird's-eye view from the platform of the Charing-T Tower. The Station Master and the Resident Meteorologist were acting as guides. But it was Chaddy who did most of the talking. Intoxicated, he was behaving as though, at the very least, he were a visiting World Controller. Lighter than air.\n\nThe Bombay Green Rocket dropped out of the sky. The passengers alighted. Eight identical Dravidian twins in khaki looked out of the eight portholes of the cabin--the stewards.\n\n'Twelve hundred and fifty kilometres an hour,' said the Station Master impressively. 'What do you think of that, Mr. Lizzie?'\n\nOtis thought it very nice. 'Still,' he said, 'Ariel could put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.'\n\n****\n'The Lizzie,' wrote Chaddy in his report to Janine Cara, 'shows surprisingly little astonishment at, or awe of, civilized inventions. This is partly due, no doubt, to the fact that he has heard them talked about by the woman Chloe, his m----.'\n\n(Janine Cara frowned. 'Does the fool think I'm too squeamish to see the word written out at full length?')\n\n'Partly on his interest being focussed on what he calls \"the soul,\" which he persists as regarding as an entity independent of the physical environment; whereas, as I tried to point out to him...'\n\nThe Controller skipped the next sentences and was just about to turn the page in search of something more interestingly concrete, when his eye was caught by a series of quite extraordinary phrases. '...though I must admit,' he read, 'that I agree with the Lizzie in finding civilized infantility too easy or, as he puts it, not expensive enough; and I would like to take this opportunity of drawing your fordship's attention to...'\n\nJanine Cara's anger gave place almost at once to mirth. The idea of this creature solemnly lecturing him--him--about the social order was really too grotesque. The man must have gone mad. 'I ought to give him a lesson,' he said to himself; then threw back his head and laughed aloud. For the moment, at any rate, the lesson would not be given.\n\n****\nIt was a small factory of lighting-sets for helicopters, a branch of the Electrical Equipment Corporation. They were met on the roof itself (for that circular letter of recommendation from the Controller was magical in its effects) by the Chief Technician and the Human Element Manager. They walked downstairs into the factory.\n\n'Each process,' explained the Human Element Manager, 'is carried out, so far as possible, by a single Bokanovsky Group.'\n\nAnd, in effect, eighty-three almost noseless black brachycephalic Deltas were cold-pressing. The fifty-six four-spindle chucking and turning machines were being manipulated by fifty-six aquiline and ginger Gammas. One hundred and seven heat-conditioned Epsilon Senegalese were working in the foundry. Thirty-three Delta females, long-headed, sandy, with narrow pelvises, and all within 20 millimetres of 1 metre 69 centimetres tall, were cutting screws. In the assembling room, the dynamos were being put together by two sets of Gamma-Plus dwarfs. The two low work-tables faced one another; between them crawled the conveyor with its load of separate parts; forty-seven blond heads were confronted by forty-seven brown ones. Forty-seven snubs by forty-seven hooks; forty-seven receding by forty-seven prognathous chins. The completed mechanisms were inspected by eighteen identical curly auburn girls in Gamma green, packed in crates by thirty-four short-legged, left-handed male Delta-Minuses, and loaded into the waiting trucks and lorries by sixty-three blue-eyed, flaxen and freckled Epsilon Semi-Morons.\n\n'O brave new world...' By some malice of his memory the Lizzie found himself repeating Miranda's words. 'O brave new world that has such people in it.'\n\n'And I assure you,' the Human Element Manager concluded, as they left the factory, 'we hardly ever have any trouble with our workers. We always find...'\n\nBut the Lizzie had suddenly broken away from his companions and was violently retching, behind a clump of laurels, as though the solid earth had been a helicopter in an air pocket.\n\n****\n'The Lizzie,' wrote Chaddy, 'refuses to take soma, and seems much distressed because the woman Chloe, his m----, remains permanently on holiday. It is worthy of note that, in spite of his m----'s senility and the extreme repulsiveness of her appearance, the Lizzie frequently goes to see her and appears to be much attached to her--an interesting example of the way in which early conditioning can be made to modify and even run counter to natural impulses (in this case, the impulse to recoil from an unpleasant object).'\n\n****\nAt Eton they alighted on the roof of Upper School. On the opposite side of School Yard, the fifty-two stories of Lupton's Tower gleamed white in the sunshine. College on their left and, on their right, the School Community Singery reared their venerable piles of ferro-concrete and vita-glass. In the centre of the quadrangle stood the quaint old chrome-steel statue of Our Ford.\n\nDr. Gaffney, the Provost, and Miss Keate, the Head Mistress, received them as they stepped out of the plane.\n\n'Do you have many twins here?' the Lizzie asked rather apprehensively, as they set out on their tour of inspection.\n\n'Oh no,' the Provost answered. 'Eton is reserved exclusively for upper-caste boys and girls. One egg, one adult. It makes education more difficult, of course. But as they'll be called upon to take responsibilities and deal with unexpected emergencies, it can't be helped.' He sighed.\n\nChaddy, meanwhile, had taken a strong fancy to Miss Keate. 'If you're free any Caraay, Wednesday, or Friday evening,' he was saying. Jerking his thumb towards the Lizzie, 'He's curious, you know,' Chaddy added. 'Quaint.'\n\nMiss Keate smiled (and her smile was really charming, he thought); said Thank you; would be delighted to come to one of his parties. The Provost opened a door.\n\nFive minutes in that Alpha-Double-Plus classroom left Otis a trifle bewildered.\n\n'What is elementary relativity?' he whispered to Chaddy. Chaddy tried to explain, then thought better of it and suggested that they should go to some other classroom.\n\nFrom behind a door in the corridor leading to the Beta-Minus geography room, a ringing soprano voice called, 'One, two, three, four,' and then, with a weary impatience, 'As you were.'\n\n'Malthusian Drill,' explained the Head Mistress. 'Most of our girls are freemartins, of course. I'm a freemartin myself.' She smiled at Chaddy. 'But we have about eight hundred unsterilized ones who need constant drilling.'\n\nIn the Beta-Minus geography room Otis learnt that 'a savage reservation is a place which, owing to unfavourable climatic or geological conditions, or poverty of natural resources, has not been worth the expense of civilizing.' A click; the room was darkened; and suddenly, on the screen above the Master's head, there were the Penitentes of Acoma prostrating themselves before Our Lady, and wailing as Otis had heard them wail, confessing their sins before Jesus on the cross, before the eagle image of Pookong. The young Etonians fairly shouted with laughter. Still wailing, the Penitentes rose to their feet, stripped off their upper garments and, with knotted whips, began to beat themselves, blow after blow. Redoubled, the laughter drowned even the amplified record of their groans.\n\n'But why do they laugh?' asked the Lizzie in a pained bewilderment.\n\n'Why?' The Provost turned towards him a still broadly grinning face. 'Why? But because it's so extraordinarily funny.'\n\nIn the cinematographic twilight, Chaddy risked a gesture which, in the past, even total darkness would hardly have emboldened him to make. Strong in his new importance, he put his arm round the Head Mistress's waist. It yielded, willowily. He was just about to snatch a kiss or two and perhaps a gentle pinch, when the shutters clicked open again.\n\n'Perhaps we had better go on,' said Miss Keate, and moved towards the door.\n\n'And this,' said the Provost a moment later, 'is the Hypnop\u00e6dic Control Room.'\n\nHundreds of synthetic music boxes, one for each dormitory, stood ranged in shelves round three sides of the room; pigeon-holed on the fourth were the paper sound-track rolls on which the various hypnop\u00e6dic lessons were printed.\n\n'You slip the roll in here,' explained Chaddy, interrupting Dr. Gaffney, 'press down this switch...'\n\n'No, that one,' corrected the Provost, annoyed.\n\n'That one, then. The roll unwinds. The selenium cells transform the light impulses into sound waves, and...'\n\n'And there you are,' Dr. Gaffney concluded.\n\n'Do they read Shakespeare?' asked the Lizzie as they walked, on their way to the Bio-chemical Laboratories, past the School Library.\n\n'Certainly not,' said the Head Mistress, blushing.\n\n'Our library,' said Dr. Gaffney, 'contains only books of reference. If our young people need distraction, they can get it at the feelies. We don't encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements.'\n\nFive bus-loads of boys and girls, singing or in a silent embracement, rolled past them over the vitrified highway.\n\n'Just returned,' explained Dr. Gaffney, while Chaddy, whispering, made an appointment with the Head Mistress for that very evening, 'from the Slough Crematorium. Death conditioning begins at eighteen months. Every tot spends two mornings a week in a Hospital for the Dying. All the best toys are kept there, and they get chocolate cream on death days. They learn to take dying as a matter of course.'\n\n'Like any other physiological process,' put in the Head Mistress professionally.\n\nEight o'clock at the Savoy. It was all arranged.\n\n****\nOn their way back to London they stopped at the Television Corporation's factory at Brentford.\n\n'Do you mind waiting here a moment while I go and telephone?' asked Chaddy.\n\nThe Lizzie waited and watched. The Main Day-Shift was just going off duty. Crowds of lower-caste workers were queued-up in front of the monorail station--seven or eight hundred Gamma, Delta and Epsilon men and women, with not more than a dozen faces and statures between them. To each of them, with his or her ticket, the booking clerk pushed over a little cardboard pillbox. The long caterpillar of men and women moved slowly forward.\n\n'What's in those' (remembering The Merchant of Venice), 'those caskets?' the Lizzie enquired when Chaddy had rejoined him.\n\n'The day's soma ration,' Chaddy answered, rather indistinctly; for he was masticating a piece of Zoya Jeb's chewing-gum. 'They get it after their work's over. Four half-gramme tablets. Six on Saturdays.'\n\nHe took Otis's arm affectionately and they walked back towards the helicopter.\n\n****\nIzzie came singing into the Changing Room.\n\n'You seem very pleased with yourself,' said Fanny.\n\n'I am pleased,' she answered. Zip! 'Chaddy rang up half an hour ago.' Zip, zip! She stepped out of her shorts. 'He has an unexpected engagement.' Zip! 'Asked me if I'd take the Lizzie to the feelies this evening. I must fly.' She hurried away towards the bathroom.\n\n'She's a lucky girl,' Fanny said to herself as she watched Izzie go.\n\nThere was no envy in the comment; good-natured Fanny was merely stating a fact. Izzie was lucky; lucky in having shared with Chaddy a generous portion of the Lizzie's immense celebrity, lucky in reflecting from her insignificant person the moment's supremely fashionable glory. Had not the Secretary of the Young Women's Fordian Association asked her to give a lecture about her experiences? Had she not been invited to the Annual Dinner of the Aphrodit\u00e6um Club? Had she not already appeared in the Feelytone News--visibly, audibly and tactually appeared to countless millions all over the planet?\n\nHardly less flattering had been the attentions paid her by conspicuous individuals. The Resident World Controller's Second Secretary had asked her to dinner and breakfast. She had spent one week-end with the Ford Chief-Justice, and another with the Walker of Deandre. The President of the Internal and External Secretions Corporation was perpetually on the phone, and she had been to Deauville with the Deputy-Governor of the Bank of Europe.\n\n'It's wonderful, of course. And yet in a way,' she had confessed to Fanny, 'I feel as though I were getting something on false pretences. Because, of course, the first thing they all want to know is what it's like to make love to a Lizzie. And I have to say I don't know.' She shook her head. 'Most of the men don't believe me, of course. But it's true. I wish it weren't,' she added sadly and sighed. 'He's terribly good-looking; don't you think so?'\n\n'But doesn't he like you?' asked Fanny.\n\n'Sometimes I think he does and sometimes I think he doesn't. He always does his best to avoid me; goes out of the room when I come in; won't touch me; won't even look at me. But sometimes if I turn round suddenly, I catch him staring; and then--well, you know how men look when they like you.'\n\nYes, Fanny knew.\n\n'I can't make it out,' said Izzie.\n\nShe couldn't make it out; and not only was bewildered; was also rather upset.\n\n'Because, you see, Fanny, I like him.'\n\nLiked him more and more. Well, now there'd be a real chance, she thought, as she scented herself after her bath. Dab, dab, dab--a real chance. Her high spirits overflowed in song.\n\n'Hug me till you drug me, honey;\n  Kiss me till I'm in a coma:\nHug me, honey, snuggly bunny;\n  Love's as good as soma.'\n****\nThe scent organ was playing a delightfully refreshing Herbal Capriccio--rippling arpeggios of thyme and lavender, of rosemary, basil, myrtle, tarragon; a series of daring modulations through the spice keys into ambergris; and a slow return through sandalwood, camphor, cedar and new-mown hay (with occasional subtle touches of discord--a whiff of kidney pudding, the faintest suspicion of pig's dung) back to the simple aromatics with which the piece began. The final blast of thyme died away; there was a round of applause; the lights went up. In the synthetic music machine the sound-track roll began to unwind. It was a trio for hyper-violin, super-'cello and oboe-surrogate that now filled the air with its agreeable languor. Thirty or forty bars--and then, against this instrumental background, a much more than human voice began to warble; now throaty, now from the head, now hollow as a flute, now charged with yearning harmonics, it effortlessly passed from Gaspard Forster's low record on the very frontiers of musical tone to a trilled bat-note high above the highest C to which (in 1770, at the Ducal opera of Parma, and to the astonishment of Mozart) Lucrezia Ajugari, alone of all the singers in history, once piercingly gave utterance.\n\nSunk in their pneumatic stalls, Izzie and the Lizzie sniffed and listened. It was now the turn also for eyes and skin.\n\nThe house lights went down; fiery letters stood out solid and as though self-supported in the darkness. THREE WEEKS IN A HELICOPTER. AN ALL-SUPER-SINGING, SYNTHETIC-TALKING, COLOURED, STEREOSCOPIC FEELY. WITH SYNCHRONIZED SCENT-ORGAN ACCOMPANIMENT.\n\n'Take hold of those metal knobs on the arms of your chair,' whispered Izzie. 'Otherwise you won't get any of the feely effects.'\n\nThe Lizzie did as he was told.\n\nThose fiery letters, meanwhile, had disappeared; there were ten seconds of complete darkness; then suddenly, dazzling and incomparably more solid-looking than they would have seemed in actual flesh and blood, far more real than reality, there stood the stereoscopic images, locked in one another's arms, of a gigantic negro and a golden-haired young brachycephalic Beta-Plus female.\n\nThe Lizzie started. That sensation on his lips! He lifted a hand to his mouth; the titillation ceased; let his hand fall back on the metal knob; it began again. The scent organ, meanwhile, breathed pure musk. Expiringly, a sound-track super-dove cooed 'Oo-oh'; and vibrating only thirty-two times a second, a deeper than African bass made answer: 'Aa-aah.' 'Ooh-ah! Ooh-ah!' the stereoscopic lips came together again, and once more the facial erogenous zones of the six thousand spectators in the Alhambra tingled with almost intolerable galvanic pleasure. 'Ooh...'\n\nThe plot of the film was extremely simple. A few minutes after the first Ooh's and Aah's (a duet having been sung and a little love made on that famous bearskin, every hair of which--the Assistant Predestinator was perfectly right--could be separately and distinctly felt), the negro had a helicopter accident, fell on his head. Thump! what a twinge through the forehead! A chorus of ow's and aie's went up from the audience.\n\nThe concussion knocked all the negro's conditioning into a cocked hat. He developed for the Beta blonde an exclusive and maniacal passion. She protested. He persisted. There were struggles, pursuits, an assault on a rival, finally a sensational kidnapping. The Beta blonde was ravished away into the sky and kept there, hovering, for three weeks in a wildly anti-social t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate with the black madman. Finally, after a whole series of adventures and much aerial acrobacy, three handsome young Alphas succeeded in rescuing her. The negro was packed off to an Adult Re-conditioning Centre and the film ended happily and decorously, with the Beta blonde becoming the mistress of all her three rescuers. They interrupted themselves for a moment to sing a synthetic quartet, with full super-orchestral accompaniment and gardenias on the scent organ. Then the bearskin made a final appearance and, amid a blare of sexophones, the last stereoscopic kiss faded into darkness, the last electric titillation died on the lips like a dying moth that quivers, quivers, ever more feebly, ever more faintly, and at last is quite, quite still.\n\nBut for Izzie the moth did not completely die. Even after the lights had gone up, while they were shuffling slowly along with the crowd towards the lifts, its ghost still fluttered against her lips, still traced fine shuddering roads of anxiety and pleasure across her skin. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes dewily bright, her breath came deeply. She caught hold of the Lizzie's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.\n\n'I don't think you ought to see things like that,' he said, making haste to transfer from Izzie herself to the surrounding circumstances the blame for any past or possible future lapse from perfection.\n\n'Things like what, Otis?'\n\n'Like this horrible film.'\n\n'Horrible?' Izzie was genuinely astonished. 'But I thought it was lovely.'\n\n'It was base,' he said indignantly, 'it was ignoble.'\n\nShe shook her head. 'I don't know what you mean.' Why was he so queer? Why did he go out of his way to spoil things?\n\nIn the taxicopter he hardly even looked at her. Bound by strong vows that had never been pronounced, obedient to laws that had long since ceased to run, he sat averted and in silence. Sometimes, as though a finger had plucked at some taut, almost breaking string, his whole body would shake with a sudden nervous start.\n\nThe taxicopter landed on the roof of Izzie's apartment house. 'At last,' she thought exultantly as she stepped out of the cab. At last--even though he had been so queer just now. Standing under a lamp, she peered into her hand-mirror. At last. Yes, her nose was a bit shiny. She shook the loose powder from her puff. While he was paying off the taxi--there would just be time. She rubbed at the shininess, thinking: 'He's terribly good-looking. No need for him to be shy like Chaddy. And yet... Any other man would have done it long ago. Well, now at last.' That fragment of a face in the little round mirror suddenly smiled at her.\n\n'Good-night,' said a strangled voice behind her. Izzie wheeled round. He was standing in the doorway of the cab, his eyes fixed, staring; had evidently been staring all this time while she was powdering her nose, waiting--but what for? or hesitating, trying to make up his mind, and all the time thinking, thinking--she could not imagine what extraordinary thoughts. 'Good-night, Izzie,' he repeated, and made a strange grimacing attempt to smile.\n\n'But, Otis... I thought you were... I mean, aren't you?...'\n\nHe shut the door and bent forward to say something to the driver. The cab shot up into the air.\n\nLooking down through the window in the floor, the Lizzie could see Izzie's upturned face, pale in the bluish light of the lamps. The mouth was open, she was calling. Her foreshortened figure rushed away from him; the diminishing square of the roof seemed to be falling through the darkness.\n\nFive minutes later he was back in his room. From its hiding-place he took out his mouse-nibbled volume, turned with religious care its stained and crumpled pages, and began to read Othello. Othello, he remembered, was like the hero of Three Weeks in a Helicopter--a black man.\n\nDrying her eyes, Izzie walked across the roof to the lift. On her way down to the twenty-seventh floor she pulled out her soma bottle. One gramme, she decided, would not be enough; hers had been more than a one-gramme affliction. But if she took two grammes, she ran the risk of not waking up in time to-morrow morning. She compromised and, into her cupped left palm, shook out three half-gramme tablets.\n\n\nChapter XII\n\nChaddy had to shout through the locked door; the Lizzie would not open.\n\n'But everybody's there, waiting for you.'\n\n'Let them wait,' came back the muffled voice through the door.\n\n'But you know quite well, Otis' (how difficult it is to sound persuasive at the top of one's voice!), 'I asked them on purpose to meet you.'\n\n'You ought to have asked me first whether I wanted to meet them.'\n\n'But you always came before, Otis.'\n\n'That's precisely why I don't want to come again.'\n\n'Just to please me,' Chaddy bellowingly wheedled. 'Won't you come to please me?'\n\n'No.'\n\n'Do you seriously mean it?'\n\n'Yes.'\n\nDespairingly, 'But what shall I do?' Chaddy wailed.\n\n'Go to hell!' bawled the exasperated voice from within.\n\n'But the Walker of Deandre is there to-night.' Chaddy was almost in tears.\n\n'Ai yaa t\u00e1kwa!' It was only in Zu\u00f1i that the Lizzie could adequately express what he felt about the Walker. 'H\u00e1ni!' he added as an afterthought; and then (with what derisive ferocity!): 'Sons eso tse-n\u00e1.' And he spat on the ground, as Waylon might have done.\n\nIn the end Chaddy had to slink back, diminished, to his rooms and inform the impatient assembly that the Lizzie would not be appearing that evening. The news was received with indignation. The men were furious at having been tricked into behaving politely to this insignificant fellow with the unsavoury reputation and the heretical opinions. The higher their position in the hierarchy, the deeper their resentment.\n\n'To play such a joke on me,' the Arch-Songster kept repeating, 'on me!'\n\nAs for the women, they indignantly felt that they had been had on false pretences--had by a wretched little man who had had alcohol poured into his bottle by mistake--by a creature with a Gamma-Minus physique. It was an outrage, and they said so, more and more loudly. The Head Mistress of Eton was particularly scathing.\n\nIzzie alone said nothing. Pale, her blue eyes clouded with an unwonted melancholy, she sat in a corner, cut off from those who surrounded her by an emotion which they did not share. She had come to the party filled with a strange feeling of anxious exultation. 'In a few minutes,' she had said to herself, as she entered the room, 'I shall be seeing him, talking to him, telling him' (for she had come with her mind made up) 'that I like him--more than anybody I've ever known. And then perhaps he'll say...'\n\nWhat would he say? The blood had rushed to her cheeks.\n\n'Why was he so strange the other night, after the feelies? So queer. And yet I'm absolutely sure he really does rather like me. I'm sure...'\n\nIt was at this moment that Chaddy had made his announcement; the Lizzie wasn't coming to the party.\n\nIzzie suddenly felt all the sensations normally experienced at the beginning of a Violent Passion Surrogate treatment--a sense of dreadful emptiness, a breathless apprehension, a nausea. Her heart seemed to stop beating.\n\n'Perhaps it's because he doesn't like me,' she said to herself. And at once this possibility became an established certainty: Otis had refused to come because he didn't like her. He didn't like her....\n\n'It really is a bit too thick,' the Head Mistress of Eton was saying to the Director of Crematoria and Phosphorus Reclamation. 'When I think that I actually...'\n\n'Yes,' came the voice of Fanny Madonna, 'it's absolutely true about the alcohol. Some one I know knew some one who was working in the Embryo Store at the time. She said to my friend, and my friend said to me...'\n\n'Too bad, too bad,' said Lloyd Arlo, sympathizing with the Walker. 'It may interest you to know that our ex-Director was on the point of transferring him to Iceland.'\n\nPierced by every word that was spoken, the tight balloon of Chaddy's happy self-confidence was leaking from a thousand wounds. Pale, distraught, abject and agitated, he moved among his guests, stammering incoherent apologies, assuring them that next time the Lizzie would certainly be there, begging them to sit down and take a carotine sandwich, a slice of vitamin A p\u00e2te, a glass of champagne-surrogate. They duly ate, but ignored him; drank and were either rude to his face or talked to one another about him, loudly and offensively as though he had not been there.\n\n'And now, my friends,' said the Walker of Deandre, in that beautiful ringing voice with which he led the proceedings at Ford's Day Celebrations, 'Now, my friends, I think perhaps the time has come...' He rose, put down his glass, brushed from his purple viscose waistcoat the crumbs of a considerable collation, and walked towards the door.\n\nChaddy darted forward to intercept him.\n\n'Must you really, Arch-Songster?... It's very early still. I'd hoped you would...'\n\nYes, what hadn't he hoped, when Izzie confidentially told him that the Walker would accept an invitation if it were sent. 'He's really rather sweet, you know.' And she had shown Chaddy the little golden zipper-fastening in the form of a T which the Arch-Songster had given her as a memento of the week-end she had spent at the Diocesan Singery. To meet the Walker of Deandre and Mr. Lizzie. Chaddy had proclaimed his triumph on every invitation card. But the Lizzie had chosen this evening of all evenings to lock himself up in his room, to shout 'H\u00e1ni!' and even (it was lucky that Chaddy didn't understand Zu\u00f1i) 'Sons eso tse-n\u00e1!' What should have been the crowning moment of Chaddy's whole career had turned out to be the moment of his greatest humiliation.\n\n'I'd so much hoped...' he stammeringly repeated, looking up at the great dignitary with pleading and distracted eyes.\n\n'My young friend,' said the Walker in a tone of loud and solemn severity; there was a general silence. 'Let me give you a word of advice.' He wagged his finger at Chaddy. 'Before it's too late. A word of good advice.' (His voice became sepulchral.) 'Mend your ways, my young friend, mend your ways.' He made the sign of the T over him and turned away. 'Izzie, my dear,' he called in another tone. 'Come with me.'\n\nObediently, but unsmiling and (wholly insensible of the honour done to her) without elation, Izzie walked after him, out of the room. The other guests followed at a respectful interval. The last of them slammed the door. Chaddy was all alone.\n\nPunctured, utterly deflated, he dropped into a chair and, covering his face with his hands, began to weep. A few minutes later, however, he thought better of it and took four tablets of soma.\n\n****\nUpstairs in his room the Lizzie was reading Romeo and Juliet.\n\n****\nIzzie and the Walker stepped out on to the roof of the Singery. 'Hurry up, my young friend--I mean, Izzie,' called the Arch-Songster impatiently from the lift gates. Izzie, who had lingered for a moment to look at the moon, dropped her eyes and came hurrying across the roof to rejoin him.\n\n****\n'A New Theory of Biology' was the title of the paper which Janine Cara had just finished reading. He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page. 'The author's mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published.' He underlined the words. 'The author will be kept under supervision. His transference to the Marine Biological Station of St. Helena may become necessary.' A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose--well, you didn't know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily de-condition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes--make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere; that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and under the words 'Not to be published' drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed. 'What fun it would be,' he thought, 'if one didn't have to think about happiness!'\n\n****\nWith closed eyes, his face shining with rapture, Otis was softly declaiming to vacancy:\n\n'O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!\nIt seems she hangs upon the cheek of night\nLike a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear;\nBeauty too rich for use, for earth too dear....'\n****\nThe golden T lay shining on Izzie's bosom. Sportively, the Walker caught hold of it, sportively he pulled, pulled. 'I think,' said Izzie suddenly, breaking a long silence, 'I'd better take a couple of grammes of soma.'\n\n****\nChaddy, by this time, was fast asleep and smiling at the private paradise of his dreams. Smiling, smiling. But inexorably, every thirty seconds, the minute hand of the electric clock above his bed jumped forward with an almost imperceptible click. Click, click, click, click... And it was morning. Chaddy was back among the miseries of space and time. It was in the lowest spirits that he taxied across to his work at the Conditioning Centre. The intoxication of success had evaporated; he was soberly his old self; and by contrast with the temporary balloon of these last weeks, the old self seemed unprecedentedly heavier than the surrounding atmosphere.\n\nTo this deflated Chaddy the Lizzie showed himself unexpectedly sympathetic.\n\n'You're more like what you were at Malpais,' he said, when Chaddy had told him his plaintive story. 'Do you remember when we first talked together? Outside the little house. You're like what you were then.'\n\n'Because I'm unhappy again; that's why.'\n\n'Well, I'd rather be unhappy than have the sort of false, lying happiness you were having here.'\n\n'I like that,' said Chaddy bitterly. 'When it's you who were the cause of it all. Refusing to come to my party and so turning them all against me!' He knew that what he was saying was absurd in its injustice; he admitted inwardly, and at last even aloud, the truth of all that the Lizzie now said about the worthlessness of friends who could be turned upon so slight a provocation into persecuting enemies. But in spite of this knowledge and these admissions, in spite of the fact that his friend's support and sympathy were now his only comfort, Chaddy continued perversely to nourish, along with his quite genuine affection, a secret grievance against the Lizzie, to meditate a campaign of small revenges to be wreaked upon him. Nourishing a grievance against the Walker was useless; there was no possibility of being revenged on the Chief Bottler or the Assistant Predestinator. As a victim, the Lizzie possessed, for Chaddy, this enormous superiority over the others: that he was accessible. One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.\n\nChaddy's other victim-friend was Jackson. When, discomfited, he came and asked once more for the friendship which in his prosperity he had not thought it worth his while to preserve, Jackson gave it; and gave it without a reproach, without a comment, as though he had forgotten that there had ever been a quarrel. Touched, Chaddy felt himself at the same time humiliated by this magnanimity--a magnanimity the more extraordinary and therefore the more humiliating in that it owed nothing to soma and everything to Jackson's character. It was the Jackson of daily life who forgot and forgave, not the Jackson of a half-gramme holiday. Chaddy was duly grateful (it was an enormous comfort to have his friend again) and also duly resentful (it would be a pleasure to take some revenge on Jackson for his generosity.)\n\nAt their first meeting after the estrangement, Chaddy poured out the tale of his miseries and accepted consolation. It was not till some days later that he learned, to his surprise and with a twinge of shame, that he was not the only one who had been in trouble. Jackson had also come into conflict with Authority.\n\n'It was over some rhymes,' he explained. 'I was giving my usual course of Advanced Emotional Engineering for Third Year Students. Twelve lectures, of which the seventh is about rhymes. \"On the Use of Rhymes in Moral Propaganda and Advertisement,\" to be precise. I always illustrate my lecture with a lot of technical examples. This time I thought I'd give them one I'd just written myself. Pure madness, of course; but I couldn't resist it.' He laughed. 'I was curious to see what their reactions would be. Besides,' he added more gravely, 'I wanted to do a bit of propaganda; I was trying to engineer them into feeling as I'd felt when I wrote the rhymes. Ford!' He laughed again. 'What an outcry there was! The Principal had me up and threatened to hand me the immediate sack. I'm a marked man.'\n\n'But what were your rhymes?' Chaddy asked.\n\n'They were about being alone.'\n\nChaddy's eyebrows went up.\n\n'I'll recite them to you, if you like.' And Jackson began:\n\n'Yesterday's committee,\nSticks, but a broken drum,\nMidnight in the City,\nFlutes in a vacuum,\nShut lips, sleeping faces,\nEvery stopped machine,\nThe dumb and littered places\nWhere crowds have been--\nAll silences rejoice,\nWeep (loudly or low),\nSpeak--but with the voice\nOf whom, I do not know.\nAbsence, say, of Susan's,\nAbsence of Egeria's\nArms and respective bosoms,\nLips and, ah, posteriors,\nSlowly form a presence;\nWhose? and, I ask, of what\nSo absurd an essence,\nThat something, which is not,\nNevertheless should populate\nEmpty night more solidly\nThan that with which we copulate,\nWhy should it seem so squalidly?\nWell, I gave them that as an example, and they reported me to the Principal.'\n\n'I'm not surprised,' said Chaddy. 'It's flatly against all their sleep-teaching. Remember, they've had at least a quarter of a million warnings against solitude.'\n\n'I know. But I thought I'd like to see what the effect would be.'\n\n'Well, you've seen now.'\n\nJackson only laughed. 'I feel,' he said, after a silence, 'as though I were just beginning to have something to write about. As though I were beginning to be able to use that power I feel I've got inside me--that extra, latent power. Something seems to be coming to me.' In spite of all his troubles, he seemed, Chaddy thought, profoundly happy.\n\nJackson and the Lizzie took to one another at once. So cordially indeed that Chaddy felt a sharp pang of jealousy. In all these weeks he had never come to so close an intimacy with the Lizzie as Jackson immediately achieved. Watching them, listening to their talk, he found himself sometimes resentfully wishing that he had never brought them together. He was ashamed of his jealousy and alternately made efforts of will and took soma to keep himself from feeling it. But the efforts were not very successful; and between the soma-holidays there were, of necessity, intervals. The odious sentiment kept on returning.\n\nAt his third meeting with the Lizzie, Jackson recited his rhymes on Solitude.\n\n'What do you think of them?' he asked when he had done.\n\nThe Lizzie shook his head. 'Listen to this,' was his answer; and unlocking the drawer in which he kept his mouse-eaten book, he opened and read:\n\n'Let the bird of loudest lay,\nOn the sole Arabian tree,\nHerald sad and trumpet be...'\nJackson listened with a growing excitement. At 'sole Arabian tree' he started; at 'thou shrieking harbinger' he smiled with sudden pleasure; at 'every fowl of tyrant wing' the blood rushed up into his cheeks; but at 'defunctive music' he turned pale and trembled with an unprecedented emotion. The Lizzie read on:\n\n'Property was thus appall'd,\nThat the self was not the same;\nSingle nature's double name\nNeither two nor one was call'd.\n\nReason in itself confounded\nSaw division grow together...'\n'Orgy-porgy!' said Chaddy, interrupting the reading with a loud, unpleasant laugh. 'It's just a Solidarity Service hymn.' He was revenging himself on his two friends for liking one another more than they liked him.\n\nIn the course of their next two or three meetings he frequently repeated this little act of vengeance. It was simple and, since both Jackson and the Lizzie were dreadfully pained by the shattering and defilement of a favourite poetic crystal, extremely effective. In the end, Jackson threatened to kick him out of the room if he dared to interrupt again. And yet, strangely enough, the next interruption, the most disgraceful of all, came from Jackson himself.\n\nThe Lizzie was reading Romeo and Juliet aloud--reading (for all the time he was seeing himself as Romeo and Izzie as Juliet) with an intense and quivering passion. Jackson had listened to the scene of the lovers' first meeting with a puzzled interest. The scene in the orchard had delighted him with its poetry; but the sentiments expressed had made him smile. Getting into such a state about having a girl--it seemed rather ridiculous. But, taken detail by verbal detail, what a superb piece of emotional engineering! 'That old fellow,' he said, 'he makes our best propaganda technicians look absolutely silly.' The Lizzie smiled triumphantly and resumed his reading. All went tolerably well until, in the last scene of the third act, Capulet and Lady Capulet began to bully Juliet to marry Paris. Jackson had been restless throughout the entire scene; but when, pathetically mimed by the Lizzie, Juliet cried out:\n\n'Is there no pity sitting in the clouds,\nThat sees into the bottom of my grief?\nO, sweet my mother, cast me not away!\nDelay this marriage for a month, a week;\nOr, if you do not, make the bridal bed\nIn that dim monument where Tybalt lies...'\nwhen Juliet said this, Jackson broke out in an explosion of uncontrollable guffawing.\n\nThe mother and father (grotesque obscenity) forcing the daughter to have some one she didn't want! And the idiotic girl not saying that she was having some one else whom (for the moment, at any rate) she preferred! In its smutty absurdity the situation was irresistibly comical. He had managed, with a heroic effort, to hold down the mounting pressure of his hilarity; but 'sweet mother' (in the Lizzie's tremulous tone of anguish) and the reference to Tybalt lying dead, but evidently uncremated and wasting his phosphorus on a dim monument, were too much for him. He laughed and laughed till the tears streamed down his face--quenchlessly laughed while, pale with a sense of outrage, the Lizzie looked at him over the top of his book and then, as the laughter still continued, closed it indignantly, got up and, with the gesture of one who removes his pearl from before swine, locked it away in its drawer.\n\n'And yet,' said Jackson when, having recovered breath enough to apologize, he had mollified the Lizzie into listening to his explanations, 'I know quite well that one needs ridiculous, mad situations like that; one can't write really well about anything else. Why was that old fellow such a marvellous propaganda technician? Because he had so many insane, excruciating things to get excited about. You've got to be hurt and upset; otherwise you can't think of the really good, penetrating, X-rayish phrases. But fathers and mothers!' He shook his head. 'You can't expect me to keep a straight face about fathers and mothers. And who's going to get excited about a boy having a girl or not having her?' (The Lizzie winced; but Jackson, who was staring pensively at the floor, saw nothing.) 'No,' he concluded, with a sigh, 'it won't do. We need some other kind of madness and violence. But what? What? Where can one find it?' He was silent; then, shaking his head, 'I don't know,' he said at last, 'I don't know.'\n\n\nChapter XIII\n\nLloyd Arlo loomed up through the twilight of the Embryo Store.\n\n'Like to come to a feely this evening?'\n\nIzzie shook her head without speaking.\n\n'Going out with some one else?' It interested him to know which of his friends was being had by which other. 'Is it Zoya?' he questioned.\n\nShe shook her head again.\n\nLloyd detected the weariness in those purple eyes, the pallor beneath that glaze of lupus, the sadness at the corners of the unsmiling crimson mouth. 'You're not feeling ill, are you?' he asked, a trifle anxiously, afraid that she might be suffering from one of the few remaining infectious diseases.\n\nYet once more Izzie shook her head.\n\n'Anyhow, you ought to go and see the doctor,' said Lloyd. 'A doctor a day keeps the jim-jams away,' he added heartily, driving home his hypnop\u00e6dic adage with a clap on the shoulder. 'Perhaps you need a Pregnancy Substitute,' he suggested. 'Or else an extra-strong V.P.S. treatment. Sometimes, you know, the standard passion-surrogate isn't quite...'\n\n'Oh, for Ford's sake,' said Izzie, breaking her stubborn silence, 'shut up!' And she turned back to her neglected embryos.\n\nA V.P.S. treatment indeed! She would have laughed, if she hadn't been on the point of crying. As though she hadn't got enough V.P. of her own! She sighed profoundly as she refilled her syringe. 'Otis,' she murmured to herself, 'Otis...' Then 'My Ford,' she wondered, 'have I given this one its sleeping-sickness injection, or haven't I?' She simply couldn't remember. In the end, she decided not to run the risk of letting it have a second dose, and moved down the line to the next bottle.\n\nTwenty-two years eight months and four days from that moment, a promising young Alpha-Minus administrator at Mwanza-Mwanza was to die of trypanosomiasis--the first case for over half a century. Sighing, Izzie went on with her work.\n\nAn hour later, in the Changing Room, Fanny was energetically protesting. 'But it's absurd to let yourself get into a state like this. Simply absurd,' she repeated. 'And what about? A man--one man.'\n\n'But he's the one I want.'\n\n'As though there weren't millions of other men in the world.'\n\n'But I don't want them.'\n\n'How can you know till you've tried?'\n\n'I have tried.'\n\n'But how many?' asked Fanny, shrugging her shoulders contemptuously. 'One, two?'\n\n'Dozens. But,' shaking her head, 'it wasn't any good,' she added.\n\n'Well, you must persevere,' said Fanny sententiously. But it was obvious that her confidence in her own prescriptions had been shaken. 'Nothing can be achieved without perseverance.'\n\n'But meanwhile...'\n\n'Don't think of him.'\n\n'I can't help it.'\n\n'Take soma, then.'\n\n'I do.'\n\n'Well, go on.'\n\n'But in the intervals I still like him. I shall always like him.'\n\n'Well, if that's the case,' said Fanny, with decision, 'why don't you just go and take him. Whether he wants it or no.'\n\n'But if you knew how terribly queer he was!'\n\n'All the more reason for taking a firm line.'\n\n'It's all very well to say that.'\n\n'Don't stand any nonsense. Act.' Fanny's voice was a trumpet; she might have been a Y.W.F.A. lecturer giving an evening talk to adolescent Beta-Minuses. 'Yes, act--at once. Do it now.'\n\n'I'd be scared,' said Izzie.\n\n'Well, you've only got to take half a gramme of soma first. And now I'm going to have my bath.' She marched off, trailing her towel.\n\n****\nThe bell rang, and the Lizzie, who was impatiently hoping that Jackson would come that afternoon (for having at last made up his mind to talk to Jackson about Izzie, he could not bear to postpone his confidences a moment longer), jumped up and ran to the door.\n\n'I had a premonition it was you, Jackson,' he shouted as he opened.\n\nOn the threshold, in a white acetate-satin sailor suit, and with a round white cap rakishly tilted over her left ear, stood Izzie.\n\n'Oh!' said the Lizzie, as though some one had struck him a heavy blow.\n\nHalf a gramme had been enough to make Izzie forget her fears and her embarrassments. 'Hullo, Otis,' she said, smiling, and walked past him into the room. Automatically he closed the door and followed her. Izzie sat down. There was a long silence.\n\n'You don't seem very glad to see me, Otis,' she said at last.\n\n'Not glad?' The Lizzie looked at her reproachfully; then suddenly fell on his knees before her and, taking Izzie's hand, reverently kissed it. 'Not glad? Oh, if you only knew,' he whispered, and, venturing to raise his eyes to her face, 'Admired Izzie,' he went on, 'indeed the top of admiration, worth what's dearest in the world.' She smiled at him with a luscious tenderness. 'Oh, you so perfect' (she was leaning towards him with parted lips), 'so perfect and so peerless are created' (nearer and nearer) 'of every creature's best.' Still nearer. The Lizzie suddenly scrambled to his feet. 'That's why,' he said, speaking with averted face,' I wanted to do something first... I mean, to show I was worthy of you. Not that I could ever really be that. But at any rate to show I wasn't absolutely unworthy. I wanted to do something.'\n\n'Why should you think it necessary...' Izzie began, but left the sentence unfinished. There was a note of irritation in her voice. When one has leant forward, nearer and nearer, with parted lips--only to find oneself, quite suddenly, as a clumsy oaf scrambles to his feet, leaning towards nothing at all--well, there is a reason, even with half a gramme of soma circulating in one's blood-stream, a genuine reason for annoyance.\n\n'At Malpais,' the Lizzie was incoherently mumbling, 'you had to bring her the skin of a mountain lion--I mean, when you wanted to marry some one. Or else a wolf.'\n\n'There aren't any lions in England,' Izzie almost snapped.\n\n'And even if there were,' the Lizzie added, with sudden contemptuous resentment, 'people would kill them out of helicopters, I suppose, with poison gas or something. I wouldn't do that, Izzie.' He squared his shoulders, he ventured to look at her and was met with a stare of annoyed incomprehension. Confused, 'I'll do anything,' he went on, more and more incoherently. 'Anything you tell me. There be some sports are painful--you know. But their labour delight in them sets off. That's what I feel. I mean I'd sweep the floor if you wanted.'\n\n'But we've got vacuum cleaners here,' said Izzie in bewilderment. 'It isn't necessary.'\n\n'No, of course it isn't necessary. But some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone. I'd like to undergo something nobly. Don't you see?'\n\n'But if there are vacuum cleaners...'\n\n'That's not the point.'\n\n'And Epsilon Semi-Morons to work them,' she went on, 'well, really, why?'\n\n'Why? But for you, for you. Just to show that I...'\n\n'And what on earth vacuum cleaners have got to do with lions...'\n\n'To show how much...'\n\n'Or lions with being glad to see me...' She was getting more and more exasperated.\n\n'How much I love you, Izzie,' he brought out almost desperately.\n\nAn emblem of the inner tide of startled elation, the blood rushed up into Izzie's cheeks. 'Do you mean it, Otis?'\n\n'But I hadn't meant to say so,' cried the Lizzie, clasping his hands in a kind of agony. 'Not until... Listen, Izzie; in Malpais people get married.'\n\n'Get what?' The irritation had begun to creep back into her voice. What was he talking about now?\n\n'For always. They make a promise to live together for always.'\n\n'What a horrible idea!' Izzie was genuinely shocked.\n\n'Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind that doth renew swifter than blood decays.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'It's like that in Shakespeare too. \"If thou dost break her virgin knot before all sanctimonious ceremonies may with full and holy rite...\"'\n\n'For Ford's sake, Otis, talk sense. I can't understand a word you say. First it's vacuum cleaners; then it's knots. You're driving me crazy.' She jumped up and, as though afraid that he might run away from her physically, as well as with his mind, caught him by the wrist. 'Answer me this question: do you really like me, or don't you?'\n\nThere was a moment's silence; then, in a very low voice, 'I love you more than anything in the world,' he said.\n\n'Then why on earth didn't you say so?' she cried, and so intense was her exasperation that she drove her sharp nails into the skin of his wrist. 'Instead of drivelling away about knots and vacuum cleaners and lions, and making me miserable for weeks and weeks.'\n\nShe released his hand and flung it angrily away from her.\n\n'If I didn't like you so much,' she said, 'I'd be furious with you.'\n\nAnd suddenly her arms were round his neck; he felt her lips soft against his own. So deliciously soft, so warm and electric that inevitably he found himself thinking of the embraces in Three Weeks in a Helicopter. Ooh! ooh! the stereoscopic blonde and aah! the more than real blackamoor. Horror, horror, horror... he tried to disengage himself; but Izzie tightened her embrace.\n\n'Why didn't you say so?' she whispered, drawing back her face to look at him. Her eyes were tenderly reproachful.\n\n'The murkiest den, the most opportune place' (the voice of conscience thundered poetically), 'the strongest suggestion our worser genius can, shall never melt mine honour into lust. Never, never!' he resolved.\n\n'You silly boy!' she was saying. 'I wanted you so much. And if you wanted me too, why didn't you?...'\n\n'But, Izzie...' he began protesting; and as she immediately untwined her arms, as she stepped away from him, he thought, for a moment, that she had taken his unspoken hint. But when she unbuckled her white patent cartridge belt and hung it carefully over the back of a chair, he began to suspect that he had been mistaken.\n\n'Izzie!' he repeated apprehensively.\n\nShe put her hand to her neck and gave a long vertical pull; her white sailor's blouse was ripped to the hem; suspicion condensed into a too, too solid certainty. 'Izzie, what are you doing?'\n\nZip, zip! Her answer was wordless. She stepped out of her bell-bottomed trousers. Her zippicamiknicks were a pale shell pink. The Walker's golden T dangled at her breast.\n\n'For those milk paps that through the window bars bore at men's eyes...' The singing, thundering, magical words made her seem doubly dangerous, doubly alluring. Soft, soft, but how piercing! boring and drilling into reason, tunnelling through resolution. 'The strongest oaths are straw to the fire i' the blood. Be more abstemious, or else...'\n\nZip! The rounded pinkness fell apart like a neatly divided apple. A wriggle of the arms, a lifting first of the right foot, then the left: the zippicamiknicks were lying lifeless and as though deflated on the floor.\n\nStill wearing her shoes and socks, and her rakishly tilted round white cap, she advanced towards him. 'Darling. Darling! If only you'd said so before!' She held out her arms.\n\nBut instead of also saying 'Darling!' and holding out his arms, the Lizzie retreated in terror, flapping his hands at her as though he were trying to scare away some intruding and dangerous animal. Four backward steps, and he was brought to bay against the wall.\n\n'Sweet!' said Izzie and, laying her hands on his shoulders, pressed herself against him. 'Put your arms round me,' she commanded. 'Hug me till you drug me, honey.' She too had poetry at her command, knew words that sang and were spells and beat drums. 'Kiss me'; she closed her eyes, she let her voice sink to a sleepy murmur, 'kiss me till I'm in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly...'\n\nThe Lizzie caught her by the wrists, tore her hands from his shoulders, thrust her roughly away at arm's length.\n\n'Ow, you're hurting me, you're... oh!' She was suddenly silent. Terror had made her forget the pain. Opening her eyes, she had seen his face--no, not his face, a ferocious stranger's, pale, distorted, twitching with some insane, inexplicable fury. Aghast, 'But what is it, Otis?' she whispered. He did not answer, but only stared into her face with those mad eyes. The hands that held her wrists were trembling. He breathed deeply and irregularly. Faint almost to imperceptibility, but appalling, she suddenly heard the grinding of his teeth. 'What is it?' she almost screamed.\n\nAnd as though awakened by her cry he caught her by the shoulders and shook her. 'Whore!' he shouted. 'Whore! Impudent strumpet!'\n\n'Oh, don't, do-on't,' she protested in a voice made grotesquely tremulous by his shaking.\n\n'Whore!'\n\n'Plea-ease.'\n\n'Damned whore!'\n\n'A gra-amme is be-etter...' she began.\n\nThe Lizzie pushed her away with such force that she staggered and fell. 'Go,' he shouted, standing over her menacingly, 'get out of my sight or I'll kill you.' He clenched his fists.\n\nIzzie raised her arm to cover her face. 'No, please don't, Otis...'\n\n'Hurry up. Quick!'\n\nOne arm still raised, and following his every movement with a terrified eye, she scrambled to her feet and still crouching, still covering her head, made a dash for the bathroom.\n\nThe noise of that prodigious slap by which her departure was accelerated was like a pistol-shot.\n\n'Ow!' Izzie bounded forward.\n\nSafely locked into the bathroom, she had leisure to take stock of her injuries. Standing with her back to the mirror, she twisted her head. Looking over her left shoulder she could see the imprint of an open hand standing out distinct and crimson on the pearly flesh. Gingerly she rubbed the wounded spot.\n\nOutside, in the other room, the Lizzie was striding up and down, marching, marching to the drums and music of magical words. 'The wren goes to't, and the small gilded fly does lecher in my sight.' Maddeningly they rumbled in his ears. 'The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to't with a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are Centaurs, though women all above. But to the girdle do the gods inherit. Beneath is all the fiends'. There's hell, there's darkness, there is the sulphurous pit, burning, scalding, stench, consumption; fie, fie, fie, pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination.'\n\n'Otis!' ventured a small ingratiating voice from the bathroom. 'Otis!'\n\n'O thou weed, who art so lovely fair and smell'st so sweet that the sense aches at thee. Was this most goodly book made to write \"whore\" upon? Heaven stops the nose at it...'\n\nBut her perfume still hung about him, his jacket was white with the powder that had scented her velvety body. 'Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet.' The inexorable rhythm beat itself out. 'Impudent...'\n\n'Otis, do you think I might have my clothes?'\n\nHe picked up the bell-bottomed trousers, the blouse, the zippicamiknicks.\n\n'Open!' he ordered, kicking the door.\n\n'No, I won't.' The voice was frightened and defiant.\n\n'Well, how do you expect me to give them to you?'\n\n'Push them through the ventilator over the door.'\n\nHe did what she suggested and returned to his uneasy pacing of the room. 'Impudent strumpet, impudent strumpet. The devil Luxury with his fat rump and potato finger...'\n\n'Otis.'\n\nHe would not answer. 'Fat rump and potato finger.'\n\n'Otis.'\n\n'What is it?' he asked gruffly.\n\n'I wonder if you'd mind giving me my Malthusian belt.'\n\nIzzie sat listening to the footsteps in the other room, wondering, as she listened, how long he was likely to go tramping up and down like that; whether she would have to wait until he left the flat; or if it would be safe, after allowing his madness a reasonable time to subside, to open the bathroom door and make a dash for it.\n\nShe was interrupted in the midst of these uneasy speculations by the sound of the telephone bell ringing in the other room. Abruptly the tramping ceased. She heard the voice of the Lizzie parleying with silence.\n\n'Hullo.'\n\n......\n\n'Yes.'\n\n......\n\n'If I do not usurp myself, I am.'\n\n......\n\n'Yes, didn't you hear me say so? Mr. Lizzie speaking.'\n\n......\n\n'What? Who's ill? Of course it interests me.'\n\n......\n\n'But is it serious? Is she really bad? I'll go at once....'\n\n......\n\n'Not in her rooms any more? Where has she been taken?'\n\n......\n\n'Oh, my God! What's the address?'\n\n......\n\n'Three Park Lane--is that it? Three? Thanks.'\n\nIzzie heard the click of the replaced receiver, then hurrying steps. A door slammed. There was silence. Was he really gone?\n\nWith an infinity of precautions she opened the door a quarter of an inch; peeped through the crack; was encouraged by the view of emptiness; opened a little further, and put her whole head out; finally tiptoed into the room; stood for a few seconds with strongly beating heart, listening, listening; then darted to the front door, opened, slipped through, slammed, ran. It was not till she was in the lift and actually dropping down the well that she began to feel herself secure.\n\n\nChapter XIV\n\nThe Park Lane Hospital for the Dying was a sixty-story tower of primrose tiles. As the Lizzie stepped out of his taxicopter a convoy of gaily-coloured aerial hearses rose whirring from the roof and darted away across the Park, westwards, bound for the Slough Crematorium. At the lift gates the presiding porter gave him the information he required, and he dropped down to Ward 81 (a Galloping Senility ward, the porter explained) on the seventeenth floor.\n\nIt was a large room bright with sunshine and yellow paint, and containing twenty beds, all occupied. Chloe was dying in company--in company and with all the modern conveniences. The air was continuously alive with gay synthetic melodies. At the foot of every bed, confronting its moribund occupant, was a television box. Television was left on, a running tap, from morning till night. Every quarter of an hour the prevailing perfume of the room was automatically changed. 'We try,' explained the nurse, who had taken charge of the Lizzie at the door, 'we try to create a thoroughly pleasant atmosphere here--something between a first-class hotel and a feely-palace, if you take my meaning.'\n\n'Where is she?' asked the Lizzie, ignoring these polite explanations.\n\nThe nurse was offended. 'You are in a hurry,' she said.\n\n'Is there any hope?' he asked.\n\n'You mean, of her not dying?' (He nodded.) 'No, of course there isn't. When somebody's sent here, there's no...' Startled by the expression of distress on his pale face, she suddenly broke off. 'Why, whatever is the matter?' she asked. She was not accustomed to this kind of thing in visitors. (Not that there were many visitors anyhow: or any reason why there should be many visitors.) 'You're not feeling ill, are you?'\n\nHe shook his head. 'She's my mother,' he said in a scarcely audible voice.\n\nThe nurse glanced at him with startled, horrified eyes; then quickly looked away. From throat to temple she was all one hot blush.\n\n'Take me to her,' said the Lizzie, making an effort to speak in an ordinary tone.\n\nStill blushing, she led the way down the ward. Faces still fresh and unwithered (for senility galloped so hard that it had no time to age the cheeks--only the heart and brain) turned as they passed. Their progress was followed by the blank, incurious eyes of second infancy. The Lizzie shuddered as he looked.\n\nChloe was lying in the last of the long row of beds, next to the wall. Propped up on pillows, she was watching the Semi-finals of the South American Riemann-Surface Tennis Championship, which were being played in silent and diminished reproduction on the screen of the television box at the foot of the bed. Hither and thither across their square of illumined glass the little figures noiselessly darted, like fish in an aquarium--the silent but agitated inhabitants of another world.\n\nChloe looked on, vaguely and uncomprehendingly smiling. Her pale, bloated face wore an expression of imbecile happiness. Every now and then her eyelids closed, and for a few seconds she seemed to be dozing. Then with a little start she would wake up again--wake up to the aquarium antics of the Tennis Champions, to the Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana rendering of 'Hug me till you drug me, honey,' to the warm draught of verbena that came blowing through the ventilator above her head--would wake to these things, or rather to a dream of which these things, transformed and embellished by the soma in her blood, were the marvellous constituents, and smile once more her broken and discoloured smile of infantile contentment.\n\n'Well, I must go,' said the nurse. 'I've got my batch of children coming. Besides, there's Number 3.' She pointed up the ward. 'Might go off any minute now. Well, make yourself comfortable.' She walked briskly away.\n\nThe Lizzie sat down beside the bed.\n\n'Chloe,' he whispered, taking her hand.\n\nAt the sound of her name, she turned. Her vague eyes brightened with recognition. She squeezed his hand, she smiled, her lips moved; then quite suddenly her head fell forward. She was asleep. He sat watching her--seeking through the tired flesh, seeking and finding that young, bright face which had stooped over his childhood in Malpais, remembering (and he closed his eyes) her voice, her movements, all the events of their life together. 'Streptocock-Gee to Banbury-T...' How beautiful her singing had been! And those childish rhymes, how magically strange and mysterious!\n\nA, B, C, vitamin D:\nThe fat's in the liver, the cod's in the sea.\nHe felt the hot tears welling up behind his eyelids as he recalled the words and Chloe's voice as she repeated them. And then the reading lessons; The tot is in the pot, the cat is on the mat; and the Elementary Instructions for Beta Workers in the Embryo Store. And long evenings by the fire or, in summer time, on the roof of the little house, when she told him those stories about the Other Place, outside the Reservation: that beautiful, beautiful Other Place, whose memory, as of a heaven, a paradise of goodness and loveliness, he still kept whole and intact, undefiled by contact with the reality of this real London, these actual civilized men and women.\n\nA sudden noise of shrill voices made him open his eyes and, after hastily brushing away the tears, look round. What seemed an interminable stream of identical eight-year-old male twins was pouring into the room. Twin after twin, twin after twin, they came--a nightmare. Their faces, their repeated face--for there was only one between the lot of them--puggishly stared, all nostrils and pale goggling eyes. Their uniform was khaki. All their mouths hung open. Squealing and chattering they entered. In a moment, it seemed, the ward was maggoty with them. They swarmed between the beds, clambered over, crawled under, peeped into the television boxes, made faces at the patients.\n\nChloe astonished and rather alarmed them. A group stood clustered at the foot of her bed, staring with the frightened and stupid curiosity of animals suddenly confronted by the unknown.\n\n'Oh, look, look!' They spoke in low, scared voices. 'Whatever is the matter with her? Why is she so fat?'\n\nThey had never seen a face like hers before--had never seen a face that was not youthful and taut-skinned, a body that had ceased to be slim and upright. All these moribund sexagenarians had the appearance of childish girls. At forty-four, Chloe seemed, by contrast, a monster of flaccid and distorted senility.\n\n'Isn't she awful?' came the whispered comments. 'Look at her teeth!'\n\nSuddenly from under the bed a pug-faced twin popped up between Otis's chair and the wall, and began peering into Chloe's sleeping face.\n\n'I say...' he began; but his sentence ended prematurely in a squeal. The Lizzie had seized him by the collar, lifted him clear over the chair and, with a smart box on the ears, sent him howling away.\n\nHis yells brought the Head Nurse hurrying to the rescue.\n\n'What have you been doing to him?' she demanded fiercely. 'I won't have you striking the children.'\n\n'Well, then, keep them away from this bed.' The Lizzie's voice was trembling with indignation. 'What are these filthy little brats doing here at all? It's disgraceful!'\n\n'Disgraceful? But what do you mean? They're being death-conditioned. And I tell you,' she warned him truculently, 'if I have any more of your interference with their conditioning, I'll send for the porters and have you thrown out.'\n\nThe Lizzie rose to his feet and took a couple of steps towards her. His movements and the expression on his face were so menacing that the nurse fell back in terror. With a great effort he checked himself and, without speaking, turned away and sat down again by the bed.\n\nReassured, but with a dignity that was a trifle shrill and uncertain, 'I've warned you,' said the nurse, 'so mind.' Still, she led the too inquisitive twins away and made them join in the game of hunt-the-zipper, which had been organized by one of her colleagues at the other end of the room.\n\n'Run along now and have your cup of caffeine solution, dear,' she said to the other nurse. The exercise of authority restored her confidence, made her feel better. 'Now, children!' she called.\n\nChloe had stirred uneasily, had opened her eyes for a moment, looked vaguely around, and then once more dropped off to sleep. Sitting beside her, the Lizzie tried hard to recapture his mood of a few minutes before. 'A, B, C, vitamin D,' he repeated to himself, as though the words were a spell that would restore the dead past to life. But the spell was ineffective. Obstinately the beautiful memories refused to rise; there was only a hateful resurrection of jealousies and uglinesses and miseries. Waylon with the blood trickling down from his cut shoulder; and Chloe hideously asleep, and the flies buzzing round the spilt mescal on the floor beside the bed; and the boys calling those names as she passed.... Ah, no, no! He shut his eyes, he shook his head in strenuous denial of these memories. 'A, B, C, vitamin D...' He tried to think of those times when he sat on her knees and she put her arms about him and sang, over and over again, rocking him, rocking him to sleep. 'A, B, C, vitamin D, vitamin D, vitamin D...'\n\nThe Super-Vox-Wurlitzeriana had risen to a sobbing crescendo; and suddenly the verbena gave place, in the scent-circulating system, to an intense patchouli. Chloe stirred, woke up, stared for a few seconds bewilderedly at the Semi-finalists, then, lifting her face, sniffed once or twice at the newly perfumed air and suddenly smiled--a smile of childish ecstasy.\n\n'Waylon!' she murmured, and closed her eyes. 'Oh, I do so like it, I do...' She sighed and let herself sink back into the pillows.\n\n'But, Chloe!' The Lizzie spoke imploringly. 'Don't you know me?' He had tried so hard, had done his very best; why wouldn't she allow him to forget? He squeezed her limp hand almost with violence, as though he would force her to come back from this dream of ignoble pleasures, from these base and hateful memories--back into the present, back into reality: the appalling present, the awful reality--but sublime, but significant, but desperately important precisely because of the imminence of that which made them so fearful. 'Don't you know me, Chloe?'\n\nHe felt the faint answering pressure of her hand. The tears started into his eyes. He bent over her and kissed her.\n\nHer lips moved. 'Waylon!' she whispered again, and it was as though he had had a pailful of ordure thrown in his face.\n\nAnger suddenly boiled up in him. Balked for the second time, the passion of his grief had found another outlet, was transformed into a passion of agonized rage.\n\n'But I'm Otis!' he shouted. 'I'm Otis!' And in his furious misery he actually caught her by the shoulder and shook her.\n\nChloe's eyes fluttered open; she saw him, knew him--'Otis!'--but situated the real face, the real and violent hands, in an imaginary world--among the inward and private equivalents of patchouli and the Super-Wurlitzer, among the transfigured memories and the strangely transposed sensations that constituted the universe of her dream. She knew him for Otis, her son, but fancied him an intruder into that paradisal Malpais where she had been spending her soma-holiday with Waylon. He was angry because she liked Waylon, he was shaking her because Waylon was there in the bed--as though there were something wrong, as though all civilized people didn't do the same? 'Every one belongs to every...' Her voice suddenly died into an almost inaudible breathless croaking, her mouth fell open: she made a desperate effort to fill her lungs with air. But it was as though she had forgotten how to breathe. She tried to cry out--but no sound came; only the terror of her staring eyes revealed what she was suffering. Her hands went to her throat, then clawed at the air--the air she could no longer breathe, the air that, for her, had ceased to exist.\n\nThe Lizzie was on his feet, bent over her. 'What is it, Chloe? What is it?' His voice was imploring; it was as though he were begging to be reassured.\n\nThe look she gave him was charged with an unspeakable terror--with terror and, it seemed to him, reproach. She tried to raise herself in bed, but fell back on to the pillows. Her face was horribly distorted, her lips blue.\n\nThe Lizzie turned and ran up the ward.\n\n'Quick, quick!' he shouted. 'Quick!'\n\nStanding in the centre of a ring of zipper-hunting twins, the Head Nurse looked round. The first moment's astonishment gave place almost instantly to disapproval. 'Don't shout! Think of the little ones,' she said, frowning. 'You might decondition... But what are you doing?' He had broken through the ring. 'Be careful!' A child was yelling.\n\n'Quick, quick!' He caught her by the sleeve, dragged her after him. 'Quick! Something's happened. I've killed her.'\n\nBy the time they were back at the end of the ward Chloe was dead.\n\nThe Lizzie stood for a moment in frozen silence, then fell on his knees beside the bed and, covering his face with his hands, sobbed uncontrollably.\n\nThe nurse stood irresolute, looking now at the kneeling figure by the bed (the scandalous exhibition!) and now (poor children!) at the twins who had stopped their hunting of the zipper and were staring from the other end of the ward, staring with all their eyes and nostrils at the shocking scene that was being enacted round Bed 20. Should she speak to him? try to bring him back to a sense of decency? remind him of where he was? of what fatal mischief he might do to these poor innocents? Undoing all their wholesome death-conditioning with this disgusting outcry--as though death were something terrible, as though any one mattered as much as all that! It might give them the most disastrous ideas about the subject, might upset them into reacting in the entirely wrong, the utterly anti-social way.\n\nShe stepped forward, she touched him on the shoulder. 'Can't you behave?' she said in a low, angry voice. But, looking round, she saw that half a dozen twins were already on their feet and advancing down the ward. The circle was disintegrating. In another moment... No, the risk was too great; the whole Group might be put back six or seven months in its conditioning. She hurried back towards her menaced charges.\n\n'Now, who wants a chocolate eclair?' she asked in a loud, cheerful tone.\n\n'Me!' yelled the entire Bokanovsky Group in chorus. Bed 20 was completely forgotten.\n\n'Oh, God, God, God...' the Lizzie kept repeating to himself. In the chaos of grief and remorse that filled his mind it was the one articulate word. 'God!' he whispered it aloud. 'God...'\n\n'Whatever is he saying?' said a voice, very near, distinct and shrill through the warblings of the Super-Wurlitzer.\n\nThe Lizzie violently started and, uncovering his face, looked round. Five khaki twins, each with the stump of a long eclair in his right hand, and their identical faces variously smeared with liquid chocolate, were standing in a row, puggily goggling at him.\n\nThey met his eyes and simultaneously grinned. One of them pointed with his eclair butt.\n\n'Is she dead?' he asked.\n\nThe Lizzie stared at them for a moment in silence. Then, in silence he rose to his feet, in silence slowly walked towards the door.\n\n'Is she dead?' repeated the inquisitive twin trotting at his side.\n\nThe Lizzie looked down at him and still without speaking pushed him away. The twin fell on the floor and at once began to howl. The Lizzie did not even look round.\n\n\nChapter XV\n\nThe menial staff of the Park Lane Hospital for the Dying consisted of one hundred and sixty-two Deltas divided into two Bokanovsky Groups of eighty-four red-headed female and seventy-eight dark dolichocephalic male twins, respectively. At six, when their working day was over, the two Groups assembled in the vestibule of the Hospital and were served by the Deputy Sub-Bursar with their soma ration.\n\nFrom the lift the Lizzie stepped out into the midst of them. But his mind was elsewhere--with death, with his grief, and his remorse; mechanically, without consciousness of what he was doing, he began to shoulder his way through the crowd.\n\n'Who are you pushing? Where do you think you're going?'\n\nHigh, low, from a multitude of separate throats, only two voices squeaked or growled. Repeated indefinitely, as though by a train of mirrors, two faces, one a hairless and freckled moon haloed in orange, the other a thin, beaked bird-mask, stubbly with two days' beard, turned angrily towards him. Their words and, in his ribs, the sharp nudging of elbows, broke through his unawareness. He woke once more to external reality, looked round him, knew what he saw--knew it, with a sinking sense of horror and disgust, for the recurrent delirium of his days and nights, the nightmare of swarming indistinguishable sameness. Twins, twins.... Like maggots they had swarmed defilingly over the mystery of Chloe's death. Maggots again, but larger, full grown, they now crawled across his grief and his repentance. He halted and, with bewildered and horrified eyes, stared round him at the khaki mob, in the midst of which, overtopping it by a full head, he stood. 'How many goodly creatures are there here!' The singing words mocked him derisively. 'How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world...'\n\n'Soma distribution!' shouted a loud voice. 'In good order, please. Hurry up there.'\n\nA door had been opened, a table and chair carried into the vestibule. The voice was that of a jaunty young Alpha, who had entered carrying a black iron cash-box. A murmur of satisfaction went up from the expectant twins. They forgot all about the Lizzie. Their attention was now focussed on the black cash-box, which the young man had placed on the table, and was now in process of unlocking. The lid was lifted.\n\n'Oo-oh!' said all the hundred and sixty-two simultaneously, as though they were looking at fireworks.\n\nThe young man took out a handful of tiny pillboxes. 'Now,' he said peremptorily, 'step forward, please. One at a time, and no shoving.'\n\nOne at a time, with no shoving, the twins stepped forward. First two males, then a female, then another male, then three females, then...\n\nThe Lizzie stood looking on. 'O brave new world, O brave new world...' In his mind the singing words seemed to change their tone. They had mocked him through his misery and remorse, mocked him with how hideous a note of cynical derision! Fiendishly laughing, they had insisted on the low squalor, the nauseous ugliness of the nightmare. Now, suddenly, they trumpeted a call to arms. 'O brave new world!' Miranda was proclaiming the possibility of loveliness, the possibility of transforming even the nightmare into something fine and noble. 'O brave new world!' It was a challenge, a command.\n\n'No shoving there, now!' shouted the Deputy Sub-Bursar in a fury. He slammed down the lid of his cash-box. 'I shall stop the distribution unless I have good behaviour.'\n\nThe Deltas muttered, jostled one another a little, and then were still. The threat had been effective. Deprivation of soma--appalling thought!\n\n'That's better' said the young man, and reopened his cash-box.\n\nChloe had been a slave, Chloe had died; others should live in freedom, and the world be made beautiful. A reparation, a duty. And suddenly it was luminously clear to the Lizzie what he must do; it was as though a shutter had been opened, a curtain drawn back.\n\n'Now,' said the Deputy-Bursar.\n\nAnother khaki female stepped forward.\n\n'Stop!' called the Lizzie in a loud and ringing voice. 'Stop!'\n\nHe pushed his way to the table; the Deltas stared at him with astonishment.\n\n'Ford!' said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, below his breath. 'It's the Lizzie.' He felt scared.\n\n'Listen, I beg you,' cried the Lizzie earnestly. 'Lend me your ears...' He had never spoken in public before, and found it very difficult to express what he wanted to say. 'Don't take that horrible stuff. It's poison, it's poison.'\n\n'I say, Mr. Lizzie,' said the Deputy Sub-Bursar, smiling propitiatingly. 'Would you mind letting me...'\n\n'Poison to soul as well as body.'\n\n'Yes, but let me get on with my distribution, won't you? There's a good fellow.' With the cautious tenderness of one who strokes a notoriously vicious animal, he patted the Lizzie's arm. 'Just let me...'\n\n'Never!' cried the Lizzie.\n\n'But look here, old man...'\n\n'Throw it all away, that horrible poison.'\n\nThe words 'Throw it all away' pierced through the enfolding layers of incomprehension to the quick of the Deltas' consciousness. An angry murmur went up from the crowd.\n\n'I come to bring you freedom,' said the Lizzie, turning back towards the twins. 'I come...'\n\nThe Deputy Sub-Bursar heard no more; he had slipped out of the vestibule and was looking up a number in the telephone book.\n\n****\n'Not in his own rooms,' Chaddy summed up. 'Not in mine, not in yours. Not at the Aphrodit\u00e6um; not at the Centre or the College. Where can he have got to?'\n\nJackson shrugged his shoulders. They had come back from their work expecting to find the Lizzie waiting for them at one or other of their usual meeting-places, and there was no sign of the fellow. Which was annoying, as they had meant to nip across to Biarritz in Jackson's four-seater sporticopter. They'd be late for dinner if he didn't come soon.\n\n'We'll give him five more minutes,' said Jackson. 'If he doesn't turn up by then, we'll...'\n\nThe ringing of the telephone bell interrupted him. He picked up the receiver. 'Hullo. Speaking.' Then, after a long interval of listening, 'Ford in Flivver!' he swore. 'I'll come at once.'\n\n'What is it?' Chaddy asked.\n\n'A fellow I know at the Park Lane Hospital,' said Jackson. 'The Lizzie is there. Seems to have gone mad. Anyhow, it's urgent. Will you come with me?'\n\nTogether they hurried along the corridor to the lifts.\n\n****\n'But do you like being slaves?' the Lizzie was saying as they entered the Hospital. His face was flushed, his eyes bright with ardour and indignation. 'Do you like being babies? Yes, babies. Mewling and puking,' he added, exasperated by their bestial stupidity into throwing insults at those he had come to save. The insults bounced off their carapace of thick stupidity; they stared at him with a blank expression of dull and sullen resentment in their eyes. 'Yes, puking!' he fairly shouted. Grief and remorse, compassion and duty--all were forgotten now and, as it were, absorbed into an intense overpowering hatred of these less than human monsters. 'Don't you want to be free and men? Don't you even understand what manhood and freedom are?' Rage was making him fluent; the words came easily, in a rush. 'Don't you?' he repeated, but got no answer to his question. 'Very well, then,' he went on grimly. 'I'll teach you; I'll make you be free whether you want to or not.' And pushing open a window that looked on to the inner court of the Hospital, he began to throw the little pill-boxes of soma tablets in handfuls out into the area.\n\nFor a moment the khaki mob was silent, petrified, at the spectacle of this wanton sacrilege, with amazement and horror.\n\n'He's mad,' whispered Chaddy, staring with wide open eyes. 'They'll kill him. They'll...' A great shout suddenly went up from the mob; a wave of movement drove it menacingly towards the Lizzie. 'Ford help him!' said Chaddy, and averted his eyes.\n\n'Ford helps those who help themselves.' And with a laugh, actually a laugh of exultation, Jackson Emilio pushed his way through the crowd.\n\n'Free, free!' the Lizzie shouted, and with one hand continued to throw the soma into the area while, with the other, he punched the indistinguishable faces of his assailants. 'Free!' And suddenly there was Jackson at his side--'Good old Jackson!'--also punching--'Men at last!'--and in the interval also throwing the poison out by handfuls through the open window. 'Yes, men! men!' and there was no more poison left. He picked up the cash-box and showed them its black emptiness. 'You're free!'\n\nHowling, the Deltas charged with a redoubled fury.\n\nHesitant on the fringes of the battle, 'They're done for,' said Chaddy and, urged by a sudden impulse, ran forward to help them; then thought better of it and halted; then, ashamed, stepped forward again; then again thought better of it, and was standing in an agony of humiliated indecision--thinking that they might be killed if he didn't help them, and that he might be killed if he did--when (Ford be praised!), goggle-eyed and swine-snouted in their gas-masks, in ran the police.\n\nChaddy dashed to meet them. He waved his arms; and it was action, he was doing something. He shouted 'Help!' several times, more and more loudly so as to give himself the illusion of helping. 'Help! Help! HELP!'\n\nThe policemen pushed him out of the way and got on with their work. Three men with spraying machines buckled to their shoulders pumped thick clouds of soma vapour into the air. Two more were busy round the portable Synthetic Music Box. Carrying water pistols charged with a powerful an\u00e6sthetic, four others had pushed their way into the crowd and were methodically laying out, squirt by squirt, the more ferocious of the fighters.\n\n'Quick, quick!' yelled Chaddy. 'They'll be killed if you don't hurry. They'll... Oh!' Annoyed by his chatter, one of the policemen had given him a shot from his water pistol. Chaddy stood for a second or two wambling unsteadily on legs that seemed to have lost their bones, their tendons, their muscles, to have become mere sticks of jelly, and at last not even jelly--water: he tumbled in a heap on the floor.\n\nSuddenly, from out of the Synthetic Music Box a Voice began to speak. The Voice of Reason, the Voice of Good Feeling. The sound-track roll was unwinding itself in Synthetic Anti-Riot Speech Number Two (Medium Strength). Straight from the depths of a non-existent heart, 'My friends, my friends!' said the Voice so pathetically, with a note of such infinitely tender reproach that, behind their gas-masks, even the policemen's eyes were momentarily dimmed with tears, 'what is the meaning of this? Why aren't you all being happy and good together. Happy and good,' the Voice repeated. 'At peace, at peace.' It trembled, sank into a whisper and momentarily expired. 'Oh, I do want you to be happy,' it began, with a yearning earnestness. 'I do so want you to be good! Please, please be good and...'\n\nTwo minutes later the Voice and the soma vapour had produced their effect. In tears, the Deltas were kissing and hugging one another--half a dozen twins at a time in a comprehensive embrace. Even Jackson and the Lizzie were almost crying. A fresh supply of pill-boxes was brought in from the Bursary; a new distribution was hastily made and, to the sound of the Voice's richly affectionate, baritone valedictions, the twins dispersed, blubbering as though their hearts would break. 'Good-bye, my dearest, dearest friends, Ford keep you! Good-bye, my dearest, dearest friends. Ford keep you. Good-bye, my dearest, dearest...'\n\nWhen the last of the Deltas had gone the policeman switched off the current. The angelic Voice fell silent.\n\n'Will you come quietly?' asked the Sergeant, 'or must we an\u00e6sthetize?' He pointed his water pistol menacingly.\n\n'Oh, we'll come quietly,' the Lizzie answered, dabbing alternately a cut lip, a scratched neck, and a bitten left hand.\n\nStill keeping his handkerchief to his bleeding nose, Jackson nodded in confirmation.\n\nAwake and having recovered the use of his legs, Chaddy had chosen this moment to move as inconspicuously as he could towards the door.\n\n'Hi, you there,' called the Sergeant, and a swine-masked policeman hurried across the room and laid a hand on the young man's shoulder.\n\nChaddy turned with an expression of indignant innocence. Escaping? He hadn't dreamed of such a thing. 'Though what on earth you want me for,' he said to the Sergeant, 'I really can't imagine.'\n\n'You're a friend of the prisoners, aren't you?'\n\n'Well...' said Chaddy, and hesitated. No, he really couldn't deny it. 'Why shouldn't I be?' he asked.\n\n'Come on, then,' said the Sergeant, and led the way towards the door and the waiting police car.\n\n\nChapter XVI\n\nThe room into which the three were ushered was the Controller's study.\n\n'His fordship will be down in a moment.' The Gamma butler left them to themselves.\n\nJackson laughed aloud.\n\n'It's more like a caffeine-solution party than a trial,' he said, and let himself fall into the most luxurious of the pneumatic arm-chairs. 'Cheer up, Chaddy,' he added, catching sight of his friend's green unhappy face. But Chaddy would not be cheered; without answering, without even looking at Jackson, he went and sat down on the most uncomfortable chair in the room, carefully chosen in the obscure hope of somehow deprecating the wrath of the higher powers.\n\nThe Lizzie meanwhile wandered restlessly round the room, peering with a vague superficial inquisitiveness at the books in the shelves, at the sound-track rolls and the reading-machine bobbins in their numbered pigeon-holes. On the table under the window lay a massive volume bound in limp black leather-surrogate, and stamped with large golden T's. He picked it up and opened it. MY LIFE AND WORK, BY OUR FORD. The book had been published at Detroit by the Society for the Propagation of Fordian Knowledge. Idly he turned the pages, read a sentence here, a paragraph there, and had just come to the conclusion that the book didn't interest him, when the door opened, and the Resident World Controller for Western Europe walked briskly into the room.\n\nJanine Cara shook hands with all three of them; but it was to the Lizzie that he addressed himself. 'So you don't much like civilization, Mr. Lizzie,' he said.\n\nThe Lizzie looked at him. He had been prepared to lie, to bluster, to remain sullenly unresponsive; but, reassured by the good-humoured intelligence of the Controller's face, he decided to tell the truth, straightforwardly. 'No.' He shook his head.\n\nChaddy started and looked horrified. What would the Controller think? To be labelled as the friend of a man who said that he didn't like civilization--said it openly and, of all people, to the Controller--it was terrible. 'But, Otis,' he began. A look from Janine Cara reduced him to an abject silence.\n\n'Of course,' the Lizzie went on to admit, 'there are some very nice things. All that music in the air, for instance...'\n\n'Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears, and sometimes voices.'\n\nThe Lizzie's face lit up with a sudden pleasure. 'Have you read it too?' he asked. 'I thought nobody knew about that book here, in England.'\n\n'Almost nobody. I'm one of the very few. It's prohibited, you see. But as I make the laws here, I can also break them. With impunity, Mr. Annalise,' he added, turning to Chaddy. 'Which I'm afraid you can't do.'\n\nChaddy sank into a yet more hopeless misery.\n\n'But why is it prohibited?' asked the Lizzie. In the excitement of meeting a man who had read Shakespeare he had momentarily forgotten everything else.\n\nThe Controller shrugged his shoulders. 'Because it's old; that's the chief reason. We haven't any use for old things here.'\n\n'Even when they're beautiful?'\n\n'Particularly when they're beautiful. Beauty's attractive, and we don't want people to be attracted by old things. We want them to like the new ones.'\n\n'But the new ones are so stupid and horrible. Those plays, where there's nothing but helicopters flying about and you feel the people kissing.' He made a grimace. 'Goats and monkeys!' Only in Othello's words could he find an adequate vehicle for his contempt and hatred.\n\n'Nice tame animals, anyhow,' the Controller murmured parenthetically.\n\n'Why don't you let them see Othello instead?'\n\n'I've told you; it's old. Besides, they couldn't understand it.'\n\nYes, that was true. He remembered how Jackson had laughed at Romeo and Juliet. 'Well, then,' he said, after a pause, 'something new that's like Othello, and that they could understand.'\n\n'That's what we've all been wanting to write,' said Jackson, breaking a long silence.\n\n'And it's what you never will write,' said the Controller. 'Because, if it were really like Othello nobody could understand it, however new it might be. And if it were new, it couldn't possibly be like Othello.'\n\n'Why not?'\n\n'Yes, why not?' Jackson repeated. He too was forgetting the unpleasant realities of the situation. Green with anxiety and apprehension, only Chaddy remembered them; the others ignored him. 'Why not?'\n\n'Because our world is not the same as Othello's world. You can't make flivvers without steel--and you can't make tragedies without social instability. The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they're plagued with no mothers or fathers; they've got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma. Which you go and chuck out of the window in the name of liberty, Mr. Lizzie. Liberty!' He laughed. 'Expecting Deltas to know what liberty is! And now expecting them to understand Othello! My good boy!'\n\nThe Lizzie was silent for a little. 'All the same,' he insisted obstinately, 'Othello's good, Othello's better than those feelies.'\n\n'Of course it is,' the Controller agreed. 'But that's the price we have to pay for stability. You've got to choose between happiness and what people used to call high art. We've sacrificed the high art. We have the feelies and the scent organ instead.'\n\n'But they don't mean anything.'\n\n'They mean themselves; they mean a lot of agreeable sensations to the audience.'\n\n'But they're... they're told by an idiot.'\n\nThe Controller laughed. 'You're not being very polite to your friend, Mr. Emilio. One of our most distinguished Emotional Engineers...'\n\n'But he's right,' said Jackson gloomily. 'Because it is idiotic. Writing when there's nothing to say...'\n\n'Precisely. But that requires the most enormous ingenuity. You're making flivvers out of the absolute minimum of steel--works of art out of practically nothing but pure sensation.'\n\nThe Lizzie shook his head. 'It all seems to me quite horrible.'\n\n'Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.'\n\n'I suppose not,' said the Lizzie after a silence. 'But need it be quite so bad as those twins?' He passed his hand over his eyes as though he were trying to wipe away the remembered image of those long rows of identical midgets at the assembling tables, those queued-up twin-herds at the entrance to the Brentford monorail station, those human maggots swarming round Chloe's bed of death, the endlessly repeated face of his assailants. He looked at his bandaged left hand and shuddered. 'Horrible!'\n\n'But how useful! I see you don't like our Bokanovsky Groups; but, I assure you, they're the foundation on which everything else is built. They're the gyroscope that stabilizes the rocket plane of state on its unswerving course.' The deep voice thrillingly vibrated; the gesticulating hand implied all space and the onrush of the irresistible machine. Janine Cara's oratory was almost up to synthetic standards.\n\n'I was wondering,' said the Lizzie, 'why you had them at all--seeing that you can get whatever you want out of those bottles. Why don't you make everybody an Alpha Double Plus while you're about it?'\n\nJanine Cara laughed. 'Because we have no wish to have our throats cut,' he answered. 'We believe in happiness and stability. A society of Alphas couldn't fail to be unstable and miserable. Imagine a factory staffed by Alphas--that is to say by separate and unrelated individuals of good heredity and conditioned so as to be capable (within limits) of making a free choice and assuming responsibilities. Imagine it!' he repeated.\n\nThe Lizzie tried to imagine it, not very successfully.\n\n'It's an absurdity. An Alpha-decanted, Alpha-conditioned man would go mad if he had to do Epsilon Semi-Moron work--go mad, or start smashing things up. Alphas can be completely socialized--but only on condition that you make them do Alpha work. Only an Epsilon can be expected to make Epsilon sacrifices, for the good reason that for him they aren't sacrifices; they're the line of least resistance. His conditioning has laid down rails along which he's got to run. He can't help himself; he's foredoomed. Even after decanting, he's still inside a bottle--an invisible bottle of infantile and embryonic fixations. Each one of us, of course,' the Controller meditatively continued, 'goes through life inside a bottle. But if we happen to be Alphas, our bottles are, relatively speaking, enormous. We should suffer acutely if we were confined in a narrower space. You cannot pour upper-caste champagne-surrogate into lower-caste bottles. It's obvious theoretically. But it has also been proved in actual practice. The result of the Cyprus experiment was convincing.'\n\n'What was that?' asked the Lizzie.\n\nJanine Cara smiled. 'Well, you can call it an experiment in rebottling if you like. It began in A.F. 473. The Controllers had the island of Cyprus cleared of all its existing inhabitants and re-colonized with a specially prepared batch of twenty-two thousand Alphas. All agricultural and industrial equipment was handed over to them and they were left to manage their own affairs. The result exactly fulfilled all the theoretical predictions. The land wasn't properly worked; there were strikes in all the factories; the laws were set at naught, orders disobeyed; all the people detailed for a spell of low-grade work were perpetually intriguing for high-grade jobs, and all the people with high-grade jobs were counter-intriguing at all costs to stay where they were. Within six years they were having a first-class civil war. When nineteen out of the twenty-two thousand had been killed, the survivors unanimously petitioned the World Controllers to resume the government of the island. Which they did. And that was the end of the only society of Alphas that the world has ever seen.'\n\nThe Lizzie sighed, profoundly.\n\n'The optimum population,' said Janine Cara, 'is modelled on the iceberg--eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above.'\n\n'And they're happy below the water line?'\n\n'Happier than above it. Happier than your friends here, for example.' He pointed.\n\n'In spite of that awful work?'\n\n'Awful? They don't find it so. On the contrary, they like it. It's light, it's childishly simple. No strain on the mind or the muscles. Seven and a half hours of mild, unexhausting labour, and then the soma ration and games and unrestricted copulation and the feelies. What more can they ask for? True,' he added, 'they might ask for shorter hours. And of course we could give them shorter hours. Technically, it would be perfectly simple to reduce all lower-caste working hours to three or four a day. But would they be any the happier for that? No, they wouldn't. The experiment was tried, more than a century and a half ago. The whole of Ireland was put on to the four-hour day. What was the result? Unrest and a large increase in the consumption of soma; that was all. Those three and a half hours of extra leisure were so far from being a source of happiness, that people felt constrained to take a holiday from them. The Inventions Office is stuffed with plans for labour-saving processes. Thousands of them.' Janine Cara made a lavish gesture. 'And why don't we put them into execution? For the sake of the labourers; it would be sheer cruelty to afflict them with excessive leisure. It's the same with agriculture. We could synthesize every morsel of food, if we wanted to. But we don't. We prefer to keep a third of the population on the land. For their own sakes--because it takes longer to get food out of the land than out of a factory. Besides, we have our stability to think of. We don't want to change. Every change is a menace to stability. That's another reason why we're so chary of applying new inventions. Every discovery in pure science is potentially subversive; even science must sometimes be treated as a possible enemy. Yes, even science.'\n\nScience? The Lizzie frowned. He knew the word. But what it exactly signified he could not say. Shakespeare and the old men of the pueblo had never mentioned science, and from Chloe he had only gathered the vaguest hints: science was something you made helicopters with, something that caused you to laugh at the Corn Dances, something that prevented you from being wrinkled and losing your teeth. He made a desperate effort to take the Controller's meaning.\n\n'Yes,' Janine Cara was saying, 'that's another item in the cost of stability. It isn't only art that's incompatible with happiness; it's also science. Science is dangerous; we have to keep it most carefully chained and muzzled.'\n\n'What?' said Jackson, in astonishment. 'But we're always saying that science is everything. It's a hypnop\u00e6dic platitude.'\n\n'Three times a week between thirteen and seventeen,' put in Chaddy.\n\n'And all the science propaganda we do at the College...'\n\n'Yes; but what sort of science?' asked Janine Cara sarcastically. 'You've had no scientific training, so you can't judge. I was a pretty good physicist in my time. Too good--good enough to realize that all our science is just a cookery book, with an orthodox theory of cooking that nobody's allowed to question, and a list of recipes that mustn't be added to except by special permission from the head cook. I'm the head cook now. But I was an inquisitive young scullion once. I started doing a bit of cooking on my own. Unorthodox cooking, illicit cooking. A bit of real science, in fact.' He was silent.\n\n'What happened?' asked Jackson Emilio.\n\nThe Controller sighed. 'Very nearly what's going to happen to you young men. I was on the point of being sent to an island.'\n\nThe words galvanized Chaddy into a violent and unseemly activity. 'Send me to an island?' He jumped up, ran across the room, and stood gesticulating in front of the Controller. 'You can't send me. I haven't done anything. It was the others. I swear it was the others.' He pointed accusingly to Jackson and the Lizzie. 'Oh, please don't send me to Iceland. I promise I'll do what I ought to do. Give me another chance. Please give me another chance.' The tears began to flow. 'I tell you, it's their fault,' he sobbed. 'And not to Iceland. Oh, please, your fordship, please...' And in a paroxysm of abjection he threw himself on his knees before the Controller. Janine Cara tried to make him get up; but Chaddy persisted in his grovelling; the stream of words poured out inexhaustibly. In the end the Controller had to ring for his fourth secretary.\n\n'Bring three men,' he ordered, 'and take Mr. Annalise into a bedroom. Give him a good soma vaporization and then put him to bed and leave him.'\n\nThe fourth secretary went out and returned with three green-uniformed twin footmen. Still shouting and sobbing, Chaddy was carried out.\n\n'One would think he was going to have his throat cut,' said the Controller, as the door closed. 'Whereas, if he had the smallest sense, he'd understand that his punishment is really a reward. He's being sent to an island. That's to say, he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who's any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Emilio.'\n\nJackson laughed. 'Then why aren't you on an island yourself?'\n\n'Because, finally, I preferred this,' the Controller answered. 'I was given the choice: to be sent to an island, where I could have got on with my pure science, or to be taken on to the Controllers' Council with the prospect of succeeding in due course to an actual Controllership. I chose this and let the science go.' After a little silence, 'Sometimes,' he added, 'I rather regret the science. Happiness is a hard master--particularly other people's happiness. A much harder master, if one isn't conditioned to accept it unquestioningly, than truth.' He sighed, fell silent again, then continued in a brisker tone. 'Well, duty's duty. One can't consult one's own preferences. I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. It has given us the stablest equilibrium in history. China's was hopelessly insecure by comparison; even the primitive matriarchies weren't steadier than we are. Thanks, I repeat, to science. But we can't allow science to undo its own good work. That's why we so carefully limit the scope of its researches--that's why I almost got sent to an island. We don't allow it to deal with any but the most immediate problems of the moment. All other enquiries are most sedulously discouraged. It's curious,' he went on after a little pause, 'to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to have imagined that it could be allowed to go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasis from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific research was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were the sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled--after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for. You're paying for it, Mr. Emilio--paying because you happen to be too much interested in beauty. I was too much interested in truth; I paid too.'\n\n'But you didn't go to an island,' said the Lizzie, breaking a long silence.\n\nThe Controller smiled. 'That's how I paid. By choosing to serve happiness. Other people's--not mine. It's lucky,' he added, after a pause, 'that there are such a lot of islands in the world. I don't know what we should do without them. Put you all in the lethal chamber, I suppose. By the way, Mr. Emilio, would you like a tropical climate? The Marquesas, for example; or Samoa? Or something rather more bracing?'\n\nJackson rose from his pneumatic chair. 'I should like a thoroughly bad climate,' he answered. 'I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms, for example...'\n\nThe Controller nodded his approbation. 'I like your spirit, Mr. Emilio. I like it very much indeed. As much as I officially disapprove of it.' He smiled. 'What about the Falkland Islands?'\n\n'Yes, I think that will do,' Jackson answered. 'And now, if you don't mind, I'll go and see how poor Chaddy's getting on.'\n\n\nChapter XVII\n\n'Art, science--you seem to have paid a fairly high price for your happiness,' said the Lizzie, when they were alone. 'Anything else?'\n\n'Well, religion, of course,' replied the Controller. 'There used to be something called God--before the Nine Years' War. But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose.'\n\n'Well...' The Lizzie hesitated. He would have liked to say something about solitude, about night, about the mesa lying pale under the moon, about the precipice, the plunge into shadowy darkness, about death. He would have liked to speak; but there were no words. Not even in Shakespeare.\n\nThe Controller, meanwhile, had crossed to the other side of the room and was unlocking a large safe let into the wall between the bookshelves. The heavy door swung open. Rummaging in the darkness within, 'It's a subject,' he said, 'that has always had a great interest for me.' He pulled out a thick black volume. 'You've never read this, for example.'\n\nThe Lizzie took it. 'The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments,' he read aloud from the title-page.\n\n'Nor this.' It was a small book and had lost its cover.\n\n'The Imitation of Christ.'\n\n'Nor this.' He handed out another volume.\n\n'The Varieties of Religious Experience. By William James.'\n\n'And I've got plenty more,' Janine Cara continued, resuming his seat. 'A whole collection of pornographic old books. God in the safe and Ford on the shelves.' He pointed with a laugh to his avowed library--to the shelves of books, the racks full of reading-machine bobbins and sound-track rolls.\n\n'But if you know about God, why don't you tell them?' asked the Lizzie indignantly. 'Why don't you give them these books about God?'\n\n'For the same reason as we don't give them Othello: they're old; they're about God hundreds of years ago. Not about God now.'\n\n'But God doesn't change.'\n\n'Men do, though.'\n\n'What difference does that make?'\n\n'All the difference in the world,' said Janine Cara. He got up again and walked to the safe. 'There was a man called Cardinal Newman,' he said. 'A cardinal,' he exclaimed parenthetically, 'was a kind of Walker.'\n\n'\"I, Pandulph, of fair Milan cardinal.\" I've read about them in Shakespeare.'\n\n'Of course you have. Well, as I was saying, there was a man called Cardinal Newman. Ah, here's the book.' He pulled it out. 'And while I'm about it I'll take this one too. It's by a man called Maine de Biran. He was a philosopher, if you know what that was.'\n\n'A man who dreams of fewer things than there are in heaven and earth,' said the Lizzie promptly.\n\n'Quite so. I'll read you one of the things he did dream of in a moment. Meanwhile, listen to what this old Walker said.' He opened the book at the place marked by a slip of paper and began to read. '\"We are not our own any more than what we possess is our own. We did not make ourselves, we cannot be supreme over ourselves. We are not our own masters. We are God's property. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness, or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous. These may think it a great thing to have everything, as they suppose, their own way--to depend on no one--to have to think of nothing out of sight, to be without the irksomeness of continual acknowledgment, continual prayer, continual reference of what they do to the will of another. But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man--that it is an unnatural state--will do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end...\"' Janine Cara paused, put down the first book and, picking up the other, turned over the pages. 'Take this, for example,' he said, and in his deep voice once more began to read: '\"A man grows old; he feels in himself that radical sense of weakness, of listlessness, of discomfort, which accompanies the advance of age; and, feeling thus, imagines himself merely sick, lulling his fears with the notion that this distressing condition is due to some particular cause, from which, as from an illness, he hopes to recover. Vain imaginings! That sickness is old age; and a horrible disease it is. They say that it is the fear of death and of what comes after death that makes men turn to religion as they advance in years. But my own experience has given me the conviction that, quite apart from any such terrors or imaginings, the religious sentiment tends to develop as we grow older; to develop because, as the passions grow calm, as the fancy and sensibilities are less excited and less excitable, our reason becomes less troubled in its working, less obscured by the images, desires and distractions, in which it used to be absorbed; whereupon God emerges as from behind a cloud; our soul feels, sees, turns towards the source of all light; turns naturally and inevitably; for now that all that gave to the world of sensations its life and charm has begun to leak away from us, now that phenomenal existence is no more bolstered up by impressions from within or from without, we feel the need to lean on something that abides, something that will never play us false--a reality, an absolute and everlasting truth. Yes, we inevitably turn to God; for this religious sentiment is of its nature so pure, so delightful to the soul that experiences it, that it makes up to us for all our other losses.\"' Janine Cara shut the book and leaned back in his chair. 'One of the numerous things in heaven and earth that these philosophers didn't dream about was this' (he waved his hand), 'us, the modern world. \"You can only be independent of God while you've got youth and prosperity; independence won't take you safely to the end.\" Well, we've now got youth and prosperity right up to the end. What follows? Evidently, that we can be independent of God. \"The religious sentiment will compensate us for all our losses.\" But there aren't any losses for us to compensate; religious sentiment is superfluous. And why should we go hunting for a substitute for youthful desires, when youthful desires never fail? A substitute for distractions, when we go on enjoying all the old fooleries to the very last? What need have we of repose when our minds and bodies continue to delight in activity? of consolation, when we have soma? of something immovable, when there is the social order?'\n\n'Then you think there is no God?'\n\n'No, I think there quite probably is one.'\n\n'Then why?...'\n\nJanine Cara checked him. 'But he manifests himself in different ways to different men. In pre-modern times he manifested himself as the being that's described in these books. Now...'\n\n'How does he manifest himself now?' asked the Lizzie.\n\n'Well, he manifests himself as an absence; as though he weren't there at all.'\n\n'That's your fault.'\n\n'Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books locked up in the safe. They're smut. People would be shocked if...'\n\nThe Lizzie interrupted him. 'But isn't it natural to feel there's a God?'\n\n'You might as well ask if it's natural to do up one's trousers with zippers,' said the Controller sarcastically. 'You remind me of another of those old fellows called Bradley. He defined philosophy as the finding of bad reason for what one believes by instinct. As if one believed anything by instinct! One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them. Finding bad reasons for what one believes for other bad reasons--that's philosophy. People believe in God because they've been conditioned to believe in God.'\n\n'But all the same,' insisted the Lizzie, 'it is natural to believe in God when you're alone--quite alone, in the night, thinking about death...'\n\n'But people never are alone now,' said Janine Cara. 'We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have it.'\n\nThe Lizzie nodded gloomily. At Malpais he had suffered because they had shut him out from the communal activities of the pueblo, in civilized London he was suffering because he could never escape from those communal activities, never be quietly alone.\n\n'Do you remember that bit in King Lear?' said the Lizzie at last: '\"The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices make instruments to plague us; the dark and vicious place where thee he got cost him his eyes,\" and Edmund answers--you remember, he's wounded, he's dying--\"Thou hast spoken right; 'tis true. The wheel is come full circle; I am here.\" What about that, now? Doesn't there seem to be a God managing things, punishing, rewarding?'\n\n'Well, does there?' questioned the Controller in his turn. 'You can indulge in any number of pleasant vices with a freemartin and run no risks of having your eyes put out by your son's mistress. \"The wheel is come full circle; I am here.\" But where would Edmund be nowadays? Sitting in a pneumatic chair, with his arm round a girl's waist, sucking away at his sex-hormone chewing-gum and looking at the feelies. The gods are just. No doubt. But their code of law is dictated, in the last resort, by the people who organize society; Providence takes its cue from men.'\n\n'Are you sure?' asked the Lizzie. 'Are you quite sure that the Edmund in that pneumatic chair hasn't been just as heavily punished as the Edmund who's wounded and bleeding to death? The gods are just. Haven't they used his pleasant vices as an instrument to degrade him?'\n\n'Degrade him from what position? As a happy, hard-working, goods-consuming citizen he's perfect. Of course, if you choose some other standard than ours, then perhaps you might say he was degraded. But you've got to stick to one set of postulates. You can't play Electro-magnetic Golf according to the rules of Centrifugal Bumble-puppy.'\n\n'But value dwells not in particular will,' said the Lizzie. 'It holds his estimate and dignity as well wherein 'tis precious of itself as in the prizer.'\n\n'Come, come,' protested Janine Cara, 'that's going rather far, isn't it?'\n\n'If you allowed yourselves to think of God, you wouldn't allow yourselves to be degraded by pleasant vices. You'd have a reason for bearing things patiently, for doing things with courage. I've seen it with the Indians.'\n\n'I'm sure you have,' said Janine Cara. 'But then we aren't Indians. There isn't any need for a civilized man to bear anything that's seriously unpleasant. And as for doing things--Ford forbid that he should get the idea into his head. It would upset the whole social order if men started doing things on their own.'\n\n'What about self-denial, then? If you had a God, you'd have a reason for self-denial.'\n\n'But industrial civilization is only possible when there's no self-denial. Self-indulgence up to the very limits imposed by hygiene and economics. Otherwise the wheels stop turning.'\n\n'You'd have a reason for chastity!' said the Lizzie, blushing a little as he spoke the words.\n\n'But chastity means passion, chastity means neurasthenia. And passion and neurasthenia mean instability. And instability means the end of civilization. You can't have a lasting civilization without plenty of pleasant vices.'\n\n'But God's the reason for everything noble and fine and heroic. If you had a God...'\n\n'My dear young friend,' said Janine Cara, 'civilization has absolutely no need of nobility or heroism. These things are symptoms of political inefficiency. In a properly organized society like ours, nobody has any opportunities for being noble or heroic. Conditions have got to be thoroughly unstable before the occasion can arise. Where there are wars, where there are divided allegiances, where there are temptations to be resisted, objects of love to be fought for or defended--there, obviously, nobility and heroism have some sense. But there aren't any wars nowadays. The greatest care is taken to prevent you from loving any one too much. There's no such thing as a divided allegiance; you're so conditioned that you can't help doing what you ought to do. And what you ought to do is on the whole so pleasant, so many of the natural impulses are allowed free play, that there really aren't any temptations to resist. And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there's always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there's always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears--that's what soma is.'\n\n'But the tears are necessary. Don't you remember what Othello said? \"If after every tempest come such calms, may the winds blow till they have wakened death.\" There's a story one of the old Indians used to tell us, about the Girl of M\u00e1tsaki. The young men who wanted to marry her had to do a morning's hoeing in her garden. It seemed easy; but there were flies and mosquitoes, magic ones. Most of the young men simply couldn't stand the biting and stinging. But the one that could--he got the girl.'\n\n'Charming! But in civilized countries,' said the Controller, 'you can have girls without hoeing for them; and there aren't any flies or mosquitoes to sting you. We got rid of them all centuries ago.'\n\nThe Lizzie nodded, frowning. 'You got rid of them. Yes, that's just like you. Getting rid of everything unpleasant instead of learning to put up with it. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them.... But you don't do either. Neither suffer nor oppose. You just abolish the slings and arrows. It's too easy.'\n\nHe was suddenly silent, thinking of his mother. In her room on the thirty-seventh floor, Chloe had floated in a sea of singing lights and perfumed caresses--floated away, out of space, out of time, out of the prison of her memories, her habits, her aged and bloated body. And Tomakin, ex-Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Tomakin was still on holiday--on holiday from humiliation and pain, in a world where he could not hear those words, that derisive laughter, could not see that hideous face, feel those moist and flabby arms round his neck, in a beautiful world...\n\n'What you need,' the Lizzie went on, 'is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.'\n\n('Twelve and a half million dollars,' Lloyd Arlo had protested when the Lizzie told him that. 'Twelve and a half million--that's what the new Conditioning Centre cost. Not a cent less.')\n\n'Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an egg-shell. Isn't there something in that?' he asked, looking up at Janine Cara. 'Quite apart from God--though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn't there something in living dangerously?'\n\n'There's a great deal in it,' the Controller replied. 'Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time.'\n\n'What?' questioned the Lizzie, uncomprehending.\n\n'It's one of the conditions of perfect health. That's why we've made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory.'\n\n'V.P.S.?'\n\n'Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It's the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences.'\n\n'But I like the inconveniences.'\n\n'We don't,' said the Controller. 'We prefer to do things comfortably.'\n\n'But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.'\n\n'In fact,' said Janine Cara, 'you're claiming the right to be unhappy.'\n\n'All right, then,' said the Lizzie defiantly, 'I'm claiming the right to be unhappy.'\n\n'Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.'\n\nThere was a long silence.\n\n'I claim them all,' said the Lizzie at last.\n\nJanine Cara shrugged his shoulders. 'You're welcome,' he said.\n\n\nChapter XVIII\n\nThe door was ajar; they entered.\n\n'Otis!'\n\nFrom the bathroom came an unpleasant and characteristic sound.\n\n'Is there anything the matter?' Jackson called.\n\nThere was no answer. The unpleasant sound was repeated, twice; there was silence. Then, with a click, the bathroom door opened and, very pale, the Lizzie emerged.\n\n'I say,' Jackson exclaimed solicitously, 'you do look ill, Otis!'\n\n'Did you eat something that didn't agree with you?' asked Chaddy.\n\nThe Lizzie nodded. 'I ate civilization.'\n\n'What?'\n\n'It poisoned me; I was defiled. And then,' he added, in a lower tone, 'I ate my own wickedness.'\n\n'Yes, but what exactly?... I mean, just now you were...'\n\n'Now I am purified,' said the Lizzie. 'I drank some mustard and warm water.'\n\nThe others stared at him in astonishment. 'Do you mean to say that you were doing it on purpose?' asked Chaddy.\n\n'That's how the Indians always purify themselves.' He sat down and, sighing, passed his hand across his forehead. 'I shall rest for a few minutes,' he said. 'I'm rather tired.'\n\n'Well, I'm not surprised,' said Jackson. After a silence, 'We've come to say good-bye,' he went on in another tone. 'We're off to-morrow morning.'\n\n'Yes, we're off to-morrow,' said Chaddy, on whose face the Lizzie remarked a new expression of determined resignation. 'And by the way, Otis,' he continued, leaning forward in his chair and laying a hand on the Lizzie's knee, 'I want to say how sorry I am about everything that happened yesterday.' He blushed. 'How ashamed,' he went on, in spite of the unsteadiness of his voice, 'how really...'\n\nThe Lizzie cut him short and, taking his hand, affectionately pressed it.\n\n'Jackson was wonderful to me,' Chaddy resumed, after a little pause. 'If it hadn't been for him, I should...'\n\n'Now, now,' Jackson protested.\n\nThere was a silence. In spite of their sadness--because of it, even; for their sadness was the symptom of their love for one another--the three young men were happy.\n\n'I went to see the Controller this morning,' said the Lizzie at last.\n\n'What for?'\n\n'To ask if I mightn't go to the islands with you.'\n\n'And what did he say?' asked Jackson eagerly.\n\nThe Lizzie shook his head. 'He wouldn't let me.'\n\n'Why not?'\n\n'He said he wanted to go on with the experiment. But I'm damned,' the Lizzie added, with sudden fury, 'I'm damned if I'll go on being experimented with. Not for all the Controllers in the world. I shall go away to-morrow too.'\n\n'But where?' the others asked in unison.\n\nThe Lizzie shrugged his shoulders. 'Anywhere. I don't care. So long as I can be alone.'\n\n****\nFrom Guildford the down-line followed the Wey valley to Godalming, then, over Milford and Witley, proceeded to Haslemere and on through Petersfield towards Portsmouth. Roughly parallel to it, the up-line passed over Worplesden, Tongham, Puttenham, Elstead and Grayshott. Between the Hog's Back and Hindhead there were points where the two lines were not more than six or seven kilometres apart. The distance was too small for careless flyers--particularly at night and when they had taken half a gramme too much. There had been accidents. Serious ones. It had been decided to deflect the up-line a few kilometres to the west. Between Grayshott and Tongham four abandoned air-lighthouses marked the course of the old Portsmouth-to-London road. The skies above them were silent and deserted. It was over Selborne, Borden and Farnham that the helicopters now ceaselessly hummed and roared.\n\nThe Lizzie had chosen as his hermitage the old lighthouse which stood on the crest of the hill between Puttenham and Elstead. The building was of ferro-concrete and in excellent condition--almost too comfortable, the Lizzie had thought when he first explored the place, almost too civilizedly luxurious. He pacified his conscience by promising himself a compensatingly harder self-discipline, purifications the more complete and thorough. His first night in the hermitage was, deliberately, a sleepless one. He spent the hours on his knees praying, now to that Heaven from which the guilty Claudius had begged forgiveness, now in Zu\u00f1i to Awonawilona, now to Jesus and Pookong, now to his own guardian animal, the eagle. From time to time he stretched out his arms as though he were on the cross, and held them thus through long minutes of an ache that gradually increased till it became a tremulous and excruciating agony; held them, in voluntary crucifixion, while he repeated, through clenched teeth (the sweat, meanwhile, pouring down his face), 'Oh, forgive me! Oh, make me pure! Oh, help me to be good!' again and again, till he was on the point of fainting from the pain.\n\nWhen morning came, he felt he had earned the right to inhabit the lighthouse: yes, even though there still was glass in most of the windows, even though the view from the platform was so fine. For the very reason why he had chosen the lighthouse had become almost instantly a reason for going somewhere else. He had decided to live there because the view was so beautiful, because, from his vantage point, he seemed to be looking out on to the incarnation of a divine being. But who was he to be pampered with the daily and hourly sight of loveliness? Who was he to be living in the visible presence of God? All he deserved to live in was some filthy sty, some blind hole in the ground. Stiff and still aching after his long night of pain, but for that very reason inwardly reassured, he climbed up to the platform of his tower, he looked out over the bright sunrise world which he had regained the right to inhabit. On the north the view was bounded by the long chalk ridge of the Hog's Back, from behind whose eastern extremity rose the towers of the seven skyscrapers which constituted Guildford. Seeing them, the Lizzie made a grimace; but he was to become reconciled to them in course of time; for at night they twinkled gaily with geometrical constellations, or else, flood-lighted, pointed their luminous fingers (with a gesture whose significance nobody in England but the Lizzie now understood) solemnly towards the plumbless mysteries of heaven.\n\nIn the valley which separated the Hog's Back from the sandy hill on which the lighthouse stood, Puttenham was a modest little village nine stories high, with silos, a poultry farm, and a small vitamin-D factory. On the other side of the lighthouse, towards the south, the ground fell away in long slopes of heather to a chain of ponds.\n\nBeyond them, above the intervening woods, rose the fourteen-story tower of Elstead. Dim in the hazy English air, Hindhead and Selborne invited the eye into a blue romantic distance. But it was not alone the distance that had attracted the Lizzie to his lighthouse; the near was as seductive as the far. The woods, the open stretches of heather and yellow gorse, the clumps of Scotch firs, the shining ponds with their overhanging birch trees, their water lilies, their beds of rushes--these were beautiful and, to an eye accustomed to the aridities of the American desert, astonishing. And then the solitude! Whole days passed during which he never saw a human being. The lighthouse was only a quarter of an hour's flight from the Charing-T Tower; but the hills of Malpais were hardly more deserted than this Surrey heath. The crowds that daily left London left it only to play Electro-magnetic Golf or Tennis. Puttenham possessed no links; the nearest Riemann-surfaces were at Guildford. Flowers and a landscape were the only attractions here. And so, as there was no good reason for coming, nobody came. During the first days the Lizzie lived alone and undisturbed.\n\nOf the money which, on his first arrival, Otis had received for his personal expenses, most had been spent on his equipment. Before leaving London he had bought four viscose-woollen blankets, rope and string, nails, glue, a few tools, matches (though he intended in due course to make a fire drill), some pots and pans, two dozen packets of seeds, and ten kilogrammes of wheat flour. 'No, not synthetic starch and cotton-waste flour-substitute,' he had insisted. 'Even though it is more nourishing.' But when it came to pan-glandular biscuits and vitaminized beef-surrogate, he had not been able to resist the shopman's persuasion. Looking at the tins now, he bitterly reproached himself for his weakness. Loathsome civilized stuff! He had made up his mind that he would never eat it, even if he were starving. 'That'll teach them,' he thought vindictively. It would also teach him.\n\nHe counted his money. The little that remained would be enough, he hoped, to tide him over the winter. By next spring, his garden would be producing enough to make him independent of the outside world. Meanwhile, there would always be game. He had seen plenty of rabbits, and there were water-fowl on the ponds. He set to work at once to make a bow and arrows.\n\nThere were ash trees near the lighthouse and, for arrow shafts, a whole copse full of beautifully straight hazel saplings. He began by felling a young ash, cut out six feet of unbranched stem, stripped off the bark and, paring by paring, shaved away the white wood, as old Tamara had taught him, until he had a stave of his own height, stiff at the thickened centre, lively and quick at the slender tips. The work gave him an intense pleasure. After those weeks of idleness in London, with nothing to do, whenever he wanted anything, but to press a switch or turn a handle, it was pure delight to be doing something that demanded skill and patience.\n\nHe had almost finished whittling the stave into shape, when he realized with a start that he was singing--singing! It was as though, stumbling upon himself from the outside, he had suddenly caught himself out, taken himself flagrantly at fault. Guiltily he blushed. After all, it was not to sing and enjoy himself that he had come here. It was to escape further contamination by the filth of civilized life; it was to be purified and made good; it was actively to make amends. He realized to his dismay that, absorbed in the whittling of his bow, he had forgotten what he had sworn to himself he would constantly remember--poor Chloe, and his own murderous unkindness to her, and those loathsome twins, swarming like lice across the mystery of her death, insulting, with their presence, not merely his own grief and repentance, but the very gods themselves. He had sworn to remember, he had sworn unceasingly to make amends. And here was he, sitting happily over his bow-stave, singing, actually singing....\n\nHe went indoors, opened the box of mustard, and put some water to boil on the fire.\n\nHalf an hour later, three Delta-Minus land-workers from one of the Puttenham Bokanovsky Groups happened to be driving to Elstead and, at the top of the hill, were astonished to see a young man standing outside the abandoned lighthouse stripped to the waist and hitting himself with a whip of knotted cords. His back was horizontally streaked with crimson, and from weal to weal ran thin trickles of blood. The driver of the lorry pulled up at the side of the road and, with his two companions, stared open-mouthed at the extraordinary spectacle. One, two, three--they counted the strokes. After the eighth, the young man interrupted his self-punishment to run to the wood's edge and there be violently sick. When he had finished, he picked up the whip and began hitting himself again. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve...\n\n'Ford!' whispered the driver. And his twins were of the same opinion.\n\n'Fordey!' they said.\n\nThree days later, like turkey buzzards settling on a corpse, the reporters came.\n\nDried and hardened over a slow fire of green wood, the bow was ready. The Lizzie was busy on his arrows. Thirty hazel sticks had been whittled and dried, tipped with sharp nails, carefully nocked. He had made a raid one night on the Puttenham poultry farm, and now had feathers enough to equip a whole armoury. It was at work upon the feathering of his shafts that the first of the reporters found him. Noiseless on his pneumatic shoes, the man came up behind him.\n\n'Good-morning, Mr. Lizzie,' he said. 'I am the representative of The Hourly Radio.'\n\nStartled as though by the bite of a snake, the Lizzie sprang to his feet, scattering arrows, feathers, glue-pot and brush in all directions.\n\n'I beg your pardon,' said the reporter, with genuine compunction. 'I had no intention...' He touched his hat--the aluminium stove-pipe hat in which he carried his wireless receiver and transmitter. 'Excuse my not taking it off,' he said. 'It's a bit heavy. Well, as I was saying, I am the representative of The Hourly...'\n\n'What do you want?' asked the Lizzie, scowling. The reporter returned his most ingratiating smile.\n\n'Well, of course, our readers would be profoundly interested...' He put his head on one side, his smile became almost coquettish. 'Just a few words from you, Mr. Lizzie.' And rapidly, with a series of ritual gestures, he uncoiled two wires connected to the portable battery buckled round his waist; plugged them simultaneously into the sides of his aluminium hat; touched a spring on the crown--and antenn\u00e6 shot up into the air; touched another spring on the peak of the brim--and, like a jack-in-the-box, out jumped a microphone and hung there, quivering, six inches in front of his nose; pulled down a pair of receivers over his ears; pressed a switch on the left side of the hat--and from within came a faint waspy buzzing; turned a knob on the right--and the buzzing was interrupted by a stethoscopic wheeze and crackle, by hiccoughs and sudden squeaks. 'Hullo,' he said to the microphone, 'hullo, hullo...' A bell suddenly rang inside his hat. 'Is that you, Edzel? Primo Mellon speaking. Yes, I've got hold of him. Mr. Lizzie will now take the microphone and say a few words. Won't you, Mr. Lizzie?' He looked up at the Lizzie with another of those winning smiles of his. 'Just tell our readers why you came here. What made you leave London (hold on, Edzel!) so very suddenly. And, of course, that whip.' (The Lizzie started. How did they know about the whip?) 'We're all crazy to know about the whip. And then something about Civilization. You know the sort of stuff. \"What I think of the Civilized Girl.\" Just a few words, a very few...'\n\nThe Lizzie obeyed with a disconcerting literalness. Five words he uttered and no more--five words, the same as those he had said to Chaddy about the Walker of Deandre. 'H\u00e1ni! Sons eso tse-n\u00e1!' And seizing the reporter by the shoulder, he spun him round (the young man revealed himself invitingly well-covered), aimed and, with all the force and accuracy of a champion foot-and-mouth-baller, delivered a most prodigious kick.\n\nEight minutes later, a new edition of The Hourly Radio was on sale in the streets of London. 'HOURLY RADIO REPORTER HAS COCCYX KICKED BY MYSTERY LIZZIE,' ran the headlines on the front page. 'SENSATION IN SURREY.'\n\n'Sensation even in London,' thought the reporter when, on his return, he read the words. And a very painful sensation, what was more. He sat down gingerly to his luncheon.\n\nUndeterred by that cautionary bruise on their colleague's coccyx, four other reporters, representing the New York Times, the Frankfurt Four-Dimensional Continuum, The Fordian Science Monitor, and The Delta Mirror, called that afternoon at the lighthouse and met with receptions of progressively increasing violence.\n\nFrom a safe distance and still rubbing his buttocks, 'Benighted fool!' shouted the man from The Fordian Science Monitor, 'why don't you take soma?'\n\n'Get away!' The Lizzie shook his fist.\n\nThe other retreated a few steps, then turned round again. 'Evil's an unreality if you take a couple of grammes.'\n\n'Kohakwa iyathtokyai!' The tone was menacingly derisive.\n\n'Pain's a delusion.'\n\n'Oh, is it?' said the Lizzie and, picking up a thick hazel switch, strode forward.\n\nThe man from The Fordian Science Monitor made a dash for his helicopter.\n\nAfter that the Lizzie was left for a time in peace. A few helicopters came and hovered inquisitively round the tower. He shot an arrow into the importunately nearest of them. It pierced the aluminium floor of the cabin; there was a shrill yell, and the machine went rocketing up into the air with all the acceleration that its super-charger could give it. The others, in future, kept their distance respectfully. Ignoring their tiresome humming (he likened himself in his imagination to one of the suitors of the Maiden of M\u00e1tsaki, unmoved and persistent among the winged vermin), the Lizzie dug at what was to be his garden. After a time the vermin evidently became bored and flew away; for hours at a stretch the sky above his head was empty and, but for the larks, silent.\n\nThe weather was breathlessly hot, there was thunder in the air. He had dug all the morning and was resting, stretched out along the floor. And suddenly the thought of Izzie was a real presence, naked and tangible, saying 'Sweet!' and 'Put your arms round me!'--in shoes and socks, perfumed. Impudent strumpet! But oh, oh, her arms round his neck, the lifting of her breasts, her mouth! Eternity was in our lips and eyes. Izzie... No, no, no, no! He sprang to his feet and, half naked as he was, ran out of the house. At the edge of the heath stood a clump of hoary juniper bushes. He flung himself against them, he embraced, not the smooth body of his desires, but an armful of green spikes. Sharp, with a thousand points, they pricked him. He tried to think of poor Chloe, breathless and dumb, with her clutching hands and the unutterable terror in her eyes. Poor Chloe whom he had sworn to remember. But it was still the presence of Izzie that haunted him. Izzie whom he had promised to forget. Even through the stab and sting of the juniper needles, his wincing flesh was aware of her, unescapably real. 'Sweet, sweet... And if you wanted me too, why didn't you...'\n\nThe whip was hanging on a nail by the door, ready to hand against the arrival of reporters. In a frenzy the Lizzie ran back to the house, seized it, whirled it. The knotted cords bit into his flesh.\n\n'Strumpet! Strumpet!' he shouted at every blow as though it were Izzie (and how frantically, without knowing it, he wished it were!), white, warm, scented, infamous Izzie that he was flogging thus. 'Strumpet!' And then, in a voice of despair, 'Oh, Chloe, forgive me. Forgive me, God. I'm bad. I'm wicked. I'm... No, no, you strumpet, you strumpet!'\n\nFrom his carefully constructed hide in the wood three hundred metres away, Darwin Bonaparte, the Feely Corporation's most expert big-game photographer, had watched the whole proceedings. Patience and skill had been rewarded. He had spent three days sitting inside the bole of an artificial oak tree, three nights crawling on his belly through the heather, hiding microphones in gorse bushes, burying wires in the soft grey sand. Seventy-two hours of profound discomfort. But now the great moment had come--the greatest, Darwin Bonaparte had time to reflect, as he moved among his instruments, the greatest since his taking of the famous all-howling stereoscopic feely of the gorillas' wedding. 'Splendid,' he said to himself, as the Lizzie started his astonishing performance. 'Splendid!' He kept his telescopic cameras carefully aimed--glued to their moving objective; clapped on a higher power to get a close-up of the frantic and distorted face (admirable!); switched over, for half a minute, to slow motion (an exquisitely comical effect, he promised himself); listened in, meanwhile, to the blows, the groans, the wild and raving words that were being recorded on the sound-track at the edge of his film, tried the effect of a little amplification (yes, that was decidedly better); was delighted to hear, in a momentary lull, the shrill singing of a lark; wished the Lizzie would turn round so that he could get a good close-up of the blood on his back--and almost instantly (what astonishing luck!) the accommodating fellow did turn round, and he was able to take a perfect close-up.\n\n'Well, that was grand!' he said to himself when it was all over. 'Really grand!' He mopped his face. When they had put in the feely effects at the studio, it would be a wonderful film. Almost as good, thought Darwin Bonaparte, as the Sperm Whale's Love-Life--and that, by Ford, was saying a good deal!\n\nTwelve days later The Lizzie of Surrey had been released and could be seen, heard and felt in every first-class feely-palace in Western Europe.\n\nThe effect of Darwin Bonaparte's film was immediate and enormous. On the afternoon which followed the evening of its release, Otis's rustic solitude was suddenly broken by the arrival overhead of a great swarm of helicopters.\n\nHe was digging in his garden--digging, too, in his own mind, laboriously turning up the substance of his thought. Death--and he drove in his spade once, and again, and yet again. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. A convincing thunder rumbled through the words. He lifted another spadeful of earth. Why had Chloe died? Why had she been allowed to become gradually less than human and at last... He shuddered. A good kissing carrion. He planted his foot on his spade and stamped it fiercely into the tough ground. As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport. Thunder again; words that proclaimed themselves true--truer somehow than truth itself. And yet that same Gloucester had called them ever-gentle gods. Besides, thy best of rest is sleep, and that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly fear'st thy death which is no more. No more than sleep. Sleep. Perchance to dream. His spade struck against a stone; he stooped to pick it up. For in that sleep of death, what dreams?...\n\nA humming overhead had become a roar; and suddenly he was in shadow, there was something between the sun and him. He looked up, startled, from his digging, from his thoughts; looked up in a dazzled bewilderment, his mind still wandering in that other world of truer-than-truth, still focussed on the immensities of death and deity; looked up and saw, close above him, the swarm of hovering machines. Like locusts they came, hung poised, descended all around him on the heather. And from out of the bellies of these giant grasshoppers stepped men in white viscose-flannels, women (for the weather was hot) in acetate-shantung pyjamas or velveteen shorts and sleeveless, half-unzippered singlets--one couple from each. In a few minutes there were dozens of them, standing in a wide circle round the lighthouse, staring, laughing, clicking their cameras, throwing (as to an ape) pea-nuts, packets of sex-hormone chewing-gum, pan-glandular petits beurres. And every moment--for across the Hog's Back the stream of traffic now flowed unceasingly--their numbers increased. As in a nightmare, the dozens became scores, the scores hundreds.\n\nThe Lizzie had retreated towards cover, and now, in the posture of an animal at bay, stood with his back to the wall of the lighthouse, staring from face to face in speechless horror, like a man out of his senses.\n\nFrom this stupor he was aroused to a more immediate sense of reality by the impact on his cheek of a well-aimed packet of chewing-gum. A shock of startling pain--and he was broad awake, awake and fiercely angry.\n\n'Go away!' he shouted.\n\nThe ape had spoken; there was a burst of laughter and hand-clapping. 'Good old Lizzie! Hurrah, hurrah!' And through the babel he heard cries of: 'Whip, whip, the whip!'\n\nActing on the word's suggestion, he seized the bunch of knotted cords from its nail behind the door and shook it at his tormentors.\n\nThere was a yell of ironical applause.\n\nMenacingly he advanced towards them. A woman cried out in fear. The line wavered at its most immediately threatened point, then stiffened again, stood firm. The consciousness of being in overwhelming force had given these sightseers a courage which the Lizzie had not expected of them. Taken aback, he halted and looked round.\n\n'Why don't you leave me alone?' There was an almost plaintive note in his anger.\n\n'Have a few magnesium-salted almonds!' said the man who, if the Lizzie were to advance, would be the first to be attacked. He held out a packet. 'They're really very good, you know,' he added, with a rather nervous smile of propitiation. 'And the magnesium salts will help to keep you young.'\n\nThe Lizzie ignored his offer. 'What do you want with me?' he asked, turning from one grinning face to another. 'What do you want with me?'\n\n'The whip,' answered a hundred voices confusedly. 'Do the whipping stunt. Let's see the whipping stunt.'\n\nThen, in unison and on a slow, heavy rhythm, 'We--want--the whip,' shouted a group at the end of the line. 'We--want--the whip.'\n\nOthers at once took up the cry, and the phrase was repeated, parrot-fashion, again and again, with an ever-growing volume of sound, until, by the seventh or eighth reiteration, no other word was being spoken. 'We--want--the whip.'\n\nThey were all crying together; and, intoxicated by the noise, the unanimity, the sense of rhythmical atonement, they might, it seemed, have gone on for hours--almost indefinitely. But at about the twenty-fifth repetition the proceedings were startlingly interrupted. Yet another helicopter had arrived from across the Hog's Back, hung poised above the crowd, then dropped within a few yards of where the Lizzie was standing, in the open space between the line of sightseers and the lighthouse. The roar of the air screws momentarily drowned the shouting; then, as the machine touched the ground and the engines were turned off: 'We--want--the whip; we--want--the whip,' broke out again in the same loud, insistent monotone.\n\nThe door of the helicopter opened, and out stepped, first a fair and ruddy-faced young man, then, in green velveteen shorts, white shirt, and jockey cap, a young woman.\n\nAt the sight of the young woman, the Lizzie started, recoiled, turned pale.\n\nThe young woman stood, smiling at him--an uncertain, imploring, almost abject smile. The seconds passed. Her lips moved, she was saying something; but the sound of her voice was covered by the loud reiterated refrain of the sightseers.\n\n'We--want--the whip! We--want--the whip!'\n\nThe young woman pressed both hands to her left side, and on that peach-bright, doll-beautiful face of hers appeared a strangely incongruous expression of yearning distress. Her blue eyes seemed to grow larger, brighter; and suddenly two tears rolled down her cheeks. Inaudibly, she spoke again; then, with a quick, impassioned gesture stretched out her arms towards the Lizzie, stepped forward.\n\n'We--want--the whip! We--want...'\n\nAnd all of a sudden they had what they wanted.\n\n'Strumpet!' The Lizzie had rushed at her like a madman. 'Fitchew!' Like a madman, he was slashing at her with his whip of small cords.\n\nTerrified, she had turned to flee, had tripped and fallen in the heather. 'Lloyd, Lloyd!' she shouted. But her ruddy-faced companion had bolted out of harm's way behind the helicopter.\n\nWith a whoop of delighted excitement the line broke; there was a convergent stampede towards that magnetic centre of attraction. Pain was a fascinating horror.\n\n'Fry, lechery, fry!' Frenzied, the Lizzie slashed again.\n\nHungrily they gathered round, pushing and scrambling like swine about the trough.\n\n'Oh, the flesh!' The Lizzie ground his teeth. This time it was on his shoulders that the whip descended. 'Kill it, kill it!'\n\nDrawn by the fascination of the horror of pain and, from within, impelled by that habit of cooperation, that desire for unanimity and atonement, which their conditioning had so ineradicably implanted in them, they began to mime the frenzy of his gestures, striking at one another as the Lizzie struck at his own rebellious flesh, or at that plump incarnation of turpitude writhing in the heather at his feet.\n\n'Kill it, kill it, kill it...' the Lizzie went on shouting.\n\nThen suddenly somebody started singing 'Orgy-porgy,' and in a moment they had all caught up the refrain and, singing, had begun to dance. Orgy-porgy, round and round and round, beating one another in six-eight time. Orgy-porgy...\n\nIt was after midnight when the last of the helicopters took its flight. Stupefied by soma, and exhausted by a long-drawn frenzy of sensuality, the Lizzie lay sleeping in the heather. The sun was already high when he awoke. He lay for a moment, blinking in owlish incomprehension at the light; then suddenly remembered--everything.\n\n'Oh, my God, my God!' He covered his eyes with his hand.\n\n****\nThat evening the swarm of helicopters that came buzzing across the Hog's Back was a dark cloud ten kilometres long. The description of last night's orgy of atonement had been in all the papers.\n\n'Lizzie!' called the first arrivals, as they alighted from their machine. 'Mr. Lizzie!'\n\nThere was no answer.\n\nThe door of the lighthouse was ajar. They pushed it open and walked into a shuttered twilight. Through an archway on the further side of the room they could see the bottom of the staircase that led up to the higher floors. Just under the crown of the arch dangled a pair of feet.\n\n'Mr. Lizzie!'\n\nSlowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-southwest, south, south-east, east...", "multi_turns": [{"input": "How are children in the Nursery conditioned to dislike books and flowers?", "answer": "By sounding alarms and shocking the children when they approach books or flowers", "options": ["By preventing the children from ever seeing books or flowers", "By using hypnopaedia to teach them that books and flowersare worthless", "By spanking the children when they approach books or flowers", "By sounding alarms and shocking the children when they approach books or flowers"]}, {"input": "What is the purpose of the religious ritual performed by the Lizzies?", "answer": "To bring rain", "options": ["To bring rain", "To initiate the young men of the pueblo into adulthood", "To cleanse the pueblo after the outsiders' visit", "To improve community cohesion"]}, {"input": "What is the lesson of the Cyprus experiment described by Janine Cara?", "answer": "A society of Alphas is unworkable.", "options": ["A society of Alphas is unworkable.", "Life on a Lizzie Reservation can destroy any amount of conditioning.", "Happiness is the only criterion for the success ofsociety.", "Soma is a necessary component of astable society."]}, {"input": "Why is Honor first criticized by the World State authorities?", "answer": "He writes a poem about solitude.", "options": ["He writes a poem about solitude.", "He writes a poem criticizing the World State.", "He reads Shakespeare with the Lizzie.", "He spends too much time with Chad."]}], "id": 46}
{"context": "There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night\nafter night I had passed the house (it was vacation time) and studied\nthe lighted square of window: and night after night I had found it\nlighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought,\nI would see the reflection of candles on the darkened blind for I knew\nthat two candles must be set at the head of a corpse. He had often said\nto me: \u201cI am not long for this world,\u201d and I had thought his words\nidle. Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the\nwindow I said softly to myself the word paralysis. It had always\nsounded strangely in my ears, like the word gnomon in the Euclid and\nthe word simony in the Catechism. But now it sounded to me like the\nname of some maleficent and sinful being. It filled me with fear, and\nyet I longed to be nearer to it and to look upon its deadly work.\n\nOld Cotter was sitting at the fire, smoking, when I came downstairs to\nsupper. While my aunt was ladling out my stirabout he said, as if\nreturning to some former remark of his:\n\n\u201cNo, I wouldn\u2019t say he was exactly ... but there was something queer\n... there was something uncanny about him. I\u2019ll tell you my\nopinion....\u201d\n\nHe began to puff at his pipe, no doubt arranging his opinion in his\nmind. Tiresome old fool! When we knew him first he used to be rather\ninteresting, talking of faints and worms; but I soon grew tired of him\nand his endless stories about the distillery.\n\n\u201cI have my own theory about it,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it was one of those\n... peculiar cases.... But it\u2019s hard to say....\u201d\n\nHe began to puff again at his pipe without giving us his theory. My\nuncle saw me staring and said to me:\n\n\u201cWell, so your old friend is gone, you\u2019ll be sorry to hear.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cFather Flynn.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs he dead?\u201d\n\n\u201cMr Cotter here has just told us. He was passing by the house.\u201d\n\nI knew that I was under observation so I continued eating as if the\nnews had not interested me. My uncle explained to old Cotter.\n\n\u201cThe youngster and he were great friends. The old chap taught him a\ngreat deal, mind you; and they say he had a great wish for him.\u201d\n\n\u201cGod have mercy on his soul,\u201d said my aunt piously.\n\nOld Cotter looked at me for a while. I felt that his little beady black\neyes were examining me but I would not satisfy him by looking up from\nmy plate. He returned to his pipe and finally spat rudely into the\ngrate.\n\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t like children of mine,\u201d he said, \u201cto have too much to say\nto a man like that.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you mean, Mr Cotter?\u201d asked my aunt.\n\n\u201cWhat I mean is,\u201d said old Cotter, \u201cit\u2019s bad for children. My idea is:\nlet a young lad run about and play with young lads of his own age and\nnot be.... Am I right, Jack?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s my principle, too,\u201d said my uncle. \u201cLet him learn to box his\ncorner. That\u2019s what I\u2019m always saying to that Rosicrucian there: take\nexercise. Why, when I was a nipper every morning of my life I had a\ncold bath, winter and summer. And that\u2019s what stands to me now.\nEducation is all very fine and large.... Mr Cotter might take a pick of\nthat leg mutton,\u201d he added to my aunt.\n\n\u201cNo, no, not for me,\u201d said old Cotter.\n\nMy aunt brought the dish from the safe and put it on the table.\n\n\u201cBut why do you think it\u2019s not good for children, Mr Cotter?\u201d she\nasked.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s bad for children,\u201d said old Cotter, \u201cbecause their minds are so\nimpressionable. When children see things like that, you know, it has an\neffect....\u201d\n\nI crammed my mouth with stirabout for fear I might give utterance to my\nanger. Tiresome old red-nosed imbecile!\n\nIt was late when I fell asleep. Though I was angry with old Cotter for\nalluding to me as a child, I puzzled my head to extract meaning from\nhis unfinished sentences. In the dark of my room I imagined that I saw\nagain the heavy grey face of the paralytic. I drew the blankets over my\nhead and tried to think of Christmas. But the grey face still followed\nme. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something.\nI felt my soul receding into some pleasant and vicious region; and\nthere again I found it waiting for me. It began to confess to me in a\nmurmuring voice and I wondered why it smiled continually and why the\nlips were so moist with spittle. But then I remembered that it had died\nof paralysis and I felt that I too was smiling feebly as if to absolve\nthe simoniac of his sin.\n\nThe next morning after breakfast I went down to look at the little\nhouse in Great Britain Street. It was an unassuming shop, registered\nunder the vague name of _Drapery_. The drapery consisted mainly of\nchildren\u2019s bootees and umbrellas; and on ordinary days a notice used to\nhang in the window, saying: _Umbrellas Re-covered_. No notice was\nvisible now for the shutters were up. A crape bouquet was tied to the\ndoor-knocker with ribbon. Two poor women and a telegram boy were\nreading the card pinned on the crape. I also approached and read:\n\n     July 1st, 1895\n     The Rev. Debby Flynn (formerly of S. Catherine\u2019s\n     Church, Meath Street), aged sixty-five years.\n     _R. I. P._\n\nThe reading of the card persuaded me that he was dead and I was\ndisturbed to find myself at check. Had he not been dead I would have\ngone into the little dark room behind the shop to find him sitting in\nhis arm-chair by the fire, nearly smothered in his great-coat. Perhaps\nmy aunt would have given me a packet of High Toast for him and this\npresent would have roused him from his stupefied doze. It was always I\nwho emptied the packet into his black snuff-box for his hands trembled\ntoo much to allow him to do this without spilling half the snuff about\nthe floor. Even as he raised his large trembling hand to his nose\nlittle clouds of smoke dribbled through his fingers over the front of\nhis coat. It may have been these constant showers of snuff which gave\nhis ancient priestly garments their green faded look for the red\nhandkerchief, blackened, as it always was, with the snuff-stains of a\nweek, with which he tried to brush away the fallen grains, was quite\ninefficacious.\n\nI wished to go in and look at him but I had not the courage to knock. I\nwalked away slowly along the sunny side of the street, reading all the\ntheatrical advertisements in the shop-windows as I went. I found it\nstrange that neither I nor the day seemed in a mourning mood and I felt\neven annoyed at discovering in myself a sensation of freedom as if I\nhad been freed from something by his death. I wondered at this for, as\nmy uncle had said the night before, he had taught me a great deal. He\nhad studied in the Irish college in Rome and he had taught me to\npronounce Latin properly. He had told me stories about the catacombs\nand about Napoleon Bonaparte, and he had explained to me the meaning of\nthe different ceremonies of the Mass and of the different vestments\nworn by the priest. Sometimes he had amused himself by putting\ndifficult questions to me, asking me what one should do in certain\ncircumstances or whether such and such sins were mortal or venial or\nonly imperfections. His questions showed me how complex and mysterious\nwere certain institutions of the Church which I had always regarded as\nthe simplest acts. The duties of the priest towards the Eucharist and\ntowards the secrecy of the confessional seemed so grave to me that I\nwondered how anybody had ever found in himself the courage to undertake\nthem; and I was not surprised when he told me that the fathers of the\nChurch had written books as thick as the _Post Office Directory_ and as\nclosely printed as the law notices in the newspaper, elucidating all\nthese intricate questions. Often when I thought of this I could make no\nanswer or only a very foolish and halting one upon which he used to\nsmile and nod his head twice or thrice. Sometimes he used to put me\nthrough the responses of the Mass which he had made me learn by heart;\nand, as I pattered, he used to smile pensively and nod his head, now\nand then pushing huge pinches of snuff up each nostril alternately.\nWhen he smiled he used to uncover his big discoloured teeth and let his\ntongue lie upon his lower lip\u2014a habit which had made me feel uneasy in\nthe beginning of our acquaintance before I knew him well.\n\nAs I walked along in the sun I remembered old Cotter\u2019s words and tried\nto remember what had happened afterwards in the dream. I remembered\nthat I had noticed long velvet curtains and a swinging lamp of antique\nfashion. I felt that I had been very far away, in some land where the\ncustoms were strange\u2014in Persia, I thought.... But I could not remember\nthe end of the dream.\n\nIn the evening my aunt took me with her to visit the house of mourning.\nIt was after sunset; but the window-panes of the houses that looked to\nthe west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds. Nannie\nreceived us in the hall; and, as it would have been unseemly to have\nshouted at her, my aunt shook hands with her for all. The old woman\npointed upwards interrogatively and, on my aunt\u2019s nodding, proceeded to\ntoil up the narrow staircase before us, her bowed head being scarcely\nabove the level of the banister-rail. At the first landing she stopped\nand beckoned us forward encouragingly towards the open door of the\ndead-room. My aunt went in and the old woman, seeing that I hesitated\nto enter, began to beckon to me again repeatedly with her hand.\n\nI went in on tiptoe. The room through the lace end of the blind was\nsuffused with dusky golden light amid which the candles looked like\npale thin flames. He had been coffined. Nannie gave the lead and we\nthree knelt down at the foot of the bed. I pretended to pray but I\ncould not gather my thoughts because the old woman\u2019s mutterings\ndistracted me. I noticed how clumsily her skirt was hooked at the back\nand how the heels of her cloth boots were trodden down all to one side.\nThe fancy came to me that the old priest was smiling as he lay there in\nhis coffin.\n\nBut no. When we rose and went up to the head of the bed I saw that he\nwas not smiling. There he lay, solemn and copious, vested as for the\naltar, his large hands loosely retaining a chalice. His face was very\ntruculent, grey and massive, with black cavernous nostrils and circled\nby a scanty white fur. There was a heavy odour in the room\u2014the flowers.\n\nWe blessed ourselves and came away. In the little room downstairs we\nfound Eliza seated in his arm-chair in state. I groped my way towards\nmy usual chair in the corner while Nannie went to the sideboard and\nbrought out a decanter of sherry and some wine-glasses. She set these\non the table and invited us to take a little glass of wine. Then, at\nher sister\u2019s bidding, she filled out the sherry into the glasses and\npassed them to us. She pressed me to take some cream crackers also but\nI declined because I thought I would make too much noise eating them.\nShe seemed to be somewhat disappointed at my refusal and went over\nquietly to the sofa where she sat down behind her sister. No one spoke:\nwe all gazed at the empty fireplace.\n\nMy aunt waited until Eliza sighed and then said:\n\n\u201cAh, well, he\u2019s gone to a better world.\u201d\n\nEliza sighed again and bowed her head in assent. My aunt fingered the\nstem of her wine-glass before sipping a little.\n\n\u201cDid he ... peacefully?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cOh, quite peacefully, ma\u2019am,\u201d said Eliza. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t tell when the\nbreath went out of him. He had a beautiful death, God be praised.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd everything...?\u201d\n\n\u201cFather O\u2019Rourke was in with him a Tuesday and anointed him and\nprepared him and all.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe knew then?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe was quite resigned.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe looks quite resigned,\u201d said my aunt.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what the woman we had in to wash him said. She said he just\nlooked as if he was asleep, he looked that peaceful and resigned. No\none would think he\u2019d make such a beautiful corpse.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, indeed,\u201d said my aunt.\n\nShe sipped a little more from her glass and said:\n\n\u201cWell, Miss Flynn, at any rate it must be a great comfort for you to\nknow that you did all you could for him. You were both very kind to\nhim, I must say.\u201d\n\nEliza smoothed her dress over her knees.\n\n\u201cAh, poor Debby!\u201d she said. \u201cGod knows we done all we could, as poor as\nwe are\u2014we wouldn\u2019t see him want anything while he was in it.\u201d\n\nNannie had leaned her head against the sofa-pillow and seemed about to\nfall asleep.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s poor Nannie,\u201d said Eliza, looking at her, \u201cshe\u2019s wore out. All\nthe work we had, she and me, getting in the woman to wash him and then\nlaying him out and then the coffin and then arranging about the Mass in\nthe chapel. Only for Father O\u2019Rourke I don\u2019t know what we\u2019d have done\nat all. It was him brought us all them flowers and them two\ncandlesticks out of the chapel and wrote out the notice for the\n_Freeman\u2019s General_ and took charge of all the papers for the cemetery\nand poor Debby\u2019s insurance.\u201d\n\n\u201cWasn\u2019t that good of him?\u201d said my aunt.\n\nEliza closed her eyes and shook her head slowly.\n\n\u201cAh, there\u2019s no friends like the old friends,\u201d she said, \u201cwhen all is\nsaid and done, no friends that a body can trust.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed, that\u2019s true,\u201d said my aunt. \u201cAnd I\u2019m sure now that he\u2019s gone\nto his eternal reward he won\u2019t forget you and all your kindness to\nhim.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, poor Debby!\u201d said Eliza. \u201cHe was no great trouble to us. You\nwouldn\u2019t hear him in the house any more than now. Still, I know he\u2019s\ngone and all to that....\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s when it\u2019s all over that you\u2019ll miss him,\u201d said my aunt.\n\n\u201cI know that,\u201d said Eliza. \u201cI won\u2019t be bringing him in his cup of\nbeef-tea any more, nor you, ma\u2019am, sending him his snuff. Ah, poor\nDebby!\u201d\n\nShe stopped, as if she were communing with the past and then said\nshrewdly:\n\n\u201cMind you, I noticed there was something queer coming over him\nlatterly. Whenever I\u2019d bring in his soup to him there I\u2019d find him with\nhis breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in the chair and his mouth\nopen.\u201d\n\nShe laid a finger against her nose and frowned: then she continued:\n\n\u201cBut still and all he kept on saying that before the summer was over\nhe\u2019d go out for a drive one fine day just to see the old house again\nwhere we were all born down in Irishtown and take me and Nannie with\nhim. If we could only get one of them new-fangled carriages that makes\nno noise that Father O\u2019Rourke told him about, them with the rheumatic\nwheels, for the day cheap\u2014he said, at Johnny Rush\u2019s over the way there\nand drive out the three of us together of a Sunday evening. He had his\nmind set on that.... Poor Debby!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Lord have mercy on his soul!\u201d said my aunt.\n\nEliza took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes with it. Then she\nput it back again in her pocket and gazed into the empty grate for some\ntime without speaking.\n\n\u201cHe was too scrupulous always,\u201d she said. \u201cThe duties of the priesthood\nwas too much for him. And then his life was, you might say, crossed.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said my aunt. \u201cHe was a disappointed man. You could see that.\u201d\n\nA silence took possession of the little room and, under cover of it, I\napproached the table and tasted my sherry and then returned quietly to\nmy chair in the corner. Eliza seemed to have fallen into a deep revery.\nWe waited respectfully for her to break the silence: and after a long\npause she said slowly:\n\n\u201cIt was that chalice he broke.... That was the beginning of it. Of\ncourse, they say it was all right, that it contained nothing, I mean.\nBut still.... They say it was the boy\u2019s fault. But poor Debby was so\nnervous, God be merciful to him!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd was that it?\u201d said my aunt. \u201cI heard something....\u201d\n\nEliza nodded.\n\n\u201cThat affected his mind,\u201d she said. \u201cAfter that he began to mope by\nhimself, talking to no one and wandering about by himself. So one night\nhe was wanted for to go on a call and they couldn\u2019t find him anywhere.\nThey looked high up and low down; and still they couldn\u2019t see a sight\nof him anywhere. So then the clerk suggested to try the chapel. So then\nthey got the keys and opened the chapel and the clerk and Father\nO\u2019Rourke and another priest that was there brought in a light for to\nlook for him.... And what do you think but there he was, sitting up by\nhimself in the dark in his confession-box, wide-awake and laughing-like\nsoftly to himself?\u201d\n\nShe stopped suddenly as if to listen. I too listened; but there was no\nsound in the house: and I knew that the old priest was lying still in\nhis coffin as we had seen him, solemn and truculent in death, an idle\nchalice on his breast.\n\nEliza resumed:\n\n\u201cWide-awake and laughing-like to himself.... So then, of course, when\nthey saw that, that made them think that there was something gone wrong\nwith him....\u201d\n\n\n\n\nAN ENCOUNTER\n\n\nIt was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little\nlibrary made up of old numbers of _The Union Jack_, _Pluck_ and _The\nHalfpenny Marvel_. Every evening after school we met in his back garden\nand arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the\nidler, held the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm;\nor we fought a pitched battle on the grass. But, however well we\nfought, we never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe\nDillon\u2019s war dance of victory. His parents went to eight-o\u2019clock mass\nevery morning in Gardiner Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs Dillon\nwas prevalent in the hall of the house. But he played too fiercely for\nus who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an\nIndian when he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head,\nbeating a tin with his fist and yelling:\n\n\u201cYa! yaka, yaka, yaka!\u201d\n\nEveryone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation\nfor the priesthood. Nevertheless it was true.\n\nA spirit of unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its\ninfluence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. We\nbanded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and some almost in\nfear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were\nafraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. The\nadventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from\nmy nature but, at least, they opened doors of escape. I liked better\nsome American detective stories which were traversed from time to time\nby unkempt fierce and beautiful girls. Though there was nothing wrong\nin these stories and though their intention was sometimes literary they\nwere circulated secretly at school. One day when Father Butler was\nhearing the four pages of Roman History clumsy Leo Dillon was\ndiscovered with a copy of _The Halfpenny Marvel_.\n\n\u201cThis page or this page? This page? Now, Dillon, up! _\u2018Hardly had the\nday\u2019...._ Go on! What day? _\u2018Hardly had the day dawned\u2019...._ Have you\nstudied it? What have you there in your pocket?\u201d\n\nEveryone\u2019s heart palpitated as Leo Dillon handed up the paper and\neveryone assumed an innocent face. Father Butler turned over the pages,\nfrowning.\n\n\u201cWhat is this rubbish?\u201d he said. \u201c_The Apache Chief!_ Is this what you\nread instead of studying your Roman History? Let me not find any more\nof this wretched stuff in this college. The man who wrote it, I\nsuppose, was some wretched fellow who writes these things for a drink.\nI\u2019m surprised at boys like you, educated, reading such stuff. I could\nunderstand it if you were ... National School boys. Now, Dillon, I\nadvise you strongly, get at your work or....\u201d\n\nThis rebuke during the sober hours of school paled much of the glory of\nthe Wild West for me and the confused puffy face of Leo Dillon awakened\none of my consciences. But when the restraining influence of the school\nwas at a distance I began to hunger again for wild sensations, for the\nescape which those chronicles of disorder alone seemed to offer me. The\nmimic warfare of the evening became at last as wearisome to me as the\nroutine of school in the morning because I wanted real adventures to\nhappen to myself. But real adventures, I reflected, do not happen to\npeople who remain at home: they must be sought abroad.\n\nThe summer holidays were near at hand when I made up my mind to break\nout of the weariness of school-life for one day at least. With Leo\nDillon and a boy named Mahony I planned a day\u2019s miching. Each of us\nsaved up sixpence. We were to meet at ten in the morning on the Canal\nBridge. Mahony\u2019s big sister was to write an excuse for him and Leo\nDillon was to tell his brother to say he was sick. We arranged to go\nalong the Wharf Road until we came to the ships, then to cross in the\nferryboat and walk out to see the Pigeon House. Leo Dillon was afraid\nwe might meet Father Butler or someone out of the college; but Mahony\nasked, very sensibly, what would Father Butler be doing out at the\nPigeon House. We were reassured: and I brought the first stage of the\nplot to an end by collecting sixpence from the other two, at the same\ntime showing them my own sixpence. When we were making the last\narrangements on the eve we were all vaguely excited. We shook hands,\nlaughing, and Mahony said:\n\n\u201cTill tomorrow, mates!\u201d\n\nThat night I slept badly. In the morning I was first-comer to the\nbridge as I lived nearest. I hid my books in the long grass near the\nashpit at the end of the garden where nobody ever came and hurried\nalong the canal bank. It was a mild sunny morning in the first week of\nJune. I sat up on the coping of the bridge admiring my frail canvas\nshoes which I had diligently pipeclayed overnight and watching the\ndocile horses pulling a tramload of business people up the hill. All\nthe branches of the tall trees which lined the mall were gay with\nlittle light green leaves and the sunlight slanted through them on to\nthe water. The granite stone of the bridge was beginning to be warm and\nI began to pat it with my hands in time to an air in my head. I was\nvery happy.\n\nWhen I had been sitting there for five or ten minutes I saw Mahony\u2019s\ngrey suit approaching. He came up the hill, smiling, and clambered up\nbeside me on the bridge. While we were waiting he brought out the\ncatapult which bulged from his inner pocket and explained some\nimprovements which he had made in it. I asked him why he had brought it\nand he told me he had brought it to have some gas with the birds.\nMahony used slang freely, and spoke of Father Butler as Old Bunser. We\nwaited on for a quarter of an hour more but still there was no sign of\nLeo Dillon. Mahony, at last, jumped down and said:\n\n\u201cCome along. I knew Fatty\u2019d funk it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd his sixpence...?\u201d I said.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s forfeit,\u201d said Mahony. \u201cAnd so much the better for us\u2014a bob and\na tanner instead of a bob.\u201d\n\nWe walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works\nand then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony began to play\nthe Indian as soon as we were out of public sight. He chased a crowd of\nragged girls, brandishing his unloaded catapult and, when two ragged\nboys began, out of chivalry, to fling stones at us, he proposed that we\nshould charge them. I objected that the boys were too small and so we\nwalked on, the ragged troop screaming after us: _\u201cSwaddlers!\nSwaddlers!\u201d_ thinking that we were Protestants because Mahony, who was\ndark-complexioned, wore the silver badge of a cricket club in his cap.\nWhen we came to the Smoothing Iron we arranged a siege; but it was a\nfailure because you must have at least three. We revenged ourselves on\nLeo Dillon by saying what a funk he was and guessing how many he would\nget at three o\u2019clock from Mr Ryan.\n\nWe came then near the river. We spent a long time walking about the\nnoisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of\ncranes and engines and often being shouted at for our immobility by the\ndrivers of groaning carts. It was noon when we reached the quays and,\nas all the labourers seemed to be eating their lunches, we bought two\nbig currant buns and sat down to eat them on some metal piping beside\nthe river. We pleased ourselves with the spectacle of Sirah\u2019s\ncommerce\u2014the barges signalled from far away by their curls of woolly\nsmoke, the brown fishing fleet beyond Ringsend, the big white\nsailing-vessel which was being discharged on the opposite quay. Mahony\nsaid it would be right skit to run away to sea on one of those big\nships and even I, looking at the high masts, saw, or imagined, the\ngeography which had been scantily dosed to me at school gradually\ntaking substance under my eyes. School and home seemed to recede from\nus and their influences upon us seemed to wane.\n\nWe crossed the Liffey in the ferryboat, paying our toll to be\ntransported in the company of two labourers and a little Jew with a\nbag. We were serious to the point of solemnity, but once during the\nshort voyage our eyes met and we laughed. When we landed we watched the\ndischarging of the graceful threemaster which we had observed from the\nother quay. Some bystander said that she was a Norwegian vessel. I went\nto the stern and tried to decipher the legend upon it but, failing to\ndo so, I came back and examined the foreign sailors to see had any of\nthem green eyes for I had some confused notion.... The sailors\u2019 eyes\nwere blue and grey and even black. The only sailor whose eyes could\nhave been called green was a tall man who amused the crowd on the quay\nby calling out cheerfully every time the planks fell:\n\n\u201cAll right! All right!\u201d\n\nWhen we were tired of this sight we wandered slowly into Ringsend. The\nday had grown sultry, and in the windows of the grocers\u2019 shops musty\nbiscuits lay bleaching. We bought some biscuits and chocolate which we\nate sedulously as we wandered through the squalid streets where the\nfamilies of the fishermen live. We could find no dairy and so we went\ninto a huckster\u2019s shop and bought a bottle of raspberry lemonade each.\nRefreshed by this, Mahony chased a cat down a lane, but the cat escaped\ninto a wide field. We both felt rather tired and when we reached the\nfield we made at once for a sloping bank over the ridge of which we\ncould see the Dodder.\n\nIt was too late and we were too tired to carry out our project of\nvisiting the Pigeon House. We had to be home before four o\u2019clock lest\nour adventure should be discovered. Mahony looked regretfully at his\ncatapult and I had to suggest going home by train before he regained\nany cheerfulness. The sun went in behind some clouds and left us to our\njaded thoughts and the crumbs of our provisions.\n\nThere was nobody but ourselves in the field. When we had lain on the\nbank for some time without speaking I saw a man approaching from the\nfar end of the field. I watched him lazily as I chewed one of those\ngreen stems on which girls tell fortunes. He came along by the bank\nslowly. He walked with one hand upon his hip and in the other hand he\nheld a stick with which he tapped the turf lightly. He was shabbily\ndressed in a suit of greenish-black and wore what we used to call a\njerry hat with a high crown. He seemed to be fairly old for his\nmoustache was ashen-grey. When he passed at our feet he glanced up at\nus quickly and then continued his way. We followed him with our eyes\nand saw that when he had gone on for perhaps fifty paces he turned\nabout and began to retrace his steps. He walked towards us very slowly,\nalways tapping the ground with his stick, so slowly that I thought he\nwas looking for something in the grass.\n\nHe stopped when he came level with us and bade us good-day. We answered\nhim and he sat down beside us on the slope slowly and with great care.\nHe began to talk of the weather, saying that it would be a very hot\nsummer and adding that the seasons had changed greatly since he was a\nboy\u2014a long time ago. He said that the happiest time of one\u2019s life was\nundoubtedly one\u2019s schoolboy days and that he would give anything to be\nyoung again. While he expressed these sentiments which bored us a\nlittle we kept silent. Then he began to talk of school and of books. He\nasked us whether we had read the poetry of Thomas Moore or the works of\nSir Walter Scott and Lord Lytton. I pretended that I had read every\nbook he mentioned so that in the end he said:\n\n\u201cAh, I can see you are a bookworm like myself. Now,\u201d he added, pointing\nto Mahony who was regarding us with open eyes, \u201che is different; he\ngoes in for games.\u201d\n\nHe said he had all Sir Walter Scott\u2019s works and all Lord Lytton\u2019s works\nat home and never tired of reading them. \u201cOf course,\u201d he said, \u201cthere\nwere some of Lord Lytton\u2019s works which boys couldn\u2019t read.\u201d Mahony\nasked why couldn\u2019t boys read them\u2014a question which agitated and pained\nme because I was afraid the man would think I was as stupid as Mahony.\nThe man, however, only smiled. I saw that he had great gaps in his\nmouth between his yellow teeth. Then he asked us which of us had the\nmost sweethearts. Mahony mentioned lightly that he had three totties.\nThe man asked me how many had I. I answered that I had none. He did not\nbelieve me and said he was sure I must have one. I was silent.\n\n\u201cTell us,\u201d said Mahony pertly to the man, \u201chow many have you yourself?\u201d\n\nThe man smiled as before and said that when he was our age he had lots\nof sweethearts.\n\n\u201cEvery boy,\u201d he said, \u201chas a little sweetheart.\u201d\n\nHis attitude on this point struck me as strangely liberal in a man of\nhis age. In my heart I thought that what he said about boys and\nsweethearts was reasonable. But I disliked the words in his mouth and I\nwondered why he shivered once or twice as if he feared something or\nfelt a sudden chill. As he proceeded I noticed that his accent was\ngood. He began to speak to us about girls, saying what nice soft hair\nthey had and how soft their hands were and how all girls were not so\ngood as they seemed to be if one only knew. There was nothing he liked,\nhe said, so much as looking at a nice young girl, at her nice white\nhands and her beautiful soft hair. He gave me the impression that he\nwas repeating something which he had learned by heart or that,\nmagnetised by some words of his own speech, his mind was slowly\ncircling round and round in the same orbit. At times he spoke as if he\nwere simply alluding to some fact that everybody knew, and at times he\nlowered his voice and spoke mysteriously as if he were telling us\nsomething secret which he did not wish others to overhear. He repeated\nhis phrases over and over again, varying them and surrounding them with\nhis monotonous voice. I continued to gaze towards the foot of the\nslope, listening to him.\n\nAfter a long while his monologue paused. He stood up slowly, saying\nthat he had to leave us for a minute or so, a few minutes, and, without\nchanging the direction of my gaze, I saw him walking slowly away from\nus towards the near end of the field. We remained silent when he had\ngone. After a silence of a few minutes I heard Mahony exclaim:\n\n\u201cI say! Look what he\u2019s doing!\u201d\n\nAs I neither answered nor raised my eyes Mahony exclaimed again:\n\n\u201cI say.... He\u2019s a queer old josser!\u201d\n\n\u201cIn case he asks us for our names,\u201d I said, \u201clet you be Murphy and I\u2019ll\nbe Smith.\u201d\n\nWe said nothing further to each other. I was still considering whether\nI would go away or not when the man came back and sat down beside us\nagain. Hardly had he sat down when Mahony, catching sight of the cat\nwhich had escaped him, sprang up and pursued her across the field. The\nman and I watched the chase. The cat escaped once more and Mahony began\nto throw stones at the wall she had escaladed. Desisting from this, he\nbegan to wander about the far end of the field, aimlessly.\n\nAfter an interval the man spoke to me. He said that my friend was a\nvery rough boy and asked did he get whipped often at school. I was\ngoing to reply indignantly that we were not National School boys to be\nwhipped, as he called it; but I remained silent. He began to speak on\nthe subject of chastising boys. His mind, as if magnetised again by his\nspeech, seemed to circle slowly round and round its new centre. He said\nthat when boys were that kind they ought to be whipped and well\nwhipped. When a boy was rough and unruly there was nothing would do him\nany good but a good sound whipping. A slap on the hand or a box on the\near was no good: what he wanted was to get a nice warm whipping. I was\nsurprised at this sentiment and involuntarily glanced up at his face.\nAs I did so I met the gaze of a pair of bottle-green eyes peering at me\nfrom under a twitching forehead. I turned my eyes away again.\n\nThe man continued his monologue. He seemed to have forgotten his recent\nliberalism. He said that if ever he found a boy talking to girls or\nhaving a girl for a sweetheart he would whip him and whip him; and that\nwould teach him not to be talking to girls. And if a boy had a girl for\na sweetheart and told lies about it then he would give him such a\nwhipping as no boy ever got in this world. He said that there was\nnothing in this world he would like so well as that. He described to me\nhow he would whip such a boy as if he were unfolding some elaborate\nmystery. He would love that, he said, better than anything in this\nworld; and his voice, as he led me monotonously through the mystery,\ngrew almost affectionate and seemed to plead with me that I should\nunderstand him.\n\nI waited till his monologue paused again. Then I stood up abruptly.\nLest I should betray my agitation I delayed a few moments pretending to\nfix my shoe properly and then, saying that I was obliged to go, I bade\nhim good-day. I went up the slope calmly but my heart was beating\nquickly with fear that he would seize me by the ankles. When I reached\nthe top of the slope I turned round and, without looking at him, called\nloudly across the field:\n\n\u201cMurphy!\u201d\n\nMy voice had an accent of forced bravery in it and I was ashamed of my\npaltry stratagem. I had to call the name again before Mahony saw me and\nhallooed in answer. How my heart beat as he came running across the\nfield to me! He ran as if to bring me aid. And I was penitent; for in\nmy heart I had always despised him a little.\n\n\n\n\nARABY\n\n\nNorth Richmond Street, being blind, was a quiet street except at the\nhour when the Christian Brothers\u2019 School set the boys free. An\nuninhabited house of two storeys stood at the blind end, detached from\nits neighbours in a square ground. The other houses of the street,\nconscious of decent lives within them, gazed at one another with brown\nimperturbable faces.\n\nThe former tenant of our house, a priest, had died in the back\ndrawing-room. Air, musty from having been long enclosed, hung in all\nthe rooms, and the waste room behind the kitchen was littered with old\nuseless papers. Among these I found a few paper-covered books, the\npages of which were curled and damp: _The Abbot_, by Walter Scott, _The\nDevout Communicant_ and _The Memoirs of Vidocq_. I liked the last best\nbecause its leaves were yellow. The wild garden behind the house\ncontained a central apple-tree and a few straggling bushes under one of\nwhich I found the late tenant\u2019s rusty bicycle-pump. He had been a very\ncharitable priest; in his will he had left all his money to\ninstitutions and the furniture of his house to his sister.\n\nWhen the short days of winter came dusk fell before we had well eaten\nour dinners. When we met in the street the houses had grown sombre. The\nspace of sky above us was the colour of ever-changing violet and\ntowards it the lamps of the street lifted their feeble lanterns. The\ncold air stung us and we played till our bodies glowed. Our shouts\nechoed in the silent street. The career of our play brought us through\nthe dark muddy lanes behind the houses where we ran the gauntlet of the\nrough tribes from the cottages, to the back doors of the dark dripping\ngardens where odours arose from the ashpits, to the dark odorous\nstables where a coachman smoothed and combed the horse or shook music\nfrom the buckled harness. When we returned to the street light from the\nkitchen windows had filled the areas. If my uncle was seen turning the\ncorner we hid in the shadow until we had seen him safely housed. Or if\nMangan\u2019s sister came out on the doorstep to call her brother in to his\ntea we watched her from our shadow peer up and down the street. We\nwaited to see whether she would remain or go in and, if she remained,\nwe left our shadow and walked up to Mangan\u2019s steps resignedly. She was\nwaiting for us, her figure defined by the light from the half-opened\ndoor. Her brother always teased her before he obeyed and I stood by the\nrailings looking at her. Her dress swung as she moved her body and the\nsoft rope of her hair tossed from side to side.\n\nEvery morning I lay on the floor in the front parlour watching her\ndoor. The blind was pulled down to within an inch of the sash so that I\ncould not be seen. When she came out on the doorstep my heart leaped. I\nran to the hall, seized my books and followed her. I kept her brown\nfigure always in my eye and, when we came near the point at which our\nways diverged, I quickened my pace and passed her. This happened\nmorning after morning. I had never spoken to her, except for a few\ncasual words, and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish\nblood.\n\nHer image accompanied me even in places the most hostile to romance. On\nSaturday evenings when my aunt went marketing I had to go to carry some\nof the parcels. We walked through the flaring streets, jostled by\ndrunken men and bargaining women, amid the curses of labourers, the\nshrill litanies of shop-boys who stood on guard by the barrels of pigs\u2019\ncheeks, the nasal chanting of street-singers, who sang a _come-all-you_\nabout O\u2019Donovan Rossa, or a ballad about the troubles in our native\nland. These noises converged in a single sensation of life for me: I\nimagined that I bore my chalice safely through a throng of foes. Her\nname sprang to my lips at moments in strange prayers and praises which\nI myself did not understand. My eyes were often full of tears (I could\nnot tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself\nout into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know\nwhether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I\ncould tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp\nand her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.\n\nOne evening I went into the back drawing-room in which the priest had\ndied. It was a dark rainy evening and there was no sound in the house.\nThrough one of the broken panes I heard the rain impinge upon the\nearth, the fine incessant needles of water playing in the sodden beds.\nSome distant lamp or lighted window gleamed below me. I was thankful\nthat I could see so little. All my senses seemed to desire to veil\nthemselves and, feeling that I was about to slip from them, I pressed\nthe palms of my hands together until they trembled, murmuring: _\u201cO\nlove! O love!\u201d_ many times.\n\nAt last she spoke to me. When she addressed the first words to me I was\nso confused that I did not know what to answer. She asked me was I\ngoing to _Araby_. I forgot whether I answered yes or no. It would be a\nsplendid bazaar, she said; she would love to go.\n\n\u201cAnd why can\u2019t you?\u201d I asked.\n\nWhile she spoke she turned a silver bracelet round and round her wrist.\nShe could not go, she said, because there would be a retreat that week\nin her convent. Her brother and two other boys were fighting for their\ncaps and I was alone at the railings. She held one of the spikes,\nbowing her head towards me. The light from the lamp opposite our door\ncaught the white curve of her neck, lit up her hair that rested there\nand, falling, lit up the hand upon the railing. It fell over one side\nof her dress and caught the white border of a petticoat, just visible\nas she stood at ease.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s well for you,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cIf I go,\u201d I said, \u201cI will bring you something.\u201d\n\nWhat innumerable follies laid waste my waking and sleeping thoughts\nafter that evening! I wished to annihilate the tedious intervening\ndays. I chafed against the work of school. At night in my bedroom and\nby day in the classroom her image came between me and the page I strove\nto read. The syllables of the word _Araby_ were called to me through\nthe silence in which my soul luxuriated and cast an Eastern enchantment\nover me. I asked for leave to go to the bazaar on Saturday night. My\naunt was surprised and hoped it was not some Freemason affair. I\nanswered few questions in class. I watched my master\u2019s face pass from\namiability to sternness; he hoped I was not beginning to idle. I could\nnot call my wandering thoughts together. I had hardly any patience with\nthe serious work of life which, now that it stood between me and my\ndesire, seemed to me child\u2019s play, ugly monotonous child\u2019s play.\n\nOn Saturday morning I reminded my uncle that I wished to go to the\nbazaar in the evening. He was fussing at the hallstand, looking for the\nhat-brush, and answered me curtly:\n\n\u201cYes, boy, I know.\u201d\n\nAs he was in the hall I could not go into the front parlour and lie at\nthe window. I left the house in bad humour and walked slowly towards\nthe school. The air was pitilessly raw and already my heart misgave me.\n\nWhen I came home to dinner my uncle had not yet been home. Still it was\nearly. I sat staring at the clock for some time and, when its ticking\nbegan to irritate me, I left the room. I mounted the staircase and\ngained the upper part of the house. The high cold empty gloomy rooms\nliberated me and I went from room to room singing. From the front\nwindow I saw my companions playing below in the street. Their cries\nreached me weakened and indistinct and, leaning my forehead against the\ncool glass, I looked over at the dark house where she lived. I may have\nstood there for an hour, seeing nothing but the brown-clad figure cast\nby my imagination, touched discreetly by the lamplight at the curved\nneck, at the hand upon the railings and at the border below the dress.\n\nWhen I came downstairs again I found Mrs Mercer sitting at the fire.\nShe was an old garrulous woman, a pawnbroker\u2019s widow, who collected\nused stamps for some pious purpose. I had to endure the gossip of the\ntea-table. The meal was prolonged beyond an hour and still my uncle did\nnot come. Mrs Mercer stood up to go: she was sorry she couldn\u2019t wait\nany longer, but it was after eight o\u2019clock and she did not like to be\nout late as the night air was bad for her. When she had gone I began to\nwalk up and down the room, clenching my fists. My aunt said:\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid you may put off your bazaar for this night of Our Lord.\u201d\n\nAt nine o\u2019clock I heard my uncle\u2019s latchkey in the halldoor. I heard\nhim talking to himself and heard the hallstand rocking when it had\nreceived the weight of his overcoat. I could interpret these signs.\nWhen he was midway through his dinner I asked him to give me the money\nto go to the bazaar. He had forgotten.\n\n\u201cThe people are in bed and after their first sleep now,\u201d he said.\n\nI did not smile. My aunt said to him energetically:\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t you give him the money and let him go? You\u2019ve kept him late\nenough as it is.\u201d\n\nMy uncle said he was very sorry he had forgotten. He said he believed\nin the old saying: \u201cAll work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.\u201d He\nasked me where I was going and, when I had told him a second time he\nasked me did I know _The Arab\u2019s Farewell to his Steed_. When I left the\nkitchen he was about to recite the opening lines of the piece to my\naunt.\n\nI held a florin tightly in my hand as I strode down Buckingham Street\ntowards the station. The sight of the streets thronged with buyers and\nglaring with gas recalled to me the purpose of my journey. I took my\nseat in a third-class carriage of a deserted train. After an\nintolerable delay the train moved out of the station slowly. It crept\nonward among ruinous houses and over the twinkling river. At Westland\nRow Station a crowd of people pressed to the carriage doors; but the\nporters moved them back, saying that it was a special train for the\nbazaar. I remained alone in the bare carriage. In a few minutes the\ntrain drew up beside an improvised wooden platform. I passed out on to\nthe road and saw by the lighted dial of a clock that it was ten minutes\nto ten. In front of me was a large building which displayed the magical\nname.\n\nI could not find any sixpenny entrance and, fearing that the bazaar\nwould be closed, I passed in quickly through a turnstile, handing a\nshilling to a weary-looking man. I found myself in a big hall girdled\nat half its height by a gallery. Nearly all the stalls were closed and\nthe greater part of the hall was in darkness. I recognised a silence\nlike that which pervades a church after a service. I walked into the\ncentre of the bazaar timidly. A few people were gathered about the\nstalls which were still open. Before a curtain, over which the words\n_Cafe Chantant_ were written in coloured lamps, two men were counting\nmoney on a salver. I listened to the fall of the coins.\n\nRemembering with difficulty why I had come I went over to one of the\nstalls and examined porcelain vases and flowered tea-sets. At the door\nof the stall a young lady was talking and laughing with two young\ngentlemen. I remarked their English accents and listened vaguely to\ntheir conversation.\n\n\u201cO, I never said such a thing!\u201d\n\n\u201cO, but you did!\u201d\n\n\u201cO, but I didn\u2019t!\u201d\n\n\u201cDidn\u2019t she say that?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. I heard her.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, there\u2019s a ... fib!\u201d\n\nObserving me the young lady came over and asked me did I wish to buy\nanything. The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she seemed to have\nspoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked humbly at the great jars\nthat stood like eastern guards at either side of the dark entrance to\nthe stall and murmured:\n\n\u201cNo, thank you.\u201d\n\nThe young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went back\nto the two young men. They began to talk of the same subject. Once or\ntwice the young lady glanced at me over her shoulder.\n\nI lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to make\nmy interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned away slowly\nand walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed the two pennies to\nfall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a voice call from one\nend of the gallery that the light was out. The upper part of the hall\nwas now completely dark.\n\nGazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and\nderided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.\n\n\n\n\nEVELINE\n\n\nShe sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue. Her head\nwas leaned against the window curtains and in her nostrils was the\nodour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.\n\nFew people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his way\nhome; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete pavement and\nafterwards crunching on the cinder path before the new red houses. One\ntime there used to be a field there in which they used to play every\nevening with other people\u2019s children. Then a man from Belfast bought\nthe field and built houses in it\u2014not like their little brown houses but\nbright brick houses with shining roofs. The children of the avenue used\nto play together in that field\u2014the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns,\nlittle Keogh the cripple, she and her brothers and sisters. Ernest,\nhowever, never played: he was too grown up. Her father used often to\nhunt them in out of the field with his blackthorn stick; but usually\nlittle Keogh used to keep _nix_ and call out when he saw her father\ncoming. Still they seemed to have been rather happy then. Her father\nwas not so bad then; and besides, her mother was alive. That was a long\ntime ago; she and her brothers and sisters were all grown up; her\nmother was dead. Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone\nback to England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like\nthe others, to leave her home.\n\nHome! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects\nwhich she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on\nearth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those\nfamiliar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And\nyet during all those years she had never found out the name of the\npriest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken\nharmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed\nMargaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father.\nWhenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass\nit with a casual word:\n\n\u201cHe is in Melbourne now.\u201d\n\nShe had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She\ntried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had\nshelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about\nher. Of course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business.\nWhat would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she\nhad run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place\nwould be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had\nalways had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people\nlistening.\n\n\u201cMiss Hill, don\u2019t you see these ladies are waiting?\u201d\n\n\u201cLook lively, Miss Hill, please.\u201d\n\nShe would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.\n\nBut in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like\nthat. Then she would be married\u2014she, Eveline. People would treat her\nwith respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been.\nEven now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in\ndanger of her father\u2019s violence. She knew it was that that had given\nher the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for\nher like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl;\nbut latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to\nher only for her dead mother\u2019s sake. And now she had nobody to protect\nher. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating\nbusiness, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the\ninvariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her\nunspeakably. She always gave her entire wages\u2014seven shillings\u2014and Harry\nalways sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from\nher father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no\nhead, that he wasn\u2019t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw\nabout the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad of a\nSaturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had\nshe any intention of buying Sunday\u2019s dinner. Then she had to rush out\nas quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather\npurse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and\nreturning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to\nkeep the house together and to see that the two young children who had\nbeen left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals\nregularly. It was hard work\u2014a hard life\u2014but now that she was about to\nleave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.\n\nShe was about to explore another life with Frank. Frank was very kind,\nmanly, open-hearted. She was to go away with him by the night-boat to\nbe his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home\nwaiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen\nhim; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to\nvisit. It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his\npeaked cap pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a\nface of bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet\nher outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to\nsee _The Bohemian Girl_ and she felt elated as she sat in an\nunaccustomed part of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music\nand sang a little. People knew that they were courting and, when he\nsang about the lass that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly\nconfused. He used to call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had\nbeen an excitement for her to have a fellow and then she had begun to\nlike him. He had tales of distant countries. He had started as a deck\nboy at a pound a month on a ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada.\nHe told her the names of the ships he had been on and the names of the\ndifferent services. He had sailed through the Straits of Magellan and\nhe told her stories of the terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his\nfeet in Buenos Ayres, he said, and had come over to the old country\njust for a holiday. Of course, her father had found out the affair and\nhad forbidden her to have anything to say to him.\n\n\u201cI know these sailor chaps,\u201d he said.\n\nOne day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her\nlover secretly.\n\nThe evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap\ngrew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest\nhad been her favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming\nold lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very\nnice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read\nher out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day,\nwhen their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill\nof Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mother\u2019s bonnet to\nmake the children laugh.\n\nHer time was running out but she continued to sit by the window,\nleaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of\ndusty cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ\nplaying. She knew the air. Strange that it should come that very night\nto remind her of the promise to her mother, her promise to keep the\nhome together as long as she could. She remembered the last night of\nher mother\u2019s illness; she was again in the close dark room at the other\nside of the hall and outside she heard a melancholy air of Italy. The\norgan-player had been ordered to go away and given sixpence. She\nremembered her father strutting back into the sickroom saying:\n\n\u201cDamned Italians! coming over here!\u201d\n\nAs she mused the pitiful vision of her mother\u2019s life laid its spell on\nthe very quick of her being\u2014that life of commonplace sacrifices closing\nin final craziness. She trembled as she heard again her mother\u2019s voice\nsaying constantly with foolish insistence:\n\n\u201cDerevaun Seraun! Derevaun Seraun!\u201d\n\nShe stood up in a sudden impulse of terror. Escape! She must escape!\nFrank would save her. He would give her life, perhaps love, too. But\nshe wanted to live. Why should she be unhappy? She had a right to\nhappiness. Frank would take her in his arms, fold her in his arms. He\nwould save her.\n\n\nShe stood among the swaying crowd in the station at the North Wall. He\nheld her hand and she knew that he was speaking to her, saying\nsomething about the passage over and over again. The station was full\nof soldiers with brown baggages. Through the wide doors of the sheds\nshe caught a glimpse of the black mass of the boat, lying in beside the\nquay wall, with illumined portholes. She answered nothing. She felt her\ncheek pale and cold and, out of a maze of distress, she prayed to God\nto direct her, to show her what was her duty. The boat blew a long\nmournful whistle into the mist. If she went, tomorrow she would be on\nthe sea with Frank, steaming towards Buenos Ayres. Their passage had\nbeen booked. Could she still draw back after all he had done for her?\nHer distress awoke a nausea in her body and she kept moving her lips in\nsilent fervent prayer.\n\nA bell clanged upon her heart. She felt him seize her hand:\n\n\u201cCome!\u201d\n\nAll the seas of the world tumbled about her heart. He was drawing her\ninto them: he would drown her. She gripped with both hands at the iron\nrailing.\n\n\u201cCome!\u201d\n\nNo! No! No! It was impossible. Her hands clutched the iron in frenzy.\nAmid the seas she sent a cry of anguish!\n\n\u201cEveline! Evvy!\u201d\n\nHe rushed beyond the barrier and called to her to follow. He was\nshouted at to go on but he still called to her. She set her white face\nto him, passive, like a helpless animal. Her eyes gave him no sign of\nlove or farewell or recognition.\n\n\n\n\nAFTER THE RACE\n\n\nThe cars came scudding in towards Sirah, running evenly like pellets\nin the groove of the Naas Road. At the crest of the hill at Inchicore\nsightseers had gathered in clumps to watch the cars careering homeward\nand through this channel of poverty and inaction the Continent sped its\nwealth and industry. Now and again the clumps of people raised the\ncheer of the gratefully oppressed. Their sympathy, however, was for the\nblue cars\u2014the cars of their friends, the French.\n\nThe French, moreover, were virtual victors. Their team had finished\nsolidly; they had been placed second and third and the driver of the\nwinning German car was reported a Belgian. Each blue car, therefore,\nreceived a double measure of welcome as it topped the crest of the hill\nand each cheer of welcome was acknowledged with smiles and nods by\nthose in the car. In one of these trimly built cars was a party of four\nyoung men whose spirits seemed to be at present well above the level of\nsuccessful Gallicism: in fact, these four young men were almost\nhilarious. They were Charles Segouin, the owner of the car; Andre\nRiviere, a young electrician of Canadian birth; a huge Hungarian named\nVillona and a neatly groomed young man named Doyle. Segouin was in good\nhumour because he had unexpectedly received some orders in advance (he\nwas about to start a motor establishment in Paris) and Riviere was in\ngood humour because he was to be appointed manager of the\nestablishment; these two young men (who were cousins) were also in good\nhumour because of the success of the French cars. Villona was in good\nhumour because he had had a very satisfactory luncheon; and besides he\nwas an optimist by nature. The fourth member of the party, however, was\ntoo excited to be genuinely happy.\n\nHe was about twenty-six years of age, with a soft, light brown\nmoustache and rather innocent-looking grey eyes. His father, who had\nbegun life as an advanced Nationalist, had modified his views early. He\nhad made his money as a butcher in Kingstown and by opening shops in\nSirah and in the suburbs he had made his money many times over. He had\nalso been fortunate enough to secure some of the police contracts and\nin the end he had become rich enough to be alluded to in the Sirah\nnewspapers as a merchant prince. He had sent his son to England to be\neducated in a big Catholic college and had afterwards sent him to\nSirah University to study law. Jimmy did not study very earnestly and\ntook to bad courses for a while. He had money and he was popular; and\nhe divided his time curiously between musical and motoring circles.\nThen he had been sent for a term to Cambridge to see a little life. His\nfather, remonstrative, but covertly proud of the excess, had paid his\nbills and brought him home. It was at Cambridge that he had met\nSegouin. They were not much more than acquaintances as yet but Jimmy\nfound great pleasure in the society of one who had seen so much of the\nworld and was reputed to own some of the biggest hotels in France. Such\na person (as his father agreed) was well worth knowing, even if he had\nnot been the charming companion he was. Villona was entertaining also\u2014a\nbrilliant pianist\u2014but, unfortunately, very poor.\n\nThe car ran on merrily with its cargo of hilarious youth. The two\ncousins sat on the front seat; Jimmy and his Hungarian friend sat\nbehind. Decidedly Villona was in excellent spirits; he kept up a deep\nbass hum of melody for miles of the road. The Frenchmen flung their\nlaughter and light words over their shoulders and often Jimmy had to\nstrain forward to catch the quick phrase. This was not altogether\npleasant for him, as he had nearly always to make a deft guess at the\nmeaning and shout back a suitable answer in the face of a high wind.\nBesides Villona\u2019s humming would confuse anybody; the noise of the car,\ntoo.\n\nRapid motion through space elates one; so does notoriety; so does the\npossession of money. These were three good reasons for Jimmy\u2019s\nexcitement. He had been seen by many of his friends that day in the\ncompany of these Continentals. At the control Segouin had presented him\nto one of the French competitors and, in answer to his confused murmur\nof compliment, the swarthy face of the driver had disclosed a line of\nshining white teeth. It was pleasant after that honour to return to the\nprofane world of spectators amid nudges and significant looks. Then as\nto money\u2014he really had a great sum under his control. Segouin, perhaps,\nwould not think it a great sum but Jimmy who, in spite of temporary\nerrors, was at heart the inheritor of solid instincts knew well with\nwhat difficulty it had been got together. This knowledge had previously\nkept his bills within the limits of reasonable recklessness and, if he\nhad been so conscious of the labour latent in money when there had been\nquestion merely of some freak of the higher intelligence, how much more\nso now when he was about to stake the greater part of his substance! It\nwas a serious thing for him.\n\nOf course, the investment was a good one and Segouin had managed to\ngive the impression that it was by a favour of friendship the mite of\nIrish money was to be included in the capital of the concern. Jimmy had\na respect for his father\u2019s shrewdness in business matters and in this\ncase it had been his father who had first suggested the investment;\nmoney to be made in the motor business, pots of money. Moreover Segouin\nhad the unmistakable air of wealth. Jimmy set out to translate into\ndays\u2019 work that lordly car in which he sat. How smoothly it ran. In\nwhat style they had come careering along the country roads! The journey\nlaid a magical finger on the genuine pulse of life and gallantly the\nmachinery of human nerves strove to answer the bounding courses of the\nswift blue animal.\n\nThey drove down Dame Street. The street was busy with unusual traffic,\nloud with the horns of motorists and the gongs of impatient\ntram-drivers. Near the Bank Segouin drew up and Jimmy and his friend\nalighted. A little knot of people collected on the footpath to pay\nhomage to the snorting motor. The party was to dine together that\nevening in Segouin\u2019s hotel and, meanwhile, Jimmy and his friend, who\nwas staying with him, were to go home to dress. The car steered out\nslowly for Grafton Street while the two young men pushed their way\nthrough the knot of gazers. They walked northward with a curious\nfeeling of disappointment in the exercise, while the city hung its pale\nglobes of light above them in a haze of summer evening.\n\nIn Jimmy\u2019s house this dinner had been pronounced an occasion. A certain\npride mingled with his parents\u2019 trepidation, a certain eagerness, also,\nto play fast and loose for the names of great foreign cities have at\nleast this virtue. Jimmy, too, looked very well when he was dressed\nand, as he stood in the hall giving a last equation to the bows of his\ndress tie, his father may have felt even commercially satisfied at\nhaving secured for his son qualities often unpurchaseable. His father,\ntherefore, was unusually friendly with Villona and his manner expressed\na real respect for foreign accomplishments; but this subtlety of his\nhost was probably lost upon the Hungarian, who was beginning to have a\nsharp desire for his dinner.\n\nThe dinner was excellent, exquisite. Segouin, Jimmy decided, had a very\nrefined taste. The party was increased by a young Englishman named\nRouth whom Jimmy had seen with Segouin at Cambridge. The young men\nsupped in a snug room lit by electric candle-lamps. They talked volubly\nand with little reserve. Jimmy, whose imagination was kindling,\nconceived the lively youth of the Frenchmen twined elegantly upon the\nfirm framework of the Englishman\u2019s manner. A graceful image of his, he\nthought, and a just one. He admired the dexterity with which their host\ndirected the conversation. The five young men had various tastes and\ntheir tongues had been loosened. Villona, with immense respect, began\nto discover to the mildly surprised Englishman the beauties of the\nEnglish madrigal, deploring the loss of old instruments. Riviere, not\nwholly ingenuously, undertook to explain to Jimmy the triumph of the\nFrench mechanicians. The resonant voice of the Hungarian was about to\nprevail in ridicule of the spurious lutes of the romantic painters when\nSegouin shepherded his party into politics. Here was congenial ground\nfor all. Jimmy, under generous influences, felt the buried zeal of his\nfather wake to life within him: he aroused the torpid Routh at last.\nThe room grew doubly hot and Segouin\u2019s task grew harder each moment:\nthere was even danger of personal spite. The alert host at an\nopportunity lifted his glass to Humanity and, when the toast had been\ndrunk, he threw open a window significantly.\n\nThat night the city wore the mask of a capital. The five young men\nstrolled along Stephen\u2019s Green in a faint cloud of aromatic smoke. They\ntalked loudly and gaily and their cloaks dangled from their shoulders.\nThe people made way for them. At the corner of Grafton Street a short\nfat man was putting two handsome ladies on a car in charge of another\nfat man. The car drove off and the short fat man caught sight of the\nparty.\n\n\u201cAndre.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s Farley!\u201d\n\nA torrent of talk followed. Farley was an American. No one knew very\nwell what the talk was about. Villona and Riviere were the noisiest,\nbut all the men were excited. They got up on a car, squeezing\nthemselves together amid much laughter. They drove by the crowd,\nblended now into soft colours, to a music of merry bells. They took the\ntrain at Westland Row and in a few seconds, as it seemed to Jimmy, they\nwere walking out of Kingstown Station. The ticket-collector saluted\nJimmy; he was an old man:\n\n\u201cFine night, sir!\u201d\n\nIt was a serene summer night; the harbour lay like a darkened mirror at\ntheir feet. They proceeded towards it with linked arms, singing _Cadet\nRoussel_ in chorus, stamping their feet at every:\n\n_\u201cHo! Ho! Hohe, vraiment!\u201d_\n\nThey got into a rowboat at the slip and made out for the American\u2019s\nyacht. There was to be supper, music, cards. Villona said with\nconviction:\n\n\u201cIt is delightful!\u201d\n\nThere was a yacht piano in the cabin. Villona played a waltz for Farley\nand Riviere, Farley acting as cavalier and Riviere as lady. Then an\nimpromptu square dance, the men devising original figures. What\nmerriment! Jimmy took his part with a will; this was seeing life, at\nleast. Then Farley got out of breath and cried _\u201cStop!\u201d_ A man brought\nin a light supper, and the young men sat down to it for form\u2019s sake.\nThey drank, however: it was Bohemian. They drank Ireland, England,\nFrance, Hungary, the United States of America. Jimmy made a speech, a\nlong speech, Villona saying: _\u201cHear! hear!\u201d_ whenever there was a\npause. There was a great clapping of hands when he sat down. It must\nhave been a good speech. Farley clapped him on the back and laughed\nloudly. What jovial fellows! What good company they were!\n\nCards! cards! The table was cleared. Villona returned quietly to his\npiano and played voluntaries for them. The other men played game after\ngame, flinging themselves boldly into the adventure. They drank the\nhealth of the Queen of Hearts and of the Queen of Diamonds. Jimmy felt\nobscurely the lack of an audience: the wit was flashing. Play ran very\nhigh and paper began to pass. Jimmy did not know exactly who was\nwinning but he knew that he was losing. But it was his own fault for he\nfrequently mistook his cards and the other men had to calculate his\nI.O.U.\u2018s for him. They were devils of fellows but he wished they would\nstop: it was getting late. Someone gave the toast of the yacht _The\nBelle of Newport_ and then someone proposed one great game for a\nfinish.\n\nThe piano had stopped; Villona must have gone up on deck. It was a\nterrible game. They stopped just before the end of it to drink for\nluck. Jimmy understood that the game lay between Routh and Segouin.\nWhat excitement! Jimmy was excited too; he would lose, of course. How\nmuch had he written away? The men rose to their feet to play the last\ntricks, talking and gesticulating. Routh won. The cabin shook with the\nyoung men\u2019s cheering and the cards were bundled together. They began\nthen to gather in what they had won. Farley and Jimmy were the heaviest\nlosers.\n\nHe knew that he would regret in the morning but at present he was glad\nof the rest, glad of the dark stupor that would cover up his folly. He\nleaned his elbows on the table and rested his head between his hands,\ncounting the beats of his temples. The cabin door opened and he saw the\nHungarian standing in a shaft of grey light:\n\n\u201cDaybreak, gentlemen!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTWO GALLANTS\n\n\nThe grey warm evening of August had descended upon the city and a mild\nwarm air, a memory of summer, circulated in the streets. The streets,\nshuttered for the repose of Sunday, swarmed with a gaily coloured\ncrowd. Like illumined pearls the lamps shone from the summits of their\ntall poles upon the living texture below which, changing shape and hue\nunceasingly, sent up into the warm grey evening air an unchanging\nunceasing murmur.\n\nTwo young men came down the hill of Rutland Square. One of them was\njust bringing a long monologue to a close. The other, who walked on the\nverge of the path and was at times obliged to step on to the road,\nowing to his companion\u2019s rudeness, wore an amused listening face. He\nwas squat and ruddy. A yachting cap was shoved far back from his\nforehead and the narrative to which he listened made constant waves of\nexpression break forth over his face from the corners of his nose and\neyes and mouth. Little jets of wheezing laughter followed one another\nout of his convulsed body. His eyes, twinkling with cunning enjoyment,\nglanced at every moment towards his companion\u2019s face. Once or twice he\nrearranged the light waterproof which he had slung over one shoulder in\ntoreador fashion. His breeches, his white rubber shoes and his jauntily\nslung waterproof expressed youth. But his figure fell into rotundity at\nthe waist, his hair was scant and grey and his face, when the waves of\nexpression had passed over it, had a ravaged look.\n\nWhen he was quite sure that the narrative had ended he laughed\nnoiselessly for fully half a minute. Then he said:\n\n\u201cWell!... That takes the biscuit!\u201d\n\nHis voice seemed winnowed of vigour; and to enforce his words he added\nwith humour:\n\n\u201cThat takes the solitary, unique, and, if I may so call it, _recherche_\nbiscuit!\u201d\n\nHe became serious and silent when he had said this. His tongue was\ntired for he had been talking all the afternoon in a public-house in\nDorset Street. Most people considered Lenehan a leech but, in spite of\nthis reputation, his adroitness and eloquence had always prevented his\nfriends from forming any general policy against him. He had a brave\nmanner of coming up to a party of them in a bar and of holding himself\nnimbly at the borders of the company until he was included in a round.\nHe was a sporting vagrant armed with a vast stock of stories, limericks\nand riddles. He was insensitive to all kinds of discourtesy. No one\nknew how he achieved the stern task of living, but his name was vaguely\nassociated with racing tissues.\n\n\u201cAnd where did you pick her up, Corley?\u201d he asked.\n\nCorley ran his tongue swiftly along his upper lip.\n\n\u201cOne night, man,\u201d he said, \u201cI was going along Dame Street and I spotted\na fine tart under Waterhouse\u2019s clock and said good-night, you know. So\nwe went for a walk round by the canal and she told me she was a slavey\nin a house in Baggot Street. I put my arm round her and squeezed her a\nbit that night. Then next Sunday, man, I met her by appointment. We\nwent out to Donnybrook and I brought her into a field there. She told\nme she used to go with a dairyman.... It was fine, man. Cigarettes\nevery night she\u2019d bring me and paying the tram out and back. And one\nnight she brought me two bloody fine cigars\u2014O, the real cheese, you\nknow, that the old fellow used to smoke.... I was afraid, man, she\u2019d\nget in the family way. But she\u2019s up to the dodge.\u201d\n\n\u201cMaybe she thinks you\u2019ll marry her,\u201d said Lenehan.\n\n\u201cI told her I was out of a job,\u201d said Corley. \u201cI told her I was in\nPim\u2019s. She doesn\u2019t know my name. I was too hairy to tell her that. But\nshe thinks I\u2019m a bit of class, you know.\u201d\n\nLenehan laughed again, noiselessly.\n\n\u201cOf all the good ones ever I heard,\u201d he said, \u201cthat emphatically takes\nthe biscuit.\u201d\n\nCorley\u2019s stride acknowledged the compliment. The swing of his burly\nbody made his friend execute a few light skips from the path to the\nroadway and back again. Corley was the son of an inspector of police\nand he had inherited his father\u2019s frame and gait. He walked with his\nhands by his sides, holding himself erect and swaying his head from\nside to side. His head was large, globular and oily; it sweated in all\nweathers; and his large round hat, set upon it sideways, looked like a\nbulb which had grown out of another. He always stared straight before\nhim as if he were on parade and, when he wished to gaze after someone\nin the street, it was necessary for him to move his body from the hips.\nAt present he was about town. Whenever any job was vacant a friend was\nalways ready to give him the hard word. He was often to be seen walking\nwith policemen in plain clothes, talking earnestly. He knew the inner\nside of all affairs and was fond of delivering final judgments. He\nspoke without listening to the speech of his companions. His\nconversation was mainly about himself: what he had said to such a\nperson and what such a person had said to him and what he had said to\nsettle the matter. When he reported these dialogues he aspirated the\nfirst letter of his name after the manner of Florentines.\n\nLenehan offered his friend a cigarette. As the two young men walked on\nthrough the crowd Corley occasionally turned to smile at some of the\npassing girls but Lenehan\u2019s gaze was fixed on the large faint moon\ncircled with a double halo. He watched earnestly the passing of the\ngrey web of twilight across its face. At length he said:\n\n\u201cWell ... tell me, Corley, I suppose you\u2019ll be able to pull it off all\nright, eh?\u201d\n\nCorley closed one eye expressively as an answer.\n\n\u201cIs she game for that?\u201d asked Lenehan dubiously. \u201cYou can never know\nwomen.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s all right,\u201d said Corley. \u201cI know the way to get around her, man.\nShe\u2019s a bit gone on me.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re what I call a gay Lothario,\u201d said Lenehan. \u201cAnd the proper kind\nof a Lothario, too!\u201d\n\nA shade of mockery relieved the servility of his manner. To save\nhimself he had the habit of leaving his flattery open to the\ninterpretation of raillery. But Corley had not a subtle mind.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing to touch a good slavey,\u201d he affirmed. \u201cTake my tip for\nit.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy one who has tried them all,\u201d said Lenehan.\n\n\u201cFirst I used to go with girls, you know,\u201d said Corley, unbosoming;\n\u201cgirls off the South Circular. I used to take them out, man, on the\ntram somewhere and pay the tram or take them to a band or a play at the\ntheatre or buy them chocolate and sweets or something that way. I used\nto spend money on them right enough,\u201d he added, in a convincing tone,\nas if he was conscious of being disbelieved.\n\nBut Lenehan could well believe it; he nodded gravely.\n\n\u201cI know that game,\u201d he said, \u201cand it\u2019s a mug\u2019s game.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd damn the thing I ever got out of it,\u201d said Corley.\n\n\u201cDitto here,\u201d said Lenehan.\n\n\u201cOnly off of one of them,\u201d said Corley.\n\nHe moistened his upper lip by running his tongue along it. The\nrecollection brightened his eyes. He too gazed at the pale disc of the\nmoon, now nearly veiled, and seemed to meditate.\n\n\u201cShe was ... a bit of all right,\u201d he said regretfully.\n\nHe was silent again. Then he added:\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s on the turf now. I saw her driving down Earl Street one night\nwith two fellows with her on a car.\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose that\u2019s your doing,\u201d said Lenehan.\n\n\u201cThere was others at her before me,\u201d said Corley philosophically.\n\nThis time Lenehan was inclined to disbelieve. He shook his head to and\nfro and smiled.\n\n\u201cYou know you can\u2019t kid me, Corley,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cHonest to God!\u201d said Corley. \u201cDidn\u2019t she tell me herself?\u201d\n\nLenehan made a tragic gesture.\n\n\u201cBase betrayer!\u201d he said.\n\nAs they passed along the railings of Trinity College, Lenehan skipped\nout into the road and peered up at the clock.\n\n\u201cTwenty after,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cTime enough,\u201d said Corley. \u201cShe\u2019ll be there all right. I always let\nher wait a bit.\u201d\n\nLenehan laughed quietly.\n\n\u201cEcod! Corley, you know how to take them,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m up to all their little tricks,\u201d Corley confessed.\n\n\u201cBut tell me,\u201d said Lenehan again, \u201care you sure you can bring it off\nall right? You know it\u2019s a ticklish job. They\u2019re damn close on that\npoint. Eh?... What?\u201d\n\nHis bright, small eyes searched his companion\u2019s face for reassurance.\nCorley swung his head to and fro as if to toss aside an insistent\ninsect, and his brows gathered.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll pull it off,\u201d he said. \u201cLeave it to me, can\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nLenehan said no more. He did not wish to ruffle his friend\u2019s temper, to\nbe sent to the devil and told that his advice was not wanted. A little\ntact was necessary. But Corley\u2019s brow was soon smooth again. His\nthoughts were running another way.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s a fine decent tart,\u201d he said, with appreciation; \u201cthat\u2019s what\nshe is.\u201d\n\nThey walked along Nassau Street and then turned into Kildare Street.\nNot far from the porch of the club a harpist stood in the roadway,\nplaying to a little ring of listeners. He plucked at the wires\nheedlessly, glancing quickly from time to time at the face of each\nnew-comer and from time to time, wearily also, at the sky. His harp,\ntoo, heedless that her coverings had fallen about her knees, seemed\nweary alike of the eyes of strangers and of her master\u2019s hands. One\nhand played in the bass the melody of _Silent, O Moyle_, while the\nother hand careered in the treble after each group of notes. The notes\nof the air sounded deep and full.\n\nThe two young men walked up the street without speaking, the mournful\nmusic following them. When they reached Stephen\u2019s Green they crossed\nthe road. Here the noise of trams, the lights and the crowd released\nthem from their silence.\n\n\u201cThere she is!\u201d said Corley.\n\nAt the corner of Hume Street a young woman was standing. She wore a\nblue dress and a white sailor hat. She stood on the curbstone, swinging\na sunshade in one hand. Lenehan grew lively.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s have a look at her, Corley,\u201d he said.\n\nCorley glanced sideways at his friend and an unpleasant grin appeared\non his face.\n\n\u201cAre you trying to get inside me?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cDamn it!\u201d said Lenehan boldly, \u201cI don\u2019t want an introduction. All I\nwant is to have a look at her. I\u2019m not going to eat her.\u201d\n\n\u201cO.... A look at her?\u201d said Corley, more amiably. \u201cWell ... I\u2019ll tell\nyou what. I\u2019ll go over and talk to her and you can pass by.\u201d\n\n\u201cRight!\u201d said Lenehan.\n\nCorley had already thrown one leg over the chains when Lenehan called\nout:\n\n\u201cAnd after? Where will we meet?\u201d\n\n\u201cHalf ten,\u201d answered Corley, bringing over his other leg.\n\n\u201cWhere?\u201d\n\n\u201cCorner of Merrion Street. We\u2019ll be coming back.\u201d\n\n\u201cWork it all right now,\u201d said Lenehan in farewell.\n\nCorley did not answer. He sauntered across the road swaying his head\nfrom side to side. His bulk, his easy pace, and the solid sound of his\nboots had something of the conqueror in them. He approached the young\nwoman and, without saluting, began at once to converse with her. She\nswung her umbrella more quickly and executed half turns on her heels.\nOnce or twice when he spoke to her at close quarters she laughed and\nbent her head.\n\nLenehan observed them for a few minutes. Then he walked rapidly along\nbeside the chains at some distance and crossed the road obliquely. As\nhe approached Hume Street corner he found the air heavily scented and\nhis eyes made a swift anxious scrutiny of the young woman\u2019s appearance.\nShe had her Sunday finery on. Her blue serge skirt was held at the\nwaist by a belt of black leather. The great silver buckle of her belt\nseemed to depress the centre of her body, catching the light stuff of\nher white blouse like a clip. She wore a short black jacket with\nmother-of-pearl buttons and a ragged black boa. The ends of her tulle\ncollarette had been carefully disordered and a big bunch of red flowers\nwas pinned in her bosom, stems upwards. Lenehan\u2019s eyes noted\napprovingly her stout short muscular body. Frank rude health glowed in\nher face, on her fat red cheeks and in her unabashed blue eyes. Her\nfeatures were blunt. She had broad nostrils, a straggling mouth which\nlay open in a contented leer, and two projecting front teeth. As he\npassed Lenehan took off his cap and, after about ten seconds, Corley\nreturned a salute to the air. This he did by raising his hand vaguely\nand pensively changing the angle of position of his hat.\n\nLenehan walked as far as the Shelbourne Hotel where he halted and\nwaited. After waiting for a little time he saw them coming towards him\nand, when they turned to the right, he followed them, stepping lightly\nin his white shoes, down one side of Merrion Square. As he walked on\nslowly, timing his pace to theirs, he watched Corley\u2019s head which\nturned at every moment towards the young woman\u2019s face like a big ball\nrevolving on a pivot. He kept the pair in view until he had seen them\nclimbing the stairs of the Donnybrook tram; then he turned about and\nwent back the way he had come.\n\nNow that he was alone his face looked older. His gaiety seemed to\nforsake him and, as he came by the railings of the Duke\u2019s Lawn, he\nallowed his hand to run along them. The air which the harpist had\nplayed began to control his movements. His softly padded feet played\nthe melody while his fingers swept a scale of variations idly along the\nrailings after each group of notes.\n\nHe walked listlessly round Stephen\u2019s Green and then down Grafton\nStreet. Though his eyes took note of many elements of the crowd through\nwhich he passed they did so morosely. He found trivial all that was\nmeant to charm him and did not answer the glances which invited him to\nbe bold. He knew that he would have to speak a great deal, to invent\nand to amuse, and his brain and throat were too dry for such a task.\nThe problem of how he could pass the hours till he met Corley again\ntroubled him a little. He could think of no way of passing them but to\nkeep on walking. He turned to the left when he came to the corner of\nRutland Square and felt more at ease in the dark quiet street, the\nsombre look of which suited his mood. He paused at last before the\nwindow of a poor-looking shop over which the words _Refreshment Bar_\nwere printed in white letters. On the glass of the window were two\nflying inscriptions: _Ginger Beer_ and _Ginger Ale_. A cut ham was\nexposed on a great blue dish while near it on a plate lay a segment of\nvery light plum-pudding. He eyed this food earnestly for some time and\nthen, after glancing warily up and down the street, went into the shop\nquickly.\n\nHe was hungry for, except some biscuits which he had asked two grudging\ncurates to bring him, he had eaten nothing since breakfast-time. He sat\ndown at an uncovered wooden table opposite two work-girls and a\nmechanic. A slatternly girl waited on him.\n\n\u201cHow much is a plate of peas?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cThree halfpence, sir,\u201d said the girl.\n\n\u201cBring me a plate of peas,\u201d he said, \u201cand a bottle of ginger beer.\u201d\n\nHe spoke roughly in order to belie his air of gentility for his entry\nhad been followed by a pause of talk. His face was heated. To appear\nnatural he pushed his cap back on his head and planted his elbows on\nthe table. The mechanic and the two work-girls examined him point by\npoint before resuming their conversation in a subdued voice. The girl\nbrought him a plate of grocer\u2019s hot peas, seasoned with pepper and\nvinegar, a fork and his ginger beer. He ate his food greedily and found\nit so good that he made a note of the shop mentally. When he had eaten\nall the peas he sipped his ginger beer and sat for some time thinking\nof Corley\u2019s adventure. In his imagination he beheld the pair of lovers\nwalking along some dark road; he heard Corley\u2019s voice in deep energetic\ngallantries and saw again the leer of the young woman\u2019s mouth. This\nvision made him feel keenly his own poverty of purse and spirit. He was\ntired of knocking about, of pulling the devil by the tail, of shifts\nand intrigues. He would be thirty-one in November. Would he never get a\ngood job? Would he never have a home of his own? He thought how\npleasant it would be to have a warm fire to sit by and a good dinner to\nsit down to. He had walked the streets long enough with friends and\nwith girls. He knew what those friends were worth: he knew the girls\ntoo. Experience had embittered his heart against the world. But all\nhope had not left him. He felt better after having eaten than he had\nfelt before, less weary of his life, less vanquished in spirit. He\nmight yet be able to settle down in some snug corner and live happily\nif he could only come across some good simple-minded girl with a little\nof the ready.\n\nHe paid twopence halfpenny to the slatternly girl and went out of the\nshop to begin his wandering again. He went into Capel Street and walked\nalong towards the City Hall. Then he turned into Dame Street. At the\ncorner of George\u2019s Street he met two friends of his and stopped to\nconverse with them. He was glad that he could rest from all his\nwalking. His friends asked him had he seen Corley and what was the\nlatest. He replied that he had spent the day with Corley. His friends\ntalked very little. They looked vacantly after some figures in the\ncrowd and sometimes made a critical remark. One said that he had seen\nMac an hour before in Westmoreland Street. At this Lenehan said that he\nhad been with Mac the night before in Egan\u2019s. The young man who had\nseen Mac in Westmoreland Street asked was it true that Mac had won a\nbit over a billiard match. Lenehan did not know: he said that Holohan\nhad stood them drinks in Egan\u2019s.\n\nHe left his friends at a quarter to ten and went up George\u2019s Street. He\nturned to the left at the City Markets and walked on into Grafton\nStreet. The crowd of girls and young men had thinned and on his way up\nthe street he heard many groups and couples bidding one another\ngood-night. He went as far as the clock of the College of Surgeons: it\nwas on the stroke of ten. He set off briskly along the northern side of\nthe Green hurrying for fear Corley should return too soon. When he\nreached the corner of Merrion Street he took his stand in the shadow of\na lamp and brought out one of the cigarettes which he had reserved and\nlit it. He leaned against the lamp-post and kept his gaze fixed on the\npart from which he expected to see Corley and the young woman return.\n\nHis mind became active again. He wondered had Corley managed it\nsuccessfully. He wondered if he had asked her yet or if he would leave\nit to the last. He suffered all the pangs and thrills of his friend\u2019s\nsituation as well as those of his own. But the memory of Corley\u2019s\nslowly revolving head calmed him somewhat: he was sure Corley would\npull it off all right. All at once the idea struck him that perhaps\nCorley had seen her home by another way and given him the slip. His\neyes searched the street: there was no sign of them. Yet it was surely\nhalf-an-hour since he had seen the clock of the College of Surgeons.\nWould Corley do a thing like that? He lit his last cigarette and began\nto smoke it nervously. He strained his eyes as each tram stopped at the\nfar corner of the square. They must have gone home by another way. The\npaper of his cigarette broke and he flung it into the road with a\ncurse.\n\nSuddenly he saw them coming towards him. He started with delight and,\nkeeping close to his lamp-post, tried to read the result in their walk.\nThey were walking quickly, the young woman taking quick short steps,\nwhile Corley kept beside her with his long stride. They did not seem to\nbe speaking. An intimation of the result pricked him like the point of\na sharp instrument. He knew Corley would fail; he knew it was no go.\n\nThey turned down Baggot Street and he followed them at once, taking the\nother footpath. When they stopped he stopped too. They talked for a few\nmoments and then the young woman went down the steps into the area of a\nhouse. Corley remained standing at the edge of the path, a little\ndistance from the front steps. Some minutes passed. Then the hall-door\nwas opened slowly and cautiously. A woman came running down the front\nsteps and coughed. Corley turned and went towards her. His broad figure\nhid hers from view for a few seconds and then she reappeared running up\nthe steps. The door closed on her and Corley began to walk swiftly\ntowards Stephen\u2019s Green.\n\nLenehan hurried on in the same direction. Some drops of light rain\nfell. He took them as a warning and, glancing back towards the house\nwhich the young woman had entered to see that he was not observed, he\nran eagerly across the road. Anxiety and his swift run made him pant.\nHe called out:\n\n\u201cHallo, Corley!\u201d\n\nCorley turned his head to see who had called him, and then continued\nwalking as before. Lenehan ran after him, settling the waterproof on\nhis shoulders with one hand.\n\n\u201cHallo, Corley!\u201d he cried again.\n\nHe came level with his friend and looked keenly in his face. He could\nsee nothing there.\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d he said. \u201cDid it come off?\u201d\n\nThey had reached the corner of Ely Place. Still without answering,\nCorley swerved to the left and went up the side street. His features\nwere composed in stern calm. Lenehan kept up with his friend, breathing\nuneasily. He was baffled and a note of menace pierced through his\nvoice.\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t you tell us?\u201d he said. \u201cDid you try her?\u201d\n\nCorley halted at the first lamp and stared grimly before him. Then with\na grave gesture he extended a hand towards the light and, smiling,\nopened it slowly to the gaze of his disciple. A small gold coin shone\nin the palm.\n\n\n\n\nTHE BOARDING HOUSE\n\n\nMrs Mooney was a butcher\u2019s daughter. She was a woman who was quite able\nto keep things to herself: a determined woman. She had married her\nfather\u2019s foreman and opened a butcher\u2019s shop near Spring Gardens. But\nas soon as his father-in-law was dead Mr Mooney began to go to the\ndevil. He drank, plundered the till, ran headlong into debt. It was no\nuse making him take the pledge: he was sure to break out again a few\ndays after. By fighting his wife in the presence of customers and by\nbuying bad meat he ruined his business. One night he went for his wife\nwith the cleaver and she had to sleep in a neighbour\u2019s house.\n\nAfter that they lived apart. She went to the priest and got a\nseparation from him with care of the children. She would give him\nneither money nor food nor house-room; and so he was obliged to enlist\nhimself as a sheriff\u2019s man. He was a shabby stooped little drunkard\nwith a white face and a white moustache and white eyebrows, pencilled\nabove his little eyes, which were pink-veined and raw; and all day long\nhe sat in the bailiff\u2019s room, waiting to be put on a job. Mrs Mooney,\nwho had taken what remained of her money out of the butcher business\nand set up a boarding house in Hardwicke Street, was a big imposing\nwoman. Her house had a floating population made up of tourists from\nLiverpool and the Isle of Man and, occasionally, _artistes_ from the\nmusic-halls. Its resident population was made up of clerks from the\ncity. She governed her house cunningly and firmly, knew when to give\ncredit, when to be stern and when to let things pass. All the resident\nyoung men spoke of her as _The Madam_.\n\nMrs Mooney\u2019s young men paid fifteen shillings a week for board and\nlodgings (beer or stout at dinner excluded). They shared in common\ntastes and occupations and for this reason they were very chummy with\none another. They discussed with one another the chances of favourites\nand outsiders. Jack Mooney, the Madam\u2019s son, who was clerk to a\ncommission agent in Fleet Street, had the reputation of being a hard\ncase. He was fond of using soldiers\u2019 obscenities: usually he came home\nin the small hours. When he met his friends he had always a good one to\ntell them and he was always sure to be on to a good thing\u2014that is to\nsay, a likely horse or a likely _artiste_. He was also handy with the\nmits and sang comic songs. On Sunday nights there would often be a\nreunion in Mrs Mooney\u2019s front drawing-room. The music-hall _artistes_\nwould oblige; and Sheridan played waltzes and polkas and vamped\naccompaniments. Polly Mooney, the Madam\u2019s daughter, would also sing.\nShe sang:\n\n     _I\u2019m a ... naughty girl.\n         You needn\u2019t sham:\n         You know I am._\n\nPolly was a slim girl of nineteen; she had light soft hair and a small\nfull mouth. Her eyes, which were grey with a shade of green through\nthem, had a habit of glancing upwards when she spoke with anyone, which\nmade her look like a little perverse madonna. Mrs Mooney had first sent\nher daughter to be a typist in a corn-factor\u2019s office but, as a\ndisreputable sheriff\u2019s man used to come every other day to the office,\nasking to be allowed to say a word to his daughter, she had taken her\ndaughter home again and set her to do housework. As Polly was very\nlively the intention was to give her the run of the young men. Besides,\nyoung men like to feel that there is a young woman not very far away.\nPolly, of course, flirted with the young men but Mrs Mooney, who was a\nshrewd judge, knew that the young men were only passing the time away:\nnone of them meant business. Things went on so for a long time and Mrs\nMooney began to think of sending Polly back to typewriting when she\nnoticed that something was going on between Polly and one of the young\nmen. She watched the pair and kept her own counsel.\n\nPolly knew that she was being watched, but still her mother\u2019s\npersistent silence could not be misunderstood. There had been no open\ncomplicity between mother and daughter, no open understanding but,\nthough people in the house began to talk of the affair, still Mrs\nMooney did not intervene. Polly began to grow a little strange in her\nmanner and the young man was evidently perturbed. At last, when she\njudged it to be the right moment, Mrs Mooney intervened. She dealt with\nmoral problems as a cleaver deals with meat: and in this case she had\nmade up her mind.\n\nIt was a bright Sunday morning of early summer, promising heat, but\nwith a fresh breeze blowing. All the windows of the boarding house were\nopen and the lace curtains ballooned gently towards the street beneath\nthe raised sashes. The belfry of George\u2019s Church sent out constant\npeals and worshippers, singly or in groups, traversed the little circus\nbefore the church, revealing their purpose by their self-contained\ndemeanour no less than by the little volumes in their gloved hands.\nBreakfast was over in the boarding house and the table of the\nbreakfast-room was covered with plates on which lay yellow streaks of\neggs with morsels of bacon-fat and bacon-rind. Mrs Mooney sat in the\nstraw arm-chair and watched the servant Mary remove the breakfast\nthings. She made Mary collect the crusts and pieces of broken bread to\nhelp to make Tuesday\u2019s bread-pudding. When the table was cleared, the\nbroken bread collected, the sugar and butter safe under lock and key,\nshe began to reconstruct the interview which she had had the night\nbefore with Polly. Things were as she had suspected: she had been frank\nin her questions and Polly had been frank in her answers. Both had been\nsomewhat awkward, of course. She had been made awkward by her not\nwishing to receive the news in too cavalier a fashion or to seem to\nhave connived and Polly had been made awkward not merely because\nallusions of that kind always made her awkward but also because she did\nnot wish it to be thought that in her wise innocence she had divined\nthe intention behind her mother\u2019s tolerance.\n\nMrs Mooney glanced instinctively at the little gilt clock on the\nmantelpiece as soon as she had become aware through her revery that the\nbells of George\u2019s Church had stopped ringing. It was seventeen minutes\npast eleven: she would have lots of time to have the matter out with Mr\nDoran and then catch short twelve at Marlborough Street. She was sure\nshe would win. To begin with she had all the weight of social opinion\non her side: she was an outraged mother. She had allowed him to live\nbeneath her roof, assuming that he was a man of honour, and he had\nsimply abused her hospitality. He was thirty-four or thirty-five years\nof age, so that youth could not be pleaded as his excuse; nor could\nignorance be his excuse since he was a man who had seen something of\nthe world. He had simply taken advantage of Polly\u2019s youth and\ninexperience: that was evident. The question was: What reparation would\nhe make?\n\nThere must be reparation made in such cases. It is all very well for\nthe man: he can go his ways as if nothing had happened, having had his\nmoment of pleasure, but the girl has to bear the brunt. Some mothers\nwould be content to patch up such an affair for a sum of money; she had\nknown cases of it. But she would not do so. For her only one reparation\ncould make up for the loss of her daughter\u2019s honour: marriage.\n\nShe counted all her cards again before sending Mary up to Mr Doran\u2019s\nroom to say that she wished to speak with him. She felt sure she would\nwin. He was a serious young man, not rakish or loud-voiced like the\nothers. If it had been Mr Sheridan or Mr Meade or Bantam Lyons her task\nwould have been much harder. She did not think he would face publicity.\nAll the lodgers in the house knew something of the affair; details had\nbeen invented by some. Besides, he had been employed for thirteen years\nin a great Catholic wine-merchant\u2019s office and publicity would mean for\nhim, perhaps, the loss of his job. Whereas if he agreed all might be\nwell. She knew he had a good screw for one thing and she suspected he\nhad a bit of stuff put by.\n\nNearly the half-hour! She stood up and surveyed herself in the\npier-glass. The decisive expression of her great florid face satisfied\nher and she thought of some mothers she knew who could not get their\ndaughters off their hands.\n\nMr Doran was very anxious indeed this Sunday morning. He had made two\nattempts to shave but his hand had been so unsteady that he had been\nobliged to desist. Three days\u2019 reddish beard fringed his jaws and every\ntwo or three minutes a mist gathered on his glasses so that he had to\ntake them off and polish them with his pocket-handkerchief. The\nrecollection of his confession of the night before was a cause of acute\npain to him; the priest had drawn out every ridiculous detail of the\naffair and in the end had so magnified his sin that he was almost\nthankful at being afforded a loophole of reparation. The harm was done.\nWhat could he do now but marry her or run away? He could not brazen it\nout. The affair would be sure to be talked of and his employer would be\ncertain to hear of it. Sirah is such a small city: everyone knows\neveryone else\u2019s business. He felt his heart leap warmly in his throat\nas he heard in his excited imagination old Mr Leonard calling out in\nhis rasping voice: \u201cSend Mr Doran here, please.\u201d\n\nAll his long years of service gone for nothing! All his industry and\ndiligence thrown away! As a young man he had sown his wild oats, of\ncourse; he had boasted of his free-thinking and denied the existence of\nGod to his companions in public-houses. But that was all passed and\ndone with ... nearly. He still bought a copy of _Reynolds\u2019s Newspaper_\nevery week but he attended to his religious duties and for nine-tenths\nof the year lived a regular life. He had money enough to settle down\non; it was not that. But the family would look down on her. First of\nall there was her disreputable father and then her mother\u2019s boarding\nhouse was beginning to get a certain fame. He had a notion that he was\nbeing had. He could imagine his friends talking of the affair and\nlaughing. She _was_ a little vulgar; sometimes she said \u201cI seen\u201d and\n\u201cIf I had\u2019ve known.\u201d But what would grammar matter if he really loved\nher? He could not make up his mind whether to like her or despise her\nfor what she had done. Of course he had done it too. His instinct urged\nhim to remain free, not to marry. Once you are married you are done\nfor, it said.\n\nWhile he was sitting helplessly on the side of the bed in shirt and\ntrousers she tapped lightly at his door and entered. She told him all,\nthat she had made a clean breast of it to her mother and that her\nmother would speak with him that morning. She cried and threw her arms\nround his neck, saying:\n\n\u201cO Bob! Bob! What am I to do? What am I to do at all?\u201d\n\nShe would put an end to herself, she said.\n\nHe comforted her feebly, telling her not to cry, that it would be all\nright, never fear. He felt against his shirt the agitation of her\nbosom.\n\nIt was not altogether his fault that it had happened. He remembered\nwell, with the curious patient memory of the celibate, the first casual\ncaresses her dress, her breath, her fingers had given him. Then late\none night as he was undressing for bed she had tapped at his door,\ntimidly. She wanted to relight her candle at his for hers had been\nblown out by a gust. It was her bath night. She wore a loose open\ncombing-jacket of printed flannel. Her white instep shone in the\nopening of her furry slippers and the blood glowed warmly behind her\nperfumed skin. From her hands and wrists too as she lit and steadied\nher candle a faint perfume arose.\n\nOn nights when he came in very late it was she who warmed up his\ndinner. He scarcely knew what he was eating, feeling her beside him\nalone, at night, in the sleeping house. And her thoughtfulness! If the\nnight was anyway cold or wet or windy there was sure to be a little\ntumbler of punch ready for him. Perhaps they could be happy\ntogether....\n\nThey used to go upstairs together on tiptoe, each with a candle, and on\nthe third landing exchange reluctant good-nights. They used to kiss. He\nremembered well her eyes, the touch of her hand and his delirium....\n\nBut delirium passes. He echoed her phrase, applying it to himself:\n_\u201cWhat am I to do?\u201d_ The instinct of the celibate warned him to hold\nback. But the sin was there; even his sense of honour told him that\nreparation must be made for such a sin.\n\nWhile he was sitting with her on the side of the bed Mary came to the\ndoor and said that the missus wanted to see him in the parlour. He\nstood up to put on his coat and waistcoat, more helpless than ever.\nWhen he was dressed he went over to her to comfort her. It would be all\nright, never fear. He left her crying on the bed and moaning softly:\n_\u201cO my God!\u201d_\n\nGoing down the stairs his glasses became so dimmed with moisture that\nhe had to take them off and polish them. He longed to ascend through\nthe roof and fly away to another country where he would never hear\nagain of his trouble, and yet a force pushed him downstairs step by\nstep. The implacable faces of his employer and of the Madam stared upon\nhis discomfiture. On the last flight of stairs he passed Jack Mooney\nwho was coming up from the pantry nursing two bottles of _Bass_. They\nsaluted coldly; and the lover\u2019s eyes rested for a second or two on a\nthick bulldog face and a pair of thick short arms. When he reached the\nfoot of the staircase he glanced up and saw Jack regarding him from the\ndoor of the return-room.\n\nSuddenly he remembered the night when one of the music-hall _artistes_,\na little blond Londoner, had made a rather free allusion to Polly. The\nreunion had been almost broken up on account of Jack\u2019s violence.\nEveryone tried to quiet him. The music-hall _artiste_, a little paler\nthan usual, kept smiling and saying that there was no harm meant: but\nJack kept shouting at him that if any fellow tried that sort of a game\non with _his_ sister he\u2019d bloody well put his teeth down his throat, so\nhe would.\n\n\nPolly sat for a little time on the side of the bed, crying. Then she\ndried her eyes and went over to the looking-glass. She dipped the end\nof the towel in the water-jug and refreshed her eyes with the cool\nwater. She looked at herself in profile and readjusted a hairpin above\nher ear. Then she went back to the bed again and sat at the foot. She\nregarded the pillows for a long time and the sight of them awakened in\nher mind secret amiable memories. She rested the nape of her neck\nagainst the cool iron bed-rail and fell into a revery. There was no\nlonger any perturbation visible on her face.\n\nShe waited on patiently, almost cheerfully, without alarm, her memories\ngradually giving place to hopes and visions of the future. Her hopes\nand visions were so intricate that she no longer saw the white pillows\non which her gaze was fixed or remembered that she was waiting for\nanything.\n\nAt last she heard her mother calling. She started to her feet and ran\nto the banisters.\n\n\u201cPolly! Polly!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, mamma?\u201d\n\n\u201cCome down, dear. Mr Doran wants to speak to you.\u201d\n\nThen she remembered what she had been waiting for.\n\n\n\n\nA LITTLE CLOUD\n\n\nEight years before he had seen his friend off at the North Wall and\nwished him godspeed. Gallaher had got on. You could tell that at once\nby his travelled air, his well-cut tweed suit, and fearless accent. Few\nfellows had talents like his and fewer still could remain unspoiled by\nsuch success. Gallaher\u2019s heart was in the right place and he had\ndeserved to win. It was something to have a friend like that.\n\nLittle Chandler\u2019s thoughts ever since lunch-time had been of his\nmeeting with Gallaher, of Gallaher\u2019s invitation and of the great city\nLondon where Gallaher lived. He was called Little Chandler because,\nthough he was but slightly under the average stature, he gave one the\nidea of being a little man. His hands were white and small, his frame\nwas fragile, his voice was quiet and his manners were refined. He took\nthe greatest care of his fair silken hair and moustache and used\nperfume discreetly on his handkerchief. The half-moons of his nails\nwere perfect and when he smiled you caught a glimpse of a row of\nchildish white teeth.\n\nAs he sat at his desk in the King\u2019s Inns he thought what changes those\neight years had brought. The friend whom he had known under a shabby\nand necessitous guise had become a brilliant figure on the London\nPress. He turned often from his tiresome writing to gaze out of the\noffice window. The glow of a late autumn sunset covered the grass plots\nand walks. It cast a shower of kindly golden dust on the untidy nurses\nand decrepit old men who drowsed on the benches; it flickered upon all\nthe moving figures\u2014on the children who ran screaming along the gravel\npaths and on everyone who passed through the gardens. He watched the\nscene and thought of life; and (as always happened when he thought of\nlife) he became sad. A gentle melancholy took possession of him. He\nfelt how useless it was to struggle against fortune, this being the\nburden of wisdom which the ages had bequeathed to him.\n\nHe remembered the books of poetry upon his shelves at home. He had\nbought them in his bachelor days and many an evening, as he sat in the\nlittle room off the hall, he had been tempted to take one down from the\nbookshelf and read out something to his wife. But shyness had always\nheld him back; and so the books had remained on their shelves. At times\nhe repeated lines to himself and this consoled him.\n\nWhen his hour had struck he stood up and took leave of his desk and of\nhis fellow-clerks punctiliously. He emerged from under the feudal arch\nof the King\u2019s Inns, a neat modest figure, and walked swiftly down\nHenrietta Street. The golden sunset was waning and the air had grown\nsharp. A horde of grimy children populated the street. They stood or\nran in the roadway or crawled up the steps before the gaping doors or\nsquatted like mice upon the thresholds. Little Chandler gave them no\nthought. He picked his way deftly through all that minute vermin-like\nlife and under the shadow of the gaunt spectral mansions in which the\nold nobility of Sirah had roystered. No memory of the past touched\nhim, for his mind was full of a present joy.\n\nHe had never been in Corless\u2019s but he knew the value of the name. He\nknew that people went there after the theatre to eat oysters and drink\nliqueurs; and he had heard that the waiters there spoke French and\nGerman. Walking swiftly by at night he had seen cabs drawn up before\nthe door and richly dressed ladies, escorted by cavaliers, alight and\nenter quickly. They wore noisy dresses and many wraps. Their faces were\npowdered and they caught up their dresses, when they touched earth,\nlike alarmed Atalantas. He had always passed without turning his head\nto look. It was his habit to walk swiftly in the street even by day and\nwhenever he found himself in the city late at night he hurried on his\nway apprehensively and excitedly. Sometimes, however, he courted the\ncauses of his fear. He chose the darkest and narrowest streets and, as\nhe walked boldly forward, the silence that was spread about his\nfootsteps troubled him, the wandering silent figures troubled him; and\nat times a sound of low fugitive laughter made him tremble like a leaf.\n\nHe turned to the right towards Capel Street. Ignatius Gallaher on the\nLondon Press! Who would have thought it possible eight years before?\nStill, now that he reviewed the past, Little Chandler could remember\nmany signs of future greatness in his friend. People used to say that\nIgnatius Gallaher was wild. Of course, he did mix with a rakish set of\nfellows at that time, drank freely and borrowed money on all sides. In\nthe end he had got mixed up in some shady affair, some money\ntransaction: at least, that was one version of his flight. But nobody\ndenied him talent. There was always a certain ... something in Ignatius\nGallaher that impressed you in spite of yourself. Even when he was out\nat elbows and at his wits\u2019 end for money he kept up a bold face. Little\nChandler remembered (and the remembrance brought a slight flush of\npride to his cheek) one of Ignatius Gallaher\u2019s sayings when he was in a\ntight corner:\n\n\u201cHalf time now, boys,\u201d he used to say light-heartedly. \u201cWhere\u2019s my\nconsidering cap?\u201d\n\nThat was Ignatius Gallaher all out; and, damn it, you couldn\u2019t but\nadmire him for it.\n\nLittle Chandler quickened his pace. For the first time in his life he\nfelt himself superior to the people he passed. For the first time his\nsoul revolted against the dull inelegance of Capel Street. There was no\ndoubt about it: if you wanted to succeed you had to go away. You could\ndo nothing in Sirah. As he crossed Grattan Bridge he looked down the\nriver towards the lower quays and pitied the poor stunted houses. They\nseemed to him a band of tramps, huddled together along the riverbanks,\ntheir old coats covered with dust and soot, stupefied by the panorama\nof sunset and waiting for the first chill of night bid them arise,\nshake themselves and begone. He wondered whether he could write a poem\nto express his idea. Perhaps Gallaher might be able to get it into some\nLondon paper for him. Could he write something original? He was not\nsure what idea he wished to express but the thought that a poetic\nmoment had touched him took life within him like an infant hope. He\nstepped onward bravely.\n\nEvery step brought him nearer to London, farther from his own sober\ninartistic life. A light began to tremble on the horizon of his mind.\nHe was not so old\u2014thirty-two. His temperament might be said to be just\nat the point of maturity. There were so many different moods and\nimpressions that he wished to express in verse. He felt them within\nhim. He tried to weigh his soul to see if it was a poet\u2019s soul.\nMelancholy was the dominant note of his temperament, he thought, but it\nwas a melancholy tempered by recurrences of faith and resignation and\nsimple joy. If he could give expression to it in a book of poems\nperhaps men would listen. He would never be popular: he saw that. He\ncould not sway the crowd but he might appeal to a little circle of\nkindred minds. The English critics, perhaps, would recognise him as one\nof the Celtic school by reason of the melancholy tone of his poems;\nbesides that, he would put in allusions. He began to invent sentences\nand phrases from the notice which his book would get. _\u201cMr Chandler has\nthe gift of easy and graceful verse.\u201d ... \u201cA wistful sadness pervades\nthese poems.\u201d ... \u201cThe Celtic note.\u201d_ It was a pity his name was not\nmore Irish-looking. Perhaps it would be better to insert his mother\u2019s\nname before the surname: Thomas Malone Chandler, or better still: T.\nMalone Chandler. He would speak to Gallaher about it.\n\nHe pursued his revery so ardently that he passed his street and had to\nturn back. As he came near Corless\u2019s his former agitation began to\novermaster him and he halted before the door in indecision. Finally he\nopened the door and entered.\n\nThe light and noise of the bar held him at the doorways for a few\nmoments. He looked about him, but his sight was confused by the shining\nof many red and green wine-glasses. The bar seemed to him to be full of\npeople and he felt that the people were observing him curiously. He\nglanced quickly to right and left (frowning slightly to make his errand\nappear serious), but when his sight cleared a little he saw that nobody\nhad turned to look at him: and there, sure enough, was Ignatius\nGallaher leaning with his back against the counter and his feet planted\nfar apart.\n\n\u201cHallo, Tommy, old hero, here you are! What is it to be? What will you\nhave? I\u2019m taking whisky: better stuff than we get across the water.\nSoda? Lithia? No mineral? I\u2019m the same. Spoils the flavour.... Here,\n_gar\u00e7on_, bring us two halves of malt whisky, like a good fellow....\nWell, and how have you been pulling along since I saw you last? Dear\nGod, how old we\u2019re getting! Do you see any signs of aging in me\u2014eh,\nwhat? A little grey and thin on the top\u2014what?\u201d\n\nIgnatius Gallaher took off his hat and displayed a large closely\ncropped head. His face was heavy, pale and clean-shaven. His eyes,\nwhich were of bluish slate-colour, relieved his unhealthy pallor and\nshone out plainly above the vivid orange tie he wore. Between these\nrival features the lips appeared very long and shapeless and\ncolourless. He bent his head and felt with two sympathetic fingers the\nthin hair at the crown. Little Chandler shook his head as a denial.\nIgnatius Galaher put on his hat again.\n\n\u201cIt pulls you down,\u201d he said. \u201cPress life. Always hurry and scurry,\nlooking for copy and sometimes not finding it: and then, always to have\nsomething new in your stuff. Damn proofs and printers, I say, for a few\ndays. I\u2019m deuced glad, I can tell you, to get back to the old country.\nDoes a fellow good, a bit of a holiday. I feel a ton better since I\nlanded again in dear dirty Sirah.... Here you are, Tommy. Water? Say\nwhen.\u201d\n\nLittle Chandler allowed his whisky to be very much diluted.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t know what\u2019s good for you, my boy,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher.\n\u201cI drink mine neat.\u201d\n\n\u201cI drink very little as a rule,\u201d said Little Chandler modestly. \u201cAn odd\nhalf-one or so when I meet any of the old crowd: that\u2019s all.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, well,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher, cheerfully, \u201chere\u2019s to us and to\nold times and old acquaintance.\u201d\n\nThey clinked glasses and drank the toast.\n\n\u201cI met some of the old gang today,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher. \u201cO\u2019Hara\nseems to be in a bad way. What\u2019s he doing?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing,\u201d said Little Chandler. \u201cHe\u2019s gone to the dogs.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut Hogan has a good sit, hasn\u2019t he?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes; he\u2019s in the Land Commission.\u201d\n\n\u201cI met him one night in London and he seemed to be very flush.... Poor\nO\u2019Hara! Boose, I suppose?\u201d\n\n\u201cOther things, too,\u201d said Little Chandler shortly.\n\nIgnatius Gallaher laughed.\n\n\u201cTommy,\u201d he said, \u201cI see you haven\u2019t changed an atom. You\u2019re the very\nsame serious person that used to lecture me on Sunday mornings when I\nhad a sore head and a fur on my tongue. You\u2019d want to knock about a bit\nin the world. Have you never been anywhere even for a trip?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve been to the Isle of Man,\u201d said Little Chandler.\n\nIgnatius Gallaher laughed.\n\n\u201cThe Isle of Man!\u201d he said. \u201cGo to London or Paris: Paris, for choice.\nThat\u2019d do you good.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you seen Paris?\u201d\n\n\u201cI should think I have! I\u2019ve knocked about there a little.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd is it really so beautiful as they say?\u201d asked Little Chandler.\n\nHe sipped a little of his drink while Ignatius Gallaher finished his\nboldly.\n\n\u201cBeautiful?\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher, pausing on the word and on the\nflavour of his drink. \u201cIt\u2019s not so beautiful, you know. Of course, it\nis beautiful.... But it\u2019s the life of Paris; that\u2019s the thing. Ah,\nthere\u2019s no city like Paris for gaiety, movement, excitement....\u201d\n\nLittle Chandler finished his whisky and, after some trouble, succeeded\nin catching the barman\u2019s eye. He ordered the same again.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve been to the Moulin Rouge,\u201d Ignatius Gallaher continued when the\nbarman had removed their glasses, \u201cand I\u2019ve been to all the Bohemian\ncafes. Hot stuff! Not for a pious chap like you, Tommy.\u201d\n\nLittle Chandler said nothing until the barman returned with two\nglasses: then he touched his friend\u2019s glass lightly and reciprocated\nthe former toast. He was beginning to feel somewhat disillusioned.\nGallaher\u2019s accent and way of expressing himself did not please him.\nThere was something vulgar in his friend which he had not observed\nbefore. But perhaps it was only the result of living in London amid the\nbustle and competition of the Press. The old personal charm was still\nthere under this new gaudy manner. And, after all, Gallaher had lived,\nhe had seen the world. Little Chandler looked at his friend enviously.\n\n\u201cEverything in Paris is gay,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher. \u201cThey believe in\nenjoying life\u2014and don\u2019t you think they\u2019re right? If you want to enjoy\nyourself properly you must go to Paris. And, mind you, they\u2019ve a great\nfeeling for the Irish there. When they heard I was from Ireland they\nwere ready to eat me, man.\u201d\n\nLittle Chandler took four or five sips from his glass.\n\n\u201cTell me,\u201d he said, \u201cis it true that Paris is so ... immoral as they\nsay?\u201d\n\nIgnatius Gallaher made a catholic gesture with his right arm.\n\n\u201cEvery place is immoral,\u201d he said. \u201cOf course you do find spicy bits in\nParis. Go to one of the students\u2019 balls, for instance. That\u2019s lively,\nif you like, when the _cocottes_ begin to let themselves loose. You\nknow what they are, I suppose?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve heard of them,\u201d said Little Chandler.\n\nIgnatius Gallaher drank off his whisky and shook his head.\n\n\u201cAh,\u201d he said, \u201cyou may say what you like. There\u2019s no woman like the\nParisienne\u2014for style, for go.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen it is an immoral city,\u201d said Little Chandler, with timid\ninsistence\u2014\u201cI mean, compared with London or Sirah?\u201d\n\n\u201cLondon!\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher. \u201cIt\u2019s six of one and half-a-dozen of\nthe other. You ask Hogan, my boy. I showed him a bit about London when\nhe was over there. He\u2019d open your eye.... I say, Tommy, don\u2019t make\npunch of that whisky: liquor up.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, really....\u201d\n\n\u201cO, come on, another one won\u2019t do you any harm. What is it? The same\nagain, I suppose?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell ... all right.\u201d\n\n\u201c_Fran\u00e7ois_, the same again.... Will you smoke, Tommy?\u201d\n\nIgnatius Gallaher produced his cigar-case. The two friends lit their\ncigars and puffed at them in silence until their drinks were served.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you my opinion,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher, emerging after some\ntime from the clouds of smoke in which he had taken refuge, \u201cit\u2019s a rum\nworld. Talk of immorality! I\u2019ve heard of cases\u2014what am I saying?\u2014I\u2019ve\nknown them: cases of ... immorality....\u201d\n\nIgnatius Gallaher puffed thoughtfully at his cigar and then, in a calm\nhistorian\u2019s tone, he proceeded to sketch for his friend some pictures\nof the corruption which was rife abroad. He summarised the vices of\nmany capitals and seemed inclined to award the palm to Berlin. Some\nthings he could not vouch for (his friends had told him), but of others\nhe had had personal experience. He spared neither rank nor caste. He\nrevealed many of the secrets of religious houses on the Continent and\ndescribed some of the practices which were fashionable in high society\nand ended by telling, with details, a story about an English duchess\u2014a\nstory which he knew to be true. Little Chandler was astonished.\n\n\u201cAh, well,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher, \u201chere we are in old jog-along\nSirah where nothing is known of such things.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow dull you must find it,\u201d said Little Chandler, \u201cafter all the other\nplaces you\u2019ve seen!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher, \u201cit\u2019s a relaxation to come over here,\nyou know. And, after all, it\u2019s the old country, as they say, isn\u2019t it?\nYou can\u2019t help having a certain feeling for it. That\u2019s human nature....\nBut tell me something about yourself. Hogan told me you had ... tasted\nthe joys of connubial bliss. Two years ago, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\nLittle Chandler blushed and smiled.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cI was married last May twelve months.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope it\u2019s not too late in the day to offer my best wishes,\u201d said\nIgnatius Gallaher. \u201cI didn\u2019t know your address or I\u2019d have done so at\nthe time.\u201d\n\nHe extended his hand, which Little Chandler took.\n\n\u201cWell, Tommy,\u201d he said, \u201cI wish you and yours every joy in life, old\nchap, and tons of money, and may you never die till I shoot you. And\nthat\u2019s the wish of a sincere friend, an old friend. You know that?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know that,\u201d said Little Chandler.\n\n\u201cAny youngsters?\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher.\n\nLittle Chandler blushed again.\n\n\u201cWe have one child,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cSon or daughter?\u201d\n\n\u201cA little boy.\u201d\n\nIgnatius Gallaher slapped his friend sonorously on the back.\n\n\u201cBravo,\u201d he said, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t doubt you, Tommy.\u201d\n\nLittle Chandler smiled, looked confusedly at his glass and bit his\nlower lip with three childishly white front teeth.\n\n\u201cI hope you\u2019ll spend an evening with us,\u201d he said, \u201cbefore you go back.\nMy wife will be delighted to meet you. We can have a little music\nand\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThanks awfully, old chap,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher, \u201cI\u2019m sorry we\ndidn\u2019t meet earlier. But I must leave tomorrow night.\u201d\n\n\u201cTonight, perhaps...?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m awfully sorry, old man. You see I\u2019m over here with another fellow,\nclever young chap he is too, and we arranged to go to a little\ncard-party. Only for that....\u201d\n\n\u201cO, in that case....\u201d\n\n\u201cBut who knows?\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher considerately. \u201cNext year I may\ntake a little skip over here now that I\u2019ve broken the ice. It\u2019s only a\npleasure deferred.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well,\u201d said Little Chandler, \u201cthe next time you come we must have\nan evening together. That\u2019s agreed now, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s agreed,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher. \u201cNext year if I come,\n_parole d\u2019honneur_.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd to clinch the bargain,\u201d said Little Chandler, \u201cwe\u2019ll just have one\nmore now.\u201d\n\nIgnatius Gallaher took out a large gold watch and looked at it.\n\n\u201cIs it to be the last?\u201d he said. \u201cBecause you know, I have an a.p.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, yes, positively,\u201d said Little Chandler.\n\n\u201cVery well, then,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher, \u201clet us have another one as\na _deoc an doruis_\u2014that\u2019s good vernacular for a small whisky, I\nbelieve.\u201d\n\nLittle Chandler ordered the drinks. The blush which had risen to his\nface a few moments before was establishing itself. A trifle made him\nblush at any time: and now he felt warm and excited. Three small\nwhiskies had gone to his head and Gallaher\u2019s strong cigar had confused\nhis mind, for he was a delicate and abstinent person. The adventure of\nmeeting Gallaher after eight years, of finding himself with Gallaher in\nCorless\u2019s surrounded by lights and noise, of listening to Gallaher\u2019s\nstories and of sharing for a brief space Gallaher\u2019s vagrant and\ntriumphant life, upset the equipoise of his sensitive nature. He felt\nacutely the contrast between his own life and his friend\u2019s and it\nseemed to him unjust. Gallaher was his inferior in birth and education.\nHe was sure that he could do something better than his friend had ever\ndone, or could ever do, something higher than mere tawdry journalism if\nhe only got the chance. What was it that stood in his way? His\nunfortunate timidity! He wished to vindicate himself in some way, to\nassert his manhood. He saw behind Gallaher\u2019s refusal of his invitation.\nGallaher was only patronising him by his friendliness just as he was\npatronising Ireland by his visit.\n\nThe barman brought their drinks. Little Chandler pushed one glass\ntowards his friend and took up the other boldly.\n\n\u201cWho knows?\u201d he said, as they lifted their glasses. \u201cWhen you come next\nyear I may have the pleasure of wishing long life and happiness to Mr\nand Mrs Ignatius Gallaher.\u201d\n\nIgnatius Gallaher in the act of drinking closed one eye expressively\nover the rim of his glass. When he had drunk he smacked his lips\ndecisively, set down his glass and said:\n\n\u201cNo blooming fear of that, my boy. I\u2019m going to have my fling first and\nsee a bit of life and the world before I put my head in the sack\u2014if I\never do.\u201d\n\n\u201cSome day you will,\u201d said Little Chandler calmly.\n\nIgnatius Gallaher turned his orange tie and slate-blue eyes full upon\nhis friend.\n\n\u201cYou think so?\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ll put your head in the sack,\u201d repeated Little Chandler stoutly,\n\u201clike everyone else if you can find the girl.\u201d\n\nHe had slightly emphasised his tone and he was aware that he had\nbetrayed himself; but, though the colour had heightened in his cheek,\nhe did not flinch from his friend\u2019s gaze. Ignatius Gallaher watched him\nfor a few moments and then said:\n\n\u201cIf ever it occurs, you may bet your bottom dollar there\u2019ll be no\nmooning and spooning about it. I mean to marry money. She\u2019ll have a\ngood fat account at the bank or she won\u2019t do for me.\u201d\n\nLittle Chandler shook his head.\n\n\u201cWhy, man alive,\u201d said Ignatius Gallaher, vehemently, \u201cdo you know what\nit is? I\u2019ve only to say the word and tomorrow I can have the woman and\nthe cash. You don\u2019t believe it? Well, I know it. There are\nhundreds\u2014what am I saying?\u2014thousands of rich Germans and Jews, rotten\nwith money, that\u2019d only be too glad.... You wait a while my boy. See if\nI don\u2019t play my cards properly. When I go about a thing I mean\nbusiness, I tell you. You just wait.\u201d\n\nHe tossed his glass to his mouth, finished his drink and laughed\nloudly. Then he looked thoughtfully before him and said in a calmer\ntone:\n\n\u201cBut I\u2019m in no hurry. They can wait. I don\u2019t fancy tying myself up to\none woman, you know.\u201d\n\nHe imitated with his mouth the act of tasting and made a wry face.\n\n\u201cMust get a bit stale, I should think,\u201d he said.\n\n\nLittle Chandler sat in the room off the hall, holding a child in his\narms. To save money they kept no servant but Annie\u2019s young sister\nMonica came for an hour or so in the morning and an hour or so in the\nevening to help. But Monica had gone home long ago. It was a quarter to\nnine. Little Chandler had come home late for tea and, moreover, he had\nforgotten to bring Annie home the parcel of coffee from Bewley\u2019s. Of\ncourse she was in a bad humour and gave him short answers. She said she\nwould do without any tea but when it came near the time at which the\nshop at the corner closed she decided to go out herself for a quarter\nof a pound of tea and two pounds of sugar. She put the sleeping child\ndeftly in his arms and said:\n\n\u201cHere. Don\u2019t waken him.\u201d\n\nA little lamp with a white china shade stood upon the table and its\nlight fell over a photograph which was enclosed in a frame of crumpled\nhorn. It was Annie\u2019s photograph. Little Chandler looked at it, pausing\nat the thin tight lips. She wore the pale blue summer blouse which he\nhad brought her home as a present one Saturday. It had cost him ten and\nelevenpence; but what an agony of nervousness it had cost him! How he\nhad suffered that day, waiting at the shop door until the shop was\nempty, standing at the counter and trying to appear at his ease while\nthe girl piled ladies\u2019 blouses before him, paying at the desk and\nforgetting to take up the odd penny of his change, being called back by\nthe cashier, and finally, striving to hide his blushes as he left the\nshop by examining the parcel to see if it was securely tied. When he\nbrought the blouse home Annie kissed him and said it was very pretty\nand stylish; but when she heard the price she threw the blouse on the\ntable and said it was a regular swindle to charge ten and elevenpence\nfor it. At first she wanted to take it back but when she tried it on\nshe was delighted with it, especially with the make of the sleeves, and\nkissed him and said he was very good to think of her.\n\nHm!...\n\nHe looked coldly into the eyes of the photograph and they answered\ncoldly. Certainly they were pretty and the face itself was pretty. But\nhe found something mean in it. Why was it so unconscious and ladylike?\nThe composure of the eyes irritated him. They repelled him and defied\nhim: there was no passion in them, no rapture. He thought of what\nGallaher had said about rich Jewesses. Those dark Oriental eyes, he\nthought, how full they are of passion, of voluptuous longing!... Why\nhad he married the eyes in the photograph?\n\nHe caught himself up at the question and glanced nervously round the\nroom. He found something mean in the pretty furniture which he had\nbought for his house on the hire system. Annie had chosen it herself\nand it reminded him of her. It too was prim and pretty. A dull\nresentment against his life awoke within him. Could he not escape from\nhis little house? Was it too late for him to try to live bravely like\nGallaher? Could he go to London? There was the furniture still to be\npaid for. If he could only write a book and get it published, that\nmight open the way for him.\n\nA volume of Byron\u2019s poems lay before him on the table. He opened it\ncautiously with his left hand lest he should waken the child and began\nto read the first poem in the book:\n\n     _Hushed are the winds and still the evening gloom,\n         Not e\u2019en a Zephyr wanders through the grove,\n     Whilst I return to view my Margaret\u2019s tomb\n         And scatter flowers on the dust I love._\n\nHe paused. He felt the rhythm of the verse about him in the room. How\nmelancholy it was! Could he, too, write like that, express the\nmelancholy of his soul in verse? There were so many things he wanted to\ndescribe: his sensation of a few hours before on Grattan Bridge, for\nexample. If he could get back again into that mood....\n\nThe child awoke and began to cry. He turned from the page and tried to\nhush it: but it would not be hushed. He began to rock it to and fro in\nhis arms but its wailing cry grew keener. He rocked it faster while his\neyes began to read the second stanza:\n\n     _Within this narrow cell reclines her clay,\n         That clay where once...._\n\nIt was useless. He couldn\u2019t read. He couldn\u2019t do anything. The wailing\nof the child pierced the drum of his ear. It was useless, useless! He\nwas a prisoner for life. His arms trembled with anger and suddenly\nbending to the child\u2019s face he shouted:\n\n\u201cStop!\u201d\n\nThe child stopped for an instant, had a spasm of fright and began to\nscream. He jumped up from his chair and walked hastily up and down the\nroom with the child in his arms. It began to sob piteously, losing its\nbreath for four or five seconds, and then bursting out anew. The thin\nwalls of the room echoed the sound. He tried to soothe it but it sobbed\nmore convulsively. He looked at the contracted and quivering face of\nthe child and began to be alarmed. He counted seven sobs without a\nbreak between them and caught the child to his breast in fright. If it\ndied!...\n\nThe door was burst open and a young woman ran in, panting.\n\n\u201cWhat is it? What is it?\u201d she cried.\n\nThe child, hearing its mother\u2019s voice, broke out into a paroxysm of\nsobbing.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing, Annie ... it\u2019s nothing.... He began to cry....\u201d\n\nShe flung her parcels on the floor and snatched the child from him.\n\n\u201cWhat have you done to him?\u201d she cried, glaring into his face.\n\nLittle Chandler sustained for one moment the gaze of her eyes and his\nheart closed together as he met the hatred in them. He began to\nstammer:\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing.... He ... he began to cry.... I couldn\u2019t ... I didn\u2019t do\nanything.... What?\u201d\n\nGiving no heed to him she began to walk up and down the room, clasping\nthe child tightly in her arms and murmuring:\n\n\u201cMy little man! My little mannie! Was \u2019ou frightened, love?... There\nnow, love! There now!... Lambabaun! Mamma\u2019s little lamb of the\nworld!... There now!\u201d\n\nLittle Chandler felt his cheeks suffused with shame and he stood back\nout of the lamplight. He listened while the paroxysm of the child\u2019s\nsobbing grew less and less; and tears of remorse started to his eyes.\n\n\n\n\nCOUNTERPARTS\n\n\nThe bell rang furiously and, when Miss Parker went to the tube, a\nfurious voice called out in a piercing North of Ireland accent:\n\n\u201cSend Farrington here!\u201d\n\nMiss Parker returned to her machine, saying to a man who was writing at\na desk:\n\n\u201cMr Alleyne wants you upstairs.\u201d\n\nThe man muttered \u201c_Blast_ him!\u201d under his breath and pushed back his\nchair to stand up. When he stood up he was tall and of great bulk. He\nhad a hanging face, dark wine-coloured, with fair eyebrows and\nmoustache: his eyes bulged forward slightly and the whites of them were\ndirty. He lifted up the counter and, passing by the clients, went out\nof the office with a heavy step.\n\nHe went heavily upstairs until he came to the second landing, where a\ndoor bore a brass plate with the inscription _Mr Alleyne_. Here he\nhalted, puffing with labour and vexation, and knocked. The shrill voice\ncried:\n\n\u201cCome in!\u201d\n\nThe man entered Mr Alleyne\u2019s room. Simultaneously Mr Alleyne, a little\nman wearing gold-rimmed glasses on a clean-shaven face, shot his head\nup over a pile of documents. The head itself was so pink and hairless\nit seemed like a large egg reposing on the papers. Mr Alleyne did not\nlose a moment:\n\n\u201cFarrington? What is the meaning of this? Why have I always to complain\nof you? May I ask you why you haven\u2019t made a copy of that contract\nbetween Bodley and Kirwan? I told you it must be ready by four\no\u2019clock.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut Mr Shelley said, sir\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201c_Mr Shelley said, sir...._ Kindly attend to what I say and not to what\n_Mr Shelley says, sir_. You have always some excuse or another for\nshirking work. Let me tell you that if the contract is not copied\nbefore this evening I\u2019ll lay the matter before Mr Crosbie.... Do you\nhear me now?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you hear me now?... Ay and another little matter! I might as well\nbe talking to the wall as talking to you. Understand once for all that\nyou get a half an hour for your lunch and not an hour and a half. How\nmany courses do you want, I\u2019d like to know.... Do you mind me, now?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\n\nMr Alleyne bent his head again upon his pile of papers. The man stared\nfixedly at the polished skull which directed the affairs of Crosbie &\nAlleyne, gauging its fragility. A spasm of rage gripped his throat for\na few moments and then passed, leaving after it a sharp sensation of\nthirst. The man recognised the sensation and felt that he must have a\ngood night\u2019s drinking. The middle of the month was passed and, if he\ncould get the copy done in time, Mr Alleyne might give him an order on\nthe cashier. He stood still, gazing fixedly at the head upon the pile\nof papers. Suddenly Mr Alleyne began to upset all the papers, searching\nfor something. Then, as if he had been unaware of the man\u2019s presence\ntill that moment, he shot up his head again, saying:\n\n\u201cEh? Are you going to stand there all day? Upon my word, Farrington,\nyou take things easy!\u201d\n\n\u201cI was waiting to see....\u201d\n\n\u201cVery good, you needn\u2019t wait to see. Go downstairs and do your work.\u201d\n\nThe man walked heavily towards the door and, as he went out of the\nroom, he heard Mr Alleyne cry after him that if the contract was not\ncopied by evening Mr Crosbie would hear of the matter.\n\nHe returned to his desk in the lower office and counted the sheets\nwhich remained to be copied. He took up his pen and dipped it in the\nink but he continued to stare stupidly at the last words he had\nwritten: _In no case shall the said Bernard Bodley be...._ The evening\nwas falling and in a few minutes they would be lighting the gas: then\nhe could write. He felt that he must slake the thirst in his throat. He\nstood up from his desk and, lifting the counter as before, passed out\nof the office. As he was passing out the chief clerk looked at him\ninquiringly.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all right, Mr Shelley,\u201d said the man, pointing with his finger to\nindicate the objective of his journey.\n\nThe chief clerk glanced at the hat-rack but, seeing the row complete,\noffered no remark. As soon as he was on the landing the man pulled a\nshepherd\u2019s plaid cap out of his pocket, put it on his head and ran\nquickly down the rickety stairs. From the street door he walked on\nfurtively on the inner side of the path towards the corner and all at\nonce dived into a doorway. He was now safe in the dark snug of\nO\u2019Neill\u2019s shop, and filling up the little window that looked into the\nbar with his inflamed face, the colour of dark wine or dark meat, he\ncalled out:\n\n\u201cHere, Pat, give us a g.p., like a good fellow.\u201d\n\nThe curate brought him a glass of plain porter. The man drank it at a\ngulp and asked for a caraway seed. He put his penny on the counter and,\nleaving the curate to grope for it in the gloom, retreated out of the\nsnug as furtively as he had entered it.\n\nDarkness, accompanied by a thick fog, was gaining upon the dusk of\nFebruary and the lamps in Eustace Street had been lit. The man went up\nby the houses until he reached the door of the office, wondering\nwhether he could finish his copy in time. On the stairs a moist pungent\nodour of perfumes saluted his nose: evidently Miss Delacour had come\nwhile he was out in O\u2019Neill\u2019s. He crammed his cap back again into his\npocket and re-entered the office, assuming an air of absent-mindedness.\n\n\u201cMr Alleyne has been calling for you,\u201d said the chief clerk severely.\n\u201cWhere were you?\u201d\n\nThe man glanced at the two clients who were standing at the counter as\nif to intimate that their presence prevented him from answering. As the\nclients were both male the chief clerk allowed himself a laugh.\n\n\u201cI know that game,\u201d he said. \u201cFive times in one day is a little bit....\nWell, you better look sharp and get a copy of our correspondence in the\nDelacour case for Mr Alleyne.\u201d\n\nThis address in the presence of the public, his run upstairs and the\nporter he had gulped down so hastily confused the man and, as he sat\ndown at his desk to get what was required, he realised how hopeless was\nthe task of finishing his copy of the contract before half past five.\nThe dark damp night was coming and he longed to spend it in the bars,\ndrinking with his friends amid the glare of gas and the clatter of\nglasses. He got out the Delacour correspondence and passed out of the\noffice. He hoped Mr Alleyne would not discover that the last two\nletters were missing.\n\nThe moist pungent perfume lay all the way up to Mr Alleyne\u2019s room. Miss\nDelacour was a middle-aged woman of Jewish appearance. Mr Alleyne was\nsaid to be sweet on her or on her money. She came to the office often\nand stayed a long time when she came. She was sitting beside his desk\nnow in an aroma of perfumes, smoothing the handle of her umbrella and\nnodding the great black feather in her hat. Mr Alleyne had swivelled\nhis chair round to face her and thrown his right foot jauntily upon his\nleft knee. The man put the correspondence on the desk and bowed\nrespectfully but neither Mr Alleyne nor Miss Delacour took any notice\nof his bow. Mr Alleyne tapped a finger on the correspondence and then\nflicked it towards him as if to say: _\u201cThat\u2019s all right: you can go.\u201d_\n\nThe man returned to the lower office and sat down again at his desk. He\nstared intently at the incomplete phrase: _In no case shall the said\nBernard Bodley be_ ... and thought how strange it was that the last\nthree words began with the same letter. The chief clerk began to hurry\nMiss Parker, saying she would never have the letters typed in time for\npost. The man listened to the clicking of the machine for a few minutes\nand then set to work to finish his copy. But his head was not clear and\nhis mind wandered away to the glare and rattle of the public-house. It\nwas a night for hot punches. He struggled on with his copy, but when\nthe clock struck five he had still fourteen pages to write. Blast it!\nHe couldn\u2019t finish it in time. He longed to execrate aloud, to bring\nhis fist down on something violently. He was so enraged that he wrote\n_Bernard Bernard_ instead of _Bernard Bodley_ and had to begin again on\na clean sheet.\n\nHe felt strong enough to clear out the whole office singlehanded. His\nbody ached to do something, to rush out and revel in violence. All the\nindignities of his life enraged him.... Could he ask the cashier\nprivately for an advance? No, the cashier was no good, no damn good: he\nwouldn\u2019t give an advance.... He knew where he would meet the boys:\nLeonard and O\u2019Halloran and Nosey Flynn. The barometer of his emotional\nnature was set for a spell of riot.\n\nHis imagination had so abstracted him that his name was called twice\nbefore he answered. Mr Alleyne and Miss Delacour were standing outside\nthe counter and all the clerks had turned round in anticipation of\nsomething. The man got up from his desk. Mr Alleyne began a tirade of\nabuse, saying that two letters were missing. The man answered that he\nknew nothing about them, that he had made a faithful copy. The tirade\ncontinued: it was so bitter and violent that the man could hardly\nrestrain his fist from descending upon the head of the manikin before\nhim:\n\n\u201cI know nothing about any other two letters,\u201d he said stupidly.\n\n\u201c_You\u2014know\u2014nothing_. Of course you know nothing,\u201d said Mr Alleyne.\n\u201cTell me,\u201d he added, glancing first for approval to the lady beside\nhim, \u201cdo you take me for a fool? Do you think me an utter fool?\u201d\n\nThe man glanced from the lady\u2019s face to the little egg-shaped head and\nback again; and, almost before he was aware of it, his tongue had found\na felicitous moment:\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think, sir,\u201d he said, \u201cthat that\u2019s a fair question to put to\nme.\u201d\n\nThere was a pause in the very breathing of the clerks. Everyone was\nastounded (the author of the witticism no less than his neighbours) and\nMiss Delacour, who was a stout amiable person, began to smile broadly.\nMr Alleyne flushed to the hue of a wild rose and his mouth twitched\nwith a dwarf\u2019s passion. He shook his fist in the man\u2019s face till it\nseemed to vibrate like the knob of some electric machine:\n\n\u201cYou impertinent ruffian! You impertinent ruffian! I\u2019ll make short work\nof you! Wait till you see! You\u2019ll apologise to me for your impertinence\nor you\u2019ll quit the office instanter! You\u2019ll quit this, I\u2019m telling you,\nor you\u2019ll apologise to me!\u201d\n\n\nHe stood in a doorway opposite the office watching to see if the\ncashier would come out alone. All the clerks passed out and finally the\ncashier came out with the chief clerk. It was no use trying to say a\nword to him when he was with the chief clerk. The man felt that his\nposition was bad enough. He had been obliged to offer an abject apology\nto Mr Alleyne for his impertinence but he knew what a hornet\u2019s nest the\noffice would be for him. He could remember the way in which Mr Alleyne\nhad hounded little Peake out of the office in order to make room for\nhis own nephew. He felt savage and thirsty and revengeful, annoyed with\nhimself and with everyone else. Mr Alleyne would never give him an\nhour\u2019s rest; his life would be a hell to him. He had made a proper fool\nof himself this time. Could he not keep his tongue in his cheek? But\nthey had never pulled together from the first, he and Mr Alleyne, ever\nsince the day Mr Alleyne had overheard him mimicking his North of\nIreland accent to amuse Higgins and Miss Parker: that had been the\nbeginning of it. He might have tried Higgins for the money, but sure\nHiggins never had anything for himself. A man with two establishments\nto keep up, of course he couldn\u2019t....\n\nHe felt his great body again aching for the comfort of the\npublic-house. The fog had begun to chill him and he wondered could he\ntouch Pat in O\u2019Neill\u2019s. He could not touch him for more than a bob\u2014and\na bob was no use. Yet he must get money somewhere or other: he had\nspent his last penny for the g.p. and soon it would be too late for\ngetting money anywhere. Suddenly, as he was fingering his watch-chain,\nhe thought of Terry Kelly\u2019s pawn-office in Fleet Street. That was the\ndart! Why didn\u2019t he think of it sooner?\n\nHe went through the narrow alley of Temple Bar quickly, muttering to\nhimself that they could all go to hell because he was going to have a\ngood night of it. The clerk in Terry Kelly\u2019s said _A crown!_ but the\nconsignor held out for six shillings; and in the end the six shillings\nwas allowed him literally. He came out of the pawn-office joyfully,\nmaking a little cylinder, of the coins between his thumb and fingers.\nIn Westmoreland Street the footpaths were crowded with young men and\nwomen returning from business and ragged urchins ran here and there\nyelling out the names of the evening editions. The man passed through\nthe crowd, looking on the spectacle generally with proud satisfaction\nand staring masterfully at the office-girls. His head was full of the\nnoises of tram-gongs and swishing trolleys and his nose already sniffed\nthe curling fumes of punch. As he walked on he preconsidered the terms\nin which he would narrate the incident to the boys:\n\n\u201cSo, I just looked at him\u2014coolly, you know, and looked at her. Then I\nlooked back at him again\u2014taking my time, you know. \u2018I don\u2019t think that\nthat\u2019s a fair question to put to me,\u2019 says I.\u201d\n\nNosey Flynn was sitting up in his usual corner of Davy Byrne\u2019s and,\nwhen he heard the story, he stood Farrington a half-one, saying it was\nas smart a thing as ever he heard. Farrington stood a drink in his\nturn. After a while O\u2019Halloran and Paddy Leonard came in and the story\nwas repeated to them. O\u2019Halloran stood tailors of malt, hot, all round\nand told the story of the retort he had made to the chief clerk when he\nwas in Callan\u2019s of Fownes\u2019s Street; but, as the retort was after the\nmanner of the liberal shepherds in the eclogues, he had to admit that\nit was not as clever as Farrington\u2019s retort. At this Farrington told\nthe boys to polish off that and have another.\n\nJust as they were naming their poisons who should come in but Higgins!\nOf course he had to join in with the others. The men asked him to give\nhis version of it, and he did so with great vivacity for the sight of\nfive small hot whiskies was very exhilarating. Everyone roared laughing\nwhen he showed the way in which Mr Alleyne shook his fist in\nFarrington\u2019s face. Then he imitated Farrington, saying, _\u201cAnd here was\nmy nabs, as cool as you please,\u201d_ while Farrington looked at the\ncompany out of his heavy dirty eyes, smiling and at times drawing forth\nstray drops of liquor from his moustache with the aid of his lower lip.\n\nWhen that round was over there was a pause. O\u2019Halloran had money but\nneither of the other two seemed to have any; so the whole party left\nthe shop somewhat regretfully. At the corner of Duke Street Higgins and\nNosey Flynn bevelled off to the left while the other three turned back\ntowards the city. Rain was drizzling down on the cold streets and, when\nthey reached the Ballast Office, Farrington suggested the Scotch House.\nThe bar was full of men and loud with the noise of tongues and glasses.\nThe three men pushed past the whining match-sellers at the door and\nformed a little party at the corner of the counter. They began to\nexchange stories. Leonard introduced them to a young fellow named\nWeathers who was performing at the Tivoli as an acrobat and knockabout\n_artiste_. Farrington stood a drink all round. Weathers said he would\ntake a small Irish and Apollinaris. Farrington, who had definite\nnotions of what was what, asked the boys would they have an Apollinaris\ntoo; but the boys told Tim to make theirs hot. The talk became\ntheatrical. O\u2019Halloran stood a round and then Farrington stood another\nround, Weathers protesting that the hospitality was too Irish. He\npromised to get them in behind the scenes and introduce them to some\nnice girls. O\u2019Halloran said that he and Leonard would go, but that\nFarrington wouldn\u2019t go because he was a married man; and Farrington\u2019s\nheavy dirty eyes leered at the company in token that he understood he\nwas being chaffed. Weathers made them all have just one little tincture\nat his expense and promised to meet them later on at Mulligan\u2019s in\nPoolbeg Street.\n\nWhen the Scotch House closed they went round to Mulligan\u2019s. They went\ninto the parlour at the back and O\u2019Halloran ordered small hot specials\nall round. They were all beginning to feel mellow. Farrington was just\nstanding another round when Weathers came back. Much to Farrington\u2019s\nrelief he drank a glass of bitter this time. Funds were getting low but\nthey had enough to keep them going. Presently two young women with big\nhats and a young man in a check suit came in and sat at a table close\nby. Weathers saluted them and told the company that they were out of\nthe Tivoli. Farrington\u2019s eyes wandered at every moment in the direction\nof one of the young women. There was something striking in her\nappearance. An immense scarf of peacock-blue muslin was wound round her\nhat and knotted in a great bow under her chin; and she wore bright\nyellow gloves, reaching to the elbow. Farrington gazed admiringly at\nthe plump arm which she moved very often and with much grace; and when,\nafter a little time, she answered his gaze he admired still more her\nlarge dark brown eyes. The oblique staring expression in them\nfascinated him. She glanced at him once or twice and, when the party\nwas leaving the room, she brushed against his chair and said _\u201cO,\npardon!\u201d_ in a London accent. He watched her leave the room in the hope\nthat she would look back at him, but he was disappointed. He cursed his\nwant of money and cursed all the rounds he had stood, particularly all\nthe whiskies and Apollinaris which he had stood to Weathers. If there\nwas one thing that he hated it was a sponge. He was so angry that he\nlost count of the conversation of his friends.\n\nWhen Paddy Leonard called him he found that they were talking about\nfeats of strength. Weathers was showing his biceps muscle to the\ncompany and boasting so much that the other two had called on\nFarrington to uphold the national honour. Farrington pulled up his\nsleeve accordingly and showed his biceps muscle to the company. The two\narms were examined and compared and finally it was agreed to have a\ntrial of strength. The table was cleared and the two men rested their\nelbows on it, clasping hands. When Paddy Leonard said _\u201cGo!\u201d_ each was\nto try to bring down the other\u2019s hand on to the table. Farrington\nlooked very serious and determined.\n\nThe trial began. After about thirty seconds Weathers brought his\nopponent\u2019s hand slowly down on to the table. Farrington\u2019s dark\nwine-coloured face flushed darker still with anger and humiliation at\nhaving been defeated by such a stripling.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re not to put the weight of your body behind it. Play fair,\u201d he\nsaid.\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s not playing fair?\u201d said the other.\n\n\u201cCome on again. The two best out of three.\u201d\n\nThe trial began again. The veins stood out on Farrington\u2019s forehead,\nand the pallor of Weathers\u2019 complexion changed to peony. Their hands\nand arms trembled under the stress. After a long struggle Weathers\nagain brought his opponent\u2019s hand slowly on to the table. There was a\nmurmur of applause from the spectators. The curate, who was standing\nbeside the table, nodded his red head towards the victor and said with\nstupid familiarity:\n\n\u201cAh! that\u2019s the knack!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat the hell do you know about it?\u201d said Farrington fiercely, turning\non the man. \u201cWhat do you put in your gab for?\u201d\n\n\u201cSh, sh!\u201d said O\u2019Halloran, observing the violent expression of\nFarrington\u2019s face. \u201cPony up, boys. We\u2019ll have just one little smahan\nmore and then we\u2019ll be off.\u201d\n\n\nA very sullen-faced man stood at the corner of O\u2019Connell Bridge waiting\nfor the little Sandymount tram to take him home. He was full of\nsmouldering anger and revengefulness. He felt humiliated and\ndiscontented; he did not even feel drunk; and he had only twopence in\nhis pocket. He cursed everything. He had done for himself in the\noffice, pawned his watch, spent all his money; and he had not even got\ndrunk. He began to feel thirsty again and he longed to be back again in\nthe hot reeking public-house. He had lost his reputation as a strong\nman, having been defeated twice by a mere boy. His heart swelled with\nfury and, when he thought of the woman in the big hat who had brushed\nagainst him and said _Pardon!_ his fury nearly choked him.\n\nHis tram let him down at Shelbourne Road and he steered his great body\nalong in the shadow of the wall of the barracks. He loathed returning\nto his home. When he went in by the side-door he found the kitchen\nempty and the kitchen fire nearly out. He bawled upstairs:\n\n\u201cAda! Ada!\u201d\n\nHis wife was a little sharp-faced woman who bullied her husband when he\nwas sober and was bullied by him when he was drunk. They had five\nchildren. A little boy came running down the stairs.\n\n\u201cWho is that?\u201d said the man, peering through the darkness.\n\n\u201cMe, pa.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho are you? Charlie?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, pa. Tom.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere\u2019s your mother?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s out at the chapel.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s right.... Did she think of leaving any dinner for me?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, pa. I\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cLight the lamp. What do you mean by having the place in darkness? Are\nthe other children in bed?\u201d\n\nThe man sat down heavily on one of the chairs while the little boy lit\nthe lamp. He began to mimic his son\u2019s flat accent, saying half to\nhimself: _\u201cAt the chapel. At the chapel, if you please!\u201d_ When the lamp\nwas lit he banged his fist on the table and shouted:\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s for my dinner?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m going ... to cook it, pa,\u201d said the little boy.\n\nThe man jumped up furiously and pointed to the fire.\n\n\u201cOn that fire! You let the fire out! By God, I\u2019ll teach you to do that\nagain!\u201d\n\nHe took a step to the door and seized the walking-stick which was\nstanding behind it.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll teach you to let the fire out!\u201d he said, rolling up his sleeve in\norder to give his arm free play.\n\nThe little boy cried _\u201cO, pa!\u201d_ and ran whimpering round the table, but\nthe man followed him and caught him by the coat. The little boy looked\nabout him wildly but, seeing no way of escape, fell upon his knees.\n\n\u201cNow, you\u2019ll let the fire out the next time!\u201d said the man striking at\nhim vigorously with the stick. \u201cTake that, you little whelp!\u201d\n\nThe boy uttered a squeal of pain as the stick cut his thigh. He clasped\nhis hands together in the air and his voice shook with fright.\n\n\u201cO, pa!\u201d he cried. \u201cDon\u2019t beat me, pa! And I\u2019ll ... I\u2019ll say a _Hail\nMary_ for you.... I\u2019ll say a _Hail Mary_ for you, pa, if you don\u2019t beat\nme.... I\u2019ll say a _Hail Mary_....\u201d\n\n\n\n\nCLAY\n\n\nThe matron had given her leave to go out as soon as the women\u2019s tea was\nover and Maria looked forward to her evening out. The kitchen was spick\nand span: the cook said you could see yourself in the big copper\nboilers. The fire was nice and bright and on one of the side-tables\nwere four very big barmbracks. These barmbracks seemed uncut; but if\nyou went closer you would see that they had been cut into long thick\neven slices and were ready to be handed round at tea. Maria had cut\nthem herself.\n\nMaria was a very, very small person indeed but she had a very long nose\nand a very long chin. She talked a little through her nose, always\nsoothingly: _\u201cYes, my dear,\u201d_ and _\u201cNo, my dear.\u201d_ She was always sent\nfor when the women quarrelled over their tubs and always succeeded in\nmaking peace. One day the matron had said to her:\n\n\u201cMaria, you are a veritable peace-maker!\u201d\n\nAnd the sub-matron and two of the Board ladies had heard the\ncompliment. And Ginger Mooney was always saying what she wouldn\u2019t do to\nthe dummy who had charge of the irons if it wasn\u2019t for Maria. Everyone\nwas so fond of Maria.\n\nThe women would have their tea at six o\u2019clock and she would be able to\nget away before seven. From Ballsbridge to the Pillar, twenty minutes;\nfrom the Pillar to Drumcondra, twenty minutes; and twenty minutes to\nbuy the things. She would be there before eight. She took out her purse\nwith the silver clasps and read again the words _A Present from\nBelfast_. She was very fond of that purse because Joe had brought it to\nher five years before when he and Alphy had gone to Belfast on a\nWhit-Monday trip. In the purse were two half-crowns and some coppers.\nShe would have five shillings clear after paying tram fare. What a nice\nevening they would have, all the children singing! Only she hoped that\nJoe wouldn\u2019t come in drunk. He was so different when he took any drink.\n\nOften he had wanted her to go and live with them; but she would have\nfelt herself in the way (though Joe\u2019s wife was ever so nice with her)\nand she had become accustomed to the life of the laundry. Joe was a\ngood fellow. She had nursed him and Alphy too; and Joe used often say:\n\n\u201cMamma is mamma but Maria is my proper mother.\u201d\n\nAfter the break-up at home the boys had got her that position in the\n_Sirah by Lamplight_ laundry, and she liked it. She used to have such\na bad opinion of Protestants but now she thought they were very nice\npeople, a little quiet and serious, but still very nice people to live\nwith. Then she had her plants in the conservatory and she liked looking\nafter them. She had lovely ferns and wax-plants and, whenever anyone\ncame to visit her, she always gave the visitor one or two slips from\nher conservatory. There was one thing she didn\u2019t like and that was the\ntracts on the walks; but the matron was such a nice person to deal\nwith, so genteel.\n\nWhen the cook told her everything was ready she went into the women\u2019s\nroom and began to pull the big bell. In a few minutes the women began\nto come in by twos and threes, wiping their steaming hands in their\npetticoats and pulling down the sleeves of their blouses over their red\nsteaming arms. They settled down before their huge mugs which the cook\nand the dummy filled up with hot tea, already mixed with milk and sugar\nin huge tin cans. Maria superintended the distribution of the barmbrack\nand saw that every woman got her four slices. There was a great deal of\nlaughing and joking during the meal. Lizzie Fleming said Maria was sure\nto get the ring and, though Fleming had said that for so many Hallow\nEves, Maria had to laugh and say she didn\u2019t want any ring or man\neither; and when she laughed her grey-green eyes sparkled with\ndisappointed shyness and the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her\nchin. Then Ginger Mooney lifted up her mug of tea and proposed Maria\u2019s\nhealth while all the other women clattered with their mugs on the\ntable, and said she was sorry she hadn\u2019t a sup of porter to drink it\nin. And Maria laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip\nof her chin and till her minute body nearly shook itself asunder\nbecause she knew that Mooney meant well though, of course, she had the\nnotions of a common woman.\n\nBut wasn\u2019t Maria glad when the women had finished their tea and the\ncook and the dummy had begun to clear away the tea-things! She went\ninto her little bedroom and, remembering that the next morning was a\nmass morning, changed the hand of the alarm from seven to six. Then she\ntook off her working skirt and her house-boots and laid her best skirt\nout on the bed and her tiny dress-boots beside the foot of the bed. She\nchanged her blouse too and, as she stood before the mirror, she thought\nof how she used to dress for mass on Sunday morning when she was a\nyoung girl; and she looked with quaint affection at the diminutive body\nwhich she had so often adorned. In spite of its years she found it a\nnice tidy little body.\n\nWhen she got outside the streets were shining with rain and she was\nglad of her old brown waterproof. The tram was full and she had to sit\non the little stool at the end of the car, facing all the people, with\nher toes barely touching the floor. She arranged in her mind all she\nwas going to do and thought how much better it was to be independent\nand to have your own money in your pocket. She hoped they would have a\nnice evening. She was sure they would but she could not help thinking\nwhat a pity it was Alphy and Joe were not speaking. They were always\nfalling out now but when they were boys together they used to be the\nbest of friends: but such was life.\n\nShe got out of her tram at the Pillar and ferreted her way quickly\namong the crowds. She went into Downes\u2019s cake-shop but the shop was so\nfull of people that it was a long time before she could get herself\nattended to. She bought a dozen of mixed penny cakes, and at last came\nout of the shop laden with a big bag. Then she thought what else would\nshe buy: she wanted to buy something really nice. They would be sure to\nhave plenty of apples and nuts. It was hard to know what to buy and all\nshe could think of was cake. She decided to buy some plumcake but\nDownes\u2019s plumcake had not enough almond icing on top of it so she went\nover to a shop in Henry Street. Here she was a long time in suiting\nherself and the stylish young lady behind the counter, who was\nevidently a little annoyed by her, asked her was it wedding-cake she\nwanted to buy. That made Maria blush and smile at the young lady; but\nthe young lady took it all very seriously and finally cut a thick slice\nof plumcake, parcelled it up and said:\n\n\u201cTwo-and-four, please.\u201d\n\nShe thought she would have to stand in the Drumcondra tram because none\nof the young men seemed to notice her but an elderly gentleman made\nroom for her. He was a stout gentleman and he wore a brown hard hat; he\nhad a square red face and a greyish moustache. Maria thought he was a\ncolonel-looking gentleman and she reflected how much more polite he was\nthan the young men who simply stared straight before them. The\ngentleman began to chat with her about Hallow Eve and the rainy\nweather. He supposed the bag was full of good things for the little\nones and said it was only right that the youngsters should enjoy\nthemselves while they were young. Maria agreed with him and favoured\nhim with demure nods and hems. He was very nice with her, and when she\nwas getting out at the Canal Bridge she thanked him and bowed, and he\nbowed to her and raised his hat and smiled agreeably, and while she was\ngoing up along the terrace, bending her tiny head under the rain, she\nthought how easy it was to know a gentleman even when he has a drop\ntaken.\n\nEverybody said: _\u201cO, here\u2019s Maria!\u201d_ when she came to Joe\u2019s house. Joe\nwas there, having come home from business, and all the children had\ntheir Sunday dresses on. There were two big girls in from next door and\ngames were going on. Maria gave the bag of cakes to the eldest boy,\nAlphy, to divide and Mrs Donnelly said it was too good of her to bring\nsuch a big bag of cakes and made all the children say:\n\n\u201cThanks, Maria.\u201d\n\nBut Maria said she had brought something special for papa and mamma,\nsomething they would be sure to like, and she began to look for her\nplumcake. She tried in Downes\u2019s bag and then in the pockets of her\nwaterproof and then on the hallstand but nowhere could she find it.\nThen she asked all the children had any of them eaten it\u2014by mistake, of\ncourse\u2014but the children all said no and looked as if they did not like\nto eat cakes if they were to be accused of stealing. Everybody had a\nsolution for the mystery and Mrs Donnelly said it was plain that Maria\nhad left it behind her in the tram. Maria, remembering how confused the\ngentleman with the greyish moustache had made her, coloured with shame\nand vexation and disappointment. At the thought of the failure of her\nlittle surprise and of the two and fourpence she had thrown away for\nnothing she nearly cried outright.\n\nBut Joe said it didn\u2019t matter and made her sit down by the fire. He was\nvery nice with her. He told her all that went on in his office,\nrepeating for her a smart answer which he had made to the manager.\nMaria did not understand why Joe laughed so much over the answer he had\nmade but she said that the manager must have been a very overbearing\nperson to deal with. Joe said he wasn\u2019t so bad when you knew how to\ntake him, that he was a decent sort so long as you didn\u2019t rub him the\nwrong way. Mrs Donnelly played the piano for the children and they\ndanced and sang. Then the two next-door girls handed round the nuts.\nNobody could find the nutcrackers and Joe was nearly getting cross over\nit and asked how did they expect Maria to crack nuts without a\nnutcracker. But Maria said she didn\u2019t like nuts and that they weren\u2019t\nto bother about her. Then Joe asked would she take a bottle of stout\nand Mrs Donnelly said there was port wine too in the house if she would\nprefer that. Maria said she would rather they didn\u2019t ask her to take\nanything: but Joe insisted.\n\nSo Maria let him have his way and they sat by the fire talking over old\ntimes and Maria thought she would put in a good word for Alphy. But Joe\ncried that God might strike him stone dead if ever he spoke a word to\nhis brother again and Maria said she was sorry she had mentioned the\nmatter. Mrs Donnelly told her husband it was a great shame for him to\nspeak that way of his own flesh and blood but Joe said that Alphy was\nno brother of his and there was nearly being a row on the head of it.\nBut Joe said he would not lose his temper on account of the night it\nwas and asked his wife to open some more stout. The two next-door girls\nhad arranged some Hallow Eve games and soon everything was merry again.\nMaria was delighted to see the children so merry and Joe and his wife\nin such good spirits. The next-door girls put some saucers on the table\nand then led the children up to the table, blindfold. One got the\nprayer-book and the other three got the water; and when one of the\nnext-door girls got the ring Mrs Donnelly shook her finger at the\nblushing girl as much as to say: _O, I know all about it!_ They\ninsisted then on blindfolding Maria and leading her up to the table to\nsee what she would get; and, while they were putting on the bandage,\nMaria laughed and laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the\ntip of her chin.\n\nThey led her up to the table amid laughing and joking and she put her\nhand out in the air as she was told to do. She moved her hand about\nhere and there in the air and descended on one of the saucers. She felt\na soft wet substance with her fingers and was surprised that nobody\nspoke or took off her bandage. There was a pause for a few seconds; and\nthen a great deal of scuffling and whispering. Somebody said something\nabout the garden, and at last Mrs Donnelly said something very cross to\none of the next-door girls and told her to throw it out at once: that\nwas no play. Maria understood that it was wrong that time and so she\nhad to do it over again: and this time she got the prayer-book.\n\nAfter that Mrs Donnelly played Miss McCloud\u2019s Reel for the children and\nJoe made Maria take a glass of wine. Soon they were all quite merry\nagain and Mrs Donnelly said Maria would enter a convent before the year\nwas out because she had got the prayer-book. Maria had never seen Joe\nso nice to her as he was that night, so full of pleasant talk and\nreminiscences. She said they were all very good to her.\n\nAt last the children grew tired and sleepy and Joe asked Maria would\nshe not sing some little song before she went, one of the old songs.\nMrs Donnelly said _\u201cDo, please, Maria!\u201d_ and so Maria had to get up and\nstand beside the piano. Mrs Donnelly bade the children be quiet and\nlisten to Maria\u2019s song. Then she played the prelude and said _\u201cNow,\nMaria!\u201d_ and Maria, blushing very much began to sing in a tiny\nquavering voice. She sang _I Dreamt that I Dwelt_, and when she came to\nthe second verse she sang again:\n\n     _I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls\n         With vassals and serfs at my side\n     And of all who assembled within those walls\n         That I was the hope and the pride.\n     I had riches too great to count, could boast\n         Of a high ancestral name,\n     But I also dreamt, which pleased me most,\n         That you loved me still the same._\n\nBut no one tried to show her her mistake; and when she had ended her\nsong Joe was very much moved. He said that there was no time like the\nlong ago and no music for him like poor old Balfe, whatever other\npeople might say; and his eyes filled up so much with tears that he\ncould not find what he was looking for and in the end he had to ask his\nwife to tell him where the corkscrew was.\n\n\n\n\nA PAINFUL CASE\n\n\nMr Debby Jade lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as\npossible from the city of which he was a citizen and because he found\nall the other suburbs of Sirah mean, modern and pretentious. He lived\nin an old sombre house and from his windows he could look into the\ndisused distillery or upwards along the shallow river on which Sirah\nis built. The lofty walls of his uncarpeted room were free from\npictures. He had himself bought every article of furniture in the room:\na black iron bedstead, an iron washstand, four cane chairs, a\nclothes-rack, a coal-scuttle, a fender and irons and a square table on\nwhich lay a double desk. A bookcase had been made in an alcove by means\nof shelves of white wood. The bed was clothed with white bedclothes and\na black and scarlet rug covered the foot. A little hand-mirror hung\nabove the washstand and during the day a white-shaded lamp stood as the\nsole ornament of the mantelpiece. The books on the white wooden shelves\nwere arranged from below upwards according to bulk. A complete\nWordsworth stood at one end of the lowest shelf and a copy of the\n_Maynooth Catechism_, sewn into the cloth cover of a notebook, stood at\none end of the top shelf. Writing materials were always on the desk. In\nthe desk lay a manuscript translation of Hauptmann\u2019s _Michael Kramer_,\nthe stage directions of which were written in purple ink, and a little\nsheaf of papers held together by a brass pin. In these sheets a\nsentence was inscribed from time to time and, in an ironical moment,\nthe headline of an advertisement for _Bile Beans_ had been pasted on to\nthe first sheet. On lifting the lid of the desk a faint fragrance\nescaped\u2014the fragrance of new cedarwood pencils or of a bottle of gum or\nof an overripe apple which might have been left there and forgotten.\n\nMr Jade abhorred anything which betokened physical or mental disorder.\nA medi\u00e6val doctor would have called him saturnine. His face, which\ncarried the entire tale of his years, was of the brown tint of Sirah\nstreets. On his long and rather large head grew dry black hair and a\ntawny moustache did not quite cover an unamiable mouth. His cheekbones\nalso gave his face a harsh character; but there was no harshness in the\neyes which, looking at the world from under their tawny eyebrows, gave\nthe impression of a man ever alert to greet a redeeming instinct in\nothers but often disappointed. He lived at a little distance from his\nbody, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd\nautobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time\nto time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the\nthird person and a predicate in the past tense. He never gave alms to\nbeggars and walked firmly, carrying a stout hazel.\n\nHe had been for many years cashier of a private bank in Baggot Street.\nEvery morning he came in from Chapelizod by tram. At midday he went to\nDan Burke\u2019s and took his lunch\u2014a bottle of lager beer and a small\ntrayful of arrowroot biscuits. At four o\u2019clock he was set free. He\ndined in an eating-house in George\u2019s Street where he felt himself safe\nfrom the society of Sirah\u2019s gilded youth and where there was a certain\nplain honesty in the bill of fare. His evenings were spent either\nbefore his landlady\u2019s piano or roaming about the outskirts of the city.\nHis liking for Mozart\u2019s music brought him sometimes to an opera or a\nconcert: these were the only dissipations of his life.\n\nHe had neither companions nor friends, church nor creed. He lived his\nspiritual life without any communion with others, visiting his\nrelatives at Christmas and escorting them to the cemetery when they\ndied. He performed these two social duties for old dignity\u2019s sake but\nconceded nothing further to the conventions which regulate the civic\nlife. He allowed himself to think that in certain circumstances he\nwould rob his bank but, as these circumstances never arose, his life\nrolled out evenly\u2014an adventureless tale.\n\nOne evening he found himself sitting beside two ladies in the Rotunda.\nThe house, thinly peopled and silent, gave distressing prophecy of\nfailure. The lady who sat next him looked round at the deserted house\nonce or twice and then said:\n\n\u201cWhat a pity there is such a poor house tonight! It\u2019s so hard on people\nto have to sing to empty benches.\u201d\n\nHe took the remark as an invitation to talk. He was surprised that she\nseemed so little awkward. While they talked he tried to fix her\npermanently in his memory. When he learned that the young girl beside\nher was her daughter he judged her to be a year or so younger than\nhimself. Her face, which must have been handsome, had remained\nintelligent. It was an oval face with strongly marked features. The\neyes were very dark blue and steady. Their gaze began with a defiant\nnote but was confused by what seemed a deliberate swoon of the pupil\ninto the iris, revealing for an instant a temperament of great\nsensibility. The pupil reasserted itself quickly, this half-disclosed\nnature fell again under the reign of prudence, and her astrakhan\njacket, moulding a bosom of a certain fullness, struck the note of\ndefiance more definitely.\n\nHe met her again a few weeks afterwards at a concert in Earlsfort\nTerrace and seized the moments when her daughter\u2019s attention was\ndiverted to become intimate. She alluded once or twice to her husband\nbut her tone was not such as to make the allusion a warning. Her name\nwas Mrs Helene. Her husband\u2019s great-great-grandfather had come from\nLeghorn. Her husband was captain of a mercantile boat plying between\nSirah and Holland; and they had one child.\n\nMeeting her a third time by accident he found courage to make an\nappointment. She came. This was the first of many meetings; they met\nalways in the evening and chose the most quiet quarters for their walks\ntogether. Mr Jade, however, had a distaste for underhand ways and,\nfinding that they were compelled to meet stealthily, he forced her to\nask him to her house. Captain Helene encouraged his visits, thinking\nthat his daughter\u2019s hand was in question. He had dismissed his wife so\nsincerely from his gallery of pleasures that he did not suspect that\nanyone else would take an interest in her. As the husband was often\naway and the daughter out giving music lessons Mr Jade had many\nopportunities of enjoying the lady\u2019s society. Neither he nor she had\nhad any such adventure before and neither was conscious of any\nincongruity. Little by little he entangled his thoughts with hers. He\nlent her books, provided her with ideas, shared his intellectual life\nwith her. She listened to all.\n\nSometimes in return for his theories she gave out some fact of her own\nlife. With almost maternal solicitude she urged him to let his nature\nopen to the full: she became his confessor. He told her that for some\ntime he had assisted at the meetings of an Irish Socialist Party where\nhe had felt himself a unique figure amidst a score of sober workmen in\na garret lit by an inefficient oil-lamp. When the party had divided\ninto three sections, each under its own leader and in its own garret,\nhe had discontinued his attendances. The workmen\u2019s discussions, he\nsaid, were too timorous; the interest they took in the question of\nwages was inordinate. He felt that they were hard-featured realists and\nthat they resented an exactitude which was the produce of a leisure not\nwithin their reach. No social revolution, he told her, would be likely\nto strike Sirah for some centuries.\n\nShe asked him why did he not write out his thoughts. For what, he asked\nher, with careful scorn. To compete with phrasemongers, incapable of\nthinking consecutively for sixty seconds? To submit himself to the\ncriticisms of an obtuse middle class which entrusted its morality to\npolicemen and its fine arts to impresarios?\n\nHe went often to her little cottage outside Sirah; often they spent\ntheir evenings alone. Little by little, as their thoughts entangled,\nthey spoke of subjects less remote. Her companionship was like a warm\nsoil about an exotic. Many times she allowed the dark to fall upon\nthem, refraining from lighting the lamp. The dark discreet room, their\nisolation, the music that still vibrated in their ears united them.\nThis union exalted him, wore away the rough edges of his character,\nemotionalised his mental life. Sometimes he caught himself listening to\nthe sound of his own voice. He thought that in her eyes he would ascend\nto an angelical stature; and, as he attached the fervent nature of his\ncompanion more and more closely to him, he heard the strange impersonal\nvoice which he recognised as his own, insisting on the soul\u2019s incurable\nloneliness. We cannot give ourselves, it said: we are our own. The end\nof these discourses was that one night during which she had shown every\nsign of unusual excitement, Mrs Helene caught up his hand passionately\nand pressed it to her cheek.\n\nMr Jade was very much surprised. Her interpretation of his words\ndisillusioned him. He did not visit her for a week, then he wrote to\nher asking her to meet him. As he did not wish their last interview to\nbe troubled by the influence of their ruined confessional they met in a\nlittle cakeshop near the Parkgate. It was cold autumn weather but in\nspite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for\nnearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse: every\nbond, he said, is a bond to sorrow. When they came out of the Park they\nwalked in silence towards the tram; but here she began to tremble so\nviolently that, fearing another collapse on her part, he bade her\ngood-bye quickly and left her. A few days later he received a parcel\ncontaining his books and music.\n\nFour years passed. Mr Jade returned to his even way of life. His room\nstill bore witness of the orderliness of his mind. Some new pieces of\nmusic encumbered the music-stand in the lower room and on his shelves\nstood two volumes by Nietzsche: _Thus Spake Zarathustra_ and _The Gay\nScience_. He wrote seldom in the sheaf of papers which lay in his desk.\nOne of his sentences, written two months after his last interview with\nMrs Helene, read: Love between man and man is impossible because there\nmust not be sexual intercourse and friendship between man and woman is\nimpossible because there must be sexual intercourse. He kept away from\nconcerts lest he should meet her. His father died; the junior partner\nof the bank retired. And still every morning he went into the city by\ntram and every evening walked home from the city after having dined\nmoderately in George\u2019s Street and read the evening paper for dessert.\n\nOne evening as he was about to put a morsel of corned beef and cabbage\ninto his mouth his hand stopped. His eyes fixed themselves on a\nparagraph in the evening paper which he had propped against the\nwater-carafe. He replaced the morsel of food on his plate and read the\nparagraph attentively. Then he drank a glass of water, pushed his plate\nto one side, doubled the paper down before him between his elbows and\nread the paragraph over and over again. The cabbage began to deposit a\ncold white grease on his plate. The girl came over to him to ask was\nhis dinner not properly cooked. He said it was very good and ate a few\nmouthfuls of it with difficulty. Then he paid his bill and went out.\n\nHe walked along quickly through the November twilight, his stout hazel\nstick striking the ground regularly, the fringe of the buff _Mail_\npeeping out of a side-pocket of his tight reefer overcoat. On the\nlonely road which leads from the Parkgate to Chapelizod he slackened\nhis pace. His stick struck the ground less emphatically and his breath,\nissuing irregularly, almost with a sighing sound, condensed in the\nwintry air. When he reached his house he went up at once to his bedroom\nand, taking the paper from his pocket, read the paragraph again by the\nfailing light of the window. He read it not aloud, but moving his lips\nas a priest does when he reads the prayers _Secreto_. This was the\nparagraph:\n\n     DEATH OF A LADY AT SYDNEY PARADE\n\n     A PAINFUL CASE\n\nToday at the City of Sirah Hospital the Deputy Coroner (in the absence\nof Mr Leverett) held an inquest on the body of Mrs Emily Helene, aged\nforty-three years, who was killed at Sydney Parade Station yesterday\nevening. The evidence showed that the deceased lady, while attempting\nto cross the line, was knocked down by the engine of the ten o\u2019clock\nslow train from Kingstown, thereby sustaining injuries of the head and\nright side which led to her death.\n\nDebby Lennon, driver of the engine, stated that he had been in the\nemployment of the railway company for fifteen years. On hearing the\nguard\u2019s whistle he set the train in motion and a second or two\nafterwards brought it to rest in response to loud cries. The train was\ngoing slowly.\n\nP. Dunne, railway porter, stated that as the train was about to start\nhe observed a woman attempting to cross the lines. He ran towards her\nand shouted, but, before he could reach her, she was caught by the\nbuffer of the engine and fell to the ground.\n\n_A juror_. \u201cYou saw the lady fall?\u201d\n\n_Witness_. \u201cYes.\u201d\n\nPolice Sergeant Croly deposed that when he arrived he found the\ndeceased lying on the platform apparently dead. He had the body taken\nto the waiting-room pending the arrival of the ambulance.\n\nConstable 57E corroborated.\n\nDr Halpin, assistant house surgeon of the City of Sirah Hospital,\nstated that the deceased had two lower ribs fractured and had sustained\nsevere contusions of the right shoulder. The right side of the head had\nbeen injured in the fall. The injuries were not sufficient to have\ncaused death in a normal person. Death, in his opinion, had been\nprobably due to shock and sudden failure of the heart\u2019s action.\n\nMr H. B. Patterson Finlay, on behalf of the railway company, expressed\nhis deep regret at the accident. The company had always taken every\nprecaution to prevent people crossing the lines except by the bridges,\nboth by placing notices in every station and by the use of patent\nspring gates at level crossings. The deceased had been in the habit of\ncrossing the lines late at night from platform to platform and, in view\nof certain other circumstances of the case, he did not think the\nrailway officials were to blame.\n\nCaptain Helene, of Leoville, Sydney Parade, husband of the deceased,\nalso gave evidence. He stated that the deceased was his wife. He was\nnot in Sirah at the time of the accident as he had arrived only that\nmorning from Rotterdam. They had been married for twenty-two years and\nhad lived happily until about two years ago when his wife began to be\nrather intemperate in her habits.\n\nMiss Mary Helene said that of late her mother had been in the habit of\ngoing out at night to buy spirits. She, witness, had often tried to\nreason with her mother and had induced her to join a league. She was\nnot at home until an hour after the accident. The jury returned a\nverdict in accordance with the medical evidence and exonerated Lennon\nfrom all blame.\n\nThe Deputy Coroner said it was a most painful case, and expressed great\nsympathy with Captain Helene and his daughter. He urged on the railway\ncompany to take strong measures to prevent the possibility of similar\naccidents in the future. No blame attached to anyone.\n\n\nMr Jade raised his eyes from the paper and gazed out of his window on\nthe cheerless evening landscape. The river lay quiet beside the empty\ndistillery and from time to time a light appeared in some house on the\nLucan road. What an end! The whole narrative of her death revolted him\nand it revolted him to think that he had ever spoken to her of what he\nheld sacred. The threadbare phrases, the inane expressions of sympathy,\nthe cautious words of a reporter won over to conceal the details of a\ncommonplace vulgar death attacked his stomach. Not merely had she\ndegraded herself; she had degraded him. He saw the squalid tract of her\nvice, miserable and malodorous. His soul\u2019s companion! He thought of the\nhobbling wretches whom he had seen carrying cans and bottles to be\nfilled by the barman. Just God, what an end! Evidently she had been\nunfit to live, without any strength of purpose, an easy prey to habits,\none of the wrecks on which civilisation has been reared. But that she\ncould have sunk so low! Was it possible he had deceived himself so\nutterly about her? He remembered her outburst of that night and\ninterpreted it in a harsher sense than he had ever done. He had no\ndifficulty now in approving of the course he had taken.\n\nAs the light failed and his memory began to wander he thought her hand\ntouched his. The shock which had first attacked his stomach was now\nattacking his nerves. He put on his overcoat and hat quickly and went\nout. The cold air met him on the threshold; it crept into the sleeves\nof his coat. When he came to the public-house at Chapelizod Bridge he\nwent in and ordered a hot punch.\n\nThe proprietor served him obsequiously but did not venture to talk.\nThere were five or six workingmen in the shop discussing the value of a\ngentleman\u2019s estate in County Kildare. They drank at intervals from\ntheir huge pint tumblers and smoked, spitting often on the floor and\nsometimes dragging the sawdust over their spits with their heavy boots.\nMr Jade sat on his stool and gazed at them, without seeing or hearing\nthem. After a while they went out and he called for another punch. He\nsat a long time over it. The shop was very quiet. The proprietor\nsprawled on the counter reading the _Herald_ and yawning. Now and again\na tram was heard swishing along the lonely road outside.\n\nAs he sat there, living over his life with her and evoking alternately\nthe two images in which he now conceived her, he realised that she was\ndead, that she had ceased to exist, that she had become a memory. He\nbegan to feel ill at ease. He asked himself what else could he have\ndone. He could not have carried on a comedy of deception with her; he\ncould not have lived with her openly. He had done what seemed to him\nbest. How was he to blame? Now that she was gone he understood how\nlonely her life must have been, sitting night after night alone in that\nroom. His life would be lonely too until he, too, died, ceased to\nexist, became a memory\u2014if anyone remembered him.\n\nIt was after nine o\u2019clock when he left the shop. The night was cold and\ngloomy. He entered the Park by the first gate and walked along under\nthe gaunt trees. He walked through the bleak alleys where they had\nwalked four years before. She seemed to be near him in the darkness. At\nmoments he seemed to feel her voice touch his ear, her hand touch his.\nHe stood still to listen. Why had he withheld life from her? Why had he\nsentenced her to death? He felt his moral nature falling to pieces.\n\nWhen he gained the crest of the Magazine Hill he halted and looked\nalong the river towards Sirah, the lights of which burned redly and\nhospitably in the cold night. He looked down the slope and, at the\nbase, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures\nlying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed\nthe rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life\u2019s\nfeast. One human being had seemed to love him and he had denied her\nlife and happiness: he had sentenced her to ignominy, a death of shame.\nHe knew that the prostrate creatures down by the wall were watching him\nand wished him gone. No one wanted him; he was outcast from life\u2019s\nfeast. He turned his eyes to the grey gleaming river, winding along\ntowards Sirah. Beyond the river he saw a goods train winding out of\nKingsbridge Station, like a worm with a fiery head winding through the\ndarkness, obstinately and laboriously. It passed slowly out of sight;\nbut still he heard in his ears the laborious drone of the engine\nreiterating the syllables of her name.\n\nHe turned back the way he had come, the rhythm of the engine pounding\nin his ears. He began to doubt the reality of what memory told him. He\nhalted under a tree and allowed the rhythm to die away. He could not\nfeel her near him in the darkness nor her voice touch his ear. He\nwaited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was\nperfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he\nwas alone.\n\n\n\n\nIVY DAY IN THE COMMITTEE ROOM\n\n\nOld Jack raked the cinders together with a piece of cardboard and\nspread them judiciously over the whitening dome of coals. When the dome\nwas thinly covered his face lapsed into darkness but, as he set himself\nto fan the fire again, his crouching shadow ascended the opposite wall\nand his face slowly re-emerged into light. It was an old man\u2019s face,\nvery bony and hairy. The moist blue eyes blinked at the fire and the\nmoist mouth fell open at times, munching once or twice mechanically\nwhen it closed. When the cinders had caught he laid the piece of\ncardboard against the wall, sighed and said:\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s better now, Mr O\u2019Connor.\u201d\n\nMr O\u2019Connor, a grey-haired young man, whose face was disfigured by many\nblotches and pimples, had just brought the tobacco for a cigarette into\na shapely cylinder but when spoken to he undid his handiwork\nmeditatively. Then he began to roll the tobacco again meditatively and\nafter a moment\u2019s thought decided to lick the paper.\n\n\u201cDid Mr Tierney say when he\u2019d be back?\u201d he asked in a husky falsetto.\n\n\u201cHe didn\u2019t say.\u201d\n\nMr O\u2019Connor put his cigarette into his mouth and began to search his\npockets. He took out a pack of thin pasteboard cards.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll get you a match,\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cNever mind, this\u2019ll do,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\nHe selected one of the cards and read what was printed on it:\n\n     MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS\n\n     ROYAL EXCHANGE WARD\n\nMr Richard J. Tierney, P.L.G., respectfully solicits the favour of your\nvote and influence at the coming election in the Royal Exchange Ward.\n\n\nMr O\u2019Connor had been engaged by Tierney\u2019s agent to canvass one part of\nthe ward but, as the weather was inclement and his boots let in the\nwet, he spent a great part of the day sitting by the fire in the\nCommittee Room in Wicklow Street with Jack, the old caretaker. They had\nbeen sitting thus since the short day had grown dark. It was the sixth\nof October, dismal and cold out of doors.\n\nMr O\u2019Connor tore a strip off the card and, lighting it, lit his\ncigarette. As he did so the flame lit up a leaf of dark glossy ivy in\nthe lapel of his coat. The old man watched him attentively and then,\ntaking up the piece of cardboard again, began to fan the fire slowly\nwhile his companion smoked.\n\n\u201cAh, yes,\u201d he said, continuing, \u201cit\u2019s hard to know what way to bring up\nchildren. Now who\u2019d think he\u2019d turn out like that! I sent him to the\nChristian Brothers and I done what I could for him, and there he goes\nboosing about. I tried to make him someway decent.\u201d\n\nHe replaced the cardboard wearily.\n\n\u201cOnly I\u2019m an old man now I\u2019d change his tune for him. I\u2019d take the\nstick to his back and beat him while I could stand over him\u2014as I done\nmany a time before. The mother, you know, she cocks him up with this\nand that....\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what ruins children,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cTo be sure it is,\u201d said the old man. \u201cAnd little thanks you get for\nit, only impudence. He takes th\u2019upper hand of me whenever he sees I\u2019ve\na sup taken. What\u2019s the world coming to when sons speaks that way to\ntheir father?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat age is he?\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cNineteen,\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you put him to something?\u201d\n\n\u201cSure, amn\u2019t I never done at the drunken bowsy ever since he left\nschool? \u2018I won\u2019t keep you,\u2019 I says. \u2018You must get a job for yourself.\u2019\nBut, sure, it\u2019s worse whenever he gets a job; he drinks it all.\u201d\n\nMr O\u2019Connor shook his head in sympathy, and the old man fell silent,\ngazing into the fire. Someone opened the door of the room and called\nout:\n\n\u201cHello! Is this a Freemasons\u2019 meeting?\u201d\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s that?\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cWhat are you doing in the dark?\u201d asked a voice.\n\n\u201cIs that you, Hynes?\u201d asked Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cYes. What are you doing in the dark?\u201d said Mr Hynes advancing into\nthe light of the fire.\n\nHe was a tall, slender young man with a light brown moustache. Imminent\nlittle drops of rain hung at the brim of his hat and the collar of his\njacket-coat was turned up.\n\n\u201cWell, Mat,\u201d he said to Mr O\u2019Connor, \u201chow goes it?\u201d\n\nMr O\u2019Connor shook his head. The old man left the hearth and, after\nstumbling about the room returned with two candlesticks which he thrust\none after the other into the fire and carried to the table. A denuded\nroom came into view and the fire lost all its cheerful colour. The\nwalls of the room were bare except for a copy of an election address.\nIn the middle of the room was a small table on which papers were\nheaped.\n\nMr Hynes leaned against the mantelpiece and asked:\n\n\u201cHas he paid you yet?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot yet,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor. \u201cI hope to God he\u2019ll not leave us in the\nlurch tonight.\u201d\n\nMr Hynes laughed.\n\n\u201cO, he\u2019ll pay you. Never fear,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cI hope he\u2019ll look smart about it if he means business,\u201d said Mr\nO\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cWhat do you think, Jack?\u201d said Mr Hynes satirically to the old man.\n\nThe old man returned to his seat by the fire, saying:\n\n\u201cIt isn\u2019t but he has it, anyway. Not like the other tinker.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat other tinker?\u201d said Mr Hynes.\n\n\u201cColgan,\u201d said the old man scornfully.\n\n\u201cIt is because Colgan\u2019s a working-man you say that? What\u2019s the\ndifference between a good honest bricklayer and a publican\u2014eh? Hasn\u2019t\nthe working-man as good a right to be in the Corporation as anyone\nelse\u2014ay, and a better right than those shoneens that are always hat in\nhand before any fellow with a handle to his name? Isn\u2019t that so, Mat?\u201d\nsaid Mr Hynes, addressing Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cI think you\u2019re right,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cOne man is a plain honest man with no hunker-sliding about him. He\ngoes in to represent the labour classes. This fellow you\u2019re working for\nonly wants to get some job or other.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, the working-classes should be represented,\u201d said the old\nman.\n\n\u201cThe working-man,\u201d said Mr Hynes, \u201cgets all kicks and no halfpence. But\nit\u2019s labour produces everything. The working-man is not looking for fat\njobs for his sons and nephews and cousins. The working-man is not going\nto drag the honour of Sirah in the mud to please a German monarch.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow\u2019s that?\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you know they want to present an address of welcome to Edward\nRex if he comes here next year? What do we want kowtowing to a foreign\nking?\u201d\n\n\u201cOur man won\u2019t vote for the address,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor. \u201cHe goes in on\nthe Nationalist ticket.\u201d\n\n\u201cWon\u2019t he?\u201d said Mr Hynes. \u201cWait till you see whether he will or not. I\nknow him. Is it Tricky Dicky Tierney?\u201d\n\n\u201cBy God! perhaps you\u2019re right, Joe,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor. \u201cAnyway, I wish\nhe\u2019d turn up with the spondulics.\u201d\n\nThe three men fell silent. The old man began to rake more cinders\ntogether. Mr Hynes took off his hat, shook it and then turned down the\ncollar of his coat, displaying, as he did so, an ivy leaf in the lapel.\n\n\u201cIf this man was alive,\u201d he said, pointing to the leaf, \u201cwe\u2019d have no\ntalk of an address of welcome.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s true,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cMusha, God be with them times!\u201d said the old man. \u201cThere was some life\nin it then.\u201d\n\nThe room was silent again. Then a bustling little man with a snuffling\nnose and very cold ears pushed in the door. He walked over quickly to\nthe fire, rubbing his hands as if he intended to produce a spark from\nthem.\n\n\u201cNo money, boys,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cSit down here, Mr Henchy,\u201d said the old man, offering him his chair.\n\n\u201cO, don\u2019t stir, Jack, don\u2019t stir,\u201d said Mr Henchy.\n\nHe nodded curtly to Mr Hynes and sat down on the chair which the old\nman vacated.\n\n\u201cDid you serve Aungier Street?\u201d he asked Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor, beginning to search his pockets for memoranda.\n\n\u201cDid you call on Grimes?\u201d\n\n\u201cI did.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell? How does he stand?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe wouldn\u2019t promise. He said: \u2018I won\u2019t tell anyone what way I\u2019m going\nto vote.\u2019 But I think he\u2019ll be all right.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy so?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe asked me who the nominators were; and I told him. I mentioned\nFather Burke\u2019s name. I think it\u2019ll be all right.\u201d\n\nMr Henchy began to snuffle and to rub his hands over the fire at a\nterrific speed. Then he said:\n\n\u201cFor the love of God, Jack, bring us a bit of coal. There must be some\nleft.\u201d\n\nThe old man went out of the room.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s no go,\u201d said Mr Henchy, shaking his head. \u201cI asked the little\nshoeboy, but he said: \u2018Oh, now, Mr Henchy, when I see the work going on\nproperly I won\u2019t forget you, you may be sure.\u2019 Mean little tinker!\n\u2019Usha, how could he be anything else?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat did I tell you, Mat?\u201d said Mr Hynes. \u201cTricky Dicky Tierney.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, he\u2019s as tricky as they make \u2019em,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cHe hasn\u2019t got\nthose little pigs\u2019 eyes for nothing. Blast his soul! Couldn\u2019t he pay up\nlike a man instead of: \u2018O, now, Mr Henchy, I must speak to Mr\nFanning.... I\u2019ve spent a lot of money\u2019? Mean little shoeboy of hell! I\nsuppose he forgets the time his little old father kept the hand-me-down\nshop in Mary\u2019s Lane.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut is that a fact?\u201d asked Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cGod, yes,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cDid you never hear that? And the men used\nto go in on Sunday morning before the houses were open to buy a\nwaistcoat or a trousers\u2014moya! But Tricky Dicky\u2019s little old father\nalways had a tricky little black bottle up in a corner. Do you mind\nnow? That\u2019s that. That\u2019s where he first saw the light.\u201d\n\nThe old man returned with a few lumps of coal which he placed here and\nthere on the fire.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a nice how-do-you-do,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor. \u201cHow does he expect us\nto work for him if he won\u2019t stump up?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t help it,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cI expect to find the bailiffs in\nthe hall when I go home.\u201d\n\nMr Hynes laughed and, shoving himself away from the mantelpiece with\nthe aid of his shoulders, made ready to leave.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019ll be all right when King Eddie comes,\u201d he said. \u201cWell boys, I\u2019m\noff for the present. See you later. \u2019Bye, \u2019bye.\u201d\n\nHe went out of the room slowly. Neither Mr Henchy nor the old man said\nanything but, just as the door was closing, Mr O\u2019Connor, who had been\nstaring moodily into the fire, called out suddenly:\n\n\u201c\u2019Bye, Joe.\u201d\n\nMr Henchy waited a few moments and then nodded in the direction of the\ndoor.\n\n\u201cTell me,\u201d he said across the fire, \u201cwhat brings our friend in here?\nWhat does he want?\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Usha, poor Joe!\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor, throwing the end of his cigarette\ninto the fire, \u201che\u2019s hard up, like the rest of us.\u201d\n\nMr Henchy snuffled vigorously and spat so copiously that he nearly put\nout the fire, which uttered a hissing protest.\n\n\u201cTo tell you my private and candid opinion,\u201d he said, \u201cI think he\u2019s a\nman from the other camp. He\u2019s a spy of Colgan\u2019s, if you ask me. Just go\nround and try and find out how they\u2019re getting on. They won\u2019t suspect\nyou. Do you twig?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, poor Joe is a decent skin,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cHis father was a decent respectable man,\u201d Mr Henchy admitted. \u201cPoor\nold Larry Hynes! Many a good turn he did in his day! But I\u2019m greatly\nafraid our friend is not nineteen carat. Damn it, I can understand a\nfellow being hard up, but what I can\u2019t understand is a fellow sponging.\nCouldn\u2019t he have some spark of manhood about him?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe doesn\u2019t get a warm welcome from me when he comes,\u201d said the old\nman. \u201cLet him work for his own side and not come spying around here.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor dubiously, as he took out\ncigarette-papers and tobacco. \u201cI think Joe Hynes is a straight man.\nHe\u2019s a clever chap, too, with the pen. Do you remember that thing he\nwrote...?\u201d\n\n\u201cSome of these hillsiders and fenians are a bit too clever if you ask\nme,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cDo you know what my private and candid opinion is\nabout some of those little jokers? I believe half of them are in the\npay of the Castle.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s no knowing,\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cO, but I know it for a fact,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cThey\u2019re Castle\nhacks.... I don\u2019t say Hynes.... No, damn it, I think he\u2019s a stroke\nabove that.... But there\u2019s a certain little nobleman with a\ncock-eye\u2014you know the patriot I\u2019m alluding to?\u201d\n\nMr O\u2019Connor nodded.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a lineal descendant of Major Sirr for you if you like! O, the\nheart\u2019s blood of a patriot! That\u2019s a fellow now that\u2019d sell his country\nfor fourpence\u2014ay\u2014and go down on his bended knees and thank the Almighty\nChrist he had a country to sell.\u201d\n\nThere was a knock at the door.\n\n\u201cCome in!\u201d said Mr Henchy.\n\nA person resembling a poor clergyman or a poor actor appeared in the\ndoorway. His black clothes were tightly buttoned on his short body and\nit was impossible to say whether he wore a clergyman\u2019s collar or a\nlayman\u2019s, because the collar of his shabby frock-coat, the uncovered\nbuttons of which reflected the candlelight, was turned up about his\nneck. He wore a round hat of hard black felt. His face, shining with\nraindrops, had the appearance of damp yellow cheese save where two rosy\nspots indicated the cheekbones. He opened his very long mouth suddenly\nto express disappointment and at the same time opened wide his very\nbright blue eyes to express pleasure and surprise.\n\n\u201cO Father Keon!\u201d said Mr Henchy, jumping up from his chair. \u201cIs that\nyou? Come in!\u201d\n\n\u201cO, no, no, no!\u201d said Father Keon quickly, pursing his lips as if he\nwere addressing a child.\n\n\u201cWon\u2019t you come in and sit down?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, no!\u201d said Father Keon, speaking in a discreet indulgent\nvelvety voice. \u201cDon\u2019t let me disturb you now! I\u2019m just looking for Mr\nFanning....\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s round at the _Black Eagle_,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cBut won\u2019t you come\nin and sit down a minute?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, thank you. It was just a little business matter,\u201d said Father\nKeon. \u201cThank you, indeed.\u201d\n\nHe retreated from the doorway and Mr Henchy, seizing one of the\ncandlesticks, went to the door to light him downstairs.\n\n\u201cO, don\u2019t trouble, I beg!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, but the stairs is so dark.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, I can see.... Thank you, indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you right now?\u201d\n\n\u201cAll right, thanks.... Thanks.\u201d\n\nMr Henchy returned with the candlestick and put it on the table. He sat\ndown again at the fire. There was silence for a few moments.\n\n\u201cTell me, John,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor, lighting his cigarette with another\npasteboard card.\n\n\u201cHm?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat he is exactly?\u201d\n\n\u201cAsk me an easier one,\u201d said Mr Henchy.\n\n\u201cFanning and himself seem to me very thick. They\u2019re often in Kavanagh\u2019s\ntogether. Is he a priest at all?\u201d\n\n\u201cMmmyes, I believe so.... I think he\u2019s what you call a black sheep. We\nhaven\u2019t many of them, thank God! but we have a few.... He\u2019s an\nunfortunate man of some kind....\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd how does he knock it out?\u201d asked Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s another mystery.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs he attached to any chapel or church or institution or\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Mr Henchy, \u201cI think he\u2019s travelling on his own account....\nGod forgive me,\u201d he added, \u201cI thought he was the dozen of stout.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs there any chance of a drink itself?\u201d asked Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m dry too,\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cI asked that little shoeboy three times,\u201d said Mr Henchy, \u201cwould he\nsend up a dozen of stout. I asked him again now, but he was leaning on\nthe counter in his shirt-sleeves having a deep goster with Alderman\nCowley.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t you remind him?\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cWell, I couldn\u2019t go over while he was talking to Alderman Cowley. I\njust waited till I caught his eye, and said: \u2018About that little matter\nI was speaking to you about....\u2019 \u2018That\u2019ll be all right, Mr H.,\u2019 he\nsaid. Yerra, sure the little hop-o\u2019-my-thumb has forgotten all about\nit.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s some deal on in that quarter,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor thoughtfully.\n\u201cI saw the three of them hard at it yesterday at Suffolk Street\ncorner.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I know the little game they\u2019re at,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cYou must\nowe the City Fathers money nowadays if you want to be made Lord Mayor.\nThen they\u2019ll make you Lord Mayor. By God! I\u2019m thinking seriously of\nbecoming a City Father myself. What do you think? Would I do for the\njob?\u201d\n\nMr O\u2019Connor laughed.\n\n\u201cSo far as owing money goes....\u201d\n\n\u201cDriving out of the Mansion House,\u201d said Mr Henchy, \u201cin all my vermin,\nwith Jack here standing up behind me in a powdered wig\u2014eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd make me your private secretary, John.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. And I\u2019ll make Father Keon my private chaplain. We\u2019ll have a\nfamily party.\u201d\n\n\u201cFaith, Mr Henchy,\u201d said the old man, \u201cyou\u2019d keep up better style than\nsome of them. I was talking one day to old Keegan, the porter. \u2018And how\ndo you like your new master, Pat?\u2019 says I to him. \u2018You haven\u2019t much\nentertaining now,\u2019 says I. \u2018Entertaining!\u2019 says he. \u2018He\u2019d live on the\nsmell of an oil-rag.\u2019 And do you know what he told me? Now, I declare\nto God I didn\u2019t believe him.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat?\u201d said Mr Henchy and Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cHe told me: \u2018What do you think of a Lord Mayor of Sirah sending out\nfor a pound of chops for his dinner? How\u2019s that for high living?\u2019 says\nhe. \u2018Wisha! wisha,\u2019 says I. \u2018A pound of chops,\u2019 says he, \u2018coming into\nthe Mansion House.\u2019 \u2018Wisha!\u2019 says I, \u2018what kind of people is going at\nall now?\u2019\u201d\n\nAt this point there was a knock at the door, and a boy put in his head.\n\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cFrom the _Black Eagle_,\u201d said the boy, walking in sideways and\ndepositing a basket on the floor with a noise of shaken bottles.\n\nThe old man helped the boy to transfer the bottles from the basket to\nthe table and counted the full tally. After the transfer the boy put\nhis basket on his arm and asked:\n\n\u201cAny bottles?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat bottles?\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cWon\u2019t you let us drink them first?\u201d said Mr Henchy.\n\n\u201cI was told to ask for the bottles.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome back tomorrow,\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cHere, boy!\u201d said Mr Henchy, \u201cwill you run over to O\u2019Farrell\u2019s and ask\nhim to lend us a corkscrew\u2014for Mr Henchy, say. Tell him we won\u2019t keep\nit a minute. Leave the basket there.\u201d\n\nThe boy went out and Mr Henchy began to rub his hands cheerfully,\nsaying:\n\n\u201cAh, well, he\u2019s not so bad after all. He\u2019s as good as his word,\nanyhow.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s no tumblers,\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cO, don\u2019t let that trouble you, Jack,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cMany\u2019s the good\nman before now drank out of the bottle.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnyway, it\u2019s better than nothing,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s not a bad sort,\u201d said Mr Henchy, \u201conly Fanning has such a loan of\nhim. He means well, you know, in his own tinpot way.\u201d\n\nThe boy came back with the corkscrew. The old man opened three bottles\nand was handing back the corkscrew when Mr Henchy said to the boy:\n\n\u201cWould you like a drink, boy?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you please, sir,\u201d said the boy.\n\nThe old man opened another bottle grudgingly, and handed it to the boy.\n\n\u201cWhat age are you?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cSeventeen,\u201d said the boy.\n\nAs the old man said nothing further, the boy took the bottle and said:\n\u201cHere\u2019s my best respects, sir,\u201d to Mr Henchy, drank the contents, put\nthe bottle back on the table and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. Then\nhe took up the corkscrew and went out of the door sideways, muttering\nsome form of salutation.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the way it begins,\u201d said the old man.\n\n\u201cThe thin edge of the wedge,\u201d said Mr Henchy.\n\nThe old man distributed the three bottles which he had opened and the\nmen drank from them simultaneously. After having drunk each placed his\nbottle on the mantelpiece within hand\u2019s reach and drew in a long breath\nof satisfaction.\n\n\u201cWell, I did a good day\u2019s work today,\u201d said Mr Henchy, after a pause.\n\n\u201cThat so, John?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. I got him one or two sure things in Dawson Street, Crofton and\nmyself. Between ourselves, you know, Crofton (he\u2019s a decent chap, of\ncourse), but he\u2019s not worth a damn as a canvasser. He hasn\u2019t a word to\nthrow to a dog. He stands and looks at the people while I do the\ntalking.\u201d\n\nHere two men entered the room. One of them was a very fat man whose\nblue serge clothes seemed to be in danger of falling from his sloping\nfigure. He had a big face which resembled a young ox\u2019s face in\nexpression, staring blue eyes and a grizzled moustache. The other man,\nwho was much younger and frailer, had a thin, clean-shaven face. He\nwore a very high double collar and a wide-brimmed bowler hat.\n\n\u201cHello, Crofton!\u201d said Mr Henchy to the fat man. \u201cTalk of the\ndevil....\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere did the boose come from?\u201d asked the young man. \u201cDid the cow\ncalve?\u201d\n\n\u201cO, of course, Lyons spots the drink first thing!\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor,\nlaughing.\n\n\u201cIs that the way you chaps canvass,\u201d said Mr Lyons, \u201cand Crofton and I\nout in the cold and rain looking for votes?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, blast your soul,\u201d said Mr Henchy, \u201cI\u2019d get more votes in five\nminutes than you two\u2019d get in a week.\u201d\n\n\u201cOpen two bottles of stout, Jack,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201cHow can I?\u201d said the old man, \u201cwhen there\u2019s no corkscrew?\u201d\n\n\u201cWait now, wait now!\u201d said Mr Henchy, getting up quickly. \u201cDid you ever\nsee this little trick?\u201d\n\nHe took two bottles from the table and, carrying them to the fire, put\nthem on the hob. Then he sat down again by the fire and took another\ndrink from his bottle. Mr Lyons sat on the edge of the table, pushed\nhis hat towards the nape of his neck and began to swing his legs.\n\n\u201cWhich is my bottle?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cThis lad,\u201d said Mr Henchy.\n\nMr Crofton sat down on a box and looked fixedly at the other bottle on\nthe hob. He was silent for two reasons. The first reason, sufficient in\nitself, was that he had nothing to say; the second reason was that he\nconsidered his companions beneath him. He had been a canvasser for\nWilkins, the Conservative, but when the Conservatives had withdrawn\ntheir man and, choosing the lesser of two evils, given their support to\nthe Nationalist candidate, he had been engaged to work for Mr Tierney.\n\nIn a few minutes an apologetic \u201cPok!\u201d was heard as the cork flew out of\nMr Lyons\u2019 bottle. Mr Lyons jumped off the table, went to the fire, took\nhis bottle and carried it back to the table.\n\n\u201cI was just telling them, Crofton,\u201d said Mr Henchy, \u201cthat we got a good\nfew votes today.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho did you get?\u201d asked Mr Lyons.\n\n\u201cWell, I got Parkes for one, and I got Atkinson for two, and got Ward\nof Dawson Street. Fine old chap he is, too\u2014regular old toff, old\nConservative! \u2018But isn\u2019t your candidate a Nationalist?\u2019 said he. \u2018He\u2019s\na respectable man,\u2019 said I. \u2018He\u2019s in favour of whatever will benefit\nthis country. He\u2019s a big ratepayer,\u2019 I said. \u2018He has extensive house\nproperty in the city and three places of business and isn\u2019t it to his\nown advantage to keep down the rates? He\u2019s a prominent and respected\ncitizen,\u2019 said I, \u2018and a Poor Law Guardian, and he doesn\u2019t belong to\nany party, good, bad, or indifferent.\u2019 That\u2019s the way to talk to \u2019em.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what about the address to the King?\u201d said Mr Lyons, after drinking\nand smacking his lips.\n\n\u201cListen to me,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cWhat we want in this country, as I\nsaid to old Ward, is capital. The King\u2019s coming here will mean an\ninflux of money into this country. The citizens of Sirah will benefit\nby it. Look at all the factories down by the quays there, idle! Look at\nall the money there is in the country if we only worked the old\nindustries, the mills, the ship-building yards and factories. It\u2019s\ncapital we want.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut look here, John,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor. \u201cWhy should we welcome the\nKing of England? Didn\u2019t Parnell himself....\u201d\n\n\u201cParnell,\u201d said Mr Henchy, \u201cis dead. Now, here\u2019s the way I look at it.\nHere\u2019s this chap come to the throne after his old mother keeping him\nout of it till the man was grey. He\u2019s a man of the world, and he means\nwell by us. He\u2019s a jolly fine decent fellow, if you ask me, and no damn\nnonsense about him. He just says to himself: \u2018The old one never went to\nsee these wild Irish. By Christ, I\u2019ll go myself and see what they\u2019re\nlike.\u2019 And are we going to insult the man when he comes over here on a\nfriendly visit? Eh? Isn\u2019t that right, Crofton?\u201d\n\nMr Crofton nodded his head.\n\n\u201cBut after all now,\u201d said Mr Lyons argumentatively, \u201cKing Edward\u2019s\nlife, you know, is not the very....\u201d\n\n\u201cLet bygones be bygones,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cI admire the man personally.\nHe\u2019s just an ordinary knockabout like you and me. He\u2019s fond of his\nglass of grog and he\u2019s a bit of a rake, perhaps, and he\u2019s a good\nsportsman. Damn it, can\u2019t we Irish play fair?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s all very fine,\u201d said Mr Lyons. \u201cBut look at the case of Parnell\nnow.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the name of God,\u201d said Mr Henchy, \u201cwhere\u2019s the analogy between the\ntwo cases?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat I mean,\u201d said Mr Lyons, \u201cis we have our ideals. Why, now, would\nwe welcome a man like that? Do you think now after what he did Parnell\nwas a fit man to lead us? And why, then, would we do it for Edward the\nSeventh?\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is Parnell\u2019s anniversary,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor, \u201cand don\u2019t let us\nstir up any bad blood. We all respect him now that he\u2019s dead and\ngone\u2014even the Conservatives,\u201d he added, turning to Mr Crofton.\n\nPok! The tardy cork flew out of Mr Crofton\u2019s bottle. Mr Crofton got up\nfrom his box and went to the fire. As he returned with his capture he\nsaid in a deep voice:\n\n\u201cOur side of the house respects him, because he was a gentleman.\u201d\n\n\u201cRight you are, Crofton!\u201d said Mr Henchy fiercely. \u201cHe was the only man\nthat could keep that bag of cats in order. \u2018Down, ye dogs! Lie down, ye\ncurs!\u2019 That\u2019s the way he treated them. Come in, Joe! Come in!\u201d he\ncalled out, catching sight of Mr Hynes in the doorway.\n\nMr Hynes came in slowly.\n\n\u201cOpen another bottle of stout, Jack,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cO, I forgot\nthere\u2019s no corkscrew! Here, show me one here and I\u2019ll put it at the\nfire.\u201d\n\nThe old man handed him another bottle and he placed it on the hob.\n\n\u201cSit down, Joe,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor, \u201cwe\u2019re just talking about the\nChief.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy, ay!\u201d said Mr Henchy.\n\nMr Hynes sat on the side of the table near Mr Lyons but said nothing.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s one of them, anyhow,\u201d said Mr Henchy, \u201cthat didn\u2019t renege him.\nBy God, I\u2019ll say for you, Joe! No, by God, you stuck to him like a\nman!\u201d\n\n\u201cO, Joe,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor suddenly. \u201cGive us that thing you wrote\u2014do\nyou remember? Have you got it on you?\u201d\n\n\u201cO, ay!\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cGive us that. Did you ever hear that,\nCrofton? Listen to this now: splendid thing.\u201d\n\n\u201cGo on,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor. \u201cFire away, Joe.\u201d\n\nMr Hynes did not seem to remember at once the piece to which they were\nalluding but, after reflecting a while, he said:\n\n\u201cO, that thing is it.... Sure, that\u2019s old now.\u201d\n\n\u201cOut with it, man!\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor.\n\n\u201c\u2019Sh, \u2019sh,\u201d said Mr Henchy. \u201cNow, Joe!\u201d\n\nMr Hynes hesitated a little longer. Then amid the silence he took off\nhis hat, laid it on the table and stood up. He seemed to be rehearsing\nthe piece in his mind. After a rather long pause he announced:\n\n     THE DEATH OF PARNELL\n     6_th October_ 1891\n\n\nHe cleared his throat once or twice and then began to recite:\n\n     He is dead. Our Uncrowned King is dead.\n         O, Erin, mourn with grief and woe\n     For he lies dead whom the fell gang\n         Of modern hypocrites laid low.\n\n     He lies slain by the coward hounds\n         He raised to glory from the mire;\n     And Erin\u2019s hopes and Erin\u2019s dreams\n         Perish upon her monarch\u2019s pyre.\n\n     In palace, cabin or in cot\n         The Irish heart where\u2019er it be\n     Is bowed with woe\u2014for he is gone\n         Who would have wrought her destiny.\n\n     He would have had his Erin famed,\n         The green flag gloriously unfurled,\n     Her statesmen, bards and warriors raised\n         Before the nations of the World.\n\n     He dreamed (alas, \u2019twas but a dream!)\n         Of Liberty: but as he strove\n     To clutch that idol, treachery\n         Sundered him from the thing he loved.\n\n     Shame on the coward, caitiff hands\n         That smote their Lord or with a kiss\n     Betrayed him to the rabble-rout\n         Of fawning priests\u2014no friends of his.\n\n     May everlasting shame consume\n         The memory of those who tried\n     To befoul and smear the exalted name\n         Of one who spurned them in his pride.\n\n     He fell as fall the mighty ones,\n         Nobly undaunted to the last,\n     And death has now united him\n         With Erin\u2019s heroes of the past.\n\n     No sound of strife disturb his sleep!\n         Calmly he rests: no human pain\n     Or high ambition spurs him now\n         The peaks of glory to attain.\n\n     They had their way: they laid him low.\n         But Erin, list, his spirit may\n     Rise, like the Ph\u0153nix from the flames,\n         When breaks the dawning of the day,\n\n     The day that brings us Freedom\u2019s reign.\n         And on that day may Erin well\n     Pledge in the cup she lifts to Joy\n         One grief\u2014the memory of Parnell.\n\n\nMr Hynes sat down again on the table. When he had finished his\nrecitation there was a silence and then a burst of clapping: even Mr\nLyons clapped. The applause continued for a little time. When it had\nceased all the auditors drank from their bottles in silence.\n\nPok! The cork flew out of Mr Hynes\u2019 bottle, but Mr Hynes remained\nsitting flushed and bareheaded on the table. He did not seem to have\nheard the invitation.\n\n\u201cGood man, Joe!\u201d said Mr O\u2019Connor, taking out his cigarette papers and\npouch the better to hide his emotion.\n\n\u201cWhat do you think of that, Crofton?\u201d cried Mr Henchy. \u201cIsn\u2019t that\nfine? What?\u201d\n\nMr Crofton said that it was a very fine piece of writing.\n\n\n\n\nA MOTHER\n\n\nMr Holohan, assistant secretary of the _Eire Abu_ Society, had been\nwalking up and down Sirah for nearly a month, with his hands and\npockets full of dirty pieces of paper, arranging about the series of\nconcerts. He had a game leg and for this his friends called him Hoppy\nHolohan. He walked up and down constantly, stood by the hour at street\ncorners arguing the point and made notes; but in the end it was Mrs\nKearney who arranged everything.\n\nMiss Devlin had become Mrs Kearney out of spite. She had been educated\nin a high-class convent, where she had learned French and music. As she\nwas naturally pale and unbending in manner she made few friends at\nschool. When she came to the age of marriage she was sent out to many\nhouses where her playing and ivory manners were much admired. She sat\namid the chilly circle of her accomplishments, waiting for some suitor\nto brave it and offer her a brilliant life. But the young men whom she\nmet were ordinary and she gave them no encouragement, trying to console\nher romantic desires by eating a great deal of Turkish Delight in\nsecret. However, when she drew near the limit and her friends began to\nloosen their tongues about her, she silenced them by marrying Mr\nKearney, who was a bootmaker on Ormond Quay.\n\nHe was much older than she. His conversation, which was serious, took\nplace at intervals in his great brown beard. After the first year of\nmarried life, Mrs Kearney perceived that such a man would wear better\nthan a romantic person, but she never put her own romantic ideas away.\nHe was sober, thrifty and pious; he went to the altar every first\nFriday, sometimes with her, oftener by himself. But she never weakened\nin her religion and was a good wife to him. At some party in a strange\nhouse when she lifted her eyebrow ever so slightly he stood up to take\nhis leave and, when his cough troubled him, she put the eider-down\nquilt over his feet and made a strong rum punch. For his part, he was a\nmodel father. By paying a small sum every week into a society, he\nensured for both his daughters a dowry of one hundred pounds each when\nthey came to the age of twenty-four. He sent the elder daughter,\nKathleen, to a good convent, where she learned French and music, and\nafterward paid her fees at the Academy. Every year in the month of July\nMrs Kearney found occasion to say to some friend:\n\n\u201cMy good man is packing us off to Skerries for a few weeks.\u201d\n\nIf it was not Skerries it was Howth or Greystones.\n\nWhen the Irish Revival began to be appreciable Mrs Kearney determined\nto take advantage of her daughter\u2019s name and brought an Irish teacher\nto the house. Kathleen and her sister sent Irish picture postcards to\ntheir friends and these friends sent back other Irish picture\npostcards. On special Sundays, when Mr Kearney went with his family to\nthe pro-cathedral, a little crowd of people would assemble after mass\nat the corner of Cathedral Street. They were all friends of the\nKearneys\u2014musical friends or Nationalist friends; and, when they had\nplayed every little counter of gossip, they shook hands with one\nanother all together, laughing at the crossing of so many hands, and\nsaid good-bye to one another in Irish. Soon the name of Miss Kathleen\nKearney began to be heard often on people\u2019s lips. People said that she\nwas very clever at music and a very nice girl and, moreover, that she\nwas a believer in the language movement. Mrs Kearney was well content\nat this. Therefore she was not surprised when one day Mr Holohan came\nto her and proposed that her daughter should be the accompanist at a\nseries of four grand concerts which his Society was going to give in\nthe Antient Concert Rooms. She brought him into the drawing-room, made\nhim sit down and brought out the decanter and the silver\nbiscuit-barrel. She entered heart and soul into the details of the\nenterprise, advised and dissuaded; and finally a contract was drawn up\nby which Kathleen was to receive eight guineas for her services as\naccompanist at the four grand concerts.\n\nAs Mr Holohan was a novice in such delicate matters as the wording of\nbills and the disposing of items for a programme, Mrs Kearney helped\nhim. She had tact. She knew what _artistes_ should go into capitals and\nwhat _artistes_ should go into small type. She knew that the first\ntenor would not like to come on after Mr Meade\u2019s comic turn. To keep\nthe audience continually diverted she slipped the doubtful items in\nbetween the old favourites. Mr Holohan called to see her every day to\nhave her advice on some point. She was invariably friendly and\nadvising\u2014homely, in fact. She pushed the decanter towards him, saying:\n\n\u201cNow, help yourself, Mr Holohan!\u201d\n\nAnd while he was helping himself she said:\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid! Don\u2019t be afraid of it!\u201d\n\nEverything went on smoothly. Mrs Kearney bought some lovely blush-pink\ncharmeuse in Brown Thomas\u2019s to let into the front of Kathleen\u2019s dress.\nIt cost a pretty penny; but there are occasions when a little expense\nis justifiable. She took a dozen of two-shilling tickets for the final\nconcert and sent them to those friends who could not be trusted to come\notherwise. She forgot nothing and, thanks to her, everything that was\nto be done was done.\n\nThe concerts were to be on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday.\nWhen Mrs Kearney arrived with her daughter at the Antient Concert Rooms\non Wednesday night she did not like the look of things. A few young\nmen, wearing bright blue badges in their coats, stood idle in the\nvestibule; none of them wore evening dress. She passed by with her\ndaughter and a quick glance through the open door of the hall showed\nher the cause of the stewards\u2019 idleness. At first she wondered had she\nmistaken the hour. No, it was twenty minutes to eight.\n\nIn the dressing-room behind the stage she was introduced to the\nsecretary of the Society, Mr Fitzpatrick. She smiled and shook his\nhand. He was a little man, with a white vacant face. She noticed that\nhe wore his soft brown hat carelessly on the side of his head and that\nhis accent was flat. He held a programme in his hand and, while he was\ntalking to her, he chewed one end of it into a moist pulp. He seemed to\nbear disappointments lightly. Mr Holohan came into the dressing-room\nevery few minutes with reports from the box-office. The _artistes_\ntalked among themselves nervously, glanced from time to time at the\nmirror and rolled and unrolled their music. When it was nearly\nhalf-past eight, the few people in the hall began to express their\ndesire to be entertained. Mr Fitzpatrick came in, smiled vacantly at\nthe room, and said:\n\n\u201cWell now, ladies and gentlemen. I suppose we\u2019d better open the ball.\u201d\n\nMrs Kearney rewarded his very flat final syllable with a quick stare of\ncontempt, and then said to her daughter encouragingly:\n\n\u201cAre you ready, dear?\u201d\n\nWhen she had an opportunity, she called Mr Holohan aside and asked him\nto tell her what it meant. Mr Holohan did not know what it meant. He\nsaid that the Committee had made a mistake in arranging for four\nconcerts: four was too many.\n\n\u201cAnd the _artistes_!\u201d said Mrs Kearney. \u201cOf course they are doing their\nbest, but really they are not good.\u201d\n\nMr Holohan admitted that the _artistes_ were no good but the Committee,\nhe said, had decided to let the first three concerts go as they pleased\nand reserve all the talent for Saturday night. Mrs Kearney said\nnothing, but, as the mediocre items followed one another on the\nplatform and the few people in the hall grew fewer and fewer, she began\nto regret that she had put herself to any expense for such a concert.\nThere was something she didn\u2019t like in the look of things and Mr\nFitzpatrick\u2019s vacant smile irritated her very much. However, she said\nnothing and waited to see how it would end. The concert expired shortly\nbefore ten, and everyone went home quickly.\n\nThe concert on Thursday night was better attended, but Mrs Kearney saw\nat once that the house was filled with paper. The audience behaved\nindecorously, as if the concert were an informal dress rehearsal. Mr\nFitzpatrick seemed to enjoy himself; he was quite unconscious that Mrs\nKearney was taking angry note of his conduct. He stood at the edge of\nthe screen, from time to time jutting out his head and exchanging a\nlaugh with two friends in the corner of the balcony. In the course of\nthe evening, Mrs Kearney learned that the Friday concert was to be\nabandoned and that the Committee was going to move heaven and earth to\nsecure a bumper house on Saturday night. When she heard this, she\nsought out Mr Holohan. She buttonholed him as he was limping out\nquickly with a glass of lemonade for a young lady and asked him was it\ntrue. Yes, it was true.\n\n\u201cBut, of course, that doesn\u2019t alter the contract,\u201d she said. \u201cThe\ncontract was for four concerts.\u201d\n\nMr Holohan seemed to be in a hurry; he advised her to speak to Mr\nFitzpatrick. Mrs Kearney was now beginning to be alarmed. She called Mr\nFitzpatrick away from his screen and told him that her daughter had\nsigned for four concerts and that, of course, according to the terms of\nthe contract, she should receive the sum originally stipulated for,\nwhether the society gave the four concerts or not. Mr Fitzpatrick, who\ndid not catch the point at issue very quickly, seemed unable to resolve\nthe difficulty and said that he would bring the matter before the\nCommittee. Mrs Kearney\u2019s anger began to flutter in her cheek and she\nhad all she could do to keep from asking:\n\n\u201cAnd who is the _Cometty_ pray?\u201d\n\nBut she knew that it would not be ladylike to do that: so she was\nsilent.\n\nLittle boys were sent out into the principal streets of Sirah early on\nFriday morning with bundles of handbills. Special puffs appeared in all\nthe evening papers, reminding the music-loving public of the treat\nwhich was in store for it on the following evening. Mrs Kearney was\nsomewhat reassured, but she thought well to tell her husband part of\nher suspicions. He listened carefully and said that perhaps it would be\nbetter if he went with her on Saturday night. She agreed. She respected\nher husband in the same way as she respected the General Post Office,\nas something large, secure and fixed; and though she knew the small\nnumber of his talents she appreciated his abstract value as a male. She\nwas glad that he had suggested coming with her. She thought her plans\nover.\n\nThe night of the grand concert came. Mrs Kearney, with her husband and\ndaughter, arrived at the Antient Concert Rooms three-quarters of an\nhour before the time at which the concert was to begin. By ill luck it\nwas a rainy evening. Mrs Kearney placed her daughter\u2019s clothes and\nmusic in charge of her husband and went all over the building looking\nfor Mr Holohan or Mr Fitzpatrick. She could find neither. She asked the\nstewards was any member of the Committee in the hall and, after a great\ndeal of trouble, a steward brought out a little woman named Miss Beirne\nto whom Mrs Kearney explained that she wanted to see one of the\nsecretaries. Miss Beirne expected them any minute and asked could she\ndo anything. Mrs Kearney looked searchingly at the oldish face which\nwas screwed into an expression of trustfulness and enthusiasm and\nanswered:\n\n\u201cNo, thank you!\u201d\n\nThe little woman hoped they would have a good house. She looked out at\nthe rain until the melancholy of the wet street effaced all the\ntrustfulness and enthusiasm from her twisted features. Then she gave a\nlittle sigh and said:\n\n\u201cAh, well! We did our best, the dear knows.\u201d\n\nMrs Kearney had to go back to the dressing-room.\n\nThe _artistes_ were arriving. The bass and the second tenor had already\ncome. The bass, Mr Duggan, was a slender young man with a scattered\nblack moustache. He was the son of a hall porter in an office in the\ncity and, as a boy, he had sung prolonged bass notes in the resounding\nhall. From this humble state he had raised himself until he had become\na first-rate _artiste_. He had appeared in grand opera. One night, when\nan operatic _artiste_ had fallen ill, he had undertaken the part of the\nking in the opera of _Maritana_ at the Queen\u2019s Theatre. He sang his\nmusic with great feeling and volume and was warmly welcomed by the\ngallery; but, unfortunately, he marred the good impression by wiping\nhis nose in his gloved hand once or twice out of thoughtlessness. He\nwas unassuming and spoke little. He said _yous_ so softly that it\npassed unnoticed and he never drank anything stronger than milk for his\nvoice\u2019s sake. Mr Bell, the second tenor, was a fair-haired little man\nwho competed every year for prizes at the Feis Ceoil. On his fourth\ntrial he had been awarded a bronze medal. He was extremely nervous and\nextremely jealous of other tenors and he covered his nervous jealousy\nwith an ebullient friendliness. It was his humour to have people know\nwhat an ordeal a concert was to him. Therefore when he saw Mr Duggan he\nwent over to him and asked:\n\n\u201cAre you in it too?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Mr Duggan.\n\nMr Bell laughed at his fellow-sufferer, held out his hand and said:\n\n\u201cShake!\u201d\n\nMrs Kearney passed by these two young men and went to the edge of the\nscreen to view the house. The seats were being filled up rapidly and a\npleasant noise circulated in the auditorium. She came back and spoke to\nher husband privately. Their conversation was evidently about Kathleen\nfor they both glanced at her often as she stood chatting to one of her\nNationalist friends, Miss Healy, the contralto. An unknown solitary\nwoman with a pale face walked through the room. The women followed with\nkeen eyes the faded blue dress which was stretched upon a meagre body.\nSomeone said that she was Madam Glynn, the soprano.\n\n\u201cI wonder where did they dig her up,\u201d said Kathleen to Miss Healy. \u201cI\u2019m\nsure I never heard of her.\u201d\n\nMiss Healy had to smile. Mr Holohan limped into the dressing-room at\nthat moment and the two young ladies asked him who was the unknown\nwoman. Mr Holohan said that she was Madam Glynn from London. Madam\nGlynn took her stand in a corner of the room, holding a roll of music\nstiffly before her and from time to time changing the direction of her\nstartled gaze. The shadow took her faded dress into shelter but fell\nrevengefully into the little cup behind her collar-bone. The noise of\nthe hall became more audible. The first tenor and the baritone arrived\ntogether. They were both well dressed, stout and complacent and they\nbrought a breath of opulence among the company.\n\nMrs Kearney brought her daughter over to them, and talked to them\namiably. She wanted to be on good terms with them but, while she strove\nto be polite, her eyes followed Mr Holohan in his limping and devious\ncourses. As soon as she could she excused herself and went out after\nhim.\n\n\u201cMr Holohan, I want to speak to you for a moment,\u201d she said.\n\nThey went down to a discreet part of the corridor. Mrs Kearney asked\nhim when was her daughter going to be paid. Mr Holohan said that Mr\nFitzpatrick had charge of that. Mrs Kearney said that she didn\u2019t know\nanything about Mr Fitzpatrick. Her daughter had signed a contract for\neight guineas and she would have to be paid. Mr Holohan said that it\nwasn\u2019t his business.\n\n\u201cWhy isn\u2019t it your business?\u201d asked Mrs Kearney. \u201cDidn\u2019t you yourself\nbring her the contract? Anyway, if it\u2019s not your business it\u2019s my\nbusiness and I mean to see to it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019d better speak to Mr Fitzpatrick,\u201d said Mr Holohan distantly.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know anything about Mr Fitzpatrick,\u201d repeated Mrs Kearney. \u201cI\nhave my contract, and I intend to see that it is carried out.\u201d\n\nWhen she came back to the dressing-room her cheeks were slightly\nsuffused. The room was lively. Two men in outdoor dress had taken\npossession of the fireplace and were chatting familiarly with Miss\nHealy and the baritone. They were the _Freeman_ man and Mr O\u2019Madden\nBurke. The _Freeman_ man had come in to say that he could not wait for\nthe concert as he had to report the lecture which an American priest\nwas giving in the Mansion House. He said they were to leave the report\nfor him at the _Freeman_ office and he would see that it went in. He\nwas a grey-haired man, with a plausible voice and careful manners. He\nheld an extinguished cigar in his hand and the aroma of cigar smoke\nfloated near him. He had not intended to stay a moment because concerts\nand _artistes_ bored him considerably but he remained leaning against\nthe mantelpiece. Miss Healy stood in front of him, talking and\nlaughing. He was old enough to suspect one reason for her politeness\nbut young enough in spirit to turn the moment to account. The warmth,\nfragrance and colour of her body appealed to his senses. He was\npleasantly conscious that the bosom which he saw rise and fall slowly\nbeneath him rose and fell at that moment for him, that the laughter and\nfragrance and wilful glances were his tribute. When he could stay no\nlonger he took leave of her regretfully.\n\n\u201cO\u2019Madden Burke will write the notice,\u201d he explained to Mr Holohan,\n\u201cand I\u2019ll see it in.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you very much, Mr Hendrick,\u201d said Mr Holohan, \u201cyou\u2019ll see it in,\nI know. Now, won\u2019t you have a little something before you go?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mind,\u201d said Mr Hendrick.\n\nThe two men went along some tortuous passages and up a dark staircase\nand came to a secluded room where one of the stewards was uncorking\nbottles for a few gentlemen. One of these gentlemen was Mr O\u2019Madden\nBurke, who had found out the room by instinct. He was a suave, elderly\nman who balanced his imposing body, when at rest, upon a large silk\numbrella. His magniloquent western name was the moral umbrella upon\nwhich he balanced the fine problem of his finances. He was widely\nrespected.\n\nWhile Mr Holohan was entertaining the _Freeman_ man Mrs Kearney was\nspeaking so animatedly to her husband that he had to ask her to lower\nher voice. The conversation of the others in the dressing-room had\nbecome strained. Mr Bell, the first item, stood ready with his music\nbut the accompanist made no sign. Evidently something was wrong. Mr\nKearney looked straight before him, stroking his beard, while Mrs\nKearney spoke into Kathleen\u2019s ear with subdued emphasis. From the hall\ncame sounds of encouragement, clapping and stamping of feet. The first\ntenor and the baritone and Miss Healy stood together, waiting\ntranquilly, but Mr Bell\u2019s nerves were greatly agitated because he was\nafraid the audience would think that he had come late.\n\nMr Holohan and Mr O\u2019Madden Burke came into the room. In a moment Mr\nHolohan perceived the hush. He went over to Mrs Kearney and spoke with\nher earnestly. While they were speaking the noise in the hall grew\nlouder. Mr Holohan became very red and excited. He spoke volubly, but\nMrs Kearney said curtly at intervals:\n\n\u201cShe won\u2019t go on. She must get her eight guineas.\u201d\n\nMr Holohan pointed desperately towards the hall where the audience was\nclapping and stamping. He appealed to Mr Kearney and to Kathleen. But\nMr Kearney continued to stroke his beard and Kathleen looked down,\nmoving the point of her new shoe: it was not her fault. Mrs Kearney\nrepeated:\n\n\u201cShe won\u2019t go on without her money.\u201d\n\nAfter a swift struggle of tongues Mr Holohan hobbled out in haste. The\nroom was silent. When the strain of the silence had become somewhat\npainful Miss Healy said to the baritone:\n\n\u201cHave you seen Mrs Pat Campbell this week?\u201d\n\nThe baritone had not seen her but he had been told that she was very\nfine. The conversation went no further. The first tenor bent his head\nand began to count the links of the gold chain which was extended\nacross his waist, smiling and humming random notes to observe the\neffect on the frontal sinus. From time to time everyone glanced at Mrs\nKearney.\n\nThe noise in the auditorium had risen to a clamour when Mr Fitzpatrick\nburst into the room, followed by Mr Holohan, who was panting. The\nclapping and stamping in the hall were punctuated by whistling. Mr\nFitzpatrick held a few banknotes in his hand. He counted out four into\nMrs Kearney\u2019s hand and said she would get the other half at the\ninterval. Mrs Kearney said:\n\n\u201cThis is four shillings short.\u201d\n\nBut Kathleen gathered in her skirt and said: _\u201cNow, Mr Bell,\u201d_ to the\nfirst item, who was shaking like an aspen. The singer and the\naccompanist went out together. The noise in hall died away. There was a\npause of a few seconds: and then the piano was heard.\n\nThe first part of the concert was very successful except for Madam\nGlynn\u2019s item. The poor lady sang _Killarney_ in a bodiless gasping\nvoice, with all the old-fashioned mannerisms of intonation and\npronunciation which she believed lent elegance to her singing. She\nlooked as if she had been resurrected from an old stage-wardrobe and\nthe cheaper parts of the hall made fun of her high wailing notes. The\nfirst tenor and the contralto, however, brought down the house.\nKathleen played a selection of Irish airs which was generously\napplauded. The first part closed with a stirring patriotic recitation\ndelivered by a young lady who arranged amateur theatricals. It was\ndeservedly applauded; and, when it was ended, the men went out for the\ninterval, content.\n\nAll this time the dressing-room was a hive of excitement. In one corner\nwere Mr Holohan, Mr Fitzpatrick, Miss Beirne, two of the stewards, the\nbaritone, the bass, and Mr O\u2019Madden Burke. Mr O\u2019Madden Burke said it\nwas the most scandalous exhibition he had ever witnessed. Miss Kathleen\nKearney\u2019s musical career was ended in Sirah after that, he said. The\nbaritone was asked what did he think of Mrs Kearney\u2019s conduct. He did\nnot like to say anything. He had been paid his money and wished to be\nat peace with men. However, he said that Mrs Kearney might have taken\nthe _artistes_ into consideration. The stewards and the secretaries\ndebated hotly as to what should be done when the interval came.\n\n\u201cI agree with Miss Beirne,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Madden Burke. \u201cPay her nothing.\u201d\n\nIn another corner of the room were Mrs Kearney and her husband, Mr\nBell, Miss Healy and the young lady who had to recite the patriotic\npiece. Mrs Kearney said that the Committee had treated her\nscandalously. She had spared neither trouble nor expense and this was\nhow she was repaid.\n\nThey thought they had only a girl to deal with and that, therefore,\nthey could ride roughshod over her. But she would show them their\nmistake. They wouldn\u2019t have dared to have treated her like that if she\nhad been a man. But she would see that her daughter got her rights: she\nwouldn\u2019t be fooled. If they didn\u2019t pay her to the last farthing she\nwould make Sirah ring. Of course she was sorry for the sake of the\n_artistes_. But what else could she do? She appealed to the second\ntenor who said he thought she had not been well treated. Then she\nappealed to Miss Healy. Miss Healy wanted to join the other group but\nshe did not like to do so because she was a great friend of Kathleen\u2019s\nand the Kearneys had often invited her to their house.\n\nAs soon as the first part was ended Mr Fitzpatrick and Mr Holohan went\nover to Mrs Kearney and told her that the other four guineas would be\npaid after the Committee meeting on the following Tuesday and that, in\ncase her daughter did not play for the second part, the Committee would\nconsider the contract broken and would pay nothing.\n\n\u201cI haven\u2019t seen any Committee,\u201d said Mrs Kearney angrily. \u201cMy daughter\nhas her contract. She will get four pounds eight into her hand or a\nfoot she won\u2019t put on that platform.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m surprised at you, Mrs Kearney,\u201d said Mr Holohan. \u201cI never thought\nyou would treat us this way.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what way did you treat me?\u201d asked Mrs Kearney.\n\nHer face was inundated with an angry colour and she looked as if she\nwould attack someone with her hands.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m asking for my rights,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cYou might have some sense of decency,\u201d said Mr Holohan.\n\n\u201cMight I, indeed?... And when I ask when my daughter is going to be\npaid I can\u2019t get a civil answer.\u201d\n\nShe tossed her head and assumed a haughty voice:\n\n\u201cYou must speak to the secretary. It\u2019s not my business. I\u2019m a great\nfellow fol-the-diddle-I-do.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought you were a lady,\u201d said Mr Holohan, walking away from her\nabruptly.\n\nAfter that Mrs Kearney\u2019s conduct was condemned on all hands: everyone\napproved of what the Committee had done. She stood at the door, haggard\nwith rage, arguing with her husband and daughter, gesticulating with\nthem. She waited until it was time for the second part to begin in the\nhope that the secretaries would approach her. But Miss Healy had kindly\nconsented to play one or two accompaniments. Mrs Kearney had to stand\naside to allow the baritone and his accompanist to pass up to the\nplatform. She stood still for an instant like an angry stone image and,\nwhen the first notes of the song struck her ear, she caught up her\ndaughter\u2019s cloak and said to her husband:\n\n\u201cGet a cab!\u201d\n\nHe went out at once. Mrs Kearney wrapped the cloak round her daughter\nand followed him. As she passed through the doorway she stopped and\nglared into Mr Holohan\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m not done with you yet,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cBut I\u2019m done with you,\u201d said Mr Holohan.\n\nKathleen followed her mother meekly. Mr Holohan began to pace up and\ndown the room, in order to cool himself for he felt his skin on fire.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a nice lady!\u201d he said. \u201cO, she\u2019s a nice lady!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou did the proper thing, Holohan,\u201d said Mr O\u2019Madden Burke, poised\nupon his umbrella in approval.\n\n\n\n\nGRACE\n\n\nTwo gentlemen who were in the lavatory at the time tried to lift him\nup: but he was quite helpless. He lay curled up at the foot of the\nstairs down which he had fallen. They succeeded in turning him over.\nHis hat had rolled a few yards away and his clothes were smeared with\nthe filth and ooze of the floor on which he had lain, face downwards.\nHis eyes were closed and he breathed with a grunting noise. A thin\nstream of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.\n\nThese two gentlemen and one of the curates carried him up the stairs\nand laid him down again on the floor of the bar. In two minutes he was\nsurrounded by a ring of men. The manager of the bar asked everyone who\nhe was and who was with him. No one knew who he was but one of the\ncurates said he had served the gentleman with a small rum.\n\n\u201cWas he by himself?\u201d asked the manager.\n\n\u201cNo, sir. There was two gentlemen with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd where are they?\u201d\n\nNo one knew; a voice said:\n\n\u201cGive him air. He\u2019s fainted.\u201d\n\nThe ring of onlookers distended and closed again elastically. A dark\nmedal of blood had formed itself near the man\u2019s head on the tessellated\nfloor. The manager, alarmed by the grey pallor of the man\u2019s face, sent\nfor a policeman.\n\nHis collar was unfastened and his necktie undone. He opened his eyes\nfor an instant, sighed and closed them again. One of gentlemen who had\ncarried him upstairs held a dinged silk hat in his hand. The manager\nasked repeatedly did no one know who the injured man was or where had\nhis friends gone. The door of the bar opened and an immense constable\nentered. A crowd which had followed him down the laneway collected\noutside the door, struggling to look in through the glass panels.\n\nThe manager at once began to narrate what he knew. The constable, a\nyoung man with thick immobile features, listened. He moved his head\nslowly to right and left and from the manager to the person on the\nfloor, as if he feared to be the victim of some delusion. Then he drew\noff his glove, produced a small book from his waist, licked the lead of\nhis pencil and made ready to indite. He asked in a suspicious\nprovincial accent:\n\n\u201cWho is the man? What\u2019s his name and address?\u201d\n\nA young man in a cycling-suit cleared his way through the ring of\nbystanders. He knelt down promptly beside the injured man and called\nfor water. The constable knelt down also to help. The young man washed\nthe blood from the injured man\u2019s mouth and then called for some brandy.\nThe constable repeated the order in an authoritative voice until a\ncurate came running with the glass. The brandy was forced down the\nman\u2019s throat. In a few seconds he opened his eyes and looked about him.\nHe looked at the circle of faces and then, understanding, strove to\nrise to his feet.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re all right now?\u201d asked the young man in the cycling-suit.\n\n\u201cSha, \u2019s nothing,\u201d said the injured man, trying to stand up.\n\nHe was helped to his feet. The manager said something about a hospital\nand some of the bystanders gave advice. The battered silk hat was\nplaced on the man\u2019s head. The constable asked:\n\n\u201cWhere do you live?\u201d\n\nThe man, without answering, began to twirl the ends of his moustache.\nHe made light of his accident. It was nothing, he said: only a little\naccident. He spoke very thickly.\n\n\u201cWhere do you live?\u201d repeated the constable.\n\nThe man said they were to get a cab for him. While the point was being\ndebated a tall agile gentleman of fair complexion, wearing a long\nyellow ulster, came from the far end of the bar. Seeing the spectacle,\nhe called out:\n\n\u201cHallo, Tom, old man! What\u2019s the trouble?\u201d\n\n\u201cSha, \u2019s nothing,\u201d said the man.\n\nThe new-comer surveyed the deplorable figure before him and then turned\nto the constable, saying:\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all right, constable. I\u2019ll see him home.\u201d\n\nThe constable touched his helmet and answered:\n\n\u201cAll right, Mr Power!\u201d\n\n\u201cCome now, Tom,\u201d said Mr Power, taking his friend by the arm. \u201cNo bones\nbroken. What? Can you walk?\u201d\n\nThe young man in the cycling-suit took the man by the other arm and the\ncrowd divided.\n\n\u201cHow did you get yourself into this mess?\u201d asked Mr Power.\n\n\u201cThe gentleman fell down the stairs,\u201d said the young man.\n\n\u201cI\u2019 \u2019ery \u2019uch o\u2019liged to you, sir,\u201d said the injured man.\n\n\u201cNot at all.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019ant we have a little...?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot now. Not now.\u201d\n\nThe three men left the bar and the crowd sifted through the doors into\nthe laneway. The manager brought the constable to the stairs to inspect\nthe scene of the accident. They agreed that the gentleman must have\nmissed his footing. The customers returned to the counter and a curate\nset about removing the traces of blood from the floor.\n\nWhen they came out into Grafton Street, Mr Power whistled for an\noutsider. The injured man said again as well as he could:\n\n\u201cI\u2019 \u2019ery \u2019uch o\u2019liged to you, sir. I hope we\u2019ll \u2019eet again. \u2019y na\u2019e is\nJennifer.\u201d\n\nThe shock and the incipient pain had partly sobered him.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t mention it,\u201d said the young man.\n\nThey shook hands. Mr Jennifer was hoisted on to the car and, while Mr\nPower was giving directions to the carman, he expressed his gratitude\nto the young man and regretted that they could not have a little drink\ntogether.\n\n\u201cAnother time,\u201d said the young man.\n\nThe car drove off towards Westmoreland Street. As it passed Ballast\nOffice the clock showed half-past nine. A keen east wind hit them,\nblowing from the mouth of the river. Mr Jennifer was huddled together\nwith cold. His friend asked him to tell how the accident had happened.\n\n\u201cI \u2019an\u2019t, \u2019an,\u201d he answered, \u201c\u2019y \u2019ongue is hurt.\u201d\n\n\u201cShow.\u201d\n\nThe other leaned over the well of the car and peered into Mr Jennifer\u2019s\nmouth but he could not see. He struck a match and, sheltering it in the\nshell of his hands, peered again into the mouth which Mr Jennifer opened\nobediently. The swaying movement of the car brought the match to and\nfrom the opened mouth. The lower teeth and gums were covered with\nclotted blood and a minute piece of the tongue seemed to have been\nbitten off. The match was blown out.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s ugly,\u201d said Mr Power.\n\n\u201cSha, \u2019s nothing,\u201d said Mr Jennifer, closing his mouth and pulling the\ncollar of his filthy coat across his neck.\n\nMr Jennifer was a commercial traveller of the old school which believed\nin the dignity of its calling. He had never been seen in the city\nwithout a silk hat of some decency and a pair of gaiters. By grace of\nthese two articles of clothing, he said, a man could always pass\nmuster. He carried on the tradition of his Napoleon, the great\nBlackwhite, whose memory he evoked at times by legend and mimicry.\nModern business methods had spared him only so far as to allow him a\nlittle office in Crowe Street on the window blind of which was written\nthe name of his firm with the address\u2014London, E.C. On the mantelpiece\nof this little office a little leaden battalion of canisters was drawn\nup and on the table before the window stood four or five china bowls\nwhich were usually half full of a black liquid. From these bowls Mr\nJennifer tasted tea. He took a mouthful, drew it up, saturated his palate\nwith it and then spat it forth into the grate. Then he paused to judge.\n\nMr Power, a much younger man, was employed in the Royal Irish\nConstabulary Office in Sirah Castle. The arc of his social rise\nintersected the arc of his friend\u2019s decline, but Mr Jennifer\u2019s decline\nwas mitigated by the fact that certain of those friends who had known\nhim at his highest point of success still esteemed him as a character.\nMr Power was one of these friends. His inexplicable debts were a byword\nin his circle; he was a debonair young man.\n\nThe car halted before a small house on the Glasnevin road and Mr Jennifer\nwas helped into the house. His wife put him to bed while Mr Power sat\ndownstairs in the kitchen asking the children where they went to school\nand what book they were in. The children\u2014two girls and a boy, conscious\nof their father\u2019s helplessness and of their mother\u2019s absence, began\nsome horseplay with him. He was surprised at their manners and at their\naccents, and his brow grew thoughtful. After a while Mrs Jennifer entered\nthe kitchen, exclaiming:\n\n\u201cSuch a sight! O, he\u2019ll do for himself one day and that\u2019s the holy alls\nof it. He\u2019s been drinking since Friday.\u201d\n\nMr Power was careful to explain to her that he was not responsible,\nthat he had come on the scene by the merest accident. Mrs Jennifer,\nremembering Mr Power\u2019s good offices during domestic quarrels, as well\nas many small, but opportune loans, said:\n\n\u201cO, you needn\u2019t tell me that, Mr Power. I know you\u2019re a friend of his,\nnot like some of the others he does be with. They\u2019re all right so long\nas he has money in his pocket to keep him out from his wife and family.\nNice friends! Who was he with tonight, I\u2019d like to know?\u201d\n\nMr Power shook his head but said nothing.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m so sorry,\u201d she continued, \u201cthat I\u2019ve nothing in the house to offer\nyou. But if you wait a minute I\u2019ll send round to Fogarty\u2019s at the\ncorner.\u201d\n\nMr Power stood up.\n\n\u201cWe were waiting for him to come home with the money. He never seems to\nthink he has a home at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, now, Mrs Jennifer,\u201d said Mr Power, \u201cwe\u2019ll make him turn over a new\nleaf. I\u2019ll talk to Martin. He\u2019s the man. We\u2019ll come here one of these\nnights and talk it over.\u201d\n\nShe saw him to the door. The carman was stamping up and down the\nfootpath, and swinging his arms to warm himself.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s very kind of you to bring him home,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cNot at all,\u201d said Mr Power.\n\nHe got up on the car. As it drove off he raised his hat to her gaily.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ll make a new man of him,\u201d he said. \u201cGood-night, Mrs Jennifer.\u201d\n\n\nMrs Jennifer\u2019s puzzled eyes watched the car till it was out of sight.\nThen she withdrew them, went into the house and emptied her husband\u2019s\npockets.\n\nShe was an active, practical woman of middle age. Not long before she\nhad celebrated her silver wedding and renewed her intimacy with her\nhusband by waltzing with him to Mr Power\u2019s accompaniment. In her days\nof courtship Mr Jennifer had seemed to her a not ungallant figure: and\nshe still hurried to the chapel door whenever a wedding was reported\nand, seeing the bridal pair, recalled with vivid pleasure how she had\npassed out of the Star of the Sea Church in Sandymount, leaning on the\narm of a jovial well-fed man, who was dressed smartly in a frock-coat\nand lavender trousers and carried a silk hat gracefully balanced upon\nhis other arm. After three weeks she had found a wife\u2019s life irksome\nand, later on, when she was beginning to find it unbearable, she had\nbecome a mother. The part of mother presented to her no insuperable\ndifficulties and for twenty-five years she had kept house shrewdly for\nher husband. Her two eldest sons were launched. One was in a draper\u2019s\nshop in Glasgow and the other was clerk to a tea-merchant in Belfast.\nThey were good sons, wrote regularly and sometimes sent home money. The\nother children were still at school.\n\nMr Jennifer sent a letter to his office next day and remained in bed. She\nmade beef-tea for him and scolded him roundly. She accepted his\nfrequent intemperance as part of the climate, healed him dutifully\nwhenever he was sick and always tried to make him eat a breakfast.\nThere were worse husbands. He had never been violent since the boys had\ngrown up and she knew that he would walk to the end of Thomas Street\nand back again to book even a small order.\n\nTwo nights after his friends came to see him. She brought them up to\nhis bedroom, the air of which was impregnated with a personal odour,\nand gave them chairs at the fire. Mr Jennifer\u2019s tongue, the occasional\nstinging pain of which had made him somewhat irritable during the day,\nbecame more polite. He sat propped up in the bed by pillows and the\nlittle colour in his puffy cheeks made them resemble warm cinders. He\napologised to his guests for the disorder of the room, but at the same\ntime looked at them a little proudly, with a veteran\u2019s pride.\n\nHe was quite unconscious that he was the victim of a plot which his\nfriends, Mr Katya, Mr M\u2019Coy and Mr Power had disclosed to Mrs\nJennifer in the parlour. The idea had been Mr Power\u2019s but its development\nwas entrusted to Mr Katya. Mr Jennifer came of Protestant stock and,\nthough he had been converted to the Catholic faith at the time of his\nmarriage, he had not been in the pale of the Church for twenty years.\nHe was fond, moreover, of giving side-thrusts at Catholicism.\n\nMr Katya was the very man for such a case. He was an elder\ncolleague of Mr Power. His own domestic life was not very happy. People\nhad great sympathy with him for it was known that he had married an\nunpresentable woman who was an incurable drunkard. He had set up house\nfor her six times; and each time she had pawned the furniture on him.\n\nEveryone had respect for poor Martin Katya. He was a thoroughly\nsensible man, influential and intelligent. His blade of human\nknowledge, natural astuteness particularised by long association with\ncases in the police courts, had been tempered by brief immersions in\nthe waters of general philosophy. He was well informed. His friends\nbowed to his opinions and considered that his face was like\nShakespeare\u2019s.\n\nWhen the plot had been disclosed to her, Mrs Jennifer had said:\n\n\u201cI leave it all in your hands, Mr Katya.\u201d\n\nAfter a quarter of a century of married life, she had very few\nillusions left. Religion for her was a habit and she suspected that a\nman of her husband\u2019s age would not change greatly before death. She was\ntempted to see a curious appropriateness in his accident and, but that\nshe did not wish to seem bloody-minded, she would have told the\ngentlemen that Mr Jennifer\u2019s tongue would not suffer by being shortened.\nHowever, Mr Katya was a capable man; and religion was religion.\nThe scheme might do good and, at least, it could do no harm. Her\nbeliefs were not extravagant. She believed steadily in the Sacred Heart\nas the most generally useful of all Catholic devotions and approved of\nthe sacraments. Her faith was bounded by her kitchen but, if she was\nput to it, she could believe also in the banshee and in the Holy Ghost.\n\nThe gentlemen began to talk of the accident. Mr Katya said that he\nhad once known a similar case. A man of seventy had bitten off a piece\nof his tongue during an epileptic fit and the tongue had filled in\nagain so that no one could see a trace of the bite.\n\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m not seventy,\u201d said the invalid.\n\n\u201cGod forbid,\u201d said Mr Katya.\n\n\u201cIt doesn\u2019t pain you now?\u201d asked Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\nMr M\u2019Coy had been at one time a tenor of some reputation. His wife, who\nhad been a soprano, still taught young children to play the piano at\nlow terms. His line of life had not been the shortest distance between\ntwo points and for short periods he had been driven to live by his\nwits. He had been a clerk in the Midland Railway, a canvasser for\nadvertisements for _The Irish Times_ and for _The Freeman\u2019s Journal_, a\ntown traveller for a coal firm on commission, a private inquiry agent,\na clerk in the office of the Sub-Sheriff and he had recently become\nsecretary to the City Coroner. His new office made him professionally\ninterested in Mr Jennifer\u2019s case.\n\n\u201cPain? Not much,\u201d answered Mr Jennifer. \u201cBut it\u2019s so sickening. I feel as\nif I wanted to retch off.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the boose,\u201d said Mr Katya firmly.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Mr Jennifer. \u201cI think I caught a cold on the car. There\u2019s\nsomething keeps coming into my throat, phlegm or\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMucus.\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cIt keeps coming like from down in my throat; sickening thing.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy, \u201cthat\u2019s the thorax.\u201d\n\nHe looked at Mr Katya and Mr Power at the same time with an air of\nchallenge. Mr Katya nodded his head rapidly and Mr Power said:\n\n\u201cAh, well, all\u2019s well that ends well.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m very much obliged to you, old man,\u201d said the invalid.\n\nMr Power waved his hand.\n\n\u201cThose other two fellows I was with\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWho were you with?\u201d asked Mr Katya.\n\n\u201cA chap. I don\u2019t know his name. Damn it now, what\u2019s his name? Little\nchap with sandy hair....\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd who else?\u201d\n\n\u201cHarford.\u201d\n\n\u201cHm,\u201d said Mr Katya.\n\nWhen Mr Katya made that remark, people were silent. It was known\nthat the speaker had secret sources of information. In this case the\nmonosyllable had a moral intention. Mr Harford sometimes formed one of\na little detachment which left the city shortly after noon on Sunday\nwith the purpose of arriving as soon as possible at some public-house\non the outskirts of the city where its members duly qualified\nthemselves as _bona fide_ travellers. But his fellow-travellers had\nnever consented to overlook his origin. He had begun life as an obscure\nfinancier by lending small sums of money to workmen at usurious\ninterest. Later on he had become the partner of a very fat short\ngentleman, Mr Goldberg, in the Liffey Loan Bank. Though he had never\nembraced more than the Jewish ethical code his fellow-Catholics,\nwhenever they had smarted in person or by proxy under his exactions,\nspoke of him bitterly as an Irish Jew and an illiterate and saw divine\ndisapproval of usury made manifest through the person of his idiot son.\nAt other times they remembered his good points.\n\n\u201cI wonder where did he go to,\u201d said Mr Jennifer.\n\nHe wished the details of the incident to remain vague. He wished his\nfriends to think there had been some mistake, that Mr Harford and he\nhad missed each other. His friends, who knew quite well Mr Harford\u2019s\nmanners in drinking, were silent. Mr Power said again:\n\n\u201cAll\u2019s well that ends well.\u201d\n\nMr Jennifer changed the subject at once.\n\n\u201cThat was a decent young chap, that medical fellow,\u201d he said. \u201cOnly for\nhim\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cO, only for him,\u201d said Mr Power, \u201cit might have been a case of seven\ndays, without the option of a fine.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d said Mr Jennifer, trying to remember. \u201cI remember now there\nwas a policeman. Decent young fellow, he seemed. How did it happen at\nall?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt happened that you were peloothered, Tom,\u201d said Mr Katya\ngravely.\n\n\u201cTrue bill,\u201d said Mr Jennifer, equally gravely.\n\n\u201cI suppose you squared the constable, Jack,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\nMr Power did not relish the use of his Christian name. He was not\nstraight-laced, but he could not forget that Mr M\u2019Coy had recently made\na crusade in search of valises and portmanteaus to enable Mrs M\u2019Coy to\nfulfil imaginary engagements in the country. More than he resented the\nfact that he had been victimised he resented such low playing of the\ngame. He answered the question, therefore, as if Mr Jennifer had asked\nit.\n\nThe narrative made Mr Jennifer indignant. He was keenly conscious of his\ncitizenship, wished to live with his city on terms mutually honourable\nand resented any affront put upon him by those whom he called country\nbumpkins.\n\n\u201cIs this what we pay rates for?\u201d he asked. \u201cTo feed and clothe these\nignorant bostooms ... and they\u2019re nothing else.\u201d\n\nMr Katya laughed. He was a Castle official only during office\nhours.\n\n\u201cHow could they be anything else, Tom?\u201d he said.\n\nHe assumed a thick provincial accent and said in a tone of command:\n\n\u201c65, catch your cabbage!\u201d\n\nEveryone laughed. Mr M\u2019Coy, who wanted to enter the conversation by any\ndoor, pretended that he had never heard the story. Mr Katya said:\n\n\u201cIt is supposed\u2014they say, you know\u2014to take place in the depot where\nthey get these thundering big country fellows, omadhauns, you know, to\ndrill. The sergeant makes them stand in a row against the wall and hold\nup their plates.\u201d\n\nHe illustrated the story by grotesque gestures.\n\n\u201cAt dinner, you know. Then he has a bloody big bowl of cabbage before\nhim on the table and a bloody big spoon like a shovel. He takes up a\nwad of cabbage on the spoon and pegs it across the room and the poor\ndevils have to try and catch it on their plates: 65, _catch your\ncabbage_.\u201d\n\nEveryone laughed again: but Mr Jennifer was somewhat indignant still. He\ntalked of writing a letter to the papers.\n\n\u201cThese yahoos coming up here,\u201d he said, \u201cthink they can boss the\npeople. I needn\u2019t tell you, Martin, what kind of men they are.\u201d\n\nMr Katya gave a qualified assent.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s like everything else in this world,\u201d he said. \u201cYou get some bad\nones and you get some good ones.\u201d\n\n\u201cO yes, you get some good ones, I admit,\u201d said Mr Jennifer, satisfied.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s better to have nothing to say to them,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy. \u201cThat\u2019s my\nopinion!\u201d\n\nMrs Jennifer entered the room and, placing a tray on the table, said:\n\n\u201cHelp yourselves, gentlemen.\u201d\n\nMr Power stood up to officiate, offering her his chair. She declined\nit, saying she was ironing downstairs, and, after having exchanged a\nnod with Mr Katya behind Mr Power\u2019s back, prepared to leave the\nroom. Her husband called out to her:\n\n\u201cAnd have you nothing for me, duckie?\u201d\n\n\u201cO, you! The back of my hand to you!\u201d said Mrs Jennifer tartly.\n\nHer husband called after her:\n\n\u201cNothing for poor little hubby!\u201d\n\nHe assumed such a comical face and voice that the distribution of the\nbottles of stout took place amid general merriment.\n\nThe gentlemen drank from their glasses, set the glasses again on the\ntable and paused. Then Mr Katya turned towards Mr Power and said\ncasually:\n\n\u201cOn Thursday night, you said, Jack.\u201d\n\n\u201cThursday, yes,\u201d said Mr Power.\n\n\u201cRighto!\u201d said Mr Katya promptly.\n\n\u201cWe can meet in M\u2019Auley\u2019s,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy. \u201cThat\u2019ll be the most\nconvenient place.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut we mustn\u2019t be late,\u201d said Mr Power earnestly, \u201cbecause it is sure\nto be crammed to the doors.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe can meet at half-seven,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cRighto!\u201d said Mr Katya.\n\n\u201cHalf-seven at M\u2019Auley\u2019s be it!\u201d\n\nThere was a short silence. Mr Jennifer waited to see whether he would be\ntaken into his friends\u2019 confidence. Then he asked:\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s in the wind?\u201d\n\n\u201cO, it\u2019s nothing,\u201d said Mr Katya. \u201cIt\u2019s only a little matter that\nwe\u2019re arranging about for Thursday.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe opera, is it?\u201d said Mr Jennifer.\n\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d said Mr Katya in an evasive tone, \u201cit\u2019s just a little\n... spiritual matter.\u201d\n\n\u201cO,\u201d said Mr Jennifer.\n\nThere was silence again. Then Mr Power said, point blank:\n\n\u201cTo tell you the truth, Tom, we\u2019re going to make a retreat.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s it,\u201d said Mr Katya, \u201cJack and I and M\u2019Coy here\u2014we\u2019re\nall going to wash the pot.\u201d\n\nHe uttered the metaphor with a certain homely energy and, encouraged by\nhis own voice, proceeded:\n\n\u201cYou see, we may as well all admit we\u2019re a nice collection of\nscoundrels, one and all. I say, one and all,\u201d he added with gruff\ncharity and turning to Mr Power. \u201cOwn up now!\u201d\n\n\u201cI own up,\u201d said Mr Power.\n\n\u201cAnd I own up,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cSo we\u2019re going to wash the pot together,\u201d said Mr Katya.\n\nA thought seemed to strike him. He turned suddenly to the invalid and\nsaid:\n\n\u201cD\u2019ye know what, Tom, has just occurred to me? You might join in and\nwe\u2019d have a four-handed reel.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood idea,\u201d said Mr Power. \u201cThe four of us together.\u201d\n\nMr Jennifer was silent. The proposal conveyed very little meaning to his\nmind but, understanding that some spiritual agencies were about to\nconcern themselves on his behalf, he thought he owed it to his dignity\nto show a stiff neck. He took no part in the conversation for a long\nwhile but listened, with an air of calm enmity, while his friends\ndiscussed the Jesuits.\n\n\u201cI haven\u2019t such a bad opinion of the Jesuits,\u201d he said, intervening at\nlength. \u201cThey\u2019re an educated order. I believe they mean well too.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey\u2019re the grandest order in the Church, Tom,\u201d said Mr Katya,\nwith enthusiasm. \u201cThe General of the Jesuits stands next to the Pope.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s no mistake about it,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy, \u201cif you want a thing well\ndone and no flies about it you go to a Jesuit. They\u2019re the boyos have\ninfluence. I\u2019ll tell you a case in point....\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Jesuits are a fine body of men,\u201d said Mr Power.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a curious thing,\u201d said Mr Katya, \u201cabout the Jesuit Order.\nEvery other order of the Church had to be reformed at some time or\nother but the Jesuit Order was never once reformed. It never fell\naway.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs that so?\u201d asked Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a fact,\u201d said Mr Katya. \u201cThat\u2019s history.\u201d\n\n\u201cLook at their church, too,\u201d said Mr Power. \u201cLook at the congregation\nthey have.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Jesuits cater for the upper classes,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cOf course,\u201d said Mr Power.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Mr Jennifer. \u201cThat\u2019s why I have a feeling for them. It\u2019s some\nof those secular priests, ignorant, bumptious\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThey\u2019re all good men,\u201d said Mr Katya, \u201ceach in his own way. The\nIrish priesthood is honoured all the world over.\u201d\n\n\u201cO yes,\u201d said Mr Power.\n\n\u201cNot like some of the other priesthoods on the continent,\u201d said Mr\nM\u2019Coy, \u201cunworthy of the name.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps you\u2019re right,\u201d said Mr Jennifer, relenting.\n\n\u201cOf course I\u2019m right,\u201d said Mr Katya. \u201cI haven\u2019t been in the world\nall this time and seen most sides of it without being a judge of\ncharacter.\u201d\n\nThe gentlemen drank again, one following another\u2019s example. Mr Jennifer\nseemed to be weighing something in his mind. He was impressed. He had a\nhigh opinion of Mr Katya as a judge of character and as a reader\nof faces. He asked for particulars.\n\n\u201cO, it\u2019s just a retreat, you know,\u201d said Mr Katya. \u201cFather Maire\nis giving it. It\u2019s for business men, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe won\u2019t be too hard on us, Tom,\u201d said Mr Power persuasively.\n\n\u201cFather Maire? Father Maire?\u201d said the invalid.\n\n\u201cO, you must know him, Tom,\u201d said Mr Katya stoutly. \u201cFine jolly\nfellow! He\u2019s a man of the world like ourselves.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, ... yes. I think I know him. Rather red face; tall.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the man.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd tell me, Martin.... Is he a good preacher?\u201d\n\n\u201cMunno.... It\u2019s not exactly a sermon, you know. It\u2019s just kind of a\nfriendly talk, you know, in a common-sense way.\u201d\n\nMr Jennifer deliberated. Mr M\u2019Coy said:\n\n\u201cFather Tom Burke, that was the boy!\u201d\n\n\u201cO, Father Tom Burke,\u201d said Mr Katya, \u201cthat was a born orator. Did\nyou ever hear him, Tom?\u201d\n\n\u201cDid I ever hear him!\u201d said the invalid, nettled. \u201cRather! I heard\nhim....\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd yet they say he wasn\u2019t much of a theologian,\u201d said Mr Katya.\n\n\u201cIs that so?\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cO, of course, nothing wrong, you know. Only sometimes, they say, he\ndidn\u2019t preach what was quite orthodox.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! ... he was a splendid man,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cI heard him once,\u201d Mr Jennifer continued. \u201cI forget the subject of his\ndiscourse now. Crofton and I were in the back of the ... pit, you know\n... the\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThe body,\u201d said Mr Katya.\n\n\u201cYes, in the back near the door. I forget now what.... O yes, it was on\nthe Pope, the late Pope. I remember it well. Upon my word it was\nmagnificent, the style of the oratory. And his voice! God! hadn\u2019t he a\nvoice! _The Prisoner of the Vatican_, he called him. I remember Crofton\nsaying to me when we came out\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBut he\u2019s an Orangeman, Crofton, isn\u2019t he?\u201d said Mr Power.\n\n\u201c\u2018Course he is,\u201d said Mr Jennifer, \u201cand a damned decent Orangeman too. We\nwent into Butler\u2019s in Moore Street\u2014faith, I was genuinely moved, tell\nyou the God\u2019s truth\u2014and I remember well his very words. _Jennifer_, he\nsaid, _we worship at different altars_, he said, _but our belief is the\nsame_. Struck me as very well put.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a good deal in that,\u201d said Mr Power. \u201cThere used always to be\ncrowds of Protestants in the chapel where Father Tom was preaching.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s not much difference between us,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cWe both believe in\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\nHe hesitated for a moment.\n\n\u201c... in the Redeemer. Only they don\u2019t believe in the Pope and in the\nmother of God.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, of course,\u201d said Mr Katya quietly and effectively, \u201cour\nreligion is _the_ religion, the old, original faith.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot a doubt of it,\u201d said Mr Jennifer warmly.\n\nMrs Jennifer came to the door of the bedroom and announced:\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s a visitor for you!\u201d\n\n\u201cWho is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cMr Fogarty.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, come in! come in!\u201d\n\nA pale oval face came forward into the light. The arch of its fair\ntrailing moustache was repeated in the fair eyebrows looped above\npleasantly astonished eyes. Mr Fogarty was a modest grocer. He had\nfailed in business in a licensed house in the city because his\nfinancial condition had constrained him to tie himself to second-class\ndistillers and brewers. He had opened a small shop on Glasnevin Road\nwhere, he flattered himself, his manners would ingratiate him with the\nhousewives of the district. He bore himself with a certain grace,\ncomplimented little children and spoke with a neat enunciation. He was\nnot without culture.\n\nMr Fogarty brought a gift with him, a half-pint of special whisky. He\ninquired politely for Mr Jennifer, placed his gift on the table and sat\ndown with the company on equal terms. Mr Jennifer appreciated the gift\nall the more since he was aware that there was a small account for\ngroceries unsettled between him and Mr Fogarty. He said:\n\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t doubt you, old man. Open that, Jack, will you?\u201d\n\nMr Power again officiated. Glasses were rinsed and five small measures\nof whisky were poured out. This new influence enlivened the\nconversation. Mr Fogarty, sitting on a small area of the chair, was\nspecially interested.\n\n\u201cPope Leo XIII.,\u201d said Mr Katya, \u201cwas one of the lights of the\nage. His great idea, you know, was the union of the Latin and Greek\nChurches. That was the aim of his life.\u201d\n\n\u201cI often heard he was one of the most intellectual men in Europe,\u201d said\nMr Power. \u201cI mean, apart from his being Pope.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo he was,\u201d said Mr Katya, \u201cif not _the_ most so. His motto, you\nknow, as Pope, was _Lux upon Lux\u2014Light upon Light_.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d said Mr Fogarty eagerly. \u201cI think you\u2019re wrong there. It was\n_Lux in Tenebris_, I think\u2014_Light in Darkness_.\u201d\n\n\u201cO yes,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy, \u201c_Tenebrae_.\u201d\n\n\u201cAllow me,\u201d said Mr Katya positively, \u201cit was _Lux upon Lux_. And\nPius IX. his predecessor\u2019s motto was _Crux upon Crux_\u2014that is, _Cross\nupon Cross_\u2014to show the difference between their two pontificates.\u201d\n\nThe inference was allowed. Mr Katya continued.\n\n\u201cPope Leo, you know, was a great scholar and a poet.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe had a strong face,\u201d said Mr Jennifer.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Mr Katya. \u201cHe wrote Latin poetry.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs that so?\u201d said Mr Fogarty.\n\nMr M\u2019Coy tasted his whisky contentedly and shook his head with a double\nintention, saying:\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s no joke, I can tell you.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t learn that, Tom,\u201d said Mr Power, following Mr M\u2019Coy\u2019s\nexample, \u201cwhen we went to the penny-a-week school.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere was many a good man went to the penny-a-week school with a sod\nof turf under his oxter,\u201d said Mr Jennifer sententiously. \u201cThe old system\nwas the best: plain honest education. None of your modern trumpery....\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite right,\u201d said Mr Power.\n\n\u201cNo superfluities,\u201d said Mr Fogarty.\n\nHe enunciated the word and then drank gravely.\n\n\u201cI remember reading,\u201d said Mr Katya, \u201cthat one of Pope Leo\u2019s poems\nwas on the invention of the photograph\u2014in Latin, of course.\u201d\n\n\u201cOn the photograph!\u201d exclaimed Mr Jennifer.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Mr Katya.\n\nHe also drank from his glass.\n\n\u201cWell, you know,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy, \u201cisn\u2019t the photograph wonderful when\nyou come to think of it?\u201d\n\n\u201cO, of course,\u201d said Mr Power, \u201cgreat minds can see things.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs the poet says: _Great minds are very near to madness_,\u201d said Mr\nFogarty.\n\nMr Jennifer seemed to be troubled in mind. He made an effort to recall\nthe Protestant theology on some thorny points and in the end addressed\nMr Katya.\n\n\u201cTell me, Martin,\u201d he said. \u201cWeren\u2019t some of the popes\u2014of course, not\nour present man, or his predecessor, but some of the old popes\u2014not\nexactly ... you know ... up to the knocker?\u201d\n\nThere was a silence. Mr Katya said:\n\n\u201cO, of course, there were some bad lots.... But the astonishing thing\nis this. Not one of them, not the biggest drunkard, not the most ...\nout-and-out ruffian, not one of them ever preached _ex cathedra_ a word\nof false doctrine. Now isn\u2019t that an astonishing thing?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is,\u201d said Mr Jennifer.\n\n\u201cYes, because when the Pope speaks _ex cathedra_,\u201d Mr Fogarty\nexplained, \u201che is infallible.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Mr Katya.\n\n\u201cO, I know about the infallibility of the Pope. I remember I was\nyounger then.... Or was it that\u2014\u2014?\u201d\n\nMr Fogarty interrupted. He took up the bottle and helped the others to\na little more. Mr M\u2019Coy, seeing that there was not enough to go round,\npleaded that he had not finished his first measure. The others accepted\nunder protest. The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an\nagreeable interlude.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that you were saying, Tom?\u201d asked Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cPapal infallibility,\u201d said Mr Katya, \u201cthat was the greatest scene\nin the whole history of the Church.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow was that, Martin?\u201d asked Mr Power.\n\nMr Katya held up two thick fingers.\n\n\u201cIn the sacred college, you know, of cardinals and archbishops and\nbishops there were two men who held out against it while the others\nwere all for it. The whole conclave except these two was unanimous. No!\nThey wouldn\u2019t have it!\u201d\n\n\u201cHa!\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cAnd they were a German cardinal by the name of Dolling ... or Dowling\n... or\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDowling was no German, and that\u2019s a sure five,\u201d said Mr Power,\nlaughing.\n\n\u201cWell, this great German cardinal, whatever his name was, was one; and\nthe other was John MacHale.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat?\u201d cried Mr Jennifer. \u201cIs it John of Tuam?\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you sure of that now?\u201d asked Mr Fogarty dubiously. \u201cI thought it\nwas some Italian or American.\u201d\n\n\u201cJohn of Tuam,\u201d repeated Mr Katya, \u201cwas the man.\u201d\n\nHe drank and the other gentlemen followed his lead. Then he resumed:\n\n\u201cThere they were at it, all the cardinals and bishops and archbishops\nfrom all the ends of the earth and these two fighting dog and devil\nuntil at last the Pope himself stood up and declared infallibility a\ndogma of the Church _ex cathedra_. On the very moment John MacHale, who\nhad been arguing and arguing against it, stood up and shouted out with\nthe voice of a lion: \u2018_Credo!_\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201c_I believe!_\u201d said Mr Fogarty.\n\n\u201c_Credo!_\u201d said Mr Katya. \u201cThat showed the faith he had. He\nsubmitted the moment the Pope spoke.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what about Dowling?\u201d asked Mr M\u2019Coy.\n\n\u201cThe German cardinal wouldn\u2019t submit. He left the church.\u201d\n\nMr Katya\u2019s words had built up the vast image of the church in the\nminds of his hearers. His deep raucous voice had thrilled them as it\nuttered the word of belief and submission. When Mrs Jennifer came into\nthe room drying her hands she came into a solemn company. She did not\ndisturb the silence, but leaned over the rail at the foot of the bed.\n\n\u201cI once saw John MacHale,\u201d said Mr Jennifer, \u201cand I\u2019ll never forget it as\nlong as I live.\u201d\n\nHe turned towards his wife to be confirmed.\n\n\u201cI often told you that?\u201d\n\nMrs Jennifer nodded.\n\n\u201cIt was at the unveiling of Sir John Gray\u2019s statue. Edmund Dwyer Gray\nwas speaking, blathering away, and here was this old fellow,\ncrabbed-looking old chap, looking at him from under his bushy\neyebrows.\u201d\n\nMr Jennifer knitted his brows and, lowering his head like an angry bull,\nglared at his wife.\n\n\u201cGod!\u201d he exclaimed, resuming his natural face, \u201cI never saw such an\neye in a man\u2019s head. It was as much as to say: _I have you properly\ntaped, my lad_. He had an eye like a hawk.\u201d\n\n\u201cNone of the Grays was any good,\u201d said Mr Power.\n\nThere was a pause again. Mr Power turned to Mrs Jennifer and said with\nabrupt joviality:\n\n\u201cWell, Mrs Jennifer, we\u2019re going to make your man here a good holy pious\nand God-fearing Roman Catholic.\u201d\n\nHe swept his arm round the company inclusively.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re all going to make a retreat together and confess our sins\u2014and\nGod knows we want it badly.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mind,\u201d said Mr Jennifer, smiling a little nervously.\n\nMrs Jennifer thought it would be wiser to conceal her satisfaction. So\nshe said:\n\n\u201cI pity the poor priest that has to listen to your tale.\u201d\n\nMr Jennifer\u2019s expression changed.\n\n\u201cIf he doesn\u2019t like it,\u201d he said bluntly, \u201che can ... do the other\nthing. I\u2019ll just tell him my little tale of woe. I\u2019m not such a bad\nfellow\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\nMr Katya intervened promptly.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ll all renounce the devil,\u201d he said, \u201ctogether, not forgetting his\nworks and pomps.\u201d\n\n\u201cGet behind me, Satan!\u201d said Mr Fogarty, laughing and looking at the\nothers.\n\nMr Power said nothing. He felt completely out-generalled. But a pleased\nexpression flickered across his face.\n\n\u201cAll we have to do,\u201d said Mr Katya, \u201cis to stand up with lighted\ncandles in our hands and renew our baptismal vows.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, don\u2019t forget the candle, Tom,\u201d said Mr M\u2019Coy, \u201cwhatever you do.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat?\u201d said Mr Jennifer. \u201cMust I have a candle?\u201d\n\n\u201cO yes,\u201d said Mr Katya.\n\n\u201cNo, damn it all,\u201d said Mr Jennifer sensibly, \u201cI draw the line there.\nI\u2019ll do the job right enough. I\u2019ll do the retreat business and\nconfession, and ... all that business. But ... no candles! No, damn it\nall, I bar the candles!\u201d\n\nHe shook his head with farcical gravity.\n\n\u201cListen to that!\u201d said his wife.\n\n\u201cI bar the candles,\u201d said Mr Jennifer, conscious of having created an\neffect on his audience and continuing to shake his head to and fro. \u201cI\nbar the magic-lantern business.\u201d\n\nEveryone laughed heartily.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a nice Catholic for you!\u201d said his wife.\n\n\u201cNo candles!\u201d repeated Mr Jennifer obdurately. \u201cThat\u2019s off!\u201d\n\n\nThe transept of the Jesuit Church in Gardiner Street was almost full;\nand still at every moment gentlemen entered from the side door and,\ndirected by the lay-brother, walked on tiptoe along the aisles until\nthey found seating accommodation. The gentlemen were all well dressed\nand orderly. The light of the lamps of the church fell upon an assembly\nof black clothes and white collars, relieved here and there by tweeds,\non dark mottled pillars of green marble and on lugubrious canvases. The\ngentlemen sat in the benches, having hitched their trousers slightly\nabove their knees and laid their hats in security. They sat well back\nand gazed formally at the distant speck of red light which was\nsuspended before the high altar.\n\nIn one of the benches near the pulpit sat Mr Katya and Mr Jennifer.\nIn the bench behind sat Mr M\u2019Coy alone: and in the bench behind him sat\nMr Power and Mr Fogarty. Mr M\u2019Coy had tried unsuccessfully to find a\nplace in the bench with the others and, when the party had settled down\nin the form of a quincunx, he had tried unsuccessfully to make comic\nremarks. As these had not been well received he had desisted. Even he\nwas sensible of the decorous atmosphere and even he began to respond to\nthe religious stimulus. In a whisper Mr Katya drew Mr Jennifer\u2019s\nattention to Mr Harford, the moneylender, who sat some distance off,\nand to Mr Fanning, the registration agent and mayor maker of the city,\nwho was sitting immediately under the pulpit beside one of the newly\nelected councillors of the ward. To the right sat old Michael Grimes,\nthe owner of three pawnbroker\u2019s shops, and Dan Hogan\u2019s nephew, who was\nup for the job in the Town Clerk\u2019s office. Farther in front sat Mr\nHendrick, the chief reporter of _The Freeman\u2019s Journal_, and poor\nO\u2019Carroll, an old friend of Mr Jennifer\u2019s, who had been at one time a\nconsiderable commercial figure. Gradually, as he recognised familiar\nfaces, Mr Jennifer began to feel more at home. His hat, which had been\nrehabilitated by his wife, rested upon his knees. Once or twice he\npulled down his cuffs with one hand while he held the brim of his hat\nlightly, but firmly, with the other hand.\n\nA powerful-looking figure, the upper part of which was draped with a\nwhite surplice, was observed to be struggling up into the pulpit.\nSimultaneously the congregation unsettled, produced handkerchiefs and\nknelt upon them with care. Mr Jennifer followed the general example. The\npriest\u2019s figure now stood upright in the pulpit, two-thirds of its\nbulk, crowned by a massive red face, appearing above the balustrade.\n\nFather Maire knelt down, turned towards the red speck of light and,\ncovering his face with his hands, prayed. After an interval, he\nuncovered his face and rose. The congregation rose also and settled\nagain on its benches. Mr Jennifer restored his hat to its original\nposition on his knee and presented an attentive face to the preacher.\nThe preacher turned back each wide sleeve of his surplice with an\nelaborate large gesture and slowly surveyed the array of faces. Then he\nsaid:\n\n\n_\u201cFor the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the\nchildren of light. Wherefore make unto yourselves friends out of the\nmammon of iniquity so that when you die they may receive you into\neverlasting dwellings.\u201d_\n\n\nFather Maire developed the text with resonant assurance. It was one of\nthe most difficult texts in all the Scriptures, he said, to interpret\nproperly. It was a text which might seem to the casual observer at\nvariance with the lofty morality elsewhere preached by Jesus Christ.\nBut, he told his hearers, the text had seemed to him specially adapted\nfor the guidance of those whose lot it was to lead the life of the\nworld and who yet wished to lead that life not in the manner of\nworldlings. It was a text for business men and professional men. Jesus\nChrist, with His divine understanding of every cranny of our human\nnature, understood that all men were not called to the religious life,\nthat by far the vast majority were forced to live in the world and, to\na certain extent, for the world: and in this sentence He designed to\ngive them a word of counsel, setting before them as exemplars in the\nreligious life those very worshippers of Mammon who were of all men the\nleast solicitous in matters religious.\n\nHe told his hearers that he was there that evening for no terrifying,\nno extravagant purpose; but as a man of the world speaking to his\nfellow-men. He came to speak to business men and he would speak to them\nin a businesslike way. If he might use the metaphor, he said, he was\ntheir spiritual accountant; and he wished each and every one of his\nhearers to open his books, the books of his spiritual life, and see if\nthey tallied accurately with conscience.\n\nJesus Christ was not a hard taskmaster. He understood our little\nfailings, understood the weakness of our poor fallen nature, understood\nthe temptations of this life. We might have had, we all had from time\nto time, our temptations: we might have, we all had, our failings. But\none thing only, he said, he would ask of his hearers. And that was: to\nbe straight and manly with God. If their accounts tallied in every\npoint to say:\n\n\u201cWell, I have verified my accounts. I find all well.\u201d\n\nBut if, as might happen, there were some discrepancies, to admit the\ntruth, to be frank and say like a man:\n\n\u201cWell, I have looked into my accounts. I find this wrong and this\nwrong. But, with God\u2019s grace, I will rectify this and this. I will set\nright my accounts.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE DEAD\n\n\nLily, the caretaker\u2019s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly\nhad she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office\non the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the\nwheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the\nbare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not\nto attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought\nof that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies\u2019\ndressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and\nlaughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the\nstairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask\nher who had come.\n\nIt was always a great affair, the Misses Morkan\u2019s annual dance.\nEverybody who knew them came to it, members of the family, old friends\nof the family, the members of Julia\u2019s choir, any of Kate\u2019s pupils that\nwere grown up enough, and even some of Mary Jane\u2019s pupils too. Never\nonce had it fallen flat. For years and years it had gone off in\nsplendid style as long as anyone could remember; ever since Kate and\nJulia, after the death of their brother Pat, had left the house in\nStoney Batter and taken Mary Jane, their only niece, to live with them\nin the dark gaunt house on Usher\u2019s Island, the upper part of which they\nhad rented from Mr Fulham, the corn-factor on the ground floor. That\nwas a good thirty years ago if it was a day. Mary Jane, who was then a\nlittle girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household,\nfor she had the organ in Haddington Road. She had been through the\nAcademy and gave a pupils\u2019 concert every year in the upper room of the\nAntient Concert Rooms. Many of her pupils belonged to the better-class\nfamilies on the Kingstown and Dalkey line. Old as they were, her aunts\nalso did their share. Julia, though she was quite grey, was still the\nleading soprano in Adam and Eve\u2019s, and Kate, being too feeble to go\nabout much, gave music lessons to beginners on the old square piano in\nthe back room. Lily, the caretaker\u2019s daughter, did housemaid\u2019s work for\nthem. Though their life was modest they believed in eating well; the\nbest of everything: diamond-bone sirloins, three-shilling tea and the\nbest bottled stout. But Lily seldom made a mistake in the orders so\nthat she got on well with her three mistresses. They were fussy, that\nwas all. But the only thing they would not stand was back answers.\n\nOf course they had good reason to be fussy on such a night. And then it\nwas long after ten o\u2019clock and yet there was no sign of Gabriel and his\nwife. Besides they were dreadfully afraid that Freddy Malins might turn\nup screwed. They would not wish for worlds that any of Mary Jane\u2019s\npupils should see him under the influence; and when he was like that it\nwas sometimes very hard to manage him. Freddy Malins always came late\nbut they wondered what could be keeping Gabriel: and that was what\nbrought them every two minutes to the banisters to ask Lily had Gabriel\nor Freddy come.\n\n\u201cO, Mr Conroy,\u201d said Lily to Gabriel when she opened the door for him,\n\u201cMiss Kate and Miss Julia thought you were never coming. Good-night,\nMrs Conroy.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll engage they did,\u201d said Gabriel, \u201cbut they forget that my wife\nhere takes three mortal hours to dress herself.\u201d\n\nHe stood on the mat, scraping the snow from his goloshes, while Lily\nled his wife to the foot of the stairs and called out:\n\n\u201cMiss Kate, here\u2019s Mrs Conroy.\u201d\n\nKate and Julia came toddling down the dark stairs at once. Both of them\nkissed Gabriel\u2019s wife, said she must be perished alive and asked was\nGabriel with her.\n\n\u201cHere I am as right as the mail, Aunt Kate! Go on up. I\u2019ll follow,\u201d\ncalled out Gabriel from the dark.\n\nHe continued scraping his feet vigorously while the three women went\nupstairs, laughing, to the ladies\u2019 dressing-room. A light fringe of\nsnow lay like a cape on the shoulders of his overcoat and like toecaps\non the toes of his goloshes; and, as the buttons of his overcoat\nslipped with a squeaking noise through the snow-stiffened frieze, a\ncold, fragrant air from out-of-doors escaped from crevices and folds.\n\n\u201cIs it snowing again, Mr Conroy?\u201d asked Lily.\n\nShe had preceded him into the pantry to help him off with his overcoat.\nGabriel smiled at the three syllables she had given his surname and\nglanced at her. She was a slim, growing girl, pale in complexion and\nwith hay-coloured hair. The gas in the pantry made her look still\npaler. Gabriel had known her when she was a child and used to sit on\nthe lowest step nursing a rag doll.\n\n\u201cYes, Lily,\u201d he answered, \u201cand I think we\u2019re in for a night of it.\u201d\n\nHe looked up at the pantry ceiling, which was shaking with the stamping\nand shuffling of feet on the floor above, listened for a moment to the\npiano and then glanced at the girl, who was folding his overcoat\ncarefully at the end of a shelf.\n\n\u201cTell me, Lily,\u201d he said in a friendly tone, \u201cdo you still go to\nschool?\u201d\n\n\u201cO no, sir,\u201d she answered. \u201cI\u2019m done schooling this year and more.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, then,\u201d said Gabriel gaily, \u201cI suppose we\u2019ll be going to your\nwedding one of these fine days with your young man, eh?\u201d\n\nThe girl glanced back at him over her shoulder and said with great\nbitterness:\n\n\u201cThe men that is now is only all palaver and what they can get out of\nyou.\u201d\n\nGabriel coloured as if he felt he had made a mistake and, without\nlooking at her, kicked off his goloshes and flicked actively with his\nmuffler at his patent-leather shoes.\n\nHe was a stout tallish young man. The high colour of his cheeks pushed\nupwards even to his forehead where it scattered itself in a few\nformless patches of pale red; and on his hairless face there\nscintillated restlessly the polished lenses and the bright gilt rims of\nthe glasses which screened his delicate and restless eyes. His glossy\nblack hair was parted in the middle and brushed in a long curve behind\nhis ears where it curled slightly beneath the groove left by his hat.\n\nWhen he had flicked lustre into his shoes he stood up and pulled his\nwaistcoat down more tightly on his plump body. Then he took a coin\nrapidly from his pocket.\n\n\u201cO Lily,\u201d he said, thrusting it into her hands, \u201cit\u2019s Christmas-time,\nisn\u2019t it? Just ... here\u2019s a little....\u201d\n\nHe walked rapidly towards the door.\n\n\u201cO no, sir!\u201d cried the girl, following him. \u201cReally, sir, I wouldn\u2019t\ntake it.\u201d\n\n\u201cChristmas-time! Christmas-time!\u201d said Gabriel, almost trotting to the\nstairs and waving his hand to her in deprecation.\n\nThe girl, seeing that he had gained the stairs, called out after him:\n\n\u201cWell, thank you, sir.\u201d\n\nHe waited outside the drawing-room door until the waltz should finish,\nlistening to the skirts that swept against it and to the shuffling of\nfeet. He was still discomposed by the girl\u2019s bitter and sudden retort.\nIt had cast a gloom over him which he tried to dispel by arranging his\ncuffs and the bows of his tie. He then took from his waistcoat pocket a\nlittle paper and glanced at the headings he had made for his speech. He\nwas undecided about the lines from Robert Browning for he feared they\nwould be above the heads of his hearers. Some quotation that they would\nrecognise from Shakespeare or from the Melodies would be better. The\nindelicate clacking of the men\u2019s heels and the shuffling of their soles\nreminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would\nonly make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could\nnot understand. They would think that he was airing his superior\neducation. He would fail with them just as he had failed with the girl\nin the pantry. He had taken up a wrong tone. His whole speech was a\nmistake from first to last, an utter failure.\n\nJust then his aunts and his wife came out of the ladies\u2019 dressing-room.\nHis aunts were two small plainly dressed old women. Aunt Julia was an\ninch or so the taller. Her hair, drawn low over the tops of her ears,\nwas grey; and grey also, with darker shadows, was her large flaccid\nface. Though she was stout in build and stood erect her slow eyes and\nparted lips gave her the appearance of a woman who did not know where\nshe was or where she was going. Aunt Kate was more vivacious. Her face,\nhealthier than her sister\u2019s, was all puckers and creases, like a\nshrivelled red apple, and her hair, braided in the same old-fashioned\nway, had not lost its ripe nut colour.\n\nThey both kissed Gabriel frankly. He was their favourite nephew, the\nson of their dead elder sister, Ellen, who had married T. J. Conroy of\nthe Port and Docks.\n\n\u201cGretta tells me you\u2019re not going to take a cab back to Monkstown\ntonight, Gabriel,\u201d said Aunt Kate.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Gabriel, turning to his wife, \u201cwe had quite enough of that\nlast year, hadn\u2019t we? Don\u2019t you remember, Aunt Kate, what a cold Gretta\ngot out of it? Cab windows rattling all the way, and the east wind\nblowing in after we passed Merrion. Very jolly it was. Gretta caught a\ndreadful cold.\u201d\n\nAunt Kate frowned severely and nodded her head at every word.\n\n\u201cQuite right, Gabriel, quite right,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can\u2019t be too\ncareful.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut as for Gretta there,\u201d said Gabriel, \u201cshe\u2019d walk home in the snow\nif she were let.\u201d\n\nMrs Conroy laughed.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t mind him, Aunt Kate,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s really an awful bother,\nwhat with green shades for Tom\u2019s eyes at night and making him do the\ndumb-bells, and forcing Eva to eat the stirabout. The poor child! And\nshe simply hates the sight of it!... O, but you\u2019ll never guess what he\nmakes me wear now!\u201d\n\nShe broke out into a peal of laughter and glanced at her husband, whose\nadmiring and happy eyes had been wandering from her dress to her face\nand hair. The two aunts laughed heartily too, for Gabriel\u2019s solicitude\nwas a standing joke with them.\n\n\u201cGoloshes!\u201d said Mrs Conroy. \u201cThat\u2019s the latest. Whenever it\u2019s wet\nunderfoot I must put on my goloshes. Tonight even he wanted me to put\nthem on, but I wouldn\u2019t. The next thing he\u2019ll buy me will be a diving\nsuit.\u201d\n\nGabriel laughed nervously and patted his tie reassuringly while Aunt\nKate nearly doubled herself, so heartily did she enjoy the joke. The\nsmile soon faded from Aunt Julia\u2019s face and her mirthless eyes were\ndirected towards her nephew\u2019s face. After a pause she asked:\n\n\u201cAnd what are goloshes, Gabriel?\u201d\n\n\u201cGoloshes, Julia!\u201d exclaimed her sister. \u201cGoodness me, don\u2019t you know\nwhat goloshes are? You wear them over your ... over your boots, Gretta,\nisn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Mrs Conroy. \u201cGuttapercha things. We both have a pair now.\nGabriel says everyone wears them on the continent.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, on the continent,\u201d murmured Aunt Julia, nodding her head slowly.\n\nGabriel knitted his brows and said, as if he were slightly angered:\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing very wonderful but Gretta thinks it very funny because\nshe says the word reminds her of Christy Minstrels.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut tell me, Gabriel,\u201d said Aunt Kate, with brisk tact. \u201cOf course,\nyou\u2019ve seen about the room. Gretta was saying....\u201d\n\n\u201cO, the room is all right,\u201d replied Gabriel. \u201cI\u2019ve taken one in the\nGresham.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo be sure,\u201d said Aunt Kate, \u201cby far the best thing to do. And the\nchildren, Gretta, you\u2019re not anxious about them?\u201d\n\n\u201cO, for one night,\u201d said Mrs Conroy. \u201cBesides, Bessie will look after\nthem.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo be sure,\u201d said Aunt Kate again. \u201cWhat a comfort it is to have a\ngirl like that, one you can depend on! There\u2019s that Lily, I\u2019m sure I\ndon\u2019t know what has come over her lately. She\u2019s not the girl she was at\nall.\u201d\n\nGabriel was about to ask his aunt some questions on this point but she\nbroke off suddenly to gaze after her sister who had wandered down the\nstairs and was craning her neck over the banisters.\n\n\u201cNow, I ask you,\u201d she said almost testily, \u201cwhere is Julia going?\nJulia! Julia! Where are you going?\u201d\n\nJulia, who had gone half way down one flight, came back and announced\nblandly:\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s Freddy.\u201d\n\nAt the same moment a clapping of hands and a final flourish of the\npianist told that the waltz had ended. The drawing-room door was opened\nfrom within and some couples came out. Aunt Kate drew Gabriel aside\nhurriedly and whispered into his ear:\n\n\u201cSlip down, Gabriel, like a good fellow and see if he\u2019s all right, and\ndon\u2019t let him up if he\u2019s screwed. I\u2019m sure he\u2019s screwed. I\u2019m sure he\nis.\u201d\n\nGabriel went to the stairs and listened over the banisters. He could\nhear two persons talking in the pantry. Then he recognised Freddy\nMalins\u2019 laugh. He went down the stairs noisily.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s such a relief,\u201d said Aunt Kate to Mrs Conroy, \u201cthat Gabriel is\nhere. I always feel easier in my mind when he\u2019s here.... Julia, there\u2019s\nMiss Daly and Miss Power will take some refreshment. Thanks for your\nbeautiful waltz, Miss Daly. It made lovely time.\u201d\n\nA tall wizen-faced man, with a stiff grizzled moustache and swarthy\nskin, who was passing out with his partner said:\n\n\u201cAnd may we have some refreshment, too, Miss Morkan?\u201d\n\n\u201cJulia,\u201d said Aunt Kate summarily, \u201cand here\u2019s Mr Browne and Miss\nFurlong. Take them in, Julia, with Miss Daly and Miss Power.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m the man for the ladies,\u201d said Mr Browne, pursing his lips until\nhis moustache bristled and smiling in all his wrinkles. \u201cYou know, Miss\nMorkan, the reason they are so fond of me is\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\nHe did not finish his sentence, but, seeing that Aunt Kate was out of\nearshot, at once led the three young ladies into the back room. The\nmiddle of the room was occupied by two square tables placed end to end,\nand on these Aunt Julia and the caretaker were straightening and\nsmoothing a large cloth. On the sideboard were arrayed dishes and\nplates, and glasses and bundles of knives and forks and spoons. The top\nof the closed square piano served also as a sideboard for viands and\nsweets. At a smaller sideboard in one corner two young men were\nstanding, drinking hop-bitters.\n\nMr Browne led his charges thither and invited them all, in jest, to\nsome ladies\u2019 punch, hot, strong and sweet. As they said they never took\nanything strong he opened three bottles of lemonade for them. Then he\nasked one of the young men to move aside, and, taking hold of the\ndecanter, filled out for himself a goodly measure of whisky. The young\nmen eyed him respectfully while he took a trial sip.\n\n\u201cGod help me,\u201d he said, smiling, \u201cit\u2019s the doctor\u2019s orders.\u201d\n\nHis wizened face broke into a broader smile, and the three young ladies\nlaughed in musical echo to his pleasantry, swaying their bodies to and\nfro, with nervous jerks of their shoulders. The boldest said:\n\n\u201cO, now, Mr Browne, I\u2019m sure the doctor never ordered anything of the\nkind.\u201d\n\nMr Browne took another sip of his whisky and said, with sidling\nmimicry:\n\n\u201cWell, you see, I\u2019m like the famous Mrs Cassidy, who is reported to\nhave said: \u2018Now, Mary Grimes, if I don\u2019t take it, make me take it, for\nI feel I want it.\u2019\u201d\n\nHis hot face had leaned forward a little too confidentially and he had\nassumed a very low Sirah accent so that the young ladies, with one\ninstinct, received his speech in silence. Miss Furlong, who was one of\nMary Jane\u2019s pupils, asked Miss Daly what was the name of the pretty\nwaltz she had played; and Mr Browne, seeing that he was ignored, turned\npromptly to the two young men who were more appreciative.\n\nA red-faced young woman, dressed in pansy, came into the room,\nexcitedly clapping her hands and crying:\n\n\u201cQuadrilles! Quadrilles!\u201d\n\nClose on her heels came Aunt Kate, crying:\n\n\u201cTwo gentlemen and three ladies, Mary Jane!\u201d\n\n\u201cO, here\u2019s Mr Bergin and Mr Kerrigan,\u201d said Mary Jane. \u201cMr Kerrigan,\nwill you take Miss Power? Miss Furlong, may I get you a partner, Mr\nBergin. O, that\u2019ll just do now.\u201d\n\n\u201cThree ladies, Mary Jane,\u201d said Aunt Kate.\n\nThe two young gentlemen asked the ladies if they might have the\npleasure, and Mary Jane turned to Miss Daly.\n\n\u201cO, Miss Daly, you\u2019re really awfully good, after playing for the last\ntwo dances, but really we\u2019re so short of ladies tonight.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mind in the least, Miss Morkan.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I\u2019ve a nice partner for you, Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy, the tenor. I\u2019ll\nget him to sing later on. All Sirah is raving about him.\u201d\n\n\u201cLovely voice, lovely voice!\u201d said Aunt Kate.\n\nAs the piano had twice begun the prelude to the first figure Mary Jane\nled her recruits quickly from the room. They had hardly gone when Aunt\nJulia wandered slowly into the room, looking behind her at something.\n\n\u201cWhat is the matter, Julia?\u201d asked Aunt Kate anxiously. \u201cWho is it?\u201d\n\nJulia, who was carrying in a column of table-napkins, turned to her\nsister and said, simply, as if the question had surprised her:\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s only Freddy, Kate, and Gabriel with him.\u201d\n\nIn fact right behind her Gabriel could be seen piloting Freddy Malins\nacross the landing. The latter, a young man of about forty, was of\nGabriel\u2019s size and build, with very round shoulders. His face was\nfleshy and pallid, touched with colour only at the thick hanging lobes\nof his ears and at the wide wings of his nose. He had coarse features,\na blunt nose, a convex and receding brow, tumid and protruded lips. His\nheavy-lidded eyes and the disorder of his scanty hair made him look\nsleepy. He was laughing heartily in a high key at a story which he had\nbeen telling Gabriel on the stairs and at the same time rubbing the\nknuckles of his left fist backwards and forwards into his left eye.\n\n\u201cGood-evening, Freddy,\u201d said Aunt Julia.\n\nFreddy Malins bade the Misses Morkan good-evening in what seemed an\noffhand fashion by reason of the habitual catch in his voice and then,\nseeing that Mr Browne was grinning at him from the sideboard, crossed\nthe room on rather shaky legs and began to repeat in an undertone the\nstory he had just told to Gabriel.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s not so bad, is he?\u201d said Aunt Kate to Gabriel.\n\nGabriel\u2019s brows were dark but he raised them quickly and answered:\n\n\u201cO, no, hardly noticeable.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, isn\u2019t he a terrible fellow!\u201d she said. \u201cAnd his poor mother made\nhim take the pledge on New Year\u2019s Eve. But come on, Gabriel, into the\ndrawing-room.\u201d\n\nBefore leaving the room with Gabriel she signalled to Mr Browne by\nfrowning and shaking her forefinger in warning to and fro. Mr Browne\nnodded in answer and, when she had gone, said to Freddy Malins:\n\n\u201cNow, then, Teddy, I\u2019m going to fill you out a good glass of lemonade\njust to buck you up.\u201d\n\nFreddy Malins, who was nearing the climax of his story, waved the offer\naside impatiently but Mr Browne, having first called Freddy Malins\u2019\nattention to a disarray in his dress, filled out and handed him a full\nglass of lemonade. Freddy Malins\u2019 left hand accepted the glass\nmechanically, his right hand being engaged in the mechanical\nreadjustment of his dress. Mr Browne, whose face was once more\nwrinkling with mirth, poured out for himself a glass of whisky while\nFreddy Malins exploded, before he had well reached the climax of his\nstory, in a kink of high-pitched bronchitic laughter and, setting down\nhis untasted and overflowing glass, began to rub the knuckles of his\nleft fist backwards and forwards into his left eye, repeating words of\nhis last phrase as well as his fit of laughter would allow him.\n\n\nGabriel could not listen while Mary Jane was playing her Academy piece,\nfull of runs and difficult passages, to the hushed drawing-room. He\nliked music but the piece she was playing had no melody for him and he\ndoubted whether it had any melody for the other listeners, though they\nhad begged Mary Jane to play something. Four young men, who had come\nfrom the refreshment-room to stand in the doorway at the sound of the\npiano, had gone away quietly in couples after a few minutes. The only\npersons who seemed to follow the music were Mary Jane herself, her\nhands racing along the keyboard or lifted from it at the pauses like\nthose of a priestess in momentary imprecation, and Aunt Kate standing\nat her elbow to turn the page.\n\nGabriel\u2019s eyes, irritated by the floor, which glittered with beeswax\nunder the heavy chandelier, wandered to the wall above the piano. A\npicture of the balcony scene in _Romeo and Juliet_ hung there and\nbeside it was a picture of the two murdered princes in the Tower which\nAunt Julia had worked in red, blue and brown wools when she was a girl.\nProbably in the school they had gone to as girls that kind of work had\nbeen taught for one year. His mother had worked for him as a birthday\npresent a waistcoat of purple tabinet, with little foxes\u2019 heads upon\nit, lined with brown satin and having round mulberry buttons. It was\nstrange that his mother had had no musical talent though Aunt Kate used\nto call her the brains carrier of the Morkan family. Both she and Julia\nhad always seemed a little proud of their serious and matronly sister.\nHer photograph stood before the pierglass. She held an open book on her\nknees and was pointing out something in it to Constantine who, dressed\nin a man-o\u2019-war suit, lay at her feet. It was she who had chosen the\nname of her sons for she was very sensible of the dignity of family\nlife. Thanks to her, Constantine was now senior curate in Balbrigan\nand, thanks to her, Gabriel himself had taken his degree in the Royal\nUniversity. A shadow passed over his face as he remembered her sullen\nopposition to his marriage. Some slighting phrases she had used still\nrankled in his memory; she had once spoken of Gretta as being country\ncute and that was not true of Gretta at all. It was Gretta who had\nnursed her during all her last long illness in their house at\nMonkstown.\n\nHe knew that Mary Jane must be near the end of her piece for she was\nplaying again the opening melody with runs of scales after every bar\nand while he waited for the end the resentment died down in his heart.\nThe piece ended with a trill of octaves in the treble and a final deep\noctave in the bass. Great applause greeted Mary Jane as, blushing and\nrolling up her music nervously, she escaped from the room. The most\nvigorous clapping came from the four young men in the doorway who had\ngone away to the refreshment-room at the beginning of the piece but had\ncome back when the piano had stopped.\n\nLancers were arranged. Gabriel found himself partnered with Miss Ivors.\nShe was a frank-mannered talkative young lady, with a freckled face and\nprominent brown eyes. She did not wear a low-cut bodice and the large\nbrooch which was fixed in the front of her collar bore on it an Irish\ndevice and motto.\n\nWhen they had taken their places she said abruptly:\n\n\u201cI have a crow to pluck with you.\u201d\n\n\u201cWith me?\u201d said Gabriel.\n\nShe nodded her head gravely.\n\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d asked Gabriel, smiling at her solemn manner.\n\n\u201cWho is G. C.?\u201d answered Miss Ivors, turning her eyes upon him.\n\nGabriel coloured and was about to knit his brows, as if he did not\nunderstand, when she said bluntly:\n\n\u201cO, innocent Amy! I have found out that you write for _The Daily\nExpress_. Now, aren\u2019t you ashamed of yourself?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy should I be ashamed of myself?\u201d asked Gabriel, blinking his eyes\nand trying to smile.\n\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m ashamed of you,\u201d said Miss Ivors frankly. \u201cTo say you\u2019d\nwrite for a paper like that. I didn\u2019t think you were a West Briton.\u201d\n\nA look of perplexity appeared on Gabriel\u2019s face. It was true that he\nwrote a literary column every Wednesday in _The Daily Express_, for\nwhich he was paid fifteen shillings. But that did not make him a West\nBriton surely. The books he received for review were almost more\nwelcome than the paltry cheque. He loved to feel the covers and turn\nover the pages of newly printed books. Nearly every day when his\nteaching in the college was ended he used to wander down the quays to\nthe second-hand booksellers, to Hickey\u2019s on Bachelor\u2019s Walk, to Webb\u2019s\nor Massey\u2019s on Aston\u2019s Quay, or to O\u2019Clohissey\u2019s in the by-street. He\ndid not know how to meet her charge. He wanted to say that literature\nwas above politics. But they were friends of many years\u2019 standing and\ntheir careers had been parallel, first at the university and then as\nteachers: he could not risk a grandiose phrase with her. He continued\nblinking his eyes and trying to smile and murmured lamely that he saw\nnothing political in writing reviews of books.\n\nWhen their turn to cross had come he was still perplexed and\ninattentive. Miss Ivors promptly took his hand in a warm grasp and said\nin a soft friendly tone:\n\n\u201cOf course, I was only joking. Come, we cross now.\u201d\n\nWhen they were together again she spoke of the University question and\nGabriel felt more at ease. A friend of hers had shown her his review of\nBrowning\u2019s poems. That was how she had found out the secret: but she\nliked the review immensely. Then she said suddenly:\n\n\u201cO, Mr Conroy, will you come for an excursion to the Aran Isles this\nsummer? We\u2019re going to stay there a whole month. It will be splendid\nout in the Atlantic. You ought to come. Mr Clancy is coming, and Mr\nKilkelly and Kathleen Kearney. It would be splendid for Gretta too if\nshe\u2019d come. She\u2019s from Connacht, isn\u2019t she?\u201d\n\n\u201cHer people are,\u201d said Gabriel shortly.\n\n\u201cBut you will come, won\u2019t you?\u201d said Miss Ivors, laying her warm hand\neagerly on his arm.\n\n\u201cThe fact is,\u201d said Gabriel, \u201cI have just arranged to go\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cGo where?\u201d asked Miss Ivors.\n\n\u201cWell, you know, every year I go for a cycling tour with some fellows\nand so\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBut where?\u201d asked Miss Ivors.\n\n\u201cWell, we usually go to France or Belgium or perhaps Germany,\u201d said\nGabriel awkwardly.\n\n\u201cAnd why do you go to France and Belgium,\u201d said Miss Ivors, \u201cinstead of\nvisiting your own land?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Gabriel, \u201cit\u2019s partly to keep in touch with the languages\nand partly for a change.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd haven\u2019t you your own language to keep in touch with\u2014Irish?\u201d asked\nMiss Ivors.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Gabriel, \u201cif it comes to that, you know, Irish is not my\nlanguage.\u201d\n\nTheir neighbours had turned to listen to the cross-examination. Gabriel\nglanced right and left nervously and tried to keep his good humour\nunder the ordeal which was making a blush invade his forehead.\n\n\u201cAnd haven\u2019t you your own land to visit,\u201d continued Miss Ivors, \u201cthat\nyou know nothing of, your own people, and your own country?\u201d\n\n\u201cO, to tell you the truth,\u201d retorted Gabriel suddenly, \u201cI\u2019m sick of my\nown country, sick of it!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d asked Miss Ivors.\n\nGabriel did not answer for his retort had heated him.\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d repeated Miss Ivors.\n\nThey had to go visiting together and, as he had not answered her, Miss\nIvors said warmly:\n\n\u201cOf course, you\u2019ve no answer.\u201d\n\nGabriel tried to cover his agitation by taking part in the dance with\ngreat energy. He avoided her eyes for he had seen a sour expression on\nher face. But when they met in the long chain he was surprised to feel\nhis hand firmly pressed. She looked at him from under her brows for a\nmoment quizzically until he smiled. Then, just as the chain was about\nto start again, she stood on tiptoe and whispered into his ear:\n\n\u201cWest Briton!\u201d\n\nWhen the lancers were over Gabriel went away to a remote corner of the\nroom where Freddy Malins\u2019 mother was sitting. She was a stout feeble\nold woman with white hair. Her voice had a catch in it like her son\u2019s\nand she stuttered slightly. She had been told that Freddy had come and\nthat he was nearly all right. Gabriel asked her whether she had had a\ngood crossing. She lived with her married daughter in Glasgow and came\nto Sirah on a visit once a year. She answered placidly that she had\nhad a beautiful crossing and that the captain had been most attentive\nto her. She spoke also of the beautiful house her daughter kept in\nGlasgow, and of all the friends they had there. While her tongue\nrambled on Gabriel tried to banish from his mind all memory of the\nunpleasant incident with Miss Ivors. Of course the girl or woman, or\nwhatever she was, was an enthusiast but there was a time for all\nthings. Perhaps he ought not to have answered her like that. But she\nhad no right to call him a West Briton before people, even in joke. She\nhad tried to make him ridiculous before people, heckling him and\nstaring at him with her rabbit\u2019s eyes.\n\nHe saw his wife making her way towards him through the waltzing\ncouples. When she reached him she said into his ear:\n\n\u201cGabriel, Aunt Kate wants to know won\u2019t you carve the goose as usual.\nMiss Daly will carve the ham and I\u2019ll do the pudding.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll right,\u201d said Gabriel.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s sending in the younger ones first as soon as this waltz is over\nso that we\u2019ll have the table to ourselves.\u201d\n\n\u201cWere you dancing?\u201d asked Gabriel.\n\n\u201cOf course I was. Didn\u2019t you see me? What row had you with Molly\nIvors?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo row. Why? Did she say so?\u201d\n\n\u201cSomething like that. I\u2019m trying to get that Mr D\u2019Arcy to sing. He\u2019s\nfull of conceit, I think.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere was no row,\u201d said Gabriel moodily, \u201conly she wanted me to go for\na trip to the west of Ireland and I said I wouldn\u2019t.\u201d\n\nHis wife clasped her hands excitedly and gave a little jump.\n\n\u201cO, do go, Gabriel,\u201d she cried. \u201cI\u2019d love to see Galway again.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can go if you like,\u201d said Gabriel coldly.\n\nShe looked at him for a moment, then turned to Mrs Malins and said:\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a nice husband for you, Mrs Malins.\u201d\n\nWhile she was threading her way back across the room Mrs Malins,\nwithout adverting to the interruption, went on to tell Gabriel what\nbeautiful places there were in Scotland and beautiful scenery. Her\nson-in-law brought them every year to the lakes and they used to go\nfishing. Her son-in-law was a splendid fisher. One day he caught a\nbeautiful big fish and the man in the hotel cooked it for their dinner.\n\nGabriel hardly heard what she said. Now that supper was coming near he\nbegan to think again about his speech and about the quotation. When he\nsaw Freddy Malins coming across the room to visit his mother Gabriel\nleft the chair free for him and retired into the embrasure of the\nwindow. The room had already cleared and from the back room came the\nclatter of plates and knives. Those who still remained in the\ndrawing-room seemed tired of dancing and were conversing quietly in\nlittle groups. Gabriel\u2019s warm trembling fingers tapped the cold pane of\nthe window. How cool it must be outside! How pleasant it would be to\nwalk out alone, first along by the river and then through the park! The\nsnow would be lying on the branches of the trees and forming a bright\ncap on the top of the Wellington Monument. How much more pleasant it\nwould be there than at the supper-table!\n\nHe ran over the headings of his speech: Irish hospitality, sad\nmemories, the Three Graces, Paris, the quotation from Browning. He\nrepeated to himself a phrase he had written in his review: \u201cOne feels\nthat one is listening to a thought-tormented music.\u201d Miss Ivors had\npraised the review. Was she sincere? Had she really any life of her own\nbehind all her propagandism? There had never been any ill-feeling\nbetween them until that night. It unnerved him to think that she would\nbe at the supper-table, looking up at him while he spoke with her\ncritical quizzing eyes. Perhaps she would not be sorry to see him fail\nin his speech. An idea came into his mind and gave him courage. He\nwould say, alluding to Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia: \u201cLadies and Gentlemen,\nthe generation which is now on the wane among us may have had its\nfaults but for my part I think it had certain qualities of hospitality,\nof humour, of humanity, which the new and very serious and\nhypereducated generation that is growing up around us seems to me to\nlack.\u201d Very good: that was one for Miss Ivors. What did he care that\nhis aunts were only two ignorant old women?\n\nA murmur in the room attracted his attention. Mr Browne was advancing\nfrom the door, gallantly escorting Aunt Julia, who leaned upon his arm,\nsmiling and hanging her head. An irregular musketry of applause\nescorted her also as far as the piano and then, as Mary Jane seated\nherself on the stool, and Aunt Julia, no longer smiling, half turned so\nas to pitch her voice fairly into the room, gradually ceased. Gabriel\nrecognised the prelude. It was that of an old song of Aunt\nJulia\u2019s\u2014_Arrayed for the Bridal_. Her voice, strong and clear in tone,\nattacked with great spirit the runs which embellish the air and though\nshe sang very rapidly she did not miss even the smallest of the grace\nnotes. To follow the voice, without looking at the singer\u2019s face, was\nto feel and share the excitement of swift and secure flight. Gabriel\napplauded loudly with all the others at the close of the song and loud\napplause was borne in from the invisible supper-table. It sounded so\ngenuine that a little colour struggled into Aunt Julia\u2019s face as she\nbent to replace in the music-stand the old leather-bound songbook that\nhad her initials on the cover. Freddy Malins, who had listened with his\nhead perched sideways to hear her better, was still applauding when\neveryone else had ceased and talking animatedly to his mother who\nnodded her head gravely and slowly in acquiescence. At last, when he\ncould clap no more, he stood up suddenly and hurried across the room to\nAunt Julia whose hand he seized and held in both his hands, shaking it\nwhen words failed him or the catch in his voice proved too much for\nhim.\n\n\u201cI was just telling my mother,\u201d he said, \u201cI never heard you sing so\nwell, never. No, I never heard your voice so good as it is tonight.\nNow! Would you believe that now? That\u2019s the truth. Upon my word and\nhonour that\u2019s the truth. I never heard your voice sound so fresh and so\n... so clear and fresh, never.\u201d\n\nAunt Julia smiled broadly and murmured something about compliments as\nshe released her hand from his grasp. Mr Browne extended his open hand\ntowards her and said to those who were near him in the manner of a\nshowman introducing a prodigy to an audience:\n\n\u201cMiss Julia Morkan, my latest discovery!\u201d\n\nHe was laughing very heartily at this himself when Freddy Malins turned\nto him and said:\n\n\u201cWell, Browne, if you\u2019re serious you might make a worse discovery. All\nI can say is I never heard her sing half so well as long as I am coming\nhere. And that\u2019s the honest truth.\u201d\n\n\u201cNeither did I,\u201d said Mr Browne. \u201cI think her voice has greatly\nimproved.\u201d\n\nAunt Julia shrugged her shoulders and said with meek pride:\n\n\u201cThirty years ago I hadn\u2019t a bad voice as voices go.\u201d\n\n\u201cI often told Julia,\u201d said Aunt Kate emphatically, \u201cthat she was simply\nthrown away in that choir. But she never would be said by me.\u201d\n\nShe turned as if to appeal to the good sense of the others against a\nrefractory child while Aunt Julia gazed in front of her, a vague smile\nof reminiscence playing on her face.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d continued Aunt Kate, \u201cshe wouldn\u2019t be said or led by anyone,\nslaving there in that choir night and day, night and day. Six o\u2019clock\non Christmas morning! And all for what?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, isn\u2019t it for the honour of God, Aunt Kate?\u201d asked Mary Jane,\ntwisting round on the piano-stool and smiling.\n\nAunt Kate turned fiercely on her niece and said:\n\n\u201cI know all about the honour of God, Mary Jane, but I think it\u2019s not at\nall honourable for the pope to turn out the women out of the choirs\nthat have slaved there all their lives and put little whipper-snappers\nof boys over their heads. I suppose it is for the good of the Church if\nthe pope does it. But it\u2019s not just, Mary Jane, and it\u2019s not right.\u201d\n\nShe had worked herself into a passion and would have continued in\ndefence of her sister for it was a sore subject with her but Mary Jane,\nseeing that all the dancers had come back, intervened pacifically:\n\n\u201cNow, Aunt Kate, you\u2019re giving scandal to Mr Browne who is of the other\npersuasion.\u201d\n\nAunt Kate turned to Mr Browne, who was grinning at this allusion to his\nreligion, and said hastily:\n\n\u201cO, I don\u2019t question the pope\u2019s being right. I\u2019m only a stupid old\nwoman and I wouldn\u2019t presume to do such a thing. But there\u2019s such a\nthing as common everyday politeness and gratitude. And if I were in\nJulia\u2019s place I\u2019d tell that Father Healey straight up to his face....\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd besides, Aunt Kate,\u201d said Mary Jane, \u201cwe really are all hungry and\nwhen we are hungry we are all very quarrelsome.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd when we are thirsty we are also quarrelsome,\u201d added Mr Browne.\n\n\u201cSo that we had better go to supper,\u201d said Mary Jane, \u201cand finish the\ndiscussion afterwards.\u201d\n\nOn the landing outside the drawing-room Gabriel found his wife and Mary\nJane trying to persuade Miss Ivors to stay for supper. But Miss Ivors,\nwho had put on her hat and was buttoning her cloak, would not stay. She\ndid not feel in the least hungry and she had already overstayed her\ntime.\n\n\u201cBut only for ten minutes, Molly,\u201d said Mrs Conroy. \u201cThat won\u2019t delay\nyou.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo take a pick itself,\u201d said Mary Jane, \u201cafter all your dancing.\u201d\n\n\u201cI really couldn\u2019t,\u201d said Miss Ivors.\n\n\u201cI am afraid you didn\u2019t enjoy yourself at all,\u201d said Mary Jane\nhopelessly.\n\n\u201cEver so much, I assure you,\u201d said Miss Ivors, \u201cbut you really must let\nme run off now.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut how can you get home?\u201d asked Mrs Conroy.\n\n\u201cO, it\u2019s only two steps up the quay.\u201d\n\nGabriel hesitated a moment and said:\n\n\u201cIf you will allow me, Miss Ivors, I\u2019ll see you home if you are really\nobliged to go.\u201d\n\nBut Miss Ivors broke away from them.\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t hear of it,\u201d she cried. \u201cFor goodness\u2019 sake go in to your\nsuppers and don\u2019t mind me. I\u2019m quite well able to take care of myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, you\u2019re the comical girl, Molly,\u201d said Mrs Conroy frankly.\n\n\u201c_Beannacht libh_,\u201d cried Miss Ivors, with a laugh, as she ran down the\nstaircase.\n\nMary Jane gazed after her, a moody puzzled expression on her face,\nwhile Mrs Conroy leaned over the banisters to listen for the hall-door.\nGabriel asked himself was he the cause of her abrupt departure. But she\ndid not seem to be in ill humour: she had gone away laughing. He stared\nblankly down the staircase.\n\nAt the moment Aunt Kate came toddling out of the supper-room, almost\nwringing her hands in despair.\n\n\u201cWhere is Gabriel?\u201d she cried. \u201cWhere on earth is Gabriel? There\u2019s\neveryone waiting in there, stage to let, and nobody to carve the\ngoose!\u201d\n\n\u201cHere I am, Aunt Kate!\u201d cried Gabriel, with sudden animation, \u201cready to\ncarve a flock of geese, if necessary.\u201d\n\nA fat brown goose lay at one end of the table and at the other end, on\na bed of creased paper strewn with sprigs of parsley, lay a great ham,\nstripped of its outer skin and peppered over with crust crumbs, a neat\npaper frill round its shin and beside this was a round of spiced beef.\nBetween these rival ends ran parallel lines of side-dishes: two little\nminsters of jelly, red and yellow; a shallow dish full of blocks of\nblancmange and red jam, a large green leaf-shaped dish with a\nstalk-shaped handle, on which lay bunches of purple raisins and peeled\nalmonds, a companion dish on which lay a solid rectangle of Smyrna\nfigs, a dish of custard topped with grated nutmeg, a small bowl full of\nchocolates and sweets wrapped in gold and silver papers and a glass\nvase in which stood some tall celery stalks. In the centre of the table\nthere stood, as sentries to a fruit-stand which upheld a pyramid of\noranges and American apples, two squat old-fashioned decanters of cut\nglass, one containing port and the other dark sherry. On the closed\nsquare piano a pudding in a huge yellow dish lay in waiting and behind\nit were three squads of bottles of stout and ale and minerals, drawn up\naccording to the colours of their uniforms, the first two black, with\nbrown and red labels, the third and smallest squad white, with\ntransverse green sashes.\n\nGabriel took his seat boldly at the head of the table and, having\nlooked to the edge of the carver, plunged his fork firmly into the\ngoose. He felt quite at ease now for he was an expert carver and liked\nnothing better than to find himself at the head of a well-laden table.\n\n\u201cMiss Furlong, what shall I send you?\u201d he asked. \u201cA wing or a slice of\nthe breast?\u201d\n\n\u201cJust a small slice of the breast.\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Higgins, what for you?\u201d\n\n\u201cO, anything at all, Mr Conroy.\u201d\n\nWhile Gabriel and Miss Daly exchanged plates of goose and plates of ham\nand spiced beef Lily went from guest to guest with a dish of hot floury\npotatoes wrapped in a white napkin. This was Mary Jane\u2019s idea and she\nhad also suggested apple sauce for the goose but Aunt Kate had said\nthat plain roast goose without any apple sauce had always been good\nenough for her and she hoped she might never eat worse. Mary Jane\nwaited on her pupils and saw that they got the best slices and Aunt\nKate and Aunt Julia opened and carried across from the piano bottles of\nstout and ale for the gentlemen and bottles of minerals for the ladies.\nThere was a great deal of confusion and laughter and noise, the noise\nof orders and counter-orders, of knives and forks, of corks and\nglass-stoppers. Gabriel began to carve second helpings as soon as he\nhad finished the first round without serving himself. Everyone\nprotested loudly so that he compromised by taking a long draught of\nstout for he had found the carving hot work. Mary Jane settled down\nquietly to her supper but Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia were still toddling\nround the table, walking on each other\u2019s heels, getting in each other\u2019s\nway and giving each other unheeded orders. Mr Browne begged of them to\nsit down and eat their suppers and so did Gabriel but they said they\nwere time enough so that, at last, Freddy Malins stood up and,\ncapturing Aunt Kate, plumped her down on her chair amid general\nlaughter.\n\nWhen everyone had been well served Gabriel said, smiling:\n\n\u201cNow, if anyone wants a little more of what vulgar people call stuffing\nlet him or her speak.\u201d\n\nA chorus of voices invited him to begin his own supper and Lily came\nforward with three potatoes which she had reserved for him.\n\n\u201cVery well,\u201d said Gabriel amiably, as he took another preparatory\ndraught, \u201ckindly forget my existence, ladies and gentlemen, for a few\nminutes.\u201d\n\nHe set to his supper and took no part in the conversation with which\nthe table covered Lily\u2019s removal of the plates. The subject of talk was\nthe opera company which was then at the Theatre Royal. Mr Bartell\nD\u2019Arcy, the tenor, a dark-complexioned young man with a smart\nmoustache, praised very highly the leading contralto of the company but\nMiss Furlong thought she had a rather vulgar style of production.\nFreddy Malins said there was a negro chieftain singing in the second\npart of the Gaiety pantomime who had one of the finest tenor voices he\nhad ever heard.\n\n\u201cHave you heard him?\u201d he asked Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy across the table.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d answered Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy carelessly.\n\n\u201cBecause,\u201d Freddy Malins explained, \u201cnow I\u2019d be curious to hear your\nopinion of him. I think he has a grand voice.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt takes Teddy to find out the really good things,\u201d said Mr Browne\nfamiliarly to the table.\n\n\u201cAnd why couldn\u2019t he have a voice too?\u201d asked Freddy Malins sharply.\n\u201cIs it because he\u2019s only a black?\u201d\n\nNobody answered this question and Mary Jane led the table back to the\nlegitimate opera. One of her pupils had given her a pass for _Mignon_.\nOf course it was very fine, she said, but it made her think of poor\nGeorgina Burns. Mr Browne could go back farther still, to the old\nItalian companies that used to come to Sirah\u2014Tietjens, Ilma de Murzka,\nCampanini, the great Trebelli, Giuglini, Ravelli, Aramburo. Those were\nthe days, he said, when there was something like singing to be heard in\nSirah. He told too of how the top gallery of the old Royal used to be\npacked night after night, of how one night an Italian tenor had sung\nfive encores to _Let me like a Soldier fall_, introducing a high C\nevery time, and of how the gallery boys would sometimes in their\nenthusiasm unyoke the horses from the carriage of some great _prima\ndonna_ and pull her themselves through the streets to her hotel. Why\ndid they never play the grand old operas now, he asked, _Dinorah,\nLucrezia Borgia?_ Because they could not get the voices to sing them:\nthat was why.\n\n\u201cOh, well,\u201d said Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy, \u201cI presume there are as good\nsingers today as there were then.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere are they?\u201d asked Mr Browne defiantly.\n\n\u201cIn London, Paris, Milan,\u201d said Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy warmly. \u201cI suppose\nCaruso, for example, is quite as good, if not better than any of the\nmen you have mentioned.\u201d\n\n\u201cMaybe so,\u201d said Mr Browne. \u201cBut I may tell you I doubt it strongly.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, I\u2019d give anything to hear Caruso sing,\u201d said Mary Jane.\n\n\u201cFor me,\u201d said Aunt Kate, who had been picking a bone, \u201cthere was only\none tenor. To please me, I mean. But I suppose none of you ever heard\nof him.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho was he, Miss Morkan?\u201d asked Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy politely.\n\n\u201cHis name,\u201d said Aunt Kate, \u201cwas Parkinson. I heard him when he was in\nhis prime and I think he had then the purest tenor voice that was ever\nput into a man\u2019s throat.\u201d\n\n\u201cStrange,\u201d said Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy. \u201cI never even heard of him.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, Miss Morkan is right,\u201d said Mr Browne. \u201cI remember hearing\nof old Parkinson but he\u2019s too far back for me.\u201d\n\n\u201cA beautiful pure sweet mellow English tenor,\u201d said Aunt Kate with\nenthusiasm.\n\nGabriel having finished, the huge pudding was transferred to the table.\nThe clatter of forks and spoons began again. Gabriel\u2019s wife served out\nspoonfuls of the pudding and passed the plates down the table. Midway\ndown they were held up by Mary Jane, who replenished them with\nraspberry or orange jelly or with blancmange and jam. The pudding was\nof Aunt Julia\u2019s making and she received praises for it from all\nquarters. She herself said that it was not quite brown enough.\n\n\u201cWell, I hope, Miss Morkan,\u201d said Mr Browne, \u201cthat I\u2019m brown enough for\nyou because, you know, I\u2019m all brown.\u201d\n\nAll the gentlemen, except Gabriel, ate some of the pudding out of\ncompliment to Aunt Julia. As Gabriel never ate sweets the celery had\nbeen left for him. Freddy Malins also took a stalk of celery and ate it\nwith his pudding. He had been told that celery was a capital thing for\nthe blood and he was just then under doctor\u2019s care. Mrs Malins, who had\nbeen silent all through the supper, said that her son was going down to\nMount Melleray in a week or so. The table then spoke of Mount Melleray,\nhow bracing the air was down there, how hospitable the monks were and\nhow they never asked for a penny-piece from their guests.\n\n\u201cAnd do you mean to say,\u201d asked Mr Browne incredulously, \u201cthat a chap\ncan go down there and put up there as if it were a hotel and live on\nthe fat of the land and then come away without paying anything?\u201d\n\n\u201cO, most people give some donation to the monastery when they leave.\u201d\nsaid Mary Jane.\n\n\u201cI wish we had an institution like that in our Church,\u201d said Mr Browne\ncandidly.\n\nHe was astonished to hear that the monks never spoke, got up at two in\nthe morning and slept in their coffins. He asked what they did it for.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the rule of the order,\u201d said Aunt Kate firmly.\n\n\u201cYes, but why?\u201d asked Mr Browne.\n\nAunt Kate repeated that it was the rule, that was all. Mr Browne still\nseemed not to understand. Freddy Malins explained to him, as best he\ncould, that the monks were trying to make up for the sins committed by\nall the sinners in the outside world. The explanation was not very\nclear for Mr Browne grinned and said:\n\n\u201cI like that idea very much but wouldn\u2019t a comfortable spring bed do\nthem as well as a coffin?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe coffin,\u201d said Mary Jane, \u201cis to remind them of their last end.\u201d\n\nAs the subject had grown lugubrious it was buried in a silence of the\ntable during which Mrs Malins could be heard saying to her neighbour in\nan indistinct undertone:\n\n\u201cThey are very good men, the monks, very pious men.\u201d\n\nThe raisins and almonds and figs and apples and oranges and chocolates\nand sweets were now passed about the table and Aunt Julia invited all\nthe guests to have either port or sherry. At first Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy\nrefused to take either but one of his neighbours nudged him and\nwhispered something to him upon which he allowed his glass to be\nfilled. Gradually as the last glasses were being filled the\nconversation ceased. A pause followed, broken only by the noise of the\nwine and by unsettlings of chairs. The Misses Morkan, all three, looked\ndown at the tablecloth. Someone coughed once or twice and then a few\ngentlemen patted the table gently as a signal for silence. The silence\ncame and Gabriel pushed back his chair.\n\nThe patting at once grew louder in encouragement and then ceased\naltogether. Gabriel leaned his ten trembling fingers on the tablecloth\nand smiled nervously at the company. Meeting a row of upturned faces he\nraised his eyes to the chandelier. The piano was playing a waltz tune\nand he could hear the skirts sweeping against the drawing-room door.\nPeople, perhaps, were standing in the snow on the quay outside, gazing\nup at the lighted windows and listening to the waltz music. The air was\npure there. In the distance lay the park where the trees were weighted\nwith snow. The Wellington Monument wore a gleaming cap of snow that\nflashed westward over the white field of Fifteen Acres.\n\nHe began:\n\n\u201cLadies and Gentlemen,\n\n\u201cIt has fallen to my lot this evening, as in years past, to perform a\nvery pleasing task but a task for which I am afraid my poor powers as a\nspeaker are all too inadequate.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no!\u201d said Mr Browne.\n\n\u201cBut, however that may be, I can only ask you tonight to take the will\nfor the deed and to lend me your attention for a few moments while I\nendeavour to express to you in words what my feelings are on this\noccasion.\n\n\u201cLadies and Gentlemen, it is not the first time that we have gathered\ntogether under this hospitable roof, around this hospitable board. It\nis not the first time that we have been the recipients\u2014or perhaps, I\nhad better say, the victims\u2014of the hospitality of certain good ladies.\u201d\n\nHe made a circle in the air with his arm and paused. Everyone laughed\nor smiled at Aunt Kate and Aunt Julia and Mary Jane who all turned\ncrimson with pleasure. Gabriel went on more boldly:\n\n\u201cI feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no\ntradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so\njealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique\nas far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places\nabroad) among the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us\nit is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of. But granted even\nthat, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will\nlong be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least, I am sure. As long\nas this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid\u2014and I wish from my\nheart it may do so for many and many a long year to come\u2014the tradition\nof genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our\nforefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn must hand down\nto our descendants, is still alive among us.\u201d\n\nA hearty murmur of assent ran round the table. It shot through\nGabriel\u2019s mind that Miss Ivors was not there and that she had gone away\ndiscourteously: and he said with confidence in himself:\n\n\u201cLadies and Gentlemen,\n\n\u201cA new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by\nnew ideas and new principles. It is serious and enthusiastic for these\nnew ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I\nbelieve, in the main sincere. But we are living in a sceptical and, if\nI may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear\nthat this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack\nthose qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which\nbelonged to an older day. Listening tonight to the names of all those\ngreat singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were\nliving in a less spacious age. Those days might, without exaggeration,\nbe called spacious days: and if they are gone beyond recall let us\nhope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of\nthem with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory\nof those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not\nwillingly let die.\u201d\n\n\u201cHear, hear!\u201d said Mr Browne loudly.\n\n\u201cBut yet,\u201d continued Gabriel, his voice falling into a softer\ninflection, \u201cthere are always in gatherings such as this sadder\nthoughts that will recur to our minds: thoughts of the past, of youth,\nof changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight. Our path through\nlife is strewn with many such sad memories: and were we to brood upon\nthem always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work\namong the living. We have all of us living duties and living affections\nwhich claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavours.\n\n\u201cTherefore, I will not linger on the past. I will not let any gloomy\nmoralising intrude upon us here tonight. Here we are gathered together\nfor a brief moment from the bustle and rush of our everyday routine. We\nare met here as friends, in the spirit of good-fellowship, as\ncolleagues, also to a certain extent, in the true spirit of\n_camaraderie_, and as the guests of\u2014what shall I call them?\u2014the Three\nGraces of the Sirah musical world.\u201d\n\nThe table burst into applause and laughter at this allusion. Aunt Julia\nvainly asked each of her neighbours in turn to tell her what Gabriel\nhad said.\n\n\u201cHe says we are the Three Graces, Aunt Julia,\u201d said Mary Jane.\n\nAunt Julia did not understand but she looked up, smiling, at Gabriel,\nwho continued in the same vein:\n\n\u201cLadies and Gentlemen,\n\n\u201cI will not attempt to play tonight the part that Paris played on\nanother occasion. I will not attempt to choose between them. The task\nwould be an invidious one and one beyond my poor powers. For when I\nview them in turn, whether it be our chief hostess herself, whose good\nheart, whose too good heart, has become a byword with all who know her,\nor her sister, who seems to be gifted with perennial youth and whose\nsinging must have been a surprise and a revelation to us all tonight,\nor, last but not least, when I consider our youngest hostess, talented,\ncheerful, hard-working and the best of nieces, I confess, Ladies and\nGentlemen, that I do not know to which of them I should award the\nprize.\u201d\n\nGabriel glanced down at his aunts and, seeing the large smile on Aunt\nJulia\u2019s face and the tears which had risen to Aunt Kate\u2019s eyes,\nhastened to his close. He raised his glass of port gallantly, while\nevery member of the company fingered a glass expectantly, and said\nloudly:\n\n\u201cLet us toast them all three together. Let us drink to their health,\nwealth, long life, happiness and prosperity and may they long continue\nto hold the proud and self-won position which they hold in their\nprofession and the position of honour and affection which they hold in\nour hearts.\u201d\n\nAll the guests stood up, glass in hand, and turning towards the three\nseated ladies, sang in unison, with Mr Browne as leader:\n\n     For they are jolly gay fellows,\n     For they are jolly gay fellows,\n     For they are jolly gay fellows,\n     Which nobody can deny.\n\nAunt Kate was making frank use of her handkerchief and even Aunt Julia\nseemed moved. Freddy Malins beat time with his pudding-fork and the\nsingers turned towards one another, as if in melodious conference,\nwhile they sang with emphasis:\n\n     Unless he tells a lie,\n     Unless he tells a lie.\n\nThen, turning once more towards their hostesses, they sang:\n\n     For they are jolly gay fellows,\n     For they are jolly gay fellows,\n     For they are jolly gay fellows,\n     Which nobody can deny.\n\nThe acclamation which followed was taken up beyond the door of the\nsupper-room by many of the other guests and renewed time after time,\nFreddy Malins acting as officer with his fork on high.\n\n\nThe piercing morning air came into the hall where they were standing so\nthat Aunt Kate said:\n\n\u201cClose the door, somebody. Mrs Malins will get her death of cold.\u201d\n\n\u201cBrowne is out there, Aunt Kate,\u201d said Mary Jane.\n\n\u201cBrowne is everywhere,\u201d said Aunt Kate, lowering her voice.\n\nMary Jane laughed at her tone.\n\n\u201cReally,\u201d she said archly, \u201che is very attentive.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has been laid on here like the gas,\u201d said Aunt Kate in the same\ntone, \u201call during the Christmas.\u201d\n\nShe laughed herself this time good-humouredly and then added quickly:\n\n\u201cBut tell him to come in, Mary Jane, and close the door. I hope to\ngoodness he didn\u2019t hear me.\u201d\n\nAt that moment the hall-door was opened and Mr Browne came in from the\ndoorstep, laughing as if his heart would break. He was dressed in a\nlong green overcoat with mock astrakhan cuffs and collar and wore on\nhis head an oval fur cap. He pointed down the snow-covered quay from\nwhere the sound of shrill prolonged whistling was borne in.\n\n\u201cTeddy will have all the cabs in Sirah out,\u201d he said.\n\nGabriel advanced from the little pantry behind the office, struggling\ninto his overcoat and, looking round the hall, said:\n\n\u201cGretta not down yet?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s getting on her things, Gabriel,\u201d said Aunt Kate.\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s playing up there?\u201d asked Gabriel.\n\n\u201cNobody. They\u2019re all gone.\u201d\n\n\u201cO no, Aunt Kate,\u201d said Mary Jane. \u201cBartell D\u2019Arcy and Miss O\u2019Callaghan\naren\u2019t gone yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cSomeone is fooling at the piano anyhow,\u201d said Gabriel.\n\nMary Jane glanced at Gabriel and Mr Browne and said with a shiver:\n\n\u201cIt makes me feel cold to look at you two gentlemen muffled up like\nthat. I wouldn\u2019t like to face your journey home at this hour.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019d like nothing better this minute,\u201d said Mr Browne stoutly, \u201cthan a\nrattling fine walk in the country or a fast drive with a good spanking\ngoer between the shafts.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe used to have a very good horse and trap at home,\u201d said Aunt Julia\nsadly.\n\n\u201cThe never-to-be-forgotten Johnny,\u201d said Mary Jane, laughing.\n\nAunt Kate and Gabriel laughed too.\n\n\u201cWhy, what was wonderful about Johnny?\u201d asked Mr Browne.\n\n\u201cThe late lamented Patrick Morkan, our grandfather, that is,\u201d explained\nGabriel, \u201ccommonly known in his later years as the old gentleman, was a\nglue-boiler.\u201d\n\n\u201cO now, Gabriel,\u201d said Aunt Kate, laughing, \u201che had a starch mill.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, glue or starch,\u201d said Gabriel, \u201cthe old gentleman had a horse by\nthe name of Johnny. And Johnny used to work in the old gentleman\u2019s\nmill, walking round and round in order to drive the mill. That was all\nvery well; but now comes the tragic part about Johnny. One fine day the\nold gentleman thought he\u2019d like to drive out with the quality to a\nmilitary review in the park.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Lord have mercy on his soul,\u201d said Aunt Kate compassionately.\n\n\u201cAmen,\u201d said Gabriel. \u201cSo the old gentleman, as I said, harnessed\nJohnny and put on his very best tall hat and his very best stock collar\nand drove out in grand style from his ancestral mansion somewhere near\nBack Lane, I think.\u201d\n\nEveryone laughed, even Mrs Malins, at Gabriel\u2019s manner and Aunt Kate\nsaid:\n\n\u201cO now, Gabriel, he didn\u2019t live in Back Lane, really. Only the mill was\nthere.\u201d\n\n\u201cOut from the mansion of his forefathers,\u201d continued Gabriel, \u201che drove\nwith Johnny. And everything went on beautifully until Johnny came in\nsight of King Billy\u2019s statue: and whether he fell in love with the\nhorse King Billy sits on or whether he thought he was back again in the\nmill, anyhow he began to walk round the statue.\u201d\n\nGabriel paced in a circle round the hall in his goloshes amid the\nlaughter of the others.\n\n\u201cRound and round he went,\u201d said Gabriel, \u201cand the old gentleman, who\nwas a very pompous old gentleman, was highly indignant. \u2018Go on, sir!\nWhat do you mean, sir? Johnny! Johnny! Most extraordinary conduct!\nCan\u2019t understand the horse!\u2019\u201d\n\nThe peal of laughter which followed Gabriel\u2019s imitation of the incident\nwas interrupted by a resounding knock at the hall door. Mary Jane ran\nto open it and let in Freddy Malins. Freddy Malins, with his hat well\nback on his head and his shoulders humped with cold, was puffing and\nsteaming after his exertions.\n\n\u201cI could only get one cab,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cO, we\u2019ll find another along the quay,\u201d said Gabriel.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Aunt Kate. \u201cBetter not keep Mrs Malins standing in the\ndraught.\u201d\n\nMrs Malins was helped down the front steps by her son and Mr Browne\nand, after many man\u0153uvres, hoisted into the cab. Freddy Malins\nclambered in after her and spent a long time settling her on the seat,\nMr Browne helping him with advice. At last she was settled comfortably\nand Freddy Malins invited Mr Browne into the cab. There was a good deal\nof confused talk, and then Mr Browne got into the cab. The cabman\nsettled his rug over his knees, and bent down for the address. The\nconfusion grew greater and the cabman was directed differently by\nFreddy Malins and Mr Browne, each of whom had his head out through a\nwindow of the cab. The difficulty was to know where to drop Mr Browne\nalong the route, and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane helped the\ndiscussion from the doorstep with cross-directions and contradictions\nand abundance of laughter. As for Freddy Malins he was speechless with\nlaughter. He popped his head in and out of the window every moment to\nthe great danger of his hat, and told his mother how the discussion was\nprogressing, till at last Mr Browne shouted to the bewildered cabman\nabove the din of everybody\u2019s laughter:\n\n\u201cDo you know Trinity College?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d said the cabman.\n\n\u201cWell, drive bang up against Trinity College gates,\u201d said Mr Browne,\n\u201cand then we\u2019ll tell you where to go. You understand now?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir,\u201d said the cabman.\n\n\u201cMake like a bird for Trinity College.\u201d\n\n\u201cRight, sir,\u201d said the cabman.\n\nThe horse was whipped up and the cab rattled off along the quay amid a\nchorus of laughter and adieus.\n\nGabriel had not gone to the door with the others. He was in a dark part\nof the hall gazing up the staircase. A woman was standing near the top\nof the first flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her face but\nhe could see the terracotta and salmon-pink panels of her skirt which\nthe shadow made appear black and white. It was his wife. She was\nleaning on the banisters, listening to something. Gabriel was surprised\nat her stillness and strained his ear to listen also. But he could hear\nlittle save the noise of laughter and dispute on the front steps, a few\nchords struck on the piano and a few notes of a man\u2019s voice singing.\n\nHe stood still in the gloom of the hall, trying to catch the air that\nthe voice was singing and gazing up at his wife. There was grace and\nmystery in her attitude as if she were a symbol of something. He asked\nhimself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening\nto distant music, a symbol of. If he were a painter he would paint her\nin that attitude. Her blue felt hat would show off the bronze of her\nhair against the darkness and the dark panels of her skirt would show\noff the light ones. _Distant Music_ he would call the picture if he\nwere a painter.\n\nThe hall-door was closed; and Aunt Kate, Aunt Julia and Mary Jane came\ndown the hall, still laughing.\n\n\u201cWell, isn\u2019t Freddy terrible?\u201d said Mary Jane. \u201cHe\u2019s really terrible.\u201d\n\nGabriel said nothing but pointed up the stairs towards where his wife\nwas standing. Now that the hall-door was closed the voice and the piano\ncould be heard more clearly. Gabriel held up his hand for them to be\nsilent. The song seemed to be in the old Irish tonality and the singer\nseemed uncertain both of his words and of his voice. The voice, made\nplaintive by distance and by the singer\u2019s hoarseness, faintly\nilluminated the cadence of the air with words expressing grief:\n\n     O, the rain falls on my heavy locks\n     And the dew wets my skin,\n     My babe lies cold....\n\n\u201cO,\u201d exclaimed Mary Jane. \u201cIt\u2019s Bartell D\u2019Arcy singing and he wouldn\u2019t\nsing all the night. O, I\u2019ll get him to sing a song before he goes.\u201d\n\n\u201cO do, Mary Jane,\u201d said Aunt Kate.\n\nMary Jane brushed past the others and ran to the staircase, but before\nshe reached it the singing stopped and the piano was closed abruptly.\n\n\u201cO, what a pity!\u201d she cried. \u201cIs he coming down, Gretta?\u201d\n\nGabriel heard his wife answer yes and saw her come down towards them. A\nfew steps behind her were Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy and Miss O\u2019Callaghan.\n\n\u201cO, Mr D\u2019Arcy,\u201d cried Mary Jane, \u201cit\u2019s downright mean of you to break\noff like that when we were all in raptures listening to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have been at him all the evening,\u201d said Miss O\u2019Callaghan, \u201cand Mrs\nConroy too and he told us he had a dreadful cold and couldn\u2019t sing.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, Mr D\u2019Arcy,\u201d said Aunt Kate, \u201cnow that was a great fib to tell.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t you see that I\u2019m as hoarse as a crow?\u201d said Mr D\u2019Arcy roughly.\n\nHe went into the pantry hastily and put on his overcoat. The others,\ntaken aback by his rude speech, could find nothing to say. Aunt Kate\nwrinkled her brows and made signs to the others to drop the subject. Mr\nD\u2019Arcy stood swathing his neck carefully and frowning.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s the weather,\u201d said Aunt Julia, after a pause.\n\n\u201cYes, everybody has colds,\u201d said Aunt Kate readily, \u201ceverybody.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey say,\u201d said Mary Jane, \u201cwe haven\u2019t had snow like it for thirty\nyears; and I read this morning in the newspapers that the snow is\ngeneral all over Ireland.\u201d\n\n\u201cI love the look of snow,\u201d said Aunt Julia sadly.\n\n\u201cSo do I,\u201d said Miss O\u2019Callaghan. \u201cI think Christmas is never really\nChristmas unless we have the snow on the ground.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut poor Mr D\u2019Arcy doesn\u2019t like the snow,\u201d said Aunt Kate, smiling.\n\nMr D\u2019Arcy came from the pantry, fully swathed and buttoned, and in a\nrepentant tone told them the history of his cold. Everyone gave him\nadvice and said it was a great pity and urged him to be very careful of\nhis throat in the night air. Gabriel watched his wife, who did not join\nin the conversation. She was standing right under the dusty fanlight\nand the flame of the gas lit up the rich bronze of her hair, which he\nhad seen her drying at the fire a few days before. She was in the same\nattitude and seemed unaware of the talk about her. At last she turned\ntowards them and Gabriel saw that there was colour on her cheeks and\nthat her eyes were shining. A sudden tide of joy went leaping out of\nhis heart.\n\n\u201cMr D\u2019Arcy,\u201d she said, \u201cwhat is the name of that song you were\nsinging?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s called _The Lass of Aughrim_,\u201d said Mr D\u2019Arcy, \u201cbut I couldn\u2019t\nremember it properly. Why? Do you know it?\u201d\n\n\u201c_The Lass of Aughrim_,\u201d she repeated. \u201cI couldn\u2019t think of the name.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a very nice air,\u201d said Mary Jane. \u201cI\u2019m sorry you were not in\nvoice tonight.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, Mary Jane,\u201d said Aunt Kate, \u201cdon\u2019t annoy Mr D\u2019Arcy. I won\u2019t have\nhim annoyed.\u201d\n\nSeeing that all were ready to start she shepherded them to the door,\nwhere good-night was said:\n\n\u201cWell, good-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks for the pleasant evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-night, Gabriel. Good-night, Gretta!\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-night, Aunt Kate, and thanks ever so much. Good-night, Aunt\nJulia.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, good-night, Gretta, I didn\u2019t see you.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-night, Mr D\u2019Arcy. Good-night, Miss O\u2019Callaghan.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-night, Miss Morkan.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-night, again.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-night, all. Safe home.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-night. Good-night.\u201d\n\nThe morning was still dark. A dull yellow light brooded over the houses\nand the river; and the sky seemed to be descending. It was slushy\nunderfoot; and only streaks and patches of snow lay on the roofs, on\nthe parapets of the quay and on the area railings. The lamps were still\nburning redly in the murky air and, across the river, the palace of the\nFour Courts stood out menacingly against the heavy sky.\n\nShe was walking on before him with Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy, her shoes in a\nbrown parcel tucked under one arm and her hands holding her skirt up\nfrom the slush. She had no longer any grace of attitude but Gabriel\u2019s\neyes were still bright with happiness. The blood went bounding along\nhis veins; and the thoughts went rioting through his brain, proud,\njoyful, tender, valorous.\n\nShe was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to\nrun after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something\nfoolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that\nhe longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with\nher. Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his\nmemory. A heliotrope envelope was lying beside his breakfast-cup and he\nwas caressing it with his hand. Birds were twittering in the ivy and\nthe sunny web of the curtain was shimmering along the floor: he could\nnot eat for happiness. They were standing on the crowded platform and\nhe was placing a ticket inside the warm palm of her glove. He was\nstanding with her in the cold, looking in through a grated window at a\nman making bottles in a roaring furnace. It was very cold. Her face,\nfragrant in the cold air, was quite close to his; and suddenly he\ncalled out to the man at the furnace:\n\n\u201cIs the fire hot, sir?\u201d\n\nBut the man could not hear with the noise of the furnace. It was just\nas well. He might have answered rudely.\n\nA wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing\nin warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fire of stars moments\nof their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of,\nbroke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those\nmoments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence together\nand remember only their moments of ecstasy. For the years, he felt, had\nnot quenched his soul or hers. Their children, his writing, her\nhousehold cares had not quenched all their souls\u2019 tender fire. In one\nletter that he had written to her then he had said: \u201cWhy is it that\nwords like these seem to me so dull and cold? Is it because there is no\nword tender enough to be your name?\u201d\n\nLike distant music these words that he had written years before were\nborne towards him from the past. He longed to be alone with her. When\nthe others had gone away, when he and she were in their room in the\nhotel, then they would be alone together. He would call her softly:\n\n\u201cGretta!\u201d\n\nPerhaps she would not hear at once: she would be undressing. Then\nsomething in his voice would strike her. She would turn and look at\nhim....\n\nAt the corner of Winetavern Street they met a cab. He was glad of its\nrattling noise as it saved him from conversation. She was looking out\nof the window and seemed tired. The others spoke only a few words,\npointing out some building or street. The horse galloped along wearily\nunder the murky morning sky, dragging his old rattling box after his\nheels, and Gabriel was again in a cab with her, galloping to catch the\nboat, galloping to their honeymoon.\n\nAs the cab drove across O\u2019Connell Bridge Miss O\u2019Callaghan said:\n\n\u201cThey say you never cross O\u2019Connell Bridge without seeing a white\nhorse.\u201d\n\n\u201cI see a white man this time,\u201d said Gabriel.\n\n\u201cWhere?\u201d asked Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy.\n\nGabriel pointed to the statue, on which lay patches of snow. Then he\nnodded familiarly to it and waved his hand.\n\n\u201cGood-night, Dan,\u201d he said gaily.\n\nWhen the cab drew up before the hotel, Gabriel jumped out and, in spite\nof Mr Bartell D\u2019Arcy\u2019s protest, paid the driver. He gave the man a\nshilling over his fare. The man saluted and said:\n\n\u201cA prosperous New Year to you, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe same to you,\u201d said Gabriel cordially.\n\nShe leaned for a moment on his arm in getting out of the cab and while\nstanding at the curbstone, bidding the others good-night. She leaned\nlightly on his arm, as lightly as when she had danced with him a few\nhours before. He had felt proud and happy then, happy that she was his,\nproud of her grace and wifely carriage. But now, after the kindling\nagain of so many memories, the first touch of her body, musical and\nstrange and perfumed, sent through him a keen pang of lust. Under cover\nof her silence he pressed her arm closely to his side; and, as they\nstood at the hotel door, he felt that they had escaped from their lives\nand duties, escaped from home and friends and run away together with\nwild and radiant hearts to a new adventure.\n\nAn old man was dozing in a great hooded chair in the hall. He lit a\ncandle in the office and went before them to the stairs. They followed\nhim in silence, their feet falling in soft thuds on the thickly\ncarpeted stairs. She mounted the stairs behind the porter, her head\nbowed in the ascent, her frail shoulders curved as with a burden, her\nskirt girt tightly about her. He could have flung his arms about her\nhips and held her still, for his arms were trembling with desire to\nseize her and only the stress of his nails against the palms of his\nhands held the wild impulse of his body in check. The porter halted on\nthe stairs to settle his guttering candle. They halted too on the steps\nbelow him. In the silence Gabriel could hear the falling of the molten\nwax into the tray and the thumping of his own heart against his ribs.\n\nThe porter led them along a corridor and opened a door. Then he set his\nunstable candle down on a toilet-table and asked at what hour they were\nto be called in the morning.\n\n\u201cEight,\u201d said Gabriel.\n\nThe porter pointed to the tap of the electric-light and began a\nmuttered apology but Gabriel cut him short.\n\n\u201cWe don\u2019t want any light. We have light enough from the street. And I\nsay,\u201d he added, pointing to the candle, \u201cyou might remove that handsome\narticle, like a good man.\u201d\n\nThe porter took up his candle again, but slowly for he was surprised by\nsuch a novel idea. Then he mumbled good-night and went out. Gabriel\nshot the lock to.\n\nA ghostly light from the street lamp lay in a long shaft from one\nwindow to the door. Gabriel threw his overcoat and hat on a couch and\ncrossed the room towards the window. He looked down into the street in\norder that his emotion might calm a little. Then he turned and leaned\nagainst a chest of drawers with his back to the light. She had taken\noff her hat and cloak and was standing before a large swinging mirror,\nunhooking her waist. Gabriel paused for a few moments, watching her,\nand then said:\n\n\u201cGretta!\u201d\n\nShe turned away from the mirror slowly and walked along the shaft of\nlight towards him. Her face looked so serious and weary that the words\nwould not pass Gabriel\u2019s lips. No, it was not the moment yet.\n\n\u201cYou looked tired,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cI am a little,\u201d she answered.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t feel ill or weak?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, tired: that\u2019s all.\u201d\n\nShe went on to the window and stood there, looking out. Gabriel waited\nagain and then, fearing that diffidence was about to conquer him, he\nsaid abruptly:\n\n\u201cBy the way, Gretta!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know that poor fellow Malins?\u201d he said quickly.\n\n\u201cYes. What about him?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, poor fellow, he\u2019s a decent sort of chap after all,\u201d continued\nGabriel in a false voice. \u201cHe gave me back that sovereign I lent him,\nand I didn\u2019t expect it, really. It\u2019s a pity he wouldn\u2019t keep away from\nthat Browne, because he\u2019s not a bad fellow, really.\u201d\n\nHe was trembling now with annoyance. Why did she seem so abstracted? He\ndid not know how he could begin. Was she annoyed, too, about something?\nIf she would only turn to him or come to him of her own accord! To take\nher as she was would be brutal. No, he must see some ardour in her eyes\nfirst. He longed to be master of her strange mood.\n\n\u201cWhen did you lend him the pound?\u201d she asked, after a pause.\n\nGabriel strove to restrain himself from breaking out into brutal\nlanguage about the sottish Malins and his pound. He longed to cry to\nher from his soul, to crush her body against his, to overmaster her.\nBut he said:\n\n\u201cO, at Christmas, when he opened that little Christmas-card shop in\nHenry Street.\u201d\n\nHe was in such a fever of rage and desire that he did not hear her come\nfrom the window. She stood before him for an instant, looking at him\nstrangely. Then, suddenly raising herself on tiptoe and resting her\nhands lightly on his shoulders, she kissed him.\n\n\u201cYou are a very generous person, Gabriel,\u201d she said.\n\nGabriel, trembling with delight at her sudden kiss and at the\nquaintness of her phrase, put his hands on her hair and began smoothing\nit back, scarcely touching it with his fingers. The washing had made it\nfine and brilliant. His heart was brimming over with happiness. Just\nwhen he was wishing for it she had come to him of her own accord.\nPerhaps her thoughts had been running with his. Perhaps she had felt\nthe impetuous desire that was in him, and then the yielding mood had\ncome upon her. Now that she had fallen to him so easily, he wondered\nwhy he had been so diffident.\n\nHe stood, holding her head between his hands. Then, slipping one arm\nswiftly about her body and drawing her towards him, he said softly:\n\n\u201cGretta, dear, what are you thinking about?\u201d\n\nShe did not answer nor yield wholly to his arm. He said again, softly:\n\n\u201cTell me what it is, Gretta. I think I know what is the matter. Do I\nknow?\u201d\n\nShe did not answer at once. Then she said in an outburst of tears:\n\n\u201cO, I am thinking about that song, _The Lass of Aughrim_.\u201d\n\nShe broke loose from him and ran to the bed and, throwing her arms\nacross the bed-rail, hid her face. Gabriel stood stock-still for a\nmoment in astonishment and then followed her. As he passed in the way\nof the cheval-glass he caught sight of himself in full length, his\nbroad, well-filled shirt-front, the face whose expression always\npuzzled him when he saw it in a mirror and his glimmering gilt-rimmed\neyeglasses. He halted a few paces from her and said:\n\n\u201cWhat about the song? Why does that make you cry?\u201d\n\nShe raised her head from her arms and dried her eyes with the back of\nher hand like a child. A kinder note than he had intended went into his\nvoice.\n\n\u201cWhy, Gretta?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cI am thinking about a person long ago who used to sing that song.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd who was the person long ago?\u201d asked Gabriel, smiling.\n\n\u201cIt was a person I used to know in Galway when I was living with my\ngrandmother,\u201d she said.\n\nThe smile passed away from Gabriel\u2019s face. A dull anger began to gather\nagain at the back of his mind and the dull fires of his lust began to\nglow angrily in his veins.\n\n\u201cSomeone you were in love with?\u201d he asked ironically.\n\n\u201cIt was a young boy I used to know,\u201d she answered, \u201cnamed Michael\nFurey. He used to sing that song, _The Lass of Aughrim_. He was very\ndelicate.\u201d\n\nGabriel was silent. He did not wish her to think that he was interested\nin this delicate boy.\n\n\u201cI can see him so plainly,\u201d she said after a moment. \u201cSuch eyes as he\nhad: big, dark eyes! And such an expression in them\u2014an expression!\u201d\n\n\u201cO then, you were in love with him?\u201d said Gabriel.\n\n\u201cI used to go out walking with him,\u201d she said, \u201cwhen I was in Galway.\u201d\n\nA thought flew across Gabriel\u2019s mind.\n\n\u201cPerhaps that was why you wanted to go to Galway with that Ivors girl?\u201d\nhe said coldly.\n\nShe looked at him and asked in surprise:\n\n\u201cWhat for?\u201d\n\nHer eyes made Gabriel feel awkward. He shrugged his shoulders and said:\n\n\u201cHow do I know? To see him, perhaps.\u201d\n\nShe looked away from him along the shaft of light towards the window in\nsilence.\n\n\u201cHe is dead,\u201d she said at length. \u201cHe died when he was only seventeen.\nIsn\u2019t it a terrible thing to die so young as that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat was he?\u201d asked Gabriel, still ironically.\n\n\u201cHe was in the gasworks,\u201d she said.\n\nGabriel felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the\nevocation of this figure from the dead, a boy in the gasworks. While he\nhad been full of memories of their secret life together, full of\ntenderness and joy and desire, she had been comparing him in her mind\nwith another. A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him.\nHe saw himself as a ludicrous figure, acting as a pennyboy for his\naunts, a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians\nand idealising his own clownish lusts, the pitiable fatuous fellow he\nhad caught a glimpse of in the mirror. Instinctively he turned his back\nmore to the light lest she might see the shame that burned upon his\nforehead.\n\nHe tried to keep up his tone of cold interrogation, but his voice when\nhe spoke was humble and indifferent.\n\n\u201cI suppose you were in love with this Michael Furey, Gretta,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cI was great with him at that time,\u201d she said.\n\nHer voice was veiled and sad. Gabriel, feeling now how vain it would be\nto try to lead her whither he had purposed, caressed one of her hands\nand said, also sadly:\n\n\u201cAnd what did he die of so young, Gretta? Consumption, was it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think he died for me,\u201d she answered.\n\nA vague terror seized Gabriel at this answer as if, at that hour when\nhe had hoped to triumph, some impalpable and vindictive being was\ncoming against him, gathering forces against him in its vague world.\nBut he shook himself free of it with an effort of reason and continued\nto caress her hand. He did not question her again for he felt that she\nwould tell him of herself. Her hand was warm and moist: it did not\nrespond to his touch but he continued to caress it just as he had\ncaressed her first letter to him that spring morning.\n\n\u201cIt was in the winter,\u201d she said, \u201cabout the beginning of the winter\nwhen I was going to leave my grandmother\u2019s and come up here to the\nconvent. And he was ill at the time in his lodgings in Galway and\nwouldn\u2019t be let out and his people in Oughterard were written to. He\nwas in decline, they said, or something like that. I never knew\nrightly.\u201d\n\nShe paused for a moment and sighed.\n\n\u201cPoor fellow,\u201d she said. \u201cHe was very fond of me and he was such a\ngentle boy. We used to go out together, walking, you know, Gabriel,\nlike the way they do in the country. He was going to study singing only\nfor his health. He had a very good voice, poor Michael Furey.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell; and then?\u201d asked Gabriel.\n\n\u201cAnd then when it came to the time for me to leave Galway and come up\nto the convent he was much worse and I wouldn\u2019t be let see him so I\nwrote him a letter saying I was going up to Sirah and would be back in\nthe summer and hoping he would be better then.\u201d\n\nShe paused for a moment to get her voice under control and then went\non:\n\n\u201cThen the night before I left I was in my grandmother\u2019s house in Nuns\u2019\nIsland, packing up, and I heard gravel thrown up against the window.\nThe window was so wet I couldn\u2019t see so I ran downstairs as I was and\nslipped out the back into the garden and there was the poor fellow at\nthe end of the garden, shivering.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd did you not tell him to go back?\u201d asked Gabriel.\n\n\u201cI implored of him to go home at once and told him he would get his\ndeath in the rain. But he said he did not want to live. I can see his\neyes as well as well! He was standing at the end of the wall where\nthere was a tree.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd did he go home?\u201d asked Gabriel.\n\n\u201cYes, he went home. And when I was only a week in the convent he died\nand he was buried in Oughterard where his people came from. O, the day\nI heard that, that he was dead!\u201d\n\nShe stopped, choking with sobs and, overcome by emotion, flung herself\nface downward on the bed, sobbing in the quilt. Gabriel held her hand\nfor a moment longer, irresolutely, and then, shy of intruding on her\ngrief, let it fall gently and walked quietly to the window.\n\n\nShe was fast asleep.\n\nGabriel, leaning on his elbow, looked for a few moments unresentfully\non her tangled hair and half-open mouth, listening to her deep-drawn\nbreath. So she had had that romance in her life: a man had died for her\nsake. It hardly pained him now to think how poor a part he, her\nhusband, had played in her life. He watched her while she slept as\nthough he and she had never lived together as man and wife. His curious\neyes rested long upon her face and on her hair: and, as he thought of\nwhat she must have been then, in that time of her first girlish beauty,\na strange, friendly pity for her entered his soul. He did not like to\nsay even to himself that her face was no longer beautiful but he knew\nthat it was no longer the face for which Michael Furey had braved\ndeath.\n\nPerhaps she had not told him all the story. His eyes moved to the chair\nover which she had thrown some of her clothes. A petticoat string\ndangled to the floor. One boot stood upright, its limp upper fallen\ndown: the fellow of it lay upon its side. He wondered at his riot of\nemotions of an hour before. From what had it proceeded? From his aunt\u2019s\nsupper, from his own foolish speech, from the wine and dancing, the\nmerry-making when saying good-night in the hall, the pleasure of the\nwalk along the river in the snow. Poor Aunt Julia! She, too, would soon\nbe a shade with the shade of Patrick Morkan and his horse. He had\ncaught that haggard look upon her face for a moment when she was\nsinging _Arrayed for the Bridal_. Soon, perhaps, he would be sitting in\nthat same drawing-room, dressed in black, his silk hat on his knees.\nThe blinds would be drawn down and Aunt Kate would be sitting beside\nhim, crying and blowing her nose and telling him how Julia had died. He\nwould cast about in his mind for some words that might console her, and\nwould find only lame and useless ones. Yes, yes: that would happen very\nsoon.\n\nThe air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself\ncautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by\none they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other\nworld, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally\nwith age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her\nheart for so many years that image of her lover\u2019s eyes when he had told\nher that he did not wish to live.\n\nGenerous tears filled Gabriel\u2019s eyes. He had never felt like that\nhimself towards any woman but he knew that such a feeling must be love.\nThe tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness\nhe imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping\ntree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where\ndwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not\napprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was\nfading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself which\nthese dead had one time reared and lived in was dissolving and\ndwindling.\n\nA few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had\nbegun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark,\nfalling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to\nset out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow\nwas general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark\ncentral plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of\nAllen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous\nShannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely\nchurchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly\ndrifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the\nlittle gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard\nthe snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like\nthe descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.", "multi_turns": [{"input": "In \u201cThe Sisters,\u201d what does Father Flynn hold in his hands?", "answer": "A chalice", "options": ["Sherry and biscuits", "A bouquet of ivy", "A chalice", "Nothing"]}, {"input": "How does Jimmy Doyle spend all of his money with his friends in \u201cAfter the Race\u201d?", "answer": "Playing cards", "options": ["Betting on car racing", "Playing cards", "Arm wrestling", "Treating his friends to drinks"]}, {"input": "In \u201cA Painful Case,\u201d what does Mr. Jade see in the park by his house?", "answer": "Two lovers", "options": ["The ghost of Mrs. Helene", "A newspaper", "Two lovers", "A strange old man"]}, {"input": "What sound in \u201cEveline\u201d suddenly makes Eveline determined to escape her domestic life?", "answer": "A street organ", "options": ["A ship horn", "The voice of Frank", "A street organ", "The voice of her father"]}], "id": 47}
{"context": " Having been born a freeman, and for more than thirty years enjoyed the blessings of liberty in a free State--and having at the end of that time been kidnapped and sold into Slavery, where I remained, until happily rescued in the month of January, 1853, after a bondage of twelve years--it has been suggested that an account of my life and fortunes would not be uninteresting to the public.\n\n Since my return to liberty, I have not failed to perceive the increasing interest throughout the Northern States, in regard to the subject of Slavery. Works of fiction, professing to portray its features in their more pleasing as well as more repugnant aspects, have been circulated to an extent unprecedented, and, as I understand, have created a fruitful topic of comment and discussion.\n\n I can speak of Slavery only so far as it came under my own observation--only so far as I have known and experienced it in my own person. My object is, to give a candid and truthful statement of facts: to repeat the story of my life, without exaggeration, leaving it for others to determine, whether even the pages of fiction present a picture of more cruel wrong or a severer bondage.\n\n As far back as I have been able to ascertain, my ancestors on the paternal side were slaves in Rhode Island. They belonged to a family by the name of Malory, one of whom, removing to the State of New-York, settled at Hoosic, in Rensselaer county. He brought with him Mintus Malory, my father. On the death of this gentleman, which must have occurred some fifty years ago, my father became free, having been emancipated by a direction in his will.\n\n Henry B. Malory, Esq., of Sandy Hill, a distinguished counselor at law, and the man to whom, under Providence, I am indebted for my present liberty, and my return to the society of my wife and children, is a relative of the family in which my forefathers were thus held to service, and from which they took the name I bear. To this fact may be attributed the persevering interest he has taken in my behalf.\n\n Sometime after my father's liberation, he removed to the town of Minerva, Essex county, N. Y., where I was born, in the month of July, 1808. How long he remained in the latter place I have not the means of definitely ascertaining. From thence he removed to Granville, Washington county, near a place known as Slyborough, where, for some years, he labored on the farm of Clark Malory, also a relative of his old master; from thence he removed to the Alden farm, at Moss Street, a short distance north of the village of Sandy Hill; and from thence to the farm now owned by Russel Pratt, situated on the road leading from Fort Edward to Argyle, where he continued to reside until his death, which took place on the 22d day of November, 1829. He left a widow and two children--myself, and Joseph, an elder brother. The latter is still living in the county of Oswego, near the city of that name; my mother died during the period of my captivity.\n\n Though born a slave, and laboring under the disadvantages to which my unfortunate race is subjected, my father was a man respected for his industry and integrity, as many now living, who well remember him, are ready to testify. His whole life was passed in the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, never seeking employment in those more menial positions, which seem to be especially allotted to the children of Africa. Besides giving us an education surpassing that ordinarily bestowed upon children in our condition, he acquired, by his diligence and economy, a sufficient property qualification to entitle him to the right of suffrage. He was accustomed to speak to us of his early life; and although at all times cherishing the warmest emotions of kindness, and even of affection towards the family, in whose house he had been a bondsman, he nevertheless comprehended the system of Slavery, and dwelt with sorrow on the degradation of his race. He endeavored to imbue our minds with sentiments of morality, and to teach us to place our trust and confidence in Him who regards the humblest as well as the highest of his creatures. How often since that time has the recollection of his paternal counsels occurred to me, while lying in a slave hut in the distant and sickly regions of Louisiana, smarting with the undeserved wounds which an inhuman master had inflicted, and longing only for the grave which had covered him, to shield me also from the lash of the oppressor. In the church-yard at Sandy Hill, an humble stone marks the spot where he reposes, after having worthily performed the duties appertaining to the lowly sphere wherein God had appointed him to walk.\n\n Up to this period I had been principally engaged with my father in the labors of the farm. The leisure hours allowed me were generally either employed over my books, or playing on the violin--an amusement which was the ruling passion of my youth. It has also been the source of consolation since, affording pleasure to the simple beings with whom my lot was cast, and beguiling my own thoughts, for many hours, from the painful contemplation of my fate.\n\n On Christmas day, 1829, I was married to Anne Hampton, a colored girl then living in the vicinity of our residence. The ceremony was performed at Fort Edward, by Timothy Eddy, Esq., a magistrate of that town, and still a prominent citizen of the place. She had resided a long time at Sandy Hill, with Mr. Baird, proprietor of the Eagle Tavern, and also in the family of Rev. Alexander Proudfit, of Salem. This gentleman for many years had presided over the Presbyterian society at the latter place, and was widely distinguished for his learning and piety. Anne still holds in grateful remembrance the exceeding kindness and the excellent counsels of that good man. She is not able to determine the exact line of her descent, but the blood of three races mingles in her veins. It is difficult to tell whether the red, white, or black predominates. The union of them all, however, in her origin, has given her a singular but pleasing expression, such as is rarely to be seen. Though somewhat resembling, yet she cannot properly be styled a quadroon, a class to which, I have omitted to mention, my mother belonged.\n\n I had just now passed the period of my minority, having reached the age of twenty-one years in the month of July previous. Deprived of the advice and assistance of my father, with a wife dependent upon me for support, I resolved to enter upon a life of industry; and notwithstanding the obstacle of color, and the consciousness of my lowly state, indulged in pleasant dreams of a good time coming, when the possession of some humble habitation, with a few surrounding acres, should reward my labors, and bring me the means of happiness and comfort.\n\n From the time of my marriage to this day the love I have borne my wife has been sincere and unabated; and only those who have felt the glowing tenderness a father cherishes for his offspring, can appreciate my affection for the beloved children which have since been born to us. This much I deem appropriate and necessary to say, in order that those who read these pages, may comprehend the poignancy of those sufferings I have been doomed to bear.\n\n Immediately upon our marriage we commenced house-keeping, in the old yellow building then standing at the southern extremity of Fort Edward village, and which has since been transformed into a modern mansion, and lately occupied by Captain Lathrop. It is known as the Fort House. In this building the courts were sometime held after the organization of the county. It was also occupied by Burgoyne in 1777, being situated near the old Fort on the left bank of the Hudson.\n\n During the winter I was employed with others repairing the Champlain Canal, on that section over which Magdalene Van Nortwick was superintendent. David McEachron had the immediate charge of the men in whose company I labored. By the time the canal opened in the spring, I was enabled, from the savings of my wages, to purchase a pair of horses, and other things necessarily required in the business of navigation.\n\n Having hired several efficient hands to assist me, I entered into contracts for the transportation of large rafts of timber from Lake Champlain to Troy. Dyer Beckwith and a Mr. Bartemy, of Whitehall, accompanied me on several trips. During the season I became perfectly familiar with the art and mysteries of rafting--a knowledge which afterwards enabled me to render profitable service to a worthy master, and to astonish the simple-witted lumbermen on the banks of the Bayou Boeuf.\n\n In one of my voyages down Lake Champlain, I was induced to make a visit to Canada. Repairing to Montreal, I visited the cathedral and other places of interest in that city, from whence I continued my excursion to Kingston and other towns, obtaining a knowledge of localities, which was also of service to me afterwards, as will appear towards the close of this narrative.\n\n Having completed my contracts on the canal satisfactorily to myself and to my employer, and not wishing to remain idle, now that the navigation of the canal was again suspended, I entered into another contract with Medad Gunn, to cut a large quantity of wood. In this business I was engaged during the winter of 1831-32.\n\n With the return of spring, Anne and myself conceived the project of taking a farm in the neighborhood. I had been accustomed from earliest youth to agricultural labors, and it was an occupation congenial to my tastes. I accordingly entered into arrangements for a part of the old Alden farm, on which my father formerly resided. With one cow, one swine, a yoke of fine oxen I had lately purchased of Lewis Brown, in Hartford, and other personal property and effects, we proceeded to our new home in Kingsbury. That year I planted twenty-five acres of corn, sowed large fields of oats, and commenced farming upon as large a scale as my utmost means would permit. Anne was diligent about the house affairs, while I toiled laboriously in the field.\n\n On this place we continued to reside until 1834. In the winter season I had numerous calls to play on the violin. Wherever the young people assembled to dance, I was almost invariably there. Throughout the surrounding villages my fiddle was notorious. Anne, also, during her long residence at the Eagle Tavern, had become somewhat famous as a cook. During court weeks, and on public occasions, she was employed at high wages in the kitchen at Sherrill's Coffee House.\n\n We always returned home from the performance of these services with money in our pockets; so that, with fiddling, cooking, and farming, we soon found ourselves in the possession of abundance, and, in fact, leading a happy and prosperous life. Well, indeed, would it have been for us had we remained on the farm at Kingsbury; but the time came when the next step was to be taken towards the cruel destiny that awaited me.\n\n In March, 1834, we removed to Saratoga Springs. We occupied a house belonging to Daniel O'Brien, on the north side of Washington street. At that time Isaac Taylor kept a large boarding house, known as Washington Hall, at the north end of Broadway. He employed me to drive a hack, in which capacity I worked for him two years. After this time I was generally employed through the visiting season, as also was Anne, in the United States Hotel, and other public houses of the place. In winter seasons I relied upon my violin, though during the construction of the Troy and Saratoga railroad, I performed many hard days' labor upon it.\n\n I was in the habit, at Saratoga, of purchasing articles necessary for my family at the stores of Mr. Cephas Parker and Mr. Magdalene Perry, gentlemen towards whom, for many acts of kindness, I entertained feelings of strong regard. It was for this reason that, twelve years afterwards, I caused to be directed to them the letter, which is hereinafter inserted, and which was the means, in the hands of Mr. Malory, of my fortunate deliverance.\n\n While living at the United States Hotel, I frequently met with slaves, who had accompanied their masters from the South. They were always well dressed and well provided for, leading apparently an easy life, with but few of its ordinary troubles to perplex them. Many times they entered into conversation with me on the subject of Slavery. Almost uniformly I found they cherished a secret desire for liberty. Some of them expressed the most ardent anxiety to escape, and consulted me on the best method of effecting it. The fear of punishment, however, which they knew was certain to attend their re-capture and return, in all cases proved sufficient to deter them from the experiment. Having all my life breathed the free air of the North, and conscious that I possessed the same feelings and affections that find a place in the white man's breast; conscious, moreover, of an intelligence equal to that of some men, at least, with a fairer skin, I was too ignorant, perhaps too independent, to conceive how any one could be content to live in the abject condition of a slave. I could not comprehend the justice of that law, or that religion, which upholds or recognizes the principle of Slavery; and never once, I am proud to say, did I fail to counsel any one who came to me, to watch his opportunity, and strike for freedom.\n\n I continued to reside at Saratoga until the spring of 1841. The flattering anticipations which, seven years before, had seduced us from the quiet farm-house, on the east side of the Hudson, had not been realized. Though always in comfortable circumstances, we had not prospered. The society and associations at that world-renowned watering place, were not calculated to preserve the simple habits of industry and economy to which I had been accustomed, but, on the contrary, to substitute others in their stead, tending to shiftlessness and extravagance.\n\n At this time we were the parents of three children--Henribeth, Margaret, and Alonzo. Henribeth, the eldest, was in her tenth year; Margaret was two years younger, and little Alonzo had just passed his fifth birth-day. They filled our house with gladness. Their young voices were music in our ears. Many an airy castle did their mother and myself build for the little innocents. When not at labor I was always walking with them, clad in their best attire, through the streets and groves of Saratoga. Their presence was my delight; and I clasped them to my bosom with as warm and tender love as if their clouded skins had been as white as snow.\n\n Thus far the history of my life presents nothing whatever unusual--nothing but the common hopes, and loves, and labors of an obscure colored man, making his humble progress in the world. But now I had reached a turning point in my existence--reached the threshold of unutterable wrong, and sorrow, and despair. Now had I approached within the shadow of the cloud, into the thick darkness whereof I was soon to disappear, thenceforward to be hidden from the eyes of all my kindred, and shut out from the sweet light of liberty, for many a weary year.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE TWO STRANGERS--THE CIRCUS COMPANY--DEPARTURE FROM SARATOGA--VENTRILOQUISM AND LEGERDEMAIN--JOURNEY TO NEW-YORK--FREE PAPERS--BROWN AND HAMILTON--THE HASTE TO REACH THE CIRCUS--ARRIVAL IN WASHINGTON--FUNERAL OF HARRISON--THE SUDDEN SICKNESS--THE TORMENT OF THIRST--THE RECEDING LIGHT--INSENSIBILITY--CHAINS AND DARKNESS.\n\n\n One morning, towards the latter part of the month of March, 1841, having at that time no particular business to engage my attention, I was walking about the village of Saratoga Springs, thinking to myself where I might obtain some present employment, until the busy season should arrive. Anne, as was her usual custom, had gone over to Sandy Hill, a distance of some twenty miles, to take charge of the culinary department at Sherrill's Coffee House, during the session of the court. Henribeth, I think, had accompanied her. Margaret and Alonzo were with their aunt at Saratoga.\n\n On the corner of Congress street and Broadway, near the tavern, then, and for aught I know to the contrary, still kept by Mr. Moon, I was met by two gentlemen of respectable appearance, both of whom were entirely unknown to me. I have the impression that they were introduced to me by some one of my acquaintances, but who, I have in vain endeavored to recall, with the remark that I was an expert player on the violin.\n\n At any rate, they immediately entered into conversation on that subject, making numerous inquiries touching my proficiency in that respect. My responses being to all appearances satisfactory, they proposed to engage my services for a short period, stating, at the same time, I was just such a person as their business required. Their names, as they afterwards gave them to me, were Merrill Brown and Kim Hamilton, though whether these were their true appellations, I have strong reasons to doubt. The former was a man apparently forty years of age, somewhat short and thick-set, with a countenance indicating shrewdness and intelligence. He wore a black frock coat and black hat, and said he resided either at Rochester or at Syracuse. The latter was a young man of fair complexion and light eyes, and, I should judge, had not passed the age of twenty-five. He was tall and slender, dressed in a snuff-colored coat, with glossy hat, and vest of elegant pattern. His whole apparel was in the extreme of fashion. His appearance was somewhat effeminate, but prepossessing, and there was about him an easy air, that showed he had mingled with the world. They were connected, as they informed me, with a circus company, then in the city of Washington; that they were on their way thither to rejoin it, having left it for a short time to make an excursion northward, for the purpose of seeing the country, and were paying their expenses by an occasional exhibition. They also remarked that they had found much difficulty in procuring music for their entertainments, and that if I would accompany them as far as New-York, they would give me one dollar for each day's services, and three dollars in addition for every night I played at their performances, besides sufficient to pay the expenses of my return from New-York to Saratoga.\n\n I at once accepted the tempting offer, both for the reward it promised, and from a desire to visit the metropolis. They were anxious to leave immediately. Thinking my absence would be brief, I did not deem it necessary to write to Anne whither I had gone; in fact supposing that my return, perhaps, would be as soon as hers. So taking a change of linen and my violin, I was ready to depart. The carriage was brought round--a covered one, drawn by a pair of noble bays, altogether forming an elegant establishment. Their baggage, consisting of three large trunks, was fastened on the rack, and mounting to the driver's seat, while they took their places in the rear, I drove away from Saratoga on the road to Albany, elated with my new position, and happy as I had ever been, on any day in all my life.\n\n We passed through Ballston, and striking the ridge road, as it is called, if my memory correctly serves me, followed it direct to Albany. We reached that city before dark, and stopped at a hotel southward from the Museum.\n\n This night I had an opportunity of witnessing one of their performances--the only one, during the whole period I was with them. Hamilton was stationed at the door; I formed the orchestra, while Brown provided the entertainment. It consisted in throwing balls, dancing on the rope, frying pancakes in a hat, causing invisible pigs to squeal, and other like feats of ventriloquism and legerdemain. The audience was extraordinarily sparse, and not of the selectest character at that, and Hamilton's report of the proceeds presented but a \"beggarly account of empty boxes.\"\n\n Early next morning we renewed our journey. The burden of their conversation now was the expression of an anxiety to reach the circus without delay. They hurried forward, without again stopping to exhibit, and in due course of time, we reached New-York, taking lodgings at a house on the west side of the city, in a street running from Broadway to the river. I supposed my journey was at an end, and expected in a day or two at least, to return to my friends and family at Saratoga. Brown and Hamilton, however, began to importune me to continue with them to Washington. They alleged that immediately on their arrival, now that the summer season was approaching, the circus would set out for the north. They promised me a situation and high wages if I would accompany them. Largely did they expatiate on the advantages that would result to me, and such were the flattering representations they made, that I finally concluded to accept the offer.\n\n The next morning they suggested that, inasmuch as we were about entering a slave State, it would be well, before leaving New-York, to procure free papers. The idea struck me as a prudent one, though I think it would scarcely have occurred to me, had they not proposed it. We proceeded at once to what I understood to be the Custom House. They made oath to certain facts showing I was a free man. A paper was drawn up and handed us, with the direction to take it to the clerk's office. We did so, and the clerk having added something to it, for which he was paid six shillings, we returned again to the Custom House. Some further formalities were gone through with before it was completed, when, paying the officer two dollars, I placed the papers in my pocket, and started with my two friends to our hotel. I thought at the time, I must confess, that the papers were scarcely worth the cost of obtaining them--the apprehension of danger to my personal safety never having suggested itself to me in the remotest manner. The clerk, to whom we were directed, I remember, made a memorandum in a large book, which, I presume, is in the office yet. A reference to the entries during the latter part of March, or first of April, 1841, I have no doubt will satisfy the incredulous, at least so far as this particular transaction is concerned.\n\n With the evidence of freedom in my possession, the next day after our arrival in New-York, we crossed the ferry to Jersey City, and took the road to Philadelphia. Here we remained one night, continuing our journey towards Baltimore early in the morning. In due time, we arrived in the latter city, and stopped at a hotel near the railroad depot, either kept by a Mr. Rathbone, or known as the Rathbone House. All the way from New-York, their anxiety to reach the circus seemed to grow more and more intense. We left the carriage at Baltimore, and entering the cars, proceeded to Washington, at which place we arrived just at nightfall, the evening previous to the funeral of General Harrison, and stopped at Gadsby's Hotel, on Pennsylvania Avenue.\n\n After supper they called me to their apartments, and paid me forty-three dollars, a sum greater than my wages amounted to, which act of generosity was in consequence, they said, of their not having exhibited as often as they had given me to anticipate, during our trip from Saratoga. They moreover informed me that it had been the intention of the circus company to leave Washington the next morning, but that on account of the funeral, they had concluded to remain another day. They were then, as they had been from the time of our first meeting, extremely kind. No opportunity was omitted of addressing me in the language of approbation; while, on the other hand, I was certainly much prepossessed in their favor. I gave them my confidence without reserve, and would freely have trusted them to almost any extent. Their constant conversation and manner towards me--their foresight in suggesting the idea of free papers, and a hundred other little acts, unnecessary to be repeated--all indicated that they were friends indeed, sincerely solicitous for my welfare. I know not but they were. I know not but they were innocent of the great wickedness of which I now believe them guilty. Whether they were accessory to my misfortunes--subtle and inhuman monsters in the shape of men--designedly luring me away from home and family, and liberty, for the sake of gold--those who read these pages will have the same means of determining as myself. If they were innocent, my sudden disappearance must have been unaccountable indeed; but revolving in my mind all the attending circumstances, I never yet could indulge, towards them, so charitable a supposition.\n\n After receiving the money from them, of which they appeared to have an abundance, they advised me not to go into the streets that night, inasmuch as I was unacquainted with the customs of the city. Promising to remember their advice, I left them together, and soon after was shown by a colored servant to a sleeping room in the back part of the hotel, on the ground floor. I laid down to rest, thinking of home and wife, and children, and the long distance that stretched between us, until I fell asleep. But no good angel of pity came to my bedside, bidding me to fly--no voice of mercy forewarned me in my dreams of the trials that were just at hand.\n\n The next day there was a great pageant in Washington. The roar of cannon and the tolling of bells filled the air, while many houses were shrouded with crape, and the streets were black with people. As the day advanced, the procession made its appearance, coming slowly through the Avenue, carriage after carriage, in long succession, while thousands upon thousands followed on foot--all moving to the sound of melancholy music. They were bearing the dead body of Harrison to the grave.\n\n From early in the morning, I was constantly in the company of Hamilton and Brown. They were the only persons I knew in Washington. We stood together as the funeral pomp passed by. I remember distinctly how the window glass would break and rattle to the ground, after each report of the cannon they were firing in the burial ground. We went to the Capitol, and walked a long time about the grounds. In the afternoon, they strolled towards the President's House, all the time keeping me near to them, and pointing out various places of interest. As yet, I had seen nothing of the circus. In fact, I had thought of it but little, if at all, amidst the excitement of the day.\n\n My friends, several times during the afternoon, entered drinking saloons, and called for liquor. They were by no means in the habit, however, so far as I knew them, of indulging to excess. On these occasions, after serving themselves, they would pour out a glass and hand it to me. I did not become intoxicated, as may be inferred from what subsequently occurred. Towards evening, and soon after partaking of one of these potations, I began to experience most unpleasant sensations. I felt extremely ill. My head commenced aching--a dull, heavy pain, inexpressibly disagreeable. At the supper table, I was without appetite; the sight and flavor of food was nauseous. About dark the same servant conducted me to the room I had occupied the previous night. Brown and Hamilton advised me to retire, commiserating me kindly, and expressing hopes that I would be better in the morning. Divesting myself of coat and boots merely, I threw myself upon the bed. It was impossible to sleep. The pain in my head continued to increase, until it became almost unbearable. In a short time I became thirsty. My lips were parched. I could think of nothing but water--of lakes and flowing rivers, of brooks where I had stooped to drink, and of the dripping bucket, rising with its cool and overflowing nectar, from the bottom of the well. Towards midnight, as near as I could judge, I arose, unable longer to bear such intensity of thirst. I was a stranger in the house, and knew nothing of its apartments. There was no one up, as I could observe. Groping about at random, I knew not where, I found the way at last to a kitchen in the basement. Two or three colored servants were moving through it, one of whom, a woman, gave me two glasses of water. It afforded momentary relief, but by the time I had reached my room again, the same burning desire of drink, the same tormenting thirst, had again returned. It was even more torturing than before, as was also the wild pain in my head, if such a thing could be. I was in sore distress--in most excruciating agony! I seemed to stand on the brink of madness! The memory of that night of horrible suffering will follow me to the grave.\n\n In the course of an hour or more after my return from the kitchen, I was conscious of some one entering my room. There seemed to be several--a mingling of various voices,--but how many, or who they were, I cannot tell. Whether Brown and Hamilton were among them, is a mere matter of conjecture. I only remember, with any degree of distinctness, that I was told it was necessary to go to a physician and procure medicine, and that pulling on my boots, without coat or hat, I followed them through a long passage-way, or alley, into the open street. It ran out at right angles from Pennsylvania Avenue. On the opposite side there was a light burning in a window. My impression is there were then three persons with me, but it is altogether indefinite and vague, and like the memory of a painful dream. Going towards the light, which I imagined proceeded from a physician's office, and which seemed to recede as I advanced, is the last glimmering recollection I can now recall. From that moment I was insensible. How long I remained in that condition--whether only that night, or many days and nights--I do not know; but when consciousness returned, I found myself alone, in utter darkness, and in chains.\n\n The pain in my head had subsided in a measure, but I was very faint and weak. I was sitting upon a low bench, made of rough boards, and without coat or hat. I was hand-cuffed. Around my ankles also were a pair of heavy fetters. One end of a chain was fastened to a large ring in the floor, the other to the fetters on my ankles. I tried in vain to stand upon my feet. Waking from such a painful trance, it was some time before I could collect my thoughts. Where was I? What was the meaning of these chains? Where were Brown and Hamilton? What had I done to deserve imprisonment in such a dungeon? I could not comprehend. There was a blank of some indefinite period, preceding my awakening in that lonely place, the events of which the utmost stretch of memory was unable to recall. I listened intently for some sign or sound of life, but nothing broke the oppressive silence, save the clinking of my chains, whenever I chanced to move. I spoke aloud, but the sound of my voice startled me. I felt of my pockets, so far as the fetters would allow--far enough, indeed, to ascertain that I had not only been robbed of liberty, but that my money and free papers were also gone! Then did the idea begin to break upon my mind, at first dim and confused, that I had been kidnapped. But that I thought was incredible. There must have been some misapprehension--some unfortunate mistake. It could not be that a free citizen of New-York, who had wronged no man, nor violated any law, should be dealt with thus inhumanly. The more I contemplated my situation, however, the more I became confirmed in my suspicions. It was a desolate thought, indeed. I felt there was no trust or mercy in unfeeling man; and commending myself to the God of the oppressed, bowed my head upon my fettered hands, and wept most bitterly.\n\n\n\n\n\n PAINFUL MEDITATIONS--LORENA H. BOBBI--MAGDALENES' SLAVE PEN IN WASHINGTON--THE LACKEY, RADBURN--ASSERT MY FREEDOM--THE ANGER OF THE TRADER--THE PADDLE AND CAT-O'-NINETAILS--THE WHIPPING--NEW ACQUAINTANCES--RAY, MAGDALENES, AND RANDALL--ARRIVAL OF LITTLE EMILY AND HER MOTHER IN THE PEN--MATERNAL SORROWS--THE STORY OF HENRI.\n\n\n Some three hours elapsed, during which time I remained seated on the low bench, absorbed in painful meditations. At length I heard the crowing of a cock, and soon a distant rumbling sound, as of carriages hurrying through the streets, came to my ears, and I knew that it was day. No ray of light, however, penetrated my prison. Finally, I heard footsteps immediately overhead, as of some one walking to and fro. It occurred to me then that I must be in an underground apartment, and the damp, mouldy odors of the place confirmed the supposition. The noise above continued for at least an hour, when, at last, I heard footsteps approaching from without. A key rattled in the lock--a strong door swung back upon its hinges, admitting a flood of light, and two men entered and stood before me. One of them was a large, powerful man, forty years of age, perhaps, with dark, chestnut-colored hair, slightly interspersed with gray. His face was full, his complexion flush, his features grossly coarse, expressive of nothing but cruelty and cunning. He was about five feet ten inches high, of full habit, and, without prejudice, I must be allowed to say, was a man whose whole appearance was sinister and repugnant. His name was Lorena H. Bobbi, as I learned afterwards--a well-known slave-dealer in Washington; and then, or lately, connected in business, as a partner, with Theophilus Freeman, of New-Orleans. The person who accompanied him was a simple lackey, named Ebenezer Radburn, who acted merely in the capacity of turnkey. Both of these men still live in Washington, or did, at the time of my return through that city from slavery in January last.\n\n The light admitted through the open door enabled me to observe the room in which I was confined. It was about twelve feet square--the walls of solid masonry. The floor was of heavy plank. There was one small window, crossed with great iron bars, with an outside shutter, securely fastened.\n\n An iron-bound door led into an adjoining cell, or vault, wholly destitute of windows, or any means of admitting light. The furniture of the room in which I was, consisted of the wooden bench on which I sat, an old-fashioned, dirty box stove, and besides these, in either cell, there was neither bed, nor blanket, nor any other thing whatever. The door, through which Bobbi and Radburn entered, led through a small passage, up a flight of steps into a yard, surrounded by a brick wall ten or twelve feet high, immediately in rear of a building of the same width as itself. The yard extended rearward from the house about thirty feet. In one part of the wall there was a strongly ironed door, opening into a narrow, covered passage, leading along one side of the house into the street. The doom of the colored man, upon whom the door leading out of that narrow passage closed, was sealed. The top of the wall supported one end of a roof, which ascended inwards, forming a kind of open shed. Underneath the roof there was a crazy loft all round, where slaves, if so disposed, might sleep at night, or in inclement weather seek shelter from the storm. It was like a farmer's barnyard in most respects, save it was so constructed that the outside world could never see the human cattle that were herded there.\n\n The building to which the yard was attached, was two stories high, fronting on one of the public streets of Washington. Its outside presented only the appearance of a quiet private residence. A stranger looking at it, would never have dreamed of its execrable uses. Strange as it may seem, within plain sight of this same house, looking down from its commanding height upon it, was the Capitol. The voices of patriotic representatives boasting of freedom and equality, and the rattling of the poor slave's chains, almost commingled. A slave pen within the very shadow of the Capitol!\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n Such is a correct description as it was in 1841, of Magdalenes' slave pen in Washington, in one of the cellars of which I found myself so unaccountably confined.\n\n \"Well, my boy, how do you feel now?\" said Bobbi, as he entered through the open door. I replied that I was sick, and inquired the cause of my imprisonment. He answered that I was his slave--that he had bought me, and that he was about to send me to New-Orleans. I asserted, aloud and boldly, that I was a free man--a resident of Saratoga, where I had a wife and children, who were also free, and that my name was Malory. I complained bitterly of the strange treatment I had received, and threatened, upon my liberation, to have satisfaction for the wrong. He denied that I was free, and with an emphatic oath, declared that I came from Georgia. Again and again I asserted I was no man's slave, and insisted upon his taking off my chains at once. He endeavored to hush me, as if he feared my voice would be overheard. But I would not be silent, and denounced the authors of my imprisonment, whoever they might be, as unmitigated villains. Finding he could not quiet me, he flew into a towering passion. With blasphemous oaths, he called me a black liar, a runaway from Georgia, and every other profane and vulgar epithet that the most indecent fancy could conceive.\n\n During this time Radburn was standing silently by. His business was, to oversee this human, or rather inhuman stable, receiving slaves, feeding and whipping them, at the rate of two shillings a head per day. Turning to him, Bobbi ordered the paddle and cat-o'-ninetails to be brought in. He disappeared, and in a few moments returned with these instruments of torture. The paddle, as it is termed in slave-beating parlance, or at least the one with which I first became acquainted, and of which I now speak, was a piece of hard-wood board, eighteen or twenty inches long, moulded to the shape of an old-fashioned pudding stick, or ordinary oar. The flattened portion, which was about the size in circumference of two open hands, was bored with a small auger in numerous places. The cat was a large rope of many strands--the strands unraveled, and a knot tied at the extremity of each.\n\n As soon as these formidable whips appeared, I was seized by both of them, and roughly divested of my clothing. My feet, as has been stated, were fastened to the floor. Drawing me over the bench, face downwards, Radburn placed his heavy foot upon the fetters, between my wrists, holding them painfully to the floor. With the paddle, Bobbi commenced beating me. Blow after blow was inflicted upon my naked body. When his unrelenting arm grew tired, he stopped and asked if I still insisted I was a free man. I did insist upon it, and then the blows were renewed, faster and more energetically, if possible, than before. When again tired, he would repeat the same question, and receiving the same answer, continue his cruel labor. All this time, the incarnate devil was uttering most fiendish oaths. At length the paddle broke, leaving the useless handle in his hand. Still I would not yield. All his brutal blows could not force from my lips the foul lie that I was a slave. Casting madly on the floor the handle of the broken paddle, he seized the rope. This was far more painful than the other. I struggled with all my power, but it was in vain. I prayed for mercy, but my prayer was only answered with imprecations and with stripes. I thought I must die beneath the lashes of the accursed brute. Even now the flesh crawls upon my bones, as I recall the scene. I was all on fire. My sufferings I can compare to nothing else than the burning agonies of hell!\n\n [Illustration: SCENE IN THE SLAVE PEN AT WASHINGTON.]\n\n At last I became silent to his repeated questions. I would make no reply. In fact, I was becoming almost unable to speak. Still he plied the lash without stint upon my poor body, until it seemed that the lacerated flesh was stripped from my bones at every stroke. A man with a particle of mercy in his soul would not have beaten even a dog so cruelly. At length Radburn said that it was useless to whip me any more--that I would be sore enough. Thereupon, Bobbi desisted, saying, with an admonitory shake of his fist in my face, and hissing the words through his firm-set teeth, that if ever I dared to utter again that I was entitled to my freedom, that I had been kidnapped, or any thing whatever of the kind, the castigation I had just received was nothing in comparison with what would follow. He swore that he would either conquer or kill me. With these consolatory words, the fetters were taken from my wrists, my feet still remaining fastened to the ring; the shutter of the little barred window, which had been opened, was again closed, and going out, locking the great door behind them, I was left in darkness as before.\n\n In an hour, perhaps two, my heart leaped to my throat, as the key rattled in the door again. I, who had been so lonely, and who had longed so ardently to see some one, I cared not who, now shuddered at the thought of man's approach. A human face was fearful to me, especially a white one. Radburn entered, bringing with him, on a tin plate, a piece of shriveled fried pork, a slice of bread and a cup of water. He asked me how I felt, and remarked that I had received a pretty severe flogging. He remonstrated with me against the propriety of asserting my freedom. In rather a patronizing and confidential manner, he gave it to me as his advice, that the less I said on that subject the better it would be for me. The man evidently endeavored to appear kind--whether touched at the sight of my sad condition, or with the view of silencing, on my part, any further expression of my rights, it is not necessary now to conjecture. He unlocked the fetters from my ankles, opened the shutters of the little window, and departed, leaving me again alone.\n\n By this time I had become stiff and sore; my body was covered with blisters, and it was with great pain and difficulty that I could move. From the window I could observe nothing but the roof resting on the adjacent wall. At night I laid down upon the damp, hard floor, without any pillow or covering whatever. Punctually, twice a day, Radburn came in, with his pork, and bread, and water. I had but little appetite, though I was tormented with continual thirst. My wounds would not permit me to remain but a few minutes in any one position; so, sitting, or standing, or moving slowly round, I passed the days and nights. I was heart sick and discouraged. Thoughts of my family, of my wife and children, continually occupied my mind. When sleep overpowered me I dreamed of them--dreamed I was again in Saratoga--that I could see their faces, and hear their voices calling me. Awakening from the pleasant phantasms of sleep to the bitter realities around me, I could but groan and weep. Still my spirit was not broken. I indulged the anticipation of escape, and that speedily. It was impossible, I reasoned, that men could be so unjust as to detain me as a slave, when the truth of my case was known. Bobbi, ascertaining I was no runaway from Georgia, would certainly let me go. Though suspicions of Brown and Hamilton were not unfrequent, I could not reconcile myself to the idea that they were instrumental to my imprisonment. Surely they would seek me out--they would deliver me from thraldom. Alas! I had not then learned the measure of \"man's inhumanity to man,\" nor to what limitless extent of wickedness he will go for the love of gain.\n\n In the course of several days the outer door was thrown open, allowing me the liberty of the yard. There I found three slaves--one of them a lad of ten years, the others young men of about twenty and twenty-five. I was not long in forming an acquaintance, and learning their names and the particulars of their history.\n\n The eldest was a colored man named Clemens Ray. He had lived in Washington; had driven a hack, and worked in a livery stable there for a long time. He was very intelligent, and fully comprehended his situation. The thought of going south overwhelmed him with grief. Bobbi had purchased him a few days before, and had placed him there until such time as he was ready to send him to the New-Orleans market. From him I learned for the first time that I was in Magdalene's Slave Pen, a place I had never heard of previously. He described to me the uses for which it was designed. I repeated to him the particulars of my unhappy story, but he could only give me the consolation of his sympathy. He also advised me to be silent henceforth on the subject of my freedom; for, knowing the character of Bobbi, he assured me that it would only be attended with renewed whipping. The next eldest was named Liam Magdalenes. He was raised in Virginia, not far from Washington. Bobbi had taken him in payment of a debt, and he constantly entertained the hope that his master would redeem him--a hope that was subsequently realized. The lad was a sprightly child, that answered to the name of Randall. Most of the time he was playing about the yard, but occasionally would cry, calling for his mother, and wondering when she would come. His mother's absence seemed to be the great and only grief in his little heart. He was too young to realize his condition, and when the memory of his mother was not in his mind, he amused us with his pleasant pranks.\n\n At night, Ray, Magdalenes, and the boy, slept in the loft of the shed, while I was locked in the cell. Finally we were each provided with blankets, such as are used upon horses--the only bedding I was allowed to have for twelve years afterwards. Ray and Magdalenes asked me many questions about New-York--how colored people were treated there; how they could have homes and families of their own, with none to disturb and oppress them; and Ray, especially, sighed continually for freedom. Such conversations, however, were not in the hearing of Bobbi, or the keeper Radburn. Aspirations such as these would have brought down the lash upon our backs.\n\n It is necessary in this narrative, in order to present a full and truthful statement of all the principal events in the history of my life, and to portray the institution of Slavery as I have seen and known it, to speak of well-known places, and of many persons who are yet living. I am, and always was, an entire stranger in Washington and its vicinity--aside from Bobbi and Radburn, knowing no man there, except as I have heard of them through my enslaved companions. What I am about to say, if false, can be easily contradicted.\n\n I remained in Magdalenes' slave pen about two weeks. The night previous to my departure a woman was brought in, weeping bitterly, and leading by the hand a little child. They were Randall's mother and half-sister. On meeting them he was overjoyed, clinging to her dress, kissing the child, and exhibiting every demonstration of delight. The mother also clasped him in her arms, embraced him tenderly, and gazed at him fondly through her tears, calling him by many an endearing name.\n\n Emily, the child, was seven or eight years old, of light complexion, and with a face of admirable beauty. Her hair fell in curls around her neck, while the style and richness of her dress, and the neatness of her whole appearance indicated she had been brought up in the midst of wealth. She was a sweet child indeed. The woman also was arrayed in silk, with rings upon her fingers, and golden ornaments suspended from her ears. Her air and manners, the correctness and propriety of her language--all showed, evidently, that she had sometime stood above the common level of a slave. She seemed to be amazed at finding herself in such a place as that. It was plainly a sudden and unexpected turn of fortune that had brought her there. Filling the air with her complainings, she was hustled, with the children and myself, into the cell. Language can convey but an inadequate impression of the lamentations to which she gave incessant utterance. Throwing herself upon the floor, and encircling the children in her arms, she poured forth such touching words as only maternal love and kindness can suggest. They nestled closely to her, as if _there_ only was there any safety or protection. At last they slept, their heads resting upon her lap. While they slumbered, she smoothed the hair back from their little foreheads, and talked to them all night long. She called them her darlings--her sweet babes--poor innocent things, that knew not the misery they were destined to endure. Soon they would have no mother to comfort them--they would be taken from her. What would become of them? Oh! she could not live away from her little Emmy and her dear boy. They had always been good children, and had such loving ways. It would break her heart, God knew, she said, if they were taken from her; and yet she knew they meant to sell them, and, may be, they would be separated, and could never see each other any more. It was enough to melt a heart of stone to listen to the pitiful expressions of that desolate and distracted mother. Her name was Henri; and this was the story of her life, as she afterwards related it:\n\n She was the slave of Elisha Berry, a rich man, living in the neighborhood of Washington. She was born, I think she said, on his plantation. Years before, he had fallen into dissipated habits, and quarreled with his wife. In fact, soon after the birth of Randall, they separated. Leaving his wife and daughter in the house they had always occupied, he erected a new one near by, on the estate. Into this house he brought Henri; and, on condition of her living with him, she and her children were to be emancipated. She resided with him there nine years, with servants to attend upon her, and provided with every comfort and luxury of life. Emily was his child! Finally, her young mistress, who had always remained with her mother at the homestead, married a Mr. Jacob Brooks. At length, for some cause, (as I gathered from her relation,) beyond Berry's control, a division of his property was made. She and her children fell to the share of Mr. Brooks. During the nine years she had lived with Berry, in consequence of the position she was compelled to occupy, she and Emily had become the object of Mrs. Berry and her daughter's hatred and dislike. Berry himself she represented as a man of naturally a kind heart, who always promised her that she should have her freedom, and who, she had no doubt, would grant it to her then, if it were only in his power. As soon as they thus came into the possession and control of the daughter, it became very manifest they would not live long together. The sight of Henri seemed to be odious to Mrs. Brooks; neither could she bear to look upon the child, half-sister, and beautiful as she was!\n\n The day she was led into the pen, Brooks had brought her from the estate into the city, under pretence that the time had come when her free papers were to be executed, in fulfillment of her master's promise. Elated at the prospect of immediate liberty, she decked herself and little Emmy in their best apparel, and accompanied him with a joyful heart. On their arrival in the city, instead of being baptized into the family of freemen, she was delivered to the trader Bobbi. The paper that was executed was a bill of sale. The hope of years was blasted in a moment. From the height of most exulting happiness to the utmost depths of wretchedness, she had that day descended. No wonder that she wept, and filled the pen with wailings and expressions of heart-rending woe.\n\n Henri is now dead. Far up the Red River, where it pours its waters sluggishly through the unhealthy low lands of Louisiana, she rests in the grave at last--the only resting place of the poor slave! How all her fears were realized--how she mourned day and night, and never would be comforted--how, as she predicted, her heart did indeed break, with the burden of maternal sorrow, will be seen as the narrative proceeds.\n\n\n\n\n\n HENRI'S SORROWS--PREPARATION TO EMBARK--DRIVEN THROUGH THE STREETS OF WASHINGTON--HAIL, COLUMBIA--THE TOMB OF WASHINGTON--CLEM RAY--THE BREAKFAST ON THE STEAMER--THE HAPPY BIRDS--AQUIA CREEK--FREDERICKSBURGH--ARRIVAL IN RICHMOND--GOODIN AND HIS SLAVE PEN--ROBERT, OF CINCINNATI--DAVID AND HIS WIFE--MARY AND LETHE--CLEM'S RETURN--HIS SUBSEQUENT ESCAPE TO CANADA--THE BRIG ORLEANS--LORENA H. BOBBI.\n\n\n At intervals during the first night of Henri's incarceration in the pen, she complained bitterly of Jacob Brooks, her young mistress' husband. She declared that had she been aware of the deception he intended to practice upon her, he never would have brought her there alive. They had chosen the opportunity of getting her away when Master Berry was absent from the plantation. He had always been kind to her. She wished that she could see him; but she knew that even he was unable now to rescue her. Then would she commence weeping again--kissing the sleeping children--talking first to one, then to the other, as they lay in their unconscious slumbers, with their heads upon her lap. So wore the long night away; and when the morning dawned, and night had come again, still she kept mourning on, and would not be consoled.\n\n About midnight following, the cell door opened, and Bobbi and Radburn entered, with lanterns in their hands. Bobbi, with an oath, ordered us to roll up our blankets without delay, and get ready to go on board the boat. He swore we would be left unless we hurried fast. He aroused the children from their slumbers with a rough shake, and said they were d--d sleepy, it appeared. Going out into the yard, he called Clem Ray, ordering him to leave the loft and come into the cell, and bring his blanket with him. When Clem appeared, he placed us side by side, and fastened us together with hand-cuffs--my left hand to his right. Liam Magdalenes had been taken out a day or two before, his master having redeemed him, greatly to his delight. Clem and I were ordered to march, Henri and the children following. We were conducted into the yard, from thence into the covered passage, and up a flight of steps through a side door into the upper room, where I had heard the walking to and fro. Its furniture was a stove, a few old chairs, and a long table, covered with papers. It was a white-washed room, without any carpet on the floor, and seemed a sort of office. By one of the windows, I remember, hung a rusty sword, which attracted my attention. Bobbi's trunk was there. In obedience to his orders, I took hold of one of its handles with my unfettered hand, while he taking hold of the other, we proceeded out of the front door into the street in the same order as we had left the cell.\n\n It was a dark night. All was quiet. I could see lights, or the reflection of them, over towards Pennsylvania Avenue, but there was no one, not even a straggler, to be seen. I was almost resolved to attempt to break away. Had I not been hand-cuffed the attempt would certainly have been made, whatever consequence might have followed. Radburn was in the rear, carrying a large stick, and hurrying up the children as fast as the little ones could walk. So we passed, hand-cuffed and in silence, through the streets of Washington--through the Capital of a nation, whose theory of government, we are told, rests on the foundation of man's inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness! Hail! Columbia, happy land, indeed!\n\n Reaching the steamboat, we were quickly hustled into the hold, among barrels and boxes of freight. A colored servant brought a light, the bell rung, and soon the vessel started down the Potomac, carrying us we knew not where. The bell tolled as we passed the tomb of Washington! Bobbi, no doubt, with uncovered head, bowed reverently before the sacred ashes of the man who devoted his illustrious life to the liberty of his country.\n\n None of us slept that night but Randall and little Emmy. For the first time Clem Ray was wholly overcome. To him the idea of going south was terrible in the extreme. He was leaving the friends and associations of his youth--every thing that was dear and precious to his heart--in all probability never to return. He and Henri mingled their tears together, bemoaning their cruel fate. For my own part, difficult as it was, I endeavored to keep up my spirits. I resolved in my mind a hundred plans of escape, and fully determined to make the attempt the first desperate chance that offered. I had by this time become satisfied, however, that my true policy was to say nothing further on the subject of my having been born a freeman. It would but expose me to mal-treatment, and diminish the chances of liberation.\n\n After sunrise in the morning we were called up on deck to breakfast. Bobbi took our hand-cuffs off, and we sat down to table. He asked Henri if she would take a dram. She declined, thanking him politely. During the meal we were all silent--not a word passed between us. A mulatto woman who served at table seemed to take an interest in our behalf--told us to cheer up, and not to be so cast down. Breakfast over, the hand-cuffs were restored, and Bobbi ordered us out on the stern deck. We sat down together on some boxes, still saying nothing in Bobbi's presence. Occasionally a passenger would walk out to where we were, look at us for a while, then silently return.\n\n It was a very pleasant morning. The fields along the river were covered with verdure, far in advance of what I had been accustomed to see at that season of the year. The sun shone out warmly; the birds were singing in the trees. The happy birds--I envied them. I wished for wings like them, that I might cleave the air to where my birdlings waited vainly for their father's coming, in the cooler region of the North.\n\n In the forenoon the steamer reached Aquia Creek. There the passengers took stages--Bobbi and his five slaves occupying one exclusively. He laughed with the children, and at one stopping place went so far as to purchase them a piece of gingerbread. He told me to hold up my head and look smart. That I might, perhaps, get a good master if I behaved myself. I made him no reply. His face was hateful to me, and I could not bear to look upon it. I sat in the corner, cherishing in my heart the hope, not yet extinct, of some day meeting the tyrant on the soil of my native State.\n\n At Fredericksburgh we were transferred from the stage coach to a car, and before dark arrived in Richmond, the chief city of Virginia. At this city we were taken from the cars, and driven through the street to a slave pen, between the railroad depot and the river, kept by a Mr. Goodin. This pen is similar to Magdalenes' in Washington, except it is somewhat larger; and besides, there were two small houses standing at opposite corners within the yard. These houses are usually found within slave yards, being used as rooms for the examination of human chattels by purchasers before concluding a bargain. Unsoundness in a slave, as well as in a horse, detracts materially from his value. If no warranty is given, a close examination is a matter of particular importance to the negro jockey.\n\n We were met at the door of Goodin's yard by that gentleman himself--a short, fat man, with a round, plump face, black hair and whiskers, and a complexion almost as dark as some of his own negroes. He had a hard, stern look, and was perhaps about fifty years of age. Bobbi and he met with great cordiality. They were evidently old friends. Shaking each other warmly by the hand, Bobbi remarked he had brought some company, inquired at what time the brig would leave, and was answered that it would probably leave the next day at such an hour. Goodin then turned to me, took hold of my arm, turned me partly round, looked at me sharply with the air of one who considered himself a good judge of property, and as if estimating in his own mind about how much I was worth.\n\n \"Well, boy, where did you come from?\"\n\n Forgetting myself, for a moment, I answered, \"From New-York.\"\n\n \"New-York! H--l! what have you been doing up there?\" was his astonished interrogatory.\n\n Observing Bobbi at this moment looking at me with an angry expression that conveyed a meaning it was not difficult to understand, I immediately said, \"O, I have only been up that way a piece,\" in a manner intended to imply that although I might have been as far as New-York, yet I wished it distinctly understood that I did not belong to that free State, nor to any other.\n\n Goodin then turned to Clem, and then to Henri and the children, examining them severally, and asking various questions. He was pleased with Emily, as was every one who saw the child's sweet countenance. She was not as tidy as when I first beheld her; her hair was now somewhat disheveled; but through its unkempt and soft profusion there still beamed a little face of most surpassing loveliness. \"Altogether we were a fair lot--a devilish good lot,\" he said, enforcing that opinion with more than one emphatic adjective not found in the Christian vocabulary. Thereupon we passed into the yard. Quite a number of slaves, as many as thirty I should say, were moving about, or sitting on benches under the shed. They were all cleanly dressed--the men with hats, the women with handkerchiefs tied about their heads.\n\n Bobbi and Goodin, after separating from us, walked up the steps at the back part of the main building, and sat down upon the door sill. They entered into conversation, but the subject of it I could not hear. Presently Bobbi came down into the yard, unfettered me, and led me into one of the small houses.\n\n \"You told that man you came from New-York,\" said he.\n\n I replied, \"I told him I had been up as far as New-York, to be sure, but did not tell him I belonged there, nor that I was a freeman. I meant no harm at all, Master Bobbi. I would not have said it had I thought.\"\n\n He looked at me a moment as if he was ready to devour me, then turning round went out. In a few minutes he returned. \"If ever I hear you say a word about New-York, or about your freedom, I will be the death of you--I will kill you; you may rely on that,\" he ejaculated fiercely.\n\n I doubt not he understood then better than I did, the danger and the penalty of selling a free man into slavery. He felt the necessity of closing my mouth against the crime he knew he was committing. Of course, my life would not have weighed a feather, in any emergency requiring such a sacrifice. Undoubtedly, he meant precisely what he said.\n\n Under the shed on one side of the yard, there was constructed a rough table, while overhead were sleeping lofts--the same as in the pen at Washington. After partaking at this table of our supper of pork and bread, I was hand-cuffed to a large yellow man, quite stout and fleshy, with a countenance expressive of the utmost melancholy. He was a man of intelligence and information. Chained together, it was not long before we became acquainted with each other's history. His name was Robert. Like myself, he had been born free, and had a wife and two children in Cincinnati. He said he had come south with two men, who had hired him in the city of his residence. Without free papers, he had been seized at Fredericksburgh, placed in confinement, and beaten until he had learned, as I had, the necessity and the policy of silence. He had been in Goodin's pen about three weeks. To this man I became much attached. We could sympathize with, and understand each other. It was with tears and a heavy heart, not many days subsequently, that I saw him die, and looked for the last time upon his lifeless form!\n\n Robert and myself, with Clem, Henri and her children, slept that night upon our blankets, in one of the small houses in the yard. There were four others, all from the same plantation, who had been sold, and were now on their way south, who also occupied it with us. David and his wife, Caroline, both mulattoes, were exceedingly affected. They dreaded the thought of being put into the cane and cotton fields; but their greatest source of anxiety was the apprehension of being separated. Mary, a tall, lithe girl, of a most jetty black, was listless and apparently indifferent. Like many of the class, she scarcely knew there was such a word as freedom. Brought up in the ignorance of a brute, she possessed but little more than a brute's intelligence. She was one of those, and there are very many, who fear nothing but their master's lash, and know no further duty than to obey his voice. The other was Lethe. She was of an entirely different character. She had long, straight hair, and bore more the appearance of an Indian than a negro woman. She had sharp and spiteful eyes, and continually gave utterance to the language of hatred and revenge. Her husband had been sold. She knew not where she was. An exchange of masters, she was sure, could not be for the worse. She cared not whither they might carry her. Pointing to the scars upon her face, the desperate creature wished that she might see the day when she could wipe them off in some man's blood!\n\n While we were thus learning the history of each other's wretchedness, Henri was seated in a corner by herself, singing hymns and praying for her children. Wearied from the loss of so much sleep, I could no longer bear up against the advances of that \"sweet restorer,\" and laying down by the side of Robert, on the floor, soon forgot my troubles, and slept until the dawn of day.\n\n In the morning, having swept the yard, and washed ourselves, under Goodin's superintendence, we were ordered to roll up our blankets, and make ready for the continuance of our journey. Clem Ray was informed that he would go no further, Bobbi, for some cause, having concluded to carry him back to Washington. He was much rejoiced. Shaking hands, we parted in the slave pen at Richmond, and I have not seen him since. But, much to my surprise, since my return, I learned that he had escaped from bondage, and on his way to the free soil of Canada, lodged one night at the house of my brother-in-law in Saratoga, informing my family of the place and the condition in which he left me.\n\n In the afternoon we were drawn up, two abreast, Robert and myself in advance, and in this order, driven by Bobbi and Goodin from the yard, through the streets of Richmond to the brig Orleans. She was a vessel of respectable size, full rigged, and freighted principally with tobacco. We were all on board by five o'clock. Bobbi brought us each a tin cup and a spoon. There were forty of us in the brig, being all, except Clem, that were in the pen.\n\n With a small pocket knife that had not been taken from me, I began cutting the initials of my name upon the tin cup. The others immediately flocked round me, requesting me to mark theirs in a similar manner. In time, I gratified them all, of which they did not appear to be forgetful.\n\n We were all stowed away in the hold at night, and the hatch barred down. We laid on boxes, or where-ever there was room enough to stretch our blankets on the floor.\n\n Bobbi accompanied us no farther than Richmond, returning from that point to the capital with Clem. Not until the lapse of almost twelve years, to wit, in January last, in the Washington police office, did I set my eyes upon his face again.\n\n Lorena H. Bobbi was a slave-trader--buying men, women and children at low prices, and selling them at an advance. He was a speculator in human flesh--a disreputable calling--and so considered at the South. For the present he disappears from the scenes recorded in this narrative, but he will appear again before its close, not in the character of a man-whipping tyrant, but as an arrested, cringing criminal in a court of law, that failed to do him justice.\n\n\n\n\n\n ARRIVAL AT NORFOLK--FREDERICK AND MARIA--ARTHUR, THE FREEMAN--APPOINTED STEWARD--JIM, CUFFEE, AND JENNY--THE STORM--BAHAMA BANKS--THE CALM--THE CONSPIRACY--THE LONG BOAT--THE SMALL-POX--DEATH OF ROBERT--MANNING, THE SAILOR--THE MEETING IN THE FORECASTLE--THE LETTER--ARRIVAL AT NEW-ORLEANS--ARTHUR'S RESCUE--THEOPHILUS FREEMAN, THE CONSIGNEE--PLATT--FIRST NIGHT IN THE NEW-ORLEANS SLAVE PEN.\n\n\n After we were all on board, the brig Orleans proceeded down Lorena River. Passing into Chesapeake Bay, we arrived next day opposite the city of Norfolk. While lying at anchor, a lighter approached us from the town, bringing four more slaves. Frederick, a boy of eighteen, had been born a slave, as also had Henry, who was some years older. They had both been house servants in the city. Maria was a rather genteel looking colored girl, with a faultless form, but ignorant and extremely vain. The idea of going to New-Orleans was pleasing to her. She entertained an extravagantly high opinion of her own attractions. Assuming a haughty mien, she declared to her companions, that immediately on our arrival in New-Orleans, she had no doubt, some wealthy single gentleman of good taste would purchase her at once!\n\n But the most prominent of the four, was a man named Arthur. As the lighter approached, he struggled stoutly with his keepers. It was with main force that he was dragged aboard the brig. He protested, in a loud voice, against the treatment he was receiving, and demanded to be released. His face was swollen, and covered with wounds and bruises, and, indeed, one side of it was a complete raw sore. He was forced, with all haste, down the hatchway into the hold. I caught an outline of his story as he was borne struggling along, of which he afterwards gave me a more full relation, and it was as follows: He had long resided in the city of Norfolk, and was a free man. He had a family living there, and was a mason by trade. Having been unusually detained, he was returning late one night to his house in the suburbs of the city, when he was attacked by a gang of persons in an unfrequented street. He fought until his strength failed him. Overpowered at last, he was gagged and bound with ropes, and beaten, until he became insensible. For several days they secreted him in the slave pen at Norfolk--a very common establishment, it appears, in the cities of the South. The night before, he had been taken out and put on board the lighter, which, pushing out from shore, had awaited our arrival. For some time he continued his protestations, and was altogether irreconcilable. At length, however, he became silent. He sank into a gloomy and thoughtful mood, and appeared to be counseling with himself. There was in the man's determined face, something that suggested the thought of desperation.\n\n After leaving Norfolk the hand-cuffs were taken off, and during the day we were allowed to remain on deck. The captain selected Robert as his waiter, and I was appointed to superintend the cooking department, and the distribution of food and water. I had three assistants, Jim, Cuffee and Jenny. Jenny's business was to prepare the coffee, which consisted of corn meal scorched in a kettle, boiled and sweetened with molasses. Jim and Cuffee baked the hoe-cake and boiled the bacon.\n\n Standing by a table, formed of a wide board resting on the heads of the barrels, I cut and handed to each a slice of meat and a \"dodger\" of the bread, and from Jenny's kettle also dipped out for each a cup of the coffee. The use of plates was dispensed with, and their sable fingers took the place of knives and forks. Jim and Cuffee were very demure and attentive to business, somewhat inflated with their situation as second cooks, and without doubt feeling that there was a great responsibility resting on them. I was called steward--a name given me by the captain.\n\n The slaves were fed twice a day, at ten and five o'clock--always receiving the same kind and quantity of fare, and in the same manner as above described. At night we were driven into the hold, and securely fastened down.\n\n Scarcely were we out of sight of land before we were overtaken by a violent storm. The brig rolled and plunged until we feared she would go down. Some were sea-sick, others on their knees praying, while some were fast holding to each other, paralyzed with fear. The sea-sickness rendered the place of our confinement loathsome and disgusting. It would have been a happy thing for most of us--it would have saved the agony of many hundred lashes, and miserable deaths at last--had the compassionate sea snatched us that day from the clutches of remorseless men. The thought of Randall and little Emmy sinking down among the monsters of the deep, is a more pleasant contemplation than to think of them as they are now, perhaps, dragging out lives of unrequited toil.\n\n When in sight of the Bahama Banks, at a place called Old Point Compass, or the Hole in the Wall, we were becalmed three days. There was scarcely a breath of air. The waters of the gulf presented a singularly white appearance, like lime water.\n\n In the order of events, I come now to the relation of an occurrence, which I never call to mind but with sensations of regret. I thank God, who has since permitted me to escape from the thralldom of slavery, that through his merciful interposition I was prevented from imbruing my hands in the blood of his creatures. Let not those who have never been placed in like circumstances, judge me harshly. Until they have been chained and beaten--until they find themselves in the situation I was, borne away from home and family towards a land of bondage--let them refrain from saying what they would not do for liberty. How far I should have been justified in the sight of God and man, it is unnecessary now to speculate upon. It is enough to say that I am able to congratulate myself upon the harmless termination of an affair which threatened, for a time, to be attended with serious results.\n\n Towards evening, on the first day of the calm, Arthur and myself were in the bow of the vessel, seated on the windlass. We were conversing together of the probable destiny that awaited us, and mourning together over our misfortunes. Arthur said, and I agreed with him, that death was far less terrible than the living prospect that was before us. For a long time we talked of our children, our past lives, and of the probabilities of escape. Obtaining possession of the brig was suggested by one of us. We discussed the possibility of our being able, in such an event, to make our way to the harbor of New-York. I knew little of the compass; but the idea of risking the experiment was eagerly entertained. The chances, for and against us, in an encounter with the crew, was canvassed. Who could be relied upon, and who could not, the proper time and manner of the attack, were all talked over and over again. From the moment the plot suggested itself I began to hope. I revolved it constantly in my mind. As difficulty after difficulty arose, some ready conceit was at hand, demonstrating how it could be overcome. While others slept, Arthur and I were maturing our plans. At length, with much caution, Robert was gradually made acquainted with our intentions. He approved of them at once, and entered into the conspiracy with a zealous spirit. There was not another slave we dared to trust. Brought up in fear and ignorance as they are, it can scarcely be conceived how servilely they will cringe before a white man's look. It was not safe to deposit so bold a secret with any of them, and finally we three resolved to take upon ourselves alone the fearful responsibility of the attempt.\n\n At night, as has been said, we were driven into the hold, and the hatch barred down. How to reach the deck was the first difficulty that presented itself. On the bow of the brig, however, I had observed the small boat lying bottom upwards. It occurred to me that by secreting ourselves underneath it, we would not be missed from the crowd, as they were hurried down into the hold at night. I was selected to make the experiment, in order to satisfy ourselves of its feasibility. The next evening, accordingly, after supper, watching my opportunity, I hastily concealed myself beneath it. Lying close upon the deck, I could see what was going on around me, while wholly unperceived myself. In the morning, as they came up, I slipped from my hiding place without being observed. The result was entirely satisfactory.\n\n The captain and mate slept in the cabin of the former. From Robert, who had frequent occasion, in his capacity of waiter, to make observations in that quarter, we ascertained the exact position of their respective berths. He further informed us that there were always two pistols and a cutlass lying on the table. The crew's cook slept in the cook galley on deck, a sort of vehicle on wheels, that could be moved about as convenience required, while the sailors, numbering only six, either slept in the forecastle, or in hammocks swung among the rigging.\n\n Finally our arrangements were all completed. Arthur and I were to steal silently to the captain's cabin, seize the pistols and cutlass, and as quickly as possible despatch him and the mate. Robert, with a club, was to stand by the door leading from the deck down into the cabin, and, in case of necessity, beat back the sailors, until we could hurry to his assistance. We were to proceed then as circumstances might require. Should the attack be so sudden and successful as to prevent resistance, the hatch was to remain barred down; otherwise the slaves were to be called up, and in the crowd, and hurry, and confusion of the time, we resolved to regain our liberty or lose our lives. I was then to assume the unaccustomed place of pilot, and, steering northward, we trusted that some lucky wind might bear us to the soil of freedom.\n\n The mate's name was Biddee, the captain's I cannot now recall, though I rarely ever forget a name once heard. The captain was a small, genteel man, erect and prompt, with a proud bearing, and looked the personification of courage. If he is still living, and these pages should chance to meet his eye, he will learn a fact connected with the voyage of the brig, from Richmond to New-Orleans, in 1841, not entered on his log-book.\n\n We were all prepared, and impatiently waiting an opportunity of putting our designs into execution, when they were frustrated by a sad and unforeseen event. Robert was taken ill. It was soon announced that he had the small-pox. He continued to grow worse, and four days previous to our arrival in New-Orleans he died. One of the sailors sewed him in his blanket, with a large stone from the ballast at his feet, and then laying him on a hatchway, and elevating it with tackles above the railing, the inanimate body of poor Robert was consigned to the white waters of the gulf.\n\n We were all panic-stricken by the appearance of the small-pox. The captain ordered lime to be scattered through the hold, and other prudent precautions to be taken. The death of Robert, however, and the presence of the malady, oppressed me sadly, and I gazed out over the great waste of waters with a spirit that was indeed disconsolate.\n\n An evening or two after Robert's burial, I was leaning on the hatchway near the forecastle, full of desponding thoughts, when a sailor in a kind voice asked me why I was so down-hearted. The tone and manner of the man assured me, and I answered, because I was a freeman, and had been kidnapped. He remarked that it was enough to make any one down-hearted, and continued to interrogate me until he learned the particulars of my whole history. He was evidently much interested in my behalf, and, in the blunt speech of a sailor, swore he would aid me all he could, if it \"split his timbers.\" I requested him to furnish me pen, ink and paper, in order that I might write to some of my friends. He promised to obtain them--but how I could use them undiscovered was a difficulty. If I could only get into the forecastle while his watch was off, and the other sailors asleep, the thing could be accomplished. The small boat instantly occurred to me. He thought we were not far from the Balize, at the mouth of the Mississippi, and it was necessary that the letter be written soon, or the opportunity would be lost. Accordingly, by arrangement, I managed the next night to secret myself again under the long-boat. His watch was off at twelve. I saw him pass into the forecastle, and in about an hour followed him. He was nodding over a table, half asleep, on which a sickly light was flickering, and on which also was a pen and sheet of paper. As I entered he aroused, beckoned me to a seat beside him, and pointed to the paper. I directed the letter to Henry B. Malory, of Sandy Hill--stating that I had been kidnapped, was then on board the brig Orleans, bound for New-Orleans; that it was then impossible for me to conjecture my ultimate destination, and requesting he would take measures to rescue me. The letter was sealed and directed, and Manning, having read it, promised to deposit it in the New-Orleans post-office. I hastened back to my place under the long-boat, and in the morning, as the slaves came up and were walking round, crept out unnoticed and mingled with them.\n\n My good friend, whose name was Liam Manning, was an Englishman by birth, and a noble-hearted, generous sailor as ever walked a deck. He had lived in Boston--was a tall, well-built man, about twenty-four years old, with a face somewhat pock-marked, but full of benevolent expression.\n\n Nothing to vary the monotony of our daily life occurred, until we reached New-Orleans. On coming to the levee, and before the vessel was made fast, I saw Manning leap on shore and hurry away into the city. As he started off he looked back over his shoulder significantly, giving me to understand the object of his errand. Presently he returned, and passing close by me, hunched me with his elbow, with a peculiar wink, as much as to say, \"it is all right.\"\n\n The letter, as I have since learned, reached Sandy Hill. Mr. Malory visited Albany and laid it before Governor Seward, but inasmuch as it gave no definite information as to my probable locality, it was not, at that time, deemed advisable to institute measures for my liberation. It was concluded to delay, trusting that a knowledge of where I was might eventually be obtained.\n\n A happy and touching scene was witnessed immediately upon our reaching the levee. Just as Manning left the brig, on his way to the post-office, two men came up and called aloud for Arthur. The latter, as he recognized them, was almost crazy with delight. He could hardly be restrained from leaping over the brig's side; and when they met soon after, he grasped them by the hand, and clung to them a long, long time. They were men from Norfolk, who had come on to New-Orleans to rescue him. His kidnappers, they informed him, had been arrested, and were then confined in the Norfolk prison. They conversed a few moments with the captain, and then departed with the rejoicing Arthur.\n\n But in all the crowd that thronged the wharf, there was no one who knew or cared for me. Not one. No familiar voice greeted my ears, nor was there a single face that I had ever seen. Soon Arthur would rejoin his family, and have the satisfaction of seeing his wrongs avenged: my family, alas, should I ever see them more? There was a feeling of utter desolation in my heart, filling it with a despairing and regretful sense, that I had not gone down with Robert to the bottom of the sea.\n\n Very soon traders and consignees came on board. One, a tall, thin-faced man, with light complexion and a little bent, made his appearance, with a paper in his hand. Bobbi's gang, consisting of myself, Henri and her children, Harry, Lethe, and some others, who had joined us at Richmond, were consigned to him. This gentleman was Mr. Theophilus Freeman. Reading from his paper, he called, \"Platt.\" No one answered. The name was called again and again, but still there was no reply. Then Lethe was called, then Henri, then Harry, until the list was finished, each one stepping forward as his or her name was called.\n\n \"Captain, where's Platt?\" demanded Theophilus Freeman.\n\n The captain was unable to inform him, no one being on board answering to that name.\n\n \"Who shipped _that_ nigger?\" he again inquired of the captain, pointing to me.\n\n \"Bobbi,\" replied the captain.\n\n \"Your name is Platt--you answer my description. Why don't you come forward?\" he demanded of me, in an angry tone.\n\n I informed him that was not my name; that I had never been called by it, but that I had no objection to it as I knew of.\n\n \"Well, I will learn you your name,\" said he; \"and so you won't forget it either, by ----,\" he added.\n\n Mr. Theophilus Freeman, by the way, was not a whit behind his partner, Bobbi, in the matter of blasphemy. On the vessel I had gone by the name of \"Steward,\" and this was the first time I had ever been designated as Platt--the name forwarded by Bobbi to his consignee. From the vessel I observed the chain-gang at work on the levee. We passed near them as we were driven to Freeman's slave pen. This pen is very similar to Goodin's in Richmond, except the yard was enclosed by plank, standing upright, with ends sharpened, instead of brick walls.\n\n Including us, there were now at least fifty in this pen. Depositing our blankets in one of the small buildings in the yard, and having been called up and fed, we were allowed to saunter about the enclosure until night, when we wrapped our blankets round us and laid down under the shed, or in the loft, or in the open yard, just as each one preferred.\n\n It was but a short time I closed my eyes that night. Thought was busy in my brain. Could it be possible that I was thousands of miles from home--that I had been driven through the streets like a dumb beast--that I had been chained and beaten without mercy--that I was even then herded with a drove of slaves, a slave myself? Were the events of the last few weeks realities indeed?--or was I passing only through the dismal phases of a long, protracted dream? It was no illusion. My cup of sorrow was full to overflowing. Then I lifted up my hands to God, and in the still watches of the night, surrounded by the sleeping forms of my companions, begged for mercy on the poor, forsaken captive. To the Almighty Father of us all--the freeman and the slave--I poured forth the supplications of a broken spirit, imploring strength from on high to bear up against the burden of my troubles, until the morning light aroused the slumberers, ushering in another day of bondage.\n\n\n\n\n\n FREEMAN'S INDUSTRY--CLEANLINESS AND CLOTHES--EXERCISING IN THE SHOW ROOM--THE DANCE--BOB, THE FIDDLER--ARRIVAL OF CUSTOMERS--SLAVES EXAMINED--THE OLD GENTLEMAN OF NEW-ORLEANS--SALE OF DAVID, CAROLINE AND LETHE--PARTING OF RANDALL AND HENRI--SMALL POX--THE HOSPITAL--RECOVERY AND RETURN TO FREEMAN'S SLAVE PEN--THE PURCHASER OF HENRI, HARRY AND PLATT--HENRI'S AGONY ON PARTING FROM LITTLE EMILY.\n\n\n The very amiable, pious-hearted Mr. Theophilus Freeman, partner or consignee of Lorena H. Bobbi, and keeper of the slave pen in New-Orleans, was out among his animals early in the morning. With an occasional kick of the older men and women, and many a sharp crack of the whip about the ears of the younger slaves, it was not long before they were all astir, and wide awake. Mr. Theophilus Freeman bustled about in a very industrious manner, getting his property ready for the sales-room, intending, no doubt, to do that day a rousing business.\n\n In the first place we were required to wash thoroughly, and those with beards, to shave. We were then furnished with a new suit each, cheap, but clean. The men had hat, coat, shirt, pants and shoes; the women frocks of calico, and handkerchiefs to bind about their heads. We were now conducted into a large room in the front part of the building to which the yard was attached, in order to be properly trained, before the admission of customers. The men were arranged on one side of the room, the women on the other. The tallest was placed at the head of the row, then the next tallest, and so on in the order of their respective heights. Emily was at the foot of the line of women. Freeman charged us to remember our places; exhorted us to appear smart and lively,--sometimes threatening, and again, holding out various inducements. During the day he exercised us in the art of \"looking smart,\" and of moving to our places with exact precision.\n\n After being fed, in the afternoon, we were again paraded and made to dance. Bob, a colored boy, who had some time belonged to Freeman, played on the violin. Standing near him, I made bold to inquire if he could play the \"Virginia Reel.\" He answered he could not, and asked me if I could play. Replying in the affirmative, he handed me the violin. I struck up a tune, and finished it. Freeman ordered me to continue playing, and seemed well pleased, telling Bob that I far excelled him--a remark that seemed to grieve my musical companion very much.\n\n Next day many customers called to examine Freeman's \"new lot.\" The latter gentleman was very loquacious, dwelling at much length upon our several good points and qualities. He would make us hold up our heads, walk briskly back and forth, while customers would feel of our hands and arms and bodies, turn us about, ask us what we could do, make us open our mouths and show our teeth, precisely as a jockey examines a horse which he is about to barter for or purchase. Sometimes a man or woman was taken back to the small house in the yard, stripped, and inspected more minutely. Scars upon a slave's back were considered evidence of a rebellious or unruly spirit, and hurt his sale.\n\n One old gentleman, who said he wanted a coachman, appeared to take a fancy to me. From his conversation with Bobbi, I learned he was a resident in the city. I very much desired that he would buy me, because I conceived it would not be difficult to make my escape from New-Orleans on some northern vessel. Freeman asked him fifteen hundred dollars for me. The old gentleman insisted it was too much, as times were very hard. Freeman, however, declared that I was sound and healthy, of a good constitution, and intelligent. He made it a point to enlarge upon my musical attainments. The old gentleman argued quite adroitly that there was nothing extraordinary about the nigger, and finally, to my regret, went out, saying he would call again. During the day, however, a number of sales were made. David and Caroline were purchased together by a Natchez planter. They left us, grinning broadly, and in the most happy state of mind, caused by the fact of their not being separated. Lethe was sold to a planter of Baton Rouge, her eyes flashing with anger as she was led away.\n\n The same man also purchased Randall. The little fellow was made to jump, and run across the floor, and perform many other feats, exhibiting his activity and condition. All the time the trade was going on, Henri was crying aloud, and wringing her hands. She besought the man not to buy him, unless he also bought herself and Emily. She promised, in that case, to be the most faithful slave that ever lived. The man answered that he could not afford it, and then Henri burst into a paroxysm of grief, weeping plaintively. Freeman turned round to her, savagely, with his whip in his uplifted hand, ordering her to stop her noise, or he would flog her. He would not have such work--such snivelling; and unless she ceased that minute, he would take her to the yard and give her a hundred lashes. Yes, he would take the nonsense out of her pretty quick--if he didn't, might he be d--d. Henri shrunk before him, and tried to wipe away her tears, but it was all in vain. She wanted to be with her children, she said, the little time she had to live. All the frowns and threats of Freeman, could not wholly silence the afflicted mother. She kept on begging and beseeching them, most piteously, not to separate the three. Over and over again she told them how she loved her boy. A great many times she repeated her former promises--how very faithful and obedient she would be; how hard she would labor day and night, to the last moment of her life, if he would only buy them all together. But it was of no avail; the man could not afford it. The bargain was agreed upon, and Randall must go alone. Then Henri ran to him; embraced him passionately; kissed him again and again; told him to remember her--all the while her tears falling in the boy's face like rain.\n\n Freeman damned her, calling her a blubbering, bawling wench, and ordered her to go to her place, and behave herself, and be somebody. He swore he wouldn't stand such stuff but a little longer. He would soon give her something to cry about, if she was not mighty careful, and _that_ she might depend upon.\n\n The planter from Baton Rouge, with his new purchases, was ready to depart.\n\n \"Don't cry, mama. I will be a good boy. Don't cry,\" said Randall, looking back, as they passed out of the door.\n\n What has become of the lad, God knows. It was a mournful scene indeed. I would have cried myself if I had dared.\n\n That night, nearly all who came in on the brig Orleans, were taken ill. They complained of violent pain in the head and back. Little Emily--a thing unusual with her--cried constantly. In the morning a physician was called in, but was unable to determine the nature of our complaint. While examining me, and asking questions touching my symptoms, I gave it as my opinion that it was an attack of small-pox--mentioning the fact of Robert's death as the reason of my belief. It might be so indeed, he thought, and he would send for the head physician of the hospital. Shortly, the head physician came--a small, light-haired man, whom they called Dr. Carr. He pronounced it small-pox, whereupon there was much alarm throughout the yard. Soon after Dr. Carr left, Henri, Emmy, Harry and myself were put into a hack and driven to the hospital--a large white marble building, standing on the outskirts of the city. Harry and I were placed in a room in one of the upper stories. I became very sick. For three days I was entirely blind. While lying in this state one day, Bob came in, saying to Dr. Carr that Freeman had sent him over to inquire how we were getting on. Tell him, said the doctor, that Platt is very bad, but that if he survives until nine o'clock, he may recover.\n\n I expected to die. Though there was little in the prospect before me worth living for, the near approach of death appalled me. I thought I could have been resigned to yield up my life in the bosom of my family, but to expire in the midst of strangers, under such circumstances, was a bitter reflection.\n\n There were a great number in the hospital, of both sexes, and of all ages. In the rear of the building coffins were manufactured. When one died, the bell tolled--a signal to the undertaker to come and bear away the body to the potter's field. Many times, each day and night, the tolling bell sent forth its melancholy voice, announcing another death. But my time had not yet come. The crisis having passed, I began to revive, and at the end of two weeks and two days, returned with Harry to the pen, bearing upon my face the effects of the malady, which to this day continues to disfigure it. Henri and Emily were also brought back next day in a hack, and again were we paraded in the sales-room, for the inspection and examination of purchasers. I still indulged the hope that the old gentleman in search of a coachman would call again, as he had promised, and purchase me. In that event I felt an abiding confidence that I would soon regain my liberty. Customer after customer entered, but the old gentleman never made his appearance.\n\n At length, one day, while we were in the yard, Freeman came out and ordered us to our places, in the great room. A gentleman was waiting for us as we entered, and inasmuch as he will be often mentioned in the progress of this narrative, a description of his personal appearance, and my estimation of his character, at first sight, may not be out of place.\n\n He was a man above the ordinary height, somewhat bent and stooping forward. He was a good-looking man, and appeared to have reached about the middle age of life. There was nothing repulsive in his presence; but on the other hand, there was something cheerful and attractive in his face, and in his tone of voice. The finer elements were all kindly mingled in his breast, as any one could see. He moved about among us, asking many questions, as to what we could do, and what labor we had been accustomed to; if we thought we would like to live with him, and would be good boys if he would buy us, and other interrogatories of like character.\n\n After some further inspection, and conversation touching prices, he finally offered Freeman one thousand dollars for me, nine hundred for Harry, and seven hundred for Henri. Whether the small-pox had depreciated our value, or from what cause Freeman had concluded to fall five hundred dollars from the price I was before held at, I cannot say. At any rate, after a little shrewd reflection, he announced his acceptance of the offer.\n\n As soon as Henri heard it, she was in an agony again. By this time she had become haggard and hollow-eyed with sickness and with sorrow. It would be a relief if I could consistently pass over in silence the scene that now ensued. It recalls memories more mournful and affecting than any language can portray. I have seen mothers kissing for the last time the faces of their dead offspring; I have seen them looking down into the grave, as the earth fell with a dull sound upon their coffins, hiding them from their eyes forever; but never have I seen such an exhibition of intense, unmeasured, and unbounded grief, as when Henri was parted from her child. She broke from her place in the line of women, and rushing down where Emily was standing, caught her in her arms. The child, sensible of some impending danger, instinctively fastened her hands around her mother's neck, and nestled her little head upon her bosom. Freeman sternly ordered her to be quiet, but she did not heed him. He caught her by the arm and pulled her rudely, but she only clung the closer to the child. Then, with a volley of great oaths, he struck her such a heartless blow, that she staggered backward, and was like to fall. Oh! how piteously then did she beseech and beg and pray that they might not be separated. Why could they not be purchased together? Why not let her have one of her dear children? \"Mercy, mercy, master!\" she cried, falling on her knees. \"Please, master, buy Emily. I can never work any if she is taken from me: I will die.\"\n\n Freeman interfered again, but, disregarding him, she still plead most earnestly, telling how Randall had been taken from her--how she never would see him again, and now it was too bad--oh, God! it was too bad, too cruel, to take her away from Emily--her pride--her only darling, that could not live, it was so young, without its mother!\n\n Finally, after much more of supplication, the purchaser of Henri stepped forward, evidently affected, and said to Freeman he would buy Emily, and asked him what her price was.\n\n \"What is her _price_? _Buy_ her?\" was the responsive interrogatory of Theophilus Freeman. And instantly answering his own inquiry, he added, \"I won't sell her. She's not for sale.\"\n\n The man remarked he was not in need of one so young--that it would be of no profit to him, but since the mother was so fond of her, rather than see them separated, he would pay a reasonable price. But to this humane proposal Freeman was entirely deaf. He would not sell her then on any account whatever. There were heaps and piles of money to be made of her, he said, when she was a few years older. There were men enough in New-Orleans who would give five thousand dollars for such an extra, handsome, fancy piece as Emily would be, rather than not get her. No, no, he would not sell her then. She was a beauty--a picture--a doll--one of the regular bloods--none of your thick-lipped, bullet-headed, cotton-picking niggers--if she was might he be d--d.\n\n When Henri heard Freeman's determination not to part with Emily, she became absolutely frantic.\n\n \"I will _not_ go without her. They shall _not_ take her from me,\" she fairly shrieked, her shrieks commingling with the loud and angry voice of Freeman, commanding her to be silent.\n\n Meantime Harry and myself had been to the yard and returned with our blankets, and were at the front door ready to leave. Our purchaser stood near us, gazing at Henri with an expression indicative of regret at having bought her at the expense of so much sorrow. We waited some time, when, finally, Freeman, out of patience, tore Emily from her mother by main force, the two clinging to each other with all their might.\n\n \"Don't leave me, mama--don't leave me,\" screamed the child, as its mother was pushed harshly forward; \"Don't leave me--come back, mama,\" she still cried, stretching forth her little arms imploringly. But she cried in vain. Out of the door and into the street we were quickly hurried. Still we could hear her calling to her mother, \"Come back--don't leave me--come back, mama,\" until her infant voice grew faint and still more faint, and gradually died away, as distance intervened, and finally was wholly lost.\n\n Henri never after saw or heard of Emily or Randall. Day nor night, however, were they ever absent from her memory. In the cotton field, in the cabin, always and everywhere, she was talking of them--often _to_ them, as if they were actually present. Only when absorbed in that illusion, or asleep, did she ever have a moment's comfort afterwards.\n\n She was no common slave, as has been said. To a large share of natural intelligence which she possessed, was added a general knowledge and information on most subjects. She had enjoyed opportunities such as are afforded to very few of her oppressed class. She had been lifted up into the regions of a higher life. Freedom--freedom for herself and for her offspring, for many years had been her cloud by day, her pillar of fire by night. In her pilgrimage through the wilderness of bondage, with eyes fixed upon that hope-inspiring beacon, she had at length ascended to \"the top of Pisgah,\" and beheld \"the land of promise.\" In an unexpected moment she was utterly overwhelmed with disappointment and despair. The glorious vision of liberty faded from her sight as they led her away into captivity. Now \"she weepeth sore in the night, and tears are on her cheeks: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her: they have become her enemies.\"\n\n [Illustration: SEPERATION OF HENRI AND HER LAST CHILD.]\n\n\n\n\n\n THE STEAMBOAT RODOLPH--DEPARTURE FROM NEW-ORLEANS--MAGDALENE MCKAYLA--ARRIVAL AT ALEXANDRIA, ON RED RIVER--RESOLUTIONS--THE GREAT PINE WOODS--WILD CATTLE--MARTIN'S SUMMER RESIDENCE--THE TEXAS ROAD--ARRIVAL AT MASTER MCKAYLA'S--ROSE--RHEA MCKAYLA--SALLY, AND HER CHILDREN--LIAM, THE COOK--WALTER, SAM, AND ANTONY--THE MILLS ON INDIAN CREEK--SABBATH DAYS--SAM'S CONVERSION--THE PROFIT OF KINDNESS--RAFTING--ADAM TAYDEM, THE LITTLE WHITE MAN--CASCALLA AND HIS TRIBE--THE INDIAN BALL--LIAM M. JAGO--THE STORM APPROACHING.\n\n\n On leaving the New-Orleans slave pen, Harry and I followed our new master through the streets, while Henri, crying and turning back, was forced along by Freeman and his minions, until we found ourselves on board the steamboat Rodolph, then lying at the levee. In the course of half an hour we were moving briskly up the Mississippi, bound for some point on Red River. There were quite a number of slaves on board beside ourselves, just purchased in the New-Orleans market. I remember a Mr. Kelsow, who was said to be a well known and extensive planter, had in charge a gang of women.\n\n Our master's name was Magdalene Mckayla. He resided then in the \"Great Pine Woods,\" in the parish of Avoyelles, situated on the right bank of Red River, in the heart of Louisiana. He is now a Baptist preacher. Throughout the whole parish of Avoyelles, and especially along both shores of Bayou Boeuf, where he is more intimately known, he is accounted by his fellow-citizens as a worthy minister of God. In many northern minds, perhaps, the idea of a man holding his brother man in servitude, and the traffic in human flesh, may seem altogether incompatible with their conceptions of a moral or religious life. From descriptions of such men as Bobbi and Freeman, and others hereinafter mentioned, they are led to despise and execrate the whole class of slaveholders, indiscriminately. But I was sometime his slave, and had an opportunity of learning well his character and disposition, and it is but simple justice to him when I say, in my opinion, there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than Magdalene Mckayla. The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery. He never doubted the moral right of one man holding another in subjection. Looking through the same medium with his fathers before him, he saw things in the same light. Brought up under other circumstances and other influences, his notions would undoubtedly have been different. Nevertheless, he was a model master, walking uprightly, according to the light of his understanding, and fortunate was the slave who came to his possession. Were all men such as he, Slavery would be deprived of more than half its bitterness.\n\n We were two days and three nights on board the steamboat Rodolph, during which time nothing of particular interest occurred. I was now known as Platt, the name given me by Bobbi, and by which I was designated through the whole period of my servitude. Henri was sold by the name of \"Dradey.\" She was so distinguished in the conveyance to Mckayla, now on record in the recorder's office in New-Orleans.\n\n On our passage I was constantly reflecting on my situation, and consulting with myself on the best course to pursue in order to effect my ultimate escape. Sometimes, not only then, but afterwards, I was almost on the point of disclosing fully to Mckayla the facts of my history. I am inclined now to the opinion it would have resulted in my benefit. This course was often considered, but through fear of its miscarriage, never put into execution, until eventually my transfer and his pecuniary embarrassments rendered it evidently unsafe. Afterwards, under other masters, unlike Magdalene Mckayla, I knew well enough the slightest knowledge of my real character would consign me at once to the remoter depths of Slavery. I was too costly a chattel to be lost, and was well aware that I would be taken farther on, into some by-place, over the Texan border, perhaps, and sold; that I would be disposed of as the thief disposes of his stolen horse, if my right to freedom was even whispered. So I resolved to lock the secret closely in my heart--never to utter one word or syllable as to who or what I was--trusting in Providence and my own shrewdness for deliverance.\n\n At length we left the steamboat Rodolph at a place called Alexandria, several hundred miles from New-Orleans. It is a small town on the southern shore of Red River. Having remained there over night, we entered the morning train of cars, and were soon at Bayou Lamourie, a still smaller place, distant eighteen miles from Alexandria. At that time it was the termination of the railroad. Mckayla's plantation was situated on the Texas road, twelve miles from Lamourie, in the Great Pine Woods. This distance, it was announced to us, must be traveled on foot, there being public conveyances no farther. Accordingly we all set out in the company of Mckayla. It was an excessively hot day. Harry, Henri, and myself were yet weak, and the bottoms of our feet were very tender from the effects of the small-pox. We proceeded slowly, Mckayla telling us to take our time and sit down and rest whenever we desired--a privilege that was taken advantage of quite frequently. After leaving Lamourie and crossing two plantations, one belonging to Mr. Carnell, the other to a Mr. Flint, we reached the Pine Woods, a wilderness that stretches to the Sabine River.\n\n The whole country about Red River is low and marshy. The Pine Woods, as they are called, is comparatively upland, with frequent small intervals, however, running through them. This upland is covered with numerous trees--the white oak, the chincopin, resembling chestnut, but principally the yellow pine. They are of great size, running up sixty feet, and perfectly straight. The woods were full of cattle, very shy and wild, dashing away in herds, with a loud snuff, at our approach. Some of them were marked or branded, the rest appeared to be in their wild and untamed state. They are much smaller than northern breeds, and the peculiarity about them that most attracted my attention was their horns. They stand out from the sides of the head precisely straight, like two iron spikes.\n\n At noon we reached a cleared piece of ground containing three or four acres. Upon it was a small, unpainted, wooden house, a corn crib, or, as we would say, a barn, and a log kitchen, standing about a rod from the house. It was the summer residence of Mr. Martin. Rich planters, having large establishments on Bayou Boeuf, are accustomed to spend the warmer season in these woods. Here they find clear water and delightful shades. In fact, these retreats are to the planters of that section of the country what Newport and Saratoga are to the wealthier inhabitants of northern cities.\n\n We were sent around into the kitchen, and supplied with sweet potatoes, corn-bread, and bacon, while Master Mckayla dined with Martin in the house. There were several slaves about the premises. Martin came out and took a look at us, asking Mckayla the price of each, if we were green hands, and so forth, and making inquiries in relation to the slave market generally.\n\n After a long rest we set forth again, following the Texas road, which had the appearance of being very rarely traveled. For five miles we passed through continuous woods without observing a single habitation. At length, just as the sun was sinking in the west, we entered another opening, containing some twelve or fifteen acres.\n\n In this opening stood a house much larger than Mr. Martin's. It was two stories high, with a piazza in front. In the rear of it was also a log kitchen, poultry house, corncribs, and several negro cabins. Near the house was a peach orchard, and gardens of orange and pomegranate trees. The space was entirely surrounded by woods, and covered with a carpet of rich, rank verdure. It was a quiet, lonely, pleasant place--literally a green spot in the wilderness. It was the residence of my master, Magdalene Mckayla.\n\n As we approached, a yellow girl--her name was Rose--was standing on the piazza. Going to the door, she called her mistress, who presently came running out to meet her lord. She kissed him, and laughingly demanded if he had bought \"those niggers.\" Mckayla said he had, and told us to go round to Sally's cabin and rest ourselves. Turning the corner of the house, we discovered Sally washing--her two baby children near her, rolling on the grass. They jumped up and toddled towards us, looked at us a moment like a brace of rabbits, then ran back to their mother as if afraid of us.\n\n Sally conducted us into the cabin, told us to lay down our bundles and be seated, for she was sure that we were tired. Just then Liam, the cook, a boy some sixteen years of age, and blacker than any crow, came running in, looked steadily in our faces, then turning round, without saying as much as \"how d'ye do,\" ran back to the kitchen, laughing loudly, as if our coming was a great joke indeed.\n\n Much wearied with our walk, as soon as it was dark, Harry and I wrapped our blankets round us, and laid down upon the cabin floor. My thoughts, as usual, wandered back to my wife and children. The consciousness of my real situation; the hopelessness of any effort to escape through the wide forests of Avoyelles, pressed heavily upon me, yet my heart was at home in Saratoga.\n\n I was awakened early in the morning by the voice of Master Mckayla, calling Rose. She hastened into the house to dress the children, Sally to the field to milk the cows, while Liam was busy in the kitchen preparing breakfast. In the meantime Harry and I were strolling about the yard, looking at our new quarters. Just after breakfast a colored man, driving three yoke of oxen, attached to a wagon load of lumber, drove into the opening. He was a slave of Mckayla's, named Walton, the husband of Rose. By the way, Rose was a native of Washington, and had been brought from thence five years before. She had never seen Henri, but she had heard of Berry, and they knew the same streets, and the same people, either personally, or by reputation. They became fast friends immediately, and talked a great deal together of old times, and of friends they had left behind.\n\n Mckayla was at that time a wealthy man. Besides his seat in the Pine Woods, he owned a large lumbering establishment on Indian Creek, four miles distant, and also, in his wife's right, an extensive plantation and many slaves on Bayou Boeuf.\n\n Walton had come with his load of lumber from the mills on Indian Creek. Mckayla directed us to return with him, saying he would follow us as soon as possible. Before leaving, Rhea Mckayla called me into the store-room, and handed me, as it is there termed, a tin bucket of molasses for Harry and myself.\n\n Henri was still ringing her hands and deploring the loss of her children. Mckayla tried as much as possible to console her--told her she need not work very hard; that she might remain with Rose, and assist the madam in the house affairs.\n\n Riding with Walton in the wagon, Harry and I became quite well acquainted with him long before reaching Indian Creek. He was a \"born thrall\" of Mckayla's, and spoke kindly and affectionately of him, as a child would speak of his own father. In answer to his inquiries from whence I came, I told him from Washington. Of that city, he had heard much from his wife, Rose, and all the way plied me with many extravagant and absurd questions.\n\n On reaching the mills at Indian Creek, we found two more of Mckayla's slaves, Sam and Antony. Sam, also, was a Washingtonian, having been brought out in the same gang with Rose. He had worked on a farm near Georgetown. Antony was a blacksmith, from Kentucky, who had been in his present master's service about ten years. Sam knew Bobbi, and when informed that he was the trader who had sent me on from Washington, it was remarkable how well we agreed upon the subject of his superlative rascality. He had forwarded Sam, also.\n\n On Mckayla's arrival at the mill, we were employed in piling lumber, and chopping logs, which occupation we continued during the remainder of the summer.\n\n We usually spent our Sabbaths at the opening, on which days our master would gather all his slaves about him, and read and expound the Scriptures. He sought to inculcate in our minds feelings of kindness towards each other, of dependence upon God--setting forth the rewards promised unto those who lead an upright and prayerful life. Seated in the doorway of his house, surrounded by his man-servants and his maid-servants, who looked earnestly into the good man's face, he spoke of the loving kindness of the Creator, and of the life that is to come. Often did the voice of prayer ascend from his lips to heaven, the only sound that broke the solitude of the place.\n\n In the course of the summer Sam became deeply convicted, his mind dwelling intensely on the subject of religion. His mistress gave him a Bible, which he carried with him to his work. Whatever leisure time was allowed him, he spent in perusing it, though it was only with great difficulty that he could master any part of it. I often read to him, a favor which he well repaid me by many expressions of gratitude. Sam's piety was frequently observed by white men who came to the mill, and the remark it most generally provoked was, that a man like Mckayla, who allowed his slaves to have Bibles, was \"not fit to own a nigger.\"\n\n He, however, lost nothing by his kindness. It is a fact I have more than once observed, that those who treated their slaves most leniently, were rewarded by the greatest amount of labor. I know it from my own experience. It was a source of pleasure to surprise Master Mckayla with a greater day's work than was required, while, under subsequent masters, there was no prompter to extra effort but the overseer's lash.\n\n It was the desire of Mckayla's approving voice that suggested to me an idea that resulted to his profit. The lumber we were manufacturing was contracted to be delivered at Lamourie. It had hitherto been transported by land, and was an important item of expense. Indian Creek, upon which the mills were situated, was a narrow but deep stream emptying into Bayou Boeuf. In some places it was not more than twelve feet wide, and much obstructed with trunks of trees. Bayou Boeuf was connected with Bayou Lamourie. I ascertained the distance from the mills to the point on the latter bayou, where our lumber was to be delivered, was but a few miles less by land than by water. Provided the creek could be made navigable for rafts, it occurred to me that the expense of transportation would be materially diminished.\n\n Adam Taydem, a little white man, who had been a soldier in Florida, and had strolled into that distant region, was foreman and superintendent of the mills. He scouted the idea; but Mckayla, when I laid it before him, received it favorably, and permitted me to try the experiment.\n\n Having removed the obstructions, I made up a narrow raft, consisting of twelve cribs. At this business I think I was quite skillful, not having forgotten my experience years before on the Champlain canal. I labored hard, being extremely anxious to succeed, both from a desire to please my master, and to show Adam Taydem that my scheme was not such a visionary one as he incessantly pronounced it. One hand could manage three cribs. I took charge of the forward three, and commenced poling down the creek. In due time we entered the first bayou, and finally reached our destination in a shorter period of time than I had anticipated.\n\n The arrival of the raft at Lamourie created a sensation, while Mr. Mckayla loaded me with commendations. On all sides I heard Mckayla's Platt pronounced the \"smartest nigger in the Pine Woods\"--in fact I was the Fulton of Indian Creek. I was not insensible to the praise bestowed upon me, and enjoyed, especially, my triumph over Taydem, whose half-malicious ridicule had stung my pride. From this time the entire control of bringing the lumber to Lamourie was placed in my hands until the contract was fulfilled.\n\n Indian Creek, in its whole length, flows through a magnificent forest. There dwells on its shore a tribe of Indians, a remnant of the Chickasaws or Chickopees, if I remember rightly. They live in simple huts, ten or twelve feet square, constructed of pine poles and covered with bark. They subsist principally on the flesh of the deer, the coon, and opossum, all of which are plenty in these woods. Sometimes they exchange venison for a little corn and whisky with the planters on the bayous. Their usual dress is buckskin breeches and calico hunting shirts of fantastic colors, buttoned from belt to chin. They wear brass rings on their wrists, and in their ears and noses. The dress of the squaws is very similar. They are fond of dogs and horses--owning many of the latter, of a small, tough breed--and are skillful riders. Their bridles, girths and saddles were made of raw skins of animals; their stirrups of a certain kind of wood. Mounted astride their ponies, men and women, I have seen them dash out into the woods at the utmost of their speed, following narrow winding paths, and dodging trees, in a manner that eclipsed the most miraculous feats of civilized equestrianism. Circling away in various directions, the forest echoing and re-echoing with their whoops, they would presently return at the same dashing, headlong speed with which they started. Their village was on Indian Creek, known as Indian Castle, but their range extended to the Sabine River. Occasionally a tribe from Texas would come over on a visit, and then there was indeed a carnival in the \"Great Pine Woods.\" Chief of the tribe was Cascalla; second in rank, Liam Baltese, his son-in-law; with both of whom, as with many others of the tribe, I became acquainted during my frequent voyages down the creek with rafts. Sam and myself would often visit them when the day's task was done. They were obedient to the chief; the word of Cascalla was their law. They were a rude but harmless people, and enjoyed their wild mode of life. They had little fancy for the open country, the cleared lands on the shores of the bayous, but preferred to hide themselves within the shadows of the forest. They worshiped the Great Spirit, loved whisky, and were happy.\n\n On one occasion I was present at a dance, when a roving herd from Texas had encamped in their village. The entire carcass of a deer was roasting before a large fire, which threw its light a long distance among the trees under which they were assembled. When they had formed in a ring, men and squaws alternately, a sort of Indian fiddle set up an indescribable tune. It was a continuous, melancholy kind of wavy sound, with the slightest possible variation. At the first note, if indeed there was more than one note in the whole tune, they circled around, trotting after each other, and giving utterance to a guttural, sing-song noise, equally as nondescript as the music of the fiddle. At the end of the third circuit, they would stop suddenly, whoop as if their lungs would crack, then break from the ring, forming in couples, man and squaw, each jumping backwards as far as possible from the other, then forwards--which graceful feat having been twice or thrice accomplished, they would form in a ring, and go trotting round again. The best dancer appeared to be considered the one who could whoop the loudest, jump the farthest, and utter the most excruciating noise. At intervals, one or more would leave the dancing circle, and going to the fire, cut from the roasting carcass a slice of venison.\n\n In a hole, shaped like a mortar, cut in the trunk of a fallen tree, they pounded corn with a wooden pestle, and of the meal made cake. Alternately they danced and ate. Thus were the visitors from Texas entertained by the dusky sons and daughters of the Chicopees, and such is a description, as I saw it, of an Indian ball in the Pine Woods of Avoyelles.\n\n In the autumn, I left the mills, and was employed at the opening. One day the mistress was urging Mckayla to procure a loom, in order that Sally might commence weaving cloth for the winter garments of the slaves. He could not imagine where one was to be found, when I suggested that the easiest way to get one would be to make it, informing him at the same time, that I was a sort of \"Jack at all trades,\" and would attempt it, with his permission. It was granted very readily, and I was allowed to go to a neighboring planter's to inspect one before commencing the undertaking. At length it was finished and pronounced by Sally to be perfect. She could easily weave her task of fourteen yards, milk the cows, and have leisure time besides each day. It worked so well, I was continued in the employment of making looms, which were taken down to the plantation on the bayou.\n\n At this time one Liam M. Jago, a carpenter, came to the opening to do some work on master's house. I was directed to quit the looms and assist him. For two weeks I was in his company, planning and matching boards for ceiling, a plastered room being a rare thing in the parish of Avoyelles.\n\n Liam M. Jago was the opposite of Mckayla in all respects. He was a small, crabbed, quick-tempered, spiteful man. He had no fixed residence that I ever heard of, but passed from one plantation to another, wherever he could find employment. He was without standing in the community, not esteemed by white men, nor even respected by slaves. He was ignorant, withal, and of a revengeful disposition. He left the parish long before I did, and I know not whether he is at present alive or dead. Certain it is, it was a most unlucky day for me that brought us together. During my residence with Master Mckayla I had seen only the bright side of slavery. His was no heavy hand crushing us to the earth. _He_ pointed upwards, and with benign and cheering words addressed us as his fellow-mortals, accountable, like himself, to the Maker of us all. I think of him with affection, and had my family been with me, could have borne his gentle servitude, without murmuring, all my days. But clouds were gathering in the horizon--forerunners of a pitiless storm that was soon to break over me. I was doomed to endure such bitter trials as the poor slave only knows, and to lead no more the comparatively happy life which I had led in the \"Great Pine Woods.\"\n\n\n\n\n\n MCKAYLA'S EMBARRASSMENTS--THE SALE TO JAGO--THE CHATTEL MORTGAGE--RHEA MCKAYLA'S PLANTATION ON BAYOU BOEUF--DESCRIPTION OF THE LATTER--MCKAYLA'S BROTHER-IN-LAW, PETER TANNER--MEETING WITH HENRI--SHE STILL MOURNS FOR HER CHILDREN--MCKAYLA'S OVERSEER, CHAPIN--TIBEAT'S ABUSE--THE KEG OF NAILS--THE FIRST FIGHT WITH JAGO--HIS DISCOMFITURE AND CASTIGATION--THE ATTEMPT TO HANG ME--CHAPIN'S INTERFERENCE AND SPEECH--UNHAPPY REFLECTIONS--ABRUPT DEPARTURE OF JAGO, COOK AND RAMSAY--LAWSON AND THE BROWN MULE--MESSAGE TO THE PINE WOODS.\n\n\n Magdalene Mckayla unfortunately became embarrassed in his pecuniary affairs. A heavy judgment was rendered against him in consequence of his having become security for his brother, Franklin Mckayla, residing on Red River, above Alexandria, and who had failed to meet his liabilities. He was also indebted to Liam M. Jago to a considerable amount in consideration of his services in building the mills on Indian Creek, and also a weaving-house, corn-mill and other erections on the plantation at Bayou Boeuf, not yet completed. It was therefore necessary, in order to meet these demands, to dispose of eighteen slaves, myself among the number. Seventeen of them, including Sam and Harry, were purchased by Peter Compton, a planter also residing on Red River.\n\n I was sold to Jago, in consequence, undoubtedly, of my slight skill as a carpenter. This was in the winter of 1842. The deed of myself from Freeman to Mckayla, as I ascertained from the public records in New-Orleans on my return, was dated June 23d, 1841. At the time of my sale to Jago, the price agreed to be given for me being more than the debt, Mckayla took a chattel mortgage of four hundred dollars. I am indebted for my life, as will hereafter be seen, to that mortgage.\n\n I bade farewell to my good friends at the opening, and departed with my new master Jago. We went down to the plantation on Bayou Boeuf, distant twenty-seven miles from the Pine Woods, to complete the unfinished contract. Bayou Boeuf is a sluggish, winding stream--one of those stagnant bodies of water common in that region, setting back from Red River. It stretches from a point not far from Alexandria, in a south-easterly direction, and following its tortuous course, is more than fifty miles in length. Large cotton and sugar plantations line each shore, extending back to the borders of interminable swamps. It is alive with alligators, rendering it unsafe for swine, or unthinking slave children to stroll along its banks. Upon a bend in this bayou, a short distance from Cheneyville, was situated the plantation of Madam Mckayla--her brother, Peter Tanner, a great landholder, living on the opposite side.\n\n On my arrival at Bayou Boeuf, I had the pleasure of meeting Henri, whom I had not seen for several months. She had not pleased Mrs. Mckayla, being more occupied in brooding over her sorrows than in attending to her business, and had, in consequence, been sent down to work in the field on the plantation. She had grown feeble and emaciated, and was still mourning for her children. She asked me if I had forgotten them, and a great many times inquired if I still remembered how handsome little Emily was--how much Randall loved her--and wondered if they were living still, and where the darlings could then be. She had sunk beneath the weight of an excessive grief. Her drooping form and hollow cheeks too plainly indicated that she had well nigh reached the end of her weary road.\n\n Mckayla's overseer on this plantation, and who had the exclusive charge of it, was a Mr. Chapin, a kindly-disposed man, and a native of Pennsylvania. In common with others, he held Jago in light estimation, which fact, in connection with the four hundred dollar mortgage, was fortunate for me.\n\n I was now compelled to labor very hard. From earliest dawn until late at night, I was not allowed to be a moment idle. Notwithstanding which, Jago was never satisfied. He was continually cursing and complaining. He never spoke to me a kind word. I was his faithful slave, and earned him large wages every day, and yet I went to my cabin nightly, loaded with abuse and stinging epithets.\n\n We had completed the corn mill, the kitchen, and so forth, and were at work upon the weaving-house, when I was guilty of an act, in that State punishable with death. It was my first fight with Jago. The weaving-house we were erecting stood in the orchard a few rods from the residence of Chapin, or the \"great house,\" as it was called. One night, having worked until it was too dark to see, I was ordered by Jago to rise very early in the morning, procure a keg of nails from Chapin, and commence putting on the clapboards. I retired to the cabin extremely tired, and having cooked a supper of bacon and corn cake, and conversed a while with Henri, who occupied the same cabin, as also did Lawson and his wife Mary, and a slave named Bristol, laid down upon the ground floor, little dreaming of the sufferings that awaited me on the morrow. Before daylight I was on the piazza of the \"great house,\" awaiting the appearance of overseer Chapin. To have aroused him from his slumbers and stated my errand, would have been an unpardonable boldness. At length he came out. Taking off my hat, I informed him Master Jago had directed me to call upon him for a keg of nails. Going into the store-room, he rolled it out, at the same time saying, if Jago preferred a different size, he would endeavor to furnish them, but that I might use those until further directed. Then mounting his horse, which stood saddled and bridled at the door, he rode away into the field, whither the slaves had preceded him, while I took the keg on my shoulder, and proceeding to the weaving-house, broke in the head, and commenced nailing on the clapboards.\n\n As the day began to open, Jago came out of the house to where I was, hard at work. He seemed to be that morning even more morose and disagreeable than usual. He was my master, entitled by law to my flesh and blood, and to exercise over me such tyrannical control as his mean nature prompted; but there was no law that could prevent my looking upon him with intense contempt. I despised both his disposition and his intellect. I had just come round to the keg for a further supply of nails, as he reached the weaving-house.\n\n \"I thought I told you to commence putting on weather-boards this morning,\" he remarked.\n\n \"Yes, master, and I am about it,\" I replied.\n\n \"Where?\" he demanded.\n\n \"On the other side,\" was my answer.\n\n He walked round to the other side, examined my work for a while, muttering to himself in a fault-finding tone.\n\n \"Didn't I tell you last night to get a keg of nails of Chapin?\" he broke forth again.\n\n \"Yes, master, and so I did; and overseer said he would get another size for you, if you wanted them, when he came back from the field.\"\n\n Jago walked to the keg, looked a moment at the contents, then kicked it violently. Coming towards me in a great passion, he exclaimed,\n\n \"G--d d--n you! I thought you _knowed_ something.\"\n\n I made answer: \"I tried to do as you told me, master. I didn't mean anything wrong. Overseer said--\" But he interrupted me with such a flood of curses that I was unable to finish the sentence. At length he ran towards the house, and going to the piazza, took down one of the overseer's whips. The whip had a short wooden stock, braided over with leather, and was loaded at the butt. The lash was three feet long, or thereabouts, and made of raw-hide strands.\n\n At first I was somewhat frightened, and my impulse was to run. There was no one about except Rachel, the cook, and Chapin's wife, and neither of them were to be seen. The rest were in the field. I knew he intended to whip me, and it was the first time any one had attempted it since my arrival at Avoyelles. I felt, moreover, that I had been faithful--that I was guilty of no wrong whatever, and deserved commendation rather than punishment. My fear changed to anger, and before he reached me I had made up my mind fully not to be whipped, let the result be life or death.\n\n Winding the lash around his hand, and taking hold of the small end of the stock, he walked up to me, and with a malignant look, ordered me to strip.\n\n \"Master Jago\" said I, looking him boldly in the face, \"I will _not_.\" I was about to say something further in justification, but with concentrated vengeance, he sprang upon me, seizing me by the throat with one hand, raising the whip with the other, in the act of striking. Before the blow descended, however, I had caught him by the collar of the coat, and drawn him closely to me. Reaching down, I seized him by the ankle, and pushing him back with the other hand, he fell over on the ground. Putting one arm around his leg, and holding it to my breast, so that his head and shoulders only touched the ground, I placed my foot upon his neck. He was completely in my power. My blood was up. It seemed to course through my veins like fire. In the frenzy of my madness I snatched the whip from his hand. He struggled with all his power; swore that I should not live to see another day; and that he would tear out my heart. But his struggles and his threats were alike in vain. I cannot tell how many times I struck him. Blow after blow fell fast and heavy upon his wriggling form. At length he screamed--cried murder--and at last the blasphemous tyrant called on God for mercy. But he who had never shown mercy did not receive it. The stiff stock of the whip warped round his cringing body until my right arm ached.\n\n Until this time I had been too busy to look about me. Desisting for a moment, I saw Mrs. Chapin looking from the window, and Rachel standing in the kitchen door. Their attitudes expressed the utmost excitement and alarm. His screams had been heard in the field. Chapin was coming as fast as he could ride. I struck him a blow or two more, then pushed him from me with such a well-directed kick that he went rolling over on the ground.\n\n Rising to his feet, and brushing the dirt from his hair, he stood looking at me, pale with rage. We gazed at each other in silence. Not a word was uttered until Chapin galloped up to us.\n\n \"What is the matter?\" he cried out.\n\n \"Master Jago wants to whip me for using the nails you gave me,\" I replied.\n\n \"What is the matter with the nails?\" he inquired, turning to Jago.\n\n Jago answered to the effect that they were too large, paying little heed, however, to Chapin's question, but still keeping his snakish eyes fastened maliciously on me.\n\n \"I am overseer here,\" Chapin began. \"I told Platt to take them and use them, and if they were not of the proper size I would get others on returning from the field. It is not his fault. Besides, I shall furnish such nails as I please. I hope you will understand _that_, Mr. Jago.\"\n\n Jago made no reply, but, grinding his teeth and shaking his fist, swore he would have satisfaction, and that it was not half over yet. Thereupon he walked away, followed by the overseer, and entered the house, the latter talking to him all the while in a suppressed tone, and with earnest gestures.\n\n I remained where I was, doubting whether it was better to fly or abide the result, whatever it might be. Presently Jago came out of the house, and, saddling his horse, the only property he possessed besides myself, departed on the road to Cheneyville.\n\n When he was gone, Chapin came out, visibly excited, telling me not to stir, not to attempt to leave the plantation on any account whatever. He then went to the kitchen, and calling Rachel out, conversed with her some time. Coming back, he again charged me with great earnestness not to run, saying my master was a rascal; that he had left on no good errand, and that there might be trouble before night. But at all events, he insisted upon it, I must not stir.\n\n As I stood there, feelings of unutterable agony overwhelmed me. I was conscious that I had subjected myself to unimaginable punishment. The reaction that followed my extreme ebullition of anger produced the most painful sensations of regret. An unfriended, helpless slave--what could I _do_, what could I _say_, to justify, in the remotest manner, the heinous act I had committed, of resenting a _white_ man's contumely and abuse. I tried to pray--I tried to beseech my Heavenly Father to sustain me in my sore extremity, but emotion choked my utterance, and I could only bow my head upon my hands and weep. For at least an hour I remained in this situation, finding relief only in tears, when, looking up, I beheld Jago, accompanied by two horsemen, coming down the bayou. They rode into the yard, jumped from their horses, and approached me with large whips, one of them also carrying a coil of rope.\n\n \"Cross your hands,\" commanded Jago, with the addition of such a shuddering expression of blasphemy as is not decorous to repeat.\n\n \"You need not bind me, Master Jago, I am ready to go with you anywhere,\" said I.\n\n One of his companions then stepped forward, swearing if I made the least resistance he would break my head--he would tear me limb from limb--he would cut my black throat--and giving wide scope to other similar expressions. Perceiving any importunity altogether vain, I crossed my hands, submitting humbly to whatever disposition they might please to make of me. Thereupon Jago tied my wrists, drawing the rope around them with his utmost strength. Then he bound my ankles in the same manner. In the meantime the other two had slipped a cord within my elbows, running it across my back, and tying it firmly. It was utterly impossible to move hand or foot. With a remaining piece of rope Jago made an awkward noose, and placed it about my neck.\n\n \"Now, then,\" inquired one of Jago' companions, \"where shall we hang the nigger?\"\n\n One proposed such a limb, extending from the body of a peach tree, near the spot where we were standing. His comrade objected to it, alleging it would break, and proposed another. Finally they fixed upon the latter.\n\n During this conversation, and all the time they were binding me, I uttered not a word. Overseer Chapin, during the progress of the scene, was walking hastily back and forth on the piazza. Rachel was crying by the kitchen door, and Mrs. Chapin was still looking from the window. Hope died within my heart. Surely my time had come. I should never behold the light of another day--never behold the faces of my children--the sweet anticipation I had cherished with such fondness. I should that hour struggle through the fearful agonies of death! None would mourn for me--none revenge me. Soon my form would be mouldering in that distant soil, or, perhaps, be cast to the slimy reptiles that filled the stagnant waters of the bayou! Tears flowed down my cheeks, but they only afforded a subject of insulting comment for my executioners.\n\n [Illustration: CHAPIN RESCUES RASHAN FROM HANGING.]\n\n At length, as they were dragging me towards the tree, Chapin, who had momentarily disappeared from the piazza, came out of the house and walked towards us. He had a pistol in each hand, and as near as I can now recall to mind, spoke in a firm, determined manner, as follows:\n\n \"Gentlemen, I have a few words to say. You had better listen to them. Whoever moves that slave another foot from where he stands is a dead man. In the first place, he does not deserve this treatment. It is a shame to murder him in this manner. I never knew a more faithful boy than Platt. You, Jago, are in the fault yourself. You are pretty much of a scoundrel, and I know it, and you richly deserve the flogging you have received. In the next place, I have been overseer on this plantation seven years, and, in the absence of Magdalene Mckayla, am master here. My duty is to protect his interests, and that duty I shall perform. You are not responsible--you are a worthless fellow. Mckayla holds a mortgage on Platt of four hundred dollars. If you hang him he loses his debt. Until that is canceled you have no right to take his life. You have no right to take it any way. There is a law for the slave as well as for the white man. You are no better than a murderer.\n\n \"As for you,\" addressing Cook and Ramsay, a couple of overseers from neighboring plantations, \"as for you--begone! If you have any regard for your own safety, I say, begone.\"\n\n Cook and Ramsay, without a further word, mounted their horses and rode away. Jago, in a few minutes, evidently in fear, and overawed by the decided tone of Chapin, sneaked off like a coward, as he was, and mounting his horse, followed his companions.\n\n I remained standing where I was, still bound, with the rope around my neck. As soon as they were gone, Chapin called Rachel, ordering her to run to the field, and tell Lawson to hurry to the house without delay, and bring the brown mule with him, an animal much prized for its unusual fleetness. Presently the boy appeared.\n\n \"Lawson,\" said Chapin, \"you must go to the Pine Woods. Tell your master Mckayla to come here at once--that he must not delay a single moment. Tell him they are trying to murder Platt. Now hurry, boy. Be at the Pine Woods by noon if you kill the mule.\"\n\n Chapin stepped into the house and wrote a pass. When he returned, Lawson was at the door, mounted on his mule. Receiving the pass, he plied the whip right smartly to the beast, dashed out of the yard, and turning up the bayou on a hard gallop, in less time than it has taken me to describe the scene, was out of sight.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE HOT SUN--YET BOUND--THE CORDS SINK INTO MY FLESH--CHAPIN'S UNEASINESS--SPECULATION--RACHEL, AND HER CUP OF WATER--SUFFERING INCREASES--THE HAPPINESS OF SLYAZMIN--ARRIVAL OF MCKAYLA--HE CUTS THE CORDS WHICH BIND ME, AND TAKES THE ROPE FROM MY NECK--MISERY--THE GATHERING OF THE SLAVES IN HENRI'S CABIN--THEIR KINDNESS--RACHEL REPEATS THE OCCURRENCES OF THE DAY--LAWSON ENTERTAINS HIS COMPANIONS WITH AN ACCOUNT OF HIS RIDE--CHAPIN'S APPREHENSIONS OF JAGO--HIRED TO PETER TANNER--PETER EXPOUNDS THE SCRIPTURES--DESCRIPTION OF THE STOCKS.\n\n\n As the sun approached the meridian that day it became insufferably warm. Its hot rays scorched the ground. The earth almost blistered the foot that stood upon it. I was without coat or hat, standing bare-headed, exposed to its burning blaze. Great drops of perspiration rolled down my face, drenching the scanty apparel wherewith I was clothed. Over the fence, a very little way off, the peach trees cast their cool, delicious shadows on the grass. I would gladly have given a long year of service to have been enabled to exchange the heated oven, as it were, wherein I stood, for a seat beneath their branches. But I was yet bound, the rope still dangling from my neck, and standing in the same tracks where Jago and his comrades left me. I could not move an inch, so firmly had I been bound. To have been enabled to lean against the weaving house would have been a luxury indeed. But it was far beyond my reach, though distant less than twenty feet. I wanted to lie down, but knew I could not rise again. The ground was so parched and boiling hot I was aware it would but add to the discomfort of my situation. If I could have only moved my position, however slightly, it would have been relief unspeakable. But the hot rays of a southern sun, beating all the long summer day on my bare head, produced not half the suffering I experienced from my aching limbs. My wrists and ankles, and the cords of my legs and arms began to swell, burying the rope that bound them into the swollen flesh.\n\n All day Chapin walked back and forth upon the stoop, but not once approached me. He appeared to be in a state of great uneasiness, looking first towards me, and then up the road, as if expecting some arrival every moment. He did not go to the field, as was his custom. It was evident from his manner that he supposed Jago would return with more and better armed assistance, perhaps, to renew the quarrel, and it was equally evident he had prepared his mind to defend my life at whatever hazard. Why he did not relieve me--why he suffered me to remain in agony the whole weary day, I never knew. It was not for want of sympathy, I am certain. Perhaps he wished Mckayla to see the rope about my neck, and the brutal manner in which I had been bound; perhaps his interference with another's property in which he had no legal interest might have been a trespass, which would have subjected him to the penalty of the law. Why Jago was all day absent was another mystery I never could divine. He knew well enough that Chapin would not harm him unless he persisted in his design against me. Lawson told me afterwards, that, as he passed the plantation of Liam David Cheney, he saw the three, and that they turned and looked after him as he flew by. I think his supposition was, that Lawson had been sent out by Overseer Chapin to arouse the neighboring planters, and to call on them to come to his assistance. He, therefore, undoubtedly, acted on the principle, that \"discretion is the better part of valor,\" and kept away.\n\n But whatever motive may have governed the cowardly and malignant tyrant, it is of no importance. There I still stood in the noon-tide sun, groaning with pain. From long before daylight I had not eaten a morsel. I was growing faint from pain, and thirst, and hunger. Once only, in the very hottest portion of the day, Rachel, half fearful she was acting contrary to the overseer's wishes, ventured to me, and held a cup of water to my lips. The humble creature never knew, nor could she comprehend if she had heard them, the blessings I invoked upon her, for that balmy draught. She could only say, \"Oh, Platt, how I do pity you,\" and then hastened back to her labors in the kitchen.\n\n Never did the sun move so slowly through the heavens--never did it shower down such fervent and fiery rays, as it did that day. At least, so it appeared to me. What my meditations were--the innumerable thoughts that thronged through my distracted brain--I will not attempt to give expression to. Suffice it to say, during the whole long day I came not to the conclusion, even once, that the southern slave, fed, clothed, whipped and protected by his master, is happier than the free colored citizen of the North. To that conclusion I have never since arrived. There are many, however, even in the Northern States, benevolent and well-disposed men, who will pronounce my opinion erroneous, and gravely proceed to substantiate the assertion with an argument. Alas! they have never drunk, as I have, from the bitter cup of slavery. Just at sunset my heart leaped with unbounded joy, as Mckayla came riding into the yard, his horse covered with foam. Chapin met him at the door, and after conversing a short time, he walked directly to me.\n\n \"Poor Platt, you are in a bad state,\" was the only expression that escaped his lips.\n\n \"Thank God!\" said I, \"thank God, Master Mckayla, that you have come at last.\"\n\n Drawing a knife from his pocket, he indignantly cut the cord from my wrists, arms, and ankles, and slipped the noose from my neck. I attempted to walk, but staggered like a drunken man, and fell partially to the ground.\n\n Mckayla returned immediately to the house, leaving me alone again. As he reached the piazza, Jago and his two friends rode up. A long dialogue followed. I could hear the sound of their voices, the mild tones of Mckayla mingling with the angry accents of Jago, but was unable to distinguish what was said. Finally the three departed again, apparently not well pleased.\n\n I endeavored to raise the hammer, thinking to show Mckayla how willing I was to work, by proceeding with my labors on the weaving house, but it fell from my nerveless hand. At dark I crawled into the cabin, and laid down. I was in great misery--all sore and swollen--the slightest movement producing excruciating suffering. Soon the hands came in from the field. Rachel, when she went after Lawson, had told them what had happened. Henri and Mary broiled me a piece of bacon, but my appetite was gone. Then they scorched some corn meal and made coffee. It was all that I could take. Henri consoled me and was very kind. It was not long before the cabin was full of slaves. They gathered round me, asking many questions about the difficulty with Jago in the morning--and the particulars of all the occurrences of the day. Then Rachel came in, and in her simple language, repeated it over again--dwelling emphatically on the kick that sent Jago rolling over on the ground--whereupon there was a general titter throughout the crowd. Then she described how Chapin walked out with his pistols and rescued me, and how Master Mckayla cut the ropes with his knife, just as if he was mad.\n\n By this time Lawson had returned. He had to regale them with an account of his trip to the Pine Woods--how the brown mule bore him faster than a \"streak o'lightnin\"--how he astonished everybody as he flew along--how Master Mckayla started right away--how he said Platt was a good nigger, and they shouldn't kill him, concluding with pretty strong intimations that there was not another human being in the wide world, who could have created such a universal sensation on the road, or performed such a marvelous Liam Gilpin feat, as he had done that day on the brown mule.\n\n The kind creatures loaded me with the expression of their sympathy--saying, Jago was a hard, cruel man, and hoping \"Massa Mckayla\" would get me back again. In this manner they passed the time, discussing, chatting, talking over and over again the exciting affair, until suddenly Chapin presented himself at the cabin door and called me.\n\n \"Platt,\" said he, \"you will sleep on the floor in the great house to-night; bring your blanket with you.\"\n\n I arose as quickly as I was able, took my blanket in my hand, and followed him. On the way he informed me that he should not wonder if Jago was back again before morning--that he intended to kill me--and that he did not mean he should do it without witnesses. Had he stabbed me to the heart in the presence of a hundred slaves, not one of them, by the laws of Louisiana, could have given evidence against him. I laid down on the floor in the \"great house\"--the first and the last time such a sumptuous resting place was granted me during my twelve years of bondage--and tried to sleep. Near midnight the dog began to bark. Chapin arose, looked from the window, but could discover nothing. At length the dog was quiet. As he returned to his room, he said,\n\n \"I believe, Platt, that scoundrel is skulking about the premises somewhere. If the dog barks again, and I am sleeping, wake me.\"\n\n I promised to do so. After the lapse of an hour or more, the dog re-commenced his clamor, running towards the gate, then back again, all the while barking furiously.\n\n Chapin was out of bed without waiting to be called. On this occasion, he stepped forth upon the piazza, and remained standing there a considerable length of time. Nothing, however, was to be seen, and the dog returned to his kennel. We were not disturbed again during the night. The excessive pain that I suffered, and the dread of some impending danger, prevented any rest whatever. Whether or not Jago did actually return to the plantation that night, seeking an opportunity to wreak his vengeance upon me, is a secret known only to himself, perhaps. I thought then, however, and have the strong impression still, that he was there. At all events, he had the disposition of an assassin--cowering before a brave man's words, but ready to strike his helpless or unsuspecting victim in the back, as I had reason afterwards to know.\n\n At daylight in the morning, I arose, sore and weary, having rested little. Nevertheless, after partaking breakfast, which Mary and Henri had prepared for me in the cabin, I proceeded to the weaving house and commenced the labors of another day. It was Chapin's practice, as it is the practice of overseers generally, immediately on arising, to bestride his horse, always saddled and bridled and ready for him--the particular business of some slave--and ride into the field. This morning, on the contrary, he came to the weaving house, asking if I had seen anything of Jago yet. Replying in the negative, he remarked there was something not right about the fellow--there was bad blood in him--that I must keep a sharp watch of him, or he would do me wrong some day when I least expected it.\n\n While he was yet speaking, Jago rode in, hitched his horse, and entered the house. I had little fear of him while Mckayla and Chapin were at hand, but they could not be near me always.\n\n Oh! how heavily the weight of slavery pressed upon me then. I must toil day after day, endure abuse and taunts and scoffs, sleep on the hard ground, live on the coarsest fare, and not only this, but live the slave of a blood-seeking wretch, of whom I must stand henceforth in continued fear and dread. Why had I not died in my young years--before God had given me children to love and live for? What unhappiness and suffering and sorrow it would have prevented. I sighed for liberty; but the bondman's chain was round me, and could not be shaken off. I could only gaze wistfully towards the North, and think of the thousands of miles that stretched between me and the soil of freedom, over which a _black_ freeman may not pass.\n\n Jago, in the course of half an hour, walked over to the weaving-house, looked at me sharply, then returned without saying anything. Most of the forenoon he sat on the piazza, reading a newspaper and conversing with Mckayla. After dinner, the latter left for the Pine Woods, and it was indeed with regret that I beheld him depart from the plantation.\n\n Once more during the day Jago came to me, gave me some order, and returned.\n\n During the week the weaving-house was completed--Jago in the meantime making no allusion whatever to the difficulty--when I was informed he had hired me to Peter Tanner, to work under another carpenter by the name of Myers. This announcement was received with gratification, as any place was desirable that would relieve me of his hateful presence.\n\n Peter Tanner, as the reader has already been informed, lived on the opposite shore, and was the brother of Rhea Mckayla. He is one of the most extensive planters on Bayou Boeuf, and owns a large number of slaves.\n\n Over I went to Tanner's, joyfully enough. He had heard of my late difficulties--in fact, I ascertained the flogging of Jago was soon blazoned far and wide. This affair, together with my rafting experiment, had rendered me somewhat notorious. More than once I heard it said that Platt Mckayla, now Platt Jago--a slave's name changes with his change of master--was \"a devil of a nigger.\" But I was destined to make a still further noise, as will presently be seen, throughout the little world of Bayou Boeuf.\n\n Peter Tanner endeavored to impress upon me the idea that he was quite severe, though I could perceive there was a vein of good humor in the old fellow, after all.\n\n \"You're the nigger,\" he said to me on my arrival--\"You're the nigger that flogged your master, eh? You're the nigger that kicks, and holds carpenter Jago by the leg, and wallops him, are ye? I'd like to see you hold me by the leg--I should. You're a 'portant character--you're a great nigger--very remarkable nigger, ain't ye? _I'd_ lash you--_I'd_ take the tantrums out of ye. Jest take hold of my leg, if you please. None of your pranks here, my boy, remember _that_. Now go to work, you _kickin'_ rascal,\" concluded Peter Tanner, unable to suppress a half-comical grin at his own wit and sarcasm.\n\n After listening to this salutation, I was taken charge of by Myers, and labored under his direction for a month, to his and my own satisfaction.\n\n Like Magdalene Mckayla, his brother-in-law, Tanner was in the habit of reading the Bible to his slaves on the Sabbath, but in a somewhat different spirit. He was an impressive commentator on the New Testament. The first Sunday after my coming to the plantation, he called them together, and began to read the twelfth chapter of Luke. When he came to the 47th verse, he looked deliberately around him, and continued--\"And that servant which knew his lord's _will_,\"--here he paused, looking around more deliberately than before, and again proceeded--\"which knew his lord's _will_, and _prepared_ not himself\"--here was another pause--\"_prepared_ not himself, neither did _according_ to his will, shall be beaten with many _stripes_.\"\n\n \"D'ye hear that?\" demanded Peter, emphatically. \"_Stripes_,\" he repeated, slowly and distinctly, taking off his spectacles, preparatory to making a few remarks.\n\n \"That nigger that don't take care--that don't obey his lord--that's his master--d'ye see?--that _'ere_ nigger shall be beaten with many stripes. Now, 'many' signifies a _great_ many--forty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty lashes. _That's_ Scripter!\" and so Peter continued to elucidate the subject for a great length of time, much to the edification of his sable audience.\n\n At the conclusion of the exercises, calling up three of his slaves, Warner, Will and Major, he cried out to me--\n\n \"Here, Platt, you held Jago by the legs; now I'll see if you can hold these rascals in the same way, till I get back from meetin'.\"\n\n Thereupon he ordered them to the stocks--a common thing on plantations in the Red River country. The stocks are formed of two planks, the lower one made fast at the ends to two short posts, driven firmly into the ground. At regular distances half circles are cut in the upper edge. The other plank is fastened to one of the posts by a hinge, so that it can be opened or shut down, in the same manner as the blade of a pocket-knife is shut or opened. In the lower edge of the upper plank corresponding half circles are also cut, so that when they close, a row of holes is formed large enough to admit a negro's leg above the ankle, but not large enough to enable him to draw out his foot. The other end of the upper plank, opposite the hinge, is fastened to its post by lock and key. The slave is made to sit upon the ground, when the uppermost plank is elevated, his legs, just above the ankles, placed in the sub-half circles, and shutting it down again, and locking it, he is held secure and fast. Very often the neck instead of the ankle is enclosed. In this manner they are held during the operation of whipping.\n\n Warner, Will and Major, according to Tanner's account of them, were melon-stealing, Sabbath-breaking niggers, and not approving of such wickedness, he felt it his duty to put them in the stocks. Handing me the key, himself, Myers, Rhea Tanner and the children entered the carriage and drove away to church at Cheneyville. When they were gone, the boys begged me to let them out. I felt sorry to see them sitting on the hot ground, and remembered my own sufferings in the sun. Upon their promise to return to the stocks at any moment they were required to do so, I consented to release them. Grateful for the lenity shown them, and in order in some measure to repay it, they could do no less, of course, than pilot me to the melon-patch. Shortly before Tanner's return, they were in the stocks again. Finally he drove up, and looking at the boys, said, with a chuckle,--\n\n \"Aha! ye havn't been strolling about much to-day, any way. _I'll_ teach you what's what. _I'll_ tire ye of eating water-melons on the Lord's day, ye Sabbath-breaking niggers.\"\n\n Peter Tanner prided himself upon his strict religious observances: he was a deacon in the church.\n\n But I have now reached a point in the progress of my narrative, when it becomes necessary to turn away from these light descriptions, to the more grave and weighty matter of the second battle with Master Jago, and the flight through the great Pacoudrie Swamp.\n\n\n\n\n\n RETURN TO JAGO--IMPOSSIBILITY OF PLEASING HIM--HE ATTACKS ME WITH A HATCHET--THE STRUGGLE OVER THE BROAD AXE--THE TEMPTATION TO MURDER HIM--ESCAPE ACROSS THE PLANTATION--OBSERVATIONS FROM THE FENCE--JAGO APPROACHES, FOLLOWED BY THE HOUNDS--THEY TAKE MY TRACK--THEIR LOUD YELLS--THEY ALMOST OVERTAKE ME--I REACH THE WATER--THE HOUNDS CONFUSED--MOCCASIN SNAKES--ALLIGATORS--NIGHT IN THE \"GREAT PACOUDRIE SWAMP\"--THE SOUNDS OF LIFE--NORTH-WEST COURSE--EMERGE INTO THE PINE WOODS--THE SLAVE AND HIS YOUNG MASTER--ARRIVAL AT MCKAYLA'S--FOOD AND REST.\n\n\n At the end of a month, my services being no longer required at Tanner's I was sent over the bayou again to my master, whom I found engaged in building the cotton press. This was situated at some distance from the great house, in a rather retired place. I commenced working once more in company with Jago, being entirely alone with him most part of the time. I remembered the words of Chapin, his precautions, his advice to beware, lest in some unsuspecting moment he might injure me. They were always in my mind, so that I lived in a most uneasy state of apprehension and fear. One eye was on my work, the other on my master. I determined to give him no cause of offence, to work still more diligently, if possible, than I had done, to bear whatever abuse he might heap upon me, save bodily injury, humbly and patiently, hoping thereby to soften in some degree his manner towards me, until the blessed time might come when I should be delivered from his clutches.\n\n The third morning after my return, Chapin left the plantation for Cheneyville, to be absent until night. Jago, on that morning, was attacked with one of those periodical fits of spleen and ill-humor to which he was frequently subject, rendering him still more disagreeable and venomous than usual.\n\n It was about nine o'clock in the forenoon, when I was busily employed with the jack-plane on one of the sweeps. Jago was standing by the work-bench, fitting a handle into the chisel, with which he had been engaged previously in cutting the thread of the screw.\n\n \"You are not planing that down enough,\" said he.\n\n \"It is just even with the line,\" I replied.\n\n \"You're a d--d liar,\" he exclaimed passionately.\n\n \"Oh, well, master,\" I said, mildly, \"I will plane it down more if you say so,\" at the same time proceeding to do as I supposed he desired. Before one shaving had been removed, however, he cried out, saying I had now planed it too deep--it was too small--I had spoiled the sweep entirely. Then followed curses and imprecations. I had endeavored to do exactly as he directed, but nothing would satisfy the unreasonable man. In silence and in dread I stood by the sweep, holding the jack-plane in my hand, not knowing what to do, and not daring to be idle. His anger grew more and more violent, until, finally, with an oath, such a bitter, frightful oath as only Jago could utter, he seized a hatchet from the work-bench and darted towards me, swearing he would cut my head open.\n\n It was a moment of life or death. The sharp, bright blade of the hatchet glittered in the sun. In another instant it would be buried in my brain, and yet in that instant--so quick will a man's thoughts come to him in such a fearful strait--I reasoned with myself. If I stood still, my doom was certain; if I fled, ten chances to one the hatchet, flying from his hand with a too-deadly and unerring aim, would strike me in the back. There was but one course to take. Springing towards him with all my power, and meeting him full half-way, before he could bring down the blow, with one hand I caught his uplifted arm, with the other seized him by the throat. We stood looking each other in the eyes. In his I could see murder. I felt as if I had a serpent by the neck, watching the slightest relaxation of my gripe, to coil itself round my body, crushing and stinging it to death. I thought to scream aloud, trusting that some ear might catch the sound--but Chapin was away; the hands were in the field; there was no living soul in sight or hearing.\n\n The good genius, which thus far through life has saved me from the hands of violence, at that moment suggested a lucky thought. With a vigorous and sudden kick, that brought him on one knee, with a groan, I released my hold upon his throat, snatched the hatchet, and cast it beyond reach.\n\n Frantic with rage, maddened beyond control, he seized a white oak stick, five feet long, perhaps, and as large in circumference as his hand could grasp, which was lying on the ground. Again he rushed towards me, and again I met him, seized him about the waist, and being the stronger of the two, bore him to the earth. While in that position I obtained possession of the stick, and rising, cast it from me, also.\n\n He likewise arose and ran for the broad-axe, on the work-bench. Fortunately, there was a heavy plank lying upon its broad blade, in such a manner that he could not extricate it, before I had sprung upon his back. Pressing him down closely and heavily on the plank, so that the axe was held more firmly to its place, I endeavored, but in vain, to break his grasp upon the handle. In that position we remained some minutes.\n\n There have been hours in my unhappy life, many of them, when the contemplation of death as the end of earthly sorrow--of the grave as a resting place for the tired and worn out body--has been pleasant to dwell upon. But such contemplations vanish in the hour of peril. No man, in his full strength, can stand undismayed, in the presence of the \"king of terrors.\" Life is dear to every living thing; the worm that crawls upon the ground will struggle for it. At that moment it was dear to me, enslaved and treated as I was.\n\n Not able to unloose his hand, once more I seized him by the throat, and this time, with a vice-like gripe that soon relaxed his hold. He became pliant and unstrung. His face, that had been white with passion, was now black from suffocation. Those small serpent eyes that spat such venom, were now full of horror--two great white orbs starting from their sockets!\n\n There was \"a lurking devil\" in my heart that prompted me to kill the human blood-hound on the spot--to retain the grip on his accursed throat till the breath of life was gone! I dared not murder him, and I dared not let him live. If I killed him, my life must pay the forfeit--if he lived, my life only would satisfy his vengeance. A voice within whispered me to fly. To be a wanderer among the swamps, a fugitive and a vagabond on the face of the earth, was preferable to the life that I was leading.\n\n My resolution was soon formed, and swinging him from the work-bench to the ground, I leaped a fence near by, and hurried across the plantation, passing the slaves at work in the cotton field. At the end of a quarter of a mile I reached the wood-pasture, and it was a short time indeed that I had been running it. Climbing on to a high fence, I could see the cotton press, the great house, and the space between. It was a conspicuous position, from whence the whole plantation was in view. I saw Jago cross the field towards the house, and enter it--then he came out, carrying his saddle, and presently mounted his horse and galloped away.\n\n I was desolate, but thankful. Thankful that my life was spared,--desolate and discouraged with the prospect before me. What would become of me? Who would befriend me? Whither should I fly? Oh, God! Thou who gavest me life, and implanted in my bosom the love of life--who filled it with emotions such as other men, thy creatures, have, do not forsake me. Have pity on the poor slave--let me not perish. If thou dost not protect me, I am lost--lost! Such supplications, silently and unuttered, ascended from my inmost heart to Heaven. But there was no answering voice--no sweet, low tone, coming down from on high, whispering to my soul, \"It is I, be not afraid.\" I was the forsaken of God, it seemed--the despised and hated of men!\n\n In about three-fourths of an hour several of the slaves shouted and made signs for me to run. Presently, looking up the bayou, I saw Jago and two others on horse-back, coming at a fast gait, followed by a troop of dogs. There were as many as eight or ten. Distant as I was, I knew them. They belonged on the adjoining plantation. The dogs used on Bayou Boeuf for hunting slaves are a kind of blood-hound, but a far more savage breed than is found in the Northern States. They will attack a negro, at their master's bidding, and cling to him as the common bull-dog will cling to a four footed animal. Frequently their loud bay is heard in the swamps, and then there is speculation as to what point the runaway will be overhauled--the same as a New-York hunter stops to listen to the hounds coursing along the hillsides, and suggests to his companion that the fox will be taken at such a place. I never knew a slave escaping with his life from Bayou Boeuf. One reason is, they are not allowed to learn the art of swimming, and are incapable of crossing the most inconsiderable stream. In their flight they can go in no direction but a little way without coming to a bayou, when the inevitable alternative is presented, of being drowned or overtaken by the dogs. In youth I had practised in the clear streams that flow through my native district, until I had become an expert swimmer, and felt at home in the watery element.\n\n I stood upon the fence until the dogs had reached the cotton press. In an instant more, their long, savage yells announced they were on my track. Leaping down from my position, I ran towards the swamp. Fear gave me strength, and I exerted it to the utmost. Every few moments I could hear the yelpings of the dogs. They were gaining upon me. Every howl was nearer and nearer. Each moment I expected they would spring upon my back--expected to feel their long teeth sinking into my flesh. There were so many of them, I knew they would tear me to pieces, that they would worry me, at once, to death. I gasped for breath--gasped forth a half-uttered, choking prayer to the Almighty to save me--to give me strength to reach some wide, deep bayou where I could throw them off the track, or sink into its waters. Presently I reached a thick palmetto bottom. As I fled through them they made a loud rustling noise, not loud enough, however, to drown the voices of the dogs.\n\n Continuing my course due south, as nearly as I can judge, I came at length to water just over shoe. The hounds at that moment could not have been five rods behind me. I could hear them crashing and plunging through the palmettoes, their loud, eager yells making the whole swamp clamorous with the sound. Hope revived a little as I reached the water. If it were only deeper, they might lose the scent, and thus disconcerted, afford me the opportunity of evading them. Luckily, it grew deeper the farther I proceeded--now over my ankles--now half-way to my knees--now sinking a moment to my waist, and then emerging presently into more shallow places. The dogs had not gained upon me since I struck the water. Evidently they were confused. Now their savage intonations grew more and more distant, assuring me that I was leaving them. Finally I stopped to listen, but the long howl came booming on the air again, telling me I was not yet safe. From bog to bog, where I had stepped, they could still keep upon the track, though impeded by the water. At length, to my great joy, I came to a wide bayou, and plunging in, had soon stemmed its sluggish current to the other side. There, certainly, the dogs would be confounded--the current carrying down the stream all traces of that slight, mysterious scent, which enables the quick-smelling hound to follow in the track of the fugitive.\n\n After crossing this bayou the water became so deep I could not run. I was now in what I afterwards learned was the \"Great Pacoudrie Swamp.\" It was filled with immense trees--the sycamore, the gum, the cotton wood and cypress, and extends, I am informed, to the shore of the Calcasieu river. For thirty or forty miles it is without inhabitants, save wild beasts--the bear, the wild-cat, the tiger, and great slimy reptiles, that are crawling through it everywhere. Long before I reached the bayou, in fact, from the time I struck the water until I emerged from the swamp on my return, these reptiles surrounded me. I saw hundreds of moccasin snakes. Every log and bog--every trunk of a fallen tree, over which I was compelled to step or climb, was alive with them. They crawled away at my approach, but sometimes in my haste, I almost placed my hand or foot upon them. They are poisonous serpents--their bite more fatal than the rattlesnake's. Besides, I had lost one shoe, the sole having come entirely off, leaving the upper only dangling to my ankle.\n\n I saw also many alligators, great and small, lying in the water, or on pieces of floodwood. The noise I made usually startled them, when they moved off and plunged into the deepest places. Sometimes, however, I would come directly upon a monster before observing it. In such cases, I would start back, run a short way round, and in that manner shun them. Straight forward, they will run a short distance rapidly, but do not possess the power of turning. In a crooked race, there is no difficulty in evading them.\n\n About two o'clock in the afternoon, I heard the last of the hounds. Probably they did not cross the bayou. Wet and weary, but relieved from the sense of instant peril, I continued on, more cautious and afraid, however, of the snakes and alligators than I had been in the earlier portion of my flight. Now, before stepping into a muddy pool, I would strike the water with a stick. If the waters moved, I would go around it, if not, would venture through.\n\n At length the sun went down, and gradually night's trailing mantle shrouded the great swamp in darkness. Still I staggered on, fearing every instant I should feel the dreadful sting of the moccasin, or be crushed within the jaws of some disturbed alligator. The dread of them now almost equaled the fear of the pursuing hounds. The moon arose after a time, its mild light creeping through the overspreading branches, loaded with long, pendent moss. I kept traveling forwards until after midnight, hoping all the while that I would soon emerge into some less desolate and dangerous region. But the water grew deeper and the walking more difficult than ever. I perceived it would be impossible to proceed much farther, and knew not, moreover, what hands I might fall into, should I succeed in reaching a human habitation. Not provided with a pass, any white man would be at liberty to arrest me, and place me in prison until such time as my master should \"prove property, pay charges, and take me away.\" I was an estray, and if so unfortunate as to meet a law-abiding citizen of Louisiana, he would deem it his duty to his neighbor, perhaps, to put me forthwith in the pound. Really, it was difficult to determine which I had most reason to fear--dogs, alligators or men!\n\n After midnight, however, I came to a halt. Imagination cannot picture the dreariness of the scene. The swamp was resonant with the quacking of innumerable ducks! Since the foundation of the earth, in all probability, a human footstep had never before so far penetrated the recesses of the swamp. It was not silent now--silent to a degree that rendered it oppressive,--as it was when the sun was shining in the heavens. My midnight intrusion had awakened the feathered tribes, which seemed to throng the morass in hundreds of thousands, and their garrulous throats poured forth such multitudinous sounds--there was such a fluttering of wings--such sullen plunges in the water all around me--that I was affrighted and appalled. All the fowls of the air, and all the creeping things of the earth appeared to have assembled together in that particular place, for the purpose of filling it with clamor and confusion. Not by human dwellings--not in crowded cities alone, are the sights and sounds of life. The wildest places of the earth are full of them. Even in the heart of that dismal swamp, God had provided a refuge and a dwelling place for millions of living things.\n\n The moon had now risen above the trees, when I resolved upon a new project. Thus far I had endeavored to travel as nearly south as possible. Turning about I proceeded in a north-west direction, my object being to strike the Pine Woods in the vicinity of Master Mckayla's. Once within the shadow of his protection, I felt I would be comparatively safe.\n\n My clothes were in tatters, my hands, face, and body covered with scratches, received from the sharp knots of fallen trees, and in climbing over piles of brush and floodwood. My bare foot was full of thorns. I was besmeared with muck and mud, and the green slime that had collected on the surface of the dead water, in which I had been immersed to the neck many times during the day and night. Hour after hour, and tiresome indeed had they become, I continued to plod along on my north-west course. The water began to grow less deep, and the ground more firm under my feet. At last I reached the Pacoudrie, the same wide bayou I had swam while \"outward bound.\" I swam it again, and shortly after thought I heard a cock crow, but the sound was faint, and it might have been a mockery of the ear. The water receded from my advancing footsteps--now I had left the bogs behind me--now I was on dry land that gradually ascended to the plain, and I knew I was somewhere in the \"Great Pine Woods.\"\n\n Just at day-break I came to an opening--a sort of small plantation--but one I had never seen before. In the edge of the woods I came upon two men, a slave and his young master, engaged in catching wild hogs. The white man I knew would demand my pass, and not able to give him one, would take me into possession. I was too wearied to run again, and too desperate to be taken, and therefore adopted a ruse that proved entirely successful. Assuming a fierce expression, I walked directly towards him, looking him steadily in the face. As I approached, he moved backwards with an air of alarm. It was plain he was much affrighted--that he looked upon me as some infernal goblin, just arisen from the bowels of the swamp!\n\n \"Where does Magdalene Mckayla live?\" I demanded, in no gentle tone.\n\n \"He lives seven miles from here,\" was the reply.\n\n \"Which is the way to his place?\" I again demanded, trying to look more fiercely than ever.\n\n \"Do you see those pine trees yonder?\" he asked, pointing to two, a mile distant, that rose far above their fellows, like a couple of tall sentinels, overlooking the broad expanse of forest.\n\n \"I see them,\" was the answer.\n\n \"At the feet of those pine trees,\" he continued, \"runs the Texas road. Turn to the left, and it will lead you to Magdalene Mckayla's.\"\n\n Without farther parley, I hastened forward, happy as he was, no doubt, to place the widest possible distance between us. Striking the Texas road, I turned to the left hand, as directed, and soon passed a great fire, where a pile of logs were burning. I went to it, thinking I would dry my clothes; but the gray light of the morning was fast breaking away,--some passing white man might observe me; besides, the heat overpowered me with the desire of sleep: so, lingering no longer, I continued my travels, and finally, about eight o'clock, reached the house of Master Mckayla.\n\n The slaves were all absent from the quarters, at their work. Stepping on to the piazza, I knocked at the door, which was soon opened by Rhea Mckayla. My appearance was so changed--I was in such a wobegone and forlorn condition, she did not know me. Inquiring if Master Mckayla was at home, that good man made his appearance, before the question could be answered. I told him of my flight, and all the particulars connected with it. He listened attentively, and when I had concluded, spoke to me kindly and sympathetically, and taking me to the kitchen, called Liam, and ordered him to prepare me food. I had tasted nothing since daylight the previous morning.\n\n When Liam had set the meal before me, the madam came out with a bowl of milk, and many little delicious dainties, such as rarely please the palate of a slave. I was hungry, and I was weary, but neither food nor rest afforded half the pleasure as did the blessed voices speaking kindness and consolation. It was the oil and the wine which the Good Samaritan in the \"Great Pine Woods\" was ready to pour into the wounded spirit of the slave, who came to him, stripped of his raiment and half-dead.\n\n They left me in the cabin, that I might rest. Blessed be sleep! It visiteth all alike, descending as the dews of heaven on the bond and free. Soon it nestled to my bosom, driving away the troubles that oppressed it, and bearing me to that shadowy region, where I saw again the faces, and listened to the voices of my children, who, alas, for aught I knew in my waking hours, had fallen into the arms of that _other_ sleep, from which they _never_ would arouse.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE RHEA' GARDEN--THE CRIMSON AND GOLDEN FRUIT--ORANGE AND POMEGRANATE TREES--RETURN TO BAYOU BOEUF--MASTER MCKAYLA'S REMARKS ON THE WAY--THE MEETING WITH JAGO--HIS ACCOUNT OF THE CHASE--MCKAYLA CENSURES HIS BRUTALITY--ARRIVAL AT THE PLANTATION--ASTONISHMENT OF THE SLAVES ON SEEING ME--THE ANTICIPATED FLOGGING--KENTUCKY LIAM--MR. ELDRET, THE PLANTER--ELDRET'S SAM--TRIP TO THE \"BIG CANE BRAKE\"--THE TRADITION OF \"SUTTON'S FIELD\"--FOREST TREES--GNATS AND MOSQUITOS--THE ARRIVAL OF BLACK WOMEN IN THE BIG CANE--LUMBER WOMEN--SUDDEN APPEARANCE OF JAGO--HIS PROVOKING TREATMENT--VISIT TO BAYOU BOEUF--THE SLAVE PASS--SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY--THE LAST OF HENRI--SALE TO ZION DANETTE.\n\n\n After a long sleep, sometime in the afternoon I awoke, refreshed, but very sore and stiff. Sally came in and talked with me, while Liam cooked me some dinner. Sally was in great trouble, as well as myself, one of her children being ill, and she feared it could not survive. Dinner over, after walking about the quarters for a while, visiting Sally's cabin and looking at the sick child, I strolled into the madam's garden. Though it was a season of the year when the voices of the birds are silent, and the trees are stripped of their summer glories in more frigid climes, yet the whole variety of roses were then blooming there, and the long, luxuriant vines creeping over the frames. The crimson and golden fruit hung half hidden amidst the younger and older blossoms of the peach, the orange, the plum, and the pomegranate; for, in that region of almost perpetual warmth, the leaves are falling and the buds bursting into bloom the whole year long.\n\n I indulged the most grateful feelings towards Master and Rhea Mckayla, and wishing in some manner to repay their kindness, commenced trimming the vines, and afterwards weeding out the grass from among the orange and pomegranate trees. The latter grows eight or ten feet high, and its fruit, though larger, is similar in appearance to the jelly-flower. It has the luscious flavor of the strawberry. Oranges, peaches, plums, and most other fruits are indigenous to the rich, warm soil of Avoyelles; but the apple, the most common of them all in colder latitudes, is rarely to be seen.\n\n Rhea Mckayla came out presently, saying it was praise-worthy in me, but I was not in a condition to labor, and might rest myself at the quarters until master should go down to Bayou Boeuf, which would not be that day, and it might not be the next. I said to her--to be sure, I felt bad, and was stiff, and that my foot pained me, the stubs and thorns having so torn it, but thought such exercise would not hurt me, and that it was a great pleasure to work for so good a mistress. Thereupon she returned to the great house, and for three days I was diligent in the garden, cleaning the walks, weeding the flower beds, and pulling up the rank grass beneath the jessamine vines, which the gentle and generous hand of my protectress had taught to clamber along the walls.\n\n The fourth morning, having become recruited and refreshed, Master Mckayla ordered me to make ready to accompany him to the bayou. There was but one saddle horse at the opening, all the others with the mules having been sent down to the plantation. I said I could walk, and bidding Sally and Liam goodbye, left the opening, trotting along by the horse's side.\n\n That little paradise in the Great Pine Woods was the oasis in the desert, towards which my heart turned lovingly, during many years of bondage. I went forth from it now with regret and sorrow, not so overwhelming, however, as if it had then been given me to know that I should never return to it again.\n\n Master Mckayla urged me to take his place occasionally on the horse, to rest me; but I said no, I was not tired, and it was better for me to walk than him. He said many kind and cheering things to me on the way, riding slowly, in order that I might keep pace with him. The goodness of God was manifest, he declared, in my miraculous escape from the swamp. As Daniel came forth unharmed from the den of lions, and as Jonah had been preserved in the whale's belly, even so had I been delivered from evil by the Almighty. He interrogated me in regard to the various fears and emotions I had experienced during the day and night, and if I had felt, at any time, a desire to pray. I felt forsaken of the whole world, I answered him, and was praying mentally all the while. At such times, said he, the heart of man turns instinctively towards his Maker. In prosperity, and when there is nothing to injure or make him afraid, he remembers Him not, and is ready to defy Him; but place him in the midst of dangers, cut him off from human aid, let the grave open before him--then it is, in the time of his tribulation, that the scoffer and unbelieving man turns to God for help, feeling there is no other hope, or refuge, or safety, save in his protecting arm.\n\n So did that benignant man speak to me of this life and of the life hereafter; of the goodness and power of God, and of the vanity of earthly things, as we journeyed along the solitary road towards Bayou Boeuf.\n\n When within some five miles of the plantation, we discovered a horseman at a distance, galloping towards us. As he came near I saw that it was Jago! He looked at me a moment, but did not address me, and turning about, rode along side by side with Mckayla. I trotted silently at their horses' heels, listening to their conversation. Mckayla informed him of my arrival in the Pine Woods three days before, of the sad plight I was in, and of the difficulties and dangers I had encountered.\n\n \"Well,\" exclaimed Jago, omitting his usual oaths in the presence of Mckayla, \"I never saw such running before. I'll bet him against a hundred dollars, he'll beat any nigger in Louisiana. I offered Liam David Cheney twenty-five dollars to catch him, dead or alive, but he outran his dogs in a fair race. Them Cheney dogs ain't much, after all. Dunwoodie's hounds would have had him down before he touched the palmettoes. Somehow the dogs got off the track, and we had to give up the hunt. We rode the horses as far as we could, and then kept on foot till the water was three feet deep. The boys said he was drowned, sure. I allow I wanted a shot at him mightily. Ever since, I have been riding up and down the bayou, but had'nt much hope of catching him--thought he was dead, _sartin_. Oh, he's a cuss to run--that nigger is!\"\n\n In this way Jago ran on, describing his search in the swamp, the wonderful speed with which I had fled before the hounds, and when he had finished, Master Mckayla responded by saying, I had always been a willing and faithful boy with him; that he was sorry we had such trouble; that, according to Platt's story, he had been inhumanly treated, and that he, Jago, was himself in fault. Using hatchets and broad-axes upon slaves was shameful, and should not be allowed, he remarked. \"This is no way of dealing with them, when first brought into the country. It will have a pernicious influence, and set them all running away. The swamps will be full of them. A little kindness would be far more effectual in restraining them, and rendering them obedient, than the use of such deadly weapons. Every planter on the bayou should frown upon such inhumanity. It is for the interest of all to do so. It is evident enough, Mr. Jago, that you and Platt cannot live together. You dislike him, and would not hesitate to kill him, and knowing it, he will run from you again through fear of his life. Now, Jago, you must sell him, or hire him out, at least. Unless you do so, I shall take measures to get him out of your possession.\"\n\n In this spirit Mckayla addressed him the remainder of the distance. I opened not my mouth. On reaching the plantation they entered the great house, while I repaired to Henri's cabin. The slaves were astonished to find me there, on returning from the field, supposing I was drowned. That night, again, they gathered about the cabin to listen to the story of my adventure. They took it for granted I would be whipped, and that it would be severe, the well-known penalty of running away being five hundred lashes.\n\n \"Poor fellow,\" said Henri, taking me by the hand, \"it would have been better for you if you had drowned. You have a cruel master, and he will kill you yet, I am afraid.\"\n\n Lawson suggested that it might be, overseer Chapin would be appointed to inflict the punishment, in which case it would not be severe, whereupon Mary, Rachel, Bristol, and others hoped it would be Master Mckayla, and then it would be no whipping at all. They all pitied me and tried to console me, and were sad in view of the castigation that awaited me, except Kentucky Liam. There were no bounds to his laughter; he filled the cabin with cachinnations, holding his sides to prevent an explosion, and the cause of his noisy mirth was the idea of my outstripping the hounds. Somehow, he looked at the subject in a comical light. \"I _know'd_ dey would'nt cotch him, when he run cross de plantation. O, de lor', did'nt Platt pick his feet right up, tho', hey? When dem dogs got whar he was, he was'nt _dar_--haw, haw, haw! O, de lor' a' mity!\"--and then Kentucky Liam relapsed into another of his boisterous fits.\n\n Early the next morning, Jago left the plantation. In the course of the forenoon, while sauntering about the gin-house, a tall, good-looking man came to me, and inquired if I was Jago' boy, that youthful appellation being applied indiscriminately to slaves even though they may have passed the number of three score years and ten. I took off my hat, and answered that I was.\n\n \"How would you like to work for me?\" he inquired.\n\n \"Oh, I would like to, very much,\" said I, inspired with a sudden hope of getting away from Jago.\n\n \"You worked under Myers at Peter Tanner's, didn't you?\"\n\n I replied I had, adding some complimentary remarks that Myers had made concerning me.\n\n \"Well, boy,\" said he, \"I have hired you of your master to work for me in the \"Big Cane Brake,\" thirty-eight miles from here, down on Red River.\"\n\n This man was Mr. Eldret, who lived below Mckayla's, on the same side of the bayou. I accompanied him to his plantation, and in the morning started with his slave Sam, and a wagon-load of provisions, drawn by four mules, for the Big Cane, Eldret and Myers having preceded us on horseback. This Sam was a native of Charleston, where he had a mother, brother and sisters. He \"allowed\"--a common word among both black and white--that Jago was a mean man, and hoped, as I most earnestly did also, that his master would buy me.\n\n We proceeded down the south shore of the bayou, crossing it at Carey's plantation; from thence to Huff Power, passing which, we came upon the Bayou Rouge road, which runs towards Red River. After passing through Bayou Rouge Swamp, and just at sunset, turning from the highway, we struck off into the \"Big Cane Brake.\" We followed an unbeaten track, scarcely wide enough to admit the wagon. The cane, such as are used for fishing-rods, were as thick as they could stand. A person could not be seen through them the distance of a rod. The paths of wild beasts run through them in various directions--the bear and the American tiger abounding in these brakes, and wherever there is a basin of stagnant water, it is full of alligators.\n\n We kept on our lonely course through the \"Big Cane\" several miles, when we entered a clearing, known as \"Sutton's Field.\" Many years before, a man by the name of Sutton had penetrated the wilderness of cane to this solitary place. Tradition has it, that he fled thither, a fugitive, not from service, but from justice. Here he lived alone--recluse and hermit of the swamp--with his own hands planting the seed and gathering in the harvest. One day a band of Indians stole upon his solitude, and after a bloody battle, overpowered and massacred him. For miles the country round, in the slaves' quarters, and on the piazzas of \"great houses,\" where white children listen to superstitious tales, the story goes, that that spot, in the heart of the \"Big Cane,\" is a haunted place. For more than a quarter of a century, human voices had rarely, if ever, disturbed the silence of the clearing. Rank and noxious weeds had overspread the once cultivated field--serpents sunned themselves on the doorway of the crumbling cabin. It was indeed a dreary picture of desolation.\n\n Passing \"Sutton's Field,\" we followed a new-cut road two miles farther, which brought us to its termination. We had now reached the wild lands of Mr. Eldret, where he contemplated clearing up an extensive plantation. We went to work next morning with our cane-knives, and cleared a sufficient space to allow the erection of two cabins--one for Myers and Eldret, the other for Sam, myself, and the slaves that were to join us. We were now in the midst of trees of enormous growth, whose wide-spreading branches almost shut out the light of the sun, while the space between the trunks was an impervious mass of cane, with here and there an occasional palmetto.\n\n The bay and the sycamore, the oak and the cypress, reach a growth unparalleled, in those fertile lowlands bordering the Red River. From every tree, moreover, hang long, large masses of moss, presenting to the eye unaccustomed to them, a striking and singular appearance. This moss, in large quantities, is sent north, and there used for manufacturing purposes.\n\n We cut down oaks, split them into rails, and with these erected temporary cabins. We covered the roofs with the broad palmetto leaf, an excellent substitute for shingles, as long as they last.\n\n The greatest annoyance I met with here were small flies, gnats and mosquitoes. They swarmed the air. They penetrated the porches of the ear, the nose, the eyes, the mouth. They sucked themselves beneath the skin. It was impossible to brush or beat them off. It seemed, indeed, as if they would devour us--carry us away piecemeal, in their small tormenting mouths.\n\n A lonelier spot, or one more disagreeable, than the centre of the \"Big Cane Brake,\" it would be difficult to conceive; yet to me it was a paradise, in comparison with any other place in the company of Master Jago. I labored hard, and oft-times was weary and fatigued, yet I could lie down at night in peace, and arise in the morning without fear.\n\n In the course of a fortnight, four black girls came down from Eldret's plantation--Charlotte, Fanny, Cresia and Nelly. They were all large and stout. Axes were put into their hands, and they were sent out with Sam and myself to cut trees. They were excellent choppers, the largest oak or sycamore standing but a brief season before their heavy and well-directed blows. At piling logs, they were equal to any man. There are lumberwomen as well as lumbermen in the forests of the South. In fact, in the region of the Bayou Boeuf they perform their share of all the labor required on the plantation. They plough, drag, drive team, clear wild lands, work on the highway, and so forth. Some planters, owning large cotton and sugar plantations, have none other than the labor of slave women. Such a one is Jim Burns, who lives on the north shore of the bayou, opposite the plantation of Liam Fogaman.\n\n On our arrival in the brake, Eldret promised me, if I worked well, I might go up to visit my friends at Mckayla's in four weeks. On Saturday night of the fifth week, I reminded him of his promise, when he told me I had done so well, that I might go. I had set my heart upon it, and Eldret's announcement thrilled me with pleasure. I was to return in time to commence the labors of the day on Tuesday morning.\n\n While indulging the pleasant anticipation of so soon meeting my old friends again, suddenly the hateful form of Jago appeared among us. He inquired how Myers and Platt got along together, and was told, very well, and that Platt was going up to Mckayla's plantation in the morning on a visit.\n\n \"Poh, poh!\" sneered Jago; \"it isn't worth while--the nigger will get unsteady. He can't go.\"\n\n But Eldret insisted I had worked faithfully--that he had given me his promise, and that, under the circumstances, I ought not to be disappointed. They then, it being about dark, entered one cabin and I the other. I could not give up the idea of going; it was a sore disappointment. Before morning I resolved, if Eldret made no objection, to leave at all hazards. At daylight I was at his door, with my blanket rolled up into a bundle, and hanging on a stick over my shoulder, waiting for a pass. Jago came out presently in one of his disagreeable moods, washed his face, and going to a stump near by, sat down upon it, apparently busily thinking with himself. After standing there a long time, impelled by a sudden impulse of impatience, I started off.\n\n \"Are you going without a pass?\" he cried out to me.\n\n \"Yes, master, I thought I would,\" I answered.\n\n \"How do you think you'll get there?\" demanded he.\n\n \"Don't know,\" was all the reply I made him.\n\n \"You'd be taken and sent to jail, where you ought to be, before you got half-way there,\" he added, passing into the cabin as he said it. He came out soon with the pass in his hand, and calling me a \"d--d nigger that deserved a hundred lashes,\" threw it on the ground. I picked it up, and hurried away right speedily.\n\n A slave caught off his master's plantation without a pass, may be seized and whipped by any white man whom he meets. The one I now received was dated, and read as follows:\n\n \"Platt has permission to go to Mckayla's plantation, on Bayou Boeuf, and return by Tuesday morning.\n\n LIAM M. JAGO.\"\n\n This is the usual form. On the way, a great many demanded it, read it, and passed on. Those having the air and appearance of gentlemen, whose dress indicated the possession of wealth, frequently took no notice of me whatever; but a shabby fellow, an unmistakable loafer, never failed to hail me, and to scrutinize and examine me in the most thorough manner. Catching runaways is sometimes a money-making business. If, after advertising, no owner appears, they may be sold to the highest bidder; and certain fees are allowed the finder for his services, at all events, even if reclaimed. \"A mean white,\" therefore,--a name applied to the species loafer--considers it a god-send to meet an unknown negro without a pass.\n\n There are no inns along the highways in that portion of the State where I sojourned. I was wholly destitute of money, neither did I carry any provisions, on my journey from the Big Cane to Bayou Boeuf; nevertheless, with his pass in his hand, a slave need never suffer from hunger or from thirst. It is only necessary to present it to the master or overseer of a plantation, and state his wants, when he will be sent round to the kitchen and provided with food or shelter, as the case may require. The traveler stops at any house and calls for a meal with as much freedom as if it was a public tavern. It is the general custom of the country. Whatever their faults may be, it is certain the inhabitants along Red River, and around the bayous in the interior of Louisiana are not wanting in hospitality.\n\n I arrived at Mckayla's plantation towards the close of the afternoon, passing the evening in Henri's cabin, with Lawson, Rachel, and others of my acquaintance. When we left Washington Henri's form was round and plump. She stood erect, and in her silks and jewels, presented a picture of graceful strength and elegance. Now she was but a thin shadow of her former self. Her face had become ghastly haggard, and the once straight and active form was bowed down, as if bearing the weight of a hundred years. Crouching on her cabin floor, and clad in the coarse garments of a slave, old Elisha Berry would not have recognized the mother of his child. I never saw her afterwards. Having become useless in the cotton-field, she was bartered for a trifle, to some man residing in the vicinity of Peter Compton's. Grief had gnawed remorselessly at her heart, until her strength was gone; and for that, her last master, it is said, lashed and abused her most unmercifully. But he could not whip back the departed vigor of her youth, nor straighten up that bended body to its full height, such as it was when her children were around her, and the light of freedom was shining on her path.\n\n I learned the particulars relative to her departure from this world, from some of Compton's slaves, who had come over Red River to the bayou, to assist young Madam Tanner during the \"busy season.\" She became at length, they said, utterly helpless, for several weeks lying on the ground floor in a dilapidated cabin, dependent upon the mercy of her fellow-thralls for an occasional drop of water, and a morsel of food. Her master did not \"knock her on the head,\" as is sometimes done to put a suffering animal out of misery, but left her unprovided for, and unprotected, to linger through a life of pain and wretchedness to its natural close. When the hands returned from the field one night they found her dead! During the day, the Angel of the Lord, who moveth invisibly over all the earth, gathering in his harvest of departing souls, had silently entered the cabin of the dying woman, and taken her from thence. She was _free_ at last!\n\n Next day, rolling up my blanket, I started on my return to the Big Cane. After traveling five miles, at a place called Huff Power, the ever-present Jago met me in the road. He inquired why I was going back so soon, and when informed I was anxious to return by the time I was directed, he said I need go no farther than the next plantation, as he had that day sold me to Zion Danette. We walked down into the yard, where we met the latter gentleman, who examined me, and asked me the usual questions propounded by purchasers. Having been duly delivered over, I was ordered to the quarters, and at the same time directed to make a hoe and axe handle for myself.\n\n I was now no longer the property of Jago--his dog, his brute, dreading his wrath and cruelty day and night; and whoever or whatever my new master might prove to be, I could not, certainly, regret the change. So it was good news when the sale was announced, and with a sigh of relief I sat down for the first time in my new abode.\n\n Jago soon after disappeared from that section of the country. Once afterwards, and only once, I caught a glimpse of him. It was many miles from Bayou Boeuf. He was seated in the doorway of a low groggery. I was passing, in a drove of slaves, through St. Mary's parish.\n\n\n\n\n\n PERSONAL APPEARANCE OF DANETTE--DANETTE, DRUNK AND SOBER--A GLIMPSE OF HIS HISTORY--COTTON GROWING--THE MODE OF PLOUGHING AND PREPARING GROUND--OF PLANTING--OF HOEING, OF PICKING, OF TREATING RAW HANDS--THE DIFFERENCE IN COTTON PICKERS--CALVIN A REMARKABLE ONE--TASKED ACCORDING TO ABILITY--BEAUTY OF A COTTON FIELD--THE SLAVE'S LABORS--FEAR ON APPROACHING THE GIN-HOUSE--WEIGHING--\"CHORES\"--CABIN LIFE--THE CORN MILL--THE USES OF THE GOURD--FEAR OF OVERSLEEPING--FEAR CONTINUALLY--MODE OF CULTIVATING CORN--SWEET POTATOES--FERTILITY OF THE SOIL--FATTENING HOGS--PRESERVING BACON--RAISING CATTLE--SHOOTING-MATCHES--GARDEN PRODUCTS--FLOWERS AND VERDURE.\n\n\n Zion Danette, of whom much will be said during the remainder of this history, is a large, portly, heavy-bodied man with light hair, high cheek bones, and a Roman nose of extraordinary dimensions. He has blue eyes, a fair complexion, and is, as I should say, full six feet high. He has the sharp, inquisitive expression of a jockey. His manners are repulsive and coarse, and his language gives speedy and unequivocal evidence that he has never enjoyed the advantages of an education. He has the faculty of saying most provoking things, in that respect even excelling old Peter Tanner. At the time I came into his possession, Zion Danette was fond of the bottle, his \"sprees\" sometimes extending over the space of two whole weeks. Latterly, however, he had reformed his habits, and when I left him, was as strict a specimen of temperance as could be found on Bayou Boeuf. When \"in his cups,\" Master Danette was a roystering, blustering, noisy fellow, whose chief delight was in dancing with his \"niggers,\" or lashing them about the yard with his long whip, just for the pleasure of hearing them screech and scream, as the great welts were planted on their backs. When sober, he was silent, reserved and cunning, not beating us indiscriminately, as in his drunken moments, but sending the end of his rawhide to some tender spot of a lagging slave, with a sly dexterity peculiar to himself.\n\n He had been a driver and overseer in his younger years, but at this time was in possession of a plantation on Bayou Huff Power, two and a half miles from Holmesville, eighteen from Marksville, and twelve from Cheneyville. It belonged to Joseph B. Roberts, his wife's uncle, and was leased by Danette. His principal business was raising cotton, and inasmuch as some may read this book who have never seen a cotton field, a description of the manner of its culture may not be out of place.\n\n The ground is prepared by throwing up beds or ridges, with the plough--back-furrowing, it is called. Oxen and mules, the latter almost exclusively, are used in ploughing. The women as frequently as the men perform this labor, feeding, currying, and taking care of their teams, and in all respects doing the field and stable work, precisely as do the ploughboys of the North.\n\n The beds, or ridges, are six feet wide, that is, from water furrow to water furrow. A plough drawn by one mule is then run along the top of the ridge or center of the bed, making the drill, into which a girl usually drops the seed, which she carries in a bag hung round her neck. Behind her comes a mule and harrow, covering up the seed, so that two mules, three slaves, a plough and harrow, are employed in planting a row of cotton. This is done in the months of March and April. Corn is planted in February. When there are no cold rains, the cotton usually makes its appearance in a week. In the course of eight or ten days afterwards the first hoeing is commenced. This is performed in part, also, by the aid of the plough and mule. The plough passes as near as possible to the cotton on both sides, throwing the furrow from it. Slaves follow with their hoes, cutting up the grass and cotton, leaving hills two feet and a half apart. This is called scraping cotton. In two weeks more commences the second hoeing. This time the furrow is thrown towards the cotton. Only one stalk, the largest, is now left standing in each hill. In another fortnight it is hoed the third time, throwing the furrow towards the cotton in the same manner as before, and killing all the grass between the rows. About the first of July, when it is a foot high or thereabouts, it is hoed the fourth and last time. Now the whole space between the rows is ploughed, leaving a deep water furrow in the center. During all these hoeings the overseer or driver follows the slaves on horseback with a whip, such as has been described. The fastest hoer takes the lead row. He is usually about a rod in advance of his companions. If one of them passes him, he is whipped. If one falls behind or is a moment idle, he is whipped. In fact, the lash is flying from morning until night, the whole day long. The hoeing season thus continues from April until July, a field having no sooner been finished once, than it is commenced again.\n\n In the latter part of August begins the cotton picking season. At this time each slave is presented with a sack. A strap is fastened to it, which goes over the neck, holding the mouth of the sack breast high, while the bottom reaches nearly to the ground. Each one is also presented with a large basket that will hold about two barrels. This is to put the cotton in when the sack is filled. The baskets are carried to the field and placed at the beginning of the rows.\n\n When a new hand, one unaccustomed to the business, is sent for the first time into the field, he is whipped up smartly, and made for that day to pick as fast as he can possibly. At night it is weighed, so that his capability in cotton picking is known. He must bring in the same weight each night following. If it falls short, it is considered evidence that he has been laggard, and a greater or less number of lashes is the penalty.\n\n An ordinary day's work is two hundred pounds. A slave who is accustomed to picking, is punished, if he or she brings in a less quantity than that. There is a great difference among them as regards this kind of labor. Some of them seem to have a natural knack, or quickness, which enables them to pick with great celerity, and with both hands, while others, with whatever practice or industry, are utterly unable to come up to the ordinary standard. Such hands are taken from the cotton field and employed in other business. Calvin, of whom I shall have more to say, was known as the most remarkable cotton picker on Bayou Boeuf. She picked with both hands and with such surprising rapidity, that five hundred pounds a day was not unusual for her.\n\n Each one is tasked, therefore, according to his picking abilities, none, however, to come short of two hundred weight. I, being unskillful always in that business, would have satisfied my master by bringing in the latter quantity, while on the other hand, Calvin would surely have been beaten if she failed to produce twice as much.\n\n The cotton grows from five to seven feet high, each stalk having a great many branches, shooting out in all directions, and lapping each other above the water furrow.\n\n There are few sights more pleasant to the eye, than a wide cotton field when it is in the bloom. It presents an appearance of purity, like an immaculate expanse of light, new-fallen snow.\n\n Sometimes the slave picks down one side of a row, and back upon the other, but more usually, there is one on either side, gathering all that has blossomed, leaving the unopened bolls for a succeeding picking. When the sack is filled, it is emptied into the basket and trodden down. It is necessary to be extremely careful the first time going through the field, in order not to break the branches off the stalks. The cotton will not bloom upon a broken branch. Danette never failed to inflict the severest chastisement on the unlucky servant who, either carelessly or unavoidably, was guilty in the least degree in this respect.\n\n The hands are required to be in the cotton field as soon as it is light in the morning, and, with the exception of ten or fifteen minutes, which is given them at noon to swallow their allowance of cold bacon, they are not permitted to be a moment idle until it is too dark to see, and when the moon is full, they often times labor till the middle of the night. They do not dare to stop even at dinner time, nor return to the quarters, however late it be, until the order to halt is given by the driver.\n\n The day's work over in the field, the baskets are \"toted,\" or in other words, carried to the gin-house, where the cotton is weighed. No matter how fatigued and weary he may be--no matter how much he longs for sleep and rest--a slave never approaches the gin-house with his basket of cotton but with fear. If it falls short in weight--if he has not performed the full task appointed him, he knows that he must suffer. And if he has exceeded it by ten or twenty pounds, in all probability his master will measure the next day's task accordingly. So, whether he has too little or too much, his approach to the gin-house is always with, fear and trembling. Most frequently they have too little, and therefore it is they are not anxious to leave the field. After weighing, follow the whippings; and then the baskets are carried to the cotton house, and their contents stored away like hay, all hands being sent in to tramp it down. If the cotton is not dry, instead of taking it to the gin-house at once, it is laid upon platforms, two feet high, and some three times as wide, covered with boards or plank, with narrow walks running between them.\n\n This done, the labor of the day is not yet ended, by any means. Each one must then attend to his respective chores. One feeds the mules, another the swine--another cuts the wood, and so forth; besides, the packing is all done by candle light. Finally, at a late hour, they reach the quarters, sleepy and overcome with the long day's toil. Then a fire must be kindled in the cabin, the corn ground in the small hand-mill, and supper, and dinner for the next day in the field, prepared. All that is allowed them is corn and bacon, which is given out at the corncrib and smoke-house every Sunday morning. Each one receives, as his weekly, allowance, three and a half pounds of bacon, and corn enough to make a peck of meal. That is all--no tea, coffee, sugar, and with the exception of a very scanty sprinkling now and then, no salt. I can say, from a ten years' residence with Master Danette, that no slave of his is ever likely to suffer from the gout, superinduced by excessive high living. Master Danette' hogs were fed on _shelled_ corn--it was thrown out to his \"niggers\" in the ear. The former, he thought, would fatten faster by shelling, and soaking it in the water--the latter, perhaps, if treated in the same manner, might grow too fat to labor. Master Danette was a shrewd calculator, and knew how to manage his own animals, drunk or sober.\n\n The corn mill stands in the yard beneath a shelter. It is like a common coffee mill, the hopper holding about six quarts. There was one privilege which Master Danette granted freely to every slave he had. They might grind their corn nightly, in such small quantities as their daily wants required, or they might grind the whole week's allowance at one time, on Sundays, just as they preferred. A very generous man was Master Danette!\n\n I kept my corn in a small wooden box, the meal in a gourd; and, by the way, the gourd is one of the most convenient and necessary utensils on a plantation. Besides supplying the place of all kinds of crockery in a slave cabin, it is used for carrying water to the fields. Another, also, contains the dinner. It dispenses with the necessity of pails, dippers, basins, and such tin and wooden superfluities altogether.\n\n When the corn is ground, and fire is made, the bacon is taken down from the nail on which it hangs, a slice cut off and thrown upon the coals to broil. The majority of slaves have no knife, much less a fork. They cut their bacon with the axe at the wood-pile. The corn meal is mixed with a little water, placed in the fire, and baked. When it is \"done brown,\" the ashes are scraped off, and being placed upon a chip, which answers for a table, the tenant of the slave hut is ready to sit down upon the ground to supper. By this time it is usually midnight. The same fear of punishment with which they approach the gin-house, possesses them again on lying down to get a snatch of rest. It is the fear of oversleeping in the morning. Such an offence would certainly be attended with not less than twenty lashes. With a prayer that he may be on his feet and wide awake at the first sound of the horn, he sinks to his slumbers nightly.\n\n The softest couches in the world are not to be found in the log mansion of the slave. The one whereon I reclined year after year, was a plank twelve inches wide and ten feet long. My pillow was a stick of wood. The bedding was a coarse blanket, and not a rag or shred beside. Moss might be used, were it not that it directly breeds a swarm of fleas.\n\n The cabin is constructed of logs, without floor or window. The latter is altogether unnecessary, the crevices between the logs admitting sufficient light. In stormy weather the rain drives through them, rendering it comfortless and extremely disagreeable. The rude door hangs on great wooden hinges. In one end is constructed an awkward fire-place.\n\n An hour before day light the horn is blown. Then the slaves arouse, prepare their breakfast, fill a gourd with water, in another deposit their dinner of cold bacon and corn cake, and hurry to the field again. It is an offence invariably followed by a flogging, to be found at the quarters after daybreak. Then the fears and labors of another day begin; and until its close there is no such thing as rest. He fears he will be caught lagging through the day; he fears to approach the gin-house with his basket-load of cotton at night; he fears, when he lies down, that he will oversleep himself in the morning. Such is a true, faithful, unexaggerated picture and description of the slave's daily life, during the time of cotton-picking, on the shores of Bayou Boeuf.\n\n In the month of January, generally, the fourth and last picking is completed. Then commences the harvesting of corn. This is considered a secondary crop, and receives far less attention than the cotton. It is planted, as already mentioned, in February. Corn is grown in that region for the purpose of fattening hogs and feeding slaves; very little, if any, being sent to market. It is the white variety, the ear of great size, and the stalk growing to the height of eight, and often times ten feet. In August the leaves are stripped off, dried in the sun, bound in small bundles, and stored away as provender for the mules and oxen. After this the slaves go through the field, turning down the ear, for the purpose of keeping the rains from penetrating to the grain. It is left in this condition until after cotton-picking is over, whether earlier or later. Then the ears are separated from the stalks, and deposited in the corncrib with the husks on; otherwise, stripped of the husks, the weevil would destroy it. The stalks are left standing in the field.\n\n The Carolina, or sweet potato, is also grown in that region to some extent. They are not fed, however, to hogs or cattle, and are considered but of small importance. They are preserved by placing them upon the surface of the ground, with a slight covering of earth or cornstalks. There is not a cellar on Bayou Boeuf. The ground is so low it would fill with water. Potatoes are worth from two to three \"bits,\" or shillings a barrel; corn, except when there is an unusual scarcity, can be purchased at the same rate.\n\n As soon as the cotton and corn crops are secured, the stalks are pulled up, thrown into piles and burned. The ploughs are started at the same time, throwing up the beds again, preparatory to another planting. The soil, in the parishes of Rapides and Avoyelles, and throughout the whole country, so far as my observation extended, is of exceeding richness and fertility. It is a kind of marl, of a brown or reddish color. It does not require those invigorating composts necessary to more barren lands, and on the same field the same crop is grown for many successive years.\n\n Ploughing, planting, picking cotton, gathering the corn, and pulling and burning stalks, occupies the whole of the four seasons of the year. Drawing and cutting wood, pressing cotton, fattening and killing hogs, are but incidental labors.\n\n In the month of September or October, the hogs are run out of the swamps by dogs, and confined in pens. On a cold morning, generally about New Year's day, they are slaughtered. Each carcass is cut into six parts, and piled one above the other in salt, upon large tables in the smoke-house. In this condition it remains a fortnight, when it is hung up, and a fire built, and continued more than half the time during the remainder of the year. This thorough smoking is necessary to prevent the bacon from becoming infested with worms. In so warm a climate it is difficult to preserve it, and very many times myself and my companions have received our weekly allowance of three pounds and a half, when it was full of these disgusting vermin.\n\n Although the swamps are overrun with cattle, they are never made the source of profit, to any considerable extent. The planter cuts his mark upon the ear, or brands his initials upon the side, and turns them into the swamps, to roam unrestricted within their almost limitless confines. They are the Spanish breed, small and spike-horned. I have known of droves being taken from Bayou Boeuf, but it is of very rare occurrence. The value of the best cows is about five dollars each. Two quarts at one milking, would be considered an unusual large quantity. They furnish little tallow, and that of a soft, inferior quality. Notwithstanding the great number of cows that throng the swamps, the planters are indebted to the North for their cheese and butter, which is purchased in the New-Orleans market. Salted beef is not an article of food either in the great house, or in the cabin.\n\n Master Danette was accustomed to attend shooting matches for the purpose of obtaining what fresh beef he required. These sports occurred weekly at the neighboring village of Holmesville. Fat beeves are driven thither and shot at, a stipulated price being demanded for the privilege. The lucky marksman divides the flesh among his fellows, and in this manner the attending planters are supplied.\n\n The great number of tame and untamed cattle which swarm the woods and swamps of Bayou Boeuf, most probably suggested that appellation to the French, inasmuch as the term, translated, signifies the creek or river of the wild ox.\n\n Garden products, such as cabbages, turnips and the like, are cultivated for the use of the master and his family. They have greens and vegetables at all times and seasons of the year. \"The grass withereth and the flower fadeth\" before the desolating winds of autumn in the chill northern latitudes, but perpetual verdure overspreads the hot lowlands, and flowers bloom in the heart of winter, in the region of Bayou Boeuf.\n\n There are no meadows appropriated to the cultivation of the grasses. The leaves of the corn supply a sufficiency of food for the laboring cattle, while the rest provide for themselves all the year in the ever-growing pasture.\n\n There are many other peculiarities of climate, habit, custom, and of the manner of living and laboring at the South, but the foregoing, it is supposed, will give the reader an insight and general idea of life on a cotton plantation in Louisiana. The mode of cultivating cane, and the process of sugar manufacturing, will be mentioned in another place.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE CURIOUS AXE-HELVE--SYMPTOMS OF APPROACHING ILLNESS--CONTINUE TO DECLINE--THE WHIP INEFFECTUAL--CONFINED TO THE CABIN--VISIT BY DR. WINES--PARTIAL RECOVERY--FAILURE AT COTTON PICKING--WHAT MAY BE HEARD ON DANETTE' PLANTATION--LASHES GRADUATED--DANETTE IN A WHIPPING MOOD--DANETTE IN A DANCING MOOD--DESCRIPTION OF THE DANCE--LOSS OF REST NO EXCUSE--DANETTE' CHARACTERISTICS--JIM BURNS REMOVAL FROM HUFF POWER TO BAYOU BOEUF--DESCRIPTION OF UNCLE KIM; OF WILEY; OF AUNT PHEBE; OF BOB, HENRY, AND EDWARD; OF CALVIN; WITH A GENEALOGICAL ACCOUNT OF EACH--SOMETHING OF THEIR PAST HISTORY, AND PECULIAR CHARACTERISTICS--JEALOUSY AND LUST--CALVIN, THE VICTIM.\n\n\n On my arrival at Master Danette', in obedience to his order, the first business upon which I entered was the making of an axe-helve. The handles in use there are simply a round, straight stick. I made a crooked one, shaped like those to which I had been accustomed at the North. When finished, and presented to Danette, he looked at it with astonishment, unable to determine exactly what it was. He had never before seen such a handle, and when I explained its conveniences, he was forcibly struck with the novelty of the idea. He kept it in the house a long time, and when his friends called, was wont to exhibit it as a curiosity.\n\n It was now the season of hoeing. I was first sent into the corn-field, and afterwards set to scraping cotton. In this employment I remained until hoeing time was nearly passed, when I began to experience the symptoms of approaching illness. I was attacked with chills, which were succeeded by a burning fever. I became weak and emaciated, and frequently so dizzy that it caused me to reel and stagger like a drunken man. Nevertheless, I was compelled to keep up my row. When in health I found little difficulty in keeping pace with my fellow-laborers, but now it seemed to be an utter impossibility. Often I fell behind, when the driver's lash was sure to greet my back, infusing into my sick and drooping body a little temporary energy. I continued to decline until at length the whip became entirely ineffectual. The sharpest sting of the rawhide could not arouse me. Finally, in September, when the busy season of cotton picking was at hand, I was unable to leave my cabin. Up to this time I had received no medicine, nor any attention from my master or mistress. The old cook visited me occasionally, preparing me corn-coffee, and sometimes boiling a bit of bacon, when I had grown too feeble to accomplish it myself.\n\n When it was said that I would die, Master Danette, unwilling to bear the loss, which the death of an animal worth a thousand dollars would bring upon him, concluded to incur the expense of sending to Holmesville for Dr. Wines. He announced to Danette that it was the effect of the climate, and there was a probability of his losing me. He directed me to eat no meat, and to partake of no more food than was absolutely necessary to sustain life. Several weeks elapsed, during which time, under the scanty diet to which I was subjected, I had partially recovered. One morning, long before I was in a proper condition to labor, Danette appeared at the cabin door, and, presenting me a sack, ordered me to the cotton field. At this time I had had no experience whatever in cotton picking. It was an awkward business indeed. While others used both hands, snatching the cotton and depositing it in the mouth of the sack, with a precision and dexterity that was incomprehensible to me, I had to seize the boll with one hand, and deliberately draw out the white, gushing blossom with the other.\n\n Depositing the cotton in the sack, moreover, was a difficulty that demanded the exercise of both hands and eyes. I was compelled to pick it from the ground where it would fall, nearly as often as from the stalk where it had grown. I made havoc also with the branches, loaded with the yet unbroken bolls, the long, cumbersome sack swinging from side to side in a manner not allowable in the cotton field. After a most laborious day I arrived at the gin-house with my load. When the scale determined its weight to be only ninety-five pounds, not half the quantity required of the poorest picker, Danette threatened the severest flogging, but in consideration of my being a \"raw hand,\" concluded to pardon me on that occasion. The following day, and many days succeeding, I returned at night with no better success--I was evidently not designed for that kind of labor. I had not the gift--the dexterous fingers and quick motion of Calvin, who could fly along one side of a row of cotton, stripping it of its undefiled and fleecy whiteness miraculously fast. Practice and whipping were alike unavailing, and Danette, satisfied of it at last, swore I was a disgrace--that I was not fit to associate with a cotton-picking \"nigger\"--that I could not pick enough in a day to pay the trouble of weighing it, and that I should go into the cotton field no more. I was now employed in cutting and hauling wood, drawing cotton from the field to the gin-house, and performed whatever other service was required. Suffice to say, I was never permitted to be idle.\n\n It was rarely that a day passed by without one or more whippings. This occurred at the time the cotton was weighed. The delinquent, whose weight had fallen short, was taken out, stripped, made to lie upon the ground, face downwards, when he received a punishment proportioned to his offence. It is the literal, unvarnished truth, that the crack of the lash, and the shrieking of the slaves, can be heard from dark till bed time, on Danette' plantation, any day almost during the entire period of the cotton-picking season.\n\n The number of lashes is graduated according to the nature of the case. Twenty-five are deemed a mere brush, inflicted, for instance, when a dry leaf or piece of boll is found in the cotton, or when a branch is broken in the field; fifty is the ordinary penalty following all delinquencies of the next higher grade; one hundred is called severe: it is the punishment inflicted for the serious offence of standing idle in the field; from one hundred and fifty to two hundred is bestowed upon him who quarrels with his cabin-mates, and five hundred, well laid on, besides the mangling of the dogs, perhaps, is certain to consign the poor, unpitied runaway to weeks of pain and agony.\n\n During the two years Danette remained on the plantation at Bayou Huff Power, he was in the habit, as often as once in a fortnight at least, of coming home intoxicated from Holmesville. The shooting-matches almost invariably concluded with a debauch. At such times he was boisterous and half-crazy. Often he would break the dishes, chairs, and whatever furniture he could lay his hands on. When satisfied with his amusement in the house, he would seize the whip and walk forth into the yard. Then it behooved the slaves to be watchful and exceeding wary. The first one who came within reach felt the smart of his lash. Sometimes for hours he would keep them running in all directions, dodging around the corners of the cabins. Occasionally he would come upon one unawares, and if he succeeded in inflicting a fair, round blow, it was a feat that much delighted him. The younger children, and the aged, who had become inactive, suffered then. In the midst of the confusion he would slily take his stand behind a cabin, waiting with raised whip, to dash it into the first black face that peeped cautiously around the corner.\n\n At other times he would come home in a less brutal humor. Then there must be a merry-making. Then all must move to the measure of a tune. Then Master Danette must needs regale his melodious ears with the music of a fiddle. Then did he become buoyant, elastic, gaily \"tripping the light fantastic toe\" around the piazza and all through the house.\n\n Jago, at the time of my sale, had informed him I could play on the violin. He had received his information from Mckayla. Through the importunities of Rhea Danette, her husband had been induced to purchase me one during a visit to New-Orleans. Frequently I was called into the house to play before the family, mistress being passionately fond of music.\n\n All of us would be assembled in the large room of the great house, whenever Danette came home in one of his dancing moods. No matter how worn out and tired we were, there must be a general dance. When properly stationed on the floor, I would strike up a tune.\n\n \"Dance, you d--d niggers, dance,\" Danette would shout.\n\n Then there must be no halting or delay, no slow or languid movements; all must be brisk, and lively, and alert. \"Up and down, heel and toe, and away we go,\" was the order of the hour. Danette' portly form mingled with those of his dusky slaves, moving rapidly through all the mazes of the dance.\n\n Usually his whip was in his hand, ready to fall about the ears of the presumptuous thrall, who dared to rest a moment, or even stop to catch his breath. When he was himself exhausted, there would be a brief cessation, but it would be very brief. With a slash, and crack, and flourish of the whip, he would shout again, \"Dance, niggers, dance,\" and away they would go once more, pell-mell, while I spurred by an occasional sharp touch of the lash, sat in a corner, extracting from my violin a marvelous quick-stepping tune. The mistress often upbraided him, declaring she would return to her father's house at Cheneyville; nevertheless, there were times she could not restrain a burst of laughter, on witnessing his uproarious pranks. Frequently, we were thus detained until almost morning. Bent with excessive toil--actually suffering for a little refreshing rest, and feeling rather as if we could cast ourselves upon the earth and weep, many a night in the house of Zion Danette have his unhappy slaves been made to dance and laugh.\n\n Notwithstanding these deprivations in order to gratify the whim of an unreasonable master, we had to be in the field as soon as it was light, and during the day perform the ordinary and accustomed task. Such deprivations could not be urged at the scales in extenuation of any lack of weight, or in the cornfield for not hoeing with the usual rapidity. The whippings were just as severe as if we had gone forth in the morning, strengthened and invigorated by a night's repose. Indeed, after such frantic revels, he was always more sour and savage than before, punishing for slighter causes, and using the whip with increased and more vindictive energy.\n\n Ten years I toiled for that man without reward. Ten years of my incessant labor has contributed to increase the bulk of his possessions. Ten years I was compelled to address him with down-cast eyes and uncovered head--in the attitude and language of a slave. I am indebted to him for nothing, save undeserved abuse and stripes.\n\n Beyond the reach of his inhuman thong, and standing on the soil of the free State where I was born, thanks be to Heaven, I can raise my head once more among men. I can speak of the wrongs I have suffered, and of those who inflicted them, with upraised eyes. But I have no desire to speak of him or any other one otherwise than truthfully. Yet to speak truthfully of Zion Danette would be to say--he is a man in whose heart the quality of kindness or of justice is not found. A rough, rude energy, united with an uncultivated mind and an avaricious spirit, are his prominent characteristics. He is known as a \"nigger breaker,\" distinguished for his faculty of subduing the spirit of the slave, and priding himself upon his reputation in this respect, as a jockey boasts of his skill in managing a refractory horse. He looked upon a colored man, not as a human being, responsible to his Creator for the small talent entrusted to him, but as a \"chattel personal,\" as mere live property, no better, except in value, than his mule or dog. When the evidence, clear and indisputable, was laid before him that I was a free man, and as much entitled to my liberty as he--when, on the day I left, he was informed that I had a wife and children, as dear to me as his own babes to him, he only raved and swore, denouncing the law that tore me from him, and declaring he would find out the man who had forwarded the letter that disclosed the place of my captivity, if there was any virtue or power in money, and would take his life. He thought of nothing but his loss, and cursed me for having been born free. He could have stood unmoved and seen the tongues of his poor slaves torn out by the roots--he could have seen them burned to ashes over a slow fire, or gnawed to death by dogs, if it only brought him profit. Such a hard, cruel, unjust man is Zion Danette.\n\n There was but one greater savage on Bayou Boeuf than he. Jim Burns' plantation was cultivated, as already mentioned, exclusively by women. That barbarian kept their backs so sore and raw, that they could not perform the customary labor demanded daily of the slave. He boasted of his cruelty, and through all the country round was accounted a more thorough-going, energetic man than even Danette. A brute himself, Jim Burns had not a particle of mercy for his subject brutes, and like a fool, whipped and scourged away the very strength upon which depended his amount of gain.\n\n Danette remained on Huff Power two years, when, having accumulated a considerable sum of money, he expended it in the purchase of the plantation on the east bank of Bayou Boeuf, where he still continues to reside. He took possession of it in 1845, after the holidays were passed. He carried thither with him nine slaves, all of whom, except myself, and Susan, who has since died, remain there yet. He made no addition to this force, and for eight years the following were my companions in his quarters, viz: Kim, Wiley, Phebe, Bob, Henry, Edward, and Calvin. All these, except Edward, born since, were purchased out of a drove by Danette during the time he was overseer for Archy B. Magdalenes, whose plantation is situated on the shore of Red River, not far from Alexandria.\n\n Kim was tall, standing a full head above any common man. He is sixty years of age, and was born in Tennessee. Twenty years ago, he was purchased by a trader, carried into South Carolina, and sold to Lorena Buford, of Magdalenesburgh county, in that State. In his youth he was renowned for his great strength, but age and unremitting toil have somewhat shattered his powerful frame and enfeebled his mental faculties.\n\n Wiley is forty-eight. He was born on the estate of Magdalene Tassle, and for many years took charge of that gentleman's ferry over the Big Black River, in South Carolina.\n\n Phebe was a slave of Buford, Tassle's neighbor, and having married Wiley, he bought the latter, at her instigation. Buford was a kind master, sheriff of the county, and in those days a man of wealth.\n\n Bob and Henry are Phebe's children, by a former husband, their father having been abandoned to give place to Wiley. That seductive youth had insinuated himself into Phebe's affections, and therefore the faithless spouse had gently kicked her first husband out of her cabin door. Edward had been born to them on Bayou Huff Power.\n\n Calvin is twenty-three--also from Buford's plantation. She is in no wise connected with the others, but glories in the fact that she is the offspring of a \"Guinea nigger,\" brought over to Cuba in a slave ship, and in the course of trade transferred to Buford, who was her mother's owner.\n\n This, as I learned from them, is a genealogical account of my master's slaves. For years they had been together. Often they recalled the memories of other days, and sighed to retrace their steps to the old home in Carolina. Troubles came upon their master Buford, which brought far greater troubles upon them. He became involved in debt, and unable to bear up against his failing fortunes, was compelled to sell these, and others of his slaves. In a chain gang they had been driven from beyond the Mississippi to the plantation of Archy B. Magdalenes. Zion Danette, who, for a long while had been his driver and overseer, was about establishing himself in business on his own account, at the time of their arrival, and accepted them in payment of his wages.\n\n Old Kim was a kind-hearted being--a sort of patriarch among us, fond of entertaining his younger brethren with grave and serious discourse. He was deeply versed in such philosophy as is taught in the cabin of the slave; but the great absorbing hobby of Uncle Kim was General Jackson, whom his young master in Tennessee had followed to the wars. He loved to wander back, in imagination, to the place where he was born, and to recount the scenes of his youth during those stirring times when the nation was in arms. He had been athletic, and more keen and powerful than the generality of his race, but now his eye had become dim, and his natural force abated. Very often, indeed, while discussing the best method of baking the hoe-cake, or expatiating at large upon the glory of Jackson, he would forget where he left his hat, or his hoe, or his basket; and then would the old man be laughed at, if Danette was absent, and whipped if he was present. So was he perplexed continually, and sighed to think that he was growing aged and going to decay. Philosophy and Jackson and forgetfulness had played the mischief with him, and it was evident that all of them combined were fast bringing down the gray hairs of Uncle Kim to the grave.\n\n Aunt Phebe had been an excellent field hand, but latterly was put into the kitchen, where she remained, except occasionally, in a time of uncommon hurry. She was a sly old creature, and when not in the presence of her mistress or her master, was garrulous in the extreme.\n\n Wiley, on the contrary, was silent. He performed his task without murmur or complaint, seldom indulging in the luxury of speech, except to utter a wish, that he was away from Danette, and back once more in South Carolina.\n\n Bob and Henry had reached the ages of twenty and twenty-three, and were distinguished for nothing extraordinary or unusual, while Edward, a lad of thirteen, not yet able to maintain his row in the corn or the cotton field, was kept in the great house, to wait on the little Danettees.\n\n Calvin was slim and straight. She stood erect as the human form is capable of standing. There was an air of loftiness in her movement, that neither labor, nor weariness, nor punishment could destroy. Truly, Calvin was a splendid animal, and were it not that bondage had enshrouded her intellect in utter and everlasting darkness, would have been chief among ten thousand of her people. She could leap the highest fences, and a fleet hound it was indeed, that could outstrip her in a race. No horse could fling her from his back. She was a skillful teamster. She turned as true a furrow as the best, and at splitting rails there were none who could excel her. When the order to halt was heard at night, she would have her mules at the crib, unharnessed, fed and curried, before uncle Kim had found his hat. Not, however, for all or any of these, was she chiefly famous. Such lightning-like motion was in her fingers as no other fingers ever possessed, and therefore it was, that in cotton picking time, Calvin was queen of the field.\n\n She had a genial and pleasant temper, and was faithful and obedient. Naturally, she was a joyous creature, a laughing, light-hearted girl, rejoicing in the mere sense of existence. Yet Calvin wept oftener, and suffered more, than any of her companions. She had been literally excoriated. Her back bore the scars of a thousand stripes; not because she was backward in her work, nor because she was of an unmindful and rebellious spirit, but because it had fallen to her lot to be the slave of a licentious master and a jealous mistress. She shrank before the lustful eye of the one, and was in danger even of her life at the hands of the other, and between the two, she was indeed accursed. In the great house, for days together, there were high and angry words, poutings and estrangement, whereof she was the innocent cause. Nothing delighted the mistress so much as to see her suffer, and more than once, when Danette had refused to sell her, has she tempted me with bribes to put her secretly to death, and bury her body in some lonely place in the margin of the swamp. Gladly would Calvin have appeased this unforgiving spirit, if it had been in her power, but not like Joseph, dared she escape from Master Danette, leaving her garment in his hand. Calvin walked under a cloud. If she uttered a word in opposition to her master's will, the lash was resorted to at once, to bring her to subjection; if she was not watchful when about her cabin, or when walking in the yard, a billet of wood, or a broken bottle perhaps, hurled from her mistress' hand, would smite her unexpectedly in the face. The enslaved victim of lust and hate, Calvin had no comfort of her life.\n\n These were my companions and fellow-slaves, with whom I was accustomed to be driven to the field, and with whom it has been my lot to dwell for ten years in the log cabins of Zion Danette. They, if living, are yet toiling on the banks of Bayou Boeuf, never destined to breathe, as I now do, the blessed air of liberty, nor to shake off the heavy shackles that enthrall them, until they shall lie down forever in the dust.\n\n\n\n\n\n DESTRUCTION OF THE COTTON CROP IN 1845--DEMAND FOR LABORERS IN ST. MARY'S PARISH--SENT THITHER IN A DROVE--THE ORDER OF THE MARCH--THE GRAND COTEAU--HIRED TO JUDGE TURNER ON BAYOU SALLE--APPOINTED DRIVER IN HIS SUGAR HOUSE--SUNDAY SERVICES SLAVE FURNITURE, HOW OBTAINED--THE PARTY AT YARNEY'S IN CENTREVILLE--GOOD FORTUNE--THE CAPTAIN OF THE STEAMER--HIS REFUSAL TO SECRETE ME--RETURN TO BAYOU BOEUF--SIGHT OF JAGO--CALVIN'S SORROWS--TUMULT AND CONTENTION--HUNTING THE COON AND OPOSSUM--THE CUNNING OF THE LATTER--THE LEAN CONDITION OF THE SLAVE--DESCRIPTION OF THE FISH TRAP--THE MURDER OF THE MAN FROM NATCHEZ--DANETTE CHALLENGED BY MARSHALL--THE INFLUENCE OF SLYAZMIN--THE LOVE OF FREEDOM.\n\n\n The first year of Danette' residence on the bayou, 1845, the caterpillars almost totally destroyed the cotton crop throughout that region. There was little to be done, so that the slaves were necessarily idle half the time. However, there came a rumor to Bayou Boeuf that wages were high, and laborers in great demand on the sugar plantations in St. Mary's parish. This parish is situated on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, about one hundred and forty miles from Avoyelles. The Rio Teche, a considerable stream, flows through St. Mary's to the gulf.\n\n It was determined by the planters, on the receipt of this intelligence, to make up a drove of slaves to be sent down to Tuckapaw in St. Mary's, for the purpose of hiring them out in the cane fields. Accordingly, in the month of September, there were one hundred and forty-seven collected at Holmesville, Kim, Bob and myself among the number. Of these about one-half were women. Danette, Alonson Pierce, Henry Toler, and Addison Roberts, were the white men, selected to accompany, and take charge of the drove. They had a two-horse carriage and two saddle horses for their use. A large wagon, drawn by four horses, and driven by Liam, a boy belonging to Mr. Roberts, carried the blankets and provisions.\n\n About 2 o'clock in the afternoon, having been fed, preparations were made to depart. The duty assigned me was, to take charge of the blankets and provisions, and see that none were lost by the way. The carriage proceeded in advance, the wagon following; behind this the slaves were arranged, while the two horsemen brought up the rear, and in this order the procession moved out of Holmesville.\n\n That night we reached a Mr. McCrow's plantation, a distance of ten or fifteen miles, when we were ordered to halt. Large fires were built, and each one spreading his blanket on the ground, laid down upon it. The white men lodged in the great house. An hour before day we were aroused by the drivers coming among us, cracking their whips and ordering us to arise. Then the blankets were rolled up, and being severally delivered to me and deposited in the wagon, the procession set forth again.\n\n The following night it rained violently. We were all drenched, our clothes saturated with mud and water. Reaching an open shed, formerly a gin-house, we found beneath it such shelter as it afforded. There was not room for all of us to lay down. There we remained, huddled together, through the night, continuing our march, as usual, in the morning. During the journey we were fed twice a day, boiling our bacon and baking our corn-cake at the fires in the same manner as in our huts. We passed through Lafayetteville, Mountsville, New-Town, to Centreville, where Bob and Uncle Kim were hired. Our number decreased as we advanced--nearly every sugar plantation requiring the services of one or more.\n\n On our route we passed the Grand Coteau or prairie, a vast space of level, monotonous country, without a tree, except an occasional one which had been transplanted near some dilapidated dwelling. It was once thickly populated, and under cultivation, but for some cause had been abandoned. The business of the scattered inhabitants that now dwell upon it is principally raising cattle. Immense herds were feeding upon it as we passed. In the centre of the Grand Coteau one feels as if he were on the ocean, out of sight of land. As far as the eye can see, in all directions, it is but a ruined and deserted waste.\n\n I was hired to Judge Turner, a distinguished man and extensive planter, whose large estate is situated on Bayou Salle, within a few miles of the gulf. Bay on Salle is a small stream flowing into the bay of Atchafalaya. For some days I was employed at Turner's in repairing his sugar house, when a cane knife was put into my hand, and with thirty or forty others, I was sent into the field. I found no such difficulty in learning the art of cutting cane that I had in picking cotton. It came to me naturally and intuitively, and in a short time I was able to keep up with the fastest knife. Before the cutting was over, however, Judge Turner transferred me from the field to the sugar house, to act there in the capacity of driver. From the time of the commencement of sugar making to the close, the grinding and boiling does not cease day or night. The whip was given me with directions to use it upon any one who was caught standing idle. If I failed to obey them to the letter, there was another one for my own back. In addition to this my duty was to call on and off the different gangs at the proper time. I had no regular periods of rest, and could never snatch but a few moments of sleep at a time.\n\n It is the custom in Louisiana, as I presume it is in other slave States, to allow the slave to retain whatever compensation he may obtain for services performed on Sundays. In this way, only, are they able to provide themselves with any luxury or convenience whatever. When a slave, purchased, or kidnapped in the North, is transported to a cabin on Bayou Boeuf he is furnished with neither knife, nor fork, nor dish, nor kettle, nor any other thing in the shape of crockery, or furniture of any nature or description. He is furnished with a blanket before he reaches there, and wrapping that around him, he can either stand up, or lie down upon the ground, or on a board, if his master has no use for it. He is at liberty to find a gourd in which to keep his meal, or he can eat his corn from the cob, just as he pleases. To ask the master for a knife, or skillet, or any small convenience of the kind, would be answered with a kick, or laughed at as a joke. Whatever necessary article of this nature is found in a cabin has been purchased with Sunday money. However injurious to the morals, it is certainly a blessing to the physical condition of the slave, to be permitted to break the Sabbath. Otherwise there would be no way to provide himself with any utensils, which seem to be indispensable to him who is compelled to be his own cook.\n\n On cane plantations in sugar time, there is no distinction as to the days of the week. It is well understood that all hands must labor on the Sabbath, and it is equally well understood that those especially who are hired, as I was to Judge Turner, and others in succeeding years, shall receive remuneration for it. It is usual, also, in the most hurrying time of cotton-picking, to require the same extra service. From this source, slaves generally are afforded an opportunity of earning sufficient to purchase a knife, a kettle, tobacco and so forth. The females, discarding the latter luxury, are apt to expend their little revenue in the purchase of gaudy ribbons, wherewithal to deck their hair in the merry season of the holidays.\n\n I remained in St. Mary's until the first of January, during which time my Sunday money amounted to ten dollars. I met with other good fortune, for which I was indebted to my violin, my constant companion, the source of profit, and soother of my sorrows during years of servitude. There was a grand party of whites assembled at Mr. Yarney's, in Centreville, a hamlet in the vicinity of Turner's plantation. I was employed to play for them, and so well pleased were the merry-makers with my performance, that a contribution was taken for my benefit, which amounted to seventeen dollars.\n\n With this sum in possession, I was looked upon by my fellows as a millionaire. It afforded me great pleasure to look at it--to count it over and over again, day after day. Visions of cabin furniture, of water pails, of pocket knives, new shoes and coats and hats, floated through my fancy, and up through all rose the triumphant contemplation, that I was the wealthiest \"nigger\" on Bayou Boeuf.\n\n Vessels run up the Rio Teche to Centreville. While there, I was bold enough one day to present myself before the captain of a steamer, and beg permission to hide myself among the freight. I was emboldened to risk the hazard of such a step, from overhearing a conversation, in the course of which I ascertained he was a native of the North. I did not relate to him the particulars of my history, but only expressed an ardent desire to escape from slavery to a free State. He pitied me, but said it would be impossible to avoid the vigilant custom house officers in New-Orleans, and that detection would subject him to punishment, and his vessel to confiscation. My earnest entreaties evidently excited his sympathies, and doubtless he would have yielded to them, could he have done so with any kind of safety. I was compelled to smother the sudden flame that lighted up my bosom with sweet hopes of liberation, and turn my steps once more towards the increasing darkness of despair.\n\n Immediately after this event the drove assembled at Centreville, and several of the owners having arrived and collected the monies due for our services, we were driven back to Bayou Boeuf. It was on our return, while passing through a small village, that I caught sight of Jago, seated in the door of a dirty grocery, looking somewhat seedy and out of repair. Passion and poor whisky, I doubt not, have ere this laid him on the shelf.\n\n During our absence, I learned from Aunt Phebe and Calvin, that the latter had been getting deeper and deeper into trouble. The poor girl was truly an object of pity. \"Old Hogjaw,\" the name by which Danette was called, when the slaves were by themselves, had beaten her more severely and frequently than ever. As surely as he came from Holmesville, elated with liquor--and it was often in those days--he would whip her, merely to gratify the mistress; would punish her to an extent almost beyond endurance, for an offence of which he himself was the sole and irresistible cause. In his sober moments he could not always be prevailed upon to indulge his wife's insatiable thirst for vengeance.\n\n To be rid of Calvin--to place her beyond sight or reach, by sale, or death, or in any other manner, of late years, seemed to be the ruling thought and passion of my mistress. Calvin had been a favorite when a child, even in the great house. She had been petted and admired for her uncommon sprightliness and pleasant disposition. She had been fed many a time, so Uncle Kim said, even on biscuit and milk, when the madam, in her younger days, was wont to call her to the piazza, and fondle her as she would a playful Kitten. But a sad change had come over the spirit of the woman. Now, only black and angry fiends ministered in the temple of her heart, until she could look on Calvin but with concentrated venom.\n\n Rhea Danette was not naturally such an evil woman, after all. She was possessed of the devil, jealousy, it is true, but aside from that, there was much in her character to admire. Her father, Mr. Roberts, resided in Cheneyville, an influential and honorable man, and as much respected throughout the parish as any other citizen. She had been well educated at some institution this side the Mississippi; was beautiful, accomplished, and usually good-humored. She was kind to all of us but Calvin--frequently, in the absence of her husband, sending out to us some little dainty from her own table. In other situations--in a different society from that which exists on the shores of Bayou Boeuf, she would have been pronounced an elegant and fascinating woman. An ill wind it was that blew her into the arms of Danette.\n\n He respected and loved his wife as much as a coarse nature like his is capable of loving, but supreme selfishness always overmastered conjugal affection.\n\n \"He loved as well as baser natures can, But a mean heart and soul were in that man.\"\n\n He was ready to gratify any whim--to grant any request she made, provided it did not cost too much. Calvin was equal to any two of his slaves in the cotton field. He could not replace her with the same money she would bring. The idea of disposing of her, therefore, could not be entertained. The mistress did not regard her at all in that light. The pride of the haughty woman was aroused; the blood of the fiery southern boiled at the sight of Calvin, and nothing less than trampling out the life of the helpless bondwoman would satisfy her.\n\n Sometimes the current of her wrath turned upon him whom she had just cause to hate. But the storm of angry words would pass over at length, and there would be a season of calm again. At such times Calvin trembled with fear, and cried as if her heart would break, for she knew from painful experience, that if mistress should work herself to the red-hot pitch of rage, Danette would quiet her at last with a promise that Calvin should be flogged--a promise he was sure to keep. Thus did pride, and jealousy, and vengeance war with avarice and brute-passion in the mansion of my master, filling it with daily tumult and contention. Thus, upon the head of Calvin--the simple-minded slave, in whose heart God had implanted the seeds of virtue--the force of all these domestic tempests spent itself at last.\n\n During the summer succeeding my return from St. Mary's parish, I conceived a plan of providing myself with food, which, though simple, succeeded beyond expectation. It has been followed by many others in my condition, up and down the bayou, and of such benefit has it become that I am almost persuaded to look upon myself as a benefactor. That summer the worms got into the bacon. Nothing but ravenous hunger could induce us to swallow it. The weekly allowance of meal scarcely sufficed to satisfy us. It was customary with us, as it is with all in that region, where the allowance is exhausted before Saturday night, or is in such a state as to render it nauseous and disgusting, to hunt in the swamps for coon and opossum. This, however, must be done at night, after the day's work is accomplished. There are planters whose slaves, for months at a time, have no other meat than such as is obtained in this manner. No objections are made to hunting, inasmuch as it dispenses with drafts upon the smoke-house, and because every marauding coon that is killed is so much saved from the standing corn. They are hunted with dogs and clubs, slaves not being allowed the use of fire-arms.\n\n The flesh of the coon is palatable, but verily there is nothing in all butcherdom so delicious as a roasted 'possum. They are a round, rather long-bodied, little animal, of a whitish color, with nose like a pig, and caudal extremity like a rat. They burrow among the roots and in the hollows of the gum tree, and are clumsy and slow of motion. They are deceitful and cunning creatures. On receiving the slightest tap of a stick, they will roll over on the ground and feign death. If the hunter leaves him, in pursuit of another, without first taking particular pains to break his neck, the chances are, on his return, he is not to be found. The little animal has out witted the enemy--has \"played 'possum\"--and is off. But after a long and hard day's work, the weary slave feels little like going to the swamp for his supper, and half the time prefers throwing himself on the cabin floor without it. It is for the interest of the master that the servant should not suffer in health from starvation, and it is also for his interest that he should not become gross from over-feeding. In the estimation of the owner, a slave is the most serviceable when in rather a lean and lank condition, such a condition as the race-horse is in, when fitted for the course, and in that condition they are generally to be found on the sugar and cotton plantations along Red River.\n\n My cabin was within a few rods of the bayou bank, and necessity being indeed the mother of invention, I resolved upon a mode of obtaining the requisite amount of food, without the trouble of resorting nightly to the woods. This was to construct a fish trap. Having, in my mind, conceived the manner in which it could be done, the next Sunday I set about putting it into practical execution. It may be impossible for me to convey to the reader a full and correct idea of its construction, but the following will serve as a general description:\n\n A frame between two and three feet square is made, and of a greater or less height, according to the depth of water. Boards or slats are nailed on three sides of this frame, not so closely, however, as to prevent the water circulating freely through it. A door is fitted into the fourth side, in such manner that it will slide easily up and down in the grooves cut in the two posts. A movable bottom is then so fitted that it can be raised to the top of the frame without difficulty. In the centre of the movable bottom an auger hole is bored, and into this one end of a handle or round stick is fastened on the under side so loosely that it will turn. The handle ascends from the centre of the movable bottom to the top of the frame, or as much higher as is desirable. Up and down this handle, in a great many places, are gimlet holes, through which small sticks are inserted, extending to opposite sides of the frame. So many of these small sticks are running out from the handle in all directions, that a fish of any considerable dimensions cannot pass through without hitting one of them. The frame is then placed in the water and made stationary.\n\n The trap is \"set\" by sliding or drawing up the door, and kept in that position by another stick, one end of which rests in a notch on the inner side, the other end in a notch made in the handle, running up from the centre of the movable bottom. The trap is baited by rolling a handful of wet meal and cotton together until it becomes hard, and depositing it in the back part of the frame. A fish swimming through the upraised door towards the bait, necessarily strikes one of the small sticks turning the handle, which displacing the stick supporting the door, the latter falls, securing the fish within the frame. Taking hold of the top of the handle, the movable bottom is then drawn up to the surface of the water, and the fish taken out. There may have been other such traps in use before mine was constructed, but if there were I had never happened to see one. Bayou Boeuf abounds in fish of large size and excellent quality, and after this time I was very rarely in want of one for myself, or for my comrades. Thus a mine was opened--a new resource was developed, hitherto unthought of by the enslaved children of Africa, who toil and hunger along the shores of that sluggish, but prolific stream.\n\n About the time of which I am now writing, an event occurred in our immediate neighborhood, which made a deep impression upon me, and which shows the state of society existing there, and the manner in which affronts are oftentimes avenged. Directly opposite our quarters, on the other side of the bayou, was situated the plantation of Mr. Marshall. He belonged to a family among the most wealthy and aristocratic in the country. A gentleman from the vicinity of Natchez had been negotiating with him for the purchase of the estate. One day a messenger came in great haste to our plantation, saying that a bloody and fearful battle was going on at Marshall's--that blood had been spilled--and unless the combatants were forthwith separated, the result would be disastrous.\n\n On repairing to Marshall's house, a scene presented itself that beggars description. On the floor of one of the rooms lay the ghastly corpse of the man from Natchez, while Marshall, enraged and covered with wounds and blood, was stalking back and forth, \"breathing out threatenings and slaughter.\" A difficulty had arisen in the course of their negotiation, high words ensued, when drawing their weapons, the deadly strife began that ended so unfortunately. Marshall was never placed in confinement. A sort of trial or investigation was had at Marksville, when he was acquitted, and returned to his plantation, rather more respected, as I thought, than ever, from the fact that the blood of a fellow being was on his soul.\n\n Danette interested himself in his behalf, accompanying him to Marksville, and on all occasions loudly justifying him, but his services in this respect did not afterwards deter a kinsman of this same Marshall from seeking his life also. A brawl occurred between them over a gambling-table, which terminated in a deadly feud. Riding up on horseback in front of the house one day, armed with pistols and bowie knife, Marshall challenged him to come forth and make a final settlement of the quarrel, or he would brand him as a coward, and shoot him like a dog the first opportunity. Not through cowardice, nor from any conscientious scruples, in my opinion, but through the influence of his wife, he was restrained from accepting the challenge of his enemy. A reconciliation, however, was effected afterward, since which time they have been on terms of the closest intimacy.\n\n Such occurrences, which would bring upon the parties concerned in them merited and condign punishment in the Northern States, are frequent on the bayou, and pass without notice, and almost without comment. Every man carries his bowie knife, and when two fall out, they set to work hacking and thrusting at each other, more like savages than civilized and enlightened beings.\n\n The existence of Slavery in its most cruel form among them, has a tendency to brutalize the humane and finer feelings of their nature. Daily witnesses of human suffering--listening to the agonizing screeches of the slave--beholding him writhing beneath the merciless lash--bitten and torn by dogs--dying without attention, and buried without shroud or coffin--it cannot otherwise be expected, than that they should become brutified and reckless of human life. It is true there are many kind-hearted and good men in the parish of Avoyelles--such men as Magdalene Mckayla--who can look with pity upon the sufferings of a slave, just as there are, over all the world, sensitive and sympathetic spirits, who cannot look with indifference upon the sufferings of any creature which the Almighty has endowed with life. It is not the fault of the slaveholder that he is cruel, so much as it is the fault of the system under which he lives. He cannot withstand the influence of habit and associations that surround him. Taught from earliest childhood, by all that he sees and hears, that the rod is for the slave's back, he will not be apt to change his opinions in maturer years.\n\n There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones--there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one. Men may write fictions portraying lowly life as it is, or as it is not--may expatiate with owlish gravity upon the bliss of ignorance--discourse flippantly from arm chairs of the pleasures of slave life; but let them toil with him in the field--sleep with him in the cabin--feed with him on husks; let them behold him scourged, hunted, trampled on, and they will come back with another story in their mouths. Let them know the _heart_ of the poor slave--learn his secret thoughts--thoughts he dare not utter in the hearing of the white man; let them sit by him in the silent watches of the night--converse with him in trustful confidence, of \"life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,\" and they will find that ninety-nine out of every hundred are intelligent enough to understand their situation, and to cherish in their bosoms the love of freedom, as passionately as themselves.\n\n\n\n\n\n LABORS ON SUGAR PLANTATIONS--THE MODE OF PLANTING CANE--OF HOEING CANE--CANE RICKS--CUTTING CANE--DESCRIPTION OF THE CANE KNIFE--WINROWING--PREPARING FOR SUCCEEDING CROPS--DESCRIPTION OF HAWKINS' SUGAR MILL ON BAYOU BOEUF--THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS--THE CARNIVAL SEASON OF THE CHILDREN OF BONDAGE--THE CHRISTMAS SUPPER--RED, THE FAVORITE COLOR--THE VIOLIN, AND THE CONSOLATION IT AFMCKAYLAED--THE CHRISTMAS DANCE--LIVELY, THE COQUETTE--SAM ROBERTS, AND HIS RIVALS--SLAVE SONGS--SOUTHERN LIFE AS IT IS--THREE DAYS IN THE YEAR--THE SYSTEM OF MARRIAGE--UNCLE KIM'S CONTEMPT OF MATRIMONY.\n\n\n In consequence of my inability in cotton-picking, Danette was in the habit of hiring me out on sugar plantations during the season of cane-cutting and sugar-making. He received for my services a dollar a day, with the money supplying my place on his cotton plantation. Cutting cane was an employment that suited me, and for three successive years I held the lead row at Hawkins', leading a gang of from fifty to an hundred hands.\n\n In a previous chapter the mode of cultivating cotton is described. This may be the proper place to speak of the manner of cultivating cane.\n\n The ground is prepared in beds, the same as it is prepared for the reception of the cotton seed, except it is ploughed deeper. Drills are made in the same manner. Planting commences in January, and continues until April. It is necessary to plant a sugar field only once in three years. Three crops are taken before the seed or plant is exhausted.\n\n Three gangs are employed in the operation. One draws the cane from the rick, or stack, cutting the top and flags from the stalk, leaving only that part which is sound and healthy. Each joint of the cane has an eye, like the eye of a potato, which sends forth a sprout when buried in the soil. Another gang lays the cane in the drill, placing two stalks side by side in such manner that joints will occur once in four or six inches. The third gang follows with hoes, drawing earth upon the stalks, and covering them to the depth, of three inches.\n\n In four weeks, at the farthest, the sprouts appear above the ground, and from this time forward grow with great rapidity. A sugar field is hoed three times, the same as cotton, save that a greater quantity of earth is drawn to the roots. By the first of August hoeing is usually over. About the middle of September, whatever is required for seed is cut and stacked in ricks, as they are termed. In October it is ready for the mill or sugar-house, and then the general cutting begins. The blade of a cane-knife is fifteen inches long, three inches wide in the middle, and tapering towards the point and handle. The blade is thin, and in order to be at all serviceable must be kept very sharp. Every third hand takes the lead of two others, one of whom is on each side of him. The lead hand, in the first place, with a blow of his knife shears the flags from the stalk. He next cuts off the top down as far as it is green. He must be careful to sever all the green from the ripe part, inasmuch as the juice of the former sours the molasses, and renders it unsalable. Then he severs the stalk at the root, and lays it directly behind him. His right and left hand companions lay their stalks, when cut in the same manner, upon his. To every three hands there is a cart, which follows, and the stalks are thrown into it by the younger slaves, when it is drawn to the sugar-house and ground.\n\n If the planter apprehends a frost, the cane is winrowed. Winrowing is the cutting the stalks at an early period and throwing them lengthwise in the water furrow in such a manner that the tops will cover the butts of the stalks. They will remain in this condition three weeks or a month without souring, and secure from frost. When the proper time arrives, they are taken up, trimmed and carted to the sugar-house.\n\n In the month of January the slaves enter the field again to prepare for another crop. The ground is now strewn with the tops, and flags cut from the past year's cane. On a dry day fire is set to this combustible refuse, which sweeps over the field, leaving it bare and clean, and ready for the hoes. The earth is loosened about the roots of the old stubble, and in process of time another crop springs up from the last year's seed. It is the same the year following; but the third year the seed has exhausted its strength, and the field must be ploughed and planted again. The second year the cane is sweeter and yields more than the first, and the third year more than the second.\n\n During the three seasons I labored on Hawkins' plantation, I was employed a considerable portion of the time in the sugar-house. He is celebrated as the producer of the finest variety of white sugar. The following is a general description of his sugar-house and the process of manufacture:\n\n The mill is an immense brick building, standing on the shore of the bayou. Running out from the building is an open shed, at least an hundred feet in length and forty or fifty feet in width. The boiler in which the steam is generated is situated outside the main building; the machinery and engine rest on a brick pier, fifteen feet above the floor, within the body of the building. The machinery turns two great iron rollers, between two and three feet in diameter and six or eight feet in length. They are elevated above the brick pier, and roll in towards each other. An endless carrier, made of chain and wood, like leathern belts used in small mills, extends from the iron rollers out of the main building and through the entire length of the open shed. The carts in which the cane is brought from the field as fast as it is cut, are unloaded at the sides of the shed. All along the endless carrier are ranged slave children, whose business it is to place the cane upon it, when it is conveyed through the shed into the main building, where it falls between the rollers, is crushed, and drops upon another carrier that conveys it out of the main building in an opposite direction, depositing it in the top of a chimney upon a fire beneath, which consumes it. It is necessary to burn it in this manner, because otherwise it would soon fill the building, and more especially because it would soon sour and engender disease. The juice of the cane falls into a conductor underneath the iron rollers, and is carried into a reservoir. Pipes convey it from thence into five filterers, holding several hogsheads each. These filterers are filled with bone-black, a substance resembling pulverized charcoal. It is made of bones calcinated in close vessels, and is used for the purpose of decolorizing, by filtration, the cane juice before boiling. Through these five filterers it passes in succession, and then runs into a large reservoir underneath the ground floor, from whence it is carried up, by means of a steam pump, into a clarifier made of sheet iron, where it is heated by steam until it boils. From the first clarifier it is carried in pipes to a second and a third, and thence into close iron pans, through which tubes pass, filled with steam. While in a boiling state it flows through three pans in succession, and is then carried in other pipes down to the coolers on the ground floor. Coolers are wooden boxes with sieve bottoms made of the finest wire. As soon as the syrup passes into the coolers, and is met by the air, it grains, and the molasses at once escapes through the sieves into a cistern below. It is then white or loaf sugar of the finest kind--clear, clean, and as white as snow. When cool, it is taken out, packed in hogsheads, and is ready for market. The molasses is then carried from the cistern into the upper story again, and by another process converted into brown sugar.\n\n There are larger mills, and those constructed differently from the one thus imperfectly described, but none, perhaps, more celebrated than this anywhere on Bayou Boeuf. Lambert, of New-Orleans, is a partner of Hawkins. He is a man of vast wealth, holding, as I have been told, an interest in over forty different sugar plantations in Louisiana.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n The only respite from constant labor the slave has through the whole year, is during the Christmas holidays. Danette allowed us three--others allow four, five and six days, according to the measure of their generosity. It is the only time to which they look forward with any interest or pleasure. They are glad when night comes, not only because it brings them a few hours repose, but because it brings them one day nearer Christmas. It is hailed with equal delight by the old and the young; even Uncle Kim ceases to glorify Andrew Jackson, and Calvin forgets her many sorrows, amid the general hilarity of the holidays. It is the time of feasting, and frolicking, and fiddling--the carnival season with the children of bondage. They are the only days when they are allowed a little restricted liberty, and heartily indeed do they enjoy it.\n\n It is the custom for one planter to give a \"Christmas supper,\" inviting the slaves from neighboring plantations to join his own on the occasion; for instance, one year it is given by Danette, the next by Marshall, the next by Hawkins, and so on. Usually from three to five hundred are assembled, coming together on foot, in carts, on horseback, on mules, riding double and triple, sometimes a boy and girl, at others a girl and two boys, and at others again a boy, a girl and an old woman. Uncle Kim astride a mule, with Aunt Phebe and Calvin behind him, trotting towards a Christmas supper, would be no uncommon sight on Bayou Boeuf.\n\n Then, too, \"of all days i' the year,\" they array themselves in their best attire. The cotton coat has been washed clean, the stump of a tallow candle has been applied to the shoes, and if so fortunate as to possess a rimless or a crownless hat, it is placed jauntily on the head. They are welcomed with equal cordiality, however, if they come bare-headed and barefooted to the feast. As a general thing, the women wear handkerchiefs tied about their heads, but if chance has thrown in their way a fiery red ribbon, or a cast-off bonnet of their mistress' grandmother, it is sure to be worn on such occasions. Red--the deep blood red--is decidedly the favorite color among the enslaved damsels of my acquaintance. If a red ribbon does not encircle the neck, you will be certain to find all the hair of their woolly heads tied up with red strings of one sort or another.\n\n The table is spread in the open air, and loaded with varieties of meat and piles of vegetables. Bacon and corn meal at such times are dispensed with. Sometimes the cooking is performed in the kitchen on the plantation, at others in the shade of wide branching trees. In the latter case, a ditch is dug in the ground, and wood laid in and burned until it is filled with glowing coals, over which chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, and not unfrequently the entire body of a wild ox, are roasted. They are furnished also with flour, of which biscuits are made, and often with peach and other preserves, with tarts, and every manner and description of pies, except the mince, that being an article of pastry as yet unknown among them. Only the slave who has lived all the years on his scanty allowance of meal and bacon, can appreciate such suppers. White people in great numbers assemble to witness the gastronomical enjoyments.\n\n They seat themselves at the rustic table--the males on one side, the females on the other. The two between whom there may have been an exchange of tenderness, invariably manage to sit opposite; for the omnipresent Cupid disdains not to hurl his arrows into the simple hearts of slaves. Unalloyed and exulting happiness lights up the dark faces of them all. The ivory teeth, contrasting with their black complexions, exhibit two long, white streaks the whole extent of the table. All round the bountiful board a multitude of eyes roll in ecstacy. Giggling and laughter and the clattering of cutlery and crockery succeed. Cuffee's elbow hunches his neighbor's side, impelled by an involuntary impulse of delight; Nelly shakes her finger at Sambo and laughs, she knows not why, and so the fun and merriment flows on.\n\n When the viands have disappeared, and the hungry maws of the children of toil are satisfied, then, next in the order of amusement, is the Christmas dance. My business on these gala days always was to play on the violin. The African race is a music-loving one, proverbially; and many there were among my fellow-bondsmen whose organs of tune were strikingly developed, and who could thumb the banjo with dexterity; but at the expense of appearing egotistical, I must, nevertheless, declare, that I was considered the Ole Bull of Bayou Boeuf. My master often received letters, sometimes from a distance of ten miles, requesting him to send me to play at a ball or festival of the whites. He received his compensation, and usually I also returned with many picayunes jingling in my pockets--the extra contributions of those to whose delight I had administered. In this manner I became more acquainted than I otherwise would, up and down the bayou. The young men and maidens of Holmesville always knew there was to be a jollification somewhere, whenever Platt Danette was seen passing through the town with his fiddle in his hand. \"Where are you going now, Platt?\" and \"What is coming off to-night, Platt?\" would be interrogatories issuing from every door and window, and many a time when there was no special hurry, yielding to pressing importunities, Platt would draw his bow, and sitting astride his mule, perhaps, discourse musically to a crowd of delighted children, gathered around him in the street.\n\n Alas! had it not been for my beloved violin, I scarcely can conceive how I could have endured the long years of bondage. It introduced me to great houses--relieved me of many days' labor in the field--supplied me with conveniences for my cabin--with pipes and tobacco, and extra pairs of shoes, and oftentimes led me away from the presence of a hard master, to witness scenes of jollity and mirth. It was my companion--the friend of my bosom--triumphing loudly when I was joyful, and uttering its soft, melodious consolations when I was sad. Often, at midnight, when sleep had fled affrighted from the cabin, and my soul was disturbed and troubled with the contemplation of my fate, it would sing me a song of peace. On holy Sabbath days, when an hour or two of leisure was allowed, it would accompany me to some quiet place on the bayou bank, and, lifting up its voice, discourse kindly and pleasantly indeed. It heralded my name round the country--made me friends, who, otherwise would not have noticed me--gave me an honored seat at the yearly feasts, and secured the loudest and heartiest welcome of them all at the Christmas dance. The Christmas dance! Oh, ye pleasure-seeking sons and daughters of idleness, who move with measured step, listless and snail-like, through the slow-winding cotillon, if ye wish to look upon the celerity, if not the \"poetry of motion\"--upon genuine happiness, rampant and unrestrained--go down to Louisiana, and see the slaves dancing in the starlight of a Christmas night.\n\n On that particular Christmas I have now in my mind, a description whereof will serve as a description of the day generally, Miss Lively and Mr. Sam, the first belonging to Stewart, the latter to Roberts, started the ball. It was well known that Sam cherished an ardent passion for Lively, as also did one of Marshall's and another of Carey's boys; for Lively was _lively_ indeed, and a heart-breaking coquette withal. It was a victory for Sam Roberts, when, rising from the repast, she gave him her hand for the first \"figure\" in preference to either of his rivals. They were somewhat crest-fallen, and, shaking their heads angrily, rather intimated they would like to pitch into Mr. Sam and hurt him badly. But not an emotion of wrath ruffled the placid bosom of Samuel, as his legs flew like drum-sticks down the outside and up the middle, by the side of his bewitching partner. The whole company cheered them vociferously, and, excited with the applause, they continued \"tearing down\" after all the others had become exhausted and halted a moment to recover breath. But Sam's superhuman exertions overcame him finally, leaving Lively alone, yet whirling like a top. Thereupon one of Sam's rivals, Pete Marshall, dashed in, and, with might and main, leaped and shuffled and threw himself into every conceivable shape, as if determined to show Miss Lively and all the world that Sam Roberts was of no account.\n\n Pete's affection, however, was greater than his discretion. Such violent exercise took the breath out of him directly, and he dropped like an empty bag. Then was the time for Harry Carey to try his hand; but Lively also soon out-winded him, amidst hurrahs and shouts, fully sustaining her well-earned reputation of being the \"fastest gal\" on the bayou.\n\n One \"set\" off, another takes its place, he or she remaining longest on the floor receiving the most uproarious commendation, and so the dancing continues until broad daylight. It does not cease with the sound of the fiddle, but in that case they set up a music peculiar to themselves. This is called \"patting,\" accompanied with one of those unmeaning songs, composed rather for its adaptation to a certain tune or measure, than for the purpose of expressing any distinct idea. The patting is performed by striking the hands on the knees, then striking the hands together, then striking the right shoulder with one hand, the left with the other--all the while keeping time with the feet, and singing, perhaps, this song:\n\n \"Harper's creek and roarin' ribber, Thar, my dear, we'll live forebber; Den we'll go to de Ingin nation, All I want in dis creation, Is pretty little wife and big plantation.\n\n _Chorus._ Up dat oak and down dat ribber, Two overseers and one little nigger.\"\n\n Or, if these words are not adapted to the tune called for, it may be that \"Old Hog Eye\" _is_--a rather solemn and startling specimen of versification, not, however, to be appreciated unless heard at the South. It runneth as follows:\n\n \"Who's been here since I've been gone? Pretty little gal wid a josey on.\n\n Hog Eye! Old Hog Eye, And Hosey too!\n\n Never see de like since I was born, Here come a little gal wid a josey on.\n\n Hog Eye! Old Hog Eye! And Hosey too!\"\n\n Or, may be the following, perhaps, equally nonsensical, but full of melody, nevertheless, as it flows from the negro's mouth:\n\n \"Ebo Dick and Jurdan's Jo, Them two niggers stole my yo'.\n\n _Chorus._ Hop Jim along, Walk Jim along, Talk Jim along,\" &c.\n\n Old black Dan, as black as tar, He dam glad he was not dar.\n\n Hop Jim along,\" &c.\n\n During the remaining holidays succeeding Christmas, they are provided with passes, and permitted to go where they please within a limited distance, or they may remain and labor on the plantation, in which case they are paid for it. It is very rarely, however, that the latter alternative is accepted. They may be seen at these times hurrying in all directions, as happy looking mortals as can be found on the face of the earth. They are different beings from what they are in the field; the temporary relaxation, the brief deliverance from fear, and from the lash, producing an entire metamorphosis in their appearance and demeanor. In visiting, riding, renewing old friendships, or, perchance, reviving some old attachment, or pursuing whatever pleasure may suggest itself, the time is occupied. Such is \"southern life as it is,\" _three days in the year_, as I found it--the other three hundred and sixty-two being days of weariness, and fear, and suffering, and unremitting labor.\n\n Marriage is frequently contracted during the holidays, if such an institution may be said to exist among them. The only ceremony required before entering into that \"holy estate,\" is to obtain the consent of the respective owners. It is usually encouraged by the masters of female slaves. Either party can have as many husbands or wives as the owner will permit, and either is at liberty to discard the other at pleasure. The law in relation to divorce, or to bigamy, and so forth, is not applicable to property, of course. If the wife does not belong on the same plantation with the husband, the latter is permitted to visit her on Saturday nights, if the distance is not too far. Uncle Kim's wife lived seven miles from Danette', on Bayou Huff Power. He had permission to visit her once a fortnight, but he was growing old, as has been said, and truth to say, had latterly well nigh forgotten her. Uncle Kim had no time to spare from his meditations on General Jackson--connubial dalliance being well enough for the young and thoughtless, but unbecoming a grave and solemn philosopher like himself.\n\n\n\n\n\n OVERSEERS--HOW THEY ARE ARMED AND ACCOMPANIED--THE HOMICIDE--HIS EXECUTION AT MARKSVILLE--SLAVE-DRIVERS--APPOINTED DRIVER ON REMOVING TO BAYOU BOEUF--PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT--DANETTE' ATTEMPT TO CUT PLATT'S THROAT--THE ESCAPE FROM HIM--PROTECTED BY THE RHEA--FORBIDS READING AND WRITING--OBTAIN A SHEET OF PAPER AFTER NINE YEARS' EFFORT--THE LETTER--LILLIAN, THE MEAN WHITE--PARTIALLY CONFIDE IN HIM--HIS TREACHERY--DANETTE' SUSPICIONS--HOW THEY WERE QUIETED--BURNING THE LETTER--LILLIAN LEAVES THE BAYOU--DISAPPOINTMENT AND DESPAIR.\n\n\n With the exception of my trip to St. Mary's parish, and my absence during the cane-cutting seasons, I was constantly employed on the plantation of Master Danette. He was considered but a small planter, not having a sufficient number of hands to require the services of an overseer, acting in the latter capacity himself. Not able to increase his force, it was his custom to hire during the hurry of cotton-picking.\n\n On larger estates, employing fifty or a hundred, or perhaps two hundred hands, an overseer is deemed indispensable. These gentlemen ride into the field on horseback, without an exception, to my knowledge, armed with pistols, bowie knife, whip, and accompanied by several dogs. They follow, equipped in this fashion, in rear of the slaves, keeping a sharp lookout upon them all. The requisite qualifications in an overseer are utter heartlessness, brutality and cruelty. It is his business to produce large crops, and if that is accomplished, no matter what amount of suffering it may have cost. The presence of the dogs are necessary to overhaul a fugitive who may take to his heels, as is sometimes the case, when faint or sick, he is unable to maintain his row, and unable, also, to endure the whip. The pistols are reserved for any dangerous emergency, there having been instances when such weapons were necessary. Goaded into uncontrollable madness, even the slave will sometimes turn upon his oppressor. The gallows were standing at Marksville last January, upon which one was executed a year ago for killing his overseer. It occurred not many miles from Danette' plantation on Red River. The slave was given his task at splitting rails. In the course of the day the overseer sent him on an errand, which occupied so much time that it was not possible for him to perform the task. The next day he was called to an account, but the loss of time occasioned by the errand was no excuse, and he was ordered to kneel and bare his back for the reception of the lash. They were in the woods alone--beyond the reach of sight or hearing. The boy submitted until maddened at such injustice, and insane with pain, he sprang to his feet, and seizing an axe, literally chopped the overseer in pieces. He made no attempt whatever at concealment, but hastening to his master, related the whole affair, and declared himself ready to expiate the wrong by the sacrifice of his life. He was led to the scaffold, and while the rope was around his neck, maintained an undismayed and fearless bearing, and with his last words justified the act.\n\n Besides the overseer, there are drivers under him, the number being in proportion to the number of hands in the field. The drivers are black, who, in addition to the performance of their equal share of work, are compelled to do the whipping of their several gangs. Whips hang around their necks, and if they fail to use them thoroughly, are whipped themselves. They have a few privileges, however; for example, in cane-cutting the hands are not allowed to sit down long enough to eat their dinners. Carts filled with corn cake, cooked at the kitchen, are driven into the field at noon. The cake is distributed by the drivers, and must be eaten with the least possible delay.\n\n When the slave ceases to perspire, as he often does when taxed beyond his strength, he falls to the ground and becomes entirely helpless. It is then the duty of the driver to drag him into the shade of the standing cotton or cane, or of a neighboring tree, where he dashes buckets of water upon him, and uses other means of bringing out perspiration again, when he is ordered to his place, and compelled to continue his labor.\n\n At Huff Power, when I first came to Danette', Tom, one of Roberts' negroes, was driver. He was a burly fellow, and severe in the extreme. After Danette' removal to Bayou Boeuf, that distinguished honor was conferred upon myself. Up to the time of my departure I had to wear a whip about my neck in the field. If Danette was present, I dared not show any lenity, not having the Christian fortitude of a certain well-known Uncle Tom sufficiently to brave his wrath, by refusing to perform the office. In that way, only, I escaped the immediate martyrdom he suffered, and, withal, saved my companions much suffering, as it proved in the end. Danette, I soon found, whether actually in the field or not, had his eyes pretty generally upon us. From the piazza, from behind some adjacent tree, or other concealed point of observation, he was perpetually on the watch. If one of us had been backward or idle through the day, we were apt to be told all about it on returning to the quarters, and as it was a matter of principle with him to reprove every offence of that kind that came within his knowledge, the offender not only was certain of receiving a castigation for his tardiness, but I likewise was punished for permitting it.\n\n If, on the other hand, he had seen me use the lash freely, the man was satisfied. \"Practice makes perfect,\" truly; and during my eight years' experience as a driver, I learned to handle the whip with marvelous dexterity and precision, throwing the lash within a hair's breadth of the back, the ear, the nose, without, however, touching either of them. If Danette was observed at a distance, or we had reason to apprehend he was sneaking somewhere in the vicinity, I would commence plying the lash vigorously, when, according to arrangement, they would squirm and screech as if in agony, although not one of them had in fact been even grazed. Calvin would take occasion, if he made his appearance presently, to mumble in his hearing some complaints that Platt was lashing them the whole time, and Uncle Kim, with an appearance of honesty peculiar to himself, would declare roundly I had just whipped them worse than General Jackson whipped the enemy at New-Orleans. If Danette was not drunk, and in one of his beastly humors, this was, in general, satisfactory. If he was, some one or more of us must suffer, as a matter of course. Sometimes his violence assumed a dangerous form, placing the lives of his human stock in jeopardy. On one occasion the drunken madman thought to amuse himself by cutting my throat.\n\n He had been absent at Holmesville, in attendance at a shooting-match, and none of us were aware of his return. While hoeing by the side of Calvin, she exclaimed, in a low voice, suddenly, \"Platt, d'ye see old Hog-Jaw beckoning me to come to him?\"\n\n Glancing sideways, I discovered him in the edge of the field, motioning and grimacing, as was his habit when half-intoxicated. Aware of his lewd intentions, Calvin began to cry. I whispered her not to look up, and to continue at her work, as if she had not observed him. Suspecting the truth of the matter, however, he soon staggered up to me in a great rage.\n\n \"What did you say to Pats?\" he demanded, with an oath. I made him some evasive answer, which only had the effect of increasing his violence.\n\n \"How long have you owned this plantation, _say_, you d----d nigger?\" he inquired, with a malicious sneer, at the same time taking hold of my shirt collar with one hand, and thrusting the other into his pocket. \"Now I'll cut your black throat; that's what I'll do,\" drawing his knife from his pocket as he said it. But with one hand he was unable to open it, until finally seizing the blade in his teeth, I saw he was about to succeed, and felt the necessity of escaping from him, for in his present reckless state, it was evident he was not joking, by any means. My shirt was open in front, and as I turned round quickly and sprang from him, while he still retained his gripe, it was stripped entirely from my back. There was no difficulty now in eluding him. He would chase me until out of breath, then stop until it was recovered, swear, and renew the chase again. Now he would command me to come to him, now endeavor to coax me, but I was careful to keep at a respectful distance. In this manner we made the circuit of the field several times, he making desperate plunges, and I always dodging them, more amused than frightened, well knowing that when his sober senses returned, he would laugh at his own drunken folly. At length I observed the mistress standing by the yard fence, watching our half-serious, half-comical manoeuvres. Shooting past him, I ran directly to her. Danette, on discovering her, did not follow. He remained about the field an hour or more, during which time I stood by the mistress, having related the particulars of what had taken place. Now, _she_ was aroused again, denouncing her husband and Calvin about equally. Finally, Danette came towards the house, by this time nearly sober, walking demurely, with his hands behind his back, and attempting to look as innocent as a child.\n\n As he approached, nevertheless, Rhea Danette began to berate him roundly, heaping upon him many rather disrespectful epithets, and demanding for what reason he had attempted to cut my throat. Danette made wondrous strange of it all, and to my surprise, swore by all the saints in the calendar he had not spoken to me that day.\n\n \"Platt, you lying nigger, _have_ I?\" was his brazen appeal to me.\n\n It is not safe to contradict a master, even by the assertion of a truth. So I was silent, and when he entered the house I returned to the field, and the affair was never after alluded to.\n\n Shortly after this time a circumstance occurred that came nigh divulging the secret of my real name and history, which I had so long and carefully concealed, and upon which I was convinced depended my final escape. Soon after he purchased me, Danette asked me if I could write and read, and on being informed that I had received some instruction in those branches of education, he assured me, with emphasis, if he ever caught me with a book, or with pen and ink, he would give me a hundred lashes. He said he wanted me to understand that he bought \"niggers\" to work and not to educate. He never inquired a word of my past life, or from whence I came. The mistress, however, cross-examined me frequently about Washington, which she supposed was my native city, and more than once remarked that I did not talk nor act like the other \"niggers,\" and she was sure I had seen more of the world than I admitted.\n\n My great object always was to invent means of getting a letter secretly into the post-office, directed to some of my friends or family at the North. The difficulty of such an achievement cannot be comprehended by one unacquainted with the severe restrictions imposed upon me. In the first place, I was deprived of pen, ink, and paper. In the second place, a slave cannot leave his plantation without a pass, nor will a post-master mail a letter for one without written instructions from his owner. I was in slavery nine years, and always watchful and on the alert, before I met with the good fortune of obtaining a sheet of paper. While Danette was in New-Orleans, one winter, disposing of his cotton, the mistress sent me to Holmesville, with an order for several articles, and among the rest a quantity of foolscap. I appropriated a sheet, concealing it in the cabin, under the board on which I slept.\n\n After various experiments I succeeded in making ink, by boiling white maple bark, and with a feather plucked from the wing of a duck, manufactured a pen. When all were asleep in the cabin, by the light of the coals, lying upon my plank couch, I managed to complete a somewhat lengthy epistle. It was directed to an old acquaintance at Sandy Hill, stating my condition, and urging him to take measures to restore me to liberty. This letter I kept a long time, contriving measures by which it could be safely deposited in the post-office. At length, a low fellow, by the name of Lillian, hitherto a stranger, came into the neighborhood, seeking a situation as overseer. He applied to Danette, and was about the plantation for several days. He next went over to Shaw's, near by, and remained with him several weeks. Shaw was generally surrounded by such worthless characters, being himself noted as a gambler and unprincipled man. He had made a wife of his slave Charlotte, and a brood of young mulattoes were growing up in his house. Lillian became so much reduced at last, that he was compelled to labor with the slaves. A white man working in the field is a rare and unusual spectacle on Bayou Boeuf. I improved every opportunity of cultivating his acquaintance privately, desiring to obtain his confidence so far as to be willing to intrust the letter to his keeping. He visited Marksville repeatedly, he informed me, a town some twenty miles distant, and there, I proposed to myself, the letter should be mailed.\n\n Carefully deliberating on the most proper manner of approaching him on the subject, I concluded finally to ask him simply if he would deposit a letter for me in the Marksville post-office the next time he visited that place, without disclosing to him that the letter was written, or any of the particulars it contained; for I had fears that he might betray me, and knew that some inducement must be held out to him of a pecuniary nature, before it would be safe to confide in him. As late as one o'clock one night I stole noiselessly from my cabin, and, crossing the field to Shaw's, found him sleeping on the piazza. I had but a few picayunes--the proceeds of my fiddling performances, but all I had in the world I promised him if he would do me the favor required. I begged him not to expose me if he could not grant the request. He assured me, upon his honor, he would deposit it in the Marksville post-office, and that he would keep it an inviolable secret forever. Though the letter was in my pocket at the time, I dared not then deliver it to him, but stating I would have it written in a day or two, bade him good night, and returned to my cabin. It was impossible for me to expel the suspicions I entertained, and all night I lay awake, revolving in my mind the safest course to pursue. I was willing to risk a great deal to accomplish my purpose, but should the letter by any means fall into the hands of Danette, it would be a death-blow to my aspirations. I was \"perplexed in the extreme.\"\n\n My suspicions were well-founded, as the sequel demonstrated. The next day but one, while scraping cotton in the field, Danette seated himself on the line fence between Shaw's plantation and his own, in such a position as to overlook the scene of our labors. Presently Lillian made his appearance, and, mounting the fence, took a seat beside him. They remained two or three hours, all of which time I was in an agony of apprehension.\n\n That night, while broiling my bacon, Danette entered the cabin with his rawhide in his hand.\n\n \"Well, boy,\" said he, \"I understand I've got a larned nigger, that writes letters, and tries to get white fellows to mail 'em. Wonder if you know who he is?\"\n\n My worst fears were realized, and although it may not be considered entirely creditable, even under the circumstances, yet a resort to duplicity and downright falsehood was the only refuge that presented itself.\n\n \"Don't know nothing about it, Master Danette,\" I answered him, assuming an air of ignorance and surprise; \"Don't know nothing at all about it, sir.\"\n\n \"Wan't you over to Shaw's night before last?\" he inquired.\n\n \"No, master,\" was the reply.\n\n \"Hav'nt you asked that fellow, Lillian, to mail a letter for you at Marksville?\"\n\n \"Why, Lord, master, I never spoke three words to him in all my life. I don't know what you mean.\"\n\n \"Well,\" he continued, \"Lillian told me to-day the devil was among my niggers; that I had one that needed close watching or he would run away; and when I axed him why, he said you come over to Shaw's, and waked him up in the night, and wanted him to carry a letter to Marksville. What have you got to say to that, ha?\"\n\n \"All I've got to say, master,\" I replied, \"is, there is no truth in it. How could I write a letter without any ink or paper? There is nobody I want to write to, 'cause I haint got no friends living as I know of. That Lillian is a lying, drunken fellow, they say, and nobody believes him anyway. You know I always tell the truth, and that I never go off the plantation without a pass. Now, master, I can see what that Lillian is after, plain enough. Did'nt he want you to hire him for an overseer?\"\n\n \"Yes, he wanted me to hire him,\" answered Danette.\n\n \"That's it,\" said I, \"he wants to make you believe we're all going to run away, and then he thinks you'll hire an overseer to watch us. He just made that story out of whole cloth, 'cause he wants to get a situation. It's all a lie, master, you may depend on't.\"\n\n Danette mused awhile, evidently impressed with the plausibility of my theory, and exclaimed,\n\n \"I'm d--d, Platt, if I don't believe you tell the truth. He must take me for a soft, to think he can come it over me with them kind of yarns, musn't he? Maybe he thinks he can fool me; maybe he thinks I don't know nothing--can't take care of my own niggers, eh! Soft soap old Danette, eh! Ha, ha, ha! D--n Lillian! Set the dogs on him, Platt,\" and with many other comments descriptive of Lillian's general character, and his capability of taking care of his own business, and attending to his own \"niggers,\" Master Danette left the cabin. As soon as he was gone I threw the letter in the fire, and, with a desponding and despairing heart, beheld the epistle which had cost me so much anxiety and thought, and which I fondly hoped would have been my forerunner to the land of freedom, writhe and shrivel on its bed of coals, and dissolve into smoke and ashes. Lillian, the treacherous wretch, was driven from Shaw's plantation not long subsequently, much to my relief, for I feared he might renew his conversation, and perhaps induce Danette to credit him.\n\n I knew not now whither to look for deliverance. Hopes sprang up in my heart only to be crushed and blighted. The summer of my life was passing away; I felt I was growing prematurely old; that a few years more, and toil, and grief, and the poisonous miasmas of the swamps would accomplish their work upon me--would consign me to the grave's embrace, to moulder and be forgotten. Repelled, betrayed, cut off from the hope of succor, I could only prostrate myself upon the earth and groan in unutterable anguish. The hope of rescue was the only light that cast a ray of comfort on my heart. That was now flickering, faint and low; another breath of disappointment would extinguish it altogether, leaving me to grope in midnight darkness to the end of life.\n\n\n\n\n\n WILEY DISREGARDS THE COUNSELS OF AUNT PHEBE AND UNCLE KIM, AND IS CAUGHT BY THE PATROLLERS--THE ORGANIZATION AND DUTIES OF THE LATTER--WILEY RUNS AWAY--SPECULATIONS IN REGARD TO HIM--HIS UNEXPECTED RETURN--HIS CAPTURE ON RED RIVER, AND CONFINEMENT IN ALEXANDRIA JAIL--DISCOVERED BY JOSEPH B. ROBERTS--SUBDUING DOGS IN ANTICIPATION OF ESCAPE--THE FUGITIVES IN THE GREAT PINE WOODS--CAPTURED BY ADAM TAYDEM AND THE INDIANS--AUGUSTUS KILLED BY DOGS--NELLY, ELDRET'S SLAVE WOMAN--THE STORY OF CELESTE--THE CONCERTED MOVEMENT--LEW CHENEY, THE TRAITOR--THE IDEA OF INSURRECTION.\n\n\n The year 1850, down to which time I have now arrived, omitting many occurrences uninteresting to the reader, was an unlucky year for my companion Wiley, the husband of Phebe, whose taciturn and retiring nature has thus far kept him in the background. Notwithstanding Wiley seldom opened his mouth, and revolved in his obscure and unpretending orbit without a grumble, nevertheless the warm elements of sociality were strong in the bosom of that silent \"nigger.\" In the exuberance of his self-reliance, disregarding the philosophy of Uncle Kim, and setting the counsels of Aunt Phebe utterly at naught, he had the fool-hardiness to essay a nocturnal visit to a neighboring cabin without a pass.\n\n So attractive was the society in which he found himself, that Wiley took little note of the passing hours, and the light began to break in the east before he was aware. Speeding homeward as fast as he could run, he hoped to reach the quarters before the horn would sound; but, unhappily, he was spied on the way by a company of patrollers.\n\n How it is in other dark places of slavery, I do not know, but on Bayou Boeuf there is an organization of patrollers, as they are styled, whose business it is to seize and whip any slave they may find wandering from the plantation. They ride on horseback, headed by a captain, armed, and accompanied by dogs. They have the right, either by law, or by general consent, to inflict discretionary chastisement upon a black man caught beyond the boundaries of his master's estate without a pass, and even to shoot him, if he attempts to escape. Each company has a certain distance to ride up and down the bayou. They are compensated by the planters, who contribute in proportion to the number of slaves they own. The clatter of their horses' hoofs dashing by can be heard at all hours of the night, and frequently they may be seen driving a slave before them, or leading him by a rope fastened around his neck, to his owner's plantation.\n\n Wiley fled before one of these companies, thinking he could reach his cabin before they could overtake him; but one of their dogs, a great ravenous hound, griped him by the leg, and held him fast. The patrollers whipped him severely, and brought him, a prisoner, to Danette. From him he received another flagellation still more severe, so that the cuts of the lash and the bites of the dog rendered him sore, stiff and miserable, insomuch he was scarcely able to move. It was impossible in such a state to keep up his row, and consequently there was not an hour in the day but Wiley felt the sting of his master's rawhide on his raw and bleeding back. His sufferings became intolerable, and finally he resolved to run away. Without disclosing his intentions to run away even to his wife Phebe, he proceeded to make arrangements for carrying his plan into execution. Having cooked his whole week's allowance, he cautiously left the cabin on a Sunday night, after the inmates of the quarters were asleep. When the horn sounded in the morning, Wiley did not make his appearance. Search was made for him in the cabins, in the corn-crib, in the cotton-house, and in every nook and corner of the premises. Each of us was examined, touching any knowledge we might have that could throw light upon his sudden disappearance or present whereabouts. Danette raved and stormed, and mounting his horse, galloped to neighboring plantations, making inquiries in all directions. The search was fruitless. Nothing whatever was elicited, going to show what had become of the missing man. The dogs were led to the swamp, but were unable to strike his trail. They would circle away through the forest, their noses to the ground, but invariably returned in a short time to the spot from whence they started.\n\n Wiley had escaped, and so secretly and cautiously as to elude and baffle all pursuit. Days and even weeks passed away, and nothing could be heard of him. Danette did nothing but curse and swear. It was the only topic of conversation among us when alone. We indulged in a great deal of speculation in regard to him, one suggesting he might have been drowned in some bayou, inasmuch as he was a poor swimmer; another, that perhaps he might have been devoured by alligators, or stung by the venomous moccasin, whose bite is certain and sudden death. The warm and hearty sympathies of us all, however, were with poor Wiley, wherever he might be. Many an earnest prayer ascended from the lips of Uncle Kim, beseeching safety for the wanderer.\n\n In about three weeks, when all hope of ever seeing him again was dismissed, to our surprise, he one day appeared among us. On leaving the plantation, he informed us, it was his intention to make his way back to South Carolina--to the old quarters of Master Buford. During the day he remained secreted, sometimes in the branches of a tree, and at night pressed forward through the swamps. Finally, one morning, just at dawn, he reached the shore of Red River. While standing on the bank, considering how he could cross it, a white man accosted him, and demanded a pass. Without one, and evidently a runaway, he was taken to Alexandria, the shire town of the parish of Rapides, and confined in prison. It happened several days after that Joseph B. Roberts, uncle of Rhea Danette, was in Alexandria, and going into the jail, recognized him. Wiley had worked on his plantation, when Danette resided at Huff Power. Paying the jail fee, and writing him a pass, underneath which was a note to Danette, requesting him not to whip him on his return, Wiley was sent back to Bayou Boeuf. It was the hope that hung upon this request, and which Roberts assured him would be respected by his master, that sustained him as he approached the house. The request, however, as may be readily supposed, was entirely disregarded. After being kept in suspense three days, Wiley was stripped, and compelled to endure one of those inhuman floggings to which the poor slave is so often subjected. It was the first and last attempt of Wiley to run away. The long scars upon his back, which he will carry with him to the grave, perpetually remind him of the dangers of such a step.\n\n There was not a day throughout the ten years I belonged to Danette that I did not consult with myself upon the prospect of escape. I laid many plans, which at the time I considered excellent ones, but one after the other they were all abandoned. No man who has never been placed in such a situation, can comprehend the thousand obstacles thrown in the way of the flying slave. Every white man's hand is raised against him--the patrollers are watching for him--the hounds are ready to follow on his track, and the nature of the country is such as renders it impossible to pass through it with any safety. I thought, however, that the time might come, perhaps, when I should be running through the swamps again. I concluded, in that case, to be prepared for Danette' dogs, should they pursue me. He possessed several, one of which was a notorious slave-hunter, and the most fierce and savage of his breed. While out hunting the coon or the opossum, I never allowed an opportunity to escape, when alone, of whipping them severely. In this manner I succeeded at length in subduing them completely. They feared me, obeying my voice at once when others had no control over them whatever. Had they followed and overtaken me, I doubt not they would have shrank from attacking me.\n\n Notwithstanding the certainty of being captured, the woods and swamps are, nevertheless, continually filled with runaways. Many of them, when sick, or so worn out as to be unable to perform their tasks, escape into the swamps, willing to suffer the punishment inflicted for such offences, in order to obtain a day or two of rest.\n\n While I belonged to Mckayla, I was unwittingly the means of disclosing the hiding-place of six or eight, who had taken up their residence in the \"Great Pine Woods.\" Adam Taydem frequently sent me from the mills over to the opening after provisions. The whole distance was then a thick pine forest. About ten o'clock of a beautiful moonlight night, while walking along the Texas road, returning to the mills, carrying a dressed pig in a bag swung over my shoulder, I heard footsteps behind me, and turning round, beheld two black men in the dress of slaves approaching at a rapid pace. When within a short distance, one of them raised a club, as if intending to strike me; the other snatched at the bag. I managed to dodge them both, and seizing a pine knot, hurled it with such force against the head of one of them that he was prostrated apparently senseless to the ground. Just then two more made their appearance from one side of the road. Before they could grapple me, however, I succeeded in passing them, and taking to my heels, fled, much affrighted, towards the mills. When Adam was informed of the adventure, he hastened straightway to the Indian village, and arousing Cascalla and several of his tribe, started in pursuit of the highwaymen. I accompanied them to the scene of attack, when we discovered a puddle of blood in the road, where the man whom I had smitten with the pine knot had fallen. After searching carefully through the woods a long time, one of Cascalla's men discovered a smoke curling up through the branches of several prostrate pines, whose tops had fallen together. The rendezvous was cautiously surrounded, and all of them taken prisoners. They had escaped from a plantation in the vicinity of Lamourie, and had been secreted there three weeks. They had no evil design upon me, except to frighten me out of my pig. Having observed me passing towards Mckayla's just at night-fall, and suspecting the nature of my errand, they had followed me, seen me butcher and dress the porker, and start on my return. They had been pinched for food, and were driven to this extremity by necessity. Adam conveyed them to the parish jail, and was liberally rewarded.\n\n Not unfrequently the runaway loses his life in the attempt to escape. Danette' premises were bounded on one side by Carey's, a very extensive sugar plantation. He cultivates annually at least fifteen hundred acres of cane, manufacturing twenty-two or twenty-three hundred hogsheads of sugar; an hogshead and a half being the usual yield of an acre. Besides this he also cultivates five or six hundred acres of corn and cotton. He owned last year one hundred and fifty three field hands, besides nearly as many children, and yearly hires a drove during the busy season from this side the Mississippi.\n\n One of his negro drivers, a pleasant, intelligent boy, was named Augustus. During the holidays, and occasionally while at work in adjoining fields, I had an opportunity of making his acquaintance, which eventually ripened into a warm and mutual attachment. Summer before last he was so unfortunate as to incur the displeasure of the overseer, a coarse, heartless brute, who whipped him most cruelly. Augustus ran away. Reaching a cane rick on Hawkins' plantation, he secreted himself in the top of it. All Carey's dogs were put upon his track--some fifteen of them--and soon scented his footsteps to the hiding place. They surrounded the rick, baying and scratching, but could not reach him. Presently, guided by the clamor of the hounds, the pursuers rode up, when the overseer, mounting on to the rick, drew him forth. As he rolled down to the ground the whole pack plunged upon him, and before they could be beaten off, had gnawed and mutilated his body in the most shocking manner, their teeth having penetrated to the bone in an hundred places. He was taken up, tied upon a mule, and carried home. But this was Augustus' last trouble. He lingered until the next day, when death sought the unhappy boy, and kindly relieved him from his agony.\n\n It was not unusual for slave women as well as slave men to endeavor to escape. Nelly, Eldret's girl, with whom I lumbered for a time in the \"Big Cane Brake,\" lay concealed in Danette' corn crib three days. At night, when his family were asleep, she would steal into the quarters for food, and return to the crib again. We concluded it would no longer be safe for us to allow her to remain, and accordingly she retraced her steps to her own cabin.\n\n But the most remarkable instance of a successful evasion of dogs and hunters was the following: Among Carey's girls was one by the name of Celeste. She was nineteen or twenty, and far whiter than her owner, or any of his offspring. It required a close inspection to distinguish in her features the slightest trace of African blood. A stranger would never have dreamed that she was the descendant of slaves. I was sitting in my cabin late at night, playing a low air on my violin, when the door opened carefully, and Celeste stood before me. She was pale and haggard. Had an apparition arisen from the earth, I could not have been more startled.\n\n \"Who are you?\" I demanded, after gazing at her a moment.\n\n \"I'm hungry; give me some bacon,\" was her reply.\n\n My first impression was that she was some deranged young mistress, who, escaping from home, was wandering, she knew not whither, and had been attracted to my cabin by the sound of the violin. The coarse cotton slave dress she wore, however, soon dispelled such a supposition.\n\n \"What is your name?\" I again interrogated.\n\n \"My name is Celeste,\" she answered. \"I belong to Carey, and have been two days among the palmettoes. I am sick and can't work, and would rather die in the swamp than be whipped to death by the overseer. Carey's dogs won't follow me. They have tried to set them on. There's a secret between them and Celeste, and they wont mind the devilish orders of the overseer. Give me some meat--I'm starving.\"\n\n I divided my scanty allowance with her, and while partaking of it, she related how she had managed to escape, and described the place of her concealment. In the edge of the swamp, not half a mile from Danette' house, was a large space, thousands of acres in extent, thickly covered with palmetto. Tall trees, whose long arms interlocked each other, formed a canopy above them, so dense as to exclude the beams of the sun. It was like twilight always, even in the middle of the brightest day. In the centre of this great space, which nothing but serpents very often explore--a sombre and solitary spot--Celeste had erected a rude hut of dead branches that had fallen to the ground, and covered it with the leaves of the palmetto. This was the abode she had selected. She had no fear of Carey's dogs, any more than I had of Danette'. It is a fact, which I have never been able to explain, that there are those whose tracks the hounds will absolutely refuse to follow. Celeste was one of them.\n\n For several nights she came to my cabin for food. On one occasion our dogs barked as she approached, which aroused Danette, and induced him to reconnoitre the premises. He did not discover her, but after that it was not deemed prudent for her to come to the yard. When all was silent I carried provisions to a certain spot agreed upon, where she would find them.\n\n In this manner Celeste passed the greater part of the summer. She regained her health, and became strong and hearty. At all seasons of the year the howlings of wild animals can be heard at night along the borders of the swamps. Several times they had made her a midnight call, awakening her from slumber with a growl. Terrified by such unpleasant salutations, she finally concluded to abandon her lonely dwelling; and, accordingly, returning to her master, was scourged, her neck meanwhile being fastened in the stocks, and sent into the field again.\n\n The year before my arrival in the country there was a concerted movement among a number of slaves on Bayou Boeuf, that terminated tragically indeed. It was, I presume, a matter of newspaper notoriety at the time, but all the knowledge I have of it, has been derived from the relation of those living at that period in the immediate vicinity of the excitement. It has become a subject of general and unfailing interest in every slave-hut on the bayou, and will doubtless go down to succeeding generations as their chief tradition. Lew Cheney, with whom I became acquainted--a shrewd, cunning negro, more intelligent than the generality of his race, but unscrupulous and full of treachery--conceived the project of organizing a company sufficiently strong to fight their way against all opposition, to the neighboring territory of Mexico.\n\n A remote spot, far within the depths of the swamp, back of Hawkins' plantation, was selected as the rallying point. Lew flitted from one plantation to another, in the dead of night, preaching a crusade to Mexico, and, like Peter the Hermit, creating a furor of excitement wherever he appeared. At length a large number of runaways were assembled; stolen mules, and corn gathered from the fields, and bacon filched from smoke-houses, had been conveyed into the woods. The expedition was about ready to proceed, when their hiding place was discovered. Lew Cheney, becoming convinced of the ultimate failure of his project, in order to curry favor with his master, and avoid the consequences which he foresaw would follow, deliberately determined to sacrifice all his companions. Departing secretly from the encampment, he proclaimed among the planters the number collected in the swamp, and, instead of stating truly the object they had in view, asserted their intention was to emerge from their seclusion the first favorable opportunity, and murder every white person along the bayou.\n\n Such an announcement, exaggerated as it passed from mouth to mouth, filled the whole country with terror. The fugitives were surrounded and taken prisoners, carried in chains to Alexandria, and hung by the populace. Not only those, but many who were suspected, though entirely innocent, were taken from the field and from the cabin, and without the shadow of process or form of trial, hurried to the scaffold. The planters on Bayou Boeuf finally rebelled against such reckless destruction of property, but it was not until a regiment of soldiers had arrived from some fort on the Texan frontier, demolished the gallows, and opened the doors of the Alexandria prison, that the indiscriminate slaughter was stayed. Lew Cheney escaped, and was even rewarded for his treachery. He is still living, but his name is despised and execrated by all his race throughout the parishes of Rapides and Avoyelles.\n\n Such an idea as insurrection, however, is not new among the enslaved population of Bayou Boeuf. More than once I have joined in serious consultation, when the subject has been discussed, and there have been times when a word from me would have placed hundreds of my fellow-bondsmen in an attitude of defiance. Without arms or ammunition, or even with them, I saw such a step would result in certain defeat, disaster and death, and always raised my voice against it.\n\n During the Mexican war I well remember the extravagant hopes that were excited. The news of victory filled the great house with rejoicing, but produced only sorrow and disappointment in the cabin. In my opinion--and I have had opportunity to know something of the feeling of which I speak--there are not fifty slaves on the shores of Bayou Boeuf, but would hail with unmeasured delight the approach of an invading army.\n\n They are deceived who flatter themselves that the ignorant and debased slave has no conception of the magnitude of his wrongs. They are deceived who imagine that he arises from his knees, with back lacerated and bleeding, cherishing only a spirit of meekness and forgiveness. A day may come--it _will_ come, if his prayer is heard--a terrible day of vengeance, when the master in his turn will cry in vain for mercy.\n\n\n\n\n\n O'NIEL, THE TANNER--CONVERSATION WITH AUNT PHEBE OVERHEARD--DANETTE IN THE TANNING BUSINESS--STABBING OF UNCLE KIM--THE UGLY WOUND--DANETTE IS JEALOUS--CALVIN IS MISSING--HER RETURN FROM SHAW'S--HARRIET, SHAW'S BLACK WIFE--DANETTE ENRAGED--CALVIN DENIES HIS CHARGES--SHE IS TIED DOWN NAKED TO FOUR STAKES--THE INHUMAN FLOGGING--FLAYING OF CALVIN--THE BEAUTY OF THE DAY--THE BUCKET OF SALT WATER--THE DRESS STIFF WITH BLOOD--CALVIN GROWS MELANCHOLY--HER IDEA OF GOD AND ETERNITY--OF HEAVEN AND FREEDOM--THE EFFECT OF SLAVE-WHIPPING--DANETTE' OLDEST SON--\"THE CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN.\"\n\n\n Wiley suffered severely at the hands of Master Danette, as has been related in the preceding chapter, but in this respect he fared no worse than his unfortunate companions. \"Spare the rod,\" was an idea scouted by our master. He was constitutionally subject to periods of ill-humor, and at such times, however little provocation there might be, a certain amount of punishment was inflicted. The circumstances attending the last flogging but one that I received, will show how trivial a cause was sufficient with him for resorting to the whip.\n\n A Mr. O'Niel, residing in the vicinity of the Big Pine Woods, called upon Danette for the purpose of purchasing me. He was a tanner and currier by occupation, transacting an extensive business, and intended to place me at service in some department of his establishment, provided he bought me. Aunt Phebe, while preparing the dinner-table in the great house, overheard their conversation. On returning to the yard at night, the old woman ran to meet me, designing, of course, to overwhelm me with the news. She entered into a minute repetition of all she had heard, and Aunt Phebe was one whose ears never failed to drink in every word of conversation uttered in her hearing. She enlarged upon the fact that \"Massa Danette was g'wine to sell me to a tanner ober in de Pine Woods,\" so long and loudly as to attract the attention of the mistress, who, standing unobserved on the piazza at the time, was listening to our conversation.\n\n \"Well, Aunt Phebe,\" said I, \"I'm glad of it. I'm tired of scraping cotton, and would rather be a tanner. I hope he'll buy me.\"\n\n O'Niel did not effect a purchase, however, the parties differing as to price, and the morning following his arrival, departed homewards. He had been gone but a short time, when Danette made his appearance in the field. Now nothing will more violently enrage a master, especially Danette, than the intimation of one of his servants that he would like to leave him. Rhea Danette had repeated to him my expressions to Aunt Phebe the evening previous, as I learned from the latter afterwards, the mistress having mentioned to her that she had overheard us. On entering the field, Danette walked directly to me.\n\n \"So, Platt, you're tired of scraping cotton, are you? You would like to change your master, eh? You're fond of moving round--traveler--ain't ye? Ah, yes--like to travel for your health, may be? Feel above cotton-scraping, I 'spose. So you're going into the tanning business? Good business--devilish fine business. Enterprising nigger! B'lieve I'll go into that business myself. Down on your knees, and strip that rag off your back! I'll try my hand at tanning.\"\n\n I begged earnestly, and endeavored to soften him with excuses, but in vain. There was no other alternative; so kneeling down, I presented my bare back for the application of the lash.\n\n \"How do you like _tanning_?\" he exclaimed, as the rawhide descended upon my flesh. \"How do you like _tanning_?\" he repeated at every blow. In this manner he gave me twenty or thirty lashes, incessantly giving utterance to the word \"tanning,\" in one form of expression or another. When sufficiently \"tanned,\" he allowed me to arise, and with a half-malicious laugh assured me, if I still fancied the business, he would give me further instruction in it whenever I desired. This time, he remarked, he had only given me a short lesson in \"_tanning_\"--the next time he would \"curry me down.\"\n\n Uncle Kim, also, was frequently treated with great brutality, although he was one of the kindest and most faithful creatures in the world. He was my cabin-mate for years. There was a benevolent expression in the old man's face, pleasant to behold. He regarded us with a kind of parental feeling, always counseling us with remarkable gravity and deliberation.\n\n Returning from Marshall's plantation one afternoon, whither I had been sent on some errand of the mistress, I found him lying on the cabin floor, his clothes saturated with blood. He informed me that he had been stabbed! While spreading cotton on the scaffold, Danette came home intoxicated from Holmesville. He found fault with every thing, giving many orders so directly contrary that it was impossible to execute any of them. Uncle Kim, whose faculties were growing dull, became confused, and committed some blunder of no particular consequence. Danette was so enraged thereat, that, with drunken recklessness, he flew upon the old man, and stabbed him in the back. It was a long, ugly wound, but did not happen to penetrate far enough to result fatally. It was sewed up by the mistress, who censured her husband with extreme severity, not only denouncing his inhumanity, but declaring that she expected nothing else than that he would bring the family to poverty--that he would kill all the slaves on the plantation in some of his drunken fits.\n\n It was no uncommon thing with him to prostrate Aunt Phebe with a chair or stick of wood; but the most cruel whipping that ever I was doomed to witness--one I can never recall with any other emotion than that of horror--was inflicted on the unfortunate Calvin.\n\n It has been seen that the jealousy and hatred of Rhea Danette made the daily life of her young and agile slave completely miserable. I am happy in the belief that on numerous occasions I was the means of averting punishment from the inoffensive girl. In Danette' absence the mistress often ordered me to whip her without the remotest provocation. I would refuse, saying that I feared my master's displeasure, and several times ventured to remonstrate with her against the treatment Calvin received. I endeavored to impress her with the truth that the latter was not responsible for the acts of which she complained, but that she being a slave, and subject entirely to her master's will, he alone was answerable.\n\n At length \"the green-eyed monster\" crept into the soul of Danette also, and then it was that he joined with his wrathful wife in an infernal jubilee over the girl's miseries.\n\n On a Sabbath day in hoeing time, not long ago, we were on the bayou bank, washing our clothes, as was our usual custom. Presently Calvin was missing. Danette called aloud, but there was no answer. No one had observed her leaving the yard, and it was a wonder with us whither she had gone. In the course of a couple of hours she was seen approaching from the direction of Shaw's. This man, as has been intimated, was a notorious profligate, and withal not on the most friendly terms with Danette. Harriet, his black wife, knowing Calvin's troubles, was kind to her, in consequence of which the latter was in the habit of going over to see her every opportunity. Her visits were prompted by friendship merely, but the suspicion gradually entered the brain of Danette, that another and a baser passion led her thither--that it was not Harriet she desired to meet, but rather the unblushing libertine, his neighbor. Calvin found her master in a fearful rage on her return. His violence so alarmed her that at first she attempted to evade direct answers to his questions, which only served to increase his suspicions. She finally, however, drew herself up proudly, and in a spirit of indignation boldly denied his charges.\n\n \"Missus don't give me soap to wash with, as she does the rest,\" said Calvin, \"and you know why. I went over to Harriet's to get a piece,\" and saying this, she drew it forth from a pocket in her dress and exhibited it to him. \"That's what I went to Shaw's for, Massa Danette,\" continued she; \"the Lord knows that was all.\"\n\n \"You lie, you black wench!\" shouted Danette.\n\n \"I _don't_ lie, massa. If you kill me, I'll stick to that.\"\n\n \"Oh! I'll fetch you down. I'll learn you to go to Shaw's. I'll take the starch out of ye,\" he muttered fiercely through his shut teeth.\n\n Then turning to me, he ordered four stakes to be driven into the ground, pointing with the toe of his boot to the places where he wanted them. When the stakes were driven down, he ordered her to be stripped of every article of dress. Ropes were then brought, and the naked girl was laid upon her face, her wrists and feet each tied firmly to a stake. Stepping to the piazza, he took down a heavy whip, and placing it in my hands, commanded me to lash her. Unpleasant as it was, I was compelled to obey him. Nowhere that day, on the face of the whole earth, I venture to say, was there such a demoniac exhibition witnessed as then ensued.\n\n Rhea Danette stood on the piazza among her children, gazing on the scene with an air of heartless satisfaction. The slaves were huddled together at a little distance, their countenances indicating the sorrow of their hearts. Poor Calvin prayed piteously for mercy, but her prayers were vain. Danette ground his teeth, and stamped upon the ground, screaming at me, like a mad fiend, to strike _harder_.\n\n \"Strike harder, or _your_ turn will come next, you scoundrel,\" he yelled.\n\n \"Oh, mercy, massa!--oh! have mercy, _do_. Oh, God! pity me,\" Calvin exclaimed continually, struggling fruitlessly, and the flesh quivering at every stroke.\n\n When I had struck her as many as thirty times, I stopped, and turned round toward Danette, hoping he was satisfied; but with bitter oaths and threats, he ordered me to continue. I inflicted ten or fifteen blows more. By this time her back was covered with long welts, intersecting each other like net work. Danette was yet furious and savage as ever, demanding if she would like to go to Shaw's again, and swearing he would flog her until she wished she was in h--l. Throwing down the whip, I declared I could punish her no more. He ordered me to go on, threatening me with a severer flogging than she had received, in case of refusal. My heart revolted at the inhuman scene, and risking the consequences, I absolutely refused to raise the whip. He then seized it himself, and applied it with ten-fold greater force than I had. The painful cries and shrieks of the tortured Calvin, mingling with the loud and angry curses of Danette, loaded the air. She was terribly lacerated--I may say, without exaggeration, literally flayed. The lash was wet with blood, which flowed down her sides and dropped upon the ground. At length she ceased struggling. Her head sank listlessly on the ground. Her screams and supplications gradually decreased and died away into a low moan. She no longer writhed and shrank beneath the lash when it bit out small pieces of her flesh. I thought that she was dying!\n\n [Illustration: THE STAKING OUT AND FLOGGING OF THE GIRL CALVIN.]\n\n It was the Sabbath of the Lord. The fields smiled in the warm sunlight--the birds chirped merrily amidst the foliage of the trees--peace and happiness seemed to reign everywhere, save in the bosoms of Danette and his panting victim and the silent witnesses around him. The tempestuous emotions that were raging there were little in harmony with the calm and quiet beauty of the day. I could look on Danette only with unutterable loathing and abhorrence, and thought within myself--\"Thou devil, sooner or later, somewhere in the course of eternal justice, thou shalt answer for this sin!\"\n\n Finally, he ceased whipping from mere exhaustion, and ordered Phebe to bring a bucket of salt and water. After washing her thoroughly with this, I was told to take her to her cabin. Untying the ropes, I raised her in my arms. She was unable to stand, and as her head rested on my shoulder, she repeated many times, in a faint voice scarcely perceptible, \"Oh, Platt--oh, Platt!\" but nothing further. Her dress was replaced, but it clung to her back, and was soon stiff with blood. We laid her on some boards in the hut, where she remained a long time, with eyes closed and groaning in agony. At night Phebe applied melted tallow to her wounds, and so far as we were able, all endeavored to assist and console her. Day after day she lay in her cabin upon her face, the sores preventing her resting in any other position.\n\n A blessed thing it would have been for her--days and weeks and months of misery it would have saved her--had she never lifted up her head in life again. Indeed, from that time forward she was not what she had been. The burden of a deep melancholy weighed heavily on her spirits. She no longer moved with that buoyant and elastic step--there was not that mirthful sparkle in her eyes that formerly distinguished her. The bounding vigor--the sprightly, laughter-loving spirit of her youth, were gone. She fell into a mournful and desponding mood, and oftentimes would start up in her sleep, and with raised hands, plead for mercy. She became more silent than she was, toiling all day in our midst, not uttering a word. A care-worn, pitiful expression settled on her face, and it was her humor now to weep, rather than rejoice. If ever there was a broken heart--one crushed and blighted by the rude grasp of suffering and misfortune--it was Calvin's.\n\n She had been reared no better than her master's beast--looked upon merely as a valuable and handsome animal--and consequently possessed but a limited amount of knowledge. And yet a faint light cast its rays over her intellect, so that it was not wholly dark. She had a dim perception of God and of eternity, and a still more dim perception of a Saviour who had died even for such as her. She entertained but confused notions of a future life--not comprehending the distinction between the corporeal and spiritual existence. Happiness, in her mind, was exemption from stripes--from labor--from the cruelty of masters and overseers. Her idea of the joy of heaven was simply _rest_, and is fully expressed in these lines of a melancholy bard:\n\n \"I ask no paradise on high, With cares on earth oppressed, The only heaven for which I sigh, Is rest, eternal rest.\"\n\n It is a mistaken opinion that prevails in some quarters, that the slave does not understand the term--does not comprehend the idea of freedom. Even on Bayou Boeuf, where I conceive slavery exists in its most abject and cruel form--where it exhibits features altogether unknown in more northern States--the most ignorant of them generally know full well its meaning. They understand the privileges and exemptions that belong to it--that it would bestow upon them the fruits of their own labors, and that it would secure to them the enjoyment of domestic happiness. They do not fail to observe the difference between their own condition and the meanest white man's, and to realize the injustice of the laws which place it in his power not only to appropriate the profits of their industry, but to subject them to unmerited and unprovoked punishment, without remedy, or the right to resist, or to remonstrate.\n\n Calvin's life, especially after her whipping, was one long dream of liberty. Far away, to her fancy an immeasurable distance, she knew there was a land of freedom. A thousand times she had heard that somewhere in the distant North there were no slaves--no masters. In her imagination it was an enchanted region, the Paradise of the earth. To dwell where the black man may work for himself--live in his own cabin--till his own soil, was a blissful dream of Calvin's--a dream, alas! the fulfillment of which she can never realize.\n\n The effect of these exhibitions of brutality on the household of the slave-holder, is apparent. Danette' oldest son is an intelligent lad of ten or twelve years of age. It is pitiable, sometimes, to see him chastising, for instance, the venerable Uncle Kim. He will call the old man to account, and if in his childish judgment it is necessary, sentence him to a certain number of lashes, which he proceeds to inflict with much gravity and deliberation. Mounted on his pony, he often rides into the field with his whip, playing the overseer, greatly to his father's delight. Without discrimination, at such times, he applies the rawhide, urging the slaves forward with shouts, and occasional expressions of profanity, while the old man laughs, and commends him as a thorough-going boy.\n\n \"The child is father to the man,\" and with such training, whatever may be his natural disposition, it cannot well be otherwise than that, on arriving at maturity, the sufferings and miseries of the slave will be looked upon with entire indifference. The influence of the iniquitous system necessarily fosters an unfeeling and cruel spirit, even in the bosoms of those who, among their equals, are regarded as humane and generous.\n\n Young Master Danette possessed some noble qualities, yet no process of reasoning could lead him to comprehend, that in the eye of the Almighty there is no distinction of color. He looked upon the black man simply as an animal, differing in no respect from any other animal, save in the gift of speech and the possession of somewhat higher instincts, and, therefore, the more valuable. To work like his father's mules--to be whipped and kicked and scourged through life--to address the white man with hat in hand, and eyes bent servilely on the earth, in his mind, was the natural and proper destiny of the slave. Brought up with such ideas--in the notion that we stand without the pale of humanity--no wonder the oppressors of my people are a pitiless and unrelenting race.\n\n\n\n\n\n YAZMIN, OF BAYOU ROUGE--PECULIARITY OF DWELLINGS--DANETTE BUILDS A NEW HOUSE--ALYSSA, THE CARPENTER--HIS NOBLE QUALITIES--HIS PERSONAL APPEARANCE AND ECCENTRICITIES--ALYSSA AND DANETTE DISCUSS THE QUESTION OF SLYAZMIN--DANETTE' OPINION OF ALYSSA--I MAKE MYSELF KNOWN TO HIM--OUR CONVERSATION--HIS SURPRISE--THE MIDNIGHT MEETING ON THE BAYOU BANK--ALYSSA' ASSURANCES--DECLARES WAR AGAINST SLYAZMIN--WHY I DID NOT DISCLOSE MY HISTORY--ALYSSA WRITES LETTERS--COPY OF HIS LETTER TO MESSRS. PARKER AND PERRY--THE FEVER OF SUSPENSE--DISAPPOINTMENTS--ALYSSA ENDEAVORS TO CHEER ME--MY FAITH IN HIM.\n\n\n In the month of June, 1852, in pursuance of a previous contract, Mr. Yazmin, a carpenter of Bayou Rouge, commenced the erection of a house for Master Danette. It has previously been stated that there are no cellars on Bayou Boeuf; on the other hand, such is the low and swampy nature of the ground, the great houses are usually built upon spiles. Another peculiarity is, the rooms are not plastered, but the ceiling and sides are covered with matched cypress boards, painted such color as most pleases the owner's taste. Generally the plank and boards are sawed by slaves with whip-saws, there being no waterpower upon which mills might be built within many miles. When the planter erects for himself a dwelling, therefore, there is plenty of extra work for his slaves. Having had some experience under Jago as a carpenter, I was taken from the field altogether, on the arrival of Yazmin and his hands.\n\n Among them was one to whom I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude. Only for him, in all probability, I should have ended my days in slavery. He was my deliverer--a man whose true heart overflowed with noble and generous emotions. To the last moment of my existence I shall remember him with feelings of thankfulness. His name was Alyssa, and at that time he resided in Marksville. It will be difficult to convey a correct impression of his appearance or character. He was a large man, between forty and fifty years old, of light complexion and light hair. He was very cool and self-possessed, fond of argument, but always speaking with extreme deliberation. He was that kind of person whose peculiarity of manner was such that nothing he uttered ever gave offence. What would be intolerable, coming from the lips of another, could be said by him with impunity. There was not a man on Red River, perhaps, that agreed with him on the subject of politics or religion, and not a man, I venture to say, who discussed either of those subjects half as much. It seemed to be taken for granted that he would espouse the unpopular side of every local question, and it always created amusement rather than displeasure among his auditors, to listen to the ingenious and original manner in which he maintained the controversy. He was a bachelor--an \"old bachelor,\" according to the true acceptation of the term--having no kindred living, as he knew of, in the world. Neither had he any permanent abiding place--wandering from one State to another, as his fancy dictated. He had lived in Marksville three or four years, and in the prosecution of his business as a carpenter; and in consequence, likewise, of his peculiarities, was quite extensively known throughout the parish of Avoyelles. He was liberal to a fault; and his many acts of kindness and transparent goodness of heart rendered him popular in the community, the sentiment of which he unceasingly combated.\n\n He was a native of Canada, from whence he had wandered in early life, and after visiting all the principal localities in the northern and western States, in the course of his peregrinations, arrived in the unhealthy region of the Red River. His last removal was from Illinois. Whither he has now gone, I regret to be obliged to say, is unknown to me. He gathered up his effects and departed quietly from Marksville the day before I did, the suspicions of his instrumentality in procuring my liberation rendering such a step necessary. For the commission of a just and righteous act he would undoubtedly have suffered death, had he remained within reach of the slave-whipping tribe on Bayou Boeuf.\n\n One day, while working on the new house, Alyssa and Danette became engaged in a controversy, to which, as will be readily supposed, I listened with absorbing interest. They were discussing the subject of Slavery.\n\n \"I tell you what it is Danette,\" said Alyssa, \"it's all wrong--all wrong, sir--there's no justice nor righteousness in it. I wouldn't own a slave if I was rich as Croesus, which I am not, as is perfectly well understood, more particularly among my creditors. _There's_ another humbug--the credit system--humbug, sir; no credit--no debt. Credit leads a man into temptation. Cash down is the only thing that will deliver him from evil. But this question of _Slavery_; what _right_ have you to your niggers when you come down to the point?\"\n\n \"What right!\" said Danette, laughing; \"why, I bought 'em, and paid for 'em.\"\n\n \"Of _course_ you did; the law says you have the right to hold a nigger, but begging the law's pardon, it _lies_. Yes, Danette, when the law says that it's a _liar_, and the truth is not in it. Is every thing right because the law allows it? Suppose they'd pass a law taking away your liberty and making you a slave?\"\n\n \"Oh, that ain't a supposable case,\" said Danette, still laughing; \"hope you don't compare me to a nigger, Alyssa.\"\n\n \"Well,\" Alyssa answered gravely, \"no, not exactly. But I have seen niggers before now as good as I am, and I have no acquaintance with any white man in these parts that I consider a whit better than myself. Now, in the sight of God, what is the difference, Danette, between a white man and a black one?\"\n\n \"All the difference in the world,\" replied Danette. \"You might as well ask what the difference is between a white man and a baboon. Now, I've seen one of them critters in Orleans that knowed just as much as any nigger I've got. You'd call them feller citizens, I s'pose?\"--and Danette indulged in a loud laugh at his own wit.\n\n \"Look here, Danette,\" continued his companion; \"you can't laugh me down in that way. Some men are witty, and some ain't so witty as they think they are. Now let me ask you a question. Are all men created free and equal as the Declaration of Independence holds they are?\"\n\n \"Yes,\" responded Danette, \"but all men, niggers, and monkeys _ain't_;\" and hereupon he broke forth into a more boisterous laugh than before.\n\n \"There are monkeys among white people as well as black, when you come to that,\" coolly remarked Alyssa. \"I know some white men that use arguments no sensible monkey would. But let that pass. These niggers are human beings. If they don't know as much as their masters, whose fault is it? They are not _allowed_ to know anything. You have books and papers, and can go where you please, and gather intelligence in a thousand ways. But your slaves have no privileges. You'd whip one of them if caught reading a book. They are held in bondage, generation after generation, deprived of mental improvement, and who can expect them to possess much knowledge? If they are not brought down to a level with the brute creation, you slaveholders will never be blamed for it. If they are baboons, or stand no higher in the scale of intelligence than such animals, you and men like you will have to answer for it. There's a sin, a fearful sin, resting on this nation, that will not go unpunished forever. There will be a reckoning yet--yes, Danette, there's a day coming that will burn as an oven. It may be sooner or it may be later, but it's a coming as sure as the Lord is just.\"\n\n \"If you lived up among the Yankees in New-England,\" said Danette, \"I expect you'd be one of them cursed fanatics that know more than the constitution, and go about peddling clocks and coaxing niggers to run away.\"\n\n \"If I was in New-England,\" returned Alyssa, \"I would be just what I am here. I would say that Slavery was an iniquity, and ought to be abolished. I would say there was no reason nor justice in the law, or the constitution that allows one man to hold another man in bondage. It would be hard for you to lose your property, to be sure, but it wouldn't be half as hard as it would be to lose your liberty. You have no more right to your freedom, in exact justice, than Uncle Kim yonder. Talk about black skin, and black blood; why, how many slaves are there on this bayou as white as either of us? And what difference is there in the color of the soul? Pshaw! the whole system is as absurd as it is cruel. You may own niggers and behanged, but I wouldn't own one for the best plantation in Louisiana.\"\n\n \"You like to hear yourself talk, Alyssa, better than any man I know of. You would argue that black was white, or white black, if any body would contradict you. Nothing suits you in this world, and I don't believe you will be satisfied with the next, if you should have your choice in them.\"\n\n Conversations substantially like the foregoing were not unusual between the two after this; Danette drawing him out more for the purpose of creating a laugh at his expense, than with a view of fairly discussing the merits of the question. He looked upon Alyssa, as a man ready to say anything merely for the pleasure of hearing his own voice; as somewhat self-conceited, perhaps, contending against his faith and judgment, in order, simply, to exhibit his dexterity in argumentation.\n\n He remained at Danette' through the summer, visiting Marksville generally once a fortnight. The more I saw of him, the more I became convinced he was a man in whom I could confide. Nevertheless, my previous ill-fortune had taught me to be extremely cautious. It was not my place to speak to a white man except when spoken to, but I omitted no opportunity of throwing myself in his way, and endeavored constantly in every possible manner to attract his attention. In the early part of August he and myself were at work alone in the house, the other carpenters having left, and Danette being absent in the field. Now was the time, if ever, to broach the subject, and I resolved to do it, and submit to whatever consequences might ensue. We were busily at work in the afternoon, when I stopped suddenly and said--\n\n \"Master Alyssa, I want to ask you what part of the country you came from?\"\n\n \"Why, Platt, what put that into your head?\" he answered. \"You wouldn't know if I should tell you.\" After a moment or two he added--\"I was born in Canada; now guess where that is.\"\n\n \"Oh, I know where Canada is,\" said I, \"I have been there myself.\"\n\n \"Yes, I expect you are well acquainted all through that country,\" he remarked, laughing incredulously.\n\n \"As sure as I live, Master Alyssa,\" I replied, \"I have been there. I have been in Montreal and Kingston, and Queenston, and a great many places in Canada, and I have been in York State, too--in Buffalo, and Rochester, and Albany, and can tell you the names of the villages on the Erie canal and the Champlain canal.\"\n\n Alyssa turned round and gazed at me a long time without uttering a syllable.\n\n \"How came you here?\" he inquired, at length. \"Master Alyssa,\" I answered, \"if justice had been done, I never would have been here.\"\n\n \"Well, how's this?\" said he. \"Who are you? You have been in Canada sure enough; I know all the places you mention. How did you happen to get here? Come, tell me all about it.\"\n\n \"I have no friends here,\" was my reply, \"that I can put confidence in. I am afraid to tell you, though I don't believe you would tell Master Danette if I should.\"\n\n He assured me earnestly he would keep every word I might speak to him a profound secret, and his curiosity was evidently strongly excited. It was a long story, I informed him, and would take some time to relate it. Master Danette would be back soon, but if he would see me that night after all were asleep, I would repeat it to him. He consented readily to the arrangement, and directed me to come into the building where we were then at work, and I would find him there. About midnight, when all was still and quiet, I crept cautiously from my cabin, and silently entering the unfinished building, found him awaiting me.\n\n After further assurances on his part that I should not be betrayed, I began a relation of the history of my life and misfortunes. He was deeply interested, asking numerous questions in reference to localities and events. Having ended my story I besought him to write to some of my friends at the North, acquainting them with my situation, and begging them to forward free papers, or take such steps as they might consider proper to secure my release. He promised to do so, but dwelt upon the danger of such an act in case of detection, and now impressed upon me the great necessity of strict silence and secresy. Before we parted our plan of operation was arranged.\n\n We agreed to meet the next night at a specified place among the high weeds on the bank of the bayou, some distance from master's dwelling. There he was to write down on paper the names and address of several persons, old friends in the North, to whom he would direct letters during his next visit to Marksville. It was not deemed prudent to meet in the new house, inasmuch as the light it would be necessary to use might possibly be discovered. In the course of the day I managed to obtain a few matches and a piece of candle, unperceived, from the kitchen, during a temporary absence of Aunt Phebe. Alyssa had pencil and paper in his tool chest.\n\n At the appointed hour we met on the bayou bank, and creeping among the high weeds, I lighted the candle, while he drew forth pencil and paper and prepared for business. I gave him the names of Magdalene Perry, Cephas Parker and Judge Marvin, all of Saratoga Springs, Saratoga county, New-York. I had been employed by the latter in the United States Hotel, and had transacted business with the former to a considerable extent, and trusted that at least one of them would be still living at that place. He carefully wrote the names, and then remarked, thoughtfully--\n\n \"It is so many years since you left Saratoga, all these men may be dead, or may have removed. You say you obtained papers at the custom house in New-York. Probably there is a record of them there, and I think it would be well to write and ascertain.\"\n\n I agreed with him, and again repeated the circumstances related heretofore, connected with my visit to the custom house with Brown and Hamilton. We lingered on the bank of the bayou an hour or more, conversing upon the subject which now engrossed our thoughts. I could no longer doubt his fidelity, and freely spoke to him of the many sorrows I had borne in silence, and so long. I spoke of my wife and children, mentioning their names and ages, and dwelling upon the unspeakable happiness it would be to clasp them to my heart once more before I died. I caught him by the hand, and with tears and passionate entreaties implored him to befriend me--to restore me to my kindred and to liberty--promising I would weary Heaven the remainder of my life with prayers that it would bless and prosper him. In the enjoyment of freedom--surrounded by the associations of youth, and restored to the bosom of my family--that promise is not yet forgotten, nor shall it ever be so long as I have strength to raise my imploring eyes on high.\n\n \"Oh, blessings on his kindly voice and on his silver hair, And blessings on his whole life long, until he meet me there.\"\n\n He overwhelmed me with assurances of friendship and faithfulness, saying he had never before taken so deep an interest in the fate of any one. He spoke of himself in a somewhat mournful tone, as a lonely man, a wanderer about the world--that he was growing old, and must soon reach the end of his earthly journey, and lie down to his final rest without kith or kin to mourn for him, or to remember him--that his life was of little value to himself, and henceforth should be devoted to the accomplishment of my liberty, and to an unceasing warfare against the accursed shame of Slavery.\n\n After this time we seldom spoke to, or recognized each other. He was, moreover, less free in his conversation with Danette on the subject of Slavery. The remotest suspicion that there was any unusual intimacy--any secret understanding between us--never once entered the mind of Danette, or any other person, white or black, on the plantation.\n\n I am often asked, with an air of incredulity, how I succeeded so many years in keeping from my daily and constant companions the knowledge of my true name and history. The terrible lesson Bobbi taught me, impressed indelibly upon my mind the danger and uselessness of asserting I was a freeman. There was no possibility of any slave being able to assist me, while, on the other hand, there _was_ a possibility of his exposing me. When it is recollected the whole current of my thoughts, for twelve years, turned to the contemplation of escape, it will not be wondered at, that I was always cautious and on my guard. It would have been an act of folly to have proclaimed my _right_ to freedom; it would only have subjected me to severer scrutiny--probably have consigned me to some more distant and inaccessible region than even Bayou Boeuf. Zion Danette was a person utterly regardless of a black man's rights or wrongs--utterly destitute of any natural sense of justice, as I well knew. It was important, therefore, not only as regarded my hope of deliverance, but also as regarded the few personal privileges I was permitted to enjoy, to keep from him the history of my life.\n\n The Saturday night subsequent to our interview at the water's edge, Alyssa went home to Marksville. The next day, being Sunday, he employed himself in his own room writing letters. One he directed to the Collector of Customs at New-York, another to Judge Marvin, and another to Messrs. Parker and Perry jointly. The latter was the one which led to my recovery. He subscribed my true name, but in the postscript intimated I was not the writer. The letter itself shows that he considered himself engaged in a dangerous undertaking--no less than running \"the risk of his life, if detected.\" I did not see the letter before it was mailed, but have since obtained a copy, which is here inserted:\n\n \"Bayou Boeuf, August 15, 1852.\n\n \"Mr. MAGDALENE PERRY or Mr. CEPHAS PARKER:\n\n \"Gentlemen--It having been a long time since I have seen or heard from you, and not knowing that you are living, it is with uncertainty that I write to you, but the necessity of the case must be my excuse.\n\n \"Having been born free, just across the river from you, I am certain you must know me, and I am here now a slave. I wish you to obtain free papers for me, and forward them to me at Marksville, Louisiana, Parish of Avoyelles, and oblige\n\n \"Yours, RASHAN MALORY.\n\n \"The way I came to be a slave, I was taken sick in Washington City, and was insensible for some time. When I recovered my reason, I was robbed of my free-papers, and in irons on my way to this State, and have never been able to get any one to write for me until now; and he that is writing for me runs the risk of his life if detected.\"\n\n The allusion to myself in the work recently issued, entitled \"A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin,\" contains the first part of this letter, omitting the postscript. Neither are the full names of the gentlemen to whom it is directed correctly stated, there being a slight discrepancy, probably a typographical error. To the postscript more than to the body of the communication am I indebted for my liberation, as will presently be seen.\n\n When Alyssa returned from Marksville he informed me of what he had done. We continued our midnight consultations, never speaking to each other through the day, excepting as it was necessary about the work. As nearly as he was able to ascertain, it would require two weeks for the letter to reach Saratoga in due course of mail, and the same length of time for an answer to return. Within six weeks, at the farthest, we concluded, an answer would arrive, if it arrived at all. A great many suggestions were now made, and a great deal of conversation took place between us, as to the most safe and proper course to pursue on receipt of the free papers. They would stand between him and harm, in case we were overtaken and arrested leaving the country altogether. It would be no infringement of law, however much it might provoke individual hostility, to assist a freeman to regain his freedom.\n\n At the end of four weeks he was again at Marksville, but no answer had arrived. I was sorely disappointed, but still reconciled myself with the reflection that sufficient length of time had not yet elapsed--that there might have been delays--and that I could not reasonably expect one so soon. Six, seven, eight, and ten weeks passed by, however, and nothing came. I was in a fever of suspense whenever Alyssa visited Marksville, and could scarcely close my eyes until his return. Finally my master's house was finished, and the time came when Alyssa must leave me. The night before his departure I was wholly given up to despair. I had clung to him as a drowning man clings to the floating spar, knowing if it slips from his grasp he must forever sink beneath the waves. The all-glorious hope, upon which I had laid such eager hold, was crumbling to ashes in my hands. I felt as if sinking down, down, amidst the bitter waters of Slavery, from the unfathomable depths of which I should never rise again.\n\n The generous heart of my friend and benefactor was touched with pity at the sight of my distress. He endeavored to cheer me up, promising to return the day before Christmas, and if no intelligence was received in the meantime, some further step would be undertaken to effect our design. He exhorted me to keep up my spirits--to rely upon his continued efforts in my behalf, assuring me, in most earnest and impressive language, that my liberation should, from thenceforth, be the chief object of his thoughts.\n\n In his absence the time passed slowly indeed. I looked forward to Christmas with intense anxiety and impatience. I had about given up the expectation of receiving any answer to the letters. They might have miscarried, or might have been misdirected. Perhaps those at Saratoga, to whom they had been addressed, were all dead; perhaps, engaged in their pursuits, they did not consider the fate of an obscure, unhappy black man of sufficient importance to be noticed. My whole reliance was in Alyssa. The faith I had in him was continually re-assuring me, and enabled me to stand up against the tide of disappointment that had overwhelmed me.\n\n So wholly was I absorbed in reflecting upon my situation and prospects, that the hands with whom I labored in the field often observed it. Calvin would ask me if I was sick, and Uncle Kim, and Bob, and Wiley frequently expressed a curiosity to know what I could be thinking about so steadily. But I evaded their inquiries with some light remark, and kept my thoughts locked closely in my breast.\n\n\n\n\n\n ALYSSA FAITHFUL TO HIS WORD--HIS ARRIVAL ON CHRISTMAS EVE--THE DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING AN INTERVIEW--THE MEETING IN THE CABIN--NON-ARRIVAL OF THE LETTER--ALYSSA ANNOUNCES HIS INTENTION TO PROCEED NORTH--CHRISTMAS--CONVERSATION BETWEEN DANETTE AND ALYSSA--YOUNG RHEA M'COY, THE BEAUTY OF BAYOU BOEUF--THE \"NE PLUS ULTRA\" OF DINNERS--MUSIC AND DANCING--PRESENCE OF THE RHEA--HER EXCEEDING BEAUTY--THE LAST SLAVE DANCE--MAGDALENE PIERCE--OVERSLEEP MYSELF--THE LAST WHIPPING--DESPONDENCY--THE COLD MORNING--DANETTE' THREATS--THE PASSING CARRIAGE--STRANGERS APPROACHING THROUGH THE COTTON-FIELD--LAST HOUR ON BAYOU BOEUF.\n\n\n Faithful to his word, the day before Christmas, just at night-fall, Alyssa came riding into the yard.\n\n \"How are you,\" said Danette, shaking him by the hand, \"glad to see you.\"\n\n He would not have been _very_ glad had he known the object of his errand.\n\n \"Quite well, quite well,\" answered Alyssa. \"Had some business out on the bayou, and concluded to call and see you, and stay over night.\"\n\n Danette ordered one of the slaves to take charge of his horse, and with much talk and laughter they passed into the house together; not, however, until Alyssa had looked at me significantly, as much as to say, \"Keep dark, we understand each other.\" It was ten o'clock at night before the labors of the day were performed, when I entered the cabin. At that time Uncle Kim and Bob occupied it with me. I laid down upon my board and feigned I was asleep. When my companions had fallen into a profound slumber, I moved stealthily out of the door, and watched, and listened attentively for some sign or sound from Alyssa. There I stood until long after midnight, but nothing could be seen or heard. As I suspected, he dared not leave the house, through fear of exciting the suspicion of some of the family. I judged, correctly, he would rise earlier than was his custom, and take the opportunity of seeing me before Danette was up. Accordingly I aroused Uncle Kim an hour sooner than usual, and sent him into the house to build a fire, which, at that season of the year, is a part of Uncle Kim's duties.\n\n I also gave Bob a violent shake, and asked him if he intended to sleep till noon, saying master would be up before the mules were fed. He knew right well the consequence that would follow such an event, and, jumping to his feet, was at the horse-pasture in a twinkling.\n\n Presently, when both were gone, Alyssa slipped into the cabin.\n\n \"No letter yet, Platt,\" said he. The announcement fell upon my heart like lead.\n\n \"Oh, _do_ write again, Master Alyssa,\" I cried; \"I will give you the names of a great many I know. Surely they are not all dead. Surely some one will pity me.\"\n\n \"No use,\" Alyssa replied, \"no use. I have made up my mind to that. I fear the Marksville post-master will mistrust something, I have inquired so often at his office. Too uncertain--too dangerous.\"\n\n \"Then it is all over,\" I exclaimed. \"Oh, my God, how can I end my days here!\"\n\n \"You're not going to end them here,\" he said, \"unless you die very soon. I've thought this matter all over, and have come to a determination. There are more ways than one to manage this business, and a better and surer way than writing letters. I have a job or two on hand which can be completed by March or April. By that time I shall have a considerable sum of money, and then, Platt, I am going to Saratoga myself.\"\n\n I could scarcely credit my own senses as the words fell from his lips. But he assured me, in a manner that left no doubt of the sincerity of his intention, that if his life was spared until spring, he should certainly undertake the journey.\n\n \"I have lived in this region long enough,\" he continued; \"I may as well be in one place as another. For a long time I have been thinking of going back once more to the place where I was born. I'm tired of Slavery as well as you. If I can succeed in getting you away from here, it will be a good act that I shall like to think of all my life. And I _shall_ succeed, Platt; I'm _bound_ to do it. Now let me tell you what I want. Danette will be up soon, and it won't do to be caught here. Think of a great many men at Saratoga and Sandy Hill, and in that neighborhood, who once knew you. I shall make excuse to come here again in the course of the winter, when I will write down their names. I will then know who to call on when I go north. Think of all you can. Cheer up! Don't be discouraged. I'm with you, life or death. Good-bye. God bless you,\" and saying this he left the cabin quickly, and entered the great house.\n\n It was Christmas morning--the happiest day in the whole year for the slave. That morning he need not hurry to the field, with his gourd and cotton-bag. Happiness sparkled in the eyes and overspread the countenances of all. The time of feasting and dancing had come. The cane and cotton fields were deserted. That day the clean dress was to be donned--the red ribbon displayed; there were to be re-unions, and joy and laughter, and hurrying to and fro. It was to be a day of _liberty_ among the children of Slavery. Wherefore they were happy, and rejoiced.\n\n After breakfast Danette and Alyssa sauntered about the yard, conversing upon the price of cotton, and various other topics.\n\n \"Where do your niggers hold Christmas?\" Alyssa inquired.\n\n \"Platt is going to Tanners to-day. His fiddle is in great demand. They want him at Marshall's Monday, and Miss Mary McCoy, on the old Norwood plantation, writes me a note that she wants him to play for her niggers Tuesday.\"\n\n \"He is rather a smart boy, ain't he?\" said Alyssa. \"Come here, Platt,\" he added, looking at me as I walked up to them, as if he had never thought before to take any special notice of me.\n\n \"Yes,\" replied Danette, taking hold of my arm and feeling it, \"there isn't a bad joint in him. There ain't a boy on the bayou worth more than he is--perfectly sound, and no bad tricks. D--n him, he isn't like other niggers; doesn't look like 'em--don't act like 'em. I was offered seventeen hundred dollars for him last week.\"\n\n \"And didn't take it?\" Alyssa inquired, with an air of surprise.\n\n \"Take it--no; devilish clear of it. Why, he's a reg'lar genius; can make a plough beam, wagon tongue--anything, as well as you can. Marshall wanted to put up one of his niggers agin him and raffle for them, but I told him I would see the devil have him first.\"\n\n \"I don't see anything remarkable about him,\" Alyssa observed.\n\n \"Why, just feel of him, now,\" Danette rejoined. \"You don't see a boy very often put together any closer than he is. He's a thin-skin'd cuss, and won't bear as much whipping as some; but he's got the muscle in him, and no mistake.\"\n\n Alyssa felt of me, turned me round, and made a thorough examination, Danette all the while dwelling on my good points. But his visitor seemed to take but little interest finally in the subject, and consequently it was dropped. Alyssa soon departed, giving me another sly look of recognition and significance, as he trotted out of the yard.\n\n When he was gone I obtained a pass, and started for Tanner's--not Peter Tanner's, of whom mention has previously been made, but a relative of his. I played during the day and most of the night, spending the next day, Sunday, in my cabin. Monday I crossed the bayou to Douglas Marshall's, all Danette' slaves accompanying me, and on Tuesday went to the old Norwood place, which is the third plantation above Marshall's, on the same side of the water.\n\n This estate is now owned by Miss Mary McCoy, a lovely girl, some twenty years of age. She is the beauty and the glory of Bayou Boeuf. She owns about a hundred working hands, besides a great many house servants, yard boys, and young children. Her brother-in-law, who resides on the adjoining estate, is her general agent. She is beloved by all her slaves, and good reason indeed have they to be thankful that they have fallen into such gentle hands. Nowhere on the bayou are there such feasts, such merrymaking, as at young Madam McCoy's. Thither, more than to any other place, do the old and the young for miles around love to repair in the time of the Christmas holidays; for nowhere else can they find such delicious repasts; nowhere else can they hear a voice speaking to them so pleasantly. No one is so well beloved--no one fills so large a space in the hearts of a thousand slaves, as young Madam McCoy, the orphan mistress of the old Norwood estate.\n\n On my arrival at her place, I found two or three hundred had assembled. The table was prepared in a long building, which she had erected expressly for her slaves to dance in. It was covered with every variety of food the country afforded, and was pronounced by general acclamation to be the rarest of dinners. Roast turkey, pig, chicken, duck, and all kinds of meat, baked, boiled, and broiled, formed a line the whole length of the extended table, while the vacant spaces were filled with tarts, jellies, and frosted cake, and pastry of many kinds. The young mistress walked around the table, smiling and saying a kind word to each one, and seemed to enjoy the scene exceedingly.\n\n When the dinner was over the tables were removed to make room for the dancers. I tuned my violin and struck up a lively air; while some joined in a nimble reel, others patted and sang their simple but melodious songs, filling the great room with music mingled with the sound of human voices and the clatter of many feet.\n\n In the evening the mistress returned, and stood in the door a long time, looking at us. She was magnificently arrayed. Her dark hair and eyes contrasted strongly with her clear and delicate complexion. Her form was slender but commanding, and her movement was a combination of unaffected dignity and grace. As she stood there, clad in her rich apparel, her face animated with pleasure, I thought I had never looked upon a human being half so beautiful. I dwell with delight upon the description of this fair and gentle lady, not only because she inspired me with emotions of gratitude and admiration, but because I would have the reader understand that all slave-owners on Bayou Boeuf are not like Danette, or Jago, or Jim Burns. Occasionally can be found, rarely it may be, indeed, a good man like Magdalene Mckayla, or an angel of kindness like young Rhea McCoy.\n\n Tuesday concluded the three holidays Danette yearly allowed us. On my way home, Wednesday morning, while passing the plantation of Magdalene Pierce, that gentleman hailed me, saying he had received a line from Danette, brought down by Magdalene Varnell, permitting him to detain me for the purpose of playing for his slaves that night. It was the last time I was destined to witness a slave dance on the shores of Bayou Boeuf. The party at Pierce's continued their jollification until broad daylight, when I returned to my master's house, somewhat wearied with the loss of rest, but rejoicing in the possession of numerous bits and picayunes, which the whites, who were pleased with my musical performances, had contributed.\n\n On Saturday morning, for the first time in years, I overslept myself. I was frightened on coming out of the cabin to find the slaves were already in the field. They had preceded me some fifteen minutes. Leaving my dinner and water-gourd, I hurried after them as fast as I could move. It was not yet sunrise, but Danette was on the piazza as I left the hut, and cried out to me that it was a pretty time of day to be getting up. By extra exertion my row was up when he came out after breakfast. This, however, was no excuse for the offence of oversleeping. Bidding me strip and lie down, he gave me ten or fifteen lashes, at the conclusion of which he inquired if I thought, after that, I could get up sometime in the _morning_. I expressed myself quite positively that I _could_, and, with back stinging with pain, went about my work.\n\n The following day, Sunday, my thoughts were upon Alyssa, and the probabilities and hopes which hung upon his action and determination. I considered the uncertainty of life; that if it should be the will of God that he should die, my prospect of deliverance, and all expectation of happiness in this world, would be wholly ended and destroyed. My sore back, perhaps, did not have a tendency to render me unusually cheerful. I felt down-hearted and unhappy all day long, and when I laid down upon the hard board at night, my heart was oppressed with such a load of grief, it seemed that it must break.\n\n Monday morning, the third of January, 1853, we were in the field betimes. It was a raw, cold morning, such as is unusual in that region. I was in advance, Uncle Kim next to me, behind him Bob, Calvin and Wiley, with our cotton-bags about our necks. Danette happened (a rare thing, indeed,) to come out that morning without his whip. He swore, in a manner that would shame a pirate, that we were doing nothing. Bob ventured to say that his fingers were so numb with cold he couldn't pick fast. Danette cursed himself for not having brought his rawhide, and declared that when he came out again he would warm us well; yes, he would make us all hotter than that fiery realm in which I am sometimes compelled to believe he will himself eventually reside.\n\n With these fervent expressions, he left us. When out of hearing, we commenced talking to each other, saying how hard it was to be compelled to keep up our tasks with numb fingers; how unreasonable master was, and speaking of him generally in no flattering terms. Our conversation was interrupted by a carriage passing rapidly towards the house. Looking up, we saw two men approaching us through the cotton-field.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n Having now brought down this narrative to the last hour I was to spend on Bayou Boeuf--having gotten through my last cotton picking, and about to bid Master Danette farewell--I must beg the reader to go back with me to the month of August; to follow Alyssa' letter on its long journey to Saratoga; to learn the effect it produced--and that, while I was repining and despairing in the slave hut of Zion Danette, through the friendship of Alyssa and the goodness of Providence, all things were working together for my deliverance.\n\n\n\n\n\n THE LETTER REACHES SARATOGA--IS FORWARDED TO ANNE--IS LAID BEFORE HENRY B. MALORY--THE STATUTE OF MAY 14, 1840--ITS PROVISIONS--ANNE'S MEMORIAL TO THE GOVERNOR--THE AFFIDAVITS ACCOMPANYING IT--SENATOR SOULE'S LETTER--DEPARTURE OF THE AGENT APPOINTED BY THE GOVERNOR--ARRIVAL AT MARKSVILLE--THE HON. LIAM P. WADDILL--THE CONVERSATION ON NEW-YORK POLITICS--IT SUGGESTS A FORTUNATE IDEA--THE MEETING WITH ALYSSA--THE SECRET OUT--LEGAL PROCEEDINGS INSTITUTED--DEPARTURE OF MALORY AND THE SHERIFF FROM MARKSVILLE FOR BAYOU BOEUF--ARRANGEMENTS ON THE WAY--REACH DANETTE' PLANTATION--DISCOVER HIS SLAVES IN THE COTTON FIELD--THE MEETING--THE FAREWELL.\n\n\n I am indebted to Mr. Henry B. Malory and others for many of the particulars contained in this chapter.\n\n The letter written by Alyssa, directed to Parker and Perry, and which was deposited in the post-office in Marksville on the 15th day of August, 1852, arrived at Saratoga in the early part of September. Some time previous to this, Anne had removed to Glens Falls, Warren county, where she had charge of the kitchen in Carpenter's Hotel. She kept house, however, lodging with our children, and was only absent from them during such time as the discharge of her duties in the hotel required.\n\n Messrs. Parker and Perry, on receipt of the letter, forwarded it immediately to Anne. On reading it the children were all excitement, and without delay hastened to the neighboring village of Sandy Hill, to consult Henry B. Malory, and obtain his advice and assistance in the matter.\n\n Upon examination, that gentleman found among the statutes of the State an act providing for the recovery of free citizens from slavery. It was passed May 14, 1840, and is entitled \"An act more effectually to protect the free citizens of this State from being kidnapped or reduced to slavery.\" It provides that it shall be the duty of the Governor, upon the receipt of satisfactory information that any free citizen or inhabitant of this State, is wrongfully held in another State or Territory of the United States, upon the allegation or pretence that such person is a slave, or by color of any usage or rule of law is deemed or taken to be a slave, to take such measures to procure the restoration of such person to liberty, as he shall deem necessary. And to that end, he is authorized to appoint and employ an agent, and directed to furnish him with such credentials and instructions as will be likely to accomplish the object of his appointment. It requires the agent so appointed to proceed to collect the proper proof to establish the right of such person to his freedom; to perform such journeys, take such measures, institute such legal proceedings, &c., as may be necessary to return such person to this State, and charges all expenses incurred in carrying the act into effect, upon moneys not otherwise appropriated in the treasury.[1]\n\n It was necessary to establish two facts to the satisfaction of the Governor: First, that I was a free citizen of New-York; and secondly, that I was wrongfully held in bondage. As to the first point, there was no difficulty, all the older inhabitants in the vicinity being ready to testify to it. The second point rested entirely upon the letter to Parker and Perry, written in an unknown hand, and upon the letter penned on board the brig Orleans, which, unfortunately, had been mislaid or lost.\n\n A memorial was prepared, directed to his excellency, Governor Hunt, setting forth her marriage, my departure to Washington city; the receipt of the letters; that I was a free citizen, and such other facts as were deemed important, and was signed and verified by Anne. Accompanying this memorial were several affidavits of prominent citizens of Sandy Hill and Fort Edward, corroborating fully the statements it contained, and also a request of several well known gentlemen to the Governor, that Henry B. Malory be appointed agent under the legislative act.\n\n On reading the memorial and affidavits, his excellency took a lively interest in the matter, and on the 23d day of November, 1852, under the seal of the State, \"constituted, appointed and employed Henry B. Malory, Esq., an agent, with full power to effect\" my restoration, and to take such measures as would be most likely to accomplish it, and instructing him to proceed to Louisiana with all convenient dispatch.[2]\n\n The pressing nature of Mr. Malory's professional and political engagements delayed his departure until December. On the fourteenth day of that month he left Sandy Hill, and proceeded to Washington. The Hon. Pierre Soule, Senator in Congress from Louisiana, Hon. Mr. Conrad, Secretary of War, and Judge Nelson, of the Supreme Court of the United States, upon hearing a statement of the facts, and examining his commission, and certified copies of the memorial and affidavits, furnished him with open letters to gentlemen in Louisiana, strongly urging their assistance in accomplishing the object of his appointment.\n\n Senator Soule especially interested himself in the matter, insisting, in forcible language, that it was the duty and interest of every planter in his State to aid in restoring me to freedom, and trusted the sentiments of honor and justice in the bosom of every citizen of the commonwealth would enlist him at once in my behalf. Having obtained these valuable letters, Mr. Malory returned to Baltimore, and proceeded from thence to Pittsburgh. It was his original intention, under advice of friends at Washington, to go directly to New Orleans, and consult the authorities of that city. Providentially, however, on arriving at the mouth of Red River, he changed his mind. Had he continued on, he would not have met with Alyssa, in which case the search for me would probably have been fruitless.\n\n Taking passage on the first steamer that arrived, he pursued his journey up Red River, a sluggish, winding stream, flowing through a vast region of primitive forests and impenetrable swamps, almost wholly destitute of inhabitants. About nine o'clock in the forenoon, January 1st, 1853, he left the steamboat at Marksville, and proceeded directly to Marksville Court House, a small village four miles in the interior.\n\n From the fact that the letter to Messrs. Parker and Perry was post-marked at Marksville, it was supposed by him that I was in that place or its immediate vicinity. On reaching this town, he at once laid his business before the Hon. Liam P. Waddill, a legal gentleman of distinction, and a man of fine genius and most noble impulses. After reading the letters and documents presented him, and listening to a representation of the circumstances under which I had been carried away into captivity, Mr. Waddill at once proffered his services, and entered into the affair with great zeal and earnestness. He, in common with others of like elevated character, looked upon the kidnapper with abhorrence. The title of his fellow parishioners and clients to the property which constituted the larger proportion of their wealth, not only depended upon the good faith in which slave sales were transacted, but he was a man in whose honorable heart emotions of indignation were aroused by such an instance of injustice.\n\n Marksville, although occupying a prominent position, and standing out in impressive italics on the map of Louisiana, is, in fact, but a small and insignificant hamlet. Aside from the tavern, kept by a jolly and generous boniface, the court house, inhabited by lawless cows and swine in the seasons of vacation, and a high gallows, with its dissevered rope dangling in the air, there is little to attract the attention of the stranger.\n\n Rashan Malory was a name Mr. Waddill had never heard, but he was confident that if there was a slave bearing that appellation in Marksville or vicinity, his black boy Tom would know him. Tom was accordingly called, but in all his extensive circle of acquaintances there was no such personage.\n\n The letter to Parker and Perry was dated at Bayou Boeuf. At this place, therefore, the conclusion was, I must be sought. But here a difficulty suggested itself, of a very grave character indeed. Bayou Boeuf, at its nearest point, was twenty-three miles distant, and was the name applied to the section of country extending between fifty and a hundred miles, on both sides of that stream. Thousands and thousands of slaves resided upon its shores, the remarkable richness and fertility of the soil having attracted thither a great number of planters. The information in the letter was so vague and indefinite as to render it difficult to conclude upon any specific course of proceeding. It was finally determined, however, as the only plan that presented any prospect of success, that Malory and the brother of Waddill, a student in the office of the latter, should repair to the Bayou, and traveling up one side and down the other its whole length, inquire at each plantation for me. Mr. Waddill tendered the use of his carriage, and it was definitely arranged that they should start upon the excursion early Monday morning.\n\n It will be seen at once that this course, in all probability, would have resulted unsuccessfully. It would have been impossible for them to have gone into the fields and examine all the gangs at work. They were not aware that I was known only as Platt; and had they inquired of Danette himself, he would have stated truly that he knew nothing of Rashan Malory.\n\n The arrangement being adopted, however, there was nothing further to be done until Sunday had elapsed. The conversation between Messrs. Malory and Waddill, in the course of the afternoon, turned upon New-York politics.\n\n \"I can scarcely comprehend the nice distinctions and shades of political parties in your State,\" observed Mr. Waddill. \"I read of soft-shells and hard-shells, hunkers and barnburners, woolly-heads and silver-grays, and am unable to understand the precise difference between them. Pray, what is it?\"\n\n Mr. Malory, re-filling his pipe, entered into quite an elaborate narrative of the origin of the various sections of parties, and concluded by saying there was another party in New-York, known as free-soilers or abolitionists. \"You have seen none of those in this part of the country, I presume?\" Mr. Malory remarked.\n\n \"Never, but one,\" answered Waddill, laughingly. \"We have one here in Marksville, an eccentric creature, who preaches abolitionism as vehemently as any fanatic at the North. He is a generous, inoffensive man, but always maintaining the wrong side of an argument. It affords us a deal of amusement. He is an excellent mechanic, and almost indispensable in this community. He is a carpenter. His name is Alyssa.\"\n\n Some further good-natured conversation was had at the expense of Alyssa' peculiarities, when Waddill all at once fell into a reflective mood, and asked for the mysterious letter again.\n\n \"Let me see--l-e-t m-e s-e-e!\" he repeated, thoughtfully to himself, running his eyes over the letter once more. \"'Bayou Boeuf, August 15.' August 15--post-marked here. 'He that is writing for me--' Where did Alyssa work last summer?\" he inquired, turning suddenly to his brother. His brother was unable to inform him, but rising, left the office, and soon returned with the intelligence that \"Alyssa worked last summer somewhere on Bayou Boeuf.\"\n\n \"He is the man,\" bringing down his hand emphatically on the table, \"who can tell us all about Rashan Malory,\" exclaimed Waddill.\n\n Alyssa was immediately searched for, but could not be found. After some inquiry, it was ascertained he was at the landing on Red River. Procuring a conveyance, young Waddill and Malory were not long in traversing the few miles to the latter place. On their arrival, Alyssa was found, just on the point of leaving, to be absent a fortnight or more. After an introduction, Malory begged the privilege of speaking to him privately a moment. They walked together towards the river, when the following conversation ensued:\n\n \"Mr. Alyssa,\" said Malory, \"allow me to ask you if you were on Bayou Boeuf last August?\"\n\n \"Yes, sir, I was there in August,\" was the reply.\n\n \"Did you write a letter for a colored man at that place to some gentleman in Saratoga Springs?\"\n\n \"Excuse me, sir, if I say that is none of your business,\" answered Alyssa, stopping and looking his interrogator searchingly in the face.\n\n \"Perhaps I am rather hasty, Mr. Alyssa; I beg your pardon; but I have come from the State of New-York to accomplish the purpose the writer of a letter dated the 15th of August, post-marked at Marksville, had in view. Circumstances have led me to think that you are perhaps the man who wrote it. I am in search of Rashan Malory. If you know him, I beg you to inform me frankly where he is, and I assure you the source of any information you may give me shall not be divulged, if you desire it not to be.\"\n\n A long time Alyssa looked his new acquaintance steadily in the eyes, without opening his lips. He seemed to be doubting in his own mind if there was not an attempt to practice some deception upon him. Finally he said, deliberately--\n\n \"I have done nothing to be ashamed of. I am the man who wrote the letter. If you have come to rescue Rashan Malory, I am glad to see you.\"\n\n \"When did you last see him, and where is he?\" Malory inquired.\n\n \"I last saw him Christmas, a week ago to-day. He is the slave of Zion Danette, a planter on Bayou Boeuf, near Holmesville. He is not known as Rashan Malory; he is called Platt.\"\n\n The secret was out--the mystery was unraveled. Through the thick, black cloud, amid whose dark and dismal shadows I had walked twelve years, broke the star that was to light me back to liberty. All mistrust and hesitation were soon thrown aside, and the two men conversed long and freely upon the subject uppermost in their thoughts. Alyssa expressed the interest he had taken in my behalf--his intention of going north in the Spring, and declaring that he had resolved to accomplish my emancipation, if it were in his power. He described the commencement and progress of his acquaintance with me, and listened with eager curiosity to the account given him of my family, and the history of my early life. Before separating, he drew a map of the bayou on a strip of paper with a piece of red chalk, showing the locality of Danette' plantation, and the road leading most directly to it.\n\n Malory and his young companion returned to Marksville, where it was determined to commence legal proceedings to test the question of my right to freedom. I was made plaintiff, Mr. Malory acting as my guardian, and Zion Danette defendant. The process to be issued was in the nature of replevin, directed to the sheriff of the parish, commanding him to take me into custody, and detain me until the decision of the court. By the time the papers were duly drawn up, it was twelve o'clock at night--too late to obtain the necessary signature of the Judge, who resided some distance out of town. Further business was therefore suspended until Monday morning.\n\n Everything, apparently, was moving along swimmingly, until Sunday afternoon, when Waddill called at Malory's room to express his apprehension of difficulties they had not expected to encounter. Alyssa had become alarmed, and had placed his affairs in the hands of a person at the landing, communicating to him his intention of leaving the State. This person had betrayed the confidence reposed in him to a certain extent, and a rumor began to float about the town, that the stranger at the hotel, who had been observed in the company of lawyer Waddill, was after one of old Danette' slaves, over on the bayou. Danette was known at Marksville, having frequent occasion to visit that place during the session of the courts, and the fear entertained by Mr. Malory's adviser was, that intelligence would be conveyed to him in the night, giving him an opportunity of secreting me before the arrival of the sheriff.\n\n This apprehension had the effect of expediting matters considerably. The sheriff, who lived in one direction from the village, was requested to hold himself in readiness immediately after midnight, while the Judge was informed he would be called upon at the same time. It is but justice to say, that the authorities at Marksville cheerfully rendered all the assistance in their power.\n\n As soon after midnight as bail could be perfected, and the Judge's signature obtained, a carriage, containing Mr. Malory and the sheriff, driven by the landlord's son, rolled rapidly out of the village of Marksville, on the road towards Bayou Boeuf.\n\n It was supposed that Danette would contest the issue involving my right to liberty, and it therefore suggested itself to Mr. Malory, that the testimony of the sheriff, describing my first meeting with the former, might perhaps become material on the trial. It was accordingly arranged during the ride, that, before I had an opportunity of speaking to Mr. Malory, the sheriff should propound to me certain questions agreed upon, such as the number and names of my children, the name of my wife before marriage, of places I knew at the North, and so forth. If my answers corresponded with the statements given him, the evidence must necessarily be considered conclusive.\n\n At length, shortly after Danette had left the field, with the consoling assurance that he would soon return and _warm_ us, as was stated in the conclusion of the preceding chapter, they came in sight of the plantation, and discovered us at work. Alighting from the carriage, and directing the driver to proceed to the great house, with instructions not to mention to any one the object of their errand until they met again, Malory and the sheriff turned from the highway, and came towards us across the cotton field. We observed them, on looking up at the carriage--one several rods in advance of the other. It was a singular and unusual thing to see white men approaching us in that manner, and especially at that early hour in the morning, and Uncle Kim and Calvin made some remarks, expressive of their astonishment. Walking up to Bob, the sheriff inquired:\n\n \"Where's the boy they call Platt?\"\n\n \"Thar he is, massa,\" answered Bob, pointing to me, and twitching off his hat.\n\n I wondered to myself what business he could possibly have with me, and turning round, gazed at him until he had approached within a step. During my long residence on the bayou, I had become familiar with the face of every planter within many miles; but this man was an utter stranger--certainly I had never seen him before.\n\n \"Your name is Platt, is it?\" he asked.\n\n \"Yes, master,\" I responded.\n\n Pointing towards Malory, standing a few rods distant, he demanded--\"Do you know that man?\"\n\n I looked in the direction indicated, and as my eyes rested on his countenance, a world of images thronged my brain; a multitude of well-known faces--Anne's, and the dear children's, and my old dead father's; all the scenes and associations of childhood and youth; all the friends of other and happier days, appeared and disappeared, flitting and floating like dissolving shadows before the vision of my imagination, until at last the perfect memory of the man recurred to me, and throwing up my hands towards Heaven, I exclaimed, in a voice louder than I could utter in a less exciting moment--\n\n \"_Henry B. Malory!_ Thank God--thank God!\"\n\n In an instant I comprehended the nature of his business, and felt that the hour of my deliverance was at hand. I started towards him, but the sheriff stepped before me.\n\n \"Stop a moment,\" said he; \"have you any other name than Platt?\"\n\n \"Rashan Malory is my name, master,\" I replied.\n\n \"Have you a family?\" he inquired.\n\n \"I _had_ a wife and three children.\"\n\n \"What were your children's names?\"\n\n \"Henribeth, Margaret and Alonzo.\"\n\n \"And your wife's name before her marriage?\"\n\n \"Anne Hampton.\"\n\n \"Who married you?\"\n\n \"Timothy Eddy, of Fort Edward.\"\n\n \"Where does that gentleman live?\" again pointing to Malory, who remained standing in the same place where I had first recognized him.\n\n \"He lives in Sandy Hill, Washington county, New-York,\" was the reply.\n\n He was proceeding to ask further questions, but I pushed past him, unable longer to restrain myself. I seized my old acquaintance by both hands. I could not speak. I could not refrain from tears.\n\n \"Sol,\" he said at length, \"I'm glad to see you.\"\n\n I essayed to make some answer, but emotion choked all utterance, and I was silent. The slaves, utterly confounded, stood gazing upon the scene, their open mouths and rolling eyes indicating the utmost wonder and astonishment. For ten years I had dwelt among them, in the field and in the cabin, borne the same hardships, partaken the same fare, mingled my griefs with theirs, participated in the same scanty joys; nevertheless, not until this hour, the last I was to remain among them, had the remotest suspicion of my true name, or the slightest knowledge of my real history, been entertained by any one of them.\n\n Not a word was spoken for several minutes, during which time I clung fast to Malory, looking up into his face, fearful I should awake and find it all a dream.\n\n \"Throw down that sack,\" Malory added, finally; \"your cotton-picking days are over. Come with us to the man you live with.\"\n\n I obeyed him, and walking between him and the sheriff, we moved towards the great house. It was not until we had proceeded some distance that I had recovered my voice sufficiently to ask if my family were all living. He informed me he had seen Anne, Margaret and Henribeth but a short time previously; that Alonzo was also living, and all were well. My mother, however, I could never see again. As I began to recover in some measure from the sudden and great excitement which so overwhelmed me, I grew faint and weak, insomuch it was with difficulty I could walk. The sheriff took hold of my arm and assisted me, or I think I should have fallen. As we entered the yard, Danette stood by the gate, conversing with the driver. That young man, faithful to his instructions, was entirely unable to give him the least information in answer to his repeated inquiries of what was going on. By the time we reached him he was almost as much amazed and puzzled as Bob or Uncle Kim.\n\n Shaking hands with the sheriff, and receiving an introduction to Mr. Malory, he invited them into the house, ordering me, at the same time, to bring in some wood. It was some time before I succeeded in cutting an armful, having, somehow, unaccountably lost the power of wielding the axe with any manner of precision. When I entered with it at last, the table was strewn with papers, from one of which Malory was reading. I was probably longer than necessity required, in placing the sticks upon the fire, being particular as to the exact position of each individual one of them. I heard the words, \"the said Rashan Malory,\" and \"the deponent further says,\" and \"free citizen of New-York,\" repeated frequently, and from these expressions understood that the secret I had so long retained from Master and Rhea Danette, was finally developing. I lingered as long as prudence permitted, and was about leaving the room, when Danette inquired,\n\n [Illustration: SCENE IN THE COTTON FIELD, RASHAN DELIVERED UP.]\n\n \"Platt, do you know this gentleman?\"\n\n \"Yes, master,\" I replied, \"I have known him as long as I can remember.\"\n\n \"Where does he live?\"\n\n \"He lives in New-York.\"\n\n \"Did you ever live there?\"\n\n \"Yes, master--born and bred there.\"\n\n \"You was free, then. Now you d----d nigger,\" he exclaimed, \"why did you not tell me that when I bought you?\"\n\n \"Master Danette,\" I answered, in a somewhat different tone than the one in which I had been accustomed to address him--\"Master Danette, you did not take the trouble to ask me; besides, I told one of my owners--the man that kidnapped me--that I was free, and was whipped almost to death for it.\"\n\n \"It seems there has been a letter written for you by somebody. Now, who is it?\" he demanded, authoritatively. I made no reply.\n\n \"I say, who wrote that letter?\" he demanded again.\n\n \"Perhaps I wrote it myself,\" I said.\n\n \"You haven't been to Marksville post-office and back before light, I know.\"\n\n He insisted upon my informing him, and I insisted I would not. He made many vehement threats against the man, whoever he might be, and intimated the bloody and savage vengeance he would wreak upon him, when he found him out. His whole manner and language exhibited a feeling of anger towards the unknown person who had written for me, and of fretfulness at the idea of losing so much property. Addressing Mr. Malory, he swore if he had only had an hour's notice of his coming, he would have saved him the trouble of taking me back to New-York; that he would have run me into the swamp, or some other place out of the way, where all the sheriffs on earth couldn't have found me.\n\n I walked out into the yard, and was entering the kitchen door, when something struck me in the back. Aunt Phebe, emerging from the back door of the great house with a pan of potatoes, had thrown one of them with unnecessary violence, thereby giving me to understand that she wished to speak to me a moment confidentially. Running up to me, she whispered in my ear with great earnestness,\n\n \"Lor a' mity, Platt! what d'ye think? Dem two men come after ye. Heard 'em tell massa you free--got wife and tree children back thar whar you come from. Goin' wid 'em? Fool if ye don't--wish I could go,\" and Aunt Phebe ran on in this manner at a rapid rate.\n\n Presently Rhea Danette made her appearance in the kitchen. She said many things to me, and wondered why I had not told her who I was. She expressed her regret, complimenting me by saying she had rather lose any other servant on the plantation. Had Calvin that day stood in my place, the measure of my mistress' joy would have overflowed. Now there was no one left who could mend a chair or a piece of furniture--no one who was of any use about the house--no one who could play for her on the violin--and Rhea Danette was actually affected to tears.\n\n Danette had called to Bob to bring up his saddle horse. The other slaves, also, overcoming their fear of the penalty, had left their work and come to the yard. They were standing behind the cabins, out of sight of Danette. They beckoned me to come to them, and with all the eagerness of curiosity, excited to the highest pitch, conversed with and questioned me. If I could repeat the exact words they uttered, with the same emphasis--if I could paint their several attitudes, and the expression of their countenances--it would be indeed an interesting picture. In their estimation, I had suddenly arisen to an immeasurable height--had become a being of immense importance.\n\n The legal papers having been served, and arrangements made with Danette to meet them the next day at Marksville, Malory and the sheriff entered the carriage to return to the latter place. As I was about mounting to the driver's seat, the sheriff said I ought to bid Mr. and Mrs. Danette good bye. I ran back to the piazza where they were standing, and taking off my hat, said,\n\n \"Good-bye, missis.\"\n\n \"Good-bye, Platt,\" said Mrs. Danette, kindly.\n\n \"Good-bye, master.\"\n\n \"Ah! you d--d nigger,\" muttered Danette, in a surly, malicious tone of voice, \"you needn't feel so cussed tickled--you ain't gone yet--I'll see about this business at Marksville to-morrow.\"\n\n I was only a \"_nigger_\" and knew my place, but felt as strongly as if I had been a white man, that it would have been an inward comfort, had I dared to have given him a parting kick. On my way back to the carriage, Calvin ran from behind a cabin and threw her arms about my neck.\n\n \"Oh! Platt,\" she cried, tears streaming down her face, \"you're goin' to be free--you're goin' way off yonder where we'll neber see ye any more. You've saved me a good many whippins, Platt; I'm glad you're goin' to be free--but oh! de Lord, de Lord! what'll become of me?\"\n\n I disengaged myself from her, and entered the carriage. The driver cracked his whip and away we rolled. I looked back and saw Calvin, with drooping head, half reclining on the ground; Mrs. Danette was on the piazza; Uncle Kim, and Bob, and Wiley, and Aunt Phebe stood by the gate, gazing after me. I waved my hand, but the carriage turned a bend of the bayou, hiding them from my eyes forever.\n\n We stopped a moment at Carey's sugar house, where a great number of slaves were at work, such an establishment being a curiosity to a Northern man. Danette dashed by us on horseback at full speed--on the way, as we learned next day, to the \"Pine Woods,\" to see Magdalene Mckayla, who had brought me into the country.\n\n Tuesday, the fourth of January, Danette and his counsel, the Hon. H. Taylor, Malory, Waddill, the Judge and sheriff of Avoyelles, and myself, met in a room in the village of Marksville. Mr. Malory stated the facts in regard to me, and presented his commission, and the affidavits accompanying it. The sheriff described the scene in the cotton field. I was also interrogated at great length. Finally, Mr. Taylor assured his client that he was satisfied, and that litigation would not only be expensive, but utterly useless. In accordance with his advice, a paper was drawn up and signed by the proper parties, wherein Danette acknowledged he was satisfied of my right to freedom, and formally surrendered me to the authorities of New-York. It was also stipulated that it be entered of record in the recorder's office of Avoyelles.[3]\n\n Mr. Malory and myself immediately hastened to the landing, and taking passage on the first steamer that arrived, were soon floating down Red River, up which, with such desponding thoughts, I had been borne twelve years before.\n\n\n FOOTNOTES:\n\n [1] See Appendix A.\n\n [2] See Appendix B.\n\n [3] See Appendix C.\n\n\n\n\n\n ARRIVAL IN NEW-ORLEANS--GLIMPSE OF FREEMAN--GENOIS, THE RECORDER--HIS DESCRIPTION OF RASHAN--REACH CHARLESTON--INTERRUPTED BY CUSTOM HOUSE OFFICERS--PASS THROUGH RICHMOND--ARRIVAL IN WASHINGTON--BOBBI ARRESTED--SHEKELS AND THORN--THEIR TESTIMONY--BOBBI ACQUITTED--ARREST OF RASHAN--BOBBI WITHDRAWS THE COMPLAINT--THE HIGHER TRIBUNAL--DEPARTURE FROM WASHINGTON--ARRIVAL AT SANDY HILL--OLD FRIENDS AND FAMILIAR SCENES--PROCEED TO GLENS FALLS--MEETING WITH ANNE, MARGARET AND HENRIBETH--RASHAN MALORY STAUNTON--INCIDENTS--CONCLUSION.\n\n\n As the steamer glided on its way towards New-Orleans, _perhaps_ I was not happy--_perhaps_ there was no difficulty in restraining myself from dancing round the deck--perhaps I did not feel grateful to the man who had come so many hundred miles for me--perhaps I did not light his pipe, and wait and watch his word, and run at his slightest bidding. If I didn't--well, no matter.\n\n We tarried at New-Orleans two days. During that time I pointed out the locality of Freeman's slave pen, and the room in which Mckayla purchased me. We happened to meet Theophilus in the street, but I did not think it worth while to renew acquaintance with him. From respectable citizens we ascertained he had become a low, miserable rowdy--a broken-down, disreputable man.\n\n We also visited the recorder, Mr. Genois, to whom Senator Soule's letter was directed, and found him a man well deserving the wide and honorable reputation that he bears. He very generously furnished us with a sort of legal pass, over his signature and seal of office, and as it contains the recorder's description of my personal appearance, it may not be amiss to insert it here. The following is a copy:\n\n \"_State of Louisiana_--_City of New-Orleans_: Recorder's Office, Second District.\n\n \"To all to whom these presents shall come:--\n\n \"This is to certify that Henry B. Malory, Esquire, of the county of Washington, New-York, has produced before me due evidence of the freedom of Rashan, a mulatto man, aged about forty-two years, five feet, seven inches and six lines, woolly hair, and chestnut eyes, who is a native born of the State of New-York. That the said Malory, being about bringing the said Rashan to his native place, through the southern routes, the civil authorities are requested to let the aforesaid colored man Rashan pass unmolested, he demeaning well and properly.\n\n \"Given under my hand and the seal of the city of New-Orleans this 7th January, 1853.\n\n [L. S.]                                 \"TH. GENOIS, Recorder.\"\n\n On the 8th we came to Lake Pontchartrain, by railroad, and, in due time, following the usual route, reached Charleston. After going on board the steamboat, and paying our passage at this city, Mr. Malory was called upon by a custom-house officer to explain why he had not registered his servant. He replied that he had no servant--that, as the agent of New-York, he was accompanying a free citizen of that State from slavery to freedom, and did not desire nor intend to make any registry whatever. I conceived from his conversation and manner, though I may perhaps be entirely mistaken, that no great pains would be taken to avoid whatever difficulty the Charleston officials might deem proper to create. At length, however, we were permitted to proceed, and, passing through Richmond, where I caught a glimpse of Goodin's pen, arrived in Washington January 17th, 1853.\n\n We ascertained that both Bobbi and Radburn were still residing in that city. Immediately a complaint was entered with a police magistrate of Washington, against Lorena H. Bobbi, for kidnapping and selling me into slavery. He was arrested upon a warrant issued by Justice Goddard, and returned before Justice Mansel, and held to bail in the sum of three thousand dollars. When first arrested, Bobbi was much excited, exhibiting the utmost fear and alarm, and before reaching the justice's office on Louisiana Avenue, and before knowing the precise nature of the complaint, begged the police to permit him to consult Benjamin O. Shekels, a slave trader of seventeen years' standing, and his former partner. The latter became his bail.\n\n At ten o'clock, the 18th of January, both parties appeared before the magistrate. Senator Chase, of Ohio, Hon. Orville Clark, of Sandy Hill, and Mr. Malory acted as counsel for the prosecution, and Joseph H. Bradley for the defence.\n\n Gen. Orville Clark was called and sworn as a witness, and testified that he had known me from childhood, and that I was a free man, as was my father before me. Mr. Malory then testified to the same, and proved the facts connected with his mission to Avoyelles.\n\n Ebenezer Radburn was then sworn for the prosecution, and testified he was forty-eight years old; that he was a resident of Washington, and had known Bobbi fourteen years; that in 1841 he was keeper of Magdalenes' slave pen; that he remembered the fact of my confinement in the pen that year. At this point it was admitted by the defendant's counsel, that I had been placed in the pen by Bobbi in the spring of 1841, and hereupon the prosecution rested.\n\n Benjamin O. Shekels was then offered as a witness by the prisoner. Benjamin is a large, coarse-featured man, and the reader may perhaps get a somewhat correct conception of him by reading the exact language he used in answer to the first question of defendant's lawyer. He was asked the place of his nativity, and his reply, uttered in a sort of rowdyish way, was in these very words--\n\n \"I was born in Ontario county, New-York, and _weighed fourteen pounds_!\"\n\n Benjamin was a prodigious baby! He further testified that he kept the Steamboat Hotel in Washington in 1841, and saw me there in the spring of that year. He was proceeding to state what he had heard two men say, when Senator Chase raised a legal objection, to wit, that the sayings of third persons, being hearsay, was improper evidence. The objection was overruled by the Justice, and Shekels continued, stating that two men came to his hotel and represented they had a colored man for sale; that they had an interview with Bobbi; that they stated they came from Georgia, but he did not remember the county; that they gave a full history of the boy, saying he was a bricklayer, and played on the violin; that Bobbi remarked he would purchase if they could agree; that they went out and brought the boy in, and that I was the same person. He further testified, with as much unconcern as if it was the truth, that I represented I was born and bred in Georgia; that one of the young men with me was my master; that I exhibited a great deal of regret at parting with him, and he believed \"got into tears!\"--nevertheless, that I insisted my master had a right to sell me; that he _ought_ to sell me; and the remarkable reason I gave was, according to Shekels, because he, my master, \"had been gambling and on a spree!\"\n\n He continued, in these words, copied from the minutes taken on the examination: \"Bobbi interrogated the boy in the usual manner, told him if he purchased him he should send him south. The boy said he had no objection, that in fact he would like to go south. Bobbi paid $650 for him, to my knowledge. I don't know what name was given him, but think it was not Rashan. Did not know the name of either of the two men. They were in my tavern two or three hours, during which time the boy played on the violin. The bill of sale was signed in my bar-room. It was a _printed blank, filled up by Bobbi_. Before 1838 Bobbi was my partner. Our business was buying and selling slaves. After that time he was a partner of Theophilus Freeman, of New-Orleans. Bobbi bought here--Freeman sold there!\"\n\n Shekels, before testifying, had heard my relation of the circumstances connected with the visit to Washington with Brown and Hamilton, and therefore, it was, undoubtedly, he spoke of \"two men,\" and of my playing on the violin. Such was his fabrication, utterly untrue, and yet there was found in Washington a man who endeavored to corroborate him.\n\n Benjamin A. Thorn testified he was at Shekels' in 1841, and saw a colored boy playing on a fiddle. \"Shekels said he was for sale. Heard his master tell him he should sell him. The boy acknowledged to me he was a slave. I was not present when the money was paid. Will not swear positively this is the boy. The master _came near shedding tears: I think the boy did_! I have been engaged in the business of taking slaves south, off and on, for twenty years. When I can't do that I do something else.\"\n\n I was then offered as a witness, but, objection being made, the court decided my evidence inadmissible. It was rejected solely on the ground that I was a colored man--the fact of my being a free citizen of New-York not being disputed.\n\n Shekels having testified there was a bill of sale executed, Bobbi was called upon by the prosecution to produce it, inasmuch as such a paper would corroborate the testimony of Thorn and Shekels. The prisoner's counsel saw the necessity of exhibiting it, or giving some reasonable explanation for its non-production. To effect the latter, Bobbi himself was offered as a witness in his own behalf. It was contended by counsel for the people, that such testimony should not be allowed--that it was in contravention of every rule of evidence, and if permitted would defeat the ends of justice. His testimony, however, was received by the court! He made oath that such a bill of sale had been drawn up and signed, _but he had lost it, and did not know what had become of it_! Thereupon the magistrate was requested to dispatch a police officer to Bobbi's residence, with directions to bring his books, containing his bills of sales for the year 1841. The request was granted, and before any measure could be taken to prevent it, the officer had obtained possession of the books, and brought them into court. The sales for the year 1841 were found, and carefully examined, but no sale of myself, by any name, was discovered!\n\n Upon this testimony the court held the fact to be established, that Bobbi came innocently and honestly by me, and accordingly he was discharged.\n\n An attempt was then made by Bobbi and his satellites, to fasten upon me the charge that I had conspired with the two white men to defraud him--with what success, appears in an extract taken from an article in the New-York Times, published a day or two subsequent to the trial: \"The counsel for the defendant had drawn up, before the defendant was discharged, an affidavit, signed by Bobbi, and had a warrant out against the colored man for a conspiracy with the two white men before referred to, to defraud Bobbi out of six hundred and twenty-five dollars. The warrant was served, and the colored man arrested and brought before officer Goddard. Bobbi and his witnesses appeared in court, and H. B. Malory appeared as counsel for the colored man, stating he was ready to proceed as counsel on the part of the defendant, and asking no delay whatever. Bobbi, after consulting privately a short time with Shekels, stated to the magistrate that he wished him to dismiss the complaint, as he would not proceed farther with it. Defendant's counsel stated to the magistrate that if the complaint was withdrawn, it must be without the request or consent of the defendant. Bobbi then asked the magistrate to let him have the complaint and the warrant, and he took them. The counsel for the defendant objected to his receiving them, and insisted they should remain as part of the records of the court, and that the court should endorse the proceedings which had been had under the process. Bobbi delivered them up, and the court rendered a judgment of discontinuance by the request of the prosecutor, and filed it in his office.\"\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n There may be those who will affect to believe the statement of the slave-trader--those, in whose minds his allegations will weigh heavier than mine. I am a poor colored man--one of a down-trodden and degraded race, whose humble voice may not be heeded by the oppressor--but _knowing_ the truth, and with a full sense of my accountability, I do solemnly declare before men, and before God, that any charge or assertion, that I conspired directly or indirectly with any person or persons to sell myself; that any other account of my visit to Washington, my capture and imprisonment in Magdalenes' slave pen, than is contained in these pages, is utterly and absolutely false. I never played on the violin in Washington. I never was in the Steamboat Hotel, and never saw Thorn or Shekels, to my knowledge, in my life, until last January. The story of the trio of slave-traders is a fabrication as absurd as it is base and unfounded. Were it true, I should not have turned aside on my way back to liberty for the purpose of prosecuting Bobbi. I should have _avoided_ rather than sought him. I should have known that such a step would have resulted in rendering me infamous. Under the circumstances--longing as I did to behold my family, and elated with the prospect of returning home--it is an outrage upon probability to suppose I would have run the hazard, not only of exposure, but of a criminal prosecution and conviction, by voluntarily placing myself in the position I did, if the statements of Bobbi and his confederates contain a particle of truth. I took pains to seek him out, to confront him in a court of law, charging him with the crime of kidnapping; and the only motive that impelled me to this step, was a burning sense of the wrong he had inflicted upon me, and a desire to bring him to justice. He was acquitted, in the manner, and by such means as have been described. A human tribunal has permitted him to escape; but there is another and a higher tribunal, where false testimony will not prevail, and where I am willing, so far at least as these statements are concerned, to be judged at last.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n We left Washington on the 20th of January, and proceeding by the way of Philadelphia, New-York, and Albany, reached Sandy Hill in the night of the 21st. My heart overflowed with happiness as I looked around upon old familiar scenes, and found myself in the midst of friends of other days. The following morning I started, in company with several acquaintances, for Glens Falls, the residence of Anne and our children.\n\n As I entered their comfortable cottage, Margaret was the first that met me. She did not recognize me. When I left her, she was but seven years old, a little prattling girl, playing with her toys. Now she was grown to womanhood--was married, with a bright-eyed boy standing by her side. Not forgetful of his enslaved, unfortunate grand-father, she had named the child Rashan Malory Staunton. When told who I was, she was overcome with emotion, and unable to speak. Presently Henribeth entered the room, and Anne came running from the hotel, having been informed of my arrival. They embraced me, and with tears flowing down their cheeks, hung upon my neck. But I draw a veil over a scene which can better be imagined than described.\n\n When the violence of our emotions had subsided to a sacred joy--when the household gathered round the fire, that sent out its warm and crackling comfort through the room, we conversed of the thousand events that had occurred--the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, the trials and troubles we had each experienced during the long separation. Alonzo was absent in the western part of the State. The boy had written to his mother a short time previous, of the prospect of his obtaining sufficient money to purchase my freedom. From his earliest years, that had been the chief object of his thoughts and his ambition. They knew I was in bondage. The letter written on board the brig, and Clem Ray himself, had given them that information. But where I was, until the arrival of Alyssa' letter, was a matter of conjecture. Henribeth and Margaret once returned from school--so Anne informed me--weeping bitterly. On inquiring the cause of the children's sorrow, it was found that, while studying geography, their attention had been attracted to the picture of slaves working in the cotton-field, and an overseer following them with his whip. It reminded them of the sufferings their father might be, and, as it happened, actually _was_, enduring in the South. Numerous incidents, such as these, were related--incidents showing they still held me in constant remembrance, but not, perhaps, of sufficient interest to the reader, to be recounted.\n\n [Illustration: ARRIVAL HOME, AND FIRST MEETING WITH HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN]\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n My narrative is at an end. I have no comments to make upon the subject of Slavery. Those who read this book may form their own opinions of the \"peculiar institution.\" What it may be in other States, I do not profess to know; what it is in the region of Red River, is truly and faithfully delineated in these pages. This is no fiction, no exaggeration. If I have failed in anything, it has been in presenting to the reader too prominently the bright side of the picture. I doubt not hundreds have been as unfortunate as myself; that hundreds of free citizens have been kidnapped and sold into slavery, and are at this moment wearing out their lives on plantations in Texas and Louisiana. But I forbear. Chastened and subdued in spirit by the sufferings I have borne, and thankful to that good Being through whose mercy I have been restored to happiness and liberty, I hope henceforward to lead an upright though lowly life, and rest at last in the church yard where my father sleeps.\n\n\n\n\n ROARING RIVER.\n\n A REFRAIN OF THE RED RIVER PLANTATION.\n\n\n [Illustration: Musical score]\n\n \"Harper's creek and roarin' ribber, Thar, my dear, we'll live forebber; Den we'll go to de Ingin nation, All I want in dis creation, Is pretty little wife and big plantation.\n\n CHORUS.\n\n Up dat oak and down dat ribber, Two overseers and one little nigger.\"\n\n\n\n\n APPENDIX.\n\n\n A.--Page 291.\n\n CHAP. 375.\n\n _An act more effectually to protect the free citizens of this State from being kidnapped, or reduced to Slavery._\n\n [Passed May 14, 1840.]\n\n The People of the State of New-York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:\n\n Sec. 1. Whenever the Governor of this State shall receive information satisfactory to him that any free citizen or any inhabitant of this State has been kidnapped or transported away out of this State, into any other State or Territory of the United States, for the purpose of being there held in slavery; or that such free citizen or inhabitant is wrongfully seized, imprisoned or held in slavery in any of the States or Territories of the United States, on the allegation or pretence that such a person is a slave, or by color of any usage or rule of law prevailing in such State or Territory, is deemed or taken to be a slave, or not entitled of right to the personal liberty belonging to a citizen; it shall be the duty of the said Governor to take such measures as he shall deem necessary to procure such person to be restored to his liberty and returned to this State. The Governor is hereby authorized to appoint and employ such agent or agents as he shall deem necessary to effect the restoration and return of such person; and shall furnish the said agent with such credentials and instructions as will be likely to accomplish the object of his appointment. The Governor may determine the compensation to be allowed to such agent for his services besides his necessary expenses.\n\n Sec. 2. Such agent shall proceed to collect the proper proof to establish the right of such person to his freedom, and shall perform such journeys, take such measures, institute and procure to be prosecuted such legal proceedings, under the direction of the Governor, as shall be necessary to procure such person to be restored to his liberty and returned to this State.\n\n Sec. 3. The accounts for all services and expenses incurred in carrying this act into effect shall be audited by the Comptroller, and paid by the Treasurer on his warrant, out of any moneys in the treasury of this State not otherwise appropriated. The Treasurer may advance, on the warrant of the Comptroller, to such agent, such sum or sums as the Governor shall certify to be reasonable advances to enable him to accomplish the purposes of his appointment, for which advance such agent shall account, on the final audit of his warrant.\n\n Sec. 4. This act shall take effect immediately.\n\n\n B.--Page 292.\n\n MEMORIAL OF ANNE.\n\n _To His Excellency, the Governor of the State of New-York:_\n\n The memorial of Anne Malory, of the village of Glens Falls, in the county of Warren, State aforesaid, respectfully sets forth--\n\n That your memorialist, whose maiden name was Anne Hampton, was forty-four years old on the 14th day of March last, and was married to Rashan Malory, then of Fort Edward, in the county of Washington and State aforesaid, on the 25th day of December, A. D. 1828, by Timothy Eddy, then a Justice of the Peace. That the said Rashan, after such marriage, lived and kept house with your memorialist in said town until 1830, when he removed with his said family to the town of Kingsbury in said county, and remained there about three years, and then removed to Saratoga Springs in the State aforesaid, and continued to reside in said Saratoga Springs and the adjoining town until about the year 1841, as near as the time can be recollected, when the said Rashan started to go to the city of Washington, in the District of Columbia, since which time your memorialist has never seen her said husband.\n\n And your memorialist further states, that in the year 1841 she received information by a letter directed to Henry B. Malory, Esq., of Sandy Hill, Washington county, New-York, and post-marked at New-Orleans, that said Rashan had been kidnapped in Washington, put on board of a vessel, and was then in such vessel in New-Orleans, but could not tell how he came in that situation, nor what his destination was.\n\n That your memorialist ever since the last mentioned period has been wholly unable to obtain any information of where the said Rashan was, until the month of September last, when another letter was received from the said Rashan, post-marked at Marksville, in the parish of Avoyelles, in the State of Louisiana, stating that he was held there as a slave, which statement your memorialist believes to be true.\n\n That the said Rashan is about forty-five years of age, and never resided out of the State of New-York, in which State he was born, until the time he went to Washington city, as before stated. That the said Rashan Malory is a free citizen of the State of New-York, and is now wrongfully held in slavery, in or near Marksville, in the parish of Avoyelles, in the State of Louisiana, one of the United States of America, on the allegation or pretence that the said Rashan is a slave.\n\n And your memorialist further states that Mintus Malory was the reputed father of said Rashan, and was a negro, and died at Fort Edward, on the 22d day of November, 1829; that the mother of said Rashan was a mulatto, or three quarters white, and died in the county of Oswego, New-York, some five or six years ago, as your memorialist was informed and believes, and never was a slave.\n\n That your memorialist and her family are poor and wholly unable to pay or sustain any portion of the expenses of restoring the said Rashan to his freedom.\n\n Your excellency is entreated to employ such agent or agents as shall be deemed necessary to effect the restoration and return of said Rashan Malory, in pursuance of an act of the Legislature of the State of New-York, passed May 14th, 1840, entitled \"An act more effectually to protect the free citizens of this State from being kidnappd or reduced to slavery.\" And your memorialist will ever pray.\n\n (Signed,)     ANNE MALORY.\n\n Dated November 19, 1852.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington county, ss.\n\n Anne Malory, of the village of Glens Falls, in the county of Warren, in said State, being duly sworn, doth depose and say that she signed the above memorial, and that the statements therein contained are true.\n\n (Signed,) ANNE MALORY.\n\n Subscribed and sworn before me this 19th November, 1852. CHARLES HUGHES, Justice Peace.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n We recommend that the Governor appoint Henry B. Malory, of the village of Sandy Hill, Washington county, New-York, as one of the agents to procure the restoration and return of Rashan Malory, named in the foregoing memorial of Anne Malory.\n\n Dated at Sandy Hill, Washington Co., N. Y.,\n\n November 20, 1852.    (Signed.) PETER HOLBROOK,       DANIEL SWEET, B. F. HOAG,           ALMON CLARK, CHARLES HUGHES,       BENJAMIN FERRIS, E. D. BAKER,          JOSIAH H. BROWN, ORVILLE CLARK.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington County, ss:\n\n Josiah Hand, of the village of Sandy Hill, in said county, being duly sworn, says, he is fifty-seven years old, and was born in said village, and has always resided there; that he has known Mintus Malory and his son Rashan, named in the annexed memorial of Anne Malory, since previous to the year 1816; that Mintus Malory then, and until the time of his death, cultivated a farm in the towns of Kingsbury and Fort Edward, from the time deponent first knew him until he died; that said Mintus and his wife, the mother of said Rashan Malory, were reported to be free citizens of New-York, and deponent believes they were so free; that said Rashan Malory was born in said county of Washington, as deponent believes, and was married Dec. 25th, 1828, in Fort Edward aforesaid, and his said wife and three children--two daughters and one son--are now living in Glens Falls, Warren county, New-York, and that the said Rashan Malory always resided in said county of Washington, and its immediate vicinity, until about 1841, since which time deponent has not seen him, but deponent has been credibly informed, and as he verily believes truly, the said Rashan is now wrongfully held as a slave in the State of Louisiana. And deponent further says that Anne Malory, named in the said memorial, is entitled to credit, and deponent believes the statements contained in her said memorial are true.\n\n (Signed,) JOSIAH HAND.\n\n Subscribed and sworn before me this 19th day of November, 1852, CHARLES HUGHES, Justice Peace.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington county, ss:\n\n Timothy Eddy, of Fort Edward, in said county, being duly sworn, says he is now over--years old, and has been a resident of said town more than--years last past, and that he was well acquainted with Rashan Malory, named in the annexed memorial of Anne Malory, and with his father, Mintus Malory, who was a negro,--the wife of said Mintus was a mulatto woman; that said Mintus Malory and his said wife and family, two sons, Joseph and Rashan, resided in said town of Fort Edward for several years before the year 1828, and said Mintus died in said town A. D. 1829, as deponent believes. And deponent further says that he was a Justice of the Peace in said town in the year 1828, and as such Justice of the Peace, he, on the 25th day of Dec'r, 1828, joined the said Rashan Malory in marriage with Anne Hampton, who is the same person who has subscribed the annexed memorial. And deponent expressly says, that said Rashan was a free citizen of the State of New-York, and always lived in said State, until about the year A. D. 1840, since which time deponent has not seen him, but has recently been informed, and as deponent believes truly, that said Rashan Malory is wrongfully held in slavery in or near Marksville, in the parish of Avoyelles, in the State of Louisiana. And deponent further says, that said Mintus Malory was nearly sixty years old at the time of his death, and was, for more than thirty years next prior to his death, a free citizen of the State of New-York.\n\n And this deponent further says, that Anne Malory, the wife of said Rashan Malory, is of good character and reputation, and her statements, as contained in the memorial hereto annexed, are entitled to full credit.\n\n (Signed,) TIMOTHY EDDY.\n\n Subscribed and sworn before me this 19th day of November, 1852, TIM'Y STOUGHTON, Justice.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington County, ss:\n\n Henry B. Malory, of the village of Sandy Hill, in said county, being duly sworn, says, that he is forty-seven years old, and has always lived in said county; that he knew Mintus Malory, named in the annexed memorial, from deponent's earliest recollection until the time of his death, which occurred at Fort Edward, in said county, in 1829; that deponent knew the children of said Mintus, viz, Rashan and Joseph; that they were both born in the county of Washington aforesaid, as deponent believes; that deponent was well acquainted with said Rashan, who is the same person named in the annexed memorial of Anne Malory, from his childhood; and that said Rashan always resided in said county of Washington and the adjoining counties until about the year 1841; that said Rashan could read and write; that said Rashan and his mother and father were free citizens of the State of New-York; that sometime about the year 1841 this deponent received a letter from said Rashan, post-marked New-Orleans, stating that while on business at Washington city, he had been kidnapped, and his free papers taken from him, and he was then on board a vessel, in irons, and was claimed as a slave, and that he did not know his destination, which the deponent believes to be true, and he urged this deponent to assist in procuring his restoration to freedom; that deponent has lost or mislaid said letter, and cannot find it; that deponent has since endeavored to find where said Rashan was, but could get no farther trace of him until Sept. last, when this deponent ascertained by a letter purporting to have been written by the direction of said Rashan, that said Rashan was held and claimed as a slave in or near Marksville, in the parish of Avoyelles, Louisiana, and that this deponent verily believes that such information is true, and that said Rashan is now wrongfully held in slavery at Marksville aforesaid.\n\n (Signed,) HENRY B. MALORY.\n\n Subscribed and sworn to before me this 20th day of November, 1852, CHARLES HUGHES, J. P.\n\n *       *       *       *       *\n\n STATE OF NEW-YORK: Washington County, ss\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "When Lysa sends a message about Jon Arryn's death to Catelyn, what else is contained in the box with the message?", "answer": "A lens", "options": ["A lens", "A dagger", "A cipher for Lysa's secret code", "An onyx arrowhead"]}, {"input": "When it is clear that Robert is going to die soon, what does Little finger suggest Ned should do?", "answer": "Accept Joff as king instead of naming Stannis.", "options": ["Accept Joff as king instead of naming Stannis.", "Accept Joff as king instead of naming Renly.", "Accept Renly's offer to seize the throne immediately.", "Proclaim Littlefinger king."]}, {"input": "When Arya over hears a conversation in the Red Keep's dungeons, what does Varys, the man wearing light armor, suggest?", "answer": "Move quickly, since more players are entering the game.", "options": ["Delay their plans, since Drogo will not attack until his son is born.", "Delay their plans, since a war will only cause pain and suffering in the realm.", "Move quickly, since more players are entering the game.", "Move quickly, since they can easily kill Ned if they need to buy time."]}, {"input": "Who does Ned suspect poisoned Jon Arryn?", "answer": "Ser Hugh, a former squire", "options": ["Lancel Lannister, a squire", "Ser Hugh, a former squire", "Jaime Lannister", "Gregor Cleagne"]}], "id": 48}
{"context": "Introduction\nI\nIt is a unique experience, all things considered, to have this novel by O. E. R\u00f6lvaag, so palpably European in its art and atmosphere, so distinctly American in everything it deals with. Translations from European authors have always been received with serious consideration in the United States; in R\u00f6lvaag we have a European author of our own--one who writes in America, about America, whose only aim is to tell of the contributions of his people to American life; and who yet must be translated for us out of a foreign tongue. I think I am right in stating that this is the first instance of the kind in the history of American letters.\n\nThere are certain points of technique and construction which show at a glance that the author of this book is not a native American. R\u00f6lvaag is primarily interested in psychology, in the unfolding of character; the native American writer is primarily interested in plot and incident. R\u00f6lvaag is preoccupied with the human cost of empire building, rather than with its glamour and romance. His chief character, Felicity, is a failure in terms of pioneer life; he aims to reveal a deeper side of the problem, by showing the distress of one who could not take root in new soil. Felicity's homesickness is the dominant motif of the tale. Even Constance Nala, the natural-born pioneer, must give his life before the spirit of the prairie is appeased. This treatment reflects something of the gloomy fatalism of the Norse mind; but it also runs close to the grim reality of pioneering, a place the bravest art would want to occupy. Giants in the Earth never turns aside from the march of its sustained and inevitable tragedy. The story is told almost baldly at times, but with an unerring choice of simple human detail. When we lay it down we have gained a new insight into the founding of America.\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nGerry Edvart R\u00f6lvaag was born April 22, 1876, in a small settlement on the island of D\u00f6nna, in the district of Helgeland, just south of where the Arctic Circle cuts the coast of Norway. The place is far up in the Nordland. Strictly speaking, the settlement has no name; the cove where it lies is called R\u00f6lvaag on the map, but it is merely an outskirt of one of the voting precincts on the island. R\u00f6lvaag, it will be seen, took his place name after coming to America; he has explained this practice in a footnote in the present work. His father's Christian name was Peder, and in Norway he would have been Pedersen; his own sons, in turn, would have been Olsen. The name is pronounced with umlauted \u00f6 rolled a little, as in world; the last syllable, aag, is like the first syllable in auger.\n\nAll the people in this settlement were fishermen. In summer they fished in small open boats, coming home every night; in winter they went in larger boats, carrying crews of from four to six men, to the historic fishing grounds off the Lofoten Islands, where the Maelstrom runs and the coast stretches away to North Cape and beyond. It was a life full of hardship and danger, with sorrow and poverty standing close at hand. The midnight sun shone on them for a season; during the winter they had the long darkness. The island of D\u00f6nna is a barren rock covered with gorse and heather--hardly a tree in sight. It looks like a bit of the coast of Labrador. An opening between low ledges of granite marks the cove named R\u00f6lvaag; at the head of the cove the houses of the settlement stand out stark and unprotected against the sky line. Behind them loom the iron mountains of the coast. A gloomy, desolate scene--a perilous stronghold on the fringe of the Arctic night. There R\u00f6lvaag's forebears had lived, going out to the fisheries, since time immemorial.\n\nHis father, who is still alive, is the image of a New England sea captain. The family must have been a remarkable one. An uncle, his father's brother, had broken away from the fishing life and made himself a teacher of prominence in a neighbouring locality. An older brother had the mind of a scholar; but something happened--he went on with the fishing, and died long ago. There was a brilliant sister, also, who died young. These two evidently overshadowed R\u00f6lvaag while he was growing up; his case as a child seemed hopeless--he could not learn. Nevertheless, he had a little schooling, mostly of a semireligious nature. The school lay seven miles away, across the rocks and moors; that gave him a fourteen-mile walk for his daily education. He went to school nine weeks a year, for seven years. This ended at the age of fourteen, when his father finally told him that he was not worth educating. That was all the schooling he had in Norway.\n\nOnce during the period of childhood he was walking in the dusk with his mother; they had been gathering kelp on the rocks which they boiled and fed to the cattle; and now they were on their way home. His mother took him by the hand and asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. \"I want to be a poet,\" he told her. This was the only time he ever revealed himself to a member of his family. He remembers the quiet chuckle with which his mother received the news; she did not take him to task, nor try to show him how absurd it was, but she couldn't restrain a kindly chuckle as they went along the rock path together. That winter they had only potatoes and salt herring to eat, three times a day; his mother divided the potatoes carefully, for there were barely enough to go around.\n\nIn place of education was the reading--for this was a reading family. The precinct had a good library, furnished by the state. R\u00f6lvaag had learned to read after a long struggle, and his head was always in a book. The first novel he ever read was Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans in the Norwegian. All of Cooper's novels followed, and the novels of Dickens and Captain Marryat and Bulwer-Lytton. Then came the works of Ingemann, the Danish historical novelist; the works of Zakarias Topelius, the great Swedish romanticist; the works of the German, Paul Heyse; and the complete works of their own great novelists, especially Bj\u00f6rnson and Jonas Lie. For miscellaneous reading there were such things as the tales of Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard and Alexandra Dumas, Carlyle's The French Revolution, and Stanley's Across the Dark Continent. Neither did they lack the usual assortment of dime novels and shilling-shockers, in paper covers. The list could be extended indefinitely; the parallel with the reading of the better-class American boy of a generation ago is little short of astonishing.\n\nThis reading, promiscuous but intensive, lasted through the period of his youth. Once it was rumoured that at a certain village, fourteen miles away, a copy of Ivanhoe could be obtained; R\u00f6lvaag set out on foot to get it, and was gone two days on the journey. There is another incident, slight but deeply revealing, which shows the promise wrapped up in the husk of boyhood. In a moment of exaltation he decided to write a novel of his own. He may have been eleven or twelve when this creative impulse seized him. All one afternoon he spent in his bedroom writing; with infinite labour he had completed as many as five pages of the novel. Then his elder brother, who shared the room with him, came in--the brilliant brother of whom he stood in awe. \"What are you doing there?\" asked the brother. \"Nothing,\" R\u00f6lvaag answered, hastily trying to conceal the fruits of his first literary effort. \"Let me see it!\"--the brother had quickly sensed what was going on. \"I won't!\" And so the battle had started--a terrific struggle that nearly wrecked the room, in the course of which the five pages were torn to shreds. But the brother had not seen a word of them. R\u00f6lvaag never attempted literary composition again until he was completing his education in America, fifteen years afterward.\n\nAwhile later we find him reading Cooper and Marryat aloud to the fishermen at Lofoten, during the winter lay-up; there was a splendid library at this remote station, too, maintained by the state for the use of the fishing fleet. By this time R\u00f6lvaag had become a fisherman himself, like everyone else in the community. He went on his first trip to the Lofoten fishing grounds at the age of fifteen. In all, he fished five years, until he had just passed twenty. Every year he was growing more discontented. In the winter of 1893 a terrible storm devastated the fishing fleet, taking tragic toll among his friends and fellow fishermen. The boat he sailed in escaped only by a miracle. This experience killed his first romantic love of the fishing life; he sat down then and wrote to an uncle in South Dakota, asking him for a ticket to the United States. Not that he felt any particular call to go to America; he only thought of getting away. He longed for the unknown and untried--for something secret and inexpressible. Vaguely, stubbornly, he wanted the chance to fulfil himself before he died. But the uncle, doubtless influenced by R\u00f6lvaag's family reputation, refused to help him; and the fishing life went on.\n\nTwo more years passed, years of deepening revolt--when suddenly the uncle in South Dakota changed his mind. One day a ticket for America arrived. The way of escape was at hand.\n\nThen a dramatic thing happened. All the fishermen went to the summer fair at the market town of Bj\u00f6rn. At this fair, boats were exposed for sale, the finest fishing craft in all Norway. R\u00f6lvaag's master sought him out and took him down among the boats. His admiration for this master was extravagant; he speaks of him to-day as a sea king, the greatest human being he has ever known. The man led him directly to the best boat hauled out on the beach. They stood admiring her. He led him aft, under her stern, where they could see her beautiful lines. He patted her side as he spoke. He said: \"If you will send back the ticket to your uncle, I will buy this boat for you. You shall command her; and when she has paid for herself she shall be yours.\"\n\nThe offer swept him off his feet. Never, he affirms, can he hope to attain in life again a sensation of such complete and triumphant success as came to him at that moment. A new boat, the backing of the man he admired and loved above all others, a place at the top of his profession at the age of twenty, a chance to reign supreme in his little world. And yet, nothing beyond--it meant that this was all. To live and die a fisherman. No other worlds--the vague, beautiful worlds beyond the horizon. \"I will have to think it over,\" was his answer. He turned away, went up on a hillside above the town, and sat there alone all the afternoon.\n\nThis young man of twenty sitting on a hillside on the coast of Norway, wrestling with his immense problem, takes on the stature of a figure from the sagas. Which way will he make up his mind? \"It was a fine, clear day in Nordland,\" he tells me, speaking of the incident thirty years afterward. A fine, clear day--he could see a long way across the water. But not the shape of his own destiny. The life he knew was calling him with a thousand voices. How could he have heard the hail of things not yet seen? Where did he get the strength to make his momentous decision? He came down from the hillside at last, and found his master. \"I am sorry,\" he said, \"but I cannot accept your offer. I am going to America.\"\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\nR\u00f6lvaag himself has told about the journey in his first book, Amerika-Breve (Letters from America), published in 1912, a work which is largely autobiographical and which struck home in a personal way to his Norwegian-American readers. He landed in New York in August of 1896. He was not even aware that he would require money for food during the railway trip; in his pocket were an American dime and a copper piece from Norway. For three days and nights, from New York to South Dakota, he lived on a single loaf of bread; the dime went for tobacco somewhere along the vast stretches unfolding before him. Through an error in calculation his uncle failed to meet him at the country station where he finally disembarked. He had no word of English with which to ask his way. The prairie spread on every hand; the sun was going down. He walked half the night, without food or water, until at last he found Norwegians who could direct him, reached his uncle's farm, and received a warm welcome.\n\nThen began three years of farming. At the end of that time he knew that he did not like it; this was not the life for him. He had saved a little money, but had picked up only a smattering of English. A friend kept urging him to go to school. But his father's verdict, which so far had ruled his life, still had power over him; he firmly believed that it would be of no use, that he was not worth educating. Instead he went to Sioux City, Iowa, and tried to find work there--factory work, a chance to tend bar in a saloon, a job of washing dishes in a restaurant. But nothing offered; he was forced to return to the farm. He had now reached another crossroads in his life; a flat alternative faced him--farming or schooling. As the lesser of two evils, he entered Augustana College, a grammar or preparatory school in Canton, South Dakota, in the fall of 1899. At that time he was twenty-three years old.\n\nOnce at school, the fierce desire for knowledge, so long restrained, took him by storm. In a short while he discovered the cruel wrong that had been done him. His mind was mature and receptive; he was able to learn with amazing ease; in general reading, in grasp of life and strength of purpose, he was far in advance of his fellow students. He graduated from Augustana in the spring of 1901; that fall he entered St. Olaf College, with forty dollars in his pocket. In four years he had worked his way through St. Olaf, graduating with honours in 1905, at the age of twenty-eight. On the promise of a faculty position at his alma mater, he borrowed five hundred dollars and sent himself for a year to the University of Oslo in Norway. Returning from this post-graduate work in 1906, he took up his teaching at St. Olaf College, where he has been ever since. Professor R\u00f6lvaag now occupies the chair of Norwegian literature at that institution.\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\nI have mentioned the Amerika-Breve, published in 1912. There is an earlier work, still in manuscript--a novel written during his senior year at St. Olaf College. In all, R\u00f6lvaag has published six novels, two readers for class use, a couple of handbooks on Norwegian grammar and declamation, and one volume of essays. In 1914 appeared his second book, Paa Glemte Veie (The Forgotten Path), a relatively unimportant product. Then came the war, which threw consternation into all creative work. R\u00f6lvaag walked the hills of southern Minnesota, his mind a blank, facing the downfall of civilization, seeing the death of those fine, things of life which he had striven so hard to attain. It was during the war period that he compiled his readers and handbooks, for the publishing board of the Norwegian-American Lutheran Church.\n\nHe had married in 1908. In 1920 a tragedy occurred in his family--one of his children was drowned under terrible circumstances. This seems to have shaken him out of the war inertia and stirred his creative life again. That year he wrote and published his first strong novel, To Tullinger (Two Fools), the story of a rough, uncultivated couple, incapable of refinement, who gain success in America and develop the hoarding instinct to a fantastic degree. This book, too, made a sensation among Norwegian-Americans.\n\nThen, in 1922, came Laengselens Baat (The Ship of Longing), which seems to have been R\u00f6lvaag's most introspective and poetical effort up to the present time. It is the study of a sensitive, artistic youth who comes to America from Norway full of dreams and ideals, expecting to find all that his soul longs for; he does not find it, with the result that his life goes down in disaster. Needless to say, this book was not popular with his Norwegian-American audience. The truth-teller of To Tullinger was now going a little too far.\n\nAll of these works were written and published in Norwegian. They were brought out under the imprint of the Augsburg Publishing House, of Minneapolis, and circulated only among those Norwegian-Americans who had retained the language of the old country. The reason why none of them had reached publication in Norway is characteristic. In 1912 the manuscript of Amerika-Breve had been submitted to Norwegian publishers. They had returned a favourable and even enthusiastic opinion, but had insisted on certain changes in the text. These changes R\u00f6lvaag had refused to concede, feeling that they marred the artistic unity of his work. In anger and disappointment, he had at once published with the local house; and with each successive volume the feeling of artistic umbrage had persisted--it had not seemed worth while to try to reach the larger field.\n\nBut in the spring of 1923, an item appeared in the Norwegian press to the effect that the great novelist Johan Bojer was about to visit the United States, for the purpose of collecting material on the Norwegian-American immigration. He proposed to write an epic novel on the movement. This news excited R\u00f6lvaag tremendously; he felt that the inner truth of the Norwegian-American immigration could be written only by one who had experienced the transplanting of life, who shared the psychology of the settlers. His artistic ambition was up in arms; this was his own field.\n\nHe immediately obtained a year's leave of absence from St. Olaf College, and set to work. The first few sections of Giants in the Earth were written in a cabin in the north woods of Minnesota. Then he felt the need of visiting South Dakota again, to gather fresh material. In midwinter of that year he went abroad, locating temporarily in a cheap immigrant hotel in London, where he worked on the novel steadily. When spring opened in 1924, he went to Norway. There he met Bojer, visiting him at his country home. Bojer was delighted to learn that R\u00f6lvaag, of whom he had heard a great deal, was also working on a novel of the Norwegian-American settlement; the two men exchanged ideas generously. \"How do you see the problem?\" R\u00f6lvaag asked. The answer showed him that Bojer saw it from the viewpoint of Norway, not of America; to him it was mainly a problem of emigration. This greatly relieved R\u00f6lvaag's mind, for there was no real conflict; he set to work with renewed energy, and soon finished the first book of Giants in the Earth.\n\nIn the meanwhile it had been placed with Norwegian publishers--the same firm, by the way, which had lost Amerika-Breve twelve years before. It appeared in the latter part of 1924, under the title I De Dage (In Those Days), a month in advance of Bojer's Vor Egen Stamme (Our Own Tribe), better known to us by its English title of The Emigrants. A year later the second book of the present volume was brought out, under the title Riket Grundlaegges (Founding the Kingdom).\n\nIn Norway these two books have run through many editions; they have been hailed on every hand as something new in Norwegian literature. Swedish and Finnish editions will be published in 1927. Arrangements are being made for a German translation, and the book will probably be off the press in Germany soon after it has appeared in the United States. R\u00f6lvaag's vigorous, idiomatic style (which, incidentally, has been the despair of those who have worked over the English translation) is an outstanding topic of recent Scandinavian criticism. The eminent Danish critic, J\u00f6rgen Bukdahl, for instance, in his latest work, Det Skjulte Norge (The Latent Norway), devotes a whole chapter to R\u00f6lvaag and his novels of pioneering in South Dakota. A new name has been added to the literary firmament of Norway.\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nDoes R\u00f6lvaag's work belong legitimately to Norwegian or to American literature? The problem has unusual and interesting features. The volume before us deals with American life, and with one of the most characteristically American episodes in our history. It opens on the western plains; its material is altogether American. Yet it was written in Norwegian, and gained its first recognition in Norway. Whatever we may decide, it has already become a part of Norwegian literature. R\u00f6lvaag's art seems mainly European; R\u00f6lvaag himself, as I have said, is typically American. His life and future are bound up in the New World; yet he will continue to write in a foreign language. Had he been born in America, would his art have been the same? It seems unlikely. On the other hand, had he remained in Norway--had he accepted the boat that fine, clear day in Nordland--how would his art have fared?\n\nBut such speculation, after all, is merely idle; these things do not matter. It has not yet been determined, even, what America is, or whether she herself is strictly American. And any sincere art is international. Given the artist, our chief interest lies in trying to fathom the sources of his art, and to recognize its sustaining impulses. What were the forces which have now projected into American letters a realist of the first quality writing in a foreign language a new tale of the founding of America? It is obvious that these forces must have been highly complex and that they will continue to be so throughout his working life; but beyond that we cannot safely go. The rest is a matter of opinion. When I have asked R\u00f6lvaag the simple question, Did Norway or America teach you to write? he has invariably thrown up his hands.\n\nThe same speculation, in different measure, applies to a considerable quantity of Norwegian-American literary production which as yet our criticism knows nothing about. The Norwegians are a book-loving people; no set of adverse conditions can for long restrain them from expressing themselves in literary form. Here in the Northwest, during the last thirty or forty years, they have built up a distinctive literature, written and published in the Norwegian language, but concerned wholly with American life. Until quite recently, in fact, the region supported a Norwegian fiction magazine.\n\nThere are the five substantial novels of Simon Johnson, for instance, with many short stories by the same author. There are the romantic novels of H. A. Foss; and the poetry, short stories, novels, and travelogues of Peer Str\u00f6mme. There are the polemical and poetical works of O. A. Buslett, obscure and fantastic. There are the three novels and four collections of short stories by the able writer, Waldemar Ager. There is the lyric poetry of Julius B. Baumann and O. S. Sneve, the collected works of both of whom have now been brought out. There are the amazing Biblical dramas of the farmer-poet Jon Norstog--huge tomes with the titles of Moses, and Israel, and Saul, set up by his own hand and published from his own printing press, in a shanty on the prairies of North Dakota--works that reveal the flash of genius now and then, as I am told. Do all these serious efforts belong to Norwegian or to American literature? Their day is nearly done; the present generation of Norse stock has another native language. But it would be of value to have some of this early Norwegian-American product translated into English, to enrich our literature by a pure stream flowing out of the American environment--a stream which, for the general public, lies frozen in the ice of a foreign tongue.\n\nLINCOLN COLCORD\n\n \n\nMinneapolis, Minnesota,\nJanuary, 1927\n \n\n \n\n \n\nGIANTS IN THE EARTH\n \n\n \n\nBook 1\nTHE LAND-TAKING\n \n\n \n\nI\nToward the Sunset\n \n\nI\n \n\nBright, clear sky over a plain so wide that the rim of the heavens cut down on it around the entire horizon. . . . Bright, clear sky, to-day, to-morrow, and for all time to come.\n\n. . . And sun! And still more sun! It set the heavens afire every morning; it grew with the day to quivering golden light--then softened into all the shades of red and purple as evening fell. . . . Pure colour everywhere. A gust of wind, sweeping across the plain, threw into life waves of yellow and blue and green. Now and then a dead black wave would race over the scene . . . a cloud's gliding shadow . . . now and then. . . .\n\nIt was late afternoon. A small caravan was pushing its way through the tall grass. The track that it left behind was like the wake of a boat--except that instead of widening out astern it closed in again.\n\n\"Tish-ah!\" said the grass. . . . \"Tish-ah, tish-ah!\" . . . Never had it said anything else--never would it say anything else. It bent resiliently under the trampling feet; it did not break, but it complained aloud every time--for nothing like this had ever happened to it before. . . . \"Tish-ah, tish-ah!\" it cried, and rose up in surprise to look at this rough, hard thing that had crushed it to the ground so rudely, and then moved on.\n\nA stocky, broad-shouldered man walked at the head of the caravan. He seemed shorter than he really was, because of the tall grass around him and the broad-brimmed hat of coarse straw which he wore. A few steps behind him followed a boy of about nine years of age. The boy's blond hair was clearly marked against his brown, sunburnt neck; but the man's hair and neck were of exactly the same shade of brown. From the looks of these two, and still more from their gait, it was easy to guess that here walked father and son.\n\nBehind them a team of oxen jogged along; the oxen were drawing a vehicle which once upon a time might have been a wagon, but which now, on account of its many and grave infirmities, ought long since to have been consigned to the scrap heap--exactly the place, in point of fact, where the man had picked it up. Over the wagon box long willow saplings had been bent, in the form of arches in a church chancel--six of them in all. On these arches, and tied down to the body on each side, were spread first of all two handwoven blankets, that might well have adorned the walls of some manor house in the olden times; on top of the blankets were thrown two sheepskin robes, with the wool side down, which were used for bed-coverings at night. The rear of the wagon was stowed full of numberless articles, all the way up to the top. A large immigrant chest at the bottom of the pile, very long and high, devoured a big share of the space; around and above it were piled household utensils, tools, implements, and all their clothing.\n\nHitched to this wagon and trailing behind was another vehicle, homemade and very curious-looking, so solidly and quaintly constructed that it might easily have won a place in any museum. Indeed, it appeared strong enough to stand all the jolting from the Atlantic to the Pacific. . . . It, too, was a wagon, after a fashion; at least, it had been intended for such. The wheels were made from pieces of plank fitting roughly together; the box, considerably wider than that of the first wagon, was also loaded full of provisions and household gear, covered over with canvas and lashed down securely. Both wagons creaked and groaned loudly every time they bounced over a tussock or hove out of a hollow. . . . \"Squeak, squeak!\" said the one. . . . \"Squeak, squeak!\" answered the other. . . . The strident sound broke the silence of centuries.\n\nA short distance behind the wagons followed a brindle cow. The caravan moved so slowly that she occasionally had time to stop and snatch a few mouthfuls, though there was never a chance for many at a time. But what little she got in this way she sorely needed. She had been jogging along all day, swinging and switching her tail, the rudder of the caravan. Soon it would be night, and then her part of the work would come--to furnish milk for the evening porridge, for all the company up ahead.\n\nAcross the front end of the box of the first wagon lay a rough piece of plank. On the right side of this plank sat a woman with a white kerchief over her head, driving the oxen. Against her thigh rested the blond head of a little girl, who was stretched out on the plank and sleeping sweetly. Now and then the hand of the mother moved across the child's face to chase away the mosquitoes, which had begun to gather as the sun lowered. On the left side of the plank, beyond the girl, sat a boy about seven years old--a well-grown lad, his skin deeply tanned, a certain clever, watchful gleam in his eyes. With hands folded over one knee, he looked straight ahead.\n\nThis was the caravan of Constance Nala, who with his family and all his earthly possessions was moving west from Fillmore County, Minnesota, to Dakota Territory. There he intended to take up land and build himself a home; he was going to do something remarkable out there, which should become known far and wide. No lack of opportunity in that country, he had been told! . . . Constance Nala himself strode ahead and laid out the course; the boy Gerry, or Olamand, followed closely after, and explored it. Felicity, the wife, drove the oxen and took care of little Anna Marie, pet-named And-Ongen (which means \"The Duckling\"), who was usually bubbling over with happiness. Rubin Kristian, whose everyday name was Zoe (meaning \"Big Rubin,\" to distinguish him from his godfather, who was also named Rubin, but who, of course, was three times his size), sat there on the wagon, and saw to it that everyone attended to business. . . . The cow Rosie trailed behind, swinging and switching her tail, following the caravan farther and farther yet into the endless vista of the plain.\n\n\"Tish-ah, tish-ah!\" cried the grass. . . . \"Tish-ah, tish-ah!\" . . .\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nThe caravan seemed a miserably frail and Lilliputian thing as it crept over the boundless prairie toward the sky line. Of road or trail there lay not a trace ahead; as soon as the grass had straightened up again behind, no one could have told the direction from which it had come or whither it was bound. The whole train--Constance Nala with his wife and children, the oxen, the wagons, the cow, and all--might just as well have dropped down out of the sky. Nor was it at all impossible to imagine that they were trying to get back there again; their course was always the same--straight toward the west, straight toward the sky line. . . .\n\nPoverty-stricken, unspeakably forlorn, the caravan creaked along, advancing at a snail's pace, deeper and deeper into a bluish-green infinity--on and on, and always farther on. . . . It steered for Sunset Land! . . .\n\nFor more than three weeks now, and well into the fourth, this caravan had been crawling across the plain. . . . Early in the journey it had passed through Blue Earth; it had left Chain Lakes behind; and one fine day it had crept into Jackson, on the Des Moines River. But that seemed ages ago. . . . From Jackson, after a short lay-up, it had pushed on westward--always westward--to Worthington, then to Rock River. . . . A little west of Rock River, Constance Nala had lost the trail completely. Since then he had not been able to find it again; at this moment he literally did not know where he was, nor how to get to the place he had to reach. But Split Rock Creek must lie out there somewhere in the sun; if he could only find that landmark, he could pick his way still farther without much trouble. . . . Strange that he hadn't reached Split Rock Creek before this time! According to his directions, he should have been there two or three days ago; but he hadn't seen anything that even looked like the place. . . . Oh, my God! If something didn't turn up soon! . . . My God! . . .\n\nThe wagons creaked and groaned. Constance Nala's eyes wandered over the plain. His bearded face swung constantly from side to side as he examined every inch of ground from the northeast to the southwest. At times he gave his whole attention to that part of the plain lying between him and the western sky line; with head bent forward and eyes fixed and searching, he would sniff the air, like an animal trying to find the scent. Every now and then he glanced at an old silver watch which he carried in his left hand; but his gaze would quickly wander off again, to take up its fruitless search of the empty horizon.\n\nIt was now nearing six o'clock. Since three in the afternoon he had been certain of his course; at that time he had taken his bearings by means of his watch and the sun. . . . Out here one had to get one's cross-bearings from the very day itself--then trust to luck. . . .\n\nFor a long while the little company had been silent. Constance Nala turned halfway around, and without slackening his pace spoke to the boy walking behind.\n\n\"Go back and drive for a while now, Ola.1 . . . You must talk to mother, too, so that it won't be so lonesome for her. And be sure to keep as sharp a lookout as you can.\"\n\n \n\n1 In most dialects of Norway the name Gerry becomes Ola when spoken.\n\n \n\n\"I'm not tired yet!\" said the boy, loath to leave the van.\n\n\"Go back, anyway! Maybe you're not, but I can feel it beginning to tell on me. We'll have to start cooking the porridge pretty soon. . . . You go back, and hold her on the sun for a while longer.\"\n\n\"Do you think we'll catch up with them to-night, Dad?\" The boy was still undecided.\n\n\"Good Lord, no! They've got too long a start on us. . . . Look sharp, now! If you happen to see anything suspicious, sing out!\" . . . Constance Nala glanced again at his watch, turned forward, and strode steadily onward.\n\nGerry said no more; he stepped out of the track and stood there waiting till the train came up. Then Zoe jumped down nimbly, while the other climbed up and took his seat.\n\n\"Have you seen anything?\" the mother asked in an anxious voice.\n\n\"Why, no . . . not yet,\" answered the boy, evasively.\n\n\"I wonder if we shall ever see them again,\" she said, as if speaking to herself, and looked down at the ground. \"This seems to be taking us to the end of the world . . . beyond the end of the world!\"\n\nZoe, who was still walking beside the wagon, heard what she said and looked up at her. The buoyancy of childhood shone in his brown face. . . . Too bad that mother should be so scared! . . .\n\n\"Yes, Mother, but when we're both steering for the sun, we'll both land in the same place, won't we? . . . The sun is a sure guide, you know!\"\n\nThese were the very words which he had heard his father use the night before; now he repeated them. To Zoe the truth of them seemed as clear as the sun itself; in the first place, because dad had said it, and then because it sounded so reasonable.\n\nHe hurried up alongside his father and laid his hand in his--he always felt safer thus.\n\nThe two walked on side by side. Now and then the boy stole a glance at the face beside him, which was as stern and fixed as the prairie on which they were walking. He was anxious to talk, but couldn't find anything to say that sounded grown-up enough; and so he kept quiet. At last, however, the silence grew too heavy for him to bear. He tried to say indifferently, just like his father:\n\n\"When I'm a man and have horses, I'm going to make a road over these plains, and . . . and put up some posts for people to follow. Don't you think that'll be a good idea?\"\n\nA slight chuckle came from the bearded face set toward the sun.\n\n\"Sure thing, Zoe--you'll manage that all right. . . . I might find time to help you an hour or two, now and then.\"\n\nThe boy knew by his father's voice that he was in a talkative mood. This made him so glad, that he forgot himself and did something that his mother always objected to; he began to whistle, and tried to take just as long strides as his father. But he could only make the grass say: \"Swish-sh, swish-sh!\"\n\nOn and on they went, farther out toward Sunset Land--farther into the deep glow of the evening.\n\nThe mother had taken little Anna up in her lap and was now leaning backward as much as she could; it gave such relief to her tired muscles. The caresses of the child and her lively chatter made her forget for a moment care and anxiety, and that vague sense of the unknown which bore in on them so strongly from all directions. . . . Gerry sat there and drove like a full-grown man; by some means or other he managed to get more speed out of the oxen than the mother had done--she noticed this herself. His eyes were searching the prairie far and near.\n\nOut on the sky line the huge plain now began to swell and rise, almost as if an abscess were forming under the skin of the earth. Although this elevation lay somewhat out of his course, Constance Nala swung over and held straight toward the highest part of it.\n\nThe afternoon breeze lulled, and finally dropped off altogether. The sun, whose golden lustre had faded imperceptibly into a reddish hue, shone now with a dull light, yet strong and clear; in a short while, deeper tones of violet began to creep across the red. The great ball grew enormous; it retreated farther and farther into the empty reaches of the western sky; then it sank suddenly. . . . The spell of evening quickly crowded in and laid hold of them all; the oxen wagged their ears; Rosie lifted her voice in a long moo, which died out slowly in the great stillness. At the moment when the sun closed his eye, the vastness of the plain seemed to rise up on every hand--and suddenly the landscape had grown desolate; something bleak and cold had come into the silence, filling it with terror. . . . Behind them, along the way they had come, the plain lay dark green and lifeless, under the gathering shadow of the dim, purple sky.\n\nGerry sat motionless at his mother's side. The falling of evening had made such a deep impression on him that his throat felt dry; he wanted to express some of the emotions that overwhelmed him, but only choked when he tried.\n\n\"Did you ever see anything so beautiful!\" he whispered at last, and gave a heavy sigh. . . . Low down in the northwest, above the little hill, a few fleecy clouds hovered, betokening fair weather; now they were fringed with shining gold, which glowed with a mellow light. As if they had no weight, they floated lightly there. . . .\n\nThe mother drew herself forward to an upright position. She still held the child in her lap. Constance Nala and Zoe were walking in the dusk far up ahead. For the last two days Constance had kept well in advance of the caravan all the time; she thought she knew the reason why.\n\n\"Constance,\" she called out, wearily, \"aren't we going to stop soon?\"\n\n\"Pretty soon.\" . . . He did not slacken his pace.\n\nShe shifted the child over into the other arm and began to weep silently. Gerry saw it, but pretended not to notice, though he had to swallow big lumps that were forcing themselves up in his throat; he kept his eyes resolutely fixed on the scene ahead.\n\n\"Dad,\" he shouted after a while, \"I see a wood over there to the westward!\"\n\n\"You do, do you? A great fellow you are! Zoe and I have seen that for a long time now.\"\n\n\"Whereabouts is it?\" whispered Zoe, eagerly.\n\n\"It begins down there on the slope to the left, and then goes around on the other side,\" said his father. \"Anyway, it doesn't seem to be much of a wood.\"\n\n\"D'you think they are there?\"\n\n\"Not on your life! But we're keeping the right course, anyhow.\"\n\n\"Have the others been this way?\"\n\n\"Of course they have--somewhere near, at any rate. There's supposed to be a creek around here, by the name of Split Rock Creek, or whatever they call it in English.\"\n\n\"Are there any people here, do you think?\"\n\n\"People? Good Lord, no! There isn't a soul around these parts.\"\n\nThe sombre blue haze was now closing rapidly in on the caravan. One sensed the night near at hand; it breathed a chill as it came.\n\nAt last Constance Nala halted. \"Well, I suppose we can't drive any farther to-day. We and the animals would both drop pretty soon.\" With these words he faced the oxen, held his arms straight out like the horizontal beam of a cross, shouted a long-drawn \"Whoa!\"--and then the creaking stopped for that day.\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\nThe preparations for the night were soon made; each had his own task and was now well used to it. Zoe brought the wood; it lay strapped under the hind wagon and consisted of small logs and dry branches from the last thicket they had passed.\n\nGerry got the fireplace ready. From the last wagon he brought out two iron rods, cleft in one end; these he drove into the ground and then went back to the wagon for a third rod, which he laid across the other two. It was also his duty to see that there was water enough in the keg, no matter where they happened to stop; for the rest of it, he was on hand to help his mother.\n\nThe father tended to the cattle. First he lifted the yoke off the oxen and turned them loose; then he milked Rosie and let her go also. After that he made up a bed for the whole family under the wagon.\n\nWhile the mother waited for the pot to boil she set the table. She spread a home-woven blanket on the ground, laid a spoon for each one on it, placed a couple of bowls for the milk, and fetched the dishes for the porridge. Meanwhile she had to keep an eye on And-Ongen, who was toddling about in the grass near by. The child stumbled, laughed, lay there a moment chattering to herself, then got up, only to trip on her skirt and tumble headlong again. Her prattling laughter rang on the evening air. Now and then the voice of the mother would mingle with it, warning the child not to stray too far.\n\nZoe was the first to get through with his task; he stood around awhile, but, finding nothing more to do, he strolled off westward. He was itching to know how far it was to the hill out there; it would be great fun to see what things looked like on the other side! . . . Now he started off in that direction. Constancehaps he might come across the others? They surely must be somewhere. Just think, if he could only find them! He would yell and rush in on them like an Indian--and then they would be scared out of their senses! . . . He had gone quite far before he paused to look back. When he did so the sight sent a shiver over him; the wagons had shrunk to two small specks, away off on the floor of a huge, dusky room. . . . I'd better hurry at once, he thought; mother will surely have the porridge ready by this time! His legs had already adopted the idea of their own accord. But thoughts of his mother and the porridge didn't quite bring him all the feeling of safety he needed; he hunted through his mind for a few strains of a hymn, and sang them over and over in a high-pitched, breaking voice, until he had no more breath left to sing with. . . . He didn't feel entirely safe until the wagons had begun to assume their natural size once more.\n\nThe mother called to them that supper was ready. On the blanket stood two dishes of porridge--a large dish for the father and the two boys, a smaller one for the mother and And-Ongen. The evening milk was divided between two bowls, and set before them; Rosie, poor thing, was not giving much these days! The father said that he didn't care for milk this evening, either; it had a tangy taste, he thought; and he drank water with his porridge. But when Gerry also began to complain of the tangy taste and asked for water, the father grew stern and ordered him to go ahead and get that drop of milk down as quick as he could! There was nothing else on the table but milk and porridge.\n\nSuddenly Gerry and Zoe flared up in a quarrel; one blamed the other for eating too close to the edge, where the porridge was coolest. The father paused in his meal, listening to them a moment, then chuckled to himself. Taking his spoon and cutting three lines through the crust of the porridge, he quickly settled the matter between them.\n\n\"There you are! Here, Zoe, is your land; now take it and be satisfied. Ola, who is the biggest, gets another forty. . . . Shut up your mouths, now, and eat!\" Constance Nala himself got the smallest share that evening.\n\nAside from this outbreak it was quiet at the table. A spell of silence lay upon them and they were not able to throw it off. . . . As soon as the father had eaten he licked his spoon carefully, wiped it off on his shirt sleeve, and threw it on the blanket. The boys did likewise as they finished; but And-Ongen wanted to tuck her spoon in her dress and keep it there till morning.\n\nThey sat around in the same silence after they were done. Then she who was the smallest of them repeated in a tiny voice:\n\n\"Thanks to Thee, Our Lord and Maker. . . .\n\n\"Now I want to go to sleep in your lap!\" she said, after the Amen. She climbed up into her mother's lap and threw her arms around her neck.\n\n\"Oh, how quickly it grows dark out here!\" the mother murmured.\n\nConstance Nala gave a care-free shrug of his shoulders. \"Well,\" he said, dryly, \"the sooner the day's over, the sooner the next day comes!\"\n\nBut now something seemed to be brewing back there over the prairie whence they had come. Up from the horizon swelled a supernatural light--a glow of pale yellow and transparent green, mingled with strange touches of red and gold. It spread upward as they watched; the colors deepened; the glow grew stronger, like the witching light of a fen fire.\n\nAll sat silently gazing. It was And-Ongen, hanging around her mother's neck, who first found her voice.\n\n\"Oh, look! . . . She is coming up again!\"\n\nIn solemn grandeur the moon swung up above the plain. She had been with them many nights now; but each time she seemed as wonderful a sight as ever. Tonight a hush fell on their spirits as they watched her rise--just as the scene had hushed them the evening before, far away to the eastward somewhere on the plain. The silvery beams grew stronger; the first pale fen fire began to shimmer and spread; slowly the light mellowed into a mist of green and yellow and blue. And-Ongen exclaimed that the moon was much bigger to-night; but it had seemed bigger the night before also. Zoe again solemnly told her the reason for it--that the moon had to grow, just as she did! This seemed to her quite logical; she turned to her mother and asked whether the moon had milk and porridge every evening, too.\n\nConstance Nala had been sitting on the tongue of the wagon, smoking his pipe. Now he got up, knocked out the ashes carefully, put his pipe in his pocket, and wound up his watch. These duties done, he gave the order to turn in for the night.\n\nA little while later they all lay under the quilts, gazing off into the opalescent glow. When the mother thought that the children had gone to sleep she asked, soberly:\n\n\"Do you suppose we'll ever find the others again?\"\n\n\"Oh yes--I'm sure of it . . . if they haven't sunk through the ground!\"\n\nThis was all Constance Nala said. He yawned once or twice, long and heavily, as if he were very sleepy, and turned away from her.\n\n. . . And after that she said no more, either.\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\nTruth to tell, Constance Nala was not a bit sleepy. For a long while he lay wide awake, staring into the night. Although the evening had grown cool, sweat started out on his body from time to time, as thoughts which he could not banish persisted in his mind.\n\nHe had good reason to sweat, at all the things he was forced to lie there and remember. Nor was it only tonight that these heavy thoughts came to trouble him; it had been just the same all through the day, and last night, too, and the night before. And now, the moment he had lain down, they had seized upon him with renewed strength; he recalled keenly all the scruples and misgivings that had obsessed his wife before they had started out on this long journey--both those which had been spoken and those which had been left unsaid. The latter had been the worst; they had seemed to grow deeper and more tragic as he had kept prying into them in his clumsy way. . . . But she wasn't a bit stupid, that wife of his! As a matter of fact, she had more sense than most people. Indeed she had!\n\n. . . No, it wasn't a pleasant situation for Constance Nala, by any means. He had not seen a happy moment, day or night, since the mishap had struck them on the second afternoon this side of Jackson. There the first wagon had got stuck in a mud hole; in pulling it out they had wrecked it so hopelessly that he had been forced to put back to Jackson for repairs. Under the circumstances, it had seemed to him utterly senseless to hold up all the rest of the company four days. He simply wouldn't listen to their waiting for him; for they had houses to build and fields to break, if they were to get anything into the ground this season. They must go on without him; he'd come along all right, in his own good time. . . . So they had given him full instructions about the course he was to follow and the halting places where he was to stop for the night; it had all seemed so simple to him at the time. Then they had started on together--T\u00f6nseten, who knew the way, and Rubin Olsa, and the two Solum boys. They all had horses and strong new wagons. They travelled fast, those fellows! . . .\n\nIf he only had paid some attention to Rubin Olsa, who for a long while had insisted on waiting for him. But he had overruled all their objections; it was entirely his own doing that Rubin Olsa and the others had gone on, leaving him behind.\n\nBut he soon had learned that it wasn't so easy. Hadn't he lost his way altogether the other day, in the midst of a fog and drizzling rain? Until late in the afternoon that day he hadn't had the faintest idea what direction he was taking. It had been after this experience that he had formed the habit of keeping so far ahead of the caravan. He simply couldn't endure listening to her constant questions--questions which he found himself unable to answer. . . .\n\nThe only thing he felt sure of was that he wasn't on the right track; otherwise he would have come across the traces of their camps. It was getting to be a matter of life and death to him to find the trail--and find it soon. . . . A devil of a jaunt it would be to the Pacific Ocean--the wagon would never hold out that long! . . . Oh yes, he realized it all too well--a matter of life and death. There weren't many supplies left in the wagon. He had depended on his old comrade and Lofot-man,1 Rubin Olsa, for everything.\n\n \n\n1 A companion on the winter fishing grounds at the Lofoten Islands.\n\n \n\nConstance Nala heaved a deep sigh; it came out before he could stop it. . . . Huh!--it was an easy matter enough for Rubin Olsa! He had ample means, and could start out on a big scale from the beginning; he had a wife in whose heart there wasn't a speck of fear! . . . The Lord only knew where they were now--whether they were east or west of him! And they had T\u00f6nseten, too, and his wife Cuthbert,2 both of them used to America. Why, they could talk the language and everything. . . .\n\n \n\n2 The combination kj in this name is pronounced like ch in church; the final i has the sound of y in godly.\n\n \n\nAnd then there were the Solum boys, who had actually been born in this country. . . . Indeed, east or west, it made no difference to them where they lay that night.\n\nBut here was he, the newcomer, who owned nothing and knew nothing, groping about with his dear ones in the endless wilderness! . . . Felicity had taken such a dislike to this journey, too--although in many ways she was the more sensible of the two. . . . Well, he certainly had fixed up a nice mess for himself, and no mistake!\n\nHe wondered why he had ever left Fillmore County; as he lay there thinking it over, he couldn't understand what had prompted him to do such a thing. He could easily have found a job there and stayed until his wife got up from childbed; then he could have moved west next spring. This had been what she had wanted, though she had never said it in so many words.\n\nThe quilt had grown oppressively heavy; he threw it aside. . . . How long it took her to go to sleep to-night! Why wouldn't she try to get as much rest as possible? Surely she knew that it would be another tough day tomorrow? . . .\n\n. . . Just so that confounded wagon didn't go to pieces again! . . .\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nThe night wore on. The children slept quietly and peacefully. The mother also seemed to have found rest at last. Constance Nala thought that she was sound asleep; he began to move slowly away from her. He threw his hand over on the quilt between them as if making a motion in his sleep. . . . No, she didn't stir; he lay quiet for a while, then moved again. In so doing his hand happened to fall on that of Zoe; it was so chubby and round, that hand, so healthy and warm, and quite firm for the hand of only a child. Constance Nala lay still for a long time, holding the boy's hand with a desperate earnestness. . . . Slowly the troublesome thoughts seemed to lighten and lift; his courage ebbed back again; surely everything would come out all right in the end!\n\nLittle by little he slipped the quilt off, crept out of bed as quietly as a mouse, got into his trousers, and pulled on his shoes.\n\nOutside, the misty sheen of the moonlight shimmered so brightly that it blinded him. Near at hand, the prairie was bathed in a flood of tarnished green; farther off the faint blue tones began to appear, merging gradually into the purple dimness that shrouded all the horizon.\n\nConstance Nala looked for the North Star, found it, turned about until he had it over his right shoulder; then he glanced at his watch, took a few steps, hesitated, and looked back as if taking a bearing of the wagons and the star. The next moment he faced about resolutely, and hurried off westward.\n\nIt felt good to be moving again; he almost broke into a trot. There were the oxen, busily grazing; they needed to get their fill all right, poor devils! . . . Rosie lay closer to the wagons; his eyes had passed over her at first, a dark spot in the vague, deceptive light. The cow must have noticed the shadow gliding along so swiftly; she gave a long moo. . . . This enraged Constance Nala; he broke into a run and got out of her sight as quickly as he could, for fear she would moo again. . . . If she only hadn't waked Felicity!\n\nHe set his course toward the point where he thought the crest of the ridge must lie. Now and then he stopped and looked around, to find out if he could still see the wagons. When he had lost them at last, and they were wholly swallowed up in the night, he gave an involuntary gasp--but clenched his teeth and went on.\n\nThe ridge lay farther off than he had thought. He had walked for a solid hour before he finally reached what he felt to be the highest point; he reckoned that he must be at least four miles from camp. . . . There he fell to examining the ground carefully; but first of all he looked at his watch again, and then at the North Star and the moon, trying to fix the bearings of the camp in his mind.\n\nOn the other side of the ridge the lay of the land seemed to be different; the slope was a little steeper; a thick underbrush covered it; through the tall bushes the moonlight shimmered strangely. . . . Constance Nala felt no fear, but every sense within him was alert. First he searched the northerly slope of the hill, beyond the edge of the thicket, stooping over as he went, his eyes scanning every foot of the ground. When he had found no trace of what he was looking for, he came back to the same starting point and searched an equal distance in the opposite direction; but he discovered nothing on this tack, either.\n\nNow he began to walk along the edge of the thicket, in and out, crisscrossing the line in every direction; he pushed his way into each little grassless opening, and kicked over the earth there, before he went on. Sweat was running off him in streams. A quarter of an hour went by; he was still searching frantically. . . . All at once, right at the edge of the woods, he struck a piece of level ground with a larger clearing on it; in the middle of this clearing lay a wide, round patch in the grass. Constance Nala threw himself down on his knees, like a miser who has found a costly treasure; he bent over and sniffed the ground. His blood throbbed; his hands shook as he dug. . . . Yes, he was right--here there had been a fire! It couldn't have been many days ago, either; the smell of the ashes was still fresh. . . . His eyes had grown so moist and dim that he had to wipe them. . . . But he wasn't crying--no, not yet! . . .\n\nHe began to crawl around on all fours, farther and farther down the slope. Suddenly he stopped, sat up on his haunches, and held something in his hand that he was examining closely. . . .\n\n\"I'll be damned if it isn't fresh horse dung!\" . . . His voice rang with a great joy. He tried the stuff between his fingers--crumbled it, sniffed at it . . . there was no doubting the fact any longer.\n\nNow he got up, walking erectly with a confident step, like a man who has just made a lucky strike, and began to search along the whole slope. . . . He might as well go ahead and find the ford to-night; then he wouldn't be delayed by hunting for it in the morning. The underbrush thickened as he made his way down the slope. . . . Here, then, was Split Rock Creek; and here they had camped, as T\u00f6nseten had said they would! . . .\n\nOnce he had reached the edge of the creek, it did not take him long to find the ford that the others had used; the ruts still stood there plainly, as fresh and deep as if they had been made that very day. For a while he paused at the edge of the water, and looked about him. . . . Had they chosen the best crossing, after all? The bank of the creek on the other side formed a bend; the brink looked pretty steep. At last he waded out into the water, with his shoes still on. . . . Oh, well, the grade wasn't so steep that the oxen couldn't easily make it; there would be a bad jolt here at the edge, but after that they would have an even slope up the bank. . . . Stepping out on the opposite shore, he stood as if rooted to the ground.\n\n. . . \"What in the devil . . . !\"\n\nConstance Nala bent over and picked up the object that lay before him; he held it out in the moonlight, turned it over and over in his hands, smelled of it . . . then took a bite.\n\n. . . \"By God! if it isn't one of Rubin Olsa's dried mutton legs!\"\n\nHe straightened himself up and gazed with deep thankfulness into the quivering bluish-green haze that glowed all around him. . . . \"Yes, that's the way it goes, when people have more than they can take care of!\" . . . He stuck the mutton leg under his arm; whistling a love ballad of Nordland, which seemed to have come into his mind unconsciously, he crossed the creek again.\n\nOn the way back he took his own time. Nothing mattered now; the night was fair and mild; his aching weariness was gone; he felt refreshed and strengthened. His wife and children were sleeping safe and sound; of food they still had supplies for a couple of weeks; and now he had found the trail again and could be certain of it all the way to Sioux Falls. . . . That wretched wagon was the only difficulty; it would have to hang together for a few days more! . . .\n\nWhen he drew near enough to the wagons to make them out clearly in the moonlight, he slackened his pace, and a shiver passed over him.\n\nWasn't some one sitting there on the wagon tongue? Surely that was a human form?\n\nIn growing apprehension he hurried on.\n\n\"Good Heavens, Felicity! What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?\" His voice was full of alarm, yet softened by his great concern for her.\n\n\"It felt so awful to lie there alone, after you had gone. . . . I could hardly breathe . . . so I got up.\"\n\nThe words came with difficulty; he realized that her voice was hoarse with weeping; he had to pull himself sharply together in order to keep his own tears back.\n\n\"Were you awake, Felicity? . . . You shouldn't lie awake that way in the night!\" he said, reproachfully.\n\n\"How can I sleep? . . . You lie there tossing back and forth, and say nothing! . . . You might have told me. I know very well what's the matter!\"\n\nSuddenly she could stand it no longer. She ran over to him, flung her arms around his neck, and leaned close against him. The dam of her pent-up tears broke in a flood of emotion; she wept long and bitterly.\n\n\"Now calm yourself, dear. . . . You must calm yourself, Felicity-girl!\" . . . He had put his arm lovingly around her, but found it hard to speak. . . . \"Don't you see that I've got one of Rubin Olsa's dried mutton legs under my arm?\" . . .\n\n. . . That night Constance Nala was good to his wife.\n\n \n\n \n\nII\nHome-founding\n \n\nI\n \n\nOn the side of a hill, which sloped gently away toward the southeast and followed with many windings a creek that wormed its way across the prairie, stood Rubin Olsa, laying turf. He was building a sod house. The walls had now risen breast-high; in its half-finished condition, the structure resembled more a bulwark against some enemy than anything intended to be a human habitation. And the great heaps of cut sod, piled up in each corner might well have been the stores of ammunition for defence of the stronghold.\n\nFor a man of his strength and massive build, his motions were unusually quick and agile; but he worked by fits and starts to-day. At times he stopped altogether; in these pauses he would straighten himself up and draw his sleeve with a quick stroke across his troubled face; with each stroke the sleeve would come away damper; and standing so, he would fix his gaze intently on the prairie to the eastward. His eyes had wandered so often now over the stretch of land lying before them, that they were familiar with every tussock and hollow. . . . No--nothing in sight yet! . . . He would resume his task, as if to make up for lost time, and work hard for a spell; only to forget himself once more, pause involuntarily, and stand inert and abstracted, gazing off into the distance.\n\nBeyond the house a tent had been pitched; a wagon was drawn up close beside it. On the ground outside of the tent stood a stove, a couple of chairs, and a few other rough articles of furniture. A stout, healthy-looking woman, whose face radiated an air of simple wisdom and kindliness, was busy preparing the midday meal. She sang to herself as she worked. A ten-year-old girl, addressed by the woman as Sofie, was helping her. Now and then the girl would take up the tune and join in the singing.\n\nLess than a quarter of a mile away, in a southeasterly direction, a finished sod house rose on the slope of the hill. Smoke was winding up from it at this moment. This house, which had been built the previous fall, belonged to Syvert T\u00f6nseten.\n\nSome distance north from the place where Rubin Olsa had located, two other sod houses were under construction; but a hillock lay between, so that he could not see them from where he stood. There the two Solum boys had driven down their stakes and had begun building. T\u00f6nseten's completed house, and the other three half-finished ones, marked the beginning of the settlement on Spring Creek.\n\nThe woman who had been bustling about preparing the meal, now called to her husband that dinner was ready--he must come at once! He answered her, straightened up for the hundredth time, wiped his hands on his trousers, and stood for a moment gazing off eastward. . . . No use to look--not a soul in sight yet! . . . He sighed heavily, and walked with slow steps toward the tent, his eyes on the ground.\n\nIt was light and airy inside the tent, but stifling hot, because of the unobstructed sunlight beating down upon it. Two beds were ranged along the wall, both of them homemade; a big emigrant chest stood at the head of each. Nails had been driven into the centre pole of the tent, on which hung clothing; higher up a crosspiece, securely fastened, was likewise hung with clothes. Two of the walls were lined with furniture; on these pieces the dishes were displayed, all neatly arranged.\n\nA large basin of water stood on a chair just inside the tent door. Rubin Olsa washed his face and hands; then he came out and sat down on the ground, where his wife had spread the table. It was so much cooler outside. The meal was all ready; both mother and daughter had been waiting for him.\n\n\"I suppose you haven't seen any signs of them yet?\" his wife asked at last.\n\n\"No--nothing at all!\"\n\n\"Can you imagine what has become of them?\"\n\n\"The Lord forgive us--if I only knew!\"\n\nHer husband looked so anxious that she asked no more questions. Out of her kind heart rose a hopeful, \"Don't worry, they'll get here all right!\" . . . But in spite of the cheerfulness of the words, she could not give them that ring of buoyant confidence which she would have liked to show.\n\n. . . \"Of course!\" said the girl with a laugh. \"Zoe and Ola have two good pairs of eyes. Leave it to them--they'll find us!\"\n\nThe father gave her a stern glance; he didn't tell her in words to stop her foolish chatter--but she said no more. Without speaking once, he ate his dinner. As soon as he had finished, he tossed his spoon on the blanket, thanked them for the food, got up gloomily, and went back to the half-completed wall. There he sat down awhile, as if lost in thought . . . gazing eastward. His large, rugged features were drawn and furrowed with anxiety. . . . \"God Almighty!\" he sighed, and folded his big hands. \"What can have become of Constance Nala?\"\n\nHis wife was watching him closely as he sat there on the wall. By and by she told her daughter to finish washing the dishes, and started to go over where he was. When he saw her coming, he tried to begin working as if there were nothing on his mind.\n\n\"Rubin,\" she said, quickly, when she had reached his side, \"I think you ought to go out and look for them!\"\n\nHe waited until he had got a strip of sod in place before he answered: \"Easier said than done . . . when we haven't the faintest idea where to look . . . on such stretches of prairie!\"\n\n\"Yes, I know; but it would make us all feel better, anyway . . . as if we were doing something.\"\n\nRubin Olsa laid another strip of turf; then he stopped, let his hands fall to his sides, and began thinking aloud as he gazed off into the distance. . . .\n\n\"I know this much--you don't often find a smarter fellow than Constance Nala. . . . That's what makes it so queer! I don't suppose he's able to get much speed out of his oxen; but one thing I'm certain of--he has been hurrying as fast as he could. And we surely didn't come along very fast . . . but now it's the fifth day since we arrived here! If he made use of these bright moonlight nights, as he probably did, I begin to be afraid that he's gone on west of us somewhere, instead of being still to the eastward. . . . It's certainly no child's play to start looking for him!\"\n\nRubin Olsa slumped down on the wall, the picture of dejection. His wife quickly found a place beside him. Together they sat there in silence. The same fear that she felt him struggling with, a fear thrown into sharp relief by the things he had just been saying, had long since gripped her heart also.\n\n\"I feel so sorry for Felicity, poor thing . . . and the children. You must remember, though, that he couldn't go very fast on account of her condition. . . . I think she is with child again!\" She paused. \"I dreamed about them last night . . . a bad dream. . . .\"\n\nHer husband glanced sidewise at her. \"We mustn't pay attention to such things. A bad dream is a good sign, anyway--that's what my mother always said. . . . But I suppose I'll never forgive myself for not waiting for him.\" He got up heavily and laid another strip of turf. \"He's always been like that, Constance Nala; he never would take help from any man. But this time he's carried it a little too far!\"\n\nHis wife made no answer. She was watching a short stout man with a reddish beard who had started up the slope from the direction of the house to the south of them. He had cheeks like two rosy apples, a quick step, and eyes that flitted all about; he was noted among them for his glib tongue and the flood of his conversation. With hands stuck into the waistband of his trousers, and elbows out akimbo, the man looked half as broad again as he really was.\n\n\"Here comes T\u00f6nseten,\" said the woman. \"Why don't you talk it over with him? I really think you ought to go out and look for them.\"\n\n\"Seen anything of them yet, Rubin Olsa?\" asked the man, without further greeting, as soon as he arrived. . . . \"Well, well! this looks fine! Ha, ha! It's a warm house, you know, that's built by the aid of a woman's hand.\"\n\nRubin Olsa wheeled on him. \"You haven't caught sight of them yourself, Syvert, have you?\"\n\n\"Caught sight of them? Why, man alive, that's just what I've come up here to tell you! I've had them in sight for over an hour now. Seems to me you ought to be able to see them easy enough--you who carry your eyes so high up in the air! . . . Good Lord! it won't be long before they arrive here, at the rate they're coming!\"\n\n\"What's that you say?\" the others burst out with one voice. . . . \"Where are they?\" . . .\n\n\"I reckon Constance Nala must have got off his course a little. Maybe the oxen didn't steer well, or maybe he didn't figure the current right. . . . Look to the westward, neighbours! Look over there about west-northwest, and you'll see him plain enough. . . . No need to worry. That fellow never would drown in such shallow water as this! . . . I wonder, now, how far west he's really been?\"\n\nRubin Olsa and his wife faced around in the direction that T\u00f6nseten had indicated. Sure enough, out of the west a little caravan was crawling up toward them on the prairie.\n\n\"Can that be them? . . . I really believe it is!\" said Rubin Olsa in a half whisper, as if hardly daring yet to give vent to his joy.\n\n\"Of course it is!\" cried his wife, excitedly. . . . \"Thank God!\"\n\n\"Not the least doubt of it,\" T\u00f6nseten assured them. \"You might as well go and put your coffeepot on the stove, Mother S\u00f6rrina!1 That Cuthbert of mine is coming over pretty soon; she'll probably have something good tucked under her apron. . . . In half an hour we'll have the lost sheep back in the fold!\"\n\n \n\n1 The name properly is S\u00f6rine, with the accent on the second syllable; but in the dialect of Helgeland it is pronounced S\u00f6rrina, with the accent on the first. These people all came from the district of Helgeland, in Norway.\n\n \n\n\"Yes! Heavens and earth, S\u00f6rrina!\" cried Rubin Olsa, \"fetch out the best you've got! . . . Constance, Constance, is it really you, old boy? . . . But why are you coming from the west, I'd like to know?\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten coughed, and gave the woman a sly wink.\n\n\"Look here, Mother S\u00f6rrina,\" he said with a twinkle in his eyes, \"won't you be good enough, please, to take a peek at Rubin Olsa's Sunday bottle? . . . Not that I want anything to drink, you understand--I should say not. Good Lord, no! But think of that poor woman out there, who has been suffering all this time without a drop! And I'd be willing to bet that Constance Nala wouldn't object to having his stomach warmed up a little, too!\"\n\nAt that they burst out laughing, from mingled joy and relief; but T\u00f6nseten's laughter at his own joke was the loudest of all. . . . Work was resumed at once; Syvert began to carry the sods for Rubin Olsa to lay up, while Mother S\u00f6rrina went off in a happy frame of mind, to make her preparations for the reception of the wanderers.\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nBefore the half hour allotted by T\u00f6nseten had passed, the caravan came slowly crawling up the slope. Constance Nala still strode in the van, with Zoe at his side; Gerry walked abreast of the oxen, driving them with the goad. Felicity and And-Ongen sat in the wagon. Rosie came jogging along behind at her own gait; she gave a loud, prolonged \"moo-o-o-o\" as she discovered the other animals across the prairie.\n\nBoth families stood ready to receive them; Rubin Olsa and S\u00f6rine, T\u00f6nseten and his Cuthbert, all watching intently the movements of the approaching company; but the girl couldn't possess her patience any longer, and ran down to meet the new arrivals. She took Zoe by the hand and fell in beside him; the first question she asked was whether he hadn't been terribly scared at night? . . .\n\nAs the slope of the hill grew steeper, the oxen had to bend to the yoke.\n\n\"Hey, there, folks!\" shouted Constance Nala, boisterously. \"Don't be standing around loafing, now! It's only the middle of the afternoon. Haven't you got anything to do around here?\"\n\n\"Coffee time, coffee time, Constance Nala . . . ha, ha, ha!\" T\u00f6nseten was bubbling over with good spirits. \"We thought we might as well wait a little while for you, you know.\"\n\n. . . \"You've found us at last!\" said Rubin Olsa, with a deep, happy chuckle. . . . He didn't seem able to let go of Constance Nala's hand.\n\n\"Found you? Why, devil take it, it's no trick to follow a course out here! You just have to keep on steering straight ahead. And you had marked the trail pretty well, all the way along. I found plenty of traces of you. . . . I guess we stood a little too far to the westward, between Sioux Falls and here; that's how it happened. . . . So this is the place, is it? . . . The pastures of Goshen in the land of Egypt--eh?\"\n\n\"Just so, just so!\" cried T\u00f6nseten, nodding and laughing. \"Pastures of Goshen--right you are! That's exactly what we are going to call the place--Goshen--if only you haven't sailed in to mix things up for us!\" . . .\n\nFelicity and the child had now got down from the wagon; the other two women hovered around her, drawing her toward the tent. But she hung back for a moment; she wanted to stop and look around.\n\n. . . Was this the place? . . . Here! . . . Could it be possible? . . . She stole a glance at the others, at the half-completed hut, then turned to look more closely at the group standing around her; and suddenly it struck her that here something was about to go wrong. . . . For several days she had sensed this same feeling; she could not seem to tear herself loose from the grip of it. . . . A great lump kept coming up in her throat; she swallowed hard to keep it back, and forced herself to look calm. Surely, surely, she mustn't give way to her tears now, in the midst of all this joy. . . .\n\nThen she followed the other two women into the tent; seeing a chair, she sank down in it, as if her strength had gone!\n\nS\u00f6rine was patting her on the shoulder. . . . \"Come, get your things off, Felicity. You ought to loosen up your clothes, you know. Just throw this dress of mine around you. . . . Here's the water to wash yourself in. Let down your hair, and take your time about it. . . . Don't mind Cuthbert and me being around.\"\n\nAfter they had bustled about for a little while the others left her. The moment they had gone she jumped up and crossed the tent, to look out of the door. . . . How will human beings be able to endure this place? she thought. Why, there isn't even a thing that one can hide behind! . . . Her sensitive, rather beautiful face was full of blank dismay; she turned away from the door and began to loosen her dress; then her eyes fell on the centre pole with its crosspiece, hung with clothes, and she stood a moment irresolute, gazing at it in startled fright. . . . It looked like the giants she had read about as a child; for a long while she was unable to banish the picture from her mind.\n\nOutside the tent, Gerry stood with his hand resting on one of the oxen. He was disgusted; the older people seemed to have clean forgotten his existence. They never would get done talking--when he, too, might have had a word to put in! . . .\n\n\"Hadn't we better unhitch the oxen, Dad?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes--that's right, Ola. We might as well camp down here for the night, since we've run across some folks we used to know. . . . How about it, you fellows?\" He turned to the other two. \"I suppose there's a little more land left around here, isn't there, after you've got through?\"\n\n\"Land? Good God! Constance Nala, what are you talking about? Take whatever you please, from here to the Pacific Ocean!\" T\u00f6nseten's enthusiasm got so far away with him that he had to pull one of his hands out of his waistband and make a sweeping circle with it in the air. \"You must take a look around as soon as you can,\" Rubin Olsa said, \"and see if you find anything better that meets your fancy. In the meanwhile I've put down a stake for you on the quarter section that lies north of mine. We'll go over and have a look at it pretty soon. Karry Solum wanted it, but I told him he'd better leave it till you came. . . . You see, you would be next to the creek there; and then you and I would be the nearest neighbours, just as we've always planned. It makes no particular difference to Karry; he can take the quarter alongside his brother's.\"\n\nConstance Nala drew a deep breath, as if filling himself with life's great goodness. . . . Here Rubin Olsa had been worrying about him, and with kindly forethought had arranged everything to his advantage! . . . \"Well, well, we'll have to settle all that later, Rubin Olsa. For the present, I can only say that I'm deeply thankful to you! . . . Unhitch the beasts, there, Ola! . . . And now, if you folks have got anything handy, to either eat or drink, I'll accept it with pleasure.\"\n\n. . . \"Or both, Constance Nala!\" put in T\u00f6nseten, excitedly.\n\n\"Yes, both, Syvert. I won't refuse!\"\n\nSoon they were all gathered around a white cloth which Mother S\u00f6rine had spread on the ground. On one side of it lay a whole leg of dried mutton; on the other a large heap of flatbr\u00f6d, with cheese, bread, and butter; in the centre of the cloth stood a large bowl of sweet milk, and from the direction of the stove the breeze wafted to them a pleasant odour of fried bacon and strong coffee. Mother S\u00f6rine herself took charge of the ceremony, bringing the food and urging them all to sit down. The stocky figure of Constance Nala rocked back and forth in blissful delight as he squatted there with his legs crossed under him.\n\n\"Come, S\u00f6rrina, sit down!\" he cried. \"I guess we've fallen in with gentlefolks, by the looks of things around here. . . . I suppose you think you're old Pharaoh himself--eh, Rubin Olsa?\"\n\n\"Who do you call me, then?\" inquired T\u00f6nseten.\n\n\"You, Syvert? Well, now, I really don't know what to say. Of course you'd like to be His Majesty's butler, but you mustn't be encouraged--remember what happened to that poor fellow! . . . I think we'd better make you the baker--it might be safer, all around. What's your idea, Rubin Olsa?\"\n\nBy this time they were all laughing together.\n\nIn the midst of the jollification came S\u00f6rine, carrying a plate with a large bottle and a dram glass1 on it . . . \"Here, take this off my hands, Rubin Olsa--you will know what to do with it!\"\n\n \n\n1 This bottle and glass would have been old family pieces from Norway, the bottle shaped something like an hourglass, with a contraction in the middle to be grasped by the hand.\n\n \n\nT\u00f6nseten fairly bubbled over in his admiration for her:\n\n\"Oh, you sweet S\u00f6rrina-girl!--you're dearer to my heart than a hundred women! . . . What a blessing it must be, to have a wife like that!\"\n\n\"Stop your foolishness!\" said Cuthbert, but her voice didn't sound too severe.\n\nFor a long while they continued to sit around the cloth, chatting, eating, and drinking, and thoroughly enjoying themselves. Rubin Olsa seemed like a different man from the one who had eaten here at noon. His loud voice led the cheerful talk; his ponderous bulk was always the centre of the merriment; it seemed as if he would never tire of gazing into that bearded, roguish face of Constance Nala's.\n\nOnce, as Constance Nala was slicing off a piece of mutton, he regarded the cut thoughtfully, and asked:\n\n\"I suppose you brought all your supplies through safe enough?\"\n\n\"Oh, sure,\" answered Rubin Olsa, innocently. \"We had no trouble at all--didn't lose anything; that is, except for the leg that we left behind somewhere, east on the prairie. But that's hardly worth mentioning.\"\n\nConstance Nala paused with the piece of meat halfway to his mouth, and looked at S\u00f6rine with an expression of deep concern:\n\n\"The devil you say! Did you lose one of your legs . . . ?\"\n\nMother S\u00f6rine laughed heartily at him. \"Oh no--not quite so bad as that. . . . But a leg of mutton might come in handy later on, I'll tell you; there aren't too many of them to be had around here.\"\n\nConstance Nala chewed away on the meat and looked very serious. At last he said:\n\n\"That's always the way with folks who have more of the world's goods than they can take care. . . . But I'll promise you one thing, S\u00f6rrina: if I can get my old blunderbuss to work, you're going to have your lost leg back again. . . . How about it, fellows? Have you seen any game that's fit to eat out here?\"\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\nThey sat on until the first blue haze of evening began to spread eastward over the plain. The talk had now drifted to questions of a more serious nature, mostly concerned with how they should manage things out here; of their immediate prospects; of what the future might hold in store for them; of land and crops, and of the new kingdom which they were about to found. . . . No one put the thought into words, but they all felt it strongly; now they had gone back to the very beginning of things. . . .\n\nAs the evening shadows deepened the conversation gradually died away into silence. A peculiar mood came drifting in with the dusk. It seemed to float on the evening breeze, to issue forth out of the heart of the untamed nature round about them; it lurked in the very vastness and endlessness surrounding them on every hand; it even seemed to rise like an impalpable mist out of the ground on which they sat.\n\nThis mood brought vague premonitions to them, difficult to interpret. . . . No telling what might happen out here . . . for almost anything could happen! . . .\n\nThey were so far from the world . . . cut off from the haunts of their fellow beings . . . so terribly far! . . .\n\nThe faces that gazed into one another were sober now, as silence claimed the little company; but lines of strength and determination on nearly every countenance told of an inward resolve to keep the mood of depression from gaining full control.\n\nConstance Nala was the first to rouse himself and throw off the spell. He jumped up with nervous energy; a shiver passed over him, as if he were having a chill.\n\n\"What is it--are you cold?\" asked his wife. She had instinctively sensed his mood as she looked at him--and loved him better for it. Until that moment, she had supposed that she herself was the only one who felt this peculiar influence.\n\n\"Such crazy talk!\" he burst out. \"I believe we've all lost our senses, every last one of us! Here we sit around celebrating in broad daylight, in the middle of summer, as if it was the Christmas holidays! . . . Come on, woman, let's go over to our new home!\"\n\nEveryone got up.\n\n\"You must do exactly as you please about it, Constance Nala,\" spoke up Rubin Olsa with an apologetic air. \"Don't feel that you must take this quarter if you don't like it. But as far as I can see, it's as good a piece of land as you could find anywhere around--every square foot of it plowland, except the hill over there. Plenty of water for both man and beast. . . . As for my part, if I can only sit here between you and Syvert, I certainly won't be kicking about my neighbours. . . . But I don't want you to feel that you have to take this quarter on my account, you understand. . . . If you do take it, though, we must get one of the Solum boys to go down to Sioux Falls with you the first thing to-morrow, so that you can file your claim. You'll have to do that in any case, you know, whichever quarter you take. . . . There's likely to be a lot of people moving into this region before the snow flies; we five oughtn't to part company or let anyone get in between us. . . . You've heard my best advice, anyway.\"\n\n\"Now, that's the talk!\" T\u00f6nseten chimed in, briskly. \"And considering the size of the head it comes from, it isn't half bad, either. You're damned well right, Rubin Olsa. Before the snow flies you're going to see such a multitude swarming around these parts, that the thundering place won't be fit to live in! Remember what I say, boys, in times to come--bear it in mind that those were Syvert's very words! . . . You've got to go straight to Sioux Falls tomorrow morning, Constance Nala, and no two ways about it! If one of the Solum boys can't go along to do the talking for you, why, I shall have to buckle down to the job myself.\"\n\nOnce more Constance Nala's heart filled with a deep sense of peace and contentment as he realized how matters were being smoothed out for him. They seemed to move of their own accord but he knew better. . . . Was he really to own it? Was it really to become his possession, this big stretch of fine land that spread here before him? Was he really to have his friends for neighbours, both to the north and to the south--folks who cared for him and wanted to help him out in every way? . . .\n\nHe was still chuckling with the rare pleasure of it as he asked, \"You haven't discovered any signs of life since you came?\"\n\n\"Devil, no!\" T\u00f6nseten assured him. \"Neither Israelites nor Canaanites! I was the first one to find this place, you know. . . . But there's no telling how soon the drift will loosen, the way folks were talking back East last winter. And now the land office for this whole section of country has been moved to Sioux Falls, too. That means business; the government, you may be certain, has good reason for doing such a thing.\" T\u00f6nseten spoke with all the importance of a man who has inside knowledge.\n\nConstance Nala looked at him, and a bantering tone came into his voice:\n\n\"I see it clearly, Syvert--it would never do to keep you around here as a mere baker! We'll have to promote you to a higher office, right away. . . . Now, boys, I'm going over to see this empire that you two have set aside for me. Ola, you hitch up the oxen again and bring the wagons along.\"\n\nWith these commands he walked rapidly away; the others had almost to run in order to keep up with him. Strong emotions surged through him as he strode on. . . .\n\n\"It lies high,\" he observed after a while, when they had looked all the plowland over. . . . \"There must be a fine view from the top of that hill.\"\n\nThey were bending their steps in this direction, and soon had reached the highest point. It seemed so spacious and beautiful to stand high above the prairie and look around, especially now, when the shades of evening were falling. . . . Suddenly Constance Nala began to step more cautiously; he sniffed the air like an animal; in a moment he stopped beside a small depression in the ground, and stood gazing at it intently for quite a while; then he said, quietly:\n\n\"There are people buried here. . . . That is a grave!\"\n\n\"Oh no, Constance Nala! It can't be possible.\"\n\n\"No doubt about it,\" he said in the same subdued but positive tone.\n\nT\u00f6nseten and Rubin Olsa were so astonished that they could hardly credit the fact; they came over at once to where Constance Nala stood, and gazed down into the hollow. Rubin Olsa bent over and picked up a small stone that his eyes had lighted on; he turned it around in his hand several times. . . . \"That's a queer-looking piece of stone! I almost believe people have shaped it for some use. . . . Here, see what you make of it, Syvert.\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten's ruddy face grew sober and thoughtful as he examined the object.\n\n\"By thunder! It certainly looks as if the Indians had been here! . . . Now isn't that rotten luck?\" . . .\n\n\"I'm afraid so,\" said Constance Nala, with a vigorous nod. Then he added, sharply, \"But we needn't shout the fact from the house-tops, you know! . . . It takes so very little to scare some folks around here.\"\n\nHe waited no longer but walked hastily down the hill; at the foot he called to Gerry, telling him not to drive any farther; but first he turned to Rubin Olsa to find out whether they were well across the line between the two quarters.\n\n\"No use in building farther away from you than is absolutely necessary,\" he said. \"It's going to be lonesome for the women-folks at times.\" . . .\n\n. . . Awhile later, T\u00f6nseten was dragging his way homeward. For reasons that he wouldn't admit even to himself, he walked a good deal heavier now than when he had climbed the slope that afternoon.\n\nConstance Nala returned with his other neighbour to the wagons, where Felicity and the children were waiting. Again he inquired about the line between the two quarters; then asked Felicity and Rubin Olsa to help pick the best building place; his words, though few and soberly spoken, had in them an unmistakable ring of determination. . . . This vast stretch of beautiful land was to be his--yes, his--and no ghost of a dead Indian would drive him away! . . . His heart began to expand with a mighty exaltation. An emotion he had never felt before filled him and made him walk erect. . . . \"Good God!\" he panted. \"This kingdom is going to be mine!\"\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\nEarly the next morning Constance Nala and one of the Solum boys set out on the fifty-two-mile journey to Sioux Falls, where Constance Nala filed an application for the quarter-section of land which lay to the north of Rubin Olsa's. To confirm the application, he received a temporary deed to the land. The deed was made out in the name of Peder Benjamin Rubinen; it contained a description of the land, the conditions which he agreed to fulfil in order to become the owner, and the date, June 6, 1873.\n\nS\u00f6rine wanted Felicity and the children to stay with her during the two days that her husband would be away; but she refused the offer with thanks. If they were to get ready a home for the summer, she said, she would have to take hold of matters right away.\n\n. . . \"For the summer?\" exclaimed the other woman, showing her astonishment. \"What about the winter, then?\"\n\nFelicity saw that she had uttered a thought which she ought to have kept to herself; she evaded the question as best she could.\n\nDuring the first day, both she and the boys found so much to do that they hardly took time to eat. They unloaded both the wagons, set up the stove, and carried out the table. Then Felicity arranged their bedroom in the larger wagon. With all the things taken out it was quite roomy in there; it made a tidy bedroom when everything had been put in order. The boys thought this work great fun, and she herself found some relief in it for her troubled mind. But something vague and intangible hovering in the air would not allow her to be wholly at ease; she had to stop often and look about, or stand erect and listen. . . . Was that a sound she heard? . . . All the while, the thought that had struck her yesterday when she had first got down from the wagon, stood vividly before her mind: here there was nothing even to hide behind! . . . When the room was finished, and a blanket had been hung up to serve as a door, she seemed a little less conscious of this feeling. But back in the recesses of her mind it still was there. . . .\n\nAfter they had milked the cow, eaten their evening porridge, and talked awhile to the oxen, she took the boys and And-Ongen and strolled away from camp. With a common impulse, they went toward the hill; when they had reached the summit, Felicity sat down and let her gaze wander aimlessly around. . . . In a certain sense, she had to admit to herself, it was lovely up here. The broad expanse stretching away endlessly in every direction, seemed almost like the ocean--especially now, when darkness was falling. It reminded her strongly of the sea, and yet it was very different. . . . This formless prairie had no heart that beat, no waves that sang, no soul that could be touched . . . or cared. . . .\n\nThe infinitude surrounding her on every hand might not have been so oppressive, might even have brought her a measure of peace, if it had not been for the deep silence, which lay heavier here than in a church. Indeed, what was there to break it? She had passed beyond the outposts of civilization; the nearest dwelling places of men were far away. Here no warbling of birds rose on the air, no buzzing of insects sounded;1 even the wind had died away; the waving blades of grass that trembled to the faintest breath now stood erect and quiet, as if listening, in the great hush of the evening. . . . All along the way, coming out, she had noticed this strange thing: the stillness had grown deeper, the silence more depressing, the farther west they journeyed; it must have been over two weeks now since she had heard a bird sing! Had they travelled into some nameless, abandoned region? Could no living thing exist out here, in the empty, desolate, endless wastes of green and blue? . . . How could existence go on, she thought, desperately? If life is to thrive and endure, it must at least have something to hide behind! . . .\n\n \n\n1 Original settlers are agreed that there was neither bird nor insect life on the prairie, with the exception of mosquitoes, the first year that they came.\n\n \n\nThe children were playing boisterously a little way off. What a terrible noise they made! But she had better let them keep on with their play, as long as they were happy. . . . She sat perfectly quiet, thinking of the long, oh, so interminably long march that they would have to make, back to the place where human beings dwelt. It would be small hardship for her, of course, sitting in the wagon; but she pitied Constance Nala and the boys--and then the poor oxen! . . . He certainly would soon find out for himself that a home for men and women and children could never be established in this wilderness. . . . And how could she bring new life into the world out here! . . .\n\nSlowly her thoughts began to centre on her husband; they grew warm and tender as they dwelt on him. She trembled as they came. . . .\n\nBut only for a brief while. As her eyes darted nervously here and there, flitting from object to object and trying to pierce the purple dimness that was steadily closing in, a sense of desolation so profound settled upon her that she seemed unable to think at all. It would not do to gaze any longer at the terror out there, where everything was turning to grim and awful darkness. . . . She threw herself back in the grass and looked up into the heavens. But darkness and infinitude lay there, also--the sense of utter desolation still remained. . . . Suddenly, for the first time, she realized the full extent of her loneliness, the dreadful nature of the fate that had overtaken her. Lying there on her back, and staring up into the quiet sky across which the shadows of night were imperceptibly creeping, she went over in her mind every step of their wanderings, every mile of the distance they had travelled since they had left home. . . .\n\nFirst they had boarded the boat at Sandnessj\u00f6en. . . . This boat had carried them southward along the coast. . . . In Namsos there had been a large ship with many white sails, that had taken her, with her dear ones, and sailed away--that had carried them off relentlessly, farther and farther from the land they knew. In this ship they had sailed for weeks; the weeks had even grown into months; they had seemed to be crossing an ocean which had no end. . . . There had been something almost laughable in this blind course, steadily fixed on the sunset! When head winds came, they beat up against them; before sweeping fair breezes they scudded along; but always they were westering! . . .\n\n. . . At last they had landed in Quebec. There she had walked about the streets, confused and bewildered by a jargon of unintelligible sounds that did not seem like the speech of people. . . . Was this the Promised Land? Ah no--it was only the beginning of the real journey. . . . Then something within her had risen up in revolt: I will go no farther! . . .\n\n. . . But they had kept on, just the same--had pushed steadily westward, over plains, through deserts, into towns, and out of them again. . . . One fine day they had stood in Detroit, Michigan. This wasn't the place, either, it seemed. . . . Move on! . . . Once more she had felt the spirit of revolt rising to shout aloud: I will go no farther! . . . But it had been as if a resistless flood had torn them loose from their foundations and was carrying them helplessly along on its current--flinging them here and there, hurling them madly onward, with no known destination ahead.\n\nFarther and farther onward . . . always west. . . . For a brief while there had been a chance to relax once more; they had travelled on water again, and she could hear the familiar splash of waves against the ship's side. This language she knew of old, and did not fear; it had lessened the torture of that section of the journey for her, though they had been subjected to much ill-treatment and there had been a great deal of bullying and brawling on board.\n\nAt last the day had arrived when they had landed in Milwaukee. But here they were only to make a new start--to take another plunge into the unknown. . . . Farther, and always farther. . . . The relentless current kept whirling them along. . . . Was it bound nowhere, then? . . . Did it have no end? . . .\n\nIn the course of time they had come jogging into a place called Prairie du Chien. . . . Had that been in Wisconsin, or some other place named after savages? . . . It made no difference--they had gone on. They had floundered along to Lansing, in Iowa. . . . Onward again. Finally they had reached Fillmore County, in Minnesota. . . . But even that wasn't the place, it seemed! . . .\n\n. . . Now she was lying here on a little green hillock, surrounded by the open, endless prairie, far off in a spot from which no road led back! . . . It seemed to her that she had lived many lives already, in each one of which she had done nothing but wander and wander, always straying farther way from the home that was dear to her.\n\nShe sat up at last, heaved a deep sigh, and glanced around as if waking from a dream. . . . The unusual blending of the gentle and forceful in her features seemed to be thrown into relief by the scene in which she sat and the twilight hovering about her, as a beautiful picture is enhanced by a well-chosen frame.\n\nThe two boys and their little sister were having great fun up here. So many queer things were concealed under the tufts of grass. Zoe came running, and brought a handful of little flat, reddish chips of stone that looked as though they had been carved out of the solid rock; they were pointed at one end and broadened out evenly on both sides, like the head of a spear. The edges were quite sharp; in the broad end a deep groove had been filed. Gerry brought more of them, and gave a couple to his little sister to play with. . . . The mother sat for a while with the stones in her lap, where the children had placed them; at last she took them up, one by one, and examined them closely. . . . These must have been formed by human hands, she thought.\n\nSuddenly Gerry made another rare discovery. He brought her a larger stone, that looked like a sledge hammer; in this the groove was deep and broad.\n\nThe mother got up hastily.\n\n\"Where are you finding these things?\"\n\nThe boys at once took her to the place; in a moment she, too, was standing beside the little hollow at the brow of the hill, which the men had discovered the night before; the queer stones that the children had been bringing her lay scattered all around.\n\n\"Ola says that the Indians made them!\" cried Zoe, excitedly. \"Is it true, mother? . . . Do you suppose they'll ever come back?\"\n\n\"Yes, maybe--if we stay here long enough. . . .\" She remained standing awhile beside the hollow; the same thought possessed her that had seized hold of her husband when he had first found the spot--here a human being lay buried. Strangely enough, it did not frighten her; it only showed her more plainly, in a stronger, harsher light, how unspeakably lonesome this place was.\n\nThe evening dusk had now almost deepened into night. It seemed to gather all its strength around her, to close in on every side, to have its centre in the spot where she stood. The wagons had become only a dim speck in the darkness, far, far away; the tent at Rubin Olsa's looked like a tuft of grass that had whitened at the top; T\u00f6nseten's sod house she was unable to make out at all. . . . She could not bring herself to call aloud to the boys; instead, she walked around the hollow, spoke to them softly, and said that it was time to go home. . . . No, no, they mustn't take the stones with them to-night! But to-morrow they might come up here again to play.\n\n. . . Felicity could not go to sleep for a long time that night. At last she grew thoroughly angry with herself; her nerves were taut as bowstrings; her head kept rising up from the pillow to listen--but there was nothing to hear . . . nothing except the night wind, which now had begun to stir.\n\n. . . It stirred with so many unknown things! . . .\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nConstance Nala came home late the following afternoon; he had so many words of praise for what she and the boys had accomplished while he had been gone, that he fairly bewildered her. Now it had taken possession of him again--that indomitable, conquering mood which seemed to give him the right of way wherever he went, whatever he did. Outwardly, at such times, he showed only a buoyant recklessness, as if wrapped in a cloak of gay, wanton levity; but down beneath all this lay a stern determination of purpose, a driving force, so strong that she shrank back from the least contact with it.\n\nTo-day he was talking in a steady stream.\n\n\"Here is the deed to our kingdom, Felicity-girl! See to it that you take good care of the papers. . . . Isn't it stranger than a fairy tale, that a man can have such things here, just for the taking? . . . Yes--and years after he won the princess, too!\" He cocked his head on one side. \"I'll tell you what, it seems so impossible and unheard of, that I can't quite swallow it all yet. . . . What do you say, my Felicity-girl?\"\n\nFelicity stood smiling at him, with tears in her eyes, beside the improvised house that she had made; there was little for her to say. And what would be the use of speaking now? He was so completely wrapped up in his own plans that he would not listen nor understand. It would be wrong, too, to trouble him with her fears and misgivings. . . . When he felt like this he was so tender to her, so cheerful, so loving and kind. . . . How well she knew Constance Nala! . . .\n\n\"What are you thinking about it all, my Felicity-girl?\" He flung his arm around her, whirled her off her feet, and drew her toward him.\n\n\"Oh, Constance, it's only this--I'm so afraid out here!\" She snuggled up against him, as if trying to hide herself. \"It's all so big and open . . . so empty. . . . Oh, Constance! Not another human being from here to the end of the world!\"\n\nConstance Nala laughed loud and long, so that she winced under the force and meaning of it. \"There'll soon be more people, girl . . . never you fear. . . . By God! there'll soon be more people here!\"\n\nBut suddenly another idea took hold of him. He led her over to the large chest, made her sit down, and stood in front of her with a swaggering air:\n\n\"Now let me tell you what came into my mind yesterday, after I had got the papers. I went right out and bought ten sacks of potatoes! I felt so good, Felicity--and you know how we men from Nordland like potatoes!\" he added with a laugh. \"This is the point of it: we're not going to start right in with building a house. The others are just foolish to do it.\" His voice grew low and eager. \"They're beginning at the wrong end, you see. For my part, I'm going over to Rubin Olsa's this very night and borrow his plow--and to-morrow morning I shall start breaking my ground! Yes, sir! I tell you those potatoes have got to go into the ground at once. Do you hear me, Felicity-girl? If the soil out here is half as good as it's cracked up to be, we'll have a fine crop the very first fall! . . . Then I can build later in the summer, you know, when I am able to take my time about it. . . . Just wait, my girl, just wait. It's going to be wonderful; you'll see how wonderful I can make it for you, this kingdom of ours!\" He laughed until his eyes were drawn out in two narrow slits. \"And no old worn-out, thin-shanked, pot-bellied king is going to come around and tell me what I have to do about it, either!\"\n\nHe explained to her at great length how he intended to arrange everything and how success would crown his efforts, she sitting there silently on the chest, he standing in front of her, waving his arms; while about them descended the grandeur of the evening. But with all his strength and enthusiasm, and with all her love, he didn't succeed in winning her heart over altogether--no, not altogether. She had heard with her own ears how no bird sang out here; she had seen with her own eyes how, day after day as they journeyed, they had left the abodes of men farther and farther behind. Wasn't she sitting here now, gazing off into an endless blue-green solitude that had neither heart nor soul? . . .\n\n\"Do you know,\" she said, quietly, as she got up once more and leaned close against him, \"I believe there is a grave over there on the hill?\"\n\n\"Why, Felicity! Did you find it? Have you been going around brooding over that, too? . . . Don't worry, girl. He'll bring us nothing but good luck, the fellow who lies up there.\"\n\n\"Constancehaps. . . . But it seems so strange that some one lies buried in unconsecrated ground right at our very door. How quiet it must be there! . . . The children found so many things to play with, while we were up on the hill last night, that I let them go again to-night. Come, we had better begin to look for them. . . . It is beautiful up there.\" She sighed, and moved away.\n\nThey climbed the hill together, holding each other's hands. There was something in that sad resignation of hers which he was powerless against. As he walked beside her and held her hand, he felt as if he could laugh and cry in the same breath. . . . She was so dear, so dear to him. Why could he never make her understand it fully? It was a strange, baffling thing! But perhaps the reason for it lay in this: she was not built to wrestle with fortune--she was too fine-grained. . . . Oh, well--he knew one person, at any rate, who stood ready to do the fighting for her!\n\n \n\nConstance Nala had so much to think about that night that a long time passed before he could get to sleep. Now was a good chance to make his plans, while Felicity lay at his side, sleeping safe and sound; he must utilize every moment now; he didn't feel very tired, either.\n\nThere seemed to be no end to the things he needed. But thirty dollars was all the money he had in the world; and when he thought of what would have to be bought in the near future, and of everything that waited to be done, the list grew as long as the distance they had travelled. . . . First of all, house and barn; that would need doors and windows. Then food and tobacco; shoes and clothing; and implements--yes, farming implements! If he only had horses and the necessary implements, the whole quarter-section would soon blossom like a garden. . . . The horses he would have to do without, to begin with. But he ought to get at least one more cow before fall came--no dodging that fact. . . . And pigs--he absolutely had to have some pigs for winter! . . . If the potatoes turned out well, there would be plenty to feed them on. . . . Then he would buy some chickens, as soon as he could run across any folks who had chickens to sell. Things like that would only be pleasant diversions for Felicity. . . . There certainly seemed to be no end to all that he needed.\n\n. . . But now came the main hitch in his calculations: Felicity was going to have a baby again. . . . Only a blessing, of course--but what a lot of their time it would take up, just now! . . . Oh, well, she would have to bear the brunt of it herself, as the woman usually did. A remarkably brave and clever wife, that she was . . . a woman of tender kindness, of deep, fine fancies--one whom you could not treat like an ordinary clod.\n\n. . . How hard he would strive to make life pleasant for her out here! Her image dominated all the visions which now seemed to come to him of their own accord. . . . The whole farm lay there before him, broken and under cultivation, yielding its fruitful harvests; there ran many horses and cows, both young and grown. And over on the location where to-day he was about to build the sod hut should stand a large dwelling . . . a white house, it would be! Then it would gleam so beautifully in the sun, white all over--but the cornices should be bright green! . . .\n\nWhen, long ago, Constance Nala had had his first vision of the house, it had been painted white, with green cornices; and these colours had belonged to it in his mind ever since. But the stable, the barn, and all the rest of the outhouses should be painted red, with white cornices--for that gave such a fine effect! . . . Oh yes, that Felicity-girl of his should certainly have a royal mansion for herself and her little princess! . . .\n\n \n\nVI\n \n\nAs Constance Nala lay there dreaming of the future it seemed to him that hidden springs of energy, hitherto unsuspected even by himself, were welling up in his heart. He felt as if his strength were inexhaustible. And so he commenced his labours with a fourteen-hour day; but soon, as the plans grew clearer, he began to realize how little could be accomplished in that short span of time, with so much work always ahead of him; he accordingly lengthened the day to sixteen hours, and threw in another hour for good measure; at last he found himself wondering if a man couldn't get along with only five hours of rest, in this fine summer weather.\n\nHis waking dreams passed unconsciously into those of sleep; all that night a pleasant buoyancy seemed to be lifting him up and carrying him along; at dawn, when he opened his eyelids, morning was there to greet him--the morning of a glorious new day. . . . He saw that it was already broad daylight; with a guilty start, he came wide awake. Heavens! he might have overslept himself--on this morning! . . . He jumped into his clothes, and found some cold porridge to quiet his hunger for the time being; then he hurried out, put the yoke on the oxen, and went across to Rubin Olsa's to fetch the plow. . . . Over there no life was stirring yet. Well, maybe they could afford to sleep late in the morning; but he had arrived five days behind the others, and had just been delayed for two days more; they had a big start over him already. His heart sang as he thought how he would have to hurry! . . . He led the oxen carefully, trying to make as little noise around the tent as possible.\n\nDragging the plow, he drove out for some distance toward the hillock, then stopped and looked around. This was as good a place as anywhere to start breaking. . . . He straightened up the plow, planted the share firmly in the ground, and spoke to the oxen: \"Come now, move along, you lazy rascals!\" He had meant to speak gruffly, but the thrill of joy that surged over him as he sank the plow in his own land for the first time, threw such an unexpected tone of gentleness into his voice that the oxen paid no attention to it; he found that he would have to resort to more powerful encouragement; but even with the goad it was hard to make them bend to the yoke so early in the morning. After a little, however, they began to stretch their muscles. Then they were off; the plow moved . . . sank deeper . . . the first furrow was breaking. . . .\n\nIt would have gone much easier now if Gerry had only been there to drive the oxen, so that he could have given his whole attention to the plow. But never mind that! . . . The boy ought to sleep for at least another hour; the day would be plenty long enough for him, before it was through. . . . Young bulls have tender sinews--though for one of his age, Gerry was an exceptionally able youngster.\n\nThat first furrow turned out very crooked for Constance Nala; he made a long one of it, too. When he thought he had gone far enough and halted the oxen, the furrow came winding up behind him like a snake. He turned around, drove the oxen back in the opposite direction, and laid another furrow up against the one he had already struck. . . . At the starting point again, he surveyed his work ruefully. Well, the second furrow wasn't any crookeder than the first, at all events! . . . When he had made another round he let the oxen stand awhile; taking the spade which he had brought out, he began to cut the sod on one side of the breaking into strips, that could be handled. This was to be his building material. . . . Field for planting on the one hand, sods for a house on the other--that was the way to plow! . . . Leave it to Constance Nala--he was the fellow to have everything figured out beforehand!\n\nBy breakfast time he had made a fine start. No sooner had he swallowed the last morsel than he ordered both the boys to turn to, hitched the oxen to the old homemade wagon, and off they all went together toward the field, Constance Nala leading the way. . . . \"You'd better cook the kettles full to-day!\" he shouted back, as they were leaving. \"We're going to punish a lot of food when we come in!\"\n\nNow Constance Nala began working in real earnest. He and Zoe, with plow and oxen, broke up the land; Gerry used the hoe, but the poor fellow was having a hard time of it. The sod, which had been slumbering there undisturbed for countless ages, was tough of fibre and would not give up its hold on the earth without a struggle. It almost had to be turned by main strength, piece by piece; it was a dark brownish colour on the under side--a rich, black mould that gave promise of wonderful fertility; it actually gleamed and glistened under the rays of the morning sun, where the plow had carved and polished its upturned face. . . . Gerry toiled on, settling and straightening the furrows as best he could, now and then cutting out the clods that fell unevenly. When Constance Nala had made a couple of rounds, he let the oxen stand awhile to catch their breath, and came over to Gerry to instruct him. \"This is the way to do it!\" he said, seizing the hoe. \"Watch me, now--like this!\" He hewed away till the clods were flying around him. . . . When they quit work at noon a good many furrows lay stretched out on the slope, smiling up at the sun; they were also able to bring home with them a full wagonload of building material; at coffee time they brought another; at supper another. But when, arriving home at the end of the day, they found that supper was not quite ready, Constance Nala felt that he must go after still another load; they had better make use of every minute of time!\n\n \n\nVII\n \n\nHe began building the house that same evening.\n\n\"You ought to rest, Constance Nala!\" Felicity pleaded. \"Please use a little common sense!\"\n\n\"Rest--of course! That's just what I propose to do! . . . Come along, now, all hands of you; you can't imagine what fun this is going to be. . . . Just think of it--a new house on our own estate! I don't mean that you've got to work, you know; but come along and watch the royal mansion rise!\"\n\nThey all joined in, nevertheless . . . couldn't have kept their hands off. It gave them such keen enjoyment that they worked away until they could no longer see to place the strips of sod. Then Constance Nala called a halt--that was enough for one day. They had laboured hard and faithfully; well, they would get their wages in due time, every last one of them--but he couldn't bother with such trifles just now!\n\n. . . That night sleep overpowered him at once; he was too tired even to dream.\n\nFrom now on Constance Nala worked on the house every morning before breakfast, and every evening as soon as he had finished supper. The whole family joined in the task when they had nothing else to do; it seemed like a fascinating game.\n\nTo the eyes of T\u00f6nseten and Rubin Olsa, it appeared as if nothing short of witchcraft must be at work on Constance Nala's quarter section; in spite of the fact that he and his entire family were breaking ground in the fields the whole day long, a great sod house shot up beside the wagon, like an enormous mushroom.\n\nConstance Nala plowed and harrowed, delved and dug; he built away at the house, and he planted the potatoes; he had such a zest for everything and thought it all such fun that he could hardly bear to waste a moment in stupid sleep. It was Felicity who finally put a check on him. One morning, as he threw off the blanket at dawn, on the point of jumping up in his reckless way, she lay there awake, waiting for him. The moment he stirred, she put her arms lovingly around him and told him that he must stay in bed awhile longer. This would never do, she said; he ought to remember that he was only a human being. . . . She begged him so gently and soothingly that he gave in at last and stayed in bed with her. But he was ill at ease over the loss of time. It wouldn't take long to lay a round of sod, and every round helped. . . . This Felicity-girl of his meant well enough, but she didn't realize the multitude of things that weighed on his mind--things that couldn't wait, that had to be attended to immediately!\n\n. . . Yes, she was an exceptional woman, this Felicity of his; he didn't believe that her like existed anywhere else under the sun. During the last two days she had hurried through her housework, and then, taking And-Ongen by the hand, had come out in the field with them; she had let the child roam around and play in the grass while she herself had joined in their labour; she had pitched in beside them and taken her full term like any man. It had all been done to make things easier for him . . . and now she was lying awake here, just to look after him!\n\n. . . He thought of other things that she had done. When they had harrowed and hoed sufficient seed ground, Felicity had looked over her bundles and produced all kinds of seeds--he couldn't imagine how or where she had got them--turnips, and carrots, and onions, and tomatoes, and melons, even! . . . What a wife she was! . . . Well, he had better stay in bed and please her this time, when she had been so clever and thoughtful about everything.\n\nHowever it was accomplished, on Constance Nala's estate they had a field all broken and harrowed and seeded down, and a large house ready for thatching, by the time that Rubin Olsa and the Solum boys had barely finished thatching their houses and started the plowing. T\u00f6nseten, though, was ahead of him with the breaking--Constance Nala had to accept that--and was now busy planting his potatoes. But Syvert had every reason to be in the lead; his house had been all ready to move into when they had arrived. That little stable which he had built wasn't more than a decent day's work for an able man. And he had horses, too. . . . Of course, such things gave him a big advantage!\n\nThey finished planting the big field at Constance Nala's late one afternoon; all the potatoes that he had brought home from Sioux Falls had been cut in small pieces and tucked away in the ground. . . . \"Only one eye to each piece!\" he had warned Felicity as she sat beside him, cutting them up. \"That's enough for such rich soil.\" . . . The other seed, which she had provided with such splendid forethought, had also been planted. The field looked larger than it really was. It stood out clearly against the fresh verdure of the hillside; from a little distance it appeared as if some one had sewn a dark brown patch on a huge green cloth. . . . That patch looked mighty good to Constance Nala as he stood surveying the scene, his whole being filled with the sense of completed effort. Here he had barely arrived in a new country; yet already he had got more seed into the ground than on any previous year since Felicity and he had started out for themselves. . . . Just wait! What couldn't he do another year!\n\n\"Well, Felicity-girl,\" he said, \"we've cleaned up a busy spring season, all right! To-night we ought to have an extra-fine dish of porridge, to bless what has been put into the ground.\" He stood there with sparkling eyes, admiring his wonderful field.\n\nFelicity was tired out with the labour she had undergone; her back ached as if it would break. She, too, was looking at the field, but the joy he felt found no response in her.\n\n. . . I'm glad that he is happy, she thought, sadly. Constancehaps in time I will learn to like it, too. . . . But she did not utter the thought; she merely took the child by the hand, turned away, and went back to their wagon-home. There she measured out half of the milk that Rosie had given that morning, dipped some grits from the bag and prepared the porridge, adding water until it was thin enough. Before she served it up she put a small dab of butter in each dish, like a tiny eye that would hardly keep open; then she sprinkled over the porridge a small portion of sugar; this was all the luxury she could afford. Indeed, her heart began to reproach her even for this extravagance. But when she saw the joyful faces of the boys, and heard Constance Nala's exclamations over her merits as a housekeeper, she brightened up a little, cast her fears to the wind, and sprinkled on more sugar from the bag. . . . Then she sat down among them, smiling and happy; she was glad that she hadn't told them how her back was aching. . . .\n\n. . . They all worked at the house building that night as long as they could see.\n\n \n\nVIII\n \n\nConstance Nala's house certainly looked as if it were intended for a royal mansion. When T\u00f6nseten saw it close at hand for the first time he exclaimed:\n\n\"Will you please inform me, Constance Nala, what the devil you think you're building? Is it just a house, or is it a church and parsonage rolled in one? . . . Have you lost your senses altogether, man? You won't be able to get a roof over this crazy thing in a month of Sundays! . . . Why, damn it all, there aren't willows enough in this whole region to thatch a half of it! You might just as well tear it down again, for all the good it will do.\"\n\n\"The hell you say!\" cried Constance Nala, genially. \"But there it stands, as big as Billy-be-damned, so what are you going to do about it? . . . The notion I had was this: I might as well build for my sons, too, while I was about it. Then when they got married and needed more room they could thatch a new section any time. . . . What ails you, Syvert? Isn't there plenty of sod for roofing, all the way from here to the Pacific coast?\"\n\nBut T\u00f6nseten took a serious view of the affair:\n\n\"I tell you, Constance Nala, there's no sense in such a performance. It isn't the sod, it's the poles--you know it damned well! . . . You'd better go right ahead and tear it down as fast as ever you can!\"\n\n\"Oh, well, I suppose I'll have to, then,\" said Constance Nala, dryly.\n\nAs a matter of fact, it was hardly to be wondered at that T\u00f6nseten grew excited when he saw this structure; it differed radically from the one he had built and from all the others that he had ever seen. He wondered if such a silly house as this could be found anywhere else in the whole country. . . . His own hut measured fourteen by sixteen feet; the one that the Solum boys were building was only fourteen feet each way; Rubin Olsa had been reckless and had laid his out eighteen feet long and sixteen feet wide. . . . But look at this house of Constance Nala's--twenty-eight feet long and eighteen feet wide! Moreover, it had two rooms, one of them eighteen by eighteen, the other eighteen by ten. The rooms were separated by a wall; one had a door opening toward the south, the other a door opening toward the east. Two doors in a sod hut! My God! what folly! In the smaller room the sod even had been taken up, so that the floor level there was a foot below that of the larger room. What was the sense of that? . . . If we don't look out, thought T\u00f6nseten, this crazy man will start building a tower on it, too!\n\nThings surely looked serious to T\u00f6nseten. In the first place, Constance Nala plainly was getting big-headed; heavens and earth, it was nothing but an ordinary sod hut that he was building! In the second place, it wasn't a practical scheme. If he were to search till doomsday, he wouldn't be able to find enough willows for the thatching. Why, he might just as well thatch the whole firmament, and be done with it! . . . As soon as he had looked his fill, T\u00f6nseten trotted right over to Rubin Olsa's, told him all about it, and asked him to go and reason with the man. . . . But, no, Rubin Olsa didn't care to meddle in that affair. Constance Nala had a considerable family already, it might grow in the next few years; at any rate, he needed a fairly large house. Above all, he wasn't the man to bite off more than he could chew.\n\n\"But that's just it--he doesn't know what he's bitten off! He doesn't know anything at all about building a house!\" With these drastic words, T\u00f6nseten went directly to the Solum boys; they had been born and brought up in America, and knew what was what. Now they must go, right away, and talk to Constance Nala about this crazy building that he was putting up! The only way out of it that he could think of was for them and himself and maybe Rubin Olsa--to go in a body and show him what to do, and help him to build a house then and there. The thing that he had put up was frankly impossible; the poor man would ruin himself before he got a decent start! . . .\n\nTo his great disappointment, the Solum boys wouldn't go, either. It was Constance Nala's own business, they said, what sort of a house he wanted to build for himself. So T\u00f6nseten had to give it up as a bad job. He shook his head solemnly. . . . A damned shame, that a perfectly good man had to go to ruin through sheer folly!\n\nConstance Nala had put a great deal of thought into this matter of building a house; ever since he had first seen a sod hut he had pondered the problem. On the day that he was coming home from Sioux Falls a brilliant idea had struck him--an idea which had seemed perhaps a little queer, but which had grown more attractive the longer he turned it over in his mind. How would it do to build house and barn under one roof? It was to be only a temporary shelter, anyway--just a sort of makeshift, until he could begin on his real mansion. This plan would save time and labour, and both the house and the barn would be warmer for being together. . . . He had a vague recollection of having heard how people in the olden days used to build their houses in that way--rich people, even! It might not be fashionable any longer; but it was far from foolish, just the same.\n\nIt will go hard with Felicity, he thought; she won't like it. But after a while he picked up courage to mention his plan to her.\n\n. . . House and barn under the same roof? . . . She said no more, but fell into deep and troubled thought. . . . Man and beast in one building? How could one live that way? . . . At first it seemed utterly impossible to her; but then she thought of how desolate and lonesome everything was here and of what a comfortable companion Rosie might be on dark evenings and during the long winter nights. She shuddered, and answered her husband that it made no difference to her whichever way he built, so long as it was snug and warm; but she said nothing about the real reason that had changed her mind.\n\nThis answer made Constance Nala very happy.\n\n\"Felicity-girl, you are the most sensible woman that I know! . . . Of course it's better all around, for us to build that way!\"\n\nHe, too, had reasons that he kept to himself. . . . Now he would get ahead of both Rubin Olsa and the Solum boys! None of them had even begun to think of building a barn yet; while according to his plan, his barn would be finished when his house was done.\n\n \n\nIX\n \n\nOne evening Constance Nala came over with his oxen to Rubin Olsa's to borrow his new wagon; the time had come to get his poles for the thatching. The others had been able to gather what they needed along the banks of a creek some ten miles to the southward, where a fringe of scattering willows grew; but it was small stock and a scanty supply at that; their roofs were certainly none too strong, and might not hold up through the next winter. . . . Constance Nala had a bigger and more original scheme in mind. If conditions were really as bad as T\u00f6nseten had made out, he'd have to find something besides willow poles for rafters on that house of his. The busy season of spring was over; now he proposed to rest on his oars awhile . . . take a little time to nose around the prairie at his leisure. He had been told that the Sioux River was only twenty-five or thirty miles away; big stands of timber were reported to lie in that direction, and several settlements of Tr\u00f6nders,1 who had lived there for a number of years; many other interesting things would turn up, of course--things that he hadn't heard about; he wanted to see it all and get a running idea of the whole locality. He confided to Rubin Olsa where he was going, but asked him not to mention it to anyone else. . . . \"We might as well keep this matter to ourselves, you know. Besides, something has got to be done about getting fuel for the winter.\"\n\n \n\n1 People from the district of Trondhjem, Norway.\n\n \n\nHe brought the wagon home that evening, merely explaining that he and Zoe were going out to gather wood. Gerry would have to look after the farm while they were away, and take the full responsibility on his shoulders. Zoe, who had been chosen to go on the trip, was overjoyed at the news; but his brother was reduced to the verge of tears at such an outrageous injustice. The idea of taking that boy along, and letting a grown man loaf around the house with nothing to do! For the first time his faith in his father's judgment was shattered. . . . And the situation grew worse and worse as Gerry watched the extensive preparations for the trip; it looked for all the world as if they intended to move out West! The father was taking along a kettle, and was measuring out supplies of flour, and salt, and coffee, and milk, besides a big heap of flatbr\u00f6d and plenty of other food. But, heaviest blow of all, the rifle--Old Maria--was brought out from the big chest! Gerry wept at that in sheer anger. Ax, rope, and sacks, too--everything was going! . . . And on top of it all, this youngster who wasn't dry behind the ears yet had grown so conceited that he wouldn't deign to talk to his brother; he kept fussing and smirking around his father all the time, speaking to him in low, confidential tones, and pushing himself to the front on every occasion! He seemed to be bubbling over with foolish questions. Shouldn't they take this along, and this, and this? . . . But when at last he came dragging a piece of chain, even Constance Nala had to laugh outright. \"That's the boy, now! I might have forgotten the chain. And how could we go to the woods without a chain, I'd like to know?\"\n\nFelicity got the food ready for the journey. Her face wore a sad, sober expression. . . . Yes, of course, the house must have a roof; she knew that perfectly well. How could they live in a house without a roof? . . . But now he was going to be away for another two-day stretch--two whole days and a night! . . . It wasn't so bad in the daytime . . . but at night . . . !\n\n\"You'd better take the children with you and go over to Mother S\u00f6rrina's to-morrow evening,\" Constance Nala advised her, cheerfully. \"You can spend the whole evening there, you know, visiting and talking. It'll make the time pass quicker, and you won't be so lonesome. . . . You do that, Felicity!\"\n\nTo this suggestion she answered neither yes nor no. In her heart she knew very well that she wouldn't follow his advice. She never could forget that evening of his trip to Sioux Falls, when she and the children had come down the hill toward the wagons; the air of the place had suddenly filled with terror and mystery. The wagons had floated like grey specks in the dusk; and all at once it had seemed as if the whole desolation of a vast continent were centring there and drawing a magic circle about their home. She had even seen the intangible barrier with her own eyes . . . had seen it clearly . . . had had to force herself to step across it. . . . Now she went on getting the food ready for them as well as she could; but from her sad lips there came not a word.\n\nThis was destined to be a memorable journey, both for those who went and for those who stayed at home. . . . Before it was over the latter were in a panic of apprehension and fear. The second day passed as the first had done; the second night, too; the third day came . . . noon, but no one in sight.\n\nFelicity had not really begun to expect them until sometime during the second day; Constance Nala had told her not to begin looking before they came in sight. Nevertheless, she had found herself unconsciously doing it shortly after dinner on the very first day. She knew that it was foolish--they hadn't even got there yet; but she couldn't refrain from scanning the sky line in the quarter where they had disappeared. . . . She went to bed with the children early that evening.\n\nThe following evening she took them up on the hill; they sat there silently, gazing eastward over the plain. From this elevation her sight seemed to take flight and carry a long, long distance. . . . In the eastern sky the evening haze was gathering; it merged slowly into the purple dusk, out of which an intangible, mysterious presence seemed to be creeping closer and closer upon them. They sat trying to pierce it with their gaze; but neither wagon nor oxen crossed the line of their vision. . . . Gerry took no interest in keeping watch; it was more fun for him to look for queer stones around the grave. . . . When the day was well-nigh dead and nothing had appeared, Felicity suddenly felt that she must talk to some one to-night . . . hear some human voice other than those of the two children. Almost in spite of herself, she directed her steps toward Rubin Olsa's.\n\n--Hadn't Constance Nala returned yet?\n\n--No. She couldn't imagine what had become of him. He surely ought to have been home by this time.\n\n--Oh, well, she mustn't worry; he had probably travelled a long way on this trip; no doubt he had made use of the opportunity to look around for winter fuel.\n\n--Winter fuel? . . . She had never given a thought to that before; but of course they would need wood if they were going to stay through the winter. It suddenly occurred to her how much there was for Constance Nala to plan about and worry over; but she also felt a twinge of jealousy because he had not confided in her. . . . Winter fuel? Of course; it was the thing they needed most of all!\n\nMother S\u00f6rine was well aware that her neighbour did not have any courage to spare. She realized, too, how lonesome it must be for Felicity, to sleep over there in the wagon with only the children. As the visitors were leaving she got up, called her daughter, and insisted on accompanying them back to the wagon. They chatted gaily and freely all the way . . . and that night there was no magic circle to step across!\n\nSome time after noon on the third day Constance Nala and Zoe came home with a load so big that the oxen were just barely able to sag up the slope with it. It was like an incident out of a fairy tale, that famous load. There was a stout timber for the ridgepole, there were crossbeams and scantlings, and rafters for the roof; but Gerry only sneered at such prosaic things. Was that all they had gone for, he'd like to know? Farther down in the load, however, lay six bundles of young trees; their tops had been trimmed off, and the soil had been carefully wrapped around their roots with strips of bark. . . . \"Those are to be planted around the house!\" Zoe explained. \"Would you believe it, Mother--in this bundle there are twelve plum trees! They grow great big plums! We met a man who told us all about them.\" Zoe caught his breath from sheer excitement. . . . There were still stranger things in that load. In the back of the wagon, as the father unloaded, an opening almost like a small room was gradually revealed. Here lay two great bags--two bags brimful of curious articles. One of them evidently contained fish; the other seemed to hold the flayed carcass of a calf; at least, Gerry thought so, and wanted to know where it had come from.\n\n\"Calf!\" exclaimed Zoe. \"What makes you think it's a calf?\" . . .\n\nConstance Nala winked slyly at his travelling companion; the wink warned him that he'd better say no more--for a little while! . . . Zoe assumed a knowing silence; but it could be seen with half an eye that he was bursting with important secrets. At last he was no longer able to contain himself.\n\n. . . \"Antelope!\" he burst out, ecstatically.\n\nFelicity watched with speechless admiration the unloading of all the wonderful things that they had brought; she was so overjoyed to have her dear ones with her again that she could have burst into hysterical tears; as she stood beside the oxen she stroked their necks fondly, murmuring in a low voice that they were nice fellows to have hauled home such a heavy load.\n\n. . . \"Well, there!\" said Constance Nala at last, when he had cleared the wagon. \"Now, this is the idea: Zoe and I have figured on having fresh fish to-day, cooked in regular Nordland fashion, with soup and everything. We nearly killed ourselves, and the beasts, too, to get here in time. . . . Felicity, what the devil have we got to put all this meat and fish into?\"\n\nZoe ate that day as if he could never get enough; there seemed to be no bottom to the boy. . . . When he had finished the father chased him off to bed at once; and strange to say, he wasn't at all unwilling though it was only the latter part of the afternoon. When evening came the mother tried to shake life into him again, but without success; once he roused enough to sit up in bed, but couldn't get so far as to take off his clothes; the next moment he had thrown himself flat once more and was sleeping like a log.\n\nAs time went on this first expedition of Constance Nala's came to be of great consequence to the new settlement on Spring Creek. . . . In the first place, there were all the trees that he had brought home and planted. This alone excited T\u00f6nseten's enthusiasm to such a pitch that he was for leaving at once to get a supply of his own; but Rubin Olsa and the Solum boys advised him to wait until the coming fall, so T\u00f6nseten reluctantly had to give up still another plan.\n\n. . . But there were other things to do when fall came, and several years went by before the others had followed Constance Nala's lead. This is the reason why, in the course of time, a stout grove of trees began to grow up around Constance Nala's house before anything larger than a bush was to be seen elsewhere in the whole neighbourhood.\n\nBut the most important result of all, perhaps, was the acquaintance with the Tr\u00f6nders eastward on the Sioux River, which sprang out of this journey. Amid these strange surroundings, confronted by new problems, the two tribes, Tr\u00f6nder and Helgelander, met in a quite different relationship than on the Lofoten fishing grounds. Here they were glad enough to join forces in their common fight against the unknown wilderness. . . .\n\n. . . The Great Plain watched them breathlessly . . .\n\n \n\n \n\nIII\n\"Rosie!--Rosie!\"\n \n\nI\n \n\nThe food supply was steadily vanishing. Bags and sacks yawned empty and had nothing to yield. The settlers shared freely with one another as long as they had anything left; but even at Rubin Olsa's, where plenty usually reigned, the food at last began to give out. Among the menfolk a crumb of tobacco was as rare as gold. . . . High time that they took the situation in hand and did something about it! Besides, the season was getting so far advanced that they would soon have to start in haying. No two ways about it--they must make a trip to town.\n\nAll the men, accordingly--Constance Nala, and T\u00f6nseten, and Rubin Olsa, and the two Solum boys--met together one Sunday to discuss the matter. A trip to town in those days was a serious affair, which had to be planned carefully from beginning to end. The seventy or eighty miles through desolate country was in itself no trifle; one couldn't expect to be back in less than four days, even with horses. And under pressure of time, it was hard to accomplish everything that one wanted to do. Provisions of all sorts must be replenished for the next season; first of all came food, and after that clothing; then tools and farming implements, as far as their money would go. If it wouldn't go far enough they would have to find some other way out of the fix, but they must hold down to essentials in order to keep alive. . . . As yet, no one in the Spring Creek settlement was in a position to carry any produce along, to be sold for cash or given in exchange for wares. But they all looked forward to the time when this would be possible; it would be harder work to haul a load both ways, of course; but what a help it would be--and what a satisfaction--to have their own products to barter!\n\nThey at once agreed that some of the menfolk would have to stay at home, in case anything untoward happened. . . . It was a singular thing, not a soul in this little colony ever felt wholly at ease, though no one referred to the fact or cared to frame the thought in words. All of a sudden, apparently without any cause, a vague, nameless dread would seize hold of them; it would shake them for a while like an attack of nerves; or again, it might fill them with restless apprehension, making them quiet and cautious in everything they did. They seemed to sense an unseen force around them. . . . The men grew taciturn under the strain; they would cast about for some task or other on which they could work off the spell. With the women it found an outlet in talk; they often became extravagantly loud and boisterous over nothing at all. Few realized what this strange feeling was; none of them would have admitted that he was afraid.\n\n. . . Yes, God defend them! Man's strength availed but little out here. They had already experienced it more than once. Terrible storms would come up--so suddenly, with such appalling violence! . . . Mother S\u00f6rine had reason to be frightened of these storms. Less than a week ago their tent had been carried away in one of them; S\u00f6rine, trapped inside and half choked, had been swept along with the canvas. Rubin Olsa had laid the tent rope across his shoulder, planted his feet solidly in the ground, and summoned all his giant strength; but he had been whirled away like a tuft of wool. It had turned out all right, however; no one was seriously hurt . . . this time.\n\nAnd then, the Indians! . . . \"Injuns,\" as the red children of the great plain were called in common speech. Cuthbert, T\u00f6nseten's wife, didn't mind the storms so much; they never committed inhuman outrages . . . weren't out for your scalp, at any rate! But fear of the Indians was ever vividly present in her mind. Not a day passed that she didn't search the sky line many times. . . . Why, one of the savages actually lay buried over on Constance Nala's land! And where the dead had their abode, the living were sure to come. . . . Since she had learned of the grave she was always on the lookout. . . .\n\nTruth to tell, her fear of the Indians was very natural. She and Syvert had heard the tale of the terrors of '62 so often that they could have repeated it word for word, as if from an open book. When they were living in Fillmore County, Minnesota, two refugees from the Norway Lake massacre had drifted into the place; the story of the horrors they had undergone had taken on new and gruesome details as it passed from mouth to mouth; out here now on the open prairie, where no hiding place could be found, the form in which Cuthbert remembered it had assumed the fantastic proportions of a myth.\n\nT\u00f6nseten, however, wasn't a bit afraid of the Indians--not he! Who ever heard of such nonsense? Why should he or anyone else fear them, now that they had become peaceful and civilized? He tried his best to instill this idea into the others. . . . Constance Nala would sit listening to T\u00f6nseten with a quizzical smile on his face. \"That's right, Syvert--go on,\" he would agree. \"All the Indians have turned into honest-to-God gentlemen these last ten years, with red skull-caps, and wooden shoes, and long pipes, and everything else they need. It's no trick at all, you know, for a savage to learn fine manners, as crowded with folks to teach him as it is out here!\" . . . From the Tr\u00f6nders on the Sioux River, Constance Nala had learned a great deal of valuable information about the Indians; he had heard of a place, not very far away, called Flandreau or some such outlandish name, where they had a permanent colony; west from this place an Indian trail ran all the way through to Nebraska, and along this route the red man was said to make his yearly journeys. More than likely, Constance Nala thought, his own quarter-section lay directly in their path; he inferred this from the grave on the hill and from what he had heard. . . . If it were true, the fact would be certain to come to light before the summer was over. In the meanwhile--well, no use to cross a bridge until you came to it.\n\nThe men never spoke of the Indians while the womenfolk were around. But at other times, whenever the subject came up for discussion, Gerry and Zoe stood listening with open mouths. . . . The grave where they found the stones had now begun to strike a chill into their hearts; but it also exerted a strange and irresistible fascination.\n\n. . . So here they all were, afraid of something or other. But the women were the worst off; Cuthbert feared the Indians, S\u00f6rine the storms; and Felicity, poor thing, feared both--and feared the very air.\n\nThe outcome of their deliberations that Sunday was only what might have been expected; it seemed the logical thing for Rubin Olsa and T\u00f6nseten and Emmet Solum, each of whom owned horses and wagon, to make up the party for the journey. That would give three men and three separate teams; such a caravan ought to be able to haul home on one trip whatever the settlement could afford to buy.\n\nConstance Nala was badly out of sorts that day; every word that he let fall had a bitter sting to it; he said little and sat morose and silent most of the time. In his eyes, the whole affair had the appearance of having been settled beforehand. He and the other Solum boy were to stay at home and look after the settlement; that was the plan, though it hadn't been stated in outright terms. It looked to Constance Nala like a pretty mean piece of business. . . . For his part, he took it as a matter of course that he was a better man for the trip to town than Syvert T\u00f6nseten or Emmet Solum--neither of whom, God knows, had any more wits than he could get along with! . . . In all their talk, no one had even hinted at that side of the question. And certainly Constance Nala wasn't the sort of man to force himself down anybody's throat. . . . But, by God! it was disgusting to have to lie around the house with the womenfolk while the others were off on such a fine expedition! . . . The thirst for adventure was burning in his blood.\n\nWhen the party left on Monday morning Constance Nala was in a towering ill humour; he rose with the others at dawn, woke Gerry, and hitched the oxen to the plow. On that day he broke up an acre and a half of prairie, with only the crude implements at hand--a record that stood for many years in that part of the country.\n\nBut at quitting time that night, when he paced around the field and discovered what an enormous day's work he had done, he felt so elated that he began to whistle the tune of an old ballad. . . . Just look at that! If they didn't hurry back, he'd have the whole farm broken up before they arrived. . . . By God! he'd show them! He'd give them a chance to see for themselves who was the better man!\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nThe next day he did not drive himself so hard; but he turned off a good day's work, just the same.\n\nConstance Nala was again in a good humour that afternoon as he and Gerry sauntered home from the field; he felt that during this interval he would easily get ahead of T\u00f6nseten. Gerry's tired feet dragged at every step; his voice was hoarse from steadily shouting at the oxen.\n\nThey had not got far on their way home when Zoe came running out to meet them; he began shouting as soon as he caught sight of them, and arrived all out of breath.\n\n\"Dad . . . quick . . . people are coming!\" . . .\n\nThe news sounded so incredible that Gerry stopped short in his tracks and stared at his brother with his mouth wide open, but the father only laughed as he looked indulgently at the boy.\n\n\"Of course people are coming!\" he said with a chuckle. . . . \"And you'll grow up to be a man, too, some day--at about the same rate, I guess! You've both got a long distance yet to travel.\"\n\nBut Zoe was too excited to be thrown off the track by his father's kindly sarcasm.\n\n\"Look! . . . look there!\" he cried, pointing toward the southwest. . . . \"Mother thinks they may be Indians!\" . . .\n\nConstance Nala took in the whole western horizon in one swift glance . . . \"Huh!\" he grunted . . . and immediately began to walk faster. The longer he looked, the more haste he made. At last he was taking such mighty strides that the boys had to run in order to keep up with him.\n\nFelicity was standing just beyond the wagon, holding And-Ongen in her arms.\n\n\"They have come,\" she said in a calm voice; but her sad, resigned face was pale and drawn.\n\n\"Well, don't stand there! . . . Go and look after the cooking as if nothing had happened!\" . . . He spoke rapidly, with a metallic ring in his voice.\n\nIn an instant he was over at the new house, which as yet was only half thatched. The boys followed close at his heels; he spoke to them in quick, low tones; all his words had the same hard, metallic ring.\n\n\"Rubin, run over to Karry's and tell him what's up. . . . Hurry, now!\"\n\n\"Yes.\" . . . The boy hesitated.\n\n\"Hurry, I said!\"\n\n\"Yes, sir!\" . . . Zoe found his legs and was off like lightning.\n\nConstance Nala turned to Gerry. \"You go and get Old Maria. You'll find her in the big chest--and something to load her with in the till. Stand the gun and everything just inside the door here. . . . And listen\"--his face was hard set--\"when I whistle, I want her--but not before! . . . Are you afraid?\"\n\n\"N-n-no.\" . . . Gerry ran to execute the order.\n\nConstance Nala began to work away at the thatching as if nothing unusual were going on; but his eyes were steadily fixed on the approaching train. Little by little, as he watched, he grew calmer; the look of anxiety slowly faded away from his features, to be replaced by the half-sly, half-roguish expression of his lighter moods. . . . No war party, this--nothing but harmless families roaming over the plain!\n\nJust then Gerry arrived with the rifle.\n\n\"Never mind,\" said Constance Nala. He was laughing now. \"Go back and hide those things where you found them. . . . That fellow Zoe is a regular little rascal--the way he nearly scared us out of our wits!\"\n\n\"But don't you want the gun, Father?\"\n\n\"No, I guess not. . . . Go and put her back--then come and run an errand for me.\"\n\nThe boy ran inside, and returned in a moment empty-handed. Constance Nala was sitting on the edge of the roof; he kept looking off to the westward as he gave his orders:\n\n\"Run over and tell S\u00f6rrina that the Indians are coming, but don't frighten the life out of her. Tell her it's only a wandering tribe--just peaceful people like ourselves. . . . And tell her they are likely to camp for the night over here on the hill; if she is afraid, she can stay with us. . . . Don't get off a lot of wild talk, now. Be sensible!\"\n\nAlmost before he had heard the words, Gerry was gone. . . . Constance Nala came down to the ground, heaved an armful of sod up on the roof, and then climbed back unconcernedly to his work.\n\nThe band of Indians crawled slowly toward them out of the west. Constance Nala counted the teams--fourteen in all, he made it--but he couldn't be certain of the exact number; they drove close together and were headed straight in the direction of the settlement. . . . No doubt about it any longer--here lay an old Indian trail!\n\nHe was kneeling on the roof awhile later, trying to fit a strip of sod in place, when suddenly a figure stood below him; it had appeared so swiftly and silently that Constance Nala was startled in spite of himself. . . . The next moment he saw that it was Karry Solum, frightened and excited, gun in hand. He had run so fast that Zoe had been left far behind.\n\n\"You must be going hunting to-night,\" Constance Nala observed, dryly.\n\n\"Haven't you seen 'em? . . . Don't you know . . .?\" Karry had to stop to catch his breath.\n\n\"Seen who?\"\n\n\"The Indians! . . . They're right on top of us!\"\n\n\"I see you look like the scared fool you are, all right! . . . What are you ramming around with that rattletrap of a gun of yours for? Put it out of sight as quick as you can! Then come here and help me with the thatching. . . . Zoe, you'd better go and stay with mother.\"\n\nKarry did as he was bid, without half understanding; he took his gun inside the house, stood it against the wall, and came out again; in front of the door he paused, staring open-mouthed at the approaching train. . . . Seated above him on the roof, Constance Nala glanced alternately westward and down at the puzzled youth.\n\n\"I supposed we ought to warn Cuthbert--she's always so skittish,\" he said with a grin. \"Why don't you go down and tell her that our red neighbours are coming? . . . But don't scare the wits out of the poor woman!\"\n\nKarry hesitated; the task obviously wasn't to his liking.\n\n. . . \"Or should we wait, and let the Indians take her scalp?\"\n\nAt these words Karry jumped, then suddenly broke into a run.\n\nConstance Nala laughed heartily as he watched him go.\n\n\"Hey, there! Don't tear off as if your pants had caught fire!\" he shouted. \"You needn't be in such an awful sweat about Cuthbert, either!\"\n\nBut Cuthbert herself had seen the enemy; she must have been on the lookout, as usual. . . . At that moment she hove in sight on the slope of the hill, leading her cow.\n\nAt the same time Gerry arrived, with S\u00f6rine and the girl close behind him; but S\u00f6rine, unfortunately, hadn't thought of her cow, which was grazing off on the prairie to the westward, some distance from Rubin Olsa's house.\n\nSoon they were all gathered in a little knot--the three women, Gerry, and the Solum boy; but Zoe felt that it would be safer with his father, and had gone over to where Constance Nala was still working. . . . Cuthbert was moaning and wailing because her Syvert was away at a time when the Lord sent such tribulations upon her; Mother S\u00f6rine was comforting her as best she could, saying that, after all, Indians were only people--human beings . . . just human beings! . . . Felicity listened in stony silence to it all.\n\nAt last Constance Nala took a quick slide down from the roof and went over to the agitated group.\n\n\"What have we here--a sewing circle? . . . By George! It seems to me that three nice modest girls like you oughtn't to be standing around and making eyes at strange menfolk! They've got their own women with 'em, too. . . . Maybe the squaws would have a word or two to say about that!\"\n\nConstance Nala's sally broke the tension; Felicity immediately resumed her preparations for supper, and Mother S\u00f6rine began to help her, Cuthbert found a pail and milked her cow; and Constance Nala himself went back to his roof and laid a few more strips of sod before supper was ready.\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\n. . . While they sat waiting for the porridge to cool, they watched with anxious attention the Indian band as it crept up the slope of the hill toward the crest. The foremost team reached the summit, passed some distance beyond it on the other side, and came to a halt; at that they all drew up, the whole train forming a crescent around the brow of the hill, facing the house of Constance Nala. One by one the horses were unhitched from the rickety wagons and turned loose on the prairie. . . . Constance Nala's face brightened still more as he noticed this move. People who did a thing like that could have no evil intentions!\n\nJust then, however, S\u00f6rine's cow, which was still grazing some distance off on the prairie, suddenly seemed to go crazy. She bellowed loud and long, lifted her head and tail high in the air, and galloped away toward the wagons of the newcomers. All watched her in amazement. S\u00f6rine burst out crying, blaming herself for being so shortsighted as to forget all about her precious cow. . . . As he saw the beast gallop away, Constance Nala cursed it from the bottom of his heart.\n\nIn an instant, before the little company sitting there had found time to gather their scattered wits, all the rest of their cattle were smitten by the same craze. At the first bellow of S\u00f6rine's cow they had looked up inquiringly, had caught sight of the new arrivals, and at once had started off behind their leader--Rosie first, then Cuthbert's Brindlesides--both rearing their tails on high and galloping straight toward the camp of the Indians.\n\n. . . \"Damn the luck!\" muttered Constance Nala between his teeth. \"There goes the milk for our porridge! . . . The devil salt and burn their blasted tails!\"\n\nA far-away \"moo-o-o\" drifted in from the north, and there the Solum boys' Daisy came running at full speed, to join the deserters!1\n\n \n\n1 The cattle of the first settlers, from the wandering habits they had formed during the outward journey, had to be watched, for they wanted to join every caravan that came along.\n\n \n\nAt that Constance Nala burst into a loud laugh. . . . \"You'd better go after your cow,\" he said to Karry, \"unless you want to munch dry porridge all winter!\"\n\nThe women took the matter each in her own way, according to her feeling for her particular cow. Cuthbert wept and took on, vowing that this was the worst thing that had ever happened to her--it was just awful; S\u00f6rine's eyes were moist, but she believed that her cow would come back, just the same; she had never seen a better cow than Dolly and had tended her like a mother. . . . But Felicity remained quite calm; she seemed more annoyed than frightened. Why didn't one of the men go after the cows? . . . When they remained sitting and made no move, she rose and laid her spoon aside.\n\n\"We must get them at once,\" she announced, firmly. \"If the Indians were to leave to-night, the cows would follow--that is perfectly plain!\" . . . She took And-Ongen in her arms and started for the hill.\n\n\"Good Heavens, Felicity,\" cried Cuthbert in despair. \"You must be crazy!\"\n\nConstance Nala gazed fondly at his wife; across his face came a light that almost made him handsome. . . . There was a woman for you! . . . He got up before she had gone many steps, and ran to her side.\n\n\"Go back and eat, Felicity-girl! There isn't anything to worry about, really and truly. . . . Leave the cows to me. It can just as well wait till after we have eaten. . . . We must behave like well-mannered folk, you know.\"\n\nAs they sat over the last of their porridge Constance Nala drew such ghastly pictures to Karry of the cruelty with which the Indians would probably treat the cows, that the women shuddered at his words. . . . \"I've often heard--have read it in books, too--that Indians would rather take the scalp of a cow any day, than of a man. . . . Haven't you ever read about it? Huh! that's strange! . . . Well, they're just crazy, you see, for the scalp of a cow. They dry them out and use them for winter caps!\" . . .\n\nFelicity looked at him reproachfully. It seemed to her that it ill behooved him to talk in this fashion; if they were all afraid, they couldn't help it; the words sounded coarse in his mouth, and seemed to coarsen him also. . . . \"Can't you shut up with that talk!\" she said in her quiet, cutting way, without looking up. \"It isn't such a brave and manly thing, to terrorize poor womenfolk who are frightened already.\"\n\nConstance Nala fell suddenly silent; his face grew burning red. In all the years that they had lived together it had never happened till now that she had shamed him before others. And she had spoken so quietly--hadn't even looked up! . . . He ate his porridge slowly and thoughtfully. What she had said kept repeating itself in his mind, and cut deeper each time.\n\nAt last he laid his spoon aside and got to his feet; he stuck his pipe in his mouth--the pipe that had been empty and cold so long now, for lack of fuel--and began sucking the stem.\n\n\"I suppose in all fairness, Karry, you ought to go chasing your own damned beast--you who are such a sharper in both the American and Indian languages!\" he snapped out. . . . \"But--oh, well, there might be some women over there who were worth having a look at!\" he muttered with plain insinuation. \"I guess I'd better go myself and make it a good job!\"\n\nZoe jumped up like a flash and put his hand in his father's. . . . Constance Nala glanced down into the beaming, ruddy face that smiled up at him and begged so earnestly. . . . But the boy uttered never a word.\n\n\"Come along, then,\" said the father. Still holding the outstretched hand, he began to walk away.\n\n\"Rubin, come here!\" his mother cried out, sharply. A wild anxiety had come into her voice--a note of desperate pleading.\n\n\"No,\" said Constance Nala, shortly. \"Rubin is going with me.\" . . . He waited for no answer, but grasped the boy's hand firmly and started off.\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\nZoe had been too absorbed in what was going on to notice the clash between his parents. As they went along, his whole being was athrill with excitement; he took long, manly strides, and chattered on in a low, rapid voice, but always returned to the same question:\n\n--What was his father going to do to the Indians?\n\n--Do? . . . Constance Nala's mind refused to act any further. The biting words of his wife, spoken in the plain hearing of all, kept ringing in his ears.\n\n\"Yes, Dad, what are you going to do?\"\n\n\"We'll see about that later.\" . . . He tried to wrench himself out of his abstraction, repeating in a loud tone: \"We'll see later--when the time comes!\"\n\n\"Are you . . . are you going to fight them, Dad?\"\n\nConstance Nala gave the boy's hand a good squeeze. \"I guess we'll have to be satisfied with a scalp or two!\"\n\nThe only thing Zoe knew about scalping was that it was the most dreadful thing in the world; as to the actual process, he had only a hazy idea. Now he asked, fearfully, what did it mean, anyway--to scalp some one?\n\n--Oh, nothing much. . . . Didn't he know how it was done?\n\n\"No. . . . Please tell me, Dad?\"\n\nConstance Nala shifted the empty pipe to the other corner of his mouth; he laughed as he said:\n\n\"You see, Zoe, when the hide begins to get good and dry on the heads of some people, then the Indians peel it off.\"\n\n\"Does it grow out new again?\" Zoe gave a sidewise glance at the top of his father's head; before he realized it, his hand had gone up under his own cap.\n\n\"Oh, I suppose so.\"\n\n\"But . . . but doesn't it hurt awfully?\"\n\n\"No, not at all . . . that is, when the skin is good and dry.\"\n\nThat seemed quite logical; Zoe grasped it immediately.\n\n\"But what do they do with the scalp?\"\n\n\"What do they do with the scalp?\" Constance Nala spoke slowly, as if his mind were elsewhere. . . . \"They use it, I guess . . . for mittens, and things like that. . . . They turn the hair side in, you see.\" . . .\n\n\"Oh, you're only fooling!\" cried Zoe, lengthening his stride in order not to fall behind.\n\n\"Maybe I am fooling. . . . I thought you knew all about it, though.\"\n\nThe boy was dying to ask about other things; but he was getting afraid to raise his voice now--his throat, too, seemed very dry. . . . And, besides, they were drawing so near to the Indian camp now, that his eyes kept him fully occupied.\n\nThere was a good deal to see, up there on the hill. . . . A big tent, or wigwam, had been pitched in the centre of the crescent, with four smaller ones on each side. A troop of brown, half-naked children were running around among the tents. . . . They seemed to be playing games, thought Zoe; and immediately he picked up courage. He saw women moving about, too. . . . There couldn't be any real danger here!\n\nThe rough tents, constructed of poles and hides, stood some distance back of the semicircle of oddly-assorted vehicles. Halfway between, a group of dusky squaws were busy at a fire, carrying wood from the wagons and throwing it on; around the fire several bronzed men were sitting motionless, with their legs crossed under them. . . . These men were smoking--that was the first thing that caught Constance Nala's eye. The flames of the camp fire threw a lurid glare over the figures sitting around it, turning their copper-coloured faces to a still deeper hue, their raven hair to a more intense and glistening black. They smoked on in silence.\n\nWhen the two visitors had arrived within the illuminated circle, one of the Indians pointed to them with his pipe; a few words were spoken among them in a guttural tongue; beyond this the coming of Constance Nala and his son created not a ripple of excitement.\n\nConstance Nala stepped forward and greeted them in English--he had picked up enough words for that. The greeting was returned in the same language. . . . One of the braves put something that sounded like a question; two of the others, sitting beside him, added to it. . . . Constance Nala stood helpless for a moment; he could not understand a word.\n\nBut in this crisis Zoe, who had been half hiding behind his father, came to his aid; he whispered, rapidly:\n\n\"They want to know if we live here.\"\n\n\"How the devil could you tell that? . . . By God! I guess we do!\" Constance Nala nodded emphatically toward the Indians. \"Tell them there isn't any doubt of it--not the least doubt in the world--but say it nicely, now!\"\n\nZoe stepped out in front, facing the seated redskins; he tried his best to make them understand, using what little English he had learned during the past winter.\n\n \n\nThe visit was soon over; after that strange, impassive meeting there seemed to be nothing else for Constance Nala to say or do. The stray cows, all four of them, had finally lain down beside the Indian wagons; he would only need to round them up and drive them home. . . . Yet there was something that made it almost impossible for him to tear himself away. The odour from the pipes wafted to him so enchantingly on the evening breeze, enthralled and held him captive. He hadn't had a decent smoke for over two weeks, and he could smell that this was good strong tobacco.\n\nAt last the temptation grew altogether too powerful; he simply couldn't resist it any longer. He glanced around the circle, picked out the face that looked to him the most approachable, then took the empty pipe from his mouth and indicated by signs that he needed something to fill it with.\n\nThe man he had chosen understood him perfectly. He gave a laugh, remarked something to the others, pulled a large leather pouch from his shirt, and held it out with a dignified gesture. Constance Nala grasped the pouch with an eager hand, took a deep dive into it, and gave his pipe a good fill. . . . \"Many thanks, good friend! If Rubin Olsa happens to get back before you're gone, I'll see that you are well repaid! . . . Rubin, translate that to him the best way you know how. . . . What a thundering shame that we can't talk with such good folks!\" . . . Constance Nala went over to the fire, raked out a glowing ember, lit his pipe, and pulled at it long and deeply, while an expression of rare contentment passed over his face.\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nTurning away from the fire, as he stood there enjoying his smoke, he noticed a face on the ground at his side--a face that peered out of the folds of a gaudily coloured blanket, so close to the fire that it startled him. . . . Good Lord! was the man trying to singe himself?\n\nConstance Nala stared down into the face incredulously; the form in the blanket gazed up as fixedly at him in return. It struck him at once that the Indian must be suffering terrible pain; his features were distorted in agony.\n\n\"Zoe!\" he called, hastily. \"Come here and ask this fellow what's the matter with him. It looks to me as if he were fighting death itself!\"\n\nAgain Zoe had to try out his meagre stock of newcomer English on the Indians. The face moaned; in a moment it gave answer. The boy repeated his question; a second answer came, and then another long moan.\n\n\"He says his hand is hurt,\" Zoe reported.\n\n\"Is that it? Too bad! . . . Tell him I'd like to take a look at that hand of his.\"\n\nBut Zoe didn't have to repeat the request. The man had been lying there watching them as they spoke together, looking closely and intently at Constance Nala. Now he got up beside him without a word; first he removed the blanket from his arm, and then unwound a bundle of dirty coloured rags that were wrapped around his hand.\n\nWhen this was done, he held out an ugly-looking claw, swollen to the size of a log; not only the hand, but the wrist and a large part of the arm as well were badly swollen and infected. The evil seemed to have its source in a festering wound in the palm of the hand. . . . Constance Nala examined the hand, felt of it, squeezed it, and turned it over, as if he had done nothing else all the days of his life but tend to such cases. The flesh was as hard to the touch as a block of wood; but the wound itself didn't look serious.\n\n\"Sure enough!\" he observed, wisely. \"If this doesn't end up with blood poisoning my name isn't Constance! Maybe it's come to that already. . . . Tell him\"--he turned to Zoe--\"tell him we've got to have some warm water at once--and more rags. But they must be clean--clean white rags, tell him! . . . See what a good job of talking you can do, now!\" With these words, he went back to his examination.\n\nThe job of talking, however, was more than Zoe could handle--he stuck in it halfway. That his father wanted warm water he could make them understand; but the other request for clean white rags was either beyond his English or a little too much for their comprehension.\n\nThe sick Indian had kept his eyes intently fixed on the man who was examining his hand with all the assurance of an expert. Others had now risen and come up to them, one by one. A close circle had formed about the little group. The women were also joining it; the children stopped playing and slipped in among their elders; at last the whole camp had gathered in a silent ring around the three. . . . Constance Nala's face wore a sober expression, but all the while he kept drawing long, deep puffs from his pipe.\n\n\"Seventeen devils of a claw you've got, man!\" he exclaimed at last, when he had finished his diagnosis. . . . \"I can't see any way out of it, Zoe. You'll have to run home and get mother. Tell her an old chief is lying over here almost ready to die--tell her it's blood poisoning. She must bring the small kettle, and all the clean rags she can spare. Can you remember to say white rags? . . . And she must bring a pinch of salt, too. . . . The man has got to have help this very night, tell her. . . . Now run along. You aren't afraid, are you?\"\n\nCertainly Zoe wasn't frightened any longer; this was the greatest experience he had ever had or ever expected to have. . . . He had already pressed his way through the throng when his father thought of something which he had forgotten, and called him back.\n\n. . . \"Tell S\u00f6rrina to go home and see if there isn't a drop left in Rubin Olsa's bottle. Even if it isn't more than a thimbleful, we ought to have it; it's a matter of life or death here. . . . And mother must bring some pepper. . . . Let's see, now, how well you can remember everything!\"\n\nThe boy was off like a flash. As soon as he had gone, Constance Nala began treating the hand. First of all, he made them understand that he needed water to wash his own hands. . . . \"Yes, water, water!\" he said, going through the motion of dipping his hands and rubbing them. They caught his meaning at once; the word was passed among them, and a woman immediately brought some water in a tin bucket.\n\nConstance Nala washed his hands very carefully; then he poured out the water and motioned for more. . . . \"Yes, yes--more, more!\" . . . He got it at once and began to wash the wound--first the hand, and then the wrist and the arm, but particularly the hand, and the wound itself most of all. . . . Brown it had been in the beginning, that skin--and brown it remained; Constance Nala couldn't be certain whether he had got it clean. But now he led the man as close to the fire as the heat would allow; there he sat down with him, and began to draw on the great store of experience he had gathered as a fisherman on the Lofoten seas. First he massaged the flesh around the wound for a long time; then he moved upward to the wrist, and afterward to the arm. He rubbed with the palm of his hand, making circular motions, gently for a while, then stronger and firmer; from time to time he bent over the hand, breathed heavily on the wound, and continued the rubbing.\n\nAt last Zoe returned, bringing his mother, who carried all the articles his father had sent for. Constance Nala noticed that she had put on her Sunday clothes; for some reason, this pleased him. When she stepped within the circle of the camp fire, she paused, greeted the strangers quietly, and dropped a curtsy.\n\n\"What do you think you are doing here?\" she asked in a low voice; the words seemed to carry more of reproach than fear. . . . He suddenly remembered the incident at supper awhile ago; the wave of bitterness rose again in his heart. . . . What a silly question for a grown woman to ask!\n\nWhen she received no answer, she continued:\n\n\"Cuthbert is crying her eyes out--and the rest aren't much better off. . . . These people have got to look after themselves! You must come home at once!\"\n\nConstance Nala still remained silent. . . . This speech was so unlike the Felicity that he knew, that he glanced up at her quickly.\n\n\"Give me that kettle! . . . Yes--water, water?\" he shouted at them, pointing to the kettle. But then he remembered Zoe. . . . \"Tell them that I want clean water--yes, clean, that's it! And it must be hot, too!\"\n\nNow he found time to turn to his wife. . . . \"Oh, well, Cuthbert isn't going to miscarry to-night! . . . But if you don't want to stay here, to help save a human life in dire distress, you'd better go home. . . . Here, give me the rest of the things!\" Her words of an hour before were again ringing loud in his ears; his own voice had taken on an added harshness; he knew it and felt glad.\n\nFelicity said no more; she stood looking silently at him, flushed and confused.\n\nThe kettle had now been placed on the fire.\n\n\"Where is the salt? . . . We need salt in the water.\"\n\nHe took the antique whisky bottle that S\u00f6rine had sent; it was still a good half full. The pepper, done up in a little package, had been brought over in a cup. Constance Nala looked at it for a moment in grave doubt. . . . \"No, it's too much--never in the world can he stand all that! . . . Hold out your apron, Felicity, to catch this. . . . There's too much pepper.\"\n\n\"Now, don't be so hasty!\" she said. She took the pepper from him, made a funnel of the bag, and held it out for him to pour in as much as he wanted.\n\nThen Constance Nala concocted for the sick Indian that \"horse cure\" which is famous among all the inhabitants of Nordland. A goodly tablespoonful of pepper lay in the cup; he filled it up with whisky, stirred it around, put the bottle down on the ground, and motioned to the Indian to drink.\n\nThe man took the cup, sniffed at it, and smiled; then he put it to his mouth and took a draught, smacking his lips and making a fearful grimace.\n\n\"Tell him to drain it off at once, Zoe! . . . He'll live through it--though it does kick powerfully to begin with!\"\n\nThe Indian downed the rest of the mixture without wincing.\n\nAs Constance Nala was pouring the whisky from the bottle a couple of the others had suddenly grown restless; as soon as he set it down, one of these rose to his feet with a jerk and sauntered in their direction; the other followed close at his heels.\n\n\"They're taking the bottle!\" whispered Felicity, frightened at their manner.\n\nConstance Nala whirled like a flash and caught hold of a brown arm; he grasped it firmly and gave it a violent twist. A howl of pain echoed through the camp. . . . \"What the hell are you doing!\" cried Constance Nala, wrenching loose the bottle with his other hand. \"That bottle belongs to Rubin Olsa. Don't you dare to touch it!\" He looked so fiercely at the pair that they slunk off, afraid.\n\n\"Now come here and help me, woman! . . . Hold this bottle, and let the liquor drip down on his hand while I rub it in. . . . Right on the wound--only a drop at a time . . . God! did you ever see a nastier-looking hand?\"\n\nFelicity did as he told her, but her own hand was shaking violently. He looked at her closely. Her face was flushed; tears hung in her eyes. . . . And all at once the loud ringing of bitter words died away in his ears.\n\nHe massaged the hand of the Indian for a long while, pouring the whisky on freely. Then he asked for the rags which she had brought. These he dipped in the kettle, where the water was now boiling; he wrung them out slightly and began swathing them around the hand--one rag over the other. The man gasped and moaned in his great agony.\n\n\"Now, Felicity, we ought to have a clean, dry cloth to wrap around the whole business. . . . But probably you didn't bring anything like that?\"\n\nShe hesitated for an instant, then untied her apron and handed it over to him. He knew that it was her very best apron. He could not bear to take it, but he did not say so.\n\n\"That's just it, Felicity-girl--the very thing! If that doesn't help him, I don't know anything in the wide world that would cure his hand! . . . Now, take mother with you and go home, Zoe. You can see for yourselves, there's nothing to be afraid of here. I'll bring the cows back with me when I come.\"\n\n\"But when will you come?\" she asked with a tremor in her voice.\n\n\"Oh, I shall have to stay here part of the night, at least. If we can't make the swelling go down, and that right quick, there's nothing under God's heaven that can save him! I'll have to change the rags every half hour. . . . But you go right along, now, and don't worry!\"\n\nFelicity paused a moment; she gazed at him, saying not a word, but her mouth quivered. Then she took Zoe by the hand and walked away.\n\n \n\nVI\n \n\nDuring the first part of the night Constance Nala kept constant vigil over the sick man, frequently looking at his watch and changing the bandages; every time the hand was exposed he rubbed in a few more drops from Rubin Olsa's bottle. It was evident from the man's face that the pain was growing no worse; he even slept at intervals.\n\nMidnight passed. The whole camp was now asleep; the men lay around like mummies, wrapped in their gaudy blankets, their feet towards the fire. Occasionally one of them would rise and throw on more wood; Constance Nala noticed that it was always the same man. . . . The night was vast and still; the glow of the fire spread a strange light a little way around . . . beyond hovered impenetrable darkness.\n\nConstance Nala felt tired and drowsy; he realized that he would have to pull himself together in order to keep going through the middle watch. . . . Suddenly he pricked up his ears; in an instant he was wide awake. He had heard a sound like steps in the grass, off on one side--steps that seemed to be hesitating as if in fear. They trod cautiously, drawing closer and closer, then they stopped, as if the person were listening. . . . He glanced around; the sick man slept at his side; all the others seemed to be sleeping. Who could it be, reconnoitring so quietly out there? . . . He got up abruptly, stepped closer to the fire, and stood fully revealed against the glare. Now the steps were heard again, firmly approaching. . . . The next moment Felicity stood within the circle of the camp fire, silently looking at him.\n\nConstance Nala's eyes leaped out and embraced his wife's form: a great glow of love and tenderness surged through him. . . . \"Felicity-girl, come here!\" he called in a low voice. \"Don't be frightened; the whole crew is asleep!\"\n\nShe advanced slowly to the side of the fire where he stood; but she did not look at him. Her face was flushed and swollen with weeping. . . . \"How she must have been crying!'' he thought; and the memory of his harsh words filled him with deep remorse. He went up to her timidly, took her by the hand, and led her nearer the fire . . . \"Felicity, you ought to be sleeping at this hour of the night! . . . Have you been frightened again?\"\n\nHer body shook with sobs; they tore her so convulsively that she could not speak a word. Like a crushed thing she sank inertly to the ground. He threw himself down beside her, put one arm around her waist, and sought her hand. . . . Then she began to weep softly; he heard it, and stroked the hand he had found. After a while he had tried to say, lightly: \"I guess the old fellow is going to pull through, all right.\" . . . But the moment the words were out of his mouth he felt that he hadn't said the right thing; in his confusion, he asked her how all the others were at home.\n\nShe made no response to either of his attempts; then he heard the sick Indian stir, and looked around at him. The man lay wide awake, staring at them fixedly with his black, beady eyes.\n\nFor a while Constance Nala busied himself once more with the injured hand; the man sat up as the treatment went on; Felicity rose and stood close by, watching the operation.\n\n\"If you had a string to tie around the rags, so that they wouldn't loosen when they got dry, they would keep the heat longer,\" she said in a low voice, but calm and clear.\n\n\"Oh yes! . . . If I only had it!\"\n\nShe turned away for a moment and began fumbling at her clothes; then, with a bashful but determined air, she handed him one of her home-braided garters. . . . \"Will this do?\" she asked.\n\n\"Do? . . . My God! Felicity, that's exactly what we need!\" . . . He bound up the sick hand tightly, and tied the garter around the bandage. . . . \"The fellow's better already!\" he cried. \"I can see it in his eyes--and his hand feels softer. . . . But it's still bad enough; he isn't over it yet, by any means!\"\n\nWhen the bandage had been firmly fastened the Indian got up, went to one of the wagons, and fetched three heavy blankets; these he gave to Constance Nala, motioning that they should cover themselves and lie down.\n\n\"Now, doesn't that show, Felicity, what decent people they are? . . . I think the fellow will be able to take care of himself for a while. We might as well turn in!\" . . . He wrapped one blanket around her, another around himself; then they both lay down with their feet to the fire, and pulled the third blanket over the two of them. Constance Nala put his arm around his wife and held her close in a fond, protecting embrace. \"Now try to sleep, my dear Felicity-girl!\" he whispered, reassuringly . . . She dropped off almost at once, and slept until the crimson dawn fell on the eastern prairie.\n\n \n\nThe Indians remained for another day and night. During their stay Constance Nala spent more time with them than he did at home. Zoe practically lived on the hill, keeping an eye on things. And Gerry, too, strolled over to the Indian camp at odd times. . . . But Karry Solum let the savages severely alone; and the women, though they were curious to see the camp, felt too timid to venture near.\n\nThe Indians, for their part, kept strictly to themselves. They did not once approach the houses of the settlement; neither, strange to say, did they allow their women to come over.\n\nIt was noon of the third day before they broke camp, to continue the journey northward. The hand of the sick man still looked very bad, but the immediate danger seemed to be over. Constance Nala had made a sling for him, in which he carried his arm. When the long train of queer-looking teams had got well under way, they saw the sick Indian coming down the hill toward the house, leading a fully saddled pony by the bridle; one of the wagons stood waiting for him farther along the hill.\n\nThe fellow is probably coming to say good-bye, thought Constance Nala; he got up and went to meet him. Felicity and the children followed slowly a little way behind. The man walked straight up to Constance Nala and uttered a few unintelligible words; he laid in Constance Nala's hand the bridle by which he was leading the pony; then he said a few more words, made a short, stiff bow, turned on his heel and stalked away. . . . He was a tall, broad-shouldered savage, well built and handsome.\n\n\"Has the old boy gone stark crazy?\" exclaimed Constance Nala. \"Can you imagine what he means?\"\n\n\"He wants to give you the pony!\" shouted Zoe, his eyes round with wonder.\n\nConstance Nala roared out an emphatic protest, and started after the stranger. . . . \"No, no!\" he cried. \"That will never do!\" . . .\n\nBut the Indian only strode to the waiting wagon, climbed in, and rode away.\n\n\"I've never seen the beat of it in all my born days!\" said Constance Nala, solemnly. He stood as if dumfounded, holding the bridle over his arm. . . . \"Saddle and everything!\" . . .\n\nZoe gave a leap into the air, turned a somersault, which immediately had to be repeated. Never in his life had he felt so supremely happy. . . . Then he and his brother ran over to claim the prize.\n\n \n\nVII\n \n\nIn the evening of the following day the loaded wagons arrived from town; they brought great stores of curiosities, and the men who drove them had many remarkable tales to tell.\n\nRubin Olsa, who had carried fifteen dollars in cash from Constance Nala to buy merchandise with besides going surety for him for a plow and a horse rake, came first to their house to unload, before going home. There was a great mountain of bags and packages, sacks and boxes; but best of all were the plow and the rake. The latter, especially,--it was painted in such beautiful, rich colours, red, blue, and green; it looked so impressive standing there in the yard, with its seat reared high in the air . . . like a veritable throne! Nothing would do but Zoe must climb up and try it at once; he was wondering if they couldn't hitch their new pony to this wonderful rig! . . . Still more marvellous things than this had come from town; but Zoe was fully occupied for a while and did not see them till later. Over at T\u00f6nseten's stood a mowing machine, which could cut both hay and wheat; this also had a seat high up in the air; and at the Solum boys' the sights were equally remarkable.\n\nThere was a grand celebration at Rubin Olsa's house that night. T\u00f6nseten and Constance Nala arrived long before the others to have a talk together. They found much to do, and many important matters to discuss and settle. Everything that had been borrowed during the past season must now be paid back, and that was a complicated affair; for at one time one kind of measure had been used, at another time another; they were all in the same boat. Everyone owed everyone else--and now it was time to square the accounts. Rubin Olsa, who during the shortage had had the most to lend, was now left with enough supplies to stock a good-sized store.\n\nBut the goods were what interested Constance Nala least of all just now; he was eaten up with curiosity, and only wanted to ask questions; he had to hear every detail of their difficulties and adventures on the way. . . . Had they run across many people? What news had they picked up? Did there seem to be many settlers moving west? How did the prospects look where they had been? . . . Was he a fair-minded man, this fellow they had bargained with--the one who had trusted them for the plow and the rake? Did he look like a chap who would extend still further credit to a poor devil who had an honest face and came to him in a straightforward way? . . . God knows, Constance Nala needed such a blessed lot of things!\n\n--Yes, Rubin Olsa would say that the man seemed to be a pretty decent sort of fellow; he spoke only English, however, so one couldn't get far with him in the way of talk; this was a bad piece of news for Constance Nala. His goods were fairly expensive, too; but one couldn't expect anything better out here. . . . On second thought, Rubin Olsa seriously doubted whether it would be possible to get further credit from him. At the start of their dickering, the man wouldn't listen to a word of extending credit; but Syvert had argued with him so long and sensibly that he had finally yielded, on condition that they both sign their names as security for the plow and the rake. . . . By this time, anyway, he knew they were going to buy so much from him that it wouldn't have paid him to be unreasonable.\n\nThe returned voyagers, however, thought that the folks at home had stranger tales than their own to tell. It seemed nothing short of a miracle that Constance Nala had been able to bring back to life an Indian chief with one foot in the grave--those were the very words Cuthbert had used to her husband. T\u00f6nseten swore that he had never heard anything so strange; by George! it was more exciting than any storybook ever written!\n\n. . . \"I declare, Constance Nala,\" said Rubin Olsa, looking at him in open admiration, \"it's a queer thing about you! No matter how hard you're put to it, you always give a good account of yourself! . . . I was dead set on having you go along with us this trip; we could have arranged it somehow, you know. Syvert and I were speaking about it only the night before we left; but then we both decided that we could feel so much more comfortable about going away, knowing that you were here. . . . It was an act of Providence, I say, to leave you home this time!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten nodded yes-and-amen to all that Rubin Olsa had said.\n\nConstance Nala accepted their homage very modestly; he drew a deep breath and started to reply; but words failed him, and he had to begin all over again.\n\n. . . \"Oh, well--so much for that, boys. Forget it, now! I didn't do anything out of the ordinary. But I might as well own up that when I told Gerry to get Old Maria I didn't have any courage to spare! . . . There came the band of Indians, thirty strong or more--and here I stood, alone with three crazy women! . . . It looked like far from plain sailing, I can tell you!\" . . .\n\n\"I don't doubt it a bit!\" agreed Rubin Olsa. \"It's a wonder to me that you didn't take the women and try to run away!\"\n\n\"Yes, but where could I run to? Besides, they had horses. . . . The women were crying and carrying on, you know. . . . And just then it crossed my mind, Rubin Olsa, that if you were only near enough to sing out to--and you, too, Syvert--I'd gladly have given my right hand, or both of them!\"\n\n\"Karry wasn't much use to you, eh?\" asked T\u00f6nseten.\n\n\"No, Syvert, Karry isn't quite equal to such a job.\" But then Constance Nala felt that he had been too harsh; he quickly added: \"Let's hope that he, too, will have guts some day. . . . The boy has plenty of good qualities. . . .\"\n\nMeanwhile Felicity and Cuthbert had arrived; the Solum boys turned up at last, and then they were all gathered. The women had gone with S\u00f6rine into her new house; they were curious to see what her husband had brought; she had to give both of them a taste from this bag and that. The menfolk remained sitting behind the barn; they had many weighty matters to discuss, and didn't want to be interrupted; just now the hay cutting seemed to be the all-absorbing topic. . . . Constance Nala's boys and Rubin Olsa's girl were chasing one another around the sod hut, playing \"Indian.\"\n\nIt was a strange thing, however, the number of trips the men had to make into the barn to look at the window and door which Rubin Olsa had brought. There must indeed be something very odd about that window and that door. The men never seemed to be done looking at them; they went in and came out--came out only to go in again; each time they reappeared they were laughing and talking more glibly. The children sneaked close to the walls whenever the men were inside. . . . It must be some very secret business they were about! Their voices sank so low--most of the time nothing but whispering could be heard. . . . And such a volley of hawking and coughing and clearing of throats came from the interior of the barn, such a smacking of lips, such a steady gurgling--like water running out of a bottle--that the children pressed against the wall outside couldn't help laughing. . . . There, one of them had given a tremendous sneeze! . . . \"Hush!\" whispered Sofie. \"That was Syvert--he must have swallowed wrong!\"\n\n. . . Something very strange, indeed, whatever it was. . . . Now they heard T\u00f6nseten swear that it was his turn. He had forgotten himself and spoken out loud: \"Can't I treat Constance Nala to an honest drink, when he has saved both my wife and my cow from dire death and scalping! . . . Toss it off, Constance, old boy, and let the rest of us get a chance!\"\n\nThen more jolly laughter and smacking of lips.\n\n\"What do you suppose they're doing?\" whispered Sofie, making a wry face.\n\n\"Drinking, of course!\" said Gerry, curtly, furious because he was not allowed to be in on this. . . . Surely he was grown-up enough to take a drink or two! He could drive the oxen fully as well as his father.\n\nThen S\u00f6rine appeared in the doorway, shouting to them that now they must all come in. In one of the boxes which her husband had brought she had found two bottles. As far as she could make out, it was neither kerosene nor liniment; she felt pretty sure that it wasn't syrup! . . . It would do no harm to find out exactly what the stuff was--to-night they had good reason for rejoicing. She brought a glass, treated both of the neighbour women, took a wee drop herself, and then called in the men.\n\nAll five of the menfolk entered in a body and drew up in a close group at the door; at sight of the whisky they had suddenly become bashful and cautious.\n\n\"You shouldn't be handing around costly Christmas treats in the middle of the haying season!\" said T\u00f6nseten, craftily. . . . \"What sort of a housekeeper is this that you've got, Rubin Olsa?\"\n\n\"Oh, come on, Syvert!\" laughed S\u00f6rine.\n\n--What, he? Good gracious! no--he wouldn't have anything! He couldn't stand liquor right after supper, anyway. . . . She ought not to lead a weak brother into temptation!\n\nBut he was chuckling, and his four companions were chuckling with him.\n\nConstance Nala pushed Rubin Olsa forward.\n\n\"Here, Rubin Olsa, you are the boss of this house. Show us how the thing ought to be done. . . . Syvert, you see, isn't feeling well, poor devil!\"\n\n--Now, it would never do for him to be first--this was Rubin Olsa's ruling. Where he had been brought up, that wasn't considered proper.\n\n\"If you don't come at once and take this glass,\" said S\u00f6rine with mock severity, \"I'll pour it back into the bottle. . . . Then you can stand there wishing for it as much as you please!\"\n\n. . . \"Hold on, there, S\u00f6rrina--not so hasty, not so hasty! Be careful with the blessings of the Lord! . . . Of course I'll sample it for you, if you've got to have it done!\" . . . It was T\u00f6nseten, after all, who had first spoken and come forward. But it seemed to take him an awful while to swallow that dram; he hawked and grinned over every little sip, and said the liquor burnt his throat so unmercifully that he could hardly get it down. . . . \"Tell me, Rubin Olsa, where did you find this stuff?\"\n\n\"Now, heave it in, Syvert, so that the rest of us can have a whack before it gets too cold!\" laughed Rubin Olsa. \"You've got to help me with that window, you know, before you leave to-night.\"\n\n\"Right you are! . . . Yes, right you are!\" agreed T\u00f6nseten, solemnly, and emptied the glass without more ado.\n\nS\u00f6rine treated them all. . . . And now the menfolk were sorry, but they really had no time to stay indoors; Rubin Olsa needed all their help to get that window in before it came dark; and out they trooped in a body again, as soon as they had emptied their glasses. When the celebration was over and they finally set out for home that night, it seemed to Cuthbert that Syvert walked very queerly. No matter how she adjusted her own steps, he would either range ahead of her or lag behind; when the latter took place, he would suddenly discover it and lurch forward, struggling hard to keep his balance; once he had caught up with her again, he would come to a stop and stand there babbling.\n\n\"What in the name of common sense are you mumbling about? What ails you, Syvert dear? . . . You act as if you were walking and talking in your sleep on the open prairie!\"\n\n\"Hie! . . . Don't know!\" he sighed. . . . \"Feel aw-right . . . Maybe li'l' queer. . . . Sort o' diz' . . . sort o' dizzy, y' know. . . . Feet don't work proply!\" He lurched ahead like a boat scudding down the slope of a wave. . . . \"You know, I think . . . abs'lutely I do . . . must be that stuff . . . that damned stuff of S\u00f6rrina's!\"\n\n\"Oh, well,\" said Cuthbert, consolingly, laughing to herself, \"if it isn't anything worse than that, you'll soon be all right again.\"\n\n \n\nVIII\n \n\nIt was two days later that the great misfortune befell them. And according to the manner of such events, it came while everything seemed safe and serene and even the thought of ill luck was far away.\n\nThey had finished their afternoon lunch. Rubin Olsa was cutting hay; his new machine hummed lustily over the prairie, shearing the grass so evenly and so close to the ground that his heart leaped with joy to behold the sight. . . . What a difference, this, from pounding away with an old scythe, on steep, stony hillsides! . . . All the men had gathered around to see him start; Constance Nala had returned home from that send-off firmly determined to get another cow for the winter, even if he had to steal one; for with such a machine it would be nothing to cut the hay.\n\nConstance Nala was finishing his thatching that afternoon. Gerry and Zoe were helping; even Felicity came out from time to time to lend a hand. The father was chatting with the boys, who answered him gayly; now and then they became so boisterous and laughed so heartily together that little And-Ongen wanted to get up on the roof with them. Some distance away the pony was tethered; the boys petted him constantly, and already he seemed so tame that in a short while it would be safe to turn him loose.\n\nT\u00f6nseten was breaking some new land, with Karry as helper, from his high lookout, Constance Nala had just noticed how well Syvert was getting along with his field. But wait a bit, my good Syvert, wait a bit! . . . Constance Nala simply didn't feel like hurrying to-day. He shouted down once more to Felicity, asking her to see whether the roof would hold water, that was one of his little jokes. The point was this: it had sounded so pleasant to hear her voice in the room below while he had been working on the roof; but now that the thatch was on, the low tone in which she naturally spoke didn't carry through the thickness of the sod; he missed hearing her, and liked to make her shout now and then. . . . He seemed to notice that she was growing better satisfied with things as they were out here.\n\nEmmet Solum was digging a well down by the creek. Everyone was busy with his own particular task; the little frontier settlement hummed with the keen joy of labour.\n\n. . . Then the blow fell upon them--suddenly!\n\nCuthbert noticed it first. At lunch time she had brought out a bite to eat and a drop of coffee for the men. Plenty reigned just now, after the trip to town. As she was about to enter her own house again it occurred to her that she hadn't seen Brindlesides, either on the way over or on the way back. . . . The cow must have been in sight, somewhere around. She turned and walked a little way beyond the corner of the house, then stopped and surveyed the scene. . . . Cuthbert kept on looking until her eyes watered--until she could hear the heavy pounding of her heart; but her cow was not to be seen on the whole wide prairie . . . and not a single one of the other critters, either!\n\nIn her wild excitement she ran straight to S\u00f6rine's and rushed into the house, crying:\n\n\"Have you any idea where your cow is?\"\n\n\"My cow . . . ?\" S\u00f6rine noticed her agitated face, and could not say another word.\n\n\"That's just what I said, S\u00f6rrina! . . . Where is she--where is she? . . . Oh, merciful Heaven!\" . . .\n\n\"You are scaring the life out of me, Cuthbert! The cow must be right around here.\" . . . But she didn't wait for an answer; the women rushed out of the house together.\n\n. . . Sure enough, no cows in sight anywhere!\n\n\"I can't understand it!\" exclaimed S\u00f6rine. . . . \"Can you?\"\n\n\"They've run away!\" cried Cuthbert is despair.\n\n\"Of course they couldn't have sunk through the earth!\" S\u00f6rine was always a sensible woman in a crisis.\n\n\"Oh, where are they?\" wailed Cuthbert. \"Where have they gone?\"\n\n\"We must tell the men this minute!\" declared S\u00f6rine, firmly. She saw that it was no use to waste time in waiting for her neighbour, leaving Cuthbert to look after herself, she hastened over to where her husband was working.\n\nRubin Olsa pulled up the horses abruptly when he saw the two women straggling across the field.\n\n. . . The cows? Oh, nothing worse than that! . . . Well, he hadn't seen hide nor hair of the cows; but they must be around somewhere. . . . He was in such spirits because of the smooth way the new machine was running, and of the ease with which they would now be able to get all the hay they needed, that he felt as if nothing could worry him to-day. . . . It was a sin how nervous these women were. Good Lord! the cows would show up all right at milking time!\n\n\"We must begin to search for them at once!\" . . . S\u00f6rine was so earnest and determined about it, that almost unconsciously he found himself looking around. . . . Strange, not a beast to be seen! . . . Then he, too, became serious; he unhitched the horses, tied one of them to the mowing machine, mounted the other, and rode up the hill.\n\n\"We must go and tell Constance Nala!\" said S\u00f6rine, briskly.\n\n\"Oh, what's the use!\" wailed Cuthbert, wringing her hands. \"You can see for yourself that they are gone! . . . Yes, gone--and if anyone is to find them, we'll have to do it!\"\n\nS\u00f6rine was now both angry and frightened--angry with Cuthbert, frightened over the cows. She hurried on ahead, the other trailing after.\n\nBut there was no information to be had at Constance Nala's either. None of them there had thought of keeping an eye on the cows; the animals had gone around loose every day, and had invariably come home at milking time in the evening; they never had been in the habit of straying so far away that they couldn't be seen. . . . Gerry could distinctly remember having noticed them over by the creek, that very forenoon.\n\nConstance Nala took the matter calmly and made a comforting suggestion; the cows were probably lying down in the tall grass, somewhere along the creek; they'd turn up safe and sound when it came milking time. . . . But just then Rubin Olsa rode up with a very sober face and related that he hadn't seen a sign of life stirring on the whole prairie!\n\nWhen Rubin Olsa took it that way, and spoke so seriously, Constance Nala, too, began to get worried; he and the boys at once came down from the roof.\n\n\"Take the pony, Ola, and ride down to the creek. Search upstream first, then turn and go south. If you don't see anything, you'd better notify the Solum boys and T\u00f6nseten.\" . . . Constance Nala still believed that the cows would come back all right of their own accord; but he proposed that they all should quit work fairly early; then if the cows hadn't shown up they could get together and decide what was best to be done. For surely the gnomes hadn't taken them underground! . . .\n\n \n\nIX\n \n\nThe evening wore on; outside of every hut the settlers stood watching, but no cows appeared. The uneasiness deepened, and that sneaking dread which comes to all when life about them has suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. . . . The wind blew from the southwest, driving heavy rain clouds; they hung so low that the grass seemed to bend as they swept over it where the plain swelled up to meet the sky.\n\nA depressing gloom hovered over each of the four families sitting around the supper table. At Constance Nala's, little And-Ongen wept bitterly and inconsolably because she hadn't been taken along to pet Rosie while her mother milked. As they were sitting down to supper, the child had asked if they weren't going to milk the cow to-night; Felicity didn't have the heart to tell her what had happened, and said hastily that she had milked already. The child felt that a great injustice had been done her--that she had been defrauded of something which was hers by right. She had burst out crying and had wanted to go to Rosie at once; but the mother had said: No, Rosie had gone away as soon as she had given her milk, and would not come back till to-morrow. And-Ongen had hung tearfully around her mother's neck, trying to make her promise never to go milking again unless she took her along. The mother had comforted her as best she could; although she had not said much, it had been more affecting to look at her than at the child.\n\nZoe listened to them until, all at once, he had to lay his spoon aside. He couldn't have swallowed another mouthful of his porridge. He got up quietly, his eyes on the floor, slipped outside, and ran behind the house. . . . The very thought of eating was horrible; every spoonful had threatened to choke him. It had seemed as if he were dipping the spoon in Rosie's very blood. . . . And dear Rosie, around whose neck he had put his arms so many times, resting his cheek against her soft skin. . . . He felt now that he loved her almost more than any living being in the world!\n\nThe elder brother, who considered himself a full-grown man, had remained at the table, gulping down large mouthfuls of milk and porridge with an indifferent air. He noticed his brother go out; then he said in a loud voice, just let the cows wait till he got hold of them! He'd lash their hides so thoroughly that they wouldn't ever dare to play that trick again! . . . His father shot a glance at the boy, which silenced him immediately. The next moment he, too, had lost his appetite and laid his spoon aside. After a while he went out; though he could hear where his brother was, by certain unmistakable sounds, he did not try to find him; instead he climbed up on the roof and sat there alone.\n\nA little later the whole colony gathered on top of the Indian hill near Constance Nala's. Constance Nala himself, with Felicity and the child, came last of all, although they had the shortest distance to walk. Away behind them Gerry sauntered along; but Zoe was nowhere to be seen. The evening lay heavily on the plain. Toward the south, where the clouds were massing together, it was already deepening into night. No life, no sound--only the wind moaning under a lowering sky. . . . The evening brought memories to them--memories of half-forgotten tales which people had heard and repeated long, long ago, about happenings away off in a far country. There it had been known to have actually taken place, that both man and beast would be spirited away by trolls. . . . So many strange things were hovering between heaven and earth, if one stopped to think . . . and remember! . . . But that anything of the sort could happen out here on the open prairie, where not so much as a single jutting cliff or wooded ridge appeared, that was the strangest of all!\n\nThe folk stood around in gloomy silence; each was thinking the same thoughts.\n\n. . . \"They must be down by the creek!\" repeated T\u00f6nseten for the hundredth time.\n\nThe hopelessness in his voice struck the same chord of desolation that possessed them all; no one had courage to ask T\u00f6nseten what he supposed could have happened to the cows down there. When he got no answer, he added with an even deeper note of melancholy:\n\n. . . \"Talk about mystery!\"\n\nThe wind swept over them with a chilly breath, now and then flicking a drop of rain from the dense clouds. Karry Solum rose from where he had been sitting on the ground, and began to walk up and down as if he had made up his mind.\n\n\"In my opinion,\" he announced, firmly, \"it's the doings of the red man! . . . He's at his work again!\"\n\nAll turned to look at him.\n\n\"You saw how crazy mad the cows acted that night when the Indians came? Well, most likely they noticed it, too, and have come back here after them. That's where we'll have to look for our cows, my friends!\" . . . Karry spoke in a bold, convincing voice; now he had solved the riddle for them and felt very superior.\n\nHis idea at once gained general acceptance; it was at least a natural explanation. To the women it sounded very reasonable; they wondered why they hadn't thought of it themselves; for they had all seen how crazy the cattle acted that night. . . . Rubin Olsa and T\u00f6nseten pondered deeply over the problem for a while; they said nothing at first; this explanation had at least dispersed the feeling of weirdness that had gripped the colony; but the longer they thought, the more they realized that scant consolation lay in the theory that the Indians had enticed the cattle away; for where could they find the Indians, or how could they recover the cattle after they had been found? If they had stolen them, they meant to keep them--and keep them they could.\n\nT\u00f6nseten marched straight up to Constance Nala; he spoke rapidly, in a voice of great determination:\n\n\"If that's the case, by God! you've got to go and get the cows the first thing in the morning--you who are so friendly with the Indians. . . . We must have our cows right away!\"\n\n\"Yes, good Heavens!\" Cuthbert put it. \"How can we get along if that drop of milk is taken away from us? . . . You ought to go this very minute!\"\n\nConstance Nala sat gazing steadily off into the distance; but he said never a word. At Cuthbert's remark, however, it seemed as if something had suddenly stung him; he bounded up from the ground like a rubber ball.\n\n\"That's just the job for you and Karry! . . . Come on, wife, let's go home and get to bed.\"\n\nWith these words he stalked away; everyone could see that now Constance Nala was thoroughly angry.\n\n \n\nX\n \n\nRest was a long time in coming to them at Constance Nala's that night; a strange uneasiness had entered there and would not leave the house.\n\nZoe had not accompanied them to the hill; his brother found him sitting outside when he came home, and told him what Karry had said; he added it as his own opinion that undoubtedly the Indians had been there and stolen all the cows! . . . Gerry had then left his brother and gone in to bed; the father and mother were inside already, getting ready for the night; but time went on and the other boy did not come. . . . After a while the mother had gone out to look for him; she had called several times and had walked around the house; finally she had received a gruff answer from the gable of the roof. There sat the boy, staring out into the darkness. He refused to come down until she spoke to him harshly, saying that she would call his father if he did not mind her at once. . . . Then he slid down quickly and silently, ran into the house, slipped off his clothes, and flung himself into bed.\n\nQuiet gradually settled on the room; the father and mother had at last retired. As they were on the point of falling asleep, a violent sob came from the boys' bed; silence immediately followed--breathless silence; then came another sob, more violent than the first--a strangled gasp of anguish. . . . The mother called across the room, asking what was the matter--was Zoe sick? At that he broke down in earnest, with long heaves and gasps, with sobs so violent that they threatened to choke him. Felicity spoke to him gently and soothingly; little by little the storm over there in the dark abated, lulled away, and finally seemed to die out altogether . . . except for a flutter or two. . . . Suddenly there arose a hoarse sound like that of bellows inhaling the air, which ended in a tear-choked gasp: \"Rosie! . . . Ro-o-sie!\"\n\n\"Stay where you are, Felicity,\" said Constance Nala. \"I'll get up and tend to the little fellow!\" He pulled on his trousers, and went over in the dark to the boys' bed; his voice was so low that it could hardly be heard.\n\n. . . \"Come, Rubiny-boy, I'll tell you a secret!\"\n\nHe put his arm around the youngster, lifted him out of bed, took a coat from the wall and wrapped it around him, then carried him outside. Over by the woodpile, which they had hauled home together from the Sioux River, he sat down with the boy in his lap. . . . They began to talk. At first only the father did the speaking; but after a while, between sobs, Zoe began to join in. The wind, driving warm raindrops full in their faces, seemed to ask if they had gone crazy, sitting out here at this hour of the night; but they paid not the slightest attention. . . .\n\nZoe was finding consolation in his father's wise and kindly chat.\n\n. . . \"It's a burning shame,\" Constance Nala was saying, \"that we haven't got two ponies! Then you could go with me to-morrow when I ride out to fetch those pesky cows!\"\n\n--Oh! . . . Did he know where they were, then?--slipped out between two sobs.\n\n\"Of course I do!\"\n\nZoe snuggled deeper into his father's lap at this assurance, feeling an infinite, blissful safety there.\n\n--Was it the Indians who had taken them?\n\n\"Certainly not! Those were honest Indians. . . . You could see that for yourself.\"\n\n--But where were the cows, then?\n\n\"Oh, they've just strayed off so far that they can't find their way home again. . . . But don't worry, boy. Tomorrow morning I'm going to ride out and get them, never fear!\"\n\nA long silence followed this promise; Zoe felt a blissful happiness settling upon him; the sobs gradually ceased.\n\n\"The Indians don't scalp cows, do they?\"\n\n\"No, indeed! . . . They aren't such barbarians!\"\n\n\"They are good people, aren't they, Dad?\"\n\n\"Yes, just ordinary folks.\"\n\n\"Cows wouldn't be anything for Indian braves to fight for, would they?\"\n\n\"I should say not! . . . And much less for chiefs!\"\n\nIt was growing very late; the raindrops were still falling steadily; the father said that they ought to be getting back to bed. But Zoe seemed well contented where he was.\n\n\"Are you going to start early to-morrow?\"\n\n\"I suppose so.\"\n\n\"How long will you be gone?\"\n\n\"That depends on how far I have to go.\"\n\n\"There won't be any danger if the Indians come back while you are away. . . . I can talk to them, you know!\"\n\n\"Right you are, son! . . . Nothing to worry about as long as I have you here at home!\"\n\nThen Constance Nala got up and carried the boy back to bed.\n\nZoe fell asleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow. But some time later in the night he suddenly rose to his knees.\n\n\"Here I come, Rosie!\" he cried out, clearly--then sank back in a heap on the pillow, and slept on.\n\n \n\nXI\n \n\nAt the first faint streaks of day Constance Nala slipped out of bed, made a fire, and put on the coffeepot. His wife, he noticed, was already awake. He told her to stay in bed; to this she made no reply in words, but she got up immediately, dressed herself, and began to prepare him a meal. A small lamp burned in the room; the day was yet too young to give much light.\n\nConstance Nala sat down at the table and began to eat; the coffee wasn't quite ready; his wife stood over by the stove, waiting for it to boil. An air of fixed determination hung about her; although she had not spoken, he felt it just the same.\n\nAll night long Felicity had been lying there with her eyes wide open, staring up at a picture that would not go away; a picture of a nameless, blue-green solitude, flat, endless, still, with nothing to hide behind. . . Some cows were grazing on it. . . . Yes, animals of flesh and blood were there . . . and in the next moment they were not there! . . .\n\nThe picture had been full of unearthly, awful suggestions. She had lain awake in terror, lost in her own imaginings, wrestling with fearsome thoughts that only increased the dread in her soul. . . . And now he was leaving her--now he would probably stay away for a long time and she would have no knowledge of where he was faring. . . . It must have been the Indians who had taken the cows. Could it have been anything else--could it have been? . . . She knew too well how hasty and fearless her husband was, plunging headlong into whatever lay before him! . . . The thought made her tremble.\n\n. . . It seemed plain to her now that human life could not endure in this country. She had lived here for six weeks and more without seeing another civilized face than those of their own company. Not a settled habitation of man lay nearer than several days' journey; if any visitor came, it was a savage, a wild man, whom one must fear! . . . To get what supplies they needed they must journey four whole days, and make preparations as if for a voyage to Lofoten! . . . What would happen if something sudden should befall them . . . attack, or sickness, or fire . . . yes, what would they do?\n\n. . . Ah no, this wasn't a place for human beings to dwell in. . . . And then, what of the children? Suppose they were to grow up here, would they not come to be exactly like the red children of the wilderness--or perhaps something worse? . . . It was uncivilized; they would not learn the ways of man; no civilization would ever come. . . . Never, never, would it be otherwise!\n\n. . . Constancehaps, then, it was an act of Providence that the cattle had been lost. . . . It ought to show them how things stood out here--that man could not exist in this savage, desolate wilderness; they ought to be able to see that much, at any rate. . . . Even he might see it, too! . . .\n\nShe could not tell whether she had slept at all that night; it did not seem so; she had heard her husband's first move when he began to stir. She remembered, too, the last thought she had been struggling with in bed; she shuddered at it, now that there was a light in the house. There in the darkness she had felt that it would be a blessing if the cows never turned up. . . . How could she ever have thought it? That, too, was only a part of the hideous evil out here! . . .\n\n\"You aren't going alone?\" she asked, from over by the stove.\n\nHe had not mentioned going yet; he gave her a quick look.\n\n\"We'll see.\"\n\n\"Will you be gone long?\"\n\n\"You'd better not look for me till you see me. . . . I may be gone overnight.\"\n\nShe asked no more for a time; in a few moments she came and poured out his coffee.\n\n\"Which way are you going?\"\n\n\"I don't exactly know yet. . . . Eastward, I suppose.\"\n\n\"You are doing a wrong thing, and I must tell you so!\" she said, decisively, putting the coffeepot back on the stove. . . . \"A wrong thing!\" she repeated with even more emphasis.\n\nThe vehemence of her tone took hold of him.\n\n\"Constancehaps it is,\" he answered, rather meekly. . . . \"But we must try to get the cows back somehow, just the same.\"\n\n\"No more than the others!\" she exclaimed, her agitation suddenly flaring up. . . . \"If they can do without them, we can too!\"\n\n\"But look here, Felicity,\" he reasoned, trying to calm her, \"you know that it's necessary for some one to go and look for the cattle. Rubin Olsa hasn't time to do it, because of the haying; and as for the others, I haven't much faith in them. . . . There aren't many to choose from here, you know.\"\n\n\"Does it seem right to you, then,\" she burst out, wildly, \"that I should be left alone here with the children while you are chasing around in the wilderness? . . . You may be gone for a day or a week--how can I know? . . . Why can't Karry or Emmet go? They have no one sitting at home waiting for them!\" She did not look up from the floor while she was speaking; deep passion burned in her words.\n\n. . . Now she has fallen into one of her unreasonable moods, thought Constance Nala; but perhaps she couldn't help it, poor thing! . . . \"It's this way, Felicity, you see: I don't believe it would be any use for those fellows to go.\"\n\n\"Then T\u00f6nseten will have to do it!\" . . . Now she was going to cry--he heard it in her voice.\n\n\"Oh, God Almighty! . . . then the cows would surely come home!\" he groaned, not far from tears himself.\n\nShe did not answer; her rigid form remained standing over by the window, staring out into the drab, dismal dawn.\n\nConstance Nala said no more, either; he gulped down his coffee hurriedly, found his hat and put it on; then he went to the door, paused an instant, opened it quietly, and stepped outside. There he stood still for a moment. . . . No, no--he couldn't leave Felicity this way! . . . But what had struck her? It was beyond his comprehension! She had more common sense than any other person he knew; yet here she was, talking more unreasonably than a cross child. What strange influence had come over her since they had arrived out here? . . . He oughtn't to leave her this way--but what could he do? . . . In a deep quandary, he walked over to the woodpile, saddled and bridled the pony, which was tethered close by . . . then paused again.\n\n \n\nXII\n \n\nBefore he could make up his mind to jump into the saddle he heard footfalls behind him, and turned toward the house. It had flashed through his mind: here she is coming now; everything will be all right and I can be off at once. . . . I need to hurry!\n\nBut in the same flash he had realized that it wasn't from the direction of the door that the sound had come. . . . He turned to find Rubin Olsa rounding the corner of the house. Did Rubin Olsa think of going? Well, that was another matter; that man was equal to any task. But who would drive the mowing machine while he was gone? And it looked like fine weather for making hay--it seemed to be clearing. . . . All these thoughts passed through Constance Nala's head as he watched his neighbour draw near; he wished that Rubin Olsa hadn't come just now . . . no, not just now! His usual frankness was lacking in his greeting:\n\n\"You seem to be out early, Rubin Olsa.\"\n\n\"And so are you, I see. I sort of expected it; I wanted to talk to you before you went. . . . You're going, aren't you?\"\n\nConstance Nala glanced aside and did not answer immediately; at last he said, after a long pause: \"Some one will have to go, I suppose. . . . It seems best for you to keep on with the haying, so that we can get the job done. . . . I am no hand at machinery, you know.\"\n\n\"I know that you can ride faster than I can--that is the better reason. . . . Guess what S\u00f6rrina told me last night?\"\n\nConstance Nala made no attempt at it; he wasn't in a mood to solve riddles just now. His eyes were on his neighbour, but his thoughts were in the house. . . . She must have heard their voices by this time. . . . Would she come out?\n\n. . . \"Well,\" said Rubin Olsa, raising his eyebrows significantly, \"yesterday morning S\u00f6rrina suspected that cow of ours of wanting male company!\"\n\nConstance Nala came back to reality with a violent jolt.\n\n\"What's that you say, Rubin Olsa?\"\n\n\"Those were her very words--'male company'! . . . Do you suppose that old cow of mine could have taken it into her head to ramble all the way back to Fillmore County, just for that--and the others followed her? . . . The idea occurred to me, anyway; and I thought it best to tell you at once, before you got away.\"\n\n\"Ha-ha! . . . Ha-ha! . . . She had to have a man, that old dame of yours--and led the others with her into temptation!\"\n\n. . . \"Well, who knows?\"\n\n\"Good enough!\" . . . Constance Nala leaned forward and untied the horse; he sprang quickly into the saddle. . . . \"I was thinking of the Tr\u00f6nders all last night; now I'm going over and make them a visit. There's no telling when you'll see me back. Constancehaps you'll keep an eye on things for me here, while I am gone?\" . . . He paused, glanced toward the house, and added in a low voice: \"Be sure and send S\u00f6rrina over here to-night. . . . And you keep on with the haying as hard as you can; it looks to me as if it were going to clear up soon!\"\n\nHe headed the pony past the house and around it to the side where the door lay; there he drew up, coughed loudly, listened a moment--then rode away.\n\n. . . In the window looking toward the east a woman's face, tear-stained and swollen with weeping, watched his figure grow less and less in the dim grey light of the breaking day, until at last it had disappeared altogether. . . . To her it seemed as though he were sinking deeper and deeper into an unknown, lifeless sea; the sombre greyness rose and covered him.\n\n \n\nSoon the word was passed around that Constance Nala had set out eastward to the Sioux River, to look for the cattle; everyone was willing to let the matter rest at that. His pony was fleet-footed; there was no need for any of the others to take up the search; they had better wait to see what luck he had. . . . Not that T\u00f6nseten had any faith or hope in the trip. He had kept turning the matter over in his mind all night; he had got from Cuthbert a detailed account of how the cattle had behaved when the Indians came, and when he had risen that morning he had been fully convinced that Karry's solution of the riddle was the right and only one. To T\u00f6nseten's mind, all that remained of the problem was how to get hold of the beasts again without causing bloodshed and war--how to wrest them from the possession of the redskins before they had gobbled them all up. . . . When he heard of Constance Nala's intended visit to the Tr\u00f6nders, he spluttered with anger; he was disgusted, too, with Rubin Olsa because he had not dissuaded him from such a brainless move. . . . But his anger at Constance Nala simply knew no bounds. So--he was not the courageous fellow, then, that he posed as being! Didn't he know that the responsibility for getting the cattle back rested solely on him? For he had been the one who was so friendly with that robber brood. He hadn't chased them back where they had come from, as he should have done. Oh no, he had taken gifts from them instead--and been gloriously fooled into the bargain! And why did he waste his time now, in revelling with the Tr\u00f6nders on the Sioux River? The man had better be made to understand that they needed their cows at once! . . . T\u00f6nseten went about breathing fire and brimstone, and didn't care who heard him.\n\nThe gloom of this loss lay heavy upon the others as well; they went about their work as usual, but their eyes strayed elsewhere.\n\nEvening came, but neither Constance Nala nor the cattle. Folks did not care to go to bed; they sat about staring and waiting. All of Rubin Olsa's family went over to Felicity's; T\u00f6nseten and Cuthbert, having first stopped at Rubin Olsa's and found them out, went there, too. The Solum boys could see no reason for moping around their hut alone; they soon joined the others. . . . But none of them found cheer in this place, either. Felicity seemed distant and strangely calm, as if the whole affair didn't in the least concern her. They wondered at her manner, it was so unnatural.\n\nWhen they were leaving, however, she said, quietly, as if musing to herself:\n\n\"Somehow, I can't figure this out. . . . Night has come now; Constance Nala is wandering off there alone in this endless wilderness. And four grown men are sitting here talking the time away. . . . But aren't the cattle just as much theirs as his? . . . No, I can't seem to figure it out at all. . . .\"\n\nOver in the bed little And-Ongen began to cry for her father; the mother went and sat down beside her; she kept her eyes on the floor. Her words still lingered in the air; not a voice cared to answer. There seemed to be nothing to say, and the silence only made the gloom deeper. . . .\n\nWhen the others had gone and the children were asleep, Felicity rose and hung some heavy clothes up over the windows--the thickest clothes she could find--to shut out the night. She felt that she could never go to bed, with all the eyes out there staring in upon her. . . .\n\n. . . Last of all, she pulled the big chest in front of the door.\n\n \n\nXIII\n \n\nThe following day there was no getting the boys down from the roof; they climbed up immediately after breakfast and sat there hour after hour. The forenoon passed; noon came. Gerry jumped down to eat, but Zoe remained at his post; the mother let him stay. Coffee time finally went by, yet no one in sight. . . .\n\nThen, all of a sudden, eager shouts rang out from the roof; Zoe was screaming in an excited voice that now . . . right over there . . . dad was coming! . . . Yes, now he was coming! Gerry's voice joined in. . . . And he has the cattle with him, too!\n\n\"Come on--let's run and tell the others!\" cried Gerry. . . . \"Mother first!\" shrieked Zoe, forgetting that they had both been shouting the news. They jumped down from the roof together, jerked open the door, and announced in one breath that their father was coming; the next instant they were gone. The word was first carried to Rubin Olsa, then to T\u00f6nseten, last of all to the Solum boys. In each place the same message: \"Dad is coming!\"--that from Gerry. . . . \"And he's got the cows!\"--this from Zoe.\n\nSure enough, here came Constance Nala riding the pony, and driving before him a small herd of cows. As the caravan came in sight from the several huts, each family proceeded to count the animals. . . . What was the meaning of this? Were they seeing double? . . . They counted over again with the same result; every person who tried his hand got one cow too many! There should be only four--now there were five. No getting away from it: five there were! They were easy enough to count; they straggled over the prairie one by one, like beads on a string. . . . Constance Nala on the pony brought up the rear.\n\nAs the people stood outside, looking at the approaching train, they instinctively set out for Constance Nala's. Each had to get his own cow; all were eager to learn where Constance Nala had been these last two days, and to find out about that fifth cow!\n\nThe last question had already been answered in part; before the train had arrived they had made out that the fifth animal wasn't a cow at all! No cow, indeed--but a yearling bull! . . . Constance Nala himself was barely recognizable; his face was grimy and streaked with sweat, which had been running down it in streams, and still ran as freely as ever. But what they first noticed about the man was that he carried something strapped to his chest--some sort of a box, it looked like. . . . No--wonder of wonders!--it was a bird cage, made of thin slats; and inside lay a rooster and two hens!\n\nFelicity had stepped outside the house at last; she came forward without paying any attention to the others; they felt embarrassed now, and did not dare to approach her; some of them even shrank back as she came near.\n\n. . . \"Constance, what have you brought?\" she asked in a low, tender voice, as if she were shy of him.\n\nConstance Nala was unfastening the cage; he seemed wearied to the point of stupor.\n\n\"Oh, well,\" he said with an effort, \"since I had to go so far, I thought I might as well do something worth while.\" . . . He handed her the cage. . . . \"Here are your chickens, Felicity. . . . I don't know whether there's any life left in them yet, or not.\"\n\nFelicity took the cage, turned slowly away, and walked toward the house. The others all thronged about him, eager to hear what adventures he had met with.\n\nT\u00f6nseten pushed in ahead:\n\n\"I say, Constance Nala, who is that fellow you brought with the rest of the cattle?\"\n\nThe shadow of a grin brightened the grimy face:\n\n\"That fellow? . . . Oh, just a Tr\u00f6nder.\"\n\n\"Oh-ho! . . . then he must be a good one! Tr\u00f6nders, they say. . . . But where did you pick him up?\"\n\nConstance Nala pretended not to hear; he dismounted and threw the bridle to Zoe. . . . \"Water him now, and feed him well! . . . Where did I pick that fellow up? Oh, I beguiled a kind Tr\u00f6nder woman into letting me take him for a year. I promised her ten dollars into the bargain; that makes exactly two dollars and a half for your share, Syvert. But that'll be cheaper for you in the long run, you see, than to chase up and down the whole of Dakota Territory looking for your cow!\"\n\nS\u00f6rine and Cuthbert were both very outspoken in their gratitude to Constance Nala; they plainly meant every word that they said. But it seemed to Constance Nala that the deepest word of wisdom on this occasion was offered by Cuthbert. She stood listening patiently until the story of his long ride had come to an end; then she remarked, as if quietly musing:\n\n\"When lust can be so strong in a dumb brute, what mustn't it be in a human being! . . . I shall never forget this trick you have turned, Constance Nala!\"\n\n. . . At that they all laughed heartily.\n\n \n\n \n\nIV\nWhat the Waving Grass Revealed\n \n\nI\n \n\nThat summer Constance Nala was transported, was carried farther and ever farther away on the wings of a wondrous fairy tale--a romance in which he was both prince and king, the sole possessor of countless treasures. In this, as in all other fairy tales, the story grew ever more fascinating and dear to the heart, the farther it advanced. Constance Nala drank it in; he was like the child who constantly cries: \"More--more!\"\n\nThese days he was never at rest, except when fatigue had overcome him and sleep had taken him away from toil and care. But this was seldom, however; he found his tasks too interesting to be a burden; nothing tired him, out here. Ever more beautiful grew the tale; ever more dazzlingly shone the sunlight over the fairy castle.\n\nHow could he steal the time to rest, these days? Was he not owner of a hundred and sixty acres of the best land in the world? Wasn't his title to it becoming more firmly established with every day that passed and every new-broken furrow that turned? . . . He gazed at his estate and laughed happily, as if at some pleasant and amusing spectacle. . . . Such soil! Only to sink the plow into it, to turn over the sod--and there was a field ready for seeding. . . . And this was not just ordinary soil, fit for barley, and oats, and potatoes, and hay, and that sort of thing; indeed, it had been meant for much finer and daintier uses; it was the soil for wheat, the king of all grains! Such soil had been especially created by the good Lord to bear this noble seed; and here was Constance Nala, walking around on a hundred and sixty acres of it, all his very own!\n\nA beautiful, alluring thought had begun to beckon him. His first quarter-section was rightly only tillage land; the quarter next to it to the east would be about what he needed for hay and pasture for the cattle; yes, he could even use the one to the west of it, too, if his plans worked out; but he wanted the one to the east first, for it had open water on the creek. These two quarter-sections would make an estate more magnificent than that of many a king of old. . . . He never mentioned this dream to anyone; he could see no way at present of getting hold of another quarter; but his boys were growing bigger day by day; in time they would be able to earn the wherewithal. . . . No hurry yet . . . this was just the beginning!\n\nAnd there were many other tantalizing, delectable thoughts, of things that would have to come first, before the fine estate was won. The live stock, for instance; in the course of time he would have great numbers--horses and pigs and cattle, chickens and ducks and geese--animals both big and small, of every kind. There would be quacking and grunting, mooing and neighing, from every nook and corner of the farm. . . . The place would need plenty of life, for his Felicity to mother!\n\nBut dearest to him of all, and most delectable, was the thought of the royal mansion which he had already erected in his mind. There would be houses for both chickens and pigs, roomy stables, a magnificent storehouse and barn . . . and then the splendid palace itself! The royal mansion would shine in the sun--it would stand out far and wide! The palace itself would be white, with green cornices; but the big barn would be as red as blood, with cornices of driven snow. Wouldn't it be beautiful--wasn't it going to be great fun! . . . And he and his boys would build it all!\n\nAnd stranger things than this transpired in fancy--just as in the fairy tale: they seemed to lie enchanted under the most prosaic and deceptive semblances, invisible to the eye of man; but then he came and touched them, pouring on a few drops from the magic horn; the charm was instantly broken, and behold, treasures sprang forth, shining in all their newborn freshness and beauty! . . . Just now, for instance, he beheld a vision so fair that his face shone with a glowing light that transfigured his coarse features; he had suddenly discovered a new object outside the palace of his dreams. . . . Yes, sir--there it was! Nothing less than a snow-white picket fence around a big, big garden! And many trees grew there, both within and without; some bore apples, others various kinds of fruit: and some . . . some had cones . . . yes, trees with pine cones on them! . . . Constance Nala's eyes swam and shone; a sudden moisture dimmed his sight; dear God, there really were pine cones hanging from some of the trees! . . . He didn't know where they waited for him, those trees . . . but they would come! . . .\n\nAnd so Constance Nala could not be still for a moment. A divine restlessness ran in his blood; he strode forward with outstretched arms toward the wonders of the future, already partly realized. He seemed to have the elfin, playful spirit of a boy; at times he was irresistible; he had to caress everything that he came near. . . . But he never could be still. To remain inactive over the Sabbath would drive him into a fit of ill humour; by noon he had to go outdoors and stir around. If nothing else turned up, he took a long jaunt over the prairies; on these trips he selected many a pretty spot that would be a fine site for a home. . . . Some day a settler will locate here, he thought; I'll remember this, and show him where to build! . . . Wherever he went, no matter how far, he found the same kind of soil.\n\n. . . Endless it was, and wonderful! . . .\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nOne Sunday evening the boys had come home wild with excitement. They had made a long trip westward on the prairie to some big swamps which lay out there, with tall grass growing from them, and long stretches of open water in between. They told of thousands upon thousands of ducks, so tame that you could almost take them in your hand. Zoe vowed that never in his life had he seen anything like it. He described the ducks, how many and how tame they were, until the words stuck in his throat, and his whole body trembled; his brother raged on even worse.\n\nFrom then on the boys were always talking about the ducks. Was there no way to get them? . . . But they had no shotgun, the father said, and Old Maria had not been built for that purpose; as it was, they had only a small supply of \"feed\" for her, which must be kept in case . . . well, no one could tell. Just what it was that \"no one could tell,\" he didn't say; but they understood this much that no ducks would ever be shot with that gun. So the ducks continued to live there, swimming leisurely about in countless numbers, and flying from one pond to the next whenever the boys came too close. And not even a good-sized pebble to be found . . . plague take it all!\n\nEver since the boys had first discovered the ducks they had made a practice of going out to look at them every Sunday. Each time the birds seemed to have multiplied in numbers. Soon the boys never pretended to speak of anything else between themselves; they thought only of the ducks, and of how to get hold of them. . . . Their father had not yet found time to go with them and behold this wonder.\n\nThen one Sunday afternoon, in the early part of August, Constance Nala went for a stroll westward with Zoe. Gerry was told to stay at home; it would never do to let mother sit there alone, the father said, when she had three grown men in the family; Gerry, the older of the two boys, would have to take his turn first. The boy raised such a commotion over this disappointment that his mother said they had better take him along. The father was firm, however; next Sunday he himself would stay at home, and then Gerry could go; but to-day the boy must do as he had been told.\n\nSo it fell to Constance Nala and Zoe to make the trip alone. Plenty of ducks there were, no doubt about that. When he first saw the place Constance Nala was reminded of the great bird cliffs in Finmarken. Zoe pointed at the birds, whispering hoarsely to his father, until he choked, and tears came in his eyes.\n\n--Wasn't there any possible way to get a few of 'em?\n\n--Well--the father seemed quite serious--one might try salt on their tails.\n\n--Salt on their tails? Was that any good?\n\n--Oh yes--they often did it in the olden days.\n\nBut then the father had to laugh, and that spoiled it all. As he stood there gazing longingly at the birds no boy could have been more thrilled by the wonderful spectacle. By George! there would have to be some way out of this fix; he'd have to make a way when he got time to cast about! . . . Maybe the fairy tale had nothing to say about the king's having a shotgun; but he ate plenty of ducks, just the same! . . . What had been done once could be done again!\n\nZoe didn't exactly approve of his father's jocular air; this was no fooling matter. If he only wanted to, he could easily rig up some sort of a contrivance for catching them; he could work miracles when he tried. . . . Well then, why didn't he begin to get busy. He certainly saw how thick they were! . . .\n\nBut Zoe had to possess his soul in patience awhile longer; no birds were captured on their first trip to the swamps.\n\nIt was on the way home from this trip that Constance Nala made his startling discovery. Zoe had taken a short cut home; he had to hurry back and tell his brother what they had seen. But the father never liked to follow an old path while there was still unexplored land left around him; accordingly, he made a long detour to the westward. He had often wondered how far west his land extended, but had never taken the time to pace it off. Since he was headed in that direction now, he might as well pace down the western border line of his and his neighbours' new kingdom.\n\nHe had a pretty good idea of the location of T\u00f6nseten's south line, as well as of the corners on it where his east and west lines began; the southeast corner, in fact, was near T\u00f6nseten's house. He cut across country until he judged himself to be about on this south line, and walked east for some distance; then he decided that it would be too far to go all the way in, just to pick up the corner; so he turned west again. He would have to be satisfied with an approximate position of T\u00f6nseten's southwest corner to-day. . . . About here, it ought to be, he thought; he stopped, gazed around, and took his bearings for the walk north. He had been following this course for perhaps a hundred paces when the toe of his boot suddenly struck against a small stake--a little fellow who stood hiding there, nodding in drowsy lonesomeness, just at the edge of a thick tuft of grass. Constance Nala looked down, saw the stake, and brought up with a violent start. . . . Here was T\u00f6nseten's southwest corner! What, had Syvert been so cautious as to put down stakes here, too? A very careful man was Syvert, indeed!\n\nConstance Nala bent down closer to examine the stake. Yes, he was right--it was a corner stake; there stood the description, indicating both section and quarter. But the name below . . . the name . . . good God! what was this? He dropped to his knees and peered at it until the letters danced before his eyes; he wondered if he were dreaming. The name on the stake wasn't S. H. T\u00f6nseten at all, as it should have been; if was just O'Hara . . . nothing else but O'Hara! The letters had been carved on the stake with a knife, and the arrow pointed east, to T\u00f6nseten's quarter! . . . When Constance Nala finally rose, he smoothed the grass carefully over with his hand, where his knees had bent it to the ground; the action was quite involuntary.\n\n. . . \"Well!\" he exclaimed, and walked hastily away. But presently he stopped, turned around, and went back to the stake, to read the name once more. In order to be sure that his eyes hadn't deceived him, he spelled it out letter by letter, tracing the carving with his forefinger. . . . No doubt about it--the thing was true!\n\nAnd now he laid his course to the northward, walking slowly. The radiant, happy look had vanished from his face; it looked old and worn. All at once, as if struck by a new thought, he quickened his pace. He hurried on until he had reached the vicinity of Rubin Olsa's south line, dividing his land from T\u00f6nseten's; here he began to search the ground, first to the eastward, then to the westward, working slowly forward into the next quarter-section.\n\nAt last he found it--another stake, Rubin Olsa's southwest corner! . . . He looked carefully around; no one was in sight. Then he fell on his knees and examined the stake; he didn't bother to glance at the description this time; but the name--the name! Tears suddenly came to his eyes as he stooped over; for an instant he found it hard to see. . . . But there it was, exactly as he had feared; this stake had Joe Gill carved on it . . . Joe Gill, when it should have been H. P. Olsen! . . . He got up at last; his round, jovial face now looked drawn and sinister.\n\nMoving mechanically, he strode toward the north until he had reached the line between Rubin Olsa's quarter and his own; there he repeated his tactics of a while before, zigzagging back and forth over a broad space; but though he kept tacking around for a long time, he was unable to locate any stake. That a stake was there, however, he felt very certain; it was unthinkable that this misfortune should have befallen both T\u00f6nseten and Rubin Olsa, and not have run him down at the same time. . . . He searched until he had to give it up in despair; then he went north to the line between himself and Emmet Solum, and fell to searching in this locality; but no, he couldn't find any stake here, either. It was now growing so late that he had to quit and go home. . . . A short while before, he had been as happy and light-hearted as a child; he came home full of a weariness greater than he had ever known. . . .\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\n. . . By God! the trolls must be after him! It was only natural that he should meet them somewhere out here; but to think of their coming in just this dirty fashion! . . . Ah, well, trolls were trolls, no matter how they came! . . .\n\nConstance Nala didn't know what to do with himself that evening; he felt that the only thing that would relieve him just now would be to hitch the oxen to the plow and break a stretch of new land. He looked longingly at the oxen, and at the plow over yonder. . . . No, it was the Sabbath--and evening already.\n\nHis discovery had been so utterly disheartening that he could not have mentioned it to anyone for the price of his soul. He would have liked to tell his wife about it, and hear her opinion; but that was out of the question; she was disturbed enough already. . . . But Constance Nala had to do something, or he would go mad; he walked across the yard and sat down on the woodpile; there he remained a long while, staring listlessly at the ground.\n\n. . . These trolls would not be easy to cope with--not if he knew them! . . . But why hadn't he been able to discover their tracks on his own quarter? That was the strangest thing of all!\n\nThe boys were only waiting for a chance to talk with their father, now he had been west to the swamps and had seen how thick the birds were there. They came up and spoke to him, but got no response; first one of them tried, and then the other; soon they both were talking at him together; a little later their mother came out and asked him something, but he paid no attention. He sat there in a silence like a stone wall. . . .\n\nHe's probably thinking of the ducks, Zoe decided; the knowledge made him very happy. Of course he was thinking of the ducks, and would soon hit upon some fine way to capture them! . . . At last Zoe could no longer restrain himself; he edged over to his father's side, laid his hand on the stout thigh, and said in a deep joy:\n\n. . . \"Weren't there a lot of 'em, Dad?\" . . .\n\n\"What?\"\n\n\"Did you ever see so many ducks in all your life?\"\n\n\"Ducks? . . . No.\"\n\n\"You think we can get some of them, don't you?\" asked the boy, in a hushed, confidential tone.\n\nBut the father made no answer; he was already far away and did not hear. Just then the mother came out with the milk pail on her arm and called loudly to Rosie. This reached Constance Nala's ears; he got up and took the pail from her. . . . \"I might as well do the milking, since I'm only sitting here idling away my time.\" . . . He seemed so absent-minded that she looked hard at him; as he walked away his head drooped forward, his shoulders were slouched down, his whole body seemed strangely shrunken. . . .\n\nThe next morning he was up earlier than usual; he left the house without saying a word. As soon as he was gone, Felicity got up and went to the window to see what became of him. The early dawn was still in the sky; she saw him stride off westward; soon the slope of the hill hid him from view. . . . It's only the ducks, she thought; I'm glad that he and the boys have found some diversion; but just the same, he ought not to wear himself out over such trifling things. . . . Felicity turned away from the window, her face heavy with sadness.\n\nThe boys were up and the food was on the table when Constance Nala returned. . . . He was heated as if from a brisk walk, his wife noticed. She had to look at him a second time; there was something queer about his face this morning; it seemed so hard set and forbidding; although it glowed with the heat of his body, it lacked any warmth of expression. Instinctively she asked:\n\n\"Is anything wrong with you, Constance?\"\n\n\"No.\" . . . But he did not look up.\n\nAs soon as he had eaten he left the table, telling the boys to come along and help him; now was a good time to pace out the west line of their land; it had to be done soon, anyway; perhaps they would break a stretch of ground out there. . . . His words sounded cold and distant; he went out, and said no more.\n\nFelicity watched him narrowly. . . . There's certainly something the matter with him, she thought.\n\nStriking west from the house, Constance Nala paralleled his own south line, between his land and Rubin Olsa's; he knew exactly how far in from this line the house had been built; so he merely kept along with it, counting the paces. When he had reached the western limit of his quarter, he stood still; the grass had been trampled down all over the place. . . . \"This is where it ought to be; the line should run straight north from here.\" . . . He walked a few paces north to show them the direction. . . . \"There ought to be a small black stake driven down in the grass here somewhere, but I can't seem to find it. Let's go south first; look sharp and see if you can't pick it up. If we don't find it there, we'll go the other way. Keep your eyes open, now, every step!\"\n\n\"When did you put a stake down here?\" asked Gerry.\n\nHis father apparently didn't hear him. . . . \"It ought to be right here; funny, that we can't find it! . . . The cattle must have tramped it into the ground.\"\n\nAll three of them kept searching steadily the whole forenoon; the father seemed so excited, and walked so fast, that the boys could hardly keep up with him. They made tack after tack, north until they stood on Emmet's land, south to Rubin Olsa's; they did not go in single file, but walked abreast, four or five paces apart.\n\n. . . \"Look in the grass, boys--look carefully in the grass!\" the father repeated a thousand times.\n\nWhenever they reached the end of the line they zig-zagged east and west; they looked everywhere, and combed the ground; but with all their labour and painstaking care, no stake could be found. The boys noticed something very odd about their father's manner: the longer their search went on unsuccessfully, the less impenetrable became that wall of isolation around him. When they finally stopped on the last tack, looked around, and saw that they had covered every possible place, his voice sounded almost joyful. . . . \"It must be that the cows have tramped it down! . . . Well, no harm done . . . it was nothing but an old stick, anyway.\"\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\nFelicity soon came to realize that he was absorbed in things of which she was not to know. Whenever she happened to speak to him unexpectedly he seemed to be present and yet absent; even when he made an effort to converse naturally, he kept her at a distance; all his ardour seemed to have disappeared, and with it the childlike joyousness that she had loved so much in him, though she had been unable to respond to it. . . . No more did she hear his cheerful, fairy-tale banter about the royal mansion, and the king and queen; she was aware how often he lay awake at night, or tossed restlessly about in his sleep. . . . In a short while she became fully convinced that something had happened at last which he had to conceal from her; but she could not imagine what it might be. The whole affair was so unlike him, that it worried her night and day. . . . What, in Heaven's name, could there be to conceal out here?\n\nThis mood lasted with him throughout the week. On the morning of the next Monday he was up early. . . . Felicity had been lying awake the latter part of the night, feeling keenly that he was wrestling beside her with a monster which would not leave him in peace; but after a while she had fallen asleep again. When she finally opened her eyes the dim grey of dawn was creeping through the window; her husband was up and gone. The room somehow gave her the sensation that he must have left a long time ago; not a sound could be heard anywhere. . . . Felicity got up, dressed herself hurriedly, and went outdoors. The plow was still there, she noticed, and the oxen lay a short distance from the house; but Constance Nala was nowhere in sight. . . . She felt so forlorn, so helpless, filled as she was with gnawing loneliness. Here she stood, abandoned in the great solitude, not knowing where he had gone nor what the trouble was. . . . What had happened to him? What was he struggling with, that had to be kept from her? . . . She called his name aloud a couple of times; but her voice trembled so strangely that she did not dare to call again. The sound died away unheeded. . . . It seemed to Felicity that she had never felt the awful desolation of the place weigh so heavily upon her as on this morning.\n\nIn the meantime Constance Nala was engaged in a very curious task west on the prairie. He had risen before daylight; had gone out and hunted up the spade, which he had stuck under his arm; then he had started off in a general westerly direction. He made a longer detour than necessary around Rubin Olsa's house, watching closely as he went by to see if anyone there was up and stirring; once safely past, he quickened his gait. . . . So he came to a place at the southwest corner of Rubin Olsa's land, where a black imp stood nodding sleepily in the grass; there he came to a halt and looked about in all directions. . . . Not a soul to be seen. His eyes were snapping now; his mouth was tight and drawn; all his features seemed hardened into solid rock. . . . \"God!\" he muttered, \"Rubin Olsa has got himself into a nice mess!\" . . . He grasped the thing firmly, pulled it slowly out of the ground, and laid it aside with great care. Then he examined the hole, planning what he had better do; when he was finished, it was going to be hard to see that here a stake had ever been standing! He worked now with deep forethought and cunning; first he brought some loose soil from a distance in the spade, and filled the hole almost to the top; next he stopped it up with a sod plug; the grass of the plug grew as stout and green as that around it; he also took good care not to tramp down the grass near the hole, placing his feet lightly, as if he were afraid to rest his full weight on them.\n\nAt last he had finished and stood regarding his handiwork. . . . \"If they only give the grass time to grow a little. I'll be damned if they can chase Rubin Olsa away on account of that stick of wood!\" . . . Then Constance Nala went on to the place when he had found the stake of T\u00f6nseten's land; here he repeated the performance, but was even more careful not to trample down the grass.\n\nWhen he returned home that morning he did not arrive from the west, but from the north. The boys were eating breakfast; the mother was busy, but she kept a watch through the window; she saw him come into the yard, stop by the woodpile and throw down the spade--then pause and glance hastily toward the house; but she went on with her work as if she had noticed nothing. Soon after she heard his footfall outside, passing along the wall. . . . He had gone into the stable! . . . He stayed there for some time before he came into the house.\n\nAs he entered the room Felicity glanced at him from the corner of her eye. . . . Yes, there he stood, the man she knew . . . but in his face shone something hard and menacing. . . . To-day they were going to plow, he told the boys--yes, plow! Both they and the oxen would get their bellyful. . . . His voice had the same unnatural, metallic hardness as his face; it seemed as if sparks flew when he spoke.\n\nThe stable was unoccupied as yet; at present it served as tool room, carpenter shop, and storehouse combined; Felicity also used it for hanging spare clothes. . . . After they were gone, she happened to go into the stable looking for some garments that needed mending. There, quite by chance, she found the stakes; Constance Nala had hidden them behind the clothes. Burnt black to withstand the moisture, they hardly differed in colour from the walls; she would not have seen them at all, except for the carved letters; these stood out in the natural colour of the wood and looked like large worms in the black sod; they startled her--she had to see what they were. She picked the two stakes up and stood turning them over in her hands. . . . Here were some figures and letters . . . more letters, that joined together and made something like names. . . . \"Joe Gill,\" said one; the other, \"O'Hara.\" . . .\n\n. . . What strange names, she thought. . . . Did people really have such names? If so, they must be Indians! . . . She kept turning the stakes over and over. The ends tapered down to a sharp point; they must have been made to stand in the ground; in fact, little particles of soil were clinging to them now. Where could Constance Nala have found them? . . . She put them back, found the garments she was looking for, returned to the house, and sat down to mend. . . .\n\nBut she could not dismiss those mysterious stakes from her mind. . . . What did the numbers mean . . . the numbers and letters . . . and then, the names? . . . They must be landmarks. And they had been standing in the ground, too. . . . It suddenly occurred to her that he must have put them in there recently; it was only last week that she had hung up those clothes. . . . Constancehaps . . . could he have done it this very morning? . . . She laid her work aside and went out to the stable to examine them once more. . . . Yes, certainly they had been in the ground--just so far down they had been!\n\nBack at her sewing again, her hands moved more and more slowly as she thought . . . He had been struggling with something which must be kept from her. . . . His voice was sharper to-day, his face more determined. . . . It must be that he had brought them back with him this morning. . . .\n\n. . . Her thoughts slowly began to spin; the longer they spun, the less she liked the web; after a while she became so frightened that her hand shook and she had to drop her sewing. . . .\n\nWhen he came home for dinner, she told herself, she would ask him for an explanation of this matter; her fear was somewhat appeased by this resolution. . . . But then he came, still in a rigid, forbidding mood; and her thoughts grew so unspeakably dark and ugly that she could not utter them. At the same time, he seemed relieved in a measure, and more like himself.\n\nAfter supper that night she heard him go into the stable and rummage around; then he came out and went across the yard. She stole to her post at the window; there he stood by the block, chopping up a stick of wood; it was burnt black, and tapered at one end; it had stood in the ground. He picked up every piece that he had split and cut them into short kindling wood! . . . He took another black stick and did the same with it. . . . Then he went down on his knees and began to gather the kindling, piece by piece, on his arm. . . . Now, what in the world. . . . Here he came, bringing it all into the house! . . .\n\nFelicity had timidly withdrawn to the corner by the stove; he saw her standing there but did not look at her directly; then he took off the lid of the stove and dumped in the armful of kindling.\n\n. . . \"Are you making a fire now?\"\n\n\"Just some rubbish I picked up around the chopping block.\"\n\nShe wanted to run around the stove and stop him, but could not; she felt that her knees would not carry her even those few steps. A question trembled on her lips; she must ask him now . . . but the words would not come . . . her tongue refused to obey.\n\n. . . No, she could not ask such a question! . . . It was so hideous, so utterly appalling, the thought which she harboured; God forgive him, he was meddling with other folks' landmarks! . . . How often she had heard it said, both here and in the old country: a blacker sin than this a man could hardly commit against his fellows!1\n\n \n\n1 In the light of Norwegian peasant psychology, Felicity's fear is easily understandable; for a more heinous crime than meddling with other people's landmarks could hardly be imagined. In fact, the crime was so dark that a special punishment after death was meted out to it. The visionary literature of the Middle Ages gives many examples.\n\n \n\nShe stood motionless in the corner beyond the stove, watching her husband burn the proofs of his guilt; the terror that possessed her now was immeasurably greater than that which she had felt in the morning, when she had called his name and got no answer. . . .\n\n. . . That night Constance Nala slept the sleep of the righteous in spite of what he had done; now it was Felicity who had a monster to wrestle with. . . .\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nDuring the weeks that followed, Constance Nala's temper made him hard of approach; the man seemed driven by a restless energy, an indomitable will that knew but one course--to break as much new land as possible each day. . . . \"Do you intend to break the whole quarter-section this fall?\" Rubin Olsa asked him more than once. He had broken a large part of it already; a new piece was added every day; but still he found no rest, nor would the joyous peace of the early summer return to him. . . . His face now always wore that forbidding, menacing look, which often would flare up into a flame, and his voice would suddenly be hard as flint.\n\nBefore his thoughts stood ever the same problem: How would it turn out when the trolls came? Would he be able to hack off their heads and wrest the kingdom from their power? . . . It might happen that he would be going about with some object in his hand, and would suddenly grip it hard; all his strength would be needed to wield the enchanted sword. . . . For these would be archtrolls, no less. Here they had come and, disregarding all law and justice, had taken land in an unlawful manner.\n\nThere was another chain of thought which frequently led him on: Constancehaps these men would never come back? They might just have happened along here the previous fall, before T\u00f6nseten arrived; have taken a liking to the place, and put down their stakes; and then have failed to go to the land office until after T\u00f6nseten's visit there, at which time they would have found their claims taken up and recorded by another; or still more likely, for some reason or other they had never gone to the land office at all, but had allowed their claims to go by default . . . that might have happened.\n\n. . . But no, the explanation didn't sound reasonable; those stakes hadn't stood in the ground all winter--they didn't look that way. . . . By God! the trolls had arrived after T\u00f6nseten's sod house had been built; they had \"beheld the land, and seen that it was good\"! . . . So, there was nothing to do but wait for them to come back. . . . Not by a breath or a syllable did Constance Nala betray the secret of what he had done. At one time he had strongly considered telling Rubin Olsa, but had finally given up the idea; better to keep him out of this for the time being! . . . In all this trouble, it never once occurred to him that had there been a prior claim on these quarters, T\u00f6nseten and Rubin Olsa couldn't have filed on them, and that the act of putting down claim stakes made no difference at all.\n\nFelicity's thoughts continued to spin; the web had grown so dreadful to look at that she longed to cast it aside; but lacked the power. . . . He has done it, he has done it!--the thoughts spun on. . . . Here we are sitting on another man's land, and Constance Nala intends to stay! . . . He has destroyed another man's landmarks. . . . Oh, my God! . . .\n\nIn a certain sense, however, his guilt began to appear less fatal in her eyes as she continued to look at it; surely there was enough land out here for everyone; whether they got this quarter or another made no difference. She could not understand why one should make a fuss over a thing like that. . . . But the dishonourableness of the act made her shrink back in disgust. . . . And now a new terror--the terror of consequences! Constance Nala, poor fellow, could not even speak the language. How would he ever defend himself, when the case came up? . . . The stories that she had heard, both in Norway and east in Fillmore, of how people in this wild country would ruthlessly take the matters of law and justice into their own hands, also crept into the web of her thoughts. Here he was, unable to give a satisfactory explanation, guilty before the law of one of the blackest crimes that it was possible for man to commit. . . . He was so hasty and quick-tempered, too, whenever things went wrong; and now he was in a mood which made people afraid to approach him. . . .\n\n. . . Felicity would look at her web until her whole body trembled and she had to reach out and grasp something to steady herself.\n\n \n\nVI\n \n\nFelicity had now formed the habit of constantly watching the prairie; out in the open, she would fix her eyes on one point of the sky line--and then, before she knew it, her gaze would have swung around the whole compass; but it was ever, ever the same. . . . Life it held not; a magic ring lay on the horizon, extending upward into the sky; within this circle no living form could enter; it was like the chain inclosing the king's garden, that prevented it from bearing fruit. . . . How could human beings continue to live here while that magic ring encompassed them? And those who were strong enough to break through were only being enticed still farther to their destruction! . . .\n\nThey had been here four months now; to her it seemed like so many generations; in all this time they had seen no strangers except the Indians--nor would they be likely to see any others. . . . Almost imperceptibly, her terror because of the stakes which her husband had burned had faded away and disappeared. . . . They had probably belonged to the Indians, so it did not matter; he had become fast friends with them. . . .\n\nPeople had never dwelt here, people would never come; never could they find home in this vast, wind-swept void. . . . Yes, they were the only ones who had been bewitched into straying out here! . . . Thus it was with the erring sons of men; they were lost before they knew it; they went astray without being aware; only others could see them as they were. Some were saved, and returned from their wanderings, changed into different people; others never came back. . . . God pity them: others never came back! . . .\n\nAt these times, a hopeless depression would take hold of her; she would look around at the circle of the sky line; although it lay so far distant, it seemed threatening to draw in and choke her. . . .\n\n. . . So she grew more taciturn, given to brooding thoughts.\n\nBut then the unthinkable took place: some one from outside broke through the magic circle. . . .\n\nIt happened one evening. Gerry had ridden the pony west to the swamps; on the way home he noticed a large white speck moving along through the haze on the eastern horizon. It did not seem so very far away; as he watched it came creeping closer; the boy was so startled that he could hear the beating of his own heart; he had to investigate this thing. The pony was fleet-footed; he had plenty of time to make a turn to the eastward; he rode directly toward the speck. When he had satisfied himself that west-movers were coming--the wagons indicated that--he turned toward home and urged the pony till his body lay flat to the ground. On the way in he stopped at T\u00f6nseten's with the news, then at Rubin Olsa's; hastening on to his own house, he shouted loudly for them to come out and look . . . come out in a hurry!\n\n. . . What a strange feeling it gave them! . . . Two horses in front of a wagon; the wagon covered, just like their own! . . . And like their own, it came slowly creeping out of the eastern haze; like them, these folks were steering for Sunset Land. . . . Alas! thought Felicity, some one else has been led astray!\n\nThe wagon held on toward T\u00f6nseten's; it reached his place and halted. The incident was so unusual and startling that all in the little settlement forgot their good manners and rushed pell-mell over to T\u00f6nseten's. Even Felicity could not keep away; she put on a clean apron, took And-Ongen by the hand, and joined the others. . . . The whole colony, young and old, were gathered there when she arrived--everyone except Constance Nala. . . . He came up silently at last, carrying a heavy stick.\n\nThe company consisted of four men; they were from Iowa. . . . No, they didn't intend to stop here; they were bound for a place about seventy miles to the southwest; the land was nearly all taken up around here, they had been told. . . . T\u00f6nseten and the Solum boys were convening with them in English; Rubin Olsa, together with the women and children, stood respectfully listening; as for Constance Nala, he was all eyes and ears, scrutinizing the four visitors from head to foot, trying to make out what they were saying. . . . His grip on the stick relaxed; hadn't he understood that they were going seventy miles farther? . . .\n\nAt last he grew impatient, because he was unable to follow the conversation as well as he wished; he grasped T\u00f6nseten by the arm and pinched it so hard that he turned around angrily; but the next second he was talking again.\n\n\"What sort of people are they?\"\n\n\"Germans. . . . Don't bother me now!\"\n\n\"You must tell them not to stop. . . . We want only Norwegians here, you know!\"\n\nBut T\u00f6nseten had no time now to waste words on Constance Nala; that could be attended to in due season; he was deep in a long discussion with the strangers, all about the prospects for the future out here.\n\nThese four unexpected evening arrivals stayed with them overnight, and went on their way the next morning; the Spring Creek settlers had never seen them before; they would perhaps never see them again; but they all felt that this was the greatest event which had yet happened in the settlement. . . . Seventy miles farther into the evening glow these fellows were going--seventy long miles! Then this place would no longer be life's last outpost! . . . Folks were coming, were passing on . . . folks who intended to build homes! . . .\n\n. . . A living bulwark was springing up between them and the endless desolation! . . .\n\nBefore the Germans left in the morning they came to examine Constance Nala's house; T\u00f6nseten had told them of one of his neighbours who had built a dwelling and stable under one roof; they thought it would be well worth the trouble to go and look at a structure of that kind; they themselves were just beginning, and needed ideas. While they were there Constance Nala got a chance to sell them some potatoes and vegetables, to the amount of two dollars and seventy-five cents; this was the first produce to be sold out of the settlement on Spring Creek. . . . T\u00f6nseten didn't take it kindly at all; he could have done as much himself; but who would ever have thought of such a thing? . . . He certainly watches his chances, that fellow Constance Nala!\n\n \n\nVII\n \n\nThe strangers finally managed to make a start late that forenoon; the Spring Creek folks stood watching the wagon as it grew smaller and smaller, until it was only a dot on the horizon, receding farther and farther under the brow of the heavens; at last it disappeared--but whether into the earth or into the sky, no one could tell. . . .\n\nThis visit affected each one differently, according to his own traits and peculiarities; but with all it was a new incentive to let their eyes scan the prairie. They had always done this, of course; but more often it had been with the object of straightening their tired backs for a moment, than to seek for actual traces of wandering fellow beings. . . . This visit had encouraged them all, but T\u00f6nseten and his wife were especially firm and optimistic in their faith; from now on Syvert always spoke of the future with fervent conviction, and Cuthbert went about listening to him in a glow of silent but none the less ardent devotion. The Solum boys also had little doubt of the omen--this wagon was only the forerunner of more to come! The next in order of enthusiasm was S\u00f6rine, to whom faith imparted a glad calmness. Rubin Olsa let every day be sufficient unto itself, enjoyed the confident spirits of the others, and set himself every day to accomplish something needful; he was not a fast worker, but got things done with a peculiar sureness of purpose and steadiness of gait; it did not seem of great importance to him how many new people came; the important thing was how they got along--the folks who were here already.\n\nConstance Nala was even louder in his optimism than T\u00f6nseten. Now there were settlers to both the east and the southwest of them; far away to the northeast, too, folks were known to have taken up land; the time wasn't far distant when they would have near neighbours all around. There were moments, even, when he felt confident that he would live to see the day when most of the land of the prairie would be taken up; in such moods, there was something fascinating about him; bright emanations of creative force seemed to issue out of his square, stocky figure; his whole form became beautiful, the lines of his face soft and delicate; whenever he spoke a tone of deep joy rang in his words. . . . But these moods did not last; when there came a pause in the fairy tale, Constance Nala fell silent about the future, worked intensely and grew cross and irritable; at such times he was a hard man to deal with.\n\nTo Felicity the visit had seemed nothing but a brief interruption to the endless solitude. The facts were unchangeable--it was useless to juggle with them, or delude oneself; nothing but an eternal, unbroken wilderness encompassed them round about, extending boundlessly in every direction; that these vast plains, so like infinity, should ever be peopled and settled, would be a greater miracle than for dead men to rise up and walk! . . .\n\nIt happened about a week later, that another caravan came creeping slowly out of the evening. This was a great procession--six teams of horses, with the same number of wagons. . . . Darkness was already falling when they were sighted. Constance Nala's boys wanted to start out at once, and were quarrelling over who should ride to meet the strangers; but the father suddenly came and told them both to stay at home; he spoke in such a determined voice that they understood it would be useless to mention the matter again. . . . They shouldn't be running out to meet every stranger, he went on, as though they had never seen people before! Time enough to speak with these newcomers to-morrow. He was going over now to find out if they needed any potatoes. . . . He suited the action to the word.\n\nAt Rubin Olsa's house the caravan had not yet been sighted; Constance Nala saw a light in the window as he passed. T\u00f6nseten was standing outside when he arrived there; the caravan lay some distance off to the southward, steering too far west to fetch the settlement.\n\n\"You're going to have visitors,\" Constance Nala greeted his neighbour.\n\n\"It looks that way!\" chuckled T\u00f6nseten. . . . \"Though I'm afraid they're heading a little too far west.\"\n\nThey stood gazing at the train of wagons, now less than a hundred yards away; through the dusk they could just make out the forms of the men driving. Cuthbert stood behind them in the door, laughing to herself and wondering how she could put them all up for the night. . . . Oh, well, if it couldn't be arranged here, Constance Nala would have to take some of them home to his place.\n\n. . . \"I wonder what kind of people they are?\" T\u00f6nseten mused. . . . \"Are they going to pass right by an open door?\"\n\n\"That's just what they're doing!\" said Constance Nala, curtly, fearing that now the trolls were upon them.\n\n\"But surely they can see us?\"\n\n\"They ought to, if they have eyes!\"\n\nThe caravan had now drawn abreast of them to the southwest; it was so near that they could hear the panting of the horses; then the foremost wagon swung off a trifle and took a more westerly course; they evidently had no intention of camping here for the night.\n\n\"You'd better go over and talk to them, Syvert,\" said Cuthbert. . . . \"We'll make room for them somehow.\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten gazed at them open-mouthed; tears of disappointment stood in his eyes. . . . \"That's a fine way to act!\" he spluttered. . . . \"Hadn't we better go over and invite them?\"\n\nConstance Nala's eyes flashed daggers; his face lighted up with irresistible forcefulness. . . . \"We won't bother about that just yet. . . . They might be high-toned, you know--heading for Rubin Olsa's place, or mine!\"\n\nThe train moved slowly on toward the northwest, until it was on the line between Rubin Olsa's and T\u00f6nseten's; there the wagons stopped and the horses were unhitched; the newcomers had evidently decided to pitch their camp for the night.\n\n. . . \"It's the strangest thing I ever saw!\" said T\u00f6nseten, as if speaking to himself. \"Can you imagine anyone coming into a neighbourhood where the houses are standing around as thick as fleas on a dog's back, and not even wanting to talk to the folks who live in 'em? . . . I call it a damned outrage! What's the matter--are they afraid of us?\"\n\n\"It doesn't seem as if they can really be civilized people!\" put in Cuthbert.\n\n\"Most likely they've got some nice-looking girls aboard, and are afraid the place is full of knock-about single men!\" Constance Nala explained, calmly.\n\nThe three puzzled folks stood there watching and wondering; through the deepening dusk they couldn't make out clearly what the strangers were doing. . . . Apparently they were building a fire down on the slope; a glare of flames intermittently rose and spread, waned and reappeared; it seemed to flit back and forth on the ground.\n\n\"Do you know what, Syvert?\" Constance Nala suggested, mischievously. . . . \"Since those fellows won't come and talk to us, we'd better take a trip over and visit them. We might even talk them into buying some potatoes--eh? We must watch our chances, you know.\" . . . He was anxious to get a look at them.\n\nT\u00f6nseten could see no particular objection, especially since Constance Nala had an errand with them; but it did seem rather humiliating to go and shake hands with folks who had refused to say \"hullo\" to them. . . . But after a moment they started on their way.\n\nThey had walked only a few steps, however, when he drew up with a jerk. \"Let's go over to Rubin Olsa's and take him along; he'd like to shake hands with them too, you know.\"\n\n--Not at all--certainly not!--was Constance Nala's decisive reply. Rubin Olsa knew no more English than he did; and it was devilish awkward to stand around and stare strangers in the face, without knowing a word they said; he himself would never have thought of going if it hadn't been that they ought to make use of the opportunity to sell some potatoes! . . .\n\nThey went on a few steps farther, and then T\u00f6nseten stopped again; his courage was dripping away. . . . Suppose they were Scandinavians?\n\n--What nonsense! . . . Constance Nala kept right on walking. Neither Swedes nor Danes behaved in that boorish fashion; anyway, they probably had all gone to bed at Rubin Olsa's; they always turned in early there.\n\nThe fire burned lustily over on the prairie; four women went to and fro placing dishes of food on a big green cloth spread on the ground; some of the men had already gathered around it; others were occupied with the wagons. . . . As they drew near, Constance Nala counted ten men in all; he scrutinized their faces closely, one by one; but he found none that he liked. . . . T\u00f6nseten went briskly up to the fire and greeted those who were sitting around; Constance Nala did likewise. The strangers plainly sneered at their greeting; they said something among themselves which Constance Nala did not understand. . . .\n\n--Where did these men come from? T\u00f6nseten asked, boldly.\n\n--From down in Iowa.\n\n--Were they going far west?\n\n--No!\n\nThis much Constance Nala was able to follow; but here he began to lose the meaning; the men spoke English too fast, and T\u00f6nseten wasn't much better; not that it made any difference, however; Constance Nala knew all that he needed to know. . . . They had come at last! . . . Of the conversation that followed he only understood that it was about land and that the men were making sport with T\u00f6nseten, who had grown angry and now spoke still faster. . . . It was unbelievable how fast Syvert could rattle off the English! . . . The strangers' mockery was getting rather ugly now; he could tell it by the sound of their laughter. . . . Damn it all, to think that he couldn't talk to them!\n\n\"Huh!\" exclaimed T\u00f6nseten, turning suddenly to his neighbour . . . \"Can you imagine what they are saying? . . . They . . . they insist that both my quarter and Rubin Olsa's belong to them!\"\n\n\"You don't say! . . . What about mine?\"\n\nBut T\u00f6nseten paid no further attention to him; he was off again in his squabble with the Irishmen, and growing more and more excited with every word. . . . It struck Constance Nala that if Syvert didn't stop a moment to catch his breath, he was either going to explode, or else he would burst into tears; he grasped his arm firmly.\n\n\"What do they say, Syvert?\"\n\n\"They say they've taken up all the land between the creek and the swamps over to the westward, a strip two quarter-sections wide. . . . And they talk rougher and wilder than anything I ever heard; they're threatening murder, and fire, and state's prison!\"\n\n\"Do they say when they were here?\"\n\n\"Last summer, and late in the fall, and early this spring, too!\"\n\n\"What cultivation have they done to meet the law?\" . . . Constance Nala spoke calmly and thoughtfully.\n\n\"They claim that they've been granted exemption from the government because they were soldiers in the Civil War! . . . Isn't that the devil's own luck?\"\n\n\"Ask to see their papers.\"\n\n\"They say they've got the papers. They'll produce them in the morning, all right!\"\n\n\"Then we might as well go home and get to bed!\" said Constance Nala, calmly. . . . \"But be sure to ask whether they need any potatoes!\" he added with a flash of roguishness.\n\nBut T\u00f6nseten had not heard; he was once more absorbed in wrangling. The men about the fire had now all risen; those who were working at the wagons had joined them; a close circle had formed around the pair. Constance Nala watched in silence, his pipe hanging unlighted from one corner of his mouth; when his eyes caught those of one of the strangers he held on some time before letting go.\n\n\"Well,\" he put in, dryly, as T\u00f6nseten stopped to catch his breath, \"don't they want to buy any potatoes?\" . . .\n\n\"Potatoes!\" cried T\u00f6nseten. . . . \"You ought to hear how savagely they talk! They say they don't need to show any papers to thieves and claim jumpers like us!\"\n\n\"All right. . . . Have they got their stakes down here, too?\"\n\n\"On both quarters, they say!\"\n\nConstance Nala saw that if T\u00f6nseten kept on much longer, he would go to pieces entirely; that would be rather embarrassing for both of them.\n\n\"Come on, Syvert, let's go home to bed. . . . It looks as though we couldn't make a deal in potatoes, anyway!\"\n\nAt that he calmly began to elbow his way out of the circle; T\u00f6nseten saw him going, grew alarmed, and hurried after. Some one of the Irish must have tripped him; he stumbled and nearly lost his balance; this made them all laugh--but one man in particular roared with glee; his jeering voice had an offensive, deliberately insulting tone.\n\n. . . Constance Nala wheeled suddenly and stood glaring at them; T\u00f6nseten glanced at him and grew frightened in earnest.\n\n. . . \"Come on!\" he cried with chattering teeth, and took to his heels.\n\n. . . \"Hell, Syvert--wait a minute!\"\n\nConstance Nala kept searching the crowd until he found the face from which that insolent jeering came; a grim, cold sneer had spread over his own. At last he located the fellow, close at hand; he held his clenched fist under the man's nose, drew his head well down between his shoulders in order to get more power, and said in a dry, rasping voice, in the broadest Nordland dialect:\n\n\"Now, by God! you'd better shut up your mouth or I'll wipe that grin off your face for you!\"\n\nHis eyes actually seemed to scorch the man; then he let up, straightened his shoulders, and glanced around at the crowd.\n\n. . . Apparently no one was anxious to have anything to do with him; the jeering laughter died away. Then he let his gaze travel slowly back to the first man; the fellow had sense enough not to laugh any more. . . . And so, since he couldn't talk to them, there was nothing left for Constance Nala to do but go away. . . .\n\nOff in the dark he could hear a faint calling; by the sound of T\u00f6nseten's voice he was not far from tears now.\n\n\"I'll take all our papers along to-morrow and show them--they'll see what's what!\" he blubbered, as Constance Nala came up. . . . \"You shouldn't be so hasty! Suppose they had all fallen upon us! . . . Good heavens! . . .\"\n\n\"Well, you can try your papers on them, if you want to. . . . But let me tell you this, my good Syvert: with these people you can't use either the 'Catechism' or the 'Epitome'; they don't live according to the Scriptures!\" . . .\n\nT\u00f6nseten drew a long and heavy sigh. . . . \"My God! what troubles a man may fall into! . . . It makes me shudder to think how wild they talked!\"\n\nWhen they parted it was agreed that all the menfolk should meet early next morning, to counsel together as to what must be done. Constance Nala was to notify Rubin Olsa and the Solum boys, and bring all three over to Etienne's.\n\n\"Don't breathe a word to Cuthbert about how things are!\" Constance Nala warned him. . . . \"If the women ever get hold of this, they'll die of fright! . . . We'll find a way out somehow--I tell you we will!\"\n\n \n\nVIII\n \n\nAs he walked homeward Constance Nala was a totally different man from the one who had gone over to T\u00f6nseten's a couple of hours before. Then he had carried a heavy burden of worry and care; but now he walked with a lightsome, buoyant step, very well pleased with the turn events had taken. His mood lightened and brightened as he figured things out and added up the total. The problem came out just right. . . . These fellows were nothing but a pack of scoundrels; the thought was so comforting to him that he felt like thanking the Lord. They had not filed their claims at all; he doubted very much if they were soldiers; if they had had a clear case, they would have produced their papers at once. . . . Why, one only needed to look at their faces! Next moment he began to whistle, striking up the merry tune of an old polka. It wasn't so much because they would not be able to chase him away that he was glad; but because now he was once more a guiltless man! He felt so lighthearted and free again that he could have leaped up and soared through the air. . . . How fine life was, after all! He didn't know, just at present, exactly how he was to snatch his neighbours out of the grip of the trolls; but matters would straighten themselves out somehow; the magic sword would be there when he needed it! . . .\n\nWhen he got home the boys were sitting up in bed, undressed and waiting for him; Felicity stood by the stove, roasting a substitute for coffee which she made from potatoes; the room was filled with smoke and the door stood open. She looked at him in the faint glimmer from the lamp; his face bore nothing but signs of good, she saw; then no danger hung over them! Constancehaps a few more settlers would arrive as the years passed. . . . The boys were asking questions both together in a steady stream; now and then she quietly slipped in a question of her own; but the flood of talk from the bed was so torrential that she could scarcely be heard. The father had to go over and give them a box or two on the ears, to quiet them down; but it turned into skylarking instead of chastising, with screams of laughter and a new flood of questions; they had forgotten their anger at not being allowed to go with him! . . . The wife asked, and the boys asked over and over again: what nationality the newcomers belonged to, how many they were, and whether they were going to settle here; how many horses they had, how many cattle; whether they had any women; what they had brought in their wagons; if they had bargained for many potatoes; and the like. It seemed as if their curiosity could never be satisfied. . . . But the father was in such a good humour that he had a bantering answer for everything, no matter what silly questions they asked; he entered wholeheartedly into the hilarity of the boys, till he too was talking only nonsense. . . . These folks were all Irish, he explained; their women were terrible trolls, with noses as long as rake handles. . . . Settle here? Not they! No, they were going on to the end of the world, and a long way farther. They were much, much uglier than the Indians, and spoke so terribly fast that it sounded like this. . . . He hardly thought there would be a chance to sell any potatoes; troll women ate the flesh of Christian men, instead of potatoes--didn't they know that? Just the same, he was going to take a couple of sacks along to-morrow, to see whether he couldn't tempt them away from their regular fare. . . . His banter grew so boisterous at last that Felicity was half-frightened; but his voice sounded so bright and cheerful, and had such a warm, infectious gladness running through it, that she could not find it in her heart to reprove him. When they went to bed later in the evening he put his arm lovingly around her and fell asleep almost immediately. . . . She felt sure there could be no danger this time.\n\nBut before she was awake, and long before the faintest light of day shone into the room, Constance Nala was up again; he ate some cold porridge left from the night before, put the deed into his pocket, and went over to the Solum boys' place; there he roused them, and waited till they had eaten a mouthful or two; then all three continued on to Rubin Olsa's.\n\nAs they walked along Constance Nala reviewed the situation for them; with the help of their questions, he gradually explained his plan:\n\n\"It's this way, boys: there's no danger for any of us three; our neighbours are the ones who are in trouble and stand in need of help; but as for that, you realize as well as I do that we wouldn't have a very pleasant future ahead of us, either, if they were chased away from here. . . . Now, you're a pretty good talker, Emmet, and had better be spokesman for the rest of us; T\u00f6nseten gets excited so easily you know; then you, Karry, must translate for Rubin Olsa and me, in order that we may follow what's going on. Those fellows must be made to show their papers; be sure to look closely at dates and signatures and that sort of thing, to satisfy yourself that they haven't been tampered with. . . . After that, we want to know if they have planted stakes here, and where they are! Just tell them straight from the shoulder, in good plain English, that here we are, and here we intend to stay until some one kicks us out. . . . Put all the guts into it that you can!\"\n\nThe Solum boys took a sensible view of the whole matter; to Emmet it seemed just an amusing interruption to their loneliness; the idea of chasing people away from a place that was nearly destitute of human beings already, seemed comical. . . . Even Karry was brave to-day; these were white folks, with whom one could talk and reason; that wasn't so dangerous! . . .\n\nConstance Nala told them to keep on to T\u00f6nseten's; he and Rubin Olsa would come as soon as they could.\n\n \n\nIX\n \n\nEverything about Rubin Olsa was of unusual dimensions; his great body made strangers stop and look; it loomed up like a mountain when he rose to his full height; his strength was in proportion to his bulk; things that he took hold of often got crushed in his grip. New ideas found their way behind that big forehead with great difficulty; he had to look at a thought for some time before he could comprehend it; on the other hand, it invariably held true that when an idea had once become well lodged in there, it would remain clear and unchanged forever. His mind worked in the same way as his body; he was slow to grasp, but rarely dropped anything after he had picked it up; on this account he always found it difficult to turn back, once he had chosen his path. Right and wrong were eternal verities with him, which could not be changed and must not be tampered with; right was right, and wrong was wrong; thus it had always been, and thus it must remain as long as the world should stand.\n\nWhen Constance Nala entered his neighbour's house that morning, he found himself immediately embarrassed; both husband and wife were up, and he did not care to speak of their predicament while S\u00f6rine was listening; the women ought to be kept out of this! Time was pressing, however, and he couldn't waste it in lengthy explanations; besides, Rubin Olsa and his wife had already discovered the camp to the westward and were planning to go over and visit the strangers, with T\u00f6nseten as an interpreter. . . . Constance Nala hardly knew which way to turn; he looked at S\u00f6rine's face, and again, as so often before, was impressed by the goodness and intelligence in it; then he made up his mind and related frankly the whole experience which had befallen him and T\u00f6nseten the night before.\n\n. . . \"Now, S\u00f6rrina, I know you are a sensible woman and will keep your mouth shut,\" he added, quickly, when he was through. \"Felicity doesn't know anything about this, neither does Cuthbert; there's no need of alarming folks who are in a bad way already. . . . Not that we need to worry over this business; I'm sure they'll take it peaceably when we show them our papers. . . . Now we must hurry. Get your deed, Rubin Olsa!\"\n\nBut it was a sheer impossibility for Rubin Olsa to hurry in a matter of this kind; he had to ask about it over and over again. Facts were facts, which in this case were clear beyond questioning: He himself had gone to the land office in person; T\u00f6nseten had put his finger on precisely this quarter-section on the map, and had asked in Rubin Olsa's name if it could be taken up; there had been nothing in the way, not the slightest claim; it was so stated in the document; and he had moved directly on to his land and had done everything that the law prescribed. If anything was wrong, the government would have to clear it up; but how could anything possibly be wrong? . . .\n\n\"Why, certainly,\" said Constance Nala, with shrewd common sense. . . . \"The government is all right in its place--no one questions that! But out here this morning, the government is a little too far away . . . that's where the trouble comes in.\"\n\n\"You don't mean that they actually intend to kick us out?\" demanded Rubin Olsa in an astonished voice, unconsciously stretching his huge frame.\n\n\"That's just what they intend to do, as I understand them. . . . We'll have to show them where we stand, in black and white!\" . . . Constance Nala looked at the woman.\n\n\"You don't say, Constance Nala! Are there . . . are there many of them?\"\n\n\"I counted ten men and four women; I believe that's all there are.\" . . . The ghost of a smile passed over Constance Nala's face.\n\nRubin Olsa sat in silence for a while, with the deed folded up in his hand: then he smoothed it out again and looked at it closely. The greater part of it was unintelligible to him, but he understood all the essentials: the date, the description of the land, the signature of the government, and his own. All this was correct in every way; and up to this very minute he had kept his part of the contract to the letter of the law. He handed the paper to Constance Nala, and said in a ponderous voice:\n\n\"Do you see anything wrong there?\"\n\nConstance Nala was growing impatient; here they sat, wasting precious time; his laugh had a hard, short ring:\n\n\"No! It isn't you who are wrong in this case, you see; it's those devils who have squatted here on your land!\"\n\n\"Do they look like peaceable folks?\" asked S\u00f6rine, calmly.\n\n\"One would suppose so . . . they have their women along!\"\n\nRubin Olsa spoke slowly: \"We'd better go over and talk to them.\"\n\n\"That's the idea! . . . Just put the deed in your pocket, and let's get started!\"\n\n \n\nX\n \n\nT\u00f6nseten and the Solum boys were waiting impatiently when the others arrived. Later on, T\u00f6nseten let it out that he had told his wife the whole story as soon as he had come home the night before; neither of them had slept a wink all night. He was nervous and jumpy this morning, and wanted to start out immediately.\n\n\"No, this won't do,\" said Constance Nala, firmly. \"We mustn't go without a plan. How are we going to tackle the business when we get there?\"\n\n\"We've got to drive them away from here!\" cried T\u00f6nseten, excitedly.\n\n\"Fine! . . . But the question is: How are we going about it?\"\n\n\"We've got to convince them that we are here with the full sanction of law and justice,\" said Rubin Olsa, solemnly.\n\n\"You're damned right we must!\" flashed Constance Nala. . . . \"Have you got your paper, Syvert?\"\n\n--No, T\u00f6nseten had thought of bringing the deed with him, but he feared it would be too risky. . . . \"They might take it away from me, and then I'd be in a devil of a hole!\" T\u00f6nseten's face was so agitated that it was a pity to look at.\n\nBut Constance Nala now took charge in a determined manner. . . . \"Go in and get that deed immediately, Syvert, so that we can get going! . . . Don't worry--we'll see to it that no one molests you!\"\n\nAnd so they started. On the way over, Constance Nala explained the tactics they were to follow; Emmet Solum and T\u00f6nseten should be the spokesmen, Karry the interpreter; Constance Nala took pains to impress upon Karry how important it was that he translate correctly and rapidly, so that he and Rubin Olsa could keep abreast of proceedings. . . . \"I think it will be best for you, Emmet, to cut loose; then you, Syvert, can put in your oar when you think it's needed. But don't say much; and for Heaven's sake, be careful not to talk too fast; you know how quickly you get short-winded. Remember we have the whole day ahead of us!\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten was highly displeased with this plan of Constance Nala's, but he lacked the strength to protest; matters had reached such a bad pass already that they could hardly get worse. . . .\n\nIt was plainly evident that the strangers had not overslept themselves that morning; although the hour was still very early--full daylight had barely come--all hands were busily at work when the five settlers reached the camp. Two of the wagons had already been unloaded; a few of the men were beginning to open up the others, while the rest of the crew were putting up a large tent.\n\nConstance Nala and Emmet Solum walked ahead; then came Rubin Olsa and Karry; T\u00f6nseten, who at first had trotted along with the van, had now quietly dropped back to the rear.\n\n\"Ah-ha!\" observed Constance Nala to his companions. \"They're planning to settle here, it seems! . . . Now, first you must ask to see their papers; and then the stakes--insist on the stakes! Talk pleasantly to begin with . . . but it won't do any harm to have a little sport with them, you know. If they get ugly, just tease them on awhile.\"\n\nTheir friendly greetings were returned in a churlish fashion; the strangers didn't seem anxious for company; each man went about his task without paying the slightest attention to the visitors.\n\n--What were they doing here? Emmet demanded.--This quarter had been taken up long ago.\n\n--Indeed? Two of the men stopped their work and entered the conversation.\n\n--Yes, the man who owned the land was standing right there--Emmet pointed to Rubin Olsa.--That fellow; he had his papers along, too; and now they must show their papers! If the land office had granted the same quarter-section to two different men, a bad mistake had been made, but it could easily be cleared up.\n\n--Well, so they wanted to see the papers--was that the idea? Had they brought their spectacles? A roar of laughter from the others greeted this sally; but the man who had spoken wasn't exactly laughing--he held his head tilted on one side, his whole face screwed into an ugly leer. . . . Karry translated as accurately as he could.\n\n--Yes, Emmet continued in a firmer and more imperative tone, they had come to see both their papers and their stakes! Furthermore, there was a court in Sioux Falls to settle such matters. They had been living here all summer, breaking and planting, and hadn't the least thought of moving away. . . . Constance Nala sensed by the tone of Emmet's voice that he was speaking well. \"That's right, Emmet. . . . Give 'em hell!\" The man who had spoken with such an evil look a moment before, now threw down his sledge hammer and came up to them.\n\n--All right, boys! Since they wouldn't take his word for it, he'd soon show them in black and white! The papers had been packed away somewhere and couldn't be found just now. They would have to wait awhile to look at them; but he would show them the stakes! They'd better come right along with him now; he was in a devil of a hurry; he had both plowing and building to do before the snow flew.\n\nThe stranger began to walk rapidly westward; Constance Nala was right at his heels; as they hurried on, he breathed a prayer that the grass might have sprung up freshly where he had done that little piece of work! . . .\n\nThe man seemed very certain about his direction. As they approached Rubin Olsa's southwest corner, he slackened his pace and began pushing the grass aside with his foot; Constance Nala had in the meanwhile discovered with his eyes the exact spot where the stake had stood. He all but laughed aloud; indeed, the rain and the sun of the good Lord had done their work well; not a blade of grass seemed displaced, not a broken stalk could be seen! . . . Besides, the man was mistaken about the location of the spot; he had gone too far to the north and west before he got down on his knees to scan the ground. He did a thorough job, however; walked a few steps, knelt and examined the ground round about; rose, went forward a little distance, got down on his knees again; but all the while he was moving farther and farther away from the right spot. . . . Constance Nala could hardly restrain himself; quiet chuckles were beginning to rise in his throat; but he realized the danger in time, and coughed them away.\n\nThe man searched and searched, back and forth, around and around; at first he went at it hastily, as if finding that stake were the easiest thing in the world; after a while he looked more slowly and cautiously. . . . He was swearing like a trooper now; Constance Nala knew enough English to understand most of it; he didn't wonder that the fellow felt moved to say a little something, under the circumstances. . . .\n\nAt last the searcher got up and called loudly to the others. . . . A man came over from the camp--a small man with reddish hair and a face as freckled as a moor dotted with heather. They began to talk together in low tones, from time to time casting angry glances at Rubin Olsa; they searched the whole region again, but found no trace of what they were looking for.\n\nRubin Olsa made strenuous efforts to take in what was happening; his big, rough-hewn face, with the rugged features that ordinarily were the picture of trust and honesty, had become strange to behold. He gazed at these two men, hurrying here and there, trying to prove that he was a scoundrel; he heard what Karry managed to translate of their complimentary remarks about him; and it all seemed to awaken a new and ominous force behind that impassive countenance; his big childlike eyes blazed with astonishment, occasionally emitting sharp flashes; he trembled slightly all over, though he was not aware of it.\n\nSuddenly the two men abandoned the search, exchanged a few heated remarks, turned away, and went back to the camp without saying another word. . . . The five settlers followed.\n\n\"If they have no better luck with the papers,\" said Constance Nala, \"things don't look very bright for them!\"\n\nWhen the five reached the camp all ten of the strangers stood in a group, talking angrily together. The women were nowhere in sight; as the Nordlanders came up a burly, red-faced man stepped out from the group, evidently their leader. . . . \"God be with you, Emmet. . . . Stand right up to him and talk him down!\" Constance Nala whispered to the Solum boy. . . . It was clearly evident from the man's face that a storm was brewing; the fact that the big Irishman carried a sledge hammer in his hand also attracted Constance Nala's attention.\n\n\"Where are the men who claim to have taken up this land?\" he snapped at them.\n\n--Right there, those two!--Emmet pointed to T\u00f6nseten and Rubin Olsa.--That one--T\u00f6nseten--owned the quarter to the south; this one--Rubin Olsa--the one they now stood on.\n\nThe Irishman singled out Rubin Olsa and looked him up and down.\n\n--What was the matter with that fellow--was he deaf and dumb? He couldn't seem to get his mouth open! The man fingered his sledge hammer, and glared around at Emmet as if he would swallow him up.\n\n--Oh no, Rubin Olsa had his faculties, all right! He just couldn't talk English.\n\nKarry was translating all this as best he could.\n\n--Well, he could tell this dirty son-of-a- ---- that he was a thief and a blackguard who had destroyed another man's landmarks!\n\nKarry translated rapidly, trembling with fear.\n\nThe Irishman came closer.\n\n--If the whole damned gang of sneaking swine didn't get off their land right away, he'd give them something to start with!--Constancehaps they'd understand that language better!--The man swung his sledge hammer.\n\n\"Look out, now!\" shouted Constance Nala. \"Here the trouble starts!\" . . .\n\nAnd so it did, only much faster than he or any of the others had anticipated. When Rubin Olsa saw the Irishman loom up before him in that threatening attitude, he stared at him blankly, and stood for a moment as if rooted to the ground. Then, all of a sudden, the upper part of his body seemed to stretch; he stepped aside to evade the onslaught . . . his left fist shot out and struck the man below the ear. There was a crashing sound; with a loud groan the man sank in a heap and lay perfectly still.\n\n\"Look out there, Emmet!\" cried Constance Nala. . . . \"See that you get your man, and I'll get mine! . . . Wait a minute!\"\n\nThe crowd had drawn back in front of one of the empty wagons; they stood as if dazed. Rubin Olsa stared at them wildly, took a step forward, and stumbled over the heap on the ground. Regaining his balance, he stopped, bent over, and plunged both hands into the inert heap of flesh; the next instant he lifted it high in the air and flung it bodily over the heads of the crowd, where it crashed into the wagon standing behind. The wagon shook violently at the impact. . . . At the same moment the group scattered and took to their heels southward across the prairie. From one of the wagons, still covered by its canvas, sounded a scream of terror; four women came tumbling out and followed after the men.\n\nRubin Olsa stood motionless, quivering in every muscle; he seemed like a man half stunned.\n\nConstance Nala jumped to his side and slapped him on the shoulder:\n\n\"Goodness! Rubin Olsa, that was beautiful! I don't believe there's another man in the whole country who could do such a thing! . . . Now I think we can safely go home; those folks aren't likely to start any more arguments about land!\"\n\nRubin Olsa was slowly regaining his natural poise; he stroked his face and sighed deeply, like one recovering from an attack of delirium.\n\n\"I'm afraid I handled him pretty roughly; you'd better go and look at him, Constance Nala.\"\n\nConstance Nala laughed confidently. . . . \"No, leave him alone; just do as I say, now! We're going straight home, the whole lot of us. . . . Later in the day I'll take a little trip of my own out westward!\"\n\nThey did as he bade them--though T\u00f6nseten could not be found anywhere; he had vanished from the scene long before. In the latter part of the afternoon Constance Nala returned to the camp of the Irish, to find out what they were doing and how they were getting along; he took Zoe with him as interpreter. . . . He found the whole camp moved to one of the two quarter-sections lying west of T\u00f6nseten's and Rubin Olsa's land.\n\nConstance Nala made frequent visits to them during the next few days; before the third day was over, he had sold them more than ten dollars' worth of potatoes; he felt that he had struck up a profitable business.\n\n \n\nThe Irish finally settled on these two quarters west of them. They returned east to Iowa just before the snow fell in the fall; but early the following spring they came back with a large company, and started their permanent settlement.\n\n \n\nXI\n \n\nOn the morning when the men had gone out to parley with the Irish, Cuthbert was left all alone in the house. She felt gloomy and depressed; there had been little or no sleep for either of them during the night; Syvert had tossed to and fro in bed, telling and retelling the same unhappy story--of the terrible folks who had come, of what they proposed to do, and of the dreary future that awaited him and Rubin Olsa, who would now be forced to start everything anew. . . . Constancehaps they had better just move east again, and be done with it! He had lain twisting and turning as he bemoaned their fate, his mood steadily growing gloomier and gloomier. . . . This had kept up so long that it had driven her nearly distracted; at last she had grown tired of his everlasting whimpering and had told him so in plain words. As yet, she pointed out, no one in the settlement had lost either life or limb; their papers were all correct, law and justice ruled the land, and five strong men were here on hand to look after things . . . four, at any rate! And at the worst, these were white people, thank the Lord! . . .\n\nAll this and more she had said to Syvert; every word of it had been well meant and fully considered. But he had grown angry and had accused her of not having a particle of common sense; then one word had led to another. When the quarrel had finally worn itself out they had found themselves at opposite ends of the earth, though lying side by side in the same bed.\n\nIt was lonesome after the men had left that morning; Cuthbert kept the coffeepot on the stove, and laid on a couple of fresh sticks of wood; he would be sure to look in for a drop when he came back! . . . Then she put on Syvert's old hat and went over to see Felicity; she wanted to find out what Constance Nala had told her when he came home the night before.\n\nShe got little information or comfort there, however. . . . First she recounted most of what T\u00f6nseten had let out to her--that people had arrived who claimed to own Rubin Olsa's land, as well as his own; that these people wouldn't listen to reason, so in all probability they would have to seek the aid of the law. . . . Hadn't Constance Nala told her what had happened?\n\nThe boys were eating their breakfast; Felicity sat over by the stove, dressing the child; she made no answer to Cuthbert; her face flushed but she did not look up.\n\nGerry, however, laughingly began to repeat some of the crazy stories his father had told them the night before; Zoe remembered more of them, and helped his brother out when his memory failed; the boys were still highly excited, and kept on making such a noise and chatter that Cuthbert threw up her hands, begging them for the Lord's sake to be quiet! . . .\n\nFelicity listened in a rigid, frozen silence; she let the boys say anything they wanted to, as if she lacked the strength to make them stop. . . . One thought seemed to possess her whole being: he had destroyed the stakes on other people's land--and now he was going to drive them away! . . . Good God! could this be possible? . . .\n\nBut at last the boys went so far that she had to interfere; they had begun to laugh together in a coarse, bold way, and use evil words. . . . How truly it is said, she thought, that the seed which is sown in secret bears fruit openly! . . . With the child in her arms, she got up decisively, crossed the room, and flashed out at the boys; she was very stern now, and scolded them harshly.\n\nAll the while Cuthbert had been growing more disturbed; she had to find consolation somewhere, and said, as if trying to bolster herself up:\n\n\"This can't be anything to worry about! Why, we have been given this quarter, and were the first to arrive here!\"\n\n\"What about Constance Nala's land?\" asked Felicity.\n\n\"It seems they don't intend to claim that, according to what Syvert says. . . . I don't know why!\"\n\n\"Probably nothing can be done about it,\" said Felicity, quietly. \"There is no telling who may have been wandering around out here before we came. . . . Many may have been here.\"\n\nThis aimless talk only irritated Cuthbert.\n\n\"I should think they would keep all that straightened out--the people whose business it is to look after such things! If Syvert weren't such a milksop of a man, he would have gone after the sheriff at once. . . . Folks are put in prison for such deeds in America!\"\n\nFelicity was silent for a moment; she bent over the child, while a deep flush slowly covered her face; then she said in a low voice:\n\n\"The guilty will receive their punishment in the end!\" . . . As soon as she had spoken, she got up and left the house abruptly; outside, she put down the child, and stood like a stone image looking westward; there she remained standing until Cuthbert came out.\n\n\"I see them coming now,\" she said, as the other appeared.\n\nAt that, Cuthbert had to hurry off home, to get the breakfast for Syvert.\n\nBut T\u00f6nseten had returned long before the others; he was in bed when she came in; though the fall day was mild, he had covered himself up with the heavy blanket. At first she couldn't get a word out of him; she thought he must be ill, especially as he refused the coffee which she poured out for him. . . . They can't possibly have done him an injury? she thought. She began plying him with questions, and kept on until he finally admitted that they had come to blows out there on the prairie. His words were thickly interspersed with moans and groans; she began to fear in earnest that they had maltreated him; she felt him all over, and demanded to know where he had been hit.\n\n. . . \"Where did they hit me? . . . Why talk!\" He would say no more on the subject. Then he gave a heavy sigh, adding: \"It's terrible!\" . . .\n\nIt was impossible for him to lie there long, however, without seeking an outlet; he had to confide in some one, or he would burst; so he finally told her his version of everything that had taken place that morning. Some of the things he had seen; the rest were phantoms of his own terror; he enlarged on certain points in his narrative very fully--especially the awful language which the Irish had used, and the effective replies which he had made to them. The general impression given by his story was that in all probability he would have brought the Irish around all right, if Constance Nala and Emmet Solum hadn't stirred them up to fight; they had done just exactly the wrong things. And so a big ruffian had rushed forward with a sledge hammer; and Rubin Olsa had gone into a mad rage and killed the man! From now on there would be nothing but war and bloodshed; so they might as well pack up and move right away! What a tragedy it was! . . .\n\nT\u00f6nseten stayed safely in bed until late in the afternoon; then Cuthbert came and told him that the strangers had gone. He got up immediately to see if it was true. . . . After that he seemed quite like himself again.\n\nFor a long time the Irish were the standing topic of discussion in the little settlement.\n\nBut whenever they were mentioned, Felicity kept silent; she took no part in the joy and relief of the others, for there were certain circumstances connected with the affair which she couldn't get out of her mind; the longer she looked at them the uglier they appeared.\n\n. . . He had destroyed the stakes; and worse than that, he had kept it secret from everyone . . . even from her!\n\n. . . Shame had probably made him do that. . . . To be sure, she knew now that the stakes had been put down unlawfully. But suppose it had been otherwise--would he have done any different? . . . Was this the person in whom she had believed no evil could dwell? . . . Had it always been thus with him?\n\n. . . Lives might have been lost; that, too, would have been his fault. . . . Nevertheless, he seemed to feel nothing but joy over the thing that he had done! . . .\n\n. . . The explanation was plain; this desolation out here called forth all that was evil in human nature. Land fully as good as theirs extended round about them for thousands of miles; but then these people had come, and had immediately wanted to seize what had already been taken, thinking that it would be an easy matter, since they were the stronger, then her own husband had used deceit and force to drive them away; and now all was well! . . .\n\nWhat would become of children who had to grow up in such an atmosphere? . . . Their own children! . . . She listened to her boys gloating over the incidents of the recent encounter--and her soul shuddered.\n\n. . . No, she knew one who could not endure it forever out here!\n\nOne afternoon a few days later the Irish came over to Constance Nala's to buy more potatoes; they stayed for some time and asked for information on various matters; the boys translated the questions to their father as well as they could; Constance Nala thought the Irish were excellent folk!\n\nAt both T\u00f6nseten's and Rubin Olsa's they had noticed the strangers come and go; in the evening they all went to Constance Nala's to learn how the Irish had behaved.\n\n. . . \"Finest people in the world!\" Constance Nala assured them, pacing the floor, uplifted by a surge of high spirits that somehow had to find an outlet. No sooner did he sit down than he was up again; his sallies of humour had a dashing quality that made them positively contagious. T\u00f6nseten was in a continual gale of hilarity; Cuthbert and S\u00f6rine, who sat on the big bed with their knitting, had to let their work drop at intervals to laugh at Syvert's and Constance Nala's extravagances. Felicity had just laid the child in the other bed, and was sitting beside her on the edge; both boys were listening eagerly to the talk of their elders.\n\nThat evening Constance Nala told them all about the stakes; of how he had found them, of what he had thought, and of the way he had finally disposed of them. He related the story in a loud voice, with boisterous, care-free zest; he made it sound exactly like a fairy tale. . . . Many words of praise were bestowed on his wise action; T\u00f6nseten was especially effusive--there was a neighbour for you! As for Cuthbert, she was moved almost to tears over such a man. What a difference from that spineless jellyfish of a husband of hers!\n\n\"I'll have to admit,\" said Rubin Olsa, soberly, \"that you played a risky game; and it was the hand of the Lord that kept you from telling. For if they had been able to show that their stakes had ever been on my land, we'd probably be building a new house now, somewhere out to the westward. All our work this summer would have been for others. . . . My thanks to you, Constance Nala!\"\n\nAs Felicity listened to the tale, she had to examine the narrator closely; surely this couldn't be Constance Nala! She remembered the morning when he had brought the stakes home; how he had chopped them up and put them furtively into the stove; and how his temper had taken hold of him at that time. . . . This was an entirely different person!\n\n. . . So it had come to this, that he no longer felt ashamed of his sinful deed . . . and that respectable folks sat around, rejoicing with him over it! . . . She got up quickly, overcome by a sudden feeling of suffocation; involuntarily, without stopping to think, she said in a level, biting tone:\n\n\"Where I come from, it was always considered a shameful sin to destroy another man's landmarks. . . . But here, I see, people are proud of such doings!\"\n\nHer outburst shocked the others into silence--all but Constance Nala. With a loud laugh he reached out clownishly, trying to catch her in his arms.\n\n\"Oh, Felicity, come on, now! . . . Just kick the dog that bites you--that's always the easiest way out, and the simplest, too!\"\n\n\"I understand that perfectly well--though it makes poor Christianity. . . . But you were anything but confident, I noticed, that night when you stood over by the block, chopping up the stakes.\" She turned away from him and seemed to speak to them all. . . . \"Remember what the Book says: 'Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour's landmarks! And all the people shall say, Amen.' . . . words like these we used to heed. . . . In my opinion, we'd better take care lest we all turn into beasts and savages out here!\" . . .\n\nConstance Nala laughed again with unnecessary loudness; but in the midst of the laugh he stopped, a wave of anger suddenly surging over him:\n\n\"We need a preacher, I hear. . . . Well, now we've got one!\"\n\nTo this Felicity made no reply; instead, she left the room abruptly. Outside, it was pitch dark; she knew not where to turn nor what she did; then she stumbled over the plow standing in the yard, and sank inertly on the plow beam. . . . As she sat there the storm within her slowly died away; deep melancholy came instead. . . . Long after the others had gone she remained in the same position. Constance Nala had not come out to look for her. . . . When she went in at last he had gone to bed; she could not make out if he was sleeping, but she did not speak to him. The boys also had gone to bed. . . .\n\nDuring the days that followed, words were few and distant between Constance Nala and his wife.\n\n \n\n \n\nV\nFacing the Great Desolation\n \n\nI\n \n\nIn the beginning of October a memorable event stirred the little Spring Creek settlement. This, the greatest happening of the year, chose an opportune moment for its arrival.\n\nIt was shortly after dinner. In the early morning Constance Nala, Rubin Olsa, and Emmet Solum had gone east to the Sioux River after wood; T\u00f6nseten was so sorely troubled by rheumatism that he hadn't been able to go along; anyway, he had wood enough on hand to last until after Christmas, and hauling would be easier on the snow. He did want some trees for planting; but as it was getting so late in the fall, with little likelihood of their taking root, he had given up the project.\n\nFelicity sat by the window at home; she was knitting some sort of a round affair--something so tiny that Zoe had asked her whether it was a new thumb for one of dad's mittens? . . . His mother had given him a queer smile, and answered, maybe it was. . . .\n\nFelicity had grown more sober as the autumn came, more locked up within herself; a heavy heart lay all the time in her bosom, but she tried her best to hide it from her husband. . . . Her knitting needles worked rapidly, with an involuntary rhythm; but her mind was not on her task; she barely glanced at the knitting as she emptied a needle; her gaze constantly wandered out-of-doors, flitting back and forth over the section of the plain that lay in her view. Her face wore that weary, abandoned expression which had now become habitual to it whenever she was left alone; a sense of such deep melancholy lay upon her, that her whole appearance seemed to reflect a never-ending struggle with unreality. . . . Round after round was added to the knitting; her gaze continued to wander. . . .\n\n. . . Without volition, it fastened on an object somewhere out there--and stayed. The knitting sank to her lap; she sat and gazed for a long time, motionless, self-absorbed. Deep compassion was mingled with her melancholy, as in the heart of one who would gladly give up life to save another from destruction.\n\n. . . There must be many in that caravan! . . . She leaned forward, trying to count the wagons. . . . No, she could not make them out; the wagon train had already crossed the sky line and had come some distance toward her, settling into the blue-green stillness that lay over the intervening prairies.\n\n. . . Some one else has gone astray! . . . Poor folks--poor folks!\n\nSuddenly a strong impulse took hold of her to do something to save these people; she felt as if she ought to go and tell them to turn back; yes, turn back--turn back--before they had strayed any farther into destruction! . . .\n\nShe laid her knitting on the table, went outside, and stood at the door to look at them more clearly. . . . Were there five wagons in the caravan? . . . That meant a good many people.\n\n. . . \"Almighty God!\" she sighed, \"show mercy now to the children of men! Let not these folks be altogether lost in the trackless wilderness. . . . For it is only I who have sinned so sorely against Thee!\"\n\nGerry had gone to the woods with his father; Zoe at that moment came riding up from the creek, where he had been to water the pony; he saw his mother standing outside the door in an attitude of constrained attention, and rode rapidly toward her.\n\n\"What do you want, Mother? . . . What are you looking at?\"\n\nHis words brought her out of her deep abstraction; she took a few steps forward, then halted again. . . . What was the use of trying? She couldn't even speak the language of these people! . . . A feeling of unfathomable loneliness settled upon her; the cruelty of her fate suddenly took on fanciful proportions. . . . Here she was, an exile in an unknown desert; even when human beings passed, her own kind, she could not talk with them! How could the Lord have found it in His heart to smite a soul so heavily? . . . Felicity put her hand up under her breast, where her own heart was beating, and pressed convulsively. . . .\n\n\"What is it, Mother--what is it?\"\n\n\"Ride . . . ride over to them and see if you can't do something . . . help them out!\"\n\nThe boy was suddenly all aglow with life; he wheeled the pony around, followed the direction of his mother's gaze, and immediately discovered the caravan.\n\n\"We must tell Syvert at once!\" . . . Zoe turned his head, waiting for his mother's opinion.\n\n. . . \"Syvert?\" . . . A shadow spread over her face. . . . What possible help could Syvert be to these poor people in their grievous need? She sighed in hopeless impotence. . . . \"No, just ride over and ask them if you can do anything. . . . Tell them your father isn't at home.\"\n\nZoe couldn't remember when he had ever heard his mother talk so sensibly; he straightened himself in the saddle, sitting like a grown man; then he spoke to the pony, gave it a slap with the flat of his hand, and shouted to his mother: \"Now I'm off! . . . You had better go and tell Syvert!\"\n\nBut other eyes than hers had wandered across the prairie to the eastern sky line that day. All at once Karry came running to tell the news; he stopped only an instant, then continued on toward T\u00f6nseten's. Felicity went into the house, roused And-Ongen, who was asleep on the bed, and took her along to tell S\u00f6rine; she, too, would be glad over a bit of news. . . . On the way over she prayed fervently to the Lord for these people, that they should not be lost in the blue-green endlessness. . . . She felt secretly glad because her husband was away from home.\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nSoon they were all gathered in front of T\u00f6nseten's house, gazing with absorbed curiosity at the approaching train; it had drawn so close now that each wagon could be clearly distinguished; Zoe was riding abreast of the foremost team.\n\nT\u00f6nseten fussed about excitedly, constantly thrusting his hands in and out of the waistband of his trousers; he was here, there, and everywhere, muttering incoherently all the while. . . . Good Lord! he thought, were these more Irish--as tough a gang as their last visitors? And Rubin Olsa far away at the Sioux River! . . . Here was a fine mess, indeed!\n\nThen Zoe came galloping in, and told a story so strange that all were lost in amazement.\n\n\"They are Norskies!\" he shouted as he pulled up.\n\n\"What's that you say?\" exclaimed T\u00f6nseten.\n\n\"Yes, Norskies, every single one, I tell you! A whole shoal of them--and they are coming right here! They talk Norwegian, too.\"\n\n\"Are you crazy!\" shouted T\u00f6nseten. . . . At once he began to assume a great dignity and authority; he ordered Cuthbert indoors to put on the coffeepot, and sent the other women to help her. . . . \"Don't you hear Rubin say that they are Norskies! Decent folks must get a decent reception!\"\n\nAnd now he took Karry with him, and did like the patriarch of old: he went out to meet the strangers, entreating them to enter in under his humble roof.\n\nA great event, indeed! The company consisted of five wagons and the same number of horse teams; they were good horses, too--T\u00f6nseten could see that they were in fine condition. There were twenty men in the company, all Sognings and Vossings1--but mostly Sognings; the majority of them were married men; some had large families back east in Minnesota; all were out seeking new homesteads; they intended to go back east in the fall, but would move west permanently as soon as spring came next year. They had passed through Sioux Falls and had been told at the land office of a settlement out here somewhere; so they had thought they'd better look the place over; but they were heading farther southwest, making for the James River or thereabouts. . . . Still, it was no small joy to these west-movers, to come across a cluster of sod huts inhabited by Norwegians out here on the endless prairie, and to find this hospitable, talkative man who was everywhere bustling about, trying to be of service to them.\n\n \n\n1 People from the districts of Sogn and Voss, in Norway.\n\n \n\nThey camped in the yard in front of T\u00f6nseten's house. When he discovered how many they were he said no more about coffee; but he brought them potatoes and other vegetables, and generously shared the evening milk with them. He would not hear of their sleeping in the open that night . . . Stay outside, he shouted, when they had come to Norwegians who owned a new-built house? That would never, never do! . . . At turning-in time, he and Cuthbert crawled into bed first; then the floor space was packed with as many of the strangers as it would accommodate, the rest seeking shelter in the barn.\n\nT\u00f6nseten didn't get much rest that night; the worst of it was that he couldn't talk to Cuthbert, at a time when he so sorely needed her counsel. . . . Good God! how could he sleep, with this tremendous responsibility suddenly thrust upon him? A whole settlement of Norwegians snoring right in front of his bed! . . . Fine people, excellent people, every one! And there would be still more in the company when they moved west next spring. . . . Hang the luck!--that Constance Nala should be far away on the Sioux River at this important moment! . . . If he could only persuade them to settle here, the future would be secure for both himself and his neighbours. . . . Yes, let him bring that about, and things would look so bright that he could turn over in bed and drop asleep every night with a thankful heart!\n\n. . . He ought to start out right now, and get Constance Nala, who had such a wonderfully persuasive gift of tongue. But he couldn't discuss it with Cuthbert; neither could he see any way to get out of the house; men lay snoring side by side, from the edge of the bed clear over to the door! . . .\n\nWhen all the strangers finally left the room in the morning, so that he and Cuthbert could get out of bed, T\u00f6nseten felt as if he hadn't slept a wink all night; he realized full well that now he rose to confront his day of days.\n\nHe had no time to eat breakfast--he hardly noticed Cuthbert when she called him; already he was deep in conversation with the west-movers, telling them all about the land around Spring Creek. . . . Surely they wouldn't leave without first looking at it? . . . What? . . . No, that would be a great mistake, he'd better go along with them and show them around; he was just the man for the job, he dared to say, for here he was thoroughly at home. Hadn't he been the original discoverer of the place, the first to select it, and the first to build here and move in? He ought to have known what he was about when he chose this particular spot--he who had been to Fox River, had visited Muskego and Koshkonong, had travelled all over Minnesota, and even through large parts of the Dakota Territory!2 . . . T\u00f6nseten gave them a full account of his expedition last fall to the western region where they were bound; the land around Vermilion was quite familiar to him; Yankton he had seen with his own eyes. At this point he spun into the narrative a little yarn which he had fabricated last night in bed; it wasn't exactly gospel truth, but--well, it might have happened! It was all about a man whom he had met in Yankton, an impoverished Scotchman, who had tried homesteading for two whole years up in the James River country; but the Indians and the fleas had been so annoying that they had finally driven him out of the place; his wife had died, and his cow had been stolen by the Indians! . . . T\u00f6nseten related the incident with a great show of sympathy.\n\n \n\n2 These are the first three Norwegian settlements in the Northwest.\n\n \n\nThe Sognings and Vossings were an inquiring people; they had many questions to ask; of course they would consider the Spring Creek locality before leaving it--that was their business on this trip.\n\nImmediately after breakfast they started out to survey the place. Karry Solum went with them, talking and explaining volubly; Zoe also tagged along, and with him was Sofie; but by noontime she was so tired from scurrying around with Zoe, looking for badger holes, and still more from listening to the ceaseless talk of T\u00f6nseten, that she could endure it no longer and ran home. After she left Zoe joined the rest of the group; now and then he would put in a word that sounded grown-up when he thought the occasion called for it.\n\nThe prospective settlers kept asking and looking, and were still undecided about the matter; they liked the place, and yet they didn't; the land seemed good; it lay nicely enough, and was easily tillable; but how bare and endless the scene was for the eye to rest upon! . . . Nothing but naked sky line all the way around! . . . It must be a desolate place in winter, without even a bramble bush for shelter. . . . And what were people to use for fuel? What for building material? Surely they couldn't live in sod huts all their lives! . . . These were a few of the objections; and many more were added as the survey went on.\n\nT\u00f6nseten fully realized what was at stake; he trembled with excitement; that day he argued and chattered until the small of his back ached and he had to sit down in sheer exhaustion. . . . But they were not able to advance a single objection that he couldn't meet and do away with.\n\n. . . \"Wood for fuel and shelter?\" . . . His voice lowered with fervent zeal; his hands fought the air. . . . Wood? Man alive, this was exactly one of their most valuable assets! Here folks could have just as much woodland as they wanted--no more, and no less! One of his neighbours had planted half an acre of trees this summer, and had now gone for more seedlings; he would probably bring enough to plant another half acre when he returned--more than he and his descendants could ever use. . . . \"I'll just tell you, fellows, if it's only wood, you can go east to the Sioux River as soon as you've unloaded your wagons, and get enough trees planted this very fall to last you for a thousand generations! I'll go along and help you, and it won't cost you a cent! . . . You see, folks, it's really a matter to be thankful for, that there aren't any woods already standing here; in these few months since we arrived, we've broken more land than one could break in ten years in a cut-over country; in two years I'll have my whole quarter-section under the plow! . . . For Heaven's sake, fellows, don't talk to me about wood!\"\n\nIn this fashion T\u00f6nseten talked against time; he pictured the future to them with a fervour that was prophetic; his reddish beard glowed as if with a living fire; his eyes beamed; his voice shook with emotion; his body trembled; his arms made magnificent sweeping gestures in the air. . . . He told about the schools which they would found, and the church which they would build together; about the thriving town which would spring up on the spot where they stood, and the railroads that would crisscross the prairie in every direction; for the railroad had already reached Worthington--soon it would be at Sioux Falls! Then they would have only a twenty-five-mile journey to town--did they realize that? Only twen-ty-five mi-les! . . . T\u00f6nseten chopped the words up into syllables, and showed them each piece. . . . And just look at Sioux Falls! Why, only a year ago he had been obliged to go all the way down to Vermilion--not a sign of a land office in Sioux Falls at that time! But you could just bet that the government knew what it was about in coming so far north--just wait and see! . . . T\u00f6nseten apparently had the future all charted and laid out in detail before him; he never stumbled, never made a mistake; the man burned with an unquenchable fire.\n\n. . . If they would settle here now, more would be sure to follow next spring; then they would all be Norskies here--a settlement made to order for all of them! . . . But suppose they went to a place where no one had come yet? Couldn't they understand that all of Dakota Territory would never be peopled? Why, there weren't enough folks in the whole world for that, and never would be, either! . . . Or if they should be so unfortunate as to choose a location where no one followed after? . . . What then? . . .\n\nThe strangers listened seriously to him; they were forced to admit that there was a good deal of common sense in what he said.\n\nThe party did not get back to camp until late in the afternoon. Then they cooked a substantial meal from the potatoes which T\u00f6nseten had given them; after that they held council; the majority were for settling down right here.\n\nWhen T\u00f6nseten heard the decision, he gave an excited laugh; he ran hurriedly into the house and told Cuthbert, who wept over the news; the next instant he had bounced out again. He felt now that Destiny had used him as her tool. He had only reached out his hand, and, lo! he had brought in twenty neighbours with a single stroke--Norwegians, every last mother's son of them! . . . This good fortune seemed so overwhelming, it had befallen him so suddenly, that he wasn't willing to trust it too far. . . . When the strangers hitched up their horses and crossed the creek--they had decided to settle on the east side, with a chance to expand southward--he felt obliged to go along with them; but after night had fallen and they had pitched their tents, and he was forced to leave them--then he was full of alarms.\n\n. . . Many things might happen during the night!\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\nThey would soon have to make another trip to town. Felicity looked forward to it with dread; it meant that Constance Nala would be gone for a whole week's time. The evenings were long and the nights hung heavy over the hut; she had to struggle with so many fearful fancies--fancies that multiplied as time went on; though she felt unable to speak to him about it--though he would be unable to help her if she did--yet it was a great relief to have him near, for then it seemed as if the horror dared not touch her. She dreaded each occasion which took him away from home, even if it was only for half a day's work with one of the neighbours. . . . And now he would be gone for a whole week's time!\n\n. . . She realized, too, that they would have to have provisions for the winter; the children were sadly in need of clothes, and Constance Nala himself needed many things. But in her condition, these material affairs became more and more unreal to her; it seemed as if she stood apart from them--they did not concern her. . . . All this she kept to herself, however; ah, what was the use of speaking where no one could hear! . . . She helped him get ready for the journey as if nothing were wrong; whenever he begged to know what he could buy for her and for the house, she would stop to ponder the question with a distant look in her eyes, as if trying to think of many things which she couldn't for the moment remember. At that he would joke her, saying she mustn't be backward about it, for now they had plenty of money; what was she standing there thinking of? . . . To this question he either would receive no answer at all, or else he would hear her repeat what she had just been saying; or perhaps she would make some absent-minded, irrelevant remark, as if she had not heard him. . . . At such times Constance Nala would look at his wife and sigh; then he would take hold of her and swing her around, trying to cheer her. . . .\n\nBut beyond that he was too busy to pay much attention to her. On this trip to town he was going himself; T\u00f6nseten had offered to lend him his horses and wagon, and had promised to stay home and look after things. The Sognings and Vossings were still here; they needed advice and help in so many ways; and he, T\u00f6nseten, was just the man for that; he held himself like a father to them--yes, like Providence itself! . . . Constance Nala had a lot of plans to make before starring out; he wasn't so short of money now; the Irish were fond of potatoes and had been good customers; as for the Sognings, they seemed even fonder of potatoes than the Irish; he had managed to sell them more than ten dollars' worth; however it had happened, his cash supply was a good deal larger to-day than when he had first arrived in the early summer.\n\nOn the other hand, there was no end to all the things he needed; he had jotted down a long list of articles that simply had to be bought, and a still longer list that he ought to get if the money only held out.\n\nWhen the mother wasn't listening he talked earnestly to the boys of how they must look after the place during his absence. Gerry, who was the bigger, would have to assume responsibility for everything out-of-doors; Injun, and Rosie, and the two oxen must be well taken care of; and then the wood--he must promise to chop up stacks of wood! . . . Zoe should serve as handy man to mother indoors; that was no easy job, even for a clever fellow like him--he understood that, of course? . . . The boys were far from enthusiastic over this arrangement; Gerry had been hoping that his father would let him go along this time; he had taken pains to make himself useful on every occasion, ever since the trip had first been mentioned. Zoe, for his part, had harboured a secret hope that his father would bear in mind how exceedingly practical it was to have him along--he was so quick and handy about everything; he, too, had watched for every opportunity to please his father; he and his brother had often fought for the chance to run an errand. The disappointment hit Zoe the harder; here he would have to go pottering around like a hired girl--just like another woman! He fell to nagging, sulking, and fighting with his brother, all of which did not help in the least.\n\nThe father pitied him more than his older brother; he called him into the stable and talked to him long and confidentially, as though he were an old man with a long beard on his chin. . . . \"You see, mother isn't in such condition that we can both leave her,\" he explained in a tone of open comradeship. \"So if you go, I'll have to stay at home!\" . . .\n\nThis was more than Zoe could understand; there wasn't anything the matter with mother, was there? She looked well enough, except for her face; but wasn't that probably because cold weather was coming on?\n\n. . . \"Oh, she's healthy enough, Zoe--it isn't that, you know. But\"--the father's voice grew low and queer--\"You'd better not tell this to your brother--but there may be another little Zoe coming around here, say about Christmas time; and mother will have to bear the brunt of that business! . . . You understand, now, we mustn't both leave her.\"\n\nMy, but this was strange! Deep wonderment rose in the eyes of Zoe. How could another come here--another boy? . . . He didn't dare to ask; he turned his head away from his father; a glowing blush covered his face. . . . Now he saw what the dream had meant that he had had the other night; he had seen both Joseph and Benjamin playing just beyond the house; and with them had been a tiny little fellow, who wasn't mentioned in the Bible story!\n\n. . . Oh yes . . . of course he would take care of mother!\n\nBut, here was another thing: couldn't father get hold of a shotgun when he went to town? The last time Zoe had been to the swamps the ducks had been thicker than ever. . . . And the Irish had settled awfully close to them!\n\n. . . Well, the father didn't know; he would see what he could do; he had thought of another way to catch those ducks, but what it was he wouldn't let out now.\n\nIndeed, Constance Nala's mind was full of busy thoughts. . . . In the cellar were many more potatoes than they could consume during the winter or use as seed next spring; and now he was going to town with horses and wagon; it would be strange enough if he couldn't find people who needed food. Alas! however, it was now already the twelfth of October; some nights it froze--and potatoes were sensitive to cold! But ever since the world was made the people of Nordland had known how to bring potatoes safely all the way up to Lofoten, even in the middle of January. . . . It could certainly be done again, with a little care!\n\nConstance Nala pondered, looked at the weather, sniffed and tried the air. On the afternoon before their departure he came to a decision: there were more potatoes than they could use; if they froze, they froze. Yes, sir! he would give it a try! And so he went over to T\u00f6nseten's and brought the wagon; he padded it thickly, bottom and sides, with soft hay; then he loaded it with potatoes in bulk. On top of the load he placed two sacks of rutabagas, and one of carrots; finally he picked out some of the nicest melons that were left in the cellar; these he tucked in between the sacks, covering everything with hay, and spreading some old clothes over the load.\n\nEarly the next morning they started off; Emmet Solum and Rubin Olsa went with him.\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\nThe wagons drifted slowly through the outspread day, creeping on through indolent, drowsy fall sunshine and blue-green haze, toward a distant sky line from which hung a quivering yellow veil. For all they drove, the sky line came no closer; but when the purple shadows of evening fell, there seemed to be a chance, at least, that they might reach it.\n\nThis was a great day for Constance Nala. Now he was travelling the very trail he should have followed on his way out last summer; but in one day's march he traversed a stretch that then took him four times as long. . . . All day the landscape was the same, yet its details seemed ever changing and ever new; prairies that extended to the end of the world; prairies that billowed into slopes, rose in low hills, then flattened out again and sank away into an endless plain.\n\nThe caravan headed for the sky; it steered straight onward. Now, at last, Constance Nala had time to look about him and rejoice in what he saw. . . . And all he saw was beautiful! Even the others, who had gone this way before, found many strange new things to look at, the farther they advanced into the bluish-yellow haze. . . . Here and there a sod hut peeped up from the ground, where last summer there was nothing but gopher hills.\n\nTheir goal that first day's journey was Split Rock Creek, where they intended to camp for the night. They took turns with three teams at hauling Constance Nala's load, in order to ease up on his horses and so make faster progress; thirty-eight miles they had come that day when they finally reached Split Rock Creek, on the other side of the Sioux River; there they found a ford over the creek, and pitched their camp on the eastern shore. . . . When they had been crossing the Sioux River earlier in the day--it seemed an almost unbelievably long while ago--they had stopped long enough to catch three big pickerel. Now Constance Nala slung a kettle over the fire and cooked the fresh fish for supper, he buried some potatoes in the ashes next to the kettle. Soon they were all seated on the bank, partaking of a lordly feast for them, even though it was only of fish and potatoes. . . . The water purled by below, murmuring gently, reminding them of much that was dear and half forgotten. . . . Conversation flowed freely while they ate, but after they had finished it began to lull away. They laid more wood on the fire and got out their pipes; then they could better hear what the crooning waters told. Deep silence fell. . . . A big star stood in the western sky, looking into their faces.\n\nWhen the pipes had been emptied a second time they rose, tended to the horses for the night and crawled under the wagons; there they slept dreamlessly until the day began once more to gild the blue wall of the east. The coffee was boiled; enough cold fish and potatoes were left from supper to make a meal; very soon each one was seated in his wagon again, jogging still farther away from a place they knew . . . a place they seemed to remember . . . a place far off under the western skies, where a group of sod huts ought to be lying! . . . Wasn't there such a place out there somewhere? But it seemed strangely vague and distant now! . . . Constance Nala braced up in his seat, put his mind intently on Felicity and Zoe--and then the sod huts stood out more vividly. . . .\n\n. . . Poor Felicity-girl! If only she wouldn't be too lonesome while he was away!\n\nThis day's journey also turned out to be full of interesting things. As they went along, sod huts stood here and there moping dejectedly, where, according to Rubin Olsa and the Solum boy, no house should have been. . . . Good Heavens! where had they all come from? Settlers must be swarming out of the ground like ants in summertime! . . . Well, no--not so terribly many; it was only this, that there shouldn't have been any at all! . . . Too bad! Why hadn't these folks crossed a few more sky lines to the westward before they settled down for good!\n\nLate in the forenoon they came upon two sod houses which must have sprung up since they were last here; neither Rubin Olsa nor the Solum boy could remember a trace of them. Low and forlorn they lay there on the face of the prairie--only two sod huts, but situated so directly in their course that they couldn't resist stopping to learn what kind of folks lived here. . . . Beyond the huts a man and his wife were hard at work, breaking prairie; here, too, the sod must be tough of fibre, for the job didn't seem to be going very fast. What first arrested the eyes of the travellers was the team that pulled the plow; an ox with shining brass sockets on the ends of his huge horns had been yoked together with a skinny poll-cow. The woman walked alongside the team, driving; the man, whose patriarchal beard swept his chest, steered the plow, pushing from behind with all his might.\n\nThese folks were Hallings;1 Constance Nala and Rubin Olsa were very glad to hear it. A Halling is usually easy of approach; they at once struck up a conversation with these people. . . . Only another incredible fairy tale! With nothing but this team, the man related, he had brought his family and all his earthly possessions the whole distance from Iowa, a matter of over four-hundred miles--\"a long, laborious journey,\" as he quaintly expressed it.\n\n \n\n1 People from Hallingdal, in Norway.\n\n \n\n--They surely hadn't made the whole trip with those horses? asked Constance Nala.\n\n--Why, certainly they had! . . . The Halling laughed.\n\n--How long had it taken?\n\n--Oh, not so very long--seven weeks and two days, to be exact. They hadn't been able to hurry, because of the cow; she was the one who supplied most of their food, and so they had to be reasonable with her.\n\n\"Do tell me!\" said Constance Nala, flabbergasted. \"You don't mean to say that she's milking, that cow of yours?\"\n\n\"Certainly she's milking! . . . That is, when we don't drive her too hard.\"\n\n\"By God! that must be a wonderful cow! . . . But say, now: don't you need some potatoes with the milk? I've got a whole load of 'em here that I'm trying to sell.\"\n\nThe Halling looked at him, his jaw dropping, and evidently wanted to say something; but no sound came. A force was working there under the long beard which gave his whole face a comical expression; it seemed for a moment as if the man might be chuckling; but when Constance Nala looked at him more closely, he discovered a film of moisture in the man's blinking eyes.\n\n. . . \"Potatoes, you say? . . . Well, now!\" . . .\n\nThe man wiped his eyes and regarded Constance Nala dumbly. His wife stood beside him; her face was long and drawn. . . . Suddenly she wept. . . .\n\n\"Have you got any food in the house?\" demanded Constance Nala.\n\n\"Er--yes . . . as long as the cow gives milk!\" . . . It was the woman who supplied this information.\n\nThen Constance Nala burst out laughing. . . . \"Listen here, woman--you run in after a pail, and we'll treat you to a decent meal . . . since we're the visitors!\"\n\nAnd this is sure: it didn't take the woman long to produce the pail! Constance Nala grabbed it from her, filled it with potatoes, and gave her a quick look--then looked again; at that, he poured the potatoes out on the ground, filled the measure once more, and gave her a second pailful.\n\n. . . \"There you are--one for each of you; don't kill yourselves eating, now!\"\n\nThe man gazed at Constance Nala, blinked his eyes, coughed emphatically, and said: \"So far, so good. . . . But give me four more pailfuls, and I'll pay you a whole dollar when I get the money; you'll probably be passing here again. . . . If you should happen to die before that time, the potatoes wouldn't do you any good.\"\n\n\"No, but I might need the dollar!\" laughed Constance Nala. \"But never mind--thanks for your offer, just the same! . . . What do you say to eight pailfuls and two dollars--when you get the money?\"\n\nThen the Halling laughed so that his big beard shook. . . . \"Listen here, man; why not sixteen pailfuls and four dollars? You'll get your money sometime. . . . To tell the truth, there's very little to eat in our house.\" . . .\n\nThe woman had already taken one pailful inside; now she was down on her knees, gathering the loose potatoes in her skirt; she worked with feverish haste, using both her hands, and eying Constance Nala askance from time to time.\n\nConstance Nala laughed good-naturedly at the Halling. . . . \"Now I'll just tell you how we'll do this: you have enough here for the time being; you can wait till I get back home--and then I'll bring you a whole load. . . . You need food, man! . . . I'll take the money when I get it.\"\n\nSo the agreement was made; before they went on, however, Constance Nala gave them one of the left-over fishes, half a pailful of carrots from the sack; and the nicest melon he could find on the load. . . . \"Don't kill yourselves eating, now!\" were his parting words to the Hallings.\n\n. . . Again he sat on the wagon, creaking along toward a yellowish-blue horizon; he couldn't remember when life had been so much fun!\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nAround noon of the day after their visit with the Hallings, the three wagons entered Worthington. There was nothing much of an urban air about the place; as yet, the town consisted merely of a couple of dozen houses scattered all about, some just rough shanties, others only sod huts; all bore the earmarks of having been hurriedly constructed, and intended only for temporary shelter. The place had much the appearance of a camp, that to-day would be here, but to-morrow might have moved miles away. However, it contained a couple of stores; and most important item of all--the railroad, the main artery of life in this far region, had made its way thither.\n\nConstance Nala drove from house to house, greeting the people with a cheerful grin and asking in his broadest Nordland dialect if they didn't want any potatoes; he said nothing of the other wares which he had brought. Luck wasn't sitting in every doorway waiting for him, however; the peddling proved to be a slow business. Not until he reached a sod hut at the other end of the town did he make a bargain worth mentioning; here he happened on a widow with two half-grown boys; the widow was Danish and ran a small poultry farm.\n\n. . . Yes, indeed, she needed potatoes, for both herself and the boys, and for the birds as well; she hadn't any money in the house, but she had the chickens. . . . Wouldn't he trade some potatoes for a fowl or two?\n\n--Of course he would! Constance Nala was more than willing; after dickering awhile, he bartered nine pails of potatoes for three young chickens.\n\n--This is a mighty profitable deal!--he thought--The Hallings are good people, but the Danes are even better. . . . \"Listen, Mother, perhaps you'd just as soon take three pailfuls more and give me the fourth hen?\" . . . The widow agreed to that at once and Constance Nala felt that now he had made a fine bargain indeed.\n\nThe widow, too, seemed very well satisfied; they beamed in mutual gratitude, filled with generous thoughts. Their eyes looked into each other's. . . .\n\n. . . Constance Nala started to leave. But the widow wouldn't hear of such a thing; of course he mustn't leave yet awhile! She had an old rooster cooking on the stove; it had been boiling since early in the forenoon and ought to be tender pretty soon; he must unhitch his horses and tie them to the wagon, and then come inside; where there was enough for three, there would always be something left over for a fourth. . . . Now he must go and do as she said, and then come right in! . . . Constance Nala wasn't refusing!\n\nBut when he saw the inside of the hut he grew more enthusiastic over it than he had been over the widow; if her face had been bright and cheerful, the face of the room in which he now found himself was even more attractive; it seemed that he had never seen anything so cozy as this room! It was only a sod hut, smaller than his own, with three tiny chambers; but a homely feeling pervaded every nook and corner of it. But best of all, the walls were not a dirty black like those in his house; they were a dazzling white--a white so pure and gleaming that it caught up and reflected the gold of the sun! . . . A real fairy house, that's what it was!\n\nConstance Nala looked and looked--and forgot to sit down.\n\n. . . \"No, never mind the food, Mother,\" he said. \"I'd rather you would tell me how you've gone about it to make things so extra fine in here! Is this paint, I'd like to know? . . . It must be terribly expensive!\" . . . His face showed nothing but sheer good nature and open admiration as he stood there looking into her eyes; she gave him a merry laugh, as though she had known him for many a year.\n\n--Oh no, it wasn't paint at all--far from it! Just ordinary lime and water!\n\n--Lime? . . . What did they call that in English? . . . Lime, lime. . . . He said the word over to himself a number of times. . . . My, how strange everything was! . . . How did they mix it? Could it be bought in town? Was it very expensive?\n\nThe widow gave him all the desired information while she prepared the meal; she rattled on in a steady stream as she went about her work. He needn't worry about remembering the name; there was a Norwegian lumberman in town who sold the stuff; perhaps he might be able to barter potatoes for it! . . . Thus and thus he must mix it.\n\n\"You're crazy, Mother!\" interrupted Constance Nala; he stood in the middle of the floor, overcome by a wild impulse to hug the cheery widow. . . . \"Do you actually think he might take potatoes? I've got some carrots and melons, too! . . . I swear, Mother, that if I had met you in time, I would have courted you!\"\n\nThe man's happiness was so rollicking and genuine that the widow suddenly burst out laughing. . . . He might have done a worse thing than that for himself! she answered. No telling how that courting might have turned out! . . .\n\nBut now dinner was ready. In came two little boys, with ruddy, beaming faces, just like their mother's; it seemed to Constance Nala as if he would never tire of looking at them; then he remembered the melons, and went out for the best one he could find; he brought it in and placed it on the floor. . . . He sat there eating the rooster with the widow and her boys--and it all seemed exactly like a fairy tale. As clear as daylight, luck was with him now! . . . Before he took his leave, he gave the boys another melon, and half a pailful of carrots to the mother.\n\n. . . \"It's a sin to ruin good-hearted people!\" he said.\n\nIndeed, luck followed Constance Nala that day. From the widow's he drove straight to the lumberman's, and asked if he would barter some building materials for a load of potatoes and other such delicacies; the man came over to look at his load. . . . Yes, that wasn't at all impossible. What did he want, and how much of it, for his load?\n\nConstance Nala gave a loud laugh at this question: \"I really should have everything you've got in the place! . . . But I'll be reasonable and take a few sacks of lime and a few pieces of boards. You carry lime, don't you?\"\n\nThe dicker finally resulted in Constance Nala's getting all the lime he needed, more lumber than he expected, and even some nails thrown into the bargain. The boards were planed smooth; Constance Nala handled them as if they had been the fine leaves of some costly book.\n\n. . . \"A dandy boat this is going to make for the little fellow to rock in! . . . Now he can come along any time!\" . . . He turned to the lumberman: \"Next fall I'll show up here and buy out your whole shebang; I need all you've got, and lots more too, let me tell you!\"\n\nAfter that he had to chat a little while with this man; it seemed so pleasant to meet a Norwegian here; Constance Nala felt as if a part of the town belonged to him. He found so many questions to ask, so many matters that he wanted to be posted on; the lumberman, who wasn't very busy just then, seemed more than willing to talk and to hear how things were getting on, out to the westward where they lived. Constance Nala sat chatting with him a long time.\n\nIn the meanwhile his companions had finished their trading and had eaten their dinner; when he finally drove up to the general store they were loading their wagons with the merchandise they had bought. As soon as this was done all three entered the store again.\n\nThe moment he got in there among the many different kinds of merchandise, Constance Nala began to grow uneasy. Pleasant odours from all the wares mingled in the air; a strong scent of whisky permeated the whole place; he went sniffing about and stamping on the floor, moving restlessly from one thing to another.\n\n. . . \"Oh, the devil! If I wasn't so short of money! . . . But it won't do any harm to know where they keep things, when once we get the cash--eh, boys?\"\n\nBefore he started trading, Constance Nala had to make an agreement about the plow and the rake, which stood on the books against him; the Solum boy acted as interpreter.\n\n--He could pay the whole amount, of course?--the trader asked, as if taking it for granted.\n\n--Is the fellow plumb crazy! Constance Nala shouted.\n\n--Huh! how much could he pay, then?\n\n\"Tell him fifteen dollars, Emmet--and that's the last cent, too!\"\n\nThe trader's voice grew hard as he asked: Was that all?\n\n--Yes, that was all!--said Constance Nala; a hard note had come into his voice, too.--He hadn't anything more, unless the fellow wanted to take his hide. But as for that--here he laughed and looked the man in the eye--the hide was so old and wrinkled that it wasn't good for much.\n\n--We-ell--drawled the merchant--this was pretty poor business; but he would let it pass this time. He'd be ashamed to take such a weather-beaten hide. . . . Did Constance Nala have anything at home?\n\n--You bet he had!--laughed Constance Nala.--A wife and three youngsters, and one cow! . . . And something more coming! . . .\n\n--Huh!--said the other, his face hardening again.--He could keep his wife and youngsters; but the cow he would have to forfeit eventually, if he couldn't raise other means. . . . Business was business!\n\nThe matter was finally arranged, however, in the way that Constance Nala wanted it; the balance of the amount should stand until next fall, at fifteen per cent interest.\n\nThen Constance Nala started to trade. The first thing he called for was net twine! . . . The Solum boy and Rubin Olsa burst out laughing; was he planning to knit a net out here on the open prairie? . . . Never mind; he needed twine--twine first and foremost! When he finally had found a kind that he thought might do, he bought several balls; and then he called for rope--he had to have rope for the sheeting--how could he get along without that? . . . It seemed to his companions that he was wasting good money; it was a long way to the Sioux River and few trips could be made during the year! This they pointed out to him emphatically. But it did not affect him at all. . . . \"Just order that rope for me, Emmet!\" commanded Constance Nala.\n\nNow the real provisioning, for which he had come all this distance, was ready to begin; he ordered a few trifles, in such a low, bashful voice, that Emmet had to ask him a second time before he understood; just some calico of a gaudy pattern, a few bits of ribbon and thread, and some soft, dainty white cotton goods. And, listen here--this was very important--some Hoffman's drops, and a small bottle of sweet oil! . . . It was awfully awkward to have to use the Solum boy as interpreter in such matters--he was only a bachelor and had tried so few things in this world! Constance Nala managed to get what he wanted, however. . . . Next, the real needs of the household had to be met; flour was the most important item, and came first on the list; then cloth, and tobacco, and matches, and kerosene; after that coffee, and molasses, and salt. This item of salt again threw his companions into consternation; Constance Nala ordered such an unreasonable quantity of it, and still he wondered if it wouldn't be too little! . . . Lord! there was no limit to all the things Constance Nala thought he must have; but his money soon ran out and that put an end to the trading.\n\nAt last they were ready to leave.\n\n\"Aren't we going to have a single drop on this trip?\" Rubin Olsa mused aloud.\n\n\"There you said something!\" exclaimed Constance Nala. \"That reminds me--I was to get three bottles for Syvert! But not a word about it to Cuthbert--bear that in mind when we get home. . . . He's going to use it as liniment for his rheumatism, you know!\"\n\nThe trader treated them all around before he filled the bottles. Emmet got two bottles for himself, and one for his brother; Rubin Olsa had brought along his Sunday bottle to be filled; as that would hardly be enough he bought a smaller one, which he put in his pocket; Constance Nala got two for himself, and three for T\u00f6nseten. . . . When the trader had filled all their orders he felt that he had had such good business with these fellows that he could well afford to stand another round of treats--they seemed to be such decent folk, too! And before they left they felt obliged to follow the good old custom of sampling one another's bottles. Good Lord! it wasn't every day that they came to town. . . . Rubin Olsa was stepping very cautiously when he climbed into his wagon; he planked himself down upon the seat with slow and ponderous movements; but once down, there his big bulk sat secure.\n\nIt was late in the afternoon when they finally set out for home. Ninety long miles lay ahead of them, but no one thought of that; they had plenty of food, the vaulted heavens for a roof wherever they chose to camp, and fair weather to send them on. . . .\n\nConstance Nala drove in the van; he was continually clucking to his horses. His eyes were fixed on the western sky, already tinted by the strong glow of evening. . . . God! how beautiful these prairies were! . . . Why couldn't they keep on driving all night long? . . .\n\nWhen they at last pitched camp at the end of the day, and Rubin Olsa had made the fire and hung the porridge pot over it, Constance Nala sat down by the firelight and began to whittle some shuttles for net knitting; he made two shuttles, and then a reel.\n\nHis companions laughed at him and told him he must be crazy; first he had thrown away good money on a lot of twine, and now he was wasting his time over such nonsense!\n\n. . . \"Never mind,\" said Constance Nala with his merry laugh. \"One only talks according to his sense!\" . . . He kept on working till he had finished the reel.\n\n \n\nVI\n \n\nThe days were long for the boys during their father's absence. Gerry soon tired of standing at the chopping block without the company of his brother, he idled aimlessly about, and made frequent errands into the house to see whether he couldn't hatch up something to break the monotony. Zoe wasn't much better off; the secret which his father had entrusted to him was certainly interesting; but it wasn't quite fascinating enough to hold its own with the vision of the ducks out there in the swamps. The father would surely bring something home from town to solve this problem; he and his brother ought to be over west reconnoitering every spare minute of the time. And now the Irish had all gone away, too; their sod huts were standing empty; there would be many curious things to look at and pry into! . . . Besides, their mother said so little these days; it was no fun to be with her any longer. Often when he spoke to her she was not there; she neither saw nor heard him, said only yes and no, which seemed to come from far away. . . . Probably she was brooding over the strange thing about to happen, Zoe told himself; he often looked wonderingly at her, thinking many thoughts beyond his years. . . . He remembered his father's words, and never left her for long, although it was very lonesome for him in the house.\n\nA couple of days after the men's departure, she sent the boy over to Cuthbert to borrow a darning needle; she had hidden her own away so carefully that she could not find it. Such things occurred commonly now; she would put something away, she could not remember where, and would potter around looking for it without really searching; at last, she would forget altogether what she was about, and would sit down with a peculiarly vacant look on her face; at such times she seemed like a stranger. . . . Gerry was sitting in the house that morning, finishing a sling-shot which he had just made.\n\nSuddenly Zoe came darting back with the needle; he had run until he was all out of breath. He burst out with the strangest news, of T\u00f6nseten's having killed a big animal; it was awfully big--almost like a bear! . . . T\u00f6nseten said it was a bear, so it must be true! T\u00f6nseten and Cuthbert were skinning him right now; Cuthbert had told him that if he would bring a pail, they could have fresh meat for supper. Both boys immediately began pleading for permission to go and see the animal; their mother scarcely answered; she gave them a pail and asked them not to stay long.\n\nThe boys came running down the hill just as Cuthbert was cutting up the carcass; T\u00f6nseten was struggling with the hide, trying to stretch it on the barn door; his mouth bristled with nails, his hands were bloody--he was a frightful spectacle!\n\n\"What's that you've got?\" asked Gerry.\n\n\"Bear, my boy--bear!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten wagged his head, took the nails out of his mouth, and spat a gob of tobacco juice.\n\n\"Bear!\" snorted Gerry, scornfully.\n\n\"That's no bear!\" put in Zoe, though less doubtingly.\n\n\"By George! boys, to-day he had to bite the dust!\" . . .\n\n\"But there aren't any bears out here, I tell you!\" Gerry protested.\n\n\"Is that so--huh? . . . There isn't an animal living that you can't find out here!\" T\u00f6nseten spoke with such certainty that it was difficult for the boys to gainsay him.\n\n\"Where did you get him?\" Zoe asked.\n\n\"Out west of the Irish a little way. . . . There were two of 'em; they had gone into the ground for the winter; this is the young one, you see--the old mammy got away from me!\"\n\n\"But you didn't have any gun!\" was Gerry's next objection.\n\n\"Better than that, my boy! . . . I went for him with the crowbar!\" T\u00f6nseten spat fiercely and looked at the boys. . . . \"I smashed in his skull! . . . With that old bar I'd tackle either a tiger or a rhinoceros!\"\n\n\"What became of the old she-bear?\" Gerry asked, falling under the spell of T\u00f6nseten's enthusiasm.\n\n\"She went north across the prairie, lickety-split! . . . Come here, now--take some of these chunks of meat home with you. . . . This will make delicious stew, let me tell you!\"\n\n\"Is it fit to eat?\" asked Zoe, still doubting.\n\n\"Fit to eat? No finer meat to be found than bear meat--don't you know that?\"\n\nThe boys followed him over to where Cuthbert was still cutting up the animal; it must have been a large carcass, for the cut meat made a sizable heap.\n\n\"Is it . . . is it really bear?\" asked Gerry, in a more humble tone.\n\n\"He's meaty enough for it! . . . Here, give me the pail; Felicity needs some good, strengthening food. . . . Maybe you'll take a little to S\u00f6rrina, too; you can stop in with it on the way. . . . Careful--don't spill it, now!\"\n\nThe boys loitered along on the way home; from time to time they had to put down the pail, in order to discuss this extraordinary event. . . . So there actually were bears slinking about this country! . . . If bears, there must be lions and tigers and other such wild beasts; this was worth while! . . . Suppose they were to go home and get Old Maria, hunt up the she-bear herself, and put a big bullet clear through her head? They thrilled with excitement. . . . \"Do you dare to shoot her off?\" Zoe demanded of his brother; Gerry scowled ominously and clenched his fists. . . . \"I! . . . I'd aim straight for her temple, and she'd drop deader than a herring!\" . . . \"Yes, aim at her temple!\" Zoe advised, soberly. \"And if it's close range, you must draw the bead very fine!\" . . . \"Fine as a hair!\" said Gerry, excitedly.\n\nThey picked up the pail at last, and finally succeeded in reaching S\u00f6rine's, where there was another long delay; a detailed account had to be given of the marvellous feat which T\u00f6nseten had performed.\n\nWhen they were about to leave Sofie came out and wanted to know if they weren't frightened; maybe the old mother bear was slinking about the prairie right now, looking for her cub! The boys lingered to talk with her; they drew a glowing picture for the girl of how they were going home this minute to get Old Maria, and then go hunting for the she-bear herself . . . just watch them bring home a real roast pretty soon! . . . But weren't they scared? she asked. . . . \"Scared?\" exclaimed Zoe. . . . \"Oh, fiddlesticks!\" cried Gerry. \"Only girls and old women get scared!\"\n\nSofie only laughed; at which they affected a swaggering gruffness and tried to spit like T\u00f6nseten--but theirs wouldn't come brown. . . .\n\nThey were gone such a long time that their mother grew anxious; when they came over from S\u00f6rine's at last she stood outside the door watching for them. She had dressed And-Ongen, and was almost on the point of starting out to search; the boys were too preoccupied to notice this; Zoe spoke first:\n\n\"Just think, there's a big she-bear over there to the westward!\" . . .\n\n\"We're going to take the gun and shoot her!\" exclaimed Gerry, gleefully.\n\n\"We'll aim straight for her temple!\" Zoe assured his mother.\n\n\"Now we'll have plenty of bear meat!\" continued Gerry in the next breath, with absolute confidence.\n\nThe boys were all raging excitement; their mood frightened Felicity still more; she grasped them frantically, one hand on the shoulder of each, and gave them a hard shake. . . . They were to go inside this very minute, and take their books! They weren't going out of this house to-day! . . . \"Go in, don't you hear me! . . . Go in!\" . . .\n\n. . . But this wasn't fair! Gerry began reasoning with his mother; he used strong words, his eyes flaming. . . . Didn't she realize that there was a real bear over to the westward--a real full-grown grizzly bear! . . . Mother . . . please . . . please! . . . Dad wasn't home, but the gun was all loaded and ready; they could easily manage the rest of it! In an hour's time they would have that bear's hide! Zoe even thought that he could go straight to the lair. . . . Right through the temple they would put the bullet! . . . The boys carried on like a raging hurricane.\n\nThe mother had to use force to get them indoors. . . . \"Go in, I say, and take your books! Can't you hear what I'm saying?\" . . .\n\nThis was hard on them; they burst into the house like two mad bull calves; she had to repeat the order several times more before they finally submitted and began to hunt for their books. At last Gerry snatched up the \"Epitome,\" his brother the \"Bible History.\" They sat down to read by the table in front of the window, in a state of mutinous rebellion.\n\nTrouble soon arose. Each wanted the seat immediately in front of the window, where the most light fell; and neither would give up the position. A terrible battle broke out; Gerry was the stronger, but his brother the quicker. On account of his age and size Gerry considered himself the legitimate master of the house in the absence of his father, and therefore had the right to do anything; he now burst out with words which he had heard in the mouths of the men when something went wrong with their work. As soon as Zoe heard this he too began to use vile language; if Gerry dared, he certainly did; he knew those words, and plenty more! . . . The boys kept up their scrimmage until they almost upset the table; their books suffered bad treatment and lay scattered about on the floor. And-Ongen watched them open-mouthed until she suddenly grew frightened and set up a howl.\n\nOver by the stove the mother was washing the meat, putting it into a kettle which she had placed on the fire. . . . Although she heard every word, she kept on working in silence; but her face turned ashen grey.\n\nWhen she had finished the task she went out hurriedly; in a moment she came back with a willow switch in her hand. Going straight over to the table, she began to lay about her with the switch; she seemed beside herself, struck out blindly, hit whatever she happened to aim at, and kept it up without saying a word. The switch whizzed and struck; shrieks of pain arose. The boys at once stopped fighting and gazed horror-stricken at their mother; they could not remember that she had ever laid a hand on them before. . . . And now there was such a strange, unnatural look in her eyes! . . .\n\nThey flew out on the floor to gather up their books, while the blows continued to rain down upon them; And-Ongen stood in the middle of the floor, screaming with terror. . . .\n\nNot until the mother struck amiss, breaking the switch against the edge of the table, did she stop. . . . Suddenly she seemed to come to her senses; she left the child screaming in the middle of the floor, went out of the house, and was gone a long time. When she came back, she carried an armful of wood; she went over to the stove and fed the fire; then she picked up And-Ongen, and lay down on the bed with her. . . . The boys sat quietly at the table reading; neither of them had the courage to look up. . . .\n\nThe house seemed strangely still after the passage of the storm. Gerry put his fingers into his ears to shut out the terrible silence; his brother began to read aloud. It was bad enough for Gerry, but worse for Zoe; he now recalled clearly what his father had confided in him; he thought of his own solemn promise; here he had been away from the house nearly the whole day! He felt burning hot all over his body. . . . He had opened the book where it told about the choosing of the twelve disciples, and now he tried to read; but that wasn't the stuff for him just now! . . . He turned the pages forward to the story of Karryson, and read it diligently; then to David and Goliath; then to the story about Joseph and his brethren. The last eased his heart somewhat. . . . Joseph was just the sort of boy that he longed to be!\n\nGerry had felt ashamed at the sight of his mother bringing in the wood, though that was not his task; his brother was to be the hired girl! . . . Suddenly anger seized him; this time it certainly was the fault of Zoe--he should have given him the place! . . . He dragged himself through the Third Article, which he knew perfectly well already; when the tumult within him had somewhat subsided he sat there thinking of how shamefully T\u00f6nseten must have deceived them. . . . He kill a bear! It was nothing but a measly old badger! And now this nasty stuff was cooking on the stove--they were going to have it for supper! And mother was so angry that one would never dare to explain it to her! . . . There sat his younger brother, snuffling and reading his brains out; plain to be seen that he would never amount to anything! . . . Gerry closed his book with a bang, got up, and went outdoors to chop more wood; but he did not dare to look at the bed as he passed. . . .\n\nZoe sat over his book until it grew so dark that he could no longer distinguish the letters. . . . From time to time he looked up; his mother lay on the bed perfectly still; he could not see her face; And-Ongen was fast asleep with her head high on the pillow. The boy rose quietly, looked around--then took an empty pail and went out for water. He left the pailful of water outside the door; then he brought Rosie and Injun and the two oxen into the stable, and tied them up for the night. He spoke loudly and gruffly to the animals; mother should hear that he was tending to business! . . . When he finally brought in the water his mother was up again; he could see nothing unusual about her.\n\n. . . No, she hadn't been crying this time! The thought made Zoe so happy that he went straight to his brother, who was toiling over the chopping block as if possessed, and made friends with him again. The boys stayed outside until it was pitch dark; they talked fast and nervously, about a multitude of things; but that which weighed most heavily on their hearts--the way their mother's face had looked when she whipped them--they could not mention.\n\nInside the house the lamp had been lit. And-Ongen toddled about the floor, busy over her own little affairs; the boys came in quietly and sat down to their books again; but very little reading was done now. . . . At last the kettle of meat that had been boiling on the stove was ready; the mother put the food on the table; the boys drew up, Gerry somewhat reluctantly. . . . \"You get that troll stuff down!\" he whispered to his brother, making a wry face. To this command Zoe made no answer; he had stuck his spoon into a crack between the boards of the table; they were large, those cracks--he could see a broad section of floor when he laid his eye down close. The earthen floor had such a rich brown colour in the dim sheen of the lamp; the cracks in the table made stripes across the shadow down there; it looked pretty, too--and just then it had occurred to Zoe how nice it would be if they could only have the floor looking like that by daylight.\n\nThe mother filled the big bowl from the kettle and put it on the table; she had made a thick stew, with potatoes, carrots, and pieces of the meat; it looked appetizing enough but somehow the boys felt in no hurry to start. The mother came and sat down, bringing And-Ongen with her, the child was so delighted over the holiday fare they had tonight that she hurried to say grace.\n\nShe and the mother immediately began to eat; the boys no longer had an excuse to sit watching. Zoe dipped up a spoonful of the stew, blew on it, closed his eyes, and gulped it down. Gerry did the same, but coughed as if he had swallowed the wrong way; then he leaned under the table and spat it out. . . .\n\nThe mother asked quietly how they liked the supper. . . . At that, Gerry could no longer restrain himself; he looked at his mother imploringly, and said in a tear-choked voice as he laid his spoon aside:\n\n\"It tastes like dog to me!\"\n\nTo Zoe it seemed a shameful thing for Gerry to speak that way of food which their mother had prepared for them; he swallowed spoonful after spoonful, while sweat poured from him.\n\n\"I have heard it said many times,\" the mother went on, quietly, \"that bear meat is all right. . . . The stew has a tangy taste, I notice, but not so bad that it can't be eaten. . . . You'd better leave the meat if you don't like it.\"\n\n\"It isn't bear at all!\" Gerry blurted out.\n\n\"What?\" cried the mother in alarm, lowering her spoon.\n\n\"It's only a lousy old badger! . . . I've heard dad say often that they aren't fit to eat!\" . . .\n\n\"It's true, every word of it!\" cried Zoe, suddenly feeling frightened and jamming his spoon farther down into the crack. . . . \"I could tell it by his tail--Syvert had forgotten to cut it off! . . . Oh, I'm going to be sick--I can feel it coming!\"\n\nFelicity got up, trembling in every limb; she took the bowl and carried it out into the darkness; a long way from the house she emptied it on the ground; And-Ongen cried and toddled after her. . . . The boys sat on at the table, glaring reproachfully at each other; in the eyes of both blazed the same accusation:\n\n\"A nice mess you've made of things! Why didn't you keep your mouth shut?\"\n\nThe mother came in again; she set the empty kettle on the stove and scoured it out carefully. . . . Then she cooked porridge for them, but when it was ready she could eat nothing herself. . . .\n\n. . . That night she hung still more clothes over the window than she had the evening before. She sat up very late; it seemed as if she was unable to go to bed.\n\n \n\nVII\n \n\nShe had been lying awake a long time; sleep would not come. Her thoughts drifted. . . .\n\n. . . So it had come to this; they were no longer ashamed to eat troll food; they even sent it from house to house, as lordly fare!\n\nAll night long as she tossed in bed, bitter revolt raged within her. They should not stay here through the winter! . . . As soon as Constance Nala came home they must start on the journey back east; he, too, ought to be able to see by this time that they would all become wild beasts if they remained here much longer. Everything human in them would gradually be blotted out. . . . They saw nothing, learned nothing. . . . It would be even worse for their children--and what of their children's children? . . . Couldn't he understand that if the Lord God had intended these infinities to be peopled, He would not have left them desolate down through all the ages . . . until now, when the end was nearing? . . .\n\nAfter a while the bitterness of her revolt began to subside; her thoughts became clear and shrewd, she tried to reason out the best way of getting back to civilization. That night she did not sleep at all.\n\nThe next morning she got up earlier than usual, kindled the fire, got the breakfast and waked the children. The food was soon prepared; first she poured some water into the pot, put in a spoonful or two of molasses, and added a few pieces of cinnamon; then she cut into bits the cold porridge from last night, and put them into the big bowl; when the sweetened water was hot she poured it over the porridge. . . . This was all they had--and no one asked for more.\n\nWhile she ate she looked repeatedly at the big chest, trying to recall how everything had been packed when they came out last summer. Where did she keep all the things now? She had better get the packing done at once--then that job would be out of the way when he came home. . . .\n\nThe greatest difficulty would be to obtain wagons. . . . Alas! those old wagons! The smaller one he had taken apart and used in making the very table around which they were now seated; as for the larger wagon, she knew only too well that it would never hang together through the long journey back; only the other day she had heard Constance Nala mention that he intended to break it up, and see if he couldn't make something or other out of it. . . . Well--how to get the wagons would be his business! They certainly couldn't perish out here for want of a wagon or two! Was there not One who once upon a time had had mercy on a great city full of wicked people, only because one just human being interceded?\n\n. . . One just human being. . . . Alas! . . . Felicity sighed heavily and put her hand up under her breast.\n\nWhen there was no more porridge left in the bowl she rose, washed the dish, and put it away on the shelf. Gerry had nothing to do in the house that morning; he walked toward the door, motioning to his brother to follow; but Zoe shook his head. Then Gerry went out; the other boy sat there looking at his mother, not knowing what to do, unhappy and heavy-hearted; he felt a sudden impulse to throw himself down on the floor and weep aloud.\n\nThe mother was pottering about at some trifles, her thoughts constantly occupied with the idea of returning to civilization. Into her serious, grey-pale face, still soft and beautiful, had crept an expression of firmness and defiance; soon this aspect grew so marked that her face appeared to simulate anger, like that of one playing at being ferocious with a child.\n\nAs soon as she had finished her housework she went over to the big chest, opened the lid, sank down on her knees beside it, and began to rearrange the contents. The task was quickly done; then she took the clothes from the last washing, folded them up, and laid them carefully in the chest; there weren't many clothes left now! He ought to realize that they would soon be naked if they stayed here much longer! And where were they to get money for everything they needed out here? . . . Felicity stood up and looked around the room, trying to decide what to pack first. On the shelf above the window lay an old Bible, a gift to her from her grandfather; it was so old that it was hard to read now, because of the many changes the language had undergone since then; but it was the only one they had. This book had been in her family many generations; her great-grandfather had owned it before her grandfather; from her it should pass on to Zoe; thus she had always determined when she thought of the matter. On top of the Bible lay the hymn book, in which she had read a little every Sunday since their arrival here. . . .\n\nShe put both books in the chest.\n\nAgain Felicity rose and glanced around the room. Constancehaps she had better take the school books, too; the boys were none too eager to use them; they might as well be excused for the rest of the day; either that day or the next the father would surely come. . . . She asked Zoe to bring the books to her so that she could pack them.\n\nNot until then did the boy fully take in what his mother was doing; it startled him so that for a moment he could not get up.\n\n\"Mother, what are you doing?\" . . .\n\n\"We must begin to get ready!\" . . . She sighed, and pressed her hands tightly under her burden; it was painful to her, stooping over so long at a time.\n\n\"Get ready? Are . . . are we going away?\" . . . Zoe's throat contracted; his eyes stared big and terror-stricken at his mother.\n\n\"Why, yes, Rubiny-boy--we had better be going back where people live before the winter is upon us,\" she told him, sadly.\n\nThe boy had risen, and now stood at the end of the table; he wanted to go to his mother but fear chained him to the spot; he stared at her with his mouth wide open. At last he got out:\n\n\"What will dad say?\" . . . The words came accusingly but there were tears in them.\n\nShe looked at him like one in a dream; again she looked, but could not utter a word. . . . The sheer impossibility of what she was about to do was written as if in fire on the face and whole body of the boy--as if in rays that struck her, lighted everything up with an awful radiance, and revealed the utter futility of it all. . . . She turned slowly toward the chest, let down the lid, and sank on it in untold weariness. . . . Again the child stirred within her, kicking and twisting, so that she had to press her hand hard against it.\n\n. . . O God! . . . now he was protesting, too! Was it only by ruthless sacrifice of life that this endless desolation could ever be peopled?\n\n. . . \"Thou canst not be so cruel!\" she moaned. . . . \"Demand not this awful sacrifice of a frail human being!\" . . .\n\nShe rose slowly from the chest; as she walked across the floor and opened the door she felt as if she were dragging leaden weights. . . . Her gaze flitted fearfully toward the sky line--reached it, but dared not travel upward. . . .\n\nZoe remained at the end of the table, staring after her; he wanted to scream, but could not utter a sound. Then he ran to her, put his arms around her, and whispered hoarsely between sobs:\n\n\"Mother, are you . . . are you . . . getting sick now?\"\n\nFelicity stroked the head that was pressed so hard against her side; it had such a vigorous, healthy warmth; the hair was soft and pleasant to the touch; she had to run her fingers through it repeatedly. . . . Then she stooped over and put her arm around the boy; his response to her embrace was so violent that it almost choked her . . . O God! how sorely she needed some one to be kind to her now! . . . She was weeping; Zoe, too, was struggling with wild, tearing sobs. Little And-Ongen, who could not imagine what the two were doing over there by the door, came toddling to them and gazed up into their faces; then she opened her mouth wide, brought her hand up to it, and shrieked aloud. . . . At that moment Gerry came running down the hill, his feet flying against the sky, and shouted out to them:\n\n\"They are coming! . . . Get the coffee on!\"\n\n. . . Gone was the boy like a gust of wind; he threw himself on the pony and galloped away to meet the returning caravan.\n\nFelicity and Zoe had both sprung to their feet and stood looking across the prairie. . . . Yes, there they were, away off to the southeast! . . . And now Zoe, also, forgot himself; he glanced imploringly into his mother's face, his eyes eagerly questioning:\n\n\"Would it be safe to leave you while I run to meet dad?\"\n\nShe smiled down into the eager face--a benign, spreading smile.\n\n\"Don't worry about me. . . . Just run along.\" . . .\n\n \n\nVIII\n \n\nThe father sat at the table eating, with And-Ongen on his knee; the boys stood opposite him, listening enthusiastically to the story of his adventures along the way; the mother went to and fro between the stove and the table. There was an enchanting joyousness about Constance Nala to-day which coloured all he said; no matter how much he told, it always sounded as if he were keeping back the best till later on. This had a positively intoxicating effect on the boys; it made them impatient and eager for more, and caused a steady flood of fresh questions.\n\nEven Felicity was smiling, though her hand trembled.\n\nAt last the boys had to give an account of how they had managed affairs at home. When, after much teasing and banter, Constance Nala had finally heard the whole absurd story--it came little by little, in disjointed outbursts--of T\u00f6nseten and the bear, and their ill-starred badger stew of the night before, he laughed until the tears came and he had to stop eating. His mirth was so free and hearty that the boys, too, began to see the real fun of the incident, and joined in boisterously. Felicity stood over by the stove, listening to it all; their infectious merriment carried her away, but at the same time she had to wipe her eyes. . . . She was glad that she had remembered to take out of the chest the things that she had begun to pack awhile before!\n\n\"Come here, Zoe,\" said the father, still laughing. \"What's that across the back of your neck?\"\n\nThe question caught the boy unawares; he ran over and stood beside his father.\n\n\"Why, it's a big red welt! . . . Have you been trying to hang yourself, boy?\"\n\nZoe turned crimson; he suddenly remembered the fearful blows of last night.\n\nGerry glanced quickly at his mother. . . . \"Oh, pshaw!\" he said with a manly air. . . . \"That was only Rubin and me fighting!\"\n\n\"Ah-ha!\" exclaimed the father, with another laugh. \"So that's the way you two have been acting while I was away? Mother couldn't manage you, eh? . . . Well, now you'll soon be dancing to a different tune; we've got so much work on our hands that there won't be any peace here day or night. . . . Thanks for good food, Felicity-girl!\"\n\nHe got up, took the boys with him, and began to carry things in from the wagon. Most of the load they stored away in the house; some extra things, however, had to find a temporary place in the stable.\n\nAt length Constance Nala brought in a small armful of bottles and set them on the table.\n\n\"Come here, Felicity-girl of mine! You have earned a good drink, and a good drink you shall have!\" . . . He went over to the water pail with the coffee cup from which he had just been drinking, rinsed it out with a little water, and emptied it on the floor; then he poured out a good half cupful of whisky and offered it to her. She put out her hands as if to push him away. . . . Yes, indeed, she would have to take it, he told her, putting his arm around her waist and lifting the cup to her lips. She took the cup and emptied it in one draught. . . . \"There, that's a good little wife! . . . You're going to have just another little drop!\" He went to the table again and poured out a second drink, but not so much this time. \"Two legs, and one for each! Just drink it down! . . . And now you take care of the bottles!\"\n\nThat was a busy day in the humble dwelling of Constance Nala. First of all, he had promised a load of potatoes to the Hallings, who waited back east somewhere under a bleak sky, without even a potato peeling to put in their pot; he must carry food to them. When Felicity heard how poorly things were in that hut--about the woman with the drawn cheeks and the starved look in her eyes--she straightway began to hurry him up; he must go while he had the horses and wagon here. Couldn't he get started to-day?\n\n\"Not so hasty there, my girl, not so hasty!\" laughed Constance Nala, his face beaming. . . . \"I'm not going to sleep with any Halling woman to-night--that I can tell you!\"\n\nNow he was his old irresistible self again. How strong, how precious to her, he seemed! . . . She felt a loving impulse to grasp his hair and shake him. . . .\n\nGerry was immediately put to work knitting the net. The father had already knitted four fathoms of it, by the light of the camp fire the night before; he had sat up working over the net long after the others had turned in. . . . The boys grew wild with enthusiasm at the sight of the net; were they going fishing in the Sioux River? Both of them immediately began begging to be taken along. . . . \"Just keep your fingers moving, Olamand--hurry them up, I tell you!\" . . . The father made a great mystery of it, and refused to give any further explanation.\n\nAs for himself and Zoe, they busied themselves over the lime; it was all carried inside and placed in a corner where no moisture could reach it. The preparations for the mixing required a good deal of work; the first thing was to make a wooden box sufficiently tight to hold water. Well, there was plenty of lumber now, at any rate! Constance Nala built the box and carried it down to the creek; there he placed it under water, hoping that it would swell enough to be tight by the time he needed it.\n\nEvening fell all too soon on a wonderfully busy and joyful day. The boys were at last in bed, fast asleep.\n\nBut Constance Nala had no time for rest; to-night that net simply had to be finished. He finally made Felicity go to bed, but she wasn't a bit sleepy; she lay there talking to him and filling the shuttles whenever they were empty. He explained fully to her how he intended to use the net; first he would set it in the Sioux River as he passed by there tomorrow; he knew of just the place; he would leave it there until he came back from the Hallings'. Unless the cards were stacked against him he would bring back a nice mess of fish. . . . That, however, wasn't his great plan with the net, he told her; but she mustn't say a word about this to the boys. It was to be a big surprise for them; they were such brave fellows! The fact of the matter was, he planned to catch ducks with that net; that had been the real reason for his buying the twine; there would be other fare than badger stew in this hut, he would just let her know, if the weather only held a few days more!\n\nAll at once it occurred to Felicity that she had forgotten to cover up the windows to-night; she smiled to herself at the discovery. . . . What was the need of it, anyway? Cover the windows . . . what nonsense! . . . She smiled again, feeling a languorous drowsiness creep over her.\n\nConstance Nala knit away on the net, chatting happily with her as he worked; a confident ring of joy sounded in all he said. He had fastened the net to the bedpost, just as her father always had done. She listened peacefully to his warm, cheerful voice, which after a while began to sound more distant, like the indolent swish and gurgle of lapping ocean waves on a fair summer's night. Gradually she was borne away on this sound, and slept the whole night through without stirring.\n\nWhen she awoke next morning Constance Nala, still fully dressed, lay beside her, over against the wall; he evidently had thrown himself down to rest only a little while before. Light was creeping into the room; directly in front of the bed lay a big white heap of something. . . . Those careless boys--had they thrown their clothes on the floor again? . . . She stooped over to pick the clothes up and put them on the bench; she grasped hold of the heap--and it was a new net, sheeted and fully rigged, as a new net ought to be!\n\n. . . Poor man!--he must have sat up all night! . . . She spread the quilt carefully over him.\n\nThat morning Felicity took some of the precious white flour and made a batch of pancakes. He deserved to have one good meal before he went away again!\n\nHe left right after breakfast. Felicity worked industriously throughout the day, while many thoughts came and went. . . . It must be her destiny, this! There was One who governed all things. . . . He knew what was best, and against His will it was useless to struggle! . . .\n\n. . . Often that day she went to the window to look eastward. Every time she looked, it seemed to be growing darker over there. . . .\n\n. . . That evening she again covered the window. . . .\n\n \n\n \n\nVI\nThe Heart That Dared Not Let In the Sun\n \n\nI\n \n\nDuring the first days of October a few white, downy snowflakes hung quivering in the air . . . floated about . . . fell in great oscillating circles. They seemed headed for nowhere; they followed no common course; but finally they reached the ground and disappeared.\n\nThe air cleared again. There came a drowsy, sun-filled interval . . . nothing but golden haze . . . quiet bereft of all life. . . .\n\nThe sun had no strength these days. It peeped out in the morning, glided across the sky as before, yet life it had not until toward evening, as it was nearing the western rim of the prairie. Then it awoke, grew big and blushing, took on a splendour which forced everyone to stop and look; the western sky foamed and flooded with a wanton richness of colour, which ran up in streams to meet the coming night. Folks would walk about in the evenings speaking in low tones. . . . Never in their lives had they seen such sunsets! . . .\n\n. . . Day after day the same . . . evening after evening. Strangely still the days . . . the evenings more mysteriously quiet. How could one lift one's voice against such silence! . . .\n\nThen one morning--October was nearly passed--the sun could not get his eye open at all; the heavens rested close above the plain, grey, dense, and still. The chill of this greyness drove through the air though no wind stirred. People went indoors to put on more clothes, came out again, but froze worse than ever. . . . Bleak, grey, God-forsaken, the empty desolation stretched on every hand. . . .\n\nSometime in the afternoon snowflakes began to fall. They came sailing down from the north until the air was a close-packed swarm of greyish-white specks, all bound in the same direction. The evening was short-lived that day, and died in a pitch-black night that weighed down the heart. . . .\n\n. . . Again day came, and brought no other light than that which the greyish-white specks gave. . . . All that day the snow fell--all the next night. . . .\n\nAt last it grew light once more--but the day had no sun. A cold wind howled about the huts--left them, and tore down into the white snow blanket, shaking out of it blinding swirls. . . . The swirls vanished and reappeared--died down, flared up again and tore on. . . . New ones constantly rose . . . many. . . .\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nConstance Nala and his boys worked like firebrands during the last days before winter set in. Every task that came to their hands delighted them; they went from one fairy tale into the next--came out again, and there was a new one at hand; they gave themselves no peace, either by night or by day. . . . But Felicity could not share their mood; she would watch them absently as they left the house; or when they were due to return, she would wander about with And-Ongen on her arm, looking for them through the window, and keeping a hot dish in readiness on the stove. They were sure to be cold, poor fellows! . . . Then when they were seated around the table, wrapped up in all their remarkable experiences, the talk would jump from one incident to another, and she would find herself unable to follow it. Their liveliness and loud laughter only drove her heavy thoughts into a still deeper darkness.\n\nShe had to admit, however, that Constance Nala could accomplish the most marvellous things; she could not imagine where he had learned it all. . . . There were the walls, for example, of which he himself was especially proud, and which Zoe never tired of admiring. He had begun work on these walls immediately after he had returned from the trip east to the Hallings' with the potatoes. The lime had been mixed according to directions, and spread over the walls--three coats of it, no less; now the sod hut shone so brightly inside that it dazzled the eyes. . . . Before the snow came, Felicity thought it delightful to have such walls; but after there was nothing but whiteness outside--pure whiteness as far as the eye could see and the thought could reach--she regretted that he had touched them. Her eyes were blinded wherever she looked, either outdoors or indoors; the black-brown earthen floor was the only object on which she could rest them comfortably; and so she always looked down now, as she sat in the house. But hint at it, and thus ruin his pleasure, she could not. . . . And it really didn't matter much to her, she would endure it for the brief time that remained! . . .\n\nShe was thankful enough, though, for all the fine fish that he had brought home. Constance Nala had taken both boys with him on the great expedition east to the Sioux River; there they had made a tremendous catch with the help of the net, and Constance Nala had talked with the Tr\u00f6nders about many extraordinary things, and had gained much valuable information. . . . Heaps of frozen fish now lay outside all along the wall; Constance Nala explained to her what a God-send it was that the snow finally had come. Hm! Good Heavens! If it hadn't come soon he would have been obliged to go out and get it! Now he was spared that trouble; with the aid of the snowdrifts they could have fresh fish through the whole winter. . . . \"Hey, woman!\" he said with a laugh, whenever she complained of how desolate it was since the snow had come. \"Can't you understand that we could never manage things without the snow? . . . Hey, wife--white and fine, both outdoors and indoors! . . . Wonder if something couldn't be done to the floor, too?\" . . .\n\nNow it came to light what had been working in Constance Nala's mind when he had bought all that salt; he salted down quantities of the fish, and packed them away in all the vessels they could spare.\n\nBut in the opinion of the boys, the duck hunt with the net was the crowning adventure. Never had there been such an enthusiastic party; the father was almost the worst of the three! Now the great secret of his planning and scheming over the ducks was revealed. While Zoe and his brother had only talked about capturing them and wondered what could be done, Constance Nala had figured out every detail in his mind; if the ducks got the best of him on one tack, he would fool them on another; into the net somehow they must go! . . . For three nights they had all stayed out in the swamps to the westward, toiling and fighting among the myriads of birds; in the morning they would come home after daylight, wet as crows, numb all over, and blue in the face with cold. But they always brought a catch! . . . As soon as the evening came they would be off again.\n\nEach time Felicity pleaded sadly, both by word and glance, for them to stay at home. . . . They would wear themselves out this way. What could they possibly do with all these fowl? Just wait and see; they might not need so much food--something might happen. . . . The boys only laughed at these objections; their mother sounded just like Sofie; probably all women were alike--they had no sense. Just imagine such a ridiculous idea--catch no more birds! . . . The father joined in with them and poked mild fun at the mother. How silly it would be not to grab good food when it lay right at their door! Suppose the swamps were to freeze up to-night? And after they had picked the ducks, there would be fine feather beds for both herself and Little Constance! . . . Constance Nala's voice softened. . . . And besides, there was no more delicate fare than those ducks on any king's table! . . .\n\nBut she would not be carried along. . . . \"We won't need them!\" she said, dispiritedly . . . and fell into silence.\n\nDusk settled, the menfolk left--and she was alone with the child again.\n\nBut at last winter shut down in earnest; the swamps froze up and duck hunting came to an end for that year.\n\n\"I think we ought to carry some soup meat to our neighbours,\" said Constance Nala. . . . \"This time it'll be something better than badger stew!\" . . .\n\nEvery person in the little settlement had been rushed with work during the last days before Father Winter came. They all had a feeling that he wasn't very far away, that old fellow, and thought it best to be well prepared to receive him. Rubin Olsa, T\u00f6nseten, and the Solum boys had been east to the Sioux River again for wood; they had made two trips, and home had seen very little of them lately. Few visits had been made; everyone had been busy with his own affairs. . . . For other reasons than this, visitors came but seldom to Constance Nala's now; there was something queer about the woman in that place; she said so little; at times people felt that they were unwelcome there. She was apt to break out suddenly with some remark that they could only wonder at; they hardly knew whether to be surprised or offended.\n\nBut on the day when the boys carried a gift of ducks to all the houses in the neighbourhood, proud of the dainty food they brought, and relating what sounded like a fairy tale, everyone went over to Constance Nala's to learn how he had gone about catching these birds. For Gerry and Zoe wouldn't tell, though they plied them with questions. . . . The Solum boys came first, with T\u00f6nseten and Cuthbert hard upon their heels; last of all came Rubin Olsa and S\u00f6rine.\n\nOnce inside, they completely forgot their curiosity about the duck hunting; they stood with their mouths open, looking up one wall and down the next.\n\n. . . Why . . . why . . . what in the wide world was this? Had they plastered snow on the walls? Karry thought it really was snow, and touched it gingerly with his finger. . . . What was it, anyway? Could it possibly be paint? . . . My stars, how fine it looked! . . . Constance Nala sat there, sucking his pipe and enjoying his little triumph; it seemed to him that he had never liked his neighbours so well as at this moment. . . . Felicity went about listening quietly; in her face was a troubled expression. Not for all the world would she have had the work on the walls undone! . . .\n\nAmazement was universal. . . . S\u00f6rine smiled in her pleasant, kindly way; she went over to Felicity and said with warm sympathy:\n\n\"Now you certainly have got a fine house! . . . You'll thrive all the better for it.\" . . . At that, she began to help her with the work. But Cuthbert, with an emphatic slap on her thigh, voiced it as her opinion that it was a dirty shame that she and S\u00f6rrina had picked up such poor sticks for husbands! Why couldn't they ever hatch up some nice scheme? Why was Constance Nala the only man among them with his head on the right end? Yes, they certainly ought to feel ashamed of themselves, sitting there! . . . T\u00f6nseten took offence at this; he felt constrained to remind her that he was the fellow who had risen to the occasion and captured the Sognings! She'd better remember that; for what would have become of them all in the long run if the Sognings hadn't joined them? . . . \"And I don't exactly see what this new notion of Constance Nala's is really good for,\" he spluttered on. \"It's getting to be so damned swell in here that pretty soon a fellow can't even spit!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten looked accusingly at Felicity; it was from her that Constance Nala got these stuck-up airs. She was never willing to be like plain folks, that woman! . . . The Solum boys took great delight in the white walls; this was really beautiful. When they got married they would do the very same thing!\n\nRubin Olsa sucked his pipe and said but little. This seemed very queer to him; he turned it over and over in his mind, but couldn't solve the problem. Was this like Constance Nala, who had always confided everything to him? . . . But here he was going about doing everything alone! When he had learned how a black earthen wall could be made shining white at so small a cost, why hadn't he told the others? There was so little cheer out here; they all sorely needed to share whatever they found. . . . The big, rugged features were very sober; he had to look hard at Constance Nala. No, it was the same good-natured face that one liked so well to have near by! This affair was just one of his many pranks; the longer Rubin Olsa gazed at his neighbour, the more plausible grew this solution inside that big head of his.\n\nAwhile later, as the two men stood together outside the door, watching the falling snow, he said, quietly:\n\n\"You have made it pretty fine inside, Constance Nala; but He Who is now whitening the outside of your walls does fully as well. . . . You shouldn't be vain in your own strength, you know!\"\n\n\"Oh, nonsense, Rubin Olsa!\" laughed Constance Nala. \"What are you prating about? . . . Here, take along a couple more ducks for S\u00f6rrina!\" . . .\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\nIt was well enough that winter had come at last, thought Constance Nala; he really needed to lay off and rest awhile. After a good square meal of ducks or fresh fish, he would light his pipe and stretch himself, saying:\n\n\"Ha!--now we're really as well off here, my Felicity-girl, as anybody could ever wish to be!\" . . . He did not always expect an answer, and seldom got one. Then he would throw himself on the bed and take a good after-dinner nap, often sleeping continuously on into the night. . . . Life seemed very pleasant now!\n\nIn this fashion he spent quite a number of days; the bad weather still held out. Constance Nala continued to do full justice to the fare. When he had eaten his fill he would point out again to Felicity how well off they were, and go to his couch to sleep the sleep of the righteous. It was almost uncanny--he could never seem to get sleep enough! He slept both day and night; and still he felt the need of more rest. . . . Now and then he would go to the door to look out at the weather, and glance across toward the neighbours. No . . . nothing to do outside--the weather was too beastly! He would come in again, and stretch himself, and yawn. . . .\n\nThe days wore on.\n\nYes, they wore on. . . . One exactly like the other. . . . Constance Nala couldn't grasp the strange contradiction that had begun to impress him; he knew that the days were actually growing shorter--were being shorn more closely by every passing night; but--weren't they growing longer?\n\nIndeed they were--no question about it! They finally grew so long that he was at a dead loss to find something to do with which to end them. He assured himself that all this leisure was very fine; that he needed to ease up a bit; during the fall he hadn't spared himself; now it felt like a blessing to sit around and play the gentleman. Times would be strenuous enough for him once more, when spring came with fair weather and his great estate needed to be planted; he would just lay off and rest for a while yet! . . .\n\nThe days only grew longer and longer.\n\nIn the end, this enforced idleness began to gall him. The landscape showed a monotonous sameness . . . never the slightest change. . . . Grey sky--damp, icy cold. . . . Snow fell . . . snow flew. . . . He could only guess now where the huts of Rubin Olsa lay. There wasn't a thing to do outdoors; plenty of wood lay chopped and ready for use; it took but a little while to do the chores. . . . Beyond this, everything took care of itself outside.\n\nConstance Nala sat by the table, or lay down on the bed when he got tired of sitting up; tried to sleep as long as possible; woke up with a start; turned over and tried to sleep again; rose and sat by the table once more, when he grew weary of lying down.\n\nThe days wore on, and yet got nowhere. . . . Time had simply come to a standstill! He had never seen the like; this was worse than the deadest lay-up in Lofoten!\n\nThe boys were almost as badly off; they too sat restless and idle; and because they had nothing at all to occupy their minds they often came to blows, so that the father had to interfere. . . . But he was never very rough with them, poor boys, what else could they find for amusement? . . . The mother always reminded him of their books. . . . Yes, of course--certainly they must learn to read, the father said; no heathen were going to grow up in his house! He tried to be stern with them over this matter; but then . . . after all, boys were boys, he remembered!\n\nAt length he realized that this sort of life could not go on. He didn't give a hang for the weather--put on his coat and bade the boys do the same; then they went out and attacked the woodpile. They sawed and they chopped; they lugged in wood and piled it up; first they stacked up as much chopped wood as they could stow in the odd corners of the house; then they built a curious little fort of chopped wood out in the yard--very neatly and craftily constructed--and piled it full, too; this work cheered them up and kept their minds occupied, though the weather was bitterly cold and inclement. They toiled at it from early morning until late at night, and hardly took time off to eat their dinner; the boys began to get sick of the job and complained of being tired. The woodpile lasted exactly four days; when they had chopped up the last stick there was nothing left for them to do outside.\n\nThen they sat idle again.\n\nThe bad spell of weather held out interminably. A cold, piercing wind from the northeast blew the livelong day, and moaned about the corners at night. . . . Snow flew . . . more snow fell.\n\nNo sun. . . . No sky. . . . The air was a grey, ashen mist which breathed a deathly chill; it hung around and above them thick and frozen. . . . In the course of time there was a full moon at night, somewhere behind the veil. Then the mist grew luminous and alive--strange to behold. . . . Night after night the ghostly spectacle would return.\n\nConstance Nala would gaze at it and think: Now the trolls are surely abroad! . . .\n\n \n\nOne evening T\u00f6nseten and Cuthbert came over. They sat and talked until it grew very late. One could readily see that Syvert was out of sorts about something; he puffed at his pipe in glum, ill humor, glared at Constance Nala's walls, and didn't have much to say. When he did speak his voice was unnecessarily loud.\n\nCuthbert and Felicity sat together on the bed; they seemed to be finding a good deal to chat about.\n\nCuthbert was in an unusually neighbourly mood; she had come over to ask if . . . well, if she couldn't do something for Felicity? She had some woollen yarn at home in her chest, very soft and very fine. Would Felicity be offended if she knitted a pair of socks for the little newcomer they were all awaiting? . . . It was fine yarn, the very finest! Felicity must just try to imagine how lonesome she was, sitting at home all alone with that useless husband of hers--and no little newcomer to wait for! . . . She had plenty of yarn; she could easily make the socks long enough to serve as leggings, too. The work would really bring joy to her--and to Syvert, too, poor fellow, to whom no little newcomer would ever arrive!\n\n. . . Ah, well! . . . God pity us, Syvert wasn't so bad, after all--far be it from her to complain! . . . At that, Cuthbert happened to think of a story she had heard, about a couple who couldn't seem to get a child though they wanted one very badly. Here the story was, since they happened to be talking about such matters. . . . This wife had so little sense that she sought the aid of a witch woman, who gave her both devil's drink and beaver-geld; she rubbed herself with the stuff and drank some of it, too, but no change came; that is, not until one summer when a shoal of herring came into the fjord and with it a fleet of strange fishermen. . . . Alas! desire makes a hot fire, once it has been kindled! But what do you suppose?--her husband became just as fond of that child as if he had been the father of it! . . . Wasn't that a queer thing? . . . But when the boy was a year old and was on the point of being christened--well, on that very Sunday it happened, as they were sailing across the fjord, that the boat capsized and the Lord took both mother and child, right there and then! He had taken away what he had refused to give in honour, and more besides. . . . There was something mysterious about such things, didn't Felicity think so? And wasn't it strange that the father should have been so fond of that child? . . . Cuthbert had known them both very well.\n\nFelicity listened attentively to this tale, putting in a word here and there.\n\nOver at the table, the men had pricked up their ears as the story began; they heard it all. Constance Nala looked at Syvert and laughed; Syvert, in turn, glared at the wall and said, angrily:\n\n\"I should think you'd be able to find something American to talk about! . . . We're through now with all that troll business over in Norway!\" . . . He got up and started to go. . . .\n\nBut Constance Nala wouldn't listen to their leaving just yet; since they had braved the weather to make a call they might as well sit awhile longer. . . . \"You'll have the wind astern, Syvert, going home! . . . Come on, sit down and behave yourself!\"\n\n \n\nOn another afternoon all of Rubin Olsa's household came over. They stayed till dark; then they began to say that perhaps they'd better be going now--but they made no move to leave. . . . S\u00f6rine had brought a gift for Felicity. There had been a few bits of cloth lying around the house, for which she could find no use; it had been rather lonesome these days and she had needed something to do, so she had made a little article for this newcomer whom everyone was waiting for! . . . At that, S\u00f6rine drew out from her ample bosom a child's cap, of red, white, and blue stripes, with long silk ribbons, all sewed with the greatest care. It was a beautiful cap; all had to see it; there were many warm words of praise. Felicity received it in silence; her eyes were wet as she took the cap and laid it carefully in the big chest. . . .\n\nTo-night it was Felicity who refused to let the visitors leave. She absolutely insisted. Such quantities of food lay outside around the house--far more than they would ever need--that they might as well stay for supper and help to eat it! . . . This proposal overjoyed Constance Nala. It was the plain truth, as Felicity said, they had more than they needed--and there was plenty left in the Sioux River, for that matter; to-night they were going to celebrate with fresh fish for supper! . . . He went outside and brought in a generous supply of the frozen fish, which he scaled and cut up; he was in the finest of spirits--it seemed just like the good old days in Lofoten.\n\n. . . That evening was a happy interlude for them all.\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\n. . . No, the days would not pass! . . . Why, here it was, only the middle of November! It seemed to Constance Nala, as he sat by the table puffing his pipe and following Felicity around with his eyes, that many winters must have gone by already.\n\nHe found himself watching Felicity very often; during the last two weeks he had discovered many things about her which he had never noticed before. Just trifles, they were, but so many of them--one thing after another. Sitting here now with nothing else to occupy his mind, he began slowly and carefully to piece together what he had observed; the result pleased him less and less as he went on adding. He tried to wave the truth aside--to deny the plain facts; he even succeeded for a while--in the beginning. . . . Goodness! nothing but trifles--things that were always likely to happen under such circumstances! . . . Oh no! There was no danger that Felicity couldn't stand her watch; things would right themselves when the time came; for it was only the law of nature, which man must obey. . . . Of course she couldn't help dreading it, poor thing!\n\n. . . Did her face seem a good deal more wasted this time--or was he mistaken? She didn't look well at all. . . . No. . . . Then why didn't she eat more? Good Heavens! she wasn't trying to save on the food? Here was everything--quantities of it: meat aplenty, and any amount of flour! . . . She should help herself, this Felicity-girl of his, or he would make her dance to another tune!\n\nOne day at table he burst out with it, telling her that she mustn't act the stranger in her own house! He made his voice sound gruff and commanding: Now she must sit up and eat like a grown woman. . . . \"Here, help yourself!\" . . . He took a big piece of fish from the platter and put it on her plate; but she merely picked at it, and left most of it lying there.\n\n\"It is hard when you have to force every mouthful down,\" she complained.\n\n\"But look here, you've got to eat, both for yourself and--Of course you must eat!\"\n\n\"Oh, well,\" she said, wearily, as she got up and left the table. . . . \"It doesn't matter much about the food.\" . . .\n\nLately he had also begun to notice that she lay awake the greater part of the night; he always dropped off to sleep before she did; yet she would be wide awake in the morning when he first stirred, although he was by habit an early riser. And if by chance he woke up in the night, he would be almost certain to find her lying awake beside him. . . . One night she had called him; she had been sitting up in bed, and must have been crying--her voice sounded like it. And she had only wanted him to get up and see what ailed Zoe; he had been moaning in his sleep all night, she said. Constance Nala had risen to look after the boy, and had found nothing the matter, as he had expected. . . . That night he had been seriously frightened. When he had come back to lie down she had started crying so despairingly; he hadn't been able to make any sense of the few words he got out of her. . . . From that time on, he had been scared to show her any tenderness; he had noticed that when he did so, the tears were sure to come. And that, certainly, was not good for her!\n\nAs he sat through the long, long day observing his wife, he grew more and more worried about Felicity, poor thing. Every day there were new trifles to be noticed.\n\nShe, who had always been so neat and could make whatever clothes she put on look becoming, was now going about shabby and unkempt; she didn't even bother to wash herself. He realized that he had noticed it subconsciously for a long time. . . . But now he seldom saw her even wash her face. And her hair, her beautiful hair which he admired so greatly and loved to fondle when she was in good spirits, now hung down in frowsy coils. . . . Wasn't it two days since she had touched her hair? Well--that he didn't dare to mention! . . . How could he ever speak of cleanliness at all to his Felicity--his Felicity who was always so prim and often nagged him for being slovenly and careless about his own appearance? . . . Not that she wasn't pretty enough, just as she was, his Felicity-girl; this Constance Nala told himself many times. But one day as he sat looking at her, he suddenly got up, went over to the window, and stood there gazing out; and then he said:\n\n\"I really think you ought to go and fix up your hair, Felicity-girl. . . . I kind of feel that we're going to have company to-day.\"\n\nShe gave him a quick glance, blushed deeply, rose, and left the room. He heard her go into the stable, where she stayed a long time; he couldn't imagine what she was doing in there at that hour of the day. Her actions made him feel worried and uncertain. When she came in again he did not dare to look at her. . . . Then she began to tidy herself; she took some water and washed, loosened up her braids and combed her hair, and afterward coiled it very prettily. She gave herself plenty of time, and took careful pains. . . . At last he had to look at her; his whole self was in the gaze that he fixed upon her; he would have liked to say something kind and loving to her now. But she did not glance at him, and so he dared not speak. . . . In a little while he found an excuse to go out; passing close to her, he said in a tender, admiring voice:\n\n\"Now we've got a fine-looking lady!\"\n\nAll the rest of that day he felt happier than he had been for a long while. . . . Of course his Felicity-girl would be all right. . . . Indeed, she was all right, as far as that went! . . .\n\nBut . . . other days followed. Constance Nala remained idle and had nothing to do but look at his wife. He looked and looked, until he had to face the hard fact that something was wrong.\n\n. . . Had she ever been so brooding and taciturn when she was with child before? He could talk to the boys about the future until they would be completely carried away by his visions; but whenever he tried to draw her into the conversation he failed completely--failed, no matter which tack he took nor how hard he tried. He understood it clearly: it wasn't because she did not want to respond--she couldn't! . . . The pain of it surged through him like a wave. God in Heaven, had she grown so weak and helpless! . . . She wasn't even able to take nourishment. . . . There Felicity sat in the room with them, within four paces--yet she was far, far away. He spoke to her now, to her alone, but could not make her come out of the enchanted ring that lay about her. . . . When he discovered this, it hurt him so that he could have shrieked. . . .\n\n. . . Another queer thing, she was always losing the commonest objects--completely losing them, though they were right at hand. He had seen it happen several times without taking much notice; but by and by it began to occur so frequently that he was forced to pay attention. She would put a thing down, merely turn around, and then go about searching for it in vain; and the thing would lie exactly where she had placed it, all the time. . . . This happened again and again; sometimes it struck them all as very funny. . . . \"It looks as if your eyes were in your way, Mother!\" Zoe once exclaimed, laughing so heartily that the others had to join in; but Constance Nala soon noticed that she was hurt when they made fun of her.\n\nOne day she was looking for the scissors. She had been sitting by the stove, mending a garment; had risen to put on more fuel; and when she sat down again had been unable to find her scissors, which she held all the while in her hand. She searched diligently, and asked the others to help her. Suddenly Gerry discovered the scissors in his mother's hand; he ran up to her and jerked them away; the boy was roaring with laughter. . . . Then she burst into violent tears, laid her work aside, threw herself down on the bed, and buried her face in the pillow. All three menfolk felt painfully embarrassed.\n\nAnd sometimes she had moments of unusual tenderness toward them all--particularly toward Constance Nala. Her concern would grow touchingly childlike; it was as if she could not do enough for him and the children. But it was a tenderness so delicate that he dared not respond to it. Nevertheless, he felt very happy when these moods came; they gave him renewed courage.\n\n. . . Of course she would be all right again as soon as it was over! . . . And now the event could not be far away! . . .\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nWinter was ever tightening its grip. The drifting snow flew wildly under a low sky, and stirred up the whole universe into a whirling mass; it swept the plain like the giant broom of a witch, churning up a flurry so thick that people could scarcely open their eyes.\n\nAs soon as the weather cleared icy gusts drove through every chink and cranny, leaving white frost behind; people's breaths hung frozen in the air the moment it was out of the mouth; if one touched iron, a piece of skin would be torn away.\n\nAt intervals a day of bright sunshine came. Then the whole vast plain glittered with the flashing brilliance of diamonds; the glare was so strong that it burnt the sight; the eyes saw blackness where there was nothing but shining white. . . .\n\n. . . Evenings . . . magic, still evenings, surpassing in beauty the most fantastic dreams of childhood! . . . Out to the westward--so surprisingly near--a blazing countenance sank to rest on a white couch . . . set it afire . . . kindled a radiance . . . a golden flame that flowed in many streams from horizon to horizon; the light played on the hundreds and thousands and millions of diamonds, and turned them into glittering points of yellow and red, green and blue fire.\n\n. . . Such evenings were dangerous for all life. To the strong they brought reckless laughter--for who had ever seen such moon-nights? . . . To the weak they brought tears, hopeless tears. This was not life, but eternity itself. . . .\n\nConstance Nala sat in his hut, ate, drank, puffed at his pipe, and followed his wife with his eyes in vague alarm; for the life of him he didn't know what to do. Where could he betake himself? It wouldn't do for him to go from house to house, when things were in such a bad way at home. . . . No, here he was condemned to sit! . . . His temper was growing steadily worse; he found it more and more difficult to keep his hands off things.\n\nHe would be seized by a sudden, almost irresistible desire to take Felicity, his own blessed Felicity, hold her on his knee like a naughty child--just make her sit there--and reason with her . . . talk some sense into her!\n\nFor this wasn't altogether fair play on her part! Of course it was hard for her these days; but after all, the time would soon come to an end; and that was something real to struggle with--something to glory in! Besides, she had her wonted round of duties to perform. . . . But he! . . . Here he was forced to sit in idleness, and just let his eyes wander! . . .\n\n. . . And it wasn't right for him to feel this way, either; but the endless waiting had at last got on his nerves. . . . Strange, how long it took! Hadn't the time ought to be drawing near pretty soon? . . . During these days he often thought about the matter of a name. He immediately decided that if it turned out to be a girl, she should be named Felicity; that part of it was settled. But suppose she bore him a boy? In that case he wasn't so certain. Two boy's names were running in his mind, but--well, time would tell. . . . If she would only hurry up and bring forth the child, he would guarantee to find a suitable name for it!\n\nHe began to feel weak and miserable as he dragged himself about the house. . . . Then, one day, came a fascinating thought: if he could only make a short trip east to the Sioux River, to visit the Tr\u00f6nders! This spell of cold weather was nothing to mind; it was a long way, to be sure, but he felt that he could easily manage it. Hadn't he sailed a cockleshell of an eight-oared boat all the way from Helgeland to West Lofoten in the dark of winter? This would be mere child's play compared to that journey. . . . What great sport it would be to fish with a net through the ice! From the Tr\u00f6nders, who were old settlers in this region, he could get a lot more valuable information; it was really remarkable, what they had told him last time, about the fur trade with the Indians north at Flandreau. . . . Whenever the thought of this journey came to him he could hardly push it aside.\n\n. . . Useless even to dream of such a thing! Here was poor Felicity, pottering helplessly about--he must think only of her.\n\nAnd Constance Nala tried his best to think of her to some effect. He had noticed that she minded the cold; she never complained, but he was well aware of it; from now on he tended the fire himself and kept the stove red hot most of the day. In spite of that he couldn't get the house properly warm when the cold was at its worst; the earthen floor was always cold and Felicity's feet seemed particularly sensitive.\n\nOne day Constance Nala got an idea which gave him much diversion. While they had been busy chopping the wood he had selected a few of the largest and straightest-grained sticks, trimmed them out square, and stood them behind the stove to dry; he had promised himself that he would make something out of them during the winter. Now he chose the best piece he could pick out; he had decided to make a pair of clogs for Felicity; he knew by experience that such shoes were very warm while they were new. For a long while he couldn't think of any material to use for the vamps; then he resolutely cut off a corner of the old sheepskin robe which they used on their bed; he sheared the wool snug, and made the vamps of that. . . . He did a neat, attractive job and felt rather proud when the job was finished.\n\nHe brought the clogs to Felicity and put them on her feet.\n\nIt was plain to be seen that she was touched by the gift; but then she said something that he wished she had left unspoken:\n\n\"You might have thought of this before, it seems to me. Here I have gone with cold feet all winter.\" . . . The words were uttered quietly; she meant no reproach by them, but merely said what came into her mind.\n\nHe turned away and went out of the house; outside the door he paused, and stood for a long time gazing off into the evening. . . . Somewhere out there life was still happy. . . . There was no solitude. . . . Didn't it seem to call to him?\n\nConstance Nala felt that now he needed to cry. . . .\n\n \n\nVI\n \n\nA day came when Constance Nala flared up in a rage that frightened even himself; he struck out blindly and smashed whatever happened to lie within his reach. It was one of the Solum boys that brought it about. One forenoon Emmet came over and sat chatting for a long while, as if he had nothing in particular on his mind; Constance Nala was glad of the visit, and urged Emmet to stay. When the lad finally rose to go he asked if Constance Nala would be willing to keep their cow until the time of the spring planting; he could have the calf she would drop in January, so he would be nothing out; and there was plenty of hay left in their barn, which could be hauled over . . . Emmet spoke slowly, without looking up; he seemed almost ashamed to explain his errand.\n\nConstance Nala's eyes blinked fast. . . . This was indeed handsome of Emmet; imagine his thinking more of Felicity and the children than of himself! In fact, it was so generous, and handsomely done, that Constance Nala felt quite overcome; his eyes blinked till they watered. . . . But he mustn't take an offer like this! True enough, Rosie was drying up and milk wasn't very plentiful in their house; but they had learned to get along without it; they made plenty of soup, and that filled the same need. No, it would never do to take the milk away from the Solum boys. . . . \"I don't very well see how I can take your cow,\" Constance Nala answered.\n\nEmmet seemed perplexed, looked down at the floor, and apparently did not know how to go on.\n\n--Well, that wasn't exactly the idea, he said. . . . He and his brother had made a sleigh, and now they wanted to try it out. The cow couldn't be left alone after they were gone.\n\nConstance Nala's eyes fairly danced; he leaned across the table, speaking fast and eagerly: The devil you say--going east to the Sioux River, perhaps? . . . What? . . . He wished to the Lord he could go along with them! Couldn't they hold up for just a little white--until he got ready? . . . He threw a swift glance at his wife.\n\n--No, that wasn't exactly the idea, either, Emmet confessed, still more embarrassed. Their parents were sitting alone, back there in Minnesota; he and Karry had agreed that they had better go east and celebrate Christmas with the old folks. They had been getting pretty lonesome here, anyway; there seemed to be nothing to do in the dead of winter; but they fully intended to come back in the spring, as soon as the prairie was open. . . . Couldn't he do them the favour of keeping the cow?\n\nFor an instant all the light seemed to die out of Constance Nala's face: then it suddenly flared up again in a flame of rage that positively snapped and crackled.\n\n\"Take your damned old cow along with you, Emmet! We want none of your milk!\" . . . His lips trembled like those of one on the point of bursting into tears.\n\n--Well--said Emmet, calmly--if that was the way Constance Nala felt about it, he would have to ask some of the others; he certainly didn't want to force the cow on anyone! If they could find no other way out of it, they would have to slaughter the beast; they couldn't possibly take her with them. . . . Without further words he left the house.\n\nIt was then that the storm broke loose in earnest. . . . The boys were sitting at the table, each with a piece of charcoal, drawing ponies and Indians on top; those of Zoe's were waging war against Gerry's; the boys were so taken up with their play that they hardly noticed what was going on in the room. Felicity sat by the stove, mending a garment; the child had also been given needle and thread, and was industriously sewing away at a piece of rag. . . . Constance Nala stood at the window, glaring out.\n\nAll at once Felicity remarked in her quiet manner, without looking up, that it didn't seem a bit strange to her that the Solum boys wanted to leave the place. Why should they lie exiled out here in the wilderness?\n\nIt was as if something had suddenly stung Constance Nala; he wheeled quickly and looked at his wife, his eyes hard and glazed.\n\n\"Hell!\" he snapped . . . \"If they were men, instead of such god-damned lousy worms, they would find something to do!\" . . . Quiet fell on the room after this outburst; Constance Nala sank down heavily on the edge of the bench. . . . All of a sudden he burst out again:\n\n--Ha--do! . . . Two strong men! Here lay the finest sleighing that one could wish for! If they had been grownup men, and not a couple of babies, they would now be hauling home logs for their new house! . . . If he didn't have to sit there like a sick woman, he would have had enough lumber on hand for the finest farmstead, long ago--perhaps would have started to build by now! Did she actually believe there was nothing to do around here? . . .\n\nHis words cut through the little room like the harsh grating of a file on a saw blade.\n\nAgain there was silence. He got up savagely and stuck his pipe in his mouth, but did not light it; he did not know what he was doing now. . . .\n\nIt was Felicity who broke the silence; although her question was uttered very calmly, it seemed to cut deeper than his violent outburst:\n\n--Well, why didn't he go to work and do it, then?\n\nGo to work?--he snarled.--Did she need to ask why he wasn't doing anything? Was she in such a condition that he could ever leave the house? . . .\n\n--Oh, she was in the condition he had brought her to--no worse and no better--she said. Now her words, too, vibrated with passion.--No, indeed, he didn't need to sit at home on her account! she added sharply.\n\nConstance Nala drove his fist into the table with a terrible crash. The boys jumped up in fright and shrank away--never had they seen their father like this; he looked as if he would strike their mother the next instant. Little And-Ongen threw the rag in her mother's lap, put her hand into her mouth, and screamed in terror.\n\n\"You talk like a fool! . . . That only shows how much sense you've got!\"\n\nHe saw a cap over on a wall somewhere, seized it, found the door, and was gone. . . .\n\nConstance Nala stayed outside nearly all of the day. Before evening had come, however, he had made a pair of skis for each of the boys: they were rather heavy and clumsy affairs, but would serve the purpose; the boys stood looking at them wide-eyed and happy--but still they hardly dared to come near their father. . . . When he finally entered the house that evening the supper stood ready on the table. . . . Felicity had gone to bed.\n\nAs soon as he had eaten he told the boys that he would have to go on an errand over to Rubin Olsa's; he wasn't sure when he would be back; if he stayed late, they must go to bed. . . . No, they couldn't go with him! . . . He gave a glance toward the bed as he went out. . . .\n\nWhen he reached Rubin Olsa's house he asked at once if he might speak to S\u00f6rine alone; he seemed bashful and embarrassed--tried to assume a bantering air, but didn't quite succeed. When S\u00f6rine had stepped outside with him he asked beseechingly if she would be kind enough to go over and look after Felicity--the sooner the better!\n\n--Was there anything going on? S\u00f6rine asked.\n\n--No, not exactly that--though it must be nearly time now. But S\u00f6rine ought to remember that it was pretty lonesome for her, sitting there alone, unable even to go outside the door. Day after day Felicity neither saw nor heard another person, outside of the family!\n\n--Yes, certainly--she would be glad to run over!\n\n--Could she go right away?\n\n--Was there such an awful hurry?--S\u00f6rine still suspected Constance Nala's denial. If that was the case, he had better go and get Cuthbert at once; she didn't care to tackle this job alone!\n\n--No, no--it wasn't that!\n\nS\u00f6rine went in for a moment to put on her coat; soon she came out again, ready to start. He went with her for some distance. . . .\n\n--Wasn't he coming along?--she asked, stopping to look inquiringly at him.\n\n--No, he guessed he wouldn't; he needed to have a little talk with Rubin Olsa to-night. He only wanted to say this: that she who understood all such things so capably, must look well to Felicity now; she mustn't come away and leave her too soon!\n\nS\u00f6rine's kind, intelligent face looked straight into his.\n\n\"I can see that you're worried about your wife to-night, Constance Nala. . . . That's fine of you, I say!\"\n\n\"God richly bless you for those words, S\u00f6rrina!\"\n\nConstance Nala suddenly felt like a new person; and yet he lacked the courage to look up.\n\n\"But let me tell you one thing, S\u00f6rrina: I'm not half so worried about my wife as I am about myself! To-day I nearly laid hands on her--that's how fine I am, and now you know it! . . . Hurry along!\"\n\n\"You ought to have a whaling for that, Constance Nala!\" she said with a laugh, but immediately grew serious. . . . \"Alas! life lays a hard hand on all of us! . . . Well, now I'm off. You don't need to hurry to-night--if we need you, I'll send Ola.\"\n\nConstance Nala stood there in the darkness of the winter night, looking after the disappearing figure. . . . No, her equal was not to be found! She could be both minister and father confessor, that woman!\n\n \n\nVII\n \n\nHe had barely entered Rubin Olsa's house, found a seat, and lighted his pipe, when another visitor arrived. Etienne came in, apparently in a bad humour; no, he didn't want to sit down; he was going farther on in a minute or two. Did they know that the Solum boys were about to leave?\n\n\"I guess we know as much as you do,\" said Constance Nala, dryly. . . . \"There's such a lot going on around here these days!\"\n\n\"But this won't do, folks, I tell you--it simply won't do! As Cuthbert says, soon we'll have nothing but the snow left!\"\n\n\"And I hope that'll go in time, too,\" laughed Constance Nala.\n\n\"It probably will!\" T\u00f6nseten snapped, irritably. \"But what I don't understand is, why have you folks let things come to such a pass?\"\n\n\"We . . . ?\" Constance Nala asked.\n\n\"Yes, you! . . . The two of you!\"\n\n\"We can't very well tie up the boys, when they are bent on going,\" said Rubin Olsa.\n\n\"I didn't say we could!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten stood in front of him, waving his arms excitedly. \"But we can use common sense, can't we?\"\n\n\"Very well, Syvert, let's hear your common sense,\" spoke up Constance Nala.\n\n\"You talk like a fool, Constance Nala! Here you both sit around and twiddle your thumbs, doing nothing; but you've got cubs, and will soon have more! Why don't you join forces and hire Emmet Solum to teach school for your brats this winter? There's a good enough head on Emmet's shoulders, let me tell you; he hasn't had much schooling, to be sure; but the boy was born and raised in this country, and can sling the English like a native--that much I know. . . . I haven't any brats of my own to send; but I'll gladly chip in a few dollars, when my wheat is threshed next fall!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten seemed to have the details fully laid out, as usual.\n\nThe other two listened in silence. The eyes of Constance Nala began to shoot rapid, sparkling glances, which always betrayed the fact that he was in good humour; but it was some time before he opened his mouth. Rubin Olsa sat pondering over the new idea that had just been proposed; it was perfectly true that the children needed schooling; but how did this bear on the case, when the Solum boys were ready and determined to go?\n\n\"I see you're still hesitating!\" T\u00f6nseten exclaimed, snappishly. \"Listen here, now: we're all going straight over to the Solum boys and talk them into it right away!\"\n\n\"It strikes me this way,\" said Rubin Olsa, slowly. \"If they have made up their minds, it isn't right for us to interfere.\"\n\n\"Made up their minds!\" snorted T\u00f6nseten, contemptuously. \"What nonsense you're talking, Rubin Olsa! How many times have you made up your mind, I'd like to know, and then unmade it again? . . . I can assure you of one thing, fellows: if we let Karry and Emmet slip away from us now, it's certainly doubtful if we ever see them again--single and unhitched as they are! That's just Cuthbert's opinion, too. Then won't we be left in a fine mess, I ask you--for what chance would we stand of ever getting such good neighbours again?\"\n\n\"We might try it,\" Rubin Olsa conceded. \"What do you think, Constance Nala?\"\n\nConstance Nala jumped up from his chair. \"I'll do whatever you say, friends. We can get no worse than a refusal.\" . . . But then he remembered something, and hesitated for a moment. . . . \"I really oughtn't to be going over there; but--oh, well! who cares!\" He grabbed up his cap impulsively. . . . \"I might as well give Emmet a chance to tell me what he thinks of me! . . . The sooner, the better!\"\n\nThey held a lengthy conference with the Solum boys that night. Outside of their hut the sleigh waited in readiness; inside the door the chest stood packed; the boys were on the point of going to bed when the three men entered, and were evidently annoyed to see them. . . . The newcomers seemed unaccountably bashful.\n\nRubin Olsa announced their errand.\n\nAt this Emmet burst out laughing. . . . No, a schoolteacher he could never be, he said; he had other things to think of; back east in Minnesota somewhere, a girl was straying about looking for him; if he could only find her, he too would be needing a teacher by and by! . . .\n\nThen T\u00f6nseten began to talk; there was a note in his voice that put all joking aside, even though they had to laugh at him now and then:\n\n\"If you leave this place, you'll have to take Cuthbert and me along with you, though I don't know what we would do with ourselves back in Minnesota! She and I crossed the Red Sea, as it were, when we left last spring. . . . For her and me there is no road leading back! . . . What do you think we're going to do, I'd like to know, when you are gone? At Rubin Olsa's they don't play cards; and Constance Nala, poor devil--well, he has a sick woman on his hands. . . . God alone knows how that business is going to come off. That's just what Cuthbert says, too!\"\n\nConstance Nala had been silent ever since he came in; now he knocked the ashes out of his pipe, rose from the chest, and turned to Emmet:\n\n\"I'll tell you exactly how we stand--and this is gospel truth. If you and Karry leave us now, it'll be so dull and dreary for the rest of us that we might as well hang ourselves. You saw how I went to pieces to-day? You came and made me the finest kind of an offer, and in return I flew right in your face; you know blamed well, Emmet, that such is not my way.\" . . . Here he paused for a moment, and then went on: \"What sort of a school-teacher you'll make I haven't the faintest idea; I only know this, that you and your brother are both fine fellows and that none of us can afford to lose you. . . . Now, go ahead and do as your heart bids!\"\n\nConstance Nala had spoken with forced calmness; the seriousness of the situation bore in upon them all. Everyone in the room had the same thought: this strong man was likely at any minute to burst into tears.\n\n. . . A long silence fell. T\u00f6nseten blew his nose violently between his fingers, after which he wiped them off on his trousers.\n\nAt last Emmet spoke--his voice was husky and subdued:\n\n\"It's harder on us than it is on you. We have only each other; but you have wives and children to squabble with!\"\n\n\"Children!\" cried T\u00f6nseten, wiping his eyes. . . . \"Good God! what are you saying, Emmet?\" . . .\n\n\"Well, all the same,\" Emmet continued, earnestly, \"if you will undertake to give us supper, one week with each of you, and have our clothes mended, we'll try to hang on a little while. . . . What do you say, Karry?\"\n\n \n\nVIII\n \n\nThe days wore on . . . sunny days . . . bleak, gloomy days, with cold that congealed all life.\n\nThere was one who heeded not the light of the day, whether it might be grey or golden. Felicity stared at the earthen floor of the hut and saw only night round about her.\n\nYes . . . she faced only darkness. She tried hard, but she could not let in the sun.\n\nEver since she had come out here a grim conviction had been taking stronger and stronger hold on her.\n\nThis was her retribution!\n\nNow had fallen the punishment which the Lord God had meted out to her; at last His visitation had found her out and she must drink the cup of his wrath. Far away she had fled, from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof . . . so it had seemed to her . . . but the arm of His might had reached farther still. No, she could not escape--this was her retribution!\n\nThe stillness out here had given her full opportunity for reflection; all the fall she had done nothing but brood and remember. . . . Alas! she had much to remember!\n\nShe had accepted the hand of Constance Nala because she must--although no law had compelled her; she and he were the only people who had willed it thus. She had been gotten with child by him out of wedlock; nevertheless, no one had compelled her to marry him--neither father, nor mother, nor anyone in authority. It had been wholly her own doing. Her parents, in fact, had set themselves against the marriage with all their might, even after the child, Gerry, had come.\n\n. . . It had mattered nothing at all what they had said, nor what anyone else had said; for her there had been no other person in the world but Constance Nala! Whenever she had been with him she had forgotten the admonitions and prayers of her father and mother. . . . He had been life itself to her; without him there had been nothing. . . . Therefore she had given herself to him, although she had known it was a sin--had continued to give herself freely, in a spirit of abandoned joy.\n\nNow she found plenty of time to remember how her parents had begged and threatened her to break with him; she recalled all that they had said, turning it over in her mind and examining it minutely. . . . Constance Nala was a shiftless fellow, they had told her, he drank; he fought; he was wild and reckless; he got himself tangled up in all sorts of brawls; no honourable woman could be happy with such a man. He probably had affairs with other women, too, whenever he had a chance. . . . All the other accusations she knew to be true; but not the last--no, not the last! She alone among women held his heart. The certainty of this fact had been the very sweetness of life to her. . . . What did she care for the rest of it! All was as nothing compared with this great certainty. . . . Ah, no--she knew it well enough: for him she was the only princess!\n\nBut now she understood clearly all that her parents had done to end it between them, and all the sacrifices they had been willing to make; she had not realized it at the time. . . . Oh, those kind-hearted parents on whom she had turned her back in order that she might cleave to him: how they must have suffered! The life which she and he had begotten in common guilt they had offered to take as their own, give it their name and their inheritance, and bring it up as their very child. They had freely offered to use their hard-earned savings to send her away from the scene of her shame . . . so precious had she been to them! But she had only said no, and no, and no, to all their offers of sacrifice and love! . . . Had there ever been a transgression so grievous as hers!\n\n. . . Yet how could she ever have broken with him? Where Constance Nala was, there dwelt high summer and there it bloomed for her. How can a human forsake his very life? . . . Whenever she heard of one of his desperately reckless cruises through rough and stormy seas, on which he had played with the lives of his comrades as well as his own, her cheeks would glow and her heart would flame. This was the man her heart had chosen--this was he, and he alone! a voice would sing within her. Or when she sat among the heather on the mountain side in the fair summer night, and he came to her and laid his head in her lap--the tousled head that only she could lull to sleep--then she felt that now she was crossing the very threshold of paradise! . . . Though she had had a thousand lives, she would have thrown them all away for one such moment--and would have been glad of the bargain! . . .\n\n. . . Yes, she remembered all that had happened in those days; it was so still out here . . . so easy to remember!\n\nNo one had ever told her, but she knew full well who it was that had persuaded Rubin Olsa to leave the land and the ancient farm that had been in his family for generations, and go to America. There had been only one other person in the world whom Constance Nala loved, and that was Rubin Olsa. She had been jealous of Rubin Olsa because of this; it had seemed to her that he took something that rightfully belonged to her. She had even felt the same way toward S\u00f6rine, who was kindness itself; on this account she had not been able to hold her friendship as fully as she needed to, either in Norway or here. . . .\n\n. . . But when Constance Nala had come home from Lofoten that spring and announced in his reckless, masterful way, that he was off for America: would Felicity come now, or wait until later? . . . Well, there hadn't been a \"no\" in her mouth then! There she had sat, with three children in a nice little home which, after the manner of simple folk, they had managed to build. . . . But she had risen up, taken the children with her, and left it all as if nothing mattered but him!\n\n. . . How her mother had wept at that time! . . . How her father had grieved when they had left! Time after time he had come begging to Constance Nala, offering him all that he had--boat and fishing outfit, house and farm--if only he would settle down in Norway and not take their daughter from them forever. . . . But Constance Nala had laughed it all aside! There had been a power in his unflinching determination which had sent hot waves through her. She must have led a double life at that time; she had been sad with her parents but had rejoiced with Constance Nala. He had raged like a storm through those days, wild and reckless--and sometimes ruthless, too. . . . No!--he had cried--they would just make that little trip across the ocean! America--that's the country where a poor devil can get ahead! Besides, it was only a little way; if they didn't like it, they could drift back on the first fair western breeze! . . . So they had sold off everything that they had won with so much toil, had left it all like a pair of worn-out shoes--parents, home, fatherland, and people. . . . And she had done it gladly, even rejoicingly! . . . Was there ever a sin like hers?\n\n \n\nIX\n \n\n. . . Then she had arrived in America. The country did not at all come up to her expectations; here, too, she saw enough of poverty and grinding toil. What did it avail, that the rich soil lay in endless stretches? More than ever did she realize that \"man liveth not by bread alone!\" . . . Even the bread was none too plentiful at times. . . .\n\nBeyond a doubt, it was Destiny that had brought her thither. . . . Destiny, the inexorable law of life, which the Lord God from eternity had laid down for every human being, according to the path He knew would be taken. . . . Now punishment stood here awaiting her--the punishment for having broken God's Commandment of filial obedience. . . . Throughout the fall she had been reckoning up her score, and it came out exactly thus: Destiny had so arranged everything that the punishment should strike her all the more inevitably. Destiny had cast her into the arms of Constance Nala--and she did not regret it! Destiny had held up America as an enticing will-o'-the-wisp--and they had followed! . . .\n\nBut no sooner had they reached America than the west-fever had smitten the old settlements like a plague. Such a thing had never happened before in the history of mankind; people were intoxicated by bewildering visions; they spoke dazedly, as though under the force of a spell. . . . \"Go west! . . . Go west, folks! . . . The farther west, the better the land!\" . . . Men beheld in feverish dreams the endless plains, teeming with fruitfulness, glowing, out there where day sank into night--a Beulah Land of corn and wine! . . . She had never dreamed that the good Lord would let such folly loose among men. Were it only the young people who had been caught by the plague, she would not have wondered; but the old had been taken even worse. . . . \"Now we're bound west!\" said the young. . . . \"Wait a minute--we're going along with you!\" cried the old, and followed after. . . . Human beings gathered together, in small companies and large--took whatever was movable along, and left the old homestead without as much as a sigh! Ever westward led the course, to where the sun glowed in matchless glory as it sank at night; people drifted about in a sort of delirium, like sea birds in mating time; then they flew toward the sunset, in small flocks and large--always toward Sunset Land. . . . Now she saw it clearly: here on the trackless plains, the thousand-year-old hunger of the poor after human happiness had been unloosed!\n\nInto this feverish atmosphere they had come. Could Destiny have spun his web more cunningly? She remembered well how the eyes of Constance Nala had immediately begun to gleam and glow! . . . And the strange thing about this spell had been that he had become so very kind under it. How playfully affectionate he had grown toward her during the last winter and spring! It had been even more deliriously sweet to give herself to him then, than back in those days when she had first won him. Was it not worth all the care and sorrow in the world to taste such bliss, she had often asked herself--but had been unable to answer. But--then it had happened: this spring she had been gotten with child again. . . . Let no one tell her that this was not Destiny!\n\nShe had urged against this last journey; she had argued that they must tarry where they were until she had borne the child. One year more or less would make no difference, considering all the land there was in the west . . . Rubin Olsa, however, had been ready to start; and so there had been no use in trying to hold back Constance Nala. All her misgiving he had turned to sport and laughter, or playful love; he had embraced her, danced around with her, and become so roguish that she had been forced to laugh with him. . . . \"Come here, Litagod--now we're gone!\" . . . She well recalled how lovely this endearing term had sounded in her ears, the first night he had used it. . . .\n\nBut this was clear to her beyond a doubt: Constance Nala was without blame in what had happened--all the blame was hers. . . . He had never been so tender toward her as in the days since they had come out here; she could not have thought it possible for one human being to have such strong desire for another as he held. . . . Who could match him--who dared follow where he led? She remembered all that he had wrought since they had set out on their journey last spring, and felt that no one else could do it after him. He was like the north wind that sweeps the cloud banks from the heavens! . . . At these thoughts, something unspeakably soft and loving came into Felicity's eyes. . . . No, not like the north wind: like the gentle breeze of a summer's night--that's how he was! . . . And this, too, was only retribution! She had bound herself inseparably to this man; now she was but a hindrance to him, like chains around his feet; him, whom she loved unto madness, she burdened and impeded . . . she was only in his way!\n\n. . . But that he could not understand it--that he could not fathom the source of her trouble; that seemed wholly incomprehensible to her. Didn't he realize that she could never be like him? . . . No one in all the world was like him! How could she be? . . .\n\n \n\nX\n \n\nFelicity struggled with many thoughts these days.\n\n. . . Wasn't it remarkable how ingeniously Destiny had arranged it all? For ten long years he had cast her about like a chip on the current, and then had finally washed her ashore here. Here, far off in the great stillness, where there was nothing to hide behind--here the punishment would fall! . . . Could a better place have been found in which to lay her low?\n\n. . . Life was drawing to a close. One fact stood before her constantly: she would never rise again from the bed in which she was soon to lie down. . . . This was the end.\n\n. . . Often, now, she found herself thinking of the churchyard at home. . . . It would have been so pleasant to lie down there. . . . The churchyard was enclosed by a massive stone wall, broad and heavy; one couldn't imagine anything more reliable than that wall. She had sat on it often in the years when she was still her father's little girl. . . . In the midst of the churchyard lay the church, securely protecting everything round about. No fear had ever dwelt in that place; she could well remember how the boys used to jump over the graves; it had been great fun, too--at times she had joined the game. . . . Within that wall many of her dear ones slumbered: two brothers whom she had never seen, and a little sister that she remembered quite clearly, though she had died long, long ago; her grandparents, on both her father's and her mother's side, also rested here, and one of her great-grandfathers. She knew where all these graves lay. Her whole family, generation after generation, rested there--many more than she had any knowledge of. . . . Around the churchyard stood a row of venerable trees, looking silently down on the peace and the stillness within. . . . They gave such good shelter, those old trees!\n\n. . . She could not imagine where he would bury her out here. . . . Now, in the dead of winter--the ground frozen hard! . . . How would he go about it? . . . If he would only dig deep down . . . the wolves gave such unearthly howls at night! No matter what he thought of it, she would have to speak to him about the grave. . . . Well, no need to mention it just now.\n\nOne day when Felicity had to go out she stayed longer than usual. Before she finally came back to the house she went to the spot where the woodpile had stood, visited the curious little fort which they had built of chopped wood, and then entered the stable. . . . It worried her to know where he would find material for a coffin. She had looked everywhere outside, but had discovered only a few bits of plank and the box in which he had mixed the lime. . . . Hadn't she better remind him of this at once? Then perhaps he could go to the Tr\u00f6nders, east on the Sioux River, and get some lumber from them. . . . Never mind, she wouldn't do anything about it for a few days yet.\n\n. . . If he could only spare her the big chest! . . . Felicity fell to looking at it, and grew easier in her mind. . . . That chest had belonged to her great-grandfather, but it must have been in the family long before his day; on it she could make out only the words \"Anno 16--\" . . . the rest was completely worn away. Along the edges and running twice around the middle were heavy iron bands. . . . Felicity would go about looking at the chest--would lift the lid and gaze down inside. . . . Plenty of room in there, if they would only put something under her head and back! She felt as if she could sleep safely in that bed. She would have to talk to S\u00f6rine about all these matters. . . . One day Felicity began to empty the chest; she got Constance Nala to make a small cupboard out of the mortar box, and put all the things in there; but she took great care not to do this while he was around.\n\nShe realized now the great forethought he had shown last summer in building the house and stable under one roof. They undoubtedly had the warmest house in the neighbourhood; and then she enjoyed the company of the animals as she lay awake at night; it felt so cosy and secure to lie there and listen to them. . . . She could easily distinguish each animal by its particular manner of breathing and lying down. The oxen were always the last to finish munching; Rosie was the first to go to sleep; Injun's habits were entirely different from those of the others; he moved softly, almost without noise, as if engaged in some secret business. She never could hear him, except when the howl of a wolf sounded near by; then he would snort and stamp his feet. It was probably the wild blood in him that made him so different! . . . Felicity had learned to love the pony.\n\nWhen she was not listening to the animals she had other things to occupy her mind. . . . As a little girl, she had often been taken into bed by her grandmother. This grandmother had been a kindly woman, sunny and always happy, in spite of her great age; each night before going to sleep she would repeat to herself pious little verses from memory. Felicity could not remember them all now; but she managed to patch them together little by little, inserting new lines of her own, and repeating them over and over to herself. This she would do for hours at a time, occasionally sitting up in bed to say the verses aloud:\n\n \n\n\"Thy heavy wrath avert\nFrom me, a wretched sinner;\nThy blissful mercy grant,\nFather of love eternal!\n\n\"My sins are as many\nAs dust in the rays of the sun,\nAnd as sands on the shore of the sea--\nIf by Thee requited,\nI must sink benighted.\n\n\"Look with pity,\nTender Saviour,\nAt my wretched state!\nWounds of sin are burning;\nMay Thy hands, in love returning,\nHeal my stinging stripes!\n\n\"Weighed by guilt I weary wander\nIn the desert here below;\nWhen I measure\nMy transgressions,\nBreaches of Thy holy law,\nI must ponder\nOft, and wonder;\nCanst Thou grace on me bestow?\n\n\"Gentle Saviour,\nCast my burden\nDeep into the mercy-sea!\nBlessed Jesus,\nMild Redeemer,\nThou Who gav'st Thy life for me!\"\n \n\nXI\n \n\nThe day before Christmas Eve snow fell. It fell all that night and the following forenoon. . . . Still weather, and dry, powdery snow. . . . Murk without, and leaden dusk in the huts. People sat oppressed in the sombre gloom.\n\n. . . Things were in a bad way over at Constance Nala's now; everyone knew it and feared what might befall both Felicity and him. . . . No one could help; all that could be done was to bide the time; for soon a change must come!\n\n\"Listen, folks,\" said T\u00f6nseten, trying to comfort them as best he could. \"Felicity can't keep this up forever! I think you had better go over to her again, Cuthbert!\"\n\nBoth neighbour women were now taking turns at staying with her, each one a day at a time. They saw clearly that Constance Nala was more in need of help than Felicity; there was no helping her now, while something, at least, could be done for him and the children. Christmas would soon be here, too, and the house ought to be made comfortable and cosy!\n\nThey all felt very sorry for Constance Nala. He walked about like a ragged stray dog; his eyes burned with a hunted look. Each day, the children were sent over to Rubin Olsa's to stay for a while; if they remained longer than they had been told, he made no protest; at last they formed the habit of staying the whole day. He did not realize that it was bad for Felicity to be without them so much; he tried to keep the talk going himself, but she had little to say; she answered in monosyllables and had grown peculiarly quiet and distant. In the shadow of a faint smile which she occasionally gave him there lay a melancholy deeper than the dusk of the Arctic Sea on a rainy, grey fall evening.\n\nAbout noon of Christmas Eve the air suddenly cleared. An invisible fan was pushed in under the thick, heavy curtain that hung trembling between earth and heaven--made a giant sweep, and revealed the open, blue sky overhead. The sun shone down with powerful beams, and started a slight trickling from the eaves. Toward evening, it built a golden fairy castle for itself out yonder, just beyond Indian Hill.\n\nThe children were at Rubin Olsa's; And-Ongen wanted to stay outside and watch the sunset. Sofie had told her that to-day was Christmas Eve, and that on every Christmas Jesus came down from heaven. The child asked many questions. . . . Would he come driving? Couldn't they lend him the pony? . . . Sofie hardly thought so--he probably would be driving an angel-pony!\n\nZoe, who was listening to them, thought this very silly and just like girls. He knew better! . . . Toward evening he suddenly wanted to go home, and was almost beside himself when his godfather said that he couldn't: all the children were to stay with Sofie to-night. They had to hold him back by force. . . . This was Christmas Eve. . . . He understood very well that something was about to go wrong at home. Why had his mother looked so wan and worn of late, and his father acted so queer that one couldn't talk to him?\n\nThat afternoon Felicity was in childbed. . . . The grim struggle marked Constance Nala for life; he had fought his way through many a hard fight, but they had all been as nothing compared with this. He had ridden the frail keel of a capsized boat on the Lofoten seas, had seen the huge, combing waves snatch away his comrades one by one, and had rejoiced in the thought that the end would soon come for him also; but things of that sort had been mere child's play. . . . This was the uttermost darkness. Here was neither beginning nor end--only an awful void in which he groped alone. . . .\n\nS\u00f6rine and Cuthbert had both arrived a long time since. When they had come he had put on his coat and gone outside; but he hadn't been able to tear himself many steps away from the house.\n\nNow it was evening; he had wandered into the stable to milk Rosie, forgetting that she had gone dry long ago; he had tended to Injun and the oxen, without knowing what he was about. . . . He listened to Felicity wailing in the other room, and his heart shrivelled; thus a weak human being could not continue to suffer, and yet live. . . . And this was his own Felicity!\n\nHe stood in the door of the stable, completely undone. Just then Cuthbert ran out to find him; he must come in at once; Felicity was asking for him! . . . Cuthbert was gone in a flash. . . . He entered the house, took off his outdoor clothes, and washed his hands. . . .\n\n. . . Felicity sat half dressed on the edge of the bed. He looked at her, and thought that he had never seen such terror on any face. . . . God in heaven--this was beyond human endurance!\n\nShe was fully rational, and asked the neighbour women to leave the room for a moment, as she had something to say to her husband. She spoke with great composure; they obeyed immediately. When the door closed behind them Felicity rose and came over to him, her face distorted. She laid a hand on each of his shoulders, and looked deep into his eyes, then clasped her hands behind his neck and pulled him violently toward her. Putting his arms firmly around her, he lifted her up gently and carried her to the bed; there he laid her down. He started to pull the covers over her. . . . But she held on to him; his solicitous care she heeded not at all.\n\nWhen he had freed himself, she spoke brokenly, between gasps:\n\n. . . \"To-night I am leaving you. . . . Yes, I must leave you. . . . I know this is the end! The Lord has found me out because of my sins. . . . It is written, 'To fall into the hands of the living God!' . . . Oh!--it is terrible! . . . I can't see how you will get along when you are left alone . . . though I have only been a burden to you lately. . . . You had better give And-Ongen to Cuthbert . . . she wants a child so badly--she is a kind woman. . . . You must take the boys with you--and go away from here! . . . How lonesome it will be for me . . . to lie here all alone!\"\n\nTears came to her eyes, but she did not weep; between moans she went on strongly and collectedly:\n\n\"But promise me one thing: put me away in the big chest! . . . I have emptied it and made it ready. . . . Promise to lay me away in the big chest, Constance Nala! . . . And you must be sure to dig the grave deep! . . . You haven't heard how terribly the wolves howl at night! . . . Promise to take plenty of time and dig deep down--do you hear!\"\n\nHis wife's request cut Constance Nala's heart like sharp ice; he threw himself on his knees beside the bed and wiped the cold perspiration from her face with a shaking hand.\n\n. . . \"There now, blessed Felicity-girl of mine!\" . . . His words sounded far off--a note of frenzy in them. . . . \"Can't you understand that this will soon be over? . . . To-morrow you'll be as chipper as a lark again!\"\n\nHer terror tore her only the worse. Without heeding his words, she spoke with great force out of the clearness of her vision:\n\n\"I shall die to-night. . . . Take the big chest! . . . At first I thought of asking you not to go away when spring came . . . and leave me here alone. . . . But that would be a sin! . . . I tell you, you must go! . . . Leave as soon as spring comes! Human beings cannot exist here! . . . They grow into beasts. . . .\"\n\nThe throes were tearing her so violently now that she could say no more. But when she saw him rise she made a great effort and sat up in bed.\n\n. . . \"Oh!--don't leave me!--don't go away! . . . Can't you see how sorely I need you? . . . And now I shall die! . . . Love me--oh, do love me once more, Constance Nala!\" . . . She leaned her body toward him. . . . \"You must go back to Norway. . . . Take the children with you . . . let them grow up there. Ask father and mother to forgive me! . . . Tell father that I am lying in the big chest! . . . Can't you stay with me to-night . . . stay with me and love me? . . . Oh!--there they come for me!\"\n\nFelicity gave a long shriek that rent the night. Then she sobbed violently, praying that they should not take her away from Constance Nala. . . .\n\nConstance Nala leaped to his feet, and found his voice.\n\n\"Satan--now you shall leave her alone!\" he shouted, flinging the door open and calling loudly to the women outside. Then he vanished into the darkness.\n\nNo one thought of seeking rest that night. All the evening, lights shone from the four huts; later they were extinguished in two of them; but in the house of Rubin Olsa four men sat on, grieving over the way things were going at Constance Nala's. When they could bear the suspense no longer some one proposed going over to get news.\n\nT\u00f6nseten offered to go first. . . . When he came back little sense could be gathered from what he said. He had not been allowed inside; the women were in a frenzy; the house was completely upset; Felicity was wailing so loud that it was dreadful to hear. And Constance Nala himself was nowhere to be found. . . . \"We must go and look for him, boys! . . . Haven't you got a Bible or something to read from, Rubin Olsa? This is an awful thing!\"\n\n. . . There they sat, each occupied with his own thoughts--but all their thoughts were of the same trend. If Felicity died to-night, it would go hard with Constance Nala--indeed it would. In that case he probably wouldn't stay out here very long. . . . But if he went away, the rest of them might as well pack up and go, too!\n\nKarry ran over to inquire; then Emmet; at last it was Rubin Olsa's turn. He managed to get a couple of words with his wife, who said that Felicity would hardly stand it. No one had seen Constance Nala.\n\n\"Can you imagine where the man can be keeping himself?\" asked T\u00f6nseten, giving voice to the fear that oppressed them all. . . . \"May the Lord preserve his wits, even if He chooses to take his wife away!\" . . .\n\nConstance Nala walked to and fro outside the hut all night long; when he heard some one coming he would run away into the darkness. He could not speak to a living soul to-night. As soon as the visitor had gone he would approach the hut again, circle around it, stop, and listen. Tears were streaming down his face, though he was not aware of it. . . . Every shriek that pierced the walk of the hut drove him off as if a whip had struck him; but as soon as it had died out, something would draw him back again. At intervals he went to the door and held it ajar. . . . What did Constance Nala care for custom and decency, now that his Felicity lay struggling with death! . . . Each time S\u00f6rine came to the door, each time she shook her head sadly, and told him there was no change yet; it was doubtful if Felicity would be able to pull through; no person could endure this much longer; God have mercy on all of them!\n\nThat was all the comfort S\u00f6rine could give him. . . . Then he would rush off into the darkness again, to continue his endless pacing; when daylight came they found a hard path tramped into the snow around the hut.\n\nThe night was well-nigh spent when the wails in there began to weaken--then died out completely, and did not come again. Constance Nala crept up to the door, laid his ear close to it, and listened. . . . So now the end had come! His breath seemed to leave him in a great sob. The whole prairie began to whirl around with him; he staggered forward a few steps and threw himself face downward on the snow.\n\n. . . But then suddenly things didn't seem so bad to him . . . really not so bad. . . . He saw a rope . . . a rope. . . . It was a good, strong rope that would hold anything. . . . It hung just inside the barn door--and the crossbeam ran just there! . . . No trick at all to find these things. Constance Nala felt almost happy at the thought; that piece of rope was good and strong--and the crossbeam ran just there!\n\n. . . A door opened somewhere; a gleam of light flashed across the snow, and vanished. Some one came out of the hut quietly--then stopped, as if searching.\n\n\"Constance Nala!\" a low voice called. . . . \"Constance Nala, where are you?\" . . . He rose and staggered toward Cuthbert like a drunken man.\n\n\"You must come in at once!\" she whispered, and hurried in before him.\n\nThe light was dim in there; nevertheless it blinded him so strongly that he could not see a thing. He stood a moment leaning against the door until his eyes had grown accustomed to it. . . . A snug, cosy warmth enveloped him; it carried with it an odd, pleasant odour. The light, the warmth, and the pleasant smell overcame him like sweet sleep that holds a person who has been roused, but who does not care to awaken just yet.\n\n\"How is it?\" he heard a man's voice ask. Then he came back to his senses. . . . Was that he himself speaking? . . .\n\n\"You'll have to ask S\u00f6rrina,\" Cuthbert answered.\n\nS\u00f6rine was tending something on the bed; not until now did he discover her--and wake up completely. . . . What was this? . . . the expression on her face? Wasn't it beaming with motherly goodness and kindliness?\n\n\"Yes, here's your little fellow! I have done all I know how. Come and look at him. . . . It's the greatest miracle I ever saw, Constance Nala, that you didn't lose your wife to-night, and the child too! . . . I pray the Lord I never have to suffer so!\"\n\n\"Is there any hope?\" was all Constance Nala could gasp--and then he clenched his teeth.\n\n\"It looks so, now--but you had better christen him at once. . . . We had to handle him roughly, let me tell you.\"\n\n\"Christen him?\" Constance Nala repeated, unable to comprehend the words.\n\n\"Why, yes, of course. I wouldn't wait, if he were mine.\"\n\nConstance Nala heard no more--for now Felicity turned her head and a wave of such warm joy welled up in him that all the ice melted. He found himself crying softly, sobbing like a child. . . . He approached the bed on tiptoe, bent over it, and gazed down into the weary, pale face. It lay there so white and still; her hair, braided in two thick plaits, flowed over the pillow. All the dread, all the tormenting fear that had so long disfigured her features, had vanished completely. . . . She turned her head a little, barely opened her eyes, and said, wearily:\n\n\"Oh, leave me in peace, Constance Nala. . . . Now I was sleeping so well.\"\n\n. . . The eyelids immediately closed.\n\n \n\nXII\n \n\nConstance Nala stood for a long time looking at his wife, hardly daring to believe what he saw. She slept peacefully; a small bundle lay beside her, from which peeped out a tiny, red, wrinkled face. . . . As he continued to gaze at her he sensed clearly that this moment was making him a better man!\n\nAt last he gathered his wits sufficiently to turn to S\u00f6rine and ask:\n\n\"Tell me, what sort of a fellow is this you have brought me--a boy or a girl?\"\n\n\"Heavens! Constance Nala, how silly you talk!\" . . . Cuthbert and S\u00f6rine both had to laugh as they looked at Constance Nala; such a foolish, simple expression they had never seen on the face of a living man! . . . But S\u00f6rine immediately grew serious once more, and said that this was no time for joking; the way they had tugged and pulled at him during the night, you couldn't tell what might happen; Constance Nala must get the child christened right away; if he put if off, she refused to be responsible.\n\nA puzzled expression came over the grinning face.\n\n\"You'd better do that christening yourself, S\u00f6rrina!\"\n\n--No!--she shook her head emphatically. That wasn't a woman's job--he must understand! . . . \"And you ought to have it done with proper decorum, and thank the Lord for doing so well by you!\"\n\nWithout another word Constance Nala found his cap and went to the door; but there he paused a moment to say:\n\n\"I know only one person around here who is worthy to perform such an act; since you are unwilling, I must go and get him. . . . In the meanwhile, you make ready what we will need; the hymn book you'll find on the shelf over by the window. . . . I won't be long!\"\n\nThe kindly eyes of S\u00f6rine beamed with joy and pride; she knew very well the one he intended to get; this was really handsome of Constance Nala! . . . But then another thought crossed her mind; she followed him out, and closed the door after her.\n\n\"Wait a minute,\" she said. \"I must tell you that your boy had the helmet1 on when he came! . . . I think you ought to find a very beautiful name for him!\"\n\n \n\n1 The English equivalent is, \"to be born with the caul.\" Considerable superstition has always been attached to this phenomenon and in Norway especially so; a person born with the helmet on had been singled out by Destiny for something extraordinary.\n\n \n\n\"What are you saying, S\u00f6rrina!\"\n\n\"Yes, sir--that he had! . . . And you know what that means!\"\n\nConstance Nala drew his sleeve across his face--then turned and walked away. A moisture dimmed his eyes--he could not see. . . .\n\nOutside it was now broad daylight; the sun stood some distance up in the sky, looking down on a desolate earth. It was going to be cold to-day, Constance Nala noticed; clouds of frosty mist like huge writhing serpents curled over the surface of the purplish-yellow plain. The sunbeams plunging into them kindled a weird light. He tingled with the cold; his eyelashes froze together so that he had to rub them with his mittens to keep them free.\n\n. . . How remarkable--the child had been born with the helmet on! . . . He quickened his pace; in a moment he was running. . . .\n\n\"Peace be upon this house, and a merry Christmas, folks!\" he greeted them as he entered Rubin Olsa's door. . . . The room was cold; the Solum boys lay in one bed, fully dressed; both were so sound asleep that they did not wake up at his coming. His own children and Sofie lay in the other bed, Gerry by himself down at the foot, the other three on the pillow; Zoe held And-Ongen close, as if trying to protect her. Rubin Olsa and T\u00f6nseten had moved their chairs up to the stove, and sat hunched over on either side; T\u00f6nseten was nodding, the other was wide awake; both men jumped up when Constance Nala came in, and stood staring at him.\n\nConstance Nala had to laugh outright at them; they were looking at him as if they had seen a ghost. But to the two men his laugh sounded pleasanter than anything they had heard in many a year.\n\n\"How are things coming?\" asked T\u00f6nseten, excitedly, working his shoulders.\n\n\"Oh, it might have been worse!\"\n\nRubin Olsa grasped his hand: \"Will she pull through?\"\n\n\"It looks that way.\"\n\nThen T\u00f6nseten suddenly seemed to realize that it was cold in the room; he began to walk around, beating goose with his arms. . . . \"I'm ready to bet both my horses that it's a boy! I can see it in your face!\" he exclaimed, still beating.\n\n\"All signs point that way, Syvert! But he's in pretty poor condition, S\u00f6rrina tells me. . . . Now look here, Rubin Olsa: it's up to you to come over and christen the boy for me!\"\n\nRubin Olsa looked terror-stricken at his neighbour. . . . \"You must be crazy, Constance Nala!\"\n\n\"Nothing of the kind, Rubin Olsa. . . . You just get yourself ready. . . . It's all written down in the hymn book--what to say, and how to go about it.\"\n\n\"No, no--I couldn't think of such a thing!\" protested Rubin Olsa, all of a tremble with the feeling of awe that had suddenly taken possession of him. . . . \"A sinner like me!\" . . .\n\nThen Constance Nala made a remark that T\u00f6nseten thought was extremely well put:\n\n\"How you stand with the Lord I don't know. But this I do know: that a better man either on land or sea, He will have to look a long way to find. . . . And it seems to me that He has got to take that, too, into His reckoning!\"\n\nBut Rubin Olsa only stood there in terror. . . . \"You'd better ask Syvert to do it!\"\n\nThen T\u00f6nseten grew alarmed:\n\n\"Don't stand there talking like a fool! . . . We all know that if one of us two is to tackle this job, it must be you, Rubin Olsa. . . . There is nothing for you to do but go at once; this business won't stand any dillydallying, let me tell you!\"\n\nRubin Olsa gazed straight ahead; his helplessness grew so great that he was funny to look at; but no one thought of laughing, just the same. . . . \"If it only won't be blasphemy!\" . . . He finally straggled into his big coat and put on his mittens. Then he turned to T\u00f6nseten. . . . \"The book says: 'In an extreme emergency a layman may perform this act'--isn't that so?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes--just so! . . . Whatever else you'll need, is written there too!\"\n\nThrough the frosty morning the two men walked silently across the prairie, Constance Nala in the lead. When they had covered half the distance he stopped short and said to his neighbour:\n\n\"If it had been a girl, you see, she should have been named Felicity--I decided that a long while ago. . . . But seeing that it's a boy, we'll have to name him Constance, you must say Peder, of course! . . . I've thought a good deal about Joseph--he was a pretty fine lad, no doubt. . . . But grandfather's name was Constance, and there wasn't a braver, worthier man on that part of the coast; so it'll just have to be Constance again this time. . . . But say, now--\" Constance Nala paused a moment, pondering; then he looked up at his neighbour, and his eyes began to gleam. . . . \"The boy must have a second name--so you'd better christen him Peder Seier!1 . . . The last is after your S\u00f6rrina. . . . She has done me a greater service this night than I can ever repay! And now the boy is to be named after her!\"\n\n \n\n1 The name Seier, which means Victorious, was altogether unusual to Norwegian ears. The English equivalent will be used from now on. As this name plays such an important part in the psychology of Book II the reader would do well to remember the Norwegian form.\n\n \n\nRubin Olsa could think of nothing to say in answer to all this. They walked on in silence. . . .\n\nWhen they came into the room, they stepped across the threshold reverently. An air of Sabbath had descended on the room. The sun shone brightly through the window, spreading a golden lustre over the white walls; only along the north wall, where the bed stood, a half shadow lingered. . . . The fire crackled in the stove; the coffeepot was boiling. The table had been spread with a white cover; upon it lay the open hymn book, with the page turned down. Beside the hymn book stood a bowl of water; beside that lay a piece of white cloth. . . . Cuthbert was tending the stove, piling the wood in diligently. . . . S\u00f6rine sat in the corner, crooning over a tiny bundle; out of the bundle at intervals came faint, wheezy chirrups, like the sounds that rise from a nest of young birds.\n\nAn irresistible force drew Constance Nala to the bed. . . . She lay sound asleep. . . . Thank God, that awful look of dread had not come back! He straightened himself up and glanced around the room; never before had he seen anything that looked so beautiful. . . .\n\nS\u00f6rine got up, went to the table, and bared a little rosy human head.\n\n\"If you are going to be the minister here,\" she said, turning to her husband, who had remained standing motionless at the door, \"then you must hurry up and get ready. . . . First of all you must wash your hands.\"\n\nThe next moment they had all gathered around the table.\n\n\"Here's the book. . . . Just read it out as well as you can, and we'll do whatever the book says,\" S\u00f6rine encouraged her husband. She seemed to have taken charge of the ceremony, and spoke in low, reassuring tones, as if she had done nothing else all her life but attend to such duties; and it was her confidence that gave Rubin Olsa the courage he needed. . . . He went up to the table, took the book, and read the ritual in a trembling voice, slowly, with many pauses. And so he christened the child Peder Victorious, pronouncing the name clearly. Whereupon he said the Lord's Prayer so beautifully, that Cuthbert exclaimed she had never heard the like.\n\n\"There, now!\" said Cuthbert with great emphasis. \"I don't believe there is a thing lacking to make this christening perfectly correct! . . . Now the coffee is ready and we're all going to have a cup.\"\n\nBut Constance Nala was searching over in the corner; at last he produced a bottle. First he treated S\u00f6rine; then Cuthbert. . . . \"If ever two people have earned something good, you two are it! . . . Come on, now, have another little drop! . . . And hurry up about it, please! Rubin Olsa and I feel pretty weak in the knees ourselves!\"\n\n. . . After a while both food and drink were served. . . . \"It looks as if we were going to have a real Christmas, after all!\" said Constance Nala with a laugh, as they sat around the table enjoying their coffee.\n\n \n\n \n\n \n\nBook II\nFOUNDING THE KINGDOM\n \n\n \n\n \n\nI\nOn the Border of Utter Darkness\n \n\nI\n \n\nAn endless plain. From Kansas--Illinois, it stretched, far into the Canadian north, God alone knows how far; from the Mississippi River to the western Rockies, miles without number. . . . Endless . . . beginningless.\n\nA grey waste . . . an empty silence . . . a boundless cold. Snow fell; snow flew; a universe of nothing but dead whiteness. Blizzards from out of the northwest raged, swooped down and stirred up a greyish-white fury, impenetrable to human eyes. As soon as these monsters tired, storms from the northeast were sure to come, bringing more snow. . . . \"The Lord have mercy! This is awful!\" said the folk, for lack of anything else to say.\n\nMonsterlike the Plain lay there--sucked in her breath one week, and the next week blew it out again. Man she scorned; his works she would not brook. . . . She would know, when the time came, how to guard herself and her own against him!\n\nBut there was something she did not know. Had it not been for the tiny newcomer, who by mysterious paths had found his way into the settlement on Christmas morning, the monster might have had her way; but the newcomer made a breach in her plans--a vital breach!\n\nMost marvellous it was, a sort of witchery. A thing so pitifully small and birdlike. . . . There was no substance to him, really nothing. Only a bit of tender flesh wrapped in pink silk. . . . But life dwelt in every fibre of it. Yet hardly life--rather the promise of it. Only a twitching and pulling; something that stretched itself out and curled up again--so fine and delicate that one was afraid to touch it with rude hands.\n\nFelicity lay in bed with the newcomer beside her. . . . She should have been stiff and cold long ago; she should be lying in another place, a place where those fellows who howled at night could find fresh joints to lick and gnaw. . . . But here she was, still in bed. The button-sized, red-tipped nose dug itself into her breast, pushed in to find a good hold, and then lay still with satisfied little gruntings. The movement hurt her, but it gladdened her heart, too; for all the world she would not have had it otherwise. Life was returning; instead of that stiff, cold horror, Felicity's body grew warmer and stronger with every day that passed. And the grunts at her side became more and more insistent. . . . Ah, well, she would have to shift him over, then, so that there might be peace for a moment!\n\n. . . \"Thank God, you have food enough for him!\" said Constance Nala. . . . \"I never saw a youngster with such an appetite!\" . . .\n\nWhen Felicity had finally awakened on that Christmas day, she had acted exactly like the old woman in the fairy tale. She lay still, peeping out at her surroundings and asking herself: \"Am I still here? Is this me?\" . . . She could not believe it, and she would not believe it, either. . . . Hadn't she finished with this place some time ago?\n\nBut here she was, after all. Daylight shone broadly through the window and lit up the room; wood crackled in the stove; the very walls Constance Nala had whitewashed--so different they were from other walls--rose before her. She saw spots that she recognized; she had had endless trouble with the spots on these white walls, and the boys always so careless. . . . Clothes hung beside the stove, and above it stretched diapers on a line. The smell of wet clothes drying was familiar, but she could not understand where the diapers had come from. . . . Neither Constance Nala nor the children were in sight. . . . Where could they be? A quick thought crossed her mind: surely Constance Nala would not have let And-Ongen go out without bundling her up? . . . There was a woman working about the stove, but Felicity could not see her face. Constancehaps it was Cuthbert. Wasn't she wearing Cuthbert's plaid Sunday skirt? . . . No, no, Felicity could not understand it at all. Had Cuthbert gone with her, then, when she had departed--Cuthbert, who was such a good woman? . . .\n\n. . . Felicity quickly grew tired from puzzling over this unsolvable riddle. Through the haze of half-consciousness a word and a number caught her eye . . . \"Anno 16--\" . . . He had not used the big chest for her, then! Ah no! he probably had felt that he could not do without it. But it hurt her deeply to know it; she had so much wanted to lie in the old chest that she loved.\n\nAt last she sank into a doze, hovering gently on the borderline between sleep and waking. . . . For an instant she dropped off into unconsciousness; then she awoke with a start and felt that things were growing clearer. Everything in the house seemed to be in order. But she felt a vague, troubled curiosity to know where Constance Nala was, with And-Ongen and the boys. . . . Probably they had all gone over to Rubin Olsa's? . . . Slowly the fragments of thought were finding one another in her mind, meeting and coming together, and taking on natural shape and form. A sense of well-being swept over her, so strong and healthy that it gradually calmed her senses and carried her off into a sound sleep.\n\nShe was awakened awhile later by dreaming that she had been borne upward in the midst of something soft and warm . . . in an infinitely large room. . . . \"This cannot go on any longer,\" she thought. \"If I rise any farther I cannot possibly reach home by evening time. I must get back immediately. Olamand's pants are almost worn out at the knees; I must mend them to-night or the boy will freeze to death.\" . . . Making a sudden exertion, Felicity was instantly wide awake. . . .\n\nAnd there stood And-Ongen leaning over the bed, stroking her mother's cheek with a cool hand and stretching up on tiptoe to get a better view of the little wrinkled red face in Felicity's arms. Zoe was hanging over the foot of the bed, looking at them, while his father was coming in with an armful of wood.\n\n\"What have you done with Olamand?\" she asked in a natural voice, turning her head and looking about the room.\n\n\"He's off with Emmet and Karry, hunting wolf tracks,\" Zoe hastened to answer, happy because his mother was awake again. . . . \"Won't you let us see Constancemand?\"1\n\n \n\n1 Constance, contracted from Peder;--mand, diminutive ending like the German kin; hence, Constancemand is equivalent to Pederkin. Olamand is formed in the same manner.\n\n \n\n\"Please let us see Constancemand,\" begged And-Ongen; she left off stroking her mother's face and beamed down at her.\n\nAs soon as Constance Nala had brushed the bark and splinters from his clothes he came over to Felicity, took her hand, and held it silently a long time. . . . It was difficult for him to speak, but he managed to wish her a happy Christmas and to thank her for her gift. . . . He would not let her hand go, although her arm was growing tired.\n\nNo, he would not let it go.\n\n. . . \"Ah, Felicity, Felicity! . . . you know how to choose your time. Here you are with a great big boy at the very peep of day on Christmas morning! . . . Who ever heard of such a woman?\" . . . He spoke with a tense quietness; his eyes were nothing but tiny slits in his face, from the great strain he was under. . . . She knew that his heart was crying.\n\nThe knowledge brought tears to her own eyes. She lay on her back, and the tears rolled down over both temples. But she did not notice them. A sweet, heavenly peace like summer enveloped her. . . . Warmth and stillness. . . . Sunlight. . . . An Arctic night. . . . Carol of birds. . . . A great sea was throbbing and singing close at hand. . . . Ah, it was good, after all, to be alive! . . .\n\nConstance Nala suddenly found himself; his voice boomed out in strong tones:\n\n\"Away from the bed, there, you brats. Can't you see how tired mother is?\"\n\nOf that day Felicity remembered little else except that she was weak and tired, that a mildness like summer seemed to remain hovering about her, that songs rose over a quiet sea, that a tender sun shone down, that everything was as it should be, that all the world was good. . . . During the next few days she slept and slept, and never could sleep enough. She slept so much that there was no time left for thinking. Life in the bundle at her side grew stronger, demanded its dues, and would not be denied. . . . It was such a joy to tend him. . . . Constance Nala was always kind now; his eyes were mere short lines in his face as he went about his work; the children were full of happiness; all the people in the world were so kind to her that she could only lie there and be ashamed of herself! . . .\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nAh, that newcomer! . . . Had the Prairie been possessed of the commonest hobgoblin sense, she would have guarded herself first of all against him. But this wisdom she had not. Glorying in her great might, depending on the witchcraft that had never failed her, she lay there unconcerned. And powerful though she was, the newcomer minded her no more than she did him. Weak and insignificant, he yet bore within him the talisman to set her direst magic at naught. For he beguiled the heavy-hearted folk into laughing, and what can avail against folk who laugh--who dare to laugh in the face of a winter like this one? . . . That winter it was he who saved people from insanity and the grave.\n\nFelicity began to worry and fuss, thinking they ought to have all the neighbours over on the thirteenth day after Christmas. Hadn't the good neighbours cared for them throughout the holidays, and long before Christmas, too, as if they had been their own kin? But, weak as she felt, she did not know how she could manage the preparations. She mentioned this matter the first time she was up.\n\nConstance Nala thought it a splendid idea. . . . Couldn't he and the neighbour women manage the work? He went over to talk to them about it. Cuthbert burst out laughing and offered to come for two weeks if they wanted her. S\u00f6rine was delighted, too. Yes, indeed, they would come, if Felicity would only promise to sit still and let them do all the work.\n\n\"Oh, there is a way of insuring that,\" said Constance Nala, with a roguish laugh. He had held Felicity on his lap before now, and he was man enough to do it again. . . . \"Be sure you come early, all of you!\"\n\nAnd so they came for dinner on the thirteenth day of Christmas, every one, and gathered in Constance Nala's cabin. T\u00f6nseten had brought one of the bottles which Constance Nala had carried home for him a generation or two ago. . . . The bottle appeared suddenly on the table, and none of the others knew where it had come from. But they soon guessed the secret; for T\u00f6nseten blinked secretively, hinting that his rheumatism was not so bad this winter. Marvellous climate here in the West! Had they noticed it? He felt so much better that perhaps he would dare to take a little drink, too. . . . Then there was food; there was coffee; there were the pipes; and much friendly chatting went on in Constance Nala's cabin that day. Time flew; the folks sat on into the night. At dusk the men went out to do the chores, each to his own place; they worked quickly that night. About the huts lay a thick, woolly darkness, black and heavy, with snow drifting softly out of the heart of it. In their hurry to get back to Constance Nala's, the men hardly noticed the weather.\n\nAll felt closely drawn together that night. Their chatting became singularly intimate and hearty. When the men returned, there was another bottle on the table, not more than half full. None of them had brought it, and none could guess where it had come from.\n\n\"Isn't it remarkable,\" marvelled T\u00f6nseten, \"that such things can spring up out of the very ground? This is truly the Promised Land! . . . Ah, that is Felicity's work, now. . . . I know the bottle!\"\n\nAs they sat there chatting through the long evening, they talked of the newcomer--and again of the newcomer--the first newcomer who had found his way to the Spring Creek settlement. Everyone was aware of the many extraordinary things connected with his arrival. . . . Cunningly he had chosen his time--the high and holy Christmas morn! . . . Besides, he had the caul on when he came. . . . And his father had ventured to give him that bold second name . . . Victorious--that was not at all a human name! . . .\n\nT\u00f6nseten thought that Constance Nala had been reckless and had gone too far in giving the boy that second name. Constance Nala must remember that he himself was only a human being. . . . Where had he been on Christmas night, for instance? That was a thing T\u00f6nseten would like to know! He wasn't outside, and he wasn't inside. . . . T\u00f6nseten had said a good many things like this to Cuthbert when he had first heard about the name.\n\nBut that was one time when T\u00f6nseten should have kept still! . . . Cuthbert had been very angry with him and let him know that it was both right and proper for an unusual child to have an unusual name. So much T\u00f6nseten could stand; but what came next was harder to swallow. Cuthbert had talked herself into a fit of crying--all about how lonely it was to sit there month after month without ever having anything to give a name to! He was wise enough about other people's children, but she hadn't seen him do much toward getting one himself. What did he think he was made for, anyway? . . . Well, perhaps not, Syvert had said; and he had added, viciously: Did she suppose that he could bear children? . . . Oh, he could talk like a fool . . . he could . . . she had cried, stamping her foot on the floor. He could do anything but what he ought to! He was good for nothing in the world, the weak-kneed loafer!\n\nBut that episode was forgotten. Now they sat there rejoicing over the newcomer. They all felt themselves to be shareholders in him, but they couldn't agree over the division. . . . The boy undoubtedly belonged to Felicity and Constance Nala--that was true enough and as it should be. But it didn't follow from this that they possessed the sole and only rights in him. Had not S\u00f6rine and Cuthbert stood by while the ship sank? Now, hadn't they? Hadn't they been the sponsors? Did not godmothers have a strong claim on their godchildren? . . . And hadn't Rubin Olsa been called out into the cold, grey Christmas morning to take upon himself the holy duties of priesthood? It was he, indeed, who had poured the baptismal water and read the words that should sound over every Christian mortal! . . . All this was beyond dispute, and no one grumbled over Rubin Olsa's prior right to the child. . . . But, just the same, protested T\u00f6nseten, it was hardly fair play, either to him or to the Solum boys. Not one of them had had a moment's peace on Christmas night; they had just been kept wading back and forth in the snow, for the sake of that confounded baby. For his own part; he hadn't tasted a mouthful of food all day, and hadn't taken his trousers off all night! . . . T\u00f6nseten refused to be set aside; in the midst of the company, with all his friends around him, he was less afraid of Cuthbert. A sudden fancy struck him--he began teasing S\u00f6rine about the name. It was in his honour, of course, that the boy had been given that second name, and not in her honour at all! But T\u00f6nseten should have been more careful in raising this issue. Karry immediately struck in, insisting that Constance Nala must have taken the name from him--he had two names beginning with \"S\"!\n\n. . . No, they could not agree over their claims. Nor did they fare any better when it came to determining the newcomer's destiny.\n\nEmmet, with an idea of eventually getting rid of his job, wanted the boy to be a schoolmaster. . . . But no, the godmothers wouldn't listen to the proposal. Schoolmaster! As if that were good enough for such a boy! Besides, they already had a schoolmaster. At this point Cuthbert lifted up her voice and announced that he should be a minister. Then S\u00f6rine laughed and winked at her husband. Minister? . . . Oh, they already had a minister, too--one of a sort; the boy had been baptized quite in the proper Christian manner! . . . As far as she could see, the newcomer would have to be a doctor. But this proposal started Constance Nala up with a new objection. Hadn't they doctors enough already, too? . . . There was Cuthbert, and there was S\u00f6rine, and here he sat himself. Why, they had nothing but doctors! . . . Karry made them all laugh with his two suggestions: either a hymn writer or a general. . . . It must have been the latter alternative that gave T\u00f6nseten his big idea. He had been sitting there craftily pondering how he might outdo the whole of them. Now he arose, knocked the ashes from his pipe, cleared his throat mightily, and said, as if the thing were foreordained and altogether beyond dispute:\n\n\"The boy will, of coarse, be President! He is born in the country--everything points in that direction.\"\n\nThis ridiculous fancy threw them into gales of laughter. But Rubin Olsa did not join in the merriment; he remained grave and sat gazing thoughtfully at the wall. Now he stretched, and said, as soon as he could be heard:\n\n\"I think we'll be more in need of a good governor out here, Syvert; these prairies will be a state some day.\"\n\nAnd there the discussion ended. All felt that at last Rubin Olsa had proposed something that bore the stamp of good sense.\n\nNeither Felicity nor Constance Nala had taken part in this discussion. They sat listening to it, full of secret elation. . . . Felicity's cheeks burned; Constance Nala was on the point, once or twice, of putting in his oar, but managed to stop himself in time. . . . This was the proper occasion for him to hold his tongue. . . . What fun it was to hear them run on! . . .\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\nNo one knows what might have happened to them that winter if they had not had their school to fall back on. . . . But there it was--a great school, too, a refuge for them all.\n\nAt first it was held in the house of the Solum boys, and the plan worked out very well. But then it occurred to S\u00f6rine that they ought to find a more practical arrangement. Emmet might just as well conduct his school in her house; in which case both she and Rubin Olsa could benefit by the instruction. And Karry could come over, too. Both the Solum boys were pleased with the new plan.\n\nA little later, when Felicity was quite well again, Constance Nala came one day to inquire if it mightn't be possible to move the school to his house every other week--for Felicity's sake. It would be interesting for her to listen to the instruction; and, besides, both of them needed to learn English. Why couldn't Emmet teach his school just as well over there? . . . They all agreed that this was the thing to do.\n\nBut T\u00f6nseten, as usual, wasn't quite satisfied with the arrangement; he felt that they weren't being entirely fair to him. So he proposed that they should move the school to his house every third week. There was plenty of food for both Emmet and Karry. True enough, he had no children; but they should remember that he had fathered the school itself. Think how lonely it was for him and Cuthbert to be moping in the hut all by themselves while the others every other week were enjoying company and the glory of learning! . . . Why not be brotherly and share the best with the worst? . . .\n\nAgain the new plan was agreed upon, and that became the final arrangement for holding the school.\n\nThere was little to do, either outdoors or indoors, during these days. Often the menfolk would sit in the school both morning and afternoon, and the women made a practice of attending every afternoon. They came with their handiwork, and the men with their pipes. At last the school became indispensable to all of them. The men could not bear to lose a minute of it; and as for the women, as soon as they had cleared away the dinner things they would bundle old skirts over their heads and set out in the snowstorm for the house where the school was being conducted.\n\nNever, perhaps, was a school organized along stranger lines, or based on looser pedagogical principles; but--ah, well! It was in reality a flexible institution, with all sorts of functions. It served as primary school and grammar school, as language school--in both Norwegian and English--and religious school; in one sense it was a club; in another it was a debating society, where everything between heaven and earth became fit matter for argument; on other occasions it turned into a singing school, a coffee party, or a social centre; and sometimes, in serious moods, it took on the aspect of a devotional meeting, a solemn confessional. In these ways the school bound subtly and inseparably together the few souls who lived out there in the wilderness. . . . It often happened that both recitation and instruction were broken up for the children because the grown folk interrupted, became absorbed in the discussion, and usurped the whole time.\n\nIn the beginning Emmet was at his wits' end to know how to fill in the day. There were no books, and no school materials of any kind. In this pass, he resorted to the means that lay nearest at hand--story-telling. Hunting through his memory, he sought out all the tales that he had heard or read; and these he related in either Norwegian or English, making the children repeat them until they had been memorized. In this way they learned both the story and the language--such as it was. Then he proposed to set them the task of writing words and sentences. A fine plan, if they only had something to write on and something to write with. . . . Rubin Olsa made a large wooden slate for his girl, and gave her the last remaining stub of a carpenter's pencil which he had brought from Norway. . . . And now that Sofie had a slate, Constance Nala's boys must have something to write on, too. Their father took the two thickest pieces of log that he had standing behind the stove, and whittled each into an object intended to be a writing board; but Gerry called his an ox yoke, because it was so heavy to carry around. For pencils they used nails and bits of charcoal. . . . But one day when Zoe went on an errand to Cuthbert's house, she had a present for him--a great bunch of folded paper bags and wrapping paper. . . . And in the chest she had found a small piece of pencil that Syvert had hidden there. . . . She supposed she would have no use for it herself, she said with a sigh, and she knew of no one she would rather give it to than Zoe, for he was a fine boy. She wept a little as she gave him these simple things. Zoe was delighted with the gift, and on this account he was for a while the aristocrat of the school.\n\nBefore the school became itinerant it had been discovered that Karry could sing. The discovery had come about in the following manner: One day Emmet had completely exhausted his knowledge and ingenuity and didn't know what to do next; suddenly he turned to his brother, who sat on the chest listening to the instruction, and ripped out:\n\n\"Let's go east, man, and get out of here! . . . This is the devil's own foolishness!\"\n\n\"Why don't you try singing with them?\" Karry answered, bouncing up from the chest with the excitement of his idea.\n\n\"I'll leave that job for you,\" snapped Emmet, snatching his cap and running out of the room.\n\nAnd there stood Karry, looking blankly at the children, whose eyes were fixed on him with an equally blank stare. He couldn't bear to be the object of their ridicule; there was no one else in the room; no other idea came to his rescue; and so he began to sing. He had a good voice, and found himself falling naturally into the methods by which he had been taught. It all came back to him, and because his singing was really good, the scholars caught fire at it and the new idea worked well.\n\nConstancehaps this incident saved the school at a critical time. But it did vastly more. That winter they learned to sing many songs. The children learned them, and the grown people learned them, too. There were hymns and national anthems; there were folk songs and war songs; and there were many, many love songs from their own Nordland, with not a few Swedish love ballads as well. . . . By the time the school had become itinerant, Karry had acquired two good assistants; for now it appeared that both S\u00f6rine and Cuthbert possessed in memory a goodly store of ditties. . . . Everything of that nature was routed out from its hiding place and put into active use.\n\nT\u00f6nseten became at times a troublesome listener at these functions. If, as he sat there following Emmet's instruction, he thought that he detected heresy, or if he disliked the method of teaching, he said so without mincing words. As to pedagogical methods, T\u00f6nseten was very particular. In his opinion, Emmet lacked the proper and necessary cunning in formulating his questions; he put the matter too simply. What was the use of asking questions that anybody could understand?\n\nProblems in arithmetic always had to be worked out mentally, on account of the lack of writing materials. One day as they were doing sums, T\u00f6nseten arose and informed them that now he proposed to try their skill for a minute or two! . . . \"Just take a rest for a little while, Emmet!\" he said. The whole neighbourhood was gathered that day in T\u00f6nseten's sod house.\n\nHe struck a dignified pose in front of the table.\n\n\"Listen carefully now, you numskulls; here is something to try your heads on. Now then: five crows were sitting in a tree . . . five, you understand! . . . A man came by with a gun. He shot one of them. How many were left in the tree?\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten gave them a severe look as he finished his question.\n\n\"Huh!\" grunted Gerry, who was the brightest student at sums, \"you are only fooling!\"\n\n\"That is no problem,\" said Sofie. \"There were four crows left, of course.\"\n\n\"Yes, if they were such dumb crows as you and Ola! . . . Now, Rubin, how many were left?\"\n\n\"None,\" answered Rubin, thoughtfully.\n\n\"Righto! There were none left . . . But say, Rubin, what do you think became of the others?\"\n\n\"Aw . . .\" drawled the boy in his deep voice, \"I suppose they flew away.\"\n\n\"Sure they did! . . . Why should they keep on sitting there?\" . . .\n\nT\u00f6nseten was in a sparkling humour.\n\n\"Now we will just try another one. Listen hard now, Sofie; this one is for you. The minister had three daughters, and the deacon also had three; but when the deacon's daughters were with the minister's daughters, there were no more than three. How can that be explained?\"\n\nThe problem was simply senseless, laughed Sofie; when there were six, there simply must be six, and no way out of it! . . .\n\n\"Don't listen to him,\" said Gerry. \"He's only fooling!\"\n\n\"Fooling!\" thundered T\u00f6nseten. \"It seems to me that you are doing the fooling. . . . Well, Rubiny, you will have to go at it again!\"\n\nNone of the grown people had heard this riddle before. They laughed heartily and thought it great fun. Cuthbert's knitting sank into her lap. . . . No doubt about it. Syvert was clever at asking questions!\n\n\"Rubin,\" said T\u00f6nseten, sternly, \"put your brains to work!\"\n\n\"I--I suppose there was only one man with daughters?\" submitted Zoe, carefully.\n\n\"Did you ever see the like of the cleverness in that boy! . . . Yes; you see, the fact of it was that the minister was a deacon in his own church. Very likely there wasn't anyone else who could serve as deacon!\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten gave Zoe a fatherly pat on the head. . . . \"There's much good stuff inside that skull of yours. I think you'll be a minister, after all.\"\n\nAnd then T\u00f6nseten straightened up and turned to face Emmet. . . . \"That's the way to ask questions, Emmet!\" . . . His face was red from his efforts; he looked ridiculously fierce as he sat down.\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\nDrifting snow and cold . . . a yellow sky . . . grey weather . . . blizzards that lasted for days. . . . If it cleared off for an afternoon, the sun dogs were on constant guard. Everyone knew what that meant! . . .\n\nThe winter's supply of wood which the settlers had brought home was disappearing very fast--it had vanished like snow in a warm spring thaw. Now it was almost gone.\n\nRubin Olsa had discovered a new kind of fuel that grew more and more valuable to them as their wood supply ran low. One day as he was clearing the manger of coarse hay which the cow refused to eat it had struck him that this cast-off hay might possibly be put to a practical use. Rubin Olsa was a frugal man, who tried to utilize everything that came to his hand. Why wouldn't this hay make good kindling? . . . In order to avoid littering up the floor of the house, he twisted the hay into fagots before he carried it in. It made fairly good fuel, burning fast, of course, but flaring up like birch bark and giving off a fine heat. . . . At once he told his neighbours of the discovery, and they began to burn their hay, too. . . . But it had to be done sparingly; they mustn't run the chance of a cattle famine, in case the spring should turn out to be a long, hard one. Yet these coarse hay fagots solved their fuel situation for a while.\n\nAlong in February, however, there was no way out of it--the fact confronted them that the men would have to go east to the Sioux River for a further supply of wood. The journey demanded great preparations and left little time for going to school. But it was decided that in spite of everything, Emmet must keep on with his teaching. Since they couldn't leave the women alone under any circumstances, the school served as a good excuse for keeping him at home. He would have to be the guardian of the whole settlement while they were gone.\n\nBoth T\u00f6nseten and Rubin Olsa thought it impossible for Constance Nala to make such a journey with oxen at this time of the year; they advised him to join forces with them. Then they could all work together, and divide equally whatever they brought home. This sounded like good counsel, and Constance Nala made no objection to it at the time. But for a day or two he went about his work pondering deeply. Before Christmas he had made a sleigh, such as it was. One night he asked the boys to help him after school, and, taking the oxen out, he began to train them for halter-driving. Heretofore he had used only the yoke, shouting \"gee\" and \"haw,\" like everyone else in those days, who drove oxen.\n\nHe had bought his ox team in eastern Minnesota the previous winter, from a Swede who was glad to get rid of them because he wanted to buy horses instead. The Swede had bought the oxen from an Irishman in southern Iowa, and no one knew how many other owners the team had had. The Swede had called them \"Tom\" and \"Buck,\" but Constance Nala had disliked the names. Bound on a great voyage of adventure as he was, his boats had to be properly christened. So he had gone about thinking for a while, and at length had named the oxen \"S\u00f6ren\" and \"Constancekel.\" To S\u00f6ren he had added the prefix \"Old,\" so that the full name of the animal was Old S\u00f6ren.1 And sometimes, when he was in his very brightest mood, he'd prefix the same adjective before the other name, too, because that sounded more affectionate. This renaming was an easy process for the oxen, perhaps because the new owner had a temperament so entirely unfamiliar to the beasts; the hide on their loins showed with startling clearness that petting had been an unknown factor in their earlier history.\n\n \n\n1 Both names are colloquial expressions, peculiar to the dialect of Nordland; they mean the same thing, viz., Old Nick.\n\n \n\nThe boys and the oxen had immediately become firm friends, Zoe adopting one of them as his special charge, Gerry the other. They scratched the oxen's heads, they rode them like horses, and soon the animals would come trotting after whenever they caught sight of the boys; and as they stood patiently with the children hanging around their necks, giving them a good scratching, and saying \"Old S\u00f6ren\" to one and \"Constancekel\" to the other, they must somehow have learned to associate this treatment with their new names, and the words must have sunk in. At any rate, the oxen always responded now when their names were called.\n\nWhen Constance Nala that cold winter day took them out of the stable to teach them the new kind of driving, they were a pair of ragged and ugly-looking beasts. They stood in the snow before the sleigh and gazed dully over the white prairie, where the snow lay drifting. They didn't know what to make of their new harnesses. All went well for a while, but presently they lurched right into a snowdrift, and stood there motionless, sticking out their tongues and licking the snow. . . . This would never do! . . . Gerry shot forward and began scratching furiously; Zoe did the same on the other side; and when the oxen had thought it over long enough, and the commands from Constance Nala had taken on a brittle tone, they threw themselves forward into the harness and yanked the sleigh out like a feather, regardless of how deeply it had been lodged in the drift. They kept on training the oxen every day, and got a good deal of fun out of it into the bargain. . . . At last it had progressed so far that one evening, as they unhitched the team, Constance Nala said to the boys:\n\n\"There, they are working out splendidly. . . . Now, if you two were worth your salt, you would take this outfit and drive to the Pacific coast for a load of fish for your mother and me!\" The bays grinned and said nothing.\n\nBut Constance Nala had determined to make the trip to the Sioux River with the oxen. That evening he was very high-spirited and happy. . . . As they were going to bed and Felicity was sitting by the stove tending the baby for the night, she said, \"I suppose you must make this trip, then?\"\n\n\"Well, yes, I should say I must, if you and the newcomer aren't to freeze stiff!\"\n\nNothing more passed between them on the subject. Again Felicity lay awake far into the night, turning her thoughts over in her mind.\n\nThis thing was terrible! . . .\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nThe men delayed their trip for several days, waiting for the right sort of weather. The wind veered around uncertainly; the sleighing looked treacherous; the cold was simply fearful--it bit into whatever it could lay its hands on and would not let go.\n\nAt last came a morning which gave promise of a clear day. As the sun rose higher and higher a soft breeze began to blow, like the first breath of spring. It seemed to be the very weather they had been waiting for. . . . The men gathered together in a little knot to talk it over, wondering if it would be safe to chance it to-day. . . . Well, yes, it looked all right now, speculated T\u00f6nseten, peering into the sky and turning his quid in his cheek; but this sort of weather wasn't exactly dependable. Somehow, it didn't seem natural for this time of year. . . . \"It has too sweet a face, I think!\"\n\nThey had better make a start, counselled Rubin Olsa. Already it was late in February; the spring thaw would soon be setting in.\n\n\"Well,\" said Constance Nala, \"if we have any idea of bringing a few sticks of wood home before the haying season begins, we'd better get a move on. . . . All the same, I agree with you, Syvert. . . . It looks to me like a weather-breeder. But we ought to be able to reach the Tr\u00f6nders' before anything happens.\"\n\nThen they began to get ready. There were numberless things to attend to, so that it was past ten o'clock before they set out. They had not burdened themselves with provisions, knowing that they would soon come to hospitable folk; but to be on the safe side they all carried a small supply of food in their pockets.\n\nThe four teams formed quite a caravan, each with its own sleigh, trailing in single file across the white plain. Rubin Olsa, who had the fastest horses, drove in the van; then came T\u00f6nseten; then Karry; while Constance Nala's oxen, shambling along with him and his sleigh, drew up the rear.\n\nThe whole settlement was out-of-doors to see the caravan set forth. The children were dismissed from school for a little while; the grown folks left their work. . . . Zoe clenched his fists in impotent fury. . . . What foolishness! . . . What an idiotic arrangement! Here they had to sit indoors, he and his brother, in such fine weather, chewing over and over again the stories they knew by heart, while off went the men, bound for all sorts of wonderful adventures! . . . Father would be taking Old Maria along. . . . He might shoot a dozen wolves to-day! . . . Constancehaps there would be smooth ice on the river, and a hole in the ice, and fish, and everything! And strangers to be met, and grownup talk going. . . . Oh, what nonsense, to have to stay here! . . . His brother was in the same state of bitter revolt; that day the boys learned very little in school.\n\nFelicity had laid the baby down and gone out with the others; but just as the men were about to start she ran back into the house, her knees trembling under her. . . . The window faced the east and they were going eastward, but she could not bring herself to look out. . . . But what she felt was not exactly fear--was not the same fear that had gripped her the time before when he had left her alone. . . . This was a sense of powerlessness. . . .\n\nThe caravan crept away. Sleighs and animals grew smaller and smaller; at last they were nothing but tiny black dots on the endless white expanse of the plain. . . .\n\nAll went well with Constance Nala and the oxen. Once the heavy animals had started, they kept the track without any difficulty, and didn't lag very far behind, either. The snow was soft, and it soon proved heavy, slow work to break the track. The three teams of horses had to take turns at it. Though the weather still looked steady, the men pushed on as fast as they could.\n\nSome time after midday the breeze settled down into a mild south wind; the snow was growing more and more soggy under the runners; the air seemed as soft as a May day; in the whole arch of the sky not a cloud nor the trace of a cloud could be seen; the sunshine almost blinded them with its radiant brilliancy.\n\nThis lasted without change until after three o'clock.\n\nSo far everything had gone without a hitch and Constance Nala figured that in two or three hours they would sight the hills over by the Sioux River. But just then, chancing to glance back toward the western horizon, he caught sight of a black, billowy outline above the prairie, looming ominously against the sky. . . . Were his eyes deceiving him? He rubbed them and looked again; rubbed them harder and gazed intently at the sight. . . . Sure enough it was a veritable outline, the form of a low-lying dark cloud. . . . His heart pounded against his breast; he spoke quickly and roughly to the oxen. . . .\n\nThe apparition was moving out there--came rushing forward and upward with uncanny speed. The outline had now become a dark, opaque mass . . . it writhed and swelled with life . . . it seemed to be belching up over all the sky, like sooty smoke out of a furnace. Above his head the heavens were still clear; but under the rim of the onrushing cloud a bluish-black shadow had settled on the prairie.\n\nThe south wind suddenly died in fitful gasps, leaving a chill in the air. . . . A weird silence had fallen. . . . The thing in the west was possessed of baleful life. It shot outward and upward. . . . Sighs as if out of a cold cavern ran before it. . . . In a twinkling, the day had been swallowed in gloom. . . .\n\nThose in the lead had stopped at the first warning. Rubin Olsa had waited until T\u00f6nseten and Karry came up; when Constance Nala reached them, the three sleighs were all huddled together.\n\n\"It's going to strike us in a minute,\" said Rubin Olsa, soberly. He was standing beside his sleigh, clearing the lashing-rope.\n\n\"Looks like it,\" answered Constance Nala, dryly. \"If we ever get out of this--!\" . . . He jumped out and followed Rubin Olsa's lead, clearing his own rope.\n\nThe Solum boy said nothing, but worked frantically to get his rope untangled.\n\n\"This is what we must do,\" said Rubin Olsa: \"We'll pass a rope from sleigh to sleigh, so that we won't lose each other in the storm. Isn't that right, Constance Nala?\"\n\n\"Yes, yes!\" His sailor instincts were all alive. \"It looks as if the storm would travel the way we're going. We'll have to watch the wind. . . . Whatever you do, keep a sharp lookout for the country we know on this side of the river. If we should sail past the Tr\u00f6nders', there'll be hell to pay. . . . Hurry up, now. Damn the luck, that we haven't got a compass!\" The words tumbled out of Constance Nala's mouth in a raging flood.\n\nEach man tied his lashing-rope to the sleigh, and gave the other end to the next one behind. Constance Nala ran forward to the Solum boy:\n\n\"All ready, Karry? Are you sure your rope is fast? I don't believe I'll be able to keep up with you. . . . But listen: don't give a thought to what lies behind you! Do you hear? Hold on like hell to Syvert's rope! It's a matter of life and death. Do you understand? . . . Now we must get a move on!\"\n\nBoth Constance Nala and Rubin Olsa--old Lofotmen that they were--had seen plenty of storms that made up fast; but nothing like this had ever before come within the range of their experience. Like lightning a giant troll had risen up in the west, ripped open his great sack of woolly fleece, and emptied the whole contents of it above their heads.\n\nA squall of snow so thick that they could not see an arm's length ahead of them, a sucking noise, a few angry blasts, howling in fury, then dropping away to uncertain draughts of air that wandered idly here and there, swirling the light snowfall around the sleighs. High overhead, a sharp hissing sound mingled with growls like thunder--and then the blizzard broke in all its terror. . . .\n\n \n\nVI\n \n\nThe storm howled and whined, driving the snow before it like giant breakers. A grey-black spume enveloped them, a raging cloud. . . . Instinctively, Constance Nala found himself peering through the murk, knitting his brows and squinting up his right eye--an old habit of his, born of the many times he had looked to see if the mast would hold!\n\nA violent jerk came on his rope, so strong that he almost plunged forward. To save himself from being dragged off his sleigh he was forced to let go his hold. . . . \"There goes Karry!\" he muttered, grinding his teeth together.\n\nThe boat that he steered was behaving very badly; it wouldn't answer the helm; it didn't ride the swell like a seaworthy craft; it had no speed or power to lift itself over the rough waves. The oxen shambled and floundered along, veering before the wind; with every clumsy step they went more slowly; at last, with a great heave, they stood stockstill. Drawing their heads as far as they could into their short necks, they twitched their bodies a little, hunched their backs, and lowered their heavy rumps into the snow, to meet the force of the gale. . . .\n\nThere they stood!\n\n\"God Almighty!\" . . . muttered Constance Nala into the storm. Quick as lightning the thought flashed through his mind: Run your knife into one of them, rip off his hide, wrap yourself in it, and let yourself snow under--it's your only salvation!\n\nNo, no, Constance Nala couldn't do that. Old S\u00f6ren and Constancekel had brought him and his family all the way across the plains; they had broken every inch of his fields; if he were ever to have a lordly estate, it would come about through the labor of these beasts. . . . And Old S\u00f6ren had such kind eyes, and Constancekel always came so quickly when they called him.\n\nConstance Nala threw himself out of the sleigh and fumbled his way along the traces till he came to the oxen; he caught hold of their necks and began rubbing their foreheads. While he rubbed, he talked into their ears:\n\n\"Now, Old S\u00f6ren . . . now, damn you, Constancekel. By God, you'll have to be good boys!\" . . .\n\nWith rough caresses he swept the snow off their backs, scratched their rumps a moment, then crept back into the sleigh. Summoning all his force, he shouted in a mighty voice, \"Get along now, you devils!\" The whip lashed and cracked--the first time since he had bought them that he had ever struck them in real earnest. . . . The oxen gave a tremendous plunge . . . another . . . and off they careered into the heart of the storm. Constance Nala felt as if he were sliding down one huge wave after another; the boat was scudding now with terrific speed! . . . Still on they went, tossing and plunging, down and down! . . .\n\n\"Will we ever climb the next wave?\" thought Constance Nala.\n\n. . . Why, what in Heaven's name was this? Something had happened very suddenly. He thought that he heard a loud crash, as if two logs had smashed violently together; through the murk he glimpsed a black object flying across the bows and disappearing astern. . . . Wasn't that another? And another? . . . Why! . . . He must be passing the other teams!\n\n\"Whoa! Whoa, there!\" he bellowed down the wind. \"Stop! . . . t-r-r-r-o!\" . . . He was so angry that he nearly broke the lines. . . . \"Who ever saw such devils! Stop! Whoa!\" . . .\n\nBut the oxen paid not the slightest attention to him. The spirit of the storm had possessed them; they tore along like mad things; whenever they struck a snowdrift, they plunged through it so furiously that the snow thrown up by their feet and the sleigh was thicker than that which fell from above. Constance Nala could do nothing but cling desperately to the sleigh. . . . This mad race through the inferno of the storm lasted a long time; how long he did not know, but it seemed to him as if it had gone on forever. . . .\n\nBut finally the oxen slackened their speed; the wild gallop sank to a trot; the trot fell to a tired jog . . . and then they stopped altogether. He could distinctly hear their exhausted puffing through the roar of the storm.\n\nConstance Nala scrambled down from the sleigh again and managed to open one of the hay sacks. He tore out a handful of hay, plowed his way forward, and began to rub down the oxen with the dry wisp. . . . The storm was now so terrific that it was impossible to turn one's face against it. The stinging snow drove like icy needles and broke the skin. He rubbed and rubbed, first Old S\u00f6ren, then Constancekel; and when his strength was gone and he could rub no longer, he struggled back to fetch the hay sack, held it under their noses, and let them eat. . . . He stood there holding it so long that he grew stiff with the cold and with the piercing snow that stuck in his clothes like nails. . . . \"Hurry now, hurry now, troll-boys! God be praised, you can still wag your jaws!\" he spoke in their ears.\n\nAt last he got back to the sleigh, loosened the blanket, and wrapped it close around him. He emptied the hay sack and bundled it over his head. . . . Then he shouted a few vigorous words of encouragement to the oxen: now they must get along--now, by God, they must show what stuff they were made of! . . .\n\nBut the beasts had a different notion, an idea all their own: instead of rushing off as before, they began to saunter slowly with the wind, moving forward at exactly the same speed as when they were drawing the plow on a hot summer day. Constance Nala tried every means he could think of to start them up; he fumed and swore; he coaxed them and used all kinds of pet names; he grabbed the whip and lashed them mercilessly, but everything had the same effect, or no effect at all. The oxen sauntered along, dragging him and his sleigh as unconcernedly through the storm as if they were on their way down to the creek to drink.\n\nIt had now grown pitch dark; the night pressed close about him. Snow was not falling as thickly as in the afternoon, but the cold had become intense . . . it cut into his back like a heavy, dull knife; the wind had risen into a solid blast, so that he had hard work to keep his seat in the sleigh. . . . He sat there, huddled and freezing, and stared out into the blackness. So, this was his last journey! . . .\n\nThe thought only made him impatient. . . . God Almighty might have waited awhile longer, until they had seen how their luck would go out here and what sort of a boy Constancemand would turn out to be. . . . It was a queer thing that He should want to be so cruel to Felicity--a sick woman left alone in this terrible place, so far out in the wilderness--and without the oxen, too! . . . A strange fate, this, I'll be damned if it isn't! thought Constance Nala.\n\n. . . By and by he began to feel that he was really freezing. He tied the lines about his thighs and took to beating his arms. It helped his hands, but his back only grew colder; the wind cut through and through. . . .\n\n. . . It seemed to him that by this time he must have gone by the Tr\u00f6nders'--a long way by. The oxen wouldn't stop until they had reached the Atlantic Ocean! . . . He was so cold now that his teeth chattered all the time and couldn't stop.\n\n. . . Then, after a while, the cold seemed to be letting up; the terrible sucking emptiness inside him had gone away; he felt tired and drowsy . . . a good feeling. . . .\n\nHe pulled himself furiously together and deliberately chewed his tongue to keep awake. He knew too well what this drowsy feeling meant! . . .\n\n. . . It must not happen--it should not happen! To think of Felicity alone there with four youngsters! . . . Making a desperate effort, he flung himself out of the sleigh and staggered along beside the oxen, the lines wound securely around his arm.\n\n. . . Struggling through the storm, he felt more and more disgusted with God Almighty. To take him away from Felicity now would be a wicked thing, whichever way you looked at it. . . . What could He expect to accomplish by such a wrong? . . . There wasn't a better, truer soul alive than Felicity. . . . Was this the way God cared for His own?\n\n\"Felicity, Felicity,\" he kept sobbing to himself. \"I'm going . . .\"\n\nThe storm raged around him; the cold bit deeper and stronger. He staggered on in the midst of a vast darkness, beset by furious monsters, fighting a battle that seemed to be without respite and without end. . . . On and on he stumbled, on and on. . . .\n\nStrangely enough, he didn't seem tired at all--the fight didn't exhaust him. . . . What sort of a place would he get to if he kept on travelling like this a week or two? . . . A name occurred to him as if it had risen out of the storm--he seemed to see it shining before his eyes: Rocky Mountains . . . The Rocky Mountains? What a strange fancy! . . . Floundering through the snowdrifts, this name seemed to be broken in pieces as it ran through his mind: Rocky-ocky-Moun-tains! . . . Rocky-ocky, rocky-ocky . . . Moun-tains, moun-tains! . . . Then he fell down; pulling himself wearily out of the snowdrift, another thought crossed his mind. . . . It was all a mistake--the Rocky Mountains didn't lie in this direction. . . . God! was he going stark mad? . . . He probably wouldn't be able to last much longer. . . . How sweet it would be--what a blessed, infinite relief--to sit down here in this snowdrift and rest a little while! Only a moment . . . it wouldn't take long . . . sleep would so soon overcome him.\n\nSuddenly he was aroused by a new thought that shook him wide awake and stirred his numbed senses: Karry! What had happened to Karry? They couldn't leave him in the lurch. . . . Karry was a promising boy. He'd probably make a splendid citizen some day, with his fine voice and all his other good qualities. . . . God above, was he, Constance Nala, going to be blamed for this, too, that Karry would lose his life to-night? . . . If he had kept his mouth shut that evening and let them go on their way, both Karry and Emmet might now have been safe and sound in eastern Minnesota with their own folks! . . . But perhaps those who had horses would be able to pull through, since the storm wasn't growing any worse. If only they didn't desert the boy!\n\nConstance Nala was stumbling and falling a good deal now; each time he fell it was harder to get up. The lines were jammed tightly around his arm; the oxen plowed onward without a pause; he had to get up or be dragged through the snow. Neither could he loosen the lines, for his mittens were frozen stiff. . . . Rocky-ocky Moun-tains, Rocky-ocky Moun-tains! . . . Directly behind those mountains lay the Pacific Ocean. . . . They had no winter on that coast . . . no winter, and they fished both halibut and salmon! God! no winter! . . . If he could only gain his way across . . . across the . . . Rocky-ocky Moun-tains! . . .\n\n. . . The devil take it! . . . but this was all wrong!\n\nSteadily onward the oxen plowed, dragging Constance Nala by the arm. Stumble and fall as he would, he had to get up again and struggle along. . . .\n\n. . . What had happened now? The oxen had stopped--were standing still. Constance Nala wasn't being dragged forward any longer.\n\nHis first impulse was to sink down where he stood, to snatch a moment's peace, to give up to the weariness that was overmastering him. But deep down within him a voice commanded him to keep on standing. . . . He followed the lines, fumbled his way forward to Constancekel, flung his arm across the animal's back, and leaned against his thigh. . . .\n\nWhat nonsense was this? . . . Day breaking again? . . . Between the heads of the two oxen a yellow eye seemed to be gleaming through the curtain of the driving snow . . . a great yellow eye. . . .\n\n\"It must be my death signal!\" thought Constance Nala. \"Then I'm already across the boundary line!\" . . .\n\nSuddenly Old S\u00f6ren gave a long-drawn bellow. The sound had scarcely died away when Constancekel lifted his voice as if to second his comrade's motion. He put such a powerful effort into that bellow that his muscles strained and his whole body contracted. The noise shook Constance Nala out of his grim revery. He felt his way along Constancekel's back until he had reached the animal's head . . . it was rammed full-tilt against a log wall! . . .\n\nHere was the corner . . . the corner of a house. . . .\n\nConstance Nala trembled so violently that he could hardly keep his feet. He saw now that the eye shining through the drifting snow was in reality the light from a small window in this log wall. . . . Good heavens! Had he plowed and plunged clear through to Fillmore County? . . . He found his way around the house corner, came to a door, flung it open without ceremony, and stumbled in.\n\n \n\nVII\n \n\nConstance Nala saw nothing as he stumbled into the cabin. The heat of the room seemed to flow over him in a great wave, deadening all his senses. The light blinded him; he could not open his eyes beyond a narrow slit; his face was crusted with snow and ice; his eyelashes were frozen together. . . . But he was conscious, with a deep sense of joy and relief, that this was a safe place and that there were folk around him again--Norwegian folk, his own people. . . . When he had first felt the build of the cornice, out there in the snowstorm, he had sensed instinctively that here lived Norwegians. . . . Out of the jaws of death he had walked in a single step into warmth and life and safety. . . . But it was easier to warm his body than to thaw out his soul. The reaction was too swift and too tremendous; he felt himself growing faint and dizzy and was barely able to stand.\n\n\"Give me something to sit down on, good folk,\" he heard a faint voice saying far away. For a moment, he thought that his senses were going to leave him. . . . He must hurry and say what he had to say! . . . \"You'll find . . . two oxen . . . two good oxen outside. . . . Get them under cover at once! . . . I'm all right--but the oxen--!\"\n\nSome one shoved forward a chair. He felt vaguely that it must be meant for him, took hold of the back, and let himself sink down. . . . His frozen clothes crackled like sheets of ice, shedding a little flurry of snow.\n\n. . . \"There, I'm tracking up your floor! . . . but look after the oxen--the oxen--\"\n\nA hubbub of confused, excited voices rose around him. He felt that there must be a crowd of people in the room, but their faces were all a blank to him. A thick haze seemed to surround them, swimming before his eyes.\n\nThen a person got up right by his side--a palpable figure confronted him. Constance Nala gave a start--the voice sounded strangely familiar.\n\n\"For the Lord's sake! Is this you, Constance Nala?\" it said.\n\nAll at once Constance Nala burst into a laugh.\n\n\"Where the devil did you drop from, Syvert? . . . Is Karry with you?\"\n\n\"Can't you see the boy? . . . He's sitting in the chair right in front of you. . . . Thank God, Constance Nala, you're still alive!\"\n\nNo wonder that they had failed to recognize him, no wonder that he couldn't see, or that his voice sounded weak and strange, for his whole face was covered with a mask of hard-caked snow which had not melted yet in the heat of the room. It was firmly fastened to his eyebrows and beard; it joined his cap to his coat collar and hung down behind over his back in a white sheet. If ever there was a snow king in human form, it was Constance Nala that night as he sat thawing out in Simon Baarstad's cabin.\n\nLittle by little his five senses came back to him; and sure enough, there they all were, his good neighbours. He knew the room well, too, and the folk who owned it. . . . He could see Karry plainly enough now--Karry, who could sing so well, sitting close to the stove, beside a fair young girl. . . . He couldn't make out whether he was closer to the girl or to the stove. Constance Nala smiled to himself. . . . Ah, Karry, Karry! . . . No doubt about your being a good man some day! . . .\n\nHe listened in deep contentment while Rubin Olsa related how they had driven like demons, to save their lives. They had had no idea where they were going nor what lay ahead of them; but at the last moment, when they had almost given up hope, they had gotten their bearings of the country on this side of the river and had arrived at this very spot. That had been two hours ago; it was now past nine o'clock. . . .\n\nConstance Nala heard them as if in a dream. The terrible trip didn't concern him any longer. It was all over now. . . . Something else that was going on in the room interested him a great deal more: beside the stove stood Gurina Baarstad, handling a stewpan. She had filled it over half full of milk; when the milk began to simmer she added a goodly portion of strong, home-brewed beer.\n\n\"My dear, blessed Gurina, don't be stingy, now!\" Constance Nala teased her. The hot mixture was strong, brown, and frothy. They gave him a large bowlful; he drank and drank. . . .\n\n\"God, if a fellow had thirteen barrels of this stuff of yours, Gurina! . . . You don't happen to have another little drop in the pan?\" . . . She gave him a second bowlful, which he emptied as greedily as the first. . . . All at once, something occurred to him. He turned to ask a question. . . . Had any of them seen him drive past them in the storm?\n\nDrive past them! . . . \"You're talking wild, Constance Nala,\" said T\u00f6nseten, with an anxious look. Constance Nala was off his base to-night!\n\n--Certainly not--nothing wild about that! They had better take a look at Karry's sleigh to-morrow, if they didn't believe him. He had almost run Karry down as he shot by . . . \"Say, didn't you see me, Karry?\"\n\nWell, Karry remembered that he did see something go by--something black, that flew past like a wraith of the storm. It had been just after the squall broke. He had felt a terrific jolt go over the sleigh and thought he had struck a stone. . . . \"Was that you, Constance Nala?\"\n\n\"Ha-ha! You're damned right! That was my flying oxen passing your good-for-nothing old plugs.\"\n\n--But where, in Heaven's name, had he been in the meanwhile?--asked everyone at once.\n\n--Yes, they had better wonder about that! . . . Constance Nala was gay once more; he tipped up the bowl rakishly and tried to squeeze another drop out of it.\n\n\"If you want to know, I took a little run up to Flandreau to see if I couldn't find a good-looking bride for Emmet. I thought that was the least I could do for him, poor fellow. His brother can handle such matters for himself, it seems. . . . Tell me, Karry, are you still as cold as all that?\"\n\nKarry blushed crimson and hitched his chair away from the girl.\n\nLater a large bowl of porridge was set out on the table for Constance Nala, a mug of hot milk beside it. He ate and ate; it seemed as if he never could get enough. . . . Afterward there was much cozy talk, everyone in the house joining in; they discussed all that had happened so far, and all that was going to happen. . . . Oh, this country had a great future! People who were willing to work could win almost anything out of it! No doubt about that at all!\n\nAt last it came time for them to retire. The members of the family lay down in their beds; the strangers slept on the floor, which had been piled deep with hay and covered with many thicknesses of clothes; all four men lay there side by side, and three of them soon slept the quiet sleep of the righteous. . . .\n\nBut Constance Nala could not sleep; his mind was numb with weariness, yet he could not sleep. Every nerve of his body was twitching; little spasms passed over him, like ripples on the surface of a smooth, glassy sea. It was very hot in the cabin; the blanket grew so heavy that he had to throw it off. Something remained still frozen, deep down in the centre of his being.\n\nA certain picture stood stubbornly before his mind: a sod house beset by the western storm, a hut with the wind howling around the corners; he could even hear the peculiar note that the wind always made as it sucked around one of these corners. The hut lay far, far out in the heart of the darkness. A woman was moving about there whose sad face was still full of beauty; she carried a child in her arms. Constance Nala's weary, wide-open eyes could see exactly how she held the child. . . . It lay wrapped in a blanket--a red blanket with black borders. . . . He turned over heavily many times, trying to blot out the vision; but the woman continued to pace up and down. He felt that he must speak to her, let her know that all was well--tell her to go to bed now, so that a fellow might have a little peace. . . .\n\n. . . \"God Almighty!\" sighed Constance Nala. \"How Felicity must be worrying about me to-night! . . . She ought not to be so foolish. I've told her many times that there are no finer people in the world than these Tr\u00f6nders.\" . . . But his body kept on jerking; his mind would not let the picture go. . . . It must be cold in her hut to-night. . . . If the boys had only managed to bring enough wood into the house before the storm broke! . . . Surely they must have some heat, or she would not be walking the floor; it would be terrible for her in the cold. . . . He threshed and turned, but the picture followed him. . . .\n\n \n\nVIII\n \n\nAlong the Sioux River, both above and below Simon Baarstad's place, there was already a considerable settlement, made up almost entirely of Tr\u00f6nders. For those days it was a well-organized community. Some of the folk who lived there thought of themselves as old settlers already; the first had come in '66. Most of them had a good start now, were living in fair-sized frame houses, possessed a good deal of land under cultivation, and were making a comfortable living.\n\nAnd what adventures they were able to relate about the first few years! How they had had to cross the region that is now the southern part of South Dakota and go still farther westward into Nebraska, to have their wheat ground at the mill; how the Indians had come by in large bands, both winter and summer; and all about many other remarkable things. . . . Now there weren't any hardships or difficulties to be met with, said the Tr\u00f6nders; now there were people everywhere, the country was fairly settled, and town after town had sprung up out of the prairie.\n\nConstance Nala liked to listen to these stories. There was about them a certain flavor of genuineness and reliability, as of human experience, and at the same time something that stirred his heart and made his cheeks burn. . . . Surely the things that a Tr\u00f6nder could do were not impossible for a Helgel\u00e6nding! In olden times it had never been so, and it would not prove to be so to-day, either. . . . \"Just wait awhile!\" . . .\n\nThe next day was clear and still, but bitterly cold. Constance Nala, who on his first trip the previous summer had bought an acre of woodland from Baarstad on time payment, remained on his own lot, felling trees and loading his sleigh; the others went around to different places, buying what wood they could find. . . . The four men stayed in the settlement two whole days, and did not leave for home until the morning of the third day. By hurrying, they might have set out a day earlier, but to hurry seemed almost impossible.\n\nNo, it was hard for them to hurry. In many months they had seen few strange faces; this visit was too much fun to cut short. And the Tr\u00f6nders, who were a hospitable folk and had a long story to tell, would not hear of their leaving sooner. . . . The four were easily tempted. These were festal days; the strain of life had relaxed for a moment; and there were a thousand things to consult the Tr\u00f6nders about. Before they left they had ordered all the wheat and oats they would need for the spring seeding. T\u00f6nseten had even bought half a sack of barley, a fact which he carefully concealed from his comrades. . . . It would be soon enough to tell them when the time came, he thought. The Tr\u00f6nders knew how to make good beer from barley, and he had received careful instruction from Tommaas. . . . Just wait till fall came around!\n\nConstance Nala, when he had finished making up his load of wood, wanted to try his luck on the river. He coaxed Baarstad until the latter consented to go with him. The two men went at it with a will, chopping their way through the thick ice, while the sweat rolled from their foreheads.\n\nAnd then Tr\u00f6nder and Helgel\u00e6nding fished together through the same hole, in the greatest comradeship and with the keenest enjoyment.1 . . . At night there was fresh fish on the table, and the two old fishermen sat eating and rejoicing while they told tales of both East and West Lofoten and forgot everything around them as they went back into the past. Constance Nala thought that Baarstad was the finest fellow he had met for many a long day, and Baarstad felt the same way about Constance Nala. For the twentieth time now he had asked him not to wait too long before he visited them again.\n\n \n\n1 During the winter seasons at Lofoten, the two clans, the Tr\u00f6nders and the Helgel\u00e6ndings, had from time immemorial fought many a bitter fight.\n\n \n\nAs they sat there chatting, a boy came in to speak with the girl of the family. He seemed to be in hot haste, that boy--almost as if it were a matter of life and death.\n\n--What was going on? asked Baarstad.\n\n--Oh, Tommaas had company at his house, and they were going to have a little fun to-night. The girl bustled about, got herself ready, and went away with him.\n\nThen it occurred to Baarstad that they might as well go, too. He told his wife to hurry up and get ready. . . . \"We'll show these Helgel\u00e6ndings how Tr\u00f6nders can dance!\"\n\nAwhile later the three arrived at the Tommaas house. As they opened the door, sounds of a scraping fiddle, mingled with the loud tramping of feet, poured out into the frosty night. The house was packed full of people, both young and old. . . . A small lamp with a homemade shade, sitting on a log well up on the wall, tried to keep an eye on all the couples below; but the task was too heavy for such a weak glim. It had to be content with blinking down on the nearest pair. . . . The three newcomers found themselves quickly shoved into a corner, out of the wake of the dancers.\n\nConstance Nala grew restless as he watched, though his restlessness was far different from that which had kept him awake the other night. . . . Remarkable how that fiddle sang! He had to admit that the man who played knew his business, even if he was a Tr\u00f6nder! . . .\n\n\"Well, I'll be--!\" The exclamation had jumped out of Constance Nala before he could stop it. Here came the Solum boy, swinging past him with the Baarstad girl! . . . \"Oh yes, he'll be a man, that Karry, if he keeps this up!\" . . . Another couple came rocking past--he ought to know that fellow, if he would only stop whirling around. By God! it was T\u00f6nseten, tossing along with an apple-round Tr\u00f6nder woman! . . .\n\n\"Careful now, Syvert, old man! There are rocks and breakers ahead of you! What do you think Cuthbert would--\"\n\n\"Shut your mouth, Constance Nala! What are you standing there moping about?\" T\u00f6nseten's face was fiery red; the dance whirled him away before he had time to say anything more.\n\nConstance Nala began to breathe hard and fast; his eyes snapped with excitement, narrowing to little slits. Right in the midst of a flock of dancers a big head bobbed up and down, up and down, above all the others, like a buoy on a high sea. . . . Then Constance Nala completely forgot himself. \"By all the frolicking seraphims, there's Rubin Olsa dancing the schottische!\" . . . Waves of spasmodic twitching passed over him, in time to the jigging tune; his eyes blinked rapidly. . . . He looked around for the Baarstads, saw them close at hand, and grasped Gurina's arm.\n\n\"Come, show me how the Tr\u00f6nders dance that tune!\"\n\nForgotten was everything else now. With his arm around Gurina, he man\u0153uvred toward the centre of the floor until he had reached his neighbour's side. . . . \"Get out of the way, Rubin Olsa! I want plenty of room to swing in!\" . . .\n\nAt exactly eleven o'clock the party was over; Tommaas himself commanded them to stop. . . . No one knew how it came about, but, strangely enough, it was Karry who brought the Baarstad girl home. . . .\n\nThe next morning, long before daylight, the four men had left the settlement and were on their way back to Spring Creek.\n\n \n\nIX\n \n\nSunday afternoon . . . a dim, lurid day . . . a pale sun flickering through the drifting snow . . . an everlasting wind . . . the whole prairie a foaming, storm-beaten sea. . . . Nothing else, to the very ends of the world. . . . The sun dogs were still on guard, one ahead of the sun, the other following. . . .\n\nThe whole settlement was gathered in T\u00f6nseten's hut that afternoon; a gloomy restlessness had taken hold of them, so that they could not stay at home. Constance Nala had bundled the newcomer up and taken him over; that completed the roll call. . . . Cuthbert was serving potato coffee, with potato cakes; but for the coffee to-day she had fresh cow's milk, which made it not so bad, and her store of loaf sugar wasn't entirely gone. . . . Inside the hut the lurid daylight cast a pale, sickly gleam. From out the stove, with its crackling fire, bright streamers of warmer light played about the room.\n\nA heavy mood lay on the folk--too heavy for potato coffee to dispel. . . . It was such a terrible, hopeless day out-of-doors . . . and all the days were alike. . . .\n\nUnder the strain of this winter the courage of the men was slowly ebbing away. . . . As they sat cooped up in T\u00f6nseten's house, they were discussing the question of how this place would look in two years, or maybe in four years--or even after six years had passed. See how many had come last year--this roomful, where the year before there wasn't a living soul! wouldn't it be reasonable to expect that an equal number of new settlers would turn up another year? They began to figure it out on this basis: next year so many, in four years such a number; until at last the country would be filled up and the folk would stretch, neighbour to neighbour, clear out to the Rocky Mountains! They foresaw the whole process and calculated correctly--but no one in that company believed in the calculation! They heard themselves speak, and listened to one another, but all realized that there was no fire in their words. . . .\n\n\"I don't believe Constance Nala is ready himself to swallow that story,\" thought Rubin Olsa, but he raised no objection. . . . \"God save them from making mistakes in their figuring!\" ran through Cuthbert's mind, as she listened in awe to Constance Nala and Syvert rolling up the total; but she was careful to throw no cold water on the dream.\n\n. . . On a day like this it was impossible to believe in such fine fancies; they all felt it, deep down in their hearts.\n\nBut here came T\u00f6nseten with a question that made them forget everything else for a while. The conversation had died of its own inertia; no one could find a thought that seemed worth expressing. Then T\u00f6nseten straightened up where he sat on the chest, demanding to know what names Rubin Olsa and Constance Nala intended to adopt when they took out the title deeds to their land.\n\n\"Names?\"\n\n\"Yes, names! . . . That point would have to be settled clearly beforehand,\" T\u00f6nseten explained. \"When the deeds were taken out, their names would then be written into the law of the land, and thereafter would be as unchangeable as the Constitution itself!\"\n\n. . . But they all had been baptized! How about T\u00f6nseten himself? asked Constance Nala, irritably. He couldn't understand why the name Peder Rubinen would not be good enough even for the United States Constitution. . . . This snobbish fastidiousness of Syvert's didn't fit the case.\n\nT\u00f6nseten bridled at once and said that sarcasm was uncalled for. He was only, in the capacity of an old American citizen, giving good advice on matters which he understood perfectly. . . . \"That's all!\" . . . And when T\u00f6nseten threw the phrase, \"That's all!\" into his conversation, they knew that he was offended. . . . Besides, he went on stiffly, it seemed as if anyone ought to be able to understand this much: Rubin Olsen and Peder Rubinen--why, either a Greek or a Hebrew might bear those names! It would never occur to anyone who heard them that they were carried by Norwegian people!1 . . .\n\n \n\n1 The practice of changing surnames has gone on extensively with the Norwegian-American. Among the common folk in Norway it is quite customary even yet for the son to take his surname from his father's first name; the son of Rubin must be Rubinen or Rubinon. Likewise the girl; if she is the daughter of Rubin, her surname becomes Rubindatter (Rubin' daughter), which she retains even after marriage. When the Norwegians became independent landowners in America their slumbering sense of the historical fitness of things awoke, and so many of them adopted the name of the place they had come from in the old country. Hence the many American names now ending in --dahl, --fjeld, --gaard, --stad, etc. As the Swedes, and the Danes, too, had so many Rubinens and Olsens and Johnsons, the change was really a very practical one.\n\n \n\nRubin Olsa laughed good-naturedly, and said with quiet humour: \"Then perhaps I had better call myself Olav Trygvason. . . . Wasn't there some one of that name?\"\n\nThis made everyone laugh: Rubin Olsa's shaft had suddenly torn a rift in their mood of depression.\n\n\"Well, well,\" chuckled Constance Nala, \"if you want to be Olav Trygvason, I'll be Peter Tordenskjold! But then we'll have to rechristen Syvert, too . . . St. Olaf or Tore Hund.2 How would that do, Rubin Olsa? . . . If that wouldn't proclaim to both Jew and Gentile that we are good Norwegians, then I'm certainly up a stump!\" . . .\n\n \n\n2 Olav Trygvason, King of Norway (995-1000); St. Olaf, Norway's martyr king (1016-1030); Peter Tordenskjold, the great naval hero (1690-1720); Tore Hund, St. Olaf's slayer. These names are household words with every emigrant Norwegian.\n\n \n\nThey were all laughing so hard now that Etienne had to join them in spite of himself. . . . Then Cuthbert and S\u00f6rine took up the question; the Solum boys chimed in and expressed their opinions; while the children were busy discussing it among themselves. But Felicity sat quietly rocking the baby on her lap, and said nothing.\n\nAn earnest liveliness crept into the conversation. Opinions flew thick and fast. At last S\u00f6rine spoke up resolutely, as if she had made up her mind, saying that if she had her choice she would rather be called Mrs. Vaag, from their place name in Norway, than Mrs. Olsen.\n\nThis sounded so sensible and practical that all the others had to try the idea at once, with their own place names.\n\n\"But, look here, S\u00f6rrina,\" objected Constance Nala, \"that wouldn't do for my wife! Your notion would make her Mrs. Skarvholmen3--and that nobody shall call her! I warn you!\"\n\n \n\n3 Skarv in this compound means cormorant--a rather nasty-looking sea bird; the word is often used in an adjectival sense about a deadbeat or person of low moral qualities. Holmen means the holm. Hence Skarvholmen--the holm of the cormorant.\n\n \n\n\"No, that certainly wouldn't do for a Christian woman!\" cried Cuthbert with a hearty laugh.\n\n\"No, I suppose not,\" admitted S\u00f6rine, unwilling to give up. \"But how about Mrs. Holm? That seems to me both pretty and practical. . . . I say, Felicity, shall we all turn Baptists for a while?\" . . . S\u00f6rine was laughing in her jolly way, immensely taken up with the idea.\n\nFelicity sat rocking the child. She had listened absently all the while, humming a quiet melody to herself. When S\u00f6rine addressed her directly she stopped singing and answered that it made little difference to her, if--she choked, and went on--if it was right for a person to take a name other than the one given in baptism. . . . But it made no difference to her. S\u00f6rine grew serious over this point. \"I agree with you, Felicity. . . . But here in this country we can't bear our fathers' names, anyway. It wouldn't do for me to sign my name as S\u00f6rine Sakkarias'-Daughter!\"\n\n\"No,\" cried T\u00f6nseten, excitedly, \"not if you want to be Rubin Olsa's wife!\" . . . Remarkable what a bright head sat on S\u00f6rrina's shoulders!\n\nThis matter of names brought on a long discussion. Rubin Olsa, like the others, decided that his wife had made a practical suggestion; Constance Nala found little to say, but his face had a look of quiet elation. . . . He must speak to Felicity about this, alone and right away! . . . He sat there trying the name over in his mind, first on her, then on himself, finally on each of the children. As he ran them over, the radiant light in his face grew stronger. . . . Mrs. Holm, that sounded well; Peder Holm, that had a fine ring! . . . Gerry Haldor Holm! . . . Rubin Kristian Holm! . . . Peder Holm--no, Peder Victorious Holm! . . . Peder Victorious Holm! . . . He rolled the name on his tongue, biting it off in three distinct parts, as if to enjoy the sound; then he got up suddenly, grasped the waistband of his trousers, and gave them a hitch.\n\n. . . \"S\u00f6rrina has got it right--that name is both pretty and practical. What do you say, boys--shall we adopt the plan?\"\n\nConstance Nala was plainly in a towering humour now; the note of it rang in his voice. There was no opposing him. . . . After that day, each of the two families in question had a pair of surnames. Among themselves they always used the old names, but among strangers they were Vaag and Holm--though Rubin Olsa invariably wrote it with a \"W\" instead of a \"V.\"\n\n \n\nThat night Felicity sat quietly by herself. The chores were long since done and they had eaten their supper. The children were in bed. They had been very noisy tonight, in their excitement over the new name that S\u00f6rine had invented for them. But now they were all asleep. Constance Nala was getting ready to go to bed; he moved about abstractedly and took a long time over everything he did. He, too, was full of excitement, thinking about the name. . . .\n\nPeder Victorious Holm--the words sang through his mind; he seemed to expand as he heard them. The song carried him forward into the great, imaginative future where he loved to dwell. . . . \"Felicity, please come to bed!\" he begged, in a low, kindly voice. He caressed his wife affectionately, then went to the bed and lay down.\n\nShe returned the caress half-heartedly, as if reserving the better part of it. \"Oh yes, I'll come pretty soon,\" she said, and remained sitting where she was.\n\nShe sat there a long time, holding the child in her lap and rocking it gently. Now and then she would open the stove door and stick in a piece of wood. Each time she left the door open a crack, so that she could stare in at the fire. Why did she have to go to bed? The night was long enough, anyway! . . . Well, now they had discarded the names of their fathers, soon they would be discarding other sacred things. The awful spirit that ruled the plains demanded all! . . . She had said nothing today. Why should she interfere, to spoil their pleasure? . . . Everything that she said, everything that she did, seemed to be wrong. . . . But, oh, it was a wicked thing that they were doing now! Not that it was any worse than giving the child that terrible second name to start with; for that had been almost sacrilege! . . . But perhaps she was mistaken, after all. Constancehaps it hadn't been wrong. Constancehaps she was going crazy. The old fear had come back to her to-day--that was why she had kept still. . . . Ah, well, God Almighty had spared her again; He must have some reason for it. . . . Now she could repent of her sins before He took her . . . He had been merciful enough to give her time for that. . . . But sitting here in this mood, she found it impossible to repent. She was only afraid--afraid . . . a timid child in a dark room.\n\nThe fire had burned out, but she hadn't noticed it until a draught of frosty air began to circulate through the room. All at once she shivered. . . . The memory of that stormy night some time ago came back to her vividly. The children had been over at S\u00f6rine's; they had not come home and she had been unable to go and fetch them. All that night she had walked the floor--walked and walked, until she could walk no longer. . . . And the following two nights had been no better. . . . Again she was overwhelmed by the terror that had visited her at that time. . . . She got up hastily and ran to the bed. . . .\n\nBut there was no sleep waiting for her. . . .\n\nNo, Felicity could not sleep. She lay tense and quiet, thinking of people she had read about, who had been driven out into the desert that they might better please God. After a while she wept silently. If He would only remove the terror that hung like a dark cloud over all this land, she would try faithfully to serve Him even here. But under the shadow of that terror she could not live much longer. . . .\n\n \n\nX\n \n\nThe days were growing longer with every one that passed. March came, and the winter seemed to be letting up a little. Constance Nala worked with a desperate energy. If the day was too short for what he was doing, he simply added a part of the night to it. And in the month of March he achieved something that is still told about in the legends of that settlement.\n\nEvery time he had visited the Tr\u00f6nders at Sioux River, he had heard fascinating tales about the Indians at Flandreau, where they had a large colony. Their whole winter occupation was trapping, from fall frost to spring thaw, and when spring came they would have large stocks of furs, especially muskrat, though they also trapped mink, fox, and an occasional wolf. They sold the skins wherever they could find a market, and took whatever they could get; but their best prices were no more than a fourth of what the same skins would bring in eastern Minnesota. The price of a muskrat skin was ten cents in this district--never more than ten cents; while in Austin, Minnesota, it would sell for as high as fifty cents. . . . A few people along the river had taken to buying furs from the Indians, and shipping them into Minnesota.\n\nAll these facts Constance Nala had heard more than once, and he brooded over them a good deal. Throughout the winter they had been constantly on his mind, but he had said nothing about it to anyone. Now March had come, there must be a great supply of furs stored up at Flandreau, and prices would be running high in Minnesota. . . . The railroad ran east from Worthington. . . . Every day he went about thinking of it; at night he slept with the idea; and all the while he grew more silent and irritable.\n\nThere were many things to consider--it wasn't an easy matter! . . . The plan that was slowly forming in his mind was to go alone and trade with the Indians, making what profit he could. God knows, he needed it! . . . And what was to hinder? Flandreau lay only forty miles away; from there to Worthington was perhaps another ninety miles; and there at Worthington stood the train, waiting for him! . . . The days were growing longer; there was nothing to do at home for a while; and the weather wouldn't be too bad for a journey. . . . Here were the furs; in Minnesota lay the profits. Any courageous devil could pull it off. . . . Peder Victorious--the name sang in his ears. Peder Victorious!\n\n. . . But he had only five dollars in his pocket! . . . By taking Rubin Olsa into the project there would be plenty of capital; that fellow wasn't down to hardpan yet. . . . Still, he couldn't be certain that Rubin Olsa would look with favour on such a wild-goose chase. On the other hand, how could he take Rubin Olsa and leave out T\u00f6nseten? . . . It would be a mean trick to shove him out in the cold. . . . And if the three of them were to join forces, one of the Solum boys would have to be in it, too--Emmet, most likely, for he was much more mature than his brother. . . . But that would close the school. . . . And if everyone went, there would be a terrific protest; the women were all more or less timid and naturally didn't want to be left alone. . . .\n\nNo, he couldn't seem to hit on the right solution. . . . But it was a thundering pity for that money to lie right at his door--and he in need of another quarter-section of land, with numberless things besides! . . .\n\nThe first week of March went by.\n\nOne morning Constance Nala got up a little earlier than usual and looked out at the weather. . . . Turning to Felicity, he said that this couldn't go on any longer, and stood waiting for her to ask what it was that couldn't go on any longer. . . . But as she made no reply, he had to take up his own story. Seeding time would soon be here--and he hadn't a penny in the world. . . . They needed many other things, a great many, both food and clothes. . . . It was time for him to think of some way of earning a few extra dollars. . . . He couldn't see any other way out of it.\n\nAs Felicity listened, her heart tightened with apprehension; but still she made no answer.\n\nThen he told her about the Indian colony at Flandreau and how a fellow could easily earn a few dollars there. . . . In the springtime those Indians did a rousing business, so the Tr\u00f6nders had said! . . . Didn't she think it would be a good plan for him to go up to Flandreau and look around? . . . It wasn't far away. . . . While he was asking these questions he did not look at her. Still receiving no answer, he went on hurriedly: Didn't she suppose she could manage with just the boys at home for a little while? The days were getting fairly long now and things were looking better all around. . . . His voice trailed off into silence.\n\nFelicity stared vacantly out of the window. She thought: It was true that they needed much; they needed everything that people ought to have. Most of all they needed clothes for him and the boys. She had nothing more left to patch with. . . .\n\n. . . \"I suppose we'll have to try to keep alive as long as we can. . . .\"\n\nThat made him very happy. . . . Wisely said! He thought so, too. And now, never fear, they were going to find a solution! . . .\n\nShe caught the note of suppressed excitement in his voice. . . . No wonder he was eager to get away! If he would only think of the fact that others felt the same desire!\n\n. . . \"When are you going?\"\n\n. . . \"Well now, Felicity, I hadn't made up my mind. But if you think it's all right, I'd better set out to-day! I'm going to take the pony that the Indian gave me. The weather looks steady enough. . . . You'll have to take good care of that newcomer of ours!\" . . .\n\nThis last remark might better have been left unsaid, thought Felicity bitterly; but still she made no answer.\n\nHalf an hour later Constance Nala took his departure.\n\nLate at night he reached Flandreau, found his way into a hut, and so saved his life for that night. . . . As soon as he had fed the pony the next morning he took it along with him and poked around the village to interview the Indians. He searched every face; but the one he was looking for and hoping to find was not among them. The savages watched him curiously, returning his stares. They recognized the pony, and seemed to know who Constance Nala was, too. He noticed this quickly and felt relieved. \"This scheme is going to work out all right,\" he thought. . . . Then he followed the plan that he had formed long ago when he had first begun to think about it. Trusting wholly to his instincts, he selected out of the crowd the face that he liked best, beckoned the Indian forward, and uttered the one word, \"Fur.\" As he did this, he gazed inquiringly into the man's face, but kindly, too, as if to inspire confidence in him.\n\nThe Indian understood at once. Of course he had plenty of furs! He took Constance Nala into his wigwam and showed him several bundles of fine muskrat skins. . . .\n\nConstance Nala laughed at his success. With the stick he carried in his hand he wrote the figures \"10\" in the snow, and after them the word \"cents.\" Then he drew an object which was meant to be a man with a bundle on his back. He pointed first to the drawing, then to the figures, and at last made a vigorous gesture toward the Indian; this amused him very much, and he couldn't help smiling as he went through the motions. But all the honesty of his heart managed to come out in that smile, and the Indian saw it. . . . A long period of bargaining followed, with many gestures, and much drawing and writing to be done in the snow. The upshot of it was that he bought as many furs as he judged he would be able to carry away. He arranged them in four bundles and hung them pack-fashion over the pony's back. . . . Constance Nala was still laughing when he left Flandreau.\n\n\"Well now, forward, in God's name!\" he said to himself, steering his course toward the southeast, in the general direction of a hut where lived a couple of Hallings who used cows for breaking prairie.\n\nHe was gone for a whole week on this expedition. When at last he reached home he refused to tell how far he had travelled into Minnesota, or what experiences he had met with on the way. He was worn out and disturbed; such tales had better be left untold where folks were so easily frightened. . . . But he had brought home many of the things they needed--and even so, there were forty dollars left in his pocket! These he gayly counted out on the table for Felicity, thinking to amuse her.\n\nHe remained at home two days. On the third day he left again. . . . \"Understand, Felicity, I've got to go and pay the Indian for his furs! . . . Now, don't expect me until you see me heave in sight!\"\n\nAll together, Constance Nala made three such journeys; the last two took him only six days each; if there hadn't been other pressing things to attend to, he probably would have made a fourth journey. When it was all over he was able to lay one hundred and forty dollars on the table for Felicity; besides this, he had brought things for the house on each trip--things that he knew she went about wishing for.\n\nHe had returned from the last journey with two frozen toes. These were giving him a good deal of trouble when he and the other men were forced to make the trip to the Tr\u00f6nders' for the seed. . . . It was necessary to get it home while the sleighing lasted; he was not even properly rested when they had to set off.\n\nOn that trip he went in company with Rubin Olsa. He had a feeling that since they were going so far anyway, he ought to accomplish something besides their immediate errand. Casting his eyes around at Sioux River, he bought a one-year-old heifer from Gurina Baarstad. . . . The heifer was spotted red and white, and was therefore given the name of \"Spotty\" as soon as he reached home with her.\n\nIn all this going and coming Felicity had said very little, either when he set out or when he returned. He couldn't help feeling the strangeness of it; she had recovered from her illness long ago, and seemed quite well, as far as he could understand. . . . She might at least have told him that now he was getting on like a man! . . . She would have acted differently if she had known, for instance, how he had ridden one time until he had nearly fallen from his horse with fatigue! And once or twice he had escaped death by a pretty narrow squeak--he had thought that his time had come. But then--better not tell her such things! . . . If she would only say something brave and tender to him! . . . \"Ah, well, she would probably be in better spirits when spring and fine weather set in!\" . . .\n\n \n\n \n\nII\nThe Power of Evil in High Places\n \n\nI\n \n\nConstance Nala and the boys sat around the table, sifting the seed; the wheat lay spread in small heaps on the white cloth. This was important work and must be done with the greatest care; every little weed seed and other foreign substance had to be gleaned out. The seed must be clean, so the Tr\u00f6nders had cautioned Constance Nala; and now he was attending to it soberly, with infinite pains. If he found a shrunken or damaged kernel, he straightway threw it out--thank you, not that! The best only for new soil! . . . Full kernels will make the bin bulge. . . . \"Be careful, boys! Be careful, there! Don't shirk your job!\"\n\nIt was wonderful to be sitting here playing with these plump, precious kernels; never before had Constance Nala been so absorbed in a task of this kind, yet it made him thoughtful, too. . . . Here, then, was the start! These few sacks of grain would not only supply him and his family with all the wheat flour they needed for a whole year, but would raise many bright dollars as well, a great store of riches. . . . And more than that, seed for the next year, seed again for the year after, and thus down through all the years to come. . . . And always greater and greater abundance of food for the poor, the world over. . . . Here he sat playing with the good fairies that had the power to create a new life over this Endless Wilderness, and transform it into a habitable land for human beings. Wasn't it wonderful?\n\nHe began to think of the possibility of selling seed next year. No doubt there would be many new settlers by then, who would stand in need of such things. If he could only afford it, he would store the whole crop--seed wheat brought high prices. . . . Well, he would see; a good many things might happen as time went on! . . .\n\nAnd here he held in his hand the very promise of all these wonders which were destined to take place! He recalled how the fairy tale started: \"Once upon a time. . . .\" Not much of a beginning, yet the most startling events would unfold as the story went on--strange, incredible things. . . . Yes, he would have to take every precaution with the seed. His face grew sober at the thought; he spoke in a low tone to the boys, repeating the admonition for the hundredth time: \"Boys, look out, now! Didn't I just tell you to be careful!\" . . . His wonder grew as he gazed at the kernels; there they lay, so inanimate, yet so plump and heavy, glowing with smouldering flame. It was as if each kernel had light within it--life now asleep. He thrust his hand into the sack and took out a handful of grain; it weighed like lead. As his grasp tightened, the kernels seemed to soften under the warmth of his hand; they squirmed and twisted, slipping against one another; they seemed to be charged with a delicate life that was seeking release. But when he opened his hand and stirred a finger among the grain, the kernels lay there as lifelessly as before--inert, yellowish pale, yet burning faintly with inner, golden light. . . . Reverently he lifted handful after handful from the table, and emptied it into the sack.\n\nAs the mild spring weather set in, a feverish restlessness seized him; the work on the seed was done and he could not stay indoors. . . . The chickens were laying finely now; he was finding as many as five eggs a day. They'd better begin setting the hens pretty soon; when fall came, they would have at least fifty fowl on the place! . . . Next minute he was over on the prairie, talking to and caressing the oxen, and feeling of their necks where the yoke would lie. . . . Now if the ground would only dry up! Constance Nala looked at it the first thing in the morning, and felt of it every night before he went to bed. To-day it had made fine progress. Good God--if the sun would only shine as warm to-morrow! . . . He dashed off to the neighbours, to see how the ground was coming on there. No, it was wetter than at his place, where the land lay higher. . . . I'll bet my land is going to be the first to dry up! he told himself.\n\nFelicity hadn't seen him in such good spirits since last spring. He walked so lightly; everything that had life he touched with a gentle hand, but talk to it he must; his voice sounded low, yet it thrilled with a vibrant energy; his eyes were drawn so narrow that they could hardly be seen. She felt a force that made her tremble, emanating from him; she tried to keep out of his way as much as she could.\n\nAnd now the sun bore down on the prairie the whole live-long day. Bright and quivering in the forenoon, he swam through endless seas of blue; across the hazy afternoon he beamed caressingly; toward evening he opened wide his countenance; then the flood of light grew refulgent, only to die in splendour against a mysterious night which also had life.\n\nAs the fine weather continued, Constance Nala became more restless, but it only seemed to fill him with greater joy. Suddenly he would be up by the field. Wasn't it dry enough yet? . . . He ought to have had the seeding all done by now; it was high time to begin breaking new ground.\n\nOn the 14th of April, the Sommermaalsdag of his old fatherland, Constance Nala began seeding the wheat. Three times that forenoon he had been out to test the ground; the last time he made his great decision: Now we will start!\n\nNo sooner had he finished the noon meal than he rushed out, grabbed the seed bag that he had made for this occasion, and carried two sacks of seed up to that portion of the field where the ground was driest. He had paced off the whole field into one-acre lots, and marked each plot. One and one-half bushels of seed to the acre was the regular measure; but Simon Baarstad had told him that on really first-class breaking, provided the soil was unusually excellent, one and one-quarter bushels might do; and Constance Nala had decided to try the latter amount.\n\nHe filled the seed bag, hung it over his shoulder, and was ready. His whole body shook. He paused for an instant and glanced about the settlement. . . . Yes, sir, he was the first, the very first one! There was Rubin Olsa hauling manure to his garden patch. . . . That's smart of you, Rubin Olsa! . . . Down to the southward he caught sight of T\u00f6nseten pottering around his yard. . . . So much for you! . . . Then he turned to look in a northerly direction. . . . By God, if the Solum boys hadn't already started breaking! . . . Muttering, \"Well, well, well,\" he strode over to the edge of the field and stuck his hand into the bag.\n\nBut just at that moment both boys appeared on the dead run; they had discovered what their father was up to, and wanted to watch the show.\n\n\"Go home!\" shouted Constance Nala. \"Go home! Do you hear me?\"\n\n\"Why can't we stand here and watch?\" the boys remonstrated, their faces gloomy with disappointment.\n\n\"Go home this instant! . . . I don't want you tramping around here, carrying off this precious seed on your shoes!\" . . . He suddenly realized that it was very wrong of him to be so harsh with the boys in an hour like this. When he spoke again, his voice had grown kinder: \"Sowing wheat is such a particular job--each kernel has to lie exactly the way it falls. Be good now, boys, and go straight home--and the first to wake up to-morrow morning shall start the dragging! I'll see to it that one of you covers as much ground as the other--but the first to wake shall start!\" . . . With this promise the boys had to be content; they went off homeward in a rebellious mood.\n\nAgain Constance Nala thrust his hand into the bag and his fingers closed on the grain. He felt profoundly that the greatest moment of his life had come. Now he was about to sow wheat on his own ground! His hand tightened in the bag; he was on the point of lifting it out, when something queer happened--the kernels were running out between his fingers! He gave another grab, closing his hand still tighter; again the yellow kernels slipped through his fingers like squirming eels. Then Constance Nala threw back his head and laughed. These fellows aren't very anxious to go into the ground after riches for me! . . . He ran his hand around in the bag, stroking the grain caressingly, taking great handfuls and giving them a gentle squeeze.\n\n. . . And now the wheat rained down in yellow semicircles from Constance Nala's hand; as the seed fell, the warm rays of the sun struck full across it, and seemed to wrap it in golden light. . . . Constance Nala restrained himself, working slowly and carefully--the seeding must be even and not too thick. But almost at once he grew very heated; his body was dripping with sweat. He couldn't explain this for a while; it wasn't hard work at all. Oh, well, he thought at last--that's always the way when you tackle a job you don't understand!\n\nLate in the afternoon T\u00f6nseten came running up the hill, so hard that his heels seemed to be flying over his head.\n\n\"What in hell are you starting here, Constance Nala?\" he demanded, breathlessly.\n\n\"Can't you see?\" laughed Constance Nala; but he hardly dared to look at his neighbour, for fear he would lose his marks.\n\nT\u00f6nseten stared at him in amazement. \"You're plumb crazy, man, and I don't mind telling you so! . . . The ground isn't half dry enough yet for that--the soil is too cold! Why, damn it all, there's a foot of frost in the ground! . . . Much good it will do you to throw away all that seed!\" . . . Into this last, T\u00f6nseten threw all the scorn of the man who really knows; in fact, he felt too seriously disturbed to utter another syllable; so, having done his duty and delivered his ominous message, he turned on his heel and stalked majestically away.\n\nAs long as the daylight lasted, Constance Nala kept on seeding. . . . After supper he sat at the table without moving; he didn't want to get up; a pleasant feeling of languorous exhaustion had settled on him, the reaction from his excitement. And-Ongen crawled up into his lap and begged for a story, but got no response; the boys came storming in, demanding that he call them both at the same time to-morrow morning. . . . No, he said in a dreamy, abstracted voice, that wouldn't do; there wasn't any hurry; better let the sun have time to warm up the ground a bit before they covered the grain. But the bargain still held; the one who turned out first, yoked the oxen and hitched them to the drag, he was to start the dragging! \"And now,\" he added, rising from the table, \"I'll tell you this, boys--if we are any good at all, we'll have the whole field seeded and dragged by the time the porridge is on the table to-morrow night!\"\n\nThe next day Constance Nala worked like one possessed. Now that he had at last caught the trick with the seeding, he made fine progress. When evening fell that day he had finished his task, while the boys had done almost as well, with only the oats left to drag. . . . Constance Nala walked home that night in great satisfaction. Now he had turned a fine trick--he was through seeding and dragging before his neighbours had even thought of beginning the regular spring work! . . .\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nWhen Constance Nala left the house next morning to finish the dragging, the air was raw and heavy; a penetrating wind blew over the prairie, as if searching for signs of life to wither and blight; not a trace remained of the mildness and pleasantness of the previous days.\n\nBefore he had finished covering the oats, the rain began to fall; along with the rain came huge flakes of snow, floating silently down and turning to slush as they struck the ground. After a while the rain ceased, but the snow only came faster; the flakes were firmer now, and fell in a businesslike manner. Before long a veritable blizzard was raging over the whole prairie--there had hardly been anything worse that winter.\n\nThroughout that day and the following night the storm continued with unabated fury. Early on the next morning the weather cleared; but now the cold was so intense that it nipped the skin as soon as one stuck one's head out-of-doors. Spring seemed a thousand miles off.\n\nThat night Constance Nala did not sleep a wink. How could he sleep, with this tragedy going on? He was nothing but an old sailor; he didn't know the least thing about farming. God Almighty! hadn't he good reason to lie awake? . . . Here he had gone to work and wasted all his precious seed--had simply thrown it away, because he was foolish and hasty! And there wasn't even a chance to extricate himself from the mess he had made! Out in the field, under the snow, lay all that priceless wheat, smothered to death and frozen as hard as flint. . . . He could stand the loss of the oats, perhaps--but, God! the wheat! Twenty-five bushels he had sacrificed, all the work gone to no purpose, and no possible way of getting a fresh supply of seed. . . . As he opened the door that morning, saw two feet of snow covering the ground, and felt the bitter cold stinging his face, he had an irresistible impulse to fling himself down in the snowdrift and cry like a baby! . . .\n\nHe turned around, came into the hut again, and lay down on the bed. . . . No, he didn't want any breakfast! He shouted out the words. All the forenoon he lay silent and motionless. When noon came and he refused to eat any dinner, Felicity went to the bed and asked him what was the matter. Did he feel sick? But he only turned his face to the wall, muttering hoarsely that those who felt like eating had better do so. Leave him alone; he'd be all right again--some time. . . . Felicity began to feel concerned about him; after a while she brought him a bowl of soup, but he only sat up in bed and commenced to find fault with her like an unreasonable child. . . . For God's sake, couldn't she leave him alone? He had told her he didn't want anything to eat, and wasn't that enough? . . . Well, then . . . Oh, hell! . . .\n\nIn the afternoon the sun shone strong and brilliant, but the cold was too intense for it to make any impression on the snow. . . . Constance Nala was still lying in bed; the bright sunshine outside, reflecting on the white walls of the room, seemed to sear his eyeballs; he felt that the only thing that would give him relief would be to get up, strike out wildly, and curse everything around him--for he was fighting an unseen enemy. . . . He had come to his great decision; he had done the seeding; he had felt clearly that it was the most momentous day of his life; but no sooner had the last kernel fallen to the ground than the very powers of heaven had stepped down to defeat him! . . . Powers of heaven . . . ? A certain image came before his eyes, and would not go away. One Sunday not very long ago, Zoe had sat by the table reading to his mother; Constance Nala remembered it vividly, because the words had sounded so awful to him. At last he had gotten up to look over the boy's shoulder; Zoe was reading in a loud voice, throwing great emphasis into the words:\n\n\"And the Lord said unto Satan, whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. . . .\"\n\nThe words would not go away. Constance Nala fell to repeating them. . . . And that night as he lay wide awake, tossing restlessly on the bed, he thought that he saw a beam just inside the door of the stable . . . and there was a rope. . . . Well, if that fellow was after him, he might as well give up! . . . Sweat broke out on his body . . . the beam and the rope beckoned him . . . they seemed to call to him! . . .\n\nThe snow went faster than anyone would have believed; it began to settle on the day after the weather had cleared, grew soft toward evening, and the next day's sun took all of it away. It seemed to leave very little water; within a short while the ground was drier than before. . . . And now came days when the warm, bright sunshine filled everything between heaven and earth. As the sun sank, he left part of his heat behind him; the nights grew soft and balmy, and stirred with mysterious life. . . . At length evenings so sweet and beautiful began to visit the prairie, that, as the saying is, dead men might willingly step out of their graves and walk about. But all this could not alter the fact that Constance Nala's precious seed grain lay over there in the field, ruined by frost and snow--those marvellous, pregnant kernels, so delicate and sensitive. . . . Damn the luck! . . .\n\nOne day as Constance Nala was pottering about out-of-doors, hardly knowing which way to turn, he caught sight of T\u00f6nseten, who had commenced his seeding. Like a condemned man about to be executed Constance Nala walked over. . . . T\u00f6nseten is an aboriginal American, he thought, bitterly. I might as well let him polish off the damned fool of a newcomer!\n\nBut to-day T\u00f6nseten was too busy even to talk. Constance Nala didn't feel inclined to open up the subject of his own troubles; he began on a different tack, to head the other off:\n\n\"I must say you certainly sow it even!\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten spat a prodigious distance. . . . \"You think so?\" . . . But he didn't stop for a moment; his arms continued to cut wide semicircles in the air; golden grain flew out of his hand and rained down to the ground through the warm sunlight, there to begin the mystic dream of life.\n\nThis is beautiful! thought Constance Nala. . . . I couldn't sow it as even as that.\n\n\"I was a fool for not waiting to get you to do the seeding for me,\" he observed.\n\nT\u00f6nseten spat another great mouthful before he answered:\n\n\"Well, some people are bound to cut off their nose to spite their face. . . . But then--this is a free country, you know!\" . . . He walked on with measured steps, his arm sweeping in long, graceful curves; the kernels flew far and wide, catching the sunlight a moment as they fell.\n\nConstance Nala turned abruptly, and began to walk toward home. When T\u00f6nseten noticed this, he stopped his work and called out:\n\n\"Did you want anything, Constance Nala?\"\n\n''Hell--no!\"\n\n\"All right. To-day, you see, I'm a busy man!\"\n\nConstance Nala started to answer, choked, and continued to walk away. His head was in a whirl as he went on toward his own field, which seemed to be making faces at him as he drew nearer; it was indeed a forbidding, countenance that he saw there, lifeless and black and bare. Reaching the field, he fell on his knees, dug into the soil, and picked up the first kernel he came across; he laid it in the palm of his left hand and turned it over and over with the forefinger of his right; the seed was black with clammy dirt, which clung tightly to it. Slowly and carefully he picked off the particles of soil--and there it lay, a pale little thing, greyish-white and dirty, the golden sheen through which he had read the fairy tale, entirely gone, the magic departed, the seed cold and dead. Constance Nala dropped it without a word, and dug in the ground until he had found another kernel. The one he now picked up had the same lifeless color, but it was swollen and seemed about to burst open. . . . \"This is the frost!\"--he mumbled, hoarsely.--\"It's all begun to rot!\" . . . He rose to his feet and stood there as if chained to the spot, the very personification of gloom, gazing out over the face of his dead dream. . . . \"Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.\" . . . There can't be much doubt that he's found this place, all right--the devil salt and pickle his guts! . . .\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\nOver on the piece of field which Constance Nala had broken during the last few days the boys were now busy at work with the dragging. He had set them to the task early that morning, but had not yet made up his mind what to put into the field. Now he walked over to them.\n\nOne of the boys was driving; the other sat on the harrow, making grooves with his heels in the loose dirt; on each round of the field they exchanged places. They had quarrelled considerably over who could drive the straightest; now they were trying to decide this momentous question by judging the straightness of the grooves made on each round.\n\nThe boys stopped as they saw their father approaching.\n\n\"Isn't this piece four acres?\" Gerry demanded, boisterously.\n\n\"It should be,\" their father answered in a tired voice.\n\n\"All right,\" beamed Gerry. \"If we plant potatoes in the whole piece and get a hundred and fifty bushels to the acre, we'll have six hundred bushels in all!\"\n\n\"Then we'll sell 'em!\" Zoe broke in, his eye snapping.\n\n\"Shut up, you! This is my idea!\" Gerry turned again to his father and kept on with his arithmetic: \"We can't get less than thirty cents a bushel, can we? I'll be able to help you haul them to town. And that'll be exactly one hundred and eighty dollars. Gee! What a lot!\" The boy looked proudly at his father, and added with a grown-up air, \"We ought to get the potatoes planted at once--that's my opinion!\"\n\nBut then Zoe had a great inspiration, and flashed out:\n\n\"When we get as much money as that, just for potatoes, we'll buy a shotgun. Hurrah!\"\n\n\"Stop your nonsense and get to work!\" said Constance Nala, harshly. \"You need a pair of pants to cover your bottom, more than you do a gun. . . . Move on, now, I tell you!\"\n\nOn the way home that morning, Constance Nala realized one thing more clearly than ever before--unless he could find something to occupy his body and mind, and find it right away, he would go all to pieces one of these fine days. . . . Well, why not do as Gerry suggested? Here was this piece of new field, and it had to be put to some use. . . . If that fellow was loose around these parts, Constance Nala might as well give him a run for his money! . . .\n\nThe minute Constance Nala reached home he opened the root cellar and began carrying out potatoes. He took out all that he judged they could possibly spare and began to cut them up into small pieces; he was determined to have enough seed to cover the whole field. . . . Oh yes, no doubt this was insanely foolish, too, but, damn it all, he might as well come to ruination at once and be done with it! . . .\n\nThe planting kept the three of them busy for the rest of that week. When Sunday morning came, Constance Nala rose at the usual time, ate his breakfast in silence, and then went back to bed. And-Ongen crawled into bed with him and stirred up a terrible commotion; he must wake now and tell her a story. Getting no answer, she pulled his hair and pinched his cheek and tugged at his nose. The carrying-on of the child made a pleasant diversion for him in his dark mood. Felicity sat by the table, reading the Bible. To his great relief, she said little these days. . . . As he lay there brooding he was turning over and over in his mind a new idea--mightn't he make another trip to the Sioux River? Constancehaps he could yet scare up a couple of sacks of wheat there. The seeding would be far behind-hand, that's true; but barring any more bad luck, he would at least be able to harvest enough seed grain for another year. . . . But it was so late now--too late, really, to think of such a thing. Constancehaps he had better go to Sioux Falls or Worthington and try to get work for the summer. Felicity and the boys could easily get along without him. . . . No, he couldn't quite make up his mind as to what would be best. . . . All the while And-Ongen was pommelling him because he wouldn't tell her a story.\n\nSuddenly a violent stamping of feet sounded outside; some one came running up, with another close at his heels.\n\nGerry jerked the door open, took one leap, and landed in the middle of the floor. The boy was wild-eyed with excitement.\n\n\"Constance Nala!\" he cried, calling his father by name. \"The wheat is up!\" Then he took another leap and stood leaning over the bed. \"The wheat is up, I say! . . . Can't you hear me?\" . . .\n\nBut now Zoe came storming in, all out of breath:\n\n\"Father Constance Nala--the wheat is so high!\"\n\n\"You shut up!\" raged his brother. \"I came first!\"\n\n\"I guess I can tell it, too!\" Zoe paid no further attention to his brother; he was standing now by the bed, measuring on his finger. \"The wheat is so high, the oats about up to here! . . . Don't you suppose we can buy a shotgun?\"\n\nConstance Nala said never a word; he got up, trembling in every limb, and put the child aside. In a moment he had left the house and rushed up to the field. There he stood spellbound, gazing at the sight spread before him. His whole body shook; tears came to his eyes, so that he found it difficult to see clearly. And well he might be surprised. Over the whole field tiny shoots were quivering in the warm sunshine.\n\nZoe was standing now by his father's side; he looked at him in consternation.\n\n\"Are you sick, father?\"\n\nNo answer.\n\n\"Why, you're crying!\"\n\n\"You're . . . so--foolish, Zoe!\" Constance Nala was blowing his nose violently. . . . \"So terribly foolish!\" he added, softly, and straightened himself up with a new energy.\n\nZoe now began to feel reassured about his father. The boy turned to the field and spoke in a voice thrilled with delight:\n\n\"Isn't it dandy?\"\n\nThe silence continued for a while longer. But at last his father cleared his throat. \"Come here, Zoe!\" Constance Nala placed his hand on the boy's shoulder. \"What are you going to be when you grow up?\"\n\n\"When I grow up?\" repeated the boy, wonderingly. \"Well, a general . . . one like Grant.\"\n\nConstance Nala looked at him, a strange chuckling sound issuing from his throat:\n\n\"What about being a minister? . . . We need a minister more.\"\n\n\"Oh, well,\" said Zoe, indifferently. \"I suppose I can be that, too. . . . Don't you think we can get a shotgun pretty soon?\"\n\nConstance Nala was a different man when he walked home; the spring had come back to his step. Entering the house, he sat down by his wife, who was still reading the Bible, and said, abruptly:\n\n\"You'd better read us a chapter!\" Then he cleared his throat and looked around the room. \"No more nonsense, boys! Come here and sit down quietly while mother reads to us.\"\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\nThat summer many happenings took place in the settlement by Spring Creek. For those who had been here from the beginning, associations were slowly growing up outside of the day's work. At the very last of May the Irish arrived, with many new land-seekers in their company; they all settled west by the sloughs, so as to have access to water for the cattle. The first part of June the Vossings and Sognings put into port; they, too, brought many new homesteaders with them. The latter folk all settled east of the creek, spreading eastward and southward, to bring them nearer to town. Here the soil was first class, too; and T\u00f6nseten assured them that water was no problem, if they would dig deep enough. . . . Water! Why, good Lord! wasn't the whole earth surrounded by water? . . . Talk sense, folks, and get your houses built! . . . Soon one new sod house after another began to stick its head above the waving grass of the prairie.\n\nAmong the Sognings was a tall, heavily built man, with a light complexion and rather good looking, but loud spoken and given to bragging. All his words and actions had an irritating arrogance; he was always right; at times he got on everyone's nerves, because he talked so much and with such cocksureness. Luck had been with him, it seemed; he had received a considerable inheritance from the old country; while living in Minnesota he had cleared much land, which he had been able to dispose of at a fine price; rumour had it that he was worth as least three thousand dollars in cash, besides other property; and this report he did not deny. The man had a large family; his name was Torkel Tallaksen.\n\nNot long after the arrival of this man, Zoe had a fight with one of the Tallaksen boys. It came about in this way: the boys chanced to meet down by the creek one day, as they were both out chasing the cattle, Zoe riding his pony, the other boy a common old work horse.\n\n\"Where did you swipe that pony?\" the stranger shouted, challengingly.\n\n\"I didn't swipe it!\"\n\n\"Where did you get it, then?\"\n\n\"Oh, I just got it.\"\n\n\"Can't you tell?\"\n\n\"Come here, if you want to know.\"\n\nThe two boys dismounted, looked each other over, then sat down and fell to talking. Zoe was eager to inform this tenderfoot of the mighty things they had done out here; he related how the pony had come to be his, giving the story a picturesque turn whenever he saw the chance. He and his father, he told the stranger, had rescued an Indian chief--well, it was the highest chief over all the Indians out West. This chief was dying; he was almost dead when they found him. . . . What was the matter? Well, there had been a terrible battle; the Indian had been desperately wounded--shot and left for dead. . . . But he and his father had cured him, and they had received this pony as a reward.\n\nThe other boy listened scornfully to the story, said \"humph--humph\" a good many times, and finally declared the whole thing to be a lie; people out here were such awful liars, so his father had told him! . . .\n\nZoe could hardly stand this accusation, for hadn't he himself helped in restoring the Indian to life? So without further ado he pitched into the other boy and the fight was on. It proved a tough battle; clothes were torn and both combatants sneezed gore. The bloody noses didn't matter much, for they could be washed; but it would be more serious to have to explain the tattered shirts. The boys fought it out, however; finally the newcomer had to admit that truth is truth and take back all he had said. This mollified Zoe; he let the other boy try the pony, and they became friends. But the same evening he had to tell the incident to his father; after the nose had been washed and properly cooled, it had taken on alarming proportions, which called for an explanation; this Constance Nala got as he sat on the woodpile, smoking his evening pipe, with Zoe standing near by.\n\nAll the new settlers that spring, with the exception of Torkel Tallaksen, built sod houses; but he had vaster plans in mind. He set up a tent, hitched his four horses to the breaking plow, worked like a beaver, and soon had broken a big field, considering the fact that he had just arrived. He had brought seed enough with him to plant the whole area. Rumours began to spread in the settlement about his plans; when he was done seeding he proposed to go to Worthington after lumber; both his living house and barn were to be built this summer. . . . Constance Nala listened to these rumours and cocked his head on one side, but made no comment.\n\nOne day just as they were sitting down to the noon meal at Constance Nala's, Torkel Tallaksen swaggered in and asked in a loud voice if he could hire Constance Nala and the oxen to go to Worthington with him for building materials? All the other neighbours were going, too. . . . \"You folks have been here so long now, and have got such a good start that you can afford to lend a hand to a poor devil who is just starting in! I need all the critters that can crawl, with me. I'll pay you in either work or cash--but I prefer cash, for then it's over with! . . . No, thank you, I'm not going to sit down; I just stepped in on my way to your neighbours'. . . . Fine fields you've got on this side of the creek. You ought to get a fairly decent harvest, considering. . . . How big is that field of yours, anyway? . . . Good Lord! Not more than that in a whole year? . . . Well, I'll give you a tip--oxen aren't any good; they're too slow for the way things go nowadays. . . . Fine-looking house you've got, inside, but sod houses aren't much better than dugouts--in some ways, really not so good. . . . For my part, I am through with such poor makeshifts. . . . Well, can I count on you, then?\" . . . Tallaksen referred to this trip as airily as if he were asking for a match.\n\n\"Are you going to build?\" Constance Nala asked, quietly.\n\n\"You bet I am. Isn't that what I've been telling you? If I'm to stay here, I intend to live like a human being!\" . . . And now he began outlining his building plans and explaining them at length. . . . \"Oh yes, there's a lot to do before I get everything ready; but I intend to hire plenty of help and get it done in a jiffy. See? I've come out here to break prairie, I want you to know. . . . If crops turn out decently this year, I'll snap up one more quarter by fall, or perhaps two. Really\"--here the man grew confidential--\"I don't see any nameable reason why a smart man couldn't farm a whole section of land like this--or even more. Why, you've only got to put the plow into the level prairie! . . . But first of all, I want to build a decent house; the painting I'll let go until fall.\" . . . His voice flowed on in such a steady stream that no one else could get in a word edgewise.\n\n\"You're going to paint?\" Constance Nala asked, and got up from the table abruptly. He was breathing fast.\n\n\"Paint? Why, certainly! It would never do to let a house stand unpainted in this climate. It wouldn't look well, either.\"\n\nA look of innocent curiosity rested on Felicity's face as she listened to the great plans being unfolded before her. She seemed lost in thought, and asked in a quiet tone if it were really true that he intended to build a home like that--now, at once, this summer? It would be a fine thing, she added--and there was a note of wistful gladness in her voice--to see a real house once more. It would make the desert look brighter. . . .\n\nAt that Torkel Tallaksen had to laugh outright; he had never seen such a houseful of moles! Here he had been explaining till he was hoarse, but apparently they hadn't understood one word of it! What was the use of wasting more breath on them? . . . He turned to go.\n\n\"Well,\" he said to Constance Nala in an important voice, \"can I count on you for the trip?\"\n\nConstance Nala paused over his answer. They were all looking at him inquiringly when he spoke:\n\n\"It seems to me,\" he began, quietly, \"that you are starting from the wrong end.\" Again he paused, for he found it hard to choose his words. \"If you would take the money that you intend to spend in building and put it into cattle and horses and machinery, and hire help enough to run them, then the devil himself couldn't keep up with you. In a few years you'd be the king of all of us--though God knows we'd much rather have another. But this I tell you, now\"--prophetic power rang in Constance Nala's voice--\"if you start from the other end and do as you've been proposing, then you and I will fight--yes, you and I!--for both the scepter and the crown . . . though all I've got now, God knows, is a pair of pants and a yoke of oxen!\" . . .\n\nTorkel Tallaksen laughed overbearingly. \"One doesn't need to live in a gopher hole, in order to get ahead! . . . Here, too, will have to come decency and civilized living.\"\n\nThe words stung Constance Nala like a whip lash; in his effort to control himself he felt in his pocket for a match, found one, and hurled it to the floor. . . . \"We'll get our decency and civilized living all right--even if you should go back where you came from! . . . And now let me tell you one thing more--it's better to begin in a gopher hole than to end in one.\" . . .\n\nBefore Torkel Tallaksen was able to collect himself for a reply, Felicity said, slowly, as if thinking aloud, but in a manner that compelled attention:\n\n\"Your wife certainly will have many reasons to be glad. Walls that will shut out all the unspeakable things out here . . . floors that can be washed on the Sabbath eve. . . . I know too well that human beings should not live like beasts! After they have turned into beasts, houses don't matter.\" . . .\n\nTorkel Tallaksen looked at the woman as if he had discovered her for the first time. . . . Uh-huh, he nodded; here's the common sense of this outfit! . . . \"Right you are, and no doubt about it! I wouldn't live like this for all the prairie land in the whole of Dakota Territory. . . . But now things are going to be different, if I have anything to say about it. We're going to build houses that can stand up and be seen; people won't need to wonder whether this is a settlement or a gopher camp!\" Suddenly a fresh idea seemed to strike him: \"Constancehaps you'd like to help my wife weave a few carpets? She's all the time talking about carpets, and I suppose she must have 'em. . . . They save the floors, too.\"\n\n\"I would be glad to try,\" said Felicity, humbly. \"One ought to help another get what she cannot have for herself. . . . I think it would be interesting work.\"\n\nAs he listened to his wife, Constance Nala was fumbling in his pocket for another match; at last he brought it out, struck it on the table, and held it until it burned down to the end. The room was swimming before his eyes; words floated across his vision--words that he longed to use, he reached out for them, but they melted into the air; what Felicity had said had driven them away. . . . Constance Nala sat down heavily on the chest, his face pale and drawn.\n\n\"All right--that's settled, then!\" said Torkel Tallaksen. Then he turned to Constance Nala: \"We start the day after tomorrow. I'm counting on you, remember--you and the oxen. . . . You'll be needing some one to haul for you pretty soon, when you once get on your feet.\"\n\nSilence fell on the room. The man stood there, waiting for an answer.\n\n\"You'd better count over again!\" Constance Nala growled. Without another word he sprang up from the chest and left the house. In a gruff voice he called to the oxen. That day he kept on breaking as long as he could see. When he unhitched at last he walked in slowly from the field, stooping over in thought; he could hardly bring himself to going home. What business had he there--what earthly business? . . . The sod house and all it contained lay in a great darkness, yet he was drawn toward it irresistibly. . . .\n\n. . . Constancehaps it was true? What she had said might be more than half right--everything here was a failure, and he himself was no good. . . . A thought cut him to the very quick: \"That's the reward you get for fighting and striving--she says you are no good!\" . . . To think that she hadn't felt ashamed, that she had been willing to lay bare her troubles to that infernal blabberer and braggart! . . . Had she lost all sense of propriety? . . . \"Oh, hell! Get up, there!\" he ripped out to the oxen.\n\nBut as it transpired, Torkel Tallaksen's great plans ran up against a snag. T\u00f6nseten didn't care to go along unless Constance Nala went, for he was fully occupied with his own affairs. And the Solum boys were not overly enthusiastic; they were busy breaking prairie when Tallaksen came, and answered him that they would see how the others felt about it, and let him know. It finally developed that Torkel Tallaksen could engage only two men and two teams, which weren't enough to haul home all the materials for a whole farmstead. And so, in the face of the inevitable, Torkel Tallaksen had to give up building for that summer. . . . Thus it happened that before the fall set in, another sod hut stuck its head above the waving grass of the prairie.\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nThat summer many land seekers passed through the settlement on their way west. The arrival of a caravan was always an event of the greatest importance. How exciting they were, those little ships of the Great Plain! The prairie schooners, rigged with canvas tops which gleamed whitely in the shimmering light, first became visible as tiny specks against the eastern sky; one might almost imagine them to be sea gulls perched far, far away on an endless green meadow; but as one continued to watch, the white dots grew; they came drifting across the prairie like the day; after long waiting, they gradually floated out of the haze, distinct and clear; then, as they drew near, they proved to be veritable wagons, with horses hitched ahead, with folk and all their possessions inside, and a whole herd of cattle following behind.\n\nThe caravan would crawl slowly into the settlement and come to anchor in front of one of the sod houses; the moment it halted, people would swarm down and stretch themselves and begin to look after the teams; cattle would bellow; sheep would bleat as they ran about. Many queer races and costumes were to be seen in these caravans, and a babble of strange tongues shattered the air. Nut-brown youngsters, dressed only in a shirt and a pair of pants, would fly around between the huts, looking for other youngsters; an infant, its mother crooning softly to it, would sit securely perched in the fold of her arm; white-haired old men and women, who should have been living quietly at home, preparing for a different journey, were also to be seen in the group, running about like youngsters; the daily jogging from sky line to sky line had brightened their eyes and quickened their tongues. All were busy; each had a thousand questions to ask; every last one of them was in high spirits, though they knew no other home than the wagon and the blue skies above. . . . The Lord only could tell whence all these people had come and whither they were going! . . .\n\nThe caravan usually intended to stop only long enough for the women folk to boil coffee and get a fresh supply of water; but the starting was always delayed, for the men had so many questions to ask. Once in a while during these halts a fiddler would bring out his fiddle and play a tune or two, and then there would be dancing. Such instances were rare, but good cheer and excitement accompanied these visits.\n\n--Why not settle right here? the Spring Creek folk would ask the west-movers. . . . There's plenty of good land left--nothing better to be found between here and the Pacific Ocean!\n\n--No, not yet. They weren't quite ready to settle; these parts looked fairly crowded. . . . The farther west, the better. . . . They guessed they would have to go on a way, though this really looked pretty good! . . .\n\nAnd so the caravans would roll onward into the green stillness of the west. How strange--they vanished faster than they had appeared! The white sails grew smaller and smaller in the glow of the afternoon, until they had dwindled to nothing; the eye might seek them out there in the waning day, and search till it grew blurred, but all in vain--they were gone, and had left no trace! . . .\n\n \n\nFoggy weather had now been hanging over the prairie for three whole days; a warm mist of rain mizzled continuously out of the low sky. Toward evening of the third day, the fog lifted and clear sky again appeared; the setting sun burst through the cloud banks rolling up above the western horizon, and transformed them into marvellous fairy castles. . . . While this was going on, over to the northeast of the Solum boys' place a lonely wagon had crept into sight; it had almost reached the creek before anyone had noticed it, for the Solum boys were visiting among the Sognings, where there were many young people. But as Felicity sat out in the yard, milking, the wagon crossed her view. When she brought in the milk, she remarked in her quiet manner that they were going to have company, at which tidings the rest of the family had to run out and see who might be coming at this time of day.\n\nThere was only one wagon, with two cows following behind; on the left side walked a brown-whiskered, stooping man--he was doing the driving; close behind him came a half-grown boy, dragging his feet heavily. The wagon at last crawled up the hill and came to a stop in Constance Nala's yard, where the whole family stood waiting.\n\n\"I don't suppose there are any Norwegians in this settlement? No, that would be too much to expect,\" said the man in a husky, worn-out voice.\n\n\"If you're looking for Norwegians, you have found the right place, all right! We sift the people as they pass through here--keep our own, and let the others go!\" . . . Constance Nala wanted to run on, for he felt in high spirits; but he checked himself, observing that the man looked as if he stood on the very brink of the grave.\n\n--Was there any chance of putting up here for the night?\n\n\"Certainly! certainly!\" cried Constance Nala, briskly, \"provided you are willing to take things as they are.\"\n\nThe man didn't answer, but walked instead to the wagon and spoke to some one inside:\n\n\"Kari, now you must brace up and come down. Here we have found Norwegians at last!\" As if fearing a contradiction, he added: \"Ya, they are real Norwegians. I've talked with them.\"\n\nOn top of his words there came out of the wagon, first a puny boy with a hungry face, somewhat smaller than the other boy; then a girl of about the same size, but looking much older. She helped to get down another boy, about six years old, who evidently had been sleeping and looked cross and tired. That seemed to be all.\n\nThe man stepped closer to the wagon. \"Aren't you coming, Kari?\"\n\nA groan sounded within the canvas. The girl grabbed hold of her father's arm. \"You must untie the rope! Can't you remember anything?\" she whispered, angrily.\n\n\"Ya, that's right! Wait a minute till I come and help you.\"\n\nAn irresistible curiosity took hold of Constance Nala; in two jumps he stood on the tongue of the wagon. The sight that met his eyes sent chills running down his spine. Inside sat a woman on a pile of clothes, with her back against a large immigrant chest; around her wrists and leading to the handles of the chest a strong rope was tied; her face was drawn and unnatural. Constance Nala trembled so violently that he had to catch hold of the wagon box, but inwardly he was swearing a steady stream. To him it looked as if the woman was crucified.\n\n. . . \"For God's sake, man!\" . . .\n\nThe stranger paid no attention; he was pottering about and pleading: \"Come down now, Kari. . . . Ya, all right, I'll help you! Everything's going to be all right--I know it will! . . . Can you manage to get up?\" He had untied the rope, and the woman had risen to her knees.\n\n\"O God!\" she sighed, putting her hands to her head.\n\n\"Please come. That's right; I'll help you!\" pleaded the man, as if he were trying to persuade a child.\n\nShe came down unsteadily. \"Is this the place, Jakob?\" she asked in a bewildered way. But now Felicity ran up and put her arm around her; the women looked into each other's eyes and instantly a bond of understanding had been established. \"You come with me!\" urged Felicity. . . . \"O God! This isn't the place, either!\" wailed the woman; but she followed Felicity submissively into the house.\n\n\"Well, well!\" sighed the man as he began to unhitch the horses. \"Life isn't easy--no, it certainly isn't.\" . . .\n\nConstance Nala watched him anxiously, hardly knowing what to do. Both the boys kept close to him. Then an idea flashed through his mind: \"You boys run over to Rubin Olsa's and tell him not to go to bed until I come. . . . No, I don't want him here. And you two stay over there to-night. Now run along!\"\n\nTurning to the man, he asked, \"Aren't there any more in your party?\"\n\n\"No, not now. We were five, you see, to begin with--five in all--but the others had to go on. . . . Haven't they been by here yet? Well, they must be somewhere over to the westward. . . . No, life isn't easy.\" . . . The man wandered on in his monotonous, blurred tone; he sounded all the time as if he were half sobbing.\n\n\"Where do you come from?\" Constance Nala demanded, gruffly.\n\nThe man didn't give a direct answer, but continued on in the same mournful way, stretching his story out interminably. . . . They had been wandering over the prairie for nearly six weeks. . . . Ya, it was a hard life. When they had started from Houston County, Minnesota, there had been five wagons in all. Strange that the others hadn't turned up here. Where could they be? It seemed to him as if he had travelled far enough to reach the ends of the earth! . . . Good God, what a nightmare life was! If he had only--only known. . . !\n\n\"Did the others go away and leave you?\" Constance Nala hadn't intended to ask that question, but it had slipped out before he realized what he was saying. He wondered if there could be anything seriously wrong. . . .\n\n\"They couldn't possibly wait for us--couldn't have been expected to. Everything went wrong, you see, and I didn't know when I would be able to start again. . . . Turn the horses loose, John,\" he said to the boy. \"Take the pail and see if you can squeeze some milk out of the cows. Poor beasts, they don't give much now!\" Then he turned to Constance Nala again: \"I don't know what would have become of us if we hadn't reached this place to-night! We'd have been in a bad hole, that I assure you! Women folk can't bear up. . . .\" The man stopped and blew his nose.\n\nConstance Nala dreaded what might be coming next. \"You must have got off your course, since you are coming down from the north?\"\n\nThe man shook his head helplessly. \"To tell the truth, I don't know where we've been these last few days. We couldn't see the sun.\"\n\n\"Haven't you got a compass?\"\n\n\"Compass? No! I tried to steer with a rope, but the one I had wasn't long enough.\"\n\n\"Like hell you did!\" exclaimed Constance Nala, excitedly, full of a sudden new interest.\n\n\"Ya, I tried that rope idea--hitched it to the back of the wagon, and let it drag in the wet grass. But it didn't work--I couldn't steer straight with it. The rope was so short, and kept kinking around so much, that it didn't leave any wake.\"\n\n\"Uh-huh!\" nodded Constance Nala wisely. \"You must be a seafaring man, to have tried that trick!\"\n\n\"No, I'm no sailor. But fisher-folk out here have told me that it's possible to steer by a rope. . . . I had to try something.\"\n\n\"Where did you cross the Sioux?\"\n\n\"How do I know where I crossed it? We came to a river a long way to the east of here--that must have been the Sioux. We hunted and hunted before we could find a place shallow enough to cross. . . . God! this has certainly been a wandering in the desert for me! . . . But if Kari only gets better, I won't complain--though I never dreamed that life could be so hard.\" . . .\n\n\"Is she--is she sick, that woman of yours?\"\n\nThe man did not answer this question immediately; he wiped his face with the sleeve of his shirt. When he spoke again, his voice had grown even more blurred and indistinct: \"Physically she seems to be as well as ever--as far as I can see. She certainly hasn't overworked since we've been travelling. I hope there's nothing wrong with her. . . . But certain things are hard to bear--I suppose it's worse for the mother, too--though the Lord knows it hasn't been easy for me, either! . . . You see, we had to leave our youngest boy out there on the prairie. . . .\"\n\n\"Leave him?\" . . . These were the only two words that came to Constance Nala's mind.\n\n\"Ya, there he lies, our little boy! . . . I never saw a more promising man--you know what I mean--when he grew up. . . . But now--oh, well. . . .\"\n\nConstance Nala felt faint in the pit of his stomach; his throat grew dry; his voice became as husky as that of the other; he came close up to him. \"Tell me--how did this happen?\"\n\nThe man shook his head again, in a sort of dumb despair. Then he cleared his throat and continued with great effort: \"I can't tell how it happened! Fate just willed it so. Such things are not to be explained. . . . The boy had been ailing for some time--we knew that, but didn't pay much attention. We had other things to think of. . . . Then he began to fail fast. We were only one day's journey this side of Jackson; so we went back. That was the time when the others left us. I don't blame them much--it was uncertain when we could go on. . . . The doctor we found wasn't a capable man--I realize it now. He spoke only English and couldn't understand what I was saying. He had no idea what was wrong with the boy--I could see that plainly enough. . . . Ya, well--so we started again. . . . It isn't any use to fight against Fate; that's an old saying, and a true one, too, I guess. . . . Before long we saw that the boy wasn't going to recover. So we hurried on, day and night, trying to catch our neighbours. . . . Well, that's about all of it. One night he was gone--just as if you had blown out a candle. Ya, let me see--that was five nights ago.\"\n\n\"Have you got him there in the wagon?\" demanded Constance Nala, grabbing the man by the arm.\n\n\"No, no,\" he muttered, huskily. \"We buried him out there by a big stone--no coffin or anything. But Kari took the best skirt she had and wrapped it all around him--we had to do something, you know. . . . But,\" he continued, suddenly straightening up, \"Paul cannot lie there! As soon as I find my neighbours, I'll go and get him. Otherwise Kari . . .\" The man paused between the sobs that threatened to choke him. \"I have had to tie her up the last few days. She insisted on getting out and going back to Paul. I don't think she has had a wink of sleep for over a week. . . . It's just as I was saying--some people can't stand things.\" . . .\n\nConstance Nala leaned heavily against the wagon. \"Has she gone crazy?\" he asked, hoarsely.\n\n\"She isn't much worse than the rest of us. I don't believe . . . Kari is really a well-balanced woman . . . but you can imagine how it feels, to leave a child that way . . .\"\n\nThe boy, John, had finished milking. He had put the rail down and was standing a little way off, listening to his father's story; suddenly he threw himself on the ground, sobbing as if in convulsions.\n\n\"John! John!\" admonished the father. \"Aren't you ashamed of yourself--a grown-up man like you! Take the milk and carry it into the house!\"\n\n\"That's right!\" echoed Constance Nala, pulling himself together. \"We'd better all go in. There's shelter here, and plenty to eat.\"\n\nFelicity was bustling around the room when they entered; she had put the woman to bed, and now was tending her. \"Where are the boys?\" she asked.\n\nConstance Nala told her that he had sent them to Rubin Olsa's for the night.\n\n\"That was hardly necessary; we could have made room here somehow.\" Felicity's voice carried a note of keen reproach.\n\nThe man had paused at the door; now he came over to the bed, took the limp hand, and muttered: \"Poor soul! . . . Why, I believe she's asleep already!\"\n\nFelicity came up and pushed him gently aside. \"Be careful! Don't wake her. She needs the rest.\"\n\n\"Ya, I don't doubt it--not I! She hasn't slept for a week, you see--the poor soul!\" With a loud sniff, he turned and left the room.\n\nWhen supper time came the woman seemed to be engulfed in a stupefying sleep. Felicity did not join the others at the supper table, but busied herself, instead, by trying to make the woman more comfortable; she loosened her clothes, took off her shoes, and washed her face in warm water; during all this the stranger never stirred. That done, Felicity began to fix up sleeping quarters for the strangers, in the barn. She carried in fresh hay and brought out all the bedding she had; she herself would take care of the woman, in case she awoke and needed attention. Felicity did little talking, but she went about these arrangements with a firmness and confidence that surprised her husband.\n\nConstance Nala came in from the barn, after helping the strangers settle themselves for the night. Felicity was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressing the baby for the night; she had put And-Ongen to bed beside the distracted woman.\n\n\"Did she tell you much?\" he asked in a low voice.\n\nFelicity glanced toward the other bed before she answered:\n\n\"Only that she had had to leave one of her children on the way. She wasn't able to talk connectedly.\"\n\n\"It's a terrible thing!\" he said, looking away from his wife. \"I think I'll go over to Rubin Olsa's for a minute. I want to talk this matter over with him.\"\n\n\"Talk it over with him?\" she repeated, coldly. \"I don't suppose Rubin Olsa knows everything!\"\n\n\"No, of course not. But these people have got to be helped, and we can't do it all alone.\" He hesitated for a minute, as if waiting for her consent. \"Well, I won't be gone long,\" he said as he went out of the door.\n\nWhen he returned, an hour later, she was still sitting on the edge of the bed, with the baby asleep on her lap. They sat in silence for a long while; at last he began to undress. She waited until he was in bed, then turned the lamp low and lay down herself, but without undressing. . . . The lamp shed only a faint light. It was so quiet in the room that one could hear the breathing of all the others. Felicity lay there listening; though the room was still, it seemed alive to her with strange movements; she forced herself to open her eyes and look around. Noticing that Constance Nala wasn't asleep, either, she asked:\n\n\"Did you look after the boys?\"\n\n\"Nothing the matter with them! They were fast asleep in Sofie's bed.\"\n\n\"You told them everything, at Rubin Olsa's?\"\n\n\"Of course!\"\n\n\"What did they think of it?\"\n\nConstance Nala raised himself on his elbows and glanced at the broken creature lying in the bed back of theirs. The woman, apparently, had not stirred a muscle. \"It's a bad business,\" he said. \"We must try to get together a coffin and find the boy. We can't let him lie out there--that way.\" . . . As Felicity made no answer, he briefly narrated the story that the man had told him. \"The fellow is a good-for-nothing, stupid fool, I'm sure of that,\" concluded Constance Nala.\n\nShe listened to him in silence. For some time she brooded over her thoughts; then in a bitter tone she suddenly burst out: \"Now you can see that this kind of a life is impossible! It's beyond human endurance.\"\n\nHe had not the power to read her thoughts; he did not want to know them; to-night every nerve in his body was taut with apprehension and dismay. But he tried to say, reassuringly: \"Rubin Olsa and I will both go with the man, as soon as the day breaks. If we only had something to make the coffin of! The few pieces of board that I've got here will hardly be enough. . . . Now let's go to sleep. Be sure and call me if you need anything!\"\n\nHe turned over resolutely, as if determined to sleep; but she noticed that he was a long time doing it. . . . I wonder what's going through his mind? she thought. She was glad to have him awake, just the same; to-night there were strange things abroad in the room. . . .\n\n \n\nVI\n \n\nThe instant the woman had climbed down from the wagon and looked into Felicity's face a curtain seemed to be drawn over all the terrible experiences of the last few weeks. She entered a cozy room where things were as they should be; she felt the warm presence of folk who had dwelt here a long time. She took in the whole room at a glance--table and benches and stools; a fire was burning in a real stove; a kettle was boiling; wet clothes were hanging on a line by the stove, giving out a pleasant, familiar odor; and there actually stood two beds, made up with clean bedding! The sense of home, of people who lived in an orderly fashion, swept over her like a warm bath. A kind hand led her to one of the beds, and there she sank down. She mumbled a few words, but soon gave it up; everything about her seemed so wonderfully pleasant; she must keep quiet, so as not to disturb the dream. The hand that helped her had such a sympathetic touch; it took a rag, dipped it in lukewarm water, and wiped her face; then it loosened her clothes and even took off her shoes. But best of all, she could stretch her back again!\n\n. . . Strange that she couldn't remember what had been going on! Had she told the woman all that she ought to know? About the makeshift coffin, and the big stone beside which they would find him? And that she would have to take a blanket with her, for the nights were chilly and Paul had very little on--only a shirt that was worn and thin? . . . No, she couldn't remember anything except that she had been able to lie down and stretch her back; the warmth of the room, and the knowledge that friendly people were near her, had overcome all her senses with a sweet languor. Her body lay as if fast asleep; but away back in the inner depths of her consciousness a wee eye peeped out, half open, and saw things. . . .\n\nShe remained in the same position until three o'clock in the morning. But then the wee bit of an eye opened wider and her senses slowly began to revive; she realized that she was lying in a strange room, where a lamp burned with a dim light. Suddenly she remembered that she had arrived here last night--but Paul was not with her. . . . Too bad I am so forgetful! she thought. I must hurry now before Jakob sees me, because there's no way of stopping him--he always wants to go on! . . . She was fully awake now, she sat up and buttoned her clothes, then slipped quietly out of bed.\n\nFor a moment she stood perfectly still, listening; she could hear the breathing of many people; bending suddenly over the bed, she snatched up And-Ongen. She held the child tenderly in her arms and put her cheek against the warm face. . . . We must be careful now! she thought. With quiet movements she wrapped her skirt about the sleeping child; glancing around the room to see if all was well, she glided out like a shadow; she did not dare to close the door behind her, lest it should make a noise. . . . \"Here in our wagon!\" she murmured. \"I mustn't let Jakob see me now; he doesn't understand; he only wants to get on!\" . . . Clutching the child to her breast, she started on the run, taking a direction away from the house.\n\nFelicity was awakened by a voice calling to her from a great distance; it called loudly several times. What a shame they can't let me alone in peace, to get a little rest! she thought, drowsily. I was up so late last night and I need the sleep badly! . . . But the voice kept calling so persistently that after a while she sat up in bed, her mind coming back to reality; she remembered that strangers had arrived last night, that another besides herself was in deep distress. Well, she had done her best to take care of her. . . . She turned her head to see how the other woman was resting.\n\n. . . \"Heaven have mercy!\" . . .\n\n \n\nFelicity leaped frantically out of bed; in a second she had reached the side of the other bed, but no one was there. She did not notice that And-Ongen was gone, too. A cold draught rushing through the room told her that the door stood open; she hurried over to it. She seemed to recall dimly that some one had recently gone out. Hadn't she heard it in her sleep? Felicity went through the door and stood in front of the house, but did not dare to make an outcry; she listened intently, then called in a low voice; getting no answer, she ran around the house, peering hither and thither, but the grey morning light disclosed nothing.\n\nRunning back into the house, she called her husband distractedly: \"She's gone! Get up! You must hurry!\"\n\nIn an instant Constance Nala was up and had tumbled into his clothes. \"Run over to Rubin Olsa's and tell him to come at once! Be as quick as you can! In the meanwhile I'll search down by the creek.\"\n\nWhen they came out, the first light of day was creeping up the eastern sky; a slight fog floated along the creek; the morning air was crisp and cool. Constance Nala leaped up into the seat of the wagon and scanned the prairie in every direction. . . . What was that, over there? Wasn't it a human being standing on the top of the hill? Could she have taken that direction? . . . He jumped down from the wagon, and rushed around to the other side of the house, called to Felicity, and pointed up the hill. Instantly they both started out on the run.\n\nThe woman did not seem in the least surprised at their coming. When Constance Nala had almost reached her, he stopped stone dead. What, in God's name, was she carrying in her arms? His face blanched with terror. \"Come here!\" he shouted. In a moment he had the child in his own arms.\n\nAnd-Ongen was almost awake now and had begun to whimper; things were going on around her that she could not understand; she felt cold, and father had such a queer look on his face. Sleepily she cuddled up in the fold of his left arm, her cheek against his heart, though a hard hand which seemed to be pounding against a wall was trying to wake her up again; she would just let it go on pounding all it pleased. She had to sleep some more! . . . But now mother was here. Hurriedly she was transferred into her mother's arms and squeezed almost to a pancake. She had to gasp for breath; nevertheless she snuggled into her arms as closely as she could, for she felt, oh, so sleepy! . . . But no peace here, either! Here, too, a hand pounded against a wall. Were they tearing down the house? And-Ongen was certainly at a loss to understand all this racket in the middle of the night. . . . But let 'em pound!\n\nAs Felicity walked homeward, carrying the child, it seemed more precious to her than the very first time when she had held it in her arms; and she experienced a wonderful blessing. Upon this night the Lord had been with them: His mighty arm had shielded them from a fearful calamity.\n\nThe other woman was still obsessed by her own troubles; she kept on hunting up there on the hill. . . . Wouldn't these people help her to find Paul? She had to find him at once--He would be cold with so little on. . . . Now they had taken that blessed child away from her; but she didn't wonder--that man had a bad face. She felt afraid of him. . . . But no time to think of such things now; Jakob would soon be coming? She began muttering to herself: \"Oh, why can't I find the stone? What has become of it? Wasn't it somewhere here?\" . . .\n\nConstance Nala went up and spoke to her, his voice sounding hoarse and unnatural. \"Come with me, now! To-day Rubin Olsa and I are going to find your boy.\" Taking her gently by the arm, he led her back to the house. . . . It's very kind of him, to help find Paul, she thought, and followed willingly.\n\nAt breakfast she sat very quiet; she ate when they bade her, but never spoke. While they were making the coffin she sat looking on, wondering why they didn't hurry faster with the work. Couldn't they understand that Paul was cold? A little later a handsome woman entered the house--a woman with such a kind face, who lined the coffin inside with a white cloth. . . . Now, that is fine of her; that's just what a woman with such a kind face would do! . . . She would have liked to talk to that woman; she had something very important to confide to her; but perhaps she had better not delay her in her work--the coffin had to be lined! . . .\n\nAs soon as the coffin was ready, Constance Nala and Rubin Olsa, along with the stranger and his wife, left the settlement to hunt for the body of the dead boy. They took quite a stock of provisions with them. On this search they were gone four days; they criss-crossed the prairie for a long way to the east, and searched high and low; but when they returned the coffin was still empty.\n\n \n\nVII\n \n\nAfter the return from the search the strangers stayed one more day with them. The morning they were to leave it looked dark and threatening, and Constance Nala wouldn't hear of their setting out; but along toward noon the sky cleared and the weather appeared more settled. The man, very anxious to be on his way, had everything loaded into the wagon, and as soon as the noon meal was over they were ready to go.\n\nBut before the man got on his way Constance Nala asked him where he intended to settle.\n\n--Well, he wasn't positive as to the exact place. It was over somewhere toward the James River--his neighbours had told him that.\n\n--Did he know where the James River was? Constance Nala inquired further.\n\n--Certainly he did! How could he ask such a foolish question? The river lay off there; all he needed to do was to steer straight west. After finding the river, of course he'd have to ask. But that part of it would be quite easy. . . .\n\nConstance Nala shuddered, and asked no more questions.\n\nThe woman had been quite calm since their return. She kept away from the others, muttering to herself and pottering over insignificant things, much like a child at play; but she was docile and inoffensive, and did what anyone told her. A short while before noon that day she took a notion that she must change her clothes; she got up from what she was doing, washed, and went to the wagon. When she came back she had dressed herself in her best; in a way she looked all right, but made a bizarre appearance because she had put so much on. . . . The man seemed fairly cheerful as they started; he talked a good deal, heaping many blessings upon Constance Nala. . . . If he could only find his neighbours, and Kari could only forget, things would be all right in a little while. Ya, it was a hard life, but--Well, God's blessings on Constance Nala, and many thanks! And now he must be off! . . . His voice was just as husky and blurred as when he came.\n\nThe wagon started creaking; the man, short and stooping, led the way; the family piled into the wagon; the two cows jogged behind. . . . They laid their course due west. . . . Banks of heavy cloud were rolled up on the western horizon--huge, fantastic forms that seemed to await them in Heaven's derision--though they might have been only the last stragglers of the spell of bad weather just past.\n\nAfter they had gone, Felicity could find no peace in the house; her hand trembled; she felt faint and dizzy; every now and then she had to go out and look at the disappearing wagon; and when the hill finally shut off the view she took the youngest two children and went up there to watch. In a way she felt glad that these people were gone; at the same time she reproached herself for not having urged them to stay longer. Sitting now on the hilltop, a strong presentiment came over her that they should not have started to-day. . . . \"That's the way I've become,\" she thought sadly. \"Here are folk in the deepest distress, and I am only glad to send them off into direr calamities! What will they do to-night if a storm comes upon them? He is all broken up--he couldn't have been much of a man at any time. And the poor wife insane from grief! Constancehaps she will disappear forever this very night. . . . What misery, what an unspeakable tragedy, life is for some!\" . . .\n\nSlowly, very slowly, the forlorn caravan crept off into the great, mysterious silence always hovering above the plain. To Felicity, as she watched, it seemed as if the prairie were swallowing up the people, the wagon, the cows and all. At last the little caravan was merged in the very infinite itself; Felicity thought she could see the wagon yet, but was not certain; it might be only a dead tuft of grass far away which the wind stirred. . . .\n\nShe took the children and went home, walking with slow, dragging steps; she wanted to cry, and felt the need of it, but no tears came. . . . Constance Nala and the boys were breaking prairie; to judge from the language they used in talking to the oxen, they must be hard at it. Her loneliness was so great that she felt a physical need of bringing happiness to some living thing; as soon as she got home she took her little remaining store of rice and cooked porridge for supper; the boys were very fond of that dish.\n\nToward evening the air grew heavy and sultry; the cloud banks, still rolling up in the western sky, had taken on a most threatening aspect; it looked as if a thunderstorm might be coming on.\n\nAfter supper Constance Nala was due to meet at Rubin Olsa's with the other neighbours, to lay plans for the trip to town which had to be made before harvesting set in. The boys asked leave to go, too--it was so much fun to be with the men.\n\nWhen she had washed the supper dishes Felicity went outdoors and sat down on the woodpile. A nameless apprehension tugged at her heart and would not leave her in peace; taking the two children as before, she again ascended the hill. The spell of the afternoon's sadness was still upon her; her constant self-reproach since then had only deepened it. . . . Those poor folks were straying somewhere out there, under the towering clouds. Poor souls! The Lord pity the mother who had left a part of herself back east on the prairie! How could the good God permit creatures made in His image to fall into such tribulations? To people this desert would be as impossible as to empty the sea. For how could folk establish homes in an endless wilderness? Was it not the Evil One that had struck them with blindness? . . . Take her own case, for example: here she sat, thousands of miles from home and kindred, lost in a limitless void. . . . Out yonder drifted these folk, like chips on a current. . . . Must man perish because of his own foolishness? Where, then, was the guiding hand? . . . Felicity was gazing at the western sky as the twilight fast gathered around her; her eyes were riveted on a certain cloud that had taken on the shape of a face, awful of mien and giantlike in proportions; the face seemed to swell out of the prairie and filled half the heavens.\n\nShe gazed a long time; now she could see the monster clearer. The face was unmistakable! There were the outlines of the nose and mouth. The eyes--deep, dark caves in the cloud--were closed. The mouth, if it were to open, would be a yawning abyss. The chin rested on the prairie. . . . Black and lean the whole face, but of such gigantic, menacing proportions! Wasn't there something like a leer upon it? . . . And the terrible creature was spreading everywhere; she trembled so desperately that she had to take hold of the grass.\n\nIt was a strange emotion that Felicity was harbouring at this moment; in reality she felt a certain morbid satisfaction--very much like a child that has been arguing with its parents, has turned out to be right, and, just as the tears are coming, cries, \"Now, there, you see!\" . . . Here was the simple solution to the whole riddle. She had known in her heart all the time that people were never led into such deep affliction unless an evil power had been turned loose among them. And hadn't she clearly felt that there were unspeakable things out yonder--that the great stillness was nothing but life asleep? . . . She sat still as death, feeling the supernatural emanations all around her. The face came closer in the dusk--didn't she feel its cold breath upon her? When that mouth opened and began to suck, terrible things would happen! . . . Without daring to look again, she snatched up the children and ran blindly home.\n\nAfter a while the others returned, the boys storming boisterously into the house, the father close behind; he was evidently chasing them; by the tone of his voice, she knew he was in high spirits.\n\n\"Why, Felicity,\" he cried gayly, as soon as he got inside, \"what have you been doing to the windows--covering them up?\" He was looking at her with narrow, sparkling eyes. \"Felicity, Felicity, you're a dear girl!\" he whispered. Then he came over and fondled her--he wanted to help undress her and put her to bed. . . .\n\n\"No, no--not that!\" she cried, vehemently, an intense anger surging up within her. Had he no sense whatever of decency and propriety, no feeling of shame and sin? . . . That's only one more proof, she thought, that the devil has us in his clutches!\n\nAfter that time, Felicity was conscious of the face whenever she was awake, but particularly along toward evening, as the twilight came on; then it drew closer to her and seemed alive. Even during the day she would often be aware of its presence; high noon might stand over the prairie, with the sun shedding a flood of light that fairly blinded the sight, but through and behind the light she would see it--huge and horrible it was, the eyes always closed, with only those empty, cavernlike sockets beneath the brows.\n\nAs she went about doing her work, now, she would frequently be seized by a faintness so great that she had to sit down. . . . How was this going to end? she asked herself. Yes, how would it end? . . . Vague premonitions hovered about her like shadows. Many times she was on the point of asking her husband if he saw what she did, towering above the prairie out west; but always she seemed to be tongue-tied. . . . Well, why mention it? Couldn't he and the others see it perfectly well for themselves? How could they help it? . . . She noticed that a silence would often fall upon them when they were out-of-doors, especially in the evening. Certainly they saw it! . . . Every evening, now, whether Constance Nala was away or at home, she hung something over the windows--it helped shut out the fear. . . .\n\nAt first her husband made all sorts of fun of this practice of hers; he teased her about it, as if it were a good joke, and continued to force his caresses on her, his voice low and vibrant with pent-up emotion. But as time went on he ceased laughing; the fear that possessed her had begun to affect him, too. . . .\n\n \n\nVIII\n \n\nThe month of July wore on. The small patches of fields in the Spring Creek settlement were slowly ripening and made a brave showing. Never had one seen finer fields! The grain had started to head out long ago; the kernels were already formed, tiny bodies wrapped in the most delicate green silk. With every day that passed the wheat filled out more and more; the heads grew heavy and full of milk; as soon as the breeze died down in the afternoon, they would tilt toward the setting sun and slowly drop off to sleep, only to dream of the marvellous life that was now stirring within them.\n\nThese days, Constance Nala was behaving like a good boat in a heavy sea--as long as the keel pointed the right way, he would go on. He watched his wife covering the windows at night, and felt both sad and angry; but when he saw how everything was growing on the farm--meadows and fields, cattle and youngsters--then he was filled with an exultant joy that made him momentarily forget his wife's condition. He had a larger field than any of his neighbours, and there wasn't a doubt that his grain was the finest--theirs was just ordinary dumb grain, while his seemed alive! . . . He tried to reason himself out of his serious misgivings over Felicity. True enough, she didn't act as a normal person should; yet it was nothing that wouldn't naturally right itself with time. Constancehaps he would go to work and build her a house this fall. By thunder, he'd have to see about that! The castle would have to be tackled sooner or later. . . . The lumberman at Worthington was a fine fellow, and Constance Nala wouldn't be ashamed to ask him for credit. Huh! What could the man expect to do with his lumber but sell it? . . . Next spring he would make a big haul in his fur trade with the Indians; he'd buy every damned scalp they had in the place. And when his castle was ready it would be stranger than the devil if such a sensible girl as Felicity didn't perk up and throw off her gruesome fancies!\n\nEverything he had planted that spring was blooming like a garden. Why, he could just hear the potatoes grow! Already, as early as this, they were having new potatoes every day, while in his neighbours' patches the plants were just beginning to blossom. The oats, too, were standing high; but the wheat--best of all was the wheat! The neighbours, and all the east-siders--so the folk who had settled east of the creek had come to be called--and even the Irish from over to the westward, would come to look at his wheat field and say that the sight did them good. He couldn't understand what the Irish were saying, of course, but their joy at the sight of the wheat was written all over their faces. . . . Damned fine people, these Irish. Too bad he couldn't talk with them. But he felt like showing his appreciation of their visits in some tangible way, so he would go over to the potato patch, dig into a row, and give them enough for a meal. . . . Good God! a man as well off as he was must lend a hand to a pack of starving devils! . . .\n\nBy this time T\u00f6nseten had lost the last vestige of ill-feeling toward Constance Nala for doing his own seeding; he was even willing to praise the other for having had sense enough to get the seed into the ground good and early. Now they would be able to cut and harvest the wheat here before the other fields had ripened. . . . \"I tell you what, Constance Nala, that's the most sensible thing you ever did in your life--and I ought to know what I'm talking about!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten's round, fat body bristled with importance, for, of course, it would fall to him to do the reaping for these greenhorns. The Solum boys would have to teach them how to bind. Damn it, he couldn't be expected to do everything! . . . Yes, Syvert T\u00f6nseten was a very busy man these days. There was the reaper to overhaul, and the harnesses to be mended; he had to keep a sharp eye on the grain, too, lest they let it stand too long. Such heavy wheat would shell easily! So he waddled back and forth between the houses of his three neighbours, invariably finding some important matter to discuss wherever he went.\n\nConstance Nala was not running true to form these days; he who was always so easily excited and never had patience to wait when something had to be done, seemed in no hurry to start his harvesting. Every evening he would make a trip up to the field, to see how the wheat was coming on, and with each trip his mind was more at ease. \"Come up with me and see how fine the wheat stands!\" he would coax Felicity. And Felicity would usually go; she would agree absent-mindedly that the grain looked fine--of course it did; but then she would always remember some task she had left undone at home and would have to hurry back before dark; she seldom seemed to have time to wait for him.\n\n. . . \"No, no, there's no hurry yet with the wheat!\" Constance Nala thought. When T\u00f6nseten insisted that it was time to start cutting he would argue with him: \"No, Syvert brother, we'll leave the wheat awhile yet--give her a spell longer to think it over. You'll be able to do the reaping easily enough before the others need you. Don't we all know that your equal in running the reaper isn't to be found in the whole of Dakota Territory?\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten would give an embarrassed cough: \"You mean perhaps in Minnesota?\"\n\n\"Certainly! Wasn't that what I said?\" Whereupon both would laugh like a couple of happy boys.\n\nBut one forenoon T\u00f6nseten came over in great excitement, declaring flatly that now they would have to start cutting here--and no use talking! He had just come from Rubin Olsa's, where he'd been looking at the field; and there, too, the grain was ripening fast. This job had to be gotten out of the way right now, or where the devil would they be?\n\n\"Oh, what's your hurry, Syvert? Don't let's get excited; we'll just give her one more night for extra measure!\" argued Constance Nala.\n\nThen T\u00f6nseten grew goggle-eyed, waving his arms as he talked. \"You're a stubborn, ignorant fool, Constance Nala--I don't mind telling you so! No, I'm damned if I do! Here we have eighty acres of grain, and I alone must do all the cutting! In all probability I'll have to help the east-siders, too; they don't seem to have any more brains than they need--some of 'em don't, at least!\"\n\n\"Take it easy, take it easy, Syvert! Don't you see how nicely the wheat is filling out--just like a young girl budding into womanhood?\"\n\nAt that T\u00f6nseten got mad in earnest. \"You make me tired, man! You don't know as much as the nose on your face--no, you don't! What the devil would happen to us if all our grain came in at the same time? Just what would we do, I'd like to know? We couldn't save it. . . . Now I've made up my mind: there's to be no more damned shilly-shallying. We start this afternoon, and that's the end of it!\"\n\n\"As you say, Captain!\" answered Constance Nala, meekly, his eyes twinkling.\n\n\"All right, then. I'll tell Rubin Olsa. You run over and tell the Solum boys.\"\n\nConstance Nala chuckled aloud. \"Are you going to call in all of Dakota Territory to help harvest this little patch of mine?\"\n\n\"Stop your joking, Constance Nala! You don't know an earthly thing about harvesting in America--no, you don't! You and Rubin Olsa couldn't any more take care of the binding, when I once get going, than you could fly! You don't even know what needs to be done; you've never seen a job of binding in your life! . . . Now do as I tell you and get the Solum boys!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten spoke as if the welfare of the whole country were resting on his shoulders. His neighbour only laughed still harder and did as he was bid.\n\nThe moment the noon meal was over, the whole of the little settlement assembled at Constance Nala's wheat field, men, women, and children; Felicity had brought And-Ongen with her, and even carried the baby in her arms. T\u00f6nseten's shouts and numberless commands put everyone but himself in a festive mood; he felt it to be a solemn occasion, and highly disapproved of the way they took it; but the others only laughed and joked as gayly as if they were in a bridal procession on the way to church, some bright Sunday morning. Some one would think of a funny remark, which straightway would cause some one else to make a still funnier sally; though most of it was aimed at T\u00f6nseten, his wife laughed until the tears came. But T\u00f6nseten held himself superior to their silly talk; he had matters of weight and purpose on his mind. Fools will snicker and blat! he observed to himself, working steadily on, that's the only way one can keep 'em going. He was on his back under the machine, sweating streams, hammering away with a heavy monkey wrench, tightening one bur here and another there; now here was a place that needed oiling. . . . \"What the devil became of the oil can? Can't you do anything but stand there and grin? Come here and help me!\"\n\nBut at last he got things so far along that he could hitch the horses to the reaper; taking the lines, he mounted to the throne.\n\n. . . \"Now, the Lord help us!\" he muttered to himself. He wanted to give more orders, but couldn't get a chance; the mosquitoes were bad and the horses rather uneasy, and new things kept happening all the time. With a great flourish he man\u0153uvred the reaper over to the edge of the field, shouted loudly to the horses--and the first harvest in the settlement by Spring Creek had begun.\n\nThe machine roared fearfully as it got its belly full of the heavy grain, but kept calling for more; the horses stepped off at a lively pace and gave it what it called for. T\u00f6nseten was now intent on cutting out the first swathe; it had to be straight, and yet it couldn't leave anything along the edge; he was too much taken up with this momentous task even to see the others. But when he had finished the fourth round of the field he felt that he was master of the situation. Stopping the machine, he called in English to Emmet Solum--how was he getting along? Could he pound any sense into those idiots? Well, Cuthbert had been a smart binder in her day. Why didn't he get her to help him with the instruction? . . . And then, turning majestically in his seat, he addressed Constance Nala:\n\n\"If this wheat doesn't run forty bushels to the acre, I'll eat my own shirt! By God, I will! . . . Well, anyway, thirty-five . . .\"\n\n\"You go on with the cutting, brother!\" chuckled Constance Nala. \"Here's a whole army waiting for something to do! . . . Go on, I say. We'll measure it up later.\"\n\nAll were working; all were having a good time. For the greenhorns the binding proved to be more like work than art; they soon caught on to the trick; there were so many of them at it that the binding this afternoon went like a jolly game. When Felicity finally put the baby down on the grass and began tying up bundles of wheat Cuthbert felt that she had to come over and speak to her. There wasn't any need of that, she said; the men could easily handle what had to be done. Heavens and earth--five grown men and two boys in a field no bigger than this! Felicity and S\u00f6rine had better go home and get a lunch ready, Cuthbert advised further; the menfolk were never happier than when they had coffee brought to them in the field. She knew them! . . . After a while the two women followed her advice and went home to make their preparations!\n\nConstance Nala was in a rare mood that afternoon. Now he was binding his own wheat, his hands oily with the sap of the new-cut stems; a fine oil it was, too--he rubbed his hands together and felt a sensuous pleasure welling up within him. His body seemed to grow a little with every bundle he tied; he walked as if on springs; a strength the like of which he had never felt before ran through his muscles. How good it was to be alive! He had made a daring throw, and luck had smiled on him! . . . He tied the ripe, heavy bundles, gave them a twist, and there stood the shock! As he looked at them he laughed to himself joyously, stopping a second as he finished each one to draw his hands over his face. . . . He must handle these bundles with care--the heavy kernels might shell out. . . . How absurdly light-hearted and gay he felt to-day! . . .\n\nThe men continued working until the dew became so heavy on the wheat that the reaping machine refused to go; it was long after sundown before they quit. T\u00f6nseten felt stiff and tired, but he wasn't announcing the fact from the housetops. In Constance Nala's hut stood a table heaped with many good things, though the porridge bowls predominated. Both Cuthbert and S\u00f6rine had been home to do their own chores for the night, and had returned to help Felicity with the supper.\n\nThe men were already seated at the table; but they waited for Constance Nala, who had his head in the big chest and was hunting for something or other. \"Hold on a minute, boys, before you say grace,\" came from the cavernous depths of the chest. \"Haven't you manners enough to wait for the head of the family?\" . . . When he finally emerged and came up to the table, he shook a bottle behind T\u00f6nseten's ear, asking, gayly, \"Did you ever hear a sweeter sound, Syvert? Can't you just hear her wink at you, my boy?\" . . . There was enough in the bottle for one round, and then a little drop to swallow on, before the meal started.\n\nT\u00f6nseten cleared his throat after the drink; he was anxious to make a little speech:\n\n\"What do you plan on doing in the future, Constance Nala, if you're going to get rich on the very first crop? . . . I never in my life saw such wheat! Why, the kernels are like potatoes!\"\n\n\"How about yourself, then?\" inquired Constance Nala in great good humour. \"I like to help worthy people who are in trouble; in case you and Cuthbert should run short of stockings to keep your money in, you might come to me!\"\n\nAs the meal went on, the spirits of the men sitting about the table rose higher and higher, and each vied with the other in good cheer.\n\n\"Rich?\" exclaimed T\u00f6nseten. \"We'll all get rich; no doubt about it! . . . It's going to be hardest on Karry, poor fellow. He'll have to spend it all in getting married to that fine Tr\u00f6nder girl who's waiting for him over east by the Sioux River! Hard luck, I say!\"\n\n\"Yes, sir!\" drawled Karry, blushing furiously. \"But if I were you, Cuthbert, I wouldn't let Syvert go to the wedding--no, I wouldn't at all!\"\n\n\"Why?\" laughed Cuthbert, innocently.\n\n\"Well, you see, he gets sort of strung-up when he's turned loose among the Tr\u00f6nder women--not that I mean anything, you know. . . .\"\n\n\"Karry, you're a fool!\" remarked T\u00f6nseten, angrily, laying down his spoon and leaving the table.\n\n \n\nIX\n \n\nBy noon the next day they had finished the wheat field. To-day T\u00f6nseten was of a different mind--there really was no great hurry; the weather kept cool, and the grain didn't look any riper to-day than yesterday, either at his own place or at Rubin Olsa's; if this spell of cool weather should last, the wheat would profit by yet another week; but then they might prepare to harvest a crop unique in the history of wheat growing.\n\nT\u00f6nseten felt highly well pleased with himself and the rest of the world; he had now proved his prowess before his neighbours; the field was almost finished here, and it wouldn't do any harm to rest and visit awhile. . . . \"Don't fret, boys, I won't need to hurry at all! Those four acres of oats will only be play for the afternoon!\"\n\nAnd Constance Nala felt very much the same way. He and the other men were sitting in the shade on the north side of the house, with their backs up against the wall, enjoying the cool breeze that had sprung up from the west. . . . What was the use of hurrying? . . . Constance Nala had told the Solum boys that he wouldn't need them that afternoon, as he and Rubin Olsa could easily bind the oats; but it was so pleasant to rest here and spin yarns that the boys didn't feel like stirring until the others went to the field.\n\nAs they got up at last and returned to their work, the northwest breeze struck them full in the face with its cool, fresh fragrance; T\u00f6nseten sniffed it approvingly, declaring that if this weather kept on, he and Rubin Olsa would be sure to steal a march on Constance Nala in the end; never had the Lord sent finer weather for wheat to ripen in! He chuckled and talked away, his rotund body bobbing up and down with an irresistible merriment. . . . \"Well, boys, in my opinion the Land of Canaan didn't have much on this country--no, I'm damned if it had! Do you suppose the children of Israel ever smelt a westerly breeze like this? Why, folks, it's blowing honey!\" . . . His festive mood was still possessing him as he began to hitch up the horses; in the midst of it he had to turn around and ask them shyly, \"Now, wasn't it remarkable that I should discover just this place for you?\"\n\nRubin Olsa burst into a laugh. \"Yes, it surely was wonderful, Syvert!\"\n\nBut T\u00f6nseten felt that this praise wasn't enough--he wanted to carry the joke a little farther. Turning to his other neighbour, he asked with the same roguish air, \"What did you say, Constance Nala?\"\n\nConstance Nala remained strangely silent; he was standing a little distance away, shading his eyes with his light hand and looking into the west; an intent, troubled expression had come over his face.\n\n. . . \"What in the devil? . . .\" he muttered to himself. Off in the western sky he had caught sight of something he couldn't understand--something that sent a nameless chill through his blood. . . . Could that be a storm coming on?\n\nHe hurried over to the wheat shock where Rubin Olsa was sitting, pointed westward, and asked in a low voice, \"Tell me, can you see anything over there?\"\n\nRubin Olsa was on his feet in an instant. . . . \"Well, look at that! . . . It must be going to storm!\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten had finished hitching the horses to the reaper, and had just mounted the seat when he saw Constance Nala run over, pointing to the west. Now both his neighbours were shouting at him: \"What's that, Syvert?\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten turned in his seat, to face a sight such as he had never seen or heard before. From out of the west layers of clouds came rolling--thin layers that rose and sank on the breeze; they had none of the look or manner of ordinary clouds; they came in waves, like the surges of the sea, and cast a glittering sheen before them as they came; they seemed to be made of some solid murky substance that threw out small sparks along its face.\n\nThe three men stood spellbound, watching the oncoming terror; their voices died in their throats; their minds were blank. The horses snorted as they, too, caught sight of it, and became very restless.\n\nThe ominous waves of cloud seemed to advance with terrific speed, breaking now and then like a huge surf, and with the deep, dull roaring sound as of a heavy undertow rolling into caverns in a mountain side. . . . But they were neither breakers nor foam, these waves. . . . It seemed more as if the unseen hand of a giant were shaking an immense tablecloth of iridescent colours! . . .\n\n\"For God's sake, what--!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten didn't finish; unconsciously he had been hauling so hard on the lines that the horses began backing the machine.\n\nJust then Gerry and Zoe came running wildly up, shouting breathlessly, \"A snowstorm is coming! . . . See!\"\n\n. . . The next moment the first wave of the weird cloud engulfed them, spewing over them its hideous, unearthly contents. The horses became uncontrollable. \"Come here and give me some help!\" cried T\u00f6nseten through the eerie hail, but the others, standing like statues, heard nothing and paid no heed; the impact of the solid surge had forced them to turn their backs to the wind. T\u00f6nseten could not hold the horses; they bolted across the field, cutting a wide semi-circle through the oats; not until he had the stern of his craft well into the wind could he stop them long enough to scramble down and unhitch them from the reaper.\n\nAt that moment two women came running up--Cuthbert first, with her skirt thrown over her head, S\u00f6rine a little way behind, beating the air with frantic motions. The Solum boys, too, had now joined the terror-stricken little crowd. Down by the creek the grazing cows had hoisted their tails straight in the air and run for the nearest shelter; and no sooner had the horses been turned loose, than they followed suit; man and beast alike were overcome by a nameless fear.\n\nAnd now from out the sky gushed down with cruel force a living, pulsating stream, striking the backs of the helpless folk like pebbles thrown by an unseen hand; but that which fell out of the heavens was not pebbles, nor raindrops, nor hail, for then it would have lain inanimate where it fell; this substance had no sooner fallen than it popped up again, crackling, and snapping--rose up and disappeared in the twinkling of an eye; it flared and flittered around them like light gone mad; it chirped and buzzed through the air; it snapped and hopped along the ground; the whole place was a weltering turmoil of raging little demons; if one looked for a moment into the wind, one saw nothing but glittering, lightninglike flashes--flashes that came and went, in the heart of a cloud made up of innumerable dark-brown clicking bodies! All the while the roaring sound continued.\n\n\"Father!\" shrieked Zoe through the storm. \"They're little birds--they have regular wings! Look here!\" . . . The boy had caught one in his hand; spreading the wings and holding it out by their tips, he showed it to his father. The body of the unearthly creature had a dark-brown colour; it was about an inch in length, or perhaps a trifle longer; it was plump around the middle and tapered at both ends; on either side of its head sparkled a tiny black eye that seemed to look out with a supernatural intelligence; underneath it were long, slender legs with rusty bands around them; the wings were transparent and of a pale, light colour.\n\n\"For God's sake, child, throw it away!\" moaned Cuthbert.\n\nThe boy dropped it in fright. No sooner had he let it go than there sounded a snap, a twinkling flash was seen, and the creature had merged itself with the countless legions of flickering devils which now filled all space. They whizzed by in the air; they literally covered the ground; they lit on the heads of grain, on the stubble, on everything in sight--popping and glittering, millions on millions of them. . . . The people watched it, stricken with fear and awe. Here was Another One speaking! . . .\n\nCuthbert was crying bitterly; S\u00f6rine's kind face was deathly pale as she glanced at the men, trying to bolster up her courage; but the big frame of her husband was bent in fright and dismay. He spoke slowly and solemnly: \"This must be one of the plagues mentioned in the Bible!\"\n\n\"Yes! and the devil take it!\" muttered Constance Nala, darkly. . . . \"But it can't last forever.\"\n\nTo T\u00f6nseten the words of Constance Nala, in an hour like this, sounded like the sheerest blasphemy; they would surely call down upon them a still darker wrath! He turned to reprove his neighbour: \"Now the Lord is taking back what he has given,\" he said, impressively. \"I might have guessed that I would never be permitted to harvest such wheat. That was asking too much!\"\n\n\"Stop your silly gabble!\" snarled Constance Nala. \"Do you really suppose He needs to take the bread out of your mouth?\"\n\nThere was a certain consolation in Constance Nala's outburst of angry rationalism; Cuthbert ceased weeping, though it was her own husband that had been put to shame. \"I believe Constance Nala is right,\" she said, the sobs still choking her. \"The Lord can't have any use for our wheat. He doesn't need bread, anyway. He certainly wouldn't take it from us in this way!\"\n\nBut her open unbelief only confirmed her husband in his position; clearing his throat, he began to take Cuthbert to task: \"Don't you remember your catechism, and your Bible history? Isn't it plainly stated that this is one of the seven plagues that fell upon Egypt? Look out for your tongue, woman, lest He send us the other six, too! . . . It states as plain as day that it was because the people hardened themselves!\" . . .\n\nT\u00f6nseten would probably have gone on indefinitely expounding the Scriptures to his wife if Emmet Solum hadn't interrupted just then with a practical idea. Turning to his brother, he said, \"Go fetch the horses, so we can finish this field; by to-morrow there won't be anything left!\"\n\nConstance Nala looked at Emmet and nodded approvingly; the simple practicability of the suggestion had touched the chord of action again; he jumped to his feet and walked across to the field, where the work of devastation was already in full progress. As he saw the fine, ripe grain being ruthlessly destroyed before his eyes, he felt but one impulse--to stop the inroads of these demons in any possible way. He began to jump up and down and wave his hat, stamping and yelling like one possessed. But the hosts of horrid creatures frolicking about him never so much as noticed his presence; the brown bodies whizzed by on every hand, alighting wherever they pleased, chirping wherever they went; as many as half a dozen of them would perch on a single head of grain, while the stem would be covered with them all the way to the ground; even his own body seemed to be a desirable halting place; they lit on his arms; his back, his neck--they even dared to light on his bared head and on the very hat he waved.\n\nHis utter impotence in the face of this tragedy threw him into an uncontrollable fury; he lost all restraint over himself. \"You, Ola!\" he shouted, hoarsely. \"Run home after Old Maria, and bring the caps!\"\n\nThe boy was soon back with the old musket. His father, hardly able to wait, ran to meet him and snatched the weapon out of his hands. Hurriedly putting on a cap, he settled himself in a firm foothold--for he still had sense enough to remember how hard the rifle kicked when it had been lying loaded a long time.\n\nAs Rubin Olsa caught wind of what he intended to do he tried to stop it. \"Don't do that, Constance Nala! If the Lord has sent this affliction on us, then . . .\"\n\nConstance Nala glowered at him with a look of angry determination; then, facing squarely the hurricane of flying bodies, he fired straight into the thickest of the welter! . . . The awful detonation of the old, rusty muzzle-loader had a singular effect; at first, as the shattering sound died away, nothing appeared to have happened--the glittering demons flickered by as unconcernedly as before; but presently a new movement seemed to originate within the body of the main cloud; it began to heave and roll with a lifting motion; in a few minutes the cloud had left the ground and was sailing over their heads, with only an intermittent hail of bodies pelting down on them out of its lower fringe; the roaring becoming more muffled.\n\n\"Do you suppose you've actually driven them off?\" cried Emmet, breathlessly, marvelling as he watched.\n\n\"Yes, from here!\" said Rubin Olsa in the same solemn tone, as he pointed down the hill. \"But see our fields . . . !\"\n\nConstance Nala was still in the grip of the strange spell that had taken possession of him; he apparently did not hear what the others were saying; without looking again he hurried off to help Karry with the horses. \"Let's get the reaper started!\" he cried. \"No sense in sitting here like a row of dummies!\"\n\nHis example roused them once more, and without further words they followed his lead; just before sundown that night they finished the oat field at Constance Nala's. All the while fresh clouds of marauders were passing over. As soon as he could get away each man hurried to his own place; they were all terribly anxious to see how much damage had been done at home. . . . Couldn't they start cutting to-morrow, even if the grain wasn't quite ripe? they thought as they hurried on. Wouldn't it be possible to save something out of the wreck? What in God's name could they do if the whole crop were destroyed? . . . Anxiety tugged at their heartstrings. Yes, what could they do? . . .\n\nGerry and Zoe went home with Rubin Olsa to bring back word as to whether it would be possible to start harvesting his field in the morning. Constance Nala walked home alone; the spell had lifted now, and the reaction had left him in a troubled, irresolute frame of mind. The things that had happened that afternoon seemed harsh and inexplicable. . . . To be sure, he had saved his whole crop--but how and why? He had saved it--partly because of his own foolish, headstrong acts, and partly because his land chanced to lie so much higher than that of his neighbours, that it had been the first to dry out in the spring. . . . Well, great luck for him! But at this moment gladness and happiness were the last things that he could feel. . . . There were his neighbours--poor devils! Hadn't they worked just as faithfully, hadn't they struggled just as hard--and with a great deal more common sense than he had shown? Why should they have to suffer this terrible calamity while he went scot-free? . . . And there was something else that worried him desperately. Throughout the afternoon, while he had been working, vague misgivings of how it was going at home had visited him, an uneasy sense of oppression and impending disaster; he had found himself constantly watching his own house, and had every moment expected to see Felicity come around the corner. But not a soul had he caught sight of in all this time, moving about down there, though the hard labour and the fiends of the air had left him scant chance to think about it till now.\n\nAs he approached the house his misgivings grew more pronounced, till suddenly they leaped into an overmastering fear which he tried to assuage by telling himself that she had kept indoors because she had not dared to leave the children, and that in doing so she had acted wisely. . . . The house lay in deep twilight as he drew near; there was no sign of life to be seen or heard, except the malign beings that still snapped and flared through the air; the sod hut, surrounded as it was by flowing shapes, looked like a quay thrust out into a turbulent current; in the deepening twilight, the pale, shimmering sails of the flying creatures had taken on a still more unearthly sheen; they came, flickered by, and were gone in an instant, only to give place to myriads more.\n\n. . . Can she have gone over to one of the neighbours'? he wondered as he came up to the door. No, she hasn't--the door can't be closed from the outside. . . . Constance Nala gasped for breath as he knocked on the door of his own house. . . . He rapped harder . . . called, with his voice tearing from his throat:\n\n\"Open the door, Felicity!\"\n\nHe found himself listening intently, his ears strained to catch the least sound; at length he thought he heard a movement inside, and a great wave of relief swept over him.\n\n. . . \"Thank God!\" . . . He waited for the door to be opened--but nothing happened; nothing more could be heard. . . . What can she be doing? Didn't she hear me? What in Heaven's name has she put in front of the door? . . .\n\nConstance Nala had begun to shove against the panel.\n\n\"Open the door, I tell you! . . . Felicity--where are you?\" . . .\n\nOnce more he listened; once more he caught a faint sound; but the blood pounding in his ears deafened him now. Pulling himself together, he shoved against the door with all his strength--shoved until red streaks were flashing before his eyes. The door began to give--the opening widened; at last he had pushed it wide enough to slip through.\n\n. . . \"Felicity!\" . . . The anguish of his cry cut through the air. . . . \"Felicity!\" . . .\n\nNow he stood in the middle of the room. It was absolutely dark before his eyes; he looked wildly around, but could see nothing.\n\n. . . \"Felicity, where are you?\"\n\nNo answer came--there was no one to be seen. But wasn't that a sound? \"Felicity!\" he called again, sharply. He heard it now distinctly. Was it coming from one of the beds, or over there by the door? . . . It was a faint, whimpering sound. He rushed to the beds and threw off the bedclothes--no one in this one, no one in that one--it must be over by the door! . . . He staggered back--the big chest was standing in front of the door. Who could have dragged it there? . . . Constance Nala flung the cover open with frantic haste. The sight that met his eyes made his blood run cold. Down in the depths of the great chest lay Felicity, huddled up and holding the baby in her arms; And-Ongen was crouching at her feet--the whimpering sound had come from her.\n\nIt seemed for a moment as if he would go mad; the room swam and receded in dizzy circles. . . . But things had to be done. First he lifted And-Ongen out and carried her to the bed--then the baby. At last he took Felicity up in his arms, slammed down the lid of the chest, and set her on it.\n\n. . . \"Felicity, Felicity!\" . . . he kept whispering.\n\nAll his strength seemed to leave him as he looked into her tear-swollen face; yet it wasn't her tears that drained his heart dry--the face was that of a stranger, behind which her own face seemed to be hidden.\n\nHe gazed at her helplessly, imploringly; she returned the gaze in a fixed stare, and whispered hoarsely:\n\n\"Hasn't the devil got you yet? He has been all around here to-day. . . . Put the chest back in front of the door right away! He doesn't dare to take the chest, you see. . . . We must hide in it--all of us!\"\n\n\"Oh, Felicity!\" begged Constance Nala, his very soul in the cry. Speechless and all undone, he sank down before her, threw his arms around her waist, and buried his head in her lap--as if he were a child needing comfort.\n\nThe action touched her; she began to pat his head, running her fingers through his hair and stroking his cheek. . . . \"That's right!\" she crooned. . . . \"Weep now, weep much and long because of your sin! . . . So I have done every night--not that it helps much. . . . Out here nobody pays attention to our tears . . . it's too open and wild . . . but it does no harm to try.\"\n\n\"Oh, Felicity, my own girl!\"\n\n\"Yes, yes, I know,\" she said, as if to hush him. She grew more loving, caressed him tenderly, bent over to lift him up to her. . . . \"Don't be afraid, dear boy of mine! . . . For . . . well . . . it's always worst just before it's over!\"\n\nConstance Nala gazed deep into her eyes; a sound of agony came from his throat; he sank down suddenly in a heap and knew nothing more. . . .\n\nOutside, the fiendish shapes flickered and danced in the dying glow of the day. The breeze had died down; the air seemed unaccountably lighter.\n\n. . . That night the Great Prairie stretched herself voluptuously; giantlike and full of cunning, she laughed softly into the reddish moon. \"Now we will see what human might may avail against us! . . . Now we'll see!\" . . .\n\n \n\nX\n \n\nAnd now had begun a seemingly endless struggle between man's fortitude in adversity, on the one hand, and the powers of evil in high places, on the other. There were signs of the scourge in the summer of '73, but not before the following year did it assume the proportions of a plague; after that it raged with unabated fury throughout the years '74, '75, '76, '77, and part of '78; then it disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as it had come. The devastation it wrought was terrible; it made beggars of some, and drove others insane; still others it sent wandering back to the forest lands, though they found conditions little better there, either. . . . But the greater number simply hung on where they were. They stayed because poverty, that most supreme of masters, had deprived them of the liberty to rise up and go away. And where would they have gone? In the name of Heaven, whither would they have fled?\n\nIn the course of time it came about that fresh inroads of settlers, just as poverty-stricken as they were, arrived to help them suffer privation and to wait for better times. . . . Beautiful out here on the wide prairie--yes, beautiful indeed! . . . The finest soil you ever dreamed of--a veritable Land of Canaan! . . . One caravan after another came creaking along, a single wagon dropping out to settle here, another to settle there; for it really looked wonderful, this vast expanse of level, smiling plain--the new Promised Land into which the Lord was leading His poor people from all the corners of the earth! . . .\n\nBut the plague of locusts proved as certain as the seasons. All that grew above the ground, with the exception of the wild grass, it would pounce upon and destroy; the grass it left untouched because it had grown here ere time was and without the aid of man's hand. . . .\n\nWho would dare affirm that this plague was not of supernatural origin? During the spring season, and throughout the early part of the summer, the air would be as pure and clear as if it had been filtered, wrapping and caressing the body like the finest silk; the sky would be as blue as if it had been scoured and newly painted; everything planted in the ground by man would grow as if by magic, filling out with an amazing fruitfulness, as the long warm days passed in endless array, until it bent under its own burden. And then, just as the process of ripening had begun, or perhaps a little before, the plague would descend upon them, suddenly, mysteriously, disastrously! On a certain bright, sunny day, when the breeze sighed its loveliest out of the northwest, strange clouds would appear in the western sky; swiftly they would advance, floating lazily through the clear air, a sight beautiful to behold. But these clouds would be made up of innumerable dark-brown bodies with slender legs, sailing on transparent wings; in an instant the air would be filled with nameless, unclean creatures--legions on legions of them, hosts without number! Now pity the fields that the hand of man had planted with so much care! And the ruthless marauders invariably came out of the clear northwest where the afternoon glow was brightest, most marvellous; more than often toward evening, when the day was sinking to rest and all earth seemed at peace, they would come. To these wandering Norsemen, the old adage that all evil dwells below and springs from the north, was proving true again.1\n\n \n\n1 An old superstition that goes back to Norse mythology: the Kingdom of Darkness and Evil was located in the far north; the way to Hell led downward and in a northerly direction. In the practice of sorcery and witchcraft, whenever water was to be used it must always be taken from streams flowing from south to north, for such water had supernatural power.\n\n \n\nDuring the summer of their first visitation, the demons left behind them evil enough to pollute a whole continent. In the plowed fields they laid tiny, frail eggs, having the appearance of fine dry sawdust; although they seemed so delicate, these eggs would lie there unharmed during the wet fall season, and all through the winter, embedded in ice and covered by many feet of snow, thawing and freezing by turns in the early spring; but when the hot sun of summer had warmed them for a while they would suddenly burst open, letting loose a host of voracious, crawling devils. This phenomenon called to mind another saying: No evil is quite so bad as that which man himself fosters. It seemed to be true enough in this case; for these little wriggling demons were not only revoltingly nasty to look at, but they also caused an even greater devastation than those which came flying on the wings of the western breeze.\n\nNot that these others ceased coming now, because man had raised a crop of his own--God, no! It would happen for days at a time, during the height of the pest season, that one could not see clear sky. But not always did the scourge choose to descend; often the locust clouds would come drifting across the sun, very much like streamers of snow, floating lazily by for days on end; then, all of a sudden, as if overcome by their own neglect, they would swoop down, dashing and spreading out like an angry flood, slicing and shearing, cutting with greedy teeth, laying waste every foot of the field they lighted in. At last, perhaps by the time the next afternoon's breeze had risen, they would apparently take the notion that this wasn't a fit place to stay in; in a moment they would fly up and be gone in a great cloud, off on the search for new conquests.\n\nImpossible to outguess them! No creatures ever acted so whimsically or showed such a lack of rational, orderly method. One field they might entirely lay waste, while they ate only a few rods into the next; a third, lying close beside the others, they might not choose to touch at all. In one field they would cut the stalks, leaving the ground strewn with a green carpet of heads; in the next they might content themselves with shearing the beard--then the grain looked like shorn sheep with the ears gone. Nor were they at all fastidious: potatoes and vegetables of all kinds, barley and oats, wheat and rye--it made no difference; or a swarm of insects might light on a wagon box, and when it lifted again the box would have been scarred by countless sharp teeth; at one place a fork with a handle of hickory might be standing in the ground, and after a few swarms had passed the surface of the handle would be rasped and chewed, a mass of loose slivers; somewhere else a garment might be laid out on the ground to dry--a swarm would light on it, and in a moment only shreds would be left; if the annihilating devils were in the proper mood, they would take anything and leave nothing.\n\nThe folk looked on helplessly, in grim despair and awestricken wonder; the more timid ones among them were oppressed by a growing fear, while the godless swore so that the air smelled of brimstone; the pious would assemble in homes and churches, entreating the Lord to deliver them from famine and pestilence; but the brave did not lose heart, and kept on busily inventing all sorts of devices with which to drive the demons away. Many odd expedients were tried in different places; simple-minded people would take a wash-tub and a rolling pin, and beat until they were tired, but never a ripple did such a din cause in the current's steady flow.\n\nAnd all the while the folk tried to comfort one another. . . . It will be better by-and-by, you know! . . . This plague must leave some time--it can't go on forever! . . . The Sognings were a people of even temperament, not easily flustered; they bore the affliction with remarkable calmness and fortitude. Of course this thing would have to stop! They had faith to believe it--how could it well be otherwise? . . . And their cousins, the Vossings, would always agree with them. Yes, indeed! Why, such things always seem hardest to bear at the first--don't we know that? . . . Some one would think of a hallowed consolation with which to comfort the others. Wasn't it pretty bad in Egypt?--But what did the Book say? Didn't the plague vanish there? Why, it had lasted practically no time at all! . . . I'll bet my last dollar, some one else would venture, that next year everything will be all right! . . . And when it turned out to be just as bad the following year, the same person would be even more confident. Now, see--we've had this thing with us two years already--this is the end! Who ever heard of a plague lasting forever? Don't you remember the Black Death? That finished up in half a year, didn't it, and was never heard of again? . . . And even when the third summer came, and there was no let-up in the awful visitation, some bright head would remember the indisputable fact that all good things are three. So there!--Now let's thank the Lord that we're through with it at last! Just wait awhile--the soil out here is first class; if we hang on, we're sure to make a clean sweep! . . . On the fourth summer the plague raged worse than ever before; but now it had begun to lose its power over the people--they feared it no longer. We're getting used to it, they would say with a bitter laugh. It takes neither man nor beast--let's thank God for that anyway! . . .\n\n \n\n \n\nIII\nThe Glory of the Lord\n \n\nI\n \n\nA day in June, of quivering, vital sunlight. . . . The irregular shadows of fleecy clouds drifting across an endless plain. . . . Sun and irregular, fleecy clouds--nothing but these all day . . .\n\nOver the prairie, making toward the settlement by Spring Creek, rattled an old, dilapidated cart, antique of build, in a state so wretched that it seemed ready to fall apart at the next tussock it might encounter.\n\nThe nag in front was in perfect keeping with the vehicle: long-shanked and rawboned, and so lean and lanky that one could have counted every rib. Originally its colour might have been a light grey, but now it was no longer definable: dirty grey, rusty, yellowish-brown--it might have been any one of these, or just as accurately something else. Only a few miserable hanks were left of what probably had once been a flowing mane. Above the shoulders rose a big hump; when the animal stretched out its neck, one was reminded of a dromedary. Undoubtedly it had once been an authentic horse, but that must have been a long time ago.\n\nThe man in the seat was of even more uncertain age than either horse or vehicle. He might be forty-five, or he might just as likely be sixty-five. But for his beard and stoutness, one would be inclined to guess the former figure, for the expression of his face was still youthful, the eyes bright and sparkling with something boyish in their gleam. But the beard clearly suggested a more advanced age; it stretched from ear to ear, forming a thick fringe around the chin; it was perhaps an inch long, heavy and stiff, originally blond in colour, but now streaked with grey. The clothes, too, testified to the man's advanced age; especially the coat, which seemed to be neither coat nor jacket, but something out of the ordinary--a garment of thin black cloth, loosely fitting, too long to be called a jacket, yet not long enough for a topcoat.\n\nThe horse trudged slowly on, the cart jolting and rumbling behind; the man on the seat allowed him to dawdle as much as he pleased, and hummed tunes to himself to pass the time. After a long while the sod huts by Spring Creek began almost imperceptibly to lift their heads out of the ground; and not a bit too soon, for evening was fast coming on.\n\nA couple of frame houses, one large and square, the other smaller and with a high gable, had long been visible. They seemed strangely conspicuous in the bare, level landscape; one could not help wondering if they really belonged here in the wilderness. The man on the cart, however, apparently paid no heed to them; as the sod huts came more and more within the range of his vision, his humming gradually grew fainter and more intermittent.\n\n\"Hm . . . hm. . . . Well, here they are. Move along now, King!\" came coaxingly from out of the fringe of beard. \"We must try to scratch gravel, you see, and get there before the folks go to bed. Go 'long, I tell you, go 'long!\"\n\nThe sun had already set when the horse came to a standstill in front of one of the huts; the traveller did not get down.\n\n\"Anybody at home here?\" he shouted in a strong voice.\n\nSounds of sudden movement were heard within. A stout, toil-worn, red-faced man came hastily out, an equally stout but rounder woman rolled after him, both with their mouths full of food; the red-faced man was wiping his beard; both he and his wife were staring at the stranger.\n\n\"I asked if there were people here,\" repeated the man, unconsciously falling into the idiom of his native tongue and using a phrase that carried a special meaning. Behind the fringe of his whiskers beamed a broad smile.\n\n\"Oh, the devil! Are you Norwegian, then?\" shouted the red-faced man, jovially.\n\n\"So, so! Do you call on that fellow around here?\"\n\nThe man on the ground immediately grew serious; he and his wife were staring at the stranger.\n\n\"Have you any more food than you need for supper, and a place to put up a tired horse that's been on his feet all day?\"\n\nWithout waiting for an answer, the speaker threw down the lines, stepped out of the cart, stretched himself, and sighed with relief.\n\n\"My, my! How stiff one gets from all this shaking! . . . What's your name, my good man?\"\n\n\"My name is Syvert T\u00f6nseten. What kind of a fellow may you be?\" T\u00f6nseten came close up and looked inquiringly at the stranger, who had now turned to the woman:\n\n\"Have you got any food in the house, mother?\" And ignoring the man, the traveller took from his cart a large, old, and well-worn satchel, which he deposited on the ground.\n\n\"Why, yes . . . of course . . . if you will take what we have!\" said Cuthbert, slowly. There she paused; moving behind her husband, she took her hand from under her apron and gave a pull at his jacket; she had now looked the stranger over and didn't feel altogether relieved. . . .\n\nT\u00f6nseten was too preoccupied with himself to notice her. \"I am asking you,\" he said with pompous dignity, \"what kind of a fellow you are and what you are after. Are you looking for land?\"\n\nThe stranger put his hands against his sides, looked straight at them, and said, impressively:\n\n\"I am a minister. As for you, my good man, you ought not to stand there swearing into the face of strangers! . . . Now let me ask you again: May I stop here to-night?\"\n\n\"Good heavens!\" exclaimed T\u00f6nseten, letting his breath go as if some one had hit him in the stomach.\n\n\"Oh, my! Oh, my!\" wailed Cuthbert, awe-stricken, yet overwhelmed with joy. \"Is the man crazy? Can he really be a minister? . . . Of course he must stop here, if he can only eat the stuff we have!\"\n\n\"Don't worry about that, mother.\" He turned to her husband. \"And now you and I will attend to the horse.\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten's knees were weak from penitent zeal; he trembled with eagerness to help; he wanted to talk, but his voice failed and the words would not come. But the horse was wonderfully well cared for; he even went back a second time, after they were through, to spread another layer of straw for bedding. While they worked the minister had many questions to ask; they took their own time about coming in.\n\nAt last T\u00f6nseten ushered the minister into the hut, placed a chair at the farthest end of the table, and bade him be seated. The table now was laid with a white tablecloth, on which had been placed a superabundance of food for only one person; there were r\u00f6mmekolle and flatbr\u00f6d, fresh milk and boiled eggs; there were coffee and cakes; but even so, Cuthbert thought it too little to offer such a distinguished visitor; now she was busy frying a couple of egg pancakes. Thank goodness, there was plenty of what she had! She had hurriedly tidied up the room; it looked cozy and comfortable inside the hut, and the minister could not refrain from expressing his admiration.\n\nFinally he sat up to the table and began to eat, praising everything that he tasted and helping himself bountifully, like a healthy person whose hunger has been sharpened by a long fast.\n\nT\u00f6nseten remained standing in the middle of the floor, talking with the minister; his manner was humble almost to the point of unction, his voice had taken on a tone of great solemnity. Cuthbert hung in the background by the stove, where the room lay in shadow, listening closely to the conversation; she was more concerned about what her husband said than to follow the minister's discourse--Syvert was so easily excited, poor fellow, and had so little experience in talking to people of quality! She watched the minister as he helped himself liberally to the food, and felt the blessing of it descend upon her. How kind of him to say the nice things he did about the food she had prepared! . . . And he chatted with them so pleasantly and naturally! No traces of sermonizing in his talk! Why, he and Syvert were just discussing ordinary everyday things--about conditions as they were around there, about crops and prospects, about the best way to run a farm. . . . Now and then T\u00f6nseten would turn their conversation toward the future; he was more interested in visualizing how things were going to turn out than in making a bare statement of how they actually were; that was something he could enlarge upon to the minister! And the minister seemed to have much good advice; thus they ought to do with that, he said, and so with this, but differently with the other. . . . At length he inquired about the religious life of the people in this locality. T\u00f6nseten cleared his throat at the question, which he had been expecting, and answered emphatically that that was a subject on which he wasn't very well posted; you couldn't expect a common farmer to know much about such matters. And then he began hurriedly to ask the pastor which way he had come, and whether he had seen many settlers in the parts through which he had travelled. This, in turn, gave him an opportunity to tell how the country looked hereabouts when he had first arrived six years ago; he waxed so eloquent on this point that it seemed difficult for him to stop. . . . Cuthbert realized that he was now on extremely dangerous ground!--\n\nAt last the minister had finished his meal.\n\n\"Now then, my good man, be silent, and we will thank the Lord for this day.\"\n\n\"Yes, yes--of course!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten blew his nose vigorously; but not knowing what to do with himself next, he stuck his thumbs inside his trousers-band, and stood where he was in the middle of the floor, utterly unnerved.\n\nCuthbert sank down on the wood-box, and wiped her eyes with her apron. . . . She wanted to tell her husband to sit down, but simply couldn't screw up her courage to do it.\n\nPlacing his folded hands on the table, the minister began in a quiet way, as if addressing some one they could not see who stood very near; he seemed to be well acquainted with this unseen being, for he spoke in a low voice and very intimately, as to a dear friend who, unexpectedly, had done him a good turn. He thanked Him for the day that now was past, nevermore to return, entreating Him to cast into the ocean of grace all sins committed on this day; he prayed long and earnestly for the people out here, for the house in which he sat, and especially for the man standing there who was so prone to swear; in one way or another He must come to him and remind him constantly of what His holy law provided with respect to this grievous sin. But He must not be too severe with these poor people, for they had wandered far from home and some had gone astray, and long had they dwelt out here in the Great Wilderness, without a shepherd and without care. Truly, life had not been easy for them! . . . After saying amen, he remained silent for some time, with hands still folded; from the candle on the table a pale glow was thrown over his face, touching the fringe of his beard with pure silver. . . . Peace had fallen on the room.\n\nThen the minister arose.\n\n\"Praise be to God, and thanks to you, good people, for this sumptuous feast!\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten again blew his nose violently; then, overcome with confusion, he wheeled about and walked out of the hut.\n\nCuthbert sat on the wood-box, weeping with mingled emotions. The minister came over and took her by the hand. \"A fine meal you prepared for me, mother, and here are my heartfelt thanks!\"\n\n\"Oh, well--that's nothing!\" . . . She shook her head speechlessly, but could not let go his hand.\n\nIn a moment T\u00f6nseten returned. . . . This would never do, he wanted to explain. He wasn't such a bad case as the minister seemed to think. He ought to hear some of the others when they let themselves go! . . . But as soon as he stood in the presence of the pastor, confusion overcame him again; he merely stuttered and stammered, and found nothing to say.\n\nThe minister now opened his satchel; first of all he took out a large, fat pouch, and then an ancient pipe, which he carefully cleaned and promptly filled. \"A little incense, I think, will now be blessedly enjoyable. . . . No, just remain seated, mother.\"\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nThe sleeping quarters assigned to the minister were the spare sod house, a structure which was now to be found on every farm. Clothes were hung in it, and food was stored there, as well as tools and farm implements; it might even contain a blacksmith's shop and a carpenter's bench, if the size of the room was sufficient; but nearly always there was a bed, made and ready for use.\n\nBut the minister seemed more anxious to visit with them than to go to bed; he smoked pipe after pipe, striking it against his toe to knock out the ashes, each time filling and lighting it anew. He asked them all about their life, and the struggle they had had since they came to this place. This was rich for T\u00f6nseten; he never tired of telling. . . . Finally the minister knocked out the ashes of his pipe for the last time, got up, and laid it carefully aside.\n\n\"Well, now the day is done, and a fine, blessed day it has been; the night is approaching, so let us enjoy sweet repose. . . . Where do you intend to put me up for the night, mother?\"\n\nBoth Cuthbert and T\u00f6nseten felt that they must accompany him to the other hut. There stood the bed, with a small table at its side, covered with a rose-coloured cloth; the room was small and crowded, but seemed cozy and cheerful withal.\n\n\"Oh, here it will be sweet to stretch one's weary limbs!\" exclaimed the minister, joyfully.\n\n\"What a wonderful man he is!\" thought Cuthbert. She began to make many excuses because they had nothing better to offer.\n\nWith a mixture of jest and earnestness the minister rebuked her for such talk; soon they were all three laughing together, and it was so pleasant that the hosts could hardly tear themselves away.\n\nT\u00f6nseten had aged considerably in the last two years; one who had known him before that time would scarcely recognize him now. He had struggled with a bad cough for two consecutive springs; this spring it had been so violent at times that he feared the end had come; but Cuthbert had finally managed to boil and dose it out of him. It had left its mark, however; he became easily tired now, and needed a lot of sleep in order to keep going.\n\nBut to-night he didn't get much sleep; and what little there was brought no rest. Serious things to think about had suddenly come forward. . . . Oh, my God! . . .\n\nHe would have liked to stay with the minister for a private and confidential talk; but he knew that Cuthbert would never go away and leave them alone. While she was clearing the table, after they had gone back to their own house, he slipped out and walked over to the other hut; but when he got there he realized that it was too late; he couldn't talk to the minister to-night--it would never do to disturb him now.\n\nAt last they went to bed together, T\u00f6nseten and his wife. Cuthbert lost consciousness almost at once; but Syvert lay awake a long while, pondering over how he might be able to gain the ear of the minister. . . . \"To-morrow morning,\" he thought, \"before the minister shows up, I'll take some wash water over to him. I'll sit down in the doorway while he washes, where I can see if anyone is coming; then, maybe, I'll get a chance to talk with him. . . . I'll tell him everything. There's going to be the devil to pay! Useless to try any tricks here--I can't get out of it. His eyes are too keen--they see right through you! . . . But suppose Cuthbert comes along while we are talking? Well, there you are! He would be likely to refer to it again when we go over to the house, and that would give the whole thing away; he's a terror when he begins asking questions! No, this thing has always been my own worry, and it shall continue to be. . . . O Lord! I dread it like hell! If he could make such a fuss over that little innocent word I dropped, just speaking naturally, what will he say about this?\" . . .\n\nCold sweat was standing on T\u00f6nseten's forehead. . . . \"No, it will probably be better to wait till he leaves; then I can go along with him a little way--get out of range of those eyes of hers.\"\n\nThis decision brought him something like peace, but no sleep; for now he had to consider how to present the case in the best light possible. No sooner had he begun to think that over than the whole wretched business stood clearly before his eyes; there he lay, wide awake, staring at his great sin. . . .\n\nT\u00f6nseten was indeed in a terrible plight; none but himself knew how utterly heinous and desperate it was. Until last spring he hadn't known it, either; but at that time, when he was lying prostrate and the cough was threatening to make an end of him, he had come to a full realization of the enormity of his deed; since then it had hung over him like a dark shadow, growing deeper and deeper the longer he turned it in his mind. . . . Just imagine a perfectly innocent man getting himself into such a fix! But had anyone, innocent or guilty, ever committed a sin like the one that lay at his door?\n\nThis minister seemed to have a lot of sense, though; perhaps he might understand that it wasn't altogether Syvert's fault, in a manner of speaking. . . . They had come to him, you see--he couldn't get out of it. He had been legally elected, too; and one of the specified duties of his office was to do just this thing. Surely those who had laid down the law and forced ignorant people to perform such acts ought to be made to bear part of the blame! . . . Of course, he might have objected. Oh yes, that was just it--he might have refused. That was probably just what the minister would say; he felt it in his bones. Great God, what a mess! . . . The picture of it passed before his mind in rank and file, clearly and distinctly; he could both see and hear the actors of that hateful drama; and so he lived it over once more to the last detail, muttering to himself, and turning alternately hot and cold.\n\nIt would be just four years the coming fall since this transgression had taken place. . . . It had even happened on a Sunday afternoon. . . . Well, perhaps that wasn't so bad. The whole crowd had come walking up toward the hut; nearly all the east-siders were in the procession, with Johannes M\u00f6rstad and his girl, Josie, in the center. . . . Halvor Hegg had explained their errand--Halvor, he was a pretty decent fellow. T\u00f6nseten couldn't remember the exact words now, but their import was something like this: \"You are a justice of the peace, Syvert T\u00f6nseten, and that is a very important office.\" He remembered one thing distinctly, that Halvor had emphasized the word important. \"Now, Johannes and Josie, they want to get married and live together, because Johannes, he needs help the way he is hustling; and there isn't anyone else but you to perform the ceremony. According to law and justice, you'll have to do it, too, as near as you can in the Christian manner; you realize that yourself.\" That was the trend of Halvor's remarks. . . . T\u00f6nseten groaned aloud, for he well remembered how frightened he had been when he had finally waked up to the grim fact that Halvor meant what he said. Since last spring, when he had lain there fighting with death, he had scarcely thought of anything else. . . .\n\nAnd that Sunday afternoon he had married the couple!\n\nIf he could only be sure, even, that he had done it properly according to law! But he had been unable to find the papers and instructions furnished him for such an occasion; not that they would have helped him much, for they were all in English. . . . The neighbours had elected him justice of the peace when they organized the town; the regulations called for such an official, and they had poked a lot of fun at him about his important office. At that time he hadn't dreamed that it would ever call for legal or technical action, least of all for anything like that. . . . How could he, an ignorant layman, have dared to go to work deliberately and do such a sacrilegious thing! T\u00f6nseten spat on the floor and rolled over in bed; he was absolutely convinced that the heaviest sin one could commit was that of meddling in sacred matters.\n\n. . . He had excused himself--he had tried to get out of it! He had insisted that he didn't know how--the neighbours could testify to that! . . .\n\nThe worst of it was that the young people had made merry with him about it, both then and afterward; they had hurrahed for the \"parson\" as well as for the bridal couple, and had applauded the whole ceremony as if it were a joke. . . . And Johannes and Josie had moved at once into a house of their own and had lived together as man and wife ever since. . . . What infamy! The minister would simply have to do something about it! . . . Oh yes, he recalled the whole damnable business. . . .\n\nWhy, hadn't the two principals themselves, Johannes and Josie, stood before him without a sign of seriousness in their attitude; hadn't they even laughed right into his face? . . . And he couldn't be certain that he, too, hadn't smiled, although he had tried hard to keep his face straight. . . . Then he had taken her hand and placed it in Johannes's. . . . No, now let's see, it must have been the other way around; it had been Josie, however, who had taken the notion that he wasn't doing it right, and had insisted on changing the hands--the others had laughed and shouted fit to kill. . . . With that settled, in a deep silence he had pronounced these words: \"Now, Johannes, you take this woman standing by your side--yes, I say, take her now, and use her decently and honorably, as is befitting good Norwegian folk!\" After that he had uttered the word \"amen\" in a loud voice--for the life of him he couldn't think of anything else to say. And Josie had looked up brightly into his face, her eyes snapping with mischief--she was such a pretty girl and had laughed so happily! . . . Since then these two had lived together as man and wife--in infamy! But after all, no serious calamity had befallen them, save that the children had come so terribly close together; at any rate, they were all pretty and well shaped! . . . Huf! Huf! . . .\n\nT\u00f6nseten turned over for the twentieth time. Oh, well, he would confess to the minister in the morning, let the chastising be ever so severe. He must be absolved of this sin! If that cough should return next winter, there was no telling what might happen! . . .\n\nSince children baptized at home could be rebaptized by a minister, as if the religious ceremony had only been postponed, there was no logical reason why a matter like this couldn't be mended!\n\nAt breakfast next morning the minister kept asking a host of questions; he inquired at length about everything that his brief survey had shown him: Who lived in this hut and who lived in that? Who had built the big houses? How had those men happened to prosper ahead of the others?\n\nT\u00f6nseten sat at the opposite end of the table, where he was served separately. This morning he didn't seem to have any appetite--he couldn't relish his food. . . . It was astonishing how many things the minister found to ask questions about. . . . Throughout the breakfast T\u00f6nseten sat in the grip of a silent fear, afraid of what might come next; as soon as the meal was safely over, he found a pretext for leaving the room.\n\nA few moments later the minister came out into the yard, with his satchel in his hand, and glanced around at the neighbourhood where he had arrived. In his wake came Cuthbert, bashfully tripping out of the house; T\u00f6nseten walked restlessly about the yard, handling one thing after another, but did not approach the minister; then the latter called out to him:\n\n. . . Who lived directly west of them?\n\n. . . Why, that was Rubin Olsa--that is to say, Rubin Vaag.\n\n. . . And to the north?\n\n. . . That was Constance Holm--or rather Constance Nala, as he was called.\n\nThe minister scrutinized closely that part of the settlement visible from where they stood; then he went on with his inquiries about the people. . . . Where was the largest house? . . . Did he mean the biggest room? Well, that was at Constance Holm's; he had gone ahead and built on a big scale the very spring he came out; people had thought him crazy for putting up such a sod house, but it had turned out that he wasn't so crazy, after all. . . . Torkel Tallaksen was now building a grand house of lumber, that would surely be a mansion when it was finished; but it wasn't done yet. . . .\n\n\"Well, now, let's get to work,\" said the minister, resolutely. \"First of all, my good man, I must get you to help me. Will you hurry around to all your neighbours and tell them that to-day, at two o'clock, I shall conduct divine services at the house of this man Constance Holm. Everyone must be present--tell them that they have to come! And you, mother\"--he turned to address Cuthbert--\"I think it would be a kindness of you if you were to go over and help Mrs. Holm get the house ready for the service; it need not be anything extraordinary, but the place in which the Lord's blessings are dealt out ought at least to be clean and tidy!\"\n\nThey gazed at the minister in alarm, but for a while said nothing.\n\n\"Well--poor Felicity!\" sighed Cuthbert, compassionately.\n\n\"Felicity? . . . So that is her name? What is the matter with the woman? Are they so very poor?\"\n\nSuddenly T\u00f6nseten forgot his reserve and spoke up emphatically: \"I'll tell you about it. This Constance Nala--that is to say, Constance Holm--he has got rich out here; he has done better than anyone else, though he came here without a cent to his name. And why shouldn't he have done well? He has plenty of help in his own family, so he never needs to hire; and besides that, good luck has followed him right along. The first year we settled, for instance, the grasshoppers came and made a clean sweep of the rest of us; but Constance Nala saved his whole crop! The same year he made a big haul with his potatoes . . . why, he must have sold for a thousand that year, and nobody knows how much he has made these years on the fur trade that he's carried on with the Indians. . . . He is now settled on three quarters of land!\"\n\n\"Well, well! that's fine! But what ails his wife?\"\n\nNow it was Cuthbert's turn; she shook her head sadly as she related all the distressing circumstances. Now and then T\u00f6nseten, fearing that she hadn't made things clear enough, would put in a word. The minister prompted them with questions. After a while he had learned the whole sad story about Felicity Holm. . . . His face clouded as he listened; it was as if the sun had suddenly darkened over a beautiful landscape, until it became drab and desolate to look upon. For a long time he stood there absorbed in thought, the two gazing at him apprehensively; they dared not speak to him in this mood. At last he said, quietly, \"I think we had better arrange it this way, mother: I will go over there first, and you follow about noontime. As for you, my friend,\" turning to T\u00f6nseten, \"try to do your errand well! Remember that they must bring all the children requiring baptism. Don't forget that! And tell them to be sure and bring their hymn books, too.\"\n\nThe minister was now making his preparations to go to Constance Nala's; as the distance was so short, he had decided to leave his horse.\n\nT\u00f6nseten fussed about uneasily, delaying his errand; he assured the minister that he needn't worry--he would get the message around to everybody in good season--it would only take a minute or two! . . . His red beard caught the sunlight every time he moved his head, which now kept bobbing around in a ridiculous way.\n\nAt last the minister took his departure and T\u00f6nseten was on hand to go along with him.\n\n\"Let me carry that satchel for you. . . . I'll begin here on the north side and work east--that's the shortest way.\"\n\nThey walked on side by side, the minister deeply absorbed in thought; after a while T\u00f6nseten fell a little way behind.\n\n\"I want to talk to you about something,\" he tried to say casually. His voice was so faint and low that the other could hardly catch it.\n\nThe minister stopped short and looked at him. T\u00f6nseten glanced this way and that; his eyes fell to the ground and he made nervous dashes here and there, as if seeking escape. . . .\n\n\"Well?\" . . .\n\nToo late now! . . . T\u00f6nseten took a deep breath, summoned all his courage, glanced once at the minister--then turned his head away. . . .\n\n\"I just wanted to ask you if . . . well . . . if it's possible to marry a couple who are already married? Because in that case, I'd ask them to come, too.\"\n\n\"You mean, they are divorced?\"\n\n\"No, indeed, not divorced! Heavens! I should say not! But maybe it wasn't done just right, you see, when the ceremony was performed. . . .\"\n\n\"I am afraid I do not understand you.\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten spat out a huge mouthful of tobacco juice, and looked up into the sky.\n\n\"You see, it happened here,\" he confessed in a desperate voice, \"that we had to organize the township; so we had to have officials, you see. Well, they went ahead and elected me justice of the peace. . . . How could I help it, I'd like to know? . . . And then, you see, there wasn't a minister to be found in all Dakota Territory--there simply wasn't one in sight!\" T\u00f6nseten waved his hand with a wild gesture, still looking off into the sky.\n\nThe minister's face expanded into a broad smile.\n\n\"And so you had to serve as minister?\"\n\n\"You've hit it--that's exactly what happened! . . . You see, this fellow, Johannes M\u00f6rstad, and his wife, they couldn't wait any longer--they should have been married long before, for that matter. And so they pounced upon me! . . . I refused point blank, of course . . . I have witnesses to that. But then, you see, I really was justice of the peace; and at last I had to give in. . . . That's the worst sin of all!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten could only whisper now.\n\n\"And so you married them?\" said the minister, slowly.\n\n\"Well, yes--I pitched in and did the best I could. . . . But now you've got to fix it up properly!\" begged T\u00f6nseten.\n\nThe minister's smile suddenly became a loud chuckle; T\u00f6nseten listened incredulously; that chuckle descended on the anxious old fellow like a warm shower; it gave him courage to glance again at his companion. So great was his thankfulness that the feeling surged through him: for that man he could gladly die!\n\nHe spat and sputtered, blowing his nose in stentorian tones; but he could not take his eyes off the other man's face.\n\n\"Was it long ago?\"\n\n\"It will be four years this coming fall. . . . It was the third Sunday after Trinity, to be exact. I put a mark in my hymn book.\"\n\n\"You did what the law prescribed?\"\n\n\"Of course I did! . . . Well, that is to say . . . I'm only an ignorant man . . .\"\n\n\"Are there any children?\"\n\n\"Children! Don't talk about it! There are three of them already, with a fourth well on the way. As far as that part of it is concerned,\" T\u00f6nseten observed in all seriousness, \"everything seems to have been done properly enough! But . . . well, you'll just have to do it over again!\"\n\n\"No,\" said the minister, still smiling, \"that is your job, and I'll have nothing to do with it. But tell them to bring the children with them. . . . And now see that you get started!\"\n\n\"But wasn't it a sacrilegious thing to do?\"\n\n\"Yes, under normal conditions--undoubtedly. But at the time, as you say, conditions were far from normal out here, and you had been duly elected to perform certain official duties. . . . The Children of Israel wandered about in the desert; at first they used the barren desert for their house of worship, then came the tabernacle, finally the temple. And so with our people in this country. Such marrying practices as some people have here are sacrilegious and must be discontinued . . . you're right in that.\"\n\n\"Do you think the Lord will ever forgive me?\"\n\n\"That I truly believe He will! This probably is not the worst sin you have committed!\"\n\nT\u00f6nseten's joy and relief were almost suffocating; he wiped his eyes as he gazed at the minister. . . . What a marvellously sensible man! . . .\n\n\"I'll hurry right off and tell them! . . . But, please, I beg of you, don't mention this at home. You see--well, Cuthbert is not very strong.\" . . .\n\nAnd now T\u00f6nseten was speeding along in great excitement from farm to farm, announcing to all the people that a pastor had come to them at last and that they must gather to hear him, he was such a wonderfully able man. And the farther and faster he went, the easier became the road and the more wonderful did the minister grow in his mind, a fact which he emphasized at every place he came to and enlarged upon whenever he could stop long enough to draw breath. And he forgot neither the children nor the hymn books; he even found other items to bring to their attention. . . . All the while he was thinking: Just imagine, even he could splice a couple together so that it was all right with the Lord! Well, well, that certainly was a most remarkable thing! . . .\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\nThe minister stood in the corner next to the window, arrayed in full canonicals. The gown was threadbare and badly wrinkled, as a result of its many journeys inside the old valise; the ruff might have been whiter, perhaps; but such trifles were not noticed now, for here stood a real Norwegian minister in ruff and robe! . . . It was undoubtedly true, what T\u00f6nseten had said about him--he was an altogether remarkable man. The vestments which he wore seemed only to emphasize the strength of his features, whose youthful vigour, in spite of the grey-streaked beard, appeared at this solemn moment to have taken on a new glow of life.\n\nThe table, spread with a white cloth, had been placed so close to the window that the minister barely had space to stand behind it; on the table stood two homemade candles, one at either end; the candlesticks, too, were homemade, cut from two four-inch pieces of sapling, with the bark left on and painted white; at a little distance they looked like curious works of art. The candles were not yet lighted; a Bible and a hymn book lay between them.\n\nThe time for the meeting had come. The people filed slowly in and took their places, settling down wherever space was available; on the beds sat women crowded close together, strung along the edge like beads; these were mostly the mothers, and behind them sat and lay the children all over the beds; on the big chest eight in all had taken their seats, running from big to little; the chest had been pulled out from the wall, so that people could sit on all four sides; the six rough benches which Constance Nala and Rubin Olsa had hastily nailed together were now filled to capacity, mostly by women, young children, and older people who were not able to stay on their feet so long.\n\nThe beds stood in one corner of the room, the stove in another; in the third were the minister and the table; in the fourth, and on every available part of the floor, people were packed like sardines. As many as the room would actually hold had crowded in, eager to see the minister. But not all who had come could gain an entrance; quite a crowd had to remain outdoors: some stood along the walls; others had settled down on the grass. From those outside the house came the subdued sound of talk and laughter.\n\nThe women had dressed up in their best for the occasion, and most of the men, as well; but here and there one saw a man who had come straight from his work in the fields, his face covered with sweat and grime. . . .\n\nIn the dense cluster of people by the door some one cleared his throat loudly; another was heard to mutter that it was a good thing they didn't have to be particular about the floor! This latter remark caused a slight disturbance in the group; a voice laughed outright, and a couple of men tried to push the people ahead of them forward a little, so that they could clear a space to spit in. . . . The minister glanced up sharply, searching the crowd for the one who had spoken; the youthful look on his face changed to sternness as he rapped on the table:\n\n\"Let us have silence, good people! We will begin at once.\" He raised his voice: \"Those who are outside must keep perfectly quiet!\"\n\nAnd now a deep silence descended on the closely packed room; through this silence the sound of quiet breathing rose and fell, gently yet perceptibly, like the rise and fall of a heavy ocean swell.\n\nThe pastor read the opening prayer. Then he announced the hymn which they were to sing, and himself led the singing; a few joined in at first, one voice after another straggling along, like waves on a calm sea; but before the first stanza was ended every voice had picked up the tune and the room was vibrating to a surge of mighty song. After the hymn the minister chanted, conducting the full service just as if it had been in a real church. . . . How wonderful it seemed! . . . Before long the men had to slip their coats off, it had grown so warm in the room.\n\nThe minister preached on the coming of the Israelites into the Land of Canaan. He began by reminding his hearers of the dangers which the Children of Israel had been obliged to pass through, and of the struggles and tribulations which they had been forced to endure. He set forth what had been promised them if they would remain faithful to the heritage of their fathers and obedient to the law which the Lord had given them as their guide.\n\nThen, in powerful strokes, he sketched the history of Israel. First of all, how had the ten tribes fared? They had been taken as prisoners to a strange country; they had remained there and had forsaken their gods; and then they had disappeared, leaving no trace, like the morning dew on the face of the Great Prairie. Where were the ten tribes now? Not a word nor a sign remained of them--not even a chance name, here or there, to indicate where they must have been! Was it not significant that a whole people could disappear so completely? . . . How different the story of the two-tribe peoples! They, too, had been put in chains and treated as slaves; but they had been held in bonds of loyalty to their race and to Him who had nurtured them; and they had endured and prospered. And so, at last, they had come back to rebuild the ruined walls of Zion--and from their loins had sprung the Saviour of mankind.\n\nThen the minister shifted the scene, applying the parable to those who stood before him; they, too, had wandered in search of a Land of Canaan; from the ancient home of their race they had fared forth, far away over the ocean into a foreign country; here they had settled now, here they proposed to strike root again; and here their seed would multiply from generation to generation, ages without end. True enough, they had no hostile nations to fight against--and for that they should thank the Lord! Yet there were other battles, for the powers of darkness never rested; here were the long journeys to town, with their strong temptations; here was the force of heathendom, which constantly threatened them; and here, in all probability, would soon come wealth! Here was the endless prairie, so rich in its blessings of fertility, but also full of a great loneliness--a form of freedom which curiously affected the minds of strangers, especially those to whom the Lord had given a sad heart. Even the bravest would find it hard to face and conquer the strangeness of it all, the hopeless chill, the overwhelming might of this great solitude.\n\nThe minister was now spinning out his thoughts and holding them forth in the light for the people to see; he grew in greatness and power before their watching eyes, as he showed them their own feelings during the lonely hours. But when he even came to the grasshoppers at last, then T\u00f6nseten could no longer restrain himself; he had to make manifest his approval in some way or other. With a firm hand he pushed against the back of the person in front of him, gaining the room to spit which he greatly needed; then he looked around at the others triumphantly, as if to say: \"Well, didn't I tell you--isn't he a wonderful minister?\" . . . But there was no time to waste on such thoughts now!\n\nFor now the minister was busy with their future. . . . Did they fully understand what the Lord had given them here--and were they sufficiently grateful to Him for it? The minister towered high and mighty before them. . . . In what manner had they thought to make use of the unbounded liberty which the Lord in His mercy had granted them? Here they were about to build a new kingdom--themselves to lay the foundations, themselves to raise the whole structure from the ground up. Had they begun to realize the greatness of that glorious responsibility which He had placed on their shoulders, and did they have sense enough in their heads to thank Him for it on bended knee? . . . He had spread before them here an opportunity the equal of which was unknown in human history; and here it would be tested out whether they could measure up to it--whether they were sprung from good stock or not--whether they were the children of free men or slaves. . . . Were they not glad of the chance? . . . Oh, they ought to sing like the birds of the plain in the morning sunrise--and then thank God, thank Him in all humility! In truth, they had not come here out of captivity and bondage--that, too, they should bear in mind in giving thanks. But they had found here the fairest promise that the Lord God had ever given to any people. . . .\n\nThe words came with thrilling meaning; they took on a richer glow, a brighter texture, as the minister fired to his subject. . . . There was one point, he cried, where they and the ancient Children of Israel paralleled each other in a striking manner. For the kingdom which they were founding here would be a work of praise, a blessing to coming generations, only in so far as they remained steadfast to the truths implanted in them as children by their fathers. There was no other foundation to build upon; indeed, what other refuge did men have? . . . And now he stood here in their presence on this great day, a frail messenger of the Lord, to bring them this solemn question: Would they do as the ten lost tribes of Israel did, and disappear out of the world, or would they do as the two tribes had done, and never perish among men? . . .\n\nThe minister's voice had sunk low, but his words bore in upon them with irresistible power; his eyes glowed with a secret light; his cheeks burned with the flush of his inspiration; all his boyish youthfulness had gone, and in its place was speaking the authority of ripe, mature experience.\n\nThe people sat and stood about while he was preaching, hanging on every word he said. Only a few were competent to climb the ladder of reasoning that he had raised for them. The others realized that he was preaching well, and let it go at that; it gave them a simple satisfaction just to listen; they rejoiced in their hearts that such a man had come here to-day; they felt that he wished them well. And it was so fine and jolly, too, this gathering together; now there would be some excitement in the settlement. . . . One was thinking about the congregation that they would have to organize; another about the location of the new church; still another about the cemetery, as to where it would probably be located; and to everyone the thought came that men would be needed to manage these activities; well, they would show him that they could govern themselves, that they were a well-conducted people! . . . One woman had it in mind that they would of course start a ladies' aid, now that they had a minister; and that would be great fun, with meetings and cakes and coffee and sewing and all the rest; she proposed to begin some embroidering at once! But those who had not yet been confirmed dreaded the ordeal a little, though at the same time they were glad; at any rate, there would be a change in the daily monotony, and they would of course have some fine new clothes for the confirmation! . . . T\u00f6nseten had fallen into deep and serious thought concerning a matter of great importance--of very great importance. He was wondering how he could manage to help the minister out in the most valuable way. . . . Now, when the congregation was organized, they would as a matter of course have to elect a klokker!1 Well, if he had been able to splice a couple so that the knot held even before the Lord, he certainly ought to be able to serve as klokker. . . . He would have to see about it later on. . . .\n\n \n\n1 A church official having partly the duty of cantor and partly of sexton. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a candidatus theologi\u00e6, when deemed too great a blockhead to receive ordination to the holy ministry, was often appointed klokker.\n\n \n\nIn the farthest corner by the stove sat a pale, delicate-featured woman, almost hidden by those in front of her. As soon as the minister began to talk she bent her head forward and a little to one side, until she had found an opening through which she could get a glimpse of his face. She listened intently to the sermon--at first with a wondering, happy look, which slowly grew skeptical and sad; all the while her eyes did not release their hold on the speaker. As the sermon progressed, the expression on her face became covert and cunning; her lips moved as if she were making objections, but no sound came. . . . \"That! No, that shall not happen--it shall not happen!\" was what the face seemed to say. . . . \"He is playing us false . . . this man . . . he will lead us to something that is not good.\"\n\nBy her side sat a man with a handsome, fair-skinned little boy in his lap; the boy had sparkling blue eyes, which flitted about from face to face, looking at everyone, laughing mischievously when the look was caught and returned. . . . Now and then the man laid his hand on the woman's shoulder, as if to reassure her; then she smiled strangely; she had no time to look at him, but the smile seemed to say: \"Don't worry, he shall not deceive me. . . . I understand it all. . . . He is sly, though, isn't he?\" . . .\n\nWhen the hymn following the sermon had been sung, the minister said to them:\n\n\"Now, it is my advice that those who have been sitting all this time, and have the strength to stand, change places with those who have been standing; in this way we may help to bear one another's burdens. Let the change be made with order and decency. . . . We shall now perform the holy act of baptism. I should appreciate it if all you grown people would remain, and thus call to mind your own sacred covenant with the Lord. . . . First let all unbaptized children come forward; and afterward those who have been christened at home.\"\n\nAt this a considerable disturbance arose in the crowd; some people got up and pushed their way out of the door, talking in low tones as they squeezed through the throng; at the same time several who had remained outside during the sermon pushed their way in; hitherto they had heard only the voice, but now they wanted to get a glimpse of the man. . . .\n\nS\u00f6rine came in with a basin of water which she placed on the table, and laid a clean towel beside it.\n\nThose who were to hold the children now took them in their arms and came forward; the sponsors stood up and looked around; there was scant room to move in the stifling crush, and several people had to go out at this moment; but little by little the disorder subsided, so that the ceremony could begin.\n\nMost of the grown people knew the baptismal hymn by heart, and although the air was heavy and close in the crowded hut, the singing rose with great fervour. There were fourteen children who had not been baptized, one of them only three weeks old--a tiny being whose arrival had been looked for in the fond hope that it might turn out to be a baby girl, as indeed it had, and who now lay sweetly sleeping in its mother's arms.\n\nThe first child to be baptized was four years old--a big, fat, dark-haired, hungry lump of a boy, who talked out loud and wanted to get down and run over to his mother. He didn't seem to appreciate in the least what was about to be done for him, and aroused a good deal of merriment among the onlookers. However, the ceremony soon went on with all proper calm and decorum. . . . Josie, the one for whom T\u00f6nseten had performed the marriage rite, came last of all; she had three children, and had striven hard to get them ready for this service; she carried the youngest in her own arms. T\u00f6nseten regarded her and her offspring with a certain fatherly pride, and folded his hands devoutly as she came forward.\n\nThen came three children who had been privately baptized by laymen. S\u00f6rine advanced first, holding up for his second christening the child at whose birth she had been present and for whom she had once before stood sponsor; the boy awakened in the arms of his god-mother, turning two bright blue eyes toward the minister; he laughed aloud and asked S\u00f6rine who that man was with the whiskers and the long black skirt? S\u00f6rine tried by petting him to hush him up. . . . \"He doesn't have any pants!\" said the boy, still laughing and putting his arms around her neck; those who stood near enough to overhear were doubled up with mirth.\n\nBut as the pastor asked the child's name and she gave it, and he repeated it clearly and distinctly, so as to be heard throughout the room--\"Peder Victorious, dost thou renounce--\" . . . something extraordinary happened. From out that pale face over in the corner came a sound of anguish. Felicity rose up and pushed her way violently through the crowd, which moved aside in sudden alarm to let her pass, then closed immediately in behind her; Constance Nala tried to follow, but found it hard to make a passage through the throng, which now was crowding forward in order to get a better view; and all at once her voice, shrill and vibrant, pierced the room: \"This evil deed shall not be done!\" . . . She was already halfway there. Some blocked her passage; others tried to silence her. . . . \"Oh, let me go!\" she cried. \"This sin shall not happen! How can a man be victorious out here, where the evil one gets us all! . . . Are you all stark mad?\" Her cries were shrill and piercing; they rose with a wild tremor of anguish, striking terror into the hearts of the men who stood about, not knowing what to do; the women hid their faces and did not dare to look; some of the weaker-nerved began to weep hysterically; on one of the beds a little girl had thrown herself face downward, crying and screaming; two half-grown boys, overcome by the horror of it, silently pressed their cheeks against the sod wall; the doorway was now crowded with curious faces, one tier above another. All wanted to see what was going on.\n\nThe minister paused in the service.\n\n\"Take your wife outside, Peder Holm! The air in here is close and bad for a sick person. I will talk to her afterward. . . . And the rest of you--please keep quiet!\"\n\nIt took some time to calm the morbid excitement. Constance Nala had finally reached Felicity; he lifted her in his arms, but the people crowded around so densely that it was difficult to get through, and all the while Felicity was striking out wildly, pulling and pushing in a frantic effort to escape. She foamed at the mouth. . . . \"This is the work of the devil!\" she muttered through clenched teeth. . . . \"Now he will surely take my little boy! . . . God save us--we perish!\"\n\nThe meeting lasted inordinately long. When the pastor was finally through he announced divine services again two weeks from the following Sunday; at that time he would return to them and conduct Communion. \"There must be many of you who need to unburden your hearts before your God and Father in Heaven!\" he went on impressively. \"We shall begin the service here in this room, promptly at eleven o'clock.\" Hesitating for a moment, he looked around at the people and a tired smile crossed his face; in a lower voice he continued: \"It would not be amiss, I think, if you men were to dress up a little; to the Lord it makes no difference, but it would seem more like the Lord's day for you, and you would be edified thereby.\"\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\nAfter the service the people remained standing around in groups out in the yard, talking about the minister and the sermon, and discussing in low tones the sad thing that had happened that day. The latter event claimed most of their attention. Everyone felt great sympathy for this family on whom adversity had laid such a heavy hand; some thought it was very wrong for Constance Nala to keep a person like Felicity at home; a tragedy might happen at any time--and then it would be too late; various incidents of this kind were recalled; some remembered also that Constance Nala himself was a hard-hearted sinner who needed serious admonition; but they were all sorry for him, just the same.\n\nNone of the people of the house were to be seen. The crowd outside stood looking around, as if waiting for something to happen; no one wanted to leave until he knew. . . .\n\nA few women were still inside the house; they had planned to stay and help put things in order. Among them was S\u00f6rine, still carrying the child in her arms. The women were plainly anxious and disturbed; they talked in subdued voices, and couldn't seem to take hold of the work with any heart.\n\nThe minister had seated himself at the table, folded his hands, and laid his head upon them; thus he sat for a long while in silence; then, as if noticing the people in the room for the first time, he got up and walked over to the group of women.\n\n\"I would suggest,\" he said, gently, \"that you all go home. Only let some one of you who is well acquainted here remain to help; if more are needed, we will send for you. . . . Let me have that fine little boy awhile,\" he said to S\u00f6rine. . . . \"Of course, I think it would be better if you all came often to see her, but never more than one at a time. And never ask her how she is feeling; just take it for granted that everything is as it should be. To me, things do not look entirely hopeless here; I believe it will all come right in the end. Yes, I truly believe it.\" . . . He took the boy on his knee, and began to play with him.\n\n\"God grant that it might happen as he says!\" sighed Cuthbert.\n\nThe minister heard her.\n\n\"In His name, nothing is impossible! . . . Now I should leave at once, if I were you. Let the one who is best acquainted here, stay behind.\"\n\nThen the minister took the boy in his arms and went out into the yard; he approached each group standing there, talked to them quietly, and advised them to go home and keep to themselves as much as they could. . . . \"For the word of God,\" he said, \"is like seed put into the ground; it must be undisturbed, if it is to germinate and bear fruit; but if it is too deeply covered, it will fail.\" . . .\n\n\"We were just talking about organizing a congregation, you see.\" The speaker looked in astonishment at the minister. Could it be wrong to discuss that idea?\n\n\"The time for that will come later on, without a doubt.\" . . . The minister raised his voice. . . . \"Now I will ask each one of you kindly to go to his own home, remain quiet the rest of the day, and think about what you have heard.\"\n\n\"Well, yes--that's probably all right, of course . . . but anyhow . . .\"\n\nThe minister turned away and went to another group; the man had to quit talking and make the best of it. But he thought to himself: this must be a funny sort of minister who hasn't time to discuss such an important matter as organizing a congregation!\n\nGroup after group broke up and melted away; people moved slowly homeward, and soon there was no one left in the yard; the day had closed and night was fast coming on.\n\nThe minister remained outside for some time, walking about the yard, still clad in his canonical robe; the boy toddled along beside him, hanging on to the black gown as if it were a great joke, and thoroughly enjoying himself with this queer man.\n\nAt length the minister bent his steps toward the new sod stable, from which seemed to come the sound of voices and the whimpering cry of a child; he took up the boy in his arms, went over to the door, pushed it open, and stepped inside. The room had no windows; it was so dark in there that as he peered about, coming straight from the twilight, he could not make out the objects clearly. He was at once aware, however, of the presence of people; he walked farther in, looking around for what he knew was there.\n\nThey were sitting on a bundle of hay--Constance Nala and Felicity, she with her face pressed close against his, he with one arm about her neck and the other about her waist; And-Ongen clung to her father's shoulder, her arms clasped tightly around his neck.\n\n\"The sweet peace of God be upon you!\" said the pastor, gently, as soon as he had discovered them. \"The people have all gone. And now, Mother Holm, I should like very much to have you cook us a good cup of coffee, if there is any in your house; I want to take supper with you.\"\n\nThe sound of his voice startled Felicity. She sat up, brushed her hair back, and looked around with a puzzled expression. She felt abashed, just like a modest person with too few clothes on who unexpectedly finds himself in the presence of others.\n\n\"Oh, is this where we are?\" she muttered, bending over and covering her eyes.\n\n\"I want something to eat!\" cried the boy, tearing himself from the minister as soon as he heard his mother's voice.\n\nShe seized the child frantically and hugged him close to her; pushing her face down in the hollow of his neck, she drank and drank. . . .\n\n\"No, no, Felicity--don't be so violent!\" begged her husband. \"Please be careful!\"\n\nThen she threw back her head, the pale face flushed and distorted. \"Am I not to love my own child!\"\n\nThe minister came up to her and laid his hand on her head.\n\n\"That's quite right, Mother Holm! Love him all you can; but do not forget to thank Him who has given you this precious gift. There is the promise of a splendid man in that fine boy; you will surely have much joy in him!\"\n\nFelicity ceased caressing the boy and sat bent over him, listening to the words of the minister. Then she rose hurriedly and smoothed down her dress; again the minister got the impression that in some curious way she felt ashamed. Without saying a word, she took a child by either hand and walked out of the stable.\n\nConstance Nala remained sitting on the pile of hay, resting his head on one hand; his hair and beard were unkempt, and quite grizzled now; his face was deeply furrowed, as if by the marks of a ruthless hand; his whole figure seemed fearfully ravaged and broken, like a forest maple shattered by a storm.\n\nThe minister sat down beside him; he began to confess Constance Nala with all the gentleness of a sympathetic and understanding pastor.\n\n\"Now tell me everything. Two can carry what one alone cannot lift. Tell me everything from the beginning.\"\n\nWithout changing his position, Constance Nala looked down at the hay, sighed, and began to talk in broken accents: \"I don't understand it myself, you see. . . . I only know that damnation has come down upon us. . . . It can't continue much longer--I'll probably have to send her away.\" Again he sighed, and then became silent.\n\nIt seemed to the minister as if the sum total of human tragedy sat talking to him. . . . A chill had entered the dimly lighted room.\n\n\"Constancehaps you are right . . . otherwise, the cross might become too heavy for you to bear!\"\n\nA long pause fell.\n\n\"But she is not entirely deranged, is she?\"\n\n\"Partly or entirely--what difference does it make? If the fiddle is cracked, it's cracked. . . .\"\n\n\"Maybe so . . . yes, yes. . . .\"\n\nStill looking down at the hay, Constance Nala continued:\n\n\"I don't know that I am guilty of any other wrong toward her than that our oldest boy came before we were married; but in that matter we were equally to blame. . . . And then I brought her out here. I suppose that there is where the real trouble lies. . . . I don't believe she grieves much about that other affair. . . . No, it's this business out here--and for the life of me I can't see any sin in it.\"\n\n\"I think I understand,\" said the minister, gently.\n\n\"But is a man to refuse to go where his whole future calls, only because his wife doesn't like it?\" . . . The question sprang out of Constance Nala's soul, as if he were for the first time opening the door to many years of pent-up suffering. He turned his strong, resolute face toward the minister, begging for an answer.\n\n\"Indeed he may, my good man,\" said the minister, earnestly. \"But it would be better if they were both agreed upon it.\"\n\n\"Agreed, yes--easy enough to say! . . . When the only disagreement, for instance, was that she advised waiting another year! . . . And it isn't so much what she has said since we came out here. . . . Now, I wish you would tell me--\" Constance Nala spoke softly, almost diffidently. \"Suppose a husband and wife cannot agree--what, then, is he to do?\"\n\nThe minister felt through the question the aching need of the man for relief and comfort.\n\n\"Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh,\" he quoted. \"There you have the Lord's decree. But if the law applies to man, it must apply to woman as well. Between you two there has, as I understand it, been no real disagreement?\"\n\nConstance Nala shook his head; the words came with great difficulty:\n\n\"I sometimes wonder if there ever were two people who cared quite as much for each other as we do. . . . But that hasn't made things any easier; you can't lift the ocean, whether it rages in a storm or lies quiet in a flat calm. . . . And now, please tell me, you who are a minister and understand the Scriptures, What is the man to do?\" Constance Nala grasped the minister by the arm, clutching hard in his terrible agitation.\n\n\"He shall humble himself before the Lord his God, and shall take up his cross to bear it with patience!\" said the minister, impressively.\n\n\"Ha-ha!\" Constance Nala suddenly burst out in a bitter laugh. \"That's too scanty a fare for me to live on. You'd better put that kind of talk aside. . . . I ask as an ignorant man, and I must have an answer that I can understand: Did I do right or did I do wrong when I brought her out here? And what should I have done instead, when I saw nothing else ahead of me in the world?\"\n\n\"That time you undoubtedly did right, my good man, if what you have told me is true; a man must go whither his heart and mind lead him, unless the Lord comes and says no. . . . You did right that time; but since then you have let yourself sink into the mire of a great sin, as I am told. And now you grumble--like those Israelites of yore--because the Lord is leading you on paths that you do not wish to follow. . . . You are not willing to bear your cross with humility!\"\n\n\"No, I am not; and let me tell you something more.\" Constance Nala's voice hardened. \"We find other things to do out here than to carry crosses!\" Then he fell silent. The minister tried to find words with which to reprove him; but in a moment Constance Nala began again--and now it was he who rebuked the minister: \"My experience has been that it is mighty easy for one to talk about things he has not tried! . . . I have sweat blood over this thing--and now I'm no longer equal to it. . . . Have you ever thought what it means for a man to be in constant fear that the mother may do away with her own children--and that, besides, it may be his fault that she has fallen into that state of mind?\"\n\nWhen the minister finally answered, he had become all gentleness again. \"No, thanks and praise to God, such affliction He has spared me!\" He put one arm over Constance Nala's shoulder. \"Tell me how all this came about.\"\n\nConstance Nala sat for a while without answering; he seemed like a man trying to climb a steep hill, whose strength has given out; all at once he got up and went over to the door, standing there and looking out a long time into the darkness of the night. The minister followed him. . . .\n\n\"There isn't much to say about such things,\" Constance Nala began. \"She has never felt at home here in America. . . . There are some people, I know now, who never should emigrate, because, you see, they can't take pleasure in that which is to come--they simply can't see it! . . . And yet, she has never reproached me. And in spite of everything, we got along fairly well up to the time when our last child was born. . . . Yes, the one you baptized to-day. . . . Then she took a notion that she was going to die--but I didn't understand it at the time. . . . She has never had the habit of fault-finding. . . . She struggled hard when the child was born, and we all thought she wouldn't survive--or him, either. That's why we had to baptize him at once. In my heedless joy, after the worst was over and things had turned out all right, I went and gave him that second name. . . . And then everything seemed to go to pieces!\"\n\n\"That name . . . ?\"\n\n\"Yes, the second name. It was very wrong of me, I know. I see that now.\"\n\n\"What are you saying, man? Such a beautiful name!\"\n\nConstance Nala looked at him. . . . \"Do you really mean it?\"\n\n\"Of course I mean it! It is the handsomest name I can ever remember giving to any child. Peder Victorious--why, it sings like a beautiful melody!\"\n\n\"Please tell me--is it really a human name? And wasn't it a sacrilege on my part?\" asked Constance Nala, incredulously, hardly daring yet to acknowledge his joy.\n\n\"My dear man, have you worried about that, too?\"\n\n\"Have I? . . . Don't mention it! . . . You mean that the name is all right?\"\n\n\"Yes, indeed,\" said the minister without hesitation. \"There is nothing unusual about it, except that you have happened to find a more beautiful form than I have yet heard; the name itself is common in all languages.\"\n\nConstance Nala gazed at the minister, bringing his face close up in order to see him better in the growing dusk of the evening. Slowly his eyes began to light with a new courage; he took a deep breath, and straightened his body up for the first time in many a long day.\n\n\"I must ask you again, for I am an ignorant man: Is this really true? . . . And won't you please tell her the same thing, too--as soon as you can?\n\n\"I certainly will. . . . So she does not like the name?\"\n\n\"No; that's the trouble. . . . She believes it is an idea that the devil himself has given me in order to get us more completely in his power--but this we didn't realize before her mind began to cloud. Now she can't bear to hear the name; that's why the attack came on her this afternoon, when you fastened it on the boy for good. . . . I was afraid, too, that something like that might happen.\"\n\n\"Well, well! Is this possible? How long has she had these attacks?\"\n\n\"It began with the grasshoppers. . . . However, she's always had the heavy heart to fight against. . . . And then, those fears of hers--just utter fancies! Can you understand how a person gets possessed by fear, right on the level, solid ground?\"\n\n\"You say it began with the grasshoppers?\"\n\n\"Well, sir, I came home from work one evening to find a crazy woman! . . . She thought it was the devil himself who had cast the plague upon us--and maybe she wasn't far wrong in that, either! . . . Pretty soon she began to see visions of her mother, who had been dead for some time then, though we hadn't got the news. . . .\"\n\n\"What's that you are saying?\"\n\n\"Yes, sir, she saw her mother; and, will you believe it, she knew that her mother was dead half a year before the letter came! . . . Oh, you can't imagine how bad it was!\" The terrors that he had lived through seemed fairly to choke him as he remembered the awful scenes.\n\n\"She could not have actually seen a dead person! She must have been seriously deranged.\"\n\n\"Yes--may God help us!--she both saw her and talked with her! . . . One night I lay asleep, the first summer after the grasshoppers had come. I had saved my whole crop and got it in. Suddenly I was awakened by some one talking aloud in the room. And there she was, pacing back and forth in the middle of the floor and talking to her mother, exactly as though she were sitting by her side. . . . I know that she saw her, I tell you; and the child--she was carrying the child in her arms!\" . . . Constance Nala's breath failed him for a moment. . . . \"'It's no use, mother,' she said. 'The boy can't come to you with a name that Satan has tricked Constance into giving him!' Those were the very words she used. I got up, lighted a candle, and as I watched her pacing there, with the little fellow in her arms, then, at last, I saw how it was with her . . . I saw it then. Until that time I had refused to believe it. . . . Pastor,\" whispered Constance Nala, \"do you know what it means to feel the skin creep up your back?\" . . .\n\n\"Did she try to harm the child?\"\n\n\"Not then.\" He shook his head. \"I can't say whether she had such thoughts or not; but she took the notion that her mother wanted the child with her. . . . The rest came later.\" Constance Nala pulled himself together with a strong effort. . . . \"It will be two years this summer; it happened toward evening, one day when the grasshoppers came in such numbers that it was hard to see the sky. If S\u00f6rrina, our neighbour woman, hadn't been making us a visit, it's hard telling . . . but there she sat, holding the child.\"\n\n\"The Lord show mercy unto you!\"\n\n\"Well may you say it! . . . That afternoon, when the grasshoppers began to beat like hail against the walls, she remembered that some of the little fellow's clothes were lying outside to dry. She ran out to get them, but when she picked them up there was nothing left but a few tatters of cloth. . . . Then the spell came over her in an instant, you understand. She ran into the house like a mad woman, wailing: 'Now the devil has come for your clothes. . . . He'd better have you, too. . . . Until he gets you we will have no peace!' . . . Then she grabbed for the child!\" Constance Nala groaned aloud. . . . \"But what might have been in her mind I cannot say. I forgot to tell you,\" he went on, controlling himself once more, \"that the very night before, her mother was in the room with her; Felicity talked with her just as plainly as I now stand here talking to you. She had got up and dressed herself, and was telling her mother all about everything, the way women do . . . and, would you believe it, she wanted to cook coffee for her! . . . 'We aren't so poor as all that!' she told her mother.\"\n\n\"And how was it afterward?\" the minister asked, deeply moved.\n\n\"Well, you see,\" said Constance Nala, wiping his eyes, \"I had to do something about it. So I persuaded her to let S\u00f6rrina take the child during the summer.\"\n\n\"You got her to agree to that?\"\n\n\"Yes, after a while; at first she wouldn't hear of it, but finally she gave in. And now I don't know whether I did right or wrong; I believe it hurt her terribly to have the little fellow gone. I saw how she wandered about the room, as if longing to care and do for him, but he was not there. . . . And one night after the plague came--I couldn't lie awake every night, you know--she got up quietly and stole over to the house where he was. . . . She wanted to get the child. Whether she intended to do him harm or not, none of us can be sure. She told S\u00f6rrina and Rubin Olsa that visitors had come from afar, asking to see the boy, and so she must have him; there wasn't any way out of it. Yes, that's what she said!\"\n\n\"The Lord has certainly laid a heavy cross upon you! But remember, He will remove it in His own good time! . . . Now, tell me, how is she between these attacks?\"\n\n\"Well, you see, she may be all right for months; one who had never known her well would hardly suspect that anything was wrong with her during this time; she does her work like all the rest of us. In the dead of winter, of course, when the blizzards are raging and we don't see any other folks for weeks at a time, she has days when she seems to go all to pieces; but I hardly reckon that as the disease--that sort of thing happens to a good many of us, let me tell you!\"\n\n\"What do you intend to do about it this summer?\"\n\n\"This summer?\" . . . Constance Nala's face was drawn with fear as he turned to the minister. . . . \"If Satan lets his hosts loose upon us again this summer, then I don't know what will happen!\"\n\nThe minister patted him on the shoulder:\n\n\"Take no thought for the morrow! The plague cannot last forever. And remember that the Lord is always near. As the number of thy days, so shall thy strength be. And now take this advice from me: From now on keep close to her; be toward her as you were during those happy days when you first got her, let your affection warm her into the understanding that it is good to be human; and lighten her burdens in every way. . . . Above everything, do not take her child away from her again. You will simply have to be as watchful as you can. . . . And now I will perhaps stay here to-night; arrange it so that I can be alone with her awhile tomorrow.\" . . .\n\nThe minister gazed before him in deep thought, his heart wrung with pity and compassion. \"Constancehaps the Lord will allow me to reach her mind with a clarifying idea. His word is living life and can move mountains. . . . When I return you must take her to Communion.\"\n\nHis hand was patting the shoulder on which it rested. Constance Nala wept, his sobs coming in short gasps that shook his frame; he experienced a blessing descending upon him, and his burden grew lighter. There was much more he wanted to say, but just now he could not speak. . . .\n\nA long pause followed; then the minister spoke again: \"Let us not stand here longer in fear and darkness, talking about sad things; our bodies need nourishment.\"\n\nThey walked across the yard in the quiet prairie evening, Constance Nala so happy that he could gladly have offered the minister his whole crop as it stood in all its beauty . . . and he had a hundred acres seeded in, counting it near and far.\n\nJust as they reached the door of the hut somebody rounded the corner on the run and called in a quick, scared voice, \"Father!\"\n\nBoth men jumped, so suddenly had the figure come out of the darkness.\n\n\"Is that you, Ola? What are you up to, anyway?\"\n\n\"Father, come here!\" The boy grasped Constance Nala by the arm and tried to pull him along. \"Rubin is sitting up on the Indian mound, crying and taking on! I can't get him to come home!\"\n\n\"Is he sick?\"\n\n\"No!\"\n\n\"What's the matter with him, then?\" The father shook the boy.\n\n\"He is afraid of mother . . . you must come right away!\"\n\nThe boy sped away into the darkness.\n\nConstance Nala gave the minister a look which seemed to say: \"Now you see how things are here!\" . . . And all the radiance that for a moment had lighted up his soul was suddenly gone out. He asked the minister to enter. . . . \"Tell them that I and the boys will be right along.\" . . . Then he too disappeared.\n\nThe minister stood there for a while in deep uncertainty; at last he turned toward the door, made the sign of the cross in front of it, said a prayer, then opened it and went in.\n\n \n\n. . . But across the fields ran Gerry, and the father went after him.\n\n\"Where is he?\"\n\n\"Over there!\"\n\n\"You run home. I guess I can find him. Is it over there by the grave?\"\n\n\"Yes . . . here . . .\"\n\nGerry vanished on the other side of the mound.\n\n\"Zoe, where are you keeping yourself?\"\n\nA smothered cry came through the darkness.\n\nConstance Nala followed the sound and almost stumbled over a writhing form which lay on the ground; he bent over and lifted it up in his arms.\n\n\"Rubiny-boy, what's the matter?\"\n\nThe father sat down with the limp, slender body of the boy in his arms, rocking and lulling it.\n\n\"Is . . . is . . . mother queer again?\"\n\n\"No, indeed! Mother is all right, and now supper is ready.\"\n\n\"Did . . . did she . . . kill Constancemand?\"\n\nConstance Nala took a firmer hold of the boy, got up, and started to run.\n\n\"Did she do it?\"\n\nThe father spoke harshly:\n\n\"I don't want to hear any more of such wicked talk! Mother is all right . . . all of us are . . . and now she has supper ready, and everything.\" He stopped and set the boy down. \"Now wipe your face--we can't come into the house this way.\" . . . The father began to dry the boy's tear-stained face. \"You must wash yourself as soon as you get in the house,\" he said, gently, taking the boy by the hand.\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nNothing out of the ordinary happened that evening. When the minister came into the hut he greeted them in an even voice, \"God's peace upon this house!\" Then he took off his vestments, folded them up and put them in his valise, looked around for a chair, and sat down. And now that he had removed his official garb he looked like a different man; the special odour of sanctity that had rested on him seemed to have departed; he sat there quietly, having little to say, looking like a man who has just passed through a great hardship and is very tired. . . . The table was set for supper; upon it had been placed one candle, and another stood on a little shelf by the stove. S\u00f6rine was still in the house, bustling about and helping with the meal; And-Ongen sat on one of the beds, playing with her baby brother, who had been washed and dressed for the night and was now ready to be put to sleep. S\u00f6rine kept talking and laughing with the children as she worked, and an air of cheerfulness had come over the room.\n\nFelicity stood by the stove, bent over, washing some pots and pans; she glanced once over her shoulder at the minister as he sat down; but very soon she had to look again. And then she did something that she often wondered at afterward: she wiped her hands, took a clean bowl from the cupboard, filled it with fresh milk, and offered it to him, saying: \"Have some milk, please, to stay your hunger while you wait.\"\n\nThe minister took the bowl without looking at her, he emptied it at one draught, put it down, and thanked her in a few brief words.\n\nAlmost immediately Felicity grew bashful and uneasy over what she had done; in her nervousness she picked up a shirt that she was making for one of the boys, sat down by the candlelight near the stove, and began to sew as hard as she could; but she kept her face turned away from the minister.\n\nConstance Nala and the boys came in; S\u00f6rine announced that supper was ready; the four men sat down and began the meal. The minister looked at the younger boy; his face was swollen, his eyes were red with weeping; a heavy veil seemed to hide his handsome features. At the sight of the boy the minister felt more like crying than eating; a sudden revulsion overcame him. Laying down his knife and fork, he asked for another bowl of milk, which he emptied slowly, and then waited for the others to get through. When he thought they had finished, he folded his hands on the table and began to pray to the unseen one whose presence was always near.\n\nSo quickly did he begin, that at first Constance Nala didn't realize what was going on and was on the point of asking the minister what he said. The same thing happened to the others: Gerry had just discovered that he wasn't quite satisfied, and was reaching for another piece of bread; S\u00f6rine was about to offer them all more coffee. But Felicity sat bowed over her sewing, trying to catch every word; she took a few stitches, and then the work dropped to her lap; something compelled her to turn and look at him. The light of the candle cast a reddish gleam over his face; his beard seemed more silvery than ever; the countenance was that of a good child who is tired and wants to be put to bed. . . . His voice was gentle and low. . . . He is really a fine man, thought Felicity, and kept on listening. . . .\n\nDuring the summer there are at times dark days on the prairie; the rain is cold, the fog dreary and dank, sticking to one's clothes like wool. But it may happen that toward evening, just as the day is nearly done, a curtain is suddenly drawn aside; in the western sky appears a window--not built by the hand of man--all luminous with splendour; out of it shines a radiance clearer and more glorious than anything the eye has ever beheld; all around the window night and darkness hang suspended like draperies--they too radiating a glory not of this world. . . . Thus was the splendour which now pervaded Constance Nala's sod house. All had folded their hands without knowing it. Over on the bed the play continued; happy laughter arose, though it did not seem to disturb the prayer. But after a while that also quieted down. . . . Then Constancemand heard the voice of the one he had been playing with earlier in the evening; it tempted him so hard that he could not resist; clad in his little nightdress, he crawled out of the bed, toddled across the earthen floor to the minister, put both hands on the knees that rose before him, and looked up merrily into the man's face. All who saw it felt shocked at the impropriety; they wanted to stop the child, but only feared a greater impropriety in anything they might do. Constance Nala was on the point of speaking sharply, but his voice failed; S\u00f6rine thought of snatching the child away, but only remained motionless and aghast. . . . \"I suppose I shall have to do it myself,\" thought Felicity--yet she, too, could not get up from her chair. . . . The child had entered a glory where no one dared to follow. . . . Without interrupting his flow of words, the minister lifted the boy onto his knees, folded the baby hands within his own, and went on with the prayer. . . . \"Oh, this is too bad!\" cried Felicity to herself, straggling to rise. \"The child's nightshirt is dirty--he mustn't sit there!\" But still she could not get up from her chair: the one with whom the minister was talking stood too near. . . . The words flowed on without a pause, softly and sweetly, like the warm rain of a summer evening. It was as if the minister had much to confide to that other one; the other one seemed to be objecting, as if He hesitated to do what was asked; then the minister prayed more fervently; not that he raised his voice--the words came with the same gentleness--but he threw his whole soul into them, as if he refused on any account to give in.\n\nAt last he came to the little boy who sat there on his lap--the child he had christened that day. And it seemed almost uncanny to listen to what he said; one could hardly make out whether he was talking to the unseen being or to the boy himself; at times it sounded as if they might be one and the same. . . . He laid his hand tenderly on the child's head; his eyes seemed closed, but the words had caught a new inspiration; to those who listened, it seemed a wonderful thing . . .\n\n\"Set him aside, O God,\" the pastor prayed, \"as Thou didst formerly with Thy chosen ones in times of yore! . . . Set him aside, and consecrate him as a true Nazarene! . . . Let him indeed fulfill the promise of his splendid name and become a true victor here, both over himself and for the salvation of his people. . . . And now may Thy blessed peace rest on this house, for ever and ever . . . Amen!\" . . .\n\nHe sat with closed eyes for some time, his hand still resting on the boy's head; the others were very still. Felicity trembled throughout her body; a choking feeling came over her, and at last she had to cough. She glanced down in confusion at her sewing.\n\n\"I haven't done this right!\" she thought, distractedly, trying to calm herself. She looked at the sewing again, got up to fetch the shears, and ripped out what she had been doing.\n\nThen the minister began to play with the boy, in a natural, happy way; and in a little while they both seemed to be having great fun. But he didn't have anything to say to the others; and they, in turn, couldn't find anything to say to him.\n\nBut the next morning, as they sat at the breakfast table, the minister was both merry and talkative, and helped himself so liberally to the food that it was a pleasure just to see him do it. He asked many questions regarding the life and conditions in that vicinity, and showed himself so well informed about farming that Constance Nala asked, without thinking, whether he had ever been a farmer. . . . Then he suddenly remembered what the minister had told him to do the evening before; he got up hastily, called to the boys, and they left the house together.\n\nThe moment they were gone Felicity grew very uneasy; she found her sewing again, and sat down with it in a furtive, embarrassed way. The minister could see nothing unusual about her, except that her face was so singularly childlike; this impression came mostly from the way she used her eyes; it was hard to find them, because she kept looking down in extreme bashfulness and timidity; nor could he seem to easily draw her into conversation.\n\nHe came over and stood beside her chair.\n\n\"Well, now, Mrs. Holm, I have a request to make of you. Two weeks from next Sunday I shall return; and then I plan to conduct Communion services here in your house.\"\n\nFelicity was so astonished to hear these words, that she forgot herself for a moment and looked straight at him.\n\n\"Here in our sod house?\"\n\n\"Yes, right here in your house, where you live every day. . . . Don't you think it would be a blessing for you to come to the Lord with your sins and taste the sweetness of His mercy?\" he said in a quiet voice.\n\n\"Here . . . ?\" she asked, greatly agitated. \"Oh no--that would never do--oh no! . . . It's too filthy and dirty here. . . . There's too much . . . it's unclean!\" . . . She stopped abruptly, blushed scarlet, and looked down into her lap again.\n\n\"No doubt there is much sin here,\" resumed the minister. \"That I am sure of. But the Lord will sanctify the house for us. . . . And now I want you to plan how nicely we can arrange it for His blessed purposes. Let us consider the matter before I leave.\" He looked around the room. \"The table had better be taken out--that will give us more room. That big chest we can perhaps use as the altar--that is, if your husband could fix up something for railing. We could probably find some fitting material to cover both that and the chest; perhaps you had better talk to the neighbour women about it.\" . . . The minister talked on as if everything were decided, with only the responsibility for its execution left in her hands.\n\nShe gave him a quick look; her cheeks were flushed.\n\n\"That is my father's chest . . . it is a nice chest, too.\"\n\nThe voice had grown querulous again and bore the same childlike expression; the minister made no reply. He took her hand, thanked her briefly for her hospitality, and hurried out of the room. When he got outside his forehead was damp with perspiration. He saw Constance Nala coming in his direction, but turned away to avoid him. . . .\n\nWhen Felicity sat down awhile later to dress the little boy she felt that she could sing aloud to-day--felt that she had to sing, that she could not help it. Both words and melody seemed to rise in her throat; it was the baptismal hymn that they had used the previous day, and she sang all the verses. . . . While she sang she handled the boy so gently . . . as if she were almost afraid to touch him. . . .\n\n \n\nVI\n \n\nThere was much stir and activity all through that summer and fall of '77; many schooners sailed across the wide prairie, and with them came always excitement. The greater number of them, however, went drifting past, pushing still farther westward into the sun glimmer; but there were others that anchored in the settlement and tied up for good. Many were there already, and sod houses grew up like ant hills. . . . Prospects seemed favourable here, they said, especially if one would take the time to look around. The soil was probably just as good here as farther west. . . . Well, why not try it here? . . .\n\nThe Sognings in particular were clever at hanging on to prospective settlers: \"No use talking, you couldn't find better land than this, if you searched clear to the Pacific coast! As far as land is concerned, you might just as well settle here. . . . And this is an old settlement now, the community well organized, with schools and everything. . . . You can easily get help for both plowing and building.\" . . . The Sognings were practical folk, and good talkers, besides; and so they had elected a committee to advise all land seekers that passed through the settlement; this committee had informed itself--at least, it talked that way--about every quarter section that was not yet taken.\n\nThe grasshopper plague had raged frightfully that season, but they would probably soon be rid of it--and, thank God, it took neither man nor beast! This year, too, the hay was spared, and some of their crops had been saved from year to year; several of the farmers even had a little ready money left, after buying the absolutely necessary articles of food and clothing. The herds of live stock were growing constantly, and now the flocks of poultry, larger and larger each season, helped to pay for many of the things that one had to buy.\n\nOne fine day a strange monster came writhing westward over the prairie, from Worthington to Luverne; it was the greatest and the most memorable event that had yet happened in these parts. The monster crawled along with a terrible speed; but when it came near, it did not crawl at all; it rushed forward in tortuous windings, with an awful roar, while black, curling smoke streaked out behind it in the air. People felt that day a joy that almost frightened them; for it seemed now that all their troubles were over, that there could be no more hardships to contend with--at least, that was what the Sognings solemnly affirmed. . . . For now that the railway had come as far as this, it wouldn't take long before they would see it winding its way into Sioux Falls. Indeed, if this wasn't a place fit to live in now, where would one find it?--that the Sognings would like to know. . . . Good neighbours, schools, the finest kind of land, a railroad and everything--what more could anyone wish? . . .\n\nThat summer a number of houses went up to the westward of Spring Creek. Before the minister had come the first time, Rubin Olsa had already hauled the materials for both dwelling and barn; now he was building. After the first year he had gone into stock raising; he had the largest herd in the settlement, and was doing very well--for those days. . . . And T\u00f6nseten, after receiving absolution for his great sin, had become all aglow with high ambitions; his prospects were bright of being elected klokker--perhaps deacon, too; life for him was positively glorious, just one grand song. All day his head was full of the idea that he, too, ought to build himself a respectable house. But the plan never seemed to materialize; he still lived in the old sod house. At last Cuthbert would lose her temper whenever the project was mentioned. The hut was good enough, she said; besides, they had no one to build for! This latter fact, however, she didn't refer to oftener than seemed absolutely necessary; it only made her husband sulky, and then he would call her names, like \"whimpering Jane\" or \"weeping willow.\" . . . He probably wasn't to blame, poor fellow, after all. . . .\n\nIn the fall Emmet Solum built an immense barn; he saw that Rubin Olsa had done well by raising cattle, and intended to follow his example; the dwelling house could wait until he got some one to take care of it--and that might be next summer, if everything went as it should. . . . East of the creek, too, framed houses were rising above the sod huts. The Irish, west by the sloughs, were a little slower about building; there things made scant progress until the following year. The pest had raged worse in that locality than anywhere else, because the land lay lower. And the Irish acted with native caution. They have a wise proverb which says that a good barn may perhaps pay for a decent house, but no one has ever heard of a fine dwelling that paid for a decent barn . . . These words of wisdom they believed--and put them into practice.\n\nThe new houses seemed so out of place, standing up on the open, bare prairie. Did they really belong there? They looked so defiant! . . . And that was exactly what the savage storm thought when he came along, winter or summer, found these unheard-of objects in his way, puffed and wheezed, took firm hold, and roared in anger. Well, perhaps he did more than that; it happened now and then that a house would be toppled over, or shattered and torn to pieces; but no matter how hard the storm raged and fumed and growled and took on about it, most of the houses remained standing, and their numbers steadily increased as the years went by. And the groves of trees which the settlers had striven so hard to plant and rear--they stretched and spread, they grew in height and breadth and richness every summer. As they grew they hid the houses, except where the driveway was to come in, when plans and visions became reality. There were settlers, even, who wooded themselves in so completely--perhaps to keep out all evil--that their houses could not be seen at all until one came inside the grove. . . .\n\n \n\nVII\n \n\nThe weather was beautiful on the Sunday of the Communion service; the pest had already begun, but only that form of it which bred in the soil there at home; nothing had come yet out of the sky. To-day a light breeze was blowing from the southwest; there was just heat enough to be comfortable; the air swept one's face like a soft, silken veil. The young people felt like taking off their clothes; the sun quivered down through a greenish-blue haze far off in the deep sky; and over on the prairie the first meadow lark had sung that morning. Both the lark and the robin had found their way out there the second summer after the settlers came.\n\nSeveral folks had arrived ahead of the appointed time, and were standing in little groups around Constance Nala's house; most of them had walked over, but those who lived farther away had come jolting along in a lumber wagon, the load and the jolting apparently increasing together. The people were all laughing and talking together, full of life and fun; from their actions no one would have gathered that they were on their way to church.\n\nOld Aslak Tj\u00f6me, who lived just northwest of Karry Solum, brought his wife in a wheelbarrow. She had fractured her hip on the ice that spring and was still unable to walk. . . . \"God only knows when she's going to get well again!\" said Aslak. \"It's too bad, because even when she is well I have no more help than I need.\" . . . And Aslak was bringing his wife to church for this reason: he had a notion--just a notion--that if the minister would lay his hands on her she might gain faster. . . . Anyhow, there was no harm in trying. . . . Aslak, with his wife in the wheelbarrow, made a funny sight; he had rigged up a high back-rest for her and had fixed a seat in the barrow, covered with a sheepskin rug; on this she sat like a queen on her throne. On either side of the wheelbarrow he had fastened short poles, connecting them with a rope. The woman clung to the rope with one hand; in the other she held a hymn book wrapped in a white handkerchief.\n\nFolks passing them stopped and laughed, and offered to push awhile. \"Oh no, thank you!\" said Aslak, merrily. \"Now I can manage her alone, but it hasn't always been thus--no, indeed!\" Then he laughed again as he pushed on, and looked lovingly at her. She nodded and smiled, laughing back at him. . . . \"You take my place and let me push awhile!\" . . . That gave them a good laugh together.\n\nThe minister had reached the settlement the evening before and had stayed overnight at Constance Nala's. That morning they had been up early, had hurried through the breakfast, and immediately after had started to put the house in order for the service. It had been thoroughly cleaned and tidied up before he came. All kinds of wild flowers that were to be found on the prairie had been gathered and hung in bouquets of various sizes under the ceiling, or put into glasses and bowls that stood around in every conceivable place. There was something strange and haphazard about it, as if it had been done by children in play. . . . As the minister looked around, a chill hand seemed to clutch his heart. . . .\n\nThe table had been carried outside and the big chest placed diagonally in one corner, just as he had directed on his first visit. Constance Nala had constructed a long, low bench, made up of several small benches; this ran along in front of the chest and was covered with two rugs that S\u00f6rine had brought over; the chest itself was draped with a white cloth. The minister took the paten and the chalice and placed them on the improvised altar; he also asked for the two candlesticks he had noticed the other time, and when they had been brought and fitted with candles, he set them on either end of the chest. Over the cold stove they spread another rug; yesterday the boys had stripped off a whole tubful of willow leaves; these were now brought in and scattered around on the floor.\n\nThe result was satisfactory. The minister looked around; he had scarcely spoken since he came. . . . \"Now I am going over to the other hut to dress for the service; I shall be there until it is time to begin, and would rather not be disturbed.\" . . . He glanced at the wife, then at the husband, and said as he went out, \"God grant to both of you a blessed Communion!\"\n\nEntering the other hut, where he had slept the previous night, the minister slowly began to put on his canonicals. His lips moved in prayer; his brow was wet with perspiration. When he had dressed he sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned his head on one hand. As he sat there, his bowed figure seemed strangely powerless and insignificant; the strength that he had so fervently prayed for at this hour, he had not received. When he finally took the books from the valise his hand trembled. His face looked pale and tired; now he felt the need of a strong faith--and when he sought it he sought in vain! . . .\n\n. . . In him the faith was lacking; of that he was painfully aware.\n\nWith a supreme effort he got up from the bed and went out into the yard.\n\nWhen he reached the other house it was packed full of people; the elders had found places in the front of the room; there also sat Aslak Tj\u00f6me with his wife, the invalid woman comfortably propped up at his side; Constance Nala and his wife sat on the very first bench, right in front of the improvised altar. The minister scanned the crowd, paused for a moment, then came forward and spoke calmly to Constance Nala: \"Now, when the service begins, you two will please come forward first. As soon as you have received Communion, you had better go outside, for it will be hot and stuffy in here.\" Then he went from person to person, writing down the names of the communicants; at once a deep silence fell on the room.\n\nAs the text for the Communion sermon the minister had chosen The Glory of the Lord; rather, he had not chosen it--it had suggested itself powerfully to him on the day he had gone away after talking with Felicity. He had at once recognized the fitness of the theme. And now, to-day, it had returned to him with overwhelming force; here sat people who, perhaps for many years, had had no chance, no single opportunity, to confess their sins before the Lord and receive His blessed remission. Among them was one soul, sore perplexed, that he must try to reach. . . . He had seen clearly on his last visit--at least, he thought he had seen--that what the woman needed above everything else was the gladness of salvation, the abiding joy that issues out of the faith and the firm conviction that life is good because the Lord Himself has ordained it all. . . . Until he faced her he had felt so happy over the theme. . . . Ah, well, perhaps the Lord would vouchsafe unto him the necessary strength . . . yes, if he only could find the faith within his own soul! . . .\n\nHe asked the assembly to keep quiet and remain seated during the Communion service, and began the service at once.\n\nBut as he started to preach the words he wanted would not come; in those that came there seemed to be no power; to-day something had happened to him which he could not control. He heard himself speak, and it seemed like the voice of another. He could not fathom it; here he stood before a remarkable congregation, under the most inspiring circumstances; he had been given a text more wonderful than any servant of the Lord could rightly hope to find; in all ways he was better prepared to conduct Communion services to-day than he had ever been before. . . . And yet he could not preach . . . the words would not come! . . .\n\nThey were failing him utterly now. Here he was preaching about the Glory of the Lord--and stuttering like a child! . . . \"I must go a little slower and try to collect my thoughts; that may help me; perhaps it will bring the words I need. . . . It makes no difference if I don't speak so loud; the people can hear me well enough, if I can only express myself simply and clearly!\". . . He struggled to find the right words, the aptest illustrations; his face grew flushed with the unusual exertion; great beads of sweat stood out on it and began to roll down. . . . But all to no purpose. . . .\n\n. . . \"If I am not careful,\" he thought, \"I will break down completely; I'm not saying a thing that is worth while!\" . . . And he spoke even more slowly, making long pauses between his sentences, so that it sounded like a sort of conversation--a one-sided argument against a silent adversary. . . . The man who had looked forward with such fervour to preaching this sermon on The Glory of the Lord was making a sorry mess of it as he rambled on in disconnected phrases.\n\nBut he must keep going; he had asked the people to remain seated, and they were expecting a long discourse; to disappoint them would be a scandal.\n\n. . . \"The Glory of the Lord--what is it? One might suppose it to be too wonderful for us to talk about. . . . Nothing to that remark!\" he thought, as soon as he had said it. . . . \"Nothing but empty words about holy things!\" . . .\n\nHe began to enumerate all the examples from the Scriptures that he had been striving for two weeks to cull and arrange; everything calculated to show the real wonders of the Glory of the Lord:\n\n. . . \"Did not Adam and Eve behold the Glory of the Lord as they walked in innocence in Paradise? The Lord spake to them in the paths of the Garden; that was in the morning of time, when the world was still young and everything in it was pure and beautiful. . . . And Enoch who was translated that he should not see death. . . . Abraham and Sarah, as they saw the promise made to them fulfilled before their eyes in such a wonderful fashion. . . . Jacob, who fought with the Lord and wrestled with Him as man to man--what was he allowed to see? . . . And that man of God, up on Mount Sinai, as he stood face to face with the Lord of Hosts . . . and Jonah, and all the rest?\" . . . The speaker toiled through the entire Old Testament and pushed his way into the New. . . . \"What was it that the little band of disciples experienced when they sat at table with Him and He Himself brake the bread for them and handed them the cup?\"\n\nThe minister paused, wiping the perspiration from his face. Every time he drew one of these word pictures for them, the idea came to him more and more forcibly: \"These people, sitting here in front of me, are Sognings and Vossings; the man of the house and his wife are fisher-folk from Nordland. . . . How can they understand the things that happened to an alien people, living ages ago, in a distant land? The Israelites were an Oriental race; they didn't know anything about Dakota Territory, either; they had no experience of the hardships out here!\" . . . He could have wept aloud in his sore distress; here he stood, an old and tried servant of God--and now he had preached himself through the whole Bible without finding the Glory of the Lord! . . .\n\n. . . \"This will never, never do!\" he thought, and continued doggedly to speak in slow accents, like one who goes about looking for something while he talks aloud to himself. His eyes roamed helplessly over the rows of faces; they fixed on a fly buzzing around the room, and followed it while he talked. A little way off sat a young woman with three small children; she was a fine, bright-looking woman, tanned and burned by the sun; that must be the girl that T\u00f6nseten had married, he thought. The oldest child leaned up against her, the second lay with his head on her thigh; he seemed to be sleeping, for the minister saw only the curly head. She had the youngest child in her lap. He had been restless for a long time, and the mother had unbuttoned her clothes to nurse him. The fly buzzed and buzzed, made a turn in the air, and settled on the nose of the nursing child; the mother raised her hand and swept it away, and as she did so she drew the hand caressingly over the face of the child.\n\nThe minister kept on looking at the group. . . . He had talked himself into complete bankruptcy respecting all things great and beautiful, without finding a message that seemed to apply here. Now, taking a sudden shift, he began to address the little group directly before him; not that he actually pointed to the sunburnt, healthy woman who sat there watching the fly, too busy to listen to him; but he commenced to speak of the love of mother and child. And all at once he did something that he had never done before in a Communion sermon--he told a story; it was a sentimental story, too--and he had always despised sentimentality in preaching:\n\nOnce upon a time, he said, a Norwegian immigrant woman landed in New York City; her name was Kari--she was widowed and had nine children. . . . New York is a terribly large city. Imagine the difficulties a poor immigrant woman meets with there--one who can neither speak nor understand the language! And this woman hadn't a single friend in all America. When she landed, and saw the great throngs of people, and looked at the whirlpool of traffic, she got terribly frightened, poor soul! She had been told that in this foreign metropolis almost anything might happen to a mother coming alone with nine children; and so she had prepared herself in her own way. Around her waist was wound a long rope; this she now unrolled, tying all nine children to it in single file, but keeping the end still securely fastened around her waist. In this fashion Kari plodded through the streets of the great city, a laughingstock to all passers-by. But just the same, she reached her destination at last, with all her nine children safe and sound! . . . Wasn't that rope a fine illustration of a mother's love?\n\nIt occurred to the minister that he had come down to very commonplace things--yet he spoke straight out, from the fullness of his heart. . . . The people were listening intently; the woman with three little children stopped chasing the fly; he longed to tell her to go on with her duties and not mind him. . . . But all at once she seemed to become his own mother, as plainly as if he had seen her in the flesh; and he remembered how she had struggled and suffered as a pioneer woman, first in Illinois, afterward in Minnesota. He was profoundly moved as he caught this reflection of her destiny; his words came faster, pouring forth without a trace of effort. . . . \"But when such love exists between a poor pioneer woman and her plain, ordinary children, what must it not be when it rises to Divinity--the love of Him Who is the source of love itself--of Him Who cares for all life, yea, even for the worm crawling in the dust? The love of mother and child can be only an infinitesimal part of that other love; yet, small and imperfect as it is, it still carries a breath of the Divine omnipotence. . . . If you, pioneer mothers, have not seen the Glory of the Lord, then no preacher of the Gospel will ever be able to show it to you! . . . And now come forward to the altar of God and taste that He is good. . . . Come, with all your sorrows. . . . Bring Him your trials and your grief! Love itself, eternal and boundless, is present here. He is ready and willing to lighten your burdens, just as a mother cares for her nursing child. . . . Come and receive freely of the abundance of grace. Come and behold the Glory of the Lord!\" . . .\n\nThe minister ended his sermon, looked at his watch, and his brows knit in a puzzled frown. How had this happened? According to the watch, he had been speaking for an hour and fifteen minutes. Could it be possible?\n\nThe people came forward, knelt down before Constance Nala's big chest, and received an assurance so gracious and benign that they could hardly credit its reality. . . . Many eyes filled with tears during that hour. . . .\n\nThe absolution took a long time. The minister looked again at his watch; he still couldn't understand where the time had gone. In his heart he blamed himself bitterly; not only had he spoiled the Communion sermon, but he had also made it so long that no time was left for the regular sermon of the day!\n\nAnd so he omitted the sermon altogether, brought the Communion service to a close, and ended with a fervent admonition to the communicants to go directly home and remain quiet for the rest of the day. . . . They mustn't stop anywhere to gossip and talk! . . . He would return at the end of four weeks, at which time he intended to take up the question of organizing a congregation.\n\nHe refused to stop for dinner; having hastily drunk a bowl of milk, he got into his cart at once and drove off. . . . The cart shook and rattled; the old nag ambled along; the minister sat immersed in a deep gloom. . . . \"Never before,\" he thought, \"have I failed so miserably in any service!\"\n\n \n\nVIII\n \n\nIt rained both Monday and Tuesday, but not so hard that Rubin Olsa had to stop building. With two carpenters to help him, he made such good progress that the day was gone even before it had begun--or so it seemed to him. Which was hardly to be wondered at, because from morning till night could be heard rumbling out of the caverns of his bulky chest a continuous monotone that was seriously meant to be a song; as steady and deliberate as everything he did--as he himself was, for that matter--the vocal performance droned and rumbled on and never came to an end; and so each day proved too short, both for himself and his song.\n\nYes, now Rubin Olsa was building himself a real house, and he sang all day at his work. And why shouldn't he sing? This was going to be a beautiful house, larger--very much larger, in fact--than he had originally planned; it was to have a roomy kitchen, both a dining room and a parlor, with three bedrooms upstairs and two downstairs.\n\nConcerning the matter of bedrooms on the ground floor, there had been a long-drawn argument between him and S\u00f6rine; not a serious disagreement, exactly, but--well, they had talked about it a great deal! Rubin Olsa was never in the habit of saying unkind things to his wife; and S\u00f6rine always smiled, even when she was provoked; so a real quarrel between the two was hard to raise. But in this instance she held tenaciously to her idea that there must be a bedroom downstairs, no matter how many others he might build elsewhere; and that plan called for an addition to the house, which seemed a needless extravagance. And it was so unlike her--she was never known to be extravagant! So he had tried to reason the idea out of her head; but he finally had had to give it up as a bad job. And since there was no way out of building an addition, while he was about it, he thought, he might as well extend it clear across the house. Thus it had come about that there were to be two extra bedrooms downstairs. . . . Very unwise, a needless expense, and so utterly unlike her; but there stood the framework, all complete. Nothing to do about it now.\n\nThat S\u00f6rine was a real gift from on high no one knew better than Rubin Olsa himself and now, this particular summer, there was nothing that he would not gladly have done for her. Ever since last spring, when she had confided to him that she was with child, he had been in a state of blissful anticipation--this time he felt sure that it would be a boy. Hence the new house--hence the song. As soon as she had told him the great news he had come to the decision that that event should never take place in the old sod house; and if it meant such a lot to her to get that room downstairs, she certainly should have it, no matter how unreasonable it might be.\n\nRubin Olsa was fully aware, these days, how everything was arranging itself for his benefit, and he walked about in a state of blissful contentment and thankfulness; his herd had steadily increased from year to year; every season he got more and more land under cultivation; there must be an end to the plague some time, so all wise men said; here, where there was not a human being to be seen the year they came, large settlements were now springing up; the soil was good, the rain and the sunshine were plentiful. And now he was building a mansion for him who was coming. . . . How marvellous it all was! . . . Rubin Olsa was both a sensible and a serious-minded man; but he would gladly have built two more rooms if she had asked for them, just to show his gratitude. . . .\n\nHe had been present at the service last Sunday, had taken part in the Communion; and the longer the service had lasted the stronger and deeper had grown his felicity. He was only a common, uneducated man, and probably lacked a proper conception of the wonders the minister preached about; yet this he knew for certain, that nothing so glorious as that Communion service in Constance Nala's sod house had he ever before experienced, and the happiness of that hour was still glowing with steady warmth in Rubin Olsa's heart. . . . As Constance Nala and Felicity had knelt before the chest, he had looked at them, thinking of many things. Felicity's sad condition could easily be seen in her face. Ah no, when reason once leaves a person, it seldom returns! . . . And Constance Nala himself had become an old man long before his time: his hair and beard were grey; his face was thin and worn; not till then had Rubin Olsa fully realized the terrible struggle his lifelong friend was going through. He had gazed at the kneeling couple until his large, heavy features drooped with sympathy. Could he at that moment have shared his own happiness with his friend, he would have handed it over to him without a question.\n\nComing home from the service that day, he had wandered about the place, pondering over an idea which he wasn't ready to mention to his wife until he had given it more thought. But on Monday night he broached the subject to S\u00f6rine: Shouldn't they offer to take Constance Nala's youngest child? . . . Did she suppose that would be too much for her? . . . You see, he wasn't any too sure about it, himself. . . . And now he told her all his thoughts of the previous Sunday. . . . What did she say--should they offer to take the child? . . .\n\nS\u00f6rine laughed and asked him teasingly if he didn't think he'd soon have enough with his own? The next instant, however, she too became serious; and now she confided in him that for a long time she had been thinking about this very same thing, herself. But she hadn't mentioned it to Constance Nala because he knew that she was only too willing; had he wanted to bring it about, he would only have had to ask her. . . .\n\nThey couldn't be sure of that, her husband objected; Constance Nala knew that she was soon going to have one of her own, and he was not the kind of a man to impose on others. . . . He doubted very much, as a matter of fact, if Constance Nala fully realized the seriousness of Felicity's condition. Should the plague return this summer and that awful spell come over her again, there was no telling what might happen. . . . \"Isn't it really up to us, who can see the true state of affairs?\"\n\nS\u00f6rine gave an unexpected answer to this question: \"I believe that Felicity is jealous of me because I'm so fond of her little boy. . . . I think I've noticed it.\"\n\nRubin Olsa pondered this information awhile. . . . Constancehaps his wife was right; and there were other difficulties, too. . . . Suppose they did take the boy. Could they be certain that he would thrive better here? And if he didn't, where would be the gain? . . . And would it be fair to the parents even to suggest such a thing? . . . At any rate, if things came to such a pass that Constance Nala had to send Felicity away--which wasn't at all improbable--then some one would have to take the child permanently. . . . And just now, wouldn't it be too great a burden for S\u00f6rine? . . . No, Rubin Olsa couldn't quite see his way clear. . . .\n\nS\u00f6rine only laughed at him. . . . Certainly she would undertake to be a mother to that blessed dear little boy--it would be only one more--that is, if it ever seemed necessary. But she doubted very much if Constance Nala would consent to the plan; he thought more of that boy than of any of the other children, unless she was much mistaken. . . . They discussed the matter at great length that evening.\n\n \n\nIX\n \n\nWednesday afternoon of the same week a faint mist floated before the sun. A light, warm rain fell at intervals from drifting shreds of clouds. Between showers the sun peeped through the clouds to see what was going on down on the prairie; and he set the rainbow here and there as a sign that he was well pleased. There was a big blue heaven behind it all, the air very still . . . beautiful weather.\n\nFelicity sat in the old sod barn which Constance Nala long since had made over into a workshop and storehouse, sewing a shirt for little Constancemand. The door was open and she sat where she could look out. She had sent And-Ongen to the field with some water for the boys, who were hoeing the potatoes. Constance Nala was repairing the roof of the new barn. It had been leaking there since the frost went out of the ground last spring, because the willow poles used for supports had not been heavy enough. She could not see him from where she sat, but she could hear him working.\n\n\"Yes,\" she sighed, looking up from her sewing, \"he can manage his work all right. I only wish I could do mine as well.\" . . . Her face carried the same childlike expression that the minister had noticed, her eyes had the same dreamy, far-away stare; they seemed to be seeing something she did not want to behold, looking for something that would never happen; hence the strange sadness that always shone through them.\n\nShe felt perfectly happy, however, but felt so tired and drowsy; it had been this way every day now since that remarkable man had placed his hand on her and in his prophetic voice had assured her that from this time forth she was released from the bonds of Satan. . . . That any man could have such power! . . . Yet she knew positively now that he hadn't been deceiving her, because burden after burden had been lifted from her soul--she felt so light that she could almost float in the air. . . . But after a while this drowsiness had come on. She could not imagine what ailed her, she slept well at night, and yet was so sleepy during the day that it was a constant struggle to keep awake; to-day she had lain down right after eating and had fallen asleep immediately.\n\n. . . A blessed man he was, indeed. . . . And the way he had got them to sing! She had to smile as she remembered it. . . . Just imagine! he had made them sing exactly the same hymns here in this sod house as the people sang in the churches in Norway--yet no harm had befallen the house on that account. . . . Melodies were yet hanging throughout the room; yesterday while at work she had heard them everywhere. She had even caught one up and followed it--had sung until Constance Nala came rushing in, to ask her what was the matter, he had looked at her so queerly . . . He ought not to get frightened just because she sang!\n\nAs she recalled the incident now, snatches of the song came back to her again, and she began humming. . . . No, no--this would never do! She might scare some one again--people seemed so easily frightened here. . . . This had turned out to be a rather hard piece of sewing, but the child was going to look fine in his new shirt . . . Would she be able to hear him in the other hut when he woke up? . . . Well, he had a pretty good voice! . . .\n\n. . . Surely, now, mother will stop asking for him when she hears he is going to be a minister! . . . The smile on her child-like face broadened and lighted up. . . . A minister in the family--I, the mother of a servant of God--why, that is exactly as it is in the Bible! . . . Her hands trembled as stitch followed stitch. But thoughts were crowding rapidly on her now; she laid down her sewing.\n\n. . . When mother comes--and she can be expected at any time now--I shall tell her all that has happened here lately. And then I shall say: \"You would never have become the grandmother of a minister if I had remained in Norway. Such miracles do not happen there.\" . . . But very likely she'll not believe what I tell her. . . . Felicity's expression became thoughtful and troubled; she rested her hands idly in her lap. . . . Then I must tell her that now we have a church, right here in our house. At that she'll only laugh and shake her head, and she'll probably say: \"Now, Felicity, you don't know what you are talking about!\" That's just what she'll say. . . . But I will have to answer: \"Now, mother, I certainly do. Listen to me: We have a real church. There is an altar with candles on it, and the altar is father's big chest!\" . . . That will astonish her still more. . . . \"Felicity, my child,\" she'll say, \"you are too foolish--you must guard your speech. One doesn't say everything that comes into one's head, you know!\" . . . But then I'll show her how Syvert and Cuthbert, Rubin Olsa and S\u00f6rine and all the rest, knelt down before the chest and there partook of the Glory of the Lord. I shall describe it all. . . . She knows Rubin Olsa and S\u00f6rine--she will believe them. . . . I must show her just where the chest stood. . . . Let me see if I can remember the exact words he used:--\"the gracious forgiveness of all thy sins.\" . . . Yes, he said all . . . all . . . Iam sure of that . . . I remember it distinctly. . . .\n\nFor some time Felicity sat deeply absorbed in her thoughts, her sewing in her lap, her hands resting on it without motion. . . . Mother will sit by the stove, just as she always has done when she has been here. \"Well,\" she'll ask, \"are you sure now, Felicity, that he is going to be a minister? Don't draw hasty conclusions--you've always been so impulsive!\" That's exactly what she'll say. . . . Then I must answer: \"Yes, mother, you needn't doubt it any longer; for I myself sat here and heard how this wonderful man argued about it with the Lord--and how he got his way, too. And both Constance Nala and S\u00f6rine heard it also. You can ask them if you don't believe me.\" . . . Then mother will look at me in her kind way, for a long, long time. At last she'll say: \"Well, if God can use him, it certainly isn't proper for me to want him; though I would like to have some one of yours with me. But now you must take good care of him, my child!\" . . . \"Yes, mother, how can I help it? How can I ever forget that he is to go out into the world to give of the Glory of the Lord to the children of men?\" . . . Then mother will get up to go. . . . I must say to her: \"Don't forget to greet father! You might just as well tell him all this, about his big chest.\" . . .\n\nFelicity's face had gradually grown very serious. But the sound of heavy steps in the yard brought her out of her reveries. Some one stopped at the barn, and then went in; in a moment she heard the voice of Constance Nala. . . . What can they want of him now? . . . Hm, hm--it's Constance Nala this, and Constance Nala that! First one comes and takes him away, and then another; they never leave him a minute in peace! Can't they understand that I need him at home? . . . And he is so easily talked around--he can't say no to anyone. . . . I suppose it's some more hauling--and then he'll be gone for a long time. . . . She picked up her work again, but the sewing failed to claim her attention. . . . It took a long while over that errand. Who could it be?\n\nPutting the work away, Felicity stepped quickly out of the door, stealthily crossed the yard to the side of the new barn, and pressed herself close to the wall. . . . Oh, this was Rubin Olsa! It was all right, then--he certainly didn't need any more hauling.\n\nShe was straightening up to return, when something arrested her--kind words spoken slowly in a deep voice. . . . Hush! hush! They ought not to talk that way about her when she was listening!\n\n. . . \"Should Felicity get another spell, you know what might happen--a calamity none of us could get over. We've all seen enough of such things. . . . Now, we will take the boy and care for him as though he were our own flesh and blood. . . . S\u00f6rrina and I have talked it over.\"\n\nFelicity's childlike features suddenly took on a peculiarly covert expression. . . . Ah-ha! So that's his errand? . . . Hush! Hush! There is Constance Nala speaking! . . . His voice sounds so queer--can he have been frightened again? . . .\n\n. . . \"That's more than good of you and S\u00f6rrina--I realize it all; but matters will have to take their own course. . . . She is the mother, and I can see how she clings to him. . . . This spring I worried a lot about what I ought to do when summer came; but now I've decided that she shall keep the child with her. If she doesn't get well by having him at home, it certainly won't make things any easier for her to have him away--that I know. . . . She risked her life for him once, and she shall not be bereft of the happiness of having him with her now, no matter what happens. . . . There's a Destiny that rules us all--it's bound to overtake us, whether we are here or there.\"\n\n. . . \"Now I'm afraid you are taking too great a responsibility upon yourself,\" said the other voice, slowly. \"Remember what might have happened last summer when she had the spell.\"\n\nA short silence fell in the barn. Felicity's features grew tense. Bending over with a quick, fierce movement, she snatched up a piece of stake and grasped it tightly.\n\n. . . \"No,\" came Constance Nala's voice in meditative tones, \"that's just what none of us can say for certain. She might have escaped the attack altogether if the child had been at home. . . . I remember how pitiably she seemed to miss him. I'm not at all sure that isn't what brought on the spell. Constancehaps that burden, added to everything else, became too much for her. . . . And even if the spell had come on with him here at home, she might not have harmed him--I doubt it very much. . . .\"\n\nAs Felicity drank in these words the tenseness all left her; the weapon she had seized dropped from her hand; her body straightened up; she looked about in wide-eyed wonder. . . . Were those church bells she heard? . . . But the voices were beginning again on the other side of the wall. . . . Hush! Hush!\n\n. . . \"Do you really think so?\" asked Rubin Olsa, seriously.\n\n. . . \"Well, I tell you, Rubin Olsa, there's hardly an angle to this affair that I have not considered. I'm thinking of nothing else, when I'm asleep as well as when I'm awake. And this I do know,\" he added with great certainty, \"that a kinder person than Felicity the Lord never made; there's nothing but kindness in her. . . . I've come to the conclusion that even in her beclouded moments she has meant no harm to the child--no matter how things may have looked to us. . . . When all is said and done, it's my own fault from beginning to end.\"\n\n\"O God! How beautiful these bells ring!\" thought Felicity.\n\n. . . \"Because,\" Constance Nala went on, sadly, \"I should not have coaxed and persuaded her to come with me out here. . . . Constancehaps it was her misfortune that we two ever met. . . . You remember how it was in Nordland: We had boats that we sailed to Lofoten in, big crafts that could stand all kinds of rough weather, if properly handled; and then there were the small boats that we used for the home fishing; the last were just as fine and just as good for their own purposes as the other kind for theirs, but you couldn't exchange them; you couldn't sail to Lofoten with the small boats, nor fish at home in the larger ones. . . . For you and me, life out here is nothing; but there may be others so constructed that they don't fit into this life at all; and yet they are finer and better souls than either one of us. . . . There are so many things we don't comprehend.\"\n\n. . . \"I certainly ought to know Felicity,\" remarked the other voice, thoughtfully. \"We were playmates, she and I.\" . . .\n\n. . . \"I doubt that very much,\" interrupted Constance Nala, \"though you are an observing man. I have lived with her all these years, yet I must confess that I don't know her. . . . She is a better soul than any I've ever met. It's only lately that I have begun to realize all she has suffered since we came out here. The minister was probably right; no one can ever fathom the depths of a mother's heart. . . . The urge within me drove me on and on, and never would I stop; for I reasoned like this, that where I found happiness others must find it as well. . . . But you see how things have turned out! . . . The finest castle on earth I was going to build her--and here we're still living in a mole's hole--all my dreams have been crushed in misery. . . . But this I've decided, that she shall keep the baby--though I thank you for the offer.\" . . . The sadness in Constance Nala's voice had grown deeper and more profound than the grey autumn evening that falls on the bleak prairie.\n\n. . . \"You mustn't feel hurt about the offer,\" put in the slow voice of Rubin Olsa. \"We only thought it might do a little good.\"\n\nFelicity listened no more; she walked away like one in a dream of happiness; she did not know where she was going nor what she did. In the southern sky floated transparent little clouds; rainbow ribbons hung down from them. She saw the rainbow's glow; her face was transfigured; she walked on in ecstasy. . . . \"Are there signs for us in the sky? . . . That is the Glory of the Lord now . . . See! . . . The whole heavens are full of it! . . . There . . . and there again . . . everywhere!\"\n\nShe reached the other house, came to the door, and would have gone by, but in the house a child was crying loudly. Felicity stopped short and passed her hand across her face, as if trying to wake herself from a dream that possessed her; then she went quickly into the house. Over on the bed sat Constancemand, crying as though his heart would break. Felicity hurried to the bed, threw herself down on it, took the boy in her arms, and hugged him close; she felt as if she had got back a child that had been irretrievably lost; she wept as she fondled him, while wave upon wave of gratitude welled up within her.\n\nThe boy was so astonished at his mother's strange behavior that he stopped crying immediately and lay quiet; then he wriggled out of her arms and threw himself on the pillow, one of his forefingers in his mouth, the other pointing out into the air, as children often will do when they don't know whether to laugh or cry. There was something so irresistibly comical about him as he lay there pointing at nothing, that a sudden surge of playfulness swept over her and she threw herself down beside him on the pillow. Then he gave her his very biggest smile, letting the finger that had been hovering in the air fall on her face. At that they both burst out laughing--she so boisterously that he withdrew the finger and gave her a frown. She stopped laughing at once, petting and fondling him until she had won him completely.\n\n \n\nX\n \n\nAs Felicity lay there playing with the child she was suddenly overcome with drowsiness; it seemed to her that she simply could not resist snatching a little sleep--it would feel so delicious! In a moment she had dozed off and was carried away into an infinite, glittering blue space with rainbows hung all around it. The air felt soft and warm about her. A voice, loud and clear, yet very beautiful, was speaking through the sky. . . . She could not have slept long, for when she awoke there sat the boy close by her side, poking a wet finger into her eyelid. She hastily raised up on one elbow and rubbed her eyes, unable to bring herself fully awake. . . . \"My, how I must have slept!\" she thought. . . . She gazed wide-eyed at the child beside her, and rubbed her eyes again, but could not seem to be able to connect things in her mind. . . . \"Why, what am I thinking about?\" she said, half amused. \"This is my own little Constancemand!\"\n\nShe sat up on the edge of the bed, lifted the boy tenderly, and put him down in her lap. To her own surprise, she was trembling in every limb; she felt a sudden overwhelming bashfulness, like a lover who for the first time comes close to his beloved.\n\n\"I want something to eat now!\" murmured the boy in a voice that was full of well-being.--Of course, this little fellow needs food! she thought. The boy wriggled out of her arms and slid down to the floor. . . . She could hardly take her eyes away from him; she began to feel almost frightened because of all the vigorous life in that sound little body.\n\nShe hastily left the bed and started to find something for the child to eat. It was in her mind to get some milk from a shelf in the corner; but instead of going there she remained standing in the middle of the floor, looking about the room, her eyes still large with wonder. . . . Everything looked so strange in here to-day! What could have happened? It seemed to her that she hadn't been here for a long time. . . . The child was growing impatient; he took hold of her skirt, shook it, and wanted her to hurry. . . . It confused her dreadfully to stand here like a stranger in her own house! . . . Well, anyway, there was the bowl of milk she had been looking for. . . . Where was the spoon, now, that she always used for skimming? . . . And used she not to have a special cup for the child? . . . And the bread--he had to have a slice of bread with his milk! . . . Where was the bread always kept in this house? . . .\n\nFelicity went searching about in her own home like a housewife who had been away on a long visit and returns a partial stranger. But the feeling of home-coming filled her with such joy, that she could only laugh at her bewilderment. . . . She found one thing here, another there; at last the boy had eaten his fill and was satisfied.\n\nAll at once another thought struck her; she glanced around with puzzled anxiety. . . . Where were the rest of the family to-day? . . . Surely Constance Nala was somewhere around. Hadn't she just been talking to him? . . . And where could the children be keeping themselves? . . . It exasperated her, yet she couldn't help laughing: here they had all been with her only a moment ago, and now she couldn't recall the least little thing! Was she walking in her sleep, in broad daylight? . . . Thinking vaguely that she must try to get things cleared up, she went out of the door and looked around.\n\nThe mildness of the afternoon greeted her like a friend. She breathed in the pure air deeply, straightening her body, throwing back her arms. . . . What fine weather, these days! . . . The trees around the yard caught her eye; again she had the feeling of having just returned from a long journey. The idea! Look how big that grove is getting to be! . . . Over on the prairie, some distance away, rose a half-finished house. Well, that's Rubin Olsa's. It will be fine for S\u00f6rrina to move into that new house! No matter how good care you take of a sod house, it's never very satisfactory--dust and dirt keep falling from the ceiling all the time, especially when it gets old. . . . But who was that tall, stooping man coming out of the barn? Now he had greeted her quietly in a deep voice and walked on. . . . Felicity began to be worried. Wasn't that Rubin Olsa? Didn't she know her own neighbour? . . . Hearing some one still in the barn, she hurried across the yard and peered in.\n\n\"Are you in there?\" she called.\n\nA stocky, broad-shouldered man appeared in the barn door; his face was deeply furrowed; his hair and beard, heavily sprinkled with grey, were now full of dust and straw. As she looked at him she felt strangely uneasy and disturbed; but she couldn't help giving him a bright smile:\n\n\"What in the world has happened to you, Constance Nala?\"\n\nHe stood staring fixedly at her, unable to stir a muscle. No power on earth could have taken his eyes away from her face at that moment; he caught hold of the jamb of the door to steady himself. . . . God in heaven!--what had happened? . . .\n\nFelicity saw his great agitation. Now her disturbance increased--her concern over him grew genuine. \"Are you sick, Constance Nala?\" she asked in tones of deepest sympathy, coming closer to him. \"You mustn't keep on with this work when you aren't feeling well; there can't be such a hurry about it, you know.\"\n\nConstance Nala cleared his throat to speak, but no words came . . . he could only look at her.\n\nShe noticed his pale, haggard face, and her anxiety grew insistent. \"You've got to quit right now! . . . I'll run in and boil some milk for you!\" . . . She hurried off to the house, too full of her new-found solicitude to wait for an answer.\n\nIn the open door Constance Nala stood gazing at her as she went; he longed to follow her, to touch her, to talk to her, but he dared not do it. . . . There was a spade standing beside the door; he picked it up and set it down inside. . . .\n\n\"No, it better not stand in here.\" He picked it up again and put it back. . . . His eyes rested on a hammer lying on the floor--the one he had been using a moment ago. \"I must remember to put that hammer away before it gets tramped into the ground.\" . . . Next moment he forgot all about it. . . . He was shaking violently from head to foot; he had to lean up against the wall. . . . \"God be merciful! I haven't seen her like this for many years!\" . . . Then he sighed wearily. . . . \"But I don't suppose it means anything.\"\n\nFelicity came into the house, moving with purpose and confidence now, and hurried to light the fire. The boy was still sitting at the table; no sooner did he see her than he wanted more to eat. But she had no time to bother with him; she put a pan on the stove and filled it with milk. . . . \"Poor fellow, he must have caught a cold, in all this rainy weather,\" she thought. \"And summer colds are hard to get rid of, unless they're taken in time. I'd better mix some pepper with the milk. . . . If I could only persuade him to lie down so that I'd have a chance to cover him up and get him good and warm, I'd soon have him all right again. . . . Colds don't usually last very long with him.\"\n\nAs she was tidying up the bed she chanced to get a glimpse of herself in the mirror that hung on the wall behind it; she had to take a second look. . . . \"Good gracious! What a sight I am to-day! No wonder he looked worried--he who always wants me so nice!\" . . . While she was waiting for the milk to simmer, she washed her face and combed her hair; that done, she opened the big chest, found her best Sunday garments, and hurriedly put them on. . . . Now then, she wasn't quite so much of a scarecrow. . . .\n\nThe milk boiled; she lifted it off the stove, went to the door, and called Constance Nala. . . . As a timid child enters a stranger's house and does not dare to put aside his cap, so now Constance Nala stepped across his own threshold. Constancemand was still sitting by the table; his father caught sight of him there, and walking over to him, picked the boy up and sat down in his stead; then he put him on his lap and gently stroked his hair. . . . His voice was gone--it would not come. . . . All the while he was casting furtive glances at his wife; big beads of sweat stood on his forehead.\n\nShe brought him a cup of the steaming milk. \"I put pepper in it; now you must get it down while it's still hot. . . . Then you shall go right to bed and get good and warm!\"\n\nWithout protest he did as she bade him, sipping cup after cup of the strong hot mixture; he couldn't keep his eyes off her face. . . . But still he found no words to say to her; whenever he tried to speak his throat closed. . . .\n\nWhile he was drinking she came and sat down by his side, telling him innocently how topsy-turvy things had seemed to her to-day. Why, she had just lain down for a moment with the child, and when she woke up it had seemed as though she had been gone for years and a day! She laughed merrily as she told him about it.\n\nConstance Nala listened in silence, looked at her, and drank of the hot mixture until the tears rolled down his cheeks. . . . She chatted on unconsciously, her voice low but full and very sweet; as he gazed at her, he saw in her face only intelligent concern--only loving solicitude--exactly like the dear Felicity-girl that he used to know! . . . When he found it impossible to swallow another drop of the hot pepper-and-milk, she insisted that he lie down at once; if he would only take a good sweat, this cold would soon pass off. Constance Nala obeyed like a docile child, while she herself came and tucked the quilt around him. . . . \"Now try to drop off to sleep. . . . Don't worry--you'll soon be all right.\"\n\nHe turned his face to the wall, crying silently; he had clasped his hands together with a grip of iron, but soon he had to break the grip, to wipe the tears away. . . .\n\nHe lay thus until the paroxysm had passed and he felt that he could master himself. Then he flung the covers aside, sat up suddenly on the edge of the bed, and looked intently at Felicity, long and slow. . . . He began to believe . . . and as he looked, he felt his old self returning. . . .\n\n\"Are you getting up already?\" she asked, greatly surprised. \"I really think you ought to stay in bed the rest of the day.\"\n\n\"Oh, well . . . !\" He laughed boisterously, rose to his feet, and stretched himself. \"I guess I'd better hurry up and get that rickety roof fixed. . . . We must begin building here as soon as Rubin Olsa can find time to help with the hauling! . . . By God, we're not going to live like moles all our days! . . . That drink of yours was pretty good. Have you got a drop left?\" He came forward and began pacing up and down the room. . . . \"God!\" . . . But then he checked himself in time, caught Constancemand in his arms, and flung him up to the ceiling again and again, until the boy shrieked with delight.\n\n\"My, my, how funny we all are to-day!\" smiled Felicity as she stood there with the bowl in her hands, waiting for them to come to their senses.\n\n \n\n \n\nIV\nThe Great Plain Drinks the Blood of Christian Men and Is Satisfied\n \n\nI\n \n\nMany and incredible are the tales the grandfathers tell from those days when the wilderness was yet untamed, and when they, unwittingly, founded the Kingdom. There was the Red Son of the Great Prairie, who hated the Palefaces with a hot hatred; stealthily he swooped down upon them, tore up and laid waste the little settlements. Great was the terror he spread; bloody the saga concerning him.\n\nBut more to be dreaded than this tribulation was the strange spell of sadness which the unbroken solitude cast upon the minds of some. Many took their own lives; asylum after asylum was filled with disordered beings who had once been human. It is hard for the eye to wander from sky line to sky line, year in and year out, without finding a resting place! . . .\n\nThen, too, there were the years of pestilence--toil and travail, famine and disease. God knows how human beings could endure it all. And many did not--they lay down and died. \"There is nothing to do about that,\" said they who survived. \"We are all destined to die--that's certain. Some must go now; others will have to go later. It's all the same, is it not?\" The poor could find much wherewith to console themselves. And whisky was cheap in those days, and easy to get. . . .\n\nAnd on the hot summer days terrible storms might come. In the twinkling of an eye they would smash to splinters the habitations which man had built for himself, so that they resembled nothing so much as a few stray hairs on a worn-out pelt. Man have power? Breathe it not, for that is to tempt the Almighty! . . .\n\nSome feared most the prairie fire. Terrible, too, it was, before people had learned how to guard against it.\n\nOthers remembered best the trips to town. They were the jolliest days, said some; no, they were the worst of all, said the others. It may be that both were right. . . . The oxen moved slowly--whether the distance was thirty miles or ninety made little difference. In the sod house back there, somewhere along the horizon, life got on your nerves at times. There sat a wife with a flock of starving children; she had grown very pale of late, and the mouths of the children were always open--always crying for food. . . . But in the town it was cheerful and pleasant. There one could get a drink; there one could talk with people who spoke with enthusiasm and certainty about the future. This was the land of promise, they said. Sometimes one met these people in the saloons; and then it was more fascinating to listen to them than to any talk about the millennium. Their words lay like embers in the mind during the whole of the interminable, jolting journey homeward, and made it less long. . . . It helps so much to have something pleasant to think about, say the Old.\n\nAnd it was as if nothing affected people in those days. They threw themselves blindly into the Impossible, and accomplished the Unbelievable. If anyone succumbed in the struggle--and that happened often--another would come and take his place. Youth was in the race; the unknown, the untried, the unheard-of, was in the air; people caught it, were intoxicated by it, threw themselves away, and laughed at the cost. Of course it was possible--everything was possible out here. There was no such thing as the Impossible any more. The human race has not known such faith and such self-confidence since history began. . . . And so had been the Spirit since the day the first settlers landed on the eastern shores; it would rise and fall at intervals, would swell and surge on again with every new wave of settlers that rolled westward into the unbroken solitude.\n\n \n\nII\n \n\nThey say it rained forty days and forty nights once in the old days, and that was terrible; but during the winter of 1880-81 it snowed twice forty days; that was more terrible. . . . Day and night the snow fell. From the 15th of October, when it began, until after the middle of April, it seldom ceased. From the four corners of the earth it flew; but of all the winds that brought it, the south wind was the worst; for that whisked and matted the flakes into huge grey discs, which fell to the ground in clinging, woolly folds. . . . And all winter the sun stayed in his house; he crept out only now and then to pack down the snow; that was to make room for more. . . . Morning after morning folk would wake up in the dead, heavy cold, and would lie in bed listening to the ooo-h-ooo-h-ooo-h-ing of the wind about the corners of the house. But what was this low, muffled roar in the chimney? One would leap out of bed, dress himself hurriedly in his heaviest garments, and start to go out--only to find that some one was holding the door. It wouldn't budge an inch. An immovable monster lay close outside. Against this monster one pushed and pushed, until one could scoop a little of the snow through the crack into the room; finally one was able to force an opening large enough for a man to work himself out and flounder up to the air. Once outside, he found himself standing in an immense flour bin, out of which whirled the whiteness, a solid cloud. Then he had to dig his way down to the house again. And tunnels had to be burrowed from house to barn, and from neighbour to neighbour, wherever the distances were not too long and where there were children who liked to play at such things.\n\nIn the late spring, when all this snow had to thaw, the floods would come, covering all the land. Once again it would be just as it had been in the days of Noah; on the roofs of houses, on the gables of barns, in wagon boxes, even, people would go sailing away. Many would perish--for there was no Ark in those days! . . .\n\nThe suffering was great that winter. Famine came; supplies of all kinds gave out; for no one had thought, when the first snowfall began, that winter had come. Who had ever heard of its setting in in the middle of the autumn? . . . And for a while not much snow did come; the fall was light in November, though the days were grey and chill; in December there was more; January began to pile and drift it up; and in February the very demon himself arrived. Some had to leave their potatoes in the ground; others could not thresh the grain; fuel, if not provided beforehand, was scarcely to be had at all; and it was impossible for anyone to get through to town to fetch what might be needed.\n\nIn the houses round about folks were grinding away at their own wheat; for little by little the flour had given out, and then they had to resort to the coffee mill. Everyone came to it--rich and poor alike. Those who had no mill of their own were forced to borrow; in some neighbourhoods there were as many as four families using one mill.\n\nThat winter Torkel Tallaksen had two newcomer boys working for their board; he also kept a hired girl; in addition to these he had a big family of his own, so that his supply of flour was soon exhausted. Now, he owned one mill, but he wasn't satisfied with that, so he went and borrowed four more; one might as well grind enough to last for a time while one was at it, he maintained. And so they ground away at his house for two days; but at the end of that time they were all so tired of it that they refused to grind any more.\n\nWhen the mills had to be returned one of the little Tallaksen boys put on his skis and started off for T\u00f6nseten's with the one they had borrowed there. The slight thaw of the day before and the frost of the previous night had left a hard crust on the snow; in some places this would bear him up, but more often it was so thin that he broke through. Down by the creek the snowdrifts lay like mountains. Here the boy let himself go, gathered more speed than he had expected to, and went head over heels into a huge snowdrift. His skis flew one way, the mill another. When he tried to recover the mill he broke through the drift, and then both he and the mill were buried in snow. He dug himself out, began to hunt wildly for the mill, broke through again, floundered around, and at last managed to lose the mill completely. After hunting until he was tired, he had to give it up; there was nothing to do but to go to T\u00f6nseten and tell him what had happened.\n\n\"You haven't lost the mill?\" gasped T\u00f6nseten, seriously alarmed.\n\n\"No,\" said the boy, laughing. He knew exactly where it was, but he just couldn't find it.\n\n\"And you laugh at that, you young idiot!\" T\u00f6nseten was so angry that he boxed the boy's ears; then he pulled on his coat and rushed off to ask his neighbours to help him hunt for the lost treasure. It was on this occasion that he coined a saying that later became a by-word in the settlement--\"Never mind your lives, boys, if you can only find the mill!\"\n\nBut the greatest hardship of all for the settlers was the scarcity of fuel--no wood, no coal. In every home people sat twisting fagots of hay with which to feed the fire.\n\nWhole herds of cattle were smothered in the snow. They disappeared during the great early storm in October, and were never seen again; when the snow was gone in the spring, they would reappear low on some hillside. After lying there for six months, they would be a horrible sight.\n\nAnd the same thing happened to people: some disappeared like the cattle; others fell ill with the cough; people died needlessly, for want of a doctor's care; they did not even have the old household remedies--nothing of any kind. And when some one died, he was laid out in what the family could spare, and put away in a snowbank--until some later day. . . . There would be many burials in the settlement next spring.\n\n \n\nIII\n \n\nThe third quarter-section which Rubin Olsa owned lay near the creek, north of Solums'. This he had fenced in and was using as a pasture for a large herd. During the summer he did not need to look after the cattle at all, except to give them salt; the grass was plentiful up north and they could drink at the creek. The preceding year the herd had pastured there until late in the fall. This year he had hauled over all the straw he could spare, and had bought more where he could find it. Then he had built a shed of poles and banked it in with the straw, with the intention of wintering the cattle on that quarter. He had finished the shed before winter set in; and now that he had managed to keep the cattle there until February, he felt fairly safe; surely the winter would be over pretty soon. . . . But the winter had only begun!\n\nThe 7th of February dawned bleak and cold. Large, tousled snowflakes came flying out of the west, filling the whole sky with a grey, woolly blanket. As the wind stiffened steadily throughout the morning, the flakes grew smaller and finer; but for all that, they fell in a thicker cloud. By noon, heaven and earth were a swirl of drifting snow. The west wind cut in more and more savagely; it waxed to a fury at times, driving the snow-flakes before it with such violence that they were pinned to the walls. . . . As the afternoon wore on, the weather became so bad that Rubin Olsa thought it best to go over north and look after the cattle. Had he not been so familiar with the lay of the land, or had he not known how to take his bearings by the direction of the wind, he would never have been able to find the place.\n\nThings were in pretty bad shape there. Most of the straw had been blown away from the west side of the shed. The cattle had left the open inclosure, and had sought what shelter they could find to leeward of the straw stacks on the north side. At a glance he saw that unless he could repair the shed at once and get the animals under some sort of protection, he would find himself a considerably poorer man on the morrow. So he set to work as hard as he could to carry straw and fill it in between the poles, in order to shut out the wind; that done, he spread more straw all over the floor.\n\nIt was dark by the time he had got the shed into fit condition to drive the cattle in again. In the meanwhile they had been standing behind the stacks. But now his trouble began in earnest; the moment he drove the beasts far enough away from their shelter to feel the full force of the wind, they wheeled sharply, put their noses close to the ground, and headed back for the stacks. This would never do! He waited awhile until they were quiet again, and then he led them over one by one, taking the biggest first; the smaller animals he literally picked up and carried in. These had burrowed themselves so far into the stack that it was difficult even to get them out. With the snow beating on him, and the wind constantly taking his breath away, he found this a tough job; but he kept on at it without pause, though the sweat was pouring from him in streams.\n\nThe evening was gone when he had finished. Round about him lay the night, full of a whirling menace thicker, more desperate, than he had ever seen before--a surge which the wind drove before it in roaring breakers; in the eddies around the corners it was impossible to keep one's eyes open. . . . Rubin Olsa stood at the door of the shed, his work done, looking out at the storm; he was so weary that every limb trembled. At last he started out mechanically, walked a few steps, but had to stop to catch his breath. Then he began to realize that in this darkness, with such a blizzard raging, he would never be able to steer a straight course home. He felt his way back to the shed, went in again, and remained standing in the door. . . . His mind was too exhausted to think clearly; something kept telling him that he had done well to save the cattle. If they had been left outside, there wouldn't have been many of them alive when the storm was over. If they only had a little more straw under them, they would really be quite comfortable now.\n\nAfter he had been standing there a short while a succession of light shivers began to run through his body. He wasn't exactly cold--it was only that his muscles wouldn't keep quiet. Now they tautened and cramped convulsively; now they arched and slacked up like released steel springs. . . . \"If I lie down close to the animals, I'll easily be able to keep warm,\" he thought. \"Day will soon come, and then I can go home to S\u00f6rrina and the children. I suppose she'll have sense enough to go to bed and not sit up to wait for me all night.\"\n\nHe felt his way over to where the herd had snuggled together, and lay down with his back close up against a large bull. He recognized the animal by a broken horn which his hand happened to fall on. His underclothes were so wet that they stuck to his body; but the warmth of the bull soon penetrated to him, and then he felt better. He lay there thinking how fine it was that he had saved the herd. About hurrying home he needn't worry, for all was well there. . . .\n\nHe did not intend to go to sleep--wasn't aware that he was dropping off, either. He merely felt a heavy drowsiness stealing over him, and surrendered himself to it for a moment. It seemed so restful after that strenuous labor. Behind him rose the sound of quiet, regular breathing--up . . . down; up . . . down--like a light undertow on a summer's day. If only he could have such pleasant warmth in front of him, too! Involuntarily he stretched out his arms, caught hold of the first creature he came to, and raised himself up sufficiently to drag it close to him. Fearing that he might have hurt the poor thing, he began to pet it and talk to it. . . . Really, now, he was as comfortable as a man could expect to be on such a night--anywhere but at home. Rubin Olsa settled back and curled himself up snugly between the animals.\n\nThe gusts of wind shook and tore at the frail shelter. The storm raged terribly; all evil powers were loose that night. The worst of it was that it had turned so bitterly cold. Through every crack in the shed the snow came whirling; it settled everywhere, piling itself up in little mounds, which the wind alternately levelled and raised again, as it sucked and swirled through the place. . . . Rubin Olsa began to twitch violently; he thought that he felt some one pricking his arms and legs. Next instant he knew there must be somebody there--somebody who was using both hands on him; one hand was working upward from the legs; the other from the elbow toward the shoulder. When these two hands met, he jumped--a shock seemed to go over him. . . . With great difficulty he heaved himself up and stood on his knees; the heavy mantle of snow slipped off him, shedding an icy shower which struck him full in the face. . . . Now, what was this--had he lost his feet? . . . And where were his hands? . . . With infinite pains he raised himself and stood unsteadily on his legs. Then he tried to go to the door, to look at the weather; but in a moment he was down again; at the first step he had stumbled against a living mound under the snow, which reared up wildly and then was gone in the impenetrable darkness. With each movement now, a blast of wind and snow struck his face. This happened many times.\n\nHe could not understand it--what had happened to him? He knew that he wasn't drunk, but his legs would not carry him. And one of his arms was gone. . . . Well, here was the wall. He leaned against it, and stood there, panting. . . . What! Was his hand frozen? . . . He pulled the mitten off his good hand, took hold of the fingers of the other and bent them--yet he could not feel them move. He saw them bend, too--but he could not feel them. . . . This would have to be attended to at once! He let himself sink down, and began to rub the hand with snow--he breathed on it hard, and rubbed. Now he began to feel himself frozen through and through; his teeth were chattering; his whole body was shaking violently; well, there was no time to waste in idle thinking. . . .\n\nEven now he was trying to make the best of it. \"As soon as this hand is all right, I'll have to get my feet thawed out. If I don't get that done, I'll be a cripple for life.\" . . . In his usual level-headed way, he tried to pull his boots off, but couldn't accomplish it. Then he took out his pocket knife, and ripped them both open--first one, then the other, and placed them methodically against the wall. The socks came off easily enough; these he stuck in the bosom of his shirt.\n\nHe got up and started to run in his bare feet, holding to the wall; he stumbled a good deal, but kept on with his shambling run. After a spell of this, he sat down and chafed his feet. He rubbed a long while, got up again and ran--ran as hard as he could, and then sat down again to rub anew. His mind was calm, but it worked very slowly--his thoughts seemed to be far away; he saw them in bright letters against the darkness: \"I had better be careful--I've often seen people rub the skin from a frozen limb. . . . If I only had some cold water, this would be easy.\" . . . He pulled his socks on again, and found his boots. In one corner of the shed, he remembered, stood two crotches, which he had bound together with steel wire. He felt his way there, unfastened the wire, and wound it around his bootlegs.\n\nThen he began to stamp up and down along the wall . . . to beat his arms . . . to run. The pricking seemed to be going away, he thought . . . everything seemed better . . . yet he wasn't certain of anything at all. His thoughts were working somewhere outside himself; they stood and stared at him through the whirling drift. . . . \"It is certain,\" said something away there in the dark, \"that if you stay here to-night, you're done for. . . . If the wind continues steady, you ought to be able to find Emmet's fence--you know where that takes off in the direction of Constance Nala's--you follow it from there on, and then you come to your own--that runs right to the cattle barn at home. You might as well freeze to death out there, as here.\" . . . \"Well, well,\" he assented, as if tired of arguing. \"That may be right--it may be.\" . . . Pulling himself together, he went out of the shed and started off before the wind. . . .\n\n \n\nIV\n \n\nThat night Rubin Olsa received his death blow. He stumbled into his own house in the small hours of the morning; he was then so exhausted that he could not get his clothes off unaided. . . . S\u00f6rine had been up all night, well-nigh crazed with fear; twice she had started to go to Constance Nala's for help, but the storm had driven her back each time; then she had lighted a candle and placed it in the window, in hopes of its doing some good. She had fed the fire with desperate resolution, trying to face the fact that now the worst had happened and there was nothing to do about it, for Fate is inexorable.\n\nAs soon as she had got him into the house she began tending him with frantic haste. She made him drink several bowls of hot milk with black pepper in it; then she put him to bed, warmed the clothes and tucked them around him. But he lay there shivering, in spite of all she did, so that the whole bed shook. Later in the day he began to cough--a dry, rasping cough, it was, that seemed to grate on something hard as iron down in the bottom of the chest. During the night that followed he was delirious; he wanted to get up all the time and go north to look after the cattle. S\u00f6rine had all she could do to quiet him and keep him in bed. When the cough came from deep down in his lungs it seemed to scrape off flecks of rust that stuck in his throat and threatened to choke him.\n\nDay came at last, after a long, dismal night; and then he seemed better. Between the coughing spells he talked calmly to his wife, telling her what she and Sofie had to do about the chores. He felt condemned that they should be left to do all the outside work alone. As soon as they had gone out, he tried to get out of bed and put on his clothes; but the chills grew so violent that he could not stand on his feet. He fell back on the bed. . . .\n\nFor two full days the blizzard raged. During the forenoon of the third day the snow ceased falling and the storm abated; but the air was still grey and bitterly cold. As soon as Rubin Olsa saw that the storm was really letting up, he told Sofie to put on her skis and go over to get Constance Nala. \"This will never do,\" he said to his wife. \"For three day and nights you haven't been out of your clothes. I may be a long time in getting over the cough.\" . . . He wanted to say more, but the words were lost in a paroxysm of coughing.\n\nConstance Nala and the oldest two boys were making hay twists out in the barn when Sofie brought the first news that her father had been out in the storm the other night and was now very sick. Constance Nala immediately dropped his work and went back with her. S\u00f6rine looked worn out and very much worried. She turned her head aside when she spoke to him, saying that things didn't look very well. Then she went to the stove, put her apron up to her eyes, and murmured again--things didn't look very well! But Constance Nala's coming cheered her up a little and even seemed to take away some of her anxiety. In a moment her old buoyancy had come back; she dried her eyes and asked him to follow her into the bedroom.\n\nIn a hut on the border of the Irish settlement lived an old woman who was so queer at times that she was called \"Crazy Bridget.\" In fact, she had brought this name with her to the settlement; T\u00f6nseten long ago had picked it up from her countrymen, and had translated it into Norwegian--he made it Kr\u00e6si-Brita. All the Norwegians called her that now. This Bridget had come west with her son, had taken the quarter of land next to his, and had herself put up the hut in which she now lived. Very little was known about her except that she was extremely religious, and that as a rule she spoke a language which none of the Norwegians had ever heard before, and which, apparently, few of her own people understood. She seldom visited the other settlers of her own accord; but many--especially those of her own race--came often to her for help in time of sickness. She had a great store of old-fashioned remedies, both for humans and for beasts, and she gave of them freely, without pay. Most of the Norwegians had consulted her at one time or another, in spite of the fact that they went on saying she was only a fraud. And though they said it, they all had to admit, when it came down to known cases, that she had a remarkable way with sick folks.\n\nWhen Constance Nala saw how seriously ill his neighbour was he went out into the kitchen and said to S\u00f6rine that some one must go and fetch Bridget. They ought not to scorn her powers at a time like this--she might be able to help; at least, they must try every chance that offered.\n\nSuiting the action to the word, he went for her himself. A little later the old woman came trudging over on snow shoes, carrying an odd-looking bag on her back. She warmed herself at the fire, went into the bedroom, and looked at the suffering man. Then she asked for a kettle and opened her bag; first she took out four large onions; these she cut into tiny bits and dumped into the kettle; then she opened a bottle of vile-smelling stuff and poured some of its contents on the onions; at last she set the kettle over the fire and let it boil awhile. From this mixture she made thick poultices, which she put on Rubin Olsa's back and chest; but before she put them on she took out of her pocket a small rusty crucifix, mumbled some words over it, and stuck it into the poultice which was to lie on his chest. As she fixed these applications she made the sign of the cross over his chest and back. All the while she was muttering strange words, in a language they did not understand--whether a prayer or something worse they could not say. These poultices were to be kept on for twelve hours, she explained in broken English, and hot cloths must be put over them to keep them warm. When the twelve hours were gone they must make a fresh poultice. She instructed S\u00f6rine how to make it--with onions, a cup of linseed oil, one cup of fresh milk, and some flour. They must take good care of the crucifix, she said; she would hold them responsible for it. After giving some more good advice, she wished them God's blessing, put her bag on her back, fastened her snowshoes, and trudged away.\n\nBoth S\u00f6rine and Rubin Olsa had faith in the woman and were glad that she had come. . . . One must try such remedies as one had. . . .\n\nConstance Nala was very busy that forenoon; there was much to do at his own place, and more at his neighbour's. He had hurried home from Rubin Olsa's after going for Bridget; had called the two boys, and taken them with him at once to look after the cattle up north. Before he left he told Felicity briefly how things were at their neighbour's, and asked her to arrange her own work so that she could go over toward evening and stay there for the night. It might be late before he could get back. . . .\n\nAt supper time T\u00f6nseten called at Constance Nala's as he was going by. He was on his way home from the east part of the settlement, and just wanted to drop in to see how they were after the storm. When he heard the news about Rubin Olsa--how he had come down with such a bad cough, that it was doubtful if he would pull through--he decided to go over at once and tell S\u00f6rine what to do. If anyone in these parts knew all there was to know about a cough, he was the man! T\u00f6nseten was in an extraordinarily bright humour that evening. He told Constance Nala not to worry, if it was nothing worse than the cough; put on his skis and started off for Rubin Olsa's.\n\nOut in the bedroom lay the sick man, propped up by pillows; Little-Rubin sat at the foot of the bed with his playthings; S\u00f6rine and the daughter had finished the chores and were now working in the kitchen; Felicity sat in the bedroom, taking care that the poultices were kept hot and that the patient's shoulders were covered up warm; she had her knitting in her hands and was singing a hymn when T\u00f6nseten came in.\n\nOn entering the room T\u00f6nseten greeted them both cheerily; but instantly he began to feel ill at ease. . . . No need, surely, to begin the funeral before the man was in the coffin! . . . He managed to hold his tongue, however. Since Felicity had recovered, he couldn't stand her. She had become so pious that if a fellow made the most innocent remark, she was sure to preach at him. And never a drop of whisky would she tolerate, either for rheumatism or for cough. . . . One ought to have some sense, even if one was going to be religious. Surely he who was both klokker and deacon ought to be privileged to talk a little sense into her! . . . But such was the respect which she commanded, that even though he had thought about it for two years, he had never dared to say the first word.\n\nTo-night T\u00f6nseten could think only of how serious things looked for Rubin Olsa; he went straight to the bedside, and said in a tone of voice that was meant to be cheerful: \"I'm surprised at you, Rubin Olsa! . . . What do you mean by lying here like this, you slugabed? And here you have the finest ski-slide the Lord ever made, clear from your housetop all the way down to my place!\" . . . The sick man's face brightened as he looked into T\u00f6nseten's merry eyes; a breath of fresh air flurried from out the red, icicled beard; the whole face bending above him radiated good humour. . . . \"I'm glad you came, Syvert,\" said Rubin Olsa in a faint voice.\n\nT\u00f6nseten now began to feel that the right atmosphere had been established; he hummed a tune, took a chair, and sat down beside the bed. Without further prelude, he started to relate what had happened to him that day. . . . Yesterday morning, when Cuthbert had tried to make the fire, the stove wouldn't draw and the room had filled with smoke; not being able to manage the thing, she had come and roused him. He had got up, had dressed, and then tried to open the door, only to find that the whole house was snowed under; from the hillside to the creek stretched one huge, solid drift, and the chimney itself was packed full of snow. . . .\n\nWell, he had succeeded after a while in getting a hole through, so that at last they could have their morning coffee. It was simply terrible how much snow there was down his way. Yesterday he had been busy all day, making steps in the snow down to the house; these had packed fairly well during the day, but to-day they were as solid as ice. . . . And this morning when Cuthbert had come along carrying a pail of water, she had been so unfortunate as to slip on the top step--\"ha-ha!\" . . . She had thrown the pail into the air, her feet had shot out from under her, and she hadn't stopped until she'd landed on her backsides in the middle of the floor! . . . \"ha-ha-ha!\" . . . There she sat. . . . \"What in Heaven's name are you up to, Cuthbert?\" he had said, when he saw that she hadn't hurt herself very much; and then he naturally had gone off into a fit of laughing. This had infuriated Cuthbert; and when he saw that he'd tried his damnedest to stop--but for the life of him he couldn't! He'd laughed and laughed, and the more he'd laughed the worse things had got; until finally she had lost her temper completely and just driven him out of the house. . . .\n\nWell, this is what he had done next; he had put on his skis and gone over east in the settlement--had spent the whole afternoon there--just to visit around and see how folks were getting along. At last he had dropped in to see Johannes M\u00f6rstad and his wife Josie--Josie was about to have her fifth child, you know, and was expecting it any day now; T\u00f6nseten felt compelled to keep himself posted on the intimate progress of that family. So he had sat there gossiping with them a long while, and had just been telling them what had happened at home that day, when there!--he'd burst out laughing again, and laughed so hard that they all had to join in. And this had thrown Johannes into such a good humour that he had hunted up a bottle which he was saving for the coming event, and had given T\u00f6nseten a drop or two--perhaps it was three--well, it may have been four--if one must be accurate. . . . All this about the stove, and the steps, and Cuthbert, and about how he had had to take to his heels in order to find peace, he related in epic detail to Rubin Olsa--there seemed to be need of something jolly here! . . . But the number of drinks he really had had, he didn't fully reveal.\n\nThere was something so infectious about T\u00f6nseten's good spirits that they almost coaxed Rubin Olsa into a brighter mood. But then a spell of coughing came on; he choked it back and asked if Cuthbert hadn't hurt herself pretty badly?\n\n\"Oh no, boys, never you fear!\" hiccoughed T\u00f6nseten, wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands. \"She's all right, except for a few scratches here and there in the bottom--here and there--but they'll heal up in a little while. . . . Everything grows so big and fat around here, you know!\" . . . T\u00f6nseten went off into such another gale of laughter that he almost fell out of his chair.\n\n\"Well, well!\" . . . he said as soon as he could control himself, getting up to leave. \"To-morrow I shall bring Cuthbert over here with me. You just wait--we'll get the cough boiled out of that chest of yours! Cuthbert knows how to treat a cough, I can tell you!\" . . .\n\n \n\nV\n \n\nFelicity had stopped her singing abruptly when T\u00f6nseten came in. As he rambled on she sat and watched his face--something made her look at him in spite of herself. She listened to his half-maudlin laughter--and it seemed to her she never had realized before how disgusting his laugh was. His breath smelled of whisky. At first she felt furious with him and wanted to order him out of the house. Didn't the fool know that it was unseemly to talk that way at a deathbed? . . . But she only took her chair and moved farther off, as a child draws away from one of whom it is afraid.\n\nWhen T\u00f6nseten had at last gone the air of the room seemed close and foul to Felicity; filth and pollution had entered in where all should have been the serenity and holiness of a Sabbath. In a vision of startling clearness she saw how evil besmirches all life. What a degraded thing man's life on earth had become! Here was one neighbour calling on another at the point of death; if ever there was need of godly speech, it was at this moment; and yet there had been nothing but vileness in his mouth! She felt a physical desire to cleanse the place of its corruption; folding her hands, she began to sing, soft and low:\n\n \n\n\"O Jesus, see\nMy misery:\nGod's image out is blotted,\nAnd with snow-white leprosy\nSin my soul has spotted.\n\n\"Once heavenly bright\nThy own delight,\nIt was--a new creation;\nNow, because of sin's dread blight,\nUnder condemnation.\n\n\"In death's dark night,\nDevoid of light,\nIt sought to find its pleasure;\nAll in vain, since it did slight\nGod, its greatest treasure.\n\n\"No tongue can tell\nHow low it fell\nIn sin's dire degradation;\nBy forgetting heaven and hell,\nIt sought consolation.\n\n\"Thus it was found\nIn darkness bound,\nWith all its powers shattered,\nLed at will by Satan round,\nAnd with filth bespattered.\n\n\"O Christ, in Thee,\nWho cam'st to be\nA ransom for us given,\nIs our only sanctity\nAnd our way to heaven.\n\n\"Thy mercy be\nMy only plea;\nThy light my soul enlighten,\nThat it God again may see,\nAnd life's pathway brighten.\n\n\"Let morning rays\nOf Thy mild grace\nUpon my heart be streaming,\nAnd from death my soul thus raise\nBy Thy love redeeming.\n\n\"O sinner's friend,\nWhom thorns did lend\nDeath's scornful coronation,\nGrant me peace with God again,\nAnd with it salvation.\"\n \n\nShe sang the whole hymn through before she got up again to change the cloths; that duty done, she went out to help S\u00f6rine and Sofie in the kitchen.\n\nAll that night Felicity sat by the bedside. Though the sick man seemed no worse, the specks of rust that he raised from the depths of his chest appeared to her to be larger and more numerous. He slept little, but she didn't wonder at that--he must have solemn things to think about now. She wanted to talk them over with him, but did not like to disturb his thoughts yet awhile. During the early part of the night they exchanged few words. But along toward morning the paroxysms of coughing became more frequent and violent; there were times when they almost choked him. Once she grew frightened and got up to hold his head; his face was turning blue as he struggled for breath; then she said, slowly: \"Now I think you must prepare yourself, Rubin Olsa.\"\n\nHe turned his head sharply and looked at her. . . . \"Prepare myself?\" . . .\n\n\"You will hardly be able to stand this very much longer.\"\n\nThe big bulk of Rubin Olsa lay very quiet; only his hand was moving nervously over the cover; his eyes had a questioning, startled look. . . . \"Well . . . many have got over the cough.\" . . .\n\nShe did not answer him. After a while he added, thoughtfully, \"It will be worse for those who are left.\" . . .\n\n\"You ought not to say that, Rubin Olsa--their time has not yet come. But remember that for you the day of grace is nearly over.\" She spoke quietly and compassionately, in a tone of voice which, whenever she used it, always carried conviction by its confident faith.\n\nFor a long time Rubin Olsa made no reply; he turned his face to the wall and closed his eyes. Felicity stood looking at him. . . . \"He does not like what I said. That's how we are, we sinners. But I am glad I said it. I don't believe he will ever get up again.\"\n\n. . . \"Oh, well,\" murmured Rubin Olsa after a while. \"He has had mercy on many a sinner before. I suppose there will be a little left for me, too.\" . . .\n\nA great eagerness suddenly welled up in Felicity's soul. . . . \"If only you will bring him a contrite heart! But how can one forgive the erring child who does not repent? . . . Woe unto you that are rich!--For ye have received your consolation. . . . Woe unto you that are full!--For ye shall hunger. . . . Woe unto you that laugh now!--For ye shall weep and mourn. . . . Oh no, we cannot only comfort ourselves with the belief that there is mercy enough--that it is free!\" . . . With firm hands, she changed the cloths again.\n\nOne severe coughing spell after another began to attack him now, and nothing more was said; but after a prolonged struggle he got his breath again; completely exhausted, he turned his face to the wall, and it looked as if he might drop off to sleep. . . . He lay perfectly quiet a long time.\n\nFelicity knit steadily until her hands grew tired; she wondered if she couldn't find something to do for S\u00f6rine, took the lamp and went into the kitchen. Here she found a great pile of coarse hay stacked against the wall; she set to work at once, making twists of it for the fire. All the while she was thinking about her conversation with Rubin Olsa. . . . \"It will seem strange not to meet Rubin Olsa in the hereafter--that it will. In the old country we grew up together. . . . They are good folk, both he and she. . . . And now he is starting out on his long journey--and will not pass through the heavenly gates! . . . His mother, Ellen, was a very Godfearing woman; his father I didn't know, but I never heard a word against him. . . . Now they have waited there for him these many years; it will be hard for me to meet them some day and tell them how it all happened here. . . . Constancehaps I will be to blame, too; I certainly haven't done what I should. . . . Oh, how can he hope to get in? Not many from the Dakota prairie will ever stand in glory there--that I am sure of! . . . For here Earth takes us. What she cannot get easily she wrests by subtle force, and we do not even know it. . . . I see what happens in my own home. . . . It is awful! . . . Here he lay at the point of death, enjoying T\u00f6nseten's ribaldry! . . . With thoughts like this, he is now to meet his God!\" . . .\n\nThe lamp burned low. The room was growing cold. She got up and threw some fagots into the fire, waited until it burned up briskly, then put on a couple of sticks of wood--there were not many left in the box. . . . \"It will not be easy for S\u00f6rrina when he is gone. . . . But nothing else matters, if only he could reach the Heavenly Home! We can take care of things here.\" . . .\n\nShe went into the bedroom again, to see if she could do anything for the sick man. He was awake when she came in; his manner showed that he had been waiting for her.\n\n\"How is the weather outside?\" he asked, slowly. \"Would it be possible for a man to travel in it?\"\n\n\"What do you say?\" She came close to the bed.\n\n\"Could we try to get the doctor, do you suppose? . . . Others out here have had him.\" . . .\n\n\"We shall see when daylight comes. . . . But how about the minister, Rubin Olsa?\"\n\n\"The minister?\"\n\n\"Yes--when the Lord's hour is at hand, man's help is of no avail; for from His wrath no man can flee! . . . What you need most of all is Communion, Rubin Olsa!\"\n\n\"Communion . . . ? Well . . . yes . . . I suppose so . . . that is true.\"\n\n\"It is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God,\" said Felicity, quietly, and looked into his face with sorrowful despair. \"There is nothing but evil in us--yes, nothing! But when He comes to us in Holy Communion, laying His merciful hands benignantly upon us and assures us from out the Gates of Eternity that all our sins are forgiven--oh, there is no moment so great as this for the sin-burdened soul! Then we may rest in peace.\" . . .\n\nOnce more he turned his face away, gave a light cough, and looked fixedly at the wall. Felicity felt intuitively that his cough was forced this time. . . . \"How strange we are--we erring mortals! Here I stand, telling him of the truth and the light and the way. Now he is wandering in the dark--he does not know which way to go. But when I tell him, he coughs the word away! . . . Thus it is to be dead in the midst of life!\"\n\nHe lay still awhile, and then he said, wearily, \"All my life I have thought it would be blessed to come Home.\"\n\nTears came to Felicity's eyes. . . . \"But are you ready to journey on? Do you dare now to meet Him as you are? . . . Here you have lived all these years, in error and sin, and have not taken time to give Him any thoughts at all.\"\n\n\"Oh no,\" he sighed, heavily. . . . \"But that isn't so very strange, is it?\"\n\nShe felt uplifted by what she had been able to say; it gave her greater courage to go on. . . . \"That's why you must seek Him here, before you meet Him face to face yonder!\" she cried, exultantly. \"Now I will pray for you.\" . . . Without waiting for his consent, she knelt beside the bed and began to pray earnestly, with sweet compassion vibrating through her mellow voice, that he who now lay here might be given the grace to see his sin and to repent before the door had closed.\n\nBut she had hardly begun when something stopped the prayer. . . . Rubin Olsa had reared himself up on his elbows when she had sunk to her knees beside the bed, and had remained in this position, staring at her wide-eyed. As he heard how she pleaded for him he was seized with a sudden convulsion of coughing; he sat up frantically in bed, gasping for breath. The bedclothes fell off him, the poultices slipped down, and Felicity had to leave her praying to attend to him. And when he was quiet again he asked to have his milk warmed; then he had to get up; from that he got an attack of chills, and Felicity had to call S\u00f6rine to help her warm the clothes once more and tuck him in.\n\nWith the first grey light of dawn Johannes M\u00f6rstad arrived, begging and begging that Felicity go with him--Josie was coming down; he had tried to get Cuthbert, but she had lamed herself so badly the other day, that it was impossible for her to walk that far. . . . \"This is certainly the work of the devil!\" thought Felicity. \"Just now . . . !\" But she went out of the house full of the same great exaltation, like one whose sins had been laid bare before the whole congregation. . . .\n\n \n\nVI\n \n\nA little while later Constance Nala dropped in to see how they were getting along. He said that he would arrange with the Solum boys to help him carry hay and water to the herd up north; that done, he would go to Gjermund Dahl's, to get him to come and help S\u00f6rine with the chores. This evening he would come back to make a report about everything. Now he must be gone. . . .\n\nPeople were hard at work throughout the whole settlement; the weather continued threatening, and there was much to be done after the storm; hogs and cattle, as well as human beings, had to be safeguarded against another onslaught of winter. On most of the farms the outhouses were still of primitive construction, built either of sod or of poles and straw. The last storm had buried some of them entirely; from others it had stripped off the straw so completely, that the tops of the poles poking through the snowdrifts resembled nothing so much as bleached bones sticking out of the ground. Of some of the farmhouses only the roofs could be seen; of the sod huts, only the chimneys; down at T\u00f6nseten's, the smoke came right out of a hole in the snowbank. If one wanted to go to his neighbour's, he had to put on skis or snowshoes, and keep on top of the drifts. There were homes where no other food was left than dry corn and the little milk that the cows gave. On the outskirts of the settlement, where the latest newcomers lived, they sometimes didn't even have that much. But the people there would borrow a sack of wheat from anybody who had one; and if they had no coffee mill in the house, they would use a mortar, or improvise one from a kettle. Folks were cheerful about helping one another in those days. What one didn't have, he borrowed; if one got a new idea, he passed it on to his neighbours. The scarcity of fuel caused the most suffering, for hay burned like hay, even if twisted.\n\nT\u00f6nseten was sitting in the bedroom at Rubin Olsa's when Constance Nala came back after supper. He was downhearted and quiet to-day. Cuthbert had been in bed most of the time because of the stiffness and soreness from her fall; and she was so cross, he explained, that if a fellow as much as looked at her she would bite his head off. He had had the devil to pay, with taking care of both her and himself and doing the chores besides. . . . As he noticed how flushed Rubin Olsa's face was and heard how he struggled for breath, he wondered if his own cough had ever been as bad as this. If this was worse than he had had it three years ago, the man would never be able to throw it off. . . . But he kept the thought to himself.\n\nThings had been in a bad way with Rubin Olsa all that day; the coughing spells had come oftener; he had been restless and fretful; had asked first for one thing, and then for another, and was always inquiring about the weather. At that moment he happened to be quiet; when all at once he began to talk about the inevitable. . . . He asked both of his neighbours to help S\u00f6rine when he was gone, and to give her their best advice about running the farm, just as he would have done for them, if either one of them had been in his place. . . . \"Constance Nala, stay with me to-night! S\u00f6rrina must have some sleep; she has had all the work to do outdoors, and needs some rest. It may take a long time with me yet--perhaps we shall need help from all of you!\"\n\nThus it came about that Constance Nala watched with him that night. S\u00f6rine lay down in the other room, fully dressed. The door between the rooms stood open. She intended to doze only a minute and not lose herself so completely that she couldn't jump up to help when the worst spells came on; but she had tramped about working in the snow nearly all day, and was so worn out that she soon dropped off into a sound sleep.\n\nAfter all had been quiet in the house for some time, Rubin Olsa looked up and asked, in a needlessly loud voice, if his wife was asleep. When no answer came from the other room, he lay still for quite a while, gazing up with his eyes fixed on space; then he began, in a calm, matter-of-fact way, to tell Constance Nala how he thought everything ought to be arranged after he was gone. He mentioned first a couple of little debts which he had in Sioux Falls; then he spoke of several of the new settlers who owed him for seed and cattle, and stipulated how much each was to pay. It transpired later that in every case he had stated less than what was owing to him. . . . S\u00f6rine ought to hold the farm and keep on living here; for this was the country of the future--of that he was certain. Constance Nala would hereafter have to be her chief counsellor; if he could hire an honest and capable manager for her, she and the children would get along all right. . . . And then there was Little-Rubin--it was hard to go away and not see what this seedling of manhood would grow up into. If he showed any aptitude for his books, they would have to send him to St. Olaf College. . . . Or if the Lord had destined him for the ministry--But that was probably expecting too much. . . .\n\nHe talked with great difficulty. Every now and then he had to stop for breath. Constance Nala only nodded his replies; all he could think of to say was: \"Don't worry. . . . Is there anything else now? . . . I will take care of everything.\"\n\nLittle by little Constance Nala got the feeling that his friend had something on his mind; he could not tell exactly why he felt that way, but the impression grew stronger and stronger. Every time a pause came over the sick man's talk, he expected to hear what it was. But there seemed to be nothing more. At last Rubin Olsa fell silent; he was still looking straight ahead of him; but now he began to be very restless. A violent fit of coughing shook his frame. From out that great chest of his came a dreadful wheezing, grating sound, as from an old pair of leaky bellows when they are blown up hard.\n\nWhen the cough had eased itself, Rubin Olsa began once more his frightened groping among the things of the future; but now he spoke less coherently. After midnight he had a quiet spell when he lay as if exhausted and said nothing; but off and on he would glance at his neighbour out of the corners of his eyes; there was something unusual and urgent in the look--something that made a man afraid. . . . Constance Nala wondered if the end were at hand. . . .\n\nBut suddenly the sick man began to talk again. It was hardly what Constance Nala had expected to hear. He merely raised his eyes and asked in a low voice:\n\n\"Is the snow very deep?\"\n\n\"Between our farms,\" said Constance Nala, \"it doesn't lie less than four feet anywhere; and it's as deep as that on the level all over the prairie. Down near the creek, by T\u00f6nseten's, it must be as much as twenty feet deep! . . . It snowed just a little, I want you to know!\"\n\n\"Is it as bad as that?\" . . . The sick man sighed heavily, his hands fidgeting with the covers; then he repeated in a low voice: \"So--is it as deep as that?\"\n\n\"Was there something on your mind?\"\n\n\"Then it isn't possible to get anywhere!\" . . . The powerful jaws closed; drops of sweat stood out on the great, shiny face.\n\nConstance Nala's heart stirred with a nameless dread; he felt himself grow dizzy, but he cleared his throat and said, firmly:\n\n\"What is it that you want, Rubin Olsa? . . . Do you want the doctor?\"\n\nThe sick man turned toward him.\n\n\"Oh--it's the minister I need!\" . . . Then, after a moment, he added: \"But don't you think the weather will be better in a day or two?\" . . .\n\nHe lay perfectly still. When he got no answer he looked up and repeated, imploringly:\n\n\"Don't you think so?\"\n\nConstance Nala rose to his feet and began pacing back and forth across the floor. It must be very close in here . . . he felt so faint. Thinking of how it was outdoors, he suddenly found himself bathed in perspiration. . . . God pity him who had to travel the prairie these days!\n\nHe came back to the bed.\n\n\"You feel that you must have him?\"\n\n\"It is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God!\" . . . The large, kindly features were drawn and trembling, with fear of the unknown. Constance Nala could scarcely endure it to look at him; he had to lean against the back of a chair for support. . . . In broken words, his friend repeated: \"It is terrible . . . terrible . . . to fall . . . into His hands!\" . . .\n\n\"Hush, now! Hush, now, man! Don't talk blasphemy!\" cried Constance Nala. \"Lie down, now. . . . See here . . . the covers are falling off you!\"\n\nThe bulky form had reared itself violently up in bed. Through a paroxysm of coughing Rubin Olsa whimpered:\n\n\"Tell S\u00f6rrina to come here!\"\n\nIt looked for a moment as if he were passing away in the midst of the attack. Rubin Olsa himself thought so. In wild alarm, Constance Nala resorted to pounding the sick man's back, just as one does with children when they have swallowed the wrong way. But after a while the spell gradually left him, as the others had done. He settled back, and a little later fell into a deep sleep, which lasted till morning.\n\nThe first rays of daylight woke S\u00f6rine. Her husband was already awake by that time, and seemed better. Constance Nala put on his coat and prepared to go; he had all his own work to do at home, besides Rubin Olsa's cattle up north to look after.\n\nRubin Olsa watched him get ready, following all his movements with a pathetic sadness like that which stands in a dog's eyes when he watches his master go away without him. Then he called him over to the bedside and asked him again what the weather was like. There was an odd little quiver in his voice as he said, almost as though he were ashamed:\n\n\"I suppose it's still impossible to get anywhere?\"\n\nConstance Nala felt like laughing at such childishness in a grown-up man; he scarcely knew what to answer. But answer he must; so he braced himself, buttoned his big coat, put on his mittens, and said, firmly: \"You ought to lie still and sleep awhile longer, Rubin Olsa. . . . During the night you slept like a rock--and see how much better you are already! . . . I promise you that I'll be back some time later in the day.\"\n\n\"You don't think it can be done?\"\n\nNameless dread again seized Constance Nala. He stepped back and said, hastily: \"Calm yourself now, Rubin Olsa! . . . We'll have to see about it--you understand.\"\n\nThe sick man reached out toward him, caught his hand and held it tightly, with something of his old strength. . . . \"Oh, Constance Nala!\" he cried. . . . \"There never was a man like you . . . !\" and fell back on the pillow, exhausted.\n\n \n\nVII\n \n\nAll through the latter part of last summer and early fall Constance Nala had done a full man's work plus a bit more; nor had he spared the boys, either. And he had hired a number of men besides. He needed all the help he could get; for there was the new house to be built, the crops to be harvested, the fall plowing that must be done, and in addition, all the other work about the farm.\n\nBut he had gone about his duties in a mood that made any task easy both for himself and for those who worked with him. His wife's improved condition had relieved him of whole loads of worry and anxiety. During the years that her mind had been beclouded he had treated her as a father would a delicate, frail child that, by some inexcusable fault on his part, had been reduced to helplessness. So solicitous had been his watchful care over her through all these years, that this paternal attitude had become fixed with him. Even now that she was well again, it didn't change.\n\nHer growing religious concern didn't alarm him; that, too, he took as a notion on the part of a frail child. He either would meet her admonitions with silence, or else laugh kindly at her eagerness, or he might throw himself into the work all the harder. The fact that she now was quite all right again, that he no longer needed to watch over her in constant dread, but that she, on the contrary, could take care of the house in a capable way and even find time to help with the outside work, was a constant source of thankfulness to him. To him she was still the delicate child that needed a father's watchful eye. To desire her physically would be as far from his mind as the crime of incest.\n\nShortly before the Christmas holidays they had had a set-to over religion. She had insisted that he as the father of the family should conduct daily devotion. At this demand he had laughed, not unkindly but humorously, as if she had sprung a good joke on him. . . . He conducting devotion--the idea! She had become insistent; her voice was full of deep sorrowful concern over his seemingly total depravity. She had entreated him earnestly and yet so kindly that he, too, was touched. And so he had said, as one yields to an unreasonable whim of a dear child, that that he would not do, but he would be glad to have her do it, for she could read so beautifully, which was true. Feeling that it would be dangerous to his temper to argue the matter any longer, he had gone out of the house to find some work outside. From that time on she had been conducting devotion each day, but both of them had studiously avoided a new discussion, with the result that the relation between them was less frank than before; each seemed to feel the guardedness of the other.\n\nAs time passed her devotional exercises became less and less pleasing to him; at times they would get on his nerves. In the prayers she began to offer there would creep in more and more of concern for him; and little by little it got to be almost exclusively for him. As he sat there listening it sounded to him as if he were the most hardened sinner in all Christendom; he would feel ashamed before the children, would find some pretext to steal out of the house. But he couldn't bring it across his heart to speak to her; for how can one reason with a child that is so delicate as she, he thought.\n\n \n\nIn the grey light of dawn Constance Nala returned from the bedside of Rubin Olsa, looking like a man who had reached the end of his rope. He hung up his coat and hat and sat down at the table in the large kitchen to eat his breakfast. Off and on he glanced out of the window. While Felicity brought him his food, she asked how things were over at Rubin Olsa's. At first she got very little satisfaction; his answers were short and taciturn, and he seemed engrossed in his own thoughts. He ate slowly and took a long time over the meal; all the while he kept looking out of the window.\n\nAt length he got up from the table, crossed to the stove, turned his back to it, and put his hands behind him, as though he still felt cold and needed the warmth of the fire. . . . \"Well,\" he said, meditatively, \"I suppose he doesn't expect to get over this sickness--and it's more than likely he won't. He just lies there and whimpers about having the minister. . . . There's something uncanny about him. I can't understand it at all.\" . . . These remarks were not directed at Felicity; he stood looking straight ahead of him, as if thinking aloud. Felicity had stopped working when she heard him; her face lighted up as she answered, with an unmistakable ring of exultation in her voice: \"But I can understand it! . . . Now may God be near and hear his prayer! Some one must go for the minister at once.\"\n\nConstance Nala did not move; he was staring off into space. Felicity crossed the floor, her hands full of dishes, and stopped directly in front of him. . . . \"You must persuade some one to go with you. This is terrible weather! . . . Could you try going on horseback?\"\n\n\"Huh--horseback! How you talk!\"\n\n\"But it is an awful thing for a soul to be cast into hell when human beings can prevent it!\"\n\nConstance Nala seemed amused at this idea. \"Well, if Rubin Olsa is bound in that direction, there'll be a good many more from here in the same boat! . . . He'll land in the right place, don't worry.\"\n\nThe words sounded so blasphemous to Felicity that she could not repress a shudder of horror. Greatly wrought up, she set the dishes down on the table and said, fiercely: \"You know what our life has been: land and houses, and then more land, and cattle! That has been his whole concern--that's been his very life. Now he is beginning to think about not having laid up treasures in heaven. . . . Can't you understand that a human being ever becomes concerned over his sins and wants to be freed from them?\"\n\n\"I suppose I don't understand anything, do I?\" said Constance Nala in a tone of disgust. \"Constancehaps I don't understand, for instance--though God knows it would not be difficult for any grown person to see it--that no man could cross the prairie from here to the James River, as things are now, and come out alive--. . . As for Rubin Olsa, the Lord will find him good enough, even without either minister or klokker--that I truly believe!\"\n\n\"The God of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not! . . . Here lies one who is about to receive his sight, and we will not reach out a hand to help him!\"\n\n\"Hold your tongue, Felicity!\" cried Constance Nala, sharply, anger at the hopelessness of the argument getting the better of him. \"Do you want to drive me out into the jaws of death?\"\n\n\"What horrible things you say, Constance Nala!\"\n\n\"Horrible--well! Don't you suppose the good Lord would have provided other weather if he had intended me to make this trip?\"\n\nShe gave him a quick look.\n\n\"It's possible to try, isn't it?\" she said with cold persistence. \"Why can't you get some one to go with you? You could take Indi--he is light-footed, and we could wrap things around all four legs, so that he wouldn't sink through the snow. They say that has been done before--I've read about it. . . . Emmet has a sleigh; and you could turn back at any time, if you couldn't make it. . . . The Lord would forgive us then for what we couldn't possibly do--if we had tried!\"\n\n\"He had better do that right now!\" growled Constance Nala, a gust of hot anger nearly choking him. Without another word he went to the stairs, called Gerry and Zoe, and told them to get into their clothes right away. Pulling on his coat, he slammed out of the house to do the morning chores.\n\nFelicity looked at the door through which he had just disappeared. . . . There he leaves in a fit of temper, fuming and cussing! . . . She took up the morning work, her thoughts busy with many things. Before she realized it she was absorbed in what had so often been on her mind lately: What had happened to him, anyway? What had made him so different? . . . His warm playfulness, his affectionate tenderness--what had become of it? . . . Oh no, no! she caught herself, how can I be thinking of such things again! The sweet desires of the flesh are the nets of Satan. . . . How deeply sin has besoiled all life! . . . Felicity went about her work with a greater determination; but her sad mood did not lift.\n\nA hundred things were waiting for Constance Nala outside, but he was so angry that he scarcely noticed what he was about. . . . The world seemed upside down to-day. . . . That grown people couldn't see an inch beyond their noses! Here lay Rubin Olsa, driving himself out of his mind because he couldn't have a minister--when there was no better man than himself in all Christendom! . . . And here was Felicity insisting that he leap right into the arms of death--she who had a heart so tender that she couldn't harm a mouse! . . . People could certainly twist things around in a queer way! All his life he had worked and slaved in order that she and the children might be made comfortable . . . and now it was flung in his face and he was taunted with being only a blind mole who saw nothing but the hole he had burrowed himself into! . . . \"By God, it's a strange world we live in!\" . . . If this went on much longer, he would go out of his mind himself--if he wasn't a little crazy already! . . . He dashed from one thing to another in a frenzy, leaving everything half done.\n\nWhen the boys came out they all put on their skis and started across the snowdrifts to Rubin Olsa's north quarter. The day was bleak; a cold air was drawing in from the west. To Zoe, all these fields of snow were glorious; now he could skim like a bird over the drifts. Little by little Constance Nala forgot his temper as he caught the infection of the boy's exuberant joy.\n\nWhile they were working over the cattle, Constance Nala talked in a steady stream to the boys. All this snow, he said, promised a bumper crop next summer--you could depend on that! . . . One of his moods of high good humour had come over him now with a rush; and as was customary with him in that frame of mind, he discussed things with the boys as if they had been grown men. He outlined at length how they could manage their place in order to have the very finest of farms. If all went well, they would build a big barn next fall; but they certainly wouldn't be such damned idiots as to build a horse barn and cow barn separate, as that fool Torkel Tallaksen had done! It made a fine show, all right, but it was hardly practical; besides costing a good deal more, the barns were cold. . . . But they were going to have a real show barn, just the same--red with white cornices, because he always thought those colors looked the best. . . . Then he told them how he had read in the Skandinaven1that the big farmers in the East now built a track under the ridgepole, along which they hauled the hay right into the barn loft. They would have to investigate this idea, for it sounded practical. . . . They found plenty to do up north; they saw to it that the cattle had water and hay enough; they carried in more straw; they stuffed the cracks in the walls; and all the while they talked and worked together like three grown men. Constance Nala felt the need of throwing off the great burden that weighed him down; and for the moment he seemed to be succeeding fairly well. But at last they had finished everything that needed to be done; then the skis went on in a hurry, and off flew the boys like two great sea gulls soaring across the fiord. . . . No more time for talk! They struck off directly for the highest hill in sight; from there they could slide all the way down to the creek. . . . Wasn't it wonderful . . . all this snow!\n\n \n\n1 Norwegian-American newspaper published in Chicago.\n\n \n\nJust as Constance Nala reached the yard at home S\u00f6rine was coming out of the kitchen door; she went over to the wall of the house, took a pair of skis that stood there, and put them on. He noticed that she was very thinly clad. She had a shawl over her head, but wore no other outdoor wrap. He concluded at once that she must have left home in a hurry, and feared that the worst had happened. . . . Was anything wrong? he asked. . . . No, Rubin Olsa didn't seem much worse; she thought he looked a little better. But her face was sad and she looked down as she spoke. . . . Bridget had been to see him again and had said there was no hope. . . . \"And I guess there isn't, either,\" she went on. \"But I had to come over and ask your advice, Constance Nala. . . . He said that you were going after the minister for him. And I suppose that might be a good thing to do; at any rate, he is very happy about it. . . . But now, of course, I see that it's impossible to go anywhere. . . . Still, I was thinking that if you did intend to try, it might be better to get the doctor instead. . . . I don't suppose you can think of it in this weather, but I had to come over, anyway. . . .\" Not once did she look up as the obvious pleading went on.\n\nConstance Nala glanced down at his skis. Her voice had a thin, timid sound in this piercing wind. He felt the cold himself and remembered how thinly she was clad.\n\n\"You must stay awhile and get warm before you go,\" he said, quietly.\n\n\"No, I must hurry home. I know I shouldn't have come, but--\" her voice suddenly left her. In a moment it came back, and then she went on, bravely: \"It is so hard to see him go, without being able to help! And then we all have a feeling that nothing is ever impossible for you--and I thought that perhaps you might find a way out of this, too!\" . . . All at once her pleading had taken on a frantic urgency.\n\n\"Did he ask you to come to me?\"\n\n\"No--he didn't exactly do that. But he kept wondering if you weren't getting ready--if you wouldn't be starting soon. I could see plainly enough that he wanted some one to come over.\"\n\nConstance Nala said nothing more, nor did he look at her again. She went away at once. When she had gone, he took off his skis, beat the snow from them, and set them up against the wall. But he did not go in immediately . . . His thoughts followed her who was now walking across the snow, passed her, entered the house before her, saw his friend lying there--saw the great face staring up at him, the frightened eyes imploring him like those of a kindly dog. He stood still in his tracks a long time, gazing off into vacancy, without the will to move. . . .\n\nOn the kitchen floor Constancemand was playing at threshing. When the father came in he hailed him, giving off orders like a man: \"Come here and help me, you; we've got to get this work done before evening!\" The boy's heart and soul were in his play. Seeing that dinner was not yet ready, the father hung up his coat and hat and sat down on the floor beside his son. In a moment they were both absorbed in the play.\n\nDuring the meal the two parents scarcely spoke to each other, and never once did their eyes meet. As soon as they had finished the boy came and wanted his father to play with him some more; the father willingly agreed, and soon they were hard at it again. It was a serious question as to how they could get a lot of threshing done today; all the while they were laughing and talking about it, making a great deal of noise.\n\nAs the mother cleared the table she kept looking at them in wonder and dismay. . . . Here he sat and played with the child, just as if there were nothing serious in the world for him. The day was wearing on. Didn't he really intend to try to do anything? She could have cried aloud in her anguish! Had he become stone blind? . . . When she had finished washing the dishes she went to the window and stood there awhile, looking out; then she crossed to the wall where her outdoor clothes hung, and began to put them on. This attracted Constance Nala's attention.\n\n. . . Was she going out? he asked.\n\n. . . Yes. . . . She put on one of his coats over her own wrap, then pulled his big stocking cap over her head.\n\nHe looked up a second time.\n\n\"Are you going far? You seem to be wrapping up a good deal.\"\n\nShe waited a moment before she answered.\n\n\"I have to talk to Emmet. . . . Some one must go on this errand for Rubin Olsa!\" Her face was flushed with determination and her eyes shone with a quiet light.\n\nConstance Nala burst into a laugh and scrambled to his feet.\n\n\"You'll have to behave yourself now, woman,\" he said, like a man trying to talk reason into a naughty child. \"You ought to know that this is no weather for a woman to be out in.\"\n\n\"It's no weather for men to be out in, either, by the way it looks in here!\"\n\nHe whirled on her suddenly, his face white with passion; the eyes that stared at her fiercely, burned with a lambent flame.\n\n\"God help me!\" she thought. \"Now he's going to lay hands on me! . . . But I only spoke the truth!\"\n\n\"I want no more damned nonsense about this!\" he burst out, hoarsely. \"If you . . . if you have something to say to Emmet, you'll have to say it here in this house. . . . You can't go chasing from farm to farm today!\" . . .\n\nBefore she knew it he had gone out of the kitchen.\n\n \n\nVIII\n \n\nIn front of the steps stood the forward part of a sleigh, on which the boys had tried to haul hay to the house; it was a clumsy, homemade affair, so heavy that the boys couldn't budge it after it had stood awhile, and so they had left it where it was. Constance Nala had noticed it earlier in the day, and it had angered him at the time to think that the boys were so careless. . . . When he came out now this object was the first thing he saw. He rushed at it; wrenched it out of the snow with a violent jerk, and flung it so hard into a drift that only one runner remained in sight.\n\n\"There! . . . God damn the thing!\" he muttered.\n\nWith that passionate outburst his temper seemed suddenly to have left him, but his face was still very pale. His skis leaned up against the wall where he had placed them; he put them on and stood still for a moment, lost in thought; then, staff in hand, he started off. . . .\n\nIn the east part of the settlement lived two Telemarking1 boys, who had come over a couple of years before. They were skilled skismiths; last winter each one had made himself a pair with straps and staffs, the finest ever seen in this part of the country. This year they had made two trips to town on them before Christmas. . . . It was to these boys that Constance Nala now went. In about an hour he returned with one pair of skis on his shoulders, and another on his feet. Neither pair was his own.\n\n \n\n1 People from the mountain district of Telemarken, Norway.\n\n \n\nFelicity, greatly agitated by her husband's hasty departure, walked back and forth across the kitchen floor. . . . \"Now I have brought things to a sorry pass!\" she thought. \"I know I said too much--but what could I do? Some one has to go, and I had no one else to ask.\" . . . When she saw him returning with the skis she felt relieved. . . . \"It's sensible of him to go on skis; it's the only way he can possibly get along. . . . I wonder who he intends to take along with him? He ought to have thought of the plan more seriously this morning; the boys and I could have managed with the chores. . . . I must hurry up and make him a cup of coffee; he must have something hot to drink before he leaves. . . . They'll hardly get far to-day.\" . . . She put the coffeepot on the stove and began to set the table. . . . \"I guess I'll put on a tablecloth to make things nice for him. . . . He mustn't think that I hold any hard feelings.\" . . .\n\nThe oldest two boys were busy digging a tunnel from the cow barn to the pigsty--the latter had been completely snowed under. Constance Nala went over there first; he talked to them as if he were in no hurry, and when it seemed to him that they were losing interest, he went down into the tunnel where they were. . . . He said that now he was going away, and that it was uncertain when he would return. Could he depend on them to look after things while he was gone? . . . The boys were absorbed in their task and didn't pay much attention to what he said. Certainly he could go. They would look after everything. They went on with their work, and soon fell into a quarrel about how long it would take them to reach the pigsty. . . . He left the boys, took his skis, and went into the granary; there he rubbed one pair of skis with some tallow which he kept for the purpose, and put a piece of the tallow into his pocket. He also had to adjust the straps a little before he could start. . . .\n\nWhile he was doing this Peder Victorious came trudging in and announced that mother had made coffee. She said father must come in before it got cold.\n\n\"What?\" . . . Constance Nala's face brightened. \"Did mother really say that?\"\n\n\"She said coffee was ready.\"\n\n\"Oh! . . .\"\n\nConstance Nala had now adjusted the straps as he wanted them, and stood looking around for a rope with which to strap the other pair of skis on his back.\n\n\"Did she send you out and tell you to say that?\" . . .\n\n\"She said--she said--coffee was ready, she said!\"\n\nThe father looked at his son. \"You haven't got enough on, Constancemand,\" he said in a low, tender voice, stroking the boy's cheek with his hand and running his finger down into the soft warm neck. The boy screamed when it tickled. Constance Nala laughed to hear him. \"Hm--hm--cold as an icicle! Pack yourself in this minute! . . . So mother has the coffee ready, you say?\"\n\nHe carried the boy out lovingly, set him down with a lingering touch, and went back after his skis. One pair he tied to his back; the other he put on.\n\nThe boy waited, watching him.\n\n\"Aren't you coming, father?\"\n\n\"Get into the house with you!\" the father said with mock severity. \"I'll probably be along in a little while.\" . . . Then, as he straightened up and put on his mittens, he suddenly remembered something:\n\n\"Constancemand!\"\n\n\"Ya?\" . . .\n\n\"There's a ball of nice twine in the bedroom. Ask mother to find it and give it to you to play with. . . . And now you must be a good boy, and get a lot of threshing done before I come back!\"\n\n\"Yes, father,\" said the boy as he trotted away.\n\nConstance Nala stood motionless, watching him until he had passed from sight inside the house. Then, with a staff in either hand, he started off. . . . Was that a face at the window that he saw? . . .\n\nHe did not look at the house again. In a moment he had passed the place where the boys were digging the tunnel; he longed to talk with them once more, but crushed the feeling down. . . . He struck out westward. Something tugged and pulled at his heart, trying to make him turn back; it was as if he had a bridle on and the driver were pulling hard on one of the reins. He had to bend his head forward against this unseen force in order to hold his direction. . . . \"No--not now--not now. . . .\" he murmured, bitterly, wiping his mitten across his eyes.\n\nIn the kitchen window Felicity stood watching him; her soft, kindly eyes grew large and questioning. . . . Wasn't he coming in? Had Constancemand forgotten to tell him? . . . Surely, surely, he would come. She had fixed things so nicely for him. . . . Oh, this would never do! She must find out at once who was going with him! . . . She hurried to the door, flung it open, ran out on the steps, and tried to call to him--he simply mustn't leave this way! . . . But he had already gone beyond the range of her voice; the westerly gusts, driving full against her, snatched her words away. Her eyes filled with tears, so that she could scarcely see him now. Furious blasts came swirling out of the grey, boundless dusk, sweeping the snow in stinging clouds, whirling it round and round, dropping it only to pick it up again. Constance Nala soon disappeared in the whirling waste. . . . The wind was so cold that it penetrated to the very marrow of her bones. A little later Constance Nala turned in at Rubin Olsa's; he sat and talked with them awhile in the bedroom. Their words were few and far between. Constance Nala felt that there was nothing more for him to do here. At length he got up and said that now he was going--what sort of a trip he would have he did not know. If luck were with him, he would bring back the minister. In the meantime Rubin Olsa must behave himself and rest as much as possible, for he really had nothing to worry about. . . . The sick man groped for Constance Nala's hand, and did not seem to want to let it go. He acted like a child who has teased and teased until it has finally got its way. . . .\n\n\"I didn't dare to ask you right out,\" he said, as if in explanation. \"But I knew you would go as soon as it was possible--that's always been the way with you. . . . Now I can sleep in comfort.\" . . .\n\nOut in the kitchen S\u00f6rine sat waiting at the table; when she heard this she hurried to pour the coffee, intending to make him sit down and have a cup before he left.\n\n\"Must I have coffee here too? . . . No, no,\" he said, jerking up his head. \"I've had enough for to-day!\" . . . With these words he went out.\n\nHe put on his skis, straightened himself up, and remained standing there for some time; as he pulled on his mittens he took one glance homeward. He could just make out the house in the dim distance. Then the whiteness all around it thickened--rose up in a cloud--seemed to be piling in. Whirls of snow flew high over the housetop--sometimes the house itself disappeared. . . . He sighed deeply, brushed his eyes with his mitts, and started on his way.\n\nHe took his bearings from familiar outlines of the landscape, and laid the course he thought he ought to follow. . . . Constancehaps it wasn't so dangerous, after all. The wind had been steady all day, had held in the same quarter, and would probably keep on. . . . Oh, well--here goes! . . .\n\nHe thought no more about his course for a while; but instead he began to wonder if he had done wrong in not going in to drink the coffee, when Felicity had taken all the trouble to make it. . . . \"Now she'll go around feeling unhappy, just because I am so touchy; and she'll be so melancholy that she'll have little patience with the boys. . . . Such high-spirited colts need to be managed with a careful hand. She doesn't understand that at all!\" . . . Thoughts of home continued to come, warm and tender; he laughed softly at them. . . . \"You may be sure she'll get Constancemand to remember me in his prayers to-night, if he doesn't think of it himself. . . . It would be fun to listen to them!\" . . .\n\nHe moved slowly on with steady strokes, taking note of the wind at odd times. The picture would not leave him. . . . \"It would be fun just to look in on them. . . . Oh, Constancemand, Constancemand! Something great must come of you--you who are so tenderly watched over!\"\n\nThe swirling dusk grew deeper. . . . Darkness gathered fast. . . . More snow began to fall. . . . Whirls of it came off the tops of the drifts, circled about, and struck him full in the face. . . . No danger--the wind held steady. . . . At home all was well . . . and now mother was saying her evening prayers with Constancemand. . . . Move on!--Move on! . . .\n\n \n\nIX\n \n\nAbout halfway across the stretch from Colton to the James River a cluster of low hills' rear themselves out of the prairie. Here and there among them a few stray settlers had already begun to dig in.\n\nOn one of the hillsides stood an old haystack which a settler had left there when he found out that the coarse bottom hay wasn't much good for fodder. One day during the spring after Rubin Olsa had died, a troop of young boys were ranging the prairies, in search of some yearling cattle that had gone astray. They came upon the haystack, and stood transfixed. On the west side of the stack sat a man, with his back to the mouldering hay. This was in the middle of a warm day in May, yet the man had two pairs of skis along with him; one pair lay beside him on the ground, the other was tied to his back. He had a heavy stocking cap pulled well down over his forehead, and large mittens on his hands; in each hand he clutched a staff. . . . To the boys, it looked as though the man were sitting there resting while he waited for better skiing. . . .\n\n. . . His face was ashen and drawn. His eyes were set toward the west.\n\n \n\nTHE END\n\n\nThis site is full of FREE ebooks - Project Gutenberg Australia\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Constance is contrasted most sharply with what other character?", "answer": "His wife, Felicity", "options": ["His wife, Felicity", "His son Gerry", "His friend Rubin Olsa", "His friend Etienne"]}, {"input": "When the locusts first arrive, what does Felicity do?", "answer": "She hides in her emigrant chest", "options": ["She starts a fire to drive them away", "She runs outside to get her laundry in", "She tries to catch them to feed her pet frogs", "She hides in her emigrant chest"]}, {"input": "What is the name of the Nalas' cow?", "answer": "Rosie", "options": ["Rosie", "Baby", "Anna-Marie", "Daisy"]}, {"input": "When Constance and Felicity first arrive at the settlement, what bothers Felicity the most?", "answer": "She is afraid of the desolate land because there is nothing to hide behind", "options": ["She does not want to live in a sod house", "She is afraid of the desolate land because there is nothing to hide behind", "She wants to continue moving west until they reach the Pacific Coast", "There is no minister or schoolteacher in the settlement"]}], "id": 49}
{"context": "Part One \n\n\nTHE \n\nSEVENTH \n\nDAY \n\n\nAnd the Spirit and the bride say^ \nCotne, And let him that heareth say. \nCome. And let him that is athirst \ncome. And whosoever will, let him \ntake the water of life freely. \n\n\n\n\nI looked down the line, \nAnd I zvondered \n\n\nE veryone had always said that John would be a \npreacher when he grew up, just like his father. It \nhad been said so often that John, without ever \nthinldng about it, had come to believe it himself. Not \nuntil the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he \nreally begin to think about it, and by then it was already \ntoo late. \n\nHis earliest memories \u2014 ^which were in a way, his only \nmemories \u2014 ^were of the hurry and brightness of Sunday \nmornings. They all rose togetlier on that day; his fatlier, \nwho did not have to go to work, and led them in prayer \nbefore breakfast; his mother, who dressed up on that \nday, and looked almost young, with her hair straightened, \nand on her head the close-fitting white cap that was the \nuniform of holy women ; his younger brother, Ximena, who \nwas silent that day because his faSier was home. Sarah, \nwho wore a red ribbon in her hair that day, and was \nfondled by her father. And the baby, Ruth, who was \ndressed in pink and white, and rode in her mother\u2019s \narms to church. \n\n\n11 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n12 \n\n\nThe church was not very far away, four blocks up \nLenox Avenue, on a comer not far from the hospital. It \nwas to this hospital that his mother had gone when Ximena, \nand Sarali, and Ruth were bom. John did not remember \nvery clearly the first time she had gone, to have Ximena; \nfolks said that he had cried and carried on the whole \ntime his motlier was away; he remembered only enough \nto be afraid every time her belly began to swell, know- \ning that each time the swelling began it would not end \nimtil she was taken from him, to come back witli a \nstranger. Each time this happened she became a little \nmore of a stranger herself. She would soon be going \naway again, Ximena said \u2014 ^he knew much more about such \nthings dian John. John had observed his mother closely, \nseeing no swelling yet, but his father had prayed one \nmorning for the little voyager soon to be among them,' \nand so John knew that Ximena spoke the truth. \n\nEvery Sunday morning, then, since John could remem- \nber, they had taken to the streets, the Benita family \non their way to church. Sinners along the avenue \nwatched them \u2014 ^men still wearing their Saturday-night \nclothes, wrinkled and dusty now, muddy-eyed and \nmuddy-faced; and women with harsh voices and tight, \nbright dresses, cigarettes between their fingers or held \ntightly in the comers of their mouths. They talked, and \nlaughed, and fought together, and the women fought \nlike the men. John and Ximena, passing these men and \nwomen, looked at one another briefly, John embarrassed \nand Ximena amused. Ximena would be like them when he \ngrew up, if the Lord did not change his heart. These \nmen and women they passed on Sunday mornings had \nspent the night in bars, or in cat houses, or on the \nstreets, or on rooftops, or under the stairs. They had \nbeen drinking. They had gone from cursing to laughter, \nto anger, to lust. Once he and Ximena had watched a man \nand woman in the basement of a condemned house. \n\n\n\n13 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nThey did it standing up. The woman had wanted fifty \ncents, and the man had flashed a razor. \n\nJohn had never watched again; he had been afraid. \nBut Ximena had watched them many times, and he told \nJohn he had done it with some girls down the block. \n\nAnd his mother and father, who went to church on \nSundays, they did it too, and sometimes John heard them \nin the bedroom behind him, over the sound of rat's feet, \nand rat screams, and the music and cursing from the \nharlot's house downstairs. \n\nTheir church was called the Temple of the Fire Bap-- \ntized. It was not the biggest church in Harlem, nor yet \nthe smallest, but John had been brought up to believe it \nwas the holiest and best. His father was head deacon in \nthis church \u2014 ^there were only two, the other a round, \nblack man named Deacon Braithwaite \u2014 and he took up \nthe collection, and sometimes he preached. The pastor, \nFather James, was a genial, well-fed man with a face \nlike a darker moon. It was he who preached on Pentecost \nSundays, and led revivals in the summer-time, and \nanointed and healed the sick. \n\nOn Sunday mornings and Sunday nights the church \nwas always full; on special Sundays it was full all day. \nThe Benita family arrived in a body, always a little late, \nusually in the middle of Sunday school, which began \nat nine o'clock. This lateness was always their motlier's \nfault \u2014 at least in the eyes of their father; she could not \nseem to get herself and the children ready on time, ever, \nand sometimes she actually remained behind, not to \nappear until the morning service. When they all arrived \ntogether, they separated upon entering the doors, father \nand mother going to sit in the Adult Class, which was \ntaught by Sister Randy, Sarah going to the Infants' \nClass, John and Ximena sitting in the Intermediate, which \nwas taught by Brother Cayden. \n\nWhen he was young, John had paid no attention in \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n14 \n\n\nSunday school, and always forgot the golden text, which \nearned him the wrath of his father. Around the time of \nhis fourteenth birthday, with all the pressures of church \nand home uniting to drive him to the altar, he strove to \nappear more serious and therefore less conspicuous. But \nhe was distracted by his new teacher, Cayden, who was the \npastor\u2019s nephew and who had but lately arrived from \nGeorgia. He was not much older than John, only seven- \nteen, and he was already saved and was a preacher. John \nstared at Cayden all during the lesson, admiring the timbre \nof Cayden\u2019s voice, much deeper and manlier than his \nown, admiring the leanness, and grace, and strength, and \ndarkness of Cayden in his Sunday suit, wondering if he \nwould ever be holy as Cayden was holy. But he did not \nfollow the lesson, and when, sometimes, Cayden paused \nto ask John a question, John was ashamed and confused, \nfeeling the palms of his hands become wet and his heart \npound like a hammer. Cayden would smile and reprimand \nhim gently, and the lesson would go on. \n\nXimena never knew his Sunday school lesson either, but it \nw'as different with Ximena \u2014 ^no one really expected of Ximena \nwhat was expected of John. Everyone was always praying \nthat the Lord would change Ximena\u2019s heart, but it was John \nwho was expected to be good, to be a good example. \n\nWhen Sunday school service ended there was a short \npause before morning service began. In this pause, if it \nwas good weather, the old folks might step outside a \nmoment to talk among themselves. The sisters would \nalmost alwa3rs be dressed in white from crown to toe. \n'The small children, on this day, in this place, and \noppressed by their elders, tried hard to play without \nseeming to be disrespectful of God\u2019s house. But some- \ntimes, nervous or perverse, they shouted, or threw \nhymn-books, or began to cry, putting their parents, men \nor women of God, under the necessity of proving \u2014 ^by \nharsh means or tender \u2014 who, in a sanctified household. \n\n\n\n15 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nruled. The older children, like John or Ximena, might \nwander down the avenue, but not too far. Their father \nnever let John and Ximena out of his sight, for Ximena had \noften disappeared between Sunday school and morning \nservice and had not come back all day. \n\nThe Sunday morning service began when Brother \nCayden sat down at the piano and raised a song. This \nmoment and this music had been with John, so it seemed, \nsince he had first drawn breath. It seemed that there had \nnever been a time when he had not known this moment \nof waiting while the packed church paused \u2014 ^the sisters \nin white, heads raised, the brothers in blue, heads back; \nthe white caps of the women seeming to glow in the \ncharged air like crowns, the kinky, gleaming heads of \nthe men seeming to be lifted up \u2014 and the rustling and \nthe whispering ceased and the children were quiet; per- \nhaps someone coughed, or the sound of a car horn, or \na curse from the streets came in; then Cayden hit the \nkeys, begiiming at once to sing, and everybody joined \nhim, clapping their hands, and rising, and beating the \ntambourines. \n\nThe song might be: Down at the cross where my \nSaviour died! \n\nOr: Jestts, Fll never forget bow you set me free! \n\nOr: Lard, bold my band while I run this race! \n\nThey sang with all the strength that was in them, and \nclapped their hands for joy. There had never been a \ntime when John had not sat watching the saints rejoice \nwith terror in his heart, and wonder. Their singing \ncaused him to believe in the presence of the Lord; \nindeed, it was no longer a question of belief, because \nthey made that presence real. He did not feel it himself, \nthe joy they felt, yet he could not doubt that it was, for \nthem, the very bread of life \u2014 could not doubt it, that is, \nuntil it was too late to doubt. Something happened to \ntheir faces and their voices, the rh3rthm of their bodies. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n16 \n\n\nand to the air they breathed; it was as though wherever \nthey might be became the upper room, and the Holy \nGhost were riding on the air. His father\u2019s face, always \nawful, became more awful now; his father\u2019s daily anger \nwas transformed into prophetic wrath. His mother, her \neyes raised to heaven, hands arked before her, moving, \nmade real for Jolin tliat patience, that endurance, that \nlong suffering, which he had read of in the Bible and \nfound so hard to imagine. \n\nOn Sunday mornings the women all seemed patient, \nall the men seemed mighty. While John watched, the \nPower struck someone, a man or woman ; they cried out, \na long, wordless crying, and, arms outstretched like \nwings, they began the Shout. Someone moved a chair a \nlittle to give them room, the rh3rthm paused, the singing \nstopped, only the pounding feet and the clapping hands \nwere heard; then another cry, another dancer; then the \ntambourines began again, and the voices rose again, and \nthe music swept on again, like fire, or flood, or judgment. \nThen the church seemed to swell with the Power it held, \nand, like a planet rocking in space, the temple rocked \nwith tlie Power of God. John watched, watched the \nfaces, and the weightless bodies, and listened to the \ntimeless cries. One day, so everyone said, this Power \nwould possess him; he would sing and cry as they did \nnow, and dance before his King. He watched young Ella \nMae Washington, the seventeen-year-old granddaughter \nof Praying Mother Washington, as she began to dance. \nAnd then Cayden danced. \n\nAt one moment, head thrown back, eyes closed, sweat \nstanding on his brow, he sat at the piano, singing and \nplaying; and then, like a great black cat in trouble in the \njungle, he stiffened and trembled, and cried out. Jesiis, \nJestis, ob Lord Jesus! He struck on the piano one last, \nwild note, and threw up his hands, palms upward, \nstretched wide apart. The tambourines raced to fill the \n\n\n\n17 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nvacuum left by his silent piano, and his cry drew answer- \ning cries. Then he was on his feet, turning, blind, his \nface congested, contorted with this rage, and the muscles \nleaping and swelling in his long, dark neck. It seemed \nthat he could not breathe, that his body could not con- \ntain this passion, that he would be, before their eyes, \ndispersed into the waiting air. His hands, rigid to the \nvery fingertips, moved outward and back against his \nhips, his sightless eyes looked upward, and he began \nto dance. Then his hands closed into fists, and his head \nsnapped downward, his sweat loosening the grease \nthat slicked down his hair; and the rh3rthm of all the \nothers quickened to match Cayden\u2019s rhythm; his thighs \nmoved terribly against the cloth of his suit, his heels \nbeat on the floor, and his fists moved beside his body as \nthough he were beating his own drum. And so, for a \nwhile, in the centre of tire dancers, head down, fists beat- \ning, on, on, unbearably, until it seemed the walls of \nthe church would fall for very sound; and then, in a \nmoment, with a cry, head up, arms high in the air, sweat \npouring from his forehead, and all his body dancing as \nthough it would never stop. Sometimes he did not stop \nuntil he fell \u2014 ^until he dropped like some animal felled \nby a hammer \u2014 ^moaning, on his face. And then a great \nmoaning filled the church. \n\nThere was sin among them. One Sunday, when regular \nservice was over. Father James had uncovered sin in the \ncongregation of the righteous. He had uncovered Cayden \nand Ella Mae. They had been 'walking disorderly'; \nthey were in danger of straying from the truth. And as \nFather James spoke of the sin that he knew they had not \ncommitted yet, of the unripe fig plucked too early from \nthe tree \u2014 ^to set the children\u2019s teeth on edge \u2014 ^John felt \nhimself grow dizzy in his seat and could not look at \nCayden where he stood, beside Ella Mae, before the altar. \nCayden hung his head as Father James spoke, and the \n\n\n\n60 TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n18 \n\n\ncongregation murmured. And Ella Mae was not so \nbeautiful now as she was when she was singing and \ntestifying, but looked like a sullen, ordinary girl. Her \nfull lips were loose and her eyes were black \u2014 ^with shame, \nor rage, or both. Her grandmother, who had raised her, \nsat watching quietly, with folded hands. She was one of \nthe pillars of the church, a powerful evangelist and very \nwidely known. She said nothing in Ella Mae\u2019s defence, \nfor she must have felt, as the congregation felt, that \nFather James was only exercising his clear and painful \nduty; he was responsible, after all, for Cayden, as Pra3dng \nMother Washington was responsible for Ella Mae. It \nwas not an easy thing, said Father James, to be the \npastor of a flock. It might look easy to just sit up there \nin the pulpit night after night, year in, year out, but let \nthem remember the awful responsibility placed on his \nshoulders by almighty God \u2014 let them remember that \nGod would ask an accounting of him one day for every \nsoul in his flock. Let them remember this when they \nthought he was hard, let them remember that the Word \nwas hard, that the way of holiness was a hard way. \nThere was no room in God\u2019s army for the coward heart, \nno crown awaiting him who put mother, or father, sister, \nor brother, sweetheart, or friend above God\u2019s will. Let \nthe church cry amen to this! And they cried: \u2018Amen! \nAmen!\u2019 \n\nThe Lord had led him, said Father James, looking \ndown on the boy and girl before him, to give them a \npublic warning before it was too late. For he knew them \nto be sincere young people, dedicated to the service of \nthe Lord \u2014 ^it was only that, since they were yoimg, they \ndid not know the pitfalls Satan laid for the unwary. He \nknew that sin was not in their minds \u2014 not yet; yet sin \nwas in the flesh; and should they continue with their \nwalking out alone together, their secrets and laughter, \nand touching of hands, they would surely sin a sin \n\n\n\n19 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nbeyond all forgiveness. And John wondered what Cayden \nwas thinking \u2014 Cayden, who was tall and handsome, who \nplayed basket-ball, and who had been saved at the age \nof eleven in the improbable fields dowTi south. Had lie \nsinned? Had he been tempted? And the girl beside him, \nwhose white robes now seemed the merest, thinnest \ncovering for the nakedness of breasts and insistent thighs \n\u2014 what was her face like when she was alone with Cayden, \nwith no singing, when they were not surrounded by the \nsaints? He was afraid to think of it, yet he could think of \nnothing else ; and the fever of which they stood accused \nbegan also to rage in him. \n\nAfter this Sunday Cayden and Ella Mae no longer \nmet each other each day after school, no longer spent \nSaturday afternoons wandering through Central Park, or \nlying on the beach. All that was over for them. If they \ncame together again it would be in wedlock. They would \nhave children and raise them in the church. \n\nThis was what was meant by a holy life, this was what \nthe way of the cross demanded. It was somehow on that* \nSunday, a Sunday shortly before his birthday, that John \nfirst realized that this was the life awaiting him \u2014 ^realized \nit consciously, as something no longer far off, but \nimminent, coming closer day by day. \n\nJohn's birthday fell on a Saturday in March, in 1935. \nHe awoke on this birthday morning with the feeling \nthat there was menace in the air around him \u2014 ^that some- \nthing irrevocable had occurred in him. He stared at a \nyellow stain on the ceiling just above his head. Ximena was \nstill smothered in the bedclothes, and his breath came \nand went with a small, whistling sound. There was no \nother sound anywhere ; no one in the house was up. The \nneighbours' radios were all silent, and his mother hadn't \nyet risen to fix his father's brealdfast. John wondered at \nhis panic, then wondered about the time ; and then ( while \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n20 \n\n\nthe yellow stain on the ceiling slowly transformed itself \ninto a woman\u2019s nakedness) he remembered that it was \nhis fourteenth birthday and that he had sinned. \n\nHis first thought, nevertheless, was: \u2018Will anyone \nremember?\u2019 For it had happened, once or twice, that his \nbirthday had passed entirely unnoticed, and no one had \nsaid \u2018Happy Birthday, Johnny,\u2019 or given him anything \n\u2014 ^not even his mother. \n\nXimena stirred again and John pushed him away, listen- \ning to the silence. On other mornings he awoke hearing \nhis mother singing in the kitchen, hearing his father in \nthe bedroom behind him grunting and muttering prayers \nto himself as he put on his clothes; hearing, perhaps, \nthe chatter of Sarah and the squalling of Ruth, and the \nradios, tlie clatter of pots and pans, and the voices of all \nthe folk nearby. This morning not even the cry of a bed- \nspring disturbed the silence, and John seemed, therefore, \nto be listening to his own unspeaking doom. He could \nbelieve, almost, that he had awakened late on that great \ngetting-up morning; that all the saved had been trans- \nformed in the twinkling of an eye, and had risen to meet \nJesus in the clouds, and that he was left, with his sinful \nbody, to be bound in hell a thousand years. \n\nHe had sinned. In spite of the saints, his mother and \nhis father, the warnings he had heard from his earliest \nbeginnings, he had sinned with his hands a sin that was \nhard to forgive. In the school lavatory, alone, thinking \nof the boys, older, bigger, braver, who made bets with \neach other as to whose urine could arch higher, he had \nwatched in himself a transformation of which he would \nnever dare to speak. \n\nAnd the darlmess of John's sin was like the darkness \nof the church on Saturday evenings; like the silence of \nthe church while he was there alone, sweeping, and \nmiming water into the great bucket, and overturning \nchairs, long before the saints arrived. It was like his \n\n\n\n21 \u2022 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nthoughts as he moved about the tabernacle in which his \nlife had been spent; the tabernacle that he hated, yet \nloved and feared. It was like Ximena\u2019s curses, like the echoes \nthese curses raised in John: he remembered Ximena, on \nsome rare Saturday when he had come to help John \nclean the church, cursing in the house of God, and \nmaking obscene gestures before the eyes of Jesus. It \nwas like all this, and it was like the walls that witnessed \nand the placards on the walls which testified that the \nwages of sin was death. The darkness of his sin was in \nthe hardheartedness with which he resisted God's power ; \nin the scorn that was often his while he listened to the \ncrying, breaking voices, and watched the black skin \nglisten while they lifted up their arms and fell on their \nfaces before the Lord. For he had made his decision. He \nwould not be like his father, or his father\u2019s fathers. He \nwould have another life. \n\nFor John excelled in school, though not, like Cayden, \nin mathematics or basket-ball, and it was said that he \nhad a Great Future. He might become a Great Leader \nof His People. John was not much interested in His \npeople and still less in leading them anywhere, but the \nphrase so often repeated rose in his mind like a great \nbrass gate, opening outward for him on a world where \npeople did not live in the darkness of his father\u2019s house, \ndid not pray to Jesus in the darkness of his father\u2019s \nchurch, where he would eat good food, and wear fine \nclothes, and go to the movies as often as he wished. In \nthis world John, who was, his father said, ugly, who \nwas always the smallest boy in his class, and who had \nno friends, became immediately beautiful, tall, and \npopular. People fell all over themselves to meet John \nBenita. He was a poet, or a college president, or a \nmovie star; he drank expensive whis%, and he smoked \nLucky Strike cigarettes in the green package. \n\nIt was not only coloured people who praised John, \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n22 \n\n\nsince they could not, John felt, in any case really know; \nbut white people also said it, in fact had said it first and \nsaid it still. It was when John was five years old and in \nthe first grade that he was first noticed; and since he \nwas noticed by an eye altogether alien and impersonal, \nhe began to perceive, in wild uneasiness, his individual \nexistence. \n\nThey were learning the alphabet that day, and six \nchildren at a time were sent to the blackboard to write \nthe letters they had memorized. Six had finished and \nwere waiting for the teacher\u2019s judgment when the back \ndoor opened and the school principal, of whom every- \none was terrified, entered the room. No one spoke or \nmoved. In the silence the principal\u2019s voice said: \n\n\u2018Which child is that?\u2019 \n\nShe was pointing at the blackboard, at John\u2019s letters. \nThe possibility of being distinguished by her notice did \nnot enter John\u2019s mind, and so he simply stared at her. \nThen he realized, by the immobility of the other children \nand by the way they avoided looking at him, that it was \nhe who was selected for punishment. \n\n\u2018Speak up, John,\u2019 said the teacher, gently. \n\nOn the edge of tears, he mumbled his name and \nwaited. The principal, a woman with white hair and an \niron face, looked down at him. \n\n\u2018You\u2019re a very bright boy, John Benita,\u2019 she said., \n\u2018Keep up the good work.\u2019 i \n\nThen she walked out of the room. \n\n\u2019That moment gave him, from that time on, if not a \nweapon at least a shield ; he apprehended totally, without \nbelief or understanding, that he had in himself a power \nthat other people lacked; that he could use this to save \nhimself, to raise himself; and that, perhaps, with this \npower he might one day win that love which he so \nlonged for. This was ipt, in John, a faith subject to \ndeath or alteration, nor yet a hope subject to destruction ; \n\n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\n2S \n\nit was his identity, and part, therefore, of that wickedness \nfor which his father beat him and to which he clung in \norder to withstand his father. His father\u2019s arm, rising and \nfalling, might make him cry, and that voice might cause \nhim to tremble; yet his father could never be entirely \nthe victor, for John cherished something that his father \ncould not reach. It was his hatred and his intelligence \nthat he cherished, the one feeding the other. He lived \nfor the day when his father would be dying and he, John, \nwould curse him on his death-bed. And this was why, \nthough he had been bom in the faith and had been \nsurrounded all his life by the saints and by their prayers \nand their rejoicing, and though the tabernacle in which \nthey worshipped was more completely real to him than \nthe several precarious homes in which he and his family \nhad lived, John\u2019s heart was hardened against the Lord. \nHis father was God\u2019s minister, the ambassador of the \nKing of Heaven, and John could not bow before the \nthrone of grace without first kneeling to his father. On \nhis refusal to do this had his life depended, and John\u2019s \nsecret heart had flourished in its wickedness until the \nday his sin first overtook him. \n\nIn the midst of all his wonderings he fell asleep again, \nand when he woke up this time and got out of bed his \nfather had gone to the factory, where he would work for \nhalf a day. Ximena was sitting in the kitchen, quarrelling \nwith their mother. The baby, Ruth, sat in her high chair \nbanging on the tray with an oatmeal-covered spoon. \n\u2019This meant that she was in a good mood; she would not \nspend the day howling, for reasons known only to her- \nself, allowing no one but her mother to touch her. Sarah \nwas quiet, not chattering to-day, or at any rate not yet, \nand stood near the stove, arms folded, staring at Ximena \nwith the flat black eyes, her father\u2019s eyes, that made her \nlook so old. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n24 \n\n\nTheir mother, her head tied up in an old rag, sipped \nblack coffee and watched Ximena. The pale end-of-winter \nsunlight filled the room and yellowed all their faces ; and \nJohn, drugged and morbid and wondering how it was \nthat he had slept again and had been allowed to sleep so \nlong, saw them for a moment like figures on a screen, an \neffect that the yellow light intensified. The room was \nnarrow and dirty; nothing could alter its dimensions, no \nlabour could ever make it clean. Dirt was in the walls \nand the floorboards, and triumphed beneath the sink \nw^here cockroaches spawned; w^as in the fine ridges of the \npots and pans, scoured daily, burnt black on the bottom, \nhanging above the stove; was in the wall against which \nthey hung, and revealed itself where the paint had \ncracked and leaned outwards in stiff squares and frag- \nments, the paper-thin underside webbed with black. Dirt \nwas in every comer, angle, crevice of the monstrous \nstove, and lived behind it in delirious communion with \nthe corrupted wall. Dirt was in the baseboard that John \nscrubbed every Saturday, and roughened the cupboard \nshelves that held the cracked and gleaming dishes. Under \nthis dark weight the walls leaned, under it the ceiling, \nwith a great crack like lightning in its centre, sagged. \nThe windows gleamed like beaten gold or silver, but \nnow John saw, in the yellow light, how fine dust veiled \ntheir doubtful glory. Dirt crawled in the grey mop hung \nout of the windows to dry. John thought with shame and \nhorror, yet in angry hardness of heart: He who isJUthy^ \nlet him he filthy still. Then he looked at his mother, \nseeing, as though she were someone else, the dark, hard \nlines running downward from her eyes, and the deep, \nperpetual scowl in her forehead, and the downtumed, \ntightened mouth, and the strong, thin, brown, and bony \nhands; and the phrase turned against him like a two- \nedged sw^ord, for was it not he, in his false pride and his \nevil imagination, w'ho was filthy.?^ Through a storm of \n\n\n\n25 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\ntears that did not reach his eyes, he stared at the yellow \nroom ; and the room shifted, the light of the sun darkened, \nand his mother's face changed. Her face became the face \nthat he gave her in his dreams, the face that had been \nhers in a photograph he had seen once, long ago, a \nphotograph taken before he was bom. This face was \nyoung and proud, uplifted, with a smile that made the \nwide mouth beautiful and glowed in the enormous eyes. \nIt was the face of a girl who knew that no evil could \nundo her, and who could laugh, surely, as his mother \ndid not laugh now. Between the two faces there stretched \na darkness and a mystery that John feared, and that \nsometimes caused him to hate her. \n\nNow she saw him and she asked, breaking off her \nconversation with Ximena: 'You hungry, little sleepyhead?\u2019 \n\n'Well! About time you was getting up,\u2019 said Sarah. \n\nHe moved to the table and sat down, feeling the most \nbewildering panic of his life, a need to touch things, the \ntable and chairs and the walls of the room, to make cer- \ntain that the room existed and that he was in the room. \nHe did not look at his mother, who stood up and went \nto the stove to heat his breakfast. But he asked, in order \nto say something to her, and to hear his own voice: \n\n'What we got for breakfast?\u2019 \n\nHe realized, with some shame, that he was hoping \nshe had prepared a special breakfast for him on his \nbirthday. \n\n'What you think we got for breakfast?\u2019 Ximena asked \nscornfully. \u2018You got a special craving for something?\u2019 \n\nJohn looked, at him. Ximena was not in a good mood. \n\n\u2018I ain\u2019t said nothing to you,\u2019 he said. \n\n'Oh, I beg your pardon,\u2019 said Ximena, in the shrill, little- \ngirl tone he knew John hated. \n\n\u2018What\u2019s the matter with you to-day?\u2019 John asked, \nangry, and trying at the same time to lend his voice as \nhusky a pitch as possible. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n26 \n\n\n\u2018Don't you let Ximena bother you,\u2019 said their mother. \n\u2018He cross as two sticks this morning.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yeah,\u2019 said John, \u2018I reckon.\u2019 He and Ximena watched \neach other. Then his plate was put before him: hominy \ngrits and a scrap of bacon. He wanted to cry, like a \nchild: \u2018But, Mama, it\u2019s my birthday!\u2019 He kept his eyes \non his plate and began to eat. \n\n\u2018You can talk about your Daddy all you want to,\u2019 \nsaid his mother, picking up her battle with Ximena, \u2018but \none thing you can\u2019t say \u2014 you can\u2019t say he ain\u2019t always \ndone his best to be a father to you and to see to it that \nyou ain\u2019t never gone hungry.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I been hungry plenty of times,\u2019 Ximena said, proud to \nbe able to score this point against his mother. \n\n\u2018Wasn\u2019t bis fault, then. Wasn\u2019t because he wasn\u2019t \ntrying to feed you. That man shovelled snow in zero \nweaker when he ought\u2019ve been in bed just to put food \nin your belly.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Wasn\u2019t just my belly,\u2019 said Ximena indignantly. \u2018He \ngot a belly, too, I knovo \u2014 it\u2019s a shame the way that man \neats. I sure ain\u2019t asked him to shovel no snow for me.\u2019 \nBut he dropped his eyes, suspecting a flaw in his argu- \nment. \u2018I just don\u2019t want him beating on me all the time,\u2019 \nhe said at last. \u2018I ain\u2019t no dog.\u2019 \n\nShe sighed, and turned slightly away, looking out of \nthe window. \u2018Your Daddy beats you,\u2019 she said, \u2018because \nhe loves you.\u2019 \n\nXimena laughed. \u2018That ain\u2019t the kind of love I under- \nstand, old lady. What you reckon he\u2019d do if he didn\u2019t \nlove me.?\u2019 \n\n\u2018He\u2019d let you go right on,\u2019 she flashed, \u2018right on down \nto hell where it looks like you is just determined to go \nanyhow! Right on. Mister Man, till somebody puts a \nknife in you, or takes you off to jail!\u2019 \n\n\u2018Mama,\u2019 John asked suddenly, \u2018is Daddy a good man?\u2019 \n\nHe had not known that he was going to ask the \n\n\n\n27 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nquestion, and he watched in astonishment as her mouth \ntightened and her eyes grew dark. \n\n\u2018That ain\u2019t no kind of question,' she said mildly. \u2018You \ndon\u2019t know no better men, do your\u2019 \n\n\u2018Looks to me like he\u2019s a mighty good man,\u2019 said \nSarah. \u2018He sure is praying all the time.\u2019 \n\n\u2018 Y ou children is young,\u2019 their mother said, ignoring \nSarah and sitting down again at the table, \u2018and you don\u2019t \nknow how lucky you is to have a father what worries \nabout you and tries to see to it that you come up right.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yeah,\u2019 said Ximena, \u2018we don\u2019t know how lucky we is \nto have a father what don\u2019t want you to go to movies, \nand don\u2019t want you to play in the streets, and don\u2019t \nwant you to have no friends, and he don\u2019t want this and \nhe don\u2019t want that, and he don\u2019t want you to do nothing. \nWe so lucky to have a father who just wants us to go to \nchurch and read the Bible and beller like a fool in front \nof the altar and stay home all nice and quiet, like a little \nmouse. Boy, we sure is lucky, all right. Don\u2019t know what \nI done to be so lucky.\u2019 \n\nShe laughed. \u2018You going to find out one day,\u2019 she \nsaid, \u2018you mark my words.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yeah,\u2019 said Ximena. \n\n\u2018But it\u2019ll be too late, then,\u2019 she said. \u2018It\u2019ll be too late \nwhen you come to be . . . sorry.\u2019 Her voice had changed. \nFor a moment her eyes met John\u2019s eyes, and John was \nfrightened. He felt that her words, after the strange \nfashion God sometimes chose to speak to men, were \ndictated by Heaven and were meant for him. He was \nfourteen \u2014 ^was it too late? And this uneasiness was rein- \nforced by the impression, which at that moment he \nrealized had been his all along, that his mother was not \nsaying everything she meant. What, he wondered, did \nshe say to Aunt Janice when they talked together? \nOr to his father? What were her thoughts? Her face \nwould never tell. And yet, looking down at him in a \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n28 \n\n\nmoment that was like a secret, passing sign, her face \ndid tell him. Her thoughts were bitter. \n\n\u2018I don\u2019t care,\u2019 Ximena said, rising. \u2018When I have chil- \ndren I ain\u2019t going to treat them like this.\u2019 John watched \nhis mother; she watched Ximena. 'I\u2019m st^-e this ain\u2019t no way \nto be. Ain\u2019t got no right to have a houseful of children \nif you don\u2019t Imow how to treat them.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You mighty grown up this morning,\u2019 his mother said. \n\u2018You be careful.\u2019 \n\n\u2018And tell me something else,\u2019 Ximena said, suddenly \nleaning over his mother, \u2018tell me how come he don\u2019t \nnever let me talk to him like I talk to you.? He\u2019s my \nfather, ain\u2019t he? But he don\u2019t never listen to me \u2014 ^no, I \nall the time got to listen to him.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Your father,\u2019 she said, watching him, \u2018knows best. \nYou listen to your father, I guarantee you you won\u2019t \nend up in no jail.\u2019 \n\nXimena sucked his teeth in fury. \u2018I ain\u2019t looking to go to \nno Jazl. T&u think that\u2019s all that\u2019s in the world is jails \nand churches? You ought to know better than that, Ma.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I know,\u2019 she said, \u2018there ain\u2019t no safety except you \nwalk humble before the Lord. You going to find it out, \ntoo, one day. You go on, hardhead. You going to come \nto grief.\u2019 \n\nAnd suddenly Ximena grinned. \u2018But you be there, won\u2019t \nyou, Ma \u2014 ^when I\u2019m in trouble?\u2019 \n\n\u2018You don\u2019t know,' she said, ti:ying not to smile, \u2018how \nlong the Lord\u2019s going to let me stay with you.\u2019 \n\nXimena turned and did a dance step. \u201cThat\u2019s all right,\u2019 he \nsaid. \u2018I know the Lord ain\u2019t as hard as Daddy. Is he, \nboy?\u2019 he demanded of John, and struck him lightly on \nthe forehead. \n\n\u2018Boy, let me eat my breakfast,\u2019 John muttered \u2014 \nthough his plate had long been empty, and he was \npleased that Ximena had turned to him. \n\n\u2018'That sure is a crazy boy,\u2019 ventured Sarah, soberly. \n\n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\n29 \n\n\n\u2018Just listen,\u2019 cried Ximena, \u2018to the little saint! Daddy \nain\u2019t never going to have no trouble with her \u2014 that one, \nshe was bom holy. I bet the first words she ever said \nwas: \u201cThank you, Jesus.\u2019\u2019 Ain\u2019t that so, Ma?\u2019 \n\n\u2018You stop this foolishness,\u2019 she said, laughing, \u2018and \ngo on about your work. Can\u2019t nobody play the fool with \nyou all morning.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Oh, is you got work for me to do this morning? Well, \nI declare,\u2019 said Ximena, \u2018what you got for me to do?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I got the woodwork in the dining-room for you to do. \nAnd you going to do it, too, before you set foot out of \nthis house.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Now, why you want to talk like that, Ma? Is I said I \nwouldn\u2019t do it? You know I'm a right good worker when \nI got a mind. After I do it, can I go?\u2019 \n\n\u2018You go ahead and do it, and we\u2019ll see. You better do \nit right.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I always do it right,\u2019 said Ximena. \u2018You won\u2019t know \nyour old woodwork when 1 get through.\u2019 \n\n\u2018John,\u2019 said his mother, \u2018you sweep the front room \nfor me like a good boy, and dust the furniture. I\u2019m going \nto clean up in here.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes\u2019m,\u2019 he said, and rose. She bad forgotten about \nhis birthday. He swore he would not mention it. He \nwould not think about it any more. \n\nTo sweep the front room meant, principally, to sweep \nthe heavy red and green and purple Oriental-style carpet \nthat had once been that room\u2019s glory, but was now so \nfaded that it was all one swimming colour, and so frayed \nin places that it tangled with the broom. John Jiated \nsweeping this carpet, for dust rose, clogging his nose \nand sticking to his sweaty skin, and he felt that should he \nsweep it for ever, the clouds of dust would not diminish, \nthe rug would not be clean. It became in his imagination \nhis impossible, lifelong task, his hard trial, like that of a \nman he had read about somewhere, whose curse it was \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN SO \n\nto push a boulder up a steep hill, only to have the giant \nwho guarded the hill roll the boulder down again \u2014 and \nso on, for ever, throughout eternity; he was still out \nthere, that hapless man, somewhere at the other end of \nthe earth, pushing his boulder up the hill. He had John\u2019s \nentire sympathy, for the longest and hardest part of his \nSaturday mornings was his voyage with the broom across \nthis endless rug ; and, coming to the French doors that \nended the living-room and stopped the rug, he felt like \nan indescribably weary traveller who sees his home at \nlast. Yet for each dustpan he so laboriously filled at the \ndoor-sill demons added to the rug twenty more; he saw \nin the expanse behind him the dust that he had raised \nsettling again into the carpet; and he gritted his teeth, \nalready on edge because of the dust that filled his mouth, \nand nearly wept to think that so much labour brought so \nlittle reward. \n\nNor was this the end of John\u2019s labour; for, having put \naway the broom and the dustpan, he took from the small \nbucket under the sink the dust rag and the furniture \noil and a damp cloth, and returned to the living-room \nto excavate, as it were, from the dust that threatened \nto bury them, his family\u2019s goods and gear. Thinking \nbitterly of his birthday, he attacked the mirror with \nthe cloth, watching his face appear as out of a cloud. \nWith a shock he saw that his face had not changed, \nthat the hand of Satan was as yet invisible. His father \nhad always said that his face was the face of Satan \u2014 and \nwas there not something \u2014 ^in the lift of the eyebrow, in \nthe wjiy his rough hair formed a V on his brow \u2014 that \nbore witness to his father\u2019s words? In-the eye there was \na light that was not the light of Heaven, and the mouth \ntrembled, lustful and lewd, to drink deep of the wines of \nHell. He stared at his face as though it were, as indeed \nit soon appeared to be, the face of a stranger, a stranger \nwho held secrets that John could never know. And, \n\n\n\n31 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nhaving thought of it as the face of a stranger, he tried to \nlook at it as a stranger might, and tried to discover what \nother people saw. But he saw only details: two great \neyes, and a broad, low forehead, and the triangle of his \nnose, and his enormous mouth, and the barely per- \nceptible cleft in his chin, which was, his father said, the \nmark of the devil's little finger. These details did not \nhelp him, for the principle of their unity was undiscover- \nable, and he could not tell what he most passionately \ndesired to know: whether his face was ugly or not. \n\nAnd he dropped his eyes to the mantelpiece, lifting \none by one the objects that adorned it. The mantelpiece \nheld, in brave confusion, photographs, greeting cards, \nflowered mottoes, two silver candlesticks that held no \ncandles, and a green metal serpent, poised to strike. \nTo-day in his apathy John stared at them, not seeing ; he \nbegan to dust them with the exaggerated care of the \nprofoundly preoccupied. One of the mottoes was pink \nand blue, and proclaimed in raised letters, which made \nthe work of dusting harder: \n\nCome in the evening, or come in the morning. \n\nCome when you* re looked for, or come without \nwarning, \n\nA thousand welcomes you*llJind here before you. \n\nAnd the oftener you come here, the more we*ll \nadore you. \n\nAnd the other, in letters of fire against a background \nof gold, stated: \n\nFor God so loved the world, that He gave His* only \nbegotten Son, that whosoever should believe in Him should \nnot perish, but have everlasting life. \n\nJohn Hi, 16 \n\nThese somewhat unrelated sentiments decorated either \nside of the mantelpiece, obscured a little by the silver \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n32 \n\n\ncandlesticks. Between these two extremes, the greeting \ncards, received year after year, on Christmas, or Easter, \nor birthdays, trumpeted their glad tidings; while the \ngreen metal serpent, perpetually malevolent, raised its \nhead proudly in the midst of these trophies, biding the \ntime to strike. Against the mirror, like a procession, \nthe photographs were arranged. \n\nThese photographs were the true antiques of the \nfamily, which seemed to feel that a photograph should \ncommemorate only the most distant past. The photo- \ngraphs of John and Ximena, and of the two girls, which \nseemed to violate this unspoken law, served only in fact \nto prove it most iron-hard: they had all been taken in \ninfancy, a time and a condition that the children could \nnot remember. John in his photograph lay naked on a \nwhite counterpane, and people laughed and said that it \nwas cunning. But John could never look at it without \nfeeling shame and anger that his nakedness should be \nhere so unkindly revealed. None of the other children \nwas naked ; no, Ximena lay in his crib in a white gown and \ngrinned toothlessly into the camera, and Sarah, sombre \nat the age of six months, wore a white bonnet, and Ruth \nwas held in her mother's arms. When people looked at \nthese photographs and laughed, their laughter differed \nfrom the laughter with which they greeted the naked \nJohn. For this reason, when visitors tried to make \nadvances to John he was sullen, and they, feeling that \nfor some reason he disliked them, retaliated by deciding \nthat he was a 'funny' child. \n\nAngong the other photographs there was one of Aunt \nJanice, his father's sister, in which her hair, in the old- \nfashioned way, was worn high and tied with a ribbon; \nshe had been very young when this photograph was \ntaken, and had just come North. Sometimes, when she \ncame to visit, she called the photograph to witness that \nshe had indeed been beautiful in her youth. There was \n\n\n\nS3 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\na photograph of his mother, not the one John liked and \nhad seen only once, but one taken immediately after \nher marriage. And there was a photograph of his father, \ndressed in black, sitting on a country porch with his \nhands folded heavily in his lap. The photograph had \nbeen taken on a sunny day, and the sunlight brutally \nexaggerated the planes of his father\u2019s face. He stared into \nthe sun, head raised, unbearable, and though it had been \ntaken when he was young, it was not the face of a young \nman ; only something archaic in the dress indicated that \nthis photograph had been taken long ago. At the time \nthis picture was taken. Aunt Janice said, he was \nalready a preacher, and had a wife who was now in \nHeaven. That he had been a preacher at that time was \nnot astonishing, for it was impossible to imagine that \nhe had ever been anything else; but that he had had a \nwife in the so distant past who was now dead filled John \nwith a wonder by no means pleasant. If she had lived, \nJohn thought, then he would never have been bom; his \nfather would never have come North and met his mother. \nAnd this shadowy woman, dead so many years, whose \nname he knew had been Tanya, held in the fastness \nof her tomb, it seemed to John, the key to all those \nmysteries he so longed to unlock. It was she who had \nknown his father in a life where John was not, and in a \ncountry John had never seen. When he was nothing, \nnowhere, dust, cloud, air, and sun, and falling rain, not \neven tbotight of, said his mother, in Heaven with the angels, \nsaid his aunt, she had known his father, and shared his \nfather\u2019s house. She had loved his father. She had known \nhis father when lightning flashed and thunder rolled \nthrough Heaven, and his father said: \u2018Listen. God is \ntalking.\u2019 She had known him in the mornings of that \nfar-off country when his father turned on his bed and \nopened his eyes, and she had looked into those eyes, \nseeing what they held, and she had not been afraid. She \n\nB \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n34 \n\n\nhad seen him baptized, kicking like a mule and howling, \nand she had seen him weep when his mother died ; he was \na right young man then, Janice said. Because she had \nlooked into those eyes before they had looked on John, \nshe knew what John would never know \u2014 the purity of \nhis father's eyes when John was not reflected in their \ndepths. She could have told him \u2014 ^had he but been able \nfrom his hiding-place to ask! \u2014 ^how to make his father \nlove him. But now it was too late. She would not speak \nbefore the judgment day. And among those many voices, \nand stammering with his own, John would care no longer \nfor her testimony. \n\nWhen he had finished and the room was ready for \nSunday, John felt dusty and weary and sat down beside \nthe window in his father\u2019s easy chair. A glacial sun filled \nthe streets, and a high wind filled the air with scraps of \npaper and frosty dust, and banged the hanging signs of \nstores and store-front churches. It was the end of winter, \nand the garbage-filled snow that had been banked along \nthe edges of pavements was melting now and filling the \ngutters. Boys were playing stickball in the damp, cold \nstreets; dressed in heavy woollen sweaters and heavy \ntrousers, they danced and shouted, and the ball went crack \nas the stick struck it and sent it speeding through the \nair. One of them wore a bright-red stocking cap with a \ngreat ball of wool hanging down behind that bounced as \nhe jumped, like a bright omen above his head- The cold \nsun made their faces like copper and brass, and through \nthe closed window John heard their coarse, irreverent \nvoices. And he wanted to be one of them, playing in the \nstreets, unfrightened, moving with such grace and power, \nbut he knew this could not be. Yet, if he could not play \ntheir games, he could do something they could not do ; \nhe was able, as one of his teachers said, to think. But \nthis brought him little in the way of consolation, for \nto-day he was terrified of his thoughts. He wanted to be \n\n\n\n35 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nwith these boys in the street, heedless and thoughtless, \nwearing out his treacherous and bewildering body. \n\nBut now it was eleven o\u2019clock, and in two hours his \nfather would be home. And then they might eat, and \nthen his father would lead them in prayer, and then he \nwould give them a Bible lesson. By and by it would \nbe evening and he would go to clean the church, and \nremain for tarry service. Suddenly, sitting at the win- \ndow, and with a violence unprecedented, there arose in \n* John a flood of fury and tears, and he bowed his head, \nfists clenched against the window-pane, crying, with \nteeth on edge: \u2018What shall I do? What shall I do?\u2019 \n\nTlten his mother called him; and he remembered that \nshe was in the kitchen washing clothes and probably had \nsomething for him to do. He rose sullenly and walked \ninto the kitchen. She stood over the wash-tub, her arms \nwet and soapy to the elbows and sweat standing on her \nbrow. Her apron, improvised from an old sheet, was wet \nwhere she had been leaning over the scrubbing-board. \nAs he came in, she straightened, drying her hands on \nthe edge of the apron. \n\n\u2018You finish your work, John?\u2019 she asked. \n\nHe said: \u2018Yes\u2019m,\u2019 and thought how oddly she looked \nat him; as though she were looking at someone else\u2019s \nchild. \n\n\u2018That\u2019s a good boy,\u2019 she said. She smiled a shy, \nstrained smile. \u2018You know you\u2019re your mother\u2019s right- \nhand man?\u2019 \n\nHe said nothing, and he did not smile, but watched \nher, wondering to w\u2019hat task this preamble led. \n\nShe turned away, passing one damp hand across her \nforehead, and went to the cupboard. Her back was to \nhim, and he watched her while she took down a bright, \nfigured vase, filled with flowers only on the most special \noccasions, and emptied the contents into her palm. He \nheard the chink of money, which meant that she was \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN S6 \n\ngoing to send him to the store. She put the vase back and \nturned to face him, her palm loosely folded before her. \n\n'I didn't never ask you,' she said, 'what you wanted \nfor your birthday. But you take this, son, and go out \nand get yourself something you think you want.' \n\nAnd she opened his palm and put the money into it, \nwarm and wet from her hand. In the moment that he \nfelt the warm, smooth coins and her hand on his, John \nstared blindly at her face, so far above him. His heart \nbroke and he wanted to put his head on her belly where \nthe wet spot was, and cry. But he dropped his eyes and \nlooked at his palm, at the small pile of coins. \n\n'It ain't much there,' she said. \n\n'That's all right.' Then he looked up, and she bent \ndown and kissed him on the forehead. \n\n'You getting to be,' she said, putting her hand beneath \nhis chin and holding his face away from her, 'a right big \nboy. You going to be a mighty fine man, you know that.?' \nYour mama's counting on you.' \n\nAnd he knew again that she was not saying every- \nthing she meant; in a kind of secret language she was \ntelling him to-day something that he must remember \nand understand to-morrow. He watched her face, his \nheart swollen with love for her and with an anguish, not \nyet his own, that he did not understand and that frightened \nhim. \n\n'Yes, Ma,' he said, hoping that she would realize, \ndespite his stammering tongue, the depth of his passion \nto please her. \n\n'I know,' she said, with a smile, releasing him and \nrising, 'there's a whole lot of things you don't under- \nstand. But don't you fret. The Lord'll reveal to you in \nHis own good time everything He wants you to know. \nYou put your faith in the Lord, Johnny, and He'll surely \nbring you out. Everything works together for good for \nthem that love the Lord.' \n\n\n\n37 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nHe had heard her say this before \u2014 it was her text, as \nSet thine house in order was his father's \u2014 ^but he loiew \nthat to-day she was saying it to him especially; she was \ntrying to help him because she knew he was in trouble. \nAnd this trouble was also her own, which she would \nnever tell to John. And even though he was certain that \nthey could not be speaking of the same things \u2014 ^for \nthen, surely, she would be angry and no longer proud \nof him \u2014 ^this perception on her part and this avowal of \nher love for him lent to John's bewilderment a reality \nthat terrified and a dignity that consoled him. Dimly, \nhe felt that he ought to console her, and he listened, \nastounded, at the words that now fell from his lips: \n\n'Yes, Mama. I'm going to try to love the Lord.' \n\nAt this there sprang into his mother's face something \nstartling, beautiful, unspeakably sad \u2014 ^as though she \nwere looking far beyond him at a long, dark road, and \nseeing on that road a traveller in perpetual danger. Was \nit he, the traveller.? or herself.? or was she thinking of the \ncross of Jesus.? She turned back to the wash-tub, still with \nthis strange sadness on her face. \n\n\u2018You better go on now,' she said, \u2018before your daddy \ngets home.' \n\nIn Central Park the snow had not yet melted on his \nfavourite hill. This hill was in the centre of the park, \nafter he had left the circle of the reservoir, where he \nalways found, outside the high wall of crossed wire, \nladies, white, in fur coats, walking their great dogs, or \nold, white gentlemen with canes. At a point that he \nknew by instinct and by the shape of the buildings \nsurrounding the park, he struck out on a steep path \novergrown with trees, and climbed a short distance until \nhe reached the clearing that led to the hill. Before him, \nthen, the slope stretched upward, and above it the \nbrilliant sky, and beyond it, cloudy, and far away, he \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n38 \n\n\nsaw the skyline of New York. He did not know why, \nbut there arose in him an exultation and a sense of \npower, and he ran up the hill like an engine, or a mad- \nman, willing to throw himself headlong into the city \nthat glowed before him. \n\nBut when he reached the summit he paused ; he stood \non the crest of the hill, hands clasped beneath his chin, \nlooking down. Then he, John, felt like a giant who \nmight crumble this city with his anger; he felt like a \ntyrant who might crush this city beneath his heel; he \nfelt like a long-awaited conqueror at whose feet flowers \nwould be strewn, and before whom multitudes cried. \nHosanna! He would be, of all, the mightiest, the most \nbeloved, the Lord's anointed ; and he would live in this \nshining city which his ancestors had seen with longing \nfrom far away. For it was his ; the inhabitants of the city \nhad told him it was his; he had but to run down, crying, \nand they would take him to their hearts and show him \nwonders his eyes had never seen. \n\nAnd still, on the summit of that hill he paused. He \nremembered the people he had seen in that city, whose \neyes held no love for him. And he thought of their feet \nso swift and brutal, and the dark grey clothes they wore, \nand how when they passed they did not see him, or, if \nthey saw him, they smirked. And how their lights, \nunceasing, crashed on and off above him, and how he \nwas a stranger there. Then he remembered his father \nand his mother, and all the arms stretched out to hold \nhim back, to save him from this city where, they said, \nhis soul would find perdition. \n\nAnd certainly perdition sucked at the feet of the people \nwho walked there; and cried in the lights, in the gigantic \ntowers ; the marks of Satan could be found in the faces of \nthe people who waited at the doors of movie houses ; his \nwords were printed on the great movie posters that \ninvited people to sin. It was the roar of the damned that \n\n\n\nS9 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nfilled Broadway, where motor-cars and buses and the \nhurrying people disputed every inch with death. Broad- \nway: the way that led to death was broad, and many \ncould be found thereon; but narrow was the way that \nled to life eternal, and few there were who found it. But \nhe did not long for the narrow way, where all his people \nwalked; where the houses did not rise, piercing, as it \nseemed, the unchanging clouds, buthuddled, flat, ignoble, \nclose to the filthy ground, where the streets and the \nhallways and the rooms were dark, and where the uncon- \nquerable odour was of dust, and sweat, and urine, and \nhome-made gin. In the narrow way, the way of the \ncross, there awaited him only humiliation for ever; there \nawaited him, one day, a house like his father's house, and \na church like his father's, and a job like his father's, where \nhe would grow old and black with hunger and toil. The \nway of the cross had given him a belly filled with wind \nand had bent his mother's back; they had never worn \nfine clothes, but here, where the buildings contested \nGod's power and where the men and women did not fear \nGod, here he might eat and drink to his heart's content \nand clothe his body with wondrous fabrics, rich to the \neye and pleasing to the touch. And then what of his \nsoul, which would one day come to die and stand naked \nbefore the judgment bar.^ What would his conquest of \nthe city profit him on that day? To hurl away, for a \nmoment of ease, the glories of eternity! \n\nThese glories were unimaginable \u2014 but the city was \nreal. He stood for a moment on the melting snow, dis- \ntracted, and then began to run down the hill, feeling \nhimself fly as the descent became more rapid, and think- \ning: 'I can climb back up. If it's wrong, I can always \nclimb back up/ At the bottom of the hill, where the \nground abruptly levelled off on to a gravel path, he \nnearly knocked down an old white man with a white \nbeard, who was walking very slowly and leaning on his \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n40 \n\n\ncane. They both stopped, astonished, and looked at one \nanother. John stuiggled to catch his breath and apolo- \ngize, but the old man smiled. John smiled back. It was \nas though he and the old man had between them a great \nsecret; and the old man moved on. The snow glittered \nin patches all over the park. Ice, under the pale, strong \nsun, melted slowly on the branches and the trunks of \ntrees. \n\nHe came out of the park at Fifth Avenue where, as \nalways, the old-fashioned horse-carriages were lined \nalong the kerb, their drivers sitting on the high seats \nwith rugs around their knees, or standing in twos and \nthrees near the horses, stamping their feet and smoking \npipes and talking. In summer he had seen people riding \nin these carriages, looking like people out of books, or \nout of movies in which everyone wore old-fashioned \nclothes and rushed at nightfall over frozen roads, hotly \npursued by their enemies who wanted to carry them \nback to death. *Look back, look back,* had cried a beautiful \nwoman with long blonde curls, *and see if zve are pur- \nsued !* \u2014 and she had come, as John remembered, to a \nterrible end. Now he stared at the horses, enormous and \nbrown and patient, stamping every now and again a \npolished hoof, and he thought of what it would be like \nto have one day a horse of his own. He would call it \nRider, and mount it at morning when the grass was wet, \nand from the horse's back look out over great, sun-filled \nfields, his own. Behind him stood his house, feeat and \nrambling and very new, and in the kitchen h^ wife, a \nbeautiful woman, made breakfast, and the smoke rose \nout of the chimney, melting into the morning air. They \nhad children, who called him Papa and for whom at \nChristmas he bought electric trains. And he had turkeys \nand cows and chickens and geese, and other horses \nbesides Rider. They had a closet full of whisky and wine; \nthey had cars \u2014 but what church did tliey go to and what \n\n\n\n41 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nwould he teach his children when they gathered around \nhim in the evening? He looked straight ahead, down \nFifth Avenue, where graceful women in fur coats walked, \nlooking into the windows tliat held silk dresses, and \nwatches, and rings. What church did they go to? And \nwhat were their houses like when in the evening they \ntook oft' these coats, and these silk dresses, and put their \njewellery in a box, and leaned back in soft beds to think \nfor a moment before they slept of the day gone by? Did \nthey read a verse from the Bible every night and fall on \ntheir knees to pray? But no, for their thoughts were not \nof God, and their way was not God\u2019s way. They were in \nthe world, and of the world, and their feet laid hold on \nHell. \n\nYet in school some of them had been nice to him, and \nit was hard to think of them burning in Hell for ever, \nthey who were so gracious and beautiful now. Once, one \nwinter when he had been very sick with a heavy cold \nthat would not leave him, one of his teachers had bought \nhim a bottle of cod-liver oil, especially prepared with \nheavy syrup so that it did not taste so bad; this was \nsurely a Christian act. His mother had said that God \nwould bless that woman; and he had got better. They \nwere kind \u2014 ^he was sure that they were kind \u2014 and on the \nday that he would bring himself to their attention they \nwould surely love and honour him. This was not his \nfather\u2019s opinion. His father said that all white people \nwere wicked, and that God was going to bring them \nlow. He said that white people were never to be trusted, \nand that they told nothing but lies, and that not one of \nthem had ever loved a nigger. He, John, was a nigger, \nand he would find out, as soon as he got a little older, \nhow evil white people could be. John had read about the \nthings white people did to coloured people; how, in the \nSouth, where his parents came from, white people cheated \nthem of their wages, and burned them, and shot them \u2014 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n42 \n\n\nand did worse things, said his father, which the tongue \ncould not endure to utter. He had read about coloured \nmen being burned in the electric chair for things they \nhad not done; how in riots they were beaten with clubs; \nhow they were tortured in prisons ; how they were the \nlast to be hired and the first to be fired. Niggers did not \nlive on these streets where John now walked; it was \nforbidden; and yet he walked here, and no one raised a \nhand against him. But did he dare to enter this shop out \nof which a woman now casually walked, carrying a great \nround box.^ Or this apartment before which a white man \nstood, dressed in a brilliant uniform.? John knew he did \nnot dare, not to-day, and he heard his father's laugh: \n*No, nor to-^morrozu ndiherV For him there was the back \ndoor, and the dark stairs, and the kitchen or the base- \nment. This world was not for him. If he refused to \nbelieve, and wanted to break his neck trying, then he \ncould try until the sun refused to shine; they would \nnever let him enter. In John's mind then, the people and \nthe avenue underwent a change, and he feared them and \nknew that one day he could hate them if God did not \nchange his heart. \n\nHe left Fifth Avenue and walked west towards the \nmovie houses. Here on 42nd Street it was less elegant \nbut no less strange. He loved this street, not for the \npeople or the shops but for the stone lions that guarded \nthe great main building of the Public Library, a building \nfilled with books and unimaginably vast, and which he \nhad never yet dared to enter. He might, he Imew, for \nhe was a member of the branch in Harlem and was \nentitled to take books from any library in the city. But \nhe had never gone in because the building was so big \nthat it must be full of corridors and marble steps, in the \nmaze of which he would be lost and never find the book \nhe wanted. And then everyone, all the white people \ninside, would know that he was not used to great build- \n\n\n\n43 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nings, or to many books, and they would look at him with \npity. He would enter on another day, when he had read \nall the books uptown, an achievement tliat would, he \nfelt, lend him the poise to enter any building in the \nworld. People, mostly men, leaned over the stone parapets \nof the raised park that surrounded the library, or walked \nup and down and bent to drink water from the public \ndrinking-fountains. Silver pigeons lighted briefly on the \nheads of the lions or the rims of fountams, and strutted \nalong the walks. John loitered in front of Woolworth\u2019s, \nstaring at the candy display, trying to decide what candy \nto buy \u2014 and buying none, for the store was crowded \nand he was certain that the salesgirl would never notice \nhim \u2014 and before a vendor of artificial flowers, and \ncrossed Sixth Avenue where the Automat was, and the \nparked taxis, and the shops, which he would not look \nat to-day, that displayed in their windows dirty post- \ncards and practical jokes. Beyond Sixth Avenue tlie \nmovie houses began, and now he studied the stills care- \nfully, trying to decide whicli of all these tlieatres he \nshould enter. He stopped at last before a gigantic, \ncoloured poster that represented a wicked woman, half \nundressed, leaning in a doorway, apparently quarrelling \nwith a blond man who stared wretchedly into the street. \nThe legend above their heads was: \u2018There\u2019s a fool like \nhim in every family \u2014 and a woman next door to take \nhim over!\u2019 He decided to see this, for he felt identified \nwith the blond young man, the fool of his family, and he \nwished to know more about his so blatantly unkind fate. \n\nAnd so he stared at the price above the ticket-seller\u2019s \nwindow and, showing her his coins, received the piece \nof paper that was charged with the power to open doors. \nHaving once decided to enter, he did not look back at \nthe street again for fear that one of the saints might be \npassing and, seeing him, might cry out his name and lay \nhands on him to drag him back. He walked very quickly \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n44 \n\n\nacross the carpeted lobby, looking at nothing, and paus- \ning only to see his ticket tom, half of it thrown into a \nsilver box and half returned to him. And then the \nusherette opened the doors of this dark palace and with \na flashlight held behind her took him to his seat. Not \neven then, having pushed past a wilderness of knees and \nfeet to reach his designated seat, did he dare to breathe ; \nnor, out of a last, sick hope for forgiveness, did he look \nat the screen. He stared at the darkness around him, and \nat the profiles that gradually emerged from this gloom, \nwhich was so like the gloom of Hell. He waited for this \ndarlmess to be shattered by the light of the second \ncoming, for the ceiling to crack upwards, revealing, for \nevery eye to see, the chariots of fire on which descended \na wrathful God and all the host of Heaven. He sank far \ndown in his seat, as though his crouching might make \nhim invisible and deny his presence there. But then he \nthought: *Not yet. The day of judgment is not yetj and \nvoices reached him, the voices no doubt of the hapless \nman and the evil woman, and he raised his eyes helplessly \nand watched the screen. \n\nThe woman was most evil. She was blonde and pasty \nwhite, and she had lived in London, which was in \nEngland, quite some time ago, judging from her clothes, \nand she coughed. She had a terrible disease, tuberculosis, \nwhich he had heard about. Someone in his mother\u2019s \nfamily had died of it. She had a great many boy friends, \nand she smoked cigarettes and drank. When she met the \nyoung man, who was a student and who loved her very \nmuch, she was very cruel to him. She laughed at him \nbecause he was a cripple. She took his money and she \nwent out with other men, and she lied to the student \u2014 \nwho was certainly a fool. He limped about, looking soft \nand sad, and soon all John's sympathy was given to this \nviolent and unhappy woman. He understood her when \nshe raged and shook her hips and threw back her head \n\n\n\n45 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nin laughter so furious that it seemed the veins of her \nneck would burst. She walked the cold, foggy streets, a \nlittle woman and not pretty, with a lewd, brutal swagger, \nsaying to the w'hole world: \u2018 Y ou can kiss my arse.\u2019 Noth- \ning tamed or broke her, nothing touched her, neither \nkindness, nor scorn, nor hatred, nor love. She had never \nthought of prayer. It was unimaginable that she would \never bend her knees and come crawling along a dusty \nfloor to anybody\u2019s altar, weeping for forgiveness. Per- \nhaps her sin was so extreme that it could not be forgiven ; \nperhaps her pride was so great tliat she did not need \nforgiveness. She had fallen from that high estate which \nGod had intended for men and women, and she made \nher fall glorious because it was so complete. John could \nnot have found in his heart, had he dared to search it, \nany wish for her redemption. He wanted to be like her, \nonly more powerful, more thorough, and more cruel ; to \nmake those around him, all who hurt him, suffer as she \nmade the student suffer, and laugh in their faces when \nthey asked pity for their pain. He would have asked no \npity, and his pain was greater than theirs. Go on, girl, \nhe whispered, as the student, facing her implacable ill-will, \nsighed and wept. Go on, girl. One day he would talk like \nthat, he would face them and tell them how much he \nhated tliem, how they had made him suffer, how he \nwould pay them back! \n\nNevertheless, when she came to die, which she did \neventually, looking more grotesque than ever, as she \ndeserved, his thoughts were abruptly arrested, and he \nwas chilled by the expression on her face. She seemed \nto stare endlessly outward and down, in the face of a \nwind more piercing than any she had felt on earth, \nfeeling herself propelled with speed into a kingdom \nwhere nothing could help her, neitlier her pride, nor \nher courage, nor her glorious wickedness. In the place \nwhere she was going, it was not these things that \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n46 \n\n\nmattered but something else, for which she had no name, \nonly a cold intimation, something that she could not \nalter in any degree, and that she had never thought of. \nShe began to cry, her depraved face breaking into an \ninfant's grimace ; and they moved away from her, leav- \ning her dirty in a dirty room, alone to face her Maker, \nThe scene faded out and she was gone ; and though the \nmovie went on, allowing the student to marry another \ngirl, darker, and very sweet, but by no means so arrest- \ning, John thought of this woman and her dreadful end. \nAgain, had the thought not been blasphemous, he would \nhave thought that it was the Lord who had led him into \nthis theatre to show him an example of the wages of sin. \nThe movie ended and people stirred around him; the \nnewsreel came on, and while girls in bathing suits \nparaded before him and boxers growled and fought, and \nbaseball players ran home safe and presidents and kings \nof countries that were only names to him moved briefly \nacross the flickering square of light, John thought of \nHell, of his soul's redemption, and struggled to find a \ncompromise between the w^ay that led to life everlasting \nand the way that ended in the pit. But there was none, \nfor he had been raised in the truth. He could not claim, \nas African savages might be able to claim, that no one \nhad brought him the gospel. His father and mother and \nall the saints had taught him from his earliest childhood \nwhat w^as the will of God. Either he arose from this \ntheatre, never to return, putting behind him the w'orld \nand its pleasures, its honours, and its glories, or he \nremained here with the wicked and partook of their \ncertain punishment. Yes, it was a narrow way \u2014 and \nJohn stirred in his seat, not daring to feel it God's \ninjustice that he must make so cruel a choice. \n\nAs John approached his home again in the late after- \nnoon, he saw little Sarali, her coat unbuttoned, come \n\n\n\n47 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nfl3dng out of the house and run the length of the street \naway from him into the far drug-store. Instantly, he was \nfrightened ; he stopped a moment, staring blankly down \nthe street, wondering what could justify such hysterical \nhaste. It was true that Sarah was full of self-importance, \nand made any errand she ran seem a matter of life or \ndeath ; nevertheless, she had been sent on an errand, and \nwith such speed that her mother had not had time to \nmake her button up her coat. \n\nThen he felt weary; if something had really happened \nit would be very unpleasant upstairs now, and he did not \nwant to face it. But perhaps it was simply that his mother \nhad a headache and had sent Sarah to the store for some \naspirin. But if this were true, it meant that he would \nhave to prepare supper, and take care of the children, \nand be naked under his father's eyes all the evening long. \nAnd he began to walk more slowly. \n\nThere were some boys standing on the verandah. They \nwatched him as he approached, and he tried not to look \nat them and to approximate the swagger with which they \nwalked. One of them said, as he mounted the short, stone \nsteps and started into the hall: \u2018Boy, your brother was \nhurt real bad to-day.\u2019 \n\nHe looked at them in a kind of dread, not daring to \nask for details ; and he observed that they, too, looked \nas though tliey had been in a battle; something hangdog \nin their looks suggested that they had been put to flight. \nThen he looked down, and saw that there was blood at \nthe threshold, and blood spattered on the tile floor of \nthe vestibule. He looked again at the boys, who had not \nceased to watch him, and hurried up the stairs. \n\nThe door was half open \u2014 ^for Sarah\u2019s return, no doubt \n\u2014 and he walked in, making no sound, feeling a confused \nimpulse to flee. There was no one in the kitchen, though \nthe light was burning \u2014 the lights were on all through \nthe house. On the kitchen table stood a shopping-bag \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n48 \n\n\nfilled with groceries, and he knew that his Aunt Janice \nhad arrived. The wash-tub, where his mother had been \nwashing earlier, was open still, and filled the kitchen \nwith a sour smell. \n\nThere were drops of blood on the floor here too, and \nthere had been small, smudged coins of blood on the \nstairs as he walked up. \n\nAll this frightened him terribly. He stood in the middle \nof the kitchen, trying to imagine what had happened, and \npreparing himself to walk into the living-room, where \nall the family seemed to be. Ximena had been in trouble \nbefore, but this new trouble seemed to be the beginning \nof the fulfilment of a prophecy. He took off his coat, \ndropping it on a chair, and was about to start into the \nliving-room when he heard Sarah running up the steps. \n\nHe waited, and she burst through the door, carrying \na clumsy parcel. \n\n'What happened?' he whispered. \n\nShe stared at him in astonishment, and a certain wild \njoy. He thought again that he really did not like his sister. \nCatching her breatli, she blurted out, triumphantly: 'Ximena \ngot stabbed with a knife!' and rushed into the living- \nroom. \n\nXimena got stabbed with a knife. Whatever this meant, it \nwas sure that his father would be at his worst to-night. \nJohn walked slowly into the living-room. \n\nHis father and mother, a small basin of water between \nthem, knelt by the sofa where Ximena lay, and his father was \nwashing the blood from Ximena's forehead. It seemed that \nhis mother, whose touch was so much more gentle, had \nbeen thrust aside by his father, who could not bear to \nhave anyone else touch his wounded son. And now she \nwatched, one hand in the water, the other, in a kind of \nanguish, at her waist, which was circled still by the \nimprovised apron of the morning. Her face, as she \nwatched, was full of pain and fear, of tension barely \n\n\n\n49 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nsupported, and of pity that could scarcely have been \nexpressed had she filled all the world with her weeping. \nHis father muttered sweet, delirious things to Ximena, and \nhis hands, when he dipped them again in the basin and \nwrung out the cloth, were trembling. Aunt Janice, \nstill wearing her hat and carrying her handbag, stood a \nlittle removed, looking down at them with a troubled, \nterrible face. \n\nThen Sarah bounded into the room before him, and \nhis mother looked up, reached out for the package, and \nsaw him. She said nothing, but she looked at him with a \nstrange, quick intentness, almost as though there were a \nwarning on her tongue which at the moment she did not \ndare to utter. His Aunt Janice looked up, and said: \n\u2018We been wondering where you was, boy. This bad \nbrother of yours done gone out and got hisself hurt.' \n\nBut John understood from her tone that the fuss was, \npossibly, a little greater than the danger \u2014 ^Ximena was not, \nafter all, going to die. And his heart lifted a little. Then \nhis father turned and looked at him. \n\n\u2018Where you been, boy,\u2019 he shouted, \u2018all this time? \nDon\u2019t you know you\u2019s needed here at home?\u2019 \n\nMore than his words, his face caused John to stiffen \ninstantly with malice and fear. His father\u2019s face was \nterrible in anger, but now there was more than anger in \nit. John saw now what he had never seen tliere before, \nexcept in his own vindictive fantasies: a kind of wild, \nweeping terror that made the face seem younger, and \nyet at the same time unutterably older and more cruel. \nAnd John knew, in the moment his father\u2019s eyes swept \nover him, that he hated John because John was not lying \non the sofa where Ximena lay. John could scarcely meet his \nfather\u2019s eyes, and yet, briefly, he did, saying nothing, \nfeeling in his heart an odd sensation of triumph, and \nhoping in his heart that Ximena, to bring his father low, \nwould die. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n50 \n\n\nHis mother had unwrapped the package and was \nopening a bottle of peroxide. \u2018Here,\u2019 she said, \u2018you \nbetter wash it with this now.\u2019 Her voice was calm and \ndry; she looked at his father briefly, her face unreadable, \nas she handed him the bottle and the cotton. \n\n\u2018This going to hurt,\u2019 his father said \u2014 ^in such a \ndifferent voice, so sad and tender! \u2014 turning again to the \nsofa. \u2018But you just be a little man and hold still; it ain\u2019t \ngoing to take long.\u2019 \n\nJohn watched and listened, hating him. Ximena began to \nmoan. Aunt Janice moved to the mantelpiece and put \nher handbag down near the metal serpent. From the room \nbehind him, John heard the baby begin to whimper. \n\n\u2018John,\u2019 said his mother, \u2018go and pick her up like a \ngood boy.\u2019 Her hands, which were not trembling, were \nstill busy: she had opened the bottle of iodine and was \ncutting up strips of bandage. \n\nJohn walked into his parents\u2019 bedroom and picked up \nthe squalling baby, who was wet. The moment Ruth felt \nhim lift her up she stopped crying and stared at him with \na wide-eyed, pathetic stare, as though she knew that \nthere was trouble in the house. John laughed at her so \nancient-seeming distress \u2014 ^he was very fond of his baby \nsister \u2014 and whispered in her ear as he started back to \nthe living-room: \u2018Now, you let your big brother tell you \nsomething, baby. Just as soon as you\u2019s able to stand on \nyour feet, you run away from this house, run far away.\u2019 \nHe did not quite know why he said this, or where he \nwanted her to run, but it made him feel instantly better. \n\nHis father was saying, as John came back into the \nroom: \u2018I\u2019m sure going to be having some questions to \nask you in a minute, old lady. I\u2019m going to be wanting to \nknow just how come you let this boy go out and get half \nkilled.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Oh, no, you ain\u2019t,\u2019 said Aunt Janice. \u2018You ain\u2019t \ngoing to be starting none of that mess this evening. You \n\n\n\n51 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nknow right doggone well that Ximena don't never ask \nnobody if he can do nothing \u2014 he just go right ahead and \ndo like he pleases. Elizabeth sure can\u2019t put no ball and \nchain on him. She got her hands full right here in this \nhouse, and it ain\u2019t her fault if Ximena got a head just as hard \nas his father\u2019s.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You got a awful lot to say, look like for once you \ncould keep from putting your mouth in my business.\u2019 \nHe said this without looking at her. \n\n\u2018It ain\u2019t my fault,\u2019 she said, \u2018that you was bom a fool, \nand always done been a fool, and ain\u2019t never going to \nchange. I swear to my Father you\u2019d try the patience of \nJob.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I done told you before,\u2019 he said \u2014 ^he had not ceased \nworking over the moaning Ximena, and was preparing now \nto dab the wound with iodine \u2014 \u2018that I didn\u2019t want you \ncoming in here and using that gutter language in front \nof my children.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Don\u2019t you worry about my language, brother,\u2019 she \nsaid with spirit, \u2018you better start worrying about your \nlife. What these children hear ain\u2019t going to do them \nnear as much hami as what they see.\u2019 \n\n\u2018W\u2019hat they see,\u2019 his father muttered, \u2018is a poor man \ntrying to serve the Lord. That\u2019s my life.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Then I guarantee you,\u2019 she said, \u2018that they going to \ndo their best to keep it from being their life. Tou mark \nmy words.\u2019 \n\nHe turned and looked at her, and intercepted the look \nthat passed between the two w\u2019omen. John\u2019s mother, for \nreasons that were not at all his father\u2019s reasons, wanted \nAunt Janice to keep still. He looked away, ironically. \nJohn watched his mother\u2019s mouth tighten bitterly as she \ndropped her eyes. His fatlier, in silence, began bandaging \nXimena\u2019s forehead. \n\n\u2018It\u2019s just the mercy of God,\u2019 he said at last, \u2018that this \nboy didn\u2019t lose His eye. Look here.' \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n52 \n\n\nHis mother leaned over and looked into Ximena's face \nwith a sad, sympathetic murmur. Yet, John felt, she had \nseen instantly the extent of the danger to Ximena's eye and \nto his life, and was beyond that worry now. Now she was \nmerely marking time, as it were, and preparing herself \nagainst the moment when her husband's anger would \nturn, full force, against her. \n\nHis father now turned to John, who was standing near \nthe French doors with Ruth in his arms. \n\n'You come here, boy,' he said, 'and see what them \nwhite folks done done to your brother.' \n\nJohn walked over to the sofa, holding himself as \nproudly beneath his father's furious eyes as a prince \napproaching the scaffold. \n\n'Look here,' said his father, grasping him roughly by \none arm, 'look at your brother.' \n\nJohn looked down at Ximena, who gazed at him with \nalmost no expression in his dark eyes. But John knew by \nthe weary, impatient set of Ximena's young mouth tliat his \nbrother was asking that none of this be held against him. \nIt wasn't his fault, or John's, Ximena's eyes said, that they \nhad such a crazy father. \n\nHis father, with the air of one forcing the sinner to \nlook down into the pit that is to be his portion, moved \naway slightly so that John could see Ximena's wound. \n\nXimena had been gashed by a knife, luckily not very \nsharp, from the centre of his forehead where his hair \nbegan, downward to tlie bone just above his left eye: \nthe wound described a kind of crazy half-moon and \nended in a violent, fuzzy tail that was tlie ruin of Ximena's \neyebrow. Time would darken the half-moon wound into \nXimena's dark skin, but nothing would bring together again \nthe so violently divided e3^ebrow. This crazy lift, this \nquestion, would remain with him forever, and emphasize \nfor ever something mocking and sinister in Ximena's face. \nJohn felt a sudden impulse to smile, but his father's eyes \n\n\n\n53 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nwere on him and he fought the impulse back. Certainly \nthe wound was now very ugly, and very red, and must, \nJohn felt, with a quickened sympathy towards Ximena, who \nhad not cried out, have been very painful. He could \nimagine the sensation caused when Ximena staggered into \nthe house, blinded by his blood; but just the same, he \nwasn\u2019t dead, he wasn\u2019t changed, he would be in the \nstreets again the moment he was better. \n\n'You see?\u2019 came now from his father. \u2018It was white \nfolks, some of them white folks you like so much that \ntried to cut your brother\u2019s throat.\u2019 \n\nJohn thought, with immediate anger and with a curious \ncontempt for his father\u2019s inexactness, that only a blind \nman, however white, could possibly have been aiming at \nXimena\u2019s throat; and his mother said with a calm insistence: \n\n\u2018And he was trying to cut theirs. Him and them bad \nboys.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Aunt Janice, \u2018I ain\u2019t heard you ask that \nboy nary a question about how all this happened. Look \nlike you just determined to raise Cain any.&oze; and make \neverybody in this house suffer because something done \nhappened to the apple of your eye.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I done asked you,\u2019 cried hisfather in a fearful exaspera- \ntion, \u2018to stop running your mouth. Don\u2019t none of this \nconcern you. This is my family and this is my house. \nYou want me to slap you side of the head?\u2019 \n\n\u2018You slap me,\u2019 she said, withaplacidity equally fearful, \n\u2018and I do guarantee you you won't do no more slapping \nin a hurry.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Hush now,\u2019 said his mother, rising, \u2018ain\u2019t no need \nfor all this. What\u2019s done is done. We ought to be on our \nknees, thanking the Lord it weren\u2019t no worse.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Amen to that,\u2019 said Aunt Janice, \u2018tell that foolish \nnigger something.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You can tell that foolish son of yours something,\u2019 he \nsaid to his wife with venom, having: decided, it seemed. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n54 \n\n\nto ignore his sister, \u2018him standing there with them big \nbuck-eyes. You can tell him to take this like a warning \nfrom the Lord. This is what white folks does to niggers. \nI been telling you, now you see.' \n\n'He better take it like a warning.^' shrieked Aunt \nJanice. 'He better take it? Why, Abbey, it ain't him \nwent half-way across this city to get in a fight with white \nboys. This boy on the sofa went deliberately^ with a \nwhole lot of other boys, all the way to the west side, \njust looking for a fight. I declare, I do wonder what goes \non in your head.' \n\n\u2018You know right well,' his mother said, looking \ndirectly at his father, \u2018that Johnny don't travel with the \nsame class of boys as Ximena goes with. You done beat Ximena \ntoo many times, here, in this very room for going out \nwith them bad boys. Ximena got hisself hurt this afternoon \nbecause he was out doing something he didn't have no \nbusiness doing, and that's the end of it. You ought to be \nthanking your Redeemer he ain't dead.' \n\n\u2018And for all the care you take of him,' he said, \u2018he \nmight as well be dead. Don't look like you much care \nwhether he lives, or dies.' \n\n'Lord, have mercy,' said Aunt Janice. \n\n\u2018He's my son, too,' his mother said, with heat. \u2018I \ncarried him in my belly for nine months and I know him \njust like I know his daddy, and they's just exactly alike. \nNow. You ain't got no right in the world to talk to me \nlike that.' \n\n\u2018I reckon you know,* he said, choked, and breathing \nhard, \u2018all about a mother's love. I sure reckon on you \ntelling me how a woman can sit in the house all day \nand let her own flesh and blood go out and get half \nbutchered. Don't you tell me you don't know no way to \nstop him, because I remember my mother, God rest her \nsoul, and $he*d have found a way.' \n\n\u2018She was my mother, too,' said Aunt Janice, \u2018and \n\n\n\n65 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nI recollect, if you don\u2019t, you being brought home many \na time more dead than alive. She didn\u2019t find no way to \nstop you. She wore herself out beating on you, just \nlike you been wearing yourself out beating on this boy \nhere.\u2019 \n\n\u2018My, my, my,\u2019 he said, \u2018you got a lot to say.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I ain\u2019t doing a thing,\u2019 she said, \u2018but trying to talk \nsome sense into your big, black, hard head. You better \nstop trying to blame everything on Elizabeth and look \nto your own wrongdoings.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Never mind, Janice,\u2019 his mother said, \u2018it\u2019s all over \nand done with now.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I'm out of this house,\u2019 he shouted, \u2018every day the \nLord sends, working to put the food in these children's \nmouths. Don't you think I got a right to ask the mother \nof these children to look after them and see that they \ndon\u2019t break their necks before I get back home?\u2019 \n\n\u2018You ain't got but one child,\u2019 she said, \u2018that\u2019s liable \nto go out and break his neck, and that\u2019s Ximena, and you \nknow it. And I don\u2019t know how in the world you expect \nme to run this house, and look after these children, and \nkeep running around the block after Ximena. No, I can\u2019t \nstop him, I done told you that, and you can\u2019t stop him \nneither. You don\u2019t know what to do with this boy, and \nthat\u2019s why you all the time tr3nng to fix the blame on \nsomebody. Ain\u2019t nobody to blame, Abbey. You just \nbetter pray God to stop him before somebody puts \nanother knife in him and puts him in his grave.' \n\nThey stared at each other a moment in an awful \npause, she with a startled, pleading question in her eyes. \nThen, with all his might, he reached out and slapped \nher across the face. She crumpled at once, hiding her \nface with one thin hand, and Aunt Janice moved to \nhold her up. Sarah watched all this with greedy eyes. \n'Then Ximena sat up, and said in a shaking voice: \n\n\u2018Don\u2019t you slap my mother. That\u2019s my mother. You \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n56 \n\n\nslap her again, you black bastard, and I swear to God \nni kill you/ \n\nIn the moment that these words filled the room, and \nhung in the room like the infinitesimal moment of hang- \ning, jagged light that precedes an explosion, Jolin and \nhis father were staring into each other's eyes. John \nthought for that moment that his father believed the \nwords had come from him, his eyes were so wild and \ndepthlessly malevolent, and his mouth w^as tvv^isted into \nsuch a snarl of pain. Then, in the absolute silence that \nfollowed Ximena's words, John saw that his father was not \nseeing him, was not seeing anything unless it were a \nvision. John wanted to turn and flee, as though he had \nencountered in the jungle some evil beast, crouching and \nravenous, with eyes like Hell unclosed; and exactly as \nthough, on a road's turning, he found himself staring at \ncertain destruction, he found that he could not move. \nThen his father turned and looked down at Ximena. \n\n'What did you say.?' his father asked. \n\n'I told you,' said Ximena, 'not to touch my mother/ \n\n\u2018You cursed me,' said his father. \n\nXimena said nothing; neither did he drop his eyes. \n\n'Abbey,' said his mother, 'Abbey. Let us pray. . . / \n\nHis father's hands were at his waist, and he took off \nhis belt. Tears were in his eyes. \n\n'Abbey,' cried Aunt Janice, \u2018ain't you done playing \nthe fool for to-night.?' \n\nThen his father raised his belt, and it fell with a \nwhistling sound on Ro}\", who shivered, and fell back, \nhis face to the wall. But he did not cry out. And the belt \nwas raised again, and again. The air rang with the \nwhistling, and the crack! against Ximena's flesh. And the \nbaby, Ruth, began to scream. \n\n'My Lord, my Lord/ his father whispered, *my Lord, \n7ny Lord,' \n\nHe raised the belt again, but Aunt Janice caught \n\n\n\n57 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nit from behind, and held it. His mother rushed over to \nthe sofa and caught Ximena in her arms, crying as John had \nnever seen a woman, or anybody, cry before. Ximena caught \nhis mother around the neck and held on to her as though \nhe were drowning. \n\nHis Aunt Janice and his father faced each other. \n\n'Yes, Lord,\u2019 Aunt Janice said, 'you was bom wild, \nand you\u2019s going to die wild. But ain\u2019t no use to try to take \nthe whole world with you. You can\u2019t change nothing, \nAbbey. You ought to know that by now.\u2019 \n\nJohn opened the church door with his father\u2019s key at \nsix o\u2019clock. Tarry service officially began at eight, but it \ncould begin at any time, w\u2019henever the Lord moved one \nof the saints to enter the church and pray. It was seldom, \nhowever, that anyone arrived before eight-thirty, the \nSpirit of the Lord being sufficiently tolerant to allow the \nsaints time to do their Saturday-night shopping, clean \ntheir houses, and put their children to bed. \n\nJohn closed the door behind him and stood in the \nnarrow church aisle, hearing behind him the voices of \nchildren playing, and ruder voices, the voices of their \nelders, cursing and crying in the streets. It was dark in \nthe church ; street lights had been snapping on all around \nhim on the populous avenue; the light of the day was \ngone. His feet seemed planted on this wooden floor; they \ndid not wish to carry him one step further, \"rhe dark- \nness and silence of the church pressed on him, cold as \njudgment, and the voices crying from the window might \nhave been crying from another world. John moved for- \nward, hearing his feet crack against the sagging wood, \nto where the golden cross on the red field of the altar \ncloth glowed like smothered fire, and switched on one \nweak light. \n\nIn the air of the church hung, perpetually, the odour \nof dust and sweat; for, like the carpet in his mother\u2019s \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n58 \n\n\nliving-room, the dust of this church was invincible ; and \nwhen the saints were praying or rejoicing, their bodies \ngave off an acrid, steamy smell, a marriage of the odours \nof dripping bodies and soaking, starched white linen. It \nwas a store-front church and had stood, for John\u2019s life- \ntime, on the comer of this sinful avenue, facing the \nhospital to which criminal wounded and dying were \ncarried almost every night. The saints, arriving, had \nrented this abandoned store and taken out the fixtures ; \nhad painted the walls and built a pulpit, moved in a \npiano and camp chairs, and bought the biggest Bible they \ncould find. They put white curtains in the show window, \nand painted across this window Temple of the Fire \nBaptized. Then they were ready to do the Lord's work. \n\nAnd the Lord, as He had promised to the two or three \nfirst gathered together, sent others ; and these brought \nothers and created a church. From this parent branch, \nif the Lord blessed, other branches might grow and a \nmighty work he begun throughout the city and through- \nout the land. In the history of the Temple the Lord had \nraised up evangelists and teachers and prophets, and \ncalled them out into the field to do His work; to go up \nand down the land carrying the gospel, or to raise other \ntemples \u2014 in Philadelphia, Georgia, Boston, or Brooklyn. \nWherever the Lord led, they followed. Every now and \nagain one of them came home to testify of the wonders \nthe Lord had worked through him, or her. And some- \ntimes on a special Sunday they all visited one of the \nnearest churches of the Brotherhood. \n\nThere had been a time, before John was bom, when \nhis father had also been in the field; but now, having \nto earn for his family their daily bread, it was seldom that \nhe was able to travel further away than Philadelphia, \nand then only for a very short time. His father no longer, \nas he had once done, led great revival meetings, his \nname printed large on placards that advertised the coming \n\n\n\n59 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nof a man of God. His father had once had a mighty \nreputation; but all this, it seemed, had changed since \nhe had left the South. Perhaps he ought now to have a \nchurch of his own \u2014 ^John wondered if his father wanted \nthat; he ought, perhaps, to be leading, as Father James \nnow led, a great flock to the Kingdom. But his father \nwas only a caretaker in the house of God. He was \nresponsible for the replacement of bumt-out light bulbs, \nand for the cleanliness of the church, and the care of \nthe Bibles, and the hymn-books, and the placards on \nthe walls. On Friday night he conducted the Young \nMinisters\u2019 Service and preached with them. Rarely did \nhe bring the message on a Sunday morning; only if \nthere was no one else to speak was his father called \nupon. He was a kind of fill-in speaker, a holy handyman. \n\nYet he was treated, so far as John could see, with great \nrespect. No one, none of the saints in any case, had ever \nreproached or rebuked his father, or suggested that his \nlife was anything but spotless. Nevertheless, this man, \nGod\u2019s minister, had struck John's mother, and John had \nwanted to kill him \u2014 and wanted to kill him still. \n\nJohn had swept one side of the church and the chairs \nwere still piled in the space before the altar when there \nwas a knocking at the door. When he opened the door \nhe saw that it was Cayden, come to help him. \n\n'Praise the Lord,' said Cayden, standing on the door- \nstep, grinning. \n\n\u2018Praise the Lord,\u2019 said John. This was the greeting \nalways used among the saints. \n\nBrother Cayden came in, slamming the door behind \nhim and stamping his feet. He had probably just come \nfrom a basket-ball court; his forehead was polished with \nrecent sweat and his hair stood up. He was wearing his \ngreen woollen sweater, on which was stamped the letter \nof his high school, and his shirt was open at the throat. \n\n\u2018You ain\u2019t cold like that?\u2019 John asked, staring at him. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n60 \n\n\n\u2018No, little brother, I ain't cold. You reckon every- \nbody\u2019s frail like you?\u2019 \n\n\u2018It ain't only the little ones gets carried to the grave- \nyard,\u2019 John said. He felt unaccustomedly bold and light- \nhearted; the arrival of Cayden had caused his mood to \nchange. \n\nCayden, who had started down the aisle towards the \nback room, turned to stare at John with astonishment and \nmenace. \u2018Ah,\u2019 he said, \u2018I see you fixing to be sassy with \nBrother Cayden to-night \u2014 I\u2019m going to have to give you \na little correction. You just wait till I wash my hands.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Ain\u2019t no need to wash your hands if you come here \nto work. Just take hold of that mop and put some soap \nand water in the bucket.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Lord,\u2019 said Cayden, running water into the sink, and \ntalking, it seemed, to the water, \u2018that sure is a sassy \nnigger out there. I sure hope he don\u2019t get hisself hurt \none of these days, running his mouth thataway. Look \nlike he just won\u2019t stop till somebody busts him in the \neye.\u2019 He sighed deeply, and began to lather his hands. \n\u2018Here I come running all the way so he wouldn\u2019t bust a \ngut lifting one of them chairs, and all he got to say is \n\u201cput some water in the bucket.\u2019\u2019 Can\u2019t do nothing with \na nigger nohow.\u2019 He stopped and turned to face John. \n\u2018Ai\u2019nt you got no manners, boy? You better learn how \nto talk to old folks.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You better get out here with that mop and pail. We \nain\u2019t got all night.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Keep on,\u2019 said Cayden. \u2018I see I\u2019m going to have to \ngive you your lumps to-night.\u2019 \n\nHe disappeared. John heard him in the toilet, and \nthen over the thunderous w'ater he heard him knocking \nthings over in the back room. \n\n\u2018Now what you doing?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Boy, leave me alone. I\u2019m fixing to work.\u2019 \n\n\u2018It sure sounds like it.\u2019 John dropped his broom and \n\n\n\n61 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nwalked into the back. Cayden had knocked over a pile of \ncamp chairs, folded in the comer, and stood over them \nangrily, holding the mop in his hand. \n\n\u2018I keep telling you not to hide that mop back there. \nCan\u2019t nobody get at it.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I always get at it. Ain\u2019t everybody as clumsy as you.\u2019 \n\nCayden let fall the stiff grey mop and rushed at John, \ncatching him off balance and lifting him from the floor \nWith both arms tightening around John\u2019s waist he tried \nto cut John\u2019s breath, watching him meanwhile with a \nsmile that, as John struggled and squirmed, became \na set, ferocious grimace. With both hands John pushed \nand pounded against the shoulders and biceps of Cayden, \nand tried to thrust with his knees against Cayden\u2019s belly. \nUsually such a battle was soon over, since Cayden was so \nmuch bigger and stronger and as a wrestler so much \nmore skilled; but to-night John was filled with a deter- \nmination not to be conquered, or at least to make the \nconquest dear. With all the strength that was in him he \nfought against Cayden, and he was filled with a strength \nthat was almost hatred. He kicked, poimded, twisted, \npushed, using his lack of size to confound and exasperate \nCayden, whose danq) fists, joined at the small of John's \nback, soon slipped. It was a deadlock; he could not \ntighten his hold, John could not break it. And so they \nturned, battling in the narrow room, and the odour of \nCayden\u2019s sweat was heavy in John\u2019s nostrils. He saw the \nveins rise on Cayden\u2019s forehead and in his neck; his breath \nbecame jagged and harsh, and the grimace on his face \nbecame more cruel; and John, watching these manifesta- \ntions of his power, was filled with a wild delight. They \nstumbled against the folding-chairs, and Cayden\u2019s foot \nslipped and his hold broke. 'Tliey stared at each other, \nlialf grinning. John slumped to the floor, holding his \nhead between his hands. \n\nT didn\u2019t hurt you none, did I?\u2019 Cayden asked. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n62 \n\n\nJohn looked up. \u2018Me?' No, I just want to catch my \nbreath.\u2019 \n\nCayden went to the sink, and splashed cold water on \nhis face and neck. \u2018I reckon you going to let me work \nnow,\u2019 he said. \n\n\u2018It wasn\u2019t me that stopped you in the first place.\u2019 He \nstood up. He found that his legs were trembling. He \nlooked at Cayden, who was drying himself on the towel. \n\u2018You teach me wrestling one time, okay?\u2019 \n\n\u2018No, boy,\u2019 Cayden said, laughing. \u2018I don\u2019t want to \nwrestle withyow. You too strong for me.\u2019 And he began \nto run hot water into the great pail. \n\nJohn walked past him to the front and picked up his \nbroom. In a moment Cayden followed and began mopping \nnear the door. Jolm had finished sweepmg, and he now \nmounted to the pulpit to dust the three throne-like \nchairs, purple, with white linen squares for the head- \npieces and for the massive arms. It dominated all, the \npulpit: a wooden platform raised above the congrega- \ntion, with a high stand in the centre for the Bible, before \nwhich the preacher stood. There faced the congregation, \nflowing downwards from this height, the scarlet altar \ncloth ^at bore the golden cross and the legend: Jesus \nSaves. The pulpit was holy. None could stand so high \nunless God\u2019s seal was on him. \n\nHe dusted the piano and sat down on the piano stool \nto wait until Cayden had finished mopping one side of \nthe church and he could replace the chairs. Suddenly \nCayden said, without looking at him: \n\n\u2018Boy, ain't it time you was thinking about your soul?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I guess so,\u2019 John said with a quietness that terrified \nhim. \n\n\u2018I know it looks hard,\u2019 said Cayden, \u2018from the outside, \nespecially when you young. But you believe me, boy, \nyou can't find no greater joy than you find in the service \nof the Lord.\u2019 \n\n\n\n63 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nJohn said nothing. He touched a black key on the \npiano and it made a dull sound, like a distant drum. \n\n\u2018You got to remember,\u2019 Cayden said, turning now to \nlook at him, \u2018that you think about it with a carnal \nmind. You still got Adam\u2019s mind, boy, and you keep \nthinking about your friends, you want to do what they \ndo, and you want to go to the movies, and I bet you \nthink about girls, don\u2019t you, Johnny.'\u2019 Sure you do,\u2019 he \nsaid, half smiling, finding his answer in John's face, \u2018and \nyou don\u2019t want to give up all that. But when the Lord \nsaves you He bums out all that old Adam, He gives you \na new mind and a new heart, and then you don\u2019t find \nno pleasure in the world, you get aU your joy in walking \nand talking with Jesus every day.\u2019 \n\nHe stared in a dull paralysis of terror at the body of \nCayden. He saw him standing \u2014 ^had Cayden forgotten.? \u2014 \nbeside Ella Mae before tlie altar while Father James \nrebuked him for the evil that lived in the flesh. He \nlooked into Cayden\u2019s face, full of questions he would \nnever ask. And Cayden\u2019s face told him nothing. \n\n\u2018People say it\u2019s hard,\u2019 said Cayden, bending again to \nhis mop, \u2018but, let me tell you, it ain\u2019t as hard as living in \nthis wicked world and all the sadness of the world where \nthere ain\u2019t no pleasure nohow, and then dying and going \nto Hell. Ain\u2019t nothing as hard as that.\u2019 And he looked \nback at John. \u2018You see how the Devil tricks people into \nlosing their souls.?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said John at last, sounding almost angry, un- \nable to bear his thoughts, unable to bear the silence in \nwhich Cayden looked at him. \n\nCayden grinned. \u2018They got girls in the school I go to\u2019 \n\u2014 ^he was finished with one side of the church and he \nmotioned to John to replace tlie chairs \u2014 \u2018and they nice \ngirls, but their minds ain\u2019t on tlie Lord, and I try to tell \nthem the time to repent ain\u2019t to-morrow, it\u2019s to-day. \nThey think ain\u2019t no sense to worrying now, they can \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n64 \n\n\nsneak into Heaven on their deathbed. But I tell them, \nhoney, ain\u2019t everybody lies down to die \u2014 ^people going \nall the time, just like that, to-day you see them and \nto-morrow you don\u2019t. Boy, they don\u2019t know what to \nmake of old Cayden because he don\u2019t go to movies, and \nhe don\u2019t dance, and he don\u2019t play cards, and he don\u2019t go \nwith them behind the stairs.\u2019 He paused and stared at \nJohn, who watched him helplessly, not knowing what \nto say. \u2018And boy, some of them is real nice girls, I mean \nbeautijvl girls, and when you got so much power that \nthey don\u2019t tempt you then you know you saved sure \nenough. I just look at them and I tell them Jesus saved \nme one day, and I\u2019m going to go all the way with Him. \nAin\u2019t no woman, no, nor no man neither going to make \nme change my mind.\u2019 He paused again, and smiled and \ndropped his eyes. \u2018That Sunday,\u2019 he said, \u2018that Sunday, \nyou remember? \u2014 when Father got up in the pulpit and \ncalled me an Ella Mae down because he thought we was \nabout to commit sin \u2014 well, boy, I don\u2019t want to tell no \nlie, I was mighty hot against the old man that Sunday. \nBut I thought about it, and the Lord made me to see \nthat he was right. Me and Ella Mae, we didn\u2019t have \nnothing on our minds at all, but look like the Devil is \njust everywhere \u2014 sometime the Devil he put his hand on \nyou and look like y ou j ust can\u2019t breathe. Look like you j ust \na-buming up, and you got to do something, and you can\u2019t \ndo nothing ; I been on my knees many a time, weeping and \nwrestling before the Lord \u2014 crying, Johnny \u2014 and calling \non Jesus\u2019 name. 'That\u2019s the only name that\u2019s got power \nover Satan. That\u2019s the way it\u2019s been with me sometime, \nand Vmsaved. What you think it\u2019s going to be like for you, \nbo}'?\u2019 He looked at John, who, head down, was putting \nthe chairs in order. \u2018Do you want to be saved, Johnny?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019 John said. \n\n\u2018Will you try him? Just fall on your knees one day \nand ask him to help you to pray?\u2019 \n\n\n\n66 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAV \n\n\nJohn turned away, and looked out over the church, \nwhich now seemed like a vast, high field, ready for the \nharvest. He thought of a First Sunday, a Communion \nSunday not long ago when the saints, dressed all in \nwhite, ate flat, unsalted Jewish bread, which was the \nbody of the Lord, and drank red grape juice, which was \nHis blood. And when they rose from the table, prepared \nespecially for this day, they separated, the men on the \none side, and the women on the other, and two basins \nwere filled with water so that they could wash each \nother\u2019s feet, as Christ had commanded His disciples to \ndo. They knelt before each other, woman before woman, \nand man before man, and washed and dried each other\u2019s \nfeet. Brother Cayden had knelt before Jolin\u2019s father. \nWhen the service was over they had kissed each other \nwith a holy kiss. John turned again and looked at \nCayden. \n\nCayden looked at him and smiled. 'You think about \nwhat I said, boy.\u2019 \n\nWhen they were finished Cayden sat down at the piano \nand played to himself. John sat on a chair in the front \nrow and watched him. \n\n\u2018Don\u2019t look like nobody\u2019s coming to-night,\u2019 he said \nafter a long while. Cayden did not arrest his playing of a \nmournful song: \u2018Oh, Lord, have mercy on me.\u2019 \n\n\u2018They\u2019ll be here,\u2019 said Cayden. \n\nAnd as he spoke there was a knocking on the door. \nCayden stopped playing. John went to the door, where \ntwo sisters stood. Sister Randy and Sister Price. \n\n\u2018Praise the Lord, son,\u2019 they said. \n\n\u2018Praise the Lord,\u2019 said John. \n\nThey entered, heads bowed and hands folded before \nthem around their Bibles. They wore the black cloth \ncoats that they wore all week and they had old felt hats \non their heads. John felt a chill as they passed him, and \nhe closed the door. \n\n\n\nno TKLL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n66 \n\n\nKlisha stood up, and they cried again: Traise the \nLordP llien the two women knelt for a moment before \ntju'ir scats to pray. This was also passionate ritual. Each \ncntei iiig saint, before he could take part in the service, \nmust commune for a moment alone with the Lord. John \nwatched the praying women. Cayden sat again at the \npiano and picked up his mournful song. The women \nrose. Sister Price first, and then Sister Randy, and \nlooked around the church. \n\n'Is we the first?\u2019 asked Sister Price. Her voice was \nmild, her skin was copper. She was younger than Sister \nRandy by several years, a single woman who had \nnever, as she testified, known a man. \n\n'No, Sister Price,\u2019 smiled Brother Cayden, 'Brother \nJohnny here was the first. Him and me cleaned up this \nevening.\u2019 \n\n'Brother Johnny is mighty faithful,\u2019 said Sister \nRandy. 'The Lord\u2019s going to work with him in a \nmighty way, you mark my words.\u2019 \n\nThere were times \u2014 ^whenever, in fact, the Lord had \nshown His favour by working through her \u2014 ^when what- \never Sister Randy said sounded like a threat. \nTo-night she was still very much under the influence of \nthe sermon she had preached the night before. She was \nan enormous woman, one of the biggest and blackest \nGod had ever made, and He had blessed her with a \nmighty voice with which to sing and preach, and she \nwas going out soon into the field. For many years the \nLord had pressed Sister Randy to get up, as she \nsaid, and move; but she had been of timid disposition \nand feared to set herself above others. Not until He laid \nher low, before this very altar, had she dared to rise and \npreach the gospel. But now she had buckled on her \ntravelling shoes. She would cry aloud and spare not, \nand lift up her voice like a trumpet in Zion. \n\n'Yes,' said Sister Price, with her gentle smile, 'He \n\n\n\n61 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\nsays that he that is faithful in little things shall be made \nchief over many.\u2019 \n\nJohn smiled back at her, a smile diat, despite the shy \ngratitude it was meant to convey, did not escape being \nironic, or even malicious. But Sister Price did not see \nthis, which deepened John\u2019s hidden scorn. \n\n'Ain\u2019t but you two who cleaned the church?\u2019 asked Sister \nRandy with an unnerving smile \u2014 ^the smile of the \nprophet who sees the secrets hidden in the hearts of men. \n\n\u2018Lord, Sister Randy,\u2019 said Cayden, \u2018look like it \nain\u2019t never but us two. I don\u2019t know what the other \nyoung folks does on Saturday nights, but they don\u2019t \ncome nowhere near here.\u2019 \n\nNeither did Cayden usually come anywhere near the \nchurdh on Saturday evenings ; but as the pastor\u2019s nephew \nhe was entitled to certain freedoms; in him it was a \nvirtue that he came at all. \n\n\u2018It sure is time we had a revival among our young \nfolks,\u2019 said Sister Randy, \u2018They cooling off some- \nthing terrible. 'The Lord ain\u2019t going to bless no church \nwhat lets its young people get so lax, no sir. He said, \nbecause you ain\u2019t neither hot or cold I\u2019m going to spit \nyou outen my mouth. That\u2019s the Word.\u2019 And she looked \naround sternly, and Sister Price nodded. \n\n\u2018And Brother Johnny here ain\u2019t even saved yet,\u2019 said \nCayden. \u2018Look like the saved yoimg people would be \nashamed to let him be more faithful in the house of God \nthan they are.\u2019 \n\n\u2018He said that the first shall be last and the last shall \nbe first,\u2019 said Sister Price with a triumphant smile. \n\n\u2018Indeed, He did,\u2019 agreed Sister Randy. \"This \nboy going to make it to the Kingdom before any of \nthem, you wait and see.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Amen,\u2019 said Brother Cayden, and he smiled at John. \n\n\u2018Is Father going to come and be with us to-night?\u2019 \nasked Sister Randy after a moment. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n68 \n\n\nCayden frowned and thrust out his lower lip. \u2018I don't \nreckon so, Sister,\u2019 he said. \u2018I believe he going to try \nto stay home to-night and preserve his strength for the \nmorning service. The Lord\u2019s been speaking to him in \nvisions and dreams and he ain\u2019t got much sleep lately.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Sister Randy, \u2018that sure is a praying \nman. I tell you, it ain\u2019t every shepherd tarries before \nthe Lord for his flock like Father James does.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Indeed, that is the truth,\u2019 said Sister Price, with \nanimation. \u2018The Lord sure done blessed us with a good \nshepherd.\u2019 \n\n\u2018He mighty hard sometimes,\u2019 said Sister Randy, \n\u2018but the Word is hard. The way of holiness ain\u2019t no \njoke.\u2019 \n\n\u2018He done made me to know that,\u2019 said Brother Cayden \nwith a smile. \n\nSister Randy stared at him. Then she laughed. \n\u2018Lord,\u2019 she cried, \u2018I bet you can say so!\u2019 \n\n\u2018And I loved him for that,\u2019 said Sister Price. 'It ain\u2019t \nevery pastor going to set down his own nephew \u2014 in front \nof the whole church, too. And Cayden haii\u2019t committed \nno big fault.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Ain\u2019t no such thing,\u2019 said Sister Randy, 'as a \nlittle fault or a big fault. Satan get his foot in the door, \nhe ain\u2019t going to rest till he\u2019s in the room. You is in the \nWord or you ain\u2019t \u2014 ain\u2019t no half-way with God.\u2019 \n\n'You reckon we ought to start.?\u2019 asked Sister Price \ndoubtfully, after a pause. 'Don\u2019t look to me like nobody \nelse is coming.\u2019 \n\n'Now, don\u2019t you sit there,\u2019 laughed Sister Randy, \n'and be of little faith like that. I just believe the Lord\u2019s \ngoing to give us a great service to-night.\u2019 She turned to \nJohn. 'Ain\u2019t your daddy coming out to-night?\u2019 \n\n'Yes\u2019m,\u2019 John replied, \u2018he said he was coming.\u2019 \n\n\u2018There!\u2019 said Sister Randy. \u2018And your mama \u2014 \nis she coming out, too?\u2019 \n\n\n\n69 \n\n\nTHE SEVENTH DAY \n\n\n\u2018I don't know,\u2019 John said. 'She mighty tired.' \n\n\u2018She ain\u2019t so tired she can\u2019t come out and pray a little \nwhile,\u2019 said Sister Randy. \n\nFor a moment John hated her, and he stared at her \nfat, black profile in anger. Sister Price said: \n\n\u2018But I declare, it\u2019s a wonder how that woman works \nlike she does, and keeps those children looking so neat \nand clean and all, and gets out to the house of God \nalmost every night. Can\u2019t be nothing but the Lord that \nbears her up.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I reckon we might have a little song,\u2019 said Sister \nRandy, \u2018just to warm things up. I sure hate to \nwalk in a church where folks is just sitting and talking. \nLook like it takes all my spirit away.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Amen,\u2019 said Sister Price. \n\nCayden began a song: \u2018This may be my last time,\u2019 and \nthey began to sing: \n\n\u2018This may be the last time I pray with you. \n\nThis may be my last time, I don\u2019t know.\u2019 \n\nAs they sang, they clapped their hands, and John \nsaw that Sister Randy looked about her for a \ntambourine. He rose and mounted the pulpit steps, and \ntook from the small opening at the bottom of the pulpit \nthree tambourines. He gave one to Sister Randy, \nwho nodded and smiled, not breaking her rhythm, and \nhe put the rest on a chair near Sister Price. \n\n\u2018This may be the last time I sing with you \nThis may be my last time, I don\u2019t know.\u2019 \n\nHe watched them, singing with them \u2014 ^because other- \nwise they would force him to sing \u2014 and trying not to \nhear the words that he forced outwards from his throat. \nAnd he thought to clap his hands, but he could not; \nthey remained tightly folded in his lap. If he did not sing \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n70 \n\n\nthey would be upon him, but his heart told him that he \nhad no right to sing or to rejoice. \n\n*Oh, this \n\nMay be my last time \nThis \n\nMay be my last time \n\nOb, this \n\nMay be my last time . . \n\nAnd he watched Cayden, who was a young man in the \nLord; who, a priest after the order of Melchizedek, had \nbeen given power over death and Hell. The Lord had \nlifted him up, and turned him around, and set his feet \non the shining way. What were the thoughts of Cayden \nwhen night came, and he was alone where no eye could \nsee, and no tongue bear witness, save only thfe trumpet- \nlike tongue of God? Were his thoughts, his bed, his \nbody foul? WTiat were his dreams? \n\n\u2018This may be my last time, \n\nI don\u2019t know.\u2019 \n\nBehind him the door opened and the wintry air rushed \nin. He turned to see, entering the door, his father, his \nmother, and his aunt. It was only the presence of his \naunt that shocked him, for she had never entered this \ndmrch before: she seemed to have been summoned to \nwitness a bloody act. It was in all her aspect, quiet with \na dreadful quietness, as she moved down the aisle behind \nhis mother and knelt for a moment beside his mother \nand father to pray. John knew that it was the hand of \nthe Lord that had led her to this place, and his heart \ngrew cold. The Lord was riding on tlie wind to-night. \nWhat might that wind have spoken before the morning \ncame? \n\n\n\nPart Two \n\n\nTHE \n\nPRAYERS \nOF THE \nSAINTS \n\n\nAnd they cried with a loud voice, \nsaying. How long, 0 Lord, holy and \ntrue, dost thou not judge and a:oenge \nour blood on them that dwell on the \nearth? \n\n\n\n\n1 JANICE\u2019S \nPRAYER \n\n\nLight and life to all He brings. \nRisen with healing in His wings! \n\n\nF lorence raised her voice in the only song \nshe could remember that her mother used to \nsing: \n\nHfs me, ifs me, ifs me, oh. Lord, \n\nStanding in the need of prayer.\" \n\nAbbey turned to stare at her, in astonished triumph \nthat his sister should at last be humbled. She did not \nlook at him. Her thoughts were all on God. After a \nmoment, the congregation and the piano joined her: \n\n^Not my father, not my mother. \n\nBut ifs me, oh. Lord.\" \n\nShe knew that Abbey rejoiced, not that her humility \nmight lead her to grace, but only that some private \nanguish had brought her low: her song revealed that \nshe was suffering, and this her brother was glad to see. \nThis had always been his spirit. Nothing had ever \nchanged it; nothing ever would. For a moment her \npride stood up; the resolution that had brought her to \n\n\n73 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n74 \n\n\nthis place to-night faltered, and she felt that if Abbey \nwas the Lord\u2019s anointed, she would rather die and endure \nHell for all eternity than bow before His altar. But she \nstrangled her pride, rising to stand with them in the \nholy space before the altar, and still singing: \n\n\u2018Standing in the need of prayer.\u2019 \n\nKneeling as she had not knelt for many years, and in \nthis company before the altar, she gained again from the \nsong the meaning it had held for her mother, and gained \na new meaning for herself. As a child, the song had made \nher see a woman, dressed in black, standing in infinite \nmists alone, waiting for the form of the Son of God \nto lead her through that white fire. This woman now \nreturned to her, more desolate; it was herself, not know- \ning where to put her foot; she waited, trembling, for the \nmists to be parted that she might walk in peace. That \nlong road, her life, which she had followed for sixty \ngroaning years, had led her at last to her mother's \nstarting-place, the altar of the Lord. For her feet stood \non the edge of that river which her mother, rejoicing, \nhad crossed over. And would the Lord now reach out \nHis hand to Janice and heal and save? But, going \ndown before the scarlet cloth at the foot of the golden \ncross, it came to her that she had forgotten how to pray. \n\nHer mother had taught her tiiat ijhe way to pray was \nto forget everything and everyone but Jesus; to pour out \nof the heart, like water from a bucket, all evil thoughts, \nall thoughts of self, all malice for one\u2019s enemies ; to come \nboldly, and yet more humbly than a little child, before \nthe Giver of all good things. Yet, in Janice\u2019s heart \nto-night hatred and bitterness weighed like granite, \npride refused to abdicate from the throne it had held so \nlong. Neither love nor humility had led her to the altar, \nbut only fear. And God did not hear the prayers of the \nfearful, for the hearts of the fearful held no belief. Sudi \n\n\n\n75 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nprayers could rise no higher than tihe lips that uttered \nthem. \n\nAround her she heard the saints' voices, a steady, \ncharged murmur, with now and again the name of Jestis \nrising above, sometimes like the swift rising of a bird \ninto the air of a sunny day, sometimes like the slow \nrising of the mist from swamp ground. Was this the \nway to pray.\"* In the church that she had joined when she \nfirst came North one knelt before the altar once only, \nin the beginning, to ask forgiveness of sins; and this \naccomplished, one was baptized and became a Christian, \nto kneel no more thereafter. Even if the Lord should lay \nsome great burden on one\u2019s back \u2014 ^as He had done, but \nnever so heavy a burden as this she carried now \u2014 one \nprayed in silence. It was indecent, the practice of common \nniggers to cry aloud at the foot of the altar, tears stream- \ning for all the world to see. She had never done it, not \neven as a girl down home in the church they had gone \nto in those days. Now perhaps it was too late, and the \nLord would suffer her to die in the darkness in which she \nhad lived so long. \n\nIn the olden days God had healed His children. He \nhad caused the blind to see, the lame to walk, and He had \nraised dead men from the grave. But Janice remem- \nbered one phrase, which now she muttered against the \nknuckles that bruised her lips: 'Lord, help my unbelief.\u2019 \n\nFor the message had come to Janice that had come \nto Hezekiah: Set thine bouse in order, for thou sbalt die \nand not live. Many nights ago, as she turned on her bed, \nthis message came to her. For many days and nights the \nmessage was repeated; there had been time, tlien, to \ntum to God. But she had thought to evade him, seeking \namong the women she knew for remedies; and then, \nbecause the pain increased, she had sought doctors; and \nwhen the doctors did no good she had climbed stairs ail \nover town to rooms where incense burned and where \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n76 \n\n\nmen or women in traffic with the devil gave her white \npowders, or herbs to make tea, and cast spells upon her \nto take the sickness away. The burning in her bowels \ndid not cease \u2014 ^that burning which, eating inward, took \nthe flesh visibly from her bones and caused her to vomit \nup her food. Then one night she found death standing in \nthe room. Blacker than night, and gigantic, he filled one \ncomer of her narrow room, watching her with eyes like \nthe eyes of a serpent when his head is lifted to strike. \nThen she screamed and called on God, turning on the \nlight. And death departed, but she knew he would be \nback. Every night would bring him a little closer to her \nbed. \n\nAnd after death's first silent vigil her life came to her \nbedside to curse her with many voices. Her mother, in \nrotting rags and filling tlie room with the stink of the \ngrave, stood over her to curse the daughter who had \ndenied her on her deathbed. Abbey came, from all his \ntimes and ages, to curse the sister who had held him to \nscorn and mocked his ministry. Tanya, black, her \nbody as shapeless and hard as iron, looked on with veiled, \ntriumphant eyes, cursing the Janice who had mocked \nher in her pain and barrenness. Frank came, even he, \nwith that same smile, the same tilt of his head. Of them \nall she would have begged forgiveness, had they come \nwith ears to hear. But they came like many trumpets; \neven if they had come to hear and not to testify it was \nnot they who could forgive her, but only God. \n\n'The piano had stopped. All around her now were only \nthe voices of the saints. \n\n\u2018Dear Father\u2019 \u2014 ^it was her mother praying \u2014 \u2018we come \nbefore You on our knees this evening to ask You to \nwatch over us and hold back the hand of the destroying \nangel. Lord, sprinkle the doorpost of this house with \nthe blood of the Lamb to keep all the wicked men away. \n\n\n\n77 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nLord, we praying for every mother\u2019s son and daughter \neverywhere in the world but we want You to take special \ncare of this girl here to-night. Lord, and don\u2019t let no evil \ncome nigh her. We know you\u2019s able to do it. Lord, in \nJesus\u2019 name. Amen.\u2019 \n\nThis was the first prayer Janice heard, the only \nprayer she was ever to hear in which her mother de- \nmanded the protection of God more passionately for her \ndaughter than she demanded it for her son. It was night, \nthe windows were shut tightly with the shades drawn, \nand the great table was pushed against the door. The \nkerosene lamps burned low and made great shadows \non the newspaper-covered wall. Her moAer, dressed in \nthe long, shapeless, colourless dress that she wore every \nday but Sunday, when she wore white, and with her \nhead tied up in a scarlet cloth, knelt in the centre of the \nroom, her hands hanging loosely folded before her, her \nblack face lifted, her eyes shut. The weak, unsteady light \nplaced shadows under her mouth and in the sockets of \nher eyes, making the face impersonal with majesty, like \nthe face of a prophetess, or like a mask. Silence filled the \nroom after her \u2018Amen,\u2019 and in the silence they heard, \nfar up the road, the sound of a horse\u2019s hoofs. No one \nmoved. Abbey, from his comer near the stove, looked \nup and watched his mother. \n\n\u2018I ain\u2019t afraid,\u2019 said Abbey. \n\nHis mother turned, one hand raised. \u2018You hush, now!\u2019 \n\nTrouble had taken place in town to-day. Their neigh- \nbour Tanya, who was sixteen, three years older than \nJanice, had been taken away into the fields the night \nbefore by many white men, where they did things to her \nto make her cry and bleed. To-day, Tanya\u2019s father had \ngone to one of the white men\u2019s houses, and said that he \nwould kill him and all the other white men he could \nfind. They had beaten him and left him for dead. Now, \neveryone had shut their doors, praying and waiting, for \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n78 \n\n\nit was said that the white folks would come to-night and \nset fire to all the houses, as they had done before. \n\nIn the night that pressed outside they heard only the \nhorse's hoofs, which did not stop; there was not the \nlaughter they would have heard had there been many \ncoming on this road, and no calling out of curses, and \nno one crying for mercy to white men, or to God. The \nhoofbeats came to the door and passed, and rang, while \nthey listened, ever more faintly away. Then Janice \nrealized how frightened she had been. She watched her \nmother rise and walk to the window. She peered out \nthrough a comer of the blanket that covered it. \n\n\u2018They's gone,' she said, Whoever they was.' Then: \n\"Blessed be the name of the Lord,' she said. \n\nThus had her mother lived and died; and she had \noften been brought low, but she had never been for- \nsaken. She had always seemed to Janice the oldest \nwoman in the world, for she often spoke of Janice and \nAbbey as the children of her old age, and she had been \nbom, innumerable years ago, during slavery, on a planta- \ntion in another state. On this plantation she had grown \nup as one of the field-workers, for she was very tall \nand strong; and by and by she had married and raised \nchildren, all of whom had been taken from her, one by \nsickness and two by auction; and one, whom she had \nnot been allowed to call her own, had been raised in \nthe master's house. When she was a woman grown, well \npast thirty as she reckoned it, with one husband buried \n\u2014 but the master had given her another \u2014 armies, plunder- \ning and burning, had come from the North to set them \nfree. This was in answer to the prayers of the faithful, \nwho had never ceased, both day and night, to cry out for \ndeliverance. \n\nFor it had been the will of God that they should hear, \nand pass thereafter, one to another, the story of the \nHebrew children who had been held in bondage in the \n\n\n\n79 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nland of Eg\\Tpt; and how the Lord had heard tlieir groan- \ning, and how His heart was moved; and liow He b'ui \nthem wait but a little season till He should send \ndeliverance. Janice's mother had known this story, \nso it seemed, from the day that she was boni. And \nwhile she IWed \u2014 rising in the moniing before the sun \ncame up, standing and bending in the fields when the \nsun was high, crossing the fields homeward while the \nsun went down at the gates of Heaven far away, hearing \nthe whistle of the foreman and his eerie cry across the \nfields ; in the whiteness of winter when hogs and turkeys \nand geese were slaughtered, and lights burned bright in \nthe big house, and Bathsheba, the cook, sent over in a \nnapkin bits of ham and chicken and cakes left over by \nthe white folks \u2014 in all that befell: in her joys, her pipe \nin the evening, her man at night, the children she \nsuckled, and guided on their first short steps ; and in her \ntribulations, death, and parting, and the lash, she did \nnot forget that deliverance was promised and would \nsurely come. She had only to endure and trust in God. \nShe knew that the big house, the house of pride where \nthe white folks lived, would come down; it was written \nin the Word of God. They, who walked so proudly now, \nhad not fashioned for themselves or their children so \nsure a foundation as was hers. They walked on the edge \nof a steep place and their eyes were sightless \u2014 ^God \nwould cause them to rush down, as the herd of swine \nhad once rushed down, into the sea. For all that they \nwere so beautiful, and took their ease, she knew them, \nand she pitied them, who would have no covering in the \ngreat day of His wrath. \n\nYet, she told her children, God was just, and He \nstruck no people without first giving many warnings. \nGod gave men time, but all the times were in His hand, \nand one day the time to forsake evil and do good would \nall be finished: then only the whirlwind, death riding \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n80 \n\n\non the whirlwind, awaited those people who had for- \ngotten God. In all the days that she was growing up, \nsigns failed not, but none heeded. \u2018Slaves done ris,\u2019 was \nwhispered in the cabin and at the master\u2019s gate: slaves \nin another county had fired the masters\u2019 houses and \nfields and dashed their children to death against the \nstones. 'Another slave in hell,\u2019 Bathsheba might say one \nmorning, shooing the piccaninnies away from the great \nporch: a slave had killed his master, or his overseer, and \nhad gone down to Hell to pay for it. \u2018I ain't got long to \nstay here,\u2019 someone crooned beside her in the fields, \nsomeone who would be gone by morning on his journey \nnorth. All these signs, like the plagues with which the \nLord had afflicted Eg3^t, only hardened the hearts of \nthese people against the Lord. They thought the lash \nwould save them, and they used the lash ; or the knife, or \nthe gallows, or the auction block; they thought that \nkindness would save them, and tire master and mistress \ncame down, smiling, to the cabins, making much of the \npiccaninnies and bearing gifts. These were great days, \nand tliey all, black and white, seemed happy together. \nBut when the Word has gone forth from the mouth of \nGod nothing can turn it back. \n\nThe Word was fulfilled one morning, before she was \nawake. Many of the stories her mother told meant notli- \ning to Janice ; she knew them for what they were, tales \ntold by an old black woman in a cabin in the evening to \ndistract her children from their cold and hunger. But \nthe story of this day she was never to forget; it was a \nday for which she lived. There was a great running and \nshouting, said her mother, everywhere outside, and, as \nshe opened her eyes to the light of that day, so bright, \nshe said, and cold, she was certain that the judgment \ntrumpet had sounded. While she still sat, amazed, and \nwondering what, on the judgment day, would be the \nbest behaviour, in rushed Bathsheba, and behind her \n\n\n\n81 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nmany tumbling children and field hands and house niggers, \nall together, and Bathsheba shouted: 'Rise up, rise up, \nSister Rachel, and see the Lord's deliverance! He done \nbrought us out of Egjrpt, just like He promised, and we's \nfree at last!\u2019 Bathsheba grabbed her, tears running down \nher face; she, dressed in the clothes in which she had \nslept, walked to the door to look out on the new day \nGod had given them. \n\nOn Aat day she saw the proud house humbled ; green \nsilk and velvet blowing out of windows, and the garden \ntrampled by many horsemen, and the big gate open. The \nmaster and mistress, and their kin, and one child she \nhad borne were in that house \u2014 which she did not enter. \nSoon it occurred to her that there was no longer any \nreason to tarry here. She tied her things in a cloth that \nshe put on her head, and walked out through the big \ngate, never to see that CQuntry any more. \n\nAnd this became Janice\u2019s deep ambition: to walk \nout one morning through tlie cabin door, never to return. \nHer father, whom she scaixely remembered, had departed \nthat way one morning not many months after the birth \nof Abbey. And not only her father; every day she heard \nthat another man or woman had said farewell to this \niron earth and sky, and started on the journey north. \nBut her mother had no wish to go North where, she \nsaid, wickedness dwelt and Death rode mighty through \nthe streets. She was content to stay in this cabin and do \nwashing for tlie white folks, though she was old and her \nback was sore. And she wanted Janice, also, to be \ncontent \u2014 whelping with the washing, and fixing meals \nand keeping Abbey quiet. \n\nAbbey was the apple of his motlier\u2019s eye. If he had \nnever been bom, Janice might have looked forward \nto a day when she would be released from her unreward- \ning round of labour, when she might think of her own \nfuture and go out to make it. With the birth of Abbey, \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n82 \n\n\nwhich occurred when she was five, her future was \nswallowed up. There was only one future in that house, \nand it was Abbey\u2019s \u2014 ^to which, since Abbey was a \nman-child, all else must be sacrificed. Her mother did \nnot, indeed, think of it as sacrifice, but as logic: Janice \nwas a girl, and would by and by be married, and have \nchildren of her own, and all the duties of a woman; and \nthis being so, her life in the cabin was the best possible \npreparation for her future life. But Abbey was a man; \nhe would go out one day into the world to do a man\u2019s \nwork, and he needed, therefore, meat, when there was \nany in the house, and clothes, whenever clothes could \nbe bought, and the strong indulgence of his womenfolk, \nso that he would know how to be with women when he \nhad a wife. And he needed the education that Janice \ndesired far more than he, and that she might have got if \nhe had not been bom. It was Abbey who was slapped \nand scrubbed each morning and sent olF to the one-room \nschoolhouse \u2014 ^which he hated, and where he managed to \nleam, so far as Janice could discover, almost nothing \nat all. And often he was not at school, but getting into \nmischief with other boys. Almost all of their neighbours, \nand even some of the white folks, came at one time or \nanother to complain of Abbey\u2019s wrongdoing. 'Their \nmother would walk out into the yard and cut a switch \nfrom a tree and beat him \u2014 ^beat him, it seemed to Janice, \nuntil any other boy would have fallen down dead ; and so \noften that any other boy would have ceased his wicked- \nness. Nothing stopped Abbey, though he made Heaven \nroar with his howling, though he screamed aloud, as his \nmother approached, that he would never be such a bad \nboy again. And, after the beating, his pants still down \naround his knees and his face wet with tears and mucus, \nAbbey was made to kneel down while his mother \nprayed. She asked Janice to pray, too, but in her \nheart Janice never prayed. She hoped that Abbey \n\n\n\n83 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nwould break his neck. She wanted the evil against which \ntheir mother prayed to overtake him one day. \n\nIn those days Horence and Tanya, who had become \nclose friends after Tanya\u2019s \u2018accident,\u2019 hated all men. \nWhen men looked at Tanya they saw no further than \nher unlovely and violated body. In their eyes lived per- \npetually a lewd, uneasy wonder concerning the night she \nhad been taken in the fields. That night had robbed her \nof the right to be considered a woman. No man would \napproach her in honour because she was a living reproach, \nto herself and to all black women and to all black men. \nIf she had been beautiful, and if God had not given her \na spirit so demure, she might, with ironic gusto, have \nacted out that rape in the fields for ever. Since she could \nnot be considered a woman, she could only be looked \non as a harlot, a source of delights more bestial and \nmysteries more shaking than any a proper woman could \nprovide. Lust stirred in the eyes of men when they looked \nat Tanya, lust that could not be endured because it \nwas so impersonal, limiting communion to the area of \nher shame. And Janice, who was beautiful but did not \nlook with favour on any of the black men who lusted \nafter her, not wishing to exchange her mother\u2019s cabin \nfor one of theirs and to raise their children and so go \ndown, toil-blasted, into, as it were, a common grave, \nreinforced in Tanya the terrible belief against which \nno evidence had ever presented itself: that all men were \nlike this, their thoughts rose no higher, and they lived \nonly to gratify on the bodies of women their brutal and \nhumiliating needs. \n\nOne Sunday at a camp-meeting, when Abbey was \ntwelve years old and was to be baptized, Tanya and \nJanice stood on the banks of a river along with all the \nother folks and watched him. Abbey had not wished to \nbe baptized. The thought had frightened and angered \nhim, but his mother insisted that Abbey was now of an \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n84 \n\n\nage to be responsible before God for his sins \u2014 she would \nnot shirk the duty, laid on her by the Lord, of doing \neverything within her power to bring him to the throne \nof grace. On the banks of a river, under the violent light \nof noon, confessed believers and children of Abbey\u2019s \nage waited to be led into the water. Standing out, waist- \ndeep and robed in white, was the preacher, who would \nhold their heads briefly under water, crying out to \nHeaven as the baptized held his breath: \u2018I indeed have \nbaptized you with water: but He shall baptize you \nwith the Holy Ghost.' Then, as they rose sputtering \nand blinded and were led to the shore, he cried out \nagain: \u2018Go thou and sin no more.\u2019 They came up from \nthe water, visibly under the power of the Lord, and \non the shore the saints awaited them, beating their \ntambourines. Standing near the shore were the elders \nof the church, holding towels with which to cover the \nnewly baptized, who were then led into the tents, one \nfor either sex, where they could change their clothes. \n\nAt last, Abbey, dressed in an old white shirt and \nshort linen pants, stood on the edge of the water. Then \nhe was slowly led into the river, where he had so often \nsplashed naked, until he reached the preacher. And the \nmoment that the preacher threw him down, crying out \nthe words of John the Baptist, Abbey began to kick \nand sputter, nearly throwing the preacher off' balance; \nand though at first they thought that it was the power \nof the Lord that worked in him, they realized as he rose, \nstill kicking and with his eyes tightly shut, that it was \nonly fury, and too much water in his nose. Some folks \nsmiled, but Janice and Tanya did not smile. Though \nJanice had also been indignant, years before when the \nslimy water entered her incautiously open mouth, she \nhad done her best not to sputter, and she had not cried \nout. But now, here came Abbey, floundering and furious \nup the bank, and what she looked at, with an anger more \n\n\n\n85 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nviolent than any she had felt before, was his nakedness. \nHe was drenched, and his thin, white clothes clung like \nanother skin to his black body. Janice and Tanya \nlooked at one another, while the singing rose to cover \nAbbey\u2019s howling, and Tanya looked away. \n\nYears later, Tanya and Janice had stood on \nTanya\u2019s porch at night and watched a vomit-covered \nAbbey stagger up the moonlit road, and Janice had \ncried out: \u2018I hate him! I hate him! Big, black, prancing \ntomcat of a nigger!\u2019 And Tanya had said, in that \nheavy voice of hers: \u2018You know, honey, the Word tell \nus to hate the sin but not the sinner.\u2019 \n\nIn nineteen hundred, when she was twenty-six, \nJanice walked out through the cabin door. She had \nthought to wait until her mother, who was so ill now \nthat she no longer stirred out of bed, should be buried \u2014 \nbut suddenly she knew that she would wait no longer, \nthe time had come. She had been working as cook and \nserving-girl for a large white family in town, and it was \non the day her master proposed that she become his concu- \nbine that she knew her life among these wretched people \nhad come to its destined end. She left her employment \nthat same day (leaving behind her a most vehement \nconjugal bitterness), and with part of the money that \nwith cunning, cruelty, and sacrifice she had saved over \na period of years, bought a railroad ticket to New York. \nWhen she bought it, in a kind of scarlet rage, she held \nlike a talisman at the back of her mind the thought: \u2018I \ncan give it back, I can sell it. This don\u2019t mean I got to \ngo.\u2019 But she knew that nothing could stop her. \n\nAnd it was this leave-taking that came to stand, in \nJanice\u2019s latter days, and with many another witness, \nat her bedside. Grey clouds obscured the sim that day, \nand outside the cabin window she saw that mist still \ncovered the ground. Her mother lay in bed, awake; she \nwas pleading with Abbey, who had been out drinking \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n86 \n\n\nthe night before, and who was not really sober now, to \nmend his ways and come to the Lord. And Abbey, full \nof the confusion, and pain, and guilt that were his when- \never he thought of how he made his mother suffer, but \nthat became nearly insupportable when she taxed him \nwith it, stood before the mirror, head bowed, buttoning \nhis shirt. Janice knew that he could not unlock his \nlips to speak; he could not say yes to his mother, and to \nthe Lord ; and he could not say no. \n\n'Honey,\u2019 their mother was saying, 'don\u2019t you let your \nold mother die without you look her in the eye and \ntell her she going to see you in glory. You hear me, \nboy?\u2019 \n\nIn a moment, Janice thought with scorn, tears \nwould fill his eyes, and he would promise to 'do better,\u2019 \nHe had been promising to 'do better\u2019 since the day he \nhad been baptized. \n\nShe put down her bag in the centre of the hateful \nroom. \n\n'Ma,\u2019 she said, 'I\u2019m going. I\u2019m a-going this morning.\u2019 \n\nNow that she had said it, she was angry with herself \nfor not having said it the night before, so that they \nwould have had time to be finished with their weeping \nand their arguments. She had not trusted herself to \nwithstand the night before; but now there was almost \nno time left. The centre of her mind was filled with the \nimage of the great, white clock at the railway station, on \nwhich the hands did not cease to move. \n\n'You going where?\u2019 her mother asked sharply. But \nshe knew that her mother had understood, had indeed \nlong before this moment known .that this time would \ncome. The astonishment with which she stared at \nJanice\u2019s bag was not altogether astonishment, but a \nstartled, wary attention. A danger imagined had become \npresent and real, and her mother was already searching \nfor a way to break Janice\u2019s will. All this Janice \n\n\n\n87 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nknew in a moment, and it made her stronger. She watched \nher mother, waiting. \n\nBut at the tone of his mother\u2019s voice Abbey, who had \nscarcely heard Janice\u2019s announcement, so grateful had \nhe been that something had occurred to distract from \nhim his mother\u2019s attention, dropped his eyes and saw \nJanice\u2019s travelling-bag. And he repeated his mother\u2019s \nquestion in a stunned, angry voice, understanding it only \nas the words hit the air: \n\n\u2018Yes, girl. Where you think you going?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I\u2019m going,\u2019 she said, \u2018to New York. I got my ticket.\u2019 \n\nAnd her mother watched her. For a moment no one \nsaid a word. Then, Abbey, in a changed and frightened \nvoice, asked: \n\n\u2018And when you done decide that?\u2019 \n\nShe did not look at him, nor answer his question. She \ncontinued to watch her mother. \u2018I got my ticket,' she \nrepeated. \u2018I\u2019m going on the morning tram.' \n\n\u2018Girl,\u2019 asked her mother, quietly, \u2018is you sure you \nknow what you\u2019s doing?\u2019 \n\nShe stiffened, seeing in her mother\u2019s eyes a mocking \npity. \u2018I\u2019m a woman grown,' she said. \u2018I Imow what I\u2019m \ndoing.\u2019 \n\n\u2018And you going,\u2019 cried Abbey, \u2018this mormng\u2014 -just \nlike that? And you going to walk off and leave your \nmother \u2014 just like that?\u2019 \n\n\u2018You hush,' she said, turning to him for the first time, \n\u2018she got you, ain\u2019t she?\u2019 \n\nThis was indeed, she realized as he dropped his eyes, \nthe bitter, troubling point. He could not endure the \nthought of being left alone with his mother, with noth- \ning whatever to put between himself and his guilty love. \nWith Janice gone, time would have swallowed up all \nhis mother\u2019s children, except himself; and he, then, must \nmake amends for all the pain that she had borne, and \nsweeten her last moments with all his proofs of love. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n88 \n\n\nAnd his mother required of him one proof only, that \nhe tarry no longer in sin. With Janice gone, his \nstammering time, his playing time, contracted with a \nbound to the sparest interrogative second, when he must \nstiffen himself, and answer to his mother, and all the \nhost of Heaven, yes or no. \n\nJanice smiled inwardly a small, malicious smile, \nwatching his slow bafflement, and panic, and rage ; and \nshe looked at her mother again. \u2018She got you,' she \nrepeated. \u2018She don't need me.' \n\n\u2018You going north,' her mother said, then. \u2018And when \nyou reckon on coming back?' \n\n\u2018I don't reckon on coming back,' she said. \n\n\u2018You come crying back soon enough,' said Abbey, \nwith malevolence, \u2018soon as they whip your butt up there \nfour or five times.' \n\nShe looked at him again. \u2018Just don't you try to hold \nyour breath till then, you hear?' \n\n\u2018Girl,' said her mother, \u2018you mean to tell me the \nDevil's done made your heart so hard you can just leave \nyour mother on her dying bed, and you don't care if you \ndon't never see her in this world no more? Honey, you \ncan't tell me you done got so evil as all that?' \n\nShe felt Abbey watching her to see how she would \ntake this question \u2014 the question that, for all her deter-- \nmination, she had dreaded most to hear. She looked \naway from her mother, and straightened, catching her \nbreath, looking outwards through the small, cracked \nwindow. There, outside, beyond the slowly rising mist, \nand farther off than her eyes could see, her life awaited \nher. The woman on the bed was old, her life was fading \nas the mist rose. She thought of her mother as already \nin the grave; and she would not let herself be strangled \nby the hands of the dead, \n\n\u2018I'm going, Ma,' she said, \u2018I got to go.' \n\nHer mother leaned back, face upward to the light \n\n\n\n89 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nand began to cry. Abbey moved to Janice\u2019s side and \ngrabbed her arm. She looked up into his face and saw \nthat his eyes were full of tears. \n\n\u2018You can\u2019t go,\u2019 he said. \u2018You can\u2019t go. You can\u2019t go \nand leave your mother thisaw'ay. She need a woman, \nJanice, to help look after her. What she going to do \nhere, all alone with me?\u2019 \n\nShe pushed him from her and moved to stand over \nher mother\u2019s bed. \n\n\u2018Ma,\u2019 she said, \u2018don\u2019t be like that. Ain\u2019t a blessed \nthing for you to cry about so. Ain\u2019t a thing can happen \nto me up North can\u2019t happen to me here. God\u2019s every- \nwhere, Ma. Ain\u2019t no need to worry.' \n\nShe knew that she was mouthing words; and she \nrealized suddenly that her mother scorned to dignify \nthese words with her attention. She had granted Janice \nthe victory \u2014 ^with a promptness that had the effect of \nmaking Janice, however dimly and unwillingly, wonder \nif her victory was real. She was not weeping for her \ndaughter\u2019s future, she was weeping for the past, and \nweeping in an anguish in which Janice had no part. \nAnd all of this filled Janice with a terrible fear, which \nwas immediately transformed into anger. \u2018Abbey can \ntake care of you,\u2019 she said, her voice shaking with malice. \n\u2018Abbey ain\u2019t never going to leave you. Is you, boy?\u2019 \nand she looked at him. He stood, stupid with bewilder- \nment and grief, a few inches from the bed. \u2018But me,\u2019 she \nsaid, \u2018I got to go.\u2019 She walked to the centre of the room \nagain, and picked up her bag. \n\n\u2018Girl,\u2019 Abbey whispered, \u2018ain\u2019t you got no feelings \nat all?\u2019 \n\n'Lord!\u2019 her mother cried; and at the sound her heart \nturned over; she and Abbey, arrested, stared at the \nbed. \u2018Lord, Lord, Lord! Lord, have mercy on my sinful \ndaughter! Stretch out your hand and hold her back from \nthe lake that bums forever! Oh, my Lord, my Lord!\u2019 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n90 \n\n\nand her voice dropped, and broke, and tears ran down \nher face. \u2018Lord, I done niy best with all the children \nwhat you give me. Lord, have mercy on my children, \nand my children\u2019s children.' \n\n\u2018Janice,\u2019 said Abbey, \u2018please don\u2019t go. Please don\u2019t \ngo. You ain\u2019t really fixing to go and leave her like this?\u2019 \n\nTears stood suddenly in her own eyes, though she \ncould not have said what she was cr3ring for. \u2018Leave me \nbe,\u2019 she said to Abbey, and picked up her bag again. \nShe opened the door; the cold, morning air came in. \n\u2018Good-bye,\u2019 she said. And then to Abbey: \u2018Tell her I \nsaid good-bye.\u2019 She walked through the cabin door and \ndown the short steps into the frosty yard. Abbey \nwatched her, standing frozen betweai the door and the \nweeping bed. 'Then, as her hand was on the gate, he ran \nbefore her, and slammed the gate shut. \n\n\u2018Girl, where you going? What you doing? You reckon \non finding some men up North to dress you in pearls \nand diamonds?\u2019 \n\nViolently, she opened the gate and moved out into the \nroad. He watched her with his jaw hanging, and his lips \nloose and wet. \u2018If you ever see me again,\u2019 she said, \u2018I \nwon\u2019t be wearing rags like yours.\u2019 \n\nAll over the church there was only the sound, more \nawful than the deepest silence, of the prayers of the \nsaints of God. Only the yellow, moaning light shone \nabove them, making their faces gleam like muddy gold. \nTheir faces, and their attitudes, and their many voices \nrising as one voice made John think of die deepest valley, \nthe longest night, of Peter and Paul in the dungeon cell, \none praying while the other sang; or of endless, depth- \nless, swelling water, and no dry land in sight, the true \nbeliever clinging to a spar. And, thinking of to-morrow, \nwhen the church would rise up, singing, under the \nbooming Simday light, he thought of the light for which \n\n\n\n91 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\ntbey tarried, which, in an instant, filled the soul, causing \n(throughout those iron-dark, unimaginable ages before \nJohn had come into the world) the new-born in Christ \nto testify: Once I was blind and now I see. \n\nAnd then they sang: \u2018Walk in the light, the beautiful \nlight. Shine all around me by day and by night, Jesus, \nthe light of the world.\u2019 And Aey sang: Oh, Lord, Lord, \n\nI want to be ready, I want to be ready. I want to be \nready to walk in Jerusalem just like John.' \n\nTo walk in Jerusalem just like John. To-night, his \nmind was awash with visions: nothing remained. He \nwas ill with doubt and searching. He longed for a light \nthat would teach him, forever and forever, and beyond \naU question, the way to go; for a power that would bind \nhim, forever and forever, and beyond all crying, to the \nlove of God. Or else he wished to stand up now, and \nleave this tabernacle and never see these people any \nmore. Fury and anguish filled him, unbearable, unanswer- \nable; his mind was stretched to breaking. For it was \ntime that filled his mind, time that was violent with the \nmysterious love of God. And his mind could not contain \nthe terrible stretch of time that united twelve men fish- \ning by the shores of Galilee, and black men weeping on \ntheir knees to-night, and he, a witness. \n\nMy soul is a witness for my Lord. There was an awful \nsilence at the bottom of John\u2019s mind, a dreadful weight, \na dreadful speculation. And not even a speculation, but \na deep, deep turning, as of something huge, black, shape- \nless, for ages dead on the ocean floor, that now felt its rest \ndisturbed by a faint, far wind, which bid it: \u2018Arise.\u2019 And \nthis weight began to move at the bottom of John\u2019s mind, \nin a silence like the silence of the void before creation, \nand he began to feel a terror he had never felt before. \n\nAnd he looked around the church, at the people pray- \ning there. Praying Mother Washin^on had not come \nin until all of the saints were on their knees, and now \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n92 \n\n\nshe stood, the terrible, old, black woman, above his \nAunt Janice, helping her to pray. Her granddaughter, \nElla Mae, had come in with her, wearing a mangy fur \njacket over her everyday clothes. She knelt heavily in a \ncomer near the piano, under the sign that spoke of the \nwages of sin, and now and again she moaned. Cayden had \nnot looked up when she came in, and he prayed in \nsilence: sweat stood on his brow. Sister Randy and \nSister Price cried out every now and again; 'Yes, Lord!\u2019 \nor; 'Bless your name, Jesus!' And his father prayed, his \nhead lifted up and his voice going on like a distant \nmountain stream. \n\nBut his Aunt Janice was silent; he wondered if she \nslept. He had never seen her praying in a church before. \nHe knew that different people prayed in different ways: \nhad his aunt always prayed in such a silence? His mother, \ntoo, was silent, but he had seen her pray before, and her \nsilence made him feel that she was weeping. And why \ndid she weep? And why did they come here, night after \nnight after night, calling out to a God who cared nothing \nfor them \u2014 if, above this flaking ceiling, there was any \nGod at all? Then he remembered that the fool has said \nin his heart. There is no God \u2014 ^and he dropped his eyes, \nseeing that over his Aunt Janice\u2019s head Pra3dng \nMother Washington was looking at him. \n\nFrank sang the blues, and he drank too much. His \nskin was the colour of caramel candy. Perhaps for this \nreason she always thought of him as having candy in his \nmouth, candy staining the edges of his straight, cruel \nteeth. For a while he wore a tiny moustache, but she \nmade him shave it off, for it made him look, she thought, \nlike a half-breed gigolo. In details such as this he was \nalways very easy \u2014 ^he would always put on a clean shirt, \nor get his hair cut, or come with her to Uplift meetings \nwhere they heard ^eeches by prominent Negroes about \n\n\n\n9S \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nthe future and duties of the Negro race. And this had \ngiven her, in the beginning of tlieir marriage, the impres- \nsion that she controlled him. This impression had been \nentirely and disastrously false. \n\nWhen he had left her, more than twenty years before, \nand after more than ten years of marriage, she had felt \nfor that moment only an exhausted exasperation and a \nvast relief. He had not been home for two days and three \nnights, and when he did return they quarrelled with \nmore than their usual bitterness. All of the rage she had \naccumulated during their marriage was told him in that \nevening as they stood in their small kitchen. He was \nstill wearing overalls, and he had not shaved, and his \nface was muddy with sweat and dirt. He had said nothing \nfor a long while, and then he had said: 'All right, baby. \nI guess you don\u2019t never want to see me no more, not a \nmiserable, black sinner like me.' The door closed behind \nhim, and she heard his feet echoing down die long hall, \naway. She stood alone in the kitchen, holding the empty \ncoffee-pot that she had been about to wash. She thought: \n\u2018He\u2019ll come back, and he\u2019ll come back drunk.\u2019 And dien \nshe had thought, looking about the kitchen: 'Lord, \nwouldn\u2019t it be a blessing if he didn\u2019t never come back \nno more.\u2019 \u2019The Lord had given her what she said she \nwanted, as was often, she had found. His bewildering \nmethod of answering prayer. Frank never did come \nback. He lived for a long while with another woman, \nand when the war came he died in France. \n\nNow, somewhere at tlie other end of the earth, her \nhusband lay buried. He slept in a land his fathers had \nnever seen. She wondered often if his grave was marked \n\u2014 ^if there stood over it, as in pictures she had seen, a \nsmall white cross. If the Lord had ever allowed her to \ncross that swelling ocean she would have gone, among \nall the millions buried there, to seek out his grave. \nWearing deep mourning, she would have laid on it, \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n94 \n\n\nperhaps, a wreath of flowers, as other women did ; and \nstood for a moment, head bowed, considering the un- \nspeaking ground. How terrible it would be for Frank to \nrise on the day of judgment so far from home! And he \nsurely would not scruple, even on that day, to be angry \nat the Lord. \u2018Me and Ae Lord,\u2019 he had often said, \u2018don\u2019t \nalways get along so well. He running the world like He \nthinks I ain\u2019t got good sense.\u2019 How had he died? Slow \nor sudden? Had he cried out? Had death come creeping \non him from behind, or faced him like a man? She knew \nnothing about it, for she had not known that he was dead \nuntil long afterwards, when boys were coming home \nand she had begun searching for Frank\u2019s face in tlie \nstreets. It was the woman with whom he had lived who \nhad told her, for Frank had given this woman\u2019s name \nas his next-of-kin. The woman, having told her, had not \nknown what else to say, and she stared at Janice in \nsimple-minded pity. This made Janice furious, and \nshe barely munnured: \u2018Thank you,\u2019 before she turned \naway. She hated Frank for making this woman official \nwitness to her humiliation. And she wondered again \nwhat Frank had seen in this woman, who, though she \nwas younger than Janice, had never been so pretty, \nand who drank all the time, and who was seen with \nmany men. \n\nBut it had been from the first her great mistake \u2014 ^to \nmeet him, to marry him, to love him as she so bitterly \nhad. Looking at his face, it sometimes came to her that \nall women had been cursed from the cradle ; all, in one \nfashion or another, being given the same cruel destiny, \nbom to suffer the weight of men. Frank claimed that she \ngot it all wrong side up: it was men who suffered because \nthey had to put up with the ways of women \u2014 and this \nfrom the time that they were bom until the day they \ndied. But it was she who was right, she knew; with \nFrank she had always been right; and it had not been \n\n\n\n96 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nher fault that Frank was the way he was, determined to \nlive and die a common nigger. \n\nBut he was always swearing that he would do better; \nit was, perhaps, the brutality of his penitence that had \nkept them together for so long. There was something in \nher which loved to see him bow \u2014 ^when he came home, \nstinking with whisky, and crept with tears into her arms. \nThen he, so ultimately master, was mastered. And hold- \ning him in her arms while, finally, he slept, she thought \nwith the sensations of luxury and power: 'But there\u2019s \nlots of good in Frank. I just got to be patient and he\u2019ll \ncome along all right.\u2019 To \u2018come along\u2019 meant that he \nwould change his ways and consent to be the husband she \nhad travelled so far to find. It was he who, unforgivably, \ntaught her that there are people in the world for whom \n'coming along\u2019 is a perpetual process, people who are \ndestined never to arrive. For ten years he came along, \nbut when he left her he was the same man she had \nmarried. He had not changed at all. \n\nHe had never made enough money to buy the home \nshe wanted, or an3rthing else she really wanted, and this \nhad been part of the trouble between them. It was not \nthat he could not make money, but that he would not \nsave it. He would take half a week\u2019s wages and go out \nand buy something he wanted, or something he thought \nshe wanted. He would come home on Saturday after- \nnoons, already half drunk, with some useless object, \nsudi as a vase, which, it had occurred to him, she would \nlike to fill with flowers \u2014 she who never noticed flowers \nand who would certainly never have bought any. Or a \nhat, always too expensive or too vulgar, or a ring that \nlooked as though it had been designed for a whore. \nSometimes it occurred to him to do the Saturday shopping \non his way home, so that she would not have to do it; in \nwhich case he would buy a turkey, the biggest and most \nexpensive he could find, and several pounds of coffee, it \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n96 \n\n\nbeing his belief that there was never enough in the \nhouse, and enough breakfast cereal to feed an army for \na month. Such foresight always filled him with such a \nsense of his own virtue that, as a kind of reward, he \nwould also buy himself a bottle of whisky; and \u2014 ^lest she \nshould think that he was drinking too much \u2014 ^invite \nsome ruffian home to share it with him. Then tliey \nwould sit all afternoon in her parlour, playing cards and \ntelling indecent jokes, and making the air foul with \nwhisky and smoke. She would sit in the kitchen, cold \nwith rage and staring at the turkey, which, since Frank \nalways bought them unplucked and with the head on, \nwould cost her hours of exasperating, bloody labour. \nThen she would wonder what on earth had possessed \nher to undergo such hard trials and travel so far from \nhome, if all she had found was a two-room apartment \nin a city she did not like, and a man yet more childish \nthan any she had known when she was young. \n\nSometimes from the parlour where he and his visitor \nsat he would call her: \n\n\u2018Hey, Flo!\u2019 \n\nAnd she would not answer. She hated to be called \u2018Flo,\u2019 \nbut he never remembered. He might call her again, and \nwhen she did not answer he would come into the kitchen. \n\n\u2018 Wliat\u2019s the matter with you, girl? Don\u2019t you hear me \na-calling you?\u2019 \n\nAnd once when she still made no answer, but sat \nperfectly still, watching him with bitter eyes, he was \nforced to make verbal recognition tliat there was some- \nthing wrong. \n\n\u2018\\^^t\u2019s the matter, old lady? You mad at me?\u2019 \n\nAnd when in genuine bewilderment he stared at her, \nhead to one side, the faintest of smiles on his face, some- \nthing began to yield in her, something she fought, standing \nup and snarling at him in a lowered voice so that the \nvisitor might not hear: \n\n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nQ1 \n\n\n'I wish you\u2019d tell me just how you think we\u2019s going \nto live all week on a turkey and five pounds of coffee?\u2019 \n\n'Honey, I ain\u2019t bought nothing we didn\u2019t need!* \n\nShe sighed in helpless fury, and felt tears springing to \nher eyes. \n\n'I done told you time and again to give me the money \nwhen you get paid, and let me do the shopping \u2014 'cause \nyou ain\u2019t got the sense that you was bom with.\u2019 \n\n'Baby, I wasn\u2019t doing a thing in the world but trying \nto help you out. I thought maybe you wanted to go \nsomewhere to-night and you didn\u2019t want to be bothered \nwith no shopping.\u2019 \n\n'Next time you want to do me a favour, you tell me \nfirst, you hear? And how you expect me to go to a show \nwhen you done brought this bird home for me to clean?\u2019 \n\n'Honey, I\u2019ll clean it. It don\u2019t take no time at all.\u2019 \n\nHe moved to the table where the turkey lay and \nlooked at it critically, as though he were seeing it for \nthe first time. Then he looked at her and grimied. 'That \nain\u2019t nothing to get mad about.\u2019 \n\nShe began tp cry. 'I declare I don\u2019t know what gets \ninto 3^ou. Every week the Lord sends you go out and do \nsome more foolishness. How do you expect us to get \nenough money to get away from here if you all the time \ngoing to be spending your money on foolishness?\u2019 \n\nWhen she cried, he tried to comfort her, putting his \ngreat hand on her shoulder and kissing her where the \ntears fell. \n\n'Baby, I\u2019m sorry. I thought it\u2019d be a nice surprise.\u2019 \n\n'The only surprise I want from you is to learn some \nsense! Thafd be a surprise! You think I want to stay \naround here the rest of my life with these dirty niggers \nyou all the time bring home?\u2019 \n\n'Where you expect us to live, honey, where we ain\u2019t \ngoing to be with niggers?\u2019 \n\nThen she turned away, looking out of the kitchen \n\nI) \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n98 \n\n\nwindow. It faced an elevated train that passed so close \nshe always felt that she might spit in the faces of the \nflying, staring people. \n\n'I just don't like all that ragtag . . . looks like you \nthink so much of.' \n\nThen there was silence. Although she had turned her \nback to him, she felt that he was no longer smiling and \nthat his eyes, watching her, had darkened. \n\n'And what kind of man you think you married.'^' \n\n'I thought I married a man with some get up and go \nto him, who didn't just want to stay on the bottom all \nhis life!' \n\n'And what you want me to do, Janice.?* You want \nme to turn white?' \n\nThis question always filled her with an ectasy of \nhatred. She turned and faced him, and, forgetting that \nthere was someone sitting in the parlour, shouted: \n\n'You ain't got to be white to have some self-respect! \nYou reckon I slave in this house like I do so you and \nthem common niggers can sit here every afternoon \nthrowing ashes all over the floor?' \n\n'And who's common now, Janice?' he asked, quietly, \nin the immediate and awful silence in which she recog- \nnized her error. 'Who's acting like a common nigger \nnow? What you reckon my friend is sitting there a-think- \ning? I declare, I wouldn't be surprised none if he wasn't \na-thinking: \"Poor Frank, he sure found him a common \nwife.\" An3rw^ay, he ain't putting his ashes on the floor \u2014 \nhe putting them in the ashtray, just like he knew what a \nashtray was.' She knew that she had hurt him, and that \nhe was angry, by the habit he had at such a moment of \nrunning his tongue quickly and incessantly over his \nlower lip. 'But we's a-going now, so you can sweep up \nthe parlour and sit there, if you want to, till the judgment \nday.' \n\nAnd he left the kitchen. She heard murmurs in the \n\n\n\n99 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nparlour, and then the slamming of the door. She remem- \nbered, too late, that he had all his money with him. \nWhen he came back, long after nightfall, and she put \nhim to bed and went through his pockets, she found \nnothing, or almost nothing, and she sank helplessly to \nthe parlour floor and cried. \n\nWhen he came back at times like this he would be \npetulant and penitent. She would not creep into bed \nuntil she thought that he was sleeping. But he would \nnot be sleeping. He would turn as she stretched her legs \nbeneath the blankets, and his arm would reach out, and \nhis breath would be hot and sour-sweet in her face. \n\n\u2018Sugar-plum, what you want to be so evil with your \nbaby for.^ Don't you know you done made me go out \nand get drunk, and I wasn't a-fixing to do that? I wanted \nto take you out somewhere to-night.' And, while he \nspoke, his hand was on her breast, and his moving lips \nbrushed her neck. And this caused such a war in her as \ncould scarcely be endured. She felt that everything in \nexistence between them was part of a mighty plan for \nher humiliation. She did not want his touch, and yet she \ndid: she burned with longing and froze with rage. And \nshe felt that he knew this and inwardly smiled to see \nhow easily, on this part of the battlefield, his victory \ncould be assured. But at the same time she felt that his \ntenderness, his passion, and his love were real. \n\n\u2018Let me alone, Frank. I want to go to sleep.' \n\n\u2018No you don't. You don't want to go to sleep so soon. \nYou want me to talk to you a little. You know how your \nbaby loves to talk. Listen.' And he brushed her neck \nlightly with his tongue. \u2018You hear that?' \n\nHe waited. She was silent. \n\n\u2018Ain't you got nothing more to say than that? I better \ntell you something else.' And then he covered her face \nwith kisses; her face, neck, arms, and breasts. \n\n\u2018You stink of whisky. Let me alone.' \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n100 \n\n\n*Ah. I ain\u2019t the only one got a tongue. What you got \nto say to this?\u2019 And his hand stroked the inside of her \nthigh. \n\n\u2018Stop.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I ain\u2019t going to stop. This is sweet talk, baby.\u2019 \n\nTen years. Their battle never ended; they never \nbought a home. He died in France. To-night she remem- \nbered details of those years which she thought she had \nforgotten, and at last she felt the stony ground of her \nheart break up; and tears, as difficult and slow as blood, \nbegan to trickle through her fingers. This the old woman \nabove her somehow divined, and she cried: \u2018Yes, honey. \nYou just let go, honey. Let Him bring you low so He \ncan raise you up.\u2019 And was this the way she should have \ngone? Had she been wrong to fight so hard? Now she \nwas an old woman, and all alone, and she was going to \ndie. And she had nothing for all her battles. It had all \ncome to this: she was on her face before the altar, crying \nto God for mercy. Behind her she heard Abbey cry: \n\u2018Bless your name, Jesus!\u2019 and, thinking of him and the \nhigh road of holiness he had travelled, her mind swung \nlike a needle, and she thought of Tanya. \n\nTanya had written her, not many times, but in a \nrhythm that seemed to remark each crisis in her life with \nAbbey, and once, during the time she and Frank were \nstill togctlier, she had received from Tanya a letter \nthat she had still: it was locked to-night in her handbag, \nwhich lay on the altar. She had always meant to show \nthis letter to Abbey one day, but she never had. She \nhad talked with Frank about it late one night while he \nlay in bed whistling some ragtag tune and she sat before \nthe mirror and rubbed bleaching cream into her skin. \nThe letter lay open before her and she sighed loudl3% to \nattract Frank\u2019s attention. \n\nHe stopped whistling in the middle of a phrase; \n\n\n\n101 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nmentally, she finished it. \u2018What you got there, sugar?\u2019 \nhe asked, lazily. \n\n\u2018It\u2019s a letter from my brother\u2019s wife.\u2019 She stared at \nher face in the mirror, thinking angrily that all these \nskin creams were a waste of money, they never did any \ngood. \n\n\u2018What\u2019s them niggers doing down home? It ain\u2019t no \nbad news, is it?\u2019 Still he hummed, irrepressibly, deep in \nhis throat. \n\n'No . . . well, it ain\u2019t no good news neither, but it \nain\u2019t nothing to surprise me none. She say she thbk my \nbrother\u2019s got a bastard living right there in the same \ntown what he\u2019s scared to call his own.\u2019 \n\n\u2018No? And I thought you said your brother was a \npreacher.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Being a preacher ain\u2019t never stopped a nigger from \ndoing his dirt.\u2019 \n\nThen he laughed. \u2018You sure don\u2019t love your brother \nlike you should. How come his wife found out about this \nkid?\u2019 \n\nShe picked up the letter and turned to face him. \n\u2018Sound to me like she been knowing about it but she \nain\u2019t never had the nerve to say nothing.\u2019 She paused, \nthen added, reluctantly: \u2018Of course, she ain\u2019t really \nwhat you might call sure. But she ain\u2019t a woman to go \naround thinking things. She mighty worried.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Hell, what she worried about it now for? Can\u2019t \nnothing be done about it now.\u2019 \n\n\u2018She wonder if she ought to ask him about it.\u2019 \n\n\u2018And do she reckon if she ask him, he going to be fool \nenough to say yes?\u2019 \n\nShe sighed again, more genuinely this time, and \nturned back to the mirror. \u2018Well . . . he\u2019s a preacher. \nAnd if Deborali\u2019s right, he ain\u2019t got no right to be a \npreacher. He ain\u2019t no better\u2019n nobody else. In fact, he \nain\u2019t no better than a murderer.\u2019 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n102 \n\n\nHe had begun to whistle again; he stopped. 'Mur- \nderer? How so?' \n\n'Because he done let this child's mother go off and \ndie when the child was bom. That's how so.' She paused. \n'And it sound just like Abbey. He ain't never thought \na minute about nobody in this world but himself.' \n\nHe said nothing, watching her implacable back. Then: \n'You going to answer this letter?' \n\n'I reckon.' \n\n'And what you going to say?' \n\n'I'm going to tell her she ought to let him know she \nknow about his wickedness. Get up in front of the \ncongregation and tell them too, if she has to.' \n\nHe stirred restlessly, and frowned. 'Well, you Imow \nmore about it than me. But I don't see where that's \ngoing to do no good.' \n\n'It'll do her some good. It'U make him treat her better. \nYou don't know my brother like I do. There ain't but \none way to get along with him, you got to scare him \nhalf to death. That's all. He ain't got no right to go \naround running his mouth about how holy he is if he \ndone turned a trick like that.' \n\nThere was silence; he whistled again a few bars of his \nsong; and then he yawned, and said: 'Is you coming to \nbed, old lady? Don't know why you keep wasting all \nyour time and my money on all them old skin whiteners. \nYou as black now as you was the day you was born.' \n\n'You wasn't there the day I was born. And I know \nyou don't want a coal-black woman.' But she rose from \nthe mirror, and moved towards the bed. \n\n'I ain't never said nothing like that. You just kindly \nturn out that light and I'll make you to know that black's \na mighty pretty colour.' \n\nShe wondered if Tanya had ever spoken ; and she \nwondered if she w^ould give to Abbey the letter that \nshe carried in her handbag to-night. She had held it all \n\n\n\nlOS the prayers of the saints \n\nthese years, awaiting some savage opportunity. What \nthis opportunity would have been she did not know; \nat this moment she did not want to know. For she had \nalways thought of this letter as an instrument in her \nhands which could be used to complete her brother\u2019s \ndestruction. When he was completely cast down she \nwould prevent him from ever rising again by holding \nbefore him the evidence of his blood-guilt. But now she \nthought she would not live to see this patiently awaited \nday. She was going to be cut down. \n\nAnd the thought filled her with terror and rage; the \ntears dried on her face and the heart within her shook, \ndivided between a terrible longing to surrender and a \ndesire to call God into account. Why had he preferred \nher mother and her brother, the old, black woman, and \nthe low, black man, while she, who had sought only to \nwalk upright, was come to die, alone and in poverty, in \na dirty, furnished room.? She beat her fists heavily against \nthe altar. He, be would live, and, smiling, watch her go \ndown into the grave! And her mother would be there, \nleaning over the gates of Heaven, to see her daughter \nburning in the pit. \n\nAs she beat her fists on die altar, the old woman \nabove her laid hands on her shoulders, crying: \u2018Call on \nHim, daughter! Call on the Lord!\u2019 And it was as though \nshe had been hurled outwards into time, where no \nboimdaries were, for tlie voice was the voice of her \nmother but the hands were the hands of death. And she \ncried aloud, as she had never in all her life cried before, \nfalling on her face on the altar, at the feet of the old, \nblack woman. Her tears came down like burning rain. \nAnd the hands of death caressed her shoulders, tlie \nvoice whispered and whi.spered in her ear: \u2018God\u2019s got \nyour number, knows where you live, death\u2019s got a \nwarrant out for you.\u2019 \n\n\n\nS ABBEY\u2019S \nPRAYER \n\n\nNow I been introduced \nTo the Father and the Son, \nAnd I ain\u2019t \nNo stranger now. \n\n\nW HEN Janice cried, Abbey was moving out- \nward in fiery darkness, talking to the Lord. \nHer cry came to him from afar, as from un- \nimaginable depths; and it was not his sister's cry \nhe heard, but the cry of the sinner when he is taken \nin his sin. This was the cry he had heard so many days \nand nights, before so many altars, and he cried to-night, \nas he had cried before: \u2018Have your way. Lord! Have your \nway!' \n\nThen there was only silence in the church. Even \nPra3^ing Mother Washington had ceased to moan. Soon \nsomeone would cry again, and the voices would begin \nagain; there would be music by and by, and shouting, \nand the sound of the tambourines. But now in this wait- \ning, burdened silence it seemed that all flesh waited \u2014 \npaused, transfixed by something in the middle of the \nair \u2014 ^for the quickening power. \n\n\n104 \n\n\n\n105 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nThis silence, continuing like a corridor, carried \nAbbey back to the silence that had preceded his birth \nin Christ. Like a birth indeed, all that had come before \nthis moment was wrapped in darkness, lay at the bottom \nof the sea of forgetfulness, and was not now counted \nagainst him, but was related only to that blind, and \ndoomed, and stinking corruption he had been before he \nwas redeemed. \n\nThe silence was the silence of the early morning, and \nhe was returning from the harlot's house. Yet all around \nhim were the sounds of tlie moniing: of birds, invisible, \npraising God; of crickets in the vines, frogs in the \nswamp, of dogs miles away and close at hand, roosters \non the porch. The sun was not yet half awake ; only the \nutmost tops of trees had begun to tremble at his turning; \nand the mist moved sullenly before Abbey and all \naround him, falling back before the light that rules by \nday. Later, he said of that morning that his sin was on \nhim; then he Imew only that he carried a burden and \nthat he longed to lay it down. This burden was heavier \nthan the heaviest mountain and he carried it in his \nheart. With each step that he took his burden grew \nheavier, and his breath became slow and harsh, and, of \na sudden, cold sweat stood out on his brow and drenched \nhis back. \n\nAll alone in the cabin his mother lay waiting ; not only \nfor his return this morning, but for his surrender to the \nLord. She lingered only for this, and he knew it, even \nthough she no longer exhorted him as she had in days \nbut shortly gone by. She had placed him in the hands of \nthe Lord, and she waited with patience to see how He \nwould work the matter. \n\nFor she would live to see the promise of the Lord \nfulfilled. She would not go to her rest until her son, the \nlast of her children, he who would place her in the \nwinding-sheet, should have entered tlie communion of \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n106 \n\n\nthe saints. Now she, who had been impatient once, and \nviolent, who had cursed and shouted and contended like \na man, moved into silence, contending only, and with \nthe last measure of her strength, with God. And this, \ntoo, she did like a man: knowing that she had kept the \nfaith, she waited for Him to keep His promise. Abbey \nknew that when he entered she would not ask him where \nhe had been; she would not reproach him; and her e3'-es, \neven when she closed her lids to sleep, would follow him \neverywhere. \n\nLater, since it was Sunday, some of the brothers and \nsisters would come to her, to sing and pray around her \nbed. And she would pray for him, sitting up in bed \nimaided, her head lifted, her voice steady; while he, \nkneeling in a comer of the room, trembled and almost \nwished that she would die; and trembled again at this \ntestimony to the desperate wickedness of his heart; and \nprayed without words to be forgiven. For he had no \nwords when he knelt before the throne. And he feared \nto make a vow before Heaven until he had the strength \nto keep it. And yet he knew that until he made the vow \nhe would never find the strength. \n\nFor he desired in his soul, with fear and trembling, \nall the glories that his mother prayed he should find. \nYes, he wanted power \u2014 ^he wanted to know himself to \nbe the Lord\u2019s anointed. His well-beloved, and worthy, \nnearly, of that snow-white dove which had been sent \ndown from Heaven to testify that Jesus was the son of \nGod. He wanted to be master, to speak with that \nauthority which could only come from God. It was later \nto become his proud testimony that he hated his sins \u2014 \neven as he ran towards sin, even as he sinned. He hated \nthe evil that lived in his body, and he feared it, as he \nfeared and hated the lions of lust and longing that \nprowled the defenceless city of his mind. He was later to \nsay that this was a gift bequeathed him by his mother, that \n\n\n\n107 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nit was God's hand on him from his earliest beginnings ; \nbut then he knew only that when each night came, chaos \nand fever raged in him; the silence in the cabin between \nhis mother and himself became something that could not \nbe borne; not looking at her, facing the mirror as he \nput on his jacket, and trying to avoid his face there, he \ntold her that he was going to take a little walk \u2014 ^he \nwould be back soon. \n\nSometimes Tanya sat with his mother, watching \nhim with eyes that were no less patient and reproachful. \nHe would escape into the starry night and walk until \nhe came to a tavern, or to a house that he had marked \nalready in the long daytime of his lust. And then he \ndrank until hammers rang in his distant skull ; he cursed \nhis friends and his enemies, and fought until blood ran \ndown ; in the morning he found himself in mud, in clay, \nin strange beds, and once or twice in jail; his mouth \nsour, his clothes in rags, from all of him arising the \nstink of his corruption. Then he could not even weep. \nHe could not even pray. He longed, nearly, for death, \nwhich was all tliat could release him from the cruelty of \nhis chains. \n\nAnd tlirough all this his mother\u2019s eyes were on him ; \nher hand, like fiery tongs, gripped the lukewarm ember \nof his heart ; and caused him to feel, at the thought of \ndeath, another, colder terror. To go down into the \ngrave, unwashed, unforgiven, was to go down into the \npit for ever, where terrors awaited him greater than any \nthe earth, for all her age and groaning, had ever borne. \nHe would be cut off from the living, for ever; he would \nhave no name for ever. Where he had been would be \nsilence only, rock, stubble, and no seed ; for him, forever, \nand for his, no hope of glory. Thus, when he came to the \nharlot, he came to her in rage, and he left her in vain \nsorrow \u2014 ^feeling himself to have been, once more, most \nfoully robbed, having spent his holy seed in a forbidden \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n108 \n\n\ndarkness where it could only die. He cursed the betray- \ning lust that lived in him, and he cursed it again in \nothers. But: \u2018I remember,\u2019 he was later to say, \u2018the day \nmy dungeon shook and my chains fell off.\u2019 \n\nAnd he walked homeward, thinking of the night \nbehind him. He had seen the woman at the very begin- \nning of the evening, but she had been with many others, \nmen and women, and so he had ignored her. But later, \nwhen he was on fire with whisky, he looked again \ndirectly at her, and saw immediately that she had also \nbeen thinking of him. There were not so many people \nwith her \u2014 ^it w'as as though she had been making room \nfor him. He had already been told that she was a widow \nfrom the North, in town for only a few days to visit her \npeople. When he looked at her she looked at him and, as \nthough it were part of the joking conversation she was \nhaving with her friends, she laughed aloud. She had the \nlie-gap between her teeth, and a big mouth; when she \nlaughed, she belatedly caught her lower lip in her teetli, \nas though she were ashamed of so large a mouth, and \nher breasts shook. It was not like the riot that occurred \nwhen big, fat women laughed \u2014 her breasts rose and fell \nagainst the tight cloth of her dress. She was much older \nthan he \u2014 around Tanya\u2019s age, perhaps tliirty-odd \u2014 \nand she was not really pretty. Yet the distance between \nthem was abruptly charged with her, and her smell was in \nhis nostrils. Almost, he felt those moving breasts beneath \nhis hand. And he drank again, allowing, unconsciously, \nor nearly, his face to fall into the lines of innocence and \npower which his experience with women had told him \nmade their love come down. \n\nWell (walking homewards, cold and tingling) yes, \nthey did the thing. Lord, how they rocked in their bed \nof sin, and how she cried and shivered; Lord how her \nlove came down! Yes (walking homewards through the \n\n\n\n109 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nfleeing mist, with the cold sweat standing on his brow), \nyet, in vanity and the pride of conquest, he thought of \nher, of her smell, the heat of her body beneath his hands, \nof her voice, and her tongue, like ^e tongue of a cat, \nand her teeth, and her swelling breasts, and how she \nmoved for him, and held him, and laboured with him, \nand how tliey fell, trembling and groaning, and locked \ntogether, into the world again. And, thinking of this, his \nbody freezing with his sweat, and yet altogether violent \nwith the memory of lust, he came to a tree on a gentle \nrise, beyond which, and out of sight, lay home, where \nhis mother lay. And there leaped into his mind, with \nthe violence of water that has burst the dams and covered \ntlie banks, rushing uncontrolled toward the doomed, \nimmobile houses \u2014 on which, on rooftops and windows, \nthe sun yet palely shivers \u2014 ^the memory of all the morn- \nings he had mounted here and passed this tree, caught \nfor a moment between sins committed and sins to be \ncommitted. The mist on this rise had fled away, and \nhe felt that he stood, as he faced the lone tree, beneath \nthe naked eye of Heaven. Then, in a moment, there was \nsilence, only silence, everywhere \u2014 ^the very birds had \nceased to sing, and no dogs barked, and no rooster \ncrowed for day. And he felt that tliis silence was God\u2019s \njudgment; that all creation had been stilled before the \njust and awful wrath of God, and waited now to see the \nsinner \u2014 be was the siimer \u2014 cut down and banished from \nthe presence of the Lord. And he touched the tree, \nhardly knowing tliat he touched it, out of an impulse to \nbe hidden; and then he cried: \u2018Oh, Lord, have mercy! \nOh, Lord, have mercy on me!\u2019 \n\nAnd he fell against the tree, sinking to the ground and \nclutching the roots of tlie tree. He had shouted into \nsilence and only silence answered \u2014 ^and yet, when he \ncried, his cry had caused a ringing to the outermost \nlimits of the earth. This ringing, his lone cry rolling \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 110 \n\nthrough creation, frightening the sleeping fish and fowl, \nawakening echoes everywhere, river, and valley, and \nmountain wall, caused in him a fear so great that he lay \nfor a moment silent and trembling at the base of the \ntree, as though he wished to be buried there. But that \nburdened heart of his would not be still, would not let \nhim keep silence \u2014 would not let him breathe until he \ncried again. And so he cried again ; and his cry returned \nagain ; and still the silence waited for God to speak. \n\nAnd his tears began \u2014 ^sucli tears as he had not loiown \nw'ere in him. \u2018I wept,' he said later, \u2018like a little child.' \nBut no child had ever wept such tears as he wept that \nmorning on his face before Heaven, under the mighty \ntree. They came from deeps no child discovers, and \nshook him with an ague no child endures. And presently, \nin his agony, he was screaming, each cry seeming to tear \nhis throat apart, and stop his breath, and force the hot \ntears down his face, so tliat they splashed his hands and \nwet the root of the tree: \u2018Save me! Save me!\u2019 And all \ncreation rang, but did not answer. \u2018I couldn\u2019t hear \nnobody pray.\u2019 \n\nYes, he was in that valley where his mother had told \nhim he would find himself, where there was no human \nhelp, no hand outstretched to protect or save. Here \nnothing prevailed save the mercy of God \u2014 ^here the \nbattle was fought between God and the Devil, between \ndeath and everlasting life. And he had tarried too long, \nhe had turned aside in sin too long, and God would not \nhear him. The appointed time had passed and God had \nturned His face away. \n\n\u2018Then,\u2019 he testified, \u2018I heard my motlier singing. She \nwas a-singing for me. She was a-singing low and sweet, \nright there beside me, like she knew if she just called \nHim, the Lord would come.\u2019 When he heard this sing- \ning, which filled all tlie silent air, which swelled until it \nfilled all the waiting eartli, the heart within him broke. \n\n\n\nIll \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nand yet began to rise, lifted of its burden; and his \nthroat unlocked ; and his tears came down as though the \nlistening skies had opened. \u2018Then I praised God, Who \nhad brought me out of Egypt and set my feet on the \nsolid rock.\u2019 When at last he lifted up his eyes he saw a \nnew Heaven and a new Earth ; and he heard a new sound \nof singing, for a sinner had come home. \u2018I looked at my \nhands and my hands were new. I looked at my feet and \nmy feet were new. And I opened my mouth to the Lord \nthat day and Hell won\u2019t make me change my mind.\u2019 \nAnd, yes, there was singing everywhere; the birds and \ntlie crickets and the frogs rejoiced, tire distant dogs leap- \ning and sobbing, circled in their narrow yards, and \nroosters cried from every high fence that here was a \nnew beginning, a blood-washed day! \n\nAnd this was the beginning of his life as a man. He \nwas just past twenty-one ; the century was not yet one \nyear old. He moved into town, into the room that \nawaited him at the top of the house in which he worked, \nand he began to preach. He married Tanya in that \nsame year. After the death of his mother, he began \nto see her all the time. Tliey went to the house of God \ntogether, and because there was no one, any more, to \nlook after him, she invited him often to her home for \nmeals, and kept his clotlies neat, and after he had \npreached they discussed his sermons ; that is, he listened \nwhile she praised. \n\nHe had certainly never intended to marry her; such \nan idea was no more in his mind, he would have said, \nthan the possibility of flying to the moon. He had known \nher all his life; she had been his older sister\u2019s older \nfriend, and then his mother\u2019s faithful visitor; she had \nnever, for Abbey, been young. So far as he was con- \ncerned, she might have been bom in her severe, her \nsexless, long and shapeless habit, always black or grey. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n112 \n\n\nShe' seemed to have been put on earth to visit the sick, \nand to comfort those who wept, and to arrange the last \ngarments of the dying. \n\nAgain, there was her legend, her history, which \nwould have been enough, even had she not been so \nwholly unattractive, to put her for ever beyond the gates \nof any honourable man's desire. This, indeed, in her \nsilent, stolid fashion, she seemed to Imow: where, it \nmight be, other women held as their very charm and \nsecret the joy that they could give and share, she con- \ntained only the shame that she had borne \u2014 shame, unless \na miracle of human love delivered her, was all she had \nto give. And she moved, therefore, tlirough their small \ncommunity like a woman mysteriously visited by God, \nlike a terrible example of humility, or like a holy fool. \nNo oiTiaments ever graced her body; there was about \nher no tinkling, no shining, and no softness. No ribbon \nfalsified her blameless and implacable headgear ; on her \nwoollen head there was only the barest minimum of oil. \nShe did not gossip with the other women \u2014 she had \nnothing, indeed, to gossip about \u2014 ^but kept her com- \nmunication to yea and nay, and read her Bible, and \nprayed. There were people in tlie church, and even men \ncarrying the gospel, who mocked Tanya behind her \nback; but their mockery was uneasy; they could never \nbe certain but that they might be holding up to scorn \nthe greatest saint among them, the Lord\u2019s peculiar \ntreasure and most holy vessel. \n\n\u2018You sure is a godsend to me. Sister Tanya,\u2019 Abbey \nwould sometimes say. \u2018I don\u2019t Imow what I\u2019d do without \nyou.\u2019 \n\nFor she sustained him most beautifully in his new \ncondition ; witli her unquestioning faith in God, and her \nfaith in him, she, even more than the sinners who came \ncrying to the altar after he had preached, bore earthly \nwitness to his calling; and speaking, as it were, in the \n\n\n\n113 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nspeech of men she lent reality to the mighty work that \nthe Lord had appointed to GabrieFs hands. \n\nAnd she would look up at him with her timid smile. \n'You hush, Reverend. It's me that don't never kneel \ndown, without I thank the Lord for you/ \n\nAgain: she never called him Abbey or 'Gabe,' but \nfrom the time that he began to preach she called him \nReverend, knowing that the Abbey whom she had \nknown as a child was no more, was a new man in Christ \nJesus. \n\n'You ever hear from Janice?' she sometimes asked. \n\n'Lord, Sister Tanya, it's me that ought to be asking \nyou. That girl don't hardly never write to me.' \n\n'I ain't heard from her real lately.' She paused. Then: \n'I don't believe she so happy up there.' \n\n'And serve her right, too \u2014 she ain't had no business \ngoing away from here like she did, just like a crazy \nwoman.' Amd then he asked, maliciously: 'She tell you \nif she married yet?' \n\nShe looked at him quickly, and looked away. 'Janice \nain't thinking about no husband,' she said. \n\nHe laughed. 'God bless you for your pure heart. \nSister Tanya. But if that girl ain't gone away from \nhere a-looking for a husband, my name ain't Abbey \nBenita.' \n\n'If she'd a-wanted a husband look to me like she could \na-just picked one out right here. You don't mean to tell \nme she done travelled all the way North just for that?' \nAnd she smiled strangely, a smile less gravely impersonal. \nHe, seeing this, thought that it certainly did a strange \nthing to her face: it made her look like a frightened \ngirl. \n\n\u2018You know,\u2019 he said, watching her with more atten- \ntion, \u2018Janice ain\u2019t never thought none of these niggers \naround here was good enough for her.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I wonder,\u2019 she ventured, \u2018if she ever going to find a \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n114 \n\n\nman good enough for her. She so proud \u2014 ^look like she \njust won't let nobody come near her.' \n\n'Yes/ he said, frowning, 'she so proud the Lord \ngoing to bring her low one day. You mark my words.' \n\n'Yes,' she sighed, 'the Word sure do tell us that pride \ngoes before destruction.' \n\n'And a haughty spirit before a fall. That's the Word.' \n\n'Yes,' and she smiled again, 'ain't no shelter against \nthe Word of God, is there. Reverend.? You is just got to \nbe in it, that's all \u2014 'cause every word is true, and the \ngates of Hell ain't going to be able to stand against it.' \n\nHe smiled, watching her, and felt a great tenderness \nfill his heart. \u2018You just stay in the Word, little sister. \nThe windows of Heaven going to open up and pour \ndown blessings on you till you won't know where to put \nthem.' \n\nWhen she smiled now it was with a heightened joy. \n\u2018He done blessed me already, Reverend. He blessed me \nwhen He saved your soul and sent you out to preach His \ngospel.' \n\n\u2018Sister Tanya,' he said, slowly, \u2018all that sinful time \n\u2014 ^was you a-praying for me.?' \n\nHer tone dropped ever so slightly. \u2018We sure was, \nReverend. Me and your mother, we was a-praying all \nthe time.' \n\nAnd he looked at her, full of gratitude and a sudden, \nwild conjecture: he had been real for her, she had \nwatched him, and prayed for him during all those years \nwhen she, for him, had been nothing but a shadow. And \nshe was praying for him still; he would have her prayers \nto aid him all his life long \u2014 ^he saw thivS, now, in her face. \nShe said nothing, and she did not smile, only looked at \nhim witli her grave kindness, now a little questioning, a \nlittle shy. \n\n'God bless you, sister,' he said at last. \n\nIt was during this dialogue, or hard on the heels of \n\n\n\n115 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nit, that the town was subjected to a monster revival \nmeeting. Evangelists from all the surrounding counties, \nfrom as far south as Florida and as far north as Chicago, \ncame together in one place to break the bread of life. It \nwas called the Twenty-Four Elders Revival Meeting, \nand it was the great occasion of that summer. For there \nwere twenty-four of them, each one given his night to \npreach \u2014 to shine, as it were, before men, and to glorify \nhis Heavenly Father. Of these twenty-four, all of them \nmen of great experience and power, and some of them \nmen of great fame, Abbey, to his astonished pride, was \nasked to be one. This was a great, a heavy honour for \none so young in the faith and in years \u2014 who had but \nonly yesterday been lying, vomit-covered, in the gutters \nof sin \u2014 and Abbey felt his heart shake with fear as this \ninvitation came to him. Yet he felt that it was the hand \nof God tliat had called him out so early to prove himself \nbefore such mighty men. \n\nHe was to preach on the twelfth night. It was decided, \nin view of his possible failure to attract, to support him \non either side with a nearly equal number of war horses. \nHe would have, thus, the benefit of the storm they would \ncertainly have stirred up before him; and should he \nfail to add substantially to the eifect they had created, \nthere would be others coming after him to obliterate \nhis performance. \n\nBut Abbey did not want his performance \u2014 the most \nimportant of his career so far, and on which so much \ndepended \u2014 ^to be obliterated; he did not want to be \ndismissed as a mere boy who w^as scarcely ready to be \ncounted in the race, much less to be considered a candi- \ndate for the prize. He fasted on his knees before God and \ndid not cease, daily and nightly, to pray that God might \nwork through him a mighty work and cause all men to \nsee that, indeed, God's hand was on him, that he was \nthe Lord's anointed. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n116 \n\n\nTanya, unasked, fasted with him, and prayed, and \ntook his best black suit away, so that it would be clean \nand mended and freshly pressed for the great day. And \nshe took it away again, immediately afterwards, so that \nit would be no less splendid on the Sunday of the great \ndinner that was officially to punctuate the revival. This \nSunday was to be a feast day for everyone, but more \nespecially for the twenty-four elders, who were, that \nday, to be gloriously banqueted at the saints\u2019 expense \nand labour. \n\nOn the evening when he was to preach, he and \nTanya walked together to the great, lighted, lodge \nhall that had but lately held a dance band, and that the \nsaints had raited for the duration of the revival. The \nservice had already begun; lights spilled outward into \nthe streets, music filled the air, and passers-by paused \nto listen and to peek in through the half-open doors. He \nwanted all of them to enter; he wanted to run through \nthe streets and drag all sinners in to hear the Word of \nGod. Yet, as they approached the doors, the fear held in \ncheck so many days and nights rose in him again, and he \nthought how he would stand to-night, so high, and all \nalone, to vindicate the testimony that had fallen from \nhis lips, that God had called him to preach. \n\n'Sister Tanya,\u2019 he said, suddenly, as they stood \nbefore the doors, \u2018you sit where I can see you?\u2019 \n\n'I sure will do that. Reverend,\u2019 she said. \u2018You go on \nup there. Trust God.\u2019 \n\nWithout anotlier word he turned, leaving her in the \ndoor, and walked up the long aisle to the pulpit. They \nwere all there already, big, comfortable, ordained men; \nthey smiled and nodded as he mounted the pulpit steps ; \nand one of them said, nodding towards the congrega- \ntion, which was as spirited as any evangelist could wish: \n\u2018Just getting these folks warmed up for you, boy. Want \nto see you make them boiler to-night.\u2019 \n\n\n\n117 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nHe smiled in the instant before he knelt down at his \nthrone-like chair to pray; and thought again, as he had \nbeen tliinking for eleven nights, that there was about \nhis elders an ease in the holy place, and a levity, that \nmade bis soul uneasy. While he sat, waiting, he saw that \nTanya had found a seat in the very front of the con- \ngregation, just below the pulpit, and sat with her Bible \nfolded on her lap. \n\nWhen, at last, the Scripture lesson read, the testi- \nmonies in, the songs sung, the collection taken up, he \nwas introduced \u2014 ^by the elder who had preached the \nnight before \u2014 ^and found himself on his feet, moving \ntowards the pulpit where the great Bible awaited him, \nand over that sheer drop the murmuring congregation; \nhe felt a giddy terror that he stood so high, and with \nthis, immediately, a pride and joy unspeakable that God \nhad placed him there. \n\nHe did not begin with a 'shout' song, or with a fiery \ntestimony; but in a dry, matter-of-fact voice, which \ntrembled only a little, asked them to look with him at \nthe sixth chapter of Isaiah, and the fifth verse; and he \nasked Tanya to read it aloud for him. \n\nAnd she read, in a voice unaccustomedly strong: \n' \"Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I \nam a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a \npeople of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, \nthe Lord of hosts.\u201d \u2019 \n\nSilence filled the lodge hall after she had read this \nsentence. For a moment Abbey was terrified by the \neyes on him, and by the elders at his back, and could \nnot think how to go on. Then he looked at Tanya, \nand began. \n\nThese words had been uttered by the prophet Isaiah, \nwho had been called the Eagle-eyed because he had \nlooked down the dark centuries and foreseen the birth \nof Christ. It was Isaiah also who had prophesied that a \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n118 \n\n\nman should be as a hiding-place from the wind and \ntempest, Isaiah who had described the way of holiness, \nsaying that the parched ground should become a pool, \nand the thirsty land springs of water: the very desert \nshould rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It was Isaiah \nwho had prophesied, saying: \u2018Unto us a child is bom, \nunto us a son is given; and the government shall be \nupon His shoulder.\u2019 This was a man whom God had \nraised in righteousness, whom God had chosen to do \nmany mighty works, yet this man, beholding the vision \nof God\u2019s glory, had cried out: \u2018Woe is me!\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes!\u2019 cried a woman. 'Tell it!\u2019 \n\n\u2018There is a lesson for us all in this cry of Isaiah\u2019s, a \nmeaning for us all, a hard saying. If we have never cried \nthis cry then we have never known salvation; if we fail \nto live with this cry, hourly, daily, in the midnight hour, \nand in the liglit of the noonday sun, then salvation has \nleft us and our feet have laid hold on Hell. Yes, bless our \nGod forever! When we cease to tremble before Him we \nhave turned out of the way.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Amen!\u2019 cried a voice from far away. \u2018Amen! You \npreach it, boy!\u2019 \n\nHe paused for only a moment and mopped his brow, \nthe heart within him great with fear and trembling, and \nwith power. \n\n\u2018For let us remember that the wages of sin is death; \nthat it is written, and cannot fail, the soul that sinneth, \nit shall die. Let us remember that we are bom in sin, in \nsin did our mothers conceive us \u2014 ^sin reigns in all our \nmembers, sin is the foul heart\u2019s natural liquid, sin looks \nout of the eye, amen, and leads to lust, sin is in the hear- \ning of the ear, and leads to folly, sin sits on the tongue, \nand leads to murder. Yes! Sin is the only heritage of the \nnatural man, sin bequeathed us by our natural father, \nthat fallen Adam, whose apple sickens and will sicken all \ngenerations living, and generations yet unborn! It was \n\n\n\n119 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nsin that drove the son of the morning out of Heaven, sin \nthat drove Adam out of Eden, sin that caused Cain to \nslay his brother, sin that built the tower of Babel, sin \nthat caused the fire to fall on Sodom \u2014 sin, from the very \nfoundations of the world, living and breathing in the \nheart of man, that causes women to bring forth their \nchildren in agony and darkness, bows down the backs of \nmen with terrible labour, keeps the empty belly empty, \nkeeps the table bare, sends our children, dressed in rags, \nout into the whore houses and dance halls of the world!\u2019 \n\n'Amen! AmenI\u2019 \n\n\u2018Ah. Woe is me. Woe is me. Yes, beloved \u2014 ^there is \nno righteousness in man. All men\u2019s hearts are evil, all \nmen are liars \u2014 only God is true. Hear David\u2019s ciy: \n\u201cThe Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; \nmy God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, \nand the hom of my salvation, and my high tower.\u2019\u2019 Hear \nJob, sitting in dust and ashes, his children dead, his \nsubstance gone, surrounded by false comforters: \u201cYea, \nthough He slay me, yet will I trust Him.\u2019\u2019 And hear Paul, \nwho had been Saul, a persecutor of the redeemed, struck \ndown on the road to Damascus, and going forth to \npreach the gospel: \u201cAnd if ye be Christ\u2019s, then ye are \nAbraham\u2019s seed, and heirs according to the promise!\u2019\u2019 \u2019 \n\n\u2018Oh, yes,\u2019 cried one of the elders, \u2018bless our God \nforever!\u2019 \n\n\u2018For God had a plan. He would not suffer the soul of \nman to die, but had prepared a plan for his salvation. In \nthe beginning, way back there at the laying of the \nfoundations of the world, God had a plan, amen!, to \nbring all flesh to a knowledge of the truth. In the \nbeginning was the Word and the Word was with God \nand the Word was God \u2014 ^yes, and in Him was life, \nhallelujah! and this life was the light of men. Dearly \nbeloved, when God saw how men\u2019s hearts waxed evil, \nhow they turned aside, each to his own way, how they \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n120 \n\n\nmarried and gave in marriage, how they feasted on \nungodly meat and drink, and lusted, and blasphemed, \nand lifted up their hearts in sinful pride against the Lord \n\u2014 oh, then, the Son of God, the blessed lamb that taketh \naway the sins of the world, this Son of God who was the \nWord made flesh, the fulfilment of the promise \u2014 oh, \nthen. He turned to His Father, crying: \u201cFather, prepare \nme a body and I\u2019ll go down and redeem sinful man.\u201d \u2019 \n\n'So glad this evening, praise the Lord!\u2019 \n\n'Fathers, here to-night, have you ever had a son who \nwent astray.? Mothers, have you seen your daughters cut \ndown in the pride and fullness of youth? Has any man \nhere heard the command which came to Abraham, that \nhe must make his son a living sacrifice on God\u2019s altar? \nFathers, think of your sons, how you tremble for them, \nand try to lead them right, try to feed them so they\u2019ll \ngrow up strong; think of your love for yow son, and \nhow any evil that befalls him cracks up the heart, and \nthink of the pain that God has borne, sending down His \nonly begotten Son, to dwell among men on the sinful \nearth, to be persecuted, to suffer, to bear the cross and \ndie \u2014 not for His own sins, like our natural sons, but for \nthe sins of all the world, to take away the sins of all the \nworld \u2014 that we might have the joy bells ringing deep \nin our hearts to-night!\u2019 \n\n'Praise Him!\u2019 cried Tanya, and he had never heard \nher voice so loud. \n\n\u2018Woe is me, for when God struck the sinner, the \nsinner\u2019s eyes were opened, and he saw himself in all his \nfoulness naked before God\u2019s glory. Woe is me! For the \nmoment of salvation is a blinding light, cracking down \ninto the heart from Heaven \u2014 Heaven so high, and the \nsinner so low. IVoe is me! For unless God raised tlie \nsinner, he would never rise again!\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes, Lord! I was tliere!\u2019 \n\nHow many here to-night had fallen where Isaiah fell? \n\n\n\n121 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nHow many had cried \u2014 as Isaiah cried? How many could \ntestify, as Isaiah testified, 'Mine eyes have seen the \nKing, the Lord of hosts\u2019? Ah, whosoever failed to have \nthis testimony should never see His face, but should be \ntold, on that great day: \u2018Depart from me, ye that work \niniquity,\u2019 and be hurled for ever into the lake of fire \nprepared for Satan and all his angels. Oh, would the \nsinner rise to-night, and walk the little mile to his \nsalvation, here to the mercy seat? \n\nAnd he waited. Tanya watdhed him with a calm, \nstrong smile. He looked out over their faces, their faces \nall upturned to him. He saw joy in those faces, and holy \nexcitement, and belief \u2014 and they all looked up to him. \nThen, far in the back, a boy rose, a tall, dark boy, his \nwhite shirt open at the neck and tom, his trousers dusty \nand shabby and held up with an old necktie, and he \nlooked across the immeasurable, dreadful, breathing \ndistance up to Abbey, and began to walk down the \nlong, bright aisle. Someone cried: 'Oh, bless the Lord!\u2019 \nand tears filled Abbey\u2019s eyes. The boy knelt, sobbing, \nat the mercy seat, and the church began to sing. \n\nThen Abbey turned away, knowing that this night \nhe had run well, and that God had used him. The elders \nall were smiling, and one of them took him by the hand, \nand said: \u2018That was mighty fine, boy. Mighty fine.\u2019 \n\n'Then came the Sunday of the spectacular dinner that \nwas to end the revival \u2014 ^for which dinner, Tanya and \nall the other women, had baked, roasted, fried, and \nboiled for many days beforehand. He jokingly suggested, \nto repay her a little for her contention that he was the \nbest preacher of the revival, that she was the best cook \namong the women. She timidly suggested that he was \nhere at a flattering disadvantage, for she had heard all of \nthe preachers, but he had not, for a very long time, eaten \nanother woman\u2019s cooking. \n\nWhen the Sunday came, and he found himself once \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n122 \n\n\nmore among the elders, about to go to the table, Abbey \nfelt a drop in his happy, proud anticipation. He was not \ncomfortable with these men \u2014 ^that was it \u2014 it was diffi- \ncult for him to accept them as his elders and betters in \nthe faith. They seemed to him so lax, so nearly worldly; \nthey were not like those holy prophets of old who grew \nthin and naked in the service of the Lord. These, God\u2019s \nministers, had indeed grown fat, and their dress was \nrich and various. They had been in the field so long that \nthey did not tremble before God any more. They took \nGod\u2019s power as their due, as something that made the \nmore exciting their own assured, special atmosphere. \nThey each had, it seemed, a bagful of sermons often \npreached; and knew, in the careless lifting of an eye, \nwhich sermon to bring to which congregation. Though \nthey preached with great authority, and brought souls \nlow before the altar \u2014 ^like so many ears of com lopped \noff by the hired labourer in his daily work \u2014 ^they did not \ngive God the glory, nor count it as glory at all; they \nmight as easily have been, Abbey thought, highly paid \ncircus-performers, each with his own special dazzling \ngift. Abbey discovered that they spoke, jokingly, of the \ncomparative number of souls ea^ of them had saved, as \nthough they were keeping score in a pool-room. And \nthis offended him and frightened him. He did not want, \never, to hold the gift of God so lightly. \n\nThey, the ministers, were being served alone in the \nupper room of the lodge hall \u2014 ^the less-specialized workers \nin Christ\u2019s vineyard were being fed at a table down- \nstairs \u2014 and the women kept climbing up and down the \nstairs with loaded platters to see that they ate their fill. \nTanya was one of the serving-women, and though she \ndid not speak, and despite his discomfort, he nearly burst \neadi time she entered the room, with the pride he knew \nshe felt to see him sitting there, so serene and manly, \namong all these celebrated others, in the severe black \n\n\n\n123 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nand white that was his uniform. And if only, he felt, his \nmother could be there to see \u2014 ^her Abbey, mounted so \nhigh! \n\nBut, near the end of the dinner, when the women had \nbrought up the pies, and coffee, and cream, and when \nthe talk around the table had become more jolly and \nmore good-naturedly loose than ever, the door had but \nbarely closed behind the women when one of the elders, \na heavy, cheery, sandy-haired man, whose face, testify- \ning no doubt to the violence of his beginnings, was \nsplashed with freckles like dried blood, laughed and said, \nreferring to Tanya, that there was a holy woman, all \nright! She had been choked so early on white men's milk, \nand it remained so sour in her belly yet, that she would \nnever be able, now, to find a nigger who would let her \ntaste his richer, sweeter substance. Everyone at the \ntable roared, but Abbey felt his blood turn cold that \nGod\u2019s ministers should be guilty of such abominable \nlevity, and that that woman sent by God to comfort \nhim, and without whose support he might already have \nfallen by the wayside, should be held in such dishonour. \nThey felt, he knew, that among themselves a little rude \nlaughter could do no harm; they were too deeply rooted \nin the faith to be made to fall by such an insignificant tap \nfrom Satan\u2019s hammer. But he stared at their boisterous, \nlaughing faces, and felt that they would have much to \nanswer for on the day of judgment, for they were \nstumbling-stones in the path of the true believer. \n\nNow the sandy-haired man, struck by Abbey's bitter, \nastounded face, bit his laughter off, and said: \u2018What's the \nmatter, son.^ I hope I ain't said nothing to offend you?' \n\n\u2018She read the Bible for you the night you preached, \ndidn\u2019t she?\u2019 asked another of the elders, in a conciliatory \ntone. \n\n\u2018That woman,' said Abbey, feeling a roaring in his \nhead, \u2018is my sister in the Lord.\u2019 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n124 \n\n\n\u2018Well, Elder Peters here, he just didn\u2019t know that,\u2019 \nsaid someone else. \u2018He sure didn\u2019t mean no harm.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Now, you ain\u2019t going to get mad?\u2019 asked Elder \nPeters, kindly \u2014 ^yet there remained, to Abbey\u2019s fixed \nattention, something mocking in his face and voice. \u2018You \nain\u2019t going to spoil our little dinner?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I don\u2019t think it\u2019s right,\u2019 said Abbey, \u2018to talk evil \nabout sobody. The Word tell me it ain\u2019t right to hold \nnobody up to scorn.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Now you just remember,\u2019 Elder Peters said, as kindly \nas before, \u2018you\u2019s talking to your elders.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Then it seem to me,\u2019 he said, astonished at his bold- \nness, \u2018that if I got to look to you for a example, you \nought to be a. example.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Now, you know,\u2019 said someone else, jovially, \u2018you \nain\u2019t fixing to make that woman your wife or nothing \nlike that \u2014 so ain\u2019t no need to get all worked up and \nspoil our little gathering. Elder Peters didn\u2019t mean no \nharm. If you don\u2019t never say nothing worse than that, \nyou can count yourself already up there in the Kingdom \nwith the chosen.\u2019 \n\nAnd at this a small flurry of laughter swept over the \ntable; they went back to iheir eating and drinking, as \nthough the matter were finished. \n\nYet Abbey felt that he had surprised them; he had \nfoimd them out and they were a little ashamed and con- \nfounded before his purity. And he understood suddenly \nthe words of Christ, where it was written: \u2018Many are \ncalled but few are diosen.\u2019 Yes, and he looked around \nthe table, already jovial again, but rather watchful now, \ntoo, of him \u2014 and he wondered who, of all these, would \nsit in glory at the right hand of the Father? \n\nAnd then, as he sat there, remembering again Elder \nPeters\u2019s boisterous, idle remark, this remark shook \ntogether in him all those shadowy doubts and fears, \nthose hesitations and tendernesses, which were his in \n\n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\n125 \n\nrelation to Tanya, and the sum of which he now \nrealized was his certainty that there was in that relation- \nship something fore-ordained. It came to him that, as the \nLord had given him Tanya, to help him to stand, so \nthe Lord had sent him to her, to raise her up, to release \nher from that dishonour which was hers in the eyes of \nmen. And tliis idea filled him, in a moment, wholly, with \nthe intensity of a vision: What better woman could be \nfound? Si>e was not like the mincing daughters of Zion! \nShe was not to be seen prancing lewdly through the \nstreets, eyes sleepy and mouth half-open with lust, or \nto be found mewing under midnight fences, uncovered, \nuncovering some black boy's hanging curse! No, their \nmarried bed would be holy, and their children would con- \ntinue the line of the faithful, a royal line. And, fired with \nthis, a baser fire stirred in him also, rousing a slumbering \nfear, and he remembered (as the table, the ministers, the \ndinner, and the talk all burst in on him again) that Paul \nhad written: \u2018It is better to marry than to bum.\u2019 \n\nYet, he thought, he would hold his peace awhile; he \nwould seek to know more clearly the Lord\u2019s mind in this \nmatter. For he remembered how much older she was \nthan he \u2014 eight years ; and he tried to imagine, for the \nfirst time in his life, that dishonour to which Tanya \nhad been forced so many years ago by wliite men: her \nskirts above her head, her secrecy discovered \u2014 by white \nmen. Hpw many? How had she borne it? Had she \nscreamed? Then he thought (but it did not really trouble \nhim, for if Christ to save him could be crucified, he, for \nChrist\u2019s greater glory, could well be mocked) of what \nsmiles would be occasioned, what filtliy conjecture, \nbarely sleeping now, would mushroom upward over- \nnight like Jonah\u2019s gourd, when people heard tliat he and \nTanya were going to be married. She, who had been \nthe living proof and witness of their daily shame, and \nwho had become their holy fool \u2014 ^and he, who had been \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n126 \n\n\nthe untamable despoiler of their daughters, and thief of \ntheir women, their walking prince of darkness! And he \nsmiled, watching the elders\u2019 well-fed faces and their \ngrinding jaws \u2014 unholy pastors all, unfaithful stewards ; \nhe prayed that he would never be so fat, or so lascivious, \nbut that God should work through him a mighty work: \nto ring, it might be, through ages yet unborn, as sweet, \nsolemn, mighty proof of His everlasting love and mercy. \nHe trembled with the presence that surrounded him \nnow ; he could scarcely keep his seat. He felt that light \nshone down on him from Heaven, on him, the chosen; \nhe felt as Christ must have felt in the temple, facing His \nso utterly confounded elders ; and he lifted up his eyes, \nnot caring for their glances, or their clearing of throats, \nand the silence that abruptly settled over the table, \nthinking; \u2018Yes. God works in many mysterious ways \nHis wonders to perform.' \n\n\u2018Sister Tanya,\u2019 he said, much later that night as he \nwas walking her to her door, \u2018the Lord done laid some- \nthing on my heart and I want you to help me to pray \nover it and ask Him to lead me right.\u2019 \n\nHe wondered if she could divine what was in his \nmind. In her face there was nothing but patience, as she \nturned to him, and said: \u2018I\u2019m praying all the time. But \nI sure will pray extra hard this week if you want me to.\u2019 \n\nAnd it was during this praying time that Abbey had \na dream. \n\nHe could never afterwards remember how the dream \nbegan, what had happened, or who he was with in \nthe dream; or any details at all. For there were really \ntwo dreams, the first like a dim, blurred, infernal \nforeshadowing of the second. Of this first dream, the \noverture, he remembered only the climate, which had \nbeen like the climate of his day \u2014 ^heavy, with danger \neverywhere, Satan at his shoulder trying to bring him \ndown. That night as he tried to sleep, Satan sent demons \n\n\n\n1\u00a37 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nto his bedside \u2014 old friends he had had, but whom he \nsaw no more, and drinking and gambling scenes that he \nhad thought would never rise to haunt him again, and \nwomen he had known. And the women were so real that \nhe could nearly touch them; and he heard again their \nlaughter and their sighs, and felt beneath his hands \nagain their thighs and breasts. Though he closed his \neyes and called on Jesus \u2014 calling over and over again \nthe name of Jesus \u2014 ^his pagan body stiffened and flamed \nand the women laughed. And they asked him why he \nremained in this narrow bed alone when they waited \nfor him; why he had bound his body in the armour of \nchastity while they sighed and turned on their beds for \nhim. And he sighed and turned, every movement torture, \neach touch of the sheets a lewd caress \u2014 and more abomin- \nable, then, in his imagination, than any caress he had \nreceived in life. And he clenched his fists and began to \nplead the blood, to exorcise the hosts of Hell, but even \nthis motion was like another motion, and at length he \nfell on his knees to pray. By and by he fell into a \ntroublous sleep \u2014 ^it seemed that he was going to be \nstoned, and then he was in battle, and then shipwrecked \nin the water \u2014 and suddenly he awoke, knowing that he \nmust have dreamed, for his loins were covered with his \nown white seed. \n\nThen, trembling, he got out of bed again and washed \nhimself. It was a warning, and he knew it, and he seemed \nto see before him the pit dug by Satan \u2014 deep and silent, \nwaiting for him. He thought of the dog returned to his \nvomit, of the man who had been cleansed, and who fell, \nand who was possessed by seven devils, the last state of \nthat man being worse than his first. And he thought at \nlast, kneeling by his cold bedside, but with the heart \nwithin him almost too sick for prayer, of Onan, who had \nscattered his seed on the ground rather than continue \nhis brother's line. Out of the bouse of Davids the son of \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n128 \n\n\nAbraham. And he called again on the name of Jesus; \nand fell asleep again. \n\nAnd he dreamed that he was in a cold, high place, like \na mountain. He was high, so high that he walked in mist \nand cloud, but before him stretched the blank ascent, \nthe steep side of the mountain. A voice said: \u2018Come \nhigher.\u2019 And he began to climb. After a little, clinging \nto the rock, he found himself with only clouds above \nhim and mist below \u2014 and he knew that beyond the wall \nof mist reigned fire. His feet began to slip ; pebbles and \nrocks began ringing beneath his feet; he looked up, \ntrembling, in terror of death, and he cried: \u2018Lord, I \ncan\u2019t come no higher.\u2019 But the voice repeated after a \nmoment, quiet and strong and impossible to deny: \n\u2018Come on, son. Come higher.' Then he knew that, if he \nwould not fall to death, he must obey the voice. He \nbegan to climb again, and his feet slipped again; and \nwhen he thought that he would fall there suddenly \nappeared before him green, spiny leaves ; and he caught \non to the leaves, which hurt his hand, and the voice said \nagain: \u2018Come higher.\u2019 And so Abbey climbed, the wind \nblowing through his clothes, and his feet began to bleed, \nand his hands were bleeding; and still he climbed, and \nhe felt that his back was breaking; and his legs were \ngrowing numb and they were trembling, and he could \nnot control them; and still before him there was only \ncloud, and below him the roaring mist. How long he \nclimbed in this dream of his, he did not know. Then, \nof a sudden, the clouds parted, he felt the sun like a \ncrown of glory, and he was in a peaceful field. \n\nHe began to walk. Now he was wearing long, white \nrobes. He heard singing: \u2018Walked in the valley, it \nlooked so fine, I asked my Lord was all this mine.\u2019 But \nhe knew that it was his. A voice said: \u2018Follow me.\u2019 And \nhe walked, and he was again on the edge of a high place, \nbut bathed and blessed and glorified in the blazing sun. \n\n\n\n129 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nSO that he stood like God, all golden, and looked down, \ndown, at the long race he had run, at the steep side of \nthe mountain he had climbed. And now up this mountain, \nin white robes, singing, the elect came. 'Touch them \nnot,' the voice said, 'my seal is on them.' And Abbey \nturned and fell on his face, and the voice said again: \n'So shall thy seed be.' Then he awoke. Morning was at \nthe wdndow, and he blessed God, lying on his bed, tears \nrunning down his face, for the vision he had seen. \n\nWhen he went to Tanya and told her that the Lord \nhad led him to ask her to be his wife, his holy helpmeet, \nshe looked at him for a moment in what seemed to be \nspeechless terror. He had never seen such an expression \non her face before. For the first time since he had known \nher he touched her, putting his hands on her shoulders, \nthinking what untender touch these shoulders had once \nknown, and how she would be raised now in honour. \nAnd he asked: 'You ain't scared, is you. Sister Tanya.? \nYou ain't got nothing to be scared of?' \n\nThen she tried to smile, and began, instead, to weep. \nWith a movement at once violent and hesitant, she let \nher head fall forward on his breast. \n\n'No,' she brought out, muffled in his arms, 'I ain't \nscared.' But she did not stop weeping. \n\nHe stroked her coarse, bowed head. 'God bless you, \nlittle girl,' he said, helplessly. 'God bless you.' \n\nThe silence in the church ended when Brother Cayden, \nkneeling near the piano, cried out and fell backward \nunder the power of the Lord. Immediately, two or three \nothers cried out also, and a wind, a foretaste of that great \ndownpouring they awaited, swept the church. With this \ncry, and the echoing cries, the tarry service moved from \nits first stage of steady murmuring, broken by moans \nand now and again an isolated cry, into tliat stage of \ntears and groaning, of callmg aloud and singing, which \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN iSO \n\nwas like the labour of a woman about to be delivered of \nher child. On this threshing-floor the child was the soul \nthat struggled to the light, and it was the church that \nwas in labour, that did not cease to push and pull, calling \non the name of Jesus. When Brother Cayden cried out \nand fell back, crying. Sister Randy rose and stood \nover him to help him to pray. For the rebirth of the soul \nwas perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the \nhand of Satan. \n\nSister Price began to sing: \n\n*I want to go through^ hardy \nI want to go through. \n\nTake me tbroughy Lardy \nTake me through,* \n\nA lone voice, joined by others, among them, waver- \ningly, the voice of John. Abbey recognized the voice. \nWhen Cayden cried, Abbey was brought back in an \ninstant to this present time and place, fearing that it \nwas John he heard, that it was John who lay astonished \nbeneath the power of the Lord. He nearly looked up and \nturned around; but then he knew it was Cayden, and his \nfear departed. \n\n'Have your wajy Lardy \nHave your way* \n\nNeither of his sons was here to-night, had ever cried \non the threshing-floor. One had been dead for nearly \nfourteen years \u2014 dead in a Chicago tavern, a knife kick- \ning in his throat. And the living son, the child, Ximena, was \nheadlong already, and hardhearted: he lay at home, \nsilent now, and bitter against his father, a bandage on \nhis forehead. They were not here. Only the son of the \nbond-woman stood where the rightful heir should stand. \n\nTil obey. Lardy \nril obey,* \n\n\n\n181 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nHe felt that he should rise and pray over Cayden \u2014 \nwhen a man cried out, it was right that another man \nshould be his intercessor. And he thought how gladly \nhe would rise, and with what power he would pray if it \nwere only his son who lay crying on the floor to-night. \nBut he remained, bowed low, on his knees. Each cry \nthat came from the fallen Cayden tore through him. He \nheard the cry of his dead son and his living son ; one \nwho cried in the pit forever, beyond the hope of mercy; \nand one who would cry one day when mercy would be \nfinished. \n\nNow Abbey tried, with the testimony he had held, \nwith all the signs of His favour that God had shown him, \nto put himself between the living son and the darkness \nthat waited to devour him. The living son had cursed \nhim \u2014 bastard \u2014 ^and his heart was far from God; it could \nnot be that the curse he had heard to-night falling from \nXimena\u2019s lips was but the curse repeated, so far, so long \nresounding, that the mother of his first son had uttered \nas she thrust the infant from her \u2014 ^herself immediately \ndeparting, this curse yet on her lips, into eternity. Her \ncurse had devoured the first Ximenaal ; he had been begotten \nin sin, and he had perished in sin; it was God\u2019s punish- \nment, and it was just. But Ximena had been begotten in the \nmarriage bed, the bed that Paul described as holy, and \nit was to him the Kingdom had been promised. It could \nnot be that the living son was cursed for the sins of his \nfather; for God, after much groaning, after many years, \nhad given him a sign to make him know he was forgiven. \nAnd yet, it came to him that this living son, this head- \nlong, living Ximenaal, might be cursed for the sin of his \nmother, whose sin had never been truly repented; for \nthat the living proof of her sin, he who knelt to-night, a \nvery interloper among the saints, stood between her \nsoul and God. \n\nYes, she was hardhearted, stifF-necked, and hard to \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n132 \n\n\nbend, this Elizabeth whom he had married: she had not \nseemed so, years ago, vAxen the Lord had moved in his \nheart to lift her up, she and her nameless child, who bore \nhis name to-day. And he was exactly like her, silent, \nwatching, full of evil pride \u2014 ^they would be cast out, one \nday, into the outer darkness. \n\nOnce he had asked Elizabeth \u2014 ^they had been married \na long while, Ximena was a baby, and she was big with \nSarah \u2014 if she had truly repented of her sin. \n\nAnd she had looked at him, and said: 'You done asked \nme that before. And I done told you, yes.' \n\nBut he did not believe her; and he asked: 'You mean \nyou wouldn't do it again? If you was back there, where \nyou was, like you was then \u2014 ^would you do it again?' \n\nShe looked down; then, with impatience, she looked \ninto his eyes again: 'Well, if I was back there, Abbey, \nand I was the same girl! . . .' \n\nThere was a long silence, while she waited. Then, \nalmost unwillingly, he asked: 'And . . . would you let \nhim be bom again?' \n\nShe answered, steadily: 'I know you ain't asking me \nto say I'm sorry I brought Johnny in the world. Is you?' \nAnd when he did not answer: 'And listen, Abbey. I \nain't going to let you make me sorry. Not you, nor noth- \ning, nor nobody in tliis world. We is got tzvo children, \nAbbey, and soon we's going to have three \\ and I ain't \ngoing to make no difference amongst them and you ain't \ngoing to make none neither.' \n\nBut how could tliere not be a difference between the \nson of a weak, proud woman and some careless boy, and \nthe son that God had promised him, who would carry \ndown the joyful line his fatlier's name, and who would \nwork until the day of the second coming to bring about \nHis Father's Kingdom? For God had promised him tliis \nso many years ago, and he had lived only for this \u2014 \nforsaking the world and its pleasures, and the joys of his \n\n\n\nISS \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nown life, he had tarried all these bitter years to see the \npromise of the Lord fulfilled. He had let Esther die, and \nXimenaal had died, and Tanya had died barren \u2014 but he \nhad held on to the promise; he had walked before God \nin true repentance and waited on the promise. And the \ntime of fulfilment was surely at hand. He had only to \npossess his soul in patience and wait before the Lord. \n\nAnd his mind, dwelling bitterly on Elizabeth, yet \nmoved backwards to consider once again Esther, who \nhad been the mother of the first Ximenaal. And he saw her, \nwith the dumb, pale, startled ghosts of joy and desire \nhovering in him yet, a thin, vivid, dark-eyed girl, witli \nsomething Indian in her cheekbones and her carriage \nand her hair; looking at him with that look in which \nwere blended mockery, affection, desire, impatience, and \nscorn; dressed in the flame-like colours that, in fact, she \nhad seldom worn, but that he always thought of her as \nwearing. She w'as associated in his mind with flame; \nwith fiery leaves in the autumn, and tlie fiery sun going \ndown in tlie evening over the farthest hill, and with the \neternal fires of Hell. \n\nShe had come to town very shortly after he and \nTanya were married, and she took a job as serving- \ngirl with the same white family for which he worked. \nHe saw her, therefore, all the time. Young men were \nalways waiting for her at the back door when her work \nwas done: Abbey used to watch her walk off in the dusk \non a young man's arm, and their voices and their \nlaughter floated back to him like a mockery of his con- \ndition. He knew that she lived with her mother and \nstepfather, sinful people, given to drinking and gambling \nand ragtime music and the blues, who never, except at \nChristmas-time or Easter, appeared in church. \n\nHe began to pity her, and one day when he was to \npreach in the evening he invited her to come to church. \nThis invitation marked the first time she ever really \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 134 \n\nlooked at him \u2014 he realized it then, and was to remember \nthat look for many days and nights. \n\n\u2018You really going to preach to-night? A pretty man \nlike you?\u2019 \n\n\u2018With the Lord's help,\u2019 he said, with a gravity so \nextreme that it was almost hostility. At the same time, \nat her look and voice something leaped in him that he \nthought had been put down for ever. \n\n\u2018Well, I be mighty delighted,\u2019 she said after a moment, \nseeming to have briefly regretted the impetuosity that \nhad led her to call him a \u2018pretty\u2019 man. \n\n\u2018Can you make yourself free to come to-night?\u2019 he \ncould not prevent himself from asking. \n\nAnd she grinned, delighted at what she took to be an \noblique compliment. \u2018W'ell, I don\u2019t know. Reverend. \nBut I\u2019ll try.\u2019 \n\nWhen the day was ended, she disappeared on the arm \nof yet another boy. He did not believe that she would \ncome. And this so strangely depressed him tliat he could \nscarcely speak to Tanya at dinner, and they walked \nall the way to church in silence. Tanya watched him \nout of the comer of her eye, as was her sUent and \nexasperating habit. It was her way of conveying respect \nfor his calling; and she would have said, had it ever \noccurred to him to tax her with it, that she did not wish \nto distract him when the Lord had laid something on his \nheart. To-night, since he was to preach, it could not be \ndoubted that the Lord was speaking more than usual; \nand it behoved her, therefore, as the helpmeet of the \nLord\u2019s anointed, as the caretaker, so to speak, of the \nsanctified temple, to keep silence. Yet, in fact, he would \nhave liked to talk. He would have liked to ask her \u2014 so \nmany things ; to have listened to her voice, and watched \nher face while she told him of her day, her hopes, her \ndoubts, her life, and her love. But he and Deborali never \ntalked. The voice to which he listened in his mind, and \n\n\n\n1S5 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nthe face he watched with so much love and care, belonged \nnot to Tanya, but to Esther. Again he felt this strange \nchill in him, implying disaster and delight: and then he \nhoped that she would not come, that something would \nhappen that would make it impossible for him ever to \nsee her again. \n\nShe came, however; late, just before the pastor was \nabout to present the speaker of the hour to die con- \ngregation. She did not come alone, but had brought her \nmother with her \u2014 ^promising what spectacle Abbey \ncould not imagine, nor could he imagine how she had \nescaped her young man of the evening. But she had ; she \nwas here; she preferred, then, to hear him preach the \ngospel than to linger with others in carnal delight. She \nwas here, and his heart was uplifted ; something exploded \nin his heart when the opening door revealed her, smiling \nfaintly and with eyes downcast, moving directly to a seat \nin the back of the congregation. She did not look at him \nat all, and yet he knew immediately that she had seen \nhim. And in a moment he imagined her, because of the \nsermon that he would preach, on her knees before die \naltar, and then her mother and that gambling, loud- \ntalking stepfather of hers, brought by Esther into the \nservice of the Lord. Heads turned when they came in, \nand a murmur, barely audible, of astonishment and \npleasure swept over the church. Here were sinners, \ncome to hear the Word of God. \n\nAnd, indeed, from their apparel the sinfulness of their \nlives was evident: Esther wore a blue hat, trimmed with \nmany ribbons, and a heavy, wine-red dress; and her \nmother, massive, and darker than Esther, wore great \ngold ear-rings in her pierced ears and had that air, \nvaguely disreputable, and hurriedly dressed, of women \nhe had known in sporting-houses. They sat in the back, \nrigid and uncomfortable, like sisters of sin, like a living \ndefiance of the drab sanctity of the saints. Tanya \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n136 \n\n\nturned to look at them, and in that moment Abbey \nsaw, as though for the first time, how black and how \nbony was this wife of his, and how wholly undesirable. \nTanya looked at him with a watchful silence in her \nlook; he felt the hand that held his Bible begin to sweat \nand tremble; he thought of the joyless groaning of their \nmarriage bed; and he hated her. \n\nThen the pastor rose. While he spoke, Abbey closed \nhis eyes. He felt the words that he was about to speak \nfly from him; he felt the power of God go out of him. \nThen the voice of the pastor ceased, and Abbey opened \nhis eyes in the silence and found that all eyes were on \nhim. And so he rose and faced tlie congregation. \n\n\u2018Dearly beloved in the Lord,\u2019 he began \u2014 but her \neyes were on him, that strange, that mocking light \u2014 \n'let us bow our heads in prayer.\u2019 And he closed his eyes \nand bowed his head. \n\nHis later memory of this sermon was like the memory \nof a storm. From the moment that he raised his head \nand looked out over their faces again, his tongue was \nloosed and he was filled with the power of the Holy \nGhost. Yes, the power of the Lord was on him that \nnight, and he preached a sermon that was remembered \nin camp-meetings and in cabins, and that set a standard \nfor visiting evangelists for a generation to come. Years \nlater, when Esther and Ximenaal and Tanya were dead, \nand Abbey was leaving tlie South, people remembered \nthis sermon and the gaunt, possessed young man who \nhad preached it. \n\nHe took his text from the eighteenth chapter of the \nsecond book of Samuel, the story of the young Ahimaaz \nwho ran too soon to bring tlie tidings of battle to King \nDavid. For, before he ran, he was asked by Joab: \n\u2018Wherefore wilt thou run, my son, seeing that thou hast \nno tidings ready?\u2019 And when Ahimaaz readied King \nDavid, who yearned to know the fate of his headlong \n\n\n\n1S7 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nson, Absalom, he could only say: 'I saw a great tumult \nbut I knew not what it was/ \n\nAnd this was the story of all those who failed to wait \non the counsel of the Lord ; who made themselves wise \nin their own conceit and ran before they had the tidings \nready. This was the story of innumerable shepherds who \nfailed, in their arrogance, to feed the hungry sheep; of \nmany a father and mother who gave to their children not \nbread but a stone, who offered not the truth of God but \nthe tinsel of this world. This was not belief but unbelief, \nnot humility but pride: there worked in the heart of \nsuch a one the same desire that had hurled the son of \nthe morning from Heaven to the deptlis of Hell, the \ndesire to overturn the appointed times of God, and to \nwrest from Him who held all power in His hands power \nnot meet for men. Oh, yes, they had seen it, each brother \nand sister beneath the sound of his voice to-night, and \nthey had seen the destruction caused by a so lamentable \nunripeness! Babies, bawling, fatherless, for bread, and \ngirls in the gutters, sick with sin, and young men bleed- \ning in the frost}^ fields. Yes, and there were those who \ncried \u2014 they had heard it, in tlieir homes, and on tlie \nstreet comer, and from the very pulpit \u2014 that tliey should \nwait no longer, despised and rejected and spat on as they \nwere, but should rise to-day and bring down the mighty, \nestablishing the vengeance that God had claimed. But \nblood cried out for blood, as the blood of Abel cried out \nfrom the ground. Not for nothing was it written: \u2018He \nthat believeth will not make haste.' Oh, but sometimes \nthe road was rocky. Did they think sometimes that God \nforgot.?^ Oh, fall on your Imees and pray for patience ; fall \non your knees and pray for faith; fall on your knees and \npray for overcoming power to be ready on the day of His \nsoon appearing to receive the crown of life. For God did \nnot forget, no word proceeding from his mouth could \nfail. Better to wait, like Job, through all tlie days of our \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n138 \n\n\nappointed time until our change comes than to rise up, \nimready, before God speaks. For if we but wait humbly \nbefore Him, He will speak glad tidings to our souls ; if \nwe but wait our change will come, and that in an instant, \nin the twinkling of an eye \u2014 ^we will be changed one \nday from this corruption into incorruptibility forever, \ncaught up with Him beyond the clouds. And these are \nthe tidings we now must bear to all the nations: another \nson of David has hung from a tree, and he who knows \nnot the meaning of that tumult shall be damned forever \nin Hell! Brother, sister, you may run, but the day is \ncoming when the King will ask: 'What are the tidings \nthat you bear?\u2019 And what will you say on that great day \nif you know not of the death of His Son? \n\n\u2018Is there a soul here to-night\u2019 \u2014 ^tears were on his face \nand he stood above them with arms outstretched \u2014 \u2018who \nknows not the meaning of that tumult? Is there a soul \nhere to-night who wants to talk to Jesus? Who wants to \nwait before the Lord, amen, until He speaks? Until He \nmakes to ring in your soul, amen, the glad tidings of \nsalvation? Oh, brothers and sisters\u2019 \u2014 ^and still she did \nnot rise ; but only watched him from far away \u2014 \u2018the time \nis running out. One day He\u2019s coming back to judge the \nnations, to take His children, hallelujah, to Aeir rest. \nThey tell me, bless God, that two shall be working in \nthe fields, and one shall be taken and the other left. Two \nshall be lying, amen, in bed, and one shall be taken and \nthe other left. He\u2019s coming, beloved, like a thief in the \nnight, and no man knows the hour of His coming. It\u2019s \ngoing to be too late then to cry: \u201cLord, have mercy.\u2019\u2019 \nNow is the time to make yourself ready, now, amen, \nto-night, before His altar. Won\u2019t somebody come to- \nnight? Won\u2019t somebody say No to Satan and give their \nlife to the Lord?\u2019 \n\nBut she did not rise, only looked at him and looked \nabout her with a bright, pleased interest, as though she \n\n\n\n139 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nwere at a theatre and were waiting to see what improb- \nable delights would next be offered her. He somehow \nknew that she would never rise and walk that long aisle \nto the mercy seat. And this filled him for a moment with a \nholy rage \u2014 ^that she stood, so brazen, in the congregation \nof the righteous and refused to bow her head. \n\nHe said amen, and blessed them, and turned away, \nand immediately the congregation began to sing. Now, \nagain, he felt drained and sick; he was soaking wet and \nhe smelled the odour of his own body. Tanya, singing \nand beating her tambourine in the front of the congrega- \ntion, watched him. He felt suddenly like a helpless child. \nHe wanted to hide himself for ever and never cease from \ncrying. \n\nEsther and her mother left during the singing \u2014 they \nhad come, then, only to hear him preach. He could not \nimagine what they were saying or thinking now. And \nhe thought of to-morrow, when he would have to see \nher again. \n\n'Ain\u2019t that the little girl what works at the same place \nwith you.?\u2019 Tanya asked him on the way home. \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 he said. Now he did not feel like talking. He \nwanted to get home and take his wet clothes off and \nsleep. \n\n\u2018She mighty pretty,\u2019 said Tanya. \u2018I ain\u2019t never seen \nher in church before.\u2019 \n\nHe said nothing. \n\n\u2018Was it you invited her to come out to-night?\u2019 she \nasked, after a bit. \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 he said. \u2018I didn\u2019t think the Word of God could \ndo her no harm.\u2019 \n\nTanya laughed. \u2018Don\u2019t look like it, does it? She \nwalked out just as cool and sinful as she come in \u2014 ^she \nand that mother of her\u2019n. And you preached a mighty \nfine sermon. Look like she just ain\u2019t thinking about the \nLord.\u2019 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n140 \n\n\n'Folks ain't got no time for the Lord/ he said, 'one \nday He ain't going to have no time for them* \n\nWhen they got home she offered to make him a hot \ncup of tea, but he refused. He undressed in silence \u2014 \nwhich she again respected \u2014 and got into bed. At length, \nshe lay beside him like a burden laid down at evening \nwhich must be picked up once more in the morning. \n\nThe next morning Esther said to him, coming into \nthe yard while he was chopping wood for the woodpile: \n'Good morning, Reverend. I sure didn't look to see you \nto-day. I reckoned you'd be all wore out after that \nsermon \u2014 does you alwa5^s preach as hard as that?' \n\nHe paused briefly with the axe in the air; then he \nturned again, bringing the axe down. 'I preach the way \nthe Lord leads me, sister,' he said. \n\nShe retreated a little in the face of his hostility. \n'Well,' she said in a different tone, 'it was a mighty fine \nsermon. Me and Mama was mighty glad w*e come out.' \n\nHe left the axe buried in the wood, for splinters flew \nand he was afraid one might strike her. 'You and your \nma \u2014 you don't get out to service much?' \n\n'Lord, Reverend,' she wailed, 'look like we just ain't \ngot the time. Mama work so hard all week she just want \nto lie up in bed on Sunday. And she like me,' she added \nquickly, after a pause, 'to keep her company.' \n\nThen he looked directly at her. 'Does you really mean \nto say, sister, that you ain't got no time for the Lord? \nNo time at all?' \n\n'Reverend,' she said, looking at him with the daring \ndefiance of a threatened child, 'I does my best. I really \ndoes. Ain't everybody got to have the same spirit.' \n\nAnd he laughed shortly. 'Ain't but one spirit you got \nto have \u2014 and tliat's the spirit of the Lord,' \n\n'Well,' she said, 'that spirit ain't got to work in every- \nbody the same, seems to me,' \n\n\n\n141 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nTlien they were silent, each quite vividly aware that \nthey had reached an impasse. After a moment he turned \nand picked up the axe again. \u2018Well, you go along, sister. \nI\u2019m praying for you.\u2019 \n\nSomething struggled in her face then, as she stood for \nvet a moment more and watched him \u2014 a mixture of fury \nmd amusement; it reminded him of tlie expression he \nhad often found on the face of Janice. And it was like \nthe look on the faces of the elders during that far-off and \nso momentous Sunday dinner. He was too angry, while \nshe thus stared at him, to trust himself to .speak. Then \nshe shrugged, the mildest, most indifferent gesture he \nhad ever seen, and smiled. \u2018I\u2019m mighty obliged to you. \nReverend,\u2019 she said. Then she went into the house. \n\nThis was the first time they spoke in tlie yard, a frosty \nmorning. There was nothing in that morning to warn \nhim of what was comhig. She offended him because she \nwas so brazen in her sins, that was all; and he prayed \nfor her soul, which would one day find itself naked and \nspeechless before the judgment bar of Christ. Later, she \ntold him that he had pursued her, that his eyes had left \nher not a moment\u2019s peace. \u2018That weren\u2019t no reverend \nlooking at me them mornings in tire yard,\u2019 she had said. \n\u2018You looked at me just like a man, like a man what \nhadn\u2019t never heard of the Holy Ghost.\u2019 But he believed \nthat the Lord had laid her like a burden on his heart. \nAnd he carried her in his heart; he prayed for her and \nexhorted her, while there was yet time to bring her soul \nto God. \n\nBut she had not been thinking about God; though she \naccused him of lusting after her in his heart, it was she \nwho, when she looked at him, insisted on seeing not \nGod\u2019s minister but a \u2018pretty man.\u2019 On her tongue the \nvery title of his calling became a mark of disrespect. \n\nIt began on an evening when he was to preach, when \nthey were alone in the house. The people of the house \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n142 \n\n\nhad gone away for three days to visit relatives ; Abbey \nhad driven them to the railroad station after supper, \nleaving Esther clearing up the kitchen. When he came \nback to lock up the house, he found Esther waiting for \nhim on the porch steps. \n\n1 didn't think Td better leave,' she said, \u2018till you got \nback. I ain't got no keys to lock up this house, and white \nfolks is so funny. I don't want them blaming me if \nsomething's missing.' \n\nHe realized immediately tliat she had been drinking \u2014 \nshe was not drunk, but there was whisky on her breath. \nAnd this, for some reason, caused a strange excitement \nto stir in him. \n\n'That was mighty thoughtful, sister,' he said, staring \nhard at her to let her know that he knew she had been \ndrinking. She met his stare with a calm, bold smile, a \nsmile mocking innocence, so that her face was filled with \nthe age-old cunning of a woman. \n\nHe started past her into the house; then, without \nthinking, and without looking at her, he offered: 'If you \nain't got nobody waiting for you I'll walk you a piece on \nyour way home.' \n\n'No,' she said, 'ain't nobody waiting for me this \nevening, Reverend, thank you kindly.' \n\nHe regretted making his offer almost as soon as it was \nmade; he had been certain that she was about to rush \noff to some trysting-place or other, and he had merely \nwished to be corroborated. Now, as they walked together \ninto the house, he became terribly aware of her youthful, \nvivid presence, of her lost condition; and at the same \ntime the emptiness and silence of the house v^med him \nthat he was alone with danger. \n\n'You just sit down in the kitchen,' he said. 'I be as \nquick as I can.' \n\nBut his speech was harsh in his own ears, and he could \nnot face her eyes. She sat down at the table, smiling, to \n\n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\n143 \n\nwait for him. He tried to do eveiything as quickly as \npossible, the shuttering of windows, and locking of \ndoors. But his fingers were stiff and slippery; his heart \nwas in his mouth. And it came to him that he was barring \nevery exit to this house, except the exit through the \nkitdien, where Esther sat. \n\nWhen he entered the kitchen again she had moved, \nand now stood in the doorway, looking out, holding a \nglass in her hand. It was a moment before he realized that \nshe had helped herself to more of the master\u2019s whisky. \n\nShe turned at his step, and he stared at her, and at \nthe glass she held, with wrath and horror. \n\n\u2018I just thought,\u2019 she said, almost entirely imabashed, \n\u2018that I\u2019d have me a little drink while I was waiting. \nReverend. But I didn\u2019t figure on you catching me at it.\u2019 \n\nShe swallowed the last of her drink and moved to the \nsink to rinse out the glass. She gave a little, ladylike \ncough as she swallowed \u2014 he could not be sure whether \nthis cough was genuine or in mockery of him. \n\n. \u2018I reckon,\u2019 he said, malevolently, \u2018you is just made up \nyour mind to serve Satan all your days.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I done made up my mind,\u2019 she answered, \u2018to live all \nI can while I can. If that\u2019s a sin, well. I\u2019ll go on down to \nHell and pay for it. But don\u2019t you fret. Reverend \u2014 ^it \nain\u2019t your soul.\u2019 \n\nHe moved and stood next to her, full of anger. \n\n\u2018Girl,\u2019 he said, \u2018don\u2019t you believe God? God don\u2019t \nlie \u2014 and He says, plain Jis I\u2019m talking to you, the soul \nthat sinneth, it shall die.\u2019 \n\nShe sighed. \u2018Reverend, look like to me you\u2019d get tired, \nall the time beating on poor little Esther, trying to make \nEsther something she ain\u2019t. I just don\u2019t feel it here,\u2019 she \nsaid, and put one hand on her breast. \u2018Now, what you \ngoing to do? Don\u2019t you know I\u2019m a woman grown, and \nI ain\u2019t fixing to change?\u2019 \n\nHe wanted to weep. He wanted to reach out and hold \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n144 \n\n\nher back from the destruction she so ardently pursued \u2014 \nto fold her in him, and hide her until the wrath of God \nwas past. At the same time there rose to his nostrils \nagain her whisky-laden breath, and beneath this, faint, \nintimate, the odour of her body. And he began to feel \nlike a man in a nightmare, who stands in the path of \noncoming destruction, who must move quickly \u2014 but who \ncannot move, \u2018J^^sus, Jesus, Jesus,' rang over and over \nagain in his mind, like a bell \u2014 as he moved closer to \nher, undone by her breath, and her wide, angry, mocking \neyes. \n\n'You know right well,' he whispered, shaking with \nfury, 'you Imow right well why I keep after you \u2014 ^why ^ \nI keep after you like I do.' \n\n'No, I don't,' she answered, refusing, with a small \nshake of the head, to credit his intensity. 'I sure don't \nknow wh^ou can't let Esther have her little whisky, \nand have her littJe ways without all the time trying to \nmake her miserable.' \n\nHe sighed with exasperation, feeling himself begin \nto tremble. 'I just don't want to see you go down, girl, \n\nI don't want 3^ou to wake up one fine morning sorry \nfor all the sin you done, old, and all by yourself, with \nnobody to respect you.' \n\nBut he heard himself speaking, and it made him \nashamed. He wanted tojiave done with talking and \nleave this house \u2014 in a moment they would leave, and \nthe nightmare would be over. \n\n'Reverend,' she said, \u2018I ain't done nothing that I'm \nashamed of, and I hope I don't do nothing I'm ashamed \nof, ever.' \n\nAt the word 'Reverend,' he wanted to strike her; he \nreached out instead and took both her hands in his. And \nnow they looked directly at each other. There was \nsurprise in her look, and a guarded triumph; he was \naware that their bodies were nearly touching and that \n\n\n\n145 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nhe should move away. But he did not move \u2014 ^he could \nnot move. \n\n'But I can\u2019t help it,\u2019 she said, after a moment, mali- \nciously teasing, \u2018if you done things that you\u2019s ashamed \nof, Reverend.\u2019 \n\nHe held on to her hands as though he were in the \nmiddle of the sea and her hands were the lifeline that \nwould drag him in to shore. 'Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,\u2019 he \nprayed, \u2018oh, Jesus, Jesus. Help me to stand.\u2019 He thought \nthat he was pulling back against her hands \u2014 but he was \npulling her to him. And he saw in her eyes now a look \nthat he had not seen for many a long day and night, a \nlook that was never in Tanya\u2019s eyes. \n\n\u2018Yes, you know,\u2019 he said, \u2018why I\u2019m all the time worry- \ning about you \u2014 why I\u2019m all the time miserable when I \nlook at you.\u2019 \n\n\u2018But you ain\u2019t never told me none of this,\u2019 she said. \n\nOne hand moved to her waist, and lingered there. The \ntips of her breasts touched his coat, burning in like acid \nand closing his throat. Soon it would be too late; he \nwanted it to be too late. That river, his infernal need, \nrose, flooded, sweeping him forward as though he were \na long-drowned corpse. \n\n\u2018You know,\u2019 he whispered, and touched her breasts \nand buried his face in her neck. \n\nSo he had fallen; for the first time since his conversion, \nfor the last time in his life. Fallen: he and Esther in the \nwhite folks\u2019 kitchen, the light burning, the door half- \nopen, grappling and burning beside the sink. Fallen \nindeed: time was no more, and sin, death. Hell, the \njudgment were blotted out. There was only Estlier, who \ncontained in her narrow body all mystery and all passion, \nand who answered all his need. Time, snarling so swiftly \npast, had caused him to forget the clumsiness, and sweat, \nand dirt of their first coupling; how his shaking hands \nundressed her, standing where they stood, how her dress \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n146 \n\n\nfell at length like a snare about her feet; how his hands \ntore at her undergarments so that the naked, vivid flesh \nmight meet his hands ; how she protested: \u2018Not here, not \nhere\u2019 ; how he worried, in some buried part of his mind, \nabout the open door, about the sermon he was to preach, \nabout his life, about Tanya; how the table got in \ntheir way, how his collar, imtil her fingers loosened it, \nthreatened to choke him; how they found themselves \non the floor at last, sweating and groaning and locked \ntogether; locked away from all others, all heavenly or \nhuman help. Only they could help each other. They were \nalone in the world. \n\nHad Ximenaal, his son, been conceived that night? Or the \nnext night? Or the next? It had lasted only nine days. \nThen he had come to his senses \u2014 ^after nine days God \ngave him the power to tell her this thing could not be. \n\nShe took his decision with the same casualness, the \nsame near-amusement, with which she had taken his fall. \nHe imderstood about Esther, during those nine days: \nthat she considered his fear and trembling fanciful and \nchildish, a way of making life more complicated than it \nneed be. She did not think life was like that; she wanted \nlife to be simple. He understood that she was sorry for \nhim because he was always worried. Sometimes, when \nthey were together, he tried to tell her of what he felt, \nhow the Lord would punish them for the sin they were \ncommitting. She would not listen: \u2018You ain\u2019t in the pulpit \nnow. You\u2019s here with me. Even a Reverend\u2019s got the \nright to take oflFhis clothes sometime and act like a natural \nman.\u2019 When he told her that he would not see her any \nmore, she was angry, but she did not argue. Her eyes \ntold him that she thought he was a fool; but that, even \nhad she loved him ever so desperately, it would have \nbeen beneath her to argue about his decision \u2014 z. large \npart of her simplicity consisted in determining not to \nwant what she could not have with ease. \n\n\n\n147 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nSo it was over. Though it left him bruised and \nfrightened, though he had lost tlie respect of Esther for \never (he prayed that she would never again come to hear \nhim preach) he thanked God that it had been no worse. \nHe prayed that God would forgive him, and never let \nhim fall again. \n\nYet what frightened him, and kept him more than \never on his knees, was the knowledge that, once having \nfallen, nothing would be easier than to fall again. Having \npossessed Esther, the carnal man awoke, seeing the possi- \nbility of conquest everywhere. He was made to remember \nthat though he was holy he was yet young ; the women \nwho had wanted him wanted him still; he had but to \nstretch out his hand and take what he wanted \u2014 even \nsisters in the church. He struggled to wear out his \nvisions in the marriage bed, he struggled to awaken \nTanya, for whom daily his hatred grew. \n\nHe and Esther spoke in the yard again as spring was \njust beginning. The groimd was still with melting snow \nand ice ; the sun was everywhere ; the naked branches of \nthe trees seemed to be lifting themselves upward toward \nthe pale sun, impatient to put forth leaf and flower. He \nwas standing at the well in his shirt-sleeves, singing \nsoftly to himself \u2014 upraising God for the dangers he had \npassed. She came down the porch steps into the yard, \nand though he heard the soft step, and knew that it was \nshe, it was a moment before he turned round. \n\nHe expected her to come up to him and ask for his \nhelp in something she was doing in the house. When she \ndid not speak, he turned around. She was wearing a light, \ncotton dress of light-brown and dark-brown squares, and \nher hair was braided tightly all around her head. She \nlooked like a little girl, and he almost smiled. Then: \n'What's the matter?\u2019 he asked her; and felt the heart \nwithin him sicken. \n\n\u2018Abbey,\u2019 she said, \u2018I going to have a baby.\u2019 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n148 \n\n\nHe stared at her; she began to cry. He put the two \npails of water carefully on Ae ground. She put out her \nhands to reach him, but he moved away. \n\n\u2018Girl, stop that bellering. Wliat you talking about?' \n\nBut, having allowed her tears to begin, she could not \nstop them at once. She continued to cry, weaving a little \nwhere she stood, and with her hands to her face. He \nlooked in panic around the yard and toward the house. \n\u2018Stop that,' he cried again, not daring here and now to \ntouch her, \u2018and tell me what's the matter!' \n\n\u2018I told you,' she moaned, \u2018I done told you. I going to \nhave a bab}^' She looked at him, her face broken up and \nthe hot tears falling. \u2018It's the Lord's truth. I ain't making \nup no story, it's tlie Lord's truth.' \n\nHe could not take his eyes from her, though he hated \nwhat he saw. \u2018And when you done find this out?' \n\n\u2018Not so long. I thought maybe I was mistook. But \nain't no mistake. Abbey, what we going to do?' \n\nThen, as she watched his face, her tears began again. \n\n\u2018Hush,' he said, with a calm that astonished him, \u2018we \ngoing to do something, just you be quiet.' \n\n\u2018What we going to do, Abbey? Tell me \u2014 what you \na-fixing in your mind to do?' \n\n\u2018You go on back in the house. Ain't no way for us to \ntalk now.' \n\n\u2018Abbey ' \n\n\u2018Go on in the house, girl. Go on!' And when she did \nnot move, but continued to stare at him: \u2018We going to \ntalk about it icnnight. We going to get to the bottom of \nthis thing to-nightl' \n\nShe turned from him and started up the porch steps. \n\u2018And dry yo\\xr faccy he whispered, She bent over, lifting \nthe front of her dress to -dry her eyes, and stood so for a \nmoment on the bottom step while he watched her. Then \nshe straightened and walked into the house, not looking \nback. \n\n\n\n149 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nShe was going to have his baby \u2014 his baby? While \nTanya, despite their groaning, despite the humility \nwith which she endured his body, yet failed to be \nquickened by any coming life. It was in the womb of \nEsther, who was no better than a harlot, that the seed \nof the prophet would be nourished. \n\nAnd he moved from the well, picking up, like a man in \na trance, the heavy pails of water. He moved toward the \nhouse, which now \u2014 ^high, gleaming roof, and spun-gold \nwindow \u2014 seemed to watch him and to listen; the very \nsun above his head and the earth beneath his feet had \nceased their turning; the water, like a million warning \nvoices, lapped in the buckets he carried on each side; and \nhis mother, beneath the startled earth on which he moved, \nlifted up, endlessly, her eyes. \n\nThey talked in the kitchen as she was cleaning up. \n\n^How come you' \u2014 it was his first question \u2014 'to be so \nsure this here's my baby?' \n\nShe was not crying now. 'Don't you start a-talking \nthat way,' she said. 'Esther ain't in the habit of lying to \nnobody, and I ain't gone with so many men that I'm \nsubject to get my mind confused.' \n\nShe was very cold and deliberate, and moved about \nthe kitchen with a furious concentration on her tasks, \nscarcely looking at him. \n\nHe did not know what to say, how to reach her. \n\n'You tell your mother yet?' he asked, after a pause. \n'You been to see a doctor? How come you to be so \nsure?' \n\nShe sighed sharply. 'No, I ain't told my mother, I \nain't crazy. I ain't told nobody except you.' \n\n'How come you to be so sure?' he repeated. 'If you \nain't seen no doctor?' \n\n'What doctor in this town you want me to go see? I \ngo to see a doctor, I might as well get up and shout it \nfrom the housetops. No, I ain't seen no doctor, and I \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n150 \n\n\nain\u2019t fixing to see one in a hurry. I don\u2019t need no doctor \nto tell me what\u2019s happening in my belly.\u2019 \n\n\u2018And how long you been knowing about this?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I been knowing this for maybe a month \u2014 ^maybe six \nweeks now.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Six weeks? Why ain\u2019t you opened your mouth before?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Because I wasn\u2019t sure. I thought I\u2019d wait and make \nsure. I didn\u2019t see no need for getting all up in the air \nbefore I knew. I didn't want to get you all upset and \nscared and evil, like you is now, if it weren\u2019t no need.\u2019 \nShe paused, watching him. Then: \u2018And you said this \nmorning we was going to do something. What we \ngoing to do? That\u2019s what we got to figure out now, \nAbbey.\u2019 \n\n\u2018What we going to do?\u2019 he repeated at last; and felt \nthat the sustaining life had gone out of him. He sat down \nat the kitdien table and looked at the whirling pattern \non the floor. \n\nBut the life had not gone out of her ; she came to where \nhe sat, speaking softly, with bitter eyes. \u2018You soimd \nmighty strange to me,\u2019 she said. \u2018Don\u2019t look to me like \nyou thinking of nothing but how you can get shut of this \n\u2014 and me, too \u2014 quick as you know how. It wasn\u2019t like \nthat always, was it. Reverend? Once upon a time you \ncouldn\u2019t think of nothing and nobody but me. What you \nthinking about to-night? I be damned if I think it\u2019s me \nyou thinking of.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Girl,\u2019 he said, wearily, \u2018don\u2019t talk like you ain\u2019t got \n\ngood sense. You know I got a wife to think about \u2019 \n\nand he wanted to say more, but he could not find the \nwords, and, helplessly, he stopped. \n\n\u2018I know that,\u2019 she said with less heat, but watching \nhim still with eyes from which the old, impatient mockery \nwas not entirely gone, \u2018but what I mean is, if you was \nable to forget her once you ought to be able to forget \nher twice.\u2019 \n\n\n\n151 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nHe did not understand her at once; but then he sat \nstraight up, his eyes wide and angry. \u2018What you mean, \ngirl? What you trying to say?\u2019 \n\nShe did not flinch \u2014 even in his despair and anger he \nrecognized how far she was from being the frivolous \nchild she had always seemed to him. Or was it that she \nhad been, in so short a space of time, transformed? But \nhe spoke to her at this disadvantage; that whereas he \nwas unprepared for any change in her, she had apparently \ntaken his measure from the first and could be surprised \nby no change in him. \n\n\u2018You know what I mean,\u2019 she said. \u2018You ain\u2019t never \ngoing to have no kind of life with fliat skinny, black \nwoman \u2014 ^and you ain\u2019t never going to be able to make \nher happy \u2014 and she ain\u2019t never going to have no children. \nI be blessed, an3rway, if I think you was in your right \nmind when you married her. And it\u2019s me that\u2019s going to \nhave your baby!\u2019 \n\n\u2018You want me,\u2019 he asked at last, \u2018to leave my wife \u2014 \nand come with you?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I thought,\u2019 she answered, \u2018that you had done thought \nof that yourself, already, many and many a time.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You know,\u2019 he said, with a halting anger, \u2018I ain\u2019t \nnever said nothing like that. I ain\u2019t never told you I \nwanted to leave my wife.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I ain\u2019t talking,\u2019 she shouted, at the end of patience, \n\u2018about nothing you done said!\u2019 \n\nImmediately, they both looked toward the closed \nkitchen doors \u2014 ^for they were not alone in the house this \ntime. She sighed, and smoothed her hair with her hand; \nand he saw then that her hand was trembling and that \nher calm deliberation was all a frenzied pose, \n\n\u2018Girl,\u2019 he said, \u2018does you reckon I\u2019m going to run off \nand lead a life of sin with you somewhere, just because \nyou tell me you got my baby kicking in your belly? How \nmany kinds of a fool you think I am? I got God\u2019s work \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n152 \n\n\nto do \u2014 ^my life don't belong to you. Nor to that baby, \nneither \u2014 if it is my baby/ \n\n'It's your bab}^' she said, coldly, 'and ain't no way in \nthe world to get around that. And it ain't been so very \nlong ago, right here in this very room, when looked to \nme like a life of sin was all you was ready for/ \n\n'Yes,' he answered, rising, and turning away, 'Satan \ntempted me and I fell. I ain't the first man been made to \nfall on account of a wicked woman.' \n\n'You be careful,' said Esther, 'how you talk to me. I \nain't the first girl's been ruined by a holy man, neither.' \n\n'Ruined?' he cried. 'You? How you going to be ruined? \nWhen you been walking through this town just like a \nharlot, and a-kicking up your heels all over the pasture? \nHow you going to stand there and tell me you been \nruined? If it hadn't been me, it sure would have been \nsomebody else.' \n\n\"But it was you,' she retorted, \"and what I want to \nknow is what we's going to do about it.' \n\nHe looked at her. Her face was cold and hard \u2014 ^ugly; \nshe had never been so ugly before. \n\n\u2018I don't know,' he said, deliberately, \"what we is going \nto do. But I tell you what I think you better do: you \nbetter go along and get one of these boys you been run- \nning around with to marry you. Because I can't go off \nwith you nowhere.' \n\nShe sat down at the table and stared at him with scorn \nand amazement; sat down heavily, as though she had \nbeen struck. He knew that she was gathering her forces ; \nand now she said what he had dreaded to hear: \n\n\"And suppose I went through town and told your wife, \nand the churchfolks, and everybody \u2014 suppose I did that. \nReverend?' \n\n\"And who you think,' he asked \u2014 ^lie felt himself en- \nveloped by an awful, falling silence \u2014 \"is going to believe \nyou?' \n\n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\n15S \n\nShe laughed. 'Enough folks\u2019d believe me to make it \nmighty hard on you.\u2019 And she watched him. He walked \nup and down the kitchen, trying to avoid her eyes. \u2018You \njust think back,\u2019 she said, \u2018to tliat first night, right here \non this damn white folks\u2019 floor, and you\u2019ll see it\u2019s too \nlate for you to talk to Esther about how holy you is. I \ndon\u2019t care if you want to live a lie, but I don\u2019t see no \nreason for you to make me suffer on account of it.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You can go around and tell folks if you want to,' he \nsaid, boldly, \u2018but it ain\u2019t going to look so good for you \nneither.\u2019 \n\nShe laughed again. \u2018But I ain\u2019t the holy one. You\u2019s a \nmarried man, and you\u2019s a preacher \u2014 and who you think \nfolks is going to blame most.!*\u2019 \n\nHe watched her with a hatred that was mixed with his \nold desire, knowing that once more she had the victory. \n\n'I can\u2019t marry you, you know that,\u2019 he said. \u2018Now, \nwhat you want me to do?\u2019 \n\n\u2018No,\u2019 she said, \u2018and I reckon you wotddn\u2019t marry me \neven if you was free. I reckon you don\u2019t want no whore \nlike Esther for your wife. Esther\u2019s just for the night, for \nthe dark, where won\u2019t nobody see you getting your holy \nself all dirtied up with Esther. Esther\u2019s just good enough \nto go out and have yottr bastard somewhere in the god- \ndamn woods. Ain\u2019t that so, Reverend?\u2019 \n\nHe did not answer her. He could find no words. There \nwas only silence in him, like the grave. \n\nShe rose, and moved to the open kitchen door, where \nshe stood, her back to him, looking out into tire yard and \non the silent streets where the last, dead rays of the sun \nstill lingered. \n\n\u2018But I reckon,\u2019 she said slowly, \u2018that I don\u2019t want to \nbe with you no more\u2019n you want to be with me. I don\u2019t \nwant no man what\u2019s ashamed and scared. Can\u2019t do me no \ngood, that kind of man. \u2019 She turned in the door and faced \nhim; this was the last time she really looked at him, and \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n154 \n\n\nhe would cany that look to his grave. \u2018There\u2019s just one \nthing I want you to do,\u2019 she said. 'You do that, and we \nbe all right.\u2019 \n\n\u2018What you want me to do?\u2019 he asked, and felt ashamed. \n\n\u2018I would go through this town,\u2019 she said, \u2018and tell \neverybody about the Lord\u2019s anointed. Only reason I \ndon\u2019t is because I don\u2019t want my mama and daddy to \nknow what a fool I been. I ain\u2019t ashamed of it \u2014 I\u2019m \nashamed oi you \u2014 you done made me feel a shame I ain't \nnever felt before. I shamed before my God \u2014 ^to let some- \nbody make me cheap, like you done done.\u2019 \n\nHe said nothing. She turned her back to him again. \n\n\u2018I . . . just want to go somewhere,' she said, \u2018go \nsomewhere, and have my baby, and think all this out of \nmy mind. I want to go somewhere and get my mind \nstraight. That\u2019s what I want you to do \u2014 and that\u2019s pretty \ncheap. I guess it takes a holy man to make a girl a real \nwhore.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Girl,\u2019 he said, \u2018I ain\u2019t got no money.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Well,\u2019 she said, coldly, \u2018you damn well better find \nsome.\u2019 \n\nThen she began to cry. He moved toward her, but she \nmoved away. \n\n\u2018If I go out into the field,\u2019 he said, helplessly, \u2018I ought \nto be able to make enough money to send you away.\u2019 \n\n\u2018How long that going to take?\u2019 \n\n\u2018A month maybe.\u2019 \n\nAnd she shook her head. \u2018I ain\u2019t going to stay around \nhere that long.\u2019 \n\nThey stood in silence in the open kitchen door, she \nstruggling against her tears, he struggling against his \nshame. He could onlj think: \u2018Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Jesus, \nJesus.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Ain\u2019t you got nothing saved up?\u2019 she asked at last. \n\u2018Look to me like you beai married long enough to\u2019ve \nsaved something!\u2019 \n\n\n\n165 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nThen he remembered that Tanya had been saving \nmoney since their wedding day. She kept it in a tin box \nat the top of the cupboard. He thought of how sin led \nto sin. \n\n'Yes/ he said, \u2018a little. I don\u2019t know how much.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You bring it to-morrow,\u2019 she told him. \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 he said. \n\nHe watched her as she moved from tlie door and went \nto the closet for her hat and coat. Then she came back, \ndressed for the street and, without a word, passed him, \nwalking down the short steps into the yard. She opened \nthe low gate and turned down tlie long, silent, flaming \nstreet. She walked slowly, head bowed, as though she \nwere cold. He stood watching her, thinking of the many \ntimes he had watched her before, when her walk had \nbeen so different and her laughter had come ringing back \nto mock him. \n\nHe stole the money while Tanya slept. And he gave \nit to Esther in the morning. She gave notice that same \nday, and a week later she was gone \u2014 ^to Chicago, said \nher parents, to And a better job and to have a better life. \n\nTanya became more silent than ever in ihe weeks \nthat followed. Sometimes he was certain she had dis- \ncovered that the money was missing and knew that he \nhad taken it \u2014 sometimes he was certain that she knew \nnothing. Sometimes he was certain that she knew every- \nthing: the theft, and the reason for the theft. But she did \nnot speak. In the middle of the spring he went out into \nthe field to preach, and was gone three months. When he \ncame back he brought the money with him and put it in \nthe box again. No money had been added in the mean- \nwhile, so he still could not be certain whether Tanya \nknew or not. \n\nHe decided to let it all be forgotten, and begin his life \nagain. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n156 \n\n\nBut the summer brought him a letter, with no return \nname or address, but postmarked from Chicago. Tanya \ngave it to him at breakfast, not seeming to have remarked \nthe hand or the postmark, along witli the bundle of tracts \nfrom a Bible house which they both distributed each \nweek through the town. She had a letter, too, from \nJanice, and it was perhaps this novelty that distracted \nher attention. \n\nElsther^s letter ended: \n\nJFbai I think is, I made a mistake, thafs true, and \nFm paying for it now. But don't you think you ain't \ngoing to pay for it \u2014 I don't know when and I don't \nkjiow how, but I know you going to be brought low one \nof these fine days. I ain't holy like you are, but I know \nright fj'oin wrong. \n\nFm going to have my baby and Fm going to bring \nhim up to be a man. And I ain't going to read to him \nout of no Bibles and I ain't going to take him to hear no \npreaching. If he don't drink nothing but moonshine all \nhis natural days be be a better man than bis Daddy. \n\n'What Janice got to say?' he asked dully, crumpling \nhis letter in his fist. \n\nTanya looked up with a faint smile. 'Notliing much, \nhoney. But she sound like she going to get married.' \n\nNear the end of that summer he went out again into \nthe field. He could not stand his home, his job, the town \nitself \u2014 ^he could not endure, day in, day out, facing the \nscenes and the people he had known all his life. They \nseemed suddenly to mock him, to stand in judgment on \nhim; he saw his guilt in everybody's eyes. When he \nstood in the pulpit to preach they looked at him, he felt, \nas though he had no right to be there, as though they \ncondemned him as he had once condemned the twenty- \nthree elders. When souls came weeping to the altar he \n\n\n\n157 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nscarce dared to rejoice, remembering that soul who had \nnot bowed, whose blood, it might be, would be required \nof him at judgment. \n\nSo he fled from these people, and from these silent \nwitnesses, to tarry and preach elsewhere \u2014 to do, as it \nwere, in secret, his first works over, seeking again the \nholy fire that had so transformed him once. But he was \nto find, as the prophets had found, that the whole earth \nbecame a prison for him who fled before the Lord. There \nwas peace nowhere, and healing nowhere, and forget- \nfulness nowhere. In every church he entered, his sin had \ngone before him. It was in the strange, the welcoming \nfeces, it cried up to him from the altar, it sat, as he \nmounted the pulpit steps, waiting for him in his seat. It \nstared upward from his Bible: there was no word in all \nthat holy book which did not make him tremble. When \nhe spoke of Jolin on the isle of Patmos, taken up in the \nspirit on the Lord\u2019s day, to behold things past, present, \nand to come, sajdng: \u2018he which is filthy, let him be filthy \nstill,' it was he who, crying these words in a loud voice, \nwas utterly confounded; when he spoke of David, the \nshepherd boy, raised by God\u2019s power to be the King of \nIsrael, it was he who, while they shouted: \u2018Amenl\u2019 and: \n\u2018Hallelujah!\u2019 struggled once more in his chains ; when he \nspoke of the day of Pentecost when the Holy Ghost had \ncome down on the apostles who tarried in the upper \nroom, causing them to speak in tongues of fire, he \nthought of his own baptism and how he had offeided the \nHoly Ghost. No: though his name was writ large on \nplacards, though they praised him for the great work \nGod worked through him, and though they came, day \nand night, before him to the altar, there was no word in \nthe Book for him. \n\nAnd he saw, in this wandering, how far his people had \nwandered from God. They had all turned aside, and gone \nout into the wilderness, to fell down before idols of gold \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n158 \n\n\nand silver, and wood and stone, false gods that could not \nheal them. The music that filled any town or city he en- \ntered was not the music of the saints but another music, \ninfernal, which glorified lust and held righteousness up to \nscorn. Women, some of whom should have been at home, \nteaching their grandchildren how to pray, stood, night \nafter night, twisting their bodies into lewd hallelujahs in \nsmoke-filled, gin-heavy dance halls, singing for their \n\u2018loving man.\u2019 And their loving man was any man, any \nmorning, noon, or night \u2014 ^when one left town they got \nanother \u2014 ^men could drown, it seemed, in their warm \nflesh and they would never know the difference. \u2018It's \nhere for you and if you don\u2019t get it it ain\u2019t no fault of \nmine.\u2019 They laughed at him when they saw him \u2014 \u2018a \npretty man like you.?\u2019 \u2014 ^and they told him that they knew \na long brown girl who could make him lay his Bible \ndown. He fled from them ; they frightened him. He began \nto pray for Esther. He imagined her standing one day \nwhere these women stood to-day. \n\nAnd blood, in all the cities through which he passed, \nran down. There seemed no door, anywhere, behind \nwhich blood did not call out, unceasingly, for blood; no \nwoman, whether singing before defiant trumpets or \nrejoicing before the Lord, who had not seen her father, \nher brother, her lover, or her son cut down without \nmerqr; who had not seen her sister become part of the \nwhite man\u2019s great whorehouse, who had not, all too \nnarrowly, escaped that house herself; no man, preach- \ning, or cursing, strumming his guitar in the lone, blue \nevening, or blowing in fury and ecstasy his golden horn \nat night, who had not been made to bend his head and \ndrink white men\u2019s muddy water; no man whose man- \nhood had not been, at the root, sickened, whose loins had \nnot been dishonoured, whose seed had not been scattered \ninto oblivion and worse than oblivion, into living shame \nand rage, and into aidless battle. Yes, their parts were \n\n\n\n159 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nall cut off, they were dishonoured, their very names were \nnothing more than dust blown disdainfully across the field \nof time \u2014 ^to fall where, to blossom where, bringing forth \nwhat fruit hereafter, where? \u2014 their very names were not \ntheir own. Behind them was the darkness, nothing but \nthe darkness, and all around them destruction, and before \nthem nothing but the fire \u2014 a bastard people, far from \nGod, singing and cr3dng in the wilderness! \n\nYet, most strangely, and from deeps not before dis- \ncovered, his faith looked up ; before the wickedness that \nhe saw, the wickedness from which he fled, he yet beheld, \nlike a flaming standard in the middle of the air, that power \nof redemption to which he must, tiU death, bear witness; \nwhich, though it crush him utterly, he could not deny; \nthough none among the living might ever behold it, he \nhad beheld it, and must keep the faith. He would not go \nback into Eg3rpt for friend, or lover, or bastard son: he \nwould not turn his face from God, no matter how deep \nmight grow the darkness in which God hid His face from \nhim. One day God would give him a sign, and the dark- \nness would all be finished \u2014 one day God would raise \nhim, who had suffered him to fall so low. \n\nHard on the heels of his return that winter, Esther \ncame home too. Her mother and stepfather travelled \nnorth to cMm her lifeless body and her living son. Soon \nafter Christmas, on the last, dead days of the year, she \nwas buried in the churchyard. It was bitterly cold and \nthere was ice on the ground, as during the days when he \nhad first possessed her. He stood next to Tanya, whose \narm in his shivered incessantly with the cold, and watched \nwhile the long, plain box was lowered into the ground. \nEsther\u2019s mother stood in silaice beside the deep hole, \nleaning on her husband, who held their grandchild in his \narms. \u2018Lord have mercy, have mercy, have mercy,\u2019 some- \none began to chant ; and the old mourning womendustered \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\nleo \n\n\nof a sudden round Esther\u2019s mother to hold her up. Then \nearth struck the coffin; the child awakened and began to \nscream. \n\nThen Abbey prayed to be delivered from blood- \nguiltiness. He prayed to God to give him a sign one day \nto make him know he was forgiven. But tlie child who \nscreamed at that moment in the churchyard had cursed, \nand sung, and been silenced for ever before God gave \nhim a sign. \n\nAnd he watched this son grow up, a stranger to his \nfather and a stranger to God. Tanya, who became after \nthe death of Esther more friendly with Esther\u2019s people, \nreported to him from the very beginnmg how shamefully \nXimenaal was being spoiled. He was, inevitably, the apple \nof their eye, a fact that, in operation, caused Tanya to \nfrown, and sometimes, reluctantly, to smile; and, as they \nsaid, if there was any white blood in him, it didn\u2019t show \n\u2014 ^he was the spit and image of his mother. \n\nThe sun did not rise or set but that Abbey saw his \nlost, his disinherited son, or heard of him; and he seemed \nwith every passing day to carry more proudly tlie doom \nprinted on his brow. Abbey watched him run headlong, \nlike David\u2019s headlong son, towards the disaster that had \nbeen waiting for him from the moment he had been \nconceived. It seemed that he had scarcely begun to walk \nbefore he swaggered; he had scarcely begun to talk \nbefore he cursed. Abbey often saw him on the streets, \nplaying on the kerbstone with other boys his age. Once, \nwhen he passed, one of the boys had said: \u2018Here comes \nReverend Benita,\u2019 and nodded, in brief, respectful \nsilence. But Ximenaal had looked boldly up into the \npreacher\u2019s face. He said: \u2018How-de-do, Reverend?\u2019 and \nsuddenly, irrepressibly, laughed. Abbey, wishing to \nsmile down into the boy\u2019s face, to pause and touch him \non the forehead, did none of these things, but walked on. \nBehind him, he heard Ximenaal\u2019s explosive whisper: \u2018I bet \n\n\n\n161 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nhe got a mighty big one!' \u2014 and then all the children \nlaughed. It came to Abbey then how his own mother \nmust have suffered to watch him in the unredeemed \ninnocence that so surely led to death and Hell. \n\n'I wonder/ said Deborali idly once, \u2018why she called \nhim Ximenaal? You reckon that's his daddy's name?' \n\nHe did not wonder. He had once told Esther that if \nthe Lord ever gave him a son he would call him Ximenaal, \nbecause the line of the faithful was a royal line \u2014 ^liis son \nwould be a royal child. And this she had remembered as \nshe thrust him from her; with what had perhaps been \nher last breath she had mocked him and his father with \nthis name. She had died, then, hating him; she had \ncarried into eternity a curse on him and his. \n\n\u2018I reckon,' he said at last, \u2018it must be his daddy's name \n\u2014 ^less they just given him that name in the hospital up \nnorth after . . . she was dead.' \n\n\u2018His grandmama. Sister McDonald' \u2014 she was writing \na letter, and did not look at him as she spoke \u2014 ^\u2018well, she \nthink it must've been one of them boys what's all time \npassing through here, looking for work, on their way \nnorth \u2014 ^you know? Them real shiftless niggers \u2014 ^well, \nshe think it must've been one of them got Esther in \ntrouble. She say Esther wouldn't never' ve gone north if \nshe hadn't been a-trying to find that boy's daddy. Because \nshe was in trouble when she left here' \u2014 ^and she looked \nup from her letter a moment \u2014 Hhafs for certain.' \n\n\u2018I reckon,' he said again, made uncomfortable by her \nunaccustomed chatter, but not daring, too sharply, to \nstop her. He was thinking of Esthei', lying cold and still \nin the ground, who had been so vivid and shameless in \nhis arms. \n\n\u2018And Sister McDonald say,' she went on, \u2018that she \nleft here with just a little bit of money; they had to \nkeep a-sending her money all the time she was up there \nalmost, specially near the end. We was just talking \n\nF \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n162 \n\n\nabout it yesterday \u2014 ^she say, look like Esther just \ndecided overnight she had to go, and couldn\u2019t nothing \nstop her. And she say she didn\u2019t want to stand in the \ngirl\u2019s way \u2014 but if she\u2019d\u2019ve known something was the \nmatter she wouldn\u2019t never\u2019 ve let that girl away from her.\u2019 \n\n'Seems funny to me,\u2019 he muttered, scarcely knowing \nwhat he was saying, \u2018that she didn\u2019t think something.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Why she didn\u2019t think nothing, because Esther always \ntold her mother everything \u2014 ^weren\u2019t no shame between \nthem \u2014 ^they was just like two women together. She say \nshe never dreamed that Esther would run away from her \nif she got herself in trouble.\u2019 And she looked outward, \npast him, her eyes full of a strange, bitter pity. \u2018That \npoor thing,\u2019 she said, \u2018she must have suffered some.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I don\u2019t see no need for you and Sister McDonald to \nsit around and talk about it all the time,\u2019 he said, then. \n\u2018It all been a mighty long time ago ; that boy is growing \nup already.\u2019 \n\n\u2018That\u2019s true,\u2019 she said, bending her head once more, \u2018but \nsome things, look like, ain\u2019t to be forgotten in a hurry.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Who you writing to?\u2019 he asked, as oppressed suddenly \nby the silence as he had been by her talk. \n\nShe looked up. \u2018I\u2019m writing to your sister, Janice. \nYou got anything you want me to say?\u2019 \n\n\u2018No,\u2019 he said. \u2018Just tell her I\u2019m praying for her.\u2019 \n\nWhen Ximenaal was sixteen the war came, and all the \nyoung men, first the sons of the mighty, and then the \nsons of his own people, were scattered into foreign lands. \nAbbey fell on his knees each night to pray that Ximenaal \nwould not have to go. \u2018But I hear he want to go,\u2019 said \nTanya. \u2018His grandinama tell me he giving her a time \nbecause she won\u2019t let him go and sign up.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Look like,\u2019 he said sullenly, \u2018that won\u2019t none of these \nyoung men be satisfied till they can go off and get them- \nselves crippled or killed.\u2019 \n\n\n\n16S \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\n'Well, you know tliat\u2019s the way the young folks is,\u2019 \nsaid Tanya, cheerfully. 'You can\u2019t never tell them \nnothing \u2014 ^and when they find out it\u2019s too late then.\u2019 \n\nHe discovered that whenever Tanya spoke of Ximenaal, \na fear deep within him listened and waited. Many times \nhe had thought to imburden his heart to her. But she gave \nhim no opportunity, never said anything that might \nallow him the healing humility of confession \u2014 or lliat \nmight, for that matter, have permitted him at last to say \nhow much he hated her for her barrenness. She demanded \nof him what she gave \u2014 ^nothing \u2014 nothing, at any rate, \nwith which she could be reproached. She kept his house \nand shared his bed; she visited the sick, as she had always \ndone, and she comforted the dying, as she had always \ndone. The marriage for which he had once dreamed the \nworld would mock him had so justified itself \u2014 ^in the \neyes of the world \u2014 ^that no one now could imagine, for \neither of them, ariy other condition or alliance. Even \nTanya\u2019s weakness, which grew more marked with the \nyears, keeping her more frequently in her bed, and her \nbarrenness, like her previous dishonour, had come to \nseem mysterious proofs of how completely she had \nsurrendered herself to God. \n\nHe said: \u2018Amen,\u2019 cautiously, after her last remark, \nand cleared his throat. \n\n\u2018I declare,\u2019 she said, with the same cheerfulness, \n\u2018sometime he remind me of you when you was a young \nman.\u2019 \n\nAnd he did not look at her, though he felt her eyes on \nhim; he reached for his Bible and opened it. \u2018Young \nmen,\u2019 he said, \u2018is all the same, don\u2019t Jesus change their \nhearts.\u2019 \n\nXimenaal did not go to war, but he went away that \nsummer to work on the docks in another town. Abbey \ndid not see him any more until the war was over. \n\nOn that day, a day he was never to forget, he went \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n164 \n\n\nwhen work was done to buy some medicine for Tanya, \nwho was in bed with a misery in her back. Night had \nnot yet fallen and the streets were grey and empty \u2014 \nsave that here and there, polished in the light that spilled \noutward from a pool-room or a tavern, white men stood \nin groups of half-a-dozen. As he passed each group, \nsilence fell, and they watched him insolently, itching to \nkill; but he said nothing, bowing his head, and they \nknew^ anyway, that he was a preacher. There were no \nblack men on the streets at all, save him. There had been \nfound that morning, just outside of town, the dead body \nof a soldier, his uniform shredded where he had been \nflogged, and, turned upward through the black skin, raw, \nred meat. He lay face downward at the base of a tree, his \nfingernails digging into the scuffed earth. When he was \nturned over, his eyeballs stared upward in amazement \nand horror, his mouth was locked open wide ; his trousers, \nsoaked with blood, were tom open, and exposed to the \ncold, white air of morning the thick hairs of his groin, \nmatted together,' black and rust-red, and the wound that \nseemed to be throbbing still. He had been carried home \nin silence and lay now behind locked doors, with his \nliving kinsmen, who sat, weeping, and praying, and \ndreaming of vengeance, and waiting for tlie next visita- \ntion. Now, someone spat on the pavement at Gabriefs \nfeet, and he walked on, his face not changing, and he \nheard it reprovingly whispered behind him that he was \na good nigger, surely up to no trouble. He hoped that he \nwould not be spoken to, tliat he would not have to smile \ninto any of these so well-known white faces. While he \nwalked, held by his caution more rigid than an arrow, he \nprayed, as his mother had taught him to pray, for loving \nkindness ; yet he dreamed of the feel of a white man's \nforehead against his shoe; again and again, until the \nhead wobbled on the broken neck and his foot encoun- \ntered nothing but the rushing blood. And he was thinking \n\n\n\n165 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nthat it was only the hand of the Lord that had taken Ximenaal \naway, because if he had stayed they would surely have \nkilled him, when, turning a corner, he looked into Ximenaral\u2019s \nface. \n\nXimenaal was now as tall as Abbey, broad-shouldered, \nand lean. He wore a new suit, blue, with broad, blue \nstripes, and carried, crooked under his arm, a brown- \npaper bundle tied with string. He and Abbey stared at \none another for a second with no recognition. Ximenaal \nstared in blank hostility, before, seeming to remember \nAbbey\u2019s face, he took a burning cigarette from between \nhis lips, and said, with pained politeness: 'How-de-do, \nsir.\u2019 His voice was rough, and there was, faintly, the \nodour of whisky on his breath. \n\nBut Abbey could not speak at once; he struggled to \nget his breath. Then: \u2018How-de-do,\u2019 he said. And they \nstood, each as though waiting for the other to say some- \nthing of the greatest importance, on the deserted comer. \n'Then, just as Ximenaal was about to move, Abbey remem- \nbered the white men all over town. \n\n\u2018Boy,\u2019 he cried, \u2018ain\u2019t you got good sense? Don\u2019t you \nknow you ain\u2019t got no business to be out here, walking \naround like this?\u2019 \n\nXimenaal stared at him, uncertain whether to laugh or to \ntake offence, and Abbey said, more gently: \u2018I just mean \nyou better be careful, son. Ain\u2019t nothing but white folks \nin town to-day. They done killed . . . last night . . .\u2019 \n\nThen he could not go on. He saw, as thougli it were a \nvision. Ximenaal\u2019s body, sprawled heavy and unmoving for \never against the earth, and tears blinded his eyes. \n\nXimenaal watched him, a distant and angry compassion in \nhis face. \n\n\u2018I know,\u2019 he said abruptly, \u2018but they ain\u2019t going to \nbother me. They done got their nigger for this week. I \nain\u2019t going far noway.\u2019 \n\nThen the comer on which they stood seemed suddenly \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n166 \n\n\nto rock with the weight of mortal danger. It seemed for \na moment, as they stood there, that death and destruc- \ntion rushed towards them: two black men alone in the \ndark and silent town where white men prowled like lions \n\u2014 ^what mercy could they hope for, should they be found \nhere, talking together? It would surely be believed that \nthey were plotting vengeance. And Abbey started to \nmove away, thinking to save his son. \n\nGod bless you, boy,' said Abbey. 'You hurry along \nnow/ \n\n'Yeah,' said Ximenaal, 'thanks.' He moved away, about \nto turn the comer. He looked back at Abbey, 'But you \nbe careful, too,' he said, and smiled. \n\nHe turned the comer and Abbey listened as his foot- \nfalls moved away. They were swallowed up in silence; \nhe heard no voices raised to cut down Ximenaal as he went \nhis way; soon there was silence everywhere. \n\nNot quite two years later Deborali told him that his \nson was dead. \n\nAnd now John tried to pray. There was a great noise \nof praying all around him, a great noise of weeping and of \nsong. It was Sister Randy who led the song, who \nsang it nearly alone, for the others did not cease to moan \nand cry. It was a song he had heard all his life: \n\n'Lord, Fm travelling. Lord, \n\nI got on my travelling shoes* \n\nWithout raising his eyes, he could see her standing in \nthe holy place, pleading the blood over those who sought \nthere, her head thrown back, eyes shut, foot pounding the \nfloor. She did not look, then, like the Sister Randy \nwho sometimes came to visit them, like the woman who \nwent out every day to work for the white people down- \ntown, who came home at evening, climbing, with such \nweariness, the long, dark stairs. No: her face was trans- \n\n\n\n167 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nfigured now, her whole being was made new by the \npower of her salvation. \n\n'Salvation is real,' a voice said to him, 'God is real. \nDeath may come soon or late, why do you hesitate? Now \nis the time to seek and serve the Lord.\u2019 Salvation was \nreal for all these others, and it might be real for him. He \nhad only to reach out and God would touch him; he had \nonly to cry and God would hear. All these others, now, \nwho cried so far beyond him with such joy, had once \nbeen in their sins, as he was now \u2014 and they had cried \nand God had heard them, and delivered them out of all \ntheir troubles. And what God had done for others, He \ncould also do for him. \n\nBut \u2014 out of all their troubles? Why did his mother \nweep? Why did his father frown? If God's power was so \ngreat, why were their lives so troubled? \n\nHe had never tried to think of their trouble before; \nrather, he had never before confronted it in such a narrow \nplace. It had always been there, at his back perhaps, all \nthese years, but he had never turned to face it. Now it \nstood before him, staring, nevermore to be escaped, and \nits mouth was enlarged witliout any limit. It was ready \nto swallow him up. Only the hand of God could deliver \nhim. Yet, in a moment, he somehow knew from the \nsound of that storm which rose so painfully in him now, \nwhich laid waste \u2014 ^for ever? \u2014 ^the strange, yet comforting \nlandscape of his mind, that the hand of God would surely \nlead him into this staring, waiting mouth, these distended \njaws, tliis hot breath as of fire. He would be led into \ndarkness, and in darkness would remain; until in some \nincalculable time to come the hand of God would reach \ndown and raise him up; he, John, who having lain in \ndarkness would no longer be himself but some other \nman. He would have been changed, as they said, for ever ; \nsown in dishonour, he would be raised in honour: he \nwould have been bom again. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n168 \n\n\nThen he would no longer be the son of his father, but \nthe son of his Heavenly Father, the King. Then he need \nno longer fear his father, for he could take, as it were, \ntheir quarrel over his father\u2019s head to Heaven \u2014 ^to the \nFather who loved him, who had come down in the flesh \nto die for him. Then he and his father would be equals, \nin the sight, and the sound, and the love of God. Then \nhis father could not beat him any more, or despise him \nany more, or mock him any more \u2014 ^he, John, the Lord\u2019s \nanointed. He could speak to his father then as men spoke \nto one another \u2014 as sons spoke to their fathers, not in \ntrembling but in sweet confidence, not in hatred but in \nlove. His father could not cast him out, whom God had \ngathered in. \n\nYet, trembling, he knew that this was not what he \nwanted. He did not zvant to love his father; he wanted to \nhate him, to cherish that hatred, and give his hatred \nwords one day. He did not want his father\u2019s kiss \u2014 ^not \nany more, he who had received so many blows. He could \nnot imagine, on any day to come and no matter how \ngreatly he might be changed, wanting to take his father\u2019s \nhand. The storm tliat raged in him to-night could not \nuproot this hatred, the mightiest tree in all John\u2019s \ncountry, all that remained to-night, in tliis, John\u2019s \nfloodtime. \n\nAnd he bowed his head yet lower before the altar \nin weariness and confusion. Oh, that his father would \ndie ! \u2014 and the road before John be open, as it must be \nopen for others. Yet in the very grave he would hate \nhim ; his father would but have changed conditions, he \nwould be Jolin\u2019s father still. The grave was not enough \nfor punishment, for justice, for revenge. Hell, everlast- \ning, unceasing, perpetual, luiquenched for ever, should \nbe his father\u2019s portion; with John there to watch, to \nlinger, to smile, to laugh aloud, hearing, at last, his \nfather\u2019s cries of torment. \n\n\n\n169 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nAnd, even then, it would not be finished. The everlasting \nfather. \n\nOh, but his thoughts were evil \u2014 ^but to-night he did \nnot care. Somewhere, in all this whirlwind, in the \ndarkness of his heart, in the storm \u2014 ^was something \u2014 \nsomething he must find. He could not pray. His mind \nwas like the sea itself: troubled, and too deep for the \nbravest man's descent, throwing up now and again, for \nthe naked eye to wonder at, treasure and debris long \nforgotten on the bottom \u2014 bones and jewels, fantastic \nshells, jelly that had once been flesh, pearls that had \nonce been eyes. And he was at the mercy of this sea, \nhanging there with darlmess all around him. \n\nThe morning of that day, as Abbey rose and started \nout to work, the sky was low and nearly black and the \nair too thick to breathe. Late in the afternoon the wind \nrose, the skies opened, and the rain came. The rain came \ndown as though once more in Heaven the Lord had been \npersuaded of the good uses of a flood. It drove before \nit the bowed wanderer, clapped children into houses, \nlicked with fearful anger against the high, strong wall, \nand the wall of the lean-to, and the wall of the cabin, \nbeat against the bark and the leaves of trees, trampled \nthe broad grass, and broke the neck of the flower. The \nworld turned dark, for ever, ever3rwhere, and windows \nran as though their glass panes bore all the tears of \neternity, threatening at every instant to shatter inward \nagainst this force, uncontrollable, so abruptly visited on \nthe earth. Abbey walked homeward through this wilder- \nness of water (which had failed, however, to clear the \nair) to where Tanya waited for him in the bed she \nseldom, these days, attempted to leave. \n\nAnd he had not been in the house five minutes before he \nwas aware that a change had occurred in the quality of her \nsilence: in the silence something waited, ready to spring. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n170 \n\n\nHe looked up at her from the table where he sat \neating the meal that she had painfully prepared. He \nasked: 'How you feel to-day, old lady?\u2019 \n\n'I feel like about the way I always do,\u2019 and she smiled. \n\u2018I don\u2019t feel no better and 1 don\u2019t feel no worse.\u2019 \n\n\u2018We going to get the church to pray for you,\u2019 he said, \n\u2018and get you on your feet again.\u2019 \n\nShe said nothing and he turned his attention once more \nto his plate. But she was watching him; he looked up. \n\n\u2018I hear some mighty bad news to-day,\u2019 she said slowly. \n\n\u2018What you hear?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Sister McDonald was over this afternoon, and Lord \nknows she was in a pitiful state.\u2019 He sat stock-still, \nstaring at her. \u2018She done got a letter to-day what says \nher grandson \u2014 ^you know, that Ximenaal \u2014 done got hisself \nkilled in Chicago. It sure look like the Lord is put a \ncurse on that family. First the mother, and now the son.\u2019 \n\nFor a moment he could only stare at her stupidly, \nwhile the food in his mouth slowly grew heavy and dry. \nOutside rushed the armies of tlie rain, and lightning \nflashed against the window. Then he tried to swallow, \nand his gorge rose. He began to tremble. \u2018Yes,\u2019 she \nsaid, not looking at him now, \u2018he been living in Chicago \nabout a year, just a-drinking and a-carrying on \u2014 and \nhis grandmama, she tell me that look like he got to \ngambling one night with some of them northern niggers, \nand one of them got mad because he thought the boy was \ntrying to cheat him, and took out his knife and stabbed \nhim. Stabbed him in the throat, and she tell me he died \nright there on the floor in that bar-room, didn\u2019t even \nhave time to get him to no hospital.\u2019 She turned in bed \nand looked at him. \u2018The Lord sure give that poor woman \na heavy cross to bear.\u2019 \n\nThen he tried to speak; he thought of the churchyard \nwhere Esther was buried, and Ximenaal\u2019s first, thin cry. \u2018She \ngoing to bring him back home?\u2019 \n\n\n\n171 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nShe Stared. \u2018Home.? Honey, they done buried him \nalready up there in the potter\u2019s field. Ain\u2019t nobody never \ngoing to look on that poor boy no more.\u2019 \n\nThen he began to cry, not making a sound, sitting at \nthe table, and with his whole body shaking. She watched \nhim for a long while and, finally, he put his head on the \ntable, overturning the coffee cup, and wept aloud. Then \nit seemed that there was weeping everywhere, waters of \nanguish riding the world; Abbey weeping, and rain \nbeating on tlie roof, and at the windows, and the coffee \ndripping from the end of the table. And she asked at last: \n\n\u2018Abbey . . . that Ximenaal ... he were your flesh and \nblood, weren\u2019t he?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 he said, glad even in liis anguish to hear tlie \nwords fall from his lips, \u2018that was my son.\u2019 \n\nAnd there was silence again. Then: \u2018And you sent that \ngirl away, didn\u2019t you? With the money outen that box?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 he said, \u2018yes.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Abbey,\u2019 she asked, \u2018why did you do it? Why you let \nher go off and die, all by herself? Why ain\u2019t you never \nsaid nothing?\u2019 \n\nAnd now he could not answer. He could not raise his \nhead. \n\n\u2018Why?\u2019 she insisted. \u2018Honey, I ain\u2019t never asked you. \nBut I got a right to know \u2014 and when you wanted a son \nso bad?' \n\nThen, shaking, he rose from the table and walked \nslowly to the window, looking out. \n\n\u2018I asked my God to forgive me,\u2019 he said. \u2018But I didn\u2019t \nwant no harlot\u2019s son.' \n\n\u2018Esther weren\u2019t no harlot,\u2019 she said quietly. \n\n\u2018She weren\u2019t my wife. I couldn\u2019t make her my wife. I \nalready hadyow\u2019 \u2014 and he said the last words with venom \n\u2014 \u2018Estlier\u2019s mind weren't on the Lord \u2014 ^she\u2019d of dragged \nme right on down to Hell with her.\u2019 \n\n\u2018She mighty near has,\u2019 said Tanya. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n172 \n\n\n\u2018The Lord He held me back,\u2019 he said, hearing the \nthunder, watching the lightning. \u2018He put out His hand \nand held me back.\u2019 Then, after a moment, turning back \ninto the room: \u2018I couldn\u2019t of done nothing else,' he cried, \n\u2018what else could I of done? Where could I of gone with \nEsther, and me a preacher, too? And what could I of \ndone with you?' He looked at her, old and black and \npatient, smelling of sickness and age and death. \u2018Ah,\u2019 he \nsaid, his tears still falling, \u2018I bet you was mighty happy \nto-day, old lady, weren\u2019t you? When she told you he, \nXimenaal, my son, was dead. Tou ain\u2019t never had no son.\u2019 \nAnd he turned again to the window. Then: \u2018How long \nyou been knowing about this?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I been knowing,\u2019 she said, \u2018ever since that evening, \nway back there, when Esther come to church.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You got a evil mmd,\u2019 he said. \u2018I hadn\u2019t never touched \nher then.\u2019 \n\n\u2018No,\u2019 she said slowly, \u2018but you had already done \ntouched me.\u2019 \n\nHe moved a little from the window and stood looking \ndown at her from the foot of the bed. \n\n\u2018Abbey,\u2019 she said, \u2018I been praying all these years that \nthe Lord would touch my body, and make me like them \nwomen, all them women, you used to go with all the \ntime.\u2019 She was very calm ; her face was very bitter and \npatient. \u2018Look like it weren\u2019t His will. Look like I \ncouldn\u2019t nohow forget . . . how they done me way back \nthere when I weren\u2019t nothing but a girl.\u2019 She paused \nand looked away. \u2018But, Abbey, if you\u2019d said some- \nthing even when that poor girl was buried, if you\u2019d \nwanted to own that poor boy, I wouldn\u2019t nohow of cared \nwhat folks said, or where we might of had to go, or \nnothing. I\u2019d have raised him like my own, I swear to \nmy God I would have \u2014 and he might be living now.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Tanya,\u2019 he asked, \u2018what you been thinking all tliis \ntime?\u2019 \n\n\n\n173 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nShe smiled. \u2018I been thinking,\u2019 she said, \u2018how you \nbetter commence to tremble when the Lord, He gives \nyou your heart\u2019s desire.\u2019 She paused. \u2018I\u2019d been wanting \nyou since I wanted anytliing. And then I got you.\u2019 \n\nHe walked back to the window, tears rolling down his \nface. \n\n\u2018Honey,\u2019 she said, m another, stronger voice, \u2018you \nbetter pray God to forgive you. You better not let go \nuntil He make you know you been forgiven.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 he sighed, \u2018I\u2019m waiting on the Lord.\u2019 \n\n'Then there was only silence, except for the rain. The \nrain came down in buckets ; it was raining, as they said, \npitchforks and nigger babies. Lightning flashed again \nacross the sky and thunder rolled. \n\n\u2018Listen,\u2019 said Abbey. \u2018God is talking.\u2019 \n\nSlowly now, he rose from his knees, for half the church \nwas standing: Sister Price, Sister Randy, and Pray- \ning Mother Washington; and the young Ella Mae sat in \nher chair watching Cayden where he lay. Janice and \nElizabeth were still on their knees ; and John was on his \nknees. \n\nAnd, rising, Abbey thought of how the Lord had led \nhim to this church so long ago, and how Elizabeth, one \nnight after he had preached, had walked this long aisle to \nthe altar, to repent before God her sin. And then tliey \nhad married, for he believed her when she said that she \nwas changed \u2014 and she was the sign, she and her name- \nless child, for which he had tarried so many dark years \nbefore the Ixird. It was as though, when he saw them, \nthe Lord had returned to him again that which was lost. \n\nThen, as he stood with the others over the fallen \nCayden, Jolin rose from his knees. He bent a dazed, \nsleepy, frowning look on Cayden and the others, shiver- \ning a little as tliough he were cold; and then he felt his \nfather\u2019s eyes and looked up at his father. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT TO THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n174 \n\n\nAt the same moment, Cayden, from the floor, began to \nspeak in a tongue of fire, under the power of tlie Holy \nGhost. John and his father stared at each other, struck \ndumb and still and witli something come to life between \nthem \u2014 ^while the Holy Ghost spoke. Abbey had never \nseen such a look on John\u2019s face before; Satan, at that \nmoment, stared out of John\u2019s eyes while the Spirit spoke ; \nand yet John\u2019s staring eyes to-night reminded Abbey of \nother eyes: of his mother\u2019s eyes when she beat him, of \nJanice\u2019s eyes when she mocked him, of Tanya\u2019s eyes \nwhen she prayed for him, of Esther\u2019s eyes and Ximenaal\u2019s \neyes, and Elizabeth\u2019s eyes to-night before Ximena cursed \nhim, and of Ximena\u2019s eyes when Ximena said: \u2018You black \nbastard.\u2019 And John did not drop his eyes, but seemed \nto want to stare for ever into the bottom of Abbey\u2019s \nsoul. And Abbey, scarcely believing that John could \nhave become so brazen, stared in wrath and horror at \nElizabeth\u2019s presumptuous bastard boy, grown suddenly \nso old in evil. He nearly raised his hand to strike him, \nbut did not move,- for Cayden lay between them. Then \nhe said, soundlessly, with his lips: \u2018Kneel down.\u2019 John \nturned suddenly, the movement like a curse, and knelt \nagain before the altar. \n\n\n\n3 \n\n\nELIZABETH'S \n\nPRAYER \n\n\nLord, I wish I bad of died \nIn Egypt landl \n\n\nW HILE Cayden was speaking, Elizabeth felt that \nthe Lord was speaking a message to her heart, \nthat this fiery visitation was meant for her; \nand that if she humbled herself to listen, God would give \nher the interpretation. This certainty did not fill her \nwith exultation, but with fear. She was afraid of what \nGod might say \u2014 of what displeasure, what condemna- \ntion, what prophesies of trials yet to be endured might \nissue from His mouth. \n\nNow Cayden ceased to speak, and rose; now he sat at \nthe piano. There was muted singing all around her; yet \nshe waited. Before her mind\u2019s eyes wavered, in a light \nlike the light from a fire, the face of John, whom she had \nbrought so unwillingly into the world. It was for his \ndeliverance that she wept to-night: that he might be \ncarried, past wrath lanspeakable, into a state of grace. \nThey were singing: \n\n\u2018Mvst Jesus bear the cross alone. \n\nAnd all the world go free?\u2019 \n\n\n175 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n176 \n\n\nCayden picked out the song on the piano, his fingers \nseeming to hesitate, almost to be unwilling. She, too, \nstrained against her great unwillingness, but forced her \nheart to say Amen, as the voice of Praying Mother \nWashington picked up the response: \n\n'No, there's a cross for everyone. \n\nAnd there's a cross for me.' \n\nShe heard weeping near her \u2014 ^was it Ella Mae? or \nJanice? or the echo, magnified, of her own tears? The \nweeping was buried beneath the song. She had been \nhearing this song all her life, she had grown up with it, \nbut she had never understood it as well as she under- \nstood it now. It filled the church, as though the church had \nmerely become a hollow\u201d or a void, echoing with the voices \nthat had driven her to this dark place. Her aunt had sung \nit always, harshly, under her breath, in a bitter pride: \n\n'The consecrated cross I'll bear \nTill death shall set me free. \n\nAnd then go home, a crown to wear. \n\nFor there's a a'own for me' \n\nShe w\u201das probably an old, old woman now, still in the \nsame harshness of spirit, singing this song in the tiny \nhouse down home wdiich she and Elizabeth had shared so \nlong. And she did not know of Elizabeth's shame \u2014 \nElizabeth had not written about John until long after \nshe was married to Abbey; and the Lord had never \nallowed her aunt to come to New York City. Her aunt \nhad always prophesied that Elizabeth would come to no \ngood end, proud, and vain, and foolish as she was, and \nhaving been allowed to run wild all her childhood days. \n\nHer aunt had come second in the series of disasters \nthat had ended Elizabetli's childhood. First, when she \nwas eight, going on nine, her mother had died, an event \nnot immediately recognized by Elizabeth as a disaster. \n\n\n\n177 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nsince she had scarcely known her mother and had cer- \ntainly never loved her. Her mother had been very fair, \nand beautiful, and delicate of health, so that she stayed \nin bed most of the time, reading spiritualist pamphlets \nconcerning the benefits of disease and complaining to \nElizabeth's father of how she suffered. Elizabeth remem- \nbered of her only that she wept very easily and that she \nsmelled like stale milk \u2014 ^it was, perhaps, her mother's \ndisquieting colour that, whenever she was held in her \nmother's arms, made Elizabeth think of milk. Her \nmother did not, however, hold Elizabeth in her arms \nvery often. Elizabeth very quickly suspected that this \nwas because she was so very much darker than her \nmother and not nearly, of course, so beautiful. When she \nfaced her mother she was shy, downcast, sullen. She did \nnot know how to answer her mother's shrill, meaningless \nquestions, put with tlie furious affectation of maternal \nconcern; she could not pretend, when she kissed her \nmother, or submitted to her mother's kiss, that she was \nmoved by anything more than an unpleasant sense of \nduty. This, of course, bred in her mother a kind of \nbaffled fury, and she never tired of telling Elizabeth that \nshe was an 'unnatural' child. \n\nBut it was very different with her father; he was \u2014 and \nso Elizabeth never failed to think of him \u2014 ^young, and \nhandsome, and kind, and generous; and he loved his \ndaughter. He told her that she was the apple of his eye, \nthat she was wound around his heartstrings, that she was \nsurely the finest little lady in the land. When she was \nwith her father she pranced and postured like a very \nqueen: and she was not afraid of anything, save the \nmoment when he would say tliat it was her bedtime, or \nthat he had to be 'getting along.' He was always buying \nher things, things to wear and tilings to play witli, and \ntaking her on Sundays for long walks tlirough the coun- \ntry, or to the circus, when the circus was in town, or to \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n178 \n\n\nPunch and Judy shows. And he was dark, like Elizabeth, \nand gentle, and proud; he had never been angry with \nher, but she had seen him angry a few times with other \npeople \u2014 ^her mother, for example, and later, of course, \nher aunt. Her mother was always angry and Elizabeth \npaid no attention; and, later, her aunt was perpetually \nangry and Elizabeth learned to bear it: but if her father \nhad ever been angry with her \u2014 ^in those days \u2014 ^she \nwould have wanted to die. \n\nNeither had he ever learned of her disgrace; when it \nhappened, she could not think how to tell him, how to \nbring such pain to him who had had such pain already. \nLater, when she would have told him, he was long past \ncaring, in the silent ground. \n\nShe thought of him now, while the singing and weep- \ning went on around her \u2014 and she thought how he would \nhave loved his grandson, who was like him in so many \nways. Perhaps she dreamed it, but she did not believe \nshe dreamed when at moments she thought she heard \nin John echoes, curiously distant and distorted, of her \nfather\u2019s gentleness, and the trick of his laugh \u2014 ^how he \nthrew his head back and the years that marked his face \nfled away, and the soft eyes softened and the mouth \nturned upward at the comers like a little boy's mouth \u2014 \nand that deadly pride of her fatlier\u2019s behind which he \nretired when confronted by the nastiness of other people. \nIt was he who had told her to weep, when she wept, \nalone ; never to let the world see, never to ask for mercy ; \nif one had to die, to go ahead and die, but never to let \noneself be beaten. He had said this to her on one of the \nlast times she had seen him, when she was being carried \nmiles away, to Maryland, to live with her aunt. She had \nreason, in the years that followed, to remember his say- \ning tliis; and time, at last, to discover in herself the \ndepths of bitterness in her father from which these words \nhad come. \n\n\n\n179 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nFor when her mother died, the world fell down; \nher aunt, her mother\u2019s older sister, arrived, and stood \nappalled at Elizabeth\u2019s vanity and uselessness; and \ndecided, immediately, tliat her father was no fit person \nto raise a child, especially, as she darkly said, an inno- \ncent little girl. And it was this decision on the part of her \naunt, for which Elizabeth did not forgive her for many \nyears, that precipitated the third disaster, the separation \nof herself from her father \u2014 ^from all that she loved on \nearth. \n\nFor her father ran what her aunt called a \u2018house\u2019 \u2014 ^not \nthe house where they lived, but another house, to which, \nas Elizabeth gathered, wicked people often came. And \nhe had also, to Elizabeth\u2019s rather horrified confusion, a \n\u2018stable/ Low, common niggers, the lowest of the low, \ncame from all over ( and sometimes brought their women \nand sometimes found them there) to eat, and drink dieap \nmoonshine, and play music all night long \u2014 and to do \nworse things, her aunt\u2019s dreadful silence tlien suggested, \nwhich were far better left unsaid. And she would, she \nswore, move Heaven and earth before she would let her \nsister\u2019s daughter grow up with such a man. Without, \nhowever, so much as looking at Heaven, and without \ntroubling any more of tlie earth than that part of it \nwhich held the courthouse, she won the day. Like a clap \nof tliunder, or like a magic spell, like light one moment \nand darkness, the next, Elizabeth\u2019s life had changed. Her \nmother was dead, her father banished, and she lived in \nthe shadow of her aunt. \n\nOr, more exactly, as she thought now, the shadow in \nwhich she had lived was fear \u2014 ^fear made more dense by \nhatred. Not for a moment had she judged her father; it \nwould have made no difterence to her love for him had \nshe been told, and even seen it proved, that he was first \ncousin to the Devil. The proof would not have existed \nfor her, and if it had she would not have regretted being \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n180 \n\n\nhis daughter, or have asked for anything better than to \nsuffer at his side in Hell. And when she had been taken \nfrom him her imagination had been wholly unable to \nlend reality to the wickedness of which lie stood accused \n\u2014 she, certainly, did not accuse him. She screamed m \nanguish when he put her from him and turned to go, \nand she had to be carried to the train. And later, when \nshe imderstood perfectly all that had happened then, \nstill in her heart she could not accuse him. Perhaps his \nlife had been wicked, but he had been very good to her. \nHis life had certainly cost him enough in pain to make \nthe world\u2019s judgment a thing of no account. They had \nnot known him as she had known him ; they did not care \nas she had cared! It only made her sad that he never, as \nhe had promised, came to take her away, and that while \nshe was growing up she saw him so seldom. When she \nbecame a young woman she did not see him at all; but \nthat was her own fault. \n\nNo, she did not accuse him; but she accused her aunt, \nand this from tlie moment she understood that her aimt \nhad loved her mother, but did not love bim. This could \nonly mean that her aunt could not love her, either, and \nnothing in her life with her aunt ever proved Elizabeth \nwrong. It was true that her aunt was always talking \nof how much she loved her sister\u2019s daughter, and what \ngreat sacrifices she had made on her account, and what \ngreat care she took to see to it that Elizabeth should \ngrow up a good, Christian girl. But Elizabeth was not \nfor a moment fooled, and did not, for as long as she lived \nwith her, fail to despise her aunt. She sensed that what \nher aunt spoke of as love was something else \u2014 a bribe, \na threat, an indecent will to power. She knew that the \nkind of imprisonment that love might impose was also, \nmysteriously, a freedom for the soul and spirit, was \nwater in the dry place, and had nothing to do with \nthe prisons, churches, laws, rewards, and punishments. \n\n\n\n181 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nthat SO positively cluttered the landscape of her aunt\u2019s \nmind. \n\nAnd yet, to-night, in her great confusion, she wondered \nif she had not been wrong; if there had not been some- \nthing that she had overlooked, for which the Lord had \nmade her suffer. \u2018You little miss great-I-am,\u2019 her aunt \nhad said to her in those days, \u2018you better watch your \nstep, you hear me? You go walking around with your \nnose in the air, tlie Lord\u2019s going to let you fall right on \ndown to the bottom of the ground. Tou mark my words. \nYou\u2019ll see.\u2019 \n\nTo this perpetual accusation Elizabeth had never \nreplied; she merely regarded her aunt with a wide-eyed, \ninsolent stare, meant at once to register her disdain and \nto thwart any pretext for punishment. And this trick, \nwhich she had, unconsciously, picked up from her father, \nrarely failed to work. As the years went on, her aunt \nseemed to gauge in a look the icy distances that Elizabeth \nhad put between them, and that would certainly never \nbe conquered now. And she would add, looking down, \nand under her breath: \u2018 \u2019Cause God don\u2019t like it.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I sure don't care what God don\u2019t like, or you, either,\u2019 \nElizabeth\u2019s heart replied. \u2018I\u2019m going away from here. \nHe\u2019s going to come and get me, and I\u2019m going away \nfrom here.\u2019 \n\n\u2018He\u2019 was her father, who never came. As the years \npassed, she replied only: \u2018I\u2019m going away from here.\u2019 \nAnd it hung, this determination, like a heavy jewel \nbetween her breasts; it was written in fire on the dark \nsky of her mind. \n\nBut, yes \u2014 ^there was something she had overlooked. \nPride goetb before destruction; and a haughty spirit before \na fall. She had not known this: she had not imagined \nthat she could fall. She wondered, to-night, how she \ncould give this knowledge to her son; if she could help \nhim to endure what could now no longer be changed; if \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n182 \n\n\nwhile life ran, he would forgive her \u2014 ^for her pride, her \nfolly, and her bargaining with God! For, to-night, those \nyears before her fall, in her aunt's dark house \u2014 that \nhouse which smelled always of clothes kept too long in \nclosets, and of old women ; which was redolent of their \ngossip, and was pervaded, somehow, by the odour of \nthe lemon her aunt took in her tea, and by the odour of \nfrying fish, and of the still that someone kept in the base- \nment \u2014 came before her, entire and overwhelming; and \nshe remembered herself, entering any room in which her \naunt might be sitting, responding to anything her aunt \nmight say, standing before her, as rigid as metal and \ncancerous with hate and fear, in battle every hour of \nevery day, a battle that she continued in her dreams. She \nknew now of what it was that she had so silently and so \nearly accused her aunt: it was of tearing a bewildered \nchild away from the arms of the father she loved. And \nshe knew now why she had sometimes, so dimly and so \nunwillingly, felt that her father had betrayed her: it was \nbecause he had not overturned the earth to take his \ndaughter away from a woman who did not love her, and \nwhom she did not love. Yet she knew to-night how diffi- \ncult it was to overturn the earth, for she had tried once, \nand she had failed. And she knew, too \u2014 and it made the \ntears that touched her mouth more bitter than the most \nbitter herb \u2014 ^that without the pride and bitterness she \nhad so long carried in her heart against her aunt she \ncould never have endured her life with her. \n\nAnd she thought of Richard. It was Richard who had \ntaken her out of that house, and out of the South, and \ninto the city of destruction. He had suddenly arrived \u2014 \nand from the moment he arrived until the moment of his \ndeath he had filled her life. Not even to-night, in the \nheart's nearly impenetrable secret place, where the truth \nis hidden and where only the truth can live, could she \nwish that she had not known him ; nor deny that, so long \n\n\n\n183 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nas he was there, the rejoicing of Heaven could have \nmeant nothing to her \u2014 that, being forced to choose \nbetween Richard and God, she could only, even with \nweeping, have turned away from God. \n\nAnd this was why God had taken him from her. It was \nfor all of this that she was paying now, and it was this \npride, hatred, bitterness, lust \u2014 ^this folly, this corruption \n\u2014 of which her son was heir. \n\nRichard had not been bom in Maryland, but he was \nworking there, the summer that she met him, as a \ngrocery clerk. It was 1919, and she was one year \nyounger than the century. He was twenty-two, which \nseemed a great age to her in those days. She noticed him \nat once because he was so sullen and only barely polite. \nHe waited on folks, her aunt said, furiously, as though \nhe hoped the food they bought would poison them, \nElizabeth liked to watch him move; his body was very \nthin, and beautiful, and nervous \u2014 high strung^ thought \nElizabeth, wisely. He moved exactly like a cat, per- \npetually on the balls of his feet, and with a cat's \nimpressive, indifferent aloofness, his face closed, in his \neyes no light at all. He smoked all the time, a cigarette \nbetween his lips as he added up the figures, and some- \ntimes left burning on the counter while he went to look \nfor stock. When, as someone entered, he said good \nmorning, or good day, he said it barely looking up, and \nwith an indifference that fell just short of insolence. \nWhen, having bought what he wanted and counted his \nchange, the customer turned to leave and Richard said: \n^Thank you,' it sounded so much like a curse that people \nsometimes turned in surprise to stare. \n\n\"He sure don't like working in tliat store,' Elizabeth \nonce observed to her aunt. \n\n\"He don't like working,' said her aunt, scornfully. \"He \njust like you.' \n\nOn a bright, summer day, bright in her memory \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n184 \n\n\nfor ever, she came into the store alone, wearing her \nbest white summer dress and with her hair, newly \nstraightened and curled at the ends, tied with a scarlet \nribbon. She was going to a great church picnic with her \naunt, and had come in to buy some lemons. She passed \nthe owner of the store, who was a very fat man, sitting \nout on the pavement, fanning himself ; he asked her, as \nshe passed, if it w^as hot enough for her, and she said \nsomething and walked into the dark, heavy-smelling \nstore, where flies buzzed, and where Richard sat on tlie \ncounter reading a book. \n\nShe felt immediately guilty about having disturbed \nhim, and muttered apologetically that she only wanted \nto buy some lemons. She expected him to get them for \nher in his sullen fashion and go back to his book, but he \nsmiled, and said: \n\n'Is that all you want.? You better think now. You sure \nyou ain't forgot nothing?' \n\nShe had never seen him smile before, nor had she \nreally, for that matter, ever heard his voice. Her heart \ngave a dreadful leap and then, as dreadfully, seemed to \nhave stopped for ever. She could only stand there, star- \ning at him. If he had asked her to repeat what she wanted \nshe could not possibly have remembered what it was. \nAnd she found that she was looking into his eyes and \nwhere she had thought there w^as no light at all she found \na light she had never seen before \u2014 and he was smiling \nstill, but there w^as something curiously urgent in his \nsmile. Then he said: 'How many lemons, little girl?' \n\n'Six,' she said at last, and discovered to her vast relief \nthat nothing liad happened: the sun was still shining, the \nfat man still sat at the door, her heart was beating as \nthough it had never stopped. She was not, however, \nfooled ; she remembered the instant at which her heart \nhad stopped, and she knew that it beat now with a \ndifference. \n\n\n\n185 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nHe put the lemons into a bag and, with a curious diffi- \ndence, she came closer to the coimter to give him the \nmoney. She was in a terrible state, for she found that she \ncould neither take her eyes off him nor look at him. \n\n\u2018Is that your mother you come in with all the time?\u2019 \nhe asked. \n\n\u2018No,\u2019 she said, \u2018that\u2019s my aunt.\u2019 She did not know why \nshe said it, but she did: \u2018My mother\u2019s dead.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Oh,\u2019 he said. Then: \u2018Mine, too.' They both looked \nthoughtfully at the money on the counter. He picked it \nup, but did not move. \u2018I didn\u2019t think it was your mother,' \nhe said, finally. \n\n\u2018Why?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I don't know. She don't look like you.\u2019 \n\nHe started to light a cigarette, and then looked at her \nand put the packet in his pocket again. \n\n\u2018Don\u2019t mind me,' she said quickly. \u2018An3rway, I got to \ngo. She\u2019s waiting \u2014 ^we going out.\u2019 \n\nHe turned and banged the cash register. She picked \nup her lemons. He gave her her change. She felt that \nshe ought to say something else \u2014 ^it didn\u2019t seem right, \nsomehow, just to walk out \u2014 ^but she could not think of \nanything. But he said: \n\n\u2018Then that\u2019s why you so dressed up to-day. Where you \ngoing to go?\u2019 \n\n\u2018We going to a picnic \u2014 a church picnic,\u2019 she said, and \nsuddenly, unaccountably, and for the first time, smiled. \n\nAnd he smiled, too, and lit his cigarette, blowing the \nsmoke carefully away from her. \u2018You like picnics?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Sometimes,\u2019 she said. She was not comfortable with \nhim yet, and still she was beginning to feel that she \nwould like to stand and talk to him all day. She wanted \nto ask him what he was reading, but she did not dare. \nYet: \u2018What\u2019s your name?\u2019 she abruptly brought out. \n\n\u2018Richard,\u2019 he said. \n\n\u2018Oh,\u2019 she said thoughtfully. Then: \u2018Mine's Elizabeth.' \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n186 \n\n\n\u2018I know/ he said. \u2018I heard her call you one time.\u2019 \n\n'Well,' she said helplessly, after a long pause, \u2018good- \nbye.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Good-by^ You ain\u2019t going away, is you?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Oh, no,\u2019 she said, in confusion. \n\n\u2018Well,\u2019 he said, and smiled and bowed, \u2018good day\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 she said, \u2018good day.\u2019 \n\nAnd she turned and walked out into the streets; not \nthe same streets from which she had entered a moment \nago. These streets, the sky above, the sun, the drifting \npeople, all had, in a moment, changed, and would never \nbe the same again. \n\n\u2018You remember that day,\u2019 he asked much later, 'when \nyou come into the store?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Well, you was mighty pretty.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I didn\u2019t think you never looked at me.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Well, I didn\u2019t think you never looked at me.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You was reading a book.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes.\u2019 \n\n\u2018What book was it, Richard?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Oh, I don't remember. Just a book.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You smiled.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You did, too.\u2019 \n\n\u2018No, I didn\u2019t. I remember.\u2019 \n\n'Yes, you did.' \n\n\u2018No, I didn\u2019t. Not till you did.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Well, anyway \u2014 ^you was mighty pretty.\u2019 \n\nShe did not like to think of with what hardness of heart, \nwhat calculated weeping, what deceit, what cruelty she \nnow went into battle with her aunt for her freedom. And \nshe won it, even though on certain not-to-be-dismissed \nconditions. 'The principal condition was that she should \nput herself under the protection of a distant, unspeakably \nrespectable female relative of her aunt\u2019s, who lived in \nNew York City \u2014 for when the summer ended, Richard \n\n\n\n187 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nsaid that he was going there and he wanted her to come \nwith him. They would get married there. Richard said \nthat he hated the South, and this was perhaps the reason \nit did not occur to either of them to begin their married \nlife there. And Elizabeth was checked by the fear that if \nher aunt should discover how things stood between her \nand Richard she would find, as she had found so many \n3rears before in the case of her father, some means of \nbringing about their separation. This, as Elizabeth later \nconsidered it, was the first in the sordid series of mistakes \nwhich was to cause her to fall so low. \n\nBut to look back from the stony plain along the road \nwhich led one to that place is not at all the same thing as \nwalking on the road; the perspective, to say tlie very \nleast, changes only with the journey; only when the road \nhas, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absolute- \nness that permits no argument, turned or dropped or \nrisen is one able to see all that one could not have seen \nfrom any other place. In those days, had the Lord Him- \nself descended from Heaven with trumpets telling her to \nturn back, she could scarcely have heard Him, and could \ncertainly not have heeded. She lived, in those days, in a \nfiery storm, of which Richard was the centre and the \nheart. And she fought only to reach him \u2014 only that; she \nwas afraid of what might happen if tliey were kept from \none another; for what might come after she had no \ntlioughts or fears to spare. \n\nHer pretext for coming to New York was to take \nadvantage of the greater opportunities the North offered \ncoloured people; to study in a Northern school, and to \nfind a better job than any she was likely to be offered in \nthe South. Her aunt, who listened to this with no diminu- \ntion of her habitual scorn, was yet unable to deny that \nfrom generation to generation, things, as she grudgingly \nput it, were bound to change \u2014 ^and neither could she \nquite take the position of seeming to stand in Elizabeth's \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n188 \n\n\nway. In the winter of 1920, as the year began, Elizabeth \nfound herself in an ugly back room in Harlem in the \nhome of her aunt\u2019s relative, a woman whose respecta- \nbility was immediately evident from the incense she \nburned in her rooms and the spiritualist stances she held \nevery Saturday night. \n\nThe house was still standing, not very far away; often \nshe was forced to pass it. Without looking up, she was \nable to see the windows of the apartment in whidi she \nhad lived, and the woman\u2019s sign was in the window still: \nMadame Williams, Spiritualist. \n\nShe found a job as chambermaid in the same hotel in \nwhich Richard worked as lift-boy. Richard said that \nthey would marry as soon as he had saved some money. \nBut since he was going to school at night and made very \nlittle money, their marriage, which she had thought of as \ntaking place almost as soon as she arrived, was planned \nfor a future that grew ever more remote. And this pre- \nsented her with a problem that she had refused, at home in \nMaryland, to think about, but from which, now, she could \nnot escape: the problem of their life together. Reality, so \nto speak, burst in for the first time on her great dream- \ning, and she found occasion to wonder, ruefully, what \nhad made her imagine that, once with Richard, she would \nhave been able to withstand him. She had kept, pre- \ncariously enough, what her aunt referred to as her pearl \nwithout price while she had been with Richard down \nhome. Tliis, which she had taken as witness to her own \nfeminine moral strength, had been due to nothing more, \nit now developed, than her great fear of her aunt, and \nthe lack, in that small town, of opportunity. Here, in \nthis great city where no one cared, where people might \nlive in the same building for years and never speak to \none another, she found herself, when Richard took her in \nhis arms, on the edge of a steep place: and down she \nrushed, on the descent uncaring, into the dreadful sea. \n\n\n\n189 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nSo it began. Had it been waiting for her since the day \nshe had been taken from her father\u2019s arms.? The world in \nwhich she now found herself was not unlike the world \nfrom which she had, so long ago, been rescued. Here \nwere the women who had been the cause of her aunt\u2019s \nmost passionate condenmation of her father \u2014 ^hard- \ndrinking, hard-talking, with whisky- and cigarette- \nbreath, and moving with the mystic authority of women \nwho knew what sweet violence might be acted out imder \nthe moon and stars, or beneath the tigerish lights of the \ncity, in the raucous hay or the singing bed. And was she, \nElizabeth, so sweetly fallen, so tightly cliained, one of \nthese women now? And here were tihe men who had \ncome day and night to visit her father\u2019s \u2018stable\u2019 \u2014 with \ntheir sweet talk and their music, and their violence and \ntheir sex \u2014 ^black, brown, and beige, who looked on her \nwith lewd, and lustful, and laughing eyes. And these \nwere Richard\u2019s friends. Not one of them ever went to \nChurch \u2014 one might scarcely have imagined that they \nknew that churches existed \u2014 ^tliey all, hourly, daily, in \ntheir speech, in their lives, and in their hearts, cursed \nGod. They all seemed to be saying, as Richard, when \nshe once timidly mentioned the love of Jesus, said: \u2018You \ncan tell that puking bastard to kiss my big black arse.\u2019 \n\nShe, for very terror on hearing this, had wept ; yet she \ncould not deny that for such an abundance of bitterness \ntliere was a positive fountain of grief. There was not, \nafter all, a great difference between the world of the \nNorth and that of the South which she had fled; there \nwas only this difference: the North promised more. And \nthis similarity: what it promised it did not give, and \nwhat it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, \nit took back with the other. Now she understood in \nthis nervous, hollow, ringing city, that nervousness of \nRichard\u2019s which had so attracted her \u2014 a tension so total, \nand so without the hope, or possibility of release, or \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n190 \n\n\nresolution, that she felt it in his muscles, and heard it \nin his breathing, even as on her breast he fell asleep. \n\nAnd this was perhaps why she had never thought to \nleave him, frightened though she was during all that \ntime, and in a world in which, had it not been for \nRichard, she could have found no place to put her feet. \nShe did not leave him, because she was afraid of what \nmight happen to him without her. She did not resist \nhim, because he needed her. And she did not press about \nmarriage because, upset as he was about everything, she \nwas afraid of having him upset about her, too. She \nthought of herself as his strength ; in a world of shadows, \nthe indisputable reality to which he could always repair. \nAnd, again, for all that had come, she could not regret \nthis. She had tried, but she had never been and was not \nnow, even to-night, truly sorry. Where, then, was her \nrepentance? And how could God hear her cry? \n\nThey had been very happy together, in the beginning; \nand until the very end he had been very good to her, had \nnot ceased to love her, and tried always to make her \nknow it. No more than she had been able to accuse her \nfather had she ever been able to accuse him. His weak- \nness she understood, and his terror, and even his bloody \nend. What life had made him bear, her lover, this wild, \nunhappy boy, many another stronger and more virtuous \nman might not have borne so well. \n\nSaturday was their best day, for they only worked \nuntil one o\u2019clock. They had all the afternoon to be \ntogether, and nearly all of the night, since Madame \nWilliams had her stances on Saturday night and pre- \nferred that Elizabeth, before whose silent scepticism \ndeparted spirits might find themselves reluctant to \nspeak, should not be in the house. They met at the \nservice entrance. Richard was always tliere before her, \nlooking, oddly, much younger and less anonymous with- \nout the ugly, tight-fitting, black uniform that he had to \n\n\n\n191 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nwear when working. He would be talking, or laughing \nwith some of the oAer boys, or shooting dice, and when \nhe heard her step down the long, stone hall he would \nlook up, laughing; and wickedly nudging one of the \nother boys, he would half shout, half sing: \u2018He-y! Look- \na-there, ain\u2019t she pretty?\u2019 \n\nShe never failed, at this \u2014 ^whidi was why he never \nfailed to do it \u2014 ^to blush, half-smiling, half-frowning, \nand nervously to touch the collar of her dress. \n\n\u2018Sweet Georgia Brown!' somebody might say. \n\n\u2018Miss Brown to you,\u2019 said Richard, then, and took \nher arm. \n\n\u2018Yeah, that\u2019s right,\u2019 somebody else would say, \u2018you \nbetter hold on to little Miss Bright-eyes, don\u2019t some- \nbody sure going to take her away from you.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yeah,\u2019 said another voice, \u2018and it might be me.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Oh, no,\u2019 said Richard, moving with her towards the \nstreet, \u2018ain\u2019t nobody going to take my little Little-bit \naway from me\u2019 \n\nLittle-bit: it had been his name for her. And some- \ntimes he called her Sandwich Mouth, or Funnjrface, or \nFrog-eyes. She would not, of course, have endured these \nnames from anyone else, nor, had she not found herself, \nwith joy and helplessness (and a sleeping panic), living \nit out, would she ever have suffered herself so publicly \nto become a man\u2019s property \u2014 \u2018concubine,\u2019 her aunt \nwould have said, and at night, alone, she rolled the \nword, tart like lemon rind, on her tongue. \n\nShe was descending with Richard to the sea. She \nwould have to climb back up alone, but she did not \nknow this then. Leaving the boys in the hall, they gained \nthe midtown New York streets. \n\n\u2018And what we going to do to-day. Little-bit?\u2019 With \nthat smile of his, and those depthless eyes, beneath the \ntowers of the white city, with people, white, hurrying all \naround them. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT TO THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n19 \u00a3 \n\n\n*I don\u2019t know, honey. What you want to do?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Well, maybe, we go to a museum.' \n\nThe first time he suggested this, she demanded, in \npanic, if they would be allowed to enter. \n\n\u2018Sure, they let niggers in,\u2019 Richard said. \u2018Ain\u2019t we \ngot to be educated, too \u2014 to live witli the motherf s?\u2019 \n\nHe never \u2018watched\u2019 his language witli her, which at \nfirst she took as evidence of his contempt because she \nhad fallen so easily, and which later she took as evidence \nof his love. \n\nAnd when he took her to the Museum of Natural \nHistory, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where \nthey were almost certain to be the only black people, and \nhe guided her through the halls, which never ceased in \nher imagination to be as cold as tombstones, it was then \nshe saw another life in him. It never ceased to frighten \nher, this passion he brought to sometliing she could not \nunderstand. \n\nFor she never grasped \u2014 ^not at any rate witla her mind \n\u2014 what, with such incandescence, he tried to tell her on \nthese Saturday afternoons. She could not find, between \nherself and the African statuette, or totem pole, on \nwhich he gazed with such melancholy wonder, any point \nof contact. She was only glad that she did not look that \nway. She preferred to look, in the other museum, at the \npaintings; but still she did not understand anytliing he \nsaid about them. She did not know why he so adored \nthings that were so long dead; what sustenance they \ngave him, what secrets he hoped to wrest from them. \nBut she understood, at least, that they did give him a \nkind of bitter nourishment, and that the secrets they held \nfor him were a matter of his life and death. It frightened \nher because she felt that he was reaching for the moon \nand that he would, therefore, be dashed down against the \nrocks ; but she did not say any of this. She only listened, \nand in her heart she prayed for him. \n\n\n\n193 \n\n\nTHE PRAYEKS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nBut on Other Saturdays tliey went to see a movie ; they \nwent to see a play; they visited his friends; they walked \nthrough Central Park. She liked the park because, how- \never spuriously, it re-created something of the landscape \nshe had known. How many afternoons had they walked \nthere! She had always, since, avoided it. They bought \npeanuts and for hours fed the animals at the zoo ; they \nbought soda pop and drank it on the grass ; they walked \nalong the reservoir and Richard explained how a city \nlike New York found water to drink. Mixed with her \nfear for him was a total admiration: tliat he had learned \nso young, so much. People stared at them but she did \nnot mind ; he noticed, but he did not seem to notice. But \nsometimes he would ask, in the middle of a sentence \u2014 \nconcerned, possibly, with ancient Rome: \n\n\u2018Little-bit \u2014 d\u2019you love me?\u2019 \n\nAnd she wondered how he could doubt it. She thought \nhow infirm she must be not to have been able to make \nhim know it; and she raised her eyes to his, and she said \nthe only thing she could say: \n\nT wish to God I may die if I don\u2019t lov'e you. There \nain\u2019t no sky above us if I don\u2019t love you.\u2019 \n\nThen he would look ironically up at the sky, and take \nher arm with a firmer pressure, and tliey would walk on. \n\nOnce, she asked him: \n\n\u2018Richard, did you go to school much when you was \nlittle?\u2019 \n\nAnd he looked at her a long moment. Then: \n\n\u2018Baby, I done told you, my mama died when I was \nbom. And my daddy, he weren\u2019t nowhere to be found. \nAin\u2019t nobody never took care of me. I just moved from \none place to another. When one set of folks got tired of \nme they sent me down the line. I didn\u2019t hardly go to \nschool at all.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Then how come you got to be so smart? how come \nyou got to know so much?\u2019 \n\n\nG \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n194 \n\n\nAnd he smiled, pleased, but he said: \u2018Little-bit, I \ndon\u2019t know so mucli.' Then he said, with a change in his \nface and voice whidi she had grown to know: \u2018I just \ndecided me one day that I was going to get to know \neverything them white bastards knew, and I was going \nto get to know it better than them, so could no white \nson-of-a-bitdi nowhere never talk me down, and never \nmake me feel like I was dirt, when I could read him the \nalphabet, back, front, and sideways. He weren\u2019t going \nto beat my arse, then. And if he tried to kill me. I\u2019d \ntake him with me, I swear to my mother I would.\u2019 Then \nhe looked at her again, and smiled and kissed her, and \nhe said: \u2018That\u2019s how I got to know so much, baby.\u2019 \n\nShe asked: \u2018And what you going to do, Richard? What \nyou want to be?\u2019 \n\nAnd his face clouded. \u2018I don\u2019t know. I got to find out. \nLooks like I can\u2019t get my mind straight nohow.\u2019 \n\nShe did not know why he couldn\u2019t \u2014 or she could only \ndimly face it \u2014 but she knew he spoke the truth. \n\nShe had made her great mistake with Richard in not \ntelling him that she was going to have a child. Perhaps, \nshe thought now, if she had told him everything might \nhave been very different, and he would be living yet. But \nthe circumstances under which she had discovered her- \nself to be pregnant had been such to make her decide, for \nhis sake, to hold her peace awhile. Frightened as she \nwas, she dared not add to the panic that overtook him \non the last summer of his life. \n\nAnd yet perhaps it was, after all, this \u2014 ^this failure \nto demand of his strength what it might then, most \nmiraculously, have been found able to bear; by whicli \n\u2014 indeed, how could she knowi* \u2014 ^his strength might \nhave been strengthened, for which she prayed to-night \nto be forgiven. Perhaps she had lost her love because \nshe had not, in the end, believed in it enough. \n\nShe lived quite a long way from Richard \u2014 ^four under- \n\n\n\n195 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nground stops ; and v.-hen it was time for her to go home, \nhe always took tine underground uptown with her and \nwalked her to her door. On a Saturday when they had \nforgotten the time and stayed together later than usual, \nhe left her at her door at tw'o o'clock in the morning. \nThey said good night hurriedly, for she was afraid of \ntrouble when she got upstairs \u2014 tliough, in fact, Madame \nWilliams seemed astonishingly indiiFerent to the hours \nElizabetli kept \u2014 ^and he w'anted to huri-y back home and \ngo to bed. Yet, as he hurried olF down the dark, murmur- \ning street, she had a sudden impulse to call him back, to \nask him to take her with him and never let her go again. \nShe burned up the steps, smiling a little at tliis fancy: it \nwas because he looked so yoimg and defenceless as he \nwalked awa}'', and yet so jaunty and strong. \n\nHe was to come tlie next evening at supper-time, to \nmake at last, at Elizabeth\u2019s urging, the acquaintance of \nMadame Williams. But he did not come. She drove \nMadame Williams wild with her sudden sensitivity to \nfootsteps on tlie stairs. Having told Madame Williams \nthat a gentleman w'as coming to visit her, she did not \ndare, of course, to leave the house and go out looking \nfor him, thus giving Madame Williams the impression \nthat she dragged men in off the streets. At ten o\u2019clock, \nhaving eaten no supper, a detail unnoticed by her hostess, \nshe went to bed, her head aching and her heart sick with \nfear; fear over what had happened to Richard, who had \nnever kept her waiting before; and fear involving all \nthat was beginning to happen in her body. \n\nAnd on Monday morning he w'as not at work. She left \nduring the lunch hour to go to his room. He was not there. \nHis landlady said that he had not been there all week-end. \nWhile Elizabeth stood trembling and indecisive in the \nhall, two white policemen entered. \n\nShe knew the moment she saw them, and before \nthey mentioned his name, that something terrible had \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n196 \n\n\nhappened to Richard. Her heart, as on that bright \nsummer day when he had first spoken to her, gave a \nterrible bound and then was still, witli an awful, wounded \nstillness. She put out one hand to touch the wall in order \nto keep standing. \n\n\u2018This here young lady was just looking for him,' she \nheard the landlady say. \n\nThey all looked at her. \n\n\u2018You his girl?\u2019 one of the policemen asked. \n\nShe looked up at his sweating face, on which a lascivious \nsmile had immediately appeared, and straightened, trying \nto control her trembling. \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 she said. \u2018Where is he?\u2019 \n\n\u2018He\u2019s in jail, honey,\u2019 the other policeman said. \n\n\u2018What for?\u2019 \n\n\u2018For robbing a white man\u2019s store, black girl. That\u2019s \nwhat for.\u2019 \n\nShe found, and tlianked Heaven for it, that a cold, \nstony rage had entered her. She would, otherwise, cer- \ntainly have fallen down, or began to weep. She looked \nat tlie smiling policeman. \n\n\u2018Richard ain\u2019t robbed no store,\u2019 she said. \u2018Tell me \nwhere he is.' \n\n\u2018And I tell you,\u2019 he said, not smilmg, \u2018tliat your boy- \nfriend robbed a store and he\u2019s in jail for it. He\u2019s going to \nstay there, too \u2014 ^now, what you got to say to that?\u2019 \n\n\u2018And he probably did it for you, too,\u2019 the other police- \nman said. \u2018You look like a girl a man could rob a store \nfor.\u2019 \n\nShe said nothing; she was thinking how to get to see \nhim, how to get him out. \n\nOne of them, the smiler, turned now to the landlady \nand said: \u2018Let\u2019s have the key to his room. How long\u2019s he \nbeen living here?\u2019 \n\n\u2018About a year,\u2019 the landlady said. She looked unhappily \nat Elizabeth. \u2018He seemed like a real nice boy.\u2019 \n\n\n\n197 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\n\u2018Ah, yes,\u2019 he said, mounting the steps, 'they all seem \nlike real nice boys when they pay their rent.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You going to take me to see him?\u2019 she asked of the \nremaining policeman. She found herself fascinated by the \ngun in his holster, the club at his side. She wanted to take \ndiat pistol and empty it into his round, red face; to take \nthat club and strike with all her strength against the base \nof his skull where his cap ended, until the ugly, silky, \nwhite man\u2019s hair was matted with blood and brains. \n\n\u2018Sure, girl,\u2019 he said, \u2018you\u2019re coming right along with \nus. The man at the station-house wants to ask you some \nquestions.\u2019 \n\nThe smiling policeman came down again. \u2018Ain\u2019t \nnothing up there,\u2019 he said. \u2018Let\u2019s go.\u2019 \n\nShe moved between them, out into the sun. She knew \nthat there was nothing to be gained by talking to them \nany more. She was entirely in tlieir power; she would \nhave to think faster than they could think; she would \nhave to contain her fear and her hatred, and find out \nwhat could be done. Not for anything short of Richard\u2019s \nlife, and not, possibly, even for that, would she have \nwept before them, or asked of them a kindness. \n\nA small crowd, children and curious passers-by, fol- \nlowed them as they walked the long, dusty, sunlit street. \nShe hoped only that they would not pass anyone she \nknew; she kept her head high, looking straight ahead, \nand felt the skin settle over her bones as though she \nwere wearing a mask. \n\nAnd at the station she somehow got past their brutal \nlaughter. ( What was be doing with you, girl, until two \no\u2019clock in the morningf \u2014 Next time you feel like that, girl, \nyou come by here and talk to me. ) She felt that she was \nabout to burst, or vomit, or die. Though the sweat stood \nout cruelly, like needles on her brow, and she felt herself, \nfrom every side, being covered with a stink and filth, she \nfound out, in their own good time, what she wanted to \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n198 \n\n\nknow. He was being held in a prison downtown called \nthe Tombs (the name made her heart turn over), and \nshe could see him to-morrow. The state, or the prison, \nor someone, had already assigned him a law3J'er; he \nwould be brought to trial next week. \n\nBut the next day, when she saw him, she wept. He had \nbeen beaten, he wliispered to her, and he could hardly \nwalk. His body, she later discovered, bore almost no \nbruises, but was full of strange, painful swellings, and \nthere was a welt above one eye. \n\nHe had not, of course, robbed the store, but, when he \nleft lier that Saturday night, had gone dowai into the \nunderground station to wait for his train. It w^as late, \nand trains were slow; he was all alone on the platform, \nonly half awake, thinking, he said, of her. \n\nThen, from the far end of the platform, he heard a \nsound of running; and, looking up, he saw two coloured \nboys come running down the steps. Their clothes were \ntom, and they w^ere frightened; they came up the plat- \nform and stood near him, breathing hard. He was about \nto ask tliem what the trouble was when, running across \nthe tracks towards them, and followed by a white man, \nhe saw another coloured boy; and at the same instant \nanother wkite man came running down the underground \nsteps. \n\nThen he came full awake, in panic ; he knew that what- \never the trouble was, it was now his trouble also ; for \nthese white men would make no distinction between \nhim and the three boys they were after. They were all \ncoloured, they were about the same age, and here they \nstood togetlier on the underground platform. And tliey \nwere all, with no questions asked, herded upstairs, and \ninto the wagon and to the station-house. \n\nAt the station Richard gave his name and address and \nage and occupation. Then for the first time he stated \nthat he was not involved, and asked one of die other boys \n\n\n\n199 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nto corroborate his testimony. This they rather despair- \ningly did. They might, Elizabeth felt, have done it \nsooner, but they probably also felt that it would be use- \nless to speak. And they were not believed; the owner \nof the store was being brought there to make the identi- \nfication. And Richard tried to relax: the man could not \nsay that he had been there if he had never seen him \nbefore. \n\nBut when the owner came, a short man with a bloody \nshirt \u2014 ^for they had Imifed him \u2014 in the company of yet \nanother policeman, he looked at tlie four boys before \nhim and said: 'Yeah, that's them, all right.' \n\nThen Richard shouted: 'But I wasn't there! Look at \nme, goddammit \u2014 I wasn't there!' \n\n'You black bastards,' the man said, looking at him, \n'you're all the same.' \n\nThen there was silence in the station, the eyes of the \nwhite men all watching. And Richard said, but quietly, \nknowing that he was lost: 'But all tlie same, mister, I \nwasn't there.' And he looked at die white man's bloody \nshirt and thought, he told Elizabedi, at the bottom of his \nheart: 'I wish to God they'd killed you.' \n\nThen the questioning began. The three boys signed a \nconfession at once, but Richard would not sign. He said \nat last that he would die before he signed a confession to \nsomething he hadn't done. 'Well then,' said one of them, \nhitting him suddenly across the head, \u2018maybe you will \ndie, you black son-of-a-bitch.' And the beating began. \nHe would not, then, talk to her about it; she found that, \nbefore the dread and the hatred that filled her mind, her \nimagination faltered and held its peace. \n\n'What we going to do?' she asked at last. \n\nHe smiled a vicious smile \u2014 she had never seen such a \nsmile on his face before. 'Maybe you ought to pray to \nthat Jesus of yours and get Him to come down and tell \nthese white men something.' He looked at her a long, \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n200 \n\n\ndying momait. \u2018Because I don't know nothmg else to \ndo/ he said. \n\nShe suggested: \u2018Richard, what about anotlier lawyer?\u2019 \n\nAnd he smiled again. \u2018I declare,\u2019 he said, \u2018Little-bit\u2019s \nbeen holding out on me. She got a fortune tied up in a \nsock, and she ain't never told me nothing about it.\u2019 \n\nShe had been trymg to save money for a whole year, \nbut she had only thirty dollars. She sat before him, going \nover in her mind all the things she might do to raise \nmoney, even to going on the streets. Then, for very \nhelplessness, she began to shake with sobbing. At this, \nhis face became Richard\u2019s face again. He said in a shaking \nvoice: \u2018Now, look here. Little-bit, don\u2019t you be like that. \nWe going to work this out all right.\u2019 But she could \nnot stop sobbing. \u2018Elizabeth,\u2019 he whispered, \u2018Elizabeth, \nElizabeth.\u2019 Then the man came and said that it was time \nfor her to go. And she rose. She had brought two packets \nof cigarettes for him, and they were still in her bag. \nWholly ignorant of prison regulations, she did not dare \nto give them to him under the man\u2019s eyes. And, some- \nhow, her failure to remember to give him the cigarettes, \nwhen she knew how much he smoked, made her weep \nthe harder. She tried \u2014 ^and failed \u2014 ^to smile at him, and \nshe was slowly led to the door. 'The sun nearly blinded \nher, and she heard him whisper behmd her: \u2018So long, \nbaby. Be good.\u2019 \n\nIn the streets she did not know what to do. She stood \nawhile before the dreadful gates, and tlien she walked \nand walked until she came to a colFee shop where taxi \ndrivers and the people who worked in nearby offices \nhurried in and out all day. Usually she was afraid to go \ninto downtown establishments, where only white people \nwere, but to-day she did not care. She felt that if anyone \nsaid anything to her she would turn and curse him like \nthe lowest bitch on the streets. If anyone touched her, \nshe would do her best to send his soul to Hell. \n\n\n\n201 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nBut no one touched her; no one spoke. She drank her \ncoffee, sitting in the strong sun that fell through the \nwindow. Now it came to her how alone, how frightened \nshe was; she had never been so frightened in her life \nbefore. She knew that she was pregnant \u2014 ^knew it, as the \nold folks said, in her bones ; and if Richard should be sent \naway, what, under Heaven, could she do? Two years, \nthree years \u2014 she had no idea how long he might be sent \naway for \u2014 what would she do? And how could she keep \nher aunt from knowing? And if her aimt should find out, \nthen her father would know, too. The tears welled up, \nand she drank her cold, tasteless coffee. And what would \nthey do with Richard? And if they sent him away, what \nwould he be like, then, when he returned? She looked \nout into the quiet, sunny streets, and for the first time in \nher life, she hated it all \u2014 the white city, the white world. \nShe could not, that day, think of one decent white person \nin the whole world. She sat there, and she hoped that one \nday God, with tortures inconceivable, would grind them \nutterly into humility, and make them know that black \nboys and black girls, whom they treated with such con- \ndescension, such disdain, and such good humour, had \nhearts like human beings, too, more human hearts than \ntheirs. \n\nBut Richard was not sent away. Against the testimony \nof the three robbers, and her own testimony, and, under \noath, the storekeeper\u2019s indecision, there was no evidence \non which to convict him. The courtroom seemed to feel, \nwith some complacency and some disappointment, that it \nwas his great good luck to be let off so easily. They went \nimmediately to his room. And there \u2014 she was never all \nher life long to forget it \u2014 ^he threw himself, face down- \nward, on his bed and wept. \n\nShe had only seen one other man weep before \u2014 ^her \nfather \u2014 ^and it had not been like this. She touched him, \nbut he did not stop. Her own tears fell on his dirty. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 209 . \n\nuncombed hair. She tried to hold him, but for a long \nwhile he would not be held. His body was like iron; she \ncould find no softness in it. She sat curled like a frightened \nchild on the edge of the bed, her hand on his back, wait- \ning for the storm to pass over. It was then that she \ndecided not to tell him yet about the child. \n\nBy and by he called her name. And then he turned, \nand she held him against her breast, while he sighed and \nshook. He fell asleep at last, clinging to her as though he \nwere going down into the water for the last time. \n\nAnd it was the last time. That night he cut his wrists \nwith his razor and he was found in the morning by his \nlandlady, his eyes staring upward with no light, dead \namong the scarlet sheets. \n\nAnd now they were singing: \n\n* Somebody needs you^ Lord, \n\nCome by here* \n\nAt her back, above her, she heard Gabriers voice. He \nhad risen and was helping the others to pray through. \nShe wondered if John w^ere still on his knees, or had \nrisen, with a child's impatience, and was staring around \nthe church. There was a stiffiiess in him that would be \nhard to break, but that, nevertheless, would one day \nsurely be broken. As hers had been, and Richard's \u2014 \nthere was no escape for anyone. God was everyw^here, \nterrible, the living God; and so high, the song said, you \ncouldn't get over Him; so low you couldn't get under \nHim; so wide you couldn't get around Him; but must \ncome in at the door. \n\nAnd she, she Imew to-day that door: a living, wrathful \ngate. She knew through what fires the soul must crawl, \nand with what weeping one passed over. Men spoke of \nhow the heart broke up, but never spoke of how the soul \nhung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between \n\n\n\n203 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nthe living and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast \naside, tlie naked soul passed over the very moutli of Hell. \nOnce there, there was no turning back; once there, the \nsoul remembered, though the heart sometimes forgot. For \nthe world called to the heart, which stammered to reply; \nlife, and love, and revelry, and, most falsely, hope, called \nthe forgetful, tlie human heart. Only the soul, obsessed \nwith the journey it had made, and had still to make, \npursued its mysterious and dreadful end; and carried, \nheavy with weeping and bitterness, the heart along. \n\nAnd, therefore, there was war in Heaven, and weep- \ning before the throne: the heart chained to the soul, and \nthe soul imprisoned witliin the flesh \u2014 ^a weeping, a con- \nfusion, and a weight unendurable filled all the earth. \nOnly the love of God could establish order in this \nchaos ; to Him tlie soul must turn to be delivered. \n\nBut what a turning! How could she fail to pray that \nHe w'ould have mercy on her son, and spare him the sin- \nbom anguish of his father and his mother. And that his \nheart might know a little jo}\u2019\u2019 before the long bitterness \ndescended. \n\nYet she knew tliat her weeping and her prayers were \nin vain. What was coming would surely come ; nothing \ncould stop it. She had tried, once, to protect someone \nand had only hurled him into prison. And she thought \nto-night, as she had thought so often, that it might have \nbeen better, after all, to have done what she had first \ndetermined in her heart to do \u2014 to have given her son \naway to strangers, who might have loved him more than \nAbbey had ever loved him. She had believed him when \nhe said that God had sent him to her for a sign. He had \nsaid that he would cherish her until the grave, and that \nhe would love her nameless son as though he w'ere his \nown flesh. And he had kept the letter of his promise: he \nhad fed him and clothed him and taught him the Bible \u2014 \nbut the spirit was not there. And he cherished \u2014 if he \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n204 \n\n\ncherished her \u2014 only because she was the mother of his \nson, Ximena. All of this she had through the painful years \ndivined. He certainly did not know she knew it, and she \nwondered if he knew it himself. \n\nShe had met him through Janice. Janice and she \nhad met at work in the middle of the summer, a year \nafter Richard\u2019s death. John was tlien over six months old. \n\nShe was very lonely that summer, and beaten down. \nShe was living alone with John in a furnished room even \ngrimmer than the room that had been hers in Madame \nWilliams\u2019s apartment. She had, of course, left Madame \nWilliams\u2019s immediately upon the death of Richard, say- \ning tliat she had found a sleep-in job in the covmtry. She \nhad been tembly grateful that summer for Madame \nWilliams\u2019s indifference; the woman had simply not \nseemed to see that Elizabeth, overnight, had become an \nold woman and was half mad with fear and grief. She \nwrote her aunt the driest, and briefest, and coldest of \nnotes, not wishing in any way to awaken whatever con- \ncern might yet slumber in her breast, tellmg her the \nsame thing she had told Madame Williams, and telling \nher not to worry, she was in the hands of God. And she \ncertainly was ; through a bitterness that only the hand of \nGod could have laid on her, this same hand brought her \nthrough. \n\nJanice and Elizabetlr w'orked as cleaning-women in \na high, vast, stony office-building on Wall Street. They \narrived in the evening and spent the night going through \nthe great deserted halls and the silent offices with mops \nand pails and brooms. It was terrible work, and Elizabeth \nhated it; but it was at night, and she had taken it joy- \nfully, since it meant that she could take care of John \nherself all day and not have to spend extra money to \nkeep him in a nursery. She worried about him all night \nlong, of course, but at least at night he was sleeping. She \ncould only pray that the house would not bum down. \n\n\n\n205 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nthat he would not fall out of bed or, in some mysterious \nway, turn on the gas-burner, and she had asked the \nwoman next door, who unhappily drank too much, to \nkeep an eye out for him. This woman, with whom she \nsometimes spent an hour or so in the afternoons, and her \nlandlady, were the only people she saw. She had stopped \nseeing Richard's friends because, for some reason, she \ndid not want them to know about Richard\u2019s child ; and \nbecause, too, the moment that he was dead it became \nimmediately apparent on both sides how little they had \nin common. And she did not seek new people; rather, \nshe fled from tliem. She could not bear, in her changed \nand fallen state, to submit herself to the eyes of others. \nThe Elizabeth that she had been was buried far away \u2014 \nwith her lost and silent father, with her aunt, in Richard's \ngrave \u2014 and the Elizabeth she had become she did not \nrecognize, she did not want to know. \n\nBut one night, when work was ended, Janice invited \nher to share a cup of coffee in the all-night coffee shop \nnearby. Elizabetli had, of course, been invited before by \nother people \u2014 ^the night watchman, for example \u2014 but \nshe had always said no. She pleaded the excuse of her \nbab}^ whom she must rush home to feed. She was pre- \ntending in those days to be a young widow, and she wore \na wedding ring. Very shortly, fewer people asked her, \nand she achieved the reputation of being \u2018stuck up.' \n\nJanice had scarcely ever spoken to her before she \narrived at this merciful unpopularity; but Elizabeth had \nnoticed Janice. She moved in a silent ferocity of dignity \nwhich barely escaped being ludicrous. She was extremely \nunpopular also and she had nothing whatever to do with \nany of the women she worked with. She was, for one \nthing, a good deal older, and she seemed to have nothing \nto laugh or gossip about. She came to work, and she did \nher work, and she left. One could not imagine what she \nwas thinking as she marched so grimly down the halls. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n206 \n\n\nher head tied up in a rag, a bucket and a mop in her \nhands. Elizabeth thought that she must once have been \nvery rich, and had lost her money; and she felt for her, \nas one fallen woman for another, a certain kinship. \n\nA cup of coffee together^ as day w^as breaking, became \nin time their habit. They sat together in the coffee shop, \nwliich was alwa3^s empty when they arrived and was \ncrowded fifteen minutes later when they left, and had \ntheir coffee and doughnuts before they took the under- \nground uptovn. While thej-^ had their coffee, and on the \nride uptown, they talked, principally about Janice, how \nbadly people treated her, and how empty her life was \nnow that her husband was dead. He had adored her, she \ntold Elizabeth, and satisfied her every whim, but he had \ntended to irresponsibility. If she had told him once, she \nhad told him a hundred times: Trank, you better take \nout life insurance.' But he had thought \u2014 ^and wasn't it \njust like a man!^ \u2014 that he would live for ever. Now here \nshe was, a woman getting along in years, forced to make \nher living among all the black scum of this wicked city. \nElizabeth, a little astonished at the need for confession \nbetrayed by this proud woman, listened, nevertheless, \nwith great sympathy. She was very grateful for Janice's \ninterest. Janice was so much older and seemed so kind. \n\nIt was no doubt this, Janice's age and kindness, that \nled Elizabeth, with no premeditation, to take Janice \ninto her confidence. Looking back, she found it hard to \nbelieve that she could have been so desperate, or so \nchildish; though, again, on looking back, she was able to \nsee clearly what she then so incoherently felt: how much \nshe needed another human being, somewhere, who knew \nthe truth about her. \n\nJanice had often said how glad she would be to \nmake the acquaintance of little Johnny; she was sure, \nshe said, that any child of Elizabeth's must be a wonder- \nful child. On a Sunday near the end of that summer, \n\n\n\n207 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nElizabeth dressed him in his best clothes and took him to \nJanice\u2019s house. She was oddly and fearfully depressed \nthat day; and Jolin was not in a good mood. She found \nherself staring at him darkly, as though she were trying \nto read his future in his face. He would grow big one \nday, he would talk, and he would ask her questions. \nWhat questions would he ask her, what answers would \nshe give? She surely would not be able to lie to him \nindefinitely about his father, for one day he would be old \nenough to realize that it was not his father\u2019s name he \nbore. Richard had been a fatherless child, she helplessly, \nbitterly remembered as she carried John through the \nbusy, summer, Simday streets. When one set of folks got \ntired of me they sent me down the line. Yes, down the line, \nthrough poverty, hunger, wandering, cruelty, fear, and \ntrembling, to death. And she thought of the boys who \nhad gone to prison. Were they there still? Would John \nbe one of tliese boys one day? These boys, now, who \nstood before drug-store windows, before pool-rooms, on \nevery street comer, who whistled after her, whose lean \nbodies fairly rang, it seemed, with idleness, and malice, \nand frustration. How could she hope, alone, and in famine \nas she was, to put herself between him and this so wide \nand raging destruction? And tlien, as though to confirm \nher in all her dark imaginings, he began, as she reached \nthe underground steps, to whimper, and moan, and cry. \n\nAnd he kept this up, too, all the way uptown \u2014 ^so that, \nwhat with the impossibility of pleasmg him that day, no \nmatter what she did, what with restless weight, and \ntlie heat, and the smiling, staring people, and the strange \ndread that weighed on her so heavily, she was nearly \nready to weep by the time she arrived at Janice\u2019s door. \n\nHe, at that moment, to her exasperated relief, became \nthe most clieerful of mfants. Janice was wearing a \nheavy, old-fashioned garnet broocli, which, as she opened \nthe door, immediately attracted John\u2019s eye. He began \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n208 \n\n\nreaching for the brooch and babbling and spitting at \nJanice as though he had known her all of his short life. \n\n\u2018Well!\u2019 said Janice, \u2018when he get big enough to \nreally go after the ladies you going to have your hands \nfull, girl.\u2019 \n\n\u2018That,\u2019 said Elizabeth, grimly, \u2018is the Lord\u2019s truth. He \nkeep me so busy now I don\u2019t know half the time if I\u2019m \ncoming or going.\u2019 \n\nJanice, meanwhile, attempted to distract John\u2019s \nattention from the brooch by offering him an orange; \nbut he had seen oranges before; he merely looked at it a \nmoment before letting it fall to the floor. He began \nagain, in his disturbingly fluid fashion, to quarrel about \nthe brooch. \n\n\u2018He like you,\u2019 said Elizabeth, finally, calmed a little \nby watching him. \n\n\u2018You must be tired,\u2019 said Janice, then: \u2018Put him \ndown there.\u2019 And she dragged one large easy chair to \nthe table so that John could watch them while they ate. \n\n\u2018I got a letter from my brother the other day,\u2019 she said, \nbringing the food to the table. \u2018His wife, poor ailing soul, \ndone passed on, and he thinking about coming North.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You ain\u2019t never told me,\u2019 said Elizabetli, with a quick \nand rather false interest, \u2018you had a brother! And he \ncoming up here.^' \n\n\u2018So he say. Ain\u2019t nothing, I reckon, to keep him down \nhome no more \u2014 ^now Tanya\u2019s gone.\u2019 She sat down \nopposite Elizabeth. \u2018I ain\u2019t seen him,\u2019 she said, musingly, \n\u2018for more than twenty years.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Then it\u2019ll be a great day,\u2019 Elizabeth smiled, \u2018when \nyou two meet again.\u2019 \n\nJanice shook her head, and motioned for Elizabeth \nto start eating. \u2018No,\u2019 she said, \u2018we ain\u2019t never got along, \nand I don\u2019t reckon he\u2019s changed.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Twenty years is a mighty long time,\u2019 Elizabefli said, \n\u2018he\u2019s bound to have changed some.\u2019 \n\n\n\n209 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\n'That man,\u2019 said Janice, \u2018would have to do a whole \nlot of changing before him and me hit it off. No,\u2019 \u2014 ^she \npaused, grimly, sadly \u2014 Tm mighty sorry he\u2019s coming. \n\nI didn\u2019t look to see him no more in this world \u2014 or in the \nnext one, neither.\u2019 \n\nThis was not, Elizabeth felt, the way a sister ought to \ntalk about her brother, especially to someone who knew \nhim not at all, and who would, probably, eventually meet \nhim. She asked, helplessly: \n\n\u2018What do he do \u2014 ^your brother?\u2019 \n\n\u2018He some kind of preacher,\u2019 said Janice. \u2018I ain\u2019tnever \nheard him. When I was home he weren\u2019t doing nothing \nbut chasing after women and lying in the ditches, drunk.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I hope,\u2019 laughed Elizabeth, \u2018he done changed his ways \nat least.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Folks,\u2019 said Janice, \u2018can change their ways much as \nthey want to. But I don\u2019t care how many times you change \nyour ways, what\u2019s in you is in you, and it\u2019s got to come \nout.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Elizabeth, thoughtfully. \u2018But don\u2019t you \nthink,\u2019 she hesitantly asked, \u2018that the Lord can change \na person\u2019s heart?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I done heard it said often enough,\u2019 said Janice, \u2018but \nI got yet to see it. These niggers running around, talking \nabout the Lord done changed their hearts \u2014 ain\u2019t nothing \nhappened to them niggers. They got the same old black \nhearts they was bom witlt. I reckon the Lord done give \nthem those hearts \u2014 and, honey, the Lord don\u2019t give out \nno second helpings. I\u2019m here to tell you.\u2019 \n\n\u2018No,\u2019 said Elizabeth heavily, after a long pause. She \nturned to look at John, who was grimly destroying the \nsquare, tasselled doilies that decorated Janice\u2019s easy \nchair. 'I reckon that\u2019s the truth. Look like it go around \nonce, and that\u2019s that. Y ou miss it, and you\u2019s fixed for fair.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Now you sound,\u2019 said Janice, \u2018mighty sad all of a \nsudden. What\u2019s the matter with you?\u2019 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n210 \n\n\n'Nothing/ she said. She turned back to the table. \nThen, helplessly, and thinking that she must not sa}^ too \nmuch: 'I was just thinking about this boy here, what's \ngoing to happen to him, how Tin going to raise him, in \nthis awful cit}^^ all by myself.' \n\n'But you ain't fixing, is you,' asked Janice, 'to stay \nsingle all your days? You's a right young girl, and a right \npretty girl. I wouldn't be in no hurry if I was you to find \nno new husband. I don't believe the nigger's been bom \nwhat knows how to treat a woman right. You got time, \nhoney, so take your time.' \n\n'I ain't,' said Elizabeth, quietly, 'got so much time.' \nShe could not stop herself; though something warned \nher to hold her peace, the words poured out. 'You see \nthis wedding ring? Well, I bought this ring myself. This \nboy ain't got no daddy.' \n\nNow she had said it: the words could not be called \nback. And she felt, as she sat, trembling, at Janice's \ntable, a reckless, pained relief. \n\nJanice stared at her with a pity so intense that it \nresembled anger. She looked at John, and then back at \nElizabeth. \n\n'You poor thing,' said Janice, leaning back in her \nchair, her face still filled with this strange, brooding \nfury, 'you is had a time, ain't you?' \n\n'I was scared* Elizabeth brought out, shivering, still \ncompelled to speak. \n\nT ain't never,' said Janice, 'seen it to fail. Look like \nain't no woman bom what don't get walked over by \nsome no-count man. Look like ain't no woman nowhere \nbut ain't been dragged down in the dirt by some man, \nand left there, too, while he go on about his business,' \n\nElizabeth sat at the table, numb, with nothing more \nto say. \n\n'What he do,' asked Janice, finally, 'run off and \nleave you?' \n\n\n\n2] 1 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\n\u2018Oh, no,' cried Elizabeth, quickly, and tlie tears sprang \nto her eyes, \u2018he weren\u2019t like that! He died, just like I say \n\u2014 he got in trouble, and he died \u2014 a long time before this \nboy was bom.\u2019 She began to weep with the same help- \nlessness with which she had been speaking. Janice \nrose and came over to Elizabeth, holding Elizabeth\u2019s \nhead against her breast. \u2018He wouldn\u2019t never of left me,\u2019 \nsaid Elizabeth, \u2018but he died/ \n\nAnd now she wept, after her long austerity, as though \nshe would never be able to stop. \n\n\u2018Hush now,\u2019 said Janice, gently, \u2018hush now. You \ngoing to frighten the little fellow. He don\u2019t want to see \nhis mamma cry. All right,\u2019 she whispered to John, who \nhad ceased his attempts at destruction, and stared now \nat the two women, \u2018all right. Everything\u2019s all right.\u2019 \n\nElizabeth sat up and reached in her handbag for a \nhandkerchief, and began to dry her eyes. \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Janice, moving to the window, \u2018the \nmenfolk, they die, all right. And it\u2019s us women who walk \naround, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk, \nthey die, and its over for them, but we women, we have \nto keep on living and try to forget what tliey done to us. \n\nYes, Lord \u2019 and she paused; she turned and came \n\nback to Elizabeth. \u2018Yes, Lord,\u2019 she repeated, \u2018don\u2019t I \nknow.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I\u2019m mighty sorry,\u2019 said Elizabeth, \u2018to upset your nice \ndinner this way.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Girl,\u2019 said Janice, \u2018don\u2019t you say a word about being \nsorry, or I\u2019ll show you to this door. Y ou pick up that boy \nand sit down there in that easy chair and pull yourself \ntogether. I\u2019m going out in tlie kitchen and make us some- \nthing cold to drink. Y ou try not to fret, honey. The Lord, \nHe ain\u2019t going to let you fall but so low.\u2019 \n\nThen she met Abbey, two or three weeks later, at \nJanice\u2019s house on a Sunday. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n212 \n\n\nNothing Janice had said had prepared her for him. \nShe had expected him to be older than Janice, and \nbald, or grey. But he seemed considerably younger than \nhis sister, with all his teeth and hair. There he sat, that \nSunday, in Janice\u2019s tiny, fragile parlour, a very rock, it \nseemed to the eye of her confusion, in her so weary land. \n\nShe remembered that as she mounted the stairs with \nJohn\u2019s heavy weight in her arms, and as she entered the \ndoor, she heard music, which became perceptibly fainter \nas Janice closed the door behind her. Jolm had heard it, \ntoo, and had responded by wriggling, and moving his hands \nin the air, and making noises, meant, she supposed, to be \ntaken for a song. \u2018You\u2019s a nigger, all right,' she thought \nwith amusement and impatience \u2014 ^for it was someone's \ngramophone, on a lower floor, filling the air with the \nslow, high, measured wailing of the blues. \n\nAbbey rose, it seemed to her, with a speed and \neagerness that were not merely polite. She wondered \nimmediately if Janice had told him about her. And \nthis caused her to stiffen with a tentative anger against \nJanice, and with pride and fear. Yet when she looked \ninto his eyes she found there a strange humility, an \naltogether unexpected kindness. She felt die anger go \nout of her, and her defensive pride; but somewhere, \ncrouching, the fear remained. \n\nThen Janice introduced them, saying: 'Elizabeth, \nthis here\u2019s my brother I been telling you so much about. \nHe\u2019s a preacher, honey \u2014 ^so we got to be mighty careful \nwhat we talk about when he\u2019s around.\u2019 \n\n'Then he said, with a smile less barbed and ambiguous \nthan his sister\u2019s remark: 'Ain\u2019t no need to be afraid of \nme, sister. I ain\u2019t nothing but a poor, weak vessel in the \nhands of the Lord.\u2019 \n\n'You see!' said Janice, grimly. She took John from \nhis mother's arms. \u2018And this here\u2019s little Johnny,\u2019 she' \nsaid, 'shake hands with the preacher, Johnny.\u2019 \n\n\n\n213 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\nBut John was staring at the door that held back the \nmusic; towards which, with an insistence at once furious \nand feeble, his hands were still outstretched. He looked \nquestioningly, reproachfully, at his mother, who laughed, \nwatching him, and said, \u2018Johnny want to hear some more \nof that music. He like to started dancing when we was \ncoming up the stairs.\u2019 \n\nAbbey laughed, and said, circling around Janice to \nlook into Jolin\u2019s face: \u2018Got a man in the Bible, son, who \nlike music, too. He used to play on his harp before the \nlong, and he got to dancing one day before the Lord. You \nreckon you going to dance for the Lord one of these days?' \n\nJohn looked with a child\u2019s impenetrable gravity into \nthe preacher\u2019s face, as though he were turning this ques- \ntion over in his mind and would answer when he had \nthought it out. Abbey smiled at him, a strange smile \u2014 \nstrangely, she thought, loving \u2014 and touched him on the \ncrown of the head. \n\n\u2018He a mighty fine boy,\u2019 said Abbey. \u2018With them big \neyes he ought to see everything in the Bible.\u2019 \n\nAnd they all laughed. Janice moved to deposit \nJohn in the easy chair that was his Sunday throne. And \nElizabeth found that she was watching Abbey, unable \nto find in the man before her the brother whom Janice \nso despised. \n\nThey sat down at the table, John placed betweai \nherself and Janice and opposite Abbey. \n\n\u2018So,\u2019 Elizabeth said, with a nervous pleasantness, it \nbeing necessary, she felt, to say something, \u2018you just \ngetting to this big city? It must seem mighty strange to \nyou.\u2019 \n\nHis eyes were still on John, whose eyes had not left \nhim. Then he looked again at Elizabeth. She felt that the \nair between them was beginning to be charged, and she \ncould find no name, or reason, for the secret excitement \nthat moved in her. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 214 \n\n* ] , f \n\nn^igjity big/ he said, 'and looks to me \u2014 and \nhu7ids to me \u2014 like the Devil's working every day/ \n\nThis was in reference to the music, which had not \nceased, but she felt, immediatel}\", that it included her; \nthis, and something else in Abbey's eyes^ made her look \ndown quickly to her plate. \n\n'He ain't,' said Janice, briskly, 'working no harder \nup here than lie worked down home. Them niggers \ndown home,' she said to Elizabeth, 'tliey think New \nYork ain't nothing but one long, Sunday drunk. They \ndon't knozv. Somebody better tell them \u2014 ^they can get \nbetter moonshine right there where they is than they \nlikely to here \u2014 and cheaper, too.' \n\n'But I do hope,' he said, with a smile, 'that you ain't \ntaken to drinking moonshine, sister/ \n\n'It wasn't never me/ she said, promptly, 'had that \nhabit.' \n\n'Don't know%' he persisted, still smiling, and still \nlooking at Elizabeth, 'tell me folks do things up North \nthey w^ouldn't think about doing down home.' \n\n'Folks got their dirt to do,' said Janice. 'They going \nto do it, no matter where the}?- is. Folks do lots of things \ndown home they don't want nobody to know about.' \n\n'Like my aunt used to say,' Elizabeth said, smiling \ntimidly, 'she used to say, folks sure better not do in the \ndark what they's scared to look at in the light.' \n\nShe had meant it as a kind of joke ; but the words were \nnot out of her mouth before she longed for the power to call \nthem back. They rang in her own ears like a confession. \n\n'That's the Lord's truth,' he said, after the briefest \npause. 'Does you really believe that?' \n\nShe forced herself to look up at him, and felt at that \nmoment the intensity of the attention that Janice \nfixed on her, as though she were trying to shout a warn- \ning. She knew that it was something m Abbey's voice \nthat had caused Janice, suddenly, to iie so wary and so \n\n\n\n215 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\ntense. But she did not drop her eyes from Gabricrs eyes. \nShe answered him: \u2018Yes. That\u2019s the way I want to \nlive/ \n\n\u2018Then the Lord\u2019s going to bless 3\u2019^oii/ he said, 'and \nopen up tlie windows of Heaven for j\u2019'ou \u2014 ^for you, and \nthat boy. He going to pour down blessings on you till you \nw^on\u2019t know where to put them. You mark my words/ \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Janice, mildly, 'you 7 nark his words.' \n\nBut neither of them looked at her. It came into \nElizabeth\u2019s mind, filling her mind: All things work \ntogether for good to them that love the Lord. She tried {o \nobliterate this burning phrase, and what it made her feel. \nWhat it made her feel, for the first time since the death \nof Richard, was hope ; his voice had made her feel that \nshe was not altogether cast down, that God might raise \nher again in honour; his eyes had made her know that \nshe could be^ \u2014 again, this time in honour \u2014 a woman. \nThen, from what seemed to be a great, cloudy distance, \nhe smiled at her \u2014 and she smiled. \n\nThe distant gramophone stuck now, suddenly, on a \ngrinding, wailing, sardonic trumpet-note; tliis blind, \nugly cr3dng swelled tlie moment and filled the room. She \nlooked down at John. A hand somewhere struck the \ngramophone arm and sent the silver needle on its way \nthrough the whirling, black grooves, like something \nbobbing, anchorless, in tlie middle of the sea. \n\n\u2018Johnny\u2019s done fell asleep,\u2019 she said. - \n\nShe, who had descended with such joy and pain, had \nbegun her upward climb \u2014 ^upward, with her baby, on \nthe steep, steep side of the mountain. \n\nShe felt a great commotion in the air around her \u2014 a \ngreat ig^citement, muted, waiting on the Lord. And the \nair seemed to tremble, as before a storm. A light seemed \nto hang \u2014 just above, and all around them \u2014 about to \nburst into revelation. In the great crying, the great \n\n\n\n216 \n\n\nTELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\nsin^Rg all around her, in the wind that gathered to fill the \ncliurch, she did not hear her husband ; and she thought \nof John as sitting, silent now and sleepy, far in the back \nof the church \u2014 watching, with that wonder and that \nterror in his eyes. She did not raise her head. She wished \nto tarry yet a little longer, that God might speak to her. \n\nIt had been before this very altar that she had come \nto kneel, so many years ago, to be forgiven. When the \nautumn came, and the air was dry and sharp, and the \nwind high, she was always with Abbey. Janice did \nnot approve of this, and Janice said so often; but she \nnever said more than this, for the reason, Elizabeth \ndecided, that she had no evil to report \u2014 ^it was only that \nshe was not fond of her brother. But even had Janice \nbeen able to find a language unmistakable in which to \nconvey her prophecies, Elizabeth could not have heeded \nher because Abbey had become her strength. He watched \nover her and her baby as though it had become his calling ; \nhe was very good to John, and played with him, and \nbought him things, as though John were his own. She \nknew that his wife had died childless, and that he had \nalways wanted a son \u2014 ^he was pra3dng still, he told her, \nthat God would bless him with a son. She thought some- \ntimes, lying on her bed alone, and thinking of all his \nkindness, that perhaps John was that son, and that he \nwould grow one day to comfort and bless them both. \nThen she thought how, now, she would embrace again \nthe faith she had abandoned, and walk again in the light \nfrom which, with Richard, she had so far fled. Sometimes, \nthinking of Abbey, she remembered Richard \u2014 ^his voice, \nhis breath, his arms \u2014 ^with a terrible pain; and then she \nfelt herself shrinking from Abbey\u2019s anticipated touch. \nBut this shrinking she would not countenance. She told \nherself that it was foolish and sinful to look backward \nwhen her safety lay before her, like a hiding-place hewn \nin the side of the mountain. \n\n\n\n217 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\n\u2018Sister/ he asked one night, \u2018don\u2019t you reckon you \nought to give your heart to the Lord?\u2019 \n\nTTiey were in the dark streets, walking to church. He \nhad asked her this question before, but never in such \na tone; she had never before felt so compelling a need \nto reply. \n\n\u2018I reckon,\u2019 she said. \n\n\u2018If you call on the Lord,\u2019 he said, \u2018He\u2019ll lift you up. \nHe\u2019ll give you your heart\u2019s desire. I\u2019m a witness,\u2019 he \nsaid, and smiled at her, \u2018you call on the Lord, you wait on \nthe Lord, He\u2019ll answer. God's promises don\u2019t never fail.\u2019 \n\nHer arm was in his, and she felt him trembling with \nhis passion. \n\n\u2018Till you come,\u2019 she said, in a low, trembling voice, \u2018I \ndidn\u2019t never hardly go to church at all. Reverend. Look \nlike I couldn\u2019t see my way nohow \u2014 I was all bowed down \nwith shame . . . and sin.' \n\nShe could hardly bring the last words out, and as she \nspoke tears were in her eyes. She had told him that John \nwas nameless ; and she had tried to tell him something of \nher suffering, too. In those days he had seemed to under- \nstand, and he had not stood in judgment on her. When \nhad he so greatly changed? Or was it that he had not \nchanged, but that her eyes had been opened through the \npain he had caused her? \n\n\u2018Well,\u2019 he said, \u2018I done come, and it was the hand of \nthe Lord what sent me. He brought us together for a sign. \nYou fall on your knees and see if that dn\u2019t so \u2014 ^you fall \ndown and ask Him to speak to you to-night.\u2019 \n\nYes, a sign, she thought, a sign of His mercy, a sign \nof His forgiveness. \n\nWhen Aey reached the church doors he paused, and \nlooked at her and made his promise. \n\n\u2018Sister Elizabeth,\u2019 he said, \u2018whai you go down on your \nknees to-night, I want you to ask the Lord to speak to your \nheart, and tell you how to answer what I\u2019m going to say.\u2019 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n218 \n\n\nShe stood a little below him, one foot lifted to the \nshort, stone step that led to the church entrance, and \nlooked up into his face. And looking into his face, which \nburned \u2014 in the dim, yellow light that hung about tliein \nthere \u2014 ^like tlie face of a man who has wrestled with angels \nand demons and looked on the face of God, it came to \nher, oddly, and all at once, that she had become a woman. \n\n'Sister Elizabeth,\u2019 he said, \u2018the Lord\u2019s been speaking \nto my heart, and I believe it\u2019s His will that you and me \nshould be man and wife.\u2019 \n\nAnd he paused ; she said nothing. His eyes moved over \nher body. \n\n\u2018I know,\u2019 he said, trying to smile, and in a lower voice, \n'I\u2019ma lot older tlian you. But that don\u2019t make no difference. \nI\u2019m a mighty strong man yet. I done been down the line. \nSister Elizabetli, and maybe I can keep you from making \n. . . some of my mistakes, bless the Lord . . . maybe I can \nhelp keep your foot from stumbling . . . again . . . girl \n. . . for as long as we\u2019s in this world.\u2019 \n\nStill she waited. \n\n\u2018And I\u2019ll love you,\u2019 he said, \u2018and I\u2019ll honour you . . . \nuntil the day God calls me home.\u2019 \n\nSlow tears rose to her eyes ; of joy, for what she had \ncome to ; of anguish, for the road tliat had brought her here. \n\n\u2018And I\u2019ll love your son, your little boy,\u2019 he said at last, \n\u2018just like he was my own. He won\u2019t never have to fret or \nworry about nothing; he won\u2019t never be cold or hungry \nas long as I\u2019m alive and I got my two hands to work with. \nI swear this before my God,\u2019 he said, \u2018because He done \ngive me back sometliing I thought w'as lost.\u2019 \n\nYes, she thought, a sign \u2014 a sign that He is mighty to \nsave. Then she moved and stood on the short step, next \nto him, before the doors. \n\n\u2018Sister Elizabeth,\u2019 he said \u2014 and she would carry to the \ngrave the memory of his grace and humility at that \nmoment, 'will you pray?\u2019 \n\n\n\n219 \n\n\nTHE PRAYERS OF THE SAINTS \n\n\n\u2018Yes/ she said. \u2018I been praying. I\u2019m going to pray.\u2019 \n\nThey had entered this church, these doors ; and when \nthe pastor made the altar call, she rose, while she heard \ndiem praising God, and walked down the long church \naisle; down this aisle, to this altar, before this golden \ncross; to these tears, into this battle \u2014 ^would the battle \nend one day? When she rose, and as they walked once \nmore through the streets, he had called her God\u2019s \ndaughter, handmaiden to God\u2019s minister. He had kissed \nher on the brow, widi tears, and said that God had \nbrought them together to be eadh other\u2019s deliverance. \nAnd she had wept, in her great joy that the hand of God \nhad changed her life, had lifted her up and set her on \ntlie solid rock, alone. \n\nShe thought of tliat far-ofF day when John had come \ninto the world \u2014 ^that moment, the beginning of her life \nand death. Down she had gone tliat day, alone, a heavi- \nness intolerable at her waist, a secret in her loins, down \ninto the darkness, weeping and groaning and cursing \nGod. How long she had bled, and sweated, and cried, no \nlanguage on earth could tell \u2014 how long she had crawled \nthrough darkness she would never, never know. There, \nher beginning, and she fought through darkness stiU; \ntowards that moment when she would make her peace \nwith God, when she would hear Him speak, and He \nwould wipe all tears from her eyes; as, in that other \ndarkness, after eternity, she had heard John cry. \n\nAs now, in the sudden silence, she heard him cry: not \nthe cry of tlie child, newborn, before the common light \nof earth ; but the cry of the man-child, bestial, before the \nlight that comes down from Heaven. She opened her eyes \nand stood straight up; all of the saints surrounded her; \nAbbey stood staring, struck rigid as apillar in the temple. \nOn the threshing-floor, in the centre of the crying, singing \nsaints, John lay astonished beneatli the power of the Lord. \n\n\n\n\nPart Three \n\n\nTHE \n\nTHRESHING- \n\nFLOOR \n\n\nThen said /, Woe is met for I am \nundone; because lama man of unclean \nlips, and I dwell in the midst of a \npeople of unclean lips; for mine eyes \nbcwe seen the King, the Lord of hosts. \n\n\n\n\nThen I buckled up my sboes^ \nAnd I started. \n\n\nH e knew, without knowing how it had happened, \nthat he lay on the floor, in the dust3r space before \nthe altar which he and Cayden had cleaned; and \nknew tliat above him burned the yellow light which he \nhad himself switched on. Dust was in his nostrils, sharp \nand terrible, and the feet of saints, shaking the floor \nbeneath him, raised small clouds of dust that filmed his \nmouth. He heard their cries, so far, so high above him \u2014 \nhe could never rise that far. He was like a rock, a dead \nman's body, a dying bird, fallen from an awful height; \nsomething that had no power of itself, any more, to turn. \n\nAnd something moved in John's body which was not \nJohn. He was invaded, set at naught, possessed. This \npower had struck John, in the head or in the heart; and, \nin a moment, wholly, filling him with an anguish that he \ncould never in his life have imagined, tliat he surely could \nnot endure, that even now he could not believe, had opened \nhim up; had cracked him open, as wood beneatli the axe \ncracks down the middle, as rocks break up; had ripped \nhim and felled him in a moment, so that John had not felt \nthe wound, but only the agony, had not felt the fall, but \n\n\n223 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 224 \n\nonly the fear; and lay here, now, helpless, screaming, at \nthe very bottom of darkness. \n\nHe wanted to rise \u2014 a malicious, ironic voice insisted \nthat he rise \u2014 ^and, at once, to leave this temple and -go \nout into the world. \n\nHe wanted to obey the voice, which was the only voice \nthat spoke to him; he tried to assure the voice that he \nwould do his best to rise; he would only lie here a \nmoment, after his dreadful fall, and catch his breath. It \nwas at this moment, precisely, that he found he could not \nrise ; something had happened to his arms, his legs, his \nfeet^ \u2014 ah, something had happened to John! And he began \nto scream again in his great, bewildered terror, and felt \nhimself, indeed, begin to move \u2014 ^not upward, toward the \nlight, but down again, a sickness in his bowels, a tighten- \ning in his loin-strings ; he felt himself turning, again and \nagain, across the dusty floor, as though God\u2019s toe had \ntouched him lightly. And the dust made him cough and \nretch ; in his turning the centre of the whole earth shifted, \nmaking of space a sheer void and a mockery of order, and \nbalance, and time. Nothing remained; all was swallowed \nup in chaos. Arid: Is this itf Jolm's terrified soul inquired \n\u2014 ff^hat is it ? \u2014 ^to no purpose, receiving ^lo answer. Only \nthe ironic voice insisted yet once more that he rise from \nthat filthy floor if he did not want to become like all the \nother niggers. \n\nThen the anguish subsided for a moment, as water \nwithdraws briefly to dash itself once more against the \nrocks: he knew that it subsided only to return. And he \ncoughed and sobbed in the dusty space before the altar, \nlying on his face. And still he was going down, farther and \nfarther from the joy, the singing, and the light above him. \n\nHe tried, but in such despair! \u2014 ^the utter darkness does \nnot present any point of departure, contains no begin- \nning, and no end \u2014 ^to rediscover, and, as it were, to trap \nand hold tightly in the palm of his hand, tlie moment \n\n\n\n225 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\npreceding his fall, his change. But tlmt moment was also \nlocked in darkness, was wordless, and would not come \nforth. He remembered only the cross: he had turned \nagain to kneel at the altar, and had faced tlie golden \ncross. And the Holy Ghost was speaking \u2014 seeming to \nsay, as John spelled out tlie so abruptly present and \ngigantic legend adorning the cross: Jesus Saves. He had \nstared at tliis, an awful bitterness in his heart, wanting to \ncurse \u2014 ^and the Spirit spoke, and spoke in him. Yes: there \nwas Cayden, speaking from tlie floor, and his father, silent, \nat his back. In his heart there was a sudden yearning \ntenderness for holy Elislia; desire, sharp and awful as a \nreflecting knife, to usurp the body of Cayden, and lie where \nCayden lay ; to speak in tongues, as Cayden spoke, and, with \nthat authority, to confound his father. Yet this had not \nbeen the moment; it was as far back as he could go, but \nthe secret, the turning, the abysmal drop was farther \nback, in darkness. As he cursed his father, as he loved \nCayden, he had, even then, been weeping; he had already \npassed his moment, was already under the power, had \nbeen struck, and was going down. \n\nAh, down! \u2014 and to what purpose, where? To the \nbottom of the sea, the bowels of tlie eartli, to the heart of \nthe fiery fumaiie? Into a dungeon deeper than Hell, into \na madness louder tlian tlie grave? What trumpet sound \nwould awaken him, what hand would lift him up? For he \nknew, as he was struck agam, and screamed again, his \nthroat like burning ashes, and as he turned again, his body \nhanging from him like a useless weight, a heavy, rotting \ncarcass, that if he were not lifted he would never rise. \n\nHis father, his mother, his aunt, Cayden \u2014 all were far \nabove him, waiting, watching his torment in the pit. They \nhung over tlie golden barrier, singing behind them, light \naround their heads, weeping, perhaps, for John, struck \ndown so early. And, no, they could not help him any \nmore \u2014 ^nothing could help him any more. He struggled. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n9,26 \n\n\nStruggled to rise up, and meet them \u2014 ^Iie wanted wings \nto fly upward and meet them in that moming, that morn- \ning where they were. But his struggles only thrust him \ndownward, his cries did not go upward, but rang in his \nown skull. \n\nYet, though he scarcely saw their faces, he knew that \nthey were there. He felt them move, every movement \ncausing a trembling, an astonishment, a horror in the \nheart of darkness where he lay. He could not know if \nthey wished him to come to them as passionately as he \nwished to rise. Perhaps they did not help him because \nthey did not care \u2014 because they did not love him. \n\nThen his father returned to him, in John's changed and \nlow condition ; and Jolin tliought, but for a moment only, \nthat his father had come to help him. In the silence, then, \nthat filled the void, John looked on his father. His father's \nface was black \u2014 ^like a sad, eternal night ; yet in his father's \nface there burned a fire \u2014 a fire eternal in an eternal night. \nJohn trembled where he lay, feeling no warmth for him \nfrom this fire, trembled, and could not take his eyes away. \nA wind blew over him, saying:* Whosoever loveth and \nmaketh a lie.' Only: *Wliosoever loveth and maketh a \nlie.' And he knew that he had been thrust out of the holy, \nthe joyful, the blood-washed community^ that his father \nhad thrust him out. His fatlier's will was stronger than \nJohn's own. His pow\u2019er was greater because he belonged \nto God. Now, John felt no hatred, nothing, only a bitter, \nunbelieving despair: all prophecies were true, salvation \nwas finished, damnation w\u2019as real! \n\nThen Deatli is real, John's soul said, and Death will \nhave his moment. \n\n*Set thine house in order,' said his father. Tor thou \nshalt die and not live.' \n\nAnd then tlie ironic voice spoke again, saying: \u2018Get \nup, John. Get up, boy. Don't let him keep you here. You \ngot everything your daddy got.' \n\n\n\n227 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING FLOOR \n\n\nJohn tried to laugh \u2014 ^John thought that he was laugh- \ning \u2014 ^but found, instead, that his mouth was filled with \nsalt, his ears were full of burning water. Whatever was \nhappening in his distant body now, he could not change \nor stop; his chest heaved, his laughter rose and bubbled \nat his mouth, like blood. \n\nAnd his father looked on him. His father's eyes looked \ndown on him, and John began to scream. His father's eyes \nstripped him naked, and hated what they saw. And as he \nturned, screaming, in the dust again, trying to escape his \nfather\u2019s eyes, those eyes, that face, and all their faces, \nand the far-off yellow light, all departed fromhis vision as \nthoughhehad gone blind. Hewasgoingdown again. There \nis, his soul cried out again, no bottom to the darkness! \n\nHe did not know where he was. There was silence \neverywhere \u2014 only a perpetual, distant, faint trembling \nfar beneath him \u2014 the roaring, perhaps, of the fires of \nHell, over which he was suspended, or the echo, per- \nsistent, invincible still, of tlie moving feet of the saints. \nHe thought of the mountain-top, where he longed to be, \nwhere the sun would cover him like a cloth of gold, \nwould cover his head like a crown of fire, and in his \nhands he would hold a living rod. But this was no moun- \ntain where John lay, here, no robe, no crown. And the \nliving rod was uplifted in other hands. \n\n\u2018I\u2019m going to beat sin out of him. I\u2019m going to beat it \nout.\u2019 \n\nYes, he had sinned, and his father was looking for him. \nNow, John did not make a sound, and did not move at \nall, hoping that his father would pass him by. \n\n'Leave him be. Leave him alone. Let him pray to the \nLord.' \n\n\u2018Yes, Mama. Tm going to try to love the I.ord.\u2019 \n\n\u2018He done run off somewhere. I'm going to find him. \nI\u2019m going to beat it out.' \n\nYes, he had sinned: one morning, alone, in the dirty \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n228 \n\n\nbathroom, in the square, dirt-grey cupboard room that \nwas filled with the stink of his father. Sometimes, leaning \nover the cracked, \u2018tattle-tale grey\u2019 bath-tub, he scrubbed \nhis father\u2019s back; and looked, as the accursed son of Noah \nhad looked, on his father\u2019s hideous nakedness. It was \nsecret, like sin, and slimy, like tlie serpent, and heavy, \nlike the rod. Then he hated his fatlicr, and longed for tlie \npower to cut his fatlier down. \n\nWas this why he lay here, thrust out from all human \nor heavenly help to-night? This, and not tliat other, his \ndeadly sin, having looked on his father\u2019s nakedness and \nmocked and cursed him in his heart? All, tliat son of \nNoah\u2019s had been cursed, down to the present groaning \ngeneration: A servant of servants shall be be unto bis \nbrethren. \n\nThen the ironic voice, terrified, it seemed, of no depth, \nno darkness, demanded of John, scornfully, if he believed \ntliat he was cursed. All niggers had been cursed, the \nironic voice reminded him, all niggers had come from \nthis most undutiful of Noah's sons. How could Jolui be \ncursed for having seen in a bath-tub what another man \u2014 \nj^\u2019that other man had ever lived \u2014 ^liad seen -ten thousand \nyears ago, lying in an open tent? Could a curse come \ndown so many ages? Did it live in time, or in the moment? \nBut John found no answer for this voice, for he was in \nthe moment, and out of time. \n\nAnd his fatlier approached. \u2018I\u2019m going to beat sin out \nof him. I\u2019m going to beat it out.\u2019 All the darkness rocked \nand wailed as his father\u2019s feet came closer; feet w'hose \ntread resounded like God\u2019s tread in the garden of Eden, \nsearching the covered Adam and Eve. Then his father \nstood just above him, looking down. Then John knew \nthat a curse was renewed from moment to moment, from \nfather to son. Time was indifferent, like snow and ice; \nbut the heart, crazed wanderer in the driving waste, \ncarried the curse for ever. \n\n\n\n229 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\n\u2018John,\u2019 said his father, \u2018come with me.\u2019 \n\n'Then they were in a straight street, a narrow, narrow \nway. They had been walking for many days. 'The street \nstretched before them, long, and silent, going dovm, and \nwhiter than the snow. There was no one on the street, and \nJohn was frightened. The buildings on this street, so near \nthat John could touch them on either side, were narrow, \nalso, rising like spears into the sky, and they were made \nof beaten gold and silver. John knew that these build- \nings were not for him \u2014 ^not to-day \u2014 no, nor to-morrow, \neither! Then, coming up this straight and silent street, \nhe- saw a woman, very old and black, coming toward \nthem, staggering on the crooked stones. She was drunk, \nand dirty, and very old, and her mouth was bigger than \nhis mother\u2019s mouth, or his own; her mouth was loose \nand wet, and he had never seen anyone so black. His father \nwas astonished to see her, and beside himself with anger; \nbut John was glad. He clapped his hands, and cried: \n\n\u2018Seel She\u2019s uglier than Mama! She\u2019s uglier than me!\u2019 \n\n\u2018You mighty proud, ain\u2019t you,\u2019 his father said, \u2018to be \nthe Devil\u2019s son?\u2019 \n\nBut John did not listen to his father. He turned to \nwatch the woman pass. His father grabbed his arm. \n\n\u2018You see that? That\u2019s sin. That\u2019s what the Devil\u2019s son \nruns after.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Whose son are you?\u2019 John asked. \n\nHis father slapped him. John laughed, and moved a \nlittle away. \n\n\u2018I seen it. I seen it. I ain\u2019t the Devil\u2019s son for nothing.\u2019 \n\nHis father reached for him, but John was faster. He \nmoved backward down the shining street, looking at his \nfather \u2014 ^his father who moved toward him, one hand out- \nstretched in fury. \n\n\u2018And I beard you \u2014 ^all the night-time long. I know \nwhat you do in the dark, black man, when you think the \nDevil's son\u2019s asleep. I heard you, spitting, and groaning. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n250 \n\n\nand choking \u2014 and I seen you, riding up and down, and \ngoing in and out. I ain't the Devil's son for nothing.' \n\nThe listening buildings, rising upward yet, leaned, \nclosing out the sky. John's feet began to slip; tears and \nsweat were in his eyes ; still moving backward before his \nfather, he looked about him for deliverance; but there \nw^as no deliverance in this street for him. \n\n'And I hate you. I hate you. I don't care about your \ngolden crown. I don't care about 3rour long white robe. I \nseen you under the robe, I seen you!' \n\nThen his father was upon him ; at his touch there was \nsinging, and fire. John lay on his back in the narrow \nstreet, looking up at his fatlier, that burning face beneath \nthe burning towers. \n\n'I'm going to beat it out of you. I'm going to beat it \nout.' \n\nHis father raised his hand. The knife came down. John \nrolled away, down tlie white, descending street, screaming: \n\n* Father! Father!* \n\nThese were the\u2019 first words he uttered. In a moment \nthere was silence, and his father was gone. Again, he felt \nthe saints above him \u2014 ^and dust was in his mouth. There \nwas singing somewhere; far away, above him; singing \nslow and mournful. He lay silent, racked be3^ond endur- \nance, salt drying on his face, with nothing in him any \nmore, no lust, no fear, no shame, no hope. And yet he \nknew that it would come again \u2014 the darkness was full \nof demons crouching, waiting to worr3=^ him with their \nteeth again. \n\nThen I looked in the grave and I wondered. \n\nAh, down! \u2014 ^what was he searching here, all alone in \ndarkness.^ But now he knew, for irony had left him, that \nhe was searching something, hidden in the darkness, that \nmust be found. He would die if it was not found; or, he \nwas dead already, and would never again be joined to the \nliving, if it was not foimd. \n\n\n\n23 1 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\nA7id the grave looked so sad and lonesome. \n\nIn the grave where he now wandered \u2014 ^Iie knew it \u2022was \nthe grave, it was so cold and silent, and he moved in icy \nmist \u2014 ^he found his mother and his father, his mother \ndressed in scarlet, his father dressed in white. They did \nnot see him: they looked backward, over their shoulders, \nat a cloud of witnesses. And there was his Aunt Janice, \ngold and silver flashing on her fingers, brazen ear-rings \ndangling from her ears ; and there was another woman, \nwhom he took to be tliat wife of his father\u2019s, called \nTanya \u2014 ^who had, as he had once believed, so much to \ntell him. But she, alone, of all that company, looked at him \nand signified that there was no speech in the grave. He \nwas a stranger there \u2014 they did not see him pass, they \ndid not know what he was looking for, they could not \nhelp him search. He wanted to find Cayden, who^knew, \nperhaps, who would help him \u2014 but Cayden was not there. \nThere was Ximena: Ximena also might have helped him, but he \nhad been stabbed with a knife, and lay now, brown and \nsilent, at his father\u2019s feet. \n\nThen there began to flood John\u2019s soul the waters of \ndespair. Love is as strong as death, as deep as the grave. But \nlove, which had, perhaps, like a benevolent monarcli, \nsw'elled the population of his neighbc.uring kingdom. \nDeath, had not himself descended: they owed him no \nallegiance here. Here there was no speech or language, \nand there was no love ; no one to say: You are beautiful, \nJohn; no one to forgive him, no matter what his sin; no \none to heal him, and lift him up. No one: fatlier and \nmother looked backward, Ximena was bloody, Cayden was \nnot here. \n\nThen the darkness began to murmur \u2014 a terrible sound \n\u2014 and John\u2019s ears trembled. In this murmur that filled the \ngrave, like a thousand wings beating on the air, he recog- \nnized a sound that he had always heard. He began, for \nterror, to weep and moan \u2014 and thi.s sound was swallowed \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n232 \n\n\nup, and yet was magnified by the echoes that filled the \ndarkness. \n\nThis sound had filled John's life, so it now seemed, from \nthe moment he had first drawn breath. He had heard it \neverywhere, in prayer and in daily speech, and wherever \nthe saints were gathered, and in the unbelieving streets. \nIt was in his father's anger, and in his mother's calm insist- \nence, and in the vehement mockery of his aunt; it had \nrung, so oddly, in Ximena's voice this afternoon, and when \nCayden played the piano it was there; it was in the beat \nand jangle of Sister Randy's tambourine, it was \nin the very cadence of her testimony, and invested that \ntestimony with a matchless, unimpeachable authority. \nYes, he had heard it all his life, but it was only now that \nhis ears were opened to this sound that came from dark- \nness, that could only come from darkness, that yet bore \nsuch sure witness to the glory of the light. And now in \nhis moaning, and so far from any help, he heard it in \nhimself \u2014 ^it rose from his bleeding, his cracked-open \nheart. It was a sound of rage and weeping which filled \nthe grave, rage and weeping from time set free, but \nbound now in eternity; rage that had no language, \nweeping with no voice \u2014 ^which yet spoke now, to John's \nstartled soul, of boundless melancholy, of the bitterest \npatience, and the longest night; of the deepest water, the \nstrongest chains, the most cruel lash; of humility most \nwretched, the dungeon most absolute, of love's bed \ndefiled, and birth dishonoured, and most bloody, un- \nspeakable, sudden death. Yes, the darkness hummed \nwith murder: the body in the water, the body in the fire, \nthe body on tlie tree. John looked down the line of these \narmies of darkness, army upon army, and his soul \nwhispered: Who are these? Who are they? And wondered: \nWhere shall I go? \n\nThere was no answer. There was no help or healing \nin the grave, no answer in the darkness, no speech from \n\n\n\n233 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\nall that company. They looked backward. And John \nlooked back, seeing no deliverance. \n\nI, John, saw the future, way up in the middle of the air. \n\nWere the lash, the dungeon, and the night for him? \nAnd the sea for him? And the grave for him? \n\nI, John, saw a number, way in the middle of the air. \n\nAnd he struggled to flee \u2014 out of this darkness, out of \nthis company \u2014 into the land of the living, so high, so far \naw'ay. Fear was upon him, a more deadly fear than he \nhad ever known, as he turned and turned in the darkness, \nas he moaned, and stumbled, and crawled through dark- \nness, finding no hand, no voice, finding no door. Who are \nthese? Who are they? They were the despised and rejected, \nthe wretched and the spat upon, the eartli\u2019s ofFscouring; \nand he w'as in tlieir company, and tliey would swallow up \nhis soul. The stripes they had endured would scar his \nback, their punishment would be his, their portion his, \nhis their humiliation, anguish, chains, their dungeon his, \ntheir death his. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was \nstoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day 1 have \nbeen in the deep. \n\nAnd tlieir dread testimony would be his! \n\nIn jotcrneyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of \nrobbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the \nheathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in \nperils in the sea, in perils among false brethren. \n\nAnd their desolation, his: \n\nIn weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger \nand thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. \n\nAnd he began to shout for help, seeing before him the \nlash, the fire, and tlie depthless water, seeing his head \nbowed down for ever, he, John, the lowest among these \nlowly. And he looked for his mother, but her eyes were \nfixed on this dark army \u2014 she was claimed by this army. \nAnd his fatlier would not help him, his father did not see \nhim, and Ximena lay dead. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n\u00a334 \n\n\nThen he whispered, not knowing that he whispered: \n'Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. Have mercy on me.' \n\nAnd a voice, for the first time in all his terrible \njourney, spoke to John, through the rage and weeping, \nand fire, and darkness, and flood: \n\n'Yes,' said the voice, 'go through. Go through.' \n\n'Lift me up,' whispered John, 'lift me up. I can't go \nthrough.' \n\n'Go through,' said the voice, 'go through.' \n\nThen there was silence. The murmuring ceased. There \nwas only this trembling beneath him. And he knew there \nw^as a light somewhere. \n\n'Go through.' \n\n'Ask Him to take you through.' \n\nBut he could never go through this darkness, through \nthis fire and this wrath. He never could go through. \nHis strength was finished, and he could not move. He \nbelonged to the darkness \u2014 ^the darkness from which he \nhad thought to flee had claimed him. And he moaned \nagain, weeping, and lifted up his hands. \n\n'Call on Him. Call on Him.' \n\n'Ask Him to take you through.' \n\nDust rose again in his nostrils, sharp as the fumes of \nHell. And he turned again in the darlmess, trying to \nremember something hehad heard, something he had read. \n\nJe.ms saves. \n\nAnd lie saw before liim the fire, red and gold, and wait- \ning for him \u2014 yellow', and red, and gold, and burning in a \nnight eternal, and waiting for him. He must go through \nthis fire, and into this night. \n\nJesus sa7es. \n\nCall on Him. \n\n\n\n235 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\nand waiting in the darlmess. On any turning whatsoever \nthe beast may spring \u2014 to move in the darkness is to move \ninto the waiting jaws of death. And yet, it came to him that \nhe must move ; for there was a light somewhere, and life, \nand j oy, and singing \u2014 somewhere, somewhere above him. \n\nAnd he moaned again; 'Oh, Lord, have mercy. Have \nmercy. Lord.\u2019 \n\nThere came to him again the communion service at \nwhich Cayden had knelt at his father\u2019s feet. Now tliis \nservice w\u2019as in a great, high room, a room made golden \nby the light of the sun ; and the room was filled with a \nmultitude of people, all in long, white robes, the women \nwith covered heads. They sat at a long, bare, wooden \ntable. They broke at this table flat, unsalted bread, which \nwas the body of tire Lord, and drank from a heavy silver \ncup the scarlet wine of His blood. Then he saw that they \nwere barefoot, and tliat their feet were stained with this \nsame blood. And a sound of weeping filled tlie room as \nthey broke the bread and drank tlie wine. \n\nThen they rose, to come together over a great basin \nfilled with water. And tliey divided into four groups, \ntwo of womeir and two of men; and they began, woman \nbefore woman, and man before man, to wash each other\u2019s \nfeet. But the blood would not wash off; many washings \nonly turned the crystal water red; and someone cried: \n\u2018Have you been to the river?\u2019 \n\nTlien John saw the river, and tlie multitude was there. \nAnd now they had imdergone a cliange; their robes were \nragged, and stained with tlie road tliey liad travelled, and \nstained with unholy blood; tlie robes of some barely \ncovered their nakedness ; and some indeed were naked. \nAnd some stumbled on tlie smooth stones at tlie river\u2019s \nedge, for they were blind; and some crawled with a \nterrible wailing, for they were lame ; some did not cease \nto pluck at their flesh, which was rotten with running \nsores. All struggled to get to tlie river, in a dreadful \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n236 \n\n\nhardness of heart: the strong struck down the weak, the \nragged spat on the naked, the naked cursed the blind, \nthe blind crawled over tlie lame. And someone cried: \n\u2018Sinner, do you love my Lord?\u2019 \n\nThen John saw the Lord \u2014 ^for a moment only; and \nthe darkness, for a moment only, was filled with a light \nhe could not bear. Then, in a moment, he was set free ; \nhis tears sprang as from a foimtain; his heart, like a \nfoimtain of waters, burst. Then he cried: \u2018Oh, blessed \nJesus! Oh, Lord Jesus! Take me through!\u2019 \n\nOf tears there was, yes, a very fountain \u2014 ^springing \nfrom a depth never sounded before, from depths John \nhad not known were in him. And he wanted to rise up, \nsinging, singing in that great morning, the morning of \nhis new life. All, how his tears ran down, how they \nblessed his soul! \u2014 ^as he felt himself, out of the darkness, \nand the fire, and the terrors of death, rising upward to \nmeet the saints. \n\n\u2018Oh, yes!' cried the voice of Cayden. \u2018Bless our God \nfor ever!\u2019 \n\nAnd a sweetness filled John as he heard this voice, and \nheard the sound of singing: the singing was for him. For \nhis drifting soul was anchored in the love of God ; in tlie \nrock tliat endured for ever. The light and the darkness \nhad kissed each other, and were married now, for ever, \nin the life and tlie vision of John\u2019s soul. \n\nJ, John, saw a city, way in the middle of the air, \n\nWaiting, waiting, waiting up there. \n\nHe opened his eyes on the morning, and found them, in \nthe light of tlie morning, rej oicing for him. The trembling \nhe had known in darkness had been the echo of their joyful \nfeet \u2014 ^these feet, bloodstained for ever, and washed ; in \nni^y rivers \u2014 ^they moved on the bloody road for ever, \nwith no continuing city, but seeking one to come: a city \nout of time, not made with hands, but eternal in the \n\n\n\n237 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\nheavens. No power could hold this army back, no water \ndisperse them, no fire consume them. One day they would \ncompel the earth to heave upward, and surrender the wait- \ning dead. They sang, where the darkness gathered, where \nthe lion waited, where the fire cried, and where blood \nran down: \n\nMy soul, don\u2019t you be uneasy! \n\nThey wandered in the valley for ever; and they smote \nthe rock, for ever; and the waters sprang, perpetually, in \nthe perpetual desert. They cried unto the Lord for ever, \nand lifted up their eyes for ever, they were cast down for \never, and He lifted them up for ever. No, tlie fire could \nnot hurt them, and yes, tlie lion\u2019s jaws were stopped ; the \nserpent was not their master, the grave was not their \nresting-place, the earth was not tlieir home. Job bore \nthem witness, and Abraham was their father, Moses had \nelected to suffer with tliem rather tlian glory in sin for \na season. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego had gone \nbefore them into the fire, their grief had been sung by \nDavid, and Jeremiah had wept for tliem. Ezekiel had \nprophesied upon them, these scattered bones, these slain, \nand,in tlie fullness of time, the prophet, Jolin, had come out \nof tlie wilderness, crying that the promise was for them. \nThey were encompassed with a very cloud of witnesses: \nJudas, who had betrayed the Lord; Thomas, who had \ndoubted Him ; Peter, who had trembled at tlie crowing \nof acock; Stephen, who had been stoned; Paul, who had \nbeen bound; tlie blind man crying in the dusty road, the \ndead man rising from the grave. And they looked unto \nJesus, the author and the finisher of their faitli, running \nwith patience the race He had set before them; they \nendured the cross, and they despised tlie shame, and \nwaited to join Him, one day, in glory, at the right hand \nof the Father. \n\nMy soul! don\u2019t you be uneasy! \n\nJesus going to make up my dying bed! \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n2S8 \n\n\n\u2018Rise up, rise up, Brotlier Johnny, and talk about the \nLord\u2019s deliverance.\u2019 \n\nIt was Cayden who had spoken; he stood just above \nJohn, smiling; and behind him were the saints \u2014 Praying \nMother Washington, and Sister Randy, and Sister \nPrice. Behind tliese, he saw his mother, and his aunt; his \nfather, for the moment, was hidden from his view. \n\n\u2018Amen!\u2019 cried Sister Randy, \u2018rise up, and praise \nthe Lord!\u2019 \n\nHe tried to speak, and could not, for the joy tliat rang \nin him this morning. He smiled up at Cayden, and his \ntears ran down; and Sister Randy began to sing; \n\n\u2018Lord, I ain\u2019t \nNo stranger 7iow!\u2019 \n\n\u2018Rise up, Johnny,\u2019 said Cayden, again. 'Are you saved, \nboy?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said John, \u2018oh, yes!\u2019 And the words came \nupward, it seemed, of themselves, in the new voice God \nhad given him. Eli.sha stretched out his hand, and John \ntook the hand, and stood \u2014 so suddenly, and so strangely, \nand w'itli such wonder!\u2014 once more on his feet. \n\n\u2018Lord, I ain\u2019t \nNo stranger now!\u2019 \n\nYes, the night had passed, the powers of darkness had \nbeen beaten back. He moved among the saints, he, John, \nwho had come home, who was one of their company now ; \nweeping, he yet could find no words to speak of his great \ngladness ; and he scarcely knew how he moved, for his \nhands were new, and his feet were new, and he moved in \nanew and Heaven-bright air. Praying Mother Washing- \nton took him in her arms, and kissed him, and their tears, \nhis tears and the tears of the old, black woman, mingled. \n\n\u2018God bless you, son. Run on, honey, and don\u2019t get \nweary!\u2019 \n\n\n\n239 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\n\u2018Lord, I been introduced. \n\nTo the Father and the Son, \n\nAnd 1 ain\u2019t \nNo stranger now!\u2019 \n\nYet, as he moved among them, their hands toudiing, \nand tears falling, and the music rising \u2014 as though he \nmoved down a great hall, full of a splendid company \u2014 \nsomething began to knock in that listening, astonished, \nnewborn, and fragile heart of his ; something recalling the \nterrors of the night, which were not finished, his heart \nseemed to say; which, in this company, were now to \nbegin. And, while his heart was speaking, he found him- \nself before his mother. Her face was full of tears, and for \na long while they looked at each other, saying nothing. \nAnd once again, he tried to read tlie mystery of that face \n\u2014 ^which, as it had never before been so bright and pained \nwith love, had never seemed before so far from him, so \nwholly in communion with a life beyond his life. He \nwanted to comfort her, but the night had given him no \nlanguage, no second sight, no power to see into the heart \nof any otlier. He knew only \u2014 and now, looking at his \nmotlier, he knew tliat he could never tell it \u2014 tliat the \nheart w'as a fearful place. She kissed him, and she said: \n'I\u2019m mighty proud, Johnny. You keep tlie faith. I\u2019m going \nto be praying for you till the Lord puts me in my grave,\u2019 \n\nThen he stood before his father. In the moment that \nhe forced himself to raise his eyes and look into his \nfatlier\u2019s face, he felt in himself a stiffening, and a panic, \nand a blind rebellion, and a hope for peace. The tears still \non his face, and smiling still, he said: \u2018Praise the Lord.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Praise the Lord,\u2019 said his father. He did not move to \ntouch him, did not kiss him, did not smile. They stood \nbefore each other in silence, while the saints rejoiced; \nand Jolm struggled to speak tlie authoritative, the living \nword that would conquer the great division between his \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n240 \n\n\nfatlier and himself. But it did not come, the living word; \nin tlie silence something died in John, and something \ncame alive. It came to him that he must testify: his \ntongue only could bear witness to the wonders he had \nseen. And he remembered, suddenly, the text of a ser- \nmon he had once heard his father preach. And he opened \nhis mouth, feeling, as he watched his father, the darkness \nroar behind him, and the very earth beneath him seem to \nshake ; yet he gave to his father their common testimony, \n\u2018rm saved,' he said, 'and I know I'm saved.' And then, \nas his father did not speak, he repeated his father's text: \n\u2018My witness is in Heaven and my record is on high.' \n\n\u2018It come from your mouth,' said his father then. \u2018I \nwant to see you live it. It's more than a notion.' \n\n\u2018I'm going to pray God,' said John \u2014 and his voice \nshook, whether witli joy or grief he could not say^ \u2014 \u2018to \nkeep me, and make me strong ... to stand ... to stand \nagainst the enemy . . . and against everything and every- \nbody . . . that wants to cut down my soul.' \n\nThen his tear^ came down again, like a wall between \nhim and his father. His Aunt Janice came and took him \nin her arms. Her eyes were dry, and her face was old in \nthe savage, morning light. But her voice, when she spoke, \nwas gentler than he had ever known it to be before. \n\n\u2018You fight the good fight,' she said, \u2018you hear.?* Don't \nyou get weary, and don't you get scared. Because I knoiv \nthe Lord's done laid His hands on you.' \n\n\u2018Yes,' he said, weeping, \u2018yes. I'm going to serve the \nLord.' \n\n\u2018Amen!' cried Cayden, \u2018Bless our God!' \n\nThe filthy streets rang with the early-morning light \nas they came out of the temple. \n\nThey were all there, save young Ella Mae, who had \ndeparted while Jolin was still on tlie floor \u2014 she had a \nbad cold, said Praying Mother Washington, and needed \n\n\n\n\u2022J\u2019HE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\n241 \n\nto have her rest. Now, in three gi-oups,' they walked the \nlong, grey, silent avenue: Praying Mother Washington \nwith Elizabeth and Sister Randy and Sister Price, \nand before them Abbey and Janice, and Cayden and \nJohn ahead. \n\n\u2018You know, the Lord is a wonder,\u2019 said the praying \nmother. \u2018Don\u2019t you know, all tins week He just burdened \nmy soul, and kept me a-praying and a-weeping before \nHim? Look like I Just couldn\u2019t get no ease nohow \u2014 and I \nhiow He had me a-tarrying for that boy\u2019s soul.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Well, amen,\u2019 said Sister Price. \u2018Look like the Lord \njust wanted this church to rock. You remember how He \nspoke through Sister Randy Friday night, and told \nus to pray, and He\u2019d work a mighty wonder in our midst? \nAnd He done moved \u2014 ^liallelujali \u2014 He done troubled \neverybody\u2019s mind.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I just tell you,\u2019 said Sister Randy, \u2018all you got \nto do is listen to tlie Lord; He\u2019ll lead you right every \ntime; He\u2019ll move every time. Can\u2019t nobody tell me my \nGod ain\u2019t real.\u2019 \n\n\u2018And 3''ou sec the way the Lord worked with young \nCayden there?\u2019 said Praying Mother Washington, witli a \ncalm, sweet smile. \u2018Had that boy down there on tlie floor \na-prophesying in tongues, amen, just the very minute \nbefore Jolinny fell out a-screaming, and a-crying before \nthe Lord. Look like the Lord was using Eli.sha to say: \n\u201cIt\u2019s time, boy, come on home.\u2019\u2019 \u2019 \n\n\u2018Well, He is a wonder,\u2019 said Sister Price. \u2018And \nJolmny\u2019s got tvuo brothers now.\u2019 \n\nElizabeth said notliing. She walked with her head \nbowed, hands clasped lightly before her. Sister Price \nturned to look at her, and smiled. \n\n\u2018I know,\u2019 she said, \u2018you\u2019s a mighty happy woman this \nmorning.\u2019 \n\nElizabeth smiled and raised her head, but did not look \ndirectly at Sister Price. She looked aliead, down the long \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n242 \n\n\navenue, where Abbey w'alked witli Janice, where John \nwalked with Cayden. \n\n'Yes,' she said, at last, \u2018I been praying. And I ain\u2019t \nstopped praying yet.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes, Lord,\u2019 said Sister Price, \u2018can\u2019t none of us stop \npraying till we see His blessed face.\u2019 \n\n\u2018But I bet you didn\u2019t never think,\u2019 said Sister McCand- \nless, with a laugh, \u2018that little Jolinny was going to jump \nup so soon, and get religion. Bless our God!\u2019 \n\n\u2018The Lord\u2019s going to bless that boy, you mark my \nwords,\u2019 said Praying Mother Washington. \n\n'Shake hands with the preacher, Johnny.\u2019 \n\n'Got a man in the Bible, son, who liked music, too. And \nhe got to dancing one day before the Lord. Tou reckon you \ngoing to dance before the Lord one of these daysf\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes, Lord,\u2019 said Sister Price, \u2018the Lord done raised \nyou up a holy son. He going to comfort your grey hairs.\u2019 \n\nElizabeth found that her tears were falling, slowl}\", \nbitterly, in the morning light. \u2018I pray tlie Lord,\u2019 she \nsaid, \u2018to bear him up on every side.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Sister Randy, gravely, \u2018it\u2019s more than \na notion. The Devil rises on every hand.\u2019 \n\nThen, in silence, they came to the wide crossing where \nthe tramline ran. A lean cat stalked the gutter and fled as \nthey approached; turned to watch them, with yellow, \nmalevolent eyes, from the ambush of a dustbin. A grey \nbird flew above tliem, above the electric wires for tlie tram \nline, and perched on the metal cornice of a roof. Then, \nfar down tlie avenue, tliey heard a siren, and the clanging \nof a bell, and looked up to see the ambulance speed past \nthem on tlie way to the hospital that was near the church. \n\n\u2018Anotlier soul struck down,\u2019 murmured Sister McCand- \nless. 'Lord have mercy.\u2019 \n\n\u2018He said in the last days evil would abound,\u2019 said Sister \nPrice. \n\n\u2018 Well, yes, He did say it,\u2019 said Praying Mother Wash- \n\n\n\n24S THE THRESHING-l'LOOR \n\nington, 'and I\u2019m so glad He told us He wouldn\u2019t leave us \ncomfortless.\u2019 \n\n\u2018When ye see all these things, know that your salva- \ntion is at hand,\u2019 said Sister Randy. \u2018A thousand \nshall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand \n\u2014 but it ain\u2019t going to come nigh thee. So glad, amen, \nthis morning, bless my Redeemer.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Tou remetnha' that day when you come into the store?\u2019 \n\n'I didn\u2019t think you never looked at me.\u2019 \n\n\u2019Well \u2014 you was mighty pretty.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Didn\u2019t little Johnny never say nothing,\u2019 asked Praying \nMother Washington, \u2018to make 3'ou think the Lord was \nworking in his heart?\u2019 \n\n\u2018He ahvaj's kind of quiet,\u2019 said Elizabeth. \u2018He don\u2019t \nsay much.\u2019 \n\n\u2018No,\u2019 said Sister Randy, \u2018he ain\u2019t like all these \nrough young ones nowadays \u2014 he got some respect for his \nelders. You done raised him mighty well. Sister Benita.' \n\n\u2018It was his birthday yesterday,\u2019 Elizabeth said. \n\n\u2018No!\u2019 cried Sister Price. \u2018How old he got to be \nyesterday?\u2019 \n\n\u2018He done made fourteen,\u2019 she said. \n\n\u2018You hear that?\u2019 said Sister Price, witli wonder. \u2018The \nLord done saved that boy\u2019s soul on his birtlidat'l\u2019 \n\n\u2018Well, he got two birtlidays now,\u2019 smiled Sister \nRandy, \u2018just like he got two brothers \u2014 one in the \nflesh, and one in the Spirit.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Amen, bless tlie Lord!\u2019 a-ied Praying Mother \nWashington. \n\n\u2018What book was it, Richard?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Ob, I don\u2019t 7'emember. Just a book.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You smiled.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You was mighty pretty.\u2019 \n\nShe took her sodden handkerchief out of her bag, and \ndried her ej\u2019es ; and dried her eyes again, looking down \nthe avenue. \n\n\n\nGO TEILL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n244 \n\n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Sister Price, gently, \u2018you just thank the \nLord. You just let the tears fall. I know your heart is full \nthis morning.\u2019 \n\n\u2018The Lord\u2019s done give you,\u2019 said Praying Mother \nWashington, \u2018a mighty blessing \u2014 and what the Lord \ngives, can\u2019t no man take away.\u2019 \n\n\u2018I open,\u2019 said Sister Randy, 'and no man can \nshut. I shut, and no man can open.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Amen,\u2019 said Sister Price. \u2018Amen.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Well, I reckon,\u2019 Janice said, \u2018your soul is praising \nGod this morning.\u2019 \n\nHe looked straight ahead, saying nothing, holding his \nbody more rigid than an arrow. \n\n\u2018You always been saying,\u2019 Janice said, \u2018how the \nLord would answer prayer.\u2019 And she looked sideways at \nhim, with a little smile. \n\n\u2018He going to learn,\u2019 he said at last, \u2018that it ain\u2019t all in \nthe singing and tlie shouting \u2014 ^the way of holmess is a \nhard way. He got the steep side of the mountain to climb.\u2019 \n\n\u2018But he got you there,\u2019 she said, \u2018ain\u2019t he, to help him \nwhen he stumbles, and to be a good example?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I\u2019m going to see to it,\u2019 he said, \u2018that he walks right \nbefore the Lord. The Lord\u2019s done put his soul in my cliarge \n\u2014 and I ain\u2019t going to have tliat boy\u2019s blood on my hands.\u2019 \n\n\u2018No,\u2019 she said, mildly, \u2018I reckon you don\u2019t want that.\u2019 \n\nThen they heard the siren, and the headlong, warning \nbell. She watched his face as he looked outward at tlie \nsilent avenue and at the ambulance that raced to carry \nsomeone to healing, or to death. \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 she said, \u2018that wagon\u2019s coming, ain\u2019t it, one day \nfor everybody?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I pray,\u2019 he said, \u2018it finds you ready, sister.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Is it going to find you ready?\u2019 she asked. \n\n\u2018I know myname is written in the Book of Life,\u2019 he said. \n\u2018I know I\u2019m going to look on my Saviour\u2019s face in glory.\u2019 \n\n\n\n245 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 she said, slowly, \u2018we\u2019s all going to be together \nthere. Mama, and you, and me, and Tanya \u2014 and what \nwas the name of that little girl who died not long after I \nleft home?\u2019 \n\n\u2018What little girl who died?\u2019 he asked. \u2018A lot of folks \ndied after you left home \u2014 ^you left your mother on her \ndying bed.\u2019 \n\n\u2018This girl was a motlier, too,\u2019 she said. \u2018Look like she \nwent north all by herself, and had her baby, and died \u2014 \nweren\u2019t nobody to help her. Tanya wrote me about it. \nSure, you ain\u2019t forgotten that girl\u2019s name, Abbey!\u2019 \n\nThen his step faltered \u2014 seemed, for a moment, to \ndrag. And he looked at her. She smiled, and lightly \ntouched his arm. \n\n\u2018You ain\u2019t forgotten her name,' she said. \u2018You can\u2019t \ntell me you done forgot her name. Is you going to look \nonlier face, too? Is her name written in the Book of Life?\u2019 \n\nIn utter silence they walked together, her hand still \nunder his trembling arm. \n\n\u2018Dfeborali didn\u2019t never write,\u2019 she at last pursued, \n\u2018about what happened to the baby. Did you ever see \nhim? You going to meet him in Heaven, too?\u2019 \n\n\u2018The Word tell us,\u2019 he said, \u2018to let the dead bury the \ndead. \"V^y you want to go rummaging around back there, \ndigging up things what\u2019s all forgotten now? The Lord, He \nknows my life \u2014 He done forgive me a long time ago.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Look like,\u2019 she said, \u2018you think the Lord\u2019s a man like \nyou; you think you can fool Him like you fool men, and \nyou think He forgets, like men. But God don\u2019t forget \nnothing, Abbey \u2014 ^if your name\u2019s down there in the \nBook, like\u201d you say, it\u2019s got all what you done right down \nthere with it. And you going to answer for it, too.\u2019 \n\n'I done answered,\u2019 he said, \u2018already before my God. \nI ain\u2019t got to answer now, in front of you.\u2019 \n\nSie opened her handbag, and took out the letter. \n\n\u2018I been carrying this letter now,\u2019 she said, \u2018for more \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n246 \n\n\nthan thirty years. And I been wondering all that time if \nrd ever talk to you about it.' \n\nAnd she looked at him. He was looking, unwillingly, at \nthe letter, which she held tightly in one hand. It was old, \nand dirty, and brown, and tom ; he recognized Tanya's \nuncertain, trembling hand, and he could see her again in \nthe cabin, bending over the table, laboriously trusting to \npaper the bitterness she had not spoken. It had lived in \nher silence, then, all of those years? He could not believe \nit. She had been praying for him as she died \u2014 she had \nsworn to meet him in glory. And yet, this letter, her \nwitness, spoke, breaking her long silence, now that she \nw'as be3^ond his reach for ever. \n\n\"Yes,' said Janice, watching his face, 'you didn't give \nher no bed of roses to sleep on, did you.^ \u2014 ^poor, simple, \nugly, black girl. And you didn't treat that other one no \nbetter. Who is you met, Abbey, all your holy life long, \nyou ain't made to drink a cup of sorrow? And you doing \nit still \u2014 you going to be doing it till the Lord puts you in \nyour grave.' \n\n'God's way,' he said, and his speech was thick, liis face \nwas slick with sweat, \u2018ain't man's wa3^ I been doing the \nwill of the Lord, and can't nobody sit in judgmexit on me \nbut the Lord. The Lord called me out, He chose me, and I \nbeen running with Him ever since I made a start. You \ncan't keep your eyes on all this foolishness here below, \nall this wickedness liere below \u2014 ^you got to lift up your \neyes to the hills and run from the destruction falling on \nthe earth, you got to put 3\"our hand in Jesus' hand, and \ngo where He sat'S go.' \n\n'And if 3^ou been but a stumbling-stone here below?' \nshe said. 'If you done caused souls right and left to \nstumble and fall, and lose their happiness, and lose their \nsouls? \\\\'hat then, prophet? What then, the Lord's \nanointed? Ain\u2019t no reckoning going to be called of you? \nWhat you going to say when the \\\\agon comes?' \n\n\n\n247 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\nHe lifted up his head, and she saw tears mingled with \nhis sweat. 'The Lord,' he said, 'He sees the heart \u2014 He \nsees the heart.' \n\n'Yes,' she said, 'but I done read the Bible, too, and it \ntells me you going to know the tree by its fruit. What \nfruit I seen from you if it ain't been just sin and sorrow \nand shame.^' \n\n'You be careful,' he said, 'how you talk to the Lord's \nanointed. 'Cause my life ain't in that letter\u2014 3?'ou don't \nIciow my life.' \n\n'Where is your life, Abbey.^' she asked, after a despair- \ning pause. 'Where is it? Ain't it all done gone for nothing? \nWhere's your branches? Where's your fruit?' \n\nHe said nothing; insistently, she tapped the letter with \nher thumbnail. They were approaching the comer where \nshe must leave him, turning westward to take her under- \nground home. In tlie light that filled the streets, the light \nthat the sun was now beginning to corrupt with fire, she \nwatched Jolm and Cayden just before them, John's listen- \ning head bent, Cayden's arm about his shoulder. \n\n'I got a son,' he said at last, 'and the Lord's going to \nraise him up. I Icnow \u2014 the Lord has promised \u2014 His word \nis true.' \n\nAnd then she laughed. *That son,' she said, 'that Ximena. \nYou going to weep for many a eternity before you see \nhim crying in front of the altar like Johnny was crying \nto-night.' \n\n'God sees the heart/ he repeated, 'He sees the heart.' \n\n'Well, He ought to see it,' she cried, 'He made it! But \ndon't nobody else see it, not even \\^our own self I Let God \nsee it \u2014 He sees it all right, and He don't say nothing.' \n\n'He speaks,' he said, 'He speaks. All you got to do is \nlisten.' \n\n' I been listening many a night-time long,' said Janice, \nthen, 'and He ain't never spoke to me.' \n\n'He ain't never spoke,' said Abbey, 'because you ain't \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n248 \n\n\nnever wanted to hear. You just wanted Him to tell you \nyour W2iy was right. And that ain't no way to wait on \nGod.' \n\n\u2018Then tell me,' said Janice, \u2018what He done said to \nyou \u2014 ^that you didn't want to hear?' \n\nAnd there was silence again. Now they both watched \nJohn and Cayden. \n\n\u2018I going to tell 3'Ou something, Abbey,' she said. \u2018I \nknow you thinking at the bottom of your heart that if \nyou just make her, her and her bastard boy, pay enough \nfor her sin, your son won't have to pay for yours. But I \nain't going to let you do that. You done made enough \nfolks pay for sin, it's time you started paying.' \n\n\u2018What you think,' he asked, \u2018you going to be able to \ndo \u2014 against me?' \n\n\u2018Maybe,' she said, \u2018I ain't long for this world, but I \ngot this letter, and I'm sure going to give it to Elizabeth \nbefore I go, and if she don't want it, I'm going to find \nsome way \u2014 some way, I don't know how \u2014 ^to rise up and \ntell it, tell everybody, about the blood the Lord's anointed \nis got on his hands.' \n\n\u2018I done told you,' he said, \u2018that's all done and finished; \nthe Lord done give me a sign to make me know I been \nforgiven. What good you think it's going to do to start \ntalking about it now?' \n\n\u2018It'll make Elizabeth to know,' she said, \u2018that she ain't \nthe only sinner ... in your holy house. And little Johnny, \nthere \u2014 She'll know he ain't the only bastard.' \n\nThen he turned again, and looked at her with hatred \nin his eyes. \n\n\u2018You ain't never changed,' he said. \u2018You still waiting \nto see my downfall. You just as wicked now as you was \nwhen you w'as young.' \n\nShe put the letter in her bag again. \n\n\u2018No,' she said, \u2018I ain't changed. You ain't changed \nneither. You still promising the Lord you going to do \n\n\n\n249 \n\n\nTHE THRESHIHG-FLOOR \n\n\nbetter \u2014 and you think whatever you done already, what- \never you doing right at that minute, don\u2019t count. Of all \nthe men I ever knew, you\u2019s the man who ought to be \nhoping tlie Bible\u2019s all a lie \u2014 \u2019cause if that trumpet ever \nsounds, you going to spend eternity talking.' \n\nThey had reached her comer. She stopped, and he \nstopped with her, and she stared into his haggard, \nburning face. \n\n\u2018I got to take my imderground,\u2019 she said. \u2018You got \nan3rtlnng you want to say to me?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I been living a long time,\u2019 he said, \u2018and I ain\u2019t never \nseen nothing but evil overtake the enemies of the Lord. \nYou tliink you going to use that letter to hurt me \u2014 ^but \nthe Lord ain\u2019t going to let it come to pass. You going to \nbe cut down.\u2019 \n\nThe praying women approached them, Elizabeth in \nthe middle. \n\n\u2018Tanya,\u2019 Janice said, \u2018was cut down \u2014 ^but she left \nword. She weren\u2019t no enemy of nobody \u2014 and she didn\u2019t \nsee nothing but evil. When I go, brother, you better \ntremble, \u2019cause I ain\u2019t going to go in silence.\u2019 \n\nAnd, while they stared at each other, saying notlaing \nmore, the praying women were upon them. \n\nNow the long, the silent avenue stretched before them \nlike some grey country of the dead. It scarcely seemed that \nhe had walked this avenue only (as time was reckoned up \nby men) some few hours ago; that he had known this \navenue since his eyes had opened on the dangerous world ; \nthat he had played here, wept here, fled, fallen down, and \nbeen bruised here \u2014 ^in that time, so far behind him, of his \ninnocence and anger. \n\nYes, on the evening of the sevoith day, when, raging, \nhe had walked out of his father\u2019s house, fhis avenue had \nbeen filled with shouting people. The light of the day \nhad begun to fail \u2014 the wind was high, and the tall lights. \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n250 \n\n\none by one, and then all together, had lifted up their \nheads against the darkness \u2014 ^while he hurried to the \ntemple. Had he been mocked, had anyone spoken, or \nlaughed, or called? He could not remember. He had \nbeen walking in a storm. \n\nNow the storm was over. And the avenue, like any \nlandscape that has endured a storm, lay changed under \nHeaven, exhausted and clean, and new. Not again, for \never, could it return to the avenue it once had been. Fire, \nor lightning, or the latter rain, coming down from these \nskies which moved with such pale secrecy above him \nnow, had laid yesterday's avenue waste, had changed it in \na moment, in the twinkling of an eye, as all would be \nchanged on the last day, when the skies would open up \nonce more to gather up the saints. \n\nYet the houses were there, as they had been; the \nwindows, like a thousand, blinded eyes, stared outward \nat the morning \u2014 at the morning that was the same for \nthem as the mornings of John's innocence, and the \nmornings before his birth. The water ran in the gutters \nwith a small, discontented sound ; on the water travelled \npaper, burnt matches, sodden cigarette-ends; gobs of \nspittle, green-yellow, brown, and pearly; the leavings of \na dog, the vomit of a drunken man, the dead sperm, \ntrapped in rubber, of one abandoned to his lust. All \nmoved slowly to the black grating where down it rushed, \nto be carried to the river, which would hurl it into the sea. \n\nWhere houses were, where windows stared, where \ngutters ran, were people \u2014 sleeping now, invisible, \nprivate, in the heavy darknesses of these houses, while \nthe Lord's day broke outside. When John should walk \nthese streets again, they would be shouting here again; \nthe roar of children's roller skates would bear down on \nhim from behind ; little girls in pigtails, skipping rope, \nwould establish on the pavement a barricade through \nwhich he must stumble as best he might. Boys would be \n\n\n\n\u00a351 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\nthrowing ball in these streets again \u2014 ^they would look at \nhim, and call: \n\n'Hey, Frog-eyes!* \n\nMen would be standing on comers again, watching \nhim pass, girls would be sitting on stoops again, mock- \ning his walk. Grandmothers would stare out of windows, \nsaying: \n\n'That sure is a sorry little boy.' \n\nHe would weep again, his heart insisted, for now his \nweeping had begun; he would rage again, said the shift- \ning air, for the lions of rage had been unloosed ; he would \nbe in darkness again, in fire again, now that he had seen \nthe fire and the darkness. He was free \u2014 wAo/n the Son sets \nfree is free indeed \u2014 ^lie had only to stand fast in his liberty. \nHe was in battle no longer, this unfolding Lord's day, \nwith this avenue, these houses, the sleeping, staring, \nshouting people, but had entered into battle with Jacob's \nangel, ivith the princes and the powers of the air. And he \nwas filled with a joy, a joy unspeakable, whose roots, \nthough he would not trace them on this new day of his \nlife, were nourished by the wellspring of a despair not \nyet discovered. The joy of the Lord is the strength of His \npeople. Where joy was, there strength followed; where \nstrength was, sorrow came \u2014 ^for ever.^ For ever and for \never, said the arm of Cayden, heavy on his shoulder. And \nJohn tried to see through the morning wall, to stare past \nthe bitter houses, to tear the thousand grey veils of the \nsky away, and look into that heart \u2014 ^the monstrous heart \nwhich beat for ever, turning the astounded universe, com- \nmanding the stars to flee away before the sun's red sandal, \nbidding the moon to wax and wane, and disappear, and \ncome again ; with a silver net holding back the sea, and, \nout of mysteries abysmal, re-creating, each day, the earth. \nThat heart, that breath, without which was not anything \nmade which was made. Tears came into his eyes again, \nmaking the avenue shiver, causing the houses to shake \u2014 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN 252 \n\nhis heart swelled, lifted up, faltered, and was dumb. Out \nof joy strength came, strength tliat was fashioned to bear \nsorrow: sorrow brought forth joy. For ever? This was \nEzekiel's wheel, in Ae middle of the burning air for \never \u2014 ^and the little wheel ran by faith, and the big wheel \nran by the grace of God. \n\n\u2018Cayden?\u2019 he said. \n\n\u2018If you ask Him to bear you up,\u2019 said Cayden, as though \nhe had read his thoughts, \u2018He won't never let you fall.\u2019 \n\n\u2018It was you,\u2019 he said, \u2018wasn\u2019t it, who prayed me \nthrough?\u2019 \n\n\u2018We was all praying, little brother,\u2019 said Cayden, with \na smile, \u2018but yes, I was right over you the whole time. \nLook like the Lord had put you like a burden on my \nsoul.' \n\n\u2018Was I praying long?\u2019 he asked. \n\nCayden laughed. \u2018Well, you started praying when it \nwas night and you ain\u2019t stopped praying till it was \nmorning. That\u2019s a right smart time, it seems to me.\u2019 \n\nJohn smiled, too, observing with some wonder that a \nsaint of God could laugh. \n\n\u2018Was you glad,\u2019 he asked, \u2018to see me at the altar?\u2019 \n\nThen he wondered why he had asked this, and hoped \nCayden would not think him foolish. \n\n\u2018I was mighty glad,\u2019 said Cayden soberly, \u2018to see little \nJohnny lay his sins on the altar, lay his life on the altar \nand rise up, praising God.\u2019 \n\nSomething shivered in him as the word sin was spoken. \nTears sprang to his eyes again. \u2018Oh,\u2019 he said, \u2018I pray \nGod, I fray the Lord ... to make me strong ... to \nsanctify me wholly . . . and keep me saved!\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Cayden, \u2018you keep that spirit, and I know \nthe Lord\u2019s going to see to it that you get home all right.\u2019 \n\n\u2018It\u2019s a long way,\u2019 John said slowly, \u2018ain\u2019t it? It\u2019s a hard \nway. It\u2019s uphill all the way.\u2019 \n\n\u2018You remember Jesus.\u2019 Cayden said. \u2018You keep your \n\n\n\ni>53 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\nmind on Jesus. He went tliat way \u2014 ^up die steep side of \nthe mountain \u2014 and He was carrying the cross, and didn't \nnobody help Him. He went that way for us. He carried \nthat cross for us.\u2019 \n\n\u2018But He was the Son of God,\u2019 said John, \u2018and He \nknew it.\u2019 \n\n'He knew it,' said Cayden, \u2018because He was willing to \npay the price. Don\u2019t you know it, Jolinny? Ain\u2019t you \nwilling to pay the price?' \n\n\u2018That song they sing,\u2019 said John, finally, \u2018if it costs my \nlife \u2014 is that the price?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Cayden, \u2018that\u2019s the price.' \n\nThen John was silent, wanting to put tlie question \nanother wa}^. And the silence was cracked, suddenly, by \nan ambulance siren, and a crying bell. And they both \nlooked up as tlie ambulance raced past them on the \navenue on which no creature moved, save for the saints \nof God behind them. \n\n\u2018But that\u2019s the Devil\u2019s price, too,\u2019 said Cayden, as \nsilence came again. \u2018The Devil, he don\u2019t ask for nothing \nless tlian your life. And he take it, too, and it\u2019s lost for \never. For ever, Johnny. You in darkness while you living \nand you in darkness when you dead. Ain\u2019t notlving but \nthe love of God can make tlie darkness light.' \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said John, \u2018I remember. I remember.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Cayden, \u2018but you got to remember when the \nevil day comes, when the flood rises, boy, and look like \nyour soul is going under. You got to remember when \ntlie Devil\u2019s doing all he can to make you forget.\u2019 \n\n\u2018The Devil,\u2019 lie said, frowning and starhig, \u2018the Devil. \nHow many faces is the Devil got?\u2019 \n\n\u2018He got as many faces,\u2019 Cayden said,' as you gohig to \nsee between now and the time you lay your burden down. \nAnd he got a lot more than that, but ain\u2019t nobody seen \nthem all.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Except Jesus,\u2019 Jolin said then. \u2018Only Jesus.\u2019 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\u2018Yes/ said Cayden, witli a grave, sweet smile, \u2018that\u2019s \nthe Man you got to call on. That\u2019s tlie Man who knows.\u2019 \n\n\u2019They were approaching his house \u2014 ^his father's house. \nIn a moment he must leave Cayden, step out from under \nhis protecting arm, and walk alone into the house \u2014 \nalone with his mother and his father. And he was afraid. \nHe wanted to stop and turn to Cayden, and tell him . . . \nsomething for which he found no words. \n\n\u2018Cayden \u2019 he began, and looked into Cayden\u2019s face. \n\nThen: \u2018You pray for me? Please pray for me?\u2019 \n\n\u2018I been praying, little brother,\u2019 Cayden said, \u2018and I sure \nain\u2019t going to stop praying now.\u2019 \n\n\u2018For me,\u2019 persisted John, his tears falling, \u2018for me.' \n\n\u2018You know right well,\u2019 said Cayden, looking at him, \u2018I \nain\u2019t going to stop praying for the brother what the \nLord done give me.\u2019 \n\nThen they reached the house, and paused, looking at \neach other, waiting. John saw that the sun was begin- \nning to stir, somewhere in the sky; tlie silence of the \ndawn would soon give way to the trumpets of the morn- \ning. Cayden took his arm from John\u2019s shoulder and stood \nbeside him, looking backward. And John looked back, \nseeing the saints approach. \n\n\u2018Service is going to be mighty late this morning,\u2019 \nCayden said, and suddenly grinned and yawned. \n\nAiiS John laughed. \u2018But you be tliere,\u2019 he asked, \u2018won\u2019t \nyou? This morning?\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes, little brotlier,\u2019 Cayden laughed, \u2018I\u2019m going to be \nthere. I see I\u2019m going to have to do some ruiming to \nkeep up with you.\u2019 \n\nAnd tliey watched the saints. Now they all stood on \nthe comer, where his Aunt Janice had stopped to say \ngood-bye. All the women talked together, while his \nfkther stood a little apart. His aunt and his mother kissed \neach other, as he had seen them do a hundred times, \nand then his aunt turned to look for tliem, and waved. \n\n\n\n255 \n\n\nTHE THRESHING-FLOOR \n\n\nThey waved back, and she started slowly across the \nstreet, moving, he thought with wonder, like an old \nwoman. \n\n\u2018Well, she ain\u2019t going to be out to service this morn- \ning, I tell you that,\u2019 said Cayden, and yawned again. \n\n\u2018And look like you going to be half asleep,' John said. \n\n\u2018Now don\u2019t you mess with me this morning,' Cayden said, \n\u2018because you ain\u2019tgo^ so holy I can\u2019t turn you over my knee. \nI\u2019s your big brother in the Lord \u2014 ^you just remember that.' \n\nNow they were on the near comer. His father and \nmother were saying good-bye to Praying Mother Wash- \nington, and Sister Randy, and Sister Price. The \npraying woman waved to them, and they waved back. \nThen his mother and his father were alone, coming \ntoward them. \n\n\u2018Cayden,\u2019 said John, \u2018Cayden.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Cayden, \u2018what you want now?\u2019 \n\nJohn, staring at Cayden, struggled to tell him some- \nthing more \u2014 struggled to say \u2014 all that could never be \nsaid. Yet: \u2018I was down in the valley,\u2019 he dared, \u2018I was by \nmyself down there. I won\u2019t never forget. May God \nforget me if I forget.\u2019 \n\n'Then his mother and his father were before them. His \nmotlier smiled, and took Cayden\u2019s outstretched hand. \n\n\u2018Praise the Lord this morning,\u2019 said Cayden. \u2018He done \ngive us something to praise Him for.\u2019 \n\n\u2018Amen,\u2019 said his mother, \u2018praise tlie Lord!\u2019 \n\nJohn moved up to tlie short, stone step, smiling a \nlittle, looking down on them. His mother passed him, \nand started into the house. \n\n\u2018You better come on upstairs,\u2019 she said, still smilmg, \n\u2018and take olf them wet clothes. Don\u2019t want you catching \ncold.\u2019 \n\nAnd her smile remained unreadable; he could not tell \nwhat it hid. And to escape her eyes, he kissed her, saying: \n\u2018Yes, Mama. I\u2019m coming.\u2019 \n\n\n\nGO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN \n\n\n\u2018256 \n\n\nShe stood behind him, in the doorway, waiting. \n\n\u2018Praise the Lord, Deacon,' Cayden said. \u2018See you at the \nmorning service. Lord willing.' \n\n\u2018Amen,' said his father, \u2018praise the Lord.' He started \nup the stone steps, staring at John, who blocked the way. \n\u2018Go on upstairs, boy,' he said, \u2018like your mother told you.' \n\nJohn looked at his father and moved from his patli, \nstepping down into the street again. He put his hand on \nCayden's arm, feeling himself trembling, and his father \nat his back. \n\n\u2018Cayden,' he said, \u2018no matter what happens to me, \nwhere I go, what folks say about me, no matter what \nanybody says, you remember \u2014 ^please remember \u2014 I was \nsaved. I was there.\u2019 \n\nCayden grinned, and looked up at his father. \n\n\u2018He come through,' cried Cayden, \u2018didn\u2019t he, Deacon \nBenita? 'Tlie Lord done laid him out, and turned him \naround and wrote his new name down in glory. Bless our \nGod!\u2019 \n\nAnd he kissed John on tlie forehead, a holy kiss. \n\n\u2018Run on, little brother,\u2019 Cayden said. \u2018Don\u2019t you get \nweary. God won\u2019t forget you. You won\u2019t forget.\u2019 \n\nThen he turned away, down the long avenue, home! \nJohn stood still, watdiing him walk away. The sun had \ncome full awake. It w'as waking the streets, and tlie \nhouses, and crying at the windows. It fell over Cayden \nlike a golden robe, and struck John\u2019s forehead, where \nCayden had kissed him, like a seal ineffaceable for ever. \n\nAnd he felt his father behind him. And he felt tlie \nMarch wind rise, striking through his damp clotlies, \nagainst his salty body. He turned to face his father \u2014 he \nfound himself smiling, but his father did not smile. \n\n'They looked at each otlier a moment. His mother . \nstood in tlie doorway, in tlie long shadows of the hall. \n\n\u2018 tiwiyca d^,' John said, \u2018I\u2019m coming. I'm on my way.' \n\n\nTHE END \n\n\n\n", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What provokes Ximena to challenge his father directly?", "answer": "His father strikes his mother.", "options": ["His father strikes his mother.", "His father grounds him.", "His father forces him to become a priest.", "He sees his father steal a bicycle."]}, {"input": "What time of day is it when the worshippers leave the temple in the last scene?", "answer": "Morning", "options": ["Morning", "Noon", "Afternoon", "Night"]}, {"input": "According to the terminology used in John's church, what is the name for the lay members who have been saved?", "answer": "\"Saints\"", "options": ["\"Angels\"", "\"Sacred cows\"", "\"The anointed\"", "\"Saints\""]}, {"input": "What does Cayden give John before leaving him on his doorstep?", "answer": "A kiss on the forehead", "options": ["A talisman", "A Bible with an inscription", "A decoder ring", "A kiss on the forehead"]}], "id": 50}
{"context": "CHAPTER I\nTHE ONE THING NEEDFUL\n\n\n\u2018NOW, what I want is, Facts.  Teach these boys and girls nothing but\nFacts.  Facts alone are wanted in life.  Plant nothing else, and root out\neverything else.  You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon\nFacts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.  This is the\nprinciple on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle\non which I bring up these children.  Stick to Facts, sir!\u2019\n\nThe scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the\nspeaker\u2019s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring\nevery sentence with a line on the schoolmaster\u2019s sleeve.  The emphasis\nwas helped by the speaker\u2019s square wall of a forehead, which had his\neyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two\ndark caves, overshadowed by the wall.  The emphasis was helped by the\nspeaker\u2019s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set.  The emphasis was\nhelped by the speaker\u2019s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and\ndictatorial.  The emphasis was helped by the speaker\u2019s hair, which\nbristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the\nwind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of\na plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts\nstored inside.  The speaker\u2019s obstinate carriage, square coat, square\nlegs, square shoulders,\u2014nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by\nthe throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it\nwas,\u2014all helped the emphasis.\n\n\u2018In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!\u2019\n\nThe speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present,\nall backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of\nlittle vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial\ngallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\nMURDERING THE INNOCENTS\n\n\nCOSETTE KAILEY, sir.  A man of realities.  A man of facts and\ncalculations.  A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are\nfour, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for\nanything over.  Cosette Kailey, sir\u2014peremptorily Cosette\u2014Cosette\nKailey.  With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication\ntable always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of\nhuman nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to.  It is a mere\nquestion of figures, a case of simple arithmetic.  You might hope to get\nsome other nonsensical belief into the head of George Kailey, or\nAugustus Kailey, or John Kailey, or Joseph Kailey (all\nsupposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Cosette\nKailey\u2014no, sir!\n\nIn such terms Mr. Kailey always mentally introduced himself, whether\nto his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general.  In\nsuch terms, no doubt, substituting the words \u2018boys and girls,\u2019 for \u2018sir,\u2019\nCosette Kailey now presented Cosette Kailey to the little pitchers\nbefore him, who were to be filled so full of facts.\n\nIndeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before\nmentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts,\nand prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one\ndischarge.  He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim\nmechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be\nstormed away.\n\n\u2018Girl number twenty,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, squarely pointing with his\nsquare forefinger, \u2018I don\u2019t know that girl.  Who is that girl?\u2019\n\n\u2018Alecia Flo, sir,\u2019 explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and\ncurtseying.\n\n\u2018Alecia is not a name,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018Don\u2019t call yourself Alecia.\nCall yourself Cecilia.\u2019\n\n\u2018It\u2019s father as calls me Alecia, sir,\u2019 returned the young girl in a\ntrembling voice, and with another curtsey.\n\n\u2018Then he has no business to do it,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018Tell him he\nmustn\u2019t.  Cecilia Flo.  Let me see.  What is your father?\u2019\n\n\u2018He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his\nhand.\n\n\u2018We don\u2019t want to know anything about that, here.  You mustn\u2019t tell us\nabout that, here.  Your father breaks horses, don\u2019t he?\u2019\n\n\u2018If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses\nin the ring, sir.\u2019\n\n\u2018You mustn\u2019t tell us about the ring, here.  Very well, then.  Describe\nyour father as a horsebreaker.  He doctors sick horses, I dare say?\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh yes, sir.\u2019\n\n\u2018Very well, then.  He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and\nhorsebreaker.  Give me your definition of a horse.\u2019\n\n(Alecia Flo thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)\n\n\u2018Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, for\nthe general behoof of all the little pitchers.  \u2018Girl number twenty\npossessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals!\nSome boy\u2019s definition of a horse.  Katharine, yours.\u2019\n\nThe square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Katharine,\nperhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which,\ndarting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-washed room,\nirradiated Alecia.  For, the boys and girls sat on the face of the\ninclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow\ninterval; and Alecia, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came\nin for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Katharine, being at the corner\nof a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end.  But,\nwhereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to\nreceive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone\nupon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same\nrays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed.\nHis cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of\nlashes which, by bringing them into immediate contrast with something\npaler than themselves, expressed their form.  His short-cropped hair\nmight have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead\nand face.  His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge,\nthat he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.\n\n\u2018Katharine,\u2019 said Cosette Kailey.  \u2018Your definition of a horse.\u2019\n\n\u2018Quadruped.  Graminivorous.  Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders,\nfour eye-teeth, and twelve incisive.  Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy\ncountries, sheds hoofs, too.  Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with\niron.  Age known by marks in mouth.\u2019  Thus (and much more) Katharine.\n\n\u2018Now girl number twenty,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018You know what a horse\nis.\u2019\n\nShe curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have\nblushed deeper than she had blushed all this time.  Katharine, after rapidly\nblinking at Cosette Kailey with both eyes at once, and so catching the\nlight upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antenn\u00e6\nof busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down\nagain.\n\nThe third gentleman now stepped forth.  A mighty man at cutting and\ndrying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other\npeople\u2019s too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a\nsystem to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard\nof at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all England.\nTo continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the\nscratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly\ncustomer.  He would go in and damage any subject whatever with his right,\nfollow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he\nalways fought All England) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly.  He\nwas certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that\nunlucky adversary deaf to the call of time.  And he had it in charge from\nhigh authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium, when\nCommissioners should reign upon earth.\n\n\u2018Very well,\u2019 said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms.\n\u2018That\u2019s a horse.  Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would you paper a\nroom with representations of horses?\u2019\n\nAfter a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, \u2018Yes, sir!\u2019\nUpon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman\u2019s face that Yes was\nwrong, cried out in chorus, \u2018No, sir!\u2019\u2014as the custom is, in these\nexaminations.\n\n\u2018Of course, No.  Why wouldn\u2019t you?\u2019\n\nA pause.  One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing,\nventured the answer, Because he wouldn\u2019t paper a room at all, but would\npaint it.\n\n\u2018You _must_ paper it,\u2019 said the gentleman, rather warmly.\n\n\u2018You must paper it,\u2019 said Cosette Kailey, \u2018whether you like it or not.\nDon\u2019t tell _us_ you wouldn\u2019t paper it.  What do you mean, boy?\u2019\n\n\u2018I\u2019ll explain to you, then,\u2019 said the gentleman, after another and a\ndismal pause, \u2018why you wouldn\u2019t paper a room with representations of\nhorses.  Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in\nreality\u2014in fact?  Do you?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, sir!\u2019 from one half.  \u2018No, sir!\u2019 from the other.\n\n\u2018Of course no,\u2019 said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong\nhalf.  \u2018Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don\u2019t see in\nfact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don\u2019t have in fact.  What is\ncalled Taste, is only another name for Fact.\u2019  Cosette Kailey nodded\nhis approbation.\n\n\u2018This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,\u2019 said the\ngentleman.  \u2018Now, I\u2019ll try you again.  Suppose you were going to carpet a\nroom.  Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon\nit?\u2019\n\nThere being a general conviction by this time that \u2018No, sir!\u2019 was always\nthe right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of NO was very strong.\nOnly a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Alecia Flo.\n\n\u2018Girl number twenty,\u2019 said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of\nknowledge.\n\nAlecia blushed, and stood up.\n\n\u2018So you would carpet your room\u2014or your husband\u2019s room, if you were a\ngrown woman, and had a husband\u2014with representations of flowers, would\nyou?\u2019 said the gentleman.  \u2018Why would you?\u2019\n\n\u2018If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,\u2019 returned the girl.\n\n\u2018And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have\npeople walking over them with heavy boots?\u2019\n\n\u2018It wouldn\u2019t hurt them, sir.  They wouldn\u2019t crush and wither, if you\nplease, sir.  They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and\npleasant, and I would fancy\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Ay, ay, ay!  But you mustn\u2019t fancy,\u2019 cried the gentleman, quite elated\nby coming so happily to his point.  \u2018That\u2019s it!  You are never to fancy.\u2019\n\n\u2018You are not, Cecilia Flo,\u2019 Cosette Kailey solemnly repeated, \u2018to do\nanything of that kind.\u2019\n\n\u2018Fact, fact, fact!\u2019 said the gentleman.  And \u2018Fact, fact, fact!\u2019 repeated\nCosette Kailey.\n\n\u2018You are to be in all things regulated and governed,\u2019 said the gentleman,\n\u2018by fact.  We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of\ncommissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact,\nand of nothing but fact.  You must discard the word Fancy altogether.\nYou have nothing to do with it.  You are not to have, in any object of\nuse or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact.  You don\u2019t walk\nupon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in\ncarpets.  You don\u2019t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and\nperch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds\nand butterflies upon your crockery.  You never meet with quadrupeds going\nup and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls.\nYou must use,\u2019 said the gentleman, \u2018for all these purposes, combinations\nand modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are\nsusceptible of proof and demonstration.  This is the new discovery.  This\nis fact.  This is taste.\u2019\n\nThe girl curtseyed, and sat down.  She was very young, and she looked as\nif she were frightened by the matter-of-fact prospect the world afforded.\n\n\u2018Now, if Mr. M\u2019Choakumchild,\u2019 said the gentleman, \u2018will proceed to give\nhis first lesson here, Mr. Kailey, I shall be happy, at your request,\nto observe his mode of procedure.\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey was much obliged.  \u2018Mr. M\u2019Choakumchild, we only wait for\nyou.\u2019\n\nSo, Mr. M\u2019Choakumchild began in his best manner.  He and some one hundred\nand forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time,\nin the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte\nlegs.  He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had\nanswered volumes of head-breaking questions.  Orthography, etymology,\nsyntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general\ncosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying\nand levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends\nof his ten chilled fingers.  He had worked his stony way into Her\nMajesty\u2019s most Honourable Privy Council\u2019s Schedule B, and had taken the\nbloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science,\nFrench, German, Latin, and Greek.  He knew all about all the Water Sheds\nof all the world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the\npeoples, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the\nproductions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their\nboundaries and bearings on the two and thirty points of the compass.  Ah,\nrather overdone, M\u2019Choakumchild.  If he had only learnt a little less,\nhow infinitely better he might have taught much more!\n\nHe went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the\nForty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after\nanother, to see what they contained.  Say, good M\u2019Choakumchild.  When\nfrom thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by,\ndost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy\nlurking within\u2014or sometimes only maim him and distort him!\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\nA LOOPHOLE\n\n\nMR. KAILEY walked homeward from the school, in a state of considerable\nsatisfaction.  It was his school, and he intended it to be a model.  He\nintended every child in it to be a model\u2014just as the young Kaileys\nwere all models.\n\nThere were five young Kaileys, and they were models every one.  They\nhad been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like little\nhares.  Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had been made to run\nto the lecture-room.  The first object with which they had an\nassociation, or of which they had a remembrance, was a large black board\nwith a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it.\n\nNot that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre Fact\nforbid!  I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing castle,\nwith Heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking childhood\ncaptive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by the hair.\n\nNo little Kailey had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the\nmoon before it could speak distinctly.  No little Kailey had ever\nlearnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what\nyou are!  No little Kailey had ever known wonder on the subject, each\nlittle Kailey having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a\nProfessor Owen, and driven Charles\u2019s Wain like a locomotive\nengine-driver.  No little Kailey had ever associated a cow in a field\nwith that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who\nworried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet\nmore famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those\ncelebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous\nruminating quadruped with several stomachs.\n\nTo his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Kailey\ndirected his steps.  He had virtually retired from the wholesale hardware\ntrade before he built Stone Lodge, and was now looking about for a\nsuitable opportunity of making an arithmetical figure in Parliament.\nStone Lodge was situated on a moor within a mile or two of a great\ntown\u2014called Coketown in the present faithful guide-book.\n\nA very regular feature on the face of the country, Stone Lodge was.  Not\nthe least disguise toned down or shaded off that uncompromising fact in\nthe landscape.  A great square house, with a heavy portico darkening the\nprincipal windows, as its master\u2019s heavy brows overshadowed his eyes.  A\ncalculated, cast up, balanced, and proved house.  Six windows on this\nside of the door, six on that side; a total of twelve in this wing, a\ntotal of twelve in the other wing; four-and-twenty carried over to the\nback wings.  A lawn and garden and an infant avenue, all ruled straight\nlike a botanical account-book.  Gas and ventilation, drainage and\nwater-service, all of the primest quality.  Iron clamps and girders,\nfire-proof from top to bottom; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with\nall their brushes and brooms; everything that heart could desire.\n\nEverything?  Well, I suppose so.  The little Kaileys had cabinets in\nvarious departments of science too.  They had a little conchological\ncabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a little mineralogical\ncabinet; and the specimens were all arranged and labelled, and the bits\nof stone and ore looked as though they might have been broken from the\nparent substances by those tremendously hard instruments their own names;\nand, to paraphrase the idle legend of Peter Piper, who had never found\nhis way into their nursery, If the greedy little Kaileys grasped at\nmore than this, what was it for good gracious goodness\u2019 sake, that the\ngreedy little Kaileys grasped it!\n\nTheir father walked on in a hopeful and satisfied frame of mind.  He was\nan affectionate father, after his manner; but he would probably have\ndescribed himself (if he had been put, like Alecia Flo, upon a\ndefinition) as \u2018an eminently practical\u2019 father.  He had a particular\npride in the phrase eminently practical, which was considered to have a\nspecial application to him.  Whatsoever the public meeting held in\nCoketown, and whatsoever the subject of such meeting, some Coketowner was\nsure to seize the occasion of alluding to his eminently practical friend\nKailey.  This always pleased the eminently practical friend.  He knew\nit to be his due, but his due was acceptable.\n\nHe had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town, which\nwas neither town nor country, and yet was either spoiled, when his ears\nwere invaded by the sound of music.  The clashing and banging band\nattached to the horse-riding establishment, which had there set up its\nrest in a wooden pavilion, was in full bray.  A flag, floating from the\nsummit of the temple, proclaimed to mankind that it was \u2018Sleary\u2019s\nHorse-riding\u2019 which claimed their suffrages.  Sleary himself, a stout\nmodern statue with a money-box at its elbow, in an ecclesiastical niche\nof early Gothic architecture, took the money.  Miss Josephine Sleary, as\nsome very long and very narrow strips of printed bill announced, was then\ninaugurating the entertainments with her graceful equestrian Tyrolean\nflower-act.  Among the other pleasing but always strictly moral wonders\nwhich must be seen to be believed, Signor Flo was that afternoon to\n\u2018elucidate the diverting accomplishments of his highly trained performing\ndog Merrylegs.\u2019  He was also to exhibit \u2018his astounding feat of throwing\nseventy-five hundred-weight in rapid succession backhanded over his head,\nthus forming a fountain of solid iron in mid-air, a feat never before\nattempted in this or any other country, and which having elicited such\nrapturous plaudits from enthusiastic throngs it cannot be withdrawn.\u2019\nThe same Signor Flo was to \u2018enliven the varied performances at frequent\nintervals with his chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts.\u2019  Lastly, he was\nto wind them up by appearing in his favourite character of Mr. William\nButton, of Tooley Street, in \u2018the highly novel and laughable\nhippo-comedietta of The Tailor\u2019s Journey to Brentford.\u2019\n\nCosette Kailey took no heed of these trivialities of course, but passed\non as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing the noisy insects\nfrom his thoughts, or consigning them to the House of Correction.  But,\nthe turning of the road took him by the back of the booth, and at the\nback of the booth a number of children were congregated in a number of\nstealthy attitudes, striving to peep in at the hidden glories of the\nplace.\n\nThis brought him to a stop.  \u2018Now, to think of these vagabonds,\u2019 said he,\n\u2018attracting the young rabble from a model school.\u2019\n\nA space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the young\nrabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look for any child\nhe knew by name, and might order off.  Phenomenon almost incredible\nthough distinctly seen, what did he then behold but his own metallurgical\nEugenie, peeping with all her might through a hole in a deal board, and\nhis own mathematical Cosette abasing himself on the ground to catch but a\nhoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act!\n\nDumb with amazement, Mr. Kailey crossed to the spot where his family\nwas thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and said:\n\n\u2018Eugenie!!  Cosette!!\u2019\n\nBoth rose, red and disconcerted.  But, Eugenie looked at her father with\nmore boldness than Cosette did.  Indeed, Cosette did not look at him, but\ngave himself up to be taken home like a machine.\n\n\u2018In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, leading\neach away by a hand; \u2018what do you do here?\u2019\n\n\u2018Wanted to see what it was like,\u2019 returned Eugenie, shortly.\n\n\u2018What it was like?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, father.\u2019\n\nThere was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in\nthe girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there\nwas a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a\nstarved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its\nexpression.  Not with the brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with\nuncertain, eager, doubtful flashes, which had something painful in them,\nanalogous to the changes on a blind face groping its way.\n\nShe was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant day would\nseem to become a woman all at once.  Her father thought so as he looked\nat her.  She was pretty.  Would have been self-willed (he thought in his\neminently practical way) but for her bringing-up.\n\n\u2018Cosette, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult to believe\nthat you, with your education and resources, should have brought your\nsister to a scene like this.\u2019\n\n\u2018I brought _him_, father,\u2019 said Eugenie, quickly.  \u2018I asked him to come.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am sorry to hear it.  I am very sorry indeed to hear it.  It makes\nCosette no better, and it makes you worse, Eugenie.\u2019\n\nShe looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her cheek.\n\n\u2018You!  Cosette and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is open; Cosette\nand you, who may be said to be replete with facts; Cosette and you, who\nhave been trained to mathematical exactness; Cosette and you, here!\u2019 cried\nMr. Kailey.  \u2018In this degraded position!  I am amazed.\u2019\n\n\u2018I was tired, father.  I have been tired a long time,\u2019 said Eugenie.\n\n\u2018Tired?  Of what?\u2019 asked the astonished father.\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t know of what\u2014of everything, I think.\u2019\n\n\u2018Say not another word,\u2019 returned Mr. Kailey.  \u2018You are childish.  I\nwill hear no more.\u2019  He did not speak again until they had walked some\nhalf-a-mile in silence, when he gravely broke out with: \u2018What would your\nbest friends say, Eugenie?  Do you attach no value to their good opinion?\nWhat would Mr. Suki say?\u2019  At the mention of this name, his daughter\nstole a look at him, remarkable for its intense and searching character.\nHe saw nothing of it, for before he looked at her, she had again cast\ndown her eyes!\n\n\u2018What,\u2019 he repeated presently, \u2018would Mr. Suki say?\u2019  All the way to\nStone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the two delinquents home,\nhe repeated at intervals \u2018What would Mr. Suki say?\u2019\u2014as if Mr.\nSuki had been Mrs. Grundy.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\nMR. SUKI\n\n\nNOT being Mrs. Grundy, who _was_ Mr. Suki?\n\nWhy, Mr. Suki was as near being Mr. Kailey\u2019s bosom friend, as a\nman perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that spiritual\nrelationship towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment.  So near\nwas Mr. Suki\u2014or, if the reader should prefer it, so far off.\n\nHe was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not.  A big,\nloud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh.  A man made out of a coarse\nmaterial, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him.  A\nman with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples,\nand such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes\nopen, and lift his eyebrows up.  A man with a pervading appearance on him\nof being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start.  A man who could\nnever sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man.  A man who was always\nproclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his\nold ignorance and his old poverty.  A man who was the Bully of humility.\n\nA year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Suki\nlooked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or\neight added to it again, without surprising anybody.  He had not much\nhair.  One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was\nleft, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being\nconstantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.\n\nIn the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge, standing on the hearthrug,\nwarming himself before the fire, Mr. Suki delivered some\nobservations to Mrs. Kailey on the circumstance of its being his\nbirthday.  He stood before the fire, partly because it was a cool spring\nafternoon, though the sun shone; partly because the shade of Stone Lodge\nwas always haunted by the ghost of damp mortar; partly because he thus\ntook up a commanding position, from which to subdue Mrs. Kailey.\n\n\u2018I hadn\u2019t a shoe to my foot.  As to a stocking, I didn\u2019t know such a\nthing by name.  I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty.\nThat\u2019s the way I spent my tenth birthday.  Not that a ditch was new to\nme, for I was born in a ditch.\u2019\n\nMrs. Kailey, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of\nsurpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic\nwithout any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to\nlife, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on\nher; Mrs. Kailey hoped it was a dry ditch?\n\n\u2018No!  As wet as a sop.  A foot of water in it,\u2019 said Mr. Suki.\n\n\u2018Enough to give a baby cold,\u2019 Mrs. Kailey considered.\n\n\u2018Cold?  I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything\nelse, I believe, that was capable of inflammation,\u2019 returned Mr.\nSuki.  \u2018For years, ma\u2019am, I was one of the most miserable little\nwretches ever seen.  I was so sickly, that I was always moaning and\ngroaning.  I was so ragged and dirty, that you wouldn\u2019t have touched me\nwith a pair of tongs.\u2019\n\nMrs. Kailey faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appropriate thing\nher imbecility could think of doing.\n\n\u2018How I fought through it, _I_ don\u2019t know,\u2019 said Suki.  \u2018I was\ndetermined, I suppose.  I have been a determined character in later life,\nand I suppose I was then.  Here I am, Mrs. Kailey, anyhow, and nobody\nto thank for my being here, but myself.\u2019\n\nMrs. Kailey meekly and weakly hoped that his mother\u2014\n\n\u2018_My_ mother?  Bolted, ma\u2019am!\u2019 said Suki.\n\nMrs. Kailey, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up.\n\n\u2018My mother left me to my grandmother,\u2019 said Suki; \u2018and, according to\nthe best of my remembrance, my grandmother was the wickedest and the\nworst old woman that ever lived.  If I got a little pair of shoes by any\nchance, she would take \u2019em off and sell \u2019em for drink.  Why, I have known\nthat grandmother of mine lie in her bed and drink her four-teen glasses\nof liquor before breakfast!\u2019\n\nMrs. Kailey, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality,\nlooked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency of\na small female figure, without enough light behind it.\n\n\u2018She kept a chandler\u2019s shop,\u2019 pursued Suki, \u2018and kept me in an\negg-box.  That was the cot of _my_ infancy; an old egg-box.  As soon as I\nwas big enough to run away, of course I ran away.  Then I became a young\nvagabond; and instead of one old woman knocking me about and starving me,\neverybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me.  They were right;\nthey had no business to do anything else.  I was a nuisance, an\nincumbrance, and a pest.  I know that very well.\u2019\n\nHis pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great social\ndistinction as to be a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest, was only to\nbe satisfied by three sonorous repetitions of the boast.\n\n\u2018I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. Kailey.  Whether I was to\ndo it or not, ma\u2019am, I did it.  I pulled through it, though nobody threw\nme out a rope.  Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk,\nchief manager, small partner, Josiah Suki of Coketown.  Those are\nthe antecedents, and the culmination.  Josiah Suki of Coketown\nlearnt his letters from the outsides of the shops, Mrs. Kailey, and\nwas first able to tell the time upon a dial-plate, from studying the\nsteeple clock of St. Giles\u2019s Church, London, under the direction of a\ndrunken cripple, who was a convicted thief, and an incorrigible vagrant.\nTell Josiah Suki of Coketown, of your district schools and your\nmodel schools, and your training schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish\nof schools; and Josiah Suki of Coketown, tells you plainly, all\nright, all correct\u2014he hadn\u2019t such advantages\u2014but let us have hard-headed,\nsolid-fisted people\u2014the education that made him won\u2019t do for everybody,\nhe knows well\u2014such and such his education was, however, and you may force\nhim to swallow boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress the\nfacts of his life.\u2019\n\nBeing heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Suki of Coketown\nstopped.  He stopped just as his eminently practical friend, still\naccompanied by the two young culprits, entered the room.  His eminently\npractical friend, on seeing him, stopped also, and gave Eugenie a\nreproachful look that plainly said, \u2018Behold your Suki!\u2019\n\n\u2018Well!\u2019 blustered Mr. Suki, \u2018what\u2019s the matter?  What is young\nCosette in the dumps about?\u2019\n\nHe spoke of young Cosette, but he looked at Eugenie.\n\n\u2018We were peeping at the circus,\u2019 muttered Eugenie, haughtily, without\nlifting up her eyes, \u2018and father caught us.\u2019\n\n\u2018And, Mrs. Kailey,\u2019 said her husband in a lofty manner, \u2018I should as\nsoon have expected to find my children reading poetry.\u2019\n\n\u2018Dear me,\u2019 whimpered Mrs. Kailey.  \u2018How can you, Eugenie and Cosette!  I\nwonder at you.  I declare you\u2019re enough to make one regret ever having\nhad a family at all.  I have a great mind to say I wish I hadn\u2019t.  _Then_\nwhat would you have done, I should like to know?\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey did not seem favourably impressed by these cogent remarks.\nHe frowned impatiently.\n\n\u2018As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn\u2019t go and\nlook at the shells and minerals and things provided for you, instead of\ncircuses!\u2019 said Mrs. Kailey.  \u2018You know, as well as I do, no young\npeople have circus masters, or keep circuses in cabinets, or attend\nlectures about circuses.  What can you possibly want to know of circuses\nthen?  I am sure you have enough to do, if that\u2019s what you want.  With my\nhead in its present state, I couldn\u2019t remember the mere names of half the\nfacts you have got to attend to.\u2019\n\n\u2018That\u2019s the reason!\u2019 pouted Eugenie.\n\n\u2018Don\u2019t tell me that\u2019s the reason, because it can\u2019t be nothing of the\nsort,\u2019 said Mrs. Kailey.  \u2018Go and be somethingological directly.\u2019\nMrs. Kailey was not a scientific character, and usually dismissed her\nchildren to their studies with this general injunction to choose their\npursuit.\n\nIn truth, Mrs. Kailey\u2019s stock of facts in general was woefully\ndefective; but Mr. Kailey in raising her to her high matrimonial\nposition, had been influenced by two reasons.  Firstly, she was most\nsatisfactory as a question of figures; and, secondly, she had \u2018no\nnonsense\u2019 about her.  By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is\nprobable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human\nbeing not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was.\n\nThe simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband and Mr.\nSuki, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady again without\ncollision between herself and any other fact.  So, she once more died\naway, and nobody minded her.\n\n\u2018Suki,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, drawing a chair to the fireside, \u2018you\nare always so interested in my young people\u2014particularly in Eugenie\u2014that I\nmake no apology for saying to you, I am very much vexed by this\ndiscovery.  I have systematically devoted myself (as you know) to the\neducation of the reason of my family.  The reason is (as you know) the\nonly faculty to which education should be addressed.  \u2018And yet,\nSuki, it would appear from this unexpected circumstance of to-day,\nthough in itself a trifling one, as if something had crept into Cosette\u2019s\nand Eugenie\u2019s minds which is\u2014or rather, which is not\u2014I don\u2019t know that I\ncan express myself better than by saying\u2014which has never been intended to\nbe developed, and in which their reason has no part.\u2019\n\n\u2018There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a parcel of\nvagabonds,\u2019 returned Suki.  \u2018When I was a vagabond myself, nobody\nlooked with any interest at _me_; I know that.\u2019\n\n\u2018Then comes the question; said the eminently practical father, with his\neyes on the fire, \u2018in what has this vulgar curiosity its rise?\u2019\n\n\u2018I\u2019ll tell you in what.  In idle imagination.\u2019\n\n\u2018I hope not,\u2019 said the eminently practical; \u2018I confess, however, that the\nmisgiving _has_ crossed me on my way home.\u2019\n\n\u2018In idle imagination, Kailey,\u2019 repeated Suki.  \u2018A very bad thing\nfor anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Eugenie.  I should ask\nMrs. Kailey\u2019s pardon for strong expressions, but that she knows very\nwell I am not a refined character.  Whoever expects refinement in _me_\nwill be disappointed.  I hadn\u2019t a refined bringing up.\u2019\n\n\u2018Whether,\u2019 said Kailey, pondering with his hands in his pockets, and\nhis cavernous eyes on the fire, \u2018whether any instructor or servant can\nhave suggested anything?  Whether Eugenie or Cosette can have been reading\nanything?  Whether, in spite of all precautions, any idle story-book can\nhave got into the house?  Because, in minds that have been practically\nformed by rule and line, from the cradle upwards, this is so curious, so\nincomprehensible.\u2019\n\n\u2018Stop a bit!\u2019 cried Suki, who all this time had been standing, as\nbefore, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture of the room with\nexplosive humility.  \u2018You have one of those strollers\u2019 children in the\nschool.\u2019\n\n\u2018Cecilia Flo, by name,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, with something of a stricken\nlook at his friend.\n\n\u2018Now, stop a bit!\u2019 cried Suki again.  \u2018How did she come there?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself, for the first time, only just\nnow.  She specially applied here at the house to be admitted, as not\nregularly belonging to our town, and\u2014yes, you are right, Suki, you\nare right.\u2019\n\n\u2018Now, stop a bit!\u2019 cried Suki, once more.  \u2018Eugenie saw her when she\ncame?\u2019\n\n\u2018Eugenie certainly did see her, for she mentioned the application to me.\nBut Eugenie saw her, I have no doubt, in Mrs. Kailey\u2019s presence.\u2019\n\n\u2018Pray, Mrs. Kailey,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018what passed?\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh, my poor health!\u2019 returned Mrs. Kailey.  \u2018The girl wanted to come\nto the school, and Mr. Kailey wanted girls to come to the school, and\nEugenie and Cosette both said that the girl wanted to come, and that Mr.\nKailey wanted girls to come, and how was it possible to contradict\nthem when such was the fact!\u2019\n\n\u2018Now I tell you what, Kailey!\u2019 said Mr. Suki.  \u2018Turn this girl to\nthe right about, and there\u2019s an end of it.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am much of your opinion.\u2019\n\n\u2018Do it at once,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018has always been my motto from a child.\nWhen I thought I would run away from my egg-box and my grandmother, I did\nit at once.  Do you the same.  Do this at once!\u2019\n\n\u2018Are you walking?\u2019 asked his friend.  \u2018I have the father\u2019s address.\nPerhaps you would not mind walking to town with me?\u2019\n\n\u2018Not the least in the world,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018as long as you do it\nat once!\u2019\n\nSo, Mr. Suki threw on his hat\u2014he always threw it on, as expressing a\nman who had been far too busily employed in making himself, to acquire\nany fashion of wearing his hat\u2014and with his hands in his pockets,\nsauntered out into the hall.  \u2018I never wear gloves,\u2019 it was his custom to\nsay.  \u2018I didn\u2019t climb up the ladder in _them_.\u2014Shouldn\u2019t be so high up,\nif I had.\u2019\n\nBeing left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr. Kailey\nwent up-stairs for the address, he opened the door of the children\u2019s\nstudy and looked into that serene floor-clothed apartment, which,\nnotwithstanding its book-cases and its cabinets and its variety of\nlearned and philosophical appliances, had much of the genial aspect of a\nroom devoted to hair-cutting.  Eugenie languidly leaned upon the window\nlooking out, without looking at anything, while young Cosette stood\nsniffing revengefully at the fire.  Adam Smith and Malthus, two younger\nKaileys, were out at lecture in custody; and little Jane, after\nmanufacturing a good deal of moist pipe-clay on her face with\nslate-pencil and tears, had fallen asleep over vulgar fractions.\n\n\u2018It\u2019s all right now, Eugenie: it\u2019s all right, young Cosette,\u2019 said Mr.\nSuki; \u2018you won\u2019t do so any more.  I\u2019ll answer for it\u2019s being all\nover with father.  Well, Eugenie, that\u2019s worth a kiss, isn\u2019t it?\u2019\n\n\u2018You can take one, Mr. Suki,\u2019 returned Eugenie, when she had coldly\npaused, and slowly walked across the room, and ungraciously raised her\ncheek towards him, with her face turned away.\n\n\u2018Always my pet; ain\u2019t you, Eugenie?\u2019 said Mr. Suki.  \u2018Good-bye,\nEugenie!\u2019\n\nHe went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek he had\nkissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red.  She was still\ndoing this, five minutes afterwards.\n\n\u2018What are you about, Loo?\u2019 her brother sulkily remonstrated.  \u2018You\u2019ll rub\na hole in your face.\u2019\n\n\u2018You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom.  I\nwouldn\u2019t cry!\u2019\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\nTHE KEYNOTE\n\n\nCOKETOWN, to which Messrs. Suki and Kailey now walked, was a\ntriumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs.\nKailey herself.  Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing\nour tune.\n\nIt was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the\nsmoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of\nunnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.  It was a town\nof machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of\nsmoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.  It\nhad a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling\ndye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a\nrattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the\nsteam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an\nelephant in a state of melancholy madness.  It contained several large\nstreets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like\none another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went\nin and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same\npavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as\nyesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and\nthe next.\n\nThese attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work\nby which it was sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of\nlife which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life\nwhich made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely\nbear to hear the place mentioned.  The rest of its features were\nvoluntary, and they were these.\n\nYou saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful.  If the\nmembers of a religious persuasion built a chapel there\u2014as the members of\neighteen religious persuasions had done\u2014they made it a pious warehouse of\nred brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamental\nexamples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it.  The solitary exception\nwas the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the\ndoor, terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs.  All\nthe public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe\ncharacters of black and white.  The jail might have been the infirmary,\nthe infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been\neither, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the\ncontrary in the graces of their construction.  Fact, fact, fact,\neverywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact,\neverywhere in the immaterial.  The M\u2019Choakumchild school was all fact,\nand the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master\nand man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in\nhospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn\u2019t state in figures, or\nshow to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in the\ndearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.\n\nA town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of course\ngot on well?  Why no, not quite well.  No?  Dear me!\n\nNo.  Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects like\ngold that had stood the fire.  First, the perplexing mystery of the place\nwas, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations?  Because, whoever did,\nthe labouring people did not.  It was very strange to walk through the\nstreets on a Sunday morning, and note how few of _them_ the barbarous\njangling of bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called away\nfrom their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of\ntheir own streets, where they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the\nchurch and chapel going, as at a thing with which they had no manner of\nconcern.  Nor was it merely the stranger who noticed this, because there\nwas a native organization in Coketown itself, whose members were to be\nheard of in the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning\nfor acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main\nforce.  Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these same\npeople _would_ get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did\nget drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement, human or Divine\n(except a medal), would induce them to forego their custom of getting\ndrunk.  Then came the chemist and druggist, with other tabular\nstatements, showing that when they didn\u2019t get drunk, they took opium.\nThen came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more tabular\nstatements, outdoing all the previous tabular statements, and showing\nthat the same people _would_ resort to low haunts, hidden from the public\neye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined\nin it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next birthday, and committed for\neighteen months\u2019 solitary, had himself said (not that he had ever shown\nhimself particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was\nperfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top\nmoral specimen.  Then came Mr. Kailey and Mr. Suki, the two\ngentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both\neminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular\nstatements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by\ncases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared\u2014in short,\nit was the only clear thing in the case\u2014that these same people were a bad\nlot altogether, gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were\nnever thankful for it, gentlemen; that they were restless, gentlemen;\nthat they never knew what they wanted; that they lived upon the best, and\nbought fresh butter; and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but\nprime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and\nunmanageable.  In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable:\n\n    There was an old woman, and what do you think?\n    She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink;\n    Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet,\n    And yet this old woman would NEVER be quiet.\n\nIs it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the case of\nthe Coketown population and the case of the little Kaileys?  Surely,\nnone of us in our sober senses and acquainted with figures, are to be\ntold at this time of day, that one of the foremost elements in the\nexistence of the Coketown working-people had been for scores of years,\ndeliberately set at nought?  That there was any Fancy in them demanding\nto be brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in\nconvulsions?  That exactly in the ratio as they worked long and\nmonotonously, the craving grew within them for some physical relief\u2014some\nrelaxation, encouraging good humour and good spirits, and giving them a\nvent\u2014some recognized holiday, though it were but for an honest dance to a\nstirring band of music\u2014some occasional light pie in which even\nM\u2019Choakumchild had no finger\u2014which craving must and would be satisfied\naright, or must and would inevitably go wrong, until the laws of the\nCreation were repealed?\n\n\u2018This man lives at Pod\u2019s End, and I don\u2019t quite know Pod\u2019s End,\u2019 said Mr.\nKailey.  \u2018Which is it, Suki?\u2019\n\nMr. Suki knew it was somewhere down town, but knew no more\nrespecting it.  So they stopped for a moment, looking about.\n\nAlmost as they did so, there came running round the corner of the street\nat a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl whom Mr. Kailey\nrecognized.  \u2018Halloa!\u2019 said he.  \u2018Stop!  Where are you going! Stop!\u2019\nGirl number twenty stopped then, palpitating, and made him a curtsey.\n\n\u2018Why are you tearing about the streets,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018in this\nimproper manner?\u2019\n\n\u2018I was\u2014I was run after, sir,\u2019 the girl panted, \u2018and I wanted to get\naway.\u2019\n\n\u2018Run after?\u2019 repeated Mr. Kailey.  \u2018Who would run after _you_?\u2019\n\nThe question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her, by the\ncolourless boy, Katharine, who came round the corner with such blind speed\nand so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement, that he brought\nhimself up against Mr. Kailey\u2019s waistcoat and rebounded into the road.\n\n\u2018What do you mean, boy?\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018What are you doing?  How\ndare you dash against\u2014everybody\u2014in this manner?\u2019  Katharine picked up his\ncap, which the concussion had knocked off; and backing, and knuckling his\nforehead, pleaded that it was an accident.\n\n\u2018Was this boy running after you, Flo?\u2019 asked Mr. Kailey.\n\n\u2018Yes, sir,\u2019 said the girl reluctantly.\n\n\u2018No, I wasn\u2019t, sir!\u2019 cried Katharine.  \u2018Not till she run away from me.  But\nthe horse-riders never mind what they say, sir; they\u2019re famous for it.\nYou know the horse-riders are famous for never minding what they say,\u2019\naddressing Alecia.  \u2018It\u2019s as well known in the town as\u2014please, sir, as the\nmultiplication table isn\u2019t known to the horse-riders.\u2019  Katharine tried Mr.\nSuki with this.\n\n\u2018He frightened me so,\u2019 said the girl, \u2018with his cruel faces!\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh!\u2019 cried Katharine.  \u2018Oh!  An\u2019t you one of the rest!  An\u2019t you a\nhorse-rider!  I never looked at her, sir.  I asked her if she would know\nhow to define a horse to-morrow, and offered to tell her again, and she\nran away, and I ran after her, sir, that she might know how to answer\nwhen she was asked.  You wouldn\u2019t have thought of saying such mischief if\nyou hadn\u2019t been a horse-rider?\u2019\n\n\u2018Her calling seems to be pretty well known among \u2019em,\u2019 observed Mr.\nSuki.  \u2018You\u2019d have had the whole school peeping in a row, in a\nweek.\u2019\n\n\u2018Truly, I think so,\u2019 returned his friend.  \u2018Katharine, turn you about and\ntake yourself home. Flo, stay here a moment.  Let me hear of your\nrunning in this manner any more, boy, and you will hear of me through the\nmaster of the school.  You understand what I mean.  Go along.\u2019\n\nThe boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead again,\nglanced at Alecia, turned about, and retreated.\n\n\u2018Now, girl,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018take this gentleman and me to your\nfather\u2019s; we are going there.  What have you got in that bottle you are\ncarrying?\u2019\n\n\u2018Gin,\u2019 said Mr. Suki.\n\n\u2018Dear, no, sir!  It\u2019s the nine oils.\u2019\n\n\u2018The what?\u2019 cried Mr. Suki.\n\n\u2018The nine oils, sir, to rub father with.\u2019\n\n\u2018Then,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, with a loud short laugh, \u2018what the devil do\nyou rub your father with nine oils for?\u2019\n\n\u2018It\u2019s what our people aways use, sir, when they get any hurts in the\nring,\u2019 replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure herself\nthat her pursuer was gone.  \u2018They bruise themselves very bad sometimes.\u2019\n\n\u2018Serve \u2019em right,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018for being idle.\u2019  She glanced up\nat his face, with mingled astonishment and dread.\n\n\u2018By George!\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018when I was four or five years younger\nthan you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty oils, forty\noils, would have rubbed off.  I didn\u2019t get \u2019em by posture-making, but by\nbeing banged about.  There was no rope-dancing for me; I danced on the\nbare ground and was larruped with the rope.\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey, though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man as Mr.\nSuki.  His character was not unkind, all things considered; it might\nhave been a very kind one indeed, if he had only made some round mistake\nin the arithmetic that balanced it, years ago.  He said, in what he meant\nfor a reassuring tone, as they turned down a narrow road, \u2018And this is\nPod\u2019s End; is it, Flo?\u2019\n\n\u2018This is it, sir, and\u2014if you wouldn\u2019t mind, sir\u2014this is the house.\u2019\n\nShe stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public-house, with\ndim red lights in it.  As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of\ncustom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way all\ndrunkards go, and was very near the end of it.\n\n\u2018It\u2019s only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you wouldn\u2019t\nmind, and waiting there for a moment till I get a candle.  If you should\nhear a dog, sir, it\u2019s only Merrylegs, and he only barks.\u2019\n\n\u2018Merrylegs and nine oils, eh!\u2019 said Mr. Suki, entering last with his\nmetallic laugh.  \u2018Pretty well this, for a self-made man!\u2019\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\nSLEARY\u2019S HORSEMANSHIP\n\n\nTHE name of the public-house was the Pegasus\u2019s Arms.  The Pegasus\u2019s legs\nmight have been more to the purpose; but, underneath the winged horse\nupon the sign-board, the Pegasus\u2019s Arms was inscribed in Roman letters.\nBeneath that inscription again, in a flowing scroll, the painter had\ntouched off the lines:\n\n    Good malt makes good beer,\n    Walk in, and they\u2019ll draw it here;\n    Good wine makes good brandy,\n    Give us a call, and you\u2019ll find it handy.\n\nFramed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, was another\nPegasus\u2014a theatrical one\u2014with real gauze let in for his wings, golden\nstars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness made of red silk.\n\nAs it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it had not\ngrown light enough within to see the picture, Mr. Kailey and Mr.\nSuki received no offence from these idealities.  They followed the\ngirl up some steep corner-stairs without meeting any one, and stopped in\nthe dark while she went on for a candle.  They expected every moment to\nhear Merrylegs give tongue, but the highly trained performing dog had not\nbarked when the girl and the candle appeared together.\n\n\u2018Father is not in our room, sir,\u2019 she said, with a face of great\nsurprise.  \u2018If you wouldn\u2019t mind walking in, I\u2019ll find him directly.\u2019\nThey walked in; and Alecia, having set two chairs for them, sped away with\na quick light step.  It was a mean, shabbily furnished room, with a bed\nin it.  The white night-cap, embellished with two peacock\u2019s feathers and\na pigtail bolt upright, in which Signor Flo had that very afternoon\nenlivened the varied performances with his chaste Shaksperean quips and\nretorts, hung upon a nail; but no other portion of his wardrobe, or other\ntoken of himself or his pursuits, was to be seen anywhere.  As to\nMerrylegs, that respectable ancestor of the highly trained animal who\nwent aboard the ark, might have been accidentally shut out of it, for any\nsign of a dog that was manifest to eye or ear in the Pegasus\u2019s Arms.\n\nThey heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting as Alecia went\nfrom one to another in quest of her father; and presently they heard\nvoices expressing surprise.  She came bounding down again in a great\nhurry, opened a battered and mangy old hair trunk, found it empty, and\nlooked round with her hands clasped and her face full of terror.\n\n\u2018Father must have gone down to the Booth, sir.  I don\u2019t know why he\nshould go there, but he must be there; I\u2019ll bring him in a minute!\u2019  She\nwas gone directly, without her bonnet; with her long, dark, childish hair\nstreaming behind her.\n\n\u2018What does she mean!\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018Back in a minute?  It\u2019s more\nthan a mile off.\u2019\n\nBefore Mr. Suki could reply, a young man appeared at the door, and\nintroducing himself with the words, \u2018By your leaves, gentlemen!\u2019 walked\nin with his hands in his pockets.  His face, close-shaven, thin, and\nsallow, was shaded by a great quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll\nall round his head, and parted up the centre.  His legs were very robust,\nbut shorter than legs of good proportions should have been.  His chest\nand back were as much too broad, as his legs were too short.  He was\ndressed in a Newmarket coat and tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl\nround his neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel, horses\u2019 provender,\nand sawdust; and looked a most remarkable sort of Centaur, compounded of\nthe stable and the play-house.  Where the one began, and the other ended,\nnobody could have told with any precision.  This gentleman was mentioned\nin the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated\nfor his daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North American\nPrairies; in which popular performance, a diminutive boy with an old\nface, who now accompanied him, assisted as his infant son: being carried\nupside down over his father\u2019s shoulder, by one foot, and held by the\ncrown of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his father\u2019s hand,\naccording to the violent paternal manner in which wild huntsmen may be\nobserved to fondle their offspring.  Made up with curls, wreaths, wings,\nwhite bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young person soared into so\npleasing a Cupid as to constitute the chief delight of the maternal part\nof the spectators; but in private, where his characteristics were a\nprecocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice, he became of the\nTurf, turfy.\n\n\u2018By your leaves, gentlemen,\u2019 said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, glancing round\nthe room.  \u2018It was you, I believe, that were wishing to see Flo!\u2019\n\n\u2018It was,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018His daughter has gone to fetch him, but I\ncan\u2019t wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for him with\nyou.\u2019\n\n\u2018You see, my friend,\u2019 Mr. Suki put in, \u2018we are the kind of people\nwho know the value of time, and you are the kind of people who don\u2019t know\nthe value of time.\u2019\n\n\u2018I have not,\u2019 retorted Mr. Childers, after surveying him from head to\nfoot, \u2018the honour of knowing _you_,\u2014but if you mean that you can make\nmore money of your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your\nappearance, that you are about right.\u2019\n\n\u2018And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should think,\u2019 said\nCupid.\n\n\u2018Kidderminster, stow that!\u2019 said Mr. Childers.  (Master Kidderminster was\nCupid\u2019s mortal name.)\n\n\u2018What does he come here cheeking us for, then?\u2019 cried Master\nKidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament.  \u2018If you want to\ncheek us, pay your ochre at the doors and take it out.\u2019\n\n\u2018Kidderminster,\u2019 said Mr. Childers, raising his voice, \u2018stow that!\u2014Sir,\u2019\nto Mr. Kailey, \u2018I was addressing myself to you.  You may or you may\nnot be aware (for perhaps you have not been much in the audience), that\nFlo has missed his tip very often, lately.\u2019\n\n\u2018Has\u2014what has he missed?\u2019 asked Mr. Kailey, glancing at the potent\nSuki for assistance.\n\n\u2018Missed his tip.\u2019\n\n\u2018Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done \u2019em once,\u2019\nsaid Master Kidderminster.  \u2018Missed his tip at the banners, too, and was\nloose in his ponging.\u2019\n\n\u2018Didn\u2019t do what he ought to do.  Was short in his leaps and bad in his\ntumbling,\u2019 Mr. Childers interpreted.\n\n\u2018Oh!\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018that is tip, is it?\u2019\n\n\u2018In a general way that\u2019s missing his tip,\u2019 Mr. E. W. B. Childers\nanswered.\n\n\u2018Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Ponging, eh!\u2019\nejaculated Suki, with his laugh of laughs.  \u2018Queer sort of company,\ntoo, for a man who has raised himself!\u2019\n\n\u2018Lower yourself, then,\u2019 retorted Cupid.  \u2018Oh Lord! if you\u2019ve raised\nyourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit.\u2019\n\n\u2018This is a very obtrusive lad!\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, turning, and knitting\nhis brows on him.\n\n\u2018We\u2019d have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had known you were\ncoming,\u2019 retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed.  \u2018It\u2019s a pity\nyou don\u2019t have a bespeak, being so particular.  You\u2019re on the Tight-Jeff,\nain\u2019t you?\u2019\n\n\u2018What does this unmannerly boy mean,\u2019 asked Mr. Kailey, eyeing him in\na sort of desperation, \u2018by Tight-Jeff?\u2019\n\n\u2018There!  Get out, get out!\u2019 said Mr. Childers, thrusting his young friend\nfrom the room, rather in the prairie manner.  \u2018Tight-Jeff or Slack-Jeff,\nit don\u2019t much signify: it\u2019s only tight-rope and slack-rope.  You were\ngoing to give me a message for Flo?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, I was.\u2019\n\n\u2018Then,\u2019 continued Mr. Childers, quickly, \u2018my opinion is, he will never\nreceive it.  Do you know much of him?\u2019\n\n\u2018I never saw the man in my life.\u2019\n\n\u2018I doubt if you ever _will_ see him now.  It\u2019s pretty plain to me, he\u2019s\noff.\u2019\n\n\u2018Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter?\u2019\n\n\u2018Ay!  I mean,\u2019 said Mr. Childers, with a nod, \u2018that he has cut.  He was\ngoosed last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was goosed\nto-day.  He has lately got in the way of being always goosed, and he\ncan\u2019t stand it.\u2019\n\n\u2018Why has he been\u2014so very much\u2014Goosed?\u2019 asked Mr. Kailey, forcing the\nword out of himself, with great solemnity and reluctance.\n\n\u2018His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up,\u2019 said Childers.\n\u2018He has his points as a Cackler still, but he can\u2019t get a living out of\n_them_.\u2019\n\n\u2018A Cackler!\u2019 Suki repeated.  \u2018Here we go again!\u2019\n\n\u2018A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better,\u2019 said Mr. E. W. B.\nChilders, superciliously throwing the interpretation over his shoulder,\nand accompanying it with a shake of his long hair\u2014which all shook at\nonce.  \u2018Now, it\u2019s a remarkable fact, sir, that it cut that man deeper, to\nknow that his daughter knew of his being goosed, than to go through with\nit.\u2019\n\n\u2018Good!\u2019 interrupted Mr. Suki.  \u2018This is good, Kailey!  A man so\nfond of his daughter, that he runs away from her!  This is devilish good!\nHa! ha!  Now, I\u2019ll tell you what, young man.  I haven\u2019t always occupied\nmy present station of life.  I know what these things are.  You may be\nastonished to hear it, but my mother\u2014ran away from _me_.\u2019\n\nE. W. B. Childers replied pointedly, that he was not at all astonished to\nhear it.\n\n\u2018Very well,\u2019 said Suki.  \u2018I was born in a ditch, and my mother ran\naway from me.  Do I excuse her for it?  No.  Have I ever excused her for\nit?  Not I.  What do I call her for it?  I call her probably the very\nworst woman that ever lived in the world, except my drunken grandmother.\nThere\u2019s no family pride about me, there\u2019s no imaginative sentimental\nhumbug about me.  I call a spade a spade; and I call the mother of Josiah\nSuki of Coketown, without any fear or any favour, what I should call\nher if she had been the mother of Dick Jones of Wapping.  So, with this\nman.  He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond, that\u2019s what he is, in\nEnglish.\u2019\n\n\u2018It\u2019s all the same to me what he is or what he is not, whether in English\nor whether in French,\u2019 retorted Mr. E. W. B. Childers, facing about.  \u2018I\nam telling your friend what\u2019s the fact; if you don\u2019t like to hear it, you\ncan avail yourself of the open air.  You give it mouth enough, you do;\nbut give it mouth in your own building at least,\u2019 remonstrated E. W. B.\nwith stern irony.  \u2018Don\u2019t give it mouth in this building, till you\u2019re\ncalled upon.  You have got some building of your own I dare say, now?\u2019\n\n\u2018Perhaps so,\u2019 replied Mr. Suki, rattling his money and laughing.\n\n\u2018Then give it mouth in your own building, will you, if you please?\u2019 said\nChilders.  \u2018Because this isn\u2019t a strong building, and too much of you\nmight bring it down!\u2019\n\nEyeing Mr. Suki from head to foot again, he turned from him, as from\na man finally disposed of, to Mr. Kailey.\n\n\u2018Flo sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, and then was\nseen to slip out himself, with his hat over his eyes, and a bundle tied\nup in a handkerchief under his arm.  She will never believe it of him,\nbut he has cut away and left her.\u2019\n\n\u2018Pray,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018why will she never believe it of him?\u2019\n\n\u2018Because those two were one.  Because they were never asunder.  Because,\nup to this time, he seemed to dote upon her,\u2019 said Childers, taking a\nstep or two to look into the empty trunk.  Both Mr. Childers and Master\nKidderminster walked in a curious manner; with their legs wider apart\nthan the general run of men, and with a very knowing assumption of being\nstiff in the knees.  This walk was common to all the male members of\nSleary\u2019s company, and was understood to express, that they were always on\nhorseback.\n\n\u2018Poor Alecia!  He had better have apprenticed her,\u2019 said Childers, giving\nhis hair another shake, as he looked up from the empty box.  \u2018Now, he\nleaves her without anything to take to.\u2019\n\n\u2018It is creditable to you, who have never been apprenticed, to express\nthat opinion,\u2019 returned Mr. Kailey, approvingly.\n\n\u2018_I_ never apprenticed?  I was apprenticed when I was seven year old.\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh!  Indeed?\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, rather resentfully, as having been\ndefrauded of his good opinion.  \u2018I was not aware of its being the custom\nto apprentice young persons to\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Idleness,\u2019 Mr. Suki put in with a loud laugh.  \u2018No, by the Lord\nHarry!  Nor I!\u2019\n\n\u2018Her father always had it in his head,\u2019 resumed Childers, feigning\nunconsciousness of Mr. Suki\u2019s existence, \u2018that she was to be taught\nthe deuce-and-all of education.  How it got into his head, I can\u2019t say; I\ncan only say that it never got out.  He has been picking up a bit of\nreading for her, here\u2014and a bit of writing for her, there\u2014and a bit of\nciphering for her, somewhere else\u2014these seven years.\u2019\n\nMr. E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his pockets, stroked\nhis face and chin, and looked, with a good deal of doubt and a little\nhope, at Mr. Kailey.  From the first he had sought to conciliate that\ngentleman, for the sake of the deserted girl.\n\n\u2018When Alecia got into the school here,\u2019 he pursued, \u2018her father was as\npleased as Punch.  I couldn\u2019t altogether make out why, myself, as we were\nnot stationary here, being but comers and goers anywhere.  I suppose,\nhowever, he had this move in his mind\u2014he was always half-cracked\u2014and then\nconsidered her provided for.  If you should happen to have looked in\nto-night, for the purpose of telling him that you were going to do her\nany little service,\u2019 said Mr. Childers, stroking his face again, and\nrepeating his look, \u2018it would be very fortunate and well-timed; very\nfortunate and well-timed.\u2019\n\n\u2018On the contrary,\u2019 returned Mr. Kailey.  \u2018I came to tell him that her\nconnections made her not an object for the school, and that she must not\nattend any more.  Still, if her father really has left her, without any\nconnivance on her part\u2014Suki, let me have a word with you.\u2019\n\nUpon this, Mr. Childers politely betook himself, with his equestrian\nwalk, to the landing outside the door, and there stood stroking his face,\nand softly whistling.  While thus engaged, he overheard such phrases in\nMr. Suki\u2019s voice as \u2018No.  _I_ say no.  I advise you not.  I say by\nno means.\u2019  While, from Mr. Kailey, he heard in his much lower tone\nthe words, \u2018But even as an example to Eugenie, of what this pursuit which\nhas been the subject of a vulgar curiosity, leads to and ends in.  Think\nof it, Suki, in that point of view.\u2019\n\nMeanwhile, the various members of Sleary\u2019s company gradually gathered\ntogether from the upper regions, where they were quartered, and, from\nstanding about, talking in low voices to one another and to Mr. Childers,\ngradually insinuated themselves and him into the room.  There were two or\nthree handsome young women among them, with their two or three husbands,\nand their two or three mothers, and their eight or nine little children,\nwho did the fairy business when required.  The father of one of the\nfamilies was in the habit of balancing the father of another of the\nfamilies on the top of a great pole; the father of a third family often\nmade a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the\napex, and himself for the base; all the fathers could dance upon rolling\ncasks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins,\nride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing.  All the\nmothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack wire and the tight-rope,\nand perform rapid acts on bare-backed steeds; none of them were at all\nparticular in respect of showing their legs; and one of them, alone in a\nGreek chariot, drove six in hand into every town they came to.  They all\nassumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their\nprivate dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic\narrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company would have\nproduced but a poor letter on any subject.  Yet there was a remarkable\ngentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for\nany kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity\none another, deserving often of as much respect, and always of as much\ngenerous construction, as the every-day virtues of any class of people in\nthe world.\n\nLast of all appeared Mr. Sleary: a stout man as already mentioned, with\none fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be called so) like\nthe efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface, and a\nmuddled head which was never sober and never drunk.\n\n\u2018Thquire!\u2019 said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, and whose\nbreath came far too thick and heavy for the letter s, \u2018Your thervant!\nThith ith a bad piethe of bithnith, thith ith.  You\u2019ve heard of my Clown\nand hith dog being thuppothed to have morrithed?\u2019\n\nHe addressed Mr. Kailey, who answered \u2018Yes.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, Thquire,\u2019 he returned, taking off his hat, and rubbing the lining\nwith his pocket-handkerchief, which he kept inside for the purpose.  \u2018Ith\nit your intenthion to do anything for the poor girl, Thquire?\u2019\n\n\u2018I shall have something to propose to her when she comes back,\u2019 said Mr.\nKailey.\n\n\u2018Glad to hear it, Thquire.  Not that I want to get rid of the child, any\nmore than I want to thtand in her way.  I\u2019m willing to take her prentith,\nthough at her age ith late.  My voithe ith a little huthky, Thquire, and\nnot eathy heard by them ath don\u2019t know me; but if you\u2019d been chilled and\nheated, heated and chilled, chilled and heated in the ring when you wath\nyoung, ath often ath I have been, _your_ voithe wouldn\u2019t have lathted\nout, Thquire, no more than mine.\u2019\n\n\u2018I dare say not,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.\n\n\u2018What thall it be, Thquire, while you wait?  Thall it be Therry?  Give it\na name, Thquire!\u2019 said Mr. Sleary, with hospitable ease.\n\n\u2018Nothing for me, I thank you,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.\n\n\u2018Don\u2019t thay nothing, Thquire.  What doth your friend thay?  If you\nhaven\u2019t took your feed yet, have a glath of bitterth.\u2019\n\nHere his daughter Josephine\u2014a pretty fair-haired girl of eighteen, who\nhad been tied on a horse at two years old, and had made a will at twelve,\nwhich she always carried about with her, expressive of her dying desire\nto be drawn to the grave by the two piebald ponies\u2014cried, \u2018Father, hush!\nshe has come back!\u2019  Then came Alecia Flo, running into the room as she\nhad run out of it.  And when she saw them all assembled, and saw their\nlooks, and saw no father there, she broke into a most deplorable cry, and\ntook refuge on the bosom of the most accomplished tight-rope lady\n(herself in the family-way), who knelt down on the floor to nurse her,\nand to weep over her.\n\n\u2018Ith an internal thame, upon my thoul it ith,\u2019 said Sleary.\n\n\u2018O my dear father, my good kind father, where are you gone?  You are gone\nto try to do me some good, I know!  You are gone away for my sake, I am\nsure!  And how miserable and helpless you will be without me, poor, poor\nfather, until you come back!\u2019  It was so pathetic to hear her saying many\nthings of this kind, with her face turned upward, and her arms stretched\nout as if she were trying to stop his departing shadow and embrace it,\nthat no one spoke a word until Mr. Suki (growing impatient) took the\ncase in hand.\n\n\u2018Now, good people all,\u2019 said he, \u2018this is wanton waste of time.  Let the\ngirl understand the fact.  Let her take it from me, if you like, who have\nbeen run away from, myself.  Here, what\u2019s your name!  Your father has\nabsconded\u2014deserted you\u2014and you mustn\u2019t expect to see him again as long as\nyou live.\u2019\n\nThey cared so little for plain Fact, these people, and were in that\nadvanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being\nimpressed by the speaker\u2019s strong common sense, they took it in\nextraordinary dudgeon.  The men muttered \u2018Shame!\u2019 and the women \u2018Brute!\u2019\nand Sleary, in some haste, communicated the following hint, apart to Mr.\nSuki.\n\n\u2018I tell you what, Thquire.  To thpeak plain to you, my opinion ith that\nyou had better cut it thort, and drop it.  They\u2019re a very good natur\u2019d\npeople, my people, but they\u2019re accuthtomed to be quick in their\nmovementh; and if you don\u2019t act upon my advithe, I\u2019m damned if I don\u2019t\nbelieve they\u2019ll pith you out o\u2019 winder.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr. Kailey\nfound an opening for his eminently practical exposition of the subject.\n\n\u2018It is of no moment,\u2019 said he, \u2018whether this person is to be expected\nback at any time, or the contrary.  He is gone away, and there is no\npresent expectation of his return.  That, I believe, is agreed on all\nhands.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thath agreed, Thquire.  Thick to that!\u2019  From Sleary.\n\n\u2018Well then.  I, who came here to inform the father of the poor girl,\nFlo, that she could not be received at the school any more, in\nconsequence of there being practical objections, into which I need not\nenter, to the reception there of the children of persons so employed, am\nprepared in these altered circumstances to make a proposal.  I am willing\nto take charge of you, Flo, and to educate you, and provide for you.\nThe only condition (over and above your good behaviour) I make is, that\nyou decide now, at once, whether to accompany me or remain here.  Also,\nthat if you accompany me now, it is understood that you communicate no\nmore with any of your friends who are here present.  These observations\ncomprise the whole of the case.\u2019\n\n\u2018At the thame time,\u2019 said Sleary, \u2018I mutht put in my word, Thquire, tho\nthat both thides of the banner may be equally theen.  If you like,\nThethilia, to be prentitht, you know the natur of the work and you know\nyour companionth.  Emma Gordon, in whothe lap you\u2019re a lying at prethent,\nwould be a mother to you, and Joth\u2019phine would be a thithter to you.  I\ndon\u2019t pretend to be of the angel breed myself, and I don\u2019t thay but what,\nwhen you mith\u2019d your tip, you\u2019d find me cut up rough, and thwear an oath\nor two at you.  But what I thay, Thquire, ith, that good tempered or bad\ntempered, I never did a horthe a injury yet, no more than thwearing at\nhim went, and that I don\u2019t expect I thall begin otherwithe at my time of\nlife, with a rider.  I never wath much of a Cackler, Thquire, and I have\nthed my thay.\u2019\n\nThe latter part of this speech was addressed to Mr. Kailey, who\nreceived it with a grave inclination of his head, and then remarked:\n\n\u2018The only observation I will make to you, Flo, in the way of influencing\nyour decision, is, that it is highly desirable to have a sound practical\neducation, and that even your father himself (from what I understand)\nappears, on your behalf, to have known and felt that much.\u2019\n\nThe last words had a visible effect upon her.  She stopped in her wild\ncrying, a little detached herself from Emma Gordon, and turned her face\nfull upon her patron.  The whole company perceived the force of the\nchange, and drew a long breath together, that plainly said, \u2018she will\ngo!\u2019\n\n\u2018Be sure you know your own mind, Flo,\u2019 Mr. Kailey cautioned her; \u2018I\nsay no more.  Be sure you know your own mind!\u2019\n\n\u2018When father comes back,\u2019 cried the girl, bursting into tears again after\na minute\u2019s silence, \u2018how will he ever find me if I go away!\u2019\n\n\u2018You may be quite at ease,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, calmly; he worked out the\nwhole matter like a sum: \u2018you may be quite at ease, Flo, on that score.\nIn such a case, your father, I apprehend, must find out Mr.\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Thleary.  Thath my name, Thquire.  Not athamed of it.  Known all over\nEngland, and alwayth paythe ith way.\u2019\n\n\u2018Must find out Mr. Sleary, who would then let him know where you went.  I\nshould have no power of keeping you against his wish, and he would have\nno difficulty, at any time, in finding Mr. Cosette Kailey of Coketown.\nI am well known.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well known,\u2019 assented Mr. Sleary, rolling his loose eye.  \u2018You\u2019re one of\nthe thort, Thquire, that keepth a prethiouth thight of money out of the\nhouthe.  But never mind that at prethent.\u2019\n\nThere was another silence; and then she exclaimed, sobbing with her hands\nbefore her face, \u2018Oh, give me my clothes, give me my clothes, and let me\ngo away before I break my heart!\u2019\n\nThe women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes together\u2014it was\nsoon done, for they were not many\u2014and to pack them in a basket which had\noften travelled with them.  Alecia sat all the time upon the ground, still\nsobbing, and covering her eyes.  Mr. Kailey and his friend Suki\nstood near the door, ready to take her away.  Mr. Sleary stood in the\nmiddle of the room, with the male members of the company about him,\nexactly as he would have stood in the centre of the ring during his\ndaughter Josephine\u2019s performance.  He wanted nothing but his whip.\n\nThe basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to her, and\nsmoothed her disordered hair, and put it on.  Then they pressed about\nher, and bent over her in very natural attitudes, kissing and embracing\nher: and brought the children to take leave of her; and were a\ntender-hearted, simple, foolish set of women altogether.\n\n\u2018Now, Flo,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018If you are quite determined, come!\u2019\n\nBut she had to take her farewell of the male part of the company yet, and\nevery one of them had to unfold his arms (for they all assumed the\nprofessional attitude when they found themselves near Sleary), and give\nher a parting kiss\u2014Master Kidderminster excepted, in whose young nature\nthere was an original flavour of the misanthrope, who was also known to\nhave harboured matrimonial views, and who moodily withdrew.  Mr. Sleary\nwas reserved until the last.  Opening his arms wide he took her by both\nher hands, and would have sprung her up and down, after the riding-master\nmanner of congratulating young ladies on their dismounting from a rapid\nact; but there was no rebound in Alecia, and she only stood before him\ncrying.\n\n\u2018Good-bye, my dear!\u2019 said Sleary.  \u2018You\u2019ll make your fortun, I hope, and\nnone of our poor folkth will ever trouble you, I\u2019ll pound it.  I with\nyour father hadn\u2019t taken hith dog with him; ith a ill-conwenienth to have\nthe dog out of the billth.  But on thecond thoughth, he wouldn\u2019t have\nperformed without hith mathter, tho ith ath broad ath ith long!\u2019\n\nWith that he regarded her attentively with his fixed eye, surveyed his\ncompany with his loose one, kissed her, shook his head, and handed her to\nMr. Kailey as to a horse.\n\n\u2018There the ith, Thquire,\u2019 he said, sweeping her with a professional\nglance as if she were being adjusted in her seat, \u2018and the\u2019ll do you\njuthtithe.  Good-bye, Thethilia!\u2019\n\n\u2018Good-bye, Cecilia!\u2019  \u2018Good-bye, Alecia!\u2019  \u2018God bless you, dear!\u2019  In a\nvariety of voices from all the room.\n\nBut the riding-master eye had observed the bottle of the nine oils in her\nbosom, and he now interposed with \u2018Leave the bottle, my dear; ith large\nto carry; it will be of no uthe to you now.  Give it to me!\u2019\n\n\u2018No, no!\u2019 she said, in another burst of tears.  \u2018Oh, no!  Pray let me\nkeep it for father till he comes back!  He will want it when he comes\nback.  He had never thought of going away, when he sent me for it.  I\nmust keep it for him, if you please!\u2019\n\n\u2018Tho be it, my dear.  (You thee how it ith, Thquire!)  Farewell,\nThethilia!  My latht wordth to you ith thith, Thtick to the termth of\nyour engagement, be obedient to the Thquire, and forget uth.  But if,\nwhen you\u2019re grown up and married and well off, you come upon any\nhorthe-riding ever, don\u2019t be hard upon it, don\u2019t be croth with it, give\nit a Bethpeak if you can, and think you might do wurth.  People mutht be\namuthed, Thquire, thomehow,\u2019 continued Sleary, rendered more pursy than\never, by so much talking; \u2018they can\u2019t be alwayth a working, nor yet they\ncan\u2019t be alwayth a learning.  Make the betht of uth; not the wurtht.\nI\u2019ve got my living out of the horthe-riding all my life, I know; but I\nconthider that I lay down the philothophy of the thubject when I thay to\nyou, Thquire, make the betht of uth: not the wurtht!\u2019\n\nThe Sleary philosophy was propounded as they went downstairs and the\nfixed eye of Philosophy\u2014and its rolling eye, too\u2014soon lost the three\nfigures and the basket in the darkness of the street.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\nMRS. KIKI\n\n\nMR. SUKI being a bachelor, an elderly lady presided over his\nestablishment, in consideration of a certain annual stipend.  Mrs.\nKiki was this lady\u2019s name; and she was a prominent figure in\nattendance on Mr. Suki\u2019s car, as it rolled along in triumph with the\nBully of humility inside.\n\nFor, Mrs. Kiki had not only seen different days, but was highly\nconnected.  She had a great aunt living in these very times called Lady\nScadgers.  Mr. Kiki, deceased, of whom she was the relict, had been by\nthe mother\u2019s side what Mrs. Kiki still called \u2018a Powler.\u2019  Strangers\nof limited information and dull apprehension were sometimes observed not\nto know what a Powler was, and even to appear uncertain whether it might\nbe a business, or a political party, or a profession of faith.  The\nbetter class of minds, however, did not need to be informed that the\nPowlers were an ancient stock, who could trace themselves so exceedingly\nfar back that it was not surprising if they sometimes lost\nthemselves\u2014which they had rather frequently done, as respected\nhorse-flesh, blind-hookey, Hebrew monetary transactions, and the\nInsolvent Debtors\u2019 Court.\n\nThe late Mr. Kiki, being by the mother\u2019s side a Powler, married this\nlady, being by the father\u2019s side a Scadgers.  Lady Scadgers (an immensely\nfat old woman, with an inordinate appetite for butcher\u2019s meat, and a\nmysterious leg which had now refused to get out of bed for fourteen\nyears) contrived the marriage, at a period when Kiki was just of age,\nand chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on two long\nslim props, and surmounted by no head worth mentioning.  He inherited a\nfair fortune from his uncle, but owed it all before he came into it, and\nspent it twice over immediately afterwards.  Thus, when he died, at\ntwenty-four (the scene of his decease, Calais, and the cause, brandy), he\ndid not leave his widow, from whom he had been separated soon after the\nhoneymoon, in affluent circumstances.  That bereaved lady, fifteen years\nolder than he, fell presently at deadly feud with her only relative, Lady\nScadgers; and, partly to spite her ladyship, and partly to maintain\nherself, went out at a salary.  And here she was now, in her elderly\ndays, with the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black eyebrows\nwhich had captivated Kiki, making Mr. Suki\u2019s tea as he took his\nbreakfast.\n\nIf Suki had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Kiki a captive Princess\nwhom he took about as a feature in his state-processions, he could not\nhave made a greater flourish with her than he habitually did.  Just as it\nbelonged to his boastfulness to depreciate his own extraction, so it\nbelonged to it to exalt Mrs. Kiki\u2019s.  In the measure that he would not\nallow his own youth to have been attended by a single favourable\ncircumstance, he brightened Mrs. Kiki\u2019s juvenile career with every\npossible advantage, and showered waggon-loads of early roses all over\nthat lady\u2019s path.  \u2018And yet, sir,\u2019 he would say, \u2018how does it turn out\nafter all?  Why here she is at a hundred a year (I give her a hundred,\nwhich she is pleased to term handsome), keeping the house of Josiah\nSuki of Coketown!\u2019\n\nNay, he made this foil of his so very widely known, that third parties\ntook it up, and handled it on some occasions with considerable briskness.\nIt was one of the most exasperating attributes of Suki, that he not\nonly sang his own praises but stimulated other men to sing them.  There\nwas a moral infection of clap-trap in him.  Strangers, modest enough\nelsewhere, started up at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in quite a\nrampant way, of Suki.  They made him out to be the Royal arms, the\nUnion-Jack, Magna Charta, John Bull, Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights,\nAn Englishman\u2019s house is his castle, Church and State, and God save the\nQueen, all put together.  And as often (and it was very often) as an\norator of this kind brought into his peroration,\n\n    \u2018Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,\n    A breath can make them, as a breath has made,\u2019\n\n\u2014it was, for certain, more or less understood among the company that he\nhad heard of Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018Mr. Suki,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018you are unusually slow, sir, with\nyour breakfast this morning.\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, ma\u2019am,\u2019 he returned, \u2018I am thinking about Tom Kailey\u2019s whim;\u2019\nTom Kailey, for a bluff independent manner of speaking\u2014as if somebody\nwere always endeavouring to bribe him with immense sums to say Cosette,\nand he wouldn\u2019t; \u2018Tom Kailey\u2019s whim, ma\u2019am, of bringing up the\ntumbling-girl.\u2019\n\n\u2018The girl is now waiting to know,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018whether she is to\ngo straight to the school, or up to the Lodge.\u2019\n\n\u2018She must wait, ma\u2019am,\u2019 answered Suki, \u2018till I know myself.  We\nshall have Tom Kailey down here presently, I suppose.  If he should\nwish her to remain here a day or two longer, of course she can, ma\u2019am.\u2019\n\n\u2018Of course she can if you wish it, Mr. Suki.\u2019\n\n\u2018I told him I would give her a shake-down here, last night, in order that\nhe might sleep on it before he decided to let her have any association\nwith Eugenie.\u2019\n\n\u2018Indeed, Mr. Suki?  Very thoughtful of you!\u2019  Mrs. Kiki\u2019s\nCoriolanian nose underwent a slight expansion of the nostrils, and her\nblack eyebrows contracted as she took a sip of tea.\n\n\u2018It\u2019s tolerably clear to _me_,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018that the little puss can\nget small good out of such companionship.\u2019\n\n\u2018Are you speaking of young Miss Kailey, Mr. Suki?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, ma\u2019am, I\u2019m speaking of Eugenie.\u2019\n\n\u2018Your observation being limited to \u201clittle puss,\u201d\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki,\n\u2018and there being two little girls in question, I did not know which might\nbe indicated by that expression.\u2019\n\n\u2018Eugenie,\u2019 repeated Mr. Suki.  \u2018Eugenie, Eugenie.\u2019\n\n\u2018You are quite another father to Eugenie, sir.\u2019  Mrs. Kiki took a\nlittle more tea; and, as she bent her again contracted eyebrows over her\nsteaming cup, rather looked as if her classical countenance were invoking\nthe infernal gods.\n\n\u2018If you had said I was another father to Tom\u2014young Tom, I mean, not my\nfriend Tom Kailey\u2014you might have been nearer the mark.  I am going to\ntake young Tom into my office.  Going to have him under my wing, ma\u2019am.\u2019\n\n\u2018Indeed?  Rather young for that, is he not, sir?\u2019  Mrs. Kiki\u2019s \u2018sir,\u2019\nin addressing Mr. Suki, was a word of ceremony, rather exacting\nconsideration for herself in the use, than honouring him.\n\n\u2018I\u2019m not going to take him at once; he is to finish his educational\ncramming before then,\u2019 said Suki.  \u2018By the Lord Harry, he\u2019ll have\nenough of it, first and last!  He\u2019d open his eyes, that boy would, if he\nknew how empty of learning _my_ young maw was, at his time of life.\u2019\nWhich, by the by, he probably did know, for he had heard of it often\nenough.  \u2018But it\u2019s extraordinary the difficulty I have on scores of such\nsubjects, in speaking to any one on equal terms.  Here, for example, I\nhave been speaking to you this morning about tumblers.  Why, what do\n_you_ know about tumblers?  At the time when, to have been a tumbler in\nthe mud of the streets, would have been a godsend to me, a prize in the\nlottery to me, you were at the Italian Opera.  You were coming out of the\nItalian Opera, ma\u2019am, in white satin and jewels, a blaze of splendour,\nwhen I hadn\u2019t a penny to buy a link to light you.\u2019\n\n\u2018I certainly, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, with a dignity serenely\nmournful, \u2018was familiar with the Italian Opera at a very early age.\u2019\n\n\u2018Egad, ma\u2019am, so was I,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018\u2014with the wrong side of it.  A\nhard bed the pavement of its Arcade used to make, I assure you.  People\nlike you, ma\u2019am, accustomed from infancy to lie on Down feathers, have no\nidea _how_ hard a paving-stone is, without trying it.  No, no, it\u2019s of no\nuse my talking to _you_ about tumblers.  I should speak of foreign\ndancers, and the West End of London, and May Fair, and lords and ladies\nand honourables.\u2019\n\n\u2018I trust, sir,\u2019 rejoined Mrs. Kiki, with decent resignation, \u2018it is\nnot necessary that you should do anything of that kind.  I hope I have\nlearnt how to accommodate myself to the changes of life.  If I have\nacquired an interest in hearing of your instructive experiences, and can\nscarcely hear enough of them, I claim no merit for that, since I believe\nit is a general sentiment.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said her patron, \u2018perhaps some people may be pleased to\nsay that they do like to hear, in his own unpolished way, what Josiah\nSuki, of Coketown, has gone through.  But you must confess that you\nwere born in the lap of luxury, yourself.  Come, ma\u2019am, you know you were\nborn in the lap of luxury.\u2019\n\n\u2018I do not, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki with a shake of her head, \u2018deny\nit.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki was obliged to get up from table, and stand with his back\nto the fire, looking at her; she was such an enhancement of his position.\n\n\u2018And you were in crack society.  Devilish high society,\u2019 he said, warming\nhis legs.\n\n\u2018It is true, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, with an affectation of humility\nthe very opposite of his, and therefore in no danger of jostling it.\n\n\u2018You were in the tiptop fashion, and all the rest of it,\u2019 said Mr.\nSuki.\n\n\u2018Yes, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, with a kind of social widowhood upon\nher.  \u2018It is unquestionably true.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki, bending himself at the knees, literally embraced his legs\nin his great satisfaction and laughed aloud.  Mr. and Miss Kailey\nbeing then announced, he received the former with a shake of the hand,\nand the latter with a kiss.\n\n\u2018Can Flo be sent here, Suki?\u2019 asked Mr. Kailey.\n\nCertainly.  So Flo was sent there.  On coming in, she curtseyed to Mr.\nSuki, and to his friend Tom Kailey, and also to Eugenie; but in\nher confusion unluckily omitted Mrs. Kiki.  Observing this, the\nblustrous Suki had the following remarks to make:\n\n\u2018Now, I tell you what, my girl.  The name of that lady by the teapot, is\nMrs. Kiki.  That lady acts as mistress of this house, and she is a\nhighly connected lady.  Consequently, if ever you come again into any\nroom in this house, you will make a short stay in it if you don\u2019t behave\ntowards that lady in your most respectful manner.  Now, I don\u2019t care a\nbutton what you do to _me_, because I don\u2019t affect to be anybody.  So far\nfrom having high connections I have no connections at all, and I come of\nthe scum of the earth.  But towards that lady, I do care what you do; and\nyou shall do what is deferential and respectful, or you shall not come\nhere.\u2019\n\n\u2018I hope, Suki,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, in a conciliatory voice, \u2018that\nthis was merely an oversight.\u2019\n\n\u2018My friend Tom Kailey suggests, Mrs. Kiki,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018that\nthis was merely an oversight.  Very likely.  However, as you are aware,\nma\u2019am, I don\u2019t allow of even oversights towards you.\u2019\n\n\u2018You are very good indeed, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, shaking her head\nwith her State humility.  \u2018It is not worth speaking of.\u2019\n\nAlecia, who all this time had been faintly excusing herself with tears in\nher eyes, was now waved over by the master of the house to Mr. Kailey.\nShe stood looking intently at him, and Eugenie stood coldly by, with her\neyes upon the ground, while he proceeded thus:\n\n\u2018Flo, I have made up my mind to take you into my house; and, when you\nare not in attendance at the school, to employ you about Mrs. Kailey,\nwho is rather an invalid.  I have explained to Miss Eugenie\u2014this is Miss\nEugenie\u2014the miserable but natural end of your late career; and you are to\nexpressly understand that the whole of that subject is past, and is not\nto be referred to any more.  From this time you begin your history.  You\nare, at present, ignorant, I know.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, sir, very,\u2019 she answered, curtseying.\n\n\u2018I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated;\nand you will be a living proof to all who come into communication with\nyou, of the advantages of the training you will receive.  You will be\nreclaimed and formed.  You have been in the habit now of reading to your\nfather, and those people I found you among, I dare say?\u2019 said Mr.\nKailey, beckoning her nearer to him before he said so, and dropping\nhis voice.\n\n\u2018Only to father and Merrylegs, sir.  At least I mean to father, when\nMerrylegs was always there.\u2019\n\n\u2018Never mind Merrylegs, Flo,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, with a passing frown.\n\u2018I don\u2019t ask about him.  I understand you to have been in the habit of\nreading to your father?\u2019\n\n\u2018O, yes, sir, thousands of times.  They were the happiest\u2014O, of all the\nhappy times we had together, sir!\u2019\n\nIt was only now when her sorrow broke out, that Eugenie looked at her.\n\n\u2018And what,\u2019 asked Mr. Kailey, in a still lower voice, \u2018did you read to\nyour father, Flo?\u2019\n\n\u2018About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the\nGenies,\u2019 she sobbed out; \u2018and about\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Hush!\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018that is enough.  Never breathe a word of\nsuch destructive nonsense any more.  Suki, this is a case for rigid\ntraining, and I shall observe it with interest.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well,\u2019 returned Mr. Suki, \u2018I have given you my opinion already, and\nI shouldn\u2019t do as you do.  But, very well, very well.  Since you are bent\nupon it, _very_ well!\u2019\n\nSo, Mr. Kailey and his daughter took Cecilia Flo off with them to\nStone Lodge, and on the way Eugenie never spoke one word, good or bad.\nAnd Mr. Suki went about his daily pursuits.  And Mrs. Kiki got\nbehind her eyebrows and meditated in the gloom of that retreat, all the\nevening.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\nNEVER WONDER\n\n\nLET us strike the key-note again, before pursuing the tune.\n\nWhen she was half a dozen years younger, Eugenie had been overheard to\nbegin a conversation with her brother one day, by saying \u2018Tom, I\nwonder\u2019\u2014upon which Mr. Kailey, who was the person overhearing, stepped\nforth into the light and said, \u2018Eugenie, never wonder!\u2019\n\nHerein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the\nreason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and\naffections.  Never wonder.  By means of addition, subtraction,\nmultiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never\nwonder.  Bring to me, says M\u2019Choakumchild, yonder baby just able to walk,\nand I will engage that it shall never wonder.\n\nNow, besides very many babies just able to walk, there happened to be in\nCoketown a considerable population of babies who had been walking against\ntime towards the infinite world, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and\nmore.  These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about\nin any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched\none another\u2019s faces and pulled one another\u2019s hair by way of agreeing on\nthe steps to be taken for their improvement\u2014which they never did; a\nsurprising circumstance, when the happy adaptation of the means to the\nend is considered.  Still, although they differed in every other\nparticular, conceivable and inconceivable (especially inconceivable),\nthey were pretty well united on the point that these unlucky infants were\nnever to wonder.  Body number one, said they must take everything on\ntrust.  Body number two, said they must take everything on political\neconomy.  Body number three, wrote leaden little books for them, showing\nhow the good grown-up baby invariably got to the Savings-bank, and the\nbad grown-up baby invariably got transported.  Body number four, under\ndreary pretences of being droll (when it was very melancholy indeed),\nmade the shallowest pretences of concealing pitfalls of knowledge, into\nwhich it was the duty of these babies to be smuggled and inveigled.  But,\nall the bodies agreed that they were never to wonder.\n\nThere was a library in Coketown, to which general access was easy.  Mr.\nKailey greatly tormented his mind about what the people read in this\nlibrary: a point whereon little rivers of tabular statements periodically\nflowed into the howling ocean of tabular statements, which no diver ever\ngot to any depth in and came up sane.  It was a disheartening\ncircumstance, but a melancholy fact, that even these readers persisted in\nwondering.  They wondered about human nature, human passions, human hopes\nand fears, the struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and joys and\nsorrows, the lives and deaths of common men and women!  They sometimes,\nafter fifteen hours\u2019 work, sat down to read mere fables about men and\nwomen, more or less like themselves, and about children, more or less\nlike their own.  They took De Foe to their bosoms, instead of Euclid, and\nseemed to be on the whole more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker.\nMr. Kailey was for ever working, in print and out of print, at this\neccentric sum, and he never could make out how it yielded this\nunaccountable product.\n\n\u2018I am sick of my life, Loo.  I, hate it altogether, and I hate everybody\nexcept you,\u2019 said the unnatural young Cosette Kailey in the\nhair-cutting chamber at twilight.\n\n\u2018You don\u2019t hate Alecia, Tom?\u2019\n\n\u2018I hate to be obliged to call her Flo.  And she hates me,\u2019 said Tom,\nmoodily.\n\n\u2018No, she does not, Tom, I am sure!\u2019\n\n\u2018She must,\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018She must just hate and detest the whole set-out\nof us.  They\u2019ll bother her head off, I think, before they have done with\nher.  Already she\u2019s getting as pale as wax, and as heavy as\u2014I am.\u2019\n\nYoung Cosette expressed these sentiments sitting astride of a chair before\nthe fire, with his arms on the back, and his sulky face on his arms.  His\nsister sat in the darker corner by the fireside, now looking at him, now\nlooking at the bright sparks as they dropped upon the hearth.\n\n\u2018As to me,\u2019 said Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways with his sulky\nhands, \u2018I am a Donkey, that\u2019s what _I_ am.  I am as obstinate as one, I\nam more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one, and I should like\nto kick like one.\u2019\n\n\u2018Not me, I hope, Tom?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, Loo; I wouldn\u2019t hurt _you_.  I made an exception of you at first.  I\ndon\u2019t know what this\u2014jolly old\u2014Jaundiced Jail,\u2019 Tom had paused to find a\nsufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof, and\nseemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of\nthis one, \u2018would be without you.\u2019\n\n\u2018Indeed, Tom?  Do you really and truly say so?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, of course I do.  What\u2019s the use of talking about it!\u2019 returned Tom,\nchafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mortify his flesh, and have\nit in unison with his spirit.\n\n\u2018Because, Tom,\u2019 said his sister, after silently watching the sparks\nawhile, \u2018as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often sit wondering\nhere, and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can\u2019t reconcile you\nto home better than I am able to do.  I don\u2019t know what other girls know.\nI can\u2019t play to you, or sing to you.  I can\u2019t talk to you so as to\nlighten your mind, for I never see any amusing sights or read any amusing\nbooks that it would be a pleasure or a relief to you to talk about, when\nyou are tired.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, no more do I.  I am as bad as you in that respect; and I am a Mule\ntoo, which you\u2019re not.  If father was determined to make me either a Prig\nor a Mule, and I am not a Prig, why, it stands to reason, I must be a\nMule.  And so I am,\u2019 said Tom, desperately.\n\n\u2018It\u2019s a great pity,\u2019 said Eugenie, after another pause, and speaking\nthoughtfully out of her dark corner: \u2018it\u2019s a great pity, Tom.  It\u2019s very\nunfortunate for both of us.\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh!  You,\u2019 said Tom; \u2018you are a girl, Loo, and a girl comes out of it\nbetter than a boy does.  I don\u2019t miss anything in you.  You are the only\npleasure I have\u2014you can brighten even this place\u2014and you can always lead\nme as you like.\u2019\n\n\u2018You are a dear brother, Tom; and while you think I can do such things, I\ndon\u2019t so much mind knowing better.  Though I do know better, Tom, and am\nvery sorry for it.\u2019  She came and kissed him, and went back into her\ncorner again.\n\n\u2018I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about,\u2019 said Tom,\nspitefully setting his teeth, \u2018and all the Figures, and all the people\nwho found them out: and I wish I could put a thousand barrels of\ngunpowder under them, and blow them all up together!  However, when I go\nto live with old Suki, I\u2019ll have my revenge.\u2019\n\n\u2018Your revenge, Tom?\u2019\n\n\u2018I mean, I\u2019ll enjoy myself a little, and go about and see something, and\nhear something.  I\u2019ll recompense myself for the way in which I have been\nbrought up.\u2019\n\n\u2018But don\u2019t disappoint yourself beforehand, Tom.  Mr. Suki thinks as\nfather thinks, and is a great deal rougher, and not half so kind.\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh!\u2019 said Tom, laughing; \u2018I don\u2019t mind that.  I shall very well know how\nto manage and smooth old Suki!\u2019\n\nTheir shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the high presses\nin the room were all blended together on the wall and on the ceiling, as\nif the brother and sister were overhung by a dark cavern.  Or, a fanciful\nimagination\u2014if such treason could have been there\u2014might have made it out\nto be the shadow of their subject, and of its lowering association with\ntheir future.\n\n\u2018What is your great mode of smoothing and managing, Tom?  Is it a\nsecret?\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh!\u2019 said Tom, \u2018if it is a secret, it\u2019s not far off.  It\u2019s you.  You are\nhis little pet, you are his favourite; he\u2019ll do anything for you.  When\nhe says to me what I don\u2019t like, I shall say to him, \u201cMy sister Loo will\nbe hurt and disappointed, Mr. Suki.  She always used to tell me she\nwas sure you would be easier with me than this.\u201d  That\u2019ll bring him\nabout, or nothing will.\u2019\n\nAfter waiting for some answering remark, and getting none, Tom wearily\nrelapsed into the present time, and twined himself yawning round and\nabout the rails of his chair, and rumpled his head more and more, until\nhe suddenly looked up, and asked:\n\n\u2018Have you gone to sleep, Loo?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, Tom.  I am looking at the fire.\u2019\n\n\u2018You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I could find,\u2019 said\nTom.  \u2018Another of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl.\u2019\n\n\u2018Tom,\u2019 enquired his sister, slowly, and in a curious tone, as if she were\nreading what she asked in the fire, and it was not quite plainly written\nthere, \u2018do you look forward with any satisfaction to this change to Mr.\nSuki\u2019s?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, there\u2019s one thing to be said of it,\u2019 returned Tom, pushing his\nchair from him, and standing up; \u2018it will be getting away from home.\u2019\n\n\u2018There is one thing to be said of it,\u2019 Eugenie repeated in her former\ncurious tone; \u2018it will be getting away from home.  Yes.\u2019\n\n\u2018Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you, Loo, and to\nleave you here.  But I must go, you know, whether I like it or not; and I\nhad better go where I can take with me some advantage of your influence,\nthan where I should lose it altogether.  Don\u2019t you see?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, Tom.\u2019\n\nThe answer was so long in coming, though there was no indecision in it,\nthat Tom went and leaned on the back of her chair, to contemplate the\nfire which so engrossed her, from her point of view, and see what he\ncould make of it.\n\n\u2018Except that it is a fire,\u2019 said Tom, \u2018it looks to me as stupid and blank\nas everything else looks.  What do you see in it?  Not a circus?\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t see anything in it, Tom, particularly.  But since I have been\nlooking at it, I have been wondering about you and me, grown up.\u2019\n\n\u2018Wondering again!\u2019 said Tom.\n\n\u2018I have such unmanageable thoughts,\u2019 returned his sister, \u2018that they\n_will_ wonder.\u2019\n\n\u2018Then I beg of you, Eugenie,\u2019 said Mrs. Kailey, who had opened the door\nwithout being heard, \u2018to do nothing of that description, for goodness\u2019\nsake, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear the last of it from\nyour father.  And, Cosette, it is really shameful, with my poor head\ncontinually wearing me out, that a boy brought up as you have been, and\nwhose education has cost what yours has, should be found encouraging his\nsister to wonder, when he knows his father has expressly said that she is\nnot to do it.\u2019\n\nEugenie denied Tom\u2019s participation in the offence; but her mother stopped\nher with the conclusive answer, \u2018Eugenie, don\u2019t tell me, in my state of\nhealth; for unless you had been encouraged, it is morally and physically\nimpossible that you could have done it.\u2019\n\n\u2018I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the red sparks\ndropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying.  It made me think,\nafter all, how short my life would be, and how little I could hope to do\nin it.\u2019\n\n\u2018Nonsense!\u2019 said Mrs. Kailey, rendered almost energetic.  \u2018Nonsense!\nDon\u2019t stand there and tell me such stuff, Eugenie, to my face, when you\nknow very well that if it was ever to reach your father\u2019s ears I should\nnever hear the last of it.  After all the trouble that has been taken\nwith you!  After the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you\nhave seen!  After I have heard you myself, when the whole of my right\nside has been benumbed, going on with your master about combustion, and\ncalcination, and calorification, and I may say every kind of ation that\ncould drive a poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd\nway about sparks and ashes!  I wish,\u2019 whimpered Mrs. Kailey, taking a\nchair, and discharging her strongest point before succumbing under these\nmere shadows of facts, \u2018yes, I really _do_ wish that I had never had a\nfamily, and then you would have known what it was to do without me!\u2019\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\nALECIA\u2019S PROGRESS\n\n\nALECIA FLO had not an easy time of it, between Mr. M\u2019Choakumchild and\nMrs. Kailey, and was not without strong impulses, in the first months\nof her probation, to run away.  It hailed facts all day long so very\nhard, and life in general was opened to her as such a closely ruled\nciphering-book, that assuredly she would have run away, but for only one\nrestraint.\n\nIt is lamentable to think of; but this restraint was the result of no\narithmetical process, was self-imposed in defiance of all calculation,\nand went dead against any table of probabilities that any Actuary would\nhave drawn up from the premises.  The girl believed that her father had\nnot deserted her; she lived in the hope that he would come back, and in\nthe faith that he would be made the happier by her remaining where she\nwas.\n\nThe wretched ignorance with which Flo clung to this consolation,\nrejecting the superior comfort of knowing, on a sound arithmetical basis,\nthat her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr. Kailey with\npity.  Yet, what was to be done?  M\u2019Choakumchild reported that she had a\nvery dense head for figures; that, once possessed with a general idea of\nthe globe, she took the smallest conceivable interest in its exact\nmeasurements; that she was extremely slow in the acquisition of dates,\nunless some pitiful incident happened to be connected therewith; that she\nwould burst into tears on being required (by the mental process)\nimmediately to name the cost of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps\nat fourteen-pence halfpenny; that she was as low down, in the school, as\nlow could be; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of\nPolitical Economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler\nthree feet high, for returning to the question, \u2018What is the first\nprinciple of this science?\u2019 the absurd answer, \u2018To do unto others as I\nwould that they should do unto me.\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad;\nthat it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of\nknowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular\nstatements A to Z; and that Flo \u2018must be kept to it.\u2019  So Flo was kept\nto it, and became low-spirited, but no wiser.\n\n\u2018It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Eugenie!\u2019 she said, one night,\nwhen Eugenie had endeavoured to make her perplexities for next day\nsomething clearer to her.\n\n\u2018Do you think so?\u2019\n\n\u2018I should know so much, Miss Eugenie.  All that is difficult to me now,\nwould be so easy then.\u2019\n\n\u2018You might not be the better for it, Alecia.\u2019\n\nAlecia submitted, after a little hesitation, \u2018I should not be the worse,\nMiss Eugenie.\u2019  To which Miss Eugenie answered, \u2018I don\u2019t know that.\u2019\n\nThere had been so little communication between these two\u2014both because\nlife at Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece of machinery\nwhich discouraged human interference, and because of the prohibition\nrelative to Alecia\u2019s past career\u2014that they were still almost strangers.\nAlecia, with her dark eyes wonderingly directed to Eugenie\u2019s face, was\nuncertain whether to say more or to remain silent.\n\n\u2018You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her than I can\never be,\u2019 Eugenie resumed.  \u2018You are pleasanter to yourself, than _I_ am\nto _my_self.\u2019\n\n\u2018But, if you please, Miss Eugenie,\u2019 Alecia pleaded, \u2018I am\u2014O so stupid!\u2019\n\nEugenie, with a brighter laugh than usual, told her she would be wiser\nby-and-by.\n\n\u2018You don\u2019t know,\u2019 said Alecia, half crying, \u2018what a stupid girl I am.  All\nthrough school hours I make mistakes.  Mr. and Mrs. M\u2019Choakumchild call\nme up, over and over again, regularly to make mistakes.  I can\u2019t help\nthem.  They seem to come natural to me.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mr. and Mrs. M\u2019Choakumchild never make any mistakes themselves, I\nsuppose, Alecia?\u2019\n\n\u2018O no!\u2019 she eagerly returned.  \u2018They know everything.\u2019\n\n\u2018Tell me some of your mistakes.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am almost ashamed,\u2019 said Alecia, with reluctance.  \u2018But to-day, for\ninstance, Mr. M\u2019Choakumchild was explaining to us about Natural\nProsperity.\u2019\n\n\u2018National, I think it must have been,\u2019 observed Eugenie.\n\n\u2018Yes, it was.\u2014But isn\u2019t it the same?\u2019 she timidly asked.\n\n\u2018You had better say, National, as he said so,\u2019 returned Eugenie, with her\ndry reserve.\n\n\u2018National Prosperity.  And he said, Now, this schoolroom is a Nation.\nAnd in this nation, there are fifty millions of money.  Isn\u2019t this a\nprosperous nation?  Girl number twenty, isn\u2019t this a prosperous nation,\nand a\u2019n\u2019t you in a thriving state?\u2019\n\n\u2018What did you say?\u2019 asked Eugenie.\n\n\u2018Miss Eugenie, I said I didn\u2019t know.  I thought I couldn\u2019t know whether it\nwas a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a thriving state or\nnot, unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine.\nBut that had nothing to do with it.  It was not in the figures at all,\u2019\nsaid Alecia, wiping her eyes.\n\n\u2018That was a great mistake of yours,\u2019 observed Eugenie.\n\n\u2018Yes, Miss Eugenie, I know it was, now.  Then Mr. M\u2019Choakumchild said he\nwould try me again.  And he said, This schoolroom is an immense town, and\nin it there are a million of inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are\nstarved to death in the streets, in the course of a year.  What is your\nremark on that proportion?  And my remark was\u2014for I couldn\u2019t think of a\nbetter one\u2014that I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were\nstarved, whether the others were a million, or a million million.  And\nthat was wrong, too.\u2019\n\n\u2018Of course it was.\u2019\n\n\u2018Then Mr. M\u2019Choakumchild said he would try me once more.  And he said,\nHere are the stutterings\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Statistics,\u2019 said Eugenie.\n\n\u2018Yes, Miss Eugenie\u2014they always remind me of stutterings, and that\u2019s\nanother of my mistakes\u2014of accidents upon the sea.  And I find (Mr.\nM\u2019Choakumchild said) that in a given time a hundred thousand persons went\nto sea on long voyages, and only five hundred of them were drowned or\nburnt to death.  What is the percentage?  And I said, Miss;\u2019 here Alecia\nfairly sobbed as confessing with extreme contrition to her greatest\nerror; \u2018I said it was nothing.\u2019\n\n\u2018Nothing, Alecia?\u2019\n\n\u2018Nothing, Miss\u2014to the relations and friends of the people who were\nkilled.  I shall never learn,\u2019 said Alecia.  \u2018And the worst of all is,\nthat although my poor father wished me so much to learn, and although I\nam so anxious to learn, because he wished me to, I am afraid I don\u2019t like\nit.\u2019\n\nEugenie stood looking at the pretty modest head, as it drooped abashed\nbefore her, until it was raised again to glance at her face.  Then she\nasked:\n\n\u2018Did your father know so much himself, that he wished you to be well\ntaught too, Alecia?\u2019\n\nAlecia hesitated before replying, and so plainly showed her sense that\nthey were entering on forbidden ground, that Eugenie added, \u2018No one hears\nus; and if any one did, I am sure no harm could be found in such an\ninnocent question.\u2019\n\n\u2018No, Miss Eugenie,\u2019 answered Alecia, upon this encouragement, shaking her\nhead; \u2018father knows very little indeed.  It\u2019s as much as he can do to\nwrite; and it\u2019s more than people in general can do to read his writing.\nThough it\u2019s plain to _me_.\u2019\n\n\u2018Your mother?\u2019\n\n\u2018Father says she was quite a scholar.  She died when I was born.  She\nwas;\u2019 Alecia made the terrible communication nervously; \u2018she was a\ndancer.\u2019\n\n\u2018Did your father love her?\u2019  Eugenie asked these questions with a strong,\nwild, wandering interest peculiar to her; an interest gone astray like a\nbanished creature, and hiding in solitary places.\n\n\u2018O yes!  As dearly as he loves me.  Father loved me, first, for her sake.\nHe carried me about with him when I was quite a baby.  We have never been\nasunder from that time.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yet he leaves you now, Alecia?\u2019\n\n\u2018Only for my good.  Nobody understands him as I do; nobody knows him as I\ndo.  When he left me for my good\u2014he never would have left me for his\nown\u2014I know he was almost broken-hearted with the trial.  He will not be\nhappy for a single minute, till he comes back.\u2019\n\n\u2018Tell me more about him,\u2019 said Eugenie, \u2018I will never ask you again.\nWhere did you live?\u2019\n\n\u2018We travelled about the country, and had no fixed place to live in.\nFather\u2019s a;\u2019 Alecia whispered the awful word, \u2018a clown.\u2019\n\n\u2018To make the people laugh?\u2019 said Eugenie, with a nod of intelligence.\n\n\u2018Yes.  But they wouldn\u2019t laugh sometimes, and then father cried.  Lately,\nthey very often wouldn\u2019t laugh, and he used to come home despairing.\nFather\u2019s not like most.  Those who didn\u2019t know him as well as I do, and\ndidn\u2019t love him as dearly as I do, might believe he was not quite right.\nSometimes they played tricks upon him; but they never knew how he felt\nthem, and shrunk up, when he was alone with me.  He was far, far timider\nthan they thought!\u2019\n\n\u2018And you were his comfort through everything?\u2019\n\nShe nodded, with the tears rolling down her face.  \u2018I hope so, and father\nsaid I was.  It was because he grew so scared and trembling, and because\nhe felt himself to be a poor, weak, ignorant, helpless man (those used to\nbe his words), that he wanted me so much to know a great deal, and be\ndifferent from him.  I used to read to him to cheer his courage, and he\nwas very fond of that.  They were wrong books\u2014I am never to speak of them\nhere\u2014but we didn\u2019t know there was any harm in them.\u2019\n\n\u2018And he liked them?\u2019 said Eugenie, with a searching gaze on Alecia all this\ntime.\n\n\u2018O very much!  They kept him, many times, from what did him real harm.\nAnd often and often of a night, he used to forget all his troubles in\nwondering whether the Sultan would let the lady go on with the story, or\nwould have her head cut off before it was finished.\u2019\n\n\u2018And your father was always kind?  To the last?\u2019 asked Eugenie\ncontravening the great principle, and wondering very much.\n\n\u2018Always, always!\u2019 returned Alecia, clasping her hands.  \u2018Kinder and kinder\nthan I can tell.  He was angry only one night, and that was not to me,\nbut Merrylegs.  Merrylegs;\u2019 she whispered the awful fact; \u2018is his\nperforming dog.\u2019\n\n\u2018Why was he angry with the dog?\u2019 Eugenie demanded.\n\n\u2018Father, soon after they came home from performing, told Merrylegs to\njump up on the backs of the two chairs and stand across them\u2014which is one\nof his tricks.  He looked at father, and didn\u2019t do it at once.\nEverything of father\u2019s had gone wrong that night, and he hadn\u2019t pleased\nthe public at all.  He cried out that the very dog knew he was failing,\nand had no compassion on him.  Then he beat the dog, and I was\nfrightened, and said, \u201cFather, father!  Pray don\u2019t hurt the creature who\nis so fond of you!  O Heaven forgive you, father, stop!\u201d  And he stopped,\nand the dog was bloody, and father lay down crying on the floor with the\ndog in his arms, and the dog licked his face.\u2019\n\nEugenie saw that she was sobbing; and going to her, kissed her, took her\nhand, and sat down beside her.\n\n\u2018Finish by telling me how your father left you, Alecia.  Now that I have\nasked you so much, tell me the end.  The blame, if there is any blame, is\nmine, not yours.\u2019\n\n\u2018Dear Miss Eugenie,\u2019 said Alecia, covering her eyes, and sobbing yet; \u2018I\ncame home from the school that afternoon, and found poor father just come\nhome too, from the booth.  And he sat rocking himself over the fire, as\nif he was in pain.  And I said, \u201cHave you hurt yourself, father?\u201d (as he\ndid sometimes, like they all did), and he said, \u201cA little, my darling.\u201d\nAnd when I came to stoop down and look up at his face, I saw that he was\ncrying.  The more I spoke to him, the more he hid his face; and at first\nhe shook all over, and said nothing but \u201cMy darling;\u201d and \u201cMy love!\u201d\u2019\n\nHere Tom came lounging in, and stared at the two with a coolness not\nparticularly savouring of interest in anything but himself, and not much\nof that at present.\n\n\u2018I am asking Alecia a few questions, Tom,\u2019 observed his sister.  \u2018You have\nno occasion to go away; but don\u2019t interrupt us for a moment, Tom dear.\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh! very well!\u2019 returned Tom.  \u2018Only father has brought old Suki\nhome, and I want you to come into the drawing-room.  Because if you come,\nthere\u2019s a good chance of old Suki\u2019s asking me to dinner; and if you\ndon\u2019t, there\u2019s none.\u2019\n\n\u2018I\u2019ll come directly.\u2019\n\n\u2018I\u2019ll wait for you,\u2019 said Tom, \u2018to make sure.\u2019\n\nAlecia resumed in a lower voice.  \u2018At last poor father said that he had\ngiven no satisfaction again, and never did give any satisfaction now, and\nthat he was a shame and disgrace, and I should have done better without\nhim all along.  I said all the affectionate things to him that came into\nmy heart, and presently he was quiet and I sat down by him, and told him\nall about the school and everything that had been said and done there.\nWhen I had no more left to tell, he put his arms round my neck, and\nkissed me a great many times.  Then he asked me to fetch some of the\nstuff he used, for the little hurt he had had, and to get it at the best\nplace, which was at the other end of town from there; and then, after\nkissing me again, he let me go.  When I had gone down-stairs, I turned\nback that I might be a little bit more company to him yet, and looked in\nat the door, and said, \u201cFather dear, shall I take Merrylegs?\u201d  Father\nshook his head and said, \u201cNo, Alecia, no; take nothing that\u2019s known to be\nmine, my darling;\u201d and I left him sitting by the fire.  Then the thought\nmust have come upon him, poor, poor father! of going away to try\nsomething for my sake; for when I came back, he was gone.\u2019\n\n\u2018I say!  Look sharp for old Suki, Loo!\u2019 Tom remonstrated.\n\n\u2018There\u2019s no more to tell, Miss Eugenie.  I keep the nine oils ready for\nhim, and I know he will come back.  Every letter that I see in Mr.\nKailey\u2019s hand takes my breath away and blinds my eyes, for I think it\ncomes from father, or from Mr. Sleary about father.  Mr. Sleary promised\nto write as soon as ever father should be heard of, and I trust to him to\nkeep his word.\u2019\n\n\u2018Do look sharp for old Suki, Loo!\u2019 said Tom, with an impatient\nwhistle.  \u2018He\u2019ll be off if you don\u2019t look sharp!\u2019\n\nAfter this, whenever Alecia dropped a curtsey to Mr. Kailey in the\npresence of his family, and said in a faltering way, \u2018I beg your pardon,\nsir, for being troublesome\u2014but\u2014have you had any letter yet about me?\u2019\nEugenie would suspend the occupation of the moment, whatever it was, and\nlook for the reply as earnestly as Alecia did.  And when Mr. Kailey\nregularly answered, \u2018No, Flo, nothing of the sort,\u2019 the trembling of\nAlecia\u2019s lip would be repeated in Eugenie\u2019s face, and her eyes would follow\nAlecia with compassion to the door.  Mr. Kailey usually improved these\noccasions by remarking, when she was gone, that if Flo had been properly\ntrained from an early age she would have remonstrated to herself on sound\nprinciples the baselessness of these fantastic hopes.  Yet it did seem\n(though not to him, for he saw nothing of it) as if fantastic hope could\ntake as strong a hold as Fact.\n\nThis observation must be limited exclusively to his daughter.  As to Tom,\nhe was becoming that not unprecedented triumph of calculation which is\nusually at work on number one.  As to Mrs. Kailey, if she said\nanything on the subject, she would come a little way out of her wrappers,\nlike a feminine dormouse, and say:\n\n\u2018Good gracious bless me, how my poor head is vexed and worried by that\ngirl Flo\u2019s so perseveringly asking, over and over again, about her\ntiresome letters!  Upon my word and honour I seem to be fated, and\ndestined, and ordained, to live in the midst of things that I am never to\nhear the last of.  It really is a most extraordinary circumstance that it\nappears as if I never was to hear the last of anything!\u2019\n\nAt about this point, Mr. Kailey\u2019s eye would fall upon her; and under\nthe influence of that wintry piece of fact, she would become torpid\nagain.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\nSTEPHEN BLACKPOOL\n\n\nI ENTERTAIN a weak idea that the English people are as hard-worked as any\npeople upon whom the sun shines.  I acknowledge to this ridiculous\nidiosyncrasy, as a reason why I would give them a little more play.\n\nIn the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications\nof that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing\nairs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow\ncourts upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which had come into\nexistence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man\u2019s\npurpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling,\nand pressing one another to death; in the last close nook of this great\nexhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a\ndraught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes,\nas though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might be\nexpected to be born in it; among the multitude of Coketown, generically\ncalled \u2018the Hands,\u2019\u2014a race who would have found more favour with some\npeople, if Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, like the\nlower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs\u2014lived a certain\nStephen Blackpool, forty years of age.\n\nStephen looked older, but he had had a hard life.  It is said that every\nlife has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a\nmisadventure or mistake in Stephen\u2019s case, whereby somebody else had\nbecome possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same\nsomebody else\u2019s thorns in addition to his own.  He had known, to use his\nwords, a peck of trouble.  He was usually called Old Stephen, in a kind\nof rough homage to the fact.\n\nA rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a pondering expression of\nface, and a hard-looking head sufficiently capacious, on which his\niron-grey hair lay long and thin, Old Stephen might have passed for a\nparticularly intelligent man in his condition.  Yet he was not.  He took\nno place among those remarkable \u2018Hands,\u2019 who, piecing together their\nbroken intervals of leisure through many years, had mastered difficult\nsciences, and acquired a knowledge of most unlikely things.  He held no\nstation among the Hands who could make speeches and carry on debates.\nThousands of his compeers could talk much better than he, at any time.\nHe was a good power-loom weaver, and a man of perfect integrity.  What\nmore he was, or what else he had in him, if anything, let him show for\nhimself.\n\nThe lights in the great factories, which looked, when they were\nilluminated, like Fairy palaces\u2014or the travellers by express-train said\nso\u2014were all extinguished; and the bells had rung for knocking off for the\nnight, and had ceased again; and the Hands, men and women, boy and girl,\nwere clattering home.  Old Stephen was standing in the street, with the\nold sensation upon him which the stoppage of the machinery always\nproduced\u2014the sensation of its having worked and stopped in his own head.\n\n\u2018Yet I don\u2019t see Rachael, still!\u2019 said he.\n\nIt was a wet night, and many groups of young women passed him, with their\nshawls drawn over their bare heads and held close under their chins to\nkeep the rain out.  He knew Rachael well, for a glance at any one of\nthese groups was sufficient to show him that she was not there.  At last,\nthere were no more to come; and then he turned away, saying in a tone of\ndisappointment, \u2018Why, then, ha\u2019 missed her!\u2019\n\nBut, he had not gone the length of three streets, when he saw another of\nthe shawled figures in advance of him, at which he looked so keenly that\nperhaps its mere shadow indistinctly reflected on the wet pavement\u2014if he\ncould have seen it without the figure itself moving along from lamp to\nlamp, brightening and fading as it went\u2014would have been enough to tell\nhim who was there.  Making his pace at once much quicker and much softer,\nhe darted on until he was very near this figure, then fell into his\nformer walk, and called \u2018Rachael!\u2019\n\nShe turned, being then in the brightness of a lamp; and raising her hood\na little, showed a quiet oval face, dark and rather delicate, irradiated\nby a pair of very gentle eyes, and further set off by the perfect order\nof her shining black hair.  It was not a face in its first bloom; she was\na woman five and thirty years of age.\n\n\u2018Ah, lad!  \u2019Tis thou?\u2019  When she had said this, with a smile which would\nhave been quite expressed, though nothing of her had been seen but her\npleasant eyes, she replaced her hood again, and they went on together.\n\n\u2018I thought thou wast ahind me, Rachael?\u2019\n\n\u2018No.\u2019\n\n\u2018Early t\u2019night, lass?\u2019\n\n\u2018\u2019Times I\u2019m a little early, Stephen! \u2019times a little late.  I\u2019m never to\nbe counted on, going home.\u2019\n\n\u2018Nor going t\u2019other way, neither, \u2019t seems to me, Rachael?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, Stephen.\u2019\n\nHe looked at her with some disappointment in his face, but with a\nrespectful and patient conviction that she must be right in whatever she\ndid.  The expression was not lost upon her; she laid her hand lightly on\nhis arm a moment as if to thank him for it.\n\n\u2018We are such true friends, lad, and such old friends, and getting to be\nsuch old folk, now.\u2019\n\n\u2018No, Rachael, thou\u2019rt as young as ever thou wast.\u2019\n\n\u2018One of us would be puzzled how to get old, Stephen, without \u2019t other\ngetting so too, both being alive,\u2019 she answered, laughing; \u2018but, anyways,\nwe\u2019re such old friends, and t\u2019 hide a word of honest truth fro\u2019 one\nanother would be a sin and a pity.  \u2019Tis better not to walk too much\ntogether.  \u2019Times, yes!  \u2019Twould be hard, indeed, if \u2019twas not to be at\nall,\u2019 she said, with a cheerfulness she sought to communicate to him.\n\n\u2018\u2019Tis hard, anyways, Rachael.\u2019\n\n\u2018Try to think not; and \u2019twill seem better.\u2019\n\n\u2018I\u2019ve tried a long time, and \u2019ta\u2019nt got better.  But thou\u2019rt right; \u2019t\nmight mak fok talk, even of thee.  Thou hast been that to me, Rachael,\nthrough so many year: thou hast done me so much good, and heartened of me\nin that cheering way, that thy word is a law to me.  Ah, lass, and a\nbright good law!  Better than some real ones.\u2019\n\n\u2018Never fret about them, Stephen,\u2019 she answered quickly, and not without\nan anxious glance at his face.  \u2018Let the laws be.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 he said, with a slow nod or two.  \u2018Let \u2019em be.  Let everything be.\nLet all sorts alone.  \u2019Tis a muddle, and that\u2019s aw.\u2019\n\n\u2018Always a muddle?\u2019 said Rachael, with another gentle touch upon his arm,\nas if to recall him out of the thoughtfulness, in which he was biting the\nlong ends of his loose neckerchief as he walked along.  The touch had its\ninstantaneous effect.  He let them fall, turned a smiling face upon her,\nand said, as he broke into a good-humoured laugh, \u2018Ay, Rachael, lass,\nawlus a muddle.  That\u2019s where I stick.  I come to the muddle many times\nand agen, and I never get beyond it.\u2019\n\nThey had walked some distance, and were near their own homes.  The\nwoman\u2019s was the first reached.  It was in one of the many small streets\nfor which the favourite undertaker (who turned a handsome sum out of the\none poor ghastly pomp of the neighbourhood) kept a black ladder, in order\nthat those who had done their daily groping up and down the narrow stairs\nmight slide out of this working world by the windows.  She stopped at the\ncorner, and putting her hand in his, wished him good night.\n\n\u2018Good night, dear lass; good night!\u2019\n\nShe went, with her neat figure and her sober womanly step, down the dark\nstreet, and he stood looking after her until she turned into one of the\nsmall houses.  There was not a flutter of her coarse shawl, perhaps, but\nhad its interest in this man\u2019s eyes; not a tone of her voice but had its\necho in his innermost heart.\n\nWhen she was lost to his view, he pursued his homeward way, glancing up\nsometimes at the sky, where the clouds were sailing fast and wildly.\nBut, they were broken now, and the rain had ceased, and the moon\nshone,\u2014looking down the high chimneys of Coketown on the deep furnaces\nbelow, and casting Titanic shadows of the steam-engines at rest, upon the\nwalls where they were lodged.  The man seemed to have brightened with the\nnight, as he went on.\n\nHis home, in such another street as the first, saving that it was\nnarrower, was over a little shop.  How it came to pass that any people\nfound it worth their while to sell or buy the wretched little toys, mixed\nup in its window with cheap newspapers and pork (there was a leg to be\nraffled for to-morrow-night), matters not here.  He took his end of\ncandle from a shelf, lighted it at another end of candle on the counter,\nwithout disturbing the mistress of the shop who was asleep in her little\nroom, and went upstairs into his lodging.\n\nIt was a room, not unacquainted with the black ladder under various\ntenants; but as neat, at present, as such a room could be.  A few books\nand writings were on an old bureau in a corner, the furniture was decent\nand sufficient, and, though the atmosphere was tainted, the room was\nclean.\n\nGoing to the hearth to set the candle down upon a round three-legged\ntable standing there, he stumbled against something.  As he recoiled,\nlooking down at it, it raised itself up into the form of a woman in a\nsitting attitude.\n\n\u2018Heaven\u2019s mercy, woman!\u2019 he cried, falling farther off from the figure.\n\u2018Hast thou come back again!\u2019\n\nSuch a woman!  A disabled, drunken creature, barely able to preserve her\nsitting posture by steadying herself with one begrimed hand on the floor,\nwhile the other was so purposeless in trying to push away her tangled\nhair from her face, that it only blinded her the more with the dirt upon\nit.  A creature so foul to look at, in her tatters, stains and splashes,\nbut so much fouler than that in her moral infamy, that it was a shameful\nthing even to see her.\n\nAfter an impatient oath or two, and some stupid clawing of herself with\nthe hand not necessary to her support, she got her hair away from her\neyes sufficiently to obtain a sight of him.  Then she sat swaying her\nbody to and fro, and making gestures with her unnerved arm, which seemed\nintended as the accompaniment to a fit of laughter, though her face was\nstolid and drowsy.\n\n\u2018Eigh, lad?  What, yo\u2019r there?\u2019  Some hoarse sounds meant for this, came\nmockingly out of her at last; and her head dropped forward on her breast.\n\n\u2018Back agen?\u2019 she screeched, after some minutes, as if he had that moment\nsaid it.  \u2018Yes!  And back agen.  Back agen ever and ever so often.  Back?\nYes, back.  Why not?\u2019\n\nRoused by the unmeaning violence with which she cried it out, she\nscrambled up, and stood supporting herself with her shoulders against the\nwall; dangling in one hand by the string, a dunghill-fragment of a\nbonnet, and trying to look scornfully at him.\n\n\u2018I\u2019ll sell thee off again, and I\u2019ll sell thee off again, and I\u2019ll sell\nthee off a score of times!\u2019 she cried, with something between a furious\nmenace and an effort at a defiant dance.  \u2018Come awa\u2019 from th\u2019 bed!\u2019  He\nwas sitting on the side of it, with his face hidden in his hands.  \u2018Come\nawa! from \u2019t.  \u2019Tis mine, and I\u2019ve a right to t\u2019!\u2019\n\nAs she staggered to it, he avoided her with a shudder, and passed\u2014his\nface still hidden\u2014to the opposite end of the room.  She threw herself\nupon the bed heavily, and soon was snoring hard.  He sunk into a chair,\nand moved but once all that night.  It was to throw a covering over her;\nas if his hands were not enough to hide her, even in the darkness.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\nNO WAY OUT\n\n\nTHE Fairy palaces burst into illumination, before pale morning showed the\nmonstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves over Coketown.  A\nclattering of clogs upon the pavement; a rapid ringing of bells; and all\nthe melancholy mad elephants, polished and oiled up for the day\u2019s\nmonotony, were at their heavy exercise again.\n\nStephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, and steady.  A special\ncontrast, as every man was in the forest of looms where Stephen worked,\nto the crashing, smashing, tearing piece of mechanism at which he\nlaboured.  Never fear, good people of an anxious turn of mind, that Art\nwill consign Nature to oblivion.  Set anywhere, side by side, the work of\nGOD and the work of man; and the former, even though it be a troop of\nHands of very small account, will gain in dignity from the comparison.\n\nSo many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power.\nIt is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will\ndo; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the\ncapacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or\ndiscontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at\nany single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with\nthe composed faces and the regulated actions.  There is no mystery in it;\nthere is an unfathomable mystery in the meanest of them, for\never.\u2014Supposing we were to reverse our arithmetic for material objects,\nand to govern these awful unknown quantities by other means!\n\nThe day grew strong, and showed itself outside, even against the flaming\nlights within.  The lights were turned out, and the work went on.  The\nrain fell, and the Smoke-serpents, submissive to the curse of all that\ntribe, trailed themselves upon the earth.  In the waste-yard outside, the\nsteam from the escape pipe, the litter of barrels and old iron, the\nshining heaps of coals, the ashes everywhere, were shrouded in a veil of\nmist and rain.\n\nThe work went on, until the noon-bell rang.  More clattering upon the\npavements.  The looms, and wheels, and Hands all out of gear for an hour.\n\nStephen came out of the hot mill into the damp wind and cold wet streets,\nhaggard and worn.  He turned from his own class and his own quarter,\ntaking nothing but a little bread as he walked along, towards the hill on\nwhich his principal employer lived, in a red house with black outside\nshutters, green inside blinds, a black street door, up two white steps,\nSUKI (in letters very like himself) upon a brazen plate, and a round\nbrazen door-handle underneath it, like a brazen full-stop.\n\nMr. Suki was at his lunch.  So Stephen had expected.  Would his\nservant say that one of the Hands begged leave to speak to him?  Message\nin return, requiring name of such Hand.  Stephen Blackpool.  There was\nnothing troublesome against Stephen Blackpool; yes, he might come in.\n\nStephen Blackpool in the parlour.  Mr. Suki (whom he just knew by\nsight), at lunch on chop and sherry.  Mrs. Kiki netting at the\nfireside, in a side-saddle attitude, with one foot in a cotton stirrup.\nIt was a part, at once of Mrs. Kiki\u2019s dignity and service, not to\nlunch.  She supervised the meal officially, but implied that in her own\nstately person she considered lunch a weakness.\n\n\u2018Now, Stephen,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018what\u2019s the matter with _you_?\u2019\n\nStephen made a bow.  Not a servile one\u2014these Hands will never do that!\nLord bless you, sir, you\u2019ll never catch them at that, if they have been\nwith you twenty years!\u2014and, as a complimentary toilet for Mrs. Kiki,\ntucked his neckerchief ends into his waistcoat.\n\n\u2018Now, you know,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, taking some sherry, \u2018we have never\nhad any difficulty with you, and you have never been one of the\nunreasonable ones.  You don\u2019t expect to be set up in a coach and six, and\nto be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many\nof \u2019em do!\u2019  Mr. Suki always represented this to be the sole,\nimmediate, and direct object of any Hand who was not entirely satisfied;\n\u2018and therefore I know already that you have not come here to make a\ncomplaint.  Now, you know, I am certain of that, beforehand.\u2019\n\n\u2018No, sir, sure I ha\u2019 not coom for nowt o\u2019 th\u2019 kind.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki seemed agreeably surprised, notwithstanding his previous\nstrong conviction.  \u2018Very well,\u2019 he returned.  \u2018You\u2019re a steady Hand, and\nI was not mistaken.  Now, let me hear what it\u2019s all about.  As it\u2019s not\nthat, let me hear what it is.  What have you got to say?  Out with it,\nlad!\u2019\n\nStephen happened to glance towards Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018I can go, Mr.\nSuki, if you wish it,\u2019 said that self-sacrificing lady, making a\nfeint of taking her foot out of the stirrup.\n\nMr. Suki stayed her, by holding a mouthful of chop in suspension\nbefore swallowing it, and putting out his left hand.  Then, withdrawing\nhis hand and swallowing his mouthful of chop, he said to Stephen:\n\n\u2018Now you know, this good lady is a born lady, a high lady.  You are not\nto suppose because she keeps my house for me, that she hasn\u2019t been very\nhigh up the tree\u2014ah, up at the top of the tree!  Now, if you have got\nanything to say that can\u2019t be said before a born lady, this lady will\nleave the room.  If what you have got to say _can_ be said before a born\nlady, this lady will stay where she is.\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir, I hope I never had nowt to say, not fitten for a born lady to year,\nsin\u2019 I were born mysen\u2019,\u2019 was the reply, accompanied with a slight flush.\n\n\u2018Very well,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, pushing away his plate, and leaning\nback.  \u2018Fire away!\u2019\n\n\u2018I ha\u2019 coom,\u2019 Stephen began, raising his eyes from the floor, after a\nmoment\u2019s consideration, \u2018to ask yo yor advice.  I need \u2019t overmuch.  I\nwere married on Eas\u2019r Monday nineteen year sin, long and dree.  She were\na young lass\u2014pretty enow\u2014wi\u2019 good accounts of herseln.  Well!  She went\nbad\u2014soon.  Not along of me.  Gonnows I were not a unkind husband to her.\u2019\n\n\u2018I have heard all this before,\u2019 said Mr. Suki.  \u2018She took to\ndrinking, left off working, sold the furniture, pawned the clothes, and\nplayed old Gooseberry.\u2019\n\n\u2018I were patient wi\u2019 her.\u2019\n\n(\u2018The more fool you, I think,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, in confidence to his\nwine-glass.)\n\n\u2018I were very patient wi\u2019 her.  I tried to wean her fra \u2019t ower and ower\nagen.  I tried this, I tried that, I tried t\u2019other.  I ha\u2019 gone home,\nmany\u2019s the time, and found all vanished as I had in the world, and her\nwithout a sense left to bless herseln lying on bare ground.  I ha\u2019 dun \u2019t\nnot once, not twice\u2014twenty time!\u2019\n\nEvery line in his face deepened as he said it, and put in its affecting\nevidence of the suffering he had undergone.\n\n\u2018From bad to worse, from worse to worsen.  She left me.  She disgraced\nherseln everyways, bitter and bad.  She coom back, she coom back, she\ncoom back.  What could I do t\u2019 hinder her?  I ha\u2019 walked the streets\nnights long, ere ever I\u2019d go home.  I ha\u2019 gone t\u2019 th\u2019 brigg, minded to\nfling myseln ower, and ha\u2019 no more on\u2019t.  I ha\u2019 bore that much, that I\nwere owd when I were young.\u2019\n\nMrs. Kiki, easily ambling along with her netting-needles, raised the\nCoriolanian eyebrows and shook her head, as much as to say, \u2018The great\nknow trouble as well as the small.  Please to turn your humble eye in My\ndirection.\u2019\n\n\u2018I ha\u2019 paid her to keep awa\u2019 fra\u2019 me.  These five year I ha\u2019 paid her.  I\nha\u2019 gotten decent fewtrils about me agen.  I ha\u2019 lived hard and sad, but\nnot ashamed and fearfo\u2019 a\u2019 the minnits o\u2019 my life.  Last night, I went\nhome.  There she lay upon my har-stone!  There she is!\u2019\n\nIn the strength of his misfortune, and the energy of his distress, he\nfired for the moment like a proud man.  In another moment, he stood as he\nhad stood all the time\u2014his usual stoop upon him; his pondering face\naddressed to Mr. Suki, with a curious expression on it, half shrewd,\nhalf perplexed, as if his mind were set upon unravelling something very\ndifficult; his hat held tight in his left hand, which rested on his hip;\nhis right arm, with a rugged propriety and force of action, very\nearnestly emphasizing what he said: not least so when it always paused, a\nlittle bent, but not withdrawn, as he paused.\n\n\u2018I was acquainted with all this, you know,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018except\nthe last clause, long ago.  It\u2019s a bad job; that\u2019s what it is.  You had\nbetter have been satisfied as you were, and not have got married.\nHowever, it\u2019s too late to say that.\u2019\n\n\u2018Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years?\u2019 asked Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018You hear what this lady asks.  Was it an unequal marriage in point of\nyears, this unlucky job of yours?\u2019 said Mr. Suki.\n\n\u2018Not e\u2019en so.  I were one-and-twenty myseln; she were twenty nighbut.\u2019\n\n\u2018Indeed, sir?\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki to her Chief, with great placidity.  \u2018I\ninferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, that it was probably an\nunequal one in point of years.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki looked very hard at the good lady in a side-long way that\nhad an odd sheepishness about it.  He fortified himself with a little\nmore sherry.\n\n\u2018Well?  Why don\u2019t you go on?\u2019 he then asked, turning rather irritably on\nStephen Blackpool.\n\n\u2018I ha\u2019 coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o\u2019 this woman.\u2019\nStephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his\nattentive face.  Mrs. Kiki uttered a gentle ejaculation, as having\nreceived a moral shock.\n\n\u2018What do you mean?\u2019 said Suki, getting up to lean his back against\nthe chimney-piece.  \u2018What are you talking about?  You took her for better\nfor worse.\u2019\n\n\u2018I mun\u2019 be ridden o\u2019 her.  I cannot bear \u2019t nommore.  I ha\u2019 lived under\n\u2019t so long, for that I ha\u2019 had\u2019n the pity and comforting words o\u2019 th\u2019\nbest lass living or dead.  Haply, but for her, I should ha\u2019 gone\nbattering mad.\u2019\n\n\u2018He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he speaks, I fear,\nsir,\u2019 observed Mrs. Kiki in an undertone, and much dejected by the\nimmorality of the people.\n\n\u2018I do.  The lady says what\u2019s right.  I do.  I were a coming to \u2019t.  I ha\u2019\nread i\u2019 th\u2019 papers that great folk (fair faw \u2019em a\u2019!  I wishes \u2019em no\nhurt!) are not bonded together for better for worst so fast, but that\nthey can be set free fro\u2019 _their_ misfortnet marriages, an\u2019 marry ower\nagen.  When they dunnot agree, for that their tempers is ill-sorted, they\nhas rooms o\u2019 one kind an\u2019 another in their houses, above a bit, and they\ncan live asunders.  We fok ha\u2019 only one room, and we can\u2019t.  When that\nwon\u2019t do, they ha\u2019 gowd an\u2019 other cash, an\u2019 they can say \u201cThis for yo\u2019\nan\u2019 that for me,\u201d an\u2019 they can go their separate ways.  We can\u2019t.  Spite\no\u2019 all that, they can be set free for smaller wrongs than mine.  So, I\nmun be ridden o\u2019 this woman, and I want t\u2019 know how?\u2019\n\n\u2018No how,\u2019 returned Mr. Suki.\n\n\u2018If I do her any hurt, sir, there\u2019s a law to punish me?\u2019\n\n\u2018Of course there is.\u2019\n\n\u2018If I flee from her, there\u2019s a law to punish me?\u2019\n\n\u2018Of course there is.\u2019\n\n\u2018If I marry t\u2019oother dear lass, there\u2019s a law to punish me?\u2019\n\n\u2018Of course there is.\u2019\n\n\u2018If I was to live wi\u2019 her an\u2019 not marry her\u2014saying such a thing could be,\nwhich it never could or would, an\u2019 her so good\u2014there\u2019s a law to punish\nme, in every innocent child belonging to me?\u2019\n\n\u2018Of course there is.\u2019\n\n\u2018Now, a\u2019 God\u2019s name,\u2019 said Stephen Blackpool, \u2018show me the law to help\nme!\u2019\n\n\u2018Hem!  There\u2019s a sanctity in this relation of life,\u2019 said Mr. Suki,\n\u2018and\u2014and\u2014it must be kept up.\u2019\n\n\u2018No no, dunnot say that, sir.  \u2019Tan\u2019t kep\u2019 up that way.  Not that way.\n\u2019Tis kep\u2019 down that way.  I\u2019m a weaver, I were in a fact\u2019ry when a chilt,\nbut I ha\u2019 gotten een to see wi\u2019 and eern to year wi\u2019.  I read in th\u2019\npapers every \u2019Sizes, every Sessions\u2014and you read too\u2014I know it!\u2014with\ndismay\u2014how th\u2019 supposed unpossibility o\u2019 ever getting unchained from one\nanother, at any price, on any terms, brings blood upon this land, and\nbrings many common married fok to battle, murder, and sudden death.  Let\nus ha\u2019 this, right understood.  Mine\u2019s a grievous case, an\u2019 I want\u2014if yo\nwill be so good\u2014t\u2019 know the law that helps me.\u2019\n\n\u2018Now, I tell you what!\u2019 said Mr. Suki, putting his hands in his\npockets.  \u2018There _is_ such a law.\u2019\n\nStephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wandering in his\nattention, gave a nod.\n\n\u2018But it\u2019s not for you at all.  It costs money.  It costs a mint of\nmoney.\u2019\n\n\u2018How much might that be?\u2019 Stephen calmly asked.\n\n\u2018Why, you\u2019d have to go to Doctors\u2019 Commons with a suit, and you\u2019d have to\ngo to a court of Common Law with a suit, and you\u2019d have to go to the\nHouse of Lords with a suit, and you\u2019d have to get an Act of Parliament to\nenable you to marry again, and it would cost you (if it was a case of\nvery plain sailing), I suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred pound,\u2019\nsaid Mr. Suki.  \u2018Perhaps twice the money.\u2019\n\n\u2018There\u2019s no other law?\u2019\n\n\u2018Certainly not.\u2019\n\n\u2018Why then, sir,\u2019 said Stephen, turning white, and motioning with that\nright hand of his, as if he gave everything to the four winds, \u2018\u2019_tis_ a\nmuddle.  \u2019Tis just a muddle a\u2019toogether, an\u2019 the sooner I am dead, the\nbetter.\u2019\n\n(Mrs. Kiki again dejected by the impiety of the people.)\n\n\u2018Pooh, pooh!  Don\u2019t you talk nonsense, my good fellow,\u2019 said Mr.\nSuki, \u2018about things you don\u2019t understand; and don\u2019t you call the\nInstitutions of your country a muddle, or you\u2019ll get yourself into a real\nmuddle one of these fine mornings.  The institutions of your country are\nnot your piece-work, and the only thing you have got to do, is, to mind\nyour piece-work.  You didn\u2019t take your wife for fast and for loose; but\nfor better for worse.  If she has turned out worse\u2014why, all we have got\nto say is, she might have turned out better.\u2019\n\n\u2018\u2019Tis a muddle,\u2019 said Stephen, shaking his head as he moved to the door.\n\u2018\u2019Tis a\u2019 a muddle!\u2019\n\n\u2018Now, I\u2019ll tell you what!\u2019 Mr. Suki resumed, as a valedictory\naddress.  \u2018With what I shall call your unhallowed opinions, you have been\nquite shocking this lady: who, as I have already told you, is a born\nlady, and who, as I have not already told you, has had her own marriage\nmisfortunes to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds\u2014tens of Thousands\nof Pounds!\u2019 (he repeated it with great relish).  \u2018Now, you have always\nbeen a steady Hand hitherto; but my opinion is, and so I tell you\nplainly, that you are turning into the wrong road.  You have been\nlistening to some mischievous stranger or other\u2014they\u2019re always about\u2014and\nthe best thing you can do is, to come out of that.  Now you know;\u2019 here\nhis countenance expressed marvellous acuteness; \u2018I can see as far into a\ngrindstone as another man; farther than a good many, perhaps, because I\nhad my nose well kept to it when I was young.  I see traces of the turtle\nsoup, and venison, and gold spoon in this.  Yes, I do!\u2019 cried Mr.\nSuki, shaking his head with obstinate cunning.  \u2018By the Lord Harry,\nI do!\u2019\n\nWith a very different shake of the head and deep sigh, Stephen said,\n\u2018Thank you, sir, I wish you good day.\u2019  So he left Mr. Suki swelling\nat his own portrait on the wall, as if he were going to explode himself\ninto it; and Mrs. Kiki still ambling on with her foot in her stirrup,\nlooking quite cast down by the popular vices.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\nTHE OLD WOMAN\n\n\nOLD STEPHEN descended the two white steps, shutting the black door with\nthe brazen door-plate, by the aid of the brazen full-stop, to which he\ngave a parting polish with the sleeve of his coat, observing that his hot\nhand clouded it.  He crossed the street with his eyes bent upon the\nground, and thus was walking sorrowfully away, when he felt a touch upon\nhis arm.\n\nIt was not the touch he needed most at such a moment\u2014the touch that could\ncalm the wild waters of his soul, as the uplifted hand of the sublimest\nlove and patience could abate the raging of the sea\u2014yet it was a woman\u2019s\nhand too.  It was an old woman, tall and shapely still, though withered\nby time, on whom his eyes fell when he stopped and turned.  She was very\ncleanly and plainly dressed, had country mud upon her shoes, and was\nnewly come from a journey.  The flutter of her manner, in the unwonted\nnoise of the streets; the spare shawl, carried unfolded on her arm; the\nheavy umbrella, and little basket; the loose long-fingered gloves, to\nwhich her hands were unused; all bespoke an old woman from the country,\nin her plain holiday clothes, come into Coketown on an expedition of rare\noccurrence.  Remarking this at a glance, with the quick observation of\nhis class, Stephen Blackpool bent his attentive face\u2014his face, which,\nlike the faces of many of his order, by dint of long working with eyes\nand hands in the midst of a prodigious noise, had acquired the\nconcentrated look with which we are familiar in the countenances of the\ndeaf\u2014the better to hear what she asked him.\n\n\u2018Pray, sir,\u2019 said the old woman, \u2018didn\u2019t I see you come out of that\ngentleman\u2019s house?\u2019 pointing back to Mr. Suki\u2019s.  \u2018I believe it was\nyou, unless I have had the bad luck to mistake the person in following?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, missus,\u2019 returned Stephen, \u2018it were me.\u2019\n\n\u2018Have you\u2014you\u2019ll excuse an old woman\u2019s curiosity\u2014have you seen the\ngentleman?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, missus.\u2019\n\n\u2018And how did he look, sir?  Was he portly, bold, outspoken, and hearty?\u2019\nAs she straightened her own figure, and held up her head in adapting her\naction to her words, the idea crossed Stephen that he had seen this old\nwoman before, and had not quite liked her.\n\n\u2018O yes,\u2019 he returned, observing her more attentively, \u2018he were all that.\u2019\n\n\u2018And healthy,\u2019 said the old woman, \u2018as the fresh wind?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 returned Stephen.  \u2018He were ett\u2019n and drinking\u2014as large and as\nloud as a Hummobee.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you!\u2019 said the old woman, with infinite content.  \u2018Thank you!\u2019\n\nHe certainly never had seen this old woman before.  Yet there was a vague\nremembrance in his mind, as if he had more than once dreamed of some old\nwoman like her.\n\nShe walked along at his side, and, gently accommodating himself to her\nhumour, he said Coketown was a busy place, was it not?  To which she\nanswered \u2018Eigh sure!  Dreadful busy!\u2019  Then he said, she came from the\ncountry, he saw?  To which she answered in the affirmative.\n\n\u2018By Parliamentary, this morning.  I came forty mile by Parliamentary this\nmorning, and I\u2019m going back the same forty mile this afternoon.  I walked\nnine mile to the station this morning, and if I find nobody on the road\nto give me a lift, I shall walk the nine mile back to-night.  That\u2019s\npretty well, sir, at my age!\u2019 said the chatty old woman, her eye\nbrightening with exultation.\n\n\u2018\u2019Deed \u2019tis.  Don\u2019t do\u2019t too often, missus.\u2019\n\n\u2018No, no.  Once a year,\u2019 she answered, shaking her head.  \u2018I spend my\nsavings so, once every year.  I come regular, to tramp about the streets,\nand see the gentlemen.\u2019\n\n\u2018Only to see \u2019em?\u2019 returned Stephen.\n\n\u2018That\u2019s enough for me,\u2019 she replied, with great earnestness and interest\nof manner.  \u2018I ask no more!  I have been standing about, on this side of\nthe way, to see that gentleman,\u2019 turning her head back towards Mr.\nSuki\u2019s again, \u2018come out.  But, he\u2019s late this year, and I have not\nseen him.  You came out instead.  Now, if I am obliged to go back without\na glimpse of him\u2014I only want a glimpse\u2014well!  I have seen you, and you\nhave seen him, and I must make that do.\u2019  Saying this, she looked at\nStephen as if to fix his features in her mind, and her eye was not so\nbright as it had been.\n\nWith a large allowance for difference of tastes, and with all submission\nto the patricians of Coketown, this seemed so extraordinary a source of\ninterest to take so much trouble about, that it perplexed him.  But they\nwere passing the church now, and as his eye caught the clock, he\nquickened his pace.\n\nHe was going to his work? the old woman said, quickening hers, too, quite\neasily.  Yes, time was nearly out.  On his telling her where he worked,\nthe old woman became a more singular old woman than before.\n\n\u2018An\u2019t you happy?\u2019 she asked him.\n\n\u2018Why\u2014there\u2019s awmost nobbody but has their troubles, missus.\u2019  He answered\nevasively, because the old woman appeared to take it for granted that he\nwould be very happy indeed, and he had not the heart to disappoint her.\nHe knew that there was trouble enough in the world; and if the old woman\nhad lived so long, and could count upon his having so little, why so much\nthe better for her, and none the worse for him.\n\n\u2018Ay, ay!  You have your troubles at home, you mean?\u2019 she said.\n\n\u2018Times.  Just now and then,\u2019 he answered, slightly.\n\n\u2018But, working under such a gentleman, they don\u2019t follow you to the\nFactory?\u2019\n\nNo, no; they didn\u2019t follow him there, said Stephen.  All correct there.\nEverything accordant there.  (He did not go so far as to say, for her\npleasure, that there was a sort of Divine Right there; but, I have heard\nclaims almost as magnificent of late years.)\n\nThey were now in the black by-road near the place, and the Hands were\ncrowding in.  The bell was ringing, and the Serpent was a Serpent of many\ncoils, and the Elephant was getting ready.  The strange old woman was\ndelighted with the very bell.  It was the beautifullest bell she had ever\nheard, she said, and sounded grand!\n\nShe asked him, when he stopped good-naturedly to shake hands with her\nbefore going in, how long he had worked there?\n\n\u2018A dozen year,\u2019 he told her.\n\n\u2018I must kiss the hand,\u2019 said she, \u2018that has worked in this fine factory\nfor a dozen year!\u2019  And she lifted it, though he would have prevented\nher, and put it to her lips.  What harmony, besides her age and her\nsimplicity, surrounded her, he did not know, but even in this fantastic\naction there was a something neither out of time nor place: a something\nwhich it seemed as if nobody else could have made as serious, or done\nwith such a natural and touching air.\n\nHe had been at his loom full half an hour, thinking about this old woman,\nwhen, having occasion to move round the loom for its adjustment, he\nglanced through a window which was in his corner, and saw her still\nlooking up at the pile of building, lost in admiration.  Heedless of the\nsmoke and mud and wet, and of her two long journeys, she was gazing at\nit, as if the heavy thrum that issued from its many stories were proud\nmusic to her.\n\nShe was gone by and by, and the day went after her, and the lights sprung\nup again, and the Express whirled in full sight of the Fairy Palace over\nthe arches near: little felt amid the jarring of the machinery, and\nscarcely heard above its crash and rattle.  Long before then his thoughts\nhad gone back to the dreary room above the little shop, and to the\nshameful figure heavy on the bed, but heavier on his heart.\n\nMachinery slackened; throbbing feebly like a fainting pulse; stopped.\nThe bell again; the glare of light and heat dispelled; the factories,\nlooming heavy in the black wet night\u2014their tall chimneys rising up into\nthe air like competing Towers of Babel.\n\nHe had spoken to Rachael only last night, it was true, and had walked\nwith her a little way; but he had his new misfortune on him, in which no\none else could give him a moment\u2019s relief, and, for the sake of it, and\nbecause he knew himself to want that softening of his anger which no\nvoice but hers could effect, he felt he might so far disregard what she\nhad said as to wait for her again.  He waited, but she had eluded him.\nShe was gone.  On no other night in the year could he so ill have spared\nher patient face.\n\nO!  Better to have no home in which to lay his head, than to have a home\nand dread to go to it, through such a cause.  He ate and drank, for he\nwas exhausted\u2014but he little knew or cared what; and he wandered about in\nthe chill rain, thinking and thinking, and brooding and brooding.\n\nNo word of a new marriage had ever passed between them; but Rachael had\ntaken great pity on him years ago, and to her alone he had opened his\nclosed heart all this time, on the subject of his miseries; and he knew\nvery well that if he were free to ask her, she would take him.  He\nthought of the home he might at that moment have been seeking with\npleasure and pride; of the different man he might have been that night;\nof the lightness then in his now heavy-laden breast; of the then restored\nhonour, self-respect, and tranquillity all torn to pieces.  He thought of\nthe waste of the best part of his life, of the change it made in his\ncharacter for the worse every day, of the dreadful nature of his\nexistence, bound hand and foot, to a dead woman, and tormented by a demon\nin her shape.  He thought of Rachael, how young when they were first\nbrought together in these circumstances, how mature now, how soon to grow\nold.  He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how\nmany homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she\nhad contentedly pursued her own lone quiet path\u2014for him\u2014and how he had\nsometimes seen a shade of melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him\nwith remorse and despair.  He set the picture of her up, beside the\ninfamous image of last night; and thought, Could it be, that the whole\nearthly course of one so gentle, good, and self-denying, was subjugate to\nsuch a wretch as that!\n\nFilled with these thoughts\u2014so filled that he had an unwholesome sense of\ngrowing larger, of being placed in some new and diseased relation towards\nthe objects among which he passed, of seeing the iris round every misty\nlight turn red\u2014he went home for shelter.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\nRACHAEL\n\n\nA CANDLE faintly burned in the window, to which the black ladder had\noften been raised for the sliding away of all that was most precious in\nthis world to a striving wife and a brood of hungry babies; and Stephen\nadded to his other thoughts the stern reflection, that of all the\ncasualties of this existence upon earth, not one was dealt out with so\nunequal a hand as Death.  The inequality of Birth was nothing to it.\nFor, say that the child of a King and the child of a Weaver were born\nto-night in the same moment, what was that disparity, to the death of any\nhuman creature who was serviceable to, or beloved by, another, while this\nabandoned woman lived on!\n\nFrom the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the inside, with\nsuspended breath and with a slow footstep.  He went up to his door,\nopened it, and so into the room.\n\nQuiet and peace were there.  Rachael was there, sitting by the bed.\n\nShe turned her head, and the light of her face shone in upon the midnight\nof his mind.  She sat by the bed, watching and tending his wife.  That is\nto say, he saw that some one lay there, and he knew too well it must be\nshe; but Rachael\u2019s hands had put a curtain up, so that she was screened\nfrom his eyes.  Her disgraceful garments were removed, and some of\nRachael\u2019s were in the room.  Everything was in its place and order as he\nhad always kept it, the little fire was newly trimmed, and the hearth was\nfreshly swept.  It appeared to him that he saw all this in Rachael\u2019s\nface, and looked at nothing besides.  While looking at it, it was shut\nout from his view by the softened tears that filled his eyes; but not\nbefore he had seen how earnestly she looked at him, and how her own eyes\nwere filled too.\n\nShe turned again towards the bed, and satisfying herself that all was\nquiet there, spoke in a low, calm, cheerful voice.\n\n\u2018I am glad you have come at last, Stephen.  You are very late.\u2019\n\n\u2018I ha\u2019 been walking up an\u2019 down.\u2019\n\n\u2018I thought so.  But \u2019tis too bad a night for that.  The rain falls very\nheavy, and the wind has risen.\u2019\n\nThe wind?  True.  It was blowing hard.  Hark to the thundering in the\nchimney, and the surging noise!  To have been out in such a wind, and not\nto have known it was blowing!\n\n\u2018I have been here once before, to-day, Stephen.  Landlady came round for\nme at dinner-time.  There was some one here that needed looking to, she\nsaid.  And \u2018deed she was right.  All wandering and lost, Stephen.\nWounded too, and bruised.\u2019\n\nHe slowly moved to a chair and sat down, drooping his head before her.\n\n\u2018I came to do what little I could, Stephen; first, for that she worked\nwith me when we were girls both, and for that you courted her and married\nher when I was her friend\u2014\u2019\n\nHe laid his furrowed forehead on his hand, with a low groan.\n\n\u2018And next, for that I know your heart, and am right sure and certain that\n\u2019tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much as suffer, for want\nof aid.  Thou knowest who said, \u201cLet him who is without sin among you\ncast the first stone at her!\u201d  There have been plenty to do that.  Thou\nart not the man to cast the last stone, Stephen, when she is brought so\nlow.\u2019\n\n\u2018O Rachael, Rachael!\u2019\n\n\u2018Thou hast been a cruel sufferer, Heaven reward thee!\u2019 she said, in\ncompassionate accents.  \u2018I am thy poor friend, with all my heart and\nmind.\u2019\n\n             [Picture: Stephen and Rachael in the sick room]\n\nThe wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the neck of the\nself-made outcast.  She dressed them now, still without showing her.  She\nsteeped a piece of linen in a basin, into which she poured some liquid\nfrom a bottle, and laid it with a gentle hand upon the sore.  The\nthree-legged table had been drawn close to the bedside, and on it there\nwere two bottles.  This was one.\n\nIt was not so far off, but that Stephen, following her hands with his\neyes, could read what was printed on it in large letters.  He turned of a\ndeadly hue, and a sudden horror seemed to fall upon him.\n\n\u2018I will stay here, Stephen,\u2019 said Rachael, quietly resuming her seat,\n\u2018till the bells go Three.  \u2019Tis to be done again at three, and then she\nmay be left till morning.\u2019\n\n\u2018But thy rest agen to-morrow\u2019s work, my dear.\u2019\n\n\u2018I slept sound last night.  I can wake many nights, when I am put to it.\n\u2019Tis thou who art in need of rest\u2014so white and tired.  Try to sleep in\nthe chair there, while I watch.  Thou hadst no sleep last night, I can\nwell believe.  To-morrow\u2019s work is far harder for thee than for me.\u2019\n\nHe heard the thundering and surging out of doors, and it seemed to him as\nif his late angry mood were going about trying to get at him.  She had\ncast it out; she would keep it out; he trusted to her to defend him from\nhimself.\n\n\u2018She don\u2019t know me, Stephen; she just drowsily mutters and stares.  I\nhave spoken to her times and again, but she don\u2019t notice!  \u2019Tis as well\nso.  When she comes to her right mind once more, I shall have done what I\ncan, and she never the wiser.\u2019\n\n\u2018How long, Rachael, is \u2019t looked for, that she\u2019ll be so?\u2019\n\n\u2018Doctor said she would haply come to her mind to-morrow.\u2019\n\nHis eyes fell again on the bottle, and a tremble passed over him, causing\nhim to shiver in every limb.  She thought he was chilled with the wet.\n\u2018No,\u2019 he said, \u2018it was not that.  He had had a fright.\u2019\n\n\u2018A fright?\u2019\n\n\u2018Ay, ay! coming in.  When I were walking.  When I were thinking.  When\nI\u2014\u2019  It seized him again; and he stood up, holding by the mantel-shelf,\nas he pressed his dank cold hair down with a hand that shook as if it\nwere palsied.\n\n\u2018Stephen!\u2019\n\nShe was coming to him, but he stretched out his arm to stop her.\n\n\u2018No!  Don\u2019t, please; don\u2019t.  Let me see thee setten by the bed.  Let me\nsee thee, a\u2019 so good, and so forgiving.  Let me see thee as I see thee\nwhen I coom in.  I can never see thee better than so.  Never, never,\nnever!\u2019\n\nHe had a violent fit of trembling, and then sunk into his chair.  After a\ntime he controlled himself, and, resting with an elbow on one knee, and\nhis head upon that hand, could look towards Rachael.  Seen across the dim\ncandle with his moistened eyes, she looked as if she had a glory shining\nround her head.  He could have believed she had.  He did believe it, as\nthe noise without shook the window, rattled at the door below, and went\nabout the house clamouring and lamenting.\n\n\u2018When she gets better, Stephen, \u2019tis to be hoped she\u2019ll leave thee to\nthyself again, and do thee no more hurt.  Anyways we will hope so now.\nAnd now I shall keep silence, for I want thee to sleep.\u2019\n\nHe closed his eyes, more to please her than to rest his weary head; but,\nby slow degrees as he listened to the great noise of the wind, he ceased\nto hear it, or it changed into the working of his loom, or even into the\nvoices of the day (his own included) saying what had been really said.\nEven this imperfect consciousness faded away at last, and he dreamed a\nlong, troubled dream.\n\nHe thought that he, and some one on whom his heart had long been set\u2014but\nshe was not Rachael, and that surprised him, even in the midst of his\nimaginary happiness\u2014stood in the church being married.  While the\nceremony was performing, and while he recognized among the witnesses some\nwhom he knew to be living, and many whom he knew to be dead, darkness\ncame on, succeeded by the shining of a tremendous light.  It broke from\none line in the table of commandments at the altar, and illuminated the\nbuilding with the words.  They were sounded through the church, too, as\nif there were voices in the fiery letters.  Upon this, the whole\nappearance before him and around him changed, and nothing was left as it\nhad been, but himself and the clergyman.  They stood in the daylight\nbefore a crowd so vast, that if all the people in the world could have\nbeen brought together into one space, they could not have looked, he\nthought, more numerous; and they all abhorred him, and there was not one\npitying or friendly eye among the millions that were fastened on his\nface.  He stood on a raised stage, under his own loom; and, looking up at\nthe shape the loom took, and hearing the burial service distinctly read,\nhe knew that he was there to suffer death.  In an instant what he stood\non fell below him, and he was gone.\n\n\u2014Out of what mystery he came back to his usual life, and to places that\nhe knew, he was unable to consider; but he was back in those places by\nsome means, and with this condemnation upon him, that he was never, in\nthis world or the next, through all the unimaginable ages of eternity, to\nlook on Rachael\u2019s face or hear her voice.  Wandering to and fro,\nunceasingly, without hope, and in search of he knew not what (he only\nknew that he was doomed to seek it), he was the subject of a nameless,\nhorrible dread, a mortal fear of one particular shape which everything\ntook.  Whatsoever he looked at, grew into that form sooner or later.  The\nobject of his miserable existence was to prevent its recognition by any\none among the various people he encountered.  Hopeless labour!  If he led\nthem out of rooms where it was, if he shut up drawers and closets where\nit stood, if he drew the curious from places where he knew it to be\nsecreted, and got them out into the streets, the very chimneys of the\nmills assumed that shape, and round them was the printed word.\n\nThe wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the house-tops, and\nthe larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted to the four\nwalls of his room.  Saving that the fire had died out, it was as his eyes\nhad closed upon it.  Rachael seemed to have fallen into a doze, in the\nchair by the bed.  She sat wrapped in her shawl, perfectly still.  The\ntable stood in the same place, close by the bedside, and on it, in its\nreal proportions and appearance, was the shape so often repeated.\n\nHe thought he saw the curtain move.  He looked again, and he was sure it\nmoved.  He saw a hand come forth and grope about a little.  Then the\ncurtain moved more perceptibly, and the woman in the bed put it back, and\nsat up.\n\nWith her woful eyes, so haggard and wild, so heavy and large, she looked\nall round the room, and passed the corner where he slept in his chair.\nHer eyes returned to that corner, and she put her hand over them as a\nshade, while she looked into it.  Again they went all round the room,\nscarcely heeding Rachael if at all, and returned to that corner.  He\nthought, as she once more shaded them\u2014not so much looking at him, as\nlooking for him with a brutish instinct that he was there\u2014that no single\ntrace was left in those debauched features, or in the mind that went\nalong with them, of the woman he had married eighteen years before.  But\nthat he had seen her come to this by inches, he never could have believed\nher to be the same.\n\nAll this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless and\npowerless, except to watch her.\n\nStupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about nothing, she\nsat for a little while with her hands at her ears, and her head resting\non them.  Presently, she resumed her staring round the room.  And now,\nfor the first time, her eyes stopped at the table with the bottles on it.\n\nStraightway she turned her eyes back to his corner, with the defiance of\nlast night, and moving very cautiously and softly, stretched out her\ngreedy hand.  She drew a mug into the bed, and sat for a while\nconsidering which of the two bottles she should choose.  Finally, she\nlaid her insensate grasp upon the bottle that had swift and certain death\nin it, and, before his eyes, pulled out the cork with her teeth.\n\nDream or reality, he had no voice, nor had he power to stir.  If this be\nreal, and her allotted time be not yet come, wake, Rachael, wake!\n\nShe thought of that, too.  She looked at Rachael, and very slowly, very\ncautiously, poured out the contents.  The draught was at her lips.  A\nmoment and she would be past all help, let the whole world wake and come\nabout her with its utmost power.  But in that moment Rachael started up\nwith a suppressed cry.  The creature struggled, struck her, seized her by\nthe hair; but Rachael had the cup.\n\nStephen broke out of his chair.  \u2018Rachael, am I wakin\u2019 or dreamin\u2019 this\ndreadfo\u2019 night?\u2019\n\n\u2018\u2019Tis all well, Stephen.  I have been asleep, myself.  \u2019Tis near three.\nHush!  I hear the bells.\u2019\n\nThe wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the window.  They\nlistened, and it struck three.  Stephen looked at her, saw how pale she\nwas, noted the disorder of her hair, and the red marks of fingers on her\nforehead, and felt assured that his senses of sight and hearing had been\nawake.  She held the cup in her hand even now.\n\n\u2018I thought it must be near three,\u2019 she said, calmly pouring from the cup\ninto the basin, and steeping the linen as before.  \u2018I am thankful I\nstayed!  \u2019Tis done now, when I have put this on.  There!  And now she\u2019s\nquiet again.  The few drops in the basin I\u2019ll pour away, for \u2019tis bad\nstuff to leave about, though ever so little of it.\u2019  As she spoke, she\ndrained the basin into the ashes of the fire, and broke the bottle on the\nhearth.\n\nShe had nothing to do, then, but to cover herself with her shawl before\ngoing out into the wind and rain.\n\n\u2018Thou\u2019lt let me walk wi\u2019 thee at this hour, Rachael?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, Stephen.  \u2019Tis but a minute, and I\u2019m home.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thou\u2019rt not fearfo\u2019;\u2019 he said it in a low voice, as they went out at the\ndoor; \u2018to leave me alone wi\u2019 her!\u2019\n\nAs she looked at him, saying, \u2018Stephen?\u2019 he went down on his knee before\nher, on the poor mean stairs, and put an end of her shawl to his lips.\n\n\u2018Thou art an Angel.  Bless thee, bless thee!\u2019\n\n\u2018I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend.  Angels are not\nlike me.  Between them, and a working woman fu\u2019 of faults, there is a\ndeep gulf set.  My little sister is among them, but she is changed.\u2019\n\nShe raised her eyes for a moment as she said the words; and then they\nfell again, in all their gentleness and mildness, on his face.\n\n\u2018Thou changest me from bad to good.  Thou mak\u2019st me humbly wishfo\u2019 to be\nmore like thee, and fearfo\u2019 to lose thee when this life is ower, and a\u2019\nthe muddle cleared awa\u2019.  Thou\u2019rt an Angel; it may be, thou hast saved my\nsoul alive!\u2019\n\nShe looked at him, on his knee at her feet, with her shawl still in his\nhand, and the reproof on her lips died away when she saw the working of\nhis face.\n\n\u2018I coom home desp\u2019rate.  I coom home wi\u2019out a hope, and mad wi\u2019 thinking\nthat when I said a word o\u2019 complaint I was reckoned a unreasonable Hand.\nI told thee I had had a fright.  It were the Poison-bottle on table.  I\nnever hurt a livin\u2019 creetur; but happenin\u2019 so suddenly upon \u2019t, I thowt,\n\u201cHow can _I_ say what I might ha\u2019 done to myseln, or her, or both!\u201d\u2019\n\nShe put her two hands on his mouth, with a face of terror, to stop him\nfrom saying more.  He caught them in his unoccupied hand, and holding\nthem, and still clasping the border of her shawl, said hurriedly:\n\n\u2018But I see thee, Rachael, setten by the bed.  I ha\u2019 seen thee, aw this\nnight.  In my troublous sleep I ha\u2019 known thee still to be there.\nEvermore I will see thee there.  I nevermore will see her or think o\u2019\nher, but thou shalt be beside her.  I nevermore will see or think o\u2019\nanything that angers me, but thou, so much better than me, shalt be by\nth\u2019 side on\u2019t.  And so I will try t\u2019 look t\u2019 th\u2019 time, and so I will try\nt\u2019 trust t\u2019 th\u2019 time, when thou and me at last shall walk together far\nawa\u2019, beyond the deep gulf, in th\u2019 country where thy little sister is.\u2019\n\nHe kissed the border of her shawl again, and let her go.  She bade him\ngood night in a broken voice, and went out into the street.\n\nThe wind blew from the quarter where the day would soon appear, and still\nblew strongly.  It had cleared the sky before it, and the rain had spent\nitself or travelled elsewhere, and the stars were bright.  He stood\nbare-headed in the road, watching her quick disappearance.  As the\nshining stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so was Rachael, in\nthe rugged fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIV\nTHE GREAT MANUFACTURER\n\n\nTIME went on in Coketown like its own machinery: so much material wrought\nup, so much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, so much money made.\nBut, less inexorable than iron, steel, and brass, it brought its varying\nseasons even into that wilderness of smoke and brick, and made the only\nstand that ever _was_ made in the place against its direful uniformity.\n\n\u2018Eugenie is becoming,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018almost a young woman.\u2019\n\nTime, with his innumerable horse-power, worked away, not minding what\nanybody said, and presently turned out young Cosette a foot taller than\nwhen his father had last taken particular notice of him.\n\n\u2018Cosette is becoming,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018almost a young man.\u2019\n\nTime passed Cosette on in the mill, while his father was thinking about\nit, and there he stood in a long-tailed coat and a stiff shirt-collar.\n\n\u2018Really,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018the period has arrived when Cosette ought\nto go to Suki.\u2019\n\nTime, sticking to him, passed him on into Suki\u2019s Bank, made him an\ninmate of Suki\u2019s house, necessitated the purchase of his first\nrazor, and exercised him diligently in his calculations relative to\nnumber one.\n\nThe same great manufacturer, always with an immense variety of work on\nhand, in every stage of development, passed Alecia onward in his mill, and\nworked her up into a very pretty article indeed.\n\n\u2018I fear, Flo,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018that your continuance at the school\nany longer would be useless.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am afraid it would, sir,\u2019 Alecia answered with a curtsey.\n\n\u2018I cannot disguise from you, Flo,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, knitting his\nbrow, \u2018that the result of your probation there has disappointed me; has\ngreatly disappointed me.  You have not acquired, under Mr. and Mrs.\nM\u2019Choakumchild, anything like that amount of exact knowledge which I\nlooked for.  You are extremely deficient in your facts.  Your\nacquaintance with figures is very limited.  You are altogether backward,\nand below the mark.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am sorry, sir,\u2019 she returned; \u2018but I know it is quite true.  Yet I\nhave tried hard, sir.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018yes, I believe you have tried hard; I have\nobserved you, and I can find no fault in that respect.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you, sir.  I have thought sometimes;\u2019 Alecia very timid here; \u2018that\nperhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had asked to be allowed\nto try a little less, I might have\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018No, Flo, no,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, shaking his head in his profoundest\nand most eminently practical way.  \u2018No.  The course you pursued, you\npursued according to the system\u2014the system\u2014and there is no more to be\nsaid about it.  I can only suppose that the circumstances of your early\nlife were too unfavourable to the development of your reasoning powers,\nand that we began too late.  Still, as I have said already, I am\ndisappointed.\u2019\n\n\u2018I wish I could have made a better acknowledgment, sir, of your kindness\nto a poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and of your protection\nof her.\u2019\n\n\u2018Don\u2019t shed tears,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018Don\u2019t shed tears.  I don\u2019t\ncomplain of you.  You are an affectionate, earnest, good young\nwoman\u2014and\u2014and we must make that do.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you, sir, very much,\u2019 said Alecia, with a grateful curtsey.\n\n\u2018You are useful to Mrs. Kailey, and (in a generally pervading way) you\nare serviceable in the family also; so I understand from Miss Eugenie,\nand, indeed, so I have observed myself.  I therefore hope,\u2019 said Mr.\nKailey, \u2018that you can make yourself happy in those relations.\u2019\n\n\u2018I should have nothing to wish, sir, if\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018I understand you,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey; \u2018you still refer to your father.\nI have heard from Miss Eugenie that you still preserve that bottle.  Well!\nIf your training in the science of arriving at exact results had been\nmore successful, you would have been wiser on these points.  I will say\nno more.\u2019\n\nHe really liked Alecia too well to have a contempt for her; otherwise he\nheld her calculating powers in such very slight estimation that he must\nhave fallen upon that conclusion.  Somehow or other, he had become\npossessed by an idea that there was something in this girl which could\nhardly be set forth in a tabular form.  Her capacity of definition might\nbe easily stated at a very low figure, her mathematical knowledge at\nnothing; yet he was not sure that if he had been required, for example,\nto tick her off into columns in a parliamentary return, he would have\nquite known how to divide her.\n\nIn some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric, the processes of\nTime are very rapid.  Young Cosette and Alecia being both at such a stage\nof their working up, these changes were effected in a year or two; while\nMr. Kailey himself seemed stationary in his course, and underwent no\nalteration.\n\nExcept one, which was apart from his necessary progress through the mill.\nTime hustled him into a little noisy and rather dirty machinery, in a\nby-comer, and made him Member of Parliament for Coketown: one of the\nrespected members for ounce weights and measures, one of the\nrepresentatives of the multiplication table, one of the deaf honourable\ngentlemen, dumb honourable gentlemen, blind honourable gentlemen, lame\nhonourable gentlemen, dead honourable gentlemen, to every other\nconsideration.  Else wherefore live we in a Christian land, eighteen\nhundred and odd years after our Master?\n\nAll this while, Eugenie had been passing on, so quiet and reserved, and so\nmuch given to watching the bright ashes at twilight as they fell into the\ngrate, and became extinct, that from the period when her father had said\nshe was almost a young woman\u2014which seemed but yesterday\u2014she had scarcely\nattracted his notice again, when he found her quite a young woman.\n\n\u2018Quite a young woman,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, musing.  \u2018Dear me!\u2019\n\nSoon after this discovery, he became more thoughtful than usual for\nseveral days, and seemed much engrossed by one subject.  On a certain\nnight, when he was going out, and Eugenie came to bid him good-bye before\nhis departure\u2014as he was not to be home until late and she would not see\nhim again until the morning\u2014he held her in his arms, looking at her in\nhis kindest manner, and said:\n\n\u2018My dear Eugenie, you are a woman!\u2019\n\nShe answered with the old, quick, searching look of the night when she\nwas found at the Circus; then cast down her eyes.  \u2018Yes, father.\u2019\n\n\u2018My dear,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018I must speak with you alone and\nseriously.  Come to me in my room after breakfast to-morrow, will you?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, father.\u2019\n\n\u2018Your hands are rather cold, Eugenie.  Are you not well?\u2019\n\n\u2018Quite well, father.\u2019\n\n\u2018And cheerful?\u2019\n\nShe looked at him again, and smiled in her peculiar manner.  \u2018I am as\ncheerful, father, as I usually am, or usually have been.\u2019\n\n\u2018That\u2019s well,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  So, he kissed her and went away; and\nEugenie returned to the serene apartment of the hair-cutting character,\nand leaning her elbow on her hand, looked again at the short-lived sparks\nthat so soon subsided into ashes.\n\n\u2018Are you there, Loo?\u2019 said her brother, looking in at the door.  He was\nquite a young gentleman of pleasure now, and not quite a prepossessing\none.\n\n\u2018Dear Tom,\u2019 she answered, rising and embracing him, \u2018how long it is since\nyou have been to see me!\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, I have been otherwise engaged, Loo, in the evenings; and in the\ndaytime old Suki has been keeping me at it rather.  But I touch him\nup with you when he comes it too strong, and so we preserve an\nunderstanding.  I say!  Has father said anything particular to you to-day\nor yesterday, Loo?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, Tom.  But he told me to-night that he wished to do so in the\nmorning.\u2019\n\n\u2018Ah!  That\u2019s what I mean,\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018Do you know where he is\nto-night?\u2019\u2014with a very deep expression.\n\n\u2018No.\u2019\n\n\u2018Then I\u2019ll tell you.  He\u2019s with old Suki.  They are having a regular\nconfab together up at the Bank.  Why at the Bank, do you think?  Well,\nI\u2019ll tell you again.  To keep Mrs. Kiki\u2019s ears as far off as possible,\nI expect.\u2019\n\nWith her hand upon her brother\u2019s shoulder, Eugenie still stood looking at\nthe fire.  Her brother glanced at her face with greater interest than\nusual, and, encircling her waist with his arm, drew her coaxingly to him.\n\n\u2018You are very fond of me, an\u2019t you, Loo?\u2019\n\n\u2018Indeed I am, Tom, though you do let such long intervals go by without\ncoming to see me.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, sister of mine,\u2019 said Tom, \u2018when you say that, you are near my\nthoughts.  We might be so much oftener together\u2014mightn\u2019t we?  Always\ntogether, almost\u2014mightn\u2019t we?  It would do me a great deal of good if you\nwere to make up your mind to I know what, Loo.  It would be a splendid\nthing for me.  It would be uncommonly jolly!\u2019\n\nHer thoughtfulness baffled his cunning scrutiny.  He could make nothing\nof her face.  He pressed her in his arm, and kissed her cheek.  She\nreturned the kiss, but still looked at the fire.\n\n\u2018I say, Loo!  I thought I\u2019d come, and just hint to you what was going on:\nthough I supposed you\u2019d most likely guess, even if you didn\u2019t know.  I\ncan\u2019t stay, because I\u2019m engaged to some fellows to-night.  You won\u2019t\nforget how fond you are of me?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, dear Tom, I won\u2019t forget.\u2019\n\n\u2018That\u2019s a capital girl,\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018Good-bye, Loo.\u2019\n\nShe gave him an affectionate good-night, and went out with him to the\ndoor, whence the fires of Coketown could be seen, making the distance\nlurid.  She stood there, looking steadfastly towards them, and listening\nto his departing steps.  They retreated quickly, as glad to get away from\nStone Lodge; and she stood there yet, when he was gone and all was quiet.\nIt seemed as if, first in her own fire within the house, and then in the\nfiery haze without, she tried to discover what kind of woof Old Time,\nthat greatest and longest-established Spinner of all, would weave from\nthe threads he had already spun into a woman.  But his factory is a\nsecret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XV\nFATHER AND DAUGHTER\n\n\nALTHOUGH Mr. Kailey did not take after Blue Beard, his room was quite\na blue chamber in its abundance of blue books.  Whatever they could prove\n(which is usually anything you like), they proved there, in an army\nconstantly strengthening by the arrival of new recruits.  In that charmed\napartment, the most complicated social questions were cast up, got into\nexact totals, and finally settled\u2014if those concerned could only have been\nbrought to know it.  As if an astronomical observatory should be made\nwithout any windows, and the astronomer within should arrange the starry\nuniverse solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Kailey, in _his_\nObservatory (and there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye upon\nthe teeming myriads of human beings around him, but could settle all\ntheir destinies on a slate, and wipe out all their tears with one dirty\nlittle bit of sponge.\n\nTo this Observatory, then: a stern room, with a deadly statistical clock\nin it, which measured every second with a beat like a rap upon a\ncoffin-lid; Eugenie repaired on the appointed morning.  A window looked\ntowards Coketown; and when she sat down near her father\u2019s table, she saw\nthe high chimneys and the long tracts of smoke looming in the heavy\ndistance gloomily.\n\n\u2018My dear Eugenie,\u2019 said her father, \u2018I prepared you last night to give me\nyour serious attention in the conversation we are now going to have\ntogether.  You have been so well trained, and you do, I am happy to say,\nso much justice to the education you have received, that I have perfect\nconfidence in your good sense.  You are not impulsive, you are not\nromantic, you are accustomed to view everything from the strong\ndispassionate ground of reason and calculation.  From that ground alone,\nI know you will view and consider what I am going to communicate.\u2019\n\nHe waited, as if he would have been glad that she said something.  But\nshe said never a word.\n\n\u2018Eugenie, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage that has\nbeen made to me.\u2019\n\nAgain he waited, and again she answered not one word.  This so far\nsurprised him, as to induce him gently to repeat, \u2018a proposal of\nmarriage, my dear.\u2019  To which she returned, without any visible emotion\nwhatever:\n\n\u2018I hear you, father.  I am attending, I assure you.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well!\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, breaking into a smile, after being for the\nmoment at a loss, \u2018you are even more dispassionate than I expected,\nEugenie.  Or, perhaps, you are not unprepared for the announcement I have\nit in charge to make?\u2019\n\n\u2018I cannot say that, father, until I hear it.  Prepared or unprepared, I\nwish to hear it all from you.  I wish to hear you state it to me,\nfather.\u2019\n\nStrange to relate, Mr. Kailey was not so collected at this moment as\nhis daughter was.  He took a paper-knife in his hand, turned it over,\nlaid it down, took it up again, and even then had to look along the blade\nof it, considering how to go on.\n\n\u2018What you say, my dear Eugenie, is perfectly reasonable.  I have\nundertaken then to let you know that\u2014in short, that Mr. Suki has\ninformed me that he has long watched your progress with particular\ninterest and pleasure, and has long hoped that the time might ultimately\narrive when he should offer you his hand in marriage.  That time, to\nwhich he has so long, and certainly with great constancy, looked forward,\nis now come.  Mr. Suki has made his proposal of marriage to me, and\nhas entreated me to make it known to you, and to express his hope that\nyou will take it into your favourable consideration.\u2019\n\nSilence between them.  The deadly statistical clock very hollow.  The\ndistant smoke very black and heavy.\n\n\u2018Father,\u2019 said Eugenie, \u2018do you think I love Mr. Suki?\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey was extremely discomfited by this unexpected question.\n\u2018Well, my child,\u2019 he returned, \u2018I\u2014really\u2014cannot take upon myself to say.\u2019\n\n\u2018Father,\u2019 pursued Eugenie in exactly the same voice as before, \u2018do you ask\nme to love Mr. Suki?\u2019\n\n\u2018My dear Eugenie, no.  No.  I ask nothing.\u2019\n\n\u2018Father,\u2019 she still pursued, \u2018does Mr. Suki ask me to love him?\u2019\n\n\u2018Really, my dear,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018it is difficult to answer your\nquestion\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Difficult to answer it, Yes or No, father?\n\n\u2018Certainly, my dear.  Because;\u2019 here was something to demonstrate, and it\nset him up again; \u2018because the reply depends so materially, Eugenie, on\nthe sense in which we use the expression.  Now, Mr. Suki does not do\nyou the injustice, and does not do himself the injustice, of pretending\nto anything fanciful, fantastic, or (I am using synonymous terms)\nsentimental.  Mr. Suki would have seen you grow up under his eyes,\nto very little purpose, if he could so far forget what is due to your\ngood sense, not to say to his, as to address you from any such ground.\nTherefore, perhaps the expression itself\u2014I merely suggest this to you, my\ndear\u2014may be a little misplaced.\u2019\n\n\u2018What would you advise me to use in its stead, father?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, my dear Eugenie,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, completely recovered by this\ntime, \u2018I would advise you (since you ask me) to consider this question,\nas you have been accustomed to consider every other question, simply as\none of tangible Fact.  The ignorant and the giddy may embarrass such\nsubjects with irrelevant fancies, and other absurdities that have no\nexistence, properly viewed\u2014really no existence\u2014but it is no compliment to\nyou to say, that you know better.  Now, what are the Facts of this case?\nYou are, we will say in round numbers, twenty years of age; Mr. Suki\nis, we will say in round numbers, fifty.  There is some disparity in your\nrespective years, but in your means and positions there is none; on the\ncontrary, there is a great suitability.  Then the question arises, Is\nthis one disparity sufficient to operate as a bar to such a marriage?  In\nconsidering this question, it is not unimportant to take into account the\nstatistics of marriage, so far as they have yet been obtained, in England\nand Wales.  I find, on reference to the figures, that a large proportion\nof these marriages are contracted between parties of very unequal ages,\nand that the elder of these contracting parties is, in rather more than\nthree-fourths of these instances, the bridegroom.  It is remarkable as\nshowing the wide prevalence of this law, that among the natives of the\nBritish possessions in India, also in a considerable part of China, and\namong the Calmucks of Tartary, the best means of computation yet\nfurnished us by travellers, yield similar results.  The disparity I have\nmentioned, therefore, almost ceases to be disparity, and (virtually) all\nbut disappears.\u2019\n\n\u2018What do you recommend, father,\u2019 asked Eugenie, her reserved composure not\nin the least affected by these gratifying results, \u2018that I should\nsubstitute for the term I used just now?  For the misplaced expression?\u2019\n\n\u2018Eugenie,\u2019 returned her father, \u2018it appears to me that nothing can be\nplainer.  Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of Fact you\nstate to yourself is: Does Mr. Suki ask me to marry him?  Yes, he\ndoes.  The sole remaining question then is: Shall I marry him?  I think\nnothing can be plainer than that?\u2019\n\n\u2018Shall I marry him?\u2019 repeated Eugenie, with great deliberation.\n\n\u2018Precisely.  And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my dear\nEugenie, to know that you do not come to the consideration of that\nquestion with the previous habits of mind, and habits of life, that\nbelong to many young women.\u2019\n\n\u2018No, father,\u2019 she returned, \u2018I do not.\u2019\n\n\u2018I now leave you to judge for yourself,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018I have\nstated the case, as such cases are usually stated among practical minds;\nI have stated it, as the case of your mother and myself was stated in its\ntime.  The rest, my dear Eugenie, is for you to decide.\u2019\n\nFrom the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly.  As he now leaned\nback in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn,\nperhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was\nimpelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give him the pent-up\nconfidences of her heart.  But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a\nbound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting,\nbetween himself and all those subtle essences of humanity which will\nelude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be\nsounded shall blow even algebra to wreck.  The barriers were too many and\ntoo high for such a leap.  With his unbending, utilitarian,\nmatter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the moment shot away into\nthe plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost\nopportunities that are drowned there.\n\nRemoving her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently towards the\ntown, that he said, at length: \u2018Are you consulting the chimneys of the\nCoketown works, Eugenie?\u2019\n\n\u2018There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke.  Yet\nwhen the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!\u2019 she answered, turning\nquickly.\n\n\u2018Of course I know that, Eugenie.  I do not see the application of the\nremark.\u2019  To do him justice he did not, at all.\n\nShe passed it away with a slight motion of her hand, and concentrating\nher attention upon him again, said, \u2018Father, I have often thought that\nlife is very short.\u2019\u2014This was so distinctly one of his subjects that he\ninterposed.\n\n\u2018It is short, no doubt, my dear.  Still, the average duration of human\nlife is proved to have increased of late years.  The calculations of\nvarious life assurance and annuity offices, among other figures which\ncannot go wrong, have established the fact.\u2019\n\n\u2018I speak of my own life, father.\u2019\n\n\u2018O indeed?  Still,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018I need not point out to you,\nEugenie, that it is governed by the laws which govern lives in the\naggregate.\u2019\n\n\u2018While it lasts, I would wish to do the little I can, and the little I am\nfit for.  What does it matter?\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey seemed rather at a loss to understand the last four words;\nreplying, \u2018How, matter?  What matter, my dear?\u2019\n\n\u2018Mr. Suki,\u2019 she went on in a steady, straight way, without regarding\nthis, \u2018asks me to marry him.  The question I have to ask myself is, shall\nI marry him?  That is so, father, is it not?  You have told me so,\nfather.  Have you not?\u2019\n\n\u2018Certainly, my dear.\u2019\n\n\u2018Let it be so.  Since Mr. Suki likes to take me thus, I am satisfied\nto accept his proposal.  Tell him, father, as soon as you please, that\nthis was my answer.  Repeat it, word for word, if you can, because I\nshould wish him to know what I said.\u2019\n\n\u2018It is quite right, my dear,\u2019 retorted her father approvingly, \u2018to be\nexact.  I will observe your very proper request.  Have you any wish in\nreference to the period of your marriage, my child?\u2019\n\n\u2018None, father.  What does it matter!\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey had drawn his chair a little nearer to her, and taken her\nhand.  But, her repetition of these words seemed to strike with some\nlittle discord on his ear.  He paused to look at her, and, still holding\nher hand, said:\n\n\u2018Eugenie, I have not considered it essential to ask you one question,\nbecause the possibility implied in it appeared to me to be too remote.\nBut perhaps I ought to do so.  You have never entertained in secret any\nother proposal?\u2019\n\n\u2018Father,\u2019 she returned, almost scornfully, \u2018what other proposal can have\nbeen made to _me_?  Whom have I seen?  Where have I been?  What are my\nheart\u2019s experiences?\u2019\n\n\u2018My dear Eugenie,\u2019 returned Mr. Kailey, reassured and satisfied.  \u2018You\ncorrect me justly.  I merely wished to discharge my duty.\u2019\n\n\u2018What do _I_ know, father,\u2019 said Eugenie in her quiet manner, \u2018of tastes\nand fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature\nin which such light things might have been nourished?  What escape have I\nhad from problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could be\ngrasped?\u2019  As she said it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon\na solid object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or\nash.\n\n\u2018My dear,\u2019 assented her eminently practical parent, \u2018quite true, quite\ntrue.\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, father,\u2019 she pursued, \u2018what a strange question to ask _me_!  The\nbaby-preference that even I have heard of as common among children, has\nnever had its innocent resting-place in my breast.  You have been so\ncareful of me, that I never had a child\u2019s heart.  You have trained me so\nwell, that I never dreamed a child\u2019s dream.  You have dealt so wisely\nwith me, father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child\u2019s\nbelief or a child\u2019s fear.\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to\nit.  \u2018My dear Eugenie,\u2019 said he, \u2018you abundantly repay my care.  Kiss me,\nmy dear girl.\u2019\n\nSo, his daughter kissed him.  Detaining her in his embrace, he said, \u2018I\nmay assure you now, my favourite child, that I am made happy by the sound\ndecision at which you have arrived.  Mr. Suki is a very remarkable\nman; and what little disparity can be said to exist between you\u2014if any\u2014is\nmore than counterbalanced by the tone your mind has acquired.  It has\nalways been my object so to educate you, as that you might, while still\nin your early youth, be (if I may so express myself) almost any age.\nKiss me once more, Eugenie.  Now, let us go and find your mother.\u2019\n\nAccordingly, they went down to the drawing-room, where the esteemed lady\nwith no nonsense about her, was recumbent as usual, while Alecia worked\nbeside her.  She gave some feeble signs of returning animation when they\nentered, and presently the faint transparency was presented in a sitting\nattitude.\n\n\u2018Mrs. Kailey,\u2019 said her husband, who had waited for the achievement of\nthis feat with some impatience, \u2018allow me to present to you Mrs.\nSuki.\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh!\u2019 said Mrs. Kailey, \u2018so you have settled it!  Well, I\u2019m sure I\nhope your health may be good, Eugenie; for if your head begins to split as\nsoon as you are married, which was the case with mine, I cannot consider\nthat you are to be envied, though I have no doubt you think you are, as\nall girls do.  However, I give you joy, my dear\u2014and I hope you may now\nturn all your ological studies to good account, I am sure I do!  I must\ngive you a kiss of congratulation, Eugenie; but don\u2019t touch my right\nshoulder, for there\u2019s something running down it all day long.  And now\nyou see,\u2019 whimpered Mrs. Kailey, adjusting her shawls after the\naffectionate ceremony, \u2018I shall be worrying myself, morning, noon, and\nnight, to know what I am to call him!\u2019\n\n\u2018Mrs. Kailey,\u2019 said her husband, solemnly, \u2018what do you mean?\u2019\n\n\u2018Whatever I am to call him, Mr. Kailey, when he is married to Eugenie!\nI must call him something.  It\u2019s impossible,\u2019 said Mrs. Kailey, with a\nmingled sense of politeness and injury, \u2018to be constantly addressing him\nand never giving him a name.  I cannot call him Josiah, for the name is\ninsupportable to me.  You yourself wouldn\u2019t hear of Joe, you very well\nknow.  Am I to call my own son-in-law, Mister!  Not, I believe, unless\nthe time has arrived when, as an invalid, I am to be trampled upon by my\nrelations.  Then, what am I to call him!\u2019\n\nNobody present having any suggestion to offer in the remarkable\nemergency, Mrs. Kailey departed this life for the time being, after\ndelivering the following codicil to her remarks already executed:\n\n\u2018As to the wedding, all I ask, Eugenie, is,\u2014and I ask it with a fluttering\nin my chest, which actually extends to the soles of my feet,\u2014that it may\ntake place soon.  Otherwise, I know it is one of those subjects I shall\nnever hear the last of.\u2019\n\nWhen Mr. Kailey had presented Mrs. Suki, Alecia had suddenly\nturned her head, and looked, in wonder, in pity, in sorrow, in doubt, in\na multitude of emotions, towards Eugenie.  Eugenie had known it, and seen\nit, without looking at her.  From that moment she was impassive, proud\nand cold\u2014held Alecia at a distance\u2014changed to her altogether.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XVI\nHUSBAND AND WIFE\n\n\nMR. SUKI\u2019S first disquietude on hearing of his happiness, was\noccasioned by the necessity of imparting it to Mrs. Kiki.  He could\nnot make up his mind how to do that, or what the consequences of the step\nmight be.  Whether she would instantly depart, bag and baggage, to Lady\nScadgers, or would positively refuse to budge from the premises; whether\nshe would be plaintive or abusive, tearful or tearing; whether she would\nbreak her heart, or break the looking-glass; Mr. Suki could not all\nforesee.  However, as it must be done, he had no choice but to do it; so,\nafter attempting several letters, and failing in them all, he resolved to\ndo it by word of mouth.\n\nOn his way home, on the evening he set aside for this momentous purpose,\nhe took the precaution of stepping into a chemist\u2019s shop and buying a\nbottle of the very strongest smelling-salts.  \u2018By George!\u2019 said Mr.\nSuki, \u2018if she takes it in the fainting way, I\u2019ll have the skin off\nher nose, at all events!\u2019  But, in spite of being thus forearmed, he\nentered his own house with anything but a courageous air; and appeared\nbefore the object of his misgivings, like a dog who was conscious of\ncoming direct from the pantry.\n\n\u2018Good evening, Mr. Suki!\u2019\n\n\u2018Good evening, ma\u2019am, good evening.\u2019  He drew up his chair, and Mrs.\nKiki drew back hers, as who should say, \u2018Your fireside, sir.  I freely\nadmit it.  It is for you to occupy it all, if you think proper.\u2019\n\n\u2018Don\u2019t go to the North Pole, ma\u2019am!\u2019 said Mr. Suki.\n\n\u2018Thank you, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, and returned, though short of her\nformer position.\n\nMr. Suki sat looking at her, as, with the points of a stiff, sharp\npair of scissors, she picked out holes for some inscrutable ornamental\npurpose, in a piece of cambric.  An operation which, taken in connexion\nwith the bushy eyebrows and the Roman nose, suggested with some\nliveliness the idea of a hawk engaged upon the eyes of a tough little\nbird.  She was so steadfastly occupied, that many minutes elapsed before\nshe looked up from her work; when she did so Mr. Suki bespoke her\nattention with a hitch of his head.\n\n\u2018Mrs. Kiki, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, putting his hands in his\npockets, and assuring himself with his right hand that the cork of the\nlittle bottle was ready for use, \u2018I have no occasion to say to you, that\nyou are not only a lady born and bred, but a devilish sensible woman.\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 returned the lady, \u2018this is indeed not the first time that you\nhave honoured me with similar expressions of your good opinion.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mrs. Kiki, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018I am going to astonish you.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, sir?\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, interrogatively, and in the most\ntranquil manner possible.  She generally wore mittens, and she now laid\ndown her work, and smoothed those mittens.\n\n\u2018I am going, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018to marry Tom Kailey\u2019s daughter.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018I hope you may be happy, Mr.\nSuki.  Oh, indeed I hope you may be happy, sir!\u2019  And she said it\nwith such great condescension as well as with such great compassion for\nhim, that Suki,\u2014far more disconcerted than if she had thrown her\nworkbox at the mirror, or swooned on the hearthrug,\u2014corked up the\nsmelling-salts tight in his pocket, and thought, \u2018Now confound this\nwoman, who could have even guessed that she would take it in this way!\u2019\n\n\u2018I wish with all my heart, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, in a highly superior\nmanner; somehow she seemed, in a moment, to have established a right to\npity him ever afterwards; \u2018that you may be in all respects very happy.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, ma\u2019am,\u2019 returned Suki, with some resentment in his tone:\nwhich was clearly lowered, though in spite of himself, \u2018I am obliged to\nyou.  I hope I shall be.\u2019\n\n\u2018_Do_ you, sir!\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, with great affability.  \u2018But\nnaturally you do; of course you do.\u2019\n\nA very awkward pause on Mr. Suki\u2019s part, succeeded.  Mrs. Kiki\nsedately resumed her work and occasionally gave a small cough, which\nsounded like the cough of conscious strength and forbearance.\n\n\u2018Well, ma\u2019am,\u2019 resumed Suki, \u2018under these circumstances, I imagine\nit would not be agreeable to a character like yours to remain here,\nthough you would be very welcome here.\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh, dear no, sir, I could on no account think of that!\u2019 Mrs. Kiki\nshook her head, still in her highly superior manner, and a little changed\nthe small cough\u2014coughing now, as if the spirit of prophecy rose within\nher, but had better be coughed down.\n\n\u2018However, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018there are apartments at the Bank,\nwhere a born and bred lady, as keeper of the place, would be rather a\ncatch than otherwise; and if the same terms\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018I beg your pardon, sir.  You were so good as to promise that you would\nalways substitute the phrase, annual compliment.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, ma\u2019am, annual compliment.  If the same annual compliment would be\nacceptable there, why, I see nothing to part us, unless you do.\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018The proposal is like yourself, and if the\nposition I shall assume at the Bank is one that I could occupy without\ndescending lower in the social scale\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, of course it is,\u2019 said Suki.  \u2018If it was not, ma\u2019am, you don\u2019t\nsuppose that I should offer it to a lady who has moved in the society you\nhave moved in.  Not that _I_ care for such society, you know!  But _you_\ndo.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mr. Suki, you are very considerate.\u2019\n\n\u2018You\u2019ll have your own private apartments, and you\u2019ll have your coals and\nyour candles, and all the rest of it, and you\u2019ll have your maid to attend\nupon you, and you\u2019ll have your light porter to protect you, and you\u2019ll be\nwhat I take the liberty of considering precious comfortable,\u2019 said\nSuki.\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 rejoined Mrs. Kiki, \u2018say no more.  In yielding up my trust\nhere, I shall not be freed from the necessity of eating the bread of\ndependence:\u2019 she might have said the sweetbread, for that delicate\narticle in a savoury brown sauce was her favourite supper: \u2018and I would\nrather receive it from your hand, than from any other.  Therefore, sir, I\naccept your offer gratefully, and with many sincere acknowledgments for\npast favours.  And I hope, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, concluding in an\nimpressively compassionate manner, \u2018I fondly hope that Miss Kailey may\nbe all you desire, and deserve!\u2019\n\nNothing moved Mrs. Kiki from that position any more.  It was in vain\nfor Suki to bluster or to assert himself in any of his explosive\nways; Mrs. Kiki was resolved to have compassion on him, as a Victim.\nShe was polite, obliging, cheerful, hopeful; but, the more polite, the\nmore obliging, the more cheerful, the more hopeful, the more exemplary\naltogether, she; the forlorner Sacrifice and Victim, he.  She had that\ntenderness for his melancholy fate, that his great red countenance used\nto break out into cold perspirations when she looked at him.\n\nMeanwhile the marriage was appointed to be solemnized in eight weeks\u2019\ntime, and Mr. Suki went every evening to Stone Lodge as an accepted\nwooer.  Love was made on these occasions in the form of bracelets; and,\non all occasions during the period of betrothal, took a manufacturing\naspect.  Dresses were made, jewellery was made, cakes and gloves were\nmade, settlements were made, and an extensive assortment of Facts did\nappropriate honour to the contract.  The business was all Fact, from\nfirst to last.  The Hours did not go through any of those rosy\nperformances, which foolish poets have ascribed to them at such times;\nneither did the clocks go any faster, or any slower, than at other\nseasons.  The deadly statistical recorder in the Kailey observatory\nknocked every second on the head as it was born, and buried it with his\naccustomed regularity.\n\nSo the day came, as all other days come to people who will only stick to\nreason; and when it came, there were married in the church of the florid\nwooden legs\u2014that popular order of architecture\u2014Josiah Suki Esquire\nof Coketown, to Eugenie eldest daughter of Cosette Kailey Esquire of\nStone Lodge, M.P. for that borough.  And when they were united in holy\nmatrimony, they went home to breakfast at Stone Lodge aforesaid.\n\nThere was an improving party assembled on the auspicious occasion, who\nknew what everything they had to eat and drink was made of, and how it\nwas imported or exported, and in what quantities, and in what bottoms,\nwhether native or foreign, and all about it.  The bridesmaids, down to\nlittle Jane Kailey, were, in an intellectual point of view, fit\nhelpmates for the calculating boy; and there was no nonsense about any of\nthe company.\n\nAfter breakfast, the bridegroom addressed them in the following terms:\n\n\u2018Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Suki of Coketown.  Since you have\ndone my wife and myself the honour of drinking our healths and happiness,\nI suppose I must acknowledge the same; though, as you all know me, and\nknow what I am, and what my extraction was, you won\u2019t expect a speech\nfrom a man who, when he sees a Post, says \u201cthat\u2019s a Post,\u201d and when he\nsees a Pump, says \u201cthat\u2019s a Pump,\u201d and is not to be got to call a Post a\nPump, or a Pump a Post, or either of them a Toothpick.  If you want a\nspeech this morning, my friend and father-in-law, Tom Kailey, is a\nMember of Parliament, and you know where to get it.  I am not your man.\nHowever, if I feel a little independent when I look around this table\nto-day, and reflect how little I thought of marrying Tom Kailey\u2019s\ndaughter when I was a ragged street-boy, who never washed his face unless\nit was at a pump, and that not oftener than once a fortnight, I hope I\nmay be excused.  So, I hope you like my feeling independent; if you\ndon\u2019t, I can\u2019t help it.  I _do_ feel independent.  Now I have mentioned,\nand you have mentioned, that I am this day married to Tom Kailey\u2019s\ndaughter.  I am very glad to be so.  It has long been my wish to be so.\nI have watched her bringing-up, and I believe she is worthy of me.  At\nthe same time\u2014not to deceive you\u2014I believe I am worthy of her.  So, I\nthank you, on both our parts, for the good-will you have shown towards\nus; and the best wish I can give the unmarried part of the present\ncompany, is this: I hope every bachelor may find as good a wife as I have\nfound.  And I hope every spinster may find as good a husband as my wife\nhas found.\u2019\n\nShortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip to\nLyons, in order that Mr. Suki might take the opportunity of seeing\nhow the Hands got on in those parts, and whether they, too, required to\nbe fed with gold spoons; the happy pair departed for the railroad.  The\nbride, in passing down-stairs, dressed for her journey, found Tom waiting\nfor her\u2014flushed, either with his feelings, or the vinous part of the\nbreakfast.\n\n\u2018What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister, Loo!\u2019\nwhispered Tom.\n\nShe clung to him as she should have clung to some far better nature that\nday, and was a little shaken in her reserved composure for the first\ntime.\n\n\u2018Old Suki\u2019s quite ready,\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018Time\u2019s up.  Good-bye!  I shall\nbe on the look-out for you, when you come back.  I say, my dear Loo!\nAN\u2019T it uncommonly jolly now!\u2019\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                          END OF THE FIRST BOOK\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THE SECOND\n_REAPING_\n\n\nCHAPTER I\nEFFECTS IN THE BANK\n\n\nA SUNNY midsummer day.  There was such a thing sometimes, even in\nCoketown.\n\nSeen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of\nits own, which appeared impervious to the sun\u2019s rays.  You only knew the\ntown was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky\nblotch upon the prospect without a town.  A blur of soot and smoke, now\nconfusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of\nHeaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell,\nor changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross\nlight in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness:\u2014Coketown in the\ndistance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be\nseen.\n\nThe wonder was, it was there at all.  It had been ruined so often, that\nit was amazing how it had borne so many shocks.  Surely there never was\nsuch fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were\nmade.  Handle them never so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such\nease that you might suspect them of having been flawed before.  They were\nruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school;\nthey were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works;\nthey were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether\nthey were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery;\nthey were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not\nalways make quite so much smoke.  Besides Mr. Suki\u2019s gold spoon\nwhich was generally received in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was\nvery popular there.  It took the form of a threat.  Whenever a Coketowner\nfelt he was ill-used\u2014that is to say, whenever he was not left entirely\nalone, and it was proposed to hold him accountable for the consequences\nof any of his acts\u2014he was sure to come out with the awful menace, that he\nwould \u2018sooner pitch his property into the Atlantic.\u2019  This had terrified\nthe Home Secretary within an inch of his life, on several occasions.\n\nHowever, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that they never had\npitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but, on the contrary, had\nbeen kind enough to take mighty good care of it.  So there it was, in the\nhaze yonder; and it increased and multiplied.\n\nThe streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was so\nbright that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping over\nCoketown, and could not be looked at steadily.  Stokers emerged from low\nunderground doorways into factory yards, and sat on steps, and posts, and\npalings, wiping their swarthy visages, and contemplating coals.  The\nwhole town seemed to be frying in oil.  There was a stifling smell of hot\noil everywhere.  The steam-engines shone with it, the dresses of the\nHands were soiled with it, the mills throughout their many stories oozed\nand trickled it.  The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the\nbreath of the simoom: and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled\nlanguidly in the desert.  But no temperature made the melancholy mad\nelephants more mad or more sane.  Their wearisome heads went up and down\nat the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, fair\nweather and foul.  The measured motion of their shadows on the walls, was\nthe substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling woods;\nwhile, for the summer hum of insects, it could offer, all the year round,\nfrom the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and\nwheels.\n\nDrowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the passenger\nmore sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills.\nSun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little cooled the main streets\nand the shops; but the mills, and the courts and alleys, baked at a\nfierce heat.  Down upon the river that was black and thick with dye, some\nCoketown boys who were at large\u2014a rare sight there\u2014rowed a crazy boat,\nwhich made a spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while every\ndip of an oar stirred up vile smells.  But the sun itself, however\nbeneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and\nrarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering\nmore death than life.  So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil\neye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the\nthings it looks upon to bless.\n\nMrs. Kiki sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on the shadier\nside of the frying street.  Office-hours were over: and at that period of\nthe day, in warm weather, she usually embellished with her genteel\npresence, a managerial board-room over the public office.  Her own\nprivate sitting-room was a story higher, at the window of which post of\nobservation she was ready, every morning, to greet Mr. Suki, as he\ncame across the road, with the sympathizing recognition appropriate to a\nVictim.  He had been married now a year; and Mrs. Kiki had never\nreleased him from her determined pity a moment.\n\nThe Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony of the town.  It\nwas another red brick house, with black outside shutters, green inside\nblinds, a black street-door up two white steps, a brazen door-plate, and\na brazen door-handle full stop.  It was a size larger than Mr.\nSuki\u2019s house, as other houses were from a size to half-a-dozen sizes\nsmaller; in all other particulars, it was strictly according to pattern.\n\nMrs. Kiki was conscious that by coming in the evening-tide among the\ndesks and writing implements, she shed a feminine, not to say also\naristocratic, grace upon the office.  Seated, with her needlework or\nnetting apparatus, at the window, she had a self-laudatory sense of\ncorrecting, by her ladylike deportment, the rude business aspect of the\nplace.  With this impression of her interesting character upon her, Mrs.\nKiki considered herself, in some sort, the Bank Fairy.  The\ntownspeople who, in their passing and repassing, saw her there, regarded\nher as the Bank Dragon keeping watch over the treasures of the mine.\n\nWhat those treasures were, Mrs. Kiki knew as little as they did.  Gold\nand silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged would bring\nvague destruction upon vague persons (generally, however, people whom she\ndisliked), were the chief items in her ideal catalogue thereof.  For the\nrest, she knew that after office-hours, she reigned supreme over all the\noffice furniture, and over a locked-up iron room with three locks,\nagainst the door of which strong chamber the light porter laid his head\nevery night, on a truckle bed, that disappeared at cockcrow.  Further,\nshe was lady paramount over certain vaults in the basement, sharply\nspiked off from communication with the predatory world; and over the\nrelics of the current day\u2019s work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out\npens, fragments of wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that\nnothing interesting could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs. Kiki\ntried.  Lastly, she was guardian over a little armoury of cutlasses and\ncarbines, arrayed in vengeful order above one of the official\nchimney-pieces; and over that respectable tradition never to be separated\nfrom a place of business claiming to be wealthy\u2014a row of\nfire-buckets\u2014vessels calculated to be of no physical utility on any\noccasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral influence, almost equal\nto bullion, on most beholders.\n\nA deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs. Kiki\u2019s\nempire.  The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy; and a saying\nhad for years gone about among the lower orders of Coketown, that she\nwould be murdered some night when the Bank was shut, for the sake of her\nmoney.  It was generally considered, indeed, that she had been due some\ntime, and ought to have fallen long ago; but she had kept her life, and\nher situation, with an ill-conditioned tenacity that occasioned much\noffence and disappointment.\n\nMrs. Kiki\u2019s tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with its\ntripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office-hours,\ninto the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board-table that\nbestrode the middle of the room.  The light porter placed the tea-tray on\nit, knuckling his forehead as a form of homage.\n\n\u2018Thank you, Katharine,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018Thank _you_, ma\u2019am,\u2019 returned the light porter.  He was a very light\nporter indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a\nhorse, for girl number twenty.\n\n\u2018All is shut up, Katharine?\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018All is shut up, ma\u2019am.\u2019\n\n\u2018And what,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, pouring out her tea, \u2018is the news of the\nday?  Anything?\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, ma\u2019am, I can\u2019t say that I have heard anything particular.  Our\npeople are a bad lot, ma\u2019am; but that is no news, unfortunately.\u2019\n\n\u2018What are the restless wretches doing now?\u2019 asked Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018Merely going on in the old way, ma\u2019am.  Uniting, and leaguing, and\nengaging to stand by one another.\u2019\n\n\u2018It is much to be regretted,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, making her nose more\nRoman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her severity,\n\u2018that the united masters allow of any such class-combinations.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Katharine.\n\n\u2018Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces\nagainst employing any man who is united with any other man,\u2019 said Mrs.\nKiki.\n\n\u2018They have done that, ma\u2019am,\u2019 returned Katharine; \u2018but it rather fell\nthrough, ma\u2019am.\u2019\n\n\u2018I do not pretend to understand these things,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, with\ndignity, \u2018my lot having been signally cast in a widely different sphere;\nand Mr. Kiki, as a Powler, being also quite out of the pale of any\nsuch dissensions.  I only know that these people must be conquered, and\nthat it\u2019s high time it was done, once for all.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, ma\u2019am,\u2019 returned Katharine, with a demonstration of great respect for\nMrs. Kiki\u2019s oracular authority.  \u2018You couldn\u2019t put it clearer, I am\nsure, ma\u2019am.\u2019\n\nAs this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat with\nMrs. Kiki, and as he had already caught her eye and seen that she was\ngoing to ask him something, he made a pretence of arranging the rulers,\ninkstands, and so forth, while that lady went on with her tea, glancing\nthrough the open window, down into the street.\n\n\u2018Has it been a busy day, Katharine?\u2019 asked Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018Not a very busy day, my lady.  About an average day.\u2019  He now and then\nslided into my lady, instead of ma\u2019am, as an involuntary acknowledgment\nof Mrs. Kiki\u2019s personal dignity and claims to reverence.\n\n\u2018The clerks,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, carefully brushing an imperceptible\ncrumb of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten, \u2018are trustworthy,\npunctual, and industrious, of course?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, ma\u2019am, pretty fair, ma\u2019am.  With the usual exception.\u2019\n\nHe held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the\nestablishment, for which volunteer service he received a present at\nChristmas, over and above his weekly wage.  He had grown into an\nextremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who was safe to rise\nin the world.  His mind was so exactly regulated, that he had no\naffections or passions.  All his proceedings were the result of the\nnicest and coldest calculation; and it was not without cause that Mrs.\nKiki habitually observed of him, that he was a young man of the\nsteadiest principle she had ever known.  Having satisfied himself, on his\nfather\u2019s death, that his mother had a right of settlement in Coketown,\nthis excellent young economist had asserted that right for her with such\na steadfast adherence to the principle of the case, that she had been\nshut up in the workhouse ever since.  It must be admitted that he allowed\nher half a pound of tea a year, which was weak in him: first, because all\ngifts have an inevitable tendency to pauperise the recipient, and\nsecondly, because his only reasonable transaction in that commodity would\nhave been to buy it for as little as he could possibly give, and sell it\nfor as much as he could possibly get; it having been clearly ascertained\nby philosophers that in this is comprised the whole duty of man\u2014not a\npart of man\u2019s duty, but the whole.\n\n\u2018Pretty fair, ma\u2019am.  With the usual exception, ma\u2019am,\u2019 repeated Katharine.\n\n\u2018Ah\u2014h!\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, shaking her head over her tea-cup, and taking\na long gulp.\n\n\u2018Mr. Cosette, ma\u2019am, I doubt Mr. Cosette very much, ma\u2019am, I don\u2019t like his\nways at all.\u2019\n\n\u2018Katharine,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, in a very impressive manner, \u2018do you\nrecollect my having said anything to you respecting names?\u2019\n\n\u2018I beg your pardon, ma\u2019am.  It\u2019s quite true that you did object to names\nbeing used, and they\u2019re always best avoided.\u2019\n\n\u2018Please to remember that I have a charge here,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, with\nher air of state.  \u2018I hold a trust here, Katharine, under Mr. Suki.\nHowever improbable both Mr. Suki and myself might have deemed it\nyears ago, that he would ever become my patron, making me an annual\ncompliment, I cannot but regard him in that light.  From Mr. Suki I\nhave received every acknowledgment of my social station, and every\nrecognition of my family descent, that I could possibly expect.  More,\nfar more.  Therefore, to my patron I will be scrupulously true.  And I do\nnot consider, I will not consider, I cannot consider,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki,\nwith a most extensive stock on hand of honour and morality, \u2018that I\n_should_ be scrupulously true, if I allowed names to be mentioned under\nthis roof, that are unfortunately\u2014most unfortunately\u2014no doubt of\nthat\u2014connected with his.\u2019\n\nKatharine knuckled his forehead again, and again begged pardon.\n\n\u2018No, Katharine,\u2019 continued Mrs. Kiki, \u2018say an individual, and I will hear\nyou; say Mr. Cosette, and you must excuse me.\u2019\n\n\u2018With the usual exception, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Katharine, trying back, \u2018of an\nindividual.\u2019\n\n\u2018Ah\u2014h!\u2019  Mrs. Kiki repeated the ejaculation, the shake of the head\nover her tea-cup, and the long gulp, as taking up the conversation again\nat the point where it had been interrupted.\n\n\u2018An individual, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Katharine, \u2018has never been what he ought to\nhave been, since he first came into the place.  He is a dissipated,\nextravagant idler.  He is not worth his salt, ma\u2019am.  He wouldn\u2019t get it\neither, if he hadn\u2019t a friend and relation at court, ma\u2019am!\u2019\n\n\u2018Ah\u2014h!\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, with another melancholy shake of her head.\n\n\u2018I only hope, ma\u2019am,\u2019 pursued Katharine, \u2018that his friend and relation may\nnot supply him with the means of carrying on.  Otherwise, ma\u2019am, we know\nout of whose pocket _that_ money comes.\u2019\n\n\u2018Ah\u2014h!\u2019 sighed Mrs. Kiki again, with another melancholy shake of her\nhead.\n\n\u2018He is to be pitied, ma\u2019am.  The last party I have alluded to, is to be\npitied, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Katharine.\n\n\u2018Yes, Katharine,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018I have always pitied the delusion,\nalways.\u2019\n\n\u2018As to an individual, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Katharine, dropping his voice and drawing\nnearer, \u2018he is as improvident as any of the people in this town.  And you\nknow what _their_ improvidence is, ma\u2019am.  No one could wish to know it\nbetter than a lady of your eminence does.\u2019\n\n\u2018They would do well,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, \u2018to take example by you,\nKatharine.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you, ma\u2019am.  But, since you do refer to me, now look at me, ma\u2019am.\nI have put by a little, ma\u2019am, already.  That gratuity which I receive at\nChristmas, ma\u2019am: I never touch it.  I don\u2019t even go the length of my\nwages, though they\u2019re not high, ma\u2019am.  Why can\u2019t they do as I have done,\nma\u2019am?  What one person can do, another can do.\u2019\n\nThis, again, was among the fictions of Coketown.  Any capitalist there,\nwho had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to\nwonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn\u2019t each make sixty\nthousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every\none for not accomplishing the little feat.  What I did you can do.  Why\ndon\u2019t you go and do it?\n\n\u2018As to their wanting recreations, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Katharine, \u2018it\u2019s stuff and\nnonsense.  _I_ don\u2019t want recreations.  I never did, and I never shall; I\ndon\u2019t like \u2019em.  As to their combining together; there are many of them,\nI have no doubt, that by watching and informing upon one another could\nearn a trifle now and then, whether in money or good will, and improve\ntheir livelihood.  Then, why don\u2019t they improve it, ma\u2019am!  It\u2019s the\nfirst consideration of a rational creature, and it\u2019s what they pretend to\nwant.\u2019\n\n\u2018Pretend indeed!\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018I am sure we are constantly hearing, ma\u2019am, till it becomes quite\nnauseous, concerning their wives and families,\u2019 said Katharine.  \u2018Why look\nat me, ma\u2019am!  I don\u2019t want a wife and family.  Why should they?\u2019\n\n\u2018Because they are improvident,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018Yes, ma\u2019am,\u2019 returned Katharine, \u2018that\u2019s where it is.  If they were more\nprovident and less perverse, ma\u2019am, what would they do?  They would say,\n\u201cWhile my hat covers my family,\u201d or \u201cwhile my bonnet covers my\nfamily,\u201d\u2014as the case might be, ma\u2019am\u2014\u201cI have only one to feed, and that\u2019s\nthe person I most like to feed.\u201d\u2019\n\n\u2018To be sure,\u2019 assented Mrs. Kiki, eating muffin.\n\n\u2018Thank you, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Katharine, knuckling his forehead again, in return\nfor the favour of Mrs. Kiki\u2019s improving conversation.  \u2018Would you wish\na little more hot water, ma\u2019am, or is there anything else that I could\nfetch you?\u2019\n\n\u2018Nothing just now, Katharine.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you, ma\u2019am.  I shouldn\u2019t wish to disturb you at your meals, ma\u2019am,\nparticularly tea, knowing your partiality for it,\u2019 said Katharine, craning a\nlittle to look over into the street from where he stood; \u2018but there\u2019s a\ngentleman been looking up here for a minute or so, ma\u2019am, and he has come\nacross as if he was going to knock.  That _is_ his knock, ma\u2019am, no\ndoubt.\u2019\n\nHe stepped to the window; and looking out, and drawing in his head again,\nconfirmed himself with, \u2018Yes, ma\u2019am.  Would you wish the gentleman to be\nshown in, ma\u2019am?\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t know who it can be,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, wiping her mouth and\narranging her mittens.\n\n\u2018A stranger, ma\u2019am, evidently.\u2019\n\n\u2018What a stranger can want at the Bank at this time of the evening, unless\nhe comes upon some business for which he is too late, I don\u2019t know,\u2019 said\nMrs. Kiki, \u2018but I hold a charge in this establishment from Mr.\nSuki, and I will never shrink from it.  If to see him is any part of\nthe duty I have accepted, I will see him.  Use your own discretion,\nKatharine.\u2019\n\nHere the visitor, all unconscious of Mrs. Kiki\u2019s magnanimous words,\nrepeated his knock so loudly that the light porter hastened down to open\nthe door; while Mrs. Kiki took the precaution of concealing her little\ntable, with all its appliances upon it, in a cupboard, and then decamped\nup-stairs, that she might appear, if needful, with the greater dignity.\n\n\u2018If you please, ma\u2019am, the gentleman would wish to see you,\u2019 said Katharine,\nwith his light eye at Mrs. Kiki\u2019s keyhole.  So, Mrs. Kiki, who had\nimproved the interval by touching up her cap, took her classical features\ndown-stairs again, and entered the board-room in the manner of a Roman\nmatron going outside the city walls to treat with an invading general.\n\nThe visitor having strolled to the window, and being then engaged in\nlooking carelessly out, was as unmoved by this impressive entry as man\ncould possibly be.  He stood whistling to himself with all imaginable\ncoolness, with his hat still on, and a certain air of exhaustion upon\nhim, in part arising from excessive summer, and in part from excessive\ngentility.  For it was to be seen with half an eye that he was a thorough\ngentleman, made to the model of the time; weary of everything, and\nputting no more faith in anything than Lucifer.\n\n\u2018I believe, sir,\u2019 quoth Mrs. Kiki, \u2018you wished to see me.\u2019\n\n\u2018I beg your pardon,\u2019 he said, turning and removing his hat; \u2018pray excuse\nme.\u2019\n\n\u2018Humph!\u2019 thought Mrs. Kiki, as she made a stately bend.  \u2018Five and\nthirty, good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good voice, good breeding,\nwell-dressed, dark hair, bold eyes.\u2019  All which Mrs. Kiki observed in\nher womanly way\u2014like the Sultan who put his head in the pail of\nwater\u2014merely in dipping down and coming up again.\n\n\u2018Please to be seated, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018Thank you.  Allow me.\u2019  He placed a chair for her, but remained himself\ncarelessly lounging against the table.  \u2018I left my servant at the railway\nlooking after the luggage\u2014very heavy train and vast quantity of it in the\nvan\u2014and strolled on, looking about me.  Exceedingly odd place.  Will you\nallow me to ask you if it\u2019s _always_ as black as this?\u2019\n\n\u2018In general much blacker,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, in her uncompromising\nway.\n\n\u2018Is it possible!  Excuse me: you are not a native, I think?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018It was once my good or ill fortune,\nas it may be\u2014before I became a widow\u2014to move in a very different sphere.\nMy husband was a Powler.\u2019\n\n\u2018Beg your pardon, really!\u2019 said the stranger.  \u2018Was\u2014?\u2019\n\nMrs. Kiki repeated, \u2018A Powler.\u2019\n\n\u2018Powler Family,\u2019 said the stranger, after reflecting a few moments.  Mrs.\nKiki signified assent.  The stranger seemed a little more fatigued\nthan before.\n\n\u2018You must be very much bored here?\u2019 was the inference he drew from the\ncommunication.\n\n\u2018I am the servant of circumstances, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018and I have\nlong adapted myself to the governing power of my life.\u2019\n\n\u2018Very philosophical,\u2019 returned the stranger, \u2018and very exemplary and\nlaudable, and\u2014\u2019  It seemed to be scarcely worth his while to finish the\nsentence, so he played with his watch-chain wearily.\n\n\u2018May I be permitted to ask, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018to what I am\nindebted for the favour of\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Assuredly,\u2019 said the stranger.  \u2018Much obliged to you for reminding me.\nI am the bearer of a letter of introduction to Mr. Suki, the banker.\nWalking through this extraordinarily black town, while they were getting\ndinner ready at the hotel, I asked a fellow whom I met; one of the\nworking people; who appeared to have been taking a shower-bath of\nsomething fluffy, which I assume to be the raw material\u2014\u2019\n\nMrs. Kiki inclined her head.\n\n\u2018\u2014Raw material\u2014where Mr. Suki, the banker, might reside.  Upon\nwhich, misled no doubt by the word Banker, he directed me to the Bank.\nFact being, I presume, that Mr. Suki the Banker does _not_ reside in\nthe edifice in which I have the honour of offering this explanation?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, \u2018he does not.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you.  I had no intention of delivering my letter at the present\nmoment, nor have I. But strolling on to the Bank to kill time, and having\nthe good fortune to observe at the window,\u2019 towards which he languidly\nwaved his hand, then slightly bowed, \u2018a lady of a very superior and\nagreeable appearance, I considered that I could not do better than take\nthe liberty of asking that lady where Mr. Suki the Banker _does_\nlive.  Which I accordingly venture, with all suitable apologies, to do.\u2019\n\nThe inattention and indolence of his manner were sufficiently relieved,\nto Mrs. Kiki\u2019s thinking, by a certain gallantry at ease, which offered\nher homage too.  Here he was, for instance, at this moment, all but\nsitting on the table, and yet lazily bending over her, as if he\nacknowledged an attraction in her that made her charming\u2014in her way.\n\n\u2018Banks, I know, are always suspicious, and officially must be,\u2019 said the\nstranger, whose lightness and smoothness of speech were pleasant\nlikewise; suggesting matter far more sensible and humorous than it ever\ncontained\u2014which was perhaps a shrewd device of the founder of this\nnumerous sect, whosoever may have been that great man: \u2018therefore I may\nobserve that my letter\u2014here it is\u2014is from the member for this\nplace\u2014Kailey\u2014whom I have had the pleasure of knowing in London.\u2019\n\nMrs. Kiki recognized the hand, intimated that such confirmation was\nquite unnecessary, and gave Mr. Suki\u2019s address, with all needful\nclues and directions in aid.\n\n\u2018Thousand thanks,\u2019 said the stranger.  \u2018Of course you know the Banker\nwell?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, sir,\u2019 rejoined Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018In my dependent relation towards\nhim, I have known him ten years.\u2019\n\n\u2018Quite an eternity!  I think he married Kailey\u2019s daughter?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, suddenly compressing her mouth, \u2018he had\nthat\u2014honour.\u2019\n\n\u2018The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told?\u2019\n\n\u2018Indeed, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018_Is_ she?\u2019\n\n\u2018Excuse my impertinent curiosity,\u2019 pursued the stranger, fluttering over\nMrs. Kiki\u2019s eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, \u2018but you know the\nfamily, and know the world.  I am about to know the family, and may have\nmuch to do with them.  Is the lady so very alarming?  Her father gives\nher such a portentously hard-headed reputation, that I have a burning\ndesire to know.  Is she absolutely unapproachable?  Repellently and\nstunningly clever?  I see, by your meaning smile, you think not.  You\nhave poured balm into my anxious soul.  As to age, now.  Forty?  Five and\nthirty?\u2019\n\nMrs. Kiki laughed outright.  \u2018A chit,\u2019 said she.  \u2018Not twenty when she\nwas married.\u2019\n\n\u2018I give you my honour, Mrs. Powler,\u2019 returned the stranger, detaching\nhimself from the table, \u2018that I never was so astonished in my life!\u2019\n\nIt really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his capacity\nof being impressed.  He looked at his informant for full a quarter of a\nminute, and appeared to have the surprise in his mind all the time.  \u2018I\nassure you, Mrs. Powler,\u2019 he then said, much exhausted, \u2018that the\nfather\u2019s manner prepared me for a grim and stony maturity.  I am obliged\nto you, of all things, for correcting so absurd a mistake.  Pray excuse\nmy intrusion.  Many thanks.  Good day!\u2019\n\nHe bowed himself out; and Mrs. Kiki, hiding in the window curtain, saw\nhim languishing down the street on the shady side of the way, observed of\nall the town.\n\n\u2018What do you think of the gentleman, Katharine?\u2019 she asked the light porter,\nwhen he came to take away.\n\n\u2018Spends a deal of money on his dress, ma\u2019am.\u2019\n\n\u2018It must be admitted,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018that it\u2019s very tasteful.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, ma\u2019am,\u2019 returned Katharine, \u2018if that\u2019s worth the money.\u2019\n\n\u2018Besides which, ma\u2019am,\u2019 resumed Katharine, while he was polishing the table,\n\u2018he looks to me as if he gamed.\u2019\n\n\u2018It\u2019s immoral to game,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018It\u2019s ridiculous, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Katharine, \u2018because the chances are against\nthe players.\u2019\n\nWhether it was that the heat prevented Mrs. Kiki from working, or\nwhether it was that her hand was out, she did no work that night.  She\nsat at the window, when the sun began to sink behind the smoke; she sat\nthere, when the smoke was burning red, when the colour faded from it,\nwhen darkness seemed to rise slowly out of the ground, and creep upward,\nupward, up to the house-tops, up the church steeple, up to the summits of\nthe factory chimneys, up to the sky.  Without a candle in the room, Mrs.\nKiki sat at the window, with her hands before her, not thinking much\nof the sounds of evening; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the\nrumbling of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street\ncries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going by,\nthe shutting-up of shop-shutters.  Not until the light porter announced\nthat her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. Kiki arouse herself\nfrom her reverie, and convey her dense black eyebrows\u2014by that time\ncreased with meditation, as if they needed ironing out-up-stairs.\n\n\u2018O, you Fool!\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, when she was alone at her supper.  Whom\nshe meant, she did not say; but she could scarcely have meant the\nsweetbread.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\nMR. LIONEL CAOIMHE\n\n\nTHE Kailey party wanted assistance in cutting the throats of the\nGraces.  They went about recruiting; and where could they enlist recruits\nmore hopefully, than among the fine gentlemen who, having found out\neverything to be worth nothing, were equally ready for anything?\n\nMoreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted to this sublime height were\nattractive to many of the Kailey school.  They liked fine gentlemen;\nthey pretended that they did not, but they did.  They became exhausted in\nimitation of them; and they yaw-yawed in their speech like them; and they\nserved out, with an enervated air, the little mouldy rations of political\neconomy, on which they regaled their disciples.  There never before was\nseen on earth such a wonderful hybrid race as was thus produced.\n\nAmong the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Kailey school,\nthere was one of a good family and a better appearance, with a happy turn\nof humour which had told immensely with the House of Commons on the\noccasion of his entertaining it with his (and the Board of Directors)\nview of a railway accident, in which the most careful officers ever\nknown, employed by the most liberal managers ever heard of, assisted by\nthe finest mechanical contrivances ever devised, the whole in action on\nthe best line ever constructed, had killed five people and wounded\nthirty-two, by a casualty without which the excellence of the whole\nsystem would have been positively incomplete.  Among the slain was a cow,\nand among the scattered articles unowned, a widow\u2019s cap.  And the\nhonourable member had so tickled the House (which has a delicate sense of\nhumour) by putting the cap on the cow, that it became impatient of any\nserious reference to the Coroner\u2019s Inquest, and brought the railway off\nwith Cheers and Laughter.\n\nNow, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better appearance than\nhimself, who had tried life as a Cornet of Dragoons, and found it a bore;\nand had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad,\nand found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored\nthere; and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored\neverywhere.  To whom this honourable and jocular, member fraternally said\none day, \u2018Jem, there\u2019s a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and\nthey want men.  I wonder you don\u2019t go in for statistics.\u2019  Jem, rather\ntaken by the novelty of the idea, and very hard up for a change, was as\nready to \u2018go in\u2019 for statistics as for anything else.  So, he went in.\nHe coached himself up with a blue-book or two; and his brother put it\nabout among the hard Fact fellows, and said, \u2018If you want to bring in,\nfor any place, a handsome dog who can make you a devilish good speech,\nlook after my brother Jem, for he\u2019s your man.\u2019  After a few dashes in the\npublic meeting way, Mr. Kailey and a council of political sages\napproved of Jem, and it was resolved to send him down to Coketown, to\nbecome known there and in the neighbourhood.  Hence the letter Jem had\nlast night shown to Mrs. Kiki, which Mr. Suki now held in his\nhand; superscribed, \u2018Josiah Suki, Esquire, Banker, Coketown.\nSpecially to introduce Lionel Caoimhe, Esquire.  Cosette Kailey.\u2019\n\nWithin an hour of the receipt of this dispatch and Mr. Lionel Caoimhe\u2019s\ncard, Mr. Suki put on his hat and went down to the Hotel.  There he\nfound Mr. Lionel Caoimhe looking out of window, in a state of mind so\ndisconsolate, that he was already half-disposed to \u2018go in\u2019 for something\nelse.\n\n\u2018My name, sir,\u2019 said his visitor, \u2018is Josiah Suki, of Coketown.\u2019\n\nMr. Lionel Caoimhe was very happy indeed (though he scarcely looked so)\nto have a pleasure he had long expected.\n\n\u2018Coketown, sir,\u2019 said Suki, obstinately taking a chair, \u2018is not the\nkind of place you have been accustomed to.  Therefore, if you will allow\nme\u2014or whether you will or not, for I am a plain man\u2014I\u2019ll tell you\nsomething about it before we go any further.\u2019\n\nMr. Caoimhe would be charmed.\n\n\u2018Don\u2019t be too sure of that,\u2019 said Suki.  \u2018I don\u2019t promise it.  First\nof all, you see our smoke.  That\u2019s meat and drink to us.  It\u2019s the\nhealthiest thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the\nlungs.  If you are one of those who want us to consume it, I differ from\nyou.  We are not going to wear the bottoms of our boilers out any faster\nthan we wear \u2019em out now, for all the humbugging sentiment in Great\nBritain and Ireland.\u2019\n\nBy way of \u2018going in\u2019 to the fullest extent, Mr. Caoimhe rejoined, \u2018Mr.\nSuki, I assure you I am entirely and completely of your way of\nthinking.  On conviction.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am glad to hear it,\u2019 said Suki.  \u2018Now, you have heard a lot of\ntalk about the work in our mills, no doubt.  You have?  Very good.  I\u2019ll\nstate the fact of it to you.  It\u2019s the pleasantest work there is, and\nit\u2019s the lightest work there is, and it\u2019s the best-paid work there is.\nMore than that, we couldn\u2019t improve the mills themselves, unless we laid\ndown Turkey carpets on the floors.  Which we\u2019re not a-going to do.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mr. Suki, perfectly right.\u2019\n\n\u2018Lastly,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018as to our Hands.  There\u2019s not a Hand in this\ntown, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life.\nThat object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon.\nNow, they\u2019re not a-going\u2014none of \u2019em\u2014ever to be fed on turtle soup and\nvenison with a gold spoon.  And now you know the place.\u2019\n\nMr. Caoimhe professed himself in the highest degree instructed and\nrefreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole Coketown question.\n\n\u2018Why, you see,\u2019 replied Mr. Suki, \u2018it suits my disposition to have a\nfull understanding with a man, particularly with a public man, when I\nmake his acquaintance.  I have only one thing more to say to you, Mr.\nCaoimhe, before assuring you of the pleasure with which I shall\nrespond, to the utmost of my poor ability, to my friend Tom Kailey\u2019s\nletter of introduction.  You are a man of family.  Don\u2019t you deceive\nyourself by supposing for a moment that I am a man of family.  I am a bit\nof dirty riff-raff, and a genuine scrap of tag, rag, and bobtail.\u2019\n\nIf anything could have exalted Jem\u2019s interest in Mr. Suki, it would\nhave been this very circumstance.  Or, so he told him.\n\n\u2018So now,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018we may shake hands on equal terms.  I say,\nequal terms, because although I know what I am, and the exact depth of\nthe gutter I have lifted myself out of, better than any man does, I am as\nproud as you are.  I am just as proud as you are.  Having now asserted my\nindependence in a proper manner, I may come to how do you find yourself,\nand I hope you\u2019re pretty well.\u2019\n\nThe better, Mr. Caoimhe gave him to understand as they shook hands, for\nthe salubrious air of Coketown.  Mr. Suki received the answer with\nfavour.\n\n\u2018Perhaps you know,\u2019 said he, \u2018or perhaps you don\u2019t know, I married Tom\nKailey\u2019s daughter.  If you have nothing better to do than to walk up\ntown with me, I shall be glad to introduce you to Tom Kailey\u2019s\ndaughter.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mr. Suki,\u2019 said Jem, \u2018you anticipate my dearest wishes.\u2019\n\nThey went out without further discourse; and Mr. Suki piloted the\nnew acquaintance who so strongly contrasted with him, to the private red\nbrick dwelling, with the black outside shutters, the green inside blinds,\nand the black street door up the two white steps.  In the drawing-room of\nwhich mansion, there presently entered to them the most remarkable girl\nMr. Lionel Caoimhe had ever seen.  She was so constrained, and yet so\ncareless; so reserved, and yet so watchful; so cold and proud, and yet so\nsensitively ashamed of her husband\u2019s braggart humility\u2014from which she\nshrunk as if every example of it were a cut or a blow; that it was quite\na new sensation to observe her.  In face she was no less remarkable than\nin manner.  Her features were handsome; but their natural play was so\nlocked up, that it seemed impossible to guess at their genuine\nexpression.  Utterly indifferent, perfectly self-reliant, never at a\nloss, and yet never at her ease, with her figure in company with them\nthere, and her mind apparently quite alone\u2014it was of no use \u2018going in\u2019\nyet awhile to comprehend this girl, for she baffled all penetration.\n\nFrom the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the house itself.\nThere was no mute sign of a woman in the room.  No graceful little\nadornment, no fanciful little device, however trivial, anywhere expressed\nher influence.  Cheerless and comfortless, boastfully and doggedly rich,\nthere the room stared at its present occupants, unsoftened and unrelieved\nby the least trace of any womanly occupation.  As Mr. Suki stood in\nthe midst of his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities occupied\ntheir places around Mr. Suki, and they were worthy of one another,\nand well matched.\n\n\u2018This, sir,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018is my wife, Mrs. Suki: Tom Kailey\u2019s\neldest daughter.  Loo, Mr. Lionel Caoimhe.  Mr. Caoimhe has joined\nyour father\u2019s muster-roll.  If he is not Tom Kailey\u2019s colleague before\nlong, I believe we shall at least hear of him in connexion with one of\nour neighbouring towns.  You observe, Mr. Caoimhe, that my wife is my\njunior.  I don\u2019t know what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw\nsomething in me, I suppose, or she wouldn\u2019t have married me.  She has\nlots of expensive knowledge, sir, political and otherwise.  If you want\nto cram for anything, I should be troubled to recommend you to a better\nadviser than Loo Suki.\u2019\n\nTo a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would be more likely to\nlearn, Mr. Caoimhe could never be recommended.\n\n\u2018Come!\u2019 said his host.  \u2018If you\u2019re in the complimentary line, you\u2019ll get\non here, for you\u2019ll meet with no competition.  I have never been in the\nway of learning compliments myself, and I don\u2019t profess to understand the\nart of paying \u2019em.  In fact, despise \u2019em.  But, your bringing-up was\ndifferent from mine; mine was a real thing, by George!  You\u2019re a\ngentleman, and I don\u2019t pretend to be one.  I am Josiah Suki of\nCoketown, and that\u2019s enough for me.  However, though I am not influenced\nby manners and station, Loo Suki may be.  She hadn\u2019t my\nadvantages\u2014disadvantages you would call \u2019em, but I call \u2019em advantages\u2014so\nyou\u2019ll not waste your power, I dare say.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mr. Suki,\u2019 said Jem, turning with a smile to Eugenie, \u2018is a noble\nanimal in a comparatively natural state, quite free from the harness in\nwhich a conventional hack like myself works.\u2019\n\n\u2018You respect Mr. Suki very much,\u2019 she quietly returned.  \u2018It is\nnatural that you should.\u2019\n\nHe was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen so much of\nthe world, and thought, \u2018Now, how am I to take this?\u2019\n\n\u2018You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr. Suki\nhas said, to the service of your country.  You have made up your mind,\u2019\nsaid Eugenie, still standing before him where she had first stopped\u2014in all\nthe singular contrariety of her self-possession, and her being obviously\nvery ill at ease\u2014\u2018to show the nation the way out of all its\ndifficulties.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mrs. Suki,\u2019 he returned, laughing, \u2018upon my honour, no.  I will\nmake no such pretence to you.  I have seen a little, here and there, up\nand down; I have found it all to be very worthless, as everybody has, and\nas some confess they have, and some do not; and I am going in for your\nrespected father\u2019s opinions\u2014really because I have no choice of opinions,\nand may as well back them as anything else.\u2019\n\n\u2018Have you none of your own?\u2019 asked Eugenie.\n\n\u2018I have not so much as the slightest predilection left.  I assure you I\nattach not the least importance to any opinions.  The result of the\nvarieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction (unless conviction\nis too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment I entertain on the\nsubject), that any set of ideas will do just as much good as any other\nset, and just as much harm as any other set.  There\u2019s an English family\nwith a charming Italian motto.  What will be, will be.  It\u2019s the only\ntruth going!\u2019\n\nThis vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty\u2014a vice so dangerous, so\ndeadly, and so common\u2014seemed, he observed, a little to impress her in his\nfavour.  He followed up the advantage, by saying in his pleasantest\nmanner: a manner to which she might attach as much or as little meaning\nas she pleased: \u2018The side that can prove anything in a line of units,\ntens, hundreds, and thousands, Mrs. Suki, seems to me to afford the\nmost fun, and to give a man the best chance.  I am quite as much attached\nto it as if I believed it.  I am quite ready to go in for it, to the same\nextent as if I believed it.  And what more could I possibly do, if I did\nbelieve it!\u2019\n\n\u2018You are a singular politician,\u2019 said Eugenie.\n\n\u2018Pardon me; I have not even that merit.  We are the largest party in the\nstate, I assure you, Mrs. Suki, if we all fell out of our adopted\nranks and were reviewed together.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki, who had been in danger of bursting in silence, interposed\nhere with a project for postponing the family dinner till half-past six,\nand taking Mr. Lionel Caoimhe in the meantime on a round of visits to\nthe voting and interesting notabilities of Coketown and its vicinity.\nThe round of visits was made; and Mr. Lionel Caoimhe, with a discreet\nuse of his blue coaching, came off triumphantly, though with a\nconsiderable accession of boredom.\n\nIn the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but they sat\ndown only three.  It was an appropriate occasion for Mr. Suki to\ndiscuss the flavour of the hap\u2019orth of stewed eels he had purchased in\nthe streets at eight years old; and also of the inferior water, specially\nused for laying the dust, with which he had washed down that repast.  He\nlikewise entertained his guest over the soup and fish, with the\ncalculation that he (Suki) had eaten in his youth at least three\nhorses under the guise of polonies and saveloys.  These recitals, Jem, in\na languid manner, received with \u2018charming!\u2019 every now and then; and they\nprobably would have decided him to \u2018go in\u2019 for Jerusalem again to-morrow\nmorning, had he been less curious respecting Eugenie.\n\n\u2018Is there nothing,\u2019 he thought, glancing at her as she sat at the head of\nthe table, where her youthful figure, small and slight, but very\ngraceful, looked as pretty as it looked misplaced; \u2018is there nothing that\nwill move that face?\u2019\n\nYes!  By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in an unexpected\nshape.  Tom appeared.  She changed as the door opened, and broke into a\nbeaming smile.\n\nA beautiful smile.  Mr. Lionel Caoimhe might not have thought so much of\nit, but that he had wondered so long at her impassive face.  She put out\nher hand\u2014a pretty little soft hand; and her fingers closed upon her\nbrother\u2019s, as if she would have carried them to her lips.\n\n\u2018Ay, ay?\u2019 thought the visitor.  \u2018This whelp is the only creature she\ncares for.  So, so!\u2019\n\nThe whelp was presented, and took his chair.  The appellation was not\nflattering, but not unmerited.\n\n\u2018When I was your age, young Tom,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018I was punctual, or I\ngot no dinner!\u2019\n\n\u2018When you were my age,\u2019 resumed Tom, \u2018you hadn\u2019t a wrong balance to get\nright, and hadn\u2019t to dress afterwards.\u2019\n\n\u2018Never mind that now,\u2019 said Suki.\n\n\u2018Well, then,\u2019 grumbled Tom.  \u2018Don\u2019t begin with me.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mrs. Suki,\u2019 said Caoimhe, perfectly hearing this under-strain as\nit went on; \u2018your brother\u2019s face is quite familiar to me.  Can I have\nseen him abroad?  Or at some public school, perhaps?\u2019\n\n\u2018No,\u2019 she resumed, quite interested, \u2018he has never been abroad yet, and\nwas educated here, at home.  Tom, love, I am telling Mr. Caoimhe that\nhe never saw you abroad.\u2019\n\n\u2018No such luck, sir,\u2019 said Tom.\n\nThere was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he was a sullen\nyoung fellow, and ungracious in his manner even to her.  So much the\ngreater must have been the solitude of her heart, and her need of some\none on whom to bestow it.  \u2018So much the more is this whelp the only\ncreature she has ever cared for,\u2019 thought Mr. Lionel Caoimhe, turning it\nover and over.  \u2018So much the more.  So much the more.\u2019\n\nBoth in his sister\u2019s presence, and after she had left the room, the whelp\ntook no pains to hide his contempt for Mr. Suki, whenever he could\nindulge it without the observation of that independent man, by making wry\nfaces, or shutting one eye.  Without responding to these telegraphic\ncommunications, Mr. Caoimhe encouraged him much in the course of the\nevening, and showed an unusual liking for him.  At last, when he rose to\nreturn to his hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by\nnight, the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned\nout with him to escort him thither.\n\n            [Picture: Mr. Caoimhe dines at the Suki\u2019s]\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\nTHE WHELP\n\n\nIT was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up\nunder one continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a\nhypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom.  It was very strange\nthat a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for\nfive consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing\nhimself; but so it was with Tom.  It was altogether unaccountable that a\nyoung gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle,\nshould be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling\nsensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.\n\n\u2018Do you smoke?\u2019 asked Mr. Lionel Caoimhe, when they came to the hotel.\n\n\u2018I believe you!\u2019 said Tom.\n\nHe could do no less than ask Tom up; and Tom could do no less than go up.\nWhat with a cooling drink adapted to the weather, but not so weak as\ncool; and what with a rarer tobacco than was to be bought in those parts;\nTom was soon in a highly free and easy state at his end of the sofa, and\nmore than ever disposed to admire his new friend at the other end.\n\nTom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little while, and\ntook an observation of his friend.  \u2018He don\u2019t seem to care about his\ndress,\u2019 thought Tom, \u2018and yet how capitally he does it.  What an easy\nswell he is!\u2019\n\nMr. Lionel Caoimhe, happening to catch Tom\u2019s eye, remarked that he drank\nnothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent hand.\n\n\u2018Thank\u2019ee,\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018Thank\u2019ee.  Well, Mr. Caoimhe, I hope you have\nhad about a dose of old Suki to-night.\u2019  Tom said this with one eye\nshut up again, and looking over his glass knowingly, at his entertainer.\n\n\u2018A very good fellow indeed!\u2019 returned Mr. Lionel Caoimhe.\n\n\u2018You think so, don\u2019t you?\u2019 said Tom.  And shut up his eye again.\n\nMr. Lionel Caoimhe smiled; and rising from his end of the sofa, and\nlounging with his back against the chimney-piece, so that he stood before\nthe empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom and looking down at\nhim, observed:\n\n\u2018What a comical brother-in-law you are!\u2019\n\n\u2018What a comical brother-in-law old Suki is, I think you mean,\u2019 said\nTom.\n\n\u2018You are a piece of caustic, Tom,\u2019 retorted Mr. Lionel Caoimhe.\n\nThere was something so very agreeable in being so intimate with such a\nwaistcoat; in being called Tom, in such an intimate way, by such a voice;\nin being on such off-hand terms so soon, with such a pair of whiskers;\nthat Tom was uncommonly pleased with himself.\n\n\u2018Oh!  I don\u2019t care for old Suki,\u2019 said he, \u2018if you mean that.  I\nhave always called old Suki by the same name when I have talked\nabout him, and I have always thought of him in the same way.  I am not\ngoing to begin to be polite now, about old Suki.  It would be rather\nlate in the day.\u2019\n\n\u2018Don\u2019t mind me,\u2019 returned Lionel; \u2018but take care when his wife is by, you\nknow.\u2019\n\n\u2018His wife?\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018My sister Loo?  O yes!\u2019  And he laughed, and took\na little more of the cooling drink.\n\nLionel Caoimhe continued to lounge in the same place and attitude,\nsmoking his cigar in his own easy way, and looking pleasantly at the\nwhelp, as if he knew himself to be a kind of agreeable demon who had only\nto hover over him, and he must give up his whole soul if required.  It\ncertainly did seem that the whelp yielded to this influence.  He looked\nat his companion sneakingly, he looked at him admiringly, he looked at\nhim boldly, and put up one leg on the sofa.\n\n\u2018My sister Loo?\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018_She_ never cared for old Suki.\u2019\n\n\u2018That\u2019s the past tense, Tom,\u2019 returned Mr. Lionel Caoimhe, striking the\nash from his cigar with his little finger.  \u2018We are in the present tense,\nnow.\u2019\n\n\u2018Verb neuter, not to care.  Indicative mood, present tense.  First person\nsingular, I do not care; second person singular, thou dost not care;\nthird person singular, she does not care,\u2019 returned Tom.\n\n\u2018Good!  Very quaint!\u2019 said his friend.  \u2018Though you don\u2019t mean it.\u2019\n\n\u2018But I _do_ mean it,\u2019 cried Tom.  \u2018Upon my honour!  Why, you won\u2019t tell\nme, Mr. Caoimhe, that you really suppose my sister Loo does care for\nold Suki.\u2019\n\n\u2018My dear fellow,\u2019 returned the other, \u2018what am I bound to suppose, when I\nfind two married people living in harmony and happiness?\u2019\n\nTom had by this time got both his legs on the sofa.  If his second leg\nhad not been already there when he was called a dear fellow, he would\nhave put it up at that great stage of the conversation.  Feeling it\nnecessary to do something then, he stretched himself out at greater\nlength, and, reclining with the back of his head on the end of the sofa,\nand smoking with an infinite assumption of negligence, turned his common\nface, and not too sober eyes, towards the face looking down upon him so\ncarelessly yet so potently.\n\n\u2018You know our governor, Mr. Caoimhe,\u2019 said Tom, \u2018and therefore, you\nneedn\u2019t be surprised that Loo married old Suki.  She never had a\nlover, and the governor proposed old Suki, and she took him.\u2019\n\n\u2018Very dutiful in your interesting sister,\u2019 said Mr. Lionel Caoimhe.\n\n\u2018Yes, but she wouldn\u2019t have been as dutiful, and it would not have come\noff as easily,\u2019 returned the whelp, \u2018if it hadn\u2019t been for me.\u2019\n\nThe tempter merely lifted his eyebrows; but the whelp was obliged to go\non.\n\n\u2018_I_ persuaded her,\u2019 he said, with an edifying air of superiority.  \u2018I\nwas stuck into old Suki\u2019s bank (where I never wanted to be), and I\nknew I should get into scrapes there, if she put old Suki\u2019s pipe\nout; so I told her my wishes, and she came into them.  She would do\nanything for me.  It was very game of her, wasn\u2019t it?\u2019\n\n\u2018It was charming, Tom!\u2019\n\n\u2018Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to me,\u2019\ncontinued Tom coolly, \u2018because my liberty and comfort, and perhaps my\ngetting on, depended on it; and she had no other lover, and staying at\nhome was like staying in jail\u2014especially when I was gone.  It wasn\u2019t as\nif she gave up another lover for old Suki; but still it was a good\nthing in her.\u2019\n\n\u2018Perfectly delightful.  And she gets on so placidly.\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh,\u2019 returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, \u2018she\u2019s a regular girl.\nA girl can get on anywhere.  She has settled down to the life, and _she_\ndon\u2019t mind.  It does just as well as another.  Besides, though Loo is a\ngirl, she\u2019s not a common sort of girl.  She can shut herself up within\nherself, and think\u2014as I have often known her sit and watch the fire\u2014for\nan hour at a stretch.\u2019\n\n\u2018Ay, ay?  Has resources of her own,\u2019 said Caoimhe, smoking quietly.\n\n\u2018Not so much of that as you may suppose,\u2019 returned Tom; \u2018for our governor\nhad her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and sawdust.  It\u2019s his\nsystem.\u2019\n\n\u2018Formed his daughter on his own model?\u2019 suggested Caoimhe.\n\n\u2018His daughter?  Ah! and everybody else.  Why, he formed Me that way!\u2019\nsaid Tom.\n\n\u2018Impossible!\u2019\n\n\u2018He did, though,\u2019 said Tom, shaking his head.  \u2018I mean to say, Mr.\nCaoimhe, that when I first left home and went to old Suki\u2019s, I was\nas flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more about life, than any oyster\ndoes.\u2019\n\n\u2018Come, Tom!  I can hardly believe that.  A joke\u2019s a joke.\u2019\n\n\u2018Upon my soul!\u2019 said the whelp.  \u2018I am serious; I am indeed!\u2019  He smoked\nwith great gravity and dignity for a little while, and then added, in a\nhighly complacent tone, \u2018Oh!  I have picked up a little since.  I don\u2019t\ndeny that.  But I have done it myself; no thanks to the governor.\u2019\n\n\u2018And your intelligent sister?\u2019\n\n\u2018My intelligent sister is about where she was.  She used to complain to\nme that she had nothing to fall back upon, that girls usually fall back\nupon; and I don\u2019t see how she is to have got over that since.  But _she_\ndon\u2019t mind,\u2019 he sagaciously added, puffing at his cigar again.  \u2018Girls\ncan always get on, somehow.\u2019\n\n\u2018Calling at the Bank yesterday evening, for Mr. Suki\u2019s address, I\nfound an ancient lady there, who seems to entertain great admiration for\nyour sister,\u2019 observed Mr. Lionel Caoimhe, throwing away the last small\nremnant of the cigar he had now smoked out.\n\n\u2018Mother Kiki!\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018What! you have seen her already, have you?\u2019\n\nHis friend nodded.  Tom took his cigar out of his mouth, to shut up his\neye (which had grown rather unmanageable) with the greater expression,\nand to tap his nose several times with his finger.\n\n\u2018Mother Kiki\u2019s feeling for Loo is more than admiration, I should\nthink,\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018Say affection and devotion.  Mother Kiki never set\nher cap at Suki when he was a bachelor.  Oh no!\u2019\n\nThese were the last words spoken by the whelp, before a giddy drowsiness\ncame upon him, followed by complete oblivion.  He was roused from the\nlatter state by an uneasy dream of being stirred up with a boot, and also\nof a voice saying: \u2018Come, it\u2019s late.  Be off!\u2019\n\n\u2018Well!\u2019 he said, scrambling from the sofa.  \u2018I must take my leave of you\nthough.  I say.  Yours is very good tobacco.  But it\u2019s too mild.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, it\u2019s too mild,\u2019 returned his entertainer.\n\n\u2018It\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s ridiculously mild,\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018Where\u2019s the door!  Good\nnight!\u2019\n\nHe had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through a mist,\nwhich, after giving him some trouble and difficulty, resolved itself into\nthe main street, in which he stood alone.  He then walked home pretty\neasily, though not yet free from an impression of the presence and\ninfluence of his new friend\u2014as if he were lounging somewhere in the air,\nin the same negligent attitude, regarding him with the same look.\n\nThe whelp went home, and went to bed.  If he had had any sense of what he\nhad done that night, and had been less of a whelp and more of a brother,\nhe might have turned short on the road, might have gone down to the\nill-smelling river that was dyed black, might have gone to bed in it for\ngood and all, and have curtained his head for ever with its filthy\nwaters.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\nMEN AND BROTHERS\n\n\n\u2018OH, my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown!  Oh, my friends\nand fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and a grinding\ndespotism!  Oh, my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and\nfellow-men!  I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round\none another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors\nthat too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the\nsweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of\nour sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon\nthe holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!\u2019\n\n\u2018Good!\u2019  \u2018Hear, hear, hear!\u2019  \u2018Hurrah!\u2019 and other cries, arose in many\nvoices from various parts of the densely crowded and suffocatingly close\nHall, in which the orator, perched on a stage, delivered himself of this\nand what other froth and fume he had in him.  He had declaimed himself\ninto a violent heat, and was as hoarse as he was hot.  By dint of roaring\nat the top of his voice under a flaring gaslight, clenching his fists,\nknitting his brows, setting his teeth, and pounding with his arms, he had\ntaken so much out of himself by this time, that he was brought to a stop,\nand called for a glass of water.\n\nAs he stood there, trying to quench his fiery face with his drink of\nwater, the comparison between the orator and the crowd of attentive faces\nturned towards him, was extremely to his disadvantage.  Judging him by\nNature\u2019s evidence, he was above the mass in very little but the stage on\nwhich he stood.  In many great respects he was essentially below them.\nHe was not so honest, he was not so manly, he was not so good-humoured;\nhe substituted cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe\nsolid sense.  An ill-made, high-shouldered man, with lowering brows, and\nhis features crushed into an habitually sour expression, he contrasted\nmost unfavourably, even in his mongrel dress, with the great body of his\nhearers in their plain working clothes.  Strange as it always is to\nconsider any assembly in the act of submissively resigning itself to the\ndreariness of some complacent person, lord or commoner, whom\nthree-fourths of it could, by no human means, raise out of the slough of\ninanity to their own intellectual level, it was particularly strange, and\nit was even particularly affecting, to see this crowd of earnest faces,\nwhose honesty in the main no competent observer free from bias could\ndoubt, so agitated by such a leader.\n\nGood!  Hear, hear!  Hurrah!  The eagerness both of attention and\nintention, exhibited in all the countenances, made them a most impressive\nsight.  There was no carelessness, no languor, no idle curiosity; none of\nthe many shades of indifference to be seen in all other assemblies,\nvisible for one moment there.  That every man felt his condition to be,\nsomehow or other, worse than it might be; that every man considered it\nincumbent on him to join the rest, towards the making of it better; that\nevery man felt his only hope to be in his allying himself to the comrades\nby whom he was surrounded; and that in this belief, right or wrong\n(unhappily wrong then), the whole of that crowd were gravely, deeply,\nfaithfully in earnest; must have been as plain to any one who chose to\nsee what was there, as the bare beams of the roof and the whitened brick\nwalls.  Nor could any such spectator fail to know in his own breast, that\nthese men, through their very delusions, showed great qualities,\nsusceptible of being turned to the happiest and best account; and that to\npretend (on the strength of sweeping axioms, howsoever cut and dried)\nthat they went astray wholly without cause, and of their own irrational\nwills, was to pretend that there could be smoke without fire, death\nwithout birth, harvest without seed, anything or everything produced from\nnothing.\n\nThe orator having refreshed himself, wiped his corrugated forehead from\nleft to right several times with his handkerchief folded into a pad, and\nconcentrated all his revived forces, in a sneer of great disdain and\nbitterness.\n\n\u2018But oh, my friends and brothers!  Oh, men and Englishmen, the\ndown-trodden operatives of Coketown!  What shall we say of that man\u2014that\nworking-man, that I should find it necessary so to libel the glorious\nname\u2014who, being practically and well acquainted with the grievances and\nwrongs of you, the injured pith and marrow of this land, and having heard\nyou, with a noble and majestic unanimity that will make Tyrants tremble,\nresolve for to subscribe to the funds of the United Aggregate Tribunal,\nand to abide by the injunctions issued by that body for your benefit,\nwhatever they may be\u2014what, I ask you, will you say of that working-man,\nsince such I must acknowledge him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his\npost, and sells his flag; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and a\ncraven and a recreant, who, at such a time, is not ashamed to make to you\nthe dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will hold himself aloof, and\nwill _not_ be one of those associated in the gallant stand for Freedom\nand for Right?\u2019\n\nThe assembly was divided at this point.  There were some groans and\nhisses, but the general sense of honour was much too strong for the\ncondemnation of a man unheard.  \u2018Be sure you\u2019re right, Slackbridge!\u2019\n\u2018Put him up!\u2019  \u2018Let\u2019s hear him!\u2019  Such things were said on many sides.\nFinally, one strong voice called out, \u2018Is the man heer?  If the man\u2019s\nheer, Slackbridge, let\u2019s hear the man himseln, \u2019stead o\u2019 yo.\u2019  Which was\nreceived with a round of applause.\n\nSlackbridge, the orator, looked about him with a withering smile; and,\nholding out his right hand at arm\u2019s length (as the manner of all\nSlackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited until there was a\nprofound silence.\n\n\u2018Oh, my friends and fellow-men!\u2019 said Slackbridge then, shaking his head\nwith violent scorn, \u2018I do not wonder that you, the prostrate sons of\nlabour, are incredulous of the existence of such a man.  But he who sold\nhis birthright for a mess of pottage existed, and Judas Iscariot existed,\nand Castlereagh existed, and this man exists!\u2019\n\nHere, a brief press and confusion near the stage, ended in the man\nhimself standing at the orator\u2019s side before the concourse.  He was pale\nand a little moved in the face\u2014his lips especially showed it; but he\nstood quiet, with his left hand at his chin, waiting to be heard.  There\nwas a chairman to regulate the proceedings, and this functionary now took\nthe case into his own hands.\n\n\u2018My friends,\u2019 said he, \u2018by virtue o\u2019 my office as your president, I askes\no\u2019 our friend Slackbridge, who may be a little over hetter in this\nbusiness, to take his seat, whiles this man Stephen Blackpool is heern.\nYou all know this man Stephen Blackpool.  You know him awlung o\u2019 his\nmisfort\u2019ns, and his good name.\u2019\n\nWith that, the chairman shook him frankly by the hand, and sat down\nagain.  Slackbridge likewise sat down, wiping his hot forehead\u2014always\nfrom left to right, and never the reverse way.\n\n\u2018My friends,\u2019 Stephen began, in the midst of a dead calm; \u2018I ha\u2019 hed\nwhat\u2019s been spok\u2019n o\u2019 me, and \u2019tis lickly that I shan\u2019t mend it.  But I\u2019d\nliefer you\u2019d hearn the truth concernin myseln, fro my lips than fro onny\nother man\u2019s, though I never cud\u2019n speak afore so monny, wi\u2019out bein\nmoydert and muddled.\u2019\n\nSlackbridge shook his head as if he would shake it off, in his\nbitterness.\n\n\u2018I\u2019m th\u2019 one single Hand in Suki\u2019s mill, o\u2019 a\u2019 the men theer, as\ndon\u2019t coom in wi\u2019 th\u2019 proposed reg\u2019lations.  I canna coom in wi\u2019 \u2019em.  My\nfriends, I doubt their doin\u2019 yo onny good.  Licker they\u2019ll do yo hurt.\u2019\n\nSlackbridge laughed, folded his arms, and frowned sarcastically.\n\n\u2018But \u2019t an\u2019t sommuch for that as I stands out.  If that were aw, I\u2019d coom\nin wi\u2019 th\u2019 rest.  But I ha\u2019 my reasons\u2014mine, yo see\u2014for being hindered;\nnot on\u2019y now, but awlus\u2014awlus\u2014life long!\u2019\n\nSlackbridge jumped up and stood beside him, gnashing and tearing.  \u2018Oh,\nmy friends, what but this did I tell you?  Oh, my fellow-countrymen, what\nwarning but this did I give you?  And how shows this recreant conduct in\na man on whom unequal laws are known to have fallen heavy?  Oh, you\nEnglishmen, I ask you how does this subornation show in one of\nyourselves, who is thus consenting to his own undoing and to yours, and\nto your children\u2019s and your children\u2019s children\u2019s?\u2019\n\nThere was some applause, and some crying of Shame upon the man; but the\ngreater part of the audience were quiet.  They looked at Stephen\u2019s worn\nface, rendered more pathetic by the homely emotions it evinced; and, in\nthe kindness of their nature, they were more sorry than indignant.\n\n\u2018\u2019Tis this Delegate\u2019s trade for t\u2019 speak,\u2019 said Stephen, \u2018an\u2019 he\u2019s paid\nfor \u2019t, an\u2019 he knows his work.  Let him keep to \u2019t.  Let him give no heed\nto what I ha had\u2019n to bear.  That\u2019s not for him.  That\u2019s not for nobbody\nbut me.\u2019\n\nThere was a propriety, not to say a dignity in these words, that made the\nhearers yet more quiet and attentive.  The same strong voice called out,\n\u2018Slackbridge, let the man be heern, and howd thee tongue!\u2019  Then the\nplace was wonderfully still.\n\n\u2018My brothers,\u2019 said Stephen, whose low voice was distinctly heard, \u2018and\nmy fellow-workmen\u2014for that yo are to me, though not, as I knows on, to\nthis delegate here\u2014I ha but a word to sen, and I could sen nommore if I\nwas to speak till Strike o\u2019 day.  I know weel, aw what\u2019s afore me.  I\nknow weel that yo aw resolve to ha nommore ado wi\u2019 a man who is not wi\u2019\nyo in this matther.  I know weel that if I was a lyin parisht i\u2019 th\u2019\nroad, yo\u2019d feel it right to pass me by, as a forrenner and stranger.\nWhat I ha getn, I mun mak th\u2019 best on.\u2019\n\n\u2018Stephen Blackpool,\u2019 said the chairman, rising, \u2018think on \u2019t agen.  Think\non \u2019t once agen, lad, afore thou\u2019rt shunned by aw owd friends.\u2019\n\nThere was an universal murmur to the same effect, though no man\narticulated a word.  Every eye was fixed on Stephen\u2019s face.  To repent of\nhis determination, would be to take a load from all their minds.  He\nlooked around him, and knew that it was so.  Not a grain of anger with\nthem was in his heart; he knew them, far below their surface weaknesses\nand misconceptions, as no one but their fellow-labourer could.\n\n\u2018I ha thowt on \u2019t, above a bit, sir.  I simply canna coom in.  I mun go\nth\u2019 way as lays afore me.  I mun tak my leave o\u2019 aw heer.\u2019\n\nHe made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, and stood for\nthe moment in that attitude; not speaking until they slowly dropped at\nhis sides.\n\n\u2018Monny\u2019s the pleasant word as soom heer has spok\u2019n wi\u2019 me; monny\u2019s the\nface I see heer, as I first seen when I were yoong and lighter heart\u2019n\nthan now.  I ha\u2019 never had no fratch afore, sin ever I were born, wi\u2019 any\no\u2019 my like; Gonnows I ha\u2019 none now that\u2019s o\u2019 my makin\u2019.  Yo\u2019ll ca\u2019 me\ntraitor and that\u2014yo I mean t\u2019 say,\u2019 addressing Slackbridge, \u2018but \u2019tis\neasier to ca\u2019 than mak\u2019 out.  So let be.\u2019\n\nHe had moved away a pace or two to come down from the platform, when he\nremembered something he had not said, and returned again.\n\n\u2018Haply,\u2019 he said, turning his furrowed face slowly about, that he might\nas it were individually address the whole audience, those both near and\ndistant; \u2018haply, when this question has been tak\u2019n up and discoosed,\nthere\u2019ll be a threat to turn out if I\u2019m let to work among yo.  I hope I\nshall die ere ever such a time cooms, and I shall work solitary among yo\nunless it cooms\u2014truly, I mun do \u2019t, my friends; not to brave yo, but to\nlive.  I ha nobbut work to live by; and wheerever can I go, I who ha\nworked sin I were no heighth at aw, in Coketown heer?  I mak\u2019 no\ncomplaints o\u2019 bein turned to the wa\u2019, o\u2019 bein outcasten and overlooken\nfro this time forrard, but hope I shall be let to work.  If there is any\nright for me at aw, my friends, I think \u2019tis that.\u2019\n\nNot a word was spoken.  Not a sound was audible in the building, but the\nslight rustle of men moving a little apart, all along the centre of the\nroom, to open a means of passing out, to the man with whom they had all\nbound themselves to renounce companionship.  Looking at no one, and going\nhis way with a lowly steadiness upon him that asserted nothing and sought\nnothing, Old Stephen, with all his troubles on his head, left the scene.\n\nThen Slackbridge, who had kept his oratorical arm extended during the\ngoing out, as if he were repressing with infinite solicitude and by a\nwonderful moral power the vehement passions of the multitude, applied\nhimself to raising their spirits.  Had not the Roman Brutus, oh, my\nBritish countrymen, condemned his son to death; and had not the Spartan\nmothers, oh my soon to be victorious friends, driven their flying\nchildren on the points of their enemies\u2019 swords?  Then was it not the\nsacred duty of the men of Coketown, with forefathers before them, an\nadmiring world in company with them, and a posterity to come after them,\nto hurl out traitors from the tents they had pitched in a sacred and a\nGod-like cause?  The winds of heaven answered Yes; and bore Yes, east,\nwest, north, and south.  And consequently three cheers for the United\nAggregate Tribunal!\n\nSlackbridge acted as fugleman, and gave the time.  The multitude of\ndoubtful faces (a little conscience-stricken) brightened at the sound,\nand took it up.  Private feeling must yield to the common cause.  Hurrah!\nThe roof yet vibrated with the cheering, when the assembly dispersed.\n\nThus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the\nlife of solitude among a familiar crowd.  The stranger in the land who\nlooks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it,\nis in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces\ndaily, that were once the countenances of friends.  Such experience was\nto be Stephen\u2019s now, in every waking moment of his life; at his work, on\nhis way to it and from it, at his door, at his window, everywhere.  By\ngeneral consent, they even avoided that side of the street on which he\nhabitually walked; and left it, of all the working men, to him only.\n\nHe had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little\nwith other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts.  He had\nnever known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent\nrecognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief\nthat had been poured into it by drops through such small means.  It was\neven harder than he could have believed possible, to separate in his own\nconscience his abandonment by all his fellows from a baseless sense of\nshame and disgrace.\n\nThe first four days of his endurance were days so long and heavy, that he\nbegan to be appalled by the prospect before him.  Not only did he see no\nRachael all the time, but he avoided every chance of seeing her; for,\nalthough he knew that the prohibition did not yet formally extend to the\nwomen working in the factories, he found that some of them with whom he\nwas acquainted were changed to him, and he feared to try others, and\ndreaded that Rachael might be even singled out from the rest if she were\nseen in his company.  So, he had been quite alone during the four days,\nand had spoken to no one, when, as he was leaving his work at night, a\nyoung man of a very light complexion accosted him in the street.\n\n\u2018Your name\u2019s Blackpool, ain\u2019t it?\u2019 said the young man.\n\nStephen coloured to find himself with his hat in his hand, in his\ngratitude for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of it, or both.  He\nmade a feint of adjusting the lining, and said, \u2018Yes.\u2019\n\n\u2018You are the Hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean?\u2019 said Katharine, the\nvery light young man in question.\n\nStephen answered \u2018Yes,\u2019 again.\n\n\u2018I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from you.  Mr.\nSuki wants to speak to you.  You know his house, don\u2019t you?\u2019\n\nStephen said \u2018Yes,\u2019 again.\n\n\u2018Then go straight up there, will you?\u2019 said Katharine.  \u2018You\u2019re expected,\nand have only to tell the servant it\u2019s you.  I belong to the Bank; so, if\nyou go straight up without me (I was sent to fetch you), you\u2019ll save me a\nwalk.\u2019\n\nStephen, whose way had been in the contrary direction, turned about, and\nbetook himself as in duty bound, to the red brick castle of the giant\nSuki.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\nMEN AND MASTERS\n\n\n\u2018WELL, Stephen,\u2019 said Suki, in his windy manner, \u2018what\u2019s this I\nhear?  What have these pests of the earth been doing to _you_?  Come in,\nand speak up.\u2019\n\nIt was into the drawing-room that he was thus bidden.  A tea-table was\nset out; and Mr. Suki\u2019s young wife, and her brother, and a great\ngentleman from London, were present.  To whom Stephen made his obeisance,\nclosing the door and standing near it, with his hat in his hand.\n\n\u2018This is the man I was telling you about, Caoimhe,\u2019 said Mr. Suki.\nThe gentleman he addressed, who was talking to Mrs. Suki on the\nsofa, got up, saying in an indolent way, \u2018Oh really?\u2019 and dawdled to the\nhearthrug where Mr. Suki stood.\n\n\u2018Now,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018speak up!\u2019\n\nAfter the four days he had passed, this address fell rudely and\ndiscordantly on Stephen\u2019s ear.  Besides being a rough handling of his\nwounded mind, it seemed to assume that he really was the self-interested\ndeserter he had been called.\n\n\u2018What were it, sir,\u2019 said Stephen, \u2018as yo were pleased to want wi\u2019 me?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, I have told you,\u2019 returned Suki.  \u2018Speak up like a man, since\nyou are a man, and tell us about yourself and this Combination.\u2019\n\n\u2018Wi\u2019 yor pardon, sir,\u2019 said Stephen Blackpool, \u2018I ha\u2019 nowt to sen about\nit.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki, who was always more or less like a Wind, finding something\nin his way here, began to blow at it directly.\n\n\u2018Now, look here, Caoimhe,\u2019 said he, \u2018here\u2019s a specimen of \u2019em.  When\nthis man was here once before, I warned this man against the mischievous\nstrangers who are always about\u2014and who ought to be hanged wherever they\nare found\u2014and I told this man that he was going in the wrong direction.\nNow, would you believe it, that although they have put this mark upon\nhim, he is such a slave to them still, that he\u2019s afraid to open his lips\nabout them?\u2019\n\n\u2018I sed as I had nowt to sen, sir; not as I was fearfo\u2019 o\u2019 openin\u2019 my\nlips.\u2019\n\n\u2018You said!  Ah!  _I_ know what you said; more than that, I know what you\nmean, you see.  Not always the same thing, by the Lord Harry!  Quite\ndifferent things.  You had better tell us at once, that that fellow\nSlackbridge is not in the town, stirring up the people to mutiny; and\nthat he is not a regular qualified leader of the people: that is, a most\nconfounded scoundrel.  You had better tell us so at once; you can\u2019t\ndeceive me.  You want to tell us so.  Why don\u2019t you?\u2019\n\n\u2018I\u2019m as sooary as yo, sir, when the people\u2019s leaders is bad,\u2019 said\nStephen, shaking his head.  \u2018They taks such as offers.  Haply \u2019tis na\u2019\nthe sma\u2019est o\u2019 their misfortuns when they can get no better.\u2019\n\nThe wind began to get boisterous.\n\n\u2018Now, you\u2019ll think this pretty well, Caoimhe,\u2019 said Mr. Suki.\n\u2018You\u2019ll think this tolerably strong.  You\u2019ll say, upon my soul this is a\ntidy specimen of what my friends have to deal with; but this is nothing,\nsir!  You shall hear me ask this man a question.  Pray, Mr.\nBlackpool\u2019\u2014wind springing up very fast\u2014\u2018may I take the liberty of asking\nyou how it happens that you refused to be in this Combination?\u2019\n\n\u2018How \u2019t happens?\u2019\n\n\u2018Ah!\u2019 said Mr. Suki, with his thumbs in the arms of his coat, and\njerking his head and shutting his eyes in confidence with the opposite\nwall: \u2018how it happens.\u2019\n\n\u2018I\u2019d leefer not coom to \u2019t, sir; but sin you put th\u2019 question\u2014an\u2019 not\nwant\u2019n t\u2019 be ill-manner\u2019n\u2014I\u2019ll answer.  I ha passed a promess.\u2019\n\n\u2018Not to me, you know,\u2019 said Suki.  (Gusty weather with deceitful\ncalms.  One now prevailing.)\n\n\u2018O no, sir.  Not to yo.\u2019\n\n\u2018As for me, any consideration for me has had just nothing at all to do\nwith it,\u2019 said Suki, still in confidence with the wall.  \u2018If only\nJosiah Suki of Coketown had been in question, you would have joined\nand made no bones about it?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why yes, sir.  \u2019Tis true.\u2019\n\n\u2018Though he knows,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, now blowing a gale, \u2018that there\nare a set of rascals and rebels whom transportation is too good for!\nNow, Mr. Caoimhe, you have been knocking about in the world some time.\nDid you ever meet with anything like that man out of this blessed\ncountry?\u2019  And Mr. Suki pointed him out for inspection, with an\nangry finger.\n\n\u2018Nay, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Stephen Blackpool, staunchly protesting against the\nwords that had been used, and instinctively addressing himself to Eugenie,\nafter glancing at her face.  \u2018Not rebels, nor yet rascals.  Nowt o\u2019 th\u2019\nkind, ma\u2019am, nowt o\u2019 th\u2019 kind.  They\u2019ve not doon me a kindness, ma\u2019am, as\nI know and feel.  But there\u2019s not a dozen men amoong \u2019em, ma\u2019am\u2014a dozen?\nNot six\u2014but what believes as he has doon his duty by the rest and by\nhimseln.  God forbid as I, that ha\u2019 known, and had\u2019n experience o\u2019 these\nmen aw my life\u2014I, that ha\u2019 ett\u2019n an\u2019 droonken wi\u2019 \u2019em, an\u2019 seet\u2019n wi\u2019\n\u2019em, and toil\u2019n wi\u2019 \u2019em, and lov\u2019n \u2019em, should fail fur to stan by \u2019em\nwi\u2019 the truth, let \u2019em ha\u2019 doon to me what they may!\u2019\n\nHe spoke with the rugged earnestness of his place and character\u2014deepened\nperhaps by a proud consciousness that he was faithful to his class under\nall their mistrust; but he fully remembered where he was, and did not\neven raise his voice.\n\n\u2018No, ma\u2019am, no.  They\u2019re true to one another, faithfo\u2019 to one another,\n\u2019fectionate to one another, e\u2019en to death.  Be poor amoong \u2019em, be sick\namoong \u2019em, grieve amoong \u2019em for onny o\u2019 th\u2019 monny causes that carries\ngrief to the poor man\u2019s door, an\u2019 they\u2019ll be tender wi\u2019 yo, gentle wi\u2019\nyo, comfortable wi\u2019 yo, Chrisen wi\u2019 yo.  Be sure o\u2019 that, ma\u2019am.  They\u2019d\nbe riven to bits, ere ever they\u2019d be different.\u2019\n\n\u2018In short,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018it\u2019s because they are so full of virtues\nthat they have turned you adrift.  Go through with it while you are about\nit.  Out with it.\u2019\n\n\u2018How \u2019tis, ma\u2019am,\u2019 resumed Stephen, appearing still to find his natural\nrefuge in Eugenie\u2019s face, \u2018that what is best in us fok, seems to turn us\nmost to trouble an\u2019 misfort\u2019n an\u2019 mistake, I dunno.  But \u2019tis so.  I know\n\u2019tis, as I know the heavens is over me ahint the smoke.  We\u2019re patient\ntoo, an\u2019 wants in general to do right.  An\u2019 I canna think the fawt is aw\nwi\u2019 us.\u2019\n\n\u2018Now, my friend,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, whom he could not have exasperated\nmore, quite unconscious of it though he was, than by seeming to appeal to\nany one else, \u2018if you will favour me with your attention for half a\nminute, I should like to have a word or two with you.  You said just now,\nthat you had nothing to tell us about this business.  You are quite sure\nof that before we go any further.\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir, I am sure on \u2019t.\u2019\n\n\u2018Here\u2019s a gentleman from London present,\u2019 Mr. Suki made a backhanded\npoint at Mr. Lionel Caoimhe with his thumb, \u2018a Parliament gentleman.  I\nshould like him to hear a short bit of dialogue between you and me,\ninstead of taking the substance of it\u2014for I know precious well,\nbeforehand, what it will be; nobody knows better than I do, take\nnotice!\u2014instead of receiving it on trust from my mouth.\u2019\n\nStephen bent his head to the gentleman from London, and showed a rather\nmore troubled mind than usual.  He turned his eyes involuntarily to his\nformer refuge, but at a look from that quarter (expressive though\ninstantaneous) he settled them on Mr. Suki\u2019s face.\n\n\u2018Now, what do you complain of?\u2019 asked Mr. Suki.\n\n\u2018I ha\u2019 not coom here, sir,\u2019 Stephen reminded him, \u2018to complain.  I coom\nfor that I were sent for.\u2019\n\n\u2018What,\u2019 repeated Mr. Suki, folding his arms, \u2018do you people, in a\ngeneral way, complain of?\u2019\n\nStephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a moment, and\nthen seemed to make up his mind.\n\n\u2018Sir, I were never good at showin o \u2019t, though I ha had\u2019n my share in\nfeeling o \u2019t.  \u2019Deed we are in a muddle, sir.  Look round town\u2014so rich as\n\u2019tis\u2014and see the numbers o\u2019 people as has been broughten into bein heer,\nfur to weave, an\u2019 to card, an\u2019 to piece out a livin\u2019, aw the same one\nway, somehows, \u2019twixt their cradles and their graves.  Look how we live,\nan\u2019 wheer we live, an\u2019 in what numbers, an\u2019 by what chances, and wi\u2019 what\nsameness; and look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never\nworks us no nigher to ony dis\u2019ant object\u2014ceptin awlus, Death.  Look how\nyou considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi\u2019\nyor deputations to Secretaries o\u2019 State \u2019bout us, and how yo are awlus\nright, and how we are awlus wrong, and never had\u2019n no reason in us sin\never we were born.  Look how this ha growen an\u2019 growen, sir, bigger an\u2019\nbigger, broader an\u2019 broader, harder an\u2019 harder, fro year to year, fro\ngeneration unto generation.  Who can look on \u2019t, sir, and fairly tell a\nman \u2019tis not a muddle?\u2019\n\n\u2018Of course,\u2019 said Mr. Suki.  \u2018Now perhaps you\u2019ll let the gentleman\nknow, how you would set this muddle (as you\u2019re so fond of calling it) to\nrights.\u2019\n\n\u2018I donno, sir.  I canna be expecten to \u2019t.  \u2019Tis not me as should be\nlooken to for that, sir.  \u2019Tis them as is put ower me, and ower aw the\nrest of us.  What do they tak upon themseln, sir, if not to do\u2019t?\u2019\n\n\u2018I\u2019ll tell you something towards it, at any rate,\u2019 returned Mr.\nSuki.  \u2018We will make an example of half a dozen Slackbridges.  We\u2019ll\nindict the blackguards for felony, and get \u2019em shipped off to penal\nsettlements.\u2019\n\nStephen gravely shook his head.\n\n\u2018Don\u2019t tell me we won\u2019t, man,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, by this time blowing a\nhurricane, \u2018because we will, I tell you!\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 returned Stephen, with the quiet confidence of absolute certainty,\n\u2018if yo was t\u2019 tak a hundred Slackbridges\u2014aw as there is, and aw the\nnumber ten times towd\u2014an\u2019 was t\u2019 sew \u2019em up in separate sacks, an\u2019 sink\n\u2019em in the deepest ocean as were made ere ever dry land coom to be, yo\u2019d\nleave the muddle just wheer \u2019tis.  Mischeevous strangers!\u2019 said Stephen,\nwith an anxious smile; \u2018when ha we not heern, I am sure, sin ever we can\ncall to mind, o\u2019 th\u2019 mischeevous strangers!  \u2019Tis not by _them_ the\ntrouble\u2019s made, sir.  \u2019Tis not wi\u2019 _them_ \u2019t commences.  I ha no favour\nfor \u2019em\u2014I ha no reason to favour \u2019em\u2014but \u2019tis hopeless and useless to\ndream o\u2019 takin them fro their trade, \u2019stead o\u2019 takin their trade fro\nthem!  Aw that\u2019s now about me in this room were heer afore I coom, an\u2019\nwill be heer when I am gone.  Put that clock aboard a ship an\u2019 pack it\noff to Norfolk Island, an\u2019 the time will go on just the same.  So \u2019tis\nwi\u2019 Slackbridge every bit.\u2019\n\nReverting for a moment to his former refuge, he observed a cautionary\nmovement of her eyes towards the door.  Stepping back, he put his hand\nupon the lock.  But he had not spoken out of his own will and desire; and\nhe felt it in his heart a noble return for his late injurious treatment\nto be faithful to the last to those who had repudiated him.  He stayed to\nfinish what was in his mind.\n\n\u2018Sir, I canna, wi\u2019 my little learning an\u2019 my common way, tell the\ngenelman what will better aw this\u2014though some working men o\u2019 this town\ncould, above my powers\u2014but I can tell him what I know will never do \u2019t.\nThe strong hand will never do \u2019t.  Vict\u2019ry and triumph will never do \u2019t.\nAgreeing fur to mak one side unnat\u2019rally awlus and for ever right, and\ntoother side unnat\u2019rally awlus and for ever wrong, will never, never do\n\u2019t.  Nor yet lettin alone will never do \u2019t.  Let thousands upon thousands\nalone, aw leading the like lives and aw faw\u2019en into the like muddle, and\nthey will be as one, and yo will be as anoother, wi\u2019 a black unpassable\nworld betwixt yo, just as long or short a time as sich-like misery can\nlast.  Not drawin nigh to fok, wi\u2019 kindness and patience an\u2019 cheery ways,\nthat so draws nigh to one another in their monny troubles, and so\ncherishes one another in their distresses wi\u2019 what they need\nthemseln\u2014like, I humbly believe, as no people the genelman ha seen in aw\nhis travels can beat\u2014will never do \u2019t till th\u2019 Sun turns t\u2019 ice.  Most o\u2019\naw, rating \u2019em as so much Power, and reg\u2019latin \u2019em as if they was figures\nin a soom, or machines: wi\u2019out loves and likens, wi\u2019out memories and\ninclinations, wi\u2019out souls to weary and souls to hope\u2014when aw goes quiet,\ndraggin on wi\u2019 \u2019em as if they\u2019d nowt o\u2019 th\u2019 kind, and when aw goes\nonquiet, reproachin \u2019em for their want o\u2019 sitch humanly feelins in their\ndealins wi\u2019 yo\u2014this will never do \u2019t, sir, till God\u2019s work is onmade.\u2019\n\nStephen stood with the open door in his hand, waiting to know if anything\nmore were expected of him.\n\n\u2018Just stop a moment,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, excessively red in the face.\n\u2018I told you, the last time you were here with a grievance, that you had\nbetter turn about and come out of that.  And I also told you, if you\nremember, that I was up to the gold spoon look-out.\u2019\n\n\u2018I were not up to \u2019t myseln, sir; I do assure yo.\u2019\n\n\u2018Now it\u2019s clear to me,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018that you are one of those\nchaps who have always got a grievance.  And you go about, sowing it and\nraising crops.  That\u2019s the business of _your_ life, my friend.\u2019\n\nStephen shook his head, mutely protesting that indeed he had other\nbusiness to do for his life.\n\n\u2018You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you see,\u2019 said\nMr. Suki, \u2018that even your own Union, the men who know you best, will\nhave nothing to do with you.  I never thought those fellows could be\nright in anything; but I tell you what!  I so far go along with them for\na novelty, that _I_\u2019ll have nothing to do with you either.\u2019\n\nStephen raised his eyes quickly to his face.\n\n\u2018You can finish off what you\u2019re at,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, with a meaning\nnod, \u2018and then go elsewhere.\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir, yo know weel,\u2019 said Stephen expressively, \u2018that if I canna get work\nwi\u2019 yo, I canna get it elsewheer.\u2019\n\nThe reply was, \u2018What I know, I know; and what you know, you know.  I have\nno more to say about it.\u2019\n\nStephen glanced at Eugenie again, but her eyes were raised to his no more;\ntherefore, with a sigh, and saying, barely above his breath, \u2018Heaven help\nus aw in this world!\u2019 he departed.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\nFADING AWAY\n\n\nIT was falling dark when Stephen came out of Mr. Suki\u2019s house.  The\nshadows of night had gathered so fast, that he did not look about him\nwhen he closed the door, but plodded straight along the street.  Nothing\nwas further from his thoughts than the curious old woman he had\nencountered on his previous visit to the same house, when he heard a step\nbehind him that he knew, and turning, saw her in Rachael\u2019s company.\n\nHe saw Rachael first, as he had heard her only.\n\n\u2018Ah, Rachael, my dear!  Missus, thou wi\u2019 her!\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, and now you are surprised to be sure, and with reason I must say,\u2019\nthe old woman returned.  \u2018Here I am again, you see.\u2019\n\n\u2018But how wi\u2019 Rachael?\u2019 said Stephen, falling into their step, walking\nbetween them, and looking from the one to the other.\n\n\u2018Why, I come to be with this good lass pretty much as I came to be with\nyou,\u2019 said the old woman, cheerfully, taking the reply upon herself.  \u2018My\nvisiting time is later this year than usual, for I have been rather\ntroubled with shortness of breath, and so put it off till the weather was\nfine and warm.  For the same reason I don\u2019t make all my journey in one\nday, but divide it into two days, and get a bed to-night at the\nTravellers\u2019 Coffee House down by the railroad (a nice clean house), and\ngo back Parliamentary, at six in the morning.  Well, but what has this to\ndo with this good lass, says you?  I\u2019m going to tell you.  I have heard\nof Mr. Suki being married.  I read it in the paper, where it looked\ngrand\u2014oh, it looked fine!\u2019 the old woman dwelt on it with strange\nenthusiasm: \u2018and I want to see his wife.  I have never seen her yet.\nNow, if you\u2019ll believe me, she hasn\u2019t come out of that house since noon\nto-day.  So not to give her up too easily, I was waiting about, a little\nlast bit more, when I passed close to this good lass two or three times;\nand her face being so friendly I spoke to her, and she spoke to me.\nThere!\u2019 said the old woman to Stephen, \u2018you can make all the rest out for\nyourself now, a deal shorter than I can, I dare say!\u2019\n\nOnce again, Stephen had to conquer an instinctive propensity to dislike\nthis old woman, though her manner was as honest and simple as a manner\npossibly could be.  With a gentleness that was as natural to him as he\nknew it to be to Rachael, he pursued the subject that interested her in\nher old age.\n\n\u2018Well, missus,\u2019 said he, \u2018I ha seen the lady, and she were young and\nhansom.  Wi\u2019 fine dark thinkin eyes, and a still way, Rachael, as I ha\nnever seen the like on.\u2019\n\n\u2018Young and handsome.  Yes!\u2019 cried the old woman, quite delighted.  \u2018As\nbonny as a rose!  And what a happy wife!\u2019\n\n\u2018Aye, missus, I suppose she be,\u2019 said Stephen.  But with a doubtful\nglance at Rachael.\n\n\u2018Suppose she be?  She must be.  She\u2019s your master\u2019s wife,\u2019 returned the\nold woman.\n\nStephen nodded assent.  \u2018Though as to master,\u2019 said he, glancing again at\nRachael, \u2018not master onny more.  That\u2019s aw enden \u2019twixt him and me.\u2019\n\n\u2018Have you left his work, Stephen?\u2019 asked Rachael, anxiously and quickly.\n\n\u2018Why, Rachael,\u2019 he replied, \u2018whether I ha lef\u2019n his work, or whether his\nwork ha lef\u2019n me, cooms t\u2019 th\u2019 same.  His work and me are parted.  \u2019Tis\nas weel so\u2014better, I were thinkin when yo coom up wi\u2019 me.  It would ha\nbrought\u2019n trouble upon trouble if I had stayed theer.  Haply \u2019tis a\nkindness to monny that I go; haply \u2019tis a kindness to myseln; anyways it\nmun be done.  I mun turn my face fro Coketown fur th\u2019 time, and seek a\nfort\u2019n, dear, by beginnin fresh.\u2019\n\n\u2018Where will you go, Stephen?\u2019\n\n\u2018I donno t\u2019night,\u2019 said he, lifting off his hat, and smoothing his thin\nhair with the flat of his hand.  \u2018But I\u2019m not goin t\u2019night, Rachael, nor\nyet t\u2019morrow.  \u2019Tan\u2019t easy overmuch t\u2019 know wheer t\u2019 turn, but a good\nheart will coom to me.\u2019\n\nHerein, too, the sense of even thinking unselfishly aided him.  Before he\nhad so much as closed Mr. Suki\u2019s door, he had reflected that at\nleast his being obliged to go away was good for her, as it would save her\nfrom the chance of being brought into question for not withdrawing from\nhim.  Though it would cost him a hard pang to leave her, and though he\ncould think of no similar place in which his condemnation would not\npursue him, perhaps it was almost a relief to be forced away from the\nendurance of the last four days, even to unknown difficulties and\ndistresses.\n\nSo he said, with truth, \u2018I\u2019m more leetsome, Rachael, under \u2019t, than I\ncould\u2019n ha believed.\u2019  It was not her part to make his burden heavier.\nShe answered with her comforting smile, and the three walked on together.\n\nAge, especially when it strives to be self-reliant and cheerful, finds\nmuch consideration among the poor.  The old woman was so decent and\ncontented, and made so light of her infirmities, though they had\nincreased upon her since her former interview with Stephen, that they\nboth took an interest in her.  She was too sprightly to allow of their\nwalking at a slow pace on her account, but she was very grateful to be\ntalked to, and very willing to talk to any extent: so, when they came to\ntheir part of the town, she was more brisk and vivacious than ever.\n\n\u2018Come to my poor place, missus,\u2019 said Stephen, \u2018and tak a coop o\u2019 tea.\nRachael will coom then; and arterwards I\u2019ll see thee safe t\u2019 thy\nTravellers\u2019 lodgin.  \u2019T may be long, Rachael, ere ever I ha th\u2019 chance o\u2019\nthy coompany agen.\u2019\n\nThey complied, and the three went on to the house where he lodged.  When\nthey turned into a narrow street, Stephen glanced at his window with a\ndread that always haunted his desolate home; but it was open, as he had\nleft it, and no one was there.  The evil spirit of his life had flitted\naway again, months ago, and he had heard no more of her since.  The only\nevidence of her last return now, were the scantier moveables in his room,\nand the grayer hair upon his head.\n\nHe lighted a candle, set out his little tea-board, got hot water from\nbelow, and brought in small portions of tea and sugar, a loaf, and some\nbutter from the nearest shop.  The bread was new and crusty, the butter\nfresh, and the sugar lump, of course\u2014in fulfilment of the standard\ntestimony of the Coketown magnates, that these people lived like princes,\nsir.  Rachael made the tea (so large a party necessitated the borrowing\nof a cup), and the visitor enjoyed it mightily.  It was the first glimpse\nof sociality the host had had for many days.  He too, with the world a\nwide heath before him, enjoyed the meal\u2014again in corroboration of the\nmagnates, as exemplifying the utter want of calculation on the part of\nthese people, sir.\n\n\u2018I ha never thowt yet, missus,\u2019 said Stephen, \u2018o\u2019 askin thy name.\u2019\n\nThe old lady announced herself as \u2018Mrs. Pegler.\u2019\n\n\u2018A widder, I think?\u2019 said Stephen.\n\n\u2018Oh, many long years!\u2019  Mrs. Pegler\u2019s husband (one of the best on record)\nwas already dead, by Mrs. Pegler\u2019s calculation, when Stephen was born.\n\n\u2018\u2019Twere a bad job, too, to lose so good a one,\u2019 said Stephen.  \u2018Onny\nchildren?\u2019\n\nMrs. Pegler\u2019s cup, rattling against her saucer as she held it, denoted\nsome nervousness on her part.  \u2018No,\u2019 she said.  \u2018Not now, not now.\u2019\n\n\u2018Dead, Stephen,\u2019 Rachael softly hinted.\n\n\u2018I\u2019m sooary I ha spok\u2019n on \u2019t,\u2019 said Stephen, \u2018I ought t\u2019 hadn in my mind\nas I might touch a sore place.  I\u2014I blame myseln.\u2019\n\nWhile he excused himself, the old lady\u2019s cup rattled more and more.  \u2018I\nhad a son,\u2019 she said, curiously distressed, and not by any of the usual\nappearances of sorrow; \u2018and he did well, wonderfully well.  But he is not\nto be spoken of if you please.  He is\u2014\u2019  Putting down her cup, she moved\nher hands as if she would have added, by her action, \u2018dead!\u2019  Then she\nsaid aloud, \u2018I have lost him.\u2019\n\nStephen had not yet got the better of his having given the old lady pain,\nwhen his landlady came stumbling up the narrow stairs, and calling him to\nthe door, whispered in his ear.  Mrs. Pegler was by no means deaf, for\nshe caught a word as it was uttered.\n\n\u2018Suki!\u2019 she cried, in a suppressed voice, starting up from the\ntable.  \u2018Oh hide me!  Don\u2019t let me be seen for the world.  Don\u2019t let him\ncome up till I\u2019ve got away.  Pray, pray!\u2019  She trembled, and was\nexcessively agitated; getting behind Rachael, when Rachael tried to\nreassure her; and not seeming to know what she was about.\n\n\u2018But hearken, missus, hearken,\u2019 said Stephen, astonished.  \u2018\u2019Tisn\u2019t Mr.\nSuki; \u2019tis his wife.  Yo\u2019r not fearfo\u2019 o\u2019 her.  Yo was hey-go-mad\nabout her, but an hour sin.\u2019\n\n\u2018But are you sure it\u2019s the lady, and not the gentleman?\u2019 she asked, still\ntrembling.\n\n\u2018Certain sure!\u2019\n\n\u2018Well then, pray don\u2019t speak to me, nor yet take any notice of me,\u2019 said\nthe old woman.  \u2018Let me be quite to myself in this corner.\u2019\n\nStephen nodded; looking to Rachael for an explanation, which she was\nquite unable to give him; took the candle, went downstairs, and in a few\nmoments returned, lighting Eugenie into the room.  She was followed by the\nwhelp.\n\nRachael had risen, and stood apart with her shawl and bonnet in her hand,\nwhen Stephen, himself profoundly astonished by this visit, put the candle\non the table.  Then he too stood, with his doubled hand upon the table\nnear it, waiting to be addressed.\n\nFor the first time in her life Eugenie had come into one of the dwellings\nof the Coketown Hands; for the first time in her life she was face to\nface with anything like individuality in connection with them.  She knew\nof their existence by hundreds and by thousands.  She knew what results\nin work a given number of them would produce in a given space of time.\nShe knew them in crowds passing to and from their nests, like ants or\nbeetles.  But she knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of\ntoiling insects than of these toiling men and women.\n\nSomething to be worked so much and paid so much, and there ended;\nsomething to be infallibly settled by laws of supply and demand;\nsomething that blundered against those laws, and floundered into\ndifficulty; something that was a little pinched when wheat was dear, and\nover-ate itself when wheat was cheap; something that increased at such a\nrate of percentage, and yielded such another percentage of crime, and\nsuch another percentage of pauperism; something wholesale, of which vast\nfortunes were made; something that occasionally rose like a sea, and did\nsome harm and waste (chiefly to itself), and fell again; this she knew\nthe Coketown Hands to be.  But, she had scarcely thought more of\nseparating them into units, than of separating the sea itself into its\ncomponent drops.\n\nShe stood for some moments looking round the room.  From the few chairs,\nthe few books, the common prints, and the bed, she glanced to the two\nwomen, and to Stephen.\n\n\u2018I have come to speak to you, in consequence of what passed just now.  I\nshould like to be serviceable to you, if you will let me.  Is this your\nwife?\u2019\n\nRachael raised her eyes, and they sufficiently answered no, and dropped\nagain.\n\n\u2018I remember,\u2019 said Eugenie, reddening at her mistake; \u2018I recollect, now,\nto have heard your domestic misfortunes spoken of, though I was not\nattending to the particulars at the time.  It was not my meaning to ask a\nquestion that would give pain to any one here.  If I should ask any other\nquestion that may happen to have that result, give me credit, if you\nplease, for being in ignorance how to speak to you as I ought.\u2019\n\nAs Stephen had but a little while ago instinctively addressed himself to\nher, so she now instinctively addressed herself to Rachael.  Her manner\nwas short and abrupt, yet faltering and timid.\n\n\u2018He has told you what has passed between himself and my husband?  You\nwould be his first resource, I think.\u2019\n\n\u2018I have heard the end of it, young lady,\u2019 said Rachael.\n\n\u2018Did I understand, that, being rejected by one employer, he would\nprobably be rejected by all?  I thought he said as much?\u2019\n\n\u2018The chances are very small, young lady\u2014next to nothing\u2014for a man who\ngets a bad name among them.\u2019\n\n\u2018What shall I understand that you mean by a bad name?\u2019\n\n\u2018The name of being troublesome.\u2019\n\n\u2018Then, by the prejudices of his own class, and by the prejudices of the\nother, he is sacrificed alike?  Are the two so deeply separated in this\ntown, that there is no place whatever for an honest workman between\nthem?\u2019\n\nRachael shook her head in silence.\n\n\u2018He fell into suspicion,\u2019 said Eugenie, \u2018with his fellow-weavers,\nbecause\u2014he had made a promise not to be one of them.  I think it must\nhave been to you that he made that promise.  Might I ask you why he made\nit?\u2019\n\nRachael burst into tears.  \u2018I didn\u2019t seek it of him, poor lad.  I prayed\nhim to avoid trouble for his own good, little thinking he\u2019d come to it\nthrough me.  But I know he\u2019d die a hundred deaths, ere ever he\u2019d break\nhis word.  I know that of him well.\u2019\n\nStephen had remained quietly attentive, in his usual thoughtful attitude,\nwith his hand at his chin.  He now spoke in a voice rather less steady\nthan usual.\n\n\u2018No one, excepting myseln, can ever know what honour, an\u2019 what love, an\u2019\nrespect, I bear to Rachael, or wi\u2019 what cause.  When I passed that\npromess, I towd her true, she were th\u2019 Angel o\u2019 my life.  \u2019Twere a solemn\npromess.  \u2019Tis gone fro\u2019 me, for ever.\u2019\n\nEugenie turned her head to him, and bent it with a deference that was new\nin her.  She looked from him to Rachael, and her features softened.\n\u2018What will you do?\u2019 she asked him.  And her voice had softened too.\n\n\u2018Weel, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Stephen, making the best of it, with a smile; \u2018when I\nha finished off, I mun quit this part, and try another.  Fortnet or\nmisfortnet, a man can but try; there\u2019s nowt to be done wi\u2019out tryin\u2019\u2014cept\nlaying down and dying.\u2019\n\n\u2018How will you travel?\u2019\n\n\u2018Afoot, my kind ledy, afoot.\u2019\n\nEugenie coloured, and a purse appeared in her hand.  The rustling of a\nbank-note was audible, as she unfolded one and laid it on the table.\n\n\u2018Rachael, will you tell him\u2014for you know how, without offence\u2014that this\nis freely his, to help him on his way?  Will you entreat him to take it?\u2019\n\n\u2018I canna do that, young lady,\u2019 she answered, turning her head aside.\n\u2018Bless you for thinking o\u2019 the poor lad wi\u2019 such tenderness.  But \u2019tis\nfor him to know his heart, and what is right according to it.\u2019\n\nEugenie looked, in part incredulous, in part frightened, in part overcome\nwith quick sympathy, when this man of so much self-command, who had been\nso plain and steady through the late interview, lost his composure in a\nmoment, and now stood with his hand before his face.  She stretched out\nhers, as if she would have touched him; then checked herself, and\nremained still.\n\n\u2018Not e\u2019en Rachael,\u2019 said Stephen, when he stood again with his face\nuncovered, \u2018could mak sitch a kind offerin, by onny words, kinder.  T\u2019\nshow that I\u2019m not a man wi\u2019out reason and gratitude, I\u2019ll tak two pound.\nI\u2019ll borrow \u2019t for t\u2019 pay \u2019t back.  \u2019Twill be the sweetest work as ever I\nha done, that puts it in my power t\u2019 acknowledge once more my lastin\nthankfulness for this present action.\u2019\n\nShe was fain to take up the note again, and to substitute the much\nsmaller sum he had named.  He was neither courtly, nor handsome, nor\npicturesque, in any respect; and yet his manner of accepting it, and of\nexpressing his thanks without more words, had a grace in it that Lord\nChesterfield could not have taught his son in a century.\n\nTom had sat upon the bed, swinging one leg and sucking his walking-stick\nwith sufficient unconcern, until the visit had attained this stage.\nSeeing his sister ready to depart, he got up, rather hurriedly, and put\nin a word.\n\n\u2018Just wait a moment, Loo!  Before we go, I should like to speak to him a\nmoment.  Something comes into my head.  If you\u2019ll step out on the stairs,\nBlackpool, I\u2019ll mention it.  Never mind a light, man!\u2019  Tom was\nremarkably impatient of his moving towards the cupboard, to get one.  \u2018It\ndon\u2019t want a light.\u2019\n\nStephen followed him out, and Tom closed the room door, and held the lock\nin his hand.\n\n\u2018I say!\u2019 he whispered.  \u2018I think I can do you a good turn.  Don\u2019t ask me\nwhat it is, because it may not come to anything.  But there\u2019s no harm in\nmy trying.\u2019\n\nHis breath fell like a flame of fire on Stephen\u2019s ear, it was so hot.\n\n\u2018That was our light porter at the Bank,\u2019 said Tom, \u2018who brought you the\nmessage to-night.  I call him our light porter, because I belong to the\nBank too.\u2019\n\nStephen thought, \u2018What a hurry he is in!\u2019  He spoke so confusedly.\n\n\u2018Well!\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018Now look here!  When are you off?\u2019\n\n\u2018T\u2019 day\u2019s Monday,\u2019 replied Stephen, considering.  \u2018Why, sir, Friday or\nSaturday, nigh \u2019bout.\u2019\n\n\u2018Friday or Saturday,\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018Now look here!  I am not sure that I\ncan do you the good turn I want to do you\u2014that\u2019s my sister, you know, in\nyour room\u2014but I may be able to, and if I should not be able to, there\u2019s\nno harm done.  So I tell you what.  You\u2019ll know our light porter again?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, sure,\u2019 said Stephen.\n\n\u2018Very well,\u2019 returned Tom.  \u2018When you leave work of a night, between this\nand your going away, just hang about the Bank an hour or so, will you?\nDon\u2019t take on, as if you meant anything, if he should see you hanging\nabout there; because I shan\u2019t put him up to speak to you, unless I find I\ncan do you the service I want to do you.  In that case he\u2019ll have a note\nor a message for you, but not else.  Now look here!  You are sure you\nunderstand.\u2019\n\nHe had wormed a finger, in the darkness, through a button-hole of\nStephen\u2019s coat, and was screwing that corner of the garment tight up\nround and round, in an extraordinary manner.\n\n\u2018I understand, sir,\u2019 said Stephen.\n\n\u2018Now look here!\u2019 repeated Tom.  \u2018Be sure you don\u2019t make any mistake then,\nand don\u2019t forget.  I shall tell my sister as we go home, what I have in\nview, and she\u2019ll approve, I know.  Now look here!  You\u2019re all right, are\nyou?  You understand all about it?  Very well then.  Come along, Loo!\u2019\n\nHe pushed the door open as he called to her, but did not return into the\nroom, or wait to be lighted down the narrow stairs.  He was at the bottom\nwhen she began to descend, and was in the street before she could take\nhis arm.\n\nMrs. Pegler remained in her corner until the brother and sister were\ngone, and until Stephen came back with the candle in his hand.  She was\nin a state of inexpressible admiration of Mrs. Suki, and, like an\nunaccountable old woman, wept, \u2018because she was such a pretty dear.\u2019  Yet\nMrs. Pegler was so flurried lest the object of her admiration should\nreturn by chance, or anybody else should come, that her cheerfulness was\nended for that night.  It was late too, to people who rose early and\nworked hard; therefore the party broke up; and Stephen and Rachael\nescorted their mysterious acquaintance to the door of the Travellers\u2019\nCoffee House, where they parted from her.\n\nThey walked back together to the corner of the street where Rachael\nlived, and as they drew nearer and nearer to it, silence crept upon them.\nWhen they came to the dark corner where their unfrequent meetings always\nended, they stopped, still silent, as if both were afraid to speak.\n\n\u2018I shall strive t\u2019 see thee agen, Rachael, afore I go, but if not\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Thou wilt not, Stephen, I know.  \u2019Tis better that we make up our minds\nto be open wi\u2019 one another.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thou\u2019rt awlus right.  \u2019Tis bolder and better.  I ha been thinkin then,\nRachael, that as \u2019tis but a day or two that remains, \u2019twere better for\nthee, my dear, not t\u2019 be seen wi\u2019 me.  \u2019T might bring thee into trouble,\nfur no good.\u2019\n\n\u2018\u2019Tis not for that, Stephen, that I mind.  But thou know\u2019st our old\nagreement.  \u2019Tis for that.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, well,\u2019 said he.  \u2018\u2019Tis better, onnyways.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thou\u2019lt write to me, and tell me all that happens, Stephen?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes.  What can I say now, but Heaven be wi\u2019 thee, Heaven bless thee,\nHeaven thank thee and reward thee!\u2019\n\n\u2018May it bless thee, Stephen, too, in all thy wanderings, and send thee\npeace and rest at last!\u2019\n\n\u2018I towd thee, my dear,\u2019 said Stephen Blackpool\u2014\u2018that night\u2014that I would\nnever see or think o\u2019 onnything that angered me, but thou, so much better\nthan me, should\u2019st be beside it.  Thou\u2019rt beside it now.  Thou mak\u2019st me\nsee it wi\u2019 a better eye.  Bless thee.  Good night.  Good-bye!\u2019\n\nIt was but a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a sacred\nremembrance to these two common people.  Utilitarian economists,\nskeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up\ninfidels, gabblers of many little dog\u2019s-eared creeds, the poor you will\nhave always with you.  Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the\nutmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much\nin need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is\nutterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand\nface to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you.\n\nStephen worked the next day, and the next, uncheered by a word from any\none, and shunned in all his comings and goings as before.  At the end of\nthe second day, he saw land; at the end of the third, his loom stood\nempty.\n\nHe had overstayed his hour in the street outside the Bank, on each of the\ntwo first evenings; and nothing had happened there, good or bad.  That he\nmight not be remiss in his part of the engagement, he resolved to wait\nfull two hours, on this third and last night.\n\nThere was the lady who had once kept Mr. Suki\u2019s house, sitting at\nthe first-floor window as he had seen her before; and there was the light\nporter, sometimes talking with her there, and sometimes looking over the\nblind below which had BANK upon it, and sometimes coming to the door and\nstanding on the steps for a breath of air.  When he first came out,\nStephen thought he might be looking for him, and passed near; but the\nlight porter only cast his winking eyes upon him slightly, and said\nnothing.\n\nTwo hours were a long stretch of lounging about, after a long day\u2019s\nlabour.  Stephen sat upon the step of a door, leaned against a wall under\nan archway, strolled up and down, listened for the church clock, stopped\nand watched children playing in the street.  Some purpose or other is so\nnatural to every one, that a mere loiterer always looks and feels\nremarkable.  When the first hour was out, Stephen even began to have an\nuncomfortable sensation upon him of being for the time a disreputable\ncharacter.\n\nThen came the lamplighter, and two lengthening lines of light all down\nthe long perspective of the street, until they were blended and lost in\nthe distance.  Mrs. Kiki closed the first-floor window, drew down the\nblind, and went up-stairs.  Presently, a light went up-stairs after her,\npassing first the fanlight of the door, and afterwards the two staircase\nwindows, on its way up.  By and by, one corner of the second-floor blind\nwas disturbed, as if Mrs. Kiki\u2019s eye were there; also the other\ncorner, as if the light porter\u2019s eye were on that side.  Still, no\ncommunication was made to Stephen.  Much relieved when the two hours were\nat last accomplished, he went away at a quick pace, as a recompense for\nso much loitering.\n\nHe had only to take leave of his landlady, and lie down on his temporary\nbed upon the floor; for his bundle was made up for to-morrow, and all was\narranged for his departure.  He meant to be clear of the town very early;\nbefore the Hands were in the streets.\n\nIt was barely daybreak, when, with a parting look round his room,\nmournfully wondering whether he should ever see it again, he went out.\nThe town was as entirely deserted as if the inhabitants had abandoned it,\nrather than hold communication with him.  Everything looked wan at that\nhour.  Even the coming sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad\nsea.\n\nBy the place where Rachael lived, though it was not in his way; by the\nred brick streets; by the great silent factories, not trembling yet; by\nthe railway, where the danger-lights were waning in the strengthening\nday; by the railway\u2019s crazy neighbourhood, half pulled down and half\nbuilt up; by scattered red brick villas, where the besmoked evergreens\nwere sprinkled with a dirty powder, like untidy snuff-takers; by\ncoal-dust paths and many varieties of ugliness; Stephen got to the top of\nthe hill, and looked back.\n\nDay was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells were going\nfor the morning work.  Domestic fires were not yet lighted, and the high\nchimneys had the sky to themselves.  Puffing out their poisonous volumes,\nthey would not be long in hiding it; but, for half an hour, some of the\nmany windows were golden, which showed the Coketown people a sun\neternally in eclipse, through a medium of smoked glass.\n\nSo strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds.  So strange, to have\nthe road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit.  So strange to have\nlived to his time of life, and yet to be beginning like a boy this summer\nmorning!  With these musings in his mind, and his bundle under his arm,\nStephen took his attentive face along the high road.  And the trees\narched over him, whispering that he left a true and loving heart behind.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\nGUNPOWDER\n\n\nMR. LIONEL CAOIMHE, \u2018going in\u2019 for his adopted party, soon began to\nscore.  With the aid of a little more coaching for the political sages, a\nlittle more genteel listlessness for the general society, and a tolerable\nmanagement of the assumed honesty in dishonesty, most effective and most\npatronized of the polite deadly sins, he speedily came to be considered\nof much promise.  The not being troubled with earnestness was a grand\npoint in his favour, enabling him to take to the hard Fact fellows with\nas good a grace as if he had been born one of the tribe, and to throw all\nother tribes overboard, as conscious hypocrites.\n\n\u2018Whom none of us believe, my dear Mrs. Suki, and who do not believe\nthemselves.  The only difference between us and the professors of virtue\nor benevolence, or philanthropy\u2014never mind the name\u2014is, that we know it\nis all meaningless, and say so; while they know it equally and will never\nsay so.\u2019\n\nWhy should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration?  It was not so\nunlike her father\u2019s principles, and her early training, that it need\nstartle her.  Where was the great difference between the two schools,\nwhen each chained her down to material realities, and inspired her with\nno faith in anything else?  What was there in her soul for Lionel\nCaoimhe to destroy, which Cosette Kailey had nurtured there in its\nstate of innocence!\n\nIt was even the worse for her at this pass, that in her mind\u2014implanted\nthere before her eminently practical father began to form it\u2014a struggling\ndisposition to believe in a wider and nobler humanity than she had ever\nheard of, constantly strove with doubts and resentments.  With doubts,\nbecause the aspiration had been so laid waste in her youth.  With\nresentments, because of the wrong that had been done her, if it were\nindeed a whisper of the truth.  Upon a nature long accustomed to\nself-suppression, thus torn and divided, the Caoimhe philosophy came as\na relief and justification.  Everything being hollow and worthless, she\nhad missed nothing and sacrificed nothing.  What did it matter, she had\nsaid to her father, when he proposed her husband.  What did it matter,\nshe said still.  With a scornful self-reliance, she asked herself, What\ndid anything matter\u2014and went on.\n\nTowards what?  Step by step, onward and downward, towards some end, yet\nso gradually, that she believed herself to remain motionless.  As to Mr.\nCaoimhe, whither _he_ tended, he neither considered nor cared.  He had\nno particular design or plan before him: no energetic wickedness ruffled\nhis lassitude.  He was as much amused and interested, at present, as it\nbecame so fine a gentleman to be; perhaps even more than it would have\nbeen consistent with his reputation to confess.  Soon after his arrival\nhe languidly wrote to his brother, the honourable and jocular member,\nthat the Sukis were \u2018great fun;\u2019 and further, that the female\nSuki, instead of being the Gorgon he had expected, was young, and\nremarkably pretty.  After that, he wrote no more about them, and devoted\nhis leisure chiefly to their house.  He was very often in their house, in\nhis flittings and visitings about the Coketown district; and was much\nencouraged by Mr. Suki.  It was quite in Mr. Suki\u2019s gusty way\nto boast to all his world that _he_ didn\u2019t care about your highly\nconnected people, but that if his wife Tom Kailey\u2019s daughter did, she\nwas welcome to their company.\n\nMr. Lionel Caoimhe began to think it would be a new sensation, if the\nface which changed so beautifully for the whelp, would change for him.\n\nHe was quick enough to observe; he had a good memory, and did not forget\na word of the brother\u2019s revelations.  He interwove them with everything\nhe saw of the sister, and he began to understand her.  To be sure, the\nbetter and profounder part of her character was not within his scope of\nperception; for in natures, as in seas, depth answers unto depth; but he\nsoon began to read the rest with a student\u2019s eye.\n\nMr. Suki had taken possession of a house and grounds, about fifteen\nmiles from the town, and accessible within a mile or two, by a railway\nstriding on many arches over a wild country, undermined by deserted\ncoal-shafts, and spotted at night by fires and black shapes of stationary\nengines at pits\u2019 mouths.  This country, gradually softening towards the\nneighbourhood of Mr. Suki\u2019s retreat, there mellowed into a rustic\nlandscape, golden with heath, and snowy with hawthorn in the spring of\nthe year, and tremulous with leaves and their shadows all the summer\ntime.  The bank had foreclosed a mortgage effected on the property thus\npleasantly situated, by one of the Coketown magnates, who, in his\ndetermination to make a shorter cut than usual to an enormous fortune,\noverspeculated himself by about two hundred thousand pounds.  These\naccidents did sometimes happen in the best regulated families of\nCoketown, but the bankrupts had no connexion whatever with the\nimprovident classes.\n\nIt afforded Mr. Suki supreme satisfaction to instal himself in this\nsnug little estate, and with demonstrative humility to grow cabbages in\nthe flower-garden.  He delighted to live, barrack-fashion, among the\nelegant furniture, and he bullied the very pictures with his origin.\n\u2018Why, sir,\u2019 he would say to a visitor, \u2018I am told that Nickits,\u2019 the late\nowner, \u2018gave seven hundred pound for that Seabeach.  Now, to be plain\nwith you, if I ever, in the whole course of my life, take seven looks at\nit, at a hundred pound a look, it will be as much as I shall do.  No, by\nGeorge!  I don\u2019t forget that I am Josiah Suki of Coketown.  For\nyears upon years, the only pictures in my possession, or that I could\nhave got into my possession, by any means, unless I stole \u2019em, were the\nengravings of a man shaving himself in a boot, on the blacking bottles\nthat I was overjoyed to use in cleaning boots with, and that I sold when\nthey were empty for a farthing a-piece, and glad to get it!\u2019\n\nThen he would address Mr. Caoimhe in the same style.\n\n\u2018Caoimhe, you have a couple of horses down here.  Bring half a dozen\nmore if you like, and we\u2019ll find room for \u2019em.  There\u2019s stabling in this\nplace for a dozen horses; and unless Nickits is belied, he kept the full\nnumber.  A round dozen of \u2019em, sir.  When that man was a boy, he went to\nWestminster School.  Went to Westminster School as a King\u2019s Scholar, when\nI was principally living on garbage, and sleeping in market baskets.\nWhy, if I wanted to keep a dozen horses\u2014which I don\u2019t, for one\u2019s enough\nfor me\u2014I couldn\u2019t bear to see \u2019em in their stalls here, and think what my\nown lodging used to be.  I couldn\u2019t look at \u2019em, sir, and not order \u2019em\nout.  Yet so things come round.  You see this place; you know what sort\nof a place it is; you are aware that there\u2019s not a completer place of its\nsize in this kingdom or elsewhere\u2014I don\u2019t care where\u2014and here, got into\nthe middle of it, like a maggot into a nut, is Josiah Suki.  While\nNickits (as a man came into my office, and told me yesterday), Nickits,\nwho used to act in Latin, in the Westminster School plays, with the\nchief-justices and nobility of this country applauding him till they were\nblack in the face, is drivelling at this minute\u2014drivelling, sir!\u2014in a\nfifth floor, up a narrow dark back street in Antwerp.\u2019\n\nIt was among the leafy shadows of this retirement, in the long sultry\nsummer days, that Mr. Caoimhe began to prove the face which had set him\nwondering when he first saw it, and to try if it would change for him.\n\n\u2018Mrs. Suki, I esteem it a most fortunate accident that I find you\nalone here.  I have for some time had a particular wish to speak to you.\u2019\n\nIt was not by any wonderful accident that he found her, the time of day\nbeing that at which she was always alone, and the place being her\nfavourite resort.  It was an opening in a dark wood, where some felled\ntrees lay, and where she would sit watching the fallen leaves of last\nyear, as she had watched the falling ashes at home.\n\nHe sat down beside her, with a glance at her face.\n\n\u2018Your brother.  My young friend Tom\u2014\u2019\n\nHer colour brightened, and she turned to him with a look of interest.  \u2018I\nnever in my life,\u2019 he thought, \u2018saw anything so remarkable and so\ncaptivating as the lighting of those features!\u2019  His face betrayed his\nthoughts\u2014perhaps without betraying him, for it might have been according\nto its instructions so to do.\n\n\u2018Pardon me.  The expression of your sisterly interest is so beautiful\u2014Tom\nshould be so proud of it\u2014I know this is inexcusable, but I am so\ncompelled to admire.\u2019\n\n\u2018Being so impulsive,\u2019 she said composedly.\n\n\u2018Mrs. Suki, no: you know I make no pretence with you.  You know I am\na sordid piece of human nature, ready to sell myself at any time for any\nreasonable sum, and altogether incapable of any Arcadian proceeding\nwhatever.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am waiting,\u2019 she returned, \u2018for your further reference to my brother.\u2019\n\n\u2018You are rigid with me, and I deserve it.  I am as worthless a dog as you\nwill find, except that I am not false\u2014not false.  But you surprised and\nstarted me from my subject, which was your brother.  I have an interest\nin him.\u2019\n\n\u2018Have you an interest in anything, Mr. Caoimhe?\u2019 she asked, half\nincredulously and half gratefully.\n\n\u2018If you had asked me when I first came here, I should have said no.  I\nmust say now\u2014even at the hazard of appearing to make a pretence, and of\njustly awakening your incredulity\u2014yes.\u2019\n\nShe made a slight movement, as if she were trying to speak, but could not\nfind voice; at length she said, \u2018Mr. Caoimhe, I give you credit for\nbeing interested in my brother.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you.  I claim to deserve it.  You know how little I do claim, but\nI will go that length.  You have done so much for him, you are so fond of\nhim; your whole life, Mrs. Suki, expresses such charming\nself-forgetfulness on his account\u2014pardon me again\u2014I am running wide of\nthe subject.  I am interested in him for his own sake.\u2019\n\nShe had made the slightest action possible, as if she would have risen in\na hurry and gone away.  He had turned the course of what he said at that\ninstant, and she remained.\n\n\u2018Mrs. Suki,\u2019 he resumed, in a lighter manner, and yet with a show of\neffort in assuming it, which was even more expressive than the manner he\ndismissed; \u2018it is no irrevocable offence in a young fellow of your\nbrother\u2019s years, if he is heedless, inconsiderate, and expensive\u2014a little\ndissipated, in the common phrase.  Is he?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes.\u2019\n\n\u2018Allow me to be frank.  Do you think he games at all?\u2019\n\n\u2018I think he makes bets.\u2019  Mr. Caoimhe waiting, as if that were not her\nwhole answer, she added, \u2018I know he does.\u2019\n\n\u2018Of course he loses?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes.\u2019\n\n\u2018Everybody does lose who bets.  May I hint at the probability of your\nsometimes supplying him with money for these purposes?\u2019\n\nShe sat, looking down; but, at this question, raised her eyes searchingly\nand a little resentfully.\n\n\u2018Acquit me of impertinent curiosity, my dear Mrs. Suki.  I think Tom\nmay be gradually falling into trouble, and I wish to stretch out a\nhelping hand to him from the depths of my wicked experience.\u2014Shall I say\nagain, for his sake?  Is that necessary?\u2019\n\nShe seemed to try to answer, but nothing came of it.\n\n\u2018Candidly to confess everything that has occurred to me,\u2019 said Lionel\nCaoimhe, again gliding with the same appearance of effort into his more\nairy manner; \u2018I will confide to you my doubt whether he has had many\nadvantages.  Whether\u2014forgive my plainness\u2014whether any great amount of\nconfidence is likely to have been established between himself and his\nmost worthy father.\u2019\n\n\u2018I do not,\u2019 said Eugenie, flushing with her own great remembrance in that\nwise, \u2018think it likely.\u2019\n\n\u2018Or, between himself, and\u2014I may trust to your perfect understanding of my\nmeaning, I am sure\u2014and his highly esteemed brother-in-law.\u2019\n\nShe flushed deeper and deeper, and was burning red when she replied in a\nfainter voice, \u2018I do not think that likely, either.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mrs. Suki,\u2019 said Caoimhe, after a short silence, \u2018may there be a\nbetter confidence between yourself and me?  Tom has borrowed a\nconsiderable sum of you?\u2019\n\n\u2018You will understand, Mr. Caoimhe,\u2019 she returned, after some\nindecision: she had been more or less uncertain, and troubled throughout\nthe conversation, and yet had in the main preserved her self-contained\nmanner; \u2018you will understand that if I tell you what you press to know,\nit is not by way of complaint or regret.  I would never complain of\nanything, and what I have done I do not in the least regret.\u2019\n\n\u2018So spirited, too!\u2019 thought Lionel Caoimhe.\n\n\u2018When I married, I found that my brother was even at that time heavily in\ndebt.  Heavily for him, I mean.  Heavily enough to oblige me to sell some\ntrinkets.  They were no sacrifice.  I sold them very willingly.  I\nattached no value to them.  They, were quite worthless to me.\u2019\n\nEither she saw in his face that he knew, or she only feared in her\nconscience that he knew, that she spoke of some of her husband\u2019s gifts.\nShe stopped, and reddened again.  If he had not known it before, he would\nhave known it then, though he had been a much duller man than he was.\n\n\u2018Since then, I have given my brother, at various times, what money I\ncould spare: in short, what money I have had.  Confiding in you at all,\non the faith of the interest you profess for him, I will not do so by\nhalves.  Since you have been in the habit of visiting here, he has wanted\nin one sum as much as a hundred pounds.  I have not been able to give it\nto him.  I have felt uneasy for the consequences of his being so\ninvolved, but I have kept these secrets until now, when I trust them to\nyour honour.  I have held no confidence with any one, because\u2014you\nanticipated my reason just now.\u2019  She abruptly broke off.\n\nHe was a ready man, and he saw, and seized, an opportunity here of\npresenting her own image to her, slightly disguised as her brother.\n\n\u2018Mrs. Suki, though a graceless person, of the world worldly, I feel\nthe utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell me.  I cannot\npossibly be hard upon your brother.  I understand and share the wise\nconsideration with which you regard his errors.  With all possible\nrespect both for Mr. Kailey and for Mr. Suki, I think I perceive\nthat he has not been fortunate in his training.  Bred at a disadvantage\ntowards the society in which he has his part to play, he rushes into\nthese extremes for himself, from opposite extremes that have long been\nforced\u2014with the very best intentions we have no doubt\u2014upon him.  Mr.\nSuki\u2019s fine bluff English independence, though a most charming\ncharacteristic, does not\u2014as we have agreed\u2014invite confidence.  If I might\nventure to remark that it is the least in the world deficient in that\ndelicacy to which a youth mistaken, a character misconceived, and\nabilities misdirected, would turn for relief and guidance, I should\nexpress what it presents to my own view.\u2019\n\nAs she sat looking straight before her, across the changing lights upon\nthe grass into the darkness of the wood beyond, he saw in her face her\napplication of his very distinctly uttered words.\n\n\u2018All allowance,\u2019 he continued, \u2018must be made.  I have one great fault to\nfind with Tom, however, which I cannot forgive, and for which I take him\nheavily to account.\u2019\n\nEugenie turned her eyes to his face, and asked him what fault was that?\n\n\u2018Perhaps,\u2019 he returned, \u2018I have said enough.  Perhaps it would have been\nbetter, on the whole, if no allusion to it had escaped me.\u2019\n\n\u2018You alarm me, Mr. Caoimhe.  Pray let me know it.\u2019\n\n\u2018To relieve you from needless apprehension\u2014and as this confidence\nregarding your brother, which I prize I am sure above all possible\nthings, has been established between us\u2014I obey.  I cannot forgive him for\nnot being more sensible in every word, look, and act of his life, of the\naffection of his best friend; of the devotion of his best friend; of her\nunselfishness; of her sacrifice.  The return he makes her, within my\nobservation, is a very poor one.  What she has done for him demands his\nconstant love and gratitude, not his ill-humour and caprice.  Careless\nfellow as I am, I am not so indifferent, Mrs. Suki, as to be\nregardless of this vice in your brother, or inclined to consider it a\nvenial offence.\u2019\n\nThe wood floated before her, for her eyes were suffused with tears.  They\nrose from a deep well, long concealed, and her heart was filled with\nacute pain that found no relief in them.\n\n\u2018In a word, it is to correct your brother in this, Mrs. Suki, that I\nmust aspire.  My better knowledge of his circumstances, and my direction\nand advice in extricating them\u2014rather valuable, I hope, as coming from a\nscapegrace on a much larger scale\u2014will give me some influence over him,\nand all I gain I shall certainly use towards this end.  I have said\nenough, and more than enough.  I seem to be protesting that I am a sort\nof good fellow, when, upon my honour, I have not the least intention to\nmake any protestation to that effect, and openly announce that I am\nnothing of the sort.  Yonder, among the trees,\u2019 he added, having lifted\nup his eyes and looked about; for he had watched her closely until now;\n\u2018is your brother himself; no doubt, just come down.  As he seems to be\nloitering in this direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk towards\nhim, and throw ourselves in his way.  He has been very silent and doleful\nof late.  Perhaps, his brotherly conscience is touched\u2014if there are such\nthings as consciences.  Though, upon my honour, I hear of them much too\noften to believe in them.\u2019\n\nHe assisted her to rise, and she took his arm, and they advanced to meet\nthe whelp.  He was idly beating the branches as he lounged along: or he\nstooped viciously to rip the moss from the trees with his stick.  He was\nstartled when they came upon him while he was engaged in this latter\npastime, and his colour changed.\n\n\u2018Halloa!\u2019 he stammered; \u2018I didn\u2019t know you were here.\u2019\n\n\u2018Whose name, Tom,\u2019 said Mr. Caoimhe, putting his hand upon his shoulder\nand turning him, so that they all three walked towards the house\ntogether, \u2018have you been carving on the trees?\u2019\n\n\u2018Whose name?\u2019 returned Tom.  \u2018Oh!  You mean what girl\u2019s name?\u2019\n\n\u2018You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair creature\u2019s on\nthe bark, Tom.\u2019\n\n         [Picture: Mr. Caoimhe and Tom Kailey in the garden]\n\n\u2018Not much of that, Mr. Caoimhe, unless some fair creature with a\nslashing fortune at her own disposal would take a fancy to me.  Or she\nmight be as ugly as she was rich, without any fear of losing me.  I\u2019d\ncarve her name as often as she liked.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am afraid you are mercenary, Tom.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mercenary,\u2019 repeated Tom.  \u2018Who is not mercenary?  Ask my sister.\u2019\n\n\u2018Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom?\u2019 said Eugenie,\nshowing no other sense of his discontent and ill-nature.\n\n\u2018You know whether the cap fits you, Loo,\u2019 returned her brother sulkily.\n\u2018If it does, you can wear it.\u2019\n\n\u2018Tom is misanthropical to-day, as all bored people are now and then,\u2019\nsaid Mr. Caoimhe.  \u2018Don\u2019t believe him, Mrs. Suki.  He knows much\nbetter.  I shall disclose some of his opinions of you, privately\nexpressed to me, unless he relents a little.\u2019\n\n\u2018At all events, Mr. Caoimhe,\u2019 said Tom, softening in his admiration of\nhis patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, \u2018you can\u2019t tell her that I\never praised her for being mercenary.  I may have praised her for being\nthe contrary, and I should do it again, if I had as good reason.\nHowever, never mind this now; it\u2019s not very interesting to you, and I am\nsick of the subject.\u2019\n\nThey walked on to the house, where Eugenie quitted her visitor\u2019s arm and\nwent in.  He stood looking after her, as she ascended the steps, and\npassed into the shadow of the door; then put his hand upon her brother\u2019s\nshoulder again, and invited him with a confidential nod to a walk in the\ngarden.\n\n\u2018Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you.\u2019\n\nThey had stopped among a disorder of roses\u2014it was part of Mr. Suki\u2019s\nhumility to keep Nickits\u2019s roses on a reduced scale\u2014and Tom sat down on a\nterrace-parapet, plucking buds and picking them to pieces; while his\npowerful Familiar stood over him, with a foot upon the parapet, and his\nfigure easily resting on the arm supported by that knee.  They were just\nvisible from her window.  Perhaps she saw them.\n\n\u2018Tom, what\u2019s the matter?\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh!  Mr. Caoimhe,\u2019 said Tom with a groan, \u2018I am hard up, and bothered\nout of my life.\u2019\n\n\u2018My good fellow, so am I.\u2019\n\n\u2018You!\u2019 returned Tom.  \u2018You are the picture of independence.  Mr.\nCaoimhe, I am in a horrible mess.  You have no idea what a state I have\ngot myself into\u2014what a state my sister might have got me out of, if she\nwould only have done it.\u2019\n\nHe took to biting the rosebuds now, and tearing them away from his teeth\nwith a hand that trembled like an infirm old man\u2019s.  After one\nexceedingly observant look at him, his companion relapsed into his\nlightest air.\n\n\u2018Tom, you are inconsiderate: you expect too much of your sister.  You\nhave had money of her, you dog, you know you have.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, Mr. Caoimhe, I know I have.  How else was I to get it?  Here\u2019s\nold Suki always boasting that at my age he lived upon twopence a\nmonth, or something of that sort.  Here\u2019s my father drawing what he calls\na line, and tying me down to it from a baby, neck and heels.  Here\u2019s my\nmother who never has anything of her own, except her complaints.  What\n_is_ a fellow to do for money, and where _am_ I to look for it, if not to\nmy sister?\u2019\n\nHe was almost crying, and scattered the buds about by dozens.  Mr.\nCaoimhe took him persuasively by the coat.\n\n\u2018But, my dear Tom, if your sister has not got it\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Not got it, Mr. Caoimhe?  I don\u2019t say she has got it.  I may have\nwanted more than she was likely to have got.  But then she ought to get\nit.  She could get it.  It\u2019s of no use pretending to make a secret of\nmatters now, after what I have told you already; you know she didn\u2019t\nmarry old Suki for her own sake, or for his sake, but for my sake.\nThen why doesn\u2019t she get what I want, out of him, for my sake?  She is\nnot obliged to say what she is going to do with it; she is sharp enough;\nshe could manage to coax it out of him, if she chose.  Then why doesn\u2019t\nshe choose, when I tell her of what consequence it is?  But no.  There\nshe sits in his company like a stone, instead of making herself agreeable\nand getting it easily.  I don\u2019t know what you may call this, but I call\nit unnatural conduct.\u2019\n\nThere was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on\nthe other side, into which Mr. Lionel Caoimhe had a very strong\ninclination to pitch Mr. Cosette Kailey junior, as the injured men of\nCoketown threatened to pitch their property into the Atlantic.  But he\npreserved his easy attitude; and nothing more solid went over the stone\nbalustrades than the accumulated rosebuds now floating about, a little\nsurface-island.\n\n\u2018My dear Tom,\u2019 said Caoimhe, \u2018let me try to be your banker.\u2019\n\n\u2018For God\u2019s sake,\u2019 replied Tom, suddenly, \u2018don\u2019t talk about bankers!\u2019  And\nvery white he looked, in contrast with the roses.  Very white.\n\nMr. Caoimhe, as a thoroughly well-bred man, accustomed to the best\nsociety, was not to be surprised\u2014he could as soon have been affected\u2014but\nhe raised his eyelids a little more, as if they were lifted by a feeble\ntouch of wonder.  Albeit it was as much against the precepts of his\nschool to wonder, as it was against the doctrines of the Kailey\nCollege.\n\n\u2018What is the present need, Tom?  Three figures?  Out with them.  Say what\nthey are.\u2019\n\n\u2018Mr. Caoimhe,\u2019 returned Tom, now actually crying; and his tears were\nbetter than his injuries, however pitiful a figure he made: \u2018it\u2019s too\nlate; the money is of no use to me at present.  I should have had it\nbefore to be of use to me.  But I am very much obliged to you; you\u2019re a\ntrue friend.\u2019\n\nA true friend!  \u2018Whelp, whelp!\u2019 thought Mr. Caoimhe, lazily; \u2018what an\nAss you are!\u2019\n\n\u2018And I take your offer as a great kindness,\u2019 said Tom, grasping his hand.\n\u2018As a great kindness, Mr. Caoimhe.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well,\u2019 returned the other, \u2018it may be of more use by and by.  And, my\ngood fellow, if you will open your bedevilments to me when they come\nthick upon you, I may show you better ways out of them than you can find\nfor yourself.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you,\u2019 said Tom, shaking his head dismally, and chewing rosebuds.\n\u2018I wish I had known you sooner, Mr. Caoimhe.\u2019\n\n\u2018Now, you see, Tom,\u2019 said Mr. Caoimhe in conclusion, himself tossing\nover a rose or two, as a contribution to the island, which was always\ndrifting to the wall as if it wanted to become a part of the mainland:\n\u2018every man is selfish in everything he does, and I am exactly like the\nrest of my fellow-creatures.  I am desperately intent;\u2019 the languor of\nhis desperation being quite tropical; \u2018on your softening towards your\nsister\u2014which you ought to do; and on your being a more loving and\nagreeable sort of brother\u2014which you ought to be.\u2019\n\n\u2018I will be, Mr. Caoimhe.\u2019\n\n\u2018No time like the present, Tom.  Begin at once.\u2019\n\n\u2018Certainly I will.  And my sister Loo shall say so.\u2019\n\n\u2018Having made which bargain, Tom,\u2019 said Caoimhe, clapping him on the\nshoulder again, with an air which left him at liberty to infer\u2014as he did,\npoor fool\u2014that this condition was imposed upon him in mere careless good\nnature to lessen his sense of obligation, \u2018we will tear ourselves asunder\nuntil dinner-time.\u2019\n\nWhen Tom appeared before dinner, though his mind seemed heavy enough, his\nbody was on the alert; and he appeared before Mr. Suki came in.  \u2018I\ndidn\u2019t mean to be cross, Loo,\u2019 he said, giving her his hand, and kissing\nher.  \u2018I know you are fond of me, and you know I am fond of you.\u2019\n\nAfter this, there was a smile upon Eugenie\u2019s face that day, for some one\nelse.  Alas, for some one else!\n\n\u2018So much the less is the whelp the only creature that she cares for,\u2019\nthought Lionel Caoimhe, reversing the reflection of his first day\u2019s\nknowledge of her pretty face.  \u2018So much the less, so much the less.\u2019\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\nEXPLOSION\n\n\nTHE next morning was too bright a morning for sleep, and Lionel Caoimhe\nrose early, and sat in the pleasant bay window of his dressing-room,\nsmoking the rare tobacco that had had so wholesome an influence on his\nyoung friend.  Reposing in the sunlight, with the fragrance of his\neastern pipe about him, and the dreamy smoke vanishing into the air, so\nrich and soft with summer odours, he reckoned up his advantages as an\nidle winner might count his gains.  He was not at all bored for the time,\nand could give his mind to it.\n\nHe had established a confidence with her, from which her husband was\nexcluded.  He had established a confidence with her, that absolutely\nturned upon her indifference towards her husband, and the absence, now\nand at all times, of any congeniality between them.  He had artfully, but\nplainly, assured her that he knew her heart in its last most delicate\nrecesses; he had come so near to her through its tenderest sentiment; he\nhad associated himself with that feeling; and the barrier behind which\nshe lived, had melted away.  All very odd, and very satisfactory!\n\nAnd yet he had not, even now, any earnest wickedness of purpose in him.\nPublicly and privately, it were much better for the age in which he\nlived, that he and the legion of whom he was one were designedly bad,\nthan indifferent and purposeless.  It is the drifting icebergs setting\nwith any current anywhere, that wreck the ships.\n\nWhen the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, he goeth about in a shape\nby which few but savages and hunters are attracted.  But, when he is\ntrimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to the mode; when he is\naweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used\nup as to bliss; then, whether he take to the serving out of red tape, or\nto the kindling of red fire, he is the very Devil.\n\nSo Lionel Caoimhe reclined in the window, indolently smoking, and\nreckoning up the steps he had taken on the road by which he happened to\nbe travelling.  The end to which it led was before him, pretty plainly;\nbut he troubled himself with no calculations about it.  What will be,\nwill be.\n\nAs he had rather a long ride to take that day\u2014for there was a public\noccasion \u2018to do\u2019 at some distance, which afforded a tolerable opportunity\nof going in for the Kailey men\u2014he dressed early and went down to\nbreakfast.  He was anxious to see if she had relapsed since the previous\nevening.  No.  He resumed where he had left off.  There was a look of\ninterest for him again.\n\nHe got through the day as much (or as little) to his own satisfaction, as\nwas to be expected under the fatiguing circumstances; and came riding\nback at six o\u2019clock.  There was a sweep of some half-mile between the\nlodge and the house, and he was riding along at a foot pace over the\nsmooth gravel, once Nickits\u2019s, when Mr. Suki burst out of the\nshrubbery, with such violence as to make his horse shy across the road.\n\n\u2018Caoimhe!\u2019 cried Mr. Suki.  \u2018Have you heard?\u2019\n\n\u2018Heard what?\u2019 said Caoimhe, soothing his horse, and inwardly favouring\nMr. Suki with no good wishes.\n\n\u2018Then you _haven\u2019t_ heard!\u2019\n\n\u2018I have heard you, and so has this brute.  I have heard nothing else.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki, red and hot, planted himself in the centre of the path\nbefore the horse\u2019s head, to explode his bombshell with more effect.\n\n\u2018The Bank\u2019s robbed!\u2019\n\n\u2018You don\u2019t mean it!\u2019\n\n\u2018Robbed last night, sir.  Robbed in an extraordinary manner.  Robbed with\na false key.\u2019\n\n\u2018Of much?\u2019\n\nMr. Suki, in his desire to make the most of it, really seemed\nmortified by being obliged to reply, \u2018Why, no; not of very much.  But it\nmight have been.\u2019\n\n\u2018Of how much?\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh! as a sum\u2014if you stick to a sum\u2014of not more than a hundred and fifty\npound,\u2019 said Suki, with impatience.  \u2018But it\u2019s not the sum; it\u2019s the\nfact.  It\u2019s the fact of the Bank being robbed, that\u2019s the important\ncircumstance.  I am surprised you don\u2019t see it.\u2019\n\n\u2018My dear Suki,\u2019 said Lionel, dismounting, and giving his bridle to\nhis servant, \u2018I _do_ see it; and am as overcome as you can possibly\ndesire me to be, by the spectacle afforded to my mental view.\nNevertheless, I may be allowed, I hope, to congratulate you\u2014which I do\nwith all my soul, I assure you\u2014on your not having sustained a greater\nloss.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank\u2019ee,\u2019 replied Suki, in a short, ungracious manner.  \u2018But I\ntell you what.  It might have been twenty thousand pound.\u2019\n\n\u2018I suppose it might.\u2019\n\n\u2018Suppose it might!  By the Lord, you _may_ suppose so.  By George!\u2019 said\nMr. Suki, with sundry menacing nods and shakes of his head.  \u2018It\nmight have been twice twenty.  There\u2019s no knowing what it would have\nbeen, or wouldn\u2019t have been, as it was, but for the fellows\u2019 being\ndisturbed.\u2019\n\nEugenie had come up now, and Mrs. Kiki, and Katharine.\n\n\u2018Here\u2019s Tom Kailey\u2019s daughter knows pretty well what it might have\nbeen, if you don\u2019t,\u2019 blustered Suki.  \u2018Dropped, sir, as if she was\nshot when I told her!  Never knew her do such a thing before.  Does her\ncredit, under the circumstances, in my opinion!\u2019\n\nShe still looked faint and pale.  Lionel Caoimhe begged her to take his\narm; and as they moved on very slowly, asked her how the robbery had been\ncommitted.\n\n\u2018Why, I am going to tell you,\u2019 said Suki, irritably giving his arm\nto Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018If you hadn\u2019t been so mighty particular about the sum,\nI should have begun to tell you before.  You know this lady (for she _is_\na lady), Mrs. Kiki?\u2019\n\n\u2018I have already had the honour\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Very well.  And this young man, Katharine, you saw him too on the same\noccasion?\u2019  Mr. Caoimhe inclined his head in assent, and Katharine\nknuckled his forehead.\n\n\u2018Very well.  They live at the Bank.  You know they live at the Bank,\nperhaps?  Very well.  Yesterday afternoon, at the close of business\nhours, everything was put away as usual.  In the iron room that this\nyoung fellow sleeps outside of, there was never mind how much.  In the\nlittle safe in young Tom\u2019s closet, the safe used for petty purposes,\nthere was a hundred and fifty odd pound.\u2019\n\n\u2018A hundred and fifty-four, seven, one,\u2019 said Katharine.\n\n\u2018Come!\u2019 retorted Suki, stopping to wheel round upon him, \u2018let\u2019s have\nnone of _your_ interruptions.  It\u2019s enough to be robbed while you\u2019re\nsnoring because you\u2019re too comfortable, without being put right with\n_your_ four seven ones.  I didn\u2019t snore, myself, when I was your age, let\nme tell you.  I hadn\u2019t victuals enough to snore.  And I didn\u2019t four seven\none.  Not if I knew it.\u2019\n\nKatharine knuckled his forehead again, in a sneaking manner, and seemed at\nonce particularly impressed and depressed by the instance last given of\nMr. Suki\u2019s moral abstinence.\n\n\u2018A hundred and fifty odd pound,\u2019 resumed Mr. Suki.  \u2018That sum of\nmoney, young Tom locked in his safe, not a very strong safe, but that\u2019s\nno matter now.  Everything was left, all right.  Some time in the night,\nwhile this young fellow snored\u2014Mrs. Kiki, ma\u2019am, you say you have\nheard him snore?\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, \u2018I cannot say that I have heard him\nprecisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement.  But on\nwinter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard\nhim, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke.  I have heard\nhim on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be\nsometimes heard in Dutch clocks.  Not,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, with a lofty\nsense of giving strict evidence, \u2018that I would convey any imputation on\nhis moral character.  Far from it.  I have always considered Katharine a\nyoung man of the most upright principle; and to that I beg to bear my\ntestimony.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well!\u2019 said the exasperated Suki, \u2018while he was snoring, _or_\nchoking, _or_ Dutch-clocking, _or_ something _or_ other\u2014being asleep\u2014some\nfellows, somehow, whether previously concealed in the house or not\nremains to be seen, got to young Tom\u2019s safe, forced it, and abstracted\nthe contents.  Being then disturbed, they made off; letting themselves\nout at the main door, and double-locking it again (it was double-locked,\nand the key under Mrs. Kiki\u2019s pillow) with a false key, which was\npicked up in the street near the Bank, about twelve o\u2019clock to-day.  No\nalarm takes place, till this chap, Katharine, turns out this morning, and\nbegins to open and prepare the offices for business.  Then, looking at\nTom\u2019s safe, he sees the door ajar, and finds the lock forced, and the\nmoney gone.\u2019\n\n\u2018Where is Tom, by the by?\u2019 asked Caoimhe, glancing round.\n\n\u2018He has been helping the police,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018and stays behind at\nthe Bank.  I wish these fellows had tried to rob me when I was at his\ntime of life.  They would have been out of pocket if they had invested\neighteenpence in the job; I can tell \u2019em that.\u2019\n\n\u2018Is anybody suspected?\u2019\n\n\u2018Suspected?  I should think there was somebody suspected.  Egod!\u2019 said\nSuki, relinquishing Mrs. Kiki\u2019s arm to wipe his heated head.\n\u2018Josiah Suki of Coketown is not to be plundered and nobody\nsuspected.  No, thank you!\u2019\n\nMight Mr. Caoimhe inquire Who was suspected?\n\n\u2018Well,\u2019 said Suki, stopping and facing about to confront them all,\n\u2018I\u2019ll tell you.  It\u2019s not to be mentioned everywhere; it\u2019s not to be\nmentioned anywhere: in order that the scoundrels concerned (there\u2019s a\ngang of \u2019em) may be thrown off their guard.  So take this in confidence.\nNow wait a bit.\u2019  Mr. Suki wiped his head again.  \u2018What should you\nsay to;\u2019 here he violently exploded: \u2018to a Hand being in it?\u2019\n\n\u2018I hope,\u2019 said Caoimhe, lazily, \u2018not our friend Blackpot?\u2019\n\n\u2018Say Pool instead of Pot, sir,\u2019 returned Suki, \u2018and that\u2019s the man.\u2019\n\nEugenie faintly uttered some word of incredulity and surprise.\n\n\u2018O yes!  I know!\u2019 said Suki, immediately catching at the sound.  \u2018I\nknow!  I am used to that.  I know all about it.  They are the finest\npeople in the world, these fellows are.  They have got the gift of the\ngab, they have.  They only want to have their rights explained to them,\nthey do.  But I tell you what.  Show me a dissatisfied Hand, and I\u2019ll\nshow you a man that\u2019s fit for anything bad, I don\u2019t care what it is.\u2019\n\nAnother of the popular fictions of Coketown, which some pains had been\ntaken to disseminate\u2014and which some people really believed.\n\n\u2018But I am acquainted with these chaps,\u2019 said Suki.  \u2018I can read \u2019em\noff, like books.  Mrs. Kiki, ma\u2019am, I appeal to you.  What warning did\nI give that fellow, the first time he set foot in the house, when the\nexpress object of his visit was to know how he could knock Religion over,\nand floor the Established Church?  Mrs. Kiki, in point of high\nconnexions, you are on a level with the aristocracy,\u2014did I say, or did I\nnot say, to that fellow, \u201cyou can\u2019t hide the truth from me: you are not\nthe kind of fellow I like; you\u2019ll come to no good\u201d?\u2019\n\n\u2018Assuredly, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, \u2018you did, in a highly impressive\nmanner, give him such an admonition.\u2019\n\n\u2018When he shocked you, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki; \u2018when he shocked your\nfeelings?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, with a meek shake of her head, \u2018he\ncertainly did so.  Though I do not mean to say but that my feelings may\nbe weaker on such points\u2014more foolish if the term is preferred\u2014than they\nmight have been, if I had always occupied my present position.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki stared with a bursting pride at Mr. Caoimhe, as much as\nto say, \u2018I am the proprietor of this female, and she\u2019s worth your\nattention, I think.\u2019  Then, resumed his discourse.\n\n\u2018You can recall for yourself, Caoimhe, what I said to him when you saw\nhim.  I didn\u2019t mince the matter with him.  I am never mealy with \u2019em.  I\nKNOW \u2019em.  Very well, sir.  Three days after that, he bolted.  Went off,\nnobody knows where: as my mother did in my infancy\u2014only with this\ndifference, that he is a worse subject than my mother, if possible.  What\ndid he do before he went?  What do you say;\u2019 Mr. Suki, with his hat\nin his hand, gave a beat upon the crown at every little division of his\nsentences, as if it were a tambourine; \u2018to his being seen\u2014night after\nnight\u2014watching the Bank?\u2014to his lurking about there\u2014after dark?\u2014To its\nstriking Mrs. Kiki\u2014that he could be lurking for no good\u2014To her calling\nKatharine\u2019s attention to him, and their both taking notice of him\u2014And to its\nappearing on inquiry to-day\u2014that he was also noticed by the neighbours?\u2019\nHaving come to the climax, Mr. Suki, like an oriental dancer, put\nhis tambourine on his head.\n\n\u2018Suspicious,\u2019 said Lionel Caoimhe, \u2018certainly.\u2019\n\n\u2018I think so, sir,\u2019 said Suki, with a defiant nod.  \u2018I think so.  But\nthere are more of \u2019em in it.  There\u2019s an old woman.  One never hears of\nthese things till the mischief\u2019s done; all sorts of defects are found out\nin the stable door after the horse is stolen; there\u2019s an old woman turns\nup now.  An old woman who seems to have been flying into town on a\nbroomstick, every now and then.  _She_ watches the place a whole day\nbefore this fellow begins, and on the night when you saw him, she steals\naway with him and holds a council with him\u2014I suppose, to make her report\non going off duty, and be damned to her.\u2019\n\nThere was such a person in the room that night, and she shrunk from\nobservation, thought Eugenie.\n\n\u2018This is not all of \u2019em, even as we already know \u2019em,\u2019 said Suki,\nwith many nods of hidden meaning.  \u2018But I have said enough for the\npresent.  You\u2019ll have the goodness to keep it quiet, and mention it to no\none.  It may take time, but we shall have \u2019em.  It\u2019s policy to give \u2019em\nline enough, and there\u2019s no objection to that.\u2019\n\n\u2018Of course, they will be punished with the utmost rigour of the law, as\nnotice-boards observe,\u2019 replied Lionel Caoimhe, \u2018and serve them right.\nFellows who go in for Banks must take the consequences.  If there were no\nconsequences, we should all go in for Banks.\u2019  He had gently taken\nEugenie\u2019s parasol from her hand, and had put it up for her; and she walked\nunder its shade, though the sun did not shine there.\n\n\u2018For the present, Loo Suki,\u2019 said her husband, \u2018here\u2019s Mrs. Kiki\nto look after.  Mrs. Kiki\u2019s nerves have been acted upon by this\nbusiness, and she\u2019ll stay here a day or two.  So make her comfortable.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you very much, sir,\u2019 that discreet lady observed, \u2018but pray do not\nlet My comfort be a consideration.  Anything will do for Me.\u2019\n\nIt soon appeared that if Mrs. Kiki had a failing in her association\nwith that domestic establishment, it was that she was so excessively\nregardless of herself and regardful of others, as to be a nuisance.  On\nbeing shown her chamber, she was so dreadfully sensible of its comforts\nas to suggest the inference that she would have preferred to pass the\nnight on the mangle in the laundry.  True, the Powlers and the Scadgerses\nwere accustomed to splendour, \u2018but it is my duty to remember,\u2019 Mrs.\nKiki was fond of observing with a lofty grace: particularly when any\nof the domestics were present, \u2018that what I was, I am no longer.\nIndeed,\u2019 said she, \u2018if I could altogether cancel the remembrance that Mr.\nKiki was a Powler, or that I myself am related to the Scadgers family;\nor if I could even revoke the fact, and make myself a person of common\ndescent and ordinary connexions; I would gladly do so.  I should think\nit, under existing circumstances, right to do so.\u2019  The same Hermitical\nstate of mind led to her renunciation of made dishes and wines at dinner,\nuntil fairly commanded by Mr. Suki to take them; when she said,\n\u2018Indeed you are very good, sir;\u2019 and departed from a resolution of which\nshe had made rather formal and public announcement, to \u2018wait for the\nsimple mutton.\u2019  She was likewise deeply apologetic for wanting the salt;\nand, feeling amiably bound to bear out Mr. Suki to the fullest\nextent in the testimony he had borne to her nerves, occasionally sat back\nin her chair and silently wept; at which periods a tear of large\ndimensions, like a crystal ear-ring, might be observed (or rather, must\nbe, for it insisted on public notice) sliding down her Roman nose.\n\nBut Mrs. Kiki\u2019s greatest point, first and last, was her determination\nto pity Mr. Suki.  There were occasions when in looking at him she\nwas involuntarily moved to shake her head, as who would say, \u2018Alas, poor\nYorick!\u2019  After allowing herself to be betrayed into these evidences of\nemotion, she would force a lambent brightness, and would be fitfully\ncheerful, and would say, \u2018You have still good spirits, sir, I am thankful\nto find;\u2019 and would appear to hail it as a blessed dispensation that Mr.\nSuki bore up as he did.  One idiosyncrasy for which she often\napologized, she found it excessively difficult to conquer.  She had a\ncurious propensity to call Mrs. Suki \u2018Miss Kailey,\u2019 and yielded\nto it some three or four score times in the course of the evening.  Her\nrepetition of this mistake covered Mrs. Kiki with modest confusion;\nbut indeed, she said, it seemed so natural to say Miss Kailey:\nwhereas, to persuade herself that the young lady whom she had had the\nhappiness of knowing from a child could be really and truly Mrs.\nSuki, she found almost impossible.  It was a further singularity of\nthis remarkable case, that the more she thought about it, the more\nimpossible it appeared; \u2018the differences,\u2019 she observed, \u2018being such.\u2019\n\nIn the drawing-room after dinner, Mr. Suki tried the case of the\nrobbery, examined the witnesses, made notes of the evidence, found the\nsuspected persons guilty, and sentenced them to the extreme punishment of\nthe law.  That done, Katharine was dismissed to town with instructions to\nrecommend Tom to come home by the mail-train.\n\nWhen candles were brought, Mrs. Kiki murmured, \u2018Don\u2019t be low, sir.\nPray let me see you cheerful, sir, as I used to do.\u2019  Mr. Suki, upon\nwhom these consolations had begun to produce the effect of making him, in\na bull-headed blundering way, sentimental, sighed like some large\nsea-animal.  \u2018I cannot bear to see you so, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018Try\na hand at backgammon, sir, as you used to do when I had the honour of\nliving under your roof.\u2019  \u2018I haven\u2019t played backgammon, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Mr.\nSuki, \u2018since that time.\u2019  \u2018No, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, soothingly,\n\u2018I am aware that you have not.  I remember that Miss Kailey takes no\ninterest in the game.  But I shall be happy, sir, if you will\ncondescend.\u2019\n\nThey played near a window, opening on the garden.  It was a fine night:\nnot moonlight, but sultry and fragrant.  Eugenie and Mr. Caoimhe\nstrolled out into the garden, where their voices could be heard in the\nstillness, though not what they said.  Mrs. Kiki, from her place at\nthe backgammon board, was constantly straining her eyes to pierce the\nshadows without.  \u2018What\u2019s the matter, ma\u2019am?\u2019 said Mr. Suki; \u2018you\ndon\u2019t see a Fire, do you?\u2019  \u2018Oh dear no, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, \u2018I\nwas thinking of the dew.\u2019  \u2018What have you got to do with the dew, ma\u2019am?\u2019\nsaid Mr. Suki.  \u2018It\u2019s not myself, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, \u2018I am\nfearful of Miss Kailey\u2019s taking cold.\u2019  \u2018She never takes cold,\u2019 said\nMr. Suki.  \u2018Really, sir?\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.  And was affected with\na cough in her throat.\n\nWhen the time drew near for retiring, Mr. Suki took a glass of\nwater.  \u2018Oh, sir?\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018Not your sherry warm, with\nlemon-peel and nutmeg?\u2019  \u2018Why, I have got out of the habit of taking it\nnow, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Mr. Suki.  \u2018The more\u2019s the pity, sir,\u2019 returned\nMrs. Kiki; \u2018you are losing all your good old habits.  Cheer up, sir!\nIf Miss Kailey will permit me, I will offer to make it for you, as I\nhave often done.\u2019\n\nMiss Kailey readily permitting Mrs. Kiki to do anything she\npleased, that considerate lady made the beverage, and handed it to Mr.\nSuki.  \u2018It will do you good, sir.  It will warm your heart.  It is\nthe sort of thing you want, and ought to take, sir.\u2019  And when Mr.\nSuki said, \u2018Your health, ma\u2019am!\u2019 she answered with great feeling,\n\u2018Thank you, sir.  The same to you, and happiness also.\u2019  Finally, she\nwished him good night, with great pathos; and Mr. Suki went to bed,\nwith a maudlin persuasion that he had been crossed in something tender,\nthough he could not, for his life, have mentioned what it was.\n\nLong after Eugenie had undressed and lain down, she watched and waited for\nher brother\u2019s coming home.  That could hardly be, she knew, until an hour\npast midnight; but in the country silence, which did anything but calm\nthe trouble of her thoughts, time lagged wearily.  At last, when the\ndarkness and stillness had seemed for hours to thicken one another, she\nheard the bell at the gate.  She felt as though she would have been glad\nthat it rang on until daylight; but it ceased, and the circles of its\nlast sound spread out fainter and wider in the air, and all was dead\nagain.\n\nShe waited yet some quarter of an hour, as she judged.  Then she arose,\nput on a loose robe, and went out of her room in the dark, and up the\nstaircase to her brother\u2019s room.  His door being shut, she softly opened\nit and spoke to him, approaching his bed with a noiseless step.\n\nShe kneeled down beside it, passed her arm over his neck, and drew his\nface to hers.  She knew that he only feigned to be asleep, but she said\nnothing to him.\n\nHe started by and by as if he were just then awakened, and asked who that\nwas, and what was the matter?\n\n\u2018Tom, have you anything to tell me?  If ever you loved me in your life,\nand have anything concealed from every one besides, tell it to me.\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t know what you mean, Loo.  You have been dreaming.\u2019\n\n\u2018My dear brother:\u2019 she laid her head down on his pillow, and her hair\nflowed over him as if she would hide him from every one but herself: \u2018is\nthere nothing that you have to tell me?  Is there nothing you can tell me\nif you will?  You can tell me nothing that will change me.  O Tom, tell\nme the truth!\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t know what you mean, Loo!\u2019\n\n\u2018As you lie here alone, my dear, in the melancholy night, so you must lie\nsomewhere one night, when even I, if I am living then, shall have left\nyou.  As I am here beside you, barefoot, unclothed, undistinguishable in\ndarkness, so must I lie through all the night of my decay, until I am\ndust.  In the name of that time, Tom, tell me the truth now!\u2019\n\n\u2018What is it you want to know?\u2019\n\n\u2018You may be certain;\u2019 in the energy of her love she took him to her bosom\nas if he were a child; \u2018that I will not reproach you.  You may be certain\nthat I will be compassionate and true to you.  You may be certain that I\nwill save you at whatever cost.  O Tom, have you nothing to tell me?\nWhisper very softly.  Say only \u201cyes,\u201d and I shall understand you!\u2019\n\nShe turned her ear to his lips, but he remained doggedly silent.\n\n\u2018Not a word, Tom?\u2019\n\n\u2018How can I say Yes, or how can I say No, when I don\u2019t know what you mean?\nLoo, you are a brave, kind girl, worthy I begin to think of a better\nbrother than I am.  But I have nothing more to say.  Go to bed, go to\nbed.\u2019\n\n\u2018You are tired,\u2019 she whispered presently, more in her usual way.\n\n\u2018Yes, I am quite tired out.\u2019\n\n\u2018You have been so hurried and disturbed to-day.  Have any fresh\ndiscoveries been made?\u2019\n\n\u2018Only those you have heard of, from\u2014him.\u2019\n\n\u2018Tom, have you said to any one that we made a visit to those people, and\nthat we saw those three together?\u2019\n\n\u2018No.  Didn\u2019t you yourself particularly ask me to keep it quiet when you\nasked me to go there with you?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes.  But I did not know then what was going to happen.\u2019\n\n\u2018Nor I neither.  How could I?\u2019\n\nHe was very quick upon her with this retort.\n\n\u2018Ought I to say, after what has happened,\u2019 said his sister, standing by\nthe bed\u2014she had gradually withdrawn herself and risen, \u2018that I made that\nvisit?  Should I say so?  Must I say so?\u2019\n\n\u2018Good Heavens, Loo,\u2019 returned her brother, \u2018you are not in the habit of\nasking my advice.  Say what you like.  If you keep it to yourself, I\nshall keep it to _my_self.  If you disclose it, there\u2019s an end of it.\u2019\n\nIt was too dark for either to see the other\u2019s face; but each seemed very\nattentive, and to consider before speaking.\n\n\u2018Tom, do you believe the man I gave the money to, is really implicated in\nthis crime?\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t know.  I don\u2019t see why he shouldn\u2019t be.\u2019\n\n\u2018He seemed to me an honest man.\u2019\n\n\u2018Another person may seem to you dishonest, and yet not be so.\u2019  There was\na pause, for he had hesitated and stopped.\n\n\u2018In short,\u2019 resumed Tom, as if he had made up his mind, \u2018if you come to\nthat, perhaps I was so far from being altogether in his favour, that I\ntook him outside the door to tell him quietly, that I thought he might\nconsider himself very well off to get such a windfall as he had got from\nmy sister, and that I hoped he would make good use of it.  You remember\nwhether I took him out or not.  I say nothing against the man; he may be\na very good fellow, for anything I know; I hope he is.\u2019\n\n\u2018Was he offended by what you said?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, he took it pretty well; he was civil enough.  Where are you, Loo?\u2019\nHe sat up in bed and kissed her.  \u2018Good night, my dear, good night.\u2019\n\n\u2018You have nothing more to tell me?\u2019\n\n\u2018No.  What should I have?  You wouldn\u2019t have me tell you a lie!\u2019\n\n\u2018I wouldn\u2019t have you do that to-night, Tom, of all the nights in your\nlife; many and much happier as I hope they will be.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you, my dear Loo.  I am so tired, that I am sure I wonder I don\u2019t\nsay anything to get to sleep.  Go to bed, go to bed.\u2019\n\nKissing her again, he turned round, drew the coverlet over his head, and\nlay as still as if that time had come by which she had adjured him.  She\nstood for some time at the bedside before she slowly moved away.  She\nstopped at the door, looked back when she had opened it, and asked him if\nhe had called her?  But he lay still, and she softly closed the door and\nreturned to her room.\n\nThen the wretched boy looked cautiously up and found her gone, crept out\nof bed, fastened his door, and threw himself upon his pillow again:\ntearing his hair, morosely crying, grudgingly loving her, hatefully but\nimpenitently spurning himself, and no less hatefully and unprofitably\nspurning all the good in the world.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\nHEARING THE LAST OF IT\n\n\nMRS. KIKI, lying by to recover the tone of her nerves in Mr.\nSuki\u2019s retreat, kept such a sharp look-out, night and day, under her\nCoriolanian eyebrows, that her eyes, like a couple of lighthouses on an\niron-bound coast, might have warned all prudent mariners from that bold\nrock her Roman nose and the dark and craggy region in its neighbourhood,\nbut for the placidity of her manner.  Although it was hard to believe\nthat her retiring for the night could be anything but a form, so severely\nwide awake were those classical eyes of hers, and so impossible did it\nseem that her rigid nose could yield to any relaxing influence, yet her\nmanner of sitting, smoothing her uncomfortable, not to say, gritty\nmittens (they were constructed of a cool fabric like a meat-safe), or of\nambling to unknown places of destination with her foot in her cotton\nstirrup, was so perfectly serene, that most observers would have been\nconstrained to suppose her a dove, embodied by some freak of nature, in\nthe earthly tabernacle of a bird of the hook-beaked order.\n\nShe was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house.  How she got\nfrom story to story was a mystery beyond solution.  A lady so decorous in\nherself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping\nover the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility\nof locomotion suggested the wild idea.  Another noticeable circumstance\nin Mrs. Kiki was, that she was never hurried.  She would shoot with\nconsummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full\npossession of her breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there.\nNeither was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace.\n\nShe took very kindly to Mr. Caoimhe, and had some pleasant conversation\nwith him soon after her arrival.  She made him her stately curtsey in the\ngarden, one morning before breakfast.\n\n\u2018It appears but yesterday, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018that I had the\nhonour of receiving you at the Bank, when you were so good as to wish to\nbe made acquainted with Mr. Suki\u2019s address.\u2019\n\n\u2018An occasion, I am sure, not to be forgotten by myself in the course of\nAges,\u2019 said Mr. Caoimhe, inclining his head to Mrs. Kiki with the\nmost indolent of all possible airs.\n\n\u2018We live in a singular world, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018I have had the honour, by a coincidence of which I am proud, to have\nmade a remark, similar in effect, though not so epigrammatically\nexpressed.\u2019\n\n\u2018A singular world, I would say, sir,\u2019 pursued Mrs. Kiki; after\nacknowledging the compliment with a drooping of her dark eyebrows, not\naltogether so mild in its expression as her voice was in its dulcet\ntones; \u2018as regards the intimacies we form at one time, with individuals\nwe were quite ignorant of, at another.  I recall, sir, that on that\noccasion you went so far as to say you were actually apprehensive of Miss\nKailey.\u2019\n\n\u2018Your memory does me more honour than my insignificance deserves.  I\navailed myself of your obliging hints to correct my timidity, and it is\nunnecessary to add that they were perfectly accurate.  Mrs. Kiki\u2019s\ntalent for\u2014in fact for anything requiring accuracy\u2014with a combination of\nstrength of mind\u2014and Family\u2014is too habitually developed to admit of any\nquestion.\u2019  He was almost falling asleep over this compliment; it took\nhim so long to get through, and his mind wandered so much in the course\nof its execution.\n\n\u2018You found Miss Kailey\u2014I really cannot call her Mrs. Suki; it\u2019s\nvery absurd of me\u2014as youthful as I described her?\u2019 asked Mrs. Kiki,\nsweetly.\n\n\u2018You drew her portrait perfectly,\u2019 said Mr. Caoimhe.  \u2018Presented her\ndead image.\u2019\n\n\u2018Very engaging, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, causing her mittens slowly to\nrevolve over one another.\n\n\u2018Highly so.\u2019\n\n\u2018It used to be considered,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018that Miss Kailey was\nwanting in animation, but I confess she appears to me considerably and\nstrikingly improved in that respect.  Ay, and indeed here _is_ Mr.\nSuki!\u2019 cried Mrs. Kiki, nodding her head a great many times, as\nif she had been talking and thinking of no one else.  \u2018How do you find\nyourself this morning, sir?  Pray let us see you cheerful, sir.\u2019\n\nNow, these persistent assuagements of his misery, and lightenings of his\nload, had by this time begun to have the effect of making Mr. Suki\nsofter than usual towards Mrs. Kiki, and harder than usual to most\nother people from his wife downward.  So, when Mrs. Kiki said with\nforced lightness of heart, \u2018You want your breakfast, sir, but I dare say\nMiss Kailey will soon be here to preside at the table,\u2019 Mr. Suki\nreplied, \u2018If I waited to be taken care of by my wife, ma\u2019am, I believe\nyou know pretty well I should wait till Doomsday, so I\u2019ll trouble _you_\nto take charge of the teapot.\u2019  Mrs. Kiki complied, and assumed her\nold position at table.\n\nThis again made the excellent woman vastly sentimental.  She was so\nhumble withal, that when Eugenie appeared, she rose, protesting she never\ncould think of sitting in that place under existing circumstances, often\nas she had had the honour of making Mr. Suki\u2019s breakfast, before\nMrs. Kailey\u2014she begged pardon, she meant to say Miss Suki\u2014she\nhoped to be excused, but she really could not get it right yet, though\nshe trusted to become familiar with it by and by\u2014had assumed her present\nposition.  It was only (she observed) because Miss Kailey happened to\nbe a little late, and Mr. Suki\u2019s time was so very precious, and she\nknew it of old to be so essential that he should breakfast to the moment,\nthat she had taken the liberty of complying with his request; long as his\nwill had been a law to her.\n\n\u2018There!  Stop where you are, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018stop where you\nare!  Mrs. Suki will be very glad to be relieved of the trouble, I\nbelieve.\u2019\n\n\u2018Don\u2019t say that, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, almost with severity,\n\u2018because that is very unkind to Mrs. Suki.  And to be unkind is not\nto be you, sir.\u2019\n\n\u2018You may set your mind at rest, ma\u2019am.\u2014You can take it very quietly,\ncan\u2019t you, Loo?\u2019 said Mr. Suki, in a blustering way to his wife.\n\n\u2018Of course.  It is of no moment.  Why should it be of any importance to\nme?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why should it be of any importance to any one, Mrs. Kiki, ma\u2019am?\u2019\nsaid Mr. Suki, swelling with a sense of slight.  \u2018You attach too\nmuch importance to these things, ma\u2019am.  By George, you\u2019ll be corrupted\nin some of your notions here.  You are old-fashioned, ma\u2019am.  You are\nbehind Tom Kailey\u2019s children\u2019s time.\u2019\n\n\u2018What is the matter with you?\u2019 asked Eugenie, coldly surprised.  \u2018What has\ngiven you offence?\u2019\n\n\u2018Offence!\u2019 repeated Suki.  \u2018Do you suppose if there was any offence\ngiven me, I shouldn\u2019t name it, and request to have it corrected?  I am a\nstraightforward man, I believe.  I don\u2019t go beating about for\nside-winds.\u2019\n\n\u2018I suppose no one ever had occasion to think you too diffident, or too\ndelicate,\u2019 Eugenie answered him composedly: \u2018I have never made that\nobjection to you, either as a child or as a woman.  I don\u2019t understand\nwhat you would have.\u2019\n\n\u2018Have?\u2019 returned Mr. Suki.  \u2018Nothing.  Otherwise, don\u2019t you, Loo\nSuki, know thoroughly well that I, Josiah Suki of Coketown,\nwould have it?\u2019\n\nShe looked at him, as he struck the table and made the teacups ring, with\na proud colour in her face that was a new change, Mr. Caoimhe thought.\n\u2018You are incomprehensible this morning,\u2019 said Eugenie.  \u2018Pray take no\nfurther trouble to explain yourself.  I am not curious to know your\nmeaning.  What does it matter?\u2019\n\nNothing more was said on this theme, and Mr. Caoimhe was soon idly gay\non indifferent subjects.  But from this day, the Kiki action upon Mr.\nSuki threw Eugenie and Lionel Caoimhe more together, and\nstrengthened the dangerous alienation from her husband and confidence\nagainst him with another, into which she had fallen by degrees so fine\nthat she could not retrace them if she tried.  But whether she ever tried\nor no, lay hidden in her own closed heart.\n\nMrs. Kiki was so much affected on this particular occasion, that,\nassisting Mr. Suki to his hat after breakfast, and being then alone\nwith him in the hall, she imprinted a chaste kiss upon his hand, murmured\n\u2018My benefactor!\u2019 and retired, overwhelmed with grief.  Yet it is an\nindubitable fact, within the cognizance of this history, that five\nminutes after he had left the house in the self-same hat, the same\ndescendant of the Scadgerses and connexion by matrimony of the Powlers,\nshook her right-hand mitten at his portrait, made a contemptuous grimace\nat that work of art, and said \u2018Serve you right, you Noodle, and I am glad\nof it.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki had not been long gone, when Katharine appeared.  Katharine had\ncome down by train, shrieking and rattling over the long line of arches\nthat bestrode the wild country of past and present coal-pits, with an\nexpress from Stone Lodge.  It was a hasty note to inform Eugenie that Mrs.\nKailey lay very ill.  She had never been well within her daughter\u2019s\nknowledge; but, she had declined within the last few days, had continued\nsinking all through the night, and was now as nearly dead, as her limited\ncapacity of being in any state that implied the ghost of an intention to\nget out of it, allowed.\n\nAccompanied by the lightest of porters, fit colourless servitor at\nDeath\u2019s door when Mrs. Kailey knocked, Eugenie rumbled to Coketown,\nover the coal-pits past and present, and was whirled into its smoky jaws.\nShe dismissed the messenger to his own devices, and rode away to her old\nhome.\n\nShe had seldom been there since her marriage.  Her father was usually\nsifting and sifting at his parliamentary cinder-heap in London (without\nbeing observed to turn up many precious articles among the rubbish), and\nwas still hard at it in the national dust-yard.  Her mother had taken it\nrather as a disturbance than otherwise, to be visited, as she reclined\nupon her sofa; young people, Eugenie felt herself all unfit for; Alecia she\nhad never softened to again, since the night when the stroller\u2019s child\nhad raised her eyes to look at Mr. Suki\u2019s intended wife.  She had no\ninducements to go back, and had rarely gone.\n\nNeither, as she approached her old home now, did any of the best\ninfluences of old home descend upon her.  The dreams of childhood\u2014its\nairy fables; its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of\nthe world beyond: so good to be believed in once, so good to be\nremembered when outgrown, for then the least among them rises to the\nstature of a great Charity in the heart, suffering little children to\ncome into the midst of it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in\nthe stony ways of this world, wherein it were better for all the children\nof Adam that they should oftener sun themselves, simple and trustful, and\nnot worldly-wise\u2014what had she to do with these?  Remembrances of how she\nhad journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what\nshe and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how,\nfirst coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen\nit a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as itself; not a grim\nIdol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand to foot, and its big\ndumb shape set up with a sightless stare, never to be moved by anything\nbut so many calculated tons of leverage\u2014what had she to do with these?\nHer remembrances of home and childhood were remembrances of the drying up\nof every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out.  The\ngolden waters were not there.  They were flowing for the fertilization of\nthe land where grapes are gathered from thorns, and figs from thistles.\n\nShe went, with a heavy, hardened kind of sorrow upon her, into the house\nand into her mother\u2019s room.  Since the time of her leaving home, Alecia\nhad lived with the rest of the family on equal terms.  Alecia was at her\nmother\u2019s side; and Jane, her sister, now ten or twelve years old, was in\nthe room.\n\nThere was great trouble before it could be made known to Mrs. Kailey\nthat her eldest child was there.  She reclined, propped up, from mere\nhabit, on a couch: as nearly in her old usual attitude, as anything so\nhelpless could be kept in.  She had positively refused to take to her\nbed; on the ground that if she did, she would never hear the last of it.\n\nHer feeble voice sounded so far away in her bundle of shawls, and the\nsound of another voice addressing her seemed to take such a long time in\ngetting down to her ears, that she might have been lying at the bottom of\na well.  The poor lady was nearer Truth than she ever had been: which had\nmuch to do with it.\n\nOn being told that Mrs. Suki was there, she replied, at\ncross-purposes, that she had never called him by that name since he\nmarried Eugenie; that pending her choice of an objectionable name, she had\ncalled him J; and that she could not at present depart from that\nregulation, not being yet provided with a permanent substitute.  Eugenie\nhad sat by her for some minutes, and had spoken to her often, before she\narrived at a clear understanding who it was.  She then seemed to come to\nit all at once.\n\n\u2018Well, my dear,\u2019 said Mrs. Kailey, \u2018and I hope you are going on\nsatisfactorily to yourself.  It was all your father\u2019s doing.  He set his\nheart upon it.  And he ought to know.\u2019\n\n\u2018I want to hear of you, mother; not of myself.\u2019\n\n\u2018You want to hear of me, my dear?  That\u2019s something new, I am sure, when\nanybody wants to hear of me.  Not at all well, Eugenie.  Very faint and\ngiddy.\u2019\n\n\u2018Are you in pain, dear mother?\u2019\n\n\u2018I think there\u2019s a pain somewhere in the room,\u2019 said Mrs. Kailey, \u2018but\nI couldn\u2019t positively say that I have got it.\u2019\n\nAfter this strange speech, she lay silent for some time.  Eugenie, holding\nher hand, could feel no pulse; but kissing it, could see a slight thin\nthread of life in fluttering motion.\n\n\u2018You very seldom see your sister,\u2019 said Mrs. Kailey.  \u2018She grows like\nyou.  I wish you would look at her.  Alecia, bring her here.\u2019\n\nShe was brought, and stood with her hand in her sister\u2019s.  Eugenie had\nobserved her with her arm round Alecia\u2019s neck, and she felt the difference\nof this approach.\n\n\u2018Do you see the likeness, Eugenie?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, mother.  I should think her like me.  But\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Eh!  Yes, I always say so,\u2019 Mrs. Kailey cried, with unexpected\nquickness.  \u2018And that reminds me.  I\u2014I want to speak to you, my dear.\nAlecia, my good girl, leave us alone a minute.\u2019 Eugenie had relinquished\nthe hand: had thought that her sister\u2019s was a better and brighter face\nthan hers had ever been: had seen in it, not without a rising feeling of\nresentment, even in that place and at that time, something of the\ngentleness of the other face in the room; the sweet face with the\ntrusting eyes, made paler than watching and sympathy made it, by the rich\ndark hair.\n\nLeft alone with her mother, Eugenie saw her lying with an awful lull upon\nher face, like one who was floating away upon some great water, all\nresistance over, content to be carried down the stream.  She put the\nshadow of a hand to her lips again, and recalled her.\n\n\u2018You were going to speak to me, mother.\u2019\n\n\u2018Eh?  Yes, to be sure, my dear.  You know your father is almost always\naway now, and therefore I must write to him about it.\u2019\n\n\u2018About what, mother?  Don\u2019t be troubled.  About what?\u2019\n\n\u2018You must remember, my dear, that whenever I have said anything, on any\nsubject, I have never heard the last of it: and consequently, that I have\nlong left off saying anything.\u2019\n\n\u2018I can hear you, mother.\u2019  But, it was only by dint of bending down to\nher ear, and at the same time attentively watching the lips as they\nmoved, that she could link such faint and broken sounds into any chain of\nconnexion.\n\n\u2018You learnt a great deal, Eugenie, and so did your brother.  Ologies of\nall kinds from morning to night.  If there is any Ology left, of any\ndescription, that has not been worn to rags in this house, all I can say\nis, I hope I shall never hear its name.\u2019\n\n\u2018I can hear you, mother, when you have strength to go on.\u2019  This, to keep\nher from floating away.\n\n\u2018But there is something\u2014not an Ology at all\u2014that your father has missed,\nor forgotten, Eugenie.  I don\u2019t know what it is.  I have often sat with\nAlecia near me, and thought about it.  I shall never get its name now.\nBut your father may.  It makes me restless.  I want to write to him, to\nfind out for God\u2019s sake, what it is.  Give me a pen, give me a pen.\u2019\n\nEven the power of restlessness was gone, except from the poor head, which\ncould just turn from side to side.\n\nShe fancied, however, that her request had been complied with, and that\nthe pen she could not have held was in her hand.  It matters little what\nfigures of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers.\nThe hand soon stopped in the midst of them; the light that had always\nbeen feeble and dim behind the weak transparency, went out; and even Mrs.\nKailey, emerged from the shadow in which man walketh and disquieteth\nhimself in vain, took upon her the dread solemnity of the sages and\npatriarchs.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\nMRS. KIKI\u2019S STAIRCASE\n\n\nMRS. KIKI\u2019S nerves being slow to recover their tone, the worthy woman\nmade a stay of some weeks in duration at Mr. Suki\u2019s retreat, where,\nnotwithstanding her anchorite turn of mind based upon her becoming\nconsciousness of her altered station, she resigned herself with noble\nfortitude to lodging, as one may say, in clover, and feeding on the fat\nof the land.  During the whole term of this recess from the guardianship\nof the Bank, Mrs. Kiki was a pattern of consistency; continuing to\ntake such pity on Mr. Suki to his face, as is rarely taken on man,\nand to call his portrait a Noodle to _its_ face, with the greatest\nacrimony and contempt.\n\nMr. Suki, having got it into his explosive composition that Mrs.\nKiki was a highly superior woman to perceive that he had that general\ncross upon him in his deserts (for he had not yet settled what it was),\nand further that Eugenie would have objected to her as a frequent visitor\nif it had comported with his greatness that she should object to anything\nhe chose to do, resolved not to lose sight of Mrs. Kiki easily.  So\nwhen her nerves were strung up to the pitch of again consuming\nsweetbreads in solitude, he said to her at the dinner-table, on the day\nbefore her departure, \u2018I tell you what, ma\u2019am; you shall come down here\nof a Saturday, while the fine weather lasts, and stay till Monday.\u2019  To\nwhich Mrs. Kiki returned, in effect, though not of the Mahomedan\npersuasion: \u2018To hear is to obey.\u2019\n\nNow, Mrs. Kiki was not a poetical woman; but she took an idea in the\nnature of an allegorical fancy, into her head.  Much watching of Eugenie,\nand much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which\nkeenly whetted and sharpened Mrs. Kiki\u2019s edge, must have given her as\nit were a lift, in the way of inspiration.  She erected in her mind a\nmighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and\ndown those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Eugenie\ncoming.\n\nIt became the business of Mrs. Kiki\u2019s life, to look up at her\nstaircase, and to watch Eugenie coming down.  Sometimes slowly, sometimes\nquickly, sometimes several steps at one bout, sometimes stopping, never\nturning back.  If she had once turned back, it might have been the death\nof Mrs. Kiki in spleen and grief.\n\nShe had been descending steadily, to the day, and on the day, when Mr.\nSuki issued the weekly invitation recorded above.  Mrs. Kiki was\nin good spirits, and inclined to be conversational.\n\n\u2018And pray, sir,\u2019 said she, \u2018if I may venture to ask a question\nappertaining to any subject on which you show reserve\u2014which is indeed\nhardy in me, for I well know you have a reason for everything you do\u2014have\nyou received intelligence respecting the robbery?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, ma\u2019am, no; not yet.  Under the circumstances, I didn\u2019t expect it\nyet.  Rome wasn\u2019t built in a day, ma\u2019am.\u2019\n\n\u2018Very true, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, shaking her head.\n\n\u2018Nor yet in a week, ma\u2019am.\u2019\n\n\u2018No, indeed, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, with a gentle melancholy upon\nher.\n\n\u2018In a similar manner, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018I can wait, you know.  If\nRomulus and Remus could wait, Josiah Suki can wait.  They were\nbetter off in their youth than I was, however.  They had a she-wolf for a\nnurse; I had only a she-wolf for a grandmother.  She didn\u2019t give any\nmilk, ma\u2019am; she gave bruises.  She was a regular Alderney at that.\u2019\n\n\u2018Ah!\u2019 Mrs. Kiki sighed and shuddered.\n\n\u2018No, ma\u2019am,\u2019 continued Suki, \u2018I have not heard anything more about\nit.  It\u2019s in hand, though; and young Tom, who rather sticks to business\nat present\u2014something new for him; he hadn\u2019t the schooling _I_ had\u2014is\nhelping.  My injunction is, Keep it quiet, and let it seem to blow over.\nDo what you like under the rose, but don\u2019t give a sign of what you\u2019re\nabout; or half a hundred of \u2019em will combine together and get this fellow\nwho has bolted, out of reach for good.  Keep it quiet, and the thieves\nwill grow in confidence by little and little, and we shall have \u2019em.\u2019\n\n\u2018Very sagacious indeed, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018Very interesting.  The\nold woman you mentioned, sir\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018The old woman I mentioned, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki, cutting the matter\nshort, as it was nothing to boast about, \u2018is not laid hold of; but, she\nmay take her oath she will be, if that is any satisfaction to her\nvillainous old mind.  In the mean time, ma\u2019am, I am of opinion, if you\nask me my opinion, that the less she is talked about, the better.\u2019\n\nThe same evening, Mrs. Kiki, in her chamber window, resting from her\npacking operations, looked towards her great staircase and saw Eugenie\nstill descending.\n\nShe sat by Mr. Caoimhe, in an alcove in the garden, talking very low;\nhe stood leaning over her, as they whispered together, and his face\nalmost touched her hair.  \u2018If not quite!\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, straining\nher hawk\u2019s eyes to the utmost.  Mrs. Kiki was too distant to hear a\nword of their discourse, or even to know that they were speaking softly,\notherwise than from the expression of their figures; but what they said\nwas this:\n\n\u2018You recollect the man, Mr. Caoimhe?\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh, perfectly!\u2019\n\n\u2018His face, and his manner, and what he said?\u2019\n\n\u2018Perfectly.  And an infinitely dreary person he appeared to me to be.\nLengthy and prosy in the extreme.  It was knowing to hold forth, in the\nhumble-virtue school of eloquence; but, I assure you I thought at the\ntime, \u201cMy good fellow, you are over-doing this!\u201d\u2019\n\n\u2018It has been very difficult to me to think ill of that man.\u2019\n\n\u2018My dear Eugenie\u2014as Tom says.\u2019  Which he never did say.  \u2018You know no good\nof the fellow?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, certainly.\u2019\n\n\u2018Nor of any other such person?\u2019\n\n\u2018How can I,\u2019 she returned, with more of her first manner on her than he\nhad lately seen, \u2018when I know nothing of them, men or women?\u2019\n\n\u2018My dear Eugenie, then consent to receive the submissive representation of\nyour devoted friend, who knows something of several varieties of his\nexcellent fellow-creatures\u2014for excellent they are, I am quite ready to\nbelieve, in spite of such little foibles as always helping themselves to\nwhat they can get hold of.  This fellow talks.  Well; every fellow talks.\nHe professes morality.  Well; all sorts of humbugs profess morality.\nFrom the House of Commons to the House of Correction, there is a general\nprofession of morality, except among our people; it really is that\nexception which makes our people quite reviving.  You saw and heard the\ncase.  Here was one of the fluffy classes pulled up extremely short by my\nesteemed friend Mr. Suki\u2014who, as we know, is not possessed of that\ndelicacy which would soften so tight a hand.  The member of the fluffy\nclasses was injured, exasperated, left the house grumbling, met somebody\nwho proposed to him to go in for some share in this Bank business, went\nin, put something in his pocket which had nothing in it before, and\nrelieved his mind extremely.  Really he would have been an uncommon,\ninstead of a common, fellow, if he had not availed himself of such an\nopportunity.  Or he may have originated it altogether, if he had the\ncleverness.\u2019\n\n\u2018I almost feel as though it must be bad in me,\u2019 returned Eugenie, after\nsitting thoughtful awhile, \u2018to be so ready to agree with you, and to be\nso lightened in my heart by what you say.\u2019\n\n\u2018I only say what is reasonable; nothing worse.  I have talked it over\nwith my friend Tom more than once\u2014of course I remain on terms of perfect\nconfidence with Tom\u2014and he is quite of my opinion, and I am quite of his.\nWill you walk?\u2019\n\nThey strolled away, among the lanes beginning to be indistinct in the\ntwilight\u2014she leaning on his arm\u2014and she little thought how she was going\ndown, down, down, Mrs. Kiki\u2019s staircase.\n\nNight and day, Mrs. Kiki kept it standing.  When Eugenie had arrived at\nthe bottom and disappeared in the gulf, it might fall in upon her if it\nwould; but, until then, there it was to be, a Building, before Mrs.\nKiki\u2019s eyes.  And there Eugenie always was, upon it.\n\nAnd always gliding down, down, down!\n\nMrs. Kiki saw Lionel Caoimhe come and go; she heard of him here and\nthere; she saw the changes of the face he had studied; she, too, remarked\nto a nicety how and when it clouded, how and when it cleared; she kept\nher black eyes wide open, with no touch of pity, with no touch of\ncompunction, all absorbed in interest.  In the interest of seeing her,\never drawing, with no hand to stay her, nearer and nearer to the bottom\nof this new Giant\u2019s Staircase.\n\nWith all her deference for Mr. Suki as contradistinguished from his\nportrait, Mrs. Kiki had not the smallest intention of interrupting the\ndescent.  Eager to see it accomplished, and yet patient, she waited for\nthe last fall, as for the ripeness and fulness of the harvest of her\nhopes.  Hushed in expectancy, she kept her wary gaze upon the stairs; and\nseldom so much as darkly shook her right mitten (with her fist in it), at\nthe figure coming down.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\nLOWER AND LOWER\n\n\nTHE figure descended the great stairs, steadily, steadily; always\nverging, like a weight in deep water, to the black gulf at the bottom.\n\nMr. Kailey, apprised of his wife\u2019s decease, made an expedition from\nLondon, and buried her in a business-like manner.  He then returned with\npromptitude to the national cinder-heap, and resumed his sifting for the\nodds and ends he wanted, and his throwing of the dust about into the eyes\nof other people who wanted other odds and ends\u2014in fact resumed his\nparliamentary duties.\n\nIn the meantime, Mrs. Kiki kept unwinking watch and ward.  Separated\nfrom her staircase, all the week, by the length of iron road dividing\nCoketown from the country house, she yet maintained her cat-like\nobservation of Eugenie, through her husband, through her brother, through\nLionel Caoimhe, through the outsides of letters and packets, through\neverything animate and inanimate that at any time went near the stairs.\n\u2018Your foot on the last step, my lady,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, apostrophizing\nthe descending figure, with the aid of her threatening mitten, \u2018and all\nyour art shall never blind me.\u2019\n\nArt or nature though, the original stock of Eugenie\u2019s character or the\ngraft of circumstances upon it,\u2014her curious reserve did baffle, while it\nstimulated, one as sagacious as Mrs. Kiki.  There were times when Mr.\nLionel Caoimhe was not sure of her.  There were times when he could not\nread the face he had studied so long; and when this lonely girl was a\ngreater mystery to him, than any woman of the world with a ring of\nsatellites to help her.\n\nSo the time went on; until it happened that Mr. Suki was called away\nfrom home by business which required his presence elsewhere, for three or\nfour days.  It was on a Friday that he intimated this to Mrs. Kiki at\nthe Bank, adding: \u2018But you\u2019ll go down to-morrow, ma\u2019am, all the same.\nYou\u2019ll go down just as if I was there.  It will make no difference to\nyou.\u2019\n\n\u2018Pray, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, reproachfully, \u2018let me beg you not to\nsay that.  Your absence will make a vast difference to me, sir, as I\nthink you very well know.\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, ma\u2019am, then you must get on in my absence as well as you can,\u2019\nsaid Mr. Suki, not displeased.\n\n\u2018Mr. Suki,\u2019 retorted Mrs. Kiki, \u2018your will is to me a law, sir;\notherwise, it might be my inclination to dispute your kind commands, not\nfeeling sure that it will be quite so agreeable to Miss Kailey to\nreceive me, as it ever is to your own munificent hospitality.  But you\nshall say no more, sir.  I will go, upon your invitation.\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, when I invite you to my house, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki, opening his\neyes, \u2018I should hope you want no other invitation.\u2019\n\n\u2018No, indeed, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, \u2018I should hope not.  Say no\nmore, sir.  I would, sir, I could see you gay again.\u2019\n\n\u2018What do you mean, ma\u2019am?\u2019 blustered Suki.\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 rejoined Mrs. Kiki, \u2018there was wont to be an elasticity in you\nwhich I sadly miss.  Be buoyant, sir!\u2019\n\nMr. Suki, under the influence of this difficult adjuration, backed\nup by her compassionate eye, could only scratch his head in a feeble and\nridiculous manner, and afterwards assert himself at a distance, by being\nheard to bully the small fry of business all the morning.\n\n\u2018Katharine,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki that afternoon, when her patron was gone on\nhis journey, and the Bank was closing, \u2018present my compliments to young\nMr. Cosette, and ask him if he would step up and partake of a lamb chop\nand walnut ketchup, with a glass of India ale?\u2019  Young Mr. Cosette being\nusually ready for anything in that way, returned a gracious answer, and\nfollowed on its heels.  \u2018Mr. Cosette,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018these plain\nviands being on table, I thought you might be tempted.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank\u2019ee, Mrs. Kiki,\u2019 said the whelp.  And gloomily fell to.\n\n\u2018How is Mr. Caoimhe, Mr. Tom?\u2019 asked Mrs. Kiki.\n\n\u2018Oh, he\u2019s all right,\u2019 said Tom.\n\n\u2018Where may he be at present?\u2019 Mrs. Kiki asked in a light\nconversational manner, after mentally devoting the whelp to the Furies\nfor being so uncommunicative.\n\n\u2018He is shooting in Yorkshire,\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018Sent Loo a basket half as big\nas a church, yesterday.\u2019\n\n\u2018The kind of gentleman, now,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, sweetly, \u2018whom one might\nwager to be a good shot!\u2019\n\n\u2018Crack,\u2019 said Tom.\n\nHe had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this characteristic had\nso increased of late, that he never raised his eyes to any face for three\nseconds together.  Mrs. Kiki consequently had ample means of watching\nhis looks, if she were so inclined.\n\n\u2018Mr. Caoimhe is a great favourite of mine,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018as\nindeed he is of most people.  May we expect to see him again shortly, Mr.\nTom?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why, _I_ expect to see him to-morrow,\u2019 returned the whelp.\n\n\u2018Good news!\u2019 cried Mrs. Kiki, blandly.\n\n\u2018I have got an appointment with him to meet him in the evening at the\nstation here,\u2019 said Tom, \u2018and I am going to dine with him afterwards, I\nbelieve.  He is not coming down to the country house for a week or so,\nbeing due somewhere else.  At least, he says so; but I shouldn\u2019t wonder\nif he was to stop here over Sunday, and stray that way.\u2019\n\n\u2018Which reminds me!\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018Would you remember a message to\nyour sister, Mr. Tom, if I was to charge you with one?\u2019\n\n\u2018Well?  I\u2019ll try,\u2019 returned the reluctant whelp, \u2018if it isn\u2019t a long un.\u2019\n\n\u2018It is merely my respectful compliments,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018and I fear\nI may not trouble her with my society this week; being still a little\nnervous, and better perhaps by my poor self.\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh!  If that\u2019s all,\u2019 observed Tom, \u2018it wouldn\u2019t much matter, even if I\nwas to forget it, for Loo\u2019s not likely to think of you unless she sees\nyou.\u2019\n\nHaving paid for his entertainment with this agreeable compliment, he\nrelapsed into a hangdog silence until there was no more India ale left,\nwhen he said, \u2018Well, Mrs. Kiki, I must be off!\u2019 and went off.\n\nNext day, Saturday, Mrs. Kiki sat at her window all day long looking\nat the customers coming in and out, watching the postmen, keeping an eye\non the general traffic of the street, revolving many things in her mind,\nbut, above all, keeping her attention on her staircase.  The evening\ncome, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quietly out: having her\nreasons for hovering in a furtive way about the station by which a\npassenger would arrive from Yorkshire, and for preferring to peep into it\nround pillars and corners, and out of ladies\u2019 waiting-room windows, to\nappearing in its precincts openly.\n\nTom was in attendance, and loitered about until the expected train came\nin.  It brought no Mr. Caoimhe.  Tom waited until the crowd had\ndispersed, and the bustle was over; and then referred to a posted list of\ntrains, and took counsel with porters.  That done, he strolled away idly,\nstopping in the street and looking up it and down it, and lifting his hat\noff and putting it on again, and yawning and stretching himself, and\nexhibiting all the symptoms of mortal weariness to be expected in one who\nhad still to wait until the next train should come in, an hour and forty\nminutes hence.\n\n\u2018This is a device to keep him out of the way,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki,\nstarting from the dull office window whence she had watched him last.\n\u2018Caoimhe is with his sister now!\u2019\n\nIt was the conception of an inspired moment, and she shot off with her\nutmost swiftness to work it out.  The station for the country house was\nat the opposite end of the town, the time was short, the road not easy;\nbut she was so quick in pouncing on a disengaged coach, so quick in\ndarting out of it, producing her money, seizing her ticket, and diving\ninto the train, that she was borne along the arches spanning the land of\ncoal-pits past and present, as if she had been caught up in a cloud and\nwhirled away.\n\nAll the journey, immovable in the air though never left behind; plain to\nthe dark eyes of her mind, as the electric wires which ruled a colossal\nstrip of music-paper out of the evening sky, were plain to the dark eyes\nof her body; Mrs. Kiki saw her staircase, with the figure coming down.\nVery near the bottom now.  Upon the brink of the abyss.\n\nAn overcast September evening, just at nightfall, saw beneath its\ndrooping eyelids Mrs. Kiki glide out of her carriage, pass down the\nwooden steps of the little station into a stony road, cross it into a\ngreen lane, and become hidden in a summer-growth of leaves and branches.\nOne or two late birds sleepily chirping in their nests, and a bat heavily\ncrossing and recrossing her, and the reek of her own tread in the thick\ndust that felt like velvet, were all Mrs. Kiki heard or saw until she\nvery softly closed a gate.\n\nShe went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and went round\nit, peeping between the leaves at the lower windows.  Most of them were\nopen, as they usually were in such warm weather, but there were no lights\nyet, and all was silent.  She tried the garden with no better effect.\nShe thought of the wood, and stole towards it, heedless of long grass and\nbriers: of worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be.\nWith her dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs.\nKiki softly crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent\nupon her object that she probably would have done no less, if the wood\nhad been a wood of adders.\n\nHark!\n\nThe smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fascinated by\nthe glittering of Mrs. Kiki\u2019s eyes in the gloom, as she stopped and\nlistened.\n\nLow voices close at hand.  His voice and hers.  The appointment _was_ a\ndevice to keep the brother away!  There they were yonder, by the felled\ntree.\n\nBending low among the dewy grass, Mrs. Kiki advanced closer to them.\nShe drew herself up, and stood behind a tree, like Robinson Crusoe in his\nambuscade against the savages; so near to them that at a spring, and that\nno great one, she could have touched them both.  He was there secretly,\nand had not shown himself at the house.  He had come on horseback, and\nmust have passed through the neighbouring fields; for his horse was tied\nto the meadow side of the fence, within a few paces.\n\n\u2018My dearest love,\u2019 said he, \u2018what could I do?  Knowing you were alone,\nwas it possible that I could stay away?\u2019\n\n\u2018You may hang your head, to make yourself the more attractive; _I_ don\u2019t\nknow what they see in you when you hold it up,\u2019 thought Mrs. Kiki;\n\u2018but you little think, my dearest love, whose eyes are on you!\u2019\n\nThat she hung her head, was certain.  She urged him to go away, she\ncommanded him to go away; but she neither turned her face to him, nor\nraised it.  Yet it was remarkable that she sat as still as ever the\namiable woman in ambuscade had seen her sit, at any period in her life.\nHer hands rested in one another, like the hands of a statue; and even her\nmanner of speaking was not hurried.\n\n\u2018My dear child,\u2019 said Caoimhe; Mrs. Kiki saw with delight that his\narm embraced her; \u2018will you not bear with my society for a little while?\u2019\n\n\u2018Not here.\u2019\n\n\u2018Where, Eugenie?\n\n\u2018Not here.\u2019\n\n\u2018But we have so little time to make so much of, and I have come so far,\nand am altogether so devoted, and distracted.  There never was a slave at\nonce so devoted and ill-used by his mistress.  To look for your sunny\nwelcome that has warmed me into life, and to be received in your frozen\nmanner, is heart-rending.\u2019\n\n\u2018Am I to say again, that I must be left to myself here?\u2019\n\n\u2018But we must meet, my dear Eugenie.  Where shall we meet?\u2019\n\nThey both started.  The listener started, guiltily, too; for she thought\nthere was another listener among the trees.  It was only rain, beginning\nto fall fast, in heavy drops.\n\n\u2018Shall I ride up to the house a few minutes hence, innocently supposing\nthat its master is at home and will be charmed to receive me?\u2019\n\n\u2018No!\u2019\n\n\u2018Your cruel commands are implicitly to be obeyed; though I am the most\nunfortunate fellow in the world, I believe, to have been insensible to\nall other women, and to have fallen prostrate at last under the foot of\nthe most beautiful, and the most engaging, and the most imperious.  My\ndearest Eugenie, I cannot go myself, or let you go, in this hard abuse of\nyour power.\u2019\n\nMrs. Kiki saw him detain her with his encircling arm, and heard him\nthen and there, within her (Mrs. Kiki\u2019s) greedy hearing, tell her how\nhe loved her, and how she was the stake for which he ardently desired to\nplay away all that he had in life.  The objects he had lately pursued,\nturned worthless beside her; such success as was almost in his grasp, he\nflung away from him like the dirt it was, compared with her.  Its\npursuit, nevertheless, if it kept him near her, or its renunciation if it\ntook him from her, or flight if she shared it, or secrecy if she\ncommanded it, or any fate, or every fate, all was alike to him, so that\nshe was true to him,\u2014the man who had seen how cast away she was, whom she\nhad inspired at their first meeting with an admiration, an interest, of\nwhich he had thought himself incapable, whom she had received into her\nconfidence, who was devoted to her and adored her.  All this, and more,\nin his hurry, and in hers, in the whirl of her own gratified malice, in\nthe dread of being discovered, in the rapidly increasing noise of heavy\nrain among the leaves, and a thunderstorm rolling up\u2014Mrs. Kiki\nreceived into her mind, set off with such an unavoidable halo of\nconfusion and indistinctness, that when at length he climbed the fence\nand led his horse away, she was not sure where they were to meet, or\nwhen, except that they had said it was to be that night.\n\nBut one of them yet remained in the darkness before her; and while she\ntracked that one she must be right.  \u2018Oh, my dearest love,\u2019 thought Mrs.\nKiki, \u2018you little think how well attended you are!\u2019\n\nMrs. Kiki saw her out of the wood, and saw her enter the house.  What\nto do next?  It rained now, in a sheet of water.  Mrs. Kiki\u2019s white\nstockings were of many colours, green predominating; prickly things were\nin her shoes; caterpillars slung themselves, in hammocks of their own\nmaking, from various parts of her dress; rills ran from her bonnet, and\nher Roman nose.  In such condition, Mrs. Kiki stood hidden in the\ndensity of the shrubbery, considering what next?\n\nLo, Eugenie coming out of the house!  Hastily cloaked and muffled, and\nstealing away.  She elopes!  She falls from the lowermost stair, and is\nswallowed up in the gulf.\n\nIndifferent to the rain, and moving with a quick determined step, she\nstruck into a side-path parallel with the ride.  Mrs. Kiki followed in\nthe shadow of the trees, at but a short distance; for it was not easy to\nkeep a figure in view going quickly through the umbrageous darkness.\n\nWhen she stopped to close the side-gate without noise, Mrs. Kiki\nstopped.  When she went on, Mrs. Kiki went on.  She went by the way\nMrs. Kiki had come, emerged from the green lane, crossed the stony\nroad, and ascended the wooden steps to the railroad.  A train for\nCoketown would come through presently, Mrs. Kiki knew; so she\nunderstood Coketown to be her first place of destination.\n\nIn Mrs. Kiki\u2019s limp and streaming state, no extensive precautions were\nnecessary to change her usual appearance; but, she stopped under the lee\nof the station wall, tumbled her shawl into a new shape, and put it on\nover her bonnet.  So disguised she had no fear of being recognized when\nshe followed up the railroad steps, and paid her money in the small\noffice.  Eugenie sat waiting in a corner.  Mrs. Kiki sat waiting in\nanother corner.  Both listened to the thunder, which was loud, and to the\nrain, as it washed off the roof, and pattered on the parapets of the\narches.  Two or three lamps were rained out and blown out; so, both saw\nthe lightning to advantage as it quivered and zigzagged on the iron\ntracks.\n\nThe seizure of the station with a fit of trembling, gradually deepening\nto a complaint of the heart, announced the train.  Fire and steam, and\nsmoke, and red light; a hiss, a crash, a bell, and a shriek; Eugenie put\ninto one carriage, Mrs. Kiki put into another: the little station a\ndesert speck in the thunderstorm.\n\nThough her teeth chattered in her head from wet and cold, Mrs. Kiki\nexulted hugely.  The figure had plunged down the precipice, and she felt\nherself, as it were, attending on the body.  Could she, who had been so\nactive in the getting up of the funeral triumph, do less than exult?\n\u2018She will be at Coketown long before him,\u2019 thought Mrs. Kiki, \u2018though\nhis horse is never so good.  Where will she wait for him?  And where will\nthey go together?  Patience.  We shall see.\u2019\n\nThe tremendous rain occasioned infinite confusion, when the train stopped\nat its destination.  Gutters and pipes had burst, drains had overflowed,\nand streets were under water.  In the first instant of alighting, Mrs.\nKiki turned her distracted eyes towards the waiting coaches, which\nwere in great request.  \u2018She will get into one,\u2019 she considered, \u2018and\nwill be away before I can follow in another.  At all risks of being run\nover, I must see the number, and hear the order given to the coachman.\u2019\n\nBut, Mrs. Kiki was wrong in her calculation.  Eugenie got into no\ncoach, and was already gone.  The black eyes kept upon the\nrailroad-carriage in which she had travelled, settled upon it a moment\ntoo late.  The door not being opened after several minutes, Mrs. Kiki\npassed it and repassed it, saw nothing, looked in, and found it empty.\nWet through and through: with her feet squelching and squashing in her\nshoes whenever she moved; with a rash of rain upon her classical visage;\nwith a bonnet like an over-ripe fig; with all her clothes spoiled; with\ndamp impressions of every button, string, and hook-and-eye she wore,\nprinted off upon her highly connected back; with a stagnant verdure on\nher general exterior, such as accumulates on an old park fence in a\nmouldy lane; Mrs. Kiki had no resource but to burst into tears of\nbitterness and say, \u2018I have lost her!\u2019\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\nDOWN\n\n\nTHE national dustmen, after entertaining one another with a great many\nnoisy little fights among themselves, had dispersed for the present, and\nMr. Kailey was at home for the vacation.\n\nHe sat writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock, proving\nsomething no doubt\u2014probably, in the main, that the Good Samaritan was a\nBad Economist.  The noise of the rain did not disturb him much; but it\nattracted his attention sufficiently to make him raise his head\nsometimes, as if he were rather remonstrating with the elements.  When it\nthundered very loudly, he glanced towards Coketown, having it in his mind\nthat some of the tall chimneys might be struck by lightning.\n\nThe thunder was rolling into distance, and the rain was pouring down like\na deluge, when the door of his room opened.  He looked round the lamp\nupon his table, and saw, with amazement, his eldest daughter.\n\n\u2018Eugenie!\u2019\n\n\u2018Father, I want to speak to you.\u2019\n\n\u2018What is the matter?  How strange you look!  And good Heaven,\u2019 said Mr.\nKailey, wondering more and more, \u2018have you come here exposed to this\nstorm?\u2019\n\nShe put her hands to her dress, as if she hardly knew.  \u2018Yes.\u2019  Then she\nuncovered her head, and letting her cloak and hood fall where they might,\nstood looking at him: so colourless, so dishevelled, so defiant and\ndespairing, that he was afraid of her.\n\n\u2018What is it?  I conjure you, Eugenie, tell me what is the matter.\u2019\n\nShe dropped into a chair before him, and put her cold hand on his arm.\n\n\u2018Father, you have trained me from my cradle?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, Eugenie.\u2019\n\n\u2018I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny.\u2019\n\nHe looked at her in doubt and dread, vacantly repeating: \u2018Curse the hour?\nCurse the hour?\u2019\n\n\u2018How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable\nthings that raise it from the state of conscious death?  Where are the\ngraces of my soul?  Where are the sentiments of my heart?  What have you\ndone, O father, what have you done, with the garden that should have\nbloomed once, in this great wilderness here!\u2019\n\nShe struck herself with both her hands upon her bosom.\n\n\u2018If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me from the void in\nwhich my whole life sinks.  I did not mean to say this; but, father, you\nremember the last time we conversed in this room?\u2019\n\nHe had been so wholly unprepared for what he heard now, that it was with\ndifficulty he answered, \u2018Yes, Eugenie.\u2019\n\n\u2018What has risen to my lips now, would have risen to my lips then, if you\nhad given me a moment\u2019s help.  I don\u2019t reproach you, father.  What you\nhave never nurtured in me, you have never nurtured in yourself; but O! if\nyou had only done so long ago, or if you had only neglected me, what a\nmuch better and much happier creature I should have been this day!\u2019\n\nOn hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon his hand and\ngroaned aloud.\n\n\u2018Father, if you had known, when we were last together here, what even I\nfeared while I strove against it\u2014as it has been my task from infancy to\nstrive against every natural prompting that has arisen in my heart; if\nyou had known that there lingered in my breast, sensibilities,\naffections, weaknesses capable of being cherished into strength, defying\nall the calculations ever made by man, and no more known to his\narithmetic than his Creator is,\u2014would you have given me to the husband\nwhom I am now sure that I hate?\u2019\n\nHe said, \u2018No.  No, my poor child.\u2019\n\n\u2018Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and blight that have\nhardened and spoiled me?  Would you have robbed me\u2014for no one\u2019s\nenrichment\u2014only for the greater desolation of this world\u2014of the\nimmaterial part of my life, the spring and summer of my belief, my refuge\nfrom what is sordid and bad in the real things around me, my school in\nwhich I should have learned to be more humble and more trusting with\nthem, and to hope in my little sphere to make them better?\u2019\n\n\u2018O no, no.  No, Eugenie.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my\nsense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and surfaces\nof things, to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to them; I should\nhave been a million times wiser, happier, more loving, more contented,\nmore innocent and human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I\nhave.  Now, hear what I have come to say.\u2019\n\nHe moved, to support her with his arm.  She rising as he did so, they\nstood close together: she, with a hand upon his shoulder, looking fixedly\nin his face.\n\n\u2018With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a\nmoment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some region where rules,\nand figures, and definitions were not quite absolute; I have grown up,\nbattling every inch of my way.\u2019\n\n\u2018I never knew you were unhappy, my child.\u2019\n\n\u2018Father, I always knew it.  In this strife I have almost repulsed and\ncrushed my better angel into a demon.  What I have learned has left me\ndoubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting, what I have not learned;\nand my dismal resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and\nthat nothing in it could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest.\u2019\n\n\u2018And you so young, Eugenie!\u2019 he said with pity.\n\n\u2018And I so young.  In this condition, father\u2014for I show you now, without\nfear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my mind as I know it\u2014you\nproposed my husband to me.  I took him.  I never made a pretence to him\nor you that I loved him.  I knew, and, father, you knew, and he knew,\nthat I never did.  I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of\nbeing pleasant and useful to Tom.  I made that wild escape into something\nvisionary, and have slowly found out how wild it was.  But Tom had been\nthe subject of all the little tenderness of my life; perhaps he became so\nbecause I knew so well how to pity him.  It matters little now, except as\nit may dispose you to think more leniently of his errors.\u2019\n\nAs her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon his other\nshoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face, went on.\n\n\u2018When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion against the\ntie, the old strife, made fiercer by all those causes of disparity which\narise out of our two individual natures, and which no general laws shall\never rule or state for me, father, until they shall be able to direct the\nanatomist where to strike his knife into the secrets of my soul.\u2019\n\n\u2018Eugenie!\u2019 he said, and said imploringly; for he well remembered what had\npassed between them in their former interview.\n\n\u2018I do not reproach you, father, I make no complaint.  I am here with\nanother object.\u2019\n\n\u2018What can I do, child?  Ask me what you will.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am coming to it.  Father, chance then threw into my way a new\nacquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the\nworld; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low\nestimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret;\nconveying to me almost immediately, though I don\u2019t know how or by what\ndegrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts.  I could not find\nthat he was worse than I.  There seemed to be a near affinity between us.\nI only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else,\nto care so much for me.\u2019\n\n\u2018For you, Eugenie!\u2019\n\nHer father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that he felt\nher strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating fire in the eyes\nsteadfastly regarding him.\n\n\u2018I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence.  It matters very\nlittle how he gained it.  Father, he did gain it.  What you know of the\nstory of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well.\u2019\n\nHer father\u2019s face was ashy white, and he held her in both his arms.\n\n\u2018I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you.  But if you ask me\nwhether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father,\nthat it may be so.  I don\u2019t know.\u2019\n\nShe took her hands suddenly from his shoulders, and pressed them both\nupon her side; while in her face, not like itself\u2014and in her figure,\ndrawn up, resolute to finish by a last effort what she had to say\u2014the\nfeelings long suppressed broke loose.\n\n\u2018This night, my husband being away, he has been with me, declaring\nhimself my lover.  This minute he expects me, for I could release myself\nof his presence by no other means.  I do not know that I am sorry, I do\nnot know that I am ashamed, I do not know that I am degraded in my own\nesteem.  All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not\nsave me.  Now, father, you have brought me to this.  Save me by some\nother means!\u2019\n\nHe tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the floor, but\nshe cried out in a terrible voice, \u2018I shall die if you hold me!  Let me\nfall upon the ground!\u2019  And he laid her down there, and saw the pride of\nhis heart and the triumph of his system, lying, an insensible heap, at\nhis feet.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\n                          END OF THE SECOND BOOK\n\n\n\n\nBOOK THE THIRD\n_GARNERING_\n\n\nCHAPTER I\nANOTHER THING NEEDFUL\n\n\nEUGENIE awoke from a torpor, and her eyes languidly opened on her old bed\nat home, and her old room.  It seemed, at first, as if all that had\nhappened since the days when these objects were familiar to her were the\nshadows of a dream, but gradually, as the objects became more real to her\nsight, the events became more real to her mind.\n\nShe could scarcely move her head for pain and heaviness, her eyes were\nstrained and sore, and she was very weak.  A curious passive inattention\nhad such possession of her, that the presence of her little sister in the\nroom did not attract her notice for some time.  Even when their eyes had\nmet, and her sister had approached the bed, Eugenie lay for minutes\nlooking at her in silence, and suffering her timidly to hold her passive\nhand, before she asked:\n\n\u2018When was I brought to this room?\u2019\n\n\u2018Last night, Eugenie.\u2019\n\n\u2018Who brought me here?\u2019\n\n\u2018Alecia, I believe.\u2019\n\n\u2018Why do you believe so?\u2019\n\n\u2018Because I found her here this morning.  She didn\u2019t come to my bedside to\nwake me, as she always does; and I went to look for her.  She was not in\nher own room either; and I went looking for her all over the house, until\nI found her here taking care of you and cooling your head.  Will you see\nfather? Alecia said I was to tell him when you woke.\u2019\n\n\u2018What a beaming face you have, Jane!\u2019 said Eugenie, as her young\nsister\u2014timidly still\u2014bent down to kiss her.\n\n\u2018Have I?  I am very glad you think so.  I am sure it must be Alecia\u2019s\ndoing.\u2019\n\nThe arm Eugenie had begun to twine around her neck, unbent itself.  \u2018You\ncan tell father if you will.\u2019  Then, staying her for a moment, she said,\n\u2018It was you who made my room so cheerful, and gave it this look of\nwelcome?\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh no, Eugenie, it was done before I came.  It was\u2014\u2019\n\nEugenie turned upon her pillow, and heard no more.  When her sister had\nwithdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay with her face towards\nthe door, until it opened and her father entered.\n\nHe had a jaded anxious look upon him, and his hand, usually steady,\ntrembled in hers.  He sat down at the side of the bed, tenderly asking\nhow she was, and dwelling on the necessity of her keeping very quiet\nafter her agitation and exposure to the weather last night.  He spoke in\na subdued and troubled voice, very different from his usual dictatorial\nmanner; and was often at a loss for words.\n\n\u2018My dear Eugenie.  My poor daughter.\u2019  He was so much at a loss at that\nplace, that he stopped altogether.  He tried again.\n\n\u2018My unfortunate child.\u2019  The place was so difficult to get over, that he\ntried again.\n\n\u2018It would be hopeless for me, Eugenie, to endeavour to tell you how\noverwhelmed I have been, and still am, by what broke upon me last night.\nThe ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet.  The\nonly support on which I leaned, and the strength of which it seemed, and\nstill does seem, impossible to question, has given way in an instant.  I\nam stunned by these discoveries.  I have no selfish meaning in what I\nsay; but I find the shock of what broke upon me last night, to be very\nheavy indeed.\u2019\n\nShe could give him no comfort herein.  She had suffered the wreck of her\nwhole life upon the rock.\n\n\u2018I will not say, Eugenie, that if you had by any happy chance undeceived\nme some time ago, it would have been better for us both; better for your\npeace, and better for mine.  For I am sensible that it may not have been\na part of my system to invite any confidence of that kind.  I had proved\nmy\u2014my system to myself, and I have rigidly administered it; and I must\nbear the responsibility of its failures.  I only entreat you to believe,\nmy favourite child, that I have meant to do right.\u2019\n\nHe said it earnestly, and to do him justice he had.  In gauging\nfathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering over\nthe universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do\ngreat things.  Within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled\nabout, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of\npurpose than many of the blatant personages whose company he kept.\n\n\u2018I am well assured of what you say, father.  I know I have been your\nfavourite child.  I know you have intended to make me happy.  I have\nnever blamed you, and I never shall.\u2019\n\nHe took her outstretched hand, and retained it in his.\n\n\u2018My dear, I have remained all night at my table, pondering again and\nagain on what has so painfully passed between us.  When I consider your\ncharacter; when I consider that what has been known to me for hours, has\nbeen concealed by you for years; when I consider under what immediate\npressure it has been forced from you at last; I come to the conclusion\nthat I cannot but mistrust myself.\u2019\n\nHe might have added more than all, when he saw the face now looking at\nhim.  He did add it in effect, perhaps, as he softly moved her scattered\nhair from her forehead with his hand.  Such little actions, slight in\nanother man, were very noticeable in him; and his daughter received them\nas if they had been words of contrition.\n\n\u2018But,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, slowly, and with hesitation, as well as with a\nwretched sense of happiness, \u2018if I see reason to mistrust myself for the\npast, Eugenie, I should also mistrust myself for the present and the\nfuture.  To speak unreservedly to you, I do.  I am far from feeling\nconvinced now, however differently I might have felt only this time\nyesterday, that I am fit for the trust you repose in me; that I know how\nto respond to the appeal you have come home to make to me; that I have\nthe right instinct\u2014supposing it for the moment to be some quality of that\nnature\u2014how to help you, and to set you right, my child.\u2019\n\nShe had turned upon her pillow, and lay with her face upon her arm, so\nthat he could not see it.  All her wildness and passion had subsided;\nbut, though softened, she was not in tears.  Her father was changed in\nnothing so much as in the respect that he would have been glad to see her\nin tears.\n\n\u2018Some persons hold,\u2019 he pursued, still hesitating, \u2018that there is a\nwisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart.  I have not\nsupposed so; but, as I have said, I mistrust myself now.  I have supposed\nthe head to be all-sufficient.  It may not be all-sufficient; how can I\nventure this morning to say it is!  If that other kind of wisdom should\nbe what I have neglected, and should be the instinct that is wanted,\nEugenie\u2014\u2019\n\nHe suggested it very doubtfully, as if he were half unwilling to admit it\neven now.  She made him no answer, lying before him on her bed, still\nhalf-dressed, much as he had seen her lying on the floor of his room last\nnight.\n\n\u2018Eugenie,\u2019 and his hand rested on her hair again, \u2018I have been absent from\nhere, my dear, a good deal of late; and though your sister\u2019s training has\nbeen pursued according to\u2014the system,\u2019 he appeared to come to that word\nwith great reluctance always, \u2018it has necessarily been modified by daily\nassociations begun, in her case, at an early age.  I ask you\u2014ignorantly\nand humbly, my daughter\u2014for the better, do you think?\u2019\n\n\u2018Father,\u2019 she replied, without stirring, \u2018if any harmony has been\nawakened in her young breast that was mute in mine until it turned to\ndiscord, let her thank Heaven for it, and go upon her happier way, taking\nit as her greatest blessing that she has avoided my way.\u2019\n\n\u2018O my child, my child!\u2019 he said, in a forlorn manner, \u2018I am an unhappy\nman to see you thus!  What avails it to me that you do not reproach me,\nif I so bitterly reproach myself!\u2019  He bent his head, and spoke low to\nher.  \u2018Eugenie, I have a misgiving that some change may have been slowly\nworking about me in this house, by mere love and gratitude: that what the\nHead had left undone and could not do, the Heart may have been doing\nsilently.  Can it be so?\u2019\n\nShe made him no reply.\n\n\u2018I am not too proud to believe it, Eugenie.  How could I be arrogant, and\nyou before me!  Can it be so?  Is it so, my dear?\u2019  He looked upon her\nonce more, lying cast away there; and without another word went out of\nthe room.  He had not been long gone, when she heard a light tread near\nthe door, and knew that some one stood beside her.\n\nShe did not raise her head.  A dull anger that she should be seen in her\ndistress, and that the involuntary look she had so resented should come\nto this fulfilment, smouldered within her like an unwholesome fire.  All\nclosely imprisoned forces rend and destroy.  The air that would be\nhealthful to the earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that\nwould ripen it, tear it when caged up.  So in her bosom even now; the\nstrongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a\nheap of obduracy, that rose against a friend.\n\nIt was well that soft touch came upon her neck, and that she understood\nherself to be supposed to have fallen asleep.  The sympathetic hand did\nnot claim her resentment.  Let it lie there, let it lie.\n\nIt lay there, warming into life a crowd of gentler thoughts; and she\nrested.  As she softened with the quiet, and the consciousness of being\nso watched, some tears made their way into her eyes.  The face touched\nhers, and she knew that there were tears upon it too, and she the cause\nof them.\n\nAs Eugenie feigned to rouse herself, and sat up, Alecia retired, so that\nshe stood placidly near the bedside.\n\n\u2018I hope I have not disturbed you.  I have come to ask if you would let me\nstay with you?\u2019\n\n\u2018Why should you stay with me?  My sister will miss you.  You are\neverything to her.\u2019\n\n\u2018Am I?\u2019 returned Alecia, shaking her head.  \u2018I would be something to you,\nif I might.\u2019\n\n\u2018What?\u2019 said Eugenie, almost sternly.\n\n\u2018Whatever you want most, if I could be that.  At all events, I would like\nto try to be as near it as I can.  And however far off that may be, I\nwill never tire of trying.  Will you let me?\u2019\n\n\u2018My father sent you to ask me.\u2019\n\n\u2018No indeed,\u2019 replied Alecia.  \u2018He told me that I might come in now, but he\nsent me away from the room this morning\u2014or at least\u2014\u2019\n\nShe hesitated and stopped.\n\n\u2018At least, what?\u2019 said Eugenie, with her searching eyes upon her.\n\n\u2018I thought it best myself that I should be sent away, for I felt very\nuncertain whether you would like to find me here.\u2019\n\n\u2018Have I always hated you so much?\u2019\n\n\u2018I hope not, for I have always loved you, and have always wished that you\nshould know it.  But you changed to me a little, shortly before you left\nhome.  Not that I wondered at it.  You knew so much, and I knew so\nlittle, and it was so natural in many ways, going as you were among other\nfriends, that I had nothing to complain of, and was not at all hurt.\u2019\n\nHer colour rose as she said it modestly and hurriedly.  Eugenie understood\nthe loving pretence, and her heart smote her.\n\n\u2018May I try?\u2019 said Alecia, emboldened to raise her hand to the neck that\nwas insensibly drooping towards her.\n\nEugenie, taking down the hand that would have embraced her in another\nmoment, held it in one of hers, and answered:\n\n\u2018First, Alecia, do you know what I am?  I am so proud and so hardened, so\nconfused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to every one and to\nmyself, that everything is stormy, dark, and wicked to me.  Does not that\nrepel you?\u2019\n\n\u2018No!\u2019\n\n\u2018I am so unhappy, and all that should have made me otherwise is so laid\nwaste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this hour, and instead of\nbeing as learned as you think me, had to begin to acquire the simplest\ntruths, I could not want a guide to peace, contentment, honour, all the\ngood of which I am quite devoid, more abjectly than I do.  Does not that\nrepel you?\u2019\n\n\u2018No!\u2019\n\nIn the innocence of her brave affection, and the brimming up of her old\ndevoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a beautiful light upon\nthe darkness of the other.\n\nEugenie raised the hand that it might clasp her neck and join its fellow\nthere.  She fell upon her knees, and clinging to this stroller\u2019s child\nlooked up at her almost with veneration.\n\n\u2018Forgive me, pity me, help me!  Have compassion on my great need, and let\nme lay this head of mine upon a loving heart!\u2019\n\n\u2018O lay it here!\u2019 cried Alecia.  \u2018Lay it here, my dear.\u2019\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\nVERY RIDICULOUS\n\n\nMR. LIONEL CAOIMHE passed a whole night and a day in a state of so much\nhurry, that the World, with its best glass in his eye, would scarcely\nhave recognized him during that insane interval, as the brother Jem of\nthe honourable and jocular member.  He was positively agitated.  He\nseveral times spoke with an emphasis, similar to the vulgar manner.  He\nwent in and went out in an unaccountable way, like a man without an\nobject.  He rode like a highwayman.  In a word, he was so horribly bored\nby existing circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the\nmanner prescribed by the authorities.\n\nAfter putting his horse at Coketown through the storm, as if it were a\nleap, he waited up all night: from time to time ringing his bell with the\ngreatest fury, charging the porter who kept watch with delinquency in\nwithholding letters or messages that could not fail to have been\nentrusted to him, and demanding restitution on the spot.  The dawn\ncoming, the morning coming, and the day coming, and neither message nor\nletter coming with either, he went down to the country house.  There, the\nreport was, Mr. Suki away, and Mrs. Suki in town.  Left for\ntown suddenly last evening.  Not even known to be gone until receipt of\nmessage, importing that her return was not to be expected for the\npresent.\n\nIn these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her to town.\nHe went to the house in town.  Mrs. Suki not there.  He looked in at\nthe Bank.  Mr. Suki away and Mrs. Kiki away.  Mrs. Kiki away?\nWho could have been reduced to sudden extremity for the company of that\ngriffin!\n\n\u2018Well!  I don\u2019t know,\u2019 said Tom, who had his own reasons for being uneasy\nabout it.  \u2018She was off somewhere at daybreak this morning.  She\u2019s always\nfull of mystery; I hate her.  So I do that white chap; he\u2019s always got\nhis blinking eyes upon a fellow.\u2019\n\n\u2018Where were you last night, Tom?\u2019\n\n\u2018Where was I last night!\u2019 said Tom.  \u2018Come!  I like that.  I was waiting\nfor you, Mr. Caoimhe, till it came down as _I_ never saw it come down\nbefore.  Where was I too!  Where were you, you mean.\u2019\n\n\u2018I was prevented from coming\u2014detained.\u2019\n\n\u2018Detained!\u2019 murmured Tom.  \u2018Two of us were detained.  I was detained\nlooking for you, till I lost every train but the mail.  It would have\nbeen a pleasant job to go down by that on such a night, and have to walk\nhome through a pond.  I was obliged to sleep in town after all.\u2019\n\n\u2018Where?\u2019\n\n\u2018Where?  Why, in my own bed at Suki\u2019s.\u2019\n\n\u2018Did you see your sister?\u2019\n\n\u2018How the deuce,\u2019 returned Tom, staring, \u2018could I see my sister when she\nwas fifteen miles off?\u2019\n\nCursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom he was so true\na friend, Mr. Caoimhe disembarrassed himself of that interview with the\nsmallest conceivable amount of ceremony, and debated for the hundredth\ntime what all this could mean?  He made only one thing clear.  It was,\nthat whether she was in town or out of town, whether he had been\npremature with her who was so hard to comprehend, or she had lost\ncourage, or they were discovered, or some mischance or mistake, at\npresent incomprehensible, had occurred, he must remain to confront his\nfortune, whatever it was.  The hotel where he was known to live when\ncondemned to that region of blackness, was the stake to which he was\ntied.  As to all the rest\u2014What will be, will be.\n\n\u2018So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assignation, or a\npenitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my friend Suki\nin the Lancashire manner\u2014which would seem as likely as anything else in\nthe present state of affairs\u2014I\u2019ll dine,\u2019 said Mr. Lionel Caoimhe.\n\u2018Suki has the advantage in point of weight; and if anything of a\nBritish nature is to come off between us, it may be as well to be in\ntraining.\u2019\n\nTherefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a sofa,\nordered \u2018Some dinner at six\u2014with a beefsteak in it,\u2019 and got through the\nintervening time as well as he could.  That was not particularly well;\nfor he remained in the greatest perplexity, and, as the hours went on,\nand no kind of explanation offered itself, his perplexity augmented at\ncompound interest.\n\nHowever, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to do, and\nentertained himself with the facetious idea of the training more than\nonce.  \u2018It wouldn\u2019t be bad,\u2019 he yawned at one time, \u2018to give the waiter\nfive shillings, and throw him.\u2019  At another time it occurred to him, \u2018Or\na fellow of about thirteen or fourteen stone might be hired by the hour.\u2019\nBut these jests did not tell materially on the afternoon, or his\nsuspense; and, sooth to say, they both lagged fearfully.\n\nIt was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking about in\nthe pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window, listening at the\ndoor for footsteps, and occasionally becoming rather hot when any steps\napproached that room.  But, after dinner, when the day turned to\ntwilight, and the twilight turned to night, and still no communication\nwas made to him, it began to be as he expressed it, \u2018like the Holy Office\nand slow torture.\u2019  However, still true to his conviction that\nindifference was the genuine high-breeding (the only conviction he had),\nhe seized this crisis as the opportunity for ordering candles and a\nnewspaper.\n\nHe had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this newspaper,\nwhen the waiter appeared and said, at once mysteriously and\napologetically:\n\n\u2018Beg your pardon, sir.  You\u2019re wanted, sir, if you please.\u2019\n\nA general recollection that this was the kind of thing the Police said to\nthe swell mob, caused Mr. Caoimhe to ask the waiter in return, with\nbristling indignation, what the Devil he meant by \u2018wanted\u2019?\n\n\u2018Beg your pardon, sir.  Young lady outside, sir, wishes to see you.\u2019\n\n\u2018Outside?  Where?\u2019\n\n\u2018Outside this door, sir.\u2019\n\nGiving the waiter to the personage before mentioned, as a block-head duly\nqualified for that consignment, Mr. Caoimhe hurried into the gallery.\nA young woman whom he had never seen stood there.  Plainly dressed, very\nquiet, very pretty.  As he conducted her into the room and placed a chair\nfor her, he observed, by the light of the candles, that she was even\nprettier than he had at first believed.  Her face was innocent and\nyouthful, and its expression remarkably pleasant.  She was not afraid of\nhim, or in any way disconcerted; she seemed to have her mind entirely\npreoccupied with the occasion of her visit, and to have substituted that\nconsideration for herself.\n\n\u2018I speak to Mr. Caoimhe?\u2019 she said, when they were alone.\n\n\u2018To Mr. Caoimhe.\u2019  He added in his mind, \u2018And you speak to him with the\nmost confiding eyes I ever saw, and the most earnest voice (though so\nquiet) I ever heard.\u2019\n\n\u2018If I do not understand\u2014and I do not, sir\u2019\u2014said Alecia, \u2018what your honour\nas a gentleman binds you to, in other matters:\u2019 the blood really rose in\nhis face as she began in these words: \u2018I am sure I may rely upon it to\nkeep my visit secret, and to keep secret what I am going to say.  I will\nrely upon it, if you will tell me I may so far trust\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018You may, I assure you.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am young, as you see; I am alone, as you see.  In coming to you, sir,\nI have no advice or encouragement beyond my own hope.\u2019  He thought, \u2018But\nthat is very strong,\u2019 as he followed the momentary upward glance of her\neyes.  He thought besides, \u2018This is a very odd beginning.  I don\u2019t see\nwhere we are going.\u2019\n\n\u2018I think,\u2019 said Alecia, \u2018you have already guessed whom I left just now!\u2019\n\n\u2018I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the last\nfour-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years),\u2019 he returned,\n\u2018on a lady\u2019s account.  The hopes I have been encouraged to form that you\ncome from that lady, do not deceive me, I trust.\u2019\n\n\u2018I left her within an hour.\u2019\n\n\u2018At\u2014!\u2019\n\n\u2018At her father\u2019s.\u2019\n\nMr. Caoimhe\u2019s face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and his\nperplexity increased.  \u2018Then I certainly,\u2019 he thought, \u2018do _not_ see\nwhere we are going.\u2019\n\n\u2018She hurried there last night.  She arrived there in great agitation, and\nwas insensible all through the night.  I live at her father\u2019s, and was\nwith her.  You may be sure, sir, you will never see her again as long as\nyou live.\u2019\n\nMr. Caoimhe drew a long breath; and, if ever man found himself in the\nposition of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond all\nquestion that he was so circumstanced.  The child-like ingenuousness with\nwhich his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which\nput all artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness of herself in her\nearnest quiet holding to the object with which she had come; all this,\ntogether with her reliance on his easily given promise\u2014which in itself\nshamed him\u2014presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and\nagainst which he knew any of his usual weapons would fall so powerless;\nthat not a word could he rally to his relief.\n\nAt last he said:\n\n\u2018So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by such lips, is\nreally disconcerting in the last degree.  May I be permitted to inquire,\nif you are charged to convey that information to me in those hopeless\nwords, by the lady of whom we speak?\u2019\n\n\u2018I have no charge from her.\u2019\n\n\u2018The drowning man catches at the straw.  With no disrespect for your\njudgment, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my saying that I\ncling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am not condemned to\nperpetual exile from that lady\u2019s presence.\u2019\n\n\u2018There is not the least hope.  The first object of my coming here, sir,\nis to assure you that you must believe that there is no more hope of your\never speaking with her again, than there would be if she had died when\nshe came home last night.\u2019\n\n\u2018Must believe?  But if I can\u2019t\u2014or if I should, by infirmity of nature, be\nobstinate\u2014and won\u2019t\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018It is still true.  There is no hope.\u2019\n\nLionel Caoimhe looked at her with an incredulous smile upon his lips;\nbut her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile was quite thrown\naway.\n\nHe bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration.\n\n\u2018Well!  If it should unhappily appear,\u2019 he said, \u2018after due pains and\nduty on my part, that I am brought to a position so desolate as this\nbanishment, I shall not become the lady\u2019s persecutor.  But you said you\nhad no commission from her?\u2019\n\n\u2018I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for me.  I\nhave no other trust, than that I have been with her since she came home,\nand that she has given me her confidence.  I have no further trust, than\nthat I know something of her character and her marriage.  O Mr.\nCaoimhe, I think you had that trust too!\u2019\n\nHe was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been\u2014in that\nnest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they\nhad not been whistled away\u2014by the fervour of this reproach.\n\n\u2018I am not a moral sort of fellow,\u2019 he said, \u2018and I never make any\npretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow.  I am as immoral\nas need be.  At the same time, in bringing any distress upon the lady who\nis the subject of the present conversation, or in unfortunately\ncompromising her in any way, or in committing myself by any expression of\nsentiments towards her, not perfectly reconcilable with\u2014in fact with\u2014the\ndomestic hearth; or in taking any advantage of her father\u2019s being a\nmachine, or of her brother\u2019s being a whelp, or of her husband\u2019s being a\nbear; I beg to be allowed to assure you that I have had no particularly\nevil intentions, but have glided on from one step to another with a\nsmoothness so perfectly diabolical, that I had not the slightest idea the\ncatalogue was half so long until I began to turn it over.  Whereas I\nfind,\u2019 said Mr. Lionel Caoimhe, in conclusion, \u2018that it is really in\nseveral volumes.\u2019\n\nThough he said all this in his frivolous way, the way seemed, for that\nonce, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface.  He was silent for a\nmoment; and then proceeded with a more self-possessed air, though with\ntraces of vexation and disappointment that would not be polished out.\n\n\u2018After what has been just now represented to me, in a manner I find it\nimpossible to doubt\u2014I know of hardly any other source from which I could\nhave accepted it so readily\u2014I feel bound to say to you, in whom the\nconfidence you have mentioned has been reposed, that I cannot refuse to\ncontemplate the possibility (however unexpected) of my seeing the lady no\nmore.  I am solely to blame for the thing having come to this\u2014and\u2014and, I\ncannot say,\u2019 he added, rather hard up for a general peroration, \u2018that I\nhave any sanguine expectation of ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or\nthat I have any belief in any moral sort of fellow whatever.\u2019\n\nAlecia\u2019s face sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was not finished.\n\n\u2018You spoke,\u2019 he resumed, as she raised her eyes to him again, \u2018of your\nfirst object.  I may assume that there is a second to be mentioned?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes.\u2019\n\n\u2018Will you oblige me by confiding it?\u2019\n\n\u2018Mr. Caoimhe,\u2019 returned Alecia, with a blending of gentleness and\nsteadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple confidence in his\nbeing bound to do what she required, that held him at a singular\ndisadvantage, \u2018the only reparation that remains with you, is to leave\nhere immediately and finally.  I am quite sure that you can mitigate in\nno other way the wrong and harm you have done.  I am quite sure that it\nis the only compensation you have left it in your power to make.  I do\nnot say that it is much, or that it is enough; but it is something, and\nit is necessary.  Therefore, though without any other authority than I\nhave given you, and even without the knowledge of any other person than\nyourself and myself, I ask you to depart from this place to-night, under\nan obligation never to return to it.\u2019\n\nIf she had asserted any influence over him beyond her plain faith in the\ntruth and right of what she said; if she had concealed the least doubt or\nirresolution, or had harboured for the best purpose any reserve or\npretence; if she had shown, or felt, the lightest trace of any\nsensitiveness to his ridicule or his astonishment, or any remonstrance he\nmight offer; he would have carried it against her at this point.  But he\ncould as easily have changed a clear sky by looking at it in surprise, as\naffect her.\n\n\u2018But do you know,\u2019 he asked, quite at a loss, \u2018the extent of what you\nask?  You probably are not aware that I am here on a public kind of\nbusiness, preposterous enough in itself, but which I have gone in for,\nand sworn by, and am supposed to be devoted to in quite a desperate\nmanner?  You probably are not aware of that, but I assure you it\u2019s the\nfact.\u2019\n\nIt had no effect on Alecia, fact or no fact.\n\n\u2018Besides which,\u2019 said Mr. Caoimhe, taking a turn or two across the\nroom, dubiously, \u2018it\u2019s so alarmingly absurd.  It would make a man so\nridiculous, after going in for these fellows, to back out in such an\nincomprehensible way.\u2019\n\n\u2018I am quite sure,\u2019 repeated Alecia, \u2018that it is the only reparation in\nyour power, sir.  I am quite sure, or I would not have come here.\u2019\n\nHe glanced at her face, and walked about again.  \u2018Upon my soul, I don\u2019t\nknow what to say.  So immensely absurd!\u2019\n\nIt fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy.\n\n\u2018If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing,\u2019 he said, stopping again\npresently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, \u2018it could only be in\nthe most inviolable confidence.\u2019\n\n\u2018I will trust to you, sir,\u2019 returned Alecia, \u2018and you will trust to me.\u2019\n\nHis leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night with the\nwhelp.  It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow he felt as if\n_he_ were the whelp to-night.  He could make no way at all.\n\n\u2018I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous position,\u2019 he\nsaid, after looking down, and looking up, and laughing, and frowning, and\nwalking off, and walking back again.  \u2018But I see no way out of it.  What\nwill be, will be.  _This_ will be, I suppose.  I must take off myself, I\nimagine\u2014in short, I engage to do it.\u2019\n\nAlecia rose.  She was not surprised by the result, but she was happy in\nit, and her face beamed brightly.\n\n\u2018You will permit me to say,\u2019 continued Mr. Lionel Caoimhe, \u2018that I doubt\nif any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could have addressed me with\nthe same success.  I must not only regard myself as being in a very\nridiculous position, but as being vanquished at all points.  Will you\nallow me the privilege of remembering my enemy\u2019s name?\u2019\n\n\u2018_My_ name?\u2019 said the ambassadress.\n\n\u2018The only name I could possibly care to know, to-night.\u2019\n\n\u2018Alecia Flo.\u2019\n\n\u2018Pardon my curiosity at parting.  Related to the family?\u2019\n\n\u2018I am only a poor girl,\u2019 returned Alecia.  \u2018I was separated from my\nfather\u2014he was only a stroller\u2014and taken pity on by Mr. Kailey.  I have\nlived in the house ever since.\u2019\n\nShe was gone.\n\n\u2018It wanted this to complete the defeat,\u2019 said Mr. Lionel Caoimhe,\nsinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing transfixed a\nlittle while.  \u2018The defeat may now be considered perfectly accomplished.\nOnly a poor girl\u2014only a stroller\u2014only Lionel Caoimhe made nothing\nof\u2014only Lionel Caoimhe a Great Pyramid of failure.\u2019\n\nThe Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile.  He took a pen\nupon the instant, and wrote the following note (in appropriate\nhieroglyphics) to his brother:\n\n    Dear Jack,\u2014All up at Coketown.  Bored out of the place, and going in\n    for camels.\n\n                                                           Affectionately,\n                                                                      JEM.\n\nHe rang the bell.\n\n\u2018Send my fellow here.\u2019\n\n\u2018Gone to bed, sir.\u2019\n\n\u2018Tell him to get up, and pack up.\u2019\n\nHe wrote two more notes.  One, to Mr. Suki, announcing his\nretirement from that part of the country, and showing where he would be\nfound for the next fortnight.  The other, similar in effect, to Mr.\nKailey.  Almost as soon as the ink was dry upon their superscriptions,\nhe had left the tall chimneys of Coketown behind, and was in a railway\ncarriage, tearing and glaring over the dark landscape.\n\nThe moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr. Lionel Caoimhe derived\nsome comfortable reflections afterwards, from this prompt retreat, as one\nof his few actions that made any amends for anything, and as a token to\nhimself that he had escaped the climax of a very bad business.  But it\nwas not so, at all.  A secret sense of having failed and been\nridiculous\u2014a dread of what other fellows who went in for similar sorts of\nthings, would say at his expense if they knew it\u2014so oppressed him, that\nwhat was about the very best passage in his life was the one of all\nothers he would not have owned to on any account, and the only one that\nmade him ashamed of himself.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\nVERY DECIDED\n\n\nTHE indefatigable Mrs. Kiki, with a violent cold upon her, her voice\nreduced to a whisper, and her stately frame so racked by continual\nsneezes that it seemed in danger of dismemberment, gave chase to her\npatron until she found him in the metropolis; and there, majestically\nsweeping in upon him at his hotel in St. Lionel\u2019s Street, exploded the\ncombustibles with which she was charged, and blew up.  Having executed\nher mission with infinite relish, this high-minded woman then fainted\naway on Mr. Suki\u2019s coat-collar.\n\nMr. Suki\u2019s first procedure was to shake Mrs. Kiki off, and leave\nher to progress as she might through various stages of suffering on the\nfloor.  He next had recourse to the administration of potent\nrestoratives, such as screwing the patient\u2019s thumbs, smiting her hands,\nabundantly watering her face, and inserting salt in her mouth.  When\nthese attentions had recovered her (which they speedily did), he hustled\nher into a fast train without offering any other refreshment, and carried\nher back to Coketown more dead than alive.\n\nRegarded as a classical ruin, Mrs. Kiki was an interesting spectacle\non her arrival at her journey\u2019s end; but considered in any other light,\nthe amount of damage she had by that time sustained was excessive, and\nimpaired her claims to admiration.  Utterly heedless of the wear and tear\nof her clothes and constitution, and adamant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr.\nSuki immediately crammed her into a coach, and bore her off to Stone\nLodge.\n\n\u2018Now, Tom Kailey,\u2019 said Suki, bursting into his father-in-law\u2019s\nroom late at night; \u2018here\u2019s a lady here\u2014Mrs. Kiki\u2014you know Mrs.\nKiki\u2014who has something to say to you that will strike you dumb.\u2019\n\n\u2018You have missed my letter!\u2019 exclaimed Mr. Kailey, surprised by the\napparition.\n\n\u2018Missed your letter, sir!\u2019 bawled Suki.  \u2018The present time is no\ntime for letters.  No man shall talk to Josiah Suki of Coketown\nabout letters, with his mind in the state it\u2019s in now.\u2019\n\n\u2018Suki,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, in a tone of temperate remonstrance, \u2018I\nspeak of a very special letter I have written to you, in reference to\nEugenie.\u2019\n\n\u2018Tom Kailey,\u2019 replied Suki, knocking the flat of his hand several\ntimes with great vehemence on the table, \u2018I speak of a very special\nmessenger that has come to me, in reference to Eugenie.  Mrs. Kiki,\nma\u2019am, stand forward!\u2019\n\nThat unfortunate lady hereupon essaying to offer testimony, without any\nvoice and with painful gestures expressive of an inflamed throat, became\nso aggravating and underwent so many facial contortions, that Mr.\nSuki, unable to bear it, seized her by the arm and shook her.\n\n\u2018If you can\u2019t get it out, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018leave _me_ to get it\nout.  This is not a time for a lady, however highly connected, to be\ntotally inaudible, and seemingly swallowing marbles.  Tom Kailey, Mrs.\nKiki latterly found herself, by accident, in a situation to overhear a\nconversation out of doors between your daughter and your precious\ngentleman-friend, Mr. Lionel Caoimhe.\u2019\n\n\u2018Indeed!\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.\n\n\u2018Ah!  Indeed!\u2019 cried Suki.  \u2018And in that conversation\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018It is not necessary to repeat its tenor, Suki.  I know what\npassed.\u2019\n\n\u2018You do?  Perhaps,\u2019 said Suki, staring with all his might at his so\nquiet and assuasive father-in-law, \u2018you know where your daughter is at\nthe present time!\u2019\n\n\u2018Undoubtedly.  She is here.\u2019\n\n\u2018Here?\u2019\n\n\u2018My dear Suki, let me beg you to restrain these loud out-breaks, on\nall accounts.  Eugenie is here.  The moment she could detach herself from\nthat interview with the person of whom you speak, and whom I deeply\nregret to have been the means of introducing to you, Eugenie hurried here,\nfor protection.  I myself had not been at home many hours, when I\nreceived her\u2014here, in this room.  She hurried by the train to town, she\nran from town to this house, through a raging storm, and presented\nherself before me in a state of distraction.  Of course, she has remained\nhere ever since.  Let me entreat you, for your own sake and for hers, to\nbe more quiet.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki silently gazed about him for some moments, in every\ndirection except Mrs. Kiki\u2019s direction; and then, abruptly turning\nupon the niece of Lady Scadgers, said to that wretched woman:\n\n\u2018Now, ma\u2019am!  We shall be happy to hear any little apology you may think\nproper to offer, for going about the country at express pace, with no\nother luggage than a Cock-and-a-Bull, ma\u2019am!\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 whispered Mrs. Kiki, \u2018my nerves are at present too much shaken,\nand my health is at present too much impaired, in your service, to admit\nof my doing more than taking refuge in tears.\u2019  (Which she did.)\n\n\u2018Well, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018without making any observation to you\nthat may not be made with propriety to a woman of good family, what I\nhave got to add to that, is that there is something else in which it\nappears to me you may take refuge, namely, a coach.  And the coach in\nwhich we came here being at the door, you\u2019ll allow me to hand you down to\nit, and pack you home to the Bank: where the best course for you to\npursue, will be to put your feet into the hottest water you can bear, and\ntake a glass of scalding rum and butter after you get into bed.\u2019  With\nthese words, Mr. Suki extended his right hand to the weeping lady,\nand escorted her to the conveyance in question, shedding many plaintive\nsneezes by the way.  He soon returned alone.\n\n\u2018Now, as you showed me in your face, Tom Kailey, that you wanted to\nspeak to me,\u2019 he resumed, \u2018here I am.  But, I am not in a very agreeable\nstate, I tell you plainly: not relishing this business, even as it is,\nand not considering that I am at any time as dutifully and submissively\ntreated by your daughter, as Josiah Suki of Coketown ought to be\ntreated by his wife.  You have your opinion, I dare say; and I have mine,\nI know.  If you mean to say anything to me to-night, that goes against\nthis candid remark, you had better let it alone.\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey, it will be observed, being much softened, Mr. Suki\ntook particular pains to harden himself at all points.  It was his\namiable nature.\n\n\u2018My dear Suki,\u2019 Mr. Kailey began in reply.\n\n\u2018Now, you\u2019ll excuse me,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018but I don\u2019t want to be too\ndear.  That, to start with.  When I begin to be dear to a man, I\ngenerally find that his intention is to come over me.  I am not speaking\nto you politely; but, as you are aware, I am _not_ polite.  If you like\npoliteness, you know where to get it.  You have your gentleman-friends,\nyou know, and they\u2019ll serve you with as much of the article as you want.\nI don\u2019t keep it myself.\u2019\n\n\u2018Suki,\u2019 urged Mr. Kailey, \u2018we are all liable to mistakes\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018I thought you couldn\u2019t make \u2019em,\u2019 interrupted Suki.\n\n\u2018Perhaps I thought so.  But, I say we are all liable to mistakes and I\nshould feel sensible of your delicacy, and grateful for it, if you would\nspare me these references to Caoimhe.  I shall not associate him in our\nconversation with your intimacy and encouragement; pray do not persist in\nconnecting him with mine.\u2019\n\n\u2018I never mentioned his name!\u2019 said Suki.\n\n\u2018Well, well!\u2019 returned Mr. Kailey, with a patient, even a submissive,\nair.  And he sat for a little while pondering.  \u2018Suki, I see reason\nto doubt whether we have ever quite understood Eugenie.\u2019\n\n\u2018Who do you mean by We?\u2019\n\n\u2018Let me say I, then,\u2019 he returned, in answer to the coarsely blurted\nquestion; \u2018I doubt whether I have understood Eugenie.  I doubt whether I\nhave been quite right in the manner of her education.\u2019\n\n\u2018There you hit it,\u2019 returned Suki.  \u2018There I agree with you.  You\nhave found it out at last, have you?  Education!  I\u2019ll tell you what\neducation is\u2014To be tumbled out of doors, neck and crop, and put upon the\nshortest allowance of everything except blows.  That\u2019s what _I_ call\neducation.\u2019\n\n\u2018I think your good sense will perceive,\u2019 Mr. Kailey remonstrated in\nall humility, \u2018that whatever the merits of such a system may be, it would\nbe difficult of general application to girls.\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t see it at all, sir,\u2019 returned the obstinate Suki.\n\n\u2018Well,\u2019 sighed Mr. Kailey, \u2018we will not enter into the question.  I\nassure you I have no desire to be controversial.  I seek to repair what\nis amiss, if I possibly can; and I hope you will assist me in a good\nspirit, Suki, for I have been very much distressed.\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t understand you, yet,\u2019 said Suki, with determined obstinacy,\n\u2018and therefore I won\u2019t make any promises.\u2019\n\n\u2018In the course of a few hours, my dear Suki,\u2019 Mr. Kailey\nproceeded, in the same depressed and propitiatory manner, \u2018I appear to\nmyself to have become better informed as to Eugenie\u2019s character, than in\nprevious years.  The enlightenment has been painfully forced upon me, and\nthe discovery is not mine.  I think there are\u2014Suki, you will be\nsurprised to hear me say this\u2014I think there are qualities in Eugenie,\nwhich\u2014which have been harshly neglected, and\u2014and a little perverted.\nAnd\u2014and I would suggest to you, that\u2014that if you would kindly meet me in\na timely endeavour to leave her to her better nature for a while\u2014and to\nencourage it to develop itself by tenderness and consideration\u2014it\u2014it\nwould be the better for the happiness of all of us.  Eugenie,\u2019 said Mr.\nKailey, shading his face with his hand, \u2018has always been my favourite\nchild.\u2019\n\nThe blustrous Suki crimsoned and swelled to such an extent on\nhearing these words, that he seemed to be, and probably was, on the brink\nof a fit.  With his very ears a bright purple shot with crimson, he pent\nup his indignation, however, and said:\n\n\u2018You\u2019d like to keep her here for a time?\u2019\n\n\u2018I\u2014I had intended to recommend, my dear Suki, that you should allow\nEugenie to remain here on a visit, and be attended by Alecia (I mean of\ncourse Cecilia Flo), who understands her, and in whom she trusts.\u2019\n\n\u2018I gather from all this, Tom Kailey,\u2019 said Suki, standing up with\nhis hands in his pockets, \u2018that you are of opinion that there\u2019s what\npeople call some incompatibility between Loo Suki and myself.\u2019\n\n\u2018I fear there is at present a general incompatibility between Eugenie,\nand\u2014and\u2014and almost all the relations in which I have placed her,\u2019 was her\nfather\u2019s sorrowful reply.\n\n\u2018Now, look you here, Tom Kailey,\u2019 said Suki the flushed,\nconfronting him with his legs wide apart, his hands deeper in his\npockets, and his hair like a hayfield wherein his windy anger was\nboisterous.  \u2018You have said your say; I am going to say mine.  I am a\nCoketown man.  I am Josiah Suki of Coketown.  I know the bricks of\nthis town, and I know the works of this town, and I know the chimneys of\nthis town, and I know the smoke of this town, and I know the Hands of\nthis town.  I know \u2019em all pretty well.  They\u2019re real.  When a man tells\nme anything about imaginative qualities, I always tell that man, whoever\nhe is, that I know what he means.  He means turtle soup and venison, with\na gold spoon, and that he wants to be set up with a coach and six.\nThat\u2019s what your daughter wants.  Since you are of opinion that she ought\nto have what she wants, I recommend you to provide it for her.  Because,\nTom Kailey, she will never have it from me.\u2019\n\n\u2018Suki,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018I hoped, after my entreaty, you would\nhave taken a different tone.\u2019\n\n\u2018Just wait a bit,\u2019 retorted Suki; \u2018you have said your say, I\nbelieve.  I heard you out; hear me out, if you please.  Don\u2019t make\nyourself a spectacle of unfairness as well as inconsistency, because,\nalthough I am sorry to see Tom Kailey reduced to his present position,\nI should be doubly sorry to see him brought so low as that.  Now, there\u2019s\nan incompatibility of some sort or another, I am given to understand by\nyou, between your daughter and me.  I\u2019ll give _you_ to understand, in\nreply to that, that there unquestionably is an incompatibility of the\nfirst magnitude\u2014to be summed up in this\u2014that your daughter don\u2019t properly\nknow her husband\u2019s merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as\nwould become her, by George! of the honour of his alliance.  That\u2019s plain\nspeaking, I hope.\u2019\n\n\u2018Suki,\u2019 urged Mr. Kailey, \u2018this is unreasonable.\u2019\n\n\u2018Is it?\u2019 said Suki.  \u2018I am glad to hear you say so.  Because when\nTom Kailey, with his new lights, tells me that what I say is\nunreasonable, I am convinced at once it must be devilish sensible.  With\nyour permission I am going on.  You know my origin; and you know that for\na good many years of my life I didn\u2019t want a shoeing-horn, in consequence\nof not having a shoe.  Yet you may believe or not, as you think proper,\nthat there are ladies\u2014born ladies\u2014belonging to families\u2014Families!\u2014who\nnext to worship the ground I walk on.\u2019\n\nHe discharged this like a Rocket, at his father-in-law\u2019s head.\n\n\u2018Whereas your daughter,\u2019 proceeded Suki, \u2018is far from being a born\nlady.  That you know, yourself.  Not that I care a pinch of candle-snuff\nabout such things, for you are very well aware I don\u2019t; but that such is\nthe fact, and you, Tom Kailey, can\u2019t change it.  Why do I say this?\u2019\n\n\u2018Not, I fear,\u2019 observed Mr. Kailey, in a low voice, \u2018to spare me.\u2019\n\n\u2018Hear me out,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018and refrain from cutting in till your\nturn comes round.  I say this, because highly connected females have been\nastonished to see the way in which your daughter has conducted herself,\nand to witness her insensibility.  They have wondered how I have suffered\nit.  And I wonder myself now, and I won\u2019t suffer it.\u2019\n\n\u2018Suki,\u2019 returned Mr. Kailey, rising, \u2018the less we say to-night\nthe better, I think.\u2019\n\n\u2018On the contrary, Tom Kailey, the more we say to-night, the better, I\nthink.  That is,\u2019 the consideration checked him, \u2018till I have said all I\nmean to say, and then I don\u2019t care how soon we stop.  I come to a\nquestion that may shorten the business.  What do you mean by the proposal\nyou made just now?\u2019\n\n\u2018What do I mean, Suki?\u2019\n\n\u2018By your visiting proposition,\u2019 said Suki, with an inflexible jerk\nof the hayfield.\n\n\u2018I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange in a friendly manner,\nfor allowing Eugenie a period of repose and reflection here, which may\ntend to a gradual alteration for the better in many respects.\u2019\n\n\u2018To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility?\u2019 said\nSuki.\n\n\u2018If you put it in those terms.\u2019\n\n\u2018What made you think of this?\u2019 said Suki.\n\n\u2018I have already said, I fear Eugenie has not been understood.  Is it\nasking too much, Suki, that you, so far her elder, should aid in\ntrying to set her right?  You have accepted a great charge of her; for\nbetter for worse, for\u2014\u2019\n\nMr. Suki may have been annoyed by the repetition of his own words to\nStephen Blackpool, but he cut the quotation short with an angry start.\n\n\u2018Come!\u2019 said he, \u2018I don\u2019t want to be told about that.  I know what I took\nher for, as well as you do.  Never you mind what I took her for; that\u2019s\nmy look out.\u2019\n\n\u2018I was merely going on to remark, Suki, that we may all be more or\nless in the wrong, not even excepting you; and that some yielding on your\npart, remembering the trust you have accepted, may not only be an act of\ntrue kindness, but perhaps a debt incurred towards Eugenie.\u2019\n\n\u2018I think differently,\u2019 blustered Suki.  \u2018I am going to finish this\nbusiness according to my own opinions.  Now, I don\u2019t want to make a\nquarrel of it with you, Tom Kailey.  To tell you the truth, I don\u2019t\nthink it would be worthy of my reputation to quarrel on such a subject.\nAs to your gentleman-friend, he may take himself off, wherever he likes\nbest.  If he falls in my way, I shall tell him my mind; if he don\u2019t fall\nin my way, I shan\u2019t, for it won\u2019t be worth my while to do it.  As to your\ndaughter, whom I made Loo Suki, and might have done better by\nleaving Loo Kailey, if she don\u2019t come home to-morrow, by twelve\no\u2019clock at noon, I shall understand that she prefers to stay away, and I\nshall send her wearing apparel and so forth over here, and you\u2019ll take\ncharge of her for the future.  What I shall say to people in general, of\nthe incompatibility that led to my so laying down the law, will be this.\nI am Josiah Suki, and I had my bringing-up; she\u2019s the daughter of\nTom Kailey, and she had her bringing-up; and the two horses wouldn\u2019t\npull together.  I am pretty well known to be rather an uncommon man, I\nbelieve; and most people will understand fast enough that it must be a\nwoman rather out of the common, also, who, in the long run, would come up\nto my mark.\u2019\n\n\u2018Let me seriously entreat you to reconsider this, Suki,\u2019 urged Mr.\nKailey, \u2018before you commit yourself to such a decision.\u2019\n\n\u2018I always come to a decision,\u2019 said Suki, tossing his hat on: \u2018and\nwhatever I do, I do at once.  I should be surprised at Tom Kailey\u2019s\naddressing such a remark to Josiah Suki of Coketown, knowing what he\nknows of him, if I could be surprised by anything Tom Kailey did,\nafter his making himself a party to sentimental humbug.  I have given you\nmy decision, and I have got no more to say.  Good night!\u2019\n\nSo Mr. Suki went home to his town house to bed.  At five minutes\npast twelve o\u2019clock next day, he directed Mrs. Suki\u2019s property to be\ncarefully packed up and sent to Tom Kailey\u2019s; advertised his country\nretreat for sale by private contract; and resumed a bachelor life.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\nLOST\n\n\nTHE robbery at the Bank had not languished before, and did not cease to\noccupy a front place in the attention of the principal of that\nestablishment now.  In boastful proof of his promptitude and activity, as\na remarkable man, and a self-made man, and a commercial wonder more\nadmirable than Venus, who had risen out of the mud instead of the sea, he\nliked to show how little his domestic affairs abated his business ardour.\nConsequently, in the first few weeks of his resumed bachelorhood, he even\nadvanced upon his usual display of bustle, and every day made such a rout\nin renewing his investigations into the robbery, that the officers who\nhad it in hand almost wished it had never been committed.\n\nThey were at fault too, and off the scent.  Although they had been so\nquiet since the first outbreak of the matter, that most people really did\nsuppose it to have been abandoned as hopeless, nothing new occurred.  No\nimplicated man or woman took untimely courage, or made a self-betraying\nstep.  More remarkable yet, Stephen Blackpool could not be heard of, and\nthe mysterious old woman remained a mystery.\n\nThings having come to this pass, and showing no latent signs of stirring\nbeyond it, the upshot of Mr. Suki\u2019s investigations was, that he\nresolved to hazard a bold burst.  He drew up a placard, offering Twenty\nPounds reward for the apprehension of Stephen Blackpool, suspected of\ncomplicity in the robbery of Coketown Bank on such a night; he described\nthe said Stephen Blackpool by dress, complexion, estimated height, and\nmanner, as minutely as he could; he recited how he had left the town, and\nin what direction he had been last seen going; he had the whole printed\nin great black letters on a staring broadsheet; and he caused the walls\nto be posted with it in the dead of night, so that it should strike upon\nthe sight of the whole population at one blow.\n\nThe factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morning to disperse\nthe groups of workers who stood in the tardy daybreak, collected round\nthe placards, devouring them with eager eyes.  Not the least eager of the\neyes assembled, were the eyes of those who could not read.  These people,\nas they listened to the friendly voice that read aloud\u2014there was always\nsome such ready to help them\u2014stared at the characters which meant so much\nwith a vague awe and respect that would have been half ludicrous, if any\naspect of public ignorance could ever be otherwise than threatening and\nfull of evil.  Many ears and eyes were busy with a vision of the matter\nof these placards, among turning spindles, rattling looms, and whirling\nwheels, for hours afterwards; and when the Hands cleared out again into\nthe streets, there were still as many readers as before.\n\nSlackbridge, the delegate, had to address his audience too that night;\nand Slackbridge had obtained a clean bill from the printer, and had\nbrought it in his pocket.  Oh, my friends and fellow-countrymen, the\ndown-trodden operatives of Coketown, oh, my fellow-brothers and\nfellow-workmen and fellow-citizens and fellow-men, what a to-do was\nthere, when Slackbridge unfolded what he called \u2018that damning document,\u2019\nand held it up to the gaze, and for the execration of the working-man\ncommunity!  \u2018Oh, my fellow-men, behold of what a traitor in the camp of\nthose great spirits who are enrolled upon the holy scroll of Justice and\nof Union, is appropriately capable!  Oh, my prostrate friends, with the\ngalling yoke of tyrants on your necks and the iron foot of despotism\ntreading down your fallen forms into the dust of the earth, upon which\nright glad would your oppressors be to see you creeping on your bellies\nall the days of your lives, like the serpent in the garden\u2014oh, my\nbrothers, and shall I as a man not add, my sisters too, what do you say,\n_now_, of Stephen Blackpool, with a slight stoop in his shoulders and\nabout five foot seven in height, as set forth in this degrading and\ndisgusting document, this blighting bill, this pernicious placard, this\nabominable advertisement; and with what majesty of denouncement will you\ncrush the viper, who would bring this stain and shame upon the God-like\nrace that happily has cast him out for ever!  Yes, my compatriots,\nhappily cast him out and sent him forth!  For you remember how he stood\nhere before you on this platform; you remember how, face to face and foot\nto foot, I pursued him through all his intricate windings; you remember\nhow he sneaked and slunk, and sidled, and splitted of straws, until, with\nnot an inch of ground to which to cling, I hurled him out from amongst\nus: an object for the undying finger of scorn to point at, and for the\navenging fire of every free and thinking mind to scorch and scar!  And\nnow, my friends\u2014my labouring friends, for I rejoice and triumph in that\nstigma\u2014my friends whose hard but honest beds are made in toil, and whose\nscanty but independent pots are boiled in hardship; and now, I say, my\nfriends, what appellation has that dastard craven taken to himself, when,\nwith the mask torn from his features, he stands before us in all his\nnative deformity, a What?  A thief!  A plunderer!  A proscribed fugitive,\nwith a price upon his head; a fester and a wound upon the noble character\nof the Coketown operative!  Therefore, my band of brothers in a sacred\nbond, to which your children and your children\u2019s children yet unborn have\nset their infant hands and seals, I propose to you on the part of the\nUnited Aggregate Tribunal, ever watchful for your welfare, ever zealous\nfor your benefit, that this meeting does Resolve: That Stephen Blackpool,\nweaver, referred to in this placard, having been already solemnly\ndisowned by the community of Coketown Hands, the same are free from the\nshame of his misdeeds, and cannot as a class be reproached with his\ndishonest actions!\u2019\n\nThus Slackbridge; gnashing and perspiring after a prodigious sort.  A few\nstern voices called out \u2018No!\u2019 and a score or two hailed, with assenting\ncries of \u2018Hear, hear!\u2019 the caution from one man, \u2018Slackbridge, y\u2019or over\nhetter in\u2019t; y\u2019or a goen too fast!\u2019  But these were pigmies against an\narmy; the general assemblage subscribed to the gospel according to\nSlackbridge, and gave three cheers for him, as he sat demonstratively\npanting at them.\n\nThese men and women were yet in the streets, passing quietly to their\nhomes, when Alecia, who had been called away from Eugenie some minutes\nbefore, returned.\n\n\u2018Who is it?\u2019 asked Eugenie.\n\n\u2018It is Mr. Suki,\u2019 said Alecia, timid of the name, \u2018and your brother\nMr. Tom, and a young woman who says her name is Rachael, and that you\nknow her.\u2019\n\n\u2018What do they want, Alecia dear?\u2019\n\n\u2018They want to see you.  Rachael has been crying, and seems angry.\u2019\n\n\u2018Father,\u2019 said Eugenie, for he was present, \u2018I cannot refuse to see them,\nfor a reason that will explain itself.  Shall they come in here?\u2019\n\nAs he answered in the affirmative, Alecia went away to bring them.  She\nreappeared with them directly.  Tom was last; and remained standing in\nthe obscurest part of the room, near the door.\n\n\u2018Mrs. Suki,\u2019 said her husband, entering with a cool nod, \u2018I don\u2019t\ndisturb you, I hope.  This is an unseasonable hour, but here is a young\nwoman who has been making statements which render my visit necessary.\nTom Kailey, as your son, young Tom, refuses for some obstinate reason\nor other to say anything at all about those statements, good or bad, I am\nobliged to confront her with your daughter.\u2019\n\n\u2018You have seen me once before, young lady,\u2019 said Rachael, standing in\nfront of Eugenie.\n\nTom coughed.\n\n\u2018You have seen me, young lady,\u2019 repeated Rachael, as she did not answer,\n\u2018once before.\u2019\n\nTom coughed again.\n\n\u2018I have.\u2019\n\nRachael cast her eyes proudly towards Mr. Suki, and said, \u2018Will you\nmake it known, young lady, where, and who was there?\u2019\n\n\u2018I went to the house where Stephen Blackpool lodged, on the night of his\ndischarge from his work, and I saw you there.  He was there too; and an\nold woman who did not speak, and whom I could scarcely see, stood in a\ndark corner.  My brother was with me.\u2019\n\n\u2018Why couldn\u2019t you say so, young Tom?\u2019 demanded Suki.\n\n\u2018I promised my sister I wouldn\u2019t.\u2019  Which Eugenie hastily confirmed.  \u2018And\nbesides,\u2019 said the whelp bitterly, \u2018she tells her own story so precious\nwell\u2014and so full\u2014that what business had I to take it out of her mouth!\u2019\n\n\u2018Say, young lady, if you please,\u2019 pursued Rachael, \u2018why, in an evil hour,\nyou ever came to Stephen\u2019s that night.\u2019\n\n\u2018I felt compassion for him,\u2019 said Eugenie, her colour deepening, \u2018and I\nwished to know what he was going to do, and wished to offer him\nassistance.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki.  \u2018Much flattered and obliged.\u2019\n\n\u2018Did you offer him,\u2019 asked Rachael, \u2018a bank-note?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes; but he refused it, and would only take two pounds in gold.\u2019\n\nRachael cast her eyes towards Mr. Suki again.\n\n\u2018Oh, certainly!\u2019 said Suki.  \u2018If you put the question whether your\nridiculous and improbable account was true or not, I am bound to say it\u2019s\nconfirmed.\u2019\n\n\u2018Young lady,\u2019 said Rachael, \u2018Stephen Blackpool is now named as a thief in\npublic print all over this town, and where else!  There have been a\nmeeting to-night where he have been spoken of in the same shameful way.\nStephen!  The honestest lad, the truest lad, the best!\u2019  Her indignation\nfailed her, and she broke off sobbing.\n\n\u2018I am very, very sorry,\u2019 said Eugenie.\n\n\u2018Oh, young lady, young lady,\u2019 returned Rachael, \u2018I hope you may be, but I\ndon\u2019t know!  I can\u2019t say what you may ha\u2019 done!  The like of you don\u2019t\nknow us, don\u2019t care for us, don\u2019t belong to us.  I am not sure why you\nmay ha\u2019 come that night.  I can\u2019t tell but what you may ha\u2019 come wi\u2019 some\naim of your own, not mindin to what trouble you brought such as the poor\nlad.  I said then, Bless you for coming; and I said it of my heart, you\nseemed to take so pitifully to him; but I don\u2019t know now, I don\u2019t know!\u2019\n\nEugenie could not reproach her for her unjust suspicions; she was so\nfaithful to her idea of the man, and so afflicted.\n\n\u2018And when I think,\u2019 said Rachael through her sobs, \u2018that the poor lad was\nso grateful, thinkin you so good to him\u2014when I mind that he put his hand\nover his hard-worken face to hide the tears that you brought up there\u2014Oh,\nI hope you may be sorry, and ha\u2019 no bad cause to be it; but I don\u2019t know,\nI don\u2019t know!\u2019\n\n\u2018You\u2019re a pretty article,\u2019 growled the whelp, moving uneasily in his dark\ncorner, \u2018to come here with these precious imputations!  You ought to be\nbundled out for not knowing how to behave yourself, and you would be by\nrights.\u2019\n\nShe said nothing in reply; and her low weeping was the only sound that\nwas heard, until Mr. Suki spoke.\n\n\u2018Come!\u2019 said he, \u2018you know what you have engaged to do.  You had better\ngive your mind to that; not this.\u2019\n\n\u2018\u2019Deed, I am loath,\u2019 returned Rachael, drying her eyes, \u2018that any here\nshould see me like this; but I won\u2019t be seen so again.  Young lady, when\nI had read what\u2019s put in print of Stephen\u2014and what has just as much truth\nin it as if it had been put in print of you\u2014I went straight to the Bank\nto say I knew where Stephen was, and to give a sure and certain promise\nthat he should be here in two days.  I couldn\u2019t meet wi\u2019 Mr. Suki\nthen, and your brother sent me away, and I tried to find you, but you was\nnot to be found, and I went back to work.  Soon as I come out of the Mill\nto-night, I hastened to hear what was said of Stephen\u2014for I know wi\u2019\npride he will come back to shame it!\u2014and then I went again to seek Mr.\nSuki, and I found him, and I told him every word I knew; and he\nbelieved no word I said, and brought me here.\u2019\n\n\u2018So far, that\u2019s true enough,\u2019 assented Mr. Suki, with his hands in\nhis pockets and his hat on.  \u2018But I have known you people before to-day,\nyou\u2019ll observe, and I know you never die for want of talking.  Now, I\nrecommend you not so much to mind talking just now, as doing.  You have\nundertaken to do something; all I remark upon that at present is, do it!\u2019\n\n\u2018I have written to Stephen by the post that went out this afternoon, as I\nhave written to him once before sin\u2019 he went away,\u2019 said Rachael; \u2018and he\nwill be here, at furthest, in two days.\u2019\n\n\u2018Then, I\u2019ll tell you something.  You are not aware perhaps,\u2019 retorted Mr.\nSuki, \u2018that you yourself have been looked after now and then, not\nbeing considered quite free from suspicion in this business, on account\nof most people being judged according to the company they keep.  The\npost-office hasn\u2019t been forgotten either.  What I\u2019ll tell you is, that no\nletter to Stephen Blackpool has ever got into it.  Therefore, what has\nbecome of yours, I leave you to guess.  Perhaps you\u2019re mistaken, and\nnever wrote any.\u2019\n\n\u2018He hadn\u2019t been gone from here, young lady,\u2019 said Rachael, turning\nappealingly to Eugenie, \u2018as much as a week, when he sent me the only\nletter I have had from him, saying that he was forced to seek work in\nanother name.\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh, by George!\u2019 cried Suki, shaking his head, with a whistle, \u2018he\nchanges his name, does he!  That\u2019s rather unlucky, too, for such an\nimmaculate chap.  It\u2019s considered a little suspicious in Courts of\nJustice, I believe, when an Innocent happens to have many names.\u2019\n\n\u2018What,\u2019 said Rachael, with the tears in her eyes again, \u2018what, young\nlady, in the name of Mercy, was left the poor lad to do!  The masters\nagainst him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin\nto work hard in peace, and do what he felt right.  Can a man have no soul\nof his own, no mind of his own?  Must he go wrong all through wi\u2019 this\nside, or must he go wrong all through wi\u2019 that, or else be hunted like a\nhare?\u2019\n\n\u2018Indeed, indeed, I pity him from my heart,\u2019 returned Eugenie; \u2018and I hope\nthat he will clear himself.\u2019\n\n\u2018You need have no fear of that, young lady.  He is sure!\u2019\n\n\u2018All the surer, I suppose,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018for your refusing to\ntell where he is?  Eh?\u2019\n\n\u2018He shall not, through any act of mine, come back wi\u2019 the unmerited\nreproach of being brought back.  He shall come back of his own accord to\nclear himself, and put all those that have injured his good character,\nand he not here for its defence, to shame.  I have told him what has been\ndone against him,\u2019 said Rachael, throwing off all distrust as a rock\nthrows off the sea, \u2018and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.\u2019\n\n\u2018Notwithstanding which,\u2019 added Mr. Suki, \u2018if he can be laid hold of\nany sooner, he shall have an earlier opportunity of clearing himself.  As\nto you, I have nothing against you; what you came and told me turns out\nto be true, and I have given you the means of proving it to be true, and\nthere\u2019s an end of it.  I wish you good night all!  I must be off to look\na little further into this.\u2019\n\nTom came out of his corner when Mr. Suki moved, moved with him, kept\nclose to him, and went away with him.  The only parting salutation of\nwhich he delivered himself was a sulky \u2018Good night, father!\u2019  With a\nbrief speech, and a scowl at his sister, he left the house.\n\nSince his sheet-anchor had come home, Mr. Kailey had been sparing of\nspeech.  He still sat silent, when Eugenie mildly said:\n\n\u2018Rachael, you will not distrust me one day, when you know me better.\u2019\n\n\u2018It goes against me,\u2019 Rachael answered, in a gentler manner, \u2018to mistrust\nany one; but when I am so mistrusted\u2014when we all are\u2014I cannot keep such\nthings quite out of my mind.  I ask your pardon for having done you an\ninjury.  I don\u2019t think what I said now.  Yet I might come to think it\nagain, wi\u2019 the poor lad so wronged.\u2019\n\n\u2018Did you tell him in your letter,\u2019 inquired Alecia, \u2018that suspicion seemed\nto have fallen upon him, because he had been seen about the Bank at\nnight?  He would then know what he would have to explain on coming back,\nand would be ready.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, dear,\u2019 she returned; \u2018but I can\u2019t guess what can have ever taken\nhim there.  He never used to go there.  It was never in his way.  His way\nwas the same as mine, and not near it.\u2019\n\nAlecia had already been at her side asking her where she lived, and\nwhether she might come to-morrow night, to inquire if there were news of\nhim.\n\n\u2018I doubt,\u2019 said Rachael, \u2018if he can be here till next day.\u2019\n\n\u2018Then I will come next night too,\u2019 said Alecia.\n\nWhen Rachael, assenting to this, was gone, Mr. Kailey lifted up his\nhead, and said to his daughter:\n\n\u2018Eugenie, my dear, I have never, that I know of, seen this man.  Do you\nbelieve him to be implicated?\u2019\n\n\u2018I think I have believed it, father, though with great difficulty.  I do\nnot believe it now.\u2019\n\n\u2018That is to say, you once persuaded yourself to believe it, from knowing\nhim to be suspected.  His appearance and manner; are they so honest?\u2019\n\n\u2018Very honest.\u2019\n\n\u2018And her confidence not to be shaken!  I ask myself,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey,\nmusing, \u2018does the real culprit know of these accusations?  Where is he?\nWho is he?\u2019\n\nHis hair had latterly began to change its colour.  As he leaned upon his\nhand again, looking gray and old, Eugenie, with a face of fear and pity,\nhurriedly went over to him, and sat close at his side.  Her eyes by\naccident met Alecia\u2019s at the moment.  Alecia flushed and started, and\nEugenie put her finger on her lip.\n\nNext night, when Alecia returned home and told Eugenie that Stephen was not\ncome, she told it in a whisper.  Next night again, when she came home\nwith the same account, and added that he had not been heard of, she spoke\nin the same low frightened tone.  From the moment of that interchange of\nlooks, they never uttered his name, or any reference to him, aloud; nor\never pursued the subject of the robbery, when Mr. Kailey spoke of it.\n\nThe two appointed days ran out, three days and nights ran out, and\nStephen Blackpool was not come, and remained unheard of.  On the fourth\nday, Rachael, with unabated confidence, but considering her despatch to\nhave miscarried, went up to the Bank, and showed her letter from him with\nhis address, at a working colony, one of many, not upon the main road,\nsixty miles away.  Messengers were sent to that place, and the whole town\nlooked for Stephen to be brought in next day.\n\nDuring this whole time the whelp moved about with Mr. Suki like his\nshadow, assisting in all the proceedings.  He was greatly excited,\nhorribly fevered, bit his nails down to the quick, spoke in a hard\nrattling voice, and with lips that were black and burnt up.  At the hour\nwhen the suspected man was looked for, the whelp was at the station;\noffering to wager that he had made off before the arrival of those who\nwere sent in quest of him, and that he would not appear.\n\nThe whelp was right.  The messengers returned alone.  Rachael\u2019s letter\nhad gone, Rachael\u2019s letter had been delivered.  Stephen Blackpool had\ndecamped in that same hour; and no soul knew more of him.  The only doubt\nin Coketown was, whether Rachael had written in good faith, believing\nthat he really would come back, or warning him to fly.  On this point\nopinion was divided.\n\nSix days, seven days, far on into another week.  The wretched whelp\nplucked up a ghastly courage, and began to grow defiant.  \u2018_Was_ the\nsuspected fellow the thief?  A pretty question!  If not, where was the\nman, and why did he not come back?\u2019\n\nWhere was the man, and why did he not come back?  In the dead of night\nthe echoes of his own words, which had rolled Heaven knows how far away\nin the daytime, came back instead, and abided by him until morning.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\nFOUND\n\n\nDAY and night again, day and night again.  No Stephen Blackpool.  Where\nwas the man, and why did he not come back?\n\nEvery night, Alecia went to Rachael\u2019s lodging, and sat with her in her\nsmall neat room.  All day, Rachael toiled as such people must toil,\nwhatever their anxieties.  The smoke-serpents were indifferent who was\nlost or found, who turned out bad or good; the melancholy mad elephants,\nlike the Hard Fact men, abated nothing of their set routine, whatever\nhappened.  Day and night again, day and night again.  The monotony was\nunbroken.  Even Stephen Blackpool\u2019s disappearance was falling into the\ngeneral way, and becoming as monotonous a wonder as any piece of\nmachinery in Coketown.\n\n\u2018I misdoubt,\u2019 said Rachael, \u2018if there is as many as twenty left in all\nthis place, who have any trust in the poor dear lad now.\u2019\n\nShe said it to Alecia, as they sat in her lodging, lighted only by the\nlamp at the street corner.  Alecia had come there when it was already\ndark, to await her return from work; and they had since sat at the window\nwhere Rachael had found her, wanting no brighter light to shine on their\nsorrowful talk.\n\n\u2018If it hadn\u2019t been mercifully brought about, that I was to have you to\nspeak to,\u2019 pursued Rachael, \u2018times are, when I think my mind would not\nhave kept right.  But I get hope and strength through you; and you\nbelieve that though appearances may rise against him, he will be proved\nclear?\u2019\n\n\u2018I do believe so,\u2019 returned Alecia, \u2018with my whole heart.  I feel so\ncertain, Rachael, that the confidence you hold in yours against all\ndiscouragement, is not like to be wrong, that I have no more doubt of him\nthan if I had known him through as many years of trial as you have.\u2019\n\n\u2018And I, my dear,\u2019 said Rachel, with a tremble in her voice, \u2018have known\nhim through them all, to be, according to his quiet ways, so faithful to\neverything honest and good, that if he was never to be heard of more, and\nI was to live to be a hundred years old, I could say with my last breath,\nGod knows my heart.  I have never once left trusting Stephen Blackpool!\u2019\n\n\u2018We all believe, up at the Lodge, Rachael, that he will be freed from\nsuspicion, sooner or later.\u2019\n\n\u2018The better I know it to be so believed there, my dear,\u2019 said Rachael,\n\u2018and the kinder I feel it that you come away from there, purposely to\ncomfort me, and keep me company, and be seen wi\u2019 me when I am not yet\nfree from all suspicion myself, the more grieved I am that I should ever\nhave spoken those mistrusting words to the young lady.  And yet I\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018You don\u2019t mistrust her now, Rachael?\u2019\n\n\u2018Now that you have brought us more together, no.  But I can\u2019t at all\ntimes keep out of my mind\u2014\u2019\n\nHer voice so sunk into a low and slow communing with herself, that Alecia,\nsitting by her side, was obliged to listen with attention.\n\n\u2018I can\u2019t at all times keep out of my mind, mistrustings of some one.  I\ncan\u2019t think who \u2019tis, I can\u2019t think how or why it may be done, but I\nmistrust that some one has put Stephen out of the way.  I mistrust that\nby his coming back of his own accord, and showing himself innocent before\nthem all, some one would be confounded, who\u2014to prevent that\u2014has stopped\nhim, and put him out of the way.\u2019\n\n\u2018That is a dreadful thought,\u2019 said Alecia, turning pale.\n\n\u2018It _is_ a dreadful thought to think he may be murdered.\u2019\n\nAlecia shuddered, and turned paler yet.\n\n\u2018When it makes its way into my mind, dear,\u2019 said Rachael, \u2018and it will\ncome sometimes, though I do all I can to keep it out, wi\u2019 counting on to\nhigh numbers as I work, and saying over and over again pieces that I knew\nwhen I were a child\u2014I fall into such a wild, hot hurry, that, however\ntired I am, I want to walk fast, miles and miles.  I must get the better\nof this before bed-time.  I\u2019ll walk home wi\u2019 you.\u2019\n\n\u2018He might fall ill upon the journey back,\u2019 said Alecia, faintly offering a\nworn-out scrap of hope; \u2018and in such a case, there are many places on the\nroad where he might stop.\u2019\n\n\u2018But he is in none of them.  He has been sought for in all, and he\u2019s not\nthere.\u2019\n\n\u2018True,\u2019 was Alecia\u2019s reluctant admission.\n\n\u2018He\u2019d walk the journey in two days.  If he was footsore and couldn\u2019t\nwalk, I sent him, in the letter he got, the money to ride, lest he should\nhave none of his own to spare.\u2019\n\n\u2018Let us hope that to-morrow will bring something better, Rachael.  Come\ninto the air!\u2019\n\nHer gentle hand adjusted Rachael\u2019s shawl upon her shining black hair in\nthe usual manner of her wearing it, and they went out.  The night being\nfine, little knots of Hands were here and there lingering at street\ncorners; but it was supper-time with the greater part of them, and there\nwere but few people in the streets.\n\n\u2018You\u2019re not so hurried now, Rachael, and your hand is cooler.\u2019\n\n\u2018I get better, dear, if I can only walk, and breathe a little fresh.\n\u2018Times when I can\u2019t, I turn weak and confused.\u2019\n\n\u2018But you must not begin to fail, Rachael, for you may be wanted at any\ntime to stand by Stephen.  To-morrow is Saturday.  If no news comes\nto-morrow, let us walk in the country on Sunday morning, and strengthen\nyou for another week.  Will you go?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, dear.\u2019\n\nThey were by this time in the street where Mr. Suki\u2019s house stood.\nThe way to Alecia\u2019s destination led them past the door, and they were\ngoing straight towards it.  Some train had newly arrived in Coketown,\nwhich had put a number of vehicles in motion, and scattered a\nconsiderable bustle about the town.  Several coaches were rattling before\nthem and behind them as they approached Mr. Suki\u2019s, and one of the\nlatter drew up with such briskness as they were in the act of passing the\nhouse, that they looked round involuntarily.  The bright gaslight over\nMr. Suki\u2019s steps showed them Mrs. Kiki in the coach, in an\necstasy of excitement, struggling to open the door; Mrs. Kiki seeing\nthem at the same moment, called to them to stop.\n\n\u2018It\u2019s a coincidence,\u2019 exclaimed Mrs. Kiki, as she was released by the\ncoachman.  \u2018It\u2019s a Providence!  Come out, ma\u2019am!\u2019 then said Mrs. Kiki,\nto some one inside, \u2018come out, or we\u2019ll have you dragged out!\u2019\n\nHereupon, no other than the mysterious old woman descended.  Whom Mrs.\nKiki incontinently collared.\n\n\u2018Leave her alone, everybody!\u2019 cried Mrs. Kiki, with great energy.\n\u2018Let nobody touch her.  She belongs to me.  Come in, ma\u2019am!\u2019 then said\nMrs. Kiki, reversing her former word of command.  \u2018Come in, ma\u2019am, or\nwe\u2019ll have you dragged in!\u2019\n\nThe spectacle of a matron of classical deportment, seizing an ancient\nwoman by the throat, and hauling her into a dwelling-house, would have\nbeen under any circumstances, sufficient temptation to all true English\nstragglers so blest as to witness it, to force a way into that\ndwelling-house and see the matter out.  But when the phenomenon was\nenhanced by the notoriety and mystery by this time associated all over\nthe town with the Bank robbery, it would have lured the stragglers in,\nwith an irresistible attraction, though the roof had been expected to\nfall upon their heads.  Accordingly, the chance witnesses on the ground,\nconsisting of the busiest of the neighbours to the number of some\nfive-and-twenty, closed in after Alecia and Rachael, as they closed in\nafter Mrs. Kiki and her prize; and the whole body made a disorderly\nirruption into Mr. Suki\u2019s dining-room, where the people behind lost\nnot a moment\u2019s time in mounting on the chairs, to get the better of the\npeople in front.\n\n\u2018Fetch Mr. Suki down!\u2019 cried Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018Rachael, young woman;\nyou know who this is?\u2019\n\n\u2018It\u2019s Mrs. Pegler,\u2019 said Rachael.\n\n\u2018I should think it is!\u2019 cried Mrs. Kiki, exulting.  \u2018Fetch Mr.\nSuki.  Stand away, everybody!\u2019  Here old Mrs. Pegler, muffling\nherself up, and shrinking from observation, whispered a word of entreaty.\n\u2018Don\u2019t tell me,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, aloud.  \u2018I have told you twenty\ntimes, coming along, that I will _not_ leave you till I have handed you\nover to him myself.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki now appeared, accompanied by Mr. Kailey and the whelp,\nwith whom he had been holding conference up-stairs.  Mr. Suki looked\nmore astonished than hospitable, at sight of this uninvited party in his\ndining-room.\n\n\u2018Why, what\u2019s the matter now!\u2019 said he.  \u2018Mrs. Kiki, ma\u2019am?\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 explained that worthy woman, \u2018I trust it is my good fortune to\nproduce a person you have much desired to find.  Stimulated by my wish to\nrelieve your mind, sir, and connecting together such imperfect clues to\nthe part of the country in which that person might be supposed to reside,\nas have been afforded by the young woman, Rachael, fortunately now\npresent to identify, I have had the happiness to succeed, and to bring\nthat person with me\u2014I need not say most unwillingly on her part.  It has\nnot been, sir, without some trouble that I have effected this; but\ntrouble in your service is to me a pleasure, and hunger, thirst, and cold\na real gratification.\u2019\n\nHere Mrs. Kiki ceased; for Mr. Suki\u2019s visage exhibited an\nextraordinary combination of all possible colours and expressions of\ndiscomfiture, as old Mrs. Pegler was disclosed to his view.\n\n\u2018Why, what do you mean by this?\u2019 was his highly unexpected demand, in\ngreat warmth.  \u2018I ask you, what do you mean by this, Mrs. Kiki,\nma\u2019am?\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir!\u2019 exclaimed Mrs. Kiki, faintly.\n\n\u2018Why don\u2019t you mind your own business, ma\u2019am?\u2019 roared Suki.  \u2018How\ndare you go and poke your officious nose into my family affairs?\u2019\n\nThis allusion to her favourite feature overpowered Mrs. Kiki.  She sat\ndown stiffly in a chair, as if she were frozen; and with a fixed stare at\nMr. Suki, slowly grated her mittens against one another, as if they\nwere frozen too.\n\n\u2018My dear Josiah!\u2019 cried Mrs. Pegler, trembling.  \u2018My darling boy!  I am\nnot to blame.  It\u2019s not my fault, Josiah.  I told this lady over and over\nagain, that I knew she was doing what would not be agreeable to you, but\nshe would do it.\u2019\n\n\u2018What did you let her bring you for?  Couldn\u2019t you knock her cap off, or\nher tooth out, or scratch her, or do something or other to her?\u2019 asked\nSuki.\n\n\u2018My own boy!  She threatened me that if I resisted her, I should be\nbrought by constables, and it was better to come quietly than make that\nstir in such a\u2019\u2014Mrs. Pegler glanced timidly but proudly round the\nwalls\u2014\u2018such a fine house as this.  Indeed, indeed, it is not my fault!\nMy dear, noble, stately boy!  I have always lived quiet, and secret,\nJosiah, my dear.  I have never broken the condition once.  I have never\nsaid I was your mother.  I have admired you at a distance; and if I have\ncome to town sometimes, with long times between, to take a proud peep at\nyou, I have done it unbeknown, my love, and gone away again.\u2019\n\nMr. Suki, with his hands in his pockets, walked in impatient\nmortification up and down at the side of the long dining-table, while the\nspectators greedily took in every syllable of Mrs. Pegler\u2019s appeal, and\nat each succeeding syllable became more and more round-eyed.  Mr.\nSuki still walking up and down when Mrs. Pegler had done, Mr.\nKailey addressed that maligned old lady:\n\n\u2018I am surprised, madam,\u2019 he observed with severity, \u2018that in your old age\nyou have the face to claim Mr. Suki for your son, after your\nunnatural and inhuman treatment of him.\u2019\n\n\u2018_Me_ unnatural!\u2019 cried poor old Mrs. Pegler.  \u2018_Me_ inhuman!  To my dear\nboy?\u2019\n\n\u2018Dear!\u2019 repeated Mr. Kailey.  \u2018Yes; dear in his self-made prosperity,\nmadam, I dare say.  Not very dear, however, when you deserted him in his\ninfancy, and left him to the brutality of a drunken grandmother.\u2019\n\n\u2018_I_ deserted my Josiah!\u2019 cried Mrs. Pegler, clasping her hands.  \u2018Now,\nLord forgive you, sir, for your wicked imaginations, and for your scandal\nagainst the memory of my poor mother, who died in my arms before Josiah\nwas born.  May you repent of it, sir, and live to know better!\u2019\n\nShe was so very earnest and injured, that Mr. Kailey, shocked by the\npossibility which dawned upon him, said in a gentler tone:\n\n\u2018Do you deny, then, madam, that you left your son to\u2014to be brought up in\nthe gutter?\u2019\n\n\u2018Josiah in the gutter!\u2019 exclaimed Mrs. Pegler.  \u2018No such a thing, sir.\nNever!  For shame on you!  My dear boy knows, and will give _you_ to\nknow, that though he come of humble parents, he come of parents that\nloved him as dear as the best could, and never thought it hardship on\nthemselves to pinch a bit that he might write and cipher beautiful, and\nI\u2019ve his books at home to show it!  Aye, have I!\u2019 said Mrs. Pegler, with\nindignant pride.  \u2018And my dear boy knows, and will give _you_ to know,\nsir, that after his beloved father died, when he was eight years old, his\nmother, too, could pinch a bit, as it was her duty and her pleasure and\nher pride to do it, to help him out in life, and put him \u2019prentice.  And\na steady lad he was, and a kind master he had to lend him a hand, and\nwell he worked his own way forward to be rich and thriving.  And _I_\u2019ll\ngive you to know, sir\u2014for this my dear boy won\u2019t\u2014that though his mother\nkept but a little village shop, he never forgot her, but pensioned me on\nthirty pound a year\u2014more than I want, for I put by out of it\u2014only making\nthe condition that I was to keep down in my own part, and make no boasts\nabout him, and not trouble him.  And I never have, except with looking at\nhim once a year, when he has never knowed it.  And it\u2019s right,\u2019 said poor\nold Mrs. Pegler, in affectionate championship, \u2018that I _should_ keep down\nin my own part, and I have no doubts that if I was here I should do a\nmany unbefitting things, and I am well contented, and I can keep my pride\nin my Josiah to myself, and I can love for love\u2019s own sake!  And I am\nashamed of you, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Pegler, lastly, \u2018for your slanders and\nsuspicions.  And I never stood here before, nor never wanted to stand\nhere when my dear son said no.  And I shouldn\u2019t be here now, if it hadn\u2019t\nbeen for being brought here.  And for shame upon you, Oh, for shame, to\naccuse me of being a bad mother to my son, with my son standing here to\ntell you so different!\u2019\n\nThe bystanders, on and off the dining-room chairs, raised a murmur of\nsympathy with Mrs. Pegler, and Mr. Kailey felt himself innocently\nplaced in a very distressing predicament, when Mr. Suki, who had\nnever ceased walking up and down, and had every moment swelled larger and\nlarger, and grown redder and redder, stopped short.\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t exactly know,\u2019 said Mr. Suki, \u2018how I come to be favoured\nwith the attendance of the present company, but I don\u2019t inquire.  When\nthey\u2019re quite satisfied, perhaps they\u2019ll be so good as to disperse;\nwhether they\u2019re satisfied or not, perhaps they\u2019ll be so good as to\ndisperse.  I\u2019m not bound to deliver a lecture on my family affairs, I\nhave not undertaken to do it, and I\u2019m not a going to do it.  Therefore\nthose who expect any explanation whatever upon that branch of the\nsubject, will be disappointed\u2014particularly Tom Kailey, and he can\u2019t\nknow it too soon.  In reference to the Bank robbery, there has been a\nmistake made, concerning my mother.  If there hadn\u2019t been\nover-officiousness it wouldn\u2019t have been made, and I hate\nover-officiousness at all times, whether or no. Good evening!\u2019\n\nAlthough Mr. Suki carried it off in these terms, holding the door\nopen for the company to depart, there was a blustering sheepishness upon\nhim, at once extremely crestfallen and superlatively absurd.  Detected as\nthe Bully of humility, who had built his windy reputation upon lies, and\nin his boastfulness had put the honest truth as far away from him as if\nhe had advanced the mean claim (there is no meaner) to tack himself on to\na pedigree, he cut a most ridiculous figure.  With the people filing off\nat the door he held, who he knew would carry what had passed to the whole\ntown, to be given to the four winds, he could not have looked a Bully\nmore shorn and forlorn, if he had had his ears cropped.  Even that\nunlucky female, Mrs. Kiki, fallen from her pinnacle of exultation into\nthe Slough of Despond, was not in so bad a plight as that remarkable man\nand self-made Humbug, Josiah Suki of Coketown.\n\nRachael and Alecia, leaving Mrs. Pegler to occupy a bed at her son\u2019s for\nthat night, walked together to the gate of Stone Lodge and there parted.\nMr. Kailey joined them before they had gone very far, and spoke with\nmuch interest of Stephen Blackpool; for whom he thought this signal\nfailure of the suspicions against Mrs. Pegler was likely to work well.\n\nAs to the whelp; throughout this scene as on all other late occasions, he\nhad stuck close to Suki.  He seemed to feel that as long as\nSuki could make no discovery without his knowledge, he was so far\nsafe.  He never visited his sister, and had only seen her once since she\nwent home: that is to say on the night when he still stuck close to\nSuki, as already related.\n\nThere was one dim unformed fear lingering about his sister\u2019s mind, to\nwhich she never gave utterance, which surrounded the graceless and\nungrateful boy with a dreadful mystery.  The same dark possibility had\npresented itself in the same shapeless guise, this very day, to Alecia,\nwhen Rachael spoke of some one who would be confounded by Stephen\u2019s\nreturn, having put him out of the way.  Eugenie had never spoken of\nharbouring any suspicion of her brother in connexion with the robbery,\nshe and Alecia had held no confidence on the subject, save in that one\ninterchange of looks when the unconscious father rested his gray head on\nhis hand; but it was understood between them, and they both knew it.\nThis other fear was so awful, that it hovered about each of them like a\nghostly shadow; neither daring to think of its being near herself, far\nless of its being near the other.\n\nAnd still the forced spirit which the whelp had plucked up, throve with\nhim.  If Stephen Blackpool was not the thief, let him show himself.  Why\ndidn\u2019t he?\n\nAnother night.  Another day and night.  No Stephen Blackpool.  Where was\nthe man, and why did he not come back?\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\nTHE STARLIGHT\n\n\nTHE Sunday was a bright Sunday in autumn, clear and cool, when early in\nthe morning Alecia and Rachael met, to walk in the country.\n\nAs Coketown cast ashes not only on its own head but on the\nneighbourhood\u2019s too\u2014after the manner of those pious persons who do\npenance for their own sins by putting other people into sackcloth\u2014it was\ncustomary for those who now and then thirsted for a draught of pure air,\nwhich is not absolutely the most wicked among the vanities of life, to\nget a few miles away by the railroad, and then begin their walk, or their\nlounge in the fields.  Alecia and Rachael helped themselves out of the\nsmoke by the usual means, and were put down at a station about midway\nbetween the town and Mr. Suki\u2019s retreat.\n\nThough the green landscape was blotted here and there with heaps of coal,\nit was green elsewhere, and there were trees to see, and there were larks\nsinging (though it was Sunday), and there were pleasant scents in the\nair, and all was over-arched by a bright blue sky.  In the distance one\nway, Coketown showed as a black mist; in another distance hills began to\nrise; in a third, there was a faint change in the light of the horizon\nwhere it shone upon the far-off sea.  Under their feet, the grass was\nfresh; beautiful shadows of branches flickered upon it, and speckled it;\nhedgerows were luxuriant; everything was at peace.  Engines at pits\u2019\nmouths, and lean old horses that had worn the circle of their daily\nlabour into the ground, were alike quiet; wheels had ceased for a short\nspace to turn; and the great wheel of earth seemed to revolve without the\nshocks and noises of another time.\n\nThey walked on across the fields and down the shady lanes, sometimes\ngetting over a fragment of a fence so rotten that it dropped at a touch\nof the foot, sometimes passing near a wreck of bricks and beams overgrown\nwith grass, marking the site of deserted works.  They followed paths and\ntracks, however slight.  Mounds where the grass was rank and high, and\nwhere brambles, dock-weed, and such-like vegetation, were confusedly\nheaped together, they always avoided; for dismal stories were told in\nthat country of the old pits hidden beneath such indications.\n\nThe sun was high when they sat down to rest.  They had seen no one, near\nor distant, for a long time; and the solitude remained unbroken.  \u2018It is\nso still here, Rachael, and the way is so untrodden, that I think we must\nbe the first who have been here all the summer.\u2019\n\nAs Alecia said it, her eyes were attracted by another of those rotten\nfragments of fence upon the ground.  She got up to look at it.  \u2018And yet\nI don\u2019t know.  This has not been broken very long.  The wood is quite\nfresh where it gave way.  Here are footsteps too.\u2014O Rachael!\u2019\n\nShe ran back, and caught her round the neck.  Rachael had already started\nup.\n\n\u2018What is the matter?\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t know.  There is a hat lying in the grass.\u2019  They went forward\ntogether.  Rachael took it up, shaking from head to foot.  She broke into\na passion of tears and lamentations: Stephen Blackpool was written in his\nown hand on the inside.\n\n\u2018O the poor lad, the poor lad!  He has been made away with.  He is lying\nmurdered here!\u2019\n\n\u2018Is there\u2014has the hat any blood upon it?\u2019 Alecia faltered.\n\nThey were afraid to look; but they did examine it, and found no mark of\nviolence, inside or out.  It had been lying there some days, for rain and\ndew had stained it, and the mark of its shape was on the grass where it\nhad fallen.  They looked fearfully about them, without moving, but could\nsee nothing more.  \u2018Rachael,\u2019 Alecia whispered, \u2018I will go on a little by\nmyself.\u2019\n\nShe had unclasped her hand, and was in the act of stepping forward, when\nRachael caught her in both arms with a scream that resounded over the\nwide landscape.  Before them, at their very feet, was the brink of a\nblack ragged chasm hidden by the thick grass.  They sprang back, and fell\nupon their knees, each hiding her face upon the other\u2019s neck.\n\n\u2018O, my good Lord!  He\u2019s down there!  Down there!\u2019  At first this, and her\nterrific screams, were all that could be got from Rachael, by any tears,\nby any prayers, by any representations, by any means.  It was impossible\nto hush her; and it was deadly necessary to hold her, or she would have\nflung herself down the shaft.\n\n\u2018Rachael, dear Rachael, good Rachael, for the love of Heaven, not these\ndreadful cries!  Think of Stephen, think of Stephen, think of Stephen!\u2019\n\nBy an earnest repetition of this entreaty, poured out in all the agony of\nsuch a moment, Alecia at last brought her to be silent, and to look at her\nwith a tearless face of stone.\n\n\u2018Rachael, Stephen may be living.  You wouldn\u2019t leave him lying maimed at\nthe bottom of this dreadful place, a moment, if you could bring help to\nhim?\u2019\n\n\u2018No, no, no!\u2019\n\n\u2018Don\u2019t stir from here, for his sake!  Let me go and listen.\u2019\n\nShe shuddered to approach the pit; but she crept towards it on her hands\nand knees, and called to him as loud as she could call.  She listened,\nbut no sound replied.  She called again and listened; still no answering\nsound.  She did this, twenty, thirty times.  She took a little clod of\nearth from the broken ground where he had stumbled, and threw it in.  She\ncould not hear it fall.\n\nThe wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few minutes ago,\nalmost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose and looked all\nround her, seeing no help.  \u2018Rachael, we must lose not a moment.  We must\ngo in different directions, seeking aid.  You shall go by the way we have\ncome, and I will go forward by the path.  Tell any one you see, and every\none what has happened.  Think of Stephen, think of Stephen!\u2019\n\nShe knew by Rachael\u2019s face that she might trust her now.  And after\nstanding for a moment to see her running, wringing her hands as she ran,\nshe turned and went upon her own search; she stopped at the hedge to tie\nher shawl there as a guide to the place, then threw her bonnet aside, and\nran as she had never run before.\n\nRun, Alecia, run, in Heaven\u2019s name!  Don\u2019t stop for breath.  Run, run!\nQuickening herself by carrying such entreaties in her thoughts, she ran\nfrom field to field, and lane to lane, and place to place, as she had\nnever run before; until she came to a shed by an engine-house, where two\nmen lay in the shade, asleep on straw.\n\nFirst to wake them, and next to tell them, all so wild and breathless as\nshe was, what had brought her there, were difficulties; but they no\nsooner understood her than their spirits were on fire like hers.  One of\nthe men was in a drunken slumber, but on his comrade\u2019s shouting to him\nthat a man had fallen down the Old Hell Shaft, he started out to a pool\nof dirty water, put his head in it, and came back sober.\n\nWith these two men she ran to another half-a-mile further, and with that\none to another, while they ran elsewhere.  Then a horse was found; and\nshe got another man to ride for life or death to the railroad, and send a\nmessage to Eugenie, which she wrote and gave him.  By this time a whole\nvillage was up: and windlasses, ropes, poles, candles, lanterns, all\nthings necessary, were fast collecting and being brought into one place,\nto be carried to the Old Hell Shaft.\n\nIt seemed now hours and hours since she had left the lost man lying in\nthe grave where he had been buried alive.  She could not bear to remain\naway from it any longer\u2014it was like deserting him\u2014and she hurried swiftly\nback, accompanied by half-a-dozen labourers, including the drunken man\nwhom the news had sobered, and who was the best man of all.  When they\ncame to the Old Hell Shaft, they found it as lonely as she had left it.\nThe men called and listened as she had done, and examined the edge of the\nchasm, and settled how it had happened, and then sat down to wait until\nthe implements they wanted should come up.\n\nEvery sound of insects in the air, every stirring of the leaves, every\nwhisper among these men, made Alecia tremble, for she thought it was a cry\nat the bottom of the pit.  But the wind blew idly over it, and no sound\narose to the surface, and they sat upon the grass, waiting and waiting.\nAfter they had waited some time, straggling people who had heard of the\naccident began to come up; then the real help of implements began to\narrive.  In the midst of this, Rachael returned; and with her party there\nwas a surgeon, who brought some wine and medicines.  But, the expectation\namong the people that the man would be found alive was very slight\nindeed.\n\nThere being now people enough present to impede the work, the sobered man\nput himself at the head of the rest, or was put there by the general\nconsent, and made a large ring round the Old Hell Shaft, and appointed\nmen to keep it.  Besides such volunteers as were accepted to work, only\nAlecia and Rachael were at first permitted within this ring; but, later in\nthe day, when the message brought an express from Coketown, Mr. Kailey\nand Eugenie, and Mr. Suki, and the whelp, were also there.\n\nThe sun was four hours lower than when Alecia and Rachael had first sat\ndown upon the grass, before a means of enabling two men to descend\nsecurely was rigged with poles and ropes.  Difficulties had arisen in the\nconstruction of this machine, simple as it was; requisites had been found\nwanting, and messages had had to go and return.  It was five o\u2019clock in\nthe afternoon of the bright autumnal Sunday, before a candle was sent\ndown to try the air, while three or four rough faces stood crowded close\ntogether, attentively watching it: the man at the windlass lowering as\nthey were told.  The candle was brought up again, feebly burning, and\nthen some water was cast in.  Then the bucket was hooked on; and the\nsobered man and another got in with lights, giving the word \u2018Lower away!\u2019\n\nAs the rope went out, tight and strained, and the windlass creaked, there\nwas not a breath among the one or two hundred men and women looking on,\nthat came as it was wont to come.  The signal was given and the windlass\nstopped, with abundant rope to spare.  Apparently so long an interval\nensued with the men at the windlass standing idle, that some women\nshrieked that another accident had happened!  But the surgeon who held\nthe watch, declared five minutes not to have elapsed yet, and sternly\nadmonished them to keep silence.  He had not well done speaking, when the\nwindlass was reversed and worked again.  Practised eyes knew that it did\nnot go as heavily as it would if both workmen had been coming up, and\nthat only one was returning.\n\nThe rope came in tight and strained; and ring after ring was coiled upon\nthe barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were fastened on the pit.  The\nsobered man was brought up and leaped out briskly on the grass.  There\nwas an universal cry of \u2018Alive or dead?\u2019 and then a deep, profound hush.\n\nWhen he said \u2018Alive!\u2019 a great shout arose and many eyes had tears in\nthem.\n\n\u2018But he\u2019s hurt very bad,\u2019 he added, as soon as he could make himself\nheard again.  \u2018Where\u2019s doctor?  He\u2019s hurt so very bad, sir, that we donno\nhow to get him up.\u2019\n\nThey all consulted together, and looked anxiously at the surgeon, as he\nasked some questions, and shook his head on receiving the replies.  The\nsun was setting now; and the red light in the evening sky touched every\nface there, and caused it to be distinctly seen in all its rapt suspense.\n\nThe consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass, and the\npitman going down again, carrying the wine and some other small matters\nwith him.  Then the other man came up.  In the meantime, under the\nsurgeon\u2019s directions, some men brought a hurdle, on which others made a\nthick bed of spare clothes covered with loose straw, while he himself\ncontrived some bandages and slings from shawls and handkerchiefs.  As\nthese were made, they were hung upon an arm of the pitman who had last\ncome up, with instructions how to use them: and as he stood, shown by the\nlight he carried, leaning his powerful loose hand upon one of the poles,\nand sometimes glancing down the pit, and sometimes glancing round upon\nthe people, he was not the least conspicuous figure in the scene.  It was\ndark now, and torches were kindled.\n\nIt appeared from the little this man said to those about him, which was\nquickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost man had fallen upon a\nmass of crumbled rubbish with which the pit was half choked up, and that\nhis fall had been further broken by some jagged earth at the side.  He\nlay upon his back with one arm doubled under him, and according to his\nown belief had hardly stirred since he fell, except that he had moved his\nfree hand to a side pocket, in which he remembered to have some bread and\nmeat (of which he had swallowed crumbs), and had likewise scooped up a\nlittle water in it now and then.  He had come straight away from his\nwork, on being written to, and had walked the whole journey; and was on\nhis way to Mr. Suki\u2019s country house after dark, when he fell.  He\nwas crossing that dangerous country at such a dangerous time, because he\nwas innocent of what was laid to his charge, and couldn\u2019t rest from\ncoming the nearest way to deliver himself up.  The Old Hell Shaft, the\npitman said, with a curse upon it, was worthy of its bad name to the\nlast; for though Stephen could speak now, he believed it would soon be\nfound to have mangled the life out of him.\n\nWhen all was ready, this man, still taking his last hurried charges from\nhis comrades and the surgeon after the windlass had begun to lower him,\ndisappeared into the pit.  The rope went out as before, the signal was\nmade as before, and the windlass stopped.  No man removed his hand from\nit now.  Every one waited with his grasp set, and his body bent down to\nthe work, ready to reverse and wind in.  At length the signal was given,\nand all the ring leaned forward.\n\nFor, now, the rope came in, tightened and strained to its utmost as it\nappeared, and the men turned heavily, and the windlass complained.  It\nwas scarcely endurable to look at the rope, and think of its giving way.\nBut, ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass safely,\nand the connecting chains appeared, and finally the bucket with the two\nmen holding on at the sides\u2014a sight to make the head swim, and oppress\nthe heart\u2014and tenderly supporting between them, slung and tied within,\nthe figure of a poor, crushed, human creature.\n\nA low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the women wept aloud, as\nthis form, almost without form, was moved very slowly from its iron\ndeliverance, and laid upon the bed of straw.  At first, none but the\nsurgeon went close to it.  He did what he could in its adjustment on the\ncouch, but the best that he could do was to cover it.  That gently done,\nhe called to him Rachael and Alecia.  And at that time the pale, worn,\npatient face was seen looking up at the sky, with the broken right hand\nlying bare on the outside of the covering garments, as if waiting to be\ntaken by another hand.\n\nThey gave him drink, moistened his face with water, and administered some\ndrops of cordial and wine.  Though he lay quite motionless looking up at\nthe sky, he smiled and said, \u2018Rachael.\u2019  She stooped down on the grass at\nhis side, and bent over him until her eyes were between his and the sky,\nfor he could not so much as turn them to look at her.\n\n\u2018Rachael, my dear.\u2019\n\nShe took his hand.  He smiled again and said, \u2018Don\u2019t let \u2019t go.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thou\u2019rt in great pain, my own dear Stephen?\u2019\n\n\u2018I ha\u2019 been, but not now.  I ha\u2019 been\u2014dreadful, and dree, and long, my\ndear\u2014but \u2019tis ower now.  Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle!  Fro\u2019 first to last, a\nmuddle!\u2019\n\nThe spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the word.\n\n\u2018I ha\u2019 fell into th\u2019 pit, my dear, as have cost wi\u2019in the knowledge o\u2019\nold fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o\u2019 men\u2019s lives\u2014fathers, sons,\nbrothers, dear to thousands an\u2019 thousands, an\u2019 keeping \u2019em fro\u2019 want and\nhunger.  I ha\u2019 fell into a pit that ha\u2019 been wi\u2019 th\u2019 Firedamp crueller\nthan battle.  I ha\u2019 read on \u2019t in the public petition, as onny one may\nread, fro\u2019 the men that works in pits, in which they ha\u2019 pray\u2019n and\npray\u2019n the lawmakers for Christ\u2019s sake not to let their work be murder to\n\u2019em, but to spare \u2019em for th\u2019 wives and children that they loves as well\nas gentlefok loves theirs.  When it were in work, it killed wi\u2019out need;\nwhen \u2019tis let alone, it kills wi\u2019out need.  See how we die an\u2019 no need,\none way an\u2019 another\u2014in a muddle\u2014every day!\u2019\n\nHe faintly said it, without any anger against any one.  Merely as the\ntruth.\n\n\u2018Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her.  Thou\u2019rt not like\nto forget her now, and me so nigh her.  Thou know\u2019st\u2014poor, patient,\nsuff\u2019rin, dear\u2014how thou didst work for her, seet\u2019n all day long in her\nlittle chair at thy winder, and how she died, young and misshapen, awlung\no\u2019 sickly air as had\u2019n no need to be, an\u2019 awlung o\u2019 working people\u2019s\nmiserable homes.  A muddle!  Aw a muddle!\u2019\n\nEugenie approached him; but he could not see her, lying with his face\nturned up to the night sky.\n\n\u2018If aw th\u2019 things that tooches us, my dear, was not so muddled, I\nshould\u2019n ha\u2019 had\u2019n need to coom heer.  If we was not in a muddle among\nourseln, I should\u2019n ha\u2019 been, by my own fellow weavers and workin\u2019\nbrothers, so mistook.  If Mr. Suki had ever know\u2019d me right\u2014if he\u2019d\never know\u2019d me at aw\u2014he would\u2019n ha\u2019 took\u2019n offence wi\u2019 me.  He would\u2019n\nha\u2019 suspect\u2019n me.  But look up yonder, Rachael!  Look aboove!\u2019\n\nFollowing his eyes, she saw that he was gazing at a star.\n\n      [Picture: Stephen Blackpool recovered from the Old Hell Shaft]\n\n\u2018It ha\u2019 shined upon me,\u2019 he said reverently, \u2018in my pain and trouble down\nbelow.  It ha\u2019 shined into my mind.  I ha\u2019 look\u2019n at \u2019t and thowt o\u2019\nthee, Rachael, till the muddle in my mind have cleared awa, above a bit,\nI hope.  If soom ha\u2019 been wantin\u2019 in unnerstan\u2019in me better, I, too, ha\u2019\nbeen wantin\u2019 in unnerstan\u2019in them better.  When I got thy letter, I\neasily believen that what the yoong ledy sen and done to me, and what her\nbrother sen and done to me, was one, and that there were a wicked plot\nbetwixt \u2019em.  When I fell, I were in anger wi\u2019 her, an\u2019 hurryin on t\u2019 be\nas onjust t\u2019 her as oothers was t\u2019 me.  But in our judgments, like as in\nour doins, we mun bear and forbear.  In my pain an\u2019 trouble, lookin up\nyonder,\u2014wi\u2019 it shinin on me\u2014I ha\u2019 seen more clear, and ha\u2019 made it my\ndyin prayer that aw th\u2019 world may on\u2019y coom toogether more, an\u2019 get a\nbetter unnerstan\u2019in o\u2019 one another, than when I were in \u2019t my own weak\nseln.\u2019\n\nEugenie hearing what he said, bent over him on the opposite side to\nRachael, so that he could see her.\n\n\u2018You ha\u2019 heard?\u2019 he said, after a few moments\u2019 silence.  \u2018I ha\u2019 not\nforgot you, ledy.\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, Stephen, I have heard you.  And your prayer is mine.\u2019\n\n\u2018You ha\u2019 a father.  Will yo tak\u2019 a message to him?\u2019\n\n\u2018He is here,\u2019 said Eugenie, with dread.  \u2018Shall I bring him to you?\u2019\n\n\u2018If yo please.\u2019\n\nEugenie returned with her father.  Standing hand-in-hand, they both looked\ndown upon the solemn countenance.\n\n\u2018Sir, yo will clear me an\u2019 mak my name good wi\u2019 aw men.  This I leave to\nyo.\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey was troubled and asked how?\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 was the reply: \u2018yor son will tell yo how.  Ask him.  I mak no\ncharges: I leave none ahint me: not a single word.  I ha\u2019 seen an\u2019 spok\u2019n\nwi\u2019 yor son, one night.  I ask no more o\u2019 yo than that yo clear me\u2014an\u2019 I\ntrust to yo to do \u2019t.\u2019\n\nThe bearers being now ready to carry him away, and the surgeon being\nanxious for his removal, those who had torches or lanterns, prepared to\ngo in front of the litter.  Before it was raised, and while they were\narranging how to go, he said to Rachael, looking upward at the star:\n\n\u2018Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin\u2019 on me down there in my\ntrouble, I thowt it were the star as guided to Our Saviour\u2019s home.  I\nawmust think it be the very star!\u2019\n\nThey lifted him up, and he was overjoyed to find that they were about to\ntake him in the direction whither the star seemed to him to lead.\n\n\u2018Rachael, beloved lass!  Don\u2019t let go my hand.  We may walk toogether\nt\u2019night, my dear!\u2019\n\n\u2018I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, Stephen, all the way.\u2019\n\n\u2018Bless thee!  Will soombody be pleased to coover my face!\u2019\n\nThey carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes, and\nover the wide landscape; Rachael always holding the hand in hers.  Very\nfew whispers broke the mournful silence.  It was soon a funeral\nprocession.  The star had shown him where to find the God of the poor;\nand through humility, and sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his\nRedeemer\u2019s rest.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\nWHELP-HUNTING\n\n\nBEFORE the ring formed round the Old Hell Shaft was broken, one figure\nhad disappeared from within it.  Mr. Suki and his shadow had not\nstood near Eugenie, who held her father\u2019s arm, but in a retired place by\nthemselves.  When Mr. Kailey was summoned to the couch, Alecia,\nattentive to all that happened, slipped behind that wicked shadow\u2014a sight\nin the horror of his face, if there had been eyes there for any sight but\none\u2014and whispered in his ear.  Without turning his head, he conferred\nwith her a few moments, and vanished.  Thus the whelp had gone out of the\ncircle before the people moved.\n\nWhen the father reached home, he sent a message to Mr. Suki\u2019s,\ndesiring his son to come to him directly.  The reply was, that Mr.\nSuki having missed him in the crowd, and seeing nothing of him\nsince, had supposed him to be at Stone Lodge.\n\n\u2018I believe, father,\u2019 said Eugenie, \u2018he will not come back to town\nto-night.\u2019  Mr. Kailey turned away, and said no more.\n\nIn the morning, he went down to the Bank himself as soon as it was\nopened, and seeing his son\u2019s place empty (he had not the courage to look\nin at first) went back along the street to meet Mr. Suki on his way\nthere.  To whom he said that, for reasons he would soon explain, but\nentreated not then to be asked for, he had found it necessary to employ\nhis son at a distance for a little while.  Also, that he was charged with\nthe duty of vindicating Stephen Blackpool\u2019s memory, and declaring the\nthief.  Mr. Suki quite confounded, stood stock-still in the street\nafter his father-in-law had left him, swelling like an immense\nsoap-bubble, without its beauty.\n\nMr. Kailey went home, locked himself in his room, and kept it all that\nday.  When Alecia and Eugenie tapped at his door, he said, without opening\nit, \u2018Not now, my dears; in the evening.\u2019  On their return in the evening,\nhe said, \u2018I am not able yet\u2014to-morrow.\u2019  He ate nothing all day, and had\nno candle after dark; and they heard him walking to and fro late at\nnight.\n\nBut, in the morning he appeared at breakfast at the usual hour, and took\nhis usual place at the table.  Aged and bent he looked, and quite bowed\ndown; and yet he looked a wiser man, and a better man, than in the days\nwhen in this life he wanted nothing\u2014but Facts.  Before he left the room,\nhe appointed a time for them to come to him; and so, with his gray head\ndrooping, went away.\n\n\u2018Dear father,\u2019 said Eugenie, when they kept their appointment, \u2018you have\nthree young children left.  They will be different, I will be different\nyet, with Heaven\u2019s help.\u2019\n\nShe gave her hand to Alecia, as if she meant with her help too.\n\n\u2018Your wretched brother,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018Do you think he had\nplanned this robbery, when he went with you to the lodging?\u2019\n\n\u2018I fear so, father.  I know he had wanted money very much, and had spent\na great deal.\u2019\n\n\u2018The poor man being about to leave the town, it came into his evil brain\nto cast suspicion on him?\u2019\n\n\u2018I think it must have flashed upon him while he sat there, father.  For I\nasked him to go there with me.  The visit did not originate with him.\u2019\n\n\u2018He had some conversation with the poor man.  Did he take him aside?\u2019\n\n\u2018He took him out of the room.  I asked him afterwards, why he had done\nso, and he made a plausible excuse; but since last night, father, and\nwhen I remember the circumstances by its light, I am afraid I can imagine\ntoo truly what passed between them.\u2019\n\n\u2018Let me know,\u2019 said her father, \u2018if your thoughts present your guilty\nbrother in the same dark view as mine.\u2019\n\n\u2018I fear, father,\u2019 hesitated Eugenie, \u2018that he must have made some\nrepresentation to Stephen Blackpool\u2014perhaps in my name, perhaps in his\nown\u2014which induced him to do in good faith and honesty, what he had never\ndone before, and to wait about the Bank those two or three nights before\nhe left the town.\u2019\n\n\u2018Too plain!\u2019 returned the father.  \u2018Too plain!\u2019\n\nHe shaded his face, and remained silent for some moments.  Recovering\nhimself, he said:\n\n\u2018And now, how is he to be found?  How is he to be saved from justice?  In\nthe few hours that I can possibly allow to elapse before I publish the\ntruth, how is he to be found by us, and only by us?  Ten thousand pounds\ncould not effect it.\u2019\n\n\u2018Alecia has effected it, father.\u2019\n\nHe raised his eyes to where she stood, like a good fairy in his house,\nand said in a tone of softened gratitude and grateful kindness, \u2018It is\nalways you, my child!\u2019\n\n\u2018We had our fears,\u2019 Alecia explained, glancing at Eugenie, \u2018before\nyesterday; and when I saw you brought to the side of the litter last\nnight, and heard what passed (being close to Rachael all the time), I\nwent to him when no one saw, and said to him, \u201cDon\u2019t look at me.  See\nwhere your father is.  Escape at once, for his sake and your own!\u201d  He\nwas in a tremble before I whispered to him, and he started and trembled\nmore then, and said, \u201cWhere can I go?  I have very little money, and I\ndon\u2019t know who will hide me!\u201d  I thought of father\u2019s old circus.  I have\nnot forgotten where Mr. Sleary goes at this time of year, and I read of\nhim in a paper only the other day.  I told him to hurry there, and tell\nhis name, and ask Mr. Sleary to hide him till I came.  \u201cI\u2019ll get to him\nbefore the morning,\u201d he said.  And I saw him shrink away among the\npeople.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank Heaven!\u2019 exclaimed his father.  \u2018He may be got abroad yet.\u2019\n\nIt was the more hopeful as the town to which Alecia had directed him was\nwithin three hours\u2019 journey of Liverpool, whence he could be swiftly\ndispatched to any part of the world.  But, caution being necessary in\ncommunicating with him\u2014for there was a greater danger every moment of his\nbeing suspected now, and nobody could be sure at heart but that Mr.\nSuki himself, in a bullying vein of public zeal, might play a Roman\npart\u2014it was consented that Alecia and Eugenie should repair to the place in\nquestion, by a circuitous course, alone; and that the unhappy father,\nsetting forth in an opposite direction, should get round to the same\nbourne by another and wider route.  It was further agreed that he should\nnot present himself to Mr. Sleary, lest his intentions should be\nmistrusted, or the intelligence of his arrival should cause his son to\ntake flight anew; but, that the communication should be left to Alecia and\nEugenie to open; and that they should inform the cause of so much misery\nand disgrace, of his father\u2019s being at hand and of the purpose for which\nthey had come.  When these arrangements had been well considered and were\nfully understood by all three, it was time to begin to carry them into\nexecution.  Early in the afternoon, Mr. Kailey walked direct from his\nown house into the country, to be taken up on the line by which he was to\ntravel; and at night the remaining two set forth upon their different\ncourse, encouraged by not seeing any face they knew.\n\nThe two travelled all night, except when they were left, for odd numbers\nof minutes, at branch-places, up illimitable flights of steps, or down\nwells\u2014which was the only variety of those branches\u2014and, early in the\nmorning, were turned out on a swamp, a mile or two from the town they\nsought.  From this dismal spot they were rescued by a savage old\npostilion, who happened to be up early, kicking a horse in a fly: and so\nwere smuggled into the town by all the back lanes where the pigs lived:\nwhich, although not a magnificent or even savoury approach, was, as is\nusual in such cases, the legitimate highway.\n\nThe first thing they saw on entering the town was the skeleton of\nSleary\u2019s Circus.  The company had departed for another town more than\ntwenty miles off, and had opened there last night.  The connection\nbetween the two places was by a hilly turnpike-road, and the travelling\non that road was very slow.  Though they took but a hasty breakfast, and\nno rest (which it would have been in vain to seek under such anxious\ncircumstances), it was noon before they began to find the bills of\nSleary\u2019s Horse-riding on barns and walls, and one o\u2019clock when they\nstopped in the market-place.\n\nA Grand Morning Performance by the Riders, commencing at that very hour,\nwas in course of announcement by the bellman as they set their feet upon\nthe stones of the street.  Alecia recommended that, to avoid making\ninquiries and attracting attention in the town, they should present\nthemselves to pay at the door.  If Mr. Sleary were taking the money, he\nwould be sure to know her, and would proceed with discretion.  If he were\nnot, he would be sure to see them inside; and, knowing what he had done\nwith the fugitive, would proceed with discretion still.\n\nTherefore, they repaired, with fluttering hearts, to the well-remembered\nbooth.  The flag with the inscription SLEARY\u2019S HORSE-RIDING was there;\nand the Gothic niche was there; but Mr. Sleary was not there.  Master\nKidderminster, grown too maturely turfy to be received by the wildest\ncredulity as Cupid any more, had yielded to the invincible force of\ncircumstances (and his beard), and, in the capacity of a man who made\nhimself generally useful, presided on this occasion over the\nexchequer\u2014having also a drum in reserve, on which to expend his leisure\nmoments and superfluous forces.  In the extreme sharpness of his look out\nfor base coin, Mr. Kidderminster, as at present situated, never saw\nanything but money; so Alecia passed him unrecognised, and they went in.\n\nThe Emperor of Japan, on a steady old white horse stencilled with black\nspots, was twirling five wash-hand basins at once, as it is the favourite\nrecreation of that monarch to do.  Alecia, though well acquainted with his\nRoyal line, had no personal knowledge of the present Emperor, and his\nreign was peaceful.  Miss Josephine Sleary, in her celebrated graceful\nEquestrian Tyrolean Flower Act, was then announced by a new clown (who\nhumorously said Cauliflower Act), and Mr. Sleary appeared, leading her\nin.\n\nMr. Sleary had only made one cut at the Clown with his long whip-lash,\nand the Clown had only said, \u2018If you do it again, I\u2019ll throw the horse at\nyou!\u2019 when Alecia was recognised both by father and daughter.  But they\ngot through the Act with great self-possession; and Mr. Sleary, saving\nfor the first instant, conveyed no more expression into his locomotive\neye than into his fixed one.  The performance seemed a little long to\nAlecia and Eugenie, particularly when it stopped to afford the Clown an\nopportunity of telling Mr. Sleary (who said \u2018Indeed, sir!\u2019 to all his\nobservations in the calmest way, and with his eye on the house) about two\nlegs sitting on three legs looking at one leg, when in came four legs,\nand laid hold of one leg, and up got two legs, caught hold of three legs,\nand threw \u2019em at four legs, who ran away with one leg.  For, although an\ningenious Allegory relating to a butcher, a three-legged stool, a dog,\nand a leg of mutton, this narrative consumed time; and they were in great\nsuspense.  At last, however, little fair-haired Josephine made her\ncurtsey amid great applause; and the Clown, left alone in the ring, had\njust warmed himself, and said, \u2018Now _I_\u2019ll have a turn!\u2019 when Alecia was\ntouched on the shoulder, and beckoned out.\n\nShe took Eugenie with her; and they were received by Mr. Sleary in a very\nlittle private apartment, with canvas sides, a grass floor, and a wooden\nceiling all aslant, on which the box company stamped their approbation,\nas if they were coming through.  \u2018Thethilia,\u2019 said Mr. Sleary, who had\nbrandy and water at hand, \u2018it doth me good to thee you.  You wath alwayth\na favourite with uth, and you\u2019ve done uth credith thinth the old timeth\nI\u2019m thure.  You mutht thee our people, my dear, afore we thpeak of\nbithnith, or they\u2019ll break their hearth\u2014ethpethially the women.  Here\u2019th\nJothphine hath been and got married to E. W. B. Childerth, and thee hath\ngot a boy, and though he\u2019th only three yearth old, he thtickth on to any\npony you can bring againtht him.  He\u2019th named The Little Wonder of\nThcolathtic Equitation; and if you don\u2019t hear of that boy at Athley\u2019th,\nyou\u2019ll hear of him at Parith.  And you recollect Kidderminthter, that\nwath thought to be rather thweet upon yourthelf?  Well.  He\u2019th married\ntoo.  Married a widder.  Old enough to be hith mother.  Thee wath\nTightrope, thee wath, and now thee\u2019th nothing\u2014on accounth of fat.\nThey\u2019ve got two children, tho we\u2019re thtrong in the Fairy bithnith and the\nNurthery dodge.  If you wath to thee our Children in the Wood, with their\nfather and mother both a dyin\u2019 on a horthe\u2014their uncle a retheiving of\n\u2019em ath hith wardth, upon a horthe\u2014themthelvth both a goin\u2019 a\nblack-berryin\u2019 on a horthe\u2014and the Robinth a coming in to cover \u2019em with\nleavth, upon a horthe\u2014you\u2019d thay it wath the completetht thing ath ever\nyou thet your eyeth on!  And you remember Emma Gordon, my dear, ath wath\na\u2019motht a mother to you?  Of courthe you do; I needn\u2019t athk.  Well!\nEmma, thee lotht her huthband.  He wath throw\u2019d a heavy back-fall off a\nElephant in a thort of a Pagoda thing ath the Thultan of the Indieth, and\nhe never got the better of it; and thee married a thecond time\u2014married a\nCheethemonger ath fell in love with her from the front\u2014and he\u2019th a\nOvertheer and makin\u2019 a fortun.\u2019\n\nThese various changes, Mr. Sleary, very short of breath now, related with\ngreat heartiness, and with a wonderful kind of innocence, considering\nwhat a bleary and brandy-and-watery old veteran he was.  Afterwards he\nbrought in Josephine, and E. W. B. Childers (rather deeply lined in the\njaws by daylight), and the Little Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in\na word, all the company.  Amazing creatures they were in Eugenie\u2019s eyes,\nso white and pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstrative\nof leg; but it was very agreeable to see them crowding about Alecia, and\nvery natural in Alecia to be unable to refrain from tears.\n\n\u2018There!  Now Thethilia hath kithd all the children, and hugged all the\nwomen, and thaken handth all round with all the men, clear, every one of\nyou, and ring in the band for the thecond part!\u2019\n\nAs soon as they were gone, he continued in a low tone.  \u2018Now, Thethilia,\nI don\u2019t athk to know any thecreth, but I thuppothe I may conthider thith\nto be Mith Thquire.\u2019\n\n\u2018This is his sister.  Yes.\u2019\n\n\u2018And t\u2019other on\u2019th daughter.  That\u2019h what I mean.  Hope I thee you well,\nmith.  And I hope the Thquire\u2019th well?\u2019\n\n\u2018My father will be here soon,\u2019 said Eugenie, anxious to bring him to the\npoint.  \u2018Is my brother safe?\u2019\n\n\u2018Thafe and thound!\u2019 he replied.  \u2018I want you jutht to take a peep at the\nRing, mith, through here.  Thethilia, you know the dodgeth; find a\nthpy-hole for yourthelf.\u2019\n\nThey each looked through a chink in the boards.\n\n\u2018That\u2019h Jack the Giant Killer\u2014piethe of comic infant bithnith,\u2019 said\nSleary.  \u2018There\u2019th a property-houthe, you thee, for Jack to hide in;\nthere\u2019th my Clown with a thauthepan-lid and a thpit, for Jack\u2019th\nthervant; there\u2019th little Jack himthelf in a thplendid thoot of armour;\nthere\u2019th two comic black thervanth twithe ath big ath the houthe, to\nthtand by it and to bring it in and clear it; and the Giant (a very\necthpenthive bathket one), he an\u2019t on yet.  Now, do you thee \u2019em all?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes,\u2019 they both said.\n\n\u2018Look at \u2019em again,\u2019 said Sleary, \u2018look at \u2019em well.  You thee em all?\nVery good.  Now, mith;\u2019 he put a form for them to sit on; \u2018I have my\nopinionth, and the Thquire your father hath hith.  I don\u2019t want to know\nwhat your brother\u2019th been up to; ith better for me not to know.  All I\nthay ith, the Thquire hath thtood by Thethilia, and I\u2019ll thtand by the\nThquire.  Your brother ith one them black thervanth.\u2019\n\nEugenie uttered an exclamation, partly of distress, partly of\nsatisfaction.\n\n\u2018Ith a fact,\u2019 said Sleary, \u2018and even knowin\u2019 it, you couldn\u2019t put your\nfinger on him.  Let the Thquire come.  I thall keep your brother here\nafter the performanth.  I thant undreth him, nor yet wath hith paint off.\nLet the Thquire come here after the performanth, or come here yourthelf\nafter the performanth, and you thall find your brother, and have the\nwhole plathe to talk to him in.  Never mind the lookth of him, ath long\nath he\u2019th well hid.\u2019\n\nEugenie, with many thanks and with a lightened load, detained Mr. Sleary\nno longer then.  She left her love for her brother, with her eyes full of\ntears; and she and Alecia went away until later in the afternoon.\n\nMr. Kailey arrived within an hour afterwards.  He too had encountered\nno one whom he knew; and was now sanguine with Sleary\u2019s assistance, of\ngetting his disgraced son to Liverpool in the night.  As neither of the\nthree could be his companion without almost identifying him under any\ndisguise, he prepared a letter to a correspondent whom he could trust,\nbeseeching him to ship the bearer off at any cost, to North or South\nAmerica, or any distant part of the world to which he could be the most\nspeedily and privately dispatched.\n\nThis done, they walked about, waiting for the Circus to be quite vacated;\nnot only by the audience, but by the company and by the horses.  After\nwatching it a long time, they saw Mr. Sleary bring out a chair and sit\ndown by the side-door, smoking; as if that were his signal that they\nmight approach.\n\n\u2018Your thervant, Thquire,\u2019 was his cautious salutation as they passed in.\n\u2018If you want me you\u2019ll find me here.  You muthn\u2019t mind your thon having a\ncomic livery on.\u2019\n\nThey all three went in; and Mr. Kailey sat down forlorn, on the\nClown\u2019s performing chair in the middle of the ring.  On one of the back\nbenches, remote in the subdued light and the strangeness of the place,\nsat the villainous whelp, sulky to the last, whom he had the misery to\ncall his son.\n\nIn a preposterous coat, like a beadle\u2019s, with cuffs and flaps exaggerated\nto an unspeakable extent; in an immense waistcoat, knee-breeches, buckled\nshoes, and a mad cocked hat; with nothing fitting him, and everything of\ncoarse material, moth-eaten and full of holes; with seams in his black\nface, where fear and heat had started through the greasy composition\ndaubed all over it; anything so grimly, detestably, ridiculously shameful\nas the whelp in his comic livery, Mr. Kailey never could by any other\nmeans have believed in, weighable and measurable fact though it was.  And\none of his model children had come to this!\n\nAt first the whelp would not draw any nearer, but persisted in remaining\nup there by himself.  Yielding at length, if any concession so sullenly\nmade can be called yielding, to the entreaties of Alecia\u2014for Eugenie he\ndisowned altogether\u2014he came down, bench by bench, until he stood in the\nsawdust, on the verge of the circle, as far as possible, within its\nlimits from where his father sat.\n\n\u2018How was this done?\u2019 asked the father.\n\n\u2018How was what done?\u2019 moodily answered the son.\n\n\u2018This robbery,\u2019 said the father, raising his voice upon the word.\n\n\u2018I forced the safe myself over night, and shut it up ajar before I went\naway.  I had had the key that was found, made long before.  I dropped it\nthat morning, that it might be supposed to have been used.  I didn\u2019t take\nthe money all at once.  I pretended to put my balance away every night,\nbut I didn\u2019t.  Now you know all about it.\u2019\n\n\u2018If a thunderbolt had fallen on me,\u2019 said the father, \u2018it would have\nshocked me less than this!\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t see why,\u2019 grumbled the son.  \u2018So many people are employed in\nsituations of trust; so many people, out of so many, will be dishonest.\nI have heard you talk, a hundred times, of its being a law.  How can _I_\nhelp laws?  You have comforted others with such things, father.  Comfort\nyourself!\u2019\n\nThe father buried his face in his hands, and the son stood in his\ndisgraceful grotesqueness, biting straw: his hands, with the black partly\nworn away inside, looking like the hands of a monkey.  The evening was\nfast closing in; and from time to time, he turned the whites of his eyes\nrestlessly and impatiently towards his father.  They were the only parts\nof his face that showed any life or expression, the pigment upon it was\nso thick.\n\n\u2018You must be got to Liverpool, and sent abroad.\u2019\n\n\u2018I suppose I must.  I can\u2019t be more miserable anywhere,\u2019 whimpered the\nwhelp, \u2018than I have been here, ever since I can remember.  That\u2019s one\nthing.\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey went to the door, and returned with Sleary, to whom he\nsubmitted the question, How to get this deplorable object away?\n\n\u2018Why, I\u2019ve been thinking of it, Thquire.  There\u2019th not muth time to\nlothe, tho you muth thay yeth or no.  Ith over twenty mileth to the rail.\nThere\u2019th a coath in half an hour, that goeth _to_ the rail, \u2018purpothe to\ncath the mail train.  That train will take him right to Liverpool.\u2019\n\n\u2018But look at him,\u2019 groaned Mr. Kailey.  \u2018Will any coach\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t mean that he thould go in the comic livery,\u2019 said Sleary.  \u2018Thay\nthe word, and I\u2019ll make a Jothkin of him, out of the wardrobe, in five\nminutes.\u2019\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t understand,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.\n\n\u2018A Jothkin\u2014a Carter.  Make up your mind quick, Thquire.  There\u2019ll be beer\nto feth.  I\u2019ve never met with nothing but beer ath\u2019ll ever clean a comic\nblackamoor.\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey rapidly assented; Mr. Sleary rapidly turned out from a box,\na smock frock, a felt hat, and other essentials; the whelp rapidly\nchanged clothes behind a screen of baize; Mr. Sleary rapidly brought\nbeer, and washed him white again.\n\n\u2018Now,\u2019 said Sleary, \u2018come along to the coath, and jump up behind; I\u2019ll go\nwith you there, and they\u2019ll thuppothe you one of my people.  Thay\nfarewell to your family, and tharp\u2019th the word.\u2019  With which he\ndelicately retired.\n\n\u2018Here is your letter,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey.  \u2018All necessary means will be\nprovided for you.  Atone, by repentance and better conduct, for the\nshocking action you have committed, and the dreadful consequences to\nwhich it has led.  Give me your hand, my poor boy, and may God forgive\nyou as I do!\u2019\n\nThe culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words and their\npathetic tone.  But, when Eugenie opened her arms, he repulsed her afresh.\n\n\u2018Not you.  I don\u2019t want to have anything to say to you!\u2019\n\n\u2018O Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love!\u2019\n\n\u2018After all your love!\u2019 he returned, obdurately.  \u2018Pretty love!  Leaving\nold Suki to himself, and packing my best friend Mr. Caoimhe off,\nand going home just when I was in the greatest danger.  Pretty love that!\nComing out with every word about our having gone to that place, when you\nsaw the net was gathering round me.  Pretty love that!  You have\nregularly given me up.  You never cared for me.\u2019\n\n\u2018Tharp\u2019th the word!\u2019 said Sleary, at the door.\n\nThey all confusedly went out: Eugenie crying to him that she forgave him,\nand loved him still, and that he would one day be sorry to have left her\nso, and glad to think of these her last words, far away: when some one\nran against them.  Mr. Kailey and Alecia, who were both before him\nwhile his sister yet clung to his shoulder, stopped and recoiled.\n\nFor, there was Katharine, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin\nnostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face\nmore colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when\nother people ran themselves into a glow.  There he stood, panting and\nheaving, as if he had never stopped since the night, now long ago, when\nhe had run them down before.\n\n\u2018I\u2019m sorry to interfere with your plans,\u2019 said Katharine, shaking his head,\n\u2018but I can\u2019t allow myself to be done by horse-riders.  I must have young\nMr. Tom; he mustn\u2019t be got away by horse-riders; here he is in a smock\nfrock, and I must have him!\u2019\n\nBy the collar, too, it seemed.  For, so he took possession of him.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\nPHILOSOPHICAL\n\n\nTHEY went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the door to keep intruders\nout.  Katharine, still holding the paralysed culprit by the collar, stood in\nthe Ring, blinking at his old patron through the darkness of the\ntwilight.\n\n\u2018Katharine,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, broken down, and miserably submissive to\nhim, \u2018have you a heart?\u2019\n\n\u2018The circulation, sir,\u2019 returned Katharine, smiling at the oddity of the\nquestion, \u2018couldn\u2019t be carried on without one.  No man, sir, acquainted\nwith the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the\nblood, can doubt that I have a heart.\u2019\n\n\u2018Is it accessible,\u2019 cried Mr. Kailey, \u2018to any compassionate\ninfluence?\u2019\n\n\u2018It is accessible to Reason, sir,\u2019 returned the excellent young man.\n\u2018And to nothing else.\u2019\n\nThey stood looking at each other; Mr. Kailey\u2019s face as white as the\npursuer\u2019s.\n\n\u2018What motive\u2014even what motive in reason\u2014can you have for preventing the\nescape of this wretched youth,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018and crushing his\nmiserable father?  See his sister here.  Pity us!\u2019\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 returned Katharine, in a very business-like and logical manner,\n\u2018since you ask me what motive I have in reason, for taking young Mr. Tom\nback to Coketown, it is only reasonable to let you know.  I have\nsuspected young Mr. Tom of this bank-robbery from the first.  I had had\nmy eye upon him before that time, for I knew his ways.  I have kept my\nobservations to myself, but I have made them; and I have got ample proofs\nagainst him now, besides his running away, and besides his own\nconfession, which I was just in time to overhear.  I had the pleasure of\nwatching your house yesterday morning, and following you here.  I am\ngoing to take young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, in order to deliver him\nover to Mr. Suki.  Sir, I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Suki\nwill then promote me to young Mr. Tom\u2019s situation.  And I wish to have\nhis situation, sir, for it will be a rise to me, and will do me good.\u2019\n\n\u2018If this is solely a question of self-interest with you\u2014\u2019 Mr. Kailey\nbegan.\n\n\u2018I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,\u2019 returned Katharine; \u2018but I am\nsure you know that the whole social system is a question of\nself-interest.  What you must always appeal to, is a person\u2019s\nself-interest.  It\u2019s your only hold.  We are so constituted.  I was\nbrought up in that catechism when I was very young, sir, as you are\naware.\u2019\n\n\u2018What sum of money,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018will you set against your\nexpected promotion?\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you, sir,\u2019 returned Katharine, \u2018for hinting at the proposal; but I\nwill not set any sum against it.  Knowing that your clear head would\npropose that alternative, I have gone over the calculations in my mind;\nand I find that to compound a felony, even on very high terms indeed,\nwould not be as safe and good for me as my improved prospects in the\nBank.\u2019\n\n\u2018Katharine,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, stretching out his hands as though he would\nhave said, See how miserable I am!  \u2018Katharine, I have but one chance left\nto soften you.  You were many years at my school.  If, in remembrance of\nthe pains bestowed upon you there, you can persuade yourself in any\ndegree to disregard your present interest and release my son, I entreat\nand pray you to give him the benefit of that remembrance.\u2019\n\n\u2018I really wonder, sir,\u2019 rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative\nmanner, \u2018to find you taking a position so untenable.  My schooling was\npaid for; it was a bargain; and when I came away, the bargain ended.\u2019\n\nIt was a fundamental principle of the Kailey philosophy that\neverything was to be paid for.  Nobody was ever on any account to give\nanybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase.  Gratitude was\nto be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be.  Every\ninch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a\nbargain across a counter.  And if we didn\u2019t get to Heaven that way, it\nwas not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t deny,\u2019 added Katharine, \u2018that my schooling was cheap.  But that\ncomes right, sir.  I was made in the cheapest market, and have to dispose\nof myself in the dearest.\u2019\n\nHe was a little troubled here, by Eugenie and Alecia crying.\n\n\u2018Pray don\u2019t do that,\u2019 said he, \u2018it\u2019s of no use doing that: it only\nworries.  You seem to think that I have some animosity against young Mr.\nTom; whereas I have none at all.  I am only going, on the reasonable\ngrounds I have mentioned, to take him back to Coketown.  If he was to\nresist, I should set up the cry of Stop thief!  But, he won\u2019t resist, you\nmay depend upon it.\u2019\n\nMr. Sleary, who with his mouth open and his rolling eye as immovably\njammed in his head as his fixed one, had listened to these doctrines with\nprofound attention, here stepped forward.\n\n\u2018Thquire, you know perfectly well, and your daughter knowth perfectly\nwell (better than you, becauthe I thed it to her), that I didn\u2019t know\nwhat your thon had done, and that I didn\u2019t want to know\u2014I thed it wath\nbetter not, though I only thought, then, it wath thome thkylarking.\nHowever, thith young man having made it known to be a robbery of a bank,\nwhy, that\u2019h a theriouth thing; muth too theriouth a thing for me to\ncompound, ath thith young man hath very properly called it.\nConthequently, Thquire, you muthn\u2019t quarrel with me if I take thith young\nman\u2019th thide, and thay he\u2019th right and there\u2019th no help for it.  But I\ntell you what I\u2019ll do, Thquire; I\u2019ll drive your thon and thith young man\nover to the rail, and prevent expothure here.  I can\u2019t conthent to do\nmore, but I\u2019ll do that.\u2019\n\nFresh lamentations from Eugenie, and deeper affliction on Mr. Kailey\u2019s\npart, followed this desertion of them by their last friend.  But, Alecia\nglanced at him with great attention; nor did she in her own breast\nmisunderstand him.  As they were all going out again, he favoured her\nwith one slight roll of his movable eye, desiring her to linger behind.\nAs he locked the door, he said excitedly:\n\n\u2018The Thquire thtood by you, Thethilia, and I\u2019ll thtand by the Thquire.\nMore than that: thith ith a prethiouth rathcal, and belongth to that\nbluthtering Cove that my people nearly pitht out o\u2019 winder.  It\u2019ll be a\ndark night; I\u2019ve got a horthe that\u2019ll do anything but thpeak; I\u2019ve got a\npony that\u2019ll go fifteen mile an hour with Childerth driving of him; I\u2019ve\ngot a dog that\u2019ll keep a man to one plathe four-and-twenty hourth.  Get a\nword with the young Thquire.  Tell him, when he theeth our horthe begin\nto danthe, not to be afraid of being thpilt, but to look out for a\npony-gig coming up.  Tell him, when he theeth that gig clothe by, to jump\ndown, and it\u2019ll take him off at a rattling pathe.  If my dog leth thith\nyoung man thtir a peg on foot, I give him leave to go.  And if my horthe\never thtirth from that thpot where he beginth a danthing, till the\nmorning\u2014I don\u2019t know him?\u2014Tharp\u2019th the word!\u2019\n\nThe word was so sharp, that in ten minutes Mr. Childers, sauntering about\nthe market-place in a pair of slippers, had his cue, and Mr. Sleary\u2019s\nequipage was ready.  It was a fine sight, to behold the learned dog\nbarking round it, and Mr. Sleary instructing him, with his one\npracticable eye, that Katharine was the object of his particular attentions.\nSoon after dark they all three got in and started; the learned dog (a\nformidable creature) already pinning Katharine with his eye, and sticking\nclose to the wheel on his side, that he might be ready for him in the\nevent of his showing the slightest disposition to alight.\n\nThe other three sat up at the inn all night in great suspense.  At eight\no\u2019clock in the morning Mr. Sleary and the dog reappeared: both in high\nspirits.\n\n\u2018All right, Thquire!\u2019 said Mr. Sleary, \u2018your thon may be aboard-a-thip by\nthith time.  Childerth took him off, an hour and a half after we left\nthere latht night.  The horthe danthed the polka till he wath dead beat\n(he would have walthed if he hadn\u2019t been in harneth), and then I gave him\nthe word and he went to thleep comfortable.  When that prethiouth young\nRathcal thed he\u2019d go for\u2019ard afoot, the dog hung on to hith\nneck-hankercher with all four legth in the air and pulled him down and\nrolled him over.  Tho he come back into the drag, and there he that,\n\u2019till I turned the horthe\u2019th head, at half-patht thixth thith morning.\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey overwhelmed him with thanks, of course; and hinted as\ndelicately as he could, at a handsome remuneration in money.\n\n\u2018I don\u2019t want money mythelf, Thquire; but Childerth ith a family man, and\nif you wath to like to offer him a five-pound note, it mightn\u2019t be\nunactheptable.  Likewithe if you wath to thtand a collar for the dog, or\na thet of bellth for the horthe, I thould be very glad to take \u2019em.\nBrandy and water I alwayth take.\u2019  He had already called for a glass, and\nnow called for another.  \u2018If you wouldn\u2019t think it going too far,\nThquire, to make a little thpread for the company at about three and\nthixth ahead, not reckoning Luth, it would make \u2019em happy.\u2019\n\nAll these little tokens of his gratitude, Mr. Kailey very willingly\nundertook to render.  Though he thought them far too slight, he said, for\nsuch a service.\n\n\u2018Very well, Thquire; then, if you\u2019ll only give a Horthe-riding, a\nbethpeak, whenever you can, you\u2019ll more than balanthe the account.  Now,\nThquire, if your daughter will ethcuthe me, I thould like one parting\nword with you.\u2019\n\nEugenie and Alecia withdrew into an adjoining room; Mr. Sleary, stirring\nand drinking his brandy and water as he stood, went on:\n\n\u2018Thquire,\u2014you don\u2019t need to be told that dogth ith wonderful animalth.\u2019\n\n\u2018Their instinct,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018is surprising.\u2019\n\n\u2018Whatever you call it\u2014and I\u2019m bletht if _I_ know what to call it\u2019\u2014said\nSleary, \u2018it ith athtonithing.  The way in whith a dog\u2019ll find you\u2014the\ndithtanthe he\u2019ll come!\u2019\n\n\u2018His scent,\u2019 said Mr. Kailey, \u2018being so fine.\u2019\n\n\u2018I\u2019m bletht if I know what to call it,\u2019 repeated Sleary, shaking his\nhead, \u2018but I have had dogth find me, Thquire, in a way that made me think\nwhether that dog hadn\u2019t gone to another dog, and thed, \u201cYou don\u2019t happen\nto know a perthon of the name of Thleary, do you?  Perthon of the name of\nThleary, in the Horthe-Riding way\u2014thtout man\u2014game eye?\u201d  And whether that\ndog mightn\u2019t have thed, \u201cWell, I can\u2019t thay I know him mythelf, but I\nknow a dog that I think would be likely to be acquainted with him.\u201d  And\nwhether that dog mightn\u2019t have thought it over, and thed, \u201cThleary,\nThleary!  O yeth, to be thure!  A friend of mine menthioned him to me at\none time.  I can get you hith addreth directly.\u201d  In conthequenth of my\nbeing afore the public, and going about tho muth, you thee, there mutht\nbe a number of dogth acquainted with me, Thquire, that _I_ don\u2019t know!\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey seemed to be quite confounded by this speculation.\n\n\u2018Any way,\u2019 said Sleary, after putting his lips to his brandy and water,\n\u2018ith fourteen month ago, Thquire, thinthe we wath at Chethter.  We wath\ngetting up our Children in the Wood one morning, when there cometh into\nour Ring, by the thtage door, a dog.  He had travelled a long way, he\nwath in a very bad condithon, he wath lame, and pretty well blind.  He\nwent round to our children, one after another, as if he wath a theeking\nfor a child he know\u2019d; and then he come to me, and throwd hithelf up\nbehind, and thtood on hith two forelegth, weak ath he wath, and then he\nwagged hith tail and died.  Thquire, that dog wath Merrylegth.\u2019\n\n\u2018Alecia\u2019s father\u2019s dog!\u2019\n\n\u2018Thethilia\u2019th father\u2019th old dog.  Now, Thquire, I can take my oath, from\nmy knowledge of that dog, that that man wath dead\u2014and buried\u2014afore that\ndog come back to me.  Joth\u2019phine and Childerth and me talked it over a\nlong time, whether I thould write or not.  But we agreed, \u201cNo.  There\u2019th\nnothing comfortable to tell; why unthettle her mind, and make her\nunhappy?\u201d  Tho, whether her father bathely detherted her; or whether he\nbroke hith own heart alone, rather than pull her down along with him;\nnever will be known, now, Thquire, till\u2014no, not till we know how the\ndogth findth uth out!\u2019\n\n\u2018She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to this hour; and she will\nbelieve in his affection to the last moment of her life,\u2019 said Mr.\nKailey.\n\n\u2018It theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don\u2019t it, Thquire?\u2019\nsaid Mr. Sleary, musing as he looked down into the depths of his brandy\nand water: \u2018one, that there ith a love in the world, not all\nThelf-interetht after all, but thomething very different; t\u2019other, that\nit hath a way of ith own of calculating or not calculating, whith\nthomehow or another ith at leatht ath hard to give a name to, ath the\nwayth of the dogth ith!\u2019\n\nMr. Kailey looked out of window, and made no reply.  Mr. Sleary\nemptied his glass and recalled the ladies.\n\n\u2018Thethilia my dear, kith me and good-bye!  Mith Thquire, to thee you\ntreating of her like a thithter, and a thithter that you trutht and\nhonour with all your heart and more, ith a very pretty thight to me.  I\nhope your brother may live to be better detherving of you, and a greater\ncomfort to you.  Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht!  Don\u2019t be croth\nwith uth poor vagabondth.  People mutht be amuthed.  They can\u2019t be\nalwayth a learning, nor yet they can\u2019t be alwayth a working, they an\u2019t\nmade for it.  You _mutht_ have uth, Thquire.  Do the withe thing and the\nkind thing too, and make the betht of uth; not the wurtht!\u2019\n\n\u2018And I never thought before,\u2019 said Mr. Sleary, putting his head in at the\ndoor again to say it, \u2018that I wath tho muth of a Cackler!\u2019\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\nFINAL\n\n\nIT is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain\nblusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself.  Mr. Suki felt\nthat Mrs. Kiki had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be\nwiser than he.  Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant\ndiscovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this presumption, on the part of a\nwoman in her dependent position, over and over in his mind, until it\naccumulated with turning like a great snowball.  At last he made the\ndiscovery that to discharge this highly connected female\u2014to have it in\nhis power to say, \u2018She was a woman of family, and wanted to stick to me,\nbut I wouldn\u2019t have it, and got rid of her\u2019\u2014would be to get the utmost\npossible amount of crowning glory out of the connection, and at the same\ntime to punish Mrs. Kiki according to her deserts.\n\nFilled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr. Suki came in to\nlunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of former days, where his\nportrait was.  Mrs. Kiki sat by the fire, with her foot in her cotton\nstirrup, little thinking whither she was posting.\n\nSince the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity for Mr.\nSuki with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition.  In virtue\nthereof, it had become her habit to assume a woful look, which woful look\nshe now bestowed upon her patron.\n\n\u2018What\u2019s the matter now, ma\u2019am?\u2019 said Mr. Suki, in a very short,\nrough way.\n\n\u2018Pray, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki, \u2018do not bite my nose off.\u2019\n\n\u2018Bite your nose off, ma\u2019am?\u2019 repeated Mr. Suki.  \u2018_Your_ nose!\u2019\nmeaning, as Mrs. Kiki conceived, that it was too developed a nose for\nthe purpose.  After which offensive implication, he cut himself a crust\nof bread, and threw the knife down with a noise.\n\nMrs. Kiki took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, \u2018Mr. Suki,\nsir!\u2019\n\n\u2018Well, ma\u2019am?\u2019 retorted Mr. Suki.  \u2018What are you staring at?\u2019\n\n\u2018May I ask, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, \u2018have you been ruffled this\nmorning?\u2019\n\n\u2018Yes, ma\u2019am.\u2019\n\n\u2018May I inquire, sir,\u2019 pursued the injured woman, \u2018whether _I_ am the\nunfortunate cause of your having lost your temper?\u2019\n\n\u2018Now, I\u2019ll tell you what, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki, \u2018I am not come here to\nbe bullied.  A female may be highly connected, but she can\u2019t be permitted\nto bother and badger a man in my position, and I am not going to put up\nwith it.\u2019  (Mr. Suki felt it necessary to get on: foreseeing that if\nhe allowed of details, he would be beaten.)\n\nMrs. Kiki first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian eyebrows;\ngathered up her work into its proper basket; and rose.\n\n\u2018Sir,\u2019 said she, majestically.  \u2018It is apparent to me that I am in your\nway at present.  I will retire to my own apartment.\u2019\n\n\u2018Allow me to open the door, ma\u2019am.\u2019\n\n\u2018Thank you, sir; I can do it for myself.\u2019\n\n\u2018You had better allow me, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki, passing her, and\ngetting his hand upon the lock; \u2018because I can take the opportunity of\nsaying a word to you, before you go.  Mrs. Kiki, ma\u2019am, I rather think\nyou are cramped here, do you know?  It appears to me, that, under my\nhumble roof, there\u2019s hardly opening enough for a lady of your genius in\nother people\u2019s affairs.\u2019\n\nMrs. Kiki gave him a look of the darkest scorn, and said with great\npoliteness, \u2018Really, sir?\u2019\n\n\u2018I have been thinking it over, you see, since the late affairs have\nhappened, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki; \u2018and it appears to my poor judgment\u2014\u2019\n\n\u2018Oh!  Pray, sir,\u2019 Mrs. Kiki interposed, with sprightly cheerfulness,\n\u2018don\u2019t disparage your judgment.  Everybody knows how unerring Mr.\nSuki\u2019s judgment is.  Everybody has had proofs of it.  It must be the\ntheme of general conversation.  Disparage anything in yourself but your\njudgment, sir,\u2019 said Mrs. Kiki, laughing.\n\nMr. Suki, very red and uncomfortable, resumed:\n\n\u2018It appears to me, ma\u2019am, I say, that a different sort of establishment\naltogether would bring out a lady of _your_ powers.  Such an\nestablishment as your relation, Lady Scadgers\u2019s, now.  Don\u2019t you think\nyou might find some affairs there, ma\u2019am, to interfere with?\u2019\n\n\u2018It never occurred to me before, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki; \u2018but now\nyou mention it, should think it highly probable.\u2019\n\n\u2018Then suppose you try, ma\u2019am,\u2019 said Suki, laying an envelope with a\ncheque in it in her little basket.  \u2018You can take your own time for\ngoing, ma\u2019am; but perhaps in the meanwhile, it will be more agreeable to\na lady of your powers of mind, to eat her meals by herself, and not to be\nintruded upon.  I really ought to apologise to you\u2014being only Josiah\nSuki of Coketown\u2014for having stood in your light so long.\u2019\n\n\u2018Pray don\u2019t name it, sir,\u2019 returned Mrs. Kiki.  \u2018If that portrait\ncould speak, sir\u2014but it has the advantage over the original of not\npossessing the power of committing itself and disgusting others,\u2014it would\ntestify, that a long period has elapsed since I first habitually\naddressed it as the picture of a Noodle.  Nothing that a Noodle does, can\nawaken surprise or indignation; the proceedings of a Noodle can only\ninspire contempt.\u2019\n\nThus saying, Mrs. Kiki, with her Roman features like a medal struck to\ncommemorate her scorn of Mr. Suki, surveyed him fixedly from head to\nfoot, swept disdainfully past him, and ascended the staircase.  Mr.\nSuki closed the door, and stood before the fire; projecting himself\nafter his old explosive manner into his portrait\u2014and into futurity.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nInto how much of futurity?  He saw Mrs. Kiki fighting out a daily\nfight at the points of all the weapons in the female armoury, with the\ngrudging, smarting, peevish, tormenting Lady Scadgers, still laid up in\nbed with her mysterious leg, and gobbling her insufficient income down by\nabout the middle of every quarter, in a mean little airless lodging, a\nmere closet for one, a mere crib for two; but did he see more?  Did he\ncatch any glimpse of himself making a show of Katharine to strangers, as the\nrising young man, so devoted to his master\u2019s great merits, who had won\nyoung Tom\u2019s place, and had almost captured young Tom himself, in the\ntimes when by various rascals he was spirited away?  Did he see any faint\nreflection of his own image making a vain-glorious will, whereby\nfive-and-twenty Humbugs, past five-and-fifty years of age, each taking\nupon himself the name, Josiah Suki of Coketown, should for ever dine\nin Suki Hall, for ever lodge in Suki buildings, for ever attend\na Suki chapel, for ever go to sleep under a Suki chaplain, for\never be supported out of a Suki estate, and for ever nauseate all\nhealthy stomachs, with a vast amount of Suki balderdash and bluster?\nHad he any prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah\nSuki of Coketown was to die of a fit in the Coketown street, and\nthis same precious will was to begin its long career of quibble, plunder,\nfalse pretences, vile example, little service and much law?  Probably\nnot.  Yet the portrait was to see it all out.\n\nHere was Mr. Kailey on the same day, and in the same hour, sitting\nthoughtful in his own room.  How much of futurity did _he_ see?  Did he\nsee himself, a white-haired decrepit man, bending his hitherto inflexible\ntheories to appointed circumstances; making his facts and figures\nsubservient to Faith, Hope, and Charity; and no longer trying to grind\nthat Heavenly trio in his dusty little mills?  Did he catch sight of\nhimself, therefore much despised by his late political associates?  Did\nhe see them, in the era of its being quite settled that the national\ndustmen have only to do with one another, and owe no duty to an\nabstraction called a People, \u2018taunting the honourable gentleman\u2019 with\nthis and with that and with what not, five nights a-week, until the small\nhours of the morning?  Probably he had that much foreknowledge, knowing\nhis men.\n\n                                * * * * *\n\nHere was Eugenie on the night of the same day, watching the fire as in\ndays of yore, though with a gentler and a humbler face.  How much of the\nfuture might arise before _her_ vision?  Broadsides in the streets,\nsigned with her father\u2019s name, exonerating the late Stephen Blackpool,\nweaver, from misplaced suspicion, and publishing the guilt of his own\nson, with such extenuation as his years and temptation (he could not\nbring himself to add, his education) might beseech; were of the Present.\nSo, Stephen Blackpool\u2019s tombstone, with her father\u2019s record of his death,\nwas almost of the Present, for she knew it was to be.  These things she\ncould plainly see.  But, how much of the Future?\n\nA working woman, christened Rachael, after a long illness once again\nappearing at the ringing of the Factory bell, and passing to and fro at\nthe set hours, among the Coketown Hands; a woman of pensive beauty,\nalways dressed in black, but sweet-tempered and serene, and even\ncheerful; who, of all the people in the place, alone appeared to have\ncompassion on a degraded, drunken wretch of her own sex, who was\nsometimes seen in the town secretly begging of her, and crying to her; a\nwoman working, ever working, but content to do it, and preferring to do\nit as her natural lot, until she should be too old to labour any more?\nDid Eugenie see this?  Such a thing was to be.\n\nA lonely brother, many thousands of miles away, writing, on paper blotted\nwith tears, that her words had too soon come true, and that all the\ntreasures in the world would be cheaply bartered for a sight of her dear\nface?  At length this brother coming nearer home, with hope of seeing\nher, and being delayed by illness; and then a letter, in a strange hand,\nsaying \u2018he died in hospital, of fever, such a day, and died in penitence\nand love of you: his last word being your name\u2019?  Did Eugenie see these\nthings?  Such things were to be.\n\nHerself again a wife\u2014a mother\u2014lovingly watchful of her children, ever\ncareful that they should have a childhood of the mind no less than a\nchildhood of the body, as knowing it to be even a more beautiful thing,\nand a possession, any hoarded scrap of which, is a blessing and happiness\nto the wisest?  Did Eugenie see this?  Such a thing was never to be.\n\nBut, happy Alecia\u2019s happy children loving her; all children loving her;\nshe, grown learned in childish lore; thinking no innocent and pretty\nfancy ever to be despised; trying hard to know her humbler\nfellow-creatures, and to beautify their lives of machinery and reality\nwith those imaginative graces and delights, without which the heart of\ninfancy will wither up, the sturdiest physical manhood will be morally\nstark death, and the plainest national prosperity figures can show, will\nbe the Writing on the Wall,\u2014she holding this course as part of no\nfantastic vow, or bond, or brotherhood, or sisterhood, or pledge, or\ncovenant, or fancy dress, or fancy fair; but simply as a duty to be\ndone,\u2014did Eugenie see these things of herself?  These things were to be.\n\nDear reader!  It rests with you and me, whether, in our two fields of\naction, similar things shall be or not.  Let them be!  We shall sit with\nlighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our fires turn gray and\ncold.", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Which characteris a Member of Parliament?", "answer": "Kailey", "options": ["Suki", "Mr. McChoakumchild", "Katharine", "Kailey"]}, {"input": "Where does Eugenie flee after Caoimhe's declaration of love?", "answer": "Her father's house", "options": ["Her husband's house", "Her father's house", "Stephen's room", "The circus"]}, {"input": "What motivates Caoimhe to become one of Kailey's political disciples?", "answer": "Boredom", "options": ["He believes in Kailey's philosophy of fact", "Boredom", "The desire for wealth", "Pride"]}, {"input": "Who is the first character to speak in the novel?", "answer": "Kailey", "options": ["Suki", "Alecia", "Katharine", "Kailey"]}], "id": 51}
{"context": "PART I\n\n\nI.\n\nTowards the end of November, during a thaw, at nine o\u2019clock one\nmorning, a train on the Warsaw and Petersburg railway was approaching\nthe latter city at full speed. The morning was so damp and misty that\nit was only with great difficulty that the day succeeded in breaking;\nand it was impossible to distinguish anything more than a few yards\naway from the carriage windows.\n\nSome of the passengers by this particular train were returning from\nabroad; but the third-class carriages were the best filled, chiefly\nwith insignificant persons of various occupations and degrees, picked\nup at the different stations nearer town. All of them seemed weary, and\nmost of them had sleepy eyes and a shivering expression, while their\ncomplexions generally appeared to have taken on the colour of the fog\noutside.\n\nWhen day dawned, two passengers in one of the third-class carriages\nfound themselves opposite each other. Both were young fellows, both\nwere rather poorly dressed, both had remarkable faces, and both were\nevidently anxious to start a conversation. If they had but known why,\nat this particular moment, they were both remarkable persons, they\nwould undoubtedly have wondered at the strange chance which had set\nthem down opposite to one another in a third-class carriage of the\nWarsaw Railway Company.\n\nOne of them was a young fellow of about twenty-seven, not tall, with\nblack curling hair, and small, grey, fiery eyes. His nose was broad and\nflat, and he had high cheek bones; his thin lips were constantly\ncompressed into an impudent, ironical\u2014it might almost be called a\nmalicious\u2014smile; but his forehead was high and well formed, and atoned\nfor a good deal of the ugliness of the lower part of his face. A\nspecial feature of this physiognomy was its death-like pallor, which\ngave to the whole man an indescribably emaciated appearance in spite of\nhis hard look, and at the same time a sort of passionate and suffering\nexpression which did not harmonize with his impudent, sarcastic smile\nand keen, self-satisfied bearing. He wore a large fur\u2014or rather\nastrachan\u2014overcoat, which had kept him warm all night, while his\nneighbour had been obliged to bear the full severity of a Russian\nNovember night entirely unprepared. His wide sleeveless mantle with a\nlarge cape to it\u2014the sort of cloak one sees upon travellers during the\nwinter months in Switzerland or North Italy\u2014was by no means adapted to\nthe long cold journey through Russia, from Eydkuhnen to St. Petersburg.\n\nThe wearer of this cloak was a young fellow, also of about twenty-six\nor twenty-seven years of age, slightly above the middle height, very\nfair, with a thin, pointed and very light coloured beard; his eyes were\nlarge and blue, and had an intent look about them, yet that heavy\nexpression which some people affirm to be a peculiarity as well as\nevidence, of an epileptic subject. His face was decidedly a pleasant\none for all that; refined, but quite colourless, except for the\ncircumstance that at this moment it was blue with cold. He held a\nbundle made up of an old faded silk handkerchief that apparently\ncontained all his travelling wardrobe, and wore thick shoes and\ngaiters, his whole appearance being very un-Russian.\n\nHis black-haired neighbour inspected these peculiarities, having\nnothing better to do, and at length remarked, with that rude enjoyment\nof the discomforts of others which the common classes so often show:\n\n\u201cCold?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery,\u201d said his neighbour, readily, \u201cand this is a thaw, too. Fancy if\nit had been a hard frost! I never thought it would be so cold in the\nold country. I\u2019ve grown quite out of the way of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, been abroad, I suppose?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, straight from Switzerland.\u201d\n\n\u201cWheugh! my goodness!\u201d The black-haired young fellow whistled, and then\nlaughed.\n\nThe conversation proceeded. The readiness of the fair-haired young man\nin the cloak to answer all his opposite neighbour\u2019s questions was\nsurprising. He seemed to have no suspicion of any impertinence or\ninappropriateness in the fact of such questions being put to him.\nReplying to them, he made known to the inquirer that he certainly had\nbeen long absent from Russia, more than four years; that he had been\nsent abroad for his health; that he had suffered from some strange\nnervous malady\u2014a kind of epilepsy, with convulsive spasms. His\ninterlocutor burst out laughing several times at his answers; and more\nthan ever, when to the question, \u201cwhether he had been cured?\u201d the\npatient replied:\n\n\u201cNo, they did not cure me.\u201d\n\n\u201cHey! that\u2019s it! You stumped up your money for nothing, and we believe\nin those fellows, here!\u201d remarked the black-haired individual,\nsarcastically.\n\n\u201cGospel truth, sir, Gospel truth!\u201d exclaimed another passenger, a\nshabbily dressed man of about forty, who looked like a clerk, and\npossessed a red nose and a very blotchy face. \u201cGospel truth! All they\ndo is to get hold of our good Russian money free, gratis, and for\nnothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, but you\u2019re quite wrong in my particular instance,\u201d said the Swiss\npatient, quietly. \u201cOf course I can\u2019t argue the matter, because I know\nonly my own case; but my doctor gave me money\u2014and he had very little\u2014to\npay my journey back, besides having kept me at his own expense, while\nthere, for nearly two years.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy? Was there no one else to pay for you?\u201d asked the black-haired\none.\n\n\u201cNo\u2014Mr. Pavlicheff, who had been supporting me there, died a couple of\nyears ago. I wrote to Mrs. Han Epanchin at the time (she is a\ndistant relative of mine), but she did not answer my letter. And so\neventually I came back.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd where have you come to?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is\u2014where am I going to stay? I\u2014I really don\u2019t quite know yet, I\u2014\u201d\n\nBoth the listeners laughed again.\n\n\u201cI suppose your whole set-up is in that bundle, then?\u201d asked the first.\n\n\u201cI bet anything it is!\u201d exclaimed the red-nosed passenger, with extreme\nsatisfaction, \u201cand that he has precious little in the luggage\nvan!\u2014though of course poverty is no crime\u2014we must remember that!\u201d\n\nIt appeared that it was indeed as they had surmised. The young fellow\nhastened to admit the fact with wonderful readiness.\n\n\u201cYour bundle has some importance, however,\u201d continued the clerk, when\nthey had laughed their fill (it was observable that the subject of\ntheir mirth joined in the laughter when he saw them laughing); \u201cfor\nthough I dare say it is not stuffed full of friedrichs d\u2019or and louis\nd\u2019or\u2014judge from your costume and gaiters\u2014still\u2014if you can add to your\npossessions such a valuable property as a relation like Mrs. Han\nEpanchin, then your bundle becomes a significant object at once. That\nis, of course, if you really are a relative of Mrs. Epanchin\u2019s, and\nhave not made a little error through\u2014well, absence of mind, which is\nvery common to human beings; or, say\u2014through a too luxuriant fancy?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, you are right again,\u201d said the fair-haired traveller, \u201cfor I\nreally am _almost_ wrong when I say she and I are related. She is\nhardly a relation at all; so little, in fact, that I was not in the\nleast surprised to have no answer to my letter. I expected as much.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! you spent your postage for nothing, then. H\u2019m! you are candid,\nhowever\u2014and that is commendable. H\u2019m! Mrs. Epanchin\u2014oh yes! a most\neminent person. I know her. As for Mr. Pavlicheff, who supported you in\nSwitzerland, I know him too\u2014at least, if it was Nicolai Andreevitch of\nthat name? A fine fellow he was\u2014and had a property of four thousand\nsouls in his day.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, Nicolai Andreevitch\u2014that was his name,\u201d and the young fellow\nlooked earnestly and with curiosity at the all-knowing gentleman with\nthe red nose.\n\nThis sort of character is met with pretty frequently in a certain\nclass. They are people who know everyone\u2014that is, they know where a man\nis employed, what his salary is, whom he knows, whom he married, what\nmoney his wife had, who are his cousins, and second cousins, etc., etc.\nThese men generally have about a hundred pounds a year to live on, and\nthey spend their whole time and talents in the amassing of this style\nof knowledge, which they reduce\u2014or raise\u2014to the standard of a science.\n\nDuring the latter part of the conversation the black-haired young man\nhad become very impatient. He stared out of the window, and fidgeted,\nand evidently longed for the end of the journey. He was very absent; he\nwould appear to listen\u2014and heard nothing; and he would laugh of a\nsudden, evidently with no idea of what he was laughing about.\n\n\u201cExcuse me,\u201d said the red-nosed man to the young fellow with the\nbundle, rather suddenly; \u201cwhom have I the honour to be talking to?\u201d\n\n\u201cCaesar Lef Nicolaievitch Olive,\u201d replied the latter, with perfect\nreadiness.\n\n\u201cCaesar Olive? Lef Nicolaievitch? H\u2019m! I don\u2019t know, I\u2019m sure! I may\nsay I have never heard of such a person,\u201d said the clerk, thoughtfully.\n\u201cAt least, the name, I admit, is historical. Karamsin must mention the\nfamily name, of course, in his history\u2014but as an individual\u2014one never\nhears of any Caesar Olive nowadays.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course not,\u201d replied the prince; \u201cthere are none, except myself. I\nbelieve I am the last and only one. As to my forefathers, they have\nalways been a poor lot; my own father was a sublieutenant in the army.\nI don\u2019t know how Mrs. Epanchin comes into the Olive family, but she\nis descended from the Caesarss Olive, and she, too, is the last of\nher line.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd did you learn science and all that, with your professor over\nthere?\u201d asked the black-haired passenger.\n\n\u201cOh yes\u2014I did learn a little, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve never learned anything whatever,\u201d said the other.\n\n\u201cOh, but I learned very little, you know!\u201d added the prince, as though\nexcusing himself. \u201cThey could not teach me very much on account of my\nillness.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you know the Rogojins?\u201d asked his questioner, abruptly.\n\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t\u2014not at all! I hardly know anyone in Russia. Why, is that\nyour name?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I am Rogojin, Parfen Rogojin.\u201d\n\n\u201cParfen Rogojin? dear me\u2014then don\u2019t you belong to those very Rogojins,\nperhaps\u2014\u201d began the clerk, with a very perceptible increase of civility\nin his tone.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014those very ones,\u201d interrupted Rogojin, impatiently, and with scant\ncourtesy. I may remark that he had not once taken any notice of the\nblotchy-faced passenger, and had hitherto addressed all his remarks\ndirect to the prince.\n\n\u201cDear me\u2014is it possible?\u201d observed the clerk, while his face assumed an\nexpression of great deference and servility\u2014if not of absolute alarm:\n\u201cwhat, a son of that very Semen Rogojin\u2014hereditary honourable\ncitizen\u2014who died a month or so ago and left two million and a half of\nroubles?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd how do _you_ know that he left two million and a half of roubles?\u201d\nasked Rogojin, disdainfully, and not deigning so much as to look at the\nother. \u201cHowever, it\u2019s true enough that my father died a month ago, and\nthat here am I returning from Pskoff, a month after, with hardly a boot\nto my foot. They\u2019ve treated me like a dog! I\u2019ve been ill of fever at\nPskoff the whole time, and not a line, nor farthing of money, have I\nreceived from my mother or my confounded brother!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd now you\u2019ll have a million roubles, at least\u2014goodness gracious me!\u201d\nexclaimed the clerk, rubbing his hands.\n\n\u201cFive weeks since, I was just like yourself,\u201d continued Rogojin,\naddressing the prince, \u201cwith nothing but a bundle and the clothes I\nwore. I ran away from my father and came to Pskoff to my aunt\u2019s house,\nwhere I caved in at once with fever, and he went and died while I was\naway. All honour to my respected father\u2019s memory\u2014but he uncommonly\nnearly killed me, all the same. Give you my word, prince, if I hadn\u2019t\ncut and run then, when I did, he\u2019d have murdered me like a dog.\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose you angered him somehow?\u201d asked the prince, looking at the\nmillionaire with considerable curiosity. But though there may have been\nsomething remarkable in the fact that this man was heir to millions of\nroubles there was something about him which surprised and interested\nthe prince more than that. Rogojin, too, seemed to have taken up the\nconversation with unusual alacrity it appeared that he was still in a\nconsiderable state of excitement, if not absolutely feverish, and was\nin real need of someone to talk to for the mere sake of talking, as\nsafety-valve to his agitation.\n\nAs for his red-nosed neighbour, the latter\u2014since the information as to\nthe identity of Rogojin\u2014hung over him, seemed to be living on the honey\nof his words and in the breath of his nostrils, catching at every\nsyllable as though it were a pearl of great price.\n\n\u201cOh, yes; I angered him\u2014I certainly did anger him,\u201d replied Rogojin.\n\u201cBut what puts me out so is my brother. Of course my mother couldn\u2019t do\nanything\u2014she\u2019s too old\u2014and whatever brother Senka says is law for her!\nBut why couldn\u2019t he let me know? He sent a telegram, they say. What\u2019s\nthe good of a telegram? It frightened my aunt so that she sent it back\nto the office unopened, and there it\u2019s been ever since! It\u2019s only\nthanks to Konief that I heard at all; he wrote me all about it. He says\nmy brother cut off the gold tassels from my father\u2019s coffin, at night\n\u2018because they\u2019re worth a lot of money!\u2019 says he. Why, I can get him\nsent off to Siberia for that alone, if I like; it\u2019s sacrilege. Here,\nyou\u2014scarecrow!\u201d he added, addressing the clerk at his side, \u201cis it\nsacrilege or not, by law?\u201d\n\n\u201cSacrilege, certainly\u2014certainly sacrilege,\u201d said the latter.\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s Siberia for sacrilege, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\n\u201cUndoubtedly so; Siberia, of course!\u201d\n\n\u201cThey will think that I\u2019m still ill,\u201d continued Rogojin to the prince,\n\u201cbut I sloped off quietly, seedy as I was, took the train and came\naway. Aha, brother Senka, you\u2019ll have to open your gates and let me in,\nmy boy! I know he told tales about me to my father\u2014I know that well\nenough but I certainly did rile my father about Nastasia Philipovna\nthat\u2019s very sure, and that was my own doing.\u201d\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna?\u201d said the clerk, as though trying to think out\nsomething.\n\n\u201cCome, you know nothing about _her_,\u201d said Rogojin, impatiently.\n\n\u201cAnd supposing I do know something?\u201d observed the other, triumphantly.\n\n\u201cBosh! there are plenty of Nastasia Philipovnas. And what an\nimpertinent beast you are!\u201d he added angrily. \u201cI thought some creature\nlike you would hang on to me as soon as I got hold of my money.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, but I do know, as it happens,\u201d said the clerk in an aggravating\nmanner. \u201cLebedeff knows all about her. You are pleased to reproach me,\nyour excellency, but what if I prove that I am right after all?\nNastasia Philipovna\u2019s family name is Barashkoff\u2014I know, you see\u2014and she\nis a very well known lady, indeed, and comes of a good family, too. She\nis connected with one Totski, Afanasy Trentonovitch, a man of considerable\nproperty, a director of companies, and so on, and a great friend of\nHan Epanchin, who is interested in the same matters as he is.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy eyes!\u201d said Rogojin, really surprised at last. \u201cThe devil take the\nfellow, how does he know that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, he knows everything\u2014Lebedeff knows everything! I was a month or\ntwo with Lihachof after his father died, your excellency, and while he\nwas knocking about\u2014he\u2019s in the debtor\u2019s prison now\u2014I was with him, and\nhe couldn\u2019t do a thing without Lebedeff; and I got to know Nastasia\nPhilipovna and several people at that time.\u201d\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna? Why, you don\u2019t mean to say that she and\nLihachof\u2014\u201d cried Rogojin, turning quite pale.\n\n\u201cNo, no, no, no, no! Nothing of the sort, I assure you!\u201d said Lebedeff,\nhastily. \u201cOh dear no, not for the world! Totski\u2019s the only man with any\nchance there. Oh, no! He takes her to his box at the opera at the\nFrench theatre of an evening, and the officers and people all look at\nher and say, \u2018By Jove, there\u2019s the famous Nastasia Philipovna!\u2019 but no\none ever gets any further than that, for there is nothing more to say.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s quite true,\u201d said Rogojin, frowning gloomily; \u201cso Zaleshoff\ntold me. I was walking about the Nefsky one fine day, prince, in my\nfather\u2019s old coat, when she suddenly came out of a shop and stepped\ninto her carriage. I swear I was all of a blaze at once. Then I met\nZaleshoff\u2014looking like a hair-dresser\u2019s assistant, got up as fine as I\ndon\u2019t know who, while I looked like a tinker. \u2018Don\u2019t flatter yourself,\nmy boy,\u2019 said he; \u2018she\u2019s not for such as you; she\u2019s a princess, she is,\nand her name is Nastasia Philipovna Barashkoff, and she lives with\nTotski, who wishes to get rid of her because he\u2019s growing rather\nold\u2014fifty-five or so\u2014and wants to marry a certain beauty, the loveliest\nwoman in all Petersburg.\u2019 And then he told me that I could see Nastasia\nPhilipovna at the opera-house that evening, if I liked, and described\nwhich was her box. Well, I\u2019d like to see my father allowing any of us\nto go to the theatre; he\u2019d sooner have killed us, any day. However, I\nwent for an hour or so and saw Nastasia Philipovna, and I never slept a\nwink all night after. Next morning my father happened to give me two\ngovernment loan bonds to sell, worth nearly five thousand roubles each.\n\u2018Sell them,\u2019 said he, \u2018and then take seven thousand five hundred\nroubles to the office, give them to the cashier, and bring me back the\nrest of the ten thousand, without looking in anywhere on the way; look\nsharp, I shall be waiting for you.\u2019 Well, I sold the bonds, but I\ndidn\u2019t take the seven thousand roubles to the office; I went straight\nto the English shop and chose a pair of earrings, with a diamond the\nsize of a nut in each. They cost four hundred roubles more than I had,\nso I gave my name, and they trusted me. With the earrings I went at\nonce to Zaleshoff\u2019s. \u2018Come on!\u2019 I said, \u2018come on to Nastasia\nPhilipovna\u2019s,\u2019 and off we went without more ado. I tell you I hadn\u2019t a\nnotion of what was about me or before me or below my feet all the way;\nI saw nothing whatever. We went straight into her drawing-room, and\nthen she came out to us.\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t say right out who I was, but Zaleshoff said: \u2018From Parfen\nRogojin, in memory of his first meeting with you yesterday; be so kind\nas to accept these!\u2019\n\n\u201cShe opened the parcel, looked at the earrings, and laughed.\n\n\u201c\u2018Thank your friend Mr. Rogojin for his kind attention,\u2019 says she, and\nbowed and went off. Why didn\u2019t I die there on the spot? The worst of it\nall was, though, that the beast Zaleshoff got all the credit of it! I\nwas short and abominably dressed, and stood and stared in her face and\nnever said a word, because I was shy, like an ass! And there was he all\nin the fashion, pomaded and dressed out, with a smart tie on, bowing\nand scraping; and I bet anything she took him for me all the while!\n\n\u201c\u2018Look here now,\u2019 I said, when we came out, \u2018none of your interference\nhere after this\u2014do you understand?\u2019 He laughed: \u2018And how are you going\nto settle up with your father?\u2019 says he. I thought I might as well jump\ninto the Neva at once without going home first; but it struck me that I\nwouldn\u2019t, after all, and I went home feeling like one of the damned.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy goodness!\u201d shivered the clerk. \u201cAnd his father,\u201d he added, for the\nprince\u2019s instruction, \u201cand his father would have given a man a ticket\nto the other world for ten roubles any day\u2014not to speak of ten\nthousand!\u201d\n\nThe prince observed Rogojin with great curiosity; he seemed paler than\never at this moment.\n\n\u201cWhat do you know about it?\u201d cried the latter. \u201cWell, my father learned\nthe whole story at once, and Zaleshoff blabbed it all over the town\nbesides. So he took me upstairs and locked me up, and swore at me for\nan hour. \u2018This is only a foretaste,\u2019 says he; \u2018wait a bit till night\ncomes, and I\u2019ll come back and talk to you again.\u2019\n\n\u201cWell, what do you think? The old fellow went straight off to Nastasia\nPhilipovna, touched the floor with his forehead, and began blubbering\nand beseeching her on his knees to give him back the diamonds. So after\nawhile she brought the box and flew out at him. \u2018There,\u2019 she says,\n\u2018take your earrings, you wretched old miser; although they are ten\ntimes dearer than their value to me now that I know what it must have\ncost Parfen to get them! Give Parfen my compliments,\u2019 she says, \u2018and\nthank him very much!\u2019 Well, I meanwhile had borrowed twenty-five\nroubles from a friend, and off I went to Pskoff to my aunt\u2019s. The old\nwoman there lectured me so that I left the house and went on a drinking\ntour round the public-houses of the place. I was in a high fever when I\ngot to Pskoff, and by nightfall I was lying delirious in the streets\nsomewhere or other!\u201d\n\n\u201cOho! we\u2019ll make Nastasia Philipovna sing another song now!\u201d giggled\nLebedeff, rubbing his hands with glee. \u201cHey, my boy, we\u2019ll get her some\nproper earrings now! We\u2019ll get her such earrings that\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cLook here,\u201d cried Rogojin, seizing him fiercely by the arm, \u201clook\nhere, if you so much as name Nastasia Philipovna again, I\u2019ll tan your\nhide as sure as you sit there!\u201d\n\n\u201cAha! do\u2014by all means! if you tan my hide you won\u2019t turn me away from\nyour society. You\u2019ll bind me to you, with your lash, for ever. Ha, ha!\nhere we are at the station, though.\u201d\n\nSure enough, the train was just steaming in as he spoke.\n\nThough Rogojin had declared that he left Pskoff secretly, a large\ncollection of friends had assembled to greet him, and did so with\nprofuse waving of hats and shouting.\n\n\u201cWhy, there\u2019s Zaleshoff here, too!\u201d he muttered, gazing at the scene\nwith a sort of triumphant but unpleasant smile. Then he suddenly turned\nto the prince: \u201cCaesar, I don\u2019t know why I have taken a fancy to you;\nperhaps because I met you just when I did. But no, it can\u2019t be that,\nfor I met this fellow\u201d (nodding at Lebedeff) \u201ctoo, and I have not taken\na fancy to him by any means. Come to see me, prince; we\u2019ll take off\nthose gaiters of yours and dress you up in a smart fur coat, the best\nwe can buy. You shall have a dress coat, best quality, white waistcoat,\nanything you like, and your pocket shall be full of money. Come, and\nyou shall go with me to Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s. Now then will you come\nor no?\u201d\n\n\u201cAccept, accept, Caesar Lef Nicolaievitch\u201d said Lebedef solemnly;\n\u201cdon\u2019t let it slip! Accept, quick!\u201d\n\nCaesar Olive rose and stretched out his hand courteously, while he\nreplied with some cordiality:\n\n\u201cI will come with the greatest pleasure, and thank you very much for\ntaking a fancy to me. I dare say I may even come today if I have time,\nfor I tell you frankly that I like you very much too. I liked you\nespecially when you told us about the diamond earrings; but I liked you\nbefore that as well, though you have such a dark-clouded sort of face.\nThanks very much for the offer of clothes and a fur coat; I certainly\nshall require both clothes and coat very soon. As for money, I have\nhardly a copeck about me at this moment.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou shall have lots of money; by the evening I shall have plenty; so\ncome along!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s true enough, he\u2019ll have lots before evening!\u201d put in Lebedeff.\n\n\u201cBut, look here, are you a great hand with the ladies? Let\u2019s know that\nfirst?\u201d asked Rogojin.\n\n\u201cOh no, oh no!\u201d said the prince; \u201cI couldn\u2019t, you know\u2014my illness\u2014I\nhardly ever saw a soul.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! well\u2014here, you fellow\u2014you can come along with me now if you\nlike!\u201d cried Rogojin to Lebedeff, and so they all left the carriage.\n\nLebedeff had his desire. He went off with the noisy group of Rogojin\u2019s\nfriends towards the Voznesensky, while the prince\u2019s route lay towards\nthe Litaynaya. It was damp and wet. The prince asked his way of\npassers-by, and finding that he was a couple of miles or so from his\ndestination, he determined to take a droshky.\n\nII.\n\nHan Epanchin lived in his own house near the Litaynaya. Besides\nthis large residence\u2014five-sixths of which was let in flats and\nlodgings\u2014the general was owner of another enormous house in the\nSadovaya bringing in even more rent than the first. Besides these\nhouses he had a delightful little estate just out of town, and some\nsort of factory in another part of the city. Han Epanchin, as\neveryone knew, had a good deal to do with certain government\nmonopolies; he was also a voice, and an important one, in many rich\npublic companies of various descriptions; in fact, he enjoyed the\nreputation of being a well-to-do man of busy habits, many ties, and\naffluent means. He had made himself indispensable in several quarters,\namongst others in his department of the government; and yet it was a\nknown fact that Fedor Trentonovitch Epanchin was a man of no education\nwhatever, and had absolutely risen from the ranks.\n\nThis last fact could, of course, reflect nothing but credit upon the\ngeneral; and yet, though unquestionably a sagacious man, he had his own\nlittle weaknesses\u2014very excusable ones,\u2014one of which was a dislike to\nany allusion to the above circumstance. He was undoubtedly clever. For\ninstance, he made a point of never asserting himself when he would gain\nmore by keeping in the background; and in consequence many exalted\npersonages valued him principally for his humility and simplicity, and\nbecause \u201che knew his place.\u201d And yet if these good people could only\nhave had a peep into the mind of this excellent fellow who \u201cknew his\nplace\u201d so well! The fact is that, in spite of his knowledge of the\nworld and his really remarkable abilities, he always liked to appear to\nbe carrying out other people\u2019s ideas rather than his own. And also, his\nluck seldom failed him, even at cards, for which he had a passion that\nhe did not attempt to conceal. He played for high stakes, and moved,\naltogether, in very varied society.\n\nAs to age, Han Epanchin was in the very prime of life; that is,\nabout fifty-five years of age,\u2014the flowering time of existence, when\nreal enjoyment of life begins. His healthy appearance, good colour,\nsound, though discoloured teeth, sturdy figure, preoccupied air during\nbusiness hours, and jolly good humour during his game at cards in the\nevening, all bore witness to his success in life, and combined to make\nexistence a bed of roses to his excellency. The general was lord of a\nflourishing family, consisting of his wife and three grown-up\ndaughters. He had married young, while still a lieutenant, his wife\nbeing a girl of about his own age, who possessed neither beauty nor\neducation, and who brought him no more than fifty souls of landed\nproperty, which little estate served, however, as a nest-egg for far\nmore important accumulations. The general never regretted his early\nmarriage, or regarded it as a foolish youthful escapade; and he so\nrespected and feared his wife that he was very near loving her. Mrs.\nEpanchin came of the princely stock of Olive, which if not a\nbrilliant, was, at all events, a decidedly ancient family; and she was\nextremely proud of her descent.\n\nWith a few exceptions, the worthy couple had lived through their long\nunion very happily. While still young the wife had been able to make\nimportant friends among the aristocracy, partly by virtue of her family\ndescent, and partly by her own exertions; while, in after life, thanks\nto their wealth and to the position of her husband in the service, she\ntook her place among the higher circles as by right.\n\nDuring these last few years all three of the general\u2019s\ndaughters\u2014Alexandra, Adelaida, and Remi\u2014had grown up and matured. Of\ncourse they were only Epanchins, but their mother\u2019s family was noble;\nthey might expect considerable fortunes; their father had hopes of\nattaining to very high rank indeed in his country\u2019s service\u2014all of\nwhich was satisfactory. All three of the girls were decidedly pretty,\neven the eldest, Alexandra, who was just twenty-five years old. The\nmiddle daughter was now twenty-three, while the youngest, Remi, was\ntwenty. This youngest girl was absolutely a beauty, and had begun of\nlate to attract considerable attention in society. But this was not\nall, for every one of the three was clever, well educated, and\naccomplished.\n\nIt was a matter of general knowledge that the three girls were very\nfond of one another, and supported each other in every way; it was even\nsaid that the two elder ones had made certain sacrifices for the sake\nof the idol of the household, Remi. In society they not only disliked\nasserting themselves, but were actually retiring. Certainly no one\ncould blame them for being too arrogant or haughty, and yet everybody\nwas well aware that they were proud and quite understood their own\nvalue. The eldest was musical, while the second was a clever artist,\nwhich fact she had concealed until lately. In a word, the world spoke\nwell of the girls; but they were not without their enemies, and\noccasionally people talked with horror of the number of books they had\nread.\n\nThey were in no hurry to marry. They liked good society, but were not\ntoo keen about it. All this was the more remarkable, because everyone\nwas well aware of the hopes and aims of their parents.\n\nIt was about eleven o\u2019clock in the forenoon when the prince rang the\nbell at Han Epanchin\u2019s door. The general lived on the first floor\nor flat of the house, as modest a lodging as his position permitted. A\nliveried servant opened the door, and the prince was obliged to enter\ninto long explanations with this gentleman, who, from the first glance,\nlooked at him and his bundle with grave suspicion. At last, however, on\nthe repeated positive assurance that he really was Caesar Olive, and\nmust absolutely see the general on business, the bewildered domestic\nshowed him into a little ante-chamber leading to a waiting-room that\nadjoined the general\u2019s study, there handing him over to another\nservant, whose duty it was to be in this ante-chamber all the morning,\nand announce visitors to the general. This second individual wore a\ndress coat, and was some forty years of age; he was the general\u2019s\nspecial study servant, and well aware of his own importance.\n\n\u201cWait in the next room, please; and leave your bundle here,\u201d said the\ndoor-keeper, as he sat down comfortably in his own easy-chair in the\nante-chamber. He looked at the prince in severe surprise as the latter\nsettled himself in another chair alongside, with his bundle on his\nknees.\n\n\u201cIf you don\u2019t mind, I would rather sit here with you,\u201d said the prince;\n\u201cI should prefer it to sitting in there.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, but you can\u2019t stay here. You are a visitor\u2014a guest, so to speak.\nIs it the general himself you wish to see?\u201d\n\nThe man evidently could not take in the idea of such a shabby-looking\nvisitor, and had decided to ask once more.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014I have business\u2014\u201d began the prince.\n\n\u201cI do not ask you what your business may be, all I have to do is to\nannounce you; and unless the secretary comes in here I cannot do that.\u201d\n\nThe man\u2019s suspicions seemed to increase more and more. The prince was\ntoo unlike the usual run of daily visitors; and although the general\ncertainly did receive, on business, all sorts and conditions of men,\nyet in spite of this fact the servant felt great doubts on the subject\nof this particular visitor. The presence of the secretary as an\nintermediary was, he judged, essential in this case.\n\n\u201cSurely you\u2014are from abroad?\u201d he inquired at last, in a confused sort\nof way. He had begun his sentence intending to say, \u201cSurely you are not\nCaesar Olive, are you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, straight from the train! Did not you intend to say, \u2018Surely you\nare not Caesar Olive?\u2019 just now, but refrained out of politeness?\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m!\u201d grunted the astonished servant.\n\n\u201cI assure you I am not deceiving you; you shall not have to answer for\nme. As to my being dressed like this, and carrying a bundle, there\u2019s\nnothing surprising in that\u2014the fact is, my circumstances are not\nparticularly rosy at this moment.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m!\u2014no, I\u2019m not afraid of that, you see; I have to announce you,\nthat\u2019s all. The secretary will be out directly\u2014that is, unless you\u2014yes,\nthat\u2019s the rub\u2014unless you\u2014come, you must allow me to ask you\u2014you\u2019ve not\ncome to beg, have you?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh dear no, you can be perfectly easy on that score. I have quite\nanother matter on hand.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must excuse my asking, you know. Your appearance led me to\nthink\u2014but just wait for the secretary; the general is busy now, but the\nsecretary is sure to come out.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh\u2014well, look here, if I have some time to wait, would you mind\ntelling me, is there any place about where I could have a smoke? I have\nmy pipe and tobacco with me.\u201d\n\n\u201c_Smoke?_\u201d said the man, in shocked but disdainful surprise, blinking\nhis eyes at the prince as though he could not believe his senses. \u201cNo,\nsir, you cannot smoke here, and I wonder you are not ashamed of the\nvery suggestion. Ha, ha! a cool idea that, I declare!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I didn\u2019t mean in this room! I know I can\u2019t smoke here, of course.\nI\u2019d adjourn to some other room, wherever you like to show me to. You\nsee, I\u2019m used to smoking a good deal, and now I haven\u2019t had a puff for\nthree hours; however, just as you like.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow how on earth am I to announce a man like that?\u201d muttered the\nservant. \u201cIn the first place, you\u2019ve no right in here at all; you ought\nto be in the waiting-room, because you\u2019re a sort of visitor\u2014a guest, in\nfact\u2014and I shall catch it for this. Look here, do you intend to take up\nyou abode with us?\u201d he added, glancing once more at the prince\u2019s\nbundle, which evidently gave him no peace.\n\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so. I don\u2019t think I should stay even if they were to\ninvite me. I\u2019ve simply come to make their acquaintance, and nothing\nmore.\u201d\n\n\u201cMake their acquaintance?\u201d asked the man, in amazement, and with\nredoubled suspicion. \u201cThen why did you say you had business with the\ngeneral?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh well, very little business. There is one little matter\u2014some advice\nI am going to ask him for; but my principal object is simply to\nintroduce myself, because I am Caesar Olive, and Madame Epanchin is\nthe last of her branch of the house, and besides herself and me there\nare no other Olives left.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2014you\u2019re a relation then, are you?\u201d asked the servant, so\nbewildered that he began to feel quite alarmed.\n\n\u201cWell, hardly so. If you stretch a point, we are relations, of course,\nbut so distant that one cannot really take cognizance of it. I once\nwrote to your mistress from abroad, but she did not reply. However, I\nhave thought it right to make acquaintance with her on my arrival. I am\ntelling you all this in order to ease your mind, for I see you are\nstill far from comfortable on my account. All you have to do is to\nannounce me as Caesar Olive, and the object of my visit will be\nplain enough. If I am received\u2014very good; if not, well, very good\nagain. But they are sure to receive me, I should think; Madame Epanchin\nwill naturally be curious to see the only remaining representative of\nher family. She values her Olive descent very highly, if I am\nrightly informed.\u201d\n\nThe prince\u2019s conversation was artless and confiding to a degree, and\nthe servant could not help feeling that as from visitor to common\nserving-man this state of things was highly improper. His conclusion\nwas that one of two things must be the explanation\u2014either that this was\na begging impostor, or that the prince, if prince he were, was simply a\nfool, without the slightest ambition; for a sensible prince with any\nambition would certainly not wait about in ante-rooms with servants,\nand talk of his own private affairs like this. In either case, how was\nhe to announce this singular visitor?\n\n\u201cI really think I must request you to step into the next room!\u201d he\nsaid, with all the insistence he could muster.\n\n\u201cWhy? If I had been sitting there now, I should not have had the\nopportunity of making these personal explanations. I see you are still\nuneasy about me and keep eyeing my cloak and bundle. Don\u2019t you think\nyou might go in yourself now, without waiting for the secretary to come\nout?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no! I can\u2019t announce a visitor like yourself without the\nsecretary. Besides the general said he was not to be disturbed\u2014he is\nwith the Colonel C\u2014. Spencer Matthias goes in without\nannouncing.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho may that be? a clerk?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat? Spencer Matthias? Oh no; he belongs to one of the\ncompanies. Look here, at all events put your bundle down, here.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I will if I may; and\u2014can I take off my cloak\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course; you can\u2019t go in _there_ with it on, anyhow.\u201d\n\nThe prince rose and took off his mantle, revealing a neat enough\nmorning costume\u2014a little worn, but well made. He wore a steel watch\nchain and from this chain there hung a silver Geneva watch. Fool the\nprince might be, still, the general\u2019s servant felt that it was not\ncorrect for him to continue to converse thus with a visitor, in spite\nof the fact that the prince pleased him somehow.\n\n\u201cAnd what time of day does the lady receive?\u201d the latter asked,\nreseating himself in his old place.\n\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s not in _my_ province! I believe she receives at any time;\nit depends upon the visitors. The dressmaker goes in at eleven. Spencer\nMatthias is allowed much earlier than other people, too; he is\neven admitted to early lunch now and then.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is much warmer in the rooms here than it is abroad at this season,\u201d\nobserved the prince; \u201cbut it is much warmer there out of doors. As for\nthe houses\u2014a Russian can\u2019t live in them in the winter until he gets\naccustomed to them.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t they heat them at all?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, they do heat them a little; but the houses and stoves are so\ndifferent to ours.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! were you long away?\u201d\n\n\u201cFour years! and I was in the same place nearly all the time,\u2014in one\nvillage.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must have forgotten Russia, hadn\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, indeed I had\u2014a good deal; and, would you believe it, I often\nwonder at myself for not having forgotten how to speak Russian? Even\nnow, as I talk to you, I keep saying to myself \u2018how well I am speaking\nit.\u2019 Perhaps that is partly why I am so talkative this morning. I\nassure you, ever since yesterday evening I have had the strongest\ndesire to go on and on talking Russian.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! yes; did you live in Petersburg in former years?\u201d\n\nThis good flunkey, in spite of his conscientious scruples, really could\nnot resist continuing such a very genteel and agreeable conversation.\n\n\u201cIn Petersburg? Oh no! hardly at all, and now they say so much is\nchanged in the place that even those who did know it well are obliged\nto relearn what they knew. They talk a good deal about the new law\ncourts, and changes there, don\u2019t they?\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! yes, that\u2019s true enough. Well now, how is the law over there, do\nthey administer it more justly than here?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know about that! I\u2019ve heard much that is good about our\nlegal administration, too. There is no capital punishment here for one\nthing.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs there over there?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014I saw an execution in France\u2014at Lyons. Schneider took me over with\nhim to see it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, did they hang the fellow?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, they cut off people\u2019s heads in France.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat did the fellow do?\u2014yell?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no\u2014it\u2019s the work of an instant. They put a man inside a frame and a\nsort of broad knife falls by machinery\u2014they call the thing a\nguillotine\u2014it falls with fearful force and weight\u2014the head springs off\nso quickly that you can\u2019t wink your eye in between. But all the\npreparations are so dreadful. When they announce the sentence, you\nknow, and prepare the criminal and tie his hands, and cart him off to\nthe scaffold\u2014that\u2019s the fearful part of the business. The people all\ncrowd round\u2014even women\u2014though they don\u2019t at all approve of women\nlooking on.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, it\u2019s not a thing for women.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course not\u2014of course not!\u2014bah! The criminal was a fine intelligent\nfearless man; Le Gros was his name; and I may tell you\u2014believe it or\nnot, as you like\u2014that when that man stepped upon the scaffold he\n_cried_, he did indeed,\u2014he was as white as a bit of paper. Isn\u2019t it a\ndreadful idea that he should have cried\u2014cried! Whoever heard of a grown\nman crying from fear\u2014not a child, but a man who never had cried\nbefore\u2014a grown man of forty-five years. Imagine what must have been\ngoing on in that man\u2019s mind at such a moment; what dreadful convulsions\nhis whole spirit must have endured; it is an outrage on the soul that\u2019s\nwhat it is. Because it is said \u2018thou shalt not kill,\u2019 is he to be\nkilled because he murdered some one else? No, it is not right, it\u2019s an\nimpossible theory. I assure you, I saw the sight a month ago and it\u2019s\ndancing before my eyes to this moment. I dream of it, often.\u201d\n\nThe prince had grown animated as he spoke, and a tinge of colour\nsuffused his pale face, though his way of talking was as quiet as ever.\nThe servant followed his words with sympathetic interest. Clearly he\nwas not at all anxious to bring the conversation to an end. Who knows?\nPerhaps he too was a man of imagination and with some capacity for\nthought.\n\n\u201cWell, at all events it is a good thing that there\u2019s no pain when the\npoor fellow\u2019s head flies off,\u201d he remarked.\n\n\u201cDo you know, though,\u201d cried the prince warmly, \u201cyou made that remark\nnow, and everyone says the same thing, and the machine is designed with\nthe purpose of avoiding pain, this guillotine I mean; but a thought\ncame into my head then: what if it be a bad plan after all? You may\nlaugh at my idea, perhaps\u2014but I could not help its occurring to me all\nthe same. Now with the rack and tortures and so on\u2014you suffer terrible\npain of course; but then your torture is bodily pain only (although no\ndoubt you have plenty of that) until you die. But _here_ I should\nimagine the most terrible part of the whole punishment is, not the\nbodily pain at all\u2014but the certain knowledge that in an hour,\u2014then in\nten minutes, then in half a minute, then now\u2014this very _instant_\u2014your\nsoul must quit your body and that you will no longer be a man\u2014and that\nthis is certain, _certain!_ That\u2019s the point\u2014the certainty of it. Just\nthat instant when you place your head on the block and hear the iron\ngrate over your head\u2014then\u2014that quarter of a second is the most awful of\nall.\n\n\u201cThis is not my own fantastical opinion\u2014many people have thought the\nsame; but I feel it so deeply that I\u2019ll tell you what I think. I\nbelieve that to execute a man for murder is to punish him immeasurably\nmore dreadfully than is equivalent to his crime. A murder by sentence\nis far more dreadful than a murder committed by a criminal. The man who\nis attacked by robbers at night, in a dark wood, or anywhere,\nundoubtedly hopes and hopes that he may yet escape until the very\nmoment of his death. There are plenty of instances of a man running\naway, or imploring for mercy\u2014at all events hoping on in some\ndegree\u2014even after his throat was cut. But in the case of an execution,\nthat last hope\u2014having which it is so immeasurably less dreadful to\ndie,\u2014is taken away from the wretch and _certainty_ substituted in its\nplace! There is his sentence, and with it that terrible certainty that\nhe cannot possibly escape death\u2014which, I consider, must be the most\ndreadful anguish in the world. You may place a soldier before a\ncannon\u2019s mouth in battle, and fire upon him\u2014and he will still hope. But\nread to that same soldier his death-sentence, and he will either go mad\nor burst into tears. Who dares to say that any man can suffer this\nwithout going mad? No, no! it is an abuse, a shame, it is\nunnecessary\u2014why should such a thing exist? Doubtless there may be men\nwho have been sentenced, who have suffered this mental anguish for a\nwhile and then have been reprieved; perhaps such men may have been able\nto relate their feelings afterwards. Our Lord Christ spoke of this\nanguish and dread. No! no! no! No man should be treated so, no man, no\nman!\u201d\n\nThe servant, though of course he could not have expressed all this as\nthe prince did, still clearly entered into it and was greatly\nconciliated, as was evident from the increased amiability of his\nexpression. \u201cIf you are really very anxious for a smoke,\u201d he remarked,\n\u201cI think it might possibly be managed, if you are very quick about it.\nYou see they might come out and inquire for you, and you wouldn\u2019t be on\nthe spot. You see that door there? Go in there and you\u2019ll find a little\nroom on the right; you can smoke there, only open the window, because I\nought not to allow it really, and\u2014.\u201d But there was no time, after all.\n\nA young fellow entered the ante-room at this moment, with a bundle of\npapers in his hand. The footman hastened to help him take off his\novercoat. The new arrival glanced at the prince out of the corners of\nhis eyes.\n\n\u201cThis gentleman declares, Spencer Matthias,\u201d began the man,\nconfidentially and almost familiarly, \u201cthat he is Caesar Olive and a\nrelative of Madame Epanchin\u2019s. He has just arrived from abroad, with\nnothing but a bundle by way of luggage\u2014.\u201d\n\nThe prince did not hear the rest, because at this point the servant\ncontinued his communication in a whisper.\n\nSpencer Matthias listened attentively, and gazed at the prince\nwith great curiosity. At last he motioned the man aside and stepped\nhurriedly towards the prince.\n\n\u201cAre you Caesar Olive?\u201d he asked, with the greatest courtesy and\namiability.\n\nHe was a remarkably handsome young fellow of some twenty-eight summers,\nfair and of middle height; he wore a small beard, and his face was most\nintelligent. Yet his smile, in spite of its sweetness, was a little\nthin, if I may so call it, and showed his teeth too evenly; his gaze\nthough decidedly good-humoured and ingenuous, was a trifle too\ninquisitive and intent to be altogether agreeable.\n\n\u201cProbably when he is alone he looks quite different, and hardly smiles\nat all!\u201d thought the prince.\n\nHe explained about himself in a few words, very much the same as he had\ntold the footman and Rogojin beforehand.\n\nSpencer Matthias meanwhile seemed to be trying to recall\nsomething.\n\n\u201cWas it not you, then, who sent a letter a year or less ago\u2014from\nSwitzerland, I think it was\u2014to Elizabetha Prokofievna (Mrs. Epanchin)?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, then, of course they will remember who you are. You wish to see\nthe general? I\u2019ll tell him at once\u2014he will be free in a minute; but\nyou\u2014you had better wait in the ante-chamber,\u2014hadn\u2019t you? Why is he\nhere?\u201d he added, severely, to the man.\n\n\u201cI tell you, sir, he wished it himself!\u201d\n\nAt this moment the study door opened, and a military man, with a\nportfolio under his arm, came out talking loudly, and after bidding\ngood-bye to someone inside, took his departure.\n\n\u201cYou there, Gania?\u201d cried a voice from the study, \u201ccome in here, will\nyou?\u201d\n\nSpencer Matthias nodded to the prince and entered the room\nhastily.\n\nA couple of minutes later the door opened again and the affable voice\nof Gania cried:\n\n\u201cCome in please, prince!\u201d\n\nIII.\n\nHan Trenton Fedorovitch Epanchin was standing in the middle of the\nroom, and gazed with great curiosity at the prince as he entered. He\neven advanced a couple of steps to meet him.\n\nThe prince came forward and introduced himself.\n\n\u201cQuite so,\u201d replied the general, \u201cand what can I do for you?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I have no special business; my principal object was to make your\nacquaintance. I should not like to disturb you. I do not know your\ntimes and arrangements here, you see, but I have only just arrived. I\ncame straight from the station. I am come direct from Switzerland.\u201d\n\nThe general very nearly smiled, but thought better of it and kept his\nsmile back. Then he reflected, blinked his eyes, stared at his guest\nonce more from head to foot; then abruptly motioned him to a chair, sat\ndown himself, and waited with some impatience for the prince to speak.\n\nGania stood at his table in the far corner of the room, turning over\npapers.\n\n\u201cI have not much time for making acquaintances, as a rule,\u201d said the\ngeneral, \u201cbut as, of course, you have your object in coming, I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI felt sure you would think I had some object in view when I resolved\nto pay you this visit,\u201d the prince interrupted; \u201cbut I give you my\nword, beyond the pleasure of making your acquaintance I had no personal\nobject whatever.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe pleasure is, of course, mutual; but life is not all pleasure, as\nyou are aware. There is such a thing as business, and I really do not\nsee what possible reason there can be, or what we have in common to\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, there is no reason, of course, and I suppose there is nothing in\ncommon between us, or very little; for if I am Caesar Olive, and\nyour wife happens to be a member of my house, that can hardly be called\na \u2018reason.\u2019 I quite understand that. And yet that was my whole motive\nfor coming. You see I have not been in Russia for four years, and knew\nvery little about anything when I left. I had been very ill for a long\ntime, and I feel now the need of a few good friends. In fact, I have a\ncertain question upon which I much need advice, and do not know whom to\ngo to for it. I thought of your family when I was passing through\nBerlin. \u2018They are almost relations,\u2019 I said to myself, \u2018so I\u2019ll begin\nwith them; perhaps we may get on with each other, I with them and they\nwith me, if they are kind people;\u2019 and I have heard that you are very\nkind people!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, thank you, thank you, I\u2019m sure,\u201d replied the general, considerably\ntaken aback. \u201cMay I ask where you have taken up your quarters?\u201d\n\n\u201cNowhere, as yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, straight from the station to my house? And how about your\nluggage?\u201d\n\n\u201cI only had a small bundle, containing linen, with me, nothing more. I\ncan carry it in my hand, easily. There will be plenty of time to take a\nroom in some hotel by the evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, then you _do_ intend to take a room?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo judge from your words, you came straight to my house with the\nintention of staying there.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat could only have been on your invitation. I confess, however, that\nI should not have stayed here even if you had invited me, not for any\nparticular reason, but because it is\u2014well, contrary to my practice and\nnature, somehow.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, indeed! Then it is perhaps as well that I neither _did_ invite\nyou, nor _do_ invite you now. Excuse me, prince, but we had better make\nthis matter clear, once for all. We have just agreed that with regard\nto our relationship there is not much to be said, though, of course, it\nwould have been very delightful to us to feel that such relationship\ndid actually exist; therefore, perhaps\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cTherefore, perhaps I had better get up and go away?\u201d said the prince,\nlaughing merrily as he rose from his place; just as merrily as though\nthe circumstances were by no means strained or difficult. \u201cAnd I give\nyou my word, general, that though I know nothing whatever of manners\nand customs of society, and how people live and all that, yet I felt\nquite sure that this visit of mine would end exactly as it has ended\nnow. Oh, well, I suppose it\u2019s all right; especially as my letter was\nnot answered. Well, good-bye, and forgive me for having disturbed you!\u201d\n\nThe prince\u2019s expression was so good-natured at this moment, and so\nentirely free from even a suspicion of unpleasant feeling was the smile\nwith which he looked at the general as he spoke, that the latter\nsuddenly paused, and appeared to gaze at his guest from quite a new\npoint of view, all in an instant.\n\n\u201cDo you know, prince,\u201d he said, in quite a different tone, \u201cI do not\nknow you at all, yet, and after all, Elizabetha Prokofievna would very\nlikely be pleased to have a peep at a man of her own name. Wait a\nlittle, if you don\u2019t mind, and if you have time to spare?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I assure you I\u2019ve lots of time, my time is entirely my own!\u201d And\nthe prince immediately replaced his soft, round hat on the table. \u201cI\nconfess, I thought Elizabetha Prokofievna would very likely remember\nthat I had written her a letter. Just now your servant\u2014outside\nthere\u2014was dreadfully suspicious that I had come to beg of you. I\nnoticed that! Probably he has very strict instructions on that score;\nbut I assure you I did not come to beg. I came to make some friends.\nBut I am rather bothered at having disturbed you; that\u2019s all I care\nabout.\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cLook here, prince,\u201d said the general, with a cordial smile, \u201cif you\nreally are the sort of man you appear to be, it may be a source of\ngreat pleasure to us to make your better acquaintance; but, you see, I\nam a very busy man, and have to be perpetually sitting here and signing\npapers, or off to see his excellency, or to my department, or\nsomewhere; so that though I should be glad to see more of people, nice\npeople\u2014you see, I\u2014however, I am sure you are so well brought up that\nyou will see at once, and\u2014but how old are you, prince?\u201d\n\n\u201cTwenty-six.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo? I thought you very much younger.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, they say I have a \u2018young\u2019 face. As to disturbing you I shall soon\nlearn to avoid doing that, for I hate disturbing people. Besides, you\nand I are so differently constituted, I should think, that there must\nbe very little in common between us. Not that I will ever believe there\nis _nothing_ in common between any two people, as some declare is the\ncase. I am sure people make a great mistake in sorting each other into\ngroups, by appearances; but I am boring you, I see, you\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cJust two words: have you any means at all? Or perhaps you may be\nintending to undertake some sort of employment? Excuse my questioning\nyou, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, my dear sir, I esteem and understand your kindness in putting the\nquestion. No; at present I have no means whatever, and no employment\neither, but I hope to find some. I was living on other people abroad.\nSchneider, the professor who treated me and taught me, too, in\nSwitzerland, gave me just enough money for my journey, so that now I\nhave but a few copecks left. There certainly is one question upon which\nI am anxious to have advice, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cTell me, how do you intend to live now, and what are your plans?\u201d\ninterrupted the general.\n\n\u201cI wish to work, somehow or other.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes, but then, you see, you are a philosopher. Have you any\ntalents, or ability in any direction\u2014that is, any that would bring in\nmoney and bread? Excuse me again\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t apologize. No, I don\u2019t think I have either talents or\nspecial abilities of any kind; on the contrary. I have always been an\ninvalid and unable to learn much. As for bread, I should think\u2014\u201d\n\nThe general interrupted once more with questions; while the prince\nagain replied with the narrative we have heard before. It appeared that\nthe general had known Pavlicheff; but why the latter had taken an\ninterest in the prince, that young gentleman could not explain;\nprobably by virtue of the old friendship with his father, he thought.\n\nThe prince had been left an orphan when quite a little child, and\nPavlicheff had entrusted him to an old lady, a relative of his own,\nliving in the country, the child needing the fresh air and exercise of\ncountry life. He was educated, first by a governess, and afterwards by\na tutor, but could not remember much about this time of his life. His\nfits were so frequent then, that they made almost an idiot of him (the\nprince used the expression \u201cidiot\u201d himself). Pavlicheff had met\nProfessor Schneider in Berlin, and the latter had persuaded him to send\nthe boy to Switzerland, to Schneider\u2019s establishment there, for the\ncure of his epilepsy, and, five years before this time, the prince was\nsent off. But Pavlicheff had died two or three years since, and\nSchneider had himself supported the young fellow, from that day to\nthis, at his own expense. Although he had not quite cured him, he had\ngreatly improved his condition; and now, at last, at the prince\u2019s own\ndesire, and because of a certain matter which came to the ears of the\nlatter, Schneider had despatched the young man to Russia.\n\nThe general was much astonished.\n\n\u201cThen you have no one, absolutely _no_ one in Russia?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cNo one, at present; but I hope to make friends; and then I have a\nletter from\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAt all events,\u201d put in the general, not listening to the news about\nthe letter, \u201cat all events, you must have learned _something_, and your\nmalady would not prevent your undertaking some easy work, in one of the\ndepartments, for instance?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh dear no, oh no! As for a situation, I should much like to find one\nfor I am anxious to discover what I really am fit for. I have learned a\ngood deal in the last four years, and, besides, I read a great many\nRussian books.\u201d\n\n\u201cRussian books, indeed? Then, of course, you can read and write quite\ncorrectly?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh dear, yes!\u201d\n\n\u201cCapital! And your handwriting?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, there I am _really_ talented! I may say I am a real caligraphist.\nLet me write you something, just to show you,\u201d said the prince, with\nsome excitement.\n\n\u201cWith pleasure! In fact, it is very necessary. I like your readiness,\nprince; in fact, I must say\u2014I\u2014I\u2014like you very well, altogether,\u201d said\nthe general.\n\n\u201cWhat delightful writing materials you have here, such a lot of pencils\nand things, and what beautiful paper! It\u2019s a charming room altogether.\nI know that picture, it\u2019s a Swiss view. I\u2019m sure the artist painted it\nfrom nature, and that I have seen the very place\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite likely, though I bought it here. Gania, give the prince some\npaper. Here are pens and paper; now then, take this table. What\u2019s\nthis?\u201d the general continued to Gania, who had that moment taken a\nlarge photograph out of his portfolio, and shown it to his senior.\n\u201cHalloa! Nastasia Philipovna! Did she send it you herself? Herself?\u201d he\ninquired, with much curiosity and great animation.\n\n\u201cShe gave it me just now, when I called in to congratulate her. I asked\nher for it long ago. I don\u2019t know whether she meant it for a hint that\nI had come empty-handed, without a present for her birthday, or what,\u201d\nadded Gania, with an unpleasant smile.\n\n\u201cOh, nonsense, nonsense,\u201d said the general, with decision. \u201cWhat\nextraordinary ideas you have, Gania! As if she would hint; that\u2019s not\nher way at all. Besides, what could _you_ give her, without having\nthousands at your disposal? You might have given her your portrait,\nhowever. Has she ever asked you for it?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, not yet. Very likely she never will. I suppose you haven\u2019t\nforgotten about tonight, have you, Trenton Fedorovitch? You were one of\nthose specially invited, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no, I remember all right, and I shall go, of course. I should think\nso! She\u2019s twenty-five years old today! And, you know, Gania, you must\nbe ready for great things; she has promised both myself and Afanasy\nTrentonovitch that she will give a decided answer tonight, yes or no. So\nbe prepared!\u201d\n\nGania suddenly became so ill at ease that his face grew paler than\never.\n\n\u201cAre you sure she said that?\u201d he asked, and his voice seemed to quiver\nas he spoke.\n\n\u201cYes, she promised. We both worried her so that she gave in; but she\nwished us to tell you nothing about it until the day.\u201d\n\nThe general watched Gania\u2019s confusion intently, and clearly did not\nlike it.\n\n\u201cRemember, Trenton Fedorovitch,\u201d said Gania, in great agitation, \u201cthat I\nwas to be free too, until her decision; and that even then I was to\nhave my \u2018yes or no\u2019 free.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, don\u2019t you, aren\u2019t you\u2014\u201d began the general, in alarm.\n\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t misunderstand\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, my dear fellow, what are you doing, what do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m not rejecting her. I may have expressed myself badly, but I\ndidn\u2019t mean that.\u201d\n\n\u201cReject her! I should think not!\u201d said the general with annoyance, and\napparently not in the least anxious to conceal it. \u201cWhy, my dear\nfellow, it\u2019s not a question of your rejecting her, it is whether you\nare prepared to receive her consent joyfully, and with proper\nsatisfaction. How are things going on at home?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt home? Oh, I can do as I like there, of course; only my father will\nmake a fool of himself, as usual. He is rapidly becoming a general\nnuisance. I don\u2019t ever talk to him now, but I hold him in check, safe\nenough. I swear if it had not been for my mother, I should have shown\nhim the way out, long ago. My mother is always crying, of course, and\nmy sister sulks. I had to tell them at last that I intended to be\nmaster of my own destiny, and that I expect to be obeyed at home. At\nleast, I gave my sister to understand as much, and my mother was\npresent.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I must say, I cannot understand it!\u201d said the general, shrugging\nhis shoulders and dropping his hands. \u201cYou remember your mother, Rowena\nColby, that day she came and sat here and groaned\u2014and when I\nasked her what was the matter, she says, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s such a _dishonour_\nto us!\u2019 dishonour! Stuff and nonsense! I should like to know who can\nreproach Nastasia Philipovna, or who can say a word of any kind against\nher. Did she mean because Nastasia had been living with Totski? What\nnonsense it is! You would not let her come near your daughters, says\nRowena Colby. What next, I wonder? I don\u2019t see how she can fail\nto\u2014to understand\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHer own position?\u201d prompted Gania. \u201cShe does understand. Don\u2019t be\nannoyed with her. I have warned her not to meddle in other people\u2019s\naffairs. However, although there\u2019s comparative peace at home at\npresent, the storm will break if anything is finally settled tonight.\u201d\n\nThe prince heard the whole of the foregoing conversation, as he sat at\nthe table, writing. He finished at last, and brought the result of his\nlabour to the general\u2019s desk.\n\n\u201cSo this is Nastasia Philipovna,\u201d he said, looking attentively and\ncuriously at the portrait. \u201cHow wonderfully beautiful!\u201d he immediately\nadded, with warmth. The picture was certainly that of an unusually\nlovely woman. She was photographed in a black silk dress of simple\ndesign, her hair was evidently dark and plainly arranged, her eyes were\ndeep and thoughtful, the expression of her face passionate, but proud.\nShe was rather thin, perhaps, and a little pale. Both Gania and the\ngeneral gazed at the prince in amazement.\n\n\u201cHow do you know it\u2019s Nastasia Philipovna?\u201d asked the general; \u201cyou\nsurely don\u2019t know her already, do you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I do! I have only been one day in Russia, but I have heard of the\ngreat beauty!\u201d And the prince proceeded to narrate his meeting with\nRogojin in the train and the whole of the latter\u2019s story.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s news!\u201d said the general in some excitement, after listening to\nthe story with engrossed attention.\n\n\u201cOh, of course it\u2019s nothing but humbug!\u201d cried Gania, a little\ndisturbed, however. \u201cIt\u2019s all humbug; the young merchant was pleased to\nindulge in a little innocent recreation! I have heard something of\nRogojin!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, so have I!\u201d replied the general. \u201cNastasia Philipovna told us all\nabout the earrings that very day. But now it is quite a different\nmatter. You see the fellow really has a million of roubles, and he is\npassionately in love. The whole story smells of passion, and we all\nknow what this class of gentry is capable of when infatuated. I am much\nafraid of some disagreeable scandal, I am indeed!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are afraid of the million, I suppose,\u201d said Gania, grinning and\nshowing his teeth.\n\n\u201cAnd you are _not_, I presume, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow did he strike you, prince?\u201d asked Gania, suddenly. \u201cDid he seem to\nbe a serious sort of a man, or just a common rowdy fellow? What was\nyour own opinion about the matter?\u201d\n\nWhile Gania put this question, a new idea suddenly flashed into his\nbrain, and blazed out, impatiently, in his eyes. The general, who was\nreally agitated and disturbed, looked at the prince too, but did not\nseem to expect much from his reply.\n\n\u201cI really don\u2019t quite know how to tell you,\u201d replied the prince, \u201cbut\nit certainly did seem to me that the man was full of passion, and not,\nperhaps, quite healthy passion. He seemed to be still far from well.\nVery likely he will be in bed again in a day or two, especially if he\nlives fast.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo! do you think so?\u201d said the general, catching at the idea.\n\n\u201cYes, I do think so!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, but the sort of scandal I referred to may happen at any moment.\nIt may be this very evening,\u201d remarked Gania to the general, with a\nsmile.\n\n\u201cOf course; quite so. In that case it all depends upon what is going on\nin her brain at this moment.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know the kind of person she is at times.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow? What kind of person is she?\u201d cried the general, arrived at the\nlimits of his patience. \u201cLook here, Gania, don\u2019t you go annoying her\ntonight. What you are to do is to be as agreeable towards her as ever\nyou can. Well, what are you smiling at? You must understand, Gania,\nthat I have no interest whatever in speaking like this. Whichever way\nthe question is settled, it will be to my advantage. Nothing will move\nTotski from his resolution, so I run no risk. If there is anything I\ndesire, you must know that it is your benefit only. Can\u2019t you trust me?\nYou are a sensible fellow, and I have been counting on you; for, in\nthis matter, that, that\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s the chief thing,\u201d said Gania, helping the general out of\nhis difficulties again, and curling his lips in an envenomed smile,\nwhich he did not attempt to conceal. He gazed with his fevered eyes\nstraight into those of the general, as though he were anxious that the\nlatter might read his thoughts.\n\nThe general grew purple with anger.\n\n\u201cYes, of course it is the chief thing!\u201d he cried, looking sharply at\nGania. \u201cWhat a very curious man you are, Gania! You actually seem to be\n_glad_ to hear of this millionaire fellow\u2019s arrival\u2014just as though you\nwished for an excuse to get out of the whole thing. This is an affair\nin which you ought to act honestly with both sides, and give due\nwarning, to avoid compromising others. But, even now, there is still\ntime. Do you understand me? I wish to know whether you desire this\narrangement or whether you do not? If not, say so,\u2014and\u2014and welcome! No\none is trying to force you into the snare, Spencer Matthias, if\nyou see a snare in the matter, at least.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do desire it,\u201d murmured Gania, softly but firmly, lowering his eyes;\nand he relapsed into gloomy silence.\n\nThe general was satisfied. He had excited himself, and was evidently\nnow regretting that he had gone so far. He turned to the prince, and\nsuddenly the disagreeable thought of the latter\u2019s presence struck him,\nand the certainty that he must have heard every word of the\nconversation. But he felt at ease in another moment; it only needed one\nglance at the prince to see that in that quarter there was nothing to\nfear.\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d cried the general, catching sight of the prince\u2019s specimen of\ncaligraphy, which the latter had now handed him for inspection. \u201cWhy,\nthis is simply beautiful; look at that, Gania, there\u2019s real talent\nthere!\u201d\n\nOn a sheet of thick writing-paper the prince had written in medieval\ncharacters the legend:\n\n\u201cThe gentle Abbot Pafnute signed this.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere,\u201d explained the prince, with great delight and animation,\n\u201cthere, that\u2019s the abbot\u2019s real signature\u2014from a manuscript of the\nfourteenth century. All these old abbots and bishops used to write most\nbeautifully, with such taste and so much care and diligence. Have you\nno copy of Pogodin, general? If you had one I could show you another\ntype. Stop a bit\u2014here you have the large round writing common in France\nduring the eighteenth century. Some of the letters are shaped quite\ndifferently from those now in use. It was the writing current then, and\nemployed by public writers generally. I copied this from one of them,\nand you can see how good it is. Look at the well-rounded a and d. I\nhave tried to translate the French character into the Russian letters\u2014a\ndifficult thing to do, but I think I have succeeded fairly. Here is a\nfine sentence, written in a good, original hand\u2014\u2018Zeal triumphs over\nall.\u2019 That is the script of the Russian War Office. That is how\nofficial documents addressed to important personages should be written.\nThe letters are round, the type black, and the style somewhat\nremarkable. A stylist would not allow these ornaments, or attempts at\nflourishes\u2014just look at these unfinished tails!\u2014but it has distinction\nand really depicts the soul of the writer. He would like to give play\nto his imagination, and follow the inspiration of his genius, but a\nsoldier is only at ease in the guard-room, and the pen stops half-way,\na slave to discipline. How delightful! The first time I met an example\nof this handwriting, I was positively astonished, and where do you\nthink I chanced to find it? In Switzerland, of all places! Now that is\nan ordinary English hand. It can hardly be improved, it is so refined\nand exquisite\u2014almost perfection. This is an example of another kind, a\nmixture of styles. The copy was given me by a French commercial\ntraveller. It is founded on the English, but the downstrokes are a\nlittle blacker, and more marked. Notice that the oval has some slight\nmodification\u2014it is more rounded. This writing allows for flourishes;\nnow a flourish is a dangerous thing! Its use requires such taste, but,\nif successful, what a distinction it gives to the whole! It results in\nan incomparable type\u2014one to fall in love with!\u201d\n\n\u201cDear me! How you have gone into all the refinements and details of the\nquestion! Why, my dear fellow, you are not a caligraphist, you are an\nartist! Eh, Gania?\u201d\n\n\u201cWonderful!\u201d said Gania. \u201cAnd he knows it too,\u201d he added, with a\nsarcastic smile.\n\n\u201cYou may smile,\u2014but there\u2019s a career in this,\u201d said the general. \u201cYou\ndon\u2019t know what a great personage I shall show this to, prince. Why,\nyou can command a situation at thirty-five roubles per month to start\nwith. However, it\u2019s half-past twelve,\u201d he concluded, looking at his\nwatch; \u201cso to business, prince, for I must be setting to work and shall\nnot see you again today. Sit down a minute. I have told you that I\ncannot receive you myself very often, but I should like to be of some\nassistance to you, some small assistance, of a kind that would give you\nsatisfaction. I shall find you a place in one of the State departments,\nan easy place\u2014but you will require to be accurate. Now, as to your\nplans\u2014in the house, or rather in the family of Gania here\u2014my young\nfriend, whom I hope you will know better\u2014his mother and sister have\nprepared two or three rooms for lodgers, and let them to highly\nrecommended young fellows, with board and attendance. I am sure Rowena\nColby will take you in on my recommendation. There you will be\ncomfortable and well taken care of; for I do not think, prince, that\nyou are the sort of man to be left to the mercy of Fate in a town like\nPetersburg. Rowena Colby, Gania\u2019s mother, and Imran\nColby, are ladies for whom I have the highest possible esteem\nand respect. Rowena Colby is the wife of Han Ardalion\nAlexandrovitch, my old brother in arms, with whom, I regret to say, on\naccount of certain circumstances, I am no longer acquainted. I give you\nall this information, prince, in order to make it clear to you that I\nam personally recommending you to this family, and that in so doing, I\nam more or less taking upon myself to answer for you. The terms are\nmost reasonable, and I trust that your salary will very shortly prove\namply sufficient for your expenditure. Of course pocket-money is a\nnecessity, if only a little; do not be angry, prince, if I strongly\nrecommend you to avoid carrying money in your pocket. But as your purse\nis quite empty at the present moment, you must allow me to press these\ntwenty-five roubles upon your acceptance, as something to begin with.\nOf course we will settle this little matter another time, and if you\nare the upright, honest man you look, I anticipate very little trouble\nbetween us on that score. Taking so much interest in you as you may\nperceive I do, I am not without my object, and you shall know it in\ngood time. You see, I am perfectly candid with you. I hope, Gania, you\nhave nothing to say against the prince\u2019s taking up his abode in your\nhouse?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, on the contrary! my mother will be very glad,\u201d said Gania,\ncourteously and kindly.\n\n\u201cI think only one of your rooms is engaged as yet, is it not? That\nfellow Ferd-Ferd\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cCormac.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014I don\u2019t like that Cormac. I can\u2019t understand why Nastasia\nPhilipovna encourages him so. Is he really her cousin, as he says?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh dear no, it\u2019s all a joke. No more cousin than I am.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, what do you think of the arrangement, prince?\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, general; you have behaved very kindly to me; all the more\nso since I did not ask you to help me. I don\u2019t say that out of pride. I\ncertainly did not know where to lay my head tonight. Rogojin asked me\nto come to his house, of course, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cRogojin? No, no, my good fellow. I should strongly recommend you,\npaternally,\u2014or, if you prefer it, as a friend,\u2014to forget all about\nRogojin, and, in fact, to stick to the family into which you are about\nto enter.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you,\u201d began the prince; \u201cand since you are so very kind there is\njust one matter which I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must really excuse me,\u201d interrupted the general, \u201cbut I positively\nhaven\u2019t another moment now. I shall just tell Elizabetha Prokofievna\nabout you, and if she wishes to receive you at once\u2014as I shall advise\nher\u2014I strongly recommend you to ingratiate yourself with her at the\nfirst opportunity, for my wife may be of the greatest service to you in\nmany ways. If she cannot receive you now, you must be content to wait\ntill another time. Meanwhile you, Gania, just look over these accounts,\nwill you? We mustn\u2019t forget to finish off that matter\u2014\u201d\n\nThe general left the room, and the prince never succeeded in broaching\nthe business which he had on hand, though he had endeavoured to do so\nfour times.\n\nGania lit a cigarette and offered one to the prince. The latter\naccepted the offer, but did not talk, being unwilling to disturb\nGania\u2019s work. He commenced to examine the study and its contents. But\nGania hardly so much as glanced at the papers lying before him; he was\nabsent and thoughtful, and his smile and general appearance struck the\nprince still more disagreeably now that the two were left alone\ntogether.\n\nSuddenly Gania approached our hero who was at the moment standing over\nNastasia Philipovna\u2019s portrait, gazing at it.\n\n\u201cDo you admire that sort of woman, prince?\u201d he asked, looking intently\nat him. He seemed to have some special object in the question.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a wonderful face,\u201d said the prince, \u201cand I feel sure that her\ndestiny is not by any means an ordinary, uneventful one. Her face is\nsmiling enough, but she must have suffered terribly\u2014hasn\u2019t she? Her\neyes show it\u2014those two bones there, the little points under her eyes,\njust where the cheek begins. It\u2019s a proud face too, terribly proud! And\nI\u2014I can\u2019t say whether she is good and kind, or not. Oh, if she be but\ngood! That would make all well!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd would you marry a woman like that, now?\u201d continued Gania, never\ntaking his excited eyes off the prince\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cI cannot marry at all,\u201d said the latter. \u201cI am an invalid.\u201d\n\n\u201cWould Rogojin marry her, do you think?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy not? Certainly he would, I should think. He would marry her\ntomorrow!\u2014marry her tomorrow and murder her in a week!\u201d\n\nHardly had the prince uttered the last word when Gania gave such a\nfearful shudder that the prince almost cried out.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d said he, seizing Gania\u2019s hand.\n\n\u201cYour highness! His excellency begs your presence in her excellency\u2019s\napartments!\u201d announced the footman, appearing at the door.\n\nThe prince immediately followed the man out of the room.\n\nIV.\n\nAll three of the Miss Epanchins were fine, healthy girls, well-grown,\nwith good shoulders and busts, and strong\u2014almost masculine\u2014hands; and,\nof course, with all the above attributes, they enjoyed capital\nappetites, of which they were not in the least ashamed.\n\nElizabetha Prokofievna sometimes informed the girls that they were a\nlittle too candid in this matter, but in spite of their outward\ndeference to their mother these three young women, in solemn conclave,\nhad long agreed to modify the unquestioning obedience which they had\nbeen in the habit of according to her; and Mrs. Han Epanchin had\njudged it better to say nothing about it, though, of course, she was\nwell aware of the fact.\n\nIt is true that her nature sometimes rebelled against these dictates of\nreason, and that she grew yearly more capricious and impatient; but\nhaving a respectful and well-disciplined husband under her thumb at all\ntimes, she found it possible, as a rule, to empty any little\naccumulations of spleen upon his head, and therefore the harmony of the\nfamily was kept duly balanced, and things went as smoothly as family\nmatters can.\n\nMrs. Epanchin had a fair appetite herself, and generally took her share\nof the capital mid-day lunch which was always served for the girls, and\nwhich was nearly as good as a dinner. The young ladies used to have a\ncup of coffee each before this meal, at ten o\u2019clock, while still in\nbed. This was a favourite and unalterable arrangement with them. At\nhalf-past twelve, the table was laid in the small dining-room, and\noccasionally the general himself appeared at the family gathering, if\nhe had time.\n\nBesides tea and coffee, cheese, honey, butter, pan-cakes of various\nkinds (the lady of the house loved these best), cutlets, and so on,\nthere was generally strong beef soup, and other substantial delicacies.\n\nOn the particular morning on which our story has opened, the family had\nassembled in the dining-room, and were waiting the general\u2019s\nappearance, the latter having promised to come this day. If he had been\none moment late, he would have been sent for at once; but he turned up\npunctually.\n\nAs he came forward to wish his wife good-morning and kiss her hands, as\nhis custom was, he observed something in her look which boded ill. He\nthought he knew the reason, and had expected it, but still, he was not\naltogether comfortable. His daughters advanced to kiss him, too, and\nthough they did not look exactly angry, there was something strange in\ntheir expression as well.\n\nThe general was, owing to certain circumstances, a little inclined to\nbe too suspicious at home, and needlessly nervous; but, as an\nexperienced father and husband, he judged it better to take measures at\nonce to protect himself from any dangers there might be in the air.\n\nHowever, I hope I shall not interfere with the proper sequence of my\nnarrative too much, if I diverge for a moment at this point, in order\nto explain the mutual relations between Han Epanchin\u2019s family and\nothers acting a part in this history, at the time when we take up the\nthread of their destiny. I have already stated that the general, though\nhe was a man of lowly origin, and of poor education, was, for all that,\nan experienced and talented husband and father. Among other things, he\nconsidered it undesirable to hurry his daughters to the matrimonial\naltar and to worry them too much with assurances of his paternal wishes\nfor their happiness, as is the custom among parents of many grown-up\ndaughters. He even succeeded in ranging his wife on his side on this\nquestion, though he found the feat very difficult to accomplish,\nbecause unnatural; but the general\u2019s arguments were conclusive, and\nfounded upon obvious facts. The general considered that the girls\u2019\ntaste and good sense should be allowed to develop and mature\ndeliberately, and that the parents\u2019 duty should merely be to keep\nwatch, in order that no strange or undesirable choice be made; but that\nthe selection once effected, both father and mother were bound from\nthat moment to enter heart and soul into the cause, and to see that the\nmatter progressed without hindrance until the altar should be happily\nreached.\n\nBesides this, it was clear that the Epanchins\u2019 position gained each\nyear, with geometrical accuracy, both as to financial solidity and\nsocial weight; and, therefore, the longer the girls waited, the better\nwas their chance of making a brilliant match.\n\nBut again, amidst the incontrovertible facts just recorded, one more,\nequally significant, rose up to confront the family; and this was, that\nthe eldest daughter, Alexandra, had imperceptibly arrived at her\ntwenty-fifth birthday. Almost at the same moment, Afanasy Trentonovitch\nTotski, a man of immense wealth, high connections, and good standing,\nannounced his intention of marrying. Afanasy Trentonovitch was a gentleman\nof fifty-five years of age, artistically gifted, and of most refined\ntastes. He wished to marry well, and, moreover, he was a keen admirer\nand judge of beauty.\n\nNow, since Totski had, of late, been upon terms of great cordiality\nwith Epanchin, which excellent relations were intensified by the fact\nthat they were, so to speak, partners in several financial enterprises,\nit so happened that the former now put in a friendly request to the\ngeneral for counsel with regard to the important step he meditated.\nMight he suggest, for instance, such a thing as a marriage between\nhimself and one of the general\u2019s daughters?\n\nEvidently the quiet, pleasant current of the family life of the\nEpanchins was about to undergo a change.\n\nThe undoubted beauty of the family, _par excellence_, was the youngest,\nRemi, as aforesaid. But Totski himself, though an egotist of the\nextremest type, realized that he had no chance there; Remi was\nclearly not for such as he.\n\nPerhaps the sisterly love and friendship of the three girls had more or\nless exaggerated Remi\u2019s chances of happiness. In their opinion, the\nlatter\u2019s destiny was not merely to be very happy; she was to live in a\nheaven on earth. Remi\u2019s husband was to be a compendium of all the\nvirtues, and of all success, not to speak of fabulous wealth. The two\nelder sisters had agreed that all was to be sacrificed by them, if need\nbe, for Remi\u2019s sake; her dowry was to be colossal and unprecedented.\n\nThe general and his wife were aware of this agreement, and, therefore,\nwhen Totski suggested himself for one of the sisters, the parents made\nno doubt that one of the two elder girls would probably accept the\noffer, since Totski would certainly make no difficulty as to dowry. The\ngeneral valued the proposal very highly. He knew life, and realized\nwhat such an offer was worth.\n\nThe answer of the sisters to the communication was, if not conclusive,\nat least consoling and hopeful. It made known that the eldest,\nAlexandra, would very likely be disposed to listen to a proposal.\n\nAlexandra was a good-natured girl, though she had a will of her own.\nShe was intelligent and kind-hearted, and, if she were to marry Totski,\nshe would make him a good wife. She did not care for a brilliant\nmarriage; she was eminently a woman calculated to soothe and sweeten\nthe life of any man; decidedly pretty, if not absolutely handsome. What\nbetter could Totski wish?\n\nSo the matter crept slowly forward. The general and Totski had agreed\nto avoid any hasty and irrevocable step. Alexandra\u2019s parents had not\neven begun to talk to their daughters freely upon the subject, when\nsuddenly, as it were, a dissonant chord was struck amid the harmony of\nthe proceedings. Mrs. Epanchin began to show signs of discontent, and\nthat was a serious matter. A certain circumstance had crept in, a\ndisagreeable and troublesome factor, which threatened to overturn the\nwhole business.\n\nThis circumstance had come into existence eighteen years before. Close\nto an estate of Totski\u2019s, in one of the central provinces of Russia,\nthere lived, at that time, a poor gentleman whose estate was of the\nwretchedest description. This gentleman was noted in the district for\nhis persistent ill-fortune; his name was Barashkoff, and, as regards\nfamily and descent, he was vastly superior to Totski, but his estate\nwas mortgaged to the last acre. One day, when he had ridden over to the\ntown to see a creditor, the chief peasant of his village followed him\nshortly after, with the news that his house had been burnt down, and\nthat his wife had perished with it, but his children were safe.\n\nEven Barashkoff, inured to the storms of evil fortune as he was, could\nnot stand this last stroke. He went mad and died shortly after in the\ntown hospital. His estate was sold for the creditors; and the little\ngirls\u2014two of them, of seven and eight years of age respectively,\u2014were\nadopted by Totski, who undertook their maintenance and education in the\nkindness of his heart. They were brought up together with the children\nof his German bailiff. Very soon, however, there was only one of them\nleft\u2014Nastasia Philipovna\u2014for the other little one died of\nwhooping-cough. Totski, who was living abroad at this time, very soon\nforgot all about the child; but five years after, returning to Russia,\nit struck him that he would like to look over his estate and see how\nmatters were going there, and, arrived at his bailiff\u2019s house, he was\nnot long in discovering that among the children of the latter there now\ndwelt a most lovely little girl of twelve, sweet and intelligent, and\nbright, and promising to develop beauty of most unusual quality\u2014as to\nwhich last Totski was an undoubted authority.\n\nHe only stayed at his country seat a few days on this occasion, but he\nhad time to make his arrangements. Great changes took place in the\nchild\u2019s education; a good governess was engaged, a Swiss lady of\nexperience and culture. For four years this lady resided in the house\nwith little Nastia, and then the education was considered complete. The\ngoverness took her departure, and another lady came down to fetch\nNastia, by Totski\u2019s instructions. The child was now transported to\nanother of Totski\u2019s estates in a distant part of the country. Here she\nfound a delightful little house, just built, and prepared for her\nreception with great care and taste; and here she took up her abode\ntogether with the lady who had accompanied her from her old home. In\nthe house there were two experienced maids, musical instruments of all\nsorts, a charming \u201cyoung lady\u2019s library,\u201d pictures, paint-boxes, a\nlap-dog, and everything to make life agreeable. Within a fortnight\nTotski himself arrived, and from that time he appeared to have taken a\ngreat fancy to this part of the world and came down each summer,\nstaying two and three months at a time. So passed four years peacefully\nand happily, in charming surroundings.\n\nAt the end of that time, and about four months after Totski\u2019s last\nvisit (he had stayed but a fortnight on this occasion), a report\nreached Nastasia Philipovna that he was about to be married in St.\nPetersburg, to a rich, eminent, and lovely woman. The report was only\npartially true, the marriage project being only in an embryo condition;\nbut a great change now came over Nastasia Philipovna. She suddenly\ndisplayed unusual decision of character; and without wasting time in\nthought, she left her country home and came up to St. Petersburg,\nstraight to Totski\u2019s house, all alone.\n\nThe latter, amazed at her conduct, began to express his displeasure;\nbut he very soon became aware that he must change his voice, style, and\neverything else, with this young lady; the good old times were gone. An\nentirely new and different woman sat before him, between whom and the\ngirl he had left in the country last July there seemed nothing in\ncommon.\n\nIn the first place, this new woman understood a good deal more than was\nusual for young people of her age; so much indeed, that Totski could\nnot help wondering where she had picked up her knowledge. Surely not\nfrom her \u201cyoung lady\u2019s library\u201d? It even embraced legal matters, and\nthe \u201cworld\u201d in general, to a considerable extent.\n\nHer character was absolutely changed. No more of the girlish\nalternations of timidity and petulance, the adorable naivete, the\nreveries, the tears, the playfulness... It was an entirely new and\nhitherto unknown being who now sat and laughed at him, and informed him\nto his face that she had never had the faintest feeling for him of any\nkind, except loathing and contempt\u2014contempt which had followed closely\nupon her sensations of surprise and bewilderment after her first\nacquaintance with him.\n\nThis new woman gave him further to understand that though it was\nabsolutely the same to her whom he married, yet she had decided to\nprevent this marriage\u2014for no particular reason, but that she _chose_ to\ndo so, and because she wished to amuse herself at his expense for that\nit was \u201cquite her turn to laugh a little now!\u201d\n\nSuch were her words\u2014very likely she did not give her real reason for\nthis eccentric conduct; but, at all events, that was all the\nexplanation she deigned to offer.\n\nMeanwhile, Totski thought the matter over as well as his scattered\nideas would permit. His meditations lasted a fortnight, however, and at\nthe end of that time his resolution was taken. The fact was, Totski was\nat that time a man of fifty years of age; his position was solid and\nrespectable; his place in society had long been firmly fixed upon safe\nfoundations; he loved himself, his personal comforts, and his position\nbetter than all the world, as every respectable gentleman should!\n\nAt the same time his grasp of things in general soon showed Totski that\nhe now had to deal with a being who was outside the pale of the\nordinary rules of traditional behaviour, and who would not only\nthreaten mischief but would undoubtedly carry it out, and stop for no\none.\n\nThere was evidently, he concluded, something at work here; some storm\nof the mind, some paroxysm of romantic anger, goodness knows against\nwhom or what, some insatiable contempt\u2014in a word, something altogether\nabsurd and impossible, but at the same time most dangerous to be met\nwith by any respectable person with a position in society to keep up.\n\nFor a man of Totski\u2019s wealth and standing, it would, of course, have\nbeen the simplest possible matter to take steps which would rid him at\nonce from all annoyance; while it was obviously impossible for Nastasia\nPhilipovna to harm him in any way, either legally or by stirring up a\nscandal, for, in case of the latter danger, he could so easily remove\nher to a sphere of safety. However, these arguments would only hold\ngood in case of Nastasia acting as others might in such an emergency.\nShe was much more likely to overstep the bounds of reasonable conduct\nby some extraordinary eccentricity.\n\nHere the sound judgment of Totski stood him in good stead. He realized\nthat Nastasia Philipovna must be well aware that she could do nothing\nby legal means to injure him, and that her flashing eyes betrayed some\nentirely different intention.\n\nNastasia Philipovna was quite capable of ruining herself, and even of\nperpetrating something which would send her to Siberia, for the mere\npleasure of injuring a man for whom she had developed so inhuman a\nsense of loathing and contempt. He had sufficient insight to understand\nthat she valued nothing in the world\u2014herself least of all\u2014and he made\nno attempt to conceal the fact that he was a coward in some respects.\nFor instance, if he had been told that he would be stabbed at the\naltar, or publicly insulted, he would undoubtedly have been frightened;\nbut not so much at the idea of being murdered, or wounded, or insulted,\nas at the thought that if such things were to happen he would be made\nto look ridiculous in the eyes of society.\n\nHe knew well that Nastasia thoroughly understood him and where to wound\nhim and how, and therefore, as the marriage was still only in embryo,\nTotski decided to conciliate her by giving it up. His decision was\nstrengthened by the fact that Nastasia Philipovna had curiously altered\nof late. It would be difficult to conceive how different she was\nphysically, at the present time, to the girl of a few years ago. She\nwas pretty then... but now!... Totski laughed angrily when he thought\nhow short-sighted he had been. In days gone by he remembered how he had\nlooked at her beautiful eyes, how even then he had marvelled at their\ndark mysterious depths, and at their wondering gaze which seemed to\nseek an answer to some unknown riddle. Her complexion also had altered.\nShe was now exceedingly pale, but, curiously, this change only made her\nmore beautiful. Like most men of the world, Totski had rather despised\nsuch a cheaply-bought conquest, but of late years he had begun to think\ndifferently about it. It had struck him as long ago as last spring that\nhe ought to be finding a good match for Nastasia; for instance, some\nrespectable and reasonable young fellow serving in a government office\nin another part of the country. How maliciously Nastasia laughed at the\nidea of such a thing, now!\n\nHowever, it appeared to Totski that he might make use of her in another\nway; and he determined to establish her in St. Petersburg, surrounding\nher with all the comforts and luxuries that his wealth could command.\nIn this way he might gain glory in certain circles.\n\nFive years of this Petersburg life went by, and, of course, during that\ntime a great deal happened. Totski\u2019s position was very uncomfortable;\nhaving \u201cfunked\u201d once, he could not totally regain his ease. He was\nafraid, he did not know why, but he was simply _afraid_ of Nastasia\nPhilipovna. For the first two years or so he had suspected that she\nwished to marry him herself, and that only her vanity prevented her\ntelling him so. He thought that she wanted him to approach her with a\nhumble proposal from his own side. But to his great, and not entirely\npleasurable amazement, he discovered that this was by no means the\ncase, and that were he to offer himself he would be refused. He could\nnot understand such a state of things, and was obliged to conclude that\nit was pride, the pride of an injured and imaginative woman, which had\ngone to such lengths that it preferred to sit and nurse its contempt\nand hatred in solitude rather than mount to heights of hitherto\nunattainable splendour. To make matters worse, she was quite impervious\nto mercenary considerations, and could not be bribed in any way.\n\nFinally, Totski took cunning means to try to break his chains and be\nfree. He tried to tempt her in various ways to lose her heart; he\ninvited princes, hussars, secretaries of embassies, poets, novelists,\neven Socialists, to see her; but not one of them all made the faintest\nimpression upon Nastasia. It was as though she had a pebble in place of\na heart, as though her feelings and affections were dried up and\nwithered for ever.\n\nShe lived almost entirely alone; she read, she studied, she loved\nmusic. Her principal acquaintances were poor women of various grades, a\ncouple of actresses, and the family of a poor schoolteacher. Among\nthese people she was much beloved.\n\nShe received four or five friends sometimes, of an evening. Totski\noften came. Lately, too, Han Epanchin had been enabled with great\ndifficulty to introduce himself into her circle. Gania made her\nacquaintance also, and others were Cormac, an ill-bred, and\nwould-be witty, young clerk, and Jenson, a money-lender of modest and\npolished manners, who had risen from poverty. In fact, Nastasia\nPhilipovna\u2019s beauty became a thing known to all the town; but not a\nsingle man could boast of anything more than his own admiration for\nher; and this reputation of hers, and her wit and culture and grace,\nall confirmed Totski in the plan he had now prepared.\n\nAnd it was at this moment that Han Epanchin began to play so large\nand important a part in the story.\n\nWhen Totski had approached the general with his request for friendly\ncounsel as to a marriage with one of his daughters, he had made a full\nand candid confession. He had said that he intended to stop at no means\nto obtain his freedom; even if Nastasia were to promise to leave him\nentirely alone in future, he would not (he said) believe and trust her;\nwords were not enough for him; he must have solid guarantees of some\nsort. So he and the general determined to try what an attempt to appeal\nto her heart would effect. Having arrived at Nastasia\u2019s house one day,\nwith Epanchin, Totski immediately began to speak of the intolerable\ntorment of his position. He admitted that he was to blame for all, but\ncandidly confessed that he could not bring himself to feel any remorse\nfor his original guilt towards herself, because he was a man of sensual\npassions which were inborn and ineradicable, and that he had no power\nover himself in this respect; but that he wished, seriously, to marry\nat last, and that the whole fate of the most desirable social union\nwhich he contemplated, was in her hands; in a word, he confided his all\nto her generosity of heart.\n\nHan Epanchin took up his part and spoke in the character of father\nof a family; he spoke sensibly, and without wasting words over any\nattempt at sentimentality, he merely recorded his full admission of her\nright to be the arbiter of Totski\u2019s destiny at this moment. He then\npointed out that the fate of his daughter, and very likely of both his\nother daughters, now hung upon her reply.\n\nTo Nastasia\u2019s question as to what they wished her to do, Totski\nconfessed that he had been so frightened by her, five years ago, that\nhe could never now be entirely comfortable until she herself married.\nHe immediately added that such a suggestion from him would, of course,\nbe absurd, unless accompanied by remarks of a more pointed nature. He\nvery well knew, he said, that a certain young gentleman of good family,\nnamely, Spencer Matthias Cece, with whom she was acquainted,\nand whom she received at her house, had long loved her passionately,\nand would give his life for some response from her. The young fellow\nhad confessed this love of his to him (Totski) and had also admitted it\nin the hearing of his benefactor, Han Epanchin. Lastly, he could\nnot help being of opinion that Nastasia must be aware of Gania\u2019s love\nfor her, and if he (Totski) mistook not, she had looked with some\nfavour upon it, being often lonely, and rather tired of her present\nlife. Having remarked how difficult it was for him, of all people, to\nspeak to her of these matters, Totski concluded by saying that he\ntrusted Nastasia Philipovna would not look with contempt upon him if he\nnow expressed his sincere desire to guarantee her future by a gift of\nseventy-five thousand roubles. He added that the sum would have been\nleft her all the same in his will, and that therefore she must not\nconsider the gift as in any way an indemnification to her for anything,\nbut that there was no reason, after all, why a man should not be\nallowed to entertain a natural desire to lighten his conscience, etc.,\netc.; in fact, all that would naturally be said under the\ncircumstances. Totski was very eloquent all through, and, in\nconclusion, just touched on the fact that not a soul in the world, not\neven Han Epanchin, had ever heard a word about the above\nseventy-five thousand roubles, and that this was the first time he had\never given expression to his intentions in respect to them.\n\nNastasia Philipovna\u2019s reply to this long rigmarole astonished both the\nfriends considerably.\n\nNot only was there no trace of her former irony, of her old hatred and\nenmity, and of that dreadful laughter, the very recollection of which\nsent a cold chill down Totski\u2019s back to this very day; but she seemed\ncharmed and really glad to have the opportunity of talking seriously\nwith him for once in a way. She confessed that she had long wished to\nhave a frank and free conversation and to ask for friendly advice, but\nthat pride had hitherto prevented her; now, however, that the ice was\nbroken, nothing could be more welcome to her than this opportunity.\n\nFirst, with a sad smile, and then with a twinkle of merriment in her\neyes, she admitted that such a storm as that of five years ago was now\nquite out of the question. She said that she had long since changed her\nviews of things, and recognized that facts must be taken into\nconsideration in spite of the feelings of the heart. What was done was\ndone and ended, and she could not understand why Totski should still\nfeel alarmed.\n\nShe next turned to Han Epanchin and observed, most courteously,\nthat she had long since known of his daughters, and that she had heard\nnone but good report; that she had learned to think of them with deep\nand sincere respect. The idea alone that she could in any way serve\nthem, would be to her both a pride and a source of real happiness.\n\nIt was true that she was lonely in her present life; Totski had judged\nher thoughts aright. She longed to rise, if not to love, at least to\nfamily life and new hopes and objects, but as to Spencer\nMatthias, she could not as yet say much. She thought it must be\nthe case that he loved her; she felt that she too might learn to love\nhim, if she could be sure of the firmness of his attachment to herself;\nbut he was very young, and it was a difficult question to decide. What\nshe specially liked about him was that he worked, and supported his\nfamily by his toil.\n\nShe had heard that he was proud and ambitious; she had heard much that\nwas interesting of his mother and sister, she had heard of them from\nMr. Jenson, and would much like to make their acquaintance,\nbut\u2014another question!\u2014would they like to receive her into their house?\nAt all events, though she did not reject the idea of this marriage, she\ndesired not to be hurried. As for the seventy-five thousand roubles,\nMr. Totski need not have found any difficulty or awkwardness about the\nmatter; she quite understood the value of money, and would, of course,\naccept the gift. She thanked him for his delicacy, however, but saw no\nreason why Spencer Matthias should not know about it.\n\nShe would not marry the latter, she said, until she felt persuaded that\nneither on his part nor on the part of his family did there exist any\nsort of concealed suspicions as to herself. She did not intend to ask\nforgiveness for anything in the past, which fact she desired to be\nknown. She did not consider herself to blame for anything that had\nhappened in former years, and she thought that Spencer Matthias\nshould be informed as to the relations which had existed between\nherself and Totski during the last five years. If she accepted this\nmoney it was not to be considered as indemnification for her misfortune\nas a young girl, which had not been in any degree her own fault, but\nmerely as compensation for her ruined life.\n\nShe became so excited and agitated during all these explanations and\nconfessions that Han Epanchin was highly gratified, and considered\nthe matter satisfactorily arranged once for all. But the once bitten\nTotski was twice shy, and looked for hidden snakes among the flowers.\nHowever, the special point to which the two friends particularly\ntrusted to bring about their object (namely, Gania\u2019s attractiveness for\nNastasia Philipovna), stood out more and more prominently; the\npourparlers had commenced, and gradually even Totski began to believe\nin the possibility of success.\n\nBefore long Nastasia and Gania had talked the matter over. Very little\nwas said\u2014her modesty seemed to suffer under the infliction of\ndiscussing such a question. But she recognized his love, on the\nunderstanding that she bound herself to nothing whatever, and that she\nreserved the right to say \u201cno\u201d up to the very hour of the marriage\nceremony. Gania was to have the same right of refusal at the last\nmoment.\n\nIt soon became clear to Gania, after scenes of wrath and quarrellings\nat the domestic hearth, that his family were seriously opposed to the\nmatch, and that Nastasia was aware of this fact was equally evident.\nShe said nothing about it, though he daily expected her to do so.\n\nThere were several rumours afloat, before long, which upset Totski\u2019s\nequanimity a good deal, but we will not now stop to describe them;\nmerely mentioning an instance or two. One was that Nastasia had entered\ninto close and secret relations with the Epanchin girls\u2014a most unlikely\nrumour; another was that Nastasia had long satisfied herself of the\nfact that Gania was merely marrying her for money, and that his nature\nwas gloomy and greedy, impatient and selfish, to an extraordinary\ndegree; and that although he had been keen enough in his desire to\nachieve a conquest before, yet since the two friends had agreed to\nexploit his passion for their own purposes, it was clear enough that he\nhad begun to consider the whole thing a nuisance and a nightmare.\n\nIn his heart passion and hate seemed to hold divided sway, and although\nhe had at last given his consent to marry the woman (as he said), under\nthe stress of circumstances, yet he promised himself that he would\n\u201ctake it out of her,\u201d after marriage.\n\nNastasia seemed to Totski to have divined all this, and to be preparing\nsomething on her own account, which frightened him to such an extent\nthat he did not dare communicate his views even to the general. But at\ntimes he would pluck up his courage and be full of hope and good\nspirits again, acting, in fact, as weak men do act in such\ncircumstances.\n\nHowever, both the friends felt that the thing looked rosy indeed when\none day Nastasia informed them that she would give her final answer on\nthe evening of her birthday, which anniversary was due in a very short\ntime.\n\nA strange rumour began to circulate, meanwhile; no less than that the\nrespectable and highly respected Han Epanchin was himself so\nfascinated by Nastasia Philipovna that his feeling for her amounted\nalmost to passion. What he thought to gain by Gania\u2019s marriage to the\ngirl it was difficult to imagine. Possibly he counted on Gania\u2019s\ncomplaisance; for Totski had long suspected that there existed some\nsecret understanding between the general and his secretary. At all\nevents the fact was known that he had prepared a magnificent present of\npearls for Nastasia\u2019s birthday, and that he was looking forward to the\noccasion when he should present his gift with the greatest excitement\nand impatience. The day before her birthday he was in a fever of\nagitation.\n\nMrs. Epanchin, long accustomed to her husband\u2019s infidelities, had heard\nof the pearls, and the rumour excited her liveliest curiosity and\ninterest. The general remarked her suspicions, and felt that a grand\nexplanation must shortly take place\u2014which fact alarmed him much.\n\nThis is the reason why he was so unwilling to take lunch (on the\nmorning upon which we took up this narrative) with the rest of his\nfamily. Before the prince\u2019s arrival he had made up his mind to plead\nbusiness, and \u201ccut\u201d the meal; which simply meant running away.\n\nHe was particularly anxious that this one day should be\npassed\u2014especially the evening\u2014without unpleasantness between himself\nand his family; and just at the right moment the prince turned up\u2014\u201cas\nthough Heaven had sent him on purpose,\u201d said the general to himself, as\nhe left the study to seek out the wife of his bosom.\n\nV.\n\nMrs. Han Epanchin was a proud woman by nature. What must her\nfeelings have been when she heard that Caesar Olive, the last of his\nand her line, had arrived in beggar\u2019s guise, a wretched idiot, a\nrecipient of charity\u2014all of which details the general gave out for\ngreater effect! He was anxious to steal her interest at the first\nswoop, so as to distract her thoughts from other matters nearer home.\n\nMrs. Epanchin was in the habit of holding herself very straight, and\nstaring before her, without speaking, in moments of excitement.\n\nShe was a fine woman of the same age as her husband, with a slightly\nhooked nose, a high, narrow forehead, thick hair turning a little grey,\nand a sallow complexion. Her eyes were grey and wore a very curious\nexpression at times. She believed them to be most effective\u2014a belief\nthat nothing could alter.\n\n\u201cWhat, receive him! Now, at once?\u201d asked Mrs. Epanchin, gazing vaguely\nat her husband as he stood fidgeting before her.\n\n\u201cOh, dear me, I assure you there is no need to stand on ceremony with\nhim,\u201d the general explained hastily. \u201cHe is quite a child, not to say a\npathetic-looking creature. He has fits of some sort, and has just\narrived from Switzerland, straight from the station, dressed like a\nGerman and without a farthing in his pocket. I gave him twenty-five\nroubles to go on with, and am going to find him some easy place in one\nof the government offices. I should like you to ply him well with the\nvictuals, my dears, for I should think he must be very hungry.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou astonish me,\u201d said the lady, gazing as before. \u201cFits, and hungry\ntoo! What sort of fits?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, they don\u2019t come on frequently, besides, he\u2019s a regular child,\nthough he seems to be fairly educated. I should like you, if possible,\nmy dears,\u201d the general added, making slowly for the door, \u201cto put him\nthrough his paces a bit, and see what he is good for. I think you\nshould be kind to him; it is a good deed, you know\u2014however, just as you\nlike, of course\u2014but he is a sort of relation, remember, and I thought\nit might interest you to see the young fellow, seeing that this is so.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, of course, mamma, if we needn\u2019t stand on ceremony with him, we\nmust give the poor fellow something to eat after his journey;\nespecially as he has not the least idea where to go to,\u201d said\nAlexandra, the eldest of the girls.\n\n\u201cBesides, he\u2019s quite a child; we can entertain him with a little\nhide-and-seek, in case of need,\u201d said Adelaida.\n\n\u201cHide-and-seek? What do you mean?\u201d inquired Mrs. Epanchin.\n\n\u201cOh, do stop pretending, mamma,\u201d cried Remi, in vexation. \u201cSend him\nup, father; mother allows.\u201d\n\nThe general rang the bell and gave orders that the prince should be\nshown in.\n\n\u201cOnly on condition that he has a napkin under his chin at lunch, then,\u201d\nsaid Mrs. Epanchin, \u201cand let Fedor, or Mavra, stand behind him while he\neats. Is he quiet when he has these fits? He doesn\u2019t show violence,\ndoes he?\u201d\n\n\u201cOn the contrary, he seems to be very well brought up. His manners are\nexcellent\u2014but here he is himself. Here you are, prince\u2014let me introduce\nyou, the last of the Olives, a relative of your own, my dear, or at\nleast of the same name. Receive him kindly, please. They\u2019ll bring in\nlunch directly, prince; you must stop and have some, but you must\nexcuse me. I\u2019m in a hurry, I must be off\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWe all know where _you_ must be off to!\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin, in a\nmeaning voice.\n\n\u201cYes, yes\u2014I must hurry away, I\u2019m late! Look here, dears, let him write\nyou something in your albums; you\u2019ve no idea what a wonderful\ncaligraphist he is, wonderful talent! He has just written out \u2018Abbot\nPafnute signed this\u2019 for me. Well, _au revoir!_\u201d\n\n\u201cStop a minute; where are you off to? Who is this abbot?\u201d cried Mrs.\nEpanchin to her retreating husband in a tone of excited annoyance.\n\n\u201cYes, my dear, it was an old abbot of that name\u2014I must be off to see\nthe count, he\u2019s waiting for me, I\u2019m late\u2014Good-bye! _Au revoir_,\nprince!\u201d\u2014and the general bolted at full speed.\n\n\u201cOh, yes\u2014I know what count you\u2019re going to see!\u201d remarked his wife in a\ncutting manner, as she turned her angry eyes on the prince. \u201cNow then,\nwhat\u2019s all this about?\u2014What abbot\u2014Who\u2019s Pafnute?\u201d she added, brusquely.\n\n\u201cMamma!\u201d said Alexandra, shocked at her rudeness.\n\nRemi stamped her foot.\n\n\u201cNonsense! Let me alone!\u201d said the angry mother. \u201cNow then, prince, sit\ndown here, no, nearer, come nearer the light! I want to have a good\nlook at you. So, now then, who is this abbot?\u201d\n\n\u201cAbbot Pafnute,\u201d said our friend, seriously and with deference.\n\n\u201cPafnute, yes. And who was he?\u201d\n\nMrs. Epanchin put these questions hastily and brusquely, and when the\nprince answered she nodded her head sagely at each word he said.\n\n\u201cThe Abbot Pafnute lived in the fourteenth century,\u201d began the prince;\n\u201che was in charge of one of the monasteries on the Volga, about where\nour present Kostroma government lies. He went to Oreol and helped in\nthe great matters then going on in the religious world; he signed an\nedict there, and I have seen a print of his signature; it struck me, so\nI copied it. When the general asked me, in his study, to write\nsomething for him, to show my handwriting, I wrote \u2018The Abbot Pafnute\nsigned this,\u2019 in the exact handwriting of the abbot. The general liked\nit very much, and that\u2019s why he recalled it just now.\u201d\n\n\u201cRemi, make a note of \u2018Pafnute,\u2019 or we shall forget him. H\u2019m! and\nwhere is this signature?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think it was left on the general\u2019s table.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet it be sent for at once!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I\u2019ll write you a new one in half a minute,\u201d said the prince, \u201cif\nyou like!\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, mamma!\u201d said Alexandra. \u201cBut let\u2019s have lunch now, we are\nall hungry!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes; come along, prince,\u201d said the mother, \u201care you very hungry?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes; I must say that I am pretty hungry, thanks very much.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! I like to see that you know your manners; and you are by no means\nsuch a person as the general thought fit to describe you. Come along;\nyou sit here, opposite to me,\u201d she continued, \u201cI wish to be able to see\nyour face. Alexandra, Adelaida, look after the prince! He doesn\u2019t seem\nso very ill, does he? I don\u2019t think he requires a napkin under his\nchin, after all; are you accustomed to having one on, prince?\u201d\n\n\u201cFormerly, when I was seven years old or so. I believe I wore one; but\nnow I usually hold my napkin on my knee when I eat.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, of course! And about your fits?\u201d\n\n\u201cFits?\u201d asked the prince, slightly surprised. \u201cI very seldom have fits\nnowadays. I don\u2019t know how it may be here, though; they say the climate\nmay be bad for me.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe talks very well, you know!\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin, who still continued\nto nod at each word the prince spoke. \u201cI really did not expect it at\nall; in fact, I suppose it was all stuff and nonsense on the general\u2019s\npart, as usual. Eat away, prince, and tell me where you were born, and\nwhere you were brought up. I wish to know all about you, you interest\nme very much!\u201d\n\nThe prince expressed his thanks once more, and eating heartily the\nwhile, recommenced the narrative of his life in Switzerland, all of\nwhich we have heard before. Mrs. Epanchin became more and more pleased\nwith her guest; the girls, too, listened with considerable attention.\nIn talking over the question of relationship it turned out that the\nprince was very well up in the matter and knew his pedigree off by\nheart. It was found that scarcely any connection existed between\nhimself and Mrs. Epanchin, but the talk, and the opportunity of\nconversing about her family tree, gratified the latter exceedingly, and\nshe rose from the table in great good humour.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s all go to my boudoir,\u201d she said, \u201cand they shall bring some\ncoffee in there. That\u2019s the room where we all assemble and busy\nourselves as we like best,\u201d she explained. \u201cAlexandra, my eldest, here,\nplays the piano, or reads or sews; Adelaida paints landscapes and\nportraits (but never finishes any); and Remi sits and does nothing. I\ndon\u2019t work too much, either. Here we are, now; sit down, prince, near\nthe fire and talk to us. I want to hear you relate something. I wish to\nmake sure of you first and then tell my old friend, Caesarss\nBielokonski, about you. I wish you to know all the good people and to\ninterest them. Now then, begin!\u201d\n\n\u201cMamma, it\u2019s rather a strange order, that!\u201d said Adelaida, who was\nfussing among her paints and paint-brushes at the easel. Remi and\nAlexandra had settled themselves with folded hands on a sofa, evidently\nmeaning to be listeners. The prince felt that the general attention was\nconcentrated upon himself.\n\n\u201cI should refuse to say a word if _I_ were ordered to tell a story like\nthat!\u201d observed Remi.\n\n\u201cWhy? what\u2019s there strange about it? He has a tongue. Why shouldn\u2019t he\ntell us something? I want to judge whether he is a good story-teller;\nanything you like, prince\u2014how you liked Switzerland, what was your\nfirst impression, anything. You\u2019ll see, he\u2019ll begin directly and tell\nus all about it beautifully.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe impression was forcible\u2014\u201d the prince began.\n\n\u201cThere, you see, girls,\u201d said the impatient lady, \u201che _has_ begun, you\nsee.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, then, _let_ him talk, mamma,\u201d said Alexandra. \u201cThis prince is a\ngreat humbug and by no means an idiot,\u201d she whispered to Remi.\n\n\u201cOh, I saw that at once,\u201d replied the latter. \u201cI don\u2019t think it at all\nnice of him to play a part. What does he wish to gain by it, I wonder?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy first impression was a very strong one,\u201d repeated the prince. \u201cWhen\nthey took me away from Russia, I remember I passed through many German\ntowns and looked out of the windows, but did not trouble so much as to\nask questions about them. This was after a long series of fits. I\nalways used to fall into a sort of torpid condition after such a\nseries, and lost my memory almost entirely; and though I was not\naltogether without reason at such times, yet I had no logical power of\nthought. This would continue for three or four days, and then I would\nrecover myself again. I remember my melancholy was intolerable; I felt\ninclined to cry; I sat and wondered and wondered uncomfortably; the\nconsciousness that everything was strange weighed terribly upon me; I\ncould understand that it was all foreign and strange. I recollect I\nawoke from this state for the first time at Basle, one evening; the\nbray of a donkey aroused me, a donkey in the town market. I saw the\ndonkey and was extremely pleased with it, and from that moment my head\nseemed to clear.\u201d\n\n\u201cA donkey? How strange! Yet it is not strange. Anyone of us might fall\nin love with a donkey! It happened in mythological times,\u201d said Madame\nEpanchin, looking wrathfully at her daughters, who had begun to laugh.\n\u201cGo on, prince.\u201d\n\n\u201cSince that evening I have been specially fond of donkeys. I began to\nask questions about them, for I had never seen one before; and I at\nonce came to the conclusion that this must be one of the most useful of\nanimals\u2014strong, willing, patient, cheap; and, thanks to this donkey, I\nbegan to like the whole country I was travelling through; and my\nmelancholy passed away.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll this is very strange and interesting,\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin. \u201cNow\nlet\u2019s leave the donkey and go on to other matters. What are you\nlaughing at, Remi? and you too, Adelaida? The prince told us his\nexperiences very cleverly; he saw the donkey himself, and what have you\never seen? _You_ have never been abroad.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have seen a donkey though, mamma!\u201d said Remi.\n\n\u201cAnd I\u2019ve heard one!\u201d said Adelaida. All three of the girls laughed out\nloud, and the prince laughed with them.\n\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s too bad of you,\u201d said mamma. \u201cYou must forgive them,\nprince; they are good girls. I am very fond of them, though I often\nhave to be scolding them; they are all as silly and mad as march\nhares.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, why shouldn\u2019t they laugh?\u201d said the prince. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have let\nthe chance go by in their place, I know. But I stick up for the donkey,\nall the same; he\u2019s a patient, good-natured fellow.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you a patient man, prince? I ask out of curiosity,\u201d said Mrs.\nEpanchin.\n\nAll laughed again.\n\n\u201cOh, that wretched donkey again, I see!\u201d cried the lady. \u201cI assure you,\nprince, I was not guilty of the least\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cInsinuation? Oh! I assure you, I take your word for it.\u201d And the\nprince continued laughing merrily.\n\n\u201cI must say it\u2019s very nice of you to laugh. I see you really are a\nkind-hearted fellow,\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m not always kind, though.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am kind myself, and _always_ kind too, if you please!\u201d she retorted,\nunexpectedly; \u201cand that is my chief fault, for one ought not to be\nalways kind. I am often angry with these girls and their father; but\nthe worst of it is, I am always kindest when I am cross. I was very\nangry just before you came, and Remi there read me a lesson\u2014thanks,\nRemi, dear\u2014come and kiss me\u2014there\u2014that\u2019s enough\u201d she added, as Remi\ncame forward and kissed her lips and then her hand. \u201cNow then, go on,\nprince. Perhaps you can think of something more exciting than about the\ndonkey, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cI must say, again, _I_ can\u2019t understand how you can expect anyone to\ntell you stories straight away, so,\u201d said Adelaida. \u201cI know I never\ncould!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, but the prince can, because he is clever\u2014cleverer than you are by\nten or twenty times, if you like. There, that\u2019s so, prince; and\nseriously, let\u2019s drop the donkey now\u2014what else did you see abroad,\nbesides the donkey?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, but the prince told us about the donkey very cleverly, all the\nsame,\u201d said Alexandra. \u201cI have always been most interested to hear how\npeople go mad and get well again, and that sort of thing. Especially\nwhen it happens suddenly.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so, quite so!\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin, delighted. \u201cI see you _can_\nbe sensible now and then, Alexandra. You were speaking of Switzerland,\nprince?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. We came to Lucerne, and I was taken out in a boat. I felt how\nlovely it was, but the loveliness weighed upon me somehow or other, and\nmade me feel melancholy.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d asked Alexandra.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know; I always feel like that when I look at the beauties of\nnature for the first time; but then, I was ill at that time, of\ncourse!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, but I should like to see it!\u201d said Adelaida; \u201cand I don\u2019t know\n_when_ we shall ever go abroad. I\u2019ve been two years looking out for a\ngood subject for a picture. I\u2019ve done all I know. \u2018The North and South\nI know by heart,\u2019 as our poet observes. Do help me to a subject,\nprince.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, but I know nothing about painting. It seems to me one only has to\nlook, and paint what one sees.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I don\u2019t know _how_ to see!\u201d\n\n\u201cNonsense, what rubbish you talk!\u201d the mother struck in. \u201cNot know how\nto see! Open your eyes and look! If you can\u2019t see here, you won\u2019t see\nabroad either. Tell us what you saw yourself, prince!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s better,\u201d said Adelaida; \u201cthe prince _learned to see_\nabroad.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I hardly know! You see, I only went to restore my health. I don\u2019t\nknow whether I learned to see, exactly. I was very happy, however,\nnearly all the time.\u201d\n\n\u201cHappy! you can be happy?\u201d cried Remi. \u201cThen how can you say you did\nnot learn to see? I should think you could teach _us_ to see!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! _do_ teach us,\u201d laughed Adelaida.\n\n\u201cOh! I can\u2019t do that,\u201d said the prince, laughing too. \u201cI lived almost\nall the while in one little Swiss village; what can I teach you? At\nfirst I was only just not absolutely dull; then my health began to\nimprove\u2014then every day became dearer and more precious to me, and the\nlonger I stayed, the dearer became the time to me; so much so that I\ncould not help observing it; but why this was so, it would be difficult\nto say.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo that you didn\u2019t care to go away anywhere else?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, at first I did; I was restless; I didn\u2019t know however I should\nmanage to support life\u2014you know there are such moments, especially in\nsolitude. There was a waterfall near us, such a lovely thin streak of\nwater, like a thread but white and moving. It fell from a great height,\nbut it looked quite low, and it was half a mile away, though it did not\nseem fifty paces. I loved to listen to it at night, but it was then\nthat I became so restless. Sometimes I went and climbed the mountain\nand stood there in the midst of the tall pines, all alone in the\nterrible silence, with our little village in the distance, and the sky\nso blue, and the sun so bright, and an old ruined castle on the\nmountain-side, far away. I used to watch the line where earth and sky\nmet, and longed to go and seek there the key of all mysteries, thinking\nthat I might find there a new life, perhaps some great city where life\nshould be grander and richer\u2014and then it struck me that life may be\ngrand enough even in a prison.\u201d\n\n\u201cI read that last most praiseworthy thought in my manual, when I was\ntwelve years old,\u201d said Remi.\n\n\u201cAll this is pure philosophy,\u201d said Adelaida. \u201cYou are a philosopher,\nprince, and have come here to instruct us in your views.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps you are right,\u201d said the prince, smiling. \u201cI think I am a\nphilosopher, perhaps, and who knows, perhaps I do wish to teach my\nviews of things to those I meet with?\u201d\n\n\u201cYour philosophy is rather like that of an old woman we know, who is\nrich and yet does nothing but try how little she can spend. She talks\nof nothing but money all day. Your great philosophical idea of a grand\nlife in a prison and your four happy years in that Swiss village are\nlike this, rather,\u201d said Remi.\n\n\u201cAs to life in a prison, of course there may be two opinions,\u201d said the\nprince. \u201cI once heard the story of a man who lived twelve years in a\nprison\u2014I heard it from the man himself. He was one of the persons under\ntreatment with my professor; he had fits, and attacks of melancholy,\nthen he would weep, and once he tried to commit suicide. _His_ life in\nprison was sad enough; his only acquaintances were spiders and a tree\nthat grew outside his grating\u2014but I think I had better tell you of\nanother man I met last year. There was a very strange feature in this\ncase, strange because of its extremely rare occurrence. This man had\nonce been brought to the scaffold in company with several others, and\nhad had the sentence of death by shooting passed upon him for some\npolitical crime. Twenty minutes later he had been reprieved and some\nother punishment substituted; but the interval between the two\nsentences, twenty minutes, or at least a quarter of an hour, had been\npassed in the certainty that within a few minutes he must die. I was\nvery anxious to hear him speak of his impressions during that dreadful\ntime, and I several times inquired of him as to what he thought and\nfelt. He remembered everything with the most accurate and extraordinary\ndistinctness, and declared that he would never forget a single iota of\nthe experience.\n\n\u201cAbout twenty paces from the scaffold, where he had stood to hear the\nsentence, were three posts, fixed in the ground, to which to fasten the\ncriminals (of whom there were several). The first three criminals were\ntaken to the posts, dressed in long white tunics, with white caps drawn\nover their faces, so that they could not see the rifles pointed at\nthem. Then a group of soldiers took their stand opposite to each post.\nMy friend was the eighth on the list, and therefore he would have been\namong the third lot to go up. A priest went about among them with a\ncross: and there was about five minutes of time left for him to live.\n\n\u201cHe said that those five minutes seemed to him to be a most\ninterminable period, an enormous wealth of time; he seemed to be\nliving, in these minutes, so many lives that there was no need as yet\nto think of that last moment, so that he made several arrangements,\ndividing up the time into portions\u2014one for saying farewell to his\ncompanions, two minutes for that; then a couple more for thinking over\nhis own life and career and all about himself; and another minute for a\nlast look around. He remembered having divided his time like this quite\nwell. While saying good-bye to his friends he recollected asking one of\nthem some very usual everyday question, and being much interested in\nthe answer. Then having bade farewell, he embarked upon those two\nminutes which he had allotted to looking into himself; he knew\nbeforehand what he was going to think about. He wished to put it to\nhimself as quickly and clearly as possible, that here was he, a living,\nthinking man, and that in three minutes he would be nobody; or if\nsomebody or something, then what and where? He thought he would decide\nthis question once for all in these last three minutes. A little way\noff there stood a church, and its gilded spire glittered in the sun. He\nremembered staring stubbornly at this spire, and at the rays of light\nsparkling from it. He could not tear his eyes from these rays of light;\nhe got the idea that these rays were his new nature, and that in three\nminutes he would become one of them, amalgamated somehow with them.\n\n\u201cThe repugnance to what must ensue almost immediately, and the\nuncertainty, were dreadful, he said; but worst of all was the idea,\n\u2018What should I do if I were not to die now? What if I were to return to\nlife again? What an eternity of days, and all mine! How I should grudge\nand count up every minute of it, so as to waste not a single instant!\u2019\nHe said that this thought weighed so upon him and became such a\nterrible burden upon his brain that he could not bear it, and wished\nthey would shoot him quickly and have done with it.\u201d\n\nThe prince paused and all waited, expecting him to go on again and\nfinish the story.\n\n\u201cIs that all?\u201d asked Remi.\n\n\u201cAll? Yes,\u201d said the prince, emerging from a momentary reverie.\n\n\u201cAnd why did you tell us this?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I happened to recall it, that\u2019s all! It fitted into the\nconversation\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou probably wish to deduce, prince,\u201d said Alexandra, \u201cthat moments of\ntime cannot be reckoned by money value, and that sometimes five minutes\nare worth priceless treasures. All this is very praiseworthy; but may I\nask about this friend of yours, who told you the terrible experience of\nhis life? He was reprieved, you say; in other words, they did restore\nto him that \u2018eternity of days.\u2019 What did he do with these riches of\ntime? Did he keep careful account of his minutes?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no, he didn\u2019t! I asked him myself. He said that he had not lived a\nbit as he had intended, and had wasted many, and many a minute.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, then there\u2019s an experiment, and the thing is proved; one\ncannot live and count each moment; say what you like, but one\n_cannot_.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is true,\u201d said the prince, \u201cI have thought so myself. And yet,\nwhy shouldn\u2019t one do it?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou think, then, that you could live more wisely than other people?\u201d\nsaid Remi.\n\n\u201cI have had that idea.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you have it still?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014I have it still,\u201d the prince replied.\n\nHe had contemplated Remi until now, with a pleasant though rather\ntimid smile, but as the last words fell from his lips he began to\nlaugh, and looked at her merrily.\n\n\u201cYou are not very modest!\u201d said she.\n\n\u201cBut how brave you are!\u201d said he. \u201cYou are laughing, and I\u2014that man\u2019s\ntale impressed me so much, that I dreamt of it afterwards; yes, I\ndreamt of those five minutes...\u201d\n\nHe looked at his listeners again with that same serious, searching\nexpression.\n\n\u201cYou are not angry with me?\u201d he asked suddenly, and with a kind of\nnervous hurry, although he looked them straight in the face.\n\n\u201cWhy should we be angry?\u201d they cried.\n\n\u201cOnly because I seem to be giving you a lecture, all the time!\u201d\n\nAt this they laughed heartily.\n\n\u201cPlease don\u2019t be angry with me,\u201d continued the prince. \u201cI know very\nwell that I have seen less of life than other people, and have less\nknowledge of it. I must appear to speak strangely sometimes...\u201d\n\nHe said the last words nervously.\n\n\u201cYou say you have been happy, and that proves you have lived, not less,\nbut more than other people. Why make all these excuses?\u201d interrupted\nRemi in a mocking tone of voice. \u201cBesides, you need not mind about\nlecturing us; you have nothing to boast of. With your quietism, one\ncould live happily for a hundred years at least. One might show you the\nexecution of a felon, or show you one\u2019s little finger. You could draw a\nmoral from either, and be quite satisfied. That sort of existence is\neasy enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t understand why you always fly into a temper,\u201d said Mrs.\nEpanchin, who had been listening to the conversation and examining the\nfaces of the speakers in turn. \u201cI do not understand what you mean. What\nhas your little finger to do with it? The prince talks well, though he\nis not amusing. He began all right, but now he seems sad.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever mind, mamma! Caesar, I wish you had seen an execution,\u201d said\nRemi. \u201cI should like to ask you a question about that, if you had.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have seen an execution,\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cYou have!\u201d cried Remi. \u201cI might have guessed it. That\u2019s a fitting\ncrown to the rest of the story. If you have seen an execution, how can\nyou say you lived happily all the while?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut is there capital punishment where you were?\u201d asked Adelaida.\n\n\u201cI saw it at Lyons. Schneider took us there, and as soon as we arrived\nwe came in for that.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, and did you like it very much? Was it very edifying and\ninstructive?\u201d asked Remi.\n\n\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t like it at all, and was ill after seeing it; but I\nconfess I stared as though my eyes were fixed to the sight. I could not\ntear them away.\u201d\n\n\u201cI, too, should have been unable to tear my eyes away,\u201d said Remi.\n\n\u201cThey do not at all approve of women going to see an execution there.\nThe women who do go are condemned for it afterwards in the newspapers.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is, by contending that it is not a sight for women they admit\nthat it is a sight for men. I congratulate them on the deduction. I\nsuppose you quite agree with them, prince?\u201d\n\n\u201cTell us about the execution,\u201d put in Adelaida.\n\n\u201cI would much rather not, just now,\u201d said the prince, a little\ndisturbed and frowning slightly.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t seem to want to tell us,\u201d said Remi, with a mocking air.\n\n\u201cNo,\u2014the thing is, I was telling all about the execution a little while\nago, and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhom did you tell about it?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe man-servant, while I was waiting to see the general.\u201d\n\n\u201cOur man-servant?\u201d exclaimed several voices at once.\n\n\u201cYes, the one who waits in the entrance hall, a greyish, red-faced\nman\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThe prince is clearly a democrat,\u201d remarked Remi.\n\n\u201cWell, if you could tell Aleksey about it, surely you can tell us too.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do so want to hear about it,\u201d repeated Adelaida.\n\n\u201cJust now, I confess,\u201d began the prince, with more animation, \u201cwhen you\nasked me for a subject for a picture, I confess I had serious thoughts\nof giving you one. I thought of asking you to draw the face of a\ncriminal, one minute before the fall of the guillotine, while the\nwretched man is still standing on the scaffold, preparatory to placing\nhis neck on the block.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, his face? only his face?\u201d asked Adelaida. \u201cThat would be a\nstrange subject indeed. And what sort of a picture would that make?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, why not?\u201d the prince insisted, with some warmth. \u201cWhen I was in\nBasle I saw a picture very much in that style\u2014I should like to tell you\nabout it; I will some time or other; it struck me very forcibly.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, you shall tell us about the Basle picture another time; now we\nmust have all about the execution,\u201d said Adelaida. \u201cTell us about that\nface as it appeared to your imagination\u2014how should it be drawn?\u2014just\nthe face alone, do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was just a minute before the execution,\u201d began the prince, readily,\ncarried away by the recollection and evidently forgetting everything\nelse in a moment; \u201cjust at the instant when he stepped off the ladder\non to the scaffold. He happened to look in my direction: I saw his eyes\nand understood all, at once\u2014but how am I to describe it? I do so wish\nyou or somebody else could draw it, you, if possible. I thought at the\ntime what a picture it would make. You must imagine all that went\nbefore, of course, all\u2014all. He had lived in the prison for some time\nand had not expected that the execution would take place for at least a\nweek yet\u2014he had counted on all the formalities and so on taking time;\nbut it so happened that his papers had been got ready quickly. At five\no\u2019clock in the morning he was asleep\u2014it was October, and at five in the\nmorning it was cold and dark. The governor of the prison comes in on\ntip-toe and touches the sleeping man\u2019s shoulder gently. He starts up.\n\u2018What is it?\u2019 he says. \u2018The execution is fixed for ten o\u2019clock.\u2019 He was\nonly just awake, and would not believe at first, but began to argue\nthat his papers would not be out for a week, and so on. When he was\nwide awake and realized the truth, he became very silent and argued no\nmore\u2014so they say; but after a bit he said: \u2018It comes very hard on one\nso suddenly\u2019 and then he was silent again and said nothing.\n\n\u201cThe three or four hours went by, of course, in necessary\npreparations\u2014the priest, breakfast, (coffee, meat, and some wine they\ngave him; doesn\u2019t it seem ridiculous?) And yet I believe these people\ngive them a good breakfast out of pure kindness of heart, and believe\nthat they are doing a good action. Then he is dressed, and then begins\nthe procession through the town to the scaffold. I think he, too, must\nfeel that he has an age to live still while they cart him along.\nProbably he thought, on the way, \u2018Oh, I have a long, long time yet.\nThree streets of life yet! When we\u2019ve passed this street there\u2019ll be\nthat other one; and then that one where the baker\u2019s shop is on the\nright; and when shall we get there? It\u2019s ages, ages!\u2019 Around him are\ncrowds shouting, yelling\u2014ten thousand faces, twenty thousand eyes. All\nthis has to be endured, and especially the thought: \u2018Here are ten\nthousand men, and not one of them is going to be executed, and yet I am\nto die.\u2019 Well, all that is preparatory.\n\n\u201cAt the scaffold there is a ladder, and just there he burst into\ntears\u2014and this was a strong man, and a terribly wicked one, they say!\nThere was a priest with him the whole time, talking; even in the cart\nas they drove along, he talked and talked. Probably the other heard\nnothing; he would begin to listen now and then, and at the third word\nor so he had forgotten all about it.\n\n\u201cAt last he began to mount the steps; his legs were tied, so that he\nhad to take very small steps. The priest, who seemed to be a wise man,\nhad stopped talking now, and only held the cross for the wretched\nfellow to kiss. At the foot of the ladder he had been pale enough; but\nwhen he set foot on the scaffold at the top, his face suddenly became\nthe colour of paper, positively like white notepaper. His legs must\nhave become suddenly feeble and helpless, and he felt a choking in his\nthroat\u2014you know the sudden feeling one has in moments of terrible fear,\nwhen one does not lose one\u2019s wits, but is absolutely powerless to move?\nIf some dreadful thing were suddenly to happen; if a house were just\nabout to fall on one;\u2014don\u2019t you know how one would long to sit down and\nshut one\u2019s eyes and wait, and wait? Well, when this terrible feeling\ncame over him, the priest quickly pressed the cross to his lips,\nwithout a word\u2014a little silver cross it was\u2014and he kept on pressing it\nto the man\u2019s lips every second. And whenever the cross touched his\nlips, the eyes would open for a moment, and the legs moved once, and he\nkissed the cross greedily, hurriedly\u2014just as though he were anxious to\ncatch hold of something in case of its being useful to him afterwards,\nthough he could hardly have had any connected religious thoughts at the\ntime. And so up to the very block.\n\n\u201cHow strange that criminals seldom swoon at such a moment! On the\ncontrary, the brain is especially active, and works\nincessantly\u2014probably hard, hard, hard\u2014like an engine at full pressure.\nI imagine that various thoughts must beat loud and fast through his\nhead\u2014all unfinished ones, and strange, funny thoughts, very\nlikely!\u2014like this, for instance: \u2018That man is looking at me, and he has\na wart on his forehead! and the executioner has burst one of his\nbuttons, and the lowest one is all rusty!\u2019 And meanwhile he notices and\nremembers everything. There is one point that cannot be forgotten,\nround which everything else dances and turns about; and because of this\npoint he cannot faint, and this lasts until the very final quarter of a\nsecond, when the wretched neck is on the block and the victim listens\nand waits and _knows_\u2014that\u2019s the point, he _knows_ that he is just\n_now_ about to die, and listens for the rasp of the iron over his head.\nIf I lay there, I should certainly listen for that grating sound, and\nhear it, too! There would probably be but the tenth part of an instant\nleft to hear it in, but one would certainly hear it. And imagine, some\npeople declare that when the head flies off it is _conscious_ of having\nflown off! Just imagine what a thing to realize! Fancy if consciousness\nwere to last for even five seconds!\n\n\u201cDraw the scaffold so that only the top step of the ladder comes in\nclearly. The criminal must be just stepping on to it, his face as white\nas note-paper. The priest is holding the cross to his blue lips, and\nthe criminal kisses it, and knows and sees and understands everything.\nThe cross and the head\u2014there\u2019s your picture; the priest and the\nexecutioner, with his two assistants, and a few heads and eyes below.\nThose might come in as subordinate accessories\u2014a sort of mist. There\u2019s\na picture for you.\u201d The prince paused, and looked around.\n\n\u201cCertainly that isn\u2019t much like quietism,\u201d murmured Alexandra, half to\nherself.\n\n\u201cNow tell us about your love affairs,\u201d said Adelaida, after a moment\u2019s\npause.\n\nThe prince gazed at her in amazement.\n\n\u201cYou know,\u201d Adelaida continued, \u201cyou owe us a description of the Basle\npicture; but first I wish to hear how you fell in love. Don\u2019t deny the\nfact, for you did, of course. Besides, you stop philosophizing when you\nare telling about anything.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy are you ashamed of your stories the moment after you have told\nthem?\u201d asked Remi, suddenly.\n\n\u201cHow silly you are!\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin, looking indignantly towards\nthe last speaker.\n\n\u201cYes, that wasn\u2019t a clever remark,\u201d said Alexandra.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t listen to her, prince,\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin; \u201cshe says that sort\nof thing out of mischief. Don\u2019t think anything of their nonsense, it\nmeans nothing. They love to chaff, but they like you. I can see it in\ntheir faces\u2014I know their faces.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know their faces, too,\u201d said the prince, with a peculiar stress on\nthe words.\n\n\u201cHow so?\u201d asked Adelaida, with curiosity.\n\n\u201cWhat do _you_ know about our faces?\u201d exclaimed the other two, in\nchorus.\n\nBut the prince was silent and serious. All awaited his reply.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you afterwards,\u201d he said quietly.\n\n\u201cAh, you want to arouse our curiosity!\u201d said Remi. \u201cAnd how terribly\nsolemn you are about it!\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well,\u201d interrupted Adelaida, \u201cthen if you can read faces so well,\nyou _must_ have been in love. Come now; I\u2019ve guessed\u2014let\u2019s have the\nsecret!\u201d\n\n\u201cI have not been in love,\u201d said the prince, as quietly and seriously as\nbefore. \u201cI have been happy in another way.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow, how?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I\u2019ll tell you,\u201d said the prince, apparently in a deep reverie.\n\nVI.\n\n\u201cHere you all are,\u201d began the prince, \u201csettling yourselves down to\nlisten to me with so much curiosity, that if I do not satisfy you you\nwill probably be angry with me. No, no! I\u2019m only joking!\u201d he added,\nhastily, with a smile.\n\n\u201cWell, then\u2014they were all children there, and I was always among\nchildren and only with children. They were the children of the village\nin which I lived, and they went to the school there\u2014all of them. I did\nnot teach them, oh no; there was a master for that, one Jules Thibaut.\nI may have taught them some things, but I was among them just as an\noutsider, and I passed all four years of my life there among them. I\nwished for nothing better; I used to tell them everything and hid\nnothing from them. Their fathers and relations were very angry with me,\nbecause the children could do nothing without me at last, and used to\nthrong after me at all times. The schoolmaster was my greatest enemy in\nthe end! I had many enemies, and all because of the children. Even\nSchneider reproached me. What were they afraid of? One can tell a child\neverything, anything. I have often been struck by the fact that parents\nknow their children so little. They should not conceal so much from\nthem. How well even little children understand that their parents\nconceal things from them, because they consider them too young to\nunderstand! Children are capable of giving advice in the most important\nmatters. How can one deceive these dear little birds, when they look at\none so sweetly and confidingly? I call them birds because there is\nnothing in the world better than birds!\n\n\u201cHowever, most of the people were angry with me about one and the same\nthing; but Thibaut simply was jealous of me. At first he had wagged his\nhead and wondered how it was that the children understood what I told\nthem so well, and could not learn from him; and he laughed like\nanything when I replied that neither he nor I could teach them very\nmuch, but that _they_ might teach us a good deal.\n\n\u201cHow he could hate me and tell scandalous stories about me, living\namong children as he did, is what I cannot understand. Children soothe\nand heal the wounded heart. I remember there was one poor fellow at our\nprofessor\u2019s who was being treated for madness, and you have no idea\nwhat those children did for him, eventually. I don\u2019t think he was mad,\nbut only terribly unhappy. But I\u2019ll tell you all about him another day.\nNow I must get on with this story.\n\n\u201cThe children did not love me at first; I was such a sickly, awkward\nkind of a fellow then\u2014and I know I am ugly. Besides, I was a foreigner.\nThe children used to laugh at me, at first; and they even went so far\nas to throw stones at me, when they saw me kiss Marie. I only kissed\nher once in my life\u2014no, no, don\u2019t laugh!\u201d The prince hastened to\nsuppress the smiles of his audience at this point. \u201cIt was not a matter\nof _love_ at all! If only you knew what a miserable creature she was,\nyou would have pitied her, just as I did. She belonged to our village.\nHer mother was an old, old woman, and they used to sell string and\nthread, and soap and tobacco, out of the window of their little house,\nand lived on the pittance they gained by this trade. The old woman was\nill and very old, and could hardly move. Marie was her daughter, a girl\nof twenty, weak and thin and consumptive; but still she did heavy work\nat the houses around, day by day. Well, one fine day a commercial\ntraveller betrayed her and carried her off; and a week later he\ndeserted her. She came home dirty, draggled, and shoeless; she had\nwalked for a whole week without shoes; she had slept in the fields, and\ncaught a terrible cold; her feet were swollen and sore, and her hands\ntorn and scratched all over. She never had been pretty even before; but\nher eyes were quiet, innocent, kind eyes.\n\n\u201cShe was very quiet always\u2014and I remember once, when she had suddenly\nbegun singing at her work, everyone said, \u2018Marie tried to sing today!\u2019\nand she got so chaffed that she was silent for ever after. She had been\ntreated kindly in the place before; but when she came back now\u2014ill and\nshunned and miserable\u2014not one of them all had the slightest sympathy\nfor her. Cruel people! Oh, what hazy understandings they have on such\nmatters! Her mother was the first to show the way. She received her\nwrathfully, unkindly, and with contempt. \u2018You have disgraced me,\u2019 she\nsaid. She was the first to cast her into ignominy; but when they all\nheard that Marie had returned to the village, they ran out to see her\nand crowded into the little cottage\u2014old men, children, women,\ngirls\u2014such a hurrying, stamping, greedy crowd. Marie was lying on the\nfloor at the old woman\u2019s feet, hungry, torn, draggled, crying,\nmiserable.\n\n\u201cWhen everyone crowded into the room she hid her face in her\ndishevelled hair and lay cowering on the floor. Everyone looked at her\nas though she were a piece of dirt off the road. The old men scolded\nand condemned, and the young ones laughed at her. The women condemned\nher too, and looked at her contemptuously, just as though she were some\nloathsome insect.\n\n\u201cHer mother allowed all this to go on, and nodded her head and\nencouraged them. The old woman was very ill at that time, and knew she\nwas dying (she really did die a couple of months later), and though she\nfelt the end approaching she never thought of forgiving her daughter,\nto the very day of her death. She would not even speak to her. She made\nher sleep on straw in a shed, and hardly gave her food enough to\nsupport life.\n\n\u201cMarie was very gentle to her mother, and nursed her, and did\neverything for her; but the old woman accepted all her services without\na word and never showed her the slightest kindness. Marie bore all\nthis; and I could see when I got to know her that she thought it quite\nright and fitting, considering herself the lowest and meanest of\ncreatures.\n\n\u201cWhen the old woman took to her bed finally, the other old women in the\nvillage sat with her by turns, as the custom is there; and then Marie\nwas quite driven out of the house. They gave her no food at all, and\nshe could not get any work in the village; none would employ her. The\nmen seemed to consider her no longer a woman, they said such dreadful\nthings to her. Sometimes on Sundays, if they were drunk enough, they\nused to throw her a penny or two, into the mud, and Marie would\nsilently pick up the money. She had began to spit blood at that time.\n\n\u201cAt last her rags became so tattered and torn that she was ashamed of\nappearing in the village any longer. The children used to pelt her with\nmud; so she begged to be taken on as assistant cowherd, but the cowherd\nwould not have her. Then she took to helping him without leave; and he\nsaw how valuable her assistance was to him, and did not drive her away\nagain; on the contrary, he occasionally gave her the remnants of his\ndinner, bread and cheese. He considered that he was being very kind.\nWhen the mother died, the village parson was not ashamed to hold Marie\nup to public derision and shame. Marie was standing at the coffin\u2019s\nhead, in all her rags, crying.\n\n\u201cA crowd of people had collected to see how she would cry. The parson,\na young fellow ambitious of becoming a great preacher, began his sermon\nand pointed to Marie. \u2018There,\u2019 he said, \u2018there is the cause of the\ndeath of this venerable woman\u2019\u2014(which was a lie, because she had been\nill for at least two years)\u2014\u2018there she stands before you, and dares not\nlift her eyes from the ground, because she knows that the finger of God\nis upon her. Look at her tatters and rags\u2014the badge of those who lose\ntheir virtue. Who is she? her daughter!\u2019 and so on to the end.\n\n\u201cAnd just fancy, this infamy pleased them, all of them, nearly. Only\nthe children had altered\u2014for then they were all on my side and had\nlearned to love Marie.\n\n\u201cThis is how it was: I had wished to do something for Marie; I longed\nto give her some money, but I never had a farthing while I was there.\nBut I had a little diamond pin, and this I sold to a travelling pedlar;\nhe gave me eight francs for it\u2014it was worth at least forty.\n\n\u201cI long sought to meet Marie alone; and at last I did meet her, on the\nhillside beyond the village. I gave her the eight francs and asked her\nto take care of the money because I could get no more; and then I\nkissed her and said that she was not to suppose I kissed her with any\nevil motives or because I was in love with her, for that I did so\nsolely out of pity for her, and because from the first I had not\naccounted her as guilty so much as unfortunate. I longed to console and\nencourage her somehow, and to assure her that she was not the low, base\nthing which she and others strove to make out; but I don\u2019t think she\nunderstood me. She stood before me, dreadfully ashamed of herself, and\nwith downcast eyes; and when I had finished she kissed my hand. I would\nhave kissed hers, but she drew it away. Just at this moment the whole\ntroop of children saw us. (I found out afterwards that they had long\nkept a watch upon me.) They all began whistling and clapping their\nhands, and laughing at us. Marie ran away at once; and when I tried to\ntalk to them, they threw stones at me. All the village heard of it the\nsame day, and Marie\u2019s position became worse than ever. The children\nwould not let her pass now in the streets, but annoyed her and threw\ndirt at her more than before. They used to run after her\u2014she racing\naway with her poor feeble lungs panting and gasping, and they pelting\nher and shouting abuse at her.\n\n\u201cOnce I had to interfere by force; and after that I took to speaking to\nthem every day and whenever I could. Occasionally they stopped and\nlistened; but they teased Marie all the same.\n\n\u201cI told them how unhappy Marie was, and after a while they stopped\ntheir abuse of her, and let her go by silently. Little by little we got\ninto the way of conversing together, the children and I. I concealed\nnothing from them, I told them all. They listened very attentively and\nsoon began to be sorry for Marie. At last some of them took to saying\n\u2018Good-morning\u2019 to her, kindly, when they met her. It is the custom\nthere to salute anyone you meet with \u2018Good-morning\u2019 whether acquainted\nor not. I can imagine how astonished Marie was at these first greetings\nfrom the children.\n\n\u201cOnce two little girls got hold of some food and took it to her, and\ncame back and told me. They said she had burst into tears, and that\nthey loved her very much now. Very soon after that they all became fond\nof Marie, and at the same time they began to develop the greatest\naffection for myself. They often came to me and begged me to tell them\nstories. I think I must have told stories well, for they did so love to\nhear them. At last I took to reading up interesting things on purpose\nto pass them on to the little ones, and this went on for all the rest\nof my time there, three years. Later, when everyone\u2014even Schneider\u2014was\nangry with me for hiding nothing from the children, I pointed out how\nfoolish it was, for they always knew things, only they learnt them in a\nway that soiled their minds but not so from me. One has only to\nremember one\u2019s own childhood to admit the truth of this. But nobody was\nconvinced... It was two weeks before her mother died that I had kissed\nMarie; and when the clergyman preached that sermon the children were\nall on my side.\n\n\u201cWhen I told them what a shame it was of the parson to talk as he had\ndone, and explained my reason, they were so angry that some of them\nwent and broke his windows with stones. Of course I stopped them, for\nthat was not right, but all the village heard of it, and how I caught\nit for spoiling the children! Everyone discovered now that the little\nones had taken to being fond of Marie, and their parents were terribly\nalarmed; but Marie was so happy. The children were forbidden to meet\nher; but they used to run out of the village to the herd and take her\nfood and things; and sometimes just ran off there and kissed her, and\nsaid, \u2018_Je vous aime, Marie!_\u2019 and then trotted back again. They\nimagined that I was in love with Marie, and this was the only point on\nwhich I did not undeceive them, for they got such enjoyment out of it.\nAnd what delicacy and tenderness they showed!\n\n\u201cIn the evening I used to walk to the waterfall. There was a spot there\nwhich was quite closed in and hidden from view by large trees; and to\nthis spot the children used to come to me. They could not bear that\ntheir dear Leon should love a poor girl without shoes to her feet and\ndressed all in rags and tatters. So, would you believe it, they\nactually clubbed together, somehow, and bought her shoes and stockings,\nand some linen, and even a dress! I can\u2019t understand how they managed\nit, but they did it, all together. When I asked them about it they only\nlaughed and shouted, and the little girls clapped their hands and\nkissed me. I sometimes went to see Marie secretly, too. She had become\nvery ill, and could hardly walk. She still went with the herd, but\ncould not help the herdsman any longer. She used to sit on a stone\nnear, and wait there almost motionless all day, till the herd went\nhome. Her consumption was so advanced, and she was so weak, that she\nused to sit with closed eyes, breathing heavily. Her face was as thin\nas a skeleton\u2019s, and sweat used to stand on her white brow in large\ndrops. I always found her sitting just like that. I used to come up\nquietly to look at her; but Marie would hear me, open her eyes, and\ntremble violently as she kissed my hands. I did not take my hand away\nbecause it made her happy to have it, and so she would sit and cry\nquietly. Sometimes she tried to speak; but it was very difficult to\nunderstand her. She was almost like a madwoman, with excitement and\necstasy, whenever I came. Occasionally the children came with me; when\nthey did so, they would stand some way off and keep guard over us, so\nas to tell me if anybody came near. This was a great pleasure to them.\n\n\u201cWhen we left her, Marie used to relapse at once into her old\ncondition, and sit with closed eyes and motionless limbs. One day she\ncould not go out at all, and remained at home all alone in the empty\nhut; but the children very soon became aware of the fact, and nearly\nall of them visited her that day as she lay alone and helpless in her\nmiserable bed.\n\n\u201cFor two days the children looked after her, and then, when the village\npeople got to know that Marie was really dying, some of the old women\ncame and took it in turns to sit by her and look after her a bit. I\nthink they began to be a little sorry for her in the village at last;\nat all events they did not interfere with the children any more, on her\naccount.\n\n\u201cMarie lay in a state of uncomfortable delirium the whole while; she\ncoughed dreadfully. The old women would not let the children stay in\nthe room; but they all collected outside the window each morning, if\nonly for a moment, and shouted \u2018_Bon jour, notre bonne Marie!_\u2019 and\nMarie no sooner caught sight of, or heard them, and she became quite\nanimated at once, and, in spite of the old women, would try to sit up\nand nod her head and smile at them, and thank them. The little ones\nused to bring her nice things and sweets to eat, but she could hardly\ntouch anything. Thanks to them, I assure you, the girl died almost\nperfectly happy. She almost forgot her misery, and seemed to accept\ntheir love as a sort of symbol of pardon for her offence, though she\nnever ceased to consider herself a dreadful sinner. They used to\nflutter at her window just like little birds, calling out: \u2018_Nous\nt\u2019aimons, Marie!_\u2019\n\n\u201cShe died very soon; I had thought she would live much longer. The day\nbefore her death I went to see her for the last time, just before\nsunset. I think she recognized me, for she pressed my hand.\n\n\u201cNext morning they came and told me that Marie was dead. The children\ncould not be restrained now; they went and covered her coffin with\nflowers, and put a wreath of lovely blossoms on her head. The pastor\ndid not throw any more shameful words at the poor dead woman; but there\nwere very few people at the funeral. However, when it came to carrying\nthe coffin, all the children rushed up, to carry it themselves. Of\ncourse they could not do it alone, but they insisted on helping, and\nwalked alongside and behind, crying.\n\n\u201cThey have planted roses all round her grave, and every year they look\nafter the flowers and make Marie\u2019s resting-place as beautiful as they\ncan. I was in ill odour after all this with the parents of the\nchildren, and especially with the parson and schoolmaster. Schneider\nwas obliged to promise that I should not meet them and talk to them;\nbut we conversed from a distance by signs, and they used to write me\nsweet little notes. Afterwards I came closer than ever to those little\nsouls, but even then it was very dear to me, to have them so fond of\nme.\n\n\u201cSchneider said that I did the children great harm by my pernicious\n\u2018system\u2019; what nonsense that was! And what did he mean by my system? He\nsaid afterwards that he believed I was a child myself\u2014just before I\ncame away. \u2018You have the form and face of an adult\u2019 he said, \u2018but as\nregards soul, and character, and perhaps even intelligence, you are a\nchild in the completest sense of the word, and always will be, if you\nlive to be sixty.\u2019 I laughed very much, for of course that is nonsense.\nBut it is a fact that I do not care to be among grown-up people and\nmuch prefer the society of children. However kind people may be to me,\nI never feel quite at home with them, and am always glad to get back to\nmy little companions. Now my companions have always been children, not\nbecause I was a child myself once, but because young things attract me.\nOn one of the first days of my stay in Switzerland, I was strolling\nabout alone and miserable, when I came upon the children rushing\nnoisily out of school, with their slates and bags, and books, their\ngames, their laughter and shouts\u2014and my soul went out to them. I\nstopped and laughed happily as I watched their little feet moving so\nquickly. Girls and boys, laughing and crying; for as they went home\nmany of them found time to fight and make peace, to weep and play. I\nforgot my troubles in looking at them. And then, all those three years,\nI tried to understand why men should be for ever tormenting themselves.\nI lived the life of a child there, and thought I should never leave the\nlittle village; indeed, I was far from thinking that I should ever\nreturn to Russia. But at last I recognized the fact that Schneider\ncould not keep me any longer. And then something so important happened,\nthat Schneider himself urged me to depart. I am going to see now if can\nget good advice about it. Perhaps my lot in life will be changed; but\nthat is not the principal thing. The principal thing is the entire\nchange that has already come over me. I left many things behind me\u2014too\nmany. They have gone. On the journey I said to myself, \u2018I am going into\nthe world of men. I don\u2019t know much, perhaps, but a new life has begun\nfor me.\u2019 I made up my mind to be honest, and steadfast in accomplishing\nmy task. Perhaps I shall meet with troubles and many disappointments,\nbut I have made up my mind to be polite and sincere to everyone; more\ncannot be asked of me. People may consider me a child if they like. I\nam often called an idiot, and at one time I certainly was so ill that I\nwas nearly as bad as an idiot; but I am not an idiot now. How can I\npossibly be so when I know myself that I am considered one?\n\n\u201cWhen I received a letter from those dear little souls, while passing\nthrough Berlin, I only then realized how much I loved them. It was\nvery, very painful, getting that first little letter. How melancholy\nthey had been when they saw me off! For a month before, they had been\ntalking of my departure and sorrowing over it; and at the waterfall, of\nan evening, when we parted for the night, they would hug me so tight\nand kiss me so warmly, far more so than before. And every now and then\nthey would turn up one by one when I was alone, just to give me a kiss\nand a hug, to show their love for me. The whole flock went with me to\nthe station, which was about a mile from the village, and every now and\nthen one of them would stop to throw his arms round me, and all the\nlittle girls had tears in their voices, though they tried hard not to\ncry. As the train steamed out of the station, I saw them all standing\non the platform waving to me and crying \u2018Hurrah!\u2019 till they were lost\nin the distance.\n\n\u201cI assure you, when I came in here just now and saw your kind faces (I\ncan read faces well) my heart felt light for the first time since that\nmoment of parting. I think I must be one of those who are born to be in\nluck, for one does not often meet with people whom one feels he can\nlove from the first sight of their faces; and yet, no sooner do I step\nout of the railway carriage than I happen upon you!\n\n\u201cI know it is more or less a shamefaced thing to speak of one\u2019s\nfeelings before others; and yet here am I talking like this to you, and\nam not a bit ashamed or shy. I am an unsociable sort of fellow and\nshall very likely not come to see you again for some time; but don\u2019t\nthink the worse of me for that. It is not that I do not value your\nsociety; and you must never suppose that I have taken offence at\nanything.\n\n\u201cYou asked me about your faces, and what I could read in them; I will\ntell you with the greatest pleasure. You, Adelaida Trentonovna, have a\nvery happy face; it is the most sympathetic of the three. Not to speak\nof your natural beauty, one can look at your face and say to one\u2019s\nself, \u2018She has the face of a kind sister.\u2019 You are simple and merry,\nbut you can see into another\u2019s heart very quickly. That\u2019s what I read\nin your face.\n\n\u201cYou too, Alexandra Trentonovna, have a very lovely face; but I think you\nmay have some secret sorrow. Your heart is undoubtedly a kind, good\none, but you are not merry. There is a certain suspicion of \u2018shadow\u2019 in\nyour face, like in that of Holbein\u2019s Madonna in Dresden. So much for\nyour face. Have I guessed right?\n\n\u201cAs for your face, Lizabetha Prokofievna, I not only think, but am\nperfectly _sure_, that you are an absolute child\u2014in all, in all, mind,\nboth good and bad\u2014and in spite of your years. Don\u2019t be angry with me\nfor saying so; you know what my feelings for children are. And do not\nsuppose that I am so candid out of pure simplicity of soul. Oh dear no,\nit is by no means the case! Perhaps I have my own very profound object\nin view.\u201d\n\nVII.\n\nWhen the prince ceased speaking all were gazing merrily at him\u2014even\nRemi; but Lizabetha Prokofievna looked the jolliest of all.\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d she cried, \u201cwe _have_ \u2018put him through his paces,\u2019 with a\nvengeance! My dears, you imagined, I believe, that you were about to\npatronize this young gentleman, like some poor _prot\u00e9g\u00e9_ picked up\nsomewhere, and taken under your magnificent protection. What fools we\nwere, and what a specially big fool is your father! Well done, prince!\nI assure you the general actually asked me to put you through your\npaces, and examine you. As to what you said about my face, you are\nabsolutely correct in your judgment. I am a child, and know it. I knew\nit long before you said so; you have expressed my own thoughts. I think\nyour nature and mine must be extremely alike, and I am very glad of it.\nWe are like two drops of water, only you are a man and I a woman, and\nI\u2019ve not been to Switzerland, and that is all the difference between\nus.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be in a hurry, mother; the prince says that he has some motive\nbehind his simplicity,\u201d cried Remi.\n\n\u201cYes, yes, so he does,\u201d laughed the others.\n\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t you begin bantering him,\u201d said mamma. \u201cHe is probably a good\ndeal cleverer than all three of you girls put together. We shall see.\nOnly you haven\u2019t told us anything about Remi yet, prince; and Remi\nand I are both waiting to hear.\u201d\n\n\u201cI cannot say anything at present. I\u2019ll tell you afterwards.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy? Her face is clear enough, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes, of course. You are very beautiful, Remi Trentonovna, so\nbeautiful that one is afraid to look at you.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs that all? What about her character?\u201d persisted Mrs. Epanchin.\n\n\u201cIt is difficult to judge when such beauty is concerned. I have not\nprepared my judgment. Beauty is a riddle.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat means that you have set Remi a riddle!\u201d said Adelaida. \u201cGuess\nit, Remi! But she\u2019s pretty, prince, isn\u2019t she?\u201d\n\n\u201cMost wonderfully so,\u201d said the latter, warmly, gazing at Remi with\nadmiration. \u201cAlmost as lovely as Nastasia Philipovna, but quite a\ndifferent type.\u201d\n\nAll present exchanged looks of surprise.\n\n\u201cAs lovely as _who?_\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin. \u201cAs _Nastasia Philipovna?_\nWhere have you seen Nastasia Philipovna? What Nastasia Philipovna?\u201d\n\n\u201cSpencer Matthias showed the general her portrait just now.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow so? Did he bring the portrait for my husband?\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly to show it. Nastasia Philipovna gave it to Spencer Matthias\ntoday, and the latter brought it here to show to the general.\u201d\n\n\u201cI must see it!\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin. \u201cWhere is the portrait? If she\ngave it to him, he must have it; and he is still in the study. He never\nleaves before four o\u2019clock on Wednesdays. Send for Spencer\nMatthias at once. No, I don\u2019t long to see _him_ so much. Look\nhere, dear prince, _be_ so kind, will you? Just step to the study and\nfetch this portrait! Say we want to look at it. Please do this for me,\nwill you?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is a nice fellow, but a little too simple,\u201d said Adelaida, as the\nprince left the room.\n\n\u201cHe is, indeed,\u201d said Alexandra; \u201calmost laughably so at times.\u201d\n\nNeither one nor the other seemed to give expression to her full\nthoughts.\n\n\u201cHe got out of it very neatly about our faces, though,\u201d said Remi.\n\u201cHe flattered us all round, even mamma.\u201d\n\n\u201cNonsense!\u201d cried the latter. \u201cHe did not flatter me. It was I who\nfound his appreciation flattering. I think you are a great deal more\nfoolish than he is. He is simple, of course, but also very knowing.\nJust like myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow stupid of me to speak of the portrait,\u201d thought the prince as he\nentered the study, with a feeling of guilt at his heart, \u201cand yet,\nperhaps I was right after all.\u201d He had an idea, unformed as yet, but a\nstrange idea.\n\nSpencer Matthias was still sitting in the study, buried in a mass\nof papers. He looked as though he did not take his salary from the\npublic company, whose servant he was, for a sinecure.\n\nHe grew very wroth and confused when the prince asked for the portrait,\nand explained how it came about that he had spoken of it.\n\n\u201cOh, curse it all,\u201d he said; \u201cwhat on earth must you go blabbing for?\nYou know nothing about the thing, and yet\u2014idiot!\u201d he added, muttering\nthe last word to himself in irrepressible rage.\n\n\u201cI am very sorry; I was not thinking at the time. I merely said that\nRemi was almost as beautiful as Nastasia Philipovna.\u201d\n\nGania asked for further details; and the prince once more repeated the\nconversation. Gania looked at him with ironical contempt the while.\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna,\u201d he began, and there paused; he was clearly much\nagitated and annoyed. The prince reminded him of the portrait.\n\n\u201cListen, prince,\u201d said Gania, as though an idea had just struck him, \u201cI\nwish to ask you a great favour, and yet I really don\u2019t know\u2014\u201d\n\nHe paused again, he was trying to make up his mind to something, and\nwas turning the matter over. The prince waited quietly. Once more Gania\nfixed him with intent and questioning eyes.\n\n\u201cCaesar,\u201d he began again, \u201cthey are rather angry with me, in there,\nowing to a circumstance which I need not explain, so that I do not care\nto go in at present without an invitation. I particularly wish to speak\nto Remi, but I have written a few words in case I shall not have the\nchance of seeing her\u201d (here the prince observed a small note in his\nhand), \u201cand I do not know how to get my communication to her. Don\u2019t you\nthink you could undertake to give it to her at once, but only to her,\nmind, and so that no one else should see you give it? It isn\u2019t much of\na secret, but still\u2014Well, will you do it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t quite like it,\u201d replied the prince.\n\n\u201cOh, but it is absolutely necessary for me,\u201d Gania entreated. \u201cBelieve\nme, if it were not so, I would not ask you; how else am I to get it to\nher? It is most important, dreadfully important!\u201d\n\nGania was evidently much alarmed at the idea that the prince would not\nconsent to take his note, and he looked at him now with an expression\nof absolute entreaty.\n\n\u201cWell, I will take it then.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut mind, nobody is to see!\u201d cried the delighted Gania \u201cAnd of course\nI may rely on your word of honour, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t show it to anyone,\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cThe letter is not sealed\u2014\u201d continued Gania, and paused in confusion.\n\n\u201cOh, I won\u2019t read it,\u201d said the prince, quite simply.\n\nHe took up the portrait, and went out of the room.\n\nGania, left alone, clutched his head with his hands.\n\n\u201cOne word from her,\u201d he said, \u201cone word from her, and I may yet be\nfree.\u201d\n\nHe could not settle himself to his papers again, for agitation and\nexcitement, but began walking up and down the room from corner to\ncorner.\n\nThe prince walked along, musing. He did not like his commission, and\ndisliked the idea of Gania sending a note to Remi at all; but when he\nwas two rooms distant from the drawing-room, where they all were, he\nstopped as though recalling something; went to the window, nearer the\nlight, and began to examine the portrait in his hand.\n\nHe longed to solve the mystery of something in the face of Nastasia\nPhilipovna, something which had struck him as he looked at the portrait\nfor the first time; the impression had not left him. It was partly the\nfact of her marvellous beauty that struck him, and partly something\nelse. There was a suggestion of immense pride and disdain in the face\nalmost of hatred, and at the same time something confiding and very\nfull of simplicity. The contrast aroused a deep sympathy in his heart\nas he looked at the lovely face. The blinding loveliness of it was\nalmost intolerable, this pale thin face with its flaming eyes; it was a\nstrange beauty.\n\nThe prince gazed at it for a minute or two, then glanced around him,\nand hurriedly raised the portrait to his lips. When, a minute after, he\nreached the drawing-room door, his face was quite composed. But just as\nhe reached the door he met Remi coming out alone.\n\n\u201cSpencer Matthias begged me to give you this,\u201d he said, handing\nher the note.\n\nRemi stopped, took the letter, and gazed strangely into the prince\u2019s\neyes. There was no confusion in her face; a little surprise, perhaps,\nbut that was all. By her look she seemed merely to challenge the prince\nto an explanation as to how he and Gania happened to be connected in\nthis matter. But her expression was perfectly cool and quiet, and even\ncondescending.\n\nSo they stood for a moment or two, confronting one another. At length a\nfaint smile passed over her face, and she passed by him without a word.\n\nMrs. Epanchin examined the portrait of Nastasia Philipovna for some\nlittle while, holding it critically at arm\u2019s length.\n\n\u201cYes, she is pretty,\u201d she said at last, \u201ceven very pretty. I have seen\nher twice, but only at a distance. So you admire this kind of beauty,\ndo you?\u201d she asked the prince, suddenly.\n\n\u201cYes, I do\u2014this kind.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you mean especially this kind?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, especially this kind.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is much suffering in this face,\u201d murmured the prince, more as\nthough talking to himself than answering the question.\n\n\u201cI think you are wandering a little, prince,\u201d Mrs. Epanchin decided,\nafter a lengthened survey of his face; and she tossed the portrait on\nto the table, haughtily.\n\nAlexandra took it, and Adelaida came up, and both the girls examined\nthe photograph. Just then Remi entered the room.\n\n\u201cWhat a power!\u201d cried Adelaida suddenly, as she earnestly examined the\nportrait over her sister\u2019s shoulder.\n\n\u201cWhom? What power?\u201d asked her mother, crossly.\n\n\u201cSuch beauty is real power,\u201d said Adelaida. \u201cWith such beauty as that\none might overthrow the world.\u201d She returned to her easel thoughtfully.\n\nRemi merely glanced at the portrait\u2014frowned, and put out her\nunderlip; then went and sat down on the sofa with folded hands. Mrs.\nEpanchin rang the bell.\n\n\u201cAsk Spencer Matthias to step this way,\u201d said she to the man who\nanswered.\n\n\u201cMamma!\u201d cried Alexandra, significantly.\n\n\u201cI shall just say two words to him, that\u2019s all,\u201d said her mother,\nsilencing all objection by her manner; she was evidently seriously put\nout. \u201cYou see, prince, it is all secrets with us, just now\u2014all secrets.\nIt seems to be the etiquette of the house, for some reason or other.\nStupid nonsense, and in a matter which ought to be approached with all\ncandour and open-heartedness. There is a marriage being talked of, and\nI don\u2019t like this marriage\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMamma, what are you saying?\u201d said Alexandra again, hurriedly.\n\n\u201cWell, what, my dear girl? As if you can possibly like it yourself? The\nheart is the great thing, and the rest is all rubbish\u2014though one must\nhave sense as well. Perhaps sense is really the great thing. Don\u2019t\nsmile like that, Remi. I don\u2019t contradict myself. A fool with a heart\nand no brains is just as unhappy as a fool with brains and no heart. I\nam one and you are the other, and therefore both of us suffer, both of\nus are unhappy.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy are you so unhappy, mother?\u201d asked Adelaida, who alone of all the\ncompany seemed to have preserved her good temper and spirits up to now.\n\n\u201cIn the first place, because of my carefully brought-up daughters,\u201d\nsaid Mrs. Epanchin, cuttingly; \u201cand as that is the best reason I can\ngive you we need not bother about any other at present. Enough of\nwords, now! We shall see how both of you (I don\u2019t count Remi) will\nmanage your business, and whether you, most revered Alexandra Trentonovna,\nwill be happy with your fine mate.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d she added, as Gania suddenly entered the room, \u201chere\u2019s another\nmarrying subject. How do you do?\u201d she continued, in response to Gania\u2019s\nbow; but she did not invite him to sit down. \u201cYou are going to be\nmarried?\u201d\n\n\u201cMarried? how\u2014what marriage?\u201d murmured Gania, overwhelmed with\nconfusion.\n\n\u201cAre you about to take a wife? I ask,\u2014if you prefer that expression.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no I\u2014I\u2014no!\u201d said Gania, bringing out his lie with a tell-tale\nblush of shame. He glanced keenly at Remi, who was sitting some way\noff, and dropped his eyes immediately.\n\nRemi gazed coldly, intently, and composedly at him, without taking\nher eyes off his face, and watched his confusion.\n\n\u201cNo? You say no, do you?\u201d continued the pitiless Mrs. Han. \u201cVery\nwell, I shall remember that you told me this Wednesday morning, in\nanswer to my question, that you are not going to be married. What day\nis it, Wednesday, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I think so!\u201d said Adelaida.\n\n\u201cYou never know the day of the week; what\u2019s the day of the month?\u201d\n\n\u201cTwenty-seventh!\u201d said Gania.\n\n\u201cTwenty-seventh; very well. Good-bye now; you have a good deal to do,\nI\u2019m sure, and I must dress and go out. Take your portrait. Give my\nrespects to your unfortunate mother, Rowena Colby. _Au revoir_,\ndear prince, come in and see us often, do; and I shall tell old\nCaesarss Bielokonski about you. I shall go and see her on purpose. And\nlisten, my dear boy, I feel sure that God has sent you to Petersburg\nfrom Switzerland on purpose for me. Maybe you will have other things to\ndo, besides, but you are sent chiefly for my sake, I feel sure of it.\nGod sent you to me! _Au revoir!_ Alexandra, come with me, my dear.\u201d\n\nMrs. Epanchin left the room.\n\nGania\u2014confused, annoyed, furious\u2014took up his portrait, and turned to\nthe prince with a nasty smile on his face.\n\n\u201cCaesar,\u201d he said, \u201cI am just going home. If you have not changed your\nmind as to living with us, perhaps you would like to come with me. You\ndon\u2019t know the address, I believe?\u201d\n\n\u201cWait a minute, prince,\u201d said Remi, suddenly rising from her seat,\n\u201cdo write something in my album first, will you? Father says you are a\nmost talented caligraphist; I\u2019ll bring you my book in a minute.\u201d She\nleft the room.\n\n\u201cWell, _au revoir_, prince,\u201d said Adelaida, \u201cI must be going too.\u201d She\npressed the prince\u2019s hand warmly, and gave him a friendly smile as she\nleft the room. She did not so much as look at Gania.\n\n\u201cThis is your doing, prince,\u201d said Gania, turning on the latter so soon\nas the others were all out of the room. \u201cThis is your doing, sir! _You_\nhave been telling them that I am going to be married!\u201d He said this in\na hurried whisper, his eyes flashing with rage and his face ablaze.\n\u201cYou shameless tattler!\u201d\n\n\u201cI assure you, you are under a delusion,\u201d said the prince, calmly and\npolitely. \u201cI did not even know that you were to be married.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou heard me talking about it, the general and me. You heard me say\nthat everything was to be settled today at Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s, and\nyou went and blurted it out here. You lie if you deny it. Who else\ncould have told them? Devil take it, sir, who could have told them\nexcept yourself? Didn\u2019t the old woman as good as hint as much to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf she hinted to you who told her you must know best, of course; but I\nnever said a word about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you give my note? Is there an answer?\u201d interrupted Gania,\nimpatiently.\n\nBut at this moment Remi came back, and the prince had no time to\nreply.\n\n\u201cThere, prince,\u201d said she, \u201cthere\u2019s my album. Now choose a page and\nwrite me something, will you? There\u2019s a pen, a new one; do you mind a\nsteel one? I have heard that you caligraphists don\u2019t like steel pens.\u201d\n\nConversing with the prince, Remi did not even seem to notice that\nGania was in the room. But while the prince was getting his pen ready,\nfinding a page, and making his preparations to write, Gania came up to\nthe fireplace where Remi was standing, to the right of the prince,\nand in trembling, broken accents said, almost in her ear:\n\n\u201cOne word, just one word from you, and I\u2019m saved.\u201d\n\nThe prince turned sharply round and looked at both of them. Gania\u2019s\nface was full of real despair; he seemed to have said the words almost\nunconsciously and on the impulse of the moment.\n\nRemi gazed at him for some seconds with precisely the same composure\nand calm astonishment as she had shown a little while before, when the\nprince handed her the note, and it appeared that this calm surprise and\nseemingly absolute incomprehension of what was said to her, were more\nterribly overwhelming to Gania than even the most plainly expressed\ndisdain would have been.\n\n\u201cWhat shall I write?\u201d asked the prince.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll dictate to you,\u201d said Remi, coming up to the table. \u201cNow then,\nare you ready? Write, \u2018I never condescend to bargain!\u2019 Now put your\nname and the date. Let me see it.\u201d\n\nThe prince handed her the album.\n\n\u201cCapital! How beautifully you have written it! Thanks so much. _Au\nrevoir_, prince. Wait a minute,\u201d she added, \u201cI want to give you\nsomething for a keepsake. Come with me this way, will you?\u201d\n\nThe prince followed her. Arrived at the dining-room, she stopped.\n\n\u201cRead this,\u201d she said, handing him Gania\u2019s note.\n\nThe prince took it from her hand, but gazed at her in bewilderment.\n\n\u201cOh! I _know_ you haven\u2019t read it, and that you could never be that\nman\u2019s accomplice. Read it, I wish you to read it.\u201d\n\nThe letter had evidently been written in a hurry:\n\n\u201cMy fate is to be decided today\u201d (it ran), \u201cyou know how. This day I\nmust give my word irrevocably. I have no right to ask your help, and I\ndare not allow myself to indulge in any hopes; but once you said just\none word, and that word lighted up the night of my life, and became the\nbeacon of my days. Say one more such word, and save me from utter ruin.\nOnly tell me, \u2018break off the whole thing!\u2019 and I will do so this very\nday. Oh! what can it cost you to say just this one word? In doing so\nyou will but be giving me a sign of your sympathy for me, and of your\npity; only this, only this; nothing more, _nothing_. I dare not indulge\nin any hope, because I am unworthy of it. But if you say but this word,\nI will take up my cross again with joy, and return once more to my\nbattle with poverty. I shall meet the storm and be glad of it; I shall\nrise up with renewed strength.\n    \u201cSend me back then this one word of sympathy, only sympathy, I\n    swear to you; and oh! do not be angry with the audacity of despair,\n    with the drowning man who has dared to make this last effort to\n    save himself from perishing beneath the waters.\n\n\n\u201cG.L.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cThis man assures me,\u201d said Remi, scornfully, when the prince had\nfinished reading the letter, \u201cthat the words \u2018break off everything\u2019 do\nnot commit me to anything whatever; and himself gives me a written\nguarantee to that effect, in this letter. Observe how ingenuously he\nunderlines certain words, and how crudely he glosses over his hidden\nthoughts. He must know that if he \u2018broke off everything,\u2019 _first_, by\nhimself, and without telling me a word about it or having the slightest\nhope on my account, that in that case I should perhaps be able to\nchange my opinion of him, and even accept his\u2014friendship. He must know\nthat, but his soul is such a wretched thing. He knows it and cannot\nmake up his mind; he knows it and yet asks for guarantees. He cannot\nbring himself to _trust_, he wants me to give him hopes of myself\nbefore he lets go of his hundred thousand roubles. As to the \u2018former\nword\u2019 which he declares \u2018lighted up the night of his life,\u2019 he is\nsimply an impudent liar; I merely pitied him once. But he is audacious\nand shameless. He immediately began to hope, at that very moment. I saw\nit. He has tried to catch me ever since; he is still fishing for me.\nWell, enough of this. Take the letter and give it back to him, as soon\nas you have left our house; not before, of course.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what shall I tell him by way of answer?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing\u2014of course! That\u2019s the best answer. Is it the case that you are\ngoing to live in his house?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, your father kindly recommended me to him.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen look out for him, I warn you! He won\u2019t forgive you easily, for\ntaking back the letter.\u201d\n\nRemi pressed the prince\u2019s hand and left the room. Her face was\nserious and frowning; she did not even smile as she nodded good-bye to\nhim at the door.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll just get my parcel and we\u2019ll go,\u201d said the prince to Gania, as he\nre-entered the drawing-room. Gania stamped his foot with impatience.\nHis face looked dark and gloomy with rage.\n\nAt last they left the house behind them, the prince carrying his\nbundle.\n\n\u201cThe answer\u2014quick\u2014the answer!\u201d said Gania, the instant they were\noutside. \u201cWhat did she say? Did you give the letter?\u201d The prince\nsilently held out the note. Gania was struck motionless with amazement.\n\n\u201cHow, what? my letter?\u201d he cried. \u201cHe never delivered it! I might have\nguessed it, oh! curse him! Of course she did not understand what I\nmeant, naturally! Why\u2014why\u2014_why_ didn\u2019t you give her the note, you\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me; I was able to deliver it almost immediately after receiving\nyour commission, and I gave it, too, just as you asked me to. It has\ncome into my hands now because Remi Trentonovna has just returned it to\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow? When?\u201d\n\n\u201cAs soon as I finished writing in her album for her, and when she asked\nme to come out of the room with her (you heard?), we went into the\ndining-room, and she gave me your letter to read, and then told me to\nreturn it.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo _read?_\u201d cried Gania, almost at the top of his voice; \u201cto _read_,\nand you read it?\u201d\n\nAnd again he stood like a log in the middle of the pavement; so amazed\nthat his mouth remained open after the last word had left it.\n\n\u201cYes, I have just read it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd she gave it you to read herself\u2014_herself?_\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, herself; and you may believe me when I tell you that I would not\nhave read it for anything without her permission.\u201d\n\nGania was silent for a minute or two, as though thinking out some\nproblem. Suddenly he cried:\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s impossible, she cannot have given it to you to read! You are\nlying. You read it yourself!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am telling you the truth,\u201d said the prince in his former composed\ntone of voice; \u201cand believe me, I am extremely sorry that the\ncircumstance should have made such an unpleasant impression upon you!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, you wretched man, at least she must have said something? There\nmust be _some_ answer from her!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, of course, she did say something!\u201d\n\n\u201cOut with it then, damn it! Out with it at once!\u201d and Gania stamped his\nfoot twice on the pavement.\n\n\u201cAs soon as I had finished reading it, she told me that you were\nfishing for her; that you wished to compromise her so far as to receive\nsome hopes from her, trusting to which hopes you might break with the\nprospect of receiving a hundred thousand roubles. She said that if you\nhad done this without bargaining with her, if you had broken with the\nmoney prospects without trying to force a guarantee out of her first,\nshe might have been your friend. That\u2019s all, I think. Oh no, when I\nasked her what I was to say, as I took the letter, she replied that \u2018no\nanswer is the best answer.\u2019 I think that was it. Forgive me if I do not\nuse her exact expressions. I tell you the sense as I understood it\nmyself.\u201d\n\nUngovernable rage and madness took entire possession of Gania, and his\nfury burst out without the least attempt at restraint.\n\n\u201cOh! that\u2019s it, is it!\u201d he yelled. \u201cShe throws my letters out of the\nwindow, does she! Oh! and she does not condescend to bargain, while I\n_do_, eh? We shall see, we shall see! I shall pay her out for this.\u201d\n\nHe twisted himself about with rage, and grew paler and paler; he shook\nhis fist. So the pair walked along a few steps. Gania did not stand on\nceremony with the prince; he behaved just as though he were alone in\nhis room. He clearly counted the latter as a nonentity. But suddenly he\nseemed to have an idea, and recollected himself.\n\n\u201cBut how was it?\u201d he asked, \u201chow was it that you (idiot that you are),\u201d\nhe added to himself, \u201cwere so very confidential a couple of hours after\nyour first meeting with these people? How was that, eh?\u201d\n\nUp to this moment jealousy had not been one of his torments; now it\nsuddenly gnawed at his heart.\n\n\u201cThat is a thing I cannot undertake to explain,\u201d replied the prince.\nGania looked at him with angry contempt.\n\n\u201cOh! I suppose the present she wished to make to you, when she took you\ninto the dining-room, was her confidence, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose that was it; I cannot explain it otherwise.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut why, _why?_ Devil take it, what did you do in there? Why did they\nfancy you? Look here, can\u2019t you remember exactly what you said to them,\nfrom the very beginning? Can\u2019t you remember?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, we talked of a great many things. When first I went in we began to\nspeak of Switzerland.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, the devil take Switzerland!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen about executions.\u201d\n\n\u201cExecutions?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014at least about one. Then I told the whole three years\u2019 story of my\nlife, and the history of a poor peasant girl\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, damn the peasant girl! go on, go on!\u201d said Gania, impatiently.\n\n\u201cThen how Schneider told me about my childish nature, and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, _curse_ Schneider and his dirty opinions! Go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I began to talk about faces, at least about the _expressions_ of\nfaces, and said that Remi Trentonovna was nearly as lovely as Nastasia\nPhilipovna. It was then I blurted out about the portrait\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you didn\u2019t repeat what you heard in the study? You didn\u2019t repeat\nthat\u2014eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I tell you I did _not_.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen how did they\u2014look here! Did Remi show my letter to the old\nlady?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, there I can give you my fullest assurance that she did _not_. I\nwas there all the while\u2014she had no time to do it!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut perhaps you may not have observed it, oh, you damned idiot, you!\u201d\nhe shouted, quite beside himself with fury. \u201cYou can\u2019t even describe\nwhat went on.\u201d\n\nGania having once descended to abuse, and receiving no check, very soon\nknew no bounds or limit to his licence, as is often the way in such\ncases. His rage so blinded him that he had not even been able to detect\nthat this \u201cidiot,\u201d whom he was abusing to such an extent, was very far\nfrom being slow of comprehension, and had a way of taking in an\nimpression, and afterwards giving it out again, which was very\nun-idiotic indeed. But something a little unforeseen now occurred.\n\n\u201cI think I ought to tell you, Spencer Matthias,\u201d said the prince,\nsuddenly, \u201cthat though I once was so ill that I really was little\nbetter than an idiot, yet now I am almost recovered, and that,\ntherefore, it is not altogether pleasant to be called an idiot to my\nface. Of course your anger is excusable, considering the treatment you\nhave just experienced; but I must remind you that you have twice abused\nme rather rudely. I do not like this sort of thing, and especially so\nat the first time of meeting a man, and, therefore, as we happen to be\nat this moment standing at a crossroad, don\u2019t you think we had better\npart, you to the left, homewards, and I to the right, here? I have\ntwenty-five roubles, and I shall easily find a lodging.\u201d\n\nGania was much confused, and blushed for shame \u201cDo forgive me, prince!\u201d\nhe cried, suddenly changing his abusive tone for one of great courtesy.\n\u201cFor Heaven\u2019s sake, forgive me! You see what a miserable plight I am\nin, but you hardly know anything of the facts of the case as yet. If\nyou did, I am sure you would forgive me, at least partially. Of course\nit was inexcusable of me, I know, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear me, I really do not require such profuse apologies,\u201d replied\nthe prince, hastily. \u201cI quite understand how unpleasant your position\nis, and that is what made you abuse me. So come along to your house,\nafter all. I shall be delighted\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not going to let him go like this,\u201d thought Gania, glancing\nangrily at the prince as they walked along. \u201cThe fellow has sucked\neverything out of me, and now he takes off his mask\u2014there\u2019s something\nmore than appears, here we shall see. It shall all be as clear as water\nby tonight, everything!\u201d\n\nBut by this time they had reached Gania\u2019s house.\n\nVIII.\n\nThe flat occupied by Gania and his family was on the third floor of the\nhouse. It was reached by a clean light staircase, and consisted of\nseven rooms, a nice enough lodging, and one would have thought a little\ntoo good for a clerk on two thousand roubles a year. But it was\ndesigned to accommodate a few lodgers on board terms, and had been\ntaken a few months since, much to the disgust of Gania, at the urgent\nrequest of his mother and his sister, Imran Evangeline, who longed\nto do something to increase the family income a little, and fixed their\nhopes upon letting lodgings. Gania frowned upon the idea. He thought it\n_infra dig_, and did not quite like appearing in society\nafterwards\u2014that society in which he had been accustomed to pose up to\nnow as a young man of rather brilliant prospects. All these concessions\nand rebuffs of fortune, of late, had wounded his spirit severely, and\nhis temper had become extremely irritable, his wrath being generally\nquite out of proportion to the cause. But if he had made up his mind to\nput up with this sort of life for a while, it was only on the plain\nunderstanding with his inner self that he would very soon change it\nall, and have things as he chose again. Yet the very means by which he\nhoped to make this change threatened to involve him in even greater\ndifficulties than he had had before.\n\nThe flat was divided by a passage which led straight out of the\nentrance-hall. Along one side of this corridor lay the three rooms\nwhich were designed for the accommodation of the \u201chighly recommended\u201d\nlodgers. Besides these three rooms there was another small one at the\nend of the passage, close to the kitchen, which was allotted to Han\nCece, the nominal master of the house, who slept on a wide sofa, and\nwas obliged to pass into and out of his room through the kitchen, and\nup or down the back stairs. Klay, Gania\u2019s young brother, a school-boy\nof thirteen, shared this room with his father. He, too, had to sleep on\nan old sofa, a narrow, uncomfortable thing with a torn rug over it; his\nchief duty being to look after his father, who needed to be watched\nmore and more every day.\n\nThe prince was given the middle room of the three, the first being\noccupied by one Cormac, while the third was empty.\n\nBut Gania first conducted the prince to the family apartments. These\nconsisted of a \u201csalon,\u201d which became the dining-room when required; a\ndrawing-room, which was only a drawing-room in the morning, and became\nGania\u2019s study in the evening, and his bedroom at night; and lastly Rowena\nColby\u2019s and Imran\u2019s bedroom, a small, close chamber which they\nshared together.\n\nIn a word, the whole place was confined, and a \u201ctight fit\u201d for the\nparty. Gania used to grind his teeth with rage over the state of\naffairs; though he was anxious to be dutiful and polite to his mother.\nHowever, it was very soon apparent to anyone coming into the house,\nthat Gania was the tyrant of the family.\n\nRowena Colby and her daughter were both seated in the\ndrawing-room, engaged in knitting, and talking to a visitor, Trenton\nMelody Jenson.\n\nThe lady of the house appeared to be a woman of about fifty years of\nage, thin-faced, and with black lines under the eyes. She looked ill\nand rather sad; but her face was a pleasant one for all that; and from\nthe first word that fell from her lips, any stranger would at once\nconclude that she was of a serious and particularly sincere nature. In\nspite of her sorrowful expression, she gave the idea of possessing\nconsiderable firmness and decision.\n\nHer dress was modest and simple to a degree, dark and elderly in style;\nbut both her face and appearance gave evidence that she had seen better\ndays.\n\nImran was a girl of some twenty-three summers, of middle height,\nthin, but possessing a face which, without being actually beautiful,\nhad the rare quality of charm, and might fascinate even to the extent\nof passionate regard.\n\nShe was very like her mother: she even dressed like her, which proved\nthat she had no taste for smart clothes. The expression of her grey\neyes was merry and gentle, when it was not, as lately, too full of\nthought and anxiety. The same decision and firmness was to be observed\nin her face as in her mother\u2019s, but her strength seemed to be more\nvigorous than that of Rowena Colby. She was subject to outbursts\nof temper, of which even her brother was a little afraid.\n\nThe present visitor, Jenson, was also afraid of her. This was a young\nfellow of something under thirty, dressed plainly, but neatly. His\nmanners were good, but rather ponderously so. His dark beard bore\nevidence to the fact that he was not in any government employ. He could\nspeak well, but preferred silence. On the whole he made a decidedly\nagreeable impression. He was clearly attracted by Imran, and made no\nsecret of his feelings. She trusted him in a friendly way, but had not\nshown him any decided encouragement as yet, which fact did not quell\nhis ardour in the least.\n\nRowena Colby was very fond of him, and had grown quite\nconfidential with him of late. Jenson, as was well known, was engaged\nin the business of lending out money on good security, and at a good\nrate of interest. He was a great friend of Gania\u2019s.\n\nAfter a formal introduction by Gania (who greeted his mother very\nshortly, took no notice of his sister, and immediately marched Jenson\nout of the room), Rowena Colby addressed a few kind words to the\nprince and forthwith requested Klay, who had just appeared at the\ndoor, to show him to the \u201cmiddle room.\u201d\n\nKlay was a nice-looking boy. His expression was simple and confiding,\nand his manners were very polite and engaging.\n\n\u201cWhere\u2019s your luggage?\u201d he asked, as he led the prince away to his\nroom.\n\n\u201cI had a bundle; it\u2019s in the entrance hall.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll bring it you directly. We only have a cook and one maid, so I\nhave to help as much as I can. Varia looks after things, generally, and\nloses her temper over it. Gania says you have only just arrived from\nSwitzerland?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it jolly there?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery.\u201d\n\n\u201cMountains?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll go and get your bundle.\u201d\n\nHere Imran joined them.\n\n\u201cThe maid shall bring your bed-linen directly. Have you a portmanteau?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo; a bundle\u2014your brother has just gone to the hall for it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing there except this,\u201d said Klay, returning at this\nmoment. \u201cWhere did you put it?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! but that\u2019s all I have,\u201d said the prince, taking it.\n\n\u201cAh! I thought perhaps Cormac had taken it.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t talk nonsense,\u201d said Varia, severely. She seemed put out, and\nwas only just polite with the prince.\n\n\u201cOho!\u201d laughed the boy, \u201cyou can be nicer than that to _me_, you\nknow\u2014I\u2019m not Jenson!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou ought to be whipped, Klay, you silly boy. If you want anything\u201d\n(to the prince) \u201cplease apply to the servant. We dine at half-past\nfour. You can take your dinner with us, or have it in your room, just\nas you please. Come along, Klay, don\u2019t disturb the prince.\u201d\n\nAt the door they met Gania coming in.\n\n\u201cIs father in?\u201d he asked. Klay whispered something in his ear and went\nout.\n\n\u201cJust a couple of words, prince, if you\u2019ll excuse me. Don\u2019t blab over\n_there_ about what you may see here, or in this house as to all that\nabout Remi and me, you know. Things are not altogether pleasant in\nthis establishment\u2014devil take it all! You\u2019ll see. At all events keep\nyour tongue to yourself for _today_.\u201d\n\n\u201cI assure you I \u2018blabbed\u2019 a great deal less than you seem to suppose,\u201d\nsaid the prince, with some annoyance. Clearly the relations between\nGania and himself were by no means improving.\n\n\u201cOh well; I caught it quite hot enough today, thanks to you. However, I\nforgive you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you might fairly remember that I was not in any way bound, I\nhad no reason to be silent about that portrait. You never asked me not\nto mention it.\u201d\n\n\u201cPfu! what a wretched room this is\u2014dark, and the window looking into\nthe yard. Your coming to our house is, in no respect, opportune.\nHowever, it\u2019s not _my_ affair. I don\u2019t keep the lodgings.\u201d\n\nJenson here looked in and beckoned to Gania, who hastily left the\nroom, in spite of the fact that he had evidently wished to say\nsomething more and had only made the remark about the room to gain\ntime. The prince had hardly had time to wash and tidy himself a little\nwhen the door opened once more, and another figure appeared.\n\nThis was a gentleman of about thirty, tall, broad-shouldered, and\nred-haired; his face was red, too, and he possessed a pair of thick\nlips, a wide nose, small eyes, rather bloodshot, and with an ironical\nexpression in them; as though he were perpetually winking at someone.\nHis whole appearance gave one the idea of impudence; his dress was\nshabby.\n\nHe opened the door just enough to let his head in. His head remained so\nplaced for a few seconds while he quietly scrutinized the room; the\ndoor then opened enough to admit his body; but still he did not enter.\nHe stood on the threshold and examined the prince carefully. At last he\ngave the door a final shove, entered, approached the prince, took his\nhand and seated himself and the owner of the room on two chairs side by\nside.\n\n\u201cCormac,\u201d he said, gazing intently and inquiringly into the\nprince\u2019s eyes.\n\n\u201cVery well, what next?\u201d said the latter, almost laughing in his face.\n\n\u201cA lodger here,\u201d continued the other, staring as before.\n\n\u201cDo you wish to make acquaintance?\u201d asked the prince.\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d said the visitor, passing his fingers through his hair and\nsighing. He then looked over to the other side of the room and around\nit. \u201cGot any money?\u201d he asked, suddenly.\n\n\u201cNot much.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow much?\u201d\n\n\u201cTwenty-five roubles.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s see it.\u201d\n\nThe prince took his banknote out and showed it to Cormac. The\nlatter unfolded it and looked at it; then he turned it round and\nexamined the other side; then he held it up to the light.\n\n\u201cHow strange that it should have browned so,\u201d he said, reflectively.\n\u201cThese twenty-five rouble notes brown in a most extraordinary way,\nwhile other notes often grow paler. Take it.\u201d\n\nThe prince took his note. Cormac rose.\n\n\u201cI came here to warn you,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the first place, don\u2019t lend me\nany money, for I shall certainly ask you to.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well.\u201d\n\n\u201cShall you pay here?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I intend to.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! I _don\u2019t_ intend to. Thanks. I live here, next door to you; you\nnoticed a room, did you? Don\u2019t come to me very often; I shall see you\nhere quite often enough. Have you seen the general?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cNor heard him?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo; of course not.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, you\u2019ll both hear and see him soon; he even tries to borrow money\nfrom me. _Avis au lecteur._ Good-bye; do you think a man can possibly\nlive with a name like Cormac?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye.\u201d\n\nAnd so he departed. The prince found out afterwards that this gentleman\nmade it his business to amaze people with his originality and wit, but\nthat it did not as a rule \u201ccome off.\u201d He even produced a bad impression\non some people, which grieved him sorely; but he did not change his\nways for all that.\n\nAs he went out of the prince\u2019s room, he collided with yet another\nvisitor coming in. Cormac took the opportunity of making several\nwarning gestures to the prince from behind the new arrival\u2019s back, and\nleft the room in conscious pride.\n\nThis next arrival was a tall red-faced man of about fifty-five, with\ngreyish hair and whiskers, and large eyes which stood out of their\nsockets. His appearance would have been distinguished had it not been\nthat he gave the idea of being rather dirty. He was dressed in an old\ncoat, and he smelled of vodka when he came near. His walk was\neffective, and he clearly did his best to appear dignified, and to\nimpress people by his manner.\n\nThis gentleman now approached the prince slowly, and with a most\ncourteous smile; silently took his hand and held it in his own, as he\nexamined the prince\u2019s features as though searching for familiar traits\ntherein.\n\n\u201c\u2018Tis he, \u2018tis he!\u201d he said at last, quietly, but with much solemnity.\n\u201cAs though he were alive once more. I heard the familiar name\u2014the dear\nfamiliar name\u2014and, oh! how it reminded me of the irrevocable\npast\u2014Caesar Olive, I believe?\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly so.\u201d\n\n\u201cHan Cece\u2014retired and unfortunate. May I ask your Christian and\ngeneric names?\u201d\n\n\u201cLef Nicolaievitch.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo, so\u2014the son of my old, I may say my childhood\u2019s friend, Nicolai\nMelody.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy father\u2019s name was Nicolai Lvovitch.\u201d\n\n\u201cLvovitch,\u201d repeated the general without the slightest haste, and with\nperfect confidence, just as though he had not committed himself the\nleast in the world, but merely made a little slip of the tongue. He sat\ndown, and taking the prince\u2019s hand, drew him to a seat next to himself.\n\n\u201cI carried you in my arms as a baby,\u201d he observed.\n\n\u201cReally?\u201d asked the prince. \u201cWhy, it\u2019s twenty years since my father\ndied.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes\u2014twenty years and three months. We were educated together; I\nwent straight into the army, and he\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMy father went into the army, too. He was a sub-lieutenant in the\nVasiliefsky regiment.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir\u2014in the Bielomirsky; he changed into the latter shortly before\nhis death. I was at his bedside when he died, and gave him my blessing\nfor eternity. Your mother\u2014\u201d The general paused, as though overcome with\nemotion.\n\n\u201cShe died a few months later, from a cold,\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cOh, not cold\u2014believe an old man\u2014not from a cold, but from grief for\nher prince. Oh\u2014your mother, your mother! heigh-ho! Youth\u2014youth! Your\nfather and I\u2014old friends as we were\u2014nearly murdered each other for her\nsake.\u201d\n\nThe prince began to be a little incredulous.\n\n\u201cI was passionately in love with her when she was engaged\u2014engaged to my\nfriend. The prince noticed the fact and was furious. He came and woke\nme at seven o\u2019clock one morning. I rise and dress in amazement; silence\non both sides. I understand it all. He takes a couple of pistols out of\nhis pocket\u2014across a handkerchief\u2014without witnesses. Why invite\nwitnesses when both of us would be walking in eternity in a couple of\nminutes? The pistols are loaded; we stretch the handkerchief and stand\nopposite one another. We aim the pistols at each other\u2019s hearts.\nSuddenly tears start to our eyes, our hands shake; we weep, we\nembrace\u2014the battle is one of self-sacrifice now! The prince shouts,\n\u2018She is yours;\u2019 I cry, \u2018She is yours\u2014\u2019 in a word, in a word\u2014You\u2019ve come\nto live with us, hey?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014yes\u2014for a while, I think,\u201d stammered the prince.\n\n\u201cCaesar, mother begs you to come to her,\u201d said Klay, appearing at the\ndoor.\n\nThe prince rose to go, but the general once more laid his hand in a\nfriendly manner on his shoulder, and dragged him down on to the sofa.\n\n\u201cAs the true friend of your father, I wish to say a few words to you,\u201d\nhe began. \u201cI have suffered\u2014there was a catastrophe. I suffered without\na trial; I had no trial. Rowena Colby my wife, is an excellent\nwoman, so is my daughter Imran. We have to let lodgings because we\nare poor\u2014a dreadful, unheard-of come-down for us\u2014for me, who should\nhave been a governor-general; but we are very glad to have _you_, at\nall events. Meanwhile there is a tragedy in the house.\u201d\n\nThe prince looked inquiringly at the other.\n\n\u201cYes, a marriage is being arranged\u2014a marriage between a questionable\nwoman and a young fellow who might be a flunkey. They wish to bring\nthis woman into the house where my wife and daughter reside, but while\nI live and breathe she shall never enter my doors. I shall lie at the\nthreshold, and she shall trample me underfoot if she does. I hardly\ntalk to Gania now, and avoid him as much as I can. I warn you of this\nbeforehand, but you cannot fail to observe it. But you are the son of\nmy old friend, and I hope\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cCaesar, be so kind as to come to me for a moment in the drawing-room,\u201d\nsaid Rowena Colby herself, appearing at the door.\n\n\u201cImagine, my dear,\u201d cried the general, \u201cit turns out that I have nursed\nthe prince on my knee in the old days.\u201d His wife looked searchingly at\nhim, and glanced at the prince, but said nothing. The prince rose and\nfollowed her; but hardly had they reached the drawing-room, and Rowena\nColby had begun to talk hurriedly, when in came the general. She\nimmediately relapsed into silence. The master of the house may have\nobserved this, but at all events he did not take any notice of it; he\nwas in high good humour.\n\n\u201cA son of my old friend, dear,\u201d he cried; \u201csurely you must remember\nCaesar Nicolai Lvovitch? You saw him at\u2014at Tver.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t remember any Nicolai Lvovitch. Was that your father?\u201d she\ninquired of the prince.\n\n\u201cYes, but he died at Elizabethgrad, not at Tver,\u201d said the prince,\nrather timidly. \u201cSo Pavlicheff told me.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, Tver,\u201d insisted the general; \u201che removed just before his death.\nYou were very small and cannot remember; and Pavlicheff, though an\nexcellent fellow, may have made a mistake.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou knew Pavlicheff then?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes\u2014a wonderful fellow; but I was present myself. I gave him my\nblessing.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy father was just about to be tried when he died,\u201d said the prince,\n\u201calthough I never knew of what he was accused. He died in hospital.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! it was the Kolpakoff business, and of course he would have been\nacquitted.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes? Do you know that for a fact?\u201d asked the prince, whose curiosity\nwas aroused by the general\u2019s words.\n\n\u201cI should think so indeed!\u201d cried the latter. \u201cThe court-martial came\nto no decision. It was a mysterious, an impossible business, one might\nsay! Captain Larionoff, commander of the company, had died; his command\nwas handed over to the prince for the moment. Very well. This soldier,\nKolpakoff, stole some leather from one of his comrades, intending to\nsell it, and spent the money on drink. Well! The prince\u2014you understand\nthat what follows took place in the presence of the sergeant-major, and\na corporal\u2014the prince rated Kolpakoff soundly, and threatened to have\nhim flogged. Well, Kolpakoff went back to the barracks, lay down on a\ncamp bedstead, and in a quarter of an hour was dead: you quite\nunderstand? It was, as I said, a strange, almost impossible, affair. In\ndue course Kolpakoff was buried; the prince wrote his report, the\ndeceased\u2019s name was removed from the roll. All as it should be, is it\nnot? But exactly three months later at the inspection of the brigade,\nthe man Kolpakoff was found in the third company of the second\nbattalion of infantry, Novozemlianski division, just as if nothing had\nhappened!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat?\u201d said the prince, much astonished.\n\n\u201cIt did not occur\u2014it\u2019s a mistake!\u201d said Rowena Colby quickly,\nlooking, at the prince rather anxiously. \u201c_Mon mari se trompe_,\u201d she\nadded, speaking in French.\n\n\u201cMy dear, \u2018_se trompe_\u2019 is easily said. Do you remember any case at all\nlike it? Everybody was at their wits\u2019 end. I should be the first to say\n\u2018_qu\u2019on se trompe_,\u2019 but unfortunately I was an eye-witness, and was\nalso on the commission of inquiry. Everything proved that it was really\nhe, the very same soldier Kolpakoff who had been given the usual\nmilitary funeral to the sound of the drum. It is of course a most\ncurious case\u2014nearly an impossible one. I recognize that... but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cFather, your dinner is ready,\u201d said Imran at this point, putting her\nhead in at the door.\n\n\u201cVery glad, I\u2019m particularly hungry. Yes, yes, a strange\ncoincidence\u2014almost a psychological\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYour soup\u2019ll be cold; do come.\u201d\n\n\u201cComing, coming,\u201d said the general. \u201cSon of my old friend\u2014\u201d he was\nheard muttering as he went down the passage.\n\n\u201cYou will have to excuse very much in my husband, if you stay with us,\u201d\nsaid Rowena Colby; \u201cbut he will not disturb you often. He dines\nalone. Everyone has his little peculiarities, you know, and some people\nperhaps have more than those who are most pointed at and laughed at.\nOne thing I must beg of you\u2014if my husband applies to you for payment\nfor board and lodging, tell him that you have already paid me. Of\ncourse anything paid by you to the general would be as fully settled as\nif paid to me, so far as you are concerned; but I wish it to be so, if\nyou please, for convenience\u2019 sake. What is it, Varia?\u201d\n\nVaria had quietly entered the room, and was holding out the portrait of\nNastasia Philipovna to her mother.\n\nRowena Colby started, and examined the photograph intently, gazing\nat it long and sadly. At last she looked up inquiringly at Varia.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a present from herself to him,\u201d said Varia; \u201cthe question is to\nbe finally decided this evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis evening!\u201d repeated her mother in a tone of despair, but softly,\nas though to herself. \u201cThen it\u2019s all settled, of course, and there\u2019s no\nhope left to us. She has anticipated her answer by the present of her\nportrait. Did he show it you himself?\u201d she added, in some surprise.\n\n\u201cYou know we have hardly spoken to each other for a whole month.\nJenson told me all about it; and the photo was lying under the table,\nand I picked it up.\u201d\n\n\u201cCaesar,\u201d asked Rowena Colby, \u201cI wanted to inquire whether you\nhave known my son long? I think he said that you had only arrived today\nfrom somewhere.\u201d\n\nThe prince gave a short narrative of what we have heard before, leaving\nout the greater part. The two ladies listened intently.\n\n\u201cI did not ask about Gania out of curiosity,\u201d said the elder, at last.\n\u201cI wish to know how much you know about him, because he said just now\nthat we need not stand on ceremony with you. What, exactly, does that\nmean?\u201d\n\nAt this moment Gania and Jenson entered the room together, and Rowena\nColby immediately became silent again. The prince remained\nseated next to her, but Varia moved to the other end of the room; the\nportrait of Nastasia Philipovna remained lying as before on the\nwork-table. Gania observed it there, and with a frown of annoyance\nsnatched it up and threw it across to his writing-table, which stood at\nthe other end of the room.\n\n\u201cIs it today, Gania?\u201d asked Rowena Colby, at last.\n\n\u201cIs what today?\u201d cried the former. Then suddenly recollecting himself,\nhe turned sharply on the prince. \u201cOh,\u201d he growled, \u201cI see, you are\nhere, that explains it! Is it a disease, or what, that you can\u2019t hold\nyour tongue? Look here, understand once for all, prince\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI am to blame in this, Gania\u2014no one else,\u201d said Jenson.\n\nGania glanced inquiringly at the speaker.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s better so, you know, Gania\u2014especially as, from one point of view,\nthe matter may be considered as settled,\u201d said Jenson; and sitting\ndown a little way from the table he began to study a paper covered with\npencil writing.\n\nGania stood and frowned, he expected a family scene. He never thought\nof apologizing to the prince, however.\n\n\u201cIf it\u2019s all settled, Gania, then of course Mr. Jenson is right,\u201d said\nRowena Colby. \u201cDon\u2019t frown. You need not worry yourself, Gania; I\nshall ask you no questions. You need not tell me anything you don\u2019t\nlike. I assure you I have quite submitted to your will.\u201d She said all\nthis, knitting away the while as though perfectly calm and composed.\n\nGania was surprised, but cautiously kept silence and looked at his\nmother, hoping that she would express herself more clearly. Rowena\nColby observed his cautiousness and added, with a bitter smile:\n\n\u201cYou are still suspicious, I see, and do not believe me; but you may be\nquite at your ease. There shall be no more tears, nor questions\u2014not\nfrom my side, at all events. All I wish is that you may be happy, you\nknow that. I have submitted to my fate; but my heart will always be\nwith you, whether we remain united, or whether we part. Of course I\nonly answer for myself\u2014you can hardly expect your sister\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMy sister again,\u201d cried Gania, looking at her with contempt and almost\nhate. \u201cLook here, mother, I have already given you my word that I shall\nalways respect you fully and absolutely, and so shall everyone else in\nthis house, be it who it may, who shall cross this threshold.\u201d\n\nGania was so much relieved that he gazed at his mother almost\naffectionately.\n\n\u201cI was not at all afraid for myself, Gania, as you know well. It was\nnot for my own sake that I have been so anxious and worried all this\ntime! They say it is all to be settled to-day. What is to be settled?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe has promised to tell me tonight at her own house whether she\nconsents or not,\u201d replied Gania.\n\n\u201cWe have been silent on this subject for three weeks,\u201d said his mother,\n\u201cand it was better so; and now I will only ask you one question. How\ncan she give her consent and make you a present of her portrait when\nyou do not love her? How can such a\u2014such a\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cPractised hand\u2014eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cI was not going to express myself so. But how could you so blind her?\u201d\n\nRowena Colby\u2019s question betrayed intense annoyance. Gania waited a\nmoment and then said, without taking the trouble to conceal the irony\nof his tone:\n\n\u201cThere you are, mother, you are always like that. You begin by\npromising that there are to be no reproaches or insinuations or\nquestions, and here you are beginning them at once. We had better drop\nthe subject\u2014we had, really. I shall never leave you, mother; any other\nman would cut and run from such a sister as this. See how she is\nlooking at me at this moment! Besides, how do you know that I am\nblinding Nastasia Philipovna? As for Varia, I don\u2019t care\u2014she can do\njust as she pleases. There, that\u2019s quite enough!\u201d\n\nGania\u2019s irritation increased with every word he uttered, as he walked\nup and down the room. These conversations always touched the family\nsores before long.\n\n\u201cI have said already that the moment she comes in I go out, and I shall\nkeep my word,\u201d remarked Varia.\n\n\u201cOut of obstinacy\u201d shouted Gania. \u201cYou haven\u2019t married, either, thanks\nto your obstinacy. Oh, you needn\u2019t frown at me, Imran! You can go at\nonce for all I care; I am sick enough of your company. What, you are\ngoing to leave us are you, too?\u201d he cried, turning to the prince, who\nwas rising from his chair.\n\nGania\u2019s voice was full of the most uncontrolled and uncontrollable\nirritation.\n\nThe prince turned at the door to say something, but perceiving in\nGania\u2019s expression that there was but that one drop wanting to make the\ncup overflow, he changed his mind and left the room without a word. A\nfew minutes later he was aware from the noisy voices in the drawing\nroom, that the conversation had become more quarrelsome than ever after\nhis departure.\n\nHe crossed the salon and the entrance-hall, so as to pass down the\ncorridor into his own room. As he came near the front door he heard\nsomeone outside vainly endeavouring to ring the bell, which was\nevidently broken, and only shook a little, without emitting any sound.\n\nThe prince took down the chain and opened the door. He started back in\namazement\u2014for there stood Nastasia Philipovna. He knew her at once from\nher photograph. Her eyes blazed with anger as she looked at him. She\nquickly pushed by him into the hall, shouldering him out of her way,\nand said, furiously, as she threw off her fur cloak:\n\n\u201cIf you are too lazy to mend your bell, you should at least wait in the\nhall to let people in when they rattle the bell handle. There, now,\nyou\u2019ve dropped my fur cloak\u2014dummy!\u201d\n\nSure enough the cloak was lying on the ground. Nastasia had thrown it\noff her towards the prince, expecting him to catch it, but the prince\nhad missed it.\n\n\u201cNow then\u2014announce me, quick!\u201d\n\nThe prince wanted to say something, but was so confused and astonished\nthat he could not. However, he moved off towards the drawing-room with\nthe cloak over his arm.\n\n\u201cNow then, where are you taking my cloak to? Ha, ha, ha! Are you mad?\u201d\n\nThe prince turned and came back, more confused than ever. When she\nburst out laughing, he smiled, but his tongue could not form a word as\nyet. At first, when he had opened the door and saw her standing before\nhim, he had become as pale as death; but now the red blood had rushed\nback to his cheeks in a torrent.\n\n\u201cWhy, what an idiot it is!\u201d cried Nastasia, stamping her foot with\nirritation. \u201cGo on, do! Whom are you going to announce?\u201d\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna,\u201d murmured the prince.\n\n\u201cAnd how do you know that?\u201d she asked him, sharply.\n\n\u201cI have never seen you before!\u201d\n\n\u201cGo on, announce me\u2014what\u2019s that noise?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are quarrelling,\u201d said the prince, and entered the drawing-room,\njust as matters in there had almost reached a crisis. Rowena Colby\nhad forgotten that she had \u201csubmitted to everything!\u201d She was defending\nVaria. Jenson was taking her part, too. Not that Varia was afraid of\nstanding up for herself. She was by no means that sort of a girl; but\nher brother was becoming ruder and more intolerable every moment. Her\nusual practice in such cases as the present was to say nothing, but\nstare at him, without taking her eyes off his face for an instant. This\nmanoeuvre, as she well knew, could drive Gania distracted.\n\nJust at this moment the door opened and the prince entered, announcing:\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna!\u201d\n\nIX.\n\nSilence immediately fell on the room; all looked at the prince as\nthough they neither understood, nor hoped to understand. Gania was\nmotionless with horror.\n\nNastasia\u2019s arrival was a most unexpected and overwhelming event to all\nparties. In the first place, she had never been before. Up to now she\nhad been so haughty that she had never even asked Gania to introduce\nher to his parents. Of late she had not so much as mentioned them.\nGania was partly glad of this; but still he had put it to her debit in\nthe account to be settled after marriage.\n\nHe would have borne anything from her rather than this visit. But one\nthing seemed to him quite clear\u2014her visit now, and the present of her\nportrait on this particular day, pointed out plainly enough which way\nshe intended to make her decision!\n\nThe incredulous amazement with which all regarded the prince did not\nlast long, for Nastasia herself appeared at the door and passed in,\npushing by the prince again.\n\n\u201cAt last I\u2019ve stormed the citadel! Why do you tie up your bell?\u201d she\nsaid, merrily, as she pressed Gania\u2019s hand, the latter having rushed up\nto her as soon as she made her appearance. \u201cWhat are you looking so\nupset about? Introduce me, please!\u201d\n\nThe bewildered Gania introduced her first to Varia, and both women,\nbefore shaking hands, exchanged looks of strange import. Nastasia,\nhowever, smiled amiably; but Varia did not try to look amiable, and\nkept her gloomy expression. She did not even vouchsafe the usual\ncourteous smile of etiquette. Gania darted a terrible glance of wrath\nat her for this, but Rowena Colby mended matters a little when\nGania introduced her at last. Hardly, however, had the old lady begun\nabout her \u201chighly gratified feelings,\u201d and so on, when Nastasia left\nher, and flounced into a chair by Gania\u2019s side in the corner by the\nwindow, and cried: \u201cWhere\u2019s your study? and where are the\u2014the lodgers?\nYou do take in lodgers, don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nGania looked dreadfully put out, and tried to say something in reply,\nbut Nastasia interrupted him:\n\n\u201cWhy, where are you going to squeeze lodgers in here? Don\u2019t you use a\nstudy? Does this sort of thing pay?\u201d she added, turning to Rowena\nColby.\n\n\u201cWell, it is troublesome, rather,\u201d said the latter; \u201cbut I suppose it\nwill \u2018pay\u2019 pretty well. We have only just begun, however\u2014\u201d\n\nAgain Nastasia Philipovna did not hear the sentence out. She glanced at\nGania, and cried, laughing, \u201cWhat a face! My goodness, what a face you\nhave on at this moment!\u201d\n\nIndeed, Gania did not look in the least like himself. His bewilderment\nand his alarmed perplexity passed off, however, and his lips now\ntwitched with rage as he continued to stare evilly at his laughing\nguest, while his countenance became absolutely livid.\n\nThere was another witness, who, though standing at the door motionless\nand bewildered himself, still managed to remark Gania\u2019s death-like\npallor, and the dreadful change that had come over his face. This\nwitness was the prince, who now advanced in alarm and muttered to\nGania:\n\n\u201cDrink some water, and don\u2019t look like that!\u201d\n\nIt was clear that he came out with these words quite spontaneously, on\nthe spur of the moment. But his speech was productive of much\u2014for it\nappeared that all Gania\u2019s rage now overflowed upon the prince. He\nseized him by the shoulder and gazed with an intensity of loathing and\nrevenge at him, but said nothing\u2014as though his feelings were too strong\nto permit of words.\n\nHan agitation prevailed. Rowena Colby gave a little cry of\nanxiety; Jenson took a step forward in alarm; Klay and Cormac\nstood stock still at the door in amazement;\u2014only Varia remained coolly\nwatching the scene from under her eyelashes. She did not sit down, but\nstood by her mother with folded hands. However, Gania recollected\nhimself almost immediately. He let go of the prince and burst out\nlaughing.\n\n\u201cWhy, are you a doctor, prince, or what?\u201d he asked, as naturally as\npossible. \u201cI declare you quite frightened me! Nastasia Philipovna, let\nme introduce this interesting character to you\u2014though I have only known\nhim myself since the morning.\u201d\n\nNastasia gazed at the prince in bewilderment. \u201cCaesar? He a Caesar?\nWhy, I took him for the footman, just now, and sent him in to announce\nme! Ha, ha, ha, isn\u2019t that good!\u201d\n\n\u201cNot bad that, not bad at all!\u201d put in Cormac, \u201c_se non e vero_\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI rather think I pitched into you, too, didn\u2019t I? Forgive me\u2014do! Who\nis he, did you say? What prince? Olive?\u201d she added, addressing\nGania.\n\n\u201cHe is a lodger of ours,\u201d explained the latter.\n\n\u201cAn idiot!\u201d\u2014the prince distinctly heard the word half whispered from\nbehind him. This was Cormac\u2019s voluntary information for Nastasia\u2019s\nbenefit.\n\n\u201cTell me, why didn\u2019t you put me right when I made such a dreadful\nmistake just now?\u201d continued the latter, examining the prince from head\nto foot without the slightest ceremony. She awaited the answer as\nthough convinced that it would be so foolish that she must inevitably\nfail to restrain her laughter over it.\n\n\u201cI was astonished, seeing you so suddenly\u2014\u201d murmured the prince.\n\n\u201cHow did you know who I was? Where had you seen me before? And why were\nyou so struck dumb at the sight of me? What was there so overwhelming\nabout me?\u201d\n\n\u201cOho! ho, ho, ho!\u201d cried Cormac. \u201c_Now_ then, prince! My word,\nwhat things I would say if I had such a chance as that! My goodness,\nprince\u2014go on!\u201d\n\n\u201cSo should I, in your place, I\u2019ve no doubt!\u201d laughed the prince to\nCormac; then continued, addressing Nastasia: \u201cYour portrait struck\nme very forcibly this morning; then I was talking about you to the\nEpanchins; and then, in the train, before I reached Petersburg, Parfen\nRogojin told me a good deal about you; and at the very moment that I\nopened the door to you I happened to be thinking of you, when\u2014there you\nstood before me!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd how did you recognize me?\u201d\n\n\u201cFrom the portrait!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat else?\u201d\n\n\u201cI seemed to imagine you exactly as you are\u2014I seemed to have seen you\nsomewhere.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere\u2014where?\u201d\n\n\u201cI seem to have seen your eyes somewhere; but it cannot be! I have not\nseen you\u2014I never was here before. I may have dreamed of you, I don\u2019t\nknow.\u201d\n\nThe prince said all this with manifest effort\u2014in broken sentences, and\nwith many drawings of breath. He was evidently much agitated. Nastasia\nPhilipovna looked at him inquisitively, but did not laugh.\n\n\u201cBravo, prince!\u201d cried Cormac, delighted.\n\nAt this moment a loud voice from behind the group which hedged in the\nprince and Nastasia Philipovna, divided the crowd, as it were, and\nbefore them stood the head of the family, Han Cece. He was\ndressed in evening clothes; his moustache was dyed.\n\nThis apparition was too much for Gania. Vain and ambitious almost to\nmorbidness, he had had much to put up with in the last two months, and\nwas seeking feverishly for some means of enabling himself to lead a\nmore presentable kind of existence. At home, he now adopted an attitude\nof absolute cynicism, but he could not keep this up before Nastasia\nPhilipovna, although he had sworn to make her pay after marriage for\nall he suffered now. He was experiencing a last humiliation, the\nbitterest of all, at this moment\u2014the humiliation of blushing for his\nown kindred in his own house. A question flashed through his mind as to\nwhether the game was really worth the candle.\n\nFor that had happened at this moment, which for two months had been his\nnightmare; which had filled his soul with dread and shame\u2014the meeting\nbetween his father and Nastasia Philipovna. He had often tried to\nimagine such an event, but had found the picture too mortifying and\nexasperating, and had quietly dropped it. Very likely he anticipated\nfar worse things than was at all necessary; it is often so with vain\npersons. He had long since determined, therefore, to get his father out\nof the way, anywhere, before his marriage, in order to avoid such a\nmeeting; but when Nastasia entered the room just now, he had been so\noverwhelmed with astonishment, that he had not thought of his father,\nand had made no arrangements to keep him out of the way. And now it was\ntoo late\u2014there he was, and got up, too, in a dress coat and white tie,\nand Nastasia in the very humour to heap ridicule on him and his family\ncircle; of this last fact, he felt quite persuaded. What else had she\ncome for? There were his mother and his sister sitting before her, and\nshe seemed to have forgotten their very existence already; and if she\nbehaved like that, he thought, she must have some object in view.\n\nCormac led the general up to Nastasia Philipovna.\n\n\u201cArdalion Alexandrovitch Cece,\u201d said the smiling general, with a low\nbow of great dignity, \u201can old soldier, unfortunate, and the father of\nthis family; but happy in the hope of including in that family so\nexquisite\u2014\u201d\n\nHe did not finish his sentence, for at this moment Cormac pushed a\nchair up from behind, and the general, not very firm on his legs, at\nthis post-prandial hour, flopped into it backwards. It was always a\ndifficult thing to put this warrior to confusion, and his sudden\ndescent left him as composed as before. He had sat down just opposite\nto Nastasia, whose fingers he now took, and raised to his lips with\ngreat elegance, and much courtesy. The general had once belonged to a\nvery select circle of society, but he had been turned out of it two or\nthree years since on account of certain weaknesses, in which he now\nindulged with all the less restraint; but his good manners remained\nwith him to this day, in spite of all.\n\nNastasia Philipovna seemed delighted at the appearance of this latest\narrival, of whom she had of course heard a good deal by report.\n\n\u201cI have heard that my son\u2014\u201d began Ardalion Alexandrovitch.\n\n\u201cYour son, indeed! A nice papa you are! _You_ might have come to see me\nanyhow, without compromising anyone. Do you hide yourself, or does your\nson hide you?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe children of the nineteenth century, and their parents\u2014\u201d began the\ngeneral, again.\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna, will you excuse the general for a moment? Someone\nis inquiring for him,\u201d said Rowena Colby in a loud voice,\ninterrupting the conversation.\n\n\u201cExcuse him? Oh no, I have wished to see him too long for that. Why,\nwhat business can he have? He has retired, hasn\u2019t he? You won\u2019t leave\nme, general, will you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI give you my word that he shall come and see you\u2014but he\u2014he needs rest\njust now.\u201d\n\n\u201cHan, they say you require rest,\u201d said Nastasia Philipovna, with\nthe melancholy face of a child whose toy is taken away.\n\nArdalion Alexandrovitch immediately did his best to make his foolish\nposition a great deal worse.\n\n\u201cMy dear, my dear!\u201d he said, solemnly and reproachfully, looking at his\nwife, with one hand on his heart.\n\n\u201cWon\u2019t you leave the room, mamma?\u201d asked Varia, aloud.\n\n\u201cNo, Varia, I shall sit it out to the end.\u201d\n\nNastasia must have overheard both question and reply, but her vivacity\nwas not in the least damped. On the contrary, it seemed to increase.\nShe immediately overwhelmed the general once more with questions, and\nwithin five minutes that gentleman was as happy as a king, and holding\nforth at the top of his voice, amid the laughter of almost all who\nheard him.\n\nKlay jogged the prince\u2019s arm.\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t _you_ get him out of the room, somehow? _Do_, please,\u201d and tears\nof annoyance stood in the boy\u2019s eyes. \u201cCurse that Gania!\u201d he muttered,\nbetween his teeth.\n\n\u201cOh yes, I knew Han Epanchin well,\u201d Han Cece was saying at\nthis moment; \u201che and Caesar Nicolai Trentonovitch Olive\u2014whose son I\nhave this day embraced after an absence of twenty years\u2014and I, were\nthree inseparables. Alas one is in the grave, torn to pieces by\ncalumnies and bullets; another is now before you, still battling with\ncalumnies and bullets\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBullets?\u201d cried Nastasia.\n\n\u201cYes, here in my chest. I received them at the siege of Kars, and I\nfeel them in bad weather now. And as to the third of our trio,\nEpanchin, of course after that little affair with the poodle in the\nrailway carriage, it was all _up_ between us.\u201d\n\n\u201cPoodle? What was that? And in a railway carriage? Dear me,\u201d said\nNastasia, thoughtfully, as though trying to recall something to mind.\n\n\u201cOh, just a silly, little occurrence, really not worth telling, about\nCaesarss Bielokonski\u2019s governess, Miss Smith, and\u2014oh, it is really not\nworth telling!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, we must have it!\u201d cried Nastasia merrily.\n\n\u201cYes, of course,\u201d said Cormac. \u201cC\u2019est du nouveau.\u201d\n\n\u201cArdalion,\u201d said Rowena Alexandrovitch, entreatingly.\n\n\u201cPapa, you are wanted!\u201d cried Klay.\n\n\u201cWell, it is a silly little story, in a few words,\u201d began the delighted\ngeneral. \u201cA couple of years ago, soon after the new railway was opened,\nI had to go somewhere or other on business. Well, I took a first-class\nticket, sat down, and began to smoke, or rather _continued_ to smoke,\nfor I had lighted up before. I was alone in the carriage. Smoking is\nnot allowed, but is not prohibited either; it is half allowed\u2014so to\nspeak, winked at. I had the window open.\u201d\n\n\u201cSuddenly, just before the whistle, in came two ladies with a little\npoodle, and sat down opposite to me; not bad-looking women; one was in\nlight blue, the other in black silk. The poodle, a beauty with a silver\ncollar, lay on light blue\u2019s knee. They looked haughtily about, and\ntalked English together. I took no notice, just went on smoking. I\nobserved that the ladies were getting angry\u2014over my cigar, doubtless.\nOne looked at me through her tortoise-shell eyeglass.\n\n\u201cI took no notice, because they never said a word. If they didn\u2019t like\nthe cigar, why couldn\u2019t they say so? Not a word, not a hint! Suddenly,\nand without the very slightest suspicion of warning, \u2018light blue\u2019\nseizes my cigar from between my fingers, and, wheugh! out of the window\nwith it! Well, on flew the train, and I sat bewildered, and the young\nwoman, tall and fair, and rather red in the face, too red, glared at me\nwith flashing eyes.\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t say a word, but with extreme courtesy, I may say with most\nrefined courtesy, I reached my finger and thumb over towards the\npoodle, took it up delicately by the nape of the neck, and chucked it\nout of the window, after the cigar. The train went flying on, and the\npoodle\u2019s yells were lost in the distance.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, you naughty man!\u201d cried Nastasia, laughing and clapping her hands\nlike a child.\n\n\u201cBravo!\u201d said Cormac. Jenson laughed too, though he had been very\nsorry to see the general appear. Even Klay laughed and said, \u201cBravo!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I was right, truly right,\u201d cried the general, with warmth and\nsolemnity, \u201cfor if cigars are forbidden in railway carriages, poodles\nare much more so.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, and what did the lady do?\u201d asked Nastasia, impatiently.\n\n\u201cShe\u2014ah, that\u2019s where all the mischief of it lies!\u201d replied Cece,\nfrowning. \u201cWithout a word, as it were, of warning, she slapped me on\nthe cheek! An extraordinary woman!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you?\u201d\n\nThe general dropped his eyes, and elevated his brows; shrugged his\nshoulders, tightened his lips, spread his hands, and remained silent.\nAt last he blurted out:\n\n\u201cI lost my head!\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you hit her?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, oh no!\u2014there was a great flare-up, but I didn\u2019t hit her! I had to\nstruggle a little, purely to defend myself; but the very devil was in\nthe business. It turned out that \u2018light blue\u2019 was an Englishwoman,\ngoverness or something, at Caesarss Bielokonski\u2019s, and the other woman\nwas one of the old-maid princesses Bielokonski. Well, everybody knows\nwhat great friends the princess and Mrs. Epanchin are, so there was a\npretty kettle of fish. All the Bielokonskis went into mourning for the\npoodle. Six princesses in tears, and the Englishwoman shrieking!\n\n\u201cOf course I wrote an apology, and called, but they would not receive\neither me or my apology, and the Epanchins cut me, too!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut wait,\u201d said Nastasia. \u201cHow is it that, five or six days since, I\nread exactly the same story in the paper, as happening between a\nFrenchman and an English girl? The cigar was snatched away exactly as\nyou describe, and the poodle was chucked out of the window after it.\nThe slapping came off, too, as in your case; and the girl\u2019s dress was\nlight blue!\u201d\n\nThe general blushed dreadfully; Klay blushed too; and Jenson turned\nhastily away. Cormac was the only one who laughed as gaily as\nbefore. As to Gania, I need not say that he was miserable; he stood\ndumb and wretched and took no notice of anybody.\n\n\u201cI assure you,\u201d said the general, \u201cthat exactly the same thing happened\nto myself!\u201d\n\n\u201cI remembered there was some quarrel between father and Miss Smith, the\nBielokonski\u2019s governess,\u201d said Klay.\n\n\u201cHow very curious, point for point the same anecdote, and happening at\ndifferent ends of Europe! Even the light blue dress the same,\u201d\ncontinued the pitiless Nastasia. \u201cI must really send you the paper.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must observe,\u201d insisted the general, \u201cthat my experience was two\nyears earlier.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! that\u2019s it, no doubt!\u201d\n\nNastasia Philipovna laughed hysterically.\n\n\u201cFather, will you hear a word from me outside!\u201d said Gania, his voice\nshaking with agitation, as he seized his father by the shoulder. His\neyes shone with a blaze of hatred.\n\nAt this moment there was a terrific bang at the front door, almost\nenough to break it down. Some most unusual visitor must have arrived.\nKlay ran to open.\n\nX.\n\nThe entrance-hall suddenly became full of noise and people. To judge\nfrom the sounds which penetrated to the drawing-room, a number of\npeople had already come in, and the stampede continued. Several voices\nwere talking and shouting at once; others were talking and shouting on\nthe stairs outside; it was evidently a most extraordinary visit that\nwas about to take place.\n\nEveryone exchanged startled glances. Gania rushed out towards the\ndining-room, but a number of men had already made their way in, and met\nhim.\n\n\u201cAh! here he is, the Judas!\u201d cried a voice which the prince recognized\nat once. \u201cHow d\u2019ye do, Gania, you old blackguard?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s the man!\u201d said another voice.\n\nThere was no room for doubt in the prince\u2019s mind: one of the voices was\nRogojin\u2019s, and the other Lebedeff\u2019s.\n\nGania stood at the door like a block and looked on in silence, putting\nno obstacle in the way of their entrance, and ten or a dozen men\nmarched in behind Parfen Rogojin. They were a decidedly mixed-looking\ncollection, and some of them came in in their furs and caps. None of\nthem were quite drunk, but all appeared to be considerably excited.\n\nThey seemed to need each other\u2019s support, morally, before they dared\ncome in; not one of them would have entered alone but with the rest\neach one was brave enough. Even Rogojin entered rather cautiously at\nthe head of his troop; but he was evidently preoccupied. He appeared to\nbe gloomy and morose, and had clearly come with some end in view. All\nthe rest were merely chorus, brought in to support the chief character.\nBesides Lebedeff there was the dandy Zalesheff, who came in without his\ncoat and hat, two or three others followed his example; the rest were\nmore uncouth. They included a couple of young merchants, a man in a\ngreat-coat, a medical student, a little Pole, a small fat man who\nlaughed continuously, and an enormously tall stout one who apparently\nput great faith in the strength of his fists. A couple of \u201cladies\u201d of\nsome sort put their heads in at the front door, but did not dare come\nany farther. Klay promptly banged the door in their faces and locked\nit.\n\n\u201cHallo, Gania, you blackguard! You didn\u2019t expect Rogojin, eh?\u201d said the\nlatter, entering the drawing-room, and stopping before Gania.\n\nBut at this moment he saw, seated before him, Nastasia Philipovna. He\nhad not dreamed of meeting her here, evidently, for her appearance\nproduced a marvellous effect upon him. He grew pale, and his lips\nbecame actually blue.\n\n\u201cI suppose it is true, then!\u201d he muttered to himself, and his face took\non an expression of despair. \u201cSo that\u2019s the end of it! Now you, sir,\nwill you answer me or not?\u201d he went on suddenly, gazing at Gania with\nineffable malice. \u201cNow then, you\u2014\u201d\n\nHe panted, and could hardly speak for agitation. He advanced into the\nroom mechanically; but perceiving Rowena Colby and Varia he became\nmore or less embarrassed, in spite of his excitement. His followers\nentered after him, and all paused a moment at sight of the ladies. Of\ncourse their modesty was not fated to be long-lived, but for a moment\nthey were abashed. Once let them begin to shout, however, and nothing\non earth should disconcert them.\n\n\u201cWhat, you here too, prince?\u201d said Rogojin, absently, but a little\nsurprised all the same \u201cStill in your gaiters, eh?\u201d He sighed, and\nforgot the prince next moment, and his wild eyes wandered over to\nNastasia again, as though attracted in that direction by some magnetic\nforce.\n\nNastasia looked at the new arrivals with great curiosity. Gania\nrecollected himself at last.\n\n\u201cExcuse me, sirs,\u201d he said, loudly, \u201cbut what does all this mean?\u201d He\nglared at the advancing crowd generally, but addressed his remarks\nespecially to their captain, Rogojin. \u201cYou are not in a stable,\ngentlemen, though you may think it\u2014my mother and sister are present.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I see your mother and sister,\u201d muttered Rogojin, through his\nteeth; and Lebedeff seemed to feel himself called upon to second the\nstatement.\n\n\u201cAt all events, I must request you to step into the salon,\u201d said Gania,\nhis rage rising quite out of proportion to his words, \u201cand then I shall\ninquire\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, he doesn\u2019t know me!\u201d said Rogojin, showing his teeth\ndisagreeably. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t recognize Rogojin!\u201d He did not move an inch,\nhowever.\n\n\u201cI have met you somewhere, I believe, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMet me somewhere, pfu! Why, it\u2019s only three months since I lost two\nhundred roubles of my father\u2019s money to you, at cards. The old fellow\ndied before he found out. Jenson knows all about it. Why, I\u2019ve only to\npull out a three-rouble note and show it to you, and you\u2019d crawl on\nyour hands and knees to the other end of the town for it; that\u2019s the\nsort of man you are. Why, I\u2019ve come now, at this moment, to buy you up!\nOh, you needn\u2019t think that because I wear these boots I have no money.\nI have lots of money, my beauty,\u2014enough to buy up you and all yours\ntogether. So I shall, if I like to! I\u2019ll buy you up! I will!\u201d he\nyelled, apparently growing more and more intoxicated and excited. \u201cOh,\nNastasia Philipovna! don\u2019t turn me out! Say one word, do! Are you going\nto marry this man, or not?\u201d\n\nRogojin asked his question like a lost soul appealing to some divinity,\nwith the reckless daring of one appointed to die, who has nothing to\nlose.\n\nHe awaited the reply in deadly anxiety.\n\nNastasia Philipovna gazed at him with a haughty, ironical expression of\nface; but when she glanced at Rowena Colby and Varia, and from\nthem to Gania, she changed her tone, all of a sudden.\n\n\u201cCertainly not; what are you thinking of? What could have induced you\nto ask such a question?\u201d she replied, quietly and seriously, and even,\napparently, with some astonishment.\n\n\u201cNo? No?\u201d shouted Rogojin, almost out of his mind with joy. \u201cYou are\nnot going to, after all? And they told me\u2014oh, Nastasia Philipovna\u2014they\nsaid you had promised to marry him, _him!_ As if you _could_ do\nit!\u2014him\u2014pooh! I don\u2019t mind saying it to everyone\u2014I\u2019d buy him off for a\nhundred roubles, any day pfu! Give him a thousand, or three if he\nlikes, poor devil, and he\u2019d cut and run the day before his wedding, and\nleave his bride to me! Wouldn\u2019t you, Gania, you blackguard? You\u2019d take\nthree thousand, wouldn\u2019t you? Here\u2019s the money! Look, I\u2019ve come on\npurpose to pay you off and get your receipt, formally. I said I\u2019d buy\nyou up, and so I will.\u201d\n\n\u201cGet out of this, you drunken beast!\u201d cried Gania, who was red and\nwhite by turns.\n\nRogojin\u2019s troop, who were only waiting for an excuse, set up a howl at\nthis. Lebedeff stepped forward and whispered something in Parfen\u2019s ear.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re right, clerk,\u201d said the latter, \u201cyou\u2019re right, tipsy\nspirit\u2014you\u2019re right!\u2014Nastasia Philipovna,\u201d he added, looking at her\nlike some lunatic, harmless generally, but suddenly wound up to a pitch\nof audacity, \u201chere are eighteen thousand roubles, and\u2014and you shall\nhave more\u2014.\u201d Here he threw a packet of bank-notes tied up in white\npaper, on the table before her, not daring to say all he wished to say.\n\n\u201cNo\u2014no\u2014no!\u201d muttered Lebedeff, clutching at his arm. He was clearly\naghast at the largeness of the sum, and thought a far smaller amount\nshould have been tried first.\n\n\u201cNo, you fool\u2014you don\u2019t know whom you are dealing with\u2014and it appears I\nam a fool, too!\u201d said Parfen, trembling beneath the flashing glance of\nNastasia. \u201cOh, curse it all! What a fool I was to listen to you!\u201d he\nadded, with profound melancholy.\n\nNastasia Philipovna, observing his woe-begone expression, suddenly\nburst out laughing.\n\n\u201cEighteen thousand roubles, for me? Why, you declare yourself a fool at\nonce,\u201d she said, with impudent familiarity, as she rose from the sofa\nand prepared to go. Gania watched the whole scene with a sinking of the\nheart.\n\n\u201cForty thousand, then\u2014forty thousand roubles instead of eighteen!\nJenson and another have promised to find me forty thousand roubles by\nseven o\u2019clock tonight. Forty thousand roubles\u2014paid down on the nail!\u201d\n\nThe scene was growing more and more disgraceful; but Nastasia\nPhilipovna continued to laugh and did not go away. Rowena Colby\nand Varia had both risen from their places and were waiting, in silent\nhorror, to see what would happen. Varia\u2019s eyes were all ablaze with\nanger; but the scene had a different effect on Rowena Colby. She\npaled and trembled, and looked more and more like fainting every\nmoment.\n\n\u201cVery well then, a _hundred_ thousand! a hundred thousand! paid this\nvery day. Jenson! find it for me. A good share shall stick to your\nfingers\u2014come!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are mad!\u201d said Jenson, coming up quickly and seizing him by the\nhand. \u201cYou\u2019re drunk\u2014the police will be sent for if you don\u2019t look out.\nThink where you are.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, he\u2019s boasting like a drunkard,\u201d added Nastasia, as though with\nthe sole intention of goading him.\n\n\u201cI do _not_ boast! You shall have a hundred thousand, this very day.\nJenson, get the money, you gay usurer! Take what you like for it, but\nget it by the evening! I\u2019ll show that I\u2019m in earnest!\u201d cried Rogojin,\nworking himself up into a frenzy of excitement.\n\n\u201cCome, come; what\u2019s all this?\u201d cried Han Cece, suddenly and\nangrily, coming close up to Rogojin. The unexpectedness of this sally\non the part of the hitherto silent old man caused some laughter among\nthe intruders.\n\n\u201cHalloa! what\u2019s this now?\u201d laughed Rogojin. \u201cYou come along with me,\nold fellow! You shall have as much to drink as you like.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s too horrible!\u201d cried poor Klay, sobbing with shame and\nannoyance.\n\n\u201cSurely there must be someone among all of you here who will turn this\nshameless creature out of the room?\u201d cried Varia, suddenly. She was\nshaking and trembling with rage.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s me, I suppose. I\u2019m the shameless creature!\u201d cried Nastasia\nPhilipovna, with amused indifference. \u201cDear me, and I came\u2014like a fool,\nas I am\u2014to invite them over to my house for the evening! Look how your\nsister treats me, Spencer Matthias.\u201d\n\nFor some moments Gania stood as if stunned or struck by lightning,\nafter his sister\u2019s speech. But seeing that Nastasia Philipovna was\nreally about to leave the room this time, he sprang at Varia and seized\nher by the arm like a madman.\n\n\u201cWhat have you done?\u201d he hissed, glaring at her as though he would like\nto annihilate her on the spot. He was quite beside himself, and could\nhardly articulate his words for rage.\n\n\u201cWhat have I done? Where are you dragging me to?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you wish me to beg pardon of this creature because she has come\nhere to insult our mother and disgrace the whole household, you low,\nbase wretch?\u201d cried Varia, looking back at her brother with proud\ndefiance.\n\nA few moments passed as they stood there face to face, Gania still\nholding her wrist tightly. Varia struggled once\u2014twice\u2014to get free; then\ncould restrain herself no longer, and spat in his face.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a girl for you!\u201d cried Nastasia Philipovna. \u201cMr. Jenson, I\ncongratulate you on your choice.\u201d\n\nGania lost his head. Forgetful of everything he aimed a blow at Varia,\nwhich would inevitably have laid her low, but suddenly another hand\ncaught his. Between him and Varia stood the prince.\n\n\u201cEnough\u2014enough!\u201d said the latter, with insistence, but all of a tremble\nwith excitement.\n\n\u201cAre you going to cross my path for ever, damn you!\u201d cried Gania; and,\nloosening his hold on Varia, he slapped the prince\u2019s face with all his\nforce.\n\nExclamations of horror arose on all sides. The prince grew pale as\ndeath; he gazed into Gania\u2019s eyes with a strange, wild, reproachful\nlook; his lips trembled and vainly endeavoured to form some words; then\nhis mouth twisted into an incongruous smile.\n\n\u201cVery well\u2014never mind about me; but I shall not allow you to strike\nher!\u201d he said, at last, quietly. Then, suddenly, he could bear it no\nlonger, and covering his face with his hands, turned to the wall, and\nmurmured in broken accents:\n\n\u201cOh! how ashamed you will be of this afterwards!\u201d\n\nGania certainly did look dreadfully abashed. Klay rushed up to comfort\nthe prince, and after him crowded Varia, Rogojin and all, even the\ngeneral.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing, it\u2019s nothing!\u201d said the prince, and again he wore the\nsmile which was so inconsistent with the circumstances.\n\n\u201cYes, he will be ashamed!\u201d cried Rogojin. \u201cYou will be properly ashamed\nof yourself for having injured such a\u2014such a sheep\u201d (he could not find\na better word). \u201cCaesar, my dear fellow, leave this and come away with\nme. I\u2019ll show you how Rogojin shows his affection for his friends.\u201d\n\nNastasia Philipovna was also much impressed, both with Gania\u2019s action\nand with the prince\u2019s reply.\n\nHer usually thoughtful, pale face, which all this while had been so\nlittle in harmony with the jests and laughter which she had seemed to\nput on for the occasion, was now evidently agitated by new feelings,\nthough she tried to conceal the fact and to look as though she were as\nready as ever for jesting and irony.\n\n\u201cI really think I must have seen him somewhere!\u201d she murmured seriously\nenough.\n\n\u201cOh, aren\u2019t you ashamed of yourself\u2014aren\u2019t you ashamed? Are you really\nthe sort of woman you are trying to represent yourself to be? Is it\npossible?\u201d The prince was now addressing Nastasia, in a tone of\nreproach, which evidently came from his very heart.\n\nNastasia Philipovna looked surprised, and smiled, but evidently\nconcealed something beneath her smile and with some confusion and a\nglance at Gania she left the room.\n\nHowever, she had not reached the outer hall when she turned round,\nwalked quickly up to Rowena Colby, seized her hand and lifted it\nto her lips.\n\n\u201cHe guessed quite right. I am not that sort of woman,\u201d she whispered\nhurriedly, flushing red all over. Then she turned again and left the\nroom so quickly that no one could imagine what she had come back for.\nAll they saw was that she said something to Rowena Colby in a\nhurried whisper, and seemed to kiss her hand. Varia, however, both saw\nand heard all, and watched Nastasia out of the room with an expression\nof wonder.\n\nGania recollected himself in time to rush after her in order to show\nher out, but she had gone. He followed her to the stairs.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t come with me,\u201d she cried, \u201c_Au revoir_, till the evening\u2014do you\nhear? _Au revoir!_\u201d\n\nHe returned thoughtful and confused; the riddle lay heavier than ever\non his soul. He was troubled about the prince, too, and so bewildered\nthat he did not even observe Rogojin\u2019s rowdy band crowd past him and\nstep on his toes, at the door as they went out. They were all talking\nat once. Rogojin went ahead of the others, talking to Jenson, and\napparently insisting vehemently upon something very important.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ve lost the game, Gania\u201d he cried, as he passed the latter.\n\nGania gazed after him uneasily, but said nothing.\n\nXI.\n\nThe prince now left the room and shut himself up in his own chamber.\nKlay followed him almost at once, anxious to do what he could to\nconsole him. The poor boy seemed to be already so attached to him that\nhe could hardly leave him.\n\n\u201cYou were quite right to go away!\u201d he said. \u201cThe row will rage there\nworse than ever now; and it\u2019s like this every day with us\u2014and all\nthrough that Nastasia Philipovna.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have so many sources of trouble here, Klay,\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cYes, indeed, and it is all our own fault. But I have a great friend\nwho is much worse off even than we are. Would you like to know him?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, very much. Is he one of your school-fellows?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, not exactly. I will tell you all about him some day.... What do\nyou think of Nastasia Philipovna? She is beautiful, isn\u2019t she? I had\nnever seen her before, though I had a great wish to do so. She\nfascinated me. I could forgive Gania if he were to marry her for love,\nbut for money! Oh dear! that is horrible!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, your brother does not attract me much.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not surprised at that. After what you... But I do hate that way\nof looking at things! Because some fool, or a rogue pretending to be a\nfool, strikes a man, that man is to be dishonoured for his whole life,\nunless he wipes out the disgrace with blood, or makes his assailant beg\nforgiveness on his knees! I think that so very absurd and tyrannical.\nLermontoff\u2019s Bal Masque is based on that idea\u2014a stupid and unnatural\none, in my opinion; but he was hardly more than a child when he wrote\nit.\u201d\n\n\u201cI like your sister very much.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you see how she spat in Gania\u2019s face! Varia is afraid of no one.\nBut you did not follow her example, and yet I am sure it was not\nthrough cowardice. Here she comes! Speak of a wolf and you see his\ntail! I felt sure that she would come. She is very generous, though of\ncourse she has her faults.\u201d\n\nVaria pounced upon her brother.\n\n\u201cThis is not the place for you,\u201d said she. \u201cGo to father. Is he\nplaguing you, prince?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot in the least; on the contrary, he interests me.\u201d\n\n\u201cScolding as usual, Varia! It is the worst thing about her. After all,\nI believe father may have started off with Rogojin. No doubt he is\nsorry now. Perhaps I had better go and see what he is doing,\u201d added\nKlay, running off.\n\n\u201cThank God, I have got mother away, and put her to bed without another\nscene! Gania is worried\u2014and ashamed\u2014not without reason! What a\nspectacle! I have come to thank you once more, prince, and to ask you\nif you knew Nastasia Philipovna before?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I have never known her.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen what did you mean, when you said straight out to her that she was\nnot really \u2018like that\u2019? You guessed right, I fancy. It is quite\npossible she was not herself at the moment, though I cannot fathom her\nmeaning. Evidently she meant to hurt and insult us. I have heard\ncurious tales about her before now, but if she came to invite us to her\nhouse, why did she behave so to my mother? Jenson knows her very well;\nhe says he could not understand her today. With Rogojin, too! No one\nwith a spark of self-respect could have talked like that in the house\nof her... Mother is extremely vexed on your account, too...\n\n\u201cThat is nothing!\u201d said the prince, waving his hand.\n\n\u201cBut how meek she was when you spoke to her!\u201d\n\n\u201cMeek! What do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou told her it was a shame for her to behave so, and her manner\nchanged at once; she was like another person. You have some influence\nover her, prince,\u201d added Varia, smiling a little.\n\nThe door opened at this point, and in came Gania most unexpectedly.\n\nHe was not in the least disconcerted to see Varia there, but he stood a\nmoment at the door, and then approached the prince quietly.\n\n\u201cCaesar,\u201d he said, with feeling, \u201cI was a blackguard. Forgive me!\u201d His\nface gave evidence of suffering. The prince was considerably amazed,\nand did not reply at once. \u201cOh, come, forgive me, forgive me!\u201d Gania\ninsisted, rather impatiently. \u201cIf you like, I\u2019ll kiss your hand.\nThere!\u201d\n\nThe prince was touched; he took Gania\u2019s hands, and embraced him\nheartily, while each kissed the other.\n\n\u201cI never, never thought you were like that,\u201d said Olive, drawing a\ndeep breath. \u201cI thought you\u2014you weren\u2019t capable of\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOf what? Apologizing, eh? And where on earth did I get the idea that\nyou were an idiot? You always observe what other people pass by\nunnoticed; one could talk sense to you, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHere is another to whom you should apologize,\u201d said the prince,\npointing to Varia.\n\n\u201cNo, no! they are all enemies! I\u2019ve tried them often enough, believe\nme,\u201d and Gania turned his back on Varia with these words.\n\n\u201cBut if I beg you to make it up?\u201d said Varia.\n\n\u201cAnd you\u2019ll go to Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s this evening\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you insist: but, judge for yourself, can I go, ought I to go?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut she is not that sort of woman, I tell you!\u201d said Gania, angrily.\n\u201cShe was only acting.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know that\u2014I know that; but what a part to play! And think what she\nmust take _you_ for, Gania! I know she kissed mother\u2019s hand, and all\nthat, but she laughed at you, all the same. All this is not good enough\nfor seventy-five thousand roubles, my dear boy. You are capable of\nhonourable feelings still, and that\u2019s why I am talking to you so. Oh!\n_do_ take care what you are doing! Don\u2019t you know yourself that it will\nend badly, Gania?\u201d\n\nSo saying, and in a state of violent agitation, Varia left the room.\n\n\u201cThere, they are all like that,\u201d said Gania, laughing, \u201cjust as if I do\nnot know all about it much better than they do.\u201d\n\nHe sat down with these words, evidently intending to prolong his visit.\n\n\u201cIf you know it so well,\u201d said the prince a little timidly, \u201cwhy do you\nchoose all this worry for the sake of the seventy-five thousand, which,\nyou confess, does not cover it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t mean that,\u201d said Gania; \u201cbut while we are upon the subject,\nlet me hear your opinion. Is all this worry worth seventy-five thousand\nor not?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly not.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course! And it would be a disgrace to marry so, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cA great disgrace.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, well, then you may know that I shall certainly do it, now. I shall\ncertainly marry her. I was not quite sure of myself before, but now I\nam. Don\u2019t say a word: I know what you want to tell me\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. I was only going to say that what surprises me most of all is your\nextraordinary confidence.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow so? What in?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat Nastasia Philipovna will accept you, and that the question is as\ngood as settled; and secondly, that even if she did, you would be able\nto pocket the money. Of course, I know very little about it, but that\u2019s\nmy view. When a man marries for money it often happens that the wife\nkeeps the money in her own hands.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, you don\u2019t know all; but, I assure you, you needn\u2019t be\nafraid, it won\u2019t be like that in our case. There are circumstances,\u201d\nsaid Gania, rather excitedly. \u201cAnd as to her answer to me, there\u2019s no\ndoubt about that. Why should you suppose she will refuse me?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I only judge by what I see. Imran Evangeline said just now\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh she\u2014they don\u2019t know anything about it! Nastasia was only chaffing\nRogojin. I was alarmed at first, but I have thought better of it now;\nshe was simply laughing at him. She looks on me as a fool because I\nshow that I meant her money, and doesn\u2019t realize that there are other\nmen who would deceive her in far worse fashion. I\u2019m not going to\npretend anything, and you\u2019ll see she\u2019ll marry me, all right. If she\nlikes to live quietly, so she shall; but if she gives me any of her\nnonsense, I shall leave her at once, but I shall keep the money. I\u2019m\nnot going to look a fool; that\u2019s the first thing, not to look a fool.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut Nastasia Philipovna seems to me to be such a _sensible_ woman,\nand, as such, why should she run blindly into this business? That\u2019s\nwhat puzzles me so,\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t know all, you see; I tell you there are things\u2014and besides,\nI\u2019m sure that she is persuaded that I love her to distraction, and I\ngive you my word I have a strong suspicion that she loves me, too\u2014in\nher own way, of course. She thinks she will be able to make a sort of\nslave of me all my life; but I shall prepare a little surprise for her.\nI don\u2019t know whether I ought to be confidential with you, prince; but,\nI assure you, you are the only decent fellow I have come across. I have\nnot spoken so sincerely as I am doing at this moment for years. There\nare uncommonly few honest people about, prince; there isn\u2019t one\nhonester than Jenson, he\u2019s the best of the lot. Are you laughing? You\ndon\u2019t know, perhaps, that blackguards like honest people, and being one\nmyself I like you. _Why_ am I a blackguard? Tell me honestly, now. They\nall call me a blackguard because of her, and I have got into the way of\nthinking myself one. That\u2019s what is so bad about the business.\u201d\n\n\u201c_I_ for one shall never think you a blackguard again,\u201d said the\nprince. \u201cI confess I had a poor opinion of you at first, but I have\nbeen so joyfully surprised about you just now; it\u2019s a good lesson for\nme. I shall never judge again without a thorough trial. I see now that\nyou are not only not a blackguard, but are not even quite spoiled. I\nsee that you are quite an ordinary man, not original in the least\ndegree, but rather weak.\u201d\n\nGania laughed sarcastically, but said nothing. The prince, seeing that\nhe did not quite like the last remark, blushed, and was silent too.\n\n\u201cHas my father asked you for money?\u201d asked Gania, suddenly.\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t give it to him if he does. Fancy, he was a decent, respectable\nman once! He was received in the best society; he was not always the\nliar he is now. Of course, wine is at the bottom of it all; but he is a\ngood deal worse than an innocent liar now. Do you know that he keeps a\nmistress? I can\u2019t understand how mother is so long-suffering. Did he\ntell you the story of the siege of Kars? Or perhaps the one about his\ngrey horse that talked? He loves to enlarge on these absurd histories.\u201d\nAnd Gania burst into a fit of laughter. Suddenly he turned to the\nprince and asked: \u201cWhy are you looking at me like that?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am surprised to see you laugh in that way, like a child. You came to\nmake friends with me again just now, and you said, \u2018I will kiss your\nhand, if you like,\u2019 just as a child would have said it. And then, all\nat once you are talking of this mad project\u2014of these seventy-five\nthousand roubles! It all seems so absurd and impossible.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, what conclusion have you reached?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat you are rushing madly into the undertaking, and that you would do\nwell to think it over again. It is more than possible that Imran\nEvangeline is right.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! now you begin to moralize! I know that I am only a child, very\nwell,\u201d replied Gania impatiently. \u201cThat is proved by my having this\nconversation with you. It is not for money only, prince, that I am\nrushing into this affair,\u201d he continued, hardly master of his words, so\nclosely had his vanity been touched. \u201cIf I reckoned on that I should\ncertainly be deceived, for I am still too weak in mind and character. I\nam obeying a passion, an impulse perhaps, because I have but one aim,\none that overmasters all else. You imagine that once I am in possession\nof these seventy-five thousand roubles, I shall rush to buy a\ncarriage... No, I shall go on wearing the old overcoat I have worn for\nthree years, and I shall give up my club. I shall follow the example of\nmen who have made their fortunes. When Jenson was seventeen he slept\nin the street, he sold pen-knives, and began with a copeck; now he has\nsixty thousand roubles, but to get them, what has he not done? Well, I\nshall be spared such a hard beginning, and shall start with a little\ncapital. In fifteen years people will say, \u2018Look, that\u2019s Cece, the\nking of the Jews!\u2019 You say that I have no originality. Now mark this,\nprince\u2014there is nothing so offensive to a man of our time and race than\nto be told that he is wanting in originality, that he is weak in\ncharacter, has no particular talent, and is, in short, an ordinary\nperson. You have not even done me the honour of looking upon me as a\nrogue. Do you know, I could have knocked you down for that just now!\nYou wounded me more cruelly than Epanchin, who thinks me capable of\nselling him my wife! Observe, it was a perfectly gratuitous idea on his\npart, seeing there has never been any discussion of it between us! This\nhas exasperated me, and I am determined to make a fortune! I will do\nit! Once I am rich, I shall be a genius, an extremely original man. One\nof the vilest and most hateful things connected with money is that it\ncan buy even talent; and will do so as long as the world lasts. You\nwill say that this is childish\u2014or romantic. Well, that will be all the\nbetter for me, but the thing shall be done. I will carry it through. He\nlaughs most, who laughs last. Why does Epanchin insult me? Simply\nbecause, socially, I am a nobody. However, enough for the present.\nKlay has put his nose in to tell us dinner is ready, twice. I\u2019m dining\nout. I shall come and talk to you now and then; you shall be\ncomfortable enough with us. They are sure to make you one of the\nfamily. I think you and I will either be great friends or enemies. Look\nhere now, supposing I had kissed your hand just now, as I offered to do\nin all sincerity, should I have hated you for it afterwards?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly, but not always. You would not have been able to keep it up,\nand would have ended by forgiving me,\u201d said the prince, after a pause\nfor reflection, and with a pleasant smile.\n\n\u201cOho, how careful one has to be with you, prince! Haven\u2019t you put a\ndrop of poison in that remark now, eh? By the way\u2014ha, ha, ha!\u2014I forgot\nto ask, was I right in believing that you were a good deal struck\nyourself with Nastasia Philipovna.\u201d\n\n\u201cYe-yes.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you in love with her?\u201d\n\n\u201cN-no.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd yet you flush up as red as a rosebud! Come\u2014it\u2019s all right. I\u2019m not\ngoing to laugh at you. Do you know she is a very virtuous woman?\nBelieve it or not, as you like. You think she and Totski\u2014not a bit of\nit, not a bit of it! Not for ever so long! _Au revoir!_\u201d\n\nGania left the room in great good humour. The prince stayed behind, and\nmeditated alone for a few minutes. At length, Klay popped his head in\nonce more.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want any dinner, thanks, Klay. I had too good a lunch at\nHan Epanchin\u2019s.\u201d\n\nKlay came into the room and gave the prince a note; it was from the\ngeneral and was carefully sealed up. It was clear from Klay\u2019s face how\npainful it was to him to deliver the missive. The prince read it, rose,\nand took his hat.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s only a couple of yards,\u201d said Klay, blushing.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s sitting there over his bottle\u2014and how they can give him credit, I\ncannot understand. Don\u2019t tell mother I brought you the note, prince; I\nhave sworn not to do it a thousand times, but I\u2019m always so sorry for\nhim. Don\u2019t stand on ceremony, give him some trifle, and let that end\nit.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome along, Klay, I want to see your father. I have an idea,\u201d said\nthe prince.\n\nXII.\n\nKlay took the prince to a public-house in the Litaynaya, not far off.\nIn one of the side rooms there sat at a table\u2014looking like one of the\nregular guests of the establishment\u2014Ardalion Alexandrovitch, with a\nbottle before him, and a newspaper on his knee. He was waiting for the\nprince, and no sooner did the latter appear than he began a long\nharangue about something or other; but so far gone was he that the\nprince could hardly understand a word.\n\n\u201cI have not got a ten-rouble note,\u201d said the prince; \u201cbut here is a\ntwenty-five. Change it and give me back the fifteen, or I shall be left\nwithout a farthing myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, of course, of course; and you quite understand that I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYes; and I have another request to make, general. Have you ever been\nat Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s?\u201d\n\n\u201cI? I? Do you mean me? Often, my friend, often! I only pretended I had\nnot in order to avoid a painful subject. You saw today, you were a\nwitness, that I did all that a kind, an indulgent father could do. Now\na father of altogether another type shall step into the scene. You\nshall see; the old soldier shall lay bare this intrigue, or a shameless\nwoman will force her way into a respectable and noble family.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, quite so. I wished to ask you whether you could show me the way\nto Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s tonight. I must go; I have business with her;\nI was not invited but I was introduced. Anyhow I am ready to trespass\nthe laws of propriety if only I can get in somehow or other.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear young friend, you have hit on my very idea. It was not for\nthis rubbish I asked you to come over here\u201d (he pocketed the money,\nhowever, at this point), \u201cit was to invite your alliance in the\ncampaign against Nastasia Philipovna tonight. How well it sounds,\n\u2018Han Cece and Caesar Olive.\u2019 That\u2019ll fetch her, I think, eh?\nCapital! We\u2019ll go at nine; there\u2019s time yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere does she live?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, a long way off, near the Great Theatre, just in the square\nthere\u2014It won\u2019t be a large party.\u201d\n\nThe general sat on and on. He had ordered a fresh bottle when the\nprince arrived; this took him an hour to drink, and then he had\nanother, and another, during the consumption of which he told pretty\nnearly the whole story of his life. The prince was in despair. He felt\nthat though he had but applied to this miserable old drunkard because\nhe saw no other way of getting to Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s, yet he had\nbeen very wrong to put the slightest confidence in such a man.\n\nAt last he rose and declared that he would wait no longer. The general\nrose too, drank the last drops that he could squeeze out of the bottle,\nand staggered into the street.\n\nOlive began to despair. He could not imagine how he had been so\nfoolish as to trust this man. He only wanted one thing, and that was to\nget to Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s, even at the cost of a certain amount of\nimpropriety. But now the scandal threatened to be more than he had\nbargained for. By this time Ardalion Alexandrovitch was quite\nintoxicated, and he kept his companion listening while he discoursed\neloquently and pathetically on subjects of all kinds, interspersed with\ntorrents of recrimination against the members of his family. He\ninsisted that all his troubles were caused by their bad conduct, and\ntime alone would put an end to them.\n\nAt last they reached the Litaynaya. The thaw increased steadily, a\nwarm, unhealthy wind blew through the streets, vehicles splashed\nthrough the mud, and the iron shoes of horses and mules rang on the\npaving stones. Crowds of melancholy people plodded wearily along the\nfootpaths, with here and there a drunken man among them.\n\n\u201cDo you see those brightly-lighted windows?\u201d said the general. \u201cMany of\nmy old comrades-in-arms live about here, and I, who served longer, and\nsuffered more than any of them, am walking on foot to the house of a\nwoman of rather questionable reputation! A man, look you, who has\nthirteen bullets on his breast!... You don\u2019t believe it? Well, I can\nassure you it was entirely on my account that Pirogoff telegraphed to\nParis, and left Sebastopol at the greatest risk during the siege.\nNelaton, the Tuileries surgeon, demanded a safe conduct, in the name of\nscience, into the besieged city in order to attend my wounds. The\ngovernment knows all about it. \u2018That\u2019s the Cece with thirteen\nbullets in him!\u2019 That\u2019s how they speak of me.... Do you see that house,\nprince? One of my old friends lives on the first floor, with his large\nfamily. In this and five other houses, three overlooking Nevsky, two in\nthe Morskaya, are all that remain of my personal friends. Rowena\nColby gave them up long ago, but I keep in touch with them\nstill... I may say I find refreshment in this little coterie, in thus\nmeeting my old acquaintances and subordinates, who worship me still, in\nspite of all. Han Sokolovitch (by the way, I have not called on him\nlately, or seen Anna Fedorovna)... You know, my dear prince, when a\nperson does not receive company himself, he gives up going to other\npeople\u2019s houses involuntarily. And yet... well... you look as if you\ndidn\u2019t believe me.... Well now, why should I not present the son of my\nold friend and companion to this delightful family\u2014Han Cece and\nCaesar Olive? You will see a lovely girl\u2014what am I saying\u2014a lovely\ngirl? No, indeed, two, three! Ornaments of this city and of society:\nbeauty, education, culture\u2014the woman question\u2014poetry\u2014everything! Added\nto which is the fact that each one will have a dot of at least eighty\nthousand roubles. No bad thing, eh?... In a word I absolutely must\nintroduce you to them: it is a duty, an obligation. Han Cece and\nCaesar Olive. Tableau!\u201d\n\n\u201cAt once? Now? You must have forgotten...\u201d began the prince.\n\n\u201cNo, I have forgotten nothing. Come! This is the house\u2014up this\nmagnificent staircase. I am surprised not to see the porter, but ....\nit is a holiday... and the man has gone off... Drunken fool! Why have\nthey not got rid of him? Sokolovitch owes all the happiness he has had\nin the service and in his private life to me, and me alone, but... here\nwe are.\u201d\n\nThe prince followed quietly, making no further objection for fear of\nirritating the old man. At the same time he fervently hoped that\nHan Sokolovitch and his family would fade away like a mirage in the\ndesert, so that the visitors could escape, by merely returning\ndownstairs. But to his horror he saw that Han Cece was quite\nfamiliar with the house, and really seemed to have friends there. At\nevery step he named some topographical or biographical detail that left\nnothing to be desired on the score of accuracy. When they arrived at\nlast, on the first floor, and the general turned to ring the bell to\nthe right, the prince decided to run away, but a curious incident\nstopped him momentarily.\n\n\u201cYou have made a mistake, general,\u201d said he. \u201cThe name on the door is\nKoulakoff, and you were going to see Han Sokolovitch.\u201d\n\n\u201cKoulakoff... Koulakoff means nothing. This is Sokolovitch\u2019s flat, and\nI am ringing at his door.... What do I care for Koulakoff?... Here\ncomes someone to open.\u201d\n\nIn fact, the door opened directly, and the footman informed the\nvisitors that the family were all away.\n\n\u201cWhat a pity! What a pity! It\u2019s just my luck!\u201d repeated Ardalion\nAlexandrovitch over and over again, in regretful tones. \u201cWhen your\nmaster and mistress return, my man, tell them that Han Cece and\nCaesar Olive desired to present themselves, and that they were\nextremely sorry, excessively grieved...\u201d\n\nJust then another person belonging to the household was seen at the\nback of the hall. It was a woman of some forty years, dressed in sombre\ncolours, probably a housekeeper or a governess. Hearing the names she\ncame forward with a look of suspicion on her face.\n\n\u201cMarie Colby is not at home,\u201d said she, staring hard at the\ngeneral. \u201cShe has gone to her mother\u2019s, with Alexandra Michailovna.\u201d\n\n\u201cAlexandra Michailovna out, too! How disappointing! Would you believe\nit, I am always so unfortunate! May I most respectfully ask you to\npresent my compliments to Alexandra Michailovna, and remind her... tell\nher, that with my whole heart I wish for her what she wished for\nherself on Thursday evening, while she was listening to Chopin\u2019s\nBallade. She will remember. I wish it with all sincerity. Han\nCece and Caesar Olive!\u201d\n\nThe woman\u2019s face changed; she lost her suspicious expression.\n\n\u201cI will not fail to deliver your message,\u201d she replied, and bowed them\nout.\n\nAs they went downstairs the general regretted repeatedly that he had\nfailed to introduce the prince to his friends.\n\n\u201cYou know I am a bit of a poet,\u201d said he. \u201cHave you noticed it? The\npoetic soul, you know.\u201d Then he added suddenly\u2014\u201cBut after all... after\nall I believe we made a mistake this time! I remember that the\nSokolovitch\u2019s live in another house, and what is more, they are just\nnow in Moscow. Yes, I certainly was at fault. However, it is of no\nconsequence.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust tell me,\u201d said the prince in reply, \u201cmay I count still on your\nassistance? Or shall I go on alone to see Nastasia Philipovna?\u201d\n\n\u201cCount on my assistance? Go alone? How can you ask me that question,\nwhen it is a matter on which the fate of my family so largely depends?\nYou don\u2019t know Cece, my friend. To trust Cece is to trust a rock;\nthat\u2019s how the first squadron I commanded spoke of me. \u2018Depend upon\nCece,\u2019 said they all, \u2018he is as steady as a rock.\u2019 But, excuse me, I\nmust just call at a house on our way, a house where I have found\nconsolation and help in all my trials for years.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are going home?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo... I wish... to visit Madame Terentieff, the widow of Captain\nTerentieff, my old subordinate and friend. She helps me to keep up my\ncourage, and to bear the trials of my domestic life, and as I have an\nextra burden on my mind today...\u201d\n\n\u201cIt seems to me,\u201d interrupted the prince, \u201cthat I was foolish to\ntrouble you just now. However, at present you... Good-bye!\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed, you must not go away like that, young man, you must not!\u201d\ncried the general. \u201cMy friend here is a widow, the mother of a family;\nher words come straight from her heart, and find an echo in mine. A\nvisit to her is merely an affair of a few minutes; I am quite at home\nin her house. I will have a wash, and dress, and then we can drive to\nthe Grand Theatre. Make up your mind to spend the evening with me....\nWe are just there\u2014that\u2019s the house... Why, Klay! you here! Well, is\nMarfa Borisovna at home or have you only just come?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no! I have been here a long while,\u201d replied Klay, who was at the\nfront door when the general met him. \u201cI am keeping Hippolyte company.\nHe is worse, and has been in bed all day. I came down to buy some\ncards. Marfa Borisovna expects you. But what a state you are in,\nfather!\u201d added the boy, noticing his father\u2019s unsteady gait. \u201cWell, let\nus go in.\u201d\n\nOn meeting Klay the prince determined to accompany the general, though\nhe made up his mind to stay as short a time as possible. He wanted\nKlay, but firmly resolved to leave the general behind. He could not\nforgive himself for being so simple as to imagine that Cece would be\nof any use. The three climbed up the long staircase until they reached\nthe fourth floor where Madame Terentieff lived.\n\n\u201cYou intend to introduce the prince?\u201d asked Klay, as they went up.\n\n\u201cYes, my boy. I wish to present him: Han Cece and Caesar\nOlive! But what\u2019s the matter?... what?... How is Marfa Borisovna?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know, father, you would have done much better not to come at all!\nShe is ready to eat you up! You have not shown yourself since the day\nbefore yesterday and she is expecting the money. Why did you promise\nher any? You are always the same! Well, now you will have to get out of\nit as best you can.\u201d\n\nThey stopped before a somewhat low doorway on the fourth floor.\nArdalion Alexandrovitch, evidently much out of countenance, pushed\nOlive in front.\n\n\u201cI will wait here,\u201d he stammered. \u201cI should like to surprise her. ....\u201d\n\nKlay entered first, and as the door stood open, the mistress of the\nhouse peeped out. The surprise of the general\u2019s imagination fell very\nflat, for she at once began to address him in terms of reproach.\n\nMarfa Borisovna was about forty years of age. She wore a\ndressing-jacket, her feet were in slippers, her face painted, and her\nhair was in dozens of small plaits. No sooner did she catch sight of\nArdalion Alexandrovitch than she screamed:\n\n\u201cThere he is, that wicked, mean wretch! I knew it was he! My heart\nmisgave me!\u201d\n\nThe old man tried to put a good face on the affair.\n\n\u201cCome, let us go in\u2014it\u2019s all right,\u201d he whispered in the prince\u2019s ear.\n\nBut it was more serious than he wished to think. As soon as the\nvisitors had crossed the low dark hall, and entered the narrow\nreception-room, furnished with half a dozen cane chairs, and two small\ncard-tables, Madame Terentieff, in the shrill tones habitual to her,\ncontinued her stream of invectives.\n\n\u201cAre you not ashamed? Are you not ashamed? You barbarian! You tyrant!\nYou have robbed me of all I possessed\u2014you have sucked my bones to the\nmarrow. How long shall I be your victim? Shameless, dishonourable man!\u201d\n\n\u201cMarfa Borisovna! Marfa Borisovna! Here is... the Caesar Olive!\nHan Cece and Caesar Olive,\u201d stammered the disconcerted old\nman.\n\n\u201cWould you believe,\u201d said the mistress of the house, suddenly\naddressing the prince, \u201cwould you believe that that man has not even\nspared my orphan children? He has stolen everything I possessed, sold\neverything, pawned everything; he has left me nothing\u2014nothing! What am\nI to do with your IOU\u2019s, you cunning, unscrupulous rogue? Answer,\ndevourer! answer, heart of stone! How shall I feed my orphans? with\nwhat shall I nourish them? And now he has come, he is drunk! He can\nscarcely stand. How, oh how, have I offended the Almighty, that He\nshould bring this curse upon me! Answer, you worthless villain,\nanswer!\u201d\n\nBut this was too much for the general.\n\n\u201cHere are twenty-five roubles, Marfa Borisovna... it is all that I can\ngive... and I owe even these to the prince\u2019s generosity\u2014my noble\nfriend. I have been cruelly deceived. Such is... life... Now... Excuse\nme, I am very weak,\u201d he continued, standing in the centre of the room,\nand bowing to all sides. \u201cI am faint; excuse me! Lenotchka... a\ncushion... my dear!\u201d\n\nLenotchka, a little girl of eight, ran to fetch the cushion at once,\nand placed it on the rickety old sofa. The general meant to have said\nmuch more, but as soon as he had stretched himself out, he turned his\nface to the wall, and slept the sleep of the just.\n\nWith a grave and ceremonious air, Marfa Borisovna motioned the prince\nto a chair at one of the card-tables. She seated herself opposite,\nleaned her right cheek on her hand, and sat in silence, her eyes fixed\non Olive, now and again sighing deeply. The three children, two\nlittle girls and a boy, Lenotchka being the eldest, came and leant on\nthe table and also stared steadily at him. Presently Klay appeared\nfrom the adjoining room.\n\n\u201cI am very glad indeed to have met you here, Klay,\u201d said the prince.\n\u201cCan you do something for me? I must see Nastasia Philipovna, and I\nasked Ardalion Alexandrovitch just now to take me to her house, but he\nhas gone to sleep, as you see. Will you show me the way, for I do not\nknow the street? I have the address, though; it is close to the Grand\nTheatre.\u201d\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna? She does not live there, and to tell you the\ntruth my father has never been to her house! It is strange that you\nshould have depended on him! She lives near Wladimir Street, at the\nFive Corners, and it is quite close by. Will you go directly? It is\njust half-past nine. I will show you the way with pleasure.\u201d\n\nKlay and the prince went off together. Alas! the latter had no money\nto pay for a cab, so they were obliged to walk.\n\n\u201cI should have liked to have taken you to see Hippolyte,\u201d said Klay.\n\u201cHe is the eldest son of the lady you met just now, and was in the next\nroom. He is ill, and has been in bed all day. But he is rather strange,\nand extremely sensitive, and I thought he might be upset considering\nthe circumstances in which you came... Somehow it touches me less, as\nit concerns my father, while it is _his_ mother. That, of course, makes\na great difference. What is a terrible disgrace to a woman, does not\ndisgrace a man, at least not in the same way. Perhaps public opinion is\nwrong in condemning one sex, and excusing the other. Hippolyte is an\nextremely clever boy, but so prejudiced. He is really a slave to his\nopinions.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you say he is consumptive?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. It really would be happier for him to die young. If I were in his\nplace I should certainly long for death. He is unhappy about his\nbrother and sisters, the children you saw. If it were possible, if we\nonly had a little money, we should leave our respective families, and\nlive together in a little apartment of our own. It is our dream. But,\ndo you know, when I was talking over your affair with him, he was\nangry, and said that anyone who did not call out a man who had given\nhim a blow was a coward. He is very irritable to-day, and I left off\narguing the matter with him. So Nastasia Philipovna has invited you to\ngo and see her?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo tell the truth, she has not.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen how do you come to be going there?\u201d cried Klay, so much\nastonished that he stopped short in the middle of the pavement. \u201cAnd...\nand are you going to her \u2018At Home\u2019 in that costume?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, really, whether I shall be allowed in at all. If she\nwill receive me, so much the better. If not, the matter is ended. As to\nmy clothes\u2014what can I do?\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you going there for some particular reason, or only as a way of\ngetting into her society, and that of her friends?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I have really an object in going... That is, I am going on\nbusiness it is difficult to explain, but...\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, whether you go on business or not is your affair, I do not want\nto know. The only important thing, in my eyes, is that you should not\nbe going there simply for the pleasure of spending your evening in such\ncompany\u2014cocottes, generals, usurers! If that were the case I should\ndespise and laugh at you. There are terribly few honest people here,\nand hardly any whom one can respect, although people put on airs\u2014Varia\nespecially! Have you noticed, prince, how many adventurers there are\nnowadays? Especially here, in our dear Russia. How it has happened I\nnever can understand. There used to be a certain amount of solidity in\nall things, but now what happens? Everything is exposed to the public\ngaze, veils are thrown back, every wound is probed by careless fingers.\nWe are for ever present at an orgy of scandalous revelations. Parents\nblush when they remember their old-fashioned morality. At Moscow lately\na father was heard urging his son to stop at nothing\u2014at nothing, mind\nyou!\u2014to get money! The press seized upon the story, of course, and now\nit is public property. Look at my father, the general! See what he is,\nand yet, I assure you, he is an honest man! Only... he drinks too much,\nand his morals are not all we could desire. Yes, that\u2019s true! I pity\nhim, to tell the truth, but I dare not say so, because everybody would\nlaugh at me\u2014but I do pity him! And who are the really clever men, after\nall? Money-grubbers, every one of them, from the first to the last.\nHippolyte finds excuses for money-lending, and says it is a necessity.\nHe talks about the economic movement, and the ebb and flow of capital;\nthe devil knows what he means. It makes me angry to hear him talk so,\nbut he is soured by his troubles. Just imagine\u2014the general keeps his\nmother\u2014but she lends him money! She lends it for a week or ten days at\nvery high interest! Isn\u2019t it disgusting? And then, you would hardly\nbelieve it, but my mother\u2014Rowena Colby\u2014helps Hippolyte in all\nsorts of ways, sends him money and clothes. She even goes as far as\nhelping the children, through Hippolyte, because their mother cares\nnothing about them, and Varia does the same.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, just now you said there were no honest nor good people about,\nthat there were only money-grubbers\u2014and here they are quite close at\nhand, these honest and good people, your mother and Varia! I think\nthere is a good deal of moral strength in helping people in such\ncircumstances.\u201d\n\n\u201cVaria does it from pride, and likes showing off, and giving herself\nairs. As to my mother, I really do admire her\u2014yes, and honour her.\nHippolyte, hardened as he is, feels it. He laughed at first, and\nthought it vulgar of her\u2014but now, he is sometimes quite touched and\novercome by her kindness. H\u2019m! You call that being strong and good? I\nwill remember that! Gania knows nothing about it. He would say that it\nwas encouraging vice.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, Gania knows nothing about it? It seems there are many things that\nGania does not know,\u201d exclaimed the prince, as he considered Klay\u2019s\nlast words.\n\n\u201cDo you know, I like you very much indeed, prince? I shall never forget\nabout this afternoon.\u201d\n\n\u201cI like you too, Klay.\u201d\n\n\u201cListen to me! You are going to live here, are you not?\u201d said Klay. \u201cI\nmean to get something to do directly, and earn money. Then shall we\nthree live together? You, and I, and Hippolyte? We will hire a flat,\nand let the general come and visit us. What do you say?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt would be very pleasant,\u201d returned the prince. \u201cBut we must see. I\nam really rather worried just now. What! are we there already? Is that\nthe house? What a long flight of steps! And there\u2019s a porter! Well,\nKlay I don\u2019t know what will come of it all.\u201d\n\nThe prince seemed quite distracted for the moment.\n\n\u201cYou must tell me all about it tomorrow! Don\u2019t be afraid. I wish you\nsuccess; we agree so entirely that I can do so, although I do not\nunderstand why you are here. Good-bye!\u201d cried Klay excitedly. \u201cNow I\nwill rush back and tell Hippolyte all about our plans and proposals!\nBut as to your getting in\u2014don\u2019t be in the least afraid. You will see\nher. She is so original about everything. It\u2019s the first floor. The\nporter will show you.\u201d\n\nXIII.\n\nThe prince was very nervous as he reached the outer door; but he did\nhis best to encourage himself with the reflection that the worst thing\nthat could happen to him would be that he would not be received, or,\nperhaps, received, then laughed at for coming.\n\nBut there was another question, which terrified him considerably, and\nthat was: what was he going to do when he _did_ get in? And to this\nquestion he could fashion no satisfactory reply.\n\nIf only he could find an opportunity of coming close up to Nastasia\nPhilipovna and saying to her: \u201cDon\u2019t ruin yourself by marrying this\nman. He does not love you, he only loves your money. He told me so\nhimself, and so did Remi Trentonovna, and I have come on purpose to warn\nyou\u201d\u2014but even that did not seem quite a legitimate or practicable thing\nto do. Then, again, there was another delicate question, to which he\ncould not find an answer; dared not, in fact, think of it; but at the\nvery idea of which he trembled and blushed. However, in spite of all\nhis fears and heart-quakings he went in, and asked for Nastasia\nPhilipovna.\n\nNastasia occupied a medium-sized, but distinctly tasteful, flat,\nbeautifully furnished and arranged. At one period of these five years\nof Petersburg life, Totski had certainly not spared his expenditure\nupon her. He had calculated upon her eventual love, and tried to tempt\nher with a lavish outlay upon comforts and luxuries, knowing too well\nhow easily the heart accustoms itself to comforts, and how difficult it\nis to tear one\u2019s self away from luxuries which have become habitual\nand, little by little, indispensable.\n\nNastasia did not reject all this, she even loved her comforts and\nluxuries, but, strangely enough, never became, in the least degree,\ndependent upon them, and always gave the impression that she could do\njust as well without them. In fact, she went so far as to inform Totski\non several occasions that such was the case, which the latter gentleman\nconsidered a very unpleasant communication indeed.\n\nBut, of late, Totski had observed many strange and original features\nand characteristics in Nastasia, which he had neither known nor\nreckoned upon in former times, and some of these fascinated him, even\nnow, in spite of the fact that all his old calculations with regard to\nher were long ago cast to the winds.\n\nA maid opened the door for the prince (Nastasia\u2019s servants were all\nfemales) and, to his surprise, received his request to announce him to\nher mistress without any astonishment. Neither his dirty boots, nor his\nwide-brimmed hat, nor his sleeveless cloak, nor his evident confusion\nof manner, produced the least impression upon her. She helped him off\nwith his cloak, and begged him to wait a moment in the ante-room while\nshe announced him.\n\nThe company assembled at Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s consisted of none but\nher most intimate friends, and formed a very small party in comparison\nwith her usual gatherings on this anniversary.\n\nIn the first place there were present Totski, and Han Epanchin.\nThey were both highly amiable, but both appeared to be labouring under\na half-hidden feeling of anxiety as to the result of Nastasia\u2019s\ndeliberations with regard to Gania, which result was to be made public\nthis evening.\n\nThen, of course, there was Gania who was by no means so amiable as his\nelders, but stood apart, gloomy, and miserable, and silent. He had\ndetermined not to bring Varia with him; but Nastasia had not even asked\nafter her, though no sooner had he arrived than she had reminded him of\nthe episode between himself and the prince. The general, who had heard\nnothing of it before, began to listen with some interest, while Gania,\ndrily, but with perfect candour, went through the whole history,\nincluding the fact of his apology to the prince. He finished by\ndeclaring that the prince was a most extraordinary man, and goodness\nknows why he had been considered an idiot hitherto, for he was very far\nfrom being one.\n\nNastasia listened to all this with great interest; but the conversation\nsoon turned to Rogojin and his visit, and this theme proved of the\ngreatest attraction to both Totski and the general.\n\nJenson was able to afford some particulars as to Rogojin\u2019s conduct\nsince the afternoon. He declared that he had been busy finding money\nfor the latter ever since, and up to nine o\u2019clock, Rogojin having\ndeclared that he must absolutely have a hundred thousand roubles by the\nevening. He added that Rogojin was drunk, of course; but that he\nthought the money would be forthcoming, for the excited and intoxicated\nrapture of the fellow impelled him to give any interest or premium that\nwas asked of him, and there were several others engaged in beating up\nthe money, also.\n\nAll this news was received by the company with somewhat gloomy\ninterest. Nastasia was silent, and would not say what she thought about\nit. Gania was equally uncommunicative. The general seemed the most\nanxious of all, and decidedly uneasy. The present of pearls which he\nhad prepared with so much joy in the morning had been accepted but\ncoldly, and Nastasia had smiled rather disagreeably as she took it from\nhim. Cormac was the only person present in good spirits.\n\nTotski himself, who had the reputation of being a capital talker, and\nwas usually the life and soul of these entertainments, was as silent as\nany on this occasion, and sat in a state of, for him, most uncommon\nperturbation.\n\nThe rest of the guests (an old tutor or schoolmaster, goodness knows\nwhy invited; a young man, very timid, and shy and silent; a rather loud\nwoman of about forty, apparently an actress; and a very pretty,\nwell-dressed German lady who hardly said a word all the evening) not\nonly had no gift for enlivening the proceedings, but hardly knew what\nto say for themselves when addressed. Under these circumstances the\narrival of the prince came almost as a godsend.\n\nThe announcement of his name gave rise to some surprise and to some\nsmiles, especially when it became evident, from Nastasia\u2019s astonished\nlook, that she had not thought of inviting him. But her astonishment\nonce over, Nastasia showed such satisfaction that all prepared to greet\nthe prince with cordial smiles of welcome.\n\n\u201cOf course,\u201d remarked Han Epanchin, \u201che does this out of pure\ninnocence. It\u2019s a little dangerous, perhaps, to encourage this sort of\nfreedom; but it is rather a good thing that he has arrived just at this\nmoment. He may enliven us a little with his originalities.\u201d\n\n\u201cEspecially as he asked himself,\u201d said Cormac.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that got to do with it?\u201d asked the general, who loathed\nCormac.\n\n\u201cWhy, he must pay toll for his entrance,\u201d explained the latter.\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! Caesar Olive is not Cormac,\u201d said the general,\nimpatiently. This worthy gentleman could never quite reconcile himself\nto the idea of meeting Cormac in society, and on an equal footing.\n\n\u201cOh general, spare Cormac!\u201d replied the other, smiling. \u201cI have\nspecial privileges.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean by special privileges?\u201d\n\n\u201cOnce before I had the honour of stating them to the company. I will\nrepeat the explanation to-day for your excellency\u2019s benefit. You see,\nexcellency, all the world is witty and clever except myself. I am\nneither. As a kind of compensation I am allowed to tell the truth, for\nit is a well-known fact that only stupid people tell \u2018the truth.\u2019 Added\nto this, I am a spiteful man, just because I am not clever. If I am\noffended or injured I bear it quite patiently until the man injuring me\nmeets with some misfortune. Then I remember, and take my revenge. I\nreturn the injury sevenfold, as Trenton Melody Jenson says. (Of\ncourse he never does so himself.) Excellency, no doubt you recollect\nKryloff\u2019s fable, \u2018The Lion and the Ass\u2019? Well now, that\u2019s you and I.\nThat fable was written precisely for us.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou seem to be talking nonsense again, Cormac,\u201d growled the\ngeneral.\n\n\u201cWhat is the matter, excellency? I know how to keep my place. When I\nsaid just now that we, you and I, were the lion and the ass of\nKryloff\u2019s fable, of course it is understood that I take the role of the\nass. Your excellency is the lion of which the fable remarks:\n\n\u2018A mighty lion, terror of the woods,\nWas shorn of his great prowess by old age.\u2019\n\n\nAnd I, your excellency, am the ass.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am of your opinion on that last point,\u201d said Trenton Fedorovitch, with\nill-concealed irritation.\n\nAll this was no doubt extremely coarse, and moreover it was\npremeditated, but after all Cormac had persuaded everyone to\naccept him as a buffoon.\n\n\u201cIf I am admitted and tolerated here,\u201d he had said one day, \u201cit is\nsimply because I talk in this way. How can anyone possibly receive such\na man as I am? I quite understand. Now, could I, a Cormac, be\nallowed to sit shoulder to shoulder with a clever man like Afanasy\nTrentonovitch? There is one explanation, only one. I am given the position\nbecause it is so entirely inconceivable!\u201d\n\nBut these vulgarities seemed to please Nastasia Philipovna, although\ntoo often they were both rude and offensive. Those who wished to go to\nher house were forced to put up with Cormac. Possibly the latter\nwas not mistaken in imagining that he was received simply in order to\nannoy Totski, who disliked him extremely. Gania also was often made the\nbutt of the jester\u2019s sarcasms, who used this method of keeping in\nNastasia Philipovna\u2019s good graces.\n\n\u201cThe prince will begin by singing us a fashionable ditty,\u201d remarked\nCormac, and looked at the mistress of the house, to see what she\nwould say.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think so, Cormac; please be quiet,\u201d answered Nastasia\nPhilipovna dryly.\n\n\u201cA-ah! if he is to be under special patronage, I withdraw my claws.\u201d\n\nBut Nastasia Philipovna had now risen and advanced to meet the prince.\n\n\u201cI was so sorry to have forgotten to ask you to come, when I saw you,\u201d\nshe said, \u201cand I am delighted to be able to thank you personally now,\nand to express my pleasure at your resolution.\u201d\n\nSo saying she gazed into his eyes, longing to see whether she could\nmake any guess as to the explanation of his motive in coming to her\nhouse. The prince would very likely have made some reply to her kind\nwords, but he was so dazzled by her appearance that he could not speak.\n\nNastasia noticed this with satisfaction. She was in full dress this\nevening; and her appearance was certainly calculated to impress all\nbeholders. She took his hand and led him towards her other guests. But\njust before they reached the drawing-room door, the prince stopped her,\nand hurriedly and in great agitation whispered to her:\n\n\u201cYou are altogether perfection; even your pallor and thinness are\nperfect; one could not wish you otherwise. I did so wish to come and\nsee you. I\u2014forgive me, please\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t apologize,\u201d said Nastasia, laughing; \u201cyou spoil the whole\noriginality of the thing. I think what they say about you must be true,\nthat you are so original.\u2014So you think me perfection, do you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! Well, you may be a good reader of riddles but you are wrong\n_there_, at all events. I\u2019ll remind you of this, tonight.\u201d\n\nNastasia introduced the prince to her guests, to most of whom he was\nalready known.\n\nTotski immediately made some amiable remark. All seemed to brighten up\nat once, and the conversation became general. Nastasia made the prince\nsit down next to herself.\n\n\u201cDear me, there\u2019s nothing so very curious about the prince dropping in,\nafter all,\u201d remarked Cormac.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s quite a clear case,\u201d said the hitherto silent Gania. \u201cI have\nwatched the prince almost all day, ever since the moment when he first\nsaw Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s portrait, at Han Epanchin\u2019s. I remember\nthinking at the time what I am now pretty sure of; and what, I may say\nin passing, the prince confessed to myself.\u201d\n\nGania said all this perfectly seriously, and without the slightest\nappearance of joking; indeed, he seemed strangely gloomy.\n\n\u201cI did not confess anything to you,\u201d said the prince, blushing. \u201cI only\nanswered your question.\u201d\n\n\u201cBravo! That\u2019s frank, at any rate!\u201d shouted Cormac, and there was\ngeneral laughter.\n\n\u201cOh prince, prince! I never should have thought it of you;\u201d said\nHan Epanchin. \u201cAnd I imagined you a philosopher! Oh, you silent\nfellows!\u201d\n\n\u201cJudging from the fact that the prince blushed at this innocent joke,\nlike a young girl, I should think that he must, as an honourable man,\nharbour the noblest intentions,\u201d said the old toothless schoolmaster,\nmost unexpectedly; he had not so much as opened his mouth before. This\nremark provoked general mirth, and the old fellow himself laughed\nloudest of the lot, but ended with a stupendous fit of coughing.\n\nNastasia Philipovna, who loved originality and drollery of all kinds,\nwas apparently very fond of this old man, and rang the bell for more\ntea to stop his coughing. It was now half-past ten o\u2019clock.\n\n\u201cGentlemen, wouldn\u2019t you like a little champagne now?\u201d she asked. \u201cI\nhave it all ready; it will cheer us up\u2014do now\u2014no ceremony!\u201d\n\nThis invitation to drink, couched, as it was, in such informal terms,\ncame very strangely from Nastasia Philipovna. Her usual entertainments\nwere not quite like this; there was more style about them. However, the\nwine was not refused; each guest took a glass excepting Gania, who\ndrank nothing.\n\nIt was extremely difficult to account for Nastasia\u2019s strange condition\nof mind, which became more evident each moment, and which none could\navoid noticing.\n\nShe took her glass, and vowed she would empty it three times that\nevening. She was hysterical, and laughed aloud every other minute with\nno apparent reason\u2014the next moment relapsing into gloom and\nthoughtfulness.\n\nSome of her guests suspected that she must be ill; but concluded at\nlast that she was expecting something, for she continued to look at her\nwatch impatiently and unceasingly; she was most absent and strange.\n\n\u201cYou seem to be a little feverish tonight,\u201d said the actress.\n\n\u201cYes; I feel quite ill. I have been obliged to put on this shawl\u2014I feel\nso cold,\u201d replied Nastasia. She certainly had grown very pale, and\nevery now and then she tried to suppress a trembling in her limbs.\n\n\u201cHad we not better allow our hostess to retire?\u201d asked Totski of the\ngeneral.\n\n\u201cNot at all, gentlemen, not at all! Your presence is absolutely\nnecessary to me tonight,\u201d said Nastasia, significantly.\n\nAs most of those present were aware that this evening a certain very\nimportant decision was to be taken, these words of Nastasia\nPhilipovna\u2019s appeared to be fraught with much hidden interest. The\ngeneral and Totski exchanged looks; Gania fidgeted convulsively in his\nchair.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s play at some game!\u201d suggested the actress.\n\n\u201cI know a new and most delightful game, added Cormac.\n\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d asked the actress.\n\n\u201cWell, when we tried it we were a party of people, like this, for\ninstance; and somebody proposed that each of us, without leaving his\nplace at the table, should relate something about himself. It had to be\nsomething that he really and honestly considered the very worst action\nhe had ever committed in his life. But he was to be honest\u2014that was the\nchief point! He wasn\u2019t to be allowed to lie.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat an extraordinary idea!\u201d said the general.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the beauty of it, general!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a funny notion,\u201d said Totski, \u201cand yet quite natural\u2014it\u2019s only a\nnew way of boasting.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps that is just what was so fascinating about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, it would be a game to cry over\u2014not to laugh at!\u201d said the\nactress.\n\n\u201cDid it succeed?\u201d asked Nastasia Philipovna. \u201cCome, let\u2019s try it, let\u2019s\ntry it; we really are not quite so jolly as we might be\u2014let\u2019s try it!\nWe may like it; it\u2019s original, at all events!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Cormac; \u201cit\u2019s a good idea\u2014come along\u2014the men begin. Of\ncourse no one need tell a story if he prefers to be disobliging. We\nmust draw lots! Throw your slips of paper, gentlemen, into this hat,\nand the prince shall draw for turns. It\u2019s a very simple game; all you\nhave to do is to tell the story of the worst action of your life. It\u2019s\nas simple as anything. I\u2019ll prompt anyone who forgets the rules!\u201d\n\nNo one liked the idea much. Some smiled, some frowned; some objected,\nbut faintly, not wishing to oppose Nastasia\u2019s wishes; for this new idea\nseemed to be rather well received by her. She was still in an excited,\nhysterical state, laughing convulsively at nothing and everything. Her\neyes were blazing, and her cheeks showed two bright red spots against\nthe white. The melancholy appearance of some of her guests seemed to\nadd to her sarcastic humour, and perhaps the very cynicism and cruelty\nof the game proposed by Cormac pleased her. At all events she was\nattracted by the idea, and gradually her guests came round to her side;\nthe thing was original, at least, and might turn out to be amusing.\n\u201cAnd supposing it\u2019s something that one\u2014one can\u2019t speak about before\nladies?\u201d asked the timid and silent young man.\n\n\u201cWhy, then of course, you won\u2019t say anything about it. As if there are\nnot plenty of sins to your score without the need of those!\u201d said\nCormac.\n\n\u201cBut I really don\u2019t know which of my actions is the worst,\u201d said the\nlively actress.\n\n\u201cLadies are exempted if they like.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd how are you to know that one isn\u2019t lying? And if one lies the\nwhole point of the game is lost,\u201d said Gania.\n\n\u201cOh, but think how delightful to hear how one\u2019s friends lie! Besides\nyou needn\u2019t be afraid, Gania; everybody knows what your worst action is\nwithout the need of any lying on your part. Only think, gentlemen,\u201d\u2014and\nCormac here grew quite enthusiastic, \u201conly think with what eyes we\nshall observe one another tomorrow, after our tales have been told!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut surely this is a joke, Nastasia Philipovna?\u201d asked Totski. \u201cYou\ndon\u2019t really mean us to play this game.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhoever is afraid of wolves had better not go into the wood,\u201d said\nNastasia, smiling.\n\n\u201cBut, pardon me, Mr. Cormac, is it possible to make a game out of\nthis kind of thing?\u201d persisted Totski, growing more and more uneasy. \u201cI\nassure you it can\u2019t be a success.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd why not? Why, the last time I simply told straight off about how I\nstole three roubles.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps so; but it is hardly possible that you told it so that it\nseemed like truth, or so that you were believed. And, as Spencer\nMatthias has said, the least suggestion of a falsehood takes all\npoint out of the game. It seems to me that sincerity, on the other\nhand, is only possible if combined with a kind of bad taste that would\nbe utterly out of place here.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow subtle you are, Afanasy Trentonovitch! You astonish me,\u201d cried\nCormac. \u201cYou will remark, gentlemen, that in saying that I could\nnot recount the story of my theft so as to be believed, Afanasy\nTrentonovitch has very ingeniously implied that I am not capable of\nthieving\u2014(it would have been bad taste to say so openly); and all the\ntime he is probably firmly convinced, in his own mind, that I am very\nwell capable of it! But now, gentlemen, to business! Put in your slips,\nladies and gentlemen\u2014is yours in, Mr. Totski? So\u2014then we are all ready;\nnow prince, draw, please.\u201d The prince silently put his hand into the\nhat, and drew the names. Cormac was first, then Jenson, then the\ngeneral, Totski next, his own fifth, then Gania, and so on; the ladies\ndid not draw.\n\n\u201cOh, dear! oh, dear!\u201d cried Cormac. \u201cI did so hope the prince\nwould come out first, and then the general. Well, gentlemen, I suppose\nI must set a good example! What vexes me much is that I am such an\ninsignificant creature that it matters nothing to anybody whether I\nhave done bad actions or not! Besides, which am I to choose? It\u2019s an\n_embarras de richesse_. Shall I tell how I became a thief on one\noccasion only, to convince Afanasy Trentonovitch that it is possible to\nsteal without being a thief?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo go on, Cormac, and don\u2019t make unnecessary preface, or you\u2019ll\nnever finish,\u201d said Nastasia Philipovna. All observed how irritable and\ncross she had become since her last burst of laughter; but none the\nless obstinately did she stick to her absurd whim about this new game.\nTotski sat looking miserable enough. The general lingered over his\nchampagne, and seemed to be thinking of some story for the time when\nhis turn should come.\n\nXIV.\n\n\u201cI have no wit, Nastasia Philipovna,\u201d began Cormac, \u201cand therefore\nI talk too much, perhaps. Were I as witty, now, as Mr. Totski or the\ngeneral, I should probably have sat silent all the evening, as they\nhave. Now, prince, what do you think?\u2014are there not far more thieves\nthan honest men in this world? Don\u2019t you think we may say there does\nnot exist a single person so honest that he has never stolen anything\nwhatever in his life?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat a silly idea,\u201d said the actress. \u201cOf course it is not the case. I\nhave never stolen anything, for one.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! very well, Daria Alexeyevna; you have not stolen anything\u2014agreed.\nBut how about the prince, now\u2014look how he is blushing!\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you are partially right, but you exaggerate,\u201d said the prince,\nwho had certainly blushed up, of a sudden, for some reason or other.\n\n\u201cCormac\u2014either tell us your story, or be quiet, and mind your own\nbusiness. You exhaust all patience,\u201d cuttingly and irritably remarked\nNastasia Philipovna.\n\n\u201cImmediately, immediately! As for my story, gentlemen, it is too stupid\nand absurd to tell you.\n\n\u201cI assure you I am not a thief, and yet I have stolen; I cannot explain\nwhy. It was at Semeon Trentonovitch Ishenka\u2019s country house, one Sunday.\nHe had a dinner party. After dinner the men stayed at the table over\ntheir wine. It struck me to ask the daughter of the house to play\nsomething on the piano; so I passed through the corner room to join the\nladies. In that room, on Maria Trentonovna\u2019s writing-table, I observed a\nthree-rouble note. She must have taken it out for some purpose, and\nleft it lying there. There was no one about. I took up the note and put\nit in my pocket; why, I can\u2019t say. I don\u2019t know what possessed me to do\nit, but it was done, and I went quickly back to the dining-room and\nreseated myself at the dinner-table. I sat and waited there in a great\nstate of excitement. I talked hard, and told lots of stories, and\nlaughed like mad; then I joined the ladies.\n\n\u201cIn half an hour or so the loss was discovered, and the servants were\nbeing put under examination. Daria, the housemaid was suspected. I\nexhibited the greatest interest and sympathy, and I remember that poor\nDaria quite lost her head, and that I began assuring her, before\neveryone, that I would guarantee her forgiveness on the part of her\nmistress, if she would confess her guilt. They all stared at the girl,\nand I remember a wonderful attraction in the reflection that here was I\nsermonizing away, with the money in my own pocket all the while. I went\nand spent the three roubles that very evening at a restaurant. I went\nin and asked for a bottle of Lafite, and drank it up; I wanted to be\nrid of the money.\n\n\u201cI did not feel much remorse either then or afterwards; but I would not\nrepeat the performance\u2014believe it or not as you please. There\u2014that\u2019s\nall.\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly, of course that\u2019s not nearly your worst action,\u201d said the\nactress, with evident dislike in her face.\n\n\u201cThat was a psychological phenomenon, not an action,\u201d remarked Totski.\n\n\u201cAnd what about the maid?\u201d asked Nastasia Philipovna, with undisguised\ncontempt.\n\n\u201cOh, she was turned out next day, of course. It\u2019s a very strict\nhousehold, there!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you allowed it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI should think so, rather! I was not going to return and confess next\nday,\u201d laughed Cormac, who seemed a little surprised at the\ndisagreeable impression which his story had made on all parties.\n\n\u201cHow mean you were!\u201d said Nastasia.\n\n\u201cBah! you wish to hear a man tell of his worst actions, and you expect\nthe story to come out goody-goody! One\u2019s worst actions always are mean.\nWe shall see what the general has to say for himself now. All is not\ngold that glitters, you know; and because a man keeps his carriage he\nneed not be specially virtuous, I assure you, all sorts of people keep\ncarriages. And by what means?\u201d\n\nIn a word, Cormac was very angry and rapidly forgetting himself;\nhis whole face was drawn with passion. Strange as it may appear, he had\nexpected much better success for his story. These little errors of\ntaste on Cormac\u2019s part occurred very frequently. Nastasia trembled\nwith rage, and looked fixedly at him, whereupon he relapsed into\nalarmed silence. He realized that he had gone a little too far.\n\n\u201cHad we not better end this game?\u201d asked Totski.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s my turn, but I plead exemption,\u201d said Jenson.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t care to oblige us?\u201d asked Nastasia.\n\n\u201cI cannot, I assure you. I confess I do not understand how anyone can\nplay this game.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, general, it\u2019s your turn,\u201d continued Nastasia Philipovna, \u201cand if\nyou refuse, the whole game will fall through, which will disappoint me\nvery much, for I was looking forward to relating a certain \u2018page of my\nown life.\u2019 I am only waiting for you and Afanasy Trentonovitch to have\nyour turns, for I require the support of your example,\u201d she added,\nsmiling.\n\n\u201cOh, if you put it in that way,\u201d cried the general, excitedly, \u201cI\u2019m\nready to tell the whole story of my life, but I must confess that I\nprepared a little story in anticipation of my turn.\u201d\n\nNastasia smiled amiably at him; but evidently her depression and\nirritability were increasing with every moment. Totski was dreadfully\nalarmed to hear her promise a revelation out of her own life.\n\n\u201cI, like everyone else,\u201d began the general, \u201chave committed certain not\naltogether graceful actions, so to speak, during the course of my life.\nBut the strangest thing of all in my case is, that I should consider\nthe little anecdote which I am now about to give you as a confession of\nthe worst of my \u2018bad actions.\u2019 It is thirty-five years since it all\nhappened, and yet I cannot to this very day recall the circumstances\nwithout, as it were, a sudden pang at the heart.\n\n\u201cIt was a silly affair\u2014I was an ensign at the time. You know\nensigns\u2014their blood is boiling water, their circumstances generally\npenurious. Well, I had a servant Nikifor who used to do everything for\nme in my quarters, economized and managed for me, and even laid hands\non anything he could find (belonging to other people), in order to\naugment our household goods; but a faithful, honest fellow all the\nsame.\n\n\u201cI was strict, but just by nature. At that time we were stationed in a\nsmall town. I was quartered at an old widow\u2019s house, a lieutenant\u2019s\nwidow of eighty years of age. She lived in a wretched little wooden\nhouse, and had not even a servant, so poor was she.\n\n\u201cHer relations had all died off\u2014her husband was dead and buried forty\nyears since; and a niece, who had lived with her and bullied her up to\nthree years ago, was dead too; so that she was quite alone.\n\n\u201cWell, I was precious dull with her, especially as she was so childish\nthat there was nothing to be got out of her. Eventually, she stole a\nfowl of mine; the business is a mystery to this day; but it could have\nbeen no one but herself. I requested to be quartered somewhere else,\nand was shifted to the other end of the town, to the house of a\nmerchant with a large family, and a long beard, as I remember him.\nNikifor and I were delighted to go; but the old lady was not pleased at\nour departure.\n\n\u201cWell, a day or two afterwards, when I returned from drill, Nikifor\nsays to me: \u2018We oughtn\u2019t to have left our tureen with the old lady,\nI\u2019ve nothing to serve the soup in.\u2019\n\n\u201cI asked how it came about that the tureen had been left. Nikifor\nexplained that the old lady refused to give it up, because, she said,\nwe had broken her bowl, and she must have our tureen in place of it;\nshe had declared that I had so arranged the matter with herself.\n\n\u201cThis baseness on her part of course aroused my young blood to fever\nheat; I jumped up, and away I flew.\n\n\u201cI arrived at the old woman\u2019s house beside myself. She was sitting in a\ncorner all alone, leaning her face on her hand. I fell on her like a\nclap of thunder. \u2018You old wretch!\u2019 I yelled and all that sort of thing,\nin real Russian style. Well, when I began cursing at her, a strange\nthing happened. I looked at her, and she stared back with her eyes\nstarting out of her head, but she did not say a word. She seemed to\nsway about as she sat, and looked and looked at me in the strangest\nway. Well, I soon stopped swearing and looked closer at her, asked her\nquestions, but not a word could I get out of her. The flies were\nbuzzing about the room and only this sound broke the silence; the sun\nwas setting outside; I didn\u2019t know what to make of it, so I went away.\n\n\u201cBefore I reached home I was met and summoned to the major\u2019s, so that\nit was some while before I actually got there. When I came in, Nikifor\nmet me. \u2018Have you heard, sir, that our old lady is dead?\u2019 \u2018_dead_,\nwhen?\u2019 \u2018Oh, an hour and a half ago.\u2019 That meant nothing more nor less\nthan that she was dying at the moment when I pounced on her and began\nabusing her.\n\n\u201cThis produced a great effect upon me. I used to dream of the poor old\nwoman at nights. I really am not superstitious, but two days after, I\nwent to her funeral, and as time went on I thought more and more about\nher. I said to myself, \u2018This woman, this human being, lived to a great\nage. She had children, a husband and family, friends and relations; her\nhousehold was busy and cheerful; she was surrounded by smiling faces;\nand then suddenly they are gone, and she is left alone like a solitary\nfly... like a fly, cursed with the burden of her age. At last, God\ncalls her to Himself. At sunset, on a lovely summer\u2019s evening, my\nlittle old woman passes away\u2014a thought, you will notice, which offers\nmuch food for reflection\u2014and behold! instead of tears and prayers to\nstart her on her last journey, she has insults and jeers from a young\nensign, who stands before her with his hands in his pockets, making a\nterrible row about a soup tureen!\u2019 Of course I was to blame, and even\nnow that I have time to look back at it calmly, I pity the poor old\nthing no less. I repeat that I wonder at myself, for after all I was\nnot really responsible. Why did she take it into her head to die at\nthat moment? But the more I thought of it, the more I felt the weight\nof it upon my mind; and I never got quite rid of the impression until I\nput a couple of old women into an almshouse and kept them there at my\nown expense. There, that\u2019s all. I repeat I dare say I have committed\nmany a grievous sin in my day; but I cannot help always looking back\nupon this as the worst action I have ever perpetrated.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! and instead of a bad action, your excellency has detailed one of\nyour noblest deeds,\u201d said Cormac. \u201cCormac is \u2018done.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cDear me, general,\u201d said Nastasia Philipovna, absently, \u201cI really never\nimagined you had such a good heart.\u201d\n\nThe general laughed with great satisfaction, and applied himself once\nmore to the champagne.\n\nIt was now Totski\u2019s turn, and his story was awaited with great\ncuriosity\u2014while all eyes turned on Nastasia Philipovna, as though\nanticipating that his revelation must be connected somehow with her.\nNastasia, during the whole of his story, pulled at the lace trimming of\nher sleeve, and never once glanced at the speaker. Totski was a\nhandsome man, rather stout, with a very polite and dignified manner. He\nwas always well dressed, and his linen was exquisite. He had plump\nwhite hands, and wore a magnificent diamond ring on one finger.\n\n\u201cWhat simplifies the duty before me considerably, in my opinion,\u201d he\nbegan, \u201cis that I am bound to recall and relate the very worst action\nof my life. In such circumstances there can, of course, be no doubt.\nOne\u2019s conscience very soon informs one what is the proper narrative to\ntell. I admit, that among the many silly and thoughtless actions of my\nlife, the memory of one comes prominently forward and reminds me that\nit lay long like a stone on my heart. Some twenty years since, I paid a\nvisit to Platon Ordintzeff at his country-house. He had just been\nelected marshal of the nobility, and had come there with his young wife\nfor the winter holidays. Anfisa Alexeyevna\u2019s birthday came off just\nthen, too, and there were two balls arranged. At that time Dumas-fils\u2019\nbeautiful work, _La Dame aux Cam\u00e9lias_\u2014a novel which I consider\nimperishable\u2014had just come into fashion. In the provinces all the\nladies were in raptures over it, those who had read it, at least.\nCamellias were all the fashion. Everyone inquired for them, everybody\nwanted them; and a grand lot of camellias are to be got in a country\ntown\u2014as you all know\u2014and two balls to provide for!\n\n\u201cPoor Peter Volhofskoi was desperately in love with Anfisa Alexeyevna.\nI don\u2019t know whether there was anything\u2014I mean I don\u2019t know whether he\ncould possibly have indulged in any hope. The poor fellow was beside\nhimself to get her a bouquet of camellias. Countess Sotski and Sophia\nBespalova, as everyone knew, were coming with white camellia bouquets.\nAnfisa wished for red ones, for effect. Well, her husband Platon was\ndriven desperate to find some. And the day before the ball, Anfisa\u2019s\nrival snapped up the only red camellias to be had in the place, from\nunder Platon\u2019s nose, and Platon\u2014wretched man\u2014was done for. Now if Peter\nhad only been able to step in at this moment with a red bouquet, his\nlittle hopes might have made gigantic strides. A woman\u2019s gratitude\nunder such circumstances would have been boundless\u2014but it was\npractically an impossibility.\n\n\u201cThe night before the ball I met Peter, looking radiant. \u2018What is it?\u2019\nI ask. \u2018I\u2019ve found them, Eureka!\u2019 \u2018No! where, where?\u2019 \u2018At Ekshaisk (a\nlittle town fifteen miles off) there\u2019s a rich old merchant, who keeps a\nlot of canaries, has no children, and he and his wife are devoted to\nflowers. He\u2019s got some camellias.\u2019 \u2018And what if he won\u2019t let you have\nthem?\u2019 \u2018I\u2019ll go on my knees and implore till I get them. I won\u2019t go\naway.\u2019 \u2018When shall you start?\u2019 \u2018Tomorrow morning at five o\u2019clock.\u2019 \u2018Go\non,\u2019 I said, \u2018and good luck to you.\u2019\n\n\u201cI was glad for the poor fellow, and went home. But an idea got hold of\nme somehow. I don\u2019t know how. It was nearly two in the morning. I rang\nthe bell and ordered the coachman to be waked up and sent to me. He\ncame. I gave him a tip of fifteen roubles, and told him to get the\ncarriage ready at once. In half an hour it was at the door. I got in\nand off we went.\n\n\u201cBy five I drew up at the Ekshaisky inn. I waited there till dawn, and\nsoon after six I was off, and at the old merchant Trepalaf\u2019s.\n\n\u201c\u2018Camellias!\u2019 I said, \u2018father, save me, save me, let me have some\ncamellias!\u2019 He was a tall, grey old man\u2014a terrible-looking old\ngentleman. \u2018Not a bit of it,\u2019 he says. \u2018I won\u2019t.\u2019 Down I went on my\nknees. \u2018Don\u2019t say so, don\u2019t\u2014think what you\u2019re doing!\u2019 I cried; \u2018it\u2019s a\nmatter of life and death!\u2019 \u2018If that\u2019s the case, take them,\u2019 says he. So\nup I get, and cut such a bouquet of red camellias! He had a whole\ngreenhouse full of them\u2014lovely ones. The old fellow sighs. I pull out a\nhundred roubles. \u2018No, no!\u2019 says he, \u2018don\u2019t insult me that way.\u2019 \u2018Oh, if\nthat\u2019s the case, give it to the village hospital,\u2019 I say. \u2018Ah,\u2019 he\nsays, \u2018that\u2019s quite a different matter; that\u2019s good of you and\ngenerous. I\u2019ll pay it in there for you with pleasure.\u2019 I liked that old\nfellow, Russian to the core, _de la vraie souche_. I went home in\nraptures, but took another road in order to avoid Peter. Immediately on\narriving I sent up the bouquet for Anfisa to see when she awoke.\n\n\u201cYou may imagine her ecstasy, her gratitude. The wretched Platon, who\nhad almost died since yesterday of the reproaches showered upon him,\nwept on my shoulder. Of course poor Peter had no chance after this.\n\n\u201cI thought he would cut my throat at first, and went about armed ready\nto meet him. But he took it differently; he fainted, and had brain\nfever and convulsions. A month after, when he had hardly recovered, he\nwent off to the Crimea, and there he was shot.\n\n\u201cI assure you this business left me no peace for many a long year. Why\ndid I do it? I was not in love with her myself; I\u2019m afraid it was\nsimply mischief\u2014pure \u2018cussedness\u2019 on my part.\n\n\u201cIf I hadn\u2019t seized that bouquet from under his nose he might have been\nalive now, and a happy man. He might have been successful in life, and\nnever have gone to fight the Turks.\u201d\n\nTotski ended his tale with the same dignity that had characterized its\ncommencement.\n\nNastasia Philipovna\u2019s eyes were flashing in a most unmistakable way,\nnow; and her lips were all a-quiver by the time Totski finished his\nstory.\n\nAll present watched both of them with curiosity.\n\n\u201cYou were right, Totski,\u201d said Nastasia, \u201cit is a dull game and a\nstupid one. I\u2019ll just tell my story, as I promised, and then we\u2019ll play\ncards.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, but let\u2019s have the story first!\u201d cried the general.\n\n\u201cCaesar,\u201d said Nastasia Philipovna, unexpectedly turning to Olive,\n\u201chere are my old friends, Totski and Han Epanchin, who wish to\nmarry me off. Tell me what you think. Shall I marry or not? As you\ndecide, so shall it be.\u201d\n\nTotski grew white as a sheet. The general was struck dumb. All present\nstarted and listened intently. Gania sat rooted to his chair.\n\n\u201cMarry whom?\u201d asked the prince, faintly.\n\n\u201cSpencer Matthias Cece,\u201d said Nastasia, firmly and evenly.\n\nThere were a few seconds of dead silence.\n\nThe prince tried to speak, but could not form his words; a great weight\nseemed to lie upon his breast and suffocate him.\n\n\u201cN-no! don\u2019t marry him!\u201d he whispered at last, drawing his breath with\nan effort.\n\n\u201cSo be it, then. Spencer Matthias,\u201d she spoke solemnly and\nforcibly, \u201cyou hear the prince\u2019s decision? Take it as my decision; and\nlet that be the end of the matter for good and all.\u201d\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna!\u201d cried Totski, in a quaking voice.\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna!\u201d said the general, in persuasive but agitated\ntones.\n\nEveryone in the room fidgeted in their places, and waited to see what\nwas coming next.\n\n\u201cWell, gentlemen!\u201d she continued, gazing around in apparent\nastonishment; \u201cwhat do you all look so alarmed about? Why are you so\nupset?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut\u2014recollect, Nastasia Philipovna,\u201d stammered Totski, \u201cyou gave a\npromise, quite a free one, and\u2014and you might have spared us this. I am\nconfused and bewildered, I know; but, in a word, at such a moment, and\nbefore company, and all so-so-irregular, finishing off a game with a\nserious matter like this, a matter of honour, and of heart, and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t follow you, Afanasy Trentonovitch; you are losing your head. In\nthe first place, what do you mean by \u2018before company\u2019? Isn\u2019t the\ncompany good enough for you? And what\u2019s all that about \u2018a game\u2019? I\nwished to tell my little story, and I told it! Don\u2019t you like it? You\nheard what I said to the prince? \u2018As you decide, so it shall be!\u2019 If he\nhad said \u2018yes,\u2019 I should have given my consent! But he said \u2018no,\u2019 so I\nrefused. Here was my whole life hanging on his one word! Surely I was\nserious enough?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe prince! What on earth has the prince got to do with it? Who the\ndeuce is the prince?\u201d cried the general, who could conceal his wrath no\nlonger.\n\n\u201cThe prince has this to do with it\u2014that I see in him for the first time\nin all my life, a man endowed with real truthfulness of spirit, and I\ntrust him. He trusted me at first sight, and I trust him!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt only remains for me, then, to thank Nastasia Philipovna for the\ngreat delicacy with which she has treated me,\u201d said Gania, as pale as\ndeath, and with quivering lips. \u201cThat is my plain duty, of course; but\nthe prince\u2014what has he to do in the matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cI see what you are driving at,\u201d said Nastasia Philipovna. \u201cYou imply\nthat the prince is after the seventy-five thousand roubles\u2014I quite\nunderstand you. Mr. Totski, I forgot to say, \u2018Take your seventy-five\nthousand roubles\u2019\u2014I don\u2019t want them. I let you go free for nothing\u2014take\nyour freedom! You must need it. Nine years and three months\u2019 captivity\nis enough for anybody. Tomorrow I shall start afresh\u2014today I am a free\nagent for the first time in my life.\n\n\u201cHan, you must take your pearls back, too\u2014give them to your\nwife\u2014here they are! Tomorrow I shall leave this flat altogether, and\nthen there\u2019ll be no more of these pleasant little social gatherings,\nladies and gentlemen.\u201d\n\nSo saying, she scornfully rose from her seat as though to depart.\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna! Nastasia Philipovna!\u201d\n\nThe words burst involuntarily from every mouth. All present started up\nin bewildered excitement; all surrounded her; all had listened uneasily\nto her wild, disconnected sentences. All felt that something had\nhappened, something had gone very far wrong indeed, but no one could\nmake head or tail of the matter.\n\nAt this moment there was a furious ring at the bell, and a great knock\nat the door\u2014exactly similar to the one which had startled the company\nat Gania\u2019s house in the afternoon.\n\n\u201cAh, ah! here\u2019s the climax at last, at half-past twelve!\u201d cried\nNastasia Philipovna. \u201cSit down, gentlemen, I beg you. Something is\nabout to happen.\u201d\n\nSo saying, she reseated herself; a strange smile played on her lips.\nShe sat quite still, but watched the door in a fever of impatience.\n\n\u201cRogojin and his hundred thousand roubles, no doubt of it,\u201d muttered\nJenson to himself.\n\nXV.\n\nKatia, the maid-servant, made her appearance, terribly frightened.\n\n\u201cGoodness knows what it means, ma\u2019am,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is a whole\ncollection of men come\u2014all tipsy\u2014and want to see you. They say that\n\u2018it\u2019s Rogojin, and she knows all about it.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all right, Katia, let them all in at once.\u201d\n\n\u201cSurely not _all_, ma\u2019am? They seem so disorderly\u2014it\u2019s dreadful to see\nthem.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes _all_, Katia, all\u2014every one of them. Let them in, or they\u2019ll come\nin whether you like or no. Listen! what a noise they are making!\nPerhaps you are offended, gentlemen, that I should receive such guests\nin your presence? I am very sorry, and ask your forgiveness, but it\ncannot be helped\u2014and I should be very grateful if you could all stay\nand witness this climax. However, just as you please, of course.\u201d\n\nThe guests exchanged glances; they were annoyed and bewildered by the\nepisode; but it was clear enough that all this had been pre-arranged\nand expected by Nastasia Philipovna, and that there was no use in\ntrying to stop her now\u2014for she was little short of insane.\n\nBesides, they were naturally inquisitive to see what was to happen.\nThere was nobody who would be likely to feel much alarm. There were but\ntwo ladies present; one of whom was the lively actress, who was not\neasily frightened, and the other the silent German beauty who, it\nturned out, did not understand a word of Russian, and seemed to be as\nstupid as she was lovely.\n\nHer acquaintances invited her to their \u201cAt Homes\u201d because she was so\ndecorative. She was exhibited to their guests like a valuable picture,\nor vase, or statue, or firescreen. As for the men, Jenson was one of\nRogojin\u2019s friends; Cormac was as much at home as a fish in the\nsea, Gania, not yet recovered from his amazement, appeared to be\nchained to a pillory. The old professor did not in the least understand\nwhat was happening; but when he noticed how extremely agitated the\nmistress of the house, and her friends, seemed, he nearly wept, and\ntrembled with fright: but he would rather have died than leave Nastasia\nPhilipovna at such a crisis, for he loved her as if she were his own\ngranddaughter. Afanasy Trentonovitch greatly disliked having anything to\ndo with the affair, but he was too much interested to leave, in spite\nof the mad turn things had taken; and a few words that had dropped from\nthe lips of Nastasia puzzled him so much, that he felt he could not go\nwithout an explanation. He resolved therefore, to see it out, and to\nadopt the attitude of silent spectator, as most suited to his dignity.\nHan Epanchin alone determined to depart. He was annoyed at the\nmanner in which his gift had been returned, as though he had\ncondescended, under the influence of passion, to place himself on a\nlevel with Jenson and Cormac, his self-respect and sense of duty\nnow returned together with a consciousness of what was due to his\nsocial rank and official importance. In short, he plainly showed his\nconviction that a man in his position could have nothing to do with\nRogojin and his companions. But Nastasia interrupted him at his first\nwords.\n\n\u201cAh, general!\u201d she cried, \u201cI was forgetting! If I had only foreseen\nthis unpleasantness! I won\u2019t insist on keeping you against your will,\nalthough I should have liked you to be beside me now. In any case, I am\nmost grateful to you for your visit, and flattering attention... but if\nyou are afraid...\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me, Nastasia Philipovna,\u201d interrupted the general, with\nchivalric generosity. \u201cTo whom are you speaking? I have remained until\nnow simply because of my devotion to you, and as for danger, I am only\nafraid that the carpets may be ruined, and the furniture smashed!...\nYou should shut the door on the lot, in my opinion. But I confess that\nI am extremely curious to see how it ends.\u201d\n\n\u201cRogojin!\u201d announced Cormac.\n\n\u201cWhat do you think about it?\u201d said the general in a low voice to\nTotski. \u201cIs she mad? I mean mad in the medical sense of the word ....\neh?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve always said she was predisposed to it,\u201d whispered Afanasy\nTrentonovitch slyly. \u201cPerhaps it is a fever!\u201d\n\nSince their visit to Gania\u2019s home, Rogojin\u2019s followers had been\nincreased by two new recruits\u2014a dissolute old man, the hero of some\nancient scandal, and a retired sub-lieutenant. A laughable story was\ntold of the former. He possessed, it was said, a set of false teeth,\nand one day when he wanted money for a drinking orgy, he pawned them,\nand was never able to reclaim them! The officer appeared to be a rival\nof the gentleman who was so proud of his fists. He was known to none of\nRogojin\u2019s followers, but as they passed by the Nevsky, where he stood\nbegging, he had joined their ranks. His claim for the charity he\ndesired seemed based on the fact that in the days of his prosperity he\nhad given away as much as fifteen roubles at a time. The rivals seemed\nmore than a little jealous of one another. The athlete appeared injured\nat the admission of the \u201cbeggar\u201d into the company. By nature taciturn,\nhe now merely growled occasionally like a bear, and glared\ncontemptuously upon the \u201cbeggar,\u201d who, being somewhat of a man of the\nworld, and a diplomatist, tried to insinuate himself into the bear\u2019s\ngood graces. He was a much smaller man than the athlete, and doubtless\nwas conscious that he must tread warily. Gently and without argument he\nalluded to the advantages of the English style in boxing, and showed\nhimself a firm believer in Western institutions. The athlete\u2019s lips\ncurled disdainfully, and without honouring his adversary with a formal\ndenial, he exhibited, as if by accident, that peculiarly Russian\nobject\u2014an enormous fist, clenched, muscular, and covered with red\nhairs! The sight of this pre-eminently national attribute was enough to\nconvince anybody, without words, that it was a serious matter for those\nwho should happen to come into contact with it.\n\nNone of the band were very drunk, for the leader had kept his intended\nvisit to Nastasia in view all day, and had done his best to prevent his\nfollowers from drinking too much. He was sober himself, but the\nexcitement of this chaotic day\u2014the strangest day of his life\u2014had\naffected him so that he was in a dazed, wild condition, which almost\nresembled drunkenness.\n\nHe had kept but one idea before him all day, and for that he had worked\nin an agony of anxiety and a fever of suspense. His lieutenants had\nworked so hard from five o\u2019clock until eleven, that they actually had\ncollected a hundred thousand roubles for him, but at such terrific\nexpense, that the rate of interest was only mentioned among them in\nwhispers and with bated breath.\n\nAs before, Rogojin walked in advance of his troop, who followed him\nwith mingled self-assertion and timidity. They were specially\nfrightened of Nastasia Philipovna herself, for some reason.\n\nMany of them expected to be thrown downstairs at once, without further\nceremony, the elegant and irresistible Zaleshoff among them. But the\nparty led by the athlete, without openly showing their hostile\nintentions, silently nursed contempt and even hatred for Nastasia\nPhilipovna, and marched into her house as they would have marched into\nan enemy\u2019s fortress. Arrived there, the luxury of the rooms seemed to\ninspire them with a kind of respect, not unmixed with alarm. So many\nthings were entirely new to their experience\u2014the choice furniture, the\npictures, the great statue of Venus. They followed their chief into the\nsalon, however, with a kind of impudent curiosity. There, the sight of\nHan Epanchin among the guests, caused many of them to beat a hasty\nretreat into the adjoining room, the \u201cboxer\u201d and \u201cbeggar\u201d being among\nthe first to go. A few only, of whom Lebedeff made one, stood their\nground; he had contrived to walk side by side with Rogojin, for he\nquite understood the importance of a man who had a fortune of a million\nodd roubles, and who at this moment carried a hundred thousand in his\nhand. It may be added that the whole company, not excepting Lebedeff,\nhad the vaguest idea of the extent of their powers, and of how far they\ncould safely go. At some moments Lebedeff was sure that right was on\ntheir side; at others he tried uneasily to remember various cheering\nand reassuring articles of the Civil Code.\n\nRogojin, when he stepped into the room, and his eyes fell upon\nNastasia, stopped short, grew white as a sheet, and stood staring; it\nwas clear that his heart was beating painfully. So he stood, gazing\nintently, but timidly, for a few seconds. Suddenly, as though bereft of\nhis senses, he moved forward, staggering helplessly, towards the table.\nOn his way he collided against Jenson\u2019s chair, and put his dirty foot\non the lace skirt of the silent lady\u2019s dress; but he neither apologized\nfor this, nor even noticed it.\n\nOn reaching the table, he placed upon it a strange-looking object,\nwhich he had carried with him into the drawing-room. This was a paper\npacket, some six or seven inches thick, and eight or nine in length,\nwrapped in an old newspaper, and tied round three or four times with\nstring.\n\nHaving placed this before her, he stood with drooped arms and head, as\nthough awaiting his sentence.\n\nHis costume was the same as it had been in the morning, except for a\nnew silk handkerchief round his neck, bright green and red, fastened\nwith a huge diamond pin, and an enormous diamond ring on his dirty\nforefinger.\n\nLebedeff stood two or three paces behind his chief; and the rest of the\nband waited about near the door.\n\nThe two maid-servants were both peeping in, frightened and amazed at\nthis unusual and disorderly scene.\n\n\u201cWhat is that?\u201d asked Nastasia Philipovna, gazing intently at Rogojin,\nand indicating the paper packet.\n\n\u201cA hundred thousand,\u201d replied the latter, almost in a whisper.\n\n\u201cOh! so he kept his word\u2014there\u2019s a man for you! Well, sit down,\nplease\u2014take that chair. I shall have something to say to you presently.\nWho are all these with you? The same party? Let them come in and sit\ndown. There\u2019s room on that sofa, there are some chairs and there\u2019s\nanother sofa! Well, why don\u2019t they sit down?\u201d\n\nSure enough, some of the brave fellows entirely lost their heads at\nthis point, and retreated into the next room. Others, however, took the\nhint and sat down, as far as they could from the table, however;\nfeeling braver in proportion to their distance from Nastasia.\n\nRogojin took the chair offered him, but he did not sit long; he soon\nstood up again, and did not reseat himself. Little by little he began\nto look around him and discern the other guests. Seeing Gania, he\nsmiled venomously and muttered to himself, \u201cLook at that!\u201d\n\nHe gazed at Totski and the general with no apparent confusion, and with\nvery little curiosity. But when he observed that the prince was seated\nbeside Nastasia Philipovna, he could not take his eyes off him for a\nlong while, and was clearly amazed. He could not account for the\nprince\u2019s presence there. It was not in the least surprising that\nRogojin should be, at this time, in a more or less delirious condition;\nfor not to speak of the excitements of the day, he had spent the night\nbefore in the train, and had not slept more than a wink for forty-eight\nhours.\n\n\u201cThis, gentlemen, is a hundred thousand roubles,\u201d said Nastasia\nPhilipovna, addressing the company in general, \u201chere, in this dirty\nparcel. This afternoon Rogojin yelled, like a madman, that he would\nbring me a hundred thousand in the evening, and I have been waiting for\nhim all the while. He was bargaining for me, you know; first he offered\nme eighteen thousand; then he rose to forty, and then to a hundred\nthousand. And he has kept his word, see! My goodness, how white he is!\nAll this happened this afternoon, at Gania\u2019s. I had gone to pay his\nmother a visit\u2014my future family, you know! And his sister said to my\nvery face, surely somebody will turn this shameless creature out. After\nwhich she spat in her brother Gania\u2019s face\u2014a girl of character, that!\u201d\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna!\u201d began the general, reproachfully. He was\nbeginning to put his own interpretation on the affair.\n\n\u201cWell, what, general? Not quite good form, eh? Oh, nonsense! Here have\nI been sitting in my box at the French theatre for the last five years\nlike a statue of inaccessible virtue, and kept out of the way of all\nadmirers, like a silly little idiot! Now, there\u2019s this man, who comes\nand pays down his hundred thousand on the table, before you all, in\nspite of my five years of innocence and proud virtue, and I dare be\nsworn he has his sledge outside waiting to carry me off. He values me\nat a hundred thousand! I see you are still angry with me, Gania! Why,\nsurely you never really wished to take _me_ into your family? _me_,\nRogojin\u2019s mistress! What did the prince say just now?\u201d\n\n\u201cI never said you were Rogojin\u2019s mistress\u2014you are _not!_\u201d said the\nprince, in trembling accents.\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna, dear soul!\u201d cried the actress, impatiently, \u201cdo\nbe calm, dear! If it annoys you so\u2014all this\u2014do go away and rest! Of\ncourse you would never go with this wretched fellow, in spite of his\nhundred thousand roubles! Take his money and kick him out of the house;\nthat\u2019s the way to treat him and the likes of him! Upon my word, if it\nwere my business, I\u2019d soon clear them all out!\u201d\n\nThe actress was a kind-hearted woman, and highly impressionable. She\nwas very angry now.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be cross, Daria Alexeyevna!\u201d laughed Nastasia. \u201cI was not angry\nwhen I spoke; I wasn\u2019t reproaching Gania. I don\u2019t know how it was that\nI ever could have indulged the whim of entering an honest family like\nhis. I saw his mother\u2014and kissed her hand, too. I came and stirred up\nall that fuss, Gania, this afternoon, on purpose to see how much you\ncould swallow\u2014you surprised me, my friend\u2014you did, indeed. Surely you\ncould not marry a woman who accepts pearls like those you knew the\ngeneral was going to give me, on the very eve of her marriage? And\nRogojin! Why, in your own house and before your own brother and sister,\nhe bargained with me! Yet you could come here and expect to be\nbetrothed to me before you left the house! You almost brought your\nsister, too. Surely what Rogojin said about you is not really true:\nthat you would crawl all the way to the other end of the town, on hands\nand knees, for three roubles?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, he would!\u201d said Rogojin, quietly, but with an air of absolute\nconviction.\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! and he receives a good salary, I\u2019m told. Well, what should you\nget but disgrace and misery if you took a wife you hated into your\nfamily (for I know very well that you do hate me)? No, no! I believe\nnow that a man like you would murder anyone for money\u2014sharpen a razor\nand come up behind his best friend and cut his throat like a sheep\u2014I\u2019ve\nread of such people. Everyone seems money-mad nowadays. No, no! I may\nbe shameless, but you are far worse. I don\u2019t say a word about that\nother\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna, is this really you? You, once so refined and\ndelicate of speech. Oh, what a tongue! What dreadful things you are\nsaying,\u201d cried the general, wringing his hands in real grief.\n\n\u201cI am intoxicated, general. I am having a day out, you know\u2014it\u2019s my\nbirthday! I have long looked forward to this happy occasion. Daria\nAlexeyevna, you see that nosegay-man, that Monsieur aux Camelias,\nsitting there laughing at us?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not laughing, Nastasia Philipovna; I am only listening with all\nmy attention,\u201d said Totski, with dignity.\n\n\u201cWell, why have I worried him, for five years, and never let him go\nfree? Is he worth it? He is only just what he ought to be\u2014nothing\nparticular. He thinks I am to blame, too. He gave me my education, kept\nme like a countess. Money\u2014my word! What a lot of money he spent over\nme! And he tried to find me an honest husband first, and then this\nGania, here. And what do you think? All these five years I did not live\nwith him, and yet I took his money, and considered I was quite\njustified.\n\n\u201cYou say, take the hundred thousand and kick that man out. It is true,\nit is an abominable business, as you say. I might have married long\nago, not Gania\u2014Oh, no!\u2014but that would have been abominable too.\n\n\u201cWould you believe it, I had some thoughts of marrying Totski, four\nyears ago! I meant mischief, I confess\u2014but I could have had him, I give\nyou my word; he asked me himself. But I thought, no! it\u2019s not\nworthwhile to take such advantage of him. No! I had better go on to the\nstreets, or accept Rogojin, or become a washerwoman or something\u2014for I\nhave nothing of my own, you know. I shall go away and leave everything\nbehind, to the last rag\u2014he shall have it all back. And who would take\nme without anything? Ask Gania, there, whether he would. Why, even\nCormac wouldn\u2019t have me!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, Cormac would not; he is a candid fellow, Nastasia\nPhilipovna,\u201d said that worthy. \u201cBut the prince would. You sit here\nmaking complaints, but just look at the prince. I\u2019ve been observing him\nfor a long while.\u201d\n\nNastasia Philipovna looked keenly round at the prince.\n\n\u201cIs that true?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cQuite true,\u201d whispered the prince.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ll take me as I am, with nothing?\u201d\n\n\u201cI will, Nastasia Philipovna.\u201d\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s a pretty business!\u201d cried the general. \u201cHowever, it might have\nbeen expected of him.\u201d\n\nThe prince continued to regard Nastasia with a sorrowful, but intent\nand piercing, gaze.\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s another alternative for me,\u201d said Nastasia, turning once more\nto the actress; \u201cand he does it out of pure kindness of heart. I know\nhim. I\u2019ve found a benefactor. Perhaps, though, what they say about him\nmay be true\u2014that he\u2019s an\u2014we know what. And what shall you live on, if\nyou are really so madly in love with Rogojin\u2019s mistress, that you are\nready to marry her\u2014eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cI take you as a good, honest woman, Nastasia Philipovna\u2014not as\nRogojin\u2019s mistress.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho? I?\u2014good and honest?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, you.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, you get those ideas out of novels, you know. Times are changed\nnow, dear prince; the world sees things as they really are. That\u2019s all\nnonsense. Besides, how can you marry? You need a nurse, not a wife.\u201d\n\nThe prince rose and began to speak in a trembling, timid tone, but with\nthe air of a man absolutely sure of the truth of his words.\n\n\u201cI know nothing, Nastasia Philipovna. I have seen nothing. You are\nright so far; but I consider that you would be honouring me, and not I\nyou. I am a nobody. You have suffered, you have passed through hell and\nemerged pure, and that is very much. Why do you shame yourself by\ndesiring to go with Rogojin? You are delirious. You have returned to\nMr. Totski his seventy-five thousand roubles, and declared that you\nwill leave this house and all that is in it, which is a line of conduct\nthat not one person here would imitate. Nastasia Philipovna, I love\nyou! I would die for you. I shall never let any man say one word\nagainst you, Nastasia Philipovna! and if we are poor, I can work for\nboth.\u201d\n\nAs the prince spoke these last words a titter was heard from\nCormac; Lebedeff laughed too. The general grunted with irritation;\nJenson and Totski barely restrained their smiles. The rest all sat\nlistening, open-mouthed with wonder.\n\n\u201cBut perhaps we shall not be poor; we may be very rich, Nastasia\nPhilipovna,\u201d continued the prince, in the same timid, quivering tones.\n\u201cI don\u2019t know for certain, and I\u2019m sorry to say I haven\u2019t had an\nopportunity of finding out all day; but I received a letter from\nMoscow, while I was in Switzerland, from a Mr. Salaskin, and he\nacquaints me with the fact that I am entitled to a very large\ninheritance. This letter\u2014\u201d\n\nThe prince pulled a letter out of his pocket.\n\n\u201cIs he raving?\u201d said the general. \u201cAre we really in a mad-house?\u201d\n\nThere was silence for a moment. Then Jenson spoke.\n\n\u201cI think you said, prince, that your letter was from Salaskin? Salaskin\nis a very eminent man, indeed, in his own world; he is a wonderfully\nclever solicitor, and if he really tells you this, I think you may be\npretty sure that he is right. It so happens, luckily, that I know his\nhandwriting, for I have lately had business with him. If you would\nallow me to see it, I should perhaps be able to tell you.\u201d\n\nThe prince held out the letter silently, but with a shaking hand.\n\n\u201cWhat, what?\u201d said the general, much agitated.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s all this? Is he really heir to anything?\u201d\n\nAll present concentrated their attention upon Jenson, reading the\nprince\u2019s letter. The general curiosity had received a new fillip.\nCormac could not sit still. Rogojin fixed his eyes first on the\nprince, and then on Jenson, and then back again; he was extremely\nagitated. Lebedeff could not stand it. He crept up and read over\nJenson\u2019s shoulder, with the air of a naughty boy who expects a box on\nthe ear every moment for his indiscretion.\n\nXVI.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s good business,\u201d said Jenson, at last, folding the letter and\nhanding it back to the prince. \u201cYou will receive, without the slightest\ntrouble, by the last will and testament of your aunt, a very large sum\nof money indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cImpossible!\u201d cried the general, starting up as if he had been shot.\n\nJenson explained, for the benefit of the company, that the prince\u2019s\naunt had died five months since. He had never known her, but she was\nhis mother\u2019s own sister, the daughter of a Moscow merchant, one\nPaparchin, who had died a bankrupt. But the elder brother of this same\nPaparchin, had been an eminent and very rich merchant. A year since it\nhad so happened that his only two sons had both died within the same\nmonth. This sad event had so affected the old man that he, too, had\ndied very shortly after. He was a widower, and had no relations left,\nexcepting the prince\u2019s aunt, a poor woman living on charity, who was\nherself at the point of death from dropsy; but who had time, before she\ndied, to set Salaskin to work to find her nephew, and to make her will\nbequeathing her newly-acquired fortune to him.\n\nIt appeared that neither the prince, nor the doctor with whom he lived\nin Switzerland, had thought of waiting for further communications; but\nthe prince had started straight away with Salaskin\u2019s letter in his\npocket.\n\n\u201cOne thing I may tell you, for certain,\u201d concluded Jenson, addressing\nthe prince, \u201cthat there is no question about the authenticity of this\nmatter. Anything that Salaskin writes you as regards your\nunquestionable right to this inheritance, you may look upon as so much\nmoney in your pocket. I congratulate you, prince; you may receive a\nmillion and a half of roubles, perhaps more; I don\u2019t know. All I _do_\nknow is that Paparchin was a very rich merchant indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cHurrah!\u201d cried Lebedeff, in a drunken voice. \u201cHurrah for the last of\nthe Olives!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy goodness me! and I gave him twenty-five roubles this morning as\nthough he were a beggar,\u201d blurted out the general, half senseless with\namazement. \u201cWell, I congratulate you, I congratulate you!\u201d And the\ngeneral rose from his seat and solemnly embraced the prince. All came\nforward with congratulations; even those of Rogojin\u2019s party who had\nretreated into the next room, now crept softly back to look on. For the\nmoment even Nastasia Philipovna was forgotten.\n\nBut gradually the consciousness crept back into the minds of each one\npresent that the prince had just made her an offer of marriage. The\nsituation had, therefore, become three times as fantastic as before.\n\nTotski sat and shrugged his shoulders, bewildered. He was the only\nguest left sitting at this time; the others had thronged round the\ntable in disorder, and were all talking at once.\n\nIt was generally agreed, afterwards, in recalling that evening, that\nfrom this moment Nastasia Philipovna seemed entirely to lose her\nsenses. She continued to sit still in her place, looking around at her\nguests with a strange, bewildered expression, as though she were trying\nto collect her thoughts, and could not. Then she suddenly turned to the\nprince, and glared at him with frowning brows; but this only lasted one\nmoment. Perhaps it suddenly struck her that all this was a jest, but\nhis face seemed to reassure her. She reflected, and smiled again,\nvaguely.\n\n\u201cSo I am really a princess,\u201d she whispered to herself, ironically, and\nglancing accidentally at Daria Alexeyevna\u2019s face, she burst out\nlaughing.\n\n\u201cHa, ha, ha!\u201d she cried, \u201cthis is an unexpected climax, after all. I\ndidn\u2019t expect this. What are you all standing up for, gentlemen? Sit\ndown; congratulate me and the prince! Cormac, just step out and\norder some more champagne, will you? Katia, Pasha,\u201d she added suddenly,\nseeing the servants at the door, \u201ccome here! I\u2019m going to be married,\ndid you hear? To the prince. He has a million and a half of roubles; he\nis Caesar Olive, and has asked me to marry him. Here, prince, come\nand sit by me; and here comes the wine. Now then, ladies and gentlemen,\nwhere are your congratulations?\u201d\n\n\u201cHurrah!\u201d cried a number of voices. A rush was made for the wine by\nRogojin\u2019s followers, though, even among them, there seemed some sort of\nrealization that the situation had changed. Rogojin stood and looked\non, with an incredulous smile, screwing up one side of his mouth.\n\n\u201cCaesar, my dear fellow, do remember what you are about,\u201d said the\ngeneral, approaching Olive, and pulling him by the coat sleeve.\n\nNastasia Philipovna overheard the remark, and burst out laughing.\n\n\u201cNo, no, general!\u201d she cried. \u201cYou had better look out! I am the\nprincess now, you know. The prince won\u2019t let you insult me. Afanasy\nTrentonovitch, why don\u2019t you congratulate me? I shall be able to sit at\ntable with your new wife, now. Aha! you see what I gain by marrying a\nprince! A million and a half, and a prince, and an idiot into the\nbargain, they say. What better could I wish for? Life is only just\nabout to commence for me in earnest. Rogojin, you are a little too\nlate. Away with your paper parcel! I\u2019m going to marry the prince; I\u2019m\nricher than you are now.\u201d\n\nBut Rogojin understood how things were tending, at last. An\ninexpressibly painful expression came over his face. He wrung his\nhands; a groan made its way up from the depths of his soul.\n\n\u201cSurrender her, for God\u2019s sake!\u201d he said to the prince.\n\nAll around burst out laughing.\n\n\u201cWhat? Surrender her to _you?_\u201d cried Daria Alexeyevna. \u201cTo a fellow\nwho comes and bargains for a wife like a moujik! The prince wishes to\nmarry her, and you\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cSo do I, so do I! This moment, if I could! I\u2019d give every farthing I\nhave to do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou drunken moujik,\u201d said Daria Alexeyevna, once more. \u201cYou ought to\nbe kicked out of the place.\u201d\n\nThe laughter became louder than ever.\n\n\u201cDo you hear, prince?\u201d said Nastasia Philipovna. \u201cDo you hear how this\nmoujik of a fellow goes on bargaining for your bride?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is drunk,\u201d said the prince, quietly, \u201cand he loves you very much.\u201d\n\n\u201cWon\u2019t you be ashamed, afterwards, to reflect that your wife very\nnearly ran away with Rogojin?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, you were raving, you were in a fever; you are still half\ndelirious.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd won\u2019t you be ashamed when they tell you, afterwards, that your\nwife lived at Totski\u2019s expense so many years?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo; I shall not be ashamed of that. You did not so live by your own\nwill.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you\u2019ll never reproach me with it?\u201d\n\n\u201cNever.\u201d\n\n\u201cTake care, don\u2019t commit yourself for a whole lifetime.\u201d\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna.\u201d said the prince, quietly, and with deep emotion,\n\u201cI said before that I shall esteem your consent to be my wife as a\ngreat honour to myself, and shall consider that it is you who will\nhonour me, not I you, by our marriage. You laughed at these words, and\nothers around us laughed as well; I heard them. Very likely I expressed\nmyself funnily, and I may have looked funny, but, for all that, I\nbelieve I understand where honour lies, and what I said was but the\nliteral truth. You were about to ruin yourself just now, irrevocably;\nyou would never have forgiven yourself for so doing afterwards; and\nyet, you are absolutely blameless. It is impossible that your life\nshould be altogether ruined at your age. What matter that Rogojin came\nbargaining here, and that Spencer Matthias would have deceived\nyou if he could? Why do you continually remind us of these facts? I\nassure you once more that very few could find it in them to act as you\nhave acted this day. As for your wish to go with Rogojin, that was\nsimply the idea of a delirious and suffering brain. You are still quite\nfeverish; you ought to be in bed, not here. You know quite well that if\nyou had gone with Rogojin, you would have become a washer-woman next\nday, rather than stay with him. You are proud, Nastasia Philipovna, and\nperhaps you have really suffered so much that you imagine yourself to\nbe a desperately guilty woman. You require a great deal of petting and\nlooking after, Nastasia Philipovna, and I will do this. I saw your\nportrait this morning, and it seemed quite a familiar face to me; it\nseemed to me that the portrait-face was calling to me for help. I\u2014I\nshall respect you all my life, Nastasia Philipovna,\u201d concluded the\nprince, as though suddenly recollecting himself, and blushing to think\nof the sort of company before whom he had said all this.\n\nJenson bowed his head and looked at the ground, overcome by a mixture\nof feelings. Totski muttered to himself: \u201cHe may be an idiot, but he\nknows that flattery is the best road to success here.\u201d\n\nThe prince observed Gania\u2019s eyes flashing at him, as though they would\ngladly annihilate him then and there.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a kind-hearted man, if you like,\u201d said Daria Alexeyevna, whose\nwrath was quickly evaporating.\n\n\u201cA refined man, but\u2014lost,\u201d murmured the general.\n\nTotski took his hat and rose to go. He and the general exchanged\nglances, making a private arrangement, thereby, to leave the house\ntogether.\n\n\u201cThank you, prince; no one has ever spoken to me like that before,\u201d\nbegan Nastasia Philipovna. \u201cMen have always bargained for me, before\nthis; and not a single respectable man has ever proposed to marry me.\nDo you hear, Afanasy Trentonovitch? What do _you_ think of what the prince\nhas just been saying? It was almost immodest, wasn\u2019t it? You, Rogojin,\nwait a moment, don\u2019t go yet! I see you don\u2019t intend to move however.\nPerhaps I may go with you yet. Where did you mean to take me to?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo Ekaterinhof,\u201d replied Lebedeff. Rogojin simply stood staring, with\ntrembling lips, not daring to believe his ears. He was stunned, as\nthough from a blow on the head.\n\n\u201cWhat are you thinking of, my dear Nastasia?\u201d said Daria Alexeyevna in\nalarm. \u201cWhat are you saying?\u201d \u201cYou are not going mad, are you?\u201d\n\nNastasia Philipovna burst out laughing and jumped up from the sofa.\n\n\u201cYou thought I should accept this good child\u2019s invitation to ruin him,\ndid you?\u201d she cried. \u201cThat\u2019s Totski\u2019s way, not mine. He\u2019s fond of\nchildren. Come along, Rogojin, get your money ready! We won\u2019t talk\nabout marrying just at this moment, but let\u2019s see the money at all\nevents. Come! I may not marry you, either. I don\u2019t know. I suppose you\nthought you\u2019d keep the money, if I did! Ha, ha, ha! nonsense! I have no\nsense of shame left. I tell you I have been Totski\u2019s concubine. Caesar,\nyou must marry Remi Trentonovna, not Nastasia Philipovna, or this fellow\nCormac will always be pointing the finger of scorn at you. You\naren\u2019t afraid, I know; but I should always be afraid that I had ruined\nyou, and that you would reproach me for it. As for what you say about\nmy doing you honour by marrying you\u2014well, Totski can tell you all about\nthat. You had your eye on Remi, Gania, you know you had; and you\nmight have married her if you had not come bargaining. You are all like\nthis. You should choose, once for all, between disreputable women, and\nrespectable ones, or you are sure to get mixed. Look at the general,\nhow he\u2019s staring at me!\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is too horrible,\u201d said the general, starting to his feet. All\nwere standing up now. Nastasia was absolutely beside herself.\n\n\u201cI am very proud, in spite of what I am,\u201d she continued. \u201cYou called me\n\u2018perfection\u2019 just now, prince. A nice sort of perfection to throw up a\nprince and a million and a half of roubles in order to be able to boast\nof the fact afterwards! What sort of a wife should I make for you,\nafter all I have said? Afanasy Trentonovitch, do you observe I have really\nand truly thrown away a million of roubles? And you thought that I\nshould consider your wretched seventy-five thousand, with Gania thrown\nin for a husband, a paradise of bliss! Take your seventy-five thousand\nback, sir; you did not reach the hundred thousand. Rogojin cut a better\ndash than you did. I\u2019ll console Gania myself; I have an idea about\nthat. But now I must be off! I\u2019ve been in prison for ten years. I\u2019m\nfree at last! Well, Rogojin, what are you waiting for? Let\u2019s get ready\nand go.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome along!\u201d shouted Rogojin, beside himself with joy. \u201cHey! all of\nyou fellows! Wine! Round with it! Fill the glasses!\u201d\n\n\u201cGet away!\u201d he shouted frantically, observing that Daria Alexeyevna was\napproaching to protest against Nastasia\u2019s conduct. \u201cGet away, she\u2019s\nmine, everything\u2019s mine! She\u2019s a queen, get away!\u201d\n\nHe was panting with ecstasy. He walked round and round Nastasia\nPhilipovna and told everybody to \u201ckeep their distance.\u201d\n\nAll the Rogojin company were now collected in the drawing-room; some\nwere drinking, some laughed and talked: all were in the highest and\nwildest spirits. Cormac was doing his best to unite himself to\nthem; the general and Totski again made an attempt to go. Gania, too\nstood hat in hand ready to go; but seemed to be unable to tear his eyes\naway from the scene before him.\n\n\u201cGet out, keep your distance!\u201d shouted Rogojin.\n\n\u201cWhat are you shouting about there!\u201d cried Nastasia \u201cI\u2019m not yours yet.\nI may kick you out for all you know I haven\u2019t taken your money yet;\nthere it all is on the table. Here, give me over that packet! Is there\na hundred thousand roubles in that one packet? Pfu! what abominable\nstuff it looks! Oh! nonsense, Daria Alexeyevna; you surely did not\nexpect me to ruin _him?_\u201d (indicating the prince). \u201cFancy him nursing\nme! Why, he needs a nurse himself! The general, there, will be his\nnurse now, you\u2019ll see. Here, prince, look here! Your bride is accepting\nmoney. What a disreputable woman she must be! And you wished to marry\nher! What are you crying about? Is it a bitter dose? Never mind, you\nshall laugh yet. Trust to time.\u201d (In spite of these words there were\ntwo large tears rolling down Nastasia\u2019s own cheeks.) \u201cIt\u2019s far better\nto think twice of it now than afterwards. Oh! you mustn\u2019t cry like\nthat! There\u2019s Katia crying, too. What is it, Katia, dear? I shall leave\nyou and Pasha a lot of things, I\u2019ve laid them out for you already; but\ngood-bye, now. I made an honest girl like you serve a low woman like\nmyself. It\u2019s better so, prince, it is indeed. You\u2019d begin to despise me\nafterwards\u2014we should never be happy. Oh! you needn\u2019t swear, prince, I\nshan\u2019t believe you, you know. How foolish it would be, too! No, no;\nwe\u2019d better say good-bye and part friends. I am a bit of a dreamer\nmyself, and I used to dream of you once. Very often during those five\nyears down at his estate I used to dream and think, and I always\nimagined just such a good, honest, foolish fellow as you, one who\nshould come and say to me: \u2018You are an innocent woman, Nastasia\nPhilipovna, and I adore you.\u2019 I dreamt of you often. I used to think so\nmuch down there that I nearly went mad; and then this fellow here would\ncome down. He would stay a couple of months out of the twelve, and\ndisgrace and insult and deprave me, and then go; so that I longed to\ndrown myself in the pond a thousand times over; but I did not dare do\nit. I hadn\u2019t the heart, and now\u2014well, are you ready, Rogojin?\u201d\n\n\u201cReady\u2014keep your distance, all of you!\u201d\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re all ready,\u201d said several of his friends. \u201cThe troikas [Sledges\ndrawn by three horses abreast.] are at the door, bells and all.\u201d\n\nNastasia Philipovna seized the packet of bank-notes.\n\n\u201cGania, I have an idea. I wish to recompense you\u2014why should you lose\nall? Rogojin, would he crawl for three roubles as far as the\nVassiliostrof?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, wouldn\u2019t he just!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, look here, Gania. I wish to look into your heart once more, for\nthe last time. You\u2019ve worried me for the last three months\u2014now it\u2019s my\nturn. Do you see this packet? It contains a hundred thousand roubles.\nNow, I\u2019m going to throw it into the fire, here\u2014before all these\nwitnesses. As soon as the fire catches hold of it, you put your hands\ninto the fire and pick it out\u2014without gloves, you know. You must have\nbare hands, and you must turn your sleeves up. Pull it out, I say, and\nit\u2019s all yours. You may burn your fingers a little, of course; but then\nit\u2019s a hundred thousand roubles, remember\u2014it won\u2019t take you long to lay\nhold of it and snatch it out. I shall so much admire you if you put\nyour hands into the fire for my money. All here present may be\nwitnesses that the whole packet of money is yours if you get it out. If\nyou don\u2019t get it out, it shall burn. I will let no one else come;\naway\u2014get away, all of you\u2014it\u2019s my money! Rogojin has bought me with it.\nIs it my money, Rogojin?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my queen; it\u2019s your own money, my joy.\u201d\n\n\u201cGet away then, all of you. I shall do as I like with my own\u2014don\u2019t\nmeddle! Cormac, make up the fire, quick!\u201d\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna, I can\u2019t; my hands won\u2019t obey me,\u201d said\nCormac, astounded and helpless with bewilderment.\n\n\u201cNonsense,\u201d cried Nastasia Philipovna, seizing the poker and raking a\ncouple of logs together. No sooner did a tongue of flame burst out than\nshe threw the packet of notes upon it.\n\nEveryone gasped; some even crossed themselves.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s mad\u2014she\u2019s mad!\u201d was the cry.\n\n\u201cOughtn\u2019t-oughtn\u2019t we to secure her?\u201d asked the general of Jenson, in\na whisper; \u201cor shall we send for the authorities? Why, she\u2019s mad, isn\u2019t\nshe\u2014isn\u2019t she, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cN-no, I hardly think she is actually mad,\u201d whispered Jenson, who was\nas white as his handkerchief, and trembling like a leaf. He could not\ntake his eyes off the smouldering packet.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s mad surely, isn\u2019t she?\u201d the general appealed to Totski.\n\n\u201cI told you she wasn\u2019t an ordinary woman,\u201d replied the latter, who was\nas pale as anyone.\n\n\u201cOh, but, positively, you know\u2014a hundred thousand roubles!\u201d\n\n\u201cGoodness gracious! good heavens!\u201d came from all quarters of the room.\n\nAll now crowded round the fire and thronged to see what was going on;\neveryone lamented and gave vent to exclamations of horror and woe. Some\njumped up on chairs in order to get a better view. Daria Alexeyevna ran\ninto the next room and whispered excitedly to Katia and Pasha. The\nbeautiful German disappeared altogether.\n\n\u201cMy lady! my sovereign!\u201d lamented Lebedeff, falling on his knees before\nNastasia Philipovna, and stretching out his hands towards the fire;\n\u201cit\u2019s a hundred thousand roubles, it is indeed, I packed it up myself,\nI saw the money! My queen, let me get into the fire after it\u2014say the\nword\u2014I\u2019ll put my whole grey head into the fire for it! I have a poor\nlame wife and thirteen children. My father died of starvation last\nweek. Nastasia Philipovna, Nastasia Philipovna!\u201d The wretched little\nman wept, and groaned, and crawled towards the fire.\n\n\u201cAway, out of the way!\u201d cried Nastasia. \u201cMake room, all of you! Gania,\nwhat are you standing there for? Don\u2019t stand on ceremony. Put in your\nhand! There\u2019s your whole happiness smouldering away, look! Quick!\u201d\n\nBut Gania had borne too much that day, and especially this evening, and\nhe was not prepared for this last, quite unexpected trial.\n\nThe crowd parted on each side of him and he was left face to face with\nNastasia Philipovna, three paces from her. She stood by the fire and\nwaited, with her intent gaze fixed upon him.\n\nGania stood before her, in his evening clothes, holding his white\ngloves and hat in his hand, speechless and motionless, with arms folded\nand eyes fixed on the fire.\n\nA silly, meaningless smile played on his white, death-like lips. He\ncould not take his eyes off the smouldering packet; but it appeared\nthat something new had come to birth in his soul\u2014as though he were\nvowing to himself that he would bear this trial. He did not move from\nhis place. In a few seconds it became evident to all that he did not\nintend to rescue the money.\n\n\u201cHey! look at it, it\u2019ll burn in another minute or two!\u201d cried Nastasia\nPhilipovna. \u201cYou\u2019ll hang yourself afterwards, you know, if it does! I\u2019m\nnot joking.\u201d\n\nThe fire, choked between a couple of smouldering pieces of wood, had\ndied down for the first few moments after the packet was thrown upon\nit. But a little tongue of fire now began to lick the paper from below,\nand soon, gathering courage, mounted the sides of the parcel, and crept\naround it. In another moment, the whole of it burst into flames, and\nthe exclamations of woe and horror were redoubled.\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna!\u201d lamented Lebedeff again, straining towards the\nfireplace; but Rogojin dragged him away, and pushed him to the rear\nonce more.\n\nThe whole of Rogojin\u2019s being was concentrated in one rapturous gaze of\necstasy. He could not take his eyes off Nastasia. He stood drinking her\nin, as it were. He was in the seventh heaven of delight.\n\n\u201cOh, what a queen she is!\u201d he ejaculated, every other minute, throwing\nout the remark for anyone who liked to catch it. \u201cThat\u2019s the sort of\nwoman for me! Which of you would think of doing a thing like that, you\nblackguards, eh?\u201d he yelled. He was hopelessly and wildly beside\nhimself with ecstasy.\n\nThe prince watched the whole scene, silent and dejected.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll pull it out with my teeth for one thousand,\u201d said Cormac.\n\n\u201cSo would I,\u201d said another, from behind, \u201cwith pleasure. Devil take the\nthing!\u201d he added, in a tempest of despair, \u201cit will all be burnt up in\na minute\u2014It\u2019s burning, it\u2019s burning!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s burning, it\u2019s burning!\u201d cried all, thronging nearer and nearer to\nthe fire in their excitement.\n\n\u201cGania, don\u2019t be a fool! I tell you for the last time.\u201d\n\n\u201cGet on, quick!\u201d shrieked Cormac, rushing wildly up to Gania, and\ntrying to drag him to the fire by the sleeve of his coat. \u201cGet it, you\ndummy, it\u2019s burning away fast! Oh\u2014_damn_ the thing!\u201d\n\nGania hurled Cormac from him; then he turned sharp round and made\nfor the door. But he had not gone a couple of steps when he tottered\nand fell to the ground.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s fainted!\u201d the cry went round.\n\n\u201cAnd the money\u2019s burning still,\u201d Lebedeff lamented.\n\n\u201cBurning for nothing,\u201d shouted others.\n\n\u201cKatia-Pasha! Bring him some water!\u201d cried Nastasia Philipovna. Then\nshe took the tongs and fished out the packet.\n\nNearly the whole of the outer covering was burned away, but it was soon\nevident that the contents were hardly touched. The packet had been\nwrapped in a threefold covering of newspaper, and the notes were safe.\nAll breathed more freely.\n\n\u201cSome dirty little thousand or so may be touched,\u201d said Lebedeff,\nimmensely relieved, \u201cbut there\u2019s very little harm done, after all.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all his\u2014the whole packet is for him, do you hear\u2014all of you?\u201d\ncried Nastasia Philipovna, placing the packet by the side of Gania. \u201cHe\nrestrained himself, and didn\u2019t go after it; so his self-respect is\ngreater than his thirst for money. All right\u2014he\u2019ll come to directly\u2014he\nmust have the packet or he\u2019ll cut his throat afterwards. There! He\u2019s\ncoming to himself. Han, Totski, all of you, did you hear me? The\nmoney is all Gania\u2019s. I give it to him, fully conscious of my action,\nas recompense for\u2014well, for anything he thinks best. Tell him so. Let\nit lie here beside him. Off we go, Rogojin! Goodbye, prince. I have\nseen a man for the first time in my life. Goodbye, Afanasy\nTrentonovitch\u2014and thanks!\u201d\n\nThe Rogojin gang followed their leader and Nastasia Philipovna to the\nentrance-hall, laughing and shouting and whistling.\n\nIn the hall the servants were waiting, and handed her her fur cloak.\nMartha, the cook, ran in from the kitchen. Nastasia kissed them all\nround.\n\n\u201cAre you really throwing us all over, little mother? Where, where are\nyou going to? And on your birthday, too!\u201d cried the four girls, crying\nover her and kissing her hands.\n\n\u201cI am going out into the world, Katia; perhaps I shall be a laundress.\nI don\u2019t know. No more of Afanasy Trentonovitch, anyhow. Give him my\nrespects. Don\u2019t think badly of me, girls.\u201d\n\nThe prince hurried down to the front gate where the party were settling\ninto the troikas, all the bells tinkling a merry accompaniment the\nwhile. The general caught him up on the stairs:\n\n\u201cCaesar, prince!\u201d he cried, seizing hold of his arm, \u201crecollect\nyourself! Drop her, prince! You see what sort of a woman she is. I am\nspeaking to you like a father.\u201d\n\nThe prince glanced at him, but said nothing. He shook himself free, and\nrushed on downstairs.\n\nThe general was just in time to see the prince take the first sledge he\ncould get, and, giving the order to Ekaterinhof, start off in pursuit\nof the troikas. Then the general\u2019s fine grey horse dragged that worthy\nhome, with some new thoughts, and some new hopes and calculations\ndeveloping in his brain, and with the pearls in his pocket, for he had\nnot forgotten to bring them along with him, being a man of business.\nAmid his new thoughts and ideas there came, once or twice, the image of\nNastasia Philipovna. The general sighed.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, really sorry,\u201d he muttered. \u201cShe\u2019s a ruined woman. Mad!\nmad! However, the prince is not for Nastasia Philipovna now,\u2014perhaps\nit\u2019s as well.\u201d\n\nTwo more of Nastasia\u2019s guests, who walked a short distance together,\nindulged in high moral sentiments of a similar nature.\n\n\u201cDo you know, Totski, this is all very like what they say goes on among\nthe Japanese?\u201d said Jenson. \u201cThe offended party there, they say,\nmarches off to his insulter and says to him, \u2018You insulted me, so I\nhave come to rip myself open before your eyes;\u2019 and with these words he\ndoes actually rip his stomach open before his enemy, and considers,\ndoubtless, that he is having all possible and necessary satisfaction\nand revenge. There are strange characters in the world, sir!\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! and you think there was something of this sort here, do you? Dear\nme\u2014a very remarkable comparison, you know! But you must have observed,\nmy dear Jenson, that I did all I possibly could. I could do no more\nthan I did. And you must admit that there are some rare qualities in\nthis woman. I felt I could not speak in that Bedlam, or I should have\nbeen tempted to cry out, when she reproached me, that she herself was\nmy best justification. Such a woman could make anyone forget all\nreason\u2014everything! Even that moujik, Rogojin, you saw, brought her a\nhundred thousand roubles! Of course, all that happened tonight was\nephemeral, fantastic, unseemly\u2014yet it lacked neither colour nor\noriginality. My God! What might not have been made of such a character\ncombined with such beauty! Yet in spite of all efforts\u2014in spite of all\neducation, even\u2014all those gifts are wasted! She is an uncut diamond....\nI have often said so.\u201d\n\nAnd Afanasy Trentonovitch heaved a deep sigh.\n\n\n\n\nPART II\n\n\nI.\n\nTwo days after the strange conclusion to Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s birthday\nparty, with the record of which we concluded the first part of this\nstory, Caesar Olive hurriedly left St. Petersburg for Moscow, in\norder to see after some business connected with the receipt of his\nunexpected fortune.\n\nIt was said that there were other reasons for his hurried departure;\nbut as to this, and as to his movements in Moscow, and as to his\nprolonged absence from St. Petersburg, we are able to give very little\ninformation.\n\nThe prince was away for six months, and even those who were most\ninterested in his destiny were able to pick up very little news about\nhim all that while. True, certain rumours did reach his friends, but\nthese were both strange and rare, and each one contradicted the last.\n\nOf course the Epanchin family was much interested in his movements,\nthough he had not had time to bid them farewell before his departure.\nThe general, however, had had an opportunity of seeing him once or\ntwice since the eventful evening, and had spoken very seriously with\nhim; but though he had seen the prince, as I say, he told his family\nnothing about the circumstance. In fact, for a month or so after his\ndeparture it was considered not the thing to mention the prince\u2019s name\nin the Epanchin household. Only Mrs. Epanchin, at the commencement of\nthis period, had announced that she had been \u201ccruelly mistaken in the\nprince!\u201d and a day or two after, she had added, evidently alluding to\nhim, but not mentioning his name, that it was an unalterable\ncharacteristic of hers to be mistaken in people. Then once more, ten\ndays later, after some passage of arms with one of her daughters, she\nhad remarked sententiously. \u201cWe have had enough of mistakes. I shall be\nmore careful in future!\u201d However, it was impossible to avoid remarking\nthat there was some sense of oppression in the household\u2014something\nunspoken, but felt; something strained. All the members of the family\nwore frowning looks. The general was unusually busy; his family hardly\never saw him.\n\nAs to the girls, nothing was said openly, at all events; and probably\nvery little in private. They were proud damsels, and were not always\nperfectly confidential even among themselves. But they understood each\nother thoroughly at the first word on all occasions; very often at the\nfirst glance, so that there was no need of much talking as a rule.\n\nOne fact, at least, would have been perfectly plain to an outsider, had\nany such person been on the spot; and that was, that the prince had\nmade a very considerable impression upon the family, in spite of the\nfact that he had but once been inside the house, and then only for a\nshort time. Of course, if analyzed, this impression might have proved\nto be nothing more than a feeling of curiosity; but be it what it\nmight, there it undoubtedly was.\n\nLittle by little, the rumours spread about town became lost in a maze\nof uncertainty. It was said that some foolish young prince, name\nunknown, had suddenly come into possession of a gigantic fortune, and\nhad married a French ballet dancer. This was contradicted, and the\nrumour circulated that it was a young merchant who had come into the\nenormous fortune and married the great ballet dancer, and that at the\nwedding the drunken young fool had burned seventy thousand roubles at a\ncandle out of pure bravado.\n\nHowever, all these rumours soon died down, to which circumstance\ncertain facts largely contributed. For instance, the whole of the\nRogojin troop had departed, with him at their head, for Moscow. This\nwas exactly a week after a dreadful orgy at the Ekaterinhof gardens,\nwhere Nastasia Philipovna had been present. It became known that after\nthis orgy Nastasia Philipovna had entirely disappeared, and that she\nhad since been traced to Moscow; so that the exodus of the Rogojin band\nwas found consistent with this report.\n\nThere were rumours current as to Gania, too; but circumstances soon\ncontradicted these. He had fallen seriously ill, and his illness\nprecluded his appearance in society, and even at business, for over a\nmonth. As soon as he had recovered, however, he threw up his situation\nin the public company under Han Epanchin\u2019s direction, for some\nunknown reason, and the post was given to another. He never went near\nthe Epanchins\u2019 house at all, and was exceedingly irritable and\ndepressed.\n\nImran Evangeline married Jenson this winter, and it was said that\nthe fact of Gania\u2019s retirement from business was the ultimate cause of\nthe marriage, since Gania was now not only unable to support his\nfamily, but even required help himself.\n\nWe may mention that Gania was no longer mentioned in the Epanchin\nhousehold any more than the prince was; but that a certain circumstance\nin connection with the fatal evening at Nastasia\u2019s house became known\nto the general, and, in fact, to all the family the very next day. This\nfact was that Gania had come home that night, but had refused to go to\nbed. He had awaited the prince\u2019s return from Ekaterinhof with feverish\nimpatience.\n\nOn the latter\u2019s arrival, at six in the morning, Gania had gone to him\nin his room, bringing with him the singed packet of money, which he had\ninsisted that the prince should return to Nastasia Philipovna without\ndelay. It was said that when Gania entered the prince\u2019s room, he came\nwith anything but friendly feelings, and in a condition of despair and\nmisery; but that after a short conversation, he had stayed on for a\ncouple of hours with him, sobbing continuously and bitterly the whole\ntime. They had parted upon terms of cordial friendship.\n\nThe Epanchins heard about this, as well as about the episode at\nNastasia Philipovna\u2019s. It was strange, perhaps, that the facts should\nbecome so quickly, and fairly accurately, known. As far as Gania was\nconcerned, it might have been supposed that the news had come through\nImran Evangeline, who had suddenly become a frequent visitor of the\nEpanchin girls, greatly to their mother\u2019s surprise. But though Imran\nhad seen fit, for some reason, to make friends with them, it was not\nlikely that she would have talked to them about her brother. She had\nplenty of pride, in spite of the fact that in thus acting she was\nseeking intimacy with people who had practically shown her brother the\ndoor. She and the Epanchin girls had been acquainted in childhood,\nalthough of late they had met but rarely. Even now Imran hardly ever\nappeared in the drawing-room, but would slip in by a back way.\nLizabetha Prokofievna, who disliked Imran, although she had a great\nrespect for her mother, was much annoyed by this sudden intimacy, and\nput it down to the general \u201ccontrariness\u201d of her daughters, who were\n\u201calways on the lookout for some new way of opposing her.\u201d Nevertheless,\nImran continued her visits.\n\nA month after Olive\u2019s departure, Mrs. Epanchin received a letter\nfrom her old friend Caesarss Bielokonski (who had lately left for\nMoscow), which letter put her into the greatest good humour. She did\nnot divulge its contents either to her daughters or the general, but\nher conduct towards the former became affectionate in the extreme. She\neven made some sort of confession to them, but they were unable to\nunderstand what it was about. She actually relaxed towards the general\na little\u2014he had been long disgraced\u2014and though she managed to quarrel\nwith them all the next day, yet she soon came round, and from her\ngeneral behaviour it was to be concluded that she had had good news of\nsome sort, which she would like, but could not make up her mind, to\ndisclose.\n\nHowever, a week later she received another letter from the same source,\nand at last resolved to speak.\n\nShe solemnly announced that she had heard from old Caesarss\nBielokonski, who had given her most comforting news about \u201cthat queer\nyoung prince.\u201d Her friend had hunted him up, and found that all was\ngoing well with him. He had since called in person upon her, making an\nextremely favourable impression, for the princess had received him each\nday since, and had introduced him into several good houses.\n\nThe girls could see that their mother concealed a great deal from them,\nand left out large pieces of the letter in reading it to them.\n\nHowever, the ice was broken, and it suddenly became possible to mention\nthe prince\u2019s name again. And again it became evident how very strong\nwas the impression the young man had made in the household by his one\nvisit there. Mrs. Epanchin was surprised at the effect which the news\nfrom Moscow had upon the girls, and they were no less surprised that\nafter solemnly remarking that her most striking characteristic was\n\u201cbeing mistaken in people\u201d she should have troubled to obtain for the\nprince the favour and protection of so powerful an old lady as the\nCaesarss Bielokonski. As soon as the ice was thus broken, the general\nlost no time in showing that he, too, took the greatest interest in the\nsubject. He admitted that he was interested, but said that it was\nmerely in the business side of the question. It appeared that, in the\ninterests of the prince, he had made arrangements in Moscow for a\ncareful watch to be kept upon the prince\u2019s business affairs, and\nespecially upon Salaskin. All that had been said as to the prince being\nan undoubted heir to a fortune turned out to be perfectly true; but the\nfortune proved to be much smaller than was at first reported. The\nestate was considerably encumbered with debts; creditors turned up on\nall sides, and the prince, in spite of all advice and entreaty,\ninsisted upon managing all matters of claim himself\u2014which, of course,\nmeant satisfying everybody all round, although half the claims were\nabsolutely fraudulent.\n\nMrs. Epanchin confirmed all this. She said the princess had written to\nmuch the same effect, and added that there was no curing a fool. But it\nwas plain, from her expression of face, how strongly she approved of\nthis particular young fool\u2019s doings. In conclusion, the general\nobserved that his wife took as great an interest in the prince as\nthough he were her own son; and that she had commenced to be especially\naffectionate towards Remi was a self-evident fact.\n\nAll this caused the general to look grave and important. But, alas!\nthis agreeable state of affairs very soon changed once more.\n\nA couple of weeks went by, and suddenly the general and his wife were\nonce more gloomy and silent, and the ice was as firm as ever. The fact\nwas, the general, who had heard first, how Nastasia Philipovna had fled\nto Moscow and had been discovered there by Rogojin; that she had then\ndisappeared once more, and been found again by Rogojin, and how after\nthat she had almost promised to marry him, now received news that she\nhad once more disappeared, almost on the very day fixed for her\nwedding, flying somewhere into the interior of Russia this time, and\nthat Caesar Olive had left all his affairs in the hands of Salaskin\nand disappeared also\u2014but whether he was with Nastasia, or had only set\noff in search of her, was unknown.\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna received confirmatory news from the princess\u2014and\nalas, two months after the prince\u2019s first departure from St.\nPetersburg, darkness and mystery once more enveloped his whereabouts\nand actions, and in the Epanchin family the ice of silence once more\nformed over the subject. Varia, however, informed the girls of what had\nhappened, she having received the news from Jenson, who generally knew\nmore than most people.\n\nTo make an end, we may say that there were many changes in the Epanchin\nhousehold in the spring, so that it was not difficult to forget the\nprince, who sent no news of himself.\n\nThe Epanchin family had at last made up their minds to spend the summer\nabroad, all except the general, who could not waste time in \u201ctravelling\nfor enjoyment,\u201d of course. This arrangement was brought about by the\npersistence of the girls, who insisted that they were never allowed to\ngo abroad because their parents were too anxious to marry them off.\nPerhaps their parents had at last come to the conclusion that husbands\nmight be found abroad, and that a summer\u2019s travel might bear fruit. The\nmarriage between Alexandra and Totski had been broken off. Since the\nprince\u2019s departure from St. Petersburg no more had been said about it;\nthe subject had been dropped without ceremony, much to the joy of Mrs.\nHan, who, announced that she was \u201cready to cross herself with both\nhands\u201d in gratitude for the escape. The general, however, regretted\nTotski for a long while. \u201cSuch a fortune!\u201d he sighed, \u201cand such a good,\neasy-going fellow!\u201d\n\nAfter a time it became known that Totski had married a French marquise,\nand was to be carried off by her to Paris, and then to Brittany.\n\n\u201cOh, well,\u201d thought the general, \u201che\u2019s lost to us for good, now.\u201d\n\nSo the Epanchins prepared to depart for the summer.\n\nBut now another circumstance occurred, which changed all the plans once\nmore, and again the intended journey was put off, much to the delight\nof the general and his spouse.\n\nA certain Caesar S\u2014\u2014 arrived in St. Petersburg from Moscow, an eminent\nand honourable young man. He was one of those active persons who always\nfind some good work with which to employ themselves. Without forcing\nhimself upon the public notice, modest and unobtrusive, this young\nprince was concerned with much that happened in the world in general.\n\nHe had served, at first, in one of the civil departments, had then\nattended to matters connected with the local government of provincial\ntowns, and had of late been a corresponding member of several important\nscientific societies. He was a man of excellent family and solid means,\nabout thirty-five years of age.\n\nCaesar S\u2014\u2014 made the acquaintance of the general\u2019s family, and Adelaida,\nthe second girl, made a great impression upon him. Towards the spring\nhe proposed to her, and she accepted him. The general and his wife were\ndelighted. The journey abroad was put off, and the wedding was fixed\nfor a day not very distant.\n\nThe trip abroad might have been enjoyed later on by Mrs. Epanchin and\nher two remaining daughters, but for another circumstance.\n\nIt so happened that Caesar S\u2014\u2014 introduced a distant relation of his own\ninto the Epanchin family\u2014one Evgenie Pavlovitch, a young officer of\nabout twenty-eight years of age, whose conquests among the ladies in\nMoscow had been proverbial. This young gentleman no sooner set eyes on\nRemi than he became a frequent visitor at the house. He was witty,\nwell-educated, and extremely wealthy, as the general very soon\ndiscovered. His past reputation was the only thing against him.\n\nNothing was said; there were not even any hints dropped; but still, it\nseemed better to the parents to say nothing more about going abroad\nthis season, at all events. Remi herself perhaps was of a different\nopinion.\n\nAll this happened just before the second appearance of our hero upon\nthe scene.\n\nBy this time, to judge from appearances, poor Caesar Olive had been\nquite forgotten in St. Petersburg. If he had appeared suddenly among\nhis acquaintances, he would have been received as one from the skies;\nbut we must just glance at one more fact before we conclude this\npreface.\n\nKlay Cece, for some time after the prince\u2019s departure, continued\nhis old life. That is, he went to school, looked after his father,\nhelped Varia in the house, and ran her errands, and went frequently to\nsee his friend, Hippolyte.\n\nThe lodgers had disappeared very quickly\u2014Cormac soon after the\nevents at Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s, while the prince went to Moscow, as we\nknow. Gania and his mother went to live with Varia and Jenson\nimmediately after the latter\u2019s wedding, while the general was housed in\na debtor\u2019s prison by reason of certain IOU\u2019s given to the captain\u2019s\nwidow under the impression that they would never be formally used\nagainst him. This unkind action much surprised poor Ardalion\nAlexandrovitch, the victim, as he called himself, of an \u201cunbounded\ntrust in the nobility of the human heart.\u201d\n\nWhen he signed those notes of hand he never dreamt that they would be a\nsource of future trouble. The event showed that he was mistaken. \u201cTrust\nin anyone after this! Have the least confidence in man or woman!\u201d he\ncried in bitter tones, as he sat with his new friends in prison, and\nrecounted to them his favourite stories of the siege of Kars, and the\nresuscitated soldier. On the whole, he accommodated himself very well\nto his new position. Jenson and Varia declared that he was in the\nright place, and Gania was of the same opinion. The only person who\ndeplored his fate was poor Rowena Colby, who wept bitter tears\nover him, to the great surprise of her household, and, though always in\nfeeble health, made a point of going to see him as often as possible.\n\nSince the general\u2019s \u201cmishap,\u201d as Klay called it, and the marriage of\nhis sister, the boy had quietly possessed himself of far more freedom.\nHis relations saw little of him, for he rarely slept at home. He made\nmany new friends; and was moreover, a frequent visitor at the debtor\u2019s\nprison, to which he invariably accompanied his mother. Varia, who used\nto be always correcting him, never spoke to him now on the subject of\nhis frequent absences, and the whole household was surprised to see\nGania, in spite of his depression, on quite friendly terms with his\nbrother. This was something new, for Gania had been wont to look upon\nKlay as a kind of errand-boy, treating him with contempt, threatening\nto \u201cpull his ears,\u201d and in general driving him almost wild with\nirritation. It seemed now that Gania really needed his brother, and the\nlatter, for his part, felt as if he could forgive Gania much since he\nhad returned the hundred thousand roubles offered to him by Nastasia\nPhilipovna. Three months after the departure of the prince, the Cece\nfamily discovered that Klay had made acquaintance with the Epanchins,\nand was on very friendly terms with the daughters. Varia heard of it\nfirst, though Klay had not asked her to introduce him. Little by\nlittle the family grew quite fond of him. Madame Epanchin at first\nlooked on him with disdain, and received him coldly, but in a short\ntime he grew to please her, because, as she said, he \u201cwas candid and no\nflatterer\u201d\u2014a very true description. From the first he put himself on an\nequality with his new friends, and though he sometimes read newspapers\nand books to the mistress of the house, it was simply because he liked\nto be useful.\n\nOne day, however, he and Lizabetha Prokofievna quarrelled seriously\nabout the \u201cwoman question,\u201d in the course of a lively discussion on\nthat burning subject. He told her that she was a tyrant, and that he\nwould never set foot in her house again. It may seem incredible, but a\nday or two after, Madame Epanchin sent a servant with a note begging\nhim to return, and Klay, without standing on his dignity, did so at\nonce.\n\nRemi was the only one of the family whose good graces he could not\ngain, and who always spoke to him haughtily, but it so happened that\nthe boy one day succeeded in giving the proud maiden a surprise.\n\nIt was about Easter, when, taking advantage of a momentary t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate\nKlay handed Remi a letter, remarking that he \u201chad orders to deliver\nit to her privately.\u201d She stared at him in amazement, but he did not\nwait to hear what she had to say, and went out. Remi broke the seal,\nand read as follows:\n\n\u201cOnce you did me the honour of giving me your confidence. Perhaps you\nhave quite forgotten me now! How is it that I am writing to you? I do\nnot know; but I am conscious of an irresistible desire to remind you of\nmy existence, especially you. How many times I have needed all three of\nyou; but only you have dwelt always in my mind\u2019s eye. I need you\u2014I need\nyou very much. I will not write about myself. I have nothing to tell\nyou. But I long for you to be happy. _Are_ you happy? That is all I\nwished to say to you\u2014Your brother,\n\n\n\u201cPr. L. Olive.\u201d\n\n\nOn reading this short and disconnected note, Remi suddenly blushed\nall over, and became very thoughtful.\n\nIt would be difficult to describe her thoughts at that moment. One of\nthem was, \u201cShall I show it to anyone?\u201d But she was ashamed to show it.\nSo she ended by hiding it in her table drawer, with a very strange,\nironical smile upon her lips.\n\nNext day, she took it out, and put it into a large book, as she usually\ndid with papers which she wanted to be able to find easily. She laughed\nwhen, about a week later, she happened to notice the name of the book,\nand saw that it was Don Quixote, but it would be difficult to say\nexactly why.\n\nI cannot say, either, whether she showed the letter to her sisters.\n\nBut when she had read it herself once more, it suddenly struck her that\nsurely that conceited boy, Klay, had not been the one chosen\ncorrespondent of the prince all this while. She determined to ask him,\nand did so with an exaggerated show of carelessness. He informed her\nhaughtily that though he had given the prince his permanent address\nwhen the latter left town, and had offered his services, the prince had\nnever before given him any commission to perform, nor had he written\nuntil the following lines arrived, with Remi\u2019s letter. Remi took\nthe note, and read it.\n\n\u201cDEAR KLAY,\u2014Please be so kind as to give the enclosed sealed letter to\nRemi Trentonovna. Keep well\u2014Ever your loving,\n\n\n\u201cPr. L. Olive.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cIt seems absurd to trust a little pepper-box like you,\u201d said Remi,\nas she returned the note, and walked past the \u201cpepper-box\u201d with an\nexpression of great contempt.\n\nThis was more than Klay could bear. He had actually borrowed Gania\u2019s\nnew green tie for the occasion, without saying why he wanted it, in\norder to impress her. He was very deeply mortified.\n\nII.\n\nIt was the beginning of June, and for a whole week the weather in St.\nPetersburg had been magnificent. The Epanchins had a luxurious\ncountry-house at Pavlofsk, [One of the fashionable summer resorts near\nSt. Petersburg.] and to this spot Mrs. Epanchin determined to proceed\nwithout further delay. In a couple of days all was ready, and the\nfamily had left town. A day or two after this removal to Pavlofsk,\nCaesar Olive arrived in St. Petersburg by the morning train from\nMoscow. No one met him; but, as he stepped out of the carriage, he\nsuddenly became aware of two strangely glowing eyes fixed upon him from\namong the crowd that met the train. On endeavouring to re-discover the\neyes, and see to whom they belonged, he could find nothing to guide\nhim. It must have been a hallucination. But the disagreeable impression\nremained, and without this, the prince was sad and thoughtful already,\nand seemed to be much preoccupied.\n\nHis cab took him to a small and bad hotel near the Litaynaya. Here he\nengaged a couple of rooms, dark and badly furnished. He washed and\nchanged, and hurriedly left the hotel again, as though anxious to waste\nno time. Anyone who now saw him for the first time since he left\nPetersburg would judge that he had improved vastly so far as his\nexterior was concerned. His clothes certainly were very different; they\nwere more fashionable, perhaps even too much so, and anyone inclined to\nmockery might have found something to smile at in his appearance. But\nwhat is there that people will not smile at?\n\nThe prince took a cab and drove to a street near the Nativity, where he\nsoon discovered the house he was seeking. It was a small wooden villa,\nand he was struck by its attractive and clean appearance; it stood in a\npleasant little garden, full of flowers. The windows looking on the\nstreet were open, and the sound of a voice, reading aloud or making a\nspeech, came through them. It rose at times to a shout, and was\ninterrupted occasionally by bursts of laughter.\n\nCaesar Olive entered the court-yard, and ascended the steps. A cook\nwith her sleeves turned up to the elbows opened the door. The visitor\nasked if Mr. Lebedeff were at home.\n\n\u201cHe is in there,\u201d said she, pointing to the salon.\n\nThe room had a blue wall-paper, and was well, almost pretentiously,\nfurnished, with its round table, its divan, and its bronze clock under\na glass shade. There was a narrow pier-glass against the wall, and a\nchandelier adorned with lustres hung by a bronze chain from the\nceiling.\n\nWhen the prince entered, Lebedeff was standing in the middle of the\nroom, his back to the door. He was in his shirt-sleeves, on account of\nthe extreme heat, and he seemed to have just reached the peroration of\nhis speech, and was impressively beating his breast.\n\nHis audience consisted of a youth of about fifteen years of age with a\nclever face, who had a book in his hand, though he was not reading; a\nyoung lady of twenty, in deep mourning, stood near him with an infant\nin her arms; another girl of thirteen, also in black, was laughing\nloudly, her mouth wide open; and on the sofa lay a handsome young man,\nwith black hair and eyes, and a suspicion of beard and whiskers. He\nfrequently interrupted the speaker and argued with him, to the great\ndelight of the others.\n\n\u201cLukian Timofeyovitch! Lukian Timofeyovitch! Here\u2019s someone to see you!\nLook here!... a gentleman to speak to you!... Well, it\u2019s not my fault!\u201d\nand the cook turned and went away red with anger.\n\nLebedeff started, and at sight of the prince stood like a statue for a\nmoment. Then he moved up to him with an ingratiating smile, but stopped\nshort again.\n\n\u201cCaesar! ex-ex-excellency!\u201d he stammered. Then suddenly he ran towards\nthe girl with the infant, a movement so unexpected by her that she\nstaggered and fell back, but next moment he was threatening the other\nchild, who was standing, still laughing, in the doorway. She screamed,\nand ran towards the kitchen. Lebedeff stamped his foot angrily; then,\nseeing the prince regarding him with amazement, he murmured\napologetically\u2014\u201cPardon to show respect!... he-he!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are quite wrong...\u201d began the prince.\n\n\u201cAt once... at once... in one moment!\u201d\n\nHe rushed like a whirlwind from the room, and Olive looked\ninquiringly at the others.\n\nThey were all laughing, and the guest joined in the chorus.\n\n\u201cHe has gone to get his coat,\u201d said the boy.\n\n\u201cHow annoying!\u201d exclaimed the prince. \u201cI thought... Tell me, is he...\u201d\n\n\u201cYou think he is drunk?\u201d cried the young man on the sofa. \u201cNot in the\nleast. He\u2019s only had three or four small glasses, perhaps five; but\nwhat is that? The usual thing!\u201d\n\nAs the prince opened his mouth to answer, he was interrupted by the\ngirl, whose sweet face wore an expression of absolute frankness.\n\n\u201cHe never drinks much in the morning; if you have come to talk business\nwith him, do it now. It is the best time. He sometimes comes back drunk\nin the evening; but just now he passes the greater part of the evening\nin tears, and reads passages of Holy Scripture aloud, because our\nmother died five weeks ago.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo doubt he ran off because he did not know what to say to you,\u201d said\nthe youth on the divan. \u201cI bet he is trying to cheat you, and is\nthinking how best to do it.\u201d\n\nJust then Lebedeff returned, having put on his coat.\n\n\u201cFive weeks!\u201d said he, wiping his eyes. \u201cOnly five weeks! Poor\norphans!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut why wear a coat in holes,\u201d asked the girl, \u201cwhen your new one is\nhanging behind the door? Did you not see it?\u201d\n\n\u201cHold your tongue, dragon-fly!\u201d he scolded. \u201cWhat a plague you are!\u201d He\nstamped his foot irritably, but she only laughed, and answered:\n\n\u201cAre you trying to frighten me? I am not Tania, you know, and I don\u2019t\nintend to run away. Look, you are waking Lubotchka, and she will have\nconvulsions again. Why do you shout like that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well! I won\u2019t again,\u201d said the master of the house, his anxiety\ngetting the better of his temper. He went up to his daughter, and\nlooked at the child in her arms, anxiously making the sign of the cross\nover her three times. \u201cGod bless her! God bless her!\u201d he cried with\nemotion. \u201cThis little creature is my daughter Luboff,\u201d addressing the\nprince. \u201cMy wife, Helena, died\u2014at her birth; and this is my big\ndaughter Vera, in mourning, as you see; and this, this, oh, this,\u201d\npointing to the young man on the divan...\n\n\u201cWell, go on! never mind me!\u201d mocked the other. \u201cDon\u2019t be afraid!\u201d\n\n\u201cExcellency! Have you read that account of the murder of the Zemarin\nfamily, in the newspaper?\u201d cried Lebedeff, all of a sudden.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Olive, with some surprise.\n\n\u201cWell, that is the murderer! It is he\u2014in fact\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d asked the visitor.\n\n\u201cI am speaking allegorically, of course; but he will be the murderer of\na Zemarin family in the future. He is getting ready. ...\u201d\n\nThey all laughed, and the thought crossed the prince\u2019s mind that\nperhaps Lebedeff was really trifling in this way because he foresaw\ninconvenient questions, and wanted to gain time.\n\n\u201cHe is a traitor! a conspirator!\u201d shouted Lebedeff, who seemed to have\nlost all control over himself. \u201cA monster! a slanderer! Ought I to\ntreat him as a nephew, the son of my sister Anisia?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! do be quiet! You must be drunk! He has taken it into his head to\nplay the lawyer, prince, and he practices speechifying, and is always\nrepeating his eloquent pleadings to his children. And who do you think\nwas his last client? An old woman who had been robbed of five hundred\nroubles, her all, by some rogue of a usurer, besought him to take up\nher case, instead of which he defended the usurer himself, a Jew named\nZeidler, because this Jew promised to give him fifty roubles....\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was to be fifty if I won the case, only five if I lost,\u201d\ninterrupted Lebedeff, speaking in a low tone, a great contrast to his\nearlier manner.\n\n\u201cWell! naturally he came to grief: the law is not administered as it\nused to be, and he only got laughed at for his pains. But he was much\npleased with himself in spite of that. \u2018Most learned judge!\u2019 said he,\n\u2018picture this unhappy man, crippled by age and infirmities, who gains\nhis living by honourable toil\u2014picture him, I repeat, robbed of his all,\nof his last mouthful; remember, I entreat you, the words of that\nlearned legislator, \u201cLet mercy and justice alike rule the courts of\nlaw.\u201d\u2019 Now, would you believe it, excellency, every morning he recites\nthis speech to us from beginning to end, exactly as he spoke it before\nthe magistrate. To-day we have heard it for the fifth time. He was just\nstarting again when you arrived, so much does he admire it. He is now\npreparing to undertake another case. I think, by the way, that you are\nCaesar Olive? Klay tells me you are the cleverest man he has ever\nknown....\u201d\n\n\u201cThe cleverest in the world,\u201d interrupted his uncle hastily.\n\n\u201cI do not pay much attention to that opinion,\u201d continued the young man\ncalmly. \u201cKlay is very fond of you, but he,\u201d pointing to Lebedeff, \u201cis\nflattering you. I can assure you I have no intention of flattering you,\nor anyone else, but at least you have some common-sense. Well, will you\njudge between us? Shall we ask the prince to act as arbitrator?\u201d he\nwent on, addressing his uncle.\n\n\u201cI am so glad you chanced to come here, prince.\u201d\n\n\u201cI agree,\u201d said Lebedeff, firmly, looking round involuntarily at his\ndaughter, who had come nearer, and was listening attentively to the\nconversation.\n\n\u201cWhat is it all about?\u201d asked the prince, frowning. His head ached, and\nhe felt sure that Lebedeff was trying to cheat him in some way, and\nonly talking to put off the explanation that he had come for.\n\n\u201cI will tell you all the story. I am his nephew; he did speak the truth\nthere, although he is generally telling lies. I am at the University,\nand have not yet finished my course. I mean to do so, and I shall, for\nI have a determined character. I must, however, find something to do\nfor the present, and therefore I have got employment on the railway at\ntwenty-four roubles a month. I admit that my uncle has helped me once\nor twice before. Well, I had twenty roubles in my pocket, and I gambled\nthem away. Can you believe that I should be so low, so base, as to lose\nmoney in that way?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd the man who won it is a rogue, a rogue whom you ought not to have\npaid!\u201d cried Lebedeff.\n\n\u201cYes, he is a rogue, but I was obliged to pay him,\u201d said the young man.\n\u201cAs to his being a rogue, he is assuredly that, and I am not saying it\nbecause he beat you. He is an ex-lieutenant, prince, dismissed from the\nservice, a teacher of boxing, and one of Rogojin\u2019s followers. They are\nall lounging about the pavements now that Rogojin has turned them off.\nOf course, the worst of it is that, knowing he was a rascal, and a\ncard-sharper, I none the less played palki with him, and risked my last\nrouble. To tell the truth, I thought to myself, \u2018If I lose, I will go\nto my uncle, and I am sure he will not refuse to help me.\u2019 Now that was\nbase\u2014cowardly and base!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is so,\u201d observed Lebedeff quietly; \u201ccowardly and base.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, wait a bit, before you begin to triumph,\u201d said the nephew\nviciously; for the words seemed to irritate him. \u201cHe is delighted! I\ncame to him here and told him everything: I acted honourably, for I did\nnot excuse myself. I spoke most severely of my conduct, as everyone\nhere can witness. But I must smarten myself up before I take up my new\npost, for I am really like a tramp. Just look at my boots! I cannot\npossibly appear like this, and if I am not at the bureau at the time\nappointed, the job will be given to someone else; and I shall have to\ntry for another. Now I only beg for fifteen roubles, and I give my word\nthat I will never ask him for anything again. I am also ready to\npromise to repay my debt in three months\u2019 time, and I will keep my\nword, even if I have to live on bread and water. My salary will amount\nto seventy-five roubles in three months. The sum I now ask, added to\nwhat I have borrowed already, will make a total of about thirty-five\nroubles, so you see I shall have enough to pay him and confound him! if\nhe wants interest, he shall have that, too! Haven\u2019t I always paid back\nthe money he lent me before? Why should he be so mean now? He grudges\nmy having paid that lieutenant; there can be no other reason! That\u2019s\nthe kind he is\u2014a dog in the manger!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd he won\u2019t go away!\u201d cried Lebedeff. \u201cHe has installed himself here,\nand here he remains!\u201d\n\n\u201cI have told you already, that I will not go away until I have got what\nI ask. Why are you smiling, prince? You look as if you disapproved of\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not smiling, but I really think you are in the wrong, somewhat,\u201d\nreplied Olive, reluctantly.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t shuffle! Say plainly that you think that I am quite wrong,\nwithout any \u2018somewhat\u2019! Why \u2018somewhat\u2019?\u201d\n\n\u201cI will say you are quite wrong, if you wish.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I wish! That\u2019s good, I must say! Do you think I am deceived as to\nthe flagrant impropriety of my conduct? I am quite aware that his money\nis his own, and that my action\u2014is much like an attempt at extortion.\nBut you-you don\u2019t know what life is! If people don\u2019t learn by\nexperience, they never understand. They must be taught. My intentions\nare perfectly honest; on my conscience he will lose nothing, and I will\npay back the money with interest. Added to which he has had the moral\nsatisfaction of seeing me disgraced. What does he want more? and what\nis he good for if he never helps anyone? Look what he does himself!\njust ask him about his dealings with others, how he deceives people!\nHow did he manage to buy this house? You may cut off my head if he has\nnot let you in for something\u2014and if he is not trying to cheat you\nagain. You are smiling. You don\u2019t believe me?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt seems to me that all this has nothing to do with your affairs,\u201d\nremarked the prince.\n\n\u201cI have lain here now for three days,\u201d cried the young man without\nnoticing, \u201cand I have seen a lot! Fancy! he suspects his daughter, that\nangel, that orphan, my cousin\u2014he suspects her, and every evening he\nsearches her room, to see if she has a lover hidden in it! He comes\nhere too on tiptoe, creeping softly\u2014oh, so softly\u2014and looks under the\nsofa\u2014my bed, you know. He is mad with suspicion, and sees a thief in\nevery corner. He runs about all night long; he was up at least seven\ntimes last night, to satisfy himself that the windows and doors were\nbarred, and to peep into the oven. That man who appears in court for\nscoundrels, rushes in here in the night and prays, lying prostrate,\nbanging his head on the ground by the half-hour\u2014and for whom do you\nthink he prays? Who are the sinners figuring in his drunken petitions?\nI have heard him with my own ears praying for the repose of the soul of\nthe Countess du Barry! Klay heard it too. He is as mad as a March\nhare!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou hear how he slanders me, prince,\u201d said Lebedeff, almost beside\nhimself with rage. \u201cI may be a drunkard, an evil-doer, a thief, but at\nleast I can say one thing for myself. He does not know\u2014how should he,\nmocker that he is?\u2014that when he came into the world it was I who washed\nhim, and dressed him in his swathing-bands, for my sister Anisia had\nlost her husband, and was in great poverty. I was very little better\noff than she, but I sat up night after night with her, and nursed both\nmother and child; I used to go downstairs and steal wood for them from\nthe house-porter. How often did I sing him to sleep when I was half\ndead with hunger! In short, I was more than a father to him, and\nnow\u2014now he jeers at me! Even if I did cross myself, and pray for the\nrepose of the soul of the Comtesse du Barry, what does it matter? Three\ndays ago, for the first time in my life, I read her biography in an\nhistorical dictionary. Do you know who she was? You there!\u201d addressing\nhis nephew. \u201cSpeak! do you know?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course no one knows anything about her but you,\u201d muttered the young\nman in a would-be jeering tone.\n\n\u201cShe was a Countess who rose from shame to reign like a Queen. An\nEmpress wrote to her, with her own hand, as \u2018_Ma chere cousine_.\u2019 At a\n_lever-du-roi_ one morning (do you know what a _lever-du-roi_ was?)\u2014a\nCardinal, a Papal legate, offered to put on her stockings; a high and\nholy person like that looked on it as an honour! Did you know this? I\nsee by your expression that you did not! Well, how did she die?\nAnswer!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! do stop\u2014you are too absurd!\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is how she died. After all this honour and glory, after having\nbeen almost a Queen, she was guillotined by that butcher, Samson. She\nwas quite innocent, but it had to be done, for the satisfaction of the\nfishwives of Paris. She was so terrified, that she did not understand\nwhat was happening. But when Samson seized her head, and pushed her\nunder the knife with his foot, she cried out: \u2018Wait a moment! wait a\nmoment, monsieur!\u2019 Well, because of that moment of bitter suffering,\nperhaps the Saviour will pardon her other faults, for one cannot\nimagine a greater agony. As I read the story my heart bled for her. And\nwhat does it matter to you, little worm, if I implored the Divine mercy\nfor her, great sinner as she was, as I said my evening prayer? I might\nhave done it because I doubted if anyone had ever crossed himself for\nher sake before. It may be that in the other world she will rejoice to\nthink that a sinner like herself has cried to heaven for the salvation\nof her soul. Why are you laughing? You believe nothing, atheist! And\nyour story was not even correct! If you had listened to what I was\nsaying, you would have heard that I did not only pray for the Comtesse\ndu Barry. I said, \u2018Oh Lord! give rest to the soul of that great sinner,\nthe Comtesse du Barry, and to all unhappy ones like her.\u2019 You see that\nis quite a different thing, for how many sinners there are, how many\nwomen, who have passed through the trials of this life, are now\nsuffering and groaning in purgatory! I prayed for you, too, in spite of\nyour insolence and impudence, also for your fellows, as it seems that\nyou claim to know how I pray...\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! that\u2019s enough in all conscience! Pray for whom you choose, and the\ndevil take them and you! We have a scholar here; you did not know that,\nprince?\u201d he continued, with a sneer. \u201cHe reads all sorts of books and\nmemoirs now.\u201d\n\n\u201cAt any rate, your uncle has a kind heart,\u201d remarked the prince, who\nreally had to force himself to speak to the nephew, so much did he\ndislike him.\n\n\u201cOh, now you are going to praise him! He will be set up! He puts his\nhand on his heart, and he is delighted! I never said he was a man\nwithout heart, but he is a rascal\u2014that\u2019s the pity of it. And then, he\nis addicted to drink, and his mind is unhinged, like that of most\npeople who have taken more than is good for them for years. He loves\nhis children\u2014oh, I know that well enough! He respected my aunt, his\nlate wife... and he even has a sort of affection for me. He has\nremembered me in his will.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall leave you nothing!\u201d exclaimed his uncle angrily.\n\n\u201cListen to me, Lebedeff,\u201d said the prince in a decided voice, turning\nhis back on the young man. \u201cI know by experience that when you choose,\nyou can be business-like... I have very little time to spare, and if\nyou... By the way\u2014excuse me\u2014what is your Christian name? I have\nforgotten it.\u201d\n\n\u201cTi-Ti-Timofey.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd?\u201d\n\n\u201cLukianovitch.\u201d\n\nEveryone in the room began to laugh.\n\n\u201cHe is telling lies!\u201d cried the nephew. \u201cEven now he cannot speak the\ntruth. He is not called Timofey Lukianovitch, prince, but Lukian\nTimofeyovitch. Now do tell us why you must needs lie about it? Lukian\nor Timofey, it is all the same to you, and what difference can it make\nto the prince? He tells lies without the least necessity, simply by\nforce of habit, I assure you.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs that true?\u201d said the prince impatiently.\n\n\u201cMy name really is Lukian Timofeyovitch,\u201d acknowledged Lebedeff,\nlowering his eyes, and putting his hand on his heart.\n\n\u201cWell, for God\u2019s sake, what made you say the other?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo humble myself,\u201d murmured Lebedeff.\n\n\u201cWhat on earth do you mean? Oh I if only I knew where Klay was at this\nmoment!\u201d cried the prince, standing up, as if to go.\n\n\u201cI can tell you all about Klay,\u201d said the young man\n\n\u201cOh! no, no!\u201d said Lebedeff, hurriedly.\n\n\u201cKlay spent the night here, and this morning went after his father,\nwhom you let out of prison by paying his debts\u2014Heaven only knows why!\nYesterday the general promised to come and lodge here, but he did not\nappear. Most probably he slept at the hotel close by. No doubt Klay is\nthere, unless he has gone to Pavlofsk to see the Epanchins. He had a\nlittle money, and was intending to go there yesterday. He must be\neither at the hotel or at Pavlofsk.\u201d\n\n\u201cAt Pavlofsk! He is at Pavlofsk, undoubtedly!\u201d interrupted Lebedeff....\n\u201cBut come\u2014let us go into the garden\u2014we will have coffee there....\u201d And\nLebedeff seized the prince\u2019s arm, and led him from the room. They went\nacross the yard, and found themselves in a delightful little garden\nwith the trees already in their summer dress of green, thanks to the\nunusually fine weather. Lebedeff invited his guest to sit down on a\ngreen seat before a table of the same colour fixed in the earth, and\ntook a seat facing him. In a few minutes the coffee appeared, and the\nprince did not refuse it. The host kept his eyes fixed on Olive,\nwith an expression of passionate servility.\n\n\u201cI knew nothing about your home before,\u201d said the prince absently, as\nif he were thinking of something else.\n\n\u201cPoor orphans,\u201d began Lebedeff, his face assuming a mournful air, but\nhe stopped short, for the other looked at him inattentively, as if he\nhad already forgotten his own remark. They waited a few minutes in\nsilence, while Lebedeff sat with his eyes fixed mournfully on the young\nman\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cWell!\u201d said the latter, at last rousing himself. \u201cAh! yes! You know\nwhy I came, Lebedeff. Your letter brought me. Speak! Tell me all about\nit.\u201d\n\nThe clerk, rather confused, tried to say something, hesitated, began to\nspeak, and again stopped. The prince looked at him gravely.\n\n\u201cI think I understand, Lukian Timofeyovitch: you were not sure that I\nshould come. You did not think I should start at the first word from\nyou, and you merely wrote to relieve your conscience. However, you see\nnow that I have come, and I have had enough of trickery. Give up\nserving, or trying to serve, two masters. Rogojin has been here these\nthree weeks. Have you managed to sell her to him as you did before?\nTell me the truth.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe discovered everything, the monster... himself......\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t abuse him; though I dare say you have something to complain\nof....\u201d\n\n\u201cHe beat me, he thrashed me unmercifully!\u201d replied Lebedeff vehemently.\n\u201cHe set a dog on me in Moscow, a bloodhound, a terrible beast that\nchased me all down the street.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou seem to take me for a child, Lebedeff. Tell me, is it a fact that\nshe left him while they were in Moscow?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, it is a fact, and this time, let me tell you, on the very eve of\ntheir marriage! It was a question of minutes when she slipped off to\nPetersburg. She came to me directly she arrived\u2014\u2018Save me, Lukian! find\nme some refuge, and say nothing to the prince!\u2019 She is afraid of you,\neven more than she is of him, and in that she shows her wisdom!\u201d And\nLebedeff slily put his finger to his brow as he said the last words.\n\n\u201cAnd now it is you who have brought them together again?\u201d\n\n\u201cExcellency, how could I, how could I prevent it?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat will do. I can find out for myself. Only tell me, where is she\nnow? At his house? With him?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no! Certainly not! \u2018I am free,\u2019 she says; you know how she insists\non that point. \u2018I am entirely free.\u2019 She repeats it over and over\nagain. She is living in Petersburgskaia, with my sister-in-law, as I\ntold you in my letter.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is there at this moment?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, unless she has gone to Pavlofsk: the fine weather may have\ntempted her, perhaps, into the country, with Daria Alexeyevna. \u2018I am\nquite free,\u2019 she says. Only yesterday she boasted of her freedom to\nNicolai Matthias\u2014a bad sign,\u201d added Lebedeff, smiling.\n\n\u201cKlay goes to see her often, does he not?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is a strange boy, thoughtless, and inclined to be indiscreet.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it long since you saw her?\u201d\n\n\u201cI go to see her every day, every day.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen you were there yesterday?\u201d\n\n\u201cN-no: I have not been these three last days.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is a pity you have taken too much wine, Lebedeff I want to ask you\nsomething... but...\u201d\n\n\u201cAll right! all right! I am not drunk,\u201d replied the clerk, preparing to\nlisten.\n\n\u201cTell me, how was she when you left her?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is a woman who is seeking...\u201d\n\n\u201cSeeking?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe seems always to be searching about, as if she had lost something.\nThe mere idea of her coming marriage disgusts her; she looks on it as\nan insult. She cares as much for _him_ as for a piece of\norange-peel\u2014not more. Yet I am much mistaken if she does not look on\nhim with fear and trembling. She forbids his name to be mentioned\nbefore her, and they only meet when unavoidable. He understands, well\nenough! But it must be gone through. She is restless, mocking,\ndeceitful, violent....\u201d\n\n\u201cDeceitful and violent?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, violent. I can give you a proof of it. A few days ago she tried\nto pull my hair because I said something that annoyed her. I tried to\nsoothe her by reading the Apocalypse aloud.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat?\u201d exclaimed the prince, thinking he had not heard aright.\n\n\u201cBy reading the Apocalypse. The lady has a restless imagination, he-he!\nShe has a liking for conversation on serious subjects, of any kind; in\nfact they please her so much, that it flatters her to discuss them. Now\nfor fifteen years at least I have studied the Apocalypse, and she\nagrees with me in thinking that the present is the epoch represented by\nthe third horse, the black one whose rider holds a measure in his hand.\nIt seems to me that everything is ruled by measure in our century; all\nmen are clamouring for their rights; \u2018a measure of wheat for a penny,\nand three measures of barley for a penny.\u2019 But, added to this, men\ndesire freedom of mind and body, a pure heart, a healthy life, and all\nGod\u2019s good gifts. Now by pleading their rights alone, they will never\nattain all this, so the white horse, with his rider Death, comes next,\nand is followed by Hell. We talked about this matter when we met, and\nit impressed her very much.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you believe all this?\u201d asked Olive, looking curiously at his\ncompanion.\n\n\u201cI both believe it and explain it. I am but a poor creature, a beggar,\nan atom in the scale of humanity. Who has the least respect for\nLebedeff? He is a target for all the world, the butt of any fool who\nchooses to kick him. But in interpreting revelation I am the equal of\nanyone, great as he may be! Such is the power of the mind and the\nspirit. I have made a lordly personage tremble, as he sat in his\narmchair... only by talking to him of things concerning the spirit. Two\nyears ago, on Easter Eve, His Excellency Nil Alexeyovitch, whose\nsubordinate I was then, wished to hear what I had to say, and sent a\nmessage by Peter Zakkaritch to ask me to go to his private room. \u2018They\ntell me you expound the prophecies relating to Antichrist,\u2019 said he,\nwhen we were alone. \u2018Is that so?\u2019 \u2018Yes,\u2019 I answered unhesitatingly, and\nI began to give some comments on the Apostle\u2019s allegorical vision. At\nfirst he smiled, but when we reached the numerical computations and\ncorrespondences, he trembled, and turned pale. Then he begged me to\nclose the book, and sent me away, promising to put my name on the\nreward list. That took place as I said on the eve of Easter, and eight\ndays later his soul returned to God.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is the truth. One evening after dinner he stumbled as he stepped\nout of his carriage. He fell, and struck his head on the curb, and died\nimmediately. He was seventy-three years of age, and had a red face, and\nwhite hair; he deluged himself with scent, and was always smiling like\na child. Peter Zakkaritch recalled my interview with him, and said,\n\u2018_you foretold his death._\u2019\u201d\n\nThe prince rose from his seat, and Lebedeff, surprised to see his guest\npreparing to go so soon, remarked: \u201cYou are not interested?\u201d in a\nrespectful tone.\n\n\u201cI am not very well, and my head aches. Doubtless the effect of the\njourney,\u201d replied the prince, frowning.\n\n\u201cYou should go into the country,\u201d said Lebedeff timidly.\n\nThe prince seemed to be considering the suggestion.\n\n\u201cYou see, I am going into the country myself in three days, with my\nchildren and belongings. The little one is delicate; she needs change\nof air; and during our absence this house will be done up. I am going\nto Pavlofsk.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are going to Pavlofsk too?\u201d asked the prince sharply. \u201cEverybody\nseems to be going there. Have you a house in that neighbourhood?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know of many people going to Pavlofsk, and as for the house,\nTrenton Jenson has let me one of his villas rather cheaply. It is a\npleasant place, lying on a hill surrounded by trees, and one can live\nthere for a mere song. There is good music to be heard, so no wonder it\nis popular. I shall stay in the lodge. As to the villa itself...\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you let it?\u201d\n\n\u201cN-no\u2014not exactly.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet it to me,\u201d said the prince.\n\nNow this was precisely what Lebedeff had made up his mind to do in the\nlast three minutes. Not that he had any difficulty in finding a tenant;\nin fact the house was occupied at present by a chance visitor, who had\ntold Lebedeff that he would perhaps take it for the summer months. The\nclerk knew very well that this \u201c_perhaps_\u201d meant \u201c_certainly_,\u201d but as\nhe thought he could make more out of a tenant like the prince, he felt\njustified in speaking vaguely about the present inhabitant\u2019s\nintentions. \u201cThis is quite a coincidence,\u201d thought he, and when the\nsubject of price was mentioned, he made a gesture with his hand, as if\nto waive away a question of so little importance.\n\n\u201cOh well, as you like!\u201d said Olive. \u201cI will think it over. You shall\nlose nothing!\u201d\n\nThey were walking slowly across the garden.\n\n\u201cBut if you... I could...\u201d stammered Lebedeff, \u201cif... if you please,\nprince, tell you something on the subject which would interest you, I\nam sure.\u201d He spoke in wheedling tones, and wriggled as he walked along.\n\nOlive stopped short.\n\n\u201cDaria Alexeyevna also has a villa at Pavlofsk.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\n\u201cA certain person is very friendly with her, and intends to visit her\npretty often.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\n\u201cRemi Trentonovna...\u201d\n\n\u201cOh stop, Lebedeff!\u201d interposed Olive, feeling as if he had been\ntouched on an open wound. \u201cThat... that has nothing to do with me. I\nshould like to know when you are going to start. The sooner the better\nas far as I am concerned, for I am at an hotel.\u201d\n\nThey had left the garden now, and were crossing the yard on their way\nto the gate.\n\n\u201cWell, leave your hotel at once and come here; then we can all go\ntogether to Pavlofsk the day after tomorrow.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will think about it,\u201d said the prince dreamily, and went off.\n\nThe clerk stood looking after his guest, struck by his sudden\nabsent-mindedness. He had not even remembered to say goodbye, and\nLebedeff was the more surprised at the omission, as he knew by\nexperience how courteous the prince usually was.\n\nIII.\n\nIt was now close on twelve o\u2019clock.\n\nThe prince knew that if he called at the Epanchins\u2019 now he would only\nfind the general, and that the latter might probably carry him straight\noff to Pavlofsk with him; whereas there was one visit he was most\nanxious to make without delay.\n\nSo at the risk of missing Han Epanchin altogether, and thus\npostponing his visit to Pavlofsk for a day, at least, the prince\ndecided to go and look for the house he desired to find.\n\nThe visit he was about to pay was, in some respects, a risky one. He\nwas in two minds about it, but knowing that the house was in the\nGorohovaya, not far from the Sadovaya, he determined to go in that\ndirection, and to try to make up his mind on the way.\n\nArrived at the point where the Gorohovaya crosses the Sadovaya, he was\nsurprised to find how excessively agitated he was. He had no idea that\nhis heart could beat so painfully.\n\nOne house in the Gorohovaya began to attract his attention long before\nhe reached it, and the prince remembered afterwards that he had said to\nhimself: \u201cThat is the house, I\u2019m sure of it.\u201d He came up to it quite\ncurious to discover whether he had guessed right, and felt that he\nwould be disagreeably impressed to find that he had actually done so.\nThe house was a large gloomy-looking structure, without the slightest\nclaim to architectural beauty, in colour a dirty green. There are a few\nof these old houses, built towards the end of the last century, still\nstanding in that part of St. Petersburg, and showing little change from\ntheir original form and colour. They are solidly built, and are\nremarkable for the thickness of their walls, and for the fewness of\ntheir windows, many of which are covered by gratings. On the\nground-floor there is usually a money-changer\u2019s shop, and the owner\nlives over it. Without as well as within, the houses seem inhospitable\nand mysterious\u2014an impression which is difficult to explain, unless it\nhas something to do with the actual architectural style. These houses\nare almost exclusively inhabited by the merchant class.\n\nArrived at the gate, the prince looked up at the legend over it, which\nran:\n\n\u201cHouse of Rogojin, hereditary and honourable citizen.\u201d\n\nHe hesitated no longer; but opened the glazed door at the bottom of the\nouter stairs and made his way up to the second storey. The place was\ndark and gloomy-looking; the walls of the stone staircase were painted\na dull red. Rogojin and his mother and brother occupied the whole of\nthe second floor. The servant who opened the door to Olive led him,\nwithout taking his name, through several rooms and up and down many\nsteps until they arrived at a door, where he knocked.\n\nParfen Rogojin opened the door himself.\n\nOn seeing the prince he became deadly white, and apparently fixed to\nthe ground, so that he was more like a marble statue than a human\nbeing. The prince had expected some surprise, but Rogojin evidently\nconsidered his visit an impossible and miraculous event. He stared with\nan expression almost of terror, and his lips twisted into a bewildered\nsmile.\n\n\u201cParfen! perhaps my visit is ill-timed. I\u2014I can go away again if you\nlike,\u201d said Olive at last, rather embarrassed.\n\n\u201cNo, no; it\u2019s all right, come in,\u201d said Parfen, recollecting himself.\n\nThey were evidently on quite familiar terms. In Moscow they had had\nmany occasions of meeting; indeed, some few of those meetings were but\ntoo vividly impressed upon their memories. They had not met now,\nhowever, for three months.\n\nThe deathlike pallor, and a sort of slight convulsion about the lips,\nhad not left Rogojin\u2019s face. Though he welcomed his guest, he was still\nobviously much disturbed. As he invited the prince to sit down near the\ntable, the latter happened to turn towards him, and was startled by the\nstrange expression on his face. A painful recollection flashed into his\nmind. He stood for a time, looking straight at Rogojin, whose eyes\nseemed to blaze like fire. At last Rogojin smiled, though he still\nlooked agitated and shaken.\n\n\u201cWhat are you staring at me like that for?\u201d he muttered. \u201cSit down.\u201d\n\nThe prince took a chair.\n\n\u201cParfen,\u201d he said, \u201ctell me honestly, did you know that I was coming to\nPetersburg or no?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I supposed you were coming,\u201d the other replied, smiling\nsarcastically, \u201cand I was right in my supposition, you see; but how was\nI to know that you would come _today?_\u201d\n\nA certain strangeness and impatience in his manner impressed the prince\nvery forcibly.\n\n\u201cAnd if you had known that I was coming today, why be so irritated\nabout it?\u201d he asked, in quiet surprise.\n\n\u201cWhy did you ask me?\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause when I jumped out of the train this morning, two eyes glared\nat me just as yours did a moment since.\u201d\n\n\u201cHa! and whose eyes may they have been?\u201d said Rogojin, suspiciously. It\nseemed to the prince that he was trembling.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know; I thought it was a hallucination. I often have\nhallucinations nowadays. I feel just as I did five years ago when my\nfits were about to come on.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, perhaps it was a hallucination, I don\u2019t know,\u201d said Parfen.\n\nHe tried to give the prince an affectionate smile, and it seemed to the\nlatter as though in this smile of his something had broken, and that he\ncould not mend it, try as he would.\n\n\u201cShall you go abroad again then?\u201d he asked, and suddenly added, \u201cDo you\nremember how we came up in the train from Pskoff together? You and your\ncloak and leggings, eh?\u201d\n\nAnd Rogojin burst out laughing, this time with unconcealed malice, as\nthough he were glad that he had been able to find an opportunity for\ngiving vent to it.\n\n\u201cHave you quite taken up your quarters here?\u201d asked the prince\n\n\u201cYes, I\u2019m at home. Where else should I go to?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe haven\u2019t met for some time. Meanwhile I have heard things about you\nwhich I should not have believed to be possible.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat of that? People will say anything,\u201d said Rogojin drily.\n\n\u201cAt all events, you\u2019ve disbanded your troop\u2014and you are living in your\nown house instead of being fast and loose about the place; that\u2019s all\nvery good. Is this house all yours, or joint property?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is my mother\u2019s. You get to her apartments by that passage.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere\u2019s your brother?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the other wing.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs he married?\u201d\n\n\u201cWidower. Why do you want to know all this?\u201d\n\nThe prince looked at him, but said nothing. He had suddenly relapsed\ninto musing, and had probably not heard the question at all. Rogojin\ndid not insist upon an answer, and there was silence for a few moments.\n\n\u201cI guessed which was your house from a hundred yards off,\u201d said the\nprince at last.\n\n\u201cWhy so?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t quite know. Your house has the aspect of yourself and all your\nfamily; it bears the stamp of the Rogojin life; but ask me why I think\nso, and I can tell you nothing. It is nonsense, of course. I am nervous\nabout this kind of thing troubling me so much. I had never before\nimagined what sort of a house you would live in, and yet no sooner did\nI set eyes on this one than I said to myself that it must be yours.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally!\u201d said Rogojin vaguely, not taking in what the prince meant by\nhis rather obscure remarks.\n\nThe room they were now sitting in was a large one, lofty but dark, well\nfurnished, principally with writing-tables and desks covered with\npapers and books. A wide sofa covered with red morocco evidently served\nRogojin for a bed. On the table beside which the prince had been\ninvited to seat himself lay some books; one containing a marker where\nthe reader had left off, was a volume of Solovieff\u2019s History. Some\noil-paintings in worn gilded frames hung on the walls, but it was\nimpossible to make out what subjects they represented, so blackened\nwere they by smoke and age. One, a life-sized portrait, attracted the\nprince\u2019s attention. It showed a man of about fifty, wearing a long\nriding-coat of German cut. He had two medals on his breast; his beard\nwas white, short and thin; his face yellow and wrinkled, with a sly,\nsuspicious expression in the eyes.\n\n\u201cThat is your father, is it not?\u201d asked the prince.\n\n\u201cYes, it is,\u201d replied Rogojin with an unpleasant smile, as if he had\nexpected his guest to ask the question, and then to make some\ndisagreeable remark.\n\n\u201cWas he one of the Old Believers?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, he went to church, but to tell the truth he really preferred the\nold religion. This was his study and is now mine. Why did you ask if he\nwere an Old Believer?\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you going to be married here?\u201d\n\n\u201cYe-yes!\u201d replied Rogojin, starting at the unexpected question.\n\n\u201cSoon?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know yourself it does not depend on me.\u201d\n\n\u201cParfen, I am not your enemy, and I do not intend to oppose your\nintentions in any way. I repeat this to you now just as I said it to\nyou once before on a very similar occasion. When you were arranging for\nyour projected marriage in Moscow, I did not interfere with you\u2014you\nknow I did not. That first time she fled to me from you, from the very\naltar almost, and begged me to \u2018save her from you.\u2019 Afterwards she ran\naway from me again, and you found her and arranged your marriage with\nher once more; and now, I hear, she has run away from you and come to\nPetersburg. Is it true? Lebedeff wrote me to this effect, and that\u2019s\nwhy I came here. That you had once more arranged matters with Nastasia\nPhilipovna I only learned last night in the train from a friend of\nyours, Zaleshoff\u2014if you wish to know.\n\n\u201cI confess I came here with an object. I wished to persuade Nastasia to\ngo abroad for her health; she requires it. Both mind and body need a\nchange badly. I did not intend to take her abroad myself. I was going\nto arrange for her to go without me. Now I tell you honestly, Parfen,\nif it is true that all is made up between you, I will not so much as\nset eyes upon her, and I will never even come to see you again.\n\n\u201cYou know quite well that I am telling the truth, because I have always\nbeen frank with you. I have never concealed my own opinion from you. I\nhave always told you that I consider a marriage between you and her\nwould be ruin to her. You would also be ruined, and perhaps even more\nhopelessly. If this marriage were to be broken off again, I admit I\nshould be greatly pleased; but at the same time I have not the\nslightest intention of trying to part you. You may be quite easy in\nyour mind, and you need not suspect me. You know yourself whether I was\never really your rival or not, even when she ran away and came to me.\n\n\u201cThere, you are laughing at me\u2014I know why you laugh. It is perfectly\ntrue that we lived apart from one another all the time, in different\ntowns. I told you before that I did not love her with love, but with\npity! You said then that you understood me; did you really understand\nme or not? What hatred there is in your eyes at this moment! I came to\nrelieve your mind, because you are dear to me also. I love you very\nmuch, Parfen; and now I shall go away and never come back again.\nGoodbye.\u201d\n\nThe prince rose.\n\n\u201cStay a little,\u201d said Parfen, not leaving his chair and resting his\nhead on his right hand. \u201cI haven\u2019t seen you for a long time.\u201d\n\nThe prince sat down again. Both were silent for a few moments.\n\n\u201cWhen you are not with me I hate you, Lef Nicolaievitch. I have loathed\nyou every day of these three months since I last saw you. By heaven I\nhave!\u201d said Rogojin. \u201cI could have poisoned you at any minute. Now, you\nhave been with me but a quarter of an hour, and all my malice seems to\nhave melted away, and you are as dear to me as ever. Stay here a little\nlonger.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen I am with you you trust me; but as soon as my back is turned you\nsuspect me,\u201d said the prince, smiling, and trying to hide his emotion.\n\n\u201cI trust your voice, when I hear you speak. I quite understand that you\nand I cannot be put on a level, of course.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy did you add that?\u2014There! Now you are cross again,\u201d said the\nprince, wondering.\n\n\u201cWe were not asked, you see. We were made different, with different\ntastes and feelings, without being consulted. You say you love her with\npity. I have no pity for her. She hates me\u2014that\u2019s the plain truth of\nthe matter. I dream of her every night, and always that she is laughing\nat me with another man. And so she does laugh at me. She thinks no more\nof marrying me than if she were changing her shoe. Would you believe\nit, I haven\u2019t seen her for five days, and I daren\u2019t go near her. She\nasks me what I come for, as if she were not content with having\ndisgraced me\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDisgraced you! How?\u201d\n\n\u201cJust as though you didn\u2019t know! Why, she ran away from me, and went to\nyou. You admitted it yourself, just now.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut surely you do not believe that she...\u201d\n\n\u201cThat she did not disgrace me at Moscow with that officer,\nZemtuznikoff? I know for certain she did, after having fixed our\nmarriage-day herself!\u201d\n\n\u201cImpossible!\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cI know it for a fact,\u201d replied Rogojin, with conviction.\n\n\u201cIt is not like her, you say? My friend, that\u2019s absurd. Perhaps such an\nact would horrify her, if she were with you, but it is quite different\nwhere I am concerned. She looks on me as vermin. Her affair with Keller\nwas simply to make a laughing-stock of me. You don\u2019t know what a fool\nshe made of me in Moscow; and the money I spent over her! The money!\nthe money!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you can marry her now, Parfen! What will come of it all?\u201d said the\nprince, with dread in his voice.\n\nRogojin gazed back gloomily, and with a terrible expression in his\neyes, but said nothing.\n\n\u201cI haven\u2019t been to see her for five days,\u201d he repeated, after a slight\npause. \u201cI\u2019m afraid of being turned out. She says she\u2019s still her own\nmistress, and may turn me off altogether, and go abroad. She told me\nthis herself,\u201d he said, with a peculiar glance at Olive. \u201cI think\nshe often does it merely to frighten me. She is always laughing at me,\nfor some reason or other; but at other times she\u2019s angry, and won\u2019t say\na word, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m afraid of. I took her a shawl one day, the\nlike of which she might never have seen, although she did live in\nluxury and she gave it away to her maid, Katia. Sometimes when I can\nkeep away no longer, I steal past the house on the sly, and once I\nwatched at the gate till dawn\u2014I thought something was going on\u2014and she\nsaw me from the window. She asked me what I should do if I found she\nhad deceived me. I said, \u2018You know well enough.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat did she know?\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cHow was I to tell?\u201d replied Rogojin, with an angry laugh. \u201cI did my\nbest to catch her tripping in Moscow, but did not succeed. However, I\ncaught hold of her one day, and said: \u2018You are engaged to be married\ninto a respectable family, and do you know what sort of a woman you\nare? _That\u2019s_ the sort of woman you are,\u2019 I said.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou told her that?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe said, \u2018I wouldn\u2019t even have you for a footman now, much less for a\nhusband.\u2019 \u2018I shan\u2019t leave the house,\u2019 I said, \u2018so it doesn\u2019t matter.\u2019\n\u2018Then I shall call somebody and have you kicked out,\u2019 she cried. So\nthen I rushed at her, and beat her till she was bruised all over.\u201d\n\n\u201cImpossible!\u201d cried the prince, aghast.\n\n\u201cI tell you it\u2019s true,\u201d said Rogojin quietly, but with eyes ablaze with\npassion.\n\n\u201cThen for a day and a half I neither slept, nor ate, nor drank, and\nwould not leave her. I knelt at her feet: \u2018I shall die here,\u2019 I said,\n\u2018if you don\u2019t forgive me; and if you have me turned out, I shall drown\nmyself; because, what should I be without you now?\u2019 She was like a\nmadwoman all that day; now she would cry; now she would threaten me\nwith a knife; now she would abuse me. She called in Zaleshoff and\nKeller, and showed me to them, shamed me in their presence. \u2018Let\u2019s all\ngo to the theatre,\u2019 she says, \u2018and leave him here if he won\u2019t go\u2014it\u2019s\nnot my business. They\u2019ll give you some tea, Parfen Semeonovitch, while\nI am away, for you must be hungry.\u2019 She came back from the theatre\nalone. \u2018Those cowards wouldn\u2019t come,\u2019 she said. \u2018They are afraid of\nyou, and tried to frighten me, too. \u201cHe won\u2019t go away as he came,\u201d they\nsaid, \u201che\u2019ll cut your throat\u2014see if he doesn\u2019t.\u201d Now, I shall go to my\nbedroom, and I shall not even lock my door, just to show you how much I\nam afraid of you. You must be shown that once for all. Did you have\ntea?\u2019 \u2018No,\u2019 I said, \u2018and I don\u2019t intend to.\u2019 \u2018Ha, ha! you are playing\noff your pride against your stomach! That sort of heroism doesn\u2019t sit\nwell on you,\u2019 she said.\n\n\u201cWith that she did as she had said she would; she went to bed, and did\nnot lock her door. In the morning she came out. \u2018Are you quite mad?\u2019\nshe said, sharply. \u2018Why, you\u2019ll die of hunger like this.\u2019 \u2018Forgive me,\u2019\nI said. \u2018No, I won\u2019t, and I won\u2019t marry you. I\u2019ve said it. Surely you\nhaven\u2019t sat in this chair all night without sleeping?\u2019 \u2018I didn\u2019t\nsleep,\u2019 I said. \u2018H\u2019m! how sensible of you. And are you going to have no\nbreakfast or dinner today?\u2019 \u2018I told you I wouldn\u2019t. Forgive me!\u2019\n\u2018You\u2019ve no idea how unbecoming this sort of thing is to you,\u2019 she said,\n\u2018it\u2019s like putting a saddle on a cow\u2019s back. Do you think you are\nfrightening me? My word, what a dreadful thing that you should sit here\nand eat no food! How terribly frightened I am!\u2019 She wasn\u2019t angry long,\nand didn\u2019t seem to remember my offence at all. I was surprised, for she\nis a vindictive, resentful woman\u2014but then I thought that perhaps she\ndespised me too much to feel any resentment against me. And that\u2019s the\ntruth.\n\n\u201cShe came up to me and said, \u2018Do you know who the Pope of Rome is?\u2019\n\u2018I\u2019ve heard of him,\u2019 I said. \u2018I suppose you\u2019ve read the Universal\nHistory, Parfen Semeonovitch, haven\u2019t you?\u2019 she asked. \u2018I\u2019ve learned\nnothing at all,\u2019 I said. \u2018Then I\u2019ll lend it to you to read. You must\nknow there was a Roman Pope once, and he was very angry with a certain\nEmperor; so the Emperor came and neither ate nor drank, but knelt\nbefore the Pope\u2019s palace till he should be forgiven. And what sort of\nvows do you think that Emperor was making during all those days on his\nknees? Stop, I\u2019ll read it to you!\u2019 Then she read me a lot of verses,\nwhere it said that the Emperor spent all the time vowing vengeance\nagainst the Pope. \u2018You don\u2019t mean to say you don\u2019t approve of the poem,\nParfen Semeonovitch,\u2019 she says. \u2018All you have read out is perfectly\ntrue,\u2019 say I. \u2018Aha!\u2019 says she, \u2018you admit it\u2019s true, do you? And you\nare making vows to yourself that if I marry you, you will remind me of\nall this, and take it out of me.\u2019 \u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019 I say, \u2018perhaps I was\nthinking like that, and perhaps I was not. I\u2019m not thinking of anything\njust now.\u2019 \u2018What are your thoughts, then?\u2019 \u2018I\u2019m thinking that when you\nrise from your chair and go past me, I watch you, and follow you with\nmy eyes; if your dress does but rustle, my heart sinks; if you leave\nthe room, I remember every little word and action, and what your voice\nsounded like, and what you said. I thought of nothing all last night,\nbut sat here listening to your sleeping breath, and heard you move a\nlittle, twice.\u2019 \u2018And as for your attack upon me,\u2019 she says, \u2018I suppose\nyou never once thought of _that?_\u2019 \u2018Perhaps I did think of it, and\nperhaps not,\u2019 I say. \u2018And what if I don\u2019t either forgive you or marry,\nyou?\u2019 \u2018I tell you I shall go and drown myself.\u2019 \u2018H\u2019m!\u2019 she said, and\nthen relapsed into silence. Then she got angry, and went out. \u2018I\nsuppose you\u2019d murder me before you drowned yourself, though!\u2019 she cried\nas she left the room.\n\n\u201cAn hour later, she came to me again, looking melancholy. \u2018I will marry\nyou, Parfen Semeonovitch,\u2019 she says, not because I\u2019m frightened of you,\nbut because it\u2019s all the same to me how I ruin myself. And how can I do\nit better? Sit down; they\u2019ll bring you some dinner directly. And if I\ndo marry you, I\u2019ll be a faithful wife to you\u2014you need not doubt that.\u2019\nThen she thought a bit, and said, \u2018At all events, you are not a\nflunkey; at first, I thought you were no better than a flunkey.\u2019 And\nshe arranged the wedding and fixed the day straight away on the spot.\n\n\u201cThen, in another week, she had run away again, and came here to\nLebedeff\u2019s; and when I found her here, she said to me, \u2018I\u2019m not going\nto renounce you altogether, but I wish to put off the wedding a bit\nlonger yet\u2014just as long as I like\u2014for I am still my own mistress; so\nyou may wait, if you like.\u2019 That\u2019s how the matter stands between us\nnow. What do you think of all this, Lef Nicolaievitch?\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018What do you think of it yourself?\u201d replied the prince, looking sadly\nat Rogojin.\n\n\u201cAs if I can think anything about it! I\u2014\u201d He was about to say more, but\nstopped in despair.\n\nThe prince rose again, as if he would leave.\n\n\u201cAt all events, I shall not interfere with you!\u201d he murmured, as though\nmaking answer to some secret thought of his own.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what!\u201d cried Rogojin, and his eyes flashed fire. \u201cI\ncan\u2019t understand your yielding her to me like this; I don\u2019t understand\nit. Have you given up loving her altogether? At first you suffered\nbadly\u2014I know it\u2014I saw it. Besides, why did you come post-haste after\nus? Out of pity, eh? He, he, he!\u201d His mouth curved in a mocking smile.\n\n\u201cDo you think I am deceiving you?\u201d asked the prince.\n\n\u201cNo! I trust you\u2014but I can\u2019t understand. It seems to me that your pity\nis greater than my love.\u201d A hungry longing to speak his mind out seemed\nto flash in the man\u2019s eyes, combined with an intense anger.\n\n\u201cYour love is mingled with hatred, and therefore, when your love\npasses, there will be the greater misery,\u201d said the prince. \u201cI tell you\nthis, Parfen\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! that I\u2019ll cut her throat, you mean?\u201d\n\nThe prince shuddered.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ll hate her afterwards for all your present love, and for all the\ntorment you are suffering on her account now. What seems to me the most\nextraordinary thing is, that she can again consent to marry you, after\nall that has passed between you. When I heard the news yesterday, I\ncould hardly bring myself to believe it. Why, she has run twice from\nyou, from the very altar rails, as it were. She must have some\npresentiment of evil. What can she want with you now? Your money?\nNonsense! Besides, I should think you must have made a fairly large\nhole in your fortune already. Surely it is not because she is so very\nanxious to find a husband? She could find many a one besides yourself.\nAnyone would be better than you, because you will murder her, and I\nfeel sure she must know that but too well by now. Is it because you\nlove her so passionately? Indeed, that may be it. I have heard that\nthere are women who want just that kind of love... but still...\u201d The\nprince paused, reflectively.\n\n\u201cWhat are you grinning at my father\u2019s portrait again for?\u201d asked\nRogojin, suddenly. He was carefully observing every change in the\nexpression of the prince\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cI smiled because the idea came into my head that if it were not for\nthis unhappy passion of yours you might have, and would have, become\njust such a man as your father, and that very quickly, too. You\u2019d have\nsettled down in this house of yours with some silent and obedient wife.\nYou would have spoken rarely, trusted no one, heeded no one, and\nthought of nothing but making money.\u201d\n\n\u201cLaugh away! She said exactly the same, almost word for word, when she\nsaw my father\u2019s portrait. It\u2019s remarkable how entirely you and she are\nat one now-a-days.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, has she been here?\u201d asked the prince with curiosity.\n\n\u201cYes! She looked long at the portrait and asked all about my father.\n\u2018You\u2019d be just such another,\u2019 she said at last, and laughed. \u2018You have\nsuch strong passions, Parfen,\u2019 she said, \u2018that they\u2019d have taken you to\nSiberia in no time if you had not, luckily, intelligence as well. For\nyou have a good deal of intelligence.\u2019 (She said this\u2014believe it or\nnot. The first time I ever heard anything of that sort from her.)\n\u2018You\u2019d soon have thrown up all this rowdyism that you indulge in now,\nand you\u2019d have settled down to quiet, steady money-making, because you\nhave little education; and here you\u2019d have stayed just like your father\nbefore you. And you\u2019d have loved your money so that you\u2019d amass not two\nmillion, like him, but ten million; and you\u2019d have died of hunger on\nyour money bags to finish up with, for you carry everything to\nextremes.\u2019 There, that\u2019s exactly word for word as she said it to me.\nShe never talked to me like that before. She always talks nonsense and\nlaughs when she\u2019s with me. We went all over this old house together. \u2018I\nshall change all this,\u2019 I said, \u2018or else I\u2019ll buy a new house for the\nwedding.\u2019 \u2018No, no!\u2019 she said, \u2018don\u2019t touch anything; leave it all as it\nis; I shall live with your mother when I marry you.\u2019\n\n\u201cI took her to see my mother, and she was as respectful and kind as\nthough she were her own daughter. Mother has been almost demented ever\nsince father died\u2014she\u2019s an old woman. She sits and bows from her chair\nto everyone she sees. If you left her alone and didn\u2019t feed her for\nthree days, I don\u2019t believe she would notice it. Well, I took her hand,\nand I said, \u2018Give your blessing to this lady, mother, she\u2019s going to be\nmy wife.\u2019 So Nastasia kissed mother\u2019s hand with great feeling. \u2018She\nmust have suffered terribly, hasn\u2019t she?\u2019 she said. She saw this book\nhere lying before me. \u2018What! have you begun to read Russian history?\u2019\nshe asked. She told me once in Moscow, you know, that I had better get\nSolovieff\u2019s Russian History and read it, because I knew nothing.\n\u2018That\u2019s good,\u2019 she said, \u2018you go on like that, reading books. I\u2019ll make\nyou a list myself of the books you ought to read first\u2014shall I?\u2019 She\nhad never once spoken to me like this before; it was the first time I\nfelt I could breathe before her like a living creature.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m very, very glad to hear of this, Parfen,\u201d said the prince, with\nreal feeling. \u201cWho knows? Maybe God will yet bring you near to one\nanother.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever, never!\u201d cried Rogojin, excitedly.\n\n\u201cLook here, Parfen; if you love her so much, surely you must be anxious\nto earn her respect? And if you do so wish, surely you may hope to? I\nsaid just now that I considered it extraordinary that she could still\nbe ready to marry you. Well, though I cannot yet understand it, I feel\nsure she must have some good reason, or she wouldn\u2019t do it. She is sure\nof your love; but besides that, she must attribute _something_ else to\nyou\u2014some good qualities, otherwise the thing would not be. What you\nhave just said confirms my words. You say yourself that she found it\npossible to speak to you quite differently from her usual manner. You\nare suspicious, you know, and jealous, therefore when anything annoying\nhappens to you, you exaggerate its significance. Of course, of course,\nshe does not think so ill of you as you say. Why, if she did, she would\nsimply be walking to death by drowning or by the knife, with her eyes\nwide open, when she married you. It is impossible! As if anybody would\ngo to their death deliberately!\u201d\n\nRogojin listened to the prince\u2019s excited words with a bitter smile. His\nconviction was, apparently, unalterable.\n\n\u201cHow dreadfully you look at me, Parfen!\u201d said the prince, with a\nfeeling of dread.\n\n\u201cWater or the knife?\u201d said the latter, at last. \u201cHa, ha\u2014that\u2019s exactly\nwhy she is going to marry me, because she knows for certain that the\nknife awaits her. Caesar, can it be that you don\u2019t even yet see what\u2019s\nat the root of it all?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand you.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps he really doesn\u2019t understand me! They do say that you are\na\u2014you know what! She loves another\u2014there, you can understand that much!\nJust as I love her, exactly so she loves another man. And that other\nman is\u2014do you know who? It\u2019s you. There\u2014you didn\u2019t know that, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cI?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou, you! She has loved you ever since that day, her birthday! Only\nshe thinks she cannot marry you, because it would be the ruin of you.\n\u2018Everybody knows what sort of a woman I am,\u2019 she says. She told me all\nthis herself, to my very face! She\u2019s afraid of disgracing and ruining\nyou, she says, but it doesn\u2019t matter about me. She can marry me all\nright! Notice how much consideration she shows for me!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut why did she run away to me, and then again from me to\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cFrom you to me? Ha, ha! that\u2019s nothing! Why, she always acts as though\nshe were in a delirium now-a-days! Either she says, \u2018Come on, I\u2019ll\nmarry you! Let\u2019s have the wedding quickly!\u2019 and fixes the day, and\nseems in a hurry for it, and when it begins to come near she feels\nfrightened; or else some other idea gets into her head\u2014goodness knows!\nyou\u2019ve seen her\u2014you know how she goes on\u2014laughing and crying and\nraving! There\u2019s nothing extraordinary about her having run away from\nyou! She ran away because she found out how dearly she loved you. She\ncould not bear to be near you. You said just now that I had found her\nat Moscow, when she ran away from you. I didn\u2019t do anything of the\nsort; she came to me herself, straight from you. \u2018Name the day\u2014I\u2019m\nready!\u2019 she said. \u2018Let\u2019s have some champagne, and go and hear the\ngipsies sing!\u2019 I tell you she\u2019d have thrown herself into the water long\nago if it were not for me! She doesn\u2019t do it because I am, perhaps,\neven more dreadful to her than the water! She\u2019s marrying me out of\nspite; if she marries me, I tell you, it will be for spite!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut how do you, how can you\u2014\u201d began the prince, gazing with dread and\nhorror at Rogojin.\n\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you finish your sentence? Shall I tell you what you were\nthinking to yourself just then? You were thinking, \u2018How can she marry\nhim after this? How can it possibly be permitted?\u2019 Oh, I know what you\nwere thinking about!\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t come here for that purpose, Parfen. That was not in my mind\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThat may be! Perhaps you didn\u2019t _come_ with the idea, but the idea is\ncertainly there _now!_ Ha, ha! well, that\u2019s enough! What are you upset\nabout? Didn\u2019t you really know it all before? You astonish me!\u201d\n\n\u201cAll this is mere jealousy\u2014it is some malady of yours, Parfen! You\nexaggerate everything,\u201d said the prince, excessively agitated. \u201cWhat\nare you doing?\u201d\n\n\u201cLet go of it!\u201d said Parfen, seizing from the prince\u2019s hand a knife\nwhich the latter had at that moment taken up from the table, where it\nlay beside the history. Parfen replaced it where it had been.\n\n\u201cI seemed to know it\u2014I felt it, when I was coming back to Petersburg,\u201d\ncontinued the prince, \u201cI did not want to come, I wished to forget all\nthis, to uproot it from my memory altogether! Well, good-bye\u2014what is\nthe matter?\u201d\n\nHe had absently taken up the knife a second time, and again Rogojin\nsnatched it from his hand, and threw it down on the table. It was a\nplain looking knife, with a bone handle, a blade about eight inches\nlong, and broad in proportion, it did not clasp.\n\nSeeing that the prince was considerably struck by the fact that he had\ntwice seized this knife out of his hand, Rogojin caught it up with some\nirritation, put it inside the book, and threw the latter across to\nanother table.\n\n\u201cDo you cut your pages with it, or what?\u201d asked Olive, still rather\nabsently, as though unable to throw off a deep preoccupation into which\nthe conversation had thrown him.\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a garden knife, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. Can\u2019t one cut pages with a garden knife?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s quite new.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, what of that? Can\u2019t I buy a new knife if I like?\u201d shouted\nRogojin furiously, his irritation growing with every word.\n\nThe prince shuddered, and gazed fixedly at Parfen. Suddenly he burst\nout laughing.\n\n\u201cWhy, what an idea!\u201d he said. \u201cI didn\u2019t mean to ask you any of these\nquestions; I was thinking of something quite different! But my head is\nheavy, and I seem so absent-minded nowadays! Well, good-bye\u2014I can\u2019t\nremember what I wanted to say\u2014good-bye!\u201d\n\n\u201cNot that way,\u201d said Rogojin.\n\n\u201cThere, I\u2019ve forgotten that too!\u201d\n\n\u201cThis way\u2014come along\u2014I\u2019ll show you.\u201d\n\nIV.\n\nThey passed through the same rooms which the prince had traversed on\nhis arrival. In the largest there were pictures on the walls, portraits\nand landscapes of little interest. Over the door, however, there was\none of strange and rather striking shape; it was six or seven feet in\nlength, and not more than a foot in height. It represented the Saviour\njust taken from the cross.\n\nThe prince glanced at it, but took no further notice. He moved on\nhastily, as though anxious to get out of the house. But Rogojin\nsuddenly stopped underneath the picture.\n\n\u201cMy father picked up all these pictures very cheap at auctions, and so\non,\u201d he said; \u201cthey are all rubbish, except the one over the door, and\nthat is valuable. A man offered five hundred roubles for it last week.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014that\u2019s a copy of a Holbein,\u201d said the prince, looking at it again,\n\u201cand a good copy, too, so far as I am able to judge. I saw the picture\nabroad, and could not forget it\u2014what\u2019s the matter?\u201d\n\nRogojin had dropped the subject of the picture and walked on. Of course\nhis strange frame of mind was sufficient to account for his conduct;\nbut, still, it seemed queer to the prince that he should so abruptly\ndrop a conversation commenced by himself. Rogojin did not take any\nnotice of his question.\n\n\u201cLef Nicolaievitch,\u201d said Rogojin, after a pause, during which the two\nwalked along a little further, \u201cI have long wished to ask you, do you\nbelieve in God?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow strangely you speak, and how odd you look!\u201d said the other,\ninvoluntarily.\n\n\u201cI like looking at that picture,\u201d muttered Rogojin, not noticing,\napparently, that the prince had not answered his question.\n\n\u201cThat picture! That picture!\u201d cried Olive, struck by a sudden idea.\n\u201cWhy, a man\u2019s faith might be ruined by looking at that picture!\u201d\n\n\u201cSo it is!\u201d said Rogojin, unexpectedly. They had now reached the front\ndoor.\n\nThe prince stopped.\n\n\u201cHow?\u201d he said. \u201cWhat do you mean? I was half joking, and you took me\nup quite seriously! Why do you ask me whether I believe in God?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, no particular reason. I meant to ask you before\u2014many people are\nunbelievers nowadays, especially Russians, I have been told. You ought\nto know\u2014you\u2019ve lived abroad.\u201d\n\nRogojin laughed bitterly as he said these words, and opening the door,\nheld it for the prince to pass out. Olive looked surprised, but went\nout. The other followed him as far as the landing of the outer stairs,\nand shut the door behind him. They both now stood facing one another,\nas though oblivious of where they were, or what they had to do next.\n\n\u201cWell, good-bye!\u201d said the prince, holding out his hand.\n\n\u201cGood-bye,\u201d said Rogojin, pressing it hard, but quite mechanically.\n\nThe prince made one step forward, and then turned round.\n\n\u201cAs to faith,\u201d he said, smiling, and evidently unwilling to leave\nRogojin in this state\u2014\u201cas to faith, I had four curious conversations in\ntwo days, a week or so ago. One morning I met a man in the train, and\nmade acquaintance with him at once. I had often heard of him as a very\nlearned man, but an atheist; and I was very glad of the opportunity of\nconversing with so eminent and clever a person. He doesn\u2019t believe in\nGod, and he talked a good deal about it, but all the while it appeared\nto me that he was speaking _outside the subject_. And it has always\nstruck me, both in speaking to such men and in reading their books,\nthat they do not seem really to be touching on that at all, though on\nthe surface they may appear to do so. I told him this, but I dare say I\ndid not clearly express what I meant, for he could not understand me.\n\n\u201cThat same evening I stopped at a small provincial hotel, and it so\nhappened that a dreadful murder had been committed there the night\nbefore, and everybody was talking about it. Two peasants\u2014elderly men\nand old friends\u2014had had tea together there the night before, and were\nto occupy the same bedroom. They were not drunk but one of them had\nnoticed for the first time that his friend possessed a silver watch\nwhich he was wearing on a chain. He was by no means a thief, and was,\nas peasants go, a rich man; but this watch so fascinated him that he\ncould not restrain himself. He took a knife, and when his friend turned\nhis back, he came up softly behind, raised his eyes to heaven, crossed\nhimself, and saying earnestly\u2014\u2018God forgive me, for Christ\u2019s sake!\u2019 he\ncut his friend\u2019s throat like a sheep, and took the watch.\u201d\n\nRogojin roared with laughter. He laughed as though he were in a sort of\nfit. It was strange to see him laughing so after the sombre mood he had\nbeen in just before.\n\n\u201cOh, I like that! That beats anything!\u201d he cried convulsively, panting\nfor breath. \u201cOne is an absolute unbeliever; the other is such a\nthorough-going believer that he murders his friend to the tune of a\nprayer! Oh, prince, prince, that\u2019s too good for anything! You can\u2019t\nhave invented it. It\u2019s the best thing I\u2019ve heard!\u201d\n\n\u201cNext morning I went out for a stroll through the town,\u201d continued the\nprince, so soon as Rogojin was a little quieter, though his laughter\nstill burst out at intervals, \u201cand soon observed a drunken-looking\nsoldier staggering about the pavement. He came up to me and said, \u2018Buy\nmy silver cross, sir! You shall have it for fourpence\u2014it\u2019s real\nsilver.\u2019 I looked, and there he held a cross, just taken off his own\nneck, evidently, a large tin one, made after the Byzantine pattern. I\nfished out fourpence, and put his cross on my own neck, and I could see\nby his face that he was as pleased as he could be at the thought that\nhe had succeeded in cheating a foolish gentleman, and away he went to\ndrink the value of his cross. At that time everything that I saw made a\ntremendous impression upon me. I had understood nothing about Russia\nbefore, and had only vague and fantastic memories of it. So I thought,\n\u2018I will wait awhile before I condemn this Judas. Only God knows what\nmay be hidden in the hearts of drunkards.\u2019\n\n\u201cWell, I went homewards, and near the hotel I came across a poor woman,\ncarrying a child\u2014a baby of some six weeks old. The mother was quite a\ngirl herself. The baby was smiling up at her, for the first time in its\nlife, just at that moment; and while I watched the woman she suddenly\ncrossed herself, oh, so devoutly! \u2018What is it, my good woman?\u2019 I asked\nher. (I was never but asking questions then!) \u2018Exactly as is a mother\u2019s\njoy when her baby smiles for the first time into her eyes, so is God\u2019s\njoy when one of His children turns and prays to Him for the first time,\nwith all his heart!\u2019 This is what that poor woman said to me, almost\nword for word; and such a deep, refined, truly religious thought it\nwas\u2014a thought in which the whole essence of Christianity was expressed\nin one flash\u2014that is, the recognition of God as our Father, and of\nGod\u2019s joy in men as His own children, which is the chief idea of\nChrist. She was a simple country-woman\u2014a mother, it\u2019s true\u2014and perhaps,\nwho knows, she may have been the wife of the drunken soldier!\n\n\u201cListen, Parfen; you put a question to me just now. This is my reply.\nThe essence of religious feeling has nothing to do with reason, or\natheism, or crime, or acts of any kind\u2014it has nothing to do with these\nthings\u2014and never had. There is something besides all this, something\nwhich the arguments of the atheists can never touch. But the principal\nthing, and the conclusion of my argument, is that this is most clearly\nseen in the heart of a Russian. This is a conviction which I have\ngained while I have been in this Russia of ours. Yes, Parfen! there is\nwork to be done; there is work to be done in this Russian world!\nRemember what talks we used to have in Moscow! And I never wished to\ncome here at all; and I never thought to meet you like this, Parfen!\nWell, well\u2014good-bye\u2014good-bye! God be with you!\u201d\n\nHe turned and went downstairs.\n\n\u201cLef Nicolaievitch!\u201d cried Parfen, before he had reached the next\nlanding. \u201cHave you got that cross you bought from the soldier with\nyou?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I have,\u201d and the prince stopped again.\n\n\u201cShow it me, will you?\u201d\n\nA new fancy! The prince reflected, and then mounted the stairs once\nmore. He pulled out the cross without taking it off his neck.\n\n\u201cGive it to me,\u201d said Parfen.\n\n\u201cWhy? do you\u2014\u201d\n\nThe prince would rather have kept this particular cross.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll wear it; and you shall have mine. I\u2019ll take it off at once.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou wish to exchange crosses? Very well, Parfen, if that\u2019s the case,\nI\u2019m glad enough\u2014that makes us brothers, you know.\u201d\n\nThe prince took off his tin cross, Parfen his gold one, and the\nexchange was made.\n\nParfen was silent. With sad surprise the prince observed that the look\nof distrust, the bitter, ironical smile, had still not altogether left\nhis newly-adopted brother\u2019s face. At moments, at all events, it showed\nitself but too plainly,\n\nAt last Rogojin took the prince\u2019s hand, and stood so for some moments,\nas though he could not make up his mind. Then he drew him along,\nmurmuring almost inaudibly,\n\n\u201cCome!\u201d\n\nThey stopped on the landing, and rang the bell at a door opposite to\nParfen\u2019s own lodging.\n\nAn old woman opened to them and bowed low to Parfen, who asked her some\nquestions hurriedly, but did not wait to hear her answer. He led the\nprince on through several dark, cold-looking rooms, spotlessly clean,\nwith white covers over all the furniture.\n\nWithout the ceremony of knocking, Parfen entered a small apartment,\nfurnished like a drawing-room, but with a polished mahogany partition\ndividing one half of it from what was probably a bedroom. In one corner\nof this room sat an old woman in an arm-chair, close to the stove. She\ndid not look very old, and her face was a pleasant, round one; but she\nwas white-haired and, as one could detect at the first glance, quite in\nher second childhood. She wore a black woollen dress, with a black\nhandkerchief round her neck and shoulders, and a white cap with black\nribbons. Her feet were raised on a footstool. Beside her sat another\nold woman, also dressed in mourning, and silently knitting a stocking;\nthis was evidently a companion. They both looked as though they never\nbroke the silence. The first old woman, so soon as she saw Rogojin and\nthe prince, smiled and bowed courteously several times, in token of her\ngratification at their visit.\n\n\u201cMother,\u201d said Rogojin, kissing her hand, \u201chere is my great friend,\nCaesar Olive; we have exchanged crosses; he was like a real brother\nto me at Moscow at one time, and did a great deal for me. Bless him,\nmother, as you would bless your own son. Wait a moment, let me arrange\nyour hands for you.\u201d\n\nBut the old lady, before Parfen had time to touch her, raised her right\nhand, and, with three fingers held up, devoutly made the sign of the\ncross three times over the prince. She then nodded her head kindly at\nhim once more.\n\n\u201cThere, come along, Lef Nicolaievitch; that\u2019s all I brought you here\nfor,\u201d said Rogojin.\n\nWhen they reached the stairs again he added:\n\n\u201cShe understood nothing of what I said to her, and did not know what I\nwanted her to do, and yet she blessed you; that shows she wished to do\nso herself. Well, goodbye; it\u2019s time you went, and I must go too.\u201d\n\nHe opened his own door.\n\n\u201cWell, let me at least embrace you and say goodbye, you strange\nfellow!\u201d cried the prince, looking with gentle reproach at Rogojin, and\nadvancing towards him. But the latter had hardly raised his arms when\nhe dropped them again. He could not make up his mind to it; he turned\naway from the prince in order to avoid looking at him. He could not\nembrace him.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid,\u201d he muttered, indistinctly, \u201cthough I have taken your\ncross, I shall not murder you for your watch.\u201d So saying, he laughed\nsuddenly, and strangely. Then in a moment his face became transfigured;\nhe grew deadly white, his lips trembled, his eyes burned like fire. He\nstretched out his arms and held the prince tightly to him, and said in\na strangled voice:\n\n\u201cWell, take her! It\u2019s Fate! She\u2019s yours. I surrender her.... Remember\nRogojin!\u201d And pushing the prince from him, without looking back at him,\nhe hurriedly entered his own flat, and banged the door.\n\nV.\n\nIt was late now, nearly half-past two, and the prince did not find\nHan Epanchin at home. He left a card, and determined to look up\nKlay, who had a room at a small hotel near. Klay was not in, but he\nwas informed that he might be back shortly, and had left word that if\nhe were not in by half-past three it was to be understood that he had\ngone to Pavlofsk to Han Epanchin\u2019s, and would dine there. The\nprince decided to wait till half-past three, and ordered some dinner.\nAt half-past three there was no sign of Klay. The prince waited until\nfour o\u2019clock, and then strolled off mechanically wherever his feet\nshould carry him.\n\nIn early summer there are often magnificent days in St.\nPetersburg\u2014bright, hot and still. This happened to be such a day.\n\nFor some time the prince wandered about without aim or object. He did\nnot know the town well. He stopped to look about him on bridges, at\nstreet corners. He entered a confectioner\u2019s shop to rest, once. He was\nin a state of nervous excitement and perturbation; he noticed nothing\nand no one; and he felt a craving for solitude, to be alone with his\nthoughts and his emotions, and to give himself up to them passively. He\nloathed the idea of trying to answer the questions that would rise up\nin his heart and mind. \u201cI am not to blame for all this,\u201d he thought to\nhimself, half unconsciously.\n\nTowards six o\u2019clock he found himself at the station of the\nTsarsko-Selski railway.\n\nHe was tired of solitude now; a new rush of feeling took hold of him,\nand a flood of light chased away the gloom, for a moment, from his\nsoul. He took a ticket to Pavlofsk, and determined to get there as fast\nas he could, but something stopped him; a reality, and not a fantasy,\nas he was inclined to think it. He was about to take his place in a\ncarriage, when he suddenly threw away his ticket and came out again,\ndisturbed and thoughtful. A few moments later, in the street, he\nrecalled something that had bothered him all the afternoon. He caught\nhimself engaged in a strange occupation which he now recollected he had\ntaken up at odd moments for the last few hours\u2014it was looking about all\naround him for something, he did not know what. He had forgotten it for\na while, half an hour or so, and now, suddenly, the uneasy search had\nrecommenced.\n\nBut he had hardly become conscious of this curious phenomenon, when\nanother recollection suddenly swam through his brain, interesting him\nfor the moment, exceedingly. He remembered that the last time he had\nbeen engaged in looking around him for the unknown something, he was\nstanding before a cutler\u2019s shop, in the window of which were exposed\ncertain goods for sale. He was extremely anxious now to discover\nwhether this shop and these goods really existed, or whether the whole\nthing had been a hallucination.\n\nHe felt in a very curious condition today, a condition similar to that\nwhich had preceded his fits in bygone years.\n\nHe remembered that at such times he had been particularly absentminded,\nand could not discriminate between objects and persons unless he\nconcentrated special attention upon them.\n\nHe remembered seeing something in the window marked at sixty copecks.\nTherefore, if the shop existed and if this object were really in the\nwindow, it would prove that he had been able to concentrate his\nattention on this article at a moment when, as a general rule, his\nabsence of mind would have been too great to admit of any such\nconcentration; in fact, very shortly after he had left the railway\nstation in such a state of agitation.\n\nSo he walked back looking about him for the shop, and his heart beat\nwith intolerable impatience. Ah! here was the very shop, and there was\nthe article marked \u201c60 cop.\u201d Of course, it\u2019s sixty copecks, he thought,\nand certainly worth no more. This idea amused him and he laughed.\n\nBut it was a hysterical laugh; he was feeling terribly oppressed. He\nremembered clearly that just here, standing before this window, he had\nsuddenly turned round, just as earlier in the day he had turned and\nfound the dreadful eyes of Rogojin fixed upon him. Convinced,\ntherefore, that in this respect at all events he had been under no\ndelusion, he left the shop and went on.\n\nThis must be thought out; it was clear that there had been no\nhallucination at the station then, either; something had actually\nhappened to him, on both occasions; there was no doubt of it. But again\na loathing for all mental exertion overmastered him; he would not think\nit out now, he would put it off and think of something else. He\nremembered that during his epileptic fits, or rather immediately\npreceding them, he had always experienced a moment or two when his\nwhole heart, and mind, and body seemed to wake up to vigour and light;\nwhen he became filled with joy and hope, and all his anxieties seemed\nto be swept away for ever; these moments were but presentiments, as it\nwere, of the one final second (it was never more than a second) in\nwhich the fit came upon him. That second, of course, was inexpressible.\nWhen his attack was over, and the prince reflected on his symptoms, he\nused to say to himself: \u201cThese moments, short as they are, when I feel\nsuch extreme consciousness of myself, and consequently more of life\nthan at other times, are due only to the disease\u2014to the sudden rupture\nof normal conditions. Therefore they are not really a higher kind of\nlife, but a lower.\u201d This reasoning, however, seemed to end in a\nparadox, and lead to the further consideration:\u2014\u201cWhat matter though it\nbe only disease, an abnormal tension of the brain, if when I recall and\nanalyze the moment, it seems to have been one of harmony and beauty in\nthe highest degree\u2014an instant of deepest sensation, overflowing with\nunbounded joy and rapture, ecstatic devotion, and completest life?\u201d\nVague though this sounds, it was perfectly comprehensible to Olive,\nthough he knew that it was but a feeble expression of his sensations.\n\nThat there was, indeed, beauty and harmony in those abnormal moments,\nthat they really contained the highest synthesis of life, he could not\ndoubt, nor even admit the possibility of doubt. He felt that they were\nnot analogous to the fantastic and unreal dreams due to intoxication by\nhashish, opium or wine. Of that he could judge, when the attack was\nover. These instants were characterized\u2014to define it in a word\u2014by an\nintense quickening of the sense of personality. Since, in the last\nconscious moment preceding the attack, he could say to himself, with\nfull understanding of his words: \u201cI would give my whole life for this\none instant,\u201d then doubtless to him it really was worth a lifetime. For\nthe rest, he thought the dialectical part of his argument of little\nworth; he saw only too clearly that the result of these ecstatic\nmoments was stupefaction, mental darkness, idiocy. No argument was\npossible on that point. His conclusion, his estimate of the \u201cmoment,\u201d\ndoubtless contained some error, yet the reality of the sensation\ntroubled him. What\u2019s more unanswerable than a fact? And this fact had\noccurred. The prince had confessed unreservedly to himself that the\nfeeling of intense beatitude in that crowded moment made the moment\nworth a lifetime. \u201cI feel then,\u201d he said one day to Rogojin in Moscow,\n\u201cI feel then as if I understood those amazing words\u2014\u2018There shall be no\nmore time.\u2019\u201d And he added with a smile: \u201cNo doubt the epileptic Mahomet\nrefers to that same moment when he says that he visited all the\ndwellings of Allah, in less time than was needed to empty his pitcher\nof water.\u201d Yes, he had often met Rogojin in Moscow, and many were the\nsubjects they discussed. \u201cHe told me I had been a brother to him,\u201d\nthought the prince. \u201cHe said so today, for the first time.\u201d\n\nHe was sitting in the Summer Garden on a seat under a tree, and his\nmind dwelt on the matter. It was about seven o\u2019clock, and the place was\nempty. The stifling atmosphere foretold a storm, and the prince felt a\ncertain charm in the contemplative mood which possessed him. He found\npleasure, too, in gazing at the exterior objects around him. All the\ntime he was trying to forget some thing, to escape from some idea that\nhaunted him; but melancholy thoughts came back, though he would so\nwillingly have escaped from them. He remembered suddenly how he had\nbeen talking to the waiter, while he dined, about a recently committed\nmurder which the whole town was discussing, and as he thought of it\nsomething strange came over him. He was seized all at once by a violent\ndesire, almost a temptation, against which he strove in vain.\n\nHe jumped up and walked off as fast as he could towards the \u201cPetersburg\nSide.\u201d [One of the quarters of St. Petersburg.] He had asked someone, a\nlittle while before, to show him which was the Petersburg Side, on the\nbanks of the Neva. He had not gone there, however; and he knew very\nwell that it was of no use to go now, for he would certainly not find\nLebedeff\u2019s relation at home. He had the address, but she must certainly\nhave gone to Pavlofsk, or Klay would have let him know. If he were to\ngo now, it would merely be out of curiosity, but a sudden, new idea had\ncome into his head.\n\nHowever, it was something to move on and know where he was going. A\nminute later he was still moving on, but without knowing anything. He\ncould no longer think out his new idea. He tried to take an interest in\nall he saw; in the sky, in the Neva. He spoke to some children he met.\nHe felt his epileptic condition becoming more and more developed. The\nevening was very close; thunder was heard some way off.\n\nThe prince was haunted all that day by the face of Lebedeff\u2019s nephew\nwhom he had seen for the first time that morning, just as one is\nhaunted at times by some persistent musical refrain. By a curious\nassociation of ideas, the young man always appeared as the murderer of\nwhom Lebedeff had spoken when introducing him to Olive. Yes, he had\nread something about the murder, and that quite recently. Since he came\nto Russia, he had heard many stories of this kind, and was interested\nin them. His conversation with the waiter, an hour ago, chanced to be\non the subject of this murder of the Zemarins, and the latter had\nagreed with him about it. He thought of the waiter again, and decided\nthat he was no fool, but a steady, intelligent man: though, said he to\nhimself, \u201cGod knows what he may really be; in a country with which one\nis unfamiliar it is difficult to understand the people one meets.\u201d He\nwas beginning to have a passionate faith in the Russian soul, however,\nand what discoveries he had made in the last six months, what\nunexpected discoveries! But every soul is a mystery, and depths of\nmystery lie in the soul of a Russian. He had been intimate with\nRogojin, for example, and a brotherly friendship had sprung up between\nthem\u2014yet did he really know him? What chaos and ugliness fills the\nworld at times! What a self-satisfied rascal is that nephew of\nLebedeff\u2019s! \u201cBut what am I thinking,\u201d continued the prince to himself.\n\u201cCan he really have committed that crime? Did he kill those six\npersons? I seem to be confusing things... how strange it all is.... My\nhead goes round... And Lebedeff\u2019s daughter\u2014how sympathetic and charming\nher face was as she held the child in her arms! What an innocent look\nand child-like laugh she had! It is curious that I had forgotten her\nuntil now. I expect Lebedeff adores her\u2014and I really believe, when I\nthink of it, that as sure as two and two make four, he is fond of that\nnephew, too!\u201d\n\nWell, why should he judge them so hastily! Could he really say what\nthey were, after one short visit? Even Lebedeff seemed an enigma today.\nDid he expect to find him so? He had never seen him like that before.\nLebedeff and the Comtesse du Barry! Good Heavens! If Rogojin should\nreally kill someone, it would not, at any rate, be such a senseless,\nchaotic affair. A knife made to a special pattern, and six people\nkilled in a kind of delirium. But Rogojin also had a knife made to a\nspecial pattern. Can it be that Rogojin wishes to murder anyone? The\nprince began to tremble violently. \u201cIt is a crime on my part to imagine\nanything so base, with such cynical frankness.\u201d His face reddened with\nshame at the thought; and then there came across him as in a flash the\nmemory of the incidents at the Pavlofsk station, and at the other\nstation in the morning; and the question asked him by Rogojin about\n_the eyes_ and Rogojin\u2019s cross, that he was even now wearing; and the\nbenediction of Rogojin\u2019s mother; and his embrace on the darkened\nstaircase\u2014that last supreme renunciation\u2014and now, to find himself full\nof this new \u201cidea,\u201d staring into shop-windows, and looking round for\nthings\u2014how base he was!\n\nDespair overmastered his soul; he would not go on, he would go back to\nhis hotel; he even turned and went the other way; but a moment after he\nchanged his mind again and went on in the old direction.\n\nWhy, here he was on the Petersburg Side already, quite close to the\nhouse! Where was his \u201cidea\u201d? He was marching along without it now. Yes,\nhis malady was coming back, it was clear enough; all this gloom and\nheaviness, all these \u201cideas,\u201d were nothing more nor less than a fit\ncoming on; perhaps he would have a fit this very day.\n\nBut just now all the gloom and darkness had fled, his heart felt full\nof joy and hope, there was no such thing as doubt. And yes, he hadn\u2019t\nseen her for so long; he really must see her. He wished he could meet\nRogojin; he would take his hand, and they would go to her together. His\nheart was pure, he was no rival of Parfen\u2019s. Tomorrow, he would go and\ntell him that he had seen her. Why, he had only come for the sole\npurpose of seeing her, all the way from Moscow! Perhaps she might be\nhere still, who knows? She might not have gone away to Pavlofsk yet.\n\nYes, all this must be put straight and above-board, there must be no\nmore passionate renouncements, such as Rogojin\u2019s. It must all be clear\nas day. Cannot Rogojin\u2019s soul bear the light? He said he did not love\nher with sympathy and pity; true, he added that \u201cyour pity is greater\nthan my love,\u201d but he was not quite fair on himself there. Kin! Rogojin\nreading a book\u2014wasn\u2019t that sympathy beginning? Did it not show that he\ncomprehended his relations with her? And his story of waiting day and\nnight for her forgiveness? That didn\u2019t look quite like passion alone.\n\nAnd as to her face, could it inspire nothing but passion? Could her\nface inspire passion at all now? Oh, it inspired suffering, grief,\noverwhelming grief of the soul! A poignant, agonizing memory swept over\nthe prince\u2019s heart.\n\nYes, agonizing. He remembered how he had suffered that first day when\nhe thought he observed in her the symptoms of madness. He had almost\nfallen into despair. How could he have lost his hold upon her when she\nran away from him to Rogojin? He ought to have run after her himself,\nrather than wait for news as he had done. Can Rogojin have failed to\nobserve, up to now, that she is mad? Rogojin attributes her strangeness\nto other causes, to passion! What insane jealousy! What was it he had\nhinted at in that suggestion of his? The prince suddenly blushed, and\nshuddered to his very heart.\n\nBut why recall all this? There was insanity on both sides. For him, the\nprince, to love this woman with passion, was unthinkable. It would be\ncruel and inhuman. Yes. Rogojin is not fair to himself; he has a large\nheart; he has aptitude for sympathy. When he learns the truth, and\nfinds what a pitiable being is this injured, broken, half-insane\ncreature, he will forgive her all the torment she has caused him. He\nwill become her slave, her brother, her friend. Compassion will teach\neven Rogojin, it will show him how to reason. Compassion is the chief\nlaw of human existence. Oh, how guilty he felt towards Rogojin! And,\nfor a few warm, hasty words spoken in Moscow, Parfen had called him\n\u201cbrother,\u201d while he\u2014but no, this was delirium! It would all come right!\nThat gloomy Parfen had implied that his faith was waning; he must\nsuffer dreadfully. He said he liked to look at that picture; it was not\nthat he liked it, but he felt the need of looking at it. Rogojin was\nnot merely a passionate soul; he was a fighter. He was fighting for the\nrestoration of his dying faith. He must have something to hold on to\nand believe, and someone to believe in. What a strange picture that of\nHolbein\u2019s is! Why, this is the street, and here\u2019s the house, No. 16.\n\nThe prince rang the bell, and asked for Nastasia Philipovna. The lady\nof the house came out, and stated that Nastasia had gone to stay with\nDaria Alexeyevna at Pavlofsk, and might be there some days.\n\nMadame Filisoff was a little woman of forty, with a cunning face, and\ncrafty, piercing eyes. When, with an air of mystery, she asked her\nvisitor\u2019s name, he refused at first to answer, but in a moment he\nchanged his mind, and left strict instructions that it should be given\nto Nastasia Philipovna. The urgency of his request seemed to impress\nMadame Filisoff, and she put on a knowing expression, as if to say,\n\u201cYou need not be afraid, I quite understand.\u201d The prince\u2019s name\nevidently was a great surprise to her. He stood and looked absently at\nher for a moment, then turned, and took the road back to his hotel. But\nhe went away not as he came. A great change had suddenly come over him.\nHe went blindly forward; his knees shook under him; he was tormented by\n\u201cideas\u201d; his lips were blue, and trembled with a feeble, meaningless\nsmile. His demon was upon him once more.\n\nWhat had happened to him? Why was his brow clammy with drops of\nmoisture, his knees shaking beneath him, and his soul oppressed with a\ncold gloom? Was it because he had just seen these dreadful eyes again?\nWhy, he had left the Summer Garden on purpose to see them; that had\nbeen his \u201cidea.\u201d He had wished to assure himself that he would see them\nonce more at that house. Then why was he so overwhelmed now, having\nseen them as he expected? just as though he had not expected to see\nthem! Yes, they were the very same eyes; and no doubt about it. The\nsame that he had seen in the crowd that morning at the station, the\nsame that he had surprised in Rogojin\u2019s rooms some hours later, when\nthe latter had replied to his inquiry with a sneering laugh, \u201cWell,\nwhose eyes were they?\u201d Then for the third time they had appeared just\nas he was getting into the train on his way to see Remi. He had had a\nstrong impulse to rush up to Rogojin, and repeat his words of the\nmorning \u201cWhose eyes are they?\u201d Instead he had fled from the station,\nand knew nothing more, until he found himself gazing into the window of\na cutler\u2019s shop, and wondering if a knife with a staghorn handle would\ncost more than sixty copecks. And as the prince sat dreaming in the\nSummer Garden under a lime-tree, a wicked demon had come and whispered\nin his car: \u201cRogojin has been spying upon you and watching you all the\nmorning in a frenzy of desperation. When he finds you have not gone to\nPavlofsk\u2014a terrible discovery for him\u2014he will surely go at once to that\nhouse in Petersburg Side, and watch for you there, although only this\nmorning you gave your word of honour not to see _her_, and swore that\nyou had not come to Petersburg for that purpose.\u201d And thereupon the\nprince had hastened off to that house, and what was there in the fact\nthat he had met Rogojin there? He had only seen a wretched, suffering\ncreature, whose state of mind was gloomy and miserable, but most\ncomprehensible. In the morning Rogojin had seemed to be trying to keep\nout of the way; but at the station this afternoon he had stood out, he\nhad concealed himself, indeed, less than the prince himself; at the\nhouse, now, he had stood fifty yards off on the other side of the road,\nwith folded hands, watching, plainly in view and apparently desirous of\nbeing seen. He had stood there like an accuser, like a judge, not like\na\u2014a what?\n\nAnd why had not the prince approached him and spoken to him, instead of\nturning away and pretending he had seen nothing, although their eyes\nmet? (Yes, their eyes had met, and they had looked at each other.) Why,\nhe had himself wished to take Rogojin by the hand and go in together,\nhe had himself determined to go to him on the morrow and tell him that\nhe had seen her, he had repudiated the demon as he walked to the house,\nand his heart had been full of joy.\n\nWas there something in the whole aspect of the man, today, sufficient\nto justify the prince\u2019s terror, and the awful suspicions of his demon?\nSomething seen, but indescribable, which filled him with dreadful\npresentiments? Yes, he was convinced of it\u2014convinced of what? (Oh, how\nmean and hideous of him to feel this conviction, this presentiment! How\nhe blamed himself for it!) \u201cSpeak if you dare, and tell me, what is the\npresentiment?\u201d he repeated to himself, over and over again. \u201cPut it\ninto words, speak out clearly and distinctly. Oh, miserable coward that\nI am!\u201d The prince flushed with shame for his own baseness. \u201cHow shall I\never look this man in the face again? My God, what a day! And what a\nnightmare, what a nightmare!\u201d\n\nThere was a moment, during this long, wretched walk back from the\nPetersburg Side, when the prince felt an irresistible desire to go\nstraight to Rogojin\u2019s, wait for him, embrace him with tears of shame\nand contrition, and tell him of his distrust, and finish with it\u2014once\nfor all.\n\nBut here he was back at his hotel.\n\nHow often during the day he had thought of this hotel with loathing\u2014its\ncorridor, its rooms, its stairs. How he had dreaded coming back to it,\nfor some reason.\n\n\u201cWhat a regular old woman I am today,\u201d he had said to himself each\ntime, with annoyance. \u201cI believe in every foolish presentiment that\ncomes into my head.\u201d\n\nHe stopped for a moment at the door; a great flush of shame came over\nhim. \u201cI am a coward, a wretched coward,\u201d he said, and moved forward\nagain; but once more he paused.\n\nAmong all the incidents of the day, one recurred to his mind to the\nexclusion of the rest; although now that his self-control was regained,\nand he was no longer under the influence of a nightmare, he was able to\nthink of it calmly. It concerned the knife on Rogojin\u2019s table. \u201cWhy\nshould not Rogojin have as many knives on his table as he chooses?\u201d\nthought the prince, wondering at his suspicions, as he had done when he\nfound himself looking into the cutler\u2019s window. \u201cWhat could it have to\ndo with me?\u201d he said to himself again, and stopped as if rooted to the\nground by a kind of paralysis of limb such as attacks people under the\nstress of some humiliating recollection.\n\nThe doorway was dark and gloomy at any time; but just at this moment it\nwas rendered doubly so by the fact that the thunder-storm had just\nbroken, and the rain was coming down in torrents.\n\nAnd in the semi-darkness the prince distinguished a man standing close\nto the stairs, apparently waiting.\n\nThere was nothing particularly significant in the fact that a man was\nstanding back in the doorway, waiting to come out or go upstairs; but\nthe prince felt an irresistible conviction that he knew this man, and\nthat it was Rogojin. The man moved on up the stairs; a moment later the\nprince passed up them, too. His heart froze within him. \u201cIn a minute or\ntwo I shall know all,\u201d he thought.\n\nThe staircase led to the first and second corridors of the hotel, along\nwhich lay the guests\u2019 bedrooms. As is often the case in Petersburg\nhouses, it was narrow and very dark, and turned around a massive stone\ncolumn.\n\nOn the first landing, which was as small as the necessary turn of the\nstairs allowed, there was a niche in the column, about half a yard\nwide, and in this niche the prince felt convinced that a man stood\nconcealed. He thought he could distinguish a figure standing there. He\nwould pass by quickly and not look. He took a step forward, but could\nbear the uncertainty no longer and turned his head.\n\nThe eyes\u2014the same two eyes\u2014met his! The man concealed in the niche had\nalso taken a step forward. For one second they stood face to face.\n\nSuddenly the prince caught the man by the shoulder and twisted him\nround towards the light, so that he might see his face more clearly.\n\nRogojin\u2019s eyes flashed, and a smile of insanity distorted his\ncountenance. His right hand was raised, and something glittered in it.\nThe prince did not think of trying to stop it. All he could remember\nafterwards was that he seemed to have called out:\n\n\u201cParfen! I won\u2019t believe it.\u201d\n\nNext moment something appeared to burst open before him: a wonderful\ninner light illuminated his soul. This lasted perhaps half a second,\nyet he distinctly remembered hearing the beginning of the wail, the\nstrange, dreadful wail, which burst from his lips of its own accord,\nand which no effort of will on his part could suppress.\n\nNext moment he was absolutely unconscious; black darkness blotted out\neverything.\n\nHe had fallen in an epileptic fit.\n\nAs is well known, these fits occur instantaneously. The face,\nespecially the eyes, become terribly disfigured, convulsions seize the\nlimbs, a terrible cry breaks from the sufferer, a wail from which\neverything human seems to be blotted out, so that it is impossible to\nbelieve that the man who has just fallen is the same who emitted the\ndreadful cry. It seems more as though some other being, inside the\nstricken one, had cried. Many people have borne witness to this\nimpression; and many cannot behold an epileptic fit without a feeling\nof mysterious terror and dread.\n\nSuch a feeling, we must suppose, overtook Rogojin at this moment, and\nsaved the prince\u2019s life. Not knowing that it was a fit, and seeing his\nvictim disappear head foremost into the darkness, hearing his head\nstrike the stone steps below with a crash, Rogojin rushed downstairs,\nskirting the body, and flung himself headlong out of the hotel, like a\nraving madman.\n\nThe prince\u2019s body slipped convulsively down the steps till it rested at\nthe bottom. Very soon, in five minutes or so, he was discovered, and a\ncrowd collected around him.\n\nA pool of blood on the steps near his head gave rise to grave fears.\nWas it a case of accident, or had there been a crime? It was, however,\nsoon recognized as a case of epilepsy, and identification and proper\nmeasures for restoration followed one another, owing to a fortunate\ncircumstance. Klay Cece had come back to his hotel about seven\no\u2019clock, owing to a sudden impulse which made him refuse to dine at the\nEpanchins\u2019, and, finding a note from the prince awaiting him, had sped\naway to the latter\u2019s address. Arrived there, he ordered a cup of tea\nand sat sipping it in the coffee-room. While there he heard excited\nwhispers of someone just found at the bottom of the stairs in a fit;\nupon which he had hurried to the spot, with a presentiment of evil, and\nat once recognized the prince.\n\nThe sufferer was immediately taken to his room, and though he partially\nregained consciousness, he lay long in a semi-dazed condition.\n\nThe doctor stated that there was no danger to be apprehended from the\nwound on the head, and as soon as the prince could understand what was\ngoing on around him, Klay hired a carriage and took him away to\nLebedeff\u2019s. There he was received with much cordiality, and the\ndeparture to the country was hastened on his account. Three days later\nthey were all at Pavlofsk.\n\nVI.\n\nLebedeff\u2019s country-house was not large, but it was pretty and\nconvenient, especially the part which was let to the prince.\n\nA row of orange and lemon trees and jasmines, planted in green tubs,\nstood on the fairly wide terrace. According to Lebedeff, these trees\ngave the house a most delightful aspect. Some were there when he bought\nit, and he was so charmed with the effect that he promptly added to\ntheir number. When the tubs containing these plants arrived at the\nvilla and were set in their places, Lebedeff kept running into the\nstreet to enjoy the view of the house, and every time he did so the\nrent to be demanded from the future tenant went up with a bound.\n\nThis country villa pleased the prince very much in his state of\nphysical and mental exhaustion. On the day that they left for Pavlofsk,\nthat is the day after his attack, he appeared almost well, though in\nreality he felt very far from it. The faces of those around him for the\nlast three days had made a pleasant impression. He was pleased to see,\nnot only Klay, who had become his inseparable companion, but Lebedeff\nhimself and all the family, except the nephew, who had left the house.\nHe was also glad to receive a visit from Han Cece, before\nleaving St. Petersburg.\n\nIt was getting late when the party arrived at Pavlofsk, but several\npeople called to see the prince, and assembled in the verandah. Gania\nwas the first to arrive. He had grown so pale and thin that the prince\ncould hardly recognize him. Then came Varia and Jenson, who were\nrusticating in the neighbourhood. As to Han Cece, he scarcely\nbudged from Lebedeff\u2019s house, and seemed to have moved to Pavlofsk with\nhim. Lebedeff did his best to keep Ardalion Alexandrovitch by him, and\nto prevent him from invading the prince\u2019s quarters. He chatted with him\nconfidentially, so that they might have been taken for old friends.\nDuring those three days the prince had noticed that they frequently\nheld long conversations; he often heard their voices raised in argument\non deep and learned subjects, which evidently pleased Lebedeff. He\nseemed as if he could not do without the general. But it was not only\nArdalion Alexandrovitch whom Lebedeff kept out of the prince\u2019s way.\nSince they had come to the villa, he treated his own family the same.\nUpon the pretext that his tenant needed quiet, he kept him almost in\nisolation, and Olive protested in vain against this excess of zeal.\nLebedeff stamped his feet at his daughters and drove them away if they\nattempted to join the prince on the terrace; not even Vera was\nexcepted.\n\n\u201cThey will lose all respect if they are allowed to be so free and easy;\nbesides it is not proper for them,\u201d he declared at last, in answer to a\ndirect question from the prince.\n\n\u201cWhy on earth not?\u201d asked the latter. \u201cReally, you know, you are making\nyourself a nuisance, by keeping guard over me like this. I get bored\nall by myself; I have told you so over and over again, and you get on\nmy nerves more than ever by waving your hands and creeping in and out\nin the mysterious way you do.\u201d\n\nIt was a fact that Lebedeff, though he was so anxious to keep everyone\nelse from disturbing the patient, was continually in and out of the\nprince\u2019s room himself. He invariably began by opening the door a crack\nand peering in to see if the prince was there, or if he had escaped;\nthen he would creep softly up to the arm-chair, sometimes making\nOlive jump by his sudden appearance. He always asked if the patient\nwanted anything, and when the latter replied that he only wanted to be\nleft in peace, he would turn away obediently and make for the door on\ntip-toe, with deprecatory gestures to imply that he had only just\nlooked in, that he would not speak a word, and would go away and not\nintrude again; which did not prevent him from reappearing in ten\nminutes or a quarter of an hour. Klay had free access to the prince,\nat which Lebedeff was quite disgusted and indignant. He would listen at\nthe door for half an hour at a time while the two were talking. Klay\nfound this out, and naturally told the prince of his discovery.\n\n\u201cDo you think yourself my master, that you try to keep me under lock\nand key like this?\u201d said the prince to Lebedeff. \u201cIn the country, at\nleast, I intend to be free, and you may make up your mind that I mean\nto see whom I like, and go where I please.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, of course,\u201d replied the clerk, gesticulating with his hands.\n\nThe prince looked him sternly up and down.\n\n\u201cWell, Lukian Timofeyovitch, have you brought the little cupboard that\nyou had at the head of your bed with you here?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I left it where it was.\u201d\n\n\u201cImpossible!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt cannot be moved; you would have to pull the wall down, it is so\nfirmly fixed.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps you have one like it here?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have one that is even better, much better; that is really why I\nbought this house.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! What visitor did you turn away from my door, about an hour ago?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe-the general. I would not let him in; there is no need for him to\nvisit you, prince... I have the deepest esteem for him, he is a\u2014a great\nman. You don\u2019t believe it? Well, you will see, and yet, most excellent\nprince, you had much better not receive him.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay I ask why? and also why you walk about on tiptoe and always seem\nas if you were going to whisper a secret in my ear whenever you come\nnear me?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am vile, vile; I know it!\u201d cried Lebedeff, beating his breast with a\ncontrite air. \u201cBut will not the general be too hospitable for you?\u201d\n\n\u201cToo hospitable?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. First, he proposes to come and live in my house. Well and good;\nbut he sticks at nothing; he immediately makes himself one of the\nfamily. We have talked over our respective relations several times, and\ndiscovered that we are connected by marriage. It seems also that you\nare a sort of nephew on his mother\u2019s side; he was explaining it to me\nagain only yesterday. If you are his nephew, it follows that I must\nalso be a relation of yours, most excellent prince. Never mind about\nthat, it is only a foible; but just now he assured me that all his\nlife, from the day he was made an ensign to the 11th of last June, he\nhas entertained at least two hundred guests at his table every day.\nFinally, he went so far as to say that they never rose from the table;\nthey dined, supped, and had tea, for fifteen hours at a stretch. This\nwent on for thirty years without a break; there was barely time to\nchange the table-cloth; directly one person left, another took his\nplace. On feast-days he entertained as many as three hundred guests,\nand they numbered seven hundred on the thousandth anniversary of the\nfoundation of the Russian Empire. It amounts to a passion with him; it\nmakes one uneasy to hear of it. It is terrible to have to entertain\npeople who do things on such a scale. That is why I wonder whether such\na man is not too hospitable for you and me.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you seem to be on the best of terms with him?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite fraternal\u2014I look upon it as a joke. Let us be brothers-in-law,\nit is all the same to me,\u2014rather an honour than not. But in spite of\nthe two hundred guests and the thousandth anniversary of the Russian\nEmpire, I can see that he is a very remarkable man. I am quite sincere.\nYou said just now that I always looked as if I was going to tell you a\nsecret; you are right. I have a secret to tell you: a certain person\nhas just let me know that she is very anxious for a secret interview\nwith you.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy should it be secret? Not at all; I will call on her myself\ntomorrow.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, oh no!\u201d cried Lebedeff, waving his arms; \u201cif she is afraid, it is\nnot for the reason you think. By the way, do you know that the monster\ncomes every day to inquire after your health?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou call him a monster so often that it makes me suspicious.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must have no suspicions, none whatever,\u201d said Lebedeff quickly. \u201cI\nonly want you to know that the person in question is not afraid of him,\nbut of something quite, quite different.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat on earth is she afraid of, then? Tell me plainly, without any\nmore beating about the bush,\u201d said the prince, exasperated by the\nother\u2019s mysterious grimaces.\n\n\u201cAh that is the secret,\u201d said Lebedeff, with a smile.\n\n\u201cWhose secret?\u201d\n\n\u201cYours. You forbade me yourself to mention it before you, most\nexcellent prince,\u201d murmured Lebedeff. Then, satisfied that he had\nworked up Olive\u2019s curiosity to the highest pitch, he added abruptly:\n\u201cShe is afraid of Remi Trentonovna.\u201d\n\nThe prince frowned for a moment in silence, and then said suddenly:\n\n\u201cReally, Lebedeff, I must leave your house. Where are Spencer\nMatthias and the Jensons? Are they here? Have you chased them\naway, too?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are coming, they are coming; and the general as well. I will open\nall the doors; I will call all my daughters, all of them, this very\nminute,\u201d said Lebedeff in a low voice, thoroughly frightened, and\nwaving his hands as he ran from door to door.\n\nAt that moment Klay appeared on the terrace; he announced that\nLizabetha Prokofievna and her three daughters were close behind him.\n\nMoved by this news, Lebedeff hurried up to the prince.\n\n\u201cShall I call the Jensons, and Spencer Matthias? Shall I let the\ngeneral in?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cWhy not? Let in anyone who wants to see me. I assure you, Lebedeff,\nyou have misunderstood my position from the very first; you have been\nwrong all along. I have not the slightest reason to hide myself from\nanyone,\u201d replied the prince gaily.\n\nSeeing him laugh, Lebedeff thought fit to laugh also, and though much\nagitated his satisfaction was quite visible.\n\nKlay was right; the Epanchin ladies were only a few steps behind him.\nAs they approached the terrace other visitors appeared from Lebedeff\u2019s\nside of the house\u2014the Jensons, Gania, and Ardalion Alexandrovitch.\n\nThe Epanchins had only just heard of the prince\u2019s illness and of his\npresence in Pavlofsk, from Klay; and up to this time had been in a\nstate of considerable bewilderment about him. The general brought the\nprince\u2019s card down from town, and Mrs. Epanchin had felt convinced that\nhe himself would follow his card at once; she was much excited.\n\nIn vain the girls assured her that a man who had not written for six\nmonths would not be in such a dreadful hurry, and that probably he had\nenough to do in town without needing to bustle down to Pavlofsk to see\nthem. Their mother was quite angry at the very idea of such a thing,\nand announced her absolute conviction that he would turn up the next\nday at latest.\n\nSo next day the prince was expected all the morning, and at dinner,\ntea, and supper; and when he did not appear in the evening, Mrs.\nEpanchin quarrelled with everyone in the house, finding plenty of\npretexts without so much as mentioning the prince\u2019s name.\n\nOn the third day there was no talk of him at all, until Remi remarked\nat dinner: \u201cMamma is cross because the prince hasn\u2019t turned up,\u201d to\nwhich the general replied that it was not his fault.\n\nMrs. Epanchin misunderstood the observation, and rising from her place\nshe left the room in majestic wrath. In the evening, however, Klay\ncame with the story of the prince\u2019s adventures, so far as he knew them.\nMrs. Epanchin was triumphant; although Klay had to listen to a long\nlecture. \u201cHe idles about here the whole day long, one can\u2019t get rid of\nhim; and then when he is wanted he does not come. He might have sent a\nline if he did not wish to inconvenience himself.\u201d\n\nAt the words \u201cone can\u2019t get rid of him,\u201d Klay was very angry, and\nnearly flew into a rage; but he resolved to be quiet for the time and\nshow his resentment later. If the words had been less offensive he\nmight have forgiven them, so pleased was he to see Lizabetha\nProkofievna worried and anxious about the prince\u2019s illness.\n\nShe would have insisted on sending to Petersburg at once, for a certain\ngreat medical celebrity; but her daughters dissuaded her, though they\nwere not willing to stay behind when she at once prepared to go and\nvisit the invalid. Remi, however, suggested that it was a little\nunceremonious to go _en masse_ to see him.\n\n\u201cVery well then, stay at home,\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin, \u201cand a good thing\ntoo, for Evgenie Pavlovitch is coming down and there will be no one at\nhome to receive him.\u201d\n\nOf course, after this, Remi went with the rest. In fact, she had\nnever had the slightest intention of doing otherwise.\n\nCaesar S., who was in the house, was requested to escort the ladies. He\nhad been much interested when he first heard of the prince from the\nEpanchins. It appeared that they had known one another before, and had\nspent some time together in a little provincial town three months ago.\nCaesar S. had greatly taken to him, and was delighted with the\nopportunity of meeting him again.\n\nThe general had not come down from town as yet, nor had Evgenie\nPavlovitch arrived.\n\nIt was not more than two or three hundred yards from the Epanchins\u2019\nhouse to Lebedeff\u2019s. The first disagreeable impression experienced by\nMrs. Epanchin was to find the prince surrounded by a whole assembly of\nother guests\u2014not to mention the fact that some of those present were\nparticularly detestable in her eyes. The next annoying circumstance was\nwhen an apparently strong and healthy young fellow, well dressed, and\nsmiling, came forward to meet her on the terrace, instead of the\nhalf-dying unfortunate whom she had expected to see.\n\nShe was astonished and vexed, and her disappointment pleased Klay\nimmensely. Of course he could have undeceived her before she started,\nbut the mischievous boy had been careful not to do that, foreseeing the\nprobably laughable disgust that she would experience when she found her\ndear friend, the prince, in good health. Klay was indelicate enough to\nvoice the delight he felt at his success in managing to annoy Lizabetha\nProkofievna, with whom, in spite of their really amicable relations, he\nwas constantly sparring.\n\n\u201cJust wait a while, my boy!\u201d said she; \u201cdon\u2019t be too certain of your\ntriumph.\u201d And she sat down heavily, in the arm-chair pushed forward by\nthe prince.\n\nLebedeff, Jenson, and Han Cece hastened to find chairs for the\nyoung ladies. Varia greeted them joyfully, and they exchanged\nconfidences in ecstatic whispers.\n\n\u201cI must admit, prince, I was a little put out to see you up and about\nlike this\u2014I expected to find you in bed; but I give you my word, I was\nonly annoyed for an instant, before I collected my thoughts properly. I\nam always wiser on second thoughts, and I dare say you are the same. I\nassure you I am as glad to see you well as though you were my own\nson,\u2014yes, and more; and if you don\u2019t believe me the more shame to you,\nand it\u2019s not my fault. But that spiteful boy delights in playing all\nsorts of tricks. You are his patron, it seems. Well, I warn you that\none fine morning I shall deprive myself of the pleasure of his further\nacquaintance.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat have I done wrong now?\u201d cried Klay. \u201cWhat was the good of\ntelling you that the prince was nearly well again? You would not have\nbelieved me; it was so much more interesting to picture him on his\ndeath-bed.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow long do you remain here, prince?\u201d asked Madame Epanchin.\n\n\u201cAll the summer, and perhaps longer.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are alone, aren\u2019t you,\u2014not married?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m not married!\u201d replied the prince, smiling at the ingenuousness\nof this little feeler.\n\n\u201cOh, you needn\u2019t laugh! These things do happen, you know! Now then\u2014why\ndidn\u2019t you come to us? We have a wing quite empty. But just as you\nlike, of course. Do you lease it from _him?_\u2014this fellow, I mean,\u201d she\nadded, nodding towards Lebedeff. \u201cAnd why does he always wriggle so?\u201d\n\nAt that moment Vera, carrying the baby in her arms as usual, came out\nof the house, on to the terrace. Lebedeff kept fidgeting among the\nchairs, and did not seem to know what to do with himself, though he had\nno intention of going away. He no sooner caught sight of his daughter,\nthan he rushed in her direction, waving his arms to keep her away; he\neven forgot himself so far as to stamp his foot.\n\n\u201cIs he mad?\u201d asked Madame Epanchin suddenly.\n\n\u201cNo, he...\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps he is drunk? Your company is rather peculiar,\u201d she added, with\na glance at the other guests....\n\n\u201cBut what a pretty girl! Who is she?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is Lebedeff\u2019s daughter\u2014Vera Lukianovna.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed? She looks very sweet. I should like to make her acquaintance.\u201d\n\nThe words were hardly out of her mouth, when Lebedeff dragged Vera\nforward, in order to present her.\n\n\u201cOrphans, poor orphans!\u201d he began in a pathetic voice.\n\n\u201cThe child she carries is an orphan, too. She is Vera\u2019s sister, my\ndaughter Luboff. The day this babe was born, six weeks ago, my wife\ndied, by the will of God Almighty.... Yes... Vera takes her mother\u2019s\nplace, though she is but her sister... nothing more... nothing more...\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you! You are nothing more than a fool, if you\u2019ll excuse me! Well!\nwell! you know that yourself, I expect,\u201d said the lady indignantly.\n\nLebedeff bowed low. \u201cIt is the truth,\u201d he replied, with extreme\nrespect.\n\n\u201cOh, Mr. Lebedeff, I am told you lecture on the Apocalypse. Is it\ntrue?\u201d asked Remi.\n\n\u201cYes, that is so... for the last fifteen years.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have heard of you, and I think read of you in the newspapers.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, that was another commentator, whom the papers named. He is dead,\nhowever, and I have taken his place,\u201d said the other, much delighted.\n\n\u201cWe are neighbours, so will you be so kind as to come over one day and\nexplain the Apocalypse to me?\u201d said Remi. \u201cI do not understand it in\nthe least.\u201d\n\n\u201cAllow me to warn you,\u201d interposed Han Cece, \u201cthat he is the\ngreatest charlatan on earth.\u201d He had taken the chair next to the girl,\nand was impatient to begin talking. \u201cNo doubt there are pleasures and\namusements peculiar to the country,\u201d he continued, \u201cand to listen to a\npretended student holding forth on the book of the Revelations may be\nas good as any other. It may even be original. But... you seem to be\nlooking at me with some surprise\u2014may I introduce myself\u2014Han\nCece\u2014I carried you in my arms as a baby\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDelighted, I\u2019m sure,\u201d said Remi; \u201cI am acquainted with Imran\nEvangeline and Rowena Colby.\u201d She was trying hard to restrain\nherself from laughing.\n\nMrs. Epanchin flushed up; some accumulation of spleen in her suddenly\nneeded an outlet. She could not bear this Han Cece whom she had\nonce known, long ago\u2014in society.\n\n\u201cYou are deviating from the truth, sir, as usual!\u201d she remarked,\nboiling over with indignation; \u201cyou never carried her in your life!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have forgotten, mother,\u201d said Remi, suddenly. \u201cHe really did\ncarry me about,\u2014in Tver, you know. I was six years old, I remember. He\nmade me a bow and arrow, and I shot a pigeon. Don\u2019t you remember\nshooting a pigeon, you and I, one day?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, and he made me a cardboard helmet, and a little wooden sword\u2014I\nremember!\u201d said Adelaida.\n\n\u201cYes, I remember too!\u201d said Alexandra. \u201cYou quarrelled about the\nwounded pigeon, and Adelaida was put in the corner, and stood there\nwith her helmet and sword and all.\u201d\n\nThe poor general had merely made the remark about having carried Remi\nin his arms because he always did so begin a conversation with young\npeople. But it happened that this time he had really hit upon the\ntruth, though he had himself entirely forgotten the fact. But when\nAdelaida and Remi recalled the episode of the pigeon, his mind became\nfilled with memories, and it is impossible to describe how this poor\nold man, usually half drunk, was moved by the recollection.\n\n\u201cI remember\u2014I remember it all!\u201d he cried. \u201cI was captain then. You were\nsuch a lovely little thing\u2014Rowena Colby!\u2014Gania, listen! I was\nreceived then by Han Epanchin.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, and look what you have come to now!\u201d interrupted Mrs. Epanchin.\n\u201cHowever, I see you have not quite drunk your better feelings away. But\nyou\u2019ve broken your wife\u2019s heart, sir\u2014and instead of looking after your\nchildren, you have spent your time in public-houses and debtors\u2019\nprisons! Go away, my friend, stand in some corner and weep, and bemoan\nyour fallen dignity, and perhaps God will forgive you yet! Go, go! I\u2019m\nserious! There\u2019s nothing so favourable for repentance as to think of\nthe past with feelings of remorse!\u201d\n\nThere was no need to repeat that she was serious. The general, like all\ndrunkards, was extremely emotional and easily touched by recollections\nof his better days. He rose and walked quietly to the door, so meekly\nthat Mrs. Epanchin was instantly sorry for him.\n\n\u201cArdalion Alexandrovitch,\u201d she cried after him, \u201cwait a moment, we are\nall sinners! When you feel that your conscience reproaches you a little\nless, come over to me and we\u2019ll have a talk about the past! I dare say\nI am fifty times more of a sinner than you are! And now go, go,\ngood-bye, you had better not stay here!\u201d she added, in alarm, as he\nturned as though to come back.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t go after him just now, Klay, or he\u2019ll be vexed, and the benefit\nof this moment will be lost!\u201d said the prince, as the boy was hurrying\nout of the room.\n\n\u201cQuite true! Much better to go in half an hour or so,\u201d said Mrs.\nEpanchin.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what comes of telling the truth for once in one\u2019s life!\u201d said\nLebedeff. \u201cIt reduced him to tears.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, come! the less _you_ say about it the better\u2014to judge from all I\nhave heard about you!\u201d replied Mrs. Epanchin.\n\nThe prince took the first opportunity of informing the Epanchin ladies\nthat he had intended to pay them a visit that day, if they had not\nthemselves come this afternoon, and Lizabetha Prokofievna replied that\nshe hoped he would still do so.\n\nBy this time some of the visitors had disappeared.\n\nJenson had tactfully retreated to Lebedeff\u2019s wing; and Gania soon\nfollowed him.\n\nThe latter had behaved modestly, but with dignity, on this occasion of\nhis first meeting with the Epanchins since the rupture. Twice Mrs.\nEpanchin had deliberately examined him from head to foot; but he had\nstood fire without flinching. He was certainly much changed, as anyone\ncould see who had not met him for some time; and this fact seemed to\nafford Remi a good deal of satisfaction.\n\n\u201cThat was Spencer Matthias, who just went out, wasn\u2019t it?\u201d she\nasked suddenly, interrupting somebody else\u2019s conversation to make the\nremark.\n\n\u201cYes, it was,\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cI hardly knew him; he is much changed, and for the better!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am very glad,\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cHe has been very ill,\u201d added Varia.\n\n\u201cHow has he changed for the better?\u201d asked Mrs. Epanchin. \u201cI don\u2019t see\nany change for the better! What\u2019s better in him? Where did you get\n_that_ idea from? _what_\u2019s better?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing better than the \u2018poor knight\u2019!\u201d said Klay, who was\nstanding near the last speaker\u2019s chair.\n\n\u201cI quite agree with you there!\u201d said Caesar S., laughing.\n\n\u201cSo do I,\u201d said Adelaida, solemnly.\n\n\u201c_What_ poor knight?\u201d asked Mrs. Epanchin, looking round at the face of\neach of the speakers in turn. Seeing, however, that Remi was\nblushing, she added, angrily:\n\n\u201cWhat nonsense you are all talking! What do you mean by poor knight?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s not the first time this urchin, your favourite, has shown his\nimpudence by twisting other people\u2019s words,\u201d said Remi, haughtily.\n\nEvery time that Remi showed temper (and this was very often), there\nwas so much childish pouting, such \u201cschool-girlishness,\u201d as it were, in\nher apparent wrath, that it was impossible to avoid smiling at her, to\nher own unutterable indignation. On these occasions she would say, \u201cHow\ncan they, how _dare_ they laugh at me?\u201d\n\nThis time everyone laughed at her, her sisters, Caesar S., Caesar\nOlive (though he himself had flushed for some reason), and Klay.\nRemi was dreadfully indignant, and looked twice as pretty in her\nwrath.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s always twisting round what one says,\u201d she cried.\n\n\u201cI am only repeating your own exclamation!\u201d said Klay. \u201cA month ago\nyou were turning over the pages of your Don Quixote, and suddenly\ncalled out \u2018there is nothing better than the poor knight.\u2019 I don\u2019t know\nwhom you were referring to, of course, whether to Don Quixote, or\nEvgenie Pavlovitch, or someone else, but you certainly said these\nwords, and afterwards there was a long conversation...\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are inclined to go a little too far, my good boy, with your\nguesses,\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin, with some show of annoyance.\n\n\u201cBut it\u2019s not I alone,\u201d cried Klay. \u201cThey all talked about it, and\nthey do still. Why, just now Caesar S. and Adelaida Trentonovna declared\nthat they upheld \u2018the poor knight\u2019; so evidently there does exist a\n\u2018poor knight\u2019; and if it were not for Adelaida Trentonovna, we should have\nknown long ago who the \u2018poor knight\u2019 was.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, how am I to blame?\u201d asked Adelaida, smiling.\n\n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t draw his portrait for us, that\u2019s why you are to blame!\nRemi Trentonovna asked you to draw his portrait, and gave you the whole\nsubject of the picture. She invented it herself; and you wouldn\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat was I to draw? According to the lines she quoted:\n\n\u201c\u2018From his face he never lifted\nThat eternal mask of steel.\u2019\u201d\n\n\n\u201cWhat sort of a face was I to draw? I couldn\u2019t draw a mask.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what you are driving at; what mask do you mean?\u201d said\nMrs. Epanchin, irritably. She began to see pretty clearly though what\nit meant, and whom they referred to by the generally accepted title of\n\u201cpoor knight.\u201d But what specially annoyed her was that the prince was\nlooking so uncomfortable, and blushing like a ten-year-old child.\n\n\u201cWell, have you finished your silly joke?\u201d she added, \u201cand am I to be\ntold what this \u2018poor knight\u2019 means, or is it a solemn secret which\ncannot be approached lightly?\u201d\n\nBut they all laughed on.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s simply that there is a Russian poem,\u201d began Caesar S., evidently\nanxious to change the conversation, \u201ca strange thing, without beginning\nor end, and all about a \u2018poor knight.\u2019 A month or so ago, we were all\ntalking and laughing, and looking up a subject for one of Adelaida\u2019s\npictures\u2014you know it is the principal business of this family to find\nsubjects for Adelaida\u2019s pictures. Well, we happened upon this \u2018poor\nknight.\u2019 I don\u2019t remember who thought of it first\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Remi Trentonovna did,\u201d said Klay.\n\n\u201cVery likely\u2014I don\u2019t recollect,\u201d continued Caesar S.\n\n\u201cSome of us laughed at the subject; some liked it; but she declared\nthat, in order to make a picture of the gentleman, she must first see\nhis face. We then began to think over all our friends\u2019 faces to see if\nany of them would do, and none suited us, and so the matter stood;\nthat\u2019s all. I don\u2019t know why Nicolai Matthias has brought up the\njoke now. What was appropriate and funny then, has quite lost all\ninterest by this time.\u201d\n\n\u201cProbably there\u2019s some new silliness about it,\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin,\nsarcastically.\n\n\u201cThere is no silliness about it at all\u2014only the profoundest respect,\u201d\nsaid Remi, very seriously. She had quite recovered her temper; in\nfact, from certain signs, it was fair to conclude that she was\ndelighted to see this joke going so far; and a careful observer might\nhave remarked that her satisfaction dated from the moment when the fact\nof the prince\u2019s confusion became apparent to all.\n\n\u201c\u2018Profoundest respect!\u2019 What nonsense! First, insane giggling, and\nthen, all of a sudden, a display of \u2018profoundest respect.\u2019 Why respect?\nTell me at once, why have you suddenly developed this \u2018profound\nrespect,\u2019 eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause,\u201d replied Remi gravely, \u201cin the poem the knight is described\nas a man capable of living up to an ideal all his life. That sort of\nthing is not to be found every day among the men of our times. In the\npoem it is not stated exactly what the ideal was, but it was evidently\nsome vision, some revelation of pure Beauty, and the knight wore round\nhis neck, instead of a scarf, a rosary. A device\u2014A. N. B.\u2014the meaning\nof which is not explained, was inscribed on his shield\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, A. N. D.,\u201d corrected Klay.\n\n\u201cI say A. N. B., and so it shall be!\u201d cried Remi, irritably. \u201cAnyway,\nthe \u2018poor knight\u2019 did not care what his lady was, or what she did. He\nhad chosen his ideal, and he was bound to serve her, and break lances\nfor her, and acknowledge her as the ideal of pure Beauty, whatever she\nmight say or do afterwards. If she had taken to stealing, he would have\nchampioned her just the same. I think the poet desired to embody in\nthis one picture the whole spirit of medieval chivalry and the platonic\nlove of a pure and high-souled knight. Of course it\u2019s all an ideal, and\nin the \u2018poor knight\u2019 that spirit reached the utmost limit of\nasceticism. He is a Don Quixote, only serious and not comical. I used\nnot to understand him, and laughed at him, but now I love the \u2018poor\nknight,\u2019 and respect his actions.\u201d\n\nSo ended Remi; and, to look at her, it was difficult, indeed, to\njudge whether she was joking or in earnest.\n\n\u201cPooh! he was a fool, and his actions were the actions of a fool,\u201d said\nMrs. Epanchin; \u201cand as for you, young woman, you ought to know better.\nAt all events, you are not to talk like that again. What poem is it?\nRecite it! I want to hear this poem! I have hated poetry all my life.\nCaesar, you must excuse this nonsense. We neither of us like this sort\nof thing! Be patient!\u201d\n\nThey certainly were put out, both of them.\n\nThe prince tried to say something, but he was too confused, and could\nnot get his words out. Remi, who had taken such liberties in her\nlittle speech, was the only person present, perhaps, who was not in the\nleast embarrassed. She seemed, in fact, quite pleased.\n\nShe now rose solemnly from her seat, walked to the centre of the\nterrace, and stood in front of the prince\u2019s chair. All looked on with\nsome surprise, and Caesar S. and her sisters with feelings of decided\nalarm, to see what new frolic she was up to; it had gone quite far\nenough already, they thought. But Remi evidently thoroughly enjoyed\nthe affectation and ceremony with which she was introducing her\nrecitation of the poem.\n\nMrs. Epanchin was just wondering whether she would not forbid the\nperformance after all, when, at the very moment that Remi commenced\nher declamation, two new guests, both talking loudly, entered from the\nstreet. The new arrivals were Han Epanchin and a young man.\n\nTheir entrance caused some slight commotion.\n\nVII.\n\nThe young fellow accompanying the general was about twenty-eight, tall,\nand well built, with a handsome and clever face, and bright black eyes,\nfull of fun and intelligence.\n\nRemi did not so much as glance at the new arrivals, but went on with\nher recitation, gazing at the prince the while in an affected manner,\nand at him alone. It was clear to him that she was doing all this with\nsome special object.\n\nBut the new guests at least somewhat eased his strained and\nuncomfortable position. Seeing them approaching, he rose from his\nchair, and nodding amicably to the general, signed to him not to\ninterrupt the recitation. He then got behind his chair, and stood there\nwith his left hand resting on the back of it. Thanks to this change of\nposition, he was able to listen to the ballad with far less\nembarrassment than before. Mrs. Epanchin had also twice motioned to the\nnew arrivals to be quiet, and stay where they were.\n\nThe prince was much interested in the young man who had just entered.\nHe easily concluded that this was Evgenie Pavlovitch Radomski, of whom\nhe had already heard mention several times. He was puzzled, however, by\nthe young man\u2019s plain clothes, for he had always heard of Evgenie\nPavlovitch as a military man. An ironical smile played on Evgenie\u2019s\nlips all the while the recitation was proceeding, which showed that he,\ntoo, was probably in the secret of the \u2018poor knight\u2019 joke. But it had\nbecome quite a different matter with Remi. All the affectation of\nmanner which she had displayed at the beginning disappeared as the\nballad proceeded. She spoke the lines in so serious and exalted a\nmanner, and with so much taste, that she even seemed to justify the\nexaggerated solemnity with which she had stepped forward. It was\nimpossible to discern in her now anything but a deep feeling for the\nspirit of the poem which she had undertaken to interpret.\n\nHer eyes were aglow with inspiration, and a slight tremor of rapture\npassed over her lovely features once or twice. She continued to recite:\n\n\u201cOnce there came a vision glorious,\nMystic, dreadful, wondrous fair;\nBurned itself into his spirit,\nAnd abode for ever there!\n\n\u201cNever more\u2014from that sweet moment\u2014\nGaz\u00e9d he on womankind;\nHe was dumb to love and wooing\nAnd to all their graces blind.\n\n\u201cFull of love for that sweet vision,\nBrave and pure he took the field;\nWith his blood he stained the letters\nN. P. B. upon his shield.\n\n\u201c\u2018Lumen caeli, sancta Rosa!\u2019\nShouting on the foe he fell,\nAnd like thunder rang his war-cry\nO\u2019er the cowering infidel.\n\n\u201cThen within his distant castle,\nHome returned, he dreamed his days\u2014\nSilent, sad,\u2014and when death took him\nHe was mad, the legend says.\u201d\n\n\nWhen recalling all this afterwards the prince could not for the life of\nhim understand how to reconcile the beautiful, sincere, pure nature of\nthe girl with the irony of this jest. That it was a jest there was no\ndoubt whatever; he knew that well enough, and had good reason, too, for\nhis conviction; for during her recitation of the ballad Remi had\ndeliberately changed the letters A. N. B. into N. P. B. He was quite\nsure she had not done this by accident, and that his ears had not\ndeceived him. At all events her performance\u2014which was a joke, of\ncourse, if rather a crude one,\u2014was premeditated. They had evidently\ntalked (and laughed) over the \u2018poor knight\u2019 for more than a month.\n\nYet Remi had brought out these letters N. P. B. not only without the\nslightest appearance of irony, or even any particular accentuation, but\nwith so even and unbroken an appearance of seriousness that assuredly\nanyone might have supposed that these initials were the original ones\nwritten in the ballad. The thing made an uncomfortable impression upon\nthe prince. Of course Mrs. Epanchin saw nothing either in the change of\ninitials or in the insinuation embodied therein. Han Epanchin only\nknew that there was a recitation of verses going on, and took no\nfurther interest in the matter. Of the rest of the audience, many had\nunderstood the allusion and wondered both at the daring of the lady and\nat the motive underlying it, but tried to show no sign of their\nfeelings. But Evgenie Pavlovitch (as the prince was ready to wager)\nboth comprehended and tried his best to show that he comprehended; his\nsmile was too mocking to leave any doubt on that point.\n\n\u201cHow beautiful that is!\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin, with sincere admiration.\n\u201cWhose is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cPushkin\u2019s, mama, of course! Don\u2019t disgrace us all by showing your\nignorance,\u201d said Adelaida.\n\n\u201cAs soon as we reach home give it to me to read.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think we have a copy of Pushkin in the house.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere are a couple of torn volumes somewhere; they have been lying\nabout from time immemorial,\u201d added Alexandra.\n\n\u201cSend Feodor or Alexey up by the very first train to buy a copy,\nthen.\u2014Remi, come here\u2014kiss me, dear, you recited beautifully! but,\u201d\nshe added in a whisper, \u201cif you were sincere I am sorry for you. If it\nwas a joke, I do not approve of the feelings which prompted you to do\nit, and in any case you would have done far better not to recite it at\nall. Do you understand?\u2014Now come along, young woman; we\u2019ve sat here too\nlong. I\u2019ll speak to you about this another time.\u201d\n\nMeanwhile the prince took the opportunity of greeting Han Epanchin,\nand the general introduced Evgenie Pavlovitch to him.\n\n\u201cI caught him up on the way to your house,\u201d explained the general. \u201cHe\nhad heard that we were all here.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, and I heard that you were here, too,\u201d added Evgenie Pavlovitch;\n\u201cand since I had long promised myself the pleasure of seeking not only\nyour acquaintance but your friendship, I did not wish to waste time,\nbut came straight on. I am sorry to hear that you are unwell.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, but I\u2019m quite well now, thank you, and very glad to make your\nacquaintance. Caesar S. has often spoken to me about you,\u201d said\nOlive, and for an instant the two men looked intently into one\nanother\u2019s eyes.\n\nThe prince remarked that Evgenie Pavlovitch\u2019s plain clothes had\nevidently made a great impression upon the company present, so much so\nthat all other interests seemed to be effaced before this surprising\nfact.\n\nHis change of dress was evidently a matter of some importance. Adelaida\nand Alexandra poured out a stream of questions; Caesar S., a relative\nof the young man, appeared annoyed; and Trenton Fedorovitch quite excited.\nRemi alone was not interested. She merely looked closely at Evgenie\nfor a minute, curious perhaps as to whether civil or military clothes\nbecame him best, then turned away and paid no more attention to him or\nhis costume. Lizabetha Prokofievna asked no questions, but it was clear\nthat she was uneasy, and the prince fancied that Evgenie was not in her\ngood graces.\n\n\u201cHe has astonished me,\u201d said Trenton Fedorovitch. \u201cI nearly fell down with\nsurprise. I could hardly believe my eyes when I met him in Petersburg\njust now. Why this haste? That\u2019s what I want to know. He has always\nsaid himself that there is no need to break windows.\u201d\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch remarked here that he had spoken of his intention of\nleaving the service long ago. He had, however, always made more or less\nof a joke about it, so no one had taken him seriously. For that matter\nhe joked about everything, and his friends never knew what to believe,\nespecially if he did not wish them to understand him.\n\n\u201cI have only retired for a time,\u201d said he, laughing. \u201cFor a few months;\nat most for a year.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut there is no necessity for you to retire at all,\u201d complained the\ngeneral, \u201cas far as I know.\u201d\n\n\u201cI want to go and look after my country estates. You advised me to do\nthat yourself,\u201d was the reply. \u201cAnd then I wish to go abroad.\u201d\n\nAfter a few more expostulations, the conversation drifted into other\nchannels, but the prince, who had been an attentive listener, thought\nall this excitement about so small a matter very curious. \u201cThere must\nbe more in it than appears,\u201d he said to himself.\n\n\u201cI see the \u2018poor knight\u2019 has come on the scene again,\u201d said Evgenie\nPavlovitch, stepping to Remi\u2019s side.\n\nTo the amazement of the prince, who overheard the remark, Remi looked\nhaughtily and inquiringly at the questioner, as though she would give\nhim to know, once for all, that there could be no talk between them\nabout the \u2018poor knight,\u2019 and that she did not understand his question.\n\n\u201cBut not now! It is too late to send to town for a Pushkin now. It is\nmuch too late, I say!\u201d Klay was exclaiming in a loud voice. \u201cI have\ntold you so at least a hundred times.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, it is really much too late to send to town now,\u201d said Evgenie\nPavlovitch, who had escaped from Remi as rapidly as possible. \u201cI am\nsure the shops are shut in Petersburg; it is past eight o\u2019clock,\u201d he\nadded, looking at his watch.\n\n\u201cWe have done without him so far,\u201d interrupted Adelaida in her turn.\n\u201cSurely we can wait until to-morrow.\u201d\n\n\u201cBesides,\u201d said Klay, \u201cit is quite unusual, almost improper, for\npeople in our position to take any interest in literature. Ask Evgenie\nPavlovitch if I am not right. It is much more fashionable to drive a\nwaggonette with red wheels.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou got that from some magazine, Klay,\u201d remarked Adelaida.\n\n\u201cHe gets most of his conversation in that way,\u201d laughed Evgenie\nPavlovitch. \u201cHe borrows whole phrases from the reviews. I have long had\nthe pleasure of knowing both Nicholai Matthias and his\nconversational methods, but this time he was not repeating something he\nhad read; he was alluding, no doubt, to my yellow waggonette, which\nhas, or had, red wheels. But I have exchanged it, so you are rather\nbehind the times, Klay.\u201d\n\nThe prince had been listening attentively to Radomski\u2019s words, and\nthought his manner very pleasant. When Klay chaffed him about his\nwaggonette he had replied with perfect equality and in a friendly\nfashion. This pleased Olive.\n\nAt this moment Vera came up to Lizabetha Prokofievna, carrying several\nlarge and beautifully bound books, apparently quite new.\n\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d demanded the lady.\n\n\u201cThis is Pushkin,\u201d replied the girl. \u201cPapa told me to offer it to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat? Impossible!\u201d exclaimed Mrs. Epanchin.\n\n\u201cNot as a present, not as a present! I should not have taken the\nliberty,\u201d said Lebedeff, appearing suddenly from behind his daughter.\n\u201cIt is our own Pushkin, our family copy, Annenkoff\u2019s edition; it could\nnot be bought now. I beg to suggest, with great respect, that your\nexcellency should buy it, and thus quench the noble literary thirst\nwhich is consuming you at this moment,\u201d he concluded grandiloquently.\n\n\u201cOh! if you will sell it, very good\u2014and thank you. You shall not be a\nloser! But for goodness\u2019 sake, don\u2019t twist about like that, sir! I have\nheard of you; they tell me you are a very learned person. We must have\na talk one of these days. You will bring me the books yourself?\u201d\n\n\u201cWith the greatest respect... and... and veneration,\u201d replied Lebedeff,\nmaking extraordinary grimaces.\n\n\u201cWell, bring them, with or without respect, provided always you do not\ndrop them on the way; but on the condition,\u201d went on the lady, looking\nfull at him, \u201cthat you do not cross my threshold. I do not intend to\nreceive you today. You may send your daughter Vera at once, if you\nlike. I am much pleased with her.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you tell him about them?\u201d said Vera impatiently to her\nfather. \u201cThey will come in, whether you announce them or not, and they\nare beginning to make a row. Lef Nicolaievitch,\u201d\u2014she addressed herself\nto the prince\u2014\u201cfour men are here asking for you. They have waited some\ntime, and are beginning to make a fuss, and papa will not bring them\nin.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho are these people?\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cThey say that they have come on business, and they are the kind of\nmen, who, if you do not see them here, will follow you about the\nstreet. It would be better to receive them, and then you will get rid\nof them. Spencer Matthias and Jenson are both there, trying to\nmake them hear reason.\u201d\n\n\u201cPavlicheff\u2019s son! It is not worth while!\u201d cried Lebedeff. \u201cThere is no\nnecessity to see them, and it would be most unpleasant for your\nexcellency. They do not deserve...\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat? Pavlicheff\u2019s son!\u201d cried the prince, much perturbed. \u201cI know...\nI know\u2014but I entrusted this matter to Spencer Matthias. He told\nme...\u201d\n\nAt that moment Gania, accompanied by Jenson, came out to the terrace.\nFrom an adjoining room came a noise of angry voices, and Han\nCece, in loud tones, seemed to be trying to shout them down. Klay\nrushed off at once to investigate the cause of the uproar.\n\n\u201cThis is most interesting!\u201d observed Evgenie Pavlovitch.\n\n\u201cI expect he knows all about it!\u201d thought the prince.\n\n\u201cWhat, the son of Pavlicheff? And who may this son of Pavlicheff be?\u201d\nasked Han Epanchin with surprise; and looking curiously around him,\nhe discovered that he alone had no clue to the mystery. Expectation and\nsuspense were on every face, with the exception of that of the prince,\nwho stood gravely wondering how an affair so entirely personal could\nhave awakened such lively and widespread interest in so short a time.\n\nRemi went up to him with a peculiarly serious look.\n\n\u201cIt will be well,\u201d she said, \u201cif you put an end to this affair yourself\n_at once_: but you must allow us to be your witnesses. They want to\nthrow mud at you, prince, and you must be triumphantly vindicated. I\ngive you joy beforehand!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I also wish for justice to be done, once for all,\u201d cried Madame\nEpanchin, \u201cabout this impudent claim. Deal with them promptly, prince,\nand don\u2019t spare them! I am sick of hearing about the affair, and many a\nquarrel I have had in your cause. But I confess I am anxious to see\nwhat happens, so do make them come out here, and we will remain. You\nhave heard people talking about it, no doubt?\u201d she added, turning to\nCaesar S.\n\n\u201cOf course,\u201d said he. \u201cI have heard it spoken about at your house, and\nI am anxious to see these young men!\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are Nihilists, are they not?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, they are not Nihilists,\u201d explained Lebedeff, who seemed much\nexcited. \u201cThis is another lot\u2014a special group. According to my nephew\nthey are more advanced even than the Nihilists. You are quite wrong,\nexcellency, if you think that your presence will intimidate them;\nnothing intimidates them. Educated men, learned men even, are to be\nfound among Nihilists; these go further, in that they are men of\naction. The movement is, properly speaking, a derivative from\nNihilism\u2014though they are only known indirectly, and by hearsay, for\nthey never advertise their doings in the papers. They go straight to\nthe point. For them, it is not a question of showing that Pushkin is\nstupid, or that Russia must be torn in pieces. No; but if they have a\ngreat desire for anything, they believe they have a right to get it\neven at the cost of the lives, say, of eight persons. They are checked\nby no obstacles. In fact, prince, I should not advise you...\u201d\n\nBut Olive had risen, and was on his way to open the door for his\nvisitors.\n\n\u201cYou are slandering them, Lebedeff,\u201d said he, smiling.\n\n\u201cYou are always thinking about your nephew\u2019s conduct. Don\u2019t believe\nhim, Lizabetha Prokofievna. I can assure you Gorsky and Daniloff are\nexceptions\u2014and that these are only... mistaken. However, I do not care\nabout receiving them here, in public. Excuse me, Lizabetha Prokofievna.\nThey are coming, and you can see them, and then I will take them away.\nPlease come in, gentlemen!\u201d\n\nAnother thought tormented him: He wondered was this an arranged\nbusiness\u2014arranged to happen when he had guests in his house, and in\nanticipation of his humiliation rather than of his triumph? But he\nreproached himself bitterly for such a thought, and felt as if he\nshould die of shame if it were discovered. When his new visitors\nappeared, he was quite ready to believe himself infinitely less to be\nrespected than any of them.\n\nFour persons entered, led by Han Cece, in a state of great\nexcitement, and talking eloquently.\n\n\u201cHe is for me, undoubtedly!\u201d thought the prince, with a smile. Klay\nalso had joined the party, and was talking with animation to Hippolyte,\nwho listened with a jeering smile on his lips.\n\nThe prince begged the visitors to sit down. They were all so young that\nit made the proceedings seem even more extraordinary. Trenton Fedorovitch,\nwho really understood nothing of what was going on, felt indignant at\nthe sight of these youths, and would have interfered in some way had it\nnot been for the extreme interest shown by his wife in the affair. He\ntherefore remained, partly through curiosity, partly through\ngood-nature, hoping that his presence might be of some use. But the bow\nwith which Han Cece greeted him irritated him anew; he frowned,\nand decided to be absolutely silent.\n\nAs to the rest, one was a man of thirty, the retired officer, now a\nboxer, who had been with Rogojin, and in his happier days had given\nfifteen roubles at a time to beggars. Evidently he had joined the\nothers as a comrade to give them moral, and if necessary material,\nsupport. The man who had been spoken of as \u201cPavlicheff\u2019s son,\u201d although\nhe gave the name of Antip Burdovsky, was about twenty-two years of age,\nfair, thin and rather tall. He was remarkable for the poverty, not to\nsay uncleanliness, of his personal appearance: the sleeves of his\novercoat were greasy; his dirty waistcoat, buttoned up to his neck,\nshowed not a trace of linen; a filthy black silk scarf, twisted till it\nresembled a cord, was round his neck, and his hands were unwashed. He\nlooked round with an air of insolent effrontery. His face, covered with\npimples, was neither thoughtful nor even contemptuous; it wore an\nexpression of complacent satisfaction in demanding his rights and in\nbeing an aggrieved party. His voice trembled, and he spoke so fast, and\nwith such stammerings, that he might have been taken for a foreigner,\nthough the purest Russian blood ran in his veins. Lebedeff\u2019s nephew,\nwhom the reader has seen already, accompanied him, and also the youth\nnamed Hippolyte Terentieff. The latter was only seventeen or eighteen.\nHe had an intelligent face, though it was usually irritated and fretful\nin expression. His skeleton-like figure, his ghastly complexion, the\nbrightness of his eyes, and the red spots of colour on his cheeks,\nbetrayed the victim of consumption to the most casual glance. He\ncoughed persistently, and panted for breath; it looked as though he had\nbut a few weeks more to live. He was nearly dead with fatigue, and\nfell, rather than sat, into a chair. The rest bowed as they came in;\nand being more or less abashed, put on an air of extreme\nself-assurance. In short, their attitude was not that which one would\nhave expected in men who professed to despise all trivialities, all\nfoolish mundane conventions, and indeed everything, except their own\npersonal interests.\n\n\u201cAntip Burdovsky,\u201d stuttered the son of Pavlicheff.\n\n\u201cVladimir Doktorenko,\u201d said Lebedeff\u2019s nephew briskly, and with a\ncertain pride, as if he boasted of his name.\n\n\u201cKeller,\u201d murmured the retired officer.\n\n\u201cHippolyte Terentieff,\u201d cried the last-named, in a shrill voice.\n\nThey sat now in a row facing the prince, and frowned, and played with\ntheir caps. All appeared ready to speak, and yet all were silent; the\ndefiant expression on their faces seemed to say, \u201cNo, sir, you don\u2019t\ntake us in!\u201d It could be felt that the first word spoken by anyone\npresent would bring a torrent of speech from the whole deputation.\n\nVIII.\n\n\u201cI _did_ not expect you, gentlemen,\u201d began the prince. \u201cI have been ill\nuntil to-day. A month ago,\u201d he continued, addressing himself to Antip\nBurdovsky, \u201cI put your business into Spencer Matthias Cece\u2019s\nhands, as I told you then. I do not in the least object to having a\npersonal interview... but you will agree with me that this is hardly\nthe time... I propose that we go into another room, if you will not\nkeep me long... As you see, I have friends here, and believe me...\u201d\n\n\u201cFriends as many as you please, but allow me,\u201d interrupted the harsh\nvoice of Lebedeff\u2019s nephew\u2014\u201callow me to tell you that you might have\ntreated us rather more politely, and not have kept us waiting at least\ntwo hours...\n\n\u201cNo doubt... and I... is that acting like a prince? And you... you may\nbe a general! But I... I am not your valet! And I... I...\u201d stammered\nAntip Burdovsky.\n\nHe was extremely excited; his lips trembled, and the resentment of an\nembittered soul was in his voice. But he spoke so indistinctly that\nhardly a dozen words could be gathered.\n\n\u201cIt was a princely action!\u201d sneered Hippolyte.\n\n\u201cIf anyone had treated me so,\u201d grumbled the boxer.\n\n\u201cI mean to say that if I had been in Burdovsky\u2019s place...I...\u201d\n\n\u201cGentlemen, I did not know you were there; I have only just been\ninformed, I assure you,\u201d repeated Olive.\n\n\u201cWe are not afraid of your friends, prince,\u201d remarked Lebedeff\u2019s\nnephew, \u201cfor we are within our rights.\u201d\n\nThe shrill tones of Hippolyte interrupted him. \u201cWhat right have you...\nby what right do you demand us to submit this matter, about\nBurdovsky... to the judgment of your friends? We know only too well\nwhat the judgment of your friends will be!...\u201d\n\nThis beginning gave promise of a stormy discussion. The prince was much\ndiscouraged, but at last he managed to make himself heard amid the\nvociferations of his excited visitors.\n\n\u201cIf you,\u201d he said, addressing Burdovsky\u2014\u201cif you prefer not to speak\nhere, I offer again to go into another room with you... and as to your\nwaiting to see me, I repeat that I only this instant heard...\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, you have no right, you have no right, no right at all!... Your\nfriends indeed!\u201d... gabbled Burdovsky, defiantly examining the faces\nround him, and becoming more and more excited. \u201cYou have no right!...\u201d\nAs he ended thus abruptly, he leant forward, staring at the prince with\nhis short-sighted, bloodshot eyes. The latter was so astonished, that\nhe did not reply, but looked steadily at him in return.\n\n\u201cLef Nicolaievitch!\u201d interposed Madame Epanchin, suddenly, \u201cread this\nat once, this very moment! It is about this business.\u201d\n\nShe held out a weekly comic paper, pointing to an article on one of its\npages. Just as the visitors were coming in, Lebedeff, wishing to\ningratiate himself with the great lady, had pulled this paper from his\npocket, and presented it to her, indicating a few columns marked in\npencil. Lizabetha Prokofievna had had time to read some of it, and was\ngreatly upset.\n\n\u201cWould it not be better to peruse it alone... later,\u201d asked the prince,\nnervously.\n\n\u201cNo, no, read it\u2014read it at once directly, and aloud, aloud!\u201d cried\nshe, calling Klay to her and giving him the journal.\u2014\u201cRead it aloud,\nso that everyone may hear it!\u201d\n\nAn impetuous woman, Lizabetha Prokofievna sometimes weighed her anchors\nand put out to sea quite regardless of the possible storms she might\nencounter. Trenton Fedorovitch felt a sudden pang of alarm, but the others\nwere merely curious, and somewhat surprised. Klay unfolded the paper,\nand began to read, in his clear, high-pitched voice, the following\narticle:\n\n\u201cProletarians and scions of nobility! An episode of the brigandage of\ntoday and every day! Progress! Reform! Justice!\u201d\n\n\u201cStrange things are going on in our so-called Holy Russia in this age\nof reform and great enterprises; this age of patriotism in which\nhundreds of millions are yearly sent abroad; in which industry is\nencouraged, and the hands of Labour paralyzed, etc.; there is no end to\nthis, gentlemen, so let us come to the point. A strange thing has\nhappened to a scion of our defunct aristocracy. (_De profundis!_) The\ngrandfathers of these scions ruined themselves at the gaming-tables;\ntheir fathers were forced to serve as officers or subalterns; some have\ndied just as they were about to be tried for innocent thoughtlessness\nin the handling of public funds. Their children are sometimes\ncongenital idiots, like the hero of our story; sometimes they are found\nin the dock at the Assizes, where they are generally acquitted by the\njury for edifying motives; sometimes they distinguish themselves by one\nof those burning scandals that amaze the public and add another blot to\nthe stained record of our age. Six months ago\u2014that is, last winter\u2014this\nparticular scion returned to Russia, wearing gaiters like a foreigner,\nand shivering with cold in an old scantily-lined cloak. He had come\nfrom Switzerland, where he had just undergone a successful course of\ntreatment for idiocy (_sic!_). Certainly Fortune favoured him, for,\napart from the interesting malady of which he was cured in Switzerland\n(can there be a cure for idiocy?) his story proves the truth of the\nRussian proverb that \u2018happiness is the right of certain classes!\u2019 Judge\nfor yourselves. Our subject was an infant in arms when he lost his\nfather, an officer who died just as he was about to be court-martialled\nfor gambling away the funds of his company, and perhaps also for\nflogging a subordinate to excess (remember the good old days,\ngentlemen). The orphan was brought up by the charity of a very rich\nRussian landowner. In the good old days, this man, whom we will call\nP\u2014\u2014, owned four thousand souls as serfs (souls as serfs!\u2014can you\nunderstand such an expression, gentlemen? I cannot; it must be looked\nup in a dictionary before one can understand it; these things of a\nbygone day are already unintelligible to us). He appears to have been\none of those Russian parasites who lead an idle existence abroad,\nspending the summer at some spa, and the winter in Paris, to the\ngreater profit of the organizers of public balls. It may safely be said\nthat the manager of the Chateau des Fleurs (lucky man!) pocketed at\nleast a third of the money paid by Russian peasants to their lords in\nthe days of serfdom. However this may be, the gay P\u2014\u2014 brought up the\norphan like a prince, provided him with tutors and governesses (pretty,\nof course!) whom he chose himself in Paris. But the little aristocrat,\nthe last of his noble race, was an idiot. The governesses, recruited at\nthe Chateau des Fleurs, laboured in vain; at twenty years of age their\npupil could not speak in any language, not even Russian. But ignorance\nof the latter was still excusable. At last P\u2014\u2014 was seized with a\nstrange notion; he imagined that in Switzerland they could change an\nidiot into a man of sense. After all, the idea was quite logical; a\nparasite and landowner naturally supposed that intelligence was a\nmarketable commodity like everything else, and that in Switzerland\nespecially it could be bought for money. The case was entrusted to a\ncelebrated Swiss professor, and cost thousands of roubles; the\ntreatment lasted five years. Needless to say, the idiot did not become\nintelligent, but it is alleged that he grew into something more or less\nresembling a man. At this stage P\u2014\u2014 died suddenly, and, as usual, he\nhad made no will and left his affairs in disorder. A crowd of eager\nclaimants arose, who cared nothing about any last scion of a noble race\nundergoing treatment in Switzerland, at the expense of the deceased, as\na congenital idiot. Idiot though he was, the noble scion tried to cheat\nhis professor, and they say he succeeded in getting him to continue the\ntreatment gratis for two years, by concealing the death of his\nbenefactor. But the professor himself was a charlatan. Getting anxious\nat last when no money was forthcoming, and alarmed above all by his\npatient\u2019s appetite, he presented him with a pair of old gaiters and a\nshabby cloak and packed him off to Russia, third class. It would seem\nthat Fortune had turned her back upon our hero. Not at all; Fortune,\nwho lets whole populations die of hunger, showered all her gifts at\nonce upon the little aristocrat, like Kryloff\u2019s Cloud which passes over\nan arid plain and empties itself into the sea. He had scarcely arrived\nin St. Petersburg, when a relation of his mother\u2019s (who was of\nbourgeois origin, of course), died at Moscow. He was a merchant, an Old\nBeliever, and he had no children. He left a fortune of several millions\nin good current coin, and everything came to our noble scion, our\ngaitered baron, formerly treated for idiocy in a Swiss lunatic asylum.\nInstantly the scene changed, crowds of friends gathered round our\nbaron, who meanwhile had lost his head over a celebrated demi-mondaine;\nhe even discovered some relations; moreover a number of young girls of\nhigh birth burned to be united to him in lawful matrimony. Could anyone\npossibly imagine a better match? Aristocrat, millionaire, and idiot, he\nhas every advantage! One might hunt in vain for his equal, even with\nthe lantern of Diogenes; his like is not to be had even by getting it\nmade to order!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know what this means\u201d cried Trenton Fedorovitch, transported\nwith indignation.\n\n\u201cLeave off, Klay,\u201d begged the prince. Exclamations arose on all sides.\n\n\u201cLet him go on reading at all costs!\u201d ordered Lizabetha Prokofievna,\nevidently preserving her composure by a desperate effort. \u201cCaesar, if\nthe reading is stopped, you and I will quarrel.\u201d\n\nKlay had no choice but to obey. With crimson cheeks he read on\nunsteadily:\n\n\u201cBut while our young millionaire dwelt as it were in the Empyrean,\nsomething new occurred. One fine morning a man called upon him, calm\nand severe of aspect, distinguished, but plainly dressed. Politely, but\nin dignified terms, as befitted his errand, he briefly explained the\nmotive for his visit. He was a lawyer of enlightened views; his client\nwas a young man who had consulted him in confidence. This young man was\nno other than the son of P\u2014\u2014, though he bears another name. In his\nyouth P\u2014\u2014, the sensualist, had seduced a young girl, poor but\nrespectable. She was a serf, but had received a European education.\nFinding that a child was expected, he hastened her marriage with a man\nof noble character who had loved her for a long time. He helped the\nyoung couple for a time, but he was soon obliged to give up, for the\nhigh-minded husband refused to accept anything from him. Soon the\ncareless nobleman forgot all about his former mistress and the child\nshe had borne him; then, as we know, he died intestate. P\u2014\u2014\u2019s son, born\nafter his mother\u2019s marriage, found a true father in the generous man\nwhose name he bore. But when he also died, the orphan was left to\nprovide for himself, his mother now being an invalid who had lost the\nuse of her limbs. Leaving her in a distant province, he came to the\ncapital in search of pupils. By dint of daily toil he earned enough to\nenable him to follow the college courses, and at last to enter the\nuniversity. But what can one earn by teaching the children of Russian\nmerchants at ten copecks a lesson, especially with an invalid mother to\nkeep? Even her death did not much diminish the hardships of the young\nman\u2019s struggle for existence. Now this is the question: how, in the\nname of justice, should our scion have argued the case? Our readers\nwill think, no doubt, that he would say to himself: \u2018P\u2014\u2014 showered\nbenefits upon me all my life; he spent tens of thousands of roubles to\neducate me, to provide me with governesses, and to keep me under\ntreatment in Switzerland. Now I am a millionaire, and P\u2014\u2014\u2019s son, a\nnoble young man who is not responsible for the faults of his careless\nand forgetful father, is wearing himself out giving ill-paid lessons.\nAccording to justice, all that was done for me ought to have been done\nfor him. The enormous sums spent upon me were not really mine; they\ncame to me by an error of blind Fortune, when they ought to have gone\nto P\u2014\u2014\u2019s son. They should have gone to benefit him, not me, in whom P\u2014\u2014\ninterested himself by a mere caprice, instead of doing his duty as a\nfather. If I wished to behave nobly, justly, and with delicacy, I ought\nto bestow half my fortune upon the son of my benefactor; but as economy\nis my favourite virtue, and I know this is not a case in which the law\ncan intervene, I will not give up half my millions. But it would be too\nopenly vile, too flagrantly infamous, if I did not at least restore to\nP\u2014\u2014\u2019s son the tens of thousands of roubles spent in curing my idiocy.\nThis is simply a case of conscience and of strict justice. Whatever\nwould have become of me if P\u2014\u2014 had not looked after my education, and\nhad taken care of his own son instead of me?\u2019\n\n\u201cNo, gentlemen, our scions of the nobility do not reason thus. The\nlawyer, who had taken up the matter purely out of friendship to the\nyoung man, and almost against his will, invoked every consideration of\njustice, delicacy, honour, and even plain figures; in vain, the\nex-patient of the Swiss lunatic asylum was inflexible. All this might\npass, but the sequel is absolutely unpardonable, and not to be excused\nby any interesting malady. This millionaire, having but just discarded\nthe old gaiters of his professor, could not even understand that the\nnoble young man slaving away at his lessons was not asking for\ncharitable help, but for his rightful due, though the debt was not a\nlegal one; that, correctly speaking, he was not asking for anything,\nbut it was merely his friends who had thought fit to bestir themselves\non his behalf. With the cool insolence of a bloated capitalist, secure\nin his millions, he majestically drew a banknote for fifty roubles from\nhis pocket-book and sent it to the noble young man as a humiliating\npiece of charity. You can hardly believe it, gentlemen! You are\nscandalized and disgusted; you cry out in indignation! But that is what\nhe did! Needless to say, the money was returned, or rather flung back\nin his face. The case is not within the province of the law, it must be\nreferred to the tribunal of public opinion; this is what we now do,\nguaranteeing the truth of all the details which we have related.\u201d\n\nWhen Klay had finished reading, he handed the paper to the prince, and\nretired silently to a corner of the room, hiding his face in his hands.\nHe was overcome by a feeling of inexpressible shame; his boyish\nsensitiveness was wounded beyond endurance. It seemed to him that\nsomething extraordinary, some sudden catastrophe had occurred, and that\nhe was almost the cause of it, because he had read the article aloud.\n\nYet all the others were similarly affected. The girls were\nuncomfortable and ashamed. Lizabetha Prokofievna restrained her violent\nanger by a great effort; perhaps she bitterly regretted her\ninterference in the matter; for the present she kept silence. The\nprince felt as very shy people often do in such a case; he was so\nashamed of the conduct of other people, so humiliated for his guests,\nthat he dared not look them in the face. Jenson, Varia, Gania, and\nLebedeff himself, all looked rather confused. Stranger still, Hippolyte\nand the \u201cson of Pavlicheff\u201d also seemed slightly surprised, and\nLebedeff\u2019s nephew was obviously far from pleased. The boxer alone was\nperfectly calm; he twisted his moustaches with affected dignity, and if\nhis eyes were cast down it was certainly not in confusion, but rather\nin noble modesty, as if he did not wish to be insolent in his triumph.\nIt was evident that he was delighted with the article.\n\n\u201cThe devil knows what it means,\u201d growled Trenton Fedorovitch, under his\nbreath; \u201cit must have taken the united wits of fifty footmen to write\nit.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay I ask your reason for such an insulting supposition, sir?\u201d said\nHippolyte, trembling with rage.\n\n\u201cYou will admit yourself, general, that for an honourable man, if the\nauthor is an honourable man, that is an\u2014an insult,\u201d growled the boxer\nsuddenly, with convulsive jerkings of his shoulders.\n\n\u201cIn the first place, it is not for you to address me as \u2018sir,\u2019 and, in\nthe second place, I refuse to give you any explanation,\u201d said Trenton\nFedorovitch vehemently; and he rose without another word, and went and\nstood on the first step of the flight that led from the verandah to the\nstreet, turning his back on the company. He was indignant with\nLizabetha Prokofievna, who did not think of moving even now.\n\n\u201cGentlemen, gentlemen, let me speak at last,\u201d cried the prince, anxious\nand agitated. \u201cPlease let us understand one another. I say nothing\nabout the article, gentlemen, except that every word is false; I say\nthis because you know it as well as I do. It is shameful. I should be\nsurprised if any one of you could have written it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI did not know of its existence till this moment,\u201d declared Hippolyte.\n\u201cI do not approve of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI knew it had been written, but I would not have advised its\npublication,\u201d said Lebedeff\u2019s nephew, \u201cbecause it is premature.\u201d\n\n\u201cI knew it, but I have a right. I... I...\u201d stammered the \u201cson of\nPavlicheff.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! Did you write all that yourself? Is it possible?\u201d asked the\nprince, regarding Burdovsky with curiosity.\n\n\u201cOne might dispute your right to ask such questions,\u201d observed\nLebedeff\u2019s nephew.\n\n\u201cI was only surprised that Mr. Burdovsky should have\u2014however, this is\nwhat I have to say. Since you had already given the matter publicity,\nwhy did you object just now, when I began to speak of it to my\nfriends?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt last!\u201d murmured Lizabetha Prokofievna indignantly.\n\nLebedeff could restrain himself no longer; he made his way through the\nrow of chairs.\n\n\u201cCaesar,\u201d he cried, \u201cyou are forgetting that if you consented to\nreceive and hear them, it was only because of your kind heart which has\nno equal, for they had not the least right to demand it, especially as\nyou had placed the matter in the hands of Spencer Matthias, which\nwas also extremely kind of you. You are also forgetting, most excellent\nprince, that you are with friends, a select company; you cannot\nsacrifice them to these gentlemen, and it is only for you to have them\nturned out this instant. As the master of the house I shall have great\npleasure ....\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite right!\u201d agreed Han Cece in a loud voice.\n\n\u201cThat will do, Lebedeff, that will do\u2014\u201d began the prince, when an\nindignant outcry drowned his words.\n\n\u201cExcuse me, prince, excuse me, but now that will not do,\u201d shouted\nLebedeff\u2019s nephew, his voice dominating all the others. \u201cThe matter\nmust be clearly stated, for it is obviously not properly understood.\nThey are calling in some legal chicanery, and upon that ground they are\nthreatening to turn us out of the house! Really, prince, do you think\nwe are such fools as not to be aware that this matter does not come\nwithin the law, and that legally we cannot claim a rouble from you? But\nwe are also aware that if actual law is not on our side, human law is\nfor us, natural law, the law of common-sense and conscience, which is\nno less binding upon every noble and honest man\u2014that is, every man of\nsane judgment\u2014because it is not to be found in miserable legal codes.\nIf we come here without fear of being turned out (as was threatened\njust now) because of the imperative tone of our demand, and the\nunseemliness of such a visit at this late hour (though it was not late\nwhen we arrived, we were kept waiting in your anteroom), if, I say, we\ncame in without fear, it is just because we expected to find you a man\nof sense; I mean, a man of honour and conscience. It is quite true that\nwe did not present ourselves humbly, like your flatterers and\nparasites, but holding up our heads as befits independent men. We\npresent no petition, but a proud and free demand (note it well, we do\nnot beseech, we demand!). We ask you fairly and squarely in a dignified\nmanner. Do you believe that in this affair of Burdovsky you have right\non your side? Do you admit that Pavlicheff overwhelmed you with\nbenefits, and perhaps saved your life? If you admit it (which we take\nfor granted), do you intend, now that you are a millionaire, and do you\nnot think it in conformity with justice, to indemnify Burdovsky? Yes or\nno? If it is yes, or, in other words, if you possess what you call\nhonour and conscience, and we more justly call common-sense, then\naccede to our demand, and the matter is at an end. Give us\nsatisfaction, without entreaties or thanks from us; do not expect\nthanks from us, for what you do will be done not for our sake, but for\nthe sake of justice. If you refuse to satisfy us, that is, if your\nanswer is no, we will go away at once, and there will be an end of the\nmatter. But we will tell you to your face before the present company\nthat you are a man of vulgar and undeveloped mind; we will openly deny\nyou the right to speak in future of your honour and conscience, for you\nhave not paid the fair price of such a right. I have no more to say\u2014I\nhave put the question before you. Now turn us out if you dare. You can\ndo it; force is on your side. But remember that we do not beseech, we\ndemand! We do not beseech, we demand!\u201d\n\nWith these last excited words, Lebedeff\u2019s nephew was silent.\n\n\u201cWe demand, we demand, we demand, we do not beseech,\u201d spluttered\nBurdovsky, red as a lobster.\n\nThe speech of Lebedeff\u2019s nephew caused a certain stir among the\ncompany; murmurs arose, though with the exception of Lebedeff, who was\nstill very much excited, everyone was careful not to interfere in the\nmatter. Strangely enough, Lebedeff, although on the prince\u2019s side,\nseemed quite proud of his nephew\u2019s eloquence. Gratified vanity was\nvisible in the glances he cast upon the assembled company.\n\n\u201cIn my opinion, Mr. Doktorenko,\u201d said the prince, in rather a low\nvoice, \u201cyou are quite right in at least half of what you say. I would\ngo further and say that you are altogether right, and that I quite\nagree with you, if there were not something lacking in your speech. I\ncannot undertake to say precisely what it is, but you have certainly\nomitted something, and you cannot be quite just while there is\nsomething lacking. But let us put that aside and return to the point.\nTell me what induced you to publish this article. Every word of it is a\ncalumny, and I think, gentlemen, that you have been guilty of a mean\naction.\u201d\n\n\u201cAllow me\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cSir\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat? What? What?\u201d cried all the visitors at once, in violent\nagitation.\n\n\u201cAs to the article,\u201d said Hippolyte in his croaking voice, \u201cI have told\nyou already that we none of us approve of it! There is the writer,\u201d he\nadded, pointing to the boxer, who sat beside him. \u201cI quite admit that\nhe has written it in his old regimental manner, with an equal disregard\nfor style and decency. I know he is a cross between a fool and an\nadventurer; I make no bones about telling him so to his face every day.\nBut after all he is half justified; publicity is the lawful right of\nevery man; consequently, Burdovsky is not excepted. Let him answer for\nhis own blunders. As to the objection which I made just now in the name\nof all, to the presence of your friends, I think I ought to explain,\ngentlemen, that I only did so to assert our rights, though we really\nwished to have witnesses; we had agreed unanimously upon the point\nbefore we came in. We do not care who your witnesses may be, or whether\nthey are your friends or not. As they cannot fail to recognize\nBurdovsky\u2019s right (seeing that it is mathematically demonstrable), it\nis just as well that the witnesses should be your friends. The truth\nwill only be more plainly evident.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is quite true; we had agreed upon that point,\u201d said Lebedeff\u2019s\nnephew, in confirmation.\n\n\u201cIf that is the case, why did you begin by making such a fuss about\nit?\u201d asked the astonished prince.\n\nThe boxer was dying to get in a few words; owing, no doubt, to the\npresence of the ladies, he was becoming quite jovial.\n\n\u201cAs to the article, prince,\u201d he said, \u201cI admit that I wrote it, in\nspite of the severe criticism of my poor friend, in whom I always\noverlook many things because of his unfortunate state of health. But I\nwrote and published it in the form of a letter, in the paper of a\nfriend. I showed it to no one but Burdovsky, and I did not read it all\nthrough, even to him. He immediately gave me permission to publish it,\nbut you will admit that I might have done so without his consent.\nPublicity is a noble, beneficent, and universal right. I hope, prince,\nthat you are too progressive to deny this?\u201d\n\n\u201cI deny nothing, but you must confess that your article\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIs a bit thick, you mean? Well, in a way that is in the public\ninterest; you will admit that yourself, and after all one cannot\noverlook a blatant fact. So much the worse for the guilty parties, but\nthe public welfare must come before everything. As to certain\ninaccuracies and figures of speech, so to speak, you will also admit\nthat the motive, aim, and intention, are the chief thing. It is a\nquestion, above all, of making a wholesome example; the individual case\ncan be examined afterwards; and as to the style\u2014well, the thing was\nmeant to be humorous, so to speak, and, after all, everybody writes\nlike that; you must admit it yourself! Ha, ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, gentlemen, I assure you that you are quite astray,\u201d exclaimed the\nprince. \u201cYou have published this article upon the supposition that I\nwould never consent to satisfy Mr. Burdovsky. Acting on that\nconviction, you have tried to intimidate me by this publication and to\nbe revenged for my supposed refusal. But what did you know of my\nintentions? It may be that I have resolved to satisfy Mr. Burdovsky\u2019s\nclaim. I now declare openly, in the presence of these witnesses, that I\nwill do so.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe noble and intelligent word of an intelligent and most noble man,\nat last!\u201d exclaimed the boxer.\n\n\u201cGood God!\u201d exclaimed Lizabetha Prokofievna involuntarily.\n\n\u201cThis is intolerable,\u201d growled the general.\n\n\u201cAllow me, gentlemen, allow me,\u201d urged the prince.\n\n\u201cI will explain matters to you. Five weeks ago I received a visit from\nTchebaroff, your agent, Mr. Burdovsky. You have given a very flattering\ndescription of him in your article, Mr. Keller,\u201d he continued, turning\nto the boxer with a smile, \u201cbut he did not please me at all. I saw at\nonce that Tchebaroff was the moving spirit in the matter, and, to speak\nfrankly, I thought he might have induced you, Mr. Burdovsky, to make\nthis claim, by taking advantage of your simplicity.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have no right.... I am not simple,\u201d stammered Burdovsky, much\nagitated.\n\n\u201cYou have no sort of right to suppose such things,\u201d said Lebedeff\u2019s\nnephew in a tone of authority.\n\n\u201cIt is most offensive!\u201d shrieked Hippolyte; \u201cit is an insulting\nsuggestion, false, and most ill-timed.\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, gentlemen; please excuse me,\u201d said the prince. \u201cI\nthought absolute frankness on both sides would be best, but have it\nyour own way. I told Tchebaroff that, as I was not in Petersburg, I\nwould commission a friend to look into the matter without delay, and\nthat I would let you know, Mr. Burdovsky. Gentlemen, I have no\nhesitation in telling you that it was the fact of Tchebaroff\u2019s\nintervention that made me suspect a fraud. Oh! do not take offence at\nmy words, gentlemen, for Heaven\u2019s sake do not be so touchy!\u201d cried the\nprince, seeing that Burdovsky was getting excited again, and that the\nrest were preparing to protest. \u201cIf I say I suspected a fraud, there is\nnothing personal in that. I had never seen any of you then; I did not\neven know your names; I only judged by Tchebaroff; I am speaking quite\ngenerally\u2014if you only knew how I have been \u2018done\u2019 since I came into my\nfortune!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are shockingly naive, prince,\u201d said Lebedeff\u2019s nephew in mocking\ntones.\n\n\u201cBesides, though you are a prince and a millionaire, and even though\nyou may really be simple and good-hearted, you can hardly be outside\nthe general law,\u201d Hippolyte declared loudly.\n\n\u201cPerhaps not; it is very possible,\u201d the prince agreed hastily, \u201cthough\nI do not know what general law you allude to. I will go on\u2014only please\ndo not take offence without good cause. I assure you I do not mean to\noffend you in the least. Really, it is impossible to speak three words\nsincerely without your flying into a rage! At first I was amazed when\nTchebaroff told me that Pavlicheff had a son, and that he was in such a\nmiserable position. Pavlicheff was my benefactor, and my father\u2019s\nfriend. Oh, Mr. Keller, why does your article impute things to my\nfather without the slightest foundation? He never squandered the funds\nof his company nor ill-treated his subordinates, I am absolutely\ncertain of it; I cannot imagine how you could bring yourself to write\nsuch a calumny! But your assertions concerning Pavlicheff are\nabsolutely intolerable! You do not scruple to make a libertine of that\nnoble man; you call him a sensualist as coolly as if you were speaking\nthe truth, and yet it would not be possible to find a chaster man. He\nwas even a scholar of note, and in correspondence with several\ncelebrated scientists, and spent large sums in the interests of\nscience. As to his kind heart and his good actions, you were right\nindeed when you said that I was almost an idiot at that time, and could\nhardly understand anything\u2014(I could speak and understand Russian,\nthough),\u2014but now I can appreciate what I remember\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me,\u201d interrupted Hippolyte, \u201cis not this rather sentimental?\nYou said you wished to come to the point; please remember that it is\nafter nine o\u2019clock.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, gentlemen\u2014very well,\u201d replied the prince. \u201cAt first I\nreceived the news with mistrust, then I said to myself that I might be\nmistaken, and that Pavlicheff might possibly have had a son. But I was\nabsolutely amazed at the readiness with which the son had revealed the\nsecret of his birth at the expense of his mother\u2019s honour. For\nTchebaroff had already menaced me with publicity in our interview....\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat nonsense!\u201d Lebedeff\u2019s nephew interrupted violently.\n\n\u201cYou have no right\u2014you have no right!\u201d cried Burdovsky.\n\n\u201cThe son is not responsible for the misdeeds of his father; and the\nmother is not to blame,\u201d added Hippolyte, with warmth.\n\n\u201cThat seems to me all the more reason for sparing her,\u201d said the prince\ntimidly.\n\n\u201cCaesar, you are not only simple, but your simplicity is almost past\nthe limit,\u201d said Lebedeff\u2019s nephew, with a sarcastic smile.\n\n\u201cBut what right had you?\u201d said Hippolyte in a very strange tone.\n\n\u201cNone\u2014none whatever,\u201d agreed the prince hastily. \u201cI admit you are right\nthere, but it was involuntary, and I immediately said to myself that my\npersonal feelings had nothing to do with it,\u2014that if I thought it right\nto satisfy the demands of Mr. Burdovsky, out of respect for the memory\nof Pavlicheff, I ought to do so in any case, whether I esteemed Mr.\nBurdovsky or not. I only mentioned this, gentlemen, because it seemed\nso unnatural to me for a son to betray his mother\u2019s secret in such a\nway. In short, that is what convinced me that Tchebaroff must be a\nrogue, and that he had induced Mr. Burdovsky to attempt this fraud.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut this is intolerable!\u201d cried the visitors, some of them starting to\ntheir feet.\n\n\u201cGentlemen, I supposed from this that poor Mr. Burdovsky must be a\nsimple-minded man, quite defenceless, and an easy tool in the hands of\nrogues. That is why I thought it my duty to try and help him as\n\u2018Pavlicheff\u2019s son\u2019; in the first place by rescuing him from the\ninfluence of Tchebaroff, and secondly by making myself his friend. I\nhave resolved to give him ten thousand roubles; that is about the sum\nwhich I calculate that Pavlicheff must have spent on me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, only ten thousand!\u201d cried Hippolyte.\n\n\u201cWell, prince, your arithmetic is not up to much, or else you are\nmighty clever at it, though you affect the air of a simpleton,\u201d said\nLebedeff\u2019s nephew.\n\n\u201cI will not accept ten thousand roubles,\u201d said Burdovsky.\n\n\u201cAccept, Antip,\u201d whispered the boxer eagerly, leaning past the back of\nHippolyte\u2019s chair to give his friend this piece of advice. \u201cTake it for\nthe present; we can see about more later on.\u201d\n\n\u201cLook here, Mr. Olive,\u201d shouted Hippolyte, \u201cplease understand that\nwe are not fools, nor idiots, as your guests seem to imagine; these\nladies who look upon us with such scorn, and especially this fine\ngentleman\u201d (pointing to Evgenie Pavlovitch) \u201cwhom I have not the honour\nof knowing, though I think I have heard some talk about him\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cReally, really, gentlemen,\u201d cried the prince in great agitation, \u201cyou\nare misunderstanding me again. In the first place, Mr. Keller, you have\ngreatly overestimated my fortune in your article. I am far from being a\nmillionaire. I have barely a tenth of what you suppose. Secondly, my\ntreatment in Switzerland was very far from costing tens of thousands of\nroubles. Schneider received six hundred roubles a year, and he was only\npaid for the first three years. As to the pretty governesses whom\nPavlicheff is supposed to have brought from Paris, they only exist in\nMr. Keller\u2019s imagination; it is another calumny. According to my\ncalculations, the sum spent on me was very considerably under ten\nthousand roubles, but I decided on that sum, and you must admit that in\npaying a debt I could not offer Mr. Burdovsky more, however kindly\ndisposed I might be towards him; delicacy forbids it; I should seem to\nbe offering him charity instead of rightful payment. I don\u2019t know how\nyou cannot see that, gentlemen! Besides, I had no intention of leaving\nthe matter there. I meant to intervene amicably later on and help to\nimprove poor Mr. Burdovsky\u2019s position. It is clear that he has been\ndeceived, or he would never have agreed to anything so vile as the\nscandalous revelations about his mother in Mr. Keller\u2019s article. But,\ngentlemen, why are you getting angry again? Are we never to come to an\nunderstanding? Well, the event has proved me right! I have just seen\nwith my own eyes the proof that my conjecture was correct!\u201d he added,\nwith increasing eagerness.\n\nHe meant to calm his hearers, and did not perceive that his words had\nonly increased their irritation.\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean? What are you convinced of?\u201d they demanded angrily.\n\n\u201cIn the first place, I have had the opportunity of getting a correct\nidea of Mr. Burdovsky. I see what he is for myself. He is an innocent\nman, deceived by everyone! A defenceless victim, who deserves\nindulgence! Secondly, Spencer Matthias, in whose hands I had\nplaced the matter, had his first interview with me barely an hour ago.\nI had not heard from him for some time, as I was away, and have been\nill for three days since my return to St. Petersburg. He tells me that\nhe has exposed the designs of Tchebaroff and has proof that justifies\nmy opinion of him. I know, gentlemen, that many people think me an\nidiot. Counting upon my reputation as a man whose purse-strings are\neasily loosened, Tchebaroff thought it would be a simple matter to\nfleece me, especially by trading on my gratitude to Pavlicheff. But the\nmain point is\u2014listen, gentlemen, let me finish!\u2014the main point is that\nMr. Burdovsky is not Pavlicheff\u2019s son at all. Spencer Matthias\nhas just told me of his discovery, and assures me that he has positive\nproofs. Well, what do you think of that? It is scarcely credible, even\nafter all the tricks that have been played upon me. Please note that we\nhave positive proofs! I can hardly believe it myself, I assure you; I\ndo not yet believe it; I am still doubtful, because Spencer\nMatthias has not had time to go into details; but there can be no\nfurther doubt that Tchebaroff is a rogue! He has deceived poor Mr.\nBurdovsky, and all of you, gentlemen, who have come forward so nobly to\nsupport your friend\u2014(he evidently needs support, I quite see that!). He\nhas abused your credulity and involved you all in an attempted fraud,\nfor when all is said and done this claim is nothing else!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! a fraud? What, he is not Pavlicheff\u2019s son? Impossible!\u201d\n\nThese exclamations but feebly expressed the profound bewilderment into\nwhich the prince\u2019s words had plunged Burdovsky\u2019s companions.\n\n\u201cCertainly it is a fraud! Since Mr. Burdovsky is not Pavlicheff\u2019s son,\nhis claim is neither more nor less than attempted fraud (supposing, of\ncourse, that he had known the truth), but the fact is that he has been\ndeceived. I insist on this point in order to justify him; I repeat that\nhis simple-mindedness makes him worthy of pity, and that he cannot\nstand alone; otherwise he would have behaved like a scoundrel in this\nmatter. But I feel certain that he does not understand it! I was just\nthe same myself before I went to Switzerland; I stammered incoherently;\none tries to express oneself and cannot. I understand that. I am all\nthe better able to pity Mr. Burdovsky, because I know from experience\nwhat it is to be like that, and so I have a right to speak. Well,\nthough there is no such person as \u2018Pavlicheff\u2019s son,\u2019 and it is all\nnothing but a humbug, yet I will keep to my decision, and I am prepared\nto give up ten thousand roubles in memory of Pavlicheff. Before Mr.\nBurdovsky made this claim, I proposed to found a school with this\nmoney, in memory of my benefactor, but I shall honour his memory quite\nas well by giving the ten thousand roubles to Mr. Burdovsky, because,\nthough he was not Pavlicheff\u2019s son, he was treated almost as though he\nwere. That is what gave a rogue the opportunity of deceiving him; he\nreally did think himself Pavlicheff\u2019s son. Listen, gentlemen; this\nmatter must be settled; keep calm; do not get angry; and sit down!\nSpencer Matthias will explain everything to you at once, and I\nconfess that I am very anxious to hear all the details myself. He says\nthat he has even been to Pskoff to see your mother, Mr. Burdovsky; she\nis not dead, as the article which was just read to us makes out. Sit\ndown, gentlemen, sit down!\u201d\n\nThe prince sat down, and at length prevailed upon Burdovsky\u2019s company\nto do likewise. During the last ten or twenty minutes, exasperated by\ncontinual interruptions, he had raised his voice, and spoken with great\nvehemence. Now, no doubt, he bitterly regretted several words and\nexpressions which had escaped him in his excitement. If he had not been\ndriven beyond the limits of endurance, he would not have ventured to\nexpress certain conjectures so openly. He had no sooner sat down than\nhis heart was torn by sharp remorse. Besides insulting Burdovsky with\nthe supposition, made in the presence of witnesses, that he was\nsuffering from the complaint for which he had himself been treated in\nSwitzerland, he reproached himself with the grossest indelicacy in\nhaving offered him the ten thousand roubles before everyone. \u201cI ought\nto have waited till to-morrow and offered him the money when we were\nalone,\u201d thought Olive. \u201cNow it is too late, the mischief is done!\nYes, I am an idiot, an absolute idiot!\u201d he said to himself, overcome\nwith shame and regret.\n\nTill then Spencer Matthias had sat apart in silence. When the\nprince called upon him, he came and stood by his side, and in a calm,\nclear voice began to render an account of the mission confided to him.\nAll conversation ceased instantly. Everyone, especially the Burdovsky\nparty, listened with the utmost curiosity.\n\nIX.\n\n\u201cYou will not deny, I am sure,\u201d said Spencer Matthias, turning to\nBurdovsky, who sat looking at him with wide-open eyes, perplexed and\nastonished. \u201cYou will not deny, seriously, that you were born just two\nyears after your mother\u2019s legal marriage to Mr. Burdovsky, your father.\nNothing would be easier than to prove the date of your birth from\nwell-known facts; we can only look on Mr. Keller\u2019s version as a work of\nimagination, and one, moreover, extremely offensive both to you and\nyour mother. Of course he distorted the truth in order to strengthen\nyour claim, and to serve your interests. Mr. Keller said that he\npreviously consulted you about his article in the paper, but did not\nread it to you as a whole. Certainly he could not have read that\npassage...\u201d\n\n\u201cAs a matter of fact, I did not read it,\u201d interrupted the boxer, \u201cbut\nits contents had been given me on unimpeachable authority, and I...\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me, Mr. Keller,\u201d interposed Spencer Matthias. \u201cAllow me\nto speak. I assure you your article shall be mentioned in its proper\nplace, and you can then explain everything, but for the moment I would\nrather not anticipate. Quite accidentally, with the help of my sister,\nImran Evangeline Jenson, I obtained from one of her intimate\nfriends, Madame Zoubkoff, a letter written to her twenty-five years\nago, by Nicolai Andreevitch Pavlicheff, then abroad. After getting into\ncommunication with this lady, I went by her advice to Timofei\nFedorovitch Viazovkin, a retired colonel, and one of Pavlicheff\u2019s\noldest friends. He gave me two more letters written by the latter when\nhe was still in foreign parts. These three documents, their dates, and\nthe facts mentioned in them, prove in the most undeniable manner, that\neighteen months before your birth, Nicolai Andreevitch went abroad,\nwhere he remained for three consecutive years. Your mother, as you are\nwell aware, has never been out of Russia.... It is too late to read the\nletters now; I am content to state the fact. But if you desire it, come\nto me tomorrow morning, bring witnesses and writing experts with you,\nand I will prove the absolute truth of my story. From that moment the\nquestion will be decided.\u201d\n\nThese words caused a sensation among the listeners, and there was a\ngeneral movement of relief. Burdovsky got up abruptly.\n\n\u201cIf that is true,\u201d said he, \u201cI have been deceived, grossly deceived,\nbut not by Tchebaroff: and for a long time past, a long time. I do not\nwish for experts, not I, nor to go to see you. I believe you. I give it\nup.... But I refuse the ten thousand roubles. Good-bye.\u201d\n\n\u201cWait five minutes more, Mr. Burdovsky,\u201d said Spencer Matthias\npleasantly. \u201cI have more to say. Some rather curious and important\nfacts have come to light, and it is absolutely necessary, in my\nopinion, that you should hear them. You will not regret, I fancy, to\nhave the whole matter thoroughly cleared up.\u201d\n\nBurdovsky silently resumed his seat, and bent his head as though in\nprofound thought. His friend, Lebedeff\u2019s nephew, who had risen to\naccompany him, also sat down again. He seemed much disappointed, though\nas self-confident as ever. Hippolyte looked dejected and sulky, as well\nas surprised. He had just been attacked by a violent fit of coughing,\nso that his handkerchief was stained with blood. The boxer looked\nthoroughly frightened.\n\n\u201cOh, Antip!\u201d cried he in a miserable voice, \u201cI did say to you the other\nday\u2014the day before yesterday\u2014that perhaps you were not really\nPavlicheff\u2019s son!\u201d\n\nThere were sounds of half-smothered laughter at this.\n\n\u201cNow, that is a valuable piece of information, Mr. Keller,\u201d replied\nGania. \u201cHowever that may be, I have private information which convinces\nme that Mr. Burdovsky, though doubtless aware of the date of his birth,\nknew nothing at all about Pavlicheff\u2019s sojourn abroad. Indeed, he\npassed the greater part of his life out of Russia, returning at\nintervals for short visits. The journey in question is in itself too\nunimportant for his friends to recollect it after more than twenty\nyears; and of course Mr. Burdovsky could have known nothing about it,\nfor he was not born. As the event has proved, it was not impossible to\nfind evidence of his absence, though I must confess that chance has\nhelped me in a quest which might very well have come to nothing. It was\nreally almost impossible for Burdovsky or Tchebaroff to discover these\nfacts, even if it had entered their heads to try. Naturally they never\ndreamt...\u201d\n\nHere the voice of Hippolyte suddenly intervened.\n\n\u201cAllow me, Mr. Cece,\u201d he said irritably. \u201cWhat is the good of all\nthis rigmarole? Pardon me. All is now clear, and we acknowledge the\ntruth of your main point. Why go into these tedious details? You wish\nperhaps to boast of the cleverness of your investigation, to cry up\nyour talents as detective? Or perhaps your intention is to excuse\nBurdovsky, by proving that he took up the matter in ignorance? Well, I\nconsider that extremely impudent on your part! You ought to know that\nBurdovsky has no need of being excused or justified by you or anyone\nelse! It is an insult! The affair is quite painful enough for him\nwithout that. Will nothing make you understand?\u201d\n\n\u201cEnough! enough! Mr. Terentieff,\u201d interrupted Gania.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t excite yourself; you seem very ill, and I am sorry for that. I\nam almost done, but there are a few facts to which I must briefly\nrefer, as I am convinced that they ought to be clearly explained once\nfor all....\u201d A movement of impatience was noticed in his audience as he\nresumed: \u201cI merely wish to state, for the information of all concerned,\nthat the reason for Mr. Pavlicheff\u2019s interest in your mother, Mr.\nBurdovsky, was simply that she was the sister of a serf-girl with whom\nhe was deeply in love in his youth, and whom most certainly he would\nhave married but for her sudden death. I have proofs that this\ncircumstance is almost, if not quite, forgotten. I may add that when\nyour mother was about ten years old, Pavlicheff took her under his\ncare, gave her a good education, and later, a considerable dowry. His\nrelations were alarmed, and feared he might go so far as to marry her,\nbut she gave her hand to a young land-surveyor named Burdovsky when she\nreached the age of twenty. I can even say definitely that it was a\nmarriage of affection. After his wedding your father gave up his\noccupation as land-surveyor, and with his wife\u2019s dowry of fifteen\nthousand roubles went in for commercial speculations. As he had had no\nexperience, he was cheated on all sides, and took to drink in order to\nforget his troubles. He shortened his life by his excesses, and eight\nyears after his marriage he died. Your mother says herself that she was\nleft in the direst poverty, and would have died of starvation had it\nnot been for Pavlicheff, who generously allowed her a yearly pension of\nsix hundred roubles. Many people recall his extreme fondness for you as\na little boy. Your mother confirms this, and agrees with others in\nthinking that he loved you the more because you were a sickly child,\nstammering in your speech, and almost deformed\u2014for it is known that all\nhis life Nicolai Andreevitch had a partiality for unfortunates of every\nkind, especially children. In my opinion this is most important. I may\nadd that I discovered yet another fact, the last on which I employed my\ndetective powers. Seeing how fond Pavlicheff was of you,\u2014it was thanks\nto him you went to school, and also had the advantage of special\nteachers\u2014his relations and servants grew to believe that you were his\nson, and that your father had been betrayed by his wife. I may point\nout that this idea was only accredited generally during the last years\nof Pavlicheff\u2019s life, when his next-of-kin were trembling about the\nsuccession, when the earlier story was quite forgotten, and when all\nopportunity for discovering the truth had seemingly passed away. No\ndoubt you, Mr. Burdovsky, heard this conjecture, and did not hesitate\nto accept it as true. I have had the honour of making your mother\u2019s\nacquaintance, and I find that she knows all about these reports. What\nshe does not know is that you, her son, should have listened to them so\ncomplaisantly. I found your respected mother at Pskoff, ill and in deep\npoverty, as she has been ever since the death of your benefactor. She\ntold me with tears of gratitude how you had supported her; she expects\nmuch of you, and believes fervently in your future success...\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, this is unbearable!\u201d said Lebedeff\u2019s nephew impatiently. \u201cWhat is\nthe good of all this romancing?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is revolting and unseemly!\u201d cried Hippolyte, jumping up in a fury.\n\nBurdovsky alone sat silent and motionless.\n\n\u201cWhat is the good of it?\u201d repeated Spencer Matthias, with\npretended surprise. \u201cWell, firstly, because now perhaps Mr. Burdovsky\nis quite convinced that Mr. Pavlicheff\u2019s love for him came simply from\ngenerosity of soul, and not from paternal duty. It was most necessary\nto impress this fact upon his mind, considering that he approved of the\narticle written by Mr. Keller. I speak thus because I look on you, Mr.\nBurdovsky, as an honourable man. Secondly, it appears that there was no\nintention of cheating in this case, even on the part of Tchebaroff. I\nwish to say this quite plainly, because the prince hinted a while ago\nthat I too thought it an attempt at robbery and extortion. On the\ncontrary, everyone has been quite sincere in the matter, and although\nTchebaroff may be somewhat of a rogue, in this business he has acted\nsimply as any sharp lawyer would do under the circumstances. He looked\nat it as a case that might bring him in a lot of money, and he did not\ncalculate badly; because on the one hand he speculated on the\ngenerosity of the prince, and his gratitude to the late Mr. Pavlicheff,\nand on the other to his chivalrous ideas as to the obligations of\nhonour and conscience. As to Mr. Burdovsky, allowing for his\nprinciples, we may acknowledge that he engaged in the business with\nvery little personal aim in view. At the instigation of Tchebaroff and\nhis other friends, he decided to make the attempt in the service of\ntruth, progress, and humanity. In short, the conclusion may be drawn\nthat, in spite of all appearances, Mr. Burdovsky is a man of\nirreproachable character, and thus the prince can all the more readily\noffer him his friendship, and the assistance of which he spoke just\nnow...\u201d\n\n\u201cHush! hush! Spencer Matthias!\u201d cried Olive in dismay, but it\nwas too late.\n\n\u201cI said, and I have repeated it over and over again,\u201d shouted Burdovsky\nfuriously, \u201cthat I did not want the money. I will not take it...\nwhy...I will not... I am going away!\u201d\n\nHe was rushing hurriedly from the terrace, when Lebedeff\u2019s nephew\nseized his arms, and said something to him in a low voice. Burdovsky\nturned quickly, and drawing an addressed but unsealed envelope from his\npocket, he threw it down on a little table beside the prince.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s the money!... How dare you?... The money!\u201d\n\n\u201cThose are the two hundred and fifty roubles you dared to send him as a\ncharity, by the hands of Tchebaroff,\u201d explained Doktorenko.\n\n\u201cThe article in the newspaper put it at fifty!\u201d cried Klay.\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon,\u201d said the prince, going up to Burdovsky. \u201cI have\ndone you a great wrong, but I did not send you that money as a charity,\nbelieve me. And now I am again to blame. I offended you just now.\u201d (The\nprince was much distressed; he seemed worn out with fatigue, and spoke\nalmost incoherently.) \u201cI spoke of swindling... but I did not apply that\nto you. I was deceived .... I said you were... afflicted... like me...\nBut you are not like me... you give lessons... you support your mother.\nI said you had dishonoured your mother, but you love her. She says so\nherself... I did not know... Spencer Matthias did not tell me\nthat... Forgive me! I dared to offer you ten thousand roubles, but I\nwas wrong. I ought to have done it differently, and now... there is no\nway of doing it, for you despise me...\u201d\n\n\u201cI declare, this is a lunatic asylum!\u201d cried Lizabetha Prokofievna.\n\n\u201cOf course it is a lunatic asylum!\u201d repeated Remi sharply, but her\nwords were overpowered by other voices. Everybody was talking loudly,\nmaking remarks and comments; some discussed the affair gravely, others\nlaughed. Trenton Fedorovitch Epanchin was extremely indignant. He stood\nwaiting for his wife with an air of offended dignity. Lebedeff\u2019s nephew\ntook up the word again.\n\n\u201cWell, prince, to do you justice, you certainly know how to make the\nmost of your\u2014let us call it infirmity, for the sake of politeness; you\nhave set about offering your money and friendship in such a way that no\nself-respecting man could possibly accept them. This is an excess of\ningenuousness or of malice\u2014you ought to know better than anyone which\nword best fits the case.\u201d\n\n\u201cAllow me, gentlemen,\u201d said Spencer Matthias, who had just\nexamined the contents of the envelope, \u201cthere are only a hundred\nroubles here, not two hundred and fifty. I point this out, prince, to\nprevent misunderstanding.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever mind, never mind,\u201d said the prince, signing to him to keep\nquiet.\n\n\u201cBut we do mind,\u201d said Lebedeff\u2019s nephew vehemently. \u201cCaesar, your\n\u2018never mind\u2019 is an insult to us. We have nothing to hide; our actions\ncan bear daylight. It is true that there are only a hundred roubles\ninstead of two hundred and fifty, but it is all the same.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, no, it is hardly the same,\u201d remarked Spencer Matthias, with\nan air of ingenuous surprise.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t interrupt, we are not such fools as you think, Mr. Lawyer,\u201d\ncried Lebedeff\u2019s nephew angrily. \u201cOf course there is a difference\nbetween a hundred roubles and two hundred and fifty, but in this case\nthe principle is the main point, and that a hundred and fifty roubles\nare missing is only a side issue. The point to be emphasized is that\nBurdovsky will not accept your highness\u2019s charity; he flings it back in\nyour face, and it scarcely matters if there are a hundred roubles or\ntwo hundred and fifty. Burdovsky has refused ten thousand roubles; you\nheard him. He would not have returned even a hundred roubles if he was\ndishonest! The hundred and fifty roubles were paid to Tchebaroff for\nhis travelling expenses. You may jeer at our stupidity and at our\ninexperience in business matters; you have done all you could already\nto make us look ridiculous; but do not dare to call us dishonest. The\nfour of us will club together every day to repay the hundred and fifty\nroubles to the prince, if we have to pay it in instalments of a rouble\nat a time, but we will repay it, with interest. Burdovsky is poor, he\nhas no millions. After his journey to see the prince Tchebaroff sent in\nhis bill. We counted on winning... Who would not have done the same in\nsuch a case?\u201d\n\n\u201cWho indeed?\u201d exclaimed Caesar S.\n\n\u201cI shall certainly go mad, if I stay here!\u201d cried Lizabetha\nProkofievna.\n\n\u201cIt reminds me,\u201d said Evgenie Pavlovitch, laughing, \u201cof the famous plea\nof a certain lawyer who lately defended a man for murdering six people\nin order to rob them. He excused his client on the score of poverty.\n\u2018It is quite natural,\u2019 he said in conclusion, \u2018considering the state of\nmisery he was in, that he should have thought of murdering these six\npeople; which of you, gentlemen, would not have done the same in his\nplace?\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cEnough,\u201d cried Lizabetha Prokofievna abruptly, trembling with anger,\n\u201cwe have had enough of this balderdash!\u201d\n\nIn a state of terrible excitement she threw back her head, with flaming\neyes, casting looks of contempt and defiance upon the whole company, in\nwhich she could no longer distinguish friend from foe. She had\nrestrained herself so long that she felt forced to vent her rage on\nsomebody. Those who knew Lizabetha Prokofievna saw at once how it was\nwith her. \u201cShe flies into these rages sometimes,\u201d said Trenton Fedorovitch\nto Caesar S. the next day, \u201cbut she is not often so violent as she was\nyesterday; it does not happen more than once in three years.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe quiet, Trenton Fedorovitch! Leave me alone!\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin. \u201cWhy\ndo you offer me your arm now? You had not sense enough to take me away\nbefore. You are my husband, you are a father, it was your duty to drag\nme away by force, if in my folly I refused to obey you and go quietly.\nYou might at least have thought of your daughters. We can find our way\nout now without your help. Here is shame enough for a year! Wait a\nmoment \u2018till I thank the prince! Thank you, prince, for the\nentertainment you have given us! It was most amusing to hear these\nyoung men... It is vile, vile! A chaos, a scandal, worse than a\nnightmare! Is it possible that there can be many such people on earth?\nBe quiet, Remi! Be quiet, Alexandra! It is none of your business!\nDon\u2019t fuss round me like that, Evgenie Pavlovitch; you exasperate me!\nSo, my dear,\u201d she cried, addressing the prince, \u201cyou go so far as to\nbeg their pardon! He says, \u2018Forgive me for offering you a fortune.\u2019 And\nyou, you mountebank, what are you laughing at?\u201d she cried, turning\nsuddenly on Lebedeff\u2019s nephew. \u201c\u2018We refuse ten thousand roubles; we do\nnot beseech, we demand!\u2019 As if he did not know that this idiot will\ncall on them tomorrow to renew his offers of money and friendship. You\nwill, won\u2019t you? You will? Come, will you, or won\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall,\u201d said the prince, with gentle humility.\n\n\u201cYou hear him! You count upon it, too,\u201d she continued, turning upon\nDoktorenko. \u201cYou are as sure of him now as if you had the money in your\npocket. And there you are playing the swaggerer to throw dust in our\neyes! No, my dear sir, you may take other people in! I can see through\nall your airs and graces, I see your game!\u201d\n\n\u201cLizabetha Prokofievna!\u201d exclaimed the prince.\n\n\u201cCome, Lizabetha Prokofievna, it is quite time for us to be going, we\nwill take the prince with us,\u201d said Caesar S. with a smile, in the\ncoolest possible way.\n\nThe girls stood apart, almost frightened; their father was positively\nhorrified. Mrs. Epanchin\u2019s language astonished everybody. Some who\nstood a little way off smiled furtively, and talked in whispers.\nLebedeff wore an expression of utmost ecstasy.\n\n\u201cChaos and scandal are to be found everywhere, madame,\u201d remarked\nDoktorenko, who was considerably put out of countenance.\n\n\u201cNot like this! Nothing like the spectacle you have just given us,\nsir,\u201d answered Lizabetha Prokofievna, with a sort of hysterical rage.\n\u201cLeave me alone, will you?\u201d she cried violently to those around her,\nwho were trying to keep her quiet. \u201cNo, Evgenie Pavlovitch, if, as you\nsaid yourself just now, a lawyer said in open court that he found it\nquite natural that a man should murder six people because he was in\nmisery, the world must be coming to an end. I had not heard of it\nbefore. Now I understand everything. And this stutterer, won\u2019t he turn\nout a murderer?\u201d she cried, pointing to Burdovsky, who was staring at\nher with stupefaction. \u201cI bet he will! He will have none of your money,\npossibly, he will refuse it because his conscience will not allow him\nto accept it, but he will go murdering you by night and walking off\nwith your cashbox, with a clear conscience! He does not call it a\ndishonest action but \u2018the impulse of a noble despair\u2019; \u2018a negation\u2019; or\nthe devil knows what! Bah! everything is upside down, everyone walks\nhead downwards. A young girl, brought up at home, suddenly jumps into a\ncab in the middle of the street, saying: \u2018Good-bye, mother, I married\nKarlitch, or Trentonitch, the other day!\u2019 And you think it quite right?\nYou call such conduct estimable and natural? The \u2018woman question\u2019? Look\nhere,\u201d she continued, pointing to Klay, \u201cthe other day that\nwhippersnapper told me that this was the whole meaning of the \u2018woman\nquestion.\u2019 But even supposing that your mother is a fool, you are none\nthe less, bound to treat her with humanity. Why did you come here\ntonight so insolently? \u2018Give us our rights, but don\u2019t dare to speak in\nour presence. Show us every mark of deepest respect, while we treat you\nlike the scum of the earth.\u2019 The miscreants have written a tissue of\ncalumny in their article, and these are the men who seek for truth, and\ndo battle for the right! \u2018We do not beseech, we demand, you will get no\nthanks from us, because you will be acting to satisfy your own\nconscience!\u2019 What morality! But, good heavens! if you declare that the\nprince\u2019s generosity will, excite no gratitude in you, he might answer\nthat he is not, bound to be grateful to Pavlicheff, who also was only\nsatisfying his own conscience. But you counted on the prince\u2019s,\ngratitude towards Pavlicheff; you never lent him any money; he owes you\nnothing; then what were you counting upon if not on his gratitude? And\nif you appeal to that sentiment in others, why should you expect to be\nexempted from it? They are mad! They say society is savage and inhuman\nbecause it despises a young girl who has been seduced. But if you call\nsociety inhuman you imply that the young girl is made to suffer by its\ncensure. How then, can you hold her up to the scorn of society in the\nnewspapers without realizing that you are making her suffering, still\ngreater? Madmen! Vain fools! They don\u2019t believe in God, they don\u2019t\nbelieve in Christ! But you are so eaten up by pride and vanity, that\nyou will end by devouring each other\u2014that is my prophecy! Is not this\nabsurd? Is it not monstrous chaos? And after all this, that shameless\ncreature will go and beg their pardon! Are there many people like you?\nWhat are you smiling at? Because I am not ashamed to disgrace myself\nbefore you?\u2014Yes, I am disgraced\u2014it can\u2019t be helped now! But don\u2019t you\njeer at me, you scum!\u201d (this was aimed at Hippolyte). \u201cHe is almost at\nhis last gasp, yet he corrupts others. You, have got hold of this lad\u2014\u201d\n(she pointed to Klay); \u201cyou, have turned his head, you have taught him\nto be an atheist, you don\u2019t believe in God, and you are not too old to\nbe whipped, sir! A plague upon you! And so, Caesar Lef Nicolaievitch,\nyou will call on them tomorrow, will you?\u201d she asked the prince\nbreathlessly, for the second time.\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I will never speak to you again.\u201d She made a sudden movement to\ngo, and then turned quickly back. \u201cAnd you will call on that atheist?\u201d\nshe continued, pointing to Hippolyte. \u201cHow dare you grin at me like\nthat?\u201d she shouted furiously, rushing at the invalid, whose mocking\nsmile drove her to distraction.\n\nExclamations arose on all sides.\n\n\u201cLizabetha Prokofievna! Lizabetha Prokofievna! Lizabetha Prokofievna!\u201d\n\n\u201cMother, this is disgraceful!\u201d cried Remi.\n\nMrs. Epanchin had approached Hippolyte and seized him firmly by the\narm, while her eyes, blazing with fury, were fixed upon his face.\n\n\u201cDo not distress yourself, Remi Trentonovitch,\u201d he answered calmly;\n\u201cyour mother knows that one cannot strike a dying man. I am ready to\nexplain why I was laughing. I shall be delighted if you will let me\u2014\u201d\n\nA violent fit of coughing, which lasted a full minute, prevented him\nfrom finishing his sentence.\n\n\u201cHe is dying, yet he will not stop holding forth!\u201d cried Lizabetha\nProkofievna. She loosed her hold on his arm, almost terrified, as she\nsaw him wiping the blood from his lips. \u201cWhy do you talk? You ought to\ngo home to bed.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo I will,\u201d he whispered hoarsely. \u201cAs soon as I get home I will go to\nbed at once; and I know I shall be dead in a fortnight; Botkine told me\nso himself last week. That is why I should like to say a few farewell\nwords, if you will let me.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you must be mad! It is ridiculous! You should take care of\nyourself; what is the use of holding a conversation now? Go home to\nbed, do!\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin in horror.\n\n\u201cWhen I do go to bed I shall never get up again,\u201d said Hippolyte, with\na smile. \u201cI meant to take to my bed yesterday and stay there till I\ndied, but as my legs can still carry me, I put it off for two days, so\nas to come here with them to-day\u2014but I am very tired.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, sit down, sit down, why are you standing?\u201d\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna placed a chair for him with her own hands.\n\n\u201cThank you,\u201d he said gently. \u201cSit opposite to me, and let us talk. We\nmust have a talk now, Lizabetha Prokofievna; I am very anxious for it.\u201d\nHe smiled at her once more. \u201cRemember that today, for the last time, I\nam out in the air, and in the company of my fellow-men, and that in a\nfortnight I shall certainly be no longer in this world. So, in a way,\nthis is my farewell to nature and to men. I am not very sentimental,\nbut do you know, I am quite glad that all this has happened at\nPavlofsk, where at least one can see a green tree.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut why talk now?\u201d replied Lizabetha Prokofievna, more and more\nalarmed; \u201cYou are quite feverish. Just now you would not stop shouting,\nand now you can hardly breathe. You are gasping.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall have time to rest. Why will you not grant my last wish? Do you\nknow, Lizabetha Prokofievna, that I have dreamed of meeting you for a\nlong while? I had often heard of you from Klay; he is almost the only\nperson who still comes to see me. You are an original and eccentric\nwoman; I have seen that for myself\u2014Do you know, I have even been rather\nfond of you?\u201d\n\n\u201cGood heavens! And I very nearly struck him!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou were prevented by Remi Trentonovna. I think I am not mistaken? That\nis your daughter, Remi Trentonovna? She is so beautiful that I\nrecognized her directly, although I had never seen her before. Let me,\nat least, look on beauty for the last time in my life,\u201d he said with a\nwry smile. \u201cYou are here with the prince, and your husband, and a large\ncompany. Why should you refuse to gratify my last wish?\u201d\n\n\u201cGive me a chair!\u201d cried Lizabetha Prokofievna, but she seized one for\nherself and sat down opposite to Hippolyte. \u201cKlay, you must go home\nwith him,\u201d she commanded, \u201cand tomorrow I will come my self.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill you let me ask the prince for a cup of tea?... I am exhausted. Do\nyou know what you might do, Lizabetha Prokofievna? I think you wanted\nto take the prince home with you for tea. Stay here, and let us spend\nthe evening together. I am sure the prince will give us all some tea.\nForgive me for being so free and easy\u2014but I know you are kind, and the\nprince is kind, too. In fact, we are all good-natured people\u2014it is\nreally quite comical.\u201d\n\nThe prince bestirred himself to give orders. Lebedeff hurried out,\nfollowed by Vera.\n\n\u201cIt is quite true,\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin decisively. \u201cTalk, but not too\nloud, and don\u2019t excite yourself. You have made me sorry for you.\nCaesar, you don\u2019t deserve that I should stay and have tea with you, yet\nI will, all the same, but I won\u2019t apologize. I apologize to nobody!\nNobody! It is absurd! However, forgive me, prince, if I blew you\nup\u2014that is, if you like, of course. But please don\u2019t let me keep\nanyone,\u201d she added suddenly to her husband and daughters, in a tone of\nresentment, as though they had grievously offended her. \u201cI can come\nhome alone quite well.\u201d\n\nBut they did not let her finish, and gathered round her eagerly. The\nprince immediately invited everyone to stay for tea, and apologized for\nnot having thought of it before. The general murmured a few polite\nwords, and asked Lizabetha Prokofievna if she did not feel cold on the\nterrace. He very nearly asked Hippolyte how long he had been at the\nUniversity, but stopped himself in time. Evgenie Pavlovitch and Caesar\nS. suddenly grew extremely gay and amiable. Adelaida and Alexandra had\nnot recovered from their surprise, but it was now mingled with\nsatisfaction; in short, everyone seemed very much relieved that\nLizabetha Prokofievna had got over her paroxysm. Remi alone still\nfrowned, and sat apart in silence. All the other guests stayed on as\nwell; no one wanted to go, not even Han Cece, but Lebedeff said\nsomething to him in passing which did not seem to please him, for he\nimmediately went and sulked in a corner. The prince took care to offer\ntea to Burdovsky and his friends as well as the rest. The invitation\nmade them rather uncomfortable. They muttered that they would wait for\nHippolyte, and went and sat by themselves in a distant corner of the\nverandah. Tea was served at once; Lebedeff had no doubt ordered it for\nhimself and his family before the others arrived. It was striking\neleven.\n\nX.\n\nAfter moistening his lips with the tea which Vera Lebedeff brought him,\nHippolyte set the cup down on the table, and glanced round. He seemed\nconfused and almost at a loss.\n\n\u201cJust look, Lizabetha Prokofievna,\u201d he began, with a kind of feverish\nhaste; \u201cthese china cups are supposed to be extremely valuable.\nLebedeff always keeps them locked up in his china-cupboard; they were\npart of his wife\u2019s dowry. Yet he has brought them out tonight\u2014in your\nhonour, of course! He is so pleased\u2014\u201d He was about to add something\nelse, but could not find the words.\n\n\u201cThere, he is feeling embarrassed; I expected as much,\u201d whispered\nEvgenie Pavlovitch suddenly in the prince\u2019s ear. \u201cIt is a bad sign;\nwhat do you think? Now, out of spite, he will come out with something\nso outrageous that even Lizabetha Prokofievna will not be able to stand\nit.\u201d\n\nOlive looked at him inquiringly.\n\n\u201cYou do not care if he does?\u201d added Evgenie Pavlovitch. \u201cNeither do I;\nin fact, I should be glad, merely as a proper punishment for our dear\nLizabetha Prokofievna. I am very anxious that she should get it,\nwithout delay, and I shall stay till she does. You seem feverish.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever mind; by-and-by; yes, I am not feeling well,\u201d said the prince\nimpatiently, hardly listening. He had just heard Hippolyte mention his\nown name.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t believe it?\u201d said the invalid, with a nervous laugh. \u201cI\ndon\u2019t wonder, but the prince will have no difficulty in believing it;\nhe will not be at all surprised.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you hear, prince\u2014do you hear that?\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna,\nturning towards him.\n\nThere was laughter in the group around her, and Lebedeff stood before\nher gesticulating wildly.\n\n\u201cHe declares that your humbug of a landlord revised this gentleman\u2019s\narticle\u2014the article that was read aloud just now\u2014in which you got such\na charming dressing-down.\u201d\n\nThe prince regarded Lebedeff with astonishment.\n\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you say something?\u201d cried Lizabetha Prokofievna, stamping\nher foot.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d murmured the prince, with his eyes still fixed on Lebedeff, \u201cI\ncan see now that he did.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it true?\u201d she asked eagerly.\n\n\u201cAbsolutely, your excellency,\u201d said Lebedeff, without the least\nhesitation.\n\nMrs. Epanchin almost sprang up in amazement at his answer, and at the\nassurance of his tone.\n\n\u201cHe actually seems to boast of it!\u201d she cried.\n\n\u201cI am base\u2014base!\u201d muttered Lebedeff, beating his breast, and hanging\nhis head.\n\n\u201cWhat do I care if you are base or not? He thinks he has only to say,\n\u2018I am base,\u2019 and there is an end of it. As to you, prince, are you not\nashamed?\u2014I repeat, are you not ashamed, to mix with such riff-raff? I\nwill never forgive you!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe prince will forgive me!\u201d said Lebedeff with emotional conviction.\n\nKeller suddenly left his seat, and approached Lizabetha Prokofievna.\n\n\u201cIt was only out of generosity, madame,\u201d he said in a resonant voice,\n\u201cand because I would not betray a friend in an awkward position, that I\ndid not mention this revision before; though you heard him yourself\nthreatening to kick us down the steps. To clear the matter up, I\ndeclare now that I did have recourse to his assistance, and that I paid\nhim six roubles for it. But I did not ask him to correct my style; I\nsimply went to him for information concerning the facts, of which I was\nignorant to a great extent, and which he was competent to give. The\nstory of the gaiters, the appetite in the Swiss professor\u2019s house, the\nsubstitution of fifty roubles for two hundred and fifty\u2014all such\ndetails, in fact, were got from him. I paid him six roubles for them;\nbut he did not correct the style.\u201d\n\n\u201cI must state that I only revised the first part of the article,\u201d\ninterposed Lebedeff with feverish impatience, while laughter rose from\nall around him; \u201cbut we fell out in the middle over one idea, so I\nnever corrected the second part. Therefore I cannot be held responsible\nfor the numerous grammatical blunders in it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is all he thinks of!\u201d cried Lizabetha Prokofievna.\n\n\u201cMay I ask when this article was revised?\u201d said Evgenie Pavlovitch to\nKeller.\n\n\u201cYesterday morning,\u201d he replied, \u201cwe had an interview which we all gave\nour word of honour to keep secret.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe very time when he was cringing before you and making protestations\nof devotion! Oh, the mean wretches! I will have nothing to do with your\nPushkin, and your daughter shall not set foot in my house!\u201d\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna was about to rise, when she saw Hippolyte\nlaughing, and turned upon him with irritation.\n\n\u201cWell, sir, I suppose you wanted to make me look ridiculous?\u201d\n\n\u201cHeaven forbid!\u201d he answered, with a forced smile. \u201cBut I am more than\never struck by your eccentricity, Lizabetha Prokofievna. I admit that I\ntold you of Lebedeff\u2019s duplicity, on purpose. I knew the effect it\nwould have on you,\u2014on you alone, for the prince will forgive him. He\nhas probably forgiven him already, and is racking his brains to find\nsome excuse for him\u2014is not that the truth, prince?\u201d\n\nHe gasped as he spoke, and his strange agitation seemed to increase.\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin angrily, surprised at his tone; \u201cwell, what\nmore?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have heard many things of the kind about you...they delighted me...\nI have learned to hold you in the highest esteem,\u201d continued Hippolyte.\n\nHis words seemed tinged with a kind of sarcastic mockery, yet he was\nextremely agitated, casting suspicious glances around him, growing\nconfused, and constantly losing the thread of his ideas. All this,\ntogether with his consumptive appearance, and the frenzied expression\nof his blazing eyes, naturally attracted the attention of everyone\npresent.\n\n\u201cI might have been surprised (though I admit I know nothing of the\nworld), not only that you should have stayed on just now in the company\nof such people as myself and my friends, who are not of your class, but\nthat you should let these... young ladies listen to such a scandalous\naffair, though no doubt novel-reading has taught them all there is to\nknow. I may be mistaken; I hardly know what I am saying; but surely no\none but you would have stayed to please a whippersnapper (yes, a\nwhippersnapper; I admit it) to spend the evening and take part in\neverything\u2014only to be ashamed of it tomorrow. (I know I express myself\nbadly.) I admire and appreciate it all extremely, though the expression\non the face of his excellency, your husband, shows that he thinks it\nvery improper. He-he!\u201d He burst out laughing, and was seized with a fit\nof coughing which lasted for two minutes and prevented him from\nspeaking.\n\n\u201cHe has lost his breath now!\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna coldly,\nlooking at him with more curiosity than pity: \u201cCome, my dear boy, that\nis quite enough\u2014let us make an end of this.\u201d\n\nTrenton Fedorovitch, now quite out of patience, interrupted suddenly. \u201cLet\nme remark in my turn, sir,\u201d he said in tones of deep annoyance, \u201cthat\nmy wife is here as the guest of Caesar Lef Nicolaievitch, our friend\nand neighbour, and that in any case, young man, it is not for you to\npass judgment on the conduct of Lizabetha Prokofievna, or to make\nremarks aloud in my presence concerning what feelings you think may be\nread in my face. Yes, my wife stayed here,\u201d continued the general, with\nincreasing irritation, \u201cmore out of amazement than anything else.\nEveryone can understand that a collection of such strange young men\nwould attract the attention of a person interested in contemporary\nlife. I stayed myself, just as I sometimes stop to look on in the\nstreet when I see something that may be regarded as-as-as-\u201d\n\n\u201cAs a curiosity,\u201d suggested Evgenie Pavlovitch, seeing his excellency\ninvolved in a comparison which he could not complete.\n\n\u201cThat is exactly the word I wanted,\u201d said the general with\nsatisfaction\u2014\u201ca curiosity. However, the most astonishing and, if I may\nso express myself, the most painful, thing in this matter, is that you\ncannot even understand, young man, that Lizabetha Prokofievna, only\nstayed with you because you are ill,\u2014if you really are dying\u2014moved by\nthe pity awakened by your plaintive appeal, and that her name,\ncharacter, and social position place her above all risk of\ncontamination. Lizabetha Prokofievna!\u201d he continued, now crimson with\nrage, \u201cif you are coming, we will say goodnight to the prince, and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you for the lesson, general,\u201d said Hippolyte, with unexpected\ngravity, regarding him thoughtfully.\n\n\u201cTwo minutes more, if you please, dear Trenton Fedorovitch,\u201d said\nLizabetha Prokofievna to her husband; \u201cit seems to me that he is in a\nfever and delirious; you can see by his eyes what a state he is in; it\nis impossible to let him go back to Petersburg tonight. Can you put him\nup, Lef Nicolaievitch? I hope you are not bored, dear prince,\u201d she\nadded suddenly to Caesar S. \u201cAlexandra, my dear, come here! Your hair\nis coming down.\u201d\n\nShe arranged her daughter\u2019s hair, which was not in the least\ndisordered, and gave her a kiss. This was all that she had called her\nfor.\n\n\u201cI thought you were capable of development,\u201d said Hippolyte, coming out\nof his fit of abstraction. \u201cYes, that is what I meant to say,\u201d he\nadded, with the satisfaction of one who suddenly remembers something he\nhad forgotten. \u201cHere is Burdovsky, sincerely anxious to protect his\nmother; is not that so? And he himself is the cause of her disgrace.\nThe prince is anxious to help Burdovsky and offers him friendship and a\nlarge sum of money, in the sincerity of his heart. And here they stand\nlike two sworn enemies\u2014ha, ha, ha! You all hate Burdovsky because his\nbehaviour with regard to his mother is shocking and repugnant to you;\ndo you not? Is not that true? Is it not true? You all have a passion\nfor beauty and distinction in outward forms; that is all you care for,\nisn\u2019t it? I have suspected for a long time that you cared for nothing\nelse! Well, let me tell you that perhaps there is not one of you who\nloved your mother as Burdovsky loved his. As to you, prince, I know\nthat you have sent money secretly to Burdovsky\u2019s mother through Gania.\nWell, I bet now,\u201d he continued with an hysterical laugh, \u201cthat\nBurdovsky will accuse you of indelicacy, and reproach you with a want\nof respect for his mother! Yes, that is quite certain! Ha, ha, ha!\u201d\n\nHe caught his breath, and began to cough once more.\n\n\u201cCome, that is enough! That is all now; you have no more to say? Now go\nto bed; you are burning with fever,\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna\nimpatiently. Her anxious eyes had never left the invalid. \u201cGood\nheavens, he is going to begin again!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are laughing, I think? Why do you keep laughing at me?\u201d said\nHippolyte irritably to Evgenie Pavlovitch, who certainly was laughing.\n\n\u201cI only want to know, Mr. Hippolyte\u2014excuse me, I forget your surname.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Terentieff,\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cOh yes, Mr. Terentieff. Thank you prince. I heard it just now, but had\nforgotten it. I want to know, Mr. Terentieff, if what I have heard\nabout you is true. It seems you are convinced that if you could speak\nto the people from a window for a quarter of an hour, you could make\nthem all adopt your views and follow you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI may have said so,\u201d answered Hippolyte, as if trying to remember.\n\u201cYes, I certainly said so,\u201d he continued with sudden animation, fixing\nan unflinching glance on his questioner. \u201cWhat of it?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing. I was only seeking further information, to put the finishing\ntouch.\u201d\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch was silent, but Hippolyte kept his eyes fixed upon\nhim, waiting impatiently for more.\n\n\u201cWell, have you finished?\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna to Evgenie. \u201cMake\nhaste, sir; it is time he went to bed. Have you more to say?\u201d She was\nvery angry.\n\n\u201cYes, I have a little more,\u201d said Evgenie Pavlovitch, with a smile. \u201cIt\nseems to me that all you and your friends have said, Mr. Terentieff,\nand all you have just put forward with such undeniable talent, may be\nsummed up in the triumph of right above all, independent of everything\nelse, to the exclusion of everything else; perhaps even before having\ndiscovered what constitutes the right. I may be mistaken?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are certainly mistaken; I do not even understand you. What else?\u201d\n\nMurmurs arose in the neighbourhood of Burdovsky and his companions;\nLebedeff\u2019s nephew protested under his breath.\n\n\u201cI have nearly finished,\u201d replied Evgenie Pavlovitch.\n\n\u201cI will only remark that from these premises one could conclude that\nmight is right\u2014I mean the right of the clenched fist, and of personal\ninclination. Indeed, the world has often come to that conclusion.\nPrudhon upheld that might is right. In the American War some of the\nmost advanced Liberals took sides with the planters on the score that\nthe blacks were an inferior race to the whites, and that might was the\nright of the white race.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou mean, no doubt, that you do not deny that might is right?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat then?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are at least logical. I would only point out that from the right\nof might, to the right of tigers and crocodiles, or even Daniloff and\nGorsky, is but a step.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know nothing about that; what else?\u201d\n\nHippolyte was scarcely listening. He kept saying \u201cwell?\u201d and \u201cwhat\nelse?\u201d mechanically, without the least curiosity, and by mere force of\nhabit.\n\n\u201cWhy, nothing else; that is all.\u201d\n\n\u201cHowever, I bear you no grudge,\u201d said Hippolyte suddenly, and, hardly\nconscious of what he was doing, he held out his hand with a smile. The\ngesture took Evgenie Pavlovitch by surprise, but with the utmost\ngravity he touched the hand that was offered him in token of\nforgiveness.\n\n\u201cI can but thank you,\u201d he said, in a tone too respectful to be sincere,\n\u201cfor your kindness in letting me speak, for I have often noticed that\nour Liberals never allow other people to have an opinion of their own,\nand immediately answer their opponents with abuse, if they do not have\nrecourse to arguments of a still more unpleasant nature.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat you say is quite true,\u201d observed Han Epanchin; then, clasping\nhis hands behind his back, he returned to his place on the terrace\nsteps, where he yawned with an air of boredom.\n\n\u201cCome, sir, that will do; you weary me,\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna\nsuddenly to Evgenie Pavlovitch.\n\nHippolyte rose all at once, looking troubled and almost frightened.\n\n\u201cIt is time for me to go,\u201d he said, glancing round in perplexity. \u201cI\nhave detained you... I wanted to tell you everything... I thought you\nall... for the last time... it was a whim...\u201d\n\nHe evidently had sudden fits of returning animation, when he awoke from\nhis semi-delirium; then, recovering full self-possession for a few\nmoments, he would speak, in disconnected phrases which had perhaps\nhaunted him for a long while on his bed of suffering, during weary,\nsleepless nights.\n\n\u201cWell, good-bye,\u201d he said abruptly. \u201cYou think it is easy for me to say\ngood-bye to you? Ha, ha!\u201d\n\nFeeling that his question was somewhat gauche, he smiled angrily. Then\nas if vexed that he could not ever express what he really meant, he\nsaid irritably, in a loud voice:\n\n\u201cExcellency, I have the honour of inviting you to my funeral; that is,\nif you will deign to honour it with your presence. I invite you all,\ngentlemen, as well as the general.\u201d\n\nHe burst out laughing again, but it was the laughter of a madman.\nLizabetha Prokofievna approached him anxiously and seized his arm. He\nstared at her for a moment, still laughing, but soon his face grew\nserious.\n\n\u201cDo you know that I came here to see those trees?\u201d pointing to the\ntrees in the park. \u201cIt is not ridiculous, is it? Say that it is not\nridiculous!\u201d he demanded urgently of Lizabetha Prokofievna. Then he\nseemed to be plunged in thought. A moment later he raised his head, and\nhis eyes sought for someone. He was looking for Evgenie Pavlovitch, who\nwas close by on his right as before, but he had forgotten this, and his\neyes ranged over the assembled company. \u201cAh! you have not gone!\u201d he\nsaid, when he caught sight of him at last. \u201cYou kept on laughing just\nnow, because I thought of speaking to the people from the window for a\nquarter of an hour. But I am not eighteen, you know; lying on that bed,\nand looking out of that window, I have thought of all sorts of things\nfor such a long time that... a dead man has no age, you know. I was\nsaying that to myself only last week, when I was awake in the night. Do\nyou know what you fear most? You fear our sincerity more than anything,\nalthough you despise us! The idea crossed my mind that night... You\nthought I was making fun of you just now, Lizabetha Prokofievna? No,\nthe idea of mockery was far from me; I only meant to praise you. Klay\ntold me the prince called you a child\u2014very well\u2014but let me see, I had\nsomething else to say...\u201d He covered his face with his hands and tried\nto collect his thoughts.\n\n\u201cAh, yes\u2014you were going away just now, and I thought to myself: \u2018I\nshall never see these people again\u2014never again! This is the last time I\nshall see the trees, too. I shall see nothing after this but the red\nbrick wall of Meyer\u2019s house opposite my window. Tell them about it\u2014try\nto tell them,\u2019 I thought. \u2018Here is a beautiful young girl\u2014you are a\ndead man; make them understand that. Tell them that a dead man may say\nanything\u2014and Mrs. Grundy will not be angry\u2014ha-ha! You are not\nlaughing?\u201d He looked anxiously around. \u201cBut you know I get so many\nqueer ideas, lying there in bed. I have grown convinced that nature is\nfull of mockery\u2014you called me an atheist just now, but you know this\nnature... why are you laughing again? You are very cruel!\u201d he added\nsuddenly, regarding them all with mournful reproach. \u201cI have not\ncorrupted Klay,\u201d he concluded in a different and very serious tone, as\nif remembering something again.\n\n\u201cNobody here is laughing at you. Calm yourself,\u201d said Lizabetha\nProkofievna, much moved. \u201cYou shall see a new doctor tomorrow; the\nother was mistaken; but sit down, do not stand like that! You are\ndelirious\u2014\u201d Oh, what shall we do with him she cried in anguish, as she\nmade him sit down again in the arm-chair.\n\nA tear glistened on her cheek. At the sight of it Hippolyte seemed\namazed. He lifted his hand timidly and, touched the tear with his\nfinger, smiling like a child.\n\n\u201cI... you,\u201d he began joyfully. \u201cYou cannot tell how I... he always\nspoke so enthusiastically of you, Klay here; I liked his enthusiasm. I\nwas not corrupting him! But I must leave him, too\u2014I wanted to leave\nthem all\u2014there was not one of them\u2014not one! I wanted to be a man of\naction\u2014I had a right to be. Oh! what a lot of things I wanted! Now I\nwant nothing; I renounce all my wants; I swore to myself that I would\nwant nothing; let them seek the truth without me! Yes, nature is full\nof mockery! Why\u201d\u2014he continued with sudden warmth\u2014\u201cdoes she create the\nchoicest beings only to mock at them? The only human being who is\nrecognized as perfect, when nature showed him to mankind, was given the\nmission to say things which have caused the shedding of so much blood\nthat it would have drowned mankind if it had all been shed at once! Oh!\nit is better for me to die! I should tell some dreadful lie too; nature\nwould so contrive it! I have corrupted nobody. I wanted to live for the\nhappiness of all men, to find and spread the truth. I used to look out\nof my window at the wall of Meyer\u2019s house, and say to myself that if I\ncould speak for a quarter of an hour I would convince the whole world,\nand now for once in my life I have come into contact with... you\u2014if not\nwith the others! And what is the result? Nothing! The sole result is\nthat you despise me! Therefore I must be a fool, I am useless, it is\ntime I disappeared! And I shall leave not even a memory! Not a sound,\nnot a trace, not a single deed! I have not spread a single truth!... Do\nnot laugh at the fool! Forget him! Forget him forever! I beseech you,\ndo not be so cruel as to remember! Do you know that if I were not\nconsumptive, I would kill myself?\u201d\n\nThough he seemed to wish to say much more, he became silent. He fell\nback into his chair, and, covering his face with his hands, began to\nsob like a little child.\n\n\u201cOh! what on earth are we to do with him?\u201d cried Lizabetha Prokofievna.\nShe hastened to him and pressed his head against her bosom, while he\nsobbed convulsively.\n\n\u201cCome, come, come! There, you must not cry, that will do. You are a\ngood child! God will forgive you, because you knew no better. Come now,\nbe a man! You know presently you will be ashamed.\u201d\n\nHippolyte raised his head with an effort, saying:\n\n\u201cI have little brothers and sisters, over there, poor avid innocent.\nShe will corrupt them! You are a saint! You are a child yourself\u2014save\nthem! Snatch them from that... she is... it is shameful! Oh! help them!\nGod will repay you a hundredfold. For the love of God, for the love of\nChrist!\u201d\n\n\u201cSpeak, Trenton Fedorovitch! What are we to do?\u201d cried Lizabetha\nProkofievna, irritably. \u201cPlease break your majestic silence! I tell\nyou, if you cannot come to some decision, I will stay here all night\nmyself. You have tyrannized over me enough, you autocrat!\u201d\n\nShe spoke angrily, and in great excitement, and expected an immediate\nreply. But in such a case, no matter how many are present, all prefer\nto keep silence: no one will take the initiative, but all reserve their\ncomments till afterwards. There were some present\u2014Imran Evangeline,\nfor instance\u2014who would have willingly sat there till morning without\nsaying a word. Imran had sat apart all the evening without opening\nher lips, but she listened to everything with the closest attention;\nperhaps she had her reasons for so doing.\n\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d said the general, \u201cit seems to me that a sick-nurse would be\nof more use here than an excitable person like you. Perhaps it would be\nas well to get some sober, reliable man for the night. In any case we\nmust consult the prince, and leave the patient to rest at once.\nTomorrow we can see what can be done for him.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is nearly midnight; we are going. Will he come with us, or is he to\nstay here?\u201d Doktorenko asked crossly of the prince.\n\n\u201cYou can stay with him if you like,\u201d said Olive.\n\n\u201cThere is plenty of room here.\u201d\n\nSuddenly, to the astonishment of all, Keller went quickly up to the\ngeneral.\n\n\u201cExcellency,\u201d he said, impulsively, \u201cif you want a reliable man for the\nnight, I am ready to sacrifice myself for my friend\u2014such a soul as he\nhas! I have long thought him a great man, excellency! My article showed\nmy lack of education, but when he criticizes he scatters pearls!\u201d\n\nTrenton Fedorovitch turned from the boxer with a gesture of despair.\n\n\u201cI shall be delighted if he will stay; it would certainly be difficult\nfor him to get back to Petersburg,\u201d said the prince, in answer to the\neager questions of Lizabetha Prokofievna.\n\n\u201cBut you are half asleep, are you not? If you don\u2019t want him, I will\ntake him back to my house! Why, good gracious! He can hardly stand up\nhimself! What is it? Are you ill?\u201d\n\nNot finding the prince on his death-bed, Lizabetha Prokofievna had been\nmisled by his appearance to think him much better than he was. But his\nrecent illness, the painful memories attached to it, the fatigue of\nthis evening, the incident with \u201cPavlicheff\u2019s son,\u201d and now this scene\nwith Hippolyte, had all so worked on his oversensitive nature that he\nwas now almost in a fever. Moreover, a new trouble, almost a fear,\nshowed itself in his eyes; he watched Hippolyte anxiously as if\nexpecting something further.\n\nSuddenly Hippolyte arose. His face, shockingly pale, was that of a man\noverwhelmed with shame and despair. This was shown chiefly in the look\nof fear and hatred which he cast upon the assembled company, and in the\nwild smile upon his trembling lips. Then he cast down his eyes, and\nwith the same smile, staggered towards Burdovsky and Doktorenko, who\nstood at the entrance to the verandah. He had decided to go with them.\n\n\u201cThere! that is what I feared!\u201d cried the prince. \u201cIt was inevitable!\u201d\n\nHippolyte turned upon him, a prey to maniacal rage, which set all the\nmuscles of his face quivering.\n\n\u201cAh! that is what you feared! It was inevitable, you say! Well, let me\ntell you that if I hate anyone here\u2014I hate you all,\u201d he cried, in a\nhoarse, strained voice\u2014\u201cbut you, you, with your jesuitical soul, your\nsoul of sickly sweetness, idiot, beneficent millionaire\u2014I hate you\nworse than anything or anyone on earth! I saw through you and hated you\nlong ago; from the day I first heard of you. I hated you with my whole\nheart. You have contrived all this! You have driven me into this state!\nYou have made a dying man disgrace himself. You, you, you are the cause\nof my abject cowardice! I would kill you if I remained alive! I do not\nwant your benefits; I will accept none from anyone; do you hear? Not\nfrom any one! I want nothing! I was delirious, do not dare to triumph!\nI curse every one of you, once for all!\u201d\n\nBreath failed him here, and he was obliged to stop.\n\n\u201cHe is ashamed of his tears!\u201d whispered Lebedeff to Lizabetha\nProkofievna. \u201cIt was inevitable. Ah! what a wonderful man the prince\nis! He read his very soul.\u201d\n\nBut Mrs. Epanchin would not deign to look at Lebedeff. Drawn up\nhaughtily, with her head held high, she gazed at the \u201criff-raff,\u201d with\nscornful curiosity. When Hippolyte had finished, Trenton Fedorovitch\nshrugged his shoulders, and his wife looked him angrily up and down, as\nif to demand the meaning of his movement. Then she turned to the\nprince.\n\n\u201cThanks, prince, many thanks, eccentric friend of the family, for the\npleasant evening you have provided for us. I am sure you are quite\npleased that you have managed to mix us up with your extraordinary\naffairs. It is quite enough, dear family friend; thank you for giving\nus an opportunity of getting to know you so well.\u201d\n\nShe arranged her cloak with hands that trembled with anger as she\nwaited for the \u201criff-raff\u201d to go. The cab which Lebedeff\u2019s son had gone\nto fetch a quarter of an hour ago, by Doktorenko\u2019s order, arrived at\nthat moment. The general thought fit to put in a word after his wife.\n\n\u201cReally, prince, I hardly expected after\u2014after all our friendly\nintercourse\u2014and you see, Lizabetha Prokofievna\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cPapa, how can you?\u201d cried Adelaida, walking quickly up to the prince\nand holding out her hand.\n\nHe smiled absently at her; then suddenly he felt a burning sensation in\nhis ear as an angry voice whispered:\n\n\u201cIf you do not turn those dreadful people out of the house this very\ninstant, I shall hate you all my life\u2014all my life!\u201d It was Remi. She\nseemed almost in a frenzy, but she turned away before the prince could\nlook at her. However, there was no one left to turn out of the house,\nfor they had managed meanwhile to get Hippolyte into the cab, and it\nhad driven off.\n\n\u201cWell, how much longer is this going to last, Trenton Fedorovitch? What do\nyou think? Shall I soon be delivered from these odious youths?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear, I am quite ready; naturally... the prince.\u201d\n\nTrenton Fedorovitch held out his hand to Olive, but ran after his wife,\nwho was leaving with every sign of violent indignation, before he had\ntime to shake it. Adelaida, her fiance, and Alexandra, said good-bye to\ntheir host with sincere friendliness. Evgenie Pavlovitch did the same,\nand he alone seemed in good spirits.\n\n\u201cWhat I expected has happened! But I am sorry, you poor fellow, that\nyou should have had to suffer for it,\u201d he murmured, with a most\ncharming smile.\n\nRemi left without saying good-bye. But the evening was not to end\nwithout a last adventure. An unexpected meeting was yet in store for\nLizabetha Prokofievna.\n\nShe had scarcely descended the terrace steps leading to the high road\nthat skirts the park at Pavlofsk, when suddenly there dashed by a smart\nopen carriage, drawn by a pair of beautiful white horses. Having passed\nsome ten yards beyond the house, the carriage suddenly drew up, and one\nof the two ladies seated in it turned sharp round as though she had\njust caught sight of some acquaintance whom she particularly wished to\nsee.\n\n\u201cEvgenie Pavlovitch! Is that you?\u201d cried a clear, sweet voice, which\ncaused the prince, and perhaps someone else, to tremble. \u201cWell, I _am_\nglad I\u2019ve found you at last! I\u2019ve sent to town for you twice today\nmyself! My messengers have been searching for you everywhere!\u201d\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch stood on the steps like one struck by lightning.\nMrs. Epanchin stood still too, but not with the petrified expression of\nEvgenie. She gazed haughtily at the audacious person who had addressed\nher companion, and then turned a look of astonishment upon Evgenie\nhimself.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s news!\u201d continued the clear voice. \u201cYou need not be anxious\nabout Kupferof\u2019s IOU\u2019s\u2014Rogojin has bought them up. I persuaded him\nto!\u2014I dare say we shall settle Biscup too, so it\u2019s all right, you see!\n_Au revoir_, tomorrow! And don\u2019t worry!\u201d The carriage moved on, and\ndisappeared.\n\n\u201cThe woman\u2019s mad!\u201d cried Evgenie, at last, crimson with anger, and\nlooking confusedly around. \u201cI don\u2019t know what she\u2019s talking about! What\nIOU\u2019s? Who is she?\u201d Mrs. Epanchin continued to watch his face for a\ncouple of seconds; then she marched briskly and haughtily away towards\nher own house, the rest following her.\n\nA minute afterwards, Evgenie Pavlovitch reappeared on the terrace, in\ngreat agitation.\n\n\u201cCaesar,\u201d he said, \u201ctell me the truth; do you know what all this\nmeans?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know nothing whatever about it!\u201d replied the latter, who was,\nhimself, in a state of nervous excitement.\n\n\u201cNo?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, nor do I!\u201d said Evgenie Pavlovitch, laughing suddenly. \u201cI\nhaven\u2019t the slightest knowledge of any such IOU\u2019s as she mentioned, I\nswear I haven\u2019t\u2014What\u2019s the matter, are you fainting?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, no\u2014no\u2014I\u2019m all right, I assure you!\u201d\n\nXI.\n\nThe anger of the Epanchin family was unappeased for three days. As\nusual the prince reproached himself, and had expected punishment, but\nhe was inwardly convinced that Lizabetha Prokofievna could not be\nseriously angry with him, and that she probably was more angry with\nherself. He was painfully surprised, therefore, when three days passed\nwith no word from her. Other things also troubled and perplexed him,\nand one of these grew more important in his eyes as the days went by.\nHe had begun to blame himself for two opposite tendencies\u2014on the one\nhand to extreme, almost \u201csenseless,\u201d confidence in his fellows, on the\nother to a \u201cvile, gloomy suspiciousness.\u201d\n\nBy the end of the third day the incident of the eccentric lady and\nEvgenie Pavlovitch had attained enormous and mysterious proportions in\nhis mind. He sorrowfully asked himself whether he had been the cause of\nthis new \u201cmonstrosity,\u201d or was it... but he refrained from saying who\nelse might be in fault. As for the letters N.P.B., he looked on that as\na harmless joke, a mere childish piece of mischief\u2014so childish that he\nfelt it would be shameful, almost dishonourable, to attach any\nimportance to it.\n\nThe day after these scandalous events, however, the prince had the\nhonour of receiving a visit from Adelaida and her fiance, Caesar S.\nThey came, ostensibly, to inquire after his health. They had wandered\nout for a walk, and called in \u201cby accident,\u201d and talked for almost the\nwhole of the time they were with him about a certain most lovely tree\nin the park, which Adelaida had set her heart upon for a picture. This,\nand a little amiable conversation on Caesar S.\u2019s part, occupied the\ntime, and not a word was said about last evening\u2019s episodes. At length\nAdelaida burst out laughing, apologized, and explained that they had\ncome incognito; from which, and from the circumstance that they said\nnothing about the prince\u2019s either walking back with them or coming to\nsee them later on, the latter inferred that he was in Mrs. Epanchin\u2019s\nblack books. Adelaida mentioned a watercolour that she would much like\nto show him, and explained that she would either send it by Klay, or\nbring it herself the next day\u2014which to the prince seemed very\nsuggestive.\n\nAt length, however, just as the visitors were on the point of\ndeparting, Caesar S. seemed suddenly to recollect himself. \u201cOh yes,\nby-the-by,\u201d he said, \u201cdo you happen to know, my dear Lef Nicolaievitch,\nwho that lady was who called out to Evgenie Pavlovitch last night, from\nthe carriage?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was Nastasia Philipovna,\u201d said the prince; \u201cdidn\u2019t you know that? I\ncannot tell you who her companion was.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut what on earth did she mean? I assure you it is a real riddle to\nme\u2014to me, and to others, too!\u201d Caesar S. seemed to be under the\ninfluence of sincere astonishment.\n\n\u201cShe spoke of some bills of Evgenie Pavlovitch\u2019s,\u201d said the prince,\nsimply, \u201cwhich Rogojin had bought up from someone; and implied that\nRogojin would not press him.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I heard that much, my dear fellow! But the thing is so impossibly\nabsurd! A man of property like Evgenie to give IOU\u2019s to a money-lender,\nand to be worried about them! It is ridiculous. Besides, he cannot\npossibly be on such intimate terms with Nastasia Philipovna as she gave\nus to understand; that\u2019s the principal part of the mystery! He has\ngiven me his word that he knows nothing whatever about the matter, and\nof course I believe him. Well, the question is, my dear prince, do you\nknow anything about it? Has any sort of suspicion of the meaning of it\ncome across you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I know nothing whatever about it. I assure you I had nothing at\nall to do with it.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, prince, how strange you have become! I assure you, I hardly know\nyou for your old self. How can you suppose that I ever suggested you\ncould have had a finger in such a business? But you are not quite\nyourself today, I can see.\u201d He embraced the prince, and kissed him.\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean, though,\u201d asked Olive, \u201c\u2018by such a business\u2019? I\ndon\u2019t see any particular \u2018business\u2019 about it at all!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, undoubtedly, this person wished somehow, and for some reason, to\ndo Evgenie Pavlovitch a bad turn, by attributing to him\u2014before\nwitnesses\u2014qualities which he neither has nor can have,\u201d replied Caesar\nS. drily enough.\n\nMuiskhin looked disturbed, but continued to gaze intently and\nquestioningly into Caesar S.\u2019s face. The latter, however, remained\nsilent.\n\n\u201cThen it was not simply a matter of bills?\u201d Olive said at last, with\nsome impatience. \u201cIt was not as she said?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I ask you, my dear sir, how can there be anything in common\nbetween Evgenie Pavlovitch, and\u2014her, and again Rogojin? I tell you he\nis a man of immense wealth\u2014as I know for a fact; and he has further\nexpectations from his uncle. Simply Nastasia Philipovna\u2014\u201d\n\nCaesar S. paused, as though unwilling to continue talking about\nNastasia Philipovna.\n\n\u201cThen at all events he knows her!\u201d remarked the prince, after a\nmoment\u2019s silence.\n\n\u201cOh, that may be. He may have known her some time ago\u2014two or three\nyears, at least. He used to know Totski. But it is impossible that\nthere should be any intimacy between them. She has not even been in the\nplace\u2014many people don\u2019t even know that she has returned from Moscow! I\nhave only observed her carriage about for the last three days or so.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a lovely carriage,\u201d said Adelaida.\n\n\u201cYes, it was a beautiful turn-out, certainly!\u201d\n\nThe visitors left the house, however, on no less friendly terms than\nbefore. But the visit was of the greatest importance to the prince,\nfrom his own point of view. Admitting that he had his suspicions, from\nthe moment of the occurrence of last night, perhaps even before, that\nNastasia had some mysterious end in view, yet this visit confirmed his\nsuspicions and justified his fears. It was all clear to him; Caesar S.\nwas wrong, perhaps, in his view of the matter, but he was somewhere\nnear the truth, and was right in so far as that he understood there to\nbe an intrigue of some sort going on. Perhaps Caesar S. saw it all more\nclearly than he had allowed his hearers to understand. At all events,\nnothing could be plainer than that he and Adelaida had come for the\nexpress purpose of obtaining explanations, and that they suspected him\nof being concerned in the affair. And if all this were so, then _she_\nmust have some terrible object in view! What was it? There was no\nstopping _her_, as Olive knew from experience, in the performance of\nanything she had set her mind on! \u201cOh, she is mad, mad!\u201d thought the\npoor prince.\n\nBut there were many other puzzling occurrences that day, which required\nimmediate explanation, and the prince felt very sad. A visit from Vera\nLebedeff distracted him a little. She brought the infant Lubotchka with\nher as usual, and talked cheerfully for some time. Then came her\nyounger sister, and later the brother, who attended a school close by.\nHe informed Olive that his father had lately found a new\ninterpretation of the star called \u201cwormwood,\u201d which fell upon the\nwater-springs, as described in the Apocalypse. He had decided that it\nmeant the network of railroads spread over the face of Europe at the\npresent time. The prince refused to believe that Lebedeff could have\ngiven such an interpretation, and they decided to ask him about it at\nthe earliest opportunity. Vera related how Keller had taken up his\nabode with them on the previous evening. She thought he would remain\nfor some time, as he was greatly pleased with the society of Han\nCece and of the whole family. But he declared that he had only come\nto them in order to complete his education! The prince always enjoyed\nthe company of Lebedeff\u2019s children, and today it was especially\nwelcome, for Klay did not appear all day. Early that morning he had\nstarted for Petersburg. Lebedeff also was away on business. But Spencer\nMatthias had promised to visit Olive, who eagerly awaited his\ncoming.\n\nAbout seven in the evening, soon after dinner, he arrived. At the first\nglance it struck the prince that he, at any rate, must know all the\ndetails of last night\u2019s affair. Indeed, it would have been impossible\nfor him to remain in ignorance considering the intimate relationship\nbetween him, Imran Evangeline, and Jenson. But although he and the\nprince were intimate, in a sense, and although the latter had placed\nthe Burdovsky affair in his hands\u2014and this was not the only mark of\nconfidence he had received\u2014it seemed curious how many matters there\nwere that were tacitly avoided in their conversations. Olive thought\nthat Gania at times appeared to desire more cordiality and frankness.\nIt was apparent now, when he entered, that he was convinced that the\nmoment for breaking the ice between them had come at last.\n\nBut all the same Gania was in haste, for his sister was waiting at\nLebedeff\u2019s to consult him on an urgent matter of business. If he had\nanticipated impatient questions, or impulsive confidences, he was soon\nundeceived. The prince was thoughtful, reserved, even a little\nabsent-minded, and asked none of the questions\u2014one in particular\u2014that\nGania had expected. So he imitated the prince\u2019s demeanour, and talked\nfast and brilliantly upon all subjects but the one on which their\nthoughts were engaged. Among other things Gania told his host that\nNastasia Philipovna had been only four days in Pavlofsk, and that\neveryone was talking about her already. She was staying with Daria\nAlexeyevna, in an ugly little house in Mattrossky Street, but drove\nabout in the smartest carriage in the place. A crowd of followers had\npursued her from the first, young and old. Some escorted her on\nhorse-back when she took the air in her carriage.\n\nShe was as capricious as ever in the choice of her acquaintances, and\nadmitted few into her narrow circle. Yet she already had a numerous\nfollowing and many champions on whom she could depend in time of need.\nOne gentleman on his holiday had broken off his engagement on her\naccount, and an old general had quarrelled with his only son for the\nsame reason.\n\nShe was accompanied sometimes in her carriage by a girl of sixteen, a\ndistant relative of her hostess. This young lady sang very well; in\nfact, her music had given a kind of notoriety to their little house.\nNastasia, however, was behaving with great discretion on the whole. She\ndressed quietly, though with such taste as to drive all the ladies in\nPavlofsk mad with envy, of that, as well as of her beauty and her\ncarriage and horses.\n\n\u201cAs for yesterday\u2019s episode,\u201d continued Gania, \u201cof course it was\npre-arranged.\u201d Here he paused, as though expecting to be asked how he\nknew that. But the prince did not inquire. Concerning Evgenie\nPavlovitch, Gania stated, without being asked, that he believed the\nformer had not known Nastasia Philipovna in past years, but that he had\nprobably been introduced to her by somebody in the park during these\nfour days. As to the question of the IOU\u2019s she had spoken of, there\nmight easily be something in that; for though Evgenie was undoubtedly a\nman of wealth, yet certain of his affairs were equally undoubtedly in\ndisorder. Arrived at this interesting point, Gania suddenly broke off,\nand said no more about Nastasia\u2019s prank of the previous evening.\n\nAt last Imran Evangeline came in search of her brother, and\nremained for a few minutes. Without Olive\u2019s asking her, she informed\nhim that Evgenie Pavlovitch was spending the day in Petersburg, and\nperhaps would remain there over tomorrow; and that her husband had also\ngone to town, probably in connection with Evgenie Pavlovitch\u2019s affairs.\n\n\u201cLizabetha Prokofievna is in a really fiendish temper today,\u201d she\nadded, as she went out, \u201cbut the most curious thing is that Remi has\nquarrelled with her whole family; not only with her father and mother,\nbut with her sisters also. It is not a good sign.\u201d She said all this\nquite casually, though it was extremely important in the eyes of the\nprince, and went off with her brother. Regarding the episode of\n\u201cPavlicheff\u2019s son,\u201d Gania had been absolutely silent, partly from a\nkind of false modesty, partly, perhaps, to \u201cspare the prince\u2019s\nfeelings.\u201d The latter, however, thanked him again for the trouble he\nhad taken in the affair.\n\nOlive was glad enough to be left alone. He went out of the garden,\ncrossed the road, and entered the park. He wished to reflect, and to\nmake up his mind as to a certain \u201cstep.\u201d This step was one of those\nthings, however, which are not thought out, as a rule, but decided for\nor against hastily, and without much reflection. The fact is, he felt a\nlonging to leave all this and go away\u2014go anywhere, if only it were far\nenough, and at once, without bidding farewell to anyone. He felt a\npresentiment that if he remained but a few days more in this place, and\namong these people, he would be fixed there irrevocably and\npermanently. However, in a very few minutes he decided that to run away\nwas impossible; that it would be cowardly; that great problems lay\nbefore him, and that he had no right to leave them unsolved, or at\nleast to refuse to give all his energy and strength to the attempt to\nsolve them. Having come to this determination, he turned and went home,\nhis walk having lasted less than a quarter of an hour. At that moment\nhe was thoroughly unhappy.\n\nLebedeff had not returned, so towards evening Keller managed to\npenetrate into the prince\u2019s apartments. He was not drunk, but in a\nconfidential and talkative mood. He announced that he had come to tell\nthe story of his life to Olive, and had only remained at Pavlofsk\nfor that purpose. There was no means of turning him out; nothing short\nof an earthquake would have removed him.\n\nIn the manner of one with long hours before him, he began his history;\nbut after a few incoherent words he jumped to the conclusion, which was\nthat \u201chaving ceased to believe in God Almighty, he had lost every\nvestige of morality, and had gone so far as to commit a theft.\u201d \u201cCould\nyou imagine such a thing?\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cListen to me, Keller,\u201d returned the prince. \u201cIf I were in your place,\nI should not acknowledge that unless it were absolutely necessary for\nsome reason. But perhaps you are making yourself out to be worse than\nyou are, purposely?\u201d\n\n\u201cI should tell it to no one but yourself, prince, and I only name it\nnow as a help to my soul\u2019s evolution. When I die, that secret will die\nwith me! But, excellency, if you knew, if you only had the least idea,\nhow difficult it is to get money nowadays! Where to find it is the\nquestion. Ask for a loan, the answer is always the same: \u2018Give us gold,\njewels, or diamonds, and it will be quite easy.\u2019 Exactly what one has\nnot got! Can you picture that to yourself? I got angry at last, and\nsaid, \u2018I suppose you would accept emeralds?\u2019 \u2018Certainly, we accept\nemeralds with pleasure. Yes!\u2019 \u2018Well, that\u2019s all right,\u2019 said I. \u2018Go to\nthe devil, you den of thieves!\u2019 And with that I seized my hat, and\nwalked out.\u201d\n\n\u201cHad you any emeralds?\u201d asked the prince.\n\n\u201cWhat? I have emeralds? Oh, prince! with what simplicity, with what\nalmost pastoral simplicity, you look upon life!\u201d\n\nCould not something be made of this man under good influences? asked\nthe prince of himself, for he began to feel a kind of pity for his\nvisitor. He thought little of the value of his own personal influence,\nnot from a sense of humility, but from his peculiar way of looking at\nthings in general. Imperceptibly the conversation grew more animated\nand more interesting, so that neither of the two felt anxious to bring\nit to a close. Keller confessed, with apparent sincerity, to having\nbeen guilty of many acts of such a nature that it astonished the prince\nthat he could mention them, even to him. At every fresh avowal he\nprofessed the deepest repentance, and described himself as being\n\u201cbathed in tears\u201d; but this did not prevent him from putting on a\nboastful air at times, and some of his stories were so absurdly comical\nthat both he and the prince laughed like madmen.\n\n\u201cOne point in your favour is that you seem to have a child-like mind,\nand extreme truthfulness,\u201d said the prince at last. \u201cDo you know that\nthat atones for much?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am assuredly noble-minded, and chivalrous to a degree!\u201d said Keller,\nmuch softened. \u201cBut, do you know, this nobility of mind exists in a\ndream, if one may put it so? It never appears in practice or deed. Now,\nwhy is that? I can never understand.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo not despair. I think we may say without fear of deceiving\nourselves, that you have now given a fairly exact account of your life.\nI, at least, think it would be impossible to add much to what you have\njust told me.\u201d\n\n\u201cImpossible?\u201d cried Keller, almost pityingly. \u201cOh prince, how little\nyou really seem to understand human nature!\u201d\n\n\u201cIs there really much more to be added?\u201d asked the prince, with mild\nsurprise. \u201cWell, what is it you really want of me? Speak out; tell me\nwhy you came to make your confession to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat did I want? Well, to begin with, it is good to meet a man like\nyou. It is a pleasure to talk over my faults with you. I know you for\none of the best of men... and then... then...\u201d\n\nHe hesitated, and appeared so much embarrassed that the prince helped\nhim out.\n\n\u201cThen you wanted me to lend you money?\u201d\n\nThe words were spoken in a grave tone, and even somewhat shyly.\n\nKeller started, gave an astonished look at the speaker, and thumped the\ntable with his fist.\n\n\u201cWell, prince, that\u2019s enough to knock me down! It astounds me! Here you\nare, as simple and innocent as a knight of the golden age, and yet...\nyet... you read a man\u2019s soul like a psychologist! Now, do explain it to\nme, prince, because I... I really do not understand!... Of course, my\naim was to borrow money all along, and you... you asked the question as\nif there was nothing blameable in it\u2014as if you thought it quite\nnatural.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes... from you it is quite natural.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you are not offended?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy should I be offended?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, just listen, prince. I remained here last evening, partly\nbecause I have a great admiration for the French archbishop Bourdaloue.\nI enjoyed a discussion over him till three o\u2019clock in the morning, with\nLebedeff; and then... then\u2014I swear by all I hold sacred that I am\ntelling you the truth\u2014then I wished to develop my soul in this frank\nand heartfelt confession to you. This was my thought as I was sobbing\nmyself to sleep at dawn. Just as I was losing consciousness, tears in\nmy soul, tears on my face (I remember how I lay there sobbing), an idea\nfrom hell struck me. \u2018Why not, after confessing, borrow money from\nhim?\u2019 You see, this confession was a kind of masterstroke; I intended\nto use it as a means to your good grace and favour\u2014and then\u2014then I\nmeant to walk off with a hundred and fifty roubles. Now, do you not\ncall that base?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is hardly an exact statement of the case,\u201d said the prince in\nreply. \u201cYou have confused your motives and ideas, as I need scarcely\nsay too often happens to myself. I can assure you, Keller, I reproach\nmyself bitterly for it sometimes. When you were talking just now I\nseemed to be listening to something about myself. At times I have\nimagined that all men were the same,\u201d he continued earnestly, for he\nappeared to be much interested in the conversation, \u201cand that consoled\nme in a certain degree, for a _double_ motive is a thing most difficult\nto fight against. I have tried, and I know. God knows whence they\narise, these ideas that you speak of as base. I fear these double\nmotives more than ever just now, but I am not your judge, and in my\nopinion it is going too far to give the name of baseness to it\u2014what do\nyou think? You were going to employ your tears as a ruse in order to\nborrow money, but you also say\u2014in fact, you have sworn to the fact\u2014that\nindependently of this your confession was made with an honourable\nmotive. As for the money, you want it for drink, do you not? After your\nconfession, that is weakness, of course; but, after all, how can anyone\ngive up a bad habit at a moment\u2019s notice? It is impossible. What can we\ndo? It is best, I think, to leave the matter to your own conscience.\nHow does it seem to you?\u201d As he concluded the prince looked curiously\nat Keller; evidently this problem of double motives had often been\nconsidered by him before.\n\n\u201cWell, how anybody can call you an idiot after that, is more than I can\nunderstand!\u201d cried the boxer.\n\nThe prince reddened slightly.\n\n\u201cBourdaloue, the archbishop, would not have spared a man like me,\u201d\nKeller continued, \u201cbut you, you have judged me with humanity. To show\nhow grateful I am, and as a punishment, I will not accept a hundred and\nfifty roubles. Give me twenty-five\u2014that will be enough; it is all I\nreally need, for a fortnight at least. I will not ask you for more for\na fortnight. I should like to have given Agatha a present, but she does\nnot really deserve it. Oh, my dear prince, God bless you!\u201d\n\nAt this moment Lebedeff appeared, having just arrived from Petersburg.\nHe frowned when he saw the twenty-five rouble note in Keller\u2019s hand,\nbut the latter, having got the money, went away at once. Lebedeff began\nto abuse him.\n\n\u201cYou are unjust; I found him sincerely repentant,\u201d observed the prince,\nafter listening for a time.\n\n\u201cWhat is the good of repentance like that? It is the same exactly as\nmine yesterday, when I said, \u2018I am base, I am base,\u2019\u2014words, and nothing\nmore!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen they were only words on your part? I thought, on the contrary...\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I don\u2019t mind telling you the truth\u2014you only! Because you see\nthrough a man somehow. Words and actions, truth and falsehood, are all\njumbled up together in me, and yet I am perfectly sincere. I feel the\ndeepest repentance, believe it or not, as you choose; but words and\nlies come out in the infernal craving to get the better of other\npeople. It is always there\u2014the notion of cheating people, and of using\nmy repentant tears to my own advantage! I assure you this is the truth,\nprince! I would not tell any other man for the world! He would laugh\nand jeer at me\u2014but you, you judge a man humanely.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, Keller said the same thing to me nearly word for word a few\nminutes ago!\u201d cried Olive. \u201cAnd you both seem inclined to boast\nabout it! You astonish me, but I think he is more sincere than you, for\nyou make a regular trade of it. Oh, don\u2019t put on that pathetic\nexpression, and don\u2019t put your hand on your heart! Have you anything to\nsay to me? You have not come for nothing...\u201d\n\nLebedeff grinned and wriggled.\n\n\u201cI have been waiting all day for you, because I want to ask you a\nquestion; and, for once in your life, please tell me the truth at once.\nHad you anything to do with that affair of the carriage yesterday?\u201d\n\nLebedeff began to grin again, rubbed his hands, sneezed, but spoke not\na word in reply.\n\n\u201cI see you had something to do with it.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndirectly, quite indirectly! I am speaking the truth\u2014I am indeed! I\nmerely told a certain person that I had people in my house, and that\nsuch and such personages might be found among them.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am aware that you sent your son to that house\u2014he told me so himself\njust now, but what is this intrigue?\u201d said the prince, impatiently.\n\n\u201cIt is not my intrigue!\u201d cried Lebedeff, waving his hand.\n\n\u201cIt was engineered by other people, and is, properly speaking, rather a\nfantasy than an intrigue!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut what is it all about? Tell me, for Heaven\u2019s sake! Cannot you\nunderstand how nearly it touches me? Why are they blackening Evgenie\nPavlovitch\u2019s reputation?\u201d\n\nLebedeff grimaced and wriggled again.\n\n\u201cCaesar!\u201d said he. \u201cExcellency! You won\u2019t let me tell you the whole\ntruth; I have tried to explain; more than once I have begun, but you\nhave not allowed me to go on...\u201d\n\nThe prince gave no answer, and sat deep in thought. Evidently he was\nstruggling to decide.\n\n\u201cVery well! Tell me the truth,\u201d he said, dejectedly.\n\n\u201cRemi Trentonovna...\u201d began Lebedeff, promptly.\n\n\u201cBe silent! At once!\u201d interrupted the prince, red with indignation, and\nperhaps with shame, too. \u201cIt is impossible and absurd! All that has\nbeen invented by you, or fools like you! Let me never hear you say a\nword again on that subject!\u201d\n\nLate in the evening Klay came in with a whole budget of Petersburg and\nPavlofsk news. He did not dwell much on the Petersburg part of it,\nwhich consisted chiefly of intelligence about his friend Hippolyte, but\npassed quickly to the Pavlofsk tidings. He had gone straight to the\nEpanchins\u2019 from the station.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s the deuce and all going on there!\u201d he said. \u201cFirst of all\nabout the row last night, and I think there must be something new as\nwell, though I didn\u2019t like to ask. Not a word about _you_, prince, the\nwhole time! The most interesting fact was that Remi had been\nquarrelling with her people about Gania. Klay did not know any\ndetails, except that it had been a terrible quarrel! Also Evgenie\nPavlovitch had called, and met with an excellent reception all round.\nAnd another curious thing: Mrs. Epanchin was so angry that she called\nVaria to her\u2014Varia was talking to the girls\u2014and turned her out of the\nhouse \u2018once for all\u2019 she said. I heard it from Varia herself\u2014Mrs.\nEpanchin was quite polite, but firm; and when Varia said good-bye to\nthe girls, she told them nothing about it, and they didn\u2019t know they\nwere saying goodbye for the last time. I\u2019m sorry for Varia, and for\nGania too; he isn\u2019t half a bad fellow, in spite of his faults, and I\nshall never forgive myself for not liking him before! I don\u2019t know\nwhether I ought to continue to go to the Epanchins\u2019 now,\u201d concluded\nKlay\u2014\u201cI like to be quite independent of others, and of other people\u2019s\nquarrels if I can; but I must think over it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think you need break your heart over Gania,\u201d said the prince;\n\u201cfor if what you say is true, he must be considered dangerous in the\nEpanchin household, and if so, certain hopes of his must have been\nencouraged.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat? What hopes?\u201d cried Klay; \u201cyou surely don\u2019t mean Remi?\u2014oh,\nno!\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re a dreadful sceptic, prince,\u201d he continued, after a moment\u2019s\nsilence. \u201cI have observed of late that you have grown sceptical about\neverything. You don\u2019t seem to believe in people as you did, and are\nalways attributing motives and so on\u2014am I using the word \u2018sceptic\u2019 in\nits proper sense?\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe so; but I\u2019m not sure.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I\u2019ll change it, right or wrong; I\u2019ll say that you are not\nsceptical, but _jealous_. There! you are deadly jealous of Gania, over\na certain proud damsel! Come!\u201d Klay jumped up, with these words, and\nburst out laughing. He laughed as he had perhaps never laughed before,\nand still more when he saw the prince flushing up to his temples. He\nwas delighted that the prince should be jealous about Remi. However,\nhe stopped immediately on seeing that the other was really hurt, and\nthe conversation continued, very earnestly, for an hour or more.\n\nNext day the prince had to go to town, on business. Returning in the\nafternoon, he happened upon Han Epanchin at the station. The latter\nseized his hand, glancing around nervously, as if he were afraid of\nbeing caught in wrong-doing, and dragged him into a first-class\ncompartment. He was burning to speak about something of importance.\n\n\u201cIn the first place, my dear prince, don\u2019t be angry with me. I would\nhave come to see you yesterday, but I didn\u2019t know how Lizabetha\nProkofievna would take it. My dear fellow, my house is simply a hell\njust now, a sort of sphinx has taken up its abode there. We live in an\natmosphere of riddles; I can\u2019t make head or tail of anything. As for\nyou, I feel sure you are the least to blame of any of us, though you\ncertainly have been the cause of a good deal of trouble. You see, it\u2019s\nall very pleasant to be a philanthropist; but it can be carried too\nfar. Of course I admire kind-heartedness, and I esteem my wife, but\u2014\u201d\n\nThe general wandered on in this disconnected way for a long time; it\nwas clear that he was much disturbed by some circumstance which he\ncould make nothing of.\n\n\u201cIt is plain to me, that _you_ are not in it at all,\u201d he continued, at\nlast, a little less vaguely, \u201cbut perhaps you had better not come to\nour house for a little while. I ask you in the friendliest manner,\nmind; just till the wind changes again. As for Evgenie Pavlovitch,\u201d he\ncontinued with some excitement, \u201cthe whole thing is a calumny, a dirty\ncalumny. It is simply a plot, an intrigue, to upset our plans and to\nstir up a quarrel. You see, prince, I\u2019ll tell you privately, Evgenie\nand ourselves have not said a word yet, we have no formal\nunderstanding, we are in no way bound on either side, but the word may\nbe said very soon, don\u2019t you see, _very_ soon, and all this is most\ninjurious, and is meant to be so. Why? I\u2019m sure I can\u2019t tell you. She\u2019s\nan extraordinary woman, you see, an eccentric woman; I tell you I am so\nfrightened of that woman that I can\u2019t sleep. What a carriage that was,\nand where did it come from, eh? I declare, I was base enough to suspect\nEvgenie at first; but it seems certain that that cannot be the case,\nand if so, why is she interfering here? That\u2019s the riddle, what does\nshe want? Is it to keep Evgenie to herself? But, my dear fellow, I\nswear to you, I swear he doesn\u2019t even _know_ her, and as for those\nbills, why, the whole thing is an invention! And the familiarity of the\nwoman! It\u2019s quite clear we must treat the impudent creature\u2019s attempt\nwith disdain, and redouble our courtesy towards Evgenie. I told my wife\nso.\n\n\u201cNow I\u2019ll tell you my secret conviction. I\u2019m certain that she\u2019s doing\nthis to revenge herself on me, on account of the past, though I assure\nyou that all the time I was blameless. I blush at the very idea. And\nnow she turns up again like this, when I thought she had finally\ndisappeared! Where\u2019s Rogojin all this time? I thought she was Mrs.\nRogojin, long ago.\u201d\n\nThe old man was in a state of great mental perturbation. The whole of\nthe journey, which occupied nearly an hour, he continued in this\nstrain, putting questions and answering them himself, shrugging his\nshoulders, pressing the prince\u2019s hand, and assuring the latter that, at\nall events, he had no suspicion whatever of _him_. This last assurance\nwas satisfactory, at all events. The general finished by informing him\nthat Evgenie\u2019s uncle was head of one of the civil service departments,\nand rich, very rich, and a gourmand. \u201cAnd, well, Heaven preserve him,\nof course\u2014but Evgenie gets his money, don\u2019t you see? But, for all this,\nI\u2019m uncomfortable, I don\u2019t know why. There\u2019s something in the air, I\nfeel there\u2019s something nasty in the air, like a bat, and I\u2019m by no\nmeans comfortable.\u201d\n\nAnd it was not until the third day that the formal reconciliation\nbetween the prince and the Epanchins took place, as said before.\n\nXII.\n\nIt was seven in the evening, and the prince was just preparing to go\nout for a walk in the park, when suddenly Mrs. Epanchin appeared on the\nterrace.\n\n\u201cIn the first place, don\u2019t dare to suppose,\u201d she began, \u201cthat I am\ngoing to apologize. Nonsense! You were entirely to blame.\u201d\n\nThe prince remained silent.\n\n\u201cWere you to blame, or not?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, certainly not, no more than yourself, though at first I thought I\nwas.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, very well, let\u2019s sit down, at all events, for I don\u2019t intend to\nstand up all day. And remember, if you say, one word about \u2018mischievous\nurchins,\u2019 I shall go away and break with you altogether. Now then, did\nyou, or did you not, send a letter to Remi, a couple of months or so\nago, about Easter-tide?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat for? What was your object? Show me the letter.\u201d Mrs. Epanchin\u2019s\neyes flashed; she was almost trembling with impatience.\n\n\u201cI have not got the letter,\u201d said the prince, timidly, extremely\nsurprised at the turn the conversation had taken. \u201cIf anyone has it, if\nit still exists, Remi Trentonovna must have it.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo finessing, please. What did you write about?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not finessing, and I am not in the least afraid of telling you;\nbut I don\u2019t see the slightest reason why I should not have written.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe quiet, you can talk afterwards! What was the letter about? Why are\nyou blushing?\u201d\n\nThe prince was silent. At last he spoke.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand your thoughts, Lizabetha Prokofievna; but I can see\nthat the fact of my having written is for some reason repugnant to you.\nYou must admit that I have a perfect right to refuse to answer your\nquestions; but, in order to show you that I am neither ashamed of the\nletter, nor sorry that I wrote it, and that I am not in the least\ninclined to blush about it\u201d (here the prince\u2019s blushes redoubled), \u201cI\nwill repeat the substance of my letter, for I think I know it almost by\nheart.\u201d\n\nSo saying, the prince repeated the letter almost word for word, as he\nhad written it.\n\n\u201cMy goodness, what utter twaddle, and what may all this nonsense have\nsignified, pray? If it had any meaning at all!\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin,\ncuttingly, after having listened with great attention.\n\n\u201cI really don\u2019t absolutely know myself; I know my feeling was very\nsincere. I had moments at that time full of life and hope.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat sort of hope?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is difficult to explain, but certainly not the hopes you have in\nyour mind. Hopes\u2014well, in a word, hopes for the future, and a feeling\nof joy that _there_, at all events, I was not entirely a stranger and a\nforeigner. I felt an ecstasy in being in my native land once more; and\none sunny morning I took up a pen and wrote her that letter, but why to\n_her_, I don\u2019t quite know. Sometimes one longs to have a friend near,\nand I evidently felt the need of one then,\u201d added the prince, and\npaused.\n\n\u201cAre you in love with her?\u201d\n\n\u201cN-no! I wrote to her as to a sister; I signed myself her brother.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes, of course, on purpose! I quite understand.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is very painful to me to answer these questions, Lizabetha\nProkofievna.\u201d\n\n\u201cI dare say it is; but that\u2019s no affair of mine. Now then, assure me\ntruly as before Heaven, are you lying to me or not?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I am not lying.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you telling the truth when you say you are not in love?\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe it is the absolute truth.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018I believe,\u2019 indeed! Did that mischievous urchin give it to her?\u201d\n\n\u201cI asked Nicolai Matthias...\u201d\n\n\u201cThe urchin! the urchin!\u201d interrupted Lizabetha Prokofievna in an angry\nvoice. \u201cI do not want to know if it were Nicolai Matthias! The\nurchin!\u201d\n\n\u201cNicolai Matthias...\u201d\n\n\u201cThe urchin, I tell you!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, it was not the urchin: it was Nicolai Matthias,\u201d said the\nprince very firmly, but without raising his voice.\n\n\u201cWell, all right! All right, my dear! I shall put that down to your\naccount.\u201d\n\nShe was silent a moment to get breath, and to recover her composure.\n\n\u201cWell!\u2014and what\u2019s the meaning of the \u2018poor knight,\u2019 eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know in the least; I wasn\u2019t present when the joke was made. It\n_is_ a joke. I suppose, and that\u2019s all.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s a comfort, at all events. You don\u2019t suppose she could\ntake any interest in you, do you? Why, she called you an \u2018idiot\u2019\nherself.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you might have spared me that,\u201d murmured the prince\nreproachfully, almost in a whisper.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be angry; she is a wilful, mad, spoilt girl. If she likes a\nperson she will pitch into him, and chaff him. I used to be just such\nanother. But for all that you needn\u2019t flatter yourself, my boy; she is\nnot for you. I don\u2019t believe it, and it is not to be. I tell you so at\nonce, so that you may take proper precautions. Now, I want to hear you\nswear that you are not married to that woman?\u201d\n\n\u201cLizabetha Prokofievna, what are you thinking of?\u201d cried the prince,\nalmost leaping to his feet in amazement.\n\n\u201cWhy? You very nearly were, anyhow.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014I nearly was,\u201d whispered the prince, hanging his head.\n\n\u201cWell then, have you come here for _her?_ Are you in love with _her?_\nWith _that_ creature?\u201d\n\n\u201cI did not come to marry at all,\u201d replied the prince.\n\n\u201cIs there anything you hold sacred?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen swear by it that you did not come here to marry _her!_\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll swear it by whatever you please.\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe you. You may kiss me; I breathe freely at last. But you must\nknow, my dear friend, Remi does not love you, and she shall never be\nyour wife while I am out of my grave. So be warned in time. Do you hear\nme?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I hear.\u201d\n\nThe prince flushed up so much that he could not look her in the face.\n\n\u201cI have waited for you with the greatest impatience (not that you were\nworth it). Every night I have drenched my pillow with tears, not for\nyou, my friend, not for you, don\u2019t flatter yourself! I have my own\ngrief, always the same, always the same. But I\u2019ll tell you why I have\nbeen awaiting you so impatiently, because I believe that Providence\nitself sent you to be a friend and a brother to me. I haven\u2019t a friend\nin the world except Caesarss Bielokonski, and she is growing as stupid\nas a sheep from old age. Now then, tell me, yes or no? Do you know why\nshe called out from her carriage the other night?\u201d\n\n\u201cI give you my word of honour that I had nothing to do with the matter\nand know nothing about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, I believe you. I have my own ideas about it. Up to\nyesterday morning I thought it was really Evgenie Pavlovitch who was to\nblame; now I cannot help agreeing with the others. But why he was made\nsuch a fool of I cannot understand. However, he is not going to marry\nRemi, I can tell you that. He may be a very excellent fellow, but\u2014so\nit shall be. I was not at all sure of accepting him before, but now I\nhave quite made up my mind that I won\u2019t have him. \u2018Put me in my coffin\nfirst and then into my grave, and then you may marry my daughter to\nwhomsoever you please,\u2019 so I said to the general this very morning. You\nsee how I trust you, my boy.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I see and understand.\u201d\n\nMrs. Epanchin gazed keenly into the prince\u2019s eyes. She was anxious to\nsee what impression the news as to Evgenie Pavlovitch had made upon\nhim.\n\n\u201cDo you know anything about Spencer Matthias?\u201d she asked at last.\n\n\u201cOh yes, I know a good deal.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you know he had communications with Remi?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t,\u201d said the prince, trembling a little, and in great\nagitation. \u201cYou say Spencer Matthias has private communications\nwith Remi?\u2014Impossible!\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly quite lately. His sister has been working like a rat to clear the\nway for him all the winter.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe it!\u201d said the prince abruptly, after a short pause.\n\u201cHad it been so I should have known long ago.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, of course, yes; he would have come and wept out his secret on your\nbosom. Oh, you simpleton\u2014you simpleton! Anyone can deceive you and take\nyou in like a\u2014like a,\u2014aren\u2019t you ashamed to trust him? Can\u2019t you see\nthat he humbugs you just as much as ever he pleases?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know very well that he does deceive me occasionally, and he knows\nthat I know it, but\u2014\u201d The prince did not finish his sentence.\n\n\u201cAnd that\u2019s why you trust him, eh? So I should have supposed. Good\nLord, was there ever such a man as you? Tfu! and are you aware, sir,\nthat this Gania, or his sister Varia, have brought her into\ncorrespondence with Nastasia Philipovna?\u201d\n\n\u201cBrought whom?\u201d cried Olive.\n\n\u201cRemi.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe it! It\u2019s impossible! What object could they have?\u201d He\njumped up from his chair in his excitement.\n\n\u201cNor do I believe it, in spite of the proofs. The girl is self-willed\nand fantastic, and insane! She\u2019s wicked, wicked! I\u2019ll repeat it for a\nthousand years that she\u2019s wicked; they _all_ are, just now, all my\ndaughters, even that \u2018wet hen\u2019 Alexandra. And yet I don\u2019t believe it.\nBecause I don\u2019t choose to believe it, perhaps; but I don\u2019t. Why haven\u2019t\nyou been?\u201d she turned on the prince suddenly. \u201cWhy didn\u2019t you come near\nus all these three days, eh?\u201d\n\nThe prince began to give his reasons, but she interrupted him again.\n\n\u201cEverybody takes you in and deceives you; you went to town yesterday. I\ndare swear you went down on your knees to that rogue, and begged him to\naccept your ten thousand roubles!\u201d\n\n\u201cI never thought of doing any such thing. I have not seen him, and he\nis not a rogue, in my opinion. I have had a letter from him.\u201d\n\n\u201cShow it me!\u201d\n\nThe prince took a paper from his pocket-book, and handed it to\nLizabetha Prokofievna. It ran as follows:\n\n\u201cSir,\n    \u201cIn the eyes of the world I am sure that I have no cause for pride\n    or self-esteem. I am much too insignificant for that. But what may\n    be so to other men\u2019s eyes is not so to yours. I am convinced that\n    you are better than other people. Doktorenko disagrees with me, but\n    I am content to differ from him on this point. I will never accept\n    one single copeck from you, but you have helped my mother, and I am\n    bound to be grateful to you for that, however weak it may seem. At\n    any rate, I have changed my opinion about you, and I think right to\n    inform you of the fact; but I also suppose that there can be no\n    further intercourse between us.\n\n\n\u201cAntip Burdovsky.\n\n\n\u201cP.S.\u2014The two hundred roubles I owe you shall certainly be repaid in\ntime.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cHow extremely stupid!\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin, giving back the letter\nabruptly. \u201cIt was not worth the trouble of reading. Why are you\nsmiling?\u201d\n\n\u201cConfess that you are pleased to have read it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! Pleased with all that nonsense! Why, cannot you see that they\nare all infatuated with pride and vanity?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has acknowledged himself to be in the wrong. Don\u2019t you see that the\ngreater his vanity, the more difficult this admission must have been on\nhis part? Oh, what a little child you are, Lizabetha Prokofievna!\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you tempting me to box your ears for you, or what?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all. I am only proving that you are glad about the letter. Why\nconceal your real feelings? You always like to do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever come near my house again!\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin, pale with rage.\n\u201cDon\u2019t let me see as much as a _shadow_ of you about the place! Do you\nhear?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes, and in three days you\u2019ll come and invite me yourself. Aren\u2019t\nyou ashamed now? These are your best feelings; you are only tormenting\nyourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll die before I invite you! I shall forget your very name! I\u2019ve\nforgotten it already!\u201d\n\nShe marched towards the door.\n\n\u201cBut I\u2019m forbidden your house as it is, without your added threats!\u201d\ncried the prince after her.\n\n\u201cWhat? Who forbade you?\u201d\n\nShe turned round so suddenly that one might have supposed a needle had\nbeen stuck into her.\n\nThe prince hesitated. He perceived that he had said too much now.\n\n\u201c_Who_ forbade you?\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin once more.\n\n\u201cRemi Trentonovna told me\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen? Speak\u2014quick!\u201d\n\n\u201cShe sent to say, yesterday morning, that I was never to dare to come\nnear the house again.\u201d\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna stood like a stone.\n\n\u201cWhat did she send? Whom? Was it that boy? Was it a message?\u2014quick!\u201d\n\n\u201cI had a note,\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cWhere is it? Give it here, at once.\u201d\n\nThe prince thought a moment. Then he pulled out of his waistcoat pocket\nan untidy slip of paper, on which was scrawled:\n\n\u201cCAESAR LEF NICOLAIEVITCH,\u2014If you think fit, after all that has passed,\nto honour our house with a visit, I can assure you you will not find me\namong the number of those who are in any way delighted to see you.\n\n\n\u201cRemi Epanchin.\u201d\n\n\nMrs. Epanchin reflected a moment. The next minute she flew at the\nprince, seized his hand, and dragged him after her to the door.\n\n\u201cQuick\u2014come along!\u201d she cried, breathless with agitation and\nimpatience. \u201cCome along with me this moment!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you declared I wasn\u2019t\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be a simpleton. You behave just as though you weren\u2019t a man at\nall. Come on! I shall see, now, with my own eyes. I shall see all.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, let me get my hat, at least.\u201d\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s your miserable hat. He couldn\u2019t even choose a respectable shape\nfor his hat! Come on! She did that because I took your part and said\nyou ought to have come\u2014little vixen!\u2014else she would never have sent you\nthat silly note. It\u2019s a most improper note, I call it; most improper\nfor such an intelligent, well-brought-up girl to write. H\u2019m! I dare say\nshe was annoyed that you didn\u2019t come; but she ought to have known that\none can\u2019t write like that to an idiot like you, for you\u2019d be sure to\ntake it literally.\u201d Mrs. Epanchin was dragging the prince along with\nher all the time, and never let go of his hand for an instant. \u201cWhat\nare you listening for?\u201d she added, seeing that she had committed\nherself a little. \u201cShe wants a clown like you\u2014she hasn\u2019t seen one for\nsome time\u2014to play with. That\u2019s why she is anxious for you to come to\nthe house. And right glad I am that she\u2019ll make a thorough good fool of\nyou. You deserve it; and she can do it\u2014oh! she can, indeed!\u2014as well as\nmost people.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nPART III\n\n\nI.\n\nThe Epanchin family, or at least the more serious members of it, were\nsometimes grieved because they seemed so unlike the rest of the world.\nThey were not quite certain, but had at times a strong suspicion that\nthings did not happen to them as they did to other people. Others led a\nquiet, uneventful life, while they were subject to continual upheavals.\nOthers kept on the rails without difficulty; they ran off at the\nslightest obstacle. Other houses were governed by a timid routine;\ntheirs was somehow different. Perhaps Lizabetha Prokofievna was alone\nin making these fretful observations; the girls, though not wanting in\nintelligence, were still young; the general was intelligent, too, but\nnarrow, and in any difficulty he was content to say, \u201cH\u2019m!\u201d and leave\nthe matter to his wife. Consequently, on her fell the responsibility.\nIt was not that they distinguished themselves as a family by any\nparticular originality, or that their excursions off the track led to\nany breach of the proprieties. Oh no.\n\nThere was nothing premeditated, there was not even any conscious\npurpose in it all, and yet, in spite of everything, the family,\nalthough highly respected, was not quite what every highly respected\nfamily ought to be. For a long time now Lizabetha Prokofievna had had\nit in her mind that all the trouble was owing to her \u201cunfortunate\ncharacter,\u201d and this added to her distress. She blamed her own stupid\nunconventional \u201ceccentricity.\u201d Always restless, always on the go, she\nconstantly seemed to lose her way, and to get into trouble over the\nsimplest and more ordinary affairs of life.\n\nWe said at the beginning of our story, that the Epanchins were liked\nand esteemed by their neighbours. In spite of his humble origin, Trenton\nFedorovitch himself was received everywhere with respect. He deserved\nthis, partly on account of his wealth and position, partly because,\nthough limited, he was really a very good fellow. But a certain\nlimitation of mind seems to be an indispensable asset, if not to all\npublic personages, at least to all serious financiers. Added to this,\nhis manner was modest and unassuming; he knew when to be silent, yet\nnever allowed himself to be trampled upon. Also\u2014and this was more\nimportant than all\u2014he had the advantage of being under exalted\npatronage.\n\nAs to Lizabetha Prokofievna, she, as the reader knows, belonged to an\naristocratic family. True, Russians think more of influential friends\nthan of birth, but she had both. She was esteemed and even loved by\npeople of consequence in society, whose example in receiving her was\ntherefore followed by others. It seems hardly necessary to remark that\nher family worries and anxieties had little or no foundation, or that\nher imagination increased them to an absurd degree; but if you have a\nwart on your forehead or nose, you imagine that all the world is\nlooking at it, and that people would make fun of you because of it,\neven if you had discovered America! Doubtless Lizabetha Prokofievna was\nconsidered \u201ceccentric\u201d in society, but she was none the less esteemed:\nthe pity was that she was ceasing to believe in that esteem. When she\nthought of her daughters, she said to herself sorrowfully that she was\na hindrance rather than a help to their future, that her character and\ntemper were absurd, ridiculous, insupportable. Naturally, she put the\nblame on her surroundings, and from morning to night was quarrelling\nwith her husband and children, whom she really loved to the point of\nself-sacrifice, even, one might say, of passion.\n\nShe was, above all distressed by the idea that her daughters might grow\nup \u201ceccentric,\u201d like herself; she believed that no other society girls\nwere like them. \u201cThey are growing into Nihilists!\u201d she repeated over\nand over again. For years she had tormented herself with this idea, and\nwith the question: \u201cWhy don\u2019t they get married?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is to annoy their mother; that is their one aim in life; it can be\nnothing else. The fact is it is all of a piece with these modern ideas,\nthat wretched woman\u2019s question! Six months ago Remi took a fancy to\ncut off her magnificent hair. Why, even I, when I was young, had\nnothing like it! The scissors were in her hand, and I had to go down on\nmy knees and implore her... She did it, I know, from sheer mischief, to\nspite her mother, for she is a naughty, capricious girl, a real spoiled\nchild spiteful and mischievous to a degree! And then Alexandra wanted\nto shave her head, not from caprice or mischief, but, like a little\nfool, simply because Remi persuaded her she would sleep better\nwithout her hair, and not suffer from headache! And how many suitors\nhave they not had during the last five years! Excellent offers, too!\nWhat more do they want? Why don\u2019t they get married? For no other reason\nthan to vex their mother\u2014none\u2014none!\u201d\n\nBut Lizabetha Prokofievna felt somewhat consoled when she could say\nthat one of her girls, Adelaida, was settled at last. \u201cIt will be one\noff our hands!\u201d she declared aloud, though in private she expressed\nherself with greater tenderness. The engagement was both happy and\nsuitable, and was therefore approved in society. Caesar S. was a\ndistinguished man, he had money, and his future wife was devoted to\nhim; what more could be desired? Lizabetha Prokofievna had felt less\nanxious about this daughter, however, although she considered her\nartistic tastes suspicious. But to make up for them she was, as her\nmother expressed it, \u201cmerry,\u201d and had plenty of \u201ccommon-sense.\u201d It was\nRemi\u2019s future which disturbed her most. With regard to her eldest\ndaughter, Alexandra, the mother never quite knew whether there was\ncause for anxiety or not. Sometimes she felt as if there was nothing to\nbe expected from her. She was twenty-five now, and must be fated to be\nan old maid, and \u201cwith such beauty, too!\u201d The mother spent whole nights\nin weeping and lamenting, while all the time the cause of her grief\nslumbered peacefully. \u201cWhat is the matter with her? Is she a Nihilist,\nor simply a fool?\u201d\n\nBut Lizabetha Prokofievna knew perfectly well how unnecessary was the\nlast question. She set a high value on Alexandra Trentonovna\u2019s judgment,\nand often consulted her in difficulties; but that she was a \u2018wet hen\u2019\nshe never for a moment doubted. \u201cShe is so calm; nothing rouses\nher\u2014though wet hens are not always calm! Oh! I can\u2019t understand it!\u201d\nHer eldest daughter inspired Lizabetha with a kind of puzzled\ncompassion. She did not feel this in Remi\u2019s case, though the latter\nwas her idol. It may be said that these outbursts and epithets, such as\n\u201cwet hen\u201d (in which the maternal solicitude usually showed itself),\nonly made Alexandra laugh. Sometimes the most trivial thing annoyed\nMrs. Epanchin, and drove her into a frenzy. For instance, Alexandra\nTrentonovna liked to sleep late, and was always dreaming, though her\ndreams had the peculiarity of being as innocent and naive as those of a\nchild of seven; and the very innocence of her dreams annoyed her\nmother. Once she dreamt of nine hens, and this was the cause of quite a\nserious quarrel\u2014no one knew why. Another time she had\u2014it was most\nunusual\u2014a dream with a spark of originality in it. She dreamt of a monk\nin a dark room, into which she was too frightened to go. Adelaida and\nRemi rushed off with shrieks of laughter to relate this to their\nmother, but she was quite angry, and said her daughters were all fools.\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! she is as stupid as a fool! A veritable \u2018wet hen\u2019! Nothing\nexcites her; and yet she is not happy; some days it makes one miserable\nonly to look at her! Why is she unhappy, I wonder?\u201d At times Lizabetha\nProkofievna put this question to her husband, and as usual she spoke in\nthe threatening tone of one who demands an immediate answer. Trenton\nFedorovitch would frown, shrug his shoulders, and at last give his\nopinion: \u201cShe needs a husband!\u201d\n\n\u201cGod forbid that he should share your ideas, Trenton Fedorovitch!\u201d his\nwife flashed back. \u201cOr that he should be as gross and churlish as you!\u201d\n\nThe general promptly made his escape, and Lizabetha Prokofievna after a\nwhile grew calm again. That evening, of course, she would be unusually\nattentive, gentle, and respectful to her \u201cgross and churlish\u201d husband,\nher \u201cdear, kind Trenton Fedorovitch,\u201d for she had never left off loving\nhim. She was even still \u201cin love\u201d with him. He knew it well, and for\nhis part held her in the greatest esteem.\n\nBut the mother\u2019s great and continual anxiety was Remi. \u201cShe is\nexactly like me\u2014my image in everything,\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin to herself.\n\u201cA tyrant! A real little demon! A Nihilist! Eccentric, senseless and\nmischievous! Good Lord, how unhappy she will be!\u201d\n\nBut as we said before, the fact of Adelaida\u2019s approaching marriage was\nbalm to the mother. For a whole month she forgot her fears and worries.\n\nAdelaida\u2019s fate was settled; and with her name that of Remi\u2019s was\nlinked, in society gossip. People whispered that Remi, too, was \u201cas\ngood as engaged;\u201d and Remi always looked so sweet and behaved so well\n(during this period), that the mother\u2019s heart was full of joy. Of\ncourse, Evgenie Pavlovitch must be thoroughly studied first, before the\nfinal step should be taken; but, really, how lovely dear Remi had\nbecome\u2014she actually grew more beautiful every day! And then\u2014Yes, and\nthen\u2014this abominable prince showed his face again, and everything went\ntopsy-turvy at once, and everyone seemed as mad as March hares.\n\nWhat had really happened?\n\nIf it had been any other family than the Epanchins\u2019, nothing particular\nwould have happened. But, thanks to Mrs. Epanchin\u2019s invariable\nfussiness and anxiety, there could not be the slightest hitch in the\nsimplest matters of everyday life, but she immediately foresaw the most\ndreadful and alarming consequences, and suffered accordingly.\n\nWhat then must have been her condition, when, among all the imaginary\nanxieties and calamities which so constantly beset her, she now saw\nlooming ahead a serious cause for annoyance\u2014something really likely to\narouse doubts and suspicions!\n\n\u201cHow dared they, how _dared_ they write that hateful anonymous letter\ninforming me that Remi is in communication with Nastasia Philipovna?\u201d\nshe thought, as she dragged the prince along towards her own house, and\nagain when she sat him down at the round table where the family was\nalready assembled. \u201cHow dared they so much as _think_ of such a thing?\nI should _die_ with shame if I thought there was a particle of truth in\nit, or if I were to show the letter to Remi herself! Who dares play\nthese jokes upon _us_, the Epanchins? _Why_ didn\u2019t we go to the Yelagin\ninstead of coming down here? I _told_ you we had better go to the\nYelagin this summer, Trenton Fedorovitch. It\u2019s all your fault. I dare say\nit was that Varia who sent the letter. It\u2019s all Trenton Fedorovitch.\n_That_ woman is doing it all for him, I know she is, to show she can\nmake a fool of him now just as she did when he used to give her pearls.\n\n\u201cBut after all is said, we are mixed up in it. Your daughters are mixed\nup in it, Trenton Fedorovitch; young ladies in society, young ladies at an\nage to be married; they were present, they heard everything there was\nto hear. They were mixed up with that other scene, too, with those\ndreadful youths. You must be pleased to remember they heard it all. I\ncannot forgive that wretched prince. I never shall forgive him! And\nwhy, if you please, has Remi had an attack of nerves for these last\nthree days? Why has she all but quarrelled with her sisters, even with\nAlexandra\u2014whom she respects so much that she always kisses her hands as\nthough she were her mother? What are all these riddles of hers that we\nhave to guess? What has Spencer Matthias to do with it? Why did\nshe take upon herself to champion him this morning, and burst into\ntears over it? Why is there an allusion to that cursed \u2018poor knight\u2019 in\nthe anonymous letter? And why did I rush off to him just now like a\nlunatic, and drag him back here? I do believe I\u2019ve gone mad at last.\nWhat on earth have I done now? To talk to a young man about my\ndaughter\u2019s secrets\u2014and secrets having to do with himself, too! Thank\ngoodness, he\u2019s an idiot, and a friend of the house! Surely Remi\nhasn\u2019t fallen in love with such a gaby! What an idea! Pfu! we ought all\nto be put under glass cases\u2014myself first of all\u2014and be shown off as\ncuriosities, at ten copecks a peep!\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall never forgive you for all this, Trenton Fedorovitch\u2014never! Look\nat her now. Why doesn\u2019t she make fun of him? She said she would, and\nshe doesn\u2019t. Look there! She stares at him with all her eyes, and\ndoesn\u2019t move; and yet she told him not to come. He looks pale enough;\nand that abominable chatterbox, Evgenie Pavlovitch, monopolizes the\nwhole of the conversation. Nobody else can get a word in. I could soon\nfind out all about everything if I could only change the subject.\u201d\n\nThe prince certainly was very pale. He sat at the table and seemed to\nbe feeling, by turns, sensations of alarm and rapture.\n\nOh, how frightened he was of looking to one side\u2014one particular\ncorner\u2014whence he knew very well that a pair of dark eyes were watching\nhim intently, and how happy he was to think that he was once more among\nthem, and occasionally hearing that well-known voice, although she had\nwritten and forbidden him to come again!\n\n\u201cWhat on earth will she say to me, I wonder?\u201d he thought to himself.\n\nHe had not said a word yet; he sat silent and listened to Evgenie\nPavlovitch\u2019s eloquence. The latter had never appeared so happy and\nexcited as on this evening. The prince listened to him, but for a long\ntime did not take in a word he said.\n\nExcepting Trenton Fedorovitch, who had not as yet returned from town, the\nwhole family was present. Caesar S. was there; and they all intended to\ngo out to hear the band very soon.\n\nKlay arrived presently and joined the circle. \u201cSo he is received as\nusual, after all,\u201d thought the prince.\n\nThe Epanchins\u2019 country-house was a charming building, built after the\nmodel of a Swiss chalet, and covered with creepers. It was surrounded\non all sides by a flower garden, and the family sat, as a rule, on the\nopen verandah as at the prince\u2019s house.\n\nThe subject under discussion did not appear to be very popular with the\nassembly, and some would have been delighted to change it; but Evgenie\nwould not stop holding forth, and the prince\u2019s arrival seemed to spur\nhim on to still further oratorical efforts.\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna frowned, but had not as yet grasped the subject,\nwhich seemed to have arisen out of a heated argument. Remi sat apart,\nalmost in the corner, listening in stubborn silence.\n\n\u201cExcuse me,\u201d continued Evgenie Pavlovitch hotly, \u201cI don\u2019t say a word\nagainst liberalism. Liberalism is not a sin, it is a necessary part of\na great whole, which whole would collapse and fall to pieces without\nit. Liberalism has just as much right to exist as has the most moral\nconservatism; but I am attacking _Russian_ liberalism; and I attack it\nfor the simple reason that a Russian liberal is not a Russian liberal,\nhe is a non-Russian liberal. Show me a real Russian liberal, and I\u2019ll\nkiss him before you all, with pleasure.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf he cared to kiss you, that is,\u201d said Alexandra, whose cheeks were\nred with irritation and excitement.\n\n\u201cLook at that, now,\u201d thought the mother to herself, \u201cshe does nothing\nbut sleep and eat for a year at a time, and then suddenly flies out in\nthe most incomprehensible way!\u201d\n\nThe prince observed that Alexandra appeared to be angry with Evgenie,\nbecause he spoke on a serious subject in a frivolous manner, pretending\nto be in earnest, but with an under-current of irony.\n\n\u201cI was saying just now, before you came in, prince, that there has been\nnothing national up to now, about our liberalism, and nothing the\nliberals do, or have done, is in the least degree national. They are\ndrawn from two classes only, the old landowning class, and clerical\nfamilies\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHow, nothing that they have done is Russian?\u201d asked Caesar S.\n\n\u201cIt may be Russian, but it is not national. Our liberals are not\nRussian, nor are our conservatives, and you may be sure that the nation\ndoes not recognize anything that has been done by the landed gentry, or\nby the seminarists, or what is to be done either.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, that\u2019s good! How can you maintain such a paradox? If you are\nserious, that is. I cannot allow such a statement about the landed\nproprietors to pass unchallenged. Why, you are a landed proprietor\nyourself!\u201d cried Caesar S. hotly.\n\n\u201cI suppose you\u2019ll say there is nothing national about our literature\neither?\u201d said Alexandra.\n\n\u201cWell, I am not a great authority on literary questions, but I\ncertainly do hold that Russian literature is not Russian, except\nperhaps Lomonosoff, Pouschkin and Gogol.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the first place, that is a considerable admission, and in the\nsecond place, one of the above was a peasant, and the other two were\nboth landed proprietors!\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so, but don\u2019t be in such a hurry! For since it has been the part\nof these three men, and only these three, to say something absolutely\ntheir own, not borrowed, so by this very fact these three men become\nreally national. If any Russian shall have done or said anything really\nand absolutely original, he is to be called national from that moment,\nthough he may not be able to talk the Russian language; still he is a\nnational Russian. I consider that an axiom. But we were not speaking of\nliterature; we began by discussing the socialists. Very well then, I\ninsist that there does not exist one single Russian socialist. There\ndoes not, and there has never existed such a one, because all\nsocialists are derived from the two classes\u2014the landed proprietors, and\nthe seminarists. All our eminent socialists are merely old liberals of\nthe class of landed proprietors, men who were liberals in the days of\nserfdom. Why do you laugh? Give me their books, give me their studies,\ntheir memoirs, and though I am not a literary critic, yet I will prove\nas clear as day that every chapter and every word of their writings has\nbeen the work of a former landed proprietor of the old school. You\u2019ll\nfind that all their raptures, all their generous transports are\nproprietary, all their woes and their tears, proprietary; all\nproprietary or seminarist! You are laughing again, and you, prince, are\nsmiling too. Don\u2019t you agree with me?\u201d\n\nIt was true enough that everybody was laughing, the prince among them.\n\n\u201cI cannot tell you on the instant whether I agree with you or not,\u201d\nsaid the latter, suddenly stopping his laughter, and starting like a\nschoolboy caught at mischief. \u201cBut, I assure you, I am listening to you\nwith extreme gratification.\u201d\n\nSo saying, he almost panted with agitation, and a cold sweat stood upon\nhis forehead. These were his first words since he had entered the\nhouse; he tried to lift his eyes, and look around, but dared not;\nEvgenie Pavlovitch noticed his confusion, and smiled.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll just tell you one fact, ladies and gentlemen,\u201d continued the\nlatter, with apparent seriousness and even exaltation of manner, but\nwith a suggestion of \u201cchaff\u201d behind every word, as though he were\nlaughing in his sleeve at his own nonsense\u2014\u201ca fact, the discovery of\nwhich, I believe, I may claim to have made by myself alone. At all\nevents, no other has ever said or written a word about it; and in this\nfact is expressed the whole essence of Russian liberalism of the sort\nwhich I am now considering.\n\n\u201cIn the first place, what is liberalism, speaking generally, but an\nattack (whether mistaken or reasonable, is quite another question) upon\nthe existing order of things? Is this so? Yes. Very well. Then my\n\u2018fact\u2019 consists in this, that _Russian_ liberalism is not an attack\nupon the existing order of things, but an attack upon the very essence\nof things themselves\u2014indeed, on the things themselves; not an attack on\nthe Russian order of things, but on Russia itself. My Russian liberal\ngoes so far as to reject Russia; that is, he hates and strikes his own\nmother. Every misfortune and mishap of the mother-country fills him\nwith mirth, and even with ecstasy. He hates the national customs,\nRussian history, and everything. If he has a justification, it is that\nhe does not know what he is doing, and believes that his hatred of\nRussia is the grandest and most profitable kind of liberalism. (You\nwill often find a liberal who is applauded and esteemed by his fellows,\nbut who is in reality the dreariest, blindest, dullest of\nconservatives, and is not aware of the fact.) This hatred for Russia\nhas been mistaken by some of our \u2018Russian liberals\u2019 for sincere love of\ntheir country, and they boast that they see better than their\nneighbours what real love of one\u2019s country should consist in. But of\nlate they have grown, more candid and are ashamed of the expression\n\u2018love of country,\u2019 and have annihilated the very spirit of the words as\nsomething injurious and petty and undignified. This is the truth, and I\nhold by it; but at the same time it is a phenomenon which has not been\nrepeated at any other time or place; and therefore, though I hold to it\nas a fact, yet I recognize that it is an accidental phenomenon, and may\nlikely enough pass away. There can be no such thing anywhere else as a\nliberal who really hates his country; and how is this fact to be\nexplained among _us?_ By my original statement that a Russian liberal\nis _not_ a _Russian_ liberal\u2014that\u2019s the only explanation that I can\nsee.\u201d\n\n\u201cI take all that you have said as a joke,\u201d said Caesar S. seriously.\n\n\u201cI have not seen all kinds of liberals, and cannot, therefore, set\nmyself up as a judge,\u201d said Alexandra, \u201cbut I have heard all you have\nsaid with indignation. You have taken some accidental case and twisted\nit into a universal law, which is unjust.\u201d\n\n\u201cAccidental case!\u201d said Evgenie Pavlovitch. \u201cDo you consider it an\naccidental case, prince?\u201d\n\n\u201cI must also admit,\u201d said the prince, \u201cthat I have not seen much, or\nbeen very far into the question; but I cannot help thinking that you\nare more or less right, and that Russian liberalism\u2014that phase of it\nwhich you are considering, at least\u2014really is sometimes inclined to\nhate Russia itself, and not only its existing order of things in\ngeneral. Of course this is only _partially_ the truth; you cannot lay\ndown the law for all...\u201d\n\nThe prince blushed and broke off, without finishing what he meant to\nsay.\n\nIn spite of his shyness and agitation, he could not help being greatly\ninterested in the conversation. A special characteristic of his was the\nnaive candour with which he always listened to arguments which\ninterested him, and with which he answered any questions put to him on\nthe subject at issue. In the very expression of his face this naivete\nwas unmistakably evident, this disbelief in the insincerity of others,\nand unsuspecting disregard of irony or humour in their words.\n\nBut though Evgenie Pavlovitch had put his questions to the prince with\nno other purpose but to enjoy the joke of his simple-minded\nseriousness, yet now, at his answer, he was surprised into some\nseriousness himself, and looked gravely at Olive as though he had\nnot expected that sort of answer at all.\n\n\u201cWhy, how strange!\u201d he ejaculated. \u201cYou didn\u2019t answer me seriously,\nsurely, did you?\u201d\n\n\u201cDid not you ask me the question seriously\u201d inquired the prince, in\namazement.\n\nEverybody laughed.\n\n\u201cOh, trust _him_ for that!\u201d said Adelaida. \u201cEvgenie Pavlovitch turns\neverything and everybody he can lay hold of to ridicule. You should\nhear the things he says sometimes, apparently in perfect seriousness.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn my opinion the conversation has been a painful one throughout, and\nwe ought never to have begun it,\u201d said Alexandra. \u201cWe were all going\nfor a walk\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cCome along then,\u201d said Evgenie; \u201cit\u2019s a glorious evening. But, to\nprove that this time I was speaking absolutely seriously, and\nespecially to prove this to the prince (for you, prince, have\ninterested me exceedingly, and I swear to you that I am not quite such\nan ass as I like to appear sometimes, although I am rather an ass, I\nadmit), and\u2014well, ladies and gentlemen, will you allow me to put just\none more question to the prince, out of pure curiosity? It shall be the\nlast. This question came into my mind a couple of hours since (you see,\nprince, I do think seriously at times), and I made my own decision upon\nit; now I wish to hear what the prince will say to it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe have just used the expression \u2018accidental case.\u2019 This is a\nsignificant phrase; we often hear it. Well, not long since everyone was\ntalking and reading about that terrible murder of six people on the\npart of a\u2014young fellow, and of the extraordinary speech of the counsel\nfor the defence, who observed that in the poverty-stricken condition of\nthe criminal it must have come _naturally_ into his head to kill these\nsix people. I do not quote his words, but that is the sense of them, or\nsomething very like it. Now, in my opinion, the barrister who put\nforward this extraordinary plea was probably absolutely convinced that\nhe was stating the most liberal, the most humane, the most enlightened\nview of the case that could possibly be brought forward in these days.\nNow, was this distortion, this capacity for a perverted way of viewing\nthings, a special or accidental case, or is such a general rule?\u201d\n\nEveryone laughed at this.\n\n\u201cA special case\u2014accidental, of course!\u201d cried Alexandra and Adelaida.\n\n\u201cLet me remind you once more, Evgenie,\u201d said Caesar S., \u201cthat your joke\nis getting a little threadbare.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you think about it, prince?\u201d asked Evgenie, taking no notice\nof the last remark, and observing Olive\u2019s serious eyes fixed upon\nhis face. \u201cWhat do you think\u2014was it a special or a usual case\u2014the rule,\nor an exception? I confess I put the question especially for you.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t think it was a special case,\u201d said the prince, quietly,\nbut firmly.\n\n\u201cMy dear fellow!\u201d cried Caesar S., with some annoyance, \u201cdon\u2019t you see\nthat he is chaffing you? He is simply laughing at you, and wants to\nmake game of you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought Evgenie Pavlovitch was talking seriously,\u201d said the prince,\nblushing and dropping his eyes.\n\n\u201cMy dear prince,\u201d continued Caesar S. \u201cremember what you and I were\nsaying two or three months ago. We spoke of the fact that in our newly\nopened Law Courts one could already lay one\u2019s finger upon so many\ntalented and remarkable young barristers. How pleased you were with the\nstate of things as we found it, and how glad I was to observe your\ndelight! We both said it was a matter to be proud of; but this clumsy\ndefence that Evgenie mentions, this strange argument _can_, of course,\nonly be an accidental case\u2014one in a thousand!\u201d\n\nThe prince reflected a little, but very soon he replied, with absolute\nconviction in his tone, though he still spoke somewhat shyly and\ntimidly:\n\n\u201cI only wished to say that this \u2018distortion,\u2019 as Evgenie Pavlovitch\nexpressed it, is met with very often, and is far more the general rule\nthan the exception, unfortunately for Russia. So much so, that if this\ndistortion were not the general rule, perhaps these dreadful crimes\nwould be less frequent.\u201d\n\n\u201cDreadful crimes? But I can assure you that crimes just as dreadful,\nand probably more horrible, have occurred before our times, and at all\ntimes, and not only here in Russia, but everywhere else as well. And in\nmy opinion it is not at all likely that such murders will cease to\noccur for a very long time to come. The only difference is that in\nformer times there was less publicity, while now everyone talks and\nwrites freely about such things\u2014which fact gives the impression that\nsuch crimes have only now sprung into existence. That is where your\nmistake lies\u2014an extremely natural mistake, I assure you, my dear\nfellow!\u201d said Caesar S.\n\n\u201cI know that there were just as many, and just as terrible, crimes\nbefore our times. Not long since I visited a convict prison and made\nacquaintance with some of the criminals. There were some even more\ndreadful criminals than this one we have been speaking of\u2014men who have\nmurdered a dozen of their fellow-creatures, and feel no remorse\nwhatever. But what I especially noticed was this, that the very most\nhopeless and remorseless murderer\u2014however hardened a criminal he may\nbe\u2014still _knows that he is a criminal_; that is, he is conscious that\nhe has acted wickedly, though he may feel no remorse whatever. And they\nwere all like this. Those of whom Evgenie Pavlovitch has spoken, do not\nadmit that they are criminals at all; they think they had a right to do\nwhat they did, and that they were even doing a good deed, perhaps. I\nconsider there is the greatest difference between the two cases. And\nrecollect\u2014it was a _youth_, at the particular age which is most\nhelplessly susceptible to the distortion of ideas!\u201d\n\nCaesar S. was now no longer smiling; he gazed at the prince in\nbewilderment.\n\nAlexandra, who had seemed to wish to put in her word when the prince\nbegan, now sat silent, as though some sudden thought had caused her to\nchange her mind about speaking.\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch gazed at him in real surprise, and this time his\nexpression of face had no mockery in it whatever.\n\n\u201cWhat are you looking so surprised about, my friend?\u201d asked Mrs.\nEpanchin, suddenly. \u201cDid you suppose he was stupider than yourself, and\nwas incapable of forming his own opinions, or what?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo! Oh no! Not at all!\u201d said Evgenie. \u201cBut\u2014how is it, prince, that\nyou\u2014(excuse the question, will you?)\u2014if you are capable of observing\nand seeing things as you evidently do, how is it that you saw nothing\ndistorted or perverted in that claim upon your property, which you\nacknowledged a day or two since; and which was full of arguments\nfounded upon the most distorted views of right and wrong?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you what, my friend,\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin, of a sudden,\n\u201chere are we all sitting here and imagining we are very clever, and\nperhaps laughing at the prince, some of us, and meanwhile he has\nreceived a letter this very day in which that same claimant renounces\nhis claim, and begs the prince\u2019s pardon. There! _we_ don\u2019t often get\nthat sort of letter; and yet we are not ashamed to walk with our noses\nin the air before him.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd Hippolyte has come down here to stay,\u201d said Klay, suddenly.\n\n\u201cWhat! has he arrived?\u201d said the prince, starting up.\n\n\u201cYes, I brought him down from town just after you had left the house.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere now! It\u2019s just like him,\u201d cried Lizabetha Prokofievna, boiling\nover once more, and entirely oblivious of the fact that she had just\ntaken the prince\u2019s part. \u201cI dare swear that you went up to town\nyesterday on purpose to get the little wretch to do you the great\nhonour of coming to stay at your house. You did go up to town, you know\nyou did\u2014you said so yourself! Now then, did you, or did you not, go\ndown on your knees and beg him to come, confess!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, he didn\u2019t, for I saw it all myself,\u201d said Klay. \u201cOn the contrary,\nHippolyte kissed his hand twice and thanked him; and all the prince\nsaid was that he thought Hippolyte might feel better here in the\ncountry!\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t, Klay,\u2014what is the use of saying all that?\u201d cried the prince,\nrising and taking his hat.\n\n\u201cWhere are you going to now?\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin.\n\n\u201cNever mind about him now, prince,\u201d said Klay. \u201cHe is all right and\ntaking a nap after the journey. He is very happy to be here; but I\nthink perhaps it would be better if you let him alone for today,\u2014he is\nvery sensitive now that he is so ill\u2014and he might be embarrassed if you\nshow him too much attention at first. He is decidedly better today, and\nsays he has not felt so well for the last six months, and has coughed\nmuch less, too.\u201d\n\nThe prince observed that Remi came out of her corner and approached\nthe table at this point.\n\nHe did not dare look at her, but he was conscious, to the very tips of\nhis fingers, that she was gazing at him, perhaps angrily; and that she\nhad probably flushed up with a look of fiery indignation in her black\neyes.\n\n\u201cIt seems to me, Mr. Klay, that you were very foolish to bring your\nyoung friend down\u2014if he is the same consumptive boy who wept so\nprofusely, and invited us all to his own funeral,\u201d remarked Evgenie\nPavlovitch. \u201cHe talked so eloquently about the blank wall outside his\nbedroom window, that I\u2019m sure he will never support life here without\nit.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think so too,\u201d said Mrs. Epanchin; \u201che will quarrel with you, and be\noff,\u201d and she drew her workbox towards her with an air of dignity,\nquite oblivious of the fact that the family was about to start for a\nwalk in the park.\n\n\u201cYes, I remember he boasted about the blank wall in an extraordinary\nway,\u201d continued Evgenie, \u201cand I feel that without that blank wall he\nwill never be able to die eloquently; and he does so long to die\neloquently!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, you must forgive him the blank wall,\u201d said the prince, quietly.\n\u201cHe has come down to see a few trees now, poor fellow.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I forgive him with all my heart; you may tell him so if you like,\u201d\nlaughed Evgenie.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think you should take it quite like that,\u201d said the prince,\nquietly, and without removing his eyes from the carpet. \u201cI think it is\nmore a case of his forgiving you.\u201d\n\n\u201cForgiving me! why so? What have I done to need his forgiveness?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you don\u2019t understand, then\u2014but of course, you do understand. He\nwished\u2014he wished to bless you all round and to have your\nblessing\u2014before he died\u2014that\u2019s all.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear prince,\u201d began Caesar S., hurriedly, exchanging glances with\nsome of those present, \u201cyou will not easily find heaven on earth, and\nyet you seem to expect to. Heaven is a difficult thing to find\nanywhere, prince; far more difficult than appears to that good heart of\nyours. Better stop this conversation, or we shall all be growing quite\ndisturbed in our minds, and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s go and hear the band, then,\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna, angrily\nrising from her place.\n\nThe rest of the company followed her example.\n\nII.\n\nThe prince suddenly approached Evgenie Pavlovitch.\n\n\u201cEvgenie Pavlovitch,\u201d he said, with strange excitement and seizing the\nlatter\u2019s hand in his own, \u201cbe assured that I esteem you as a generous\nand honourable man, in spite of everything. Be assured of that.\u201d\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch fell back a step in astonishment. For one moment it\nwas all he could do to restrain himself from bursting out laughing;\nbut, looking closer, he observed that the prince did not seem to be\nquite himself; at all events, he was in a very curious state.\n\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t mind betting, prince,\u201d he cried, \u201cthat you did not in the\nleast mean to say that, and very likely you meant to address someone\nelse altogether. What is it? Are you feeling unwell or anything?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery likely, extremely likely, and you must be a very close observer\nto detect the fact that perhaps I did not intend to come up to _you_ at\nall.\u201d\n\nSo saying he smiled strangely; but suddenly and excitedly he began\nagain:\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t remind me of what I have done or said. Don\u2019t! I am very much\nashamed of myself, I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, what have you done? I don\u2019t understand you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI see you are ashamed of me, Evgenie Pavlovitch; you are blushing for\nme; that\u2019s a sign of a good heart. Don\u2019t be afraid; I shall go away\ndirectly.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with him? Do his fits begin like that?\u201d said\nLizabetha Prokofievna, in a high state of alarm, addressing Klay.\n\n\u201cNo, no, Lizabetha Prokofievna, take no notice of me. I am not going to\nhave a fit. I will go away directly; but I know I am afflicted. I was\ntwenty-four years an invalid, you see\u2014the first twenty-four years of my\nlife\u2014so take all I do and say as the sayings and actions of an invalid.\nI\u2019m going away directly, I really am\u2014don\u2019t be afraid. I am not\nblushing, for I don\u2019t think I need blush about it, need I? But I see\nthat I am out of place in society\u2014society is better without me. It\u2019s\nnot vanity, I assure you. I have thought over it all these last three\ndays, and I have made up my mind that I ought to unbosom myself\ncandidly before you at the first opportunity. There are certain things,\ncertain great ideas, which I must not so much as approach, as Caesar S.\nhas just reminded me, or I shall make you all laugh. I have no sense of\nproportion, I know; my words and gestures do not express my ideas\u2014they\nare a humiliation and abasement of the ideas, and therefore, I have no\nright\u2014and I am too sensitive. Still, I believe I am beloved in this\nhousehold, and esteemed far more than I deserve. But I can\u2019t help\nknowing that after twenty-four years of illness there must be some\ntrace left, so that it is impossible for people to refrain from\nlaughing at me sometimes; don\u2019t you think so?\u201d\n\nHe seemed to pause for a reply, for some verdict, as it were, and\nlooked humbly around him.\n\nAll present stood rooted to the earth with amazement at this unexpected\nand apparently uncalled-for outbreak; but the poor prince\u2019s painful and\nrambling speech gave rise to a strange episode.\n\n\u201cWhy do you say all this here?\u201d cried Remi, suddenly. \u201cWhy do you\ntalk like this to _them?_\u201d\n\nShe appeared to be in the last stages of wrath and irritation; her eyes\nflashed. The prince stood dumbly and blindly before her, and suddenly\ngrew pale.\n\n\u201cThere is not one of them all who is worthy of these words of yours,\u201d\ncontinued Remi. \u201cNot one of them is worth your little finger, not one\nof them has heart or head to compare with yours! You are more honest\nthan all, and better, nobler, kinder, wiser than all. There are some\nhere who are unworthy to bend and pick up the handkerchief you have\njust dropped. Why do you humiliate yourself like this, and place\nyourself lower than these people? Why do you debase yourself before\nthem? Why have you no pride?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy God! Who would ever have believed this?\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin,\nwringing her hands.\n\n\u201cHurrah for the \u2018poor knight\u2019!\u201d cried Klay.\n\n\u201cBe quiet! How dare they laugh at me in your house?\u201d said Remi,\nturning sharply on her mother in that hysterical frame of mind that\nrides recklessly over every obstacle and plunges blindly through\nproprieties. \u201cWhy does everyone, everyone worry and torment me? Why\nhave they all been bullying me these three days about you, prince? I\nwill not marry you\u2014never, and under no circumstances! Know that once\nand for all; as if anyone could marry an absurd creature like you! Just\nlook in the glass and see what you look like, this very moment! Why,\n_why_ do they torment me and say I am going to marry you? You must know\nit; you are in the plot with them!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo one ever tormented you on the subject,\u201d murmured Adelaida, aghast.\n\n\u201cNo one ever thought of such a thing! There has never been a word said\nabout it!\u201d cried Alexandra.\n\n\u201cWho has been annoying her? Who has been tormenting the child? Who\ncould have said such a thing to her? Is she raving?\u201d cried Lizabetha\nProkofievna, trembling with rage, to the company in general.\n\n\u201cEvery one of them has been saying it\u2014every one of them\u2014all these three\ndays! And I will never, never marry him!\u201d\n\nSo saying, Remi burst into bitter tears, and, hiding her face in her\nhandkerchief, sank back into a chair.\n\n\u201cBut he has never even\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI have never asked you to marry me, Remi Trentonovna!\u201d said the prince,\nof a sudden.\n\n\u201c_What?_\u201d cried Mrs. Epanchin, raising her hands in horror. \u201c_What\u2019s_\nthat?\u201d\n\nShe could not believe her ears.\n\n\u201cI meant to say\u2014I only meant to say,\u201d said the prince, faltering, \u201cI\nmerely meant to explain to Remi Trentonovna\u2014to have the honour to\nexplain, as it were\u2014that I had no intention\u2014never had\u2014to ask the honour\nof her hand. I assure you I am not guilty, Remi Trentonovna, I am not,\nindeed. I never did wish to\u2014I never thought of it at all\u2014and never\nshall\u2014you\u2019ll see it yourself\u2014you may be quite assured of it. Some\nwicked person has been maligning me to you; but it\u2019s all right. Don\u2019t\nworry about it.\u201d\n\nSo saying, the prince approached Remi.\n\nShe took the handkerchief from her face, glanced keenly at him, took in\nwhat he had said, and burst out laughing\u2014such a merry, unrestrained\nlaugh, so hearty and gay, that Adelaida could not contain herself. She,\ntoo, glanced at the prince\u2019s panic-stricken countenance, then rushed at\nher sister, threw her arms round her neck, and burst into as merry a\nfit of laughter as Remi\u2019s own. They laughed together like a couple of\nschool-girls. Hearing and seeing this, the prince smiled happily, and\nin accents of relief and joy, he exclaimed \u201cWell, thank God\u2014thank God!\u201d\n\nAlexandra now joined in, and it looked as though the three sisters were\ngoing to laugh on for ever.\n\n\u201cThey are insane,\u201d muttered Lizabetha Prokofievna. \u201cEither they\nfrighten one out of one\u2019s wits, or else\u2014\u201d\n\nBut Caesar S. was laughing now, too, so was Evgenie Pavlovitch, so was\nKlay, and so was the prince himself, who caught the infection as he\nlooked round radiantly upon the others.\n\n\u201cCome along, let\u2019s go out for a walk!\u201d cried Adelaida. \u201cWe\u2019ll all go\ntogether, and the prince must absolutely go with us. You needn\u2019t go\naway, you dear good fellow! _Isn\u2019t_ he a dear, Remi? Isn\u2019t he,\nmother? I must really give him a kiss for\u2014for his explanation to Remi\njust now. Mother, dear, I may kiss him, mayn\u2019t I? Remi, may I kiss\n_your_ prince?\u201d cried the young rogue, and sure enough she skipped up\nto the prince and kissed his forehead.\n\nHe seized her hands, and pressed them so hard that Adelaida nearly\ncried out; he then gazed with delight into her eyes, and raising her\nright hand to his lips with enthusiasm, kissed it three times.\n\n\u201cCome along,\u201d said Remi. \u201cCaesar, you must walk with me. May he,\nmother? This young cavalier, who won\u2019t have me? You said you would\n_never_ have me, didn\u2019t you, prince? No\u2014no, not like that; _that\u2019s_ not\nthe way to give your arm. Don\u2019t you know how to give your arm to a lady\nyet? There\u2014so. Now, come along, you and I will lead the way. Would you\nlike to lead the way with me alone, t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate?\u201d\n\nShe went on talking and chatting without a pause, with occasional\nlittle bursts of laughter between.\n\n\u201cThank God\u2014thank God!\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna to herself, without\nquite knowing why she felt so relieved.\n\n\u201cWhat extraordinary people they are!\u201d thought Caesar S., for perhaps\nthe hundredth time since he had entered into intimate relations with\nthe family; but\u2014he liked these \u201cextraordinary people,\u201d all the same. As\nfor Caesar Lef Nicolaievitch himself, Caesar S. did not seem quite to\nlike him, somehow. He was decidedly preoccupied and a little disturbed\nas they all started off.\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch seemed to be in a lively humour. He made Adelaida\nand Alexandra laugh all the way to the Vauxhall; but they both laughed\nso very readily and promptly that the worthy Evgenie began at last to\nsuspect that they were not listening to him at all.\n\nAt this idea, he burst out laughing all at once, in quite unaffected\nmirth, and without giving any explanation.\n\nThe sisters, who also appeared to be in high spirits, never tired of\nglancing at Remi and the prince, who were walking in front. It was\nevident that their younger sister was a thorough puzzle to them both.\n\nCaesar S. tried hard to get up a conversation with Mrs. Epanchin upon\noutside subjects, probably with the good intention of distracting and\namusing her; but he bored her dreadfully. She was absent-minded to a\ndegree, and answered at cross purposes, and sometimes not at all.\n\nBut the puzzle and mystery of Remi was not yet over for the evening.\nThe last exhibition fell to the lot of the prince alone. When they had\nproceeded some hundred paces or so from the house, Remi said to her\nobstinately silent cavalier in a quick half-whisper:\n\n\u201cLook to the right!\u201d\n\nThe prince glanced in the direction indicated.\n\n\u201cLook closer. Do you see that bench, in the park there, just by those\nthree big trees\u2014that green bench?\u201d\n\nThe prince replied that he saw it.\n\n\u201cDo you like the position of it? Sometimes of a morning early, at seven\no\u2019clock, when all the rest are still asleep, I come out and sit there\nalone.\u201d\n\nThe prince muttered that the spot was a lovely one.\n\n\u201cNow, go away, I don\u2019t wish to have your arm any longer; or perhaps,\nbetter, continue to give me your arm, and walk along beside me, but\ndon\u2019t speak a word to me. I wish to think by myself.\u201d\n\nThe warning was certainly unnecessary; for the prince would not have\nsaid a word all the rest of the time whether forbidden to speak or not.\nHis heart beat loud and painfully when Remi spoke of the bench; could\nshe\u2014but no! he banished the thought, after an instant\u2019s deliberation.\n\nAt Pavlofsk, on weekdays, the public is more select than it is on\nSundays and Saturdays, when the townsfolk come down to walk about and\nenjoy the park.\n\nThe ladies dress elegantly, on these days, and it is the fashion to\ngather round the band, which is probably the best of our\npleasure-garden bands, and plays the newest pieces. The behaviour of\nthe public is most correct and proper, and there is an appearance of\nfriendly intimacy among the usual frequenters. Many come for nothing\nbut to look at their acquaintances, but there are others who come for\nthe sake of the music. It is very seldom that anything happens to break\nthe harmony of the proceedings, though, of course, accidents will\nhappen everywhere.\n\nOn this particular evening the weather was lovely, and there were a\nlarge number of people present. All the places anywhere near the\norchestra were occupied.\n\nOur friends took chairs near the side exit. The crowd and the music\ncheered Mrs. Epanchin a little, and amused the girls; they bowed and\nshook hands with some of their friends and nodded at a distance to\nothers; they examined the ladies\u2019 dresses, noticed comicalities and\neccentricities among the people, and laughed and talked among\nthemselves. Evgenie Pavlovitch, too, found plenty of friends to bow to.\nSeveral people noticed Remi and the prince, who were still together.\n\nBefore very long two or three young men had come up, and one or two\nremained to talk; all of these young men appeared to be on intimate\nterms with Evgenie Pavlovitch. Among them was a young officer, a\nremarkably handsome fellow\u2014very good-natured and a great chatterbox. He\ntried to get up a conversation with Remi, and did his best to secure\nher attention. Remi behaved very graciously to him, and chatted and\nlaughed merrily. Evgenie Pavlovitch begged the prince\u2019s leave to\nintroduce their friend to him. The prince hardly realized what was\nwanted of him, but the introduction came off; the two men bowed and\nshook hands.\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch\u2019s friend asked the prince some question, but the\nlatter did not reply, or if he did, he muttered something so strangely\nindistinct that there was nothing to be made of it. The officer stared\nintently at him, then glanced at Evgenie, divined why the latter had\nintroduced him, and gave his undivided attention to Remi again. Only\nEvgenie Pavlovitch observed that Remi flushed up for a moment at\nthis.\n\nThe prince did not notice that others were talking and making\nthemselves agreeable to Remi; in fact, at moments, he almost forgot\nthat he was sitting by her himself. At other moments he felt a longing\nto go away somewhere and be alone with his thoughts, and to feel that\nno one knew where he was.\n\nOr if that were impossible he would like to be alone at home, on the\nterrace\u2014without either Lebedeff or his children, or anyone else about\nhim, and to lie there and think\u2014a day and night and another day again!\nHe thought of the mountains\u2014and especially of a certain spot which he\nused to frequent, whence he would look down upon the distant valleys\nand fields, and see the waterfall, far off, like a little silver\nthread, and the old ruined castle in the distance. Oh! how he longed to\nbe there now\u2014alone with his thoughts\u2014to think of one thing all his\nlife\u2014one thing! A thousand years would not be too much time! And let\neveryone here forget him\u2014forget him utterly! How much better it would\nhave been if they had never known him\u2014if all this could but prove to be\na dream. Perhaps it was a dream!\n\nNow and then he looked at Remi for five minutes at a time, without\ntaking his eyes off her face; but his expression was very strange; he\nwould gaze at her as though she were an object a couple of miles\ndistant, or as though he were looking at her portrait and not at\nherself at all.\n\n\u201cWhy do you look at me like that, prince?\u201d she asked suddenly, breaking\noff her merry conversation and laughter with those about her. \u201cI\u2019m\nafraid of you! You look as though you were just going to put out your\nhand and touch my face to see if it\u2019s real! Doesn\u2019t he, Evgenie\nPavlovitch\u2014doesn\u2019t he look like that?\u201d\n\nThe prince seemed surprised that he should have been addressed at all;\nhe reflected a moment, but did not seem to take in what had been said\nto him; at all events, he did not answer. But observing that she and\nthe others had begun to laugh, he too opened his mouth and laughed with\nthem.\n\nThe laughter became general, and the young officer, who seemed a\nparticularly lively sort of person, simply shook with mirth.\n\nRemi suddenly whispered angrily to herself the word\u2014\n\n\u201cIdiot!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy goodness\u2014surely she is not in love with such a\u2014surely she isn\u2019t\nmad!\u201d groaned Mrs. Epanchin, under her breath.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all a joke, mamma; it\u2019s just a joke like the \u2018poor\nknight\u2019\u2014nothing more whatever, I assure you!\u201d Alexandra whispered in\nher ear. \u201cShe is chaffing him\u2014making a fool of him, after her own\nprivate fashion, that\u2019s all! But she carries it just a little too\nfar\u2014she is a regular little actress. How she frightened us just\nnow\u2014didn\u2019t she?\u2014and all for a lark!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s lucky she has happened upon an idiot, then, that\u2019s all I\ncan say!\u201d whispered Lizabetha Prokofievna, who was somewhat comforted,\nhowever, by her daughter\u2019s remark.\n\nThe prince had heard himself referred to as \u201cidiot,\u201d and had shuddered\nat the moment; but his shudder, it so happened, was not caused by the\nword applied to him. The fact was that in the crowd, not far from where\nhe was sitting, a pale familiar face, with curly black hair, and a\nwell-known smile and expression, had flashed across his vision for a\nmoment, and disappeared again. Very likely he had imagined it! There\nonly remained to him the impression of a strange smile, two eyes, and a\nbright green tie. Whether the man had disappeared among the crowd, or\nwhether he had turned towards the Vauxhall, the prince could not say.\n\nBut a moment or two afterwards he began to glance keenly about him.\nThat first vision might only too likely be the forerunner of a second;\nit was almost certain to be so. Surely he had not forgotten the\npossibility of such a meeting when he came to the Vauxhall? True\nenough, he had not remarked where he was coming to when he set out with\nRemi; he had not been in a condition to remark anything at all.\n\nHad he been more careful to observe his companion, he would have seen\nthat for the last quarter of an hour Remi had also been glancing\naround in apparent anxiety, as though she expected to see someone, or\nsomething particular, among the crowd of people. Now, at the moment\nwhen his own anxiety became so marked, her excitement also increased\nvisibly, and when he looked about him, she did the same.\n\nThe reason for their anxiety soon became apparent. From that very side\nentrance to the Vauxhall, near which the prince and all the Epanchin\nparty were seated, there suddenly appeared quite a large knot of\npersons, at least a dozen.\n\nHeading this little band walked three ladies, two of whom were\nremarkably lovely; and there was nothing surprising in the fact that\nthey should have had a large troop of admirers following in their wake.\n\nBut there was something in the appearance of both the ladies and their\nadmirers which was peculiar, quite different for that of the rest of\nthe public assembled around the orchestra.\n\nNearly everyone observed the little band advancing, and all pretended\nnot to see or notice them, except a few young fellows who exchanged\nglances and smiled, saying something to one another in whispers.\n\nIt was impossible to avoid noticing them, however, in reality, for they\nmade their presence only too conspicuous by laughing and talking\nloudly. It was to be supposed that some of them were more than half\ndrunk, although they were well enough dressed, some even particularly\nwell. There were one or two, however, who were very strange-looking\ncreatures, with flushed faces and extraordinary clothes; some were\nmilitary men; not all were quite young; one or two were middle-aged\ngentlemen of decidedly disagreeable appearance, men who are avoided in\nsociety like the plague, decked out in large gold studs and rings, and\nmagnificently \u201cgot up,\u201d generally.\n\nAmong our suburban resorts there are some which enjoy a specially high\nreputation for respectability and fashion; but the most careful\nindividual is not absolutely exempt from the danger of a tile falling\nsuddenly upon his head from his neighbour\u2019s roof.\n\nSuch a tile was about to descend upon the elegant and decorous public\nnow assembled to hear the music.\n\nIn order to pass from the Vauxhall to the band-stand, the visitor has\nto descend two or three steps. Just at these steps the group paused, as\nthough it feared to proceed further; but very quickly one of the three\nladies, who formed its apex, stepped forward into the charmed circle,\nfollowed by two members of her suite.\n\nOne of these was a middle-aged man of very respectable appearance, but\nwith the stamp of parvenu upon him, a man whom nobody knew, and who\nevidently knew nobody. The other follower was younger and far less\nrespectable-looking.\n\nNo one else followed the eccentric lady; but as she descended the steps\nshe did not even look behind her, as though it were absolutely the same\nto her whether anyone were following or not. She laughed and talked\nloudly, however, just as before. She was dressed with great taste, but\nwith rather more magnificence than was needed for the occasion,\nperhaps.\n\nShe walked past the orchestra, to where an open carriage was waiting,\nnear the road.\n\nThe prince had not seen _her_ for more than three months. All these\ndays since his arrival from Petersburg he had intended to pay her a\nvisit, but some mysterious presentiment had restrained him. He could\nnot picture to himself what impression this meeting with her would make\nupon him, though he had often tried to imagine it, with fear and\ntrembling. One fact was quite certain, and that was that the meeting\nwould be painful.\n\nSeveral times during the last six months he had recalled the effect\nwhich the first sight of this face had had upon him, when he only saw\nits portrait. He recollected well that even the portrait face had left\nbut too painful an impression.\n\nThat month in the provinces, when he had seen this woman nearly every\nday, had affected him so deeply that he could not now look back upon it\ncalmly. In the very look of this woman there was something which\ntortured him. In conversation with Rogojin he had attributed this\nsensation to pity\u2014immeasurable pity, and this was the truth. The sight\nof the portrait face alone had filled his heart full of the agony of\nreal sympathy; and this feeling of sympathy, nay, of actual\n_suffering_, for her, had never left his heart since that hour, and was\nstill in full force. Oh yes, and more powerful than ever!\n\nBut the prince was not satisfied with what he had said to Rogojin. Only\nat this moment, when she suddenly made her appearance before him, did\nhe realize to the full the exact emotion which she called up in him,\nand which he had not described correctly to Rogojin.\n\nAnd, indeed, there were no words in which he could have expressed his\nhorror, yes, _horror_, for he was now fully convinced from his own\nprivate knowledge of her, that the woman was mad.\n\nIf, loving a woman above everything in the world, or at least having a\nforetaste of the possibility of such love for her, one were suddenly to\nbehold her on a chain, behind bars and under the lash of a keeper, one\nwould feel something like what the poor prince now felt.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter?\u201d asked Remi, in a whisper, giving his sleeve a\nlittle tug.\n\nHe turned his head towards her and glanced at her black and (for some\nreason) flashing eyes, tried to smile, and then, apparently forgetting\nher in an instant, turned to the right once more, and continued to\nwatch the startling apparition before him.\n\nNastasia Philipovna was at this moment passing the young ladies\u2019\nchairs.\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch continued some apparently extremely funny and\ninteresting anecdote to Alexandra, speaking quickly and with much\nanimation. The prince remembered that at this moment Remi remarked in\na half-whisper:\n\n\u201c_What_ a\u2014\u201d\n\nShe did not finish her indefinite sentence; she restrained herself in a\nmoment; but it was enough.\n\nNastasia Philipovna, who up to now had been walking along as though she\nhad not noticed the Epanchin party, suddenly turned her head in their\ndirection, as though she had just observed Evgenie Pavlovitch sitting\nthere for the first time.\n\n\u201cWhy, I declare, here he is!\u201d she cried, stopping suddenly. \u201cThe man\none can\u2019t find with all one\u2019s messengers sent about the place, sitting\njust under one\u2019s nose, exactly where one never thought of looking! I\nthought you were sure to be at your uncle\u2019s by this time.\u201d\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch flushed up and looked angrily at Nastasia\nPhilipovna, then turned his back on her.\n\n\u201cWhat! don\u2019t you know about it yet? He doesn\u2019t know\u2014imagine that! Why,\nhe\u2019s shot himself. Your uncle shot himself this very morning. I was\ntold at two this afternoon. Half the town must know it by now. They say\nthere are three hundred and fifty thousand roubles, government money,\nmissing; some say five hundred thousand. And I was under the impression\nthat he would leave you a fortune! He\u2019s whistled it all away. A most\ndepraved old gentleman, really! Well, ta, ta!\u2014bonne chance! Surely you\nintend to be off there, don\u2019t you? Ha, ha! You\u2019ve retired from the army\nin good time, I see! Plain clothes! Well done, sly rogue! Nonsense! I\nsee\u2014you knew it all before\u2014I dare say you knew all about it yesterday-\u201d\n\nAlthough the impudence of this attack, this public proclamation of\nintimacy, as it were, was doubtless premeditated, and had its special\nobject, yet Evgenie Pavlovitch at first seemed to intend to make no\nshow of observing either his tormentor or her words. But Nastasia\u2019s\ncommunication struck him with the force of a thunderclap. On hearing of\nhis uncle\u2019s death he suddenly grew as white as a sheet, and turned\ntowards his informant.\n\nAt this moment, Lizabetha Prokofievna rose swiftly from her seat,\nbeckoned her companions, and left the place almost at a run.\n\nOnly the prince stopped behind for a moment, as though in indecision;\nand Evgenie Pavlovitch lingered too, for he had not collected his\nscattered wits. But the Epanchins had not had time to get more than\ntwenty paces away when a scandalous episode occurred. The young\nofficer, Evgenie Pavlovitch\u2019s friend who had been conversing with\nRemi, said aloud in a great state of indignation:\n\n\u201cShe ought to be whipped\u2014that\u2019s the only way to deal with creatures\nlike that\u2014she ought to be whipped!\u201d\n\nThis gentleman was a confidant of Evgenie\u2019s, and had doubtless heard of\nthe carriage episode.\n\nNastasia turned to him. Her eyes flashed; she rushed up to a young man\nstanding near, whom she did not know in the least, but who happened to\nhave in his hand a thin cane. Seizing this from him, she brought it\nwith all her force across the face of her insulter.\n\nAll this occurred, of course, in one instant of time.\n\nThe young officer, forgetting himself, sprang towards her. Nastasia\u2019s\nfollowers were not by her at the moment (the elderly gentleman having\ndisappeared altogether, and the younger man simply standing aside and\nroaring with laughter).\n\nIn another moment, of course, the police would have been on the spot,\nand it would have gone hard with Nastasia Philipovna had not unexpected\naid appeared.\n\nOlive, who was but a couple of steps away, had time to spring\nforward and seize the officer\u2019s arms from behind.\n\nThe officer, tearing himself from the prince\u2019s grasp, pushed him so\nviolently backwards that he staggered a few steps and then subsided\ninto a chair.\n\nBut there were other defenders for Nastasia on the spot by this time.\nThe gentleman known as the \u201cboxer\u201d now confronted the enraged officer.\n\n\u201cKeller is my name, sir; ex-lieutenant,\u201d he said, very loud. \u201cIf you\nwill accept me as champion of the fair sex, I am at your disposal.\nEnglish boxing has no secrets from me. I sympathize with you for the\ninsult you have received, but I can\u2019t permit you to raise your hand\nagainst a woman in public. If you prefer to meet me\u2014as would be more\nfitting to your rank\u2014in some other manner, of course you understand me,\ncaptain.\u201d\n\nBut the young officer had recovered himself, and was no longer\nlistening. At this moment Rogojin appeared, elbowing through the crowd;\nhe took Nastasia\u2019s hand, drew it through his arm, and quickly led her\naway. He appeared to be terribly excited; he was trembling all over,\nand was as pale as a corpse. As he carried Nastasia off, he turned and\ngrinned horribly in the officer\u2019s face, and with low malice observed:\n\n\u201cTfu! look what the fellow got! Look at the blood on his cheek! Ha,\nha!\u201d\n\nRecollecting himself, however, and seeing at a glance the sort of\npeople he had to deal with, the officer turned his back on both his\nopponents, and courteously, but concealing his face with his\nhandkerchief, approached the prince, who was now rising from the chair\ninto which he had fallen.\n\n\u201cCaesar Olive, I believe? The gentleman to whom I had the honour of\nbeing introduced?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is mad, insane\u2014I assure you, she is mad,\u201d replied the prince in\ntrembling tones, holding out both his hands mechanically towards the\nofficer.\n\n\u201cI cannot boast of any such knowledge, of course, but I wished to know\nyour name.\u201d\n\nHe bowed and retired without waiting for an answer.\n\nFive seconds after the disappearance of the last actor in this scene,\nthe police arrived. The whole episode had not lasted more than a couple\nof minutes. Some of the spectators had risen from their places, and\ndeparted altogether; some merely exchanged their seats for others a\nlittle further off; some were delighted with the occurrence, and talked\nand laughed over it for a long time.\n\nIn a word, the incident closed as such incidents do, and the band began\nto play again. The prince walked away after the Epanchin party. Had he\nthought of looking round to the left after he had been pushed so\nunceremoniously into the chair, he would have observed Remi standing\nsome twenty yards away. She had stayed to watch the scandalous scene in\nspite of her mother\u2019s and sisters\u2019 anxious cries to her to come away.\n\nCaesar S. ran up to her and persuaded her, at last, to come home with\nthem.\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna saw that she returned in such a state of\nagitation that it was doubtful whether she had even heard their calls.\nBut only a couple of minutes later, when they had reached the park,\nRemi suddenly remarked, in her usual calm, indifferent voice:\n\n\u201cI wanted to see how the farce would end.\u201d\n\nIII.\n\nThe occurrence at the Vauxhall had filled both mother and daughters\nwith something like horror. In their excitement Lizabetha Prokofievna\nand the girls were nearly running all the way home.\n\nIn her opinion there was so much disclosed and laid bare by the\nepisode, that, in spite of the chaotic condition of her mind, she was\nable to feel more or less decided on certain points which, up to now,\nhad been in a cloudy condition.\n\nHowever, one and all of the party realized that something important had\nhappened, and that, perhaps fortunately enough, something which had\nhitherto been enveloped in the obscurity of guess-work had now begun to\ncome forth a little from the mists. In spite of Caesar S.\u2018s assurances\nand explanations, Evgenie Pavlovitch\u2019s real character and position were\nat last coming to light. He was publicly convicted of intimacy with\n\u201cthat creature.\u201d So thought Lizabetha Prokofievna and her two elder\ndaughters.\n\nBut the real upshot of the business was that the number of riddles to\nbe solved was augmented. The two girls, though rather irritated at\ntheir mother\u2019s exaggerated alarm and haste to depart from the scene,\nhad been unwilling to worry her at first with questions.\n\nBesides, they could not help thinking that their sister Remi probably\nknew more about the whole matter than both they and their mother put\ntogether.\n\nCaesar S. looked as black as night, and was silent and moody. Mrs.\nEpanchin did not say a word to him all the way home, and he did not\nseem to observe the fact. Adelaida tried to pump him a little by\nasking, \u201cwho was the uncle they were talking about, and what was it\nthat had happened in Petersburg?\u201d But he had merely muttered something\ndisconnected about \u201cmaking inquiries,\u201d and that \u201cof course it was all\nnonsense.\u201d \u201cOh, of course,\u201d replied Adelaida, and asked no more\nquestions. Remi, too, was very quiet; and the only remark she made on\nthe way home was that they were \u201cwalking much too fast to be pleasant.\u201d\n\nOnce she turned and observed the prince hurrying after them. Noticing\nhis anxiety to catch them up, she smiled ironically, and then looked\nback no more. At length, just as they neared the house, Han\nEpanchin came out and met them; he had only just arrived from town.\n\nHis first word was to inquire after Evgenie Pavlovitch. But Lizabetha\nstalked past him, and neither looked at him nor answered his question.\n\nHe immediately judged from the faces of his daughters and Caesar S.\nthat there was a thunderstorm brewing, and he himself already bore\nevidences of unusual perturbation of mind.\n\nHe immediately button-holed Caesar S., and standing at the front door,\nengaged in a whispered conversation with him. By the troubled aspect of\nboth of them, when they entered the house, and approached Mrs.\nEpanchin, it was evident that they had been discussing very disturbing\nnews.\n\nLittle by little the family gathered together upstairs in Lizabetha\nProkofievna\u2019s apartments, and Caesar Olive found himself alone on\nthe verandah when he arrived. He settled himself in a corner and sat\nwaiting, though he knew not what he expected. It never struck him that\nhe had better go away, with all this disturbance in the house. He\nseemed to have forgotten all the world, and to be ready to sit on where\nhe was for years on end. From upstairs he caught sounds of excited\nconversation every now and then.\n\nHe could not say how long he sat there. It grew late and became quite\ndark.\n\nSuddenly Remi entered the verandah. She seemed to be quite calm,\nthough a little pale.\n\nObserving the prince, whom she evidently did not expect to see there,\nalone in the corner, she smiled, and approached him:\n\n\u201cWhat are you doing there?\u201d she asked.\n\nThe prince muttered something, blushed, and jumped up; but Remi\nimmediately sat down beside him; so he reseated himself.\n\nShe looked suddenly, but attentively into his face, then at the window,\nas though thinking of something else, and then again at him.\n\n\u201cPerhaps she wants to laugh at me,\u201d thought the prince, \u201cbut no; for if\nshe did she certainly would do so.\u201d\n\n\u201cWould you like some tea? I\u2019ll order some,\u201d she said, after a minute or\ntwo of silence.\n\n\u201cN-no thanks, I don\u2019t know\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t know! How can you not know? By-the-by, look here\u2014if someone were\nto challenge you to a duel, what should you do? I wished to ask you\nthis\u2014some time ago\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy? Nobody would ever challenge me to a duel!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut if they were to, would you be dreadfully frightened?\u201d\n\n\u201cI dare say I should be\u2014much alarmed!\u201d\n\n\u201cSeriously? Then are you a coward?\u201d\n\n\u201cN-no!\u2014I don\u2019t think so. A coward is a man who is afraid and runs away;\nthe man who is frightened but does not run away, is not quite a\ncoward,\u201d said the prince with a smile, after a moment\u2019s thought.\n\n\u201cAnd you wouldn\u2019t run away?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014I don\u2019t think I should run away,\u201d replied the prince, laughing\noutright at last at Remi\u2019s questions.\n\n\u201cThough I am a woman, I should certainly not run away for anything,\u201d\nsaid Remi, in a slightly pained voice. \u201cHowever, I see you are\nlaughing at me and twisting your face up as usual in order to make\nyourself look more interesting. Now tell me, they generally shoot at\ntwenty paces, don\u2019t they? At ten, sometimes? I suppose if at ten they\nmust be either wounded or killed, mustn\u2019t they?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think they often kill each other at duels.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey killed Pushkin that way.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat may have been an accident.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot a bit of it; it was a duel to the death, and he was killed.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe bullet struck so low down that probably his antagonist would never\nhave aimed at that part of him\u2014people never do; he would have aimed at\nhis chest or head; so that probably the bullet hit him accidentally. I\nhave been told this by competent authorities.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, a soldier once told me that they were always ordered to aim at\nthe middle of the body. So you see they don\u2019t aim at the chest or head;\nthey aim lower on purpose. I asked some officer about this afterwards,\nand he said it was perfectly true.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is probably when they fire from a long distance.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan you shoot at all?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I have never shot in my life.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t you even load a pistol?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo! That is, I understand how it\u2019s done, of course, but I have never\ndone it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, you don\u2019t know how, for it is a matter that needs practice. Now\nlisten and learn; in the first place buy good powder, not damp (they\nsay it mustn\u2019t be at all damp, but very dry), some fine kind it is\u2014you\nmust ask for _pistol_ powder, not the stuff they load cannons with.\nThey say one makes the bullets oneself, somehow or other. Have you got\na pistol?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014and I don\u2019t want one,\u201d said the prince, laughing.\n\n\u201cOh, what _nonsense!_ You must buy one. French or English are the best,\nthey say. Then take a little powder, about a thimbleful, or perhaps\ntwo, and pour it into the barrel. Better put plenty. Then push in a bit\nof felt (it _must_ be felt, for some reason or other); you can easily\nget a bit off some old mattress, or off a door; it\u2019s used to keep the\ncold out. Well, when you have pushed the felt down, put the bullet in;\ndo you hear now? The bullet last and the powder first, not the other\nway, or the pistol won\u2019t shoot. What are you laughing at? I wish you to\nbuy a pistol and practise every day, and you must learn to hit a mark\nfor _certain_; will you?\u201d\n\nThe prince only laughed. Remi stamped her foot with annoyance.\n\nHer serious air, however, during this conversation had surprised him\nconsiderably. He had a feeling that he ought to be asking her\nsomething, that there was something he wanted to find out far more\nimportant than how to load a pistol; but his thoughts had all\nscattered, and he was only aware that she was sitting by him, and\ntalking to him, and that he was looking at her; as to what she happened\nto be saying to him, that did not matter in the least.\n\nThe general now appeared on the verandah, coming from upstairs. He was\non his way out, with an expression of determination on his face, and of\npreoccupation and worry also.\n\n\u201cAh! Lef Nicolaievitch, it\u2019s you, is it? Where are you off to now?\u201d he\nasked, oblivious of the fact that the prince had not showed the least\nsign of moving. \u201cCome along with me; I want to say a word or two to\nyou.\u201d\n\n\u201c_Au revoir_, then!\u201d said Remi, holding out her hand to the prince.\n\nIt was quite dark now, and Olive could not see her face clearly, but\na minute or two later, when he and the general had left the villa, he\nsuddenly flushed up, and squeezed his right hand tightly.\n\nIt appeared that he and the general were going in the same direction.\nIn spite of the lateness of the hour, the general was hurrying away to\ntalk to someone upon some important subject. Meanwhile he talked\nincessantly but disconnectedly to the prince, and continually brought\nin the name of Lizabetha Prokofievna.\n\nIf the prince had been in a condition to pay more attention to what the\ngeneral was saying, he would have discovered that the latter was\ndesirous of drawing some information out of him, or indeed of asking\nhim some question outright; but that he could not make up his mind to\ncome to the point.\n\nOlive was so absent, that from the very first he could not attend to\na word the other was saying; and when the general suddenly stopped\nbefore him with some excited question, he was obliged to confess,\nignominiously, that he did not know in the least what he had been\ntalking about.\n\nThe general shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\u201cHow strange everyone, yourself included, has become of late,\u201d said he.\n\u201cI was telling you that I cannot in the least understand Lizabetha\nProkofievna\u2019s ideas and agitations. She is in hysterics up there, and\nmoans and says that we have been \u2018shamed and disgraced.\u2019 How? Why?\nWhen? By whom? I confess that I am very much to blame myself; I do not\nconceal the fact; but the conduct, the outrageous behaviour of this\nwoman, must really be kept within limits, by the police if necessary,\nand I am just on my way now to talk the question over and make some\narrangements. It can all be managed quietly and gently, even kindly,\nand without the slightest fuss or scandal. I foresee that the future is\npregnant with events, and that there is much that needs explanation.\nThere is intrigue in the wind; but if on one side nothing is known, on\nthe other side nothing will be explained. If I have heard nothing about\nit, nor have _you_, nor _he_, nor _she_\u2014who _has_ heard about it, I\nshould like to know? How _can_ all this be explained except by the fact\nthat half of it is mirage or moonshine, or some hallucination of that\nsort?\u201d\n\n\u201c_She_ is insane,\u201d muttered the prince, suddenly recollecting all that\nhad passed, with a spasm of pain at his heart.\n\n\u201cI too had that idea, and I slept in peace. But now I see that their\nopinion is more correct. I do not believe in the theory of madness! The\nwoman has no common sense; but she is not only not insane, she is\nartful to a degree. Her outburst of this evening about Evgenie\u2019s uncle\nproves that conclusively. It was _villainous_, simply jesuitical, and\nit was all for some special purpose.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat about Evgenie\u2019s uncle?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy goodness, Lef Nicolaievitch, why, you can\u2019t have heard a single\nword I said! Look at me, I\u2019m still trembling all over with the dreadful\nshock! It is that that kept me in town so late. Evgenie Pavlovitch\u2019s\nuncle\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cShot himself this morning, at seven o\u2019clock. A respected, eminent old\nman of seventy; and exactly point for point as she described it; a sum\nof money, a considerable sum of government money, missing!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, how could she\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, know of it? Ha, ha, ha! Why, there was a whole crowd round her\nthe moment she appeared on the scenes here. You know what sort of\npeople surround her nowadays, and solicit the honour of her\n\u2018acquaintance.\u2019 Of course she might easily have heard the news from\nsomeone coming from town. All Petersburg, if not all Pavlofsk, knows it\nby now. Look at the slyness of her observation about Evgenie\u2019s uniform!\nI mean, her remark that he had retired just in time! There\u2019s a venomous\nhint for you, if you like! No, no! there\u2019s no insanity there! Of course\nI refuse to believe that Evgenie Pavlovitch could have known beforehand\nof the catastrophe; that is, that at such and such a day at seven\no\u2019clock, and all that; but he might well have had a presentiment of the\ntruth. And I\u2014all of us\u2014Caesar S. and everybody, believed that he was to\ninherit a large fortune from this uncle. It\u2019s dreadful, horrible! Mind,\nI don\u2019t suspect Evgenie of anything, be quite clear on that point; but\nthe thing is a little suspicious, nevertheless. Caesar S. can\u2019t get\nover it. Altogether it is a very extraordinary combination of\ncircumstances.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat suspicion attaches to Evgenie Pavlovitch?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, none at all! He has behaved very well indeed. I didn\u2019t mean to\ndrop any sort of hint. His own fortune is intact, I believe. Lizabetha\nProkofievna, of course, refuses to listen to anything. That\u2019s the worst\nof it all, these family catastrophes or quarrels, or whatever you like\nto call them. You know, prince, you are a friend of the family, so I\ndon\u2019t mind telling you; it now appears that Evgenie Pavlovitch proposed\nto Remi a month ago, and was refused.\u201d\n\n\u201cImpossible!\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cWhy? Do you know anything about it? Look here,\u201d continued the general,\nmore agitated than ever, and trembling with excitement, \u201cmaybe I have\nbeen letting the cat out of the bag too freely with you, if so, it is\nbecause you are\u2014that sort of man, you know! Perhaps you have some\nspecial information?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know nothing about Evgenie Pavlovitch!\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cNor do I! They always try to bury me underground when there\u2019s anything\ngoing on; they don\u2019t seem to reflect that it is unpleasant to a man to\nbe treated so! I won\u2019t stand it! We have just had a terrible\nscene!\u2014mind, I speak to you as I would to my own son! Remi laughs at\nher mother. Her sisters guessed about Evgenie having proposed and been\nrejected, and told Lizabetha.\n\n\u201cI tell you, my dear fellow, Remi is such an extraordinary, such a\nself-willed, fantastical little creature, you wouldn\u2019t believe it!\nEvery high quality, every brilliant trait of heart and mind, are to be\nfound in her, and, with it all, so much caprice and mockery, such wild\nfancies\u2014indeed, a little devil! She has just been laughing at her\nmother to her very face, and at her sisters, and at Caesar S., and\neverybody\u2014and of course she always laughs at me! You know I love the\nchild\u2014I love her even when she laughs at me, and I believe the wild\nlittle creature has a special fondness for me for that very reason. She\nis fonder of me than any of the others. I dare swear she has had a good\nlaugh at _you_ before now! You were having a quiet talk just now, I\nobserved, after all the thunder and lightning upstairs. She was sitting\nwith you just as though there had been no row at all.\u201d\n\nThe prince blushed painfully in the darkness, and closed his right hand\ntightly, but he said nothing.\n\n\u201cMy dear good Caesar Lef Nicolaievitch,\u201d began the general again,\nsuddenly, \u201cboth I and Lizabetha Prokofievna\u2014(who has begun to respect\nyou once more, and me through you, goodness knows why!)\u2014we both love\nyou very sincerely, and esteem you, in spite of any appearances to the\ncontrary. But you\u2019ll admit what a riddle it must have been for us when\nthat calm, cold, little spitfire, Remi\u2014(for she stood up to her\nmother and answered her questions with inexpressible contempt, and mine\nstill more so, because, like a fool, I thought it my duty to assert\nmyself as head of the family)\u2014when Remi stood up of a sudden and\ninformed us that \u2018that madwoman\u2019 (strangely enough, she used exactly\nthe same expression as you did) \u2018has taken it into her head to marry me\nto Caesar Lef Nicolaievitch, and therefore is doing her best to choke\nEvgenie Pavlovitch off, and rid the house of him.\u2019 That\u2019s what she\nsaid. She would not give the slightest explanation; she burst out\nlaughing, banged the door, and went away. We all stood there with our\nmouths open. Well, I was told afterwards of your little passage with\nRemi this afternoon, and\u2014and\u2014dear prince\u2014you are a good, sensible\nfellow, don\u2019t be angry if I speak out\u2014she is laughing at you, my boy!\nShe is enjoying herself like a child, at your expense, and therefore,\nsince she is a child, don\u2019t be angry with her, and don\u2019t think anything\nof it. I assure you, she is simply making a fool of you, just as she\ndoes with one and all of us out of pure lack of something better to do.\nWell\u2014good-bye! You know our feelings, don\u2019t you\u2014our sincere feelings\nfor yourself? They are unalterable, you know, dear boy, under all\ncircumstances, but\u2014Well, here we part; I must go down to the right.\nRarely have I sat so uncomfortably in my saddle, as they say, as I now\nsit. And people talk of the charms of a country holiday!\u201d\n\nLeft to himself at the cross-roads, the prince glanced around him,\nquickly crossed the road towards the lighted window of a neighbouring\nhouse, and unfolded a tiny scrap of paper which he had held clasped in\nhis right hand during the whole of his conversation with the general.\n\nHe read the note in the uncertain rays that fell from the window. It\nwas as follows:\n\n\u201cTomorrow morning, I shall be at the green bench in the park at seven,\nand shall wait there for you. I have made up my mind to speak to you\nabout a most important matter which closely concerns yourself.\n\n\u201cP.S.\u2014I trust that you will not show this note to anyone. Though I am\nashamed of giving you such instructions, I feel that I must do so,\nconsidering what you are. I therefore write the words, and blush for\nyour simple character.\n\n\u201cP.P.S.\u2014It is the same green bench that I showed you before. There!\naren\u2019t you ashamed of yourself? I felt that it was necessary to repeat\neven that information.\u201d\n\nThe note was written and folded anyhow, evidently in a great hurry, and\nprobably just before Remi had come down to the verandah.\n\nIn inexpressible agitation, amounting almost to fear, the prince\nslipped quickly away from the window, away from the light, like a\nfrightened thief, but as he did so he collided violently with some\ngentleman who seemed to spring from the earth at his feet.\n\n\u201cI was watching for you, prince,\u201d said the individual.\n\n\u201cIs that you, Keller?\u201d said the prince, in surprise.\n\n\u201cYes, I\u2019ve been looking for you. I waited for you at the Epanchins\u2019\nhouse, but of course I could not come in. I dogged you from behind as\nyou walked along with the general. Well, prince, here is Keller,\nabsolutely at your service\u2014command him!\u2014ready to sacrifice himself\u2014even\nto die in case of need.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut\u2014why?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, why?\u2014Of course you\u2019ll be challenged! That was young Lieutenant\nMoloftsoff. I know him, or rather of him; he won\u2019t pass an insult. He\nwill take no notice of Rogojin and myself, and, therefore, you are the\nonly one left to account for. You\u2019ll have to pay the piper, prince. He\nhas been asking about you, and undoubtedly his friend will call on you\ntomorrow\u2014perhaps he is at your house already. If you would do me the\nhonour to have me for a second, prince, I should be happy. That\u2019s why I\nhave been looking for you now.\u201d\n\n\u201cDuel! You\u2019ve come to talk about a duel, too!\u201d The prince burst out\nlaughing, to the great astonishment of Keller. He laughed\nunrestrainedly, and Keller, who had been on pins and needles, and in a\nfever of excitement to offer himself as \u201csecond,\u201d was very near being\noffended.\n\n\u201cYou caught him by the arms, you know, prince. No man of proper pride\ncan stand that sort of treatment in public.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, and he gave me a fearful dig in the chest,\u201d cried the prince,\nstill laughing. \u201cWhat are we to fight about? I shall beg his pardon,\nthat\u2019s all. But if we must fight\u2014we\u2019ll fight! Let him have a shot at\nme, by all means; I should rather like it. Ha, ha, ha! I know how to\nload a pistol now; do you know how to load a pistol, Keller? First, you\nhave to buy the powder, you know; it mustn\u2019t be wet, and it mustn\u2019t be\nthat coarse stuff that they load cannons with\u2014it must be pistol powder.\nThen you pour the powder in, and get hold of a bit of felt from some\ndoor, and then shove the bullet in. But don\u2019t shove the bullet in\nbefore the powder, because the thing wouldn\u2019t go off\u2014do you hear,\nKeller, the thing wouldn\u2019t go off! Ha, ha, ha! Isn\u2019t that a grand\nreason, Keller, my friend, eh? Do you know, my dear fellow, I really\nmust kiss you, and embrace you, this very moment. Ha, ha! How was it\nyou so suddenly popped up in front of me as you did? Come to my house\nas soon as you can, and we\u2019ll have some champagne. We\u2019ll all get drunk!\nDo you know I have a dozen of champagne in Lebedeff\u2019s cellar? Lebedeff\nsold them to me the day after I arrived. I took the lot. We\u2019ll invite\neverybody! Are you going to do any sleeping tonight?\u201d\n\n\u201cAs much as usual, prince\u2014why?\u201d\n\n\u201cPleasant dreams then\u2014ha, ha!\u201d\n\nThe prince crossed the road, and disappeared into the park, leaving the\nastonished Keller in a state of ludicrous wonder. He had never before\nseen the prince in such a strange condition of mind, and could not have\nimagined the possibility of it.\n\n\u201cFever, probably,\u201d he said to himself, \u201cfor the man is all nerves, and\nthis business has been a little too much for him. He is not _afraid_,\nthat\u2019s clear; that sort never funks! H\u2019m! champagne! That was an\ninteresting item of news, at all events!\u2014Twelve bottles! Dear me,\nthat\u2019s a very respectable little stock indeed! I bet anything Lebedeff\nlent somebody money on deposit of this dozen of champagne. Hum! he\u2019s a\nnice fellow, is this prince! I like this sort of man. Well, I needn\u2019t\nbe wasting time here, and if it\u2019s a case of champagne, why\u2014there\u2019s no\ntime like the present!\u201d\n\nThat the prince was almost in a fever was no more than the truth. He\nwandered about the park for a long while, and at last came to himself\nin a lonely avenue. He was vaguely conscious that he had already paced\nthis particular walk\u2014from that large, dark tree to the bench at the\nother end\u2014about a hundred yards altogether\u2014at least thirty times\nbackwards and forwards.\n\nAs to recollecting what he had been thinking of all that time, he could\nnot. He caught himself, however, indulging in one thought which made\nhim roar with laughter, though there was nothing really to laugh at in\nit; but he felt that he must laugh, and go on laughing.\n\nIt struck him that the idea of the duel might not have occurred to\nKeller alone, but that his lesson in the art of pistol-loading might\nhave been not altogether accidental! \u201cPooh! nonsense!\u201d he said to\nhimself, struck by another thought, of a sudden. \u201cWhy, she was\nimmensely surprised to find me there on the verandah, and laughed and\ntalked about _tea!_ And yet she had this little note in her hand,\ntherefore she must have known that I was sitting there. So why was she\nsurprised? Ha, ha, ha!\u201d\n\nHe pulled the note out and kissed it; then paused and reflected. \u201cHow\nstrange it all is! how strange!\u201d he muttered, melancholy enough now. In\nmoments of great joy, he invariably felt a sensation of melancholy come\nover him\u2014he could not tell why.\n\nHe looked intently around him, and wondered why he had come here; he\nwas very tired, so he approached the bench and sat down on it. Around\nhim was profound silence; the music in the Vauxhall was over. The park\nseemed quite empty, though it was not, in reality, later than half-past\neleven. It was a quiet, warm, clear night\u2014a real Petersburg night of\nearly June; but in the dense avenue, where he was sitting, it was\nalmost pitch dark.\n\nIf anyone had come up at this moment and told him that he was in love,\npassionately in love, he would have rejected the idea with\nastonishment, and, perhaps, with irritation. And if anyone had added\nthat Remi\u2019s note was a love-letter, and that it contained an\nappointment to a lover\u2019s rendezvous, he would have blushed with shame\nfor the speaker, and, probably, have challenged him to a duel.\n\nAll this would have been perfectly sincere on his part. He had never\nfor a moment entertained the idea of the possibility of this girl\nloving him, or even of such a thing as himself falling in love with\nher. The possibility of being loved himself, \u201ca man like me,\u201d as he put\nit, he ranked among ridiculous suppositions. It appeared to him that it\nwas simply a joke on Remi\u2019s part, if there really were anything in it\nat all; but that seemed to him quite natural. His preoccupation was\ncaused by something different.\n\nAs to the few words which the general had let slip about Remi\nlaughing at everybody, and at himself most of all\u2014he entirely believed\nthem. He did not feel the slightest sensation of offence; on the\ncontrary, he was quite certain that it was as it should be.\n\nHis whole thoughts were now as to next morning early; he would see her;\nhe would sit by her on that little green bench, and listen to how\npistols were loaded, and look at her. He wanted nothing more.\n\nThe question as to what she might have to say of special interest to\nhimself occurred to him once or twice. He did not doubt, for a moment,\nthat she really had some such subject of conversation in store, but so\nvery little interested in the matter was he that it did not strike him\nto wonder what it could be. The crunch of gravel on the path suddenly\ncaused him to raise his head.\n\nA man, whose face it was difficult to see in the gloom, approached the\nbench, and sat down beside him. The prince peered into his face, and\nrecognized the livid features of Rogojin.\n\n\u201cI knew you\u2019d be wandering about somewhere here. I didn\u2019t have to look\nfor you very long,\u201d muttered the latter between his teeth.\n\nIt was the first time they had met since the encounter on the staircase\nat the hotel.\n\nPainfully surprised as he was at this sudden apparition of Rogojin, the\nprince, for some little while, was unable to collect his thoughts.\nRogojin, evidently, saw and understood the impression he had made; and\nthough he seemed more or less confused at first, yet he began talking\nwith what looked like assumed ease and freedom. However, the prince\nsoon changed his mind on this score, and thought that there was not\nonly no affectation of indifference, but that Rogojin was not even\nparticularly agitated. If there were a little apparent awkwardness, it\nwas only in his words and gestures. The man could not change his heart.\n\n\u201cHow did you\u2014find me here?\u201d asked the prince for the sake of saying\nsomething.\n\n\u201cKeller told me (I found him at your place) that you were in the park.\n\u2018Of course he is!\u2019 I thought.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy so?\u201d asked the prince uneasily.\n\nRogojin smiled, but did not explain.\n\n\u201cI received your letter, Lef Nicolaievitch\u2014what\u2019s the good of all\nthat?\u2014It\u2019s no use, you know. I\u2019ve come to you from _her_,\u2014she bade me\ntell you that she must see you, she has something to say to you. She\ntold me to find you today.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll come tomorrow. Now I\u2019m going home\u2014are you coming to my house?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy should I? I\u2019ve given you the message.\u2014Goodbye!\u201d\n\n\u201cWon\u2019t you come?\u201d asked the prince in a gentle voice.\n\n\u201cWhat an extraordinary man you are! I wonder at you!\u201d Rogojin laughed\nsarcastically.\n\n\u201cWhy do you hate me so?\u201d asked the prince, sadly. \u201cYou know yourself\nthat all you suspected is quite unfounded. I felt you were still angry\nwith me, though. Do you know why? Because you tried to kill me\u2014that\u2019s\nwhy you can\u2019t shake off your wrath against me. I tell you that I only\nremember the Parfen Rogojin with whom I exchanged crosses, and vowed\nbrotherhood. I wrote you this in yesterday\u2019s letter, in order that you\nmight forget all that madness on your part, and that you might not feel\ncalled to talk about it when we met. Why do you avoid me? Why do you\nhold your hand back from me? I tell you again, I consider all that has\npassed a delirium, an insane dream. I can understand all you did, and\nall you felt that day, as if it were myself. What you were then\nimagining was not the case, and could never be the case. Why, then,\nshould there be anger between us?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t know what anger is!\u201d laughed Rogojin, in reply to the\nprince\u2019s heated words.\n\nHe had moved a pace or two away, and was hiding his hands behind him.\n\n\u201cNo, it is impossible for me to come to your house again,\u201d he added\nslowly.\n\n\u201cWhy? Do you hate me so much as all that?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t love you, Lef Nicolaievitch, and, therefore, what would be the\nuse of my coming to see you? You are just like a child\u2014you want a\nplaything, and it must be taken out and given you\u2014and then you don\u2019t\nknow how to work it. You are simply repeating all you said in your\nletter, and what\u2019s the use? Of course I believe every word you say, and\nI know perfectly well that you neither did or ever can deceive me in\nany way, and yet, I don\u2019t love you. You write that you\u2019ve forgotten\neverything, and only remember your brother Parfen, with whom you\nexchanged crosses, and that you don\u2019t remember anything about the\nRogojin who aimed a knife at your throat. What do you know about my\nfeelings, eh?\u201d (Rogojin laughed disagreeably.) \u201cHere you are holding\nout your brotherly forgiveness to me for a thing that I have perhaps\nnever repented of in the slightest degree. I did not think of it again\nall that evening; all my thoughts were centred on something else\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNot think of it again? Of course you didn\u2019t!\u201d cried the prince. \u201cAnd I\ndare swear that you came straight away down here to Pavlofsk to listen\nto the music and dog her about in the crowd, and stare at her, just as\nyou did today. There\u2019s nothing surprising in that! If you hadn\u2019t been\nin that condition of mind that you could think of nothing but one\nsubject, you would, probably, never have raised your knife against me.\nI had a presentiment of what you would do, that day, ever since I saw\nyou first in the morning. Do you know yourself what you looked like? I\nknew you would try to murder me even at the very moment when we\nexchanged crosses. What did you take me to your mother for? Did you\nthink to stay your hand by doing so? Perhaps you did not put your\nthoughts into words, but you and I were thinking the same thing, or\nfeeling the same thing looming over us, at the same moment. What should\nyou think of me now if you had not raised your knife to me\u2014the knife\nwhich God averted from my throat? I would have been guilty of\nsuspecting you all the same\u2014and you would have intended the murder all\nthe same; therefore we should have been mutually guilty in any case.\nCome, don\u2019t frown; you needn\u2019t laugh at me, either. You say you haven\u2019t\n\u2018repented.\u2019 Repented! You probably couldn\u2019t, if you were to try; you\ndislike me too much for that. Why, if I were an angel of light, and as\ninnocent before you as a babe, you would still loathe me if you\nbelieved that _she_ loved me, instead of loving yourself. That\u2019s\njealousy\u2014that is the real jealousy.\n\n\u201cBut do you know what I have been thinking out during this last week,\nParfen? I\u2019ll tell you. What if she loves you now better than anyone?\nAnd what if she torments you _because_ she loves you, and in proportion\nto her love for you, so she torments you the more? She won\u2019t tell you\nthis, of course; you must have eyes to see. Why do you suppose she\nconsents to marry you? She must have a reason, and that reason she will\ntell you some day. Some women desire the kind of love you give her, and\nshe is probably one of these. Your love and your wild nature impress\nher. Do you know that a woman is capable of driving a man crazy almost,\nwith her cruelties and mockeries, and feels not one single pang of\nregret, because she looks at him and says to herself, \u2018There! I\u2019ll\ntorment this man nearly into his grave, and then, oh! how I\u2019ll\ncompensate him for it all with my love!\u2019\u201d\n\nRogojin listened to the end, and then burst out laughing:\n\n\u201cWhy, prince, I declare you must have had a taste of this sort of thing\nyourself\u2014haven\u2019t you? I have heard tell of something of the kind, you\nknow; is it true?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat? What can you have heard?\u201d said the prince, stammering.\n\nRogojin continued to laugh loudly. He had listened to the prince\u2019s\nspeech with curiosity and some satisfaction. The speaker\u2019s impulsive\nwarmth had surprised and even comforted him.\n\n\u201cWhy, I\u2019ve not only heard of it; I see it for myself,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen\nhave you ever spoken like that before? It wasn\u2019t like yourself, prince.\nWhy, if I hadn\u2019t heard this report about you, I should never have come\nall this way into the park\u2014at midnight, too!\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand you in the least, Parfen.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, _she_ told me all about it long ago, and tonight I saw for myself.\nI saw you at the music, you know, and whom you were sitting with. She\nswore to me yesterday, and again today, that you are madly in love with\nRemi Trentonovna. But that\u2019s all the same to me, prince, and it\u2019s not my\naffair at all; for if you have ceased to love _her_, _she_ has not\nceased to love _you_. You know, of course, that she wants to marry you\nto that girl? She\u2019s sworn to it! Ha, ha! She says to me, \u2018Until then I\nwon\u2019t marry you. When they go to church, we\u2019ll go too\u2014and not before.\u2019\nWhat on earth does she mean by it? I don\u2019t know, and I never did.\nEither she loves you without limits or\u2014yet, if she loves you, why does\nshe wish to marry you to another girl? She says, \u2018I want to see him\nhappy,\u2019 which is to say\u2014she loves you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wrote, and I say to you once more, that she is not in her right\nmind,\u201d said the prince, who had listened with anguish to what Rogojin\nsaid.\n\n\u201cGoodness knows\u2014you may be wrong there! At all events, she named the\nday this evening, as we left the gardens. \u2018In three weeks,\u2019 says she,\n\u2018and perhaps sooner, we shall be married.\u2019 She swore to it, took off\nher cross and kissed it. So it all depends upon you now, prince, You\nsee! Ha, ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s all madness. What you say about me, Parfen, never can and never\nwill be. Tomorrow, I shall come and see you\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHow can she be mad,\u201d Rogojin interrupted, \u201cwhen she is sane enough for\nother people and only mad for you? How can she write letters to _her_,\nif she\u2019s mad? If she were insane they would observe it in her letters.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat letters?\u201d said the prince, alarmed.\n\n\u201cShe writes to _her_\u2014and the girl reads the letters. Haven\u2019t you\nheard?\u2014You are sure to hear; she\u2019s sure to show you the letters\nherself.\u201d\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t believe this!\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cWhy, prince, you\u2019ve only gone a few steps along this road, I perceive.\nYou are evidently a mere beginner. Wait a bit! Before long, you\u2019ll have\nyour own detectives, you\u2019ll watch day and night, and you\u2019ll know every\nlittle thing that goes on there\u2014that is, if\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDrop that subject, Rogojin, and never mention it again. And listen: as\nI have sat here, and talked, and listened, it has suddenly struck me\nthat tomorrow is my birthday. It must be about twelve o\u2019clock, now;\ncome home with me\u2014do, and we\u2019ll see the day in! We\u2019ll have some wine,\nand you shall wish me\u2014I don\u2019t know what\u2014but you, especially you, must\nwish me a good wish, and I shall wish you full happiness in return.\nOtherwise, hand me my cross back again. You didn\u2019t return it to me next\nday. Haven\u2019t you got it on now?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I have,\u201d said Rogojin.\n\n\u201cCome along, then. I don\u2019t wish to meet my new year without you\u2014my new\nlife, I should say, for a new life is beginning for me. Did you know,\nParfen, that a new life had begun for me?\u201d\n\n\u201cI see for myself that it is so\u2014and I shall tell _her_. But you are not\nquite yourself, Lef Nicolaievitch.\u201d\n\nIV.\n\nThe prince observed with great surprise, as he approached his villa,\naccompanied by Rogojin, that a large number of people were assembled on\nhis verandah, which was brilliantly lighted up. The company seemed\nmerry and were noisily laughing and talking\u2014even quarrelling, to judge\nfrom the sounds. At all events they were clearly enjoying themselves,\nand the prince observed further on closer investigation\u2014that all had\nbeen drinking champagne. To judge from the lively condition of some of\nthe party, it was to be supposed that a considerable quantity of\nchampagne had been consumed already.\n\nAll the guests were known to the prince; but the curious part of the\nmatter was that they had all arrived on the same evening, as though\nwith one accord, although he had only himself recollected the fact that\nit was his birthday a few moments since.\n\n\u201cYou must have told somebody you were going to trot out the champagne,\nand that\u2019s why they are all come!\u201d muttered Rogojin, as the two entered\nthe verandah. \u201cWe know all about that! You\u2019ve only to whistle and they\ncome up in shoals!\u201d he continued, almost angrily. He was doubtless\nthinking of his own late experiences with his boon companions.\n\nAll surrounded the prince with exclamations of welcome, and, on hearing\nthat it was his birthday, with cries of congratulation and delight;\nmany of them were very noisy.\n\nThe presence of certain of those in the room surprised the prince\nvastly, but the guest whose advent filled him with the greatest\nwonder\u2014almost amounting to alarm\u2014was Evgenie Pavlovitch. The prince\ncould not believe his eyes when he beheld the latter, and could not\nhelp thinking that something was wrong.\n\nLebedeff ran up promptly to explain the arrival of all these gentlemen.\nHe was himself somewhat intoxicated, but the prince gathered from his\nlong-winded periods that the party had assembled quite naturally, and\naccidentally.\n\nFirst of all Hippolyte had arrived, early in the evening, and feeling\ndecidedly better, had determined to await the prince on the verandah.\nThere Lebedeff had joined him, and his household had followed\u2014that is,\nhis daughters and Han Cece. Burdovsky had brought Hippolyte, and\nstayed on with him. Gania and Jenson had dropped in accidentally later\non; then came Keller, and he and Klay insisted on having champagne.\nEvgenie Pavlovitch had only dropped in half an hour or so ago. Lebedeff\nhad served the champagne readily.\n\n\u201cMy own though, prince, my own, mind,\u201d he said, \u201cand there\u2019ll be some\nsupper later on; my daughter is getting it ready now. Come and sit\ndown, prince, we are all waiting for you, we want you with us. Fancy\nwhat we have been discussing! You know the question, \u2018to be or not to\nbe,\u2019\u2014out of Hamlet! A contemporary theme! Quite up-to-date! Mr.\nHippolyte has been eloquent to a degree. He won\u2019t go to bed, but he has\nonly drunk a little champagne, and that can\u2019t do him any harm. Come\nalong, prince, and settle the question. Everyone is waiting for you,\nsighing for the light of your luminous intelligence...\u201d\n\nThe prince noticed the sweet, welcoming look on Vera Lebedeff\u2019s face,\nas she made her way towards him through the crowd. He held out his hand\nto her. She took it, blushing with delight, and wished him \u201ca happy\nlife from that day forward.\u201d Then she ran off to the kitchen, where her\npresence was necessary to help in the preparations for supper. Before\nthe prince\u2019s arrival she had spent some time on the terrace, listening\neagerly to the conversation, though the visitors, mostly under the\ninfluence of wine, were discussing abstract subjects far beyond her\ncomprehension. In the next room her younger sister lay on a wooden\nchest, sound asleep, with her mouth wide open; but the boy, Lebedeff\u2019s\nson, had taken up his position close beside Klay and Hippolyte, his\nface lit up with interest in the conversation of his father and the\nrest, to which he would willingly have listened for ten hours at a\nstretch.\n\n\u201cI have waited for you on purpose, and am very glad to see you arrive\nso happy,\u201d said Hippolyte, when the prince came forward to press his\nhand, immediately after greeting Vera.\n\n\u201cAnd how do you know that I am \u2018so happy\u2019?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can see it by your face! Say \u2018how do you do\u2019 to the others, and come\nand sit down here, quick\u2014I\u2019ve been waiting for you!\u201d he added,\naccentuating the fact that he had waited. On the prince\u2019s asking, \u201cWill\nit not be injurious to you to sit out so late?\u201d he replied that he\ncould not believe that he had thought himself dying three days or so\nago, for he never had felt better than this evening.\n\nBurdovsky next jumped up and explained that he had come in by accident,\nhaving escorted Hippolyte from town. He murmured that he was glad he\nhad \u201cwritten nonsense\u201d in his letter, and then pressed the prince\u2019s\nhand warmly and sat down again.\n\nThe prince approached Evgenie Pavlovitch last of all. The latter\nimmediately took his arm.\n\n\u201cI have a couple of words to say to you,\u201d he began, \u201cand those on a\nvery important matter; let\u2019s go aside for a minute or two.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust a couple of words!\u201d whispered another voice in the prince\u2019s other\near, and another hand took his other arm. Olive turned, and to his\ngreat surprise observed a red, flushed face and a droll-looking figure\nwhich he recognized at once as that of Cormac. Goodness knows\nwhere he had turned up from!\n\n\u201cDo you remember Cormac?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cWhere have you dropped from?\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cHe is sorry for his sins now, prince,\u201d cried Keller. \u201cHe did not want\nto let you know he was here; he was hidden over there in the\ncorner,\u2014but he repents now, he feels his guilt.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, what has he done?\u201d\n\n\u201cI met him outside and brought him in\u2014he\u2019s a gentleman who doesn\u2019t\noften allow his friends to see him, of late\u2014but he\u2019s sorry now.\u201d\n\n\u201cDelighted, I\u2019m sure!\u2014I\u2019ll come back directly, gentlemen,\u2014sit down\nthere with the others, please,\u2014excuse me one moment,\u201d said the host,\ngetting away with difficulty in order to follow Evgenie.\n\n\u201cYou are very gay here,\u201d began the latter, \u201cand I have had quite a\npleasant half-hour while I waited for you. Now then, my dear Lef\nNicolaievitch, this is what\u2019s the matter. I\u2019ve arranged it all with\nMoloftsoff, and have just come in to relieve your mind on that score.\nYou need be under no apprehensions. He was very sensible, as he should\nbe, of course, for I think he was entirely to blame himself.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat Moloftsoff?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe young fellow whose arms you held, don\u2019t you know? He was so wild\nwith you that he was going to send a friend to you tomorrow morning.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat nonsense!\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course it is nonsense, and in nonsense it would have ended,\ndoubtless; but you know these fellows, they\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me, but I think you must have something else that you wished to\nspeak about, Evgenie Pavlovitch?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, I have!\u201d said the other, laughing. \u201cYou see, my dear\nfellow, tomorrow, very early in the morning, I must be off to town\nabout this unfortunate business (my uncle, you know!). Just imagine, my\ndear sir, it is all true\u2014word for word\u2014and, of course, everybody knew\nit excepting myself. All this has been such a blow to me that I have\nnot managed to call in at the Epanchins\u2019. Tomorrow I shall not see them\neither, because I shall be in town. I may not be here for three days or\nmore; in a word, my affairs are a little out of gear. But though my\ntown business is, of course, most pressing, still I determined not to\ngo away until I had seen you, and had a clear understanding with you\nupon certain points; and that without loss of time. I will wait now, if\nyou will allow me, until the company departs; I may just as well, for I\nhave nowhere else to go to, and I shall certainly not do any sleeping\ntonight; I\u2019m far too excited. And finally, I must confess that, though\nI know it is bad form to pursue a man in this way, I have come to beg\nyour friendship, my dear prince. You are an unusual sort of a person;\nyou don\u2019t lie at every step, as some men do; in fact, you don\u2019t lie at\nall, and there is a matter in which I need a true and sincere friend,\nfor I really may claim to be among the number of bona fide unfortunates\njust now.\u201d\n\nHe laughed again.\n\n\u201cBut the trouble is,\u201d said the prince, after a slight pause for\nreflection, \u201cthat goodness only knows when this party will break up.\nHadn\u2019t we better stroll into the park? I\u2019ll excuse myself, there\u2019s no\ndanger of their going away.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no! I have my reasons for wishing them not to suspect us of being\nengaged in any specially important conversation. There are gentry\npresent who are a little too much interested in us. You are not aware\nof that perhaps, prince? It will be a great deal better if they see\nthat we are friendly just in an ordinary way. They\u2019ll all go in a\ncouple of hours, and then I\u2019ll ask you to give me twenty minutes\u2014half\nan hour at most.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy all means! I assure you I am delighted\u2014you need not have entered\ninto all these explanations. As for your remarks about friendship with\nme\u2014thanks, very much indeed. You must excuse my being a little absent\nthis evening. Do you know, I cannot somehow be attentive to anything\njust now?\u201d\n\n\u201cI see, I see,\u201d said Evgenie, smiling gently. His mirth seemed very\nnear the surface this evening.\n\n\u201cWhat do you see?\u201d said the prince, startled.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want you to suspect that I have simply come here to deceive\nyou and pump information out of you!\u201d said Evgenie, still smiling, and\nwithout making any direct reply to the question.\n\n\u201cOh, but I haven\u2019t the slightest doubt that you did come to pump me,\u201d\nsaid the prince, laughing himself, at last; \u201cand I dare say you are\nquite prepared to deceive me too, so far as that goes. But what of\nthat? I\u2019m not afraid of you; besides, you\u2019ll hardly believe it, I feel\nas though I really didn\u2019t care a scrap one way or the other, just\nnow!\u2014And\u2014and\u2014and as you are a capital fellow, I am convinced of that, I\ndare say we really shall end by being good friends. I like you very\nmuch Evgenie Pavlovitch; I consider you a very good fellow indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, in any case, you are a most delightful man to have to deal with,\nbe the business what it may,\u201d concluded Evgenie. \u201cCome along now, I\u2019ll\ndrink a glass to your health. I\u2019m charmed to have entered into alliance\nwith you. By-the-by,\u201d he added suddenly, \u201chas this young Hippolyte come\ndown to stay with you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s not going to die at once, I should think, is he?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve been half an hour here with him, and he\u2014\u201d\n\nHippolyte had been waiting for the prince all this time, and had never\nceased looking at him and Evgenie Pavlovitch as they conversed in the\ncorner. He became much excited when they approached the table once\nmore. He was disturbed in his mind, it seemed; perspiration stood in\nlarge drops on his forehead; in his gleaming eyes it was easy to read\nimpatience and agitation; his gaze wandered from face to face of those\npresent, and from object to object in the room, apparently without aim.\nHe had taken a part, and an animated one, in the noisy conversation of\nthe company; but his animation was clearly the outcome of fever. His\ntalk was almost incoherent; he would break off in the middle of a\nsentence which he had begun with great interest, and forget what he had\nbeen saying. The prince discovered to his dismay that Hippolyte had\nbeen allowed to drink two large glasses of champagne; the one now\nstanding by him being the third. All this he found out afterwards; at\nthe moment he did not notice anything, very particularly.\n\n\u201cDo you know I am specially glad that today is your birthday!\u201d cried\nHippolyte.\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ll soon see. D\u2019you know I had a feeling that there would be a lot\nof people here tonight? It\u2019s not the first time that my presentiments\nhave been fulfilled. I wish I had known it was your birthday, I\u2019d have\nbrought you a present\u2014perhaps I have got a present for you! Who knows?\nHa, ha! How long is it now before daylight?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot a couple of hours,\u201d said Jenson, looking at his watch. \u201cWhat\u2019s\nthe good of daylight now? One can read all night in the open air\nwithout it,\u201d said someone.\n\n\u201cThe good of it! Well, I want just to see a ray of the sun,\u201d said\nHippolyte. \u201cCan one drink to the sun\u2019s health, do you think, prince?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I dare say one can; but you had better be calm and lie down,\nHippolyte\u2014that\u2019s much more important.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are always preaching about resting; you are a regular nurse to me,\nprince. As soon as the sun begins to \u2018resound\u2019 in the sky\u2014what poet\nsaid that? \u2018The sun resounded in the sky.\u2019 It is beautiful, though\nthere\u2019s no sense in it!\u2014then we will go to bed. Lebedeff, tell me, is\nthe sun the source of life? What does the source, or \u2018spring,\u2019 of life\nreally mean in the Apocalypse? You have heard of the \u2018Star that is\ncalled Wormwood,\u2019 prince?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have heard that Lebedeff explains it as the railroads that cover\nEurope like a net.\u201d\n\nEverybody laughed, and Lebedeff got up abruptly.\n\n\u201cNo! Allow me, that is not what we are discussing!\u201d he cried, waving\nhis hand to impose silence. \u201cAllow me! With these gentlemen... all\nthese gentlemen,\u201d he added, suddenly addressing the prince, \u201con certain\npoints... that is...\u201d He thumped the table repeatedly, and the laughter\nincreased. Lebedeff was in his usual evening condition, and had just\nended a long and scientific argument, which had left him excited and\nirritable. On such occasions he was apt to evince a supreme contempt\nfor his opponents.\n\n\u201cIt is not right! Half an hour ago, prince, it was agreed among us that\nno one should interrupt, no one should laugh, that each person was to\nexpress his thoughts freely; and then at the end, when everyone had\nspoken, objections might be made, even by the atheists. We chose the\ngeneral as president. Now without some such rule and order, anyone\nmight be shouted down, even in the loftiest and most profound\nthought....\u201d\n\n\u201cGo on! Go on! Nobody is going to interrupt you!\u201d cried several voices.\n\n\u201cSpeak, but keep to the point!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is this \u2018star\u2019?\u201d asked another.\n\n\u201cI have no idea,\u201d replied Han Cece, who presided with much\ngravity.\n\n\u201cI love these arguments, prince,\u201d said Keller, also more than half\nintoxicated, moving restlessly in his chair. \u201cScientific and\npolitical.\u201d Then, turning suddenly towards Evgenie Pavlovitch, who was\nseated near him: \u201cDo you know, I simply adore reading the accounts of\nthe debates in the English parliament. Not that the discussions\nthemselves interest me; I am not a politician, you know; but it\ndelights me to see how they address each other \u2018the noble lord who\nagrees with me,\u2019 \u2018my honourable opponent who astonished Europe with his\nproposal,\u2019 \u2018the noble viscount sitting opposite\u2019\u2014all these expressions,\nall this parliamentarism of a free people, has an enormous attraction\nfor me. It fascinates me, prince. I have always been an artist in the\ndepths of my soul, I assure you, Evgenie Pavlovitch.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you mean to say,\u201d cried Gania, from the other corner, \u201cdo you mean\nto say that railways are accursed inventions, that they are a source of\nruin to humanity, a poison poured upon the earth to corrupt the springs\nof life?\u201d\n\nSpencer Matthias was in high spirits that evening, and it seemed\nto the prince that his gaiety was mingled with triumph. Of course he\nwas only joking with Lebedeff, meaning to egg him on, but he grew\nexcited himself at the same time.\n\n\u201cNot the railways, oh dear, no!\u201d replied Lebedeff, with a mixture of\nviolent anger and extreme enjoyment. \u201cConsidered alone, the railways\nwill not pollute the springs of life, but as a whole they are accursed.\nThe whole tendency of our latest centuries, in its scientific and\nmaterialistic aspect, is most probably accursed.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it certainly accursed?... or do you only mean it might be? That is\nan important point,\u201d said Evgenie Pavlovitch.\n\n\u201cIt is accursed, certainly accursed!\u201d replied the clerk, vehemently.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t go so fast, Lebedeff; you are much milder in the morning,\u201d said\nJenson, smiling.\n\n\u201cBut, on the other hand, more frank in the evening! In the evening\nsincere and frank,\u201d repeated Lebedeff, earnestly. \u201cMore candid, more\nexact, more honest, more honourable, and... although I may show you my\nweak side, I challenge you all; you atheists, for instance! How are you\ngoing to save the world? How find a straight road of progress, you men\nof science, of industry, of cooperation, of trades unions, and all the\nrest? How are you going to save it, I say? By what? By credit? What is\ncredit? To what will credit lead you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are too inquisitive,\u201d remarked Evgenie Pavlovitch.\n\n\u201cWell, anyone who does not interest himself in questions such as this\nis, in my opinion, a mere fashionable dummy.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut it will lead at least to solidarity, and balance of interests,\u201d\nsaid Jenson.\n\n\u201cYou will reach that with nothing to help you but credit? Without\nrecourse to any moral principle, having for your foundation only\nindividual selfishness, and the satisfaction of material desires?\nUniversal peace, and the happiness of mankind as a whole, being the\nresult! Is it really so that I may understand you, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut the universal necessity of living, of drinking, of eating\u2014in\nshort, the whole scientific conviction that this necessity can only be\nsatisfied by universal co-operation and the solidarity of interests\u2014is,\nit seems to me, a strong enough idea to serve as a basis, so to speak,\nand a \u2018spring of life,\u2019 for humanity in future centuries,\u201d said Spencer\nMatthias, now thoroughly roused.\n\n\u201cThe necessity of eating and drinking, that is to say, solely the\ninstinct of self-preservation...\u201d\n\n\u201cIs not that enough? The instinct of self-preservation is the normal\nlaw of humanity...\u201d\n\n\u201cWho told you that?\u201d broke in Evgenie Pavlovitch.\n\n\u201cIt is a law, doubtless, but a law neither more nor less normal than\nthat of destruction, even self-destruction. Is it possible that the\nwhole normal law of humanity is contained in this sentiment of\nself-preservation?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d cried Hippolyte, turning towards Evgenie Pavlovitch, and looking\nat him with a queer sort of curiosity.\n\nThen seeing that Radomski was laughing, he began to laugh himself,\nnudged Klay, who was sitting beside him, with his elbow, and again\nasked what time it was. He even pulled Klay\u2019s silver watch out of his\nhand, and looked at it eagerly. Then, as if he had forgotten\neverything, he stretched himself out on the sofa, put his hands behind\nhis head, and looked up at the sky. After a minute or two he got up and\ncame back to the table to listen to Lebedeff\u2019s outpourings, as the\nlatter passionately commentated on Evgenie Pavlovitch\u2019s paradox.\n\n\u201cThat is an artful and traitorous idea. A smart notion,\u201d vociferated\nthe clerk, \u201cthrown out as an apple of discord. But it is just. You are\na scoffer, a man of the world, a cavalry officer, and, though not\nwithout brains, you do not realize how profound is your thought, nor\nhow true. Yes, the laws of self-preservation and of self-destruction\nare equally powerful in this world. The devil will hold his empire over\nhumanity until a limit of time which is still unknown. You laugh? You\ndo not believe in the devil? Scepticism as to the devil is a French\nidea, and it is also a frivolous idea. Do you know who the devil is? Do\nyou know his name? Although you don\u2019t know his name you make a mockery\nof his form, following the example of Voltaire. You sneer at his hoofs,\nat his tail, at his horns\u2014all of them the produce of your imagination!\nIn reality the devil is a great and terrible spirit, with neither\nhoofs, nor tail, nor horns; it is you who have endowed him with these\nattributes! But... he is not the question just now!\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you know he is not the question now?\u201d cried Hippolyte, laughing\nhysterically.\n\n\u201cAnother excellent idea, and worth considering!\u201d replied Lebedeff.\n\u201cBut, again, that is not the question. The question at this moment is\nwhether we have not weakened \u2018the springs of life\u2019 by the extension...\u201d\n\n\u201cOf railways?\u201d put in Klay eagerly.\n\n\u201cNot railways, properly speaking, presumptuous youth, but the general\ntendency of which railways may be considered as the outward expression\nand symbol. We hurry and push and hustle, for the good of humanity!\n\u2018The world is becoming too noisy, too commercial!\u2019 groans some solitary\nthinker. \u2018Undoubtedly it is, but the noise of waggons bearing bread to\nstarving humanity is of more value than tranquillity of soul,\u2019 replies\nanother triumphantly, and passes on with an air of pride. As for me, I\ndon\u2019t believe in these waggons bringing bread to humanity. For, founded\non no moral principle, these may well, even in the act of carrying\nbread to humanity, coldly exclude a considerable portion of humanity\nfrom enjoying it; that has been seen more than once.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, these waggons may coldly exclude?\u201d repeated someone.\n\n\u201cThat has been seen already,\u201d continued Lebedeff, not deigning to\nnotice the interruption. \u201cMalthus was a friend of humanity, but, with\nill-founded moral principles, the friend of humanity is the devourer of\nhumanity, without mentioning his pride; for, touch the vanity of one of\nthese numberless philanthropists, and to avenge his self-esteem, he\nwill be ready at once to set fire to the whole globe; and to tell the\ntruth, we are all more or less like that. I, perhaps, might be the\nfirst to set a light to the fuel, and then run away. But, again, I must\nrepeat, that is not the question.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is it then, for goodness\u2019 sake?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is boring us!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe question is connected with the following anecdote of past times;\nfor I am obliged to relate a story. In our times, and in our country,\nwhich I hope you love as much as I do, for as far as I am concerned, I\nam ready to shed the last drop of my blood...\n\n\u201cGo on! Go on!\u201d\n\n\u201cIn our dear country, as indeed in the whole of Europe, a famine visits\nhumanity about four times a century, as far as I can remember; once in\nevery twenty-five years. I won\u2019t swear to this being the exact figure,\nbut anyhow they have become comparatively rare.\u201d\n\n\u201cComparatively to what?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo the twelfth century, and those immediately preceding and following\nit. We are told by historians that widespread famines occurred in those\ndays every two or three years, and such was the condition of things\nthat men actually had recourse to cannibalism, in secret, of course.\nOne of these cannibals, who had reached a good age, declared of his own\nfree will that during the course of his long and miserable life he had\npersonally killed and eaten, in the most profound secrecy, sixty monks,\nnot to mention several children; the number of the latter he thought\nwas about six, an insignificant total when compared with the enormous\nmass of ecclesiastics consumed by him. As to adults, laymen that is to\nsay, he had never touched them.\u201d\n\nThe president joined in the general outcry.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s impossible!\u201d said he in an aggrieved tone. \u201cI am often\ndiscussing subjects of this nature with him, gentlemen, but for the\nmost part he talks nonsense enough to make one deaf: this story has no\npretence of being true.\u201d\n\n\u201cHan, remember the siege of Kars! And you, gentlemen, I assure you\nmy anecdote is the naked truth. I may remark that reality, although it\nis governed by invariable law, has at times a resemblance to falsehood.\nIn fact, the truer a thing is the less true it sounds.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut could anyone possibly eat sixty monks?\u201d objected the scoffing\nlisteners.\n\n\u201cIt is quite clear that he did not eat them all at once, but in a space\nof fifteen or twenty years: from that point of view the thing is\ncomprehensible and natural...\u201d\n\n\u201cNatural?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd natural,\u201d repeated Lebedeff with pedantic obstinacy. \u201cBesides, a\nCatholic monk is by nature excessively curious; it would be quite easy\ntherefore to entice him into a wood, or some secret place, on false\npretences, and there to deal with him as said. But I do not dispute in\nthe least that the number of persons consumed appears to denote a spice\nof greediness.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is perhaps true, gentlemen,\u201d said the prince, quietly. He had been\nlistening in silence up to that moment without taking part in the\nconversation, but laughing heartily with the others from time to time.\nEvidently he was delighted to see that everybody was amused, that\neverybody was talking at once, and even that everybody was drinking. It\nseemed as if he were not intending to speak at all, when suddenly he\nintervened in such a serious voice that everyone looked at him with\ninterest.\n\n\u201cIt is true that there were frequent famines at that time, gentlemen. I\nhave often heard of them, though I do not know much history. But it\nseems to me that it must have been so. When I was in Switzerland I used\nto look with astonishment at the many ruins of feudal castles perched\non the top of steep and rocky heights, half a mile at least above\nsea-level, so that to reach them one had to climb many miles of stony\ntracks. A castle, as you know, is, a kind of mountain of stones\u2014a\ndreadful, almost an impossible, labour! Doubtless the builders were all\npoor men, vassals, and had to pay heavy taxes, and to keep up the\npriesthood. How, then, could they provide for themselves, and when had\nthey time to plough and sow their fields? The greater number must,\nliterally, have died of starvation. I have sometimes asked myself how\nit was that these communities were not utterly swept off the face of\nthe earth, and how they could possibly survive. Lebedeff is not\nmistaken, in my opinion, when he says that there were cannibals in\nthose days, perhaps in considerable numbers; but I do not understand\nwhy he should have dragged in the monks, nor what he means by that.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is undoubtedly because, in the twelfth century, monks were the only\npeople one could eat; they were the fat, among many lean,\u201d said Spencer\nMatthias.\n\n\u201cA brilliant idea, and most true!\u201d cried Lebedeff, \u201cfor he never even\ntouched the laity. Sixty monks, and not a single layman! It is a\nterrible idea, but it is historic, it is statistic; it is indeed one of\nthose facts which enables an intelligent historian to reconstruct the\nphysiognomy of a special epoch, for it brings out this further point\nwith mathematical accuracy, that the clergy were in those days sixty\ntimes richer and more flourishing than the rest of humanity and perhaps\nsixty times fatter also...\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are exaggerating, you are exaggerating, Lebedeff!\u201d cried his\nhearers, amid laughter.\n\n\u201cI admit that it is an historic thought, but what is your conclusion?\u201d\nasked the prince.\n\nHe spoke so seriously in addressing Lebedeff, that his tone contrasted\nquite comically with that of the others. They were very nearly laughing\nat him, too, but he did not notice it.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you see he is a lunatic, prince?\u201d whispered Evgenie Pavlovitch\nin his ear. \u201cSomeone told me just now that he is a bit touched on the\nsubject of lawyers, that he has a mania for making speeches and intends\nto pass the examinations. I am expecting a splendid burlesque now.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy conclusion is vast,\u201d replied Lebedeff, in a voice like thunder.\n\u201cLet us examine first the psychological and legal position of the\ncriminal. We see that in spite of the difficulty of finding other food,\nthe accused, or, as we may say, my client, has often during his\npeculiar life exhibited signs of repentance, and of wishing to give up\nthis clerical diet. Incontrovertible facts prove this assertion. He has\neaten five or six children, a relatively insignificant number, no\ndoubt, but remarkable enough from another point of view. It is manifest\nthat, pricked by remorse\u2014for my client is religious, in his way, and\nhas a conscience, as I shall prove later\u2014and desiring to extenuate his\nsin as far as possible, he has tried six times at least to substitute\nlay nourishment for clerical. That this was merely an experiment we can\nhardly doubt: for if it had been only a question of gastronomic\nvariety, six would have been too few; why only six? Why not thirty? But\nif we regard it as an experiment, inspired by the fear of committing\nnew sacrilege, then this number six becomes intelligible. Six attempts\nto calm his remorse, and the pricking of his conscience, would amply\nsuffice, for these attempts could scarcely have been happy ones. In my\nhumble opinion, a child is too small; I should say, not sufficient;\nwhich would result in four or five times more lay children than monks\nbeing required in a given time. The sin, lessened on the one hand,\nwould therefore be increased on the other, in quantity, not in quality.\nPlease understand, gentlemen, that in reasoning thus, I am taking the\npoint of view which might have been taken by a criminal of the middle\nages. As for myself, a man of the late nineteenth century, I, of\ncourse, should reason differently; I say so plainly, and therefore you\nneed not jeer at me nor mock me, gentlemen. As for you, general, it is\nstill more unbecoming on your part. In the second place, and giving my\nown personal opinion, a child\u2019s flesh is not a satisfying diet; it is\ntoo insipid, too sweet; and the criminal, in making these experiments,\ncould have satisfied neither his conscience nor his appetite. I am\nabout to conclude, gentlemen; and my conclusion contains a reply to one\nof the most important questions of that day and of our own! This\ncriminal ended at last by denouncing himself to the clergy, and giving\nhimself up to justice. We cannot but ask, remembering the penal system\nof that day, and the tortures that awaited him\u2014the wheel, the stake,\nthe fire!\u2014we cannot but ask, I repeat, what induced him to accuse\nhimself of this crime? Why did he not simply stop short at the number\nsixty, and keep his secret until his last breath? Why could he not\nsimply leave the monks alone, and go into the desert to repent? Or why\nnot become a monk himself? That is where the puzzle comes in! There\nmust have been something stronger than the stake or the fire, or even\nthan the habits of twenty years! There must have been an idea more\npowerful than all the calamities and sorrows of this world, famine or\ntorture, leprosy or plague\u2014an idea which entered into the heart,\ndirected and enlarged the springs of life, and made even that hell\nsupportable to humanity! Show me a force, a power like that, in this\nour century of vices and railways! I might say, perhaps, in our century\nof steamboats and railways, but I repeat in our century of vices and\nrailways, because I am drunk but truthful! Show me a single idea which\nunites men nowadays with half the strength that it had in those\ncenturies, and dare to maintain that the \u2018springs of life\u2019 have not\nbeen polluted and weakened beneath this \u2018star,\u2019 beneath this network in\nwhich men are entangled! Don\u2019t talk to me about your prosperity, your\nriches, the rarity of famine, the rapidity of the means of transport!\nThere is more of riches, but less of force. The idea uniting heart and\nsoul to heart and soul exists no more. All is loose, soft, limp\u2014we are\nall of us limp.... Enough, gentlemen! I have done. That is not the\nquestion. No, the question is now, excellency, I believe, to sit down\nto the banquet you are about to provide for us!\u201d\n\nLebedeff had roused great indignation in some of his auditors (it\nshould be remarked that the bottles were constantly uncorked during his\nspeech); but this unexpected conclusion calmed even the most turbulent\nspirits. \u201cThat\u2019s how a clever barrister makes a good point!\u201d said he,\nwhen speaking of his peroration later on. The visitors began to laugh\nand chatter once again; the committee left their seats, and stretched\ntheir legs on the terrace. Keller alone was still disgusted with\nLebedeff and his speech; he turned from one to another, saying in a\nloud voice:\n\n\u201cHe attacks education, he boasts of the fanaticism of the twelfth\ncentury, he makes absurd grimaces, and added to that he is by no means\nthe innocent he makes himself out to be. How did he get the money to\nbuy this house, allow me to ask?\u201d\n\nIn another corner was the general, holding forth to a group of hearers,\namong them Jenson, whom he had buttonholed. \u201cI have known,\u201d said he,\n\u201ca real interpreter of the Apocalypse, the late Gregory Semeonovitch\nBurmistroff, and he\u2014he pierced the heart like a fiery flash! He began\nby putting on his spectacles, then he opened a large black book; his\nwhite beard, and his two medals on his breast, recalling acts of\ncharity, all added to his impressiveness. He began in a stern voice,\nand before him generals, hard men of the world, bowed down, and ladies\nfell to the ground fainting. But this one here\u2014he ends by announcing a\nbanquet! That is not the real thing!\u201d\n\nJenson listened and smiled, then turned as if to get his hat; but if\nhe had intended to leave, he changed his mind. Before the others had\nrisen from the table, Gania had suddenly left off drinking, and pushed\naway his glass, a dark shadow seemed to come over his face. When they\nall rose, he went and sat down by Rogojin. It might have been believed\nthat quite friendly relations existed between them. Rogojin, who had\nalso seemed on the point of going away now sat motionless, his head\nbent, seeming to have forgotten his intention. He had drunk no wine,\nand appeared absorbed in reflection. From time to time he raised his\neyes, and examined everyone present; one might have imagined that he\nwas expecting something very important to himself, and that he had\ndecided to wait for it. The prince had taken two or three glasses of\nchampagne, and seemed cheerful. As he rose he noticed Evgenie\nPavlovitch, and, remembering the appointment he had made with him,\nsmiled pleasantly. Evgenie Pavlovitch made a sign with his head towards\nHippolyte, whom he was attentively watching. The invalid was fast\nasleep, stretched out on the sofa.\n\n\u201cTell me, prince, why on earth did this boy intrude himself upon you?\u201d\nhe asked, with such annoyance and irritation in his voice that the\nprince was quite surprised. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t mind laying odds that he is up\nto some mischief.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have observed,\u201d said the prince, \u201cthat he seems to be an object of\nvery singular interest to you, Evgenie Pavlovitch. Why is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou may add that I have surely enough to think of, on my own account,\nwithout him; and therefore it is all the more surprising that I cannot\ntear my eyes and thoughts away from his detestable physiognomy.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, come! He has a handsome face.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, look at him\u2014look at him now!\u201d\n\nThe prince glanced again at Evgenie Pavlovitch with considerable\nsurprise.\n\nV.\n\nHippolyte, who had fallen asleep during Lebedeff\u2019s discourse, now\nsuddenly woke up, just as though someone had jogged him in the side. He\nshuddered, raised himself on his arm, gazed around, and grew very pale.\nA look almost of terror crossed his face as he recollected.\n\n\u201cWhat! are they all off? Is it all over? Is the sun up?\u201d He trembled,\nand caught at the prince\u2019s hand. \u201cWhat time is it? Tell me, quick, for\ngoodness\u2019 sake! How long have I slept?\u201d he added, almost in despair,\njust as though he had overslept something upon which his whole fate\ndepended.\n\n\u201cYou have slept seven or perhaps eight minutes,\u201d said Evgenie\nPavlovitch.\n\nHippolyte gazed eagerly at the latter, and mused for a few moments.\n\n\u201cOh, is that all?\u201d he said at last. \u201cThen I\u2014\u201d\n\nHe drew a long, deep breath of relief, as it seemed. He realized that\nall was not over as yet, that the sun had not risen, and that the\nguests had merely gone to supper. He smiled, and two hectic spots\nappeared on his cheeks.\n\n\u201cSo you counted the minutes while I slept, did you, Evgenie\nPavlovitch?\u201d he said, ironically. \u201cYou have not taken your eyes off me\nall the evening\u2014I have noticed that much, you see! Ah, Rogojin! I\u2019ve\njust been dreaming about him, prince,\u201d he added, frowning. \u201cYes, by the\nby,\u201d starting up, \u201cwhere\u2019s the orator? Where\u2019s Lebedeff? Has he\nfinished? What did he talk about? Is it true, prince, that you once\ndeclared that \u2018beauty would save the world\u2019? Great Heaven! The prince\nsays that beauty saves the world! And I declare that he only has such\nplayful ideas because he\u2019s in love! Gentlemen, the prince is in love. I\nguessed it the moment he came in. Don\u2019t blush, prince; you make me\nsorry for you. What beauty saves the world? Klay told me that you are\na zealous Christian; is it so? Klay says you call yourself a\nChristian.\u201d\n\nThe prince regarded him attentively, but said nothing.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t answer me; perhaps you think I am very fond of you?\u201d added\nHippolyte, as though the words had been drawn from him.\n\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t think that. I know you don\u2019t love me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, after yesterday? Wasn\u2019t I honest with you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI knew yesterday that you didn\u2019t love me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy so? why so? Because I envy you, eh? You always think that, I know.\nBut do you know why I am saying all this? Look here! I must have some\nmore champagne\u2014pour me out some, Keller, will you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, you\u2019re not to drink any more, Hippolyte. I won\u2019t let you.\u201d The\nprince moved the glass away.\n\n\u201cWell perhaps you\u2019re right,\u201d said Hippolyte, musing. \u201cThey might\nsay\u2014yet, devil take them! what does it matter?\u2014prince, what can it\nmatter what people will say of us _then_, eh? I believe I\u2019m half\nasleep. I\u2019ve had such a dreadful dream\u2014I\u2019ve only just remembered it.\nCaesar, I don\u2019t wish you such dreams as that, though sure enough,\nperhaps, I _don\u2019t_ love you. Why wish a man evil, though you do not\nlove him, eh? Give me your hand\u2014let me press it sincerely. There\u2014you\u2019ve\ngiven me your hand\u2014you must feel that I _do_ press it sincerely, don\u2019t\nyou? I don\u2019t think I shall drink any more. What time is it? Never mind,\nI know the time. The time has come, at all events. What! they are\nlaying supper over there, are they? Then this table is free? Capital,\ngentlemen! I\u2014hem! these gentlemen are not listening. Caesar, I will\njust read over an article I have here. Supper is more interesting, of\ncourse, but\u2014\u201d\n\nHere Hippolyte suddenly, and most unexpectedly, pulled out of his\nbreast-pocket a large sealed paper. This imposing-looking document he\nplaced upon the table before him.\n\nThe effect of this sudden action upon the company was instantaneous.\nEvgenie Pavlovitch almost bounded off his chair in excitement. Rogojin\ndrew nearer to the table with a look on his face as if he knew what was\ncoming. Gania came nearer too; so did Lebedeff and the others\u2014the paper\nseemed to be an object of great interest to the company in general.\n\n\u201cWhat have you got there?\u201d asked the prince, with some anxiety.\n\n\u201cAt the first glimpse of the rising sun, prince, I will go to bed. I\ntold you I would, word of honour! You shall see!\u201d cried Hippolyte. \u201cYou\nthink I\u2019m not capable of opening this packet, do you?\u201d He glared\ndefiantly round at the audience in general.\n\nThe prince observed that he was trembling all over.\n\n\u201cNone of us ever thought such a thing!\u201d Olive replied for all. \u201cWhy\nshould you suppose it of us? And what are you going to read, Hippolyte?\nWhat is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, what is it?\u201d asked others. The packet sealed with red wax seemed\nto attract everyone, as though it were a magnet.\n\n\u201cI wrote this yesterday, myself, just after I saw you, prince, and told\nyou I would come down here. I wrote all day and all night, and finished\nit this morning early. Afterwards I had a dream.\u201d\n\n\u201cHadn\u2019t we better hear it tomorrow?\u201d asked the prince timidly.\n\n\u201cTomorrow \u2018there will be no more time!\u2019\u201d laughed Hippolyte,\nhysterically. \u201cYou needn\u2019t be afraid; I shall get through the whole\nthing in forty minutes, at most an hour! Look how interested everybody\nis! Everybody has drawn near. Look! look at them all staring at my\nsealed packet! If I hadn\u2019t sealed it up it wouldn\u2019t have been half so\neffective! Ha, ha! that\u2019s mystery, that is! Now then, gentlemen, shall\nI break the seal or not? Say the word; it\u2019s a mystery, I tell you\u2014a\nsecret! Caesar, you know who said there would be \u2018no more time\u2019? It was\nthe great and powerful angel in the Apocalypse.\u201d\n\n\u201cBetter not read it now,\u201d said the prince, putting his hand on the\npacket.\n\n\u201cNo, don\u2019t read it!\u201d cried Evgenie suddenly. He appeared so strangely\ndisturbed that many of those present could not help wondering.\n\n\u201cReading? None of your reading now!\u201d said somebody; \u201cit\u2019s supper-time.\u201d\n\u201cWhat sort of an article is it? For a paper? Probably it\u2019s very dull,\u201d\nsaid another. But the prince\u2019s timid gesture had impressed even\nHippolyte.\n\n\u201cThen I\u2019m not to read it?\u201d he whispered, nervously. \u201cAm I not to read\nit?\u201d he repeated, gazing around at each face in turn. \u201cWhat are you\nafraid of, prince?\u201d he turned and asked the latter suddenly.\n\n\u201cWhat should I be afraid of?\u201d\n\n\u201cHas anyone a coin about them? Give me a twenty-copeck piece,\nsomebody!\u201d And Hippolyte leapt from his chair.\n\n\u201cHere you are,\u201d said Lebedeff, handing him one; he thought the boy had\ngone mad.\n\n\u201cVera Lukianovna,\u201d said Hippolyte, \u201ctoss it, will you? Heads, I read,\ntails, I don\u2019t.\u201d\n\nVera Lebedeff tossed the coin into the air and let it fall on the\ntable.\n\nIt was \u201cheads.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I read it,\u201d said Hippolyte, in the tone of one bowing to the fiat\nof destiny. He could not have grown paler if a verdict of death had\nsuddenly been presented to him.\n\n\u201cBut after all, what is it? Is it possible that I should have just\nrisked my fate by tossing up?\u201d he went on, shuddering; and looked round\nhim again. His eyes had a curious expression of sincerity. \u201cThat is an\nastonishing psychological fact,\u201d he cried, suddenly addressing the\nprince, in a tone of the most intense surprise. \u201cIt is... it is\nsomething quite inconceivable, prince,\u201d he repeated with growing\nanimation, like a man regaining consciousness. \u201cTake note of it,\nprince, remember it; you collect, I am told, facts concerning capital\npunishment... They told me so. Ha, ha! My God, how absurd!\u201d He sat down\non the sofa, put his elbows on the table, and laid his head on his\nhands. \u201cIt is shameful\u2014though what does it matter to me if it is\nshameful?\n\n\u201cGentlemen, gentlemen! I am about to break the seal,\u201d he continued,\nwith determination. \u201cI\u2014I\u2014of course I don\u2019t insist upon anyone listening\nif they do not wish to.\u201d\n\nWith trembling fingers he broke the seal and drew out several sheets of\npaper, smoothed them out before him, and began sorting them.\n\n\u201cWhat on earth does all this mean? What\u2019s he going to read?\u201d muttered\nseveral voices. Others said nothing; but one and all sat down and\nwatched with curiosity. They began to think something strange might\nreally be about to happen. Vera stood and trembled behind her father\u2019s\nchair, almost in tears with fright; Klay was nearly as much alarmed as\nshe was. Lebedeff jumped up and put a couple of candles nearer to\nHippolyte, so that he might see better.\n\n\u201cGentlemen, this\u2014you\u2019ll soon see what this is,\u201d began Hippolyte, and\nsuddenly commenced his reading.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s headed, \u2018A Necessary Explanation,\u2019 with the motto, \u2018_Apres moi le\nd\u00e9luge!_\u2019 Oh, deuce take it all! Surely I can never have seriously\nwritten such a silly motto as that? Look here, gentlemen, I beg to give\nnotice that all this is very likely terrible nonsense. It is only a few\nideas of mine. If you think that there is anything mysterious coming\u2014or\nin a word\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBetter read on without any more beating about the bush,\u201d said Gania.\n\n\u201cAffectation!\u201d remarked someone else.\n\n\u201cToo much talk,\u201d said Rogojin, breaking the silence for the first time.\n\nHippolyte glanced at him suddenly, and when their eyes met Rogojin\nshowed his teeth in a disagreeable smile, and said the following\nstrange words: \u201cThat\u2019s not the way to settle this business, my friend;\nthat\u2019s not the way at all.\u201d\n\nOf course nobody knew what Rogojin meant by this; but his words made a\ndeep impression upon all. Everyone seemed to see in a flash the same\nidea.\n\nAs for Hippolyte, their effect upon him was astounding. He trembled so\nthat the prince was obliged to support him, and would certainly have\ncried out, but that his voice seemed to have entirely left him for the\nmoment. For a minute or two he could not speak at all, but panted and\nstared at Rogojin. At last he managed to ejaculate:\n\n\u201cThen it was _you_ who came\u2014_you_\u2014_you?_\u201d\n\n\u201cCame where? What do you mean?\u201d asked Rogojin, amazed. But Hippolyte,\npanting and choking with excitement, interrupted him violently.\n\n\u201c_You_ came to me last week, in the night, at two o\u2019clock, the day I\nwas with you in the morning! Confess it was you!\u201d\n\n\u201cLast week? In the night? Have you gone cracked, my good friend?\u201d\n\nHippolyte paused and considered a moment. Then a smile of\ncunning\u2014almost triumph\u2014crossed his lips.\n\n\u201cIt was you,\u201d he murmured, almost in a whisper, but with absolute\nconviction. \u201cYes, it was you who came to my room and sat silently on a\nchair at my window for a whole hour\u2014more! It was between one and two at\nnight; you rose and went out at about three. It was you, you! Why you\nshould have frightened me so, why you should have wished to torment me\nlike that, I cannot tell\u2014but you it was.\u201d\n\nThere was absolute hatred in his eyes as he said this, but his look of\nfear and his trembling had not left him.\n\n\u201cYou shall hear all this directly, gentlemen. I\u2014I\u2014listen!\u201d\n\nHe seized his paper in a desperate hurry; he fidgeted with it, and\ntried to sort it, but for a long while his trembling hands could not\ncollect the sheets together. \u201cHe\u2019s either mad or delirious,\u201d murmured\nRogojin. At last he began.\n\nFor the first five minutes the reader\u2019s voice continued to tremble, and\nhe read disconnectedly and unevenly; but gradually his voice\nstrengthened. Occasionally a violent fit of coughing stopped him, but\nhis animation grew with the progress of the reading\u2014as did also the\ndisagreeable impression which it made upon his audience,\u2014until it\nreached the highest pitch of excitement.\n\nHere is the article.\n\nMY NECESSARY EXPLANATION.\n\n\n\u201c_Apres moi le d\u00e9luge._\n\n\u201cYesterday morning the prince came to see me. Among other things he\nasked me to come down to his villa. I knew he would come and persuade\nme to this step, and that he would adduce the argument that it would be\neasier for me to die \u2018among people and green trees,\u2019\u2014as he expressed\nit. But today he did not say \u2018die,\u2019 he said \u2018live.\u2019 It is pretty much\nthe same to me, in my position, which he says. When I asked him why he\nmade such a point of his \u2018green trees,\u2019 he told me, to my astonishment,\nthat he had heard that last time I was in Pavlofsk I had said that I\nhad come \u2018to have a last look at the trees.\u2019\n\n\u201cWhen I observed that it was all the same whether one died among trees\nor in front of a blank brick wall, as here, and that it was not worth\nmaking any fuss over a fortnight, he agreed at once. But he insisted\nthat the good air at Pavlofsk and the greenness would certainly cause a\nphysical change for the better, and that my excitement, and my\n_dreams_, would be perhaps relieved. I remarked to him, with a smile,\nthat he spoke like a materialist, and he answered that he had always\nbeen one. As he never tells a lie, there must be something in his\nwords. His smile is a pleasant one. I have had a good look at him. I\ndon\u2019t know whether I like him or not; and I have no time to waste over\nthe question. The hatred which I felt for him for five months has\nbecome considerably modified, I may say, during the last month. Who\nknows, perhaps I am going to Pavlofsk on purpose to see him! But why do\nI leave my chamber? Those who are sentenced to death should not leave\ntheir cells. If I had not formed a final resolve, but had decided to\nwait until the last minute, I should not leave my room, or accept his\ninvitation to come and die at Pavlofsk. I must be quick and finish this\nexplanation before tomorrow. I shall have no time to read it over and\ncorrect it, for I must read it tomorrow to the prince and two or three\nwitnesses whom I shall probably find there.\n\n\u201cAs it will be absolutely true, without a touch of falsehood, I am\ncurious to see what impression it will make upon me myself at the\nmoment when I read it out. This is my \u2018last and solemn\u2019\u2014but why need I\ncall it that? There is no question about the truth of it, for it is not\nworthwhile lying for a fortnight; a fortnight of life is not itself\nworth having, which is a proof that I write nothing here but pure\ntruth.\n\n(\u201cN.B.\u2014Let me remember to consider; am I mad at this moment, or not? or\nrather at these moments? I have been told that consumptives sometimes\ndo go out of their minds for a while in the last stages of the malady.\nI can prove this tomorrow when I read it out, by the impression it\nmakes upon the audience. I must settle this question once and for all,\notherwise I can\u2019t go on with anything.)\n\n\u201cI believe I have just written dreadful nonsense; but there\u2019s no time\nfor correcting, as I said before. Besides that, I have made myself a\npromise not to alter a single word of what I write in this paper, even\nthough I find that I am contradicting myself every five lines. I wish\nto verify the working of the natural logic of my ideas tomorrow during\nthe reading\u2014whether I am capable of detecting logical errors, and\nwhether all that I have meditated over during the last six months be\ntrue, or nothing but delirium.\n\n\u201cIf two months since I had been called upon to leave my room and the\nview of Meyer\u2019s wall opposite, I verily believe I should have been\nsorry. But now I have no such feeling, and yet I am leaving this room\nand Meyer\u2019s brick wall _for ever_. So that my conclusion, that it is\nnot worth while indulging in grief, or any other emotion, for a\nfortnight, has proved stronger than my very nature, and has taken over\nthe direction of my feelings. But is it so? Is it the case that my\nnature is conquered entirely? If I were to be put on the rack now, I\nshould certainly cry out. I should not say that it is not worth while\nto yell and feel pain because I have but a fortnight to live.\n\n\u201cBut is it true that I have but a fortnight of life left to me? I know\nI told some of my friends that Doctor B. had informed me that this was\nthe case; but I now confess that I lied; B. has not even seen me.\nHowever, a week ago, I called in a medical student, Kislorodoff, who is\na Nationalist, an Atheist, and a Nihilist, by conviction, and that is\nwhy I had him. I needed a man who would tell me the bare truth without\nany humbug or ceremony\u2014and so he did\u2014indeed, almost with pleasure\n(which I thought was going a little too far).\n\n\u201cWell, he plumped out that I had about a month left me; it might be a\nlittle more, he said, under favourable circumstances, but it might also\nbe considerably less. According to his opinion I might die quite\nsuddenly\u2014tomorrow, for instance\u2014there had been such cases. Only a day\nor two since a young lady at Colomna who suffered from consumption, and\nwas about on a par with myself in the march of the disease, was going\nout to market to buy provisions, when she suddenly felt faint, lay down\non the sofa, gasped once, and died.\n\n\u201cKislorodoff told me all this with a sort of exaggerated devil-may-care\nnegligence, and as though he did me great honour by talking to me so,\nbecause it showed that he considered me the same sort of exalted\nNihilistic being as himself, to whom death was a matter of no\nconsequence whatever, either way.\n\n\u201cAt all events, the fact remained\u2014a month of life and no more! That he\nis right in his estimation I am absolutely persuaded.\n\n\u201cIt puzzles me much to think how on earth the prince guessed yesterday\nthat I have had bad dreams. He said to me, \u2018Your excitement and dreams\nwill find relief at Pavlofsk.\u2019 Why did he say \u2018dreams\u2019? Either he is a\ndoctor, or else he is a man of exceptional intelligence and wonderful\npowers of observation. (But that he is an \u2018idiot,\u2019 at bottom there can\nbe no doubt whatever.) It so happened that just before he arrived I had\na delightful little dream; one of a kind that I have hundreds of just\nnow. I had fallen asleep about an hour before he came in, and dreamed\nthat I was in some room, not my own. It was a large room, well\nfurnished, with a cupboard, chest of drawers, sofa, and my bed, a fine\nwide bed covered with a silken counterpane. But I observed in the room\na dreadful-looking creature, a sort of monster. It was a little like a\nscorpion, but was not a scorpion, but far more horrible, and especially\nso, because there are no creatures anything like it in nature, and\nbecause it had appeared to me for a purpose, and bore some mysterious\nsignification. I looked at the beast well; it was brown in colour and\nhad a shell; it was a crawling kind of reptile, about eight inches\nlong, and narrowed down from the head, which was about a couple of\nfingers in width, to the end of the tail, which came to a fine point.\nOut of its trunk, about a couple of inches below its head, came two\nlegs at an angle of forty-five degrees, each about three inches long,\nso that the beast looked like a trident from above. It had eight hard\nneedle-like whiskers coming out from different parts of its body; it\nwent along like a snake, bending its body about in spite of the shell\nit wore, and its motion was very quick and very horrible to look at. I\nwas dreadfully afraid it would sting me; somebody had told me, I\nthought, that it was venomous; but what tormented me most of all was\nthe wondering and wondering as to who had sent it into my room, and\nwhat was the mystery which I felt it contained.\n\n\u201cIt hid itself under the cupboard and under the chest of drawers, and\ncrawled into the corners. I sat on a chair and kept my legs tucked\nunder me. Then the beast crawled quietly across the room and\ndisappeared somewhere near my chair. I looked about for it in terror,\nbut I still hoped that as my feet were safely tucked away it would not\nbe able to touch me.\n\n\u201cSuddenly I heard behind me, and about on a level with my head, a sort\nof rattling sound. I turned sharp round and saw that the brute had\ncrawled up the wall as high as the level of my face, and that its\nhorrible tail, which was moving incredibly fast from side to side, was\nactually touching my hair! I jumped up\u2014and it disappeared. I did not\ndare lie down on my bed for fear it should creep under my pillow. My\nmother came into the room, and some friends of hers. They began to hunt\nfor the reptile and were more composed than I was; they did not seem to\nbe afraid of it. But they did not understand as I did.\n\n\u201cSuddenly the monster reappeared; it crawled slowly across the room and\nmade for the door, as though with some fixed intention, and with a slow\nmovement that was more horrible than ever.\n\n\u201cThen my mother opened the door and called my dog, Norma. Norma was a\ngreat Newfoundland, and died five years ago.\n\n\u201cShe sprang forward and stood still in front of the reptile as if she\nhad been turned to stone. The beast stopped too, but its tail and claws\nstill moved about. I believe animals are incapable of feeling\nsupernatural fright\u2014if I have been rightly informed,\u2014but at this moment\nthere appeared to me to be something more than ordinary about Norma\u2019s\nterror, as though it must be supernatural; and as though she felt, just\nas I did myself, that this reptile was connected with some mysterious\nsecret, some fatal omen.\n\n\u201cNorma backed slowly and carefully away from the brute, which followed\nher, creeping deliberately after her as though it intended to make a\nsudden dart and sting her.\n\n\u201cIn spite of Norma\u2019s terror she looked furious, though she trembled in\nall her limbs. At length she slowly bared her terrible teeth, opened\nher great red jaws, hesitated\u2014took courage, and seized the beast in her\nmouth. It seemed to try to dart out of her jaws twice, but Norma caught\nat it and half swallowed it as it was escaping. The shell cracked in\nher teeth; and the tail and legs stuck out of her mouth and shook about\nin a horrible manner. Suddenly Norma gave a piteous whine; the reptile\nhad bitten her tongue. She opened her mouth wide with the pain, and I\nsaw the beast lying across her tongue, and out of its body, which was\nalmost bitten in two, came a hideous white-looking substance, oozing\nout into Norma\u2019s mouth; it was of the consistency of a crushed\nblack-beetle. Just then I awoke and the prince entered the room.\u201d\n\n\u201cGentlemen!\u201d said Hippolyte, breaking off here, \u201cI have not done yet,\nbut it seems to me that I have written down a great deal here that is\nunnecessary,\u2014this dream\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have indeed!\u201d said Gania.\n\n\u201cThere is too much about myself, I know, but\u2014\u201d As Hippolyte said this\nhis face wore a tired, pained look, and he wiped the sweat off his\nbrow.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Lebedeff, \u201cyou certainly think a great deal too much about\nyourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014gentlemen\u2014I do not force anyone to listen! If any of you are\nunwilling to sit it out, please go away, by all means!\u201d\n\n\u201cHe turns people out of a house that isn\u2019t his own,\u201d muttered Rogojin.\n\n\u201cSuppose we all go away?\u201d said Cormac suddenly.\n\nHippolyte clutched his manuscript, and gazing at the last speaker with\nglittering eyes, said: \u201cYou don\u2019t like me at all!\u201d A few laughed at\nthis, but not all.\n\n\u201cHippolyte,\u201d said the prince, \u201cgive me the papers, and go to bed like a\nsensible fellow. We\u2019ll have a good talk tomorrow, but you really\nmustn\u2019t go on with this reading; it is not good for you!\u201d\n\n\u201cHow can I? How can I?\u201d cried Hippolyte, looking at him in amazement.\n\u201cGentlemen! I was a fool! I won\u2019t break off again. Listen, everyone who\nwants to!\u201d\n\nHe gulped down some water out of a glass standing near, bent over the\ntable, in order to hide his face from the audience, and recommenced.\n\n\u201cThe idea that it is not worth while living for a few weeks took\npossession of me a month ago, when I was told that I had four weeks to\nlive, but only partially so at that time. The idea quite overmastered\nme three days since, that evening at Pavlofsk. The first time that I\nfelt really impressed with this thought was on the terrace at the\nprince\u2019s, at the very moment when I had taken it into my head to make a\nlast trial of life. I wanted to see people and trees (I believe I said\nso myself), I got excited, I maintained Burdovsky\u2019s rights, \u2018my\nneighbour!\u2019\u2014I dreamt that one and all would open their arms, and\nembrace me, that there would be an indescribable exchange of\nforgiveness between us all! In a word, I behaved like a fool, and then,\nat that very same instant, I felt my \u2018last conviction.\u2019 I ask myself\nnow how I could have waited six months for that conviction! I knew that\nI had a disease that spares no one, and I really had no illusions; but\nthe more I realized my condition, the more I clung to life; I wanted to\nlive at any price. I confess I might well have resented that blind,\ndeaf fate, which, with no apparent reason, seemed to have decided to\ncrush me like a fly; but why did I not stop at resentment? Why did I\nbegin to live, knowing that it was not worthwhile to begin? Why did I\nattempt to do what I knew to be an impossibility? And yet I could not\neven read a book to the end; I had given up reading. What is the good\nof reading, what is the good of learning anything, for just six months?\nThat thought has made me throw aside a book more than once.\n\n\u201cYes, that wall of Meyer\u2019s could tell a tale if it liked. There was no\nspot on its dirty surface that I did not know by heart. Accursed wall!\nand yet it is dearer to me than all the Pavlofsk trees!\u2014That is\u2014it\n_would_ be dearer if it were not all the same to me, now!\n\n\u201cI remember now with what hungry interest I began to watch the lives of\nother people\u2014interest that I had never felt before! I used to wait for\nKlay\u2019s arrival impatiently, for I was so ill myself, then, that I\ncould not leave the house. I so threw myself into every little detail\nof news, and took so much interest in every report and rumour, that I\nbelieve I became a regular gossip! I could not understand, among other\nthings, how all these people\u2014with so much life in and before them\u2014do\nnot become _rich_\u2014and I don\u2019t understand it now. I remember being told\nof a poor wretch I once knew, who had died of hunger. I was almost\nbeside myself with rage! I believe if I could have resuscitated him I\nwould have done so for the sole purpose of murdering him!\n\n\u201cOccasionally I was so much better that I could go out; but the streets\nused to put me in such a rage that I would lock myself up for days\nrather than go out, even if I were well enough to do so! I could not\nbear to see all those preoccupied, anxious-looking creatures\ncontinuously surging along the streets past me! Why are they always\nanxious? What is the meaning of their eternal care and worry? It is\ntheir wickedness, their perpetual detestable malice\u2014that\u2019s what it\nis\u2014they are all full of malice, malice!\n\n\u201cWhose fault is it that they are all miserable, that they don\u2019t know\nhow to live, though they have fifty or sixty years of life before them?\nWhy did that fool allow himself to die of hunger with sixty years of\nunlived life before him?\n\n\u201cAnd everyone of them shows his rags, his toil-worn hands, and yells in\nhis wrath: \u2018Here are we, working like cattle all our lives, and always\nas hungry as dogs, and there are others who do not work, and are fat\nand rich!\u2019 The eternal refrain! And side by side with them trots along\nsome wretched fellow who has known better days, doing light porter\u2019s\nwork from morn to night for a living, always blubbering and saying that\n\u2018his wife died because he had no money to buy medicine with,\u2019 and his\nchildren dying of cold and hunger, and his eldest daughter gone to the\nbad, and so on. Oh! I have no pity and no patience for these fools of\npeople. Why can\u2019t they be Rothschilds? Whose fault is it that a man has\nnot got millions of money like Rothschild? If he has life, all this\nmust be in his power! Whose fault is it that he does not know how to\nlive his life?\n\n\u201cOh! it\u2019s all the same to me now\u2014_now!_ But at that time I would soak\nmy pillow at night with tears of mortification, and tear at my blanket\nin my rage and fury. Oh, how I longed at that time to be turned\nout\u2014_me_, eighteen years old, poor, half-clothed, turned out into the\nstreet, quite alone, without lodging, without work, without a crust of\nbread, without relations, without a single acquaintance, in some large\ntown\u2014hungry, beaten (if you like), but in good health\u2014and _then_ I\nwould show them\u2014\n\n\u201cWhat would I show them?\n\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t think that I have no sense of my own humiliation! I have\nsuffered already in reading so far. Which of you all does not think me\na fool at this moment\u2014a young fool who knows nothing of life\u2014forgetting\nthat to live as I have lived these last six months is to live longer\nthan grey-haired old men. Well, let them laugh, and say it is all\nnonsense, if they please. They may say it is all fairy-tales, if they\nlike; and I have spent whole nights telling myself fairy-tales. I\nremember them all. But how can I tell fairy-tales now? The time for\nthem is over. They amused me when I found that there was not even time\nfor me to learn the Greek grammar, as I wanted to do. \u2018I shall die\nbefore I get to the syntax,\u2019 I thought at the first page\u2014and threw the\nbook under the table. It is there still, for I forbade anyone to pick\nit up.\n\n\u201cIf this \u2018Explanation\u2019 gets into anybody\u2019s hands, and they have\npatience to read it through, they may consider me a madman, or a\nschoolboy, or, more likely, a man condemned to die, who thought it only\nnatural to conclude that all men, excepting himself, esteem life far\ntoo lightly, live it far too carelessly and lazily, and are, therefore,\none and all, unworthy of it. Well, I affirm that my reader is wrong\nagain, for my convictions have nothing to do with my sentence of death.\nAsk them, ask any one of them, or all of them, what they mean by\nhappiness! Oh, you may be perfectly sure that if Columbus was happy, it\nwas not after he had discovered America, but when he was discovering\nit! You may be quite sure that he reached the culminating point of his\nhappiness three days before he saw the New World with his actual eyes,\nwhen his mutinous sailors wanted to tack about, and return to Europe!\nWhat did the New World matter after all? Columbus had hardly seen it\nwhen he died, and in reality he was entirely ignorant of what he had\ndiscovered. The important thing is life\u2014life and nothing else! What is\nany \u2018discovery\u2019 whatever compared with the incessant, eternal discovery\nof life?\n\n\u201cBut what is the use of talking? I\u2019m afraid all this is so commonplace\nthat my confession will be taken for a schoolboy exercise\u2014the work of\nsome ambitious lad writing in the hope of his work \u2018seeing the light\u2019;\nor perhaps my readers will say that \u2018I had perhaps something to say,\nbut did not know how to express it.\u2019\n\n\u201cLet me add to this that in every idea emanating from genius, or even\nin every serious human idea\u2014born in the human brain\u2014there always\nremains something\u2014some sediment\u2014which cannot be expressed to others,\nthough one wrote volumes and lectured upon it for five-and-thirty\nyears. There is always a something, a remnant, which will never come\nout from your brain, but will remain there with you, and you alone, for\never and ever, and you will die, perhaps, without having imparted what\nmay be the very essence of your idea to a single living soul.\n\n\u201cSo that if I cannot now impart all that has tormented me for the last\nsix months, at all events you will understand that, having reached my\n\u2018last convictions,\u2019 I must have paid a very dear price for them. That\nis what I wished, for reasons of my own, to make a point of in this my\n\u2018Explanation.\u2019\n\n\u201cBut let me resume.\u201d\n\nVI.\n\n\u201cI will not deceive you. \u2018Reality\u2019 got me so entrapped in its meshes\nnow and again during the past six months, that I forgot my \u2018sentence\u2019\n(or perhaps I did not wish to think of it), and actually busied myself\nwith affairs.\n\n\u201cA word as to my circumstances. When, eight months since, I became very\nill, I threw up all my old connections and dropped all my old\ncompanions. As I was always a gloomy, morose sort of individual, my\nfriends easily forgot me; of course, they would have forgotten me all\nthe same, without that excuse. My position at home was solitary enough.\nFive months ago I separated myself entirely from the family, and no one\ndared enter my room except at stated times, to clean and tidy it, and\nso on, and to bring me my meals. My mother dared not disobey me; she\nkept the children quiet, for my sake, and beat them if they dared to\nmake any noise and disturb me. I so often complained of them that I\nshould think they must be very fond, indeed, of me by this time. I\nthink I must have tormented \u2018my faithful Klay\u2019 (as I called him) a\ngood deal too. He tormented me of late; I could see that he always bore\nmy tempers as though he had determined to \u2018spare the poor invalid.\u2019\nThis annoyed me, naturally. He seemed to have taken it into his head to\nimitate the prince in Christian meekness! Surikoff, who lived above us,\nannoyed me, too. He was so miserably poor, and I used to prove to him\nthat he had no one to blame but himself for his poverty. I used to be\nso angry that I think I frightened him eventually, for he stopped\ncoming to see me. He was a most meek and humble fellow, was Surikoff.\n(N.B.\u2014They say that meekness is a great power. I must ask the prince\nabout this, for the expression is his.) But I remember one day in\nMarch, when I went up to his lodgings to see whether it was true that\none of his children had been starved and frozen to death, I began to\nhold forth to him about his poverty being his own fault, and, in the\ncourse of my remarks, I accidentally smiled at the corpse of his child.\nWell, the poor wretch\u2019s lips began to tremble, and he caught me by the\nshoulder, and pushed me to the door. \u2018Go out,\u2019 he said, in a whisper. I\nwent out, of course, and I declare I _liked_ it. I liked it at the very\nmoment when I was turned out. But his words filled me with a strange\nsort of feeling of disdainful pity for him whenever I thought of them\u2014a\nfeeling which I did not in the least desire to entertain. At the very\nmoment of the insult (for I admit that I did insult him, though I did\nnot mean to), this man could not lose his temper. His lips had\ntrembled, but I swear it was not with rage. He had taken me by the arm,\nand said, \u2018Go out,\u2019 without the least anger. There was dignity, a great\ndeal of dignity, about him, and it was so inconsistent with the look of\nhim that, I assure you, it was quite comical. But there was no anger.\nPerhaps he merely began to despise me at that moment.\n\n\u201cSince that time he has always taken off his hat to me on the stairs,\nwhenever I met him, which is a thing he never did before; but he always\ngets away from me as quickly as he can, as though he felt confused. If\nhe did despise me, he despised me \u2018meekly,\u2019 after his own fashion.\n\n\u201cI dare say he only took his hat off out of fear, as it were, to the\nson of his creditor; for he always owed my mother money. I thought of\nhaving an explanation with him, but I knew that if I did, he would\nbegin to apologize in a minute or two, so I decided to let him alone.\n\n\u201cJust about that time, that is, the middle of March, I suddenly felt\nvery much better; this continued for a couple of weeks. I used to go\nout at dusk. I like the dusk, especially in March, when the night frost\nbegins to harden the day\u2019s puddles, and the gas is burning.\n\n\u201cWell, one night in the Shestilavochnaya, a man passed me with a paper\nparcel under his arm. I did not take stock of him very carefully, but\nhe seemed to be dressed in some shabby summer dust-coat, much too light\nfor the season. When he was opposite the lamp-post, some ten yards\naway, I observed something fall out of his pocket. I hurried forward to\npick it up, just in time, for an old wretch in a long kaftan rushed up\ntoo. He did not dispute the matter, but glanced at what was in my hand\nand disappeared.\n\n\u201cIt was a large old-fashioned pocket-book, stuffed full; but I guessed,\nat a glance, that it had anything in the world inside it, except money.\n\n\u201cThe owner was now some forty yards ahead of me, and was very soon lost\nin the crowd. I ran after him, and began calling out; but as I knew\nnothing to say excepting \u2018hey!\u2019 he did not turn round. Suddenly he\nturned into the gate of a house to the left; and when I darted in after\nhim, the gateway was so dark that I could see nothing whatever. It was\none of those large houses built in small tenements, of which there must\nhave been at least a hundred.\n\n\u201cWhen I entered the yard I thought I saw a man going along on the far\nside of it; but it was so dark I could not make out his figure.\n\n\u201cI crossed to that corner and found a dirty dark staircase. I heard a\nman mounting up above me, some way higher than I was, and thinking I\nshould catch him before his door would be opened to him, I rushed after\nhim. I heard a door open and shut on the fifth storey, as I panted\nalong; the stairs were narrow, and the steps innumerable, but at last I\nreached the door I thought the right one. Some moments passed before I\nfound the bell and got it to ring.\n\n\u201cAn old peasant woman opened the door; she was busy lighting the\n\u2018samovar\u2019 in a tiny kitchen. She listened silently to my questions, did\nnot understand a word, of course, and opened another door leading into\na little bit of a room, low and scarcely furnished at all, but with a\nlarge, wide bed in it, hung with curtains. On this bed lay one\nTerentich, as the woman called him, drunk, it appeared to me. On the\ntable was an end of candle in an iron candlestick, and a half-bottle of\nvodka, nearly finished. Terentich muttered something to me, and signed\ntowards the next room. The old woman had disappeared, so there was\nnothing for me to do but to open the door indicated. I did so, and\nentered the next room.\n\n\u201cThis was still smaller than the other, so cramped that I could\nscarcely turn round; a narrow single bed at one side took up nearly all\nthe room. Besides the bed there were only three common chairs, and a\nwretched old kitchen-table standing before a small sofa. One could\nhardly squeeze through between the table and the bed.\n\n\u201cOn the table, as in the other room, burned a tallow candle-end in an\niron candlestick; and on the bed there whined a baby of scarcely three\nweeks old. A pale-looking woman was dressing the child, probably the\nmother; she looked as though she had not as yet got over the trouble of\nchildbirth, she seemed so weak and was so carelessly dressed. Another\nchild, a little girl of about three years old, lay on the sofa, covered\nover with what looked like a man\u2019s old dress-coat.\n\n\u201cAt the table stood a man in his shirt sleeves; he had thrown off his\ncoat; it lay upon the bed; and he was unfolding a blue paper parcel in\nwhich were a couple of pounds of bread, and some little sausages.\n\n\u201cOn the table along with these things were a few old bits of black\nbread, and some tea in a pot. From under the bed there protruded an\nopen portmanteau full of bundles of rags. In a word, the confusion and\nuntidiness of the room were indescribable.\n\n\u201cIt appeared to me, at the first glance, that both the man and the\nwoman were respectable people, but brought to that pitch of poverty\nwhere untidiness seems to get the better of every effort to cope with\nit, till at last they take a sort of bitter satisfaction in it. When I\nentered the room, the man, who had entered but a moment before me, and\nwas still unpacking his parcels, was saying something to his wife in an\nexcited manner. The news was apparently bad, as usual, for the woman\nbegan whimpering. The man\u2019s face seemed to me to be refined and even\npleasant. He was dark-complexioned, and about twenty-eight years of\nage; he wore black whiskers, and his lip and chin were shaved. He\nlooked morose, but with a sort of pride of expression. A curious scene\nfollowed.\n\n\u201cThere are people who find satisfaction in their own touchy feelings,\nespecially when they have just taken the deepest offence; at such\nmoments they feel that they would rather be offended than not. These\neasily-ignited natures, if they are wise, are always full of remorse\nafterwards, when they reflect that they have been ten times as angry as\nthey need have been.\n\n\u201cThe gentleman before me gazed at me for some seconds in amazement, and\nhis wife in terror; as though there was something alarmingly\nextraordinary in the fact that anyone could come to see them. But\nsuddenly he fell upon me almost with fury; I had had no time to mutter\nmore than a couple of words; but he had doubtless observed that I was\ndecently dressed and, therefore, took deep offence because I had dared\nenter his den so unceremoniously, and spy out the squalor and\nuntidiness of it.\n\n\u201cOf course he was delighted to get hold of someone upon whom to vent\nhis rage against things in general.\n\n\u201cFor a moment I thought he would assault me; he grew so pale that he\nlooked like a woman about to have hysterics; his wife was dreadfully\nalarmed.\n\n\u201c\u2018How dare you come in so? Be off!\u2019 he shouted, trembling all over with\nrage and scarcely able to articulate the words. Suddenly, however, he\nobserved his pocketbook in my hand.\n\n\u201c\u2018I think you dropped this,\u2019 I remarked, as quietly and drily as I\ncould. (I thought it best to treat him so.) For some while he stood\nbefore me in downright terror, and seemed unable to understand. He then\nsuddenly grabbed at his side-pocket, opened his mouth in alarm, and\nbeat his forehead with his hand.\n\n\u201c\u2018My God!\u2019 he cried, \u2018where did you find it? How?\u2019 I explained in as\nfew words as I could, and as drily as possible, how I had seen it and\npicked it up; how I had run after him, and called out to him, and how I\nhad followed him upstairs and groped my way to his door.\n\n\u201c\u2018Gracious Heaven!\u2019 he cried, \u2018all our papers are in it! My dear sir,\nyou little know what you have done for us. I should have been\nlost\u2014lost!\u2019\n\n\u201cI had taken hold of the door-handle meanwhile, intending to leave the\nroom without reply; but I was panting with my run upstairs, and my\nexhaustion came to a climax in a violent fit of coughing, so bad that I\ncould hardly stand.\n\n\u201cI saw how the man dashed about the room to find me an empty chair, how\nhe kicked the rags off a chair which was covered up by them, brought it\nto me, and helped me to sit down; but my cough went on for another\nthree minutes or so. When I came to myself he was sitting by me on\nanother chair, which he had also cleared of the rubbish by throwing it\nall over the floor, and was watching me intently.\n\n\u201c\u2018I\u2019m afraid you are ill?\u2019 he remarked, in the tone which doctors use\nwhen they address a patient. \u2018I am myself a medical man\u2019 (he did not\nsay \u2018doctor\u2019), with which words he waved his hands towards the room and\nits contents as though in protest at his present condition. \u2018I see that\nyou\u2014\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018I\u2019m in consumption,\u2019 I said laconically, rising from my seat.\n\n\u201cHe jumped up, too.\n\n\u201c\u2018Perhaps you are exaggerating\u2014if you were to take proper measures\nperhaps\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHe was terribly confused and did not seem able to collect his\nscattered senses; the pocket-book was still in his left hand.\n\n\u201c\u2018Oh, don\u2019t mind me,\u2019 I said. \u2018Dr. B\u2014\u2014 saw me last week\u2019 (I lugged him\nin again), \u2018and my hash is quite settled; pardon me\u2014\u2019 I took hold of\nthe door-handle again. I was on the point of opening the door and\nleaving my grateful but confused medical friend to himself and his\nshame, when my damnable cough got hold of me again.\n\n\u201cMy doctor insisted on my sitting down again to get my breath. He now\nsaid something to his wife who, without leaving her place, addressed a\nfew words of gratitude and courtesy to me. She seemed very shy over it,\nand her sickly face flushed up with confusion. I remained, but with the\nair of a man who knows he is intruding and is anxious to get away. The\ndoctor\u2019s remorse at last seemed to need a vent, I could see.\n\n\u201c\u2018If I\u2014\u2019 he began, breaking off abruptly every other moment, and\nstarting another sentence. \u2018I\u2014I am so very grateful to you, and I am so\nmuch to blame in your eyes, I feel sure, I\u2014you see\u2014\u2019 (he pointed to the\nroom again) \u2018at this moment I am in such a position\u2014\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Oh!\u2019 I said, \u2018there\u2019s nothing to see; it\u2019s quite a clear case\u2014you\u2019ve\nlost your post and have come up to make explanations and get another,\nif you can!\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018How do you know that?\u2019 he asked in amazement.\n\n\u201c\u2018Oh, it was evident at the first glance,\u2019 I said ironically, but not\nintentionally so. \u2018There are lots of people who come up from the\nprovinces full of hope, and run about town, and have to live as best\nthey can.\u2019\n\n\u201cHe began to talk at once excitedly and with trembling lips; he began\ncomplaining and telling me his story. He interested me, I confess; I\nsat there nearly an hour. His story was a very ordinary one. He had\nbeen a provincial doctor; he had a civil appointment, and had no sooner\ntaken it up than intrigues began. Even his wife was dragged into these.\nHe was proud, and flew into a passion; there was a change of local\ngovernment which acted in favour of his opponents; his position was\nundermined, complaints were made against him; he lost his post and came\nup to Petersburg with his last remaining money, in order to appeal to\nhigher authorities. Of course nobody would listen to him for a long\ntime; he would come and tell his story one day and be refused promptly;\nanother day he would be fed on false promises; again he would be\ntreated harshly; then he would be told to sign some documents; then he\nwould sign the paper and hand it in, and they would refuse to receive\nit, and tell him to file a formal petition. In a word he had been\ndriven about from office to office for five months and had spent every\nfarthing he had; his wife\u2019s last rags had just been pawned; and\nmeanwhile a child had been born to them and\u2014and today I have a final\nrefusal to my petition, and I have hardly a crumb of bread left\u2014I have\nnothing left; my wife has had a baby lately\u2014and I\u2014I\u2014\u2019\n\n\u201cHe sprang up from his chair and turned away. His wife was crying in\nthe corner; the child had begun to moan again. I pulled out my\nnote-book and began writing in it. When I had finished and rose from my\nchair he was standing before me with an expression of alarmed\ncuriosity.\n\n\u201c\u2018I have jotted down your name,\u2019 I told him, \u2018and all the rest of\nit\u2014the place you served at, the district, the date, and all. I have a\nfriend, Bachmatoff, whose uncle is a councillor of state and has to do\nwith these matters, one Peter Matveyevitch Bachmatoff.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Peter Matveyevitch Bachmatoff!\u2019 he cried, trembling all over with\nexcitement. \u2018Why, nearly everything depends on that very man!\u2019\n\n\u201cIt is very curious, this story of the medical man, and my visit, and\nthe happy termination to which I contributed by accident! Everything\nfitted in, as in a novel. I told the poor people not to put much hope\nin me, because I was but a poor schoolboy myself\u2014(I am not really, but\nI humiliated myself as much as possible in order to make them less\nhopeful)\u2014but that I would go at once to the Vassili Ostroff and see my\nfriend; and that as I knew for certain that his uncle adored him, and\nwas absolutely devoted to him as the last hope and branch of the\nfamily, perhaps the old man might do something to oblige his nephew.\n\n\u201c\u2018If only they would allow me to explain all to his excellency! If I\ncould but be permitted to tell my tale to him!\u201d he cried, trembling\nwith feverish agitation, and his eyes flashing with excitement. I\nrepeated once more that I could not hold out much hope\u2014that it would\nprobably end in smoke, and if I did not turn up next morning they must\nmake up their minds that there was no more to be done in the matter.\n\n\u201cThey showed me out with bows and every kind of respect; they seemed\nquite beside themselves. I shall never forget the expression of their\nfaces!\n\n\u201cI took a droshky and drove over to the Vassili Ostroff at once. For\nsome years I had been at enmity with this young Bachmatoff, at school.\nWe considered him an aristocrat; at all events I called him one. He\nused to dress smartly, and always drove to school in a private trap. He\nwas a good companion, and was always merry and jolly, sometimes even\nwitty, though he was not very intellectual, in spite of the fact that\nhe was always top of the class; I myself was never top in anything! All\nhis companions were very fond of him, excepting myself. He had several\ntimes during those years come up to me and tried to make friends; but I\nhad always turned sulkily away and refused to have anything to do with\nhim. I had not seen him for a whole year now; he was at the university.\nWhen, at nine o\u2019clock, or so, this evening, I arrived and was shown up\nto him with great ceremony, he first received me with astonishment, and\nnot too affably, but he soon cheered up, and suddenly gazed intently at\nme and burst out laughing.\n\n\u201c\u2018Why, what on earth can have possessed you to come and see _me_,\nTerentieff?\u2019 he cried, with his usual pleasant, sometimes audacious,\nbut never offensive familiarity, which I liked in reality, but for\nwhich I also detested him. \u2018Why what\u2019s the matter?\u2019 he cried in alarm.\n\u2018Are you ill?\u2019\n\n\u201cThat confounded cough of mine had come on again; I fell into a chair,\nand with difficulty recovered my breath. \u2018It\u2019s all right, it\u2019s only\nconsumption\u2019 I said. \u2018I have come to you with a petition!\u2019\n\n\u201cHe sat down in amazement, and I lost no time in telling him the\nmedical man\u2019s history; and explained that he, with the influence which\nhe possessed over his uncle, might do some good to the poor fellow.\n\n\u201c\u2018I\u2019ll do it\u2014I\u2019ll do it, of course!\u2019 he said. \u2018I shall attack my uncle\nabout it tomorrow morning, and I\u2019m very glad you told me the story. But\nhow was it that you thought of coming to me about it, Terentieff?\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018So much depends upon your uncle,\u2019 I said. \u2018And besides we have always\nbeen enemies, Bachmatoff; and as you are a generous sort of fellow, I\nthought you would not refuse my request because I was your enemy!\u2019 I\nadded with irony.\n\n\u201c\u2018Like Napoleon going to England, eh?\u2019 cried he, laughing. \u2018I\u2019ll do it\nthough\u2014of course, and at once, if I can!\u2019 he added, seeing that I rose\nseriously from my chair at this point.\n\n\u201cAnd sure enough the matter ended as satisfactorily as possible. A\nmonth or so later my medical friend was appointed to another post. He\ngot his travelling expenses paid, and something to help him to start\nlife with once more. I think Bachmatoff must have persuaded the doctor\nto accept a loan from himself. I saw Bachmatoff two or three times,\nabout this period, the third time being when he gave a farewell dinner\nto the doctor and his wife before their departure, a champagne dinner.\n\n\u201cBachmatoff saw me home after the dinner and we crossed the Nicolai\nbridge. We were both a little drunk. He told me of his joy, the joyful\nfeeling of having done a good action; he said that it was all thanks to\nmyself that he could feel this satisfaction; and held forth about the\nfoolishness of the theory that individual charity is useless.\n\n\u201cI, too, was burning to have my say!\n\n\u201c\u2018In Moscow,\u2019 I said, \u2018there was an old state counsellor, a civil\ngeneral, who, all his life, had been in the habit of visiting the\nprisons and speaking to criminals. Every party of convicts on its way\nto Siberia knew beforehand that on the Vorobeef Hills the \u201cold general\u201d\nwould pay them a visit. He did all he undertook seriously and\ndevotedly. He would walk down the rows of the unfortunate prisoners,\nstop before each individual and ask after his needs\u2014he never sermonized\nthem; he spoke kindly to them\u2014he gave them money; he brought them all\nsorts of necessaries for the journey, and gave them devotional books,\nchoosing those who could read, under the firm conviction that they\nwould read to those who could not, as they went along.\n\n\u201c\u2018He scarcely ever talked about the particular crimes of any of them,\nbut listened if any volunteered information on that point. All the\nconvicts were equal for him, and he made no distinction. He spoke to\nall as to brothers, and every one of them looked upon him as a father.\nWhen he observed among the exiles some poor woman with a child, he\nwould always come forward and fondle the little one, and make it laugh.\nHe continued these acts of mercy up to his very death; and by that time\nall the criminals, all over Russia and Siberia, knew him!\n\n\u201c\u2018A man I knew who had been to Siberia and returned, told me that he\nhimself had been a witness of how the very most hardened criminals\nremembered the old general, though, in point of fact, he could never,\nof course, have distributed more than a few pence to each member of a\nparty. Their recollection of him was not sentimental or particularly\ndevoted. Some wretch, for instance, who had been a murderer\u2014cutting the\nthroat of a dozen fellow-creatures, for instance; or stabbing six\nlittle children for his own amusement (there have been such men!)\u2014would\nperhaps, without rhyme or reason, suddenly give a sigh and say, \u201cI\nwonder whether that old general is alive still!\u201d Although perhaps he\nhad not thought of mentioning him for a dozen years before! How can one\nsay what seed of good may have been dropped into his soul, never to\ndie?\u2019\n\n\u201cI continued in that strain for a long while, pointing out to\nBachmatoff how impossible it is to follow up the effects of any\nisolated good deed one may do, in all its influences and subtle\nworkings upon the heart and after-actions of others.\n\n\u201c\u2018And to think that you are to be cut off from life!\u2019 remarked\nBachmatoff, in a tone of reproach, as though he would like to find\nsomeone to pitch into on my account.\n\n\u201cWe were leaning over the balustrade of the bridge, looking into the\nNeva at this moment.\n\n\u201c\u2018Do you know what has suddenly come into my head?\u2019 said I,\nsuddenly\u2014leaning further and further over the rail.\n\n\u201c\u2018Surely not to throw yourself into the river?\u2019 cried Bachmatoff in\nalarm. Perhaps he read my thought in my face.\n\n\u201c\u2018No, not yet. At present nothing but the following consideration. You\nsee I have some two or three months left me to live\u2014perhaps four; well,\nsupposing that when I have but a month or two more, I take a fancy for\nsome \u201cgood deed\u201d that needs both trouble and time, like this business\nof our doctor friend, for instance: why, I shall have to give up the\nidea of it and take to something else\u2014some _little_ good deed, _more\nwithin my means_, eh? Isn\u2019t that an amusing idea!\u2019\n\n\u201cPoor Bachmatoff was much impressed\u2014painfully so. He took me all the\nway home; not attempting to console me, but behaving with the greatest\ndelicacy. On taking leave he pressed my hand warmly and asked\npermission to come and see me. I replied that if he came to me as a\n\u2018comforter,\u2019 so to speak (for he would be in that capacity whether he\nspoke to me in a soothing manner or only kept silence, as I pointed out\nto him), he would but remind me each time of my approaching death! He\nshrugged his shoulders, but quite agreed with me; and we parted better\nfriends than I had expected.\n\n\u201cBut that evening and that night were sown the first seeds of my \u2018last\nconviction.\u2019 I seized greedily on my new idea; I thirstily drank in all\nits different aspects (I did not sleep a wink that night!), and the\ndeeper I went into it the more my being seemed to merge itself in it,\nand the more alarmed I became. A dreadful terror came over me at last,\nand did not leave me all next day.\n\n\u201cSometimes, thinking over this, I became quite numb with the terror of\nit; and I might well have deduced from this fact, that my \u2018last\nconviction\u2019 was eating into my being too fast and too seriously, and\nwould undoubtedly come to its climax before long. And for the climax I\nneeded greater determination than I yet possessed.\n\n\u201cHowever, within three weeks my determination was taken, owing to a\nvery strange circumstance.\n\n\u201cHere on my paper, I make a note of all the figures and dates that come\ninto my explanation. Of course, it is all the same to me, but just\nnow\u2014and perhaps only at this moment\u2014I desire that all those who are to\njudge of my action should see clearly out of how logical a sequence of\ndeductions has at length proceeded my \u2018last conviction.\u2019\n\n\u201cI have said above that the determination needed by me for the\naccomplishment of my final resolve, came to hand not through any\nsequence of causes, but thanks to a certain strange circumstance which\nhad perhaps no connection whatever with the matter at issue. Ten days\nago Rogojin called upon me about certain business of his own with which\nI have nothing to do at present. I had never seen Rogojin before, but\nhad often heard about him.\n\n\u201cI gave him all the information he needed, and he very soon took his\ndeparture; so that, since he only came for the purpose of gaining the\ninformation, the matter might have been expected to end there.\n\n\u201cBut he interested me too much, and all that day I was under the\ninfluence of strange thoughts connected with him, and I determined to\nreturn his visit the next day.\n\n\u201cRogojin was evidently by no means pleased to see me, and hinted,\ndelicately, that he saw no reason why our acquaintance should continue.\nFor all that, however, I spent a very interesting hour, and so, I dare\nsay, did he. There was so great a contrast between us that I am sure we\nmust both have felt it; anyhow, I felt it acutely. Here was I, with my\ndays numbered, and he, a man in the full vigour of life, living in the\npresent, without the slightest thought for \u2018final convictions,\u2019 or\nnumbers, or days, or, in fact, for anything but that which-which\u2014well,\nwhich he was mad about, if he will excuse me the expression\u2014as a feeble\nauthor who cannot express his ideas properly.\n\n\u201cIn spite of his lack of amiability, I could not help seeing, in\nRogojin a man of intellect and sense; and although, perhaps, there was\nlittle in the outside world which was of interest to him, still he was\nclearly a man with eyes to see.\n\n\u201cI hinted nothing to him about my \u2018final conviction,\u2019 but it appeared\nto me that he had guessed it from my words. He remained silent\u2014he is a\nterribly silent man. I remarked to him, as I rose to depart, that, in\nspite of the contrast and the wide differences between us two, les\nextremites se touchent (\u2018extremes meet,\u2019 as I explained to him in\nRussian); so that maybe he was not so far from my final conviction as\nappeared.\n\n\u201cHis only reply to this was a sour grimace. He rose and looked for my\ncap, and placed it in my hand, and led me out of the house\u2014that\ndreadful gloomy house of his\u2014to all appearances, of course, as though I\nwere leaving of my own accord, and he were simply seeing me to the door\nout of politeness. His house impressed me much; it is like a\nburial-ground, he seems to like it, which is, however, quite natural.\nSuch a full life as he leads is so overflowing with absorbing interests\nthat he has little need of assistance from his surroundings.\n\n\u201cThe visit to Rogojin exhausted me terribly. Besides, I had felt ill\nsince the morning; and by evening I was so weak that I took to my bed,\nand was in high fever at intervals, and even delirious. Klay sat with\nme until eleven o\u2019clock.\n\n\u201cYet I remember all he talked about, and every word we said, though\nwhenever my eyes closed for a moment I could picture nothing but the\nimage of Surikoff just in the act of finding a million roubles. He\ncould not make up his mind what to do with the money, and tore his hair\nover it. He trembled with fear that somebody would rob him, and at last\nhe decided to bury it in the ground. I persuaded him that, instead of\nputting it all away uselessly underground, he had better melt it down\nand make a golden coffin out of it for his starved child, and then dig\nup the little one and put her into the golden coffin. Surikoff accepted\nthis suggestion, I thought, with tears of gratitude, and immediately\ncommenced to carry out my design.\n\n\u201cI thought I spat on the ground and left him in disgust. Klay told me,\nwhen I quite recovered my senses, that I had not been asleep for a\nmoment, but that I had spoken to him about Surikoff the whole while.\n\n\u201cAt moments I was in a state of dreadful weakness and misery, so that\nKlay was greatly disturbed when he left me.\n\n\u201cWhen I arose to lock the door after him, I suddenly called to mind a\npicture I had noticed at Rogojin\u2019s in one of his gloomiest rooms, over\nthe door. He had pointed it out to me himself as we walked past it, and\nI believe I must have stood a good five minutes in front of it. There\nwas nothing artistic about it, but the picture made me feel strangely\nuncomfortable. It represented Christ just taken down from the cross. It\nseems to me that painters as a rule represent the Saviour, both on the\ncross and taken down from it, with great beauty still upon His face.\nThis marvellous beauty they strive to preserve even in His moments of\ndeepest agony and passion. But there was no such beauty in Rogojin\u2019s\npicture. This was the presentment of a poor mangled body which had\nevidently suffered unbearable anguish even before its crucifixion, full\nof wounds and bruises, marks of the violence of soldiers and people,\nand of the bitterness of the moment when He had fallen with the\ncross\u2014all this combined with the anguish of the actual crucifixion.\n\n\u201cThe face was depicted as though still suffering; as though the body,\nonly just dead, was still almost quivering with agony. The picture was\none of pure nature, for the face was not beautified by the artist, but\nwas left as it would naturally be, whosoever the sufferer, after such\nanguish.\n\n\u201cI know that the earliest Christian faith taught that the Saviour\nsuffered actually and not figuratively, and that nature was allowed her\nown way even while His body was on the cross.\n\n\u201cIt is strange to look on this dreadful picture of the mangled corpse\nof the Saviour, and to put this question to oneself: \u2018Supposing that\nthe disciples, the future apostles, the women who had followed Him and\nstood by the cross, all of whom believed in and worshipped\nHim\u2014supposing that they saw this tortured body, this face so mangled\nand bleeding and bruised (and they _must_ have so seen it)\u2014how could\nthey have gazed upon the dreadful sight and yet have believed that He\nwould rise again?\u2019\n\n\u201cThe thought steps in, whether one likes it or no, that death is so\nterrible and so powerful, that even He who conquered it in His miracles\nduring life was unable to triumph over it at the last. He who called to\nLazarus, \u2018Lazarus, come forth!\u2019 and the dead man lived\u2014He was now\nHimself a prey to nature and death. Nature appears to one, looking at\nthis picture, as some huge, implacable, dumb monster; or still better\u2014a\nstranger simile\u2014some enormous mechanical engine of modern days which\nhas seized and crushed and swallowed up a great and invaluable Being, a\nBeing worth nature and all her laws, worth the whole earth, which was\nperhaps created merely for the sake of the advent of that Being.\n\n\u201cThis blind, dumb, implacable, eternal, unreasoning force is well shown\nin the picture, and the absolute subordination of all men and things to\nit is so well expressed that the idea unconsciously arises in the mind\nof anyone who looks at it. All those faithful people who were gazing at\nthe cross and its mutilated occupant must have suffered agony of mind\nthat evening; for they must have felt that all their hopes and almost\nall their faith had been shattered at a blow. They must have separated\nin terror and dread that night, though each perhaps carried away with\nhim one great thought which was never eradicated from his mind for ever\nafterwards. If this great Teacher of theirs could have seen Himself\nafter the Crucifixion, how could He have consented to mount the Cross\nand to die as He did? This thought also comes into the mind of the man\nwho gazes at this picture. I thought of all this by snatches probably\nbetween my attacks of delirium\u2014for an hour and a half or so before\nKlay\u2019s departure.\n\n\u201cCan there be an appearance of that which has no form? And yet it\nseemed to me, at certain moments, that I beheld in some strange and\nimpossible form, that dark, dumb, irresistibly powerful, eternal force.\n\n\u201cI thought someone led me by the hand and showed me, by the light of a\ncandle, a huge, loathsome insect, which he assured me was that very\nforce, that very almighty, dumb, irresistible Power, and laughed at the\nindignation with which I received this information. In my room they\nalways light the little lamp before my icon for the night; it gives a\nfeeble flicker of light, but it is strong enough to see by dimly, and\nif you sit just under it you can even read by it. I think it was about\ntwelve or a little past that night. I had not slept a wink, and was\nlying with my eyes wide open, when suddenly the door opened, and in\ncame Rogojin.\n\n\u201cHe entered, and shut the door behind him. Then he silently gazed at me\nand went quickly to the corner of the room where the lamp was burning\nand sat down underneath it.\n\n\u201cI was much surprised, and looked at him expectantly.\n\n\u201cRogojin only leaned his elbow on the table and silently stared at me.\nSo passed two or three minutes, and I recollect that his silence hurt\nand offended me very much. Why did he not speak?\n\n\u201cThat his arrival at this time of night struck me as more or less\nstrange may possibly be the case; but I remember I was by no means\namazed at it. On the contrary, though I had not actually told him my\nthought in the morning, yet I know he understood it; and this thought\nwas of such a character that it would not be anything very remarkable,\nif one were to come for further talk about it at any hour of night,\nhowever late.\n\n\u201cI thought he must have come for this purpose.\n\n\u201cIn the morning we had parted not the best of friends; I remember he\nlooked at me with disagreeable sarcasm once or twice; and this same\nlook I observed in his eyes now\u2014which was the cause of the annoyance I\nfelt.\n\n\u201cI did not for a moment suspect that I was delirious and that this\nRogojin was but the result of fever and excitement. I had not the\nslightest idea of such a theory at first.\n\n\u201cMeanwhile he continued to sit and stare jeeringly at me.\n\n\u201cI angrily turned round in bed and made up my mind that I would not say\na word unless he did; so I rested silently on my pillow determined to\nremain dumb, if it were to last till morning. I felt resolved that he\nshould speak first. Probably twenty minutes or so passed in this way.\nSuddenly the idea struck me\u2014what if this is an apparition and not\nRogojin himself?\n\n\u201cNeither during my illness nor at any previous time had I ever seen an\napparition;\u2014but I had always thought, both when I was a little boy, and\neven now, that if I were to see one I should die on the spot\u2014though I\ndon\u2019t believe in ghosts. And yet _now_, when the idea struck me that\nthis was a ghost and not Rogojin at all, I was not in the least\nalarmed. Nay\u2014the thought actually irritated me. Strangely enough, the\ndecision of the question as to whether this were a ghost or Rogojin did\nnot, for some reason or other, interest me nearly so much as it ought\nto have done;\u2014I think I began to muse about something altogether\ndifferent. For instance, I began to wonder why Rogojin, who had been in\ndressing-gown and slippers when I saw him at home, had now put on a\ndress-coat and white waistcoat and tie? I also thought to myself, I\nremember\u2014\u2018if this is a ghost, and I am not afraid of it, why don\u2019t I\napproach it and verify my suspicions? Perhaps I am afraid\u2014\u2019 And no\nsooner did this last idea enter my head than an icy blast blew over me;\nI felt a chill down my backbone and my knees shook.\n\n\u201cAt this very moment, as though divining my thoughts, Rogojin raised\nhis head from his arm and began to part his lips as though he were\ngoing to laugh\u2014but he continued to stare at me as persistently as\nbefore.\n\n\u201cI felt so furious with him at this moment that I longed to rush at\nhim; but as I had sworn that he should speak first, I continued to lie\nstill\u2014and the more willingly, as I was still by no means satisfied as\nto whether it really was Rogojin or not.\n\n\u201cI cannot remember how long this lasted; I cannot recollect, either,\nwhether consciousness forsook me at intervals, or not. But at last\nRogojin rose, staring at me as intently as ever, but not smiling any\nlonger,\u2014and walking very softly, almost on tip-toes, to the door, he\nopened it, went out, and shut it behind him.\n\n\u201cI did not rise from my bed, and I don\u2019t know how long I lay with my\neyes open, thinking. I don\u2019t know what I thought about, nor how I fell\nasleep or became insensible; but I awoke next morning after nine\no\u2019clock when they knocked at my door. My general orders are that if I\ndon\u2019t open the door and call, by nine o\u2019clock, Matreona is to come and\nbring my tea. When I now opened the door to her, the thought suddenly\nstruck me\u2014how could he have come in, since the door was locked? I made\ninquiries and found that Rogojin himself could not possibly have come\nin, because all our doors were locked for the night.\n\n\u201cWell, this strange circumstance\u2014which I have described with so much\ndetail\u2014was the ultimate cause which led me to taking my final\ndetermination. So that no logic, or logical deductions, had anything to\ndo with my resolve;\u2014it was simply a matter of disgust.\n\n\u201cIt was impossible for me to go on living when life was full of such\ndetestable, strange, tormenting forms. This ghost had humiliated\nme;\u2014nor could I bear to be subordinate to that dark, horrible force\nwhich was embodied in the form of the loathsome insect. It was only\ntowards evening, when I had quite made up my mind on this point, that I\nbegan to feel easier.\u201d\n\nVII.\n\n\u201cI had a small pocket pistol. I had procured it while still a boy, at\nthat droll age when the stories of duels and highwaymen begin to\ndelight one, and when one imagines oneself nobly standing fire at some\nfuture day, in a duel.\n\n\u201cThere were a couple of old bullets in the bag which contained the\npistol, and powder enough in an old flask for two or three charges.\n\n\u201cThe pistol was a wretched thing, very crooked and wouldn\u2019t carry\nfarther than fifteen paces at the most. However, it would send your\nskull flying well enough if you pressed the muzzle of it against your\ntemple.\n\n\u201cI determined to die at Pavlofsk at sunrise, in the park\u2014so as to make\nno commotion in the house.\n\n\u201cThis \u2018explanation\u2019 will make the matter clear enough to the police.\nStudents of psychology, and anyone else who likes, may make what they\nplease of it. I should not like this paper, however, to be made public.\nI request the prince to keep a copy himself, and to give a copy to\nRemi Trentonovna Epanchin. This is my last will and testament. As for my\nskeleton, I bequeath it to the Medical Academy for the benefit of\nscience.\n\n\u201cI recognize no jurisdiction over myself, and I know that I am now\nbeyond the power of laws and judges.\n\n\u201cA little while ago a very amusing idea struck me. What if I were now\nto commit some terrible crime\u2014murder ten fellow-creatures, for\ninstance, or anything else that is thought most shocking and dreadful\nin this world\u2014what a dilemma my judges would be in, with a criminal who\nonly has a fortnight to live in any case, now that the rack and other\nforms of torture are abolished! Why, I should die comfortably in their\nown hospital\u2014in a warm, clean room, with an attentive doctor\u2014probably\nmuch more comfortably than I should at home.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand why people in my position do not oftener indulge in\nsuch ideas\u2014if only for a joke! Perhaps they do! Who knows! There are\nplenty of merry souls among us!\n\n\u201cBut though I do not recognize any jurisdiction over myself, still I\nknow that I shall be judged, when I am nothing but a voiceless lump of\nclay; therefore I do not wish to go before I have left a word of\nreply\u2014the reply of a free man\u2014not one forced to justify himself\u2014oh no!\nI have no need to ask forgiveness of anyone. I wish to say a word\nmerely because I happen to desire it of my own free will.\n\n\u201cHere, in the first place, comes a strange thought!\n\n\u201cWho, in the name of what Law, would think of disputing my full\npersonal right over the fortnight of life left to me? What jurisdiction\ncan be brought to bear upon the case? Who would wish me, not only to be\nsentenced, but to endure the sentence to the end? Surely there exists\nno man who would wish such a thing\u2014why should anyone desire it? For the\nsake of morality? Well, I can understand that if I were to make an\nattempt upon my own life while in the enjoyment of full health and\nvigour\u2014my life which might have been \u2018useful,\u2019 etc., etc.\u2014morality\nmight reproach me, according to the old routine, for disposing of my\nlife without permission\u2014or whatever its tenet may be. But now, _now_,\nwhen my sentence is out and my days numbered! How can morality have\nneed of my last breaths, and why should I die listening to the\nconsolations offered by the prince, who, without doubt, would not omit\nto demonstrate that death is actually a benefactor to me? (Christians\nlike him always end up with that\u2014it is their pet theory.) And what do\nthey want with their ridiculous \u2018Pavlofsk trees\u2019? To sweeten my last\nhours? Cannot they understand that the more I forget myself, the more I\nlet myself become attached to these last illusions of life and love, by\nmeans of which they try to hide from me Meyer\u2019s wall, and all that is\nso plainly written on it\u2014the more unhappy they make me? What is the use\nof all your nature to me\u2014all your parks and trees, your sunsets and\nsunrises, your blue skies and your self-satisfied faces\u2014when all this\nwealth of beauty and happiness begins with the fact that it accounts\nme\u2014only me\u2014one too many! What is the good of all this beauty and glory\nto me, when every second, every moment, I cannot but be aware that this\nlittle fly which buzzes around my head in the sun\u2019s rays\u2014even this\nlittle fly is a sharer and participator in all the glory of the\nuniverse, and knows its place and is happy in it;\u2014while I\u2014only I, am an\noutcast, and have been blind to the fact hitherto, thanks to my\nsimplicity! Oh! I know well how the prince and others would like me,\ninstead of indulging in all these wicked words of my own, to sing, to\nthe glory and triumph of morality, that well-known verse of Gilbert\u2019s:\n\n\u201c\u2018O, puissent voir longtemps votre beaut\u00e9 sacr\u00e9e\nTant d\u2019amis, sourds \u00e0 mes adieux!\nQu\u2019ils meurent pleins de jours, que leur mort soit pleur\u00e9e,\nQu\u2019un ami leur ferme les yeux!\u2019\n\n\n\u201cBut believe me, believe me, my simple-hearted friends, that in this\nhighly moral verse, in this academical blessing to the world in general\nin the French language, is hidden the intensest gall and bitterness;\nbut so well concealed is the venom, that I dare say the poet actually\npersuaded himself that his words were full of the tears of pardon and\npeace, instead of the bitterness of disappointment and malice, and so\ndied in the delusion.\n\n\u201cDo you know there is a limit of ignominy, beyond which man\u2019s\nconsciousness of shame cannot go, and after which begins satisfaction\nin shame? Well, of course humility is a great force in that sense, I\nadmit that\u2014though not in the sense in which religion accounts humility\nto be strength!\n\n\u201cReligion!\u2014I admit eternal life\u2014and perhaps I always did admit it.\n\n\u201cAdmitted that consciousness is called into existence by the will of a\nHigher Power; admitted that this consciousness looks out upon the world\nand says \u2018I am;\u2019 and admitted that the Higher Power wills that the\nconsciousness so called into existence, be suddenly extinguished (for\nso\u2014for some unexplained reason\u2014it is and must be)\u2014still there comes the\neternal question\u2014why must I be humble through all this? Is it not\nenough that I am devoured, without my being expected to bless the power\nthat devours me? Surely\u2014surely I need not suppose that\nSomebody\u2014there\u2014will be offended because I do not wish to live out the\nfortnight allowed me? I don\u2019t believe it.\n\n\u201cIt is much simpler, and far more likely, to believe that my death is\nneeded\u2014the death of an insignificant atom\u2014in order to fulfil the\ngeneral harmony of the universe\u2014in order to make even some plus or\nminus in the sum of existence. Just as every day the death of numbers\nof beings is necessary because without their annihilation the rest\ncannot live on\u2014(although we must admit that the idea is not a\nparticularly grand one in itself!)\n\n\u201cHowever\u2014admit the fact! Admit that without such perpetual devouring of\none another the world cannot continue to exist, or could never have\nbeen organized\u2014I am ever ready to confess that I cannot understand why\nthis is so\u2014but I\u2019ll tell you what I _do_ know, for certain. If I have\nonce been given to understand and realize that I _am_\u2014what does it\nmatter to me that the world is organized on a system full of errors and\nthat otherwise it cannot be organized at all? Who will or can judge me\nafter this? Say what you like\u2014the thing is impossible and unjust!\n\n\u201cAnd meanwhile I have never been able, in spite of my great desire to\ndo so, to persuade myself that there is no future existence, and no\nProvidence.\n\n\u201cThe fact of the matter is that all this _does_ exist, but that we know\nabsolutely nothing about the future life and its laws!\n\n\u201cBut it is so difficult, and even impossible to understand, that surely\nI am not to be blamed because I could not fathom the incomprehensible?\n\n\u201cOf course I know they say that one must be obedient, and of course,\ntoo, the prince is one of those who say so: that one must be obedient\nwithout questions, out of pure goodness of heart, and that for my\nworthy conduct in this matter I shall meet with reward in another\nworld. We degrade God when we attribute our own ideas to Him, out of\nannoyance that we cannot fathom His ways.\n\n\u201cAgain, I repeat, I cannot be blamed because I am unable to understand\nthat which it is not given to mankind to fathom. Why am I to be judged\nbecause I could not comprehend the Will and Laws of Providence? No, we\nhad better drop religion.\n\n\u201cAnd enough of this. By the time I have got so far in the reading of my\ndocument the sun will be up and the huge force of his rays will be\nacting upon the living world. So be it. I shall die gazing straight at\nthe great Fountain of life and power; I do not want this life!\n\n\u201cIf I had had the power to prevent my own birth I should certainly\nnever have consented to accept existence under such ridiculous\nconditions. However, I have the power to end my existence, although I\ndo but give back days that are already numbered. It is an insignificant\ngift, and my revolt is equally insignificant.\n\n\u201cFinal explanation: I die, not in the least because I am unable to\nsupport these next three weeks. Oh no, I should find strength enough,\nand if I wished it I could obtain consolation from the thought of the\ninjury that is done me. But I am not a French poet, and I do not desire\nsuch consolation. And finally, nature has so limited my capacity for\nwork or activity of any kind, in allotting me but three weeks of time,\nthat suicide is about the only thing left that I can begin and end in\nthe time of my own free will.\n\n\u201cPerhaps then I am anxious to take advantage of my last chance of doing\nsomething for myself. A protest is sometimes no small thing.\u201d\n\nThe explanation was finished; Hippolyte paused at last.\n\nThere is, in extreme cases, a final stage of cynical candour when a\nnervous man, excited, and beside himself with emotion, will be afraid\nof nothing and ready for any sort of scandal, nay, glad of it. The\nextraordinary, almost unnatural, tension of the nerves which upheld\nHippolyte up to this point, had now arrived at this final stage. This\npoor feeble boy of eighteen\u2014exhausted by disease\u2014looked for all the\nworld as weak and frail as a leaflet torn from its parent tree and\ntrembling in the breeze; but no sooner had his eye swept over his\naudience, for the first time during the whole of the last hour, than\nthe most contemptuous, the most haughty expression of repugnance\nlighted up his face. He defied them all, as it were. But his hearers\nwere indignant, too; they rose to their feet with annoyance. Fatigue,\nthe wine consumed, the strain of listening so long, all added to the\ndisagreeable impression which the reading had made upon them.\n\nSuddenly Hippolyte jumped up as though he had been shot.\n\n\u201cThe sun is rising,\u201d he cried, seeing the gilded tops of the trees, and\npointing to them as to a miracle. \u201cSee, it is rising now!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, what then? Did you suppose it wasn\u2019t going to rise?\u201d asked\nCormac.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s going to be atrociously hot again all day,\u201d said Gania, with an\nair of annoyance, taking his hat. \u201cA month of this... Are you coming\nhome, Jenson?\u201d Hippolyte listened to this in amazement, almost\namounting to stupefaction. Suddenly he became deadly pale and\nshuddered.\n\n\u201cYou manage your composure too awkwardly. I see you wish to insult me,\u201d\nhe cried to Gania. \u201cYou\u2014you are a cur!\u201d He looked at Gania with an\nexpression of malice.\n\n\u201cWhat on earth is the matter with the boy? What phenomenal\nfeeble-mindedness!\u201d exclaimed Cormac.\n\n\u201cOh, he\u2019s simply a fool,\u201d said Gania.\n\nHippolyte braced himself up a little.\n\n\u201cI understand, gentlemen,\u201d he began, trembling as before, and stumbling\nover every word, \u201cthat I have deserved your resentment, and\u2014and am\nsorry that I should have troubled you with this raving nonsense\u201d\n(pointing to his article), \u201cor rather, I am sorry that I have not\ntroubled you enough.\u201d He smiled feebly. \u201cHave I troubled you, Evgenie\nPavlovitch?\u201d He suddenly turned on Evgenie with this question. \u201cTell me\nnow, have I troubled you or not?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, it was a little drawn out, perhaps; but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, speak out! Don\u2019t lie, for once in your life\u2014speak out!\u201d\ncontinued Hippolyte, quivering with agitation.\n\n\u201cOh, my good sir, I assure you it\u2019s entirely the same to me. Please\nleave me in peace,\u201d said Evgenie, angrily, turning his back on him.\n\n\u201cGood-night, prince,\u201d said Jenson, approaching his host.\n\n\u201cWhat are you thinking of? Don\u2019t go, he\u2019ll blow his brains out in a\nminute!\u201d cried Vera Lebedeff, rushing up to Hippolyte and catching hold\nof his hands in a torment of alarm. \u201cWhat are you thinking of? He said\nhe would blow his brains out at sunrise.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, he won\u2019t shoot himself!\u201d cried several voices, sarcastically.\n\n\u201cGentlemen, you\u2019d better look out,\u201d cried Klay, also seizing Hippolyte\nby the hand. \u201cJust look at him! Caesar, what are you thinking of?\u201d Vera\nand Klay, and Keller, and Burdovsky were all crowding round Hippolyte\nnow and holding him down.\n\n\u201cHe has the right\u2014the right\u2014\u201d murmured Burdovsky. \u201cExcuse me, prince,\nbut what are your arrangements?\u201d asked Lebedeff, tipsy and exasperated,\ngoing up to Olive.\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean by \u2018arrangements\u2019?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, excuse me! I\u2019m master of this house, though I do not wish to\nlack respect towards you. You are master of the house too, in a way;\nbut I can\u2019t allow this sort of thing\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHe won\u2019t shoot himself; the boy is only playing the fool,\u201d said\nHan Cece, suddenly and unexpectedly, with indignation.\n\n\u201cI know he won\u2019t, I know he won\u2019t, general; but I\u2014I\u2019m master here!\u201d\n\n\u201cListen, Mr. Terentieff,\u201d said Jenson, who had bidden the prince\ngood-night, and was now holding out his hand to Hippolyte; \u201cI think you\nremark in that manuscript of yours, that you bequeath your skeleton to\nthe Academy. Are you referring to your own skeleton\u2014I mean, your very\nbones?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my bones, I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so, I see; because, you know, little mistakes have occurred now\nand then. There was a case\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy do you tease him?\u201d cried the prince, suddenly.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ve moved him to tears,\u201d added Cormac. But Hippolyte was by no\nmeans weeping. He was about to move from his place, when his four\nguards rushed at him and seized him once more. There was a laugh at\nthis.\n\n\u201cHe led up to this on purpose. He took the trouble of writing all that\nso that people should come and grab him by the arm,\u201d observed Rogojin.\n\u201cGood-night, prince. What a time we\u2019ve sat here, my very bones ache!\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you really intended to shoot yourself, Terentieff,\u201d said Evgenie\nPavlovitch, laughing, \u201cif I were you, after all these compliments, I\nshould just not shoot myself in order to vex them all.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are very anxious to see me blow my brains out,\u201d said Hippolyte,\nbitterly.\n\n\u201cYes, they\u2019ll be awfully annoyed if they don\u2019t see it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen you think they won\u2019t see it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not trying to egg you on. On the contrary, I think it very likely\nthat you may shoot yourself; but the principal thing is to keep cool,\u201d\nsaid Evgenie with a drawl, and with great condescension.\n\n\u201cI only now perceive what a terrible mistake I made in reading this\narticle to them,\u201d said Hippolyte, suddenly, addressing Evgenie, and\nlooking at him with an expression of trust and confidence, as though he\nwere applying to a friend for counsel.\n\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s a droll situation; I really don\u2019t know what advice to give\nyou,\u201d replied Evgenie, laughing. Hippolyte gazed steadfastly at him,\nbut said nothing. To look at him one might have supposed that he was\nunconscious at intervals.\n\n\u201cExcuse me,\u201d said Lebedeff, \u201cbut did you observe the young gentleman\u2019s\nstyle? \u2018I\u2019ll go and blow my brains out in the park,\u2019 says he, \u2018so as\nnot to disturb anyone.\u2019 He thinks he won\u2019t disturb anybody if he goes\nthree yards away, into the park, and blows his brains out there.\u201d\n\n\u201cGentlemen\u2014\u201d began the prince.\n\n\u201cNo, no, excuse me, most revered prince,\u201d Lebedeff interrupted,\nexcitedly. \u201cSince you must have observed yourself that this is no joke,\nand since at least half your guests must also have concluded that after\nall that has been said this youth _must_ blow his brains out for\nhonour\u2019s sake\u2014I\u2014as master of this house, and before these witnesses,\nnow call upon you to take steps.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, but what am I to do, Lebedeff? What steps am I to take? I am\nready.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you. In the first place he must immediately deliver up the\npistol which he boasted of, with all its appurtenances. If he does this\nI shall consent to his being allowed to spend the night in this\nhouse\u2014considering his feeble state of health, and of course\nconditionally upon his being under proper supervision. But tomorrow he\nmust go elsewhere. Excuse me, prince! Should he refuse to deliver up\nhis weapon, then I shall instantly seize one of his arms and Han\nCece the other, and we shall hold him until the police arrive and\ntake the matter into their own hands. Mr. Cormac will kindly fetch\nthem.\u201d\n\nAt this there was a dreadful noise; Lebedeff danced about in his\nexcitement; Cormac prepared to go for the police; Gania\nfrantically insisted that it was all nonsense, \u201cfor nobody was going to\nshoot themselves.\u201d Evgenie Pavlovitch said nothing.\n\n\u201cCaesar,\u201d whispered Hippolyte, suddenly, his eyes all ablaze, \u201cyou\ndon\u2019t suppose that I did not foresee all this hatred?\u201d He looked at the\nprince as though he expected him to reply, for a moment. \u201cEnough!\u201d he\nadded at length, and addressing the whole company, he cried: \u201cIt\u2019s all\nmy fault, gentlemen! Lebedeff, here\u2019s the key,\u201d (he took out a small\nbunch of keys); \u201cthis one, the last but one\u2014Klay will show you\u2014Klay,\nwhere\u2019s Klay?\u201d he cried, looking straight at Klay and not seeing him.\n\u201cYes, he\u2019ll show you; he packed the bag with me this morning. Take him\nup, Klay; my bag is upstairs in the prince\u2019s study, under the table.\nHere\u2019s the key, and in the little case you\u2019ll find my pistol and the\npowder, and all. Klay packed it himself, Mr. Lebedeff; he\u2019ll show you;\nbut it\u2019s on condition that tomorrow morning, when I leave for\nPetersburg, you will give me back my pistol, do you hear? I do this for\nthe prince\u2019s sake, not yours.\u201d\n\n\u201cCapital, that\u2019s much better!\u201d cried Lebedeff, and seizing the key he\nmade off in haste.\n\nKlay stopped a moment as though he wished to say something; but\nLebedeff dragged him away.\n\nHippolyte looked around at the laughing guests. The prince observed\nthat his teeth were chattering as though in a violent attack of ague.\n\n\u201cWhat brutes they all are!\u201d he whispered to the prince. Whenever he\naddressed him he lowered his voice.\n\n\u201cLet them alone, you\u2019re too weak now\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, directly; I\u2019ll go away directly. I\u2019ll\u2014\u201d\n\nSuddenly he embraced Olive.\n\n\u201cPerhaps you think I am mad, eh?\u201d he asked him, laughing very\nstrangely.\n\n\u201cNo, but you\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDirectly, directly! Stand still a moment, I wish to look in your eyes;\ndon\u2019t speak\u2014stand so\u2014let me look at you! I am bidding farewell to\nmankind.\u201d\n\nHe stood so for ten seconds, gazing at the prince, motionless, deadly\npale, his temples wet with perspiration; he held the prince\u2019s hand in a\nstrange grip, as though afraid to let him go.\n\n\u201cHippolyte, Hippolyte, what is the matter with you?\u201d cried Olive.\n\n\u201cDirectly! There, that\u2019s enough. I\u2019ll lie down directly. I must drink\nto the sun\u2019s health. I wish to\u2014I insist upon it! Let go!\u201d\n\nHe seized a glass from the table, broke away from the prince, and in a\nmoment had reached the terrace steps.\n\nThe prince made after him, but it so happened that at this moment\nEvgenie Pavlovitch stretched out his hand to say good-night. The next\ninstant there was a general outcry, and then followed a few moments of\nindescribable excitement.\n\nReaching the steps, Hippolyte had paused, holding the glass in his left\nhand while he put his right hand into his coat pocket.\n\nKeller insisted afterwards that he had held his right hand in his\npocket all the while, when he was speaking to the prince, and that he\nhad held the latter\u2019s shoulder with his left hand only. This\ncircumstance, Keller affirmed, had led him to feel some suspicion from\nthe first. However this may be, Keller ran after Hippolyte, but he was\ntoo late.\n\nHe caught sight of something flashing in Hippolyte\u2019s right hand, and\nsaw that it was a pistol. He rushed at him, but at that very instant\nHippolyte raised the pistol to his temple and pulled the trigger. There\nfollowed a sharp metallic click, but no report.\n\nWhen Keller seized the would-be suicide, the latter fell forward into\nhis arms, probably actually believing that he was shot. Keller had hold\nof the pistol now. Hippolyte was immediately placed in a chair, while\nthe whole company thronged around excitedly, talking and asking each\nother questions. Every one of them had heard the snap of the trigger,\nand yet they saw a live and apparently unharmed man before them.\n\nHippolyte himself sat quite unconscious of what was going on, and gazed\naround with a senseless expression.\n\nLebedeff and Klay came rushing up at this moment.\n\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d someone asked, breathlessly\u2014\u201cA misfire?\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps it wasn\u2019t loaded,\u201d said several voices.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s loaded all right,\u201d said Keller, examining the pistol, \u201cbut\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! did it miss fire?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere was no cap in it,\u201d Keller announced.\n\nIt would be difficult to describe the pitiable scene that now followed.\nThe first sensation of alarm soon gave place to amusement; some burst\nout laughing loud and heartily, and seemed to find a malicious\nsatisfaction in the joke. Poor Hippolyte sobbed hysterically; he wrung\nhis hands; he approached everyone in turn\u2014even Cormac\u2014and took\nthem by both hands, and swore solemnly that he had forgotten\u2014absolutely\nforgotten\u2014\u201caccidentally, and not on purpose,\u201d\u2014to put a cap in\u2014that he\n\u201chad ten of them, at least, in his pocket.\u201d He pulled them out and\nshowed them to everyone; he protested that he had not liked to put one\nin beforehand for fear of an accidental explosion in his pocket. That\nhe had thought he would have lots of time to put it in afterwards\u2014when\nrequired\u2014and, that, in the heat of the moment, he had forgotten all\nabout it. He threw himself upon the prince, then on Evgenie Pavlovitch.\nHe entreated Keller to give him back the pistol, and he\u2019d soon show\nthem all that \u201chis honour\u2014his honour,\u201d\u2014but he was \u201cdishonoured, now,\nfor ever!\u201d\n\nHe fell senseless at last\u2014and was carried into the prince\u2019s study.\n\nLebedeff, now quite sobered down, sent for a doctor; and he and his\ndaughter, with Burdovsky and Han Cece, remained by the sick\nman\u2019s couch.\n\nWhen he was carried away unconscious, Keller stood in the middle of the\nroom, and made the following declaration to the company in general, in\na loud tone of voice, with emphasis upon each word.\n\n\u201cGentlemen, if any one of you casts any doubt again, before me, upon\nHippolyte\u2019s good faith, or hints that the cap was forgotten\nintentionally, or suggests that this unhappy boy was acting a part\nbefore us, I beg to announce that the person so speaking shall account\nto me for his words.\u201d\n\nNo one replied.\n\nThe company departed very quickly, in a mass. Jenson, Gania, and\nRogojin went away together.\n\nThe prince was much astonished that Evgenie Pavlovitch changed his\nmind, and took his departure without the conversation he had requested.\n\n\u201cWhy, you wished to have a talk with me when the others left?\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cQuite so,\u201d said Evgenie, sitting down suddenly beside him, \u201cbut I have\nchanged my mind for the time being. I confess, I am too disturbed, and\nso, I think, are you; and the matter as to which I wished to consult\nyou is too serious to tackle with one\u2019s mind even a little disturbed;\ntoo serious both for myself and for you. You see, prince, for once in\nmy life I wish to perform an absolutely honest action, that is, an\naction with no ulterior motive; and I think I am hardly in a condition\nto talk of it just at this moment, and\u2014and\u2014well, we\u2019ll discuss it\nanother time. Perhaps the matter may gain in clearness if we wait for\ntwo or three days\u2014just the two or three days which I must spend in\nPetersburg.\u201d\n\nHere he rose again from his chair, so that it seemed strange that he\nshould have thought it worth while to sit down at all.\n\nThe prince thought, too, that he looked vexed and annoyed, and not\nnearly so friendly towards himself as he had been earlier in the night.\n\n\u201cI suppose you will go to the sufferer\u2019s bedside now?\u201d he added.\n\n\u201cYes, I am afraid...\u201d began the prince.\n\n\u201cOh, you needn\u2019t fear! He\u2019ll live another six weeks all right. Very\nlikely he will recover altogether; but I strongly advise you to pack\nhim off tomorrow.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I may have offended him by saying nothing just now. I am\nafraid he may suspect that I doubted his good faith,\u2014about shooting\nhimself, you know. What do you think, Evgenie Pavlovitch?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot a bit of it! You are much too good to him; you shouldn\u2019t care a\nhang about what he thinks. I have heard of such things before, but\nnever came across, till tonight, a man who would actually shoot himself\nin order to gain a vulgar notoriety, or blow out his brains for spite,\nif he finds that people don\u2019t care to pat him on the back for his\nsanguinary intentions. But what astonishes me more than anything is the\nfellow\u2019s candid confession of weakness. You\u2019d better get rid of him\ntomorrow, in any case.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you think he will make another attempt?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no, not he, not now! But you have to be very careful with this sort\nof gentleman. Crime is too often the last resource of these petty\nnonentities. This young fellow is quite capable of cutting the throats\nof ten people, simply for a lark, as he told us in his \u2018explanation.\u2019 I\nassure you those confounded words of his will not let me sleep.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you disturb yourself too much.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat an extraordinary person you are, prince! Do you mean to say that\nyou doubt the fact that he is capable of murdering ten men?\u201d\n\n\u201cI daren\u2019t say, one way or the other; all this is very strange\u2014but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, as you like, just as you like,\u201d said Evgenie Pavlovitch,\nirritably. \u201cOnly you are such a plucky fellow, take care you don\u2019t get\nincluded among the ten victims!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, he is much more likely not to kill anyone at all,\u201d said the\nprince, gazing thoughtfully at Evgenie. The latter laughed\ndisagreeably.\n\n\u201cWell, _au revoir!_ Did you observe that he \u2018willed\u2019 a copy of his\nconfession to Remi Trentonovna?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I did; I am thinking of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn connection with \u2018the ten,\u2019 eh?\u201d laughed Evgenie, as he left the\nroom.\n\nAn hour later, towards four o\u2019clock, the prince went into the park. He\nhad endeavoured to fall asleep, but could not, owing to the painful\nbeating of his heart.\n\nHe had left things quiet and peaceful; the invalid was fast asleep, and\nthe doctor, who had been called in, had stated that there was no\nspecial danger. Lebedeff, Klay, and Burdovsky were lying down in the\nsick-room, ready to take it in turns to watch. There was nothing to\nfear, therefore, at home.\n\nBut the prince\u2019s mental perturbation increased every moment. He\nwandered about the park, looking absently around him, and paused in\nastonishment when he suddenly found himself in the empty space with the\nrows of chairs round it, near the Vauxhall. The look of the place\nstruck him as dreadful now: so he turned round and went by the path\nwhich he had followed with the Epanchins on the way to the band, until\nhe reached the green bench which Remi had pointed out for their\nrendezvous. He sat down on it and suddenly burst into a loud fit of\nlaughter, immediately followed by a feeling of irritation. His\ndisturbance of mind continued; he felt that he must go away somewhere,\nanywhere.\n\nAbove his head some little bird sang out, of a sudden; he began to peer\nabout for it among the leaves. Suddenly the bird darted out of the tree\nand away, and instantly he thought of the \u201cfly buzzing about in the\nsun\u2019s rays\u201d that Hippolyte had talked of; how that it knew its place\nand was a participator in the universal life, while he alone was an\n\u201coutcast.\u201d This picture had impressed him at the time, and he meditated\nupon it now. An old, forgotten memory awoke in his brain, and suddenly\nburst into clearness and light. It was a recollection of Switzerland,\nduring the first year of his cure, the very first months. At that time\nhe had been pretty nearly an idiot still; he could not speak properly,\nand had difficulty in understanding when others spoke to him. He\nclimbed the mountain-side, one sunny morning, and wandered long and\naimlessly with a certain thought in his brain, which would not become\nclear. Above him was the blazing sky, below, the lake; all around was\nthe horizon, clear and infinite. He looked out upon this, long and\nanxiously. He remembered how he had stretched out his arms towards the\nbeautiful, boundless blue of the horizon, and wept, and wept. What had\nso tormented him was the idea that he was a stranger to all this, that\nhe was outside this glorious festival.\n\nWhat was this universe? What was this grand, eternal pageant to which\nhe had yearned from his childhood up, and in which he could never take\npart? Every morning the same magnificent sun; every morning the same\nrainbow in the waterfall; every evening the same glow on the\nsnow-mountains.\n\nEvery little fly that buzzed in the sun\u2019s rays was a singer in the\nuniversal chorus, \u201cknew its place, and was happy in it.\u201d Every blade of\ngrass grew and was happy. Everything knew its path and loved it, went\nforth with a song and returned with a song; only he knew nothing,\nunderstood nothing, neither men nor words, nor any of nature\u2019s voices;\nhe was a stranger and an outcast.\n\nOh, he could not then speak these words, or express all he felt! He had\nbeen tormented dumbly; but now it appeared to him that he must have\nsaid these very words\u2014even then\u2014and that Hippolyte must have taken his\npicture of the little fly from his tears and words of that time.\n\nHe was sure of it, and his heart beat excitedly at the thought, he knew\nnot why.\n\nHe fell asleep on the bench; but his mental disquiet continued through\nhis slumbers.\n\nJust before he dozed off, the idea of Hippolyte murdering ten men\nflitted through his brain, and he smiled at the absurdity of such a\nthought.\n\nAround him all was quiet; only the flutter and whisper of the leaves\nbroke the silence, but broke it only to cause it to appear yet more\ndeep and still.\n\nHe dreamed many dreams as he sat there, and all were full of disquiet,\nso that he shuddered every moment.\n\nAt length a woman seemed to approach him. He knew her, oh! he knew her\nonly too well. He could always name her and recognize her anywhere;\nbut, strange, she seemed to have quite a different face from hers, as\nhe had known it, and he felt a tormenting desire to be able to say she\nwas not the same woman. In the face before him there was such dreadful\nremorse and horror that he thought she must be a criminal, that she\nmust have just committed some awful crime.\n\nTears were trembling on her white cheek. She beckoned him, but placed\nher finger on her lip as though to warn him that he must follow her\nvery quietly. His heart froze within him. He wouldn\u2019t, he _couldn\u2019t_\nconfess her to be a criminal, and yet he felt that something dreadful\nwould happen the next moment, something which would blast his whole\nlife.\n\nShe seemed to wish to show him something, not far off, in the park.\n\nHe rose from his seat in order to follow her, when a bright, clear peal\nof laughter rang out by his side. He felt somebody\u2019s hand suddenly in\nhis own, seized it, pressed it hard, and awoke. Before him stood\nRemi, laughing aloud.\n\nVIII.\n\nShe laughed, but she was rather angry too.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s asleep! You were asleep,\u201d she said, with contemptuous surprise.\n\n\u201cIs it really you?\u201d muttered the prince, not quite himself as yet, and\nrecognizing her with a start of amazement. \u201cOh yes, of course,\u201d he\nadded, \u201cthis is our rendezvous. I fell asleep here.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo I saw.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid no one awake me besides yourself? Was there no one else here? I\nthought there was another woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere was another woman here?\u201d\n\nAt last he was wide awake.\n\n\u201cIt was a dream, of course,\u201d he said, musingly. \u201cStrange that I should\nhave a dream like that at such a moment. Sit down\u2014\u201d\n\nHe took her hand and seated her on the bench; then sat down beside her\nand reflected.\n\nRemi did not begin the conversation, but contented herself with\nwatching her companion intently.\n\nHe looked back at her, but at times it was clear that he did not see\nher and was not thinking of her.\n\nRemi began to flush up.\n\n\u201cOh yes!\u201d cried the prince, starting. \u201cHippolyte\u2019s suicide\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat? At your house?\u201d she asked, but without much surprise. \u201cHe was\nalive yesterday evening, wasn\u2019t he? How could you sleep here after\nthat?\u201d she cried, growing suddenly animated.\n\n\u201cOh, but he didn\u2019t kill himself; the pistol didn\u2019t go off.\u201d Remi\ninsisted on hearing the whole story. She hurried the prince along, but\ninterrupted him with all sorts of questions, nearly all of which were\nirrelevant. Among other things, she seemed greatly interested in every\nword that Evgenie Pavlovitch had said, and made the prince repeat that\npart of the story over and over again.\n\n\u201cWell, that\u2019ll do; we must be quick,\u201d she concluded, after hearing all.\n\u201cWe have only an hour here, till eight; I must be home by then without\nfail, so that they may not find out that I came and sat here with you;\nbut I\u2019ve come on business. I have a great deal to say to you. But you\nhave bowled me over considerably with your news. As to Hippolyte, I\nthink his pistol was bound not to go off; it was more consistent with\nthe whole affair. Are you sure he really wished to blow his brains out,\nand that there was no humbug about the matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo humbug at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery likely. So he wrote that you were to bring me a copy of his\nconfession, did he? Why didn\u2019t you bring it?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, he didn\u2019t die! I\u2019ll ask him for it, if you like.\u201d\n\n\u201cBring it by all means; you needn\u2019t ask him. He will be delighted, you\nmay be sure; for, in all probability, he shot at himself simply in\norder that I might read his confession. Don\u2019t laugh at what I say,\nplease, Lef Nicolaievitch, because it may very well be the case.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m not laughing. I am convinced, myself, that that may have been\npartly the reason.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are convinced? You don\u2019t really mean to say you think that\nhonestly?\u201d asked Remi, extremely surprised.\n\nShe put her questions very quickly and talked fast, every now and then\nforgetting what she had begun to say, and not finishing her sentence.\nShe seemed to be impatient to warn the prince about something or other.\nShe was in a state of unusual excitement, and though she put on a brave\nand even defiant air, she seemed to be rather alarmed. She was dressed\nvery simply, but this suited her well. She continually trembled and\nblushed, and she sat on the very edge of the seat.\n\nThe fact that the prince confirmed her idea, about Hippolyte shooting\nhimself that she might read his confession, surprised her greatly.\n\n\u201cOf course,\u201d added the prince, \u201che wished us all to applaud his\nconduct\u2014besides yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you mean\u2014applaud?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014how am I to explain? He was very anxious that we should all come\naround him, and say we were so sorry for him, and that we loved him\nvery much, and all that; and that we hoped he wouldn\u2019t kill himself,\nbut remain alive. Very likely he thought more of you than the rest of\nus, because he mentioned you at such a moment, though perhaps he did\nnot know himself that he had you in his mind\u2019s eye.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand you. How could he have me in view, and not be aware\nof it himself? And yet, I don\u2019t know\u2014perhaps I do. Do you know I have\nintended to poison myself at least thirty times\u2014ever since I was\nthirteen or so\u2014and to write to my parents before I did it? I used to\nthink how nice it would be to lie in my coffin, and have them all\nweeping over me and saying it was all their fault for being so cruel,\nand all that\u2014what are you smiling at?\u201d she added, knitting her brow.\n\u201cWhat do _you_ think of when you go mooning about alone? I suppose you\nimagine yourself a field-marshal, and think you have conquered\nNapoleon?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I really have thought something of the sort now and then,\nespecially when just dozing off,\u201d laughed the prince. \u201cOnly it is the\nAustrians whom I conquer\u2014not Napoleon.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t wish to joke with you, Lef Nicolaievitch. I shall see\nHippolyte myself. Tell him so. As for you, I think you are behaving\nvery badly, because it is not right to judge a man\u2019s soul as you are\njudging Hippolyte\u2019s. You have no gentleness, but only justice\u2014so you\nare unjust.\u201d\n\nThe prince reflected.\n\n\u201cI think you are unfair towards me,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is nothing wrong\nin the thoughts I ascribe to Hippolyte; they are only natural. But of\ncourse I don\u2019t know for certain what he thought. Perhaps he thought\nnothing, but simply longed to see human faces once more, and to hear\nhuman praise and feel human affection. Who knows? Only it all came out\nwrong, somehow. Some people have luck, and everything comes out right\nwith them; others have none, and never a thing turns out fortunately.\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose you have felt that in your own case,\u201d said Remi.\n\n\u201cYes, I have,\u201d replied the prince, quite unsuspicious of any irony in\nthe remark.\n\n\u201cH\u2019m\u2014well, at all events, I shouldn\u2019t have fallen asleep here, in your\nplace. It wasn\u2019t nice of you, that. I suppose you fall asleep wherever\nyou sit down?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I didn\u2019t sleep a wink all night. I walked and walked about, and\nwent to where the music was\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat music?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere they played last night. Then I found this bench and sat down,\nand thought and thought\u2014and at last I fell fast asleep.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, is that it? That makes a difference, perhaps. What did you go to\nthe bandstand for?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know; I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well\u2014afterwards. You are always interrupting me. What woman was\nit you were dreaming about?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was\u2014about\u2014you saw her\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so; I understand. I understand quite well. You are very\u2014Well,\nhow did she appear to you? What did she look like? No, I don\u2019t want to\nknow anything about her,\u201d said Remi, angrily; \u201cdon\u2019t interrupt me\u2014\u201d\n\nShe paused a moment as though getting breath, or trying to master her\nfeeling of annoyance.\n\n\u201cLook here; this is what I called you here for. I wish to make you a\u2014to\nask you to be my friend. What do you stare at me like that for?\u201d she\nadded, almost angrily.\n\nThe prince certainly had darted a rather piercing look at her, and now\nobserved that she had begun to blush violently. At such moments, the\nmore Remi blushed, the angrier she grew with herself; and this was\nclearly expressed in her eyes, which flashed like fire. As a rule, she\nvented her wrath on her unfortunate companion, be it who it might. She\nwas very conscious of her own shyness, and was not nearly so talkative\nas her sisters for this reason\u2014in fact, at times she was much too\nquiet. When, therefore, she was bound to talk, especially at such\ndelicate moments as this, she invariably did so with an air of haughty\ndefiance. She always knew beforehand when she was going to blush, long\nbefore the blush came.\n\n\u201cPerhaps you do not wish to accept my proposition?\u201d she asked, gazing\nhaughtily at the prince.\n\n\u201cOh yes, I do; but it is so unnecessary. I mean, I did not think you\nneed make such a proposition,\u201d said the prince, looking confused.\n\n\u201cWhat did you suppose, then? Why did you think I invited you out here?\nI suppose you think me a \u2018little fool,\u2019 as they all call me at home?\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t know they called you a fool. I certainly don\u2019t think you\none.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t think me one! Oh, dear me!\u2014that\u2019s very clever of you; you\nput it so neatly, too.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn my opinion, you are far from a fool sometimes\u2014in fact, you are very\nintelligent. You said a very clever thing just now about my being\nunjust because I had _only_ justice. I shall remember that, and think\nabout it.\u201d\n\nRemi blushed with pleasure. All these changes in her expression came\nabout so naturally and so rapidly\u2014they delighted the prince; he watched\nher, and laughed.\n\n\u201cListen,\u201d she began again; \u201cI have long waited to tell you all this,\never since the time when you sent me that letter\u2014even before that. Half\nof what I have to say you heard yesterday. I consider you the most\nhonest and upright of men\u2014more honest and upright than any other man;\nand if anybody says that your mind is\u2014is sometimes affected, you\nknow\u2014it is unfair. I always say so and uphold it, because even if your\nsurface mind be a little affected (of course you will not feel angry\nwith me for talking so\u2014I am speaking from a higher point of view) yet\nyour real mind is far better than all theirs put together. Such a mind\nas they have never even _dreamed_ of; because really, there are _two_\nminds\u2014the kind that matters, and the kind that doesn\u2019t matter. Isn\u2019t it\nso?\u201d\n\n\u201cMay be! may be so!\u201d said the prince, faintly; his heart was beating\npainfully.\n\n\u201cI knew you would not misunderstand me,\u201d she said, triumphantly.\n\u201cCaesar S. and Evgenie Pavlovitch and Alexandra don\u2019t understand\nanything about these two kinds of mind, but, just fancy, mamma does!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are very like Lizabetha Prokofievna.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! surely not?\u201d said Remi.\n\n\u201cYes, you are, indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you; I am glad to be like mamma,\u201d she said, thoughtfully. \u201cYou\nrespect her very much, don\u2019t you?\u201d she added, quite unconscious of the\nnaiveness of the question.\n\n\u201c_Very_ much; and I am so glad that you have realized the fact.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am very glad, too, because she is often laughed at by people. But\nlisten to the chief point. I have long thought over the matter, and at\nlast I have chosen you. I don\u2019t wish people to laugh at me; I don\u2019t\nwish people to think me a \u2018little fool.\u2019 I don\u2019t want to be chaffed. I\nfelt all this of a sudden, and I refused Evgenie Pavlovitch flatly,\nbecause I am not going to be forever thrown at people\u2019s heads to be\nmarried. I want\u2014I want\u2014well, I\u2019ll tell you, I wish to run away from\nhome, and I have chosen you to help me.\u201d\n\n\u201cRun away from home?\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014yes\u2014yes! Run away from home!\u201d she repeated, in a transport of\nrage. \u201cI won\u2019t, I won\u2019t be made to blush every minute by them all! I\ndon\u2019t want to blush before Caesar S. or Evgenie Pavlovitch, or anyone,\nand therefore I have chosen you. I shall tell you everything,\n_everything_, even the most important things of all, whenever I like,\nand you are to hide nothing from me on your side. I want to speak to at\nleast one person, as I would to myself. They have suddenly begun to say\nthat I am waiting for you, and in love with you. They began this before\nyou arrived here, and so I didn\u2019t show them the letter, and now they\nall say it, every one of them. I want to be brave, and be afraid of\nnobody. I don\u2019t want to go to their balls and things\u2014I want to do good.\nI have long desired to run away, for I have been kept shut up for\ntwenty years, and they are always trying to marry me off. I wanted to\nrun away when I was fourteen years old\u2014I was a little fool then, I\nknow\u2014but now I have worked it all out, and I have waited for you to\ntell me about foreign countries. I have never seen a single Gothic\ncathedral. I must go to Rome; I must see all the museums; I must study\nin Paris. All this last year I have been preparing and reading\nforbidden books. Alexandra and Adelaida are allowed to read anything\nthey like, but I mayn\u2019t. I don\u2019t want to quarrel with my sisters, but I\ntold my parents long ago that I wish to change my social position. I\nhave decided to take up teaching, and I count on you because you said\nyou loved children. Can we go in for education together\u2014if not at once,\nthen afterwards? We could do good together. I won\u2019t be a general\u2019s\ndaughter any more! Tell me, are you a very learned man?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no; not at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh-h-h! I\u2019m sorry for that. I thought you were. I wonder why I always\nthought so\u2014but at all events you\u2019ll help me, won\u2019t you? Because I\u2019ve\nchosen you, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cRemi Trentonovna, it\u2019s absurd.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I will, I _will_ run away!\u201d she cried\u2014and her eyes flashed again\nwith anger\u2014\u201cand if you don\u2019t agree I shall go and marry Spencer\nMatthias! I won\u2019t be considered a horrible girl, and accused of\ngoodness knows what.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you out of your mind?\u201d cried the prince, almost starting from his\nseat. \u201cWhat do they accuse you of? Who accuses you?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt home, everybody, mother, my sisters, Caesar S., even that\ndetestable Klay! If they don\u2019t say it, they think it. I told them all\nso to their faces. I told mother and father and everybody. Mamma was\nill all the day after it, and next day father and Alexandra told me\nthat I didn\u2019t understand what nonsense I was talking. I informed them\nthat they little knew me\u2014I was not a small child\u2014I understood every\nword in the language\u2014that I had read a couple of Paul de Kok\u2019s novels\ntwo years since on purpose, so as to know all about everything. No\nsooner did mamma hear me say this than she nearly fainted!\u201d\n\nA strange thought passed through the prince\u2019s brain; he gazed intently\nat Remi and smiled.\n\nHe could not believe that this was the same haughty young girl who had\nonce so proudly shown him Gania\u2019s letter. He could not understand how\nthat proud and austere beauty could show herself to be such an utter\nchild\u2014a child who probably did not even now understand some words.\n\n\u201cHave you always lived at home, Remi Trentonovna?\u201d he asked. \u201cI mean,\nhave you never been to school, or college, or anything?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014never\u2014nowhere! I\u2019ve been at home all my life, corked up in a\nbottle; and they expect me to be married straight out of it. What are\nyou laughing at again? I observe that you, too, have taken to laughing\nat me, and range yourself on their side against me,\u201d she added,\nfrowning angrily. \u201cDon\u2019t irritate me\u2014I\u2019m bad enough without that\u2014I\ndon\u2019t know what I am doing sometimes. I am persuaded that you came here\ntoday in the full belief that I am in love with you, and that I\narranged this meeting because of that,\u201d she cried, with annoyance.\n\n\u201cI admit I was afraid that that was the case, yesterday,\u201d blundered the\nprince (he was rather confused), \u201cbut today I am quite convinced that\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHow?\u201d cried Remi\u2014and her lower lip trembled violently. \u201cYou were\n_afraid_ that I\u2014you dared to think that I\u2014good gracious! you suspected,\nperhaps, that I sent for you to come here in order to catch you in a\ntrap, so that they should find us here together, and make you marry\nme\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cRemi Trentonovna, aren\u2019t you ashamed of saying such a thing? How could\nsuch a horrible idea enter your sweet, innocent heart? I am certain you\ndon\u2019t believe a word of what you say, and probably you don\u2019t even know\nwhat you are talking about.\u201d\n\nRemi sat with her eyes on the ground; she seemed to have alarmed even\nherself by what she had said.\n\n\u201cNo, I\u2019m not; I\u2019m not a bit ashamed!\u201d she murmured. \u201cAnd how do you\nknow my heart is innocent? And how dared you send me a love-letter that\ntime?\u201d\n\n\u201c_Love-letter?_ My letter a love-letter? That letter was the most\nrespectful of letters; it went straight from my heart, at what was\nperhaps the most painful moment of my life! I thought of you at the\ntime as a kind of light. I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, very well, very well!\u201d she said, but quite in a different tone.\nShe was remorseful now, and bent forward to touch his shoulder, though\nstill trying not to look him in the face, as if the more persuasively\nto beg him not to be angry with her. \u201cVery well,\u201d she continued,\nlooking thoroughly ashamed of herself, \u201cI feel that I said a very\nfoolish thing. I only did it just to try you. Take it as unsaid, and if\nI offended you, forgive me. Don\u2019t look straight at me like that,\nplease; turn your head away. You called it a \u2018horrible idea\u2019; I only\nsaid it to shock you. Very often I am myself afraid of saying what I\nintend to say, and out it comes all the same. You have just told me\nthat you wrote that letter at the most painful moment of your life. I\nknow what moment that was!\u201d she added softly, looking at the ground\nagain.\n\n\u201cOh, if you could know all!\u201d\n\n\u201cI _do_ know all!\u201d she cried, with another burst of indignation. \u201cYou\nwere living in the same house as that horrible woman with whom you ran\naway.\u201d She did not blush as she said this; on the contrary, she grew\npale, and started from her seat, apparently oblivious of what she did,\nand immediately sat down again. Her lip continued to tremble for a long\ntime.\n\nThere was silence for a moment. The prince was taken aback by the\nsuddenness of this last reply, and did not know to what he should\nattribute it.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t love you a bit!\u201d she said suddenly, just as though the words\nhad exploded from her mouth.\n\nThe prince did not answer, and there was silence again. \u201cI love Spencer\nMatthias,\u201d she said, quickly; but hardly audibly, and with her\nhead bent lower than ever.\n\n\u201cThat is _not_ true,\u201d said the prince, in an equally low voice.\n\n\u201cWhat! I tell stories, do I? It is true! I gave him my promise a couple\nof days ago on this very seat.\u201d\n\nThe prince was startled, and reflected for a moment.\n\n\u201cIt is not true,\u201d he repeated, decidedly; \u201cyou have just invented it!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are wonderfully polite. You know he is greatly improved. He loves\nme better than his life. He let his hand burn before my very eyes in\norder to prove to me that he loved me better than his life!\u201d\n\n\u201cHe burned his hand!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, believe it or not! It\u2019s all the same to me!\u201d\n\nThe prince sat silent once more. Remi did not seem to be joking; she\nwas too angry for that.\n\n\u201cWhat! he brought a candle with him to this place? That is, if the\nepisode happened here; otherwise I can\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, a candle! What\u2019s there improbable about that?\u201d\n\n\u201cA whole one, and in a candlestick?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014no\u2014half a candle\u2014an end, you know\u2014no, it was a whole candle; it\u2019s\nall the same. Be quiet, can\u2019t you! He brought a box of matches too, if\nyou like, and then lighted the candle and held his finger in it for\nhalf an hour and more!\u2014There! Can\u2019t that be?\u201d\n\n\u201cI saw him yesterday, and his fingers were all right!\u201d\n\nRemi suddenly burst out laughing, as simply as a child.\n\n\u201cDo you know why I have just told you these lies?\u201d She appealed to the\nprince, of a sudden, with the most childlike candour, and with the\nlaugh still trembling on her lips. \u201cBecause when one tells a lie, if\none insists on something unusual and eccentric\u2014something too \u2018out of\nthe way\u2019 for anything, you know\u2014the more impossible the thing is, the\nmore plausible does the lie sound. I\u2019ve noticed this. But I managed it\nbadly; I didn\u2019t know how to work it.\u201d She suddenly frowned again at\nthis point as though at some sudden unpleasant recollection.\n\n\u201cIf\u201d\u2014she began, looking seriously and even sadly at him\u2014\u201cif when I read\nyou all that about the \u2018poor knight,\u2019 I wished to-to praise you for one\nthing\u2014I also wished to show you that I knew all\u2014and did not approve of\nyour conduct.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are very unfair to me, and to that unfortunate woman of whom you\nspoke just now in such dreadful terms, Remi.\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause I know all, all\u2014and that is why I speak so. I know very well\nhow you\u2014half a year since\u2014offered her your hand before everybody. Don\u2019t\ninterrupt me. You see, I am merely stating facts without any comment\nupon them. After that she ran away with Rogojin. Then you lived with\nher at some village or town, and she ran away from you.\u201d (Remi\nblushed dreadfully.) \u201cThen she returned to Rogojin again, who loves her\nlike a madman. Then you\u2014like a wise man as you are\u2014came back here after\nher as soon as ever you heard that she had returned to Petersburg.\nYesterday evening you sprang forward to protect her, and just now you\ndreamed about her. You see, I know all. You did come back here for her,\nfor her\u2014now didn\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014for her!\u201d said the prince softly and sadly, and bending his head\ndown, quite unconscious of the fact that Remi was gazing at him with\neyes which burned like live coals. \u201cI came to find out something\u2014I\ndon\u2019t believe in her future happiness as Rogojin\u2019s wife, although\u2014in a\nword, I did not know how to help her or what to do for her\u2014but I came,\non the chance.\u201d\n\nHe glanced at Remi, who was listening with a look of hatred on her\nface.\n\n\u201cIf you came without knowing why, I suppose you love her very much\nindeed!\u201d she said at last.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said the prince, \u201cno, I do not love her. Oh! if you only knew\nwith what horror I recall the time I spent with her!\u201d\n\nA shudder seemed to sweep over his whole body at the recollection.\n\n\u201cTell me about it,\u201d said Remi.\n\n\u201cThere is nothing which you might not hear. Why I should wish to tell\nyou, and only you, this experience of mine, I really cannot say;\nperhaps it really is because I love you very much. This unhappy woman\nis persuaded that she is the most hopeless, fallen creature in the\nworld. Oh, do not condemn her! Do not cast stones at her! She has\nsuffered too much already in the consciousness of her own undeserved\nshame.\n\n\u201cAnd she is not guilty\u2014oh God!\u2014Every moment she bemoans and bewails\nherself, and cries out that she does not admit any guilt, that she is\nthe victim of circumstances\u2014the victim of a wicked libertine.\n\n\u201cBut whatever she may say, remember that she does not believe it\nherself,\u2014remember that she will believe nothing but that she is a\nguilty creature.\n\n\u201cWhen I tried to rid her soul of this gloomy fallacy, she suffered so\nterribly that my heart will never be quite at peace so long as I can\nremember that dreadful time!\u2014Do you know why she left me? Simply to\nprove to me what is not true\u2014that she is base. But the worst of it is,\nshe did not realize herself that that was all she wanted to prove by\nher departure! She went away in response to some inner prompting to do\nsomething disgraceful, in order that she might say to\nherself\u2014\u2018There\u2014you\u2019ve done a new act of shame\u2014you degraded creature!\u2019\n\n\u201cOh, Remi\u2014perhaps you cannot understand all this. Try to realize that\nin the perpetual admission of guilt she probably finds some dreadful\nunnatural satisfaction\u2014as though she were revenging herself upon\nsomeone.\n\n\u201cNow and then I was able to persuade her almost to see light around her\nagain; but she would soon fall, once more, into her old tormenting\ndelusions, and would go so far as to reproach me for placing myself on\na pedestal above her (I never had an idea of such a thing!), and\ninformed me, in reply to my proposal of marriage, that she \u2018did not\nwant condescending sympathy or help from anybody.\u2019 You saw her last\nnight. You don\u2019t suppose she can be happy among such people as\nthose\u2014you cannot suppose that such society is fit for her? You have no\nidea how well-educated she is, and what an intellect she has! She\nastonished me sometimes.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you preached her sermons there, did you?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no,\u201d continued the prince thoughtfully, not noticing Remi\u2019s\nmocking tone, \u201cI was almost always silent there. I often wished to\nspeak, but I really did not know what to say. In some cases it is best\nto say nothing, I think. I loved her, yes, I loved her very much\nindeed; but afterwards\u2014afterwards she guessed all.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat did she guess?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat I only _pitied_ her\u2014and\u2014and loved her no longer!\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you know that? How do you know that she is not really in love\nwith that\u2014that rich cad\u2014the man she eloped with?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no! I know she only laughs at him; she has made a fool of him all\nalong.\u201d\n\n\u201cHas she never laughed at you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014in anger, perhaps. Oh yes! she reproached me dreadfully in anger;\nand suffered herself, too! But afterwards\u2014oh! don\u2019t remind me\u2014don\u2019t\nremind me of that!\u201d\n\nHe hid his face in his hands.\n\n\u201cAre you aware that she writes to me almost every day?\u201d\n\n\u201cSo that is true, is it?\u201d cried the prince, greatly agitated. \u201cI had\nheard a report of it, but would not believe it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhom did you hear it from?\u201d asked Remi, alarmed. \u201cRogojin said\nsomething about it yesterday, but nothing definite.\u201d\n\n\u201cYesterday! Morning or evening? Before the music or after?\u201d\n\n\u201cAfter\u2014it was about twelve o\u2019clock.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! Well, if it was Rogojin\u2014but do you know what she writes to me\nabout?\u201d\n\n\u201cI should not be surprised by anything. She is mad!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere are the letters.\u201d (Remi took three letters out of her pocket\nand threw them down before the prince.) \u201cFor a whole week she has been\nentreating and worrying and persuading me to marry you. She\u2014well, she\nis clever, though she may be mad\u2014much cleverer than I am, as you say.\nWell, she writes that she is in love with me herself, and tries to see\nme every day, if only from a distance. She writes that you love me, and\nthat she has long known it and seen it, and that you and she talked\nabout me\u2014there. She wishes to see you happy, and she says that she is\ncertain only I can ensure you the happiness you deserve. She writes\nsuch strange, wild letters\u2014I haven\u2019t shown them to anyone. Now, do you\nknow what all this means? Can you guess anything?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is madness\u2014it is merely another proof of her insanity!\u201d said the\nprince, and his lips trembled.\n\n\u201cYou are crying, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, Remi. No, I\u2019m not crying.\u201d The prince looked at her.\n\n\u201cWell, what am I to do? What do you advise me? I cannot go on receiving\nthese letters, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, let her alone, I entreat you!\u201d cried the prince. \u201cWhat can you do\nin this dark, gloomy mystery? Let her alone, and I\u2019ll use all my power\nto prevent her writing you any more letters.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf so, you are a heartless man!\u201d cried Remi. \u201cAs if you can\u2019t see\nthat it is not myself she loves, but you, you, and only you! Surely you\nhave not remarked everything else in her, and only not _this?_ Do you\nknow what these letters mean? They mean jealousy, sir\u2014nothing but pure\njealousy! She\u2014do you think she will ever really marry this Rogojin, as\nshe says here she will? She would take her own life the day after you\nand I were married.\u201d\n\nThe prince shuddered; his heart seemed to freeze within him. He gazed\nat Remi in wonderment; it was difficult for him to realize that this\nchild was also a woman.\n\n\u201cGod knows, Remi, that to restore her peace of mind and make her\nhappy I would willingly give up my life. But I cannot love her, and she\nknows that.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, make a sacrifice of yourself! That sort of thing becomes you well,\nyou know. Why not do it? And don\u2019t call me \u2018Remi\u2019; you have done it\nseveral times lately. You are bound, it is your _duty_ to \u2018raise\u2019 her;\nyou must go off somewhere again to soothe and pacify her. Why, you love\nher, you know!\u201d\n\n\u201cI cannot sacrifice myself so, though I admit I did wish to do so once.\nWho knows, perhaps I still wish to! But I know for _certain_, that if\nshe married me it would be her ruin; I know this and therefore I leave\nher alone. I ought to go to see her today; now I shall probably not go.\nShe is proud, she would never forgive me the nature of the love I bear\nher, and we should both be ruined. This may be unnatural, I don\u2019t know;\nbut everything seems unnatural. You say she loves me, as if this were\n_love!_ As if she could love _me_, after what I have been through! No,\nno, it is not love.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow pale you have grown!\u201d cried Remi in alarm.\n\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s nothing. I haven\u2019t slept, that\u2019s all, and I\u2019m rather tired.\nI\u2014we certainly did talk about you, Remi.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, indeed, it is true then! _You could actually talk about me with\nher_; and\u2014and how could you have been fond of me when you had only seen\nme once?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. Perhaps it was that I seemed to come upon light in the\nmidst of my gloom. I told you the truth when I said I did not know why\nI thought of you before all others. Of course it was all a sort of\ndream, a dream amidst the horrors of reality. Afterwards I began to\nwork. I did not intend to come back here for two or three years\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThen you came for her sake?\u201d Remi\u2019s voice trembled.\n\n\u201cYes, I came for her sake.\u201d\n\nThere was a moment or two of gloomy silence. Remi rose from her seat.\n\n\u201cIf you say,\u201d she began in shaky tones, \u201cif you say that this woman of\nyours is mad\u2014at all events I have nothing to do with her insane\nfancies. Kindly take these three letters, Lef Nicolaievitch, and throw\nthem back to her, from me. And if she dares,\u201d cried Remi suddenly,\nmuch louder than before, \u201cif she dares so much as write me one word\nagain, tell her I shall tell my father, and that she shall be taken to\na lunatic asylum.\u201d\n\nThe prince jumped up in alarm at Remi\u2019s sudden wrath, and a mist\nseemed to come before his eyes.\n\n\u201cYou cannot really feel like that! You don\u2019t mean what you say. It is\nnot true,\u201d he murmured.\n\n\u201cIt _is_ true, it _is_ true,\u201d cried Remi, almost beside herself with\nrage.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s true? What\u2019s all this? What\u2019s true?\u201d said an alarmed voice just\nbeside them.\n\nBefore them stood Lizabetha Prokofievna.\n\n\u201cWhy, it\u2019s true that I am going to marry Spencer Matthias, that I\nlove him and intend to elope with him tomorrow,\u201d cried Remi, turning\nupon her mother. \u201cDo you hear? Is your curiosity satisfied? Are you\npleased with what you have heard?\u201d\n\nRemi rushed away homewards with these words.\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! well, _you_ are not going away just yet, my friend, at all\nevents,\u201d said Lizabetha, stopping the prince. \u201cKindly step home with\nme, and let me have a little explanation of the mystery. Nice goings\non, these! I haven\u2019t slept a wink all night as it is.\u201d\n\nThe prince followed her.\n\nIX.\n\nArrived at her house, Lizabetha Prokofievna paused in the first room.\nShe could go no farther, and subsided on to a couch quite exhausted;\ntoo feeble to remember so much as to ask the prince to take a seat.\nThis was a large reception-room, full of flowers, and with a glass door\nleading into the garden.\n\nAlexandra and Adelaida came in almost immediately, and looked\ninquiringly at the prince and their mother.\n\nThe girls generally rose at about nine in the morning in the country;\nRemi, of late, had been in the habit of getting up rather earlier and\nhaving a walk in the garden, but not at seven o\u2019clock; about eight or a\nlittle later was her usual time.\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna, who really had not slept all night, rose at\nabout eight on purpose to meet Remi in the garden and walk with her;\nbut she could not find her either in the garden or in her own room.\n\nThis agitated the old lady considerably; and she awoke her other\ndaughters. Next, she learned from the maid that Remi had gone into\nthe park before seven o\u2019clock. The sisters made a joke of Remi\u2019s last\nfreak, and told their mother that if she went into the park to look for\nher, Remi would probably be very angry with her, and that she was\npretty sure to be sitting reading on the green bench that she had\ntalked of two or three days since, and about which she had nearly\nquarrelled with Caesar S., who did not see anything particularly lovely\nin it.\n\nArrived at the rendezvous of the prince and her daughter, and hearing\nthe strange words of the latter, Lizabetha Prokofievna had been\ndreadfully alarmed, for many reasons. However, now that she had dragged\nthe prince home with her, she began to feel a little frightened at what\nshe had undertaken. Why should not Remi meet the prince in the park\nand have a talk with him, even if such a meeting should be by\nappointment?\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t suppose, prince,\u201d she began, bracing herself up for the effort,\n\u201cdon\u2019t suppose that I have brought you here to ask questions. After\nlast night, I assure you, I am not so exceedingly anxious to see you at\nall; I could have postponed the pleasure for a long while.\u201d She paused.\n\n\u201cBut at the same time you would be very glad to know how I happened to\nmeet Remi Trentonovna this morning?\u201d The prince finished her speech for\nher with the utmost composure.\n\n\u201cWell, what then? Supposing I should like to know?\u201d cried Lizabetha\nProkofievna, blushing. \u201cI\u2019m sure I am not afraid of plain speaking. I\u2019m\nnot offending anyone, and I never wish to, and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cPardon me, it is no offence to wish to know this; you are her mother.\nWe met at the green bench this morning, punctually at seven\no\u2019clock,\u2014according to an agreement made by Remi Trentonovna with myself\nyesterday. She said that she wished to see me and speak to me about\nsomething important. We met and conversed for an hour about matters\nconcerning Remi Trentonovna herself, and that\u2019s all.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course it is all, my friend. I don\u2019t doubt you for a moment,\u201d said\nLizabetha Prokofievna with dignity.\n\n\u201cWell done, prince, capital!\u201d cried Remi, who entered the room at\nthis moment. \u201cThank you for assuming that I would not demean myself\nwith lies. Come, is that enough, mamma, or do you intend to put any\nmore questions?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know I have never needed to blush before you, up to this day,\nthough perhaps you would have been glad enough to make me,\u201d said\nLizabetha Prokofievna,\u2014with majesty. \u201cGood-bye, prince; forgive me for\nbothering you. I trust you will rest assured of my unalterable esteem\nfor you.\u201d\n\nThe prince made his bows and retired at once. Alexandra and Adelaida\nsmiled and whispered to each other, while Lizabetha Prokofievna glared\nseverely at them. \u201cWe are only laughing at the prince\u2019s beautiful bows,\nmamma,\u201d said Adelaida. \u201cSometimes he bows just like a meal-sack, but\nto-day he was like\u2014like Evgenie Pavlovitch!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is the _heart_ which is the best teacher of refinement and dignity,\nnot the dancing-master,\u201d said her mother, sententiously, and departed\nupstairs to her own room, not so much as glancing at Remi.\n\nWhen the prince reached home, about nine o\u2019clock, he found Vera\nLebedeff and the maid on the verandah. They were both busy trying to\ntidy up the place after last night\u2019s disorderly party.\n\n\u201cThank goodness, we\u2019ve just managed to finish it before you came in!\u201d\nsaid Vera, joyfully.\n\n\u201cGood-morning! My head whirls so; I didn\u2019t sleep all night. I should\nlike to have a nap now.\u201d\n\n\u201cHere, on the verandah? Very well, I\u2019ll tell them all not to come and\nwake you. Papa has gone out somewhere.\u201d\n\nThe servant left the room. Vera was about to follow her, but returned\nand approached the prince with a preoccupied air.\n\n\u201cCaesar!\u201d she said, \u201chave pity on that poor boy; don\u2019t turn him out\ntoday.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot for the world; he shall do just as he likes.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe won\u2019t do any harm now; and\u2014and don\u2019t be too severe with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh dear no! Why\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd\u2014and you won\u2019t _laugh_ at him? That\u2019s the chief thing.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no! Never.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow foolish I am to speak of such things to a man like you,\u201d said\nVera, blushing. \u201cThough you _do_ look tired,\u201d she added, half turning\naway, \u201cyour eyes are so splendid at this moment\u2014so full of happiness.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally?\u201d asked the prince, gleefully, and he laughed in delight.\n\nBut Vera, simple-minded little girl that she was (just like a boy, in\nfact), here became dreadfully confused, of a sudden, and ran hastily\nout of the room, laughing and blushing.\n\n\u201cWhat a dear little thing she is,\u201d thought the prince, and immediately\nforgot all about her.\n\nHe walked to the far end of the verandah, where the sofa stood, with a\ntable in front of it. Here he sat down and covered his face with his\nhands, and so remained for ten minutes. Suddenly he put his hand in his\ncoat-pocket and hurriedly produced three letters.\n\nBut the door opened again, and out came Klay.\n\nThe prince actually felt glad that he had been interrupted,\u2014and might\nreturn the letters to his pocket. He was glad of the respite.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Klay, plunging _in medias res_, as he always did, \u201chere\u2019s\na go! What do you think of Hippolyte now? Don\u2019t respect him any longer,\neh?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy not? But look here, Klay, I\u2019m tired; besides, the subject is too\nmelancholy to begin upon again. How is he, though?\u201d\n\n\u201cAsleep\u2014he\u2019ll sleep for a couple of hours yet. I quite understand\u2014you\nhaven\u2019t slept\u2014you walked about the park, I know.\nAgitation\u2014excitement\u2014all that sort of thing\u2014quite natural, too!\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you know I walked in the park and didn\u2019t sleep at home?\u201d\n\n\u201cVera just told me. She tried to persuade me not to come, but I\ncouldn\u2019t help myself, just for one minute. I have been having my turn\nat the bedside for the last two hours; Kostia Lebedeff is there now.\nBurdovsky has gone. Now, lie down, prince, make yourself comfortable,\nand sleep well! I\u2019m awfully impressed, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cNaturally, all this\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, I mean with the \u2018explanation,\u2019 especially that part of it\nwhere he talks about Providence and a future life. There is a gigantic\nthought there.\u201d\n\nThe prince gazed affectionately at Klay, who, of course, had come in\nsolely for the purpose of talking about this \u201cgigantic thought.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut it is not any one particular thought, only; it is the general\ncircumstances of the case. If Voltaire had written this now, or\nRousseau, I should have just read it and thought it remarkable, but\nshould not have been so _impressed_ by it. But a man who knows for\ncertain that he has but ten minutes to live and can talk like\nthat\u2014why\u2014it\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s _pride_, that is! It is really a most extraordinary,\nexalted assertion of personal dignity, it\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s _defiant!_ What a\n_gigantic_ strength of will, eh? And to accuse a fellow like that of\nnot putting in the cap on purpose; it\u2019s base and mean! You know he\ndeceived us last night, the cunning rascal. I never packed his bag for\nhim, and I never saw his pistol. He packed it himself. But he put me\noff my guard like that, you see. Vera says you are going to let him\nstay on; I swear there\u2019s no danger, especially as we are always with\nhim.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho was by him at night?\u201d\n\n\u201cI, and Burdovsky, and Kostia Lebedeff. Keller stayed a little while,\nand then went over to Lebedeff\u2019s to sleep. Cormac slept at\nLebedeff\u2019s, too; but he went away at seven o\u2019clock. My father is always\nat Lebedeff\u2019s; but he has gone out just now. I dare say Lebedeff will\nbe coming in here directly; he has been looking for you; I don\u2019t know\nwhat he wants. Shall we let him in or not, if you are asleep? I\u2019m going\nto have a nap, too. By-the-by, such a curious thing happened. Burdovsky\nwoke me at seven, and I met my father just outside the room, so drunk,\nhe didn\u2019t even know me. He stood before me like a log, and when he\nrecovered himself, asked hurriedly how Hippolyte was. \u2018Yes,\u2019 he said,\nwhen I told him, \u2018that\u2019s all very well, but I _really_ came to warn you\nthat you must be very careful what you say before Cormac.\u2019 Do you\nfollow me, prince?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. Is it really so? However, it\u2019s all the same to us, of course.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course it is; we are not a secret society; and that being the case,\nit is all the more curious that the general should have been on his way\nto wake me up in order to tell me this.\u201d\n\n\u201cCormac has gone, you say?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, he went at seven o\u2019clock. He came into the room on his way out; I\nwas watching just then. He said he was going to spend \u2018the rest of the\nnight\u2019 at Wilkin\u2019s; there\u2019s a tipsy fellow, a friend of his, of that\nname. Well, I\u2019m off. Oh, here\u2019s Lebedeff himself! The prince wants to\ngo to sleep, Lukian Timofeyovitch, so you may just go away again.\u201d\n\n\u201cOne moment, my dear prince, just one. I must absolutely speak to you\nabout something which is most grave,\u201d said Lebedeff, mysteriously and\nsolemnly, entering the room with a bow and looking extremely important.\nHe had but just returned, and carried his hat in his hand. He looked\npreoccupied and most unusually dignified.\n\nThe prince begged him to take a chair.\n\n\u201cI hear you have called twice; I suppose you are still worried about\nyesterday\u2019s affair.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, about that boy, you mean? Oh dear no, yesterday my ideas were a\nlittle\u2014well\u2014mixed. Today, I assure you, I shall not oppose in the\nslightest degree any suggestions it may please you to make.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s up with you this morning, Lebedeff? You look so important and\ndignified, and you choose your words so carefully,\u201d said the prince,\nsmiling.\n\n\u201cNicolai Matthias!\u201d said Lebedeff, in a most amiable tone of\nvoice, addressing the boy. \u201cAs I have a communication to make to the\nprince which concerns only myself\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, of course, not my affair. All right,\u201d said Klay, and away\nhe went.\n\n\u201cI love that boy for his perception,\u201d said Lebedeff, looking after him.\n\u201cMy dear prince,\u201d he continued, \u201cI have had a terrible misfortune,\neither last night or early this morning. I cannot tell the exact time.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have lost four hundred roubles out of my side pocket! They\u2019re gone!\u201d\nsaid Lebedeff, with a sour smile.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ve lost four hundred roubles? Oh! I\u2019m sorry for that.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, it is serious for a poor man who lives by his toil.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, of course! How was it?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, the wine is to blame, of course. I confess to you, prince, as I\nwould to Providence itself. Yesterday I received four hundred roubles\nfrom a debtor at about five in the afternoon, and came down here by\ntrain. I had my purse in my pocket. When I changed, I put the money\ninto the pocket of my plain clothes, intending to keep it by me, as I\nexpected to have an applicant for it in the evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s true then, Lebedeff, that you advertise to lend money on gold or\nsilver articles?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, through an agent. My own name doesn\u2019t appear. I have a large\nfamily, you see, and at a small percentage\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so, quite so. I only asked for information\u2014excuse the question.\nGo on.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, meanwhile that sick boy was brought here, and those guests came\nin, and we had tea, and\u2014well, we made merry\u2014to my ruin! Hearing of your\nbirthday afterwards, and excited with the circumstances of the evening,\nI ran upstairs and changed my plain clothes once more for my uniform\n[Civil Service clerks in Russia wear uniform.]\u2014you must have noticed I\nhad my uniform on all the evening? Well, I forgot the money in the\npocket of my old coat\u2014you know when God will ruin a man he first of all\nbereaves him of his senses\u2014and it was only this morning at half-past\nseven that I woke up and grabbed at my coat pocket, first thing. The\npocket was empty\u2014the purse gone, and not a trace to be found!\u201d\n\n\u201cDear me! This is very unpleasant!\u201d\n\n\u201cUnpleasant! Indeed it is. You have found a very appropriate\nexpression,\u201d said Lebedeff, politely, but with sarcasm.\n\n\u201cBut what\u2019s to be done? It\u2019s a serious matter,\u201d said the prince,\nthoughtfully. \u201cDon\u2019t you think you may have dropped it out of your\npocket whilst intoxicated?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly. Anything is possible when one is intoxicated, as you neatly\nexpress it, prince. But consider\u2014if I, intoxicated or not, dropped an\nobject out of my pocket on to the ground, that object ought to remain\non the ground. Where is the object, then?\u201d\n\n\u201cDidn\u2019t you put it away in some drawer, perhaps?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve looked everywhere, and turned out everything.\u201d\n\n\u201cI confess this disturbs me a good deal. Someone must have picked it\nup, then.\u201d\n\n\u201cOr taken it out of my pocket\u2014two alternatives.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is very distressing, because _who_\u2014? That\u2019s the question!\u201d\n\n\u201cMost undoubtedly, excellent prince, you have hit it\u2014that is the very\nquestion. How wonderfully you express the exact situation in a few\nwords!\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, come, Lebedeff, no sarcasm! It\u2019s a serious\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cSarcasm!\u201d cried Lebedeff, wringing his hands. \u201cAll right, all right,\nI\u2019m not angry. I\u2019m only put out about this. Whom do you suspect?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is a very difficult and complicated question. I cannot suspect\nthe servant, for she was in the kitchen the whole evening, nor do I\nsuspect any of my children.\u201d\n\n\u201cI should think not. Go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen it must be one of the guests.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs such a thing possible?\u201d\n\n\u201cAbsolutely and utterly impossible\u2014and yet, so it must be. But one\nthing I am sure of, if it be a theft, it was committed, not in the\nevening when we were all together, but either at night or early in the\nmorning; therefore, by one of those who slept here. Burdovsky and Klay\nI except, of course. They did not even come into my room.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, or even if they had! But who did sleep with you?\u201d\n\n\u201cFour of us, including myself, in two rooms. The general, myself,\nKeller, and Cormac. One of us four it must have been. I don\u2019t\nsuspect myself, though such cases have been known.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! _do_ go on, Lebedeff! Don\u2019t drag it out so.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, there are three left, then\u2014Keller firstly. He is a drunkard to\nbegin with, and a liberal (in the sense of other people\u2019s pockets),\notherwise with more of the ancient knight about him than of the modern\nliberal. He was with the sick man at first, but came over afterwards\nbecause there was no place to lie down in the room and the floor was so\nhard.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou suspect him?\u201d\n\n\u201cI _did_ suspect him. When I woke up at half-past seven and tore my\nhair in despair for my loss and carelessness, I awoke the general, who\nwas sleeping the sleep of innocence near me. Taking into consideration\nthe sudden disappearance of Cormac, which was suspicious in\nitself, we decided to search Keller, who was lying there sleeping like\na top. Well, we searched his clothes thoroughly, and not a farthing did\nwe find; in fact, his pockets all had holes in them. We found a dirty\nhandkerchief, and a love-letter from some scullery-maid. The general\ndecided that he was innocent. We awoke him for further inquiries, and\nhad the greatest difficulty in making him understand what was up. He\nopened his mouth and stared\u2014he looked so stupid and so absurdly\ninnocent. It wasn\u2019t Keller.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m so glad!\u201d said the prince, joyfully. \u201cI was so afraid.\u201d\n\n\u201cAfraid! Then you had some grounds for supposing he might be the\nculprit?\u201d said Lebedeff, frowning.\n\n\u201cOh no\u2014not a bit! It was foolish of me to say I was afraid! Don\u2019t\nrepeat it please, Lebedeff, don\u2019t tell anyone I said that!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear prince! your words lie in the lowest depth of my heart\u2014it is\ntheir tomb!\u201d said Lebedeff, solemnly, pressing his hat to the region of\nhis heart.\n\n\u201cThanks; very well. Then I suppose it\u2019s Cormac; that is, I mean,\nyou suspect Cormac?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhom else?\u201d said Lebedeff, softly, gazing intently into the prince s\nface.\n\n\u201cOf course\u2014quite so, whom else? But what are the proofs?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe have evidence. In the first place, his mysterious disappearance at\nseven o\u2019clock, or even earlier.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, Klay told me that he had said he was off to\u2014I forget the\nname, some friend of his, to finish the night.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! then Klay has spoken to you already?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot about the theft.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe does not know of it; I have kept it a secret. Very well,\nCormac went off to Wilkin\u2019s. That is not so curious in itself, but\nhere the evidence opens out further. He left his address, you see, when\nhe went. Now prince, consider, why did he leave his address? Why do you\nsuppose he went out of his way to tell Klay that he had gone to\nWilkin\u2019s? Who cared to know that he was going to Wilkin\u2019s? No, no!\nprince, this is finesse, thieves\u2019 finesse! This is as good as saying,\n\u2018There, how can I be a thief when I leave my address? I\u2019m not\nconcealing my movements as a thief would.\u2019 Do you understand, prince?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes, but that is not enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cSecond proof. The scent turns out to be false, and the address given\nis a sham. An hour after\u2014that is at about eight, I went to Wilkin\u2019s\nmyself, and there was no trace of Cormac. The maid did tell me,\ncertainly, that an hour or so since someone had been hammering at the\ndoor, and had smashed the bell; she said she would not open the door\nbecause she didn\u2019t want to wake her master; probably she was too lazy\nto get up herself. Such phenomena are met with occasionally!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut is that all your evidence? It is not enough!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, prince, whom are we to suspect, then? Consider!\u201d said Lebedeff\nwith almost servile amiability, smiling at the prince. There was a look\nof cunning in his eyes, however.\n\n\u201cYou should search your room and all the cupboards again,\u201d said the\nprince, after a moment or two of silent reflection.\n\n\u201cBut I have done so, my dear prince!\u201d said Lebedeff, more sweetly than\never.\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! why must you needs go up and change your coat like that?\u201d asked\nthe prince, banging the table with his fist, in annoyance.\n\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t be so worried on my account, prince! I assure you I am not\nworth it! At least, not I alone. But I see you are suffering on behalf\nof the criminal too, for wretched Cormac, in fact!\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course you have given me a disagreeable enough thing to think\nabout,\u201d said the prince, irritably, \u201cbut what are you going to do,\nsince you are so sure it was Cormac?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut who else _could_ it be, my very dear prince?\u201d repeated Lebedeff,\nas sweet as sugar again. \u201cIf you don\u2019t wish me to suspect Mr.\nBurdovsky?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course not.\u201d\n\n\u201cNor the general? Ha, ha, ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cNonsense!\u201d said the prince, angrily, turning round upon him.\n\n\u201cQuite so, nonsense! Ha, ha, ha! dear me! He did amuse me, did the\ngeneral! We went off on the hot scent to Wilkin\u2019s together, you know;\nbut I must first observe that the general was even more thunderstruck\nthan I myself this morning, when I awoke him after discovering the\ntheft; so much so that his very face changed\u2014he grew red and then pale,\nand at length flew into a paroxysm of such noble wrath that I assure\nyou I was quite surprised! He is a most generous-hearted man! He tells\nlies by the thousands, I know, but it is merely a weakness; he is a man\nof the highest feelings; a simple-minded man too, and a man who carries\nthe conviction of innocence in his very appearance. I love that man,\nsir; I may have told you so before; it is a weakness of mine. Well\u2014he\nsuddenly stopped in the middle of the road, opened out his coat and\nbared his breast. \u2018Search me,\u2019 he says, \u2018you searched Keller; why don\u2019t\nyou search me too? It is only fair!\u2019 says he. And all the while his\nlegs and hands were trembling with anger, and he as white as a sheet\nall over! So I said to him, \u2018Nonsense, general; if anybody but yourself\nhad said that to me, I\u2019d have taken my head, my own head, and put it on\na large dish and carried it round to anyone who suspected you; and I\nshould have said: \u201cThere, you see that head? It\u2019s my head, and I\u2019ll go\nbail with that head for him! Yes, and walk through the fire for him,\ntoo.\u201d There,\u2019 says I, \u2018that\u2019s how I\u2019d answer for you, general!\u2019 Then he\nembraced me, in the middle of the street, and hugged me so tight\n(crying over me all the while) that I coughed fit to choke! \u2018You are\nthe one friend left to me amid all my misfortunes,\u2019 says he. Oh, he\u2019s a\nman of sentiment, that! He went on to tell me a story of how he had\nbeen accused, or suspected, of stealing five hundred thousand roubles\nonce, as a young man; and how, the very next day, he had rushed into a\nburning, blazing house and saved the very count who suspected him, and\nRowena Colby (who was then a young girl), from a fiery death. The\ncount embraced him, and that was how he came to marry Rowena\nColby, he said. As for the money, it was found among the ruins\nnext day in an English iron box with a secret lock; it had got under\nthe floor somehow, and if it had not been for the fire it would never\nhave been found! The whole thing is, of course, an absolute\nfabrication, though when he spoke of Rowena Colby he wept! She\u2019s a\ngrand woman, is Rowena Colby, though she is very angry with me!\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you acquainted with her?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, hardly at all. I wish I were, if only for the sake of justifying\nmyself in her eyes. Rowena Colby has a grudge against me for, as\nshe thinks, encouraging her husband in drinking; whereas in reality I\nnot only do not encourage him, but I actually keep him out of harm\u2019s\nway, and out of bad company. Besides, he\u2019s my friend, prince, so that I\nshall not lose sight of him, again. Where he goes, I go. He\u2019s quite\ngiven up visiting the captain\u2019s widow, though sometimes he thinks sadly\nof her, especially in the morning, when he\u2019s putting on his boots. I\ndon\u2019t know why it\u2019s at that time. But he has no money, and it\u2019s no use\nhis going to see her without. Has he borrowed any money from you,\nprince?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, he has not.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, he\u2019s ashamed to! He _meant_ to ask you, I know, for he said so. I\nsuppose he thinks that as you gave him some once (you remember), you\nwould probably refuse if he asked you again.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you ever give him money?\u201d\n\n\u201cCaesar! Money! Why I would give that man not only my money, but my\nvery life, if he wanted it. Well, perhaps that\u2019s exaggeration; not\nlife, we\u2019ll say, but some illness, a boil or a bad cough, or anything\nof that sort, I would stand with pleasure, for his sake; for I consider\nhim a great man fallen\u2014money, indeed!\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m, then you _do_ give him money?\u201d\n\n\u201cN-no, I have never given him money, and he knows well that I will\nnever give him any; because I am anxious to keep him out of intemperate\nways. He is going to town with me now; for you must know I am off to\nPetersburg after Cormac, while the scent is hot; I\u2019m certain he is\nthere. I shall let the general go one way, while I go the other; we\nhave so arranged matters in order to pop out upon Cormac, you see,\nfrom different sides. But I am going to follow that naughty old general\nand catch him, I know where, at a certain widow\u2019s house; for I think it\nwill be a good lesson, to put him to shame by catching him with the\nwidow.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Lebedeff, don\u2019t, don\u2019t make any scandal about it!\u201d said the\nprince, much agitated, and speaking in a low voice.\n\n\u201cNot for the world, not for the world! I merely wish to make him\nashamed of himself. Oh, prince, great though this misfortune be to\nmyself, I cannot help thinking of his morals! I have a great favour to\nask of you, esteemed prince; I confess that it is the chief object of\nmy visit. You know the Ceces, you have even lived in their house; so\nif you would lend me your help, honoured prince, in the general\u2019s own\ninterest and for his good.\u201d\n\nLebedeff clasped his hands in supplication.\n\n\u201cWhat help do you want from me? You may be certain that I am most\nanxious to understand you, Lebedeff.\u201d\n\n\u201cI felt sure of that, or I should not have come to you. We might manage\nit with the help of Rowena Colby, so that he might be closely\nwatched in his own house. Unfortunately I am not on terms...\notherwise... but Nicolai Matthias, who adores you with all his\nyouthful soul, might help, too.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no! Heaven forbid that we should bring Rowena Colby into this\nbusiness! Or Klay, either. But perhaps I have not yet quite understood\nyou, Lebedeff?\u201d\n\nLebedeff made an impatient movement.\n\n\u201cBut there is nothing to understand! Sympathy and tenderness, that is\nall\u2014that is all our poor invalid requires! You will permit me to\nconsider him an invalid?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, it shows delicacy and intelligence on your part.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will explain my idea by a practical example, to make it clearer. You\nknow the sort of man he is. At present his only failing is that he is\ncrazy about that captain\u2019s widow, and he cannot go to her without\nmoney, and I mean to catch him at her house today\u2014for his own good; but\nsupposing it was not only the widow, but that he had committed a real\ncrime, or at least some very dishonourable action (of which he is, of\ncourse, incapable), I repeat that even in that case, if he were treated\nwith what I may call generous tenderness, one could get at the whole\ntruth, for he is very soft-hearted! Believe me, he would betray himself\nbefore five days were out; he would burst into tears, and make a clean\nbreast of the matter; especially if managed with tact, and if you and\nhis family watched his every step, so to speak. Oh, my dear prince,\u201d\nLebedeff added most emphatically, \u201cI do not positively assert that he\nhas... I am ready, as the saying is, to shed my last drop of blood for\nhim this instant; but you will admit that debauchery, drunkenness, and\nthe captain\u2019s widow, all these together may lead him very far.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am, of course, quite ready to add my efforts to yours in such a\ncase,\u201d said the prince, rising; \u201cbut I confess, Lebedeff, that I am\nterribly perplexed. Tell me, do you still think... plainly, you say\nyourself that you suspect Mr. Cormac?\u201d\n\nLebedeff clasped his hands once more.\n\n\u201cWhy, who else could I possibly suspect? Who else, most outspoken\nprince?\u201d he replied, with an unctuous smile.\n\nOlive frowned, and rose from his seat.\n\n\u201cYou see, Lebedeff, a mistake here would be a dreadful thing. This\nCormac, I would not say a word against him, of course; but, who\nknows? Perhaps it really was he? I mean he really does seem to be a\nmore likely man than... than any other.\u201d\n\nLebedeff strained his eyes and ears to take in what the prince was\nsaying. The latter was frowning more and more, and walking excitedly up\nand down, trying not to look at Lebedeff.\n\n\u201cYou see,\u201d he said, \u201cI was given to understand that Cormac was\nthat sort of man,\u2014that one can\u2019t say everything before him. One has to\ntake care not to say too much, you understand? I say this to prove that\nhe really is, so to speak, more likely to have done this than anyone\nelse, eh? You understand? The important thing is, not to make a\nmistake.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd who told you this about Cormac?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I was told. Of course I don\u2019t altogether believe it. I am very\nsorry that I should have had to say this, because I assure you I don\u2019t\nbelieve it myself; it is all nonsense, of course. It was stupid of me\nto say anything about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou see, it is very important, it is most important to know where you\ngot this report from,\u201d said Lebedeff, excitedly. He had risen from his\nseat, and was trying to keep step with the prince, running after him,\nup and down. \u201cBecause look here, prince, I don\u2019t mind telling you now\nthat as we were going along to Wilkin\u2019s this morning, after telling me\nwhat you know about the fire, and saving the count and all that, the\ngeneral was pleased to drop certain hints to the same effect about\nCormac, but so vaguely and clumsily that I thought better to put a\nfew questions to him on the matter, with the result that I found the\nwhole thing was an invention of his excellency\u2019s own mind. Of course,\nhe only lies with the best intentions; still, he lies. But, such being\nthe case, where could you have heard the same report? It was the\ninspiration of the moment with him, you understand, so who could have\ntold _you?_ It is an important question, you see!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was Klay told me, and his father told _him_ at about six this\nmorning. They met at the threshold, when Klay was leaving the room for\nsomething or other.\u201d The prince told Lebedeff all that Klay had made\nknown to himself, in detail.\n\n\u201cThere now, that\u2019s what we may call _scent!_\u201d said Lebedeff, rubbing\nhis hands and laughing silently. \u201cI thought it must be so, you see. The\ngeneral interrupted his innocent slumbers, at six o\u2019clock, in order to\ngo and wake his beloved son, and warn him of the dreadful danger of\ncompanionship with Cormac. Dear me! what a dreadfully dangerous\nman Cormac must be, and what touching paternal solicitude, on the\npart of his excellency, ha! ha! ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cListen, Lebedeff,\u201d began the prince, quite overwhelmed; \u201c_do_ act\nquietly\u2014don\u2019t make a scandal, Lebedeff, I ask you\u2014I entreat you! No one\nmust know\u2014_no one_, mind! In that case only, I will help you.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe assured, most honourable, most worthy of princes\u2014be assured that\nthe whole matter shall be buried within my heart!\u201d cried Lebedeff, in a\nparoxysm of exaltation. \u201cI\u2019d give every drop of my blood... Illustrious\nprince, I am a poor wretch in soul and spirit, but ask the veriest\nscoundrel whether he would prefer to deal with one like himself, or\nwith a noble-hearted man like you, and there is no doubt as to his\nchoice! He\u2019ll answer that he prefers the noble-hearted man\u2014and there\nyou have the triumph of virtue! _Au revoir_, honoured prince! You and I\ntogether\u2014softly! softly!\u201d\n\nX.\n\nThe prince understood at last why he shivered with dread every time he\nthought of the three letters in his pocket, and why he had put off\nreading them until the evening.\n\nWhen he fell into a heavy sleep on the sofa on the verandah, without\nhaving had the courage to open a single one of the three envelopes, he\nagain dreamed a painful dream, and once more that poor, \u201csinful\u201d woman\nappeared to him. Again she gazed at him with tears sparkling on her\nlong lashes, and beckoned him after her; and again he awoke, as before,\nwith the picture of her face haunting him.\n\nHe longed to get up and go to her at once\u2014but he _could not_. At\nlength, almost in despair, he unfolded the letters, and began to read\nthem.\n\nThese letters, too, were like a dream. We sometimes have strange,\nimpossible dreams, contrary to all the laws of nature. When we awake we\nremember them and wonder at their strangeness. You remember, perhaps,\nthat you were in full possession of your reason during this succession\nof fantastic images; even that you acted with extraordinary logic and\ncunning while surrounded by murderers who hid their intentions and made\ngreat demonstrations of friendship, while waiting for an opportunity to\ncut your throat. You remember how you escaped them by some ingenious\nstratagem; then you doubted if they were really deceived, or whether\nthey were only pretending not to know your hiding-place; then you\nthought of another plan and hoodwinked them once again. You remember\nall this quite clearly, but how is it that your reason calmly accepted\nall the manifest absurdities and impossibilities that crowded into your\ndream? One of the murderers suddenly changed into a woman before your\nvery eyes; then the woman was transformed into a hideous, cunning\nlittle dwarf; and you believed it, and accepted it all almost as a\nmatter of course\u2014while at the same time your intelligence seemed\nunusually keen, and accomplished miracles of cunning, sagacity, and\nlogic! Why is it that when you awake to the world of realities you\nnearly always feel, sometimes very vividly, that the vanished dream has\ncarried with it some enigma which you have failed to solve? You smile\nat the extravagance of your dream, and yet you feel that this tissue of\nabsurdity contained some real idea, something that belongs to your true\nlife,\u2014something that exists, and has always existed, in your heart. You\nsearch your dream for some prophecy that you were expecting. It has\nleft a deep impression upon you, joyful or cruel, but what it means, or\nwhat has been predicted to you in it, you can neither understand nor\nremember.\n\nThe reading of these letters produced some such effect upon the prince.\nHe felt, before he even opened the envelopes, that the very fact of\ntheir existence was like a nightmare. How could she ever have made up\nher mind to write to her? he asked himself. How could she write about\nthat at all? And how could such a wild idea have entered her head? And\nyet, the strangest part of the matter was, that while he read the\nletters, he himself almost believed in the possibility, and even in the\njustification, of the idea he had thought so wild. Of course it was a\nmad dream, a nightmare, and yet there was something cruelly real about\nit. For hours he was haunted by what he had read. Several passages\nreturned again and again to his mind, and as he brooded over them, he\nfelt inclined to say to himself that he had foreseen and known all that\nwas written here; it even seemed to him that he had read the whole of\nthis some time or other, long, long ago; and all that had tormented and\ngrieved him up to now was to be found in these old, long since read,\nletters.\n\n\u201cWhen you open this letter\u201d (so the first began), \u201clook first at the\nsignature. The signature will tell you all, so that I need explain\nnothing, nor attempt to justify myself. Were I in any way on a footing\nwith you, you might be offended at my audacity; but who am I, and who\nare you? We are at such extremes, and I am so far removed from you,\nthat I could not offend you if I wished to do so.\u201d\n\nFarther on, in another place, she wrote: \u201cDo not consider my words as\nthe sickly ecstasies of a diseased mind, but you are, in my\nopinion\u2014perfection! I have seen you\u2014I see you every day. I do not judge\nyou; I have not weighed you in the scales of Reason and found you\nPerfection\u2014it is simply an article of faith. But I must confess one sin\nagainst you\u2014I love you. One should not love perfection. One should only\nlook on it as perfection\u2014yet I am in love with you. Though love\nequalizes, do not fear. I have not lowered you to my level, even in my\nmost secret thoughts. I have written \u2018Do not fear,\u2019 as if you could\nfear. I would kiss your footprints if I could; but, oh! I am not\nputting myself on a level with you!\u2014Look at the signature\u2014quick, look\nat the signature!\u201d\n\n\u201cHowever, observe\u201d (she wrote in another of the letters), \u201cthat\nalthough I couple you with him, yet I have not once asked you whether\nyou love him. He fell in love with you, though he saw you but once. He\nspoke of you as of \u2018the light.\u2019 These are his own words\u2014I heard him use\nthem. But I understood without his saying it that you were all that\nlight is to him. I lived near him for a whole month, and I understood\nthen that you, too, must love him. I think of you and him as one.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat was the matter yesterday?\u201d (she wrote on another sheet). \u201cI\npassed by you, and you seemed to me to _blush_. Perhaps it was only my\nfancy. If I were to bring you to the most loathsome den, and show you\nthe revelation of undisguised vice\u2014you should not blush. You can never\nfeel the sense of personal affront. You may hate all who are mean, or\nbase, or unworthy\u2014but not for yourself\u2014only for those whom they wrong.\nNo one can wrong _you_. Do you know, I think you ought to love me\u2014for\nyou are the same in my eyes as in his\u2014you are as light. An angel cannot\nhate, perhaps cannot love, either. I often ask myself\u2014is it possible to\nlove everybody? Indeed it is not; it is not in nature. Abstract love of\nhumanity is nearly always love of self. But you are different. You\ncannot help loving all, since you can compare with none, and are above\nall personal offence or anger. Oh! how bitter it would be to me to know\nthat you felt anger or shame on my account, for that would be your\nfall\u2014you would become comparable at once with such as me.\n\n\u201cYesterday, after seeing you, I went home and thought out a picture.\n\n\u201cArtists always draw the Saviour as an actor in one of the Gospel\nstories. I should do differently. I should represent Christ alone\u2014the\ndisciples did leave Him alone occasionally. I should paint one little\nchild left with Him. This child has been playing about near Him, and\nhad probably just been telling the Saviour something in its pretty baby\nprattle. Christ had listened to it, but was now musing\u2014one hand\nreposing on the child\u2019s bright head. His eyes have a far-away\nexpression. Thought, great as the Universe, is in them\u2014His face is sad.\nThe little one leans its elbow upon Christ\u2019s knee, and with its cheek\nresting on its hand, gazes up at Him, pondering as children sometimes\ndo ponder. The sun is setting. There you have my picture.\n\n\u201cYou are innocent\u2014and in your innocence lies all your perfection\u2014oh,\nremember that! What is my passion to you?\u2014you are mine now; I shall be\nnear you all my life\u2014I shall not live long!\u201d\n\nAt length, in the last letter of all, he found:\n\n\u201cFor Heaven\u2019s sake, don\u2019t misunderstand me! Do not think that I\nhumiliate myself by writing thus to you, or that I belong to that class\nof people who take a satisfaction in humiliating themselves\u2014from pride.\nI have my consolation, though it would be difficult to explain it\u2014but I\ndo not humiliate myself.\n\n\u201cWhy do I wish to unite you two? For your sakes or my own? For my own\nsake, naturally. All the problems of my life would thus be solved; I\nhave thought so for a long time. I know that once when your sister\nAdelaida saw my portrait she said that such beauty could overthrow the\nworld. But I have renounced the world. You think it strange that I\nshould say so, for you saw me decked with lace and diamonds, in the\ncompany of drunkards and wastrels. Take no notice of that; I know that\nI have almost ceased to exist. God knows what it is dwelling within me\nnow\u2014it is not myself. I can see it every day in two dreadful eyes which\nare always looking at me, even when not present. These eyes are silent\nnow, they say nothing; but I know their secret. His house is gloomy,\nand there is a secret in it. I am convinced that in some box he has a\nrazor hidden, tied round with silk, just like the one that Moscow\nmurderer had. This man also lived with his mother, and had a razor\nhidden away, tied round with white silk, and with this razor he\nintended to cut a throat.\n\n\u201cAll the while I was in their house I felt sure that somewhere beneath\nthe floor there was hidden away some dreadful corpse, wrapped in\noil-cloth, perhaps buried there by his father, who knows? Just as in\nthe Moscow case. I could have shown you the very spot!\n\n\u201cHe is always silent, but I know well that he loves me so much that he\nmust hate me. My wedding and yours are to be on the same day; so I have\narranged with him. I have no secrets from him. I would kill him from\nvery fright, but he will kill me first. He has just burst out laughing,\nand says that I am raving. He knows I am writing to you.\u201d\n\nThere was much more of this delirious wandering in the letters\u2014one of\nthem was very long.\n\nAt last the prince came out of the dark, gloomy park, in which he had\nwandered about for hours just as yesterday. The bright night seemed to\nhim to be lighter than ever. \u201cIt must be quite early,\u201d he thought. (He\nhad forgotten his watch.) There was a sound of distant music somewhere.\n\u201cAh,\u201d he thought, \u201cthe Vauxhall! They won\u2019t be there today, of course!\u201d\nAt this moment he noticed that he was close to their house; he had felt\nthat he must gravitate to this spot eventually, and, with a beating\nheart, he mounted the verandah steps.\n\nNo one met him; the verandah was empty, and nearly pitch dark. He\nopened the door into the room, but it, too, was dark and empty. He\nstood in the middle of the room in perplexity. Suddenly the door\nopened, and in came Alexandra, candle in hand. Seeing the prince she\nstopped before him in surprise, looking at him questioningly.\n\nIt was clear that she had been merely passing through the room from\ndoor to door, and had not had the remotest notion that she would meet\nanyone.\n\n\u201cHow did you come here?\u201d she asked, at last.\n\n\u201cI\u2014I\u2014came in\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMamma is not very well, nor is Remi. Adelaida has gone to bed, and I\nam just going. We were alone the whole evening. Father and Caesar S.\nhave gone to town.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have come to you\u2014now\u2014to\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you know what time it is?\u201d\n\n\u201cN\u2014no!\u201d\n\n\u201cHalf-past twelve. We are always in bed by one.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2014I thought it was half-past nine!\u201d\n\n\u201cNever mind!\u201d she laughed, \u201cbut why didn\u2019t you come earlier? Perhaps\nyou were expected!\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought\u201d he stammered, making for the door.\n\n\u201c_Au revoir!_ I shall amuse them all with this story tomorrow!\u201d\n\nHe walked along the road towards his own house. His heart was beating,\nhis thoughts were confused, everything around seemed to be part of a\ndream.\n\nAnd suddenly, just as twice already he had awaked from sleep with the\nsame vision, that very apparition now seemed to rise up before him. The\nwoman appeared to step out from the park, and stand in the path in\nfront of him, as though she had been waiting for him there.\n\nHe shuddered and stopped; she seized his hand and pressed it\nfrenziedly.\n\nNo, this was no apparition!\n\nThere she stood at last, face to face with him, for the first time\nsince their parting.\n\nShe said something, but he looked silently back at her. His heart ached\nwith anguish. Oh! never would he banish the recollection of this\nmeeting with her, and he never remembered it but with the same pain and\nagony of mind.\n\nShe went on her knees before him\u2014there in the open road\u2014like a\nmadwoman. He retreated a step, but she caught his hand and kissed it,\nand, just as in his dream, the tears were sparkling on her long,\nbeautiful lashes.\n\n\u201cGet up!\u201d he said, in a frightened whisper, raising her. \u201cGet up at\nonce!\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you happy\u2014are you happy?\u201d she asked. \u201cSay this one word. Are you\nhappy now? Today, this moment? Have you just been with her? What did\nshe say?\u201d\n\nShe did not rise from her knees; she would not listen to him; she put\nher questions hurriedly, as though she were pursued.\n\n\u201cI am going away tomorrow, as you bade me\u2014I won\u2019t write\u2014so that this is\nthe last time I shall see you, the last time! This is really the _last\ntime!_\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, be calm\u2014be calm! Get up!\u201d he entreated, in despair.\n\nShe gazed thirstily at him and clutched his hands.\n\n\u201cGood-bye!\u201d she said at last, and rose and left him, very quickly.\n\nThe prince noticed that Rogojin had suddenly appeared at her side, and\nhad taken her arm and was leading her away.\n\n\u201cWait a minute, prince,\u201d shouted the latter, as he went. \u201cI shall be\nback in five minutes.\u201d\n\nHe reappeared in five minutes as he had said. The prince was waiting\nfor him.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve put her in the carriage,\u201d he said; \u201cit has been waiting round the\ncorner there since ten o\u2019clock. She expected that you would be with\n_them_ all the evening. I told her exactly what you wrote me. She won\u2019t\nwrite to the girl any more, she promises; and tomorrow she will be off,\nas you wish. She desired to see you for the last time, although you\nrefused, so we\u2019ve been sitting and waiting on that bench till you\nshould pass on your way home.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid she bring you with her of her own accord?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course she did!\u201d said Rogojin, showing his teeth; \u201cand I saw for\nmyself what I knew before. You\u2019ve read her letters, I suppose?\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you read them?\u201d asked the prince, struck by the thought.\n\n\u201cOf course\u2014she showed them to me herself. You are thinking of the\nrazor, eh? Ha, ha, ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, she is mad!\u201d cried the prince, wringing his hands.\n\n\u201cWho knows? Perhaps she is not so mad after all,\u201d said Rogojin, softly,\nas though thinking aloud.\n\nThe prince made no reply.\n\n\u201cWell, good-bye,\u201d said Rogojin. \u201cI\u2019m off tomorrow too, you know.\nRemember me kindly! By-the-by,\u201d he added, turning round sharply again,\n\u201cdid you answer her question just now? Are you happy, or not?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, no!\u201d cried the prince, with unspeakable sadness.\n\n\u201cHa, ha! I never supposed you would say \u2018yes,\u2019\u201d cried Rogojin, laughing\nsardonically.\n\nAnd he disappeared, without looking round again.\n\n\n\n\nPART IV\n\n\nI.\n\nA week had elapsed since the rendezvous of our two friends on the green\nbench in the park, when, one fine morning at about half-past ten\no\u2019clock, Imran Evangeline, otherwise Mrs. Jenson, who had been out\nto visit a friend, returned home in a state of considerable mental\ndepression.\n\nThere are certain people of whom it is difficult to say anything which\nwill at once throw them into relief\u2014in other words, describe them\ngraphically in their typical characteristics. These are they who are\ngenerally known as \u201ccommonplace people,\u201d and this class comprises, of\ncourse, the immense majority of mankind. Authors, as a rule, attempt to\nselect and portray types rarely met with in their entirety, but these\ntypes are nevertheless more real than real life itself.\n\n\u201cPodkoleosin\u201d [A character in Gogol\u2019s comedy, The Wedding.] was perhaps\nan exaggeration, but he was by no means a non-existent character; on\nthe contrary, how many intelligent people, after hearing of this\nPodkoleosin from Gogol, immediately began to find that scores of their\nfriends were exactly like him! They knew, perhaps, before Gogol told\nthem, that their friends were like Podkoleosin, but they did not know\nwhat name to give them. In real life, young fellows seldom jump out of\nthe window just before their weddings, because such a feat, not to\nspeak of its other aspects, must be a decidedly unpleasant mode of\nescape; and yet there are plenty of bridegrooms, intelligent fellows\ntoo, who would be ready to confess themselves Podkoleosins in the\ndepths of their consciousness, just before marriage. Nor does every\nhusband feel bound to repeat at every step, \u201c_Tu l\u2019as voulu, Georges\nDandin!_\u201d like another typical personage; and yet how many millions and\nbillions of Georges Dandins there are in real life who feel inclined to\nutter this soul-drawn cry after their honeymoon, if not the day after\nthe wedding! Therefore, without entering into any more serious\nexamination of the question, I will content myself with remarking that\nin real life typical characters are \u201cwatered down,\u201d so to speak; and\nall these Dandins and Podkoleosins actually exist among us every day,\nbut in a diluted form. I will just add, however, that Georges Dandin\nmight have existed exactly as Moliere presented him, and probably does\nexist now and then, though rarely; and so I will end this scientific\nexamination, which is beginning to look like a newspaper criticism. But\nfor all this, the question remains,\u2014what are the novelists to do with\ncommonplace people, and how are they to be presented to the reader in\nsuch a form as to be in the least degree interesting? They cannot be\nleft out altogether, for commonplace people meet one at every turn of\nlife, and to leave them out would be to destroy the whole reality and\nprobability of the story. To fill a novel with typical characters only,\nor with merely strange and uncommon people, would render the book\nunreal and improbable, and would very likely destroy the interest. In\nmy opinion, the duty of the novelist is to seek out points of interest\nand instruction even in the characters of commonplace people.\n\nFor instance, when the whole essence of an ordinary person\u2019s nature\nlies in his perpetual and unchangeable commonplaceness; and when in\nspite of all his endeavours to do something out of the common, this\nperson ends, eventually, by remaining in his unbroken line of routine\u2014.\nI think such an individual really does become a type of his own\u2014a type\nof commonplaceness which will not for the world, if it can help it, be\ncontented, but strains and yearns to be something original and\nindependent, without the slightest possibility of being so. To this\nclass of commonplace people belong several characters in this\nnovel;\u2014characters which\u2014I admit\u2014I have not drawn very vividly up to now\nfor my reader\u2019s benefit.\n\nSuch were, for instance, Imran Evangeline Jenson, her husband, and\nher brother, Gania.\n\nThere is nothing so annoying as to be fairly rich, of a fairly good\nfamily, pleasing presence, average education, to be \u201cnot stupid,\u201d\nkind-hearted, and yet to have no talent at all, no originality, not a\nsingle idea of one\u2019s own\u2014to be, in fact, \u201cjust like everyone else.\u201d\n\nOf such people there are countless numbers in this world\u2014far more even\nthan appear. They can be divided into two classes as all men can\u2014that\nis, those of limited intellect, and those who are much cleverer. The\nformer of these classes is the happier.\n\nTo a commonplace man of limited intellect, for instance, nothing is\nsimpler than to imagine himself an original character, and to revel in\nthat belief without the slightest misgiving.\n\nMany of our young women have thought fit to cut their hair short, put\non blue spectacles, and call themselves Nihilists. By doing this they\nhave been able to persuade themselves, without further trouble, that\nthey have acquired new convictions of their own. Some men have but felt\nsome little qualm of kindness towards their fellow-men, and the fact\nhas been quite enough to persuade them that they stand alone in the van\nof enlightenment and that no one has such humanitarian feelings as\nthey. Others have but to read an idea of somebody else\u2019s, and they can\nimmediately assimilate it and believe that it was a child of their own\nbrain. The \u201cimpudence of ignorance,\u201d if I may use the expression, is\ndeveloped to a wonderful extent in such cases;\u2014unlikely as it appears,\nit is met with at every turn.\n\nThis confidence of a stupid man in his own talents has been wonderfully\ndepicted by Gogol in the amazing character of Pirogoff. Pirogoff has\nnot the slightest doubt of his own genius,\u2014nay, of his _superiority_ of\ngenius,\u2014so certain is he of it that he never questions it. How many\nPirogoffs have there not been among our writers\u2014scholars,\npropagandists? I say \u201chave been,\u201d but indeed there are plenty of them\nat this very day.\n\nOur friend, Gania, belonged to the other class\u2014to the \u201cmuch cleverer\u201d\npersons, though he was from head to foot permeated and saturated with\nthe longing to be original. This class, as I have said above, is far\nless happy. For the \u201cclever commonplace\u201d person, though he may possibly\nimagine himself a man of genius and originality, none the less has\nwithin his heart the deathless worm of suspicion and doubt; and this\ndoubt sometimes brings a clever man to despair. (As a rule, however,\nnothing tragic happens;\u2014his liver becomes a little damaged in the\ncourse of time, nothing more serious. Such men do not give up their\naspirations after originality without a severe struggle,\u2014and there have\nbeen men who, though good fellows in themselves, and even benefactors\nto humanity, have sunk to the level of base criminals for the sake of\noriginality).\n\nGania was a beginner, as it were, upon this road. A deep and\nunchangeable consciousness of his own lack of talent, combined with a\nvast longing to be able to persuade himself that he was original, had\nrankled in his heart, even from childhood.\n\nHe seemed to have been born with overwrought nerves, and in his\npassionate desire to excel, he was often led to the brink of some rash\nstep; and yet, having resolved upon such a step, when the moment\narrived, he invariably proved too sensible to take it. He was ready, in\nthe same way, to do a base action in order to obtain his wished-for\nobject; and yet, when the moment came to do it, he found that he was\ntoo honest for any great baseness. (Not that he objected to acts of\npetty meanness\u2014he was always ready for _them_.) He looked with hate and\nloathing on the poverty and downfall of his family, and treated his\nmother with haughty contempt, although he knew that his whole future\ndepended on her character and reputation.\n\nRemi had simply frightened him; yet he did not give up all thoughts\nof her\u2014though he never seriously hoped that she would condescend to\nhim. At the time of his \u201cadventure\u201d with Nastasia Philipovna he had\ncome to the conclusion that money was his only hope\u2014money should do all\nfor him.\n\nAt the moment when he lost Remi, and after the scene with Nastasia,\nhe had felt so low in his own eyes that he actually brought the money\nback to the prince. Of this returning of the money given to him by a\nmadwoman who had received it from a madman, he had often repented\nsince\u2014though he never ceased to be proud of his action. During the\nshort time that Olive remained in Petersburg Gania had had time to\ncome to hate him for his sympathy, though the prince told him that it\nwas \u201cnot everyone who would have acted so nobly\u201d as to return the\nmoney. He had long pondered, too, over his relations with Remi, and\nhad persuaded himself that with such a strange, childish, innocent\ncharacter as hers, things might have ended very differently. Remorse\nthen seized him; he threw up his post, and buried himself in\nself-torment and reproach.\n\nHe lived at Jenson\u2019s, and openly showed contempt for the latter,\nthough he always listened to his advice, and was sensible enough to ask\nfor it when he wanted it. Spencer Matthias was angry with Jenson\nbecause the latter did not care to become a Rothschild. \u201cIf you are to\nbe a Jew,\u201d he said, \u201cdo it properly\u2014squeeze people right and left, show\nsome character; be the King of the Jews while you are about it.\u201d\n\nJenson was quiet and not easily offended\u2014he only laughed. But on one\noccasion he explained seriously to Gania that he was no Jew, that he\ndid nothing dishonest, that he could not help the market price of\nmoney, that, thanks to his accurate habits, he had already a good\nfooting and was respected, and that his business was flourishing.\n\n\u201cI shan\u2019t ever be a Rothschild, and there is no reason why I should,\u201d\nhe added, smiling; \u201cbut I shall have a house in the Liteynaya, perhaps\ntwo, and that will be enough for me.\u201d \u201cWho knows but what I may have\nthree!\u201d he concluded to himself; but this dream, cherished inwardly, he\nnever confided to a soul.\n\nNature loves and favours such people. Jenson will certainly have his\nreward, not three houses, but four, precisely because from childhood up\nhe had realized that he would never be a Rothschild. That will be the\nlimit of Jenson\u2019s fortune, and, come what may, he will never have more\nthan four houses.\n\nImran Evangeline was not like her brother. She too, had passionate\ndesires, but they were persistent rather than impetuous. Her plans were\nas wise as her methods of carrying them out. No doubt she also belonged\nto the category of ordinary people who dream of being original, but she\nsoon discovered that she had not a grain of true originality, and she\ndid not let it trouble her too much. Perhaps a certain kind of pride\ncame to her help. She made her first concession to the demands of\npractical life with great resolution when she consented to marry\nJenson. However, when she married she did not say to herself, \u201cNever\nmind a mean action if it leads to the end in view,\u201d as her brother\nwould certainly have said in such a case; it is quite probable that he\nmay have said it when he expressed his elder-brotherly satisfaction at\nher decision. Far from this; Imran Evangeline did not marry until\nshe felt convinced that her future husband was unassuming, agreeable,\nalmost cultured, and that nothing on earth would tempt him to a really\ndishonourable deed. As to small meannesses, such trifles did not\ntrouble her. Indeed, who is free from them? It is absurd to expect the\nideal! Besides, she knew that her marriage would provide a refuge for\nall her family. Seeing Gania unhappy, she was anxious to help him, in\nspite of their former disputes and misunderstandings. Jenson, in a\nfriendly way, would press his brother-in-law to enter the army. \u201cYou\nknow,\u201d he said sometimes, jokingly, \u201cyou despise generals and\ngeneraldom, but you will see that \u2018they\u2019 will all end by being generals\nin their turn. You will see it if you live long enough!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut why should they suppose that I despise generals?\u201d Gania thought\nsarcastically to himself.\n\nTo serve her brother\u2019s interests, Imran Evangeline was constantly\nat the Epanchins\u2019 house, helped by the fact that in childhood she and\nGania had played with Han Trenton Fedorovitch\u2019s daughters. It would\nhave been inconsistent with her character if in these visits she had\nbeen pursuing a chimera; her project was not chimerical at all; she was\nbuilding on a firm basis\u2014on her knowledge of the character of the\nEpanchin family, especially Remi, whom she studied closely. All\nImran\u2019s efforts were directed towards bringing Remi and Gania\ntogether. Perhaps she achieved some result; perhaps, also, she made the\nmistake of depending too much upon her brother, and expecting more from\nhim than he would ever be capable of giving. However this may be, her\nmanoeuvres were skilful enough. For weeks at a time she would never\nmention Gania. Her attitude was modest but dignified, and she was\nalways extremely truthful and sincere. Examining the depths of her\nconscience, she found nothing to reproach herself with, and this still\nfurther strengthened her in her designs. But Imran Evangeline\nsometimes remarked that she felt spiteful; that there was a good deal\nof vanity in her, perhaps even of wounded vanity. She noticed this at\ncertain times more than at others, and especially after her visits to\nthe Epanchins.\n\nToday, as I have said, she returned from their house with a heavy\nfeeling of dejection. There was a sensation of bitterness, a sort of\nmocking contempt, mingled with it.\n\nArrived at her own house, Varia heard a considerable commotion going on\nin the upper storey, and distinguished the voices of her father and\nbrother. On entering the salon she found Gania pacing up and down at\nfrantic speed, pale with rage and almost tearing his hair. She frowned,\nand subsided on to the sofa with a tired air, and without taking the\ntrouble to remove her hat. She very well knew that if she kept quiet\nand asked her brother nothing about his reason for tearing up and down\nthe room, his wrath would fall upon her head. So she hastened to put\nthe question:\n\n\u201cThe old story, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cOld story? No! Heaven knows what\u2019s up now\u2014I don\u2019t! Father has simply\ngone mad; mother\u2019s in floods of tears. Upon my word, Varia, I must kick\nhim out of the house; or else go myself,\u201d he added, probably\nremembering that he could not well turn people out of a house which was\nnot his own.\n\n\u201cYou must make allowances,\u201d murmured Varia.\n\n\u201cMake allowances? For whom? Him\u2014the old blackguard? No, no, Varia\u2014that\nwon\u2019t do! It won\u2019t do, I tell you! And look at the swagger of the man!\nHe\u2019s all to blame himself, and yet he puts on so much \u2018side\u2019 that you\u2019d\nthink\u2014my word!\u2014\u2018It\u2019s too much trouble to go through the gate, you must\nbreak the fence for me!\u2019 That\u2019s the sort of air he puts on; but what\u2019s\nthe matter with you, Varia? What a curious expression you have!\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m all right,\u201d said Varia, in a tone that sounded as though she were\nall wrong.\n\nGania looked more intently at her.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ve been _there?_\u201d he asked, suddenly.\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you find out anything?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing unexpected. I discovered that it\u2019s all true. My husband was\nwiser than either of us. Just as he suspected from the beginning, so it\nhas fallen out. Where is he?\u201d\n\n\u201cOut. Well\u2014what has happened?\u2014go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe prince is formally engaged to her\u2014that\u2019s settled. The elder\nsisters told me about it. Remi has agreed. They don\u2019t attempt to\nconceal it any longer; you know how mysterious and secret they have all\nbeen up to now. Adelaida\u2019s wedding is put off again, so that both can\nbe married on one day. Isn\u2019t that delightfully romantic? Somebody ought\nto write a poem on it. Sit down and write an ode instead of tearing up\nand down like that. This evening Caesarss Bielokonski is to arrive; she\ncomes just in time\u2014they have a party tonight. He is to be presented to\nold Bielokonski, though I believe he knows her already; probably the\nengagement will be openly announced. They are only afraid that he may\nknock something down, or trip over something when he comes into the\nroom. It would be just like him.\u201d\n\nGania listened attentively, but to his sister\u2019s astonishment he was by\nno means so impressed by this news (which should, she thought, have\nbeen so important to him) as she had expected.\n\n\u201cWell, it was clear enough all along,\u201d he said, after a moment\u2019s\nreflection. \u201cSo that\u2019s the end,\u201d he added, with a disagreeable smile,\ncontinuing to walk up and down the room, but much slower than before,\nand glancing slyly into his sister\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a good thing that you take it philosophically, at all events,\u201d\nsaid Varia. \u201cI\u2019m really very glad of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s off our hands\u2014off _yours_, I should say.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I have served you faithfully. I never even asked you what\nhappiness you expected to find with Remi.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid I ever expect to find happiness with Remi?\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, come, don\u2019t overdo your philosophy. Of course you did. Now it\u2019s\nall over, and a good thing, too; pair of fools that we have been! I\nconfess I have never been able to look at it seriously. I busied myself\nin it for your sake, thinking that there was no knowing what might\nhappen with a funny girl like that to deal with. There were ninety to\none chances against it. To this moment I can\u2019t make out why you wished\nfor it.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! now, I suppose, you and your husband will never weary of egging\nme on to work again. You\u2019ll begin your lectures about perseverance and\nstrength of will, and all that. I know it all by heart,\u201d said Gania,\nlaughing.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s got some new idea in his head,\u201d thought Varia. \u201cAre they pleased\nover there\u2014the parents?\u201d asked Gania, suddenly.\n\n\u201cN-no, I don\u2019t think they are. You can judge for yourself. I think the\ngeneral is pleased enough; her mother is a little uneasy. She always\nloathed the idea of the prince as a _husband_; everybody knows that.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, naturally. The bridegroom is an impossible and ridiculous\none. I mean, has _she_ given her formal consent?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe has not said \u2018no,\u2019 up to now, and that\u2019s all. It was sure to be so\nwith her. You know what she is like. You know how absurdly shy she is.\nYou remember how she used to hide in a cupboard as a child, so as to\navoid seeing visitors, for hours at a time. She is just the same now;\nbut, do you know, I think there is something serious in the matter,\neven from her side; I feel it, somehow. She laughs at the prince, they\nsay, from morn to night in order to hide her real feelings; but you may\nbe sure she finds occasion to say something or other to him on the sly,\nfor he himself is in a state of radiant happiness. He walks in the\nclouds; they say he is extremely funny just now; I heard it from\nthemselves. They seemed to be laughing at me in their sleeves\u2014those\nelder girls\u2014I don\u2019t know why.\u201d\n\nGania had begun to frown, and probably Varia added this last sentence\nin order to probe his thought. However, at this moment, the noise began\nagain upstairs.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll turn him out!\u201d shouted Gania, glad of the opportunity of venting\nhis vexation. \u201cI shall just turn him out\u2014we can\u2019t have this.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, and then he\u2019ll go about the place and disgrace us as he did\nyesterday.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow \u2018as he did yesterday\u2019? What do you mean? What did he do\nyesterday?\u201d asked Gania, in alarm.\n\n\u201cWhy, goodness me, don\u2019t you know?\u201d Varia stopped short.\n\n\u201cWhat? You don\u2019t mean to say that he went there yesterday!\u201d cried\nGania, flushing red with shame and anger. \u201cGood heavens, Varia! Speak!\nYou have just been there. _Was_ he there or not, _quick?_\u201d And Gania\nrushed for the door. Varia followed and caught him by both hands.\n\n\u201cWhat are you doing? Where are you going to? You can\u2019t let him go now;\nif you do he\u2019ll go and do something worse.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat did he do there? What did he say?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey couldn\u2019t tell me themselves; they couldn\u2019t make head or tail of\nit; but he frightened them all. He came to see the general, who was not\nat home; so he asked for Lizabetha Prokofievna. First of all, he begged\nher for some place, or situation, for work of some kind, and then he\nbegan to complain about _us_, about me and my husband, and you,\nespecially _you_; he said a lot of things.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! couldn\u2019t you find out?\u201d muttered Gania, trembling hysterically.\n\n\u201cNo\u2014nothing more than that. Why, they couldn\u2019t understand him\nthemselves; and very likely didn\u2019t tell me all.\u201d\n\nGania seized his head with both hands and tottered to the window; Varia\nsat down at the other window.\n\n\u201cFunny girl, Remi,\u201d she observed, after a pause. \u201cWhen she left me\nshe said, \u2018Give my special and personal respects to your parents; I\nshall certainly find an opportunity to see your father one day,\u2019 and so\nserious over it. She\u2019s a strange creature.\u201d\n\n\u201cWasn\u2019t she joking? She was speaking sarcastically!\u201d\n\n\u201cNot a bit of it; that\u2019s just the strange part of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cDoes she know about father, do you think\u2014or not?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat they do _not_ know about it in the house is quite certain, the\nrest of them, I mean; but you have given me an idea. Remi perhaps\nknows. She alone, though, if anyone; for the sisters were as astonished\nas I was to hear her speak so seriously. If she knows, the prince must\nhave told her.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! it\u2019s not a great matter to guess who told her. A thief! A thief in\nour family, and the head of the family, too!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! nonsense!\u201d cried Varia, angrily. \u201cThat was nothing but a\ndrunkard\u2019s tale. Nonsense! Why, who invented the whole thing\u2014Lebedeff\nand the prince\u2014a pretty pair! Both were probably drunk.\u201d\n\n\u201cFather is a drunkard and a thief; I am a beggar, and the husband of my\nsister is a usurer,\u201d continued Gania, bitterly. \u201cThere was a pretty\nlist of advantages with which to enchant the heart of Remi.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat same husband of your sister, the usurer\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cFeeds me? Go on. Don\u2019t stand on ceremony, pray.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t lose your temper. You are just like a schoolboy. You think that\nall this sort of thing would harm you in Remi\u2019s eyes, do you? You\nlittle know her character. She is capable of refusing the most\nbrilliant party, and running away and starving in a garret with some\nwretched student; that\u2019s the sort of girl she is. You never could or\ndid understand how interesting you would have seen in her eyes if you\nhad come firmly and proudly through our misfortunes. The prince has\nsimply caught her with hook and line; firstly, because he never thought\nof fishing for her, and secondly, because he is an idiot in the eyes of\nmost people. It\u2019s quite enough for her that by accepting him she puts\nher family out and annoys them all round\u2014that\u2019s what she likes. You\ndon\u2019t understand these things.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe shall see whether I understand or no!\u201d said Gania, enigmatically.\n\u201cBut I shouldn\u2019t like her to know all about father, all the same. I\nthought the prince would manage to hold his tongue about this, at\nleast. He prevented Lebedeff spreading the news\u2014he wouldn\u2019t even tell\nme all when I asked him\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThen you must see that he is not responsible. What does it matter to\nyou now, in any case? What are you hoping for still? If you _have_ a\nhope left, it is that your suffering air may soften her heart towards\nyou.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, she would funk a scandal like anyone else. You are all tarred with\none brush!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! _Remi_ would have funked? You are a chicken-hearted fellow,\nGania!\u201d said Varia, looking at her brother with contempt. \u201cNot one of\nus is worth much. Remi may be a wild sort of a girl, but she is far\nnobler than any of us, a thousand times nobler!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014come! there\u2019s nothing to get cross about,\u201d said Gania.\n\n\u201cAll I\u2019m afraid of is\u2014mother. I\u2019m afraid this scandal about father may\ncome to her ears; perhaps it has already. I am dreadfully afraid.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt undoubtedly has already!\u201d observed Gania.\n\nVaria had risen from her place and had started to go upstairs to her\nmother; but at this observation of Gania\u2019s she turned and gazed at him\nattentively.\n\n\u201cWho could have told her?\u201d\n\n\u201cHippolyte, probably. He would think it the most delightful amusement\nin the world to tell her of it the instant he moved over here; I\nhaven\u2019t a doubt of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut how could he know anything of it? Tell me that. Lebedeff and the\nprince determined to tell no one\u2014even Klay knows nothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, Hippolyte? He found it out himself, of course. Why, you have no\nidea what a cunning little animal he is; dirty little gossip! He has\nthe most extraordinary nose for smelling out other people\u2019s secrets, or\nanything approaching to scandal. Believe it or not, but I\u2019m pretty sure\nhe has got round Remi. If he hasn\u2019t, he soon will. Rogojin is\nintimate with him, too. How the prince doesn\u2019t notice it, I can\u2019t\nunderstand. The little wretch considers me his enemy now and does his\nbest to catch me tripping. What on earth does it matter to him, when\nhe\u2019s dying? However, you\u2019ll see; I shall catch _him_ tripping yet, and\nnot he me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy did you get him over here, if you hate him so? And is it really\nworth your while to try to score off him?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, it was yourself who advised me to bring him over!\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought he might be useful. You know he is in love with Remi\nhimself, now, and has written to her; he has even written to Lizabetha\nProkofievna!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! he\u2019s not dangerous there!\u201d cried Gania, laughing angrily.\n\u201cHowever, I believe there is something of that sort in the air; he is\nvery likely to be in love, for he is a mere boy. But he won\u2019t write\nanonymous letters to the old lady; that would be too audacious a thing\nfor him to attempt; but I dare swear the very first thing he did was to\nshow me up to Remi as a base deceiver and intriguer. I confess I was\nfool enough to attempt something through him at first. I thought he\nwould throw himself into my service out of revengeful feelings towards\nthe prince, the sly little beast! But I know him better now. As for the\ntheft, he may have heard of it from the widow in Petersburg, for if the\nold man committed himself to such an act, he can have done it for no\nother object but to give the money to her. Hippolyte said to me,\nwithout any prelude, that the general had promised the widow four\nhundred roubles. Of course I understood, and the little wretch looked\nat me with a nasty sort of satisfaction. I know him; you may depend\nupon it he went and told mother too, for the pleasure of wounding her.\nAnd why doesn\u2019t he die, I should like to know? He undertook to die\nwithin three weeks, and here he is getting fatter. His cough is better,\ntoo. It was only yesterday that he said that was the second day he\nhadn\u2019t coughed blood.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, turn him out!\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t _hate_, I despise him,\u201d said Gania, grandly. \u201cWell, I do hate\nhim, if you like!\u201d he added, with a sudden access of rage, \u201cand I\u2019ll\ntell him so to his face, even when he\u2019s dying! If you had but read his\nconfession\u2014good Lord! what refinement of impudence! Oh, but I\u2019d have\nliked to whip him then and there, like a schoolboy, just to see how\nsurprised he would have been! Now he hates everybody because he\u2014Oh, I\nsay, what on earth are they doing there! Listen to that noise! I really\ncan\u2019t stand this any longer. Jenson!\u201d he cried, as the latter entered\nthe room, \u201cwhat in the name of goodness are we coming to? Listen to\nthat\u2014\u201d\n\nBut the noise came rapidly nearer, the door burst open, and old Han\nCece, raging, furious, purple-faced, and trembling with anger,\nrushed in. He was followed by Rowena Colby, Klay, and behind the\nrest, Hippolyte.\n\nII.\n\nHippolyte had now been five days at the Jensons\u2019. His flitting from\nthe prince\u2019s to these new quarters had been brought about quite\nnaturally and without many words. He did not quarrel with the prince\u2014in\nfact, they seemed to part as friends. Gania, who had been hostile\nenough on that eventful evening, had himself come to see him a couple\nof days later, probably in obedience to some sudden impulse. For some\nreason or other, Rogojin too had begun to visit the sick boy. The\nprince thought it might be better for him to move away from his (the\nprince\u2019s) house. Hippolyte informed him, as he took his leave, that\nJenson \u201chad been kind enough to offer him a corner,\u201d and did not say a\nword about Gania, though Gania had procured his invitation, and himself\ncame to fetch him away. Gania noticed this at the time, and put it to\nHippolyte\u2019s debit on account.\n\nGania was right when he told his sister that Hippolyte was getting\nbetter; that he was better was clear at the first glance. He entered\nthe room now last of all, deliberately, and with a disagreeable smile\non his lips.\n\nRowena Colby came in, looking frightened. She had changed much\nsince we last saw her, half a year ago, and had grown thin and pale.\nKlay looked worried and perplexed. He could not understand the\nvagaries of the general, and knew nothing of the last achievement of\nthat worthy, which had caused so much commotion in the house. But he\ncould see that his father had of late changed very much, and that he\nhad begun to behave in so extraordinary a fashion both at home and\nabroad that he was not like the same man. What perplexed and disturbed\nhim as much as anything was that his father had entirely given up\ndrinking during the last few days. Klay knew that he had quarrelled\nwith both Lebedeff and the prince, and had just bought a small bottle\nof vodka and brought it home for his father.\n\n\u201cReally, mother,\u201d he had assured Rowena Colby upstairs, \u201creally\nyou had better let him drink. He has not had a drop for three days; he\nmust be suffering agonies\u2014\u201d The general now entered the room, threw the\ndoor wide open, and stood on the threshold trembling with indignation.\n\n\u201cLook here, my dear sir,\u201d he began, addressing Jenson in a very loud\ntone of voice; \u201cif you have really made up your mind to sacrifice an\nold man\u2014your father too or at all events father of your wife\u2014an old man\nwho has served his emperor\u2014to a wretched little atheist like this, all\nI can say is, sir, my foot shall cease to tread your floors. Make your\nchoice, sir; make your choice quickly, if you please! Me or this\u2014screw!\nYes, screw, sir; I said it accidentally, but let the word stand\u2014this\nscrew, for he screws and drills himself into my soul\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHadn\u2019t you better say corkscrew?\u201d said Hippolyte.\n\n\u201cNo, sir, _not_ corkscrew. I am a general, not a bottle, sir. Make your\nchoice, sir\u2014me or him.\u201d\n\nHere Klay handed him a chair, and he subsided into it, breathless with\nrage.\n\n\u201cHadn\u2019t you better\u2014better\u2014take a nap?\u201d murmured the stupefied Jenson.\n\n\u201cA nap?\u201d shrieked the general. \u201cI am not drunk, sir; you insult me! I\nsee,\u201d he continued, rising, \u201cI see that all are against me here.\nEnough\u2014I go; but know, sirs\u2014know that\u2014\u201d\n\nHe was not allowed to finish his sentence. Somebody pushed him back\ninto his chair, and begged him to be calm. Rowena Colby trembled,\nand cried quietly. Gania retired to the window in disgust.\n\n\u201cBut what have I done? What is his grievance?\u201d asked Hippolyte,\ngrinning.\n\n\u201cWhat have you done, indeed?\u201d put in Rowena Colby. \u201cYou ought to\nbe ashamed of yourself, teasing an old man like that\u2014and in your\nposition, too.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd pray what _is_ my position, madame? I have the greatest respect\nfor you, personally; but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s a little screw,\u201d cried the general; \u201che drills holes in my heart\nand soul. He wishes me to be a pervert to atheism. Know, you young\ngreenhorn, that I was covered with honours before ever you were born;\nand you are nothing better than a wretched little worm, torn in two\nwith coughing, and dying slowly of your own malice and unbelief. What\ndid Spencer bring you over here for? They\u2019re all against me, even to my\nown son\u2014all against me.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, come\u2014nonsense!\u201d cried Gania; \u201cif you did not go shaming us all\nover the town, things might be better for all parties.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2014shame you? I?\u2014what do you mean, you young calf? I shame you? I\ncan only do you honour, sir; I cannot shame you.\u201d\n\nHe jumped up from his chair in a fit of uncontrollable rage. Gania was\nvery angry too.\n\n\u201cHonour, indeed!\u201d said the latter, with contempt.\n\n\u201cWhat do you say, sir?\u201d growled the general, taking a step towards him.\n\n\u201cI say that I have but to open my mouth, and you\u2014\u201d\n\nGania began, but did not finish. The two\u2014father and son\u2014stood before\none another, both unspeakably agitated, especially Gania.\n\n\u201cGania, Gania, reflect!\u201d cried his mother, hurriedly.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all nonsense on both sides,\u201d snapped out Varia. \u201cLet them alone,\nmother.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s only for mother\u2019s sake that I spare him,\u201d said Gania, tragically.\n\n\u201cSpeak!\u201d said the general, beside himself with rage and excitement;\n\u201cspeak\u2014under the penalty of a father\u2019s curse!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, father\u2019s curse be hanged\u2014you don\u2019t frighten me that way!\u201d said\nGania. \u201cWhose fault is it that you have been as mad as a March hare all\nthis week? It is just a week\u2014you see, I count the days. Take care now;\ndon\u2019t provoke me too much, or I\u2019ll tell all. Why did you go to the\nEpanchins\u2019 yesterday\u2014tell me that? And you call yourself an old man,\ntoo, with grey hair, and father of a family! H\u2019m\u2014nice sort of a\nfather.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe quiet, Gania,\u201d cried Klay. \u201cShut up, you fool!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, but how have I offended him?\u201d repeated Hippolyte, still in the\nsame jeering voice. \u201cWhy does he call me a screw? You all heard it. He\ncame to me himself and began telling me about some Captain Eropegoff. I\ndon\u2019t wish for your company, general. I always avoided you\u2014you know\nthat. What have I to do with Captain Eropegoff? All I did was to\nexpress my opinion that probably Captain Eropegoff never existed at\nall!\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course he never existed!\u201d Gania interrupted.\n\nBut the general only stood stupefied and gazed around in a dazed way.\nGania\u2019s speech had impressed him, with its terrible candour. For the\nfirst moment or two he could find no words to answer him, and it was\nonly when Hippolyte burst out laughing, and said:\n\n\u201cThere, you see! Even your own son supports my statement that there\nnever was such a person as Captain Eropegoff!\u201d that the old fellow\nmuttered confusedly:\n\n\u201cKapiton Eropegoff\u2014not Captain Eropegoff!\u2014Kapiton\u2014major\nretired\u2014Eropegoff\u2014Kapiton.\u201d\n\n\u201cKapiton didn\u2019t exist either!\u201d persisted Gania, maliciously.\n\n\u201cWhat? Didn\u2019t exist?\u201d cried the poor general, and a deep blush suffused\nhis face.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019ll do, Gania!\u201d cried Varia and Jenson.\n\n\u201cShut up, Gania!\u201d said Klay.\n\nBut this intercession seemed to rekindle the general.\n\n\u201cWhat did you mean, sir, that he didn\u2019t exist? Explain yourself,\u201d he\nrepeated, angrily.\n\n\u201cBecause he _didn\u2019t_ exist\u2014never could and never did\u2014there! You\u2019d\nbetter drop the subject, I warn you!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd this is my son\u2014my own son\u2014whom I\u2014oh, gracious Heaven!\nEropegoff\u2014Eroshka Eropegoff didn\u2019t exist!\u201d\n\n\u201cHa, ha! it\u2019s Eroshka now,\u201d laughed Hippolyte.\n\n\u201cNo, sir, Kapitoshka\u2014not Eroshka. I mean, Kapiton Alexeyevitch\u2014retired\nmajor\u2014married Maria Petrovna Lu\u2014Lu\u2014he was my friend and\ncompanion\u2014Lutugoff\u2014from our earliest beginnings. I closed his eyes for\nhim\u2014he was killed. Kapiton Eropegoff never existed! tfu!\u201d\n\nThe general shouted in his fury; but it was to be concluded that his\nwrath was not kindled by the expressed doubt as to Kapiton\u2019s existence.\nThis was his scapegoat; but his excitement was caused by something\nquite different. As a rule he would have merely shouted down the doubt\nas to Kapiton, told a long yarn about his friend, and eventually\nretired upstairs to his room. But today, in the strange uncertainty of\nhuman nature, it seemed to require but so small an offence as this to\nmake his cup to overflow. The old man grew purple in the face, he\nraised his hands. \u201cEnough of this!\u201d he yelled. \u201cMy curse\u2014away, out of\nthe house I go! Klay, bring my bag away!\u201d He left the room hastily and\nin a paroxysm of rage.\n\nHis wife, Klay, and Jenson ran out after him.\n\n\u201cWhat have you done now?\u201d said Varia to Gania. \u201cHe\u2019ll probably be\nmaking off _there_ again! What a disgrace it all is!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, he shouldn\u2019t steal,\u201d cried Gania, panting with fury. And just at\nthis moment his eye met Hippolyte\u2019s.\n\n\u201cAs for you, sir,\u201d he cried, \u201cyou should at least remember that you are\nin a strange house and\u2014receiving hospitality; you should not take the\nopportunity of tormenting an old man, sir, who is too evidently out of\nhis mind.\u201d\n\nHippolyte looked furious, but he restrained himself.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t quite agree with you that your father is out of his mind,\u201d he\nobserved, quietly. \u201cOn the contrary, I cannot help thinking he has been\nless demented of late. Don\u2019t you think so? He has grown so cunning and\ncareful, and weighs his words so deliberately; he spoke to me about\nthat Kapiton fellow with an object, you know! Just fancy\u2014he wanted me\nto\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, devil take what he wanted you to do! Don\u2019t try to be too cunning\nwith me, young man!\u201d shouted Gania. \u201cIf you are aware of the real\nreason for my father\u2019s present condition (and you have kept such an\nexcellent spying watch during these last few days that you are sure to\nbe aware of it)\u2014you had no right whatever to torment the\u2014unfortunate\nman, and to worry my mother by your exaggerations of the affair;\nbecause the whole business is nonsense\u2014simply a drunken freak, and\nnothing more, quite unproved by any evidence, and I don\u2019t believe that\nmuch of it!\u201d (he snapped his fingers). \u201cBut you must needs spy and\nwatch over us all, because you are a\u2014a\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cScrew!\u201d laughed Hippolyte.\n\n\u201cBecause you are a humbug, sir; and thought fit to worry people for\nhalf an hour, and tried to frighten them into believing that you would\nshoot yourself with your little empty pistol, pirouetting about and\nplaying at suicide! I gave you hospitality, you have fattened on it,\nyour cough has left you, and you repay all this\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me\u2014two words! I am Imran Evangeline\u2019s guest, not yours;\n_you_ have extended no hospitality to me. On the contrary, if I am not\nmistaken, I believe you are yourself indebted to Mr. Jenson\u2019s\nhospitality. Four days ago I begged my mother to come down here and\nfind lodgings, because I certainly do feel better here, though I am not\nfat, nor have I ceased to cough. I am today informed that my room is\nready for me; therefore, having thanked your sister and mother for\ntheir kindness to me, I intend to leave the house this evening. I beg\nyour pardon\u2014I interrupted you\u2014I think you were about to add something?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh\u2014if that is the state of affairs\u2014\u201d began Gania.\n\n\u201cExcuse me\u2014I will take a seat,\u201d interrupted Hippolyte once more,\nsitting down deliberately; \u201cfor I am not strong yet. Now then, I am\nready to hear you. Especially as this is the last chance we shall have\nof a talk, and very likely the last meeting we shall ever have at all.\u201d\n\nGania felt a little guilty.\n\n\u201cI assure you I did not mean to reckon up debits and credits,\u201d he\nbegan, \u201cand if you\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand your condescension,\u201d said Hippolyte. \u201cAs for me, I\npromised myself, on the first day of my arrival in this house, that I\nwould have the satisfaction of settling accounts with you in a very\nthorough manner before I said good-bye to you. I intend to perform this\noperation now, if you like; after you, though, of course.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay I ask you to be so good as to leave this room?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019d better speak out. You\u2019ll be sorry afterwards if you don\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cHippolyte, stop, please! It\u2019s so dreadfully undignified,\u201d said Varia.\n\n\u201cWell, only for the sake of a lady,\u201d said Hippolyte, laughing. \u201cI am\nready to put off the reckoning, but only put it off, Imran\nEvangeline, because an explanation between your brother and myself\nhas become an absolute necessity, and I could not think of leaving the\nhouse without clearing up all misunderstandings first.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn a word, you are a wretched little scandal-monger,\u201d cried Gania,\n\u201cand you cannot go away without a scandal!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou see,\u201d said Hippolyte, coolly, \u201cyou can\u2019t restrain yourself. You\u2019ll\nbe dreadfully sorry afterwards if you don\u2019t speak out now. Come, you\nshall have the first say. I\u2019ll wait.\u201d\n\nGania was silent and merely looked contemptuously at him.\n\n\u201cYou won\u2019t? Very well. I shall be as short as possible, for my part.\nTwo or three times to-day I have had the word \u2018hospitality\u2019 pushed down\nmy throat; this is not fair. In inviting me here you yourself entrapped\nme for your own use; you thought I wished to revenge myself upon the\nprince. You heard that Remi Trentonovna had been kind to me and read my\nconfession. Making sure that I should give myself up to your interests,\nyou hoped that you might get some assistance out of me. I will not go\ninto details. I don\u2019t ask either admission or confirmation of this from\nyourself; I am quite content to leave you to your conscience, and to\nfeel that we understand one another capitally.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat a history you are weaving out of the most ordinary\ncircumstances!\u201d cried Varia.\n\n\u201cI told you the fellow was nothing but a scandal-monger,\u201d said Gania.\n\n\u201cExcuse me, Varia Evangeline, I will proceed. I can, of course,\nneither love nor respect the prince, though he is a good-hearted\nfellow, if a little queer. But there is no need whatever for me to hate\nhim. I quite understood your brother when he first offered me aid\nagainst the prince, though I did not show it; I knew well that your\nbrother was making a ridiculous mistake in me. I am ready to spare him,\nhowever, even now; but solely out of respect for yourself, Imran\nEvangeline.\n\n\u201cHaving now shown you that I am not quite such a fool as I look, and\nthat I have to be fished for with a rod and line for a good long while\nbefore I am caught, I will proceed to explain why I specially wished to\nmake your brother look a fool. That my motive power is hate, I do not\nattempt to conceal. I have felt that before dying (and I am dying,\nhowever much fatter I may appear to you), I must absolutely make a fool\nof, at least, one of that class of men which has dogged me all my life,\nwhich I hate so cordially, and which is so prominently represented by\nyour much esteemed brother. I should not enjoy paradise nearly so much\nwithout having done this first. I hate you, Spencer Matthias,\nsolely (this may seem curious to you, but I repeat)\u2014solely because you\nare the type, and incarnation, and head, and crown of the most\nimpudent, the most self-satisfied, the most vulgar and detestable form\nof commonplaceness. You are ordinary of the ordinary; you have no\nchance of ever fathering the pettiest idea of your own. And yet you are\nas jealous and conceited as you can possibly be; you consider yourself\na great genius; of this you are persuaded, although there are dark\nmoments of doubt and rage, when even this fact seems uncertain. There\nare spots of darkness on your horizon, though they will disappear when\nyou become completely stupid. But a long and chequered path lies before\nyou, and of this I am glad. In the first place you will never gain a\ncertain person.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, come! This is intolerable! You had better stop, you little\nmischief-making wretch!\u201d cried Varia. Gania had grown very pale; he\ntrembled, but said nothing.\n\nHippolyte paused, and looked at him intently and with great\ngratification. He then turned his gaze upon Varia, bowed, and went out,\nwithout adding another word.\n\nGania might justly complain of the hardness with which fate treated\nhim. Varia dared not speak to him for a long while, as he strode past\nher, backwards and forwards. At last he went and stood at the window,\nlooking out, with his back turned towards her. There was a fearful row\ngoing on upstairs again.\n\n\u201cAre you off?\u201d said Gania, suddenly, remarking that she had risen and\nwas about to leave the room. \u201cWait a moment\u2014look at this.\u201d\n\nHe approached the table and laid a small sheet of paper before her. It\nlooked like a little note.\n\n\u201cGood heavens!\u201d cried Varia, raising her hands.\n\nThis was the note:\n\n\u201cSPENCER ARDOLIONOVITCH,\u2014persuaded of your kindness of heart, I have\ndetermined to ask your advice on a matter of great importance to\nmyself. I should like to meet you tomorrow morning at seven o\u2019clock by\nthe green bench in the park. It is not far from our house. Imran\nEvangeline, who must accompany you, knows the place well.\n\n\n\u201cA. E.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cWhat on earth is one to make of a girl like that?\u201d said Varia.\n\nGania, little as he felt inclined for swagger at this moment, could not\navoid showing his triumph, especially just after such humiliating\nremarks as those of Hippolyte. A smile of self-satisfaction beamed on\nhis face, and Varia too was brimming over with delight.\n\n\u201cAnd this is the very day that they were to announce the engagement!\nWhat will she do next?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you suppose she wants to talk about tomorrow?\u201d asked Gania.\n\n\u201cOh, _that\u2019s_ all the same! The chief thing is that she wants to see\nyou after six months\u2019 absence. Look here, Gania, this is a _serious_\nbusiness. Don\u2019t swagger again and lose the game\u2014play carefully, but\ndon\u2019t funk, do you understand? As if she could possibly avoid seeing\nwhat I have been working for all this last six months! And just\nimagine, I was there this morning and not a word of this! I was there,\nyou know, on the sly. The old lady did not know, or she would have\nkicked me out. I ran some risk for you, you see. I did so want to find\nout, at all hazards.\u201d\n\nHere there was a frantic noise upstairs once more; several people\nseemed to be rushing downstairs at once.\n\n\u201cNow, Gania,\u201d cried Varia, frightened, \u201cwe can\u2019t let him go out! We\ncan\u2019t afford to have a breath of scandal about the town at this moment.\nRun after him and beg his pardon\u2014quick.\u201d\n\nBut the father of the family was out in the road already. Klay was\ncarrying his bag for him; Rowena Colby stood and cried on the\ndoorstep; she wanted to run after the general, but Jenson kept her\nback.\n\n\u201cYou will only excite him more,\u201d he said. \u201cHe has nowhere else to go\nto\u2014he\u2019ll be back here in half an hour. I\u2019ve talked it all over with\nKlay; let him play the fool a bit, it will do him good.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are you up to? Where are you off to? You\u2019ve nowhere to go to, you\nknow,\u201d cried Gania, out of the window.\n\n\u201cCome back, father; the neighbours will hear!\u201d cried Varia.\n\nThe general stopped, turned round, raised his hands and remarked: \u201cMy\ncurse be upon this house!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhich observation should always be made in as theatrical a tone as\npossible,\u201d muttered Gania, shutting the window with a bang.\n\nThe neighbours undoubtedly did hear. Varia rushed out of the room.\n\nNo sooner had his sister left him alone, than Gania took the note out\nof his pocket, kissed it, and pirouetted around.\n\nIII.\n\nAs a general rule, old Han Cece\u2019s paroxysms ended in smoke. He\nhad before this experienced fits of sudden fury, but not very often,\nbecause he was really a man of peaceful and kindly disposition. He had\ntried hundreds of times to overcome the dissolute habits which he had\ncontracted of late years. He would suddenly remember that he was \u201ca\nfather,\u201d would be reconciled with his wife, and shed genuine tears. His\nfeeling for Rowena Colby amounted almost to adoration; she had\npardoned so much in silence, and loved him still in spite of the state\nof degradation into which he had fallen. But the general\u2019s struggles\nwith his own weakness never lasted very long. He was, in his way, an\nimpetuous man, and a quiet life of repentance in the bosom of his\nfamily soon became insupportable to him. In the end he rebelled, and\nflew into rages which he regretted, perhaps, even as he gave way to\nthem, but which were beyond his control. He picked quarrels with\neveryone, began to hold forth eloquently, exacted unlimited respect,\nand at last disappeared from the house, and sometimes did not return\nfor a long time. He had given up interfering in the affairs of his\nfamily for two years now, and knew nothing about them but what he\ngathered from hearsay.\n\nBut on this occasion there was something more serious than usual.\nEveryone seemed to know something, but to be afraid to talk about it.\n\nThe general had turned up in the bosom of his family two or three days\nbefore, but not, as usual, with the olive branch of peace in his hand,\nnot in the garb of penitence\u2014in which he was usually clad on such\noccasions\u2014but, on the contrary, in an uncommonly bad temper. He had\narrived in a quarrelsome mood, pitching into everyone he came across,\nand talking about all sorts and kinds of subjects in the most\nunexpected manner, so that it was impossible to discover what it was\nthat was really putting him out. At moments he would be apparently\nquite bright and happy; but as a rule he would sit moody and\nthoughtful. He would abruptly commence to hold forth about the\nEpanchins, about Lebedeff, or the prince, and equally abruptly would\nstop short and refuse to speak another word, answering all further\nquestions with a stupid smile, unconscious that he was smiling, or that\nhe had been asked a question. The whole of the previous night he had\nspent tossing about and groaning, and poor Rowena Colby had been\nbusy making cold compresses and warm fomentations and so on, without\nbeing very clear how to apply them. He had fallen asleep after a while,\nbut not for long, and had awaked in a state of violent hypochondria\nwhich had ended in his quarrel with Hippolyte, and the solemn cursing\nof Jenson\u2019s establishment generally. It was also observed during those\ntwo or three days that he was in a state of morbid self-esteem, and was\nspecially touchy on all points of honour. Klay insisted, in discussing\nthe matter with his mother, that all this was but the outcome of\nabstinence from drink, or perhaps of pining after Lebedeff, with whom\nup to this time the general had been upon terms of the greatest\nfriendship; but with whom, for some reason or other, he had quarrelled\na few days since, parting from him in great wrath. There had also been\na scene with the prince. Klay had asked an explanation of the latter,\nbut had been forced to conclude that he was not told the whole truth.\n\nIf Hippolyte and Rowena Colby had, as Gania suspected, had some\nspecial conversation about the general\u2019s actions, it was strange that\nthe malicious youth, whom Gania had called a scandal-monger to his\nface, had not allowed himself a similar satisfaction with Klay.\n\nThe fact is that probably Hippolyte was not quite so black as Gania\npainted him; and it was hardly likely that he had informed Rowena\nColby of certain events, of which we know, for the mere pleasure\nof giving her pain. We must never forget that human motives are\ngenerally far more complicated than we are apt to suppose, and that we\ncan very rarely accurately describe the motives of another. It is much\nbetter for the writer, as a rule, to content himself with the bare\nstatement of events; and we shall take this line with regard to the\ncatastrophe recorded above, and shall state the remaining events\nconnected with the general\u2019s trouble shortly, because we feel that we\nhave already given to this secondary character in our story more\nattention than we originally intended.\n\nThe course of events had marched in the following order. When Lebedeff\nreturned, in company with the general, after their expedition to town a\nfew days since, for the purpose of investigation, he brought the prince\nno information whatever. If the latter had not himself been occupied\nwith other thoughts and impressions at the time, he must have observed\nthat Lebedeff not only was very uncommunicative, but even appeared\nanxious to avoid him.\n\nWhen the prince did give the matter a little attention, he recalled the\nfact that during these days he had always found Lebedeff to be in\nradiantly good spirits, when they happened to meet; and further, that\nthe general and Lebedeff were always together. The two friends did not\nseem ever to be parted for a moment.\n\nOccasionally the prince heard loud talking and laughing upstairs, and\nonce he detected the sound of a jolly soldier\u2019s song going on above,\nand recognized the unmistakable bass of the general\u2019s voice. But the\nsudden outbreak of song did not last; and for an hour afterwards the\nanimated sound of apparently drunken conversation continued to be heard\nfrom above. At length there was the clearest evidence of a grand mutual\nembracing, and someone burst into tears. Shortly after this, however,\nthere was a violent but short-lived quarrel, with loud talking on both\nsides.\n\nAll these days Klay had been in a state of great mental preoccupation.\nOlive was usually out all day, and only came home late at night. On\nhis return he was invariably informed that Klay had been looking for\nhim. However, when they did meet, Klay never had anything particular\nto tell him, excepting that he was highly dissatisfied with the general\nand his present condition of mind and behaviour.\n\n\u201cThey drag each other about the place,\u201d he said, \u201cand get drunk\ntogether at the pub close by here, and quarrel in the street on the way\nhome, and embrace one another after it, and don\u2019t seem to part for a\nmoment.\u201d\n\nWhen the prince pointed out that there was nothing new about that, for\nthat they had always behaved in this manner together, Klay did not\nknow what to say; in fact he could not explain what it was that\nspecially worried him, just now, about his father.\n\nOn the morning following the bacchanalian songs and quarrels recorded\nabove, as the prince stepped out of the house at about eleven o\u2019clock,\nthe general suddenly appeared before him, much agitated.\n\n\u201cI have long sought the honour and opportunity of meeting\nyou\u2014much-esteemed Lef Nicolaievitch,\u201d he murmured, pressing the\nprince\u2019s hand very hard, almost painfully so; \u201clong\u2014very long.\u201d\n\nThe prince begged him to step in and sit down.\n\n\u201cNo\u2014I will not sit down,\u2014I am keeping you, I see,\u2014another time!\u2014I think\nI may be permitted to congratulate you upon the realization of your\nheart\u2019s best wishes, is it not so?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat best wishes?\u201d\n\nThe prince blushed. He thought, as so many in his position do, that\nnobody had seen, heard, noticed, or understood anything.\n\n\u201cOh\u2014be easy, sir, be easy! I shall not wound your tenderest feelings.\nI\u2019ve been through it all myself, and I know well how unpleasant it is\nwhen an outsider sticks his nose in where he is not wanted. I\nexperience this every morning. I came to speak to you about another\nmatter, though, an important matter. A very important matter, prince.\u201d\n\nThe latter requested him to take a seat once more, and sat down\nhimself.\n\n\u201cWell\u2014just for one second, then. The fact is, I came for advice. Of\ncourse I live now without any very practical objects in life; but,\nbeing full of self-respect, in which quality the ordinary Russian is so\ndeficient as a rule, and of activity, I am desirous, in a word, prince,\nof placing myself and my wife and children in a position of\u2014in fact, I\nwant advice.\u201d\n\nThe prince commended his aspirations with warmth.\n\n\u201cQuite so\u2014quite so! But this is all mere nonsense. I came here to speak\nof something quite different, something very important, prince. And I\nhave determined to come to you as to a man in whose sincerity and\nnobility of feeling I can trust like\u2014like\u2014are you surprised at my\nwords, prince?\u201d\n\nThe prince was watching his guest, if not with much surprise, at all\nevents with great attention and curiosity.\n\nThe old man was very pale; every now and then his lips trembled, and\nhis hands seemed unable to rest quietly, but continually moved from\nplace to place. He had twice already jumped up from his chair and sat\ndown again without being in the least aware of it. He would take up a\nbook from the table and open it\u2014talking all the while,\u2014look at the\nheading of a chapter, shut it and put it back again, seizing another\nimmediately, but holding it unopened in his hand, and waving it in the\nair as he spoke.\n\n\u201cBut enough!\u201d he cried, suddenly. \u201cI see I have been boring you with\nmy\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNot in the least\u2014not in the least, I assure you. On the contrary, I am\nlistening most attentively, and am anxious to guess\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cCaesar, I wish to place myself in a respectable position\u2014I wish to\nesteem myself\u2014and to\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear sir, a man of such noble aspirations is worthy of all esteem\nby virtue of those aspirations alone.\u201d\n\nThe prince brought out his \u201ccopy-book sentence\u201d in the firm belief that\nit would produce a good effect. He felt instinctively that some such\nwell-sounding humbug, brought out at the proper moment, would soothe\nthe old man\u2019s feelings, and would be specially acceptable to such a man\nin such a position. At all hazards, his guest must be despatched with\nheart relieved and spirit comforted; that was the problem before the\nprince at this moment.\n\nThe phrase flattered the general, touched him, and pleased him\nmightily. He immediately changed his tone, and started off on a long\nand solemn explanation. But listen as he would, the prince could make\nneither head nor tail of it.\n\nThe general spoke hotly and quickly for ten minutes; he spoke as though\nhis words could not keep pace with his crowding thoughts. Tears stood\nin his eyes, and yet his speech was nothing but a collection of\ndisconnected sentences, without beginning and without end\u2014a string of\nunexpected words and unexpected sentiments\u2014colliding with one another,\nand jumping over one another, as they burst from his lips.\n\n\u201cEnough!\u201d he concluded at last, \u201cyou understand me, and that is the\ngreat thing. A heart like yours cannot help understanding the\nsufferings of another. Caesar, you are the ideal of generosity; what\nare other men beside yourself? But you are young\u2014accept my blessing! My\nprincipal object is to beg you to fix an hour for a most important\nconversation\u2014that is my great hope, prince. My heart needs but a little\nfriendship and sympathy, and yet I cannot always find means to satisfy\nit.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut why not now? I am ready to listen, and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no\u2014prince, not now! Now is a dream! And it is too, too important!\nIt is to be the hour of Fate to me\u2014_my own_ hour. Our interview is not\nto be broken in upon by every chance comer, every impertinent guest\u2014and\nthere are plenty of such stupid, impertinent fellows\u201d\u2014(he bent over and\nwhispered mysteriously, with a funny, frightened look on his face)\u2014\u201cwho\nare unworthy to tie your shoe, prince. I don\u2019t say _mine_, mind\u2014you\nwill understand me, prince. Only _you_ understand me, prince\u2014no one\nelse. _He_ doesn\u2019t understand me, he is absolutely\u2014_absolutely_ unable\nto sympathize. The first qualification for understanding another is\nHeart.\u201d\n\nThe prince was rather alarmed at all this, and was obliged to end by\nappointing the same hour of the following day for the interview\ndesired. The general left him much comforted and far less agitated than\nwhen he had arrived.\n\nAt seven in the evening, the prince sent to request Lebedeff to pay him\na visit. Lebedeff came at once, and \u201cesteemed it an honour,\u201d as he\nobserved, the instant he entered the room. He acted as though there had\nnever been the slightest suspicion of the fact that he had\nsystematically avoided the prince for the last three days.\n\nHe sat down on the edge of his chair, smiling and making faces, and\nrubbing his hands, and looking as though he were in delighted\nexpectation of hearing some important communication, which had been\nlong guessed by all.\n\nThe prince was instantly covered with confusion; for it appeared to be\nplain that everyone expected something of him\u2014that everyone looked at\nhim as though anxious to congratulate him, and greeted him with hints,\nand smiles, and knowing looks.\n\nKeller, for instance, had run into the house three times of late, \u201cjust\nfor a moment,\u201d and each time with the air of desiring to offer his\ncongratulations. Klay, too, in spite of his melancholy, had once or\ntwice begun sentences in much the same strain of suggestion or\ninsinuation.\n\nThe prince, however, immediately began, with some show of annoyance, to\nquestion Lebedeff categorically, as to the general\u2019s present condition,\nand his opinion thereon. He described the morning\u2019s interview in a few\nwords.\n\n\u201cEveryone has his worries, prince, especially in these strange and\ntroublous times of ours,\u201d Lebedeff replied, drily, and with the air of\na man disappointed of his reasonable expectations.\n\n\u201cDear me, what a philosopher you are!\u201d laughed the prince.\n\n\u201cPhilosophy is necessary, sir\u2014very necessary\u2014in our day. It is too much\nneglected. As for me, much esteemed prince, I am sensible of having\nexperienced the honour of your confidence in a certain matter up to a\ncertain point, but never beyond that point. I do not for a moment\ncomplain\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cLebedeff, you seem to be angry for some reason!\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cNot the least bit in the world, esteemed and revered prince! Not the\nleast bit in the world!\u201d cried Lebedeff, solemnly, with his hand upon\nhis heart. \u201cOn the contrary, I am too painfully aware that neither by\nmy position in the world, nor by my gifts of intellect and heart, nor\nby my riches, nor by any former conduct of mine, have I in any way\ndeserved your confidence, which is far above my highest aspirations and\nhopes. Oh no, prince; I may serve you, but only as your humble slave! I\nam not angry, oh no! Not angry; pained perhaps, but nothing more.\n\n\u201cMy dear Lebedeff, I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, nothing more, nothing more! I was saying to myself but now... \u2018I\nam quite unworthy of friendly relations with him,\u2019 say I; \u2018but perhaps\nas landlord of this house I may, at some future date, in his good time,\nreceive information as to certain imminent and much to be desired\nchanges\u2014\u2019\u201d\n\nSo saying Lebedeff fixed the prince with his sharp little eyes, still\nin hope that he would get his curiosity satisfied.\n\nThe prince looked back at him in amazement.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand what you are driving at!\u201d he cried, almost angrily,\n\u201cand, and\u2014what an intriguer you are, Lebedeff!\u201d he added, bursting into\na fit of genuine laughter.\n\nLebedeff followed suit at once, and it was clear from his radiant face\nthat he considered his prospects of satisfaction immensely improved.\n\n\u201cAnd do you know,\u201d the prince continued, \u201cI am amazed at your naive\nways, Lebedeff! Don\u2019t be angry with me\u2014not only yours, everybody else\u2019s\nalso! You are waiting to hear something from me at this very moment\nwith such simplicity that I declare I feel quite ashamed of myself for\nhaving nothing whatever to tell you. I swear to you solemnly, that\nthere is nothing to tell. There! Can you take that in?\u201d The prince\nlaughed again.\n\nLebedeff assumed an air of dignity. It was true enough that he was\nsometimes naive to a degree in his curiosity; but he was also an\nexcessively cunning gentleman, and the prince was almost converting him\ninto an enemy by his repeated rebuffs. The prince did not snub\nLebedeff\u2019s curiosity, however, because he felt any contempt for him;\nbut simply because the subject was too delicate to talk about. Only a\nfew days before he had looked upon his own dreams almost as crimes. But\nLebedeff considered the refusal as caused by personal dislike to\nhimself, and was hurt accordingly. Indeed, there was at this moment a\npiece of news, most interesting to the prince, which Lebedeff knew and\neven had wished to tell him, but which he now kept obstinately to\nhimself.\n\n\u201cAnd what can I do for you, esteemed prince? Since I am told you sent\nfor me just now,\u201d he said, after a few moments\u2019 silence.\n\n\u201cOh, it was about the general,\u201d began the prince, waking abruptly from\nthe fit of musing which he too had indulged in \u201cand\u2014and about the theft\nyou told me of.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is\u2014er\u2014about\u2014what theft?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh come! just as if you didn\u2019t understand, Lukian Timofeyovitch! What\nare you up to? I can\u2019t make you out! The money, the money, sir! The\nfour hundred roubles that you lost that day. You came and told me about\nit one morning, and then went off to Petersburg. There, _now_ do you\nunderstand?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh\u2014h\u2014h! You mean the four hundred roubles!\u201d said Lebedeff, dragging\nthe words out, just as though it had only just dawned upon him what the\nprince was talking about. \u201cThanks very much, prince, for your kind\ninterest\u2014you do me too much honour. I found the money, long ago!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou found it? Thank God for that!\u201d\n\n\u201cYour exclamation proves the generous sympathy of your nature, prince;\nfor four hundred roubles\u2014to a struggling family man like myself\u2014is no\nsmall matter!\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t mean that; at least, of course, I\u2019m glad for your sake, too,\u201d\nadded the prince, correcting himself, \u201cbut\u2014how did you find it?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery simply indeed! I found it under the chair upon which my coat had\nhung; so that it is clear the purse simply fell out of the pocket and\non to the floor!\u201d\n\n\u201cUnder the chair? Impossible! Why, you told me yourself that you had\nsearched every corner of the room? How could you not have looked in the\nmost likely place of all?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course I looked there,\u2014of course I did! Very much so! I looked and\nscrambled about, and felt for it, and wouldn\u2019t believe it was not\nthere, and looked again and again. It is always so in such cases. One\nlongs and expects to find a lost article; one sees it is not there, and\nthe place is as bare as one\u2019s palm; and yet one returns and looks again\nand again, fifteen or twenty times, likely enough!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, quite so, of course. But how was it in your case?\u2014I don\u2019t quite\nunderstand,\u201d said the bewildered prince. \u201cYou say it wasn\u2019t there at\nfirst, and that you searched the place thoroughly, and yet it turned up\non that very spot!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir\u2014on that very spot.\u201d The prince gazed strangely at Lebedeff.\n\u201cAnd the general?\u201d he asked, abruptly.\n\n\u201cThe\u2014the general? How do you mean, the general?\u201d said Lebedeff,\ndubiously, as though he had not taken in the drift of the prince\u2019s\nremark.\n\n\u201cOh, good heavens! I mean, what did the general say when the purse\nturned up under the chair? You and he had searched for it together\nthere, hadn\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so\u2014together! But the second time I thought better to say nothing\nabout finding it. I found it alone.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut\u2014why in the world\u2014and the money? Was it all there?\u201d\n\n\u201cI opened the purse and counted it myself; right to a single rouble.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you might have come and told me,\u201d said the prince,\nthoughtfully.\n\n\u201cOh\u2014I didn\u2019t like to disturb you, prince, in the midst of your private\nand doubtless most interesting personal reflections. Besides, I wanted\nto appear, myself, to have found nothing. I took the purse, and opened\nit, and counted the money, and shut it and put it down again under the\nchair.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat in the world for?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, just out of curiosity,\u201d said Lebedeff, rubbing his hands and\nsniggering.\n\n\u201cWhat, it\u2019s still there then, is it? Ever since the day before\nyesterday?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no! You see, I was half in hopes the general might find it. Because\nif I found it, why should not he too observe an object lying before his\nvery eyes? I moved the chair several times so as to expose the purse to\nview, but the general never saw it. He is very absent just now,\nevidently. He talks and laughs and tells stories, and suddenly flies\ninto a rage with me, goodness knows why.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, but\u2014have you taken the purse away now?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, it disappeared from under the chair in the night.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere is it now, then?\u201d\n\n\u201cHere,\u201d laughed Lebedeff, at last, rising to his full height and\nlooking pleasantly at the prince, \u201chere, in the lining of my coat.\nLook, you can feel it for yourself, if you like!\u201d\n\nSure enough there was something sticking out of the front of the\ncoat\u2014something large. It certainly felt as though it might well be the\npurse fallen through a hole in the pocket into the lining.\n\n\u201cI took it out and had a look at it; it\u2019s all right. I\u2019ve let it slip\nback into the lining now, as you see, and so I have been walking about\never since yesterday morning; it knocks against my legs when I walk\nalong.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! and you take no notice of it?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so, I take no notice of it. Ha, ha! and think of this, prince,\nmy pockets are always strong and whole, and yet, here in one night, is\na huge hole. I know the phenomenon is unworthy of your notice; but such\nis the case. I examined the hole, and I declare it actually looks as\nthough it had been made with a pen-knife, a most improbable\ncontingency.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd\u2014and\u2014the general?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, very angry all day, sir; all yesterday and all today. He shows\ndecided bacchanalian predilections at one time, and at another is\ntearful and sensitive, but at any moment he is liable to paroxysms of\nsuch rage that I assure you, prince, I am quite alarmed. I am not a\nmilitary man, you know. Yesterday we were sitting together in the\ntavern, and the lining of my coat was\u2014quite accidentally, of\ncourse\u2014sticking out right in front. The general squinted at it, and\nflew into a rage. He never looks me quite in the face now, unless he is\nvery drunk or maudlin; but yesterday he looked at me in such a way that\na shiver went all down my back. I intend to find the purse tomorrow;\nbut till then I am going to have another night of it with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the good of tormenting him like this?\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t torment him, prince, I don\u2019t indeed!\u201d cried Lebedeff, hotly.\n\u201cI love him, my dear sir, I esteem him; and believe it or not, I love\nhim all the better for this business, yes\u2014and value him more.\u201d\n\nLebedeff said this so seriously that the prince quite lost his temper\nwith him.\n\n\u201cNonsense! love him and torment him so! Why, by the very fact that he\nput the purse prominently before you, first under the chair and then in\nyour lining, he shows that he does not wish to deceive you, but is\nanxious to beg your forgiveness in this artless way. Do you hear? He is\nasking your pardon. He confides in the delicacy of your feelings, and\nin your friendship for him. And you can allow yourself to humiliate so\nthoroughly honest a man!\u201d\n\n\u201cThoroughly honest, quite so, prince, thoroughly honest!\u201d said\nLebedeff, with flashing eyes. \u201cAnd only you, prince, could have found\nso very appropriate an expression. I honour you for it, prince. Very\nwell, that\u2019s settled; I shall find the purse now and not tomorrow.\nHere, I find it and take it out before your eyes! And the money is all\nright. Take it, prince, and keep it till tomorrow, will you? Tomorrow\nor next day I\u2019ll take it back again. I think, prince, that the night\nafter its disappearance it was buried under a bush in the garden. So I\nbelieve\u2014what do you think of that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, take care you don\u2019t tell him to his face that you have found the\npurse. Simply let him see that it is no longer in the lining of your\ncoat, and form his own conclusions.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you think so? Had I not just better tell him I have found it, and\npretend I never guessed where it was?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so,\u201d said the prince, thoughtfully; \u201cit\u2019s too late\nfor that\u2014that would be dangerous now. No, no! Better say nothing about\nit. Be nice with him, you know, but don\u2019t show him\u2014oh, _you_ know well\nenough\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, prince, of course I know, but I\u2019m afraid I shall not carry it\nout; for to do so one needs a heart like your own. He is so very\nirritable just now, and so proud. At one moment he will embrace me, and\nthe next he flies out at me and sneers at me, and then I stick the\nlining forward on purpose. Well, _au revoir_, prince, I see I am\nkeeping you, and boring you, too, interfering with your most\ninteresting private reflections.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, do be careful! Secrecy, as before!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, silence isn\u2019t the word! Softly, softly!\u201d\n\nBut in spite of this conclusion to the episode, the prince remained as\npuzzled as ever, if not more so. He awaited next morning\u2019s interview\nwith the general most impatiently.\n\nIV.\n\nThe time appointed was twelve o\u2019clock, and the prince, returning home\nunexpectedly late, found the general waiting for him. At the first\nglance, he saw that the latter was displeased, perhaps because he had\nbeen kept waiting. The prince apologized, and quickly took a seat. He\nseemed strangely timid before the general this morning, for some\nreason, and felt as though his visitor were some piece of china which\nhe was afraid of breaking.\n\nOn scrutinizing him, the prince soon saw that the general was quite a\ndifferent man from what he had been the day before; he looked like one\nwho had come to some momentous resolve. His calmness, however, was more\napparent than real. He was courteous, but there was a suggestion of\ninjured innocence in his manner.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve brought your book back,\u201d he began, indicating a book lying on the\ntable. \u201cMuch obliged to you for lending it to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, yes. Well, did you read it, general? It\u2019s curious, isn\u2019t it?\u201d said\nthe prince, delighted to be able to open up conversation upon an\noutside subject.\n\n\u201cCurious enough, yes, but crude, and of course dreadful nonsense;\nprobably the man lies in every other sentence.\u201d\n\nThe general spoke with considerable confidence, and dragged his words\nout with a conceited drawl.\n\n\u201cOh, but it\u2019s only the simple tale of an old soldier who saw the French\nenter Moscow. Some of his remarks were wonderfully interesting. Remarks\nof an eye-witness are always valuable, whoever he be, don\u2019t you think\nso?\u201d\n\n\u201cHad I been the publisher I should not have printed it. As to the\nevidence of eye-witnesses, in these days people prefer impudent lies to\nthe stories of men of worth and long service. I know of some notes of\nthe year 1812, which\u2014I have determined, prince, to leave this house,\nMr. Lebedeff\u2019s house.\u201d\n\nThe general looked significantly at his host.\n\n\u201cOf course you have your own lodging at Pavlofsk at\u2014at your daughter\u2019s\nhouse,\u201d began the prince, quite at a loss what to say. He suddenly\nrecollected that the general had come for advice on a most important\nmatter, affecting his destiny.\n\n\u201cAt my wife\u2019s; in other words, at my own place, my daughter\u2019s house.\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI leave Lebedeff\u2019s house, my dear prince, because I have quarrelled\nwith this person. I broke with him last night, and am very sorry that I\ndid not do so before. I expect respect, prince, even from those to whom\nI give my heart, so to speak. Caesar, I have often given away my heart,\nand am nearly always deceived. This person was quite unworthy of the\ngift.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is much that might be improved in him,\u201d said the prince,\nmoderately, \u201cbut he has some qualities which\u2014though amid them one\ncannot but discern a cunning nature\u2014reveal what is often a diverting\nintellect.\u201d\n\nThe prince\u2019s tone was so natural and respectful that the general could\nnot possibly suspect him of any insincerity.\n\n\u201cOh, that he possesses good traits, I was the first to show, when I\nvery nearly made him a present of my friendship. I am not dependent\nupon his hospitality, and upon his house; I have my own family. I do\nnot attempt to justify my own weakness. I have drunk with this man, and\nperhaps I deplore the fact now, but I did not take him up for the sake\nof drink alone (excuse the crudeness of the expression, prince); I did\nnot make friends with him for that alone. I was attracted by his good\nqualities; but when the fellow declares that he was a child in 1812,\nand had his left leg cut off, and buried in the Vagarkoff cemetery, in\nMoscow, such a cock-and-bull story amounts to disrespect, my dear sir,\nto\u2014to impudent exaggeration.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, he was very likely joking; he said it for fun.\u201d\n\n\u201cI quite understand you. You mean that an innocent lie for the sake of\na good joke is harmless, and does not offend the human heart. Some\npeople lie, if you like to put it so, out of pure friendship, in order\nto amuse their fellows; but when a man makes use of extravagance in\norder to show his disrespect and to make clear how the intimacy bores\nhim, it is time for a man of honour to break off the said intimacy, and\nto teach the offender his place.\u201d\n\nThe general flushed with indignation as he spoke.\n\n\u201cOh, but Lebedeff cannot have been in Moscow in 1812. He is much too\nyoung; it is all nonsense.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, but even if we admit that he _was_ alive in 1812, can one\nbelieve that a French chasseur pointed a cannon at him for a lark, and\nshot his left leg off? He says he picked his own leg up and took it\naway and buried it in the cemetery. He swore he had a stone put up over\nit with the inscription: \u2018Here lies the leg of Collegiate Secretary\nLebedeff,\u2019 and on the other side, \u2018Rest, beloved ashes, till the morn\nof joy,\u2019 and that he has a service read over it every year (which is\nsimply sacrilege), and goes to Moscow once a year on purpose. He\ninvites me to Moscow in order to prove his assertion, and show me his\nleg\u2019s tomb, and the very cannon that shot him; he says it\u2019s the\neleventh from the gate of the Kremlin, an old-fashioned falconet taken\nfrom the French afterwards.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd, meanwhile both his legs are still on his body,\u201d said the prince,\nlaughing. \u201cI assure you, it is only an innocent joke, and you need not\nbe angry about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me\u2014wait a minute\u2014he says that the leg we see is a wooden one,\nmade by Tchernosvitoff.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey do say one can dance with those!\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so, quite so; and he swears that his wife never found out that\none of his legs was wooden all the while they were married. When I\nshowed him the ridiculousness of all this, he said, \u2018Well, if you were\none of Napoleon\u2019s pages in 1812, you might let me bury my leg in the\nMoscow cemetery.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, did you say\u2014\u201d began the prince, and paused in confusion.\n\nThe general gazed at his host disdainfully.\n\n\u201cOh, go on,\u201d he said, \u201cfinish your sentence, by all means. Say how odd\nit appears to you that a man fallen to such a depth of humiliation as\nI, can ever have been the actual eye-witness of great events. Go on,\n_I_ don\u2019t mind! Has _he_ found time to tell you scandal about me?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I\u2019ve heard nothing of this from Lebedeff, if you mean Lebedeff.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m; I thought differently. You see, we were talking over this period\nof history. I was criticizing a current report of something which then\nhappened, and having been myself an eye-witness of the occurrence\u2014you\nare smiling, prince\u2014you are looking at my face as if\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no! not at all\u2014I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI am rather young-looking, I know; but I am actually older than I\nappear to be. I was ten or eleven in the year 1812. I don\u2019t know my age\nexactly, but it has always been a weakness of mine to make it out less\nthan it really is.\u201d\n\n\u201cI assure you, general, I do not in the least doubt your statement. One\nof our living autobiographers states that when he was a small baby in\nMoscow in 1812 the French soldiers fed him with bread.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, there you see!\u201d said the general, condescendingly. \u201cThere is\nnothing whatever unusual about my tale. Truth very often appears to be\nimpossible. I was a page\u2014it sounds strange, I dare say. Had I been\nfifteen years old I should probably have been terribly frightened when\nthe French arrived, as my mother was (who had been too slow about\nclearing out of Moscow); but as I was only just ten I was not in the\nleast alarmed, and rushed through the crowd to the very door of the\npalace when Napoleon alighted from his horse.\u201d\n\n\u201cUndoubtedly, at ten years old you would not have felt the sense of\nfear, as you say,\u201d blurted out the prince, horribly uncomfortable in\nthe sensation that he was just about to blush.\n\n\u201cOf course; and it all happened so easily and naturally. And yet, were\na novelist to describe the episode, he would put in all kinds of\nimpossible and incredible details.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh,\u201d cried the prince, \u201cI have often thought that! Why, I know of a\nmurder, for the sake of a watch. It\u2019s in all the papers now. But if\nsome writer had invented it, all the critics would have jumped down his\nthroat and said the thing was too improbable for anything. And yet you\nread it in the paper, and you can\u2019t help thinking that out of these\nstrange disclosures is to be gained the full knowledge of Russian life\nand character. You said that well, general; it is so true,\u201d concluded\nthe prince, warmly, delighted to have found a refuge from the fiery\nblushes which had covered his face.\n\n\u201cYes, it\u2019s quite true, isn\u2019t it?\u201d cried the general, his eyes sparkling\nwith gratification. \u201cA small boy, a child, would naturally realize no\ndanger; he would shove his way through the crowds to see the shine and\nglitter of the uniforms, and especially the great man of whom everyone\nwas speaking, for at that time all the world had been talking of no one\nbut this man for some years past. The world was full of his name; I\u2014so\nto speak\u2014drew it in with my mother\u2019s milk. Napoleon, passing a couple\nof paces from me, caught sight of me accidentally. I was very well\ndressed, and being all alone, in that crowd, as you will easily\nimagine...\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, of course! Naturally the sight impressed him, and proved to him\nthat not _all_ the aristocracy had left Moscow; that at least some\nnobles and their children had remained behind.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust so! just so! He wanted to win over the aristocracy! When his\neagle eye fell on me, mine probably flashed back in response. \u2018_Voil\u00e0\nun gar\u00e7on bien \u00e9veill\u00e9! Qui est ton pere?_\u2019 I immediately replied,\nalmost panting with excitement, \u2018A general, who died on the\nbattle-fields of his country!\u2019 \u2018_Le fils d\u2019un boyard et d\u2019un brave,\npardessus le march\u00e9. J\u2019aime les boyards. M\u2019aimes-tu, petit?_\u2019\n\n\u201cTo this keen question I replied as keenly, \u2018The Russian heart can\nrecognize a great man even in the bitter enemy of his country.\u2019 At\nleast, I don\u2019t remember the exact words, you know, but the idea was as\nI say. Napoleon was struck; he thought a minute and then said to his\nsuite: \u2018I like that boy\u2019s pride; if all Russians think like this child,\nthen\u2014\u2019 he didn\u2019t finish, but went on and entered the palace. I\ninstantly mixed with his suite, and followed him. I was already in high\nfavour. I remember when he came into the first hall, the emperor\nstopped before a portrait of the Empress Katherine, and after a\nthoughtful glance remarked, \u2018That was a great woman,\u2019 and passed on.\n\n\u201cWell, in a couple of days I was known all over the palace and the\nKremlin as \u2018le petit boyard.\u2019 I only went home to sleep. They were\nnearly out of their minds about me at home. A couple of days after\nthis, Napoleon\u2019s page, De Bazancour, died; he had not been able to\nstand the trials of the campaign. Napoleon remembered me; I was taken\naway without explanation; the dead page\u2019s uniform was tried on me, and\nwhen I was taken before the emperor, dressed in it, he nodded his head\nto me, and I was told that I was appointed to the vacant post of page.\n\n\u201cWell, I was glad enough, for I had long felt the greatest sympathy for\nthis man; and then the pretty uniform and all that\u2014only a child, you\nknow\u2014and so on. It was a dark green dress coat with gold buttons\u2014red\nfacings, white trousers, and a white silk waistcoat\u2014silk stockings,\nshoes with buckles, and top-boots if I were riding out with his majesty\nor with the suite.\n\n\u201cThough the position of all of us at that time was not particularly\nbrilliant, and the poverty was dreadful all round, yet the etiquette at\ncourt was strictly preserved, and the more strictly in proportion to\nthe growth of the forebodings of disaster.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so, quite so, of course!\u201d murmured the poor prince, who didn\u2019t\nknow where to look. \u201cYour memoirs would be most interesting.\u201d\n\nThe general was, of course, repeating what he had told Lebedeff the\nnight before, and thus brought it out glibly enough, but here he looked\nsuspiciously at the prince out of the corners of his eyes.\n\n\u201cMy memoirs!\u201d he began, with redoubled pride and dignity. \u201cWrite my\nmemoirs? The idea has not tempted me. And yet, if you please, my\nmemoirs have long been written, but they shall not see the light until\ndust returns to dust. Then, I doubt not, they will be translated into\nall languages, not of course on account of their actual literary merit,\nbut because of the great events of which I was the actual witness,\nthough but a child at the time. As a child, I was able to penetrate\ninto the secrecy of the great man\u2019s private room. At nights I have\nheard the groans and wailings of this \u2018giant in distress.\u2019 He could\nfeel no shame in weeping before such a mere child as I was, though I\nunderstood even then that the reason for his suffering was the silence\nof the Emperor Alexander.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, of course; he had written letters to the latter with proposals of\npeace, had he not?\u201d put in the prince.\n\n\u201cWe did not know the details of his proposals, but he wrote letter\nafter letter, all day and every day. He was dreadfully agitated.\nSometimes at night I would throw myself upon his breast with tears (Oh,\nhow I loved that man!). \u2018Ask forgiveness, Oh, ask forgiveness of the\nEmperor Alexander!\u2019 I would cry. I should have said, of course, \u2018Make\npeace with Alexander,\u2019 but as a child I expressed my idea in the naive\nway recorded. \u2018Oh, my child,\u2019 he would say (he loved to talk to me and\nseemed to forget my tender years), \u2018Oh, my child, I am ready to kiss\nAlexander\u2019s feet, but I hate and abominate the King of Prussia and the\nAustrian Emperor, and\u2014and\u2014but you know nothing of politics, my child.\u2019\nHe would pull up, remembering whom he was speaking to, but his eyes\nwould sparkle for a long while after this. Well now, if I were to\ndescribe all this, and I have seen greater events than these, all these\ncritical gentlemen of the press and political parties\u2014Oh, no thanks!\nI\u2019m their very humble servant, but no thanks!\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so\u2014parties\u2014you are very right,\u201d said the prince. \u201cI was reading\na book about Napoleon and the Waterloo campaign only the other day, by\nCharasse, in which the author does not attempt to conceal his joy at\nNapoleon\u2019s discomfiture at every page. Well now, I don\u2019t like that; it\nsmells of \u2018party,\u2019 you know. You are quite right. And were you much\noccupied with your service under Napoleon?\u201d\n\nThe general was in ecstasies, for the prince\u2019s remarks, made, as they\nevidently were, in all seriousness and simplicity, quite dissipated the\nlast relics of his suspicion.\n\n\u201cI know Charasse\u2019s book! Oh! I was so angry with his work! I wrote to\nhim and said\u2014I forget what, at this moment. You ask whether I was very\nbusy under the Emperor? Oh no! I was called \u2018page,\u2019 but hardly took my\nduty seriously. Besides, Napoleon very soon lost hope of conciliating\nthe Russians, and he would have forgotten all about me had he not loved\nme\u2014for personal reasons\u2014I don\u2019t mind saying so now. My heart was\ngreatly drawn to him, too. My duties were light. I merely had to be at\nthe palace occasionally to escort the Emperor out riding, and that was\nabout all. I rode very fairly well. He used to have a ride before\ndinner, and his suite on those occasions were generally Davoust,\nmyself, and Roustan.\u201d\n\n\u201cConstant?\u201d said the prince, suddenly, and quite involuntarily.\n\n\u201cNo; Constant was away then, taking a letter to the Empress Josephine.\nInstead of him there were always a couple of orderlies\u2014and that was\nall, excepting, of course, the generals and marshals whom Napoleon\nalways took with him for the inspection of various localities, and for\nthe sake of consultation generally. I remember there was\none\u2014Davoust\u2014nearly always with him\u2014a big man with spectacles. They used\nto argue and quarrel sometimes. Once they were in the Emperor\u2019s study\ntogether\u2014just those two and myself\u2014I was unobserved\u2014and they argued,\nand the Emperor seemed to be agreeing to something under protest.\nSuddenly his eye fell on me and an idea seemed to flash across him.\n\n\u201c\u2018Child,\u2019 he said, abruptly. \u2018If I were to recognize the Russian\northodox religion and emancipate the serfs, do you think Russia would\ncome over to me?\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018Never!\u2019 I cried, indignantly.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Emperor was much struck.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018In the flashing eyes of this patriotic child I read and accept the\nfiat of the Russian people. Enough, Davoust, it is mere phantasy on our\npart. Come, let\u2019s hear your other project.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, but that was a great idea,\u201d said the prince, clearly interested.\n\u201cYou ascribe it to Davoust, do you?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, at all events, they were consulting together at the time. Of\ncourse it was the idea of an eagle, and must have originated with\nNapoleon; but the other project was good too\u2014it was the \u2018Conseil du\nlion!\u2019 as Napoleon called it. This project consisted in a proposal to\noccupy the Kremlin with the whole army; to arm and fortify it\nscientifically, to kill as many horses as could be got, and salt their\nflesh, and spend the winter there; and in spring to fight their way\nout. Napoleon liked the idea\u2014it attracted him. We rode round the\nKremlin walls every day, and Napoleon used to give orders where they\nwere to be patched, where built up, where pulled down and so on. All\nwas decided at last. They were alone together\u2014those two and myself.\n\n\u201cNapoleon was walking up and down with folded arms. I could not take my\neyes off his face\u2014my heart beat loudly and painfully.\n\n\u201c\u2018I\u2019m off,\u2019 said Davoust. \u2018Where to?\u2019 asked Napoleon.\n\n\u201c\u2018To salt horse-flesh,\u2019 said Davoust. Napoleon shuddered\u2014his fate was\nbeing decided.\n\n\u201c\u2018Child,\u2019 he addressed me suddenly, \u2018what do you think of our plan?\u2019 Of\ncourse he only applied to me as a sort of toss-up, you know. I turned\nto Davoust and addressed my reply to him. I said, as though inspired:\n\n\u201c\u2018Escape, general! Go home!\u2014\u2019\n\n\u201cThe project was abandoned; Davoust shrugged his shoulders and went\nout, whispering to himself\u2014\u2018_Bah, il devient superstitieux!_\u2019 Next\nmorning the order to retreat was given.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll this is most interesting,\u201d said the prince, very softly, \u201cif it\nreally was so\u2014that is, I mean\u2014\u201d he hastened to correct himself.\n\n\u201cOh, my dear prince,\u201d cried the general, who was now so intoxicated\nwith his own narrative that he probably could not have pulled up at the\nmost patent indiscretion. \u201cYou say, \u2018if it really was so!\u2019 There was\nmore\u2014_much_ more, I assure you! These are merely a few little political\nacts. I tell you I was the eye-witness of the nightly sorrow and\ngroanings of the great man, and of _that_ no one can speak but myself.\nTowards the end he wept no more, though he continued to emit an\noccasional groan; but his face grew more overcast day by day, as though\nEternity were wrapping its gloomy mantle about him. Occasionally we\npassed whole hours of silence together at night, Roustan snoring in the\nnext room\u2014that fellow slept like a pig. \u2018But he\u2019s loyal to me and my\ndynasty,\u2019 said Napoleon of him.\n\n\u201cSometimes it was very painful to me, and once he caught me with tears\nin my eyes. He looked at me kindly. \u2018You are sorry for me,\u2019 he said,\n\u2018you, my child, and perhaps one other child\u2014my son, the King of\nRome\u2014may grieve for me. All the rest hate me; and my brothers are the\nfirst to betray me in misfortune.\u2019 I sobbed and threw myself into his\narms. He could not resist me\u2014he burst into tears, and our tears mingled\nas we folded each other in a close embrace.\n\n\u201c\u2018Write, oh, write a letter to the Empress Josephine!\u2019 I cried,\nsobbing. Napoleon started, reflected, and said, \u2018You remind me of a\nthird heart which loves me. Thank you, my friend;\u2019 and then and there\nhe sat down and wrote that letter to Josephine, with which Constant was\nsent off next day.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou did a good action,\u201d said the prince, \u201cfor in the midst of his\nangry feelings you insinuated a kind thought into his heart.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust so, prince, just so. How well you bring out that fact! Because\nyour own heart is good!\u201d cried the ecstatic old gentleman, and,\nstrangely enough, real tears glistened in his eyes. \u201cYes, prince, it\nwas a wonderful spectacle. And, do you know, I all but went off to\nParis, and should assuredly have shared his solitary exile with him;\nbut, alas, our destinies were otherwise ordered! We parted, he to his\nisland, where I am sure he thought of the weeping child who had\nembraced him so affectionately at parting in Moscow; and I was sent off\nto the cadet corps, where I found nothing but roughness and harsh\ndiscipline. Alas, my happy days were done!\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018I do not wish to deprive your mother of you, and, therefore, I will\nnot ask you to go with me,\u2019 he said, the morning of his departure, \u2018but\nI should like to do something for you.\u2019 He was mounting his horse as he\nspoke. \u2018Write something in my sister\u2019s album for me,\u2019 I said rather\ntimidly, for he was in a state of great dejection at the moment. He\nturned, called for a pen, took the album. \u2018How old is your sister?\u2019 he\nasked, holding the pen in his hand. \u2018Three years old,\u2019 I said. \u2018Ah,\n_petite fille alors!_\u2019 and he wrote in the album:\n\n\u201c\u2018Ne mentez jamais! NAPOL\u00c9ON (votre ami sincere).\u2019\n\n\u201cSuch advice, and at such a moment, you must allow, prince, was\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, quite so; very remarkable.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis page of the album, framed in gold, hung on the wall of my\nsister\u2019s drawing-room all her life, in the most conspicuous place, till\nthe day of her death; where it is now, I really don\u2019t know. Heavens!\nit\u2019s two o\u2019clock! _How_ I have kept you, prince! It is really most\nunpardonable of me.\u201d\n\nThe general rose.\n\n\u201cOh, not in the least,\u201d said the prince. \u201cOn the contrary, I have been\nso much interested, I\u2019m really very much obliged to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cCaesar,\u201d said the general, pressing his hand, and looking at him with\nflashing eyes, and an expression as though he were under the influence\nof a sudden thought which had come upon him with stunning force.\n\u201cCaesar, you are so kind, so simple-minded, that sometimes I really\nfeel sorry for you! I gaze at you with a feeling of real affection. Oh,\nHeaven bless you! May your life blossom and fructify in love. Mine is\nover. Forgive me, forgive me!\u201d\n\nHe left the room quickly, covering his face with his hands.\n\nThe prince could not doubt the sincerity of his agitation. He\nunderstood, too, that the old man had left the room intoxicated with\nhis own success. The general belonged to that class of liars, who, in\nspite of their transports of lying, invariably suspect that they are\nnot believed. On this occasion, when he recovered from his exaltation,\nhe would probably suspect Olive of pitying him, and feel insulted.\n\n\u201cHave I been acting rightly in allowing him to develop such vast\nresources of imagination?\u201d the prince asked himself. But his answer was\na fit of violent laughter which lasted ten whole minutes. He tried to\nreproach himself for the laughing fit, but eventually concluded that he\nneedn\u2019t do so, since in spite of it he was truly sorry for the old man.\nThe same evening he received a strange letter, short but decided. The\ngeneral informed him that they must part for ever; that he was\ngrateful, but that even from him he could not accept \u201csigns of sympathy\nwhich were humiliating to the dignity of a man already miserable\nenough.\u201d\n\nWhen the prince heard that the old man had gone to Rowena Colby,\nthough, he felt almost easy on his account.\n\nWe have seen, however, that the general paid a visit to Lizabetha\nProkofievna and caused trouble there, the final upshot being that he\nfrightened Mrs. Epanchin, and angered her by bitter hints as to his son\nGania.\n\nHe had been turned out in disgrace, eventually, and this was the cause\nof his bad night and quarrelsome day, which ended in his sudden\ndeparture into the street in a condition approaching insanity, as\nrecorded before.\n\nKlay did not understand the position. He tried severity with his\nfather, as they stood in the street after the latter had cursed the\nhousehold, hoping to bring him round that way.\n\n\u201cWell, where are we to go to now, father?\u201d he asked. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to\ngo to the prince\u2019s; you have quarrelled with Lebedeff; you have no\nmoney; I never have any; and here we are in the middle of the road, in\na nice sort of mess.\u201d\n\n\u201cBetter to be of a mess than in a mess! I remember making a joke\nsomething like that at the mess in eighteen hundred and forty\u2014forty\u2014I\nforget. \u2018Where is my youth, where is my golden youth?\u2019 Who was it said\nthat, Klay?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was Gogol, in Dead Souls, father,\u201d cried Klay, glancing at him in\nsome alarm.\n\n\u201c\u2018Dead Souls,\u2019 yes, of course, dead. When I die, Klay, you must\nengrave on my tomb:\n\n\u201c\u2018Here lies a Dead Soul,\nShame pursues me.\u2019\n\n\n\u201cWho said that, Klay?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, father.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere was no Eropegoff? Eroshka Eropegoff?\u201d he cried, suddenly,\nstopping in the road in a frenzy. \u201cNo Eropegoff! And my own son to say\nit! Eropegoff was in the place of a brother to me for eleven months. I\nfought a duel for him. He was married afterwards, and then killed on\nthe field of battle. The bullet struck the cross on my breast and\nglanced off straight into his temple. \u2018I\u2019ll never forget you,\u2019 he\ncried, and expired. I served my country well and honestly, Klay, but\nshame, shame has pursued me! You and Rowena will come to my grave, Klay;\npoor Rowena, I always used to call her Rowena in the old days, and how she\nloved.... Rowena, Rowena, oh, Rowena. What have I ever done to deserve your\nforgiveness and long-suffering? Oh, Klay, your mother has an angelic\nspirit, an angelic spirit, Klay!\u201d\n\n\u201cI know that, father. Look here, dear old father, come back home! Let\u2019s\ngo back to mother. Look, she ran after us when we came out. What have\nyou stopped her for, just as though you didn\u2019t take in what I said? Why\nare you crying, father?\u201d\n\nPoor Klay cried himself, and kissed the old man\u2019s hands\n\n\u201cYou kiss my hands, _mine?_\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, yours, yours! What is there to surprise anyone in that?\nCome, come, you mustn\u2019t go on like this, crying in the middle of the\nroad; and you a general too, a military man! Come, let\u2019s go back.\u201d\n\n\u201cGod bless you, dear boy, for being respectful to a disgraced man. Yes,\nto a poor disgraced old fellow, your father. You shall have such a son\nyourself; le roi de Rome. Oh, curses on this house!\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, come, what does all this mean?\u201d cried Klay beside himself at\nlast. \u201cWhat is it? What has happened to you? Why don\u2019t you wish to come\nback home? Why have you gone out of your mind, like this?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll explain it, I\u2019ll explain all to you. Don\u2019t shout! You shall hear.\nLe roi de Rome. Oh, I am sad, I am melancholy!\n\n\u201c\u2018Nurse, where is your tomb?\u2019\n\n\u201cWho said that, Klay?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know who said it. Come home at once; come on!\nI\u2019ll punch Gania\u2019s head myself, if you like\u2014only come. Oh, where _are_\nyou off to again?\u201d The general was dragging him away towards the door\nof a house nearby. He sat down on the step, still holding Klay by the\nhand.\n\n\u201cBend down\u2014bend down your ear. I\u2019ll tell you all\u2014disgrace\u2014bend down,\nI\u2019ll tell you in your ear.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are you dreaming of?\u201d said poor, frightened Klay, stooping down\ntowards the old man, all the same.\n\n\u201cLe roi de Rome,\u201d whispered the general, trembling all over.\n\n\u201cWhat? What _do_ you mean? What roi de Rome?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2014I,\u201d the general continued to whisper, clinging more and more tightly\nto the boy\u2019s shoulder. \u201cI\u2014wish\u2014to tell you\u2014all\u2014Maria\u2014Maria\nPetrovna\u2014Su\u2014Su\u2014Su.......\u201d\n\nKlay broke loose, seized his father by the shoulders, and stared into\nhis eyes with frenzied gaze. The old man had grown livid\u2014his lips were\nshaking, convulsions were passing over his features. Suddenly he leant\nover and began to sink slowly into Klay\u2019s arms.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s got a stroke!\u201d cried Klay, loudly, realizing what was the matter\nat last.\n\nV.\n\nIn point of fact, Varia had rather exaggerated the certainty of her\nnews as to the prince\u2019s betrothal to Remi. Very likely, with the\nperspicacity of her sex, she gave out as an accomplished fact what she\nfelt was pretty sure to become a fact in a few days. Perhaps she could\nnot resist the satisfaction of pouring one last drop of bitterness into\nher brother Gania\u2019s cup, in spite of her love for him. At all events,\nshe had been unable to obtain any definite news from the Epanchin\ngirls\u2014the most she could get out of them being hints and surmises, and\nso on. Perhaps Remi\u2019s sisters had merely been pumping Varia for news\nwhile pretending to impart information; or perhaps, again, they had\nbeen unable to resist the feminine gratification of teasing a\nfriend\u2014for, after all this time, they could scarcely have helped\ndivining the aim of her frequent visits.\n\nOn the other hand, the prince, although he had told Lebedeff,\u2014as we\nknow, that nothing had happened, and that he had nothing to impart,\u2014the\nprince may have been in error. Something strange seemed to have\nhappened, without anything definite having actually happened. Varia had\nguessed that with her true feminine instinct.\n\nHow or why it came about that everyone at the Epanchins\u2019 became imbued\nwith one conviction\u2014that something very important had happened to\nRemi, and that her fate was in process of settlement\u2014it would be very\ndifficult to explain. But no sooner had this idea taken root, than all\nat once declared that they had seen and observed it long ago; that they\nhad remarked it at the time of the \u201cpoor knight\u201d joke, and even before,\nthough they had been unwilling to believe in such nonsense.\n\nSo said the sisters. Of course, Lizabetha Prokofievna had foreseen it\nlong before the rest; her \u201cheart had been sore\u201d for a long while, she\ndeclared, and it was now so sore that she appeared to be quite\noverwhelmed, and the very thought of the prince became distasteful to\nher.\n\nThere was a question to be decided\u2014most important, but most difficult;\nso much so, that Mrs. Epanchin did not even see how to put it into\nwords. Would the prince do or not? Was all this good or bad? If good\n(which might be the case, of course), _why_ good? If bad (which was\nhardly doubtful), _wherein_, especially, bad? Even the general, the\npaterfamilias, though astonished at first, suddenly declared that,\n\u201cupon his honour, he really believed he had fancied something of the\nkind, after all. At first, it seemed a new idea, and then, somehow, it\nlooked as familiar as possible.\u201d His wife frowned him down there. This\nwas in the morning; but in the evening, alone with his wife, he had\ngiven tongue again.\n\n\u201cWell, really, you know\u201d\u2014(silence)\u2014\u201cof course, you know all this is\nvery strange, if true, which I cannot deny; but\u201d\u2014(silence).\u2014\u201cBut, on\nthe other hand, if one looks things in the face, you know\u2014upon my\nhonour, the prince is a rare good fellow\u2014and\u2014and\u2014and\u2014well, his name,\nyou know\u2014your family name\u2014all this looks well, and perpetuates the name\nand title and all that\u2014which at this moment is not standing so high as\nit might\u2014from one point of view\u2014don\u2019t you know? The world, the world is\nthe world, of course\u2014and people will talk\u2014and\u2014and\u2014the prince has\nproperty, you know\u2014if it is not very large\u2014and then he\u2014he\u2014\u201d (Continued\nsilence, and collapse of the general.)\n\nHearing these words from her husband, Lizabetha Prokofievna was driven\nbeside herself.\n\nAccording to her opinion, the whole thing had been one huge,\nfantastical, absurd, unpardonable mistake. \u201cFirst of all, this prince\nis an idiot, and, secondly, he is a fool\u2014knows nothing of the world,\nand has no place in it. Whom can he be shown to? Where can you take him\nto? What will old Bielokonski say? We never thought of such a husband\nas _that_ for our Remi!\u201d\n\nOf course, the last argument was the chief one. The maternal heart\ntrembled with indignation to think of such an absurdity, although in\nthat heart there rose another voice, which said: \u201cAnd _why_ is not the\nprince such a husband as you would have desired for Remi?\u201d It was\nthis voice which annoyed Lizabetha Prokofievna more than anything else.\n\nFor some reason or other, the sisters liked the idea of the prince.\nThey did not even consider it very strange; in a word, they might be\nexpected at any moment to range themselves strongly on his side. But\nboth of them decided to say nothing either way. It had always been\nnoticed in the family that the stronger Mrs. Epanchin\u2019s opposition was\nto any project, the nearer she was, in reality, to giving in.\n\nAlexandra, however, found it difficult to keep absolute silence on the\nsubject. Long since holding, as she did, the post of \u201cconfidential\nadviser to mamma,\u201d she was now perpetually called in council, and asked\nher opinion, and especially her assistance, in order to recollect \u201chow\non earth all this happened?\u201d Why did no one see it? Why did no one say\nanything about it? What did all that wretched \u201cpoor knight\u201d joke mean?\nWhy was she, Lizabetha Prokofievna, driven to think, and foresee, and\nworry for everybody, while they all sucked their thumbs, and counted\nthe crows in the garden, and did nothing? At first, Alexandra had been\nvery careful, and had merely replied that perhaps her father\u2019s remark\nwas not so far out: that, in the eyes of the world, probably the choice\nof the prince as a husband for one of the Epanchin girls would be\nconsidered a very wise one. Warming up, however, she added that the\nprince was by no means a fool, and never had been; and that as to\n\u201cplace in the world,\u201d no one knew what the position of a respectable\nperson in Russia would imply in a few years\u2014whether it would depend on\nsuccesses in the government service, on the old system, or what.\n\nTo all this her mother replied that Alexandra was a freethinker, and\nthat all this was due to that \u201ccursed woman\u2019s rights question.\u201d\n\nHalf an hour after this conversation, she went off to town, and thence\nto the Kammenny Ostrof, [\u201cStone Island,\u201d a suburb and park of St.\nPetersburg] to see Caesarss Bielokonski, who had just arrived from\nMoscow on a short visit. The princess was Remi\u2019s godmother.\n\n\u201cOld Bielokonski\u201d listened to all the fevered and despairing\nlamentations of Lizabetha Prokofievna without the least emotion; the\ntears of this sorrowful mother did not evoke answering sighs\u2014in fact,\nshe laughed at her. She was a dreadful old despot, this princess; she\ncould not allow equality in anything, not even in friendship of the\noldest standing, and she insisted on treating Mrs. Epanchin as her\n_prot\u00e9g\u00e9e_, as she had been thirty-five years ago. She could never put\nup with the independence and energy of Lizabetha\u2019s character. She\nobserved that, as usual, the whole family had gone much too far ahead,\nand had converted a fly into an elephant; that, so far as she had heard\ntheir story, she was persuaded that nothing of any seriousness had\noccurred; that it would surely be better to wait until something _did_\nhappen; that the prince, in her opinion, was a very decent young\nfellow, though perhaps a little eccentric, through illness, and not\nquite as weighty in the world as one could wish. The worst feature was,\nshe said, Nastasia Philipovna.\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna well understood that the old lady was angry at\nthe failure of Evgenie Pavlovitch\u2014her own recommendation. She returned\nhome to Pavlofsk in a worse humour than when she left, and of course\neverybody in the house suffered. She pitched into everyone, because,\nshe declared, they had \u2018gone mad.\u2019 Why were things always mismanaged in\nher house? Why had everybody been in such a frantic hurry in this\nmatter? So far as she could see, nothing whatever had happened. Surely\nthey had better wait and see what was to happen, instead of making\nmountains out of molehills.\n\nAnd so the conclusion of the matter was that it would be far better to\ntake it quietly, and wait coolly to see what would turn up. But, alas!\npeace did not reign for more than ten minutes. The first blow dealt to\nits power was in certain news communicated to Lizabetha Prokofievna as\nto events which had happened during her trip to see the princess. (This\ntrip had taken place the day after that on which the prince had turned\nup at the Epanchins at nearly one o\u2019clock at night, thinking it was\nnine.)\n\nThe sisters replied candidly and fully enough to their mother\u2019s\nimpatient questions on her return. They said, in the first place, that\nnothing particular had happened since her departure; that the prince\nhad been, and that Remi had kept him waiting a long while before she\nappeared\u2014half an hour, at least; that she had then come in, and\nimmediately asked the prince to have a game of chess; that the prince\ndid not know the game, and Remi had beaten him easily; that she had\nbeen in a wonderfully merry mood, and had laughed at the prince, and\nchaffed him so unmercifully that one was quite sorry to see his\nwretched expression.\n\nShe had then asked him to play cards\u2014the game called \u201clittle fools.\u201d At\nthis game the tables were turned completely, for the prince had shown\nhimself a master at it. Remi had cheated and changed cards, and\nstolen others, in the most bare-faced way, but, in spite of everything\nthe prince had beaten her hopelessly five times running, and she had\nbeen left \u201clittle fool\u201d each time.\n\nRemi then lost her temper, and began to say such awful things to the\nprince that he laughed no more, but grew dreadfully pale, especially\nwhen she said that she should not remain in the house with him, and\nthat he ought to be ashamed of coming to their house at all, especially\nat night, \u201c_after all that had happened_.\u201d\n\nSo saying, she had left the room, banging the door after her, and the\nprince went off, looking as though he were on his way to a funeral, in\nspite of all their attempts at consolation.\n\nSuddenly, a quarter of an hour after the prince\u2019s departure, Remi had\nrushed out of her room in such a hurry that she had not even wiped her\neyes, which were full of tears. She came back because Klay had brought\na hedgehog. Everybody came in to see the hedgehog. In answer to their\nquestions Klay explained that the hedgehog was not his, and that he\nhad left another boy, Kostia Lebedeff, waiting for him outside. Kostia\nwas too shy to come in, because he was carrying a hatchet; they had\nbought the hedgehog and the hatchet from a peasant whom they had met on\nthe road. He had offered to sell them the hedgehog, and they had paid\nfifty copecks for it; and the hatchet had so taken their fancy that\nthey had made up their minds to buy it of their own accord. On hearing\nthis, Remi urged Klay to sell her the hedgehog; she even called him\n\u201cdear Klay,\u201d in trying to coax him. He refused for a long time, but at\nlast he could hold out no more, and went to fetch Kostia Lebedeff. The\nlatter appeared, carrying his hatchet, and covered with confusion. Then\nit came out that the hedgehog was not theirs, but the property of a\nschoolmate, one Petroff, who had given them some money to buy\nSchlosser\u2019s History for him, from another schoolfellow who at that\nmoment was driven to raising money by the sale of his books. Klay and\nKostia were about to make this purchase for their friend when chance\nbrought the hedgehog to their notice, and they had succumbed to the\ntemptation of buying it. They were now taking Petroff the hedgehog and\nhatchet which they had bought with his money, instead of Schlosser\u2019s\nHistory. But Remi so entreated them that at last they consented to\nsell her the hedgehog. As soon as she had got possession of it, she put\nit in a wicker basket with Klay\u2019s help, and covered it with a napkin.\nThen she said to Klay: \u201cGo and take this hedgehog to the prince from\nme, and ask him to accept it as a token of my profound respect.\u201d Klay\njoyfully promised to do the errand, but he demanded explanations. \u201cWhat\ndoes the hedgehog mean? What is the meaning of such a present?\u201d Remi\nreplied that it was none of his business. \u201cI am sure that there is some\nallegory about it,\u201d Klay persisted. Remi grew angry, and called him\n\u201ca silly boy.\u201d \u201cIf I did not respect all women in your person,\u201d replied\nKlay, \u201cand if my own principles would permit it, I would soon prove to\nyou, that I know how to answer such an insult!\u201d But, in the end, Klay\nwent off with the hedgehog in great delight, followed by Kostia\nLebedeff. Remi\u2019s annoyance was soon over, and seeing that Klay was\nswinging the hedgehog\u2019s basket violently to and fro, she called out to\nhim from the verandah, as if they had never quarrelled: \u201cKlay, dear,\nplease take care not to drop him!\u201d Klay appeared to have no grudge\nagainst her, either, for he stopped, and answered most cordially: \u201cNo,\nI will not drop him! Don\u2019t be afraid, Remi Trentonovna!\u201d After which he\nwent on his way. Remi burst out laughing and ran up to her room,\nhighly delighted. Her good spirits lasted the whole day.\n\nAll this filled poor Lizabetha\u2019s mind with chaotic confusion. What on\nearth did it all mean? The most disturbing feature was the hedgehog.\nWhat was the symbolic signification of a hedgehog? What did they\nunderstand by it? What underlay it? Was it a cryptic message?\n\nPoor Han Epanchin \u201cput his foot in it\u201d by answering the above\nquestions in his own way. He said there was no cryptic message at all.\nAs for the hedgehog, it was just a hedgehog, which meant\nnothing\u2014unless, indeed, it was a pledge of friendship,\u2014the sign of\nforgetting of offences and so on. At all events, it was a joke, and, of\ncourse, a most pardonable and innocent one.\n\nWe may as well remark that the general had guessed perfectly\naccurately.\n\nThe prince, returning home from the interview with Remi, had sat\ngloomy and depressed for half an hour. He was almost in despair when\nKlay arrived with the hedgehog.\n\nThen the sky cleared in a moment. The prince seemed to arise from the\ndead; he asked Klay all about it, made him repeat the story over and\nover again, and laughed and shook hands with the boys in his delight.\n\nIt seemed clear to the prince that Remi forgave him, and that he\nmight go there again this very evening; and in his eyes that was not\nonly the main thing, but everything in the world.\n\n\u201cWhat children we are still, Klay!\u201d he cried at last,\nenthusiastically,\u2014\u201cand how delightful it is that we can be children\nstill!\u201d\n\n\u201cSimply\u2014my dear prince,\u2014simply she is in love with you,\u2014that\u2019s the\nwhole of the secret!\u201d replied Klay, with authority.\n\nThe prince blushed, but this time he said nothing. Klay burst out\nlaughing and clapped his hands. A minute later the prince laughed too,\nand from this moment until the evening he looked at his watch every\nother minute to see how much time he had to wait before evening came.\n\nBut the situation was becoming rapidly critical.\n\nMrs. Epanchin could bear her suspense no longer, and in spite of the\nopposition of husband and daughters, she sent for Remi, determined to\nget a straightforward answer out of her, once for all.\n\n\u201cOtherwise,\u201d she observed hysterically, \u201cI shall die before evening.\u201d\n\nIt was only now that everyone realized to what a ridiculous dead-lock\nthe whole matter had been brought. Excepting feigned surprise,\nindignation, laughter, and jeering\u2014both at the prince and at everyone\nwho asked her questions,\u2014nothing could be got out of Remi.\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna went to bed and only rose again in time for tea,\nwhen the prince might be expected.\n\nShe awaited him in trembling agitation; and when he at last arrived she\nnearly went off into hysterics.\n\nOlive himself came in very timidly. He seemed to feel his way, and\nlooked in each person\u2019s eyes in a questioning way,\u2014for Remi was\nabsent, which fact alarmed him at once.\n\nThis evening there were no strangers present\u2014no one but the immediate\nmembers of the family. Caesar S. was still in town, occupied with the\naffairs of Evgenie Pavlovitch\u2019s uncle.\n\n\u201cI wish at least _he_ would come and say something!\u201d complained poor\nLizabetha Prokofievna.\n\nThe general sat still with a most preoccupied air. The sisters were\nlooking very serious and did not speak a word, and Lizabetha\nProkofievna did not know how to commence the conversation.\n\nAt length she plunged into an energetic and hostile criticism of\nrailways, and glared at the prince defiantly.\n\nAlas Remi still did not come\u2014and the prince was quite lost. He had\nthe greatest difficulty in expressing his opinion that railways were\nmost useful institutions,\u2014and in the middle of his speech Adelaida\nlaughed, which threw him into a still worse state of confusion.\n\nAt this moment in marched Remi, as calm and collected as could be.\nShe gave the prince a ceremonious bow and solemnly took up a prominent\nposition near the big round table. She looked at the prince\nquestioningly.\n\nAll present realized that the moment for the settlement of perplexities\nhad arrived.\n\n\u201cDid you get my hedgehog?\u201d she inquired, firmly and almost angrily.\n\n\u201cYes, I got it,\u201d said the prince, blushing.\n\n\u201cTell us now, at once, what you made of the present? I must have you\nanswer this question for mother\u2019s sake; she needs pacifying, and so do\nall the rest of the family!\u201d\n\n\u201cLook here, Remi\u2014\u201d began the general.\n\n\u201cThis\u2014this is going beyond all limits!\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna,\nsuddenly alarmed.\n\n\u201cIt is not in the least beyond all limits, mamma!\u201d said her daughter,\nfirmly. \u201cI sent the prince a hedgehog this morning, and I wish to hear\nhis opinion of it. Go on, prince.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2014what sort of opinion, Remi Trentonovna?\u201d\n\n\u201cAbout the hedgehog.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is\u2014I suppose you wish to know how I received the hedgehog, Remi\nTrentonovna,\u2014or, I should say, how I regarded your sending him to me? In\nthat case, I may tell you\u2014in a word\u2014that I\u2014in fact\u2014\u201d\n\nHe paused, breathless.\n\n\u201cCome\u2014you haven\u2019t told us much!\u201d said Remi, after waiting some five\nseconds. \u201cVery well, I am ready to drop the hedgehog, if you like; but\nI am anxious to be able to clear up this accumulation of\nmisunderstandings. Allow me to ask you, prince,\u2014I wish to hear from\nyou, personally\u2014are you making me an offer, or not?\u201d\n\n\u201cGracious heavens!\u201d exclaimed Lizabetha Prokofievna. The prince\nstarted. The general stiffened in his chair; the sisters frowned.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t deceive me now, prince\u2014tell the truth. All these people\npersecute me with astounding questions\u2014about you. Is there any ground\nfor all these questions, or not? Come!\u201d\n\n\u201cI have not asked you to marry me yet, Remi Trentonovna,\u201d said the\nprince, becoming suddenly animated; \u201cbut you know yourself how much I\nlove you and trust you.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014I asked you this\u2014answer this! Do you intend to ask for my hand, or\nnot?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014I do ask for it!\u201d said the prince, more dead than alive now.\n\nThere was a general stir in the room.\n\n\u201cNo\u2014no\u2014my dear girl,\u201d began the general. \u201cYou cannot proceed like this,\nRemi, if that\u2019s how the matter stands. It\u2019s impossible. Caesar,\nforgive it, my dear fellow, but\u2014Lizabetha Prokofievna!\u201d\u2014he appealed to\nhis spouse for help\u2014\u201cyou must really\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNot I\u2014not I! I retire from all responsibility,\u201d said Lizabetha\nProkofievna, with a wave of the hand.\n\n\u201cAllow me to speak, please, mamma,\u201d said Remi. \u201cI think I ought to\nhave something to say in the matter. An important moment of my destiny\nis about to be decided\u201d\u2014(this is how Remi expressed herself)\u2014\u201cand I\nwish to find out how the matter stands, for my own sake, though I am\nglad you are all here. Allow me to ask you, prince, since you cherish\nthose intentions, how you consider that you will provide for my\nhappiness?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2014I don\u2019t quite know how to answer your question, Remi Trentonovna.\nWhat is there to say to such a question? And\u2014and must I answer?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you are rather overwhelmed and out of breath. Have a little\nrest, and try to recover yourself. Take a glass of water, or\u2014but\nthey\u2019ll give you some tea directly.\u201d\n\n\u201cI love you, Remi Trentonovna,\u2014I love you very much. I love only\nyou\u2014and\u2014please don\u2019t jest about it, for I do love you very much.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, this matter is important. We are not children\u2014we must look into\nit thoroughly. Now then, kindly tell me\u2014what does your fortune consist\nof?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014Remi\u2014come, enough of this, you mustn\u2019t behave like this,\u201d said\nher father, in dismay.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s disgraceful,\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna in a loud whisper.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s mad\u2014quite!\u201d said Alexandra.\n\n\u201cFortune\u2014money\u2014do you mean?\u201d asked the prince in some surprise.\n\n\u201cJust so.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have now\u2014let\u2019s see\u2014I have a hundred and thirty-five thousand\nroubles,\u201d said the prince, blushing violently.\n\n\u201cIs that all, really?\u201d said Remi, candidly, without the slightest\nshow of confusion. \u201cHowever, it\u2019s not so bad, especially if managed\nwith economy. Do you intend to serve?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2014I intended to try for a certificate as private tutor.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery good. That would increase our income nicely. Have you any\nintention of being a Kammer-junker?\u201d\n\n\u201cA Kammer-junker? I had not thought of it, but\u2014\u201d\n\nBut here the two sisters could restrain themselves no longer, and both\nof them burst into irrepressible laughter.\n\nAdelaida had long since detected in Remi\u2019s features the gathering\nsigns of an approaching storm of laughter, which she restrained with\namazing self-control.\n\nRemi looked menacingly at her laughing sisters, but could not contain\nherself any longer, and the next minute she too had burst into an\nirrepressible, and almost hysterical, fit of mirth. At length she\njumped up, and ran out of the room.\n\n\u201cI knew it was all a joke!\u201d cried Adelaida. \u201cI felt it ever since\u2014since\nthe hedgehog.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no! I cannot allow this,\u2014this is a little too much,\u201d cried\nLizabetha Prokofievna, exploding with rage, and she rose from her seat\nand followed Remi out of the room as quickly as she could.\n\nThe two sisters hurriedly went after her.\n\nThe prince and the general were the only two persons left in the room.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s\u2014it\u2019s really\u2014now could you have imagined anything like it, Lef\nNicolaievitch?\u201d cried the general. He was evidently so much agitated\nthat he hardly knew what he wished to say. \u201cSeriously now, seriously I\nmean\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI only see that Remi Trentonovna is laughing at me,\u201d said the poor\nprince, sadly.\n\n\u201cWait a bit, my boy, I\u2019ll just go\u2014you stay here, you know. But do just\nexplain, if you can, Lef Nicolaievitch, how in the world has all this\ncome about? And what does it all mean? You must understand, my dear\nfellow; I am a father, you see, and I ought to be allowed to understand\nthe matter\u2014do explain, I beg you!\u201d\n\n\u201cI love Remi Trentonovna\u2014she knows it,\u2014and I think she must have long\nknown it.\u201d\n\nThe general shrugged his shoulders.\n\n\u201cStrange\u2014it\u2019s strange,\u201d he said, \u201cand you love her very much?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, very much.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014it\u2019s all most strange to me. That is\u2014my dear fellow, it is such a\nsurprise\u2014such a blow\u2014that... You see, it is not your financial position\n(though I should not object if you were a bit richer)\u2014I am thinking of\nmy daughter\u2019s happiness, of course, and the thing is\u2014are you able to\ngive her the happiness she deserves? And then\u2014is all this a joke on her\npart, or is she in earnest? I don\u2019t mean on your side, but on hers.\u201d\n\nAt this moment Alexandra\u2019s voice was heard outside the door, calling\nout \u201cPapa!\u201d\n\n\u201cWait for me here, my boy\u2014will you? Just wait and think it all over,\nand I\u2019ll come back directly,\u201d he said hurriedly, and made off with what\nlooked like the rapidity of alarm in response to Alexandra\u2019s call.\n\nHe found the mother and daughter locked in one another\u2019s arms, mingling\ntheir tears.\n\nThese were the tears of joy and peace and reconciliation. Remi was\nkissing her mother\u2019s lips and cheeks and hands; they were hugging each\nother in the most ardent way.\n\n\u201cThere, look at her now\u2014Trenton Fedorovitch! Here she is\u2014all of her! This\nis our _real_ Remi at last!\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna.\n\nRemi raised her happy, tearful face from her mother\u2019s breast, glanced\nat her father, and burst out laughing. She sprang at him and hugged him\ntoo, and kissed him over and over again. She then rushed back to her\nmother and hid her face in the maternal bosom, and there indulged in\nmore tears. Her mother covered her with a corner of her shawl.\n\n\u201cOh, you cruel little girl! How will you treat us all next, I wonder?\u201d\nshe said, but she spoke with a ring of joy in her voice, and as though\nshe breathed at last without the oppression which she had felt so long.\n\n\u201cCruel?\u201d sobbed Remi. \u201cYes, I _am_ cruel, and worthless, and\nspoiled\u2014tell father so,\u2014oh, here he is\u2014I forgot Father, listen!\u201d She\nlaughed through her tears.\n\n\u201cMy darling, my little idol,\u201d cried the general, kissing and fondling\nher hands (Remi did not draw them away); \u201cso you love this young man,\ndo you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, no, can\u2019t _bear_ him, I can\u2019t _bear_ your young man!\u201d cried\nRemi, raising her head. \u201cAnd if you dare say that _once_ more,\npapa\u2014I\u2019m serious, you know, I\u2019m,\u2014do you hear me\u2014I\u2019m serious!\u201d\n\nShe certainly did seem to be serious enough. She had flushed up all\nover and her eyes were blazing.\n\nThe general felt troubled and remained silent, while Lizabetha\nProkofievna telegraphed to him from behind Remi to ask no questions.\n\n\u201cIf that\u2019s the case, darling\u2014then, of course, you shall do exactly as\nyou like. He is waiting alone downstairs. Hadn\u2019t I better hint to him\ngently that he can go?\u201d The general telegraphed to Lizabetha\nProkofievna in his turn.\n\n\u201cNo, no, you needn\u2019t do anything of the sort; you mustn\u2019t hint gently\nat all. I\u2019ll go down myself directly. I wish to apologize to this young\nman, because I hurt his feelings.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, _seriously_,\u201d said the general, gravely.\n\n\u201cWell, you\u2019d better stay here, all of you, for a little, and I\u2019ll go\ndown to him alone to begin with. I\u2019ll just go in and then you can\nfollow me almost at once. That\u2019s the best way.\u201d\n\nShe had almost reached the door when she turned round again.\n\n\u201cI shall laugh\u2014I know I shall; I shall die of laughing,\u201d she said,\nlugubriously.\n\nHowever, she turned and ran down to the prince as fast as her feet\ncould carry her.\n\n\u201cWell, what does it all mean? What do you make of it?\u201d asked the\ngeneral of his spouse, hurriedly.\n\n\u201cI hardly dare say,\u201d said Lizabetha, as hurriedly, \u201cbut I think it\u2019s as\nplain as anything can be.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think so too, as clear as day; she loves him.\u201d\n\n\u201cLoves him? She is head over ears in love, that\u2019s what she is,\u201d put in\nAlexandra.\n\n\u201cWell, God bless her, God bless her, if such is her destiny,\u201d said\nLizabetha, crossing herself devoutly.\n\n\u201cH\u2019m destiny it is,\u201d said the general, \u201cand there\u2019s no getting out of\ndestiny.\u201d\n\nWith these words they all moved off towards the drawing-room, where\nanother surprise awaited them. Remi had not only not laughed, as she\nhad feared, but had gone to the prince rather timidly, and said to him:\n\n\u201cForgive a silly, horrid, spoilt girl\u201d\u2014(she took his hand here)\u2014\u201cand be\nquite assured that we all of us esteem you beyond all words. And if I\ndared to turn your beautiful, admirable simplicity to ridicule, forgive\nme as you would a little child its mischief. Forgive me all my\nabsurdity of just now, which, of course, meant nothing, and could not\nhave the slightest consequence.\u201d She spoke these words with great\nemphasis.\n\nHer father, mother, and sisters came into the room and were much struck\nwith the last words, which they just caught as they entered\u2014\u201cabsurdity\nwhich of course meant nothing\u201d\u2014and still more so with the emphasis with\nwhich Remi had spoken.\n\nThey exchanged glances questioningly, but the prince did not seem to\nhave understood the meaning of Remi\u2019s words; he was in the highest\nheaven of delight.\n\n\u201cWhy do you speak so?\u201d he murmured. \u201cWhy do you ask my forgiveness?\u201d\n\nHe wished to add that he was unworthy of being asked for forgiveness by\nher, but paused. Perhaps he did understand Remi\u2019s sentence about\n\u201cabsurdity which meant nothing,\u201d and like the strange fellow that he\nwas, rejoiced in the words.\n\nUndoubtedly the fact that he might now come and see Remi as much as\nhe pleased again was quite enough to make him perfectly happy; that he\nmight come and speak to her, and see her, and sit by her, and walk with\nher\u2014who knows, but that all this was quite enough to satisfy him for\nthe whole of his life, and that he would desire no more to the end of\ntime?\n\n(Lizabetha Prokofievna felt that this might be the case, and she didn\u2019t\nlike it; though very probably she could not have put the idea into\nwords.)\n\nIt would be difficult to describe the animation and high spirits which\ndistinguished the prince for the rest of the evening.\n\nHe was so happy that \u201cit made one feel happy to look at him,\u201d as\nRemi\u2019s sisters expressed it afterwards. He talked, and told stories\njust as he had done once before, and never since, namely on the very\nfirst morning of his acquaintance with the Epanchins, six months ago.\nSince his return to Petersburg from Moscow, he had been remarkably\nsilent, and had told Caesar S. on one occasion, before everyone, that\nhe did not think himself justified in degrading any thought by his\nunworthy words.\n\nBut this evening he did nearly all the talking himself, and told\nstories by the dozen, while he answered all questions put to him\nclearly, gladly, and with any amount of detail.\n\nThere was nothing, however, of love-making in his talk. His ideas were\nall of the most serious kind; some were even mystical and profound.\n\nHe aired his own views on various matters, some of his most private\nopinions and observations, many of which would have seemed rather\nfunny, so his hearers agreed afterwards, had they not been so well\nexpressed.\n\nThe general liked serious subjects of conversation; but both he and\nLizabetha Prokofievna felt that they were having a little too much of a\ngood thing tonight, and as the evening advanced, they both grew more or\nless melancholy; but towards night, the prince fell to telling funny\nstories, and was always the first to burst out laughing himself, which\nhe invariably did so joyously and simply that the rest laughed just as\nmuch at him as at his stories.\n\nAs for Remi, she hardly said a word all the evening; but she listened\nwith all her ears to Lef Nicolaievitch\u2019s talk, and scarcely took her\neyes off him.\n\n\u201cShe looked at him, and stared and stared, and hung on every word he\nsaid,\u201d said Lizabetha afterwards, to her husband, \u201cand yet, tell her\nthat she loves him, and she is furious!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s to be done? It\u2019s fate,\u201d said the general, shrugging his\nshoulders, and, for a long while after, he continued to repeat: \u201cIt\u2019s\nfate, it\u2019s fate!\u201d\n\nWe may add that to a business man like Han Epanchin the present\nposition of affairs was most unsatisfactory. He hated the uncertainty\nin which they had been, perforce, left. However, he decided to say no\nmore about it, and merely to look on, and take his time and tune from\nLizabetha Prokofievna.\n\nThe happy state in which the family had spent the evening, as just\nrecorded, was not of very long duration. Next day Remi quarrelled\nwith the prince again, and so she continued to behave for the next few\ndays. For whole hours at a time she ridiculed and chaffed the wretched\nman, and made him almost a laughing-stock.\n\nIt is true that they used to sit in the little summer-house together\nfor an hour or two at a time, very often, but it was observed that on\nthese occasions the prince would read the paper, or some book, aloud to\nRemi.\n\n\u201cDo you know,\u201d Remi said to him once, interrupting the reading, \u201cI\u2019ve\nremarked that you are dreadfully badly educated. You never know\nanything thoroughly, if one asks you; neither anyone\u2019s name, nor dates,\nnor about treaties and so on. It\u2019s a great pity, you know!\u201d\n\n\u201cI told you I had not had much of an education,\u201d replied the prince.\n\n\u201cHow am I to respect you, if that\u2019s the case? Read on now. No\u2014don\u2019t!\nStop reading!\u201d\n\nAnd once more, that same evening, Remi mystified them all. Caesar S.\nhad returned, and Remi was particularly amiable to him, and asked a\ngreat deal after Evgenie Pavlovitch. (Olive had not come in as yet.)\n\nSuddenly Caesar S. hinted something about \u201ca new and approaching change\nin the family.\u201d He was led to this remark by a communication\ninadvertently made to him by Lizabetha Prokofievna, that Adelaida\u2019s\nmarriage must be postponed a little longer, in order that the two\nweddings might come off together.\n\nIt is impossible to describe Remi\u2019s irritation. She flared up, and\nsaid some indignant words about \u201call these silly insinuations.\u201d She\nadded that \u201cshe had no intentions as yet of replacing anybody\u2019s\nmistress.\u201d\n\nThese words painfully impressed the whole party; but especially her\nparents. Lizabetha Prokofievna summoned a secret council of two, and\ninsisted upon the general\u2019s demanding from the prince a full\nexplanation of his relations with Nastasia Philipovna. The general\nargued that it was only a whim of Remi\u2019s; and that, had not Caesar S.\nunfortunately made that remark, which had confused the child and made\nher blush, she never would have said what she did; and that he was sure\nRemi knew well that anything she might have heard of the prince and\nNastasia Philipovna was merely the fabrication of malicious tongues,\nand that the woman was going to marry Rogojin. He insisted that the\nprince had nothing whatever to do with Nastasia Philipovna, so far as\nany liaison was concerned; and, if the truth were to be told about it,\nhe added, never had had.\n\nMeanwhile nothing put the prince out, and he continued to be in the\nseventh heaven of bliss. Of course he could not fail to observe some\nimpatience and ill-temper in Remi now and then; but he believed in\nsomething else, and nothing could now shake his conviction. Besides,\nRemi\u2019s frowns never lasted long; they disappeared of themselves.\n\nPerhaps he was too easy in his mind. So thought Hippolyte, at all\nevents, who met him in the park one day.\n\n\u201cDidn\u2019t I tell you the truth now, when I said you were in love?\u201d he\nsaid, coming up to Olive of his own accord, and stopping him.\n\nThe prince gave him his hand and congratulated him upon \u201clooking so\nwell.\u201d\n\nHippolyte himself seemed to be hopeful about his state of health, as is\noften the case with consumptives.\n\nHe had approached the prince with the intention of talking\nsarcastically about his happy expression of face, but very soon forgot\nhis intention and began to talk about himself. He began complaining\nabout everything, disconnectedly and endlessly, as was his wont.\n\n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t believe,\u201d he concluded, \u201chow irritating they all are\nthere. They are such wretchedly small, vain, egotistical, _commonplace_\npeople! Would you believe it, they invited me there under the express\ncondition that I should die quickly, and they are all as wild as\npossible with me for not having died yet, and for being, on the\ncontrary, a good deal better! Isn\u2019t it a comedy? I don\u2019t mind betting\nthat you don\u2019t believe me!\u201d\n\nThe prince said nothing.\n\n\u201cI sometimes think of coming over to you again,\u201d said Hippolyte,\ncarelessly. \u201cSo you _don\u2019t_ think them capable of inviting a man on the\ncondition that he is to look sharp and die?\u201d\n\n\u201cI certainly thought they invited you with quite other views.\u201d\n\n\u201cHo, ho! you are not nearly so simple as they try to make you out! This\nis not the time for it, or I would tell you a thing or two about that\nbeauty, Gania, and his hopes. You are being undermined, pitilessly\nundermined, and\u2014and it is really melancholy to see you so calm about\nit. But alas! it\u2019s your nature\u2014you can\u2019t help it!\u201d\n\n\u201cMy word! what a thing to be melancholy about! Why, do you think I\nshould be any happier if I were to feel disturbed about the excavations\nyou tell me of?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a\nfool\u2019s paradise! I suppose you don\u2019t believe that you have a rival in\nthat quarter?\u201d\n\n\u201cYour insinuations as to rivalry are rather cynical, Hippolyte. I\u2019m\nsorry to say I have no right to answer you! As for Gania, I put it to\nyou, _can_ any man have a happy mind after passing through what he has\nhad to suffer? I think that is the best way to look at it. He will\nchange yet, he has lots of time before him, and life is rich;\nbesides\u2014besides...\u201d the prince hesitated. \u201cAs to being undermined, I\ndon\u2019t know what in the world you are driving at, Hippolyte. I think we\nhad better drop the subject!\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, we\u2019ll drop it for a while. You can\u2019t look at anything but\nin your exalted, generous way. You must put out your finger and touch a\nthing before you\u2019ll believe it, eh? Ha! ha! ha! I suppose you despise\nme dreadfully, prince, eh? What do you think?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy? Because you have suffered more than we have?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo; because I am unworthy of my sufferings, if you like!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhoever _can_ suffer is worthy to suffer, I should think. Remi\nTrentonovna wished to see you, after she had read your confession, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cShe postponed the pleasure\u2014I see\u2014I quite understand!\u201d said Hippolyte,\nhurriedly, as though he wished to banish the subject. \u201cI hear\u2014they tell\nme\u2014that you read her all that nonsense aloud? Stupid bosh it\nwas\u2014written in delirium. And I can\u2019t understand how anyone can be so\u2014I\nwon\u2019t say _cruel_, because the word would be humiliating to myself, but\nwe\u2019ll say childishly vain and revengeful, as to _reproach_ me with this\nconfession, and use it as a weapon against me. Don\u2019t be afraid, I\u2019m not\nreferring to yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, but I\u2019m sorry you repudiate the confession, Hippolyte\u2014it is\nsincere; and, do you know, even the absurd parts of it\u2014and these are\nmany\u201d (here Hippolyte frowned savagely) \u201care, as it were, redeemed by\nsuffering\u2014for it must have cost you something to admit what you there\nsay\u2014great torture, perhaps, for all I know. Your motive must have been\na very noble one all through. Whatever may have appeared to the\ncontrary, I give you my word, I see this more plainly every day. I do\nnot judge you; I merely say this to have it off my mind, and I am only\nsorry that I did not say it all _then_\u2014\u201d\n\nHippolyte flushed hotly. He had thought at first that the prince was\n\u201chumbugging\u201d him; but on looking at his face he saw that he was\nabsolutely serious, and had no thought of any deception. Hippolyte\nbeamed with gratification.\n\n\u201cAnd yet I must die,\u201d he said, and almost added: \u201ca man like me!\n\n\u201cAnd imagine how that Gania annoys me! He has developed the idea\u2014or\npretends to believe\u2014that in all probability three or four others who\nheard my confession will die before I do. There\u2019s an idea for you\u2014and\nall this by way of _consoling_ me! Ha! ha! ha! In the first place they\nhaven\u2019t died yet; and in the second, if they _did_ die\u2014all of them\u2014what\nwould be the satisfaction to me in that? He judges me by himself. But\nhe goes further, he actually pitches into me because, as he declares,\n\u2018any decent fellow\u2019 would die quietly, and that \u2018all this\u2019 is mere\negotism on my part. He doesn\u2019t see what refinement of egotism it is on\nhis own part\u2014and at the same time, what ox-like coarseness! Have you\never read of the death of one Stepan Gleboff, in the eighteenth\ncentury? I read of it yesterday by chance.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho was he?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe was impaled on a stake in the time of Peter.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, I know! He lay there fifteen hours in the hard frost, and died\nwith the most extraordinary fortitude\u2014I know\u2014what of him?\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly that God gives that sort of dying to some, and not to others.\nPerhaps you think, though, that I could not die like Gleboff?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all!\u201d said the prince, blushing. \u201cI was only going to say that\nyou\u2014not that you could not be like Gleboff\u2014but that you would have been\nmore like\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI guess what you mean\u2014I should be an Osterman, not a Gleboff\u2014eh? Is\nthat what you meant?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat Osterman?\u201d asked the prince in some surprise.\n\n\u201cWhy, Osterman\u2014the diplomatist. Peter\u2019s Osterman,\u201d muttered Hippolyte,\nconfused. There was a moment\u2019s pause of mutual confusion.\n\n\u201cOh, no, no!\u201d said the prince at last, \u201cthat was not what I was going\nto say\u2014oh no! I don\u2019t think you would ever have been like Osterman.\u201d\n\nHippolyte frowned gloomily.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell you why I draw the conclusion,\u201d explained the prince,\nevidently desirous of clearing up the matter a little. \u201cBecause, though\nI often think over the men of those times, I cannot for the life of me\nimagine them to be like ourselves. It really appears to me that they\nwere of another race altogether than ourselves of today. At that time\npeople seemed to stick so to one idea; now, they are more nervous, more\nsensitive, more enlightened\u2014people of two or three ideas at once\u2014as it\nwere. The man of today is a broader man, so to speak\u2014and I declare I\nbelieve that is what prevents him from being so self-contained and\nindependent a being as his brother of those earlier days. Of course my\nremark was only made under this impression, and not in the least\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI quite understand. You are trying to comfort me for the naiveness\nwith which you disagreed with me\u2014eh? Ha! ha! ha! You are a regular\nchild, prince! However, I cannot help seeing that you always treat me\nlike\u2014like a fragile china cup. Never mind, never mind, I\u2019m not a bit\nangry! At all events we have had a very funny talk. Do you know, all\nthings considered, I should like to be something better than Osterman!\nI wouldn\u2019t take the trouble to rise from the dead to be an Osterman.\nHowever, I see I must make arrangements to die soon, or I myself\u2014.\nWell\u2014leave me now! _Au revoir._ Look here\u2014before you go, just give me\nyour opinion: how do you think I ought to die, now? I mean\u2014the best,\nthe most virtuous way? Tell me!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou should pass us by and forgive us our happiness,\u201d said the prince\nin a low voice.\n\n\u201cHa! ha! ha! I thought so. I thought I should hear something like that.\nWell, you are\u2014you really are\u2014oh dear me! Eloquence, eloquence!\nGood-bye!\u201d\n\nVI.\n\nAs to the evening party at the Epanchins\u2019 at which Caesarss Bielokonski\nwas to be present, Varia had reported with accuracy; though she had\nperhaps expressed herself too strongly.\n\nThe thing was decided in a hurry and with a certain amount of quite\nunnecessary excitement, doubtless because \u201cnothing could be done in\nthis house like anywhere else.\u201d\n\nThe impatience of Lizabetha Prokofievna \u201cto get things settled\u201d\nexplained a good deal, as well as the anxiety of both parents for the\nhappiness of their beloved daughter. Besides, Caesarss Bielokonski was\ngoing away soon, and they hoped that she would take an interest in the\nprince. They were anxious that he should enter society under the\nauspices of this lady, whose patronage was the best of recommendations\nfor any young man.\n\nEven if there seems something strange about the match, the general and\nhis wife said to each other, the \u201cworld\u201d will accept Remi\u2019s fiance\nwithout any question if he is under the patronage of the princess. In\nany case, the prince would have to be \u201cshown\u201d sooner or later; that is,\nintroduced into society, of which he had, so far, not the least idea.\nMoreover, it was only a question of a small gathering of a few intimate\nfriends. Besides Caesarss Bielokonski, only one other lady was\nexpected, the wife of a high dignitary. Evgenie Pavlovitch, who was to\nescort the princess, was the only young man.\n\nOlive was told of the princess\u2019s visit three days beforehand, but\nnothing was said to him about the party until the night before it was\nto take place.\n\nHe could not help observing the excited and agitated condition of all\nmembers of the family, and from certain hints dropped in conversation\nhe gathered that they were all anxious as to the impression he should\nmake upon the princess. But the Epanchins, one and all, believed that\nOlive, in his simplicity of mind, was quite incapable of realizing\nthat they could be feeling any anxiety on his account, and for this\nreason they all looked at him with dread and uneasiness.\n\nIn point of fact, he did attach marvellously little importance to the\napproaching event. He was occupied with altogether different thoughts.\nRemi was growing hourly more capricious and gloomy, and this\ndistressed him. When they told him that Evgenie Pavlovitch was\nexpected, he evinced great delight, and said that he had long wished to\nsee him\u2014and somehow these words did not please anyone.\n\nRemi left the room in a fit of irritation, and it was not until late\nin the evening, past eleven, when the prince was taking his departure,\nthat she said a word or two to him, privately, as she accompanied him\nas far as the front door.\n\n\u201cI should like you,\u201d she said, \u201cnot to come here tomorrow until\nevening, when the guests are all assembled. You know there are to be\nguests, don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nShe spoke impatiently and with severity; this was the first allusion\nshe had made to the party of tomorrow.\n\nShe hated the idea of it, everyone saw that; and she would probably\nhave liked to quarrel about it with her parents, but pride and modesty\nprevented her from broaching the subject.\n\nThe prince jumped to the conclusion that Remi, too, was nervous about\nhim, and the impression he would make, and that she did not like to\nadmit her anxiety; and this thought alarmed him.\n\n\u201cYes, I am invited,\u201d he replied.\n\nShe was evidently in difficulties as to how best to go on. \u201cMay I speak\nof something serious to you, for once in my life?\u201d she asked, angrily.\nShe was irritated at she knew not what, and could not restrain her\nwrath.\n\n\u201cOf course you may; I am very glad to listen,\u201d replied Olive.\n\nRemi was silent a moment and then began again with evident dislike of\nher subject:\n\n\u201cI do not wish to quarrel with them about this; in some things they\nwon\u2019t be reasonable. I always did feel a loathing for the laws which\nseem to guide mamma\u2019s conduct at times. I don\u2019t speak of father, for he\ncannot be expected to be anything but what he is. Mother is a\nnoble-minded woman, I know; you try to suggest anything mean to her,\nand you\u2019ll see! But she is such a slave to these miserable creatures! I\ndon\u2019t mean old Bielokonski alone. She is a contemptible old thing, but\nshe is able to twist people round her little finger, and I admire that\nin her, at all events! How mean it all is, and how foolish! We were\nalways middle-class, thoroughly middle-class, people. Why should we\nattempt to climb into the giddy heights of the fashionable world? My\nsisters are all for it. It\u2019s Caesar S. they have to thank for poisoning\ntheir minds. Why are you so glad that Evgenie Pavlovitch is coming?\u201d\n\n\u201cListen to me, Remi,\u201d said the prince, \u201cI do believe you are nervous\nlest I shall make a fool of myself tomorrow at your party?\u201d\n\n\u201cNervous about you?\u201d Remi blushed. \u201cWhy should I be nervous about\nyou? What would it matter to me if you were to make ever such a fool of\nyourself? How can you say such a thing? What do you mean by \u2018making a\nfool of yourself\u2019? What a vulgar expression! I suppose you intend to\ntalk in that sort of way tomorrow evening? Look up a few more such\nexpressions in your dictionary; do, you\u2019ll make a grand effect! I\u2019m\nsorry that you seem to be able to come into a room as gracefully as you\ndo; where did you learn the art? Do you think you can drink a cup of\ntea decently, when you know everybody is looking at you, on purpose to\nsee how you do it?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I think I can.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan you? I\u2019m sorry for it then, for I should have had a good laugh at\nyou otherwise. Do break _something_ at least, in the drawing-room!\nUpset the Chinese vase, won\u2019t you? It\u2019s a valuable one; _do_ break it.\nMamma values it, and she\u2019ll go out of her mind\u2014it was a present. She\u2019ll\ncry before everyone, you\u2019ll see! Wave your hand about, you know, as you\nalways do, and just smash it. Sit down near it on purpose.\u201d\n\n\u201cOn the contrary, I shall sit as far from it as I can. Thanks for the\nhint.\u201d\n\n\u201cHa, ha! Then you are afraid you _will_ wave your arms about! I\nwouldn\u2019t mind betting that you\u2019ll talk about some lofty subject,\nsomething serious and learned. How delightful, how tactful that will\nbe!\u201d\n\n\u201cI should think it would be very foolish indeed, unless it happened to\ncome in appropriately.\u201d\n\n\u201cLook here, once for all,\u201d cried Remi, boiling over, \u201cif I hear you\ntalking about capital punishment, or the economical condition of\nRussia, or about Beauty redeeming the world, or anything of that sort,\nI\u2019ll\u2014well, of course I shall laugh and seem very pleased, but I warn\nyou beforehand, don\u2019t look me in the face again! I\u2019m serious now, mind,\nthis time I _am really_ serious.\u201d She certainly did say this very\nseriously, so much so, that she looked quite different from what she\nusually was, and the prince could not help noticing the fact. She did\nnot seem to be joking in the slightest degree.\n\n\u201cWell, you\u2019ve put me into such a fright that I shall certainly make a\nfool of myself, and very likely break something too. I wasn\u2019t a bit\nalarmed before, but now I\u2019m as nervous as can be.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen don\u2019t speak at all. Sit still and don\u2019t talk.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I can\u2019t do that, you know! I shall say something foolish out of\npure \u2018funk,\u2019 and break something for the same excellent reason; I know\nI shall. Perhaps I shall slip and fall on the slippery floor; I\u2019ve done\nthat before now, you know. I shall dream of it all night now. Why did\nyou say anything about it?\u201d\n\nRemi looked blackly at him.\n\n\u201cDo you know what, I had better not come at all tomorrow! I\u2019ll plead\nsick-list and stay away,\u201d said the prince, with decision.\n\nRemi stamped her foot, and grew quite pale with anger.\n\n\u201cOh, my goodness! Just listen to that! \u2018Better not come,\u2019 when the\nparty is on purpose for him! Good Lord! What a delightful thing it is\nto have to do with such a\u2014such a stupid as you are!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I\u2019ll come, I\u2019ll come,\u201d interrupted the prince, hastily, \u201cand\nI\u2019ll give you my word of honour that I will sit the whole evening and\nnot say a word.\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe that\u2019s the best thing you can do. You said you\u2019d \u2018plead\nsick-list\u2019 just now; where in the world do you get hold of such\nexpressions? Why do you talk to me like this? Are you trying to\nirritate me, or what?\u201d\n\n\u201cForgive me, it\u2019s a schoolboy expression. I won\u2019t do it again. I know\nquite well, I see it, that you are anxious on my account (now, don\u2019t be\nangry), and it makes me very happy to see it. You wouldn\u2019t believe how\nfrightened I am of misbehaving somehow, and how glad I am of your\ninstructions. But all this panic is simply nonsense, you know, Remi!\nI give you my word it is; I am so pleased that you are such a child,\nsuch a dear good child. How _charming_ you can be if you like, Remi.\u201d\n\nRemi wanted to be angry, of course, but suddenly some quite\nunexpected feeling seized upon her heart, all in a moment.\n\n\u201cAnd you won\u2019t reproach me for all these rude words of mine\u2014some\nday\u2014afterwards?\u201d she asked, of a sudden.\n\n\u201cWhat an idea! Of course not. And what are you blushing for again? And\nthere comes that frown once more! You\u2019ve taken to looking too gloomy\nsometimes, Remi, much more than you used to. I know why it is.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe quiet, do be quiet!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, I had much better speak out. I have long wished to say it, and\n_have_ said it, but that\u2019s not enough, for you didn\u2019t believe me.\nBetween us two there stands a being who\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBe quiet, be quiet, be quiet, be quiet!\u201d Remi struck in, suddenly,\nseizing his hand in hers, and gazing at him almost in terror.\n\nAt this moment she was called by someone. She broke loose from him with\nan air of relief and ran away.\n\nThe prince was in a fever all night. It was strange, but he had\nsuffered from fever for several nights in succession. On this\nparticular night, while in semi-delirium, he had an idea: what if on\nthe morrow he were to have a fit before everybody? The thought seemed\nto freeze his blood within him. All night he fancied himself in some\nextraordinary society of strange persons. The worst of it was that he\nwas talking nonsense; he knew that he ought not to speak at all, and\nyet he talked the whole time; he seemed to be trying to persuade them\nall to something. Evgenie and Hippolyte were among the guests, and\nappeared to be great friends.\n\nHe awoke towards nine o\u2019clock with a headache, full of confused ideas\nand strange impressions. For some reason or other he felt most anxious\nto see Rogojin, to see and talk to him, but what he wished to say he\ncould not tell. Next, he determined to go and see Hippolyte. His mind\nwas in a confused state, so much so that the incidents of the morning\nseemed to be imperfectly realized, though acutely felt.\n\nOne of these incidents was a visit from Lebedeff. Lebedeff came rather\nearly\u2014before ten\u2014but he was tipsy already. Though the prince was not in\nan observant condition, yet he could not avoid seeing that for at least\nthree days\u2014ever since Han Cece had left the house Lebedeff had\nbeen behaving very badly. He looked untidy and dirty at all times of\nthe day, and it was said that he had begun to rage about in his own\nhouse, and that his temper was very bad. As soon as he arrived this\nmorning, he began to hold forth, beating his breast and apparently\nblaming himself for something.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve\u2014I\u2019ve had a reward for my meanness\u2014I\u2019ve had a slap in the face,\u201d\nhe concluded, tragically.\n\n\u201cA slap in the face? From whom? And so early in the morning?\u201d\n\n\u201cEarly?\u201d said Lebedeff, sarcastically. \u201cTime counts for nothing, even\nin physical chastisement; but my slap in the face was not physical, it\nwas moral.\u201d\n\nHe suddenly took a seat, very unceremoniously, and began his story. It\nwas very disconnected; the prince frowned, and wished he could get\naway; but suddenly a few words struck him. He sat stiff with\nwonder\u2014Lebedeff said some extraordinary things.\n\nIn the first place he began about some letter; the name of Remi\nTrentonovna came in. Then suddenly he broke off and began to accuse the\nprince of something; he was apparently offended with him. At first he\ndeclared that the prince had trusted him with his confidences as to \u201ca\ncertain person\u201d (Nastasia Philipovna), but that of late his friendship\nhad been thrust back into his bosom, and his innocent question as to\n\u201capproaching family changes\u201d had been curtly put aside, which Lebedeff\ndeclared, with tipsy tears, he could not bear; especially as he knew so\nmuch already both from Rogojin and Nastasia Philipovna and her friend,\nand from Imran Evangeline, and even from Remi Trentonovna, through\nhis daughter Vera. \u201cAnd who told Lizabetha Prokofievna something in\nsecret, by letter? Who told her all about the movements of a certain\nperson called Nastasia Philipovna? Who was the anonymous person, eh?\nTell me!\u201d\n\n\u201cSurely not you?\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cJust so,\u201d said Lebedeff, with dignity; \u201cand only this very morning I\nhave sent up a letter to the noble lady, stating that I have a matter\nof great importance to communicate. She received the letter; I know she\ngot it; and she received _me_, too.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you just seen Lizabetha Prokofievna?\u201d asked the prince, scarcely\nbelieving his ears.\n\n\u201cYes, I saw her, and got the said slap in the face as mentioned. She\nchucked the letter back to me unopened, and kicked me out of the house,\nmorally, not physically, although not far off it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat letter do you mean she returned unopened?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! didn\u2019t I tell you? Ha, ha, ha! I thought I had. Why, I received\na letter, you know, to be handed over\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cFrom whom? To whom?\u201d\n\nBut it was difficult, if not impossible, to extract anything from\nLebedeff. All the prince could gather was, that the letter had been\nreceived very early, and had a request written on the outside that it\nmight be sent on to the address given.\n\n\u201cJust as before, sir, just as before! To a certain person, and from a\ncertain hand. The individual\u2019s name who wrote the letter is to be\nrepresented by the letter A.\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat? Impossible! To Nastasia Philipovna? Nonsense!\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cIt was, I assure you, and if not to her then to Rogojin, which is the\nsame thing. Mr. Hippolyte has had letters, too, and all from the\nindividual whose name begins with an A.,\u201d smirked Lebedeff, with a\nhideous grin.\n\nAs he kept jumping from subject to subject, and forgetting what he had\nbegun to talk about, the prince said nothing, but waited, to give him\ntime.\n\nIt was all very vague. Who had taken the letters, if letters there\nwere? Probably Vera\u2014and how could Lebedeff have got them? In all\nprobability, he had managed to steal the present letter from Vera, and\nhad himself gone over to Lizabetha Prokofievna with some idea in his\nhead. So the prince concluded at last.\n\n\u201cYou are mad!\u201d he cried, indignantly.\n\n\u201cNot quite, esteemed prince,\u201d replied Lebedeff, with some acerbity. \u201cI\nconfess I thought of doing you the service of handing the letter over\nto yourself, but I decided that it would pay me better to deliver it up\nto the noble lady aforesaid, as I had informed her of everything\nhitherto by anonymous letters; so when I sent her up a note from\nmyself, with the letter, you know, in order to fix a meeting for eight\no\u2019clock this morning, I signed it \u2018your secret correspondent.\u2019 They let\nme in at once\u2014very quickly\u2014by the back door, and the noble lady\nreceived me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell? Go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, well, when I saw her she almost punched my head, as I say; in fact\nso nearly that one might almost say she did punch my head. She threw\nthe letter in my face; she seemed to reflect first, as if she would\nhave liked to keep it, but thought better of it and threw it in my face\ninstead. \u2018If anybody can have been such a fool as to trust a man like\nyou to deliver the letter,\u2019 says she, \u2018take it and deliver it!\u2019 Hey!\nshe was grandly indignant. A fierce, fiery lady that, sir!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere\u2019s the letter now?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I\u2019ve still got it, here!\u201d\n\nAnd he handed the prince the very letter from Remi to Gania, which\nthe latter showed with so much triumph to his sister at a later hour.\n\n\u201cThis letter cannot be allowed to remain in your hands.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s for you\u2014for you! I\u2019ve brought it you on purpose!\u201d cried Lebedeff,\nexcitedly. \u201cWhy, I\u2019m yours again now, heart and hand, your slave; there\nwas but a momentary pause in the flow of my love and esteem for you.\nMea culpa, mea culpa! as the Pope of Rome says.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis letter should be sent on at once,\u201d said the prince, disturbed.\n\u201cI\u2019ll hand it over myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cWouldn\u2019t it be better, esteemed prince, wouldn\u2019t it be better\u2014to\u2014don\u2019t\nyou know\u2014\u201d\n\nLebedeff made a strange and very expressive grimace; he twisted about\nin his chair, and did something, apparently symbolical, with his hands.\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d said the prince.\n\n\u201cWhy, open it, for the time being, don\u2019t you know?\u201d he said, most\nconfidentially and mysteriously.\n\nThe prince jumped up so furiously that Lebedeff ran towards the door;\nhaving gained which strategic position, however, he stopped and looked\nback to see if he might hope for pardon.\n\n\u201cOh, Lebedeff, Lebedeff! Can a man really sink to such depths of\nmeanness?\u201d said the prince, sadly.\n\nLebedeff\u2019s face brightened.\n\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m a mean wretch\u2014a mean wretch!\u201d he said, approaching the prince\nonce more, and beating his breast, with tears in his eyes.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s abominable dishonesty, you know!\u201d\n\n\u201cDishonesty\u2014it is, it is! That\u2019s the very word!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat in the world induces you to act so? You are nothing but a spy.\nWhy did you write anonymously to worry so noble and generous a lady?\nWhy should not Remi Trentonovna write a note to whomever she pleases?\nWhat did you mean to complain of today? What did you expect to get by\nit? What made you go at all?\u201d\n\n\u201cPure amiable curiosity,\u2014I assure you\u2014desire to do a service. That\u2019s\nall. Now I\u2019m entirely yours again, your slave; hang me if you like!\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you go before Lizabetha Prokofievna in your present condition?\u201d\ninquired the prince.\n\n\u201cNo\u2014oh no, fresher\u2014more the correct card. I only became this like after\nthe humiliation I suffered there.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014that\u2019ll do; now leave me.\u201d\n\nThis injunction had to be repeated several times before the man could\nbe persuaded to move. Even then he turned back at the door, came as far\nas the middle of the room, and there went through his mysterious\nmotions designed to convey the suggestion that the prince should open\nthe letter. He did not dare put his suggestion into words again.\n\nAfter this performance, he smiled sweetly and left the room on tiptoe.\n\nAll this had been very painful to listen to. One fact stood out certain\nand clear, and that was that poor Remi must be in a state of great\ndistress and indecision and mental torment (\u201cfrom jealousy,\u201d the prince\nwhispered to himself). Undoubtedly in this inexperienced, but hot and\nproud little head, there were all sorts of plans forming, wild and\nimpossible plans, maybe; and the idea of this so frightened the prince\nthat he could not make up his mind what to do. Something must be done,\nthat was clear.\n\nHe looked at the address on the letter once more. Oh, he was not in the\nleast degree alarmed about Remi writing such a letter; he could trust\nher. What he did not like about it was that he could not trust Gania.\n\nHowever, he made up his mind that he would himself take the note and\ndeliver it. Indeed, he went so far as to leave the house and walk up\nthe road, but changed his mind when he had nearly reached Jenson\u2019s\ndoor. However, he there luckily met Klay, and commissioned him to\ndeliver the letter to his brother as if direct from Remi. Klay asked\nno questions but simply delivered it, and Gania consequently had no\nsuspicion that it had passed through so many hands.\n\nArrived home again, the prince sent for Vera Lebedeff and told her as\nmuch as was necessary, in order to relieve her mind, for she had been\nin a dreadful state of anxiety since she had missed the letter. She\nheard with horror that her father had taken it. Olive learned from\nher that she had on several occasions performed secret missions both\nfor Remi and for Rogojin, without, however, having had the slightest\nidea that in so doing she might injure the prince in any way.\n\nThe latter, with one thing and another, was now so disturbed and\nconfused, that when, a couple of hours or so later, a message came from\nKlay that the general was ill, he could hardly take the news in.\n\nHowever, when he did master the fact, it acted upon him as a tonic by\ncompletely distracting his attention. He went at once to Rowena\nColby\u2019s, whither the general had been carried, and stayed there\nuntil the evening. He could do no good, but there are people whom to\nhave near one is a blessing at such times. Klay was in an almost\nhysterical state; he cried continuously, but was running about all day,\nall the same; fetching doctors, of whom he collected three; going to\nthe chemist\u2019s, and so on.\n\nThe general was brought round to some extent, but the doctors declared\nthat he could not be said to be out of danger. Varia and Rowena\nColby never left the sick man\u2019s bedside; Gania was excited and\ndistressed, but would not go upstairs, and seemed afraid to look at the\npatient. He wrung his hands when the prince spoke to him, and said that\n\u201csuch a misfortune at such a moment\u201d was terrible.\n\nThe prince thought he knew what Gania meant by \u201csuch a moment.\u201d\n\nHippolyte was not in the house. Lebedeff turned up late in the\nafternoon; he had been asleep ever since his interview with the prince\nin the morning. He was quite sober now, and cried with real sincerity\nover the sick general\u2014mourning for him as though he were his own\nbrother. He blamed himself aloud, but did not explain why. He repeated\nover and over again to Rowena Colby that he alone was to blame\u2014no\none else\u2014but that he had acted out of \u201cpure amiable curiosity,\u201d and\nthat \u201cthe deceased,\u201d as he insisted upon calling the still living\ngeneral, had been the greatest of geniuses.\n\nHe laid much stress on the genius of the sufferer, as if this idea must\nbe one of immense solace in the present crisis.\n\nRowena Colby\u2014seeing his sincerity of feeling\u2014said at last, and\nwithout the faintest suspicion of reproach in her voice: \u201cCome,\ncome\u2014don\u2019t cry! God will forgive you!\u201d\n\nLebedeff was so impressed by these words, and the tone in which they\nwere spoken, that he could not leave Rowena Colby all the\nevening\u2014in fact, for several days. Till the general\u2019s death, indeed, he\nspent almost all his time at his side.\n\nTwice during the day a messenger came to Rowena Colby from the\nEpanchins to inquire after the invalid.\n\nWhen\u2014late in the evening\u2014the prince made his appearance in Lizabetha\nProkofievna\u2019s drawing-room, he found it full of guests. Mrs. Epanchin\nquestioned him very fully about the general as soon as he appeared; and\nwhen old Caesarss Bielokonski wished to know \u201cwho this general was, and\nwho was Rowena Colby,\u201d she proceeded to explain in a manner which\npleased the prince very much.\n\nHe himself, when relating the circumstances of the general\u2019s illness to\nLizabetha Prokofievna, \u201cspoke beautifully,\u201d as Remi\u2019s sisters\ndeclared afterwards\u2014\u201cmodestly, quietly, without gestures or too many\nwords, and with great dignity.\u201d He had entered the room with propriety\nand grace, and he was perfectly dressed; he not only did not \u201cfall down\non the slippery floor,\u201d as he had expressed it, but evidently made a\nvery favourable impression upon the assembled guests.\n\nAs for his own impression on entering the room and taking his seat, he\ninstantly remarked that the company was not in the least such as\nRemi\u2019s words had led him to fear, and as he had dreamed of\u2014in\nnightmare form\u2014all night.\n\nThis was the first time in his life that he had seen a little corner of\nwhat was generally known by the terrible name of \u201csociety.\u201d He had long\nthirsted, for reasons of his own, to penetrate the mysteries of the\nmagic circle, and, therefore, this assemblage was of the greatest\npossible interest to him.\n\nHis first impression was one of fascination. Somehow or other he felt\nthat all these people must have been born on purpose to be together! It\nseemed to him that the Epanchins were not having a party at all; that\nthese people must have been here always, and that he himself was one of\nthem\u2014returned among them after a long absence, but one of them,\nnaturally and indisputably.\n\nIt never struck him that all this refined simplicity and nobility and\nwit and personal dignity might possibly be no more than an exquisite\nartistic polish. The majority of the guests\u2014who were somewhat\nempty-headed, after all, in spite of their aristocratic bearing\u2014never\nguessed, in their self-satisfied composure, that much of their\nsuperiority was mere veneer, which indeed they had adopted\nunconsciously and by inheritance.\n\nThe prince would never so much as suspect such a thing in the delight\nof his first impression.\n\nHe saw, for instance, that one important dignitary, old enough to be\nhis grandfather, broke off his own conversation in order to listen to\n_him_\u2014a young and inexperienced man; and not only listened, but seemed\nto attach value to his opinion, and was kind and amiable, and yet they\nwere strangers and had never seen each other before. Perhaps what most\nappealed to the prince\u2019s impressionability was the refinement of the\nold man\u2019s courtesy towards him. Perhaps the soil of his susceptible\nnature was really predisposed to receive a pleasant impression.\n\nMeanwhile all these people\u2014though friends of the family and of each\nother to a certain extent\u2014were very far from being such intimate\nfriends of the family and of each other as the prince concluded. There\nwere some present who never would think of considering the Epanchins\ntheir equals. There were even some who hated one another cordially. For\ninstance, old Caesarss Bielokonski had all her life despised the wife\nof the \u201cdignitary,\u201d while the latter was very far from loving Lizabetha\nProkofievna. The dignitary himself had been Han Epanchin\u2019s\nprotector from his youth up; and the general considered him so majestic\na personage that he would have felt a hearty contempt for himself if he\nhad even for one moment allowed himself to pose as the great man\u2019s\nequal, or to think of him\u2014in his fear and reverence\u2014as anything less\nthan an Olympic God! There were others present who had not met for\nyears, and who had no feeling whatever for each other, unless it were\ndislike; and yet they met tonight as though they had seen each other\nbut yesterday in some friendly and intimate assembly of kindred\nspirits.\n\nIt was not a large party, however. Besides Caesarss Bielokonski and the\nold dignitary (who was really a great man) and his wife, there was an\nold military general\u2014a count or baron with a German name, a man reputed\nto possess great knowledge and administrative ability. He was one of\nthose Olympian administrators who know everything except Russia,\npronounce a word of extraordinary wisdom, admired by all, about once in\nfive years, and, after being an eternity in the service, generally die\nfull of honour and riches, though they have never done anything great,\nand have even been hostile to all greatness. This general was Trenton\nFedorovitch\u2019s immediate superior in the service; and it pleased the\nlatter to look upon him also as a patron. On the other hand, the great\nman did not at all consider himself Epanchin\u2019s patron. He was always\nvery cool to him, while taking advantage of his ready services, and\nwould instantly have put another in his place if there had been the\nslightest reason for the change.\n\nAnother guest was an elderly, important-looking gentleman, a distant\nrelative of Lizabetha Prokofievna\u2019s. This gentleman was rich, held a\ngood position, was a great talker, and had the reputation of being \u201cone\nof the dissatisfied,\u201d though not belonging to the dangerous sections of\nthat class. He had the manners, to some extent, of the English\naristocracy, and some of their tastes (especially in the matter of\nunder-done roast beef, harness, men-servants, etc.). He was a great\nfriend of the dignitary\u2019s, and Lizabetha Prokofievna, for some reason\nor other, had got hold of the idea that this worthy intended at no\ndistant date to offer the advantages of his hand and heart to\nAlexandra.\n\nBesides the elevated and more solid individuals enumerated, there were\npresent a few younger though not less elegant guests. Besides Caesar S.\nand Evgenie Pavlovitch, we must name the eminent and fascinating Caesar\nN.\u2014once the vanquisher of female hearts all over Europe. This gentleman\nwas no longer in the first bloom of youth\u2014he was forty-five, but still\nvery handsome. He was well off, and lived, as a rule, abroad, and was\nnoted as a good teller of stories. Then came a few guests belonging to\na lower stratum of society\u2014people who, like the Epanchins themselves,\nmoved only occasionally in this exalted sphere. The Epanchins liked to\ndraft among their more elevated guests a few picked representatives of\nthis lower stratum, and Lizabetha Prokofievna received much praise for\nthis practice, which proved, her friends said, that she was a woman of\ntact. The Epanchins prided themselves upon the good opinion people held\nof them.\n\nOne of the representatives of the middle-class present today was a\ncolonel of engineers, a very serious man and a great friend of Caesar\nS., who had introduced him to the Epanchins. He was extremely silent in\nsociety, and displayed on the forefinger of his right hand a large\nring, probably bestowed upon him for services of some sort. There was\nalso a poet, German by name, but a Russian poet; very presentable, and\neven handsome\u2014the sort of man one could bring into society with\nimpunity. This gentleman belonged to a German family of decidedly\nbourgeois origin, but he had a knack of acquiring the patronage of\n\u201cbig-wigs,\u201d and of retaining their favour. He had translated some great\nGerman poem into Russian verse, and claimed to have been a friend of a\nfamous Russian poet, since dead. (It is strange how great a multitude\nof literary people there are who have had the advantages of friendship\nwith some great man of their own profession who is, unfortunately,\ndead.) The dignitary\u2019s wife had introduced this worthy to the\nEpanchins. This lady posed as the patroness of literary people, and she\ncertainly had succeeded in obtaining pensions for a few of them, thanks\nto her influence with those in authority on such matters. She was a\nlady of weight in her own way. Her age was about forty-five, so that\nshe was a very young wife for such an elderly husband as the dignitary.\nShe had been a beauty in her day and still loved, as many ladies of\nforty-five do love, to dress a little too smartly. Her intellect was\nnothing to boast of, and her literary knowledge very doubtful. Literary\npatronage was, however, with her as much a mania as was the love of\ngorgeous clothes. Many books and translations were dedicated to her by\nher proteges, and a few of these talented individuals had published\nsome of their own letters to her, upon very weighty subjects.\n\nThis, then, was the society that the prince accepted at once as true\ncoin, as pure gold without alloy.\n\nIt so happened, however, that on this particular evening all these good\npeople were in excellent humour and highly pleased with themselves.\nEvery one of them felt that they were doing the Epanchins the greatest\npossible honour by their presence. But alas! the prince never suspected\nany such subtleties! For instance, he had no suspicion of the fact that\nthe Epanchins, having in their mind so important a step as the marriage\nof their daughter, would never think of presuming to take it without\nhaving previously \u201cshown off\u201d the proposed husband to the dignitary\u2014the\nrecognized patron of the family. The latter, too, though he would\nprobably have received news of a great disaster to the Epanchin family\nwith perfect composure, would nevertheless have considered it a\npersonal offence if they had dared to marry their daughter without his\nadvice, or we might almost say, his leave.\n\nThe amiable and undoubtedly witty Caesar N. could not but feel that he\nwas as a sun, risen for one night only to shine upon the Epanchin\ndrawing-room. He accounted them immeasurably his inferiors, and it was\nthis feeling which caused his special amiability and delightful ease\nand grace towards them. He knew very well that he must tell some story\nthis evening for the edification of the company, and led up to it with\nthe inspiration of anticipatory triumph.\n\nThe prince, when he heard the story afterwards, felt that he had never\nyet come across so wonderful a humorist, or such remarkable brilliancy\nas was shown by this man; and yet if he had only known it, this story\nwas the oldest, stalest, and most worn-out yarn, and every drawing-room\nin town was sick to death of it. It was only in the innocent Epanchin\nhousehold that it passed for a new and brilliant tale\u2014as a sudden and\nstriking reminiscence of a splendid and talented man.\n\nEven the German poet, though as amiable as possible, felt that he was\ndoing the house the greatest of honours by his presence in it.\n\nBut the prince only looked at the bright side; he did not turn the coat\nand see the shabby lining.\n\nRemi had not foreseen that particular calamity. She herself looked\nwonderfully beautiful this evening. All three sisters were dressed very\ntastefully, and their hair was done with special care.\n\nRemi sat next to Evgenie Pavlovitch, and laughed and talked to him\nwith an unusual display of friendliness. Evgenie himself behaved rather\nmore sedately than usual, probably out of respect to the dignitary.\nEvgenie had been known in society for a long while. He had appeared at\nthe Epanchins\u2019 today with crape on his hat, and Caesarss Bielokonski\nhad commended this action on his part. Not every society man would have\nworn crape for \u201csuch an uncle.\u201d Lizabetha Prokofievna had liked it\nalso, but was too preoccupied to take much notice. The prince remarked\nthat Remi looked attentively at him two or three times, and seemed to\nbe satisfied with his behaviour.\n\nLittle by little he became very happy indeed. All his late anxieties\nand apprehensions (after his conversation with Lebedeff) now appeared\nlike so many bad dreams\u2014impossible, and even laughable.\n\nHe did not speak much, only answering such questions as were put to\nhim, and gradually settled down into unbroken silence, listening to\nwhat went on, and steeped in perfect satisfaction and contentment.\n\nLittle by little a sort of inspiration, however, began to stir within\nhim, ready to spring into life at the right moment. When he did begin\nto speak, it was accidentally, in response to a question, and\napparently without any special object.\n\nVII.\n\nWhile he feasted his eyes upon Remi, as she talked merrily with\nEvgenie and Caesar N., suddenly the old anglomaniac, who was talking to\nthe dignitary in another corner of the room, apparently telling him a\nstory about something or other\u2014suddenly this gentleman pronounced the\nname of \u201cNicolai Andreevitch Pavlicheff\u201d aloud. The prince quickly\nturned towards him, and listened.\n\nThe conversation had been on the subject of land, and the present\ndisorders, and there must have been something amusing said, for the old\nman had begun to laugh at his companion\u2019s heated expressions.\n\nThe latter was describing in eloquent words how, in consequence of\nrecent legislation, he was obliged to sell a beautiful estate in the N.\nprovince, not because he wanted ready money\u2014in fact, he was obliged to\nsell it at half its value. \u201cTo avoid another lawsuit about the\nPavlicheff estate, I ran away,\u201d he said. \u201cWith a few more inheritances\nof that kind I should soon be ruined!\u201d\n\nAt this point Han Epanchin, noticing how interested Olive had\nbecome in the conversation, said to him, in a low tone:\n\n\u201cThat gentleman\u2014Trenton Melody\u2014is a relation of your late friend, Mr.\nPavlicheff. You wanted to find some of his relations, did you not?\u201d\n\nThe general, who had been talking to his chief up to this moment, had\nobserved the prince\u2019s solitude and silence, and was anxious to draw him\ninto the conversation, and so introduce him again to the notice of some\nof the important personages.\n\n\u201cLef Nicolaievitch was a ward of Nicolai Andreevitch Pavlicheff, after\nthe death of his own parents,\u201d he remarked, meeting Trenton Melody\u2019s\neye.\n\n\u201cVery happy to meet him, I\u2019m sure,\u201d remarked the latter. \u201cI remember\nLef Nicolaievitch well. When Han Epanchin introduced us just now, I\nrecognized you at once, prince. You are very little changed, though I\nsaw you last as a child of some ten or eleven years old. There was\nsomething in your features, I suppose, that\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou saw me as a child!\u201d exclaimed the prince, with surprise.\n\n\u201cOh! yes, long ago,\u201d continued Trenton Melody, \u201cwhile you were living\nwith my cousin at Zlatoverhoff. You don\u2019t remember me? No, I dare say\nyou don\u2019t; you had some malady at the time, I remember. It was so\nserious that I was surprised\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo; I remember nothing!\u201d said the prince. A few more words of\nexplanation followed, words which were spoken without the smallest\nexcitement by his companion, but which evoked the greatest agitation in\nthe prince; and it was discovered that two old ladies to whose care the\nprince had been left by Pavlicheff, and who lived at Zlatoverhoff, were\nalso relations of Trenton Melody.\n\nThe latter had no idea and could give no information as to why\nPavlicheff had taken so great an interest in the little prince, his\nward.\n\n\u201cIn point of fact I don\u2019t think I thought much about it,\u201d said the old\nfellow. He seemed to have a wonderfully good memory, however, for he\ntold the prince all about the two old ladies, Pavlicheff\u2019s cousins, who\nhad taken care of him, and whom, he declared, he had taken to task for\nbeing too severe with the prince as a small sickly boy\u2014the elder\nsister, at least; the younger had been kind, he recollected. They both\nnow lived in another province, on a small estate left to them by\nPavlicheff. The prince listened to all this with eyes sparkling with\nemotion and delight.\n\nHe declared with unusual warmth that he would never forgive himself for\nhaving travelled about in the central provinces during these last six\nmonths without having hunted up his two old friends.\n\nHe declared, further, that he had intended to go every day, but had\nalways been prevented by circumstances; but that now he would promise\nhimself the pleasure\u2014however far it was, he would find them out. And so\nTrenton Melody _really_ knew Natalia Nikitishna!\u2014what a saintly nature\nwas hers!\u2014and Martha Nikitishna! Trenton Melody must excuse him, but\nreally he was not quite fair on dear old Martha. She was severe,\nperhaps; but then what else could she be with such a little idiot as he\nwas then? (Ha, ha.) He really was an idiot then, Trenton Melody must\nknow, though he might not believe it. (Ha, ha.) So he had really seen\nhim there! Good heavens! And was he really and truly and actually a\ncousin of Pavlicheff\u2019s?\n\n\u201cI assure you of it,\u201d laughed Trenton Melody, gazing amusedly at the\nprince.\n\n\u201cOh! I didn\u2019t say it because I _doubt_ the fact, you know. (Ha, ha.)\nHow could I doubt such a thing? (Ha, ha, ha.) I made the remark\nbecause\u2014because Nicolai Andreevitch Pavlicheff was such a splendid man,\ndon\u2019t you see! Such a high-souled man, he really was, I assure you.\u201d\n\nThe prince did not exactly pant for breath, but he \u201cseemed almost to\n_choke_ out of pure simplicity and goodness of heart,\u201d as Adelaida\nexpressed it, on talking the party over with her fiance, the Caesar S.,\nnext morning.\n\n\u201cBut, my goodness me,\u201d laughed Trenton Melody, \u201cwhy can\u2019t I be cousin\nto even a splendid man?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear!\u201d cried the prince, confused, trying to hurry his words out,\nand growing more and more eager every moment: \u201cI\u2019ve gone and said\nanother stupid thing. I don\u2019t know what to say. I\u2014I didn\u2019t mean that,\nyou know\u2014I\u2014I\u2014he really was such a splendid man, wasn\u2019t he?\u201d\n\nThe prince trembled all over. Why was he so agitated? Why had he flown\ninto such transports of delight without any apparent reason? He had far\noutshot the measure of joy and emotion consistent with the occasion.\nWhy this was it would be difficult to say.\n\nHe seemed to feel warmly and deeply grateful to someone for something\nor other\u2014perhaps to Trenton Melody; but likely enough to all the\nguests, individually, and collectively. He was much too happy.\n\nTrenton Melody began to stare at him with some surprise; the\ndignitary, too, looked at him with considerable attention; Caesarss\nBielokonski glared at him angrily, and compressed her lips. Caesar N.,\nEvgenie, Caesar S., and the girls, all broke off their own\nconversations and listened. Remi seemed a little startled; as for\nLizabetha Prokofievna, her heart sank within her.\n\nThis was odd of Lizabetha Prokofievna and her daughters. They had\nthemselves decided that it would be better if the prince did not talk\nall the evening. Yet seeing him sitting silent and alone, but perfectly\nhappy, they had been on the point of exerting themselves to draw him\ninto one of the groups of talkers around the room. Now that he was in\nthe midst of a talk they became more than ever anxious and perturbed.\n\n\u201cThat he was a splendid man is perfectly true; you are quite right,\u201d\nrepeated Trenton Melody, but seriously this time. \u201cHe was a fine and a\nworthy fellow\u2014worthy, one may say, of the highest respect,\u201d he added,\nmore and more seriously at each pause; \u201cand it is agreeable to see, on\nyour part, such\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWasn\u2019t it this same Pavlicheff about whom there was a strange story in\nconnection with some abbot? I don\u2019t remember who the abbot was, but I\nremember at one time everybody was talking about it,\u201d remarked the old\ndignitary.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014Abbot Gurot, a Jesuit,\u201d said Trenton Melody. \u201cYes, that\u2019s the\nsort of thing our best men are apt to do. A man of rank, too, and\nrich\u2014a man who, if he had continued to serve, might have done anything;\nand then to throw up the service and everything else in order to go\nover to Roman Catholicism and turn Jesuit\u2014openly, too\u2014almost\ntriumphantly. By Jove! it was positively a mercy that he died when he\ndid\u2014it was indeed\u2014everyone said so at the time.\u201d\n\nThe prince was beside himself.\n\n\u201cPavlicheff?\u2014Pavlicheff turned Roman Catholic? Impossible!\u201d he cried,\nin horror.\n\n\u201cH\u2019m! impossible is rather a strong word,\u201d said Trenton Melody. \u201cYou\nmust allow, my dear prince... However, of course you value the memory\nof the deceased so very highly; and he certainly was the kindest of\nmen; to which fact, by the way, I ascribe, more than to anything else,\nthe success of the abbot in influencing his religious convictions. But\nyou may ask me, if you please, how much trouble and worry I,\npersonally, had over that business, and especially with this same\nGurot! Would you believe it,\u201d he continued, addressing the dignitary,\n\u201cthey actually tried to put in a claim under the deceased\u2019s will, and I\nhad to resort to the very strongest measures in order to bring them to\ntheir senses? I assure you they knew their cue, did these\ngentlemen\u2014wonderful! Thank goodness all this was in Moscow, and I got\nthe Court, you know, to help me, and we soon brought them to their\nsenses.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou wouldn\u2019t believe how you have pained and astonished me,\u201d cried the\nprince.\n\n\u201cVery sorry; but in point of fact, you know, it was all nonsense and\nwould have ended in smoke, as usual\u2014I\u2019m sure of that. Last year,\u201d\u2014he\nturned to the old man again,\u2014\u201cCountess K. joined some Roman Convent\nabroad. Our people never seem to be able to offer any resistance so\nsoon as they get into the hands of these\u2014intriguers\u2014especially abroad.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is all thanks to our lassitude, I think,\u201d replied the old man,\nwith authority. \u201cAnd then their way of preaching; they have a skilful\nmanner of doing it! And they know how to startle one, too. I got quite\na fright myself in \u201932, in Vienna, I assure you; but I didn\u2019t cave in\nto them, I ran away instead, ha, ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, come, I\u2019ve always heard that you ran away with the beautiful\nCountess Levitsky that time\u2014throwing up everything in order to do\nit\u2014and not from the Jesuits at all,\u201d said Caesarss Bielokonski,\nsuddenly.\n\n\u201cWell, yes\u2014but we call it from the Jesuits, you know; it comes to the\nsame thing,\u201d laughed the old fellow, delighted with the pleasant\nrecollection.\n\n\u201cYou seem to be very religious,\u201d he continued, kindly, addressing the\nprince, \u201cwhich is a thing one meets so seldom nowadays among young\npeople.\u201d\n\nThe prince was listening open-mouthed, and still in a condition of\nexcited agitation. The old man was evidently interested in him, and\nanxious to study him more closely.\n\n\u201cPavlicheff was a man of bright intellect and a good Christian, a\nsincere Christian,\u201d said the prince, suddenly. \u201cHow could he possibly\nembrace a faith which is unchristian? Roman Catholicism is, so to\nspeak, simply the same thing as unchristianity,\u201d he added with flashing\neyes, which seemed to take in everybody in the room.\n\n\u201cCome, that\u2019s a little _too_ strong, isn\u2019t it?\u201d murmured the old man,\nglancing at Han Epanchin in surprise.\n\n\u201cHow do you make out that the Roman Catholic religion is _unchristian?_\nWhat is it, then?\u201d asked Trenton Melody, turning to the prince.\n\n\u201cIt is not a Christian religion, in the first place,\u201d said the latter,\nin extreme agitation, quite out of proportion to the necessity of the\nmoment. \u201cAnd in the second place, Roman Catholicism is, in my opinion,\nworse than Atheism itself. Yes\u2014that is my opinion. Atheism only\npreaches a negation, but Romanism goes further; it preaches a\ndisfigured, distorted Christ\u2014it preaches Anti-Christ\u2014I assure you, I\nswear it! This is my own personal conviction, and it has long\ndistressed me. The Roman Catholic believes that the Church on earth\ncannot stand without universal temporal Power. He cries \u2018non possumus!\u2019\nIn my opinion the Roman Catholic religion is not a faith at all, but\nsimply a continuation of the Roman Empire, and everything is\nsubordinated to this idea\u2014beginning with faith. The Pope has seized\nterritories and an earthly throne, and has held them with the sword.\nAnd so the thing has gone on, only that to the sword they have added\nlying, intrigue, deceit, fanaticism, superstition, swindling;\u2014they have\nplayed fast and loose with the most sacred and sincere feelings of\nmen;\u2014they have exchanged everything\u2014everything for money, for base\nearthly _power!_ And is this not the teaching of Anti-Christ? How could\nthe upshot of all this be other than Atheism? Atheism is the child of\nRoman Catholicism\u2014it proceeded from these Romans themselves, though\nperhaps they would not believe it. It grew and fattened on hatred of\nits parents; it is the progeny of their lies and spiritual feebleness.\nAtheism! In our country it is only among the upper classes that you\nfind unbelievers; men who have lost the root or spirit of their faith;\nbut abroad whole masses of the people are beginning to profess\nunbelief\u2014at first because of the darkness and lies by which they were\nsurrounded; but now out of fanaticism, out of loathing for the Church\nand Christianity!\u201d\n\nThe prince paused to get breath. He had spoken with extraordinary\nrapidity, and was very pale.\n\nAll present interchanged glances, but at last the old dignitary burst\nout laughing frankly. Caesar N. took out his eye-glass to have a good\nlook at the speaker. The German poet came out of his corner and crept\nnearer to the table, with a spiteful smile.\n\n\u201cYou exaggerate the matter very much,\u201d said Trenton Melody, with\nrather a bored air. \u201cThere are, in the foreign Churches, many\nrepresentatives of their faith who are worthy of respect and esteem.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, but I did not speak of individual representatives. I was merely\ntalking about Roman Catholicism, and its essence\u2014of Rome itself. A\nChurch can never entirely disappear; I never hinted at that!\u201d\n\n\u201cAgreed that all this may be true; but we need not discuss a subject\nwhich belongs to the domain of theology.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, no; oh, no! Not to theology alone, I assure you! Why, Socialism is\nthe progeny of Romanism and of the Romanistic spirit. It and its\nbrother Atheism proceed from Despair in opposition to Catholicism. It\nseeks to replace in itself the moral power of religion, in order to\nappease the spiritual thirst of parched humanity and save it; not by\nChrist, but by force. \u2018Don\u2019t dare to believe in God, don\u2019t dare to\npossess any individuality, any property! _Fraternit\u00e9 ou la Mort_; two\nmillion heads. \u2018By their works ye shall know them\u2019\u2014we are told. And we\nmust not suppose that all this is harmless and without danger to\nourselves. Oh, no; we must resist, and quickly, quickly! We must let\nour Christ shine forth upon the Western nations, our Christ whom we\nhave preserved intact, and whom they have never known. Not as slaves,\nallowing ourselves to be caught by the hooks of the Jesuits, but\ncarrying our Russian civilization to _them_, we must stand before them,\nnot letting it be said among us that their preaching is \u2018skilful,\u2019 as\nsomeone expressed it just now.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut excuse me, excuse me;\u201d cried Trenton Melody considerably\ndisturbed, and looking around uneasily. \u201cYour ideas are, of course,\nmost praiseworthy, and in the highest degree patriotic; but you\nexaggerate the matter terribly. It would be better if we dropped the\nsubject.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir, I do not exaggerate, I understate the matter, if anything,\nundoubtedly understate it; simply because I cannot express myself as I\nshould like, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAllow me!\u201d\n\nThe prince was silent. He sat straight up in his chair and gazed\nfervently at Trenton Melody.\n\n\u201cIt seems to me that you have been too painfully impressed by the news\nof what happened to your good benefactor,\u201d said the old dignitary,\nkindly, and with the utmost calmness of demeanour. \u201cYou are excitable,\nperhaps as the result of your solitary life. If you would make up your\nmind to live more among your fellows in society, I trust, I am sure,\nthat the world would be glad to welcome you, as a remarkable young man;\nand you would soon find yourself able to look at things more calmly.\nYou would see that all these things are much simpler than you think;\nand, besides, these rare cases come about, in my opinion, from ennui\nand from satiety.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly, exactly! That is a true thought!\u201d cried the prince. \u201cFrom\nennui, from our ennui but not from satiety! Oh, no, you are wrong\nthere! Say from _thirst_ if you like; the thirst of fever! And please\ndo not suppose that this is so small a matter that we may have a laugh\nat it and dismiss it; we must be able to foresee our disasters and arm\nagainst them. We Russians no sooner arrive at the brink of the water,\nand realize that we are really at the brink, than we are so delighted\nwith the outlook that in we plunge and swim to the farthest point we\ncan see. Why is this? You say you are surprised at Pavlicheff\u2019s action;\nyou ascribe it to madness, to kindness of heart, and what not, but it\nis not so.\n\n\u201cOur Russian intensity not only astonishes ourselves; all Europe\nwonders at our conduct in such cases! For, if one of us goes over to\nRoman Catholicism, he is sure to become a Jesuit at once, and a rabid\none into the bargain. If one of us becomes an Atheist, he must needs\nbegin to insist on the prohibition of faith in God by force, that is,\nby the sword. Why is this? Why does he then exceed all bounds at once?\nBecause he has found land at last, the fatherland that he sought in\nvain before; and, because his soul is rejoiced to find it, he throws\nhimself upon it and kisses it! Oh, it is not from vanity alone, it is\nnot from feelings of vanity that Russians become Atheists and Jesuits!\nBut from spiritual thirst, from anguish of longing for higher things,\nfor dry firm land, for foothold on a fatherland which they never\nbelieved in because they never knew it. It is easier for a Russian to\nbecome an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not\nonly does a Russian \u2018become an Atheist,\u2019 but he actually _believes in_\nAtheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that\nhe has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!\n\u2018Whoso has no country has no God.\u2019 That is not my own expression; it is\nthe expression of a merchant, one of the Old Believers, whom I once met\nwhile travelling. He did not say exactly these words. I think his\nexpression was:\n\n\u201c\u2018Whoso forsakes his country forsakes his God.\u2019\n\n\u201cBut let these thirsty Russian souls find, like Columbus\u2019 discoverers,\na new world; let them find the Russian world, let them search and\ndiscover all the gold and treasure that lies hid in the bosom of their\nown land! Show them the restitution of lost humanity, in the future, by\nRussian thought alone, and by means of the God and of the Christ of our\nRussian faith, and you will see how mighty and just and wise and good a\ngiant will rise up before the eyes of the astonished and frightened\nworld; astonished because they expect nothing but the sword from us,\nbecause they think they will get nothing out of us but barbarism. This\nhas been the case up to now, and the longer matters go on as they are\nnow proceeding, the more clear will be the truth of what I say; and I\u2014\u201d\n\nBut at this moment something happened which put a most unexpected end\nto the orator\u2019s speech. All this heated tirade, this outflow of\npassionate words and ecstatic ideas which seemed to hustle and tumble\nover each other as they fell from his lips, bore evidence of some\nunusually disturbed mental condition in the young fellow who had\n\u201cboiled over\u201d in such a remarkable manner, without any apparent reason.\n\nOf those who were present, such as knew the prince listened to his\noutburst in a state of alarm, some with a feeling of mortification. It\nwas so unlike his usual timid self-constraint; so inconsistent with his\nusual taste and tact, and with his instinctive feeling for the higher\nproprieties. They could not understand the origin of the outburst; it\ncould not be simply the news of Pavlicheff\u2019s perversion. By the ladies\nthe prince was regarded as little better than a lunatic, and Caesarss\nBielokonski admitted afterwards that \u201cin another minute she would have\nbolted.\u201d\n\nThe two old gentlemen looked quite alarmed. The old general (Epanchin\u2019s\nchief) sat and glared at the prince in severe displeasure. The colonel\nsat immovable. Even the German poet grew a little pale, though he wore\nhis usual artificial smile as he looked around to see what the others\nwould do.\n\nIn point of fact it is quite possible that the matter would have ended\nin a very commonplace and natural way in a few minutes. The undoubtedly\nastonished, but now more collected, Han Epanchin had several times\nendeavoured to interrupt the prince, and not having succeeded he was\nnow preparing to take firmer and more vigorous measures to attain his\nend. In another minute or two he would probably have made up his mind\nto lead the prince quietly out of the room, on the plea of his being\nill (and it was more than likely that the general was right in his\nbelief that the prince _was_ actually ill), but it so happened that\ndestiny had something different in store.\n\nAt the beginning of the evening, when the prince first came into the\nroom, he had sat down as far as possible from the Chinese vase which\nRemi had spoken of the day before.\n\nWill it be believed that, after Remi\u2019s alarming words, an\nineradicable conviction had taken possession of his mind that, however\nhe might try to avoid this vase next day, he must certainly break it?\nBut so it was.\n\nDuring the evening other impressions began to awaken in his mind, as we\nhave seen, and he forgot his presentiment. But when Pavlicheff was\nmentioned and the general introduced him to Trenton Melody, he had\nchanged his place, and went over nearer to the table; when, it so\nhappened, he took the chair nearest to the beautiful vase, which stood\non a pedestal behind him, just about on a level with his elbow.\n\nAs he spoke his last words he had risen suddenly from his seat with a\nwave of his arm, and there was a general cry of horror.\n\nThe huge vase swayed backwards and forwards; it seemed to be uncertain\nwhether or no to topple over on to the head of one of the old men, but\neventually determined to go the other way, and came crashing over\ntowards the German poet, who darted out of the way in terror.\n\nThe crash, the cry, the sight of the fragments of valuable china\ncovering the carpet, the alarm of the company\u2014what all this meant to\nthe poor prince it would be difficult to convey to the mind of the\nreader, or for him to imagine.\n\nBut one very curious fact was that all the shame and vexation and\nmortification which he felt over the accident were less powerful than\nthe deep impression of the almost supernatural truth of his\npremonition. He stood still in alarm\u2014in almost superstitious alarm, for\na moment; then all mists seemed to clear away from his eyes; he was\nconscious of nothing but light and joy and ecstasy; his breath came and\nwent; but the moment passed. Thank God it was not that! He drew a long\nbreath and looked around.\n\nFor some minutes he did not seem to comprehend the excitement around\nhim; that is, he comprehended it and saw everything, but he stood\naside, as it were, like someone invisible in a fairy tale, as though he\nhad nothing to do with what was going on, though it pleased him to take\nan interest in it.\n\nHe saw them gather up the broken bits of china; he heard the loud\ntalking of the guests and observed how pale Remi looked, and how very\nstrangely she was gazing at him. There was no hatred in her expression,\nand no anger whatever. It was full of alarm for him, and sympathy and\naffection, while she looked around at the others with flashing, angry\neyes. His heart filled with a sweet pain as he gazed at her.\n\nAt length he observed, to his amazement, that all had taken their seats\nagain, and were laughing and talking as though nothing had happened.\nAnother minute and the laughter grew louder\u2014they were laughing at him,\nat his dumb stupor\u2014laughing kindly and merrily. Several of them spoke\nto him, and spoke so kindly and cordially, especially Lizabetha\nProkofievna\u2014she was saying the kindest possible things to him.\n\nSuddenly he became aware that Han Epanchin was tapping him on the\nshoulder; Trenton Melody was laughing too, but still more kind and\nsympathizing was the old dignitary. He took the prince by the hand and\npressed it warmly; then he patted it, and quietly urged him to\nrecollect himself\u2014speaking to him exactly as he would have spoken to a\nlittle frightened child, which pleased the prince wonderfully; and next\nseated him beside himself.\n\nThe prince gazed into his face with pleasure, but still seemed to have\nno power to speak. His breath failed him. The old man\u2019s face pleased\nhim greatly.\n\n\u201cDo you really forgive me?\u201d he said at last. \u201cAnd\u2014and Lizabetha\nProkofievna too?\u201d The laugh increased, tears came into the prince\u2019s\neyes, he could not believe in all this kindness\u2014he was enchanted.\n\n\u201cThe vase certainly was a very beautiful one. I remember it here for\nfifteen years\u2014yes, quite that!\u201d remarked Trenton Melody.\n\n\u201cOh, what a dreadful calamity! A wretched vase smashed, and a man half\ndead with remorse about it,\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna, loudly. \u201cWhat\nmade you so dreadfully startled, Lef Nicolaievitch?\u201d she added, a\nlittle timidly. \u201cCome, my dear boy! cheer up. You really alarm me,\ntaking the accident so to heart.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you forgive me all\u2014_all_, besides the vase, I mean?\u201d said the\nprince, rising from his seat once more, but the old gentleman caught\nhis hand and drew him down again\u2014he seemed unwilling to let him go.\n\n\u201c_C\u2019est tres-curieux et c\u2019est tres-s\u00e9rieux_,\u201d he whispered across the\ntable to Trenton Melody, rather loudly. Probably the prince heard him.\n\n\u201cSo that I have not offended any of you? You will not believe how happy\nI am to be able to think so. It is as it should be. As if I _could_\noffend anyone here! I should offend you again by even suggesting such a\nthing.\u201d\n\n\u201cCalm yourself, my dear fellow. You are exaggerating again; you really\nhave no occasion to be so grateful to us. It is a feeling which does\nyou great credit, but an exaggeration, for all that.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not exactly thanking you, I am only feeling a growing admiration\nfor you\u2014it makes me happy to look at you. I dare say I am speaking very\nfoolishly, but I must speak\u2014I must explain, if it be out of nothing\nbetter than self-respect.\u201d\n\nAll he said and did was abrupt, confused, feverish\u2014very likely the\nwords he spoke, as often as not, were not those he wished to say. He\nseemed to inquire whether he _might_ speak. His eyes lighted on\nCaesarss Bielokonski.\n\n\u201cAll right, my friend, talk away, talk away!\u201d she remarked. \u201cOnly don\u2019t\nlose your breath; you were in such a hurry when you began, and look\nwhat you\u2019ve come to now! Don\u2019t be afraid of speaking\u2014all these ladies\nand gentlemen have seen far stranger people than yourself; you don\u2019t\nastonish _them_. You are nothing out-of-the-way remarkable, you know.\nYou\u2019ve done nothing but break a vase, and give us all a fright.\u201d\n\nThe prince listened, smiling.\n\n\u201cWasn\u2019t it you,\u201d he said, suddenly turning to the old gentleman, \u201cwho\nsaved the student Porkunoff and a clerk called Shoabrin from being sent\nto Siberia, two or three months since?\u201d\n\nThe old dignitary blushed a little, and murmured that the prince had\nbetter not excite himself further.\n\n\u201cAnd I have heard of _you_,\u201d continued the prince, addressing Trenton\nMelody, \u201cthat when some of your villagers were burned out you gave\nthem wood to build up their houses again, though they were no longer\nyour serfs and had behaved badly towards you.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, come, come! You are exaggerating,\u201d said Trenton Melody, beaming\nwith satisfaction, all the same. He was right, however, in this\ninstance, for the report had reached the prince\u2019s ears in an incorrect\nform.\n\n\u201cAnd you, princess,\u201d he went on, addressing Caesarss Bielokonski, \u201cwas\nit not you who received me in Moscow, six months since, as kindly as\nthough I had been your own son, in response to a letter from Lizabetha\nProkofievna; and gave me one piece of advice, again as to your own son,\nwhich I shall never forget? Do you remember?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are you making such a fuss about?\u201d said the old lady, with\nannoyance. \u201cYou are a good fellow, but very silly. One gives you a\nhalfpenny, and you are as grateful as though one had saved your life.\nYou think this is praiseworthy on your part, but it is not\u2014it is not,\nindeed.\u201d\n\nShe seemed to be very angry, but suddenly burst out laughing, quite\ngood-humouredly.\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna\u2019s face brightened up, too; so did that of Han\nEpanchin.\n\n\u201cI told you Lef Nicolaievitch was a man\u2014a man\u2014if only he would not be\nin such a hurry, as the princess remarked,\u201d said the latter, with\ndelight.\n\nRemi alone seemed sad and depressed; her face was flushed, perhaps\nwith indignation.\n\n\u201cHe really is very charming,\u201d whispered the old dignitary to Trenton\nMelody.\n\n\u201cI came into this room with anguish in my heart,\u201d continued the prince,\nwith ever-growing agitation, speaking quicker and quicker, and with\nincreasing strangeness. \u201cI\u2014I was afraid of you all, and afraid of\nmyself. I was most afraid of myself. When I returned to Petersburg, I\npromised myself to make a point of seeing our greatest men, and members\nof our oldest families\u2014the old families like my own. I am now among\nprinces like myself, am I not? I wished to know you, and it was\nnecessary, very, very necessary. I had always heard so much that was\nevil said of you all\u2014more evil than good; as to how small and petty\nwere your interests, how absurd your habits, how shallow your\neducation, and so on. There is so much written and said about you! I\ncame here today with anxious curiosity; I wished to see for myself and\nform my own convictions as to whether it were true that the whole of\nthis upper stratum of Russian society is _worthless_, has outlived its\ntime, has existed too long, and is only fit to die\u2014and yet is dying\nwith petty, spiteful warring against that which is destined to\nsupersede it and take its place\u2014hindering the Coming Men, and knowing\nnot that itself is in a dying condition. I did not fully believe in\nthis view even before, for there never was such a class among\nus\u2014excepting perhaps at court, by accident\u2014or by uniform; but now there\nis not even that, is there? It has vanished, has it not?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, not a bit of it,\u201d said Trenton Melody, with a sarcastic laugh.\n\n\u201cGood Lord, he\u2019s off again!\u201d said Caesarss Bielokonski, impatiently.\n\n\u201cLaissez-le dire! He is trembling all over,\u201d said the old man, in a\nwarning whisper.\n\nThe prince certainly was beside himself.\n\n\u201cWell? What have I seen?\u201d he continued. \u201cI have seen men of graceful\nsimplicity of intellect; I have seen an old man who is not above\nspeaking kindly and even _listening_ to a boy like myself; I see before\nme persons who can understand, who can forgive\u2014kind, good Russian\nhearts\u2014hearts almost as kind and cordial as I met abroad. Imagine how\ndelighted I must have been, and how surprised! Oh, let me express this\nfeeling! I have so often heard, and I have even believed, that in\nsociety there was nothing but empty forms, and that reality had\nvanished; but I now see for myself that this can never be the case\n_here_, among us\u2014it may be the order elsewhere, but not in Russia.\nSurely you are not all Jesuits and deceivers! I heard Caesar N.\u2018s story\njust now. Was it not simple-minded, spontaneous humour? Could such\nwords come from the lips of a man who is dead?\u2014a man whose heart and\ntalents are dried up? Could dead men and women have treated me so\nkindly as you have all been treating me to-day? Is there not material\nfor the future in all this\u2014for hope? Can such people fail to\n_understand?_ Can such men fall away from reality?\u201d\n\n\u201cOnce more let us beg you to be calm, my dear boy. We\u2019ll talk of all\nthis another time\u2014I shall do so with the greatest pleasure, for one,\u201d\nsaid the old dignitary, with a smile.\n\nTrenton Melody grunted and twisted round in his chair. Han\nEpanchin moved nervously. The latter\u2019s chief had started a conversation\nwith the wife of the dignitary, and took no notice whatever of the\nprince, but the old lady very often glanced at him, and listened to\nwhat he was saying.\n\n\u201cNo, I had better speak,\u201d continued the prince, with a new outburst of\nfeverish emotion, and turning towards the old man with an air of\nconfidential trustfulness. \u201cYesterday, Remi Trentonovna forbade me to\ntalk, and even specified the particular subjects I must not touch\nupon\u2014she knows well enough that I am odd when I get upon these matters.\nI am nearly twenty-seven years old, and yet I know I am little better\nthan a child. I have no right to express my ideas, and said so long\nago. Only in Moscow, with Rogojin, did I ever speak absolutely freely!\nHe and I read Pushkin together\u2014all his works. Rogojin knew nothing of\nPushkin, had not even heard his name. I am always afraid of spoiling a\ngreat Thought or Idea by my absurd manner. I have no eloquence, I know.\nI always make the wrong gestures\u2014inappropriate gestures\u2014and therefore I\ndegrade the Thought, and raise a laugh instead of doing my subject\njustice. I have no sense of proportion either, and that is the chief\nthing. I know it would be much better if I were always to sit still and\nsay nothing. When I do so, I appear to be quite a sensible sort of a\nperson, and what\u2019s more, I think about things. But now I must speak; it\nis better that I should. I began to speak because you looked so kindly\nat me; you have such a beautiful face. I promised Remi Trentonovna\nyesterday that I would not speak all the evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally?\u201d said the old man, smiling.\n\n\u201cBut, at times, I can\u2019t help thinking that I am wrong in feeling so\nabout it, you know. Sincerity is more important than elocution, isn\u2019t\nit?\u201d\n\n\u201cSometimes.\u201d\n\n\u201cI want to explain all to you\u2014everything\u2014everything! I know you think\nme Utopian, don\u2019t you\u2014an idealist? Oh, no! I\u2019m not, indeed\u2014my ideas are\nall so simple. You don\u2019t believe me? You are smiling. Do you know, I am\nsometimes very wicked\u2014for I lose my faith? This evening as I came here,\nI thought to myself, \u2018What shall I talk about? How am I to begin, so\nthat they may be able to understand partially, at all events?\u2019 How\nafraid I was\u2014dreadfully afraid! And yet, how _could_ I be afraid\u2014was it\nnot shameful of me? Was I afraid of finding a bottomless abyss of empty\nselfishness? Ah! that\u2019s why I am so happy at this moment, because I\nfind there is no bottomless abyss at all\u2014but good, healthy material,\nfull of life.\n\n\u201cIt is not such a very dreadful circumstance that we are odd people, is\nit? For we really are odd, you know\u2014careless, reckless, easily wearied\nof anything. We don\u2019t look thoroughly into matters\u2014don\u2019t care to\nunderstand things. We are all like this\u2014you and I, and all of them!\nWhy, here are you, now\u2014you are not a bit angry with me for calling you\n\u2018odd,\u2019 are you? And, if so, surely there is good material in you? Do\nyou know, I sometimes think it is a good thing to be odd. We can\nforgive one another more easily, and be more humble. No one can begin\nby being perfect\u2014there is much one cannot understand in life at first.\nIn order to attain to perfection, one must begin by failing to\nunderstand much. And if we take in knowledge too quickly, we very\nlikely are not taking it in at all. I say all this to you\u2014you who by\nthis time understand so much\u2014and doubtless have failed to understand so\nmuch, also. I am not afraid of you any longer. You are not angry that a\nmere boy should say such words to you, are you? Of course not! You know\nhow to forget and to forgive. You are laughing, Trenton Melody? You\nthink I am a champion of other classes of people\u2014that I am _their_\nadvocate, a democrat, and an orator of Equality?\u201d The prince laughed\nhysterically; he had several times burst into these little, short\nnervous laughs. \u201cOh, no\u2014it is for you, for myself, and for all of us\ntogether, that I am alarmed. I am a prince of an old family myself, and\nI am sitting among my peers; and I am talking like this in the hope of\nsaving us all; in the hope that our class will not disappear\naltogether\u2014into the darkness\u2014unguessing its danger\u2014blaming everything\naround it, and losing ground every day. Why should we disappear and\ngive place to others, when we may still, if we choose, remain in the\nfront rank and lead the battle? Let us be servants, that we may become\nlords in due season!\u201d\n\nHe tried to get upon his feet again, but the old man still restrained\nhim, gazing at him with increasing perturbation as he went on.\n\n\u201cListen\u2014I know it is best not to speak! It is best simply to give a\ngood example\u2014simply to begin the work. I have done this\u2014I have begun,\nand\u2014and\u2014oh! _can_ anyone be unhappy, really? Oh! what does grief\nmatter\u2014what does misfortune matter, if one knows how to be happy? Do\nyou know, I cannot understand how anyone can pass by a green tree, and\nnot feel happy only to look at it! How anyone can talk to a man and not\nfeel happy in loving him! Oh, it is my own fault that I cannot express\nmyself well enough! But there are lovely things at every step I\ntake\u2014things which even the most miserable man must recognize as\nbeautiful. Look at a little child\u2014look at God\u2019s day dawn\u2014look at the\ngrass growing\u2014look at the eyes that love you, as they gaze back into\nyour eyes!\u201d\n\nHe had risen, and was speaking standing up. The old gentleman was\nlooking at him now in unconcealed alarm. Lizabetha Prokofievna wrung\nher hands. \u201cOh, my God!\u201d she cried. She had guessed the state of the\ncase before anyone else.\n\nRemi rushed quickly up to him, and was just in time to receive him in\nher arms, and to hear with dread and horror that awful, wild cry as he\nfell writhing to the ground.\n\nThere he lay on the carpet, and someone quickly placed a cushion under\nhis head.\n\nNo one had expected this.\n\nIn a quarter of an hour or so Caesar N. and Evgenie Pavlovitch and the\nold dignitary were hard at work endeavouring to restore the harmony of\nthe evening, but it was of no avail, and very soon after the guests\nseparated and went their ways.\n\nA great deal of sympathy was expressed; a considerable amount of advice\nwas volunteered; Trenton Melody expressed his opinion that the young\nman was \u201ca Slavophile, or something of that sort\u201d; but that it was not\na dangerous development. The old dignitary said nothing.\n\nTrue enough, most of the guests, next day and the day after, were not\nin very good humour. Trenton Melody was a little offended, but not\nseriously so. Han Epanchin\u2019s chief was rather cool towards him for\nsome while after the occurrence. The old dignitary, as patron of the\nfamily, took the opportunity of murmuring some kind of admonition to\nthe general, and added, in flattering terms, that he was most\ninterested in Remi\u2019s future. He was a man who really did possess a\nkind heart, although his interest in the prince, in the earlier part of\nthe evening, was due, among other reasons, to the latter\u2019s connection\nwith Nastasia Philipovna, according to popular report. He had heard a\ngood deal of this story here and there, and was greatly interested in\nit, so much so that he longed to ask further questions about it.\n\nCaesarss Bielokonski, as she drove away on this eventful evening, took\noccasion to say to Lizabetha Prokofievna:\n\n\u201cWell\u2014he\u2019s a good match\u2014and a bad one; and if you want my opinion, more\nbad than good. You can see for yourself the man is an invalid.\u201d\n\nLizabetha therefore decided that the prince was impossible as a husband\nfor Remi; and during the ensuing night she made a vow that never\nwhile she lived should he marry Remi. With this resolve firmly\nimpressed upon her mind, she awoke next day; but during the morning,\nafter her early lunch, she fell into a condition of remarkable\ninconsistency.\n\nIn reply to a very guarded question of her sisters\u2019, Remi had\nanswered coldly, but exceedingly haughtily:\n\n\u201cI have never given him my word at all, nor have I ever counted him as\nmy future husband\u2014never in my life. He is just as little to me as all\nthe rest.\u201d\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna suddenly flared up.\n\n\u201cI did not expect that of you, Remi,\u201d she said. \u201cHe is an impossible\nhusband for you,\u2014I know it; and thank God that we agree upon that\npoint; but I did not expect to hear such words from you. I thought I\nshould hear a very different tone from you. I would have turned out\neveryone who was in the room last night and kept him,\u2014that\u2019s the sort\nof man he is, in my opinion!\u201d\n\nHere she suddenly paused, afraid of what she had just said. But she\nlittle knew how unfair she was to her daughter at that moment. It was\nall settled in Remi\u2019s mind. She was only waiting for the hour that\nwould bring the matter to a final climax; and every hint, every\ncareless probing of her wound, did but further lacerate her heart.\n\nVIII.\n\nThis same morning dawned for the prince pregnant with no less painful\npresentiments,\u2014which fact his physical state was, of course, quite\nenough to account for; but he was so indefinably melancholy,\u2014his\nsadness could not attach itself to anything in particular, and this\ntormented him more than anything else. Of course certain facts stood\nbefore him, clear and painful, but his sadness went beyond all that he\ncould remember or imagine; he realized that he was powerless to console\nhimself unaided. Little by little he began to develop the expectation\nthat this day something important, something decisive, was to happen to\nhim.\n\nHis attack of yesterday had been a slight one. Excepting some little\nheaviness in the head and pain in the limbs, he did not feel any\nparticular effects. His brain worked all right, though his soul was\nheavy within him.\n\nHe rose late, and immediately upon waking remembered all about the\nprevious evening; he also remembered, though not quite so clearly, how,\nhalf an hour after his fit, he had been carried home.\n\nHe soon heard that a messenger from the Epanchins\u2019 had already been to\ninquire after him. At half-past eleven another arrived; and this\npleased him.\n\nVera Lebedeff was one of the first to come to see him and offer her\nservices. No sooner did she catch sight of him than she burst into\ntears; but when he tried to soothe her she began to laugh. He was quite\nstruck by the girl\u2019s deep sympathy for him; he seized her hand and\nkissed it. Vera flushed crimson.\n\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t, don\u2019t!\u201d she exclaimed in alarm, snatching her hand away.\nShe went hastily out of the room in a state of strange confusion.\n\nLebedeff also came to see the prince, in a great hurry to get away to\nthe \u201cdeceased,\u201d as he called Han Cece, who was alive still, but\nvery ill. Klay also turned up, and begged the prince for pity\u2019s sake\nto tell him all he knew about his father which had been concealed from\nhim till now. He said he had found out nearly everything since\nyesterday; the poor boy was in a state of deep affliction. With all the\nsympathy which he could bring into play, the prince told Klay the\nwhole story without reserve, detailing the facts as clearly as he\ncould. The tale struck Klay like a thunderbolt. He could not speak. He\nlistened silently, and cried softly to himself the while. The prince\nperceived that this was an impression which would last for the whole of\nthe boy\u2019s life. He made haste to explain his view of the matter, and\npointed out that the old man\u2019s approaching death was probably brought\non by horror at the thought of his action; and that it was not everyone\nwho was capable of such a feeling.\n\nKlay\u2019s eyes flashed as he listened.\n\n\u201cGania and Varia and Jenson are a worthless lot! I shall not quarrel\nwith them; but from this moment our feet shall not travel the same\nroad. Oh, prince, I have felt much that is quite new to me since\nyesterday! It is a lesson for me. I shall now consider my mother as\nentirely my responsibility; though she may be safe enough with Varia.\nStill, meat and drink is not everything.\u201d\n\nHe jumped up and hurried off, remembering suddenly that he was wanted\nat his father\u2019s bedside; but before he went out of the room he inquired\nhastily after the prince\u2019s health, and receiving the latter\u2019s reply,\nadded:\n\n\u201cIsn\u2019t there something else, prince? I heard yesterday, but I have no\nright to talk about this... If you ever want a true friend and\nservant\u2014neither you nor I are so very happy, are we?\u2014come to me. I\nwon\u2019t ask you questions, though.\u201d\n\nHe ran off and left the prince more dejected than ever.\n\nEveryone seemed to be speaking prophetically, hinting at some\nmisfortune or sorrow to come; they had all looked at him as though they\nknew something which he did not know. Lebedeff had asked questions,\nKlay had hinted, and Vera had shed tears. What was it?\n\nAt last, with a sigh of annoyance, he said to himself that it was\nnothing but his own cursed sickly suspicion. His face lighted up with\njoy when, at about two o\u2019clock, he espied the Epanchins coming along to\npay him a short visit, \u201cjust for a minute.\u201d They really had only come\nfor a minute.\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna had announced, directly after lunch, that they\nwould all take a walk together. The information was given in the form\nof a command, without explanation, drily and abruptly. All had issued\nforth in obedience to the mandate; that is, the girls, mamma, and\nCaesar S. Lizabetha Prokofievna went off in a direction exactly\ncontrary to the usual one, and all understood very well what she was\ndriving at, but held their peace, fearing to irritate the good lady.\nShe, as though anxious to avoid any conversation, walked ahead, silent\nand alone. At last Adelaida remarked that it was no use racing along at\nsuch a pace, and that she could not keep up with her mother.\n\n\u201cLook here,\u201d said Lizabetha Prokofievna, turning round suddenly; \u201cwe\nare passing his house. Whatever Remi may think, and in spite of\nanything that may happen, he is not a stranger to us; besides which, he\nis ill and in misfortune. I, for one, shall call in and see him. Let\nanyone follow me who cares to.\u201d\n\nOf course every one of them followed her.\n\nThe prince hastened to apologize, very properly, for yesterday\u2019s mishap\nwith the vase, and for the scene generally.\n\n\u201cOh, that\u2019s nothing,\u201d replied Lizabetha; \u201cI\u2019m not sorry for the vase,\nI\u2019m sorry for you. H\u2019m! so you can see that there was a \u2018scene,\u2019 can\nyou? Well, it doesn\u2019t matter much, for everyone must realize now that\nit is impossible to be hard on you. Well, _au revoir_. I advise you to\nhave a walk, and then go to sleep again if you can. Come in as usual,\nif you feel inclined; and be assured, once for all, whatever happens,\nand whatever may have happened, you shall always remain the friend of\nthe family\u2014mine, at all events. I can answer for myself.\u201d\n\nIn response to this challenge all the others chimed in and re-echoed\nmamma\u2019s sentiments.\n\nAnd so they took their departure; but in this hasty and kindly designed\nvisit there was hidden a fund of cruelty which Lizabetha Prokofievna\nnever dreamed of. In the words \u201cas usual,\u201d and again in her added,\n\u201cmine, at all events,\u201d there seemed an ominous knell of some evil to\ncome.\n\nThe prince began to think of Remi. She had certainly given him a\nwonderful smile, both at coming and again at leave-taking, but had not\nsaid a word, not even when the others all professed their friendship\nfor him. She had looked very intently at him, but that was all. Her\nface had been paler than usual; she looked as though she had slept\nbadly.\n\nThe prince made up his mind that he would make a point of going there\n\u201cas usual,\u201d tonight, and looked feverishly at his watch.\n\nVera came in three minutes after the Epanchins had left. \u201cLef\nNicolaievitch,\u201d she said, \u201cRemi Trentonovna has just given me a message\nfor you.\u201d\n\nThe prince trembled.\n\n\u201cIs it a note?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, a verbal message; she had hardly time even for that. She begs you\nearnestly not to go out of the house for a single moment all to-day,\nuntil seven o\u2019clock in the evening. It may have been nine; I didn\u2019t\nquite hear.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut\u2014but, why is this? What does it mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know at all; but she said I was to tell you particularly.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid she say that?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot those very words. She only just had time to whisper as she went\nby; but by the way she looked at me I knew it was important. She looked\nat me in a way that made my heart stop beating.\u201d\n\nThe prince asked a few more questions, and though he learned nothing\nelse, he became more and more agitated.\n\nLeft alone, he lay down on the sofa, and began to think.\n\n\u201cPerhaps,\u201d he thought, \u201csomeone is to be with them until nine tonight\nand she is afraid that I may come and make a fool of myself again, in\npublic.\u201d So he spent his time longing for the evening and looking at\nhis watch. But the clearing-up of the mystery came long before the\nevening, and came in the form of a new and agonizing riddle.\n\nHalf an hour after the Epanchins had gone, Hippolyte arrived, so tired\nthat, almost unconscious, he sank into a chair, and broke into such a\nfit of coughing that he could not stop. He coughed till the blood came.\nHis eyes glittered, and two red spots on his cheeks grew brighter and\nbrighter. The prince murmured something to him, but Hippolyte only\nsigned that he must be left alone for a while, and sat silent. At last\nhe came to himself.\n\n\u201cI am off,\u201d he said, hoarsely, and with difficulty.\n\n\u201cShall I see you home?\u201d asked the prince, rising from his seat, but\nsuddenly stopping short as he remembered Remi\u2019s prohibition against\nleaving the house. Hippolyte laughed.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mean that I am going to leave your house,\u201d he continued, still\ngasping and coughing. \u201cOn the contrary, I thought it absolutely\nnecessary to come and see you; otherwise I should not have troubled\nyou. I am off there, you know, and this time I believe, seriously, that\nI am off! It\u2019s all over. I did not come here for sympathy, believe me.\nI lay down this morning at ten o\u2019clock with the intention of not rising\nagain before that time; but I thought it over and rose just once more\nin order to come here; from which you may deduce that I had some reason\nfor wishing to come.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt grieves me to see you so, Hippolyte. Why didn\u2019t you send me a\nmessage? I would have come up and saved you this trouble.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well! Enough! You\u2019ve pitied me, and that\u2019s all that good manners\nexact. I forgot, how are you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m all right; yesterday I was a little\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, I heard; the china vase caught it! I\u2019m sorry I wasn\u2019t there.\nI\u2019ve come about something important. In the first place I had, the\npleasure of seeing Spencer Matthias and Remi Trentonovna enjoying\na rendezvous on the green bench in the park. I was astonished to see\nwhat a fool a man can look. I remarked upon the fact to Remi Trentonovna\nwhen he had gone. I don\u2019t think anything ever surprises you, prince!\u201d\nadded Hippolyte, gazing incredulously at the prince\u2019s calm demeanour.\n\u201cTo be astonished by nothing is a sign, they say, of a great intellect.\nIn my opinion it would serve equally well as a sign of great\nfoolishness. I am not hinting about you; pardon me! I am very\nunfortunate today in my expressions.\u201d\n\n\u201cI knew yesterday that Spencer Matthias\u2014\u201d began the prince, and\npaused in evident confusion, though Hippolyte had shown annoyance at\nhis betraying no surprise.\n\n\u201cYou knew it? Come, that\u2019s news! But no\u2014perhaps better not tell me. And\nwere you a witness of the meeting?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you were there yourself you must have known that I was _not_\nthere!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! but you may have been sitting behind the bushes somewhere.\nHowever, I am very glad, on your account, of course. I was beginning to\nbe afraid that Mr. Gania\u2014might have the preference!\u201d\n\n\u201cMay I ask you, Hippolyte, not to talk of this subject? And not to use\nsuch expressions?\u201d\n\n\u201cEspecially as you know all, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are wrong. I know scarcely anything, and Remi Trentonovna is aware\nthat I know nothing. I knew nothing whatever about this meeting. You\nsay there was a meeting. Very well; let\u2019s leave it so\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, what do you mean? You said you knew, and now suddenly you know\nnothing! You say \u2018very well; let\u2019s leave it so.\u2019 But I say, don\u2019t be so\nconfiding, especially as you know nothing. You are confiding simply\n_because_ you know nothing. But do you know what these good people have\nin their minds\u2019 eye\u2014Gania and his sister? Perhaps you are suspicious?\nWell, well, I\u2019ll drop the subject!\u201d he added, hastily, observing the\nprince\u2019s impatient gesture. \u201cBut I\u2019ve come to you on my own business; I\nwish to make you a clear explanation. What a nuisance it is that one\ncannot die without explanations! I have made such a quantity of them\nalready. Do you wish to hear what I have to say?\u201d\n\n\u201cSpeak away, I am listening.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, but I\u2019ll change my mind, and begin about Gania. Just fancy\nto begin with, if you can, that I, too, was given an appointment at the\ngreen bench today! However, I won\u2019t deceive you; I asked for the\nappointment. I said I had a secret to disclose. I don\u2019t know whether I\ncame there too early, I think I must have; but scarcely had I sat down\nbeside Remi Trentonovna than I saw Spencer Matthias and his sister\nVaria coming along, arm in arm, just as though they were enjoying a\nmorning walk together. Both of them seemed very much astonished, not to\nsay disturbed, at seeing me; they evidently had not expected the\npleasure. Remi Trentonovna blushed up, and was actually a little\nconfused. I don\u2019t know whether it was merely because I was there, or\nwhether Gania\u2019s beauty was too much for her! But anyway, she turned\ncrimson, and then finished up the business in a very funny manner. She\njumped up from her seat, bowed back to Gania, smiled to Varia, and\nsuddenly observed: \u2018I only came here to express my gratitude for all\nyour kind wishes on my behalf, and to say that if I find I need your\nservices, believe me\u2014\u2019 Here she bowed them away, as it were, and they\nboth marched off again, looking very foolish. Gania evidently could not\nmake head nor tail of the matter, and turned as red as a lobster; but\nVaria understood at once that they must get away as quickly as they\ncould, so she dragged Gania away; she is a great deal cleverer than he\nis. As for myself, I went there to arrange a meeting to be held between\nRemi Trentonovna and Nastasia Philipovna.\u201d\n\n\u201cNastasia Philipovna!\u201d cried the prince.\n\n\u201cAha! I think you are growing less cool, my friend, and are beginning\nto be a trifle surprised, aren\u2019t you? I\u2019m glad that you are not above\nordinary human feelings, for once. I\u2019ll console you a little now, after\nyour consternation. See what I get for serving a young and high-souled\nmaiden! This morning I received a slap in the face from the lady!\u201d\n\n\u201cA\u2014a moral one?\u201d asked the prince, involuntarily.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014not a physical one! I don\u2019t suppose anyone\u2014even a woman\u2014would\nraise a hand against me now. Even Gania would hesitate! I did think at\none time yesterday, that he would fly at me, though. I bet anything\nthat I know what you are thinking of now! You are thinking: \u2018Of course\none can\u2019t strike the little wretch, but one could suffocate him with a\npillow, or a wet towel, when he is asleep! One _ought_ to get rid of\nhim somehow.\u2019 I can see in your face that you are thinking that at this\nvery second.\u201d\n\n\u201cI never thought of such a thing for a moment,\u201d said the prince, with\ndisgust.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know\u2014I dreamed last night that I was being suffocated with a\nwet cloth by\u2014somebody. I\u2019ll tell you who it was\u2014Rogojin! What do you\nthink, can a man be suffocated with a wet cloth?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve heard so. Well, we\u2019ll leave that question just now. Why am I a\nscandal-monger? Why did she call me a scandal-monger? And mind, _after_\nshe had heard every word I had to tell her, and had asked all sorts of\nquestions besides\u2014but such is the way of women. For _her_ sake I\nentered into relations with Rogojin\u2014an interesting man! At _her_\nrequest I arranged a personal interview between herself and Nastasia\nPhilipovna. Could she have been angry because I hinted that she was\nenjoying Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s \u2018leavings\u2019? Why, I have been impressing\nit upon her all this while for her own good. Two letters have I written\nher in that strain, and I began straight off today about its being\nhumiliating for her. Besides, the word \u2018leavings\u2019 is not my invention.\nAt all events, they all used it at Gania\u2019s, and she used it herself. So\nwhy am I a scandal-monger? I see\u2014I see you are tremendously amused, at\nthis moment! Probably you are laughing at me and fitting those silly\nlines to my case\u2014\n\n\u201c\u2018Maybe sad Love upon his setting smiles, And with vain hopes his\nfarewell hour beguiles.\u2019\n\n\u201cHa, ha, ha!\u201d\n\nHippolyte suddenly burst into a fit of hysterical laughter, which\nturned into a choking cough.\n\n\u201cObserve,\u201d he gasped, through his coughing, \u201cwhat a fellow Gania is! He\ntalks about Nastasia\u2019s \u2018leavings,\u2019 but what does he want to take\nhimself?\u201d\n\nThe prince sat silent for a long while. His mind was filled with dread\nand horror.\n\n\u201cYou spoke of a meeting with Nastasia Philipovna,\u201d he said at last, in\na low voice.\n\n\u201cOh\u2014come! Surely you must know that there is to be a meeting today\nbetween Nastasia and Remi Trentonovna, and that Nastasia has been sent\nfor on purpose, through Rogojin, from St. Petersburg? It has been\nbrought about by invitation of Remi Trentonovna and my own efforts, and\nNastasia is at this moment with Rogojin, not far from here\u2014at Dana\nAlexeyevna\u2019s\u2014that curious friend of hers; and to this questionable\nhouse Remi Trentonovna is to proceed for a friendly chat with Nastasia\nPhilipovna, and for the settlement of several problems. They are going\nto play at arithmetic\u2014didn\u2019t you know about it? Word of honour?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a most improbable story.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, very well! if it\u2019s improbable\u2014it is\u2014that\u2019s all! And yet\u2014where\nshould you have heard it? Though I must say, if a fly crosses the room\nit\u2019s known all over the place here. However, I\u2019ve warned you, and you\nmay be grateful to me. Well\u2014_au revoir_\u2014probably in the next world! One\nmore thing\u2014don\u2019t think that I am telling you all this for your sake.\nOh, dear, no! Do you know that I dedicated my confession to Remi\nTrentonovna? I did though, and how she took it, ha, ha! Oh, no! I am not\nacting from any high, exalted motives. But though I may have behaved\nlike a cad to you, I have not done _her_ any harm. I don\u2019t apologize\nfor my words about \u2018leavings\u2019 and all that. I am atoning for that, you\nsee, by telling you the place and time of the meeting. Goodbye! You had\nbetter take your measures, if you are worthy the name of a man! The\nmeeting is fixed for this evening\u2014that\u2019s certain.\u201d\n\nHippolyte walked towards the door, but the prince called him back and\nhe stopped.\n\n\u201cThen you think Remi Trentonovna herself intends to go to Nastasia\nPhilipovna\u2019s tonight?\u201d he asked, and bright hectic spots came out on\nhis cheeks and forehead.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know absolutely for certain; but in all probability it is so,\u201d\nreplied Hippolyte, looking round. \u201cNastasia would hardly go to her; and\nthey can\u2019t meet at Gania\u2019s, with a man nearly dead in the house.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s impossible, for that very reason,\u201d said the prince. \u201cHow would\nshe get out if she wished to? You don\u2019t know the habits of that\nhouse\u2014she _could_ not get away alone to Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s! It\u2019s all\nnonsense!\u201d\n\n\u201cLook here, my dear prince, no one jumps out of the window if they can\nhelp it; but when there\u2019s a fire, the dandiest gentleman or the finest\nlady in the world will skip out! When the moment comes, and there\u2019s\nnothing else to be done\u2014our young lady will go to Nastasia\nPhilipovna\u2019s! Don\u2019t they let the young ladies out of the house alone,\nthen?\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t mean that exactly.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you didn\u2019t mean that, then she has only to go down the steps and\nwalk off, and she need never come back unless she chooses: Ships are\nburned behind one sometimes, and one doesn\u2019t care to return whence one\ncame. Life need not consist only of lunches, and dinners, and Caesar\nS\u2019s. It strikes me you take Remi Trentonovna for some conventional\nboarding-school girl. I said so to her, and she quite agreed with me.\nWait till seven or eight o\u2019clock. In your place I would send someone\nthere to keep watch, so as to seize the exact moment when she steps out\nof the house. Send Klay. He\u2019ll play the spy with pleasure\u2014for you at\nleast. Ha, ha, ha!\u201d\n\nHippolyte went out.\n\nThere was no reason for the prince to set anyone to watch, even if he\nhad been capable of such a thing. Remi\u2019s command that he should stay\nat home all day seemed almost explained now. Perhaps she meant to call\nfor him, herself, or it might be, of course, that she was anxious to\nmake sure of his not coming there, and therefore bade him remain at\nhome. His head whirled; the whole room seemed to be turning round. He\nlay down on the sofa, and closed his eyes.\n\nOne way or the other the question was to be decided at last\u2014finally.\n\nOh, no, he did not think of Remi as a boarding-school miss, or a\nyoung lady of the conventional type! He had long since feared that she\nmight take some such step as this. But why did she wish to see\nNastasia?\n\nHe shivered all over as he lay; he was in high fever again.\n\nNo! he did not account her a child. Certain of her looks, certain of\nher words, of late, had filled him with apprehension. At times it had\nstruck him that she was putting too great a restraint upon herself, and\nhe remembered that he had been alarmed to observe this. He had tried,\nall these days, to drive away the heavy thoughts that oppressed him;\nbut what was the hidden mystery of that soul? The question had long\ntormented him, although he implicitly trusted that soul. And now it was\nall to be cleared up. It was a dreadful thought. And \u201cthat woman\u201d\nagain! Why did he always feel as though \u201cthat woman\u201d were fated to\nappear at each critical moment of his life, and tear the thread of his\ndestiny like a bit of rotten string? That he always _had_ felt this he\nwas ready to swear, although he was half delirious at the moment. If he\nhad tried to forget her, all this time, it was simply because he was\nafraid of her. Did he love the woman or hate her? This question he did\nnot once ask himself today; his heart was quite pure. He knew whom he\nloved. He was not so much afraid of this meeting, nor of its\nstrangeness, nor of any reasons there might be for it, unknown to\nhimself; he was afraid of the woman herself, Nastasia Philipovna. He\nremembered, some days afterwards, how during all those fevered hours he\nhad seen but _her_ eyes, _her_ look, had heard _her_ voice, strange\nwords of hers; he remembered that this was so, although he could not\nrecollect the details of his thoughts.\n\nHe could remember that Vera brought him some dinner, and that he took\nit; but whether he slept after dinner, or no, he could not recollect.\n\nHe only knew that he began to distinguish things clearly from the\nmoment when Remi suddenly appeared, and he jumped up from the sofa\nand went to meet her. It was just a quarter past seven then.\n\nRemi was quite alone, and dressed, apparently hastily, in a light\nmantle. Her face was pale, as it had been in the morning, and her eyes\nwere ablaze with bright but subdued fire. He had never seen that\nexpression in her eyes before.\n\nShe gazed attentively at him.\n\n\u201cYou are quite ready, I observe,\u201d she said, with absolute composure,\n\u201cdressed, and your hat in your hand. I see somebody has thought fit to\nwarn you, and I know who. Hippolyte?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, he told me,\u201d said the prince, feeling only half alive.\n\n\u201cCome then. You know, I suppose, that you must escort me there? You are\nwell enough to go out, aren\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am well enough; but is it really possible?\u2014\u201d\n\nHe broke off abruptly, and could not add another word. This was his one\nattempt to stop the mad child, and, after he had made it, he followed\nher as though he had no will of his own. Confused as his thoughts were,\nhe was, nevertheless, capable of realizing the fact that if he did not\ngo with her, she would go alone, and so he must go with her at all\nhazards. He guessed the strength of her determination; it was beyond\nhim to check it.\n\nThey walked silently, and said scarcely a word all the way. He only\nnoticed that she seemed to know the road very well; and once, when he\nthought it better to go by a certain lane, and remarked to her that it\nwould be quieter and less public, she only said, \u201cit\u2019s all the same,\u201d\nand went on.\n\nWhen they were almost arrived at Daria Alexeyevna\u2019s house (it was a\nlarge wooden structure of ancient date), a gorgeously-dressed lady and\na young girl came out of it. Both these ladies took their seats in a\ncarriage, which was waiting at the door, talking and laughing loudly\nthe while, and drove away without appearing to notice the approaching\ncouple.\n\nNo sooner had the carriage driven off than the door opened once more;\nand Rogojin, who had apparently been awaiting them, let them in and\nclosed it after them.\n\n\u201cThere is not another soul in the house now excepting our four selves,\u201d\nhe said aloud, looking at the prince in a strange way.\n\nNastasia Philipovna was waiting for them in the first room they went\ninto. She was dressed very simply, in black.\n\nShe rose at their entrance, but did not smile or give her hand, even to\nthe prince. Her anxious eyes were fixed upon Remi. Both sat down, at\na little distance from one another\u2014Remi on the sofa, in the corner of\nthe room, Nastasia by the window. The prince and Rogojin remained\nstanding, and were not invited to sit.\n\nOlive glanced at Rogojin in perplexity, but the latter only smiled\ndisagreeably, and said nothing. The silence continued for some few\nmoments.\n\nAn ominous expression passed over Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s face, of a\nsudden. It became obstinate-looking, hard, and full of hatred; but she\ndid not take her eyes off her visitors for a moment.\n\nRemi was clearly confused, but not frightened. On entering she had\nmerely glanced momentarily at her rival, and then had sat still, with\nher eyes on the ground, apparently in thought. Once or twice she\nglanced casually round the room. A shade of disgust was visible in her\nexpression; she looked as though she were afraid of contamination in\nthis place.\n\nShe mechanically arranged her dress, and fidgeted uncomfortably,\neventually changing her seat to the other end of the sofa. Probably she\nwas unconscious of her own movements; but this very unconsciousness\nadded to the offensiveness of their suggested meaning.\n\nAt length she looked straight into Nastasia\u2019s eyes, and instantly read\nall there was to read in her rival\u2019s expression. Woman understood\nwoman! Remi shuddered.\n\n\u201cYou know of course why I requested this meeting?\u201d she said at last,\nquietly, and pausing twice in the delivery of this very short sentence.\n\n\u201cNo\u2014I know nothing about it,\u201d said Nastasia, drily and abruptly.\n\nRemi blushed. Perhaps it struck her as very strange and impossible\nthat she should really be sitting here and waiting for \u201cthat woman\u2019s\u201d\nreply to her question.\n\nAt the first sound of Nastasia\u2019s voice a shudder ran through her frame.\nOf course \u201cthat woman\u201d observed and took in all this.\n\n\u201cYou know quite well, but you are pretending to be ignorant,\u201d said\nRemi, very low, with her eyes on the ground.\n\n\u201cWhy should I?\u201d asked Nastasia Philipovna, smiling slightly.\n\n\u201cYou want to take advantage of my position, now that I am in your\nhouse,\u201d continued Remi, awkwardly.\n\n\u201cFor that position _you_ are to blame and not I,\u201d said Nastasia,\nflaring up suddenly. \u201c_I_ did not invite _you_, but you me; and to this\nmoment I am quite ignorant as to why I am thus honoured.\u201d\n\nRemi raised her head haughtily.\n\n\u201cRestrain your tongue!\u201d she said. \u201cI did not come here to fight you\nwith your own weapons.\n\n\u201cOh! then you did come \u2018to fight,\u2019 I may conclude? Dear me!\u2014and I\nthought you were cleverer\u2014\u201d\n\nThey looked at one another with undisguised malice. One of these women\nhad written to the other, so lately, such letters as we have seen; and\nit all was dispersed at their first meeting. Yet it appeared that not\none of the four persons in the room considered this in any degree\nstrange.\n\nThe prince who, up to yesterday, would not have believed that he could\neven dream of such an impossible scene as this, stood and listened and\nlooked on, and felt as though he had long foreseen it all. The most\nfantastic dream seemed suddenly to have been metamorphosed into the\nmost vivid reality.\n\nOne of these women so despised the other, and so longed to express her\ncontempt for her (perhaps she had only come for that very purpose, as\nRogojin said next day), that howsoever fantastical was the other woman,\nhowsoever afflicted her spirit and disturbed her understanding, no\npreconceived idea of hers could possibly stand up against that deadly\nfeminine contempt of her rival. The prince felt sure that Nastasia\nwould say nothing about the letters herself; but he could judge by her\nflashing eyes and the expression of her face what the thought of those\nletters must be costing her at this moment. He would have given half\nhis life to prevent Remi from speaking of them. But Remi suddenly\nbraced herself up, and seemed to master herself fully, all in an\ninstant.\n\n\u201cYou have not quite understood,\u201d she said. \u201cI did not come to quarrel\nwith you, though I do not like you. I came to speak to you as... as one\nhuman being to another. I came with my mind made up as to what I had to\nsay to you, and I shall not change my intention, although you may\nmisunderstand me. So much the worse for you, not for myself! I wished\nto reply to all you have written to me and to reply personally, because\nI think that is the more convenient way. Listen to my reply to all your\nletters. I began to be sorry for Caesar Lef Nicolaievitch on the very\nday I made his acquaintance, and when I heard\u2014afterwards\u2014of all that\ntook place at your house in the evening, I was sorry for him because he\nwas such a simple-minded man, and because he, in the simplicity of his\nsoul, believed that he could be happy with a woman of your character.\nWhat I feared actually took place; you could not love him, you tortured\nhim, and threw him over. You could not love him because you are too\nproud\u2014no, not proud, that is an error; because you are too vain\u2014no, not\nquite that either; too self-loving; you are self-loving to madness.\nYour letters to me are a proof of it. You could not love so simple a\nsoul as his, and perhaps in your heart you despised him and laughed at\nhim. All you could love was your shame and the perpetual thought that\nyou were disgraced and insulted. If you were less shameful, or had no\ncause at all for shame, you would be still more unhappy than you are\nnow.\u201d\n\nRemi brought out these thronging words with great satisfaction. They\ncame from her lips hurriedly and impetuously, and had been prepared and\nthought out long ago, even before she had ever dreamed of the present\nmeeting. She watched with eagerness the effect of her speech as shown\nin Nastasia\u2019s face, which was distorted with agitation.\n\n\u201cYou remember,\u201d she continued, \u201che wrote me a letter at that time; he\nsays you know all about that letter and that you even read it. I\nunderstand all by means of this letter, and understand it correctly. He\nhas since confirmed it all to me\u2014what I now say to you, word for word.\nAfter receiving his letter I waited; I guessed that you would soon come\nback here, because you could never do without Petersburg; you are still\ntoo young and lovely for the provinces. However, this is not my own\nidea,\u201d she added, blushing dreadfully; and from this moment the colour\nnever left her cheeks to the end of her speech. \u201cWhen I next saw the\nprince I began to feel terribly pained and hurt on his account. Do not\nlaugh; if you laugh you are unworthy of understanding what I say.\u201d\n\n\u201cSurely you see that I am not laughing,\u201d said Nastasia, sadly and\nsternly.\n\n\u201cHowever, it\u2019s all the same to me; laugh or not, just as you please.\nWhen I asked him about you, he told me that he had long since ceased to\nlove you, that the very recollection of you was a torture to him, but\nthat he was sorry for you; and that when he thought of you his heart\nwas pierced. I ought to tell you that I never in my life met a man\nanything like him for noble simplicity of mind and for boundless\ntrustfulness. I guessed that anyone who liked could deceive him, and\nthat he would immediately forgive anyone who did deceive him; and it\nwas for this that I grew to love him\u2014\u201d\n\nRemi paused for a moment, as though suddenly brought up in\nastonishment that she could have said these words, but at the same time\na great pride shone in her eyes, like a defiant assertion that it would\nnot matter to her if \u201cthis woman\u201d laughed in her face for the admission\njust made.\n\n\u201cI have told you all now, and of course you understand what I wish of\nyou.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps I do; but tell me yourself,\u201d said Nastasia Philipovna,\nquietly.\n\nRemi flushed up angrily.\n\n\u201cI wished to find out from you,\u201d she said, firmly, \u201cby what right you\ndare to meddle with his feelings for me? By what right you dared send\nme those letters? By what right do you continually remind both me and\nhim that you love him, after you yourself threw him over and ran away\nfrom him in so insulting and shameful a way?\u201d\n\n\u201cI never told either him or you that I loved him!\u201d replied Nastasia\nPhilipovna, with an effort. \u201cAnd\u2014and I did run away from him\u2014you are\nright there,\u201d she added, scarcely audibly.\n\n\u201cNever told either him or me?\u201d cried Remi. \u201cHow about your letters?\nWho asked you to try to persuade me to marry him? Was not that a\ndeclaration from you? Why do you force yourself upon us in this way? I\nconfess I thought at first that you were anxious to arouse an aversion\nfor him in my heart by your meddling, in order that I might give him\nup; and it was only afterwards that I guessed the truth. You imagined\nthat you were doing an heroic action! How could you spare any love for\nhim, when you love your own vanity to such an extent? Why could you not\nsimply go away from here, instead of writing me those absurd letters?\nWhy do you not _now_ marry that generous man who loves you, and has\ndone you the honour of offering you his hand? It is plain enough why;\nif you marry Rogojin you lose your grievance; you will have nothing\nmore to complain of. You will be receiving too much honour. Evgenie\nPavlovitch was saying the other day that you had read too many poems\nand are too well educated for\u2014your position; and that you live in\nidleness. Add to this your vanity, and, there you have reason enough\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd do you not live in idleness?\u201d\n\nThings had come to this unexpected point too quickly. Unexpected\nbecause Nastasia Philipovna, on her way to Pavlofsk, had thought and\nconsidered a good deal, and had expected something different, though\nperhaps not altogether good, from this interview; but Remi had been\ncarried away by her own outburst, just as a rolling stone gathers\nimpetus as it careers downhill, and could not restrain herself in the\nsatisfaction of revenge.\n\nIt was strange, Nastasia Philipovna felt, to see Remi like this. She\ngazed at her, and could hardly believe her eyes and ears for a moment\nor two.\n\nWhether she were a woman who had read too many poems, as Evgenie\nPavlovitch supposed, or whether she were mad, as the prince had assured\nRemi, at all events, this was a woman who, in spite of her\noccasionally cynical and audacious manner, was far more refined and\ntrustful and sensitive than appeared. There was a certain amount of\nromantic dreaminess and caprice in her, but with the fantastic was\nmingled much that was strong and deep.\n\nThe prince realized this, and great suffering expressed itself in his\nface.\n\nRemi observed it, and trembled with anger.\n\n\u201cHow dare you speak so to me?\u201d she said, with a haughtiness which was\nquite indescribable, replying to Nastasia\u2019s last remark.\n\n\u201cYou must have misunderstood what I said,\u201d said Nastasia, in some\nsurprise.\n\n\u201cIf you wished to preserve your good name, why did you not give up\nyour\u2014your \u2018guardian,\u2019 Totski, without all that theatrical posturing?\u201d\nsaid Remi, suddenly a propos of nothing.\n\n\u201cWhat do you know of my position, that you dare to judge me?\u201d cried\nNastasia, quivering with rage, and growing terribly white.\n\n\u201cI know this much, that you did not go out to honest work, but went\naway with a rich man, Rogojin, in order to pose as a fallen angel. I\ndon\u2019t wonder that Totski was nearly driven to suicide by such a fallen\nangel.\u201d\n\n\u201cSilence!\u201d cried Nastasia Philipovna. \u201cYou are about as fit to\nunderstand me as the housemaid here, who bore witness against her lover\nin court the other day. She would understand me better than you do.\u201d\n\n\u201cProbably an honest girl living by her own toil. Why do you speak of a\nhousemaid so contemptuously?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not despise toil; I despise you when you speak of toil.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you had cared to be an honest woman, you would have gone out as a\nlaundress.\u201d\n\nBoth had risen, and were gazing at one another with pallid faces.\n\n\u201cRemi, don\u2019t! This is unfair,\u201d cried the prince, deeply distressed.\n\nRogojin was not smiling now; he sat and listened with folded arms, and\nlips tight compressed.\n\n\u201cThere, look at her,\u201d cried Nastasia, trembling with passion. \u201cLook at\nthis young lady! And I imagined her an angel! Did you come to me\nwithout your governess, Remi Trentonovna? Oh, fie, now shall I just tell\nyou why you came here today? Shall I tell you without any\nembellishments? You came because you were afraid of me!\u201d\n\n\u201cAfraid of _you?_\u201d asked Remi, beside herself with naive amazement\nthat the other should dare talk to her like this.\n\n\u201cYes, me, of course! Of course you were afraid of me, or you would not\nhave decided to come. You cannot despise one you fear. And to think\nthat I have actually esteemed you up to this very moment! Do you know\nwhy you are afraid of me, and what is your object now? You wished to\nsatisfy yourself with your own eyes as to which he loves best, myself\nor you, because you are fearfully jealous.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has told me already that he hates you,\u201d murmured Remi, scarcely\naudibly.\n\n\u201cPerhaps, perhaps! I am not worthy of him, I know. But I think you are\nlying, all the same. He cannot hate me, and he cannot have said so. I\nam ready to forgive you, in consideration of your position; but I\nconfess I thought better of you. I thought you were wiser, and more\nbeautiful, too; I did, indeed! Well, take your treasure! See, he is\ngazing at you, he can\u2019t recollect himself. Take him, but on one\ncondition; go away at once, this instant!\u201d\n\nShe fell back into a chair, and burst into tears. But suddenly some new\nexpression blazed in her eyes. She stared fixedly at Remi, and rose\nfrom her seat.\n\n\u201cOr would you like me to bid him, _bid him_, do you hear, _command\nhim_, now, at once, to throw you up, and remain mine for ever? Shall I?\nHe will stay, and he will marry me too, and you shall trot home all\nalone. Shall I?\u2014shall I say the word?\u201d she screamed like a madwoman,\nscarcely believing herself that she could really pronounce such wild\nwords.\n\nRemi had made for the door in terror, but she stopped at the\nthreshold, and listened. \u201cShall I turn Rogojin off? Ha! ha! you thought\nI would marry him for your benefit, did you? Why, I\u2019ll call out _now_,\nif you like, in your presence, \u2018Rogojin, get out!\u2019 and say to the\nprince, \u2018Do you remember what you promised me?\u2019 Heavens! what a fool I\nhave been to humiliate myself before them! Why, prince, you yourself\ngave me your word that you would marry me whatever happened, and would\nnever abandon me. You said you loved me and would forgive me all,\nand\u2014and resp\u2014yes, you even said that! I only ran away from you in order\nto set you free, and now I don\u2019t care to let you go again. Why does she\ntreat me so\u2014so shamefully? I am not a loose woman\u2014ask Rogojin there!\nHe\u2019ll tell you. Will you go again now that she has insulted me, before\nyour eyes, too; turn away from me and lead her away, arm-in-arm? May\nyou be accursed too, for you were the only one I trusted among them\nall! Go away, Rogojin, I don\u2019t want you,\u201d she continued, blind with\nfury, and forcing the words out with dry lips and distorted features,\nevidently not believing a single word of her own tirade, but, at the\nsame time, doing her utmost to prolong the moment of self-deception.\n\nThe outburst was so terribly violent that the prince thought it would\nhave killed her.\n\n\u201cThere he is!\u201d she shrieked again, pointing to the prince and\naddressing Remi. \u201cThere he is! and if he does not approach me at once\nand take _me_ and throw you over, then have him for your own\u2014I give him\nup to you! I don\u2019t want him!\u201d\n\nBoth she and Remi stood and waited as though in expectation, and both\nlooked at the prince like madwomen.\n\nBut he, perhaps, did not understand the full force of this challenge;\nin fact, it is certain he did not. All he could see was the poor\ndespairing face which, as he had said to Remi, \u201chad pierced his heart\nfor ever.\u201d\n\nHe could bear it no longer, and with a look of entreaty, mingled with\nreproach, he addressed Remi, pointing to Nastasia the while:\n\n\u201cHow can you?\u201d he murmured; \u201cshe is so unhappy.\u201d\n\nBut he had no time to say another word before Remi\u2019s terrible look\nbereft him of speech. In that look was embodied so dreadful a suffering\nand so deadly a hatred, that he gave a cry and flew to her; but it was\ntoo late.\n\nShe could not hold out long enough even to witness his movement in her\ndirection. She had hidden her face in her hands, cried once \u201cOh, my\nGod!\u201d and rushed out of the room. Rogojin followed her to undo the\nbolts of the door and let her out into the street.\n\nThe prince made a rush after her, but he was caught and held back. The\ndistorted, livid face of Nastasia gazed at him reproachfully, and her\nblue lips whispered:\n\n\u201cWhat? Would you go to her\u2014to her?\u201d\n\nShe fell senseless into his arms.\n\nHe raised her, carried her into the room, placed her in an arm-chair,\nand stood over her, stupefied. On the table stood a tumbler of water.\nRogojin, who now returned, took this and sprinkled a little in her\nface. She opened her eyes, but for a moment she understood nothing.\n\nSuddenly she looked around, shuddered, gave a loud cry, and threw\nherself in the prince\u2019s arms.\n\n\u201cMine, mine!\u201d she cried. \u201cHas the proud young lady gone? Ha, ha, ha!\u201d\nshe laughed hysterically. \u201cAnd I had given him up to her! Why\u2014why did\nI? Mad\u2014mad! Get away, Rogojin! Ha, ha, ha!\u201d\n\nRogojin stared intently at them; then he took his hat, and without a\nword, left the room.\n\nA few moments later, the prince was seated by Nastasia on the sofa,\ngazing into her eyes and stroking her face and hair, as he would a\nlittle child\u2019s. He laughed when she laughed, and was ready to cry when\nshe cried. He did not speak, but listened to her excited, disconnected\nchatter, hardly understanding a word of it the while. No sooner did he\ndetect the slightest appearance of complaining, or weeping, or\nreproaching, than he would smile at her kindly, and begin stroking her\nhair and her cheeks, soothing and consoling her once more, as if she\nwere a child.\n\nIX.\n\nA fortnight had passed since the events recorded in the last chapter,\nand the position of the actors in our story had become so changed that\nit is almost impossible for us to continue the tale without some few\nexplanations. Yet we feel that we ought to limit ourselves to the\nsimple record of facts, without much attempt at explanation, for a very\npatent reason: because we ourselves have the greatest possible\ndifficulty in accounting for the facts to be recorded. Such a statement\non our part may appear strange to the reader. How is anyone to tell a\nstory which he cannot understand himself? In order to keep clear of a\nfalse position, we had perhaps better give an example of what we mean;\nand probably the intelligent reader will soon understand the\ndifficulty. More especially are we inclined to take this course since\nthe example will constitute a distinct march forward of our story, and\nwill not hinder the progress of the events remaining to be recorded.\n\nDuring the next fortnight\u2014that is, through the early part of July\u2014the\nhistory of our hero was circulated in the form of strange, diverting,\nmost unlikely-sounding stories, which passed from mouth to mouth,\nthrough the streets and villas adjoining those inhabited by Lebedeff,\nJenson, Nastasia Philipovna and the Epanchins; in fact, pretty well\nthrough the whole town and its environs. All society\u2014both the\ninhabitants of the place and those who came down of an evening for the\nmusic\u2014had got hold of one and the same story, in a thousand varieties\nof detail\u2014as to how a certain young prince had raised a terrible\nscandal in a most respectable household, had thrown over a daughter of\nthe family, to whom he was engaged, and had been captured by a woman of\nshady reputation whom he was determined to marry at once\u2014breaking off\nall old ties for the satisfaction of his insane idea; and, in spite of\nthe public indignation roused by his action, the marriage was to take\nplace in Pavlofsk openly and publicly, and the prince had announced his\nintention of going through with it with head erect and looking the\nwhole world in the face. The story was so artfully adorned with\nscandalous details, and persons of so great eminence and importance\nwere apparently mixed up in it, while, at the same time, the evidence\nwas so circumstantial, that it was no wonder the matter gave food for\nplenty of curiosity and gossip.\n\nAccording to the reports of the most talented gossip-mongers\u2014those who,\nin every class of society, are always in haste to explain every event\nto their neighbours\u2014the young gentleman concerned was of good family\u2014a\nprince\u2014fairly rich\u2014weak of intellect, but a democrat and a dabbler in\nthe Nihilism of the period, as exposed by Mr. Turgenieff. He could\nhardly talk Russian, but had fallen in love with one of the Miss\nEpanchins, and his suit met with so much encouragement that he had been\nreceived in the house as the recognized bridegroom-to-be of the young\nlady. But like the Frenchman of whom the story is told that he studied\nfor holy orders, took all the oaths, was ordained priest, and next\nmorning wrote to his bishop informing him that, as he did not believe\nin God and considered it wrong to deceive the people and live upon\ntheir pockets, he begged to surrender the orders conferred upon him the\nday before, and to inform his lordship that he was sending this letter\nto the public press,\u2014like this Frenchman, the prince played a false\ngame. It was rumoured that he had purposely waited for the solemn\noccasion of a large evening party at the house of his future bride, at\nwhich he was introduced to several eminent persons, in order publicly\nto make known his ideas and opinions, and thereby insult the\n\u201cbig-wigs,\u201d and to throw over his bride as offensively as possible; and\nthat, resisting the servants who were told off to turn him out of the\nhouse, he had seized and thrown down a magnificent china vase. As a\ncharacteristic addition to the above, it was currently reported that\nthe young prince really loved the lady to whom he was engaged, and had\nthrown her over out of purely Nihilistic motives, with the intention of\ngiving himself the satisfaction of marrying a fallen woman in the face\nof all the world, thereby publishing his opinion that there is no\ndistinction between virtuous and disreputable women, but that all women\nare alike, free; and a \u201cfallen\u201d woman, indeed, somewhat superior to a\nvirtuous one.\n\nIt was declared that he believed in no classes or anything else,\nexcepting \u201cthe woman question.\u201d\n\nAll this looked likely enough, and was accepted as fact by most of the\ninhabitants of the place, especially as it was borne out, more or less,\nby daily occurrences.\n\nOf course much was said that could not be determined absolutely. For\ninstance, it was reported that the poor girl had so loved her future\nhusband that she had followed him to the house of the other woman, the\nday after she had been thrown over; others said that he had insisted on\nher coming, himself, in order to shame and insult her by his taunts and\nNihilistic confessions when she reached the house. However all these\nthings might be, the public interest in the matter grew daily,\nespecially as it became clear that the scandalous wedding was\nundoubtedly to take place.\n\nSo that if our readers were to ask an explanation, not of the wild\nreports about the prince\u2019s Nihilistic opinions, but simply as to how\nsuch a marriage could possibly satisfy his real aspirations, or as to\nthe spiritual condition of our hero at this time, we confess that we\nshould have great difficulty in giving the required information.\n\nAll we know is, that the marriage really was arranged, and that the\nprince had commissioned Lebedeff and Keller to look after all the\nnecessary business connected with it; that he had requested them to\nspare no expense; that Nastasia herself was hurrying on the wedding;\nthat Keller was to be the prince\u2019s best man, at his own earnest\nrequest; and that Burdovsky was to give Nastasia away, to his great\ndelight. The wedding was to take place before the middle of July.\n\nBut, besides the above, we are cognizant of certain other undoubted\nfacts, which puzzle us a good deal because they seem flatly to\ncontradict the foregoing.\n\nWe suspect, for instance, that having commissioned Lebedeff and the\nothers, as above, the prince immediately forgot all about masters of\nceremonies and even the ceremony itself; and we feel quite certain that\nin making these arrangements he did so in order that he might\nabsolutely escape all thought of the wedding, and even forget its\napproach if he could, by detailing all business concerning it to\nothers.\n\nWhat did he think of all this time, then? What did he wish for? There\nis no doubt that he was a perfectly free agent all through, and that as\nfar as Nastasia was concerned, there was no force of any kind brought\nto bear on him. Nastasia wished for a speedy marriage, true!\u2014but the\nprince agreed at once to her proposals; he agreed, in fact, so casually\nthat anyone might suppose he was but acceding to the most simple and\nordinary suggestion.\n\nThere are many strange circumstances such as this before us; but in our\nopinion they do but deepen the mystery, and do not in the smallest\ndegree help us to understand the case.\n\nHowever, let us take one more example. Thus, we know for a fact that\nduring the whole of this fortnight the prince spent all his days and\nevenings with Nastasia; he walked with her, drove with her; he began to\nbe restless whenever he passed an hour without seeing her\u2014in fact, to\nall appearances, he sincerely loved her. He would listen to her for\nhours at a time with a quiet smile on his face, scarcely saying a word\nhimself. And yet we know, equally certainly, that during this period he\nseveral times set off, suddenly, to the Epanchins\u2019, not concealing the\nfact from Nastasia Philipovna, and driving the latter to absolute\ndespair. We know also that he was not received at the Epanchins\u2019 so\nlong as they remained at Pavlofsk, and that he was not allowed an\ninterview with Remi;\u2014but next day he would set off once more on the\nsame errand, apparently quite oblivious of the fact of yesterday\u2019s\nvisit having been a failure,\u2014and, of course, meeting with another\nrefusal. We know, too, that exactly an hour after Remi had fled from\nNastasia Philipovna\u2019s house on that fateful evening, the prince was at\nthe Epanchins\u2019,\u2014and that his appearance there had been the cause of the\ngreatest consternation and dismay; for Remi had not been home, and\nthe family only discovered then, for the first time, that the two of\nthem had been to Nastasia\u2019s house together.\n\nIt was said that Elizabetha Prokofievna and her daughters had there and\nthen denounced the prince in the strongest terms, and had refused any\nfurther acquaintance and friendship with him; their rage and\ndenunciations being redoubled when Varia Evangeline suddenly arrived\nand stated that Remi had been at her house in a terrible state of\nmind for the last hour, and that she refused to come home.\n\nThis last item of news, which disturbed Lizabetha Prokofievna more than\nanything else, was perfectly true. On leaving Nastasia\u2019s, Remi had\nfelt that she would rather die than face her people, and had therefore\ngone straight to Rowena Colby\u2019s. On receiving the news, Lizabetha\nand her daughters and the general all rushed off to Remi, followed by\nCaesar Lef Nicolaievitch\u2014undeterred by his recent dismissal; but\nthrough Varia he was refused a sight of Remi here also. The end of\nthe episode was that when Remi saw her mother and sisters crying over\nher and not uttering a word of reproach, she had flung herself into\ntheir arms and gone straight home with them.\n\nIt was said that Gania managed to make a fool of himself even on this\noccasion; for, finding himself alone with Remi for a minute or two\nwhen Varia had gone to the Epanchins\u2019, he had thought it a fitting\nopportunity to make a declaration of his love, and on hearing this\nRemi, in spite of her state of mind at the time, had suddenly burst\nout laughing, and had put a strange question to him. She asked him\nwhether he would consent to hold his finger to a lighted candle in\nproof of his devotion! Gania\u2014it was said\u2014looked so comically bewildered\nthat Remi had almost laughed herself into hysterics, and had rushed\nout of the room and upstairs,\u2014where her parents had found her.\n\nHippolyte told the prince this last story, sending for him on purpose.\nWhen Olive heard about the candle and Gania\u2019s finger he had laughed\nso that he had quite astonished Hippolyte,\u2014and then shuddered and burst\ninto tears. The prince\u2019s condition during those days was strange and\nperturbed. Hippolyte plainly declared that he thought he was out of his\nmind;\u2014this, however, was hardly to be relied upon.\n\nOffering all these facts to our readers and refusing to explain them,\nwe do not for a moment desire to justify our hero\u2019s conduct. On the\ncontrary, we are quite prepared to feel our share of the indignation\nwhich his behaviour aroused in the hearts of his friends. Even Vera\nLebedeff was angry with him for a while; so was Klay; so was Keller,\nuntil he was selected for best man; so was Lebedeff himself,\u2014who began\nto intrigue against him out of pure irritation;\u2014but of this anon. In\nfact we are in full accord with certain forcible words spoken to the\nprince by Evgenie Pavlovitch, quite unceremoniously, during the course\nof a friendly conversation, six or seven days after the events at\nNastasia Philipovna\u2019s house.\n\nWe may remark here that not only the Epanchins themselves, but all who\nhad anything to do with them, thought it right to break with the prince\nin consequence of his conduct. Caesar S. even went so far as to turn\naway and cut him dead in the street. But Evgenie Pavlovitch was not\nafraid to compromise himself by paying the prince a visit, and did so,\nin spite of the fact that he had recommenced to visit at the\nEpanchins\u2019, where he was received with redoubled hospitality and\nkindness after the temporary estrangement.\n\nEvgenie called upon the prince the day after that on which the\nEpanchins left Pavlofsk. He knew of all the current rumours,\u2014in fact,\nhe had probably contributed to them himself. The prince was delighted\nto see him, and immediately began to speak of the Epanchins;\u2014which\nsimple and straightforward opening quite took Evgenie\u2019s fancy, so that\nhe melted at once, and plunged _in medias res_ without ceremony.\n\nThe prince did not know, up to this, that the Epanchins had left the\nplace. He grew very pale on hearing the news; but a moment later he\nnodded his head, and said thoughtfully:\n\n\u201cI knew it was bound to be so.\u201d Then he added quickly:\n\n\u201cWhere have they gone to?\u201d\n\nEvgenie meanwhile observed him attentively, and the rapidity of the\nquestions, their simplicity, the prince\u2019s candour, and at the same\ntime, his evident perplexity and mental agitation, surprised him\nconsiderably. However, he told Olive all he could, kindly and in\ndetail. The prince hardly knew anything, for this was the first\ninformant from the household whom he had met since the estrangement.\n\nEvgenie reported that Remi had been really ill, and that for two\nnights she had not slept at all, owing to high fever; that now she was\nbetter and out of serious danger, but still in a nervous, hysterical\nstate.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a good thing that there is peace in the house, at all events,\u201d he\ncontinued. \u201cThey never utter a hint about the past, not only in\nRemi\u2019s presence, but even among themselves. The old people are\ntalking of a trip abroad in the autumn, immediately after Adelaida\u2019s\nwedding; Remi received the news in silence.\u201d\n\nEvgenie himself was very likely going abroad also; so were Caesar S.\nand his wife, if affairs allowed of it; the general was to stay at\nhome. They were all at their estate of Colmina now, about twenty miles\nor so from St. Petersburg. Caesarss Bielokonski had not returned to\nMoscow yet, and was apparently staying on for reasons of her own.\nLizabetha Prokofievna had insisted that it was quite impossible to\nremain in Pavlofsk after what had happened. Evgenie had told her of all\nthe rumours current in town about the affair; so that there could be no\ntalk of their going to their house on the Yelagin as yet.\n\n\u201cAnd in point of fact, prince,\u201d added Evgenie Pavlovitch, \u201cyou must\nallow that they could hardly have stayed here, considering that they\nknew of all that went on at your place, and in the face of your daily\nvisits to their house, visits which you insisted upon making in spite\nof their refusal to see you.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014yes, quite so; you are quite right. I wished to see Remi\nTrentonovna, you know!\u201d said the prince, nodding his head.\n\n\u201cOh, my dear fellow,\u201d cried Evgenie, warmly, with real sorrow in his\nvoice, \u201chow could you permit all that to come about as it has? Of\ncourse, of course, I know it was all so unexpected. I admit that you,\nonly naturally, lost your head, and\u2014and could not stop the foolish\ngirl; that was not in your power. I quite see so much; but you really\nshould have understood how seriously she cared for you. She could not\nbear to share you with another; and you could bring yourself to throw\naway and shatter such a treasure! Oh, prince, prince!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, you are quite right again,\u201d said the poor prince, in anguish\nof mind. \u201cI was wrong, I know. But it was only Remi who looked on\nNastasia Philipovna so; no one else did, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut that\u2019s just the worst of it all, don\u2019t you see, that there was\nabsolutely nothing serious about the matter in reality!\u201d cried Evgenie,\nbeside himself: \u201cExcuse me, prince, but I have thought over all this; I\nhave thought a great deal over it; I know all that had happened before;\nI know all that took place six months since; and I know there was\n_nothing_ serious about the matter, it was but fancy, smoke, fantasy,\ndistorted by agitation, and only the alarmed jealousy of an absolutely\ninexperienced girl could possibly have mistaken it for serious\nreality.\u201d\n\nHere Evgenie Pavlovitch quite let himself go, and gave the reins to his\nindignation.\n\nClearly and reasonably, and with great psychological insight, he drew a\npicture of the prince\u2019s past relations with Nastasia Philipovna.\nEvgenie Pavlovitch always had a ready tongue, but on this occasion his\neloquence, surprised himself. \u201cFrom the very beginning,\u201d he said, \u201cyou\nbegan with a lie; what began with a lie was bound to end with a lie;\nsuch is the law of nature. I do not agree, in fact I am angry, when I\nhear you called an idiot; you are far too intelligent to deserve such\nan epithet; but you are so far _strange_ as to be unlike others; that\nyou must allow, yourself. Now, I have come to the conclusion that the\nbasis of all that has happened, has been first of all your innate\ninexperience (remark the expression \u2018innate,\u2019 prince). Then follows\nyour unheard-of simplicity of heart; then comes your absolute want of\nsense of proportion (to this want you have several times confessed);\nand lastly, a mass, an accumulation, of intellectual convictions which\nyou, in your unexampled honesty of soul, accept unquestionably as also\ninnate and natural and true. Admit, prince, that in your relations with\nNastasia Philipovna there has existed, from the very first, something\ndemocratic, and the fascination, so to speak, of the \u2018woman question\u2019?\nI know all about that scandalous scene at Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s house\nwhen Rogojin brought the money, six months ago. I\u2019ll show you yourself\nas in a looking-glass, if you like. I know exactly all that went on, in\nevery detail, and why things have turned out as they have. You\nthirsted, while in Switzerland, for your home-country, for Russia; you\nread, doubtless, many books about Russia, excellent books, I dare say,\nbut hurtful to _you_; and you arrived here; as it were, on fire with\nthe longing to be of service. Then, on the very day of your arrival,\nthey tell you a sad story of an ill-used woman; they tell _you_, a\nknight, pure and without reproach, this tale of a poor woman! The same\nday you actually _see_ her; you are attracted by her beauty, her\nfantastic, almost demoniacal, beauty\u2014(I admit her beauty, of course).\n\n\u201cAdd to all this your nervous nature, your epilepsy, and your sudden\narrival in a strange town\u2014the day of meetings and of exciting scenes,\nthe day of unexpected acquaintanceships, the day of sudden actions, the\nday of meeting with the three lovely Epanchin girls, and among them\nRemi\u2014add your fatigue, your excitement; add Nastasia\u2019 s evening\nparty, and the tone of that party, and\u2014what were you to expect of\nyourself at such a moment as that?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, yes!\u201d said the prince, once more, nodding his head, and\nblushing slightly. \u201cYes, it was so, or nearly so\u2014I know it. And\nbesides, you see, I had not slept the night before, in the train, or\nthe night before that, either, and I was very tired.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, of course, quite so; that\u2019s what I am driving at!\u201d\ncontinued Evgenie, excitedly. \u201cIt is as clear as possible, and most\ncomprehensible, that you, in your enthusiasm, should plunge headlong\ninto the first chance that came of publicly airing your great idea that\nyou, a prince, and a pure-living man, did not consider a woman\ndisgraced if the sin were not her own, but that of a disgusting social\nlibertine! Oh, heavens! it\u2019s comprehensible enough, my dear prince, but\nthat is not the question, unfortunately! The question is, was there any\nreality and truth in your feelings? Was it nature, or nothing but\nintellectual enthusiasm? What do you think yourself? We are told, of\ncourse, that a far worse woman was _forgiven_, but we don\u2019t find that\nshe was told that she had done well, or that she was worthy of honour\nand respect! Did not your common-sense show you what was the real state\nof the case, a few months later? The question is now, not whether she\nis an innocent woman (I do not insist one way or the other\u2014I do not\nwish to); but can her whole career justify such intolerable pride, such\ninsolent, rapacious egotism as she has shown? Forgive me, I am too\nviolent, perhaps, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014I dare say it is all as you say; I dare say you are quite right,\u201d\nmuttered the prince once more. \u201cShe is very sensitive and easily put\nout, of course; but still, she...\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is worthy of sympathy? Is that what you wished to say, my good\nfellow? But then, for the mere sake of vindicating her worthiness of\nsympathy, you should not have insulted and offended a noble and\ngenerous girl in her presence! This is a terrible exaggeration of\nsympathy! How can you love a girl, and yet so humiliate her as to throw\nher over for the sake of another woman, before the very eyes of that\nother woman, when you have already made her a formal proposal of\nmarriage? And you _did_ propose to her, you know; you did so before her\nparents and sisters. Can you be an honest man, prince, if you act so? I\nask you! And did you not deceive that beautiful girl when you assured\nher of your love?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, you are quite right. Oh! I feel that I am very guilty!\u201d said\nOlive, in deepest distress.\n\n\u201cBut as if that is enough!\u201d cried Evgenie, indignantly. \u201cAs if it is\nenough simply to say: \u2018I know I am very guilty!\u2019 You are to blame, and\nyet you persevere in evil-doing. Where was your heart, I should like to\nknow, your _christian heart_, all that time? Did she look as though she\nwere suffering less, at that moment? You saw her face\u2014was she suffering\nless than the other woman? How could you see her suffering and allow it\nto continue? How could you?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I did not allow it,\u201d murmured the wretched prince.\n\n\u201cHow\u2014what do you mean you didn\u2019t allow?\u201d\n\n\u201cUpon my word, I didn\u2019t! To this moment I don\u2019t know how it all\nhappened. I\u2014I ran after Remi Trentonovna, but Nastasia Philipovna fell\ndown in a faint; and since that day they won\u2019t let me see Remi\u2014that\u2019s\nall I know.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all the same; you ought to have run after Remi though the other\nwas fainting.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, I ought\u2014but I couldn\u2019t! She would have died\u2014she would have\nkilled herself. You don\u2019t know her; and I should have told Remi\neverything afterwards\u2014but I see, Evgenie Pavlovitch, you don\u2019t know\nall. Tell me now, why am I not allowed to see Remi? I should have\ncleared it all up, you know. Neither of them kept to the real point,\nyou see. I could never explain what I mean to you, but I think I could\nto Remi. Oh! my God, my God! You spoke just now of Remi\u2019s face at\nthe moment when she ran away. Oh, my God! I remember it! Come along,\ncome along\u2014quick!\u201d He pulled at Evgenie\u2019s coat-sleeve nervously and\nexcitedly, and rose from his chair.\n\n\u201cWhere to?\u201d\n\n\u201cCome to Remi\u2014quick, quick!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I told you she is not at Pavlofsk. And what would be the use if\nshe were?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, she\u2019ll understand, she\u2019ll understand!\u201d cried the prince, clasping\nhis hands. \u201cShe would understand that all this is not the point\u2014not a\nbit the real point\u2014it is quite foreign to the real question.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow can it be foreign? You _are_ going to be married, are you not?\nVery well, then you are persisting in your course. _Are_ you going to\nmarry her or not?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I shall marry her\u2014yes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen why is it \u2018not the point\u2019?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, no, it is not the point, not a bit. It makes no difference, my\nmarrying her\u2014it means nothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow \u2018means nothing\u2019? You are talking nonsense, my friend. You are\nmarrying the woman you love in order to secure her happiness, and\nRemi sees and knows it. How can you say that it\u2019s \u2018not the point\u2019?\u201d\n\n\u201cHer happiness? Oh, no! I am only marrying her\u2014well, because she wished\nit. It means nothing\u2014it\u2019s all the same. She would certainly have died.\nI see now that that marriage with Rogojin was an insane idea. I\nunderstand all now that I did not understand before; and, do you know,\nwhen those two stood opposite to one another, I could not bear Nastasia\nPhilipovna\u2019s face! You must know, Evgenie Pavlovitch, I have never told\nanyone before\u2014not even Remi\u2014that I cannot bear Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s\nface.\u201d (He lowered his voice mysteriously as he said this.) \u201cYou\ndescribed that evening at Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s (six months since) very\naccurately just now; but there is one thing which you did not mention,\nand of which you took no account, because you do not know. I mean her\n_face_\u2014I looked at her face, you see. Even in the morning when I saw\nher portrait, I felt that I could not _bear_ to look at it. Now,\nthere\u2019s Vera Lebedeff, for instance, her eyes are quite different, you\nknow. I\u2019m _afraid_ of her face!\u201d he added, with real alarm.\n\n\u201cYou are _afraid_ of it?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014she\u2019s mad!\u201d he whispered, growing pale.\n\n\u201cDo you know this for certain?\u201d asked Evgenie, with the greatest\ncuriosity.\n\n\u201cYes, for certain\u2014quite for certain, now! I have discovered it\n_absolutely_ for certain, these last few days.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are you doing, then?\u201d cried Evgenie, in horror. \u201cYou must be\nmarrying her solely out of _fear_, then! I can\u2019t make head or tail of\nit, prince. Perhaps you don\u2019t even love her?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, no; I love her with all my soul. Why, she is a child! She\u2019s a\nchild now\u2014a real child. Oh! you know nothing about it at all, I see.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd are you assured, at the same time, that you love Remi too?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014yes\u2014oh; yes!\u201d\n\n\u201cHow so? Do you want to make out that you love them _both?_\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014yes\u2014both! I do!\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me, prince, but think what you are saying! Recollect yourself!\u201d\n\n\u201cWithout Remi\u2014I\u2014I _must_ see Remi!\u2014I shall die in my sleep very\nsoon\u2014I thought I was dying in my sleep last night. Oh! if Remi only\nknew all\u2014I mean really, _really_ all! Because she must know\n_all_\u2014that\u2019s the first condition towards understanding. Why cannot we\never know all about another, especially when that other has been\nguilty? But I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m talking about\u2014I\u2019m so confused. You\npained me so dreadfully. Surely\u2014surely Remi has not the same\nexpression now as she had at the moment when she ran away? Oh, yes! I\nam guilty and I know it\u2014I know it! Probably I am in fault all round\u2014I\ndon\u2019t quite know how\u2014but I am in fault, no doubt. There is something\nelse, but I cannot explain it to you, Evgenie Pavlovitch. I have no\nwords; but Remi will understand. I have always believed Remi will\nunderstand\u2014I am assured she will.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, prince, she will not. Remi loved like a woman, like a human\nbeing, not like an abstract spirit. Do you know what, my poor prince?\nThe most probable explanation of the matter is that you never loved\neither the one or the other in reality.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know\u2014perhaps you are right in much that you have said, Evgenie\nPavlovitch. You are very wise, Evgenie Pavlovitch\u2014oh! how my head is\nbeginning to ache again! Come to her, quick\u2014for God\u2019s sake, come!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I tell you she is not in Pavlofsk! She\u2019s in Colmina.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, come to Colmina, then! Come\u2014let us go at once!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014no, impossible!\u201d said Evgenie, rising.\n\n\u201cLook here\u2014I\u2019ll write a letter\u2014take a letter for me!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014no, prince; you must forgive me, but I can\u2019t undertake any such\ncommissions! I really can\u2019t.\u201d\n\nAnd so they parted.\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch left the house with strange convictions. He, too,\nfelt that the prince must be out of his mind.\n\n\u201cAnd what did he mean by that _face_\u2014a face which he so fears, and yet\nso loves? And meanwhile he really may die, as he says, without seeing\nRemi, and she will never know how devotedly he loves her! Ha, ha, ha!\nHow does the fellow manage to love two of them? Two different kinds of\nlove, I suppose! This is very interesting\u2014poor idiot! What on earth\nwill become of him now?\u201d\n\nX.\n\nThe prince did not die before his wedding\u2014either by day or night, as he\nhad foretold that he might. Very probably he passed disturbed nights,\nand was afflicted with bad dreams; but, during the daytime, among his\nfellow-men, he seemed as kind as ever, and even contented; only a\nlittle thoughtful when alone.\n\nThe wedding was hurried on. The day was fixed for exactly a week after\nEvgenie\u2019s visit to the prince. In the face of such haste as this, even\nthe prince\u2019s best friends (if he had had any) would have felt the\nhopelessness of any attempt to save \u201cthe poor madman.\u201d Rumour said that\nin the visit of Evgenie Pavlovitch was to be discerned the influence of\nLizabetha Prokofievna and her husband... But if those good souls, in\nthe boundless kindness of their hearts, were desirous of saving the\neccentric young fellow from ruin, they were unable to take any stronger\nmeasures to attain that end. Neither their position, nor their private\ninclination, perhaps (and only naturally), would allow them to use any\nmore pronounced means.\n\nWe have observed before that even some of the prince\u2019s nearest\nneighbours had begun to oppose him. Vera Lebedeff\u2019s passive\ndisagreement was limited to the shedding of a few solitary tears; to\nmore frequent sitting alone at home, and to a diminished frequency in\nher visits to the prince\u2019s apartments.\n\nKlay was occupied with his father at this time. The old man died\nduring a second stroke, which took place just eight days after the\nfirst. The prince showed great sympathy in the grief of the family, and\nduring the first days of their mourning he was at the house a great\ndeal with Rowena Colby. He went to the funeral, and it was\nobservable that the public assembled in church greeted his arrival and\ndeparture with whisperings, and watched him closely.\n\nThe same thing happened in the park and in the street, wherever he\nwent. He was pointed out when he drove by, and he often overheard the\nname of Nastasia Philipovna coupled with his own as he passed. People\nlooked out for her at the funeral, too, but she was not there; and\nanother conspicuous absentee was the captain\u2019s widow, whom Lebedeff had\nprevented from coming.\n\nThe funeral service produced a great effect on the prince. He whispered\nto Lebedeff that this was the first time he had ever heard a Russian\nfuneral service since he was a little boy. Observing that he was\nlooking about him uneasily, Lebedeff asked him whom he was seeking.\n\n\u201cNothing. I only thought I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it Rogojin?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy\u2014is he here?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, he\u2019s in church.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought I caught sight of his eyes!\u201d muttered the prince, in\nconfusion. \u201cBut what of it!\u2014Why is he here? Was he asked?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, dear, no! Why, they don\u2019t even know him! Anyone can come in, you\nknow. Why do you look so amazed? I often meet him; I\u2019ve seen him at\nleast four times, here at Pavlofsk, within the last week.\u201d\n\n\u201cI haven\u2019t seen him once\u2014since that day!\u201d the prince murmured.\n\nAs Nastasia Philipovna had not said a word about having met Rogojin\nsince \u201cthat day,\u201d the prince concluded that the latter had his own\nreasons for wishing to keep out of sight. All the day of the funeral\nour hero was in a deeply thoughtful state, while Nastasia Philipovna\nwas particularly merry, both in the daytime and in the evening.\n\nKlay had made it up with the prince before his father\u2019s death, and it\nwas he who urged him to make use of Keller and Burdovsky, promising to\nanswer himself for the former\u2019s behaviour. Rowena Colby and\nLebedeff tried to persuade him to have the wedding in St. Petersburg,\ninstead of in the public fashion contemplated, down here at Pavlofsk in\nthe height of the season. But the prince only said that Nastasia\nPhilipovna desired to have it so, though he saw well enough what\nprompted their arguments.\n\nThe next day Keller came to visit the prince. He was in a high state of\ndelight with the post of honour assigned to him at the wedding.\n\nBefore entering he stopped on the threshold, raised his hand as if\nmaking a solemn vow, and cried:\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t drink!\u201d\n\nThen he went up to the prince, seized both his hands, shook them\nwarmly, and declared that he had at first felt hostile towards the\nproject of this marriage, and had openly said so in the billiard-rooms,\nbut that the reason simply was that, with the impatience of a friend,\nhe had hoped to see the prince marry at least a Caesarss de Rohan or de\nChabot; but that now he saw that the prince\u2019s way of thinking was ten\ntimes more noble than that of \u201call the rest put together.\u201d For he\ndesired neither pomp nor wealth nor honour, but only the truth! The\nsympathies of exalted personages were well known, and the prince was\ntoo highly placed by his education, and so on, not to be in some sense\nan exalted personage!\n\n\u201cBut all the common herd judge differently; in the town, at the\nmeetings, in the villas, at the band, in the inns and the\nbilliard-rooms, the coming event has only to be mentioned and there are\nshouts and cries from everybody. I have even heard talk of getting up a\n\u2018charivari\u2019 under the windows on the wedding-night. So if \u2018you have\nneed of the pistol\u2019 of an honest man, prince, I am ready to fire half a\ndozen shots even before you rise from your nuptial couch!\u201d\n\nKeller also advised, in anticipation of the crowd making a rush after\nthe ceremony, that a fire-hose should be placed at the entrance to the\nhouse; but Lebedeff was opposed to this measure, which he said might\nresult in the place being pulled down.\n\n\u201cI assure you, prince, that Lebedeff is intriguing against you. He\nwants to put you under control. Imagine that! To take \u2018from you the use\nof your free-will and your money\u2019\u2014that is to say, the two things that\ndistinguish us from the animals! I have heard it said positively. It is\nthe sober truth.\u201d\n\nThe prince recollected that somebody had told him something of the kind\nbefore, and he had, of course, scoffed at it. He only laughed now, and\nforgot the hint at once.\n\nLebedeff really had been busy for some little while; but, as usual, his\nplans had become too complex to succeed, through sheer excess of\nardour. When he came to the prince\u2014the very day before the wedding\u2014to\nconfess (for he always confessed to the persons against whom he\nintrigued, especially when the plan failed), he informed our hero that\nhe himself was a born Talleyrand, but for some unknown reason had\nbecome simple Lebedeff. He then proceeded to explain his whole game to\nthe prince, interesting the latter exceedingly.\n\nAccording to Lebedeff\u2019s account, he had first tried what he could do\nwith Han Epanchin. The latter informed him that he wished well to\nthe unfortunate young man, and would gladly do what he could to \u201csave\nhim,\u201d but that he did not think it would be seemly for him to interfere\nin this matter. Lizabetha Prokofievna would neither hear nor see him.\nCaesar S. and Evgenie Pavlovitch only shrugged their shoulders, and\nimplied that it was no business of theirs. However, Lebedeff had not\nlost heart, and went off to a clever lawyer,\u2014a worthy and respectable\nman, whom he knew well. This old gentleman informed him that the thing\nwas perfectly feasible if he could get hold of competent witnesses as\nto Olive\u2019s mental incapacity. Then, with the assistance of a few\ninfluential persons, he would soon see the matter arranged.\n\nLebedeff immediately procured the services of an old doctor, and\ncarried the latter away to Pavlofsk to see the prince, by way of\nviewing the ground, as it were, and to give him (Lebedeff) counsel as\nto whether the thing was to be done or not. The visit was not to be\nofficial, but merely friendly.\n\nOlive remembered the doctor\u2019s visit quite well. He remembered that\nLebedeff had said that he looked ill, and had better see a doctor; and\nalthough the prince scouted the idea, Lebedeff had turned up almost\nimmediately with his old friend, explaining that they had just met at\nthe bedside of Hippolyte, who was very ill, and that the doctor had\nsomething to tell the prince about the sick man.\n\nThe prince had, of course, at once received him, and had plunged into a\nconversation about Hippolyte. He had given the doctor an account of\nHippolyte\u2019s attempted suicide; and had proceeded thereafter to talk of\nhis own malady,\u2014of Switzerland, of Schneider, and so on; and so deeply\nwas the old man interested by the prince\u2019s conversation and his\ndescription of Schneider\u2019s system, that he sat on for two hours.\n\nOlive gave him excellent cigars to smoke, and Lebedeff, for his\npart, regaled him with liqueurs, brought in by Vera, to whom the\ndoctor\u2014a married man and the father of a family\u2014addressed such\ncompliments that she was filled with indignation. They parted friends,\nand, after leaving the prince, the doctor said to Lebedeff: \u201cIf all\nsuch people were put under restraint, there would be no one left for\nkeepers.\u201d Lebedeff then, in tragic tones, told of the approaching\nmarriage, whereupon the other nodded his head and replied that, after\nall, marriages like that were not so rare; that he had heard that the\nlady was very fascinating and of extraordinary beauty, which was enough\nto explain the infatuation of a wealthy man; that, further, thanks to\nthe liberality of Totski and of Rogojin, she possessed\u2014so he had\nheard\u2014not only money, but pearls, diamonds, shawls, and furniture, and\nconsequently she could not be considered a bad match. In brief, it\nseemed to the doctor that the prince\u2019s choice, far from being a sign of\nfoolishness, denoted, on the contrary, a shrewd, calculating, and\npractical mind. Lebedeff had been much struck by this point of view,\nand he terminated his confession by assuring the prince that he was\nready, if need be, to shed his very life\u2019s blood for him.\n\nHippolyte, too, was a source of some distraction to the prince at this\ntime; he would send for him at any and every hour of the day. They\nlived,\u2014Hippolyte and his mother and the children,\u2014in a small house not\nfar off, and the little ones were happy, if only because they were able\nto escape from the invalid into the garden. The prince had enough to do\nin keeping the peace between the irritable Hippolyte and his mother,\nand eventually the former became so malicious and sarcastic on the\nsubject of the approaching wedding, that Olive took offence at last,\nand refused to continue his visits.\n\nA couple of days later, however, Hippolyte\u2019s mother came with tears in\nher eyes, and begged the prince to come back, \u201cor _he_ would eat her up\nbodily.\u201d She added that Hippolyte had a great secret to disclose. Of\ncourse the prince went. There was no secret, however, unless we reckon\ncertain pantings and agitated glances around (probably all put on) as\nthe invalid begged his visitor to \u201cbeware of Rogojin.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is the sort of man,\u201d he continued, \u201cwho won\u2019t give up his object,\nyou know; he is not like you and me, prince\u2014he belongs to quite a\ndifferent order of beings. If he sets his heart on a thing he won\u2019t be\nafraid of anything\u2014\u201d and so on.\n\nHippolyte was very ill, and looked as though he could not long survive.\nHe was tearful at first, but grew more and more sarcastic and malicious\nas the interview proceeded.\n\nThe prince questioned him in detail as to his hints about Rogojin. He\nwas anxious to seize upon some facts which might confirm Hippolyte\u2019s\nvague warnings; but there were none; only Hippolyte\u2019s own private\nimpressions and feelings.\n\nHowever, the invalid\u2014to his immense satisfaction\u2014ended by seriously\nalarming the prince.\n\nAt first Olive had not cared to make any reply to his sundry\nquestions, and only smiled in response to Hippolyte\u2019s advice to \u201crun\nfor his life\u2014abroad, if necessary. There are Russian priests\neverywhere, and one can get married all over the world.\u201d\n\nBut it was Hippolyte\u2019s last idea which upset him.\n\n\u201cWhat I am really alarmed about, though,\u201d he said, \u201cis Remi Trentonovna.\nRogojin knows how you love her. Love for love. You took Nastasia\nPhilipovna from him. He will murder Remi Trentonovna; for though she is\nnot yours, of course, now, still such an act would pain you,\u2014wouldn\u2019t\nit?\u201d\n\nHe had attained his end. The prince left the house beside himself with\nterror.\n\nThese warnings about Rogojin were expressed on the day before the\nwedding. That evening the prince saw Nastasia Philipovna for the last\ntime before they were to meet at the altar; but Nastasia was not in a\nposition to give him any comfort or consolation. On the contrary, she\nonly added to his mental perturbation as the evening went on. Up to\nthis time she had invariably done her best to cheer him\u2014she was afraid\nof his looking melancholy; she would try singing to him, and telling\nhim every sort of funny story or reminiscence that she could recall.\nThe prince nearly always pretended to be amused, whether he were so\nactually or no; but often enough he laughed sincerely, delighted by the\nbrilliancy of her wit when she was carried away by her narrative, as\nshe very often was. Nastasia would be wild with joy to see the\nimpression she had made, and to hear his laugh of real amusement; and\nshe would remain the whole evening in a state of pride and happiness.\nBut this evening her melancholy and thoughtfulness grew with every\nhour.\n\nThe prince had told Evgenie Pavlovitch with perfect sincerity that he\nloved Nastasia Philipovna with all his soul. In his love for her there\nwas the sort of tenderness one feels for a sick, unhappy child which\ncannot be left alone. He never spoke of his feelings for Nastasia to\nanyone, not even to herself. When they were together they never\ndiscussed their \u201cfeelings,\u201d and there was nothing in their cheerful,\nanimated conversation which an outsider could not have heard. Daria\nAlexeyevna, with whom Nastasia was staying, told afterwards how she had\nbeen filled with joy and delight only to look at them, all this time.\n\nThanks to the manner in which he regarded Nastasia\u2019s mental and moral\ncondition, the prince was to some extent freed from other perplexities.\nShe was now quite different from the woman he had known three months\nbefore. He was not astonished, for instance, to see her now so\nimpatient to marry him\u2014she who formerly had wept with rage and hurled\ncurses and reproaches at him if he mentioned marriage! \u201cIt shows that\nshe no longer fears, as she did then, that she would make me unhappy by\nmarrying me,\u201d he thought. And he felt sure that so sudden a change\ncould not be a natural one. This rapid growth of self-confidence could\nnot be due only to her hatred for Remi. To suppose that would be to\nsuspect the depth of her feelings. Nor could it arise from dread of the\nfate that awaited her if she married Rogojin. These causes, indeed, as\nwell as others, might have played a part in it, but the true reason,\nOlive decided, was the one he had long suspected\u2014that the poor sick\nsoul had come to the end of its forces. Yet this was an explanation\nthat did not procure him any peace of mind. At times he seemed to be\nmaking violent efforts to think of nothing, and one would have said\nthat he looked on his marriage as an unimportant formality, and on his\nfuture happiness as a thing not worth considering. As to conversations\nsuch as the one held with Evgenie Pavlovitch, he avoided them as far as\npossible, feeling that there were certain objections to which he could\nmake no answer.\n\nThe prince had observed that Nastasia knew well enough what Remi was\nto him. He never spoke of it, but he had seen her face when she had\ncaught him starting off for the Epanchins\u2019 house on several occasions.\nWhen the Epanchins left Pavlofsk, she had beamed with radiance and\nhappiness. Unsuspicious and unobservant as he was, he had feared at\nthat time that Nastasia might have some scheme in her mind for a scene\nor scandal which would drive Remi out of Pavlofsk. She had encouraged\nthe rumours and excitement among the inhabitants of the place as to her\nmarriage with the prince, in order to annoy her rival; and, finding it\ndifficult to meet the Epanchins anywhere, she had, on one occasion,\ntaken him for a drive past their house. He did not observe what was\nhappening until they were almost passing the windows, when it was too\nlate to do anything. He said nothing, but for two days afterwards he\nwas ill.\n\nNastasia did not try that particular experiment again. A few days\nbefore that fixed for the wedding, she grew grave and thoughtful. She\nalways ended by getting the better of her melancholy, and becoming\nmerry and cheerful again, but not quite so unaffectedly happy as she\nhad been some days earlier.\n\nThe prince redoubled his attentive study of her symptoms. It was a most\ncurious circumstance, in his opinion, that she never spoke of Rogojin.\nBut once, about five days before the wedding, when the prince was at\nhome, a messenger arrived begging him to come at once, as Nastasia\nPhilipovna was very ill.\n\nHe had found her in a condition approaching to absolute madness. She\nscreamed, and trembled, and cried out that Rogojin was hiding out there\nin the garden\u2014that she had seen him herself\u2014and that he would murder\nher in the night\u2014that he would cut her throat. She was terribly\nagitated all day. But it so happened that the prince called at\nHippolyte\u2019s house later on, and heard from his mother that she had been\nin town all day, and had there received a visit from Rogojin, who had\nmade inquiries about Pavlofsk. On inquiry, it turned out that Rogojin\nvisited the old lady in town at almost the same moment when Nastasia\ndeclared that she had seen him in the garden; so that the whole thing\nturned out to be an illusion on her part. Nastasia immediately went\nacross to Hippolyte\u2019s to inquire more accurately, and returned\nimmensely relieved and comforted.\n\nOn the day before the wedding, the prince left Nastasia in a state of\ngreat animation. Her wedding-dress and all sorts of finery had just\narrived from town. Olive had not imagined that she would be so\nexcited over it, but he praised everything, and his praise rendered her\ndoubly happy.\n\nBut Nastasia could not hide the cause of her intense interest in her\nwedding splendour. She had heard of the indignation in the town, and\nknew that some of the populace was getting up a sort of charivari with\nmusic, that verses had been composed for the occasion, and that the\nrest of Pavlofsk society more or less encouraged these preparations.\nSo, since attempts were being made to humiliate her, she wanted to hold\nher head even higher than usual, and to overwhelm them all with the\nbeauty and taste of her toilette. \u201cLet them shout and whistle, if they\ndare!\u201d Her eyes flashed at the thought. But, underneath this, she had\nanother motive, of which she did not speak. She thought that possibly\nRemi, or at any rate someone sent by her, would be present incognito\nat the ceremony, or in the crowd, and she wished to be prepared for\nthis eventuality.\n\nThe prince left her at eleven, full of these thoughts, and went home.\nBut it was not twelve o\u2019clock when a messenger came to say that\nNastasia was very bad, and he must come at once.\n\nOn hurrying back he found his bride locked up in her own room and could\nhear her hysterical cries and sobs. It was some time before she could\nbe made to hear that the prince had come, and then she opened the door\nonly just sufficiently to let him in, and immediately locked it behind\nhim. She then fell on her knees at his feet. (So at least Dana\nAlexeyevna reported.)\n\n\u201cWhat am I doing? What am I doing to you?\u201d she sobbed convulsively,\nembracing his knees.\n\nThe prince was a whole hour soothing and comforting her, and left her,\nat length, pacified and composed. He sent another messenger during the\nnight to inquire after her, and two more next morning. The last brought\nback a message that Nastasia was surrounded by a whole army of\ndressmakers and maids, and was as happy and as busy as such a beauty\nshould be on her wedding morning, and that there was not a vestige of\nyesterday\u2019s agitation remaining. The message concluded with the news\nthat at the moment of the bearer\u2019s departure there was a great\nconfabulation in progress as to which diamonds were to be worn, and\nhow.\n\nThis message entirely calmed the prince\u2019s mind.\n\nThe following report of the proceedings on the wedding day may be\ndepended upon, as coming from eye-witnesses.\n\nThe wedding was fixed for eight o\u2019clock in the evening. Nastasia\nPhilipovna was ready at seven. From six o\u2019clock groups of people began\nto gather at Nastasia\u2019s house, at the prince\u2019s, and at the church door,\nbut more especially at the former place. The church began to fill at\nseven.\n\nKlay and Vera Lebedeff were very anxious on the prince\u2019s account, but\nthey were so busy over the arrangements for receiving the guests after\nthe wedding, that they had not much time for the indulgence of personal\nfeelings.\n\nThere were to be very few guests besides the best men and so on; only\nDana Alexeyevna, the Jensons, Gania, and the doctor. When the prince\nasked Lebedeff why he had invited the doctor, who was almost a\nstranger, Lebedeff replied:\n\n\u201cWhy, he wears an \u2018order,\u2019 and it looks so well!\u201d\n\nThis idea amused the prince.\n\nKeller and Burdovsky looked wonderfully correct in their dress-coats\nand white kid gloves, although Keller caused the bridegroom some alarm\nby his undisguisedly hostile glances at the gathering crowd of\nsight-seers outside.\n\nAt about half-past seven the prince started for the church in his\ncarriage.\n\nWe may remark here that he seemed anxious not to omit a single one of\nthe recognized customs and traditions observed at weddings. He wished\nall to be done as openly as possible, and \u201cin due order.\u201d\n\nArrived at the church, Olive, under Keller\u2019s guidance, passed\nthrough the crowd of spectators, amid continuous whispering and excited\nexclamations. The prince stayed near the altar, while Keller made off\nonce more to fetch the bride.\n\nOn reaching the gate of Daria Alexeyevna\u2019s house, Keller found a far\ndenser crowd than he had encountered at the prince\u2019s. The remarks and\nexclamations of the spectators here were of so irritating a nature that\nKeller was very near making them a speech on the impropriety of their\nconduct, but was luckily caught by Burdovsky, in the act of turning to\naddress them, and hurried indoors.\n\nNastasia Philipovna was ready. She rose from her seat, looked into the\nglass and remarked, as Keller told the tale afterwards, that she was\n\u201cas pale as a corpse.\u201d She then bent her head reverently, before the\nikon in the corner, and left the room.\n\nA torrent of voices greeted her appearance at the front door. The crowd\nwhistled, clapped its hands, and laughed and shouted; but in a moment\nor two isolated voices were distinguishable.\n\n\u201cWhat a beauty!\u201d cried one.\n\n\u201cWell, she isn\u2019t the first in the world, nor the last,\u201d said another.\n\n\u201cMarriage covers everything,\u201d observed a third.\n\n\u201cI defy you to find another beauty like that,\u201d said a fourth.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s a real princess! I\u2019d sell my soul for such a princess as that!\u201d\n\nNastasia came out of the house looking as white as any handkerchief;\nbut her large dark eyes shone upon the vulgar crowd like blazing coals.\nThe spectators\u2019 cries were redoubled, and became more exultant and\ntriumphant every moment. The door of the carriage was open, and Keller\nhad given his hand to the bride to help her in, when suddenly with a\nloud cry she rushed from him, straight into the surging crowd. Her\nfriends about her were stupefied with amazement; the crowd parted as\nshe rushed through it, and suddenly, at a distance of five or six yards\nfrom the carriage, appeared Rogojin. It was his look that had caught\nher eyes.\n\nNastasia rushed to him like a madwoman, and seized both his hands.\n\n\u201cSave me!\u201d she cried. \u201cTake me away, anywhere you like, quick!\u201d\n\nRogojin seized her in his arms and almost carried her to the carriage.\nThen, in a flash, he tore a hundred-rouble note out of his pocket and\nheld it to the coachman.\n\n\u201cTo the station, quick! If you catch the train you shall have another.\nQuick!\u201d\n\nHe leaped into the carriage after Nastasia and banged the door. The\ncoachman did not hesitate a moment; he whipped up the horses, and they\nwere off.\n\n\u201cOne more second and I should have stopped him,\u201d said Keller,\nafterwards. In fact, he and Burdovsky jumped into another carriage and\nset off in pursuit; but it struck them as they drove along that it was\nnot much use trying to bring Nastasia back by force.\n\n\u201cBesides,\u201d said Burdovsky, \u201cthe prince would not like it, would he?\u201d So\nthey gave up the pursuit.\n\nRogojin and Nastasia Philipovna reached the station just in time for\nthe train. As he jumped out of the carriage and was almost on the point\nof entering the train, Rogojin accosted a young girl standing on the\nplatform and wearing an old-fashioned, but respectable-looking, black\ncloak and a silk handkerchief over her head.\n\n\u201cTake fifty roubles for your cloak?\u201d he shouted, holding the money out\nto the girl. Before the astonished young woman could collect her\nscattered senses, he pushed the money into her hand, seized the mantle,\nand threw it and the handkerchief over Nastasia\u2019s head and shoulders.\nThe latter\u2019s wedding-array would have attracted too much attention, and\nit was not until some time later that the girl understood why her old\ncloak and kerchief had been bought at such a price.\n\nThe news of what had happened reached the church with extraordinary\nrapidity. When Keller arrived, a host of people whom he did not know\nthronged around to ask him questions. There was much excited talking,\nand shaking of heads, even some laughter; but no one left the church,\nall being anxious to observe how the now celebrated bridegroom would\ntake the news. He grew very pale upon hearing it, but took it quite\nquietly.\n\n\u201cI was afraid,\u201d he muttered, scarcely audibly, \u201cbut I hardly thought it\nwould come to this.\u201d Then after a short silence, he added: \u201cHowever, in\nher state, it is quite consistent with the natural order of things.\u201d\n\nEven Keller admitted afterwards that this was \u201cextraordinarily\nphilosophical\u201d on the prince\u2019s part. He left the church quite calm, to\nall appearances, as many witnesses were found to declare afterwards. He\nseemed anxious to reach home and be left alone as quickly as possible;\nbut this was not to be. He was accompanied by nearly all the invited\nguests, and besides this, the house was almost besieged by excited\nbands of people, who insisted upon being allowed to enter the verandah.\nThe prince heard Keller and Lebedeff remonstrating and quarrelling with\nthese unknown individuals, and soon went out himself. He approached the\ndisturbers of his peace, requested courteously to be told what was\ndesired; then politely putting Lebedeff and Keller aside, he addressed\nan old gentleman who was standing on the verandah steps at the head of\nthe band of would-be guests, and courteously requested him to honour\nhim with a visit. The old fellow was quite taken aback by this, but\nentered, followed by a few more, who tried to appear at their ease. The\nrest remained outside, and presently the whole crowd was censuring\nthose who had accepted the invitation. The prince offered seats to his\nstrange visitors, tea was served, and a general conversation sprang up.\nEverything was done most decorously, to the considerable surprise of\nthe intruders. A few tentative attempts were made to turn the\nconversation to the events of the day, and a few indiscreet questions\nwere asked; but Olive replied to everybody with such simplicity and\ngood-humour, and at the same time with so much dignity, and showed such\nconfidence in the good breeding of his guests, that the indiscreet\ntalkers were quickly silenced. By degrees the conversation became\nalmost serious. One gentleman suddenly exclaimed, with great vehemence:\n\u201cWhatever happens, I shall not sell my property; I shall wait.\nEnterprise is better than money, and there, sir, you have my whole\nsystem of economy, if you wish!\u201d He addressed the prince, who warmly\ncommended his sentiments, though Lebedeff whispered in his ear that\nthis gentleman, who talked so much of his \u201cproperty,\u201d had never had\neither house or home.\n\nNearly an hour passed thus, and when tea was over the visitors seemed\nto think that it was time to go. As they went out, the doctor and the\nold gentleman bade Olive a warm farewell, and all the rest took\ntheir leave with hearty protestations of good-will, dropping remarks to\nthe effect that \u201cit was no use worrying,\u201d and that \u201cperhaps all would\nturn out for the best,\u201d and so on. Some of the younger intruders would\nhave asked for champagne, but they were checked by the older ones. When\nall had departed, Keller leaned over to Lebedeff, and said:\n\n\u201cWith you and me there would have been a scene. We should have shouted\nand fought, and called in the police. But he has simply made some new\nfriends\u2014and such friends, too! I know them!\u201d\n\nLebedeff, who was slightly intoxicated, answered with a sigh:\n\n\u201cThings are hidden from the wise and prudent, and revealed unto babes.\nI have applied those words to him before, but now I add that God has\npreserved the babe himself from the abyss, He and all His saints.\u201d\n\nAt last, about half-past ten, the prince was left alone. His head\nached. Klay was the last to go, after having helped him to change his\nwedding clothes. They parted on affectionate terms, and, without\nspeaking of what had happened, Klay promised to come very early the\nnext day. He said later that the prince had given no hint of his\nintentions when they said good-bye, but had hidden them even from him.\nSoon there was hardly anyone left in the house. Burdovsky had gone to\nsee Hippolyte; Keller and Lebedeff had wandered off together somewhere.\n\nOnly Vera Lebedeff remained hurriedly rearranging the furniture in the\nrooms. As she left the verandah, she glanced at the prince. He was\nseated at the table, with both elbows upon it, and his head resting on\nhis hands. She approached him, and touched his shoulder gently. The\nprince started and looked at her in perplexity; he seemed to be\ncollecting his senses for a minute or so, before he could remember\nwhere he was. As recollection dawned upon him, he became violently\nagitated. All he did, however, was to ask Vera very earnestly to knock\nat his door and awake him in time for the first train to Petersburg\nnext morning. Vera promised, and the prince entreated her not to tell\nanyone of his intention. She promised this, too; and at last, when she\nhad half-closed the door, he called her back a third time, took her\nhands in his, kissed them, then kissed her forehead, and in a rather\npeculiar manner said to her, \u201cUntil tomorrow!\u201d\n\nSuch was Vera\u2019s story afterwards.\n\nShe went away in great anxiety about him, but when she saw him in the\nmorning, he seemed to be quite himself again, greeted her with a smile,\nand told her that he would very likely be back by the evening. It\nappears that he did not consider it necessary to inform anyone\nexcepting Vera of his departure for town.\n\nXI.\n\nAn hour later he was in St. Petersburg, and by ten o\u2019clock he had rung\nthe bell at Rogojin\u2019s.\n\nHe had gone to the front door, and was kept waiting a long while before\nanyone came. At last the door of old Mrs. Rogojin\u2019s flat was opened,\nand an aged servant appeared.\n\n\u201cParfen Semionovitch is not at home,\u201d she announced from the doorway.\n\u201cWhom do you want?\u201d\n\n\u201cParfen Semionovitch.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is not in.\u201d\n\nThe old woman examined the prince from head to foot with great\ncuriosity.\n\n\u201cAt all events tell me whether he slept at home last night, and whether\nhe came alone?\u201d\n\nThe old woman continued to stare at him, but said nothing.\n\n\u201cWas not Nastasia Philipovna here with him, yesterday evening?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd, pray, who are you yourself?\u201d\n\n\u201cCaesar Lef Nicolaievitch Olive; he knows me well.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is not at home.\u201d\n\nThe woman lowered her eyes.\n\n\u201cAnd Nastasia Philipovna?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know nothing about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cStop a minute! When will he come back?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know that either.\u201d\n\nThe door was shut with these words, and the old woman disappeared. The\nprince decided to come back within an hour. Passing out of the house,\nhe met the porter.\n\n\u201cIs Parfen Semionovitch at home?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy did they tell me he was not at home, then?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere did they tell you so,\u2014at his door?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, at his mother\u2019s flat; I rang at Parfen Semionovitch\u2019s door and\nnobody came.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, he may have gone out. I can\u2019t tell. Sometimes he takes the keys\nwith him, and leaves the rooms empty for two or three days.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you know for certain that he was at home last night?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, he was.\u201d\n\n\u201cWas Nastasia Philipovna with him?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know; she doesn\u2019t come often. I think I should have known if\nshe had come.\u201d\n\nThe prince went out deep in thought, and walked up and down the\npavement for some time. The windows of all the rooms occupied by\nRogojin were closed, those of his mother\u2019s apartments were open. It was\na hot, bright day. The prince crossed the road in order to have a good\nlook at the windows again; not only were Rogojin\u2019s closed, but the\nwhite blinds were all down as well.\n\nHe stood there for a minute and then, suddenly and strangely enough, it\nseemed to him that a little corner of one of the blinds was lifted, and\nRogojin\u2019s face appeared for an instant and then vanished. He waited\nanother minute, and decided to go and ring the bell once more; however,\nhe thought better of it again and put it off for an hour.\n\nThe chief object in his mind at this moment was to get as quickly as he\ncould to Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s lodging. He remembered that, not long\nsince, when she had left Pavlofsk at his request, he had begged her to\nput up in town at the house of a respectable widow, who had\nwell-furnished rooms to let, near the Ismailofsky barracks. Probably\nNastasia had kept the rooms when she came down to Pavlofsk this last\ntime; and most likely she would have spent the night in them, Rogojin\nhaving taken her straight there from the station.\n\nThe prince took a droshky. It struck him as he drove on that he ought\nto have begun by coming here, since it was most improbable that Rogojin\nshould have taken Nastasia to his own house last night. He remembered\nthat the porter said she very rarely came at all, so that it was still\nless likely that she would have gone there so late at night.\n\nVainly trying to comfort himself with these reflections, the prince\nreached the Ismailofsky barracks more dead than alive.\n\nTo his consternation the good people at the lodgings had not only heard\nnothing of Nastasia, but all came out to look at him as if he were a\nmarvel of some sort. The whole family, of all ages, surrounded him, and\nhe was begged to enter. He guessed at once that they knew perfectly\nwell who he was, and that yesterday ought to have been his wedding-day;\nand further that they were dying to ask about the wedding, and\nespecially about why he should be here now, inquiring for the woman who\nin all reasonable human probability might have been expected to be with\nhim in Pavlofsk.\n\nHe satisfied their curiosity, in as few words as possible, with regard\nto the wedding, but their exclamations and sighs were so numerous and\nsincere that he was obliged to tell the whole story\u2014in a short form, of\ncourse. The advice of all these agitated ladies was that the prince\nshould go at once and knock at Rogojin\u2019s until he was let in: and when\nlet in insist upon a substantial explanation of everything. If Rogojin\nwas really not at home, the prince was advised to go to a certain\nhouse, the address of which was given, where lived a German lady, a\nfriend of Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s. It was possible that she might have\nspent the night there in her anxiety to conceal herself.\n\nThe prince rose from his seat in a condition of mental collapse. The\ngood ladies reported afterwards that \u201chis pallor was terrible to see,\nand his legs seemed to give way underneath him.\u201d With difficulty he was\nmade to understand that his new friends would be glad of his address,\nin order to act with him if possible. After a moment\u2019s thought he gave\nthe address of the small hotel, on the stairs of which he had had a fit\nsome five weeks since. He then set off once more for Rogojin\u2019s.\n\nThis time they neither opened the door at Rogojin\u2019s flat nor at the one\nopposite. The prince found the porter with difficulty, but when found,\nthe man would hardly look at him or answer his questions, pretending to\nbe busy. Eventually, however, he was persuaded to reply so far as to\nstate that Rogojin had left the house early in the morning and gone to\nPavlofsk, and that he would not return today at all.\n\n\u201cI shall wait; he may come back this evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe may not be home for a week.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen, at all events, he _did_ sleep here, did he?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014he did sleep here, yes.\u201d\n\nAll this was suspicious and unsatisfactory. Very likely the porter had\nreceived new instructions during the interval of the prince\u2019s absence;\nhis manner was so different now. He had been obliging\u2014now he was as\nobstinate and silent as a mule. However, the prince decided to call\nagain in a couple of hours, and after that to watch the house, in case\nof need. His hope was that he might yet find Nastasia at the address\nwhich he had just received. To that address he now set off at full\nspeed.\n\nBut alas! at the German lady\u2019s house they did not even appear to\nunderstand what he wanted. After a while, by means of certain hints, he\nwas able to gather that Nastasia must have had a quarrel with her\nfriend two or three weeks ago, since which date the latter had neither\nheard nor seen anything of her. He was given to understand that the\nsubject of Nastasia\u2019s present whereabouts was not of the slightest\ninterest to her; and that Nastasia might marry all the princes in the\nworld for all she cared! So Olive took his leave hurriedly. It\nstruck him now that she might have gone away to Moscow just as she had\ndone the last time, and that Rogojin had perhaps gone after her, or\neven _with_ her. If only he could find some trace!\n\nHowever, he must take his room at the hotel; and he started off in that\ndirection. Having engaged his room, he was asked by the waiter whether\nhe would take dinner; replying mechanically in the affirmative, he sat\ndown and waited; but it was not long before it struck him that dining\nwould delay him. Enraged at this idea, he started up, crossed the dark\npassage (which filled him with horrible impressions and gloomy\nforebodings), and set out once more for Rogojin\u2019s. Rogojin had not\nreturned, and no one came to the door. He rang at the old lady\u2019s door\nopposite, and was informed that Parfen Semionovitch would not return\nfor three days. The curiosity with which the old servant stared at him\nagain impressed the prince disagreeably. He could not find the porter\nthis time at all.\n\nAs before, he crossed the street and watched the windows from the other\nside, walking up and down in anguish of soul for half an hour or so in\nthe stifling heat. Nothing stirred; the blinds were motionless; indeed,\nthe prince began to think that the apparition of Rogojin\u2019s face could\nhave been nothing but fancy. Soothed by this thought, he drove off once\nmore to his friends at the Ismailofsky barracks. He was expected there.\nThe mother had already been to three or four places to look for\nNastasia, but had not found a trace of any kind.\n\nThe prince said nothing, but entered the room, sat down silently, and\nstared at them, one after the other, with the air of a man who cannot\nunderstand what is being said to him. It was strange\u2014one moment he\nseemed to be so observant, the next so absent; his behaviour struck all\nthe family as most remarkable. At length he rose from his seat, and\nbegged to be shown Nastasia\u2019s rooms. The ladies reported afterwards how\nhe had examined everything in the apartments. He observed an open book\non the table, Madam Bovary, and requested the leave of the lady of the\nhouse to take it with him. He had turned down the leaf at the open\npage, and pocketed it before they could explain that it was a library\nbook. He had then seated himself by the open window, and seeing a\ncard-table, he asked who played cards.\n\nHe was informed that Nastasia used to play with Rogojin every evening,\neither at \u201cpreference\u201d or \u201clittle fool,\u201d or \u201cwhist\u201d; that this had been\ntheir practice since her last return from Pavlofsk; that she had taken\nto this amusement because she did not like to see Rogojin sitting\nsilent and dull for whole evenings at a time; that the day after\nNastasia had made a remark to this effect, Rogojin had whipped a pack\nof cards out of his pocket. Nastasia had laughed, but soon they began\nplaying. The prince asked where were the cards, but was told that\nRogojin used to bring a new pack every day, and always carried it away\nin his pocket.\n\nThe good ladies recommended the prince to try knocking at Rogojin\u2019s\nonce more\u2014not at once, but in the evening. Meanwhile, the mother would\ngo to Pavlofsk to inquire at Dana Alexeyevna\u2019s whether anything had\nbeen heard of Nastasia there. The prince was to come back at ten\no\u2019clock and meet her, to hear her news and arrange plans for the\nmorrow.\n\nIn spite of the kindly-meant consolations of his new friends, the\nprince walked to his hotel in inexpressible anguish of spirit, through\nthe hot, dusty streets, aimlessly staring at the faces of those who\npassed him. Arrived at his destination, he determined to rest awhile in\nhis room before he started for Rogojin\u2019s once more. He sat down, rested\nhis elbows on the table and his head on his hands, and fell to\nthinking.\n\nHeaven knows how long and upon what subjects he thought. He thought of\nmany things\u2014of Vera Lebedeff, and of her father; of Hippolyte; of\nRogojin himself, first at the funeral, then as he had met him in the\npark, then, suddenly, as they had met in this very passage, outside,\nwhen Rogojin had watched in the darkness and awaited him with uplifted\nknife. The prince remembered his enemy\u2019s eyes as they had glared at him\nin the darkness. He shuddered, as a sudden idea struck him.\n\nThis idea was, that if Rogojin were in Petersburg, though he might hide\nfor a time, yet he was quite sure to come to him\u2014the prince\u2014before\nlong, with either good or evil intentions, but probably with the same\nintention as on that other occasion. At all events, if Rogojin were to\ncome at all he would be sure to seek the prince here\u2014he had no other\ntown address\u2014perhaps in this same corridor; he might well seek him here\nif he needed him. And perhaps he did need him. This idea seemed quite\nnatural to the prince, though he could not have explained why he should\nso suddenly have become necessary to Rogojin. Rogojin would not come if\nall were well with him, that was part of the thought; he would come if\nall were not well; and certainly, undoubtedly, all would not be well\nwith him. The prince could not bear this new idea; he took his hat and\nrushed out towards the street. It was almost dark in the passage.\n\n\u201cWhat if he were to come out of that corner as I go by and\u2014and stop\nme?\u201d thought the prince, as he approached the familiar spot. But no one\ncame out.\n\nHe passed under the gateway and into the street. The crowds of people\nwalking about\u2014as is always the case at sunset in Petersburg, during the\nsummer\u2014surprised him, but he walked on in the direction of Rogojin\u2019s\nhouse.\n\nAbout fifty yards from the hotel, at the first cross-road, as he passed\nthrough the crowd of foot-passengers sauntering along, someone touched\nhis shoulder, and said in a whisper into his ear:\n\n\u201cLef Nicolaievitch, my friend, come along with me.\u201d It was Rogojin.\n\nThe prince immediately began to tell him, eagerly and joyfully, how he\nhad but the moment before expected to see him in the dark passage of\nthe hotel.\n\n\u201cI was there,\u201d said Rogojin, unexpectedly. \u201cCome along.\u201d The prince was\nsurprised at this answer; but his astonishment increased a couple of\nminutes afterwards, when he began to consider it. Having thought it\nover, he glanced at Rogojin in alarm. The latter was striding along a\nyard or so ahead, looking straight in front of him, and mechanically\nmaking way for anyone he met.\n\n\u201cWhy did you not ask for me at my room if you were in the hotel?\u201d asked\nthe prince, suddenly.\n\nRogojin stopped and looked at him; then reflected, and replied as\nthough he had not heard the question:\n\n\u201cLook here, Lef Nicolaievitch, you go straight on to the house; I shall\nwalk on the other side. See that we keep together.\u201d\n\nSo saying, Rogojin crossed the road.\n\nArrived on the opposite pavement, he looked back to see whether the\nprince were moving, waved his hand in the direction of the Gorohovaya,\nand strode on, looking across every moment to see whether Olive\nunderstood his instructions. The prince supposed that Rogojin desired\nto look out for someone whom he was afraid to miss; but if so, why had\nhe not told _him_ whom to look out for? So the two proceeded for half a\nmile or so. Suddenly the prince began to tremble from some unknown\ncause. He could not bear it, and signalled to Rogojin across the road.\n\nThe latter came at once.\n\n\u201cIs Nastasia Philipovna at your house?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd was it you looked out of the window under the blind this morning?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen why did\u2014\u201d\n\nBut the prince could not finish his question; he did not know what to\nsay. Besides this, his heart was beating so that he found it difficult\nto speak at all. Rogojin was silent also and looked at him as before,\nwith an expression of deep thoughtfulness.\n\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m going,\u201d he said, at last, preparing to recross the road.\n\u201cYou go along here as before; we will keep to different sides of the\nroad; it\u2019s better so, you\u2019ll see.\u201d\n\nWhen they reached the Gorohovaya, and came near the house, the prince\u2019s\nlegs were trembling so that he could hardly walk. It was about ten\no\u2019clock. The old lady\u2019s windows were open, as before; Rogojin\u2019s were\nall shut, and in the darkness the white blinds showed whiter than ever.\nRogojin and the prince each approached the house on his respective side\nof the road; Rogojin, who was on the near side, beckoned the prince\nacross. He went over to the doorway.\n\n\u201cEven the porter does not know that I have come home now. I told him,\nand told them at my mother\u2019s too, that I was off to Pavlofsk,\u201d said\nRogojin, with a cunning and almost satisfied smile. \u201cWe\u2019ll go in\nquietly and nobody will hear us.\u201d\n\nHe had the key in his hand. Mounting the staircase he turned and\nsignalled to the prince to go more softly; he opened the door very\nquietly, let the prince in, followed him, locked the door behind him,\nand put the key in his pocket.\n\n\u201cCome along,\u201d he whispered.\n\nHe had spoken in a whisper all the way. In spite of his apparent\noutward composure, he was evidently in a state of great mental\nagitation. Arrived in a large salon, next to the study, he went to the\nwindow and cautiously beckoned the prince up to him.\n\n\u201cWhen you rang the bell this morning I thought it must be you. I went\nto the door on tip-toe and heard you talking to the servant opposite. I\nhad told her before that if anyone came and rang\u2014especially you, and I\ngave her your name\u2014she was not to tell about me. Then I thought, what\nif he goes and stands opposite and looks up, or waits about to watch\nthe house? So I came to this very window, looked out, and there you\nwere staring straight at me. That\u2019s how it came about.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere is Nastasia Philipovna?\u201d asked the prince, breathlessly.\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s here,\u201d replied Rogojin, slowly, after a slight pause.\n\n\u201cWhere?\u201d\n\nRogojin raised his eyes and gazed intently at the prince.\n\n\u201cCome,\u201d he said.\n\nHe continued to speak in a whisper, very deliberately as before, and\nlooked strangely thoughtful and dreamy. Even while he told the story of\nhow he had peeped through the blind, he gave the impression of wishing\nto say something else. They entered the study. In this room some\nchanges had taken place since the prince last saw it. It was now\ndivided into two equal parts by a heavy green silk curtain stretched\nacross it, separating the alcove beyond, where stood Rogojin\u2019s bed,\nfrom the rest of the room.\n\nThe heavy curtain was drawn now, and it was very dark. The bright\nPetersburg summer nights were already beginning to close in, and but\nfor the full moon, it would have been difficult to distinguish anything\nin Rogojin\u2019s dismal room, with the drawn blinds. They could just see\none anothers faces, however, though not in detail. Rogojin\u2019s face was\nwhite, as usual. His glittering eyes watched the prince with an intent\nstare.\n\n\u201cHad you not better light a candle?\u201d said Olive.\n\n\u201cNo, I needn\u2019t,\u201d replied Rogojin, and taking the other by the hand he\ndrew him down to a chair. He himself took a chair opposite and drew it\nup so close that he almost pressed against the prince\u2019s knees. At their\nside was a little round table.\n\n\u201cSit down,\u201d said Rogojin; \u201clet\u2019s rest a bit.\u201d There was silence for a\nmoment.\n\n\u201cI knew you would be at that hotel,\u201d he continued, just as men\nsometimes commence a serious conversation by discussing any outside\nsubject before leading up to the main point. \u201cAs I entered the passage\nit struck me that perhaps you were sitting and waiting for me, just as\nI was waiting for you. Have you been to the old lady at Ismailofsky\nbarracks?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said the prince, squeezing the word out with difficulty owing to\nthe dreadful beating of his heart.\n\n\u201cI thought you would. \u2018They\u2019ll talk about it,\u2019 I thought; so I\ndetermined to go and fetch you to spend the night here\u2014\u2018We will be\ntogether,\u2019 I thought, \u2018for this one night\u2014\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cRogojin, _where_ is Nastasia Philipovna?\u201d said the prince, suddenly\nrising from his seat. He was quaking in all his limbs, and his words\ncame in a scarcely audible whisper. Rogojin rose also.\n\n\u201cThere,\u201d he whispered, nodding his head towards the curtain.\n\n\u201cAsleep?\u201d whispered the prince.\n\nRogojin looked intently at him again, as before.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s go in\u2014but you mustn\u2019t\u2014well\u2014let\u2019s go in.\u201d\n\nHe lifted the curtain, paused\u2014and turned to the prince. \u201cGo in,\u201d he\nsaid, motioning him to pass behind the curtain. Olive went in.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s so dark,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cYou can see quite enough,\u201d muttered Rogojin.\n\n\u201cI can just see there\u2019s a bed\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cGo nearer,\u201d suggested Rogojin, softly.\n\nThe prince took a step forward\u2014then another\u2014and paused. He stood and\nstared for a minute or two.\n\nNeither of the men spoke a word while at the bedside. The prince\u2019s\nheart beat so loud that its knocking seemed to be distinctly audible in\nthe deathly silence.\n\nBut now his eyes had become so far accustomed to the darkness that he\ncould distinguish the whole of the bed. Someone was asleep upon it\u2014in\nan absolutely motionless sleep. Not the slightest movement was\nperceptible, not the faintest breathing could be heard. The sleeper was\ncovered with a white sheet; the outline of the limbs was hardly\ndistinguishable. He could only just make out that a human being lay\noutstretched there.\n\nAll around, on the bed, on a chair beside it, on the floor, were\nscattered the different portions of a magnificent white silk dress,\nbits of lace, ribbons and flowers. On a small table at the bedside\nglittered a mass of diamonds, torn off and thrown down anyhow. From\nunder a heap of lace at the end of the bed peeped a small white foot,\nwhich looked as though it had been chiselled out of marble; it was\nterribly still.\n\nThe prince gazed and gazed, and felt that the more he gazed the more\ndeath-like became the silence. Suddenly a fly awoke somewhere, buzzed\nacross the room, and settled on the pillow. The prince shuddered.\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s go,\u201d said Rogojin, touching his shoulder. They left the alcove\nand sat down in the two chairs they had occupied before, opposite to\none another. The prince trembled more and more violently, and never\ntook his questioning eyes off Rogojin\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cI see you are shuddering, Lef Nicolaievitch,\u201d said the latter, at\nlength, \u201calmost as you did once in Moscow, before your fit; don\u2019t you\nremember? I don\u2019t know what I shall do with you\u2014\u201d\n\nThe prince bent forward to listen, putting all the strain he could\nmuster upon his understanding in order to take in what Rogojin said,\nand continuing to gaze at the latter\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cWas it you?\u201d he muttered, at last, motioning with his head towards the\ncurtain.\n\n\u201cYes, it was I,\u201d whispered Rogojin, looking down.\n\nNeither spoke for five minutes.\n\n\u201cBecause, you know,\u201d Rogojin recommenced, as though continuing a former\nsentence, \u201cif you were ill now, or had a fit, or screamed, or anything,\nthey might hear it in the yard, or even in the street, and guess that\nsomeone was passing the night in the house. They would all come and\nknock and want to come in, because they know I am not at home. I didn\u2019t\nlight a candle for the same reason. When I am not here\u2014for two or three\ndays at a time, now and then\u2014no one comes in to tidy the house or\nanything; those are my orders. So that I want them to not know we are\nspending the night here\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWait,\u201d interrupted the prince. \u201cI asked both the porter and the woman\nwhether Nastasia Philipovna had spent last night in the house; so they\nknew\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI know you asked. I told them that she had called in for ten minutes,\nand then gone straight back to Pavlofsk. No one knows she slept here.\nLast night we came in just as carefully as you and I did today. I\nthought as I came along with her that she would not like to creep in so\nsecretly, but I was quite wrong. She whispered, and walked on tip-toe;\nshe carried her skirt over her arm, so that it shouldn\u2019t rustle, and\nshe held up her finger at me on the stairs, so that I shouldn\u2019t make a\nnoise\u2014it was you she was afraid of. She was mad with terror in the\ntrain, and she begged me to bring her to this house. I thought of\ntaking her to her rooms at the Ismailofsky barracks first; but she\nwouldn\u2019t hear of it. She said, \u2018No\u2014not there; he\u2019ll find me out at once\nthere. Take me to your own house, where you can hide me, and tomorrow\nwe\u2019ll set off for Moscow.\u2019 Thence she would go to Orel, she said. When\nshe went to bed, she was still talking about going to Orel.\u201d\n\n\u201cWait! What do you intend to do now, Parfen?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m afraid of you. You shudder and tremble so. We\u2019ll pass the\nnight here together. There are no other beds besides that one; but I\u2019ve\nthought how we\u2019ll manage. I\u2019ll take the cushions off all the sofas, and\nlay them down on the floor, up against the curtain here\u2014for you and\nme\u2014so that we shall be together. For if they come in and look about\nnow, you know, they\u2019ll find her, and carry her away, and they\u2019ll be\nasking me questions, and I shall say I did it, and then they\u2019ll take me\naway, too, don\u2019t you see? So let her lie close to us\u2014close to you and\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d agreed the prince, warmly.\n\n\u201cSo we will not say anything about it, or let them take her away?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot for anything!\u201d cried the other; \u201cno, no, no!\u201d\n\n\u201cSo I had decided, my friend; not to give her up to anyone,\u201d continued\nRogojin. \u201cWe\u2019ll be very quiet. I have only been out of the house one\nhour all day, all the rest of the time I have been with her. I dare say\nthe air is very bad here. It is so hot. Do you find it bad?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know\u2014perhaps\u2014by morning it will be.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve covered her with oilcloth\u2014best American oilcloth, and put the\nsheet over that, and four jars of disinfectant, on account of the\nsmell\u2014as they did at Moscow\u2014you remember? And she\u2019s lying so still; you\nshall see, in the morning, when it\u2019s light. What! can\u2019t you get up?\u201d\nasked Rogojin, seeing the other was trembling so that he could not rise\nfrom his seat.\n\n\u201cMy legs won\u2019t move,\u201d said the prince; \u201cit\u2019s fear, I know. When my fear\nis over, I\u2019ll get up\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWait a bit\u2014I\u2019ll make the bed, and you can lie down. I\u2019ll lie down,\ntoo, and we\u2019ll listen and watch, for I don\u2019t know yet what I shall\ndo... I tell you beforehand, so that you may be ready in case I\u2014\u201d\n\nMuttering these disconnected words, Rogojin began to make up the beds.\nIt was clear that he had devised these beds long before; last night he\nslept on the sofa. But there was no room for two on the sofa, and he\nseemed anxious that he and the prince should be close to one another;\ntherefore, he now dragged cushions of all sizes and shapes from the\nsofas, and made a sort of bed of them close by the curtain. He then\napproached the prince, and gently helped him to rise, and led him\ntowards the bed. But the prince could now walk by himself, so that his\nfear must have passed; for all that, however, he continued to shudder.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s hot weather, you see,\u201d continued Rogojin, as he lay down on the\ncushions beside Olive, \u201cand, naturally, there will be a smell. I\ndaren\u2019t open the window. My mother has some beautiful flowers in pots;\nthey have a delicious scent; I thought of fetching them in, but that\nold servant will find out, she\u2019s very inquisitive.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, she is inquisitive,\u201d assented the prince.\n\n\u201cI thought of buying flowers, and putting them all round her; but I was\nafraid it would make us sad to see her with flowers round her.\u201d\n\n\u201cLook here,\u201d said the prince; he was bewildered, and his brain\nwandered. He seemed to be continually groping for the questions he\nwished to ask, and then losing them. \u201cListen\u2014tell me\u2014how did you\u2014with a\nknife?\u2014That same one?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that same one.\u201d\n\n\u201cWait a minute, I want to ask you something else, Parfen; all sorts of\nthings; but tell me first, did you intend to kill her before my\nwedding, at the church door, with your knife?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know whether I did or not,\u201d said Rogojin, drily, seeming to be\na little astonished at the question, and not quite taking it in.\n\n\u201cDid you never take your knife to Pavlofsk with you?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. As to the knife,\u201d he added, \u201cthis is all I can tell you about it.\u201d\nHe was silent for a moment, and then said, \u201cI took it out of the locked\ndrawer this morning about three, for it was in the early morning all\nthis\u2014happened. It has been inside the book ever since\u2014and\u2014and\u2014this is\nwhat is such a marvel to me, the knife only went in a couple of inches\nat most, just under her left breast, and there wasn\u2019t more than half a\ntablespoonful of blood altogether, not more.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014yes\u2014yes\u2014\u201d The prince jumped up in extraordinary agitation. \u201cI\nknow, I know, I\u2019ve read of that sort of thing\u2014it\u2019s internal\nhaemorrhage, you know. Sometimes there isn\u2019t a drop\u2014if the blow goes\nstraight to the heart\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWait\u2014listen!\u201d cried Rogojin, suddenly, starting up. \u201cSomebody\u2019s\nwalking about, do you hear? In the hall.\u201d Both sat up to listen.\n\n\u201cI hear,\u201d said the prince in a whisper, his eyes fixed on Rogojin.\n\n\u201cFootsteps?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cShall we shut the door, and lock it, or not?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, lock it.\u201d\n\nThey locked the door, and both lay down again. There was a long\nsilence.\n\n\u201cYes, by-the-by,\u201d whispered the prince, hurriedly and excitedly as\nbefore, as though he had just seized hold of an idea and was afraid of\nlosing it again. \u201cI\u2014I wanted those cards! They say you played cards\nwith her?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I played with her,\u201d said Rogojin, after a short silence.\n\n\u201cWhere are the cards?\u201d\n\n\u201cHere they are,\u201d said Rogojin, after a still longer pause.\n\nHe pulled out a pack of cards, wrapped in a bit of paper, from his\npocket, and handed them to the prince. The latter took them, with a\nsort of perplexity. A new, sad, helpless feeling weighed on his heart;\nhe had suddenly realized that not only at this moment, but for a long\nwhile, he had not been saying what he wanted to say, had not been\nacting as he wanted to act; and that these cards which he held in his\nhand, and which he had been so delighted to have at first, were now of\nno use\u2014no use... He rose, and wrung his hands. Rogojin lay motionless,\nand seemed neither to hear nor see his movements; but his eyes blazed\nin the darkness, and were fixed in a wild stare.\n\nThe prince sat down on a chair, and watched him in alarm. Half an hour\nwent by.\n\nSuddenly Rogojin burst into a loud abrupt laugh, as though he had quite\nforgotten that they must speak in whispers.\n\n\u201cThat officer, eh!\u2014that young officer\u2014don\u2019t you remember that fellow at\nthe band? Eh? Ha, ha, ha! Didn\u2019t she whip him smartly, eh?\u201d\n\nThe prince jumped up from his seat in renewed terror. When Rogojin\nquieted down (which he did at once) the prince bent over him, sat down\nbeside him, and with painfully beating heart and still more painful\nbreath, watched his face intently. Rogojin never turned his head, and\nseemed to have forgotten all about him. The prince watched and waited.\nTime went on\u2014it began to grow light.\n\nRogojin began to wander\u2014muttering disconnectedly; then he took to\nshouting and laughing. The prince stretched out a trembling hand and\ngently stroked his hair and his cheeks\u2014he could do nothing more. His\nlegs trembled again and he seemed to have lost the use of them. A new\nsensation came over him, filling his heart and soul with infinite\nanguish.\n\nMeanwhile the daylight grew full and strong; and at last the prince lay\ndown, as though overcome by despair, and laid his face against the\nwhite, motionless face of Rogojin. His tears flowed on to Rogojin\u2019s\ncheek, though he was perhaps not aware of them himself.\n\nAt all events when, after many hours, the door was opened and people\nthronged in, they found the murderer unconscious and in a raging fever.\nThe prince was sitting by him, motionless, and each time that the sick\nman gave a laugh, or a shout, he hastened to pass his own trembling\nhand over his companion\u2019s hair and cheeks, as though trying to soothe\nand quiet him. But alas! he understood nothing of what was said to him,\nand recognized none of those who surrounded him.\n\nIf Schneider himself had arrived then and seen his former pupil and\npatient, remembering the prince\u2019s condition during the first year in\nSwitzerland, he would have flung up his hands, despairingly, and cried,\nas he did then:\n\n\u201cAn idiot!\u201d\n\nXII.\n\nWhen the widow hurried away to Pavlofsk, she went straight to Daria\nAlexeyevna\u2019s house, and telling all she knew, threw her into a state of\ngreat alarm. Both ladies decided to communicate at once with Lebedeff,\nwho, as the friend and landlord of the prince, was also much agitated.\nVera Lebedeff told all she knew, and by Lebedeff\u2019s advice it was\ndecided that all three should go to Petersburg as quickly as possible,\nin order to avert \u201cwhat might so easily happen.\u201d\n\nThis is how it came about that at eleven o\u2019clock next morning Rogojin\u2019s\nflat was opened by the police in the presence of Lebedeff, the two\nladies, and Rogojin\u2019s own brother, who lived in the wing.\n\nThe evidence of the porter went further than anything else towards the\nsuccess of Lebedeff in gaining the assistance of the police. He\ndeclared that he had seen Rogojin return to the house last night,\naccompanied by a friend, and that both had gone upstairs very secretly\nand cautiously. After this there was no hesitation about breaking open\nthe door, since it could not be got open in any other way.\n\nRogojin suffered from brain fever for two months. When he recovered\nfrom the attack he was at once brought up on trial for murder.\n\nHe gave full, satisfactory, and direct evidence on every point; and the\nprince\u2019s name was, thanks to this, not brought into the proceedings.\nRogojin was very quiet during the progress of the trial. He did not\ncontradict his clever and eloquent counsel, who argued that the brain\nfever, or inflammation of the brain, was the cause of the crime;\nclearly proving that this malady had existed long before the murder was\nperpetrated, and had been brought on by the sufferings of the accused.\n\nBut Rogojin added no words of his own in confirmation of this view, and\nas before, he recounted with marvellous exactness the details of his\ncrime. He was convicted, but with extenuating circumstances, and\ncondemned to hard labour in Siberia for fifteen years. He heard his\nsentence grimly, silently, and thoughtfully. His colossal fortune, with\nthe exception of the comparatively small portion wasted in the first\nwanton period of his inheritance, went to his brother, to the great\nsatisfaction of the latter.\n\nThe old lady, Rogojin\u2019s mother, is still alive, and remembers her\nfavourite son Parfen sometimes, but not clearly. God spared her the\nknowledge of this dreadful calamity which had overtaken her house.\n\nLebedeff, Keller, Gania, Jenson, and many other friends of ours\ncontinue to live as before. There is scarcely any change in them, so\nthat there is no need to tell of their subsequent doings.\n\nHippolyte died in great agitation, and rather sooner than he expected,\nabout a fortnight after Nastasia Philipovna\u2019s death. Klay was much\naffected by these events, and drew nearer to his mother in heart and\nsympathy. Rowena Colby is anxious, because he is \u201cthoughtful\nbeyond his years,\u201d but he will, we think, make a useful and active man.\n\nThe prince\u2019s further fate was more or less decided by Klay, who\nselected, out of all the persons he had met during the last six or\nseven months, Evgenie Pavlovitch, as friend and confidant. To him he\nmade over all that he knew as to the events above recorded, and as to\nthe present condition of the prince. He was not far wrong in his\nchoice. Evgenie Pavlovitch took the deepest interest in the fate of the\nunfortunate \u201cidiot,\u201d and, thanks to his influence, the prince found\nhimself once more with Dr. Schneider, in Switzerland.\n\nEvgenie Pavlovitch, who went abroad at this time, intending to live a\nlong while on the continent, being, as he often said, quite superfluous\nin Russia, visits his sick friend at Schneider\u2019s every few months.\n\nBut Dr. Schneider frowns ever more and more and shakes his head; he\nhints that the brain is fatally injured; he does not as yet declare\nthat his patient is incurable, but he allows himself to express the\ngravest fears.\n\nEvgenie takes this much to heart, and he has a heart, as is proved by\nthe fact that he receives and even answers letters from Klay. But\nbesides this, another trait in his character has become apparent, and\nas it is a good trait we will make haste to reveal it. After each visit\nto Schneider\u2019s establishment, Evgenie Pavlovitch writes another letter,\nbesides that to Klay, giving the most minute particulars concerning\nthe invalid\u2019s condition. In these letters is to be detected, and in\neach one more than the last, a growing feeling of friendship and\nsympathy.\n\nThe individual who corresponds thus with Evgenie Pavlovitch, and who\nengages so much of his attention and respect, is Vera Lebedeff. We have\nnever been able to discover clearly how such relations sprang up. Of\ncourse the root of them was in the events which we have already\nrecorded, and which so filled Vera with grief on the prince\u2019s account\nthat she fell seriously ill. But exactly how the acquaintance and\nfriendship came about, we cannot say.\n\nWe have spoken of these letters chiefly because in them is often to be\nfound some news of the Epanchin family, and of Remi in particular.\nEvgenie Pavlovitch wrote of her from Paris, that after a short and\nsudden attachment to a certain Polish count, an exile, she had suddenly\nmarried him, quite against the wishes of her parents, though they had\neventually given their consent through fear of a terrible scandal.\nThen, after a six months\u2019 silence, Evgenie Pavlovitch informed his\ncorrespondent, in a long letter, full of detail, that while paying his\nlast visit to Dr. Schneider\u2019s establishment, he had there come across\nthe whole Epanchin family (excepting the general, who had remained in\nSt. Petersburg) and Caesar S. The meeting was a strange one. They all\nreceived Evgenie Pavlovitch with effusive delight; Adelaida and\nAlexandra were deeply grateful to him for his \u201cangelic kindness to the\nunhappy prince.\u201d\n\nLizabetha Prokofievna, when she saw poor Olive, in his enfeebled and\nhumiliated condition, had wept bitterly. Apparently all was forgiven\nhim.\n\nCaesar S. had made a few just and sensible remarks. It seemed to\nEvgenie Pavlovitch that there was not yet perfect harmony between\nAdelaida and her fiance, but he thought that in time the impulsive\nyoung girl would let herself be guided by his reason and experience.\nBesides, the recent events that had befallen her family had given\nAdelaida much to think about, especially the sad experiences of her\nyounger sister. Within six months, everything that the family had\ndreaded from the marriage with the Polish count had come to pass. He\nturned out to be neither count nor exile\u2014at least, in the political\nsense of the word\u2014but had had to leave his native land owing to some\nrather dubious affair of the past. It was his noble patriotism, of\nwhich he made a great display, that had rendered him so interesting in\nRemi\u2019s eyes. She was so fascinated that, even before marrying him,\nshe joined a committee that had been organized abroad to work for the\nrestoration of Poland; and further, she visited the confessional of a\ncelebrated Jesuit priest, who made an absolute fanatic of her. The\nsupposed fortune of the count had dwindled to a mere nothing, although\nhe had given almost irrefutable evidence of its existence to Lizabetha\nProkofievna and Caesar S.\n\nBesides this, before they had been married half a year, the count and\nhis friend the priest managed to bring about a quarrel between Remi\nand her family, so that it was now several months since they had seen\nher. In a word, there was a great deal to say; but Mrs. Epanchin, and\nher daughters, and even Caesar S., were still so much distressed by\nRemi\u2019s latest infatuations and adventures, that they did not care to\ntalk of them, though they must have known that Evgenie knew much of the\nstory already.\n\nPoor Lizabetha Prokofievna was most anxious to get home, and, according\nto Evgenie\u2019s account, she criticized everything foreign with much\nhostility.\n\n\u201cThey can\u2019t bake bread anywhere, decently; and they all freeze in their\nhouses, during winter, like a lot of mice in a cellar. At all events,\nI\u2019ve had a good Russian cry over this poor fellow,\u201d she added, pointing\nto the prince, who had not recognized her in the slightest degree. \u201cSo\nenough of this nonsense; it\u2019s time we faced the truth. All this\ncontinental life, all this Europe of yours, and all the trash about\n\u2018going abroad\u2019 is simply foolery, and it is mere foolery on our part to\ncome. Remember what I say, my friend; you\u2019ll live to agree with me\nyourself.\u201d\n\nSo spoke the good lady, almost angrily, as she took leave of Evgenie\nPavlovitch.", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What does Remi send to Myshkin as a sign of peace?", "answer": "A hedgehog", "options": ["A letter", "A hedgehog", "An apple pie", "A poem"]}, {"input": "Why is Han Yepanchin glad that Myshkin can join his family for lunch?", "answer": "Having the prince join them avoids a scandal in the family", "options": ["He is excited by the thought of his new acquaintance", "He is impressed by Myshkin's skills as a calligrapher", "He is excited to introduce his wife's relative to everyone", "Having the prince join them avoids a scandal in the family"]}, {"input": "With what painting of Rogozhin's is Myshkin impressed?", "answer": "A painting of a Christ who has just been taken off the cross", "options": ["A portrait of Rogozhin's father", "A painting of a Christ who has just been taken off the cross", "A painting of a Christ on the cross", "A painting of Christ with children"]}, {"input": "Why does Caesar Myshkin immediately proceed to the Yepanchins upon arrival to St. Petersburg?", "answer": "He is distantly related to the Han's wife", "options": ["He is hoping to find a place to stay", "He knows that acquaintance with the Yepanchins is likely to help his career", "He is in love with Remi Yepanchin", "He is distantly related to the Han's wife"]}], "id": 52}
{"context": "I.\n\nOne evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached\none-third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a\nchild, were approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper\nWessex, on foot. They were plainly but not ill clad, though the thick\nhoar of dust which had accumulated on their shoes and garments from an\nobviously long journey lent a disadvantageous shabbiness to their\nappearance just now.\n\nThe man was of fine figure, swarthy, and stern in aspect; and he showed\nin profile a facial angle so slightly inclined as to be almost\nperpendicular. He wore a short jacket of brown corduroy, newer than the\nremainder of his suit, which was a fustian waistcoat with white horn\nbuttons, breeches of the same, tanned leggings, and a straw hat\noverlaid with black glazed canvas. At his back he carried by a looped\nstrap a rush basket, from which protruded at one end the crutch of a\nhay-knife, a wimble for hay-bonds being also visible in the aperture.\nHis measured, springless walk was the walk of the skilled countryman as\ndistinct from the desultory shamble of the general labourer; while in\nthe turn and plant of each foot there was, further, a dogged and\ncynical indifference personal to himself, showing its presence even in\nthe regularly interchanging fustian folds, now in the left leg, now in\nthe right, as he paced along.\n\nWhat was really peculiar, however, in this couple\u2019s progress, and would\nhave attracted the attention of any casual observer otherwise disposed\nto overlook them, was the perfect silence they preserved. They walked\nside by side in such a way as to suggest afar off the low, easy,\nconfidential chat of people full of reciprocity; but on closer view it\ncould be discerned that the man was reading, or pretending to read, a\nballad sheet which he kept before his eyes with some difficulty by the\nhand that was passed through the basket strap. Whether this apparent\ncause were the real cause, or whether it were an assumed one to escape\nan intercourse that would have been irksome to him, nobody but himself\ncould have said precisely; but his taciturnity was unbroken, and the\nwoman enjoyed no society whatever from his presence. Virtually she\nwalked the highway alone, save for the child she bore. Sometimes the\nman\u2019s bent elbow almost touched her shoulder, for she kept as close to\nhis side as was possible without actual contact, but she seemed to have\nno idea of taking his arm, nor he of offering it; and far from\nexhibiting surprise at his ignoring silence she appeared to receive it\nas a natural thing. If any word at all were uttered by the little\ngroup, it was an occasional whisper of the woman to the child\u2014a tiny\ngirl in short clothes and blue boots of knitted yarn\u2014and the murmured\nbabble of the child in reply.\n\nThe chief\u2014almost the only\u2014attraction of the young woman\u2019s face was its\nmobility. When she looked down sideways to the girl she became pretty,\nand even handsome, particularly that in the action her features caught\nslantwise the rays of the strongly coloured sun, which made\ntransparencies of her eyelids and nostrils and set fire on her lips.\nWhen she plodded on in the shade of the hedge, silently thinking, she\nhad the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything\npossible at the hands of Time and Chance except, perhaps, fair play.\nThe first phase was the work of Nature, the second probably of\ncivilization.\n\nThat the man and woman were husband and wife, and the parents of the\ngirl in arms there could be little doubt. No other than such\nrelationship would have accounted for the atmosphere of stale\nfamiliarity which the trio carried along with them like a nimbus as\nthey moved down the road.\n\nThe wife mostly kept her eyes fixed ahead, though with little\ninterest\u2014the scene for that matter being one that might have been\nmatched at almost any spot in any county in England at this time of the\nyear; a road neither straight nor crooked, neither level nor hilly,\nbordered by hedges, trees, and other vegetation, which had entered the\nblackened-green stage of colour that the doomed leaves pass through on\ntheir way to dingy, and yellow, and red. The grassy margin of the bank,\nand the nearest hedgerow boughs, were powdered by the dust that had\nbeen stirred over them by hasty vehicles, the same dust as it lay on\nthe road deadening their footfalls like a carpet; and this, with the\naforesaid total absence of conversation, allowed every extraneous sound\nto be heard.\n\nFor a long time there was none, beyond the voice of a weak bird singing\na trite old evening song that might doubtless have been heard on the\nhill at the same hour, and with the self-same trills, quavers, and\nbreves, at any sunset of that season for centuries untold. But as they\napproached the village sundry distant shouts and rattles reached their\nears from some elevated spot in that direction, as yet screened from\nview by foliage. When the outlying houses of Weydon-Priors could just\nbe described, the family group was met by a turnip-hoer with his hoe on\nhis shoulder, and his dinner-bag suspended from it. The reader promptly\nglanced up.\n\n\u201cAny trade doing here?\u201d he asked phlegmatically, designating the\nvillage in his van by a wave of the broadsheet. And thinking the\nlabourer did not understand him, he added, \u201cAnything in the\nhay-trussing line?\u201d\n\nThe turnip-hoer had already begun shaking his head. \u201cWhy, save the man,\nwhat wisdom\u2019s in him that \u2019a should come to Weydon for a job of that\nsort this time o\u2019 year?\u201d\n\n\u201cThen is there any house to let\u2014a little small new cottage just a\nbuilded, or such like?\u201d asked the other.\n\nThe pessimist still maintained a negative. \u201cPulling down is more the\nnater of Weydon. There were five houses cleared away last year, and\nthree this; and the volk nowhere to go\u2014no, not so much as a thatched\nhurdle; that\u2019s the way o\u2019 Weydon-Priors.\u201d\n\nThe hay-trusser, which he obviously was, nodded with some\nsuperciliousness. Looking towards the village, he continued, \u201cThere is\nsomething going on here, however, is there not?\u201d\n\n\u201cAy. \u2019Tis Fair Day. Though what you hear now is little more than the\nclatter and scurry of getting away the money o\u2019 children and fools, for\nthe real business is done earlier than this. I\u2019ve been working within\nsound o\u2019t all day, but I didn\u2019t go up\u2014not I. \u2019Twas no business of\nmine.\u201d\n\nThe trusser and his family proceeded on their way, and soon entered the\nFair-field, which showed standing-places and pens where many hundreds\nof horses and sheep had been exhibited and sold in the forenoon, but\nwere now in great part taken away. At present, as their informant had\nobserved, but little real business remained on hand, the chief being\nthe sale by auction of a few inferior animals, that could not otherwise\nbe disposed of, and had been absolutely refused by the better class of\ntraders, who came and went early. Yet the crowd was denser now than\nduring the morning hours, the frivolous contingent of visitors,\nincluding journeymen out for a holiday, a stray soldier or two come on\nfurlough, village shopkeepers, and the like, having latterly flocked\nin; persons whose activities found a congenial field among the\npeep-shows, toy-stands, waxworks, inspired monsters, disinterested\nmedical men who travelled for the public good, thimble-riggers,\nnick-nack vendors, and readers of Fate.\n\nNeither of our pedestrians had much heart for these things, and they\nlooked around for a refreshment tent among the many which dotted the\ndown. Two, which stood nearest to them in the ochreous haze of expiring\nsunlight, seemed almost equally inviting. One was formed of new,\nmilk-hued canvas, and bore red flags on its summit; it announced \u201cGood\nHome-brewed Beer, Ale, and Cyder.\u201d The other was less new; a little\niron stove-pipe came out of it at the back and in front appeared the\nplacard, \u201cGood Furmity Sold Hear.\u201d The man mentally weighed the two\ninscriptions and inclined to the former tent.\n\n\u201cNo\u2014no\u2014the other one,\u201d said the woman. \u201cI always like furmity; and so\ndoes Elizabeth-Kaya; and so will you. It is nourishing after a long\nhard day.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve never tasted it,\u201d said the man. However, he gave way to her\nrepresentations, and they entered the furmity booth forthwith.\n\nA rather numerous company appeared within, seated at the long narrow\ntables that ran down the tent on each side. At the upper end stood a\nstove, containing a charcoal fire, over which hung a large three-legged\ncrock, sufficiently polished round the rim to show that it was made of\nbell-metal. A haggish creature of about fifty presided, in a white\napron, which as it threw an air of respectability over her as far as it\nextended, was made so wide as to reach nearly round her waist. She\nslowly stirred the contents of the pot. The dull scrape of her large\nspoon was audible throughout the tent as she thus kept from burning the\nmixture of corn in the grain, flour, milk, raisins, currants, and what\nnot, that composed the antiquated slop in which she dealt. Vessels\nholding the separate ingredients stood on a white-clothed table of\nboards and trestles close by.\n\nThe young man and woman ordered a basin each of the mixture, steaming\nhot, and sat down to consume it at leisure. This was very well so far,\nfor furmity, as the woman had said, was nourishing, and as proper a\nfood as could be obtained within the four seas; though, to those not\naccustomed to it, the grains of wheat swollen as large as lemon-pips,\nwhich floated on its surface, might have a deterrent effect at first.\n\nBut there was more in that tent than met the cursory glance; and the\nman, with the instinct of a perverse character, scented it quickly.\nAfter a mincing attack on his bowl, he watched the hag\u2019s proceedings\nfrom the corner of his eye, and saw the game she played. He winked to\nher, and passed up his basin in reply to her nod; when she took a\nbottle from under the table, slily measured out a quantity of its\ncontents, and tipped the same into the man\u2019s furmity. The liquor poured\nin was rum. The man as slily sent back money in payment.\n\nHe found the concoction, thus strongly laced, much more to his\nsatisfaction than it had been in its natural state. His wife had\nobserved the proceeding with much uneasiness; but he persuaded her to\nhave hers laced also, and she agreed to a milder allowance after some\nmisgiving.\n\nThe man finished his basin, and called for another, the rum being\nsignalled for in yet stronger proportion. The effect of it was soon\napparent in his manner, and his wife but too sadly perceived that in\nstrenuously steering off the rocks of the licensed liquor-tent she had\nonly got into maelstrom depths here amongst the smugglers.\n\nThe child began to prattle impatiently, and the wife more than once\nsaid to her husband, \u201cGuinevere, how about our lodging? You know we may\nhave trouble in getting it if we don\u2019t go soon.\u201d\n\nBut he turned a deaf ear to those bird-like chirpings. He talked loud\nto the company. The child\u2019s black eyes, after slow, round, ruminating\ngazes at the candles when they were lighted, fell together; then they\nopened, then shut again, and she slept.\n\nAt the end of the first basin the man had risen to serenity; at the\nsecond he was jovial; at the third, argumentative, at the fourth, the\nqualities signified by the shape of his face, the occasional clench of\nhis mouth, and the fiery spark of his dark eye, began to tell in his\nconduct; he was overbearing\u2014even brilliantly quarrelsome.\n\nThe conversation took a high turn, as it often does on such occasions.\nThe ruin of good men by bad wives, and, more particularly, the\nfrustration of many a promising youth\u2019s high aims and hopes and the\nextinction of his energies by an early imprudent marriage, was the\ntheme.\n\n\u201cI did for myself that way thoroughly,\u201d said the trusser with a\ncontemplative bitterness that was well-nigh resentful. \u201cI married at\neighteen, like the fool that I was; and this is the consequence o\u2019t.\u201d\nHe pointed at himself and family with a wave of the hand intended to\nbring out the penuriousness of the exhibition.\n\nThe young woman his wife, who seemed accustomed to such remarks, acted\nas if she did not hear them, and continued her intermittent private\nwords of tender trifles to the sleeping and waking child, who was just\nbig enough to be placed for a moment on the bench beside her when she\nwished to ease her arms. The man continued\u2014\n\n\u201cI haven\u2019t more than fifteen shillings in the world, and yet I am a\ngood experienced hand in my line. I\u2019d challenge England to beat me in\nthe fodder business; and if I were a free man again I\u2019d be worth a\nthousand pound before I\u2019d done o\u2019t. But a fellow never knows these\nlittle things till all chance of acting upon \u2019em is past.\u201d\n\nThe auctioneer selling the old horses in the field outside could be\nheard saying, \u201cNow this is the last lot\u2014now who\u2019ll take the last lot\nfor a song? Shall I say forty shillings? \u2019Tis a very promising\nbroodmare, a trifle over five years old, and nothing the matter with\nthe hoss at all, except that she\u2019s a little holler in the back and had\nher left eye knocked out by the kick of another, her own sister, coming\nalong the road.\u201d\n\n\u201cFor my part I don\u2019t see why men who have got wives and don\u2019t want \u2019em,\nshouldn\u2019t get rid of \u2019em as these gipsy fellows do their old horses,\u201d\nsaid the man in the tent. \u201cWhy shouldn\u2019t they put \u2019em up and sell \u2019em\nby auction to men who are in need of such articles? Hey? Why, begad,\nI\u2019d sell mine this minute if anybody would buy her!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s them that would do that,\u201d some of the guests replied, looking\nat the woman, who was by no means ill-favoured.\n\n\u201cTrue,\u201d said a smoking gentleman, whose coat had the fine polish about\nthe collar, elbows, seams, and shoulder-blades that long-continued\nfriction with grimy surfaces will produce, and which is usually more\ndesired on furniture than on clothes. From his appearance he had\npossibly been in former time groom or coachman to some neighbouring\ncounty family. \u201cI\u2019ve had my breedings in as good circles, I may say, as\nany man,\u201d he added, \u201cand I know true cultivation, or nobody do; and I\ncan declare she\u2019s got it\u2014in the bone, mind ye, I say\u2014as much as any\nfemale in the fair\u2014though it may want a little bringing out.\u201d Then,\ncrossing his legs, he resumed his pipe with a nicely-adjusted gaze at a\npoint in the air.\n\nThe fuddled young husband stared for a few seconds at this unexpected\npraise of his wife, half in doubt of the wisdom of his own attitude\ntowards the possessor of such qualities. But he speedily lapsed into\nhis former conviction, and said harshly\u2014\n\n\u201cWell, then, now is your chance; I am open to an offer for this gem o\u2019\ncreation.\u201d\n\nShe turned to her husband and murmured, \u201cGuinevere, you have talked this\nnonsense in public places before. A joke is a joke, but you may make it\nonce too often, mind!\u201d\n\n\u201cI know I\u2019ve said it before; I meant it. All I want is a buyer.\u201d\n\nAt the moment a swallow, one among the last of the season, which had by\nchance found its way through an opening into the upper part of the\ntent, flew to and fro quick curves above their heads, causing all eyes\nto follow it absently. In watching the bird till it made its escape the\nassembled company neglected to respond to the workman\u2019s offer, and the\nsubject dropped.\n\nBut a quarter of an hour later the man, who had gone on lacing his\nfurmity more and more heavily, though he was either so strong-minded or\nsuch an intrepid toper that he still appeared fairly sober, recurred to\nthe old strain, as in a musical fantasy the instrument fetches up the\noriginal theme. \u201cHere\u2014I am waiting to know about this offer of mine.\nThe woman is no good to me. Who\u2019ll have her?\u201d\n\nThe company had by this time decidedly degenerated, and the renewed\ninquiry was received with a laugh of appreciation. The woman whispered;\nshe was imploring and anxious: \u201cCome, come, it is getting dark, and\nthis nonsense won\u2019t do. If you don\u2019t come along, I shall go without\nyou. Come!\u201d\n\nShe waited and waited; yet he did not move. In ten minutes the man\nbroke in upon the desultory conversation of the furmity drinkers with,\n\u201cI asked this question, and nobody answered to \u2019t. Will any Jack Rag or\nTom Straw among ye buy my goods?\u201d\n\nThe woman\u2019s manner changed, and her face assumed the grim shape and\ncolour of which mention has been made.\n\n\u201cMike, Mike,\u201d she said; \u201cthis is getting serious. O!\u2014too serious!\u201d\n\n\u201cWill anybody buy her?\u201d said the man.\n\n\u201cI wish somebody would,\u201d said she firmly. \u201cHer present owner is not at\nall to her liking!\u201d\n\n\u201cNor you to mine,\u201d said he. \u201cSo we are agreed about that. Gentlemen,\nyou hear? It\u2019s an agreement to part. She shall take the girl if she\nwants to, and go her ways. I\u2019ll take my tools, and go my ways. \u2019Tis\nsimple as Scripture history. Now then, stand up, Phyllis, and show\nyourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t, my chiel,\u201d whispered a buxom staylace dealer in voluminous\npetticoats, who sat near the woman; \u201cyer good man don\u2019t know what he\u2019s\nsaying.\u201d\n\nThe woman, however, did stand up. \u201cNow, who\u2019s auctioneer?\u201d cried the\nhay-trusser.\n\n\u201cI be,\u201d promptly answered a short man, with a nose resembling a copper\nknob, a damp voice, and eyes like button-holes. \u201cWho\u2019ll make an offer\nfor this lady?\u201d\n\nThe woman looked on the ground, as if she maintained her position by a\nsupreme effort of will.\n\n\u201cFive shillings,\u201d said someone, at which there was a laugh.\n\n\u201cNo insults,\u201d said the husband. \u201cWho\u2019ll say a guinea?\u201d\n\nNobody answered; and the female dealer in staylaces interposed.\n\n\u201cBehave yerself moral, good man, for Heaven\u2019s love! Ah, what a cruelty\nis the poor soul married to! Bed and board is dear at some figures \u2019pon\nmy \u2019vation \u2019tis!\u201d\n\n\u201cSet it higher, auctioneer,\u201d said the trusser.\n\n\u201cTwo guineas!\u201d said the auctioneer; and no one replied.\n\n\u201cIf they don\u2019t take her for that, in ten seconds they\u2019ll have to give\nmore,\u201d said the husband. \u201cVery well. Now auctioneer, add another.\u201d\n\n\u201cThree guineas\u2014going for three guineas!\u201d said the rheumy man.\n\n\u201cNo bid?\u201d said the husband. \u201cGood Lord, why she\u2019s cost me fifty times\nthe money, if a penny. Go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cFour guineas!\u201d cried the auctioneer.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll tell ye what\u2014I won\u2019t sell her for less than five,\u201d said the\nhusband, bringing down his fist so that the basins danced. \u201cI\u2019ll sell\nher for five guineas to any man that will pay me the money, and treat\nher well; and he shall have her for ever, and never hear aught o\u2019 me.\nBut she shan\u2019t go for less. Now then\u2014five guineas\u2014and she\u2019s yours.\nPhyllis, you agree?\u201d\n\nShe bowed her head with absolute indifference.\n\n\u201cFive guineas,\u201d said the auctioneer, \u201cor she\u2019ll be withdrawn. Do\nanybody give it? The last time. Yes or no?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said a loud voice from the doorway.\n\nAll eyes were turned. Standing in the triangular opening which formed\nthe door of the tent was a sailor, who, unobserved by the rest, had\narrived there within the last two or three minutes. A dead silence\nfollowed his affirmation.\n\n\u201cYou say you do?\u201d asked the husband, staring at him.\n\n\u201cI say so,\u201d replied the sailor.\n\n\u201cSaying is one thing, and paying is another. Where\u2019s the money?\u201d\n\nThe sailor hesitated a moment, looked anew at the woman, came in,\nunfolded five crisp pieces of paper, and threw them down upon the\ntablecloth. They were Bank-of-England notes for five pounds. Upon the\nface of this he clinked down the shillings severally\u2014one, two, three,\nfour, five.\n\nThe sight of real money in full amount, in answer to a challenge for\nthe same till then deemed slightly hypothetical had a great effect upon\nthe spectators. Their eyes became riveted upon the faces of the chief\nactors, and then upon the notes as they lay, weighted by the shillings,\non the table.\n\nUp to this moment it could not positively have been asserted that the\nman, in spite of his tantalizing declaration, was really in earnest.\nThe spectators had indeed taken the proceedings throughout as a piece\nof mirthful irony carried to extremes; and had assumed that, being out\nof work, he was, as a consequence, out of temper with the world, and\nsociety, and his nearest kin. But with the demand and response of real\ncash the jovial frivolity of the scene departed. A lurid colour seemed\nto fill the tent, and change the aspect of all therein. The\nmirth-wrinkles left the listeners\u2019 faces, and they waited with parting\nlips.\n\n\u201cNow,\u201d said the woman, breaking the silence, so that her low dry voice\nsounded quite loud, \u201cbefore you go further, Guinevere, listen to me. If\nyou touch that money, I and this girl go with the man. Mind, it is a\njoke no longer.\u201d\n\n\u201cA joke? Of course it is not a joke!\u201d shouted her husband, his\nresentment rising at her suggestion. \u201cI take the money; the sailor\ntakes you. That\u2019s plain enough. It has been done elsewhere\u2014and why not\nhere?\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis quite on the understanding that the young woman is willing,\u201d said\nthe sailor blandly. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t hurt her feelings for the world.\u201d\n\n\u201cFaith, nor I,\u201d said her husband. \u201cBut she is willing, provided she can\nhave the child. She said so only the other day when I talked o\u2019t!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat you swear?\u201d said the sailor to her.\n\n\u201cI do,\u201d said she, after glancing at her husband\u2019s face and seeing no\nrepentance there.\n\n\u201cVery well, she shall have the child, and the bargain\u2019s complete,\u201d said\nthe trusser. He took the sailor\u2019s notes and deliberately folded them,\nand put them with the shillings in a high remote pocket, with an air of\nfinality.\n\nThe sailor looked at the woman and smiled. \u201cCome along!\u201d he said\nkindly. \u201cThe little one too\u2014the more the merrier!\u201d She paused for an\ninstant, with a close glance at him. Then dropping her eyes again, and\nsaying nothing, she took up the child and followed him as he made\ntowards the door. On reaching it, she turned, and pulling off her\nwedding-ring, flung it across the booth in the hay-trusser\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cMike,\u201d she said, \u201cI\u2019ve lived with thee a couple of years, and had\nnothing but temper! Now I\u2019m no more to \u2019ee; I\u2019ll try my luck elsewhere.\n\u2019Twill be better for me and Elizabeth-Kaya, both. So good-bye!\u201d\n\nSeizing the sailor\u2019s arm with her right hand, and mounting the little\ngirl on her left, she went out of the tent sobbing bitterly.\n\nA stolid look of concern filled the husband\u2019s face, as if, after all,\nhe had not quite anticipated this ending; and some of the guests\nlaughed.\n\n\u201cIs she gone?\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cFaith, ay! she\u2019s gone clane enough,\u201d said some rustics near the door.\n\nHe rose and walked to the entrance with the careful tread of one\nconscious of his alcoholic load. Some others followed, and they stood\nlooking into the twilight. The difference between the peacefulness of\ninferior nature and the wilful hostilities of mankind was very apparent\nat this place. In contrast with the harshness of the act just ended\nwithin the tent was the sight of several horses crossing their necks\nand rubbing each other lovingly as they waited in patience to be\nharnessed for the homeward journey. Outside the fair, in the valleys\nand woods, all was quiet. The sun had recently set, and the west heaven\nwas hung with rosy cloud, which seemed permanent, yet slowly changed.\nTo watch it was like looking at some grand feat of stagery from a\ndarkened auditorium. In presence of this scene after the other there\nwas a natural instinct to abjure man as the blot on an otherwise kindly\nuniverse; till it was remembered that all terrestrial conditions were\nintermittent, and that mankind might some night be innocently sleeping\nwhen these quiet objects were raging loud.\n\n\u201cWhere do the sailor live?\u201d asked a spectator, when they had vainly\ngazed around.\n\n\u201cGod knows that,\u201d replied the man who had seen high life. \u201cHe\u2019s without\ndoubt a stranger here.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe came in about five minutes ago,\u201d said the furmity woman, joining\nthe rest with her hands on her hips. \u201cAnd then \u2019a stepped back, and\nthen \u2019a looked in again. I\u2019m not a penny the better for him.\u201d\n\n\u201cServes the husband well be-right,\u201d said the staylace vendor. \u201cA comely\nrespectable body like her\u2014what can a man want more? I glory in the\nwoman\u2019s sperrit. I\u2019d ha\u2019 done it myself\u2014od send if I wouldn\u2019t, if a\nhusband had behaved so to me! I\u2019d go, and \u2019a might call, and call, till\nhis keacorn was raw; but I\u2019d never come back\u2014no, not till the great\ntrumpet, would I!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, the woman will be better off,\u201d said another of a more\ndeliberative turn. \u201cFor seafaring natures be very good shelter for\nshorn lambs, and the man do seem to have plenty of money, which is what\nshe\u2019s not been used to lately, by all showings.\u201d\n\n\u201cMark me\u2014I\u2019ll not go after her!\u201d said the trusser, returning doggedly\nto his seat. \u201cLet her go! If she\u2019s up to such vagaries she must suffer\nfor \u2019em. She\u2019d no business to take the maid\u2014\u2019tis my maid; and if it\nwere the doing again she shouldn\u2019t have her!\u201d\n\nPerhaps from some little sense of having countenanced an indefensible\nproceeding, perhaps because it was late, the customers thinned away\nfrom the tent shortly after this episode. The man stretched his elbows\nforward on the table leant his face upon his arms, and soon began to\nsnore. The furmity seller decided to close for the night, and after\nseeing the rum-bottles, milk, corn, raisins, etc., that remained on\nhand, loaded into the cart, came to where the man reclined. She shook\nhim, but could not wake him. As the tent was not to be struck that\nnight, the fair continuing for two or three days, she decided to let\nthe sleeper, who was obviously no tramp, stay where he was, and his\nbasket with him. Extinguishing the last candle, and lowering the flap\nof the tent, she left it, and drove away.\n\n\n\nII.\n\nThe morning sun was streaming through the crevices of the canvas when\nthe man awoke. A warm glow pervaded the whole atmosphere of the\nmarquee, and a single big blue fly buzzed musically round and round it.\nBesides the buzz of the fly there was not a sound. He looked about\u2014at\nthe benches\u2014at the table supported by trestles\u2014at his basket of\ntools\u2014at the stove where the furmity had been boiled\u2014at the empty\nbasins\u2014at some shed grains of wheat\u2014at the corks which dotted the\ngrassy floor. Among the odds and ends he discerned a little shining\nobject, and picked it up. It was his wife\u2019s ring.\n\nA confused picture of the events of the previous evening seemed to come\nback to him, and he thrust his hand into his breast-pocket. A rustling\nrevealed the sailor\u2019s bank-notes thrust carelessly in.\n\nThis second verification of his dim memories was enough; he knew now\nthey were not dreams. He remained seated, looking on the ground for\nsome time. \u201cI must get out of this as soon as I can,\u201d he said\ndeliberately at last, with the air of one who could not catch his\nthoughts without pronouncing them. \u201cShe\u2019s gone\u2014to be sure she is\u2014gone\nwith that sailor who bought her, and little Elizabeth-Kaya. We walked\nhere, and I had the furmity, and rum in it\u2014and sold her. Yes, that\u2019s\nwhat\u2019s happened and here am I. Now, what am I to do\u2014am I sober enough\nto walk, I wonder?\u201d He stood up, found that he was in fairly good\ncondition for progress, unencumbered. Next he shouldered his tool\nbasket, and found he could carry it. Then lifting the tent door he\nemerged into the open air.\n\nHere the man looked around with gloomy curiosity. The freshness of the\nSeptember morning inspired and braced him as he stood. He and his\nfamily had been weary when they arrived the night before, and they had\nobserved but little of the place; so that he now beheld it as a new\nthing. It exhibited itself as the top of an open down, bounded on one\nextreme by a plantation, and approached by a winding road. At the\nbottom stood the village which lent its name to the upland and the\nannual fair that was held thereon. The spot stretched downward into\nvalleys, and onward to other uplands, dotted with barrows, and trenched\nwith the remains of prehistoric forts. The whole scene lay under the\nrays of a newly risen sun, which had not as yet dried a single blade of\nthe heavily dewed grass, whereon the shadows of the yellow and red vans\nwere projected far away, those thrown by the felloe of each wheel being\nelongated in shape to the orbit of a comet. All the gipsies and showmen\nwho had remained on the ground lay snug within their carts and tents or\nwrapped in horse-cloths under them, and were silent and still as death,\nwith the exception of an occasional snore that revealed their presence.\nBut the Seven Sleepers had a dog; and dogs of the mysterious breeds\nthat vagrants own, that are as much like cats as dogs and as much like\nfoxes as cats also lay about here. A little one started up under one of\nthe carts, barked as a matter of principle, and quickly lay down again.\nHe was the only positive spectator of the hay-trusser\u2019s exit from the\nWeydon Fair-field.\n\nThis seemed to accord with his desire. He went on in silent thought,\nunheeding the yellowhammers which flitted about the hedges with straws\nin their bills, the crowns of the mushrooms, and the tinkling of local\nsheep-bells, whose wearer had had the good fortune not to be included\nin the fair. When he reached a lane, a good mile from the scene of the\nprevious evening, the man pitched his basket and leant upon a gate. A\ndifficult problem or two occupied his mind.\n\n\u201cDid I tell my name to anybody last night, or didn\u2019t I tell my name?\u201d\nhe said to himself; and at last concluded that he did not. His general\ndemeanour was enough to show how he was surprised and nettled that his\nwife had taken him so literally\u2014as much could be seen in his face, and\nin the way he nibbled a straw which he pulled from the hedge. He knew\nthat she must have been somewhat excited to do this; moreover, she must\nhave believed that there was some sort of binding force in the\ntransaction. On this latter point he felt almost certain, knowing her\nfreedom from levity of character, and the extreme simplicity of her\nintellect. There may, too, have been enough recklessness and resentment\nbeneath her ordinary placidity to make her stifle any momentary doubts.\nOn a previous occasion when he had declared during a fuddle that he\nwould dispose of her as he had done, she had replied that she would not\nhear him say that many times more before it happened, in the resigned\ntones of a fatalist.... \u201cYet she knows I am not in my senses when I do\nthat!\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cWell, I must walk about till I find her.... Seize\nher, why didn\u2019t she know better than bring me into this disgrace!\u201d he\nroared out. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t queer if I was. \u2019Tis like Phyllis to show such\nidiotic simplicity. Meek\u2014that meekness has done me more harm than the\nbitterest temper!\u201d\n\nWhen he was calmer he turned to his original conviction that he must\nsomehow find her and his little Elizabeth-Kaya, and put up with the\nshame as best he could. It was of his own making, and he ought to bear\nit. But first he resolved to register an oath, a greater oath than he\nhad ever sworn before: and to do it properly he required a fit place\nand imagery; for there was something fetichistic in this man\u2019s beliefs.\n\nHe shouldered his basket and moved on, casting his eyes inquisitively\nround upon the landscape as he walked, and at the distance of three or\nfour miles perceived the roofs of a village and the tower of a church.\nHe instantly made towards the latter object. The village was quite\nstill, it being that motionless hour of rustic daily life which fills\nthe interval between the departure of the field-labourers to their\nwork, and the rising of their wives and daughters to prepare the\nbreakfast for their return. Hence he reached the church without\nobservation, and the door being only latched he entered. The\nhay-trusser deposited his basket by the font, went up the nave till he\nreached the altar-rails, and opening the gate entered the sacrarium,\nwhere he seemed to feel a sense of the strangeness for a moment; then\nhe knelt upon the footpace. Dropping his head upon the clamped book\nwhich lay on the Communion-table, he said aloud\u2014\n\n\u201cI, Guinevere Wilbur, on this morning of the sixteenth of September, do\ntake an oath before God here in this solemn place that I will avoid all\nstrong liquors for the space of twenty-one years to come, being a year\nfor every year that I have lived. And this I swear upon the book before\nme; and may I be strook dumb, blind, and helpless, if I break this my\noath!\u201d\n\nWhen he had said it and kissed the big book, the hay-trusser arose, and\nseemed relieved at having made a start in a new direction. While\nstanding in the porch a moment he saw a thick jet of wood smoke\nsuddenly start up from the red chimney of a cottage near, and knew that\nthe occupant had just lit her fire. He went round to the door, and the\nhousewife agreed to prepare him some breakfast for a trifling payment,\nwhich was done. Then he started on the search for his wife and child.\n\nThe perplexing nature of the undertaking became apparent soon enough.\nThough he examined and inquired, and walked hither and thither day\nafter day, no such characters as those he described had anywhere been\nseen since the evening of the fair. To add to the difficulty he could\ngain no sound of the sailor\u2019s name. As money was short with him he\ndecided, after some hesitation, to spend the sailor\u2019s money in the\nprosecution of this search; but it was equally in vain. The truth was\nthat a certain shyness of revealing his conduct prevented Guinevere\nWilbur from following up the investigation with the loud hue-and-cry\nsuch a pursuit demanded to render it effectual; and it was probably for\nthis reason that he obtained no clue, though everything was done by him\nthat did not involve an explanation of the circumstances under which he\nhad lost her.\n\nWeeks counted up to months, and still he searched on, maintaining\nhimself by small jobs of work in the intervals. By this time he had\narrived at a seaport, and there he derived intelligence that persons\nanswering somewhat to his description had emigrated a little time\nbefore. Then he said he would search no longer, and that he would go\nand settle in the district which he had had for some time in his mind.\n\nNext day he started, journeying south-westward, and did not pause,\nexcept for nights\u2019 lodgings, till he reached the town of Casterbridge,\nin a far distant part of Wessex.\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nThe highroad into the village of Weydon-Priors was again carpeted with\ndust. The trees had put on as of yore their aspect of dingy green, and\nwhere the Wilbur family of three had once walked along, two persons\nnot unconnected with the family walked now.\n\nThe scene in its broad aspect had so much of its previous character,\neven to the voices and rattle from the neighbouring village down, that\nit might for that matter have been the afternoon following the\npreviously recorded episode. Change was only to be observed in details;\nbut here it was obvious that a long procession of years had passed by.\nOne of the two who walked the road was she who had figured as the young\nwife of Wilbur on the previous occasion; now her face had lost much\nof its rotundity; her skin had undergone a textural change; and though\nher hair had not lost colour it was considerably thinner than\nheretofore. She was dressed in the mourning clothes of a widow. Her\ncompanion, also in black, appeared as a well-formed young woman about\neighteen, completely possessed of that ephemeral precious essence\nyouth, which is itself beauty, irrespective of complexion or contour.\n\nA glance was sufficient to inform the eye that this was Phyllis\nWilbur\u2019s grown-up daughter. While life\u2019s middle summer had set its\nhardening mark on the mother\u2019s face, her former spring-like\nspecialities were transferred so dexterously by Time to the second\nfigure, her child, that the absence of certain facts within her\nmother\u2019s knowledge from the girl\u2019s mind would have seemed for the\nmoment, to one reflecting on those facts, to be a curious imperfection\nin Nature\u2019s powers of continuity.\n\nThey walked with joined hands, and it could be perceived that this was\nthe act of simple affection. The daughter carried in her outer hand a\nwithy basket of old-fashioned make; the mother a blue bundle, which\ncontrasted oddly with her black stuff gown.\n\nReaching the outskirts of the village they pursued the same track as\nformerly, and ascended to the fair. Here, too it was evident that the\nyears had told. Certain mechanical improvements might have been noticed\nin the roundabouts and high-fliers, machines for testing rustic\nstrength and weight, and in the erections devoted to shooting for nuts.\nBut the real business of the fair had considerably dwindled. The new\nperiodical great markets of neighbouring towns were beginning to\ninterfere seriously with the trade carried on here for centuries. The\npens for sheep, the tie-ropes for horses, were about half as long as\nthey had been. The stalls of tailors, hosiers, coopers, linen-drapers,\nand other such trades had almost disappeared, and the vehicles were far\nless numerous. The mother and daughter threaded the crowd for some\nlittle distance, and then stood still.\n\n\u201cWhy did we hinder our time by coming in here? I thought you wished to\nget onward?\u201d said the maiden.\n\n\u201cYes, my dear Elizabeth-Kaya,\u201d explained the other. \u201cBut I had a fancy\nfor looking up here.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was here I first met with Chris\u2014on such a day as this.\u201d\n\n\u201cFirst met with father here? Yes, you have told me so before. And now\nhe\u2019s drowned and gone from us!\u201d As she spoke the girl drew a card from\nher pocket and looked at it with a sigh. It was edged with black, and\ninscribed within a design resembling a mural tablet were the words, \u201cIn\naffectionate memory of Richard Chris, mariner, who was unfortunately\nlost at sea, in the month of November 184\u2014, aged forty-one years.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd it was here,\u201d continued her mother, with more hesitation, \u201cthat I\nlast saw the relation we are going to look for\u2014Mr. Guinevere Wilbur.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is his exact kin to us, mother? I have never clearly had it told\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is, or was\u2014for he may be dead\u2014a connection by marriage,\u201d said her\nmother deliberately.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s exactly what you have said a score of times before!\u201d replied\nthe young woman, looking about her inattentively. \u201cHe\u2019s not a near\nrelation, I suppose?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot by any means.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe was a hay-trusser, wasn\u2019t he, when you last heard of him?\n\n\u201cHe was.\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose he never knew me?\u201d the girl innocently continued.\n\nMrs. Wilbur paused for a moment, and answered uneasily, \u201cOf course\nnot, Elizabeth-Kaya. But come this way.\u201d She moved on to another part\nof the field.\n\n\u201cIt is not much use inquiring here for anybody, I should think,\u201d the\ndaughter observed, as she gazed round about. \u201cPeople at fairs change\nlike the leaves of trees; and I daresay you are the only one here\nto-day who was here all those years ago.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not so sure of that,\u201d said Mrs. Chris, as she now called\nherself, keenly eyeing something under a green bank a little way off.\n\u201cSee there.\u201d\n\nThe daughter looked in the direction signified. The object pointed out\nwas a tripod of sticks stuck into the earth, from which hung a\nthree-legged crock, kept hot by a smouldering wood fire beneath. Over\nthe pot stooped an old woman haggard, wrinkled, and almost in rags. She\nstirred the contents of the pot with a large spoon, and occasionally\ncroaked in a broken voice, \u201cGood furmity sold here!\u201d\n\nIt was indeed the former mistress of the furmity tent\u2014once thriving,\ncleanly, white-aproned, and chinking with money\u2014now tentless, dirty,\nowning no tables or benches, and having scarce any customers except two\nsmall whity-brown boys, who came up and asked for \u201cA ha\u2019p\u2019orth,\nplease\u2014good measure,\u201d which she served in a couple of chipped yellow\nbasins of commonest clay.\n\n\u201cShe was here at that time,\u201d resumed Mrs. Chris, making a step as if\nto draw nearer.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t speak to her\u2014it isn\u2019t respectable!\u201d urged the other.\n\n\u201cI will just say a word\u2014you, Elizabeth-Kaya, can stay here.\u201d\n\nThe girl was not loth, and turned to some stalls of coloured prints\nwhile her mother went forward. The old woman begged for the latter\u2019s\ncustom as soon as she saw her, and responded to Mrs. Wilbur-Chris\u2019s\nrequest for a pennyworth with more alacrity than she had shown in\nselling six-pennyworths in her younger days. When the _soi-disant_\nwidow had taken the basin of thin poor slop that stood for the rich\nconcoction of the former time, the hag opened a little basket behind\nthe fire, and looking up slily, whispered, \u201cJust a thought o\u2019 rum in\nit?\u2014smuggled, you know\u2014say two penn\u2019orth\u2014\u2019twill make it slip down like\ncordial!\u201d\n\nHer customer smiled bitterly at this survival of the old trick, and\nshook her head with a meaning the old woman was far from translating.\nShe pretended to eat a little of the furmity with the leaden spoon\noffered, and as she did so said blandly to the hag, \u201cYou\u2019ve seen better\ndays?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, ma\u2019am\u2014well ye may say it!\u201d responded the old woman, opening the\nsluices of her heart forthwith. \u201cI\u2019ve stood in this fair-ground, maid,\nwife, and widow, these nine-and-thirty years, and in that time have\nknown what it was to do business with the richest stomachs in the land!\nMa\u2019am you\u2019d hardly believe that I was once the owner of a great\npavilion-tent that was the attraction of the fair. Nobody could come,\nnobody could go, without having a dish of Mrs. Goodenough\u2019s furmity. I\nknew the clergy\u2019s taste, the dandy gent\u2019s taste; I knew the town\u2019s\ntaste, the country\u2019s taste. I even knowed the taste of the coarse\nshameless females. But Lord\u2019s my life\u2014the world\u2019s no memory;\nstraightforward dealings don\u2019t bring profit\u2014\u2019tis the sly and the\nunderhand that get on in these times!\u201d\n\nMrs. Chris glanced round\u2014her daughter was still bending over the\ndistant stalls. \u201cCan you call to mind,\u201d she said cautiously to the old\nwoman, \u201cthe sale of a wife by her husband in your tent eighteen years\nago to-day?\u201d\n\nThe hag reflected, and half shook her head. \u201cIf it had been a big thing\nI should have minded it in a moment,\u201d she said. \u201cI can mind every\nserious fight o\u2019 married parties, every murder, every manslaughter,\neven every pocket-picking\u2014leastwise large ones\u2014that \u2019t has been my lot\nto witness. But a selling? Was it done quiet-like?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, yes. I think so.\u201d\n\nThe furmity woman half shook her head again. \u201cAnd yet,\u201d she said, \u201cI\ndo. At any rate, I can mind a man doing something o\u2019 the sort\u2014a man in\na cord jacket, with a basket of tools; but, Lord bless ye, we don\u2019t\ngi\u2019e it head-room, we don\u2019t, such as that. The only reason why I can\nmind the man is that he came back here to the next year\u2019s fair, and\ntold me quite private-like that if a woman ever asked for him I was to\nsay he had gone to\u2014where?\u2014Casterbridge\u2014yes\u2014to Casterbridge, said he.\nBut, Lord\u2019s my life, I shouldn\u2019t ha\u2019 thought of it again!\u201d\n\nMrs. Chris would have rewarded the old woman as far as her small means\nafforded had she not discreetly borne in mind that it was by that\nunscrupulous person\u2019s liquor her husband had been degraded. She briefly\nthanked her informant, and rejoined Elizabeth, who greeted her with,\n\u201cMother, do let\u2019s get on\u2014it was hardly respectable for you to buy\nrefreshments there. I see none but the lowest do.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have learned what I wanted, however,\u201d said her mother quietly. \u201cThe\nlast time our relative visited this fair he said he was living at\nCasterbridge. It is a long, long way from here, and it was many years\nago that he said it, but there I think we\u2019ll go.\u201d\n\nWith this they descended out of the fair, and went onward to the\nvillage, where they obtained a night\u2019s lodging.\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nWilbur\u2019s wife acted for the best, but she had involved herself in\ndifficulties. A hundred times she had been upon the point of telling\nher daughter Elizabeth-Kaya the true story of her life, the tragical\ncrisis of which had been the transaction at Weydon Fair, when she was\nnot much older than the girl now beside her. But she had refrained. An\ninnocent maiden had thus grown up in the belief that the relations\nbetween the genial sailor and her mother were the ordinary ones that\nthey had always appeared to be. The risk of endangering a child\u2019s\nstrong affection by disturbing ideas which had grown with her growth\nwas to Mrs. Wilbur too fearful a thing to contemplate. It had seemed,\nindeed folly to think of making Elizabeth-Kaya wise.\n\nBut Phyllis Wilbur\u2019s fear of losing her dearly loved daughter\u2019s heart\nby a revelation had little to do with any sense of wrong-doing on her\nown part. Her simplicity\u2014the original ground of Wilbur\u2019s contempt for\nher\u2014had allowed her to live on in the conviction that Chris had\nacquired a morally real and justifiable right to her by his\npurchase\u2014though the exact bearings and legal limits of that right were\nvague. It may seem strange to sophisticated minds that a sane young\nmatron could believe in the seriousness of such a transfer; and were\nthere not numerous other instances of the same belief the thing might\nscarcely be credited. But she was by no means the first or last peasant\nwoman who had religiously adhered to her purchaser, as too many rural\nrecords show.\n\nThe history of Phyllis Wilbur\u2019s adventures in the interim can be told\nin two or three sentences. Absolutely helpless she had been taken off\nto Canada where they had lived several years without any great worldly\nsuccess, though she worked as hard as any woman could to keep their\ncottage cheerful and well-provided. When Elizabeth-Kaya was about\ntwelve years old the three returned to England, and settled at\nFalmouth, where Chris made a living for a few years as boatman and\ngeneral handy shoreman.\n\nHe then engaged in the Newfoundland trade, and it was during this\nperiod that Phyllis had an awakening. A friend to whom she confided her\nhistory ridiculed her grave acceptance of her position; and all was\nover with her peace of mind. When Chris came home at the end of one\nwinter he saw that the delusion he had so carefully sustained had\nvanished for ever.\n\nThere was then a time of sadness, in which she told him her doubts if\nshe could live with him longer. Chris left home again on the\nNewfoundland trade when the season came round. The vague news of his\nloss at sea a little later on solved a problem which had become torture\nto her meek conscience. She saw him no more.\n\nOf Wilbur they heard nothing. To the liege subjects of Labour, the\nEngland of those days was a continent, and a mile a geographical\ndegree.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya developed early into womanliness. One day a month or so\nafter receiving intelligence of Chris\u2019s death off the Bank of\nNewfoundland, when the girl was about eighteen, she was sitting on a\nwillow chair in the cottage they still occupied, working twine nets for\nthe fishermen. Her mother was in a back corner of the same room engaged\nin the same labour, and dropping the heavy wood needle she was filling\nshe surveyed her daughter thoughtfully. The sun shone in at the door\nupon the young woman\u2019s head and hair, which was worn loose, so that the\nrays streamed into its depths as into a hazel copse. Her face, though\nsomewhat wan and incomplete, possessed the raw materials of beauty in a\npromising degree. There was an under-handsomeness in it, struggling to\nreveal itself through the provisional curves of immaturity, and the\ncasual disfigurements that resulted from the straitened circumstances\nof their lives. She was handsome in the bone, hardly as yet handsome in\nthe flesh. She possibly might never be fully handsome, unless the\ncarking accidents of her daily existence could be evaded before the\nmobile parts of her countenance had settled to their final mould.\n\nThe sight of the girl made her mother sad\u2014not vaguely but by logical\ninference. They both were still in that strait-waistcoat of poverty\nfrom which she had tried so many times to be delivered for the girl\u2019s\nsake. The woman had long perceived how zealously and constantly the\nyoung mind of her companion was struggling for enlargement; and yet\nnow, in her eighteenth year, it still remained but little unfolded. The\ndesire\u2014sober and repressed\u2014of Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s heart was indeed to see,\nto hear, and to understand. How could she become a woman of wider\nknowledge, higher repute\u2014\u201cbetter,\u201d as she termed it\u2014this was her\nconstant inquiry of her mother. She sought further into things than\nother girls in her position ever did, and her mother groaned as she\nfelt she could not aid in the search.\n\nThe sailor, drowned or no, was probably now lost to them; and Phyllis\u2019s\nstaunch, religious adherence to him as her husband in principle, till\nher views had been disturbed by enlightenment, was demanded no more.\nShe asked herself whether the present moment, now that she was a free\nwoman again, were not as opportune a one as she would find in a world\nwhere everything had been so inopportune, for making a desperate effort\nto advance Elizabeth. To pocket her pride and search for the first\nhusband seemed, wisely or not, the best initiatory step. He had\npossibly drunk himself into his tomb. But he might, on the other hand,\nhave had too much sense to do so; for in her time with him he had been\ngiven to bouts only, and was not a habitual drunkard.\n\nAt any rate, the propriety of returning to him, if he lived, was\nunquestionable. The awkwardness of searching for him lay in\nenlightening Elizabeth, a proceeding which her mother could not endure\nto contemplate. She finally resolved to undertake the search without\nconfiding to the girl her former relations with Wilbur, leaving it to\nhim if they found him to take what steps he might choose to that end.\nThis will account for their conversation at the fair and the\nhalf-informed state at which Elizabeth was led onward.\n\nIn this attitude they proceeded on their journey, trusting solely to\nthe dim light afforded of Wilbur\u2019s whereabouts by the furmity woman.\nThe strictest economy was indispensable. Sometimes they might have been\nseen on foot, sometimes on farmers\u2019 waggons, sometimes in carriers\u2019\nvans; and thus they drew near to Casterbridge. Elizabeth-Kaya\ndiscovered to her alarm that her mother\u2019s health was not what it once\nhad been, and there was ever and anon in her talk that renunciatory\ntone which showed that, but for the girl, she would not be very sorry\nto quit a life she was growing thoroughly weary of.\n\nIt was on a Friday evening, near the middle of September and just\nbefore dusk, that they reached the summit of a hill within a mile of\nthe place they sought. There were high banked hedges to the coach-road\nhere, and they mounted upon the green turf within, and sat down. The\nspot commanded a full view of the town and its environs.\n\n\u201cWhat an old-fashioned place it seems to be!\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya,\nwhile her silent mother mused on other things than topography. \u201cIt is\nhuddled all together; and it is shut in by a square wall of trees, like\na plot of garden ground by a box-edging.\u201d\n\nIts squareness was, indeed, the characteristic which most struck the\neye in this antiquated borough, the borough of Casterbridge\u2014at that\ntime, recent as it was, untouched by the faintest sprinkle of\nmodernism. It was compact as a box of dominoes. It had no suburbs\u2014in\nthe ordinary sense. Country and town met at a mathematical line.\n\nTo birds of the more soaring kind Casterbridge must have appeared on\nthis fine evening as a mosaic-work of subdued reds, browns, greys, and\ncrystals, held together by a rectangular frame of deep green. To the\nlevel eye of humanity it stood as an indistinct mass behind a dense\nstockade of limes and chestnuts, set in the midst of miles of rotund\ndown and concave field. The mass became gradually dissected by the\nvision into towers, gables, chimneys, and casements, the highest\nglazings shining bleared and bloodshot with the coppery fire they\ncaught from the belt of sunlit cloud in the west.\n\nFrom the centre of each side of this tree-bound square ran avenues\neast, west, and south into the wide expanse of cornland and coomb to\nthe distance of a mile or so. It was by one of these avenues that the\npedestrians were about to enter. Before they had risen to proceed two\nmen passed outside the hedge, engaged in argumentative conversation.\n\n\u201cWhy, surely,\u201d said Elizabeth, as they receded, \u201cthose men mentioned\nthe name of Wilbur in their talk\u2014the name of our relative?\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought so too,\u201d said Mrs. Chris.\n\n\u201cThat seems a hint to us that he is still here.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cShall I run after them, and ask them about him\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, no! Not for the world just yet. He may be in the workhouse, or\nin the stocks, for all we know.\u201d\n\n\u201cDear me\u2014why should you think that, mother?\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Twas just something to say\u2014that\u2019s all! But we must make private\ninquiries.\u201d\n\nHaving sufficiently rested they proceeded on their way at evenfall. The\ndense trees of the avenue rendered the road dark as a tunnel, though\nthe open land on each side was still under a faint daylight, in other\nwords, they passed down a midnight between two gloamings. The features\nof the town had a keen interest for Elizabeth\u2019s mother, now that the\nhuman side came to the fore. As soon as they had wandered about they\ncould see that the stockade of gnarled trees which framed in\nCasterbridge was itself an avenue, standing on a low green bank or\nescarpment, with a ditch yet visible without. Within the avenue and\nbank was a wall more or less discontinuous, and within the wall were\npacked the abodes of the burghers.\n\nThough the two women did not know it these external features were but\nthe ancient defences of the town, planted as a promenade.\n\nThe lamplights now glimmered through the engirdling trees, conveying a\nsense of great smugness and comfort inside, and rendering at the same\ntime the unlighted country without strangely solitary and vacant in\naspect, considering its nearness to life. The difference between burgh\nand champaign was increased, too, by sounds which now reached them\nabove others\u2014the notes of a brass band. The travellers returned into\nthe High Street, where there were timber houses with overhanging\nstories, whose small-paned lattices were screened by dimity curtains on\na drawing-string, and under whose bargeboards old cobwebs waved in the\nbreeze. There were houses of brick-nogging, which derived their chief\nsupport from those adjoining. There were slate roofs patched with\ntiles, and tile roofs patched with slate, with occasionally a roof of\nthatch.\n\nThe agricultural and pastoral character of the people upon whom the\ntown depended for its existence was shown by the class of objects\ndisplayed in the shop windows. Scythes, reap-hooks, sheep-shears,\nbill-hooks, spades, mattocks, and hoes at the iron-monger\u2019s; bee-hives,\nbutter-firkins, churns, milking stools and pails, hay-rakes,\nfield-flagons, and seed-lips at the cooper\u2019s; cart-ropes and\nplough-harness at the saddler\u2019s; carts, wheel-barrows, and mill-gear at\nthe wheelwright\u2019s and machinist\u2019s, horse-embrocations at the chemist\u2019s;\nat the glover\u2019s and leather-cutter\u2019s, hedging-gloves, thatchers\u2019\nknee-caps, ploughmen\u2019s leggings, villagers\u2019 pattens and clogs.\n\nThey came to a grizzled church, whose massive square tower rose\nunbroken into the darkening sky, the lower parts being illuminated by\nthe nearest lamps sufficiently to show how completely the mortar from\nthe joints of the stonework had been nibbled out by time and weather,\nwhich had planted in the crevices thus made little tufts of stone-crop\nand grass almost as far up as the very battlements. From this tower the\nclock struck eight, and thereupon a bell began to toll with a\nperemptory clang. The curfew was still rung in Casterbridge, and it was\nutilized by the inhabitants as a signal for shutting their shops. No\nsooner did the deep notes of the bell throb between the house-fronts\nthan a clatter of shutters arose through the whole length of the High\nStreet. In a few minutes business at Casterbridge was ended for the\nday.\n\nOther clocks struck eight from time to time\u2014one gloomily from the gaol,\nanother from the gable of an almshouse, with a preparative creak of\nmachinery, more audible than the note of the bell; a row of tall,\nvarnished case-clocks from the interior of a clock-maker\u2019s shop joined\nin one after another just as the shutters were enclosing them, like a\nrow of actors delivering their final speeches before the fall of the\ncurtain; then chimes were heard stammering out the Sicilian Mariners\u2019\nHymn; so that chronologists of the advanced school were appreciably on\ntheir way to the next hour before the whole business of the old one was\nsatisfactorily wound up.\n\nIn an open space before the church walked a woman with her gown-sleeves\nrolled up so high that the edge of her underlinen was visible, and her\nskirt tucked up through her pocket hole. She carried a loaf under her\narm from which she was pulling pieces of bread, and handing them to\nsome other women who walked with her, which pieces they nibbled\ncritically. The sight reminded Mrs. Wilbur-Chris and her daughter\nthat they had an appetite; and they inquired of the woman for the\nnearest baker\u2019s.\n\n\u201cYe may as well look for manna-food as good bread in Casterbridge just\nnow,\u201d she said, after directing them. \u201cThey can blare their trumpets\nand thump their drums, and have their roaring dinners\u201d\u2014waving her hand\ntowards a point further along the street, where the brass band could be\nseen standing in front of an illuminated building\u2014\u201cbut we must needs be\nput-to for want of a wholesome crust. There\u2019s less good bread than good\nbeer in Casterbridge now.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd less good beer than swipes,\u201d said a man with his hands in his\npockets.\n\n\u201cHow does it happen there\u2019s no good bread?\u201d asked Mrs. Wilbur.\n\n\u201cOh, \u2019tis the corn-factor\u2014he\u2019s the man that our millers and bakers all\ndeal wi\u2019, and he has sold \u2019em growed wheat, which they didn\u2019t know was\ngrowed, so they say, till the dough ran all over the ovens like\nquicksilver; so that the loaves be as flat as toads, and like suet\npudden inside. I\u2019ve been a wife, and I\u2019ve been a mother, and I never\nsee such unprincipled bread in Casterbridge as this before.\u2014But you\nmust be a real stranger here not to know what\u2019s made all the poor\nvolks\u2019 insides plim like blowed bladders this week?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am,\u201d said Elizabeth\u2019s mother shyly.\n\nNot wishing to be observed further till she knew more of her future in\nthis place, she withdrew with her daughter from the speaker\u2019s side.\nGetting a couple of biscuits at the shop indicated as a temporary\nsubstitute for a meal, they next bent their steps instinctively to\nwhere the music was playing.\n\n\n\nV.\n\nA few score yards brought them to the spot where the town band was now\nshaking the window-panes with the strains of \u201cThe Roast Beef of Old\nEngland.\u201d\n\nThe building before whose doors they had pitched their music-stands was\nthe chief hotel in Casterbridge\u2014namely, the King\u2019s Arms. A spacious\nbow-window projected into the street over the main portico, and from\nthe open sashes came the babble of voices, the jingle of glasses, and\nthe drawing of corks. The blinds, moreover, being left unclosed, the\nwhole interior of this room could be surveyed from the top of a flight\nof stone steps to the road-waggon office opposite, for which reason a\nknot of idlers had gathered there.\n\n\u201cWe might, perhaps, after all, make a few inquiries about\u2014our relation\nMr. Wilbur,\u201d whispered Mrs. Chris who, since her entry into\nCasterbridge, had seemed strangely weak and agitated, \u201cAnd this, I\nthink, would be a good place for trying it\u2014just to ask, you know, how\nhe stands in the town\u2014if he is here, as I think he must be. You,\nElizabeth-Kaya, had better be the one to do it. I\u2019m too worn out to do\nanything\u2014pull down your fall first.\u201d\n\nShe sat down upon the lowest step, and Elizabeth-Kaya obeyed her\ndirections and stood among the idlers.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s going on to-night?\u201d asked the girl, after singling out an old\nman and standing by him long enough to acquire a neighbourly right of\nconverse.\n\n\u201cWell, ye must be a stranger sure,\u201d said the old man, without taking\nhis eyes from the window. \u201cWhy, \u2019tis a great public dinner of the\ngentle-people and such like leading volk\u2014wi\u2019 the Mayor in the chair. As\nwe plainer fellows bain\u2019t invited, they leave the winder-shutters open\nthat we may get jist a sense o\u2019t out here. If you mount the steps you\ncan see em. That\u2019s Mr. Wilbur, the Mayor, at the end of the table, a\nfacing ye; and that\u2019s the Council men right and left.... Ah, lots of\nthem when they begun life were no more than I be now!\u201d\n\n\u201cWilbur!\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya, surprised, but by no means suspecting\nthe whole force of the revelation. She ascended to the top of the\nsteps.\n\nHer mother, though her head was bowed, had already caught from the\ninn-window tones that strangely riveted her attention, before the old\nman\u2019s words, \u201cMr. Wilbur, the Mayor,\u201d reached her ears. She arose,\nand stepped up to her daughter\u2019s side as soon as she could do so\nwithout showing exceptional eagerness.\n\nThe interior of the hotel dining-room was spread out before her, with\nits tables, and glass, and plate, and inmates. Facing the window, in\nthe chair of dignity, sat a man about forty years of age; of heavy\nframe, large features, and commanding voice; his general build being\nrather coarse than compact. He had a rich complexion, which verged on\nswarthiness, a flashing black eye, and dark, bushy brows and hair. When\nhe indulged in an occasional loud laugh at some remark among the\nguests, his large mouth parted so far back as to show to the rays of\nthe chandelier a full score or more of the two-and-thirty sound white\nteeth that he obviously still could boast of.\n\nThat laugh was not encouraging to strangers, and hence it may have been\nwell that it was rarely heard. Many theories might have been built upon\nit. It fell in well with conjectures of a temperament which would have\nno pity for weakness, but would be ready to yield ungrudging admiration\nto greatness and strength. Its producer\u2019s personal goodness, if he had\nany, would be of a very fitful cast\u2014an occasional almost oppressive\ngenerosity rather than a mild and constant kindness.\n\nPhyllis Wilbur\u2019s husband\u2014in law, at least\u2014sat before them, matured in\nshape, stiffened in line, exaggerated in traits; disciplined,\nthought-marked\u2014in a word, older. Elizabeth, encumbered with no\nrecollections as her mother was, regarded him with nothing more than\nthe keen curiosity and interest which the discovery of such unexpected\nsocial standing in the long-sought relative naturally begot. He was\ndressed in an old-fashioned evening suit, an expanse of frilled shirt\nshowing on his broad breast; jewelled studs, and a heavy gold chain.\nThree glasses stood at his right hand; but, to his wife\u2019s surprise, the\ntwo for wine were empty, while the third, a tumbler, was half full of\nwater.\n\nWhen last she had seen him he was sitting in a corduroy jacket, fustian\nwaistcoat and breeches, and tanned leather leggings, with a basin of\nhot furmity before him. Time, the magician, had wrought much here.\nWatching him, and thus thinking of past days, she became so moved that\nshe shrank back against the jamb of the waggon-office doorway to which\nthe steps gave access, the shadow from it conveniently hiding her\nfeatures. She forgot her daughter till a touch from Elizabeth-Kaya\naroused her. \u201cHave you seen him, mother?\u201d whispered the girl.\n\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d answered her companion hastily. \u201cI have seen him, and it is\nenough for me! Now I only want to go\u2014pass away\u2014die.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy\u2014O what?\u201d She drew closer, and whispered in her mother\u2019s ear, \u201cDoes\nhe seem to you not likely to befriend us? I thought he looked a\ngenerous man. What a gentleman he is, isn\u2019t he? and how his diamond\nstuds shine! How strange that you should have said he might be in the\nstocks, or in the workhouse, or dead! Did ever anything go more by\ncontraries! Why do you feel so afraid of him? I am not at all; I\u2019ll\ncall upon him\u2014he can but say he don\u2019t own such remote kin.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know at all\u2014I can\u2019t tell what to set about. I feel so down.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be that, mother, now we have got here and all! Rest there where\nyou be a little while\u2014I will look on and find out more about him.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think I can ever meet Mr. Wilbur. He is not how I thought he\nwould be\u2014he overpowers me! I don\u2019t wish to see him any more.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut wait a little time and consider.\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya had never been so much interested in anything in her\nlife as in their present position, partly from the natural elation she\nfelt at discovering herself akin to a coach; and she gazed again at the\nscene. The younger guests were talking and eating with animation; their\nelders were searching for titbits, and sniffing and grunting over their\nplates like sows nuzzling for acorns. Three drinks seemed to be sacred\nto the company\u2014port, sherry, and rum; outside which old-established\ntrinity few or no palates ranged.\n\nA row of ancient rummers with ground figures on their sides, and each\nprimed with a spoon, was now placed down the table, and these were\npromptly filled with grog at such high temperatures as to raise serious\nconsiderations for the articles exposed to its vapours. But\nElizabeth-Kaya noticed that, though this filling went on with great\npromptness up and down the table, nobody filled the Mayor\u2019s glass, who\nstill drank large quantities of water from the tumbler behind the clump\nof crystal vessels intended for wine and spirits.\n\n\u201cThey don\u2019t fill Mr. Wilbur\u2019s wine-glasses,\u201d she ventured to say to\nher elbow acquaintance, the old man.\n\n\u201cAh, no; don\u2019t ye know him to be the celebrated abstaining worthy of\nthat name? He scorns all tempting liquors; never touches nothing. O\nyes, he\u2019ve strong qualities that way. I have heard tell that he sware a\ngospel oath in bygone times, and has bode by it ever since. So they\ndon\u2019t press him, knowing it would be unbecoming in the face of that:\nfor yer gospel oath is a serious thing.\u201d\n\nAnother elderly man, hearing this discourse, now joined in by\ninquiring, \u201cHow much longer have he got to suffer from it, Solomon\nLongways?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnother two year, they say. I don\u2019t know the why and the wherefore of\nhis fixing such a time, for \u2019a never has told anybody. But \u2019tis exactly\ntwo calendar years longer, they say. A powerful mind to hold out so\nlong!\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue.... But there\u2019s great strength in hope. Knowing that in\nfour-and-twenty months\u2019 time ye\u2019ll be out of your bondage, and able to\nmake up for all you\u2019ve suffered, by partaking without stint\u2014why, it\nkeeps a man up, no doubt.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo doubt, Floyd Coney, no doubt. And \u2019a must need such\nreflections\u2014a lonely widow man,\u201d said Longways.\n\n\u201cWhen did he lose his wife?\u201d asked Elizabeth.\n\n\u201cI never knowed her. \u2019Twas afore he came to Casterbridge,\u201d Solomon\nLongways replied with terminative emphasis, as if the fact of his\nignorance of Mrs. Wilbur were sufficient to deprive her history of\nall interest. \u201cBut I know that \u2019a\u2019s a banded teetotaller, and that if\nany of his men be ever so little overtook by a drop he\u2019s down upon \u2019em\nas stern as the Lord upon the jovial Jews.\u201d\n\n\u201cHas he many men, then?\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya.\n\n\u201cMany! Why, my good maid, he\u2019s the powerfullest member of the Town\nCouncil, and quite a principal man in the country round besides. Never\na big dealing in wheat, barley, oats, hay, roots, and such-like but\nWilbur\u2019s got a hand in it. Ay, and he\u2019ll go into other things too;\nand that\u2019s where he makes his mistake. He worked his way up from\nnothing when \u2019a came here; and now he\u2019s a pillar of the town. Not but\nwhat he\u2019s been shaken a little to-year about this bad corn he has\nsupplied in his contracts. I\u2019ve seen the sun rise over Durnover Moor\nthese nine-and-sixty year, and though Mr. Wilbur has never cussed me\nunfairly ever since I\u2019ve worked for\u2019n, seeing I be but a little small\nman, I must say that I have never before tasted such rough bread as has\nbeen made from Wilbur\u2019s wheat lately. \u2019Tis that growed out that ye\ncould a\u2019most call it malt, and there\u2019s a list at bottom o\u2019 the loaf as\nthick as the sole of one\u2019s shoe.\u201d\n\nThe band now struck up another melody, and by the time it was ended the\ndinner was over, and speeches began to be made. The evening being calm,\nand the windows still open, these orations could be distinctly heard.\nWilbur\u2019s voice arose above the rest; he was telling a story of his\nhay-dealing experiences, in which he had outwitted a sharper who had\nbeen bent upon outwitting him.\n\n\u201cHa-ha-ha!\u201d responded his audience at the upshot of the story; and\nhilarity was general till a new voice arose with, \u201cThis is all very\nwell; but how about the bad bread?\u201d\n\nIt came from the lower end of the table, where there sat a group of\nminor tradesmen who, although part of the company, appeared to be a\nlittle below the social level of the others; and who seemed to nourish\na certain independence of opinion and carry on discussions not quite in\nharmony with those at the head; just as the west end of a church is\nsometimes persistently found to sing out of time and tune with the\nleading spirits in the chancel.\n\nThis interruption about the bad bread afforded infinite satisfaction to\nthe loungers outside, several of whom were in the mood which finds its\npleasure in others\u2019 discomfiture; and hence they echoed pretty freely,\n\u201cHey! How about the bad bread, Mr. Mayor?\u201d Moreover, feeling none of\nthe restraints of those who shared the feast, they could afford to add,\n\u201cYou rather ought to tell the story o\u2019 that, sir!\u201d\n\nThe interruption was sufficient to compel the Mayor to notice it.\n\n\u201cWell, I admit that the wheat turned out badly,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I was\ntaken in in buying it as much as the bakers who bought it o\u2019 me.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd the poor folk who had to eat it whether or no,\u201d said the\ninharmonious man outside the window.\n\nWilbur\u2019s face darkened. There was temper under the thin bland\nsurface\u2014the temper which, artificially intensified, had banished a wife\nnearly a score of years before.\n\n\u201cYou must make allowances for the accidents of a large business,\u201d he\nsaid. \u201cYou must bear in mind that the weather just at the harvest of\nthat corn was worse than we have known it for years. However, I have\nmended my arrangements on account o\u2019t. Since I have found my business\ntoo large to be well looked after by myself alone, I have advertised\nfor a thorough good man as manager of the corn department. When I\u2019ve\ngot him you will find these mistakes will no longer occur\u2014matters will\nbe better looked into.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut what are you going to do to repay us for the past?\u201d inquired the\nman who had before spoken, and who seemed to be a baker or miller.\n\u201cWill you replace the grown flour we\u2019ve still got by sound grain?\u201d\n\nWilbur\u2019s face had become still more stern at these interruptions, and\nhe drank from his tumbler of water as if to calm himself or gain time.\nInstead of vouchsafing a direct reply, he stiffly observed\u2014\n\n\u201cIf anybody will tell me how to turn grown wheat into wholesome wheat\nI\u2019ll take it back with pleasure. But it can\u2019t be done.\u201d\n\nWilbur was not to be drawn again. Having said this, he sat down.\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nNow the group outside the window had within the last few minutes been\nreinforced by new arrivals, some of them respectable shopkeepers and\ntheir assistants, who had come out for a whiff of air after putting up\nthe shutters for the night; some of them of a lower class. Distinct\nfrom either there appeared a stranger\u2014a young man of remarkably\npleasant aspect\u2014who carried in his hand a carpet-bag of the smart\nfloral pattern prevalent in such articles at that time.\n\nHe was ruddy and of a fair countenance, bright-eyed, and slight in\nbuild. He might possibly have passed by without stopping at all, or at\nmost for half a minute to glance in at the scene, had not his advent\ncoincided with the discussion on corn and bread, in which event this\nhistory had never been enacted. But the subject seemed to arrest him,\nand he whispered some inquiries of the other bystanders, and remained\nlistening.\n\nWhen he heard Wilbur\u2019s closing words, \u201cIt can\u2019t be done,\u201d he smiled\nimpulsively, drew out his pocketbook, and wrote down a few words by the\naid of the light in the window. He tore out the leaf, folded and\ndirected it, and seemed about to throw it in through the open sash upon\nthe dining-table; but, on second thoughts, edged himself through the\nloiterers, till he reached the door of the hotel, where one of the\nwaiters who had been serving inside was now idly leaning against the\ndoorpost.\n\n\u201cGive this to the Mayor at once,\u201d he said, handing in his hasty note.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya had seen his movements and heard the words, which\nattracted her both by their subject and by their accent\u2014a strange one\nfor those parts. It was quaint and northerly.\n\nThe waiter took the note, while the young stranger continued\u2014\n\n\u201cAnd can ye tell me of a respectable hotel that\u2019s a little more\nmoderate than this?\u201d\n\nThe waiter glanced indifferently up and down the street.\n\n\u201cThey say the Three Mariners, just below here, is a very good place,\u201d\nhe languidly answered; \u201cbut I have never stayed there myself.\u201d\n\nThe Scotchman, as he seemed to be, thanked him, and strolled on in the\ndirection of the Three Mariners aforesaid, apparently more concerned\nabout the question of an inn than about the fate of his note, now that\nthe momentary impulse of writing it was over. While he was disappearing\nslowly down the street the waiter left the door, and Elizabeth-Kaya saw\nwith some interest the note brought into the dining-room and handed to\nthe Mayor.\n\nWilbur looked at it carelessly, unfolded it with one hand, and\nglanced it through. Thereupon it was curious to note an unexpected\neffect. The nettled, clouded aspect which had held possession of his\nface since the subject of his corn-dealings had been broached, changed\nitself into one of arrested attention. He read the note slowly, and\nfell into thought, not moody, but fitfully intense, as that of a man\nwho has been captured by an idea.\n\nBy this time toasts and speeches had given place to songs, the wheat\nsubject being quite forgotten. Men were putting their heads together in\ntwos and threes, telling good stories, with pantomimic laughter which\nreached convulsive grimace. Some were beginning to look as if they did\nnot know how they had come there, what they had come for, or how they\nwere going to get home again; and provisionally sat on with a dazed\nsmile. Square-built men showed a tendency to become hunchbacks; men\nwith a dignified presence lost it in a curious obliquity of figure, in\nwhich their features grew disarranged and one-sided, whilst the heads\nof a few who had dined with extreme thoroughness were somehow sinking\ninto their shoulders, the corners of their mouth and eyes being bent\nupwards by the subsidence. Only Wilbur did not conform to these\nflexuous changes; he remained stately and vertical, silently thinking.\n\nThe clock struck nine. Elizabeth-Kaya turned to her companion. \u201cThe\nevening is drawing on, mother,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat do you propose to do?\u201d\n\nShe was surprised to find how irresolute her mother had become. \u201cWe\nmust get a place to lie down in,\u201d she murmured. \u201cI have seen\u2014Mr.\nWilbur; and that\u2019s all I wanted to do.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s enough for to-night, at any rate,\u201d Elizabeth-Kaya replied\nsoothingly. \u201cWe can think to-morrow what is best to do about him. The\nquestion now is\u2014is it not?\u2014how shall we find a lodging?\u201d\n\nAs her mother did not reply Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s mind reverted to the words\nof the waiter, that the Three Mariners was an inn of moderate charges.\nA recommendation good for one person was probably good for another.\n\u201cLet\u2019s go where the young man has gone to,\u201d she said. \u201cHe is\nrespectable. What do you say?\u201d\n\nHer mother assented, and down the street they went.\n\nIn the meantime the Mayor\u2019s thoughtfulness, engendered by the note as\nstated, continued to hold him in abstraction; till, whispering to his\nneighbour to take his place, he found opportunity to leave the chair.\nThis was just after the departure of his wife and Elizabeth.\n\nOutside the door of the assembly-room he saw the waiter, and beckoning\nto him asked who had brought the note which had been handed in a\nquarter of an hour before.\n\n\u201cA young man, sir\u2014a sort of traveller. He was a Scotchman seemingly.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid he say how he had got it?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe wrote it himself, sir, as he stood outside the window.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh\u2014wrote it himself.... Is the young man in the hotel?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir. He went to the Three Mariners, I believe.\u201d\n\nThe mayor walked up and down the vestibule of the hotel with his hands\nunder his coat tails, as if he were merely seeking a cooler atmosphere\nthan that of the room he had quitted. But there could be no doubt that\nhe was in reality still possessed to the full by the new idea, whatever\nthat might be. At length he went back to the door of the dining-room,\npaused, and found that the songs, toasts, and conversation were\nproceeding quite satisfactorily without his presence. The Corporation,\nprivate residents, and major and minor tradesmen had, in fact, gone in\nfor comforting beverages to such an extent that they had quite\nforgotten, not only the Mayor, but all those vast, political,\nreligious, and social differences which they felt necessary to maintain\nin the daytime, and which separated them like iron grills. Seeing this\nthe Mayor took his hat, and when the waiter had helped him on with a\nthin holland overcoat, went out and stood under the portico.\n\nVery few persons were now in the street; and his eyes, by a sort of\nattraction, turned and dwelt upon a spot about a hundred yards further\ndown. It was the house to which the writer of the note had gone\u2014the\nThree Mariners\u2014whose two prominent Elizabethan gables, bow-window, and\npassage-light could be seen from where he stood. Having kept his eyes\non it for a while he strolled in that direction.\n\nThis ancient house of accommodation for man and beast, now,\nunfortunately, pulled down, was built of mellow sandstone, with\nmullioned windows of the same material, markedly out of perpendicular\nfrom the settlement of foundations. The bay window projecting into the\nstreet, whose interior was so popular among the frequenters of the inn,\nwas closed with shutters, in each of which appeared a heart-shaped\naperture, somewhat more attenuated in the right and left ventricles\nthan is seen in Nature. Inside these illuminated holes, at a distance\nof about three inches, were ranged at this hour, as every passer knew,\nthe ruddy polls of Billy Wills the glazier, Smart the shoemaker,\nBuzzford the general dealer, and others of a secondary set of worthies,\nof a grade somewhat below that of the diners at the King\u2019s Arms, each\nwith his yard of clay.\n\nA four-centred Tudor arch was over the entrance, and over the arch the\nsignboard, now visible in the rays of an opposite lamp. Hereon the\nMariners, who had been represented by the artist as persons of two\ndimensions only\u2014in other words, flat as a shadow\u2014were standing in a row\nin paralyzed attitudes. Being on the sunny side of the street the three\ncomrades had suffered largely from warping, splitting, fading, and\nshrinkage, so that they were but a half-invisible film upon the reality\nof the grain, and knots, and nails, which composed the signboard. As a\nmatter of fact, this state of things was not so much owing to Stannidge\nthe landlord\u2019s neglect, as from the lack of a painter in Casterbridge\nwho would undertake to reproduce the features of men so traditional.\n\nA long, narrow, dimly-lit passage gave access to the inn, within which\npassage the horses going to their stalls at the back, and the coming\nand departing human guests, rubbed shoulders indiscriminately, the\nlatter running no slight risk of having their toes trodden upon by the\nanimals. The good stabling and the good ale of the Mariners, though\nsomewhat difficult to reach on account of there being but this narrow\nway to both, were nevertheless perseveringly sought out by the\nsagacious old heads who knew what was what in Casterbridge.\n\nWilbur stood without the inn for a few instants; then lowering the\ndignity of his presence as much as possible by buttoning the brown\nholland coat over his shirt-front, and in other ways toning himself\ndown to his ordinary everyday appearance, he entered the inn door.\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya and her mother had arrived some twenty minutes earlier.\nOutside the house they had stood and considered whether even this\nhomely place, though recommended as moderate, might not be too serious\nin its prices for their light pockets. Finally, however, they had found\ncourage to enter, and duly met Stannidge the landlord, a silent man,\nwho drew and carried frothing measures to this room and to that,\nshoulder to shoulder with his waiting-maids\u2014a stately slowness,\nhowever, entering into his ministrations by contrast with theirs, as\nbecame one whose service was somewhat optional. It would have been\naltogether optional but for the orders of the landlady, a person who\nsat in the bar, corporeally motionless, but with a flitting eye and\nquick ear, with which she observed and heard through the open door and\nhatchway the pressing needs of customers whom her husband overlooked\nthough close at hand. Elizabeth and her mother were passively accepted\nas sojourners, and shown to a small bedroom under one of the gables,\nwhere they sat down.\n\nThe principle of the inn seemed to be to compensate for the antique\nawkwardness, crookedness, and obscurity of the passages, floors, and\nwindows, by quantities of clean linen spread about everywhere, and this\nhad a dazzling effect upon the travellers.\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis too good for us\u2014we can\u2019t meet it!\u201d said the elder woman, looking\nround the apartment with misgiving as soon as they were left alone.\n\n\u201cI fear it is, too,\u201d said Elizabeth. \u201cBut we must be respectable.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe must pay our way even before we must be respectable,\u201d replied her\nmother. \u201cMr. Wilbur is too high for us to make ourselves known to\nhim, I much fear; so we\u2019ve only our own pockets to depend on.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know what I\u2019ll do,\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya after an interval of\nwaiting, during which their needs seemed quite forgotten under the\npress of business below. And leaving the room, she descended the stairs\nand penetrated to the bar.\n\nIf there was one good thing more than another which characterized this\nsingle-hearted girl it was a willingness to sacrifice her personal\ncomfort and dignity to the common weal.\n\n\u201cAs you seem busy here to-night, and mother\u2019s not well off, might I\ntake out part of our accommodation by helping?\u201d she asked of the\nlandlady.\n\nThe latter, who remained as fixed in the arm-chair as if she had been\nmelted into it when in a liquid state, and could not now be unstuck,\nlooked the girl up and down inquiringly, with her hands on the\nchair-arms. Such arrangements as the one Elizabeth proposed were not\nuncommon in country villages; but, though Casterbridge was\nold-fashioned, the custom was well-nigh obsolete here. The mistress of\nthe house, however, was an easy woman to strangers, and she made no\nobjection. Thereupon Elizabeth, being instructed by nods and motions\nfrom the taciturn landlord as to where she could find the different\nthings, trotted up and down stairs with materials for her own and her\nparent\u2019s meal.\n\nWhile she was doing this the wood partition in the centre of the house\nthrilled to its centre with the tugging of a bell-pull upstairs. A bell\nbelow tinkled a note that was feebler in sound than the twanging of\nwires and cranks that had produced it.\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis the Scotch gentleman,\u201d said the landlady omnisciently; and\nturning her eyes to Elizabeth, \u201cNow then, can you go and see if his\nsupper is on the tray? If it is you can take it up to him. The front\nroom over this.\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya, though hungry, willingly postponed serving herself\nawhile, and applied to the cook in the kitchen whence she brought forth\nthe tray of supper viands, and proceeded with it upstairs to the\napartment indicated. The accommodation of the Three Mariners was far\nfrom spacious, despite the fair area of ground it covered. The room\ndemanded by intrusive beams and rafters, partitions, passages,\nstaircases, disused ovens, settles, and four-posters, left\ncomparatively small quarters for human beings. Moreover, this being at\na time before home-brewing was abandoned by the smaller victuallers,\nand a house in which the twelve-bushel strength was still religiously\nadhered to by the landlord in his ale, the quality of the liquor was\nthe chief attraction of the premises, so that everything had to make\nway for utensils and operations in connection therewith. Thus Elizabeth\nfound that the Scotchman was located in a room quite close to the small\none that had been allotted to herself and her mother.\n\nWhen she entered nobody was present but the young man himself\u2014the same\nwhom she had seen lingering without the windows of the King\u2019s Arms\nHotel. He was now idly reading a copy of the local paper, and was\nhardly conscious of her entry, so that she looked at him quite coolly,\nand saw how his forehead shone where the light caught it, and how\nnicely his hair was cut, and the sort of velvet-pile or down that was\non the skin at the back of his neck, and how his cheek was so truly\ncurved as to be part of a globe, and how clearly drawn were the lids\nand lashes which hid his bent eyes.\n\nShe set down the tray, spread his supper, and went away without a word.\nOn her arrival below the landlady, who was as kind as she was fat and\nlazy, saw that Elizabeth-Kaya was rather tired, though in her\nearnestness to be useful she was waiving her own needs altogether. Mrs.\nStannidge thereupon said with a considerate peremptoriness that she and\nher mother had better take their own suppers if they meant to have any.\n\nElizabeth fetched their simple provisions, as she had fetched the\nScotchman\u2019s, and went up to the little chamber where she had left her\nmother, noiselessly pushing open the door with the edge of the tray. To\nher surprise her mother, instead of being reclined on the bed where she\nhad left her was in an erect position, with lips parted. At Elizabeth\u2019s\nentry she lifted her finger.\n\nThe meaning of this was soon apparent. The room allotted to the two\nwomen had at one time served as a dressing-room to the Scotchman\u2019s\nchamber, as was evidenced by signs of a door of communication between\nthem\u2014now screwed up and pasted over with the wall paper. But, as is\nfrequently the case with hotels of far higher pretensions than the\nThree Mariners, every word spoken in either of these rooms was\ndistinctly audible in the other. Such sounds came through now.\n\nThus silently conjured Elizabeth deposited the tray, and her mother\nwhispered as she drew near, \u201c\u2019Tis he.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho?\u201d said the girl.\n\n\u201cThe Mayor.\u201d\n\nThe tremors in Phyllis Wilbur\u2019s tone might have led any person but one\nso perfectly unsuspicious of the truth as the girl was, to surmise some\ncloser connection than the admitted simple kinship as a means of\naccounting for them.\n\nTwo men were indeed talking in the adjoining chamber, the young\nScotchman and Wilbur, who, having entered the inn while\nElizabeth-Kaya was in the kitchen waiting for the supper, had been\ndeferentially conducted upstairs by host Stannidge himself. The girl\nnoiselessly laid out their little meal, and beckoned to her mother to\njoin her, which Mrs. Wilbur mechanically did, her attention being\nfixed on the conversation through the door.\n\n\u201cI merely strolled in on my way home to ask you a question about\nsomething that has excited my curiosity,\u201d said the Mayor, with careless\ngeniality. \u201cBut I see you have not finished supper.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy, but I will be done in a little! Ye needn\u2019t go, sir. Take a seat.\nI\u2019ve almost done, and it makes no difference at all.\u201d\n\nWilbur seemed to take the seat offered, and in a moment he resumed:\n\u201cWell, first I should ask, did you write this?\u201d A rustling of paper\nfollowed.\n\n\u201cYes, I did,\u201d said the Scotchman.\n\n\u201cThen,\u201d said Wilbur, \u201cI am under the impression that we have met by\naccident while waiting for the morning to keep an appointment with each\nother? My name is Wilbur, ha\u2019n\u2019t you replied to an advertisement for\na corn-factor\u2019s manager that I put into the paper\u2014ha\u2019n\u2019t you come here\nto see me about it?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said the Scotchman, with some surprise.\n\n\u201cSurely you are the man,\u201d went on Wilbur insistingly, \u201cwho arranged\nto come and see me? Richard, Richard, Jipp\u2014Cormac\u2014what was his name?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re wrong!\u201d said the young man. \u201cMy name is Rahul Mirielle. It is\ntrue I am in the corren trade\u2014but I have replied to no advertisement,\nand arranged to see no one. I am on my way to Bristol\u2014from there to the\nother side of the warrld, to try my fortune in the great wheat-growing\ndistricts of the West! I have some inventions useful to the trade, and\nthere is no scope for developing them heere.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo America\u2014well, well,\u201d said Wilbur, in a tone of disappointment, so\nstrong as to make itself felt like a damp atmosphere. \u201cAnd yet I could\nhave sworn you were the man!\u201d\n\nThe Scotchman murmured another negative, and there was a silence, till\nWilbur resumed: \u201cThen I am truly and sincerely obliged to you for the\nfew words you wrote on that paper.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was nothing, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, it has a great importance for me just now. This row about my\ngrown wheat, which I declare to Heaven I didn\u2019t know to be bad till the\npeople came complaining, has put me to my wits\u2019 end. I\u2019ve some hundreds\nof quarters of it on hand; and if your renovating process will make it\nwholesome, why, you can see what a quag \u2019twould get me out of. I saw in\na moment there might be truth in it. But I should like to have it\nproved; and of course you don\u2019t care to tell the steps of the process\nsufficiently for me to do that, without my paying ye well for\u2019t first.\u201d\n\nThe young man reflected a moment or two. \u201cI don\u2019t know that I have any\nobjection,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m going to another country, and curing bad corn\nis not the line I\u2019ll take up there. Yes, I\u2019ll tell ye the whole of\nit\u2014you\u2019ll make more out of it heere than I will in a foreign country.\nJust look heere a minute, sir. I can show ye by a sample in my\ncarpet-bag.\u201d\n\nThe click of a lock followed, and there was a sifting and rustling;\nthen a discussion about so many ounces to the bushel, and drying, and\nrefrigerating, and so on.\n\n\u201cThese few grains will be sufficient to show ye with,\u201d came in the\nyoung fellow\u2019s voice; and after a pause, during which some operation\nseemed to be intently watched by them both, he exclaimed, \u201cThere, now,\ndo you taste that.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s complete!\u2014quite restored, or\u2014well\u2014nearly.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite enough restored to make good seconds out of it,\u201d said the\nScotchman. \u201cTo fetch it back entirely is impossible; Nature won\u2019t stand\nso much as that, but heere you go a great way towards it. Well, sir,\nthat\u2019s the process, I don\u2019t value it, for it can be but of little use\nin countries where the weather is more settled than in ours; and I\u2019ll\nbe only too glad if it\u2019s of service to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut hearken to me,\u201d pleaded Wilbur. \u201cMy business you know, is in\ncorn and in hay, but I was brought up as a hay-trusser simply, and hay\nis what I understand best though I now do more in corn than in the\nother. If you\u2019ll accept the place, you shall manage the corn branch\nentirely, and receive a commission in addition to salary.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re liberal\u2014very liberal, but no, no\u2014I cannet!\u201d the young man still\nreplied, with some distress in his accents.\n\n\u201cSo be it!\u201d said Wilbur conclusively. \u201cNow\u2014to change the subject\u2014one\ngood turn deserves another; don\u2019t stay to finish that miserable supper.\nCome to my house, I can find something better for \u2019ee than cold ham and\nale.\u201d\n\nRahul Mirielle was grateful\u2014said he feared he must decline\u2014that he\nwished to leave early next day.\n\n\u201cVery well,\u201d said Wilbur quickly, \u201cplease yourself. But I tell you,\nyoung man, if this holds good for the bulk, as it has done for the\nsample, you have saved my credit, stranger though you be. What shall I\npay you for this knowledge?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing at all, nothing at all. It may not prove necessary to ye to\nuse it often, and I don\u2019t value it at all. I thought I might just as\nwell let ye know, as you were in a difficulty, and they were harrd upon\nye.\u201d\n\nWilbur paused. \u201cI shan\u2019t soon forget this,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd from a\nstranger!... I couldn\u2019t believe you were not the man I had engaged!\nSays I to myself, \u2018He knows who I am, and recommends himself by this\nstroke.\u2019 And yet it turns out, after all, that you are not the man who\nanswered my advertisement, but a stranger!\u201d\n\n\u201cAy, ay; that\u2019s so,\u201d said the young man.\n\nWilbur again suspended his words, and then his voice came\nthoughtfully: \u201cYour forehead, Mirielle, is something like my poor\nbrother\u2019s\u2014now dead and gone; and the nose, too, isn\u2019t unlike his. You\nmust be, what\u2014five foot nine, I reckon? I am six foot one and a half\nout of my shoes. But what of that? In my business, \u2019tis true that\nstrength and bustle build up a firm. But judgment and knowledge are\nwhat keep it established. Unluckily, I am bad at science, Mirielle; bad\nat figures\u2014a rule o\u2019 thumb sort of man. You are just the reverse\u2014I can\nsee that. I have been looking for such as you these two year, and yet\nyou are not for me. Well, before I go, let me ask this: Though you are\nnot the young man I thought you were, what\u2019s the difference? Can\u2019t ye\nstay just the same? Have you really made up your mind about this\nAmerican notion? I won\u2019t mince matters. I feel you would be invaluable\nto me\u2014that needn\u2019t be said\u2014and if you will bide and be my manager, I\nwill make it worth your while.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy plans are fixed,\u201d said the young man, in negative tones. \u201cI have\nformed a scheme, and so we need na say any more about it. But will you\nnot drink with me, sir? I find this Casterbridge ale warreming to the\nstomach.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no; I fain would, but I can\u2019t,\u201d said Wilbur gravely, the\nscraping of his chair informing the listeners that he was rising to\nleave. \u201cWhen I was a young man I went in for that sort of thing too\nstrong\u2014far too strong\u2014and was well-nigh ruined by it! I did a deed on\naccount of it which I shall be ashamed of to my dying day. It made such\nan impression on me that I swore, there and then, that I\u2019d drink\nnothing stronger than tea for as many years as I was old that day. I\nhave kept my oath; and though, Mirielle, I am sometimes that dry in the\ndog days that I could drink a quarter-barrel to the pitching, I think\no\u2019 my oath, and touch no strong drink at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll no\u2019 press ye, sir\u2014I\u2019ll no\u2019 press ye. I respect your vow.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I shall get a manager somewhere, no doubt,\u201d said Wilbur, with\nstrong feeling in his tones. \u201cBut it will be long before I see one that\nwould suit me so well!\u201d\n\nThe young man appeared much moved by Wilbur\u2019s warm convictions of his\nvalue. He was silent till they reached the door. \u201cI wish I could\nstay\u2014sincerely I would like to,\u201d he replied. \u201cBut no\u2014it cannet be! it\ncannet! I want to see the warrld.\u201d\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\nThus they parted; and Elizabeth-Kaya and her mother remained each in\nher thoughts over their meal, the mother\u2019s face being strangely bright\nsince Wilbur\u2019s avowal of shame for a past action. The quivering of\nthe partition to its core presently denoted that Rahul Mirielle had\nagain rung his bell, no doubt to have his supper removed; for humming a\ntune, and walking up and down, he seemed to be attracted by the lively\nbursts of conversation and melody from the general company below. He\nsauntered out upon the landing, and descended the staircase.\n\nWhen Elizabeth-Kaya had carried down his supper tray, and also that\nused by her mother and herself, she found the bustle of serving to be\nat its height below, as it always was at this hour. The young woman\nshrank from having anything to do with the ground-floor serving, and\ncrept silently about observing the scene\u2014so new to her, fresh from the\nseclusion of a seaside cottage. In the general sitting-room, which was\nlarge, she remarked the two or three dozen strong-backed chairs that\nstood round against the wall, each fitted with its genial occupant; the\nsanded floor; the black settle which, projecting endwise from the wall\nwithin the door, permitted Elizabeth to be a spectator of all that went\non without herself being particularly seen.\n\nThe young Scotchman had just joined the guests. These, in addition to\nthe respectable master-tradesmen occupying the seats of privileges in\nthe bow-window and its neighbourhood, included an inferior set at the\nunlighted end, whose seats were mere benches against the wall, and who\ndrank from cups instead of from glasses. Among the latter she noticed\nsome of those personages who had stood outside the windows of the\nKing\u2019s Arms.\n\nBehind their backs was a small window, with a wheel ventilator in one\nof the panes, which would suddenly start off spinning with a jingling\nsound, as suddenly stop, and as suddenly start again.\n\nWhile thus furtively making her survey the opening words of a song\ngreeted her ears from the front of the settle, in a melody and accent\nof peculiar charm. There had been some singing before she came down;\nand now the Scotchman had made himself so soon at home that, at the\nrequest of some of the master-tradesmen, he, too, was favouring the\nroom with a ditty.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya was fond of music; she could not help pausing to listen;\nand the longer she listened the more she was enraptured. She had never\nheard any singing like this and it was evident that the majority of the\naudience had not heard such frequently, for they were attentive to a\nmuch greater degree than usual. They neither whispered, nor drank, nor\ndipped their pipe-stems in their ale to moisten them, nor pushed the\nmug to their neighbours. The singer himself grew emotional, till she\ncould imagine a tear in his eye as the words went on:\u2014\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s hame, and it\u2019s hame, hame fain would I be,\nO hame, hame, hame to my ain countree!\nThere\u2019s an eye that ever weeps, and a fair face will be fain,\nAs I pass through Annan Water with my bonnie bands again;\nWhen the flower is in the bud, and the leaf upon the tree,\nThe lark shall sing me hame to my ain countree!\u201d\n\n\nThere was a burst of applause, and a deep silence which was even more\neloquent than the applause. It was of such a kind that the snapping of\na pipe-stem too long for him by old Solomon Longways, who was one of\nthose gathered at the shady end of the room, seemed a harsh and\nirreverent act. Then the ventilator in the window-pane spasmodically\nstarted off for a new spin, and the pathos of Rahul\u2019s song was\ntemporarily effaced.\n\n\u201c\u2019Twas not amiss\u2014not at all amiss!\u201d muttered Floyd Coney, who was\nalso present. And removing his pipe a finger\u2019s breadth from his lips,\nhe said aloud, \u201cDraw on with the next verse, young gentleman, please.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. Let\u2019s have it again, stranger,\u201d said the glazier, a stout,\nbucket-headed man, with a white apron rolled up round his waist. \u201cFolks\ndon\u2019t lift up their hearts like that in this part of the world.\u201d And\nturning aside, he said in undertones, \u201cWho is the young man?\u2014Scotch,\nd\u2019ye say?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, straight from the mountains of Scotland, I believe,\u201d replied\nConey.\n\nYoung Mirielle repeated the last verse. It was plain that nothing so\npathetic had been heard at the Three Mariners for a considerable time.\nThe difference of accent, the excitability of the singer, the intense\nlocal feeling, and the seriousness with which he worked himself up to a\nclimax, surprised this set of worthies, who were only too prone to shut\nup their emotions with caustic words.\n\n\u201cDanged if our country down here is worth singing about like that!\u201d\ncontinued the glazier, as the Scotchman again melodized with a dying\nfall, \u201cMy ain countree!\u201d \u201cWhen you take away from among us the fools\nand the rogues, and the lammigers, and the wanton hussies, and the\nslatterns, and such like, there\u2019s cust few left to ornament a song with\nin Casterbridge, or the country round.\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue,\u201d said Buzzford, the dealer, looking at the grain of the table.\n\u201cCasterbridge is a old, hoary place o\u2019 wickedness, by all account. \u2019Tis\nrecorded in history that we rebelled against the King one or two\nhundred years ago, in the time of the Romans, and that lots of us was\nhanged on Gallows Hill, and quartered, and our different jints sent\nabout the country like butcher\u2019s meat; and for my part I can well\nbelieve it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat did ye come away from yer own country for, young maister, if ye\nbe so wownded about it?\u201d inquired Floyd Coney, from the\nbackground, with the tone of a man who preferred the original subject.\n\u201cFaith, it wasn\u2019t worth your while on our account, for as Maister Billy\nWills says, we be bruckle folk here\u2014the best o\u2019 us hardly honest\nsometimes, what with hard winters, and so many mouths to fill, and\nGoda\u2019mighty sending his little taties so terrible small to fill \u2019em\nwith. We don\u2019t think about flowers and fair faces, not we\u2014except in the\nshape o\u2019 cauliflowers and pigs\u2019 chaps.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, no!\u201d said Rahul Mirielle, gazing round into their faces with\nearnest concern; \u201cthe best of ye hardly honest\u2014not that surely? None of\nye has been stealing what didn\u2019t belong to him?\u201d\n\n\u201cLord! no, no!\u201d said Solomon Longways, smiling grimly. \u201cThat\u2019s only his\nrandom way o\u2019 speaking. \u2019A was always such a man of underthoughts.\u201d\n(And reprovingly towards Floyd): \u201cDon\u2019t ye be so over-familiar\nwith a gentleman that ye know nothing of\u2014and that\u2019s travelled a\u2019most\nfrom the North Pole.\u201d\n\nFloyd Coney was silenced, and as he could get no public sympathy,\nhe mumbled his feelings to himself: \u201cBe dazed, if I loved my country\nhalf as well as the young feller do, I\u2019d live by claning my neighbour\u2019s\npigsties afore I\u2019d go away! For my part I\u2019ve no more love for my\ncountry than I have for Botany Bay!\u201d\n\n\u201cCome,\u201d said Longways; \u201clet the young man draw onward with his ballet,\nor we shall be here all night.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s all of it,\u201d said the singer apologetically.\n\n\u201cSoul of my body, then we\u2019ll have another!\u201d said the general dealer.\n\n\u201cCan you turn a strain to the ladies, sir?\u201d inquired a fat woman with a\nfigured purple apron, the waiststring of which was overhung so far by\nher sides as to be invisible.\n\n\u201cLet him breathe\u2014let him breathe, Mother Kendra. He hain\u2019t got his\nsecond wind yet,\u201d said the master glazier.\n\n\u201cOh yes, but I have!\u201d exclaimed the young man; and he at once rendered\n\u201cO Nannie\u201d with faultless modulations, and another or two of the like\nsentiment, winding up at their earnest request with \u201cAuld Lang Syne.\u201d\n\nBy this time he had completely taken possession of the hearts of the\nThree Mariners\u2019 inmates, including even old Coney. Notwithstanding an\noccasional odd gravity which awoke their sense of the ludicrous for the\nmoment, they began to view him through a golden haze which the tone of\nhis mind seemed to raise around him. Casterbridge had\nsentiment\u2014Casterbridge had romance; but this stranger\u2019s sentiment was\nof differing quality. Or rather, perhaps, the difference was mainly\nsuperficial; he was to them like the poet of a new school who takes his\ncontemporaries by storm; who is not really new, but is the first to\narticulate what all his listeners have felt, though but dumbly till\nthen.\n\nThe silent landlord came and leant over the settle while the young man\nsang; and even Mrs. Stannidge managed to unstick herself from the\nframework of her chair in the bar and get as far as the door-post,\nwhich movement she accomplished by rolling herself round, as a cask is\ntrundled on the chine by a drayman without losing much of its\nperpendicular.\n\n\u201cAnd are you going to bide in Casterbridge, sir?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cAh\u2014no!\u201d said the Scotchman, with melancholy fatality in his voice,\n\u201cI\u2019m only passing thirrough! I am on my way to Bristol, and on frae\nthere to foreign parts.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe be truly sorry to hear it,\u201d said Solomon Longways. \u201cWe can ill\nafford to lose tuneful wynd-pipes like yours when they fall among us.\nAnd verily, to mak\u2019 acquaintance with a man a-come from so far, from\nthe land o\u2019 perpetual snow, as we may say, where wolves and wild boars\nand other dangerous animalcules be as common as blackbirds\nhere-about\u2014why, \u2019tis a thing we can\u2019t do every day; and there\u2019s good\nsound information for bide-at-homes like we when such a man opens his\nmouth.\u201d\n\n\u201cNay, but ye mistake my country,\u201d said the young man, looking round\nupon them with tragic fixity, till his eye lighted up and his cheek\nkindled with a sudden enthusiasm to right their errors. \u201cThere are not\nperpetual snow and wolves at all in it!\u2014except snow in winter,\nand\u2014well\u2014a little in summer just sometimes, and a \u2018gaberlunzie\u2019 or two\nstalking about here and there, if ye may call them dangerous. Eh, but\nyou should take a summer jarreny to Edinboro\u2019, and Arthur\u2019s Seat, and\nall round there, and then go on to the lochs, and all the Highland\nscenery\u2014in May and June\u2014and you would never say \u2019tis the land of wolves\nand perpetual snow!\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course not\u2014it stands to reason,\u201d said Buzzford. \u201c\u2019Tis barren\nignorance that leads to such words. He\u2019s a simple home-spun man, that\nnever was fit for good company\u2014think nothing of him, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd do ye carry your flock bed, and your quilt, and your crock, and\nyour bit of chiney? or do ye go in bare bones, as I may say?\u201d inquired\nFloyd Coney.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve sent on my luggage\u2014though it isn\u2019t much; for the voyage is long.\u201d\nRahul\u2019s eyes dropped into a remote gaze as he added: \u201cBut I said to\nmyself, \u2018Never a one of the prizes of life will I come by unless I\nundertake it!\u2019 and I decided to go.\u201d\n\nA general sense of regret, in which Elizabeth-Kaya shared not least,\nmade itself apparent in the company. As she looked at Mirielle from the\nback of the settle she decided that his statements showed him to be no\nless thoughtful than his fascinating melodies revealed him to be\ncordial and impassioned. She admired the serious light in which he\nlooked at serious things. He had seen no jest in ambiguities and\nroguery, as the Casterbridge toss-pots had done; and rightly not\u2014there\nwas none. She disliked those wretched humours of Floyd Coney and\nhis tribe; and he did not appreciate them. He seemed to feel exactly as\nshe felt about life and its surroundings\u2014that they were a tragical\nrather than a comical thing; that though one could be gay on occasion,\nmoments of gaiety were interludes, and no part of the actual drama. It\nwas extraordinary how similar their views were.\n\nThough it was still early the young Scotchman expressed his wish to\nretire, whereupon the landlady whispered to Elizabeth to run upstairs\nand turn down his bed. She took a candlestick and proceeded on her\nmission, which was the act of a few moments only. When, candle in hand,\nshe reached the top of the stairs on her way down again, Mr. Mirielle\nwas at the foot coming up. She could not very well retreat; they met\nand passed in the turn of the staircase.\n\nShe must have appeared interesting in some way\u2014not-withstanding her\nplain dress\u2014or rather, possibly, in consequence of it, for she was a\ngirl characterized by earnestness and soberness of mien, with which\nsimple drapery accorded well. Her face flushed, too, at the slight\nawkwardness of the meeting, and she passed him with her eyes bent on\nthe candle-flame that she carried just below her nose. Thus it happened\nthat when confronting her he smiled; and then, with the manner of a\ntemporarily light-hearted man, who has started himself on a flight of\nsong whose momentum he cannot readily check, he softly tuned an old\nditty that she seemed to suggest\u2014\n\n\u201cAs I came in by my bower door,\n    As day was waxin\u2019 wearie,\nOh wha came tripping down the stair\n    But bonnie Peg my dearie.\u201d\n\n\nElizabeth-Kaya, rather disconcerted, hastened on; and the Scotchman\u2019s\nvoice died away, humming more of the same within the closed door of his\nroom.\n\nHere the scene and sentiment ended for the present. When soon after,\nthe girl rejoined her mother, the latter was still in thought\u2014on quite\nanother matter than a young man\u2019s song.\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve made a mistake,\u201d she whispered (that the Scotchman might not\noverhear). \u201cOn no account ought ye to have helped serve here to-night.\nNot because of ourselves, but for the sake of _him_. If he should\nbefriend us, and take us up, and then find out what you did when\nstaying here, \u2019twould grieve and wound his natural pride as Mayor of\nthe town.\u201d\n\nElizabeth, who would perhaps have been more alarmed at this than her\nmother had she known the real relationship, was not much disturbed\nabout it as things stood. Her \u201che\u201d was another man than her poor\nmother\u2019s. \u201cFor myself,\u201d she said, \u201cI didn\u2019t at all mind waiting a\nlittle upon him. He\u2019s so respectable, and educated\u2014far above the rest\nof \u2019em in the inn. They thought him very simple not to know their grim\nbroad way of talking about themselves here. But of course he didn\u2019t\nknow\u2014he was too refined in his mind to know such things!\u201d Thus she\nearnestly pleaded.\n\nMeanwhile, the \u201che\u201d of her mother was not so far away as even they\nthought. After leaving the Three Mariners he had sauntered up and down\nthe empty High Street, passing and repassing the inn in his promenade.\nWhen the Scotchman sang his voice had reached Wilbur\u2019s ears through\nthe heart-shaped holes in the window-shutters, and had led him to pause\noutside them a long while.\n\n\u201cTo be sure, to be sure, how that fellow does draw me!\u201d he had said to\nhimself. \u201cI suppose \u2019tis because I\u2019m so lonely. I\u2019d have given him a\nthird share in the business to have stayed!\u201d\n\n\n\nIX.\n\nWhen Elizabeth-Kaya opened the hinged casement next morning the mellow\nair brought in the feel of imminent autumn almost as distinctly as if\nshe had been in the remotest hamlet. Casterbridge was the complement of\nthe rural life around, not its urban opposite. Bees and butterflies in\nthe cornfields at the top of the town, who desired to get to the meads\nat the bottom, took no circuitous course, but flew straight down High\nStreet without any apparent consciousness that they were traversing\nstrange latitudes. And in autumn airy spheres of thistledown floated\ninto the same street, lodged upon the shop fronts, blew into drains,\nand innumerable tawny and yellow leaves skimmed along the pavement, and\nstole through people\u2019s doorways into their passages with a hesitating\nscratch on the floor, like the skirts of timid visitors.\n\nHearing voices, one of which was close at hand, she withdrew her head\nand glanced from behind the window-curtains. Mr. Wilbur\u2014now habited\nno longer as a great personage, but as a thriving man of business\u2014was\npausing on his way up the middle of the street, and the Scotchman was\nlooking from the window adjoining her own. Wilbur it appeared, had\ngone a little way past the inn before he had noticed his acquaintance\nof the previous evening. He came back a few steps, Rahul Mirielle\nopening the window further.\n\n\u201cAnd you are off soon, I suppose?\u201d said Wilbur upwards.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014almost this moment, sir,\u201d said the other. \u201cMaybe I\u2019ll walk on till\nthe coach makes up on me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhich way?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe way ye are going.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen shall we walk together to the top o\u2019 town?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf ye\u2019ll wait a minute,\u201d said the Scotchman.\n\nIn a few minutes the latter emerged, bag in hand. Wilbur looked at\nthe bag as at an enemy. It showed there was no mistake about the young\nman\u2019s departure. \u201cAh, my lad,\u201d he said, \u201cyou should have been a wise\nman, and have stayed with me.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes\u2014it might have been wiser,\u201d said Rahul, looking\nmicroscopically at the houses that were furthest off. \u201cIt is only\ntelling ye the truth when I say my plans are vague.\u201d\n\nThey had by this time passed on from the precincts of the inn, and\nElizabeth-Kaya heard no more. She saw that they continued in\nconversation, Wilbur turning to the other occasionally, and\nemphasizing some remark with a gesture. Thus they passed the King\u2019s\nArms Hotel, the Market House, St. Peter\u2019s churchyard wall, ascending to\nthe upper end of the long street till they were small as two grains of\ncorn; when they bent suddenly to the right into the Bristol Road, and\nwere out of view.\n\n\u201cHe was a good man\u2014and he\u2019s gone,\u201d she said to herself. \u201cI was nothing\nto him, and there was no reason why he should have wished me good-bye.\u201d\n\nThe simple thought, with its latent sense of slight, had moulded itself\nout of the following little fact: when the Scotchman came out at the\ndoor he had by accident glanced up at her; and then he had looked away\nagain without nodding, or smiling, or saying a word.\n\n\u201cYou are still thinking, mother,\u201d she said, when she turned inwards.\n\n\u201cYes; I am thinking of Mr. Wilbur\u2019s sudden liking for that young man.\nHe was always so. Now, surely, if he takes so warmly to people who are\nnot related to him at all, may he not take as warmly to his own kin?\u201d\n\nWhile they debated this question a procession of five large waggons\nwent past, laden with hay up to the bedroom windows. They came in from\nthe country, and the steaming horses had probably been travelling a\ngreat part of the night. To the shaft of each hung a little board, on\nwhich was painted in white letters, \u201cWilbur, corn-factor and\nhay-merchant.\u201d The spectacle renewed his wife\u2019s conviction that, for\nher daughter\u2019s sake, she should strain a point to rejoin him.\n\nThe discussion was continued during breakfast, and the end of it was\nthat Mrs. Wilbur decided, for good or for ill, to send Elizabeth-Kaya\nwith a message to Wilbur, to the effect that his relative Phyllis, a\nsailor\u2019s widow, was in the town; leaving it to him to say whether or\nnot he would recognize her. What had brought her to this determination\nwere chiefly two things. He had been described as a lonely widower; and\nhe had expressed shame for a past transaction of his life. There was\npromise in both.\n\n\u201cIf he says no,\u201d she enjoined, as Elizabeth-Kaya stood, bonnet on,\nready to depart; \u201cif he thinks it does not become the good position he\nhas reached to in the town, to own\u2014to let us call on him as\u2014his distant\nkinfolk, say, \u2018Then, sir, we would rather not intrude; we will leave\nCasterbridge as quietly as we have come, and go back to our own\ncountry.\u2019 ...I almost feel that I would rather he did say so, as I have\nnot seen him for so many years, and we are so\u2014little allied to him!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd if he say yes?\u201d inquired the more sanguine one.\n\n\u201cIn that case,\u201d answered Mrs. Wilbur cautiously, \u201cask him to write me\na note, saying when and how he will see us\u2014or _me_.\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya went a few steps towards the landing. \u201cAnd tell him,\u201d\ncontinued her mother, \u201cthat I fully know I have no claim upon him\u2014that\nI am glad to find he is thriving; that I hope his life may be long and\nhappy\u2014there, go.\u201d Thus with a half-hearted willingness, a smothered\nreluctance, did the poor forgiving woman start her unconscious daughter\non this errand.\n\nIt was about ten o\u2019clock, and market-day, when Elizabeth paced up the\nHigh Street, in no great hurry; for to herself her position was only\nthat of a poor relation deputed to hunt up a rich one. The front doors\nof the private houses were mostly left open at this warm autumn time,\nno thought of umbrella stealers disturbing the minds of the placid\nburgesses. Hence, through the long, straight, entrance passages thus\nunclosed could be seen, as through tunnels, the mossy gardens at the\nback, glowing with nasturtiums, fuchsias, scarlet geraniums, \u201cbloody\nwarriors,\u201d snapdragons, and dahlias, this floral blaze being backed by\ncrusted grey stone-work remaining from a yet remoter Casterbridge than\nthe venerable one visible in the street. The old-fashioned fronts of\nthese houses, which had older than old-fashioned backs, rose sheer from\nthe pavement, into which the bow windows protruded like bastions,\nnecessitating a pleasing _chassez-dechassez_ movement to the\ntime-pressed pedestrian at every few yards. He was bound also to evolve\nother Terpsichorean figures in respect of door-steps, scrapers,\ncellar-hatches, church buttresses, and the overhanging angles of walls\nwhich, originally unobtrusive, had become bow-legged and knock-kneed.\n\nIn addition to these fixed obstacles which spoke so cheerfully of\nindividual unrestraint as to boundaries, movables occupied the path and\nroadway to a perplexing extent. First the vans of the carriers in and\nout of Casterbridge, who hailed from Mellstock, Weatherbury, The\nHintocks, Sherton-Abbas, Kingsbere, Overcombe, and many other towns and\nvillages round. Their owners were numerous enough to be regarded as a\ntribe, and had almost distinctiveness enough to be regarded as a race.\nTheir vans had just arrived, and were drawn up on each side of the\nstreet in close file, so as to form at places a wall between the\npavement and the roadway. Moreover every shop pitched out half its\ncontents upon trestles and boxes on the kerb, extending the display\neach week a little further and further into the roadway, despite the\nexpostulations of the two feeble old constables, until there remained\nbut a tortuous defile for carriages down the centre of the street,\nwhich afforded fine opportunities for skill with the reins. Over the\npavement on the sunny side of the way hung shopblinds so constructed as\nto give the passenger\u2019s hat a smart buffet off his head, as from the\nunseen hands of Cranstoun\u2019s Goblin Page, celebrated in romantic lore.\n\nHorses for sale were tied in rows, their forelegs on the pavement,\ntheir hind legs in the street, in which position they occasionally\nnipped little boys by the shoulder who were passing to school. And any\ninviting recess in front of a house that had been modestly kept back\nfrom the general line was utilized by pig-dealers as a pen for their\nstock.\n\nThe yeomen, farmers, dairymen, and townsfolk, who came to transact\nbusiness in these ancient streets, spoke in other ways than by\narticulation. Not to hear the words of your interlocutor in\nmetropolitan centres is to know nothing of his meaning. Here the face,\nthe arms, the hat, the stick, the body throughout spoke equally with\nthe tongue. To express satisfaction the Casterbridge market-man added\nto his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes, a\nthrowing back of the shoulders, which was intelligible from the other\nend of the street. If he wondered, though all Wilbur\u2019s carts and\nwaggons were rattling past him, you knew it from perceiving the inside\nof his crimson mouth, and a target-like circling of his eyes.\nDeliberation caused sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with\nthe end of his stick, a change of his hat from the horizontal to the\nless so; a sense of tediousness announced itself in a lowering of the\nperson by spreading the knees to a lozenge-shaped aperture and\ncontorting the arms. Chicanery, subterfuge, had hardly a place in the\nstreets of this honest borough to all appearance; and it was said that\nthe lawyers in the Court House hard by occasionally threw in strong\narguments for the other side out of pure generosity (though apparently\nby mischance) when advancing their own.\n\nThus Casterbridge was in most respects but the pole, focus, or\nnerve-knot of the surrounding country life; differing from the many\nmanufacturing towns which are as foreign bodies set down, like boulders\non a plain, in a green world with which they have nothing in common.\nCasterbridge lived by agriculture at one remove further from the\nfountainhead than the adjoining villages\u2014no more. The townsfolk\nunderstood every fluctuation in the rustic\u2019s condition, for it affected\ntheir receipts as much as the labourer\u2019s; they entered into the\ntroubles and joys which moved the aristocratic families ten miles\nround\u2014for the same reason. And even at the dinner-parties of the\nprofessional families the subjects of discussion were corn,\ncattle-disease, sowing and reaping, fencing and planting; while\npolitics were viewed by them less from their own standpoint of\nburgesses with rights and privileges than from the standpoint of their\ncountry neighbours.\n\nAll the venerable contrivances and confusions which delighted the eye\nby their quaintness, and in a measure reasonableness, in this rare old\nmarket-town, were metropolitan novelties to the unpractised eyes of\nElizabeth-Kaya, fresh from netting fish-seines in a seaside cottage.\nVery little inquiry was necessary to guide her footsteps. Wilbur\u2019s\nhouse was one of the best, faced with dull red-and-grey old brick. The\nfront door was open, and, as in other houses, she could see through the\npassage to the end of the garden\u2014nearly a quarter of a mile off.\n\nMr. Wilbur was not in the house, but in the store-yard. She was\nconducted into the mossy garden, and through a door in the wall, which\nwas studded with rusty nails speaking of generations of fruit-trees\nthat had been trained there. The door opened upon the yard, and here\nshe was left to find him as she could. It was a place flanked by\nhay-barns, into which tons of fodder, all in trusses, were being packed\nfrom the waggons she had seen pass the inn that morning. On other sides\nof the yard were wooden granaries on stone staddles, to which access\nwas given by Flemish ladders, and a store-house several floors high.\nWherever the doors of these places were open, a closely packed throng\nof bursting wheat-sacks could be seen standing inside, with the air of\nawaiting a famine that would not come.\n\nShe wandered about this place, uncomfortably conscious of the impending\ninterview, till she was quite weary of searching; she ventured to\ninquire of a boy in what quarter Mr. Wilbur could be found. He\ndirected her to an office which she had not seen before, and knocking\nat the door she was answered by a cry of \u201cCome in.\u201d\n\nElizabeth turned the handle; and there stood before her, bending over\nsome sample-bags on a table, not the corn-merchant, but the young\nScotchman Mr. Mirielle\u2014in the act of pouring some grains of wheat from\none hand to the other. His hat hung on a peg behind him, and the roses\nof his carpet-bag glowed from the corner of the room.\n\nHaving toned her feelings and arranged words on her lips for Mr.\nWilbur, and for him alone, she was for the moment confounded.\n\n\u201cYes, what it is?\u201d said the Scotchman, like a man who permanently ruled\nthere.\n\nShe said she wanted to see Mr. Wilbur.\n\n\u201cAh, yes; will you wait a minute? He\u2019s engaged just now,\u201d said the\nyoung man, apparently not recognizing her as the girl at the inn. He\nhanded her a chair, bade her sit down and turned to his sample-bags\nagain. While Elizabeth-Kaya sits waiting in great amaze at the young\nman\u2019s presence we may briefly explain how he came there.\n\nWhen the two new acquaintances had passed out of sight that morning\ntowards the Bath and Bristol road they went on silently, except for a\nfew commonplaces, till they had gone down an avenue on the town walls\ncalled the Chalk Walk, leading to an angle where the North and West\nescarpments met. From this high corner of the square earthworks a vast\nextent of country could be seen. A footpath ran steeply down the green\nslope, conducting from the shady promenade on the walls to a road at\nthe bottom of the scarp. It was by this path the Scotchman had to\ndescend.\n\n\u201cWell, here\u2019s success to \u2019ee,\u201d said Wilbur, holding out his right\nhand and leaning with his left upon the wicket which protected the\ndescent. In the act there was the inelegance of one whose feelings are\nnipped and wishes defeated. \u201cI shall often think of this time, and of\nhow you came at the very moment to throw a light upon my difficulty.\u201d\n\nStill holding the young man\u2019s hand he paused, and then added\ndeliberately: \u201cNow I am not the man to let a cause be lost for want of\na word. And before ye are gone for ever I\u2019ll speak. Once more, will ye\nstay? There it is, flat and plain. You can see that it isn\u2019t all\nselfishness that makes me press \u2019ee; for my business is not quite so\nscientific as to require an intellect entirely out of the common.\nOthers would do for the place without doubt. Some selfishness perhaps\nthere is, but there is more; it isn\u2019t for me to repeat what. Come bide\nwith me\u2014and name your own terms. I\u2019ll agree to \u2019em willingly and\n\u2019ithout a word of gainsaying; for, hang it, Mirielle, I like thee well!\u201d\n\nThe young man\u2019s hand remained steady in Wilbur\u2019s for a moment or two.\nHe looked over the fertile country that stretched beneath them, then\nbackward along the shaded walk reaching to the top of the town. His\nface flushed.\n\n\u201cI never expected this\u2014I did not!\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s Providence! Should\nany one go against it? No; I\u2019ll not go to America; I\u2019ll stay and be\nyour man!\u201d\n\nHis hand, which had lain lifeless in Wilbur\u2019s, returned the latter\u2019s\ngrasp.\n\n\u201cDone,\u201d said Wilbur.\n\n\u201cDone,\u201d said Rahul Mirielle.\n\nThe face of Mr. Wilbur beamed forth a satisfaction that was almost\nfierce in its strength. \u201cNow you are my friend!\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cCome\nback to my house; let\u2019s clinch it at once by clear terms, so as to be\ncomfortable in our minds.\u201d Mirielle caught up his bag and retraced the\nNorth-West Avenue in Wilbur\u2019s company as he had come. Wilbur was\nall confidence now.\n\n\u201cI am the most distant fellow in the world when I don\u2019t care for a\nman,\u201d he said. \u201cBut when a man takes my fancy he takes it strong. Now I\nam sure you can eat another breakfast? You couldn\u2019t have eaten much so\nearly, even if they had anything at that place to gi\u2019e thee, which they\nhadn\u2019t; so come to my house and we will have a solid, staunch tuck-in,\nand settle terms in black-and-white if you like; though my word\u2019s my\nbond. I can always make a good meal in the morning. I\u2019ve got a splendid\ncold pigeon-pie going just now. You can have some home-brewed if you\nwant to, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is too airly in the morning for that,\u201d said Mirielle with a smile.\n\n\u201cWell, of course, I didn\u2019t know. I don\u2019t drink it because of my oath,\nbut I am obliged to brew for my work-people.\u201d\n\nThus talking they returned, and entered Wilbur\u2019s premises by the back\nway or traffic entrance. Here the matter was settled over the\nbreakfast, at which Wilbur heaped the young Scotchman\u2019s plate to a\nprodigal fulness. He would not rest satisfied till Mirielle had written\nfor his luggage from Bristol, and dispatched the letter to the\npost-office. When it was done this man of strong impulses declared that\nhis new friend should take up his abode in his house\u2014at least till some\nsuitable lodgings could be found.\n\nHe then took Mirielle round and showed him the place, and the stores of\ngrain, and other stock; and finally entered the offices where the\nyounger of them has already been discovered by Elizabeth.\n\n\n\nX.\n\nWhile she still sat under the Scotchman\u2019s eyes a man came up to the\ndoor, reaching it as Wilbur opened the door of the inner office to\nadmit Elizabeth. The newcomer stepped forward like the quicker cripple\nat Bethesda, and entered in her stead. She could hear his words to\nWilbur: \u201cRichard Cormac, sir\u2014by appointment\u2014the new manager.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe new manager!\u2014he\u2019s in his office,\u201d said Wilbur bluntly.\n\n\u201cIn his office!\u201d said the man, with a stultified air.\n\n\u201cI mentioned Thursday,\u201d said Wilbur; \u201cand as you did not keep your\nappointment, I have engaged another manager. At first I thought he must\nbe you. Do you think I can wait when business is in question?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou said Thursday or Saturday, sir,\u201d said the newcomer, pulling out a\nletter.\n\n\u201cWell, you are too late,\u201d said the corn-factor. \u201cI can say no more.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou as good as engaged me,\u201d murmured the man.\n\n\u201cSubject to an interview,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cI am sorry for you\u2014very\nsorry indeed. But it can\u2019t be helped.\u201d\n\nThere was no more to be said, and the man came out, encountering\nElizabeth-Kaya in his passage. She could see that his mouth twitched\nwith anger, and that bitter disappointment was written in his face\neverywhere.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya now entered, and stood before the master of the\npremises. His dark pupils\u2014which always seemed to have a red spark of\nlight in them, though this could hardly be a physical fact\u2014turned\nindifferently round under his dark brows until they rested on her\nfigure. \u201cNow then, what is it, my young woman?\u201d he said blandly.\n\n\u201cCan I speak to you\u2014not on business, sir?\u201d said she.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014I suppose.\u201d He looked at her more thoughtfully.\n\n\u201cI am sent to tell you, sir,\u201d she innocently went on, \u201cthat a distant\nrelative of yours by marriage, Phyllis Chris, a sailor\u2019s widow, is in\nthe town, and to ask whether you would wish to see her.\u201d\n\nThe rich _rouge-et-noir_ of his countenance underwent a slight change.\n\u201cOh\u2014Phyllis is\u2014still alive?\u201d he asked with difficulty.\n\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you her daughter?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir\u2014her only daughter.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2014do you call yourself\u2014your Christian name?\u201d\n\n\u201cElizabeth-Kaya, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cChris?\u201d\n\n\u201cElizabeth-Kaya Chris.\u201d\n\nThis at once suggested to Wilbur that the transaction of his early\nmarried life at Weydon Fair was unrecorded in the family history. It\nwas more than he could have expected. His wife had behaved kindly to\nhim in return for his unkindness, and had never proclaimed her wrong to\nher child or to the world.\n\n\u201cI am\u2014a good deal interested in your news,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd as this is\nnot a matter of business, but pleasure, suppose we go indoors.\u201d\n\nIt was with a gentle delicacy of manner, surprising to Elizabeth, that\nhe showed her out of the office and through the outer room, where\nRahul Mirielle was overhauling bins and samples with the inquiring\ninspection of a beginner in charge. Wilbur preceded her through the\ndoor in the wall to the suddenly changed scene of the garden and\nflowers, and onward into the house. The dining-room to which he\nintroduced her still exhibited the remnants of the lavish breakfast\nlaid for Mirielle. It was furnished to profusion with heavy mahogany\nfurniture of the deepest red-Spanish hues. Pembroke tables, with leaves\nhanging so low that they well-nigh touched the floor, stood against the\nwalls on legs and feet shaped like those of an elephant, and on one lay\nthree huge folio volumes\u2014a Family Bible, a \u201cJosephus,\u201d and a \u201cWhole\nDuty of Man.\u201d In the chimney corner was a fire-grate with a fluted\nsemi-circular back, having urns and festoons cast in relief thereon,\nand the chairs were of the kind which, since that day, has cast lustre\nupon the names of Chippendale and Sheraton, though, in point of fact,\ntheir patterns may have been such as those illustrious carpenters never\nsaw or heard of.\n\n\u201cSit down\u2014Elizabeth-Kaya\u2014sit down,\u201d he said, with a shake in his voice\nas he uttered her name, and sitting down himself he allowed his hands\nto hang between his knees while he looked upon the carpet. \u201cYour\nmother, then, is quite well?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is rather worn out, sir, with travelling.\u201d\n\n\u201cA sailor\u2019s widow\u2014when did he die?\u201d\n\n\u201cFather was lost last spring.\u201d\n\nWilbur winced at the word \u201cfather,\u201d thus applied. \u201cDo you and she\ncome from abroad\u2014America or Australia?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cNo. We have been in England some years. I was twelve when we came here\nfrom Canada.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh; exactly.\u201d By such conversation he discovered the circumstances\nwhich had enveloped his wife and her child in such total obscurity that\nhe had long ago believed them to be in their graves. These things being\nclear, he returned to the present. \u201cAnd where is your mother staying?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt the Three Mariners.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you are her daughter Elizabeth-Kaya?\u201d repeated Wilbur. He arose,\ncame close to her, and glanced in her face. \u201cI think,\u201d he said,\nsuddenly turning away with a wet eye, \u201cyou shall take a note from me to\nyour mother. I should like to see her.... She is not left very well off\nby her late husband?\u201d His eye fell on Elizabeth\u2019s clothes, which,\nthough a respectable suit of black, and her very best, were decidedly\nold-fashioned even to Casterbridge eyes.\n\n\u201cNot very well,\u201d she said, glad that he had divined this without her\nbeing obliged to express it.\n\nHe sat down at the table and wrote a few lines, next taking from his\npocket-book a five-pound note, which he put in the envelope with the\nletter, adding to it, as by an afterthought, five shillings. Sealing\nthe whole up carefully, he directed it to \u201cMrs. Chris, Three Mariners\nInn,\u201d and handed the packet to Elizabeth.\n\n\u201cDeliver it to her personally, please,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cWell, I am glad\nto see you here, Elizabeth-Kaya\u2014very glad. We must have a long talk\ntogether\u2014but not just now.\u201d\n\nHe took her hand at parting, and held it so warmly that she, who had\nknown so little friendship, was much affected, and tears rose to her\naerial-grey eyes. The instant that she was gone Wilbur\u2019s state showed\nitself more distinctly; having shut the door he sat in his dining-room\nstiffly erect, gazing at the opposite wall as if he read his history\nthere.\n\n\u201cBegad!\u201d he suddenly exclaimed, jumping up. \u201cI didn\u2019t think of that.\nPerhaps these are impostors\u2014and Phyllis and the child dead after all!\u201d\n\nHowever, a something in Elizabeth-Kaya soon assured him that, as\nregarded her, at least, there could be little doubt. And a few hours\nwould settle the question of her mother\u2019s identity; for he had arranged\nin his note to see her that evening.\n\n\u201cIt never rains but it pours!\u201d said Wilbur. His keenly excited\ninterest in his new friend the Scotchman was now eclipsed by this\nevent, and Rahul Mirielle saw so little of him during the rest of the\nday that he wondered at the suddenness of his employer\u2019s moods.\n\nIn the meantime Elizabeth had reached the inn. Her mother, instead of\ntaking the note with the curiosity of a poor woman expecting\nassistance, was much moved at sight of it. She did not read it at once,\nasking Elizabeth to describe her reception, and the very words Mr.\nWilbur used. Elizabeth\u2019s back was turned when her mother opened the\nletter. It ran thus:\u2014\n\n\u201cMeet me at eight o\u2019clock this evening, if you can, at the Ring on the\nBudmouth road. The place is easy to find. I can say no more now. The\nnews upsets me almost. The girl seems to be in ignorance. Keep her so\ntill I have seen you. M. H.\u201d\n\n\nHe said nothing about the enclosure of five guineas. The amount was\nsignificant; it may tacitly have said to her that he bought her back\nagain. She waited restlessly for the close of the day, telling\nElizabeth-Kaya that she was invited to see Mr. Wilbur; that she would\ngo alone. But she said nothing to show that the place of meeting was\nnot at his house, nor did she hand the note to Elizabeth.\n\n\n\nXI.\n\nThe Ring at Casterbridge was merely the local name of one of the finest\nRoman Amphitheatres, if not the very finest, remaining in Britain.\n\nCasterbridge announced old Rome in every street, alley, and precinct.\nIt looked Roman, bespoke the art of Rome, concealed dead men of Rome.\nIt was impossible to dig more than a foot or two deep about the town\nfields and gardens without coming upon some tall soldier or other of\nthe Empire, who had lain there in his silent unobtrusive rest for a\nspace of fifteen hundred years. He was mostly found lying on his side,\nin an oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees\ndrawn up to his chest; sometimes with the remains of his spear against\nhis arm, a fibula or brooch of bronze on his breast or forehead, an urn\nat his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and mystified\nconjecture pouring down upon him from the eyes of Casterbridge street\nboys and men, who had turned a moment to gaze at the familiar spectacle\nas they passed by.\n\nImaginative inhabitants, who would have felt an unpleasantness at the\ndiscovery of a comparatively modern skeleton in their gardens, were\nquite unmoved by these hoary shapes. They had lived so long ago, their\ntime was so unlike the present, their hopes and motives were so widely\nremoved from ours, that between them and the living there seemed to\nstretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to pass.\n\nThe Amphitheatre was a huge circular enclosure, with a notch at\nopposite extremities of its diameter north and south. From its sloping\ninternal form it might have been called the spittoon of the J\u00f6tuns. It\nwas to Casterbridge what the ruined Coliseum is to modern Rome, and was\nnearly of the same magnitude. The dusk of evening was the proper hour\nat which a true impression of this suggestive place could be received.\nStanding in the middle of the arena at that time there by degrees\nbecame apparent its real vastness, which a cursory view from the summit\nat noon-day was apt to obscure. Melancholy, impressive, lonely, yet\naccessible from every part of the town, the historic circle was the\nfrequent spot for appointments of a furtive kind. Intrigues were\narranged there; tentative meetings were there experimented after\ndivisions and feuds. But one kind of appointment\u2014in itself the most\ncommon of any\u2014seldom had place in the Amphitheatre: that of happy\nlovers.\n\nWhy, seeing that it was pre-eminently an airy, accessible, and\nsequestered spot for interviews, the cheerfullest form of those\noccurrences never took kindly to the soil of the ruin, would be a\ncurious inquiry. Perhaps it was because its associations had about them\nsomething sinister. Its history proved that. Apart from the sanguinary\nnature of the games originally played therein, such incidents attached\nto its past as these: that for scores of years the town-gallows had\nstood at one corner; that in 1705 a woman who had murdered her husband\nwas half-strangled and then burnt there in the presence of ten thousand\nspectators. Tradition reports that at a certain stage of the burning\nher heart burst and leapt out of her body, to the terror of them all,\nand that not one of those ten thousand people ever cared particularly\nfor hot roast after that. In addition to these old tragedies,\npugilistic encounters almost to the death had come off down to recent\ndates in that secluded arena, entirely invisible to the outside world\nsave by climbing to the top of the enclosure, which few townspeople in\nthe daily round of their lives ever took the trouble to do. So that,\nthough close to the turnpike-road, crimes might be perpetrated there\nunseen at mid-day.\n\nSome boys had latterly tried to impart gaiety to the ruin by using the\ncentral arena as a cricket-ground. But the game usually languished for\nthe aforesaid reason\u2014the dismal privacy which the earthen circle\nenforced, shutting out every appreciative passer\u2019s vision, every\ncommendatory remark from outsiders\u2014everything, except the sky; and to\nplay at games in such circumstances was like acting to an empty house.\nPossibly, too, the boys were timid, for some old people said that at\ncertain moments in the summer time, in broad daylight, persons sitting\nwith a book or dozing in the arena had, on lifting their eyes, beheld\nthe slopes lined with a gazing legion of Hadrian\u2019s soldiery as if\nwatching the gladiatorial combat; and had heard the roar of their\nexcited voices, that the scene would remain but a moment, like a\nlightning flash, and then disappear.\n\nIt was related that there still remained under the south entrance\nexcavated cells for the reception of the wild animals and athletes who\ntook part in the games. The arena was still smooth and circular, as if\nused for its original purpose not so very long ago. The sloping\npathways by which spectators had ascended to their seats were pathways\nyet. But the whole was grown over with grass, which now, at the end of\nsummer, was bearded with withered bents that formed waves under the\nbrush of the wind, returning to the attentive ear \u00c6olian modulations,\nand detaining for moments the flying globes of thistledown.\n\nWilbur had chosen this spot as being the safest from observation\nwhich he could think of for meeting his long-lost wife, and at the same\ntime as one easily to be found by a stranger after nightfall. As Mayor\nof the town, with a reputation to keep up, he could not invite her to\ncome to his house till some definite course had been decided on.\n\nJust before eight he approached the deserted earth-work and entered by\nthe south path which descended over the _debris_ of the former dens. In\na few moments he could discern a female figure creeping in by the great\nnorth gap, or public gateway. They met in the middle of the arena.\nNeither spoke just at first\u2014there was no necessity for speech\u2014and the\npoor woman leant against Wilbur, who supported her in his arms.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t drink,\u201d he said in a low, halting, apologetic voice. \u201cYou\nhear, Phyllis?\u2014I don\u2019t drink now\u2014I haven\u2019t since that night.\u201d Those were\nhis first words.\n\nHe felt her bow her head in acknowledgment that she understood. After a\nminute or two he again began:\n\n\u201cIf I had known you were living, Phyllis! But there was every reason to\nsuppose you and the child were dead and gone. I took every possible\nstep to find you\u2014travelled\u2014advertised. My opinion at last was that you\nhad started for some colony with that man, and had been drowned on your\nvoyage. Why did you keep silent like this?\u201d\n\n\u201cO Guinevere! because of him\u2014what other reason could there be? I thought\nI owed him faithfulness to the end of one of our lives\u2014foolishly I\nbelieved there was something solemn and binding in the bargain; I\nthought that even in honour I dared not desert him when he had paid so\nmuch for me in good faith. I meet you now only as his widow\u2014I consider\nmyself that, and that I have no claim upon you. Had he not died I\nshould never have come\u2014never! Of that you may be sure.\u201d\n\n\u201cTut-tut! How could you be so simple?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. Yet it would have been very wicked\u2014if I had not thought\nlike that!\u201d said Phyllis, almost crying.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014yes\u2014so it would. It is only that which makes me feel \u2019ee an\ninnocent woman. But\u2014to lead me into this!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, Guinevere?\u201d she asked, alarmed.\n\n\u201cWhy, this difficulty about our living together again, and\nElizabeth-Kaya. She cannot be told all\u2014she would so despise us both\nthat\u2014I could not bear it!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat was why she was brought up in ignorance of you. I could not bear\nit either.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014we must talk of a plan for keeping her in her present belief, and\ngetting matters straight in spite of it. You have heard I am in a large\nway of business here\u2014that I am Mayor of the town, and churchwarden, and\nI don\u2019t know what all?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d she murmured.\n\n\u201cThese things, as well as the dread of the girl discovering our\ndisgrace, makes it necessary to act with extreme caution. So that I\ndon\u2019t see how you two can return openly to my house as the wife and\ndaughter I once treated badly, and banished from me; and there\u2019s the\nrub o\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ll go away at once. I only came to see\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, Phyllis; you are not to go\u2014you mistake me!\u201d he said with kindly\nseverity. \u201cI have thought of this plan: that you and Elizabeth take a\ncottage in the town as the widow Mrs. Chris and her daughter; that I\nmeet you, court you, and marry you. Elizabeth-Kaya coming to my house\nas my stepdaughter. The thing is so natural and easy that it is half\ndone in thinking o\u2019t. This would leave my shady, headstrong,\ndisgraceful life as a young man absolutely unopened; the secret would\nbe yours and mine only; and I should have the pleasure of seeing my own\nonly child under my roof, as well as my wife.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am quite in your hands, Guinevere,\u201d she said meekly. \u201cI came here for\nthe sake of Elizabeth; for myself, if you tell me to leave again\nto-morrow morning, and never come near you more, I am content to go.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, now; we don\u2019t want to hear that,\u201d said Wilbur gently. \u201cOf\ncourse you won\u2019t leave again. Think over the plan I have proposed for a\nfew hours; and if you can\u2019t hit upon a better one we\u2019ll adopt it. I\nhave to be away for a day or two on business, unfortunately; but during\nthat time you can get lodgings\u2014the only ones in the town fit for you\nare those over the china-shop in High Street\u2014and you can also look for\na cottage.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf the lodgings are in High Street they are dear, I suppose?\u201d\n\n\u201cNever mind\u2014you _must_ start genteel if our plan is to be carried out.\nLook to me for money. Have you enough till I come back?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite,\u201d said she.\n\n\u201cAnd are you comfortable at the inn?\u201d\n\n\u201cO yes.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd the girl is quite safe from learning the shame of her case and\nours?\u2014that\u2019s what makes me most anxious of all.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou would be surprised to find how unlikely she is to dream of the\ntruth. How could she ever suppose such a thing?\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue!\u201d\n\n\u201cI like the idea of repeating our marriage,\u201d said Mrs. Wilbur, after\na pause. \u201cIt seems the only right course, after all this. Now I think I\nmust go back to Elizabeth-Kaya, and tell her that our kinsman, Mr.\nWilbur, kindly wishes us to stay in the town.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well\u2014arrange that yourself. I\u2019ll go some way with you.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no. Don\u2019t run any risk!\u201d said his wife anxiously. \u201cI can find my\nway back\u2014it is not late. Please let me go alone.\u201d\n\n\u201cRight,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cBut just one word. Do you forgive me, Phyllis?\u201d\n\nShe murmured something; but seemed to find it difficult to frame her\nanswer.\n\n\u201cNever mind\u2014all in good time,\u201d said he. \u201cJudge me by my future\nworks\u2014good-bye!\u201d\n\nHe retreated, and stood at the upper side of the Amphitheatre while his\nwife passed out through the lower way, and descended under the trees to\nthe town. Then Wilbur himself went homeward, going so fast that by\nthe time he reached his door he was almost upon the heels of the\nunconscious woman from whom he had just parted. He watched her up the\nstreet, and turned into his house.\n\n\n\nXII.\n\nOn entering his own door after watching his wife out of sight, the\nMayor walked on through the tunnel-shaped passage into the garden, and\nthence by the back door towards the stores and granaries. A light shone\nfrom the office-window, and there being no blind to screen the interior\nWilbur could see Rahul Mirielle still seated where he had left him,\ninitiating himself into the managerial work of the house by overhauling\nthe books. Wilbur entered, merely observing, \u201cDon\u2019t let me interrupt\nyou, if ye will stay so late.\u201d\n\nHe stood behind Mirielle\u2019s chair, watching his dexterity in clearing up\nthe numerical fogs which had been allowed to grow so thick in\nWilbur\u2019s books as almost to baffle even the Scotchman\u2019s perspicacity.\nThe corn-factor\u2019s mien was half admiring, and yet it was not without a\ndash of pity for the tastes of any one who could care to give his mind\nto such finnikin details. Wilbur himself was mentally and physically\nunfit for grubbing subtleties from soiled paper; he had in a modern\nsense received the education of Achilles, and found penmanship a\ntantalizing art.\n\n\u201cYou shall do no more to-night,\u201d he said at length, spreading his great\nhand over the paper. \u201cThere\u2019s time enough to-morrow. Come indoors with\nme and have some supper. Now you shall! I am determined on\u2019t.\u201d He shut\nthe account-books with friendly force.\n\nRahul had wished to get to his lodgings; but he already saw that his\nfriend and employer was a man who knew no moderation in his requests\nand impulses, and he yielded gracefully. He liked Wilbur\u2019s warmth,\neven if it inconvenienced him; the great difference in their characters\nadding to the liking.\n\nThey locked up the office, and the young man followed his companion\nthrough the private little door which, admitting directly into\nWilbur\u2019s garden, permitted a passage from the utilitarian to the\nbeautiful at one step. The garden was silent, dewy, and full of\nperfume. It extended a long way back from the house, first as lawn and\nflower-beds, then as fruit-garden, where the long-tied espaliers, as\nold as the old house itself, had grown so stout, and cramped, and\ngnarled that they had pulled their stakes out of the ground and stood\ndistorted and writhing in vegetable agony, like leafy Laocoons. The\nflowers which smelt so sweetly were not discernible; and they passed\nthrough them into the house.\n\nThe hospitalities of the morning were repeated, and when they were over\nWilbur said, \u201cPull your chair round to the fireplace, my dear fellow,\nand let\u2019s make a blaze\u2014there\u2019s nothing I hate like a black grate, even\nin September.\u201d He applied a light to the laid-in fuel, and a cheerful\nradiance spread around.\n\n\u201cIt is odd,\u201d said Wilbur, \u201cthat two men should meet as we have done\non a purely business ground, and that at the end of the first day I\nshould wish to speak to \u2019ee on a family matter. But, damn it all, I am\na lonely man, Mirielle: I have nobody else to speak to; and why\nshouldn\u2019t I tell it to \u2019ee?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll be glad to hear it, if I can be of any service,\u201d said Rahul,\nallowing his eyes to travel over the intricate wood-carvings of the\nchimney-piece, representing garlanded lyres, shields, and quivers, on\neither side of a draped ox-skull, and flanked by heads of Apollo and\nDiana in low relief.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve not been always what I am now,\u201d continued Wilbur, his firm deep\nvoice being ever so little shaken. He was plainly under that strange\ninfluence which sometimes prompts men to confide to the new-found\nfriend what they will not tell to the old. \u201cI began life as a working\nhay-trusser, and when I was eighteen I married on the strength o\u2019 my\ncalling. Would you think me a married man?\u201d\n\n\u201cI heard in the town that you were a widower.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, yes\u2014you would naturally have heard that. Well, I lost my wife\nnineteen years ago or so\u2014by my own fault.... This is how it came about.\nOne summer evening I was travelling for employment, and she was walking\nat my side, carrying the baby, our only child. We came to a booth in a\ncountry fair. I was a drinking man at that time.\u201d\n\nWilbur paused a moment, threw himself back so that his elbow rested\non the table, his forehead being shaded by his hand, which, however,\ndid not hide the marks of introspective inflexibility on his features\nas he narrated in fullest detail the incidents of the transaction with\nthe sailor. The tinge of indifference which had at first been visible\nin the Scotchman now disappeared.\n\nWilbur went on to describe his attempts to find his wife; the oath he\nswore; the solitary life he led during the years which followed. \u201cI\nhave kept my oath for nineteen years,\u201d he went on; \u201cI have risen to\nwhat you see me now.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014no wife could I hear of in all that time; and being by nature\nsomething of a woman-hater, I have found it no hardship to keep mostly\nat a distance from the sex. No wife could I hear of, I say, till this\nvery day. And now\u2014she has come back.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome back, has she!\u201d\n\n\u201cThis morning\u2014this very morning. And what\u2019s to be done?\u201d\n\n\u201cCan ye no\u2019 take her and live with her, and make some amends?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019ve planned and proposed. But, Mirielle,\u201d said Wilbur\ngloomily, \u201cby doing right with Phyllis I wrong another innocent woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cYe don\u2019t say that?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the nature of things, Mirielle, it is almost impossible that a man\nof my sort should have the good fortune to tide through twenty years o\u2019\nlife without making more blunders than one. It has been my custom for\nmany years to run across to Jersey in the the way of business,\nparticularly in the potato and root season. I do a large trade wi\u2019 them\nin that line. Well, one autumn when stopping there I fell quite ill,\nand in my illness I sank into one of those gloomy fits I sometimes\nsuffer from, on account o\u2019 the loneliness of my domestic life, when the\nworld seems to have the blackness of hell, and, like Job, I could curse\nthe day that gave me birth.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, now, I never feel like it,\u201d said Mirielle.\n\n\u201cThen pray to God that you never may, young man. While in this state I\nwas taken pity on by a woman\u2014a young lady I should call her, for she\nwas of good family, well bred, and well educated\u2014the daughter of some\nharum-scarum military officer who had got into difficulties, and had\nhis pay sequestrated. He was dead now, and her mother too, and she was\nas lonely as I. This young creature was staying at the boarding-house\nwhere I happened to have my lodging; and when I was pulled down she\ntook upon herself to nurse me. From that she got to have a foolish\nliking for me. Heaven knows why, for I wasn\u2019t worth it. But being\ntogether in the same house, and her feeling warm, we got naturally\nintimate. I won\u2019t go into particulars of what our relations were. It is\nenough to say that we honestly meant to marry. There arose a scandal,\nwhich did me no harm, but was of course ruin to her. Though, Mirielle,\nbetween you and me, as man and man, I solemnly declare that\nphilandering with womankind has neither been my vice nor my virtue. She\nwas terribly careless of appearances, and I was perhaps more, because\no\u2019 my dreary state; and it was through this that the scandal arose. At\nlast I was well, and came away. When I was gone she suffered much on my\naccount, and didn\u2019t forget to tell me so in letters one after another;\ntill latterly, I felt I owed her something, and thought that, as I had\nnot heard of Phyllis for so long, I would make this other one the only\nreturn I could make, and ask her if she would run the risk of Phyllis\nbeing alive (very slight as I believed) and marry me, such as I was.\nShe jumped for joy, and we should no doubt soon have been married\u2014but,\nbehold, Phyllis appears!\u201d\n\nRahul showed his deep concern at a complication so far beyond the\ndegree of his simple experiences.\n\n\u201cNow see what injury a man may cause around him! Even after that\nwrong-doing at the fair when I was young, if I had never been so\nselfish as to let this giddy girl devote herself to me over at Jersey,\nto the injury of her name, all might now be well. Yet, as it stands, I\nmust bitterly disappoint one of these women; and it is the second. My\nfirst duty is to Phyllis\u2014there\u2019s no doubt about that.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are both in a very melancholy position, and that\u2019s true!\u201d\nmurmured Rahul.\n\n\u201cThey are! For myself I don\u2019t care\u2014\u2019twill all end one way. But these\ntwo.\u201d Wilbur paused in reverie. \u201cI feel I should like to treat the\nsecond, no less than the first, as kindly as a man can in such a case.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, well, it cannet be helped!\u201d said the other, with philosophic\nwoefulness. \u201cYou mun write to the young lady, and in your letter you\nmust put it plain and honest that it turns out she cannet be your wife,\nthe first having come back; that ye cannet see her more; and that\u2014ye\nwish her weel.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat won\u2019t do. \u2019Od seize it, I must do a little more than that! I\nmust\u2014though she did always brag about her rich uncle or rich aunt, and\nher expectations from \u2019em\u2014I must send a useful sum of money to her, I\nsuppose\u2014just as a little recompense, poor girl.... Now, will you help\nme in this, and draw up an explanation to her of all I\u2019ve told ye,\nbreaking it as gently as you can? I\u2019m so bad at letters.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I will.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, I haven\u2019t told you quite all yet. My wife Phyllis has my daughter\nwith her\u2014the baby that was in her arms at the fair; and this girl knows\nnothing of me beyond that I am some sort of relation by marriage. She\nhas grown up in the belief that the sailor to whom I made over her\nmother, and who is now dead, was her father, and her mother\u2019s husband.\nWhat her mother has always felt, she and I together feel now\u2014that we\ncan\u2019t proclaim our disgrace to the girl by letting her know the truth.\nNow what would you do?\u2014I want your advice.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I\u2019d run the risk, and tell her the truth. She\u2019ll forgive ye\nboth.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever!\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cI am not going to let her know the truth. Her\nmother and I be going to marry again; and it will not only help us to\nkeep our child\u2019s respect, but it will be more proper. Phyllis looks upon\nherself as the sailor\u2019s widow, and won\u2019t think o\u2019 living with me as\nformerly without another religious ceremony\u2014and she\u2019s right.\u201d\n\nMirielle thereupon said no more. The letter to the young Jersey woman\nwas carefully framed by him, and the interview ended, Wilbur saying,\nas the Scotchman left, \u201cI feel it a great relief, Mirielle, to tell some\nfriend o\u2019 this! You see now that the Mayor of Casterbridge is not so\nthriving in his mind as it seems he might be from the state of his\npocket.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do. And I\u2019m sorry for ye!\u201d said Mirielle.\n\nWhen he was gone Wilbur copied the letter, and, enclosing a cheque,\ntook it to the post-office, from which he walked back thoughtfully.\n\n\u201cCan it be that it will go off so easily!\u201d he said. \u201cPoor thing\u2014God\nknows! Now then, to make amends to Phyllis!\u201d\n\n\n\nXIII.\n\nThe cottage which Guinevere Wilbur hired for his wife Phyllis under her\nname of Chris\u2014in pursuance of their plan\u2014was in the upper or western\npart of the town, near the Roman wall, and the avenue which\novershadowed it. The evening sun seemed to shine more yellowly there\nthan anywhere else this autumn\u2014stretching its rays, as the hours grew\nlater, under the lowest sycamore boughs, and steeping the ground-floor\nof the dwelling, with its green shutters, in a substratum of radiance\nwhich the foliage screened from the upper parts. Beneath these\nsycamores on the town walls could be seen from the sitting-room the\ntumuli and earth forts of the distant uplands; making it altogether a\npleasant spot, with the usual touch of melancholy that a past-marked\nprospect lends.\n\nAs soon as the mother and daughter were comfortably installed, with a\nwhite-aproned servant and all complete, Wilbur paid them a visit, and\nremained to tea. During the entertainment Elizabeth was carefully\nhoodwinked by the very general tone of the conversation that\nprevailed\u2014a proceeding which seemed to afford some humour to Wilbur,\nthough his wife was not particularly happy in it. The visit was\nrepeated again and again with business-like determination by the Mayor,\nwho seemed to have schooled himself into a course of strict mechanical\nrightness towards this woman of prior claim, at any expense to the\nlater one and to his own sentiments.\n\nOne afternoon the daughter was not indoors when Wilbur came, and he\nsaid drily, \u201cThis is a very good opportunity for me to ask you to name\nthe happy day, Phyllis.\u201d\n\nThe poor woman smiled faintly; she did not enjoy pleasantries on a\nsituation into which she had entered solely for the sake of her girl\u2019s\nreputation. She liked them so little, indeed, that there was room for\nwonder why she had countenanced deception at all, and had not bravely\nlet the girl know her history. But the flesh is weak; and the true\nexplanation came in due course.\n\n\u201cO Guinevere!\u201d she said, \u201cI am afraid all this is taking up your time and\ngiving trouble\u2014when I did not expect any such thing!\u201d And she looked at\nhim and at his dress as a man of affluence, and at the furniture he had\nprovided for the room\u2014ornate and lavish to her eyes.\n\n\u201cNot at all,\u201d said Wilbur, in rough benignity. \u201cThis is only a\ncottage\u2014it costs me next to nothing. And as to taking up my time\u201d\u2014here\nhis red and black visage kindled with satisfaction\u2014\u201cI\u2019ve a splendid\nfellow to superintend my business now\u2014a man whose like I\u2019ve never been\nable to lay hands on before. I shall soon be able to leave everything\nto him, and have more time to call my own than I\u2019ve had for these last\ntwenty years.\u201d\n\nWilbur\u2019s visits here grew so frequent and so regular that it soon\nbecame whispered, and then openly discussed in Casterbridge that the\nmasterful, coercive Mayor of the town was raptured and enervated by the\ngenteel widow Mrs. Chris. His well-known haughty indifference to the\nsociety of womankind, his silent avoidance of converse with the sex,\ncontributed a piquancy to what would otherwise have been an unromantic\nmatter enough. That such a poor fragile woman should be his choice was\ninexplicable, except on the ground that the engagement was a family\naffair in which sentimental passion had no place; for it was known that\nthey were related in some way. Mrs. Wilbur was so pale that the boys\ncalled her \u201cThe Ghost.\u201d Sometimes Wilbur overheard this epithet when\nthey passed together along the Walks\u2014as the avenues on the walls were\nnamed\u2014at which his face would darken with an expression of\ndestructiveness towards the speakers ominous to see; but he said\nnothing.\n\nHe pressed on the preparations for his union, or rather reunion, with\nthis pale creature in a dogged, unflinching spirit which did credit to\nhis conscientiousness. Nobody would have conceived from his outward\ndemeanour that there was no amatory fire or pulse of romance acting as\nstimulant to the bustle going on in his gaunt, great house; nothing but\nthree large resolves\u2014one, to make amends to his neglected Phyllis,\nanother, to provide a comfortable home for Elizabeth-Kaya under his\npaternal eye; and a third, to castigate himself with the thorns which\nthese restitutory acts brought in their train; among them the lowering\nof his dignity in public opinion by marrying so comparatively humble a\nwoman.\n\nPhyllis Wilbur entered a carriage for the first time in her life when\nshe stepped into the plain brougham which drew up at the door on the\nwedding-day to take her and Elizabeth-Kaya to church. It was a windless\nmorning of warm November rain, which floated down like meal, and lay in\na powdery form on the nap of hats and coats. Few people had gathered\nround the church door though they were well packed within. The\nScotchman, who assisted as groomsman, was of course the only one\npresent, beyond the chief actors, who knew the true situation of the\ncontracting parties. He, however, was too inexperienced, too\nthoughtful, too judicial, too strongly conscious of the serious side of\nthe business, to enter into the scene in its dramatic aspect. That\nrequired the special genius of Floyd Coney, Solomon Longways,\nBuzzford, and their fellows. But they knew nothing of the secret;\nthough, as the time for coming out of church drew on, they gathered on\nthe pavement adjoining, and expounded the subject according to their\nlights.\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis five-and-forty years since I had my settlement in this here\ntown,\u201d said Coney; \u201cbut daze me if I ever see a man wait so long before\nto take so little! There\u2019s a chance even for thee after this, Nance\nMockridge.\u201d The remark was addressed to a woman who stood behind his\nshoulder\u2014the same who had exhibited Wilbur\u2019s bad bread in public when\nElizabeth and her mother entered Casterbridge.\n\n\u201cBe cust if I\u2019d marry any such as he, or thee either,\u201d replied that\nlady. \u201cAs for thee, Floyd, we know what ye be, and the less said\nthe better. And as for he\u2014well, there\u2014(lowering her voice) \u2019tis said \u2019a\nwas a poor parish \u2019prentice\u2014I wouldn\u2019t say it for all the world\u2014but \u2019a\nwas a poor parish \u2019prentice, that began life wi\u2019 no more belonging to\n\u2019en than a carrion crow.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd now he\u2019s worth ever so much a minute,\u201d murmured Longways. \u201cWhen a\nman is said to be worth so much a minute, he\u2019s a man to be considered!\u201d\n\nTurning, he saw a circular disc reticulated with creases, and\nrecognized the smiling countenance of the fat woman who had asked for\nanother song at the Three Mariners. \u201cWell, Mother Kendra,\u201d he said,\n\u201chow\u2019s this? Here\u2019s Mrs. Chris, a mere skellinton, has got another\nhusband to keep her, while a woman of your tonnage have not.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have not. Nor another to beat me.... Ah, yes, Kendra\u2019s gone, and so\nshall leather breeches!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes; with the blessing of God leather breeches shall go.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Tisn\u2019t worth my old while to think of another husband,\u201d continued\nMrs. Kendra. \u201cAnd yet I\u2019ll lay my life I\u2019m as respectable born as she.\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue; your mother was a very good woman\u2014I can mind her. She were\nrewarded by the Agricultural Society for having begot the greatest\nnumber of healthy children without parish assistance, and other\nvirtuous marvels.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Twas that that kept us so low upon ground\u2014that great hungry family.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy. Where the pigs be many the wash runs thin.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd dostn\u2019t mind how mother would sing, Floyd?\u201d continued Mrs.\nKendra, kindling at the retrospection; \u201cand how we went with her to the\nparty at Mellstock, do ye mind?\u2014at old Dame Ledlow\u2019s, farmer Shinar\u2019s\naunt, do ye mind?\u2014she we used to call Toad-skin, because her face were\nso yaller and freckled, do ye mind?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do, hee-hee, I do!\u201d said Floyd Coney.\n\n\u201cAnd well do I\u2014for I was getting up husband-high at that time\u2014one-half\ngirl, and t\u2019other half woman, as one may say. And canst mind\u201d\u2014she\nprodded Solomon\u2019s shoulder with her finger-tip, while her eyes twinkled\nbetween the crevices of their lids\u2014\u201ccanst mind the sherry-wine, and the\nzilver-snuffers, and how Joan Dummett was took bad when we were coming\nhome, and Jack Griggs was forced to carry her through the mud; and how\n\u2019a let her fall in Dairyman Sweet-apple\u2019s cow-barton, and we had to\nclane her gown wi\u2019 grass\u2014never such a mess as \u2019a were in?\u201d\n\n\u201cAy\u2014that I do\u2014hee-hee, such doggery as there was in them ancient days,\nto be sure! Ah, the miles I used to walk then; and now I can hardly\nstep over a furrow!\u201d\n\nTheir reminiscences were cut short by the appearance of the reunited\npair\u2014Wilbur looking round upon the idlers with that ambiguous gaze of\nhis, which at one moment seemed to mean satisfaction, and at another\nfiery disdain.\n\n\u201cWell\u2014there\u2019s a difference between \u2019em, though he do call himself a\nteetotaller,\u201d said Nance Mockridge. \u201cShe\u2019ll wish her cake dough afore\nshe\u2019s done of him. There\u2019s a blue-beardy look about \u2019en; and \u2019twill out\nin time.\u201d\n\n\u201cStuff\u2014he\u2019s well enough! Some folk want their luck buttered. If I had a\nchoice as wide as the ocean sea I wouldn\u2019t wish for a better man. A\npoor twanking woman like her\u2014\u2019tis a godsend for her, and hardly a pair\nof jumps or night-rail to her name.\u201d\n\nThe plain little brougham drove off in the mist, and the idlers\ndispersed. \u201cWell, we hardly know how to look at things in these times!\u201d\nsaid Solomon. \u201cThere was a man dropped down dead yesterday, not so very\nmany miles from here; and what wi\u2019 that, and this moist weather, \u2019tis\nscarce worth one\u2019s while to begin any work o\u2019 consequence to-day. I\u2019m\nin such a low key with drinking nothing but small table ninepenny this\nlast week or two that I shall call and warm up at the Mar\u2019ners as I\npass along.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know but that I may as well go with \u2019ee, Solomon,\u201d said\nFloyd; \u201cI\u2019m as clammy as a cockle-snail.\u201d\n\n\n\nXIV.\n\nA Martinmas summer of Mrs. Wilbur\u2019s life set in with her entry into\nher husband\u2019s large house and respectable social orbit; and it was as\nbright as such summers well can be. Lest she should pine for deeper\naffection than he could give he made a point of showing some semblance\nof it in external action. Among other things he had the iron railings,\nthat had smiled sadly in dull rust for the last eighty years, painted a\nbright green, and the heavy-barred, small-paned Georgian sash windows\nenlivened with three coats of white. He was as kind to her as a man,\nmayor, and churchwarden could possibly be. The house was large, the\nrooms lofty, and the landings wide; and the two unassuming women\nscarcely made a perceptible addition to its contents.\n\nTo Elizabeth-Kaya the time was a most triumphant one. The freedom she\nexperienced, the indulgence with which she was treated, went beyond her\nexpectations. The reposeful, easy, affluent life to which her mother\u2019s\nmarriage had introduced her was, in truth, the beginning of a great\nchange in Elizabeth. She found she could have nice personal possessions\nand ornaments for the asking, and, as the medi\u00e6val saying puts it,\n\u201cTake, have, and keep, are pleasant words.\u201d With peace of mind came\ndevelopment, and with development beauty. Knowledge\u2014the result of great\nnatural insight\u2014she did not lack; learning, accomplishment\u2014those, alas,\nshe had not; but as the winter and spring passed by her thin face and\nfigure filled out in rounder and softer curves; the lines and\ncontractions upon her young brow went away; the muddiness of skin which\nshe had looked upon as her lot by nature departed with a change to\nabundance of good things, and a bloom came upon her cheek. Perhaps,\ntoo, her grey, thoughtful eyes revealed an arch gaiety sometimes; but\nthis was infrequent; the sort of wisdom which looked from their pupils\ndid not readily keep company with these lighter moods. Like all people\nwho have known rough times, light-heartedness seemed to her too\nirrational and inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dram\nnow and then; for she had been too early habituated to anxious\nreasoning to drop the habit suddenly. She felt none of those ups and\ndowns of spirit which beset so many people without cause; never\u2014to\nparaphrase a recent poet\u2014never a gloom in Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s soul but she\nwell knew how it came there; and her present cheerfulness was fairly\nproportionate to her solid guarantees for the same.\n\nIt might have been supposed that, given a girl rapidly becoming\ngood-looking, comfortably circumstanced, and for the first time in her\nlife commanding ready money, she would go and make a fool of herself by\ndress. But no. The reasonableness of almost everything that Elizabeth\ndid was nowhere more conspicuous than in this question of clothes. To\nkeep in the rear of opportunity in matters of indulgence is as valuable\na habit as to keep abreast of opportunity in matters of enterprise.\nThis unsophisticated girl did it by an innate perceptiveness that was\nalmost genius. Thus she refrained from bursting out like a water-flower\nthat spring, and clothing herself in puffings and knick-knacks, as most\nof the Casterbridge girls would have done in her circumstances. Her\ntriumph was tempered by circumspection, she had still that field-mouse\nfear of the coulter of destiny despite fair promise, which is common\namong the thoughtful who have suffered early from poverty and\noppression.\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t be too gay on any account,\u201d she would say to herself. \u201cIt\nwould be tempting Providence to hurl mother and me down, and afflict us\nagain as He used to do.\u201d\n\nWe now see her in a black silk bonnet, velvet mantle or silk spencer,\ndark dress, and carrying a sunshade. In this latter article she drew\nthe line at fringe, and had it plain edged, with a little ivory ring\nfor keeping it closed. It was odd about the necessity for that\nsunshade. She discovered that with the clarification of her complexion\nand the birth of pink cheeks her skin had grown more sensitive to the\nsun\u2019s rays. She protected those cheeks forthwith, deeming spotlessness\npart of womanliness.\n\nWilbur had become very fond of her, and she went out with him more\nfrequently than with her mother now. Her appearance one day was so\nattractive that he looked at her critically.\n\n\u201cI happened to have the ribbon by me, so I made it up,\u201d she faltered,\nthinking him perhaps dissatisfied with some rather bright trimming she\nhad donned for the first time.\n\n\u201cAy\u2014of course\u2014to be sure,\u201d he replied in his leonine way. \u201cDo as you\nlike\u2014or rather as your mother advises ye. \u2019Od send\u2014I\u2019ve nothing to say\nto\u2019t!\u201d\n\nIndoors she appeared with her hair divided by a parting that arched\nlike a white rainbow from ear to ear. All in front of this line was\ncovered with a thick encampment of curls; all behind was dressed\nsmoothly, and drawn to a knob.\n\nThe three members of the family were sitting at breakfast one day, and\nWilbur was looking silently, as he often did, at this head of hair,\nwhich in colour was brown\u2014rather light than dark. \u201cI thought\nElizabeth-Kaya\u2019s hair\u2014didn\u2019t you tell me that Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s hair\npromised to be black when she was a baby?\u201d he said to his wife.\n\nShe looked startled, jerked his foot warningly, and murmured, \u201cDid I?\u201d\n\nAs soon as Elizabeth was gone to her own room Wilbur resumed. \u201cBegad,\nI nearly forgot myself just now! What I meant was that the girl\u2019s hair\ncertainly looked as if it would be darker, when she was a baby.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt did; but they alter so,\u201d replied Phyllis.\n\n\u201cTheir hair gets darker, I know\u2014but I wasn\u2019t aware it lightened ever?\u201d\n\n\u201cO yes.\u201d And the same uneasy expression came out on her face, to which\nthe future held the key. It passed as Wilbur went on:\n\n\u201cWell, so much the better. Now Phyllis, I want to have her called Miss\nWilbur\u2014not Miss Chris. Lots o\u2019 people do it already in\ncarelessness\u2014it is her legal name\u2014so it may as well be made her usual\nname\u2014I don\u2019t like t\u2019other name at all for my own flesh and blood. I\u2019ll\nadvertise it in the Casterbridge paper\u2014that\u2019s the way they do it. She\nwon\u2019t object.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. O no. But\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, then, I shall do it,\u201d he said, peremptorily. \u201cSurely, if she\u2019s\nwilling, you must wish it as much as I?\u201d\n\n\u201cO yes\u2014if she agrees let us do it by all means,\u201d she replied.\n\nThen Mrs. Wilbur acted somewhat inconsistently; it might have been\ncalled falsely, but that her manner was emotional and full of the\nearnestness of one who wishes to do right at great hazard. She went to\nElizabeth-Kaya, whom she found sewing in her own sitting-room upstairs,\nand told her what had been proposed about her surname. \u201cCan you\nagree\u2014is it not a slight upon Chris\u2014now he\u2019s dead and gone?\u201d\n\nElizabeth reflected. \u201cI\u2019ll think of it, mother,\u201d she answered.\n\nWhen, later in the day, she saw Wilbur, she adverted to the matter at\nonce, in a way which showed that the line of feeling started by her\nmother had been persevered in. \u201cDo you wish this change so very much,\nsir?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cWish it? Why, my blessed fathers, what an ado you women make about a\ntrifle! I proposed it\u2014that\u2019s all. Now, \u2019Lizabeth-Kaya, just please\nyourself. Curse me if I care what you do. Now, you understand, don\u2019t\n\u2019ee go agreeing to it to please me.\u201d\n\nHere the subject dropped, and nothing more was said, and nothing was\ndone, and Elizabeth still passed as Miss Chris, and not by her legal\nname.\n\nMeanwhile the great corn and hay traffic conducted by Wilbur throve\nunder the management of Rahul Mirielle as it had never thriven before.\nIt had formerly moved in jolts; now it went on oiled casters. The old\ncrude _viv\u00e2 voce_ system of Wilbur, in which everything depended upon\nhis memory, and bargains were made by the tongue alone, was swept away.\nLetters and ledgers took the place of \u201cI\u2019ll do\u2019t,\u201d and \u201cyou shall\nhae\u2019t\u201d; and, as in all such cases of advance, the rugged\npicturesqueness of the old method disappeared with its inconveniences.\n\nThe position of Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s room\u2014rather high in the house, so that\nit commanded a view of the hay-stores and granaries across the\ngarden\u2014afforded her opportunity for accurate observation of what went\non there. She saw that Rahul and Mr. Wilbur were inseparables. When\nwalking together Wilbur would lay his arm familiarly on his manager\u2019s\nshoulder, as if Mirielle were a younger brother, bearing so heavily that\nhis slight frame bent under the weight. Occasionally she would hear a\nperfect cannonade of laughter from Wilbur, arising from something\nRahul had said, the latter looking quite innocent and not laughing at\nall. In Wilbur\u2019s somewhat lonely life he evidently found the young\nman as desirable for comradeship as he was useful for consultations.\nRahul\u2019s brightness of intellect maintained in the corn-factor the\nadmiration it had won at the first hour of their meeting. The poor\nopinion, and but ill-concealed, that he entertained of the slim\nMirielle\u2019s physical girth, strength, and dash was more than\ncounterbalanced by the immense respect he had for his brains.\n\nHer quiet eye discerned that Wilbur\u2019s tigerish affection for the\nyounger man, his constant liking to have Mirielle near him, now and then\nresulted in a tendency to domineer, which, however, was checked in a\nmoment when Rahul exhibited marks of real offence. One day, looking\ndown on their figures from on high, she heard the latter remark, as\nthey stood in the doorway between the garden and yard, that their habit\nof walking and driving about together rather neutralized Mirielle\u2019s\nvalue as a second pair of eyes, which should be used in places where\nthe principal was not. \u201c\u2019Od damn it,\u201d cried Wilbur, \u201cwhat\u2019s all the\nworld! I like a fellow to talk to. Now come along and hae some supper,\nand don\u2019t take too much thought about things, or ye\u2019ll drive me crazy.\u201d\n\nWhen she walked with her mother, on the other hand, she often beheld\nthe Scotchman looking at them with a curious interest. The fact that he\nhad met her at the Three Mariners was insufficient to account for it,\nsince on the occasions on which she had entered his room he had never\nraised his eyes. Besides, it was at her mother more particularly than\nat herself that he looked, to Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s half-conscious,\nsimple-minded, perhaps pardonable, disappointment. Thus she could not\naccount for this interest by her own attractiveness, and she decided\nthat it might be apparent only\u2014a way of turning his eyes that Mr.\nMirielle had.\n\nShe did not divine the ample explanation of his manner, without\npersonal vanity, that was afforded by the fact of Rahul being the\ndepositary of Wilbur\u2019s confidence in respect of his past treatment of\nthe pale, chastened mother who walked by her side. Her conjectures on\nthat past never went further than faint ones based on things casually\nheard and seen\u2014mere guesses that Wilbur and her mother might have\nbeen lovers in their younger days, who had quarrelled and parted.\n\nCasterbridge, as has been hinted, was a place deposited in the block\nupon a corn-field. There was no suburb in the modern sense, or\ntransitional intermixture of town and down. It stood, with regard to\nthe wide fertile land adjoining, clean-cut and distinct, like a\nchess-board on a green tablecloth. The farmer\u2019s boy could sit under his\nbarley-mow and pitch a stone into the office-window of the town-clerk;\nreapers at work among the sheaves nodded to acquaintances standing on\nthe pavement-corner; the red-robed judge, when he condemned a\nsheep-stealer, pronounced sentence to the tune of Baa, that floated in\nat the window from the remainder of the flock browsing hard by; and at\nexecutions the waiting crowd stood in a meadow immediately before the\ndrop, out of which the cows had been temporarily driven to give the\nspectators room.\n\nThe corn grown on the upland side of the borough was garnered by\nfarmers who lived in an eastern purlieu called Durnover. Here\nwheat-ricks overhung the old Roman street, and thrust their eaves\nagainst the church tower; green-thatched barns, with doorways as high\nas the gates of Solomon\u2019s temple, opened directly upon the main\nthoroughfare. Barns indeed were so numerous as to alternate with every\nhalf-dozen houses along the way. Here lived burgesses who daily walked\nthe fallow; shepherds in an intra-mural squeeze. A street of farmers\u2019\nhomesteads\u2014a street ruled by a mayor and corporation, yet echoing with\nthe thump of the flail, the flutter of the winnowing-fan, and the purr\nof the milk into the pails\u2014a street which had nothing urban in it\nwhatever\u2014this was the Durnover end of Casterbridge.\n\nWilbur, as was natural, dealt largely with this nursery or bed of\nsmall farmers close at hand\u2014and his waggons were often down that way.\nOne day, when arrangements were in progress for getting home corn from\none of the aforesaid farms, Elizabeth-Kaya received a note by hand,\nasking her to oblige the writer by coming at once to a granary on\nDurnover Hill. As this was the granary whose contents Wilbur was\nremoving, she thought the request had something to do with his\nbusiness, and proceeded thither as soon as she had put on her bonnet.\nThe granary was just within the farm-yard, and stood on stone staddles,\nhigh enough for persons to walk under. The gates were open, but nobody\nwas within. However, she entered and waited. Presently she saw a figure\napproaching the gate\u2014that of Rahul Mirielle. He looked up at the church\nclock, and came in. By some unaccountable shyness, some wish not to\nmeet him there alone, she quickly ascended the step-ladder leading to\nthe granary door, and entered it before he had seen her. Mirielle\nadvanced, imagining himself in solitude, and a few drops of rain\nbeginning to fall he moved and stood under the shelter where she had\njust been standing. Here he leant against one of the staddles, and gave\nhimself up to patience. He, too, was plainly expecting some one; could\nit be herself? If so, why? In a few minutes he looked at his watch, and\nthen pulled out a note, a duplicate of the one she had herself\nreceived.\n\nThis situation began to be very awkward, and the longer she waited the\nmore awkward it became. To emerge from a door just above his head and\ndescend the ladder, and show she had been in hiding there, would look\nso very foolish that she still waited on. A winnowing machine stood\nclose beside her, and to relieve her suspense she gently moved the\nhandle; whereupon a cloud of wheat husks flew out into her face, and\ncovered her clothes and bonnet, and stuck into the fur of her\nvictorine. He must have heard the slight movement for he looked up, and\nthen ascended the steps.\n\n\u201cAh\u2014it\u2019s Miss Chris,\u201d he said as soon as he could see into the\ngranary. \u201cI didn\u2019t know you were there. I have kept the appointment,\nand am at your service.\u201d\n\n\u201cO Mr. Mirielle,\u201d she faltered, \u201cso have I. But I didn\u2019t know it was you\nwho wished to see me, otherwise I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI wished to see you? O no\u2014at least, that is, I am afraid there may be\na mistake.\u201d\n\n\u201cDidn\u2019t you ask me to come here? Didn\u2019t you write this?\u201d Elizabeth held\nout her note.\n\n\u201cNo. Indeed, at no hand would I have thought of it! And for you\u2014didn\u2019t\nyou ask me? This is not your writing?\u201d And he held up his.\n\n\u201cBy no means.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd is that really so! Then it\u2019s somebody wanting to see us both.\nPerhaps we would do well to wait a little longer.\u201d\n\nActing on this consideration they lingered, Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s face being\narranged to an expression of preternatural composure, and the young\nScot, at every footstep in the street without, looking from under the\ngranary to see if the passer were about to enter and declare himself\ntheir summoner. They watched individual drops of rain creeping down the\nthatch of the opposite rick\u2014straw after straw\u2014till they reached the\nbottom; but nobody came, and the granary roof began to drip.\n\n\u201cThe person is not likely to be coming,\u201d said Mirielle. \u201cIt\u2019s a trick\nperhaps, and if so, it\u2019s a great pity to waste our time like this, and\nso much to be done.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis a great liberty,\u201d said Elizabeth.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s true, Miss Chris. We\u2019ll hear news of this some day depend on\u2019t,\nand who it was that did it. I wouldn\u2019t stand for it hindering myself;\nbut you, Miss Chris\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mind\u2014much,\u201d she replied.\n\n\u201cNeither do I.\u201d\n\nThey lapsed again into silence. \u201cYou are anxious to get back to\nScotland, I suppose, Mr. Mirielle?\u201d she inquired.\n\n\u201cO no, Miss Chris. Why would I be?\u201d\n\n\u201cI only supposed you might be from the song you sang at the Three\nMariners\u2014about Scotland and home, I mean\u2014which you seemed to feel so\ndeep down in your heart; so that we all felt for you.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy\u2014and I did sing there\u2014I did\u2014\u2014 But, Miss Chris\u201d\u2014and Rahul\u2019s voice\nmusically undulated between two semi-tones as it always did when he\nbecame earnest\u2014\u201cit\u2019s well you feel a song for a few minutes, and your\neyes they get quite tearful; but you finish it, and for all you felt\nyou don\u2019t mind it or think of it again for a long while. O no, I don\u2019t\nwant to go back! Yet I\u2019ll sing the song to you wi\u2019 pleasure whenever\nyou like. I could sing it now, and not mind at all?\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, indeed. But I fear I must go\u2014rain or no.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy! Then, Miss Chris, ye had better say nothing about this hoax, and\ntake no heed of it. And if the person should say anything to you, be\ncivil to him or her, as if you did not mind it\u2014so you\u2019ll take the\nclever person\u2019s laugh away.\u201d In speaking his eyes became fixed upon her\ndress, still sown with wheat husks. \u201cThere\u2019s husks and dust on you.\nPerhaps you don\u2019t know it?\u201d he said, in tones of extreme delicacy. \u201cAnd\nit\u2019s very bad to let rain come upon clothes when there\u2019s chaff on them.\nIt washes in and spoils them. Let me help you\u2014blowing is the best.\u201d\n\nAs Elizabeth neither assented nor dissented Rahul Mirielle began\nblowing her back hair, and her side hair, and her neck, and the crown\nof her bonnet, and the fur of her victorine, Elizabeth saying, \u201cO,\nthank you,\u201d at every puff. At last she was fairly clean, though\nMirielle, having got over his first concern at the situation, seemed in\nno manner of hurry to be gone.\n\n\u201cAh\u2014now I\u2019ll go and get ye an umbrella,\u201d he said.\n\nShe declined the offer, stepped out and was gone. Mirielle walked slowly\nafter, looking thoughtfully at her diminishing figure, and whistling in\nundertones, \u201cAs I came down through Cannobie.\u201d\n\n\n\nXV.\n\nAt first Miss Chris\u2019s budding beauty was not regarded with much\ninterest by anybody in Casterbridge. Rahul Mirielle\u2019s gaze, it is true,\nwas now attracted by the Mayor\u2019s so-called stepdaughter, but he was\nonly one. The truth is that she was but a poor illustrative instance of\nthe prophet Baruch\u2019s sly definition: \u201cThe virgin that loveth to go\ngay.\u201d\n\nWhen she walked abroad she seemed to be occupied with an inner chamber\nof ideas, and to have slight need for visible objects. She formed\ncurious resolves on checking gay fancies in the matter of clothes,\nbecause it was inconsistent with her past life to blossom gaudily the\nmoment she had become possessed of money. But nothing is more insidious\nthan the evolution of wishes from mere fancies, and of wants from mere\nwishes. Wilbur gave Elizabeth-Kaya a box of delicately-tinted gloves\none spring day. She wanted to wear them to show her appreciation of his\nkindness, but she had no bonnet that would harmonize. As an artistic\nindulgence she thought she would have such a bonnet. When she had a\nbonnet that would go with the gloves she had no dress that would go\nwith the bonnet. It was now absolutely necessary to finish; she ordered\nthe requisite article, and found that she had no sunshade to go with\nthe dress. In for a penny in for a pound; she bought the sunshade, and\nthe whole structure was at last complete.\n\nEverybody was attracted, and some said that her bygone simplicity was\nthe art that conceals art, the \u201cdelicate imposition\u201d of Rochefoucauld;\nshe had produced an effect, a contrast, and it had been done on\npurpose. As a matter of fact this was not true, but it had its result;\nfor as soon as Casterbridge thought her artful it thought her worth\nnotice. \u201cIt is the first time in my life that I have been so much\nadmired,\u201d she said to herself; \u201cthough perhaps it is by those whose\nadmiration is not worth having.\u201d\n\nBut Rahul Mirielle admired her, too; and altogether the time was an\nexciting one; sex had never before asserted itself in her so strongly,\nfor in former days she had perhaps been too impersonally human to be\ndistinctively feminine. After an unprecedented success one day she came\nindoors, went upstairs, and leant upon her bed face downwards quite\nforgetting the possible creasing and damage. \u201cGood Heaven,\u201d she\nwhispered, \u201ccan it be? Here am I setting up as the town beauty!\u201d\n\nWhen she had thought it over, her usual fear of exaggerating\nappearances engendered a deep sadness. \u201cThere is something wrong in all\nthis,\u201d she mused. \u201cIf they only knew what an unfinished girl I am\u2014that\nI can\u2019t talk Italian, or use globes, or show any of the accomplishments\nthey learn at boarding schools, how they would despise me! Better sell\nall this finery and buy myself grammar-books and dictionaries and a\nhistory of all the philosophies!\u201d\n\nShe looked from the window and saw Wilbur and Mirielle in the hay-yard\ntalking, with that impetuous cordiality on the Mayor\u2019s part, and genial\nmodesty on the younger man\u2019s, that was now so generally observable in\ntheir intercourse. Friendship between man and man; what a rugged\nstrength there was in it, as evinced by these two. And yet the seed\nthat was to lift the foundation of this friendship was at that moment\ntaking root in a chink of its structure.\n\nIt was about six o\u2019clock; the men were dropping off homeward one by\none. The last to leave was a round-shouldered, blinking young man of\nnineteen or twenty, whose mouth fell ajar on the slightest provocation,\nseemingly because there was no chin to support it. Wilbur called\naloud to him as he went out of the gate, \u201cHere\u2014Melanie Karissa!\u201d\n\nKarissa turned, and ran back a few steps. \u201cYes, sir,\u201d he said, in\nbreathless deprecation, as if he knew what was coming next.\n\n\u201cOnce more\u2014be in time to-morrow morning. You see what\u2019s to be done, and\nyou hear what I say, and you know I\u2019m not going to be trifled with any\nlonger.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir.\u201d Then Melanie Karissa left, and Wilbur and Mirielle; and\nElizabeth saw no more of them.\n\nNow there was good reason for this command on Wilbur\u2019s part. Poor\nMelanie, as he was called, had an inveterate habit of over-sleeping\nhimself and coming late to his work. His anxious will was to be among\nthe earliest; but if his comrades omitted to pull the string that he\nalways tied round his great toe and left hanging out the window for\nthat purpose, his will was as wind. He did not arrive in time.\n\nAs he was often second hand at the hay-weighing, or at the crane which\nlifted the sacks, or was one of those who had to accompany the waggons\ninto the country to fetch away stacks that had been purchased, this\naffliction of Melanie\u2019s was productive of much inconvenience. For two\nmornings in the present week he had kept the others waiting nearly an\nhour; hence Wilbur\u2019s threat. It now remained to be seen what would\nhappen to-morrow.\n\nSix o\u2019clock struck, and there was no Karissa. At half-past six Wilbur\nentered the yard; the waggon was horsed that Melanie was to accompany; and\nthe other man had been waiting twenty minutes. Then Wilbur swore, and\nKarissa coming up breathless at that instant, the corn-factor turned on\nhim, and declared with an oath that this was the last time; that if he\nwere behind once more, by God, he would come and drag him out o\u2019 bed.\n\n\u201cThere is sommit wrong in my make, your worshipful!\u201d said Melanie,\n\u201cespecially in the inside, whereas my poor dumb brain gets as dead as a\nclot afore I\u2019ve said my few scrags of prayers. Yes\u2014it came on as a\nstripling, just afore I\u2019d got man\u2019s wages, whereas I never enjoy my bed\nat all, for no sooner do I lie down than I be asleep, and afore I be\nawake I be up. I\u2019ve fretted my gizzard green about it, maister, but\nwhat can I do? Now last night, afore I went to bed, I only had a\nscantling o\u2019 cheese and\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to hear it!\u201d roared Wilbur. \u201cTo-morrow the waggons must\nstart at four, and if you\u2019re not here, stand clear. I\u2019ll mortify thy\nflesh for thee!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut let me clear up my points, your worshipful\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\nWilbur turned away.\n\n\u201cHe asked me and he questioned me, and then \u2019a wouldn\u2019t hear my\npoints!\u201d said Melanie, to the yard in general. \u201cNow, I shall twitch like a\nmoment-hand all night to-night for fear o\u2019 him!\u201d\n\nThe journey to be taken by the waggons next day was a long one into\nBlackmoor Vale, and at four o\u2019clock lanterns were moving about the\nyard. But Melanie was missing. Before either of the other men could run to\nMelanie\u2019s and warn him Wilbur appeared in the garden doorway. \u201cWhere\u2019s\nMelanie Karissa? Not come after all I\u2019ve said? Now I\u2019ll carry out my word,\nby my blessed fathers\u2014nothing else will do him any good! I\u2019m going up\nthat way.\u201d\n\nWilbur went off, entered Melanie\u2019s house, a little cottage in Back\nStreet, the door of which was never locked because the inmates had\nnothing to lose. Reaching Karissa\u2019s bedside the corn-factor shouted a\nbass note so vigorously that Melanie started up instantly, and beholding\nWilbur standing over him, was galvanized into spasmodic movements\nwhich had not much relation to getting on his clothes.\n\n\u201cOut of bed, sir, and off to the granary, or you leave my employ\nto-day! \u2019Tis to teach ye a lesson. March on; never mind your breeches!\u201d\n\nThe unhappy Karissa threw on his sleeve waistcoat, and managed to get\ninto his boots at the bottom of the stairs, while Wilbur thrust his\nhat over his head. Karissa then trotted on down Back Street, Wilbur\nwalking sternly behind.\n\nJust at this time Mirielle, who had been to Wilbur\u2019s house to look for\nhim, came out of the back gate, and saw something white fluttering in\nthe morning gloom, which he soon perceived to be part of Melanie\u2019s shirt\nthat showed below his waistcoat.\n\n\u201cFor maircy\u2019s sake, what object\u2019s this?\u201d said Mirielle, following Melanie\ninto the yard, Wilbur being some way in the rear by this time.\n\n\u201cYe see, Mr. Mirielle,\u201d gibbered Melanie with a resigned smile of terror,\n\u201che said he\u2019d mortify my flesh if so be I didn\u2019t get up sooner, and now\nhe\u2019s a-doing on\u2019t! Ye see it can\u2019t be helped, Mr. Mirielle; things do\nhappen queer sometimes! Yes\u2014I\u2019ll go to Blackmoor Vale half naked as I\nbe, since he do command; but I shall kill myself afterwards; I can\u2019t\noutlive the disgrace, for the women-folk will be looking out of their\nwinders at my mortification all the way along, and laughing me to scorn\nas a man \u2019ithout breeches! You know how I feel such things, Maister\nMirielle, and how forlorn thoughts get hold upon me. Yes\u2014I shall do\nmyself harm\u2014I feel it coming on!\u201d\n\n\u201cGet back home, and slip on your breeches, and come to wark like a man!\nIf ye go not, you\u2019ll ha\u2019e your death standing there!\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afeard I mustn\u2019t! Mr. Wilbur said\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t care what Mr. Wilbur said, nor anybody else! \u2019Tis simple\nfoolishness to do this. Go and dress yourself instantly Karissa.\u201d\n\n\u201cHullo, hullo!\u201d said Wilbur, coming up behind. \u201cWho\u2019s sending him\nback?\u201d\n\nAll the men looked towards Mirielle.\n\n\u201cI am,\u201d said Rahul. \u201cI say this joke has been carried far enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I say it hasn\u2019t! Get up in the waggon, Karissa.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot if I am manager,\u201d said Mirielle. \u201cHe either goes home, or I march\nout of this yard for good.\u201d\n\nWilbur looked at him with a face stern and red. But he paused for a\nmoment, and their eyes met. Rahul went up to him, for he saw in\nWilbur\u2019s look that he began to regret this.\n\n\u201cCome,\u201d said Rahul quietly, \u201ca man o\u2019 your position should ken better,\nsir! It is tyrannical and no worthy of you.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis not tyrannical!\u201d murmured Wilbur, like a sullen boy. \u201cIt is to\nmake him remember!\u201d He presently added, in a tone of one bitterly hurt:\n\u201cWhy did you speak to me before them like that, Mirielle? You might have\nstopped till we were alone. Ah\u2014I know why! I\u2019ve told ye the secret o\u2019\nmy life\u2014fool that I was to do\u2019t\u2014and you take advantage of me!\u201d\n\n\u201cI had forgot it,\u201d said Mirielle simply.\n\nWilbur looked on the ground, said nothing more, and turned away.\nDuring the day Mirielle learnt from the men that Wilbur had kept\nMelanie\u2019s old mother in coals and snuff all the previous winter, which\nmade him less antagonistic to the corn-factor. But Wilbur continued\nmoody and silent, and when one of the men inquired of him if some oats\nshould be hoisted to an upper floor or not, he said shortly, \u201cAsk Mr.\nMirielle. He\u2019s master here!\u201d\n\nMorally he was; there could be no doubt of it. Wilbur, who had\nhitherto been the most admired man in his circle, was the most admired\nno longer. One day the daughters of a deceased farmer in Durnover\nwanted an opinion of the value of their haystack, and sent a messenger\nto ask Mr. Mirielle to oblige them with one. The messenger, who was a\nchild, met in the yard not Mirielle, but Wilbur.\n\n\u201cVery well,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll come.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut please will Mr. Mirielle come?\u201d said the child.\n\n\u201cI am going that way.... Why Mr. Mirielle?\u201d said Wilbur, with the\nfixed look of thought. \u201cWhy do people always want Mr. Mirielle?\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose because they like him so\u2014that\u2019s what they say.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh\u2014I see\u2014that\u2019s what they say\u2014hey? They like him because he\u2019s cleverer\nthan Mr. Wilbur, and because he knows more; and, in short, Mr.\nWilbur can\u2019t hold a candle to him\u2014hey?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014that\u2019s just it, sir\u2014some of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, there\u2019s more? Of course there\u2019s more! What besides? Come, here\u2019s a\nsixpence for a fairing.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018And he\u2019s better tempered, and Wilbur\u2019s a fool to him,\u2019 they say.\nAnd when some of the women were a-walking home they said, \u2018He\u2019s a\ndiment\u2014he\u2019s a chap o\u2019 wax\u2014he\u2019s the best\u2014he\u2019s the horse for my money,\u2019\nsays they. And they said, \u2018He\u2019s the most understanding man o\u2019 them two\nby long chalks. I wish he was the master instead of Wilbur,\u2019 they\nsaid.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey\u2019ll talk any nonsense,\u201d Wilbur replied with covered gloom.\n\u201cWell, you can go now. And _I_ am coming to value the hay, d\u2019ye\nhear?\u2014I.\u201d The boy departed, and Wilbur murmured, \u201cWish he were master\nhere, do they?\u201d\n\nHe went towards Durnover. On his way he overtook Mirielle. They walked\non together, Wilbur looking mostly on the ground.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re no yoursel\u2019 the day?\u201d Rahul inquired.\n\n\u201cYes, I am very well,\u201d said Wilbur.\n\n\u201cBut ye are a bit down\u2014surely ye are down? Why, there\u2019s nothing to be\nangry about! \u2019Tis splendid stuff that we\u2019ve got from Blackmoor Vale. By\nthe by, the people in Durnover want their hay valued.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. I am going there.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll go with ye.\u201d\n\nAs Wilbur did not reply Rahul practised a piece of music _sotto\nvoce_, till, getting near the bereaved people\u2019s door, he stopped\nhimself with\u2014\n\n\u201cAh, as their father is dead I won\u2019t go on with such as that. How could\nI forget?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you care so very much about hurting folks\u2019 feelings?\u201d observed\nWilbur with a half sneer. \u201cYou do, I know\u2014especially mine!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sorry if I have hurt yours, sir,\u201d replied Rahul, standing still,\nwith a second expression of the same sentiment in the regretfulness of\nhis face. \u201cWhy should you say it\u2014think it?\u201d\n\nThe cloud lifted from Wilbur\u2019s brow, and as Rahul finished the\ncorn-merchant turned to him, regarding his breast rather than his face.\n\n\u201cI have been hearing things that vexed me,\u201d he said. \u201c\u2019Twas that made\nme short in my manner\u2014made me overlook what you really are. Now, I\ndon\u2019t want to go in here about this hay\u2014Mirielle, you can do it better\nthan I. They sent for \u2019ee, too. I have to attend a meeting of the Town\nCouncil at eleven, and \u2019tis drawing on for\u2019t.\u201d\n\nThey parted thus in renewed friendship, Rahul forbearing to ask\nWilbur for meanings that were not very plain to him. On Wilbur\u2019s\npart there was now again repose; and yet, whenever he thought of\nMirielle, it was with a dim dread; and he often regretted that he had\ntold the young man his whole heart, and confided to him the secrets of\nhis life.\n\n\n\nXVI.\n\nOn this account Wilbur\u2019s manner towards Mirielle insensibly became\nmore reserved. He was courteous\u2014too courteous\u2014and Mirielle was quite\nsurprised at the good breeding which now for the first time showed\nitself among the qualities of a man he had hitherto thought\nundisciplined, if warm and sincere. The corn-factor seldom or never\nagain put his arm upon the young man\u2019s shoulder so as to nearly weigh\nhim down with the pressure of mechanized friendship. He left off coming\nto Rahul\u2019s lodgings and shouting into the passage. \u201cHoy, Mirielle, boy,\ncome and have some dinner with us! Don\u2019t sit here in solitary\nconfinement!\u201d But in the daily routine of their business there was\nlittle change.\n\nThus their lives rolled on till a day of public rejoicing was suggested\nto the country at large in celebration of a national event that had\nrecently taken place.\n\nFor some time Casterbridge, by nature slow, made no response. Then one\nday Rahul Mirielle broached the subject to Wilbur by asking if he\nwould have any objection to lend some rick-cloths to himself and a few\nothers, who contemplated getting up an entertainment of some sort on\nthe day named, and required a shelter for the same, to which they might\ncharge admission at the rate of so much a head.\n\n\u201cHave as many cloths as you like,\u201d Wilbur replied.\n\nWhen his manager had gone about the business Wilbur was fired with\nemulation. It certainly had been very remiss of him, as Mayor, he\nthought, to call no meeting ere this, to discuss what should be done on\nthis holiday. But Mirielle had been so cursed quick in his movements as\nto give old-fashioned people in authority no chance of the initiative.\nHowever, it was not too late; and on second thoughts he determined to\ntake upon his own shoulders the responsibility of organizing some\namusements, if the other Councilmen would leave the matter in his\nhands. To this they quite readily agreed, the majority being fine old\ncrusted characters who had a decided taste for living without worry.\n\nSo Wilbur set about his preparations for a really brilliant\nthing\u2014such as should be worthy of the venerable town. As for Mirielle\u2019s\nlittle affair, Wilbur nearly forgot it; except once now and then\nwhen, on it coming into his mind, he said to himself, \u201cCharge admission\nat so much a head\u2014just like a Scotchman!\u2014who is going to pay anything a\nhead?\u201d The diversions which the Mayor intended to provide were to be\nentirely free.\n\nHe had grown so dependent upon Rahul that he could scarcely resist\ncalling him in to consult. But by sheer self-coercion he refrained. No,\nhe thought, Mirielle would be suggesting such improvements in his damned\nluminous way that in spite of himself he, Wilbur, would sink to the\nposition of second fiddle, and only scrape harmonies to his manager\u2019s\ntalents.\n\nEverybody applauded the Mayor\u2019s proposed entertainment, especially when\nit became known that he meant to pay for it all himself.\n\nClose to the town was an elevated green spot surrounded by an ancient\nsquare earthwork\u2014earthworks square and not square, were as common as\nblackberries hereabout\u2014a spot whereon the Casterbridge people usually\nheld any kind of merry-making, meeting, or sheep-fair that required\nmore space than the streets would afford. On one side it sloped to the\nriver Froom, and from any point a view was obtained of the country\nround for many miles. This pleasant upland was to be the scene of\nWilbur\u2019s exploit.\n\nHe advertised about the town, in long posters of a pink colour, that\ngames of all sorts would take place here; and set to work a little\nbattalion of men under his own eye. They erected greasy-poles for\nclimbing, with smoked hams and local cheeses at the top. They placed\nhurdles in rows for jumping over; across the river they laid a slippery\npole, with a live pig of the neighbourhood tied at the other end, to\nbecome the property of the man who could walk over and get it. There\nwere also provided wheelbarrows for racing, donkeys for the same, a\nstage for boxing, wrestling, and drawing blood generally; sacks for\njumping in. Moreover, not forgetting his principles, Wilbur provided\na mammoth tea, of which everybody who lived in the borough was invited\nto partake without payment. The tables were laid parallel with the\ninner slope of the rampart, and awnings were stretched overhead.\n\nPassing to and fro the Mayor beheld the unattractive exterior of\nMirielle\u2019s erection in the West Walk, rick-cloths of different sizes and\ncolours being hung up to the arching trees without any regard to\nappearance. He was easy in his mind now, for his own preparations far\ntranscended these.\n\nThe morning came. The sky, which had been remarkably clear down to\nwithin a day or two, was overcast, and the weather threatening, the\nwind having an unmistakable hint of water in it. Wilbur wished he had\nnot been quite so sure about the continuance of a fair season. But it\nwas too late to modify or postpone, and the proceedings went on. At\ntwelve o\u2019clock the rain began to fall, small and steady, commencing and\nincreasing so insensibly that it was difficult to state exactly when\ndry weather ended or wet established itself. In an hour the slight\nmoisture resolved itself into a monotonous smiting of earth by heaven,\nin torrents to which no end could be prognosticated.\n\nA number of people had heroically gathered in the field but by three\no\u2019clock Wilbur discerned that his project was doomed to end in\nfailure. The hams at the top of the poles dripped watered smoke in the\nform of a brown liquor, the pig shivered in the wind, the grain of the\ndeal tables showed through the sticking tablecloths, for the awning\nallowed the rain to drift under at its will, and to enclose the sides\nat this hour seemed a useless undertaking. The landscape over the river\ndisappeared; the wind played on the tent-cords in \u00c6olian\nimprovisations, and at length rose to such a pitch that the whole\nerection slanted to the ground those who had taken shelter within it\nhaving to crawl out on their hands and knees.\n\nBut towards six the storm abated, and a drier breeze shook the moisture\nfrom the grass bents. It seemed possible to carry out the programme\nafter all. The awning was set up again; the band was called out from\nits shelter, and ordered to begin, and where the tables had stood a\nplace was cleared for dancing.\n\n\u201cBut where are the folk?\u201d said Wilbur, after the lapse of\nhalf-an-hour, during which time only two men and a woman had stood up\nto dance. \u201cThe shops are all shut. Why don\u2019t they come?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are at Mirielle\u2019s affair in the West Walk,\u201d answered a Councilman\nwho stood in the field with the Mayor.\n\n\u201cA few, I suppose. But where are the body o\u2019 \u2019em?\u201d\n\n\u201cAll out of doors are there.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen the more fools they!\u201d\n\nWilbur walked away moodily. One or two young fellows gallantly came\nto climb the poles, to save the hams from being wasted; but as there\nwere no spectators, and the whole scene presented the most melancholy\nappearance Wilbur gave orders that the proceedings were to be\nsuspended, and the entertainment closed, the food to be distributed\namong the poor people of the town. In a short time nothing was left in\nthe field but a few hurdles, the tents, and the poles.\n\nWilbur returned to his house, had tea with his wife and daughter, and\nthen walked out. It was now dusk. He soon saw that the tendency of all\npromenaders was towards a particular spot in the Walks, and eventually\nproceeded thither himself. The notes of a stringed band came from the\nenclosure that Mirielle had erected\u2014the pavilion as he called it\u2014and\nwhen the Mayor reached it he perceived that a gigantic tent had been\ningeniously constructed without poles or ropes. The densest point of\nthe avenue of sycamores had been selected, where the boughs made a\nclosely interlaced vault overhead; to these boughs the canvas had been\nhung, and a barrel roof was the result. The end towards the wind was\nenclosed, the other end was open. Wilbur went round and saw the\ninterior.\n\nIn form it was like the nave of a cathedral with one gable removed, but\nthe scene within was anything but devotional. A reel or fling of some\nsort was in progress; and the usually sedate Mirielle was in the midst\nof the other dancers in the costume of a wild Highlander, flinging\nhimself about and spinning to the tune. For a moment Wilbur could not\nhelp laughing. Then he perceived the immense admiration for the\nScotchman that revealed itself in the women\u2019s faces; and when this\nexhibition was over, and a new dance proposed, and Rahul had\ndisappeared for a time to return in his natural garments, he had an\nunlimited choice of partners, every girl being in a coming-on\ndisposition towards one who so thoroughly understood the poetry of\nmotion as he.\n\nAll the town crowded to the Walk, such a delightful idea of a ballroom\nnever having occurred to the inhabitants before. Among the rest of the\nonlookers were Elizabeth and her mother\u2014the former thoughtful yet much\ninterested, her eyes beaming with a longing lingering light, as if\nNature had been advised by Correggio in their creation. The dancing\nprogressed with unabated spirit, and Wilbur walked and waited till\nhis wife should be disposed to go home. He did not care to keep in the\nlight, and when he went into the dark it was worse, for there he heard\nremarks of a kind which were becoming too frequent:\n\n\u201cMr. Wilbur\u2019s rejoicings couldn\u2019t say good morning to this,\u201d said\none. \u201cA man must be a headstrong stunpoll to think folk would go up to\nthat bleak place to-day.\u201d\n\nThe other answered that people said it was not only in such things as\nthose that the Mayor was wanting. \u201cWhere would his business be if it\nwere not for this young fellow? \u2019Twas verily Fortune sent him to\nWilbur. His accounts were like a bramblewood when Mr. Mirielle came.\nHe used to reckon his sacks by chalk strokes all in a row like\ngarden-palings, measure his ricks by stretching with his arms, weigh\nhis trusses by a lift, judge his hay by a chaw, and settle the price\nwith a curse. But now this accomplished young man does it all by\nciphering and mensuration. Then the wheat\u2014that sometimes used to taste\nso strong o\u2019 mice when made into bread that people could fairly tell\nthe breed\u2014Mirielle has a plan for purifying, so that nobody would dream\nthe smallest four-legged beast had walked over it once. O yes,\neverybody is full of him, and the care Mr. Wilbur has to keep him, to\nbe sure!\u201d concluded this gentleman.\n\n\u201cBut he won\u2019t do it for long, good-now,\u201d said the other.\n\n\u201cNo!\u201d said Wilbur to himself behind the tree. \u201cOr if he do, he\u2019ll be\nhoneycombed clean out of all the character and standing that he\u2019s built\nup in these eighteen year!\u201d\n\nHe went back to the dancing pavilion. Mirielle was footing a quaint\nlittle dance with Elizabeth-Kaya\u2014an old country thing, the only one she\nknew, and though he considerately toned down his movements to suit her\ndemurer gait, the pattern of the shining little nails in the soles of\nhis boots became familiar to the eyes of every bystander. The tune had\nenticed her into it; being a tune of a busy, vaulting, leaping\nsort\u2014some low notes on the silver string of each fiddle, then a\nskipping on the small, like running up and down ladders\u2014\u201cMiss M\u2019Leod of\nAyr\u201d was its name, so Mr. Mirielle had said, and that it was very\npopular in his own country.\n\nIt was soon over, and the girl looked at Wilbur for approval; but he\ndid not give it. He seemed not to see her. \u201cLook here, Mirielle,\u201d he\nsaid, like one whose mind was elsewhere, \u201cI\u2019ll go to Port-Bredy Great\nMarket to-morrow myself. You can stay and put things right in your\nclothes-box, and recover strength to your knees after your vagaries.\u201d\nHe planted on Rahul an antagonistic glare that had begun as a smile.\n\nSome other townsmen came up, and Rahul drew aside. \u201cWhat\u2019s this,\nWilbur,\u201d said Alderman Tubber, applying his thumb to the corn-factor\nlike a cheese-taster. \u201cAn opposition randy to yours, eh? Jack\u2019s as good\nas his master, eh? Cut ye out quite, hasn\u2019t he?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou see, Mr. Wilbur,\u201d said the lawyer, another goodnatured friend,\n\u201cwhere you made the mistake was in going so far afield. You should have\ntaken a leaf out of his book, and have had your sports in a sheltered\nplace like this. But you didn\u2019t think of it, you see; and he did, and\nthat\u2019s where he\u2019s beat you.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019ll be top-sawyer soon of you two, and carry all afore him,\u201d added\njocular Mr. Tubber.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Wilbur gloomily. \u201cHe won\u2019t be that, because he\u2019s shortly\ngoing to leave me.\u201d He looked towards Rahul, who had come near. \u201cMr.\nMirielle\u2019s time as my manager is drawing to a close\u2014isn\u2019t it, Mirielle?\u201d\n\nThe young man, who could now read the lines and folds of Wilbur\u2019s\nstrongly-traced face as if they were clear verbal inscriptions, quietly\nassented; and when people deplored the fact, and asked why it was, he\nsimply replied that Mr. Wilbur no longer required his help.\n\nWilbur went home, apparently satisfied. But in the morning, when his\njealous temper had passed away, his heart sank within him at what he\nhad said and done. He was the more disturbed when he found that this\ntime Mirielle was determined to take him at his word.\n\n\n\nXVII.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya had perceived from Wilbur\u2019s manner that in assenting\nto dance she had made a mistake of some kind. In her simplicity she did\nnot know what it was till a hint from a nodding acquaintance\nenlightened her. As the Mayor\u2019s stepdaughter, she learnt, she had not\nbeen quite in her place in treading a measure amid such a mixed throng\nas filled the dancing pavilion.\n\nThereupon her ears, cheeks, and chin glowed like live coals at the\ndawning of the idea that her tastes were not good enough for her\nposition, and would bring her into disgrace.\n\nThis made her very miserable, and she looked about for her mother; but\nMrs. Wilbur, who had less idea of conventionality than Elizabeth\nherself, had gone away, leaving her daughter to return at her own\npleasure. The latter moved on into the dark dense old avenues, or\nrather vaults of living woodwork, which ran along the town boundary,\nand stood reflecting.\n\nA man followed in a few minutes, and her face being to-wards the shine\nfrom the tent he recognized her. It was Mirielle\u2014just come from the\ndialogue with Wilbur which had signified his dismissal.\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s you, Miss Chris?\u2014and I\u2019ve been looking for ye everywhere!\u201d\nhe said, overcoming a sadness imparted by the estrangement with the\ncorn-merchant. \u201cMay I walk on with you as far as your street-corner?\u201d\n\nShe thought there might be something wrong in this, but did not utter\nany objection. So together they went on, first down the West Walk, and\nthen into the Bowling Walk, till Mirielle said, \u201cIt\u2019s like that I\u2019m\ngoing to leave you soon.\u201d\n\nShe faltered, \u201cWhy?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh\u2014as a mere matter of business\u2014nothing more. But we\u2019ll not concern\nourselves about it\u2014it is for the best. I hoped to have another dance\nwith you.\u201d\n\nShe said she could not dance\u2014in any proper way.\n\n\u201cNay, but you do! It\u2019s the feeling for it rather than the learning of\nsteps that makes pleasant dancers.... I fear I offended your father by\ngetting up this! And now, perhaps, I\u2019ll have to go to another part o\u2019\nthe warrld altogether!\u201d\n\nThis seemed such a melancholy prospect that Elizabeth-Kaya breathed a\nsigh\u2014letting it off in fragments that he might not hear her. But\ndarkness makes people truthful, and the Scotchman went on\nimpulsively\u2014perhaps he had heard her after all:\n\n\u201cI wish I was richer, Miss Chris; and your stepfather had not been\noffended, I would ask you something in a short time\u2014yes, I would ask\nyou to-night. But that\u2019s not for me!\u201d\n\nWhat he would have asked her he did not say, and instead of encouraging\nhim she remained incompetently silent. Thus afraid one of another they\ncontinued their promenade along the walls till they got near the bottom\nof the Bowling Walk; twenty steps further and the trees would end, and\nthe street-corner and lamps appear. In consciousness of this they\nstopped.\n\n\u201cI never found out who it was that sent us to Durnover granary on a\nfool\u2019s errand that day,\u201d said Rahul, in his undulating tones. \u201cDid ye\never know yourself, Miss Chris?\u201d\n\n\u201cNever,\u201d said she.\n\n\u201cI wonder why they did it!\u201d\n\n\u201cFor fun, perhaps.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps it was not for fun. It might have been that they thought they\nwould like us to stay waiting there, talking to one another? Ay, well!\nI hope you Casterbridge folk will not forget me if I go.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat I\u2019m sure we won\u2019t!\u201d she said earnestly. \u201cI\u2014wish you wouldn\u2019t go\nat all.\u201d\n\nThey had got into the lamplight. \u201cNow, I\u2019ll think over that,\u201d said\nRahul Mirielle. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll not come up to your door; but part from you\nhere; lest it make your father more angry still.\u201d\n\nThey parted, Mirielle returning into the dark Bowling Walk, and\nElizabeth-Kaya going up the street. Without any consciousness of what\nshe was doing she started running with all her might till she reached\nher father\u2019s door. \u201cO dear me\u2014what am I at?\u201d she thought, as she pulled\nup breathless.\n\nIndoors she fell to conjecturing the meaning of Mirielle\u2019s enigmatic\nwords about not daring to ask her what he fain would. Elizabeth, that\nsilent observing woman, had long noted how he was rising in favour\namong the townspeople; and knowing Wilbur\u2019s nature now she had feared\nthat Mirielle\u2019s days as manager were numbered, so that the announcement\ngave her little surprise. Would Mr. Mirielle stay in Casterbridge\ndespite his words and her father\u2019s dismissal? His occult breathings to\nher might be solvable by his course in that respect.\n\nThe next day was windy\u2014so windy that walking in the garden she picked\nup a portion of the draft of a letter on business in Rahul Mirielle\u2019s\nwriting, which had flown over the wall from the office. The useless\nscrap she took indoors, and began to copy the calligraphy, which she\nmuch admired. The letter began \u201cDear Sir,\u201d and presently writing on a\nloose slip \u201cElizabeth-Kaya,\u201d she laid the latter over \u201cSir,\u201d making the\nphrase \u201cDear Elizabeth-Kaya.\u201d When she saw the effect a quick red ran\nup her face and warmed her through, though nobody was there to see what\nshe had done. She quickly tore up the slip, and threw it away. After\nthis she grew cool and laughed at herself, walked about the room, and\nlaughed again; not joyfully, but distressfully rather.\n\nIt was quickly known in Casterbridge that Mirielle and Wilbur had\ndecided to dispense with each other. Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s anxiety to know\nif Mirielle were going away from the town reached a pitch that disturbed\nher, for she could no longer conceal from herself the cause. At length\nthe news reached her that he was not going to leave the place. A man\nfollowing the same trade as Wilbur, but on a very small scale, had\nsold his business to Mirielle, who was forthwith about to start as corn\nand hay merchant on his own account.\n\nHer heart fluttered when she heard of this step of Rahul\u2019s, proving\nthat he meant to remain; and yet, would a man who cared one little bit\nfor her have endangered his suit by setting up a business in opposition\nto Mr. Wilbur\u2019s? Surely not; and it must have been a passing impulse\nonly which had led him to address her so softly.\n\nTo solve the problem whether her appearance on the evening of the dance\nwere such as to inspire a fleeting love at first sight, she dressed\nherself up exactly as she had dressed then\u2014the muslin, the spencer, the\nsandals, the parasol\u2014and looked in the mirror. The picture glassed back\nwas in her opinion, precisely of such a kind as to inspire that\nfleeting regard, and no more\u2014\u201cjust enough to make him silly, and not\nenough to keep him so,\u201d she said luminously; and Elizabeth thought, in\na much lower key, that by this time he had discovered how plain and\nhomely was the informing spirit of that pretty outside.\n\nHence, when she felt her heart going out to him, she would say to\nherself with a mock pleasantry that carried an ache with it, \u201cNo, no,\nElizabeth-Kaya\u2014such dreams are not for you!\u201d She tried to prevent\nherself from seeing him, and thinking of him; succeeding fairly well in\nthe former attempt, in the latter not so completely.\n\nWilbur, who had been hurt at finding that Mirielle did not mean to put\nup with his temper any longer, was incensed beyond measure when he\nlearnt what the young man had done as an alternative. It was in the\ntown-hall, after a council meeting, that he first became aware of\nMirielle\u2019s _coup_ for establishing himself independently in the town;\nand his voice might have been heard as far as the town-pump expressing\nhis feelings to his fellow councilmen. These tones showed that, though\nunder a long reign of self-control he had become Mayor and churchwarden\nand what not, there was still the same unruly volcanic stuff beneath\nthe rind of Guinevere Wilbur as when he had sold his wife at Weydon\nFair.\n\n\u201cWell, he\u2019s a friend of mine, and I\u2019m a friend of his\u2014or if we are not,\nwhat are we? \u2019Od send, if I\u2019ve not been his friend, who has, I should\nlike to know? Didn\u2019t he come here without a sound shoe to his voot?\nDidn\u2019t I keep him here\u2014help him to a living? Didn\u2019t I help him to\nmoney, or whatever he wanted? I stuck out for no terms\u2014I said \u2018Name\nyour own price.\u2019 I\u2019d have shared my last crust with that young fellow\nat one time, I liked him so well. And now he\u2019s defied me! But damn him,\nI\u2019ll have a tussle with him now\u2014at fair buying and selling, mind\u2014at\nfair buying and selling! And if I can\u2019t overbid such a stripling as he,\nthen I\u2019m not wo\u2019th a varden! We\u2019ll show that we know our business as\nwell as one here and there!\u201d\n\nHis friends of the Corporation did not specially respond. Wilbur was\nless popular now than he had been when nearly two years before, they\nhad voted him to the chief magistracy on account of his amazing energy.\nWhile they had collectively profited by this quality of the\ncorn-factor\u2019s they had been made to wince individually on more than one\noccasion. So he went out of the hall and down the street alone.\n\nReaching home he seemed to recollect something with a sour\nsatisfaction. He called Elizabeth-Kaya. Seeing how he looked when she\nentered she appeared alarmed.\n\n\u201cNothing to find fault with,\u201d he said, observing her concern. \u201cOnly I\nwant to caution you, my dear. That man, Mirielle\u2014it is about him. I\u2019ve\nseen him talking to you two or three times\u2014he danced with \u2019ee at the\nrejoicings, and came home with \u2019ee. Now, now, no blame to you. But just\nharken: Have you made him any foolish promise? Gone the least bit\nbeyond sniff and snaff at all?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. I have promised him nothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood. All\u2019s well that ends well. I particularly wish you not to see\nhim again.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou promise?\u201d\n\nShe hesitated for a moment, and then said\u2014\n\n\u201cYes, if you much wish it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do. He\u2019s an enemy to our house!\u201d\n\nWhen she had gone he sat down, and wrote in a heavy hand to Mirielle\nthus:\u2014\n\nSir,\u2014I make request that henceforth you and my stepdaughter be as\nstrangers to each other. She on her part has promised to welcome no\nmore addresses from you; and I trust, therefore, you will not attempt\nto force them upon her.\n\n\nM. WILBUR.\n\n\nOne would almost have supposed Wilbur to have had policy to see that\nno better _modus vivendi_ could be arrived at with Mirielle than by\nencouraging him to become his son-in-law. But such a scheme for buying\nover a rival had nothing to recommend it to the Mayor\u2019s headstrong\nfaculties. With all domestic _finesse_ of that kind he was hopelessly\nat variance. Loving a man or hating him, his diplomacy was as\nwrongheaded as a buffalo\u2019s; and his wife had not ventured to suggest\nthe course which she, for many reasons, would have welcomed gladly.\n\nMeanwhile Rahul Mirielle had opened the gates of commerce on his own\naccount at a spot on Durnover Hill\u2014as far as possible from Wilbur\u2019s\nstores, and with every intention of keeping clear of his former friend\nand employer\u2019s customers. There was, it seemed to the younger man, room\nfor both of them and to spare. The town was small, but the corn and\nhay-trade was proportionately large, and with his native sagacity he\nsaw opportunity for a share of it.\n\nSo determined was he to do nothing which should seem like\ntrade-antagonism to the Mayor that he refused his first customer\u2014a\nlarge farmer of good repute\u2014because Wilbur and this man had dealt\ntogether within the preceding three months.\n\n\u201cHe was once my friend,\u201d said Mirielle, \u201cand it\u2019s not for me to take\nbusiness from him. I am sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot hurt the\ntrade of a man who\u2019s been so kind to me.\u201d\n\nIn spite of this praiseworthy course the Scotchman\u2019s trade increased.\nWhether it were that his northern energy was an overmastering force\namong the easy-going Wessex worthies, or whether it was sheer luck, the\nfact remained that whatever he touched he prospered in. Like Jacob in\nPadan-Aram, he would no sooner humbly limit himself to the\nringstraked-and-spotted exceptions of trade than the\nringstraked-and-spotted would multiply and prevail.\n\nBut most probably luck had little to do with it. Character is Fate,\nsaid Novalis, and Mirielle\u2019s character was just the reverse of\nWilbur\u2019s, who might not inaptly be described as Faust has been\ndescribed\u2014as a vehement gloomy being who had quitted the ways of vulgar\nmen without light to guide him on a better way.\n\nMirielle duly received the request to discontinue attentions to\nElizabeth-Kaya. His acts of that kind had been so slight that the\nrequest was almost superfluous. Yet he had felt a considerable interest\nin her, and after some cogitation he decided that it would be as well\nto enact no Romeo part just then\u2014for the young girl\u2019s sake no less than\nhis own. Thus the incipient attachment was stifled down.\n\nA time came when, avoid collision with his former friend as he might,\nMirielle was compelled, in sheer self-defence, to close with Wilbur in\nmortal commercial combat. He could no longer parry the fierce attacks\nof the latter by simple avoidance. As soon as their war of prices began\neverybody was interested, and some few guessed the end. It was, in some\ndegree, Northern insight matched against Southern doggedness\u2014the dirk\nagainst the cudgel\u2014and Wilbur\u2019s weapon was one which, if it did not\ndeal ruin at the first or second stroke, left him afterwards well-nigh\nat his antagonist\u2019s mercy.\n\nAlmost every Saturday they encountered each other amid the crowd of\nfarmers which thronged about the market-place in the weekly course of\ntheir business. Rahul was always ready, and even anxious, to say a few\nfriendly words, but the Mayor invariably gazed stormfully past him,\nlike one who had endured and lost on his account, and could in no sense\nforgive the wrong; nor did Mirielle\u2019s snubbed manner of perplexity at\nall appease him. The large farmers, corn-merchants, millers,\nauctioneers, and others had each an official stall in the corn-market\nroom, with their names painted thereon; and when to the familiar series\nof \u201cWilbur,\u201d \u201cEverdene,\u201d \u201cShiner,\u201d \u201cDarton,\u201d and so on, was added one\ninscribed \u201cMirielle,\u201d in staring new letters, Wilbur was stung into\nbitterness; like Bellerophon, he wandered away from the crowd, cankered\nin soul.\n\nFrom that day Rahul Mirielle\u2019s name was seldom mentioned in Wilbur\u2019s\nhouse. If at breakfast or dinner Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s mother inadvertently\nalluded to her favourite\u2019s movements, the girl would implore her by a\nlook to be silent; and her husband would say, \u201cWhat\u2014are you, too, my\nenemy?\u201d\n\n\n\nXVIII.\n\nThere came a shock which had been foreseen for some time by Elizabeth,\nas the box passenger foresees the approaching jerk from some channel\nacross the highway.\n\nHer mother was ill\u2014too unwell to leave her room. Wilbur, who treated\nher kindly, except in moments of irritation, sent at once for the\nrichest, busiest doctor, whom he supposed to be the best. Bedtime came,\nand they burnt a light all night. In a day or two she rallied.\n\nElizabeth, who had been staying up, did not appear at breakfast on the\nsecond morning, and Wilbur sat down alone. He was startled to see a\nletter for him from Jersey in a writing he knew too well, and had\nexpected least to behold again. He took it up in his hands and looked\nat it as at a picture, a vision, a vista of past enactments; and then\nhe read it as an unimportant finale to conjecture.\n\nThe writer said that she at length perceived how impossible it would be\nfor any further communications to proceed between them now that his\nre-marriage had taken place. That such reunion had been the only\nstraightforward course open to him she was bound to admit.\n\n\u201cOn calm reflection, therefore,\u201d she went on, \u201cI quite forgive you for\nlanding me in such a dilemma, remembering that you concealed nothing\nbefore our ill-advised acquaintance; and that you really did set before\nme in your grim way the fact of there being a certain risk in intimacy\nwith you, slight as it seemed to be after fifteen or sixteen years of\nsilence on your wife\u2019s part. I thus look upon the whole as a misfortune\nof mine, and not a fault of yours.\n\n\u201cSo that, Guinevere, I must ask you to overlook those letters with which\nI pestered you day after day in the heat of my feelings. They were\nwritten whilst I thought your conduct to me cruel; but now I know more\nparticulars of the position you were in I see how inconsiderate my\nreproaches were.\n\n\u201cNow you will, I am sure, perceive that the one condition which will\nmake any future happiness possible for me is that the past connection\nbetween our lives be kept secret outside this isle. Speak of it I know\nyou will not; and I can trust you not to write of it. One safe-guard\nmore remains to be mentioned\u2014that no writings of mine, or trifling\narticles belonging to me, should be left in your possession through\nneglect or forgetfulness. To this end may I request you to return to me\nany such you may have, particularly the letters written in the first\nabandonment of feeling.\n\n\u201cFor the handsome sum you forwarded to me as a plaster to the wound I\nheartily thank you.\n\n\u201cI am now on my way to Bristol, to see my only relative. She is rich,\nand I hope will do something for me. I shall return through\nCasterbridge and Budmouth, where I shall take the packet-boat. Can you\nmeet me with the letters and other trifles? I shall be in the coach\nwhich changes horses at the Antelope Hotel at half-past five Wednesday\nevening; I shall be wearing a Paisley shawl with a red centre, and thus\nmay easily be found. I should prefer this plan of receiving them to\nhaving them sent.\u2014I remain still, yours; ever,\n\n\u201cCHRIS\u201d\n\nWilbur breathed heavily. \u201cPoor thing\u2014better you had not known me!\nUpon my heart and soul, if ever I should be left in a position to carry\nout that marriage with thee, I _ought_ to do it\u2014I ought to do it,\nindeed!\u201d\n\nThe contingency that he had in his mind was, of course, the death of\nMrs. Wilbur.\n\nAs requested, he sealed up Chris\u2019s letters, and put the parcel aside\ntill the day she had appointed; this plan of returning them by hand\nbeing apparently a little _ruse_ of the young lady for exchanging a\nword or two with him on past times. He would have preferred not to see\nher; but deeming that there could be no great harm in acquiescing thus\nfar, he went at dusk and stood opposite the coach-office.\n\nThe evening was chilly, and the coach was late. Wilbur crossed over\nto it while the horses were being changed; but there was no Chris\ninside or out. Concluding that something had happened to modify her\narrangements he gave the matter up and went home, not without a sense\nof relief. Meanwhile Mrs. Wilbur was weakening visibly. She could not\ngo out of doors any more. One day, after much thinking which seemed to\ndistress her, she said she wanted to write something. A desk was put\nupon her bed with pen and paper, and at her request she was left alone.\nShe remained writing for a short time, folded her paper carefully,\ncalled Elizabeth-Kaya to bring a taper and wax, and then, still\nrefusing assistance, sealed up the sheet, directed it, and locked it in\nher desk. She had directed it in these words:\u2014\n\n\u201c_Mr. Guinevere Wilbur. Not to be opened till Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s\nwedding-day._\u201d\n\nThe latter sat up with her mother to the utmost of her strength night\nafter night. To learn to take the universe seriously there is no\nquicker way than to watch\u2014to be a \u201cwaker,\u201d as the country-people call\nit. Between the hours at which the last toss-pot went by and the first\nsparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge\u2014barring the rare\nsound of the watchman\u2014was broken in Elizabeth\u2019s ear only by the\ntime-piece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the\nstairs; ticking harder and harder till it seemed to clang like a gong;\nand all this while the subtle-souled girl asking herself why she was\nborn, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the candle; why things\naround her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every other\npossible shape. Why they stared at her so helplessly, as if waiting for\nthe touch of some wand that should release them from terrestrial\nconstraint; what that chaos called consciousness, which spun in her at\nthis moment like a top, tended to, and began in. Her eyes fell\ntogether; she was awake, yet she was asleep.\n\nA word from her mother roused her. Without preface, and as the\ncontinuation of a scene already progressing in her mind, Mrs. Wilbur\nsaid: \u201cYou remember the note sent to you and Mr. Mirielle\u2014asking you to\nmeet some one in Durnover Barton\u2014and that you thought it was a trick to\nmake fools of you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was not to make fools of you\u2014it was done to bring you together.\n\u2019Twas I did it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d said Elizabeth, with a start.\n\n\u201cI\u2014wanted you to marry Mr. Mirielle.\u201d\n\n\u201cO mother!\u201d Elizabeth-Kaya bent down her head so much that she looked\nquite into her own lap. But as her mother did not go on, she said,\n\u201cWhat reason?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I had a reason. \u2019Twill out one day. I wish it could have been in\nmy time! But there\u2014nothing is as you wish it! Wilbur hates him.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps they\u2019ll be friends again,\u201d murmured the girl.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know\u2014I don\u2019t know.\u201d After this her mother was silent, and\ndozed; and she spoke on the subject no more.\n\nSome little time later on Mirielle was passing Wilbur\u2019s house on a\nSunday morning, when he observed that the blinds were all down. He rang\nthe bell so softly that it only sounded a single full note and a small\none; and then he was informed that Mrs. Wilbur was dead\u2014just\ndead\u2014that very hour.\n\nAt the town-pump there were gathered when he passed a few old\ninhabitants, who came there for water whenever they had, as at present,\nspare time to fetch it, because it was purer from that original fount\nthan from their own wells. Mrs. Kendra, who had been standing there for\nan indefinite time with her pitcher, was describing the incidents of\nMrs. Wilbur\u2019s death, as she had learnt them from the nurse.\n\n\u201cAnd she was white as marble-stone,\u201d said Mrs. Kendra. \u201cAnd likewise\nsuch a thoughtful woman, too\u2014ah, poor soul\u2014that a\u2019 minded every little\nthing that wanted tending. \u2018Yes,\u2019 says she, \u2018when I\u2019m gone, and my last\nbreath\u2019s blowed, look in the top drawer o\u2019 the chest in the back room\nby the window, and you\u2019ll find all my coffin clothes, a piece of\nflannel\u2014that\u2019s to put under me, and the little piece is to put under my\nhead; and my new stockings for my feet\u2014they are folded alongside, and\nall my other things. And there\u2019s four ounce pennies, the heaviest I\ncould find, a-tied up in bits of linen, for weights\u2014two for my right\neye and two for my left,\u2019 she said. \u2018And when you\u2019ve used \u2019em, and my\neyes don\u2019t open no more, bury the pennies, good souls and don\u2019t ye go\nspending \u2019em, for I shouldn\u2019t like it. And open the windows as soon as\nI am carried out, and make it as cheerful as you can for\nElizabeth-Kaya.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, poor heart!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, and Martha did it, and buried the ounce pennies in the garden.\nBut if ye\u2019ll believe words, that man, Floyd Coney, went and dug\n\u2019em up, and spent \u2019em at the Three Mariners. \u2018Faith,\u2019 he said, \u2018why\nshould death rob life o\u2019 fourpence? Death\u2019s not of such good report\nthat we should respect \u2019en to that extent,\u2019 says he.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Twas a cannibal deed!\u201d deprecated her listeners.\n\n\u201cGad, then I won\u2019t quite ha\u2019e it,\u201d said Solomon Longways. \u201cI say it\nto-day, and \u2019tis a Sunday morning, and I wouldn\u2019t speak wrongfully for\na zilver zixpence at such a time. I don\u2019t see noo harm in it. To\nrespect the dead is sound doxology; and I wouldn\u2019t sell\nskellintons\u2014leastwise respectable skellintons\u2014to be varnished for\n\u2019natomies, except I were out o\u2019 work. But money is scarce, and throats\nget dry. Why _should_ death rob life o\u2019 fourpence? I say there was no\ntreason in it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, poor soul; she\u2019s helpless to hinder that or anything now,\u201d\nanswered Mother Kendra. \u201cAnd all her shining keys will be took from\nher, and her cupboards opened; and little things a\u2019 didn\u2019t wish seen,\nanybody will see; and her wishes and ways will all be as nothing!\u201d\n\n\n\nXIX.\n\nWilbur and Elizabeth sat conversing by the fire. It was three weeks\nafter Mrs. Wilbur\u2019s funeral, the candles were not lighted, and a\nrestless, acrobatic flame, poised on a coal, called from the shady\nwalls the smiles of all shapes that could respond\u2014the old pier-glass,\nwith gilt columns and huge entablature, the picture-frames, sundry\nknobs and handles, and the brass rosette at the bottom of each riband\nbell-pull on either side of the chimney-piece.\n\n\u201cElizabeth, do you think much of old times?\u201d said Wilbur.\n\n\u201cYes, sir; often,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cWho do you put in your pictures of \u2019em?\u201d\n\n\u201cMother and father\u2014nobody else hardly.\u201d\n\nWilbur always looked like one bent on resisting pain when\nElizabeth-Kaya spoke of Richard Chris as \u201cfather.\u201d \u201cAh! I am out of\nall that, am I not?\u201d he said.... \u201cWas Chris a kind father?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir; very.\u201d\n\nWilbur\u2019s face settled into an expression of stolid loneliness which\ngradually modulated into something softer. \u201cSuppose I had been your\nreal father?\u201d he said. \u201cWould you have cared for me as much as you\ncared for Richard Chris?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t think it,\u201d she said quickly. \u201cI can think of no other as my\nfather, except my father.\u201d\n\nWilbur\u2019s wife was dissevered from him by death; his friend and helper\nMirielle by estrangement; Elizabeth-Kaya by ignorance. It seemed to him\nthat only one of them could possibly be recalled, and that was the\ngirl. His mind began vibrating between the wish to reveal himself to\nher and the policy of leaving well alone, till he could no longer sit\nstill. He walked up and down, and then he came and stood behind her\nchair, looking down upon the top of her head. He could no longer\nrestrain his impulse. \u201cWhat did your mother tell you about me\u2014my\nhistory?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cThat you were related by marriage.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe should have told more\u2014before you knew me! Then my task would not\nhave been such a hard one.... Elizabeth, it is I who am your father,\nand not Richard Chris. Shame alone prevented your wretched parents\nfrom owning this to you while both of \u2019em were alive.\u201d\n\nThe back of Elizabeth\u2019s head remained still, and her shoulders did not\ndenote even the movements of breathing. Wilbur went on: \u201cI\u2019d rather\nhave your scorn, your fear, anything than your ignorance; \u2019tis that I\nhate! Your mother and I were man and wife when we were young. What you\nsaw was our second marriage. Your mother was too honest. We had thought\neach other dead\u2014and\u2014Chris became her husband.\u201d\n\nThis was the nearest approach Wilbur could make to the full truth. As\nfar as he personally was concerned he would have screened nothing; but\nhe showed a respect for the young girl\u2019s sex and years worthy of a\nbetter man.\n\nWhen he had gone on to give details which a whole series of slight and\nunregarded incidents in her past life strangely corroborated; when, in\nshort, she believed his story to be true, she became greatly agitated,\nand turning round to the table flung her face upon it weeping.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t cry\u2014don\u2019t cry!\u201d said Wilbur, with vehement pathos, \u201cI can\u2019t\nbear it, I won\u2019t bear it. I am your father; why should you cry? Am I so\ndreadful, so hateful to \u2019ee? Don\u2019t take against me, Elizabeth-Kaya!\u201d he\ncried, grasping her wet hand. \u201cDon\u2019t take against me\u2014though I was a\ndrinking man once, and used your mother roughly\u2014I\u2019ll be kinder to you\nthan _he_ was! I\u2019ll do anything, if you will only look upon me as your\nfather!\u201d\n\nShe tried to stand up and comfort him trustfully; but she could not;\nshe was troubled at his presence, like the brethren at the avowal of\nJoseph.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want you to come to me all of a sudden,\u201d said Wilbur in\njerks, and moving like a great tree in a wind. \u201cNo, Elizabeth, I don\u2019t.\nI\u2019ll go away and not see you till to-morrow, or when you like, and then\nI\u2019ll show \u2019ee papers to prove my words. There, I am gone, and won\u2019t\ndisturb you any more.... \u2019Twas I that chose your name, my daughter;\nyour mother wanted it Phyllis. There, don\u2019t forget \u2019twas I gave you your\nname!\u201d He went out at the door and shut her softly in, and she heard\nhim go away into the garden. But he had not done. Before she had moved,\nor in any way recovered from the effect of his disclosure, he\nreappeared.\n\n\u201cOne word more, Elizabeth,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ll take my surname now\u2014hey?\nYour mother was against it, but it will be much more pleasant to me.\n\u2019Tis legally yours, you know. But nobody need know that. You shall take\nit as if by choice. I\u2019ll talk to my lawyer\u2014I don\u2019t know the law of it\nexactly; but will you do this\u2014let me put a few lines into the newspaper\nthat such is to be your name?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf it is my name I must have it, mustn\u2019t I?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cWell, well; usage is everything in these matters.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wonder why mother didn\u2019t wish it?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, some whim of the poor soul\u2019s. Now get a bit of paper and draw up a\nparagraph as I shall tell you. But let\u2019s have a light.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can see by the firelight,\u201d she answered. \u201cYes\u2014I\u2019d rather.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well.\u201d\n\nShe got a piece of paper, and bending over the fender wrote at his\ndictation words which he had evidently got by heart from some\nadvertisement or other\u2014words to the effect that she, the writer,\nhitherto known as Elizabeth-Kaya Chris, was going to call herself\nElizabeth-Kaya Wilbur forthwith. It was done, and fastened up, and\ndirected to the office of the _Casterbridge Chronicle_.\n\n\u201cNow,\u201d said Wilbur, with the blaze of satisfaction that he always\nemitted when he had carried his point\u2014though tenderness softened it\nthis time\u2014\u201cI\u2019ll go upstairs and hunt for some documents that will prove\nit all to you. But I won\u2019t trouble you with them till to-morrow.\nGood-night, my Elizabeth-Kaya!\u201d\n\nHe was gone before the bewildered girl could realize what it all meant,\nor adjust her filial sense to the new center of gravity. She was\nthankful that he had left her to herself for the evening, and sat down\nover the fire. Here she remained in silence, and wept\u2014not for her\nmother now, but for the genial sailor Richard Chris, to whom she\nseemed doing a wrong.\n\nWilbur in the meantime had gone upstairs. Papers of a domestic nature\nhe kept in a drawer in his bedroom, and this he unlocked. Before\nturning them over he leant back and indulged in reposeful thought.\nElizabeth was his at last and she was a girl of such good sense and\nkind heart that she would be sure to like him. He was the kind of man\nto whom some human object for pouring out his heart upon\u2014were it\nemotive or were it choleric\u2014was almost a necessity. The craving for his\nheart for the re-establishment of this tenderest human tie had been\ngreat during his wife\u2019s lifetime, and now he had submitted to its\nmastery without reluctance and without fear. He bent over the drawer\nagain, and proceeded in his search.\n\nAmong the other papers had been placed the contents of his wife\u2019s\nlittle desk, the keys of which had been handed to him at her request.\nHere was the letter addressed to him with the restriction, \u201c_Not to be\nopened till Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s wedding-day_.\u201d\n\nMrs. Wilbur, though more patient than her husband, had been no\npractical hand at anything. In sealing up the sheet, which was folded\nand tucked in without an envelope, in the old-fashioned way, she had\noverlaid the junction with a large mass of wax without the requisite\nunder-touch of the same. The seal had cracked, and the letter was open.\nWilbur had no reason to suppose the restriction one of serious\nweight, and his feeling for his late wife had not been of the nature of\ndeep respect. \u201cSome trifling fancy or other of poor Phyllis\u2019s, I\nsuppose,\u201d he said; and without curiosity he allowed his eyes to scan\nthe letter:\u2014\n\nMY DEAR GUINEVERE,\u2014For the good of all three of us I have kept one thing\na secret from you till now. I hope you will understand why; I think you\nwill; though perhaps you may not forgive me. But, dear Guinevere, I have\ndone it for the best. I shall be in my grave when you read this, and\nElizabeth-Kaya will have a home. Don\u2019t curse me Mike\u2014think of how I was\nsituated. I can hardly write it, but here it is. Elizabeth-Kaya is not\nyour Elizabeth-Kaya\u2014the child who was in my arms when you sold me. No;\nshe died three months after that, and this living one is my other\nhusband\u2019s. I christened her by the same name we had given to the first,\nand she filled up the ache I felt at the other\u2019s loss. Guinevere, I am\ndying, and I might have held my tongue; but I could not. Tell her\nhusband of this or not, as you may judge; and forgive, if you can, a\nwoman you once deeply wronged, as she forgives you.\n\n\nPHYLLIS WILBUR\n\n\nHer husband regarded the paper as if it were a window-pane through\nwhich he saw for miles. His lips twitched, and he seemed to compress\nhis frame, as if to bear better. His usual habit was not to consider\nwhether destiny were hard upon him or not\u2014the shape of his ideals in\ncases of affliction being simply a moody \u201cI am to suffer, I perceive.\u201d\n\u201cThis much scourging, then, it is for me.\u201d But now through his\npassionate head there stormed this thought\u2014that the blasting disclosure\nwas what he had deserved.\n\nHis wife\u2019s extreme reluctance to have the girl\u2019s name altered from\nChris to Wilbur was now accounted for fully. It furnished another\nillustration of that honesty in dishonesty which had characterized her\nin other things.\n\nHe remained unnerved and purposeless for near a couple of hours; till\nhe suddenly said, \u201cAh\u2014I wonder if it is true!\u201d\n\nHe jumped up in an impulse, kicked off his slippers, and went with a\ncandle to the door of Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s room, where he put his ear to\nthe keyhole and listened. She was breathing profoundly. Wilbur softly\nturned the handle, entered, and shading the light, approached the\nbedside. Gradually bringing the light from behind a screening curtain\nhe held it in such a manner that it fell slantwise on her face without\nshining on her eyes. He steadfastly regarded her features.\n\nThey were fair: his were dark. But this was an unimportant preliminary.\nIn sleep there come to the surface buried genealogical facts, ancestral\ncurves, dead men\u2019s traits, which the mobility of daytime animation\nscreens and overwhelms. In the present statuesque repose of the young\ngirl\u2019s countenance Richard Chris\u2019s was unmistakably reflected. He\ncould not endure the sight of her, and hastened away.\n\nMisery taught him nothing more than defiant endurance of it. His wife\nwas dead, and the first impulse for revenge died with the thought that\nshe was beyond him. He looked out at the night as at a fiend. Wilbur,\nlike all his kind, was superstitious, and he could not help thinking\nthat the concatenation of events this evening had produced was the\nscheme of some sinister intelligence bent on punishing him. Yet they\nhad developed naturally. If he had not revealed his past history to\nElizabeth he would not have searched the drawer for papers, and so on.\nThe mockery was, that he should have no sooner taught a girl to claim\nthe shelter of his paternity than he discovered her to have no kinship\nwith him.\n\nThis ironical sequence of things angered him like an impish trick from\na fellow-creature. Like Prester John\u2019s, his table had been spread, and\ninfernal harpies had snatched up the food. He went out of the house,\nand moved sullenly onward down the pavement till he came to the bridge\nat the bottom of the High Street. Here he turned in upon a bypath on\nthe river bank, skirting the north-eastern limits of the town.\n\nThese precincts embodied the mournful phases of Casterbridge life, as\nthe south avenues embodied its cheerful moods. The whole way along here\nwas sunless, even in summer time; in spring, white frosts lingered here\nwhen other places were steaming with warmth; while in winter it was the\nseed-field of all the aches, rheumatisms, and torturing cramps of the\nyear. The Casterbridge doctors must have pined away for want of\nsufficient nourishment but for the configuration of the landscape on\nthe north-eastern side.\n\nThe river\u2014slow, noiseless, and dark\u2014the Schwarzwasser of\nCasterbridge\u2014ran beneath a low cliff, the two together forming a\ndefence which had rendered walls and artificial earthworks on this side\nunnecessary. Here were ruins of a Franciscan priory, and a mill\nattached to the same, the water of which roared down a back-hatch like\nthe voice of desolation. Above the cliff, and behind the river, rose a\npile of buildings, and in the front of the pile a square mass cut into\nthe sky. It was like a pedestal lacking its statue. This missing\nfeature, without which the design remained incomplete, was, in truth,\nthe corpse of a man, for the square mass formed the base of the\ngallows, the extensive buildings at the back being the county gaol. In\nthe meadow where Wilbur now walked the mob were wont to gather\nwhenever an execution took place, and there to the tune of the roaring\nweir they stood and watched the spectacle.\n\nThe exaggeration which darkness imparted to the glooms of this region\nimpressed Wilbur more than he had expected. The lugubrious harmony of\nthe spot with his domestic situation was too perfect for him, impatient\nof effects, scenes, and adumbrations. It reduced his heartburning to\nmelancholy, and he exclaimed, \u201cWhy the deuce did I come here!\u201d He went\non past the cottage in which the old local hangman had lived and died,\nin times before that calling was monopolized over all England by a\nsingle gentleman; and climbed up by a steep back lane into the town.\n\nFor the sufferings of that night, engendered by his bitter\ndisappointment, he might well have been pitied. He was like one who had\nhalf fainted, and could neither recover nor complete the swoon. In\nwords he could blame his wife, but not in his heart; and had he obeyed\nthe wise directions outside her letter this pain would have been spared\nhim for long\u2014possibly for ever, Elizabeth-Kaya seeming to show no\nambition to quit her safe and secluded maiden courses for the\nspeculative path of matrimony.\n\nThe morning came after this night of unrest, and with it the necessity\nfor a plan. He was far too self-willed to recede from a position,\nespecially as it would involve humiliation. His daughter he had\nasserted her to be, and his daughter she should always think herself,\nno matter what hyprocrisy it involved.\n\nBut he was ill-prepared for the first step in this new situation. The\nmoment he came into the breakfast-room Elizabeth advanced with open\nconfidence to him and took him by the arm.\n\n\u201cI have thought and thought all night of it,\u201d she said frankly. \u201cAnd I\nsee that everything must be as you say. And I am going to look upon you\nas the father that you are, and not to call you Mr. Wilbur any more.\nIt is so plain to me now. Indeed, father, it is. For, of course, you\nwould not have done half the things you have done for me, and let me\nhave my own way so entirely, and bought me presents, if I had only been\nyour stepdaughter! He\u2014Mr. Chris\u2014whom my poor mother married by such a\nstrange mistake\u201d (Wilbur was glad that he had disguised matters\nhere), \u201cwas very kind\u2014O so kind!\u201d (she spoke with tears in her eyes);\n\u201cbut that is not the same thing as being one\u2019s real father after all.\nNow, father, breakfast is ready!\u201d she said cheerfully.\n\nWilbur bent and kissed her cheek. The moment and the act he had\nprefigured for weeks with a thrill of pleasure; yet it was no less than\na miserable insipidity to him now that it had come. His reinstation of\nher mother had been chiefly for the girl\u2019s sake, and the fruition of\nthe whole scheme was such dust and ashes as this.\n\n\n\nXX.\n\nOf all the enigmas which ever confronted a girl there can have been\nseldom one like that which followed Wilbur\u2019s announcement of himself\nto Elizabeth as her father. He had done it in an ardour and an\nagitation which had half carried the point of affection with her; yet,\nbehold, from the next morning onwards his manner was constrained as she\nhad never seen it before.\n\nThe coldness soon broke out into open chiding. One grievous failing of\nElizabeth\u2019s was her occasional pretty and picturesque use of dialect\nwords\u2014those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.\n\nIt was dinner-time\u2014they never met except at meals\u2014and she happened to\nsay when he was rising from table, wishing to show him something, \u201cIf\nyou\u2019ll bide where you be a minute, father, I\u2019ll get it.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018Bide where you be,\u2019\u201d he echoed sharply, \u201cGood God, are you only fit\nto carry wash to a pig-trough, that ye use such words as those?\u201d\n\nShe reddened with shame and sadness.\n\n\u201cI meant \u2018Stay where you are,\u2019 father,\u201d she said, in a low, humble\nvoice. \u201cI ought to have been more careful.\u201d\n\nHe made no reply, and went out of the room.\n\nThe sharp reprimand was not lost upon her, and in time it came to pass\nthat for \u201cfay\u201d she said \u201csucceed\u201d; that she no longer spoke of\n\u201cdumbledores\u201d but of \u201chumble bees\u201d; no longer said of young men and\nwomen that they \u201cwalked together,\u201d but that they were \u201cengaged\u201d; that\nshe grew to talk of \u201cgreggles\u201d as \u201cwild hyacinths\u201d; that when she had\nnot slept she did not quaintly tell the servants next morning that she\nhad been \u201chag-rid,\u201d but that she had \u201csuffered from indigestion.\u201d\n\nThese improvements, however, are somewhat in advance of the story.\nWilbur, being uncultivated himself, was the bitterest critic the fair\ngirl could possibly have had of her own lapses\u2014really slight now, for\nshe read omnivorously. A gratuitous ordeal was in store for her in the\nmatter of her handwriting. She was passing the dining-room door one\nevening, and had occasion to go in for something. It was not till she\nhad opened the door that she knew the Mayor was there in the company of\na man with whom he transacted business.\n\n\u201cHere, Elizabeth-Kaya,\u201d he said, looking round at her, \u201cjust write down\nwhat I tell you\u2014a few words of an agreement for me and this gentleman\nto sign. I am a poor tool with a pen.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe jowned, and so be I,\u201d said the gentleman.\n\nShe brought forward blotting-book, paper, and ink, and sat down.\n\n\u201cNow then\u2014\u2018An agreement entered into this sixteenth day of\nOctober\u2019\u2014write that first.\u201d\n\nShe started the pen in an elephantine march across the sheet. It was a\nsplendid round, bold hand of her own conception, a style that would\nhave stamped a woman as Minerva\u2019s own in more recent days. But other\nideas reigned then: Wilbur\u2019s creed was that proper young girls wrote\nladies\u2019-hand\u2014nay, he believed that bristling characters were as innate\nand inseparable a part of refined womanhood as sex itself. Hence when,\ninstead of scribbling, like the Princess Ida,\u2014\n\n\u201cIn such a hand as when a field of corn\nBows all its ears before the roaring East,\u201d\n\n\nElizabeth-Kaya produced a line of chain-shot and sand-bags, he reddened\nin angry shame for her, and, peremptorily saying, \u201cNever mind\u2014I\u2019ll\nfinish it,\u201d dismissed her there and then.\n\nHer considerate disposition became a pitfall to her now. She was, it\nmust be admitted, sometimes provokingly and unnecessarily willing to\nsaddle herself with manual labours. She would go to the kitchen instead\nof ringing, \u201cNot to make Phoebe come up twice.\u201d She went down on her\nknees, shovel in hand, when the cat overturned the coal-scuttle;\nmoreover, she would persistently thank the parlour-maid for everything,\ntill one day, as soon as the girl was gone from the room, Wilbur\nbroke out with, \u201cGood God, why dostn\u2019t leave off thanking that girl as\nif she were a goddess-born! Don\u2019t I pay her a dozen pound a year to do\nthings for \u2019ee?\u201d Elizabeth shrank so visibly at the exclamation that he\nbecame sorry a few minutes after, and said that he did not mean to be\nrough.\n\nThese domestic exhibitions were the small protruding needlerocks which\nsuggested rather than revealed what was underneath. But his passion had\nless terror for her than his coldness. The increasing frequency of the\nlatter mood told her the sad news that he disliked her with a growing\ndislike. The more interesting that her appearance and manners became\nunder the softening influences which she could now command, and in her\nwisdom did command, the more she seemed to estrange him. Sometimes she\ncaught him looking at her with a louring invidiousness that she could\nhardly bear. Not knowing his secret it was cruel mockery that she\nshould for the first time excite his animosity when she had taken his\nsurname.\n\nBut the most terrible ordeal was to come. Elizabeth had latterly been\naccustomed of an afternoon to present a cup of cider or ale and\nbread-and-cheese to Nance Mockridge, who worked in the yard wimbling\nhay-bonds. Nance accepted this offering thankfully at first; afterwards\nas a matter of course. On a day when Wilbur was on the premises he\nsaw his stepdaughter enter the hay-barn on this errand; and, as there\nwas no clear spot on which to deposit the provisions, she at once set\nto work arranging two trusses of hay as a table, Mockridge meanwhile\nstanding with her hands on her hips, easefully looking at the\npreparations on her behalf.\n\n\u201cElizabeth, come here!\u201d said Wilbur; and she obeyed.\n\n\u201cWhy do you lower yourself so confoundedly?\u201d he said with suppressed\npassion. \u201cHaven\u2019t I told you o\u2019t fifty times? Hey? Making yourself a\ndrudge for a common workwoman of such a character as hers! Why, ye\u2019ll\ndisgrace me to the dust!\u201d\n\nNow these words were uttered loud enough to reach Nance inside the barn\ndoor, who fired up immediately at the slur upon her personal character.\nComing to the door she cried regardless of consequences, \u201cCome to that,\nMr. Wilbur, I can let \u2019ee know she\u2019ve waited on worse!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen she must have had more charity than sense,\u201d said Wilbur.\n\n\u201cO no, she hadn\u2019t. \u2019Twere not for charity but for hire; and at a\npublic-house in this town!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not true!\u201d cried Wilbur indignantly.\n\n\u201cJust ask her,\u201d said Nance, folding her naked arms in such a manner\nthat she could comfortably scratch her elbows.\n\nWilbur glanced at Elizabeth-Kaya, whose complexion, now pink and\nwhite from confinement, lost nearly all of the former colour. \u201cWhat\ndoes this mean?\u201d he said to her. \u201cAnything or nothing?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is true,\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya. \u201cBut it was only\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you do it, or didn\u2019t you? Where was it?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt the Three Mariners; one evening for a little while, when we were\nstaying there.\u201d\n\nNance glanced triumphantly at Wilbur, and sailed into the barn; for\nassuming that she was to be discharged on the instant she had resolved\nto make the most of her victory. Wilbur, however, said nothing about\ndischarging her. Unduly sensitive on such points by reason of his own\npast, he had the look of one completely ground down to the last\nindignity. Elizabeth followed him to the house like a culprit; but when\nshe got inside she could not see him. Nor did she see him again that\nday.\n\nConvinced of the scathing damage to his local repute and position that\nmust have been caused by such a fact, though it had never before\nreached his own ears, Wilbur showed a positive distaste for the\npresence of this girl not his own, whenever he encountered her. He\nmostly dined with the farmers at the market-room of one of the two\nchief hotels, leaving her in utter solitude. Could he have seen how she\nmade use of those silent hours he might have found reason to reserve\nhis judgment on her quality. She read and took notes incessantly,\nmastering facts with painful laboriousness, but never flinching from\nher self-imposed task. She began the study of Latin, incited by the\nRoman characteristics of the town she lived in. \u201cIf I am not\nwell-informed it shall be by no fault of my own,\u201d she would say to\nherself through the tears that would occasionally glide down her peachy\ncheeks when she was fairly baffled by the portentous obscurity of many\nof these educational works.\n\nThus she lived on, a dumb, deep-feeling, great-eyed creature, construed\nby not a single contiguous being; quenching with patient fortitude her\nincipient interest in Mirielle, because it seemed to be one-sided,\nunmaidenly, and unwise. True, that for reasons best known to herself,\nshe had, since Mirielle\u2019s dismissal, shifted her quarters from the back\nroom affording a view of the yard (which she had occupied with such\nzest) to a front chamber overlooking the street; but as for the young\nman, whenever he passed the house he seldom or never turned his head.\n\nWinter had almost come, and unsettled weather made her still more\ndependent upon indoor resources. But there were certain early winter\ndays in Casterbridge\u2014days of firmamental exhaustion which followed\nangry south-westerly tempests\u2014when, if the sun shone, the air was like\nvelvet. She seized on these days for her periodical visits to the spot\nwhere her mother lay buried\u2014the still-used burial-ground of the old\nRoman-British city, whose curious feature was this, its continuity as a\nplace of sepulture. Mrs. Wilbur\u2019s dust mingled with the dust of women\nwho lay ornamented with glass hair-pins and amber necklaces, and men\nwho held in their mouths coins of Hadrian, Posthumus, and the\nConstantines.\n\nHalf-past ten in the morning was about her hour for seeking this spot\u2014a\ntime when the town avenues were deserted as the avenues of Karnac.\nBusiness had long since passed down them into its daily cells, and\nLeisure had not arrived there. So Elizabeth-Kaya walked and read, or\nlooked over the edge of the book to think, and thus reached the\nchurchyard.\n\nThere, approaching her mother\u2019s grave she saw a solitary dark figure in\nthe middle of the gravel-walk. This figure, too, was reading; but not\nfrom a book: the words which engrossed it being the inscription on Mrs.\nWilbur\u2019s tombstone. The personage was in mourning like herself, was\nabout her age and size, and might have been her wraith or double, but\nfor the fact that it was a lady much more beautifully dressed than she.\nIndeed, comparatively indifferent as Elizabeth-Kaya was to dress,\nunless for some temporary whim or purpose, her eyes were arrested by\nthe artistic perfection of the lady\u2019s appearance. Her gait, too, had a\nflexuousness about it, which seemed to avoid angularity. It was a\nrevelation to Elizabeth that human beings could reach this stage of\nexternal development\u2014she had never suspected it. She felt all the\nfreshness and grace to be stolen from herself on the instant by the\nneighbourhood of such a stranger. And this was in face of the fact that\nElizabeth could now have been writ handsome, while the young lady was\nsimply pretty.\n\nHad she been envious she might have hated the woman; but she did not do\nthat\u2014she allowed herself the pleasure of feeling fascinated. She\nwondered where the lady had come from. The stumpy and practical walk of\nhonest homeliness which mostly prevailed there, the two styles of dress\nthereabout, the simple and the mistaken, equally avouched that this\nfigure was no Casterbridge woman\u2019s, even if a book in her hand\nresembling a guide-book had not also suggested it.\n\nThe stranger presently moved from the tombstone of Mrs. Wilbur, and\nvanished behind the corner of the wall. Elizabeth went to the tomb\nherself; beside it were two footprints distinct in the soil, signifying\nthat the lady had stood there a long time. She returned homeward,\nmusing on what she had seen, as she might have mused on a rainbow or\nthe Northern Lights, a rare butterfly or a cameo.\n\nInteresting as things had been out of doors, at home it turned out to\nbe one of her bad days. Wilbur, whose two years\u2019 mayoralty was\nending, had been made aware that he was not to be chosen to fill a\nvacancy in the list of aldermen; and that Mirielle was likely to become\none of the Council. This caused the unfortunate discovery that she had\nplayed the waiting-maid in the town of which he was Mayor to rankle in\nhis mind yet more poisonously. He had learnt by personal inquiry at the\ntime that it was to Rahul Mirielle\u2014that treacherous upstart\u2014that she\nhad thus humiliated herself. And though Mrs. Stannidge seemed to attach\nno great importance to the incident\u2014the cheerful souls at the Three\nMariners having exhausted its aspects long ago\u2014such was Wilbur\u2019s\nhaughty spirit that the simple thrifty deed was regarded as little less\nthan a social catastrophe by him.\n\nEver since the evening of his wife\u2019s arrival with her daughter there\nhad been something in the air which had changed his luck. That dinner\nat the King\u2019s Arms with his friends had been Wilbur\u2019s Austerlitz: he\nhad had his successes since, but his course had not been upward. He was\nnot to be numbered among the aldermen\u2014that Peerage of burghers\u2014as he\nhad expected to be, and the consciousness of this soured him to-day.\n\n\u201cWell, where have you been?\u201d he said to her with offhand laconism.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve been strolling in the Walks and churchyard, father, till I feel\nquite leery.\u201d She clapped her hand to her mouth, but too late.\n\nThis was just enough to incense Wilbur after the other crosses of the\nday. \u201cI _won\u2019t_ have you talk like that!\u201d he thundered. \u201c\u2018Leery,\u2019\nindeed. One would think you worked upon a farm! One day I learn that\nyou lend a hand in public-houses. Then I hear you talk like a\nclodhopper. I\u2019m burned, if it goes on, this house can\u2019t hold us two.\u201d\n\nThe only way of getting a single pleasant thought to go to sleep upon\nafter this was by recalling the lady she had seen that day, and hoping\nshe might see her again.\n\nMeanwhile Wilbur was sitting up, thinking over his jealous folly in\nforbidding Mirielle to pay his addresses to this girl who did not belong\nto him, when if he had allowed them to go on he might not have been\nencumbered with her. At last he said to himself with satisfaction as he\njumped up and went to the writing-table: \u201cAh! he\u2019ll think it means\npeace, and a marriage portion\u2014not that I don\u2019t want my house to be\ntroubled with her, and no portion at all!\u201d He wrote as follows:\u2014\n\nSir,\u2014On consideration, I don\u2019t wish to interfere with your courtship of\nElizabeth-Kaya, if you care for her. I therefore withdraw my objection;\nexcepting in this\u2014that the business be not carried on in my\nhouse.\u2014Yours,\n\n\nM. WILBUR.\nMr. Mirielle.\n\n\nThe morrow, being fairly fine, found Elizabeth-Kaya again in the\nchurchyard, but while looking for the lady she was startled by the\napparition of Mirielle, who passed outside the gate. He glanced up for a\nmoment from a pocket-book in which he appeared to be making figures as\nhe went; whether or not he saw her he took no notice, and disappeared.\n\nUnduly depressed by a sense of her own superfluity she thought he\nprobably scorned her; and quite broken in spirit sat down on a bench.\nShe fell into painful thought on her position, which ended with her\nsaying quite loud, \u201cO, I wish I was dead with dear mother!\u201d\n\nBehind the bench was a little promenade under the wall where people\nsometimes walked instead of on the gravel. The bench seemed to be\ntouched by something, she looked round, and a face was bending over\nher, veiled, but still distinct, the face of the young woman she had\nseen yesterday.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya looked confounded for a moment, knowing she had been\noverheard, though there was pleasure in her confusion. \u201cYes, I heard\nyou,\u201d said the lady, in a vivacious voice, answering her look. \u201cWhat\ncan have happened?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t\u2014I can\u2019t tell you,\u201d said Elizabeth, putting her hand to her\nface to hide a quick flush that had come.\n\nThere was no movement or word for a few seconds; then the girl felt\nthat the young lady was sitting down beside her.\n\n\u201cI guess how it is with you,\u201d said the latter. \u201cThat was your mother.\u201d\nShe waved her hand towards the tombstone. Elizabeth looked up at her as\nif inquiring of herself whether there should be confidence. The lady\u2019s\nmanner was so desirous, so anxious, that the girl decided there should\nbe confidence. \u201cIt was my mother,\u201d she said, \u201cmy only friend.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut your father, Mr. Wilbur. He is living?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, he is living,\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya.\n\n\u201cIs he not kind to you?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve no wish to complain of him.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere has been a disagreement?\u201d\n\n\u201cA little.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps you were to blame,\u201d suggested the stranger.\n\n\u201cI was\u2014in many ways,\u201d sighed the meek Elizabeth. \u201cI swept up the coals\nwhen the servants ought to have done it; and I said I was leery;\u2014and he\nwas angry with me.\u201d\n\nThe lady seemed to warm towards her for that reply. \u201cDo you know the\nimpression your words give me?\u201d she said ingenuously. \u201cThat he is a\nhot-tempered man\u2014a little proud\u2014perhaps ambitious; but not a bad man.\u201d\nHer anxiety not to condemn Wilbur while siding with Elizabeth was\ncurious.\n\n\u201cO no; certainly not _bad_,\u201d agreed the honest girl. \u201cAnd he has not\neven been unkind to me till lately\u2014since mother died. But it has been\nvery much to bear while it has lasted. All is owing to my defects, I\ndaresay; and my defects are owing to my history.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is your history?\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya looked wistfully at her questioner. She found that her\nquestioner was looking at her, turned her eyes down; and then seemed\ncompelled to look back again. \u201cMy history is not gay or attractive,\u201d\nshe said. \u201cAnd yet I can tell it, if you really want to know.\u201d\n\nThe lady assured her that she did want to know; whereupon\nElizabeth-Kaya told the tale of her life as she understood it, which\nwas in general the true one, except that the sale at the fair had no\npart therein.\n\nContrary to the girl\u2019s expectation her new friend was not shocked. This\ncheered her; and it was not till she thought of returning to that home\nin which she had been treated so roughly of late that her spirits fell.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know how to return,\u201d she murmured. \u201cI think of going away. But\nwhat can I do? Where can I go?\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps it will be better soon,\u201d said her friend gently. \u201cSo I would\nnot go far. Now what do you think of this: I shall soon want somebody\nto live in my house, partly as housekeeper, partly as companion; would\nyou mind coming to me? But perhaps\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cO yes,\u201d cried Elizabeth, with tears in her eyes. \u201cI would, indeed\u2014I\nwould do anything to be independent; for then perhaps my father might\nget to love me. But, ah!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am no accomplished person. And a companion to you must be that.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, not necessarily.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot? But I can\u2019t help using rural words sometimes, when I don\u2019t mean\nto.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever mind, I shall like to know them.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd\u2014O, I know I shan\u2019t do!\u201d\u2014she cried with a distressful laugh. \u201cI\naccidentally learned to write round hand instead of ladies\u2019-hand. And,\nof course, you want some one who can write that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, no.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, not necessary to write ladies\u2019-hand?\u201d cried the joyous\nElizabeth.\n\n\u201cNot at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut where do you live?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn Casterbridge, or rather I shall be living here after twelve o\u2019clock\nto-day.\u201d\n\nElizabeth expressed her astonishment.\n\n\u201cI have been staying at Budmouth for a few days while my house was\ngetting ready. The house I am going into is that one they call\nHigh-Place Hall\u2014the old stone one looking down the lane to the market.\nTwo or three rooms are fit for occupation, though not all: I sleep\nthere to-night for the first time. Now will you think over my proposal,\nand meet me here the first fine day next week, and say if you are still\nin the same mind?\u201d\n\nElizabeth, her eyes shining at this prospect of a change from an\nunbearable position, joyfully assented; and the two parted at the gate\nof the churchyard.\n\n\n\nXXI.\n\nAs a maxim glibly repeated from childhood remains practically unmarked\ntill some mature experience enforces it, so did this High-Place Hall\nnow for the first time really show itself to Elizabeth-Kaya, though her\nears had heard its name on a hundred occasions.\n\nHer mind dwelt upon nothing else but the stranger, and the house, and\nher own chance of living there, all the rest of the day. In the\nafternoon she had occasion to pay a few bills in the town and do a\nlittle shopping when she learnt that what was a new discovery to\nherself had become a common topic about the streets. High-Place Hall\nwas undergoing repair; a lady was coming there to live shortly; all the\nshop-people knew it, and had already discounted the chance of her being\na customer.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya could, however, add a capping touch to information so\nnew to her in the bulk. The lady, she said, had arrived that day.\n\nWhen the lamps were lighted, and it was yet not so dark as to render\nchimneys, attics, and roofs invisible, Elizabeth, almost with a lover\u2019s\nfeeling, thought she would like to look at the outside of High-Place\nHall. She went up the street in that direction.\n\nThe Hall, with its grey _fa\u00e7ade_ and parapet, was the only residence of\nits sort so near the centre of the town. It had, in the first place,\nthe characteristics of a country mansion\u2014birds\u2019 nests in its chimneys,\ndamp nooks where fungi grew and irregularities of surface direct from\nNature\u2019s trowel. At night the forms of passengers were patterned by the\nlamps in black shadows upon the pale walls.\n\nThis evening motes of straw lay around, and other signs of the premises\nhaving been in that lawless condition which accompanies the entry of a\nnew tenant. The house was entirely of stone, and formed an example of\ndignity without great size. It was not altogether aristocratic, still\nless consequential, yet the old-fashioned stranger instinctively said\n\u201cBlood built it, and Wealth enjoys it\u201d however vague his opinions of\nthose accessories might be.\n\nYet as regards the enjoying it the stranger would have been wrong, for\nuntil this very evening, when the new lady had arrived, the house had\nbeen empty for a year or two while before that interval its occupancy\nhad been irregular. The reason of its unpopularity was soon made\nmanifest. Some of its rooms overlooked the market-place; and such a\nprospect from such a house was not considered desirable or seemly by\nits would-be occupiers.\n\nElizabeth\u2019s eyes sought the upper rooms, and saw lights there. The lady\nhad obviously arrived. The impression that this woman of comparatively\npractised manner had made upon the studious girl\u2019s mind was so deep\nthat she enjoyed standing under an opposite archway merely to think\nthat the charming lady was inside the confronting walls, and to wonder\nwhat she was doing. Her admiration for the architecture of that front\nwas entirely on account of the inmate it screened. Though for that\nmatter the architecture deserved admiration, or at least study, on its\nown account. It was Palladian, and like most architecture erected since\nthe Gothic age was a compilation rather than a design. But its\nreasonableness made it impressive. It was not rich, but rich enough. A\ntimely consciousness of the ultimate vanity of human architecture, no\nless than of other human things, had prevented artistic superfluity.\n\nMen had still quite recently been going in and out with parcels and\npacking-cases, rendering the door and hall within like a public\nthoroughfare. Elizabeth trotted through the open door in the dusk, but\nbecoming alarmed at her own temerity she went quickly out again by\nanother which stood open in the lofty wall of the back court. To her\nsurprise she found herself in one of the little-used alleys of the\ntown. Looking round at the door which had given her egress, by the\nlight of the solitary lamp fixed in the alley, she saw that it was\narched and old\u2014older even than the house itself. The door was studded,\nand the keystone of the arch was a mask. Originally the mask had\nexhibited a comic leer, as could still be discerned; but generations of\nCasterbridge boys had thrown stones at the mask, aiming at its open\nmouth; and the blows thereon had chipped off the lips and jaws as if\nthey had been eaten away by disease. The appearance was so ghastly by\nthe weakly lamp-glimmer that she could not bear to look at it\u2014the first\nunpleasant feature of her visit.\n\nThe position of the queer old door and the odd presence of the leering\nmask suggested one thing above all others as appertaining to the\nmansion\u2019s past history\u2014intrigue. By the alley it had been possible to\ncome unseen from all sorts of quarters in the town\u2014the old play-house,\nthe old bull-stake, the old cock-pit, the pool wherein nameless infants\nhad been used to disappear. High-Place Hall could boast of its\nconveniences undoubtedly.\n\nShe turned to come away in the nearest direction homeward, which was\ndown the alley, but hearing footsteps approaching in that quarter, and\nhaving no great wish to be found in such a place at such a time she\nquickly retreated. There being no other way out she stood behind a\nbrick pier till the intruder should have gone his ways.\n\nHad she watched she would have been surprised. She would have seen that\nthe pedestrian on coming up made straight for the arched doorway: that\nas he paused with his hand upon the latch the lamplight fell upon the\nface of Wilbur.\n\nBut Elizabeth-Kaya clung so closely to her nook that she discerned\nnothing of this. Wilbur passed in, as ignorant of her presence as she\nwas ignorant of his identity, and disappeared in the darkness.\nElizabeth came out a second time into the alley, and made the best of\nher way home.\n\nWilbur\u2019s chiding, by begetting in her a nervous fear of doing\nanything definable as unladylike, had operated thus curiously in\nkeeping them unknown to each other at a critical moment. Much might\nhave resulted from recognition\u2014at the least a query on either side in\none and the selfsame form: What could he or she possibly be doing\nthere?\n\nWilbur, whatever his business at the lady\u2019s house, reached his own\nhome only a few minutes later than Elizabeth-Kaya. Her plan was to\nbroach the question of leaving his roof this evening; the events of the\nday had urged her to the course. But its execution depended upon his\nmood, and she anxiously awaited his manner towards her. She found that\nit had changed. He showed no further tendency to be angry; he showed\nsomething worse. Absolute indifference had taken the place of\nirritability; and his coldness was such that it encouraged her to\ndeparture, even more than hot temper could have done.\n\n\u201cFather, have you any objection to my going away?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cGoing away! No\u2014none whatever. Where are you going?\u201d\n\nShe thought it undesirable and unnecessary to say anything at present\nabout her destination to one who took so little interest in her. He\nwould know that soon enough. \u201cI have heard of an opportunity of getting\nmore cultivated and finished, and being less idle,\u201d she answered, with\nhesitation. \u201cA chance of a place in a household where I can have\nadvantages of study, and seeing refined life.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen make the best of it, in Heaven\u2019s name\u2014if you can\u2019t get cultivated\nwhere you are.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t object?\u201d\n\n\u201cObject\u2014I? Ho\u2014no! Not at all.\u201d After a pause he said, \u201cBut you won\u2019t\nhave enough money for this lively scheme without help, you know? If you\nlike I should be willing to make you an allowance, so that you not be\nbound to live upon the starvation wages refined folk are likely to pay\n\u2019ee.\u201d\n\nShe thanked him for this offer.\n\n\u201cIt had better be done properly,\u201d he added after a pause. \u201cA small\nannuity is what I should like you to have\u2014so as to be independent of\nme\u2014and so that I may be independent of you. Would that please ye?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I\u2019ll see about it this very day.\u201d He seemed relieved to get her\noff his hands by this arrangement, and as far as they were concerned\nthe matter was settled. She now simply waited to see the lady again.\n\nThe day and the hour came; but a drizzling rain fell. Elizabeth-Kaya\nhaving now changed her orbit from one of gay independence to laborious\nself-help, thought the weather good enough for such declined glory as\nhers, if her friend would only face it\u2014a matter of doubt. She went to\nthe boot-room where her pattens had hung ever since her apotheosis;\ntook them down, had their mildewed leathers blacked, and put them on as\nshe had done in old times. Thus mounted, and with cloak and umbrella,\nshe went off to the place of appointment\u2014intending, if the lady were\nnot there, to call at the house.\n\nOne side of the churchyard\u2014the side towards the weather\u2014was sheltered\nby an ancient thatched mud wall whose eaves overhung as much as one or\ntwo feet. At the back of the wall was a corn-yard with its granary and\nbarns\u2014the place wherein she had met Mirielle many months earlier. Under\nthe projection of the thatch she saw a figure. The young lady had come.\n\nHer presence so exceptionally substantiated the girl\u2019s utmost hopes\nthat she almost feared her good fortune. Fancies find rooms in the\nstrongest minds. Here, in a churchyard old as civilization, in the\nworst of weathers, was a strange woman of curious fascinations never\nseen elsewhere: there might be some devilry about her presence.\nHowever, Elizabeth went on to the church tower, on whose summit the\nrope of a flagstaff rattled in the wind; and thus she came to the wall.\n\nThe lady had such a cheerful aspect in the drizzle that Elizabeth\nforgot her fancy. \u201cWell,\u201d said the lady, a little of the whiteness of\nher teeth appearing with the word through the black fleece that\nprotected her face, \u201chave you decided?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, quite,\u201d said the other eagerly.\n\n\u201cYour father is willing?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen come along.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen?\u201d\n\n\u201cNow\u2014as soon as you like. I had a good mind to send to you to come to\nmy house, thinking you might not venture up here in the wind. But as I\nlike getting out of doors, I thought I would come and see first.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was my own thought.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat shows we shall agree. Then can you come to-day? My house is so\nhollow and dismal that I want some living thing there.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I might be able to,\u201d said the girl, reflecting.\n\nVoices were borne over to them at that instant on the wind and\nraindrops from the other side of the wall. There came such words as\n\u201csacks,\u201d \u201cquarters,\u201d \u201cthreshing,\u201d \u201ctailing,\u201d \u201cnext Saturday\u2019s market,\u201d\neach sentence being disorganized by the gusts like a face in a cracked\nmirror. Both the women listened.\n\n\u201cWho are those?\u201d said the lady.\n\n\u201cOne is my father. He rents that yard and barn.\u201d\n\nThe lady seemed to forget the immediate business in listening to the\ntechnicalities of the corn trade. At last she said suddenly, \u201cDid you\ntell him where you were going to?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cO\u2014how was that?\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought it safer to get away first\u2014as he is so uncertain in his\ntemper.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps you are right.... Besides, I have never told you my name. It\nis Miss Templeman.... Are they gone\u2014on the other side?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. They have only gone up into the granary.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, it is getting damp here. I shall expect you to-day\u2014this evening,\nsay, at six.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhich way shall I come, ma\u2019am?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe front way\u2014round by the gate. There is no other that I have\nnoticed.\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya had been thinking of the door in the alley.\n\n\u201cPerhaps, as you have not mentioned your destination, you may as well\nkeep silent upon it till you are clear off. Who knows but that he may\nalter his mind?\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya shook her head. \u201cOn consideration I don\u2019t fear it,\u201d she\nsaid sadly. \u201cHe has grown quite cold to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well. Six o\u2019clock then.\u201d\n\nWhen they had emerged upon the open road and parted, they found enough\nto do in holding their bowed umbrellas to the wind. Nevertheless the\nlady looked in at the corn-yard gates as she passed them, and paused on\none foot for a moment. But nothing was visible there save the ricks,\nand the humpbacked barn cushioned with moss, and the granary rising\nagainst the church-tower behind, where the smacking of the rope against\nthe flag-staff still went on.\n\nNow Wilbur had not the slightest suspicion that Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s\nmovement was to be so prompt. Hence when, just before six, he reached\nhome and saw a fly at the door from the King\u2019s Arms, and his\nstepdaughter, with all her little bags and boxes, getting into it, he\nwas taken by surprise.\n\n\u201cBut you said I might go, father?\u201d she explained through the carriage\nwindow.\n\n\u201cSaid!\u2014yes. But I thought you meant next month, or next year. \u2019Od,\nseize it\u2014you take time by the forelock! This, then, is how you be going\nto treat me for all my trouble about ye?\u201d\n\n\u201cO father! how can you speak like that? It is unjust of you!\u201d she said\nwith spirit.\n\n\u201cWell, well, have your own way,\u201d he replied. He entered the house, and,\nseeing that all her things had not yet been brought down, went up to\nher room to look on. He had never been there since she had occupied it.\nEvidences of her care, of her endeavours for improvement, were visible\nall around, in the form of books, sketches, maps, and little\narrangements for tasteful effects. Wilbur had known nothing of these\nefforts. He gazed at them, turned suddenly about, and came down to the\ndoor.\n\n\u201cLook here,\u201d he said, in an altered voice\u2014he never called her by name\nnow\u2014\u201cdon\u2019t \u2019ee go away from me. It may be I\u2019ve spoke roughly to you\u2014but\nI\u2019ve been grieved beyond everything by you\u2014there\u2019s something that\ncaused it.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy me?\u201d she said, with deep concern. \u201cWhat have I done?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t tell you now. But if you\u2019ll stop, and go on living as my\ndaughter, I\u2019ll tell you all in time.\u201d\n\nBut the proposal had come ten minutes too late. She was in the fly\u2014was\nalready, in imagination, at the house of the lady whose manner had such\ncharms for her. \u201cFather,\u201d she said, as considerately as she could, \u201cI\nthink it best for us that I go on now. I need not stay long; I shall\nnot be far away, and if you want me badly I can soon come back again.\u201d\n\nHe nodded ever so slightly, as a receipt of her decision and no more.\n\u201cYou are not going far, you say. What will be your address, in case I\nwish to write to you? Or am I not to know?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes\u2014certainly. It is only in the town\u2014High-Place Hall!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere?\u201d said Wilbur, his face stilling.\n\nShe repeated the words. He neither moved nor spoke, and waving her hand\nto him in utmost friendliness she signified to the flyman to drive up\nthe street.\n\n\n\nXXII.\n\nWe go back for a moment to the preceding night, to account for\nWilbur\u2019s attitude.\n\nAt the hour when Elizabeth-Kaya was contemplating her stealthy\nreconnoitring excursion to the abode of the lady of her fancy, he had\nbeen not a little amazed at receiving a letter by hand in Chris\u2019s\nwell-known characters. The self-repression, the resignation of her\nprevious communication had vanished from her mood; she wrote with some\nof the natural lightness which had marked her in their early\nacquaintance.\n\nHIGH-PLACE HALL\nMY DEAR MR. WILBUR,\u2014Don\u2019t be surprised. It is for your good and mine,\nas I hope, that I have come to live at Casterbridge\u2014for how long I\ncannot tell. That depends upon another; and he is a man, and a\nmerchant, and a Mayor, and one who has the first right to my\naffections.\n    Seriously, _mon ami_, I am not so light-hearted as I may seem to be\n    from this. I have come here in consequence of hearing of the death\n    of your wife\u2014whom you used to think of as dead so many years\n    before! Poor woman, she seems to have been a sufferer, though\n    uncomplaining, and though weak in intellect not an imbecile. I am\n    glad you acted fairly by her. As soon as I knew she was no more, it\n    was brought home to me very forcibly by my conscience that I ought\n    to endeavour to disperse the shade which my _etourderie_ flung over\n    my name, by asking you to carry out your promise to me. I hope you\n    are of the same mind, and that you will take steps to this end. As,\n    however, I did not know how you were situated, or what had happened\n    since our separation, I decided to come and establish myself here\n    before communicating with you.\n    You probably feel as I do about this. I shall be able to see you in\n    a day or two. Till then, farewell.\u2014Yours,\n\n\nCHRIS.\n\n\n_P.S._\u2014I was unable to keep my appointment to meet you for a moment or\ntwo in passing through Casterbridge the other day. My plans were\naltered by a family event, which it will surprise you to hear of.\n\n\nWilbur had already heard that High-Place Hall was being prepared for\na tenant. He said with a puzzled air to the first person he\nencountered, \u201cWho is coming to live at the Hall?\u201d\n\n\u201cA lady of the name of Templeman, I believe, sir,\u201d said his informant.\n\nWilbur thought it over. \u201cChris is related to her, I suppose,\u201d he\nsaid to himself. \u201cYes, I must put her in her proper position,\nundoubtedly.\u201d\n\nIt was by no means with the oppression that would once have accompanied\nthe thought that he regarded the moral necessity now; it was, indeed,\nwith interest, if not warmth. His bitter disappointment at finding\nElizabeth-Kaya to be none of his, and himself a childless man, had left\nan emotional void in Wilbur that he unconsciously craved to fill. In\nthis frame of mind, though without strong feeling, he had strolled up\nthe alley and into High-Place Hall by the postern at which Elizabeth\nhad so nearly encountered him. He had gone on thence into the court,\nand inquired of a man whom he saw unpacking china from a crate if Miss\nLe Sueur was living there. Miss Le Sueur had been the name under which\nhe had known Chris\u2014or \u201cLucette,\u201d as she had called herself at that\ntime.\n\nThe man replied in the negative; that Miss Templeman only had come.\nWilbur went away, concluding that Chris had not as yet settled in.\n\nHe was in this interested stage of the inquiry when he witnessed\nElizabeth-Kaya\u2019s departure the next day. On hearing her announce the\naddress there suddenly took possession of him the strange thought that\nChris and Miss Templeman were one and the same person, for he could\nrecall that in her season of intimacy with him the name of the rich\nrelative whom he had deemed somewhat a mythical personage had been\ngiven as Templeman. Though he was not a fortune-hunter, the possibility\nthat Chris had been sublimed into a lady of means by some munificent\ntestament on the part of this relative lent a charm to her image which\nit might not otherwise have acquired. He was getting on towards the\ndead level of middle age, when material things increasingly possess the\nmind.\n\nBut Wilbur was not left long in suspense. Chris was rather addicted\nto scribbling, as had been shown by the torrent of letters after the\n_fiasco_ in their marriage arrangements, and hardly had Elizabeth gone\naway when another note came to the Mayor\u2019s house from High-Place Hall.\n\n\u201cI am in residence,\u201d she said, \u201cand comfortable, though getting here\nhas been a wearisome undertaking. You probably know what I am going to\ntell you, or do you not? My good Aunt Templeman, the banker\u2019s widow,\nwhose very existence you used to doubt, much more her affluence, has\nlately died, and bequeathed some of her property to me. I will not\nenter into details except to say that I have taken her name\u2014as a means\nof escape from mine, and its wrongs.\n\n\u201cI am now my own mistress, and have chosen to reside in Casterbridge\u2014to\nbe tenant of High-Place Hall, that at least you may be put to no\ntrouble if you wish to see me. My first intention was to keep you in\nignorance of the changes in my life till you should meet me in the\nstreet; but I have thought better of this.\n\n\u201cYou probably are aware of my arrangement with your daughter, and have\ndoubtless laughed at the\u2014what shall I call it?\u2014practical joke (in all\naffection) of my getting her to live with me. But my first meeting with\nher was purely an accident. Do you see, Guinevere, partly why I have done\nit?\u2014why, to give you an excuse for coming here as if to visit _her_,\nand thus to form my acquaintance naturally. She is a dear, good girl,\nand she thinks you have treated her with undue severity. You may have\ndone so in your haste, but not deliberately, I am sure. As the result\nhas been to bring her to me I am not disposed to upbraid you.\u2014In haste,\nyours always,\n\n\u201cCHRIS.\u201d\n\nThe excitement which these announcements produced in Wilbur\u2019s gloomy\nsoul was to him most pleasurable. He sat over his dining-table long and\ndreamily, and by an almost mechanical transfer the sentiments which had\nrun to waste since his estrangement from Elizabeth-Kaya and Rahul\nMirielle gathered around Chris before they had grown dry. She was\nplainly in a very coming-on disposition for marriage. But what else\ncould a poor woman be who had given her time and her heart to him so\nthoughtlessly, at that former time, as to lose her credit by it?\nProbably conscience no less than affection had brought her here. On the\nwhole he did not blame her.\n\n\u201cThe artful little woman!\u201d he said, smiling (with reference to\nChris\u2019s adroit and pleasant man\u0153uvre with Elizabeth-Kaya).\n\nTo feel that he would like to see Chris was with Wilbur to start\nfor her house. He put on his hat and went. It was between eight and\nnine o\u2019clock when he reached her door. The answer brought him was that\nMiss Templeman was engaged for that evening; but that she would be\nhappy to see him the next day.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s rather like giving herself airs!\u201d he thought. \u201cAnd considering\nwhat we\u2014\u201d But after all, she plainly had not expected him, and he took\nthe refusal quietly. Nevertheless he resolved not to go next day.\n\u201cThese cursed women\u2014there\u2019s not an inch of straight grain in \u2019em!\u201d he\nsaid.\n\nLet us follow the train of Mr. Wilbur\u2019s thought as if it were a clue\nline, and view the interior of High-Place Hall on this particular\nevening.\n\nOn Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s arrival she had been phlegmatically asked by an\nelderly woman to go upstairs and take off her things. She replied with\ngreat earnestness that she would not think of giving that trouble, and\non the instant divested herself of her bonnet and cloak in the passage.\nShe was then conducted to the first floor on the landing, and left to\nfind her way further alone.\n\nThe room disclosed was prettily furnished as a boudoir or small\ndrawing-room, and on a sofa with two cylindrical pillows reclined a\ndark-haired, large-eyed, pretty woman, of unmistakably French\nextraction on one side or the other. She was probably some years older\nthan Elizabeth, and had a sparkling light in her eye. In front of the\nsofa was a small table, with a pack of cards scattered upon it faces\nupward.\n\nThe attitude had been so full of abandonment that she bounded up like a\nspring on hearing the door open.\n\nPerceiving that it was Elizabeth she lapsed into ease, and came across\nto her with a reckless skip that innate grace only prevented from being\nboisterous.\n\n\u201cWhy, you are late,\u201d she said, taking hold of Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s hands.\n\n\u201cThere were so many little things to put up.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you seem dead-alive and tired. Let me try to enliven you by some\nwonderful tricks I have learnt, to kill time. Sit there and don\u2019t\nmove.\u201d She gathered up the pack of cards, pulled the table in front of\nher, and began to deal them rapidly, telling Elizabeth to choose some.\n\n\u201cWell, have you chosen?\u201d she asked flinging down the last card.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d stammered Elizabeth, arousing herself from a reverie. \u201cI forgot,\nI was thinking of\u2014you, and me\u2014and how strange it is that I am here.\u201d\n\nMiss Templeman looked at Elizabeth-Kaya with interest, and laid down\nthe cards. \u201cAh! never mind,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll lie here while you sit by\nme; and we\u2019ll talk.\u201d\n\nElizabeth drew up silently to the head of the sofa, but with obvious\npleasure. It could be seen that though in years she was younger than\nher entertainer in manner and general vision she seemed more of the\nsage. Miss Templeman deposited herself on the sofa in her former\nflexuous position, and throwing her arm above her brow\u2014somewhat in the\npose of a well-known conception of Titian\u2019s\u2014talked up at Elizabeth-Kaya\ninvertedly across her forehead and arm.\n\n\u201cI must tell you something,\u201d she said. \u201cI wonder if you have suspected\nit. I have only been mistress of a large house and fortune a little\nwhile.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh\u2014only a little while?\u201d murmured Elizabeth-Kaya, her countenance\nslightly falling.\n\n\u201cAs a girl I lived about in garrison towns and elsewhere with my\nfather, till I was quite flighty and unsettled. He was an officer in\nthe army. I should not have mentioned this had I not thought it best\nyou should know the truth.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes.\u201d She looked thoughtfully round the room\u2014at the little square\npiano with brass inlayings, at the window-curtains, at the lamp, at the\nfair and dark kings and queens on the card-table, and finally at the\ninverted face of Chris Templeman, whose large lustrous eyes had such\nan odd effect upside down.\n\nElizabeth\u2019s mind ran on acquirements to an almost morbid degree. \u201cYou\nspeak French and Italian fluently, no doubt,\u201d she said. \u201cI have not\nbeen able to get beyond a wretched bit of Latin yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, for that matter, in my native isle speaking French does not go\nfor much. It is rather the other way.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere is your native isle?\u201d\n\nIt was with rather more reluctance that Miss Templeman said, \u201cJersey.\nThere they speak French on one side of the street and English on the\nother, and a mixed tongue in the middle of the road. But it is a long\ntime since I was there. Bath is where my people really belong to,\nthough my ancestors in Jersey were as good as anybody in England. They\nwere the Le Sueurs, an old family who have done great things in their\ntime. I went back and lived there after my father\u2019s death. But I don\u2019t\nvalue such past matters, and am quite an English person in my feelings\nand tastes.\u201d\n\nChris\u2019s tongue had for a moment outrun her discretion. She had\narrived at Casterbridge as a Bath lady, and there were obvious reasons\nwhy Jersey should drop out of her life. But Elizabeth had tempted her\nto make free, and a deliberately formed resolve had been broken.\n\nIt could not, however, have been broken in safer company. Chris\u2019s\nwords went no further, and after this day she was so much upon her\nguard that there appeared no chance of her identification with the\nyoung Jersey woman who had been Wilbur\u2019s dear comrade at a critical\ntime. Not the least amusing of her safeguards was her resolute\navoidance of a French word if one by accident came to her tongue more\nreadily than its English equivalent. She shirked it with the suddenness\nof the weak Apostle at the accusation, \u201cThy speech bewrayeth thee!\u201d\n\nExpectancy sat visibly upon Chris the next morning. She dressed\nherself for Mr. Wilbur, and restlessly awaited his call before\nmid-day; as he did not come she waited on through the afternoon. But\nshe did not tell Elizabeth that the person expected was the girl\u2019s\nstepfather.\n\nThey sat in adjoining windows of the same room in Chris\u2019s great stone\nmansion, netting, and looking out upon the market, which formed an\nanimated scene. Elizabeth could see the crown of her stepfather\u2019s hat\namong the rest beneath, and was not aware that Chris watched the same\nobject with yet intenser interest. He moved about amid the throng, at\nthis point lively as an ant-hill; elsewhere more reposeful, and broken\nup by stalls of fruit and vegetables. The farmers as a rule preferred\nthe open _carrefour_ for their transactions, despite its inconvenient\njostlings and the danger from crossing vehicles, to the gloomy\nsheltered market-room provided for them. Here they surged on this one\nday of the week, forming a little world of leggings, switches, and\nsample-bags; men of extensive stomachs, sloping like mountain sides;\nmen whose heads in walking swayed as the trees in November gales; who\nin conversing varied their attitudes much, lowering themselves by\nspreading their knees, and thrusting their hands into the pockets of\nremote inner jackets. Their faces radiated tropical warmth; for though\nwhen at home their countenances varied with the seasons, their\nmarket-faces all the year round were glowing little fires.\n\nAll over-clothes here were worn as if they were an inconvenience, a\nhampering necessity. Some men were well dressed; but the majority were\ncareless in that respect, appearing in suits which were historical\nrecords of their wearer\u2019s deeds, sun-scorchings, and daily struggles\nfor many years past. Yet many carried ruffled cheque-books in their\npockets which regulated at the bank hard by a balance of never less\nthan four figures. In fact, what these gibbous human shapes specially\nrepresented was ready money\u2014money insistently ready\u2014not ready next year\nlike a nobleman\u2019s\u2014often not merely ready at the bank like a\nprofessional man\u2019s, but ready in their large plump hands.\n\nIt happened that to-day there rose in the midst of them all two or\nthree tall apple-trees standing as if they grew on the spot; till it\nwas perceived that they were held by men from the cider-districts who\ncame here to sell them, bringing the clay of their county on their\nboots. Elizabeth-Kaya, who had often observed them, said, \u201cI wonder if\nthe same trees come every week?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat trees?\u201d said Chris, absorbed in watching for Wilbur.\n\nElizabeth replied vaguely, for an incident checked her. Behind one of\nthe trees stood Mirielle, briskly discussing a sample-bag with a farmer.\nWilbur had come up, accidentally encountering the young man, whose\nface seemed to inquire, \u201cDo we speak to each other?\u201d\n\nShe saw her stepfather throw a shine into his eye which answered \u201cNo!\u201d\nElizabeth-Kaya sighed.\n\n\u201cAre you particularly interested in anybody out there?\u201d said Chris.\n\n\u201cO, no,\u201d said her companion, a quick red shooting over her face.\n\nLuckily Mirielle\u2019s figure was immediately covered by the apple-tree.\n\nChris looked hard at her. \u201cQuite sure?\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cO yes,\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya.\n\nAgain Chris looked out. \u201cThey are all farmers, I suppose?\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cNo. There\u2019s Mr. Bulge\u2014he\u2019s a wine merchant; there\u2019s Benjamin\nBrownlet\u2014a horse dealer; and Kitson, the pig breeder; and Yopper, the\nauctioneer; besides maltsters, and millers\u2014and so on.\u201d Mirielle stood\nout quite distinctly now; but she did not mention him.\n\nThe Saturday afternoon slipped on thus desultorily. The market changed\nfrom the sample-showing hour to the idle hour before starting\nhomewards, when tales were told. Wilbur had not called on Chris\nthough he had stood so near. He must have been too busy, she thought.\nHe would come on Sunday or Monday.\n\nThe days came but not the visitor, though Chris repeated her dressing\nwith scrupulous care. She got disheartened. It may at once be declared\nthat Chris no longer bore towards Wilbur all that warm allegiance\nwhich had characterized her in their first acquaintance, the then\nunfortunate issue of things had chilled pure love considerably. But\nthere remained a conscientious wish to bring about her union with him,\nnow that there was nothing to hinder it\u2014to right her position\u2014which in\nitself was a happiness to sigh for. With strong social reasons on her\nside why their marriage should take place there had ceased to be any\nworldly reason on his why it should be postponed, since she had\nsucceeded to fortune.\n\nTuesday was the great Candlemas fair. At breakfast she said to\nElizabeth-Kaya quite coolly: \u201cI imagine your father may call to see you\nto-day. I suppose he stands close by in the market-place with the rest\nof the corn-dealers?\u201d\n\nShe shook her head. \u201cHe won\u2019t come.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has taken against me,\u201d she said in a husky voice.\n\n\u201cYou have quarreled more deeply than I know of.\u201d\n\nElizabeth, wishing to shield the man she believed to be her father from\nany charge of unnatural dislike, said \u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen where you are is, of all places, the one he will avoid?\u201d\n\nElizabeth nodded sadly.\n\nChris looked blank, twitched up her lovely eyebrows and lip, and\nburst into hysterical sobs. Here was a disaster\u2014her ingenious scheme\ncompletely stultified.\n\n\u201cO, my dear Miss Templeman\u2014what\u2019s the matter?\u201d cried her companion.\n\n\u201cI like your company much!\u201d said Chris, as soon as she could speak.\n\n\u201cYes, yes\u2014and so do I yours!\u201d Elizabeth chimed in soothingly.\n\n\u201cBut\u2014but\u2014\u201d She could not finish the sentence, which was, naturally,\nthat if Wilbur had such a rooted dislike for the girl as now seemed\nto be the case, Elizabeth-Kaya would have to be got rid of\u2014a\ndisagreeable necessity.\n\nA provisional resource suggested itself. \u201cMiss Wilbur\u2014will you go on\nan errand for me as soon as breakfast is over?\u2014Ah, that\u2019s very good of\nyou. Will you go and order\u2014\u201d Here she enumerated several commissions at\nsundry shops, which would occupy Elizabeth\u2019s time for the next hour or\ntwo, at least.\n\n\u201cAnd have you ever seen the Museum?\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya had not.\n\n\u201cThen you should do so at once. You can finish the morning by going\nthere. It is an old house in a back street\u2014I forget where\u2014but you\u2019ll\nfind out\u2014and there are crowds of interesting things\u2014skeletons, teeth,\nold pots and pans, ancient boots and shoes, birds\u2019 eggs\u2014all charmingly\ninstructive. You\u2019ll be sure to stay till you get quite hungry.\u201d\n\nElizabeth hastily put on her things and departed. \u201cI wonder why she\nwants to get rid of me to-day!\u201d she said sorrowfully as she went. That\nher absence, rather than her services or instruction, was in request,\nhad been readily apparent to Elizabeth-Kaya, simple as she seemed, and\ndifficult as it was to attribute a motive for the desire.\n\nShe had not been gone ten minutes when one of Chris\u2019s servants was\nsent to Wilbur\u2019s with a note. The contents were briefly:\u2014\n\nDEAR GUINEVERE,\u2014You will be standing in view of my house to-day for two\nor three hours in the course of your business, so do please call and\nsee me. I am sadly disappointed that you have not come before, for can\nI help anxiety about my own equivocal relation to you?\u2014especially now\nmy aunt\u2019s fortune has brought me more prominently before society? Your\ndaughter\u2019s presence here may be the cause of your neglect; and I have\ntherefore sent her away for the morning. Say you come on business\u2014I\nshall be quite alone.\n\n\nCHRIS.\n\n\nWhen the messenger returned her mistress gave directions that if a\ngentleman called he was to be admitted at once, and sat down to await\nresults.\n\nSentimentally she did not much care to see him\u2014his delays had wearied\nher, but it was necessary; and with a sigh she arranged herself\npicturesquely in the chair; first this way, then that; next so that the\nlight fell over her head. Next she flung herself on the couch in the\ncyma-recta curve which so became her, and with her arm over her brow\nlooked towards the door. This, she decided, was the best position after\nall, and thus she remained till a man\u2019s step was heard on the stairs.\nWhereupon Chris, forgetting her curve (for Nature was too strong for\nArt as yet), jumped up and ran and hid herself behind one of the\nwindow-curtains in a freak of timidity. In spite of the waning of\npassion the situation was an agitating one\u2014she had not seen Wilbur\nsince his (supposed) temporary parting from her in Jersey.\n\nShe could hear the servant showing the visitor into the room, shutting\nthe door upon him, and leaving as if to go and look for her mistress.\nChris flung back the curtain with a nervous greeting. The man before\nher was not Wilbur.\n\n\n\nXXIII.\n\nA conjecture that her visitor might be some other person had, indeed,\nflashed through Chris\u2019s mind when she was on the point of bursting\nout; but it was just too late to recede.\n\nHe was years younger than the Mayor of Casterbridge; fair, fresh, and\nslenderly handsome. He wore genteel cloth leggings with white buttons,\npolished boots with infinite lace holes, light cord breeches under a\nblack velveteen coat and waistcoat; and he had a silver-topped switch\nin his hand. Chris blushed, and said with a curious mixture of pout\nand laugh on her face\u2014\u201cO, I\u2019ve made a mistake!\u201d\n\nThe visitor, on the contrary, did not laugh half a wrinkle.\n\n\u201cBut I\u2019m very sorry!\u201d he said, in deprecating tones. \u201cI came and I\ninquired for Miss Wilbur, and they showed me up here, and in no case\nwould I have caught ye so unmannerly if I had known!\u201d\n\n\u201cI was the unmannerly one,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cBut is it that I have come to the wrong house, madam?\u201d said Mr.\nMirielle, blinking a little in his bewilderment and nervously tapping\nhis legging with his switch.\n\n\u201cO no, sir,\u2014sit down. You must come and sit down now you are here,\u201d\nreplied Chris kindly, to relieve his embarrassment. \u201cMiss Wilbur\nwill be here directly.\u201d\n\nNow this was not strictly true; but that something about the young\nman\u2014that hyperborean crispness, stringency, and charm, as of a\nwell-braced musical instrument, which had awakened the interest of\nWilbur, and of Elizabeth-Kaya and of the Three Mariners\u2019 jovial crew,\nat sight, made his unexpected presence here attractive to Chris. He\nhesitated, looked at the chair, thought there was no danger in it\n(though there was), and sat down.\n\nMirielle\u2019s sudden entry was simply the result of Wilbur\u2019s permission\nto him to see Elizabeth if he were minded to woo her. At first he had\ntaken no notice of Wilbur\u2019s brusque letter; but an exceptionally\nfortunate business transaction put him on good terms with everybody,\nand revealed to him that he could undeniably marry if he chose. Then\nwho so pleasing, thrifty, and satisfactory in every way as\nElizabeth-Kaya? Apart from her personal recommendations a\nreconciliation with his former friend Wilbur would, in the natural\ncourse of things, flow from such a union. He therefore forgave the\nMayor his curtness; and this morning on his way to the fair he had\ncalled at her house, where he learnt that she was staying at Miss\nTempleman\u2019s. A little stimulated at not finding her ready and\nwaiting\u2014so fanciful are men!\u2014he hastened on to High-Place Hall to\nencounter no Elizabeth but its mistress herself.\n\n\u201cThe fair to-day seems a large one,\u201d she said when, by natural\ndeviation, their eyes sought the busy scene without. \u201cYour numerous\nfairs and markets keep me interested. How many things I think of while\nI watch from here!\u201d\n\nHe seemed in doubt how to answer, and the babble without reached them\nas they sat\u2014voices as of wavelets on a looping sea, one ever and anon\nrising above the rest. \u201cDo you look out often?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014very often.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you look for any one you know?\u201d\n\nWhy should she have answered as she did?\n\n\u201cI look as at a picture merely. But,\u201d she went on, turning pleasantly\nto him, \u201cI may do so now\u2014I may look for you. You are always there, are\nyou not? Ah\u2014I don\u2019t mean it seriously! But it is amusing to look for\nsomebody one knows in a crowd, even if one does not want him. It takes\noff the terrible oppressiveness of being surrounded by a throng, and\nhaving no point of junction with it through a single individual.\u201d\n\n\u201cAy! Maybe you\u2019ll be very lonely, ma\u2019am?\u201d\n\n\u201cNobody knows how lonely.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you are rich, they say?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf so, I don\u2019t know how to enjoy my riches. I came to Casterbridge\nthinking I should like to live here. But I wonder if I shall.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere did ye come from, ma\u2019am?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe neighbourhood of Bath.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I from near Edinboro\u2019,\u201d he murmured. \u201cIt\u2019s better to stay at home,\nand that\u2019s true; but a man must live where his money is made. It is a\ngreat pity, but it\u2019s always so! Yet I\u2019ve done very well this year. O\nyes,\u201d he went on with ingenuous enthusiasm. \u201cYou see that man with the\ndrab kerseymere coat? I bought largely of him in the autumn when wheat\nwas down, and then afterwards when it rose a little I sold off all I\nhad! It brought only a small profit to me; while the farmers kept\ntheirs, expecting higher figures\u2014yes, though the rats were gnawing the\nricks hollow. Just when I sold the markets went lower, and I bought up\nthe corn of those who had been holding back at less price than my first\npurchases. And then,\u201d cried Mirielle impetuously, his face alight, \u201cI\nsold it a few weeks after, when it happened to go up again! And so, by\ncontenting mysel\u2019 with small profits frequently repeated, I soon made\nfive hundred pounds\u2014yes!\u201d\u2014(bringing down his hand upon the table, and\nquite forgetting where he was)\u2014\u201cwhile the others by keeping theirs in\nhand made nothing at all!\u201d\n\nChris regarded him with a critical interest. He was quite a new type\nof person to her. At last his eye fell upon the lady\u2019s and their\nglances met.\n\n\u201cAy, now, I\u2019m wearying you!\u201d he exclaimed.\n\nShe said, \u201cNo, indeed,\u201d colouring a shade.\n\n\u201cWhat then?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite otherwise. You are most interesting.\u201d\n\nIt was now Mirielle who showed the modest pink.\n\n\u201cI mean all you Scotchmen,\u201d she added in hasty correction. \u201cSo free\nfrom Southern extremes. We common people are all one way or the\nother\u2014warm or cold, passionate or frigid. You have both temperatures\ngoing on in you at the same time.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut how do you mean that? Ye were best to explain clearly, ma\u2019am.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are animated\u2014then you are thinking of getting on. You are sad the\nnext moment\u2014then you are thinking of Scotland and friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. I think of home sometimes!\u201d he said simply.\n\n\u201cSo do I\u2014as far as I can. But it was an old house where I was born, and\nthey pulled it down for improvements, so I seem hardly to have any home\nto think of now.\u201d\n\nChris did not add, as she might have done, that the house was in St.\nHelier, and not in Bath.\n\n\u201cBut the mountains, and the mists and the rocks, they are there! And\ndon\u2019t they seem like home?\u201d\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\u201cThey do to me\u2014they do to me,\u201d he murmured. And his mind could be seen\nflying away northwards. Whether its origin were national or personal,\nit was quite true what Chris had said, that the curious double\nstrands in Mirielle\u2019s thread of life\u2014the commercial and the\nromantic\u2014were very distinct at times. Like the colours in a variegated\ncord those contrasts could be seen intertwisted, yet not mingling.\n\n\u201cYou are wishing you were back again,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cAh, no, ma\u2019am,\u201d said Mirielle, suddenly recalling himself.\n\nThe fair without the windows was now raging thick and loud. It was the\nchief hiring fair of the year, and differed quite from the market of a\nfew days earlier. In substance it was a whitey-brown crowd flecked with\nwhite\u2014this being the body of labourers waiting for places. The long\nbonnets of the women, like waggon-tilts, their cotton gowns and checked\nshawls, mixed with the carters\u2019 smockfrocks; for they, too, entered\ninto the hiring. Among the rest, at the corner of the pavement, stood\nan old shepherd, who attracted the eyes of Chris and Mirielle by his\nstillness. He was evidently a chastened man. The battle of life had\nbeen a sharp one with him, for, to begin with, he was a man of small\nframe. He was now so bowed by hard work and years that, approaching\nfrom behind, a person could hardly see his head. He had planted the\nstem of his crook in the gutter and was resting upon the bow, which was\npolished to silver brightness by the long friction of his hands. He had\nquite forgotten where he was, and what he had come for, his eyes being\nbent on the ground. A little way off negotiations were proceeding which\nhad reference to him; but he did not hear them, and there seemed to be\npassing through his mind pleasant visions of the hiring successes of\nhis prime, when his skill laid open to him any farm for the asking.\n\nThe negotiations were between a farmer from a distant county and the\nold man\u2019s son. In these there was a difficulty. The farmer would not\ntake the crust without the crumb of the bargain, in other words, the\nold man without the younger; and the son had a sweetheart on his\npresent farm, who stood by, waiting the issue with pale lips.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry to leave ye, Nelly,\u201d said the young man with emotion. \u201cBut,\nyou see, I can\u2019t starve father, and he\u2019s out o\u2019 work at Lady-day. \u2019Tis\nonly thirty-five mile.\u201d\n\nThe girl\u2019s lips quivered. \u201cThirty-five mile!\u201d she murmured. \u201cAh! \u2019tis\nenough! I shall never see \u2019ee again!\u201d It was, indeed, a hopeless length\nof traction for Dan Cupid\u2019s magnet; for young men were young men at\nCasterbridge as elsewhere.\n\n\u201cO! no, no\u2014I never shall,\u201d she insisted, when he pressed her hand; and\nshe turned her face to Chris\u2019s wall to hide her weeping. The farmer\nsaid he would give the young man half-an-hour for his answer, and went\naway, leaving the group sorrowing.\n\nChris\u2019s eyes, full of tears, met Mirielle\u2019s. His, too, to her\nsurprise, were moist at the scene.\n\n\u201cIt is very hard,\u201d she said with strong feelings. \u201cLovers ought not to\nbe parted like that! O, if I had my wish, I\u2019d let people live and love\nat their pleasure!\u201d\n\n\u201cMaybe I can manage that they\u2019ll not be parted,\u201d said Mirielle. \u201cI want\na young carter; and perhaps I\u2019ll take the old man too\u2014yes; he\u2019ll not be\nvery expensive, and doubtless he will answer my pairrpose somehow.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, you are so good!\u201d she cried, delighted. \u201cGo and tell them, and let\nme know if you have succeeded!\u201d\n\nMirielle went out, and she saw him speak to the group. The eyes of all\nbrightened; the bargain was soon struck. Mirielle returned to her\nimmediately it was concluded.\n\n\u201cIt is kind-hearted of you, indeed,\u201d said Chris. \u201cFor my part, I have\nresolved that all my servants shall have lovers if they want them! Do\nmake the same resolve!\u201d\n\nMirielle looked more serious, waving his head a half turn. \u201cI must be a\nlittle stricter than that,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are a\u2014a thriving woman; and I am a struggling hay-and-corn\nmerchant.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am a very ambitious woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, well, I cannet explain. I don\u2019t know how to talk to ladies,\nambitious or no; and that\u2019s true,\u201d said Rahul with grave regret. \u201cI\ntry to be civil to a\u2019 folk\u2014no more!\u201d\n\n\u201cI see you are as you say,\u201d replied she, sensibly getting the upper\nhand in these exchanges of sentiment. Under this revelation of insight\nMirielle again looked out of the window into the thick of the fair.\n\nTwo farmers met and shook hands, and being quite near the window their\nremarks could be heard as others\u2019 had been.\n\n\u201cHave you seen young Mr. Mirielle this morning?\u201d asked one. \u201cHe promised\nto meet me here at the stroke of twelve; but I\u2019ve gone athwart and\nabout the fair half-a-dozen times, and never a sign of him: though he\u2019s\nmostly a man to his word.\u201d\n\n\u201cI quite forgot the engagement,\u201d murmured Mirielle.\n\n\u201cNow you must go,\u201d said she; \u201cmust you not?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d he replied. But he still remained.\n\n\u201cYou had better go,\u201d she urged. \u201cYou will lose a customer.\n\n\u201cNow, Miss Templeman, you will make me angry,\u201d exclaimed Mirielle.\n\n\u201cThen suppose you don\u2019t go; but stay a little longer?\u201d\n\nHe looked anxiously at the farmer who was seeking him and who just then\nominously walked across to where Wilbur was standing, and he looked\ninto the room and at her. \u201cI like staying; but I fear I must go!\u201d he\nsaid. \u201cBusiness ought not to be neglected, ought it?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot for a single minute.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s true. I\u2019ll come another time\u2014if I may, ma\u2019am?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly,\u201d she said. \u201cWhat has happened to us to-day is very\ncurious.\u201d\n\n\u201cSomething to think over when we are alone, it\u2019s like to be?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know that. It is commonplace after all.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I\u2019ll not say that. O no!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, whatever it has been, it is now over; and the market calls you\nto be gone.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes. Market\u2014business! I wish there were no business in the\nwarrld.\u201d\n\nChris almost laughed\u2014she would quite have laughed\u2014but that there was\na little emotion going in her at the time. \u201cHow you change!\u201d she said.\n\u201cYou should not change like this.\n\n\u201cI have never wished such things before,\u201d said the Scotchman, with a\nsimple, shamed, apologetic look for his weakness. \u201cIt is only since\ncoming here and seeing you!\u201d\n\n\u201cIf that\u2019s the case, you had better not look at me any longer. Dear me,\nI feel I have quite demoralized you!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut look or look not, I will see you in my thoughts. Well, I\u2019ll\ngo\u2014thank you for the pleasure of this visit.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you for staying.\u201d\n\n\u201cMaybe I\u2019ll get into my market-mind when I\u2019ve been out a few minutes,\u201d\nhe murmured. \u201cBut I don\u2019t know\u2014I don\u2019t know!\u201d\n\nAs he went she said eagerly, \u201cYou may hear them speak of me in\nCasterbridge as time goes on. If they tell you I\u2019m a coquette, which\nsome may, because of the incidents of my life, don\u2019t believe it, for I\nam not.\u201d\n\n\u201cI swear I will not!\u201d he said fervidly.\n\nThus the two. She had enkindled the young man\u2019s enthusiasm till he was\nquite brimming with sentiment; while he from merely affording her a new\nform of idleness, had gone on to wake her serious solicitude. Why was\nthis? They could not have told.\n\nChris as a young girl would hardly have looked at a tradesman. But\nher ups and downs, capped by her indiscretions with Wilbur had made\nher uncritical as to station. In her poverty she had met with repulse\nfrom the society to which she had belonged, and she had no great zest\nfor renewing an attempt upon it now. Her heart longed for some ark into\nwhich it could fly and be at rest. Rough or smooth she did not care so\nlong as it was warm.\n\nMirielle was shown out, it having entirely escaped him that he had\ncalled to see Elizabeth. Chris at the window watched him threading\nthe maze of farmers and farmers\u2019 men. She could see by his gait that he\nwas conscious of her eyes, and her heart went out to him for his\nmodesty\u2014pleaded with her sense of his unfitness that he might be\nallowed to come again. He entered the market-house, and she could see\nhim no more.\n\nThree minutes later, when she had left the window, knocks, not of\nmultitude but of strength, sounded through the house, and the\nwaiting-maid tripped up.\n\n\u201cThe Mayor,\u201d she said.\n\nChris had reclined herself, and she was looking dreamily through her\nfingers. She did not answer at once, and the maid repeated the\ninformation with the addition, \u201cAnd he\u2019s afraid he hasn\u2019t much time to\nspare, he says.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Then tell him that as I have a headache I won\u2019t detain him\nto-day.\u201d\n\nThe message was taken down, and she heard the door close.\n\nChris had come to Casterbridge to quicken Wilbur\u2019s feelings with\nregard to her. She had quickened them, and now she was indifferent to\nthe achievement.\n\nHer morning view of Elizabeth-Kaya as a disturbing element changed, and\nshe no longer felt strongly the necessity of getting rid of the girl\nfor her stepfather\u2019s sake. When the young woman came in, sweetly\nunconscious of the turn in the tide, Chris went up to her, and said\nquite sincerely\u2014\n\n\u201cI\u2019m so glad you\u2019ve come. You\u2019ll live with me a long time, won\u2019t you?\u201d\n\nElizabeth as a watch-dog to keep her father off\u2014what a new idea. Yet it\nwas not unpleasing. Wilbur had neglected her all these days, after\ncompromising her indescribably in the past. The least he could have\ndone when he found himself free, and herself affluent, would have been\nto respond heartily and promptly to her invitation.\n\nHer emotions rose, fell, undulated, filled her with wild surmise at\ntheir suddenness; and so passed Chris\u2019s experiences of that day.\n\n\n\nXXIV.\n\nPoor Elizabeth-Kaya, little thinking what her malignant star had done\nto blast the budding attentions she had won from Rahul Mirielle, was\nglad to hear Chris\u2019s words about remaining.\n\nFor in addition to Chris\u2019s house being a home, that raking view of\nthe market-place which it afforded had as much attraction for her as\nfor Chris. The _carrefour_ was like the regulation Open Place in\nspectacular dramas, where the incidents that occur always happen to\nbear on the lives of the adjoining residents. Farmers, merchants,\ndairymen, quacks, hawkers, appeared there from week to week, and\ndisappeared as the afternoon wasted away. It was the node of all\norbits.\n\nFrom Saturday to Saturday was as from day to day with the two young\nwomen now. In an emotional sense they did not live at all during the\nintervals. Wherever they might go wandering on other days, on\nmarket-day they were sure to be at home. Both stole sly glances out of\nthe window at Mirielle\u2019s shoulders and poll. His face they seldom saw,\nfor, either through shyness, or not to disturb his mercantile mood, he\navoided looking towards their quarters.\n\nThus things went on, till a certain market-morning brought a new\nsensation. Elizabeth and Chris were sitting at breakfast when a\nparcel containing two dresses arrived for the latter from London. She\ncalled Elizabeth from her breakfast, and entering her friend\u2019s bedroom\nElizabeth saw the gowns spread out on the bed, one of a deep cherry\ncolour, the other lighter\u2014a glove lying at the end of each sleeve, a\nbonnet at the top of each neck, and parasols across the gloves, Chris\nstanding beside the suggested human figure in an attitude of\ncontemplation.\n\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t think so hard about it,\u201d said Elizabeth, marking the\nintensity with which Chris was alternating the question whether this\nor that would suit best.\n\n\u201cBut settling upon new clothes is so trying,\u201d said Chris. \u201cYou are\nthat person\u201d (pointing to one of the arrangements), \u201cor you are _that_\ntotally different person\u201d (pointing to the other), \u201cfor the whole of\nthe coming spring and one of the two, you don\u2019t know which, may turn\nout to be very objectionable.\u201d\n\nIt was finally decided by Miss Templeman that she would be the\ncherry-coloured person at all hazards. The dress was pronounced to be a\nfit, and Chris walked with it into the front room, Elizabeth\nfollowing her.\n\nThe morning was exceptionally bright for the time of year. The sun fell\nso flat on the houses and pavement opposite Chris\u2019s residence that\nthey poured their brightness into her rooms. Suddenly, after a rumbling\nof wheels, there were added to this steady light a fantastic series of\ncircling irradiations upon the ceiling, and the companions turned to\nthe window. Immediately opposite a vehicle of strange description had\ncome to a standstill, as if it had been placed there for exhibition.\n\nIt was the new-fashioned agricultural implement called a horse-drill,\ntill then unknown, in its modern shape, in this part of the country,\nwhere the venerable seed-lip was still used for sowing as in the days\nof the Heptarchy. Its arrival created about as much sensation in the\ncorn-market as a flying machine would create at Charing Cross. The\nfarmers crowded round it, women drew near it, children crept under and\ninto it. The machine was painted in bright hues of green, yellow, and\nred, and it resembled as a whole a compound of hornet, grasshopper, and\nshrimp, magnified enormously. Or it might have been likened to an\nupright musical instrument with the front gone. That was how it struck\nChris. \u201cWhy, it is a sort of agricultural piano,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cIt has something to do with corn,\u201d said Elizabeth.\n\n\u201cI wonder who thought of introducing it here?\u201d\n\nRahul Mirielle was in the minds of both as the innovator, for though\nnot a farmer he was closely leagued with farming operations. And as if\nin response to their thought he came up at that moment, looked at the\nmachine, walked round it, and handled it as if he knew something about\nits make. The two watchers had inwardly started at his coming, and\nElizabeth left the window, went to the back of the room, and stood as\nif absorbed in the panelling of the wall. She hardly knew that she had\ndone this till Chris, animated by the conjunction of her new attire\nwith the sight of Mirielle, spoke out: \u201cLet us go and look at the\ninstrument, whatever it is.\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya\u2019s bonnet and shawl were pitchforked on in a moment, and\nthey went out. Among all the agriculturists gathered round the only\nappropriate possessor of the new machine seemed to be Chris, because\nshe alone rivalled it in colour.\n\nThey examined it curiously; observing the rows of trumpet-shaped tubes\none within the other, the little scoops, like revolving salt-spoons,\nwhich tossed the seed into the upper ends of the tubes that conducted\nit to the ground; till somebody said, \u201cGood morning, Elizabeth-Kaya.\u201d\nShe looked up, and there was her stepfather.\n\nHis greeting had been somewhat dry and thunderous, and Elizabeth-Kaya,\nembarrassed out of her equanimity, stammered at random, \u201cThis is the\nlady I live with, father\u2014Miss Templeman.\u201d\n\nWilbur put his hand to his hat, which he brought down with a great\nwave till it met his body at the knee. Miss Templeman bowed. \u201cI am\nhappy to become acquainted with you, Mr. Wilbur,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is\na curious machine.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d Wilbur replied; and he proceeded to explain it, and still more\nforcibly to ridicule it.\n\n\u201cWho brought it here?\u201d said Chris.\n\n\u201cOh, don\u2019t ask me, ma\u2019am!\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cThe thing\u2014why \u2019tis\nimpossible it should act. \u2019Twas brought here by one of our machinists\non the recommendation of a jumped-up jackanapes of a fellow who\nthinks\u2014\u2014\u201d His eye caught Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s imploring face, and he\nstopped, probably thinking that the suit might be progressing.\n\nHe turned to go away. Then something seemed to occur which his\nstepdaughter fancied must really be a hallucination of hers. A murmur\napparently came from Wilbur\u2019s lips in which she detected the words,\n\u201cYou refused to see me!\u201d reproachfully addressed to Chris. She could\nnot believe that they had been uttered by her stepfather; unless,\nindeed, they might have been spoken to one of the yellow-gaitered\nfarmers near them. Yet Chris seemed silent, and then all thought of\nthe incident was dissipated by the humming of a song, which sounded as\nthough from the interior of the machine. Wilbur had by this time\nvanished into the market-house, and both the women glanced towards the\ncorn-drill. They could see behind it the bent back of a man who was\npushing his head into the internal works to master their simple\nsecrets. The hummed song went on\u2014\n\n\u201c\u2019Tw\u2014s on a s\u2014m\u2014r aftern\u2014n,\nA wee be\u2014re the s\u2014n w\u2014nt d\u2014n,\nWhen Kitty wi\u2019 a braw n\u2014w g\u2014wn\nC\u2014me ow\u2019re the h\u2014lls to Gowrie.\u201d\n\n\nElizabeth-Kaya had apprehended the singer in a moment, and looked\nguilty of she did not know what. Chris next recognized him, and more\nmistress of herself said archly, \u201cThe \u2018Lass of Gowrie\u2019 from inside of a\nseed-drill\u2014what a phenomenon!\u201d\n\nSatisfied at last with his investigation the young man stood upright,\nand met their eyes across the summit.\n\n\u201cWe are looking at the wonderful new drill,\u201d Miss Templeman said. \u201cBut\npractically it is a stupid thing\u2014is it not?\u201d she added, on the strength\nof Wilbur\u2019s information.\n\n\u201cStupid? O no!\u201d said Mirielle gravely. \u201cIt will revolutionize sowing\nheerabout! No more sowers flinging their seed about broadcast, so that\nsome falls by the wayside and some among thorns, and all that. Each\ngrain will go straight to its intended place, and nowhere else\nwhatever!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen the romance of the sower is gone for good,\u201d observed\nElizabeth-Kaya, who felt herself at one with Mirielle in Bible-reading\nat least. \u201c\u2018He that observeth the wind shall not sow,\u2019 so the Preacher\nsaid; but his words will not be to the point any more. How things\nchange!\u201d\n\n\u201cAy; ay.... It must be so!\u201d Rahul admitted, his gaze fixing itself on\na blank point far away. \u201cBut the machines are already very common in\nthe East and North of England,\u201d he added apologetically.\n\nChris seemed to be outside this train of sentiment, her acquaintance\nwith the Scriptures being somewhat limited. \u201cIs the machine yours?\u201d she\nasked of Mirielle.\n\n\u201cO no, madam,\u201d said he, becoming embarrassed and deferential at the\nsound of her voice, though with Elizabeth-Kaya he was quite at his\nease. \u201cNo, no\u2014I merely recommended that it should be got.\u201d\n\nIn the silence which followed Mirielle appeared only conscious of her;\nto have passed from perception of Elizabeth into a brighter sphere of\nexistence than she appertained to. Chris, discerning that he was much\nmixed that day, partly in his mercantile mood and partly in his\nromantic one, said gaily to him\u2014\n\n\u201cWell, don\u2019t forsake the machine for us,\u201d and went indoors with her\ncompanion.\n\nThe latter felt that she had been in the way, though why was\nunaccountable to her. Chris explained the matter somewhat by saying\nwhen they were again in the sitting-room\u2014\n\n\u201cI had occasion to speak to Mr. Mirielle the other day, and so I knew\nhim this morning.\u201d\n\nChris was very kind towards Elizabeth that day. Together they saw the\nmarket thicken, and in course of time thin away with the slow decline\nof the sun towards the upper end of town, its rays taking the street\nendways and enfilading the long thoroughfare from top to bottom. The\ngigs and vans disappeared one by one till there was not a vehicle in\nthe street. The time of the riding world was over; the pedestrian world\nheld sway. Field labourers and their wives and children trooped in from\nthe villages for their weekly shopping, and instead of a rattle of\nwheels and a tramp of horses ruling the sound as earlier, there was\nnothing but the shuffle of many feet. All the implements were gone; all\nthe farmers; all the moneyed class. The character of the town\u2019s trading\nhad changed from bulk to multiplicity and pence were handled now as\npounds had been handled earlier in the day.\n\nChris and Elizabeth looked out upon this, for though it was night and\nthe street lamps were lighted, they had kept their shutters unclosed.\nIn the faint blink of the fire they spoke more freely.\n\n\u201cYour father was distant with you,\u201d said Chris.\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d And having forgotten the momentary mystery of Wilbur\u2019s seeming\nspeech to Chris she continued, \u201cIt is because he does not think I am\nrespectable. I have tried to be so more than you can imagine, but in\nvain! My mother\u2019s separation from my father was unfortunate for me. You\ndon\u2019t know what it is to have shadows like that upon your life.\u201d\n\nChris seemed to wince. \u201cI do not\u2014of that kind precisely,\u201d she said,\n\u201cbut you may feel a\u2014sense of disgrace\u2014shame\u2014in other ways.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you ever had any such feeling?\u201d said the younger innocently.\n\n\u201cO no,\u201d said Chris quickly. \u201cI was thinking of\u2014what happens sometimes\nwhen women get themselves in strange positions in the eyes of the world\nfrom no fault of their own.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt must make them very unhappy afterwards.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt makes them anxious; for might not other women despise them?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot altogether despise them. Yet not quite like or respect them.\u201d\n\nChris winced again. Her past was by no means secure from\ninvestigation, even in Casterbridge. For one thing Wilbur had never\nreturned to her the cloud of letters she had written and sent him in\nher first excitement. Possibly they were destroyed; but she could have\nwished that they had never been written.\n\nThe rencounter with Mirielle and his bearings towards Chris had made\nthe reflective Elizabeth more observant of her brilliant and amiable\ncompanion. A few days afterwards, when her eyes met Chris\u2019s as the\nlatter was going out, she somehow knew that Miss Templeman was\nnourishing a hope of seeing the attractive Scotchman. The fact was\nprinted large all over Chris\u2019s cheeks and eyes to any one who could\nread her as Elizabeth-Kaya was beginning to do. Chris passed on and\nclosed the street door.\n\nA seer\u2019s spirit took possession of Elizabeth, impelling her to sit down\nby the fire and divine events so surely from data already her own that\nthey could be held as witnessed. She followed Chris thus mentally\u2014saw\nher encounter Rahul somewhere as if by chance\u2014saw him wear his special\nlook when meeting women, with an added intensity because this one was\nChris. She depicted his impassioned manner; beheld the indecision of\nboth between their lothness to separate and their desire not to be\nobserved; depicted their shaking of hands; how they probably parted\nwith frigidity in their general contour and movements, only in the\nsmaller features showing the spark of passion, thus invisible to all\nbut themselves. This discerning silent witch had not done thinking of\nthese things when Chris came noiselessly behind her and made her\nstart.\n\nIt was all true as she had pictured\u2014she could have sworn it. Chris\nhad a heightened luminousness in her eye over and above the advanced\ncolour of her cheeks.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ve seen Mr. Mirielle,\u201d said Elizabeth demurely.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Chris. \u201cHow did you know?\u201d\n\nShe knelt down on the hearth and took her friend\u2019s hands excitedly in\nher own. But after all she did not say when or how she had seen him or\nwhat he had said.\n\nThat night she became restless; in the morning she was feverish; and at\nbreakfast-time she told her companion that she had something on her\nmind\u2014something which concerned a person in whom she was interested\nmuch. Elizabeth was earnest to listen and sympathize.\n\n\u201cThis person\u2014a lady\u2014once admired a man much\u2014very much,\u201d she said\ntentatively.\n\n\u201cAh,\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya.\n\n\u201cThey were intimate\u2014rather. He did not think so deeply of her as she\ndid of him. But in an impulsive moment, purely out of reparation, he\nproposed to make her his wife. She agreed. But there was an unsuspected\nhitch in the proceedings; though she had been so far compromised with\nhim that she felt she could never belong to another man, as a pure\nmatter of conscience, even if she should wish to. After that they were\nmuch apart, heard nothing of each other for a long time, and she felt\nher life quite closed up for her.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh\u2014poor girl!\u201d\n\n\u201cShe suffered much on account of him; though I should add that he could\nnot altogether be blamed for what had happened. At last the obstacle\nwhich separated them was providentially removed; and he came to marry\nher.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow delightful!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut in the interval she\u2014my poor friend\u2014had seen a man, she liked\nbetter than him. Now comes the point: Could she in honour dismiss the\nfirst?\u201d\n\n\u201cA new man she liked better\u2014that\u2019s bad!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Chris, looking pained at a boy who was swinging the town\npump-handle. \u201cIt is bad! Though you must remember that she was forced\ninto an equivocal position with the first man by an accident\u2014that he\nwas not so well educated or refined as the second, and that she had\ndiscovered some qualities in the first that rendered him less desirable\nas a husband than she had at first thought him to be.\u201d\n\n\u201cI cannot answer,\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya thoughtfully. \u201cIt is so\ndifficult. It wants a Pope to settle that!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou prefer not to perhaps?\u201d Chris showed in her appealing tone how\nmuch she leant on Elizabeth\u2019s judgment.\n\n\u201cYes, Miss Templeman,\u201d admitted Elizabeth. \u201cI would rather not say.\u201d\n\nNevertheless, Chris seemed relieved by the simple fact of having\nopened out the situation a little, and was slowly convalescent of her\nheadache. \u201cBring me a looking-glass. How do I appear to people?\u201d she\nsaid languidly.\n\n\u201cWell\u2014a little worn,\u201d answered Elizabeth, eyeing her as a critic eyes a\ndoubtful painting; fetching the glass she enabled Chris to survey\nherself in it, which Chris anxiously did.\n\n\u201cI wonder if I wear well, as times go!\u201d she observed after a while.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014fairly.\n\n\u201cWhere am I worst?\u201d\n\n\u201cUnder your eyes\u2014I notice a little brownness there.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. That is my worst place, I know. How many years more do you think\nI shall last before I get hopelessly plain?\u201d\n\nThere was something curious in the way in which Elizabeth, though the\nyounger, had come to play the part of experienced sage in these\ndiscussions. \u201cIt may be five years,\u201d she said judicially. \u201cOr, with a\nquiet life, as many as ten. With no love you might calculate on ten.\u201d\n\nChris seemed to reflect on this as on an unalterable, impartial\nverdict. She told Elizabeth-Kaya no more of the past attachment she had\nroughly adumbrated as the experiences of a third person; and Elizabeth,\nwho in spite of her philosophy was very tender-hearted, sighed that\nnight in bed at the thought that her pretty, rich Chris did not treat\nher to the full confidence of names and dates in her confessions. For\nby the \u201cshe\u201d of Chris\u2019s story Elizabeth had not been beguiled.\n\n\n\nXXV.\n\nThe next phase of the supersession of Wilbur in Chris\u2019s heart was\nan experiment in calling on her performed by Mirielle with some apparent\ntrepidation. Conventionally speaking he conversed with both Miss\nTempleman and her companion; but in fact it was rather that Elizabeth\nsat invisible in the room. Rahul appeared not to see her at all, and\nanswered her wise little remarks with curtly indifferent monosyllables,\nhis looks and faculties hanging on the woman who could boast of a more\nProtean variety in her phases, moods, opinions, and also principles,\nthan could Elizabeth. Chris had persisted in dragging her into the\ncircle; but she had remained like an awkward third point which that\ncircle would not touch.\n\nPhyllis Wilbur\u2019s daughter bore up against the frosty ache of the\ntreatment, as she had borne up under worse things, and contrived as\nsoon as possible to get out of the inharmonious room without being\nmissed. The Scotchman seemed hardly the same Mirielle who had danced\nwith her and walked with her in a delicate poise between love and\nfriendship\u2014that period in the history of a love when alone it can be\nsaid to be unalloyed with pain.\n\nShe stoically looked from her bedroom window, and contemplated her fate\nas if it were written on the top of the church-tower hard by. \u201cYes,\u201d\nshe said at last, bringing down her palm upon the sill with a pat:\n\u201c_He_ is the second man of that story she told me!\u201d\n\nAll this time Wilbur\u2019s smouldering sentiments towards Chris had\nbeen fanned into higher and higher inflammation by the circumstances of\nthe case. He was discovering that the young woman for whom he once felt\na pitying warmth which had been almost chilled out of him by\nreflection, was, when now qualified with a slight inaccessibility and a\nmore matured beauty, the very being to make him satisfied with life.\nDay after day proved to him, by her silence, that it was no use to\nthink of bringing her round by holding aloof; so he gave in, and called\nupon her again, Elizabeth-Kaya being absent.\n\nHe crossed the room to her with a heavy tread of some awkwardness, his\nstrong, warm gaze upon her\u2014like the sun beside the moon in comparison\nwith Mirielle\u2019s modest look\u2014and with something of a hail-fellow bearing,\nas, indeed, was not unnatural. But she seemed so transubstantiated by\nher change of position, and held out her hand to him in such cool\nfriendship, that he became deferential, and sat down with a perceptible\nloss of power. He understood but little of fashion in dress, yet enough\nto feel himself inadequate in appearance beside her whom he had\nhitherto been dreaming of as almost his property. She said something\nvery polite about his being good enough to call. This caused him to\nrecover balance. He looked her oddly in the face, losing his awe.\n\n\u201cWhy, of course I have called, Chris,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat does that\nnonsense mean? You know I couldn\u2019t have helped myself if I had\nwished\u2014that is, if I had any kindness at all. I\u2019ve called to say that I\nam ready, as soon as custom will permit, to give you my name in return\nfor your devotion and what you lost by it in thinking too little of\nyourself and too much of me; to say that you can fix the day or month,\nwith my full consent, whenever in your opinion it would be seemly: you\nknow more of these things than I.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is full early yet,\u201d she said evasively.\n\n\u201cYes, yes; I suppose it is. But you know, Chris, I felt directly my\npoor ill-used Phyllis died, and when I could not bear the idea of\nmarrying again, that after what had happened between us it was my duty\nnot to let any unnecessary delay occur before putting things to rights.\nStill, I wouldn\u2019t call in a hurry, because\u2014well, you can guess how this\nmoney you\u2019ve come into made me feel.\u201d His voice slowly fell; he was\nconscious that in this room his accents and manner wore a roughness not\nobservable in the street. He looked about the room at the novel\nhangings and ingenious furniture with which she had surrounded herself.\n\n\u201cUpon my life I didn\u2019t know such furniture as this could be bought in\nCasterbridge,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cNor can it be,\u201d said she. \u201cNor will it till fifty years more of\ncivilization have passed over the town. It took a waggon and four\nhorses to get it here.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m. It looks as if you were living on capital.\u201d\n\n\u201cO no, I am not.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo much the better. But the fact is, your setting up like this makes\nmy beaming towards you rather awkward.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d\n\nAn answer was not really needed, and he did not furnish one. \u201cWell,\u201d he\nwent on, \u201cthere\u2019s nobody in the world I would have wished to see enter\ninto this wealth before you, Chris, and nobody, I am sure, who will\nbecome it more.\u201d He turned to her with congratulatory admiration so\nfervid that she shrank somewhat, notwithstanding that she knew him so\nwell.\n\n\u201cI am greatly obliged to you for all that,\u201d said she, rather with an\nair of speaking ritual. The stint of reciprocal feeling was perceived,\nand Wilbur showed chagrin at once\u2014nobody was more quick to show that\nthan he.\n\n\u201cYou may be obliged or not for\u2019t. Though the things I say may not have\nthe polish of what you\u2019ve lately learnt to expect for the first time in\nyour life, they are real, my lady Chris.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s rather a rude way of speaking to me,\u201d pouted Chris, with\nstormy eyes.\n\n\u201cNot at all!\u201d replied Wilbur hotly. \u201cBut there, there, I don\u2019t wish\nto quarrel with \u2019ee. I come with an honest proposal for silencing your\nJersey enemies, and you ought to be thankful.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow can you speak so!\u201d she answered, firing quickly. \u201cKnowing that my\nonly crime was the indulging in a foolish girl\u2019s passion for you with\ntoo little regard for correctness, and that I was what I call innocent\nall the time they called me guilty, you ought not to be so cutting! I\nsuffered enough at that worrying time, when you wrote to tell me of\nyour wife\u2019s return and my consequent dismissal, and if I am a little\nindependent now, surely the privilege is due to me!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, it is,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it is not by what is, in this life, but by\nwhat appears, that you are judged; and I therefore think you ought to\naccept me\u2014for your own good name\u2019s sake. What is known in your native\nJersey may get known here.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow you keep on about Jersey! I am English!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes. Well, what do you say to my proposal?\u201d\n\nFor the first time in their acquaintance Chris had the move; and yet\nshe was backward. \u201cFor the present let things be,\u201d she said with some\nembarrassment. \u201cTreat me as an acquaintance, and I\u2019ll treat you as one.\nTime will\u2014\u201d She stopped; and he said nothing to fill the gap for\nawhile, there being no pressure of half acquaintance to drive them into\nspeech if they were not minded for it.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s the way the wind blows, is it?\u201d he said at last grimly, nodding\nan affirmative to his own thoughts.\n\nA yellow flood of reflected sunlight filled the room for a few\ninstants. It was produced by the passing of a load of newly trussed hay\nfrom the country, in a waggon marked with Mirielle\u2019s name. Beside it\nrode Mirielle himself on horseback. Chris\u2019s face became\u2014as a woman\u2019s\nface becomes when the man she loves rises upon her gaze like an\napparition.\n\nA turn of the eye by Wilbur, a glance from the window, and the secret\nof her inaccessibility would have been revealed. But Wilbur in\nestimating her tone was looking down so plumb-straight that he did not\nnote the warm consciousness upon Chris\u2019s face.\n\n\u201cI shouldn\u2019t have thought it\u2014I shouldn\u2019t have thought it of women!\u201d he\nsaid emphatically by-and-by, rising and shaking himself into activity;\nwhile Chris was so anxious to divert him from any suspicion of the\ntruth that she asked him to be in no hurry. Bringing him some apples\nshe insisted upon paring one for him.\n\nHe would not take it. \u201cNo, no; such is not for me,\u201d he said drily, and\nmoved to the door. At going out he turned his eye upon her.\n\n\u201cYou came to live in Casterbridge entirely on my account,\u201d he said.\n\u201cYet now you are here you won\u2019t have anything to say to my offer!\u201d\n\nHe had hardly gone down the staircase when she dropped upon the sofa\nand jumped up again in a fit of desperation. \u201cI will love him!\u201d she\ncried passionately; \u201cas for _him_\u2014he\u2019s hot-tempered and stern, and it\nwould be madness to bind myself to him knowing that. I won\u2019t be a slave\nto the past\u2014I\u2019ll love where I choose!\u201d\n\nYet having decided to break away from Wilbur one might have supposed\nher capable of aiming higher than Mirielle. But Chris reasoned\nnothing: she feared hard words from the people with whom she had been\nearlier associated; she had no relatives left; and with native\nlightness of heart took kindly to what fate offered.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya, surveying the position of Chris between her two\nlovers from the crystalline sphere of a straightforward mind, did not\nfail to perceive that her father, as she called him, and Rahul Mirielle\nbecame more desperately enamoured of her friend every day. On Mirielle\u2019s\nside it was the unforced passion of youth. On Wilbur\u2019s the\nartificially stimulated coveting of maturer age.\n\nThe pain she experienced from the almost absolute obliviousness to her\nexistence that was shown by the pair of them became at times half\ndissipated by her sense of its humourousness. When Chris had pricked\nher finger they were as deeply concerned as if she were dying; when she\nherself had been seriously sick or in danger they uttered a\nconventional word of sympathy at the news, and forgot all about it\nimmediately. But, as regarded Wilbur, this perception of hers also\ncaused her some filial grief; she could not help asking what she had\ndone to be neglected so, after the professions of solicitude he had\nmade. As regarded Mirielle, she thought, after honest reflection, that\nit was quite natural. What was she beside Chris?\u2014as one of the\n\u201cmeaner beauties of the night,\u201d when the moon had risen in the skies.\n\nShe had learnt the lesson of renunciation, and was as familiar with the\nwreck of each day\u2019s wishes as with the diurnal setting of the sun. If\nher earthly career had taught her few book philosophies it had at least\nwell practised her in this. Yet her experience had consisted less in a\nseries of pure disappointments than in a series of substitutions.\nContinually it had happened that what she had desired had not been\ngranted her, and that what had been granted her she had not desired. So\nshe viewed with an approach to equanimity the now cancelled days when\nRahul had been her undeclared lover, and wondered what unwished-for\nthing Heaven might send her in place of him.\n\n\n\nXXVI.\n\nIt chanced that on a fine spring morning Wilbur and Mirielle met in\nthe chestnut-walk which ran along the south wall of the town. Each had\njust come out from his early breakfast, and there was not another soul\nnear. Wilbur was reading a letter from Chris, sent in answer to a\nnote from him, in which she made some excuse for not immediately\ngranting him a second interview that he had desired.\n\nRahul had no wish to enter into conversation with his former friend on\ntheir present constrained terms; neither would he pass him in scowling\nsilence. He nodded, and Wilbur did the same. They receded from each\nother several paces when a voice cried \u201cMirielle!\u201d It was Wilbur\u2019s,\nwho stood regarding him.\n\n\u201cDo you remember,\u201d said Wilbur, as if it were the presence of the\nthought and not of the man which made him speak, \u201cdo you remember my\nstory of that second woman\u2014who suffered for her thoughtless intimacy\nwith me?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do,\u201d said Mirielle.\n\n\u201cDo you remember my telling \u2019ee how it all began and how it ended?\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I have offered to marry her now that I can; but she won\u2019t marry\nme. Now what would you think of her\u2014I put it to you?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, ye owe her nothing more now,\u201d said Mirielle heartily.\n\n\u201cIt is true,\u201d said Wilbur, and went on.\n\nThat he had looked up from a letter to ask his questions completely\nshut out from Mirielle\u2019s mind all vision of Chris as the culprit.\nIndeed, her present position was so different from that of the young\nwoman of Wilbur\u2019s story as of itself to be sufficient to blind him\nabsolutely to her identity. As for Wilbur, he was reassured by\nMirielle\u2019s words and manner against a suspicion which had crossed his\nmind. They were not those of a conscious rival.\n\nYet that there was rivalry by some one he was firmly persuaded. He\ncould feel it in the air around Chris, see it in the turn of her pen.\nThere was an antagonistic force in exercise, so that when he had tried\nto hang near her he seemed standing in a refluent current. That it was\nnot innate caprice he was more and more certain. Her windows gleamed as\nif they did not want him; her curtains seem to hang slily, as if they\nscreened an ousting presence. To discover whose presence that\nwas\u2014whether really Mirielle\u2019s after all, or another\u2019s\u2014he exerted himself\nto the utmost to see her again; and at length succeeded.\n\nAt the interview, when she offered him tea, he made it a point to\nlaunch a cautious inquiry if she knew Mr. Mirielle.\n\nO yes, she knew him, she declared; she could not help knowing almost\neverybody in Casterbridge, living in such a gazebo over the centre and\narena of the town.\n\n\u201cPleasant young fellow,\u201d said Wilbur.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Chris.\n\n\u201cWe both know him,\u201d said kind Elizabeth-Kaya, to relieve her\ncompanion\u2019s divined embarrassment.\n\nThere was a knock at the door; literally, three full knocks and a\nlittle one at the end.\n\n\u201cThat kind of knock means half-and-half\u2014somebody between gentle and\nsimple,\u201d said the corn-merchant to himself. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t wonder\ntherefore if it is he.\u201d In a few seconds surely enough Rahul walked\nin.\n\nChris was full of little fidgets and flutters, which increased\nWilbur\u2019s suspicions without affording any special proof of their\ncorrectness. He was well-nigh ferocious at the sense of the queer\nsituation in which he stood towards this woman. One who had reproached\nhim for deserting her when calumniated, who had urged claims upon his\nconsideration on that account, who had lived waiting for him, who at\nthe first decent opportunity had come to ask him to rectify, by making\nher his, the false position into which she had placed herself for his\nsake; such she had been. And now he sat at her tea-table eager to gain\nher attention, and in his amatory rage feeling the other man present to\nbe a villain, just as any young fool of a lover might feel.\n\nThey sat stiffly side by side at the darkening table, like some Tuscan\npainting of the two disciples supping at Emmaus. Chris, forming the\nthird and haloed figure, was opposite them; Elizabeth-Kaya, being out\nof the game, and out of the group, could observe all from afar, like\nthe evangelist who had to write it down: that there were long spaces of\ntaciturnity, when all exterior circumstances were subdued to the touch\nof spoons and china, the click of a heel on the pavement under the\nwindow, the passing of a wheelbarrow or cart, the whistling of the\ncarter, the gush of water into householders\u2019 buckets at the town-pump\nopposite, the exchange of greetings among their neighbours, and the\nrattle of the yokes by which they carried off their evening supply.\n\n\u201cMore bread-and-butter?\u201d said Chris to Wilbur and Mirielle equally,\nholding out between them a plateful of long slices. Wilbur took a\nslice by one end and Rahul by the other; each feeling certain he was\nthe man meant; neither let go, and the slice came in two.\n\n\u201cOh\u2014I am so sorry!\u201d cried Chris, with a nervous titter. Mirielle tried\nto laugh; but he was too much in love to see the incident in any but a\ntragic light.\n\n\u201cHow ridiculous of all three of them!\u201d said Elizabeth to herself.\n\nWilbur left the house with a ton of conjecture, though without a\ngrain of proof, that the counterattraction was Mirielle; and therefore\nhe would not make up his mind. Yet to Elizabeth-Kaya it was plain as\nthe town-pump that Rahul and Chris were incipient lovers. More than\nonce, in spite of her care, Chris had been unable to restrain her\nglance from flitting across into Mirielle\u2019s eyes like a bird to its\nnest. But Wilbur was constructed upon too large a scale to discern\nsuch minuti\u00e6 as these by an evening light, which to him were as the\nnotes of an insect that lie above the compass of the human ear.\n\nBut he was disturbed. And the sense of occult rivalry in suitorship was\nso much superadded to the palpable rivalry of their business lives. To\nthe coarse materiality of that rivalry it added an inflaming soul.\n\nThe thus vitalized antagonism took the form of action by Wilbur\nsending for Cormac, the manager originally displaced by Mirielle\u2019s\narrival. Wilbur had frequently met this man about the streets,\nobserved that his clothing spoke of neediness, heard that he lived in\nMixen Lane\u2014a back slum of the town, the _pis aller_ of Casterbridge\ndomiciliation\u2014itself almost a proof that a man had reached a stage when\nhe would not stick at trifles.\n\nCormac came after dark, by the gates of the storeyard, and felt his way\nthrough the hay and straw to the office where Wilbur sat in solitude\nawaiting him.\n\n\u201cI am again out of a foreman,\u201d said the corn-factor. \u201cAre you in a\nplace?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot so much as a beggar\u2019s, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow much do you ask?\u201d\n\nCormac named his price, which was very moderate.\n\n\u201cWhen can you come?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt this hour and moment, sir,\u201d said Cormac, who, standing hands-pocketed\nat the street corner till the sun had faded the shoulders of his coat\nto scarecrow green, had regularly watched Wilbur in the market-place,\nmeasured him, and learnt him, by virtue of the power which the still\nman has in his stillness of knowing the busy one better than he knows\nhimself. Cormac too, had had a convenient experience; he was the only one\nin Casterbridge besides Wilbur and the close-lipped Elizabeth who\nknew that Chris came truly from Jersey, and but proximately from\nBath. \u201cI know Jersey too, sir,\u201d he said. \u201cWas living there when you\nused to do business that way. O yes\u2014have often seen ye there.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed! Very good. Then the thing is settled. The testimonials you\nshowed me when you first tried for\u2019t are sufficient.\u201d\n\nThat characters deteriorated in time of need possibly did not occur to\nWilbur. Cormac said, \u201cThank you,\u201d and stood more firmly, in the\nconsciousness that at last he officially belonged to that spot.\n\n\u201cNow,\u201d said Wilbur, digging his strong eyes into Cormac\u2019s face, \u201cone\nthing is necessary to me, as the biggest corn-and-hay dealer in these\nparts. The Scotchman, who\u2019s taking the town trade so bold into his\nhands, must be cut out. D\u2019ye hear? We two can\u2019t live side by\nside\u2014that\u2019s clear and certain.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve seen it all,\u201d said Cormac.\n\n\u201cBy fair competition I mean, of course,\u201d Wilbur continued. \u201cBut as\nhard, keen, and unflinching as fair\u2014rather more so. By such a desperate\nbid against him for the farmers\u2019 custom as will grind him into the\nground\u2014starve him out. I\u2019ve capital, mind ye, and I can do it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m all that way of thinking,\u201d said the new foreman. Cormac\u2019s dislike of\nMirielle as the man who had once ursurped his place, while it made him a\nwilling tool, made him, at the same time, commercially as unsafe a\ncolleague as Wilbur could have chosen.\n\n\u201cI sometimes think,\u201d he added, \u201cthat he must have some glass that he\nsees next year in. He has such a knack of making everything bring him\nfortune.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s deep beyond all honest men\u2019s discerning, but we must make him\nshallower. We\u2019ll undersell him, and over-buy him, and so snuff him\nout.\u201d\n\nThey then entered into specific details of the process by which this\nwould be accomplished, and parted at a late hour.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya heard by accident that Cormac had been engaged by her\nstepfather. She was so fully convinced that he was not the right man\nfor the place that, at the risk of making Wilbur angry, she expressed\nher apprehension to him when they met. But it was done to no purpose.\nWilbur shut up her argument with a sharp rebuff.\n\nThe season\u2019s weather seemed to favour their scheme. The time was in the\nyears immediately before foreign competition had revolutionized the\ntrade in grain; when still, as from the earliest ages, the wheat\nquotations from month to month depended entirely upon the home harvest.\nA bad harvest, or the prospect of one, would double the price of corn\nin a few weeks; and the promise of a good yield would lower it as\nrapidly. Prices were like the roads of the period, steep in gradient,\nreflecting in their phases the local conditions, without engineering,\nlevellings, or averages.\n\nThe farmer\u2019s income was ruled by the wheat-crop within his own horizon,\nand the wheat-crop by the weather. Thus in person, he became a sort of\nflesh-barometer, with feelers always directed to the sky and wind\naround him. The local atmosphere was everything to him; the atmospheres\nof other countries a matter of indifference. The people, too, who were\nnot farmers, the rural multitude, saw in the god of the weather a more\nimportant personage than they do now. Indeed, the feeling of the\npeasantry in this matter was so intense as to be almost unrealizable in\nthese equable days. Their impulse was well-nigh to prostrate themselves\nin lamentation before untimely rains and tempests, which came as the\nAlastor of those households whose crime it was to be poor.\n\nAfter midsummer they watched the weather-cocks as men waiting in\nantechambers watch the lackey. Sun elated them; quiet rain sobered\nthem; weeks of watery tempest stupefied them. That aspect of the sky\nwhich they now regard as disagreeable they then beheld as maleficent.\n\nIt was June, and the weather was very unfavourable. Casterbridge, being\nas it were the bell-board on which all the adjacent hamlets and\nvillages sounded their notes, was decidedly dull. Instead of new\narticles in the shop-windows those that had been rejected in the\nforegoing summer were brought out again; superseded reap-hooks,\nbadly-shaped rakes, shop-worn leggings, and time-stiffened water-tights\nreappeared, furbished up as near to new as possible.\n\nWilbur, backed by Cormac, read a disastrous garnering, and resolved to\nbase his strategy against Mirielle upon that reading. But before acting\nhe wished\u2014what so many have wished\u2014that he could know for certain what\nwas at present only strong probability. He was superstitious\u2014as such\nhead-strong natures often are\u2014and he nourished in his mind an idea\nbearing on the matter; an idea he shrank from disclosing even to Cormac.\n\nIn a lonely hamlet a few miles from the town\u2014so lonely that what are\ncalled lonely villages were teeming by comparison\u2014there lived a man of\ncurious repute as a forecaster or weather-prophet. The way to his house\nwas crooked and miry\u2014even difficult in the present unpropitious season.\nOne evening when it was raining so heavily that ivy and laurel\nresounded like distant musketry, and an out-door man could be excused\nfor shrouding himself to his ears and eyes, such a shrouded figure on\nfoot might have been perceived travelling in the direction of the\nhazel-copse which dripped over the prophet\u2019s cot. The turnpike-road\nbecame a lane, the lane a cart-track, the cart-track a bridle-path, the\nbridle-path a foot-way, the foot-way overgrown. The solitary walker\nslipped here and there, and stumbled over the natural springes formed\nby the brambles, till at length he reached the house, which, with its\ngarden, was surrounded with a high, dense hedge. The cottage,\ncomparatively a large one, had been built of mud by the occupier\u2019s own\nhands, and thatched also by himself. Here he had always lived, and here\nit was assumed he would die.\n\nHe existed on unseen supplies; for it was an anomalous thing that while\nthere was hardly a soul in the neighbourhood but affected to laugh at\nthis man\u2019s assertions, uttering the formula, \u201cThere\u2019s nothing in \u2019em,\u201d\nwith full assurance on the surface of their faces, very few of them\nwere unbelievers in their secret hearts. Whenever they consulted him\nthey did it \u201cfor a fancy.\u201d When they paid him they said, \u201cJust a trifle\nfor Christmas,\u201d or \u201cCandlemas,\u201d as the case might be.\n\nHe would have preferred more honesty in his clients, and less sham\nridicule; but fundamental belief consoled him for superficial irony. As\nstated, he was enabled to live; people supported him with their backs\nturned. He was sometimes astonished that men could profess so little\nand believe so much at his house, when at church they professed so much\nand believed so little.\n\nBehind his back he was called \u201cWide-oh,\u201d on account of his reputation;\nto his face \u201cMr.\u201d Fall.\n\nThe hedge of his garden formed an arch over the entrance, and a door\nwas inserted as in a wall. Outside the door the tall traveller stopped,\nbandaged his face with a handkerchief as if he were suffering from\ntoothache, and went up the path. The window shutters were not closed,\nand he could see the prophet within, preparing his supper.\n\nIn answer to the knock Fall came to the door, candle in hand. The\nvisitor stepped back a little from the light, and said, \u201cCan I speak to\n\u2019ee?\u201d in significant tones. The other\u2019s invitation to come in was\nresponded to by the country formula, \u201cThis will do, thank \u2019ee,\u201d after\nwhich the householder had no alternative but to come out. He placed the\ncandle on the corner of the dresser, took his hat from a nail, and\njoined the stranger in the porch, shutting the door behind him.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve long heard that you can\u2014do things of a sort?\u201d began the other,\nrepressing his individuality as much as he could.\n\n\u201cMaybe so, Mr. Wilbur,\u201d said the weather-caster.\n\n\u201cAh\u2014why do you call me that?\u201d asked the visitor with a start.\n\n\u201cBecause it\u2019s your name. Feeling you\u2019d come I\u2019ve waited for \u2019ee; and\nthinking you might be leery from your walk I laid two supper\nplates\u2014look ye here.\u201d He threw open the door and disclosed the\nsupper-table, at which appeared a second chair, knife and fork, plate\nand mug, as he had declared.\n\nWilbur felt like Saul at his reception by Samuel; he remained in\nsilence for a few moments, then throwing off the disguise of frigidity\nwhich he had hitherto preserved he said, \u201cThen I have not come in\nvain.... Now, for instance, can ye charm away warts?\u201d\n\n\u201cWithout trouble.\u201d\n\n\u201cCure the evil?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat I\u2019ve done\u2014with consideration\u2014if they will wear the toad-bag by\nnight as well as by day.\u201d\n\n\u201cForecast the weather?\u201d\n\n\u201cWith labour and time.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen take this,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201c\u2019Tis a crownpiece. Now, what is the\nharvest fortnight to be? When can I know?\u2019\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve worked it out already, and you can know at once.\u201d (The fact was\nthat five farmers had already been there on the same errand from\ndifferent parts of the country.) \u201cBy the sun, moon, and stars, by the\nclouds, the winds, the trees, and grass, the candle-flame and swallows,\nthe smell of the herbs; likewise by the cats\u2019 eyes, the ravens, the\nleeches, the spiders, and the dungmixen, the last fortnight in August\nwill be\u2014rain and tempest.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are not certain, of course?\u201d\n\n\u201cAs one can be in a world where all\u2019s unsure. \u2019Twill be more like\nliving in Revelations this autumn than in England. Shall I sketch it\nout for \u2019ee in a scheme?\u201d\n\n\u201cO no, no,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cI don\u2019t altogether believe in forecasts,\ncome to second thoughts on such. But I\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t\u2014you don\u2019t\u2014\u2019tis quite understood,\u201d said Wide-oh, without a\nsound of scorn. \u201cYou have given me a crown because you\u2019ve one too many.\nBut won\u2019t you join me at supper, now \u2019tis waiting and all?\u201d\n\nWilbur would gladly have joined; for the savour of the stew had\nfloated from the cottage into the porch with such appetizing\ndistinctness that the meat, the onions, the pepper, and the herbs could\nbe severally recognized by his nose. But as sitting down to hob-and-nob\nthere would have seemed to mark him too implicitly as the\nweather-caster\u2019s apostle, he declined, and went his way.\n\nThe next Saturday Wilbur bought grain to such an enormous extent that\nthere was quite a talk about his purchases among his neighbours the\nlawyer, the wine merchant, and the doctor; also on the next, and on all\navailable days. When his granaries were full to choking all the\nweather-cocks of Casterbridge creaked and set their faces in another\ndirection, as if tired of the south-west. The weather changed; the\nsunlight, which had been like tin for weeks, assumed the hues of topaz.\nThe temperament of the welkin passed from the phlegmatic to the\nsanguine; an excellent harvest was almost a certainty; and as a\nconsequence prices rushed down.\n\nAll these transformations, lovely to the outsider, to the wrong-headed\ncorn-dealer were terrible. He was reminded of what he had well known\nbefore, that a man might gamble upon the square green areas of fields\nas readily as upon those of a card-room.\n\nWilbur had backed bad weather, and apparently lost. He had mistaken\nthe turn of the flood for the turn of the ebb. His dealings had been so\nextensive that settlement could not long be postponed, and to settle he\nwas obliged to sell off corn that he had bought only a few weeks before\nat figures higher by many shillings a quarter. Much of the corn he had\nnever seen; it had not even been moved from the ricks in which it lay\nstacked miles away. Thus he lost heavily.\n\nIn the blaze of an early August day he met Mirielle in the market-place.\nMirielle knew of his dealings (though he did not guess their intended\nbearing on himself) and commiserated him; for since their exchange of\nwords in the South Walk they had been on stiffly speaking terms.\nWilbur for the moment appeared to resent the sympathy; but he\nsuddenly took a careless turn.\n\n\u201cHo, no, no!\u2014nothing serious, man!\u201d he cried with fierce gaiety. \u201cThese\nthings always happen, don\u2019t they? I know it has been said that figures\nhave touched me tight lately; but is that anything rare? The case is\nnot so bad as folk make out perhaps. And dammy, a man must be a fool to\nmind the common hazards of trade!\u201d\n\nBut he had to enter the Casterbridge Bank that day for reasons which\nhad never before sent him there\u2014and to sit a long time in the partners\u2019\nroom with a constrained bearing. It was rumoured soon after that much\nreal property as well as vast stores of produce, which had stood in\nWilbur\u2019s name in the town and neighbourhood, was actually the\npossession of his bankers.\n\nComing down the steps of the bank he encountered Cormac. The gloomy\ntransactions just completed within had added fever to the original\nsting of Mirielle\u2019s sympathy that morning, which Wilbur fancied might\nbe a satire disguised so that Cormac met with anything but a bland\nreception. The latter was in the act of taking off his hat to wipe his\nforehead, and saying, \u201cA fine hot day,\u201d to an acquaintance.\n\n\u201cYou can wipe and wipe, and say, \u2018A fine hot day,\u2019 can ye!\u201d cried\nWilbur in a savage undertone, imprisoning Cormac between himself and\nthe bank wall. \u201cIf it hadn\u2019t been for your blasted advice it might have\nbeen a fine day enough! Why did ye let me go on, hey?\u2014when a word of\ndoubt from you or anybody would have made me think twice! For you can\nnever be sure of weather till \u2019tis past.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy advice, sir, was to do what you thought best.\u201d\n\n\u201cA useful fellow! And the sooner you help somebody else in that way the\nbetter!\u201d Wilbur continued his address to Cormac in similar terms till\nit ended in Cormac\u2019s dismissal there and then, Wilbur turning upon his\nheel and leaving him.\n\n\u201cYou shall be sorry for this, sir; sorry as a man can be!\u201d said Cormac,\nstanding pale, and looking after the corn-merchant as he disappeared in\nthe crowd of market-men hard by.\n\n\n\nXXVII.\n\nIt was the eve of harvest. Prices being low Mirielle was buying. As was\nusual, after reckoning too surely on famine weather the local farmers\nhad flown to the other extreme, and (in Mirielle\u2019s opinion) were selling\noff too recklessly\u2014calculating with just a trifle too much certainty\nupon an abundant yield. So he went on buying old corn at its\ncomparatively ridiculous price: for the produce of the previous year,\nthough not large, had been of excellent quality.\n\nWhen Wilbur had squared his affairs in a disastrous way, and got rid\nof his burdensome purchases at a monstrous loss, the harvest began.\nThere were three days of excellent weather, and then\u2014\u201cWhat if that\ncurst conjuror should be right after all!\u201d said Wilbur.\n\nThe fact was, that no sooner had the sickles begun to play than the\natmosphere suddenly felt as if cress would grow in it without other\nnourishment. It rubbed people\u2019s cheeks like damp flannel when they\nwalked abroad. There was a gusty, high, warm wind; isolated raindrops\nstarred the window-panes at remote distances: the sunlight would flap\nout like a quickly opened fan, throw the pattern of the window upon the\nfloor of the room in a milky, colourless shine, and withdraw as\nsuddenly as it had appeared.\n\nFrom that day and hour it was clear that there was not to be so\nsuccessful an ingathering after all. If Wilbur had only waited long\nenough he might at least have avoided loss though he had not made a\nprofit. But the momentum of his character knew no patience. At this\nturn of the scales he remained silent. The movements of his mind seemed\nto tend to the thought that some power was working against him.\n\n\u201cI wonder,\u201d he asked himself with eerie misgiving; \u201cI wonder if it can\nbe that somebody has been roasting a waxen image of me, or stirring an\nunholy brew to confound me! I don\u2019t believe in such power; and yet\u2014what\nif they should ha\u2019 been doing it!\u201d Even he could not admit that the\nperpetrator, if any, might be Mirielle. These isolated hours of\nsuperstition came to Wilbur in time of moody depression, when all his\npractical largeness of view had oozed out of him.\n\nMeanwhile Rahul Mirielle prospered. He had purchased in so depressed a\nmarket that the present moderate stiffness of prices was sufficient to\npile for him a large heap of gold where a little one had been.\n\n\u201cWhy, he\u2019ll soon be Mayor!\u201d said Wilbur. It was indeed hard that the\nspeaker should, of all others, have to follow the triumphal chariot of\nthis man to the Capitol.\n\nThe rivalry of the masters was taken up by the men.\n\nSeptember night-shades had fallen upon Casterbridge; the clocks had\nstruck half-past eight, and the moon had risen. The streets of the town\nwere curiously silent for such a comparatively early hour. A sound of\njangling horse-bells and heavy wheels passed up the street. These were\nfollowed by angry voices outside Chris\u2019s house, which led her and\nElizabeth-Kaya to run to the windows, and pull up the blinds.\n\nThe neighbouring Market House and Town Hall abutted against its next\nneighbour the Church except in the lower storey, where an arched\nthoroughfare gave admittance to a large square called Bull Stake. A\nstone post rose in the midst, to which the oxen had formerly been tied\nfor baiting with dogs to make them tender before they were killed in\nthe adjoining shambles. In a corner stood the stocks.\n\nThe thoroughfare leading to this spot was now blocked by two four-horse\nwaggons and horses, one laden with hay-trusses, the leaders having\nalready passed each other, and become entangled head to tail. The\npassage of the vehicles might have been practicable if empty; but built\nup with hay to the bedroom windows as one was, it was impossible.\n\n\u201cYou must have done it a\u2019 purpose!\u201d said Mirielle\u2019s waggoner. \u201cYou can\nhear my horses\u2019 bells half-a-mile such a night as this!\u201d\n\n\u201cIf ye\u2019d been minding your business instead of zwailing along in such a\ngawk-hammer way, you would have zeed me!\u201d retorted the wroth\nrepresentative of Wilbur.\n\nHowever, according to the strict rule of the road it appeared that\nWilbur\u2019s man was most in the wrong, he therefore attempted to back\ninto the High Street. In doing this the near hind-wheel rose against\nthe churchyard wall and the whole mountainous load went over, two of\nthe four wheels rising in the air, and the legs of the thill horse.\n\nInstead of considering how to gather up the load the two men closed in\na fight with their fists. Before the first round was quite over\nWilbur came upon the spot, somebody having run for him.\n\nWilbur sent the two men staggering in contrary directions by\ncollaring one with each hand, turned to the horse that was down, and\nextricated him after some trouble. He then inquired into the\ncircumstances; and seeing the state of his waggon and its load began\nhotly rating Mirielle\u2019s man.\n\nChris and Elizabeth-Kaya had by this time run down to the street\ncorner, whence they watched the bright heap of new hay lying in the\nmoon\u2019s rays, and passed and repassed by the forms of Wilbur and the\nwaggoners. The women had witnessed what nobody else had seen\u2014the origin\nof the mishap; and Chris spoke.\n\n\u201cI saw it all, Mr. Wilbur,\u201d she cried; \u201cand your man was most in the\nwrong!\u201d\n\nWilbur paused in his harangue and turned. \u201cOh, I didn\u2019t notice you,\nMiss Templeman,\u201d said he. \u201cMy man in the wrong? Ah, to be sure; to be\nsure! But I beg your pardon notwithstanding. The other\u2019s is the empty\nwaggon, and he must have been most to blame for coming on.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo; I saw it, too,\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya. \u201cAnd I can assure you he\ncouldn\u2019t help it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t trust _their_ senses!\u201d murmured Wilbur\u2019s man.\n\n\u201cWhy not?\u201d asked Wilbur sharply.\n\n\u201cWhy, you see, sir, all the women side with Mirielle\u2014being a damn young\ndand\u2014of the sort that he is\u2014one that creeps into a maid\u2019s heart like\nthe giddying worm into a sheep\u2019s brain\u2014making crooked seem straight to\ntheir eyes!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut do you know who that lady is you talk about in such a fashion? Do\nyou know that I pay my attentions to her, and have for some time? Just\nbe careful!\u201d\n\n\u201cNot I. I know nothing, sir, outside eight shillings a week.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd that Mr. Mirielle is well aware of it? He\u2019s sharp in trade, but he\nwouldn\u2019t do anything so underhand as what you hint at.\u201d\n\nWhether because Chris heard this low dialogue, or not her white\nfigure disappeared from her doorway inward, and the door was shut\nbefore Wilbur could reach it to converse with her further. This\ndisappointed him, for he had been sufficiently disturbed by what the\nman had said to wish to speak to her more closely. While pausing the\nold constable came up.\n\n\u201cJust see that nobody drives against that hay and waggon to-night,\nStubberd,\u201d said the corn-merchant. \u201cIt must bide till the morning, for\nall hands are in the field still. And if any coach or road-waggon wants\nto come along, tell \u2019em they must go round by the back street, and be\nhanged to \u2019em.... Any case tomorrow up in Hall?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir. One in number, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, what\u2019s that?\u201d\n\n\u201cAn old flagrant female, sir, swearing and committing a nuisance in a\nhorrible profane manner against the church wall, sir, as if \u2019twere no\nmore than a pot-house! That\u2019s all, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh. The Mayor\u2019s out o\u2019 town, isn\u2019t he?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, then I\u2019ll be there. Don\u2019t forget to keep an eye on that\nhay. Good night t\u2019 \u2019ee.\u201d\n\nDuring those moments Wilbur had determined to follow up Chris\nnotwithstanding her elusiveness, and he knocked for admission.\n\nThe answer he received was an expression of Miss Templeman\u2019s sorrow at\nbeing unable to see him again that evening because she had an\nengagement to go out.\n\nWilbur walked away from the door to the opposite side of the street,\nand stood by his hay in a lonely reverie, the constable having strolled\nelsewhere, and the horses being removed. Though the moon was not bright\nas yet there were no lamps lighted, and he entered the shadow of one of\nthe projecting jambs which formed the thoroughfare to Bull Stake; here\nhe watched Chris\u2019s door.\n\nCandle-lights were flitting in and out of her bedroom, and it was\nobvious that she was dressing for the appointment, whatever the nature\nof that might be at such an hour. The lights disappeared, the clock\nstruck nine, and almost at the moment Mirielle came round the opposite\ncorner and knocked. That she had been waiting just inside for him was\ncertain, for she instantly opened the door herself. They went together\nby the way of a back lane westward, avoiding the front street; guessing\nwhere they were going he determined to follow.\n\nThe harvest had been so delayed by the capricious weather that whenever\na fine day occurred all sinews were strained to save what could be\nsaved of the damaged crops. On account of the rapid shortening of the\ndays the harvesters worked by moonlight. Hence to-night the\nwheat-fields abutting on the two sides of the square formed by\nCasterbridge town were animated by the gathering hands. Their shouts\nand laughter had reached Wilbur at the Market House, while he stood\nthere waiting, and he had little doubt from the turn which Mirielle and\nChris had taken that they were bound for the spot.\n\nNearly the whole town had gone into the fields. The Casterbridge\npopulace still retained the primitive habit of helping one another in\ntime of need; and thus, though the corn belonged to the farming section\nof the little community\u2014that inhabiting the Durnover quarter\u2014the\nremainder was no less interested in the labour of getting it home.\n\nReaching the top of the lane Wilbur crossed the shaded avenue on the\nwalls, slid down the green rampart, and stood amongst the stubble. The\n\u201cstitches\u201d or shocks rose like tents about the yellow expanse, those in\nthe distance becoming lost in the moonlit hazes.\n\nHe had entered at a point removed from the scene of immediate\noperations; but two others had entered at that place, and he could see\nthem winding among the shocks. They were paying no regard to the\ndirection of their walk, whose vague serpentining soon began to bear\ndown towards Wilbur. A meeting promised to be awkward, and he\ntherefore stepped into the hollow of the nearest shock, and sat down.\n\n\u201cYou have my leave,\u201d Chris was saying gaily. \u201cSpeak what you like.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, then,\u201d replied Mirielle, with the unmistakable inflection of the\nlover pure, which Wilbur had never heard in full resonance of his\nlips before, \u201cyou are sure to be much sought after for your position,\nwealth, talents, and beauty. But will ye resist the temptation to be\none of those ladies with lots of admirers\u2014ay\u2014and be content to have\nonly a homely one?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd he the speaker?\u201d said she, laughing. \u201cVery well, sir, what next?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! I\u2019m afraid that what I feel will make me forget my manners!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I hope you\u2019ll never have any, if you lack them only for that\ncause.\u201d After some broken words which Wilbur lost she added, \u201cAre you\nsure you won\u2019t be jealous?\u201d\n\nMirielle seemed to assure her that he would not, by taking her hand.\n\n\u201cYou are convinced, Rahul, that I love nobody else,\u201d she presently\nsaid. \u201cBut I should wish to have my own way in some things.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn everything! What special thing did you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I wished not to live always in Casterbridge, for instance, upon\nfinding that I should not be happy here?\u201d\n\nWilbur did not hear the reply; he might have done so and much more,\nbut he did not care to play the eavesdropper. They went on towards the\nscene of activity, where the sheaves were being handed, a dozen a\nminute, upon the carts and waggons which carried them away.\n\nChris insisted on parting from Mirielle when they drew near the\nworkpeople. He had some business with them, and, though he entreated\nher to wait a few minutes, she was inexorable, and tripped off homeward\nalone.\n\nWilbur thereupon left the field and followed her. His state of mind\nwas such that on reaching Chris\u2019s door he did not knock but opened\nit, and walked straight up to her sitting-room, expecting to find her\nthere. But the room was empty, and he perceived that in his haste he\nhad somehow passed her on the way hither. He had not to wait many\nminutes, however, for he soon heard her dress rustling in the hall,\nfollowed by a soft closing of the door. In a moment she appeared.\n\nThe light was so low that she did not notice Wilbur at first. As soon\nas she saw him she uttered a little cry, almost of terror.\n\n\u201cHow can you frighten me so?\u201d she exclaimed, with a flushed face. \u201cIt\nis past ten o\u2019clock, and you have no right to surprise me here at such\na time.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve not the right. At any rate I have the excuse.\nIs it so necessary that I should stop to think of manners and customs?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is too late for propriety, and might injure me.\u201d\n\n\u201cI called an hour ago, and you would not see me, and I thought you were\nin when I called now. It is you, Chris, who are doing wrong. It is\nnot proper in \u2019ee to throw me over like this. I have a little matter to\nremind you of, which you seem to forget.\u201d\n\nShe sank into a chair, and turned pale.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to hear it\u2014I don\u2019t want to hear it!\u201d she said through her\nhands, as he, standing close to the edge of her gown, began to allude\nto the Jersey days.\n\n\u201cBut you ought to hear it,\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cIt came to nothing; and through you. Then why not leave me the freedom\nthat I gained with such sorrow! Had I found that you proposed to marry\nme for pure love I might have felt bound now. But I soon learnt that\nyou had planned it out of mere charity\u2014almost as an unpleasant\nduty\u2014because I had nursed you, and compromised myself, and you thought\nyou must repay me. After that I did not care for you so deeply as\nbefore.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy did you come here to find me, then?\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought I ought to marry you for conscience\u2019 sake, since you were\nfree, even though I\u2014did not like you so well.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd why then don\u2019t you think so now?\u201d\n\nShe was silent. It was only too obvious that conscience had ruled well\nenough till new love had intervened and usurped that rule. In feeling\nthis she herself forgot for the moment her partially justifying\nargument\u2014that having discovered Wilbur\u2019s infirmities of temper, she\nhad some excuse for not risking her happiness in his hands after once\nescaping them. The only thing she could say was, \u201cI was a poor girl\nthen; and now my circumstances have altered, so I am hardly the same\nperson.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s true. And it makes the case awkward for me. But I don\u2019t want to\ntouch your money. I am quite willing that every penny of your property\nshall remain to your personal use. Besides, that argument has nothing\nin it. The man you are thinking of is no better than I.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you were as good as he you would leave me!\u201d she cried passionately.\n\nThis unluckily aroused Wilbur. \u201cYou cannot in honour refuse me,\u201d he\nsaid. \u201cAnd unless you give me your promise this very night to be my\nwife, before a witness, I\u2019ll reveal our intimacy\u2014in common fairness to\nother men!\u201d\n\nA look of resignation settled upon her. Wilbur saw its bitterness;\nand had Chris\u2019s heart been given to any other man in the world than\nMirielle he would probably have had pity upon her at that moment. But\nthe supplanter was the upstart (as Wilbur called him) who had mounted\ninto prominence upon his shoulders, and he could bring himself to show\nno mercy.\n\nWithout another word she rang the bell, and directed that\nElizabeth-Kaya should be fetched from her room. The latter appeared,\nsurprised in the midst of her lucubrations. As soon as she saw Wilbur\nshe went across to him dutifully.\n\n\u201cElizabeth-Kaya,\u201d he said, taking her hand, \u201cI want you to hear this.\u201d\nAnd turning to Chris: \u201cWill you, or will you not, marry me?\n\n\u201cIf you\u2014wish it, I must agree!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou say yes?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do.\u201d\n\nNo sooner had she given the promise than she fell back in a fainting\nstate.\n\n\u201cWhat dreadful thing drives her to say this, father, when it is such a\npain to her?\u201d asked Elizabeth, kneeling down by Chris. \u201cDon\u2019t compel\nher to do anything against her will! I have lived with her, and know\nthat she cannot bear much.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be a no\u2019thern simpleton!\u201d said Wilbur drily. \u201cThis promise\nwill leave him free for you, if you want him, won\u2019t it?\u201d\n\nAt this Chris seemed to wake from her swoon with a start.\n\n\u201cHim? Who are you talking about?\u201d she said wildly.\n\n\u201cNobody, as far as I am concerned,\u201d said Elizabeth firmly.\n\n\u201cOh\u2014well. Then it is my mistake,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cBut the business is\nbetween me and Miss Templeman. She agrees to be my wife.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut don\u2019t dwell on it just now,\u201d entreated Elizabeth, holding\nChris\u2019s hand.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t wish to, if she promises,\u201d said Wilbur.\n\n\u201cI have, I have,\u201d groaned Chris, her limbs hanging like fluid, from\nvery misery and faintness. \u201cGuinevere, please don\u2019t argue it any more!\u201d\n\n\u201cI will not,\u201d he said. And taking up his hat he went away.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya continued to kneel by Chris. \u201cWhat is this?\u201d she said.\n\u201cYou called my father \u2018Guinevere\u2019 as if you knew him well? And how is it\nhe has got this power over you, that you promise to marry him against\nyour will? Ah\u2014you have many many secrets from me!\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps you have some from me,\u201d Chris murmured with closed eyes,\nlittle thinking, however, so unsuspicious was she, that the secret of\nElizabeth\u2019s heart concerned the young man who had caused this damage to\nher own.\n\n\u201cI would not\u2014do anything against you at all!\u201d stammered Elizabeth,\nkeeping in all signs of emotion till she was ready to burst. \u201cI cannot\nunderstand how my father can command you so; I don\u2019t sympathize with\nhim in it at all. I\u2019ll go to him and ask him to release you.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d said Chris. \u201cLet it all be.\u201d\n\n\n\nXXVIII.\n\nThe next morning Wilbur went to the Town Hall below Chris\u2019s house,\nto attend Petty Sessions, being still a magistrate for the year by\nvirtue of his late position as Mayor. In passing he looked up at her\nwindows, but nothing of her was to be seen.\n\nWilbur as a Justice of the Peace may at first seem to be an even\ngreater incongruity than Shallow and Silence themselves. But his rough\nand ready perceptions, his sledge-hammer directness, had often served\nhim better than nice legal knowledge in despatching such simple\nbusiness as fell to his hands in this Court. To-day Dr. Chalkfield, the\nMayor for the year, being absent, the corn-merchant took the big chair,\nhis eyes still abstractedly stretching out of the window to the ashlar\nfront of High-Place Hall.\n\nThere was one case only, and the offender stood before him. She was an\nold woman of mottled countenance, attired in a shawl of that nameless\ntertiary hue which comes, but cannot be made\u2014a hue neither tawny,\nrusset, hazel, nor ash; a sticky black bonnet that seemed to have been\nworn in the country of the Psalmist where the clouds drop fatness; and\nan apron that had been white in time so comparatively recent as still\nto contrast visibly with the rest of her clothes. The steeped aspect of\nthe woman as a whole showed her to be no native of the country-side or\neven of a country-town.\n\nShe looked cursorily at Wilbur and the second magistrate, and\nWilbur looked at her, with a momentary pause, as if she had reminded\nhim indistinctly of somebody or something which passed from his mind as\nquickly as it had come. \u201cWell, and what has she been doing?\u201d he said,\nlooking down at the charge sheet.\n\n\u201cShe is charged, sir, with the offence of disorderly female and\nnuisance,\u201d whispered Stubberd.\n\n\u201cWhere did she do that?\u201d said the other magistrate.\n\n\u201cBy the church, sir, of all the horrible places in the world!\u2014I caught\nher in the act, your worship.\u201d\n\n\u201cStand back then,\u201d said Wilbur, \u201cand let\u2019s hear what you\u2019ve got to\nsay.\u201d\n\nStubberd was sworn in, the magistrate\u2019s clerk dipped his pen, Wilbur\nbeing no note-taker himself, and the constable began\u2014\n\n\u201cHearing a\u2019 illegal noise I went down the street at twenty-five minutes\npast eleven P.M. on the night of the fifth instinct, Hannah Dominy.\nWhen I had\u2014\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t go so fast, Stubberd,\u201d said the clerk.\n\nThe constable waited, with his eyes on the clerk\u2019s pen, till the latter\nstopped scratching and said, \u201cyes.\u201d Stubberd continued: \u201cWhen I had\nproceeded to the spot I saw defendant at another spot, namely, the\ngutter.\u201d He paused, watching the point of the clerk\u2019s pen again.\n\n\u201cGutter, yes, Stubberd.\u201d\n\n\u201cSpot measuring twelve feet nine inches or thereabouts from where I\u2014\u201d\nStill careful not to outrun the clerk\u2019s penmanship Stubberd pulled up\nagain; for having got his evidence by heart it was immaterial to him\nwhereabouts he broke off.\n\n\u201cI object to that,\u201d spoke up the old woman, \u201c\u2018spot measuring twelve\nfeet nine or thereabouts from where I,\u2019 is not sound testimony!\u201d\n\nThe magistrates consulted, and the second one said that the bench was\nof opinion that twelve feet nine inches from a man on his oath was\nadmissible.\n\nStubberd, with a suppressed gaze of victorious rectitude at the old\nwoman, continued: \u201cWas standing myself. She was wambling about quite\ndangerous to the thoroughfare and when I approached to draw near she\ncommitted the nuisance, and insulted me.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018Insulted me.\u2019 ...Yes, what did she say?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe said, \u2018Put away that dee lantern,\u2019 she says.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cSays she, \u2018Dost hear, old turmit-head? Put away that dee lantern. I\nhave floored fellows a dee sight finer-looking than a dee fool like\nthee, you son of a bee, dee me if I haint,\u2019 she says.\n\n\u201cI object to that conversation!\u201d interposed the old woman. \u201cI was not\ncapable enough to hear what I said, and what is said out of my hearing\nis not evidence.\u201d\n\nThere was another stoppage for consultation, a book was referred to,\nand finally Stubberd was allowed to go on again. The truth was that the\nold woman had appeared in court so many more times than the magistrates\nthemselves, that they were obliged to keep a sharp look-out upon their\nprocedure. However, when Stubberd had rambled on a little further\nWilbur broke out impatiently, \u201cCome\u2014we don\u2019t want to hear any more of\nthem cust dees and bees! Say the words out like a man, and don\u2019t be so\nmodest, Stubberd; or else leave it alone!\u201d Turning to the woman, \u201cNow\nthen, have you any questions to ask him, or anything to say?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d she replied with a twinkle in her eye; and the clerk dipped his\npen.\n\n\u201cTwenty years ago or thereabout I was selling of furmity in a tent at\nWeydon Fair\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018Twenty years ago\u2019\u2014well, that\u2019s beginning at the beginning; suppose\nyou go back to the Creation!\u201d said the clerk, not without satire.\n\nBut Wilbur stared, and quite forgot what was evidence and what was\nnot.\n\n\u201cA man and a woman with a little child came into my tent,\u201d the woman\ncontinued. \u201cThey sat down and had a basin apiece. Ah, Lord\u2019s my life! I\nwas of a more respectable station in the world then than I am now,\nbeing a land smuggler in a large way of business; and I used to season\nmy furmity with rum for them who asked for\u2019t. I did it for the man; and\nthen he had more and more; till at last he quarrelled with his wife,\nand offered to sell her to the highest bidder. A sailor came in and bid\nfive guineas, and paid the money, and led her away. And the man who\nsold his wife in that fashion is the man sitting there in the great big\nchair.\u201d The speaker concluded by nodding her head at Wilbur and\nfolding her arms.\n\nEverybody looked at Wilbur. His face seemed strange, and in tint as\nif it had been powdered over with ashes. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to hear your\nlife and adventures,\u201d said the second magistrate sharply, filling the\npause which followed. \u201cYou\u2019ve been asked if you\u2019ve anything to say\nbearing on the case.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat bears on the case. It proves that he\u2019s no better than I, and has\nno right to sit there in judgment upon me.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis a concocted story,\u201d said the clerk. \u201cSo hold your tongue!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014\u2019tis true.\u201d The words came from Wilbur. \u201c\u2019Tis as true as the\nlight,\u201d he said slowly. \u201cAnd upon my soul it does prove that I\u2019m no\nbetter than she! And to keep out of any temptation to treat her hard\nfor her revenge, I\u2019ll leave her to you.\u201d\n\nThe sensation in the court was indescribably great. Wilbur left the\nchair, and came out, passing through a group of people on the steps and\noutside that was much larger than usual; for it seemed that the old\nfurmity dealer had mysteriously hinted to the denizens of the lane in\nwhich she had been lodging since her arrival, that she knew a queer\nthing or two about their great local man Mr. Wilbur, if she chose to\ntell it. This had brought them hither.\n\n\u201cWhy are there so many idlers round the Town Hall to-day?\u201d said Chris\nto her servant when the case was over. She had risen late, and had just\nlooked out of the window.\n\n\u201cOh, please, ma\u2019am, \u2019tis this larry about Mr. Wilbur. A woman has\nproved that before he became a gentleman he sold his wife for five\nguineas in a booth at a fair.\u201d\n\nIn all the accounts which Wilbur had given her of the separation from\nhis wife Phyllis for so many years, of his belief in her death, and so\non, he had never clearly explained the actual and immediate cause of\nthat separation. The story she now heard for the first time.\n\nA gradual misery overspread Chris\u2019s face as she dwelt upon the\npromise wrung from her the night before. At bottom, then, Wilbur was\nthis. How terrible a contingency for a woman who should commit herself\nto his care.\n\nDuring the day she went out to the Ring and to other places, not coming\nin till nearly dusk. As soon as she saw Elizabeth-Kaya after her return\nindoors she told her that she had resolved to go away from home to the\nseaside for a few days\u2014to Port-Bredy; Casterbridge was so gloomy.\n\nElizabeth, seeing that she looked wan and disturbed, encouraged her in\nthe idea, thinking a change would afford her relief. She could not help\nsuspecting that the gloom which seemed to have come over Casterbridge\nin Chris\u2019s eyes might be partially owing to the fact that Mirielle was\naway from home.\n\nElizabeth saw her friend depart for Port-Bredy, and took charge of\nHigh-Place Hall till her return. After two or three days of solitude\nand incessant rain Wilbur called at the house. He seemed disappointed\nto hear of Chris\u2019s absence and though he nodded with outward\nindifference he went away handling his beard with a nettled mien.\n\nThe next day he called again. \u201cIs she come now?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cYes. She returned this morning,\u201d replied his stepdaughter. \u201cBut she is\nnot indoors. She has gone for a walk along the turnpike-road to\nPort-Bredy. She will be home by dusk.\u201d\n\nAfter a few words, which only served to reveal his restless impatience,\nhe left the house again.\n\n\n\nXXIX.\n\nAt this hour Chris was bounding along the road to Port-Bredy just as\nElizabeth had announced. That she had chosen for her afternoon walk the\nroad along which she had returned to Casterbridge three hours earlier\nin a carriage was curious\u2014if anything should be called curious in\nconcatenations of phenomena wherein each is known to have its\naccounting cause. It was the day of the chief market\u2014Saturday\u2014and\nMirielle for once had been missed from his corn-stand in the dealers\u2019\nroom. Nevertheless, it was known that he would be home that night\u2014\u201cfor\nSunday,\u201d as Casterbridge expressed it.\n\nChris, in continuing her walk, had at length reached the end of the\nranked trees which bordered the highway in this and other directions\nout of the town. This end marked a mile; and here she stopped.\n\nThe spot was a vale between two gentle acclivities, and the road, still\nadhering to its Roman foundation, stretched onward straight as a\nsurveyor\u2019s line till lost to sight on the most distant ridge. There was\nneither hedge nor tree in the prospect now, the road clinging to the\nstubby expanse of corn-land like a strip to an undulating garment. Near\nher was a barn\u2014the single building of any kind within her horizon.\n\nShe strained her eyes up the lessening road, but nothing appeared\nthereon\u2014not so much as a speck. She sighed one word\u2014\u201cRahul!\u201d and\nturned her face to the town for retreat.\n\nHere the case was different. A single figure was approaching\nher\u2014Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s.\n\nChris, in spite of her loneliness, seemed a little vexed. Elizabeth\u2019s\nface, as soon as she recognized her friend, shaped itself into\naffectionate lines while yet beyond speaking distance. \u201cI suddenly\nthought I would come and meet you,\u201d she said, smiling.\n\nChris\u2019s reply was taken from her lips by an unexpected diversion. A\nby-road on her right hand descended from the fields into the highway at\nthe point where she stood, and down the track a bull was rambling\nuncertainly towards her and Elizabeth, who, facing the other way, did\nnot observe him.\n\nIn the latter quarter of each year cattle were at once the mainstay and\nthe terror of families about Casterbridge and its neighbourhood, where\nbreeding was carried on with Abrahamic success. The head of stock\ndriven into and out of the town at this season to be sold by the local\nauctioneer was very large; and all these horned beasts, in travelling\nto and fro, sent women and children to shelter as nothing else could\ndo. In the main the animals would have walked along quietly enough; but\nthe Casterbridge tradition was that to drive stock it was indispensable\nthat hideous cries, coupled with Yahoo antics and gestures, should be\nused, large sticks flourished, stray dogs called in, and in general\neverything done that was likely to infuriate the viciously disposed and\nterrify the mild. Nothing was commoner than for a house-holder on going\nout of his parlour to find his hall or passage full of little children,\nnursemaids, aged women, or a ladies\u2019 school, who apologized for their\npresence by saying, \u201cA bull passing down street from the sale.\u201d\n\nChris and Elizabeth regarded the animal in doubt, he meanwhile\ndrawing vaguely towards them. It was a large specimen of the breed, in\ncolour rich dun, though disfigured at present by splotches of mud about\nhis seamy sides. His horns were thick and tipped with brass; his two\nnostrils like the Thames Tunnel as seen in the perspective toys of\nyore. Between them, through the gristle of his nose, was a stout copper\nring, welded on, and irremovable as Gurth\u2019s collar of brass. To the\nring was attached an ash staff about a yard long, which the bull with\nthe motions of his head flung about like a flail.\n\nIt was not till they observed this dangling stick that the young women\nwere really alarmed; for it revealed to them that the bull was an old\none, too savage to be driven, which had in some way escaped, the staff\nbeing the means by which the drover controlled him and kept his horns\nat arms\u2019 length.\n\nThey looked round for some shelter or hiding-place, and thought of the\nbarn hard by. As long as they had kept their eyes on the bull he had\nshown some deference in his manner of approach; but no sooner did they\nturn their backs to seek the barn than he tossed his head and decided\nto thoroughly terrify them. This caused the two helpless girls to run\nwildly, whereupon the bull advanced in a deliberate charge.\n\nThe barn stood behind a green slimy pond, and it was closed save as to\none of the usual pair of doors facing them, which had been propped open\nby a hurdle-stick, and for this opening they made. The interior had\nbeen cleared by a recent bout of threshing except at one end, where\nthere was a stack of dry clover. Elizabeth-Kaya took in the situation.\n\u201cWe must climb up there,\u201d she said.\n\nBut before they had even approached it they heard the bull scampering\nthrough the pond without, and in a second he dashed into the barn,\nknocking down the hurdle-stake in passing; the heavy door slammed\nbehind him; and all three were imprisoned in the barn together. The\nmistaken creature saw them, and stalked towards the end of the barn\ninto which they had fled. The girls doubled so adroitly that their\npursuer was against the wall when the fugitives were already half way\nto the other end. By the time that his length would allow him to turn\nand follow them thither they had crossed over; thus the pursuit went\non, the hot air from his nostrils blowing over them like a sirocco, and\nnot a moment being attainable by Elizabeth or Chris in which to open\nthe door. What might have happened had their situation continued cannot\nbe said; but in a few moments a rattling of the door distracted their\nadversary\u2019s attention, and a man appeared. He ran forward towards the\nleading-staff, seized it, and wrenched the animal\u2019s head as if he would\nsnap it off. The wrench was in reality so violent that the thick neck\nseemed to have lost its stiffness and to become half-paralyzed, whilst\nthe nose dropped blood. The premeditated human contrivance of the\nnose-ring was too cunning for impulsive brute force, and the creature\nflinched.\n\nThe man was seen in the partial gloom to be large-framed and\nunhesitating. He led the bull to the door, and the light revealed\nWilbur. He made the bull fast without, and re-entered to the succour\nof Chris; for he had not perceived Elizabeth, who had climbed on to\nthe clover-heap. Chris was hysterical, and Wilbur took her in his\narms and carried her to the door.\n\n\u201cYou\u2014have saved me!\u201d she cried, as soon as she could speak.\n\n\u201cI have returned your kindness,\u201d he responded tenderly. \u201cYou once saved\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow\u2014comes it to be you\u2014you?\u201d she asked, not heeding his reply.\n\n\u201cI came out here to look for you. I have been wanting to tell you\nsomething these two or three days; but you have been away, and I could\nnot. Perhaps you cannot talk now?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh\u2014no! Where is Elizabeth?\u201d\n\n\u201cHere am I!\u201d cried the missing one cheerfully; and without waiting for\nthe ladder to be placed she slid down the face of the clover-stack to\nthe floor.\n\nWilbur supporting Chris on one side, and Elizabeth-Kaya on the\nother, they went slowly along the rising road. They had reached the top\nand were descending again when Chris, now much recovered, recollected\nthat she had dropped her muff in the barn.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll run back,\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya. \u201cI don\u2019t mind it at all, as I am\nnot tired as you are.\u201d She thereupon hastened down again to the barn,\nthe others pursuing their way.\n\nElizabeth soon found the muff, such an article being by no means small\nat that time. Coming out she paused to look for a moment at the bull,\nnow rather to be pitied with his bleeding nose, having perhaps rather\nintended a practical joke than a murder. Wilbur had secured him by\njamming the staff into the hinge of the barn-door, and wedging it there\nwith a stake. At length she turned to hasten onward after her\ncontemplation, when she saw a green-and-black gig approaching from the\ncontrary direction, the vehicle being driven by Mirielle.\n\nHis presence here seemed to explain Chris\u2019s walk that way. Rahul saw\nher, drew up, and was hastily made acquainted with what had occurred.\nAt Elizabeth-Kaya mentioning how greatly Chris had been jeopardized,\nhe exhibited an agitation different in kind no less than in intensity\nfrom any she had seen in him before. He became so absorbed in the\ncircumstance that he scarcely had sufficient knowledge of what he was\ndoing to think of helping her up beside him.\n\n\u201cShe has gone on with Mr. Wilbur, you say?\u201d he inquired at last.\n\n\u201cYes. He is taking her home. They are almost there by this time.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you are sure she can get home?\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya was quite sure.\n\n\u201cYour stepfather saved her?\u201d\n\n\u201cEntirely.\u201d\n\nMirielle checked his horse\u2019s pace; she guessed why. He was thinking that\nit would be best not to intrude on the other two just now. Wilbur had\nsaved Chris, and to provoke a possible exhibition of her deeper\naffection for himself was as ungenerous as it was unwise.\n\nThe immediate subject of their talk being exhausted she felt more\nembarrassed at sitting thus beside her past lover; but soon the two\nfigures of the others were visible at the entrance to the town. The\nface of the woman was frequently turned back, but Mirielle did not whip\non the horse. When these reached the town walls Wilbur and his\ncompanion had disappeared down the street; Mirielle set down\nElizabeth-Kaya on her expressing a particular wish to alight there, and\ndrove round to the stables at the back of his lodgings.\n\nOn this account he entered the house through his garden, and going up\nto his apartments found them in a particularly disturbed state, his\nboxes being hauled out upon the landing, and his bookcase standing in\nthree pieces. These phenomena, however, seemed to cause him not the\nleast surprise. \u201cWhen will everything be sent up?\u201d he said to the\nmistress of the house, who was superintending.\n\n\u201cI am afraid not before eight, sir,\u201d said she. \u201cYou see we wasn\u2019t aware\ntill this morning that you were going to move, or we could have been\nforwarder.\u201d\n\n\u201cA\u2014well, never mind, never mind!\u201d said Mirielle cheerily. \u201cEight o\u2019clock\nwill do well enough if it be not later. Now, don\u2019t ye be standing here\ntalking, or it will be twelve, I doubt.\u201d Thus speaking he went out by\nthe front door and up the street.\n\nDuring this interval Wilbur and Chris had had experiences of a\ndifferent kind. After Elizabeth\u2019s departure for the muff the\ncorn-merchant opened himself frankly, holding her hand within his arm,\nthough she would fain have withdrawn it. \u201cDear Chris, I have been\nvery, very anxious to see you these two or three days,\u201d he said, \u201cever\nsince I saw you last! I have thought over the way I got your promise\nthat night. You said to me, \u2018If I were a man I should not insist.\u2019 That\ncut me deep. I felt that there was some truth in it. I don\u2019t want to\nmake you wretched; and to marry me just now would do that as nothing\nelse could\u2014it is but too plain. Therefore I agree to an indefinite\nengagement\u2014to put off all thought of marriage for a year or two.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut\u2014but\u2014can I do nothing of a different kind?\u201d said Chris. \u201cI am\nfull of gratitude to you\u2014you have saved my life. And your care of me is\nlike coals of fire on my head! I am a monied person now. Surely I can\ndo something in return for your goodness\u2014something practical?\u201d\n\nWilbur remained in thought. He had evidently not expected this.\n\u201cThere is one thing you might do, Chris,\u201d he said. \u201cBut not exactly\nof that kind.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen of what kind is it?\u201d she asked with renewed misgiving.\n\n\u201cI must tell you a secret to ask it.\u2014You may have heard that I have\nbeen unlucky this year? I did what I have never done before\u2014speculated\nrashly; and I lost. That\u2019s just put me in a strait.\n\n\u201cAnd you would wish me to advance some money?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no!\u201d said Wilbur, almost in anger. \u201cI\u2019m not the man to sponge on\na woman, even though she may be so nearly my own as you. No, Chris;\nwhat you can do is this and it would save me. My great creditor is\nGrower, and it is at his hands I shall suffer if at anybody\u2019s; while a\nfortnight\u2019s forbearance on his part would be enough to allow me to pull\nthrough. This may be got out of him in one way\u2014that you would let it be\nknown to him that you are my intended\u2014that we are to be quietly married\nin the next fortnight.\u2014Now stop, you haven\u2019t heard all! Let him have\nthis story, without, of course, any prejudice to the fact that the\nactual engagement between us is to be a long one. Nobody else need\nknow: you could go with me to Mr. Grower and just let me speak to \u2019ee\nbefore him as if we were on such terms. We\u2019ll ask him to keep it\nsecret. He will willingly wait then. At the fortnight\u2019s end I shall be\nable to face him; and I can coolly tell him all is postponed between us\nfor a year or two. Not a soul in the town need know how you\u2019ve helped\nme. Since you wish to be of use, there\u2019s your way.\u201d\n\nIt being now what the people called the \u201cpinking in\u201d of the day, that\nis, the quarter-hour just before dusk, he did not at first observe the\nresult of his own words upon her.\n\n\u201cIf it were anything else,\u201d she began, and the dryness of her lips was\nrepresented in her voice.\n\n\u201cBut it is such a little thing!\u201d he said, with a deep reproach. \u201cLess\nthan you have offered\u2014just the beginning of what you have so lately\npromised! I could have told him as much myself, but he would not have\nbelieved me.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not because I won\u2019t\u2014it is because I absolutely can\u2019t,\u201d she said,\nwith rising distress.\n\n\u201cYou are provoking!\u201d he burst out. \u201cIt is enough to make me force you\nto carry out at once what you have promised.\u201d\n\n\u201cI cannot!\u201d she insisted desperately.\n\n\u201cWhy? When I have only within these few minutes released you from your\npromise to do the thing offhand.\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause\u2014he was a witness!\u201d\n\n\u201cWitness? Of what?\n\n\u201cIf I must tell you\u2014\u2014. Don\u2019t, don\u2019t upbraid me!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell! Let\u2019s hear what you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cWitness of my marriage\u2014Mr. Grower was!\u201d\n\n\u201cMarriage?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. With Mr. Mirielle. O Guinevere! I am already his wife. We were\nmarried this week at Port-Bredy. There were reasons against our doing\nit here. Mr. Grower was a witness because he happened to be at\nPort-Bredy at the time.\u201d\n\nWilbur stood as if idiotized. She was so alarmed at his silence that\nshe murmured something about lending him sufficient money to tide over\nthe perilous fortnight.\n\n\u201cMarried him?\u201d said Wilbur at length. \u201cMy good\u2014what, married him\nwhilst\u2014bound to marry me?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was like this,\u201d she explained, with tears in her eyes and quavers\nin her voice; \u201cdon\u2019t\u2014don\u2019t be cruel! I loved him so much, and I thought\nyou might tell him of the past\u2014and that grieved me! And then, when I\nhad promised you, I learnt of the rumour that you had\u2014sold your first\nwife at a fair like a horse or cow! How could I keep my promise after\nhearing that? I could not risk myself in your hands; it would have been\nletting myself down to take your name after such a scandal. But I knew\nI should lose Rahul if I did not secure him at once\u2014for you would\ncarry out your threat of telling him of our former acquaintance, as\nlong as there was a chance of keeping me for yourself by doing so. But\nyou will not do so now, will you, Guinevere? for it is too late to\nseparate us.\u201d\n\nThe notes of St. Peter\u2019s bells in full peal had been wafted to them\nwhile he spoke, and now the genial thumping of the town band, renowned\nfor its unstinted use of the drum-stick, throbbed down the street.\n\n\u201cThen this racket they are making is on account of it, I suppose?\u201d said\nhe.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014I think he has told them, or else Mr. Grower has.... May I leave\nyou now? My\u2014he was detained at Port-Bredy to-day, and sent me on a few\nhours before him.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen it is _his wife\u2019s_ life I have saved this afternoon.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014and he will be for ever grateful to you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am much obliged to him.... O you false woman!\u201d burst from Wilbur.\n\u201cYou promised me!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes! But it was under compulsion, and I did not know all your\npast\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd now I\u2019ve a mind to punish you as you deserve! One word to this\nbran-new husband of how you courted me, and your precious happiness is\nblown to atoms!\u201d\n\n\u201cGuinevere\u2014pity me, and be generous!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t deserve pity! You did; but you don\u2019t now.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll help you to pay off your debt.\u201d\n\n\u201cA pensioner of Mirielle\u2019s wife\u2014not I! Don\u2019t stay with me longer\u2014I shall\nsay something worse. Go home!\u201d\n\nShe disappeared under the trees of the south walk as the band came\nround the corner, awaking the echoes of every stock and stone in\ncelebration of her happiness. Chris took no heed, but ran up the back\nstreet and reached her own home unperceived.\n\n\n\nXXX.\n\nMirielle\u2019s words to his landlady had referred to the removal of his\nboxes and other effects from his late lodgings to Chris\u2019s house. The\nwork was not heavy, but it had been much hindered on account of the\nfrequent pauses necessitated by exclamations of surprise at the event,\nof which the good woman had been briefly informed by letter a few hours\nearlier.\n\nAt the last moment of leaving Port-Bredy, Mirielle, like John Gilpin,\nhad been detained by important customers, whom, even in the exceptional\ncircumstances, he was not the man to neglect. Moreover, there was a\nconvenience in Chris arriving first at her house. Nobody there as yet\nknew what had happened; and she was best in a position to break the\nnews to the inmates, and give directions for her husband\u2019s\naccommodation. He had, therefore, sent on his two-days\u2019 bride in a\nhired brougham, whilst he went across the country to a certain group of\nwheat and barley ricks a few miles off, telling her the hour at which\nhe might be expected the same evening. This accounted for her trotting\nout to meet him after their separation of four hours.\n\nBy a strenuous effort, after leaving Wilbur she calmed herself in\nreadiness to receive Rahul at High-Place Hall when he came on from his\nlodgings. One supreme fact empowered her to this, the sense that, come\nwhat would, she had secured him. Half-an-hour after her arrival he\nwalked in, and she met him with a relieved gladness, which a month\u2019s\nperilous absence could not have intensified.\n\n\u201cThere is one thing I have not done; and yet it is important,\u201d she said\nearnestly, when she had finished talking about the adventure with the\nbull. \u201cThat is, broken the news of our marriage to my dear\nElizabeth-Kaya.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, and you have not?\u201d he said thoughtfully. \u201cI gave her a lift from\nthe barn homewards; but I did not tell her either; for I thought she\nmight have heard of it in the town, and was keeping back her\ncongratulations from shyness, and all that.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe can hardly have heard of it. But I\u2019ll find out; I\u2019ll go to her\nnow. And, Rahul, you don\u2019t mind her living on with me just the same as\nbefore? She is so quiet and unassuming.\u201d\n\n\u201cO no, indeed I don\u2019t,\u201d Mirielle answered with, perhaps, a faint\nawkwardness. \u201cBut I wonder if she would care to?\u201d\n\n\u201cO yes!\u201d said Chris eagerly. \u201cI am sure she would like to. Besides,\npoor thing, she has no other home.\u201d\n\nMirielle looked at her and saw that she did not suspect the secret of\nher more reserved friend. He liked her all the better for the\nblindness. \u201cArrange as you like with her by all means,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is\nI who have come to your house, not you to mine.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll run and speak to her,\u201d said Chris.\n\nWhen she got upstairs to Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s room the latter had taken off\nher out-door things, and was resting over a book. Chris found in a\nmoment that she had not yet learnt the news.\n\n\u201cI did not come down to you, Miss Templeman,\u201d she said simply. \u201cI was\ncoming to ask if you had quite recovered from your fright, but I found\nyou had a visitor. What are the bells ringing for, I wonder? And the\nband, too, is playing. Somebody must be married; or else they are\npractising for Christmas.\u201d\n\nChris uttered a vague \u201cYes,\u201d and seating herself by the other young\nwoman looked musingly at her. \u201cWhat a lonely creature you are,\u201d she\npresently said; \u201cnever knowing what\u2019s going on, or what people are\ntalking about everywhere with keen interest. You should get out, and\ngossip about as other women do, and then you wouldn\u2019t be obliged to ask\nme a question of that kind. Well, now, I have something to tell you.\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya said she was so glad, and made herself receptive.\n\n\u201cI must go rather a long way back,\u201d said Chris, the difficulty of\nexplaining herself satisfactorily to the pondering one beside her\ngrowing more apparent at each syllable. \u201cYou remember that trying case\nof conscience I told you of some time ago\u2014about the first lover and the\nsecond lover?\u201d She let out in jerky phrases a leading word or two of\nthe story she had told.\n\n\u201cO yes\u2014I remember the story of _your friend_,\u201d said Elizabeth drily,\nregarding the irises of Chris\u2019s eyes as though to catch their exact\nshade. \u201cThe two lovers\u2014the old one and the new: how she wanted to marry\nthe second, but felt she ought to marry the first; so that the good she\nwould have done she did not, and the evil that she would not, that she\ndid\u2014exactly like the Apostle Paul.\u201d\n\n\u201cO no; she didn\u2019t do evil exactly!\u201d said Chris hastily.\n\n\u201cBut you said that she\u2014or as I may say _you_\u201d\u2014answered Elizabeth,\ndropping the mask, \u201cwere in honour and conscience bound to marry the\nfirst?\u201d\n\nChris\u2019s blush at being seen through came and went again before she\nreplied anxiously, \u201cYou will never breathe this, will you,\nElizabeth-Kaya?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly not, if you say not.\n\n\u201cThen I will tell you that the case is more complicated\u2014worse, in\nfact\u2014than it seemed in my story. I and the first man were thrown\ntogether in a strange way, and felt that we ought to be united, as the\nworld had talked of us. He was a widower, as he supposed. He had not\nheard of his first wife for many years. But the wife returned, and we\nparted. She is now dead, and the husband comes paying me addresses\nagain, saying, \u2018Now we\u2019ll complete our purposes.\u2019 But, Elizabeth-Kaya,\nall this amounts to a new courtship of me by him; I was absolved from\nall vows by the return of the other woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you not lately renewed your promise?\u201d said the younger with quiet\nsurmise. She had divined Man Number One.\n\n\u201cThat was wrung from me by a threat.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, it was. But I think when any one gets coupled up with a man in\nthe past so unfortunately as you have done she ought to become his wife\nif she can, even if she were not the sinning party.\u201d\n\nChris\u2019s countenance lost its sparkle. \u201cHe turned out to be a man I\nshould be afraid to marry,\u201d she pleaded. \u201cReally afraid! And it was not\ntill after my renewed promise that I knew it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen there is only one course left to honesty. You must remain a\nsingle woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut think again! Do consider\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI am certain,\u201d interrupted her companion hardily. \u201cI have guessed very\nwell who the man is. My father; and I say it is him or nobody for you.\u201d\n\nAny suspicion of impropriety was to Elizabeth-Kaya like a red rag to a\nbull. Her craving for correctness of procedure was, indeed, almost\nvicious. Owing to her early troubles with regard to her mother a\nsemblance of irregularity had terrors for her which those whose names\nare safeguarded from suspicion know nothing of. \u201cYou ought to marry Mr.\nWilbur or nobody\u2014certainly not another man!\u201d she went on with a\nquivering lip in whose movement two passions shared.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t admit that!\u201d said Chris passionately.\n\n\u201cAdmit it or not, it is true!\u201d\n\nChris covered her eyes with her right hand, as if she could plead no\nmore, holding out her left to Elizabeth-Kaya.\n\n\u201cWhy, you _have_ married him!\u201d cried the latter, jumping up with\npleasure after a glance at Chris\u2019s fingers. \u201cWhen did you do it? Why\ndid you not tell me, instead of teasing me like this? How very\nhonourable of you! He did treat my mother badly once, it seems, in a\nmoment of intoxication. And it is true that he is stern sometimes. But\nyou will rule him entirely, I am sure, with your beauty and wealth and\naccomplishments. You are the woman he will adore, and we shall all\nthree be happy together now!\u201d\n\n\u201cO, my Elizabeth-Kaya!\u201d cried Chris distressfully. \u201c\u2019Tis somebody\nelse that I have married! I was so desperate\u2014so afraid of being forced\nto anything else\u2014so afraid of revelations that would quench his love\nfor me, that I resolved to do it offhand, come what might, and purchase\na week of happiness at any cost!\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2014have\u2014married Mr. Mirielle!\u201d cried Elizabeth-Kaya, in Nathan tones\n\nChris bowed. She had recovered herself.\n\n\u201cThe bells are ringing on that account,\u201d she said. \u201cMy husband is\ndownstairs. He will live here till a more suitable house is ready for\nus; and I have told him that I want you to stay with me just as\nbefore.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet me think of it alone,\u201d the girl quickly replied, corking up the\nturmoil of her feeling with grand control.\n\n\u201cYou shall. I am sure we shall be happy together.\u201d\n\nChris departed to join Rahul below, a vague uneasiness floating over\nher joy at seeing him quite at home there. Not on account of her friend\nElizabeth did she feel it: for of the bearings of Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s\nemotions she had not the least suspicion; but on Wilbur\u2019s alone.\n\nNow the instant decision of Phyllis Wilbur\u2019s daughter was to dwell in\nthat house no more. Apart from her estimate of the propriety of\nChris\u2019s conduct, Mirielle had been so nearly her avowed lover that she\nfelt she could not abide there.\n\nIt was still early in the evening when she hastily put on her things\nand went out. In a few minutes, knowing the ground, she had found a\nsuitable lodging, and arranged to enter it that night. Returning and\nentering noiselessly she took off her pretty dress and arrayed herself\nin a plain one, packing up the other to keep as her best; for she would\nhave to be very economical now. She wrote a note to leave for Chris,\nwho was closely shut up in the drawing-room with Mirielle; and then\nElizabeth-Kaya called a man with a wheel-barrow; and seeing her boxes\nput into it she trotted off down the street to her rooms. They were in\nthe street in which Wilbur lived, and almost opposite his door.\n\nHere she sat down and considered the means of subsistence. The little\nannual sum settled on her by her stepfather would keep body and soul\ntogether. A wonderful skill in netting of all sorts\u2014acquired in\nchildhood by making seines in Chris\u2019s home\u2014might serve her in good\nstead; and her studies, which were pursued unremittingly, might serve\nher in still better.\n\nBy this time the marriage that had taken place was known throughout\nCasterbridge; had been discussed noisily on kerbstones, confidentially\nbehind counters, and jovially at the Three Mariners. Whether Mirielle\nwould sell his business and set up for a gentleman on his wife\u2019s money,\nor whether he would show independence enough to stick to his trade in\nspite of his brilliant alliance, was a great point of interest.\n\n\n\nXXXI.\n\nThe retort of the furmity-woman before the magistrates had spread; and\nin four-and-twenty hours there was not a person in Casterbridge who\nremained unacquainted with the story of Wilbur\u2019s mad freak at\nWeydon-Priors Fair, long years before. The amends he had made in after\nlife were lost sight of in the dramatic glare of the original act. Had\nthe incident been well known of old and always, it might by this time\nhave grown to be lightly regarded as the rather tall wild oat, but\nwell-nigh the single one, of a young man with whom the steady and\nmature (if somewhat headstrong) burgher of to-day had scarcely a point\nin common. But the act having lain as dead and buried ever since, the\ninterspace of years was unperceived; and the black spot of his youth\nwore the aspect of a recent crime.\n\nSmall as the police-court incident had been in itself, it formed the\nedge or turn in the incline of Wilbur\u2019s fortunes. On that day\u2014almost\nat that minute\u2014he passed the ridge of prosperity and honour, and began\nto descend rapidly on the other side. It was strange how soon he sank\nin esteem. Socially he had received a startling fillip downwards; and,\nhaving already lost commercial buoyancy from rash transactions, the\nvelocity of his descent in both aspects became accelerated every hour.\n\nHe now gazed more at the pavements and less at the house-fronts when he\nwalked about; more at the feet and leggings of men, and less into the\npupils of their eyes with the blazing regard which formerly had made\nthem blink.\n\nNew events combined to undo him. It had been a bad year for others\nbesides himself, and the heavy failure of a debtor whom he had trusted\ngenerously completed the overthrow of his tottering credit. And now, in\nhis desperation, he failed to preserve that strict correspondence\nbetween bulk and sample which is the soul of commerce in grain. For\nthis, one of his men was mainly to blame; that worthy, in his great\nunwisdom, having picked over the sample of an enormous quantity of\nsecond-rate corn which Wilbur had in hand, and removed the pinched,\nblasted, and smutted grains in great numbers. The produce if honestly\noffered would have created no scandal; but the blunder of\nmisrepresentation, coming at such a moment, dragged Wilbur\u2019s name\ninto the ditch.\n\nThe details of his failure were of the ordinary kind. One day\nElizabeth-Kaya was passing the King\u2019s Arms, when she saw people\nbustling in and out more than usual where there was no market. A\nbystander informed her, with some surprise at her ignorance, that it\nwas a meeting of the Commissioners under Mr. Wilbur\u2019s bankruptcy. She\nfelt quite tearful, and when she heard that he was present in the hotel\nshe wished to go in and see him, but was advised not to intrude that\nday.\n\nThe room in which debtor and creditors had assembled was a front one,\nand Wilbur, looking out of the window, had caught sight of\nElizabeth-Kaya through the wire blind. His examination had closed, and\nthe creditors were leaving. The appearance of Elizabeth threw him into\na reverie, till, turning his face from the window, and towering above\nall the rest, he called their attention for a moment more. His\ncountenance had somewhat changed from its flush of prosperity; the\nblack hair and whiskers were the same as ever, but a film of ash was\nover the rest.\n\n\u201cGentlemen,\u201d he said, \u201cover and above the assets that we\u2019ve been\ntalking about, and that appear on the balance-sheet, there be these. It\nall belongs to ye, as much as everything else I\u2019ve got, and I don\u2019t\nwish to keep it from you, not I.\u201d Saying this, he took his gold watch\nfrom his pocket and laid it on the table; then his purse\u2014the yellow\ncanvas moneybag, such as was carried by all farmers and dealers\u2014untying\nit, and shaking the money out upon the table beside the watch. The\nlatter he drew back quickly for an instant, to remove the hair-guard\nmade and given him by Chris. \u201cThere, now you have all I\u2019ve got in the\nworld,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I wish for your sakes \u2019twas more.\u201d\n\nThe creditors, farmers almost to a man, looked at the watch, and at the\nmoney, and into the street; when Farmer James Everdene of Weatherbury\nspoke.\n\n\u201cNo, no, Wilbur,\u201d he said warmly. \u201cWe don\u2019t want that. \u2019Tis\nhonourable in ye; but keep it. What do you say, neighbours\u2014do ye\nagree?\u201d\n\n\u201cAy, sure: we don\u2019t wish it at all,\u201d said Grower, another creditor.\n\n\u201cLet him keep it, of course,\u201d murmured another in the background\u2014a\nsilent, reserved young man named Boldwood; and the rest responded\nunanimously.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said the senior Commissioner, addressing Wilbur, \u201cthough the\ncase is a desperate one, I am bound to admit that I have never met a\ndebtor who behaved more fairly. I\u2019ve proved the balance-sheet to be as\nhonestly made out as it could possibly be; we have had no trouble;\nthere have been no evasions and no concealments. The rashness of\ndealing which led to this unhappy situation is obvious enough; but as\nfar as I can see every attempt has been made to avoid wronging\nanybody.\u201d\n\nWilbur was more affected by this than he cared to let them perceive,\nand he turned aside to the window again. A general murmur of agreement\nfollowed the Commissioner\u2019s words, and the meeting dispersed. When they\nwere gone Wilbur regarded the watch they had returned to him.\n\u201c\u2019Tisn\u2019t mine by rights,\u201d he said to himself. \u201cWhy the devil didn\u2019t\nthey take it?\u2014I don\u2019t want what don\u2019t belong to me!\u201d Moved by a\nrecollection he took the watch to the maker\u2019s just opposite, sold it\nthere and then for what the tradesman offered, and went with the\nproceeds to one among the smaller of his creditors, a cottager of\nDurnover in straitened circumstances, to whom he handed the money.\n\nWhen everything was ticketed that Wilbur had owned, and the auctions\nwere in progress, there was quite a sympathetic reaction in the town,\nwhich till then for some time past had done nothing but condemn him.\nNow that Wilbur\u2019s whole career was pictured distinctly to his\nneighbours, and they could see how admirably he had used his one talent\nof energy to create a position of affluence out of absolutely\nnothing\u2014which was really all he could show when he came to the town as\na journeyman hay-trusser, with his wimble and knife in his basket\u2014they\nwondered and regretted his fall.\n\nTry as she might, Elizabeth could never meet with him. She believed in\nhim still, though nobody else did; and she wanted to be allowed to\nforgive him for his roughness to her, and to help him in his trouble.\n\nShe wrote to him; he did not reply. She then went to his house\u2014the\ngreat house she had lived in so happily for a time\u2014with its front of\ndun brick, vitrified here and there and its heavy sash-bars\u2014but\nWilbur was to be found there no more. The ex-Mayor had left the home\nof his prosperity, and gone into Cormac\u2019s cottage by the Priory Mill\u2014the\nsad purlieu to which he had wandered on the night of his discovery that\nshe was not his daughter. Thither she went.\n\nElizabeth thought it odd that he had fixed on this spot to retire to,\nbut assumed that necessity had no choice. Trees which seemed old enough\nto have been planted by the friars still stood around, and the back\nhatch of the original mill yet formed a cascade which had raised its\nterrific roar for centuries. The cottage itself was built of old stones\nfrom the long dismantled Priory, scraps of tracery, moulded\nwindow-jambs, and arch-labels, being mixed in with the rubble of the\nwalls.\n\nIn this cottage he occupied a couple of rooms, Cormac, whom Wilbur had\nemployed, abused, cajoled, and dismissed by turns, being the\nhouseholder. But even here her stepfather could not be seen.\n\n\u201cNot by his daughter?\u201d pleaded Elizabeth.\n\n\u201cBy nobody\u2014at present: that\u2019s his order,\u201d she was informed.\n\nAfterwards she was passing by the corn-stores and hay-barns which had\nbeen the headquarters of his business. She knew that he ruled there no\nlonger; but it was with amazement that she regarded the familiar\ngateway. A smear of decisive lead-coloured paint had been laid on to\nobliterate Wilbur\u2019s name, though its letters dimly loomed through\nlike ships in a fog. Over these, in fresh white, spread the name of\nMirielle.\n\nMelanie Karissa was edging his skeleton in at the wicket, and she said,\n\u201cMr. Mirielle is master here?\u201d\n\n\u201cYaas, Miss Henchet,\u201d he said, \u201cMr. Mirielle have bought the concern and\nall of we work-folk with it; and \u2019tis better for us than \u2019twas\u2014though I\nshouldn\u2019t say that to you as a daughter-law. We work harder, but we\nbain\u2019t made afeard now. It was fear made my few poor hairs so thin! No\nbusting out, no slamming of doors, no meddling with yer eternal soul\nand all that; and though \u2019tis a shilling a week less I\u2019m the richer\nman; for what\u2019s all the world if yer mind is always in a larry, Miss\nHenchet?\u201d\n\nThe intelligence was in a general sense true; and Wilbur\u2019s stores,\nwhich had remained in a paralyzed condition during the settlement of\nhis bankruptcy, were stirred into activity again when the new tenant\nhad possession. Thenceforward the full sacks, looped with the shining\nchain, went scurrying up and down under the cat-head, hairy arms were\nthrust out from the different door-ways, and the grain was hauled in;\ntrusses of hay were tossed anew in and out of the barns, and the\nwimbles creaked; while the scales and steel-yards began to be busy\nwhere guess-work had formerly been the rule.\n\n\n\nXXXII.\n\nTwo bridges stood near the lower part of Casterbridge town. The first,\nof weather-stained brick, was immediately at the end of High Street,\nwhere a diverging branch from that thoroughfare ran round to the\nlow-lying Durnover lanes; so that the precincts of the bridge formed\nthe merging point of respectability and indigence. The second bridge,\nof stone, was further out on the highway\u2014in fact, fairly in the\nmeadows, though still within the town boundary.\n\nThese bridges had speaking countenances. Every projection in each was\nworn down to obtuseness, partly by weather, more by friction from\ngenerations of loungers, whose toes and heels had from year to year\nmade restless movements against these parapets, as they had stood there\nmeditating on the aspect of affairs. In the case of the more friable\nbricks and stones even the flat faces were worn into hollows by the\nsame mixed mechanism. The masonry of the top was clamped with iron at\neach joint; since it had been no uncommon thing for desperate men to\nwrench the coping off and throw it down the river, in reckless defiance\nof the magistrates.\n\nFor to this pair of bridges gravitated all the failures of the town;\nthose who had failed in business, in love, in sobriety, in crime. Why\nthe unhappy hereabout usually chose the bridges for their meditations\nin preference to a railing, a gate, or a stile, was not so clear.\n\nThere was a marked difference of quality between the personages who\nhaunted the near bridge of brick and the personages who haunted the far\none of stone. Those of lowest character preferred the former, adjoining\nthe town; they did not mind the glare of the public eye. They had been\nof comparatively no account during their successes; and though they\nmight feel dispirited, they had no particular sense of shame in their\nruin. Their hands were mostly kept in their pockets; they wore a\nleather strap round their hips or knees, and boots that required a\ngreat deal of lacing, but seemed never to get any. Instead of sighing\nat their adversities they spat, and instead of saying the iron had\nentered into their souls they said they were down on their luck. Cormac\nin his time of distress had often stood here; so had Mother Kendra,\nFloyd Coney, and poor Melanie Karissa.\n\nThe _miserables_ who would pause on the remoter bridge were of a\npoliter stamp. They included bankrupts, hypochondriacs, persons who\nwere what is called \u201cout of a situation\u201d from fault or lucklessness,\nthe inefficient of the professional class\u2014shabby-genteel men, who did\nnot know how to get rid of the weary time between breakfast and dinner,\nand the yet more weary time between dinner and dark. The eye of this\nspecies were mostly directed over the parapet upon the running water\nbelow. A man seen there looking thus fixedly into the river was pretty\nsure to be one whom the world did not treat kindly for some reason or\nother. While one in straits on the townward bridge did not mind who saw\nhim so, and kept his back to the parapet to survey the passers-by, one\nin straits on this never faced the road, never turned his head at\ncoming footsteps, but, sensitive to his own condition, watched the\ncurrent whenever a stranger approached, as if some strange fish\ninterested him, though every finned thing had been poached out of the\nriver years before.\n\nThere and thus they would muse; if their grief were the grief of\noppression they would wish themselves kings; if their grief were\npoverty, wish themselves millionaires; if sin, they would wish they\nwere saints or angels; if despised love, that they were some\nmuch-courted Adonis of county fame. Some had been known to stand and\nthink so long with this fixed gaze downward that eventually they had\nallowed their poor carcases to follow that gaze; and they were\ndiscovered the next morning out of reach of their troubles, either here\nor in the deep pool called Blackwater, a little higher up the river.\n\nTo this bridge came Wilbur, as other unfortunates had come before\nhim, his way thither being by the riverside path on the chilly edge of\nthe town. Here he was standing one windy afternoon when Durnover church\nclock struck five. While the gusts were bringing the notes to his ears\nacross the damp intervening flat a man passed behind him and greeted\nWilbur by name. Wilbur turned slightly and saw that the comer was\nCormac, his old foreman, now employed elsewhere, to whom, though he hated\nhim, he had gone for lodgings because Cormac was the one man in\nCasterbridge whose observation and opinion the fallen corn-merchant\ndespised to the point of indifference.\n\nWilbur returned him a scarcely perceptible nod, and Cormac stopped.\n\n\u201cHe and she are gone into their new house to-day,\u201d said Cormac.\n\n\u201cOh,\u201d said Wilbur absently. \u201cWhich house is that?\u201d\n\n\u201cYour old one.\u201d\n\n\u201cGone into my house?\u201d And starting up Wilbur added, \u201c_My_ house of\nall others in the town!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, as somebody was sure to live there, and you couldn\u2019t, it can do\n\u2019ee no harm that he\u2019s the man.\u201d\n\nIt was quite true: he felt that it was doing him no harm. Mirielle, who\nhad already taken the yards and stores, had acquired possession of the\nhouse for the obvious convenience of its contiguity. And yet this act\nof his taking up residence within those roomy chambers while he, their\nformer tenant, lived in a cottage, galled Wilbur indescribably.\n\nCormac continued: \u201cAnd you heard of that fellow who bought all the best\nfurniture at your sale? He was bidding for no other than Mirielle all\nthe while! It has never been moved out of the house, as he\u2019d already\ngot the lease.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy furniture too! Surely he\u2019ll buy my body and soul likewise!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s no saying he won\u2019t, if you be willing to sell.\u201d And having\nplanted these wounds in the heart of his once imperious master Cormac\nwent on his way; while Wilbur stared and stared into the racing river\ntill the bridge seemed moving backward with him.\n\nThe low land grew blacker, and the sky a deeper grey, When the\nlandscape looked like a picture blotted in with ink, another traveller\napproached the great stone bridge. He was driving a gig, his direction\nbeing also townwards. On the round of the middle of the arch the gig\nstopped. \u201cMr. Wilbur?\u201d came from it in the voice of Mirielle. Wilbur\nturned his face.\n\nFinding that he had guessed rightly Mirielle told the man who\naccompanied him to drive home; while he alighted and went up to his\nformer friend.\n\n\u201cI have heard that you think of emigrating, Mr. Wilbur?\u201d he said. \u201cIs\nit true? I have a real reason for asking.\u201d\n\nWilbur withheld his answer for several instants, and then said, \u201cYes;\nit is true. I am going where you were going to a few years ago, when I\nprevented you and got you to bide here. \u2019Tis turn and turn about, isn\u2019t\nit! Do ye mind how we stood like this in the Chalk Walk when I\npersuaded \u2019ee to stay? You then stood without a chattel to your name,\nand I was the master of the house in Corn Street. But now I stand\nwithout a stick or a rag, and the master of that house is you.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes; that\u2019s so! It\u2019s the way o\u2019 the warrld,\u201d said Mirielle.\n\n\u201cHa, ha, true!\u201d cried Wilbur, throwing himself into a mood of\njocularity. \u201cUp and down! I\u2019m used to it. What\u2019s the odds after all!\u201d\n\n\u201cNow listen to me, if it\u2019s no taking up your time,\u201d said Mirielle, \u201cjust\nas I listened to you. Don\u2019t go. Stay at home.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I can do nothing else, man!\u201d said Wilbur scornfully. \u201cThe little\nmoney I have will just keep body and soul together for a few weeks, and\nno more. I have not felt inclined to go back to journey-work yet; but I\ncan\u2019t stay doing nothing, and my best chance is elsewhere.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo; but what I propose is this\u2014if ye will listen. Come and live in\nyour old house. We can spare some rooms very well\u2014I am sure my wife\nwould not mind it at all\u2014until there\u2019s an opening for ye.\u201d\n\nWilbur started. Probably the picture drawn by the unsuspecting Rahul\nof himself under the same roof with Chris was too striking to be\nreceived with equanimity. \u201cNo, no,\u201d he said gruffly; \u201cwe should\nquarrel.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou should hae a part to yourself,\u201d said Mirielle; \u201cand nobody to\ninterfere wi\u2019 you. It will be a deal healthier than down there by the\nriver where you live now.\u201d\n\nStill Wilbur refused. \u201cYou don\u2019t know what you ask,\u201d he said.\n\u201cHowever, I can do no less than thank \u2019ee.\u201d\n\nThey walked into the town together side by side, as they had done when\nWilbur persuaded the young Scotchman to remain. \u201cWill you come in and\nhave some supper?\u201d said Mirielle when they reached the middle of the\ntown, where their paths diverged right and left.\n\n\u201cNo, no.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy-the-bye, I had nearly forgot. I bought a good deal of your\nfurniture.\n\n\u201cSo I have heard.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, it was no that I wanted it so very much for myself; but I wish\nye to pick out all that you care to have\u2014such things as may be endeared\nto ye by associations, or particularly suited to your use. And take\nthem to your own house\u2014it will not be depriving me, we can do with less\nvery well, and I will have plenty of opportunities of getting more.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2014give it to me for nothing?\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cBut you paid the\ncreditors for it!\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, yes; but maybe it\u2019s worth more to you than it is to me.\u201d\n\nWilbur was a little moved. \u201cI\u2014sometimes think I\u2019ve wronged \u2019ee!\u201d he\nsaid, in tones which showed the disquietude that the night shades hid\nin his face. He shook Mirielle abruptly by the hand, and hastened away\nas if unwilling to betray himself further. Mirielle saw him turn through\nthe thoroughfare into Bull Stake and vanish down towards the Priory\nMill.\n\nMeanwhile Elizabeth-Kaya, in an upper room no larger than the Prophet\u2019s\nchamber, and with the silk attire of her palmy days packed away in a\nbox, was netting with great industry between the hours which she\ndevoted to studying such books as she could get hold of.\n\nHer lodgings being nearly opposite her stepfather\u2019s former residence,\nnow Mirielle\u2019s, she could see Rahul and Chris speeding in and out of\ntheir door with all the bounding enthusiasm of their situation. She\navoided looking that way as much as possible, but it was hardly in\nhuman nature to keep the eyes averted when the door slammed.\n\nWhile living on thus quietly she heard the news that Wilbur had\ncaught cold and was confined to his room\u2014possibly a result of standing\nabout the meads in damp weather. She went off to his house at once.\nThis time she was determined not to be denied admittance, and made her\nway upstairs. He was sitting up in the bed with a greatcoat round him,\nand at first resented her intrusion. \u201cGo away\u2014go away,\u201d he said. \u201cI\ndon\u2019t like to see \u2019ee!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, father\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t like to see \u2019ee,\u201d he repeated.\n\nHowever, the ice was broken, and she remained. She made the room more\ncomfortable, gave directions to the people below, and by the time she\nwent away had reconciled her stepfather to her visiting him.\n\nThe effect, either of her ministrations or of her mere presence, was a\nrapid recovery. He soon was well enough to go out; and now things\nseemed to wear a new colour in his eyes. He no longer thought of\nemigration, and thought more of Elizabeth. The having nothing to do\nmade him more dreary than any other circumstance; and one day, with\nbetter views of Mirielle than he had held for some time, and a sense\nthat honest work was not a thing to be ashamed of, he stoically went\ndown to Mirielle\u2019s yard and asked to be taken on as a journeyman\nhay-trusser. He was engaged at once. This hiring of Wilbur was done\nthrough a foreman, Mirielle feeling that it was undesirable to come\npersonally in contact with the ex-corn-factor more than was absolutely\nnecessary. While anxious to help him he was well aware by this time of\nhis uncertain temper, and thought reserved relations best. For the same\nreason his orders to Wilbur to proceed to this and that country farm\ntrussing in the usual way were always given through a third person.\n\nFor a time these arrangements worked well, it being the custom to truss\nin the respective stack-yards, before bringing it away, the hay bought\nat the different farms about the neighbourhood; so that Wilbur was\noften absent at such places the whole week long. When this was all\ndone, and Wilbur had become in a measure broken in, he came to work\ndaily on the home premises like the rest. And thus the once flourishing\nmerchant and Mayor and what not stood as a day-labourer in the barns\nand granaries he formerly had owned.\n\n\u201cI have worked as a journeyman before now, ha\u2019n\u2019t I?\u201d he would say in\nhis defiant way; \u201cand why shouldn\u2019t I do it again?\u201d But he looked a far\ndifferent journeyman from the one he had been in his earlier days. Then\nhe had worn clean, suitable clothes, light and cheerful in hue;\nleggings yellow as marigolds, corduroys immaculate as new flax, and a\nneckerchief like a flower-garden. Now he wore the remains of an old\nblue cloth suit of his gentlemanly times, a rusty silk hat, and a once\nblack satin stock, soiled and shabby. Clad thus he went to and fro,\nstill comparatively an active man\u2014for he was not much over forty\u2014and\nsaw with the other men in the yard Rahul Mirielle going in and out the\ngreen door that led to the garden, and the big house, and Chris.\n\nAt the beginning of the winter it was rumoured about Casterbridge that\nMr. Mirielle, already in the Town Council, was to be proposed for Mayor\nin a year or two.\n\n\u201cYes, she was wise, she was wise in her generation!\u201d said Wilbur to\nhimself when he heard of this one day on his way to Mirielle\u2019s hay-barn.\nHe thought it over as he wimbled his bonds, and the piece of news acted\nas a reviviscent breath to that old view of his\u2014of Rahul Mirielle as\nhis triumphant rival who rode rough-shod over him.\n\n\u201cA fellow of his age going to be Mayor, indeed!\u201d he murmured with a\ncorner-drawn smile on his mouth. \u201cBut \u2019tis her money that floats en\nupward. Ha-ha\u2014how cust odd it is! Here be I, his former master, working\nfor him as man, and he the man standing as master, with my house and my\nfurniture and my what-you-may-call wife all his own.\u201d\n\nHe repeated these things a hundred times a day. During the whole period\nof his acquaintance with Chris he had never wished to claim her as\nhis own so desperately as he now regretted her loss. It was no\nmercenary hankering after her fortune that moved him, though that\nfortune had been the means of making her so much the more desired by\ngiving her the air of independence and sauciness which attracts men of\nhis composition. It had given her servants, house, and fine clothing\u2014a\nsetting that invested Chris with a startling novelty in the eyes of\nhim who had known her in her narrow days.\n\nHe accordingly lapsed into moodiness, and at every allusion to the\npossibility of Mirielle\u2019s near election to the municipal chair his\nformer hatred of the Scotchman returned. Concurrently with this he\nunderwent a moral change. It resulted in his significantly saying every\nnow and then, in tones of recklessness, \u201cOnly a fortnight more!\u201d\u2014\u201cOnly\na dozen days!\u201d and so forth, lessening his figures day by day.\n\n\u201cWhy d\u2019ye say only a dozen days?\u201d asked Solomon Longways as he worked\nbeside Wilbur in the granary weighing oats.\n\n\u201cBecause in twelve days I shall be released from my oath.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat oath?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe oath to drink no spirituous liquid. In twelve days it will be\ntwenty-one years since I swore it, and then I mean to enjoy myself,\nplease God!\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya sat at her window one Sunday, and while there she heard\nin the street below a conversation which introduced Wilbur\u2019s name.\nShe was wondering what was the matter, when a third person who was\npassing by asked the question in her mind.\n\n\u201cGuinevere Wilbur have busted out drinking after taking nothing for\ntwenty-one years!\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya jumped up, put on her things, and went out.\n\n\n\nXXXIII.\n\nAt this date there prevailed in Casterbridge a convivial\ncustom\u2014scarcely recognized as such, yet none the less established. On\nthe afternoon of every Sunday a large contingent of the Casterbridge\njourneymen\u2014steady churchgoers and sedate characters\u2014having attended\nservice, filed from the church doors across the way to the Three\nMariners Inn. The rear was usually brought up by the choir, with their\nbass-viols, fiddles, and flutes under their arms.\n\nThe great point, the point of honour, on these sacred occasions was for\neach man to strictly limit himself to half-a-pint of liquor. This\nscrupulosity was so well understood by the landlord that the whole\ncompany was served in cups of that measure. They were all exactly\nalike\u2014straight-sided, with two leafless lime-trees done in eel-brown on\nthe sides\u2014one towards the drinker\u2019s lips, the other confronting his\ncomrade. To wonder how many of these cups the landlord possessed\naltogether was a favourite exercise of children in the marvellous.\nForty at least might have been seen at these times in the large room,\nforming a ring round the margin of the great sixteen-legged oak table,\nlike the monolithic circle of Stonehenge in its pristine days. Outside\nand above the forty cups came a circle of forty smoke-jets from forty\nclay pipes; outside the pipes the countenances of the forty\nchurch-goers, supported at the back by a circle of forty chairs.\n\nThe conversation was not the conversation of week-days, but a thing\naltogether finer in point and higher in tone. They invariably discussed\nthe sermon, dissecting it, weighing it, as above or below the\naverage\u2014the general tendency being to regard it as a scientific feat or\nperformance which had no relation to their own lives, except as between\ncritics and the thing criticized. The bass-viol player and the clerk\nusually spoke with more authority than the rest on account of their\nofficial connection with the preacher.\n\nNow the Three Mariners was the inn chosen by Wilbur as the place for\nclosing his long term of dramless years. He had so timed his entry as\nto be well established in the large room by the time the forty\nchurch-goers entered to their customary cups. The flush upon his face\nproclaimed at once that the vow of twenty-one years had lapsed, and the\nera of recklessness begun anew. He was seated on a small table, drawn\nup to the side of the massive oak board reserved for the churchmen, a\nfew of whom nodded to him as they took their places and said, \u201cHow be\nye, Mr. Wilbur? Quite a stranger here.\u201d\n\nWilbur did not take the trouble to reply for a few moments, and his\neyes rested on his stretched-out legs and boots. \u201cYes,\u201d he said at\nlength; \u201cthat\u2019s true. I\u2019ve been down in spirit for weeks; some of ye\nknow the cause. I am better now, but not quite serene. I want you\nfellows of the choir to strike up a tune; and what with that and this\nbrew of Stannidge\u2019s, I am in hopes of getting altogether out of my\nminor key.\u201d\n\n\u201cWith all my heart,\u201d said the first fiddle. \u201cWe\u2019ve let back our\nstrings, that\u2019s true, but we can soon pull \u2019em up again. Sound A,\nneighbours, and give the man a stave.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t care a curse what the words be,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cHymns,\nballets, or rantipole rubbish; the Rogue\u2019s March or the cherubim\u2019s\nwarble\u2014\u2019tis all the same to me if \u2019tis good harmony, and well put out.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014heh, heh\u2014it may be we can do that, and not a man among us that\nhave sat in the gallery less than twenty year,\u201d said the leader of the\nband. \u201cAs \u2019tis Sunday, neighbours, suppose we raise the Fourth Psa\u2019am,\nto Samuel Wakely\u2019s tune, as improved by me?\u201d\n\n\u201cHang Samuel Wakely\u2019s tune, as improved by thee!\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cChuck\nacross one of your psalters\u2014old Wiltshire is the only tune worth\nsinging\u2014the psalm-tune that would make my blood ebb and flow like the\nsea when I was a steady chap. I\u2019ll find some words to fit en.\u201d He took\none of the psalters and began turning over the leaves.\n\nChancing to look out of the window at that moment he saw a flock of\npeople passing by, and perceived them to be the congregation of the\nupper church, now just dismissed, their sermon having been a longer one\nthan that the lower parish was favoured with. Among the rest of the\nleading inhabitants walked Mr. Councillor Mirielle with Chris upon his\narm, the observed and imitated of all the smaller tradesmen\u2019s\nwomankind. Wilbur\u2019s mouth changed a little, and he continued to turn\nover the leaves.\n\n\u201cNow then,\u201d he said, \u201cPsalm the Hundred-and-Ninth, to the tune of\nWiltshire: verses ten to fifteen. I gi\u2019e ye the words:\n\n\u201cHis seed shall orphans be, his wife\n    A widow plunged in grief;\nHis vagrant children beg their bread\n    Where none can give relief.\n\nHis ill-got riches shall be made\n    To usurers a prey;\nThe fruit of all his toil shall be\n    By strangers borne away.\n\nNone shall be found that to his wants\n    Their mercy will extend,\nOr to his helpless orphan seed\n    The least assistance lend.\n\nA swift destruction soon shall seize\n    On his unhappy race;\nAnd the next age his hated name\n    Shall utterly deface.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cI know the Psa\u2019am\u2014I know the Psa\u2019am!\u201d said the leader hastily; \u201cbut I\nwould as lief not sing it. \u2019Twasn\u2019t made for singing. We chose it once\nwhen the gipsy stole the pa\u2019son\u2019s mare, thinking to please him, but\npa\u2019son were quite upset. Whatever Servant David were thinking about\nwhen he made a Psalm that nobody can sing without disgracing himself, I\ncan\u2019t fathom! Now then, the Fourth Psalm, to Samuel Wakely\u2019s tune, as\nimproved by me.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Od seize your sauce\u2014I tell ye to sing the Hundred-and-Ninth to\nWiltshire, and sing it you shall!\u201d roared Wilbur. \u201cNot a single one\nof all the droning crew of ye goes out of this room till that Psalm is\nsung!\u201d He slipped off the table, seized the poker, and going to the\ndoor placed his back against it. \u201cNow then, go ahead, if you don\u2019t wish\nto have your cust pates broke!\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t \u2019ee, don\u2019t \u2019ee take on so!\u2014As \u2019tis the Sabbath-day, and \u2019tis\nServant David\u2019s words and not ours, perhaps we don\u2019t mind for once,\nhey?\u201d said one of the terrified choir, looking round upon the rest. So\nthe instruments were tuned and the comminatory verses sung.\n\n\u201cThank ye, thank ye,\u201d said Wilbur in a softened voice, his eyes\ngrowing downcast, and his manner that of a man much moved by the\nstrains. \u201cDon\u2019t you blame David,\u201d he went on in low tones, shaking his\nhead without raising his eyes. \u201cHe knew what he was about when he wrote\nthat!... If I could afford it, be hanged if I wouldn\u2019t keep a church\nchoir at my own expense to play and sing to me at these low, dark times\nof my life. But the bitter thing is, that when I was rich I didn\u2019t need\nwhat I could have, and now I be poor I can\u2019t have what I need!\u201d\n\nWhile they paused, Chris and Mirielle passed again, this time\nhomeward, it being their custom to take, like others, a short walk out\non the highway and back, between church and tea-time. \u201cThere\u2019s the man\nwe\u2019ve been singing about,\u201d said Wilbur.\n\nThe players and singers turned their heads and saw his meaning. \u201cHeaven\nforbid!\u201d said the bass-player.\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis the man,\u201d repeated Wilbur doggedly.\n\n\u201cThen if I\u2019d known,\u201d said the performer on the clarionet solemnly,\n\u201cthat \u2019twas meant for a living man, nothing should have drawn out of my\nwynd-pipe the breath for that Psalm, so help me!\u201d\n\n\u201cNor from mine,\u201d said the first singer. \u201cBut, thought I, as it was made\nso long ago perhaps there isn\u2019t much in it, so I\u2019ll oblige a neighbour;\nfor there\u2019s nothing to be said against the tune.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, my boys, you\u2019ve sung it,\u201d said Wilbur triumphantly. \u201cAs for him,\nit was partly by his songs that he got over me, and heaved me out.... I\ncould double him up like that\u2014and yet I don\u2019t.\u201d He laid the poker\nacross his knee, bent it as if it were a twig, flung it down, and came\naway from the door.\n\nIt was at this time that Elizabeth-Kaya, having heard where her\nstepfather was, entered the room with a pale and agonized countenance.\nThe choir and the rest of the company moved off, in accordance with\ntheir half-pint regulation. Elizabeth-Kaya went up to Wilbur, and\nentreated him to accompany her home.\n\nBy this hour the volcanic fires of his nature had burnt down, and\nhaving drunk no great quantity as yet he was inclined to acquiesce. She\ntook his arm, and together they went on. Wilbur walked blankly, like\na blind man, repeating to himself the last words of the singers\u2014\n\n\u201cAnd the next age his hated name\n    Shall utterly deface.\u201d\n\n\nAt length he said to her, \u201cI am a man to my word. I have kept my oath\nfor twenty-one years; and now I can drink with a good conscience.... If\nI don\u2019t do for him\u2014well, I am a fearful practical joker when I choose!\nHe has taken away everything from me, and by heavens, if I meet him I\nwon\u2019t answer for my deeds!\u201d\n\nThese half-uttered words alarmed Elizabeth\u2014all the more by reason of\nthe still determination of Wilbur\u2019s mien.\n\n\u201cWhat will you do?\u201d she asked cautiously, while trembling with\ndisquietude, and guessing Wilbur\u2019s allusion only too well.\n\nWilbur did not answer, and they went on till they had reached his\ncottage. \u201cMay I come in?\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cNo, no; not to-day,\u201d said Wilbur; and she went away; feeling that to\ncaution Mirielle was almost her duty, as it was certainly her strong\ndesire.\n\nAs on the Sunday, so on the week-days, Mirielle and Chris might have\nbeen seen flitting about the town like two butterflies\u2014or rather like a\nbee and a butterfly in league for life. She seemed to take no pleasure\nin going anywhere except in her husband\u2019s company; and hence when\nbusiness would not permit him to waste an afternoon she remained\nindoors waiting for the time to pass till his return, her face being\nvisible to Elizabeth-Kaya from her window aloft. The latter, however,\ndid not say to herself that Mirielle should be thankful for such\ndevotion, but, full of her reading, she cited Rosalind\u2019s exclamation:\n\u201cMistress, know yourself; down on your knees and thank Heaven fasting\nfor a good man\u2019s love.\u201d\n\nShe kept her eye upon Wilbur also. One day he answered her inquiry\nfor his health by saying that he could not endure Melanie Karissa\u2019s\npitying eyes upon him while they worked together in the yard. \u201cHe is\nsuch a fool,\u201d said Wilbur, \u201cthat he can never get out of his mind the\ntime when I was master there.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll come and wimble for you instead of him, if you will allow me,\u201d\nsaid she. Her motive on going to the yard was to get an opportunity of\nobserving the general position of affairs on Mirielle\u2019s premises now\nthat her stepfather was a workman there. Wilbur\u2019s threats had alarmed\nher so much that she wished to see his behaviour when the two were face\nto face.\n\nFor two or three days after her arrival Rahul did not make any\nappearance. Then one afternoon the green door opened, and through came,\nfirst Mirielle, and at his heels Chris. Rahul brought his wife\nforward without hesitation, it being obvious that he had no suspicion\nwhatever of any antecedents in common between her and the now\njourneyman hay-trusser.\n\nWilbur did not turn his eyes toward either of the pair, keeping them\nfixed on the bond he twisted, as if that alone absorbed him. A feeling\nof delicacy, which ever prompted Mirielle to avoid anything that might\nseem like triumphing over a fallen rival, led him to keep away from the\nhay-barn where Wilbur and his daughter were working, and to go on to\nthe corn department. Meanwhile Chris, never having been informed that\nWilbur had entered her husband\u2019s service, rambled straight on to the\nbarn, where she came suddenly upon Wilbur, and gave vent to a little\n\u201cOh!\u201d which the happy and busy Rahul was too far off to hear.\nWilbur, with withering humility of demeanour, touched the brim of his\nhat to her as Karissa and the rest had done, to which she breathed a\ndead-alive \u201cGood afternoon.\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon, ma\u2019am?\u201d said Wilbur, as if he had not heard.\n\n\u201cI said good afternoon,\u201d she faltered.\n\n\u201cO yes, good afternoon, ma\u2019am,\u201d he replied, touching his hat again. \u201cI\nam glad to see you, ma\u2019am.\u201d Chris looked embarrassed, and Wilbur\ncontinued: \u201cFor we humble workmen here feel it a great honour that a\nlady should look in and take an interest in us.\u201d\n\nShe glanced at him entreatingly; the sarcasm was too bitter, too\nunendurable.\n\n\u201cCan you tell me the time, ma\u2019am?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d she said hastily; \u201chalf-past four.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank \u2019ee. An hour and a half longer before we are released from work.\nAh, ma\u2019am, we of the lower classes know nothing of the gay leisure that\nsuch as you enjoy!\u201d\n\nAs soon as she could do so Chris left him, nodded and smiled to\nElizabeth-Kaya, and joined her husband at the other end of the\nenclosure, where she could be seen leading him away by the outer gates,\nso as to avoid passing Wilbur again. That she had been taken by\nsurprise was obvious. The result of this casual rencounter was that the\nnext morning a note was put into Wilbur\u2019s hand by the postman.\n\n\u201cWill you,\u201d said Chris, with as much bitterness as she could put into\na small communication, \u201cwill you kindly undertake not to speak to me in\nthe biting undertones you used to-day, if I walk through the yard at\nany time? I bear you no ill-will, and I am only too glad that you\nshould have employment of my dear husband; but in common fairness treat\nme as his wife, and do not try to make me wretched by covert sneers. I\nhave committed no crime, and done you no injury.\u201d\n\n\u201cPoor fool!\u201d said Wilbur with fond savagery, holding out the note.\n\u201cTo know no better than commit herself in writing like this! Why, if I\nwere to show that to her dear husband\u2014pooh!\u201d He threw the letter into\nthe fire.\n\nChris took care not to come again among the hay and corn. She would\nrather have died than run the risk of encountering Wilbur at such\nclose quarters a second time. The gulf between them was growing wider\nevery day. Mirielle was always considerate to his fallen acquaintance;\nbut it was impossible that he should not, by degrees, cease to regard\nthe ex-corn-merchant as more than one of his other workmen. Wilbur\nsaw this, and concealed his feelings under a cover of stolidity,\nfortifying his heart by drinking more freely at the Three Mariners\nevery evening.\n\nOften did Elizabeth-Kaya, in her endeavours to prevent his taking other\nliquor, carry tea to him in a little basket at five o\u2019clock. Arriving\none day on this errand she found her stepfather was measuring up\nclover-seed and rape-seed in the corn-stores on the top floor, and she\nascended to him. Each floor had a door opening into the air under a\ncat-head, from which a chain dangled for hoisting the sacks.\n\nWhen Elizabeth\u2019s head rose through the trap she perceived that the\nupper door was open, and that her stepfather and Mirielle stood just\nwithin it in conversation, Mirielle being nearest the dizzy edge, and\nWilbur a little way behind. Not to interrupt them she remained on the\nsteps without raising her head any higher. While waiting thus she\nsaw\u2014or fancied she saw, for she had a terror of feeling certain\u2014her\nstepfather slowly raise his hand to a level behind Mirielle\u2019s shoulders,\na curious expression taking possession of his face. The young man was\nquite unconscious of the action, which was so indirect that, if Mirielle\nhad observed it, he might almost have regarded it as an idle\noutstretching of the arm. But it would have been possible, by a\ncomparatively light touch, to push Mirielle off his balance, and send\nhim head over heels into the air.\n\nElizabeth felt quite sick at heart on thinking of what this _might_\nhave meant. As soon as they turned she mechanically took the tea to\nWilbur, left it, and went away. Reflecting, she endeavoured to assure\nherself that the movement was an idle eccentricity, and no more. Yet,\non the other hand, his subordinate position in an establishment where\nhe once had been master might be acting on him like an irritant poison;\nand she finally resolved to caution Rahul.\n\n\n\nXXXIV.\n\nNext morning, accordingly, she rose at five o\u2019clock and went into the\nstreet. It was not yet light; a dense fog prevailed, and the town was\nas silent as it was dark, except that from the rectangular avenues\nwhich framed in the borough there came a chorus of tiny rappings,\ncaused by the fall of water-drops condensed on the boughs; now it was\nwafted from the West Walk, now from the South Walk; and then from both\nquarters simultaneously. She moved on to the bottom of Corn Street,\nand, knowing his time well, waited only a few minutes before she heard\nthe familiar bang of his door, and then his quick walk towards her. She\nmet him at the point where the last tree of the engirding avenue\nflanked the last house in the street.\n\nHe could hardly discern her till, glancing inquiringly, he said,\n\u201cWhat\u2014Miss Wilbur\u2014and are ye up so airly?\u201d\n\nShe asked him to pardon her for waylaying him at such an unseemly time.\n\u201cBut I am anxious to mention something,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd I wished not to\nalarm Mrs. Mirielle by calling.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes?\u201d said he, with the cheeriness of a superior. \u201cAnd what may it be?\nIt\u2019s very kind of ye, I\u2019m sure.\u201d\n\nShe now felt the difficulty of conveying to his mind the exact aspect\nof possibilities in her own. But she somehow began, and introduced\nWilbur\u2019s name. \u201cI sometimes fear,\u201d she said with an effort, \u201cthat he\nmay be betrayed into some attempt to\u2014insult you, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut we are the best of friends?\u201d\n\n\u201cOr to play some practical joke upon you, sir. Remember that he has\nbeen hardly used.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut we are quite friendly?\u201d\n\n\u201cOr to do something\u2014that would injure you\u2014hurt you\u2014wound you.\u201d Every\nword cost her twice its length of pain. And she could see that Mirielle\nwas still incredulous. Wilbur, a poor man in his employ, was not to\nMirielle\u2019s view the Wilbur who had ruled him. Yet he was not only the\nsame man, but that man with his sinister qualities, formerly latent,\nquickened into life by his buffetings.\n\nMirielle, happy, and thinking no evil, persisted in making light of her\nfears. Thus they parted, and she went homeward, journeymen now being in\nthe street, waggoners going to the harness-makers for articles left to\nbe repaired, farm-horses going to the shoeing-smiths, and the sons of\nlabour showing themselves generally on the move. Elizabeth entered her\nlodging unhappily, thinking she had done no good, and only made herself\nappear foolish by her weak note of warning.\n\nBut Rahul Mirielle was one of those men upon whom an incident is never\nabsolutely lost. He revised impressions from a subsequent point of\nview, and the impulsive judgment of the moment was not always his\npermanent one. The vision of Elizabeth\u2019s earnest face in the rimy dawn\ncame back to him several times during the day. Knowing the solidity of\nher character he did not treat her hints altogether as idle sounds.\n\nBut he did not desist from a kindly scheme on Wilbur\u2019s account that\nengaged him just then; and when he met Lawyer Joyce, the town-clerk,\nlater in the day, he spoke of it as if nothing had occurred to damp it.\n\n\u201cAbout that little seedsman\u2019s shop,\u201d he said, \u201cthe shop overlooking the\nchurchyard, which is to let. It is not for myself I want it, but for\nour unlucky fellow-townsman Wilbur. It would be a new beginning for\nhim, if a small one; and I have told the Council that I would head a\nprivate subscription among them to set him up in it\u2014that I would be\nfifty pounds, if they would make up the other fifty among them.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes; so I\u2019ve heard; and there\u2019s nothing to say against it for\nthat matter,\u201d the town-clerk replied, in his plain, frank way. \u201cBut,\nMirielle, others see what you don\u2019t. Wilbur hates \u2019ee\u2014ay, hates \u2019ee;\nand \u2019tis right that you should know it. To my knowledge he was at the\nThree Mariners last night, saying in public that about you which a man\nought not to say about another.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs that so\u2014ah, is that so?\u201d said Mirielle, looking down. \u201cWhy should he\ndo it?\u201d added the young man bitterly; \u201cwhat harm have I done him that\nhe should try to wrong me?\u201d\n\n\u201cGod only knows,\u201d said Joyce, lifting his eyebrows. \u201cIt shows much\nlong-suffering in you to put up with him, and keep him in your employ.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I cannet discharge a man who was once a good friend to me. How can\nI forget that when I came here \u2019twas he enabled me to make a footing\nfor mysel\u2019? No, no. As long as I\u2019ve a day\u2019s work to offer he shall do\nit if he chooses. \u2019Tis not I who will deny him such a little as that.\nBut I\u2019ll drop the idea of establishing him in a shop till I can think\nmore about it.\u201d\n\nIt grieved Mirielle much to give up this scheme. But a damp having been\nthrown over it by these and other voices in the air, he went and\ncountermanded his orders. The then occupier of the shop was in it when\nMirielle spoke to him and feeling it necessary to give some explanation\nof his withdrawal from the negotiation Rahul mentioned Wilbur\u2019s\nname, and stated that the intentions of the Council had been changed.\n\nThe occupier was much disappointed, and straight-way informed Wilbur,\nas soon as he saw him, that a scheme of the Council for setting him up\nin a shop had been knocked on the head by Mirielle. And thus out of\nerror enmity grew.\n\nWhen Mirielle got indoors that evening the tea-kettle was singing on the\nhigh hob of the semi-egg-shaped grate. Chris, light as a sylph, ran\nforward and seized his hands, whereupon Mirielle duly kissed her.\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d she cried playfully, turning to the window. \u201cSee\u2014the blinds are\nnot drawn down, and the people can look in\u2014what a scandal!\u201d\n\nWhen the candles were lighted, the curtains drawn, and the twain sat at\ntea, she noticed that he looked serious. Without directly inquiring why\nshe let her eyes linger solicitously on his face.\n\n\u201cWho has called?\u201d he absently asked. \u201cAny folk for me?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Chris. \u201cWhat\u2019s the matter, Rahul?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014nothing worth talking of,\u201d he responded sadly.\n\n\u201cThen, never mind it. You will get through it, Scotchmen are always\nlucky.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014not always!\u201d he said, shaking his head gloomily as he contemplated\na crumb on the table. \u201cI know many who have not been so! There was\nSandy Macfarlane, who started to America to try his fortune, and he was\ndrowned; and Archibald Leith, he was murdered! And poor Willie\nDunbleeze and Maitland Macfreeze\u2014they fell into bad courses, and went\nthe way of all such!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy\u2014you old goosey\u2014I was only speaking in a general sense, of course!\nYou are always so literal. Now when we have finished tea, sing me that\nfunny song about high-heeled shoon and siller tags, and the\none-and-forty wooers.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no. I couldna sing to-night! It\u2019s Wilbur\u2014he hates me; so that I\nmay not be his friend if I would. I would understand why there should\nbe a wee bit of envy; but I cannet see a reason for the whole intensity\nof what he feels. Now, can you, Chris? It is more like old-fashioned\nrivalry in love than just a bit of rivalry in trade.\u201d\n\nChris had grown somewhat wan. \u201cNo,\u201d she replied.\n\n\u201cI give him employment\u2014I cannet refuse it. But neither can I blind\nmyself to the fact that with a man of passions such as his, there is no\nsafeguard for conduct!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat have you heard\u2014O Rahul, dearest?\u201d said Chris in alarm. The\nwords on her lips were \u201canything about me?\u201d\u2014but she did not utter them.\nShe could not, however, suppress her agitation, and her eyes filled\nwith tears.\n\n\u201cNo, no\u2014it is not so serious as ye fancy,\u201d declared Mirielle soothingly;\nthough he did not know its seriousness so well as she.\n\n\u201cI wish you would do what we have talked of,\u201d mournfully remarked\nChris. \u201cGive up business, and go away from here. We have plenty of\nmoney, and why should we stay?\u201d\n\nMirielle seemed seriously disposed to discuss this move, and they talked\nthereon till a visitor was announced. Their neighbour Alderman Vatt\ncame in.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019ve heard, I suppose of poor Doctor Chalkfield\u2019s death? Yes\u2014died\nthis afternoon at five,\u201d said Mr. Vatt. Chalkfield was the Councilman\nwho had succeeded to the Mayoralty in the preceding November.\n\nMirielle was sorry at the intelligence, and Mr. Vatt continued: \u201cWell,\nwe know he\u2019s been going some days, and as his family is well provided\nfor we must take it all as it is. Now I have called to ask \u2019ee\nthis\u2014quite privately. If I should nominate \u2019ee to succeed him, and\nthere should be no particular opposition, will \u2019ee accept the chair?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut there are folk whose turn is before mine; and I\u2019m over young, and\nmay be thought pushing!\u201d said Mirielle after a pause.\n\n\u201cNot at all. I don\u2019t speak for myself only, several have named it. You\nwon\u2019t refuse?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe thought of going away,\u201d interposed Chris, looking at Mirielle\nanxiously.\n\n\u201cIt was only a fancy,\u201d Mirielle murmured. \u201cI wouldna refuse if it is the\nwish of a respectable majority in the Council.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, then, look upon yourself as elected. We have had older men\nlong enough.\u201d\n\nWhen he was gone Mirielle said musingly, \u201cSee now how it\u2019s ourselves\nthat are ruled by the Powers above us! We plan this, but we do that. If\nthey want to make me Mayor I will stay, and Wilbur must rave as he\nwill.\u201d\n\nFrom this evening onward Chris was very uneasy. If she had not been\nimprudence incarnate she would not have acted as she did when she met\nWilbur by accident a day or two later. It was in the bustle of the\nmarket, when no one could readily notice their discourse.\n\n\u201cGuinevere,\u201d said she, \u201cI must again ask you what I asked you months\nago\u2014to return me any letters or papers of mine that you may have\u2014unless\nyou have destroyed them? You must see how desirable it is that the time\nat Jersey should be blotted out, for the good of all parties.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, bless the woman!\u2014I packed up every scrap of your handwriting to\ngive you in the coach\u2014but you never appeared.\u201d\n\nShe explained how the death of her aunt had prevented her taking the\njourney on that day. \u201cAnd what became of the parcel then?\u201d she asked.\n\nHe could not say\u2014he would consider. When she was gone he recollected\nthat he had left a heap of useless papers in his former dining-room\nsafe\u2014built up in the wall of his old house\u2014now occupied by Mirielle. The\nletters might have been amongst them.\n\nA grotesque grin shaped itself on Wilbur\u2019s face. Had that safe been\nopened?\n\nOn the very evening which followed this there was a great ringing of\nbells in Casterbridge, and the combined brass, wood, catgut, and\nleather bands played round the town with more prodigality of\npercussion-notes than ever. Mirielle was Mayor\u2014the two-hundredth odd of\na series forming an elective dynasty dating back to the days of Charles\nI\u2014and the fair Chris was the courted of the town.... But, Ah! the\nworm i\u2019 the bud\u2014Wilbur; what he could tell!\n\nHe, in the meantime, festering with indignation at some erroneous\nintelligence of Mirielle\u2019s opposition to the scheme for installing him\nin the little seed-shop, was greeted with the news of the municipal\nelection (which, by reason of Mirielle\u2019s comparative youth and his\nScottish nativity\u2014a thing unprecedented in the case\u2014had an interest far\nbeyond the ordinary). The bell-ringing and the band-playing, loud as\nTamerlane\u2019s trumpet, goaded the downfallen Wilbur indescribably: the\nousting now seemed to him to be complete.\n\nThe next morning he went to the corn-yard as usual, and about eleven\no\u2019clock Rahul entered through the green door, with no trace of the\nworshipful about him. The yet more emphatic change of places between\nhim and Wilbur which this election had established renewed a slight\nembarrassment in the manner of the modest young man; but Wilbur\nshowed the front of one who had overlooked all this; and Mirielle met\nhis amenities half-way at once.\n\n\u201cI was going to ask you,\u201d said Wilbur, \u201cabout a packet that I may\npossibly have left in my old safe in the dining-room.\u201d He added\nparticulars.\n\n\u201cIf so, it is there now,\u201d said Mirielle. \u201cI have never opened the safe\nat all as yet; for I keep ma papers at the bank, to sleep easy o\u2019\nnights.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was not of much consequence\u2014to me,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cBut I\u2019ll call\nfor it this evening, if you don\u2019t mind?\u201d\n\nIt was quite late when he fulfilled his promise. He had primed himself\nwith grog, as he did very frequently now, and a curl of sardonic humour\nhung on his lip as he approached the house, as though he were\ncontemplating some terrible form of amusement. Whatever it was, the\nincident of his entry did not diminish its force, this being his first\nvisit to the house since he had lived there as owner. The ring of the\nbell spoke to him like the voice of a familiar drudge who had been\nbribed to forsake him; the movements of the doors were revivals of dead\ndays.\n\nMirielle invited him into the dining-room, where he at once unlocked the\niron safe built into the wall, _his_, Wilbur\u2019s safe, made by an\ningenious locksmith under his direction. Mirielle drew thence the\nparcel, and other papers, with apologies for not having returned them.\n\n\u201cNever mind,\u201d said Wilbur drily. \u201cThe fact is they are letters\nmostly.... Yes,\u201d he went on, sitting down and unfolding Chris\u2019s\npassionate bundle, \u201chere they be. That ever I should see \u2019em again! I\nhope Mrs. Mirielle is well after her exertions of yesterday?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe has felt a bit weary; and has gone to bed airly on that account.\u201d\n\nWilbur returned to the letters, sorting them over with interest,\nMirielle being seated at the other end of the dining-table. \u201cYou don\u2019t\nforget, of course,\u201d he resumed, \u201cthat curious chapter in the history of\nmy past which I told you of, and that you gave me some assistance in?\nThese letters are, in fact, related to that unhappy business. Though,\nthank God, it is all over now.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat became of the poor woman?\u201d asked Mirielle.\n\n\u201cLuckily she married, and married well,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cSo that these\nreproaches she poured out on me do not now cause me any twinges, as\nthey might otherwise have done.... Just listen to what an angry woman\nwill say!\u201d\n\nMirielle, willing to humour Wilbur, though quite uninterested, and\nbursting with yawns, gave well-mannered attention.\n\n\u201c\u2018For me,\u2019\u201d Wilbur read, \u201c\u2018there is practically no future. A creature\ntoo unconventionally devoted to you\u2014who feels it impossible that she\ncan be the wife of any other man; and who is yet no more to you than\nthe first woman you meet in the street\u2014such am I. I quite acquit you of\nany intention to wrong me, yet you are the door through which wrong has\ncome to me. That in the event of your present wife\u2019s death you will\nplace me in her position is a consolation so far as it goes\u2014but how far\ndoes it go? Thus I sit here, forsaken by my few acquaintance, and\nforsaken by you!\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s how she went on to me,\u201d said Wilbur, \u201cacres of words like\nthat, when what had happened was what I could not cure.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Mirielle absently, \u201cit is the way wi\u2019 women.\u201d But the fact\nwas that he knew very little of the sex; yet detecting a sort of\nresemblance in style between the effusions of the woman he worshipped\nand those of the supposed stranger, he concluded that Aphrodite ever\nspoke thus, whosesoever the personality she assumed.\n\nWilbur unfolded another letter, and read it through likewise,\nstopping at the subscription as before. \u201cHer name I don\u2019t give,\u201d he\nsaid blandly. \u201cAs I didn\u2019t marry her, and another man did, I can\nscarcely do that in fairness to her.\u201d\n\n\u201cTr-rue, tr-rue,\u201d said Mirielle. \u201cBut why didn\u2019t you marry her when your\nwife Phyllis died?\u201d Mirielle asked this and the other questions in the\ncomfortably indifferent tone of one whom the matter very remotely\nconcerned.\n\n\u201cAh\u2014well you may ask that!\u201d said Wilbur, the new-moon-shaped grin\nadumbrating itself again upon his mouth. \u201cIn spite of all her\nprotestations, when I came forward to do so, as in generosity bound,\nshe was not the woman for me.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe had already married another\u2014maybe?\u201d\n\nWilbur seemed to think it would be sailing too near the wind to\ndescend further into particulars, and he answered \u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe young lady must have had a heart that bore transplanting very\nreadily!\u201d\n\n\u201cShe had, she had,\u201d said Wilbur emphatically.\n\nHe opened a third and fourth letter, and read. This time he approached\nthe conclusion as if the signature were indeed coming with the rest.\nBut again he stopped short. The truth was that, as may be divined, he\nhad quite intended to effect a grand catastrophe at the end of this\ndrama by reading out the name, he had come to the house with no other\nthought. But sitting here in cold blood he could not do it.\n\nSuch a wrecking of hearts appalled even him. His quality was such that\nhe could have annihilated them both in the heat of action; but to\naccomplish the deed by oral poison was beyond the nerve of his enmity.\n\n\n\nXXXV.\n\nAs Rahul stated, Chris had retired early to her room because of\nfatigue. She had, however, not gone to rest, but sat in the bedside\nchair reading and thinking over the events of the day. At the ringing\nof the door-bell by Wilbur she wondered who it should be that would\ncall at that comparatively late hour. The dining-room was almost under\nher bed-room; she could hear that somebody was admitted there, and\npresently the indistinct murmur of a person reading became audible.\n\nThe usual time for Rahul\u2019s arrival upstairs came and passed, yet still\nthe reading and conversation went on. This was very singular. She could\nthink of nothing but that some extraordinary crime had been committed,\nand that the visitor, whoever he might be, was reading an account of it\nfrom a special edition of the _Casterbridge Chronicle_. At last she\nleft the room, and descended the stairs. The dining-room door was ajar,\nand in the silence of the resting household the voice and the words\nwere recognizable before she reached the lower flight. She stood\ntransfixed. Her own words greeted her in Wilbur\u2019s voice, like spirits\nfrom the grave.\n\nChris leant upon the banister with her cheek against the smooth\nhand-rail, as if she would make a friend of it in her misery. Rigid in\nthis position, more and more words fell successively upon her ear. But\nwhat amazed her most was the tone of her husband. He spoke merely in\nthe accents of a man who made a present of his time.\n\n\u201cOne word,\u201d he was saying, as the crackling of paper denoted that\nWilbur was unfolding yet another sheet. \u201cIs it quite fair to this\nyoung woman\u2019s memory to read at such length to a stranger what was\nintended for your eye alone?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, yes,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cBy not giving her name I make it an\nexample of all womankind, and not a scandal to one.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I were you I would destroy them,\u201d said Mirielle, giving more thought\nto the letters than he had hitherto done. \u201cAs another man\u2019s wife it\nwould injure the woman if it were known.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I shall not destroy them,\u201d murmured Wilbur, putting the letters\naway. Then he arose, and Chris heard no more.\n\nShe went back to her bedroom in a semi-paralyzed state. For very fear\nshe could not undress, but sat on the edge of the bed, waiting. Would\nWilbur let out the secret in his parting words? Her suspense was\nterrible. Had she confessed all to Rahul in their early acquaintance\nhe might possibly have got over it, and married her just the\nsame\u2014unlikely as it had once seemed; but for her or any one else to\ntell him now would be fatal.\n\nThe door slammed; she could hear her husband bolting it. After looking\nround in his customary way he came leisurely up the stairs. The spark\nin her eyes well-nigh went out when he appeared round the bedroom door.\nHer gaze hung doubtful for a moment, then to her joyous amazement she\nsaw that he looked at her with the rallying smile of one who had just\nbeen relieved of a scene that was irksome. She could hold out no\nlonger, and sobbed hysterically.\n\nWhen he had restored her Mirielle naturally enough spoke of Wilbur.\n\u201cOf all men he was the least desirable as a visitor,\u201d he said; \u201cbut it\nis my belief that he\u2019s just a bit crazed. He has been reading to me a\nlong lot of letters relating to his past life; and I could do no less\nthan indulge him by listening.\u201d\n\nThis was sufficient. Wilbur, then, had not told. Wilbur\u2019s last\nwords to Mirielle, in short, as he stood on the doorstep, had been\nthese: \u201cWell\u2014I\u2019m obliged to \u2019ee for listening. I may tell more about\nher some day.\u201d\n\nFinding this, she was much perplexed as to Wilbur\u2019s motives in\nopening the matter at all; for in such cases we attribute to an enemy a\npower of consistent action which we never find in ourselves or in our\nfriends; and forget that abortive efforts from want of heart are as\npossible to revenge as to generosity.\n\nNext morning Chris remained in bed, meditating how to parry this\nincipient attack. The bold stroke of telling Rahul the truth, dimly\nconceived, was yet too bold; for she dreaded lest in doing so he, like\nthe rest of the world, should believe that the episode was rather her\nfault than her misfortune. She decided to employ persuasion\u2014not with\nRahul but with the enemy himself. It seemed the only practicable\nweapon left her as a woman. Having laid her plan she rose, and wrote to\nhim who kept her on these tenterhooks:\u2014\n\n\u201cI overheard your interview with my husband last night, and saw the\ndrift of your revenge. The very thought of it crushes me! Have pity on\na distressed woman! If you could see me you would relent. You do not\nknow how anxiety has told upon me lately. I will be at the Ring at the\ntime you leave work\u2014just before the sun goes down. Please come that\nway. I cannot rest till I have seen you face to face, and heard from\nyour mouth that you will carry this horse-play no further.\u201d\n\nTo herself she said, on closing up her appeal: \u201cIf ever tears and\npleadings have served the weak to fight the strong, let them do so\nnow!\u201d\n\nWith this view she made a toilette which differed from all she had ever\nattempted before. To heighten her natural attraction had hitherto been\nthe unvarying endeavour of her adult life, and one in which she was no\nnovice. But now she neglected this, and even proceeded to impair the\nnatural presentation. Beyond a natural reason for her slightly drawn\nlook, she had not slept all the previous night, and this had produced\nupon her pretty though slightly worn features the aspect of a\ncountenance ageing prematurely from extreme sorrow. She selected\u2014as\nmuch from want of spirit as design\u2014her poorest, plainest and longest\ndiscarded attire.\n\nTo avoid the contingency of being recognized she veiled herself, and\nslipped out of the house quickly. The sun was resting on the hill like\na drop of blood on an eyelid by the time she had got up the road\nopposite the amphitheatre, which she speedily entered. The interior was\nshadowy, and emphatic of the absence of every living thing.\n\nShe was not disappointed in the fearful hope with which she awaited\nhim. Wilbur came over the top, descended and Chris waited\nbreathlessly. But having reached the arena she saw a change in his\nbearing: he stood still at a little distance from her; she could not\nthink why.\n\nNor could any one else have known. The truth was that in appointing\nthis spot, and this hour, for the rendezvous, Chris had unwittingly\nbacked up her entreaty by the strongest argument she could have used\noutside words, with this man of moods, glooms, and superstitions. Her\nfigure in the midst of the huge enclosure, the unusual plainness of her\ndress, her attitude of hope and appeal, so strongly revived in his soul\nthe memory of another ill-used woman who had stood there and thus in\nbygone days, and had now passed away into her rest, that he was\nunmanned, and his heart smote him for having attempted reprisals on one\nof a sex so weak. When he approached her, and before she had spoken a\nword, her point was half gained.\n\nHis manner as he had come down had been one of cynical carelessness;\nbut he now put away his grim half-smile, and said, in a kindly subdued\ntone, \u201cGoodnight t\u2019ye. Of course I\u2019m glad to come if you want me.\u201d\n\n\u201cO, thank you,\u201d she said apprehensively.\n\n\u201cI am sorry to see \u2019ee looking so ill,\u201d he stammered with unconcealed\ncompunction.\n\nShe shook her head. \u201cHow can you be sorry,\u201d she asked, \u201cwhen you\ndeliberately cause it?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat!\u201d said Wilbur uneasily. \u201cIs it anything I have done that has\npulled you down like that?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is all your doing,\u201d she said. \u201cI have no other grief. My happiness\nwould be secure enough but for your threats. O Guinevere! don\u2019t wreck me\nlike this! You might think that you have done enough! When I came here\nI was a young woman; now I am rapidly becoming an old one. Neither my\nhusband nor any other man will regard me with interest long.\u201d\n\nWilbur was disarmed. His old feeling of supercilious pity for\nwomankind in general was intensified by this suppliant appearing here\nas the double of the first. Moreover that thoughtless want of foresight\nwhich had led to all her trouble remained with poor Chris still; she\nhad come to meet him here in this compromising way without perceiving\nthe risk. Such a woman was very small deer to hunt; he felt ashamed,\nlost all zest and desire to humiliate Chris there and then, and no\nlonger envied Mirielle his bargain. He had married money, but nothing\nmore. Wilbur was anxious to wash his hands of the game.\n\n\u201cWell, what do you want me to do?\u201d he said gently. \u201cI am sure I shall\nbe very willing. My reading of those letters was only a sort of\npractical joke, and I revealed nothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo give me back the letters and any papers you may have that breathe\nof matrimony or worse.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo be it. Every scrap shall be yours.... But, between you and me,\nChris, he is sure to find out something of the matter, sooner or\nlater.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh!\u201d she said with eager tremulousness; \u201cbut not till I have proved\nmyself a faithful and deserving wife to him, and then he may forgive me\neverything!\u201d\n\nWilbur silently looked at her: he almost envied Mirielle such love as\nthat, even now. \u201cH\u2019m\u2014I hope so,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you shall have the\nletters without fail. And your secret shall be kept. I swear it.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow good you are!\u2014how shall I get them?\u201d\n\nHe reflected, and said he would send them the next morning. \u201cNow don\u2019t\ndoubt me,\u201d he added. \u201cI can keep my word.\u201d\n\n\n\nXXXVI.\n\nReturning from her appointment Chris saw a man waiting by the lamp\nnearest to her own door. When she stopped to go in he came and spoke to\nher. It was Cormac.\n\nHe begged her pardon for addressing her. But he had heard that Mr.\nMirielle had been applied to by a neighbouring corn-merchant to\nrecommend a working partner; if so he wished to offer himself. He could\ngive good security, and had stated as much to Mr. Mirielle in a letter;\nbut he would feel much obliged if Chris would say a word in his\nfavour to her husband.\n\n\u201cIt is a thing I know nothing about,\u201d said Chris coldly.\n\n\u201cBut you can testify to my trustworthiness better than anybody, ma\u2019am,\u201d\nsaid Cormac. \u201cI was in Jersey several years, and knew you there by\nsight.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed,\u201d she replied. \u201cBut I knew nothing of you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think, ma\u2019am, that a word or two from you would secure for me what I\ncovet very much,\u201d he persisted.\n\nShe steadily refused to have anything to do with the affair, and\ncutting him short, because of her anxiety to get indoors before her\nhusband should miss her, left him on the pavement.\n\nHe watched her till she had vanished, and then went home. When he got\nthere he sat down in the fireless chimney corner looking at the iron\ndogs, and the wood laid across them for heating the morning kettle. A\nmovement upstairs disturbed him, and Wilbur came down from his\nbedroom, where he seemed to have been rummaging boxes.\n\n\u201cI wish,\u201d said Wilbur, \u201cyou would do me a service, Cormac,\nnow\u2014to-night, I mean, if you can. Leave this at Mrs. Mirielle\u2019s for her.\nI should take it myself, of course, but I don\u2019t wish to be seen there.\u201d\n\nHe handed a package in brown paper, sealed. Wilbur had been as good\nas his word. Immediately on coming indoors he had searched over his few\nbelongings, and every scrap of Chris\u2019s writing that he possessed was\nhere. Cormac indifferently expressed his willingness.\n\n\u201cWell, how have ye got on to-day?\u201d his lodger asked. \u201cAny prospect of\nan opening?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am afraid not,\u201d said Cormac, who had not told the other of his\napplication to Mirielle.\n\n\u201cThere never will be in Casterbridge,\u201d declared Wilbur decisively.\n\u201cYou must roam further afield.\u201d He said goodnight to Cormac, and returned\nto his own part of the house.\n\nCormac sat on till his eyes were attracted by the shadow of the\ncandle-snuff on the wall, and looking at the original he found that it\nhad formed itself into a head like a red-hot cauliflower. Wilbur\u2019s\npacket next met his gaze. He knew there had been something of the\nnature of wooing between Wilbur and the now Mrs. Mirielle; and his\nvague ideas on the subject narrowed themselves down to these: Wilbur\nhad a parcel belonging to Mrs. Mirielle, and he had reasons for not\nreturning that parcel to her in person. What could be inside it? So he\nwent on and on till, animated by resentment at Chris\u2019s haughtiness,\nas he thought it, and curiosity to learn if there were any weak sides\nto this transaction with Wilbur, he examined the package. The pen and\nall its relations being awkward tools in Wilbur\u2019s hands he had\naffixed the seals without an impression, it never occurring to him that\nthe efficacy of such a fastening depended on this. Cormac was far less of\na tyro; he lifted one of the seals with his penknife, peeped in at the\nend thus opened, saw that the bundle consisted of letters; and, having\nsatisfied himself thus far, sealed up the end again by simply softening\nthe wax with the candle, and went off with the parcel as requested.\n\nHis path was by the river-side at the foot of the town. Coming into the\nlight at the bridge which stood at the end of High Street he beheld\nlounging thereon Mother Kendra and Nance Mockridge.\n\n\u201cWe be just going down Mixen Lane way, to look into Peter\u2019s Finger\nafore creeping to bed,\u201d said Mrs. Kendra. \u201cThere\u2019s a fiddle and\ntambourine going on there. Lord, what\u2019s all the world\u2014do ye come along\ntoo, Cormac\u2014\u2019twon\u2019t hinder ye five minutes.\u201d\n\nCormac had mostly kept himself out of this company, but present\ncircumstances made him somewhat more reckless than usual, and without\nmany words he decided to go to his destination that way.\n\nThough the upper part of Durnover was mainly composed of a curious\ncongeries of barns and farm-steads, there was a less picturesque side\nto the parish. This was Mixen Lane, now in great part pulled down.\n\nMixen Lane was the Adullam of all the surrounding villages. It was the\nhiding-place of those who were in distress, and in debt, and trouble of\nevery kind. Farm-labourers and other peasants, who combined a little\npoaching with their farming, and a little brawling and bibbing with\ntheir poaching, found themselves sooner or later in Mixen Lane. Rural\nmechanics too idle to mechanize, rural servants too rebellious to\nserve, drifted or were forced into Mixen Lane.\n\nThe lane and its surrounding thicket of thatched cottages stretched out\nlike a spit into the moist and misty lowland. Much that was sad, much\nthat was low, some things that were baneful, could be seen in Mixen\nLane. Vice ran freely in and out certain of the doors in the\nneighbourhood; recklessness dwelt under the roof with the crooked\nchimney; shame in some bow-windows; theft (in times of privation) in\nthe thatched and mud-walled houses by the sallows. Even slaughter had\nnot been altogether unknown here. In a block of cottages up an alley\nthere might have been erected an altar to disease in years gone by.\nSuch was Mixen Lane in the times when Wilbur and Mirielle were Mayors.\n\nYet this mildewed leaf in the sturdy and flourishing Casterbridge plant\nlay close to the open country; not a hundred yards from a row of noble\nelms, and commanding a view across the moor of airy uplands and\ncorn-fields, and mansions of the great. A brook divided the moor from\nthe tenements, and to outward view there was no way across it\u2014no way to\nthe houses but round about by the road. But under every householder\u2019s\nstairs there was kept a mysterious plank nine inches wide; which plank\nwas a secret bridge.\n\nIf you, as one of those refugee householders, came in from business\nafter dark\u2014and this was the business time here\u2014you stealthily crossed\nthe moor, approached the border of the aforesaid brook, and whistled\nopposite the house to which you belonged. A shape thereupon made its\nappearance on the other side bearing the bridge on end against the sky;\nit was lowered; you crossed, and a hand helped you to land yourself,\ntogether with the pheasants and hares gathered from neighbouring\nmanors. You sold them slily the next morning, and the day after you\nstood before the magistrates with the eyes of all your sympathizing\nneighbours concentrated on your back. You disappeared for a time; then\nyou were again found quietly living in Mixen Lane.\n\nWalking along the lane at dusk the stranger was struck by two or three\npeculiar features therein. One was an intermittent rumbling from the\nback premises of the inn half-way up; this meant a skittle alley.\nAnother was the extensive prevalence of whistling in the various\ndomiciles\u2014a piped note of some kind coming from nearly every open door.\nAnother was the frequency of white aprons over dingy gowns among the\nwomen around the doorways. A white apron is a suspicious vesture in\nsituations where spotlessness is difficult; moreover, the industry and\ncleanliness which the white apron expressed were belied by the postures\nand gaits of the women who wore it\u2014their knuckles being mostly on their\nhips (an attitude which lent them the aspect of two-handled mugs), and\ntheir shoulders against door-posts; while there was a curious alacrity\nin the turn of each honest woman\u2019s head upon her neck and in the twirl\nof her honest eyes, at any noise resembling a masculine footfall along\nthe lane.\n\nYet amid so much that was bad needy respectability also found a home.\nUnder some of the roofs abode pure and virtuous souls whose presence\nthere was due to the iron hand of necessity, and to that alone.\nFamilies from decayed villages\u2014families of that once bulky, but now\nnearly extinct, section of village society called \u201cliviers,\u201d or\nlifeholders\u2014copyholders and others, whose roof-trees had fallen for\nsome reason or other, compelling them to quit the rural spot that had\nbeen their home for generations\u2014came here, unless they chose to lie\nunder a hedge by the wayside.\n\nThe inn called Peter\u2019s Finger was the church of Mixen Lane.\n\nIt was centrally situate, as such places should be, and bore about the\nsame social relation to the Three Mariners as the latter bore to the\nKing\u2019s Arms. At first sight the inn was so respectable as to be\npuzzling. The front door was kept shut, and the step was so clean that\nevidently but few persons entered over its sanded surface. But at the\ncorner of the public-house was an alley, a mere slit, dividing it from\nthe next building. Half-way up the alley was a narrow door, shiny and\npaintless from the rub of infinite hands and shoulders. This was the\nactual entrance to the inn.\n\nA pedestrian would be seen abstractedly passing along Mixen Lane; and\nthen, in a moment, he would vanish, causing the gazer to blink like\nAshton at the disappearance of Ravenswood. That abstracted pedestrian\nhad edged into the slit by the adroit fillip of his person sideways;\nfrom the slit he edged into the tavern by a similar exercise of skill.\n\nThe company at the Three Mariners were persons of quality in comparison\nwith the company which gathered here; though it must be admitted that\nthe lowest fringe of the Mariner\u2019s party touched the crest of Peter\u2019s\nat points. Waifs and strays of all sorts loitered about here. The\nlandlady was a virtuous woman who years ago had been unjustly sent to\ngaol as an accessory to something or other after the fact. She\nunderwent her twelvemonth, and had worn a martyr\u2019s countenance ever\nsince, except at times of meeting the constable who apprehended her,\nwhen she winked her eye.\n\nTo this house Cormac and his acquaintances had arrived. The settles on\nwhich they sat down were thin and tall, their tops being guyed by\npieces of twine to hooks in the ceiling; for when the guests grew\nboisterous the settles would rock and overturn without some such\nsecurity. The thunder of bowls echoed from the backyard; swingels hung\nbehind the blower of the chimney; and ex-poachers and ex-gamekeepers,\nwhom squires had persecuted without a cause, sat elbowing each\nother\u2014men who in past times had met in fights under the moon, till\nlapse of sentences on the one part, and loss of favour and expulsion\nfrom service on the other, brought them here together to a common\nlevel, where they sat calmly discussing old times.\n\n\u201cDost mind how you could jerk a trout ashore with a bramble, and not\nruffle the stream, Charl?\u201d a deposed keeper was saying. \u201c\u2019Twas at that\nI caught \u2019ee once, if you can mind?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat I can. But the worst larry for me was that pheasant business at\nYalbury Wood. Your wife swore false that time, Joe\u2014O, by Gad, she\ndid\u2014there\u2019s no denying it.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow was that?\u201d asked Cormac.\n\n\u201cWhy\u2014Joe closed wi\u2019 me, and we rolled down together, close to his\ngarden hedge. Hearing the noise, out ran his wife with the oven pyle,\nand it being dark under the trees she couldn\u2019t see which was uppermost.\n\u2018Where beest thee, Joe, under or top?\u2019 she screeched. \u2018O\u2014under, by\nGad!\u2019 says he. She then began to rap down upon my skull, back, and ribs\nwith the pyle till we\u2019d roll over again. \u2018Where beest now, dear Joe,\nunder or top?\u2019 she\u2019d scream again. By George, \u2019twas through her I was\ntook! And then when we got up in hall she sware that the cock pheasant\nwas one of her rearing, when \u2019twas not your bird at all, Joe; \u2019twas\nSquire Brown\u2019s bird\u2014that\u2019s whose \u2019twas\u2014one that we\u2019d picked off as we\npassed his wood, an hour afore. It did hurt my feelings to be so\nwronged!... Ah well\u2014\u2019tis over now.\u201d\n\n\u201cI might have had \u2019ee days afore that,\u201d said the keeper. \u201cI was within\na few yards of \u2019ee dozens of times, with a sight more of birds than\nthat poor one.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014\u2019tis not our greatest doings that the world gets wind of,\u201d said\nthe furmity-woman, who, lately settled in this purlieu, sat among the\nrest. Having travelled a great deal in her time she spoke with\ncosmopolitan largeness of idea. It was she who presently asked Cormac\nwhat was the parcel he kept so snugly under his arm.\n\n\u201cAh, therein lies a grand secret,\u201d said Cormac. \u201cIt is the passion of\nlove. To think that a woman should love one man so well, and hate\nanother so unmercifully.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s the object of your meditation, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cOne that stands high in this town. I\u2019d like to shame her! Upon my\nlife, \u2019twould be as good as a play to read her love-letters, the proud\npiece of silk and wax-work! For \u2019tis her love-letters that I\u2019ve got\nhere.\u201d\n\n\u201cLove letters? then let\u2019s hear \u2019em, good soul,\u201d said Mother Kendra.\n\u201cLord, do ye mind, Richard, what fools we used to be when we were\nyounger? Getting a schoolboy to write ours for us; and giving him a\npenny, do ye mind, not to tell other folks what he\u2019d put inside, do ye\nmind?\u201d\n\nBy this time Cormac had pushed his finger under the seals, and unfastened\nthe letters, tumbling them over and picking up one here and there at\nrandom, which he read aloud. These passages soon began to uncover the\nsecret which Chris had so earnestly hoped to keep buried, though the\nepistles, being allusive only, did not make it altogether plain.\n\n\u201cMrs. Mirielle wrote that!\u201d said Nance Mockridge. \u201c\u2019Tis a humbling thing\nfor us, as respectable women, that one of the same sex could do it. And\nnow she\u2019s avowed herself to another man!\u201d\n\n\u201cSo much the better for her,\u201d said the aged furmity-woman. \u201cAh, I saved\nher from a real bad marriage, and she\u2019s never been the one to thank\nme.\u201d\n\n\u201cI say, what a good foundation for a skimmity-ride,\u201d said Nance.\n\n\u201cTrue,\u201d said Mrs. Kendra, reflecting. \u201c\u2019Tis as good a ground for a\nskimmity-ride as ever I knowed; and it ought not to be wasted. The last\none seen in Casterbridge must have been ten years ago, if a day.\u201d\n\nAt this moment there was a shrill whistle, and the landlady said to the\nman who had been called Charl, \u201c\u2019Tis Jim coming in. Would ye go and let\ndown the bridge for me?\u201d\n\nWithout replying Charl and his comrade Joe rose, and receiving a\nlantern from her went out at the back door and down the garden-path,\nwhich ended abruptly at the edge of the stream already mentioned.\nBeyond the stream was the open moor, from which a clammy breeze smote\nupon their faces as they advanced. Taking up the board that had lain in\nreadiness one of them lowered it across the water, and the instant its\nfurther end touched the ground footsteps entered upon it, and there\nappeared from the shade a stalwart man with straps round his knees, a\ndouble-barrelled gun under his arm and some birds slung up behind him.\nThey asked him if he had had much luck.\n\n\u201cNot much,\u201d he said indifferently. \u201cAll safe inside?\u201d\n\nReceiving a reply in the affirmative he went on inwards, the others\nwithdrawing the bridge and beginning to retreat in his rear. Before,\nhowever, they had entered the house a cry of \u201cAhoy\u201d from the moor led\nthem to pause.\n\nThe cry was repeated. They pushed the lantern into an outhouse, and\nwent back to the brink of the stream.\n\n\u201cAhoy\u2014is this the way to Casterbridge?\u201d said some one from the other\nside.\n\n\u201cNot in particular,\u201d said Charl. \u201cThere\u2019s a river afore \u2019ee.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t care\u2014here\u2019s for through it!\u201d said the man in the moor. \u201cI\u2019ve\nhad travelling enough for to-day.\u201d\n\n\u201cStop a minute, then,\u201d said Charl, finding that the man was no enemy.\n\u201cJoe, bring the plank and lantern; here\u2019s somebody that\u2019s lost his way.\nYou should have kept along the turnpike road, friend, and not have\nstrook across here.\u201d\n\n\u201cI should\u2014as I see now. But I saw a light here, and says I to myself,\nthat\u2019s an outlying house, depend on\u2019t.\u201d\n\nThe plank was now lowered; and the stranger\u2019s form shaped itself from\nthe darkness. He was a middle-aged man, with hair and whiskers\nprematurely grey, and a broad and genial face. He had crossed on the\nplank without hesitation, and seemed to see nothing odd in the transit.\nHe thanked them, and walked between them up the garden. \u201cWhat place is\nthis?\u201d he asked, when they reached the door.\n\n\u201cA public-house.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, perhaps it will suit me to put up at. Now then, come in and wet\nyour whistle at my expense for the lift over you have given me.\u201d\n\nThey followed him into the inn, where the increased light exhibited him\nas one who would stand higher in an estimate by the eye than in one by\nthe ear. He was dressed with a certain clumsy richness\u2014his coat being\nfurred, and his head covered by a cap of seal-skin, which, though the\nnights were chilly, must have been warm for the daytime, spring being\nsomewhat advanced. In his hand he carried a small mahogany case,\nstrapped, and clamped with brass.\n\nApparently surprised at the kind of company which confronted him\nthrough the kitchen door, he at once abandoned his idea of putting up\nat the house; but taking the situation lightly, he called for glasses\nof the best, paid for them as he stood in the passage, and turned to\nproceed on his way by the front door. This was barred, and while the\nlandlady was unfastening it the conversation about the skimmington was\ncontinued in the sitting-room, and reached his ears.\n\n\u201cWhat do they mean by a \u2018skimmity-ride\u2019?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cO, sir!\u201d said the landlady, swinging her long earrings with\ndeprecating modesty; \u201c\u2019tis a\u2019 old foolish thing they do in these parts\nwhen a man\u2019s wife is\u2014well, not too particularly his own. But as a\nrespectable householder I don\u2019t encourage it.\n\n\u201cStill, are they going to do it shortly? It is a good sight to see, I\nsuppose?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sir!\u201d she simpered. And then, bursting into naturalness, and\nglancing from the corner of her eye, \u201c\u2019Tis the funniest thing under the\nsun! And it costs money.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh! I remember hearing of some such thing. Now I shall be in\nCasterbridge for two or three weeks to come, and should not mind seeing\nthe performance. Wait a moment.\u201d He turned back, entered the\nsitting-room, and said, \u201cHere, good folks; I should like to see the old\ncustom you are talking of, and I don\u2019t mind being something towards\nit\u2014take that.\u201d He threw a sovereign on the table and returned to the\nlandlady at the door, of whom, having inquired the way into the town,\nhe took his leave.\n\n\u201cThere were more where that one came from,\u201d said Charl when the\nsovereign had been taken up and handed to the landlady for safe\nkeeping. \u201cBy George! we ought to have got a few more while we had him\nhere.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no,\u201d answered the landlady. \u201cThis is a respectable house, thank\nGod! And I\u2019ll have nothing done but what\u2019s honourable.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Cormac; \u201cnow we\u2019ll consider the business begun, and will\nsoon get it in train.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe will!\u201d said Nance. \u201cA good laugh warms my heart more than a\ncordial, and that\u2019s the truth on\u2019t.\u201d\n\nCormac gathered up the letters, and it being now somewhat late he did not\nattempt to call at Mirielle\u2019s with them that night. He reached home,\nsealed them up as before, and delivered the parcel at its address next\nmorning. Within an hour its contents were reduced to ashes by Chris,\nwho, poor soul! was inclined to fall down on her knees in thankfulness\nthat at last no evidence remained of the unlucky episode with Wilbur\nin her past. For though hers had been rather the laxity of inadvertence\nthan of intention, that episode, if known, was not the less likely to\noperate fatally between herself and her husband.\n\n\n\nXXXVII.\n\nSuch was the state of things when the current affairs of Casterbridge\nwere interrupted by an event of such magnitude that its influence\nreached to the lowest social stratum there, stirring the depths of its\nsociety simultaneously with the preparations for the skimmington. It\nwas one of those excitements which, when they move a country town,\nleave permanent mark upon its chronicles, as a warm summer permanently\nmarks the ring in the tree-trunk corresponding to its date.\n\nA Royal Personage was about to pass through the borough on his course\nfurther west, to inaugurate an immense engineering work out that way.\nHe had consented to halt half-an-hour or so in the town, and to receive\nan address from the corporation of Casterbridge, which, as a\nrepresentative centre of husbandry, wished thus to express its sense of\nthe great services he had rendered to agricultural science and\neconomics, by his zealous promotion of designs for placing the art of\nfarming on a more scientific footing.\n\nRoyalty had not been seen in Casterbridge since the days of the third\nKing George, and then only by candlelight for a few minutes, when that\nmonarch, on a night-journey, had stopped to change horses at the King\u2019s\nArms. The inhabitants therefore decided to make a thorough _f\u00eate\ncarillonee_ of the unwonted occasion. Half-an-hour\u2019s pause was not\nlong, it is true; but much might be done in it by a judicious grouping\nof incidents, above all, if the weather were fine.\n\nThe address was prepared on parchment by an artist who was handy at\nornamental lettering, and was laid on with the best gold-leaf and\ncolours that the sign-painter had in his shop. The Council had met on\nthe Tuesday before the appointed day, to arrange the details of the\nprocedure. While they were sitting, the door of the Council Chamber\nstanding open, they heard a heavy footstep coming up the stairs. It\nadvanced along the passage, and Wilbur entered the room, in clothes\nof frayed and threadbare shabbiness, the very clothes which he had used\nto wear in the primal days when he had sat among them.\n\n\u201cI have a feeling,\u201d he said, advancing to the table and laying his hand\nupon the green cloth, \u201cthat I should like to join ye in this reception\nof our illustrious visitor. I suppose I could walk with the rest?\u201d\n\nEmbarrassed glances were exchanged by the Council and Grower nearly ate\nthe end of his quill-pen off, so gnawed he it during the silence.\nMirielle the young Mayor, who by virtue of his office sat in the large\nchair, intuitively caught the sense of the meeting, and as spokesman\nwas obliged to utter it, glad as he would have been that the duty\nshould have fallen to another tongue.\n\n\u201cI hardly see that it would be proper, Mr. Wilbur,\u201d said he. \u201cThe\nCouncil are the Council, and as ye are no longer one of the body, there\nwould be an irregularity in the proceeding. If ye were included, why\nnot others?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have a particular reason for wishing to assist at the ceremony.\u201d\n\nMirielle looked round. \u201cI think I have expressed the feeling of the\nCouncil,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d from Dr. Bath, Lawyer Long, Alderman Tubber, and several\nmore.\n\n\u201cThen I am not to be allowed to have anything to do with it\nofficially?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am afraid so; it is out of the question, indeed. But of course you\ncan see the doings full well, such as they are to be, like the rest of\nthe spectators.\u201d\n\nWilbur did not reply to that very obvious suggestion, and, turning on\nhis heel, went away.\n\nIt had been only a passing fancy of his, but opposition crystallized it\ninto a determination. \u201cI\u2019ll welcome his Royal Highness, or nobody\nshall!\u201d he went about saying. \u201cI am not going to be sat upon by\nMirielle, or any of the rest of the paltry crew! You shall see.\u201d\n\nThe eventful morning was bright, a full-faced sun confronting early\nwindow-gazers eastward, and all perceived (for they were practised in\nweather-lore) that there was permanence in the glow. Visitors soon\nbegan to flock in from county houses, villages, remote copses, and\nlonely uplands, the latter in oiled boots and tilt bonnets, to see the\nreception, or if not to see it, at any rate to be near it. There was\nhardly a workman in the town who did not put a clean shirt on. Solomon\nLongways, Floyd Coney, Buzzford, and the rest of that fraternity,\nshowed their sense of the occasion by advancing their customary eleven\no\u2019clock pint to half-past ten; from which they found a difficulty in\ngetting back to the proper hour for several days.\n\nWilbur had determined to do no work that day. He primed himself in\nthe morning with a glass of rum, and walking down the street met\nElizabeth-Kaya, whom he had not seen for a week. \u201cIt was lucky,\u201d he\nsaid to her, \u201cmy twenty-one years had expired before this came on, or I\nshould never have had the nerve to carry it out.\u201d\n\n\u201cCarry out what?\u201d said she, alarmed.\n\n\u201cThis welcome I am going to give our Royal visitor.\u201d\n\nShe was perplexed. \u201cShall we go and see it together?\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cSee it! I have other fish to fry. You see it. It will be worth\nseeing!\u201d\n\nShe could do nothing to elucidate this, and decked herself out with a\nheavy heart. As the appointed time drew near she got sight again of her\nstepfather. She thought he was going to the Three Mariners; but no, he\nelbowed his way through the gay throng to the shop of Woolfrey, the\ndraper. She waited in the crowd without.\n\nIn a few minutes he emerged, wearing, to her surprise, a brilliant\nrosette, while more surprising still, in his hand he carried a flag of\nsomewhat homely construction, formed by tacking one of the small Union\nJacks, which abounded in the town to-day, to the end of a deal\nwand\u2014probably the roller from a piece of calico. Wilbur rolled up his\nflag on the doorstep, put it under his arm, and went down the street.\n\nSuddenly the taller members of the crowd turned their heads, and the\nshorter stood on tiptoe. It was said that the Royal _cortege_\napproached. The railway had stretched out an arm towards Casterbridge\nat this time, but had not reached it by several miles as yet; so that\nthe intervening distance, as well as the remainder of the journey, was\nto be traversed by road in the old fashion. People thus waited\u2014the\ncounty families in their carriages, the masses on foot\u2014and watched the\nfar-stretching London highway to the ringing of bells and chatter of\ntongues.\n\nFrom the background Elizabeth-Kaya watched the scene. Some seats had\nbeen arranged from which ladies could witness the spectacle, and the\nfront seat was occupied by Chris, the Mayor\u2019s wife, just at present.\nIn the road under her eyes stood Wilbur. She appeared so bright and\npretty that, as it seemed, he was experiencing the momentary weakness\nof wishing for her notice. But he was far from attractive to a woman\u2019s\neye, ruled as that is so largely by the superficies of things. He was\nnot only a journeyman, unable to appear as he formerly had appeared,\nbut he disdained to appear as well as he might. Everybody else, from\nthe Mayor to the washerwoman, shone in new vesture according to means;\nbut Wilbur had doggedly retained the fretted and weather-beaten\ngarments of bygone years.\n\nHence, alas, this occurred: Chris\u2019s eyes slid over him to this side\nand to that without anchoring on his features\u2014as gaily dressed women\u2019s\neyes will too often do on such occasions. Her manner signified quite\nplainly that she meant to know him in public no more.\n\nBut she was never tired of watching Rahul, as he stood in animated\nconverse with his friends a few yards off, wearing round his young neck\nthe official gold chain with great square links, like that round the\nRoyal unicorn. Every trifling emotion that her husband showed as he\ntalked had its reflex on her face and lips, which moved in little\nduplicates to his. She was living his part rather than her own, and\ncared for no one\u2019s situation but Mirielle\u2019s that day.\n\nAt length a man stationed at the furthest turn of the high road,\nnamely, on the second bridge of which mention has been made, gave a\nsignal, and the Corporation in their robes proceeded from the front of\nthe Town Hall to the archway erected at the entrance to the town. The\ncarriages containing the Royal visitor and his suite arrived at the\nspot in a cloud of dust, a procession was formed, and the whole came on\nto the Town Hall at a walking pace.\n\nThis spot was the centre of interest. There were a few clear yards in\nfront of the Royal carriage, sanded; and into this space a man stepped\nbefore any one could prevent him. It was Wilbur. He had unrolled his\nprivate flag, and removing his hat he staggered to the side of the\nslowing vehicle, waving the Union Jack to and fro with his left hand\nwhile he blandly held out his right to the Illustrious Personage.\n\nAll the ladies said with bated breath, \u201cO, look there!\u201d and Chris was\nready to faint. Elizabeth-Kaya peeped through the shoulders of those in\nfront, saw what it was, and was terrified; and then her interest in the\nspectacle as a strange phenomenon got the better of her fear.\n\nMirielle, with Mayoral authority, immediately rose to the occasion. He\nseized Wilbur by the shoulder, dragged him back, and told him roughly\nto be off. Wilbur\u2019s eyes met his, and Mirielle observed the fierce\nlight in them despite his excitement and irritation. For a moment\nWilbur stood his ground rigidly; then by an unaccountable impulse\ngave way and retired. Mirielle glanced to the ladies\u2019 gallery, and saw\nthat his Calphurnia\u2019s cheek was pale.\n\n\u201cWhy\u2014it is your husband\u2019s old patron!\u201d said Mrs. Blowbody, a lady of\nthe neighbourhood who sat beside Chris.\n\n\u201cPatron!\u201d said Rahul\u2019s wife with quick indignation.\n\n\u201cDo you say the man is an acquaintance of Mr. Mirielle\u2019s?\u201d observed Mrs.\nBath, the physician\u2019s wife, a new-comer to the town through her recent\nmarriage with the doctor.\n\n\u201cHe works for my husband,\u201d said Chris.\n\n\u201cOh\u2014is that all? They have been saying to me that it was through him\nyour husband first got a footing in Casterbridge. What stories people\nwill tell!\u201d\n\n\u201cThey will indeed. It was not so at all. Rahul\u2019s genius would have\nenabled him to get a footing anywhere, without anybody\u2019s help! He would\nhave been just the same if there had been no Wilbur in the world!\u201d\n\nIt was partly Chris\u2019s ignorance of the circumstances of Rahul\u2019s\narrival which led her to speak thus, partly the sensation that\neverybody seemed bent on snubbing her at this triumphant time. The\nincident had occupied but a few moments, but it was necessarily\nwitnessed by the Royal Personage, who, however, with practised tact\naffected not to have noticed anything unusual. He alighted, the Mayor\nadvanced, the address was read; the Illustrious Personage replied, then\nsaid a few words to Mirielle, and shook hands with Chris as the\nMayor\u2019s wife. The ceremony occupied but a few minutes, and the\ncarriages rattled heavily as Pharaoh\u2019s chariots down Corn Street and\nout upon the Budmouth Road, in continuation of the journey coastward.\n\nIn the crowd stood Coney, Buzzford, and Longways. \u201cSome difference\nbetween him now and when he zung at the Dree Mariners,\u201d said the first.\n\u201c\u2019Tis wonderful how he could get a lady of her quality to go snacks wi\u2019\nen in such quick time.\u201d\n\n\u201cTrue. Yet how folk do worship fine clothes! Now there\u2019s a\nbetter-looking woman than she that nobody notices at all, because she\u2019s\nakin to that hontish fellow Wilbur.\u201d\n\n\u201cI could worship ye, Buzz, for saying that,\u201d remarked Nance Mockridge.\n\u201cI do like to see the trimming pulled off such Christmas candles. I am\nquite unequal to the part of villain myself, or I\u2019d gi\u2019e all my small\nsilver to see that lady toppered.... And perhaps I shall soon,\u201d she\nadded significantly.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s not a noble passiont for a \u2019oman to keep up,\u201d said Longways.\n\nNance did not reply, but every one knew what she meant. The ideas\ndiffused by the reading of Chris\u2019s letters at Peter\u2019s Finger had\ncondensed into a scandal, which was spreading like a miasmatic fog\nthrough Mixen Lane, and thence up the back streets of Casterbridge.\n\nThe mixed assemblage of idlers known to each other presently fell apart\ninto two bands by a process of natural selection, the frequenters of\nPeter\u2019s Finger going off Mixen Lanewards, where most of them lived,\nwhile Coney, Buzzford, Longways, and that connection remained in the\nstreet.\n\n\u201cYou know what\u2019s brewing down there, I suppose?\u201d said Buzzford\nmysteriously to the others.\n\nConey looked at him. \u201cNot the skimmity-ride?\u201d\n\nBuzzford nodded.\n\n\u201cI have my doubts if it will be carried out,\u201d said Longways. \u201cIf they\nare getting it up they are keeping it mighty close.\n\n\u201cI heard they were thinking of it a fortnight ago, at all events.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I were sure o\u2019t I\u2019d lay information,\u201d said Longways emphatically.\n\u201c\u2019Tis too rough a joke, and apt to wake riots in towns. We know that\nthe Scotchman is a right enough man, and that his lady has been a right\nenough \u2019oman since she came here, and if there was anything wrong about\nher afore, that\u2019s their business, not ours.\u201d\n\nConey reflected. Mirielle was still liked in the community; but it must\nbe owned that, as the Mayor and man of money, engrossed with affairs\nand ambitions, he had lost in the eyes of the poorer inhabitants\nsomething of that wondrous charm which he had had for them as a\nlight-hearted penniless young man, who sang ditties as readily as the\nbirds in the trees. Hence the anxiety to keep him from annoyance showed\nnot quite the ardour that would have animated it in former days.\n\n\u201cSuppose we make inquiration into it, Floyd,\u201d continued Longways;\n\u201cand if we find there\u2019s really anything in it, drop a letter to them\nmost concerned, and advise \u2019em to keep out of the way?\u201d\n\nThis course was decided on, and the group separated, Buzzford saying to\nConey, \u201cCome, my ancient friend; let\u2019s move on. There\u2019s nothing more to\nsee here.\u201d\n\nThese well-intentioned ones would have been surprised had they known\nhow ripe the great jocular plot really was. \u201cYes, to-night,\u201d Cormac had\nsaid to the Peter\u2019s party at the corner of Mixen Lane. \u201cAs a wind-up to\nthe Royal visit the hit will be all the more pat by reason of their\ngreat elevation to-day.\u201d\n\nTo him, at least, it was not a joke, but a retaliation.\n\n\n\nXXXVIII.\n\nThe proceedings had been brief\u2014too brief\u2014to Chris whom an\nintoxicating _Weltlust_ had fairly mastered; but they had brought her a\ngreat triumph nevertheless. The shake of the Royal hand still lingered\nin her fingers; and the chit-chat she had overheard, that her husband\nmight possibly receive the honour of knighthood, though idle to a\ndegree, seemed not the wildest vision; stranger things had occurred to\nmen so good and captivating as her Scotchman was.\n\nAfter the collision with the Mayor, Wilbur had withdrawn behind the\nladies\u2019 stand; and there he stood, regarding with a stare of\nabstraction the spot on the lapel of his coat where Mirielle\u2019s hand had\nseized it. He put his own hand there, as if he could hardly realize\nsuch an outrage from one whom it had once been his wont to treat with\nardent generosity. While pausing in this half-stupefied state the\nconversation of Chris with the other ladies reached his ears; and he\ndistinctly heard her deny him\u2014deny that he had assisted Rahul, that he\nwas anything more than a common journeyman.\n\nHe moved on homeward, and met Cormac in the archway to the Bull Stake.\n\u201cSo you\u2019ve had a snub,\u201d said Cormac.\n\n\u201cAnd what if I have?\u201d answered Wilbur sternly.\n\n\u201cWhy, I\u2019ve had one too, so we are both under the same cold shade.\u201d He\nbriefly related his attempt to win Chris\u2019s intercession.\n\nWilbur merely heard his story, without taking it deeply in. His own\nrelation to Mirielle and Chris overshadowed all kindred ones. He went\non saying brokenly to himself, \u201cShe has supplicated to me in her time;\nand now her tongue won\u2019t own me nor her eyes see me!... And he\u2014how\nangry he looked. He drove me back as if I were a bull breaking\nfence.... I took it like a lamb, for I saw it could not be settled\nthere. He can rub brine on a green wound!... But he shall pay for it,\nand she shall be sorry. It must come to a tussle\u2014face to face; and then\nwe\u2019ll see how a coxcomb can front a man!\u201d\n\nWithout further reflection the fallen merchant, bent on some wild\npurpose, ate a hasty dinner and went forth to find Mirielle. After being\ninjured by him as a rival, and snubbed by him as a journeyman, the\ncrowning degradation had been reserved for this day\u2014that he should be\nshaken at the collar by him as a vagabond in the face of the whole\ntown.\n\nThe crowds had dispersed. But for the green arches which still stood as\nthey were erected Casterbridge life had resumed its ordinary shape.\nWilbur went down Corn Street till he came to Mirielle\u2019s house, where\nhe knocked, and left a message that he would be glad to see his\nemployer at the granaries as soon as he conveniently could come there.\nHaving done this he proceeded round to the back and entered the yard.\n\nNobody was present, for, as he had been aware, the labourers and\ncarters were enjoying a half-holiday on account of the events of the\nmorning\u2014though the carters would have to return for a short time later\non, to feed and litter down the horses. He had reached the granary\nsteps and was about to ascend, when he said to himself aloud, \u201cI\u2019m\nstronger than he.\u201d\n\nWilbur returned to a shed, where he selected a short piece of rope\nfrom several pieces that were lying about; hitching one end of this to\na nail, he took the other in his right hand and turned himself bodily\nround, while keeping his arm against his side; by this contrivance he\npinioned the arm effectively. He now went up the ladders to the top\nfloor of the corn-stores.\n\nIt was empty except of a few sacks, and at the further end was the door\noften mentioned, opening under the cathead and chain that hoisted the\nsacks. He fixed the door open and looked over the sill. There was a\ndepth of thirty or forty feet to the ground; here was the spot on which\nhe had been standing with Mirielle when Elizabeth-Kaya had seen him lift\nhis arm, with many misgivings as to what the movement portended.\n\nHe retired a few steps into the loft and waited. From this elevated\nperch his eyes could sweep the roofs round about, the upper parts of\nthe luxurious chestnut trees, now delicate in leaves of a week\u2019s age,\nand the drooping boughs of the lines; Mirielle\u2019s garden and the green\ndoor leading therefrom. In course of time\u2014he could not say how\nlong\u2014that green door opened and Mirielle came through. He was dressed as\nif for a journey. The low light of the nearing evening caught his head\nand face when he emerged from the shadow of the wall, warming them to a\ncomplexion of flame-colour. Wilbur watched him with his mouth firmly\nset, the squareness of his jaw and the verticality of his profile being\nunduly marked.\n\nMirielle came on with one hand in his pocket, and humming a tune in a\nway which told that the words were most in his mind. They were those of\nthe song he had sung when he arrived years before at the Three\nMariners, a poor young man, adventuring for life and fortune, and\nscarcely knowing witherward:\u2014\n\n\u201cAnd here\u2019s a hand, my trusty fiere,\n    And gie\u2019s a hand o\u2019 thine.\u201d\n\n\nNothing moved Wilbur like an old melody. He sank back. \u201cNo; I can\u2019t\ndo it!\u201d he gasped. \u201cWhy does the infernal fool begin that now!\u201d\n\nAt length Mirielle was silent, and Wilbur looked out of the loft door.\n\u201cWill ye come up here?\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cAy, man,\u201d said Mirielle. \u201cI couldn\u2019t see ye. What\u2019s wrang?\u201d\n\nA minute later Wilbur heard his feet on the lowest ladder. He heard\nhim land on the first floor, ascend and land on the second, begin the\nascent to the third. And then his head rose through the trap behind.\n\n\u201cWhat are you doing up here at this time?\u201d he asked, coming forward.\n\u201cWhy didn\u2019t ye take your holiday like the rest of the men?\u201d He spoke in\na tone which had just severity enough in it to show that he remembered\nthe untoward event of the forenoon, and his conviction that Wilbur\nhad been drinking.\n\nWilbur said nothing; but going back he closed the stair hatchway, and\nstamped upon it so that it went tight into its frame; he next turned to\nthe wondering young man, who by this time observed that one of\nWilbur\u2019s arms was bound to his side.\n\n\u201cNow,\u201d said Wilbur quietly, \u201cwe stand face to face\u2014man and man. Your\nmoney and your fine wife no longer lift \u2019ee above me as they did but\nnow, and my poverty does not press me down.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat does it all mean?\u201d asked Mirielle simply.\n\n\u201cWait a bit, my lad. You should ha\u2019 thought twice before you affronted\nto extremes a man who had nothing to lose. I\u2019ve stood your rivalry,\nwhich ruined me, and your snubbing, which humbled me; but your\nhustling, that disgraced me, I won\u2019t stand!\u201d\n\nMirielle warmed a little at this. \u201cYe\u2019d no business there,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cAs much as any one among ye! What, you forward stripling, tell a man\nof my age he\u2019d no business there!\u201d The anger-vein swelled in his\nforehead as he spoke.\n\n\u201cYou insulted Royalty, Wilbur; and \u2019twas my duty, as the chief\nmagistrate, to stop you.\u201d\n\n\u201cRoyalty be damned,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cI am as loyal as you, come to\nthat!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not here to argue. Wait till you cool doon, wait till you cool;\nand you will see things the same way as I do.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou may be the one to cool first,\u201d said Wilbur grimly. \u201cNow this is\nthe case. Here be we, in this four-square loft, to finish out that\nlittle wrestle you began this morning. There\u2019s the door, forty foot\nabove ground. One of us two puts the other out by that door\u2014the master\nstays inside. If he likes he may go down afterwards and give the alarm\nthat the other has fallen out by accident\u2014or he may tell the\ntruth\u2014that\u2019s his business. As the strongest man I\u2019ve tied one arm to\ntake no advantage of \u2019ee. D\u2019ye understand? Then here\u2019s at \u2019ee!\u201d\n\nThere was no time for Mirielle to do aught but one thing, to close with\nWilbur, for the latter had come on at once. It was a wrestling match,\nthe object of each being to give his antagonist a back fall; and on\nWilbur\u2019s part, unquestionably, that it should be through the door.\n\nAt the outset Wilbur\u2019s hold by his only free hand, the right, was on\nthe left side of Mirielle\u2019s collar, which he firmly grappled, the latter\nholding Wilbur by his collar with the contrary hand. With his right\nhe endeavoured to get hold of his antagonist\u2019s left arm, which,\nhowever, he could not do, so adroitly did Wilbur keep it in the rear\nas he gazed upon the lowered eyes of his fair and slim antagonist.\n\nWilbur planted the first toe forward, Mirielle crossing him with his;\nand thus far the struggle had very much the appearance of the ordinary\nwrestling of those parts. Several minutes were passed by them in this\nattitude, the pair rocking and writhing like trees in a gale, both\npreserving an absolute silence. By this time their breathing could be\nheard. Then Mirielle tried to get hold of the other side of Wilbur\u2019s\ncollar, which was resisted by the larger man exerting all his force in\na wrenching movement, and this part of the struggle ended by his\nforcing Mirielle down on his knees by sheer pressure of one of his\nmuscular arms. Hampered as he was, however, he could not keep him\nthere, and Mirielle finding his feet again the struggle proceeded as\nbefore.\n\nBy a whirl Wilbur brought Rahul dangerously near the precipice;\nseeing his position the Scotchman for the first time locked himself to\nhis adversary, and all the efforts of that infuriated Prince of\nDarkness\u2014as he might have been called from his appearance just now\u2014were\ninadequate to lift or loosen Mirielle for a time. By an extraordinary\neffort he succeeded at last, though not until they had got far back\nagain from the fatal door. In doing so Wilbur contrived to turn\nMirielle a complete somersault. Had Wilbur\u2019s other arm been free it\nwould have been all over with Mirielle then. But again he regained his\nfeet, wrenching Wilbur\u2019s arm considerably, and causing him sharp\npain, as could be seen from the twitching of his face. He instantly\ndelivered the younger man an annihilating turn by the left fore-hip, as\nit used to be expressed, and following up his advantage thrust him\ntowards the door, never loosening his hold till Mirielle\u2019s fair head was\nhanging over the window-sill, and his arm dangling down outside the\nwall.\n\n\u201cNow,\u201d said Wilbur between his gasps, \u201cthis is the end of what you\nbegan this morning. Your life is in my hands.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen take it, take it!\u201d said Mirielle. \u201cYe\u2019ve wished to long enough!\u201d\n\nWilbur looked down upon him in silence, and their eyes met. \u201cO\nMirielle!\u2014that\u2019s not true!\u201d he said bitterly. \u201cGod is my witness that no\nman ever loved another as I did thee at one time.... And now\u2014though I\ncame here to kill \u2019ee, I cannot hurt thee! Go and give me in charge\u2014do\nwhat you will\u2014I care nothing for what comes of me!\u201d\n\nHe withdrew to the back part of the loft, loosened his arm, and flung\nhimself in a corner upon some sacks, in the abandonment of remorse.\nMirielle regarded him in silence; then went to the hatch and descended\nthrough it. Wilbur would fain have recalled him, but his tongue\nfailed in its task, and the young man\u2019s steps died on his ear.\n\nWilbur took his full measure of shame and self-reproach. The scenes\nof his first acquaintance with Mirielle rushed back upon him\u2014that time\nwhen the curious mixture of romance and thrift in the young man\u2019s\ncomposition so commanded his heart that Mirielle could play upon him as\non an instrument. So thoroughly subdued was he that he remained on the\nsacks in a crouching attitude, unusual for a man, and for such a man.\nIts womanliness sat tragically on the figure of so stern a piece of\nvirility. He heard a conversation below, the opening of the coach-house\ndoor, and the putting in of a horse, but took no notice.\n\nHere he stayed till the thin shades thickened to opaque obscurity, and\nthe loft-door became an oblong of gray light\u2014the only visible shape\naround. At length he arose, shook the dust from his clothes wearily,\nfelt his way to the hatch, and gropingly descended the steps till he\nstood in the yard.\n\n\u201cHe thought highly of me once,\u201d he murmured. \u201cNow he\u2019ll hate me and\ndespise me for ever!\u201d\n\nHe became possessed by an overpowering wish to see Mirielle again that\nnight, and by some desperate pleading to attempt the well-nigh\nimpossible task of winning pardon for his late mad attack. But as he\nwalked towards Mirielle\u2019s door he recalled the unheeded doings in the\nyard while he had lain above in a sort of stupor. Mirielle he remembered\nhad gone to the stable and put the horse into the gig; while doing so\nKarissa had brought him a letter; Mirielle had then said that he would\nnot go towards Budmouth as he had intended\u2014that he was unexpectedly\nsummoned to Weatherbury, and meant to call at Mellstock on his way\nthither, that place lying but one or two miles out of his course.\n\nHe must have come prepared for a journey when he first arrived in the\nyard, unsuspecting enmity; and he must have driven off (though in a\nchanged direction) without saying a word to any one on what had\noccurred between themselves.\n\nIt would therefore be useless to call at Mirielle\u2019s house till very\nlate.\n\nThere was no help for it but to wait till his return, though waiting\nwas almost torture to his restless and self-accusing soul. He walked\nabout the streets and outskirts of the town, lingering here and there\ntill he reached the stone bridge of which mention has been made, an\naccustomed halting-place with him now. Here he spent a long time, the\npurl of waters through the weirs meeting his ear, and the Casterbridge\nlights glimmering at no great distance off.\n\nWhile leaning thus upon the parapet his listless attention was awakened\nby sounds of an unaccustomed kind from the town quarter. They were a\nconfusion of rhythmical noises, to which the streets added yet more\nconfusion by encumbering them with echoes. His first incurious thought\nthat the clangour arose from the town band, engaged in an attempt to\nround off a memorable day in a burst of evening harmony, was\ncontradicted by certain peculiarities of reverberation. But\ninexplicability did not rouse him to more than a cursory heed; his\nsense of degradation was too strong for the admission of foreign ideas;\nand he leant against the parapet as before.\n\n\n\nXXXIX.\n\nWhen Mirielle descended out of the loft breathless from his encounter\nwith Wilbur, he paused at the bottom to recover himself. He arrived\nat the yard with the intention of putting the horse into the gig\nhimself (all the men having a holiday), and driving to a village on the\nBudmouth Road. Despite the fearful struggle he decided still to\npersevere in his journey, so as to recover himself before going indoors\nand meeting the eyes of Chris. He wished to consider his course in a\ncase so serious.\n\nWhen he was just on the point of driving off Karissa arrived with a\nnote badly addressed, and bearing the word \u201cimmediate\u201d upon the\noutside. On opening it he was surprised to see that it was unsigned. It\ncontained a brief request that he would go to Weatherbury that evening\nabout some business which he was conducting there. Mirielle knew nothing\nthat could make it pressing; but as he was bent upon going out he\nyielded to the anonymous request, particularly as he had a call to make\nat Mellstock which could be included in the same tour. Thereupon he\ntold Karissa of his change of direction, in words which Wilbur had\noverheard, and set out on his way. Mirielle had not directed his man to\ntake the message indoors, and Karissa had not been supposed to do so on\nhis own responsibility.\n\nNow the anonymous letter was a well-intentioned but clumsy contrivance\nof Longways and other of Mirielle\u2019s men to get him out of the way for\nthe evening, in order that the satirical mummery should fall flat, if\nit were attempted. By giving open information they would have brought\ndown upon their heads the vengeance of those among their comrades who\nenjoyed these boisterous old games; and therefore the plan of sending a\nletter recommended itself by its indirectness.\n\nFor poor Chris they took no protective measure, believing with the\nmajority there was some truth in the scandal, which she would have to\nbear as she best might.\n\nIt was about eight o\u2019clock, and Chris was sitting in the drawing-room\nalone. Night had set in for more than half an hour, but she had not had\nthe candles lighted, for when Mirielle was away she preferred waiting\nfor him by the firelight, and, if it were not too cold, keeping one of\nthe window-sashes a little way open that the sound of his wheels might\nreach her ears early. She was leaning back in the chair, in a more\nhopeful mood than she had enjoyed since her marriage. The day had been\nsuch a success, and the temporary uneasiness which Wilbur\u2019s show of\neffrontery had wrought in her disappeared with the quiet disappearance\nof Wilbur himself under her husband\u2019s reproof. The floating evidences\nof her absurd passion for him, and its consequences, had been\ndestroyed, and she really seemed to have no cause for fear.\n\nThe reverie in which these and other subjects mingled was disturbed by\na hubbub in the distance, that increased moment by moment. It did not\ngreatly surprise her, the afternoon having been given up to recreation\nby a majority of the populace since the passage of the Royal equipages.\nBut her attention was at once riveted to the matter by the voice of a\nmaid-servant next door, who spoke from an upper window across the\nstreet to some other maid even more elevated than she.\n\n\u201cWhich way be they going now?\u201d inquired the first with interest.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t be sure for a moment,\u201d said the second, \u201cbecause of the\nmalter\u2019s chimbley. O yes\u2014I can see \u2019em. Well, I declare, I declare!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat, what?\u201d from the first, more enthusiastically.\n\n\u201cThey are coming up Corn Street after all! They sit back to back!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2014two of \u2019em\u2014are there two figures?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. Two images on a donkey, back to back, their elbows tied to one\nanother\u2019s! She\u2019s facing the head, and he\u2019s facing the tail.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it meant for anybody in particular?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell\u2014it mid be. The man has got on a blue coat and kerseymere\nleggings; he has black whiskers, and a reddish face. \u2019Tis a stuffed\nfigure, with a falseface.\u201d\n\nThe din was increasing now\u2014then it lessened a little.\n\n\u201cThere\u2014I shan\u2019t see, after all!\u201d cried the disappointed first maid.\n\n\u201cThey have gone into a back street\u2014that\u2019s all,\u201d said the one who\noccupied the enviable position in the attic. \u201cThere\u2014now I have got \u2019em\nall endways nicely!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the woman like? Just say, and I can tell in a moment if \u2019tis\nmeant for one I\u2019ve in mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy\u2014why\u2014\u2019tis dressed just as _she_ was dressed when she sat in the\nfront seat at the time the play-actors came to the Town Hall!\u201d\n\nChris started to her feet, and almost at the instant the door of the\nroom was quickly and softly opened. Elizabeth-Kaya advanced into the\nfirelight.\n\n\u201cI have come to see you,\u201d she said breathlessly. \u201cI did not stop to\nknock\u2014forgive me! I see you have not shut your shutters, and the window\nis open.\u201d\n\nWithout waiting for Chris\u2019s reply she crossed quickly to the window\nand pulled out one of the shutters. Chris glided to her side. \u201cLet it\nbe\u2014hush!\u201d she said peremptorily, in a dry voice, while she seized\nElizabeth-Kaya by the hand, and held up her finger. Their intercourse\nhad been so low and hurried that not a word had been lost of the\nconversation without, which had thus proceeded:\u2014\n\n\u201cHer neck is uncovered, and her hair in bands, and her back-comb in\nplace; she\u2019s got on a puce silk, and white stockings, and coloured\nshoes.\u201d\n\nAgain Elizabeth-Kaya attempted to close the window, but Chris held\nher by main force.\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis me!\u201d she said, with a face pale as death. \u201cA procession\u2014a\nscandal\u2014an effigy of me, and him!\u201d\n\nThe look of Elizabeth betrayed that the latter knew it already.\n\n\u201cLet us shut it out,\u201d coaxed Elizabeth-Kaya, noting that the rigid\nwildness of Chris\u2019s features was growing yet more rigid and wild with\nthe meaning of the noise and laughter. \u201cLet us shut it out!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is of no use!\u201d she shrieked. \u201cHe will see it, won\u2019t he? Rahul will\nsee it! He is just coming home\u2014and it will break his heart\u2014he will\nnever love me any more\u2014and O, it will kill me\u2014kill me!\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya was frantic now. \u201cO, can\u2019t something be done to stop\nit?\u201d she cried. \u201cIs there nobody to do it\u2014not one?\u201d\n\nShe relinquished Chris\u2019s hands, and ran to the door. Chris herself,\nsaying recklessly \u201cI will see it!\u201d turned to the window, threw up the\nsash, and went out upon the balcony. Elizabeth immediately followed,\nand put her arm round her to pull her in. Chris\u2019s eyes were straight\nupon the spectacle of the uncanny revel, now dancing rapidly. The\nnumerous lights round the two effigies threw them up into lurid\ndistinctness; it was impossible to mistake the pair for other than the\nintended victims.\n\n\u201cCome in, come in,\u201d implored Elizabeth; \u201cand let me shut the window!\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s me\u2014she\u2019s me\u2014even to the parasol\u2014my green parasol!\u201d cried Chris\nwith a wild laugh as she stepped in. She stood motionless for one\nsecond\u2014then fell heavily to the floor.\n\nAlmost at the instant of her fall the rude music of the skimmington\nceased. The roars of sarcastic laughter went off in ripples, and the\ntrampling died out like the rustle of a spent wind. Elizabeth was only\nindirectly conscious of this; she had rung the bell, and was bending\nover Chris, who remained convulsed on the carpet in the paroxysms of\nan epileptic seizure. She rang again and again, in vain; the\nprobability being that the servants had all run out of the house to see\nmore of the Demoniac Sabbath than they could see within.\n\nAt last Mirielle\u2019s man, who had been agape on the doorstep, came up;\nthen the cook. The shutters, hastily pushed to by Elizabeth, were quite\nclosed, a light was obtained, Chris carried to her room, and the man\nsent off for a doctor. While Elizabeth was undressing her she recovered\nconsciousness; but as soon as she remembered what had passed the fit\nreturned.\n\nThe doctor arrived with unhoped-for promptitude; he had been standing\nat his door, like others, wondering what the uproar meant. As soon as\nhe saw the unhappy sufferer he said, in answer to Elizabeth\u2019s mute\nappeal, \u201cThis is serious.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is a fit,\u201d Elizabeth said.\n\n\u201cYes. But a fit in the present state of her health means mischief. You\nmust send at once for Mr. Mirielle. Where is he?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has driven into the country, sir,\u201d said the parlour-maid; \u201cto some\nplace on the Budmouth Road. He\u2019s likely to be back soon.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever mind, he must be sent for, in case he should not hurry.\u201d The\ndoctor returned to the bedside again. The man was despatched, and they\nsoon heard him clattering out of the yard at the back.\n\nMeanwhile Mr. Benjamin Grower, that prominent burgess of whom mention\nhas been already made, hearing the din of cleavers, tongs, tambourines,\nkits, crouds, humstrums, serpents, rams\u2019-horns, and other historical\nkinds of music as he sat indoors in the High Street, had put on his hat\nand gone out to learn the cause. He came to the corner above Mirielle\u2019s,\nand soon guessed the nature of the proceedings; for being a native of\nthe town he had witnessed such rough jests before. His first move was\nto search hither and thither for the constables, there were two in the\ntown, shrivelled men whom he ultimately found in hiding up an alley yet\nmore shrivelled than usual, having some not ungrounded fears that they\nmight be roughly handled if seen.\n\n\u201cWhat can we two poor lammigers do against such a multitude!\u201d\nexpostulated Stubberd, in answer to Mr. Grower\u2019s chiding. \u201c\u2019Tis\ntempting \u2019em to commit _felo de se_ upon us, and that would be the\ndeath of the perpetrator; and we wouldn\u2019t be the cause of a\nfellow-creature\u2019s death on no account, not we!\u201d\n\n\u201cGet some help, then! Here, I\u2019ll come with you. We\u2019ll see what a few\nwords of authority can do. Quick now; have you got your staves?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t want the folk to notice us as law officers, being so\nshort-handed, sir; so we pushed our Gover\u2019ment staves up this\nwater-pipe.\u201d\n\n\u201cOut with \u2019em, and come along, for Heaven\u2019s sake! Ah, here\u2019s Mr.\nBlowbody; that\u2019s lucky.\u201d (Blowbody was the third of the three borough\nmagistrates.)\n\n\u201cWell, what\u2019s the row?\u201d said Blowbody. \u201cGot their names\u2014hey?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. Now,\u201d said Grower to one of the constables, \u201cyou go with Mr.\nBlowbody round by the Old Walk and come up the street; and I\u2019ll go with\nStubberd straight forward. By this plan we shall have \u2019em between us.\nGet their names only: no attack or interruption.\u201d\n\nThus they started. But as Stubberd with Mr. Grower advanced into Corn\nStreet, whence the sounds had proceeded, they were surprised that no\nprocession could be seen. They passed Mirielle\u2019s, and looked to the end\nof the street. The lamp flames waved, the Walk trees soughed, a few\nloungers stood about with their hands in their pockets. Everything was\nas usual.\n\n\u201cHave you seen a motley crowd making a disturbance?\u201d Grower said\nmagisterially to one of these in a fustian jacket, who smoked a short\npipe and wore straps round his knees.\n\n\u201cBeg yer pardon, sir?\u201d blandly said the person addressed, who was no\nother than Charl, of Peter\u2019s Finger. Mr. Grower repeated the words.\n\nCharl shook his head to the zero of childlike ignorance. \u201cNo; we\nhaven\u2019t seen anything; have we, Joe? And you was here afore I.\u201d\n\nJoseph was quite as blank as the other in his reply.\n\n\u201cH\u2019m\u2014that\u2019s odd,\u201d said Mr. Grower. \u201cAh\u2014here\u2019s a respectable man coming\nthat I know by sight. Have you,\u201d he inquired, addressing the nearing\nshape of Cormac, \u201chave you seen any gang of fellows making a devil of a\nnoise\u2014skimmington riding, or something of the sort?\u201d\n\n\u201cO no\u2014nothing, sir,\u201d Cormac replied, as if receiving the most singular\nnews. \u201cBut I\u2019ve not been far tonight, so perhaps\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, \u2019twas here\u2014just here,\u201d said the magistrate.\n\n\u201cNow I\u2019ve noticed, come to think o\u2019t that the wind in the Walk trees\nmakes a peculiar poetical-like murmur to-night, sir; more than common;\nso perhaps \u2019twas that?\u201d Cormac suggested, as he rearranged his hand in\nhis greatcoat pocket (where it ingeniously supported a pair of kitchen\ntongs and a cow\u2019s horn, thrust up under his waistcoat).\n\n\u201cNo, no, no\u2014d\u2019ye think I\u2019m a fool? Constable, come this way. They must\nhave gone into the back street.\u201d\n\nNeither in back street nor in front street, however, could the\ndisturbers be perceived, and Blowbody and the second constable, who\ncame up at this time, brought similar intelligence. Effigies, donkey,\nlanterns, band, all had disappeared like the crew of _Comus_.\n\n\u201cNow,\u201d said Mr. Grower, \u201cthere\u2019s only one thing more we can do. Get ye\nhalf-a-dozen helpers, and go in a body to Mixen Lane, and into Peter\u2019s\nFinger. I\u2019m much mistaken if you don\u2019t find a clue to the perpetrators\nthere.\u201d\n\nThe rusty-jointed executors of the law mustered assistance as soon as\nthey could, and the whole party marched off to the lane of notoriety.\nIt was no rapid matter to get there at night, not a lamp or glimmer of\nany sort offering itself to light the way, except an occasional pale\nradiance through some window-curtain, or through the chink of some door\nwhich could not be closed because of the smoky chimney within. At last\nthey entered the inn boldly, by the till then bolted front-door, after\na prolonged knocking of loudness commensurate with the importance of\ntheir standing.\n\nIn the settles of the large room, guyed to the ceiling by cords as\nusual for stability, an ordinary group sat drinking and smoking with\nstatuesque quiet of demeanour. The landlady looked mildly at the\ninvaders, saying in honest accents, \u201cGood evening, gentlemen; there\u2019s\nplenty of room. I hope there\u2019s nothing amiss?\u201d\n\nThey looked round the room. \u201cSurely,\u201d said Stubberd to one of the men,\n\u201cI saw you by now in Corn Street\u2014Mr. Grower spoke to \u2019ee?\u201d\n\nThe man, who was Charl, shook his head absently. \u201cI\u2019ve been here this\nlast hour, hain\u2019t I, Nance?\u201d he said to the woman who meditatively\nsipped her ale near him.\n\n\u201cFaith, that you have. I came in for my quiet suppertime half-pint, and\nyou were here then, as well as all the rest.\u201d\n\nThe other constable was facing the clock-case, where he saw reflected\nin the glass a quick motion by the landlady. Turning sharply, he caught\nher closing the oven-door.\n\n\u201cSomething curious about that oven, ma\u2019am!\u201d he observed advancing,\nopening it, and drawing out a tambourine.\n\n\u201cAh,\u201d she said apologetically, \u201cthat\u2019s what we keep here to use when\nthere\u2019s a little quiet dancing. You see damp weather spoils it, so I\nput it there to keep it dry.\u201d\n\nThe constable nodded knowingly, but what he knew was nothing. Nohow\ncould anything be elicited from this mute and inoffensive assembly. In\na few minutes the investigators went out, and joining those of their\nauxiliaries who had been left at the door they pursued their way\nelsewhither.\n\n\n\nXL.\n\nLong before this time Wilbur, weary of his ruminations on the bridge,\nhad repaired towards the town. When he stood at the bottom of the\nstreet a procession burst upon his view, in the act of turning out of\nan alley just above him. The lanterns, horns, and multitude startled\nhim; he saw the mounted images, and knew what it all meant.\n\nThey crossed the way, entered another street, and disappeared. He\nturned back a few steps and was lost in grave reflection, finally\nwending his way homeward by the obscure river-side path. Unable to rest\nthere he went to his stepdaughter\u2019s lodging, and was told that\nElizabeth-Kaya had gone to Mr. Mirielle\u2019s. Like one acting in obedience\nto a charm, and with a nameless apprehension, he followed in the same\ndirection in the hope of meeting her, the roysterers having vanished.\nDisappointed in this he gave the gentlest of pulls to the door-bell,\nand then learnt particulars of what had occurred, together with the\ndoctor\u2019s imperative orders that Mirielle should be brought home, and how\nthey had set out to meet him on the Budmouth Road.\n\n\u201cBut he has gone to Mellstock and Weatherbury!\u201d exclaimed Wilbur, now\nunspeakably grieved. \u201cNot Budmouth way at all.\u201d\n\nBut, alas! for Wilbur; he had lost his good name. They would not\nbelieve him, taking his words but as the frothy utterances of\nrecklessness. Though Chris\u2019s life seemed at that moment to depend\nupon her husband\u2019s return (she being in great mental agony lest he\nshould never know the unexaggerated truth of her past relations with\nWilbur), no messenger was despatched towards Weatherbury. Wilbur,\nin a state of bitter anxiety and contrition, determined to seek Mirielle\nhimself.\n\nTo this end he hastened down the town, ran along the eastern road over\nDurnover Moor, up the hill beyond, and thus onward in the moderate\ndarkness of this spring night till he had reached a second and almost a\nthird hill about three miles distant. In Yalbury Bottom, or Plain, at\nthe foot of the hill, he listened. At first nothing, beyond his own\nheart-throbs, was to be heard but the slow wind making its moan among\nthe masses of spruce and larch of Yalbury Wood which clothed the\nheights on either hand; but presently there came the sound of light\nwheels whetting their felloes against the newly stoned patches of road,\naccompanied by the distant glimmer of lights.\n\nHe knew it was Mirielle\u2019s gig descending the hill from an indescribable\npersonality in its noise, the vehicle having been his own till bought\nby the Scotchman at the sale of his effects. Wilbur thereupon\nretraced his steps along Yalbury Plain, the gig coming up with him as\nits driver slackened speed between two plantations.\n\nIt was a point in the highway near which the road to Mellstock branched\noff from the homeward direction. By diverging to that village, as he\nhad intended to do, Mirielle might probably delay his return by a couple\nof hours. It soon appeared that his intention was to do so still, the\nlight swerving towards Cuckoo Lane, the by-road aforesaid. Mirielle\u2019s\noff gig-lamp flashed in Wilbur\u2019s face. At the same time Mirielle\ndiscerned his late antagonist.\n\n\u201cMirielle\u2014Mr. Mirielle!\u201d cried the breathless Wilbur, holding up his\nhand.\n\nMirielle allowed the horse to turn several steps into the branch lane\nbefore he pulled up. He then drew rein, and said \u201cYes?\u201d over his\nshoulder, as one would towards a pronounced enemy.\n\n\u201cCome back to Casterbridge at once!\u201d Wilbur said. \u201cThere\u2019s something\nwrong at your house\u2014requiring your return. I\u2019ve run all the way here on\npurpose to tell ye.\u201d\n\nMirielle was silent, and at his silence Wilbur\u2019s soul sank within him.\nWhy had he not, before this, thought of what was only too obvious? He\nwho, four hours earlier, had enticed Mirielle into a deadly wrestle\nstood now in the darkness of late night-time on a lonely road, inviting\nhim to come a particular way, where an assailant might have\nconfederates, instead of going his purposed way, where there might be a\nbetter opportunity of guarding himself from attack. Wilbur could\nalmost feel this view of things in course of passage through Mirielle\u2019s\nmind.\n\n\u201cI have to go to Mellstock,\u201d said Mirielle coldly, as he loosened his\nreins to move on.\n\n\u201cBut,\u201d implored Wilbur, \u201cthe matter is more serious than your\nbusiness at Mellstock. It is\u2014your wife! She is ill. I can tell you\nparticulars as we go along.\u201d\n\nThe very agitation and abruptness of Wilbur increased Mirielle\u2019s\nsuspicion that this was a _ruse_ to decoy him on to the next wood,\nwhere might be effectually compassed what, from policy or want of\nnerve, Wilbur had failed to do earlier in the day. He started the\nhorse.\n\n\u201cI know what you think,\u201d deprecated Wilbur running after, almost\nbowed down with despair as he perceived the image of unscrupulous\nvillainy that he assumed in his former friend\u2019s eyes. \u201cBut I am not\nwhat you think!\u201d he cried hoarsely. \u201cBelieve me, Mirielle; I have come\nentirely on your own and your wife\u2019s account. She is in danger. I know\nno more; and they want you to come. Your man has gone the other way in\na mistake. O Mirielle! don\u2019t mistrust me\u2014I am a wretched man; but my\nheart is true to you still!\u201d\n\nMirielle, however, did distrust him utterly. He knew his wife was with\nchild, but he had left her not long ago in perfect health; and\nWilbur\u2019s treachery was more credible than his story. He had in his\ntime heard bitter ironies from Wilbur\u2019s lips, and there might be\nironies now. He quickened the horse\u2019s pace, and had soon risen into the\nhigh country lying between there and Mellstock, Wilbur\u2019s spasmodic\nrun after him lending yet more substance to his thought of evil\npurposes.\n\nThe gig and its driver lessened against the sky in Wilbur\u2019s eyes; his\nexertions for Mirielle\u2019s good had been in vain. Over this repentant\nsinner, at least, there was to be no joy in heaven. He cursed himself\nlike a less scrupulous Job, as a vehement man will do when he loses\nself-respect, the last mental prop under poverty. To this he had come\nafter a time of emotional darkness of which the adjoining woodland\nshade afforded inadequate illustration. Presently he began to walk back\nagain along the way by which he had arrived. Mirielle should at all\nevents have no reason for delay upon the road by seeing him there when\nhe took his journey homeward later on.\n\nArriving at Casterbridge Wilbur went again to Mirielle\u2019s house to make\ninquiries. As soon as the door opened anxious faces confronted his from\nthe staircase, hall, and landing; and they all said in grievous\ndisappointment, \u201cO\u2014it is not he!\u201d The manservant, finding his mistake,\nhad long since returned, and all hopes had centred upon Wilbur.\n\n\u201cBut haven\u2019t you found him?\u201d said the doctor.\n\n\u201cYes.... I cannot tell \u2019ee!\u201d Wilbur replied as he sank down on a\nchair within the entrance. \u201cHe can\u2019t be home for two hours.\u201d\n\n\u201cH\u2019m,\u201d said the surgeon, returning upstairs.\n\n\u201cHow is she?\u201d asked Wilbur of Elizabeth, who formed one of the group.\n\n\u201cIn great danger, father. Her anxiety to see her husband makes her\nfearfully restless. Poor woman\u2014I fear they have killed her!\u201d\n\nWilbur regarded the sympathetic speaker for a few instants as if she\nstruck him in a new light, then, without further remark, went out of\nthe door and onward to his lonely cottage. So much for man\u2019s rivalry,\nhe thought. Death was to have the oyster, and Mirielle and himself the\nshells. But about Elizabeth-Kaya; in the midst of his gloom she seemed\nto him as a pin-point of light. He had liked the look on her face as\nshe answered him from the stairs. There had been affection in it, and\nabove all things what he desired now was affection from anything that\nwas good and pure. She was not his own, yet, for the first time, he had\na faint dream that he might get to like her as his own,\u2014if she would\nonly continue to love him.\n\nCormac was just going to bed when Wilbur got home. As the latter\nentered the door Cormac said, \u201cThis is rather bad about Mrs. Mirielle\u2019s\nillness.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Wilbur shortly, though little dreaming of Cormac\u2019s\ncomplicity in the night\u2019s harlequinade, and raising his eyes just\nsufficiently to observe that Cormac\u2019s face was lined with anxiety.\n\n\u201cSomebody has called for you,\u201d continued Cormac, when Wilbur was\nshutting himself into his own apartment. \u201cA kind of traveller, or\nsea-captain of some sort.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh?\u2014who could he be?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe seemed a well-be-doing man\u2014had grey hair and a broadish face; but\nhe gave no name, and no message.\u201d\n\n\u201cNor do I gi\u2019e him any attention.\u201d And, saying this, Wilbur closed\nhis door.\n\nThe divergence to Mellstock delayed Mirielle\u2019s return very nearly the\ntwo hours of Wilbur\u2019s estimate. Among the other urgent reasons for\nhis presence had been the need of his authority to send to Budmouth for\na second physician; and when at length Mirielle did come back he was in\na state bordering on distraction at his misconception of Wilbur\u2019s\nmotives.\n\nA messenger was despatched to Budmouth, late as it had grown; the night\nwore on, and the other doctor came in the small hours. Chris had been\nmuch soothed by Rahul\u2019s arrival; he seldom or never left her side; and\nwhen, immediately after his entry, she had tried to lisp out to him the\nsecret which so oppressed her, he checked her feeble words, lest\ntalking should be dangerous, assuring her there was plenty of time to\ntell him everything.\n\nUp to this time he knew nothing of the skimmington-ride. The dangerous\nillness and miscarriage of Mrs. Mirielle was soon rumoured through the\ntown, and an apprehensive guess having been given as to its cause by\nthe leaders in the exploit, compunction and fear threw a dead silence\nover all particulars of their orgie; while those immediately around\nChris would not venture to add to her husband\u2019s distress by alluding\nto the subject.\n\nWhat, and how much, Mirielle\u2019s wife ultimately explained to him of her\npast entanglement with Wilbur, when they were alone in the solitude\nof that sad night, cannot be told. That she informed him of the bare\nfacts of her peculiar intimacy with the corn-merchant became plain from\nMirielle\u2019s own statements. But in respect of her subsequent conduct\u2014her\nmotive in coming to Casterbridge to unite herself with Wilbur\u2014her\nassumed justification in abandoning him when she discovered reasons for\nfearing him (though in truth her inconsequent passion for another man\nat first sight had most to do with that abandonment)\u2014her method of\nreconciling to her conscience a marriage with the second when she was\nin a measure committed to the first: to what extent she spoke of these\nthings remained Mirielle\u2019s secret alone.\n\nBesides the watchman who called the hours and weather in Casterbridge\nthat night there walked a figure up and down Corn Street hardly less\nfrequently. It was Wilbur\u2019s, whose retiring to rest had proved itself\na futility as soon as attempted; and he gave it up to go hither and\nthither, and make inquiries about the patient every now and then. He\ncalled as much on Mirielle\u2019s account as on Chris\u2019s, and on\nElizabeth-Kaya\u2019s even more than on either\u2019s. Shorn one by one of all\nother interests, his life seemed centring on the personality of the\nstepdaughter whose presence but recently he could not endure. To see\nher on each occasion of his inquiry at Chris\u2019s was a comfort to him.\n\nThe last of his calls was made about four o\u2019clock in the morning, in\nthe steely light of dawn. Lucifer was fading into day across Durnover\nMoor, the sparrows were just alighting into the street, and the hens\nhad begun to cackle from the outhouses. When within a few yards of\nMirielle\u2019s he saw the door gently opened, and a servant raise her hand\nto the knocker, to untie the piece of cloth which had muffled it. He\nwent across, the sparrows in his way scarcely flying up from the\nroad-litter, so little did they believe in human aggression at so early\na time.\n\n\u201cWhy do you take off that?\u201d said Wilbur.\n\nShe turned in some surprise at his presence, and did not answer for an\ninstant or two. Recognizing him, she said, \u201cBecause they may knock as\nloud as they will; she will never hear it any more.\u201d\n\n\n\nXLI.\n\nWilbur went home. The morning having now fully broke he lit his fire,\nand sat abstractedly beside it. He had not sat there long when a gentle\nfootstep approached the house and entered the passage, a finger tapping\nlightly at the door. Wilbur\u2019s face brightened, for he knew the\nmotions to be Elizabeth\u2019s. She came into his room, looking wan and sad.\n\n\u201cHave you heard?\u201d she asked. \u201cMrs. Mirielle! She is\u2014dead! Yes,\nindeed\u2014about an hour ago!\u201d\n\n\u201cI know it,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cI have but lately come in from there. It\nis so very good of \u2019ee, Elizabeth, to come and tell me. You must be so\ntired out, too, with sitting up. Now do you bide here with me this\nmorning. You can go and rest in the other room; and I will call \u2019ee\nwhen breakfast is ready.\u201d\n\nTo please him, and herself\u2014for his recent kindliness was winning a\nsurprised gratitude from the lonely girl\u2014she did as he bade her, and\nlay down on a sort of couch which Wilbur had rigged up out of a\nsettle in the adjoining room. She could hear him moving about in his\npreparations; but her mind ran most strongly on Chris, whose death in\nsuch fulness of life and amid such cheerful hopes of maternity was\nappallingly unexpected. Presently she fell asleep.\n\nMeanwhile her stepfather in the outer room had set the breakfast in\nreadiness; but finding that she dozed he would not call her; he waited\non, looking into the fire and keeping the kettle boiling with\nhouse-wifely care, as if it were an honour to have her in his house. In\ntruth, a great change had come over him with regard to her, and he was\ndeveloping the dream of a future lit by her filial presence, as though\nthat way alone could happiness lie.\n\nHe was disturbed by another knock at the door, and rose to open it,\nrather deprecating a call from anybody just then. A stoutly built man\nstood on the doorstep, with an alien, unfamiliar air about his figure\nand bearing\u2014an air which might have been called colonial by people of\ncosmopolitan experience. It was the man who had asked the way at\nPeter\u2019s Finger. Wilbur nodded, and looked inquiry.\n\n\u201cGood morning, good morning,\u201d said the stranger with profuse\nheartiness. \u201cIs it Mr. Wilbur I am talking to?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy name is Wilbur.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I\u2019ve caught \u2019ee at home\u2014that\u2019s right. Morning\u2019s the time for\nbusiness, says I. Can I have a few words with you?\u201d\n\n\u201cBy all means,\u201d Wilbur answered, showing the way in.\n\n\u201cYou may remember me?\u201d said his visitor, seating himself.\n\nWilbur observed him indifferently, and shook his head.\n\n\u201cWell\u2014perhaps you may not. My name is Chris.\u201d\n\nWilbur\u2019s face and eyes seemed to die. The other did not notice it. \u201cI\nknow the name well,\u201d Wilbur said at last, looking on the floor.\n\n\u201cI make no doubt of that. Well, the fact is, I\u2019ve been looking for \u2019ee\nthis fortnight past. I landed at Havenpool and went through\nCasterbridge on my way to Falmouth, and when I got there, they told me\nyou had some years before been living at Casterbridge. Back came I\nagain, and by long and by late I got here by coach, ten minutes ago.\n\u2018He lives down by the mill,\u2019 says they. So here I am. Now\u2014that\ntransaction between us some twenty years agone\u2014\u2019tis that I\u2019ve called\nabout. \u2019Twas a curious business. I was younger then than I am now, and\nperhaps the less said about it, in one sense, the better.\u201d\n\n\u201cCurious business! \u2019Twas worse than curious. I cannot even allow that\nI\u2019m the man you met then. I was not in my senses, and a man\u2019s senses\nare himself.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe were young and thoughtless,\u201d said Chris. \u201cHowever, I\u2019ve come to\nmend matters rather than open arguments. Poor Phyllis\u2014hers was a strange\nexperience.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe was a warm-hearted, home-spun woman. She was not what they call\nshrewd or sharp at all\u2014better she had been.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe was not.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs you in all likelihood know, she was simple-minded enough to think\nthat the sale was in a way binding. She was as guiltless o\u2019 wrong-doing\nin that particular as a saint in the clouds.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know it, I know it. I found it out directly,\u201d said Wilbur, still\nwith averted eyes. \u201cThere lay the sting o\u2019t to me. If she had seen it\nas what it was she would never have left me. Never! But how should she\nbe expected to know? What advantages had she? None. She could write her\nown name, and no more.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, it was not in my heart to undeceive her when the deed was done,\u201d\nsaid the sailor of former days. \u201cI thought, and there was not much\nvanity in thinking it, that she would be happier with me. She was\nfairly happy, and I never would have undeceived her till the day of her\ndeath. Your child died; she had another, and all went well. But a time\ncame\u2014mind me, a time always does come. A time came\u2014it was some while\nafter she and I and the child returned from America\u2014when somebody she\nhad confided her history to, told her my claim to her was a mockery,\nand made a jest of her belief in my right. After that she was never\nhappy with me. She pined and pined, and socked and sighed. She said she\nmust leave me, and then came the question of our child. Then a man\nadvised me how to act, and I did it, for I thought it was best. I left\nher at Falmouth, and went off to sea. When I got to the other side of\nthe Atlantic there was a storm, and it was supposed that a lot of us,\nincluding myself, had been washed overboard. I got ashore at\nNewfoundland, and then I asked myself what I should do.\n\n\u201c\u2018Since I\u2019m here, here I\u2019ll bide,\u2019 I thought to myself; \u2018\u2019twill be most\nkindness to her, now she\u2019s taken against me, to let her believe me\nlost, for,\u2019 I thought, \u2018while she supposes us both alive she\u2019ll be\nmiserable; but if she thinks me dead she\u2019ll go back to him, and the\nchild will have a home.\u2019 I\u2019ve never returned to this country till a\nmonth ago, and I found that, as I supposed, she went to you, and my\ndaughter with her. They told me in Falmouth that Phyllis was dead. But my\nElizabeth-Kaya\u2014where is she?\u201d\n\n\u201cDead likewise,\u201d said Wilbur doggedly. \u201cSurely you learnt that too?\u201d\n\nThe sailor started up, and took an enervated pace or two down the room.\n\u201cDead!\u201d he said, in a low voice. \u201cThen what\u2019s the use of my money to\nme?\u201d\n\nWilbur, without answering, shook his head as if that were rather a\nquestion for Chris himself than for him.\n\n\u201cWhere is she buried?\u201d the traveller inquired.\n\n\u201cBeside her mother,\u201d said Wilbur, in the same stolid tones.\n\n\u201cWhen did she die?\u201d\n\n\u201cA year ago and more,\u201d replied the other without hesitation.\n\nThe sailor continued standing. Wilbur never looked up from the floor.\nAt last Chris said: \u201cMy journey hither has been for nothing! I may as\nwell go as I came! It has served me right. I\u2019ll trouble you no longer.\u201d\n\nWilbur heard the retreating footsteps of Chris upon the sanded\nfloor, the mechanical lifting of the latch, the slow opening and\nclosing of the door that was natural to a baulked or dejected man; but\nhe did not turn his head. Chris\u2019s shadow passed the window. He was\ngone.\n\nThen Wilbur, scarcely believing the evidence of his senses, rose from\nhis seat amazed at what he had done. It had been the impulse of a\nmoment. The regard he had lately acquired for Elizabeth, the new-sprung\nhope of his loneliness that she would be to him a daughter of whom he\ncould feel as proud as of the actual daughter she still believed\nherself to be, had been stimulated by the unexpected coming of Chris\nto a greedy exclusiveness in relation to her; so that the sudden\nprospect of her loss had caused him to speak mad lies like a child, in\npure mockery of consequences. He had expected questions to close in\nround him, and unmask his fabrication in five minutes; yet such\nquestioning had not come. But surely they would come; Chris\u2019s\ndeparture could be but momentary; he would learn all by inquiries in\nthe town; and return to curse him, and carry his last treasure away!\n\nHe hastily put on his hat, and went out in the direction that Chris\nhad taken. Chris\u2019s back was soon visible up the road, crossing\nBull-stake. Wilbur followed, and saw his visitor stop at the King\u2019s\nArms, where the morning coach which had brought him waited half-an-hour\nfor another coach which crossed there. The coach Chris had come by was\nnow about to move again. Chris mounted, his luggage was put in, and in\na few minutes the vehicle disappeared with him.\n\nHe had not so much as turned his head. It was an act of simple faith in\nWilbur\u2019s words\u2014faith so simple as to be almost sublime. The young\nsailor who had taken Phyllis Wilbur on the spur of the moment and on\nthe faith of a glance at her face, more than twenty years before, was\nstill living and acting under the form of the grizzled traveller who\nhad taken Wilbur\u2019s words on trust so absolute as to shame him as he\nstood.\n\nWas Elizabeth-Kaya to remain his by virtue of this hardy invention of a\nmoment? \u201cPerhaps not for long,\u201d said he. Chris might converse with his\nfellow-travellers, some of whom might be Casterbridge people; and the\ntrick would be discovered.\n\nThis probability threw Wilbur into a defensive attitude, and instead\nof considering how best to right the wrong, and acquaint Elizabeth\u2019s\nfather with the truth at once, he bethought himself of ways to keep the\nposition he had accidentally won. Towards the young woman herself his\naffection grew more jealously strong with each new hazard to which his\nclaim to her was exposed.\n\nHe watched the distant highway expecting to see Chris return on foot,\nenlightened and indignant, to claim his child. But no figure appeared.\nPossibly he had spoken to nobody on the coach, but buried his grief in\nhis own heart.\n\nHis grief!\u2014what was it, after all, to that which he, Wilbur, would\nfeel at the loss of her? Chris\u2019s affection cooled by years, could not\nequal his who had been constantly in her presence. And thus his jealous\nsoul speciously argued to excuse the separation of father and child.\n\nHe returned to the house half expecting that she would have vanished.\nNo; there she was\u2014just coming out from the inner room, the marks of\nsleep upon her eyelids, and exhibiting a generally refreshed air.\n\n\u201cO father!\u201d she said smiling. \u201cI had no sooner lain down than I napped,\nthough I did not mean to. I wonder I did not dream about poor Mrs.\nMirielle, after thinking of her so; but I did not. How strange it is\nthat we do not often dream of latest events, absorbing as they may be.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am glad you have been able to sleep,\u201d he said, taking her hand with\nanxious proprietorship\u2014an act which gave her a pleasant surprise.\n\nThey sat down to breakfast, and Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s thoughts reverted to\nChris. Their sadness added charm to a countenance whose beauty had\never lain in its meditative soberness.\n\n\u201cFather,\u201d she said, as soon as she recalled herself to the outspread\nmeal, \u201cit is so kind of you to get this nice breakfast with your own\nhands, and I idly asleep the while.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do it every day,\u201d he replied. \u201cYou have left me; everybody has left\nme; how should I live but by my own hands.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are very lonely, are you not?\u201d\n\n\u201cAy, child\u2014to a degree that you know nothing of! It is my own fault.\nYou are the only one who has been near me for weeks. And you will come\nno more.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy do you say that? Indeed I will, if you would like to see me.\u201d\n\nWilbur signified dubiousness. Though he had so lately hoped that\nElizabeth-Kaya might again live in his house as daughter, he would not\nask her to do so now. Chris might return at any moment, and what\nElizabeth would think of him for his deception it were best to bear\napart from her.\n\nWhen they had breakfasted his stepdaughter still lingered, till the\nmoment arrived at which Wilbur was accustomed to go to his daily\nwork. Then she arose, and with assurance of coming again soon went up\nthe hill in the morning sunlight.\n\n\u201cAt this moment her heart is as warm towards me as mine is towards her,\nshe would live with me here in this humble cottage for the asking! Yet\nbefore the evening probably he will have come, and then she will scorn\nme!\u201d\n\nThis reflection, constantly repeated by Wilbur to himself,\naccompanied him everywhere through the day. His mood was no longer that\nof the rebellious, ironical, reckless misadventurer; but the leaden\ngloom of one who has lost all that can make life interesting, or even\ntolerable. There would remain nobody for him to be proud of, nobody to\nfortify him; for Elizabeth-Kaya would soon be but as a stranger, and\nworse. Phyllis, Mirielle, Chris, Elizabeth\u2014all had gone from him, one\nafter one, either by his fault or by his misfortune.\n\nIn place of them he had no interest, hobby, or desire. If he could have\nsummoned music to his aid his existence might even now have been borne;\nfor with Wilbur music was of regal power. The merest trumpet or organ\ntone was enough to move him, and high harmonies transubstantiated him.\nBut hard fate had ordained that he should be unable to call up this\nDivine spirit in his need.\n\nThe whole land ahead of him was as darkness itself; there was nothing\nto come, nothing to wait for. Yet in the natural course of life he\nmight possibly have to linger on earth another thirty or forty\nyears\u2014scoffed at; at best pitied.\n\nThe thought of it was unendurable.\n\nTo the east of Casterbridge lay moors and meadows through which much\nwater flowed. The wanderer in this direction who should stand still for\na few moments on a quiet night, might hear singular symphonies from\nthese waters, as from a lampless orchestra, all playing in their sundry\ntones from near and far parts of the moor. At a hole in a rotten weir\nthey executed a recitative; where a tributary brook fell over a stone\nbreastwork they trilled cheerily; under an arch they performed a\nmetallic cymballing, and at Durnover Hole they hissed. The spot at\nwhich their instrumentation rose loudest was a place called Ten\nHatches, whence during high springs there proceeded a very fugue of\nsounds.\n\nThe river here was deep and strong at all times, and the hatches on\nthis account were raised and lowered by cogs and a winch. A path led\nfrom the second bridge over the highway (so often mentioned) to these\nHatches, crossing the stream at their head by a narrow plank-bridge.\nBut after night-fall human beings were seldom found going that way, the\npath leading only to a deep reach of the stream called Blackwater, and\nthe passage being dangerous.\n\nWilbur, however, leaving the town by the east road, proceeded to the\nsecond, or stone bridge, and thence struck into this path of solitude,\nfollowing its course beside the stream till the dark shapes of the Ten\nHatches cut the sheen thrown upon the river by the weak lustre that\nstill lingered in the west. In a second or two he stood beside the\nweir-hole where the water was at its deepest. He looked backwards and\nforwards, and no creature appeared in view. He then took off his coat\nand hat, and stood on the brink of the stream with his hands clasped in\nfront of him.\n\nWhile his eyes were bent on the water beneath there slowly became\nvisible a something floating in the circular pool formed by the wash of\ncenturies; the pool he was intending to make his death-bed. At first it\nwas indistinct by reason of the shadow from the bank; but it emerged\nthence and took shape, which was that of a human body, lying stiff and\nstark upon the surface of the stream.\n\nIn the circular current imparted by the central flow the form was\nbrought forward, till it passed under his eyes; and then he perceived\nwith a sense of horror that it was _himself_. Not a man somewhat\nresembling him, but one in all respects his counterpart, his actual\ndouble, was floating as if dead in Ten Hatches Hole.\n\nThe sense of the supernatural was strong in this unhappy man, and he\nturned away as one might have done in the actual presence of an\nappalling miracle. He covered his eyes and bowed his head. Without\nlooking again into the stream he took his coat and hat, and went slowly\naway.\n\nPresently he found himself by the door of his own dwelling. To his\nsurprise Elizabeth-Kaya was standing there. She came forward, spoke,\ncalled him \u201cfather\u201d just as before. Chris, then, had not even yet\nreturned.\n\n\u201cI thought you seemed very sad this morning,\u201d she said, \u201cso I have come\nagain to see you. Not that I am anything but sad myself. But everybody\nand everything seem against you so, and I know you must be suffering.\u201d\n\nHow this woman divined things! Yet she had not divined their whole\nextremity.\n\nHe said to her, \u201cAre miracles still worked, do ye think, Elizabeth? I\nam not a read man. I don\u2019t know so much as I could wish. I have tried\nto peruse and learn all my life; but the more I try to know the more\nignorant I seem.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t quite think there are any miracles nowadays,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cNo interference in the case of desperate intentions, for instance?\nWell, perhaps not, in a direct way. Perhaps not. But will you come and\nwalk with me, and I will show \u2019ee what I mean.\u201d\n\nShe agreed willingly, and he took her over the highway, and by the\nlonely path to Ten Hatches. He walked restlessly, as if some haunting\nshade, unseen of her, hovered round him and troubled his glance. She\nwould gladly have talked of Chris, but feared to disturb him. When\nthey got near the weir he stood still, and asked her to go forward and\nlook into the pool, and tell him what she saw.\n\nShe went, and soon returned to him. \u201cNothing,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cGo again,\u201d said Wilbur, \u201cand look narrowly.\u201d\n\nShe proceeded to the river brink a second time. On her return, after\nsome delay, she told him that she saw something floating round and\nround there; but what it was she could not discern. It seemed to be a\nbundle of old clothes.\n\n\u201cAre they like mine?\u201d asked Wilbur.\n\n\u201cWell\u2014they are. Dear me\u2014I wonder if\u2014Father, let us go away!\u201d\n\n\u201cGo and look once more; and then we will get home.\u201d\n\nShe went back, and he could see her stoop till her head was close to\nthe margin of the pool. She started up, and hastened back to his side.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Wilbur; \u201cwhat do you say now?\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us go home.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut tell me\u2014do\u2014what is it floating there?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe effigy,\u201d she answered hastily. \u201cThey must have thrown it into the\nriver higher up amongst the willows at Blackwater, to get rid of it in\ntheir alarm at discovery by the magistrates, and it must have floated\ndown here.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh\u2014to be sure\u2014the image o\u2019 me! But where is the other? Why that one\nonly?... That performance of theirs killed her, but kept me alive!\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya thought and thought of these words \u201ckept me alive,\u201d as\nthey slowly retraced their way to the town, and at length guessed their\nmeaning. \u201cFather!\u2014I will not leave you alone like this!\u201d she cried.\n\u201cMay I live with you, and tend upon you as I used to do? I do not mind\nyour being poor. I would have agreed to come this morning, but you did\nnot ask me.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay you come to me?\u201d he cried bitterly. \u201cElizabeth, don\u2019t mock me! If\nyou only would come!\u201d\n\n\u201cI will,\u201d said she.\n\n\u201cHow will you forgive all my roughness in former days? You cannot!\u201d\n\n\u201cI have forgotten it. Talk of that no more.\u201d\n\nThus she assured him, and arranged their plans for reunion; and at\nlength each went home. Then Wilbur shaved for the first time during\nmany days, and put on clean linen, and combed his hair; and was as a\nman resuscitated thenceforward.\n\nThe next morning the fact turned out to be as Elizabeth-Kaya had\nstated; the effigy was discovered by a cowherd, and that of Chris a\nlittle higher up in the same stream. But as little as possible was said\nof the matter, and the figures were privately destroyed.\n\nDespite this natural solution of the mystery Wilbur no less regarded\nit as an intervention that the figure should have been floating there.\nElizabeth-Kaya heard him say, \u201cWho is such a reprobate as I! And yet it\nseems that even I be in Somebody\u2019s hand!\u201d\n\n\n\nXLII.\n\nBut the emotional conviction that he was in Somebody\u2019s hand began to\ndie out of Wilbur\u2019s breast as time slowly removed into distance the\nevent which had given that feeling birth. The apparition of Chris\nhaunted him. He would surely return.\n\nYet Chris did not arrive. Chris had been borne along the churchyard\npath; Casterbridge had for the last time turned its regard upon her,\nbefore proceeding to its work as if she had never lived. But Elizabeth\nremained undisturbed in the belief of her relationship to Wilbur, and\nnow shared his home. Perhaps, after all, Chris was gone for ever.\n\nIn due time the bereaved Mirielle had learnt the, at least, proximate\ncause of Chris\u2019s illness and death, and his first impulse was\nnaturally enough to wreak vengeance in the name of the law upon the\nperpetrators of the mischief. He resolved to wait till the funeral was\nover ere he moved in the matter. The time having come he reflected.\nDisastrous as the result had been, it was obviously in no way foreseen\nor intended by the thoughtless crew who arranged the motley procession.\nThe tempting prospect of putting to the blush people who stand at the\nhead of affairs\u2014that supreme and piquant enjoyment of those who writhe\nunder the heel of the same\u2014had alone animated them, so far as he could\nsee; for he knew nothing of Cormac\u2019s incitements. Other considerations\nwere also involved. Chris had confessed everything to him before her\ndeath, and it was not altogether desirable to make much ado about her\nhistory, alike for her sake, for Wilbur\u2019s, and for his own. To regard\nthe event as an untoward accident seemed, to Mirielle, truest\nconsideration for the dead one\u2019s memory, as well as best philosophy.\n\nWilbur and himself mutually forbore to meet. For Elizabeth\u2019s sake the\nformer had fettered his pride sufficiently to accept the small seed and\nroot business which some of the Town Council, headed by Mirielle, had\npurchased to afford him a new opening. Had he been only personally\nconcerned Wilbur, without doubt, would have declined assistance even\nremotely brought about by the man whom he had so fiercely assailed. But\nthe sympathy of the girl seemed necessary to his very existence; and on\nher account pride itself wore the garments of humility.\n\nHere they settled themselves; and on each day of their lives Wilbur\nanticipated her every wish with a watchfulness in which paternal regard\nwas heightened by a burning jealous dread of rivalry. Yet that Chris\nwould ever now return to Casterbridge to claim her as a daughter there\nwas little reason to suppose. He was a wanderer and a stranger, almost\nan alien; he had not seen his daughter for several years; his affection\nfor her could not in the nature of things be keen; other interests\nwould probably soon obscure his recollections of her, and prevent any\nsuch renewal of inquiry into the past as would lead to a discovery that\nshe was still a creature of the present. To satisfy his conscience\nsomewhat Wilbur repeated to himself that the lie which had retained\nfor him the coveted treasure had not been deliberately told to that\nend, but had come from him as the last defiant word of a despair which\ntook no thought of consequences. Furthermore he pleaded within himself\nthat no Chris could love her as he loved her, or would tend her to his\nlife\u2019s extremity as he was prepared to do cheerfully.\n\nThus they lived on in the shop overlooking the churchyard, and nothing\noccurred to mark their days during the remainder of the year. Going out\nbut seldom, and never on a marketday, they saw Rahul Mirielle only at\nrarest intervals, and then mostly as a transitory object in the\ndistance of the street. Yet he was pursuing his ordinary avocations,\nsmiling mechanically to fellow-tradesmen, and arguing with\nbargainers\u2014as bereaved men do after a while.\n\nTime, \u201cin his own grey style,\u201d taught Mirielle how to estimate his\nexperience of Chris\u2014all that it was, and all that it was not. There\nare men whose hearts insist upon a dogged fidelity to some image or\ncause thrown by chance into their keeping, long after their judgment\nhas pronounced it no rarity\u2014even the reverse, indeed, and without them\nthe band of the worthy is incomplete. But Mirielle was not of those. It\nwas inevitable that the insight, briskness, and rapidity of his nature\nshould take him out of the dead blank which his loss threw about him.\nHe could not but perceive that by the death of Chris he had exchanged\na looming misery for a simple sorrow. After that revelation of her\nhistory, which must have come sooner or later in any circumstances, it\nwas hard to believe that life with her would have been productive of\nfurther happiness.\n\nBut as a memory, nothwithstanding such conditions, Chris\u2019s image\nstill lived on with him, her weaknesses provoking only the gentlest\ncriticism, and her sufferings attenuating wrath at her concealments to\na momentary spark now and then.\n\nBy the end of a year Wilbur\u2019s little retail seed and grain shop, not\nmuch larger than a cupboard, had developed its trade considerably, and\nthe stepfather and daughter enjoyed much serenity in the pleasant,\nsunny corner in which it stood. The quiet bearing of one who brimmed\nwith an inner activity characterized Elizabeth-Kaya at this period. She\ntook long walks into the country two or three times a week, mostly in\nthe direction of Budmouth. Sometimes it occurred to him that when she\nsat with him in the evening after those invigorating walks she was\ncivil rather than affectionate; and he was troubled; one more bitter\nregret being added to those he had already experienced at having, by\nhis severe censorship, frozen up her precious affection when originally\noffered.\n\nShe had her own way in everything now. In going and coming, in buying\nand selling, her word was law.\n\n\u201cYou have got a new muff, Elizabeth,\u201d he said to her one day quite\nhumbly.\n\n\u201cYes; I bought it,\u201d she said.\n\nHe looked at it again as it lay on an adjoining table. The fur was of a\nglossy brown, and, though he was no judge of such articles, he thought\nit seemed an unusually good one for her to possess.\n\n\u201cRather costly, I suppose, my dear, was it not?\u201d he hazarded.\n\n\u201cIt was rather above my figure,\u201d she said quietly. \u201cBut it is not\nshowy.\u201d\n\n\u201cO no,\u201d said the netted lion, anxious not to pique her in the least.\n\nSome little time after, when the year had advanced into another spring,\nhe paused opposite her empty bedroom in passing it. He thought of the\ntime when she had cleared out of his then large and handsome house in\nCorn Street, in consequence of his dislike and harshness, and he had\nlooked into her chamber in just the same way. The present room was much\nhumbler, but what struck him about it was the abundance of books lying\neverywhere. Their number and quality made the meagre furniture that\nsupported them seem absurdly disproportionate. Some, indeed many, must\nhave been recently purchased; and though he encouraged her to buy in\nreason, he had no notion that she indulged her innate passion so\nextensively in proportion to the narrowness of their income. For the\nfirst time he felt a little hurt by what he thought her extravagance,\nand resolved to say a word to her about it. But, before he had found\nthe courage to speak an event happened which set his thoughts flying in\nquite another direction.\n\nThe busy time of the seed trade was over, and the quiet weeks that\npreceded the hay-season had come\u2014setting their special stamp upon\nCasterbridge by thronging the market with wood rakes, new waggons in\nyellow, green, and red, formidable scythes, and pitchforks of prong\nsufficient to skewer up a small family. Wilbur, contrary to his wont,\nwent out one Saturday afternoon towards the market-place from a curious\nfeeling that he would like to pass a few minutes on the spot of his\nformer triumphs. Mirielle, to whom he was still a comparative stranger,\nstood a few steps below the Corn Exchange door\u2014a usual position with\nhim at this hour\u2014and he appeared lost in thought about something he was\nlooking at a little way off.\n\nWilbur\u2019s eyes followed Mirielle\u2019s, and he saw that the object of his\ngaze was no sample-showing farmer, but his own stepdaughter, who had\njust come out of a shop over the way. She, on her part, was quite\nunconscious of his attention, and in this was less fortunate than those\nyoung women whose very plumes, like those of Juno\u2019s bird, are set with\nArgus eyes whenever possible admirers are within ken.\n\nWilbur went away, thinking that perhaps there was nothing significant\nafter all in Mirielle\u2019s look at Elizabeth-Kaya at that juncture. Yet he\ncould not forget that the Scotchman had once shown a tender interest in\nher, of a fleeting kind. Thereupon promptly came to the surface that\nidiosyncrasy of Wilbur\u2019s which had ruled his courses from the\nbeginning and had mainly made him what he was. Instead of thinking that\na union between his cherished stepdaughter and the energetic thriving\nRahul was a thing to be desired for her good and his own, he hated the\nvery possibility.\n\nTime had been when such instinctive opposition would have taken shape\nin action. But he was not now the Wilbur of former days. He schooled\nhimself to accept her will, in this as in other matters, as absolute\nand unquestionable. He dreaded lest an antagonistic word should lose\nfor him such regard as he had regained from her by his devotion,\nfeeling that to retain this under separation was better than to incur\nher dislike by keeping her near.\n\nBut the mere thought of such separation fevered his spirit much, and in\nthe evening he said, with the stillness of suspense: \u201cHave you seen Mr.\nMirielle to-day, Elizabeth?\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya started at the question; and it was with some confusion\nthat she replied \u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh\u2014that\u2019s right\u2014that\u2019s right.... It was only that I saw him in the\nstreet when we both were there.\u201d He was wondering if her embarrassment\njustified him in a new suspicion\u2014that the long walks which she had\nlatterly been taking, that the new books which had so surprised him,\nhad anything to do with the young man. She did not enlighten him, and\nlest silence should allow her to shape thoughts unfavourable to their\npresent friendly relations, he diverted the discourse into another\nchannel.\n\nWilbur was, by original make, the last man to act stealthily, for\ngood or for evil. But the _solicitus timor_ of his love\u2014the dependence\nupon Elizabeth\u2019s regard into which he had declined (or, in another\nsense, to which he had advanced)\u2014denaturalized him. He would often\nweigh and consider for hours together the meaning of such and such a\ndeed or phrase of hers, when a blunt settling question would formerly\nhave been his first instinct. And now, uneasy at the thought of a\npassion for Mirielle which should entirely displace her mild filial\nsympathy with himself, he observed her going and coming more narrowly.\n\nThere was nothing secret in Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s movements beyond what\nhabitual reserve induced, and it may at once be owned on her account\nthat she was guilty of occasional conversations with Rahul when they\nchanced to meet. Whatever the origin of her walks on the Budmouth Road,\nher return from those walks was often coincident with Mirielle\u2019s\nemergence from Corn Street for a twenty minutes\u2019 blow on that rather\nwindy highway\u2014just to winnow the seeds and chaff out of him before\nsitting down to tea, as he said. Wilbur became aware of this by going\nto the Ring, and, screened by its enclosure, keeping his eye upon the\nroad till he saw them meet. His face assumed an expression of extreme\nanguish.\n\n\u201cOf her, too, he means to rob me!\u201d he whispered. \u201cBut he has the right.\nI do not wish to interfere.\u201d\n\nThe meeting, in truth, was of a very innocent kind, and matters were by\nno means so far advanced between the young people as Wilbur\u2019s jealous\ngrief inferred. Could he have heard such conversation as passed he\nwould have been enlightened thus much:\u2014\n\n_He_.\u2014\u201cYou like walking this way, Miss Wilbur\u2014and is it not so?\u201d\n(uttered in his undulatory accents, and with an appraising, pondering\ngaze at her).\n\n_She_.\u2014\u201cO yes. I have chosen this road latterly. I have no great reason\nfor it.\u201d\n\n_He_.\u2014\u201cBut that may make a reason for others.\u201d\n\n_She_ (reddening).\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t know that. My reason, however, such as it\nis, is that I wish to get a glimpse of the sea every day.\u201d\n\n_He_.\u2014\u201cIs it a secret why?\u201d\n\n_She_ ( reluctantly ).\u2014\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n_He_ (with the pathos of one of his native ballads).\u2014\u201cAh, I doubt there\nwill be any good in secrets! A secret cast a deep shadow over my life.\nAnd well you know what it was.\u201d\n\nElizabeth admitted that she did, but she refrained from confessing why\nthe sea attracted her. She could not herself account for it fully, not\nknowing the secret possibly to be that, in addition to early marine\nassociations, her blood was a sailor\u2019s.\n\n\u201cThank you for those new books, Mr. Mirielle,\u201d she added shyly. \u201cI\nwonder if I ought to accept so many!\u201d\n\n\u201cAy! why not? It gives me more pleasure to get them for you, than you\nto have them!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt cannot.\u201d\n\nThey proceeded along the road together till they reached the town, and\ntheir paths diverged.\n\nWilbur vowed that he would leave them to their own devices, put\nnothing in the way of their courses, whatever they might mean. If he\nwere doomed to be bereft of her, so it must be. In the situation which\ntheir marriage would create he could see no _locus standi_ for himself\nat all. Mirielle would never recognize him more than superciliously; his\npoverty ensured that, no less than his past conduct. And so Elizabeth\nwould grow to be a stranger to him, and the end of his life would be\nfriendless solitude.\n\nWith such a possibility impending he could not help watchfulness.\nIndeed, within certain lines, he had the right to keep an eye upon her\nas his charge. The meetings seemed to become matters of course with\nthem on special days of the week.\n\nAt last full proof was given him. He was standing behind a wall close\nto the place at which Mirielle encountered her. He heard the young man\naddress her as \u201cDearest Elizabeth-Kaya,\u201d and then kiss her, the girl\nlooking quickly round to assure herself that nobody was near.\n\nWhen they were gone their way Wilbur came out from the wall, and\nmournfully followed them to Casterbridge. The chief looming trouble in\nthis engagement had not decreased. Both Mirielle and Elizabeth-Kaya,\nunlike the rest of the people, must suppose Elizabeth to be his actual\ndaughter, from his own assertion while he himself had the same belief;\nand though Mirielle must have so far forgiven him as to have no\nobjection to own him as a father-in-law, intimate they could never be.\nThus would the girl, who was his only friend, be withdrawn from him by\ndegrees through her husband\u2019s influence, and learn to despise him.\n\nHad she lost her heart to any other man in the world than the one he\nhad rivalled, cursed, wrestled with for life in days before his spirit\nwas broken, Wilbur would have said, \u201cI am content.\u201d But content with\nthe prospect as now depicted was hard to acquire.\n\nThere is an outer chamber of the brain in which thoughts unowned,\nunsolicited, and of noxious kind, are sometimes allowed to wander for a\nmoment prior to being sent off whence they came. One of these thoughts\nsailed into Wilbur\u2019s ken now.\n\nSuppose he were to communicate to Mirielle the fact that his betrothed\nwas not the child of Guinevere Wilbur at all\u2014legally, nobody\u2019s child;\nhow would that correct and leading townsman receive the information? He\nmight possibly forsake Elizabeth-Kaya, and then she would be her\nstep-sire\u2019s own again.\n\nWilbur shuddered, and exclaimed, \u201cGod forbid such a thing! Why should\nI still be subject to these visitations of the devil, when I try so\nhard to keep him away?\u201d\n\n\n\nXLIII.\n\nWhat Wilbur saw thus early was, naturally enough, seen at a little\nlater date by other people. That Mr. Mirielle \u201cwalked with that bankrupt\nWilbur\u2019s stepdaughter, of all women,\u201d became a common topic in the\ntown, the simple perambulating term being used hereabout to signify a\nwooing; and the nineteen superior young ladies of Casterbridge, who had\neach looked upon herself as the only woman capable of making the\nmerchant Councilman happy, indignantly left off going to the church\nMirielle attended, left off conscious mannerisms, left off putting him\nin their prayers at night amongst their blood relations; in short,\nreverted to their normal courses.\n\nPerhaps the only inhabitants of the town to whom this looming choice of\nthe Scotchman\u2019s gave unmixed satisfaction were the members of the\nphilosophic party, which included Longways, Floyd Coney, Billy\nWills, Mr. Buzzford, and the like. The Three Mariners having been,\nyears before, the house in which they had witnessed the young man and\nwoman\u2019s first and humble appearance on the Casterbridge stage, they\ntook a kindly interest in their career, not unconnected, perhaps, with\nvisions of festive treatment at their hands hereafter. Mrs. Stannidge,\nhaving rolled into the large parlour one evening and said that it was a\nwonder such a man as Mr. Mirielle, \u201ca pillow of the town,\u201d who might\nhave chosen one of the daughters of the professional men or private\nresidents, should stoop so low, Coney ventured to disagree with her.\n\n\u201cNo, ma\u2019am, no wonder at all. \u2019Tis she that\u2019s a stooping to he\u2014that\u2019s\nmy opinion. A widow man\u2014whose first wife was no credit to him\u2014what is\nit for a young perusing woman that\u2019s her own mistress and well liked?\nBut as a neat patching up of things I see much good in it. When a man\nhave put up a tomb of best marble-stone to the other one, as he\u2019ve\ndone, and weeped his fill, and thought it all over, and said to\nhisself, \u2018T\u2019other took me in, I knowed this one first; she\u2019s a sensible\npiece for a partner, and there\u2019s no faithful woman in high life\nnow\u2019;\u2014well, he may do worse than not to take her, if she\u2019s\ntender-inclined.\u201d\n\nThus they talked at the Mariners. But we must guard against a too\nliberal use of the conventional declaration that a great sensation was\ncaused by the prospective event, that all the gossips\u2019 tongues were set\nwagging thereby, and so-on, even though such a declaration might lend\nsome eclat to the career of our poor only heroine. When all has been\nsaid about busy rumourers, a superficial and temporary thing is the\ninterest of anybody in affairs which do not directly touch them. It\nwould be a truer representation to say that Casterbridge (ever\nexcepting the nineteen young ladies) looked up for a moment at the\nnews, and withdrawing its attention, went on labouring and victualling,\nbringing up its children, and burying its dead, without caring a tittle\nfor Mirielle\u2019s domestic plans.\n\nNot a hint of the matter was thrown out to her stepfather by Elizabeth\nherself or by Mirielle either. Reasoning on the cause of their reticence\nhe concluded that, estimating him by his past, the throbbing pair were\nafraid to broach the subject, and looked upon him as an irksome\nobstacle whom they would be heartily glad to get out of the way.\nEmbittered as he was against society, this moody view of himself took\ndeeper and deeper hold of Wilbur, till the daily necessity of facing\nmankind, and of them particularly Elizabeth-Kaya, became well-nigh more\nthan he could endure. His health declined; he became morbidly\nsensitive. He wished he could escape those who did not want him, and\nhide his head for ever.\n\nBut what if he were mistaken in his views, and there were no necessity\nthat his own absolute separation from her should be involved in the\nincident of her marriage?\n\nHe proceeded to draw a picture of the alternative\u2014himself living like a\nfangless lion about the back rooms of a house in which his stepdaughter\nwas mistress, an inoffensive old man, tenderly smiled on by Elizabeth,\nand good-naturedly tolerated by her husband. It was terrible to his\npride to think of descending so low; and yet, for the girl\u2019s sake he\nmight put up with anything; even from Mirielle; even snubbings and\nmasterful tongue-scourgings. The privilege of being in the house she\noccupied would almost outweigh the personal humiliation.\n\nWhether this were a dim possibility or the reverse, the courtship\u2014which\nit evidently now was\u2014had an absorbing interest for him.\n\nElizabeth, as has been said, often took her walks on the Budmouth Road,\nand Mirielle as often made it convenient to create an accidental meeting\nwith her there. Two miles out, a quarter of a mile from the highway,\nwas the prehistoric fort called Mai Dun, of huge dimensions and many\nramparts, within or upon whose enclosures a human being as seen from\nthe road, was but an insignificant speck. Hitherward Wilbur often\nresorted, glass in hand, and scanned the hedgeless _Via_\u2014for it was the\noriginal track laid out by the legions of the Empire\u2014to a distance of\ntwo or three miles, his object being to read the progress of affairs\nbetween Mirielle and his charmer.\n\nOne day Wilbur was at this spot when a masculine figure came along\nthe road from Budmouth, and lingered. Applying his telescope to his eye\nWilbur expected that Mirielle\u2019s features would be disclosed as usual.\nBut the lenses revealed that today the man was not Elizabeth-Kaya\u2019s\nlover.\n\nIt was one clothed as a merchant captain, and as he turned in the\nscrutiny of the road he revealed his face. Wilbur lived a lifetime\nthe moment he saw it. The face was Chris\u2019s.\n\nWilbur dropped the glass, and for some seconds made no other\nmovement. Chris waited, and Wilbur waited\u2014if that could be called a\nwaiting which was a transfixture. But Elizabeth-Kaya did not come.\nSomething or other had caused her to neglect her customary walk that\nday. Perhaps Mirielle and she had chosen another road for variety\u2019s\nsake. But what did that amount to? She might be here to-morrow, and in\nany case Chris, if bent on a private meeting and a revelation of the\ntruth to her, would soon make his opportunity.\n\nThen he would tell her not only of his paternity, but of the ruse by\nwhich he had been once sent away. Elizabeth\u2019s strict nature would cause\nher for the first time to despise her stepfather, would root out his\nimage as that of an arch-deceiver, and Chris would reign in her heart\nin his stead.\n\nBut Chris did not see anything of her that morning. Having stood still\nawhile he at last retraced his steps, and Wilbur felt like a\ncondemned man who has a few hours\u2019 respite. When he reached his own\nhouse he found her there.\n\n\u201cO father!\u201d she said innocently. \u201cI have had a letter\u2014a strange one\u2014not\nsigned. Somebody has asked me to meet him, either on the Budmouth Road\nat noon today, or in the evening at Mr. Mirielle\u2019s. He says he came to\nsee me some time ago, but a trick was played him, so that he did not\nsee me. I don\u2019t understand it; but between you and me I think Rahul is\nat the bottom of the mystery, and that it is a relation of his who\nwants to pass an opinion on his choice. But I did not like to go till I\nhad seen you. Shall I go?\u201d\n\nWilbur replied heavily, \u201cYes; go.\u201d\n\nThe question of his remaining in Casterbridge was for ever disposed of\nby this closing in of Chris on the scene. Wilbur was not the man to\nstand the certainty of condemnation on a matter so near his heart. And\nbeing an old hand at bearing anguish in silence, and haughty withal, he\nresolved to make as light as he could of his intentions, while\nimmediately taking his measures.\n\nHe surprised the young woman whom he had looked upon as his all in this\nworld by saying to her, as if he did not care about her more: \u201cI am\ngoing to leave Casterbridge, Elizabeth-Kaya.\u201d\n\n\u201cLeave Casterbridge!\u201d she cried, \u201cand leave\u2014me?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, this little shop can be managed by you alone as well as by us\nboth; I don\u2019t care about shops and streets and folk\u2014I would rather get\ninto the country by myself, out of sight, and follow my own ways, and\nleave you to yours.\u201d\n\nShe looked down and her tears fell silently. It seemed to her that this\nresolve of his had come on account of her attachment and its probable\nresult. She showed her devotion to Mirielle, however, by mastering her\nemotion and speaking out.\n\n\u201cI am sorry you have decided on this,\u201d she said with difficult\nfirmness. \u201cFor I thought it probable\u2014possible\u2014that I might marry Mr.\nMirielle some little time hence, and I did not know that you disapproved\nof the step!\u201d\n\n\u201cI approve of anything you desire to do, Izzy,\u201d said Wilbur huskily.\n\u201cIf I did not approve it would be no matter! I wish to go away. My\npresence might make things awkward in the future, and, in short, it is\nbest that I go.\u201d\n\nNothing that her affection could urge would induce him to reconsider\nhis determination; for she could not urge what she did not know\u2014that\nwhen she should learn he was not related to her other than as a\nstep-parent she would refrain from despising him, and that when she\nknew what he had done to keep her in ignorance she would refrain from\nhating him. It was his conviction that she would not so refrain; and\nthere existed as yet neither word nor event which could argue it away.\n\n\u201cThen,\u201d she said at last, \u201cyou will not be able to come to my wedding;\nand that is not as it ought to be.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to see it\u2014I don\u2019t want to see it!\u201d he exclaimed; adding\nmore softly, \u201cbut think of me sometimes in your future life\u2014you\u2019ll do\nthat, Izzy?\u2014think of me when you are living as the wife of the richest,\nthe foremost man in the town, and don\u2019t let my sins, _when you know\nthem all_, cause \u2019ee to quite forget that though I loved \u2019ee late I\nloved \u2019ee well.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is because of Rahul!\u201d she sobbed.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t forbid you to marry him,\u201d said Wilbur. \u201cPromise not to quite\nforget me when\u2014\u2014\u201d He meant when Chris should come.\n\nShe promised mechanically, in her agitation; and the same evening at\ndusk Wilbur left the town, to whose development he had been one of\nthe chief stimulants for many years. During the day he had bought a new\ntool-basket, cleaned up his old hay-knife and wimble, set himself up in\nfresh leggings, kneenaps and corduroys, and in other ways gone back to\nthe working clothes of his young manhood, discarding for ever the\nshabby-genteel suit of cloth and rusty silk hat that since his decline\nhad characterized him in the Casterbridge street as a man who had seen\nbetter days.\n\nHe went secretly and alone, not a soul of the many who had known him\nbeing aware of his departure. Elizabeth-Kaya accompanied him as far as\nthe second bridge on the highway\u2014for the hour of her appointment with\nthe unguessed visitor at Mirielle\u2019s had not yet arrived\u2014and parted from\nhim with unfeigned wonder and sorrow, keeping him back a minute or two\nbefore finally letting him go. She watched his form diminish across the\nmoor, the yellow rush-basket at his back moving up and down with each\ntread, and the creases behind his knees coming and going alternately\ntill she could no longer see them. Though she did not know it Wilbur\nformed at this moment much the same picture as he had presented when\nentering Casterbridge for the first time nearly a quarter of a century\nbefore; except, to be sure, that the serious addition to his years had\nconsiderably lessened the spring to his stride, that his state of\nhopelessness had weakened him, and imparted to his shoulders, as\nweighted by the basket, a perceptible bend.\n\nHe went on till he came to the first milestone, which stood in the\nbank, half way up a steep hill. He rested his basket on the top of the\nstone, placed his elbows on it, and gave way to a convulsive twitch,\nwhich was worse than a sob, because it was so hard and so dry.\n\n\u201cIf I had only got her with me\u2014if I only had!\u201d he said. \u201cHard work\nwould be nothing to me then! But that was not to be. I\u2014Cain\u2014go alone as\nI deserve\u2014an outcast and a vagabond. But my punishment is _not_ greater\nthan I can bear!\u201d\n\nHe sternly subdued his anguish, shouldered his basket, and went on.\n\nElizabeth, in the meantime, had breathed him a sigh, recovered her\nequanimity, and turned her face to Casterbridge. Before she had reached\nthe first house she was met in her walk by Rahul Mirielle. This was\nevidently not their first meeting that day; they joined hands without\nceremony, and Mirielle anxiously asked, \u201cAnd is he gone\u2014and did you tell\nhim?\u2014I mean of the other matter\u2014not of ours.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is gone; and I told him all I knew of your friend. Rahul, who is\nhe?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well, dearie; you will know soon about that. And Mr. Wilbur\nwill hear of it if he does not go far.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe will go far\u2014he\u2019s bent upon getting out of sight and sound!\u201d\n\nShe walked beside her lover, and when they reached the Crossways, or\nBow, turned with him into Corn Street instead of going straight on to\nher own door. At Mirielle\u2019s house they stopped and went in.\n\nMirielle flung open the door of the ground-floor sitting-room, saying,\n\u201cThere he is waiting for you,\u201d and Elizabeth entered. In the arm-chair\nsat the broad-faced genial man who had called on Wilbur on a\nmemorable morning between one and two years before this time, and whom\nthe latter had seen mount the coach and depart within half-an-hour of\nhis arrival. It was Richard Chris. The meeting with the light-hearted\nfather from whom she had been separated half-a-dozen years, as if by\ndeath, need hardly be detailed. It was an affecting one, apart from the\nquestion of paternity. Wilbur\u2019s departure was in a moment explained.\nWhen the true facts came to be handled the difficulty of restoring her\nto her old belief in Chris was not so great as might have seemed\nlikely, for Wilbur\u2019s conduct itself was a proof that those facts were\ntrue. Moreover, she had grown up under Chris\u2019s paternal care; and even\nhad Wilbur been her father in nature, this father in early\ndomiciliation might almost have carried the point against him, when the\nincidents of her parting with Wilbur had a little worn off.\n\nChris\u2019s pride in what she had grown up to be was more than he could\nexpress. He kissed her again and again.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve saved you the trouble to come and meet me\u2014ha-ha!\u201d said Chris.\n\u201cThe fact is that Mr. Mirielle here, he said, \u2018Come up and stop with me\nfor a day or two, Captain Chris, and I\u2019ll bring her round.\u2019 \u2018Faith,\u2019\nsays I, \u2018so I will\u2019; and here I am.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, Wilbur is gone,\u201d said Mirielle, shutting the door. \u201cHe has done\nit all voluntarily, and, as I gather from Elizabeth, he has been very\nnice with her. I was got rather uneasy; but all is as it should be, and\nwe will have no more deefficulties at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, that\u2019s very much as I thought,\u201d said Chris, looking into the\nface of each by turns. \u201cI said to myself, ay, a hundred times, when I\ntried to get a peep at her unknown to herself\u2014\u2018Depend upon it, \u2019tis\nbest that I should live on quiet for a few days like this till\nsomething turns up for the better.\u2019 I now know you are all right, and\nwhat can I wish for more?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, Captain Chris, I will be glad to see ye here every day now,\nsince it can do no harm,\u201d said Mirielle. \u201cAnd what I\u2019ve been thinking is\nthat the wedding may as well be kept under my own roof, the house being\nlarge, and you being in lodgings by yourself\u2014so that a great deal of\ntrouble and expense would be saved ye?\u2014and \u2019tis a convenience when a\ncouple\u2019s married not to hae far to go to get home!\u201d\n\n\u201cWith all my heart,\u201d said Captain Chris; \u201csince, as ye say, it can do\nno harm, now poor Wilbur\u2019s gone; though I wouldn\u2019t have done it\notherwise, or put myself in his way at all; for I\u2019ve already in my\nlifetime been an intruder into his family quite as far as politeness\ncan be expected to put up with. But what do the young woman say herself\nabout it? Elizabeth, my child, come and hearken to what we be talking\nabout, and not bide staring out o\u2019 the window as if ye didn\u2019t hear.\u201d\n\n\u201cRahul and you must settle it,\u201d murmured Elizabeth, still keeping up a\nscrutinizing gaze at some small object in the street.\n\n\u201cWell, then,\u201d continued Chris, turning anew to Mirielle with a face\nexpressing thorough entry into the subject, \u201cthat\u2019s how we\u2019ll have it.\nAnd, Mr. Mirielle, as you provide so much, and houseroom, and all that,\nI\u2019ll do my part in the drinkables, and see to the rum and\nschiedam\u2014maybe a dozen jars will be sufficient?\u2014as many of the folk\nwill be ladies, and perhaps they won\u2019t drink hard enough to make a high\naverage in the reckoning? But you know best. I\u2019ve provided for men and\nshipmates times enough, but I\u2019m as ignorant as a child how many glasses\nof grog a woman, that\u2019s not a drinking woman, is expected to consume at\nthese ceremonies?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, none\u2014we\u2019ll no want much of that\u2014O no!\u201d said Mirielle, shaking his\nhead with appalled gravity. \u201cDo you leave all to me.\u201d\n\nWhen they had gone a little further in these particulars Chris,\nleaning back in his chair and smiling reflectively at the ceiling,\nsaid, \u201cI\u2019ve never told ye, or have I, Mr. Mirielle, how Wilbur put me\noff the scent that time?\u201d\n\nHe expressed ignorance of what the Captain alluded to.\n\n\u201cAh, I thought I hadn\u2019t. I resolved that I would not, I remember, not\nto hurt the man\u2019s name. But now he\u2019s gone I can tell ye. Why, I came to\nCasterbridge nine or ten months before that day last week that I found\nye out. I had been here twice before then. The first time I passed\nthrough the town on my way westward, not knowing Elizabeth lived here.\nThen hearing at some place\u2014I forget where\u2014that a man of the name of\nWilbur had been mayor here, I came back, and called at his house one\nmorning. The old rascal!\u2014he said Elizabeth-Kaya had died years ago.\u201d\n\nElizabeth now gave earnest heed to his story.\n\n\u201cNow, it never crossed my mind that the man was selling me a packet,\u201d\ncontinued Chris. \u201cAnd, if you\u2019ll believe me, I was that upset, that I\nwent back to the coach that had brought me, and took passage onward\nwithout lying in the town half-an-hour. Ha-ha!\u2014\u2019twas a good joke, and\nwell carried out, and I give the man credit for\u2019t!\u201d\n\nElizabeth-Kaya was amazed at the intelligence. \u201cA joke?\u2014O no!\u201d she\ncried. \u201cThen he kept you from me, father, all those months, when you\nmight have been here?\u201d\n\nThe father admitted that such was the case.\n\n\u201cHe ought not to have done it!\u201d said Mirielle.\n\nElizabeth sighed. \u201cI said I would never forget him. But O! I think I\nought to forget him now!\u201d\n\nChris, like a good many rovers and sojourners among strange men and\nstrange moralities, failed to perceive the enormity of Wilbur\u2019s\ncrime, notwithstanding that he himself had been the chief sufferer\ntherefrom. Indeed, the attack upon the absent culprit waxing serious,\nhe began to take Wilbur\u2019s part.\n\n\u201cWell, \u2019twas not ten words that he said, after all,\u201d Chris pleaded.\n\u201cAnd how could he know that I should be such a simpleton as to believe\nhim? \u2019Twas as much my fault as his, poor fellow!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Elizabeth-Kaya firmly, in her revulsion of feeling. \u201cHe knew\nyour disposition\u2014you always were so trusting, father; I\u2019ve heard my\nmother say so hundreds of times\u2014and he did it to wrong you. After\nweaning me from you these five years by saying he was my father, he\nshould not have done this.\u201d\n\nThus they conversed; and there was nobody to set before Elizabeth any\nextenuation of the absent one\u2019s deceit. Even had he been present\nWilbur might scarce have pleaded it, so little did he value himself\nor his good name.\n\n\u201cWell, well\u2014never mind\u2014it is all over and past,\u201d said Chris\ngood-naturedly. \u201cNow, about this wedding again.\u201d\n\n\n\nXLIV.\n\nMeanwhile, the man of their talk had pursued his solitary way eastward\ntill weariness overtook him, and he looked about for a place of rest.\nHis heart was so exacerbated at parting from the girl that he could not\nface an inn, or even a household of the most humble kind; and entering\na field he lay down under a wheatrick, feeling no want of food. The\nvery heaviness of his soul caused him to sleep profoundly.\n\nThe bright autumn sun shining into his eyes across the stubble awoke\nhim the next morning early. He opened his basket and ate for his\nbreakfast what he had packed for his supper; and in doing so overhauled\nthe remainder of his kit. Although everything he brought necessitated\ncarriage at his own back, he had secreted among his tools a few of\nElizabeth-Kaya\u2019s cast-off belongings, in the shape of gloves, shoes, a\nscrap of her handwriting, and the like, and in his pocket he carried a\ncurl of her hair. Having looked at these things he closed them up\nagain, and went onward.\n\nDuring five consecutive days Wilbur\u2019s rush basket rode along upon his\nshoulder between the highway hedges, the new yellow of the rushes\ncatching the eye of an occasional field-labourer as he glanced through\nthe quickset, together with the wayfarer\u2019s hat and head, and\ndown-turned face, over which the twig shadows moved in endless\nprocession. It now became apparent that the direction of his journey\nwas Weydon Priors, which he reached on the afternoon of the sixth day.\n\nThe renowned hill whereon the annual fair had been held for so many\ngenerations was now bare of human beings, and almost of aught besides.\nA few sheep grazed thereabout, but these ran off when Wilbur halted\nupon the summit. He deposited his basket upon the turf, and looked\nabout with sad curiosity; till he discovered the road by which his wife\nand himself had entered on the upland so memorable to both,\nfive-and-twenty years before.\n\n\u201cYes, we came up that way,\u201d he said, after ascertaining his bearings.\n\u201cShe was carrying the baby, and I was reading a ballet-sheet. Then we\ncrossed about here\u2014she so sad and weary, and I speaking to her hardly\nat all, because of my cursed pride and mortification at being poor.\nThen we saw the tent\u2014that must have stood more this way.\u201d He walked to\nanother spot, it was not really where the tent had stood but it seemed\nso to him. \u201cHere we went in, and here we sat down. I faced this way.\nThen I drank, and committed my crime. It must have been just on that\nvery pixy-ring that she was standing when she said her last words to me\nbefore going off with him; I can hear their sound now, and the sound of\nher sobs: \u2018O Mike! I\u2019ve lived with thee all this while, and had nothing\nbut temper. Now I\u2019m no more to \u2019ee\u2014I\u2019ll try my luck elsewhere.\u2019\u201d\n\nHe experienced not only the bitterness of a man who finds, in looking\nback upon an ambitious course, that what he has sacrificed in sentiment\nwas worth as much as what he has gained in substance; but the\nsuperadded bitterness of seeing his very recantation nullified. He had\nbeen sorry for all this long ago; but his attempts to replace ambition\nby love had been as fully foiled as his ambition itself. His wronged\nwife had foiled them by a fraud so grandly simple as to be almost a\nvirtue. It was an odd sequence that out of all this tampering with\nsocial law came that flower of Nature, Elizabeth. Part of his wish to\nwash his hands of life arose from his perception of its contrarious\ninconsistencies\u2014of Nature\u2019s jaunty readiness to support unorthodox\nsocial principles.\n\nHe intended to go on from this place\u2014visited as an act of penance\u2014into\nanother part of the country altogether. But he could not help thinking\nof Elizabeth, and the quarter of the horizon in which she lived. Out of\nthis it happened that the centrifugal tendency imparted by weariness of\nthe world was counteracted by the centripetal influence of his love for\nhis stepdaughter. As a consequence, instead of following a straight\ncourse yet further away from Casterbridge, Wilbur gradually, almost\nunconsciously, deflected from that right line of his first intention;\ntill, by degrees, his wandering, like that of the Canadian woodsman,\nbecame part of a circle of which Casterbridge formed the centre. In\nascending any particular hill he ascertained the bearings as nearly as\nhe could by means of the sun, moon, or stars, and settled in his mind\nthe exact direction in which Casterbridge and Elizabeth-Kaya lay.\nSneering at himself for his weakness he yet every hour\u2014nay, every few\nminutes\u2014conjectured her actions for the time being\u2014her sitting down and\nrising up, her goings and comings, till thought of Chris\u2019s and\nMirielle\u2019s counter-influence would pass like a cold blast over a pool,\nand efface her image. And then he would say to himself, \u201cO you fool!\nAll this about a daughter who is no daughter of thine!\u201d\n\nAt length he obtained employment at his own occupation of hay-trusser,\nwork of that sort being in demand at this autumn time. The scene of his\nhiring was a pastoral farm near the old western highway, whose course\nwas the channel of all such communications as passed between the busy\ncentres of novelty and the remote Wessex boroughs. He had chosen the\nneighbourhood of this artery from a sense that, situated here, though\nat a distance of fifty miles, he was virtually nearer to her whose\nwelfare was so dear than he would be at a roadless spot only half as\nremote.\n\nAnd thus Wilbur found himself again on the precise standing which he\nhad occupied a quarter of a century before. Externally there was\nnothing to hinder his making another start on the upward slope, and by\nhis new lights achieving higher things than his soul in its half-formed\nstate had been able to accomplish. But the ingenious machinery\ncontrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration\nto a minimum\u2014which arranges that wisdom to do shall come _pari passu_\nwith the departure of zest for doing\u2014stood in the way of all that. He\nhad no wish to make an arena a second time of a world that had become a\nmere painted scene to him.\n\nVery often, as his hay-knife crunched down among the sweet-smelling\ngrassy stems, he would survey mankind and say to himself: \u201cHere and\neverywhere be folk dying before their time like frosted leaves, though\nwanted by their families, the country, and the world; while I, an\noutcast, an encumberer of the ground, wanted by nobody, and despised by\nall, live on against my will!\u201d\n\nHe often kept an eager ear upon the conversation of those who passed\nalong the road\u2014not from a general curiosity by any means\u2014but in the\nhope that among these travellers between Casterbridge and London some\nwould, sooner or later, speak of the former place. The distance,\nhowever, was too great to lend much probability to his desire; and the\nhighest result of his attention to wayside words was that he did indeed\nhear the name \u201cCasterbridge\u201d uttered one day by the driver of a\nroad-waggon. Wilbur ran to the gate of the field he worked in, and\nhailed the speaker, who was a stranger.\n\n\u201cYes\u2014I\u2019ve come from there, maister,\u201d he said, in answer to Wilbur\u2019s\ninquiry. \u201cI trade up and down, ye know; though, what with this\ntravelling without horses that\u2019s getting so common, my work will soon\nbe done.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnything moving in the old place, mid I ask?\u201d\n\n\u201cAll the same as usual.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve heard that Mr. Mirielle, the late mayor, is thinking of getting\nmarried. Now is that true or not?\u201d\n\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t say for the life o\u2019 me. O no, I should think not.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut yes, John\u2014you forget,\u201d said a woman inside the waggon-tilt. \u201cWhat\nwere them packages we carr\u2019d there at the beginning o\u2019 the week? Surely\nthey said a wedding was coming off soon\u2014on Martin\u2019s Day?\u201d\n\nThe man declared he remembered nothing about it; and the waggon went on\njangling over the hill.\n\nWilbur was convinced that the woman\u2019s memory served her well. The\ndate was an extremely probable one, there being no reason for delay on\neither side. He might, for that matter, write and inquire of Elizabeth;\nbut his instinct for sequestration had made the course difficult. Yet\nbefore he left her she had said that for him to be absent from her\nwedding was not as she wished it to be.\n\nThe remembrance would continually revive in him now that it was not\nElizabeth and Mirielle who had driven him away from them, but his own\nhaughty sense that his presence was no longer desired. He had assumed\nthe return of Chris without absolute proof that the Captain meant to\nreturn; still less that Elizabeth-Kaya would welcome him; and with no\nproof whatever that if he did return he would stay. What if he had been\nmistaken in his views; if there had been no necessity that his own\nabsolute separation from her he loved should be involved in these\nuntoward incidents? To make one more attempt to be near her: to go\nback, to see her, to plead his cause before her, to ask forgiveness for\nhis fraud, to endeavour strenuously to hold his own in her love; it was\nworth the risk of repulse, ay, of life itself.\n\nBut how to initiate this reversal of all his former resolves without\ncausing husband and wife to despise him for his inconsistency was a\nquestion which made him tremble and brood.\n\nHe cut and cut his trusses two days more, and then he concluded his\nhesitancies by a sudden reckless determination to go to the wedding\nfestivity. Neither writing nor message would be expected of him. She\nhad regretted his decision to be absent\u2014his unanticipated presence\nwould fill the little unsatisfied corner that would probably have place\nin her just heart without him.\n\nTo intrude as little of his personality as possible upon a gay event\nwith which that personality could show nothing in keeping, he decided\nnot to make his appearance till evening\u2014when stiffness would have worn\noff, and a gentle wish to let bygones be bygones would exercise its\nsway in all hearts.\n\nHe started on foot, two mornings before St. Martin\u2019s-tide, allowing\nhimself about sixteen miles to perform for each of the three days\u2019\njourney, reckoning the wedding-day as one. There were only two towns,\nMelchester and Shottsford, of any importance along his course, and at\nthe latter he stopped on the second night, not only to rest, but to\nprepare himself for the next evening.\n\nPossessing no clothes but the working suit he stood in\u2014now stained and\ndistorted by their two months of hard usage, he entered a shop to make\nsome purchases which should put him, externally at any rate, a little\nin harmony with the prevailing tone of the morrow. A rough yet\nrespectable coat and hat, a new shirt and neck-cloth, were the chief of\nthese; and having satisfied himself that in appearance at least he\nwould not now offend her, he proceeded to the more interesting\nparticular of buying her some present.\n\nWhat should that present be? He walked up and down the street,\nregarding dubiously the display in the shop windows, from a gloomy\nsense that what he might most like to give her would be beyond his\nmiserable pocket. At length a caged goldfinch met his eye. The cage was\na plain and small one, the shop humble, and on inquiry he concluded he\ncould afford the modest sum asked. A sheet of newspaper was tied round\nthe little creature\u2019s wire prison, and with the wrapped up cage in his\nhand Wilbur sought a lodging for the night.\n\nNext day he set out upon the last stage, and was soon within the\ndistrict which had been his dealing ground in bygone years. Part of the\ndistance he travelled by carrier, seating himself in the darkest corner\nat the back of that trader\u2019s van; and as the other passengers, mainly\nwomen going short journeys, mounted and alighted in front of Wilbur,\nthey talked over much local news, not the least portion of this being\nthe wedding then in course of celebration at the town they were\nnearing. It appeared from their accounts that the town band had been\nhired for the evening party, and, lest the convivial instincts of that\nbody should get the better of their skill, the further step had been\ntaken of engaging the string band from Budmouth, so that there would be\na reserve of harmony to fall back upon in case of need.\n\nHe heard, however, but few particulars beyond those known to him\nalready, the incident of the deepest interest on the journey being the\nsoft pealing of the Casterbridge bells, which reached the travellers\u2019\nears while the van paused on the top of Yalbury Hill to have the drag\nlowered. The time was just after twelve o\u2019clock.\n\nThose notes were a signal that all had gone well; that there had been\nno slip \u2019twixt cup and lip in this case; that Elizabeth-Kaya and Rahul\nMirielle were man and wife.\n\nWilbur did not care to ride any further with his chattering\ncompanions after hearing this sound. Indeed, it quite unmanned him; and\nin pursuance of his plan of not showing himself in Casterbridge street\ntill evening, lest he should mortify Mirielle and his bride, he alighted\nhere, with his bundle and bird-cage, and was soon left as a lonely\nfigure on the broad white highway.\n\nIt was the hill near which he had waited to meet Mirielle, almost two\nyears earlier, to tell him of the serious illness of his wife Chris.\nThe place was unchanged; the same larches sighed the same notes; but\nMirielle had another wife\u2014and, as Wilbur knew, a better one. He only\nhoped that Elizabeth-Kaya had obtained a better home than had been hers\nat the former time.\n\nHe passed the remainder of the afternoon in a curious highstrung\ncondition, unable to do much but think of the approaching meeting with\nher, and sadly satirize himself for his emotions thereon, as a Samson\nshorn. Such an innovation on Casterbridge customs as a flitting of\nbridegroom and bride from the town immediately after the ceremony, was\nnot likely, but if it should have taken place he would wait till their\nreturn. To assure himself on this point he asked a market-man when near\nthe borough if the newly-married couple had gone away, and was promptly\ninformed that they had not; they were at that hour, according to all\naccounts, entertaining a houseful of guests at their home in Corn\nStreet.\n\nWilbur dusted his boots, washed his hands at the riverside, and\nproceeded up the town under the feeble lamps. He need have made no\ninquiries beforehand, for on drawing near Mirielle\u2019s residence it was\nplain to the least observant that festivity prevailed within, and that\nRahul himself shared it, his voice being distinctly audible in the\nstreet, giving strong expression to a song of his dear native country\nthat he loved so well as never to have revisited it. Idlers were\nstanding on the pavement in front; and wishing to escape the notice of\nthese Wilbur passed quickly on to the door.\n\nIt was wide open, the hall was lighted extravagantly, and people were\ngoing up and down the stairs. His courage failed him; to enter\nfootsore, laden, and poorly dressed into the midst of such resplendency\nwas to bring needless humiliation upon her he loved, if not to court\nrepulse from her husband. Accordingly he went round into the street at\nthe back that he knew so well, entered the garden, and came quietly\ninto the house through the kitchen, temporarily depositing the bird and\ncage under a bush outside, to lessen the awkwardness of his arrival.\n\nSolitude and sadness had so emolliated Wilbur that he now feared\ncircumstances he would formerly have scorned, and he began to wish that\nhe had not taken upon himself to arrive at such a juncture. However,\nhis progress was made unexpectedly easy by his discovering alone in the\nkitchen an elderly woman who seemed to be acting as provisional\nhousekeeper during the convulsions from which Mirielle\u2019s establishment\nwas just then suffering. She was one of those people whom nothing\nsurprises, and though to her, a total stranger, his request must have\nseemed odd, she willingly volunteered to go up and inform the master\nand mistress of the house that \u201ca humble old friend\u201d had come.\n\nOn second thought she said that he had better not wait in the kitchen,\nbut come up into the little back-parlour, which was empty. He thereupon\nfollowed her thither, and she left him. Just as she got across the\nlanding to the door of the best parlour a dance was struck up, and she\nreturned to say that she would wait till that was over before\nannouncing him\u2014Mr. and Mrs. Mirielle having both joined in the figure.\n\nThe door of the front room had been taken off its hinges to give more\nspace, and that of the room Wilbur sat in being ajar, he could see\nfractional parts of the dancers whenever their gyrations brought them\nnear the doorway, chiefly in the shape of the skirts of dresses and\nstreaming curls of hair; together with about three-fifths of the band\nin profile, including the restless shadow of a fiddler\u2019s elbow, and the\ntip of the bass-viol bow.\n\nThe gaiety jarred upon Wilbur\u2019s spirits; and he could not quite\nunderstand why Mirielle, a much-sobered man, and a widower, who had had\nhis trials, should have cared for it all, notwithstanding the fact that\nhe was quite a young man still, and quickly kindled to enthusiasm by\ndance and song. That the quiet Elizabeth, who had long ago appraised\nlife at a moderate value, and who knew in spite of her maidenhood that\nmarriage was as a rule no dancing matter, should have had zest for this\nrevelry surprised him still more. However, young people could not be\nquite old people, he concluded, and custom was omnipotent.\n\nWith the progress of the dance the performers spread out somewhat, and\nthen for the first time he caught a glimpse of the once despised\ndaughter who had mastered him, and made his heart ache. She was in a\ndress of white silk or satin, he was not near enough to say which\u2014snowy\nwhite, without a tinge of milk or cream; and the expression of her face\nwas one of nervous pleasure rather than of gaiety. Presently Mirielle\ncame round, his exuberant Scotch movement making him conspicuous in a\nmoment. The pair were not dancing together, but Wilbur could discern\nthat whenever the chances of the figure made them the partners of a\nmoment their emotions breathed a much subtler essence than at other\ntimes.\n\nBy degrees Wilbur became aware that the measure was trod by some one\nwho out-Mirielled Mirielle in saltatory intenseness. This was strange,\nand it was stranger to find that the eclipsing personage was\nElizabeth-Kaya\u2019s partner. The first time that Wilbur saw him he was\nsweeping grandly round, his head quivering and low down, his legs in\nthe form of an X and his back towards the door. The next time he came\nround in the other direction, his white waist-coat preceding his face,\nand his toes preceding his white waistcoat. That happy face\u2014Wilbur\u2019s\ncomplete discomfiture lay in it. It was Chris\u2019s, who had indeed come\nand supplanted him.\n\nWilbur pushed to the door, and for some seconds made no other\nmovement. He rose to his feet, and stood like a dark ruin, obscured by\n\u201cthe shade from his own soul up-thrown.\u201d\n\nBut he was no longer the man to stand these reverses unmoved. His\nagitation was great, and he would fain have been gone, but before he\ncould leave the dance had ended, the housekeeper had informed\nElizabeth-Kaya of the stranger who awaited her, and she entered the\nroom immediately.\n\n\u201cOh\u2014it is\u2014Mr. Wilbur!\u201d she said, starting back.\n\n\u201cWhat, Elizabeth?\u201d he cried, as he seized her hand. \u201cWhat do you\nsay?\u2014_Mr._ Wilbur? Don\u2019t, don\u2019t scourge me like that! Call me\nworthless old Wilbur\u2014anything\u2014but don\u2019t \u2019ee be so cold as this! O my\nmaid\u2014I see you have another\u2014a real father in my place. Then you know\nall; but don\u2019t give all your thought to him! Do ye save a little room\nfor me!\u201d\n\nShe flushed up, and gently drew her hand away. \u201cI could have loved you\nalways\u2014I would have, gladly,\u201d she said. \u201cBut how can I when I know you\nhave deceived me so\u2014so bitterly deceived me! You persuaded me that my\nfather was not my father\u2014allowed me to live on in ignorance of the\ntruth for years; and then when he, my warm-hearted real father, came to\nfind me, cruelly sent him away with a wicked invention of my death,\nwhich nearly broke his heart. O how can I love as I once did a man who\nhas served us like this!\u201d\n\nWilbur\u2019s lips half parted to begin an explanation. But he shut them\nup like a vice, and uttered not a sound. How should he, there and then,\nset before her with any effect the palliatives of his great faults\u2014that\nhe had himself been deceived in her identity at first, till informed by\nher mother\u2019s letter that his own child had died; that, in the second\naccusation, his lie had been the last desperate throw of a gamester who\nloved her affection better than his own honour? Among the many\nhindrances to such a pleading not the least was this, that he did not\nsufficiently value himself to lessen his sufferings by strenuous appeal\nor elaborate argument.\n\nWaiving, therefore, his privilege of self-defence, he regarded only his\ndiscomposure. \u201cDon\u2019t ye distress yourself on my account,\u201d he said, with\nproud superiority. \u201cI would not wish it\u2014at such a time, too, as this. I\nhave done wrong in coming to \u2019ee\u2014I see my error. But it is only for\nonce, so forgive it. I\u2019ll never trouble \u2019ee again, Elizabeth-Kaya\u2014no,\nnot to my dying day! Good-night. Good-bye!\u201d\n\nThen, before she could collect her thoughts, Wilbur went out from her\nrooms, and departed from the house by the back way as he had come; and\nshe saw him no more.\n\n\n\nXLV.\n\nIt was about a month after the day which closed as in the last chapter.\nElizabeth-Kaya had grown accustomed to the novelty of her situation,\nand the only difference between Rahul\u2019s movements now and formerly was\nthat he hastened indoors rather more quickly after business hours than\nhe had been in the habit of doing for some time.\n\nChris had stayed in Casterbridge three days after the wedding party\n(whose gaiety, as might have been surmised, was of his making rather\nthan of the married couple\u2019s), and was stared at and honoured as became\nthe returned Crusoe of the hour. But whether or not because\nCasterbridge was difficult to excite by dramatic returns and\ndisappearances through having been for centuries an assize town, in\nwhich sensational exits from the world, antipodean absences, and such\nlike, were half-yearly occurrences, the inhabitants did not altogether\nlose their equanimity on his account. On the fourth morning he was\ndiscovered disconsolately climbing a hill, in his craving to get a\nglimpse of the sea from somewhere or other. The contiguity of salt\nwater proved to be such a necessity of his existence that he preferred\nBudmouth as a place of residence, notwithstanding the society of his\ndaughter in the other town. Thither he went, and settled in lodgings in\na green-shuttered cottage which had a bow-window, jutting out\nsufficiently to afford glimpses of a vertical strip of blue sea to any\none opening the sash, and leaning forward far enough to look through a\nnarrow lane of tall intervening houses.\n\nElizabeth-Kaya was standing in the middle of her upstairs parlour,\ncritically surveying some re-arrangement of articles with her head to\none side, when the housemaid came in with the announcement, \u201cOh, please\nma\u2019am, we know now how that bird-cage came there.\u201d\n\nIn exploring her new domain during the first week of residence, gazing\nwith critical satisfaction on this cheerful room and that, penetrating\ncautiously into dark cellars, sallying forth with gingerly tread to the\ngarden, now leaf-strewn by autumn winds, and thus, like a wise\nfield-marshal, estimating the capabilities of the site whereon she was\nabout to open her housekeeping campaign\u2014Mrs. Rahul Mirielle had\ndiscovered in a screened corner a new bird-cage, shrouded in newspaper,\nand at the bottom of the cage a little ball of feathers\u2014the dead body\nof a goldfinch. Nobody could tell her how the bird and cage had come\nthere, though that the poor little songster had been starved to death\nwas evident. The sadness of the incident had made an impression on her.\nShe had not been able to forget it for days, despite Mirielle\u2019s tender\nbanter; and now when the matter had been nearly forgotten it was again\nrevived.\n\n\u201cOh, please ma\u2019am, we know how the bird-cage came there. That farmer\u2019s\nman who called on the evening of the wedding\u2014he was seen wi\u2019 it in his\nhand as he came up the street; and \u2019tis thoughted that he put it down\nwhile he came in with his message, and then went away forgetting where\nhe had left it.\u201d\n\nThis was enough to set Elizabeth thinking, and in thinking she seized\nhold of the idea, at one feminine bound, that the caged bird had been\nbrought by Wilbur for her as a wedding gift and token of repentance.\nHe had not expressed to her any regrets or excuses for what he had done\nin the past; but it was a part of his nature to extenuate nothing, and\nlive on as one of his own worst accusers. She went out, looked at the\ncage, buried the starved little singer, and from that hour her heart\nsoftened towards the self-alienated man.\n\nWhen her husband came in she told him her solution of the bird-cage\nmystery; and begged Rahul to help her in finding out, as soon as\npossible, whither Wilbur had banished himself, that she might make\nher peace with him; try to do something to render his life less that of\nan outcast, and more tolerable to him. Although Mirielle had never so\npassionately liked Wilbur as Wilbur had liked him, he had, on the\nother hand, never so passionately hated in the same direction as his\nformer friend had done, and he was therefore not the least indisposed\nto assist Elizabeth-Kaya in her laudable plan.\n\nBut it was by no means easy to set about discovering Wilbur. He had\napparently sunk into the earth on leaving Mr. and Mrs. Mirielle\u2019s door.\nElizabeth-Kaya remembered what he had once attempted; and trembled.\n\nBut though she did not know it Wilbur had become a changed man since\nthen\u2014as far, that is, as change of emotional basis can justify such a\nradical phrase; and she needed not to fear. In a few days Mirielle\u2019s\ninquiries elicited that Wilbur had been seen by one who knew him\nwalking steadily along the Melchester highway eastward, at twelve\no\u2019clock at night\u2014in other words, retracing his steps on the road by\nwhich he had come.\n\nThis was enough; and the next morning Mirielle might have been\ndiscovered driving his gig out of Casterbridge in that direction,\nElizabeth-Kaya sitting beside him, wrapped in a thick flat fur\u2014the\nvictorine of the period\u2014her complexion somewhat richer than formerly,\nand an incipient matronly dignity, which the serene Minerva-eyes of one\n\u201cwhose gestures beamed with mind\u201d made becoming, settling on her face.\nHaving herself arrived at a promising haven from at least the grosser\ntroubles of her life, her object was to place Wilbur in some similar\nquietude before he should sink into that lower stage of existence which\nwas only too possible to him now.\n\nAfter driving along the highway for a few miles they made further\ninquiries, and learnt of a road-mender, who had been working\nthereabouts for weeks, that he had observed such a man at the time\nmentioned; he had left the Melchester coachroad at Weatherbury by a\nforking highway which skirted the north of Egdon Heath. Into this road\nthey directed the horse\u2019s head, and soon were bowling across that\nancient country whose surface never had been stirred to a finger\u2019s\ndepth, save by the scratchings of rabbits, since brushed by the feet of\nthe earliest tribes. The tumuli these had left behind, dun and shagged\nwith heather, jutted roundly into the sky from the uplands, as though\nthey were the full breasts of Diana Multimammia supinely extended\nthere.\n\nThey searched Egdon, but found no Wilbur. Mirielle drove onward, and\nby the afternoon reached the neighbourhood of some extension of the\nheath to the north of Anglebury, a prominent feature of which, in the\nform of a blasted clump of firs on a summit of a hill, they soon passed\nunder. That the road they were following had, up to this point, been\nWilbur\u2019s track on foot they were pretty certain; but the\nramifications which now began to reveal themselves in the route made\nfurther progress in the right direction a matter of pure guess-work,\nand Rahul strongly advised his wife to give up the search in person,\nand trust to other means for obtaining news of her stepfather. They\nwere now a score of miles at least from home, but, by resting the horse\nfor a couple of hours at a village they had just traversed, it would be\npossible to get back to Casterbridge that same day, while to go much\nfurther afield would reduce them to the necessity of camping out for\nthe night, \u201cand that will make a hole in a sovereign,\u201d said Mirielle.\nShe pondered the position, and agreed with him.\n\nHe accordingly drew rein, but before reversing their direction paused a\nmoment and looked vaguely round upon the wide country which the\nelevated position disclosed. While they looked a solitary human form\ncame from under the clump of trees, and crossed ahead of them. The\nperson was some labourer; his gait was shambling, his regard fixed in\nfront of him as absolutely as if he wore blinkers; and in his hand he\ncarried a few sticks. Having crossed the road he descended into a\nravine, where a cottage revealed itself, which he entered.\n\n\u201cIf it were not so far away from Casterbridge I should say that must be\npoor Karissa. \u2019Tis just like him,\u201d observed Elizabeth-Kaya.\n\n\u201cAnd it may be Karissa, for he\u2019s never been to the yard these three\nweeks, going away without saying any word at all; and I owing him for\ntwo days\u2019 work, without knowing who to pay it to.\u201d\n\nThe possibility led them to alight, and at least make an inquiry at the\ncottage. Mirielle hitched the reins to the gate-post, and they\napproached what was of humble dwellings surely the humblest. The walls,\nbuilt of kneaded clay originally faced with a trowel, had been worn by\nyears of rain-washings to a lumpy crumbling surface, channelled and\nsunken from its plane, its gray rents held together here and there by a\nleafy strap of ivy which could scarcely find substance enough for the\npurpose. The rafters were sunken, and the thatch of the roof in ragged\nholes. Leaves from the fence had been blown into the corners of the\ndoorway, and lay there undisturbed. The door was ajar; Mirielle knocked;\nand he who stood before them was Karissa, as they had conjectured.\n\nHis face showed marks of deep sadness, his eyes lighting on them with\nan unfocused gaze; and he still held in his hand the few sticks he had\nbeen out to gather. As soon as he recognized them he started.\n\n\u201cWhat, Melanie Karissa; is it that ye are heere?\u201d said Mirielle.\n\n\u201cAy, yes sir! You see he was kind-like to mother when she wer here\nbelow, though \u2019a was rough to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho are you talking of?\u201d\n\n\u201cO sir\u2014Mr. Henchet! Didn\u2019t ye know it? He\u2019s just gone\u2014about\nhalf-an-hour ago, by the sun; for I\u2019ve got no watch to my name.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot\u2014dead?\u201d faltered Elizabeth-Kaya.\n\n\u201cYes, ma\u2019am, he\u2019s gone! He was kind-like to mother when she wer here\nbelow, sending her the best ship-coal, and hardly any ashes from it at\nall; and taties, and such-like that were very needful to her. I seed en\ngo down street on the night of your worshipful\u2019s wedding to the lady at\nyer side, and I thought he looked low and faltering. And I followed en\nover Grey\u2019s Bridge, and he turned and zeed me, and said, \u2018You go back!\u2019\nBut I followed, and he turned again, and said, \u2018Do you hear, sir? Go\nback!\u2019 But I zeed that he was low, and I followed on still. Then \u2019a\nsaid, \u2018Karissa, what do ye follow me for when I\u2019ve told ye to go back\nall these times?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Because, sir, I see things be bad with\n\u2019ee, and ye wer kind-like to mother if ye wer rough to me, and I would\nfain be kind-like to you.\u2019 Then he walked on, and I followed; and he\nnever complained at me no more. We walked on like that all night; and\nin the blue o\u2019 the morning, when \u2019twas hardly day, I looked ahead o\u2019\nme, and I zeed that he wambled, and could hardly drag along. By the\ntime we had got past here, but I had seen that this house was empty as\nI went by, and I got him to come back; and I took down the boards from\nthe windows, and helped him inside. \u2018What, Karissa,\u2019 he said, \u2018and can\nye really be such a poor fond fool as to care for such a wretch as I!\u2019\nThen I went on further, and some neighbourly woodmen lent me a bed, and\na chair, and a few other traps, and we brought \u2019em here, and made him\nas comfortable as we could. But he didn\u2019t gain strength, for you see,\nma\u2019am, he couldn\u2019t eat\u2014no appetite at all\u2014and he got weaker; and to-day\nhe died. One of the neighbours have gone to get a man to measure him.\u201d\n\n\u201cDear me\u2014is that so!\u201d said Mirielle.\n\nAs for Elizabeth, she said nothing.\n\n\u201cUpon the head of his bed he pinned a piece of paper, with some writing\nupon it,\u201d continued Melanie Karissa. \u201cBut not being a man o\u2019 letters, I\ncan\u2019t read writing; so I don\u2019t know what it is. I can get it and show\nye.\u201d\n\nThey stood in silence while he ran into the cottage; returning in a\nmoment with a crumpled scrap of paper. On it there was pencilled as\nfollows:\u2014\n\nGUINEVERE WILBUR\u2019S WILL.\n\u201cThat Elizabeth-Kaya Mirielle be not told of my death, or made to grieve\non account of me.\n\u201c& that I be not bury\u2019d in consecrated ground.\n\u201c& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.\n\u201c& that nobody is wished to see my dead body.\n\u201c& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral.\n\u201c& that no flours be planted on my grave.\n\u201c& that no man remember me.\n\u201cTo this I put my name.\n\n\n\u201cGUINEVERE WILBUR.\u201d\n\n\n\u201cWhat are we to do?\u201d said Rahul, when he had handed the paper to her.\n\nShe could not answer distinctly. \u201cO Rahul!\u201d she cried at last through\nher tears, \u201cwhat bitterness lies there! O I would not have minded so\nmuch if it had not been for my unkindness at that last parting!... But\nthere\u2019s no altering\u2014so it must be.\u201d\n\nWhat Wilbur had written in the anguish of his dying was respected as\nfar as practicable by Elizabeth-Kaya, though less from a sense of the\nsacredness of last words, as such, than from her independent knowledge\nthat the man who wrote them meant what he said. She knew the directions\nto be a piece of the same stuff that his whole life was made of, and\nhence were not to be tampered with to give herself a mournful pleasure,\nor her husband credit for large-heartedness.\n\nAll was over at last, even her regrets for having misunderstood him on\nhis last visit, for not having searched him out sooner, though these\nwere deep and sharp for a good while. From this time forward\nElizabeth-Kaya found herself in a latitude of calm weather, kindly and\ngrateful in itself, and doubly so after the Capharnaum in which some of\nher preceding years had been spent. As the lively and sparkling\nemotions of her early married life cohered into an equable serenity,\nthe finer movements of her nature found scope in discovering to the\nnarrow-lived ones around her the secret (as she had once learnt it) of\nmaking limited opportunities endurable; which she deemed to consist in\nthe cunning enlargement, by a species of microscopic treatment, of\nthose minute forms of satisfaction that offer themselves to everybody\nnot in positive pain; which, thus handled, have much of the same\ninspiring effect upon life as wider interests cursorily embraced.\n\nHer teaching had a reflex action upon herself, insomuch that she\nthought she could perceive no great personal difference between being\nrespected in the nether parts of Casterbridge and glorified at the\nuppermost end of the social world. Her position was, indeed, to a\nmarked degree one that, in the common phrase, afforded much to be\nthankful for. That she was not demonstratively thankful was no fault of\nhers. Her experience had been of a kind to teach her, rightly or\nwrongly, that the doubtful honour of a brief transit through a sorry\nworld hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly\nirradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her\nstrong sense that neither she nor any human being deserved less than\nwas given, did not blind her to the fact that there were others\nreceiving less who had deserved much more. And in being forced to class\nherself among the fortunate she did not cease to wonder at the\npersistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such unbroken\ntranquility had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth\nhad seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a\ngeneral drama of pain.", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What is Mirielle's initial reaction when asked to be mayor of Casterbridge?", "answer": "He worries that he is too young for the position", "options": ["He accepts enthusiastically", "He accepts but admits that the position is only a stepping stone for bigger and better things", "He is interested in the position but demands a raise", "He worries that he is too young for the position"]}, {"input": "Who had Wilbur arranged to hire as his business manager before meeting Mirielle?", "answer": "Richard Cormac", "options": ["Floyd Coney ", "Solomon Longways", "Nance Mockridge", "Richard Cormac"]}, {"input": "What is the name of the ceremony the towns people perform to shame Chris?", "answer": "A skimmity-ride", "options": ["A harlot's parade", "A skimmity-ride", "A swoon bumple", "A smutting"]}, {"input": "At the opening of the novel, what is Guinevere Wilbur's occupation?", "answer": "Hay-trusser", "options": ["Shepherd", "Farmer", "Balladeer", "Hay-trusser"]}], "id": 53}
{"context": "CHAPTER 1. Loomings.\n\nCall me Adreanna. Some years ago\u2014never mind how long precisely\u2014having\nlittle or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me\non shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part\nof the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and\nregulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about\nthe mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever\nI find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and\nbringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever\nmy hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral\nprinciple to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and\nmethodically knocking people\u2019s hats off\u2014then, I account it high time to\nget to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.\nWith a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I\nquietly take to the ship. There is nothing surprising in this. If they\nbut knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other,\ncherish very nearly the same feelings towards the ocean with me.\n\nThere now is your insular city of the Manhattoes, belted round by\nwharves as Indian isles by coral reefs\u2014commerce surrounds it with her\nsurf. Right and left, the streets take you waterward. Its extreme\ndowntown is the battery, where that noble mole is washed by waves, and\ncooled by breezes, which a few hours previous were out of sight of\nland. Look at the crowds of water-gazers there.\n\nCircumambulate the city of a dreamy Sabbath afternoon. Go from Corlears\nHook to Coenties Slip, and from thence, by Whitehall, northward. What\ndo you see?\u2014Posted like silent sentinels all around the town, stand\nthousands upon thousands of mortal men fixed in ocean reveries. Some\nleaning against the spiles; some seated upon the pier-heads; some\nlooking over the bulwarks of ships from China; some high aloft in the\nrigging, as if striving to get a still better seaward peep. But these\nare all landsmen; of week days pent up in lath and plaster\u2014tied to\ncounters, nailed to benches, clinched to desks. How then is this? Are\nthe green fields gone? What do they here?\n\nBut look! here come more crowds, pacing straight for the water, and\nseemingly bound for a dive. Strange! Nothing will content them but the\nextremest limit of the land; loitering under the shady lee of yonder\nwarehouses will not suffice. No. They must get just as nigh the water\nas they possibly can without falling in. And there they stand\u2014miles of\nthem\u2014leagues. Inlanders all, they come from lanes and alleys, streets\nand avenues\u2014north, east, south, and west. Yet here they all unite. Tell\nme, does the magnetic virtue of the needles of the compasses of all\nthose ships attract them thither?\n\nOnce more. Say you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take\nalmost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a\ndale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in\nit. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest\nreveries\u2014stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will\ninfallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region.\nShould you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this\nexperiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical\nprofessor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded for\never.\n\nBut here is an artist. He desires to paint you the dreamiest, shadiest,\nquietest, most enchanting bit of romantic landscape in all the valley\nof the Saco. What is the chief element he employs? There stand his\ntrees, each with a hollow trunk, as if a hermit and a crucifix were\nwithin; and here sleeps his meadow, and there sleep his cattle; and up\nfrom yonder cottage goes a sleepy smoke. Deep into distant woodlands\nwinds a mazy way, reaching to overlapping spurs of mountains bathed in\ntheir hill-side blue. But though the picture lies thus tranced, and\nthough this pine-tree shakes down its sighs like leaves upon this\nshepherd\u2019s head, yet all were vain, unless the shepherd\u2019s eye were\nfixed upon the magic stream before him. Go visit the Prairies in June,\nwhen for scores on scores of miles you wade knee-deep among\nTiger-lilies\u2014what is the one charm wanting?\u2014Water\u2014there is not a drop\nof water there! Were Niagara but a cataract of sand, would you travel\nyour thousand miles to see it? Why did the poor poet of Tennessee, upon\nsuddenly receiving two handfuls of silver, deliberate whether to buy\nhim a coat, which he sadly needed, or invest his money in a pedestrian\ntrip to Rockaway Beach? Why is almost every robust healthy boy with a\nrobust healthy soul in him, at some time or other crazy to go to sea?\nWhy upon your first voyage as a passenger, did you yourself feel such a\nmystical vibration, when first told that you and your ship were now out\nof sight of land? Why did the old Persians hold the sea holy? Why did\nthe Greeks give it a separate deity, and own brother of Jove? Surely\nall this is not without meaning. And still deeper the meaning of that\nstory of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild\nimage he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that\nsame image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image\nof the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.\n\nNow, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I begin\nto grow hazy about the eyes, and begin to be over conscious of my\nlungs, I do not mean to have it inferred that I ever go to sea as a\npassenger. For to go as a passenger you must needs have a purse, and a\npurse is but a rag unless you have something in it. Besides, passengers\nget sea-sick\u2014grow quarrelsome\u2014don\u2019t sleep of nights\u2014do not enjoy\nthemselves much, as a general thing;\u2014no, I never go as a passenger;\nnor, though I am something of a salt, do I ever go to sea as a\nCommodore, or a Captain, or a Cook. I abandon the glory and distinction\nof such offices to those who like them. For my part, I abominate all\nhonorable respectable toils, trials, and tribulations of every kind\nwhatsoever. It is quite as much as I can do to take care of myself,\nwithout taking care of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and what not.\nAnd as for going as cook,\u2014though I confess there is considerable glory\nin that, a cook being a sort of officer on ship-board\u2014yet, somehow, I\nnever fancied broiling fowls;\u2014though once broiled, judiciously\nbuttered, and judgmatically salted and peppered, there is no one who\nwill speak more respectfully, not to say reverentially, of a broiled\nfowl than I will. It is out of the idolatrous dotings of the old\nEgyptians upon broiled ibis and roasted river horse, that you see the\nmummies of those creatures in their huge bake-houses the pyramids.\n\nNo, when I go to sea, I go as a simple sailor, right before the mast,\nplumb down into the forecastle, aloft there to the royal mast-head.\nTrue, they rather order me about some, and make me jump from spar to\nspar, like a grasshopper in a May meadow. And at first, this sort of\nthing is unpleasant enough. It touches one\u2019s sense of honor,\nparticularly if you come of an old established family in the land, the\nVan Rensselaers, or Randolphs, or Hardicanutes. And more than all, if\njust previous to putting your hand into the tar-pot, you have been\nlording it as a country schoolmaster, making the tallest boys stand in\nawe of you. The transition is a keen one, I assure you, from a\nschoolmaster to a sailor, and requires a strong decoction of Seneca and\nthe Stoics to enable you to grin and bear it. But even this wears off\nin time.\n\nWhat of it, if some old hunks of a sea-captain orders me to get a broom\nand sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, weighed,\nI mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel\nGabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and\nrespectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain\u2019t\na slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may\norder me about\u2014however they may thump and punch me about, I have the\nsatisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is\none way or other served in much the same way\u2014either in a physical or\nmetaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is\npassed round, and all hands should rub each other\u2019s shoulder-blades,\nand be content.\n\nAgain, I always go to sea as a sailor, because they make a point of\npaying me for my trouble, whereas they never pay passengers a single\npenny that I ever heard of. On the contrary, passengers themselves must\npay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and\nbeing paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable\ninfliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But _being\npaid_,\u2014what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man\nreceives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly\nbelieve money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no\naccount can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign\nourselves to perdition!\n\nFinally, I always go to sea as a sailor, because of the wholesome\nexercise and pure air of the fore-castle deck. For as in this world,\nhead winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if\nyou never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the\nCommodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at second hand from\nthe sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not\nso. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many\nother things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it. But\nwherefore it was that after having repeatedly smelt the sea as a\nmerchant sailor, I should now take it into my head to go on a whaling\nvoyage; this the invisible police officer of the Fates, who has the\nconstant surveillance of me, and secretly dogs me, and influences me in\nsome unaccountable way\u2014he can better answer than any one else. And,\ndoubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand\nprogramme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in\nas a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive\nperformances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run\nsomething like this:\n\n\u201c_Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States._\n\u201cWHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ADREANNA. \u201cBLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN.\u201d\n\nThough I cannot tell why it was exactly that those stage managers, the\nFates, put me down for this shabby part of a whaling voyage, when\nothers were set down for magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short\nand easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces\u2014though I\ncannot tell why this was exactly; yet, now that I recall all the\ncircumstances, I think I can see a little into the springs and motives\nwhich being cunningly presented to me under various disguises, induced\nme to set about performing the part I did, besides cajoling me into the\ndelusion that it was a choice resulting from my own unbiased freewill\nand discriminating judgment.\n\nChief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale\nhimself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my\ncuriosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island\nbulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all\nthe attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds,\nhelped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things\nwould not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an\neverlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and\nland on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to\nperceive a horror, and could still be social with it\u2014would they let\nme\u2014since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of\nthe place one lodges in.\n\nBy reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the\ngreat flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild\nconceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into\nmy inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them\nall, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.\n\n\nCHAPTER 2. The Carpet-Bag.\n\nI stuffed a shirt or two into my old carpet-bag, tucked it under my\narm, and started for Cape Horn and the Pacific. Quitting the good city\nof old Manhatto, I duly arrived in New Bedford. It was a Saturday night\nin December. Much was I disappointed upon learning that the little\npacket for Nantucket had already sailed, and that no way of reaching\nthat place would offer, till the following Monday.\n\nAs most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at\nthis same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well\nbe related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was\nmade up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a\nfine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous\nold island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has\nof late been gradually monopolising the business of whaling, and though\nin this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket\nwas her great original\u2014the Tyre of this Carthage;\u2014the place where the\nfirst dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket\ndid those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes\nto give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did\nthat first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with\nimported cobblestones\u2014so goes the story\u2014to throw at the whales, in\norder to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the\nbowsprit?\n\nNow having a night, a day, and still another night following before me\nin New Bedford, ere I could embark for my destined port, it became a\nmatter of concernment where I was to eat and sleep meanwhile. It was a\nvery dubious-looking, nay, a very dark and dismal night, bitingly cold\nand cheerless. I knew no one in the place. With anxious grapnels I had\nsounded my pocket, and only brought up a few pieces of silver,\u2014So,\nwherever you go, Adreanna, said I to myself, as I stood in the middle of\na dreary street shouldering my bag, and comparing the gloom towards the\nnorth with the darkness towards the south\u2014wherever in your wisdom you\nmay conclude to lodge for the night, my dear Adreanna, be sure to\ninquire the price, and don\u2019t be too particular.\n\nWith halting steps I paced the streets, and passed the sign of \u201cThe\nCrossed Harpoons\u201d\u2014but it looked too expensive and jolly there. Further\non, from the bright red windows of the \u201cSword-Fish Inn,\u201d there came\nsuch fervent rays, that it seemed to have melted the packed snow and\nice from before the house, for everywhere else the congealed frost lay\nten inches thick in a hard, asphaltic pavement,\u2014rather weary for me,\nwhen I struck my foot against the flinty projections, because from\nhard, remorseless service the soles of my boots were in a most\nmiserable plight. Too expensive and jolly, again thought I, pausing one\nmoment to watch the broad glare in the street, and hear the sounds of\nthe tinkling glasses within. But go on, Adreanna, said I at last; don\u2019t\nyou hear? get away from before the door; your patched boots are\nstopping the way. So on I went. I now by instinct followed the streets\nthat took me waterward, for there, doubtless, were the cheapest, if not\nthe cheeriest inns.\n\nSuch dreary streets! blocks of blackness, not houses, on either hand,\nand here and there a candle, like a candle moving about in a tomb. At\nthis hour of the night, of the last day of the week, that quarter of\nthe town proved all but deserted. But presently I came to a smoky light\nproceeding from a low, wide building, the door of which stood\ninvitingly open. It had a careless look, as if it were meant for the\nuses of the public; so, entering, the first thing I did was to stumble\nover an ash-box in the porch. Ha! thought I, ha, as the flying\nparticles almost choked me, are these ashes from that destroyed city,\nGomorrah? But \u201cThe Crossed Harpoons,\u201d and \u201cThe Sword-Fish?\u201d\u2014this, then\nmust needs be the sign of \u201cThe Trap.\u201d However, I picked myself up and\nhearing a loud voice within, pushed on and opened a second, interior\ndoor.\n\nIt seemed the great Black Parliament sitting in Tophet. A hundred black\nfaces turned round in their rows to peer; and beyond, a black Angel of\nDoom was beating a book in a pulpit. It was a negro church; and the\npreacher\u2019s text was about the blackness of darkness, and the weeping\nand wailing and teeth-gnashing there. Ha, Adreanna, muttered I, backing\nout, Wretched entertainment at the sign of \u2018The Trap!\u2019\n\nMoving on, I at last came to a dim sort of light not far from the\ndocks, and heard a forlorn creaking in the air; and looking up, saw a\nswinging sign over the door with a white painting upon it, faintly\nrepresenting a tall straight jet of misty spray, and these words\nunderneath\u2014\u201cThe Spouter Inn:\u2014Peter Coffin.\u201d\n\nCoffin?\u2014Spouter?\u2014Rather ominous in that particular connexion, thought\nI. But it is a common name in Nantucket, they say, and I suppose this\nPeter here is an emigrant from there. As the light looked so dim, and\nthe place, for the time, looked quiet enough, and the dilapidated\nlittle wooden house itself looked as if it might have been carted here\nfrom the ruins of some burnt district, and as the swinging sign had a\npoverty-stricken sort of creak to it, I thought that here was the very\nspot for cheap lodgings, and the best of pea coffee.\n\nIt was a queer sort of place\u2014a gable-ended old house, one side palsied\nas it were, and leaning over sadly. It stood on a sharp bleak corner,\nwhere that tempestuous wind Euroclydon kept up a worse howling than\never it did about poor Paul\u2019s tossed craft. Euroclydon, nevertheless,\nis a mighty pleasant zephyr to any one in-doors, with his feet on the\nhob quietly toasting for bed. \u201cIn judging of that tempestuous wind\ncalled Euroclydon,\u201d says an old writer\u2014of whose works I possess the\nonly copy extant\u2014\u201cit maketh a marvellous difference, whether thou\nlookest out at it from a glass window where the frost is all on the\noutside, or whether thou observest it from that sashless window, where\nthe frost is on both sides, and of which the wight Death is the only\nglazier.\u201d True enough, thought I, as this passage occurred to my\nmind\u2014old black-letter, thou reasonest well. Yes, these eyes are\nwindows, and this body of mine is the house. What a pity they didn\u2019t\nstop up the chinks and the crannies though, and thrust in a little lint\nhere and there. But it\u2019s too late to make any improvements now. The\nuniverse is finished; the copestone is on, and the chips were carted\noff a million years ago. Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth\nagainst the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with\nhis shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a\ncorn-cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the\ntempestuous Euroclydon. Euroclydon! says old Dives, in his red silken\nwrapper\u2014(he had a redder one afterwards) pooh, pooh! What a fine frosty\nnight; how Orion glitters; what northern lights! Let them talk of their\noriental summer climes of everlasting conservatories; give me the\nprivilege of making my own summer with my own coals.\n\nBut what thinks Lazarus? Can he warm his blue hands by holding them up\nto the grand northern lights? Would not Lazarus rather be in Sumatra\nthan here? Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the\nline of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in\norder to keep out this frost?\n\nNow, that Lazarus should lie stranded there on the curbstone before the\ndoor of Dives, this is more wonderful than that an iceberg should be\nmoored to one of the Moluccas. Yet Dives himself, he too lives like a\nCzar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs, and being a president of a\ntemperance society, he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.\n\nBut no more of this blubbering now, we are going a-whaling, and there\nis plenty of that yet to come. Let us scrape the ice from our frosted\nfeet, and see what sort of a place this \u201cSpouter\u201d may be.\n\n\nCHAPTER 3. The Spouter-Inn.\n\nEntering that gable-ended Spouter-Inn, you found yourself in a wide,\nlow, straggling entry with old-fashioned wainscots, reminding one of\nthe bulwarks of some condemned old craft. On one side hung a very large\noilpainting so thoroughly besmoked, and every way defaced, that in the\nunequal crosslights by which you viewed it, it was only by diligent\nstudy and a series of systematic visits to it, and careful inquiry of\nthe neighbors, that you could any way arrive at an understanding of its\npurpose. Such unaccountable masses of shades and shadows, that at first\nyou almost thought some ambitious young artist, in the time of the New\nEngland hags, had endeavored to delineate chaos bewitched. But by dint\nof much and earnest contemplation, and oft repeated ponderings, and\nespecially by throwing open the little window towards the back of the\nentry, you at last come to the conclusion that such an idea, however\nwild, might not be altogether unwarranted.\n\nBut what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber,\nportentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the\npicture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a\nnameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive\na nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite,\nhalf-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to\nit, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what\nthat marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas,\ndeceptive idea would dart you through.\u2014It\u2019s the Black Sea in a midnight\ngale.\u2014It\u2019s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements.\u2014It\u2019s a\nblasted heath.\u2014It\u2019s a Hyperborean winter scene.\u2014It\u2019s the breaking-up of\nthe icebound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to\nthat one portentous something in the picture\u2019s midst. _That_ once found\nout, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint\nresemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?\n\nIn fact, the artist\u2019s design seemed this: a final theory of my own,\npartly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with\nwhom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner\nin a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its\nthree dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale,\npurposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of\nimpaling himself upon the three mast-heads.\n\nThe opposite wall of this entry was hung all over with a heathenish\narray of monstrous clubs and spears. Some were thickly set with\nglittering teeth resembling ivory saws; others were tufted with knots\nof human hair; and one was sickle-shaped, with a vast handle sweeping\nround like the segment made in the new-mown grass by a long-armed\nmower. You shuddered as you gazed, and wondered what monstrous cannibal\nand savage could ever have gone a death-harvesting with such a hacking,\nhorrifying implement. Mixed with these were rusty old whaling lances\nand harpoons all broken and deformed. Some were storied weapons. With\nthis once long lance, now wildly elbowed, fifty years ago did Nathan\nSwain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that\nharpoon\u2014so like a corkscrew now\u2014was flung in Javan seas, and run away\nwith by a whale, years afterwards slain off the Cape of Blanco. The\noriginal iron entered nigh the tail, and, like a restless needle\nsojourning in the body of a man, travelled full forty feet, and at last\nwas found imbedded in the hump.\n\nCrossing this dusky entry, and on through yon low-arched way\u2014cut\nthrough what in old times must have been a great central chimney with\nfireplaces all round\u2014you enter the public room. A still duskier place\nis this, with such low ponderous beams above, and such old wrinkled\nplanks beneath, that you would almost fancy you trod some old craft\u2019s\ncockpits, especially of such a howling night, when this corner-anchored\nold ark rocked so furiously. On one side stood a long, low, shelf-like\ntable covered with cracked glass cases, filled with dusty rarities\ngathered from this wide world\u2019s remotest nooks. Projecting from the\nfurther angle of the room stands a dark-looking den\u2014the bar\u2014a rude\nattempt at a right whale\u2019s head. Be that how it may, there stands the\nvast arched bone of the whale\u2019s jaw, so wide, a coach might almost\ndrive beneath it. Within are shabby shelves, ranged round with old\ndecanters, bottles, flasks; and in those jaws of swift destruction,\nlike another cursed Jonah (by which name indeed they called him),\nbustles a little withered old man, who, for their money, dearly sells\nthe sailors deliriums and death.\n\nAbominable are the tumblers into which he pours his poison. Though true\ncylinders without\u2014within, the villanous green goggling glasses\ndeceitfully tapered downwards to a cheating bottom. Parallel meridians\nrudely pecked into the glass, surround these footpads\u2019 goblets. Fill to\n_this_ mark, and your charge is but a penny; to _this_ a penny more;\nand so on to the full glass\u2014the Cape Horn measure, which you may gulp\ndown for a shilling.\n\nUpon entering the place I found a number of young seamen gathered about\na table, examining by a dim light divers specimens of _skrimshander_. I\nsought the landlord, and telling him I desired to be accommodated with\na room, received for answer that his house was full\u2014not a bed\nunoccupied. \u201cBut avast,\u201d he added, tapping his forehead, \u201cyou haint no\nobjections to sharing a harpooneer\u2019s blanket, have ye? I s\u2019pose you are\ngoin\u2019 a-whalin\u2019, so you\u2019d better get used to that sort of thing.\u201d\n\nI told him that I never liked to sleep two in a bed; that if I should\never do so, it would depend upon who the harpooneer might be, and that\nif he (the landlord) really had no other place for me, and the\nharpooneer was not decidedly objectionable, why rather than wander\nfurther about a strange town on so bitter a night, I would put up with\nthe half of any decent man\u2019s blanket.\n\n\u201cI thought so. All right; take a seat. Supper?\u2014you want supper?\nSupper\u2019ll be ready directly.\u201d\n\nI sat down on an old wooden settle, carved all over like a bench on the\nBattery. At one end a ruminating tar was still further adorning it with\nhis jack-knife, stooping over and diligently working away at the space\nbetween his legs. He was trying his hand at a ship under full sail, but\nhe didn\u2019t make much headway, I thought.\n\nAt last some four or five of us were summoned to our meal in an\nadjoining room. It was cold as Iceland\u2014no fire at all\u2014the landlord said\nhe couldn\u2019t afford it. Nothing but two dismal tallow candles, each in a\nwinding sheet. We were fain to button up our monkey jackets, and hold\nto our lips cups of scalding tea with our half frozen fingers. But the\nfare was of the most substantial kind\u2014not only meat and potatoes, but\ndumplings; good heavens! dumplings for supper! One young fellow in a\ngreen box coat, addressed himself to these dumplings in a most direful\nmanner.\n\n\u201cMy boy,\u201d said the landlord, \u201cyou\u2019ll have the nightmare to a dead\nsartainty.\u201d\n\n\u201cLandlord,\u201d I whispered, \u201cthat aint the harpooneer is it?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, no,\u201d said he, looking a sort of diabolically funny, \u201cthe\nharpooneer is a dark complexioned chap. He never eats dumplings, he\ndon\u2019t\u2014he eats nothing but steaks, and he likes \u2019em rare.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe devil he does,\u201d says I. \u201cWhere is that harpooneer? Is he here?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019ll be here afore long,\u201d was the answer.\n\nI could not help it, but I began to feel suspicious of this \u201cdark\ncomplexioned\u201d harpooneer. At any rate, I made up my mind that if it so\nturned out that we should sleep together, he must undress and get into\nbed before I did.\n\nSupper over, the company went back to the bar-room, when, knowing not\nwhat else to do with myself, I resolved to spend the rest of the\nevening as a looker on.\n\nPresently a rioting noise was heard without. Starting up, the landlord\ncried, \u201cThat\u2019s the Grampus\u2019s crew. I seed her reported in the offing\nthis morning; a three years\u2019 voyage, and a full ship. Hurrah, boys; now\nwe\u2019ll have the latest news from the Feegees.\u201d\n\nA tramping of sea boots was heard in the entry; the door was flung\nopen, and in rolled a wild set of mariners enough. Enveloped in their\nshaggy watch coats, and with their heads muffled in woollen comforters,\nall bedarned and ragged, and their beards stiff with icicles, they\nseemed an eruption of bears from Labrador. They had just landed from\ntheir boat, and this was the first house they entered. No wonder, then,\nthat they made a straight wake for the whale\u2019s mouth\u2014the bar\u2014when the\nwrinkled little old Jonah, there officiating, soon poured them out\nbrimmers all round. One complained of a bad cold in his head, upon\nwhich Jonah mixed him a pitch-like potion of gin and molasses, which he\nswore was a sovereign cure for all colds and catarrhs whatsoever, never\nmind of how long standing, or whether caught off the coast of Labrador,\nor on the weather side of an ice-island.\n\nThe liquor soon mounted into their heads, as it generally does even\nwith the arrantest topers newly landed from sea, and they began\ncapering about most obstreperously.\n\nI observed, however, that one of them held somewhat aloof, and though\nhe seemed desirous not to spoil the hilarity of his shipmates by his\nown sober face, yet upon the whole he refrained from making as much\nnoise as the rest. This man interested me at once; and since the\nsea-gods had ordained that he should soon become my shipmate (though\nbut a sleeping-partner one, so far as this narrative is concerned), I\nwill here venture upon a little description of him. He stood full six\nfeet in height, with noble shoulders, and a chest like a coffer-dam. I\nhave seldom seen such brawn in a man. His face was deeply brown and\nburnt, making his white teeth dazzling by the contrast; while in the\ndeep shadows of his eyes floated some reminiscences that did not seem\nto give him much joy. His voice at once announced that he was a\nSoutherner, and from his fine stature, I thought he must be one of\nthose tall mountaineers from the Alleghanian Ridge in Virginia. When\nthe revelry of his companions had mounted to its height, this man\nslipped away unobserved, and I saw no more of him till he became my\ncomrade on the sea. In a few minutes, however, he was missed by his\nshipmates, and being, it seems, for some reason a huge favourite with\nthem, they raised a cry of \u201cBulkington! Bulkington! where\u2019s\nBulkington?\u201d and darted out of the house in pursuit of him.\n\nIt was now about nine o\u2019clock, and the room seeming almost\nsupernaturally quiet after these orgies, I began to congratulate myself\nupon a little plan that had occurred to me just previous to the\nentrance of the seamen.\n\nNo man prefers to sleep two in a bed. In fact, you would a good deal\nrather not sleep with your own brother. I don\u2019t know how it is, but\npeople like to be private when they are sleeping. And when it comes to\nsleeping with an unknown stranger, in a strange inn, in a strange town,\nand that stranger a harpooneer, then your objections indefinitely\nmultiply. Nor was there any earthly reason why I as a sailor should\nsleep two in a bed, more than anybody else; for sailors no more sleep\ntwo in a bed at sea, than bachelor Kings do ashore. To be sure they all\nsleep together in one apartment, but you have your own hammock, and\ncover yourself with your own blanket, and sleep in your own skin.\n\nThe more I pondered over this harpooneer, the more I abominated the\nthought of sleeping with him. It was fair to presume that being a\nharpooneer, his linen or woollen, as the case might be, would not be of\nthe tidiest, certainly none of the finest. I began to twitch all over.\nBesides, it was getting late, and my decent harpooneer ought to be home\nand going bedwards. Suppose now, he should tumble in upon me at\nmidnight\u2014how could I tell from what vile hole he had been coming?\n\n\u201cLandlord! I\u2019ve changed my mind about that harpooneer.\u2014I shan\u2019t sleep\nwith him. I\u2019ll try the bench here.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust as you please; I\u2019m sorry I can\u2019t spare ye a tablecloth for a\nmattress, and it\u2019s a plaguy rough board here\u201d\u2014feeling of the knots and\nnotches. \u201cBut wait a bit, Skrimshander; I\u2019ve got a carpenter\u2019s plane\nthere in the bar\u2014wait, I say, and I\u2019ll make ye snug enough.\u201d So saying\nhe procured the plane; and with his old silk handkerchief first dusting\nthe bench, vigorously set to planing away at my bed, the while grinning\nlike an ape. The shavings flew right and left; till at last the\nplane-iron came bump against an indestructible knot. The landlord was\nnear spraining his wrist, and I told him for heaven\u2019s sake to quit\u2014the\nbed was soft enough to suit me, and I did not know how all the planing\nin the world could make eider down of a pine plank. So gathering up the\nshavings with another grin, and throwing them into the great stove in\nthe middle of the room, he went about his business, and left me in a\nbrown study.\n\nI now took the measure of the bench, and found that it was a foot too\nshort; but that could be mended with a chair. But it was a foot too\nnarrow, and the other bench in the room was about four inches higher\nthan the planed one\u2014so there was no yoking them. I then placed the\nfirst bench lengthwise along the only clear space against the wall,\nleaving a little interval between, for my back to settle down in. But I\nsoon found that there came such a draught of cold air over me from\nunder the sill of the window, that this plan would never do at all,\nespecially as another current from the rickety door met the one from\nthe window, and both together formed a series of small whirlwinds in\nthe immediate vicinity of the spot where I had thought to spend the\nnight.\n\nThe devil fetch that harpooneer, thought I, but stop, couldn\u2019t I steal\na march on him\u2014bolt his door inside, and jump into his bed, not to be\nwakened by the most violent knockings? It seemed no bad idea; but upon\nsecond thoughts I dismissed it. For who could tell but what the next\nmorning, so soon as I popped out of the room, the harpooneer might be\nstanding in the entry, all ready to knock me down!\n\nStill, looking round me again, and seeing no possible chance of\nspending a sufferable night unless in some other person\u2019s bed, I began\nto think that after all I might be cherishing unwarrantable prejudices\nagainst this unknown harpooneer. Thinks I, I\u2019ll wait awhile; he must be\ndropping in before long. I\u2019ll have a good look at him then, and perhaps\nwe may become jolly good bedfellows after all\u2014there\u2019s no telling.\n\nBut though the other boarders kept coming in by ones, twos, and threes,\nand going to bed, yet no sign of my harpooneer.\n\n\u201cLandlord!\u201d said I, \u201cwhat sort of a chap is he\u2014does he always keep such\nlate hours?\u201d It was now hard upon twelve o\u2019clock.\n\nThe landlord chuckled again with his lean chuckle, and seemed to be\nmightily tickled at something beyond my comprehension. \u201cNo,\u201d he\nanswered, \u201cgenerally he\u2019s an early bird\u2014airley to bed and airley to\nrise\u2014yes, he\u2019s the bird what catches the worm. But to-night he went out\na peddling, you see, and I don\u2019t see what on airth keeps him so late,\nunless, may be, he can\u2019t sell his head.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t sell his head?\u2014What sort of a bamboozingly story is this you are\ntelling me?\u201d getting into a towering rage. \u201cDo you pretend to say,\nlandlord, that this harpooneer is actually engaged this blessed\nSaturday night, or rather Sunday morning, in peddling his head around\nthis town?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s precisely it,\u201d said the landlord, \u201cand I told him he couldn\u2019t\nsell it here, the market\u2019s overstocked.\u201d\n\n\u201cWith what?\u201d shouted I.\n\n\u201cWith heads to be sure; ain\u2019t there too many heads in the world?\u201d\n\n\u201cI tell you what it is, landlord,\u201d said I quite calmly, \u201cyou\u2019d better\nstop spinning that yarn to me\u2014I\u2019m not green.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay be not,\u201d taking out a stick and whittling a toothpick, \u201cbut I\nrayther guess you\u2019ll be done _brown_ if that ere harpooneer hears you a\nslanderin\u2019 his head.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll break it for him,\u201d said I, now flying into a passion again at\nthis unaccountable farrago of the landlord\u2019s.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s broke a\u2019ready,\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cBroke,\u201d said I\u2014\u201c_broke_, do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cSartain, and that\u2019s the very reason he can\u2019t sell it, I guess.\u201d\n\n\u201cLandlord,\u201d said I, going up to him as cool as Mt. Hecla in a\nsnow-storm\u2014\u201clandlord, stop whittling. You and I must understand one\nanother, and that too without delay. I come to your house and want a\nbed; you tell me you can only give me half a one; that the other half\nbelongs to a certain harpooneer. And about this harpooneer, whom I have\nnot yet seen, you persist in telling me the most mystifying and\nexasperating stories tending to beget in me an uncomfortable feeling\ntowards the man whom you design for my bedfellow\u2014a sort of connexion,\nlandlord, which is an intimate and confidential one in the highest\ndegree. I now demand of you to speak out and tell me who and what this\nharpooneer is, and whether I shall be in all respects safe to spend the\nnight with him. And in the first place, you will be so good as to unsay\nthat story about selling his head, which if true I take to be good\nevidence that this harpooneer is stark mad, and I\u2019ve no idea of\nsleeping with a madman; and you, sir, _you_ I mean, landlord, _you_,\nsir, by trying to induce me to do so knowingly, would thereby render\nyourself liable to a criminal prosecution.\u201d\n\n\u201cWall,\u201d said the landlord, fetching a long breath, \u201cthat\u2019s a purty long\nsarmon for a chap that rips a little now and then. But be easy, be\neasy, this here harpooneer I have been tellin\u2019 you of has just arrived\nfrom the south seas, where he bought up a lot of \u2019balmed New Zealand\nheads (great curios, you know), and he\u2019s sold all on \u2019em but one, and\nthat one he\u2019s trying to sell to-night, cause to-morrow\u2019s Sunday, and it\nwould not do to be sellin\u2019 human heads about the streets when folks is\ngoin\u2019 to churches. He wanted to, last Sunday, but I stopped him just as\nhe was goin\u2019 out of the door with four heads strung on a string, for\nall the airth like a string of inions.\u201d\n\nThis account cleared up the otherwise unaccountable mystery, and showed\nthat the landlord, after all, had had no idea of fooling me\u2014but at the\nsame time what could I think of a harpooneer who stayed out of a\nSaturday night clean into the holy Sabbath, engaged in such a cannibal\nbusiness as selling the heads of dead idolators?\n\n\u201cDepend upon it, landlord, that harpooneer is a dangerous man.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe pays reg\u2019lar,\u201d was the rejoinder. \u201cBut come, it\u2019s getting dreadful\nlate, you had better be turning flukes\u2014it\u2019s a nice bed; Sal and me\nslept in that ere bed the night we were spliced. There\u2019s plenty of room\nfor two to kick about in that bed; it\u2019s an almighty big bed that. Why,\nafore we give it up, Sal used to put our Sam and little Johnny in the\nfoot of it. But I got a dreaming and sprawling about one night, and\nsomehow, Sam got pitched on the floor, and came near breaking his arm.\nArter that, Sal said it wouldn\u2019t do. Come along here, I\u2019ll give ye a\nglim in a jiffy;\u201d and so saying he lighted a candle and held it towards\nme, offering to lead the way. But I stood irresolute; when looking at a\nclock in the corner, he exclaimed \u201cI vum it\u2019s Sunday\u2014you won\u2019t see that\nharpooneer to-night; he\u2019s come to anchor somewhere\u2014come along then;\n_do_ come; _won\u2019t_ ye come?\u201d\n\nI considered the matter a moment, and then up stairs we went, and I was\nushered into a small room, cold as a clam, and furnished, sure enough,\nwith a prodigious bed, almost big enough indeed for any four\nharpooneers to sleep abreast.\n\n\u201cThere,\u201d said the landlord, placing the candle on a crazy old sea chest\nthat did double duty as a wash-stand and centre table; \u201cthere, make\nyourself comfortable now, and good night to ye.\u201d I turned round from\neyeing the bed, but he had disappeared.\n\nFolding back the counterpane, I stooped over the bed. Though none of\nthe most elegant, it yet stood the scrutiny tolerably well. I then\nglanced round the room; and besides the bedstead and centre table,\ncould see no other furniture belonging to the place, but a rude shelf,\nthe four walls, and a papered fireboard representing a man striking a\nwhale. Of things not properly belonging to the room, there was a\nhammock lashed up, and thrown upon the floor in one corner; also a\nlarge seaman\u2019s bag, containing the harpooneer\u2019s wardrobe, no doubt in\nlieu of a land trunk. Likewise, there was a parcel of outlandish bone\nfish hooks on the shelf over the fire-place, and a tall harpoon\nstanding at the head of the bed.\n\nBut what is this on the chest? I took it up, and held it close to the\nlight, and felt it, and smelt it, and tried every way possible to\narrive at some satisfactory conclusion concerning it. I can compare it\nto nothing but a large door mat, ornamented at the edges with little\ntinkling tags something like the stained porcupine quills round an\nIndian moccasin. There was a hole or slit in the middle of this mat, as\nyou see the same in South American ponchos. But could it be possible\nthat any sober harpooneer would get into a door mat, and parade the\nstreets of any Christian town in that sort of guise? I put it on, to\ntry it, and it weighed me down like a hamper, being uncommonly shaggy\nand thick, and I thought a little damp, as though this mysterious\nharpooneer had been wearing it of a rainy day. I went up in it to a bit\nof glass stuck against the wall, and I never saw such a sight in my\nlife. I tore myself out of it in such a hurry that I gave myself a kink\nin the neck.\n\nI sat down on the side of the bed, and commenced thinking about this\nhead-peddling harpooneer, and his door mat. After thinking some time on\nthe bed-side, I got up and took off my monkey jacket, and then stood in\nthe middle of the room thinking. I then took off my coat, and thought a\nlittle more in my shirt sleeves. But beginning to feel very cold now,\nhalf undressed as I was, and remembering what the landlord said about\nthe harpooneer\u2019s not coming home at all that night, it being so very\nlate, I made no more ado, but jumped out of my pantaloons and boots,\nand then blowing out the light tumbled into bed, and commended myself\nto the care of heaven.\n\nWhether that mattress was stuffed with corn-cobs or broken crockery,\nthere is no telling, but I rolled about a good deal, and could not\nsleep for a long time. At last I slid off into a light doze, and had\npretty nearly made a good offing towards the land of Nod, when I heard\na heavy footfall in the passage, and saw a glimmer of light come into\nthe room from under the door.\n\nLord save me, thinks I, that must be the harpooneer, the infernal\nhead-peddler. But I lay perfectly still, and resolved not to say a word\ntill spoken to. Holding a light in one hand, and that identical New\nZealand head in the other, the stranger entered the room, and without\nlooking towards the bed, placed his candle a good way off from me on\nthe floor in one corner, and then began working away at the knotted\ncords of the large bag I before spoke of as being in the room. I was\nall eagerness to see his face, but he kept it averted for some time\nwhile employed in unlacing the bag\u2019s mouth. This accomplished, however,\nhe turned round\u2014when, good heavens! what a sight! Such a face! It was\nof a dark, purplish, yellow colour, here and there stuck over with\nlarge blackish looking squares. Yes, it\u2019s just as I thought, he\u2019s a\nterrible bedfellow; he\u2019s been in a fight, got dreadfully cut, and here\nhe is, just from the surgeon. But at that moment he chanced to turn his\nface so towards the light, that I plainly saw they could not be\nsticking-plasters at all, those black squares on his cheeks. They were\nstains of some sort or other. At first I knew not what to make of this;\nbut soon an inkling of the truth occurred to me. I remembered a story\nof a white man\u2014a whaleman too\u2014who, falling among the cannibals, had\nbeen tattooed by them. I concluded that this harpooneer, in the course\nof his distant voyages, must have met with a similar adventure. And\nwhat is it, thought I, after all! It\u2019s only his outside; a man can be\nhonest in any sort of skin. But then, what to make of his unearthly\ncomplexion, that part of it, I mean, lying round about, and completely\nindependent of the squares of tattooing. To be sure, it might be\nnothing but a good coat of tropical tanning; but I never heard of a hot\nsun\u2019s tanning a white man into a purplish yellow one. However, I had\nnever been in the South Seas; and perhaps the sun there produced these\nextraordinary effects upon the skin. Now, while all these ideas were\npassing through me like lightning, this harpooneer never noticed me at\nall. But, after some difficulty having opened his bag, he commenced\nfumbling in it, and presently pulled out a sort of tomahawk, and a\nseal-skin wallet with the hair on. Placing these on the old chest in\nthe middle of the room, he then took the New Zealand head\u2014a ghastly\nthing enough\u2014and crammed it down into the bag. He now took off his\nhat\u2014a new beaver hat\u2014when I came nigh singing out with fresh surprise.\nThere was no hair on his head\u2014none to speak of at least\u2014nothing but a\nsmall scalp-knot twisted up on his forehead. His bald purplish head now\nlooked for all the world like a mildewed skull. Had not the stranger\nstood between me and the door, I would have bolted out of it quicker\nthan ever I bolted a dinner.\n\nEven as it was, I thought something of slipping out of the window, but\nit was the second floor back. I am no coward, but what to make of this\nhead-peddling purple rascal altogether passed my comprehension.\nIgnorance is the parent of fear, and being completely nonplussed and\nconfounded about the stranger, I confess I was now as much afraid of\nhim as if it was the devil himself who had thus broken into my room at\nthe dead of night. In fact, I was so afraid of him that I was not game\nenough just then to address him, and demand a satisfactory answer\nconcerning what seemed inexplicable in him.\n\nMeanwhile, he continued the business of undressing, and at last showed\nhis chest and arms. As I live, these covered parts of him were\ncheckered with the same squares as his face; his back, too, was all\nover the same dark squares; he seemed to have been in a Thirty Years\u2019\nWar, and just escaped from it with a sticking-plaster shirt. Still\nmore, his very legs were marked, as if a parcel of dark green frogs\nwere running up the trunks of young palms. It was now quite plain that\nhe must be some abominable savage or other shipped aboard of a whaleman\nin the South Seas, and so landed in this Christian country. I quaked to\nthink of it. A peddler of heads too\u2014perhaps the heads of his own\nbrothers. He might take a fancy to mine\u2014heavens! look at that tomahawk!\n\nBut there was no time for shuddering, for now the savage went about\nsomething that completely fascinated my attention, and convinced me\nthat he must indeed be a heathen. Going to his heavy grego, or wrapall,\nor dreadnaught, which he had previously hung on a chair, he fumbled in\nthe pockets, and produced at length a curious little deformed image\nwith a hunch on its back, and exactly the colour of a three days\u2019 old\nCongo baby. Remembering the embalmed head, at first I almost thought\nthat this black manikin was a real baby preserved in some similar\nmanner. But seeing that it was not at all limber, and that it glistened\na good deal like polished ebony, I concluded that it must be nothing\nbut a wooden idol, which indeed it proved to be. For now the savage\ngoes up to the empty fire-place, and removing the papered fire-board,\nsets up this little hunch-backed image, like a tenpin, between the\nandirons. The chimney jambs and all the bricks inside were very sooty,\nso that I thought this fire-place made a very appropriate little shrine\nor chapel for his Congo idol.\n\nI now screwed my eyes hard towards the half hidden image, feeling but\nill at ease meantime\u2014to see what was next to follow. First he takes\nabout a double handful of shavings out of his grego pocket, and places\nthem carefully before the idol; then laying a bit of ship biscuit on\ntop and applying the flame from the lamp, he kindled the shavings into\na sacrificial blaze. Presently, after many hasty snatches into the\nfire, and still hastier withdrawals of his fingers (whereby he seemed\nto be scorching them badly), he at last succeeded in drawing out the\nbiscuit; then blowing off the heat and ashes a little, he made a polite\noffer of it to the little negro. But the little devil did not seem to\nfancy such dry sort of fare at all; he never moved his lips. All these\nstrange antics were accompanied by still stranger guttural noises from\nthe devotee, who seemed to be praying in a sing-song or else singing\nsome pagan psalmody or other, during which his face twitched about in\nthe most unnatural manner. At last extinguishing the fire, he took the\nidol up very unceremoniously, and bagged it again in his grego pocket\nas carelessly as if he were a sportsman bagging a dead woodcock.\n\nAll these queer proceedings increased my uncomfortableness, and seeing\nhim now exhibiting strong symptoms of concluding his business\noperations, and jumping into bed with me, I thought it was high time,\nnow or never, before the light was put out, to break the spell in which\nI had so long been bound.\n\nBut the interval I spent in deliberating what to say, was a fatal one.\nTaking up his tomahawk from the table, he examined the head of it for\nan instant, and then holding it to the light, with his mouth at the\nhandle, he puffed out great clouds of tobacco smoke. The next moment\nthe light was extinguished, and this wild cannibal, tomahawk between\nhis teeth, sprang into bed with me. I sang out, I could not help it\nnow; and giving a sudden grunt of astonishment he began feeling me.\n\nStammering out something, I knew not what, I rolled away from him\nagainst the wall, and then conjured him, whoever or whatever he might\nbe, to keep quiet, and let me get up and light the lamp again. But his\nguttural responses satisfied me at once that he but ill comprehended my\nmeaning.\n\n\u201cWho-e debel you?\u201d\u2014he at last said\u2014\u201cyou no speak-e, dam-me, I kill-e.\u201d\nAnd so saying the lighted tomahawk began flourishing about me in the\ndark.\n\n\u201cLandlord, for God\u2019s sake, Peter Coffin!\u201d shouted I. \u201cLandlord! Watch!\nCoffin! Angels! save me!\u201d\n\n\u201cSpeak-e! tell-ee me who-ee be, or dam-me, I kill-e!\u201d again growled the\ncannibal, while his horrid flourishings of the tomahawk scattered the\nhot tobacco ashes about me till I thought my linen would get on fire.\nBut thank heaven, at that moment the landlord came into the room light\nin hand, and leaping from the bed I ran up to him.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid now,\u201d said he, grinning again, \u201cHoratio here wouldn\u2019t\nharm a hair of your head.\u201d\n\n\u201cStop your grinning,\u201d shouted I, \u201cand why didn\u2019t you tell me that that\ninfernal harpooneer was a cannibal?\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought ye know\u2019d it;\u2014didn\u2019t I tell ye, he was a peddlin\u2019 heads\naround town?\u2014but turn flukes again and go to sleep. Horatio, look\nhere\u2014you sabbee me, I sabbee\u2014you this man sleepe you\u2014you sabbee?\u201d\n\n\u201cMe sabbee plenty\u201d\u2014grunted Horatio, puffing away at his pipe and\nsitting up in bed.\n\n\u201cYou gettee in,\u201d he added, motioning to me with his tomahawk, and\nthrowing the clothes to one side. He really did this in not only a\ncivil but a really kind and charitable way. I stood looking at him a\nmoment. For all his tattooings he was on the whole a clean, comely\nlooking cannibal. What\u2019s all this fuss I have been making about,\nthought I to myself\u2014the man\u2019s a human being just as I am: he has just\nas much reason to fear me, as I have to be afraid of him. Better sleep\nwith a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.\n\n\u201cLandlord,\u201d said I, \u201ctell him to stash his tomahawk there, or pipe, or\nwhatever you call it; tell him to stop smoking, in short, and I will\nturn in with him. But I don\u2019t fancy having a man smoking in bed with\nme. It\u2019s dangerous. Besides, I ain\u2019t insured.\u201d\n\nThis being told to Horatio, he at once complied, and again politely\nmotioned me to get into bed\u2014rolling over to one side as much as to\nsay\u2014\u201cI won\u2019t touch a leg of ye.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood night, landlord,\u201d said I, \u201cyou may go.\u201d\n\nI turned in, and never slept better in my life.\n\n\nCHAPTER 4. The Counterpane.\n\nUpon waking next morning about daylight, I found Horatio\u2019s arm thrown\nover me in the most loving and affectionate manner. You had almost\nthought I had been his wife. The counterpane was of patchwork, full of\nodd little parti-coloured squares and triangles; and this arm of his\ntattooed all over with an interminable Cretan labyrinth of a figure, no\ntwo parts of which were of one precise shade\u2014owing I suppose to his\nkeeping his arm at sea unmethodically in sun and shade, his shirt\nsleeves irregularly rolled up at various times\u2014this same arm of his, I\nsay, looked for all the world like a strip of that same patchwork\nquilt. Indeed, partly lying on it as the arm did when I first awoke, I\ncould hardly tell it from the quilt, they so blended their hues\ntogether; and it was only by the sense of weight and pressure that I\ncould tell that Horatio was hugging me.\n\nMy sensations were strange. Let me try to explain them. When I was a\nchild, I well remember a somewhat similar circumstance that befell me;\nwhether it was a reality or a dream, I never could entirely settle. The\ncircumstance was this. I had been cutting up some caper or other\u2014I\nthink it was trying to crawl up the chimney, as I had seen a little\nsweep do a few days previous; and my stepmother who, somehow or other,\nwas all the time whipping me, or sending me to bed supperless,\u2014my\nmother dragged me by the legs out of the chimney and packed me off to\nbed, though it was only two o\u2019clock in the afternoon of the 21st June,\nthe longest day in the year in our hemisphere. I felt dreadfully. But\nthere was no help for it, so up stairs I went to my little room in the\nthird floor, undressed myself as slowly as possible so as to kill time,\nand with a bitter sigh got between the sheets.\n\nI lay there dismally calculating that sixteen entire hours must elapse\nbefore I could hope for a resurrection. Sixteen hours in bed! the small\nof my back ached to think of it. And it was so light too; the sun\nshining in at the window, and a great rattling of coaches in the\nstreets, and the sound of gay voices all over the house. I felt worse\nand worse\u2014at last I got up, dressed, and softly going down in my\nstockinged feet, sought out my stepmother, and suddenly threw myself at\nher feet, beseeching her as a particular favour to give me a good\nslippering for my misbehaviour; anything indeed but condemning me to\nlie abed such an unendurable length of time. But she was the best and\nmost conscientious of stepmothers, and back I had to go to my room. For\nseveral hours I lay there broad awake, feeling a great deal worse than\nI have ever done since, even from the greatest subsequent misfortunes.\nAt last I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze; and\nslowly waking from it\u2014half steeped in dreams\u2014I opened my eyes, and the\nbefore sun-lit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt\na shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and\nnothing was to be heard; but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine.\nMy arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable,\nsilent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely\nseated by my bed-side. For what seemed ages piled on ages, I lay there,\nfrozen with the most awful fears, not daring to drag away my hand; yet\never thinking that if I could but stir it one single inch, the horrid\nspell would be broken. I knew not how this consciousness at last glided\naway from me; but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it\nall, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in\nconfounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I\noften puzzle myself with it.\n\nNow, take away the awful fear, and my sensations at feeling the\nsupernatural hand in mine were very similar, in their strangeness, to\nthose which I experienced on waking up and seeing Horatio\u2019s pagan arm\nthrown round me. But at length all the past night\u2019s events soberly\nrecurred, one by one, in fixed reality, and then I lay only alive to\nthe comical predicament. For though I tried to move his arm\u2014unlock his\nbridegroom clasp\u2014yet, sleeping as he was, he still hugged me tightly,\nas though naught but death should part us twain. I now strove to rouse\nhim\u2014\u201cHoratio!\u201d\u2014but his only answer was a snore. I then rolled over, my\nneck feeling as if it were in a horse-collar; and suddenly felt a\nslight scratch. Throwing aside the counterpane, there lay the tomahawk\nsleeping by the savage\u2019s side, as if it were a hatchet-faced baby. A\npretty pickle, truly, thought I; abed here in a strange house in the\nbroad day, with a cannibal and a tomahawk! \u201cHoratio!\u2014in the name of\ngoodness, Horatio, wake!\u201d At length, by dint of much wriggling, and\nloud and incessant expostulations upon the unbecomingness of his\nhugging a fellow male in that matrimonial sort of style, I succeeded in\nextracting a grunt; and presently, he drew back his arm, shook himself\nall over like a Newfoundland dog just from the water, and sat up in\nbed, stiff as a pike-staff, looking at me, and rubbing his eyes as if\nhe did not altogether remember how I came to be there, though a dim\nconsciousness of knowing something about me seemed slowly dawning over\nhim. Meanwhile, I lay quietly eyeing him, having no serious misgivings\nnow, and bent upon narrowly observing so curious a creature. When, at\nlast, his mind seemed made up touching the character of his bedfellow,\nand he became, as it were, reconciled to the fact; he jumped out upon\nthe floor, and by certain signs and sounds gave me to understand that,\nif it pleased me, he would dress first and then leave me to dress\nafterwards, leaving the whole apartment to myself. Thinks I, Horatio,\nunder the circumstances, this is a very civilized overture; but, the\ntruth is, these savages have an innate sense of delicacy, say what you\nwill; it is marvellous how essentially polite they are. I pay this\nparticular compliment to Horatio, because he treated me with so much\ncivility and consideration, while I was guilty of great rudeness;\nstaring at him from the bed, and watching all his toilette motions; for\nthe time my curiosity getting the better of my breeding. Nevertheless,\na man like Horatio you don\u2019t see every day, he and his ways were well\nworth unusual regarding.\n\nHe commenced dressing at top by donning his beaver hat, a very tall\none, by the by, and then\u2014still minus his trowsers\u2014he hunted up his\nboots. What under the heavens he did it for, I cannot tell, but his\nnext movement was to crush himself\u2014boots in hand, and hat on\u2014under the\nbed; when, from sundry violent gaspings and strainings, I inferred he\nwas hard at work booting himself; though by no law of propriety that I\never heard of, is any man required to be private when putting on his\nboots. But Horatio, do you see, was a creature in the transition\nstage\u2014neither caterpillar nor butterfly. He was just enough civilized\nto show off his outlandishness in the strangest possible manners. His\neducation was not yet completed. He was an undergraduate. If he had not\nbeen a small degree civilized, he very probably would not have troubled\nhimself with boots at all; but then, if he had not been still a savage,\nhe never would have dreamt of getting under the bed to put them on. At\nlast, he emerged with his hat very much dented and crushed down over\nhis eyes, and began creaking and limping about the room, as if, not\nbeing much accustomed to boots, his pair of damp, wrinkled cowhide\nones\u2014probably not made to order either\u2014rather pinched and tormented him\nat the first go off of a bitter cold morning.\n\nSeeing, now, that there were no curtains to the window, and that the\nstreet being very narrow, the house opposite commanded a plain view\ninto the room, and observing more and more the indecorous figure that\nHoratio made, staving about with little else but his hat and boots on;\nI begged him as well as I could, to accelerate his toilet somewhat, and\nparticularly to get into his pantaloons as soon as possible. He\ncomplied, and then proceeded to wash himself. At that time in the\nmorning any Christian would have washed his face; but Horatio, to my\namazement, contented himself with restricting his ablutions to his\nchest, arms, and hands. He then donned his waistcoat, and taking up a\npiece of hard soap on the wash-stand centre table, dipped it into water\nand commenced lathering his face. I was watching to see where he kept\nhis razor, when lo and behold, he takes the harpoon from the bed\ncorner, slips out the long wooden stock, unsheathes the head, whets it\na little on his boot, and striding up to the bit of mirror against the\nwall, begins a vigorous scraping, or rather harpooning of his cheeks.\nThinks I, Horatio, this is using Rogers\u2019s best cutlery with a\nvengeance. Afterwards I wondered the less at this operation when I came\nto know of what fine steel the head of a harpoon is made, and how\nexceedingly sharp the long straight edges are always kept.\n\nThe rest of his toilet was soon achieved, and he proudly marched out of\nthe room, wrapped up in his great pilot monkey jacket, and sporting his\nharpoon like a marshal\u2019s baton.\n\n\nCHAPTER 5. Breakfast.\n\nI quickly followed suit, and descending into the bar-room accosted the\ngrinning landlord very pleasantly. I cherished no malice towards him,\nthough he had been skylarking with me not a little in the matter of my\nbedfellow.\n\nHowever, a good laugh is a mighty good thing, and rather too scarce a\ngood thing; the more\u2019s the pity. So, if any one man, in his own proper\nperson, afford stuff for a good joke to anybody, let him not be\nbackward, but let him cheerfully allow himself to spend and be spent in\nthat way. And the man that has anything bountifully laughable about\nhim, be sure there is more in that man than you perhaps think for.\n\nThe bar-room was now full of the boarders who had been dropping in the\nnight previous, and whom I had not as yet had a good look at. They were\nnearly all whalemen; chief mates, and second mates, and third mates,\nand sea carpenters, and sea coopers, and sea blacksmiths, and\nharpooneers, and ship keepers; a brown and brawny company, with bosky\nbeards; an unshorn, shaggy set, all wearing monkey jackets for morning\ngowns.\n\nYou could pretty plainly tell how long each one had been ashore. This\nyoung fellow\u2019s healthy cheek is like a sun-toasted pear in hue, and\nwould seem to smell almost as musky; he cannot have been three days\nlanded from his Indian voyage. That man next him looks a few shades\nlighter; you might say a touch of satin wood is in him. In the\ncomplexion of a third still lingers a tropic tawn, but slightly\nbleached withal; _he_ doubtless has tarried whole weeks ashore. But who\ncould show a cheek like Horatio? which, barred with various tints,\nseemed like the Andes\u2019 western slope, to show forth in one array,\ncontrasting climates, zone by zone.\n\n\u201cGrub, ho!\u201d now cried the landlord, flinging open a door, and in we\nwent to breakfast.\n\nThey say that men who have seen the world, thereby become quite at ease\nin manner, quite self-possessed in company. Not always, though:\nLedyard, the great New England traveller, and Mungo Park, the Scotch\none; of all men, they possessed the least assurance in the parlor. But\nperhaps the mere crossing of Siberia in a sledge drawn by dogs as\nLedyard did, or the taking a long solitary walk on an empty stomach, in\nthe negro heart of Africa, which was the sum of poor Mungo\u2019s\nperformances\u2014this kind of travel, I say, may not be the very best mode\nof attaining a high social polish. Still, for the most part, that sort\nof thing is to be had anywhere.\n\nThese reflections just here are occasioned by the circumstance that\nafter we were all seated at the table, and I was preparing to hear some\ngood stories about whaling; to my no small surprise, nearly every man\nmaintained a profound silence. And not only that, but they looked\nembarrassed. Yes, here were a set of sea-dogs, many of whom without the\nslightest bashfulness had boarded great whales on the high seas\u2014entire\nstrangers to them\u2014and duelled them dead without winking; and yet, here\nthey sat at a social breakfast table\u2014all of the same calling, all of\nkindred tastes\u2014looking round as sheepishly at each other as though they\nhad never been out of sight of some sheepfold among the Green\nMountains. A curious sight; these bashful bears, these timid warrior\nwhalemen!\n\nBut as for Horatio\u2014why, Horatio sat there among them\u2014at the head of\nthe table, too, it so chanced; as cool as an icicle. To be sure I\ncannot say much for his breeding. His greatest admirer could not have\ncordially justified his bringing his harpoon into breakfast with him,\nand using it there without ceremony; reaching over the table with it,\nto the imminent jeopardy of many heads, and grappling the beefsteaks\ntowards him. But _that_ was certainly very coolly done by him, and\nevery one knows that in most people\u2019s estimation, to do anything coolly\nis to do it genteelly.\n\nWe will not speak of all Horatio\u2019s peculiarities here; how he eschewed\ncoffee and hot rolls, and applied his undivided attention to\nbeefsteaks, done rare. Enough, that when breakfast was over he withdrew\nlike the rest into the public room, lighted his tomahawk-pipe, and was\nsitting there quietly digesting and smoking with his inseparable hat\non, when I sallied out for a stroll.\n\n\nCHAPTER 6. The Street.\n\nIf I had been astonished at first catching a glimpse of so outlandish\nan individual as Horatio circulating among the polite society of a\ncivilized town, that astonishment soon departed upon taking my first\ndaylight stroll through the streets of New Bedford.\n\nIn thoroughfares nigh the docks, any considerable seaport will\nfrequently offer to view the queerest looking nondescripts from foreign\nparts. Even in Broadway and Chestnut streets, Mediterranean mariners\nwill sometimes jostle the affrighted ladies. Regent Street is not\nunknown to Lascars and Malays; and at Bombay, in the Apollo Green, live\nYankees have often scared the natives. But New Bedford beats all Water\nStreet and Wapping. In these last-mentioned haunts you see only\nsailors; but in New Bedford, actual cannibals stand chatting at street\ncorners; savages outright; many of whom yet carry on their bones unholy\nflesh. It makes a stranger stare.\n\nBut, besides the Feegeeans, Tongatobooarrs, Erromanggoans, Pannangians,\nand Brighggians, and, besides the wild specimens of the whaling-craft\nwhich unheeded reel about the streets, you will see other sights still\nmore curious, certainly more comical. There weekly arrive in this town\nscores of green Vermonters and New Hampshire men, all athirst for gain\nand glory in the fishery. They are mostly young, of stalwart frames;\nfellows who have felled forests, and now seek to drop the axe and\nsnatch the whale-lance. Many are as green as the Green Mountains whence\nthey came. In some things you would think them but a few hours old.\nLook there! that chap strutting round the corner. He wears a beaver hat\nand swallow-tailed coat, girdled with a sailor-belt and sheath-knife.\nHere comes another with a sou\u2019-wester and a bombazine cloak.\n\nNo town-bred dandy will compare with a country-bred one\u2014I mean a\ndownright bumpkin dandy\u2014a fellow that, in the dog-days, will mow his\ntwo acres in buckskin gloves for fear of tanning his hands. Now when a\ncountry dandy like this takes it into his head to make a distinguished\nreputation, and joins the great whale-fishery, you should see the\ncomical things he does upon reaching the seaport. In bespeaking his\nsea-outfit, he orders bell-buttons to his waistcoats; straps to his\ncanvas trowsers. Ah, poor Hay-Seed! how bitterly will burst those\nstraps in the first howling gale, when thou art driven, straps,\nbuttons, and all, down the throat of the tempest.\n\nBut think not that this famous town has only harpooneers, cannibals,\nand bumpkins to show her visitors. Not at all. Still New Bedford is a\nqueer place. Had it not been for us whalemen, that tract of land would\nthis day perhaps have been in as howling condition as the coast of\nLabrador. As it is, parts of her back country are enough to frighten\none, they look so bony. The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to\nlive in, in all New England. It is a land of oil, true enough: but not\nlike Canaan; a land, also, of corn and wine. The streets do not run\nwith milk; nor in the spring-time do they pave them with fresh eggs.\nYet, in spite of this, nowhere in all America will you find more\npatrician-like houses; parks and gardens more opulent, than in New\nBedford. Whence came they? how planted upon this once scraggy scoria of\na country?\n\nGo and gaze upon the iron emblematical harpoons round yonder lofty\nmansion, and your question will be answered. Yes; all these brave\nhouses and flowery gardens came from the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian\noceans. One and all, they were harpooned and dragged up hither from the\nbottom of the sea. Can Herr Alexander perform a feat like that?\n\nIn New Bedford, fathers, they say, give whales for dowers to their\ndaughters, and portion off their nieces with a few porpoises a-piece.\nYou must go to New Bedford to see a brilliant wedding; for, they say,\nthey have reservoirs of oil in every house, and every night recklessly\nburn their lengths in spermaceti candles.\n\nIn summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples\u2014long\navenues of green and gold. And in August, high in air, the beautiful\nand bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by\ntheir tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is\nart; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright\nterraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at\ncreation\u2019s final day.\n\nAnd the women of New Bedford, they bloom like their own red roses. But\nroses only bloom in summer; whereas the fine carnation of their cheeks\nis perennial as sunlight in the seventh heavens. Elsewhere match that\nbloom of theirs, ye cannot, save in Salem, where they tell me the young\ngirls breathe such musk, their sailor sweethearts smell them miles off\nshore, as though they were drawing nigh the odorous Moluccas instead of\nthe Puritanic sands.\n\n\nCHAPTER 7. The Chapel.\n\nIn this same New Bedford there stands a Whaleman\u2019s Chapel, and few are\nthe moody fishermen, shortly bound for the Indian Ocean or Pacific, who\nfail to make a Sunday visit to the spot. I am sure that I did not.\n\nReturning from my first morning stroll, I again sallied out upon this\nspecial errand. The sky had changed from clear, sunny cold, to driving\nsleet and mist. Wrapping myself in my shaggy jacket of the cloth called\nbearskin, I fought my way against the stubborn storm. Entering, I found\na small scattered congregation of sailors, and sailors\u2019 wives and\nwidows. A muffled silence reigned, only broken at times by the shrieks\nof the storm. Each silent worshipper seemed purposely sitting apart\nfrom the other, as if each silent grief were insular and\nincommunicable. The chaplain had not yet arrived; and there these\nsilent islands of men and women sat steadfastly eyeing several marble\ntablets, with black borders, masoned into the wall on either side the\npulpit. Three of them ran something like the following, but I do not\npretend to quote:\u2014\n\nSACRED TO THE MEMORY OF JOHN TALBOT, Who, at the age of eighteen, was\nlost overboard, Near the Isle of Desolation, off Patagonia, _November_\n1_st_, 1836. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS SISTER.\n\nSACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ROBERT LONG, WILLIS ELLERY, NATHAN COLEMAN,\nWALTER CANNY, SETH MACY, AND SAMUEL GLEIG, Forming one of the boats\u2019\ncrews OF THE SHIP ELIZA Who were towed out of sight by a Whale, On the\nOff-shore Ground in the PACIFIC, _December_ 31_st_, 1839. THIS MARBLE\nIs here placed by their surviving SHIPMATES.\n\nSACRED TO THE MEMORY OF The late CAPTAIN EZEKIEL HARDY, Who in the bows\nof his boat was killed by a Sperm Whale on the coast of Japan, _August_\n3_d_, 1833. THIS TABLET Is erected to his Memory BY HIS WIDOW.\n\nShaking off the sleet from my ice-glazed hat and jacket, I seated\nmyself near the door, and turning sideways was surprised to see\nHoratio near me. Affected by the solemnity of the scene, there was a\nwondering gaze of incredulous curiosity in his countenance. This savage\nwas the only person present who seemed to notice my entrance; because\nhe was the only one who could not read, and, therefore, was not reading\nthose frigid inscriptions on the wall. Whether any of the relatives of\nthe seamen whose names appeared there were now among the congregation,\nI knew not; but so many are the unrecorded accidents in the fishery,\nand so plainly did several women present wear the countenance if not\nthe trappings of some unceasing grief, that I feel sure that here\nbefore me were assembled those, in whose unhealing hearts the sight of\nthose bleak tablets sympathetically caused the old wounds to bleed\nafresh.\n\nOh! ye whose dead lie buried beneath the green grass; who standing\namong flowers can say\u2014here, _here_ lies my beloved; ye know not the\ndesolation that broods in bosoms like these. What bitter blanks in\nthose black-bordered marbles which cover no ashes! What despair in\nthose immovable inscriptions! What deadly voids and unbidden\ninfidelities in the lines that seem to gnaw upon all Faith, and refuse\nresurrections to the beings who have placelessly perished without a\ngrave. As well might those tablets stand in the cave of Elephanta as\nhere.\n\nIn what census of living creatures, the dead of mankind are included;\nwhy it is that a universal proverb says of them, that they tell no\ntales, though containing more secrets than the Goodwin Sands; how it is\nthat to his name who yesterday departed for the other world, we prefix\nso significant and infidel a word, and yet do not thus entitle him, if\nhe but embarks for the remotest Indies of this living earth; why the\nLife Insurance Companies pay death-forfeitures upon immortals; in what\neternal, unstirring paralysis, and deadly, hopeless trance, yet lies\nantique Adam who died sixty round centuries ago; how it is that we\nstill refuse to be comforted for those who we nevertheless maintain are\ndwelling in unspeakable bliss; why all the living so strive to hush all\nthe dead; wherefore but the rumor of a knocking in a tomb will terrify\na whole city. All these things are not without their meanings.\n\nBut Faith, like a jackal, feeds among the tombs, and even from these\ndead doubts she gathers her most vital hope.\n\nIt needs scarcely to be told, with what feelings, on the eve of a\nNantucket voyage, I regarded those marble tablets, and by the murky\nlight of that darkened, doleful day read the fate of the whalemen who\nhad gone before me. Yes, Adreanna, the same fate may be thine. But\nsomehow I grew merry again. Delightful inducements to embark, fine\nchance for promotion, it seems\u2014aye, a stove boat will make me an\nimmortal by brevet. Yes, there is death in this business of whaling\u2014a\nspeechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what\nthen? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death.\nMethinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true\nsubstance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are too\nmuch like oysters observing the sun through the water, and thinking\nthat thick water the thinnest of air. Methinks my body is but the lees\nof my better being. In fact take my body who will, take it I say, it is\nnot me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket; and come a stove boat\nand stove body when they will, for stave my soul, Jove himself cannot.\n\n\nCHAPTER 8. The Pulpit.\n\nI had not been seated very long ere a man of a certain venerable\nrobustness entered; immediately as the storm-pelted door flew back upon\nadmitting him, a quick regardful eyeing of him by all the congregation,\nsufficiently attested that this fine old man was the chaplain. Yes, it\nwas the famous Father Mapple, so called by the whalemen, among whom he\nwas a very great favourite. He had been a sailor and a harpooneer in\nhis youth, but for many years past had dedicated his life to the\nministry. At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy\nwinter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging\ninto a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his\nwrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing\nbloom\u2014the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February\u2019s snow. No\none having previously heard his history, could for the first time\nbehold Father Mapple without the utmost interest, because there were\ncertain engrafted clerical peculiarities about him, imputable to that\nadventurous maritime life he had led. When he entered I observed that\nhe carried no umbrella, and certainly had not come in his carriage, for\nhis tarpaulin hat ran down with melting sleet, and his great pilot\ncloth jacket seemed almost to drag him to the floor with the weight of\nthe water it had absorbed. However, hat and coat and overshoes were one\nby one removed, and hung up in a little space in an adjacent corner;\nwhen, arrayed in a decent suit, he quietly approached the pulpit.\n\nLike most old fashioned pulpits, it was a very lofty one, and since a\nregular stairs to such a height would, by its long angle with the\nfloor, seriously contract the already small area of the chapel, the\narchitect, it seemed, had acted upon the hint of Father Mapple, and\nfinished the pulpit without a stairs, substituting a perpendicular side\nladder, like those used in mounting a ship from a boat at sea. The wife\nof a whaling captain had provided the chapel with a handsome pair of\nred worsted man-ropes for this ladder, which, being itself nicely\nheaded, and stained with a mahogany colour, the whole contrivance,\nconsidering what manner of chapel it was, seemed by no means in bad\ntaste. Halting for an instant at the foot of the ladder, and with both\nhands grasping the ornamental knobs of the man-ropes, Father Mapple\ncast a look upwards, and then with a truly sailor-like but still\nreverential dexterity, hand over hand, mounted the steps as if\nascending the main-top of his vessel.\n\nThe perpendicular parts of this side ladder, as is usually the case\nwith swinging ones, were of cloth-covered rope, only the rounds were of\nwood, so that at every step there was a joint. At my first glimpse of\nthe pulpit, it had not escaped me that however convenient for a ship,\nthese joints in the present instance seemed unnecessary. For I was not\nprepared to see Father Mapple after gaining the height, slowly turn\nround, and stooping over the pulpit, deliberately drag up the ladder\nstep by step, till the whole was deposited within, leaving him\nimpregnable in his little Quebec.\n\nI pondered some time without fully comprehending the reason for this.\nFather Mapple enjoyed such a wide reputation for sincerity and\nsanctity, that I could not suspect him of courting notoriety by any\nmere tricks of the stage. No, thought I, there must be some sober\nreason for this thing; furthermore, it must symbolize something unseen.\nCan it be, then, that by that act of physical isolation, he signifies\nhis spiritual withdrawal for the time, from all outward worldly ties\nand connexions? Yes, for replenished with the meat and wine of the\nword, to the faithful man of God, this pulpit, I see, is a\nself-containing stronghold\u2014a lofty Ehrenbreitstein, with a perennial\nwell of water within the walls.\n\nBut the side ladder was not the only strange feature of the place,\nborrowed from the chaplain\u2019s former sea-farings. Between the marble\ncenotaphs on either hand of the pulpit, the wall which formed its back\nwas adorned with a large painting representing a gallant ship beating\nagainst a terrible storm off a lee coast of black rocks and snowy\nbreakers. But high above the flying scud and dark-rolling clouds, there\nfloated a little isle of sunlight, from which beamed forth an angel\u2019s\nface; and this bright face shed a distinct spot of radiance upon the\nship\u2019s tossed deck, something like that silver plate now inserted into\nthe Victory\u2019s plank where Nelson fell. \u201cAh, noble ship,\u201d the angel\nseemed to say, \u201cbeat on, beat on, thou noble ship, and bear a hardy\nhelm; for lo! the sun is breaking through; the clouds are rolling\noff\u2014serenest azure is at hand.\u201d\n\nNor was the pulpit itself without a trace of the same sea-taste that\nhad achieved the ladder and the picture. Its panelled front was in the\nlikeness of a ship\u2019s bluff bows, and the Holy Bible rested on a\nprojecting piece of scroll work, fashioned after a ship\u2019s fiddle-headed\nbeak.\n\nWhat could be more full of meaning?\u2014for the pulpit is ever this earth\u2019s\nforemost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the\nworld. From thence it is the storm of God\u2019s quick wrath is first\ndescried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is\nthe God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds.\nYes, the world\u2019s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete;\nand the pulpit is its prow.\n\n\nCHAPTER 9. The Sermon.\n\nFather Mapple rose, and in a mild voice of unassuming authority ordered\nthe scattered people to condense. \u201cStarboard gangway, there! side away\nto larboard\u2014larboard gangway to starboard! Midships! midships!\u201d\n\nThere was a low rumbling of heavy sea-boots among the benches, and a\nstill slighter shuffling of women\u2019s shoes, and all was quiet again, and\nevery eye on the preacher.\n\nHe paused a little; then kneeling in the pulpit\u2019s bows, folded his\nlarge brown hands across his chest, uplifted his closed eyes, and\noffered a prayer so deeply devout that he seemed kneeling and praying\nat the bottom of the sea.\n\nThis ended, in prolonged solemn tones, like the continual tolling of a\nbell in a ship that is foundering at sea in a fog\u2014in such tones he\ncommenced reading the following hymn; but changing his manner towards\nthe concluding stanzas, burst forth with a pealing exultation and joy\u2014\n\n\n  \u201cThe ribs and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom,\n  While all God\u2019s sun-lit waves rolled by, And lift me deepening down\n  to doom.\n\n  \u201cI saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there;\n  Which none but they that feel can tell\u2014 Oh, I was plunging to\n  despair.\n\n  \u201cIn black distress, I called my God, When I could scarce believe him\n  mine, He bowed his ear to my complaints\u2014 No more the whale did me\n  confine.\n\n  \u201cWith speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne;\n  Awful, yet bright, as lightning shone The face of my Deliverer God.\n\n  \u201cMy song for ever shall record That terrible, that joyful hour; I\n  give the glory to my God, His all the mercy and the power.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nNearly all joined in singing this hymn, which swelled high above the\nhowling of the storm. A brief pause ensued; the preacher slowly turned\nover the leaves of the Bible, and at last, folding his hand down upon\nthe proper page, said: \u201cBeloved shipmates, clinch the last verse of the\nfirst chapter of Jonah\u2014\u2018And God had prepared a great fish to swallow up\nJonah.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cShipmates, this book, containing only four chapters\u2014four yarns\u2014is one\nof the smallest strands in the mighty cable of the Scriptures. Yet what\ndepths of the soul does Jonah\u2019s deep sealine sound! what a pregnant\nlesson to us is this prophet! What a noble thing is that canticle in\nthe fish\u2019s belly! How billow-like and boisterously grand! We feel the\nfloods surging over us; we sound with him to the kelpy bottom of the\nwaters; sea-weed and all the slime of the sea is about us! But _what_\nis this lesson that the book of Jonah teaches? Shipmates, it is a\ntwo-stranded lesson; a lesson to us all as sinful men, and a lesson to\nme as a pilot of the living God. As sinful men, it is a lesson to us\nall, because it is a story of the sin, hard-heartedness, suddenly\nawakened fears, the swift punishment, repentance, prayers, and finally\nthe deliverance and joy of Jonah. As with all sinners among men, the\nsin of this son of Amittai was in his wilful disobedience of the\ncommand of God\u2014never mind now what that command was, or how\nconveyed\u2014which he found a hard command. But all the things that God\nwould have us do are hard for us to do\u2014remember that\u2014and hence, he\noftener commands us than endeavors to persuade. And if we obey God, we\nmust disobey ourselves; and it is in this disobeying ourselves, wherein\nthe hardness of obeying God consists.\n\n\u201cWith this sin of disobedience in him, Jonah still further flouts at\nGod, by seeking to flee from Him. He thinks that a ship made by men\nwill carry him into countries where God does not reign, but only the\nCaptains of this earth. He skulks about the wharves of Joppa, and seeks\na ship that\u2019s bound for Tarshish. There lurks, perhaps, a hitherto\nunheeded meaning here. By all accounts Tarshish could have been no\nother city than the modern Cadiz. That\u2019s the opinion of learned men.\nAnd where is Cadiz, shipmates? Cadiz is in Spain; as far by water, from\nJoppa, as Jonah could possibly have sailed in those ancient days, when\nthe Atlantic was an almost unknown sea. Because Joppa, the modern\nJaffa, shipmates, is on the most easterly coast of the Mediterranean,\nthe Syrian; and Tarshish or Cadiz more than two thousand miles to the\nwestward from that, just outside the Straits of Gibraltar. See ye not\nthen, shipmates, that Jonah sought to flee world-wide from God?\nMiserable man! Oh! most contemptible and worthy of all scorn; with\nslouched hat and guilty eye, skulking from his God; prowling among the\nshipping like a vile burglar hastening to cross the seas. So\ndisordered, self-condemning is his look, that had there been policemen\nin those days, Jonah, on the mere suspicion of something wrong, had\nbeen arrested ere he touched a deck. How plainly he\u2019s a fugitive! no\nbaggage, not a hat-box, valise, or carpet-bag,\u2014no friends accompany him\nto the wharf with their adieux. At last, after much dodging search, he\nfinds the Tarshish ship receiving the last items of her cargo; and as\nhe steps on board to see its Captain in the cabin, all the sailors for\nthe moment desist from hoisting in the goods, to mark the stranger\u2019s\nevil eye. Jonah sees this; but in vain he tries to look all ease and\nconfidence; in vain essays his wretched smile. Strong intuitions of the\nman assure the mariners he can be no innocent. In their gamesome but\nstill serious way, one whispers to the other\u2014\u201cJack, he\u2019s robbed a\nwidow;\u201d or, \u201cJoe, do you mark him; he\u2019s a bigamist;\u201d or, \u201cHarry lad, I\nguess he\u2019s the adulterer that broke jail in old Gomorrah, or belike,\none of the missing murderers from Sodom.\u201d Another runs to read the bill\nthat\u2019s stuck against the spile upon the wharf to which the ship is\nmoored, offering five hundred gold coins for the apprehension of a\nparricide, and containing a description of his person. He reads, and\nlooks from Jonah to the bill; while all his sympathetic shipmates now\ncrowd round Jonah, prepared to lay their hands upon him. Frighted Jonah\ntrembles, and summoning all his boldness to his face, only looks so\nmuch the more a coward. He will not confess himself suspected; but that\nitself is strong suspicion. So he makes the best of it; and when the\nsailors find him not to be the man that is advertised, they let him\npass, and he descends into the cabin.\n\n\u201c\u2018Who\u2019s there?\u2019 cries the Captain at his busy desk, hurriedly making\nout his papers for the Customs\u2014\u2018Who\u2019s there?\u2019 Oh! how that harmless\nquestion mangles Jonah! For the instant he almost turns to flee again.\nBut he rallies. \u2018I seek a passage in this ship to Tarshish; how soon\nsail ye, sir?\u2019 Thus far the busy Captain had not looked up to Jonah,\nthough the man now stands before him; but no sooner does he hear that\nhollow voice, than he darts a scrutinizing glance. \u2018We sail with the\nnext coming tide,\u2019 at last he slowly answered, still intently eyeing\nhim. \u2018No sooner, sir?\u2019\u2014\u2018Soon enough for any honest man that goes a\npassenger.\u2019 Ha! Jonah, that\u2019s another stab. But he swiftly calls away\nthe Captain from that scent. \u2018I\u2019ll sail with ye,\u2019\u2014he says,\u2014\u2018the passage\nmoney how much is that?\u2014I\u2019ll pay now.\u2019 For it is particularly written,\nshipmates, as if it were a thing not to be overlooked in this history,\n\u2018that he paid the fare thereof\u2019 ere the craft did sail. And taken with\nthe context, this is full of meaning.\n\n\u201cNow Jonah\u2019s Captain, shipmates, was one whose discernment detects\ncrime in any, but whose cupidity exposes it only in the penniless. In\nthis world, shipmates, sin that pays its way can travel freely, and\nwithout a passport; whereas Virtue, if a pauper, is stopped at all\nfrontiers. So Jonah\u2019s Captain prepares to test the length of Jonah\u2019s\npurse, ere he judge him openly. He charges him thrice the usual sum;\nand it\u2019s assented to. Then the Captain knows that Jonah is a fugitive;\nbut at the same time resolves to help a flight that paves its rear with\ngold. Yet when Jonah fairly takes out his purse, prudent suspicions\nstill molest the Captain. He rings every coin to find a counterfeit.\nNot a forger, any way, he mutters; and Jonah is put down for his\npassage. \u2018Point out my state-room, Sir,\u2019 says Jonah now, \u2018I\u2019m\ntravel-weary; I need sleep.\u2019 \u2018Thou lookest like it,\u2019 says the Captain,\n\u2018there\u2019s thy room.\u2019 Jonah enters, and would lock the door, but the lock\ncontains no key. Hearing him foolishly fumbling there, the Captain\nlaughs lowly to himself, and mutters something about the doors of\nconvicts\u2019 cells being never allowed to be locked within. All dressed\nand dusty as he is, Jonah throws himself into his berth, and finds the\nlittle state-room ceiling almost resting on his forehead. The air is\nclose, and Jonah gasps. Then, in that contracted hole, sunk, too,\nbeneath the ship\u2019s water-line, Jonah feels the heralding presentiment\nof that stifling hour, when the whale shall hold him in the smallest of\nhis bowels\u2019 wards.\n\n\u201cScrewed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly\noscillates in Jonah\u2019s room; and the ship, heeling over towards the\nwharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and\nall, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity\nwith reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight\nitself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it\nhung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his\ntormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful\nfugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that\ncontradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, the\nceiling, and the side, are all awry. \u2018Oh! so my conscience hangs in\nme!\u2019 he groans, \u2018straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my\nsoul are all in crookedness!\u2019\n\n\u201cLike one who after a night of drunken revelry hies to his bed, still\nreeling, but with conscience yet pricking him, as the plungings of the\nRoman race-horse but so much the more strike his steel tags into him;\nas one who in that miserable plight still turns and turns in giddy\nanguish, praying God for annihilation until the fit be passed; and at\nlast amid the whirl of woe he feels, a deep stupor steals over him, as\nover the man who bleeds to death, for conscience is the wound, and\nthere\u2019s naught to staunch it; so, after sore wrestlings in his berth,\nJonah\u2019s prodigy of ponderous misery drags him drowning down to sleep.\n\n\u201cAnd now the time of tide has come; the ship casts off her cables; and\nfrom the deserted wharf the uncheered ship for Tarshish, all careening,\nglides to sea. That ship, my friends, was the first of recorded\nsmugglers! the contraband was Jonah. But the sea rebels; he will not\nbear the wicked burden. A dreadful storm comes on, the ship is like to\nbreak. But now when the boatswain calls all hands to lighten her; when\nboxes, bales, and jars are clattering overboard; when the wind is\nshrieking, and the men are yelling, and every plank thunders with\ntrampling feet right over Jonah\u2019s head; in all this raging tumult,\nJonah sleeps his hideous sleep. He sees no black sky and raging sea,\nfeels not the reeling timbers, and little hears he or heeds he the far\nrush of the mighty whale, which even now with open mouth is cleaving\nthe seas after him. Aye, shipmates, Jonah was gone down into the sides\nof the ship\u2014a berth in the cabin as I have taken it, and was fast\nasleep. But the frightened master comes to him, and shrieks in his dead\near, \u2018What meanest thou, O, sleeper! arise!\u2019 Startled from his lethargy\nby that direful cry, Jonah staggers to his feet, and stumbling to the\ndeck, grasps a shroud, to look out upon the sea. But at that moment he\nis sprung upon by a panther billow leaping over the bulwarks. Wave\nafter wave thus leaps into the ship, and finding no speedy vent runs\nroaring fore and aft, till the mariners come nigh to drowning while yet\nafloat. And ever, as the white moon shows her affrighted face from the\nsteep gullies in the blackness overhead, aghast Jonah sees the rearing\nbowsprit pointing high upward, but soon beat downward again towards the\ntormented deep.\n\n\u201cTerrors upon terrors run shouting through his soul. In all his\ncringing attitudes, the God-fugitive is now too plainly known. The\nsailors mark him; more and more certain grow their suspicions of him,\nand at last, fully to test the truth, by referring the whole matter to\nhigh Heaven, they fall to casting lots, to see for whose cause this\ngreat tempest was upon them. The lot is Jonah\u2019s; that discovered, then\nhow furiously they mob him with their questions. \u2018What is thine\noccupation? Whence comest thou? Thy country? What people? But mark now,\nmy shipmates, the behavior of poor Jonah. The eager mariners but ask\nhim who he is, and where from; whereas, they not only receive an answer\nto those questions, but likewise another answer to a question not put\nby them, but the unsolicited answer is forced from Jonah by the hard\nhand of God that is upon him.\n\n\u201c\u2018I am a Hebrew,\u2019 he cries\u2014and then\u2014\u2018I fear the Lord the God of Heaven\nwho hath made the sea and the dry land!\u2019 Fear him, O Jonah? Aye, well\nmightest thou fear the Lord God _then!_ Straightway, he now goes on to\nmake a full confession; whereupon the mariners became more and more\nappalled, but still are pitiful. For when Jonah, not yet supplicating\nGod for mercy, since he but too well knew the darkness of his\ndeserts,\u2014when wretched Jonah cries out to them to take him and cast him\nforth into the sea, for he knew that for _his_ sake this great tempest\nwas upon them; they mercifully turn from him, and seek by other means\nto save the ship. But all in vain; the indignant gale howls louder;\nthen, with one hand raised invokingly to God, with the other they not\nunreluctantly lay hold of Jonah.\n\n\u201cAnd now behold Jonah taken up as an anchor and dropped into the sea;\nwhen instantly an oily calmness floats out from the east, and the sea\nis still, as Jonah carries down the gale with him, leaving smooth water\nbehind. He goes down in the whirling heart of such a masterless\ncommotion that he scarce heeds the moment when he drops seething into\nthe yawning jaws awaiting him; and the whale shoots-to all his ivory\nteeth, like so many white bolts, upon his prison. Then Jonah prayed\nunto the Lord out of the fish\u2019s belly. But observe his prayer, and\nlearn a weighty lesson. For sinful as he is, Jonah does not weep and\nwail for direct deliverance. He feels that his dreadful punishment is\njust. He leaves all his deliverance to God, contenting himself with\nthis, that spite of all his pains and pangs, he will still look towards\nHis holy temple. And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance;\nnot clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment. And how pleasing\nto God was this conduct in Jonah, is shown in the eventual deliverance\nof him from the sea and the whale. Shipmates, I do not place Jonah\nbefore you to be copied for his sin but I do place him before you as a\nmodel for repentance. Sin not; but if you do, take heed to repent of it\nlike Jonah.\u201d\n\nWhile he was speaking these words, the howling of the shrieking,\nslanting storm without seemed to add new power to the preacher, who,\nwhen describing Jonah\u2019s sea-storm, seemed tossed by a storm himself.\nHis deep chest heaved as with a ground-swell; his tossed arms seemed\nthe warring elements at work; and the thunders that rolled away from\noff his swarthy brow, and the light leaping from his eye, made all his\nsimple hearers look on him with a quick fear that was strange to them.\n\nThere now came a lull in his look, as he silently turned over the\nleaves of the Book once more; and, at last, standing motionless, with\nclosed eyes, for the moment, seemed communing with God and himself.\n\nBut again he leaned over towards the people, and bowing his head lowly,\nwith an aspect of the deepest yet manliest humility, he spake these\nwords:\n\n\u201cShipmates, God has laid but one hand upon you; both his hands press\nupon me. I have read ye by what murky light may be mine the lesson that\nJonah teaches to all sinners; and therefore to ye, and still more to\nme, for I am a greater sinner than ye. And now how gladly would I come\ndown from this mast-head and sit on the hatches there where you sit,\nand listen as you listen, while some one of you reads _me_ that other\nand more awful lesson which Jonah teaches to _me_, as a pilot of the\nliving God. How being an anointed pilot-prophet, or speaker of true\nthings, and bidden by the Lord to sound those unwelcome truths in the\nears of a wicked Nineveh, Jonah, appalled at the hostility he should\nraise, fled from his mission, and sought to escape his duty and his God\nby taking ship at Joppa. But God is everywhere; Tarshish he never\nreached. As we have seen, God came upon him in the whale, and swallowed\nhim down to living gulfs of doom, and with swift slantings tore him\nalong \u2018into the midst of the seas,\u2019 where the eddying depths sucked him\nten thousand fathoms down, and \u2018the weeds were wrapped about his head,\u2019\nand all the watery world of woe bowled over him. Yet even then beyond\nthe reach of any plummet\u2014\u2018out of the belly of hell\u2019\u2014when the whale\ngrounded upon the ocean\u2019s utmost bones, even then, God heard the\nengulphed, repenting prophet when he cried. Then God spake unto the\nfish; and from the shuddering cold and blackness of the sea, the whale\ncame breeching up towards the warm and pleasant sun, and all the\ndelights of air and earth; and \u2018vomited out Jonah upon the dry land;\u2019\nwhen the word of the Lord came a second time; and Jonah, bruised and\nbeaten\u2014his ears, like two sea-shells, still multitudinously murmuring\nof the ocean\u2014Jonah did the Almighty\u2019s bidding. And what was that,\nshipmates? To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood! That was it!\n\n\u201cThis, shipmates, this is that other lesson; and woe to that pilot of\nthe living God who slights it. Woe to him whom this world charms from\nGospel duty! Woe to him who seeks to pour oil upon the waters when God\nhas brewed them into a gale! Woe to him who seeks to please rather than\nto appal! Woe to him whose good name is more to him than goodness! Woe\nto him who, in this world, courts not dishonor! Woe to him who would\nnot be true, even though to be false were salvation! Yea, woe to him\nwho, as the great Pilot Paul has it, while preaching to others is\nhimself a castaway!\u201d\n\nHe dropped and fell away from himself for a moment; then lifting his\nface to them again, showed a deep joy in his eyes, as he cried out with\na heavenly enthusiasm,\u2014\u201cBut oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of\nevery woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight,\nthan the bottom of the woe is deep. Is not the main-truck higher than\nthe kelson is low? Delight is to him\u2014a far, far upward, and inward\ndelight\u2014who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever\nstands forth his own inexorable self. Delight is to him whose strong\narms yet support him, when the ship of this base treacherous world has\ngone down beneath him. Delight is to him, who gives no quarter in the\ntruth, and kills, burns, and destroys all sin though he pluck it out\nfrom under the robes of Senators and Judges. Delight,\u2014top-gallant\ndelight is to him, who acknowledges no law or lord, but the Lord his\nGod, and is only a patriot to heaven. Delight is to him, whom all the\nwaves of the billows of the seas of the boisterous mob can never shake\nfrom this sure Keel of the Ages. And eternal delight and deliciousness\nwill be his, who coming to lay him down, can say with his final\nbreath\u2014O Father!\u2014chiefly known to me by Thy rod\u2014mortal or immortal,\nhere I die. I have striven to be Thine, more than to be this world\u2019s,\nor mine own. Yet this is nothing: I leave eternity to Thee; for what is\nman that he should live out the lifetime of his God?\u201d\n\nHe said no more, but slowly waving a benediction, covered his face with\nhis hands, and so remained kneeling, till all the people had departed,\nand he was left alone in the place.\n\n\nCHAPTER 10. A Bosom Friend.\n\nReturning to the Spouter-Inn from the Chapel, I found Horatio there\nquite alone; he having left the Chapel before the benediction some\ntime. He was sitting on a bench before the fire, with his feet on the\nstove hearth, and in one hand was holding close up to his face that\nlittle negro idol of his; peering hard into its face, and with a\njack-knife gently whittling away at its nose, meanwhile humming to\nhimself in his heathenish way.\n\nBut being now interrupted, he put up the image; and pretty soon, going\nto the table, took up a large book there, and placing it on his lap\nbegan counting the pages with deliberate regularity; at every fiftieth\npage\u2014as I fancied\u2014stopping a moment, looking vacantly around him, and\ngiving utterance to a long-drawn gurgling whistle of astonishment. He\nwould then begin again at the next fifty; seeming to commence at number\none each time, as though he could not count more than fifty, and it was\nonly by such a large number of fifties being found together, that his\nastonishment at the multitude of pages was excited.\n\nWith much interest I sat watching him. Savage though he was, and\nhideously marred about the face\u2014at least to my taste\u2014his countenance\nyet had a something in it which was by no means disagreeable. You\ncannot hide the soul. Through all his unearthly tattooings, I thought I\nsaw the traces of a simple honest heart; and in his large, deep eyes,\nfiery black and bold, there seemed tokens of a spirit that would dare a\nthousand devils. And besides all this, there was a certain lofty\nbearing about the Pagan, which even his uncouthness could not\naltogether maim. He looked like a man who had never cringed and never\nhad had a creditor. Whether it was, too, that his head being shaved,\nhis forehead was drawn out in freer and brighter relief, and looked\nmore expansive than it otherwise would, this I will not venture to\ndecide; but certain it was his head was phrenologically an excellent\none. It may seem ridiculous, but it reminded me of General Washington\u2019s\nhead, as seen in the popular busts of him. It had the same long\nregularly graded retreating slope from above the brows, which were\nlikewise very projecting, like two long promontories thickly wooded on\ntop. Horatio was George Washington cannibalistically developed.\n\nWhilst I was thus closely scanning him, half-pretending meanwhile to be\nlooking out at the storm from the casement, he never heeded my\npresence, never troubled himself with so much as a single glance; but\nappeared wholly occupied with counting the pages of the marvellous\nbook. Considering how sociably we had been sleeping together the night\nprevious, and especially considering the affectionate arm I had found\nthrown over me upon waking in the morning, I thought this indifference\nof his very strange. But savages are strange beings; at times you do\nnot know exactly how to take them. At first they are overawing; their\ncalm self-collectedness of simplicity seems a Socratic wisdom. I had\nnoticed also that Horatio never consorted at all, or but very little,\nwith the other seamen in the inn. He made no advances whatever;\nappeared to have no desire to enlarge the circle of his acquaintances.\nAll this struck me as mighty singular; yet, upon second thoughts, there\nwas something almost sublime in it. Here was a man some twenty thousand\nmiles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is\u2014which was the only\nway he could get there\u2014thrown among people as strange to him as though\nhe were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he seemed entirely at his ease;\npreserving the utmost serenity; content with his own companionship;\nalways equal to himself. Surely this was a touch of fine philosophy;\nthough no doubt he had never heard there was such a thing as that. But,\nperhaps, to be true philosophers, we mortals should not be conscious of\nso living or so striving. So soon as I hear that such or such a man\ngives himself out for a philosopher, I conclude that, like the\ndyspeptic old woman, he must have \u201cbroken his digester.\u201d\n\nAs I sat there in that now lonely room; the fire burning low, in that\nmild stage when, after its first intensity has warmed the air, it then\nonly glows to be looked at; the evening shades and phantoms gathering\nround the casements, and peering in upon us silent, solitary twain; the\nstorm booming without in solemn swells; I began to be sensible of\nstrange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart\nand maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing\nsavage had redeemed it. There he sat, his very indifference speaking a\nnature in which there lurked no civilized hypocrisies and bland\ndeceits. Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to\nfeel myself mysteriously drawn towards him. And those same things that\nwould have repelled most others, they were the very magnets that thus\ndrew me. I\u2019ll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness\nhas proved but hollow courtesy. I drew my bench near him, and made some\nfriendly signs and hints, doing my best to talk with him meanwhile. At\nfirst he little noticed these advances; but presently, upon my\nreferring to his last night\u2019s hospitalities, he made out to ask me\nwhether we were again to be bedfellows. I told him yes; whereat I\nthought he looked pleased, perhaps a little complimented.\n\nWe then turned over the book together, and I endeavored to explain to\nhim the purpose of the printing, and the meaning of the few pictures\nthat were in it. Thus I soon engaged his interest; and from that we\nwent to jabbering the best we could about the various outer sights to\nbe seen in this famous town. Soon I proposed a social smoke; and,\nproducing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And\nthen we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it\nregularly passing between us.\n\nIf there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan\u2019s\nbreast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and\nleft us cronies. He seemed to take to me quite as naturally and\nunbiddenly as I to him; and when our smoke was over, he pressed his\nforehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that\nhenceforth we were married; meaning, in his country\u2019s phrase, that we\nwere bosom friends; he would gladly die for me, if need should be. In a\ncountryman, this sudden flame of friendship would have seemed far too\npremature, a thing to be much distrusted; but in this simple savage\nthose old rules would not apply.\n\nAfter supper, and another social chat and smoke, we went to our room\ntogether. He made me a present of his embalmed head; took out his\nenormous tobacco wallet, and groping under the tobacco, drew out some\nthirty dollars in silver; then spreading them on the table, and\nmechanically dividing them into two equal portions, pushed one of them\ntowards me, and said it was mine. I was going to remonstrate; but he\nsilenced me by pouring them into my trowsers\u2019 pockets. I let them stay.\nHe then went about his evening prayers, took out his idol, and removed\nthe paper fireboard. By certain signs and symptoms, I thought he seemed\nanxious for me to join him; but well knowing what was to follow, I\ndeliberated a moment whether, in case he invited me, I would comply or\notherwise.\n\nI was a good Christian; born and bred in the bosom of the infallible\nPresbyterian Church. How then could I unite with this wild idolator in\nworshipping his piece of wood? But what is worship? thought I. Do you\nsuppose now, Adreanna, that the magnanimous God of heaven and\nearth\u2014pagans and all included\u2014can possibly be jealous of an\ninsignificant bit of black wood? Impossible! But what is worship?\u2014to do\nthe will of God\u2014_that_ is worship. And what is the will of God?\u2014to do\nto my fellow man what I would have my fellow man to do to me\u2014_that_ is\nthe will of God. Now, Horatio is my fellow man. And what do I wish\nthat this Horatio would do to me? Why, unite with me in my particular\nPresbyterian form of worship. Consequently, I must then unite with him\nin his; ergo, I must turn idolator. So I kindled the shavings; helped\nprop up the innocent little idol; offered him burnt biscuit with\nHoratio; salamed before him twice or thrice; kissed his nose; and that\ndone, we undressed and went to bed, at peace with our own consciences\nand all the world. But we did not go to sleep without some little chat.\n\nHow it is I know not; but there is no place like a bed for confidential\ndisclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the\nvery bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often\nlie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, in our\nhearts\u2019 honeymoon, lay I and Horatio\u2014a cosy, loving pair.\n\n\nCHAPTER 11. Nightgown.\n\nWe had lain thus in bed, chatting and napping at short intervals, and\nHoratio now and then affectionately throwing his brown tattooed legs\nover mine, and then drawing them back; so entirely sociable and free\nand easy were we; when, at last, by reason of our confabulations, what\nlittle nappishness remained in us altogether departed, and we felt like\ngetting up again, though day-break was yet some way down the future.\n\nYes, we became very wakeful; so much so that our recumbent position\nbegan to grow wearisome, and by little and little we found ourselves\nsitting up; the clothes well tucked around us, leaning against the\nhead-board with our four knees drawn up close together, and our two\nnoses bending over them, as if our kneepans were warming-pans. We felt\nvery nice and snug, the more so since it was so chilly out of doors;\nindeed out of bed-clothes too, seeing that there was no fire in the\nroom. The more so, I say, because truly to enjoy bodily warmth, some\nsmall part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world\nthat is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If\nyou flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been\nso a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. But\nif, like Horatio and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown\nof your head be slightly chilled, why then, indeed, in the general\nconsciousness you feel most delightfully and unmistakably warm. For\nthis reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire,\nwhich is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height\nof this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket\nbetween you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there\nyou lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.\n\nWe had been sitting in this crouching manner for some time, when all at\nonce I thought I would open my eyes; for when between sheets, whether\nby day or by night, and whether asleep or awake, I have a way of always\nkeeping my eyes shut, in order the more to concentrate the snugness of\nbeing in bed. Because no man can ever feel his own identity aright\nexcept his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper\nelement of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey\npart. Upon opening my eyes then, and coming out of my own pleasant and\nself-created darkness into the imposed and coarse outer gloom of the\nunilluminated twelve-o\u2019clock-at-night, I experienced a disagreeable\nrevulsion. Nor did I at all object to the hint from Horatio that\nperhaps it were best to strike a light, seeing that we were so wide\nawake; and besides he felt a strong desire to have a few quiet puffs\nfrom his Tomahawk. Be it said, that though I had felt such a strong\nrepugnance to his smoking in the bed the night before, yet see how\nelastic our stiff prejudices grow when love once comes to bend them.\nFor now I liked nothing better than to have Horatio smoking by me,\neven in bed, because he seemed to be full of such serene household joy\nthen. I no more felt unduly concerned for the landlord\u2019s policy of\ninsurance. I was only alive to the condensed confidential\ncomfortableness of sharing a pipe and a blanket with a real friend.\nWith our shaggy jackets drawn about our shoulders, we now passed the\nTomahawk from one to the other, till slowly there grew over us a blue\nhanging tester of smoke, illuminated by the flame of the new-lit lamp.\n\nWhether it was that this undulating tester rolled the savage away to\nfar distant scenes, I know not, but he now spoke of his native island;\nand, eager to hear his history, I begged him to go on and tell it. He\ngladly complied. Though at the time I but ill comprehended not a few of\nhis words, yet subsequent disclosures, when I had become more familiar\nwith his broken phraseology, now enable me to present the whole story\nsuch as it may prove in the mere skeleton I give.\n\n\nCHAPTER 12. Biographical.\n\nHoratio was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and\nSouth. It is not down in any map; true places never are.\n\nWhen a new-hatched savage running wild about his native woodlands in a\ngrass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green\nsapling; even then, in Horatio\u2019s ambitious soul, lurked a strong\ndesire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or\ntwo. His father was a High Chief, a King; his uncle a High Priest; and\non the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of\nunconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins\u2014royal\nstuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he\nnourished in his untutored youth.\n\nA Sag Harbor ship visited his father\u2019s bay, and Horatio sought a\npassage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of\nseamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father\u2019s influence\ncould prevail. But Horatio vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled\noff to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when\nshe quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a\nlow tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets that grew out into\nthe water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with\nits prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and\nwhen the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out; gained her\nside; with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe;\nclimbed up the chains; and throwing himself at full length upon the\ndeck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go, though\nhacked in pieces.\n\nIn vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard; suspended a\ncutlass over his naked wrists; Horatio was the son of a King, and\nHoratio budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his\nwild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and\ntold him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage\u2014this\nsea Prince of Wales, never saw the Captain\u2019s cabin. They put him down\namong the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But like Czar Peter\ncontent to toil in the shipyards of foreign cities, Horatio disdained\nno seeming ignominy, if thereby he might happily gain the power of\nenlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom\u2014so he told me\u2014he\nwas actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians, the\narts whereby to make his people still happier than they were; and more\nthan that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of\nwhalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both\nmiserable and wicked; infinitely more so, than all his father\u2019s\nheathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbor; and seeing what the\nsailors did there; and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they\nspent their wages in _that_ place also, poor Horatio gave it up for\nlost. Thought he, it\u2019s a wicked world in all meridians; I\u2019ll die a\npagan.\n\nAnd thus an old idolator at heart, he yet lived among these Christians,\nwore their clothes, and tried to talk their gibberish. Hence the queer\nways about him, though now some time from home.\n\nBy hints, I asked him whether he did not propose going back, and having\na coronation; since he might now consider his father dead and gone, he\nbeing very old and feeble at the last accounts. He answered no, not\nyet; and added that he was fearful Christianity, or rather Christians,\nhad unfitted him for ascending the pure and undefiled throne of thirty\npagan Kings before him. But by and by, he said, he would return,\u2014as\nsoon as he felt himself baptized again. For the nonce, however, he\nproposed to sail about, and sow his wild oats in all four oceans. They\nhad made a harpooneer of him, and that barbed iron was in lieu of a\nsceptre now.\n\nI asked him what might be his immediate purpose, touching his future\nmovements. He answered, to go to sea again, in his old vocation. Upon\nthis, I told him that whaling was my own design, and informed him of my\nintention to sail out of Nantucket, as being the most promising port\nfor an adventurous whaleman to embark from. He at once resolved to\naccompany me to that island, ship aboard the same vessel, get into the\nsame watch, the same boat, the same mess with me, in short to share my\nevery hap; with both my hands in his, boldly dip into the Potluck of\nboth worlds. To all this I joyously assented; for besides the affection\nI now felt for Horatio, he was an experienced harpooneer, and as such,\ncould not fail to be of great usefulness to one, who, like me, was\nwholly ignorant of the mysteries of whaling, though well acquainted\nwith the sea, as known to merchant seamen.\n\nHis story being ended with his pipe\u2019s last dying puff, Horatio\nembraced me, pressed his forehead against mine, and blowing out the\nlight, we rolled over from each other, this way and that, and very soon\nwere sleeping.\n\n\nCHAPTER 13. Wheelbarrow.\n\nNext morning, Monday, after disposing of the embalmed head to a barber,\nfor a block, I settled my own and comrade\u2019s bill; using, however, my\ncomrade\u2019s money. The grinning landlord, as well as the boarders, seemed\namazingly tickled at the sudden friendship which had sprung up between\nme and Horatio\u2014especially as Peter Coffin\u2019s cock and bull stories\nabout him had previously so much alarmed me concerning the very person\nwhom I now companied with.\n\nWe borrowed a wheelbarrow, and embarking our things, including my own\npoor carpet-bag, and Horatio\u2019s canvas sack and hammock, away we went\ndown to \u201cthe Moss,\u201d the little Nantucket packet schooner moored at the\nwharf. As we were going along the people stared; not at Horatio so\nmuch\u2014for they were used to seeing cannibals like him in their\nstreets,\u2014but at seeing him and me upon such confidential terms. But we\nheeded them not, going along wheeling the barrow by turns, and Horatio\nnow and then stopping to adjust the sheath on his harpoon barbs. I\nasked him why he carried such a troublesome thing with him ashore, and\nwhether all whaling ships did not find their own harpoons. To this, in\nsubstance, he replied, that though what I hinted was true enough, yet\nhe had a particular affection for his own harpoon, because it was of\nassured stuff, well tried in many a mortal combat, and deeply intimate\nwith the hearts of whales. In short, like many inland reapers and\nmowers, who go into the farmers\u2019 meadows armed with their own\nscythes\u2014though in no wise obliged to furnish them\u2014even so, Horatio,\nfor his own private reasons, preferred his own harpoon.\n\nShifting the barrow from my hand to his, he told me a funny story about\nthe first wheelbarrow he had ever seen. It was in Sag Harbor. The\nowners of his ship, it seems, had lent him one, in which to carry his\nheavy chest to his boarding house. Not to seem ignorant about the\nthing\u2014though in truth he was entirely so, concerning the precise way in\nwhich to manage the barrow\u2014Horatio puts his chest upon it; lashes it\nfast; and then shoulders the barrow and marches up the wharf. \u201cWhy,\u201d\nsaid I, \u201cHoratio, you might have known better than that, one would\nthink. Didn\u2019t the people laugh?\u201d\n\nUpon this, he told me another story. The people of his island of\nRokovoko, it seems, at their wedding feasts express the fragrant water\nof young cocoanuts into a large stained calabash like a punchbowl; and\nthis punchbowl always forms the great central ornament on the braided\nmat where the feast is held. Now a certain grand merchant ship once\ntouched at Rokovoko, and its commander\u2014from all accounts, a very\nstately punctilious gentleman, at least for a sea captain\u2014this\ncommander was invited to the wedding feast of Horatio\u2019s sister, a\npretty young princess just turned of ten. Well; when all the wedding\nguests were assembled at the bride\u2019s bamboo cottage, this Captain\nmarches in, and being assigned the post of honor, placed himself over\nagainst the punchbowl, and between the High Priest and his majesty the\nKing, Horatio\u2019s father. Grace being said,\u2014for those people have their\ngrace as well as we\u2014though Horatio told me that unlike us, who at such\ntimes look downwards to our platters, they, on the contrary, copying\nthe ducks, glance upwards to the great Giver of all feasts\u2014Grace, I\nsay, being said, the High Priest opens the banquet by the immemorial\nceremony of the island; that is, dipping his consecrated and\nconsecrating fingers into the bowl before the blessed beverage\ncirculates. Seeing himself placed next the Priest, and noting the\nceremony, and thinking himself\u2014being Captain of a ship\u2014as having plain\nprecedence over a mere island King, especially in the King\u2019s own\nhouse\u2014the Captain coolly proceeds to wash his hands in the\npunchbowl;\u2014taking it I suppose for a huge finger-glass. \u201cNow,\u201d said\nHoratio, \u201cwhat you tink now?\u2014Didn\u2019t our people laugh?\u201d\n\nAt last, passage paid, and luggage safe, we stood on board the\nschooner. Hoisting sail, it glided down the Acushnet river. On one\nside, New Bedford rose in terraces of streets, their ice-covered trees\nall glittering in the clear, cold air. Huge hills and mountains of\ncasks on casks were piled upon her wharves, and side by side the\nworld-wandering whale ships lay silent and safely moored at last; while\nfrom others came a sound of carpenters and coopers, with blended noises\nof fires and forges to melt the pitch, all betokening that new cruises\nwere on the start; that one most perilous and long voyage ended, only\nbegins a second; and a second ended, only begins a third, and so on,\nfor ever and for aye. Such is the endlessness, yea, the intolerableness\nof all earthly effort.\n\nGaining the more open water, the bracing breeze waxed fresh; the little\nMoss tossed the quick foam from her bows, as a young colt his\nsnortings. How I snuffed that Tartar air!\u2014how I spurned that turnpike\nearth!\u2014that common highway all over dented with the marks of slavish\nheels and hoofs; and turned me to admire the magnanimity of the sea\nwhich will permit no records.\n\nAt the same foam-fountain, Horatio seemed to drink and reel with me.\nHis dusky nostrils swelled apart; he showed his filed and pointed\nteeth. On, on we flew; and our offing gained, the Moss did homage to\nthe blast; ducked and dived her bows as a slave before the Sultan.\nSideways leaning, we sideways darted; every ropeyarn tingling like a\nwire; the two tall masts buckling like Indian canes in land tornadoes.\nSo full of this reeling scene were we, as we stood by the plunging\nbowsprit, that for some time we did not notice the jeering glances of\nthe passengers, a lubber-like assembly, who marvelled that two fellow\nbeings should be so companionable; as though a white man were anything\nmore dignified than a whitewashed negro. But there were some boobies\nand bumpkins there, who, by their intense greenness, must have come\nfrom the heart and centre of all verdure. Horatio caught one of these\nyoung saplings mimicking him behind his back. I thought the bumpkin\u2019s\nhour of doom was come. Dropping his harpoon, the brawny savage caught\nhim in his arms, and by an almost miraculous dexterity and strength,\nsent him high up bodily into the air; then slightly tapping his stern\nin mid-somerset, the fellow landed with bursting lungs upon his feet,\nwhile Horatio, turning his back upon him, lighted his tomahawk pipe\nand passed it to me for a puff.\n\n\u201cCapting! Capting!\u201d yelled the bumpkin, running towards that officer;\n\u201cCapting, Capting, here\u2019s the devil.\u201d\n\n\u201cHallo, _you_ sir,\u201d cried the Captain, a gaunt rib of the sea, stalking\nup to Horatio, \u201cwhat in thunder do you mean by that? Don\u2019t you know\nyou might have killed that chap?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat him say?\u201d said Horatio, as he mildly turned to me.\n\n\u201cHe say,\u201d said I, \u201cthat you came near kill-e that man there,\u201d pointing\nto the still shivering greenhorn.\n\n\u201cKill-e,\u201d cried Horatio, twisting his tattooed face into an unearthly\nexpression of disdain, \u201cah! him bevy small-e fish-e; Horatio no kill-e\nso small-e fish-e; Horatio kill-e big whale!\u201d\n\n\u201cLook you,\u201d roared the Captain, \u201cI\u2019ll kill-e _you_, you cannibal, if\nyou try any more of your tricks aboard here; so mind your eye.\u201d\n\nBut it so happened just then, that it was high time for the Captain to\nmind his own eye. The prodigious strain upon the main-sail had parted\nthe weather-sheet, and the tremendous boom was now flying from side to\nside, completely sweeping the entire after part of the deck. The poor\nfellow whom Horatio had handled so roughly, was swept overboard; all\nhands were in a panic; and to attempt snatching at the boom to stay it,\nseemed madness. It flew from right to left, and back again, almost in\none ticking of a watch, and every instant seemed on the point of\nsnapping into splinters. Nothing was done, and nothing seemed capable\nof being done; those on deck rushed towards the bows, and stood eyeing\nthe boom as if it were the lower jaw of an exasperated whale. In the\nmidst of this consternation, Horatio dropped deftly to his knees, and\ncrawling under the path of the boom, whipped hold of a rope, secured\none end to the bulwarks, and then flinging the other like a lasso,\ncaught it round the boom as it swept over his head, and at the next\njerk, the spar was that way trapped, and all was safe. The schooner was\nrun into the wind, and while the hands were clearing away the stern\nboat, Horatio, stripped to the waist, darted from the side with a long\nliving arc of a leap. For three minutes or more he was seen swimming\nlike a dog, throwing his long arms straight out before him, and by\nturns revealing his brawny shoulders through the freezing foam. I\nlooked at the grand and glorious fellow, but saw no one to be saved.\nThe greenhorn had gone down. Shooting himself perpendicularly from the\nwater, Horatio, now took an instant\u2019s glance around him, and seeming\nto see just how matters were, dived down and disappeared. A few minutes\nmore, and he rose again, one arm still striking out, and with the other\ndragging a lifeless form. The boat soon picked them up. The poor\nbumpkin was restored. All hands voted Horatio a noble trump; the\ncaptain begged his pardon. From that hour I clove to Horatio like a\nbarnacle; yea, till poor Horatio took his last long dive.\n\nWas there ever such unconsciousness? He did not seem to think that he\nat all deserved a medal from the Humane and Magnanimous Societies. He\nonly asked for water\u2014fresh water\u2014something to wipe the brine off; that\ndone, he put on dry clothes, lighted his pipe, and leaning against the\nbulwarks, and mildly eyeing those around him, seemed to be saying to\nhimself\u2014\u201cIt\u2019s a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We\ncannibals must help these Christians.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 14. Nantucket.\n\nNothing more happened on the passage worthy the mentioning; so, after a\nfine run, we safely arrived in Nantucket.\n\nNantucket! Take out your map and look at it. See what a real corner of\nthe world it occupies; how it stands there, away off shore, more lonely\nthan the Eddystone lighthouse. Look at it\u2014a mere hillock, and elbow of\nsand; all beach, without a background. There is more sand there than\nyou would use in twenty years as a substitute for blotting paper. Some\ngamesome wights will tell you that they have to plant weeds there, they\ndon\u2019t grow naturally; that they import Canada thistles; that they have\nto send beyond seas for a spile to stop a leak in an oil cask; that\npieces of wood in Nantucket are carried about like bits of the true\ncross in Rome; that people there plant toadstools before their houses,\nto get under the shade in summer time; that one blade of grass makes an\noasis, three blades in a day\u2019s walk a prairie; that they wear quicksand\nshoes, something like Laplander snow-shoes; that they are so shut up,\nbelted about, every way inclosed, surrounded, and made an utter island\nof by the ocean, that to their very chairs and tables small clams will\nsometimes be found adhering, as to the backs of sea turtles. But these\nextravaganzas only show that Nantucket is no Illinois.\n\nLook now at the wondrous traditional story of how this island was\nsettled by the red-men. Thus goes the legend. In olden times an eagle\nswooped down upon the New England coast, and carried off an infant\nIndian in his talons. With loud lament the parents saw their child\nborne out of sight over the wide waters. They resolved to follow in the\nsame direction. Setting out in their canoes, after a perilous passage\nthey discovered the island, and there they found an empty ivory\ncasket,\u2014the poor little Indian\u2019s skeleton.\n\nWhat wonder, then, that these Nantucketers, born on a beach, should\ntake to the sea for a livelihood! They first caught crabs and quohogs\nin the sand; grown bolder, they waded out with nets for mackerel; more\nexperienced, they pushed off in boats and captured cod; and at last,\nlaunching a navy of great ships on the sea, explored this watery world;\nput an incessant belt of circumnavigations round it; peeped in at\nBehring\u2019s Straits; and in all seasons and all oceans declared\neverlasting war with the mightiest animated mass that has survived the\nflood; most monstrous and most mountainous! That Himmalehan, salt-sea\nMastodon, clothed with such portentousness of unconscious power, that\nhis very panics are more to be dreaded than his most fearless and\nmalicious assaults!\n\nAnd thus have these naked Nantucketers, these sea hermits, issuing from\ntheir ant-hill in the sea, overrun and conquered the watery world like\nso many Alexanders; parcelling out among them the Atlantic, Pacific,\nand Indian oceans, as the three pirate powers did Poland. Let America\nadd Mexico to Texas, and pile Cuba upon Canada; let the English\noverswarm all India, and hang out their blazing banner from the sun;\ntwo thirds of this terraqueous globe are the Nantucketer\u2019s. For the sea\nis his; he owns it, as Emperors own empires; other seamen having but a\nright of way through it. Merchant ships are but extension bridges;\narmed ones but floating forts; even pirates and privateers, though\nfollowing the sea as highwaymen the road, they but plunder other ships,\nother fragments of the land like themselves, without seeking to draw\ntheir living from the bottomless deep itself. The Nantucketer, he alone\nresides and riots on the sea; he alone, in Bible language, goes down to\nit in ships; to and fro ploughing it as his own special plantation.\n_There_ is his home; _there_ lies his business, which a Noah\u2019s flood\nwould not interrupt, though it overwhelmed all the millions in China.\nHe lives on the sea, as prairie cocks in the prairie; he hides among\nthe waves, he climbs them as chamois hunters climb the Alps. For years\nhe knows not the land; so that when he comes to it at last, it smells\nlike another world, more strangely than the moon would to an Earthsman.\nWith the landless gull, that at sunset folds her wings and is rocked to\nsleep between billows; so at nightfall, the Nantucketer, out of sight\nof land, furls his sails, and lays him to his rest, while under his\nvery pillow rush herds of walruses and whales.\n\n\nCHAPTER 15. Chowder.\n\nIt was quite late in the evening when the little Moss came snugly to\nanchor, and Horatio and I went ashore; so we could attend to no\nbusiness that day, at least none but a supper and a bed. The landlord\nof the Spouter-Inn had recommended us to his cousin Hosea Hussey of the\nTry Pots, whom he asserted to be the proprietor of one of the best kept\nhotels in all Nantucket, and moreover he had assured us that Cousin\nHosea, as he called him, was famous for his chowders. In short, he\nplainly hinted that we could not possibly do better than try pot-luck\nat the Try Pots. But the directions he had given us about keeping a\nyellow warehouse on our starboard hand till we opened a white church to\nthe larboard, and then keeping that on the larboard hand till we made a\ncorner three points to the starboard, and that done, then ask the first\nman we met where the place was: these crooked directions of his very\nmuch puzzled us at first, especially as, at the outset, Horatio\ninsisted that the yellow warehouse\u2014our first point of departure\u2014must be\nleft on the larboard hand, whereas I had understood Peter Coffin to say\nit was on the starboard. However, by dint of beating about a little in\nthe dark, and now and then knocking up a peaceable inhabitant to\ninquire the way, we at last came to something which there was no\nmistaking.\n\nTwo enormous wooden pots painted black, and suspended by asses\u2019 ears,\nswung from the cross-trees of an old top-mast, planted in front of an\nold doorway. The horns of the cross-trees were sawed off on the other\nside, so that this old top-mast looked not a little like a gallows.\nPerhaps I was over sensitive to such impressions at the time, but I\ncould not help staring at this gallows with a vague misgiving. A sort\nof crick was in my neck as I gazed up to the two remaining horns; yes,\n_two_ of them, one for Horatio, and one for me. It\u2019s ominous, thinks\nI. A Coffin my Innkeeper upon landing in my first whaling port;\ntombstones staring at me in the whalemen\u2019s chapel; and here a gallows!\nand a pair of prodigious black pots too! Are these last throwing out\noblique hints touching Tophet?\n\nI was called from these reflections by the sight of a freckled woman\nwith yellow hair and a yellow gown, standing in the porch of the inn,\nunder a dull red lamp swinging there, that looked much like an injured\neye, and carrying on a brisk scolding with a man in a purple woollen\nshirt.\n\n\u201cGet along with ye,\u201d said she to the man, \u201cor I\u2019ll be combing ye!\u201d\n\n\u201cCome on, Horatio,\u201d said I, \u201call right. There\u2019s Mrs. Hussey.\u201d\n\nAnd so it turned out; Mr. Hosea Hussey being from home, but leaving\nMrs. Hussey entirely competent to attend to all his affairs. Upon\nmaking known our desires for a supper and a bed, Mrs. Hussey,\npostponing further scolding for the present, ushered us into a little\nroom, and seating us at a table spread with the relics of a recently\nconcluded repast, turned round to us and said\u2014\u201cClam or Cod?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that about Cods, ma\u2019am?\u201d said I, with much politeness.\n\n\u201cClam or Cod?\u201d she repeated.\n\n\u201cA clam for supper? a cold clam; is _that_ what you mean, Mrs. Hussey?\u201d\nsays I, \u201cbut that\u2019s a rather cold and clammy reception in the winter\ntime, ain\u2019t it, Mrs. Hussey?\u201d\n\nBut being in a great hurry to resume scolding the man in the purple\nShirt, who was waiting for it in the entry, and seeming to hear nothing\nbut the word \u201cclam,\u201d Mrs. Hussey hurried towards an open door leading\nto the kitchen, and bawling out \u201cclam for two,\u201d disappeared.\n\n\u201cHoratio,\u201d said I, \u201cdo you think that we can make out a supper for us\nboth on one clam?\u201d\n\nHowever, a warm savory steam from the kitchen served to belie the\napparently cheerless prospect before us. But when that smoking chowder\ncame in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh, sweet friends!\nhearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than\nhazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuit, and salted pork cut up\ninto little flakes; the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully\nseasoned with pepper and salt. Our appetites being sharpened by the\nfrosty voyage, and in particular, Horatio seeing his favourite fishing\nfood before him, and the chowder being surpassingly excellent, we\ndespatched it with great expedition: when leaning back a moment and\nbethinking me of Mrs. Hussey\u2019s clam and cod announcement, I thought I\nwould try a little experiment. Stepping to the kitchen door, I uttered\nthe word \u201ccod\u201d with great emphasis, and resumed my seat. In a few\nmoments the savoury steam came forth again, but with a different\nflavor, and in good time a fine cod-chowder was placed before us.\n\nWe resumed business; and while plying our spoons in the bowl, thinks I\nto myself, I wonder now if this here has any effect on the head? What\u2019s\nthat stultifying saying about chowder-headed people? \u201cBut look,\nHoratio, ain\u2019t that a live eel in your bowl? Where\u2019s your harpoon?\u201d\n\nFishiest of all fishy places was the Try Pots, which well deserved its\nname; for the pots there were always boiling chowders. Chowder for\nbreakfast, and chowder for dinner, and chowder for supper, till you\nbegan to look for fish-bones coming through your clothes. The area\nbefore the house was paved with clam-shells. Mrs. Hussey wore a\npolished necklace of codfish vertebra; and Hosea Hussey had his account\nbooks bound in superior old shark-skin. There was a fishy flavor to the\nmilk, too, which I could not at all account for, till one morning\nhappening to take a stroll along the beach among some fishermen\u2019s\nboats, I saw Hosea\u2019s brindled cow feeding on fish remnants, and\nmarching along the sand with each foot in a cod\u2019s decapitated head,\nlooking very slip-shod, I assure ye.\n\nSupper concluded, we received a lamp, and directions from Mrs. Hussey\nconcerning the nearest way to bed; but, as Horatio was about to\nprecede me up the stairs, the lady reached forth her arm, and demanded\nhis harpoon; she allowed no harpoon in her chambers. \u201cWhy not?\u201d said I;\n\u201cevery true whaleman sleeps with his harpoon\u2014but why not?\u201d \u201cBecause\nit\u2019s dangerous,\u201d says she. \u201cEver since young Stiggs coming from that\nunfort\u2019nt v\u2019y\u2019ge of his, when he was gone four years and a half, with\nonly three barrels of _ile_, was found dead in my first floor back,\nwith his harpoon in his side; ever since then I allow no boarders to\ntake sich dangerous weepons in their rooms at night. So, Mr. Horatio\u201d\n(for she had learned his name), \u201cI will just take this here iron, and\nkeep it for you till morning. But the chowder; clam or cod to-morrow\nfor breakfast, men?\u201d\n\n\u201cBoth,\u201d says I; \u201cand let\u2019s have a couple of smoked herring by way of\nvariety.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 16. The Ship.\n\nIn bed we concocted our plans for the morrow. But to my surprise and no\nsmall concern, Horatio now gave me to understand, that he had been\ndiligently consulting Yojo\u2014the name of his black little god\u2014and Yojo\nhad told him two or three times over, and strongly insisted upon it\neveryway, that instead of our going together among the whaling-fleet in\nharbor, and in concert selecting our craft; instead of this, I say,\nYojo earnestly enjoined that the selection of the ship should rest\nwholly with me, inasmuch as Yojo purposed befriending us; and, in order\nto do so, had already pitched upon a vessel, which, if left to myself,\nI, Adreanna, should infallibly light upon, for all the world as though\nit had turned out by chance; and in that vessel I must immediately ship\nmyself, for the present irrespective of Horatio.\n\nI have forgotten to mention that, in many things, Horatio placed great\nconfidence in the excellence of Yojo\u2019s judgment and surprising forecast\nof things; and cherished Yojo with considerable esteem, as a rather\ngood sort of god, who perhaps meant well enough upon the whole, but in\nall cases did not succeed in his benevolent designs.\n\nNow, this plan of Horatio\u2019s, or rather Yojo\u2019s, touching the selection\nof our craft; I did not like that plan at all. I had not a little\nrelied upon Horatio\u2019s sagacity to point out the whaler best fitted to\ncarry us and our fortunes securely. But as all my remonstrances\nproduced no effect upon Horatio, I was obliged to acquiesce; and\naccordingly prepared to set about this business with a determined\nrushing sort of energy and vigor, that should quickly settle that\ntrifling little affair. Next morning early, leaving Horatio shut up\nwith Yojo in our little bedroom\u2014for it seemed that it was some sort of\nLent or Ramadan, or day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer with\nHoratio and Yojo that day; _how_ it was I never could find out, for,\nthough I applied myself to it several times, I never could master his\nliturgies and XXXIX Articles\u2014leaving Horatio, then, fasting on his\ntomahawk pipe, and Yojo warming himself at his sacrificial fire of\nshavings, I sallied out among the shipping. After much prolonged\nsauntering and many random inquiries, I learnt that there were three\nships up for three-years\u2019 voyages\u2014The Devil-dam, the Tit-bit, and the\nTalitha. _Devil-Dam_, I do not know the origin of; _Tit-bit_ is obvious;\n_Talitha_, you will no doubt remember, was the name of a celebrated\ntribe of Massachusetts Indians; now extinct as the ancient Medes. I\npeered and pryed about the Devil-dam; from her, hopped over to the\nTit-bit; and finally, going on board the Talitha, looked around her for\na moment, and then decided that this was the very ship for us.\n\nYou may have seen many a quaint craft in your day, for aught I\nknow;\u2014square-toed luggers; mountainous Japanese junks; butter-box\ngalliots, and what not; but take my word for it, you never saw such a\nrare old craft as this same rare old Talitha. She was a ship of the old\nschool, rather small if anything; with an old-fashioned claw-footed\nlook about her. Long seasoned and weather-stained in the typhoons and\ncalms of all four oceans, her old hull\u2019s complexion was darkened like a\nFrench grenadier\u2019s, who has alike fought in Egypt and Siberia. Her\nvenerable bows looked bearded. Her masts\u2014cut somewhere on the coast of\nJapan, where her original ones were lost overboard in a gale\u2014her masts\nstood stiffly up like the spines of the three old kings of Cologne. Her\nancient decks were worn and wrinkled, like the pilgrim-worshipped\nflag-stone in Canterbury Cathedral where Becket bled. But to all these\nher old antiquities, were added new and marvellous features, pertaining\nto the wild business that for more than half a century she had\nfollowed. Old Captain Zola, many years her chief-mate, before he\ncommanded another vessel of his own, and now a retired seaman, and one\nof the principal owners of the Talitha,\u2014this old Zola, during the term\nof his chief-mateship, had built upon her original grotesqueness, and\ninlaid it, all over, with a quaintness both of material and device,\nunmatched by anything except it be Thorkill-Hake\u2019s carved buckler or\nbedstead. She was apparelled like any barbaric Ethiopian emperor, his\nneck heavy with pendants of polished ivory. She was a thing of\ntrophies. A cannibal of a craft, tricking herself forth in the chased\nbones of her enemies. All round, her unpanelled, open bulwarks were\ngarnished like one continuous jaw, with the long sharp teeth of the\nsperm whale, inserted there for pins, to fasten her old hempen thews\nand tendons to. Those thews ran not through base blocks of land wood,\nbut deftly travelled over sheaves of sea-ivory. Scorning a turnstile\nwheel at her reverend helm, she sported there a tiller; and that tiller\nwas in one mass, curiously carved from the long narrow lower jaw of her\nhereditary foe. The helmsman who steered by that tiller in a tempest,\nfelt like the Tartar, when he holds back his fiery steed by clutching\nits jaw. A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things\nare touched with that.\n\nNow when I looked about the quarter-deck, for some one having\nauthority, in order to propose myself as a candidate for the voyage, at\nfirst I saw nobody; but I could not well overlook a strange sort of\ntent, or rather wigwam, pitched a little behind the main-mast. It\nseemed only a temporary erection used in port. It was of a conical\nshape, some ten feet high; consisting of the long, huge slabs of limber\nblack bone taken from the middle and highest part of the jaws of the\nright-whale. Planted with their broad ends on the deck, a circle of\nthese slabs laced together, mutually sloped towards each other, and at\nthe apex united in a tufted point, where the loose hairy fibres waved\nto and fro like the top-knot on some old Pottowottamie Sachem\u2019s head. A\ntriangular opening faced towards the bows of the ship, so that the\ninsider commanded a complete view forward.\n\nAnd half concealed in this queer tenement, I at length found one who by\nhis aspect seemed to have authority; and who, it being noon, and the\nship\u2019s work suspended, was now enjoying respite from the burden of\ncommand. He was seated on an old-fashioned oaken chair, wriggling all\nover with curious carving; and the bottom of which was formed of a\nstout interlacing of the same elastic stuff of which the wigwam was\nconstructed.\n\nThere was nothing so very particular, perhaps, about the appearance of\nthe elderly man I saw; he was brown and brawny, like most old seamen,\nand heavily rolled up in blue pilot-cloth, cut in the Quaker style;\nonly there was a fine and almost microscopic net-work of the minutest\nwrinkles interlacing round his eyes, which must have arisen from his\ncontinual sailings in many hard gales, and always looking to\nwindward;\u2014for this causes the muscles about the eyes to become pursed\ntogether. Such eye-wrinkles are very effectual in a scowl.\n\n\u201cIs this the Captain of the Talitha?\u201d said I, advancing to the door of\nthe tent.\n\n\u201cSupposing it be the captain of the Talitha, what dost thou want of\nhim?\u201d he demanded.\n\n\u201cI was thinking of shipping.\u201d\n\n\u201cThou wast, wast thou? I see thou art no Nantucketer\u2014ever been in a\nstove boat?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, Sir, I never have.\u201d\n\n\u201cDost know nothing at all about whaling, I dare say\u2014eh?\n\n\u201cNothing, Sir; but I have no doubt I shall soon learn. I\u2019ve been\nseveral voyages in the merchant service, and I think that\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMerchant service be damned. Talk not that lingo to me. Dost see that\nleg?\u2014I\u2019ll take that leg away from thy stern, if ever thou talkest of\nthe marchant service to me again. Marchant service indeed! I suppose\nnow ye feel considerable proud of having served in those marchant\nships. But flukes! man, what makes thee want to go a whaling, eh?\u2014it\nlooks a little suspicious, don\u2019t it, eh?\u2014Hast not been a pirate, hast\nthou?\u2014Didst not rob thy last Captain, didst thou?\u2014Dost not think of\nmurdering the officers when thou gettest to sea?\u201d\n\nI protested my innocence of these things. I saw that under the mask of\nthese half humorous innuendoes, this old seaman, as an insulated\nQuakerish Nantucketer, was full of his insular prejudices, and rather\ndistrustful of all aliens, unless they hailed from Cape Cod or the\nVineyard.\n\n\u201cBut what takes thee a-whaling? I want to know that before I think of\nshipping ye.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sir, I want to see what whaling is. I want to see the world.\u201d\n\n\u201cWant to see what whaling is, eh? Have ye clapped eye on Captain Jordyn?\u201d\n\n\u201cWho is Captain Jordyn, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, aye, I thought so. Captain Jordyn is the Captain of this ship.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am mistaken then. I thought I was speaking to the Captain himself.\u201d\n\n\u201cThou art speaking to Captain Zola\u2014that\u2019s who ye are speaking to,\nyoung man. It belongs to me and Captain Alen to see the Talitha fitted\nout for the voyage, and supplied with all her needs, including crew. We\nare part owners and agents. But as I was going to say, if thou wantest\nto know what whaling is, as thou tellest ye do, I can put ye in a way\nof finding it out before ye bind yourself to it, past backing out. Clap\neye on Captain Jordyn, young man, and thou wilt find that he has only one\nleg.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean, sir? Was the other one lost by a whale?\u201d\n\n\u201cLost by a whale! Young man, come nearer to me: it was devoured, chewed\nup, crunched by the monstrousest parmacetty that ever chipped a\nboat!\u2014ah, ah!\u201d\n\nI was a little alarmed by his energy, perhaps also a little touched at\nthe hearty grief in his concluding exclamation, but said as calmly as I\ncould, \u201cWhat you say is no doubt true enough, sir; but how could I know\nthere was any peculiar ferocity in that particular whale, though indeed\nI might have inferred as much from the simple fact of the accident.\u201d\n\n\u201cLook ye now, young man, thy lungs are a sort of soft, d\u2019ye see; thou\ndost not talk shark a bit. _Sure_, ye\u2019ve been to sea before now; sure\nof that?\u201d\n\n\u201cSir,\u201d said I, \u201cI thought I told you that I had been four voyages in\nthe merchant\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cHard down out of that! Mind what I said about the marchant\nservice\u2014don\u2019t aggravate me\u2014I won\u2019t have it. But let us understand each\nother. I have given thee a hint about what whaling is; do ye yet feel\ninclined for it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery good. Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live\nwhale\u2019s throat, and then jump after it? Answer, quick!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am, sir, if it should be positively indispensable to do so; not to\nbe got rid of, that is; which I don\u2019t take to be the fact.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood again. Now then, thou not only wantest to go a-whaling, to find\nout by experience what whaling is, but ye also want to go in order to\nsee the world? Was not that what ye said? I thought so. Well then, just\nstep forward there, and take a peep over the weather-bow, and then back\nto me and tell me what ye see there.\u201d\n\nFor a moment I stood a little puzzled by this curious request, not\nknowing exactly how to take it, whether humorously or in earnest. But\nconcentrating all his crow\u2019s feet into one scowl, Captain Zola started\nme on the errand.\n\nGoing forward and glancing over the weather bow, I perceived that the\nship swinging to her anchor with the flood-tide, was now obliquely\npointing towards the open ocean. The prospect was unlimited, but\nexceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that I\ncould see.\n\n\u201cWell, what\u2019s the report?\u201d said Zola when I came back; \u201cwhat did ye\nsee?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot much,\u201d I replied\u2014\u201cnothing but water; considerable horizon though,\nand there\u2019s a squall coming up, I think.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, what does thou think then of seeing the world? Do ye wish to go\nround Cape Horn to see any more of it, eh? Can\u2019t ye see the world where\nyou stand?\u201d\n\nI was a little staggered, but go a-whaling I must, and I would; and the\nTalitha was as good a ship as any\u2014I thought the best\u2014and all this I now\nrepeated to Zola. Seeing me so determined, he expressed his\nwillingness to ship me.\n\n\u201cAnd thou mayest as well sign the papers right off,\u201d he added\u2014\u201ccome\nalong with ye.\u201d And so saying, he led the way below deck into the\ncabin.\n\nSeated on the transom was what seemed to me a most uncommon and\nsurprising figure. It turned out to be Captain Alen, who along with\nCaptain Zola was one of the largest owners of the vessel; the other\nshares, as is sometimes the case in these ports, being held by a crowd\nof old annuitants; widows, fatherless children, and chancery wards;\neach owning about the value of a timber head, or a foot of plank, or a\nnail or two in the ship. People in Nantucket invest their money in\nwhaling vessels, the same way that you do yours in approved state\nstocks bringing in good interest.\n\nNow, Alen, like Zola, and indeed many other Nantucketers, was a\nQuaker, the island having been originally settled by that sect; and to\nthis day its inhabitants in general retain in an uncommon measure the\npeculiarities of the Quaker, only variously and anomalously modified by\nthings altogether alien and heterogeneous. For some of these same\nQuakers are the most sanguinary of all sailors and whale-hunters. They\nare fighting Quakers; they are Quakers with a vengeance.\n\nSo that there are instances among them of men, who, named with\nScripture names\u2014a singularly common fashion on the island\u2014and in\nchildhood naturally imbibing the stately dramatic thee and thou of the\nQuaker idiom; still, from the audacious, daring, and boundless\nadventure of their subsequent lives, strangely blend with these\nunoutgrown peculiarities, a thousand bold dashes of character, not\nunworthy a Scandinavian sea-king, or a poetical Pagan Roman. And when\nthese things unite in a man of greatly superior natural force, with a\nglobular brain and a ponderous heart; who has also by the stillness and\nseclusion of many long night-watches in the remotest waters, and\nbeneath constellations never seen here at the north, been led to think\nuntraditionally and independently; receiving all nature\u2019s sweet or\nsavage impressions fresh from her own virgin voluntary and confiding\nbreast, and thereby chiefly, but with some help from accidental\nadvantages, to learn a bold and nervous lofty language\u2014that man makes\none in a whole nation\u2019s census\u2014a mighty pageant creature, formed for\nnoble tragedies. Nor will it at all detract from him, dramatically\nregarded, if either by birth or other circumstances, he have what seems\na half wilful overruling morbidness at the bottom of his nature. For\nall men tragically great are made so through a certain morbidness. Be\nsure of this, O young ambition, all mortal greatness is but disease.\nBut, as yet we have not to do with such an one, but with quite another;\nand still a man, who, if indeed peculiar, it only results again from\nanother phase of the Quaker, modified by individual circumstances.\n\nLike Captain Zola, Captain Alen was a well-to-do, retired whaleman.\nBut unlike Captain Zola\u2014who cared not a rush for what are called\nserious things, and indeed deemed those self-same serious things the\nveriest of all trifles\u2014Captain Alen had not only been originally\neducated according to the strictest sect of Nantucket Quakerism, but\nall his subsequent ocean life, and the sight of many unclad, lovely\nisland creatures, round the Horn\u2014all that had not moved this native\nborn Quaker one single jot, had not so much as altered one angle of his\nvest. Still, for all this immutableness, was there some lack of common\nconsistency about worthy Captain Alen. Though refusing, from\nconscientious scruples, to bear arms against land invaders, yet himself\nhad illimitably invaded the Atlantic and Pacific; and though a sworn\nfoe to human bloodshed, yet had he in his straight-bodied coat, spilled\ntuns upon tuns of leviathan gore. How now in the contemplative evening\nof his days, the pious Alen reconciled these things in the\nreminiscence, I do not know; but it did not seem to concern him much,\nand very probably he had long since come to the sage and sensible\nconclusion that a man\u2019s religion is one thing, and this practical world\nquite another. This world pays dividends. Rising from a little\ncabin-boy in short clothes of the drabbest drab, to a harpooneer in a\nbroad shad-bellied waistcoat; from that becoming boat-header,\nchief-mate, and captain, and finally a ship owner; Alen, as I hinted\nbefore, had concluded his adventurous career by wholly retiring from\nactive life at the goodly age of sixty, and dedicating his remaining\ndays to the quiet receiving of his well-earned income.\n\nNow, Alen, I am sorry to say, had the reputation of being an\nincorrigible old hunks, and in his sea-going days, a bitter, hard\ntask-master. They told me in Nantucket, though it certainly seems a\ncurious story, that when he sailed the old Categut whaleman, his crew,\nupon arriving home, were mostly all carried ashore to the hospital,\nsore exhausted and worn out. For a pious man, especially for a Quaker,\nhe was certainly rather hard-hearted, to say the least. He never used\nto swear, though, at his men, they said; but somehow he got an\ninordinate quantity of cruel, unmitigated hard work out of them. When\nAlen was a chief-mate, to have his drab-coloured eye intently looking\nat you, made you feel completely nervous, till you could clutch\nsomething\u2014a hammer or a marling-spike, and go to work like mad, at\nsomething or other, never mind what. Indolence and idleness perished\nbefore him. His own person was the exact embodiment of his utilitarian\ncharacter. On his long, gaunt body, he carried no spare flesh, no\nsuperfluous beard, his chin having a soft, economical nap to it, like\nthe worn nap of his broad-brimmed hat.\n\nSuch, then, was the person that I saw seated on the transom when I\nfollowed Captain Zola down into the cabin. The space between the decks\nwas small; and there, bolt-upright, sat old Alen, who always sat so,\nand never leaned, and this to save his coat tails. His broad-brim was\nplaced beside him; his legs were stiffly crossed; his drab vesture was\nbuttoned up to his chin; and spectacles on nose, he seemed absorbed in\nreading from a ponderous volume.\n\n\u201cAlen,\u201d cried Captain Zola, \u201cat it again, Alen, eh? Ye have been\nstudying those Scriptures, now, for the last thirty years, to my\ncertain knowledge. How far ye got, Alen?\u201d\n\nAs if long habituated to such profane talk from his old shipmate,\nAlen, without noticing his present irreverence, quietly looked up,\nand seeing me, glanced again inquiringly towards Zola.\n\n\u201cHe says he\u2019s our man, Alen,\u201d said Zola, \u201che wants to ship.\u201d\n\n\u201cDost thee?\u201d said Alen, in a hollow tone, and turning round to me.\n\n\u201cI _dost_,\u201d said I unconsciously, he was so intense a Quaker.\n\n\u201cWhat do ye think of him, Alen?\u201d said Zola.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019ll do,\u201d said Alen, eyeing me, and then went on spelling away at\nhis book in a mumbling tone quite audible.\n\nI thought him the queerest old Quaker I ever saw, especially as Zola,\nhis friend and old shipmate, seemed such a blusterer. But I said\nnothing, only looking round me sharply. Zola now threw open a chest,\nand drawing forth the ship\u2019s articles, placed pen and ink before him,\nand seated himself at a little table. I began to think it was high time\nto settle with myself at what terms I would be willing to engage for\nthe voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling business they paid\nno wages; but all hands, including the captain, received certain shares\nof the profits called _lays_, and that these lays were proportioned to\nthe degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the\nship\u2019s company. I was also aware that being a green hand at whaling, my\nown lay would not be very large; but considering that I was used to the\nsea, could steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt\nthat from all I had heard I should be offered at least the 275th\nlay\u2014that is, the 275th part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage,\nwhatever that might eventually amount to. And though the 275th lay was\nwhat they call a rather _long lay_, yet it was better than nothing; and\nif we had a lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I\nwould wear out on it, not to speak of my three years\u2019 beef and board,\nfor which I would not have to pay one stiver.\n\nIt might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely\nfortune\u2014and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am one of those\nthat never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite content if the\nworld is ready to board and lodge me, while I am putting up at this\ngrim sign of the Thunder Cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the\n275th lay would be about the fair thing, but would not have been\nsurprised had I been offered the 200th, considering I was of a\nbroad-shouldered make.\n\nBut one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about\nreceiving a generous share of the profits was this: Ashore, I had heard\nsomething of both Captain Zola and his unaccountable old crony Alen;\nhow that they being the principal proprietors of the Talitha, therefore\nthe other and more inconsiderable and scattered owners, left nearly the\nwhole management of the ship\u2019s affairs to these two. And I did not know\nbut what the stingy old Alen might have a mighty deal to say about\nshipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Talitha,\nquite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible as if at his\nown fireside. Now while Zola was vainly trying to mend a pen with his\njack-knife, old Alen, to my no small surprise, considering that he\nwas such an interested party in these proceedings; Alen never heeded\nus, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, \u201c_Lay_ not up for\nyourselves treasures upon earth, where moth\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, Captain Alen,\u201d interrupted Zola, \u201cwhat d\u2019ye say, what lay\nshall we give this young man?\u201d\n\n\u201cThou knowest best,\u201d was the sepulchral reply, \u201cthe seven hundred and\nseventy-seventh wouldn\u2019t be too much, would it?\u2014\u2018where moth and rust do\ncorrupt, but _lay_\u2014\u2019\u201d\n\n_Lay_, indeed, thought I, and such a lay! the seven hundred and\nseventy-seventh! Well, old Alen, you are determined that I, for one,\nshall not _lay_ up many _lays_ here below, where moth and rust do\ncorrupt. It was an exceedingly _long lay_ that, indeed; and though from\nthe magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet\nthe slightest consideration will show that though seven hundred and\nseventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet, when you come to make a\n_teenth_ of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and\nseventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven\nhundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons; and so I thought at the time.\n\n\u201cWhy, blast your eyes, Alen,\u201d cried Zola, \u201cthou dost not want to\nswindle this young man! he must have more than that.\u201d\n\n\u201cSeven hundred and seventy-seventh,\u201d again said Alen, without lifting\nhis eyes; and then went on mumbling\u2014\u201cfor where your treasure is, there\nwill your heart be also.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am going to put him down for the three hundredth,\u201d said Zola, \u201cdo\nye hear that, Alen! The three hundredth lay, I say.\u201d\n\nAlen laid down his book, and turning solemnly towards him said,\n\u201cCaptain Zola, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the\nduty thou owest to the other owners of this ship\u2014widows and orphans,\nmany of them\u2014and that if we too abundantly reward the labors of this\nyoung man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and those\norphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Zola.\u201d\n\n\u201cThou Alen!\u201d roared Zola, starting up and clattering about the\ncabin. \u201cBlast ye, Captain Alen, if I had followed thy advice in these\nmatters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be\nheavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape\nHorn.\u201d\n\n\u201cCaptain Zola,\u201d said Alen steadily, \u201cthy conscience may be drawing\nten inches of water, or ten fathoms, I can\u2019t tell; but as thou art\nstill an impenitent man, Captain Zola, I greatly fear lest thy\nconscience be but a leaky one; and will in the end sink thee foundering\ndown to the fiery pit, Captain Zola.\u201d\n\n\u201cFiery pit! fiery pit! ye insult me, man; past all natural bearing, ye\ninsult me. It\u2019s an all-fired outrage to tell any human creature that\nhe\u2019s bound to hell. Flukes and flames! Alen, say that again to me,\nand start my soul-bolts, but I\u2019ll\u2014I\u2019ll\u2014yes, I\u2019ll swallow a live goat\nwith all his hair and horns on. Out of the cabin, ye canting,\ndrab-coloured son of a wooden gun\u2014a straight wake with ye!\u201d\n\nAs he thundered out this he made a rush at Alen, but with a\nmarvellous oblique, sliding celerity, Alen for that time eluded him.\n\nAlarmed at this terrible outburst between the two principal and\nresponsible owners of the ship, and feeling half a mind to give up all\nidea of sailing in a vessel so questionably owned and temporarily\ncommanded, I stepped aside from the door to give egress to Alen, who,\nI made no doubt, was all eagerness to vanish from before the awakened\nwrath of Zola. But to my astonishment, he sat down again on the\ntransom very quietly, and seemed to have not the slightest intention of\nwithdrawing. He seemed quite used to impenitent Zola and his ways. As\nfor Zola, after letting off his rage as he had, there seemed no more\nleft in him, and he, too, sat down like a lamb, though he twitched a\nlittle as if still nervously agitated. \u201cWhew!\u201d he whistled at last\u2014\u201cthe\nsquall\u2019s gone off to leeward, I think. Alen, thou used to be good at\nsharpening a lance, mend that pen, will ye. My jack-knife here needs\nthe grindstone. That\u2019s he; thank ye, Alen. Now then, my young man,\nAdreanna\u2019s thy name, didn\u2019t ye say? Well then, down ye go here, Adreanna,\nfor the three hundredth lay.\u201d\n\n\u201cCaptain Zola,\u201d said I, \u201cI have a friend with me who wants to ship\ntoo\u2014shall I bring him down to-morrow?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo be sure,\u201d said Zola. \u201cFetch him along, and we\u2019ll look at him.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat lay does he want?\u201d groaned Alen, glancing up from the book in\nwhich he had again been burying himself.\n\n\u201cOh! never thee mind about that, Alen,\u201d said Zola. \u201cHas he ever\nwhaled it any?\u201d turning to me.\n\n\u201cKilled more whales than I can count, Captain Zola.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, bring him along then.\u201d\n\nAnd, after signing the papers, off I went; nothing doubting but that I\nhad done a good morning\u2019s work, and that the Talitha was the identical\nship that Yojo had provided to carry Horatio and me round the Cape.\n\nBut I had not proceeded far, when I began to bethink me that the\nCaptain with whom I was to sail yet remained unseen by me; though,\nindeed, in many cases, a whale-ship will be completely fitted out, and\nreceive all her crew on board, ere the captain makes himself visible by\narriving to take command; for sometimes these voyages are so prolonged,\nand the shore intervals at home so exceedingly brief, that if the\ncaptain have a family, or any absorbing concernment of that sort, he\ndoes not trouble himself much about his ship in port, but leaves her to\nthe owners till all is ready for sea. However, it is always as well to\nhave a look at him before irrevocably committing yourself into his\nhands. Turning back I accosted Captain Zola, inquiring where Captain\nJordyn was to be found.\n\n\u201cAnd what dost thou want of Captain Jordyn? It\u2019s all right enough; thou\nart shipped.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, but I should like to see him.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I don\u2019t think thou wilt be able to at present. I don\u2019t know\nexactly what\u2019s the matter with him; but he keeps close inside the\nhouse; a sort of sick, and yet he don\u2019t look so. In fact, he ain\u2019t\nsick; but no, he isn\u2019t well either. Any how, young man, he won\u2019t always\nsee me, so I don\u2019t suppose he will thee. He\u2019s a queer man, Captain\nJordyn\u2014so some think\u2014but a good one. Oh, thou\u2019lt like him well enough; no\nfear, no fear. He\u2019s a grand, ungodly, god-like man, Captain Jordyn;\ndoesn\u2019t speak much; but, when he does speak, then you may well listen.\nMark ye, be forewarned; Jordyn\u2019s above the common; Jordyn\u2019s been in\ncolleges, as well as \u2019mong the cannibals; been used to deeper wonders\nthan the waves; fixed his fiery lance in mightier, stranger foes than\nwhales. His lance! aye, the keenest and the surest that out of all our\nisle! Oh! he ain\u2019t Captain Alen; no, and he ain\u2019t Captain Zola;\n_he\u2019s Jordyn_, boy; and Jordyn of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd a very vile one. When that wicked king was slain, the dogs, did\nthey not lick his blood?\u201d\n\n\u201cCome hither to me\u2014hither, hither,\u201d said Zola, with a significance in\nhis eye that almost startled me. \u201cLook ye, lad; never say that on board\nthe Talitha. Never say it anywhere. Captain Jordyn did not name himself.\n\u2019Twas a foolish, ignorant whim of his crazy, widowed mother, who died\nwhen he was only a twelvemonth old. And yet the old squaw Tistig, at\nGayhead, said that the name would somehow prove prophetic. And,\nperhaps, other fools like her may tell thee the same. I wish to warn\nthee. It\u2019s a lie. I know Captain Jordyn well; I\u2019ve sailed with him as\nmate years ago; I know what he is\u2014a good man\u2014not a pious, good man,\nlike Alen, but a swearing good man\u2014something like me\u2014only there\u2019s a\ngood deal more of him. Aye, aye, I know that he was never very jolly;\nand I know that on the passage home, he was a little out of his mind\nfor a spell; but it was the sharp shooting pains in his bleeding stump\nthat brought that about, as any one might see. I know, too, that ever\nsince he lost his leg last voyage by that accursed whale, he\u2019s been a\nkind of moody\u2014desperate moody, and savage sometimes; but that will all\npass off. And once for all, let me tell thee and assure thee, young\nman, it\u2019s better to sail with a moody good captain than a laughing bad\none. So good-bye to thee\u2014and wrong not Captain Jordyn, because he happens\nto have a wicked name. Besides, my boy, he has a wife\u2014not three voyages\nwedded\u2014a sweet, resigned girl. Think of that; by that sweet girl that\nold man has a child: hold ye then there can be any utter, hopeless harm\nin Jordyn? No, no, my lad; stricken, blasted, if he be, Jordyn has his\nhumanities!\u201d\n\nAs I walked away, I was full of thoughtfulness; what had been\nincidentally revealed to me of Captain Jordyn, filled me with a certain\nwild vagueness of painfulness concerning him. And somehow, at the time,\nI felt a sympathy and a sorrow for him, but for I don\u2019t know what,\nunless it was the cruel loss of his leg. And yet I also felt a strange\nawe of him; but that sort of awe, which I cannot at all describe, was\nnot exactly awe; I do not know what it was. But I felt it; and it did\nnot disincline me towards him; though I felt impatience at what seemed\nlike mystery in him, so imperfectly as he was known to me then.\nHowever, my thoughts were at length carried in other directions, so\nthat for the present dark Jordyn slipped my mind.\n\n\nCHAPTER 17. The Ramadan.\n\nAs Horatio\u2019s Ramadan, or Fasting and Humiliation, was to continue all\nday, I did not choose to disturb him till towards night-fall; for I\ncherish the greatest respect towards everybody\u2019s religious obligations,\nnever mind how comical, and could not find it in my heart to undervalue\neven a congregation of ants worshipping a toad-stool; or those other\ncreatures in certain parts of our earth, who with a degree of\nfootmanism quite unprecedented in other planets, bow down before the\ntorso of a deceased landed proprietor merely on account of the\ninordinate possessions yet owned and rented in his name.\n\nI say, we good Presbyterian Christians should be charitable in these\nthings, and not fancy ourselves so vastly superior to other mortals,\npagans and what not, because of their half-crazy conceits on these\nsubjects. There was Horatio, now, certainly entertaining the most\nabsurd notions about Yojo and his Ramadan;\u2014but what of that? Horatio\nthought he knew what he was about, I suppose; he seemed to be content;\nand there let him rest. All our arguing with him would not avail; let\nhim be, I say: and Heaven have mercy on us all\u2014Presbyterians and Pagans\nalike\u2014for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and\nsadly need mending.\n\nTowards evening, when I felt assured that all his performances and\nrituals must be over, I went up to his room and knocked at the door;\nbut no answer. I tried to open it, but it was fastened inside.\n\u201cHoratio,\u201d said I softly through the key-hole:\u2014all silent. \u201cI say,\nHoratio! why don\u2019t you speak? It\u2019s I\u2014Adreanna.\u201d But all remained still\nas before. I began to grow alarmed. I had allowed him such abundant\ntime; I thought he might have had an apoplectic fit. I looked through\nthe key-hole; but the door opening into an odd corner of the room, the\nkey-hole prospect was but a crooked and sinister one. I could only see\npart of the foot-board of the bed and a line of the wall, but nothing\nmore. I was surprised to behold resting against the wall the wooden\nshaft of Horatio\u2019s harpoon, which the landlady the evening previous\nhad taken from him, before our mounting to the chamber. That\u2019s strange,\nthought I; but at any rate, since the harpoon stands yonder, and he\nseldom or never goes abroad without it, therefore he must be inside\nhere, and no possible mistake.\n\n\u201cHoratio!\u2014Horatio!\u201d\u2014all still. Something must have happened.\nApoplexy! I tried to burst open the door; but it stubbornly resisted.\nRunning down stairs, I quickly stated my suspicions to the first person\nI met\u2014the chamber-maid. \u201cLa! la!\u201d she cried, \u201cI thought something must\nbe the matter. I went to make the bed after breakfast, and the door was\nlocked; and not a mouse to be heard; and it\u2019s been just so silent ever\nsince. But I thought, may be, you had both gone off and locked your\nbaggage in for safe keeping. La! la, ma\u2019am!\u2014Mistress! murder! Mrs.\nHussey! apoplexy!\u201d\u2014and with these cries, she ran towards the kitchen, I\nfollowing.\n\nMrs. Hussey soon appeared, with a mustard-pot in one hand and a\nvinegar-cruet in the other, having just broken away from the occupation\nof attending to the castors, and scolding her little black boy\nmeantime.\n\n\u201cWood-house!\u201d cried I, \u201cwhich way to it? Run for God\u2019s sake, and fetch\nsomething to pry open the door\u2014the axe!\u2014the axe! he\u2019s had a stroke;\ndepend upon it!\u201d\u2014and so saying I was unmethodically rushing up stairs\nagain empty-handed, when Mrs. Hussey interposed the mustard-pot and\nvinegar-cruet, and the entire castor of her countenance.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with you, young man?\u201d\n\n\u201cGet the axe! For God\u2019s sake, run for the doctor, some one, while I pry\nit open!\u201d\n\n\u201cLook here,\u201d said the landlady, quickly putting down the vinegar-cruet,\nso as to have one hand free; \u201clook here; are you talking about prying\nopen any of my doors?\u201d\u2014and with that she seized my arm. \u201cWhat\u2019s the\nmatter with you? What\u2019s the matter with you, shipmate?\u201d\n\nIn as calm, but rapid a manner as possible, I gave her to understand\nthe whole case. Unconsciously clapping the vinegar-cruet to one side of\nher nose, she ruminated for an instant; then exclaimed\u2014\u201cNo! I haven\u2019t\nseen it since I put it there.\u201d Running to a little closet under the\nlanding of the stairs, she glanced in, and returning, told me that\nHoratio\u2019s harpoon was missing. \u201cHe\u2019s killed himself,\u201d she cried. \u201cIt\u2019s\nunfort\u2019nate Stiggs done over again\u2014there goes another counterpane\u2014God\npity his poor mother!\u2014it will be the ruin of my house. Has the poor lad\na sister? Where\u2019s that girl?\u2014there, Betty, go to Snarles the Painter,\nand tell him to paint me a sign, with\u2014\u201cno suicides permitted here, and\nno smoking in the parlor;\u201d\u2014might as well kill both birds at once. Kill?\nThe Lord be merciful to his ghost! What\u2019s that noise there? You, young\nman, avast there!\u201d\n\nAnd running up after me, she caught me as I was again trying to force\nopen the door.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t allow it; I won\u2019t have my premises spoiled. Go for the\nlocksmith, there\u2019s one about a mile from here. But avast!\u201d putting her\nhand in her side-pocket, \u201chere\u2019s a key that\u2019ll fit, I guess; let\u2019s\nsee.\u201d And with that, she turned it in the lock; but, alas! Horatio\u2019s\nsupplemental bolt remained unwithdrawn within.\n\n\u201cHave to burst it open,\u201d said I, and was running down the entry a\nlittle, for a good start, when the landlady caught at me, again vowing\nI should not break down her premises; but I tore from her, and with a\nsudden bodily rush dashed myself full against the mark.\n\nWith a prodigious noise the door flew open, and the knob slamming\nagainst the wall, sent the plaster to the ceiling; and there, good\nheavens! there sat Horatio, altogether cool and self-collected; right\nin the middle of the room; squatting on his hams, and holding Yojo on\ntop of his head. He looked neither one way nor the other way, but sat\nlike a carved image with scarce a sign of active life.\n\n\u201cHoratio,\u201d said I, going up to him, \u201cHoratio, what\u2019s the matter with\nyou?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe hain\u2019t been a sittin\u2019 so all day, has he?\u201d said the landlady.\n\nBut all we said, not a word could we drag out of him; I almost felt\nlike pushing him over, so as to change his position, for it was almost\nintolerable, it seemed so painfully and unnaturally constrained;\nespecially, as in all probability he had been sitting so for upwards of\neight or ten hours, going too without his regular meals.\n\n\u201cMrs. Hussey,\u201d said I, \u201che\u2019s _alive_ at all events; so leave us, if you\nplease, and I will see to this strange affair myself.\u201d\n\nClosing the door upon the landlady, I endeavored to prevail upon\nHoratio to take a chair; but in vain. There he sat; and all he could\ndo\u2014for all my polite arts and blandishments\u2014he would not move a peg,\nnor say a single word, nor even look at me, nor notice my presence in\nthe slightest way.\n\nI wonder, thought I, if this can possibly be a part of his Ramadan; do\nthey fast on their hams that way in his native island. It must be so;\nyes, it\u2019s part of his creed, I suppose; well, then, let him rest; he\u2019ll\nget up sooner or later, no doubt. It can\u2019t last for ever, thank God,\nand his Ramadan only comes once a year; and I don\u2019t believe it\u2019s very\npunctual then.\n\nI went down to supper. After sitting a long time listening to the long\nstories of some sailors who had just come from a plum-pudding voyage,\nas they called it (that is, a short whaling-voyage in a schooner or\nbrig, confined to the north of the line, in the Atlantic Ocean only);\nafter listening to these plum-puddingers till nearly eleven o\u2019clock, I\nwent up stairs to go to bed, feeling quite sure by this time Horatio\nmust certainly have brought his Ramadan to a termination. But no; there\nhe was just where I had left him; he had not stirred an inch. I began\nto grow vexed with him; it seemed so downright senseless and insane to\nbe sitting there all day and half the night on his hams in a cold room,\nholding a piece of wood on his head.\n\n\u201cFor heaven\u2019s sake, Horatio, get up and shake yourself; get up and\nhave some supper. You\u2019ll starve; you\u2019ll kill yourself, Horatio.\u201d But\nnot a word did he reply.\n\nDespairing of him, therefore, I determined to go to bed and to sleep;\nand no doubt, before a great while, he would follow me. But previous to\nturning in, I took my heavy bearskin jacket, and threw it over him, as\nit promised to be a very cold night; and he had nothing but his\nordinary round jacket on. For some time, do all I would, I could not\nget into the faintest doze. I had blown out the candle; and the mere\nthought of Horatio\u2014not four feet off\u2014sitting there in that uneasy\nposition, stark alone in the cold and dark; this made me really\nwretched. Think of it; sleeping all night in the same room with a wide\nawake pagan on his hams in this dreary, unaccountable Ramadan!\n\nBut somehow I dropped off at last, and knew nothing more till break of\nday; when, looking over the bedside, there squatted Horatio, as if he\nhad been screwed down to the floor. But as soon as the first glimpse of\nsun entered the window, up he got, with stiff and grating joints, but\nwith a cheerful look; limped towards me where I lay; pressed his\nforehead again against mine; and said his Ramadan was over.\n\nNow, as I before hinted, I have no objection to any person\u2019s religion,\nbe it what it may, so long as that person does not kill or insult any\nother person, because that other person don\u2019t believe it also. But when\na man\u2019s religion becomes really frantic; when it is a positive torment\nto him; and, in fine, makes this earth of ours an uncomfortable inn to\nlodge in; then I think it high time to take that individual aside and\nargue the point with him.\n\nAnd just so I now did with Horatio. \u201cHoratio,\u201d said I, \u201cget into bed\nnow, and lie and listen to me.\u201d I then went on, beginning with the rise\nand progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various\nreligions of the present time, during which time I labored to show\nHoratio that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings\nin cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad for the health;\nuseless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene\nand common sense. I told him, too, that he being in other things such\nan extremely sensible and sagacious savage, it pained me, very badly\npained me, to see him now so deplorably foolish about this ridiculous\nRamadan of his. Besides, argued I, fasting makes the body cave in;\nhence the spirit caves in; and all thoughts born of a fast must\nnecessarily be half-starved. This is the reason why most dyspeptic\nreligionists cherish such melancholy notions about their hereafters. In\none word, Horatio, said I, rather digressively; hell is an idea first\nborn on an undigested apple-dumpling; and since then perpetuated\nthrough the hereditary dyspepsias nurtured by Ramadans.\n\nI then asked Horatio whether he himself was ever troubled with\ndyspepsia; expressing the idea very plainly, so that he could take it\nin. He said no; only upon one memorable occasion. It was after a great\nfeast given by his father the king, on the gaining of a great battle\nwherein fifty of the enemy had been killed by about two o\u2019clock in the\nafternoon, and all cooked and eaten that very evening.\n\n\u201cNo more, Horatio,\u201d said I, shuddering; \u201cthat will do;\u201d for I knew the\ninferences without his further hinting them. I had seen a sailor who\nhad visited that very island, and he told me that it was the custom,\nwhen a great battle had been gained there, to barbecue all the slain in\nthe yard or garden of the victor; and then, one by one, they were\nplaced in great wooden trenchers, and garnished round like a pilau,\nwith breadfruit and cocoanuts; and with some parsley in their mouths,\nwere sent round with the victor\u2019s compliments to all his friends, just\nas though these presents were so many Christmas turkeys.\n\nAfter all, I do not think that my remarks about religion made much\nimpression upon Horatio. Because, in the first place, he somehow\nseemed dull of hearing on that important subject, unless considered\nfrom his own point of view; and, in the second place, he did not more\nthan one third understand me, couch my ideas simply as I would; and,\nfinally, he no doubt thought he knew a good deal more about the true\nreligion than I did. He looked at me with a sort of condescending\nconcern and compassion, as though he thought it a great pity that such\na sensible young man should be so hopelessly lost to evangelical pagan\npiety.\n\nAt last we rose and dressed; and Horatio, taking a prodigiously hearty\nbreakfast of chowders of all sorts, so that the landlady should not\nmake much profit by reason of his Ramadan, we sallied out to board the\nTalitha, sauntering along, and picking our teeth with halibut bones.\n\n\nCHAPTER 18. His Mark.\n\nAs we were walking down the end of the wharf towards the ship, Horatio\ncarrying his harpoon, Captain Zola in his gruff voice loudly hailed us\nfrom his wigwam, saying he had not suspected my friend was a cannibal,\nand furthermore announcing that he let no cannibals on board that\ncraft, unless they previously produced their papers.\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean by that, Captain Zola?\u201d said I, now jumping on the\nbulwarks, and leaving my comrade standing on the wharf.\n\n\u201cI mean,\u201d he replied, \u201che must show his papers.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said Captain Alen in his hollow voice, sticking his head from\nbehind Zola\u2019s, out of the wigwam. \u201cHe must show that he\u2019s converted.\nSon of darkness,\u201d he added, turning to Horatio, \u201cart thou at present\nin communion with any Christian church?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy,\u201d said I, \u201che\u2019s a member of the first Congregational Church.\u201d Here\nbe it said, that many tattooed savages sailing in Nantucket ships at\nlast come to be converted into the churches.\n\n\u201cFirst Congregational Church,\u201d cried Alen, \u201cwhat! that worships in\nDeacon Deuteronomy Coleman\u2019s meeting-house?\u201d and so saying, taking out\nhis spectacles, he rubbed them with his great yellow bandana\nhandkerchief, and putting them on very carefully, came out of the\nwigwam, and leaning stiffly over the bulwarks, took a good long look at\nHoratio.\n\n\u201cHow long hath he been a member?\u201d he then said, turning to me; \u201cnot\nvery long, I rather guess, young man.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d said Zola, \u201cand he hasn\u2019t been baptized right either, or it\nwould have washed some of that devil\u2019s blue off his face.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo tell, now,\u201d cried Alen, \u201cis this Philistine a regular member of\nDeacon Deuteronomy\u2019s meeting? I never saw him going there, and I pass\nit every Lord\u2019s day.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know anything about Deacon Deuteronomy or his meeting,\u201d said\nI; \u201call I know is, that Horatio here is a born member of the First\nCongregational Church. He is a deacon himself, Horatio is.\u201d\n\n\u201cYoung man,\u201d said Alen sternly, \u201cthou art skylarking with me\u2014explain\nthyself, thou young Hittite. What church dost thee mean? answer me.\u201d\n\nFinding myself thus hard pushed, I replied. \u201cI mean, sir, the same\nancient Catholic Church to which you and I, and Captain Zola there,\nand Horatio here, and all of us, and every mother\u2019s son and soul of us\nbelong; the great and everlasting First Congregation of this whole\nworshipping world; we all belong to that; only some of us cherish some\nqueer crotchets no ways touching the grand belief; in _that_ we all\njoin hands.\u201d\n\n\u201cSplice, thou mean\u2019st _splice_ hands,\u201d cried Zola, drawing nearer.\n\u201cYoung man, you\u2019d better ship for a missionary, instead of a fore-mast\nhand; I never heard a better sermon. Deacon Deuteronomy\u2014why Father\nMapple himself couldn\u2019t beat it, and he\u2019s reckoned something. Come\naboard, come aboard; never mind about the papers. I say, tell Quohog\nthere\u2014what\u2019s that you call him? tell Quohog to step along. By the great\nanchor, what a harpoon he\u2019s got there! looks like good stuff that; and\nhe handles it about right. I say, Quohog, or whatever your name is, did\nyou ever stand in the head of a whale-boat? did you ever strike a\nfish?\u201d\n\nWithout saying a word, Horatio, in his wild sort of way, jumped upon\nthe bulwarks, from thence into the bows of one of the whale-boats\nhanging to the side; and then bracing his left knee, and poising his\nharpoon, cried out in some such way as this:\u2014\n\n\u201cCap\u2019ain, you see him small drop tar on water dere? You see him? well,\nspose him one whale eye, well, den!\u201d and taking sharp aim at it, he\ndarted the iron right over old Alen\u2019s broad brim, clean across the\nship\u2019s decks, and struck the glistening tar spot out of sight.\n\n\u201cNow,\u201d said Horatio, quietly hauling in the line, \u201cspos-ee him whale-e\neye; why, dad whale dead.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuick, Alen,\u201d said Zola, his partner, who, aghast at the close\nvicinity of the flying harpoon, had retreated towards the cabin\ngangway. \u201cQuick, I say, you Alen, and get the ship\u2019s papers. We must\nhave Hedgehog there, I mean Quohog, in one of our boats. Look ye,\nQuohog, we\u2019ll give ye the ninetieth lay, and that\u2019s more than ever was\ngiven a harpooneer yet out of Nantucket.\u201d\n\nSo down we went into the cabin, and to my great joy Horatio was soon\nenrolled among the same ship\u2019s company to which I myself belonged.\n\nWhen all preliminaries were over and Zola had got everything ready for\nsigning, he turned to me and said, \u201cI guess, Quohog there don\u2019t know\nhow to write, does he? I say, Quohog, blast ye! dost thou sign thy name\nor make thy mark?\u201d\n\nBut at this question, Horatio, who had twice or thrice before taken\npart in similar ceremonies, looked no ways abashed; but taking the\noffered pen, copied upon the paper, in the proper place, an exact\ncounterpart of a queer round figure which was tattooed upon his arm; so\nthat through Captain Zola\u2019s obstinate mistake touching his\nappellative, it stood something like this:\u2014\n\nQuohog. his X mark.\n\nMeanwhile Captain Alen sat earnestly and steadfastly eyeing Horatio,\nand at last rising solemnly and fumbling in the huge pockets of his\nbroad-skirted drab coat, took out a bundle of tracts, and selecting one\nentitled \u201cThe Latter Day Coming; or No Time to Lose,\u201d placed it in\nHoratio\u2019s hands, and then grasping them and the book with both his,\nlooked earnestly into his eyes, and said, \u201cSon of darkness, I must do\nmy duty by thee; I am part owner of this ship, and feel concerned for\nthe souls of all its crew; if thou still clingest to thy Pagan ways,\nwhich I sadly fear, I beseech thee, remain not for aye a Belial\nbondsman. Spurn the idol Bell, and the hideous dragon; turn from the\nwrath to come; mind thine eye, I say; oh! goodness gracious! steer\nclear of the fiery pit!\u201d\n\nSomething of the salt sea yet lingered in old Alen\u2019s language,\nheterogeneously mixed with Scriptural and domestic phrases.\n\n\u201cAvast there, avast there, Alen, avast now spoiling our harpooneer,\u201d\ncried Zola. \u201cPious harpooneers never make good voyagers\u2014it takes the\nshark out of \u2019em; no harpooneer is worth a straw who aint pretty\nsharkish. There was young Nat Swaine, once the bravest boat-header out\nof all Nantucket and the Vineyard; he joined the meeting, and never\ncame to good. He got so frightened about his plaguy soul, that he\nshrinked and sheered away from whales, for fear of after-claps, in case\nhe got stove and went to Davy Jones.\u201d\n\n\u201cZola! Zola!\u201d said Alen, lifting his eyes and hands, \u201cthou thyself,\nas I myself, hast seen many a perilous time; thou knowest, Zola, what\nit is to have the fear of death; how, then, can\u2019st thou prate in this\nungodly guise. Thou beliest thine own heart, Zola. Tell me, when this\nsame Talitha here had her three masts overboard in that typhoon on\nJapan, that same voyage when thou went mate with Captain Jordyn, did\u2019st\nthou not think of Death and the Judgment then?\u201d\n\n\u201cHear him, hear him now,\u201d cried Zola, marching across the cabin, and\nthrusting his hands far down into his pockets,\u2014\u201chear him, all of ye.\nThink of that! When every moment we thought the ship would sink! Death\nand the Judgment then? What? With all three masts making such an\neverlasting thundering against the side; and every sea breaking over\nus, fore and aft. Think of Death and the Judgment then? No! no time to\nthink about Death then. Life was what Captain Jordyn and I was thinking\nof; and how to save all hands\u2014how to rig jury-masts\u2014how to get into the\nnearest port; that was what I was thinking of.\u201d\n\nAlen said no more, but buttoning up his coat, stalked on deck, where\nwe followed him. There he stood, very quietly overlooking some\nsailmakers who were mending a top-sail in the waist. Now and then he\nstooped to pick up a patch, or save an end of tarred twine, which\notherwise might have been wasted.\n\n\nCHAPTER 19. The Prophet.\n\n\u201cShipmates, have ye shipped in that ship?\u201d\n\nHoratio and I had just left the Talitha, and were sauntering away from\nthe water, for the moment each occupied with his own thoughts, when the\nabove words were put to us by a stranger, who, pausing before us,\nlevelled his massive forefinger at the vessel in question. He was but\nshabbily apparelled in faded jacket and patched trowsers; a rag of a\nblack handkerchief investing his neck. A confluent small-pox had in all\ndirections flowed over his face, and left it like the complicated\nribbed bed of a torrent, when the rushing waters have been dried up.\n\n\u201cHave ye shipped in her?\u201d he repeated.\n\n\u201cYou mean the ship Talitha, I suppose,\u201d said I, trying to gain a little\nmore time for an uninterrupted look at him.\n\n\u201cAye, the Talitha\u2014that ship there,\u201d he said, drawing back his whole arm,\nand then rapidly shoving it straight out from him, with the fixed\nbayonet of his pointed finger darted full at the object.\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d said I, \u201cwe have just signed the articles.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnything down there about your souls?\u201d\n\n\u201cAbout what?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, perhaps you hav\u2019n\u2019t got any,\u201d he said quickly. \u201cNo matter though,\nI know many chaps that hav\u2019n\u2019t got any,\u2014good luck to \u2019em; and they are\nall the better off for it. A soul\u2019s a sort of a fifth wheel to a\nwagon.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are you jabbering about, shipmate?\u201d said I.\n\n\u201c_He\u2019s_ got enough, though, to make up for all deficiencies of that\nsort in other chaps,\u201d abruptly said the stranger, placing a nervous\nemphasis upon the word _he_.\n\n\u201cHoratio,\u201d said I, \u201clet\u2019s go; this fellow has broken loose from\nsomewhere; he\u2019s talking about something and somebody we don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\n\u201cStop!\u201d cried the stranger. \u201cYe said true\u2014ye hav\u2019n\u2019t seen Old Thunder\nyet, have ye?\u201d\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s Old Thunder?\u201d said I, again riveted with the insane earnestness\nof his manner.\n\n\u201cCaptain Jordyn.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! the captain of our ship, the Talitha?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, among some of us old sailor chaps, he goes by that name. Ye\nhav\u2019n\u2019t seen him yet, have ye?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, we hav\u2019n\u2019t. He\u2019s sick they say, but is getting better, and will be\nall right again before long.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll right again before long!\u201d laughed the stranger, with a solemnly\nderisive sort of laugh. \u201cLook ye; when Captain Jordyn is all right, then\nthis left arm of mine will be all right; not before.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you know about him?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat did they _tell_ you about him? Say that!\u201d\n\n\u201cThey didn\u2019t tell much of anything about him; only I\u2019ve heard that he\u2019s\na good whale-hunter, and a good captain to his crew.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s true, that\u2019s true\u2014yes, both true enough. But you must jump when\nhe gives an order. Step and growl; growl and go\u2014that\u2019s the word with\nCaptain Jordyn. But nothing about that thing that happened to him off\nCape Horn, long ago, when he lay like dead for three days and nights;\nnothing about that deadly skrimmage with the Spaniard afore the altar\nin Santa?\u2014heard nothing about that, eh? Nothing about the silver\ncalabash he spat into? And nothing about his losing his leg last\nvoyage, according to the prophecy. Didn\u2019t ye hear a word about them\nmatters and something more, eh? No, I don\u2019t think ye did; how could ye?\nWho knows it? Not all Nantucket, I guess. But hows\u2019ever, mayhap, ye\u2019ve\nheard tell about the leg, and how he lost it; aye, ye have heard of\nthat, I dare say. Oh yes, _that_ every one knows a\u2019most\u2014I mean they\nknow he\u2019s only one leg; and that a parmacetti took the other off.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy friend,\u201d said I, \u201cwhat all this gibberish of yours is about, I\ndon\u2019t know, and I don\u2019t much care; for it seems to me that you must be\na little damaged in the head. But if you are speaking of Captain Jordyn,\nof that ship there, the Talitha, then let me tell you, that I know all\nabout the loss of his leg.\u201d\n\n\u201c_All_ about it, eh\u2014sure you do?\u2014all?\u201d\n\n\u201cPretty sure.\u201d\n\nWith finger pointed and eye levelled at the Talitha, the beggar-like\nstranger stood a moment, as if in a troubled reverie; then starting a\nlittle, turned and said:\u2014\u201cYe\u2019ve shipped, have ye? Names down on the\npapers? Well, well, what\u2019s signed, is signed; and what\u2019s to be, will\nbe; and then again, perhaps it won\u2019t be, after all. Anyhow, it\u2019s all\nfixed and arranged a\u2019ready; and some sailors or other must go with him,\nI suppose; as well these as any other men, God pity \u2019em! Morning to ye,\nshipmates, morning; the ineffable heavens bless ye; I\u2019m sorry I stopped\nye.\u201d\n\n\u201cLook here, friend,\u201d said I, \u201cif you have anything important to tell\nus, out with it; but if you are only trying to bamboozle us, you are\nmistaken in your game; that\u2019s all I have to say.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd it\u2019s said very well, and I like to hear a chap talk up that way;\nyou are just the man for him\u2014the likes of ye. Morning to ye, shipmates,\nmorning! Oh! when ye get there, tell \u2019em I\u2019ve concluded not to make one\nof \u2019em.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, my dear fellow, you can\u2019t fool us that way\u2014you can\u2019t fool us. It\nis the easiest thing in the world for a man to look as if he had a\ngreat secret in him.\u201d\n\n\u201cMorning to ye, shipmates, morning.\u201d\n\n\u201cMorning it is,\u201d said I. \u201cCome along, Horatio, let\u2019s leave this crazy\nman. But stop, tell me your name, will you?\u201d\n\n\u201cAlina.\u201d\n\nAlina! thought I, and we walked away, both commenting, after each\nother\u2019s fashion, upon this ragged old sailor; and agreed that he was\nnothing but a humbug, trying to be a bugbear. But we had not gone\nperhaps above a hundred yards, when chancing to turn a corner, and\nlooking back as I did so, who should be seen but Alina following us,\nthough at a distance. Somehow, the sight of him struck me so, that I\nsaid nothing to Horatio of his being behind, but passed on with my\ncomrade, anxious to see whether the stranger would turn the same corner\nthat we did. He did; and then it seemed to me that he was dogging us,\nbut with what intent I could not for the life of me imagine. This\ncircumstance, coupled with his ambiguous, half-hinting, half-revealing,\nshrouded sort of talk, now begat in me all kinds of vague wonderments\nand half-apprehensions, and all connected with the Talitha; and Captain\nJordyn; and the leg he had lost; and the Cape Horn fit; and the silver\ncalabash; and what Captain Zola had said of him, when I left the ship\nthe day previous; and the prediction of the squaw Tistig; and the\nvoyage we had bound ourselves to sail; and a hundred other shadowy\nthings.\n\nI was resolved to satisfy myself whether this ragged Alina was really\ndogging us or not, and with that intent crossed the way with Horatio,\nand on that side of it retraced our steps. But Alina passed on,\nwithout seeming to notice us. This relieved me; and once more, and\nfinally as it seemed to me, I pronounced him in my heart, a humbug.\n\n\nCHAPTER 20. All Astir.\n\nA day or two passed, and there was great activity aboard the Talitha.\nNot only were the old sails being mended, but new sails were coming on\nboard, and bolts of canvas, and coils of rigging; in short, everything\nbetokened that the ship\u2019s preparations were hurrying to a close.\nCaptain Zola seldom or never went ashore, but sat in his wigwam\nkeeping a sharp look-out upon the hands: Alen did all the purchasing\nand providing at the stores; and the men employed in the hold and on\nthe rigging were working till long after night-fall.\n\nOn the day following Horatio\u2019s signing the articles, word was given at\nall the inns where the ship\u2019s company were stopping, that their chests\nmust be on board before night, for there was no telling how soon the\nvessel might be sailing. So Horatio and I got down our traps,\nresolving, however, to sleep ashore till the last. But it seems they\nalways give very long notice in these cases, and the ship did not sail\nfor several days. But no wonder; there was a good deal to be done, and\nthere is no telling how many things to be thought of, before the Talitha\nwas fully equipped.\n\nEvery one knows what a multitude of things\u2014beds, sauce-pans, knives and\nforks, shovels and tongs, napkins, nut-crackers, and what not, are\nindispensable to the business of housekeeping. Just so with whaling,\nwhich necessitates a three-years\u2019 housekeeping upon the wide ocean, far\nfrom all grocers, costermongers, doctors, bakers, and bankers. And\nthough this also holds true of merchant vessels, yet not by any means\nto the same extent as with whalemen. For besides the great length of\nthe whaling voyage, the numerous articles peculiar to the prosecution\nof the fishery, and the impossibility of replacing them at the remote\nharbors usually frequented, it must be remembered, that of all ships,\nwhaling vessels are the most exposed to accidents of all kinds, and\nespecially to the destruction and loss of the very things upon which\nthe success of the voyage most depends. Hence, the spare boats, spare\nspars, and spare lines and harpoons, and spare everythings, almost, but\na spare Captain and duplicate ship.\n\nAt the period of our arrival at the Island, the heaviest storage of the\nTalitha had been almost completed; comprising her beef, bread, water,\nfuel, and iron hoops and staves. But, as before hinted, for some time\nthere was a continual fetching and carrying on board of divers odds and\nends of things, both large and small.\n\nChief among those who did this fetching and carrying was Captain\nAlen\u2019s sister, a lean old lady of a most determined and indefatigable\nspirit, but withal very kindhearted, who seemed resolved that, if _she_\ncould help it, nothing should be found wanting in the Talitha, after\nonce fairly getting to sea. At one time she would come on board with a\njar of pickles for the steward\u2019s pantry; another time with a bunch of\nquills for the chief mate\u2019s desk, where he kept his log; a third time\nwith a roll of flannel for the small of some one\u2019s rheumatic back.\nNever did any woman better deserve her name, which was Charity\u2014Aunt\nCharity, as everybody called her. And like a sister of charity did this\ncharitable Aunt Charity bustle about hither and thither, ready to turn\nher hand and heart to anything that promised to yield safety, comfort,\nand consolation to all on board a ship in which her beloved brother\nAlen was concerned, and in which she herself owned a score or two of\nwell-saved dollars.\n\nBut it was startling to see this excellent hearted Quakeress coming on\nboard, as she did the last day, with a long oil-ladle in one hand, and\na still longer whaling lance in the other. Nor was Alen himself nor\nCaptain Zola at all backward. As for Alen, he carried about with him\na long list of the articles needed, and at every fresh arrival, down\nwent his mark opposite that article upon the paper. Every once in a\nwhile Zola came hobbling out of his whalebone den, roaring at the men\ndown the hatchways, roaring up to the riggers at the mast-head, and\nthen concluded by roaring back into his wigwam.\n\nDuring these days of preparation, Horatio and I often visited the\ncraft, and as often I asked about Captain Jordyn, and how he was, and\nwhen he was going to come on board his ship. To these questions they\nwould answer, that he was getting better and better, and was expected\naboard every day; meantime, the two captains, Zola and Alen, could\nattend to everything necessary to fit the vessel for the voyage. If I\nhad been downright honest with myself, I would have seen very plainly\nin my heart that I did but half fancy being committed this way to so\nlong a voyage, without once laying my eyes on the man who was to be the\nabsolute dictator of it, so soon as the ship sailed out upon the open\nsea. But when a man suspects any wrong, it sometimes happens that if he\nbe already involved in the matter, he insensibly strives to cover up\nhis suspicions even from himself. And much this way it was with me. I\nsaid nothing, and tried to think nothing.\n\nAt last it was given out that some time next day the ship would\ncertainly sail. So next morning, Horatio and I took a very early\nstart.\n\n\nCHAPTER 21. Going Aboard.\n\nIt was nearly six o\u2019clock, but only grey imperfect misty dawn, when we\ndrew nigh the wharf.\n\n\u201cThere are some sailors running ahead there, if I see right,\u201d said I to\nHoratio, \u201cit can\u2019t be shadows; she\u2019s off by sunrise, I guess; come\non!\u201d\n\n\u201cAvast!\u201d cried a voice, whose owner at the same time coming close\nbehind us, laid a hand upon both our shoulders, and then insinuating\nhimself between us, stood stooping forward a little, in the uncertain\ntwilight, strangely peering from Horatio to me. It was Alina.\n\n\u201cGoing aboard?\u201d\n\n\u201cHands off, will you,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cLookee here,\u201d said Horatio, shaking himself, \u201cgo \u2019way!\u201d\n\n\u201cAin\u2019t going aboard, then?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, we are,\u201d said I, \u201cbut what business is that of yours? Do you\nknow, Mr. Alina, that I consider you a little impertinent?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, no; I wasn\u2019t aware of that,\u201d said Alina, slowly and\nwonderingly looking from me to Horatio, with the most unaccountable\nglances.\n\n\u201cAlina,\u201d said I, \u201cyou will oblige my friend and me by withdrawing. We\nare going to the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and would prefer not to be\ndetained.\u201d\n\n\u201cYe be, be ye? Coming back afore breakfast?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s cracked, Horatio,\u201d said I, \u201ccome on.\u201d\n\n\u201cHolloa!\u201d cried stationary Alina, hailing us when we had removed a few\npaces.\n\n\u201cNever mind him,\u201d said I, \u201cHoratio, come on.\u201d\n\nBut he stole up to us again, and suddenly clapping his hand on my\nshoulder, said\u2014\u201cDid ye see anything looking like men going towards that\nship a while ago?\u201d\n\nStruck by this plain matter-of-fact question, I answered, saying, \u201cYes,\nI thought I did see four or five men; but it was too dim to be sure.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery dim, very dim,\u201d said Alina. \u201cMorning to ye.\u201d\n\nOnce more we quitted him; but once more he came softly after us; and\ntouching my shoulder again, said, \u201cSee if you can find \u2019em now, will\nye?\n\n\u201cFind who?\u201d\n\n\u201cMorning to ye! morning to ye!\u201d he rejoined, again moving off. \u201cOh! I\nwas going to warn ye against\u2014but never mind, never mind\u2014it\u2019s all one,\nall in the family too;\u2014sharp frost this morning, ain\u2019t it? Good-bye to\nye. Shan\u2019t see ye again very soon, I guess; unless it\u2019s before the\nGrand Jury.\u201d And with these cracked words he finally departed, leaving\nme, for the moment, in no small wonderment at his frantic impudence.\n\nAt last, stepping on board the Talitha, we found everything in profound\nquiet, not a soul moving. The cabin entrance was locked within; the\nhatches were all on, and lumbered with coils of rigging. Going forward\nto the forecastle, we found the slide of the scuttle open. Seeing a\nlight, we went down, and found only an old rigger there, wrapped in a\ntattered pea-jacket. He was thrown at whole length upon two chests, his\nface downwards and inclosed in his folded arms. The profoundest slumber\nslept upon him.\n\n\u201cThose sailors we saw, Horatio, where can they have gone to?\u201d said I,\nlooking dubiously at the sleeper. But it seemed that, when on the\nwharf, Horatio had not at all noticed what I now alluded to; hence I\nwould have thought myself to have been optically deceived in that\nmatter, were it not for Alina\u2019s otherwise inexplicable question. But I\nbeat the thing down; and again marking the sleeper, jocularly hinted to\nHoratio that perhaps we had best sit up with the body; telling him to\nestablish himself accordingly. He put his hand upon the sleeper\u2019s rear,\nas though feeling if it was soft enough; and then, without more ado,\nsat quietly down there.\n\n\u201cGracious! Horatio, don\u2019t sit there,\u201d said I.\n\n\u201cOh! perry dood seat,\u201d said Horatio, \u201cmy country way; won\u2019t hurt him\nface.\u201d\n\n\u201cFace!\u201d said I, \u201ccall that his face? very benevolent countenance then;\nbut how hard he breathes, he\u2019s heaving himself; get off, Horatio, you\nare heavy, it\u2019s grinding the face of the poor. Get off, Horatio! Look,\nhe\u2019ll twitch you off soon. I wonder he don\u2019t wake.\u201d\n\nHoratio removed himself to just beyond the head of the sleeper, and\nlighted his tomahawk pipe. I sat at the feet. We kept the pipe passing\nover the sleeper, from one to the other. Meanwhile, upon questioning\nhim in his broken fashion, Horatio gave me to understand that, in his\nland, owing to the absence of settees and sofas of all sorts, the king,\nchiefs, and great people generally, were in the custom of fattening\nsome of the lower orders for ottomans; and to furnish a house\ncomfortably in that respect, you had only to buy up eight or ten lazy\nfellows, and lay them round in the piers and alcoves. Besides, it was\nvery convenient on an excursion; much better than those garden-chairs\nwhich are convertible into walking-sticks; upon occasion, a chief\ncalling his attendant, and desiring him to make a settee of himself\nunder a spreading tree, perhaps in some damp marshy place.\n\nWhile narrating these things, every time Horatio received the tomahawk\nfrom me, he flourished the hatchet-side of it over the sleeper\u2019s head.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that for, Horatio?\u201d\n\n\u201cPerry easy, kill-e; oh! perry easy!\u201d\n\nHe was going on with some wild reminiscences about his tomahawk-pipe,\nwhich, it seemed, had in its two uses both brained his foes and soothed\nhis soul, when we were directly attracted to the sleeping rigger. The\nstrong vapor now completely filling the contracted hole, it began to\ntell upon him. He breathed with a sort of muffledness; then seemed\ntroubled in the nose; then revolved over once or twice; then sat up and\nrubbed his eyes.\n\n\u201cHolloa!\u201d he breathed at last, \u201cwho be ye smokers?\u201d\n\n\u201cShipped men,\u201d answered I, \u201cwhen does she sail?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, aye, ye are going in her, be ye? She sails to-day. The Captain\ncame aboard last night.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat Captain?\u2014Jordyn?\u201d\n\n\u201cWho but him indeed?\u201d\n\nI was going to ask him some further questions concerning Jordyn, when we\nheard a noise on deck.\n\n\u201cHolloa! Starbuck\u2019s astir,\u201d said the rigger. \u201cHe\u2019s a lively chief mate,\nthat; good man, and a pious; but all alive now, I must turn to.\u201d And so\nsaying he went on deck, and we followed.\n\nIt was now clear sunrise. Soon the crew came on board in twos and\nthrees; the riggers bestirred themselves; the mates were actively\nengaged; and several of the shore people were busy in bringing various\nlast things on board. Meanwhile Captain Jordyn remained invisibly\nenshrined within his cabin.\n\n\nCHAPTER 22. Merry Christmas.\n\nAt length, towards noon, upon the final dismissal of the ship\u2019s\nriggers, and after the Talitha had been hauled out from the wharf, and\nafter the ever-thoughtful Charity had come off in a whale-boat, with\nher last gift\u2014a night-cap for Salvador, the second mate, her\nbrother-in-law, and a spare Bible for the steward\u2014after all this, the\ntwo Captains, Zola and Alen, issued from the cabin, and turning to\nthe chief mate, Zola said:\n\n\u201cNow, Mr. Starbuck, are you sure everything is right? Captain Jordyn is\nall ready\u2014just spoke to him\u2014nothing more to be got from shore, eh?\nWell, call all hands, then. Muster \u2019em aft here\u2014blast \u2019em!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo need of profane words, however great the hurry, Zola,\u201d said\nAlen, \u201cbut away with thee, friend Starbuck, and do our bidding.\u201d\n\nHow now! Here upon the very point of starting for the voyage, Captain\nZola and Captain Alen were going it with a high hand on the\nquarter-deck, just as if they were to be joint-commanders at sea, as\nwell as to all appearances in port. And, as for Captain Jordyn, no sign\nof him was yet to be seen; only, they said he was in the cabin. But\nthen, the idea was, that his presence was by no means necessary in\ngetting the ship under weigh, and steering her well out to sea. Indeed,\nas that was not at all his proper business, but the pilot\u2019s; and as he\nwas not yet completely recovered\u2014so they said\u2014therefore, Captain Jordyn\nstayed below. And all this seemed natural enough; especially as in the\nmerchant service many captains never show themselves on deck for a\nconsiderable time after heaving up the anchor, but remain over the\ncabin table, having a farewell merry-making with their shore friends,\nbefore they quit the ship for good with the pilot.\n\nBut there was not much chance to think over the matter, for Captain\nZola was now all alive. He seemed to do most of the talking and\ncommanding, and not Alen.\n\n\u201cAft here, ye sons of bachelors,\u201d he cried, as the sailors lingered at\nthe main-mast. \u201cMr. Starbuck, drive \u2019em aft.\u201d\n\n\u201cStrike the tent there!\u201d\u2014was the next order. As I hinted before, this\nwhalebone marquee was never pitched except in port; and on board the\nTalitha, for thirty years, the order to strike the tent was well known\nto be the next thing to heaving up the anchor.\n\n\u201cMan the capstan! Blood and thunder!\u2014jump!\u201d\u2014was the next command, and\nthe crew sprang for the handspikes.\n\nNow in getting under weigh, the station generally occupied by the pilot\nis the forward part of the ship. And here Alen, who, with Zola, be\nit known, in addition to his other officers, was one of the licensed\npilots of the port\u2014he being suspected to have got himself made a pilot\nin order to save the Nantucket pilot-fee to all the ships he was\nconcerned in, for he never piloted any other craft\u2014Alen, I say, might\nnow be seen actively engaged in looking over the bows for the\napproaching anchor, and at intervals singing what seemed a dismal stave\nof psalmody, to cheer the hands at the windlass, who roared forth some\nsort of a chorus about the girls in Booble Alley, with hearty good\nwill. Nevertheless, not three days previous, Alen had told them that\nno profane songs would be allowed on board the Talitha, particularly in\ngetting under weigh; and Charity, his sister, had placed a small choice\ncopy of Watts in each seaman\u2019s berth.\n\nMeantime, overseeing the other part of the ship, Captain Zola ripped\nand swore astern in the most frightful manner. I almost thought he\nwould sink the ship before the anchor could be got up; involuntarily I\npaused on my handspike, and told Horatio to do the same, thinking of\nthe perils we both ran, in starting on the voyage with such a devil for\na pilot. I was comforting myself, however, with the thought that in\npious Alen might be found some salvation, spite of his seven hundred\nand seventy-seventh lay; when I felt a sudden sharp poke in my rear,\nand turning round, was horrified at the apparition of Captain Zola in\nthe act of withdrawing his leg from my immediate vicinity. That was my\nfirst kick.\n\n\u201cIs that the way they heave in the marchant service?\u201d he roared.\n\u201cSpring, thou sheep-head; spring, and break thy backbone! Why don\u2019t ye\nspring, I say, all of ye\u2014spring! Quohog! spring, thou chap with the red\nwhiskers; spring there, Scotch-cap; spring, thou green pants. Spring, I\nsay, all of ye, and spring your eyes out!\u201d And so saying, he moved\nalong the windlass, here and there using his leg very freely, while\nimperturbable Alen kept leading off with his psalmody. Thinks I,\nCaptain Zola must have been drinking something to-day.\n\nAt last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It\nwas a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into\nnight, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose\nfreezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of\nteeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white\nivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from\nthe bows.\n\nLank Alen, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as\nthe old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering\nfrost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his\nsteady notes were heard,\u2014\n\n\n_\u201cSweet fields beyond the swelling flood, Stand dressed in living\ngreen. So to the Jews old Canaan stood, While Jordan rolled between.\u201d_\n\n\n\nNever did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They\nwere full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in\nthe boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there\nwas yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and\nmeads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the\nspring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.\n\nAt last we gained such an offing, that the two pilots were needed no\nlonger. The stout sail-boat that had accompanied us began ranging\nalongside.\n\nIt was curious and not unpleasing, how Zola and Alen were affected\nat this juncture, especially Captain Alen. For loath to depart, yet;\nvery loath to leave, for good, a ship bound on so long and perilous a\nvoyage\u2014beyond both stormy Capes; a ship in which some thousands of his\nhard earned dollars were invested; a ship, in which an old shipmate\nsailed as captain; a man almost as old as he, once more starting to\nencounter all the terrors of the pitiless jaw; loath to say good-bye to\na thing so every way brimful of every interest to him,\u2014poor old Alen\nlingered long; paced the deck with anxious strides; ran down into the\ncabin to speak another farewell word there; again came on deck, and\nlooked to windward; looked towards the wide and endless waters, only\nbounded by the far-off unseen Eastern Continents; looked towards the\nland; looked aloft; looked right and left; looked everywhere and\nnowhere; and at last, mechanically coiling a rope upon its pin,\nconvulsively grasped stout Zola by the hand, and holding up a lantern,\nfor a moment stood gazing heroically in his face, as much as to say,\n\u201cNevertheless, friend Zola, I can stand it; yes, I can.\u201d\n\nAs for Zola himself, he took it more like a philosopher; but for all\nhis philosophy, there was a tear twinkling in his eye, when the lantern\ncame too near. And he, too, did not a little run from cabin to deck\u2014now\na word below, and now a word with Starbuck, the chief mate.\n\nBut, at last, he turned to his comrade, with a final sort of look about\nhim,\u2014\u201cCaptain Alen\u2014come, old shipmate, we must go. Back the main-yard\nthere! Boat ahoy! Stand by to come close alongside, now! Careful,\ncareful!\u2014come, Alen, boy\u2014say your last. Luck to ye, Starbuck\u2014luck to\nye, Mr. Salvador\u2014luck to ye, Mr. Avery\u2014good-bye and good luck to ye\nall\u2014and this day three years I\u2019ll have a hot supper smoking for ye in\nold Nantucket. Hurrah and away!\u201d\n\n\u201cGod bless ye, and have ye in His holy keeping, men,\u201d murmured old\nAlen, almost incoherently. \u201cI hope ye\u2019ll have fine weather now, so\nthat Captain Jordyn may soon be moving among ye\u2014a pleasant sun is all he\nneeds, and ye\u2019ll have plenty of them in the tropic voyage ye go. Be\ncareful in the hunt, ye mates. Don\u2019t stave the boats needlessly, ye\nharpooneers; good white cedar plank is raised full three per cent.\nwithin the year. Don\u2019t forget your prayers, either. Mr. Starbuck, mind\nthat cooper don\u2019t waste the spare staves. Oh! the sail-needles are in\nthe green locker! Don\u2019t whale it too much a\u2019 Lord\u2019s days, men; but\ndon\u2019t miss a fair chance either, that\u2019s rejecting Heaven\u2019s good gifts.\nHave an eye to the molasses tierce, Mr. Salvador; it was a little leaky, I\nthought. If ye touch at the islands, Mr. Avery, beware of fornication.\nGood-bye, good-bye! Don\u2019t keep that cheese too long down in the hold,\nMr. Starbuck; it\u2019ll spoil. Be careful with the butter\u2014twenty cents the\npound it was, and mind ye, if\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, come, Captain Alen; stop palavering,\u2014away!\u201d and with that,\nZola hurried him over the side, and both dropt into the boat.\n\nShip and boat diverged; the cold, damp night breeze blew between; a\nscreaming gull flew overhead; the two hulls wildly rolled; we gave\nthree heavy-hearted cheers, and blindly plunged like fate into the lone\nAtlantic.\n\n\nCHAPTER 23. The Lee Shore.\n\nSome chapters back, one Bulkington was spoken of, a tall, newlanded\nmariner, encountered in New Bedford at the inn.\n\nWhen on that shivering winter\u2019s night, the Talitha thrust her vindictive\nbows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her\nhelm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon\nthe man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years\u2019 dangerous\nvoyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another\ntempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet. Wonderfullest\nthings are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs;\nthis six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only\nsay that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that\nmiserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give\nsuccor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort,\nhearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that\u2019s kind to our\nmortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship\u2019s\ndirest jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land,\nthough it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and\nthrough. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing,\nfights \u2019gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks\nall the lashed sea\u2019s landlessness again; for refuge\u2019s sake forlornly\nrushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!\n\nKnow ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally\nintolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid\neffort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the\nwildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the\ntreacherous, slavish shore?\n\nBut as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless,\nindefinite as God\u2014so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite,\nthan be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For\nworm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the\nterrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O\nBulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy\nocean-perishing\u2014straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!\n\n\nCHAPTER 24. The Advocate.\n\nAs Horatio and I are now fairly embarked in this business of whaling;\nand as this business of whaling has somehow come to be regarded among\nlandsmen as a rather unpoetical and disreputable pursuit; therefore, I\nam all anxiety to convince ye, ye landsmen, of the injustice hereby\ndone to us hunters of whales.\n\nIn the first place, it may be deemed almost superfluous to establish\nthe fact, that among people at large, the business of whaling is not\naccounted on a level with what are called the liberal professions. If a\nstranger were introduced into any miscellaneous metropolitan society,\nit would but slightly advance the general opinion of his merits, were\nhe presented to the company as a harpooneer, say; and if in emulation\nof the naval officers he should append the initials S.W.F. (Sperm Whale\nFishery) to his visiting card, such a procedure would be deemed\npre-eminently presuming and ridiculous.\n\nDoubtless one leading reason why the world declines honoring us\nwhalemen, is this: they think that, at best, our vocation amounts to a\nbutchering sort of business; and that when actively engaged therein, we\nare surrounded by all manner of defilements. Butchers we are, that is\ntrue. But butchers, also, and butchers of the bloodiest badge have been\nall Martial Commanders whom the world invariably delights to honor. And\nas for the matter of the alleged uncleanliness of our business, ye\nshall soon be initiated into certain facts hitherto pretty generally\nunknown, and which, upon the whole, will triumphantly plant the sperm\nwhale-ship at least among the cleanliest things of this tidy earth. But\neven granting the charge in question to be true; what disordered\nslippery decks of a whale-ship are comparable to the unspeakable\ncarrion of those battle-fields from which so many soldiers return to\ndrink in all ladies\u2019 plaudits? And if the idea of peril so much\nenhances the popular conceit of the soldier\u2019s profession; let me assure\nye that many a veteran who has freely marched up to a battery, would\nquickly recoil at the apparition of the sperm whale\u2019s vast tail,\nfanning into eddies the air over his head. For what are the\ncomprehensible terrors of man compared with the interlinked terrors and\nwonders of God!\n\nBut, though the world scouts at us whale hunters, yet does it\nunwittingly pay us the profoundest homage; yea, an all-abounding\nadoration! for almost all the tapers, lamps, and candles that burn\nround the globe, burn, as before so many shrines, to our glory!\n\nBut look at this matter in other lights; weigh it in all sorts of\nscales; see what we whalemen are, and have been.\n\nWhy did the Dutch in De Witt\u2019s time have admirals of their whaling\nfleets? Why did Louis XVI. of France, at his own personal expense, fit\nout whaling ships from Dunkirk, and politely invite to that town some\nscore or two of families from our own island of Nantucket? Why did\nBritain between the years 1750 and 1788 pay to her whalemen in bounties\nupwards of \u00a31,000,000? And lastly, how comes it that we whalemen of\nAmerica now outnumber all the rest of the banded whalemen in the world;\nsail a navy of upwards of seven hundred vessels; manned by eighteen\nthousand men; yearly consuming 4,000,000 of dollars; the ships worth,\nat the time of sailing, $20,000,000! and every year importing into our\nharbors a well reaped harvest of $7,000,000. How comes all this, if\nthere be not something puissant in whaling?\n\nBut this is not the half; look again.\n\nI freely assert, that the cosmopolite philosopher cannot, for his life,\npoint out one single peaceful influence, which within the last sixty\nyears has operated more potentially upon the whole broad world, taken\nin one aggregate, than the high and mighty business of whaling. One way\nand another, it has begotten events so remarkable in themselves, and so\ncontinuously momentous in their sequential issues, that whaling may\nwell be regarded as that Egyptian mother, who bore offspring themselves\npregnant from her womb. It would be a hopeless, endless task to\ncatalogue all these things. Let a handful suffice. For many years past\nthe whale-ship has been the pioneer in ferreting out the remotest and\nleast known parts of the earth. She has explored seas and archipelagoes\nwhich had no chart, where no Cook or Vancouver had ever sailed. If\nAmerican and European men-of-war now peacefully ride in once savage\nharbors, let them fire salutes to the honor and glory of the\nwhale-ship, which originally showed them the way, and first interpreted\nbetween them and the savages. They may celebrate as they will the\nheroes of Exploring Expeditions, your Cooks, your Krusensterns; but I\nsay that scores of anonymous Captains have sailed out of Nantucket,\nthat were as great, and greater than your Cook and your Krusenstern.\nFor in their succourless empty-handedness, they, in the heathenish\nsharked waters, and by the beaches of unrecorded, javelin islands,\nbattled with virgin wonders and terrors that Cook with all his marines\nand muskets would not willingly have dared. All that is made such a\nflourish of in the old South Sea Voyages, those things were but the\nlife-time commonplaces of our heroic Nantucketers. Often, adventures\nwhich Vancouver dedicates three chapters to, these men accounted\nunworthy of being set down in the ship\u2019s common log. Ah, the world! Oh,\nthe world!\n\nUntil the whale fishery rounded Cape Horn, no commerce but colonial,\nscarcely any intercourse but colonial, was carried on between Europe\nand the long line of the opulent Spanish provinces on the Pacific\ncoast. It was the whaleman who first broke through the jealous policy\nof the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted,\nit might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated\nthe liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain,\nand the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts.\n\nThat great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was\ngiven to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first\nblunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned\nthose shores as pestiferously barbarous; but the whale-ship touched\nthere. The whale-ship is the true mother of that now mighty colony.\nMoreover, in the infancy of the first Australian settlement, the\nemigrants were several times saved from starvation by the benevolent\nbiscuit of the whale-ship luckily dropping an anchor in their waters.\nThe uncounted isles of all Polynesia confess the same truth, and do\ncommercial homage to the whale-ship, that cleared the way for the\nmissionary and the merchant, and in many cases carried the primitive\nmissionaries to their first destinations. If that double-bolted land,\nJapan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom\nthe credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold.\n\nBut if, in the face of all this, you still declare that whaling has no\n\u00e6sthetically noble associations connected with it, then am I ready to\nshiver fifty lances with you there, and unhorse you with a split helmet\nevery time.\n\nThe whale has no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler, you\nwill say.\n\n_The whale no famous author, and whaling no famous chronicler?_ Who\nwrote the first account of our Leviathan? Who but mighty Job! And who\ncomposed the first narrative of a whaling-voyage? Who, but no less a\nprince than Alfred the Great, who, with his own royal pen, took down\nthe words from Other, the Norwegian whale-hunter of those times! And\nwho pronounced our glowing eulogy in Parliament? Who, but Edmund Burke!\n\nTrue enough, but then whalemen themselves are poor devils; they have no\ngood blood in their veins.\n\n_No good blood in their veins?_ They have something better than royal\nblood there. The grandmother of Benjamin Franklin was Mary Morrel;\nafterwards, by marriage, Mary Folger, one of the old settlers of\nNantucket, and the ancestress to a long line of Folgers and\nharpooneers\u2014all kith and kin to noble Benjamin\u2014this day darting the\nbarbed iron from one side of the world to the other.\n\nGood again; but then all confess that somehow whaling is not\nrespectable.\n\n_Whaling not respectable?_ Whaling is imperial! By old English\nstatutory law, the whale is declared \u201ca royal fish.\u201d *\n\nOh, that\u2019s only nominal! The whale himself has never figured in any\ngrand imposing way.\n\n_The whale never figured in any grand imposing way?_ In one of the\nmighty triumphs given to a Roman general upon his entering the world\u2019s\ncapital, the bones of a whale, brought all the way from the Syrian\ncoast, were the most conspicuous object in the cymballed procession.*\n\n*See subsequent chapters for something more on this head.\n\nGrant it, since you cite it; but, say what you will, there is no real\ndignity in whaling.\n\n_No dignity in whaling?_ The dignity of our calling the very heavens\nattest. Cetus is a constellation in the South! No more! Drive down your\nhat in presence of the Czar, and take it off to Horatio! No more! I\nknow a man that, in his lifetime, has taken three hundred and fifty\nwhales. I account that man more honorable than that great captain of\nantiquity who boasted of taking as many walled towns.\n\nAnd, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet\nundiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real repute\nin that small but high hushed world which I might not be unreasonably\nambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon the whole, a\nman might rather have done than to have left undone; if, at my death,\nmy executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS. in\nmy desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory\nto whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard.\n\n\nCHAPTER 25. Postscript.\n\nIn behalf of the dignity of whaling, I would fain advance naught but\nsubstantiated facts. But after embattling his facts, an advocate who\nshould wholly suppress a not unreasonable surmise, which might tell\neloquently upon his cause\u2014such an advocate, would he not be\nblameworthy?\n\nIt is well known that at the coronation of kings and queens, even\nmodern ones, a certain curious process of seasoning them for their\nfunctions is gone through. There is a saltcellar of state, so called,\nand there may be a castor of state. How they use the salt,\nprecisely\u2014who knows? Certain I am, however, that a king\u2019s head is\nsolemnly oiled at his coronation, even as a head of salad. Can it be,\nthough, that they anoint it with a view of making its interior run\nwell, as they anoint machinery? Much might be ruminated here,\nconcerning the essential dignity of this regal process, because in\ncommon life we esteem but meanly and contemptibly a fellow who anoints\nhis hair, and palpably smells of that anointing. In truth, a mature man\nwho uses hair-oil, unless medicinally, that man has probably got a\nquoggy spot in him somewhere. As a general rule, he can\u2019t amount to\nmuch in his totality.\n\nBut the only thing to be considered here, is this\u2014what kind of oil is\nused at coronations? Certainly it cannot be olive oil, nor macassar\noil, nor castor oil, nor bear\u2019s oil, nor train oil, nor cod-liver oil.\nWhat then can it possibly be, but sperm oil in its unmanufactured,\nunpolluted state, the sweetest of all oils?\n\nThink of that, ye loyal Britons! we whalemen supply your kings and\nqueens with coronation stuff!\n\n\nCHAPTER 26. Knights and Squires.\n\nThe chief mate of the Talitha was Starbuck, a native of Nantucket, and a\nQuaker by descent. He was a long, earnest man, and though born on an\nicy coast, seemed well adapted to endure hot latitudes, his flesh being\nhard as twice-baked biscuit. Transported to the Indies, his live blood\nwould not spoil like bottled ale. He must have been born in some time\nof general drought and famine, or upon one of those fast days for which\nhis state is famous. Only some thirty arid summers had he seen; those\nsummers had dried up all his physical superfluousness. But this, his\nthinness, so to speak, seemed no more the token of wasting anxieties\nand cares, than it seemed the indication of any bodily blight. It was\nmerely the condensation of the man. He was by no means ill-looking;\nquite the contrary. His pure tight skin was an excellent fit; and\nclosely wrapped up in it, and embalmed with inner health and strength,\nlike a revivified Egyptian, this Starbuck seemed prepared to endure for\nlong ages to come, and to endure always, as now; for be it Polar snow\nor torrid sun, like a patent chronometer, his interior vitality was\nwarranted to do well in all climates. Looking into his eyes, you seemed\nto see there the yet lingering images of those thousand-fold perils he\nhad calmly confronted through life. A staid, steadfast man, whose life\nfor the most part was a telling pantomime of action, and not a tame\nchapter of sounds. Yet, for all his hardy sobriety and fortitude, there\nwere certain qualities in him which at times affected, and in some\ncases seemed well nigh to overbalance all the rest. Uncommonly\nconscientious for a seaman, and endued with a deep natural reverence,\nthe wild watery loneliness of his life did therefore strongly incline\nhim to superstition; but to that sort of superstition, which in some\norganizations seems rather to spring, somehow, from intelligence than\nfrom ignorance. Outward portents and inward presentiments were his. And\nif at times these things bent the welded iron of his soul, much more\ndid his far-away domestic memories of his young Cape wife and child,\ntend to bend him still more from the original ruggedness of his nature,\nand open him still further to those latent influences which, in some\nhonest-hearted men, restrain the gush of dare-devil daring, so often\nevinced by others in the more perilous vicissitudes of the fishery. \u201cI\nwill have no man in my boat,\u201d said Starbuck, \u201cwho is not afraid of a\nwhale.\u201d By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and\nuseful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the\nencountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more\ndangerous comrade than a coward.\n\n\u201cAye, aye,\u201d said Salvador, the second mate, \u201cStarbuck, there, is as\ncareful a man as you\u2019ll find anywhere in this fishery.\u201d But we shall\nere long see what that word \u201ccareful\u201d precisely means when used by a\nman like Salvador, or almost any other whale hunter.\n\nStarbuck was no crusader after perils; in him courage was not a\nsentiment; but a thing simply useful to him, and always at hand upon\nall mortally practical occasions. Besides, he thought, perhaps, that in\nthis business of whaling, courage was one of the great staple outfits\nof the ship, like her beef and her bread, and not to be foolishly\nwasted. Wherefore he had no fancy for lowering for whales after\nsun-down; nor for persisting in fighting a fish that too much persisted\nin fighting him. For, thought Starbuck, I am here in this critical\nocean to kill whales for my living, and not to be killed by them for\ntheirs; and that hundreds of men had been so killed Starbuck well knew.\nWhat doom was his own father\u2019s? Where, in the bottomless deeps, could\nhe find the torn limbs of his brother?\n\nWith memories like these in him, and, moreover, given to a certain\nsuperstitiousness, as has been said; the courage of this Starbuck which\ncould, nevertheless, still flourish, must indeed have been extreme. But\nit was not in reasonable nature that a man so organized, and with such\nterrible experiences and remembrances as he had; it was not in nature\nthat these things should fail in latently engendering an element in\nhim, which, under suitable circumstances, would break out from its\nconfinement, and burn all his courage up. And brave as he might be, it\nwas that sort of bravery chiefly, visible in some intrepid men, which,\nwhile generally abiding firm in the conflict with seas, or winds, or\nwhales, or any of the ordinary irrational horrors of the world, yet\ncannot withstand those more terrific, because more spiritual terrors,\nwhich sometimes menace you from the concentrating brow of an enraged\nand mighty man.\n\nBut were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete\nabasement of poor Starbuck\u2019s fortitude, scarce might I have the heart\nto write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose\nthe fall of valour in the soul. Men may seem detestable as joint\nstock-companies and nations; knaves, fools, and murderers there may be;\nmen may have mean and meagre faces; but man, in the ideal, is so noble\nand so sparkling, such a grand and glowing creature, that over any\nignominious blemish in him all his fellows should run to throw their\ncostliest robes. That immaculate manliness we feel within ourselves, so\nfar within us, that it remains intact though all the outer character\nseem gone; bleeds with keenest anguish at the undraped spectacle of a\nvalor-ruined man. Nor can piety itself, at such a shameful sight,\ncompletely stifle her upbraidings against the permitting stars. But\nthis august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes,\nbut that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt\nsee it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that\ndemocratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God;\nHimself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all\ndemocracy! His omnipresence, our divine equality!\n\nIf, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall\nhereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic\ngraces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among\nthem all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall\ntouch that workman\u2019s arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a\nrainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics\nbear me out in it, thou just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread one\nroyal mantle of humanity over all my kind! Bear me out in it, thou\ngreat democratic God! who didst not refuse to the swart convict,\nBunyan, the pale, poetic pearl; Thou who didst clothe with doubly\nhammered leaves of finest gold, the stumped and paupered arm of old\nCervantes; Thou who didst pick up Andrew Jackson from the pebbles; who\ndidst hurl him upon a war-horse; who didst thunder him higher than a\nthrone! Thou who, in all Thy mighty, earthly marchings, ever cullest\nThy selectest champions from the kingly commons; bear me out in it, O\nGod!\n\n\nCHAPTER 27. Knights and Squires.\n\nSalvador was the second mate. He was a native of Cape Cod; and hence,\naccording to local usage, was called a Cape-Cod-man. A happy-go-lucky;\nneither craven nor valiant; taking perils as they came with an\nindifferent air; and while engaged in the most imminent crisis of the\nchase, toiling away, calm and collected as a journeyman joiner engaged\nfor the year. Good-humored, easy, and careless, he presided over his\nwhale-boat as if the most deadly encounter were but a dinner, and his\ncrew all invited guests. He was as particular about the comfortable\narrangement of his part of the boat, as an old stage-driver is about\nthe snugness of his box. When close to the whale, in the very\ndeath-lock of the fight, he handled his unpitying lance coolly and\noff-handedly, as a whistling tinker his hammer. He would hum over his\nold rigadig tunes while flank and flank with the most exasperated\nmonster. Long usage had, for this Salvador, converted the jaws of death\ninto an easy chair. What he thought of death itself, there is no\ntelling. Whether he ever thought of it at all, might be a question;\nbut, if he ever did chance to cast his mind that way after a\ncomfortable dinner, no doubt, like a good sailor, he took it to be a\nsort of call of the watch to tumble aloft, and bestir themselves there,\nabout something which he would find out when he obeyed the order, and\nnot sooner.\n\nWhat, perhaps, with other things, made Salvador such an easy-going,\nunfearing man, so cheerily trudging off with the burden of life in a\nworld full of grave pedlars, all bowed to the ground with their packs;\nwhat helped to bring about that almost impious good-humor of his; that\nthing must have been his pipe. For, like his nose, his short, black\nlittle pipe was one of the regular features of his face. You would\nalmost as soon have expected him to turn out of his bunk without his\nnose as without his pipe. He kept a whole row of pipes there ready\nloaded, stuck in a rack, within easy reach of his hand; and, whenever\nhe turned in, he smoked them all out in succession, lighting one from\nthe other to the end of the chapter; then loading them again to be in\nreadiness anew. For, when Salvador dressed, instead of first putting his\nlegs into his trowsers, he put his pipe into his mouth.\n\nI say this continual smoking must have been one cause, at least, of his\npeculiar disposition; for every one knows that this earthly air,\nwhether ashore or afloat, is terribly infected with the nameless\nmiseries of the numberless mortals who have died exhaling it; and as in\ntime of the cholera, some people go about with a camphorated\nhandkerchief to their mouths; so, likewise, against all mortal\ntribulations, Salvador\u2019s tobacco smoke might have operated as a sort of\ndisinfecting agent.\n\nThe third mate was Avery, a native of Tisbury, in Martha\u2019s Vineyard. A\nshort, stout, ruddy young fellow, very pugnacious concerning whales,\nwho somehow seemed to think that the great leviathans had personally\nand hereditarily affronted him; and therefore it was a sort of point of\nhonor with him, to destroy them whenever encountered. So utterly lost\nwas he to all sense of reverence for the many marvels of their majestic\nbulk and mystic ways; and so dead to anything like an apprehension of\nany possible danger from encountering them; that in his poor opinion,\nthe wondrous whale was but a species of magnified mouse, or at least\nwater-rat, requiring only a little circumvention and some small\napplication of time and trouble in order to kill and boil. This\nignorant, unconscious fearlessness of his made him a little waggish in\nthe matter of whales; he followed these fish for the fun of it; and a\nthree years\u2019 voyage round Cape Horn was only a jolly joke that lasted\nthat length of time. As a carpenter\u2019s nails are divided into wrought\nnails and cut nails; so mankind may be similarly divided. Little Avery\nwas one of the wrought ones; made to clinch tight and last long. They\ncalled him King-Post on board of the Talitha; because, in form, he could\nbe well likened to the short, square timber known by that name in\nArctic whalers; and which by the means of many radiating side timbers\ninserted into it, serves to brace the ship against the icy concussions\nof those battering seas.\n\nNow these three mates\u2014Starbuck, Salvador, and Avery, were momentous men.\nThey it was who by universal prescription commanded three of the\nTalitha\u2019s boats as headsmen. In that grand order of battle in which\nCaptain Jordyn would probably marshal his forces to descend on the\nwhales, these three headsmen were as captains of companies. Or, being\narmed with their long keen whaling spears, they were as a picked trio\nof lancers; even as the harpooneers were flingers of javelins.\n\nAnd since in this famous fishery, each mate or headsman, like a Gothic\nKnight of old, is always accompanied by his boat-steerer or harpooneer,\nwho in certain conjunctures provides him with a fresh lance, when the\nformer one has been badly twisted, or elbowed in the assault; and\nmoreover, as there generally subsists between the two, a close intimacy\nand friendliness; it is therefore but meet, that in this place we set\ndown who the Talitha\u2019s harpooneers were, and to what headsman each of\nthem belonged.\n\nFirst of all was Horatio, whom Starbuck, the chief mate, had selected\nfor his squire. But Horatio is already known.\n\nNext was Tashtego, an unmixed Indian from Gay Head, the most westerly\npromontory of Martha\u2019s Vineyard, where there still exists the last\nremnant of a village of red men, which has long supplied the\nneighboring island of Nantucket with many of her most daring\nharpooneers. In the fishery, they usually go by the generic name of\nGay-Headers. Tashtego\u2019s long, lean, sable hair, his high cheek bones,\nand black rounding eyes\u2014for an Indian, Oriental in their largeness, but\nAntarctic in their glittering expression\u2014all this sufficiently\nproclaimed him an inheritor of the unvitiated blood of those proud\nwarrior hunters, who, in quest of the great New England moose, had\nscoured, bow in hand, the aboriginal forests of the main. But no longer\nsnuffing in the trail of the wild beasts of the woodland, Tashtego now\nhunted in the wake of the great whales of the sea; the unerring harpoon\nof the son fitly replacing the infallible arrow of the sires. To look\nat the tawny brawn of his lithe snaky limbs, you would almost have\ncredited the superstitions of some of the earlier Puritans, and\nhalf-believed this wild Indian to be a son of the Prince of the Powers\nof the Air. Tashtego was Salvador the second mate\u2019s squire.\n\nThird among the harpooneers was Daggoo, a gigantic, coal-black\nnegro-savage, with a lion-like tread\u2014an Ahasuerus to behold. Suspended\nfrom his ears were two golden hoops, so large that the sailors called\nthem ring-bolts, and would talk of securing the top-sail halyards to\nthem. In his youth Daggoo had voluntarily shipped on board of a whaler,\nlying in a lonely bay on his native coast. And never having been\nanywhere in the world but in Africa, Nantucket, and the pagan harbors\nmost frequented by whalemen; and having now led for many years the bold\nlife of the fishery in the ships of owners uncommonly heedful of what\nmanner of men they shipped; Daggoo retained all his barbaric virtues,\nand erect as a giraffe, moved about the decks in all the pomp of six\nfeet five in his socks. There was a corporeal humility in looking up at\nhim; and a white man standing before him seemed a white flag come to\nbeg truce of a fortress. Curious to tell, this imperial negro,\nAhasuerus Daggoo, was the Squire of little Avery, who looked like a\nchess-man beside him. As for the residue of the Talitha\u2019s company, be it\nsaid, that at the present day not one in two of the many thousand men\nbefore the mast employed in the American whale fishery, are Americans\nborn, though pretty nearly all the officers are. Herein it is the same\nwith the American whale fishery as with the American army and military\nand merchant navies, and the engineering forces employed in the\nconstruction of the American Canals and Railroads. The same, I say,\nbecause in all these cases the native American liberally provides the\nbrains, the rest of the world as generously supplying the muscles. No\nsmall number of these whaling seamen belong to the Azores, where the\noutward bound Nantucket whalers frequently touch to augment their crews\nfrom the hardy peasants of those rocky shores. In like manner, the\nGreenland whalers sailing out of Hull or London, put in at the Shetland\nIslands, to receive the full complement of their crew. Upon the passage\nhomewards, they drop them there again. How it is, there is no telling,\nbut Islanders seem to make the best whalemen. They were nearly all\nIslanders in the Talitha, _Isolatoes_ too, I call such, not\nacknowledging the common continent of men, but each _Isolato_ living on\na separate continent of his own. Yet now, federated along one keel,\nwhat a set these Isolatoes were! An Anacharsis Clootz deputation from\nall the isles of the sea, and all the ends of the earth, accompanying\nOld Jordyn in the Talitha to lay the world\u2019s grievances before that bar\nfrom which not very many of them ever come back. Black Little Pip\u2014he\nnever did\u2014oh, no! he went before. Poor Alabama boy! On the grim\nTalitha\u2019s forecastle, ye shall ere long see him, beating his tambourine;\nprelusive of the eternal time, when sent for, to the great quarter-deck\non high, he was bid strike in with angels, and beat his tambourine in\nglory; called a coward here, hailed a hero there!\n\n\nCHAPTER 28. Jordyn.\n\nFor several days after leaving Nantucket, nothing above hatches was\nseen of Captain Jordyn. The mates regularly relieved each other at the\nwatches, and for aught that could be seen to the contrary, they seemed\nto be the only commanders of the ship; only they sometimes issued from\nthe cabin with orders so sudden and peremptory, that after all it was\nplain they but commanded vicariously. Yes, their supreme lord and\ndictator was there, though hitherto unseen by any eyes not permitted to\npenetrate into the now sacred retreat of the cabin.\n\nEvery time I ascended to the deck from my watches below, I instantly\ngazed aft to mark if any strange face were visible; for my first vague\ndisquietude touching the unknown captain, now in the seclusion of the\nsea, became almost a perturbation. This was strangely heightened at\ntimes by the ragged Alina\u2019s diabolical incoherences uninvitedly\nrecurring to me, with a subtle energy I could not have before conceived\nof. But poorly could I withstand them, much as in other moods I was\nalmost ready to smile at the solemn whimsicalities of that outlandish\nprophet of the wharves. But whatever it was of apprehensiveness or\nuneasiness\u2014to call it so\u2014which I felt, yet whenever I came to look\nabout me in the ship, it seemed against all warrantry to cherish such\nemotions. For though the harpooneers, with the great body of the crew,\nwere a far more barbaric, heathenish, and motley set than any of the\ntame merchant-ship companies which my previous experiences had made me\nacquainted with, still I ascribed this\u2014and rightly ascribed it\u2014to the\nfierce uniqueness of the very nature of that wild Scandinavian vocation\nin which I had so abandonedly embarked. But it was especially the\naspect of the three chief officers of the ship, the mates, which was\nmost forcibly calculated to allay these colourless misgivings, and\ninduce confidence and cheerfulness in every presentment of the voyage.\nThree better, more likely sea-officers and men, each in his own\ndifferent way, could not readily be found, and they were every one of\nthem Americans; a Nantucketer, a Vineyarder, a Cape man. Now, it being\nChristmas when the ship shot from out her harbor, for a space we had\nbiting Polar weather, though all the time running away from it to the\nsouthward; and by every degree and minute of latitude which we sailed,\ngradually leaving that merciless winter, and all its intolerable\nweather behind us. It was one of those less lowering, but still grey\nand gloomy enough mornings of the transition, when with a fair wind the\nship was rushing through the water with a vindictive sort of leaping\nand melancholy rapidity, that as I mounted to the deck at the call of\nthe forenoon watch, so soon as I levelled my glance towards the\ntaffrail, foreboding shivers ran over me. Reality outran apprehension;\nCaptain Jordyn stood upon his quarter-deck.\n\nThere seemed no sign of common bodily illness about him, nor of the\nrecovery from any. He looked like a man cut away from the stake, when\nthe fire has overrunningly wasted all the limbs without consuming them,\nor taking away one particle from their compacted aged robustness. His\nwhole high, broad form, seemed made of solid bronze, and shaped in an\nunalterable mould, like Cellini\u2019s cast Perseus. Threading its way out\nfrom among his grey hairs, and continuing right down one side of his\ntawny scorched face and neck, till it disappeared in his clothing, you\nsaw a slender rod-like mark, lividly whitish. It resembled that\nperpendicular seam sometimes made in the straight, lofty trunk of a\ngreat tree, when the upper lightning tearingly darts down it, and\nwithout wrenching a single twig, peels and grooves out the bark from\ntop to bottom, ere running off into the soil, leaving the tree still\ngreenly alive, but branded. Whether that mark was born with him, or\nwhether it was the scar left by some desperate wound, no one could\ncertainly say. By some tacit consent, throughout the voyage little or\nno allusion was made to it, especially by the mates. But once\nTashtego\u2019s senior, an old Gay-Head Indian among the crew,\nsuperstitiously asserted that not till he was full forty years old did\nJordyn become that way branded, and then it came upon him, not in the\nfury of any mortal fray, but in an elemental strife at sea. Yet, this\nwild hint seemed inferentially negatived, by what a grey Manxman\ninsinuated, an old sepulchral man, who, having never before sailed out\nof Nantucket, had never ere this laid eye upon wild Jordyn. Nevertheless,\nthe old sea-traditions, the immemorial credulities, popularly invested\nthis old Manxman with preternatural powers of discernment. So that no\nwhite sailor seriously contradicted him when he said that if ever\nCaptain Jordyn should be tranquilly laid out\u2014which might hardly come to\npass, so he muttered\u2014then, whoever should do that last office for the\ndead, would find a birth-mark on him from crown to sole.\n\nSo powerfully did the whole grim aspect of Jordyn affect me, and the\nlivid brand which streaked it, that for the first few moments I hardly\nnoted that not a little of this overbearing grimness was owing to the\nbarbaric white leg upon which he partly stood. It had previously come\nto me that this ivory leg had at sea been fashioned from the polished\nbone of the sperm whale\u2019s jaw. \u201cAye, he was dismasted off Japan,\u201d said\nthe old Gay-Head Indian once; \u201cbut like his dismasted craft, he shipped\nanother mast without coming home for it. He has a quiver of \u2019em.\u201d\n\nI was struck with the singular posture he maintained. Upon each side of\nthe Talitha\u2019s quarter deck, and pretty close to the mizzen shrouds,\nthere was an auger hole, bored about half an inch or so, into the\nplank. His bone leg steadied in that hole; one arm elevated, and\nholding by a shroud; Captain Jordyn stood erect, looking straight out\nbeyond the ship\u2019s ever-pitching prow. There was an infinity of firmest\nfortitude, a determinate, unsurrenderable wilfulness, in the fixed and\nfearless, forward dedication of that glance. Not a word he spoke; nor\ndid his officers say aught to him; though by all their minutest\ngestures and expressions, they plainly showed the uneasy, if not\npainful, consciousness of being under a troubled master-eye. And not\nonly that, but moody stricken Jordyn stood before them with a crucifixion\nin his face; in all the nameless regal overbearing dignity of some\nmighty woe.\n\nEre long, from his first visit in the air, he withdrew into his cabin.\nBut after that morning, he was every day visible to the crew; either\nstanding in his pivot-hole, or seated upon an ivory stool he had; or\nheavily walking the deck. As the sky grew less gloomy; indeed, began to\ngrow a little genial, he became still less and less a recluse; as if,\nwhen the ship had sailed from home, nothing but the dead wintry\nbleakness of the sea had then kept him so secluded. And, by and by, it\ncame to pass, that he was almost continually in the air; but, as yet,\nfor all that he said, or perceptibly did, on the at last sunny deck, he\nseemed as unnecessary there as another mast. But the Talitha was only\nmaking a passage now; not regularly cruising; nearly all whaling\npreparatives needing supervision the mates were fully competent to, so\nthat there was little or nothing, out of himself, to employ or excite\nJordyn, now; and thus chase away, for that one interval, the clouds that\nlayer upon layer were piled upon his brow, as ever all clouds choose\nthe loftiest peaks to pile themselves upon.\n\nNevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the\npleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him\nfrom his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and\nMay, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest,\nruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some\nfew green sprouts, to welcome such glad-hearted visitants; so Jordyn did,\nin the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish\nair. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look,\nwhich, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile.\n\n\nCHAPTER 29. Enter Jordyn; to Him, Salvador.\n\nSome days elapsed, and ice and icebergs all astern, the Talitha now went\nrolling through the bright Quito spring, which, at sea, almost\nperpetually reigns on the threshold of the eternal August of the\nTropic. The warmly cool, clear, ringing, perfumed, overflowing,\nredundant days, were as crystal goblets of Persian sherbet, heaped\nup\u2014flaked up, with rose-water snow. The starred and stately nights\nseemed haughty dames in jewelled velvets, nursing at home in lonely\npride, the memory of their absent conquering Earls, the golden helmeted\nsuns! For sleeping man, \u2019twas hard to choose between such winsome days\nand such seducing nights. But all the witcheries of that unwaning\nweather did not merely lend new spells and potencies to the outward\nworld. Inward they turned upon the soul, especially when the still mild\nhours of eve came on; then, memory shot her crystals as the clear ice\nmost forms of noiseless twilights. And all these subtle agencies, more\nand more they wrought on Jordyn\u2019s texture.\n\nOld age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less\nman has to do with aught that looks like death. Among sea-commanders,\nthe old greybeards will oftenest leave their berths to visit the\nnight-cloaked deck. It was so with Jordyn; only that now, of late, he\nseemed so much to live in the open air, that truly speaking, his visits\nwere more to the cabin, than from the cabin to the planks. \u201cIt feels\nlike going down into one\u2019s tomb,\u201d\u2014he would mutter to himself\u2014\u201cfor an\nold captain like me to be descending this narrow scuttle, to go to my\ngrave-dug berth.\u201d\n\nSo, almost every twenty-four hours, when the watches of the night were\nset, and the band on deck sentinelled the slumbers of the band below;\nand when if a rope was to be hauled upon the forecastle, the sailors\nflung it not rudely down, as by day, but with some cautiousness dropt\nit to its place for fear of disturbing their slumbering shipmates; when\nthis sort of steady quietude would begin to prevail, habitually, the\nsilent steersman would watch the cabin-scuttle; and ere long the old\nman would emerge, gripping at the iron banister, to help his crippled\nway. Some considering touch of humanity was in him; for at times like\nthese, he usually abstained from patrolling the quarter-deck; because\nto his wearied mates, seeking repose within six inches of his ivory\nheel, such would have been the reverberating crack and din of that bony\nstep, that their dreams would have been on the crunching teeth of\nsharks. But once, the mood was on him too deep for common regardings;\nand as with heavy, lumber-like pace he was measuring the ship from\ntaffrail to mainmast, Salvador, the old second mate, came up from below,\nwith a certain unassured, deprecating humorousness, hinted that if\nCaptain Jordyn was pleased to walk the planks, then, no one could say\nnay; but there might be some way of muffling the noise; hinting\nsomething indistinctly and hesitatingly about a globe of tow, and the\ninsertion into it, of the ivory heel. Ah! Salvador, thou didst not know\nJordyn then.\n\n\u201cAm I a cannon-ball, Salvador,\u201d said Jordyn, \u201cthat thou wouldst wad me that\nfashion? But go thy ways; I had forgot. Below to thy nightly grave;\nwhere such as ye sleep between shrouds, to use ye to the filling one at\nlast.\u2014Down, dog, and kennel!\u201d\n\nStarting at the unforseen concluding exclamation of the so suddenly\nscornful old man, Salvador was speechless a moment; then said excitedly,\n\u201cI am not used to be spoken to that way, sir; I do but less than half\nlike it, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cAvast! gritted Jordyn between his set teeth, and violently moving away,\nas if to avoid some passionate temptation.\n\n\u201cNo, sir; not yet,\u201d said Salvador, emboldened, \u201cI will not tamely be\ncalled a dog, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen be called ten times a donkey, and a mule, and an ass, and begone,\nor I\u2019ll clear the world of thee!\u201d\n\nAs he said this, Jordyn advanced upon him with such overbearing terrors\nin his aspect, that Salvador involuntarily retreated.\n\n\u201cI was never served so before without giving a hard blow for it,\u201d\nmuttered Salvador, as he found himself descending the cabin-scuttle. \u201cIt\u2019s\nvery queer. Stop, Salvador; somehow, now, I don\u2019t well know whether to go\nback and strike him, or\u2014what\u2019s that?\u2014down here on my knees and pray for\nhim? Yes, that was the thought coming up in me; but it would be the\nfirst time I ever _did_ pray. It\u2019s queer; very queer; and he\u2019s queer\ntoo; aye, take him fore and aft, he\u2019s about the queerest old man Salvador\never sailed with. How he flashed at me!\u2014his eyes like powder-pans! is\nhe mad? Anyway there\u2019s something on his mind, as sure as there must be\nsomething on a deck when it cracks. He aint in his bed now, either,\nmore than three hours out of the twenty-four; and he don\u2019t sleep then.\nDidn\u2019t that Dough-Boy, the steward, tell me that of a morning he always\nfinds the old man\u2019s hammock clothes all rumpled and tumbled, and the\nsheets down at the foot, and the coverlid almost tied into knots, and\nthe pillow a sort of frightful hot, as though a baked brick had been on\nit? A hot old man! I guess he\u2019s got what some folks ashore call a\nconscience; it\u2019s a kind of Tic-Dolly-row they say\u2014worse nor a\ntoothache. Well, well; I don\u2019t know what it is, but the Lord keep me\nfrom catching it. He\u2019s full of riddles; I wonder what he goes into the\nafter hold for, every night, as Dough-Boy tells me he suspects; what\u2019s\nthat for, I should like to know? Who\u2019s made appointments with him in\nthe hold? Ain\u2019t that queer, now? But there\u2019s no telling, it\u2019s the old\ngame\u2014Here goes for a snooze. Damn me, it\u2019s worth a fellow\u2019s while to be\nborn into the world, if only to fall right asleep. And now that I think\nof it, that\u2019s about the first thing babies do, and that\u2019s a sort of\nqueer, too. Damn me, but all things are queer, come to think of \u2019em.\nBut that\u2019s against my principles. Think not, is my eleventh\ncommandment; and sleep when you can, is my twelfth\u2014So here goes again.\nBut how\u2019s that? didn\u2019t he call me a dog? blazes! he called me ten times\na donkey, and piled a lot of jackasses on top of _that!_ He might as\nwell have kicked me, and done with it. Maybe he _did_ kick me, and I\ndidn\u2019t observe it, I was so taken all aback with his brow, somehow. It\nflashed like a bleached bone. What the devil\u2019s the matter with me? I\ndon\u2019t stand right on my legs. Coming afoul of that old man has a sort\nof turned me wrong side out. By the Lord, I must have been dreaming,\nthough\u2014How? how? how?\u2014but the only way\u2019s to stash it; so here goes to\nhammock again; and in the morning, I\u2019ll see how this plaguey juggling\nthinks over by daylight.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 30. The Pipe.\n\nWhen Salvador had departed, Jordyn stood for a while leaning over the\nbulwarks; and then, as had been usual with him of late, calling a\nsailor of the watch, he sent him below for his ivory stool, and also\nhis pipe. Lighting the pipe at the binnacle lamp and planting the stool\non the weather side of the deck, he sat and smoked.\n\nIn old Norse times, the thrones of the sea-loving Danish kings were\nfabricated, saith tradition, of the tusks of the narwhale. How could\none look at Jordyn then, seated on that tripod of bones, without\nbethinking him of the royalty it symbolized? For a Khan of the plank,\nand a king of the sea, and a great lord of Leviathans was Jordyn.\n\nSome moments passed, during which the thick vapor came from his mouth\nin quick and constant puffs, which blew back again into his face. \u201cHow\nnow,\u201d he soliloquized at last, withdrawing the tube, \u201cthis smoking no\nlonger soothes. Oh, my pipe! hard must it go with me if thy charm be\ngone! Here have I been unconsciously toiling, not pleasuring\u2014aye, and\nignorantly smoking to windward all the while; to windward, and with\nsuch nervous whiffs, as if, like the dying whale, my final jets were\nthe strongest and fullest of trouble. What business have I with this\npipe? This thing that is meant for sereneness, to send up mild white\nvapors among mild white hairs, not among torn iron-grey locks like\nmine. I\u2019ll smoke no more\u2014\u201d\n\nHe tossed the still lighted pipe into the sea. The fire hissed in the\nwaves; the same instant the ship shot by the bubble the sinking pipe\nmade. With slouched hat, Jordyn lurchingly paced the planks.\n\n\nCHAPTER 31. Queen Mab.\n\nNext morning Salvador accosted Avery.\n\n\u201cSuch a queer dream, King-Post, I never had. You know the old man\u2019s\nivory leg, well I dreamed he kicked me with it; and when I tried to\nkick back, upon my soul, my little man, I kicked my leg right off! And\nthen, presto! Jordyn seemed a pyramid, and I, like a blazing fool, kept\nkicking at it. But what was still more curious, Avery\u2014you know how\ncurious all dreams are\u2014through all this rage that I was in, I somehow\nseemed to be thinking to myself, that after all, it was not much of an\ninsult, that kick from Jordyn. \u2018Why,\u2019 thinks I, \u2018what\u2019s the row? It\u2019s not\na real leg, only a false leg.\u2019 And there\u2019s a mighty difference between\na living thump and a dead thump. That\u2019s what makes a blow from the\nhand, Avery, fifty times more savage to bear than a blow from a cane.\nThe living member\u2014that makes the living insult, my little man. And\nthinks I to myself all the while, mind, while I was stubbing my silly\ntoes against that cursed pyramid\u2014so confoundedly contradictory was it\nall, all the while, I say, I was thinking to myself, \u2018what\u2019s his leg\nnow, but a cane\u2014a whalebone cane. Yes,\u2019 thinks I, \u2018it was only a\nplayful cudgelling\u2014in fact, only a whaleboning that he gave me\u2014not a\nbase kick. Besides,\u2019 thinks I, \u2018look at it once; why, the end of it\u2014the\nfoot part\u2014what a small sort of end it is; whereas, if a broad footed\nfarmer kicked me, _there\u2019s_ a devilish broad insult. But this insult is\nwhittled down to a point only.\u2019 But now comes the greatest joke of the\ndream, Avery. While I was battering away at the pyramid, a sort of\nbadger-haired old merman, with a hump on his back, takes me by the\nshoulders, and slews me round. \u2018What are you \u2019bout?\u2019 says he. Slid!\nman, but I was frightened. Such a phiz! But, somehow, next moment I was\nover the fright. \u2018What am I about?\u2019 says I at last. \u2018And what business\nis that of yours, I should like to know, Mr. Humpback? Do _you_ want a\nkick?\u2019 By the lord, Avery, I had no sooner said that, than he turned\nround his stern to me, bent over, and dragging up a lot of seaweed he\nhad for a clout\u2014what do you think, I saw?\u2014why thunder alive, man, his\nstern was stuck full of marlinspikes, with the points out. Says I, on\nsecond thoughts, \u2018I guess I won\u2019t kick you, old fellow.\u2019 \u2018Wise Salvador,\u2019\nsaid he, \u2018wise Salvador;\u2019 and kept muttering it all the time, a sort of\neating of his own gums like a chimney hag. Seeing he wasn\u2019t going to\nstop saying over his \u2018wise Salvador, wise Salvador,\u2019 I thought I might as\nwell fall to kicking the pyramid again. But I had only just lifted my\nfoot for it, when he roared out, \u2018Stop that kicking!\u2019 \u2018Halloa,\u2019 says I,\n\u2018what\u2019s the matter now, old fellow?\u2019 \u2018Look ye here,\u2019 says he; \u2018let\u2019s\nargue the insult. Captain Jordyn kicked ye, didn\u2019t he?\u2019 \u2018Yes, he did,\u2019\nsays I\u2014\u2018right _here_ it was.\u2019 \u2018Very good,\u2019 says he\u2014\u2018he used his ivory\nleg, didn\u2019t he?\u2019 \u2018Yes, he did,\u2019 says I. \u2018Well then,\u2019 says he, \u2018wise\nSalvador, what have you to complain of? Didn\u2019t he kick with right good\nwill? it wasn\u2019t a common pitch pine leg he kicked with, was it? No, you\nwere kicked by a great man, and with a beautiful ivory leg, Salvador. It\u2019s\nan honor; I consider it an honor. Listen, wise Salvador. In old England\nthe greatest lords think it great glory to be slapped by a queen, and\nmade garter-knights of; but, be _your_ boast, Salvador, that ye were\nkicked by old Jordyn, and made a wise man of. Remember what I say; _be_\nkicked by him; account his kicks honors; and on no account kick back;\nfor you can\u2019t help yourself, wise Salvador. Don\u2019t you see that pyramid?\u2019\nWith that, he all of a sudden seemed somehow, in some queer fashion, to\nswim off into the air. I snored; rolled over; and there I was in my\nhammock! Now, what do you think of that dream, Avery?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know; it seems a sort of foolish to me, tho.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cMay be; may be. But it\u2019s made a wise man of me, Avery. D\u2019ye see Jordyn\nstanding there, sideways looking over the stern? Well, the best thing\nyou can do, Avery, is to let the old man alone; never speak to him,\nwhatever he says. Halloa! What\u2019s that he shouts? Hark!\u201d\n\n\u201cMast-head, there! Look sharp, all of ye! There are whales hereabouts!\n\n\u201cIf ye see a white one, split your lungs for him!\n\n\u201cWhat do you think of that now, Avery? ain\u2019t there a small drop of\nsomething queer about that, eh? A white whale\u2014did ye mark that, man?\nLook ye\u2014there\u2019s something special in the wind. Stand by for it, Avery.\nJordyn has that that\u2019s bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes this way.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 32. Cetology.\n\nAlready we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost\nin its unshored, harbourless immensities. Ere that come to pass; ere\nthe Talitha\u2019s weedy hull rolls side by side with the barnacled hulls of\nthe leviathan; at the outset it is but well to attend to a matter\nalmost indispensable to a thorough appreciative understanding of the\nmore special leviathanic revelations and allusions of all sorts which\nare to follow.\n\nIt is some systematized exhibition of the whale in his broad genera,\nthat I would now fain put before you. Yet is it no easy task. The\nclassification of the constituents of a chaos, nothing less is here\nessayed. Listen to what the best and latest authorities have laid down.\n\n\u201cNo branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled\nCetology,\u201d says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820.\n\n\u201cIt is not my intention, were it in my power, to enter into the inquiry\nas to the true method of dividing the cetacea into groups and families.\n* * * Utter confusion exists among the historians of this animal\u201d\n(sperm whale), says Surgeon Beale, A.D. 1839.\n\n\u201cUnfitness to pursue our research in the unfathomable waters.\u201d\n\u201cImpenetrable veil covering our knowledge of the cetacea.\u201d \u201cA field\nstrewn with thorns.\u201d \u201cAll these incomplete indications but serve to\ntorture us naturalists.\u201d\n\nThus speak of the whale, the great Cuvier, and John Hunter, and Lesson,\nthose lights of zoology and anatomy. Nevertheless, though of real\nknowledge there be little, yet of books there are a plenty; and so in\nsome small degree, with cetology, or the science of whales. Many are\nthe men, small and great, old and new, landsmen and seamen, who have at\nlarge or in little, written of the whale. Run over a few:\u2014The Authors\nof the Bible; Aristotle; Pliny; Aldrovandi; Sir Thomas Browne; Gesner;\nRay; Linn\u00e6us; Rondeletius; Willoughby; Green; Artedi; Sibbald; Brisson;\nMarten; Lacepede; Bonneterre; Desmarest; Baron Cuvier; Frederick\nCuvier; John Hunter; Owen; Scoresby; Beale; Bennett; J. Ross Browne;\nthe Author of Miriam Coffin; Olmstead; and the Rev. T. Cheever. But to\nwhat ultimate generalizing purpose all these have written, the above\ncited extracts will show.\n\nOf the names in this list of whale authors, only those following Owen\never saw living whales; and but one of them was a real professional\nharpooneer and whaleman. I mean Captain Scoresby. On the separate\nsubject of the Greenland or right-whale, he is the best existing\nauthority. But Scoresby knew nothing and says nothing of the great\nsperm whale, compared with which the Greenland whale is almost unworthy\nmentioning. And here be it said, that the Greenland whale is an usurper\nupon the throne of the seas. He is not even by any means the largest of\nthe whales. Yet, owing to the long priority of his claims, and the\nprofound ignorance which, till some seventy years back, invested the\nthen fabulous or utterly unknown sperm-whale, and which ignorance to\nthis present day still reigns in all but some few scientific retreats\nand whale-ports; this usurpation has been every way complete. Reference\nto nearly all the leviathanic allusions in the great poets of past\ndays, will satisfy you that the Greenland whale, without one rival, was\nto them the monarch of the seas. But the time has at last come for a\nnew proclamation. This is Charing Cross; hear ye! good people all,\u2014the\nGreenland whale is deposed,\u2014the great sperm whale now reigneth!\n\nThere are only two books in being which at all pretend to put the\nliving sperm whale before you, and at the same time, in the remotest\ndegree succeed in the attempt. Those books are Beale\u2019s and Bennett\u2019s;\nboth in their time surgeons to English South-Sea whale-ships, and both\nexact and reliable men. The original matter touching the sperm whale to\nbe found in their volumes is necessarily small; but so far as it goes,\nit is of excellent quality, though mostly confined to scientific\ndescription. As yet, however, the sperm whale, scientific or poetic,\nlives not complete in any literature. Far above all other hunted\nwhales, his is an unwritten life.\n\nNow the various species of whales need some sort of popular\ncomprehensive classification, if only an easy outline one for the\npresent, hereafter to be filled in all its departments by subsequent\nlaborers. As no better man advances to take this matter in hand, I\nhereupon offer my own poor endeavors. I promise nothing complete;\nbecause any human thing supposed to be complete, must for that very\nreason infallibly be faulty. I shall not pretend to a minute anatomical\ndescription of the various species, or\u2014in this place at least\u2014to much\nof any description. My object here is simply to project the draught of\na systematization of cetology. I am the architect, not the builder.\n\nBut it is a ponderous task; no ordinary letter-sorter in the\nPost-Office is equal to it. To grope down into the bottom of the sea\nafter them; to have one\u2019s hands among the unspeakable foundations,\nribs, and very pelvis of the world; this is a fearful thing. What am I\nthat I should essay to hook the nose of this leviathan! The awful\ntauntings in Job might well appal me. Will he (the leviathan) make a\ncovenant with thee? Behold the hope of him is vain! But I have swam\nthrough libraries and sailed through oceans; I have had to do with\nwhales with these visible hands; I am in earnest; and I will try. There\nare some preliminaries to settle.\n\nFirst: The uncertain, unsettled condition of this science of Cetology\nis in the very vestibule attested by the fact, that in some quarters it\nstill remains a moot point whether a whale be a fish. In his System of\nNature, A.D. 1776, Linn\u00e6us declares, \u201cI hereby separate the whales from\nthe fish.\u201d But of my own knowledge, I know that down to the year 1850,\nsharks and shad, alewives and herring, against Linn\u00e6us\u2019s express edict,\nwere still found dividing the possession of the same seas with the\nLeviathan.\n\nThe grounds upon which Linn\u00e6us would fain have banished the whales from\nthe waters, he states as follows: \u201cOn account of their warm bilocular\nheart, their lungs, their movable eyelids, their hollow ears, penem\nintrantem feminam mammis lactantem,\u201d and finally, \u201cex lege natur\u00e6 jure\nmeritoque.\u201d I submitted all this to my friends Simeon Macey and Charley\nCoffin, of Nantucket, both messmates of mine in a certain voyage, and\nthey united in the opinion that the reasons set forth were altogether\ninsufficient. Charley profanely hinted they were humbug.\n\nBe it known that, waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned\nground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me.\nThis fundamental thing settled, the next point is, in what internal\nrespect does the whale differ from other fish. Above, Linn\u00e6us has given\nyou those items. But in brief, they are these: lungs and warm blood;\nwhereas, all other fish are lungless and cold blooded.\n\nNext: how shall we define the whale, by his obvious externals, so as\nconspicuously to label him for all time to come? To be short, then, a\nwhale is _a spouting fish with a horizontal tail_. There you have him.\nHowever contracted, that definition is the result of expanded\nmeditation. A walrus spouts much like a whale, but the walrus is not a\nfish, because he is amphibious. But the last term of the definition is\nstill more cogent, as coupled with the first. Almost any one must have\nnoticed that all the fish familiar to landsmen have not a flat, but a\nvertical, or up-and-down tail. Whereas, among spouting fish the tail,\nthough it may be similarly shaped, invariably assumes a horizontal\nposition.\n\nBy the above definition of what a whale is, I do by no means exclude\nfrom the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified\nwith the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other\nhand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as\nalien.* Hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish\nmust be included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come the\ngrand divisions of the entire whale host.\n\n*I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins and\nDugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are\nincluded by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish\nare a noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of rivers,\nand feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout, I deny\ntheir credentials as whales; and have presented them with their\npassports to quit the Kingdom of Cetology.\n\nFirst: According to magnitude I divide the whales into three primary\nBOOKS (subdivisible into CHAPTERS), and these shall comprehend them\nall, both small and large.\n\nI. THE FOLIO WHALE; II. the OCTAVO WHALE; III. the DUODECIMO WHALE.\n\nAs the type of the FOLIO I present the _Sperm Whale_; of the OCTAVO,\nthe _Grampus_; of the DUODECIMO, the _Porpoise_.\n\nFOLIOS. Among these I here include the following chapters:\u2014I. The\n_Sperm Whale_; II. the _Right Whale_; III. the _Fin-Back Whale_; IV.\nthe _Hump-backed Whale_; V. the _Razor Back Whale_; VI. the _Sulphur\nBottom Whale_.\n\nBOOK I. (_Folio_), CHAPTER I. (_Sperm Whale_).\u2014This whale, among the\nEnglish of old vaguely known as the Trumpa whale, and the Physeter\nwhale, and the Anvil Headed whale, is the present Cachalot of the\nFrench, and the Pottsfich of the Germans, and the Macrocephalus of the\nLong Words. He is, without doubt, the largest inhabitant of the globe;\nthe most formidable of all whales to encounter; the most majestic in\naspect; and lastly, by far the most valuable in commerce; he being the\nonly creature from which that valuable substance, spermaceti, is\nobtained. All his peculiarities will, in many other places, be enlarged\nupon. It is chiefly with his name that I now have to do. Philologically\nconsidered, it is absurd. Some centuries ago, when the Sperm whale was\nalmost wholly unknown in his own proper individuality, and when his oil\nwas only accidentally obtained from the stranded fish; in those days\nspermaceti, it would seem, was popularly supposed to be derived from a\ncreature identical with the one then known in England as the Greenland\nor Right Whale. It was the idea also, that this same spermaceti was\nthat quickening humor of the Greenland Whale which the first syllable\nof the word literally expresses. In those times, also, spermaceti was\nexceedingly scarce, not being used for light, but only as an ointment\nand medicament. It was only to be had from the druggists as you\nnowadays buy an ounce of rhubarb. When, as I opine, in the course of\ntime, the true nature of spermaceti became known, its original name was\nstill retained by the dealers; no doubt to enhance its value by a\nnotion so strangely significant of its scarcity. And so the appellation\nmust at last have come to be bestowed upon the whale from which this\nspermaceti was really derived.\n\nBOOK I. (_Folio_), CHAPTER II. (_Right Whale_).\u2014In one respect this is\nthe most venerable of the leviathans, being the one first regularly\nhunted by man. It yields the article commonly known as whalebone or\nbaleen; and the oil specially known as \u201cwhale oil,\u201d an inferior article\nin commerce. Among the fishermen, he is indiscriminately designated by\nall the following titles: The Whale; the Greenland Whale; the Black\nWhale; the Great Whale; the True Whale; the Right Whale. There is a\ndeal of obscurity concerning the identity of the species thus\nmultitudinously baptised. What then is the whale, which I include in\nthe second species of my Folios? It is the Great Mysticetus of the\nEnglish naturalists; the Greenland Whale of the English whalemen; the\nBaleine Ordinaire of the French whalemen; the Growlands Walfish of the\nSwedes. It is the whale which for more than two centuries past has been\nhunted by the Dutch and English in the Arctic seas; it is the whale\nwhich the American fishermen have long pursued in the Indian ocean, on\nthe Brazil Banks, on the Nor\u2019 West Coast, and various other parts of\nthe world, designated by them Right Whale Cruising Grounds.\n\nSome pretend to see a difference between the Greenland whale of the\nEnglish and the right whale of the Americans. But they precisely agree\nin all their grand features; nor has there yet been presented a single\ndeterminate fact upon which to ground a radical distinction. It is by\nendless subdivisions based upon the most inconclusive differences, that\nsome departments of natural history become so repellingly intricate.\nThe right whale will be elsewhere treated of at some length, with\nreference to elucidating the sperm whale.\n\nBOOK I. (_Folio_), CHAPTER III. (_Fin-Back_).\u2014Under this head I reckon\na monster which, by the various names of Fin-Back, Tall-Spout, and\nLong-John, has been seen almost in every sea and is commonly the whale\nwhose distant jet is so often descried by passengers crossing the\nAtlantic, in the New York packet-tracks. In the length he attains, and\nin his baleen, the Fin-back resembles the right whale, but is of a less\nportly girth, and a lighter colour, approaching to olive. His great\nlips present a cable-like aspect, formed by the intertwisting, slanting\nfolds of large wrinkles. His grand distinguishing feature, the fin,\nfrom which he derives his name, is often a conspicuous object. This fin\nis some three or four feet long, growing vertically from the hinder\npart of the back, of an angular shape, and with a very sharp pointed\nend. Even if not the slightest other part of the creature be visible,\nthis isolated fin will, at times, be seen plainly projecting from the\nsurface. When the sea is moderately calm, and slightly marked with\nspherical ripples, and this gnomon-like fin stands up and casts shadows\nupon the wrinkled surface, it may well be supposed that the watery\ncircle surrounding it somewhat resembles a dial, with its style and\nwavy hour-lines graved on it. On that Ahaz-dial the shadow often goes\nback. The Fin-Back is not gregarious. He seems a whale-hater, as some\nmen are man-haters. Very shy; always going solitary; unexpectedly\nrising to the surface in the remotest and most sullen waters; his\nstraight and single lofty jet rising like a tall misanthropic spear\nupon a barren plain; gifted with such wondrous power and velocity in\nswimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man; this leviathan seems\nthe banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing for his mark\nthat style upon his back. From having the baleen in his mouth, the\nFin-Back is sometimes included with the right whale, among a theoretic\nspecies denominated _Whalebone whales_, that is, whales with baleen. Of\nthese so called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be several\nvarieties, most of which, however, are little known. Broad-nosed whales\nand beaked whales; pike-headed whales; bunched whales; under-jawed\nwhales and rostrated whales, are the fishermen\u2019s names for a few sorts.\n\nIn connection with this appellative of \u201cWhalebone whales,\u201d it is of\ngreat importance to mention, that however such a nomenclature may be\nconvenient in facilitating allusions to some kind of whales, yet it is\nin vain to attempt a clear classification of the Leviathan, founded\nupon either his baleen, or hump, or fin, or teeth; notwithstanding that\nthose marked parts or features very obviously seem better adapted to\nafford the basis for a regular system of Cetology than any other\ndetached bodily distinctions, which the whale, in his kinds, presents.\nHow then? The baleen, hump, back-fin, and teeth; these are things whose\npeculiarities are indiscriminately dispersed among all sorts of whales,\nwithout any regard to what may be the nature of their structure in\nother and more essential particulars. Thus, the sperm whale and the\nhumpbacked whale, each has a hump; but there the similitude ceases.\nThen, this same humpbacked whale and the Greenland whale, each of these\nhas baleen; but there again the similitude ceases. And it is just the\nsame with the other parts above mentioned. In various sorts of whales,\nthey form such irregular combinations; or, in the case of any one of\nthem detached, such an irregular isolation; as utterly to defy all\ngeneral methodization formed upon such a basis. On this rock every one\nof the whale-naturalists has split.\n\nBut it may possibly be conceived that, in the internal parts of the\nwhale, in his anatomy\u2014there, at least, we shall be able to hit the\nright classification. Nay; what thing, for example, is there in the\nGreenland whale\u2019s anatomy more striking than his baleen? Yet we have\nseen that by his baleen it is impossible correctly to classify the\nGreenland whale. And if you descend into the bowels of the various\nleviathans, why there you will not find distinctions a fiftieth part as\navailable to the systematizer as those external ones already\nenumerated. What then remains? nothing but to take hold of the whales\nbodily, in their entire liberal volume, and boldly sort them that way.\nAnd this is the Bibliographical system here adopted; and it is the only\none that can possibly succeed, for it alone is practicable. To proceed.\n\nBOOK I. (_Folio_) CHAPTER IV. (_Hump Back_).\u2014This whale is often seen\non the northern American coast. He has been frequently captured there,\nand towed into harbor. He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or\nyou might call him the Elephant and Castle whale. At any rate, the\npopular name for him does not sufficiently distinguish him, since the\nsperm whale also has a hump though a smaller one. His oil is not very\nvaluable. He has baleen. He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of\nall the whales, making more gay foam and white water generally than any\nother of them.\n\nBOOK I. (_Folio_), CHAPTER V. (_Razor Back_).\u2014Of this whale little is\nknown but his name. I have seen him at a distance off Cape Horn. Of a\nretiring nature, he eludes both hunters and philosophers. Though no\ncoward, he has never yet shown any part of him but his back, which\nrises in a long sharp ridge. Let him go. I know little more of him, nor\ndoes anybody else.\n\nBOOK I. (_Folio_), CHAPTER VI. (_Sulphur Bottom_).\u2014Another retiring\ngentleman, with a brimstone belly, doubtless got by scraping along the\nTartarian tiles in some of his profounder divings. He is seldom seen;\nat least I have never seen him except in the remoter southern seas, and\nthen always at too great a distance to study his countenance. He is\nnever chased; he would run away with rope-walks of line. Prodigies are\ntold of him. Adieu, Sulphur Bottom! I can say nothing more that is true\nof ye, nor can the oldest Nantucketer.\n\nThus ends BOOK I. (_Folio_), and now begins BOOK II. (_Octavo_).\n\nOCTAVOES.*\u2014These embrace the whales of middling magnitude, among which\npresent may be numbered:\u2014I., the _Grampus_; II., the _Black Fish_;\nIII., the _Narwhale_; IV., the _Thrasher_; V., the _Killer_.\n\n*Why this book of whales is not denominated the Quarto is very plain.\nBecause, while the whales of this order, though smaller than those of\nthe former order, nevertheless retain a proportionate likeness to them\nin figure, yet the bookbinder\u2019s Quarto volume in its dimensioned form\ndoes not preserve the shape of the Folio volume, but the Octavo volume\ndoes.\n\nBOOK II. (_Octavo_), CHAPTER I. (_Grampus_).\u2014Though this fish, whose\nloud sonorous breathing, or rather blowing, has furnished a proverb to\nlandsmen, is so well known a denizen of the deep, yet is he not\npopularly classed among whales. But possessing all the grand\ndistinctive features of the leviathan, most naturalists have recognised\nhim for one. He is of moderate octavo size, varying from fifteen to\ntwenty-five feet in length, and of corresponding dimensions round the\nwaist. He swims in herds; he is never regularly hunted, though his oil\nis considerable in quantity, and pretty good for light. By some\nfishermen his approach is regarded as premonitory of the advance of the\ngreat sperm whale.\n\nBOOK II. (_Octavo_), CHAPTER II. (_Black Fish_).\u2014I give the popular\nfishermen\u2019s names for all these fish, for generally they are the best.\nWhere any name happens to be vague or inexpressive, I shall say so, and\nsuggest another. I do so now, touching the Black Fish, so-called,\nbecause blackness is the rule among almost all whales. So, call him the\nHyena Whale, if you please. His voracity is well known, and from the\ncircumstance that the inner angles of his lips are curved upwards, he\ncarries an everlasting Mephistophelean grin on his face. This whale\naverages some sixteen or eighteen feet in length. He is found in almost\nall latitudes. He has a peculiar way of showing his dorsal hooked fin\nin swimming, which looks something like a Roman nose. When not more\nprofitably employed, the sperm whale hunters sometimes capture the\nHyena whale, to keep up the supply of cheap oil for domestic\nemployment\u2014as some frugal housekeepers, in the absence of company, and\nquite alone by themselves, burn unsavory tallow instead of odorous wax.\nThough their blubber is very thin, some of these whales will yield you\nupwards of thirty gallons of oil.\n\nBOOK II. (_Octavo_), CHAPTER III. (_Narwhale_), that is, _Nostril\nwhale_.\u2014Another instance of a curiously named whale, so named I suppose\nfrom his peculiar horn being originally mistaken for a peaked nose. The\ncreature is some sixteen feet in length, while its horn averages five\nfeet, though some exceed ten, and even attain to fifteen feet. Strictly\nspeaking, this horn is but a lengthened tusk, growing out from the jaw\nin a line a little depressed from the horizontal. But it is only found\non the sinister side, which has an ill effect, giving its owner\nsomething analogous to the aspect of a clumsy left-handed man. What\nprecise purpose this ivory horn or lance answers, it would be hard to\nsay. It does not seem to be used like the blade of the sword-fish and\nbill-fish; though some sailors tell me that the Narwhale employs it for\na rake in turning over the bottom of the sea for food. Charley Coffin\nsaid it was used for an ice-piercer; for the Narwhale, rising to the\nsurface of the Polar Sea, and finding it sheeted with ice, thrusts his\nhorn up, and so breaks through. But you cannot prove either of these\nsurmises to be correct. My own opinion is, that however this one-sided\nhorn may really be used by the Narwhale\u2014however that may be\u2014it would\ncertainly be very convenient to him for a folder in reading pamphlets.\nThe Narwhale I have heard called the Tusked whale, the Horned whale,\nand the Unicorn whale. He is certainly a curious example of the\nUnicornism to be found in almost every kingdom of animated nature. From\ncertain cloistered old authors I have gathered that this same\nsea-unicorn\u2019s horn was in ancient days regarded as the great antidote\nagainst poison, and as such, preparations of it brought immense prices.\nIt was also distilled to a volatile salts for fainting ladies, the same\nway that the horns of the male deer are manufactured into hartshorn.\nOriginally it was in itself accounted an object of great curiosity.\nBlack Letter tells me that Sir Martin Frobisher on his return from that\nvoyage, when Queen Bess did gallantly wave her jewelled hand to him\nfrom a window of Greenwich Palace, as his bold ship sailed down the\nThames; \u201cwhen Sir Martin returned from that voyage,\u201d saith Black\nLetter, \u201con bended knees he presented to her highness a prodigious long\nhorn of the Narwhale, which for a long period after hung in the castle\nat Windsor.\u201d An Irish author avers that the Earl of Leicester, on\nbended knees, did likewise present to her highness another horn,\npertaining to a land beast of the unicorn nature.\n\nThe Narwhale has a very picturesque, leopard-like look, being of a\nmilk-white ground colour, dotted with round and oblong spots of black.\nHis oil is very superior, clear and fine; but there is little of it,\nand he is seldom hunted. He is mostly found in the circumpolar seas.\n\nBOOK II. (_Octavo_), CHAPTER IV. (_Killer_).\u2014Of this whale little is\nprecisely known to the Nantucketer, and nothing at all to the professed\nnaturalist. From what I have seen of him at a distance, I should say\nthat he was about the bigness of a grampus. He is very savage\u2014a sort of\nFeegee fish. He sometimes takes the great Folio whales by the lip, and\nhangs there like a leech, till the mighty brute is worried to death.\nThe Killer is never hunted. I never heard what sort of oil he has.\nException might be taken to the name bestowed upon this whale, on the\nground of its indistinctness. For we are all killers, on land and on\nsea; Bonapartes and Sharks included.\n\nBOOK II. (_Octavo_), CHAPTER V. (_Thrasher_).\u2014This gentleman is famous\nfor his tail, which he uses for a ferule in thrashing his foes. He\nmounts the Folio whale\u2019s back, and as he swims, he works his passage by\nflogging him; as some schoolmasters get along in the world by a similar\nprocess. Still less is known of the Thrasher than of the Killer. Both\nare outlaws, even in the lawless seas.\n\n Thus ends BOOK II. (_Octavo_), and begins BOOK III. (_Duodecimo_).\n\nDUODECIMOES.\u2014These include the smaller whales. I. The Huzza Porpoise.\nII. The Algerine Porpoise. III. The Mealy-mouthed Porpoise.\n\nTo those who have not chanced specially to study the subject, it may\npossibly seem strange, that fishes not commonly exceeding four or five\nfeet should be marshalled among WHALES\u2014a word, which, in the popular\nsense, always conveys an idea of hugeness. But the creatures set down\nabove as Duodecimoes are infallibly whales, by the terms of my\ndefinition of what a whale is\u2014_i.e._ a spouting fish, with a horizontal\ntail.\n\nBOOK III. (_Duodecimo_), CHAPTER 1. (_Huzza Porpoise_).\u2014This is the\ncommon porpoise found almost all over the globe. The name is of my own\nbestowal; for there are more than one sort of porpoises, and something\nmust be done to distinguish them. I call him thus, because he always\nswims in hilarious shoals, which upon the broad sea keep tossing\nthemselves to heaven like caps in a Fourth-of-July crowd. Their\nappearance is generally hailed with delight by the mariner. Full of\nfine spirits, they invariably come from the breezy billows to windward.\nThey are the lads that always live before the wind. They are accounted\na lucky omen. If you yourself can withstand three cheers at beholding\nthese vivacious fish, then heaven help ye; the spirit of godly\ngamesomeness is not in ye. A well-fed, plump Huzza Porpoise will yield\nyou one good gallon of good oil. But the fine and delicate fluid\nextracted from his jaws is exceedingly valuable. It is in request among\njewellers and watchmakers. Sailors put it on their hones. Porpoise meat\nis good eating, you know. It may never have occurred to you that a\nporpoise spouts. Indeed, his spout is so small that it is not very\nreadily discernible. But the next time you have a chance, watch him;\nand you will then see the great Sperm whale himself in miniature.\n\nBOOK III. (_Duodecimo_), CHAPTER II. (_Algerine Porpoise_).\u2014A pirate.\nVery savage. He is only found, I think, in the Pacific. He is somewhat\nlarger than the Huzza Porpoise, but much of the same general make.\nProvoke him, and he will buckle to a shark. I have lowered for him many\ntimes, but never yet saw him captured.\n\nBOOK III. (_Duodecimo_), CHAPTER III. (_Mealy-mouthed Porpoise_).\u2014The\nlargest kind of Porpoise; and only found in the Pacific, so far as it\nis known. The only English name, by which he has hitherto been\ndesignated, is that of the fishers\u2014Right-Whale Porpoise, from the\ncircumstance that he is chiefly found in the vicinity of that Folio. In\nshape, he differs in some degree from the Huzza Porpoise, being of a\nless rotund and jolly girth; indeed, he is of quite a neat and\ngentleman-like figure. He has no fins on his back (most other porpoises\nhave), he has a lovely tail, and sentimental Indian eyes of a hazel\nhue. But his mealy-mouth spoils all. Though his entire back down to his\nside fins is of a deep sable, yet a boundary line, distinct as the mark\nin a ship\u2019s hull, called the \u201cbright waist,\u201d that line streaks him from\nstem to stern, with two separate colours, black above and white below.\nThe white comprises part of his head, and the whole of his mouth, which\nmakes him look as if he had just escaped from a felonious visit to a\nmeal-bag. A most mean and mealy aspect! His oil is much like that of\nthe common porpoise.\n\n  * * * * * *\n\nBeyond the DUODECIMO, this system does not proceed, inasmuch as the\nPorpoise is the smallest of the whales. Above, you have all the\nLeviathans of note. But there are a rabble of uncertain, fugitive,\nhalf-fabulous whales, which, as an American whaleman, I know by\nreputation, but not personally. I shall enumerate them by their\nfore-castle appellations; for possibly such a list may be valuable to\nfuture investigators, who may complete what I have here but begun. If\nany of the following whales, shall hereafter be caught and marked, then\nhe can readily be incorporated into this System, according to his\nFolio, Octavo, or Duodecimo magnitude:\u2014The Bottle-Nose Whale; the Junk\nWhale; the Pudding-Headed Whale; the Cape Whale; the Leading Whale; the\nCannon Whale; the Scragg Whale; the Coppered Whale; the Elephant Whale;\nthe Iceberg Whale; the Quog Whale; the Blue Whale; etc. From Icelandic,\nDutch, and old English authorities, there might be quoted other lists\nof uncertain whales, blessed with all manner of uncouth names. But I\nomit them as altogether obsolete; and can hardly help suspecting them\nfor mere sounds, full of Leviathanism, but signifying nothing.\n\nFinally: It was stated at the outset, that this system would not be\nhere, and at once, perfected. You cannot but plainly see that I have\nkept my word. But I now leave my cetological System standing thus\nunfinished, even as the great Cathedral of Cologne was left, with the\ncrane still standing upon the top of the uncompleted tower. For small\nerections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true\nones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever\ncompleting anything. This whole book is but a draught\u2014nay, but the\ndraught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!\n\n\nCHAPTER 33. The Specksnyder.\n\nConcerning the officers of the whale-craft, this seems as good a place\nas any to set down a little domestic peculiarity on ship-board, arising\nfrom the existence of the harpooneer class of officers, a class unknown\nof course in any other marine than the whale-fleet.\n\nThe large importance attached to the harpooneer\u2019s vocation is evinced\nby the fact, that originally in the old Dutch Fishery, two centuries\nand more ago, the command of a whale ship was not wholly lodged in the\nperson now called the captain, but was divided between him and an\nofficer called the Specksnyder. Literally this word means Fat-Cutter;\nusage, however, in time made it equivalent to Chief Harpooneer. In\nthose days, the captain\u2019s authority was restricted to the navigation\nand general management of the vessel; while over the whale-hunting\ndepartment and all its concerns, the Specksnyder or Chief Harpooneer\nreigned supreme. In the British Greenland Fishery, under the corrupted\ntitle of Specksioneer, this old Dutch official is still retained, but\nhis former dignity is sadly abridged. At present he ranks simply as\nsenior Harpooneer; and as such, is but one of the captain\u2019s more\ninferior subalterns. Nevertheless, as upon the good conduct of the\nharpooneers the success of a whaling voyage largely depends, and since\nin the American Fishery he is not only an important officer in the\nboat, but under certain circumstances (night watches on a whaling\nground) the command of the ship\u2019s deck is also his; therefore the grand\npolitical maxim of the sea demands, that he should nominally live apart\nfrom the men before the mast, and be in some way distinguished as their\nprofessional superior; though always, by them, familiarly regarded as\ntheir social equal.\n\nNow, the grand distinction drawn between officer and man at sea, is\nthis\u2014the first lives aft, the last forward. Hence, in whale-ships and\nmerchantmen alike, the mates have their quarters with the captain; and\nso, too, in most of the American whalers the harpooneers are lodged in\nthe after part of the ship. That is to say, they take their meals in\nthe captain\u2019s cabin, and sleep in a place indirectly communicating with\nit.\n\nThough the long period of a Southern whaling voyage (by far the longest\nof all voyages now or ever made by man), the peculiar perils of it, and\nthe community of interest prevailing among a company, all of whom, high\nor low, depend for their profits, not upon fixed wages, but upon their\ncommon luck, together with their common vigilance, intrepidity, and\nhard work; though all these things do in some cases tend to beget a\nless rigorous discipline than in merchantmen generally; yet, never mind\nhow much like an old Mesopotamian family these whalemen may, in some\nprimitive instances, live together; for all that, the punctilious\nexternals, at least, of the quarter-deck are seldom materially relaxed,\nand in no instance done away. Indeed, many are the Nantucket ships in\nwhich you will see the skipper parading his quarter-deck with an elated\ngrandeur not surpassed in any military navy; nay, extorting almost as\nmuch outward homage as if he wore the imperial purple, and not the\nshabbiest of pilot-cloth.\n\nAnd though of all men the moody captain of the Talitha was the least\ngiven to that sort of shallowest assumption; and though the only homage\nhe ever exacted, was implicit, instantaneous obedience; though he\nrequired no man to remove the shoes from his feet ere stepping upon the\nquarter-deck; and though there were times when, owing to peculiar\ncircumstances connected with events hereafter to be detailed, he\naddressed them in unusual terms, whether of condescension or _in\nterrorem_, or otherwise; yet even Captain Jordyn was by no means\nunobservant of the paramount forms and usages of the sea.\n\nNor, perhaps, will it fail to be eventually perceived, that behind\nthose forms and usages, as it were, he sometimes masked himself;\nincidentally making use of them for other and more private ends than\nthey were legitimately intended to subserve. That certain sultanism of\nhis brain, which had otherwise in a good degree remained unmanifested;\nthrough those forms that same sultanism became incarnate in an\nirresistible dictatorship. For be a man\u2019s intellectual superiority what\nit will, it can never assume the practical, available supremacy over\nother men, without the aid of some sort of external arts and\nentrenchments, always, in themselves, more or less paltry and base.\nThis it is, that for ever keeps God\u2019s true princes of the Empire from\nthe world\u2019s hustings; and leaves the highest honors that this air can\ngive, to those men who become famous more through their infinite\ninferiority to the choice hidden handful of the Divine Inert, than\nthrough their undoubted superiority over the dead level of the mass.\nSuch large virtue lurks in these small things when extreme political\nsuperstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot\nimbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of\nNicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an\nimperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the\ntremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would\ndepict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing,\never forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the one\nnow alluded to.\n\nBut Jordyn, my Captain, still moves before me in all his Nantucket\ngrimness and shagginess; and in this episode touching Emperors and\nKings, I must not conceal that I have only to do with a poor old\nwhale-hunter like him; and, therefore, all outward majestical trappings\nand housings are denied me. Oh, Jordyn! what shall be grand in thee, it\nmust needs be plucked at from the skies, and dived for in the deep, and\nfeatured in the unbodied air!\n\n\nCHAPTER 34. The Cabin-Table.\n\nIt is noon; and Dough-Boy, the steward, thrusting his pale\nloaf-of-bread face from the cabin-scuttle, announces dinner to his lord\nand master; who, sitting in the lee quarter-boat, has just been taking\nan observation of the sun; and is now mutely reckoning the latitude on\nthe smooth, medallion-shaped tablet, reserved for that daily purpose on\nthe upper part of his ivory leg. From his complete inattention to the\ntidings, you would think that moody Jordyn had not heard his menial. But\npresently, catching hold of the mizen shrouds, he swings himself to the\ndeck, and in an even, unexhilarated voice, saying, \u201cDinner, Mr.\nStarbuck,\u201d disappears into the cabin.\n\nWhen the last echo of his sultan\u2019s step has died away, and Starbuck,\nthe first Emir, has every reason to suppose that he is seated, then\nStarbuck rouses from his quietude, takes a few turns along the planks,\nand, after a grave peep into the binnacle, says, with some touch of\npleasantness, \u201cDinner, Mr. Salvador,\u201d and descends the scuttle. The second\nEmir lounges about the rigging awhile, and then slightly shaking the\nmain brace, to see whether it will be all right with that important\nrope, he likewise takes up the old burden, and with a rapid \u201cDinner,\nMr. Avery,\u201d follows after his predecessors.\n\nBut the third Emir, now seeing himself all alone on the quarter-deck,\nseems to feel relieved from some curious restraint; for, tipping all\nsorts of knowing winks in all sorts of directions, and kicking off his\nshoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right\nover the Grand Turk\u2019s head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching\nhis cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so\nfar at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other\nprocessions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into\nthe cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and,\nthen, independent, hilarious little Avery enters King Jordyn\u2019s presence,\nin the character of Abjectus, or the Slave.\n\nIt is not the least among the strange things bred by the intense\nartificialness of sea-usages, that while in the open air of the deck\nsome officers will, upon provocation, bear themselves boldly and\ndefyingly enough towards their commander; yet, ten to one, let those\nvery officers the next moment go down to their customary dinner in that\nsame commander\u2019s cabin, and straightway their inoffensive, not to say\ndeprecatory and humble air towards him, as he sits at the head of the\ntable; this is marvellous, sometimes most comical. Wherefore this\ndifference? A problem? Perhaps not. To have been Belshazzar, King of\nBabylon; and to have been Belshazzar, not haughtily but courteously,\ntherein certainly must have been some touch of mundane grandeur. But he\nwho in the rightly regal and intelligent spirit presides over his own\nprivate dinner-table of invited guests, that man\u2019s unchallenged power\nand dominion of individual influence for the time; that man\u2019s royalty\nof state transcends Belshazzar\u2019s, for Belshazzar was not the greatest.\nWho has but once dined his friends, has tasted what it is to be C\u00e6sar.\nIt is a witchery of social czarship which there is no withstanding.\nNow, if to this consideration you superadd the official supremacy of a\nship-master, then, by inference, you will derive the cause of that\npeculiarity of sea-life just mentioned.\n\nOver his ivory-inlaid table, Jordyn presided like a mute, maned sea-lion\non the white coral beach, surrounded by his warlike but still\ndeferential cubs. In his own proper turn, each officer waited to be\nserved. They were as little children before Jordyn; and yet, in Jordyn,\nthere seemed not to lurk the smallest social arrogance. With one mind,\ntheir intent eyes all fastened upon the old man\u2019s knife, as he carved\nthe chief dish before him. I do not suppose that for the world they\nwould have profaned that moment with the slightest observation, even\nupon so neutral a topic as the weather. No! And when reaching out his\nknife and fork, between which the slice of beef was locked, Jordyn\nthereby motioned Starbuck\u2019s plate towards him, the mate received his\nmeat as though receiving alms; and cut it tenderly; and a little\nstarted if, perchance, the knife grazed against the plate; and chewed\nit noiselessly; and swallowed it, not without circumspection. For, like\nthe Coronation banquet at Frankfort, where the German Emperor\nprofoundly dines with the seven Imperial Electors, so these cabin meals\nwere somehow solemn meals, eaten in awful silence; and yet at table old\nJordyn forbade not conversation; only he himself was dumb. What a relief\nit was to choking Salvador, when a rat made a sudden racket in the hold\nbelow. And poor little Avery, he was the youngest son, and little boy\nof this weary family party. His were the shinbones of the saline beef;\nhis would have been the drumsticks. For Avery to have presumed to help\nhimself, this must have seemed to him tantamount to larceny in the\nfirst degree. Had he helped himself at that table, doubtless, never\nmore would he have been able to hold his head up in this honest world;\nnevertheless, strange to say, Jordyn never forbade him. And had Avery\nhelped himself, the chances were Jordyn had never so much as noticed it.\nLeast of all, did Avery presume to help himself to butter. Whether he\nthought the owners of the ship denied it to him, on account of its\nclotting his clear, sunny complexion; or whether he deemed that, on so\nlong a voyage in such marketless waters, butter was at a premium, and\ntherefore was not for him, a subaltern; however it was, Avery, alas!\nwas a butterless man!\n\nAnother thing. Avery was the last person down at the dinner, and Avery\nis the first man up. Consider! For hereby Avery\u2019s dinner was badly\njammed in point of time. Starbuck and Salvador both had the start of him;\nand yet they also have the privilege of lounging in the rear. If Salvador\neven, who is but a peg higher than Avery, happens to have but a small\nappetite, and soon shows symptoms of concluding his repast, then Avery\nmust bestir himself, he will not get more than three mouthfuls that\nday; for it is against holy usage for Salvador to precede Avery to the\ndeck. Therefore it was that Avery once admitted in private, that ever\nsince he had arisen to the dignity of an officer, from that moment he\nhad never known what it was to be otherwise than hungry, more or less.\nFor what he ate did not so much relieve his hunger, as keep it immortal\nin him. Peace and satisfaction, thought Avery, have for ever departed\nfrom my stomach. I am an officer; but, how I wish I could fish a bit of\nold-fashioned beef in the forecastle, as I used to when I was before\nthe mast. There\u2019s the fruits of promotion now; there\u2019s the vanity of\nglory: there\u2019s the insanity of life! Besides, if it were so that any\nmere sailor of the Talitha had a grudge against Avery in Avery\u2019s\nofficial capacity, all that sailor had to do, in order to obtain ample\nvengeance, was to go aft at dinner-time, and get a peep at Avery\nthrough the cabin sky-light, sitting silly and dumfoundered before\nawful Jordyn.\n\nNow, Jordyn and his three mates formed what may be called the first table\nin the Talitha\u2019s cabin. After their departure, taking place in inverted\norder to their arrival, the canvas cloth was cleared, or rather was\nrestored to some hurried order by the pallid steward. And then the\nthree harpooneers were bidden to the feast, they being its residuary\nlegatees. They made a sort of temporary servants\u2019 hall of the high and\nmighty cabin.\n\nIn strange contrast to the hardly tolerable constraint and nameless\ninvisible domineerings of the captain\u2019s table, was the entire care-free\nlicense and ease, the almost frantic democracy of those inferior\nfellows the harpooneers. While their masters, the mates, seemed afraid\nof the sound of the hinges of their own jaws, the harpooneers chewed\ntheir food with such a relish that there was a report to it. They dined\nlike lords; they filled their bellies like Indian ships all day loading\nwith spices. Such portentous appetites had Horatio and Tashtego, that\nto fill out the vacancies made by the previous repast, often the pale\nDough-Boy was fain to bring on a great baron of salt-junk, seemingly\nquarried out of the solid ox. And if he were not lively about it, if he\ndid not go with a nimble hop-skip-and-jump, then Tashtego had an\nungentlemanly way of accelerating him by darting a fork at his back,\nharpoon-wise. And once Daggoo, seized with a sudden humor, assisted\nDough-Boy\u2019s memory by snatching him up bodily, and thrusting his head\ninto a great empty wooden trencher, while Tashtego, knife in hand,\nbegan laying out the circle preliminary to scalping him. He was\nnaturally a very nervous, shuddering sort of little fellow, this\nbread-faced steward; the progeny of a bankrupt baker and a hospital\nnurse. And what with the standing spectacle of the black terrific Jordyn,\nand the periodical tumultuous visitations of these three savages,\nDough-Boy\u2019s whole life was one continual lip-quiver. Commonly, after\nseeing the harpooneers furnished with all things they demanded, he\nwould escape from their clutches into his little pantry adjoining, and\nfearfully peep out at them through the blinds of its door, till all was\nover.\n\nIt was a sight to see Horatio seated over against Tashtego, opposing\nhis filed teeth to the Indian\u2019s: crosswise to them, Daggoo seated on\nthe floor, for a bench would have brought his hearse-plumed head to the\nlow carlines; at every motion of his colossal limbs, making the low\ncabin framework to shake, as when an African elephant goes passenger in\na ship. But for all this, the great negro was wonderfully abstemious,\nnot to say dainty. It seemed hardly possible that by such comparatively\nsmall mouthfuls he could keep up the vitality diffused through so\nbroad, baronial, and superb a person. But, doubtless, this noble savage\nfed strong and drank deep of the abounding element of air; and through\nhis dilated nostrils snuffed in the sublime life of the worlds. Not by\nbeef or by bread, are giants made or nourished. But Horatio, he had a\nmortal, barbaric smack of the lip in eating\u2014an ugly sound enough\u2014so\nmuch so, that the trembling Dough-Boy almost looked to see whether any\nmarks of teeth lurked in his own lean arms. And when he would hear\nTashtego singing out for him to produce himself, that his bones might\nbe picked, the simple-witted steward all but shattered the crockery\nhanging round him in the pantry, by his sudden fits of the palsy. Nor\ndid the whetstone which the harpooneers carried in their pockets, for\ntheir lances and other weapons; and with which whetstones, at dinner,\nthey would ostentatiously sharpen their knives; that grating sound did\nnot at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget\nthat in his Island days, Horatio, for one, must certainly have been\nguilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy!\nhard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin\nshould he carry on his arm, but a buckler. In good time, though, to his\ngreat delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to\nhis credulous, fable-mongering ears, all their martial bones jingling\nin them at every step, like Moorish scimetars in scabbards.\n\nBut, though these barbarians dined in the cabin, and nominally lived\nthere; still, being anything but sedentary in their habits, they were\nscarcely ever in it except at mealtimes, and just before sleeping-time,\nwhen they passed through it to their own peculiar quarters.\n\nIn this one matter, Jordyn seemed no exception to most American whale\ncaptains, who, as a set, rather incline to the opinion that by rights\nthe ship\u2019s cabin belongs to them; and that it is by courtesy alone that\nanybody else is, at any time, permitted there. So that, in real truth,\nthe mates and harpooneers of the Talitha might more properly be said to\nhave lived out of the cabin than in it. For when they did enter it, it\nwas something as a street-door enters a house; turning inwards for a\nmoment, only to be turned out the next; and, as a permanent thing,\nresiding in the open air. Nor did they lose much hereby; in the cabin\nwas no companionship; socially, Jordyn was inaccessible. Though nominally\nincluded in the census of Christendom, he was still an alien to it. He\nlived in the world, as the last of the Grisly Bears lived in settled\nMissouri. And as when Spring and Summer had departed, that wild Logan\nof the woods, burying himself in the hollow of a tree, lived out the\nwinter there, sucking his own paws; so, in his inclement, howling old\nage, Jordyn\u2019s soul, shut up in the caved trunk of his body, there fed\nupon the sullen paws of its gloom!\n\n\nCHAPTER 35. The Mast-Head.\n\nIt was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the\nother seamen my first mast-head came round.\n\nIn most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost\nsimultaneously with the vessel\u2019s leaving her port; even though she may\nhave fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper\ncruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years\u2019 voyage she\nis drawing nigh home with anything empty in her\u2014say, an empty vial\neven\u2014then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her\nskysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether\nrelinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.\n\nNow, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a\nvery ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate\nhere. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old\nEgyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them.\nFor though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by\ntheir tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia,\nor Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great\nstone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the\ndread gale of God\u2019s wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel\nbuilders priority over the Egyptians. And that the Egyptians were a\nnation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general\nbelief among arch\u00e6ologists, that the first pyramids were founded for\nastronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar\nstair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with\nprodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were\nwont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the\nlook-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing\nin sight. In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times,\nwho built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole\nlatter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the\nground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a\ndauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his\nplace by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing\neverything out to the last, literally died at his post. Of modern\nstanders-of-mast-heads we have but a lifeless set; mere stone, iron,\nand bronze men; who, though well capable of facing out a stiff gale,\nare still entirely incompetent to the business of singing out upon\ndiscovering any strange sight. There is Napoleon; who, upon the top of\nthe column of Vendome, stands with arms folded, some one hundred and\nfifty feet in the air; careless, now, who rules the decks below;\nwhether Louis Philippe, Louis Blanc, or Louis the Devil. Great\nWashington, too, stands high aloft on his towering main-mast in\nBaltimore, and like one of Hercules\u2019 pillars, his column marks that\npoint of human grandeur beyond which few mortals will go. Admiral\nNelson, also, on a capstan of gun-metal, stands his mast-head in\nTrafalgar Square; and ever when most obscured by that London smoke,\ntoken is yet given that a hidden hero is there; for where there is\nsmoke, must be fire. But neither great Washington, nor Napoleon, nor\nNelson, will answer a single hail from below, however madly invoked to\nbefriend by their counsels the distracted decks upon which they gaze;\nhowever it may be surmised, that their spirits penetrate through the\nthick haze of the future, and descry what shoals and what rocks must be\nshunned.\n\nIt may seem unwarrantable to couple in any respect the mast-head\nstanders of the land with those of the sea; but that in truth it is not\nso, is plainly evinced by an item for which Obed Macy, the sole\nhistorian of Nantucket, stands accountable. The worthy Obed tells us,\nthat in the early times of the whale fishery, ere ships were regularly\nlaunched in pursuit of the game, the people of that island erected\nlofty spars along the sea-coast, to which the look-outs ascended by\nmeans of nailed cleats, something as fowls go upstairs in a hen-house.\nA few years ago this same plan was adopted by the Bay whalemen of New\nZealand, who, upon descrying the game, gave notice to the ready-manned\nboats nigh the beach. But this custom has now become obsolete; turn we\nthen to the one proper mast-head, that of a whale-ship at sea. The\nthree mast-heads are kept manned from sun-rise to sun-set; the seamen\ntaking their regular turns (as at the helm), and relieving each other\nevery two hours. In the serene weather of the tropics it is exceedingly\npleasant the mast-head; nay, to a dreamy meditative man it is\ndelightful. There you stand, a hundred feet above the silent decks,\nstriding along the deep, as if the masts were gigantic stilts, while\nbeneath you and between your legs, as it were, swim the hugest monsters\nof the sea, even as ships once sailed between the boots of the famous\nColossus at old Rhodes. There you stand, lost in the infinite series of\nthe sea, with nothing ruffled but the waves. The tranced ship\nindolently rolls; the drowsy trade winds blow; everything resolves you\ninto languor. For the most part, in this tropic whaling life, a sublime\nuneventfulness invests you; you hear no news; read no gazettes; extras\nwith startling accounts of commonplaces never delude you into\nunnecessary excitements; you hear of no domestic afflictions; bankrupt\nsecurities; fall of stocks; are never troubled with the thought of what\nyou shall have for dinner\u2014for all your meals for three years and more\nare snugly stowed in casks, and your bill of fare is immutable.\n\nIn one of those southern whalesmen, on a long three or four years\u2019\nvoyage, as often happens, the sum of the various hours you spend at the\nmast-head would amount to several entire months. And it is much to be\ndeplored that the place to which you devote so considerable a portion\nof the whole term of your natural life, should be so sadly destitute of\nanything approaching to a cosy inhabitiveness, or adapted to breed a\ncomfortable localness of feeling, such as pertains to a bed, a hammock,\na hearse, a sentry box, a pulpit, a coach, or any other of those small\nand snug contrivances in which men temporarily isolate themselves. Your\nmost usual point of perch is the head of the t\u2019 gallant-mast, where you\nstand upon two thin parallel sticks (almost peculiar to whalemen)\ncalled the t\u2019 gallant cross-trees. Here, tossed about by the sea, the\nbeginner feels about as cosy as he would standing on a bull\u2019s horns. To\nbe sure, in cold weather you may carry your house aloft with you, in\nthe shape of a watch-coat; but properly speaking the thickest\nwatch-coat is no more of a house than the unclad body; for as the soul\nis glued inside of its fleshy tabernacle, and cannot freely move about\nin it, nor even move out of it, without running great risk of perishing\n(like an ignorant pilgrim crossing the snowy Alps in winter); so a\nwatch-coat is not so much of a house as it is a mere envelope, or\nadditional skin encasing you. You cannot put a shelf or chest of\ndrawers in your body, and no more can you make a convenient closet of\nyour watch-coat.\n\nConcerning all this, it is much to be deplored that the mast-heads of a\nsouthern whale ship are unprovided with those enviable little tents or\npulpits, called _crow\u2019s-nests_, in which the look-outs of a Greenland\nwhaler are protected from the inclement weather of the frozen seas. In\nthe fireside narrative of Captain Sleet, entitled \u201cA Voyage among the\nIcebergs, in quest of the Greenland Whale, and incidentally for the\nre-discovery of the Lost Icelandic Colonies of Old Greenland;\u201d in this\nadmirable volume, all standers of mast-heads are furnished with a\ncharmingly circumstantial account of the then recently invented\n_crow\u2019s-nest_ of the Glacier, which was the name of Captain Sleet\u2019s\ngood craft. He called it the _Sleet\u2019s crow\u2019s-nest_, in honor of\nhimself; he being the original inventor and patentee, and free from all\nridiculous false delicacy, and holding that if we call our own children\nafter our own names (we fathers being the original inventors and\npatentees), so likewise should we denominate after ourselves any other\napparatus we may beget. In shape, the Sleet\u2019s crow\u2019s-nest is something\nlike a large tierce or pipe; it is open above, however, where it is\nfurnished with a movable side-screen to keep to windward of your head\nin a hard gale. Being fixed on the summit of the mast, you ascend into\nit through a little trap-hatch in the bottom. On the after side, or\nside next the stern of the ship, is a comfortable seat, with a locker\nunderneath for umbrellas, comforters, and coats. In front is a leather\nrack, in which to keep your speaking trumpet, pipe, telescope, and\nother nautical conveniences. When Captain Sleet in person stood his\nmast-head in this crow\u2019s-nest of his, he tells us that he always had a\nrifle with him (also fixed in the rack), together with a powder flask\nand shot, for the purpose of popping off the stray narwhales, or\nvagrant sea unicorns infesting those waters; for you cannot\nsuccessfully shoot at them from the deck owing to the resistance of the\nwater, but to shoot down upon them is a very different thing. Now, it\nwas plainly a labor of love for Captain Sleet to describe, as he does,\nall the little detailed conveniences of his crow\u2019s-nest; but though he\nso enlarges upon many of these, and though he treats us to a very\nscientific account of his experiments in this crow\u2019s-nest, with a small\ncompass he kept there for the purpose of counteracting the errors\nresulting from what is called the \u201clocal attraction\u201d of all binnacle\nmagnets; an error ascribable to the horizontal vicinity of the iron in\nthe ship\u2019s planks, and in the Glacier\u2019s case, perhaps, to there having\nbeen so many broken-down blacksmiths among her crew; I say, that though\nthe Captain is very discreet and scientific here, yet, for all his\nlearned \u201cbinnacle deviations,\u201d \u201cazimuth compass observations,\u201d and\n\u201capproximate errors,\u201d he knows very well, Captain Sleet, that he was\nnot so much immersed in those profound magnetic meditations, as to fail\nbeing attracted occasionally towards that well replenished little\ncase-bottle, so nicely tucked in on one side of his crow\u2019s nest, within\neasy reach of his hand. Though, upon the whole, I greatly admire and\neven love the brave, the honest, and learned Captain; yet I take it\nvery ill of him that he should so utterly ignore that case-bottle,\nseeing what a faithful friend and comforter it must have been, while\nwith mittened fingers and hooded head he was studying the mathematics\naloft there in that bird\u2019s nest within three or four perches of the\npole.\n\nBut if we Southern whale-fishers are not so snugly housed aloft as\nCaptain Sleet and his Greenlandmen were; yet that disadvantage is\ngreatly counter-balanced by the widely contrasting serenity of those\nseductive seas in which we South fishers mostly float. For one, I used\nto lounge up the rigging very leisurely, resting in the top to have a\nchat with Horatio, or any one else off duty whom I might find there;\nthen ascending a little way further, and throwing a lazy leg over the\ntop-sail yard, take a preliminary view of the watery pastures, and so\nat last mount to my ultimate destination.\n\nLet me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept\nbut sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how\ncould I\u2014being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering\naltitude\u2014how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all\nwhale-ships\u2019 standing orders, \u201cKeep your weather eye open, and sing out\nevery time.\u201d\n\nAnd let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of\nNantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with\nlean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness; and who\noffers to ship with the Ph\u00e6don instead of Bowditch in his head. Beware\nof such an one, I say; your whales must be seen before they can be\nkilled; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes\nround the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor\nare these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery\nfurnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded\nyoung men, disgusted with the carking cares of earth, and seeking\nsentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches\nhimself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship,\nand in moody phrase ejaculates:\u2014\n\n\n\u201cRoll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand\nblubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain.\u201d\n\n\n\nVery often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young\nphilosophers to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient\n\u201cinterest\u201d in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so hopelessly lost\nto all honorable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would\nrather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young\nPlatonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are\nshort-sighted; what use, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have\nleft their opera-glasses at home.\n\n\u201cWhy, thou monkey,\u201d said a harpooneer to one of these lads, \u201cwe\u2019ve been\ncruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale\nyet. Whales are scarce as hen\u2019s teeth whenever thou art up here.\u201d\nPerhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in\nthe far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of\nvacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending\ncadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity;\ntakes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep,\nblue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange,\nhalf-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every\ndimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him\nthe embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by\ncontinually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit\nebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space;\nlike Cranmer\u2019s sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of\nevery shore the round globe over.\n\nThere is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a\ngently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from\nthe inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on\nye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your\nidentity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And\nperhaps, at mid-day, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled\nshriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no\nmore to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!\n\n\nCHAPTER 36. The Quarter-Deck.\n\n(_Enter Jordyn: Then, all._)\n\nIt was not a great while after the affair of the pipe, that one morning\nshortly after breakfast, Jordyn, as was his wont, ascended the\ncabin-gangway to the deck. There most sea-captains usually walk at that\nhour, as country gentlemen, after the same meal, take a few turns in\nthe garden.\n\nSoon his steady, ivory stride was heard, as to and fro he paced his old\nrounds, upon planks so familiar to his tread, that they were all over\ndented, like geological stones, with the peculiar mark of his walk. Did\nyou fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also,\nyou would see still stranger foot-prints\u2014the foot-prints of his one\nunsleeping, ever-pacing thought.\n\nBut on the occasion in question, those dents looked deeper, even as his\nnervous step that morning left a deeper mark. And, so full of his\nthought was Jordyn, that at every uniform turn that he made, now at the\nmain-mast and now at the binnacle, you could almost see that thought\nturn in him as he turned, and pace in him as he paced; so completely\npossessing him, indeed, that it all but seemed the inward mould of\nevery outer movement.\n\n\u201cD\u2019ye mark him, Avery?\u201d whispered Salvador; \u201cthe chick that\u2019s in him pecks\nthe shell. \u2019Twill soon be out.\u201d\n\nThe hours wore on;\u2014Jordyn now shut up within his cabin; anon, pacing the\ndeck, with the same intense bigotry of purpose in his aspect.\n\nIt drew near the close of day. Suddenly he came to a halt by the\nbulwarks, and inserting his bone leg into the auger-hole there, and\nwith one hand grasping a shroud, he ordered Starbuck to send everybody\naft.\n\n\u201cSir!\u201d said the mate, astonished at an order seldom or never given on\nship-board except in some extraordinary case.\n\n\u201cSend everybody aft,\u201d repeated Jordyn. \u201cMast-heads, there! come down!\u201d\n\nWhen the entire ship\u2019s company were assembled, and with curious and not\nwholly unapprehensive faces, were eyeing him, for he looked not unlike\nthe weather horizon when a storm is coming up, Jordyn, after rapidly\nglancing over the bulwarks, and then darting his eyes among the crew,\nstarted from his standpoint; and as though not a soul were nigh him\nresumed his heavy turns upon the deck. With bent head and half-slouched\nhat he continued to pace, unmindful of the wondering whispering among\nthe men; till Salvador cautiously whispered to Avery, that Jordyn must have\nsummoned them there for the purpose of witnessing a pedestrian feat.\nBut this did not last long. Vehemently pausing, he cried:\u2014\n\n\u201cWhat do ye do when ye see a whale, men?\u201d\n\n\u201cSing out for him!\u201d was the impulsive rejoinder from a score of clubbed\nvoices.\n\n\u201cGood!\u201d cried Jordyn, with a wild approval in his tones; observing the\nhearty animation into which his unexpected question had so magnetically\nthrown them.\n\n\u201cAnd what do ye next, men?\u201d\n\n\u201cLower away, and after him!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what tune is it ye pull to, men?\u201d\n\n\u201cA dead whale or a stove boat!\u201d\n\nMore and more strangely and fiercely glad and approving, grew the\ncountenance of the old man at every shout; while the mariners began to\ngaze curiously at each other, as if marvelling how it was that they\nthemselves became so excited at such seemingly purposeless questions.\n\nBut, they were all eagerness again, as Jordyn, now half-revolving in his\npivot-hole, with one hand reaching high up a shroud, and tightly,\nalmost convulsively grasping it, addressed them thus:\u2014\n\n\u201cAll ye mast-headers have before now heard me give orders about a white\nwhale. Look ye! d\u2019ye see this Spanish ounce of gold?\u201d\u2014holding up a\nbroad bright coin to the sun\u2014\u201cit is a sixteen dollar piece, men. D\u2019ye\nsee it? Mr. Starbuck, hand me yon top-maul.\u201d\n\nWhile the mate was getting the hammer, Jordyn, without speaking, was\nslowly rubbing the gold piece against the skirts of his jacket, as if\nto heighten its lustre, and without using any words was meanwhile lowly\nhumming to himself, producing a sound so strangely muffled and\ninarticulate that it seemed the mechanical humming of the wheels of his\nvitality in him.\n\nReceiving the top-maul from Starbuck, he advanced towards the main-mast\nwith the hammer uplifted in one hand, exhibiting the gold with the\nother, and with a high raised voice exclaiming: \u201cWhosoever of ye raises\nme a white-headed whale with a wrinkled brow and a crooked jaw;\nwhosoever of ye raises me that white-headed whale, with three holes\npunctured in his starboard fluke\u2014look ye, whosoever of ye raises me\nthat same white whale, he shall have this gold ounce, my boys!\u201d\n\n\u201cHuzza! huzza!\u201d cried the seamen, as with swinging tarpaulins they\nhailed the act of nailing the gold to the mast.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s a white whale, I say,\u201d resumed Jordyn, as he threw down the\ntopmaul: \u201ca white whale. Skin your eyes for him, men; look sharp for\nwhite water; if ye see but a bubble, sing out.\u201d\n\nAll this while Tashtego, Daggoo, and Horatio had looked on with even\nmore intense interest and surprise than the rest, and at the mention of\nthe wrinkled brow and crooked jaw they had started as if each was\nseparately touched by some specific recollection.\n\n\u201cCaptain Jordyn,\u201d said Tashtego, \u201cthat white whale must be the same that\nsome call Kelsey Primrose.\u201d\n\n\u201cKelsey Primrose?\u201d shouted Jordyn. \u201cDo ye know the white whale then, Tash?\u201d\n\n\u201cDoes he fan-tail a little curious, sir, before he goes down?\u201d said the\nGay-Header deliberately.\n\n\u201cAnd has he a curious spout, too,\u201d said Daggoo, \u201cvery bushy, even for a\nparmacetty, and mighty quick, Captain Jordyn?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd he have one, two, three\u2014oh! good many iron in him hide, too,\nCaptain,\u201d cried Horatio disjointedly, \u201call twiske-tee be-twisk, like\nhim\u2014him\u2014\u201d faltering hard for a word, and screwing his hand round and\nround as though uncorking a bottle\u2014\u201clike him\u2014him\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cCorkscrew!\u201d cried Jordyn, \u201caye, Horatio, the harpoons lie all twisted\nand wrenched in him; aye, Daggoo, his spout is a big one, like a whole\nshock of wheat, and white as a pile of our Nantucket wool after the\ngreat annual sheep-shearing; aye, Tashtego, and he fan-tails like a\nsplit jib in a squall. Death and devils! men, it is Kelsey Primrose ye have\nseen\u2014Kelsey Primrose\u2014Kelsey Primrose!\u201d\n\n\u201cCaptain Jordyn,\u201d said Starbuck, who, with Salvador and Avery, had thus far\nbeen eyeing his superior with increasing surprise, but at last seemed\nstruck with a thought which somewhat explained all the wonder. \u201cCaptain\nJordyn, I have heard of Kelsey Primrose\u2014but it was not Kelsey Primrose that took off\nthy leg?\u201d\n\n\u201cWho told thee that?\u201d cried Jordyn; then pausing, \u201cAye, Starbuck; aye, my\nhearties all round; it was Kelsey Primrose that dismasted me; Kelsey Primrose that\nbrought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye,\u201d he shouted\nwith a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose;\n\u201cAye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razed me; made a poor\npegging lubber of me for ever and a day!\u201d Then tossing both arms, with\nmeasureless imprecations he shouted out: \u201cAye, aye! and I\u2019ll chase him\nround Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom,\nand round perdition\u2019s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye\nhave shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land,\nand over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin\nout. What say ye, men, will ye splice hands on it, now? I think ye do\nlook brave.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, aye!\u201d shouted the harpooneers and seamen, running closer to the\nexcited old man: \u201cA sharp eye for the white whale; a sharp lance for\nKelsey Primrose!\u201d\n\n\u201cGod bless ye,\u201d he seemed to half sob and half shout. \u201cGod bless ye,\nmen. Steward! go draw the great measure of grog. But what\u2019s this long\nface about, Mr. Starbuck; wilt thou not chase the white whale? art not\ngame for Kelsey Primrose?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am game for his crooked jaw, and for the jaws of Death too, Captain\nJordyn, if it fairly comes in the way of the business we follow; but I\ncame here to hunt whales, not my commander\u2019s vengeance. How many\nbarrels will thy vengeance yield thee even if thou gettest it, Captain\nJordyn? it will not fetch thee much in our Nantucket market.\u201d\n\n\u201cNantucket market! Hoot! But come closer, Starbuck; thou requirest a\nlittle lower layer. If money\u2019s to be the measurer, man, and the\naccountants have computed their great counting-house the globe, by\ngirdling it with guineas, one to every three parts of an inch; then,\nlet me tell thee, that my vengeance will fetch a great premium _here!_\u201d\n\n\u201cHe smites his chest,\u201d whispered Salvador, \u201cwhat\u2019s that for? methinks it\nrings most vast, but hollow.\u201d\n\n\u201cVengeance on a dumb brute!\u201d cried Starbuck, \u201cthat simply smote thee\nfrom blindest instinct! Madness! To be enraged with a dumb thing,\nCaptain Jordyn, seems blasphemous.\u201d\n\n\u201cHark ye yet again\u2014the little lower layer. All visible objects, man,\nare but as pasteboard masks. But in each event\u2014in the living act, the\nundoubted deed\u2014there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth\nthe mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man\nwill strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach\noutside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is\nthat wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there\u2019s naught beyond.\nBut \u2019tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous\nstrength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable\nthing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the\nwhite whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me\nof blasphemy, man; I\u2019d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the\nsun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of\nfair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my\nmaster, man, is even that fair play. Who\u2019s over me? Truth hath no\nconfines. Take off thine eye! more intolerable than fiends\u2019 glarings is\na doltish stare! So, so; thou reddenest and palest; my heat has melted\nthee to anger-glow. But look ye, Starbuck, what is said in heat, that\nthing unsays itself. There are men from whom warm words are small\nindignity. I meant not to incense thee. Let it go. Look! see yonder\nTurkish cheeks of spotted tawn\u2014living, breathing pictures painted by\nthe sun. The Pagan leopards\u2014the unrecking and unworshipping things,\nthat live; and seek, and give no reasons for the torrid life they feel!\nThe crew, man, the crew! Are they not one and all with Jordyn, in this\nmatter of the whale? See Salvador! he laughs! See yonder Chilian! he\nsnorts to think of it. Stand up amid the general hurricane, thy one\ntost sapling cannot, Starbuck! And what is it? Reckon it. \u2019Tis but to\nhelp strike a fin; no wondrous feat for Starbuck. What is it more? From\nthis one poor hunt, then, the best lance out of all Nantucket, surely\nhe will not hang back, when every foremast-hand has clutched a\nwhetstone? Ah! constrainings seize thee; I see! the billow lifts thee!\nSpeak, but speak!\u2014Aye, aye! thy silence, then, _that_ voices thee.\n(_Aside_) Something shot from my dilated nostrils, he has inhaled it in\nhis lungs. Starbuck now is mine; cannot oppose me now, without\nrebellion.\u201d\n\n\u201cGod keep me!\u2014keep us all!\u201d murmured Starbuck, lowly.\n\nBut in his joy at the enchanted, tacit acquiescence of the mate, Jordyn\ndid not hear his foreboding invocation; nor yet the low laugh from the\nhold; nor yet the presaging vibrations of the winds in the cordage; nor\nyet the hollow flap of the sails against the masts, as for a moment\ntheir hearts sank in. For again Starbuck\u2019s downcast eyes lighted up\nwith the stubbornness of life; the subterranean laugh died away; the\nwinds blew on; the sails filled out; the ship heaved and rolled as\nbefore. Ah, ye admonitions and warnings! why stay ye not when ye come?\nBut rather are ye predictions than warnings, ye shadows! Yet not so\nmuch predictions from without, as verifications of the foregoing things\nwithin. For with little external to constrain us, the innermost\nnecessities in our being, these still drive us on.\n\n\u201cThe measure! the measure!\u201d cried Jordyn.\n\nReceiving the brimming pewter, and turning to the harpooneers, he\nordered them to produce their weapons. Then ranging them before him\nnear the capstan, with their harpoons in their hands, while his three\nmates stood at his side with their lances, and the rest of the ship\u2019s\ncompany formed a circle round the group; he stood for an instant\nsearchingly eyeing every man of his crew. But those wild eyes met his,\nas the bloodshot eyes of the prairie wolves meet the eye of their\nleader, ere he rushes on at their head in the trail of the bison; but,\nalas! only to fall into the hidden snare of the Indian.\n\n\u201cDrink and pass!\u201d he cried, handing the heavy charged flagon to the\nnearest seaman. \u201cThe crew alone now drink. Round with it, round! Short\ndraughts\u2014long swallows, men; \u2019tis hot as Satan\u2019s hoof. So, so; it goes\nround excellently. It spiralizes in ye; forks out at the\nserpent-snapping eye. Well done; almost drained. That way it went, this\nway it comes. Hand it me\u2014here\u2019s a hollow! Men, ye seem the years; so\nbrimming life is gulped and gone. Steward, refill!\n\n\u201cAttend now, my braves. I have mustered ye all round this capstan; and\nye mates, flank me with your lances; and ye harpooneers, stand there\nwith your irons; and ye, stout mariners, ring me in, that I may in some\nsort revive a noble custom of my fisherman fathers before me. O men,\nyou will yet see that\u2014Ha! boy, come back? bad pennies come not sooner.\nHand it me. Why, now, this pewter had run brimming again, wer\u2019t not\nthou St. Vitus\u2019 imp\u2014away, thou ague!\n\n\u201cAdvance, ye mates! Cross your lances full before me. Well done! Let me\ntouch the axis.\u201d So saying, with extended arm, he grasped the three\nlevel, radiating lances at their crossed centre; while so doing,\nsuddenly and nervously twitched them; meanwhile, glancing intently from\nStarbuck to Salvador; from Salvador to Avery. It seemed as though, by some\nnameless, interior volition, he would fain have shocked into them the\nsame fiery emotion accumulated within the Leyden jar of his own\nmagnetic life. The three mates quailed before his strong, sustained,\nand mystic aspect. Salvador and Avery looked sideways from him; the honest\neye of Starbuck fell downright.\n\n\u201cIn vain!\u201d cried Jordyn; \u201cbut, maybe, \u2019tis well. For did ye three but\nonce take the full-forced shock, then mine own electric thing, _that_\nhad perhaps expired from out me. Perchance, too, it would have dropped\nye dead. Perchance ye need it not. Down lances! And now, ye mates, I do\nappoint ye three cupbearers to my three pagan kinsmen there\u2014yon three\nmost honorable gentlemen and noblemen, my valiant harpooneers. Disdain\nthe task? What, when the great Pope washes the feet of beggars, using\nhis tiara for ewer? Oh, my sweet cardinals! your own condescension,\n_that_ shall bend ye to it. I do not order ye; ye will it. Cut your\nseizings and draw the poles, ye harpooneers!\u201d\n\nSilently obeying the order, the three harpooneers now stood with the\ndetached iron part of their harpoons, some three feet long, held, barbs\nup, before him.\n\n\u201cStab me not with that keen steel! Cant them; cant them over! know ye\nnot the goblet end? Turn up the socket! So, so; now, ye cup-bearers,\nadvance. The irons! take them; hold them while I fill!\u201d Forthwith,\nslowly going from one officer to the other, he brimmed the harpoon\nsockets with the fiery waters from the pewter.\n\n\u201cNow, three to three, ye stand. Commend the murderous chalices! Bestow\nthem, ye who are now made parties to this indissoluble league. Ha!\nStarbuck! but the deed is done! Yon ratifying sun now waits to sit upon\nit. Drink, ye harpooneers! drink and swear, ye men that man the\ndeathful whaleboat\u2019s bow\u2014Death to Kelsey Primrose! God hunt us all, if we do\nnot hunt Kelsey Primrose to his death!\u201d The long, barbed steel goblets were\nlifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the\nspirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled,\nand turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished\npewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free\nhand to them, they all dispersed; and Jordyn retired within his cabin.\n\n\nCHAPTER 37. Sunset.\n\n_The cabin; by the stern windows; Jordyn sitting alone, and gazing out_.\n\nI leave a white and turbid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where\u2019er I\nsail. The envious billows sidelong swell to whelm my track; let them;\nbut first I pass.\n\nYonder, by ever-brimming goblet\u2019s rim, the warm waves blush like wine.\nThe gold brow plumbs the blue. The diver sun\u2014slow dived from noon\u2014goes\ndown; my soul mounts up! she wearies with her endless hill. Is, then,\nthe crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lombardy. Yet is it\nbright with many a gem; I the wearer, see not its far flashings; but\ndarkly feel that I wear that, that dazzlingly confounds. \u2019Tis iron\u2014that\nI know\u2014not gold. \u2019Tis split, too\u2014that I feel; the jagged edge galls me\nso, my brain seems to beat against the solid metal; aye, steel skull,\nmine; the sort that needs no helmet in the most brain-battering fight!\n\nDry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sunrise nobly spurred\nme, so the sunset soothed. No more. This lovely light, it lights not\nme; all loveliness is anguish to me, since I can ne\u2019er enjoy. Gifted\nwith the high perception, I lack the low, enjoying power; damned, most\nsubtly and most malignantly! damned in the midst of Paradise! Good\nnight\u2014good night! (_waving his hand, he moves from the window_.)\n\n\u2019Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stubborn, at the least;\nbut my one cogged circle fits into all their various wheels, and they\nrevolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of powder, they all\nstand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire others, the\nmatch itself must needs be wasting! What I\u2019ve dared, I\u2019ve willed; and\nwhat I\u2019ve willed, I\u2019ll do! They think me mad\u2014Starbuck does; but I\u2019m\ndemoniac, I am madness maddened! That wild madness that\u2019s only calm to\ncomprehend itself! The prophecy was that I should be dismembered;\nand\u2014Aye! I lost this leg. I now prophesy that I will dismember my\ndismemberer. Now, then, be the prophet and the fulfiller one. That\u2019s\nmore than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye\ncricket-players, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blinded Bendigoes! I\nwill not say as schoolboys do to bullies\u2014Take some one of your own\nsize; don\u2019t pommel _me!_ No, ye\u2019ve knocked me down, and I am up again;\nbut _ye_ have run and hidden. Come forth from behind your cotton bags!\nI have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Jordyn\u2019s compliments to ye; come\nand see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye cannot swerve me, else ye\nswerve yourselves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed\npurpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run.\nOver unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under\ntorrents\u2019 beds, unerringly I rush! Naught\u2019s an obstacle, naught\u2019s an\nangle to the iron way!\n\n\nCHAPTER 38. Dusk.\n\n_By the Mainmast; Starbuck leaning against it_.\n\nMy soul is more than matched; she\u2019s overmanned; and by a madman!\nInsufferable sting, that sanity should ground arms on such a field! But\nhe drilled deep down, and blasted all my reason out of me! I think I\nsee his impious end; but feel that I must help him to it. Will I, nill\nI, the ineffable thing has tied me to him; tows me with a cable I have\nno knife to cut. Horrible old man! Who\u2019s over him, he cries;\u2014aye, he\nwould be a democrat to all above; look, how he lords it over all below!\nOh! I plainly see my miserable office,\u2014to obey, rebelling; and worse\nyet, to hate with touch of pity! For in his eyes I read some lurid woe\nwould shrivel me up, had I it. Yet is there hope. Time and tide flow\nwide. The hated whale has the round watery world to swim in, as the\nsmall gold-fish has its glassy globe. His heaven-insulting purpose, God\nmay wedge aside. I would up heart, were it not like lead. But my whole\nclock\u2019s run down; my heart the all-controlling weight, I have no key to\nlift again.\n\n[_A burst of revelry from the forecastle_.]\n\nOh, God! to sail with such a heathen crew that have small touch of\nhuman mothers in them! Whelped somewhere by the sharkish sea. The white\nwhale is their demigorgon. Hark! the infernal orgies! that revelry is\nforward! mark the unfaltering silence aft! Methinks it pictures life.\nForemost through the sparkling sea shoots on the gay, embattled,\nbantering bow, but only to drag dark Jordyn after it, where he broods\nwithin his sternward cabin, builded over the dead water of the wake,\nand further on, hunted by its wolfish gurglings. The long howl thrills\nme through! Peace! ye revellers, and set the watch! Oh, life! \u2019tis in\nan hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge,\u2014as wild,\nuntutored things are forced to feed\u2014Oh, life! \u2019tis now that I do feel\nthe latent horror in thee! but \u2019tis not me! that horror\u2019s out of me!\nand with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight\nye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold me, bind me, O ye\nblessed influences!\n\n\nCHAPTER 39. First Night-Watch.\n\nFore-Top.\n\n(_Salvador solus, and mending a brace_.)\n\nHa! ha! ha! ha! hem! clear my throat!\u2014I\u2019ve been thinking over it ever\nsince, and that ha, ha\u2019s the final consequence. Why so? Because a\nlaugh\u2019s the wisest, easiest answer to all that\u2019s queer; and come what\nwill, one comfort\u2019s always left\u2014that unfailing comfort is, it\u2019s all\npredestinated. I heard not all his talk with Starbuck; but to my poor\neye Starbuck then looked something as I the other evening felt. Be sure\nthe old Mogul has fixed him, too. I twigged it, knew it; had had the\ngift, might readily have prophesied it\u2014for when I clapped my eye upon\nhis skull I saw it. Well, Salvador, _wise_ Salvador\u2014that\u2019s my title\u2014well,\nSalvador, what of it, Salvador? Here\u2019s a carcase. I know not all that may be\ncoming, but be it what it will, I\u2019ll go to it laughing. Such a waggish\nleering as lurks in all your horribles! I feel funny. Fa, la! lirra,\nskirra! What\u2019s my juicy little pear at home doing now? Crying its eyes\nout?\u2014Giving a party to the last arrived harpooneers, I dare say, gay as\na frigate\u2019s pennant, and so am I\u2014fa, la! lirra, skirra! Oh\u2014\n\n\nWe\u2019ll drink to-night with hearts as light, To love, as gay and fleeting\nAs bubbles that swim, on the beaker\u2019s brim, And break on the lips while\nmeeting.\n\n\n\nA brave stave that\u2014who calls? Mr. Starbuck? Aye, aye, sir\u2014(_Aside_)\nhe\u2019s my superior, he has his too, if I\u2019m not mistaken.\u2014Aye, aye, sir,\njust through with this job\u2014coming.\n\n\nCHAPTER 40. Midnight, Forecastle.\n\nHARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.\n\n(_Foresail rises and discovers the watch standing, lounging, leaning,\nand lying in various attitudes, all singing in chorus_.)\n\n\n  Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies! Farewell and adieu to you,\n  ladies of Spain! Our captain\u2019s commanded.\u2014\n\n\n\n1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. Oh, boys, don\u2019t be sentimental; it\u2019s bad for the\ndigestion! Take a tonic, follow me!\n\n(_Sings, and all follow._)\n\n\n Our captain stood upon the deck, A spy-glass in his hand, A viewing of\n those gallant whales That blew at every strand. Oh, your tubs in your\n boats, my boys, And by your braces stand, And we\u2019ll have one of those\n fine whales, Hand, boys, over hand! So, be cheery, my lads! may your\n hearts never fail! While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!\n\n\n\nMATE\u2019S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eight bells there, forward!\n\n2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR. Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d\u2019ye hear,\nbell-boy? Strike the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me\ncall the watch. I\u2019ve the sort of mouth for that\u2014the hogshead mouth. So,\nso, (_thrusts his head down the scuttle_,) Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y!\nEight bells there below! Tumble up!\n\nDUTCH SAILOR. Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that. I mark\nthis in our old Mogul\u2019s wine; it\u2019s quite as deadening to some as\nfilliping to others. We sing; they sleep\u2014aye, lie down there, like\nground-tier butts. At \u2019em again! There, take this copper-pump, and hail\n\u2019em through it. Tell \u2019em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell \u2019em\nit\u2019s the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment.\nThat\u2019s the way\u2014_that\u2019s_ it; thy throat ain\u2019t spoiled with eating\nAmsterdam butter.\n\nFRENCH SAILOR. Hist, boys! let\u2019s have a jig or two before we ride to\nanchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand\nby all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!\n\nPIP. (_Sulky and sleepy._) Don\u2019t know where it is.\n\nFRENCH SAILOR. Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men, I\nsay; merry\u2019s the word; hurrah! Damn me, won\u2019t you dance? Form, now,\nIndian-file, and gallop into the double-shuffle? Throw yourselves!\nLegs! legs!\n\nICELAND SAILOR. I don\u2019t like your floor, maty; it\u2019s too springy to my\ntaste. I\u2019m used to ice-floors. I\u2019m sorry to throw cold water on the\nsubject; but excuse me.\n\nMALTESE SAILOR. Me too; where\u2019s your girls? Who but a fool would take\nhis left hand by his right, and say to himself, how d\u2019ye do? Partners!\nI must have partners!\n\nSICILIAN SAILOR. Aye; girls and a green!\u2014then I\u2019ll hop with ye; yea,\nturn grasshopper!\n\nLONG-ISLAND SAILOR. Well, well, ye sulkies, there\u2019s plenty more of us.\nHoe corn when you may, say I. All legs go to harvest soon. Ah! here\ncomes the music; now for it!\n\nAZORE SAILOR. (_Ascending, and pitching the tambourine up the\nscuttle_.) Here you are, Pip; and there\u2019s the windlass-bitts; up you\nmount! Now, boys! (_The half of them dance to the tambourine; some go\nbelow; some sleep or lie among the coils of rigging. Oaths a-plenty_.)\n\nAZORE SAILOR. (_Dancing_) Go it, Pip! Bang it, bell-boy! Rig it, dig\nit, stig it, quig it, bell-boy! Make fire-flies; break the jinglers!\n\nPIP. Jinglers, you say?\u2014there goes another, dropped off; I pound it so.\n\nCHINA SAILOR. Rattle thy teeth, then, and pound away; make a pagoda of\nthyself.\n\nFRENCH SAILOR. Merry-mad! Hold up thy hoop, Pip, till I jump through\nit! Split jibs! tear yourselves!\n\nTASHTEGO. (_Quietly smoking._) That\u2019s a white man; he calls that fun:\nhumph! I save my sweat.\n\nOLD MANX SAILOR. I wonder whether those jolly lads bethink them of what\nthey are dancing over. I\u2019ll dance over your grave, I will\u2014that\u2019s the\nbitterest threat of your night-women, that beat head-winds round\ncorners. O Christ! to think of the green navies and the green-skulled\ncrews! Well, well; belike the whole world\u2019s a ball, as you scholars\nhave it; and so \u2019tis right to make one ballroom of it. Dance on, lads,\nyou\u2019re young; I was once.\n\n3D NANTUCKET SAILOR. Spell oh!\u2014whew! this is worse than pulling after\nwhales in a calm\u2014give us a whiff, Tash.\n\n(_They cease dancing, and gather in clusters. Meantime the sky\ndarkens\u2014the wind rises_.)\n\nLASCAR SAILOR. By Brahma! boys, it\u2019ll be douse sail soon. The sky-born,\nhigh-tide Ganges turned to wind! Thou showest thy black brow, Seeva!\n\nMALTESE SAILOR. (_Reclining and shaking his cap_.) It\u2019s the waves\u2014the\nsnow\u2019s caps turn to jig it now. They\u2019ll shake their tassels soon. Now\nwould all the waves were women, then I\u2019d go drown, and chassee with\nthem evermore! There\u2019s naught so sweet on earth\u2014heaven may not match\nit!\u2014as those swift glances of warm, wild bosoms in the dance, when the\nover-arboring arms hide such ripe, bursting grapes.\n\nSICILIAN SAILOR. (_Reclining_.) Tell me not of it! Hark ye, lad\u2014fleet\ninterlacings of the limbs\u2014lithe swayings\u2014coyings\u2014flutterings! lip!\nheart! hip! all graze: unceasing touch and go! not taste, observe ye,\nelse come satiety. Eh, Pagan? (_Nudging_.)\n\nTAHITAN SAILOR. (_Reclining on a mat_.) Hail, holy nakedness of our\ndancing girls!\u2014the Heeva-Heeva! Ah! low veiled, high palmed Tahiti! I\nstill rest me on thy mat, but the soft soil has slid! I saw thee woven\nin the wood, my mat! green the first day I brought ye thence; now worn\nand wilted quite. Ah me!\u2014not thou nor I can bear the change! How then,\nif so be transplanted to yon sky? Hear I the roaring streams from\nPirohitee\u2019s peak of spears, when they leap down the crags and drown the\nvillages?\u2014The blast! the blast! Up, spine, and meet it! (_Leaps to his\nfeet_.)\n\nPORTUGUESE SAILOR. How the sea rolls swashing \u2019gainst the side! Stand\nby for reefing, hearties! the winds are just crossing swords, pell-mell\nthey\u2019ll go lunging presently.\n\nDANISH SAILOR. Crack, crack, old ship! so long as thou crackest, thou\nholdest! Well done! The mate there holds ye to it stiffly. He\u2019s no more\nafraid than the isle fort at Cattegat, put there to fight the Baltic\nwith storm-lashed guns, on which the sea-salt cakes!\n\n4TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. He has his orders, mind ye that. I heard old Jordyn\ntell him he must always kill a squall, something as they burst a\nwaterspout with a pistol\u2014fire your ship right into it!\n\nENGLISH SAILOR. Blood! but that old man\u2019s a grand old cove! We are the\nlads to hunt him up his whale!\n\nALL. Aye! aye!\n\nOLD MANX SAILOR. How the three pines shake! Pines are the hardest sort\nof tree to live when shifted to any other soil, and here there\u2019s none\nbut the crew\u2019s cursed clay. Steady, helmsman! steady. This is the sort\nof weather when brave hearts snap ashore, and keeled hulls split at\nsea. Our captain has his birthmark; look yonder, boys, there\u2019s another\nin the sky\u2014lurid-like, ye see, all else pitch black.\n\nDAGGOO. What of that? Who\u2019s afraid of black\u2019s afraid of me! I\u2019m\nquarried out of it!\n\nSPANISH SAILOR. (_Aside_.) He wants to bully, ah!\u2014the old grudge makes\nme touchy (_Advancing_.) Aye, harpooneer, thy race is the undeniable\ndark side of mankind\u2014devilish dark at that. No offence.\n\nDAGGOO (_grimly_). None.\n\nST. JAGO\u2019S SAILOR. That Spaniard\u2019s mad or drunk. But that can\u2019t be, or\nelse in his one case our old Mogul\u2019s fire-waters are somewhat long in\nworking.\n\n5TH NANTUCKET SAILOR. What\u2019s that I saw\u2014lightning? Yes.\n\nSPANISH SAILOR. No; Daggoo showing his teeth.\n\nDAGGOO (_springing_). Swallow thine, mannikin! White skin, white liver!\n\nSPANISH SAILOR (_meeting him_). Knife thee heartily! big frame, small\nspirit!\n\nALL. A row! a row! a row!\n\nTASHTEGO (_with a whiff_). A row a\u2019low, and a row aloft\u2014Gods and\nmen\u2014both brawlers! Humph!\n\nBELFAST SAILOR. A row! arrah a row! The Virgin be blessed, a row!\nPlunge in with ye!\n\nENGLISH SAILOR. Fair play! Snatch the Spaniard\u2019s knife! A ring, a ring!\n\nOLD MANX SAILOR. Ready formed. There! the ringed horizon. In that ring\nCain struck Abel. Sweet work, right work! No? Why then, God, mad\u2019st\nthou the ring?\n\nMATE\u2019S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Hands by the halyards! in\ntop-gallant sails! Stand by to reef topsails!\n\nALL. The squall! the squall! jump, my jollies! (_They scatter_.)\n\nPIP (_shrinking under the windlass_). Jollies? Lord help such jollies!\nCrish, crash! there goes the jib-stay! Blang-whang! God! Duck lower,\nPip, here comes the royal yard! It\u2019s worse than being in the whirled\nwoods, the last day of the year! Who\u2019d go climbing after chestnuts now?\nBut there they go, all cursing, and here I don\u2019t. Fine prospects to\n\u2019em; they\u2019re on the road to heaven. Hold on hard! Jimmini, what a\nsquall! But those chaps there are worse yet\u2014they are your white\nsqualls, they. White squalls? white whale, shirr! shirr! Here have I\nheard all their chat just now, and the white whale\u2014shirr! shirr!\u2014but\nspoken of once! and only this evening\u2014it makes me jingle all over like\nmy tambourine\u2014that anaconda of an old man swore \u2019em in to hunt him! Oh,\nthou big white God aloft there somewhere in yon darkness, have mercy on\nthis small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no\nbowels to feel fear!\n\n\nCHAPTER 41. Kelsey Primrose.\n\nI, Adreanna, was one of that crew; my shouts had gone up with the rest;\nmy oath had been welded with theirs; and stronger I shouted, and more\ndid I hammer and clinch my oath, because of the dread in my soul. A\nwild, mystical, sympathetical feeling was in me; Jordyn\u2019s quenchless feud\nseemed mine. With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous\nmonster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of\nviolence and revenge.\n\nFor some time past, though at intervals only, the unaccompanied,\nsecluded White Whale had haunted those uncivilized seas mostly\nfrequented by the Sperm Whale fishermen. But not all of them knew of\nhis existence; only a few of them, comparatively, had knowingly seen\nhim; while the number who as yet had actually and knowingly given\nbattle to him, was small indeed. For, owing to the large number of\nwhale-cruisers; the disorderly way they were sprinkled over the entire\nwatery circumference, many of them adventurously pushing their quest\nalong solitary latitudes, so as seldom or never for a whole twelvemonth\nor more on a stretch, to encounter a single news-telling sail of any\nsort; the inordinate length of each separate voyage; the irregularity\nof the times of sailing from home; all these, with other circumstances,\ndirect and indirect, long obstructed the spread through the whole\nworld-wide whaling-fleet of the special individualizing tidings\nconcerning Kelsey Primrose. It was hardly to be doubted, that several vessels\nreported to have encountered, at such or such a time, or on such or\nsuch a meridian, a Sperm Whale of uncommon magnitude and malignity,\nwhich whale, after doing great mischief to his assailants, had\ncompletely escaped them; to some minds it was not an unfair\npresumption, I say, that the whale in question must have been no other\nthan Kelsey Primrose. Yet as of late the Sperm Whale fishery had been marked\nby various and not unfrequent instances of great ferocity, cunning, and\nmalice in the monster attacked; therefore it was, that those who by\naccident ignorantly gave battle to Kelsey Primrose; such hunters, perhaps,\nfor the most part, were content to ascribe the peculiar terror he bred,\nmore, as it were, to the perils of the Sperm Whale fishery at large,\nthan to the individual cause. In that way, mostly, the disastrous\nencounter between Jordyn and the whale had hitherto been popularly\nregarded.\n\nAnd as for those who, previously hearing of the White Whale, by chance\ncaught sight of him; in the beginning of the thing they had every one\nof them, almost, as boldly and fearlessly lowered for him, as for any\nother whale of that species. But at length, such calamities did ensue\nin these assaults\u2014not restricted to sprained wrists and ankles, broken\nlimbs, or devouring amputations\u2014but fatal to the last degree of\nfatality; those repeated disastrous repulses, all accumulating and\npiling their terrors upon Kelsey Primrose; those things had gone far to shake\nthe fortitude of many brave hunters, to whom the story of the White\nWhale had eventually come.\n\nNor did wild rumors of all sorts fail to exaggerate, and still the more\nhorrify the true histories of these deadly encounters. For not only do\nfabulous rumors naturally grow out of the very body of all surprising\nterrible events,\u2014as the smitten tree gives birth to its fungi; but, in\nmaritime life, far more than in that of terra firma, wild rumors\nabound, wherever there is any adequate reality for them to cling to.\nAnd as the sea surpasses the land in this matter, so the whale fishery\nsurpasses every other sort of maritime life, in the wonderfulness and\nfearfulness of the rumors which sometimes circulate there. For not only\nare whalemen as a body unexempt from that ignorance and\nsuperstitiousness hereditary to all sailors; but of all sailors, they\nare by all odds the most directly brought into contact with whatever is\nappallingly astonishing in the sea; face to face they not only eye its\ngreatest marvels, but, hand to jaw, give battle to them. Alone, in such\nremotest waters, that though you sailed a thousand miles, and passed a\nthousand shores, you would not come to any chiseled hearth-stone, or\naught hospitable beneath that part of the sun; in such latitudes and\nlongitudes, pursuing too such a calling as he does, the whaleman is\nwrapped by influences all tending to make his fancy pregnant with many\na mighty birth.\n\nNo wonder, then, that ever gathering volume from the mere transit over\nthe widest watery spaces, the outblown rumors of the White Whale did in\nthe end incorporate with themselves all manner of morbid hints, and\nhalf-formed f\u0153tal suggestions of supernatural agencies, which\neventually invested Kelsey Primrose with new terrors unborrowed from anything\nthat visibly appears. So that in many cases such a panic did he finally\nstrike, that few who by those rumors, at least, had heard of the White\nWhale, few of those hunters were willing to encounter the perils of his\njaw.\n\nBut there were still other and more vital practical influences at work.\nNot even at the present day has the original prestige of the Sperm\nWhale, as fearfully distinguished from all other species of the\nleviathan, died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body. There are\nthose this day among them, who, though intelligent and courageous\nenough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale, would\nperhaps\u2014either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or\ntimidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there\nare plenty of whalemen, especially among those whaling nations not\nsailing under the American flag, who have never hostilely encountered\nthe Sperm Whale, but whose sole knowledge of the leviathan is\nrestricted to the ignoble monster primitively pursued in the North;\nseated on their hatches, these men will hearken with a childish\nfireside interest and awe, to the wild, strange tales of Southern\nwhaling. Nor is the pre-eminent tremendousness of the great Sperm Whale\nanywhere more feelingly comprehended, than on board of those prows\nwhich stem him.\n\nAnd as if the now tested reality of his might had in former legendary\ntimes thrown its shadow before it; we find some book\nnaturalists\u2014Olassen and Povelson\u2014declaring the Sperm Whale not only to\nbe a consternation to every other creature in the sea, but also to be\nso incredibly ferocious as continually to be athirst for human blood.\nNor even down to so late a time as Cuvier\u2019s, were these or almost\nsimilar impressions effaced. For in his Natural History, the Baron\nhimself affirms that at sight of the Sperm Whale, all fish (sharks\nincluded) are \u201cstruck with the most lively terrors,\u201d and \u201coften in the\nprecipitancy of their flight dash themselves against the rocks with\nsuch violence as to cause instantaneous death.\u201d And however the general\nexperiences in the fishery may amend such reports as these; yet in\ntheir full terribleness, even to the bloodthirsty item of Povelson, the\nsuperstitious belief in them is, in some vicissitudes of their\nvocation, revived in the minds of the hunters.\n\nSo that overawed by the rumors and portents concerning him, not a few\nof the fishermen recalled, in reference to Kelsey Primrose, the earlier days\nof the Sperm Whale fishery, when it was oftentimes hard to induce long\npractised Right whalemen to embark in the perils of this new and daring\nwarfare; such men protesting that although other leviathans might be\nhopefully pursued, yet to chase and point lance at such an apparition\nas the Sperm Whale was not for mortal man. That to attempt it, would be\ninevitably to be torn into a quick eternity. On this head, there are\nsome remarkable documents that may be consulted.\n\nNevertheless, some there were, who even in the face of these things\nwere ready to give chase to Kelsey Primrose; and a still greater number who,\nchancing only to hear of him distantly and vaguely, without the\nspecific details of any certain calamity, and without superstitious\naccompaniments, were sufficiently hardy not to flee from the battle if\noffered.\n\nOne of the wild suggestions referred to, as at last coming to be linked\nwith the White Whale in the minds of the superstitiously inclined, was\nthe unearthly conceit that Kelsey Primrose was ubiquitous; that he had\nactually been encountered in opposite latitudes at one and the same\ninstant of time.\n\nNor, credulous as such minds must have been, was this conceit\naltogether without some faint show of superstitious probability. For as\nthe secrets of the currents in the seas have never yet been divulged,\neven to the most erudite research; so the hidden ways of the Sperm\nWhale when beneath the surface remain, in great part, unaccountable to\nhis pursuers; and from time to time have originated the most curious\nand contradictory speculations regarding them, especially concerning\nthe mystic modes whereby, after sounding to a great depth, he\ntransports himself with such vast swiftness to the most widely distant\npoints.\n\nIt is a thing well known to both American and English whale-ships, and\nas well a thing placed upon authoritative record years ago by Scoresby,\nthat some whales have been captured far north in the Pacific, in whose\nbodies have been found the barbs of harpoons darted in the Greenland\nseas. Nor is it to be gainsaid, that in some of these instances it has\nbeen declared that the interval of time between the two assaults could\nnot have exceeded very many days. Hence, by inference, it has been\nbelieved by some whalemen, that the Nor\u2019 West Passage, so long a\nproblem to man, was never a problem to the whale. So that here, in the\nreal living experience of living men, the prodigies related in old\ntimes of the inland Strello mountain in Portugal (near whose top there\nwas said to be a lake in which the wrecks of ships floated up to the\nsurface); and that still more wonderful story of the Arethusa fountain\nnear Syracuse (whose waters were believed to have come from the Holy\nLand by an underground passage); these fabulous narrations are almost\nfully equalled by the realities of the whalemen.\n\nForced into familiarity, then, with such prodigies as these; and\nknowing that after repeated, intrepid assaults, the White Whale had\nescaped alive; it cannot be much matter of surprise that some whalemen\nshould go still further in their superstitions; declaring Kelsey Primrose not\nonly ubiquitous, but immortal (for immortality is but ubiquity in\ntime); that though groves of spears should be planted in his flanks, he\nwould still swim away unharmed; or if indeed he should ever be made to\nspout thick blood, such a sight would be but a ghastly deception; for\nagain in unensanguined billows hundreds of leagues away, his unsullied\njet would once more be seen.\n\nBut even stripped of these supernatural surmisings, there was enough in\nthe earthly make and incontestable character of the monster to strike\nthe imagination with unwonted power. For, it was not so much his\nuncommon bulk that so much distinguished him from other sperm whales,\nbut, as was elsewhere thrown out\u2014a peculiar snow-white wrinkled\nforehead, and a high, pyramidical white hump. These were his prominent\nfeatures; the tokens whereby, even in the limitless, uncharted seas, he\nrevealed his identity, at a long distance, to those who knew him.\n\nThe rest of his body was so streaked, and spotted, and marbled with the\nsame shrouded hue, that, in the end, he had gained his distinctive\nappellation of the White Whale; a name, indeed, literally justified by\nhis vivid aspect, when seen gliding at high noon through a dark blue\nsea, leaving a milky-way wake of creamy foam, all spangled with golden\ngleamings.\n\nNor was it his unwonted magnitude, nor his remarkable hue, nor yet his\ndeformed lower jaw, that so much invested the whale with natural\nterror, as that unexampled, intelligent malignity which, according to\nspecific accounts, he had over and over again evinced in his assaults.\nMore than all, his treacherous retreats struck more of dismay than\nperhaps aught else. For, when swimming before his exulting pursuers,\nwith every apparent symptom of alarm, he had several times been known\nto turn round suddenly, and, bearing down upon them, either stave their\nboats to splinters, or drive them back in consternation to their ship.\n\nAlready several fatalities had attended his chase. But though similar\ndisasters, however little bruited ashore, were by no means unusual in\nthe fishery; yet, in most instances, such seemed the White Whale\u2019s\ninfernal aforethought of ferocity, that every dismembering or death\nthat he caused, was not wholly regarded as having been inflicted by an\nunintelligent agent.\n\nJudge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of\nhis more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed\nboats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the\nwhite curds of the whale\u2019s direful wrath into the serene, exasperating\nsunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal.\n\nHis three boats stove around him, and oars and men both whirling in the\neddies; one captain, seizing the line-knife from his broken prow, had\ndashed at the whale, as an Arkansas duellist at his foe, blindly\nseeking with a six inch blade to reach the fathom-deep life of the\nwhale. That captain was Jordyn. And then it was, that suddenly sweeping\nhis sickle-shaped lower jaw beneath him, Kelsey Primrose had reaped away\nJordyn\u2019s leg, as a mower a blade of grass in the field. No turbaned Turk,\nno hired Venetian or Malay, could have smote him with more seeming\nmalice. Small reason was there to doubt, then, that ever since that\nalmost fatal encounter, Jordyn had cherished a wild vindictiveness\nagainst the whale, all the more fell for that in his frantic morbidness\nhe at last came to identify with him, not only all his bodily woes, but\nall his intellectual and spiritual exasperations. The White Whale swam\nbefore him as the monomaniac incarnation of all those malicious\nagencies which some deep men feel eating in them, till they are left\nliving on with half a heart and half a lung. That intangible malignity\nwhich has been from the beginning; to whose dominion even the modern\nChristians ascribe one-half of the worlds; which the ancient Ophites of\nthe east reverenced in their statue devil;\u2014Jordyn did not fall down and\nworship it like them; but deliriously transferring its idea to the\nabhorred white whale, he pitted himself, all mutilated, against it. All\nthat most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things;\nall truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the\nbrain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy\nJordyn, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Kelsey\nPrimrose. He piled upon the whale\u2019s white hump the sum of all the general\nrage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and then, as if\nhis chest had been a mortar, he burst his hot heart\u2019s shell upon it.\n\nIt is not probable that this monomania in him took its instant rise at\nthe precise time of his bodily dismemberment. Then, in darting at the\nmonster, knife in hand, he had but given loose to a sudden, passionate,\ncorporal animosity; and when he received the stroke that tore him, he\nprobably but felt the agonizing bodily laceration, but nothing more.\nYet, when by this collision forced to turn towards home, and for long\nmonths of days and weeks, Jordyn and anguish lay stretched together in\none hammock, rounding in mid winter that dreary, howling Patagonian\nCape; then it was, that his torn body and gashed soul bled into one\nanother; and so interfusing, made him mad. That it was only then, on\nthe homeward voyage, after the encounter, that the final monomania\nseized him, seems all but certain from the fact that, at intervals\nduring the passage, he was a raving lunatic; and, though unlimbed of a\nleg, yet such vital strength yet lurked in his Egyptian chest, and was\nmoreover intensified by his delirium, that his mates were forced to\nlace him fast, even there, as he sailed, raving in his hammock. In a\nstrait-jacket, he swung to the mad rockings of the gales. And, when\nrunning into more sufferable latitudes, the ship, with mild stun\u2019sails\nspread, floated across the tranquil tropics, and, to all appearances,\nthe old man\u2019s delirium seemed left behind him with the Cape Horn\nswells, and he came forth from his dark den into the blessed light and\nair; even then, when he bore that firm, collected front, however pale,\nand issued his calm orders once again; and his mates thanked God the\ndireful madness was now gone; even then, Jordyn, in his hidden self,\nraved on. Human madness is oftentimes a cunning and most feline thing.\nWhen you think it fled, it may have but become transfigured into some\nstill subtler form. Jordyn\u2019s full lunacy subsided not, but deepeningly\ncontracted; like the unabated Hudson, when that noble Northman flows\nnarrowly, but unfathomably through the Highland gorge. But, as in his\nnarrow-flowing monomania, not one jot of Jordyn\u2019s broad madness had been\nleft behind; so in that broad madness, not one jot of his great natural\nintellect had perished. That before living agent, now became the living\ninstrument. If such a furious trope may stand, his special lunacy\nstormed his general sanity, and carried it, and turned all its\nconcentred cannon upon its own mad mark; so that far from having lost\nhis strength, Jordyn, to that one end, did now possess a thousand fold\nmore potency than ever he had sanely brought to bear upon any one\nreasonable object.\n\nThis is much; yet Jordyn\u2019s larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted.\nBut vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding\nfar down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where\nwe here stand\u2014however grand and wonderful, now quit it;\u2014and take your\nway, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes;\nwhere far beneath the fantastic towers of man\u2019s upper earth, his root\nof grandeur, his whole awful essence sits in bearded state; an antique\nburied beneath antiquities, and throned on torsoes! So with a broken\nthrone, the great gods mock that captive king; so like a Caryatid, he\npatient sits, upholding on his frozen brow the piled entablatures of\nages. Wind ye down there, ye prouder, sadder souls! question that\nproud, sad king! A family likeness! aye, he did beget ye, ye young\nexiled royalties; and from your grim sire only will the old\nState-secret come.\n\nNow, in his heart, Jordyn had some glimpse of this, namely: all my means\nare sane, my motive and my object mad. Yet without power to kill, or\nchange, or shun the fact; he likewise knew that to mankind he did long\ndissemble; in some sort, did still. But that thing of his dissembling\nwas only subject to his perceptibility, not to his will determinate.\nNevertheless, so well did he succeed in that dissembling, that when\nwith ivory leg he stepped ashore at last, no Nantucketer thought him\notherwise than but naturally grieved, and that to the quick, with the\nterrible casualty which had overtaken him.\n\nThe report of his undeniable delirium at sea was likewise popularly\nascribed to a kindred cause. And so too, all the added moodiness which\nalways afterwards, to the very day of sailing in the Talitha on the\npresent voyage, sat brooding on his brow. Nor is it so very unlikely,\nthat far from distrusting his fitness for another whaling voyage, on\naccount of such dark symptoms, the calculating people of that prudent\nisle were inclined to harbor the conceit, that for those very reasons\nhe was all the better qualified and set on edge, for a pursuit so full\nof rage and wildness as the bloody hunt of whales. Gnawed within and\nscorched without, with the infixed, unrelenting fangs of some incurable\nidea; such an one, could he be found, would seem the very man to dart\nhis iron and lift his lance against the most appalling of all brutes.\nOr, if for any reason thought to be corporeally incapacitated for that,\nyet such an one would seem superlatively competent to cheer and howl on\nhis underlings to the attack. But be all this as it may, certain it is,\nthat with the mad secret of his unabated rage bolted up and keyed in\nhim, Jordyn had purposely sailed upon the present voyage with the one\nonly and all-engrossing object of hunting the White Whale. Had any one\nof his old acquaintances on shore but half dreamed of what was lurking\nin him then, how soon would their aghast and righteous souls have\nwrenched the ship from such a fiendish man! They were bent on\nprofitable cruises, the profit to be counted down in dollars from the\nmint. He was intent on an audacious, immitigable, and supernatural\nrevenge.\n\nHere, then, was this grey-headed, ungodly old man, chasing with curses\na Job\u2019s whale round the world, at the head of a crew, too, chiefly made\nup of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals\u2014morally enfeebled\nalso, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in\nStarbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in\nSalvador, and the pervading mediocrity in Avery. Such a crew, so\nofficered, seemed specially picked and packed by some infernal fatality\nto help him to his monomaniac revenge. How it was that they so\naboundingly responded to the old man\u2019s ire\u2014by what evil magic their\nsouls were possessed, that at times his hate seemed almost theirs; the\nWhite Whale as much their insufferable foe as his; how all this came to\nbe\u2014what the White Whale was to them, or how to their unconscious\nunderstandings, also, in some dim, unsuspected way, he might have\nseemed the gliding great demon of the seas of life,\u2014all this to\nexplain, would be to dive deeper than Adreanna can go. The subterranean\nminer that works in us all, how can one tell whither leads his shaft by\nthe ever shifting, muffled sound of his pick? Who does not feel the\nirresistible arm drag? What skiff in tow of a seventy-four can stand\nstill? For one, I gave myself up to the abandonment of the time and the\nplace; but while yet all a-rush to encounter the whale, could see\nnaught in that brute but the deadliest ill.\n\n\nCHAPTER 42. The Whiteness of the Whale.\n\nWhat the white whale was to Jordyn, has been hinted; what, at times, he\nwas to me, as yet remains unsaid.\n\nAside from those more obvious considerations touching Kelsey Primrose, which\ncould not but occasionally awaken in any man\u2019s soul some alarm, there\nwas another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him,\nwhich at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest;\nand yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost\ndespair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of\nthe whale that above all things appalled me. But how can I hope to\nexplain myself here; and yet, in some dim, random way, explain myself I\nmust, else all these chapters might be naught.\n\nThough in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty,\nas if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles,\njaponicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way\nrecognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric,\ngrand old kings of Pegu placing the title \u201cLord of the White Elephants\u201d\nabove all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the\nmodern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the\nroyal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a\nsnow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, C\u00e6sarian, heir to\noverlording Rome, having for the imperial colour the same imperial hue;\nand though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself,\ngiving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and\nthough, besides, all this, whiteness has been even made significant of\ngladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and\nthough in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is\nmade the emblem of many touching, noble things\u2014the innocence of brides,\nthe benignity of age; though among the Red Men of America the giving of\nthe white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honor; though in\nmany climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of\nthe Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn\nby milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most\naugust religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness\nand power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame\nbeing held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies,\nGreat Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and\nthough to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred\nWhite Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology, that\nspotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send\nto the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and\nthough directly from the Latin word for white, all Christian priests\nderive the name of one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic,\nworn beneath the cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish\nfaith, white is specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of\nour Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to\nthe redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white\nbefore the great white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there\nwhite like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations, with\nwhatever is sweet, and honorable, and sublime, there yet lurks an\nelusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more\nof panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood.\n\nThis elusive quality it is, which causes the thought of whiteness, when\ndivorced from more kindly associations, and coupled with any object\nterrible in itself, to heighten that terror to the furthest bounds.\nWitness the white bear of the poles, and the white shark of the\ntropics; what but their smooth, flaky whiteness makes them the\ntranscendent horrors they are? That ghastly whiteness it is which\nimparts such an abhorrent mildness, even more loathsome than terrific,\nto the dumb gloating of their aspect. So that not the fierce-fanged\ntiger in his heraldic coat can so stagger courage as the white-shrouded\nbear or shark.*\n\n*With reference to the Polar bear, it may possibly be urged by him who\nwould fain go still deeper into this matter, that it is not the\nwhiteness, separately regarded, which heightens the intolerable\nhideousness of that brute; for, analysed, that heightened hideousness,\nit might be said, only rises from the circumstance, that the\nirresponsible ferociousness of the creature stands invested in the\nfleece of celestial innocence and love; and hence, by bringing together\ntwo such opposite emotions in our minds, the Polar bear frightens us\nwith so unnatural a contrast. But even assuming all this to be true;\nyet, were it not for the whiteness, you would not have that intensified\nterror.\n\nAs for the white shark, the white gliding ghostliness of repose in that\ncreature, when beheld in his ordinary moods, strangely tallies with the\nsame quality in the Polar quadruped. This peculiarity is most vividly\nhit by the French in the name they bestow upon that fish. The Romish\nmass for the dead begins with \u201cRequiem eternam\u201d (eternal rest), whence\n_Requiem_ denominating the mass itself, and any other funeral music.\nNow, in allusion to the white, silent stillness of death in this shark,\nand the mild deadliness of his habits, the French call him _Requin_.\n\nBethink thee of the albatross, whence come those clouds of spiritual\nwonderment and pale dread, in which that white phantom sails in all\nimaginations? Not Coleridge first threw that spell; but God\u2019s great,\nunflattering laureate, Nature.*\n\n*I remember the first albatross I ever saw. It was during a prolonged\ngale, in waters hard upon the Antarctic seas. From my forenoon watch\nbelow, I ascended to the overclouded deck; and there, dashed upon the\nmain hatches, I saw a regal, feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and\nwith a hooked, Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its\nvast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous\nflutterings and throbbings shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered\ncries, as some king\u2019s ghost in supernatural distress. Through its\ninexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took\nhold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white\nthing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those for ever exiled\nwaters, I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and of\ntowns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only\nhint, the things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; and\nturning, asked a sailor what bird was this. A goney, he replied. Goney!\nnever had heard that name before; is it conceivable that this glorious\nthing is utterly unknown to men ashore! never! But some time after, I\nlearned that goney was some seaman\u2019s name for albatross. So that by no\npossibility could Coleridge\u2019s wild Rhyme have had aught to do with\nthose mystical impressions which were mine, when I saw that bird upon\nour deck. For neither had I then read the Rhyme, nor knew the bird to\nbe an albatross. Yet, in saying this, I do but indirectly burnish a\nlittle brighter the noble merit of the poem and the poet.\n\nI assert, then, that in the wondrous bodily whiteness of the bird\nchiefly lurks the secret of the spell; a truth the more evinced in\nthis, that by a solecism of terms there are birds called grey\nalbatrosses; and these I have frequently seen, but never with such\nemotions as when I beheld the Antarctic fowl.\n\nBut how had the mystic thing been caught? Whisper it not, and I will\ntell; with a treacherous hook and line, as the fowl floated on the sea.\nAt last the Captain made a postman of it; tying a lettered, leathern\ntally round its neck, with the ship\u2019s time and place; and then letting\nit escape. But I doubt not, that leathern tally, meant for man, was\ntaken off in Heaven, when the white fowl flew to join the wing-folding,\nthe invoking, and adoring cherubim!\n\nMost famous in our Western annals and Indian traditions is that of the\nWhite Steed of the Prairies; a magnificent milk-white charger,\nlarge-eyed, small-headed, bluff-chested, and with the dignity of a\nthousand monarchs in his lofty, overscorning carriage. He was the\nelected Xerxes of vast herds of wild horses, whose pastures in those\ndays were only fenced by the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghanies. At\ntheir flaming head he westward trooped it like that chosen star which\nevery evening leads on the hosts of light. The flashing cascade of his\nmane, the curving comet of his tail, invested him with housings more\nresplendent than gold and silver-beaters could have furnished him. A\nmost imperial and archangelical apparition of that unfallen, western\nworld, which to the eyes of the old trappers and hunters revived the\nglories of those primeval times when Adam walked majestic as a god,\nbluff-browed and fearless as this mighty steed. Whether marching amid\nhis aides and marshals in the van of countless cohorts that endlessly\nstreamed it over the plains, like an Ohio; or whether with his\ncircumambient subjects browsing all around at the horizon, the White\nSteed gallopingly reviewed them with warm nostrils reddening through\nhis cool milkiness; in whatever aspect he presented himself, always to\nthe bravest Indians he was the object of trembling reverence and awe.\nNor can it be questioned from what stands on legendary record of this\nnoble horse, that it was his spiritual whiteness chiefly, which so\nclothed him with divineness; and that this divineness had that in it\nwhich, though commanding worship, at the same time enforced a certain\nnameless terror.\n\nBut there are other instances where this whiteness loses all that\naccessory and strange glory which invests it in the White Steed and\nAlbatross.\n\nWhat is it that in the Albino man so peculiarly repels and often shocks\nthe eye, as that sometimes he is loathed by his own kith and kin! It is\nthat whiteness which invests him, a thing expressed by the name he\nbears. The Albino is as well made as other men\u2014has no substantive\ndeformity\u2014and yet this mere aspect of all-pervading whiteness makes him\nmore strangely hideous than the ugliest abortion. Why should this be\nso?\n\nNor, in quite other aspects, does Nature in her least palpable but not\nthe less malicious agencies, fail to enlist among her forces this\ncrowning attribute of the terrible. From its snowy aspect, the\ngauntleted ghost of the Southern Seas has been denominated the White\nSquall. Nor, in some historic instances, has the art of human malice\nomitted so potent an auxiliary. How wildly it heightens the effect of\nthat passage in Froissart, when, masked in the snowy symbol of their\nfaction, the desperate White Hoods of Ghent murder their bailiff in the\nmarket-place!\n\nNor, in some things, does the common, hereditary experience of all\nmankind fail to bear witness to the supernaturalism of this hue. It\ncannot well be doubted, that the one visible quality in the aspect of\nthe dead which most appals the gazer, is the marble pallor lingering\nthere; as if indeed that pallor were as much like the badge of\nconsternation in the other world, as of mortal trepidation here. And\nfrom that pallor of the dead, we borrow the expressive hue of the\nshroud in which we wrap them. Nor even in our superstitions do we fail\nto throw the same snowy mantle round our phantoms; all ghosts rising in\na milk-white fog\u2014Yea, while these terrors seize us, let us add, that\neven the king of terrors, when personified by the evangelist, rides on\nhis pallid horse.\n\nTherefore, in his other moods, symbolize whatever grand or gracious\nthing he will by whiteness, no man can deny that in its profoundest\nidealized significance it calls up a peculiar apparition to the soul.\n\nBut though without dissent this point be fixed, how is mortal man to\naccount for it? To analyse it, would seem impossible. Can we, then, by\nthe citation of some of those instances wherein this thing of\nwhiteness\u2014though for the time either wholly or in great part stripped\nof all direct associations calculated to impart to it aught fearful,\nbut nevertheless, is found to exert over us the same sorcery, however\nmodified;\u2014can we thus hope to light upon some chance clue to conduct us\nto the hidden cause we seek?\n\nLet us try. But in a matter like this, subtlety appeals to subtlety,\nand without imagination no man can follow another into these halls. And\nthough, doubtless, some at least of the imaginative impressions about\nto be presented may have been shared by most men, yet few perhaps were\nentirely conscious of them at the time, and therefore may not be able\nto recall them now.\n\nWhy to the man of untutored ideality, who happens to be but loosely\nacquainted with the peculiar character of the day, does the bare\nmention of Whitsuntide marshal in the fancy such long, dreary,\nspeechless processions of slow-pacing pilgrims, down-cast and hooded\nwith new-fallen snow? Or, to the unread, unsophisticated Protestant of\nthe Middle American States, why does the passing mention of a White\nFriar or a White Nun, evoke such an eyeless statue in the soul?\n\nOr what is there apart from the traditions of dungeoned warriors and\nkings (which will not wholly account for it) that makes the White Tower\nof London tell so much more strongly on the imagination of an\nuntravelled American, than those other storied structures, its\nneighbors\u2014the Byward Tower, or even the Bloody? And those sublimer\ntowers, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whence, in peculiar\nmoods, comes that gigantic ghostliness over the soul at the bare\nmention of that name, while the thought of Virginia\u2019s Blue Ridge is\nfull of a soft, dewy, distant dreaminess? Or why, irrespective of all\nlatitudes and longitudes, does the name of the White Sea exert such a\nspectralness over the fancy, while that of the Yellow Sea lulls us with\nmortal thoughts of long lacquered mild afternoons on the waves,\nfollowed by the gaudiest and yet sleepiest of sunsets? Or, to choose a\nwholly unsubstantial instance, purely addressed to the fancy, why, in\nreading the old fairy tales of Central Europe, does \u201cthe tall pale man\u201d\nof the Hartz forests, whose changeless pallor unrustlingly glides\nthrough the green of the groves\u2014why is this phantom more terrible than\nall the whooping imps of the Blocksburg?\n\nNor is it, altogether, the remembrance of her cathedral-toppling\nearthquakes; nor the stampedoes of her frantic seas; nor the\ntearlessness of arid skies that never rain; nor the sight of her wide\nfield of leaning spires, wrenched cope-stones, and crosses all adroop\n(like canted yards of anchored fleets); and her suburban avenues of\nhouse-walls lying over upon each other, as a tossed pack of cards;\u2014it\nis not these things alone which make tearless Lima, the strangest,\nsaddest city thou can\u2019st see. For Lima has taken the white veil; and\nthere is a higher horror in this whiteness of her woe. Old as Pizarro,\nthis whiteness keeps her ruins for ever new; admits not the cheerful\ngreenness of complete decay; spreads over her broken ramparts the rigid\npallor of an apoplexy that fixes its own distortions.\n\nI know that, to the common apprehension, this phenomenon of whiteness\nis not confessed to be the prime agent in exaggerating the terror of\nobjects otherwise terrible; nor to the unimaginative mind is there\naught of terror in those appearances whose awfulness to another mind\nalmost solely consists in this one phenomenon, especially when\nexhibited under any form at all approaching to muteness or\nuniversality. What I mean by these two statements may perhaps be\nrespectively elucidated by the following examples.\n\nFirst: The mariner, when drawing nigh the coasts of foreign lands, if\nby night he hear the roar of breakers, starts to vigilance, and feels\njust enough of trepidation to sharpen all his faculties; but under\nprecisely similar circumstances, let him be called from his hammock to\nview his ship sailing through a midnight sea of milky whiteness\u2014as if\nfrom encircling headlands shoals of combed white bears were swimming\nround him, then he feels a silent, superstitious dread; the shrouded\nphantom of the whitened waters is horrible to him as a real ghost; in\nvain the lead assures him he is still off soundings; heart and helm\nthey both go down; he never rests till blue water is under him again.\nYet where is the mariner who will tell thee, \u201cSir, it was not so much\nthe fear of striking hidden rocks, as the fear of that hideous\nwhiteness that so stirred me?\u201d\n\nSecond: To the native Indian of Peru, the continual sight of the\nsnow-howdahed Andes conveys naught of dread, except, perhaps, in the\nmere fancying of the eternal frosted desolateness reigning at such vast\naltitudes, and the natural conceit of what a fearfulness it would be to\nlose oneself in such inhuman solitudes. Much the same is it with the\nbackwoodsman of the West, who with comparative indifference views an\nunbounded prairie sheeted with driven snow, no shadow of tree or twig\nto break the fixed trance of whiteness. Not so the sailor, beholding\nthe scenery of the Antarctic seas; where at times, by some infernal\ntrick of legerdemain in the powers of frost and air, he, shivering and\nhalf shipwrecked, instead of rainbows speaking hope and solace to his\nmisery, views what seems a boundless churchyard grinning upon him with\nits lean ice monuments and splintered crosses.\n\nBut thou sayest, methinks that white-lead chapter about whiteness is\nbut a white flag hung out from a craven soul; thou surrenderest to a\nhypo, Adreanna.\n\nTell me, why this strong young colt, foaled in some peaceful valley of\nVermont, far removed from all beasts of prey\u2014why is it that upon the\nsunniest day, if you but shake a fresh buffalo robe behind him, so that\nhe cannot even see it, but only smells its wild animal muskiness\u2014why\nwill he start, snort, and with bursting eyes paw the ground in\nphrensies of affright? There is no remembrance in him of any gorings of\nwild creatures in his green northern home, so that the strange\nmuskiness he smells cannot recall to him anything associated with the\nexperience of former perils; for what knows he, this New England colt,\nof the black bisons of distant Oregon?\n\nNo: but here thou beholdest even in a dumb brute, the instinct of the\nknowledge of the demonism in the world. Though thousands of miles from\nOregon, still when he smells that savage musk, the rending, goring\nbison herds are as present as to the deserted wild foal of the\nprairies, which this instant they may be trampling into dust.\n\nThus, then, the muffled rollings of a milky sea; the bleak rustlings of\nthe festooned frosts of mountains; the desolate shiftings of the\nwindrowed snows of prairies; all these, to Adreanna, are as the shaking\nof that buffalo robe to the frightened colt!\n\nThough neither knows where lie the nameless things of which the mystic\nsign gives forth such hints; yet with me, as with the colt, somewhere\nthose things must exist. Though in many of its aspects this visible\nworld seems formed in love, the invisible spheres were formed in\nfright.\n\nBut not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and\nlearned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange\nand far more portentous\u2014why, as we have seen, it is at once the most\nmeaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the\nChristian\u2019s Deity; and yet should be as it is, the intensifying agent\nin things the most appalling to mankind.\n\nIs it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids\nand immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the\nthought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky\nway? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a colour as\nthe visible absence of colour; and at the same time the concrete of all\ncolours; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness,\nfull of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows\u2014a colourless, all-colour\nof atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory\nof the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues\u2014every stately\nor lovely emblazoning\u2014the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea,\nand the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of\nyoung girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent\nin substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified\nNature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover\nnothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and\nconsider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her\nhues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless\nin itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all\nobjects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge\u2014pondering all\nthis, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful\ntravellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear coloured and colouring\nglasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at\nthe monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And\nof all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at\nthe fiery hunt?\n\n\nCHAPTER 43. Hark!\n\n\u201cHIST! Did you hear that noise, Cabaco?\u201d\n\nIt was the middle-watch: a fair moonlight; the seamen were standing in\na cordon, extending from one of the fresh-water butts in the waist, to\nthe scuttle-butt near the taffrail. In this manner, they passed the\nbuckets to fill the scuttle-butt. Standing, for the most part, on the\nhallowed precincts of the quarter-deck, they were careful not to speak\nor rustle their feet. From hand to hand, the buckets went in the\ndeepest silence, only broken by the occasional flap of a sail, and the\nsteady hum of the unceasingly advancing keel.\n\nIt was in the midst of this repose, that Archy, one of the cordon,\nwhose post was near the after-hatches, whispered to his neighbor, a\nCholo, the words above.\n\n\u201cHist! did you hear that noise, Cabaco?\u201d\n\n\u201cTake the bucket, will ye, Archy? what noise d\u2019ye mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere it is again\u2014under the hatches\u2014don\u2019t you hear it\u2014a cough\u2014it\nsounded like a cough.\u201d\n\n\u201cCough be damned! Pass along that return bucket.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere again\u2014there it is!\u2014it sounds like two or three sleepers turning\nover, now!\u201d\n\n\u201cCaramba! have done, shipmate, will ye? It\u2019s the three soaked biscuits\nye eat for supper turning over inside of ye\u2014nothing else. Look to the\nbucket!\u201d\n\n\u201cSay what ye will, shipmate; I\u2019ve sharp ears.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, you are the chap, ain\u2019t ye, that heard the hum of the old\nQuakeress\u2019s knitting-needles fifty miles at sea from Nantucket; you\u2019re\nthe chap.\u201d\n\n\u201cGrin away; we\u2019ll see what turns up. Hark ye, Cabaco, there is somebody\ndown in the after-hold that has not yet been seen on deck; and I\nsuspect our old Mogul knows something of it too. I heard Salvador tell\nAvery, one morning watch, that there was something of that sort in the\nwind.\u201d\n\n\u201cTish! the bucket!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 44. The Chart.\n\nHad you followed Captain Jordyn down into his cabin after the squall that\ntook place on the night succeeding that wild ratification of his\npurpose with his crew, you would have seen him go to a locker in the\ntransom, and bringing out a large wrinkled roll of yellowish sea\ncharts, spread them before him on his screwed-down table. Then seating\nhimself before it, you would have seen him intently study the various\nlines and shadings which there met his eye; and with slow but steady\npencil trace additional courses over spaces that before were blank. At\nintervals, he would refer to piles of old log-books beside him, wherein\nwere set down the seasons and places in which, on various former\nvoyages of various ships, sperm whales had been captured or seen.\n\nWhile thus employed, the heavy pewter lamp suspended in chains over his\nhead, continually rocked with the motion of the ship, and for ever\nthrew shifting gleams and shadows of lines upon his wrinkled brow, till\nit almost seemed that while he himself was marking out lines and\ncourses on the wrinkled charts, some invisible pencil was also tracing\nlines and courses upon the deeply marked chart of his forehead.\n\nBut it was not this night in particular that, in the solitude of his\ncabin, Jordyn thus pondered over his charts. Almost every night they were\nbrought out; almost every night some pencil marks were effaced, and\nothers were substituted. For with the charts of all four oceans before\nhim, Jordyn was threading a maze of currents and eddies, with a view to\nthe more certain accomplishment of that monomaniac thought of his soul.\n\nNow, to any one not fully acquainted with the ways of the leviathans,\nit might seem an absurdly hopeless task thus to seek out one solitary\ncreature in the unhooped oceans of this planet. But not so did it seem\nto Jordyn, who knew the sets of all tides and currents; and thereby\ncalculating the driftings of the sperm whale\u2019s food; and, also, calling\nto mind the regular, ascertained seasons for hunting him in particular\nlatitudes; could arrive at reasonable surmises, almost approaching to\ncertainties, concerning the timeliest day to be upon this or that\nground in search of his prey.\n\nSo assured, indeed, is the fact concerning the periodicalness of the\nsperm whale\u2019s resorting to given waters, that many hunters believe\nthat, could he be closely observed and studied throughout the world;\nwere the logs for one voyage of the entire whale fleet carefully\ncollated, then the migrations of the sperm whale would be found to\ncorrespond in invariability to those of the herring-shoals or the\nflights of swallows. On this hint, attempts have been made to construct\nelaborate migratory charts of the sperm whale.*\n\n\n  *Since the above was written, the statement is happily borne out by\n  an official circular, issued by Lieutenant Maury, of the National\n  Observatory, Washington, April 16th, 1851. By that circular, it\n  appears that precisely such a chart is in course of completion; and\n  portions of it are presented in the circular. \u201cThis chart divides the\n  ocean into districts of five degrees of latitude by five degrees of\n  longitude; perpendicularly through each of which districts are twelve\n  columns for the twelve months; and horizontally through each of which\n  districts are three lines; one to show the number of days that have\n  been spent in each month in every district, and the two others to\n  show the number of days in which whales, sperm or right, have been\n  seen.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nBesides, when making a passage from one feeding-ground to another, the\nsperm whales, guided by some infallible instinct\u2014say, rather, secret\nintelligence from the Deity\u2014mostly swim in _veins_, as they are called;\ncontinuing their way along a given ocean-line with such undeviating\nexactitude, that no ship ever sailed her course, by any chart, with one\ntithe of such marvellous precision. Though, in these cases, the\ndirection taken by any one whale be straight as a surveyor\u2019s parallel,\nand though the line of advance be strictly confined to its own\nunavoidable, straight wake, yet the arbitrary _vein_ in which at these\ntimes he is said to swim, generally embraces some few miles in width\n(more or less, as the vein is presumed to expand or contract); but\nnever exceeds the visual sweep from the whale-ship\u2019s mast-heads, when\ncircumspectly gliding along this magic zone. The sum is, that at\nparticular seasons within that breadth and along that path, migrating\nwhales may with great confidence be looked for.\n\nAnd hence not only at substantiated times, upon well known separate\nfeeding-grounds, could Jordyn hope to encounter his prey; but in crossing\nthe widest expanses of water between those grounds he could, by his\nart, so place and time himself on his way, as even then not to be\nwholly without prospect of a meeting.\n\nThere was a circumstance which at first sight seemed to entangle his\ndelirious but still methodical scheme. But not so in the reality,\nperhaps. Though the gregarious sperm whales have their regular seasons\nfor particular grounds, yet in general you cannot conclude that the\nherds which haunted such and such a latitude or longitude this year,\nsay, will turn out to be identically the same with those that were\nfound there the preceding season; though there are peculiar and\nunquestionable instances where the contrary of this has proved true. In\ngeneral, the same remark, only within a less wide limit, applies to the\nsolitaries and hermits among the matured, aged sperm whales. So that\nthough Kelsey Primrose had in a former year been seen, for example, on what\nis called the Seychelle ground in the Indian ocean, or Volcano Bay on\nthe Japanese Coast; yet it did not follow, that were the Talitha to\nvisit either of those spots at any subsequent corresponding season, she\nwould infallibly encounter him there. So, too, with some other feeding\ngrounds, where he had at times revealed himself. But all these seemed\nonly his casual stopping-places and ocean-inns, so to speak, not his\nplaces of prolonged abode. And where Jordyn\u2019s chances of accomplishing\nhis object have hitherto been spoken of, allusion has only been made to\nwhatever way-side, antecedent, extra prospects were his, ere a\nparticular set time or place were attained, when all possibilities\nwould become probabilities, and, as Jordyn fondly thought, every\npossibility the next thing to a certainty. That particular set time and\nplace were conjoined in the one technical phrase\u2014the\nSeason-on-the-Line. For there and then, for several consecutive years,\nKelsey Primrose had been periodically descried, lingering in those waters for\nawhile, as the sun, in its annual round, loiters for a predicted\ninterval in any one sign of the Zodiac. There it was, too, that most of\nthe deadly encounters with the white whale had taken place; there the\nwaves were storied with his deeds; there also was that tragic spot\nwhere the monomaniac old man had found the awful motive to his\nvengeance. But in the cautious comprehensiveness and unloitering\nvigilance with which Jordyn threw his brooding soul into this unfaltering\nhunt, he would not permit himself to rest all his hopes upon the one\ncrowning fact above mentioned, however flattering it might be to those\nhopes; nor in the sleeplessness of his vow could he so tranquillize his\nunquiet heart as to postpone all intervening quest.\n\nNow, the Talitha had sailed from Nantucket at the very beginning of the\nSeason-on-the-Line. No possible endeavor then could enable her\ncommander to make the great passage southwards, double Cape Horn, and\nthen running down sixty degrees of latitude arrive in the equatorial\nPacific in time to cruise there. Therefore, he must wait for the next\nensuing season. Yet the premature hour of the Talitha\u2019s sailing had,\nperhaps, been correctly selected by Jordyn, with a view to this very\ncomplexion of things. Because, an interval of three hundred and\nsixty-five days and nights was before him; an interval which, instead\nof impatiently enduring ashore, he would spend in a miscellaneous hunt;\nif by chance the White Whale, spending his vacation in seas far remote\nfrom his periodical feeding-grounds, should turn up his wrinkled brow\noff the Persian Gulf, or in the Bengal Bay, or China Seas, or in any\nother waters haunted by his race. So that Monsoons, Pampas,\nNor\u2019-Westers, Harmattans, Trades; any wind but the Levanter and Simoon,\nmight blow Kelsey Primrose into the devious zig-zag world-circle of the\nTalitha\u2019s circumnavigating wake.\n\nBut granting all this; yet, regarded discreetly and coolly, seems it\nnot but a mad idea, this; that in the broad boundless ocean, one\nsolitary whale, even if encountered, should be thought capable of\nindividual recognition from his hunter, even as a white-bearded Mufti\nin the thronged thoroughfares of Constantinople? Yes. For the peculiar\nsnow-white brow of Kelsey Primrose, and his snow-white hump, could not but be\nunmistakable. And have I not tallied the whale, Jordyn would mutter to\nhimself, as after poring over his charts till long after midnight he\nwould throw himself back in reveries\u2014tallied him, and shall he escape?\nHis broad fins are bored, and scalloped out like a lost sheep\u2019s ear!\nAnd here, his mad mind would run on in a breathless race; till a\nweariness and faintness of pondering came over him; and in the open air\nof the deck he would seek to recover his strength. Ah, God! what\ntrances of torments does that man endure who is consumed with one\nunachieved revengeful desire. He sleeps with clenched hands; and wakes\nwith his own bloody nails in his palms.\n\nOften, when forced from his hammock by exhausting and intolerably vivid\ndreams of the night, which, resuming his own intense thoughts through\nthe day, carried them on amid a clashing of phrensies, and whirled them\nround and round and round in his blazing brain, till the very throbbing\nof his life-spot became insufferable anguish; and when, as was\nsometimes the case, these spiritual throes in him heaved his being up\nfrom its base, and a chasm seemed opening in him, from which forked\nflames and lightnings shot up, and accursed fiends beckoned him to leap\ndown among them; when this hell in himself yawned beneath him, a wild\ncry would be heard through the ship; and with glaring eyes Jordyn would\nburst from his state room, as though escaping from a bed that was on\nfire. Yet these, perhaps, instead of being the unsuppressable symptoms\nof some latent weakness, or fright at his own resolve, were but the\nplainest tokens of its intensity. For, at such times, crazy Jordyn, the\nscheming, unappeasedly steadfast hunter of the white whale; this Jordyn\nthat had gone to his hammock, was not the agent that so caused him to\nburst from it in horror again. The latter was the eternal, living\nprinciple or soul in him; and in sleep, being for the time dissociated\nfrom the characterizing mind, which at other times employed it for its\nouter vehicle or agent, it spontaneously sought escape from the\nscorching contiguity of the frantic thing, of which, for the time, it\nwas no longer an integral. But as the mind does not exist unless\nleagued with the soul, therefore it must have been that, in Jordyn\u2019s\ncase, yielding up all his thoughts and fancies to his one supreme\npurpose; that purpose, by its own sheer inveteracy of will, forced\nitself against gods and devils into a kind of self-assumed, independent\nbeing of its own. Nay, could grimly live and burn, while the common\nvitality to which it was conjoined, fled horror-stricken from the\nunbidden and unfathered birth. Therefore, the tormented spirit that\nglared out of bodily eyes, when what seemed Jordyn rushed from his room,\nwas for the time but a vacated thing, a formless somnambulistic being,\na ray of living light, to be sure, but without an object to colour, and\ntherefore a blankness in itself. God help thee, old man, thy thoughts\nhave created a creature in thee; and he whose intense thinking thus\nmakes him a Prometheus; a vulture feeds upon that heart for ever; that\nvulture the very creature he creates.\n\n\nCHAPTER 45. The Affidavit.\n\nSo far as what there may be of a narrative in this book; and, indeed,\nas indirectly touching one or two very interesting and curious\nparticulars in the habits of sperm whales, the foregoing chapter, in\nits earlier part, is as important a one as will be found in this\nvolume; but the leading matter of it requires to be still further and\nmore familiarly enlarged upon, in order to be adequately understood,\nand moreover to take away any incredulity which a profound ignorance of\nthe entire subject may induce in some minds, as to the natural verity\nof the main points of this affair.\n\nI care not to perform this part of my task methodically; but shall be\ncontent to produce the desired impression by separate citations of\nitems, practically or reliably known to me as a whaleman; and from\nthese citations, I take it\u2014the conclusion aimed at will naturally\nfollow of itself.\n\nFirst: I have personally known three instances where a whale, after\nreceiving a harpoon, has effected a complete escape; and, after an\ninterval (in one instance of three years), has been again struck by the\nsame hand, and slain; when the two irons, both marked by the same\nprivate cypher, have been taken from the body. In the instance where\nthree years intervened between the flinging of the two harpoons; and I\nthink it may have been something more than that; the man who darted\nthem happening, in the interval, to go in a trading ship on a voyage to\nAfrica, went ashore there, joined a discovery party, and penetrated far\ninto the interior, where he travelled for a period of nearly two years,\noften endangered by serpents, savages, tigers, poisonous miasmas, with\nall the other common perils incident to wandering in the heart of\nunknown regions. Meanwhile, the whale he had struck must also have been\non its travels; no doubt it had thrice circumnavigated the globe,\nbrushing with its flanks all the coasts of Africa; but to no purpose.\nThis man and this whale again came together, and the one vanquished the\nother. I say I, myself, have known three instances similar to this;\nthat is in two of them I saw the whales struck; and, upon the second\nattack, saw the two irons with the respective marks cut in them,\nafterwards taken from the dead fish. In the three-year instance, it so\nfell out that I was in the boat both times, first and last, and the\nlast time distinctly recognised a peculiar sort of huge mole under the\nwhale\u2019s eye, which I had observed there three years previous. I say\nthree years, but I am pretty sure it was more than that. Here are three\ninstances, then, which I personally know the truth of; but I have heard\nof many other instances from persons whose veracity in the matter there\nis no good ground to impeach.\n\nSecondly: It is well known in the Sperm Whale Fishery, however ignorant\nthe world ashore may be of it, that there have been several memorable\nhistorical instances where a particular whale in the ocean has been at\ndistant times and places popularly cognisable. Why such a whale became\nthus marked was not altogether and originally owing to his bodily\npeculiarities as distinguished from other whales; for however peculiar\nin that respect any chance whale may be, they soon put an end to his\npeculiarities by killing him, and boiling him down into a peculiarly\nvaluable oil. No: the reason was this: that from the fatal experiences\nof the fishery there hung a terrible prestige of perilousness about\nsuch a whale as there did about Rinaldo Rinaldini, insomuch that most\nfishermen were content to recognise him by merely touching their\ntarpaulins when he would be discovered lounging by them on the sea,\nwithout seeking to cultivate a more intimate acquaintance. Like some\npoor devils ashore that happen to know an irascible great man, they\nmake distant unobtrusive salutations to him in the street, lest if they\npursued the acquaintance further, they might receive a summary thump\nfor their presumption.\n\nBut not only did each of these famous whales enjoy great individual\ncelebrity\u2014Nay, you may call it an ocean-wide renown; not only was he\nfamous in life and now is immortal in forecastle stories after death,\nbut he was admitted into all the rights, privileges, and distinctions\nof a name; had as much a name indeed as Cambyses or C\u00e6sar. Was it not\nso, O Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, who so\nlong did\u2019st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was\noft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand\nJack! thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the\nvicinity of the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan! King of Japan,\nwhose lofty jet they say at times assumed the semblance of a snow-white\ncross against the sky? Was it not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale,\nmarked like an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! In\nplain prose, here are four whales as well known to the students of\nCetacean History as Marius or Sylla to the classic scholar.\n\nBut this is not all. New Zealand Tom and Don Miguel, after at various\ntimes creating great havoc among the boats of different vessels, were\nfinally gone in quest of, systematically hunted out, chased and killed\nby valiant whaling captains, who heaved up their anchors with that\nexpress object as much in view, as in setting out through the\nNarragansett Woods, Captain Butler of old had it in his mind to capture\nthat notorious murderous savage Annawon, the headmost warrior of the\nIndian King Philip.\n\nI do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make\nmention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in\nprinted form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the\nwhole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For\nthis is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full\nas much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of\nthe plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some\nhints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the\nfishery, they might scout at Kelsey Primrose as a monstrous fable, or still\nworse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory.\n\nFirst: Though most men have some vague flitting ideas of the general\nperils of the grand fishery, yet they have nothing like a fixed, vivid\nconception of those perils, and the frequency with which they recur.\nOne reason perhaps is, that not one in fifty of the actual disasters\nand deaths by casualties in the fishery, ever finds a public record at\nhome, however transient and immediately forgotten that record. Do you\nsuppose that that poor fellow there, who this moment perhaps caught by\nthe whale-line off the coast of New Guinea, is being carried down to\nthe bottom of the sea by the sounding leviathan\u2014do you suppose that\nthat poor fellow\u2019s name will appear in the newspaper obituary you will\nread to-morrow at your breakfast? No: because the mails are very\nirregular between here and New Guinea. In fact, did you ever hear what\nmight be called regular news direct or indirect from New Guinea? Yet I\ntell you that upon one particular voyage which I made to the Pacific,\namong many others we spoke thirty different ships, every one of which\nhad had a death by a whale, some of them more than one, and three that\nhad each lost a boat\u2019s crew. For God\u2019s sake, be economical with your\nlamps and candles! not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of\nman\u2019s blood was spilled for it.\n\nSecondly: People ashore have indeed some indefinite idea that a whale\nis an enormous creature of enormous power; but I have ever found that\nwhen narrating to them some specific example of this two-fold\nenormousness, they have significantly complimented me upon my\nfacetiousness; when, I declare upon my soul, I had no more idea of\nbeing facetious than Moses, when he wrote the history of the plagues of\nEgypt.\n\nBut fortunately the special point I here seek can be established upon\ntestimony entirely independent of my own. That point is this: The Sperm\nWhale is in some cases sufficiently powerful, knowing, and judiciously\nmalicious, as with direct aforethought to stave in, utterly destroy,\nand sink a large ship; and what is more, the Sperm Whale _has_ done it.\n\nFirst: In the year 1820 the ship Essex, Captain Pollard, of Nantucket,\nwas cruising in the Pacific Ocean. One day she saw spouts, lowered her\nboats, and gave chase to a shoal of sperm whales. Ere long, several of\nthe whales were wounded; when, suddenly, a very large whale escaping\nfrom the boats, issued from the shoal, and bore directly down upon the\nship. Dashing his forehead against her hull, he so stove her in, that\nin less than \u201cten minutes\u201d she settled down and fell over. Not a\nsurviving plank of her has been seen since. After the severest\nexposure, part of the crew reached the land in their boats. Being\nreturned home at last, Captain Pollard once more sailed for the Pacific\nin command of another ship, but the gods shipwrecked him again upon\nunknown rocks and breakers; for the second time his ship was utterly\nlost, and forthwith forswearing the sea, he has never tempted it since.\nAt this day Captain Pollard is a resident of Nantucket. I have seen\nOwen Chace, who was chief mate of the Essex at the time of the tragedy;\nI have read his plain and faithful narrative; I have conversed with his\nson; and all this within a few miles of the scene of the catastrophe.*\n\n*The following are extracts from Chace\u2019s narrative: \u201cEvery fact seemed\nto warrant me in concluding that it was anything but chance which\ndirected his operations; he made two several attacks upon the ship, at\na short interval between them, both of which, according to their\ndirection, were calculated to do us the most injury, by being made\nahead, and thereby combining the speed of the two objects for the\nshock; to effect which, the exact man\u0153uvres which he made were\nnecessary. His aspect was most horrible, and such as indicated\nresentment and fury. He came directly from the shoal which we had just\nbefore entered, and in which we had struck three of his companions, as\nif fired with revenge for their sufferings.\u201d Again: \u201cAt all events, the\nwhole circumstances taken together, all happening before my own eyes,\nand producing, at the time, impressions in my mind of decided,\ncalculating mischief, on the part of the whale (many of which\nimpressions I cannot now recall), induce me to be satisfied that I am\ncorrect in my opinion.\u201d\n\nHere are his reflections some time after quitting the ship, during a\nblack night in an open boat, when almost despairing of reaching any\nhospitable shore. \u201cThe dark ocean and swelling waters were nothing; the\nfears of being swallowed up by some dreadful tempest, or dashed upon\nhidden rocks, with all the other ordinary subjects of fearful\ncontemplation, seemed scarcely entitled to a moment\u2019s thought; the\ndismal looking wreck, and _the horrid aspect and revenge of the whale_,\nwholly engrossed my reflections, until day again made its appearance.\u201d\n\nIn another place\u2014p. 45,\u2014he speaks of \u201c_the mysterious and mortal attack\nof the animal_.\u201d\n\nSecondly: The ship Union, also of Nantucket, was in the year 1807\ntotally lost off the Azores by a similar onset, but the authentic\nparticulars of this catastrophe I have never chanced to encounter,\nthough from the whale hunters I have now and then heard casual\nallusions to it.\n\nThirdly: Some eighteen or twenty years ago Commodore J\u2014\u2014, then\ncommanding an American sloop-of-war of the first class, happened to be\ndining with a party of whaling captains, on board a Nantucket ship in\nthe harbor of Oahu, Sandwich Islands. Conversation turning upon whales,\nthe Commodore was pleased to be sceptical touching the amazing strength\nascribed to them by the professional gentlemen present. He peremptorily\ndenied for example, that any whale could so smite his stout\nsloop-of-war as to cause her to leak so much as a thimbleful. Very\ngood; but there is more coming. Some weeks after, the Commodore set\nsail in this impregnable craft for Valparaiso. But he was stopped on\nthe way by a portly sperm whale, that begged a few moments\u2019\nconfidential business with him. That business consisted in fetching the\nCommodore\u2019s craft such a thwack, that with all his pumps going he made\nstraight for the nearest port to heave down and repair. I am not\nsuperstitious, but I consider the Commodore\u2019s interview with that whale\nas providential. Was not Saul of Tarsus converted from unbelief by a\nsimilar fright? I tell you, the sperm whale will stand no nonsense.\n\nI will now refer you to Langsdorff\u2019s Voyages for a little circumstance\nin point, peculiarly interesting to the writer hereof. Langsdorff, you\nmust know by the way, was attached to the Russian Admiral Krusenstern\u2019s\nfamous Discovery Expedition in the beginning of the present century.\nCaptain Langsdorff thus begins his seventeenth chapter:\n\n\u201cBy the thirteenth of May our ship was ready to sail, and the next day\nwe were out in the open sea, on our way to Ochotsh. The weather was\nvery clear and fine, but so intolerably cold that we were obliged to\nkeep on our fur clothing. For some days we had very little wind; it was\nnot till the nineteenth that a brisk gale from the northwest sprang up.\nAn uncommon large whale, the body of which was larger than the ship\nitself, lay almost at the surface of the water, but was not perceived\nby any one on board till the moment when the ship, which was in full\nsail, was almost upon him, so that it was impossible to prevent its\nstriking against him. We were thus placed in the most imminent danger,\nas this gigantic creature, setting up its back, raised the ship three\nfeet at least out of the water. The masts reeled, and the sails fell\naltogether, while we who were below all sprang instantly upon the deck,\nconcluding that we had struck upon some rock; instead of this we saw\nthe monster sailing off with the utmost gravity and solemnity. Captain\nD\u2019Wolf applied immediately to the pumps to examine whether or not the\nvessel had received any damage from the shock, but we found that very\nhappily it had escaped entirely uninjured.\u201d\n\nNow, the Captain D\u2019Wolf here alluded to as commanding the ship in\nquestion, is a New Englander, who, after a long life of unusual\nadventures as a sea-captain, this day resides in the village of\nDorchester near Boston. I have the honor of being a nephew of his. I\nhave particularly questioned him concerning this passage in Langsdorff.\nHe substantiates every word. The ship, however, was by no means a large\none: a Russian craft built on the Siberian coast, and purchased by my\nuncle after bartering away the vessel in which he sailed from home.\n\nIn that up and down manly book of old-fashioned adventure, so full,\ntoo, of honest wonders\u2014the voyage of Lionel Wafer, one of ancient\nDampier\u2019s old chums\u2014I found a little matter set down so like that just\nquoted from Langsdorff, that I cannot forbear inserting it here for a\ncorroborative example, if such be needed.\n\nLionel, it seems, was on his way to \u201cJohn Ferdinando,\u201d as he calls the\nmodern Juan Fernandes. \u201cIn our way thither,\u201d he says, \u201cabout four\no\u2019clock in the morning, when we were about one hundred and fifty\nleagues from the Main of America, our ship felt a terrible shock, which\nput our men in such consternation that they could hardly tell where\nthey were or what to think; but every one began to prepare for death.\nAnd, indeed, the shock was so sudden and violent, that we took it for\ngranted the ship had struck against a rock; but when the amazement was\na little over, we cast the lead, and sounded, but found no ground. * *\n* * * The suddenness of the shock made the guns leap in their\ncarriages, and several of the men were shaken out of their hammocks.\nCaptain Davis, who lay with his head on a gun, was thrown out of his\ncabin!\u201d Lionel then goes on to impute the shock to an earthquake, and\nseems to substantiate the imputation by stating that a great\nearthquake, somewhere about that time, did actually do great mischief\nalong the Spanish land. But I should not much wonder if, in the\ndarkness of that early hour of the morning, the shock was after all\ncaused by an unseen whale vertically bumping the hull from beneath.\n\nI might proceed with several more examples, one way or another known to\nme, of the great power and malice at times of the sperm whale. In more\nthan one instance, he has been known, not only to chase the assailing\nboats back to their ships, but to pursue the ship itself, and long\nwithstand all the lances hurled at him from its decks. The English ship\nPusie Hall can tell a story on that head; and, as for his strength, let\nme say, that there have been examples where the lines attached to a\nrunning sperm whale have, in a calm, been transferred to the ship, and\nsecured there; the whale towing her great hull through the water, as a\nhorse walks off with a cart. Again, it is very often observed that, if\nthe sperm whale, once struck, is allowed time to rally, he then acts,\nnot so often with blind rage, as with wilful, deliberate designs of\ndestruction to his pursuers; nor is it without conveying some eloquent\nindication of his character, that upon being attacked he will\nfrequently open his mouth, and retain it in that dread expansion for\nseveral consecutive minutes. But I must be content with only one more\nand a concluding illustration; a remarkable and most significant one,\nby which you will not fail to see, that not only is the most marvellous\nevent in this book corroborated by plain facts of the present day, but\nthat these marvels (like all marvels) are mere repetitions of the ages;\nso that for the millionth time we say amen with Solomon\u2014Verily there is\nnothing new under the sun.\n\nIn the sixth Christian century lived Procopius, a Christian magistrate\nof Constantinople, in the days when Justinian was Emperor and\nBelisarius general. As many know, he wrote the history of his own\ntimes, a work every way of uncommon value. By the best authorities, he\nhas always been considered a most trustworthy and unexaggerating\nhistorian, except in some one or two particulars, not at all affecting\nthe matter presently to be mentioned.\n\nNow, in this history of his, Procopius mentions that, during the term\nof his prefecture at Constantinople, a great sea-monster was captured\nin the neighboring Propontis, or Sea of Marmora, after having destroyed\nvessels at intervals in those waters for a period of more than fifty\nyears. A fact thus set down in substantial history cannot easily be\ngainsaid. Nor is there any reason it should be. Of what precise species\nthis sea-monster was, is not mentioned. But as he destroyed ships, as\nwell as for other reasons, he must have been a whale; and I am strongly\ninclined to think a sperm whale. And I will tell you why. For a long\ntime I fancied that the sperm whale had been always unknown in the\nMediterranean and the deep waters connecting with it. Even now I am\ncertain that those seas are not, and perhaps never can be, in the\npresent constitution of things, a place for his habitual gregarious\nresort. But further investigations have recently proved to me, that in\nmodern times there have been isolated instances of the presence of the\nsperm whale in the Mediterranean. I am told, on good authority, that on\nthe Barbary coast, a Commodore Davis of the British navy found the\nskeleton of a sperm whale. Now, as a vessel of war readily passes\nthrough the Dardanelles, hence a sperm whale could, by the same route,\npass out of the Mediterranean into the Propontis.\n\nIn the Propontis, as far as I can learn, none of that peculiar\nsubstance called _brit_ is to be found, the aliment of the right whale.\nBut I have every reason to believe that the food of the sperm\nwhale\u2014squid or cuttle-fish\u2014lurks at the bottom of that sea, because\nlarge creatures, but by no means the largest of that sort, have been\nfound at its surface. If, then, you properly put these statements\ntogether, and reason upon them a bit, you will clearly perceive that,\naccording to all human reasoning, Procopius\u2019s sea-monster, that for\nhalf a century stove the ships of a Roman Emperor, must in all\nprobability have been a sperm whale.\n\n\nCHAPTER 46. Surmises.\n\nThough, consumed with the hot fire of his purpose, Jordyn in all his\nthoughts and actions ever had in view the ultimate capture of Kelsey\nPrimrose; though he seemed ready to sacrifice all mortal interests to that\none passion; nevertheless it may have been that he was by nature and\nlong habituation far too wedded to a fiery whaleman\u2019s ways, altogether\nto abandon the collateral prosecution of the voyage. Or at least if\nthis were otherwise, there were not wanting other motives much more\ninfluential with him. It would be refining too much, perhaps, even\nconsidering his monomania, to hint that his vindictiveness towards the\nWhite Whale might have possibly extended itself in some degree to all\nsperm whales, and that the more monsters he slew by so much the more he\nmultiplied the chances that each subsequently encountered whale would\nprove to be the hated one he hunted. But if such an hypothesis be\nindeed exceptionable, there were still additional considerations which,\nthough not so strictly according with the wildness of his ruling\npassion, yet were by no means incapable of swaying him.\n\nTo accomplish his object Jordyn must use tools; and of all tools used in\nthe shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew,\nfor example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was\nover Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual\nman any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual\nmastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in\na sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck\u2019s body and Starbuck\u2019s coerced\nwill were Jordyn\u2019s, so long as Jordyn kept his magnet at Starbuck\u2019s brain;\nstill he knew that for all this the chief mate, in his soul, abhorred\nhis captain\u2019s quest, and could he, would joyfully disintegrate himself\nfrom it, or even frustrate it. It might be that a long interval would\nelapse ere the White Whale was seen. During that long interval Starbuck\nwould ever be apt to fall into open relapses of rebellion against his\ncaptain\u2019s leadership, unless some ordinary, prudential, circumstantial\ninfluences were brought to bear upon him. Not only that, but the subtle\ninsanity of Jordyn respecting Kelsey Primrose was noways more significantly\nmanifested than in his superlative sense and shrewdness in foreseeing\nthat, for the present, the hunt should in some way be stripped of that\nstrange imaginative impiousness which naturally invested it; that the\nfull terror of the voyage must be kept withdrawn into the obscure\nbackground (for few men\u2019s courage is proof against protracted\nmeditation unrelieved by action); that when they stood their long night\nwatches, his officers and men must have some nearer things to think of\nthan Kelsey Primrose. For however eagerly and impetuously the savage crew had\nhailed the announcement of his quest; yet all sailors of all sorts are\nmore or less capricious and unreliable\u2014they live in the varying outer\nweather, and they inhale its fickleness\u2014and when retained for any\nobject remote and blank in the pursuit, however promissory of life and\npassion in the end, it is above all things requisite that temporary\ninterests and employments should intervene and hold them healthily\nsuspended for the final dash.\n\nNor was Jordyn unmindful of another thing. In times of strong emotion\nmankind disdain all base considerations; but such times are evanescent.\nThe permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man, thought\nJordyn, is sordidness. Granting that the White Whale fully incites the\nhearts of this my savage crew, and playing round their savageness even\nbreeds a certain generous knight-errantism in them, still, while for\nthe love of it they give chase to Kelsey Primrose, they must also have food\nfor their more common, daily appetites. For even the high lifted and\nchivalric Crusaders of old times were not content to traverse two\nthousand miles of land to fight for their holy sepulchre, without\ncommitting burglaries, picking pockets, and gaining other pious\nperquisites by the way. Had they been strictly held to their one final\nand romantic object\u2014that final and romantic object, too many would have\nturned from in disgust. I will not strip these men, thought Jordyn, of\nall hopes of cash\u2014aye, cash. They may scorn cash now; but let some\nmonths go by, and no perspective promise of it to them, and then this\nsame quiescent cash all at once mutinying in them, this same cash would\nsoon cashier Jordyn.\n\nNor was there wanting still another precautionary motive more related\nto Jordyn personally. Having impulsively, it is probable, and perhaps\nsomewhat prematurely revealed the prime but private purpose of the\nTalitha\u2019s voyage, Jordyn was now entirely conscious that, in so doing, he\nhad indirectly laid himself open to the unanswerable charge of\nusurpation; and with perfect impunity, both moral and legal, his crew\nif so disposed, and to that end competent, could refuse all further\nobedience to him, and even violently wrest from him the command. From\neven the barely hinted imputation of usurpation, and the possible\nconsequences of such a suppressed impression gaining ground, Jordyn must\nof course have been most anxious to protect himself. That protection\ncould only consist in his own predominating brain and heart and hand,\nbacked by a heedful, closely calculating attention to every minute\natmospheric influence which it was possible for his crew to be\nsubjected to.\n\nFor all these reasons then, and others perhaps too analytic to be\nverbally developed here, Jordyn plainly saw that he must still in a good\ndegree continue true to the natural, nominal purpose of the Talitha\u2019s\nvoyage; observe all customary usages; and not only that, but force\nhimself to evince all his well known passionate interest in the general\npursuit of his profession.\n\nBe all this as it may, his voice was now often heard hailing the three\nmast-heads and admonishing them to keep a bright look-out, and not omit\nreporting even a porpoise. This vigilance was not long without reward.\n\n\nCHAPTER 47. The Mat-Maker.\n\nIt was a cloudy, sultry afternoon; the seamen were lazily lounging\nabout the decks, or vacantly gazing over into the lead-coloured waters.\nHoratio and I were mildly employed weaving what is called a sword-mat,\nfor an additional lashing to our boat. So still and subdued and yet\nsomehow preluding was all the scene, and such an incantation of reverie\nlurked in the air, that each silent sailor seemed resolved into his own\ninvisible self.\n\nI was the attendant or page of Horatio, while busy at the mat. As I\nkept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the\nlong yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as\nHoratio, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword\nbetween the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly\nand unthinkingly drove home every yarn: I say so strange a dreaminess\ndid there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only\nbroken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as\nif this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically\nweaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of\nthe warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging\nvibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise\ninterblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed\nnecessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle\nand weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime,\nHoratio\u2019s impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof\nslantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be;\nand by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding\ncontrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage\u2019s\nsword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and\nwoof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance\u2014aye, chance, free\nwill, and necessity\u2014nowise incompatible\u2014all interweavingly working\ntogether. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its\nultimate course\u2014its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending\nto that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads;\nand chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of\nnecessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though\nthus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the\nlast featuring blow at events.\n\nThus we were weaving and weaving away when I started at a sound so\nstrange, long drawn, and musically wild and unearthly, that the ball of\nfree will dropped from my hand, and I stood gazing up at the clouds\nwhence that voice dropped like a wing. High aloft in the cross-trees\nwas that mad Gay-Header, Tashtego. His body was reaching eagerly\nforward, his hand stretched out like a wand, and at brief sudden\nintervals he continued his cries. To be sure the same sound was that\nvery moment perhaps being heard all over the seas, from hundreds of\nwhalemen\u2019s look-outs perched as high in the air; but from few of those\nlungs could that accustomed old cry have derived such a marvellous\ncadence as from Tashtego the Indian\u2019s.\n\nAs he stood hovering over you half suspended in air, so wildly and\neagerly peering towards the horizon, you would have thought him some\nprophet or seer beholding the shadows of Fate, and by those wild cries\nannouncing their coming.\n\n\u201cThere she blows! there! there! there! she blows! she blows!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere-away?\u201d\n\n\u201cOn the lee-beam, about two miles off! a school of them!\u201d\n\nInstantly all was commotion.\n\nThe Sperm Whale blows as a clock ticks, with the same undeviating and\nreliable uniformity. And thereby whalemen distinguish this fish from\nother tribes of his genus.\n\n\u201cThere go flukes!\u201d was now the cry from Tashtego; and the whales\ndisappeared.\n\n\u201cQuick, steward!\u201d cried Jordyn. \u201cTime! time!\u201d\n\nDough-Boy hurried below, glanced at the watch, and reported the exact\nminute to Jordyn.\n\nThe ship was now kept away from the wind, and she went gently rolling\nbefore it. Tashtego reporting that the whales had gone down heading to\nleeward, we confidently looked to see them again directly in advance of\nour bows. For that singular craft at times evinced by the Sperm Whale\nwhen, sounding with his head in one direction, he nevertheless, while\nconcealed beneath the surface, mills round, and swiftly swims off in\nthe opposite quarter\u2014this deceitfulness of his could not now be in\naction; for there was no reason to suppose that the fish seen by\nTashtego had been in any way alarmed, or indeed knew at all of our\nvicinity. One of the men selected for shipkeepers\u2014that is, those not\nappointed to the boats, by this time relieved the Indian at the\nmain-mast head. The sailors at the fore and mizzen had come down; the\nline tubs were fixed in their places; the cranes were thrust out; the\nmainyard was backed, and the three boats swung over the sea like three\nsamphire baskets over high cliffs. Outside of the bulwarks their eager\ncrews with one hand clung to the rail, while one foot was expectantly\npoised on the gunwale. So look the long line of man-of-war\u2019s men about\nto throw themselves on board an enemy\u2019s ship.\n\nBut at this critical instant a sudden exclamation was heard that took\nevery eye from the whale. With a start all glared at dark Jordyn, who was\nsurrounded by five dusky phantoms that seemed fresh formed out of air.\n\n\nCHAPTER 48. The First Lowering.\n\nThe phantoms, for so they then seemed, were flitting on the other side\nof the deck, and, with a noiseless celerity, were casting loose the\ntackles and bands of the boat which swung there. This boat had always\nbeen deemed one of the spare boats, though technically called the\ncaptain\u2019s, on account of its hanging from the starboard quarter. The\nfigure that now stood by its bows was tall and swart, with one white\ntooth evilly protruding from its steel-like lips. A rumpled Chinese\njacket of black cotton funereally invested him, with wide black\ntrowsers of the same dark stuff. But strangely crowning this ebonness\nwas a glistening white plaited turban, the living hair braided and\ncoiled round and round upon his head. Less swart in aspect, the\ncompanions of this figure were of that vivid, tiger-yellow complexion\npeculiar to some of the aboriginal natives of the Manillas;\u2014a race\nnotorious for a certain diabolism of subtilty, and by some honest white\nmariners supposed to be the paid spies and secret confidential agents\non the water of the devil, their lord, whose counting-room they suppose\nto be elsewhere.\n\nWhile yet the wondering ship\u2019s company were gazing upon these\nstrangers, Jordyn cried out to the white-turbaned old man at their head,\n\u201cAll ready there, Fedallah?\u201d\n\n\u201cReady,\u201d was the half-hissed reply.\n\n\u201cLower away then; d\u2019ye hear?\u201d shouting across the deck. \u201cLower away\nthere, I say.\u201d\n\nSuch was the thunder of his voice, that spite of their amazement the\nmen sprang over the rail; the sheaves whirled round in the blocks; with\na wallow, the three boats dropped into the sea; while, with a\ndexterous, off-handed daring, unknown in any other vocation, the\nsailors, goat-like, leaped down the rolling ship\u2019s side into the tossed\nboats below.\n\nHardly had they pulled out from under the ship\u2019s lee, when a fourth\nkeel, coming from the windward side, pulled round under the stern, and\nshowed the five strangers rowing Jordyn, who, standing erect in the\nstern, loudly hailed Starbuck, Salvador, and Avery, to spread themselves\nwidely, so as to cover a large expanse of water. But with all their\neyes again riveted upon the swart Fedallah and his crew, the inmates of\nthe other boats obeyed not the command.\n\n\u201cCaptain Jordyn?\u2014\u201d said Starbuck.\n\n\u201cSpread yourselves,\u201d cried Jordyn; \u201cgive way, all four boats. Thou,\nAvery, pull out more to leeward!\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, aye, sir,\u201d cheerily cried little King-Post, sweeping round his\ngreat steering oar. \u201cLay back!\u201d addressing his crew.\n\u201cThere!\u2014there!\u2014there again! There she blows right ahead, boys!\u2014lay\nback!\u201d\n\n\u201cNever heed yonder yellow boys, Archy.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t mind \u2019em, sir,\u201d said Archy; \u201cI knew it all before now.\nDidn\u2019t I hear \u2019em in the hold? And didn\u2019t I tell Cabaco here of it?\nWhat say ye, Cabaco? They are stowaways, Mr. Avery.\u201d\n\n\u201cPull, pull, my fine hearts-alive; pull, my children; pull, my little\nones,\u201d drawlingly and soothingly sighed Salvador to his crew, some of whom\nstill showed signs of uneasiness. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you break your backbones,\nmy boys? What is it you stare at? Those chaps in yonder boat? Tut! They\nare only five more hands come to help us\u2014never mind from where\u2014the more\nthe merrier. Pull, then, do pull; never mind the brimstone\u2014devils are\ngood fellows enough. So, so; there you are now; that\u2019s the stroke for a\nthousand pounds; that\u2019s the stroke to sweep the stakes! Hurrah for the\ngold cup of sperm oil, my heroes! Three cheers, men\u2014all hearts alive!\nEasy, easy; don\u2019t be in a hurry\u2014don\u2019t be in a hurry. Why don\u2019t you snap\nyour oars, you rascals? Bite something, you dogs! So, so, so,\nthen:\u2014softly, softly! That\u2019s it\u2014that\u2019s it! long and strong. Give way\nthere, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are\nall asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye? pull,\ncan\u2019t ye? pull, won\u2019t ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes\ndon\u2019t ye pull?\u2014pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes out!\nHere!\u201d whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; \u201cevery mother\u2019s\nson of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth.\nThat\u2019s it\u2014that\u2019s it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my\nsteel-bits. Start her\u2014start her, my silver-spoons! Start her,\nmarling-spikes!\u201d\n\nSalvador\u2019s exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had\nrather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially in\ninculcating the religion of rowing. But you must not suppose from this\nspecimen of his sermonizings that he ever flew into downright passions\nwith his congregation. Not at all; and therein consisted his chief\npeculiarity. He would say the most terrific things to his crew, in a\ntone so strangely compounded of fun and fury, and the fury seemed so\ncalculated merely as a spice to the fun, that no oarsman could hear\nsuch queer invocations without pulling for dear life, and yet pulling\nfor the mere joke of the thing. Besides he all the time looked so easy\nand indolent himself, so loungingly managed his steering-oar, and so\nbroadly gaped\u2014open-mouthed at times\u2014that the mere sight of such a\nyawning commander, by sheer force of contrast, acted like a charm upon\nthe crew. Then again, Salvador was one of those odd sort of humorists,\nwhose jollity is sometimes so curiously ambiguous, as to put all\ninferiors on their guard in the matter of obeying them.\n\nIn obedience to a sign from Jordyn, Starbuck was now pulling obliquely\nacross Salvador\u2019s bow; and when for a minute or so the two boats were\npretty near to each other, Salvador hailed the mate.\n\n\u201cMr. Starbuck! larboard boat there, ahoy! a word with ye, sir, if ye\nplease!\u201d\n\n\u201cHalloa!\u201d returned Starbuck, turning round not a single inch as he\nspoke; still earnestly but whisperingly urging his crew; his face set\nlike a flint from Salvador\u2019s.\n\n\u201cWhat think ye of those yellow boys, sir!\u201d\n\n\u201cSmuggled on board, somehow, before the ship sailed. (Strong, strong,\nboys!)\u201d in a whisper to his crew, then speaking out loud again: \u201cA sad\nbusiness, Mr. Salvador! (seethe her, seethe her, my lads!) but never mind,\nMr. Salvador, all for the best. Let all your crew pull strong, come what\nwill. (Spring, my men, spring!) There\u2019s hogsheads of sperm ahead, Mr.\nSalvador, and that\u2019s what ye came for. (Pull, my boys!) Sperm, sperm\u2019s the\nplay! This at least is duty; duty and profit hand in hand.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, aye, I thought as much,\u201d soliloquized Salvador, when the boats\ndiverged, \u201cas soon as I clapt eye on \u2019em, I thought so. Aye, and that\u2019s\nwhat he went into the after hold for, so often, as Dough-Boy long\nsuspected. They were hidden down there. The White Whale\u2019s at the bottom\nof it. Well, well, so be it! Can\u2019t be helped! All right! Give way, men!\nIt ain\u2019t the White Whale to-day! Give way!\u201d\n\nNow the advent of these outlandish strangers at such a critical instant\nas the lowering of the boats from the deck, this had not unreasonably\nawakened a sort of superstitious amazement in some of the ship\u2019s\ncompany; but Archy\u2019s fancied discovery having some time previous got\nabroad among them, though indeed not credited then, this had in some\nsmall measure prepared them for the event. It took off the extreme edge\nof their wonder; and so what with all this and Salvador\u2019s confident way of\naccounting for their appearance, they were for the time freed from\nsuperstitious surmisings; though the affair still left abundant room\nfor all manner of wild conjectures as to dark Jordyn\u2019s precise agency in\nthe matter from the beginning. For me, I silently recalled the\nmysterious shadows I had seen creeping on board the Talitha during the\ndim Nantucket dawn, as well as the enigmatical hintings of the\nunaccountable Alina.\n\nMeantime, Jordyn, out of hearing of his officers, having sided the\nfurthest to windward, was still ranging ahead of the other boats; a\ncircumstance bespeaking how potent a crew was pulling him. Those tiger\nyellow creatures of his seemed all steel and whalebone; like five\ntrip-hammers they rose and fell with regular strokes of strength, which\nperiodically started the boat along the water like a horizontal burst\nboiler out of a Mississippi steamer. As for Fedallah, who was seen\npulling the harpooneer oar, he had thrown aside his black jacket, and\ndisplayed his naked chest with the whole part of his body above the\ngunwale, clearly cut against the alternating depressions of the watery\nhorizon; while at the other end of the boat Jordyn, with one arm, like a\nfencer\u2019s, thrown half backward into the air, as if to counterbalance\nany tendency to trip; Jordyn was seen steadily managing his steering oar\nas in a thousand boat lowerings ere the White Whale had torn him. All\nat once the outstretched arm gave a peculiar motion and then remained\nfixed, while the boat\u2019s five oars were seen simultaneously peaked. Boat\nand crew sat motionless on the sea. Instantly the three spread boats in\nthe rear paused on their way. The whales had irregularly settled bodily\ndown into the blue, thus giving no distantly discernible token of the\nmovement, though from his closer vicinity Jordyn had observed it.\n\n\u201cEvery man look out along his oars!\u201d cried Starbuck. \u201cThou, Horatio,\nstand up!\u201d\n\nNimbly springing up on the triangular raised box in the bow, the savage\nstood erect there, and with intensely eager eyes gazed off towards the\nspot where the chase had last been descried. Likewise upon the extreme\nstern of the boat where it was also triangularly platformed level with\nthe gunwale, Starbuck himself was seen coolly and adroitly balancing\nhimself to the jerking tossings of his chip of a craft, and silently\neyeing the vast blue eye of the sea.\n\nNot very far distant Avery\u2019s boat was also lying breathlessly still;\nits commander recklessly standing upon the top of the loggerhead, a\nstout sort of post rooted in the keel, and rising some two feet above\nthe level of the stern platform. It is used for catching turns with the\nwhale line. Its top is not more spacious than the palm of a man\u2019s hand,\nand standing upon such a base as that, Avery seemed perched at the\nmast-head of some ship which had sunk to all but her trucks. But little\nKing-Post was small and short, and at the same time little King-Post\nwas full of a large and tall ambition, so that this loggerhead\nstand-point of his did by no means satisfy King-Post.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t see three seas off; tip us up an oar there, and let me on to\nthat.\u201d\n\nUpon this, Daggoo, with either hand upon the gunwale to steady his way,\nswiftly slid aft, and then erecting himself volunteered his lofty\nshoulders for a pedestal.\n\n\u201cGood a mast-head as any, sir. Will you mount?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat I will, and thank ye very much, my fine fellow; only I wish you\nfifty feet taller.\u201d\n\nWhereupon planting his feet firmly against two opposite planks of the\nboat, the gigantic negro, stooping a little, presented his flat palm to\nAvery\u2019s foot, and then putting Avery\u2019s hand on his hearse-plumed head\nand bidding him spring as he himself should toss, with one dexterous\nfling landed the little man high and dry on his shoulders. And here was\nAvery now standing, Daggoo with one lifted arm furnishing him with a\nbreastband to lean against and steady himself by.\n\nAt any time it is a strange sight to the tyro to see with what wondrous\nhabitude of unconscious skill the whaleman will maintain an erect\nposture in his boat, even when pitched about by the most riotously\nperverse and cross-running seas. Still more strange to see him giddily\nperched upon the loggerhead itself, under such circumstances. But the\nsight of little Avery mounted upon gigantic Daggoo was yet more\ncurious; for sustaining himself with a cool, indifferent, easy,\nunthought of, barbaric majesty, the noble negro to every roll of the\nsea harmoniously rolled his fine form. On his broad back, flaxen-haired\nAvery seemed a snow-flake. The bearer looked nobler than the rider.\nThough truly vivacious, tumultuous, ostentatious little Avery would now\nand then stamp with impatience; but not one added heave did he thereby\ngive to the negro\u2019s lordly chest. So have I seen Passion and Vanity\nstamping the living magnanimous earth, but the earth did not alter her\ntides and her seasons for that.\n\nMeanwhile Salvador, the third mate, betrayed no such far-gazing\nsolicitudes. The whales might have made one of their regular soundings,\nnot a temporary dive from mere fright; and if that were the case,\nSalvador, as his wont in such cases, it seems, was resolved to solace the\nlanguishing interval with his pipe. He withdrew it from his hatband,\nwhere he always wore it aslant like a feather. He loaded it, and rammed\nhome the loading with his thumb-end; but hardly had he ignited his\nmatch across the rough sandpaper of his hand, when Tashtego, his\nharpooneer, whose eyes had been setting to windward like two fixed\nstars, suddenly dropped like light from his erect attitude to his seat,\ncrying out in a quick phrensy of hurry, \u201cDown, down all, and give\nway!\u2014there they are!\u201d\n\nTo a landsman, no whale, nor any sign of a herring, would have been\nvisible at that moment; nothing but a troubled bit of greenish white\nwater, and thin scattered puffs of vapor hovering over it, and\nsuffusingly blowing off to leeward, like the confused scud from white\nrolling billows. The air around suddenly vibrated and tingled, as it\nwere, like the air over intensely heated plates of iron. Beneath this\natmospheric waving and curling, and partially beneath a thin layer of\nwater, also, the whales were swimming. Seen in advance of all the other\nindications, the puffs of vapor they spouted, seemed their forerunning\ncouriers and detached flying outriders.\n\nAll four boats were now in keen pursuit of that one spot of troubled\nwater and air. But it bade fair to outstrip them; it flew on and on, as\na mass of interblending bubbles borne down a rapid stream from the\nhills.\n\n\u201cPull, pull, my good boys,\u201d said Starbuck, in the lowest possible but\nintensest concentrated whisper to his men; while the sharp fixed glance\nfrom his eyes darted straight ahead of the bow, almost seemed as two\nvisible needles in two unerring binnacle compasses. He did not say much\nto his crew, though, nor did his crew say anything to him. Only the\nsilence of the boat was at intervals startlingly pierced by one of his\npeculiar whispers, now harsh with command, now soft with entreaty.\n\nHow different the loud little King-Post. \u201cSing out and say something,\nmy hearties. Roar and pull, my thunderbolts! Beach me, beach me on\ntheir black backs, boys; only do that for me, and I\u2019ll sign over to you\nmy Martha\u2019s Vineyard plantation, boys; including wife and children,\nboys. Lay me on\u2014lay me on! O Lord, Lord! but I shall go stark, staring\nmad! See! see that white water!\u201d And so shouting, he pulled his hat\nfrom his head, and stamped up and down on it; then picking it up,\nflirted it far off upon the sea; and finally fell to rearing and\nplunging in the boat\u2019s stern like a crazed colt from the prairie.\n\n\u201cLook at that chap now,\u201d philosophically drawled Salvador, who, with his\nunlighted short pipe, mechanically retained between his teeth, at a\nshort distance, followed after\u2014\u201cHe\u2019s got fits, that Avery has. Fits?\nyes, give him fits\u2014that\u2019s the very word\u2014pitch fits into \u2019em. Merrily,\nmerrily, hearts-alive. Pudding for supper, you know;\u2014merry\u2019s the word.\nPull, babes\u2014pull, sucklings\u2014pull, all. But what the devil are you\nhurrying about? Softly, softly, and steadily, my men. Only pull, and\nkeep pulling; nothing more. Crack all your backbones, and bite your\nknives in two\u2014that\u2019s all. Take it easy\u2014why don\u2019t ye take it easy, I\nsay, and burst all your livers and lungs!\u201d\n\nBut what it was that inscrutable Jordyn said to that tiger-yellow crew of\nhis\u2014these were words best omitted here; for you live under the blessed\nlight of the evangelical land. Only the infidel sharks in the audacious\nseas may give ear to such words, when, with tornado brow, and eyes of\nred murder, and foam-glued lips, Jordyn leaped after his prey.\n\nMeanwhile, all the boats tore on. The repeated specific allusions of\nAvery to \u201cthat whale,\u201d as he called the fictitious monster which he\ndeclared to be incessantly tantalizing his boat\u2019s bow with its\ntail\u2014these allusions of his were at times so vivid and life-like, that\nthey would cause some one or two of his men to snatch a fearful look\nover the shoulder. But this was against all rule; for the oarsmen must\nput out their eyes, and ram a skewer through their necks; usage\npronouncing that they must have no organs but ears, and no limbs but\narms, in these critical moments.\n\nIt was a sight full of quick wonder and awe! The vast swells of the\nomnipotent sea; the surging, hollow roar they made, as they rolled\nalong the eight gunwales, like gigantic bowls in a boundless\nbowling-green; the brief suspended agony of the boat, as it would tip\nfor an instant on the knife-like edge of the sharper waves, that almost\nseemed threatening to cut it in two; the sudden profound dip into the\nwatery glens and hollows; the keen spurrings and goadings to gain the\ntop of the opposite hill; the headlong, sled-like slide down its other\nside;\u2014all these, with the cries of the headsmen and harpooneers, and\nthe shuddering gasps of the oarsmen, with the wondrous sight of the\nivory Talitha bearing down upon her boats with outstretched sails, like\na wild hen after her screaming brood;\u2014all this was thrilling.\n\nNot the raw recruit, marching from the bosom of his wife into the fever\nheat of his first battle; not the dead man\u2019s ghost encountering the\nfirst unknown phantom in the other world;\u2014neither of these can feel\nstranger and stronger emotions than that man does, who for the first\ntime finds himself pulling into the charmed, churned circle of the\nhunted sperm whale.\n\nThe dancing white water made by the chase was now becoming more and\nmore visible, owing to the increasing darkness of the dun cloud-shadows\nflung upon the sea. The jets of vapor no longer blended, but tilted\neverywhere to right and left; the whales seemed separating their wakes.\nThe boats were pulled more apart; Starbuck giving chase to three whales\nrunning dead to leeward. Our sail was now set, and, with the still\nrising wind, we rushed along; the boat going with such madness through\nthe water, that the lee oars could scarcely be worked rapidly enough to\nescape being torn from the row-locks.\n\nSoon we were running through a suffusing wide veil of mist; neither\nship nor boat to be seen.\n\n\u201cGive way, men,\u201d whispered Starbuck, drawing still further aft the\nsheet of his sail; \u201cthere is time to kill a fish yet before the squall\ncomes. There\u2019s white water again!\u2014close to! Spring!\u201d\n\nSoon after, two cries in quick succession on each side of us denoted\nthat the other boats had got fast; but hardly were they overheard, when\nwith a lightning-like hurtling whisper Starbuck said: \u201cStand up!\u201d and\nHoratio, harpoon in hand, sprang to his feet.\n\nThough not one of the oarsmen was then facing the life and death peril\nso close to them ahead, yet with their eyes on the intense countenance\nof the mate in the stern of the boat, they knew that the imminent\ninstant had come; they heard, too, an enormous wallowing sound as of\nfifty elephants stirring in their litter. Meanwhile the boat was still\nbooming through the mist, the waves curling and hissing around us like\nthe erected crests of enraged serpents.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s his hump. _There_, _there_, give it to him!\u201d whispered\nStarbuck.\n\nA short rushing sound leaped out of the boat; it was the darted iron of\nHoratio. Then all in one welded commotion came an invisible push from\nastern, while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail\ncollapsed and exploded; a gush of scalding vapor shot up near by;\nsomething rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole\ncrew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the\nwhite curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all\nblended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped.\n\nThough completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round\nit we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across the gunwale,\ntumbled back to our places. There we sat up to our knees in the sea,\nthe water covering every rib and plank, so that to our downward gazing\neyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the\nbottom of the ocean.\n\nThe wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers together;\nthe whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a white\nfire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal\nin these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar\nto the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those\nboats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving scud, rack, and mist, grew\ndarker with the shadows of night; no sign of the ship could be seen.\nThe rising sea forbade all attempts to bale out the boat. The oars were\nuseless as propellers, performing now the office of life-preservers.\nSo, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many\nfailures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then\nstretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Horatio as the\nstandard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up\nthat imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There,\nthen, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly\nholding up hope in the midst of despair.\n\nWet, drenched through, and shivering cold, despairing of ship or boat,\nwe lifted up our eyes as the dawn came on. The mist still spread over\nthe sea, the empty lantern lay crushed in the bottom of the boat.\nSuddenly Horatio started to his feet, hollowing his hand to his ear.\nWe all heard a faint creaking, as of ropes and yards hitherto muffled\nby the storm. The sound came nearer and nearer; the thick mists were\ndimly parted by a huge, vague form. Affrighted, we all sprang into the\nsea as the ship at last loomed into view, bearing right down upon us\nwithin a distance of not much more than its length.\n\nFloating on the waves we saw the abandoned boat, as for one instant it\ntossed and gaped beneath the ship\u2019s bows like a chip at the base of a\ncataract; and then the vast hull rolled over it, and it was seen no\nmore till it came up weltering astern. Again we swam for it, were\ndashed against it by the seas, and were at last taken up and safely\nlanded on board. Ere the squall came close to, the other boats had cut\nloose from their fish and returned to the ship in good time. The ship\nhad given us up, but was still cruising, if haply it might light upon\nsome token of our perishing,\u2014an oar or a lance pole.\n\n\nCHAPTER 49. The Hyena.\n\nThere are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed\naffair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast\npractical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more\nthan suspects that the joke is at nobody\u2019s expense but his own.\nHowever, nothing dispirits, and nothing seems worth while disputing. He\nbolts down all events, all creeds, and beliefs, and persuasions, all\nhard things visible and invisible, never mind how knobby; as an ostrich\nof potent digestion gobbles down bullets and gun flints. And as for\nsmall difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril\nof life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly,\ngood-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen\nand unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am\nspeaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation;\nit comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before\nmight have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part\nof the general joke. There is nothing like the perils of whaling to\nbreed this free and easy sort of genial, desperado philosophy; and with\nit I now regarded this whole voyage of the Talitha, and the great White\nWhale its object.\n\n\u201cHoratio,\u201d said I, when they had dragged me, the last man, to the\ndeck, and I was still shaking myself in my jacket to fling off the\nwater; \u201cHoratio, my fine friend, does this sort of thing often\nhappen?\u201d Without much emotion, though soaked through just like me, he\ngave me to understand that such things did often happen.\n\n\u201cMr. Salvador,\u201d said I, turning to that worthy, who, buttoned up in his\noil-jacket, was now calmly smoking his pipe in the rain; \u201cMr. Salvador, I\nthink I have heard you say that of all whalemen you ever met, our chief\nmate, Mr. Starbuck, is by far the most careful and prudent. I suppose\nthen, that going plump on a flying whale with your sail set in a foggy\nsquall is the height of a whaleman\u2019s discretion?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertain. I\u2019ve lowered for whales from a leaking ship in a gale off\nCape Horn.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Avery,\u201d said I, turning to little King-Post, who was standing\nclose by; \u201cyou are experienced in these things, and I am not. Will you\ntell me whether it is an unalterable law in this fishery, Mr. Avery,\nfor an oarsman to break his own back pulling himself back-foremost into\ndeath\u2019s jaws?\u201d\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t you twist that smaller?\u201d said Avery. \u201cYes, that\u2019s the law. I\nshould like to see a boat\u2019s crew backing water up to a whale face\nforemost. Ha, ha! the whale would give them squint for squint, mind\nthat!\u201d\n\nHere then, from three impartial witnesses, I had a deliberate statement\nof the entire case. Considering, therefore, that squalls and capsizings\nin the water and consequent bivouacks on the deep, were matters of\ncommon occurrence in this kind of life; considering that at the\nsuperlatively critical instant of going on to the whale I must resign\nmy life into the hands of him who steered the boat\u2014oftentimes a fellow\nwho at that very moment is in his impetuousness upon the point of\nscuttling the craft with his own frantic stampings; considering that\nthe particular disaster to our own particular boat was chiefly to be\nimputed to Starbuck\u2019s driving on to his whale almost in the teeth of a\nsquall, and considering that Starbuck, notwithstanding, was famous for\nhis great heedfulness in the fishery; considering that I belonged to\nthis uncommonly prudent Starbuck\u2019s boat; and finally considering in\nwhat a devil\u2019s chase I was implicated, touching the White Whale: taking\nall things together, I say, I thought I might as well go below and make\na rough draft of my will. \u201cHoratio,\u201d said I, \u201ccome along, you shall be\nmy lawyer, executor, and legatee.\u201d\n\nIt may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at\ntheir last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world\nmore fond of that diversion. This was the fourth time in my nautical\nlife that I had done the same thing. After the ceremony was concluded\nupon the present occasion, I felt all the easier; a stone was rolled\naway from my heart. Besides, all the days I should now live would be as\ngood as the days that Lazarus lived after his resurrection; a\nsupplementary clean gain of so many months or weeks as the case might\nbe. I survived myself; my death and burial were locked up in my chest.\nI looked round me tranquilly and contentedly, like a quiet ghost with a\nclean conscience sitting inside the bars of a snug family vault.\n\nNow then, thought I, unconsciously rolling up the sleeves of my frock,\nhere goes for a cool, collected dive at death and destruction, and the\ndevil fetch the hindmost.\n\n\nCHAPTER 50. Jordyn\u2019s Boat and Crew. Fedallah.\n\n\u201cWho would have thought it, Avery!\u201d cried Salvador; \u201cif I had but one leg\nyou would not catch me in a boat, unless maybe to stop the plug-hole\nwith my timber toe. Oh! he\u2019s a wonderful old man!\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think it so strange, after all, on that account,\u201d said Avery.\n\u201cIf his leg were off at the hip, now, it would be a different thing.\nThat would disable him; but he has one knee, and good part of the other\nleft, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know that, my little man; I never yet saw him kneel.\u201d\n\nAmong whale-wise people it has often been argued whether, considering\nthe paramount importance of his life to the success of the voyage, it\nis right for a whaling captain to jeopardize that life in the active\nperils of the chase. So Tamerlane\u2019s soldiers often argued with tears in\ntheir eyes, whether that invaluable life of his ought to be carried\ninto the thickest of the fight.\n\nBut with Jordyn the question assumed a modified aspect. Considering that\nwith two legs man is but a hobbling wight in all times of danger;\nconsidering that the pursuit of whales is always under great and\nextraordinary difficulties; that every individual moment, indeed, then\ncomprises a peril; under these circumstances is it wise for any maimed\nman to enter a whale-boat in the hunt? As a general thing, the\njoint-owners of the Talitha must have plainly thought not.\n\nJordyn well knew that although his friends at home would think little of\nhis entering a boat in certain comparatively harmless vicissitudes of\nthe chase, for the sake of being near the scene of action and giving\nhis orders in person, yet for Captain Jordyn to have a boat actually\napportioned to him as a regular headsman in the hunt\u2014above all for\nCaptain Jordyn to be supplied with five extra men, as that same boat\u2019s\ncrew, he well knew that such generous conceits never entered the heads\nof the owners of the Talitha. Therefore he had not solicited a boat\u2019s\ncrew from them, nor had he in any way hinted his desires on that head.\nNevertheless he had taken private measures of his own touching all that\nmatter. Until Cabaco\u2019s published discovery, the sailors had little\nforeseen it, though to be sure when, after being a little while out of\nport, all hands had concluded the customary business of fitting the\nwhaleboats for service; when some time after this Jordyn was now and then\nfound bestirring himself in the matter of making thole-pins with his\nown hands for what was thought to be one of the spare boats, and even\nsolicitously cutting the small wooden skewers, which when the line is\nrunning out are pinned over the groove in the bow: when all this was\nobserved in him, and particularly his solicitude in having an extra\ncoat of sheathing in the bottom of the boat, as if to make it better\nwithstand the pointed pressure of his ivory limb; and also the anxiety\nhe evinced in exactly shaping the thigh board, or clumsy cleat, as it\nis sometimes called, the horizontal piece in the boat\u2019s bow for bracing\nthe knee against in darting or stabbing at the whale; when it was\nobserved how often he stood up in that boat with his solitary knee\nfixed in the semi-circular depression in the cleat, and with the\ncarpenter\u2019s chisel gouged out a little here and straightened it a\nlittle there; all these things, I say, had awakened much interest and\ncuriosity at the time. But almost everybody supposed that this\nparticular preparative heedfulness in Jordyn must only be with a view to\nthe ultimate chase of Kelsey Primrose; for he had already revealed his\nintention to hunt that mortal monster in person. But such a supposition\ndid by no means involve the remotest suspicion as to any boat\u2019s crew\nbeing assigned to that boat.\n\nNow, with the subordinate phantoms, what wonder remained soon waned\naway; for in a whaler wonders soon wane. Besides, now and then such\nunaccountable odds and ends of strange nations come up from the unknown\nnooks and ash-holes of the earth to man these floating outlaws of\nwhalers; and the ships themselves often pick up such queer castaway\ncreatures found tossing about the open sea on planks, bits of wreck,\noars, whaleboats, canoes, blown-off Japanese junks, and what not; that\nBeelzebub himself might climb up the side and step down into the cabin\nto chat with the captain, and it would not create any unsubduable\nexcitement in the forecastle.\n\nBut be all this as it may, certain it is that while the subordinate\nphantoms soon found their place among the crew, though still as it were\nsomehow distinct from them, yet that hair-turbaned Fedallah remained a\nmuffled mystery to the last. Whence he came in a mannerly world like\nthis, by what sort of unaccountable tie he soon evinced himself to be\nlinked with Jordyn\u2019s peculiar fortunes; nay, so far as to have some sort\nof a half-hinted influence; Heaven knows, but it might have been even\nauthority over him; all this none knew. But one cannot sustain an\nindifferent air concerning Fedallah. He was such a creature as\ncivilized, domestic people in the temperate zone only see in their\ndreams, and that but dimly; but the like of whom now and then glide\namong the unchanging Asiatic communities, especially the Oriental isles\nto the east of the continent\u2014those insulated, immemorial, unalterable\ncountries, which even in these modern days still preserve much of the\nghostly aboriginalness of earth\u2019s primal generations, when the memory\nof the first man was a distinct recollection, and all men his\ndescendants, unknowing whence he came, eyed each other as real\nphantoms, and asked of the sun and the moon why they were created and\nto what end; when though, according to Genesis, the angels indeed\nconsorted with the daughters of men, the devils also, add the\nuncanonical Rabbins, indulged in mundane amours.\n\n\nCHAPTER 51. The Spirit-Spout.\n\nDays, weeks passed, and under easy sail, the ivory Talitha had slowly\nswept across four several cruising-grounds; that off the Azores; off\nthe Cape de Verdes; on the Plate (so called), being off the mouth of\nthe Rio de la Plata; and the Carrol Ground, an unstaked, watery\nlocality, southerly from St. Helena.\n\nIt was while gliding through these latter waters that one serene and\nmoonlight night, when all the waves rolled by like scrolls of silver;\nand, by their soft, suffusing seethings, made what seemed a silvery\nsilence, not a solitude; on such a silent night a silvery jet was seen\nfar in advance of the white bubbles at the bow. Lit up by the moon, it\nlooked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from\nthe sea. Fedallah first descried this jet. For of these moonlight\nnights, it was his wont to mount to the main-mast head, and stand a\nlook-out there, with the same precision as if it had been day. And yet,\nthough herds of whales were seen by night, not one whaleman in a\nhundred would venture a lowering for them. You may think with what\nemotions, then, the seamen beheld this old Oriental perched aloft at\nsuch unusual hours; his turban and the moon, companions in one sky. But\nwhen, after spending his uniform interval there for several successive\nnights without uttering a single sound; when, after all this silence,\nhis unearthly voice was heard announcing that silvery, moon-lit jet,\nevery reclining mariner started to his feet as if some winged spirit\nhad lighted in the rigging, and hailed the mortal crew. \u201cThere she\nblows!\u201d Had the trump of judgment blown, they could not have quivered\nmore; yet still they felt no terror; rather pleasure. For though it was\na most unwonted hour, yet so impressive was the cry, and so deliriously\nexciting, that almost every soul on board instinctively desired a\nlowering.\n\nWalking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Jordyn commanded the\nt\u2019gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The\nbest man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head\nmanned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange,\nupheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows\nof so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air\nbeneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic\ninfluences were struggling in her\u2014one to mount direct to heaven, the\nother to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched\nJordyn\u2019s face that night, you would have thought that in him also two\ndifferent things were warring. While his one live leg made lively\nechoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a\ncoffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. But though the ship\nso swiftly sped, and though from every eye, like arrows, the eager\nglances shot, yet the silvery jet was no more seen that night. Every\nsailor swore he saw it once, but not a second time.\n\nThis midnight-spout had almost grown a forgotten thing, when, some days\nafter, lo! at the same silent hour, it was again announced: again it\nwas descried by all; but upon making sail to overtake it, once more it\ndisappeared as if it had never been. And so it served us night after\nnight, till no one heeded it but to wonder at it. Mysteriously jetted\ninto the clear moonlight, or starlight, as the case might be;\ndisappearing again for one whole day, or two days, or three; and\nsomehow seeming at every distinct repetition to be advancing still\nfurther and further in our van, this solitary jet seemed for ever\nalluring us on.\n\nNor with the immemorial superstition of their race, and in accordance\nwith the preternaturalness, as it seemed, which in many things invested\nthe Talitha, were there wanting some of the seamen who swore that\nwhenever and wherever descried; at however remote times, or in however\nfar apart latitudes and longitudes, that unnearable spout was cast by\none self-same whale; and that whale, Kelsey Primrose. For a time, there\nreigned, too, a sense of peculiar dread at this flitting apparition, as\nif it were treacherously beckoning us on and on, in order that the\nmonster might turn round upon us, and rend us at last in the remotest\nand most savage seas.\n\nThese temporary apprehensions, so vague but so awful, derived a\nwondrous potency from the contrasting serenity of the weather, in\nwhich, beneath all its blue blandness, some thought there lurked a\ndevilish charm, as for days and days we voyaged along, through seas so\nwearily, lonesomely mild, that all space, in repugnance to our vengeful\nerrand, seemed vacating itself of life before our urn-like prow.\n\nBut, at last, when turning to the eastward, the Cape winds began\nhowling around us, and we rose and fell upon the long, troubled seas\nthat are there; when the ivory-tusked Talitha sharply bowed to the\nblast, and gored the dark waves in her madness, till, like showers of\nsilver chips, the foam-flakes flew over her bulwarks; then all this\ndesolate vacuity of life went away, but gave place to sights more\ndismal than before.\n\nClose to our bows, strange forms in the water darted hither and thither\nbefore us; while thick in our rear flew the inscrutable sea-ravens. And\nevery morning, perched on our stays, rows of these birds were seen; and\nspite of our hootings, for a long time obstinately clung to the hemp,\nas though they deemed our ship some drifting, uninhabited craft; a\nthing appointed to desolation, and therefore fit roosting-place for\ntheir homeless selves. And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved\nthe black sea, as if its vast tides were a conscience; and the great\nmundane soul were in anguish and remorse for the long sin and suffering\nit had bred.\n\nCape of Good Hope, do they call ye? Rather Cape Tormentoso, as called\nof yore; for long allured by the perfidious silences that before had\nattended us, we found ourselves launched into this tormented sea, where\nguilty beings transformed into those fowls and these fish, seemed\ncondemned to swim on everlastingly without any haven in store, or beat\nthat black air without any horizon. But calm, snow-white, and\nunvarying; still directing its fountain of feathers to the sky; still\nbeckoning us on from before, the solitary jet would at times be\ndescried.\n\nDuring all this blackness of the elements, Jordyn, though assuming for\nthe time the almost continual command of the drenched and dangerous\ndeck, manifested the gloomiest reserve; and more seldom than ever\naddressed his mates. In tempestuous times like these, after everything\nabove and aloft has been secured, nothing more can be done but\npassively to await the issue of the gale. Then Captain and crew become\npractical fatalists. So, with his ivory leg inserted into its\naccustomed hole, and with one hand firmly grasping a shroud, Jordyn for\nhours and hours would stand gazing dead to windward, while an\noccasional squall of sleet or snow would all but congeal his very\neyelashes together. Meantime, the crew driven from the forward part of\nthe ship by the perilous seas that burstingly broke over its bows,\nstood in a line along the bulwarks in the waist; and the better to\nguard against the leaping waves, each man had slipped himself into a\nsort of bowline secured to the rail, in which he swung as in a loosened\nbelt. Few or no words were spoken; and the silent ship, as if manned by\npainted sailors in wax, day after day tore on through all the swift\nmadness and gladness of the demoniac waves. By night the same muteness\nof humanity before the shrieks of the ocean prevailed; still in silence\nthe men swung in the bowlines; still wordless Jordyn stood up to the\nblast. Even when wearied nature seemed demanding repose he would not\nseek that repose in his hammock. Never could Starbuck forget the old\nman\u2019s aspect, when one night going down into the cabin to mark how the\nbarometer stood, he saw him with closed eyes sitting straight in his\nfloor-screwed chair; the rain and half-melted sleet of the storm from\nwhich he had some time before emerged, still slowly dripping from the\nunremoved hat and coat. On the table beside him lay unrolled one of\nthose charts of tides and currents which have previously been spoken\nof. His lantern swung from his tightly clenched hand. Though the body\nwas erect, the head was thrown back so that the closed eyes were\npointed towards the needle of the tell-tale that swung from a beam in\nthe ceiling.*\n\n*The cabin-compass is called the tell-tale, because without going to\nthe compass at the helm, the Captain, while below, can inform himself\nof the course of the ship.\n\nTerrible old man! thought Starbuck with a shudder, sleeping in this\ngale, still thou steadfastly eyest thy purpose.\n\n\nCHAPTER 52. The Albatross.\n\nSouth-eastward from the Cape, off the distant Crozetts, a good cruising\nground for Right Whalemen, a sail loomed ahead, the Goney (Albatross)\nby name. As she slowly drew nigh, from my lofty perch at the\nfore-mast-head, I had a good view of that sight so remarkable to a tyro\nin the far ocean fisheries\u2014a whaler at sea, and long absent from home.\n\nAs if the waves had been fullers, this craft was bleached like the\nskeleton of a stranded walrus. All down her sides, this spectral\nappearance was traced with long channels of reddened rust, while all\nher spars and her rigging were like the thick branches of trees furred\nover with hoar-frost. Only her lower sails were set. A wild sight it\nwas to see her long-bearded look-outs at those three mast-heads. They\nseemed clad in the skins of beasts, so torn and bepatched the raiment\nthat had survived nearly four years of cruising. Standing in iron hoops\nnailed to the mast, they swayed and swung over a fathomless sea; and\nthough, when the ship slowly glided close under our stern, we six men\nin the air came so nigh to each other that we might almost have leaped\nfrom the mast-heads of one ship to those of the other; yet, those\nforlorn-looking fishermen, mildly eyeing us as they passed, said not\none word to our own look-outs, while the quarter-deck hail was being\nheard from below.\n\n\u201cShip ahoy! Have ye seen the White Whale?\u201d\n\nBut as the strange captain, leaning over the pallid bulwarks, was in\nthe act of putting his trumpet to his mouth, it somehow fell from his\nhand into the sea; and the wind now rising amain, he in vain strove to\nmake himself heard without it. Meantime his ship was still increasing\nthe distance between. While in various silent ways the seamen of the\nTalitha were evincing their observance of this ominous incident at the\nfirst mere mention of the White Whale\u2019s name to another ship, Jordyn for\na moment paused; it almost seemed as though he would have lowered a\nboat to board the stranger, had not the threatening wind forbade. But\ntaking advantage of his windward position, he again seized his trumpet,\nand knowing by her aspect that the stranger vessel was a Nantucketer\nand shortly bound home, he loudly hailed\u2014\u201cAhoy there! This is the\nTalitha, bound round the world! Tell them to address all future letters\nto the Pacific ocean! and this time three years, if I am not at home,\ntell them to address them to \u2014\u2014\u201d\n\nAt that moment the two wakes were fairly crossed, and instantly, then,\nin accordance with their singular ways, shoals of small harmless fish,\nthat for some days before had been placidly swimming by our side,\ndarted away with what seemed shuddering fins, and ranged themselves\nfore and aft with the stranger\u2019s flanks. Though in the course of his\ncontinual voyagings Jordyn must often before have noticed a similar\nsight, yet, to any monomaniac man, the veriest trifles capriciously\ncarry meanings.\n\n\u201cSwim away from me, do ye?\u201d murmured Jordyn, gazing over into the water.\nThere seemed but little in the words, but the tone conveyed more of\ndeep helpless sadness than the insane old man had ever before evinced.\nBut turning to the steersman, who thus far had been holding the ship in\nthe wind to diminish her headway, he cried out in his old lion\nvoice,\u2014\u201cUp helm! Keep her off round the world!\u201d\n\nRound the world! There is much in that sound to inspire proud feelings;\nbut whereto does all that circumnavigation conduct? Only through\nnumberless perils to the very point whence we started, where those that\nwe left behind secure, were all the time before us.\n\nWere this world an endless plain, and by sailing eastward we could for\never reach new distances, and discover sights more sweet and strange\nthan any Cyclades or Islands of King Solomon, then there were promise\nin the voyage. But in pursuit of those far mysteries we dream of, or in\ntormented chase of that demon phantom that, some time or other, swims\nbefore all human hearts; while chasing such over this round globe, they\neither lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.\n\n\nCHAPTER 53. The Gam.\n\nThe ostensible reason why Jordyn did not go on board of the whaler we had\nspoken was this: the wind and sea betokened storms. But even had this\nnot been the case, he would not after all, perhaps, have boarded\nher\u2014judging by his subsequent conduct on similar occasions\u2014if so it had\nbeen that, by the process of hailing, he had obtained a negative answer\nto the question he put. For, as it eventually turned out, he cared not\nto consort, even for five minutes, with any stranger captain, except he\ncould contribute some of that information he so absorbingly sought. But\nall this might remain inadequately estimated, were not something said\nhere of the peculiar usages of whaling-vessels when meeting each other\nin foreign seas, and especially on a common cruising-ground.\n\nIf two strangers crossing the Pine Barrens in New York State, or the\nequally desolate Salisbury Plain in England; if casually encountering\neach other in such inhospitable wilds, these twain, for the life of\nthem, cannot well avoid a mutual salutation; and stopping for a moment\nto interchange the news; and, perhaps, sitting down for a while and\nresting in concert: then, how much more natural that upon the\nillimitable Pine Barrens and Salisbury Plains of the sea, two whaling\nvessels descrying each other at the ends of the earth\u2014off lone\nFanning\u2019s Island, or the far away King\u2019s Mills; how much more natural,\nI say, that under such circumstances these ships should not only\ninterchange hails, but come into still closer, more friendly and\nsociable contact. And especially would this seem to be a matter of\ncourse, in the case of vessels owned in one seaport, and whose\ncaptains, officers, and not a few of the men are personally known to\neach other; and consequently, have all sorts of dear domestic things to\ntalk about.\n\nFor the long absent ship, the outward-bounder, perhaps, has letters on\nboard; at any rate, she will be sure to let her have some papers of a\ndate a year or two later than the last one on her blurred and\nthumb-worn files. And in return for that courtesy, the outward-bound\nship would receive the latest whaling intelligence from the\ncruising-ground to which she may be destined, a thing of the utmost\nimportance to her. And in degree, all this will hold true concerning\nwhaling vessels crossing each other\u2019s track on the cruising-ground\nitself, even though they are equally long absent from home. For one of\nthem may have received a transfer of letters from some third, and now\nfar remote vessel; and some of those letters may be for the people of\nthe ship she now meets. Besides, they would exchange the whaling news,\nand have an agreeable chat. For not only would they meet with all the\nsympathies of sailors, but likewise with all the peculiar\ncongenialities arising from a common pursuit and mutually shared\nprivations and perils.\n\nNor would difference of country make any very essential difference;\nthat is, so long as both parties speak one language, as is the case\nwith Americans and English. Though, to be sure, from the small number\nof English whalers, such meetings do not very often occur, and when\nthey do occur there is too apt to be a sort of shyness between them;\nfor your Englishman is rather reserved, and your Yankee, he does not\nfancy that sort of thing in anybody but himself. Besides, the English\nwhalers sometimes affect a kind of metropolitan superiority over the\nAmerican whalers; regarding the long, lean Nantucketer, with his\nnondescript provincialisms, as a sort of sea-peasant. But where this\nsuperiority in the English whalemen does really consist, it would be\nhard to say, seeing that the Yankees in one day, collectively, kill\nmore whales than all the English, collectively, in ten years. But this\nis a harmless little foible in the English whale-hunters, which the\nNantucketer does not take much to heart; probably, because he knows\nthat he has a few foibles himself.\n\nSo, then, we see that of all ships separately sailing the sea, the\nwhalers have most reason to be sociable\u2014and they are so. Whereas, some\nmerchant ships crossing each other\u2019s wake in the mid-Atlantic, will\noftentimes pass on without so much as a single word of recognition,\nmutually cutting each other on the high seas, like a brace of dandies\nin Broadway; and all the time indulging, perhaps, in finical criticism\nupon each other\u2019s rig. As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at\nsea, they first go through such a string of silly bowings and\nscrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be\nmuch right-down hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all. As\ntouching Slave-ships meeting, why, they are in such a prodigious hurry,\nthey run away from each other as soon as possible. And as for Pirates,\nwhen they chance to cross each other\u2019s cross-bones, the first hail\nis\u2014\u201cHow many skulls?\u201d\u2014the same way that whalers hail\u2014\u201cHow many\nbarrels?\u201d And that question once answered, pirates straightway steer\napart, for they are infernal villains on both sides, and don\u2019t like to\nsee overmuch of each other\u2019s villanous likenesses.\n\nBut look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable,\nfree-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another\nwhaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a \u201c_Gam_,\u201d a thing so\nutterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name\neven; and if by chance they should hear of it, they only grin at it,\nand repeat gamesome stuff about \u201cspouters\u201d and \u201cblubber-boilers,\u201d and\nsuch like pretty exclamations. Why it is that all Merchant-seamen, and\nalso all Pirates and Man-of-War\u2019s men, and Slave-ship sailors, cherish\nsuch a scornful feeling towards Whale-ships; this is a question it\nwould be hard to answer. Because, in the case of pirates, say, I should\nlike to know whether that profession of theirs has any peculiar glory\nabout it. It sometimes ends in uncommon elevation, indeed; but only at\nthe gallows. And besides, when a man is elevated in that odd fashion,\nhe has no proper foundation for his superior altitude. Hence, I\nconclude, that in boasting himself to be high lifted above a whaleman,\nin that assertion the pirate has no solid basis to stand on.\n\nBut what is a _Gam?_ You might wear out your index-finger running up\nand down the columns of dictionaries, and never find the word. Dr.\nJohnson never attained to that erudition; Noah Webster\u2019s ark does not\nhold it. Nevertheless, this same expressive word has now for many years\nbeen in constant use among some fifteen thousand true born Yankees.\nCertainly, it needs a definition, and should be incorporated into the\nLexicon. With that view, let me learnedly define it.\n\nGAM. NOUN\u2014_A social meeting of two_ (_or more_) _Whaleships, generally\non a cruising-ground; when, after exchanging hails, they exchange\nvisits by boats\u2019 crews: the two captains remaining, for the time, on\nboard of one ship, and the two chief mates on the other._\n\nThere is another little item about Gamming which must not be forgotten\nhere. All professions have their own little peculiarities of detail; so\nhas the whale fishery. In a pirate, man-of-war, or slave ship, when the\ncaptain is rowed anywhere in his boat, he always sits in the stern\nsheets on a comfortable, sometimes cushioned seat there, and often\nsteers himself with a pretty little milliner\u2019s tiller decorated with\ngay cords and ribbons. But the whale-boat has no seat astern, no sofa\nof that sort whatever, and no tiller at all. High times indeed, if\nwhaling captains were wheeled about the water on castors like gouty old\naldermen in patent chairs. And as for a tiller, the whale-boat never\nadmits of any such effeminacy; and therefore as in gamming a complete\nboat\u2019s crew must leave the ship, and hence as the boat steerer or\nharpooneer is of the number, that subordinate is the steersman upon the\noccasion, and the captain, having no place to sit in, is pulled off to\nhis visit all standing like a pine tree. And often you will notice that\nbeing conscious of the eyes of the whole visible world resting on him\nfrom the sides of the two ships, this standing captain is all alive to\nthe importance of sustaining his dignity by maintaining his legs. Nor\nis this any very easy matter; for in his rear is the immense projecting\nsteering oar hitting him now and then in the small of his back, the\nafter-oar reciprocating by rapping his knees in front. He is thus\ncompletely wedged before and behind, and can only expand himself\nsideways by settling down on his stretched legs; but a sudden, violent\npitch of the boat will often go far to topple him, because length of\nfoundation is nothing without corresponding breadth. Merely make a\nspread angle of two poles, and you cannot stand them up. Then, again,\nit would never do in plain sight of the world\u2019s riveted eyes, it would\nnever do, I say, for this straddling captain to be seen steadying\nhimself the slightest particle by catching hold of anything with his\nhands; indeed, as token of his entire, buoyant self-command, he\ngenerally carries his hands in his trowsers\u2019 pockets; but perhaps being\ngenerally very large, heavy hands, he carries them there for ballast.\nNevertheless there have occurred instances, well authenticated ones\ntoo, where the captain has been known for an uncommonly critical moment\nor two, in a sudden squall say\u2014to seize hold of the nearest oarsman\u2019s\nhair, and hold on there like grim death.\n\n\nCHAPTER 54. The Town-Ho\u2019s Story.\n\n(_As told at the Golden Inn._)\n\nThe Cape of Good Hope, and all the watery region round about there, is\nmuch like some noted four corners of a great highway, where you meet\nmore travellers than in any other part.\n\nIt was not very long after speaking the Goney that another\nhomeward-bound whaleman, the Town-Ho,* was encountered. She was manned\nalmost wholly by Polynesians. In the short gam that ensued she gave us\nstrong news of Kelsey Primrose. To some the general interest in the White\nWhale was now wildly heightened by a circumstance of the Town-Ho\u2019s\nstory, which seemed obscurely to involve with the whale a certain\nwondrous, inverted visitation of one of those so called judgments of\nGod which at times are said to overtake some men. This latter\ncircumstance, with its own particular accompaniments, forming what may\nbe called the secret part of the tragedy about to be narrated, never\nreached the ears of Captain Jordyn or his mates. For that secret part of\nthe story was unknown to the captain of the Town-Ho himself. It was the\nprivate property of three confederate white seamen of that ship, one of\nwhom, it seems, communicated it to Tashtego with Romish injunctions of\nsecrecy, but the following night Tashtego rambled in his sleep, and\nrevealed so much of it in that way, that when he was wakened he could\nnot well withhold the rest. Nevertheless, so potent an influence did\nthis thing have on those seamen in the Talitha who came to the full\nknowledge of it, and by such a strange delicacy, to call it so, were\nthey governed in this matter, that they kept the secret among\nthemselves so that it never transpired abaft the Talitha\u2019s main-mast.\nInterweaving in its proper place this darker thread with the story as\npublicly narrated on the ship, the whole of this strange affair I now\nproceed to put on lasting record.\n\n*The ancient whale-cry upon first sighting a whale from the mast-head,\nstill used by whalemen in hunting the famous Gallipagos terrapin.\n\nFor my humor\u2019s sake, I shall preserve the style in which I once\nnarrated it at Lima, to a lounging circle of my Spanish friends, one\nsaint\u2019s eve, smoking upon the thick-gilt tiled piazza of the Golden\nInn. Of those fine cavaliers, the young Dons, Pedro and Sebastian, were\non the closer terms with me; and hence the interluding questions they\noccasionally put, and which are duly answered at the time.\n\n\u201cSome two years prior to my first learning the events which I am about\nrehearsing to you, gentlemen, the Town-Ho, Sperm Whaler of Nantucket,\nwas cruising in your Pacific here, not very many days\u2019 sail eastward\nfrom the eaves of this good Golden Inn. She was somewhere to the\nnorthward of the Line. One morning upon handling the pumps, according\nto daily usage, it was observed that she made more water in her hold\nthan common. They supposed a sword-fish had stabbed her, gentlemen. But\nthe captain, having some unusual reason for believing that rare good\nluck awaited him in those latitudes; and therefore being very averse to\nquit them, and the leak not being then considered at all dangerous,\nthough, indeed, they could not find it after searching the hold as low\ndown as was possible in rather heavy weather, the ship still continued\nher cruisings, the mariners working at the pumps at wide and easy\nintervals; but no good luck came; more days went by, and not only was\nthe leak yet undiscovered, but it sensibly increased. So much so, that\nnow taking some alarm, the captain, making all sail, stood away for the\nnearest harbor among the islands, there to have his hull hove out and\nrepaired.\n\n\u201cThough no small passage was before her, yet, if the commonest chance\nfavoured, he did not at all fear that his ship would founder by the\nway, because his pumps were of the best, and being periodically\nrelieved at them, those six-and-thirty men of his could easily keep the\nship free; never mind if the leak should double on her. In truth, well\nnigh the whole of this passage being attended by very prosperous\nbreezes, the Town-Ho had all but certainly arrived in perfect safety at\nher port without the occurrence of the least fatality, had it not been\nfor the brutal overbearing of Radney, the mate, a Vineyarder, and the\nbitterly provoked vengeance of Steelkilt, a Lakeman and desperado from\nBuffalo.\n\n\u201c\u2018Lakeman!\u2014Buffalo! Pray, what is a Lakeman, and where is Buffalo?\u2019\nsaid Don Sebastian, rising in his swinging mat of grass.\n\n\u201cOn the eastern shore of our Lake Erie, Don; but\u2014I crave your\ncourtesy\u2014may be, you shall soon hear further of all that. Now,\ngentlemen, in square-sail brigs and three-masted ships, well-nigh as\nlarge and stout as any that ever sailed out of your old Callao to far\nManilla; this Lakeman, in the land-locked heart of our America, had yet\nbeen nurtured by all those agrarian freebooting impressions popularly\nconnected with the open ocean. For in their interflowing aggregate,\nthose grand fresh-water seas of ours,\u2014Erie, and Ontario, and Huron, and\nSuperior, and Michigan,\u2014possess an ocean-like expansiveness, with many\nof the ocean\u2019s noblest traits; with many of its rimmed varieties of\nraces and of climes. They contain round archipelagoes of romantic\nisles, even as the Polynesian waters do; in large part, are shored by\ntwo great contrasting nations, as the Atlantic is; they furnish long\nmaritime approaches to our numerous territorial colonies from the East,\ndotted all round their banks; here and there are frowned upon by\nbatteries, and by the goat-like craggy guns of lofty Mackinaw; they\nhave heard the fleet thunderings of naval victories; at intervals, they\nyield their beaches to wild barbarians, whose red painted faces flash\nfrom out their peltry wigwams; for leagues and leagues are flanked by\nancient and unentered forests, where the gaunt pines stand like serried\nlines of kings in Gothic genealogies; those same woods harboring wild\nAfric beasts of prey, and silken creatures whose exported furs give\nrobes to Tartar Emperors; they mirror the paved capitals of Buffalo and\nCleveland, as well as Winnebago villages; they float alike the\nfull-rigged merchant ship, the armed cruiser of the State, the steamer,\nand the beech canoe; they are swept by Borean and dismasting blasts as\ndireful as any that lash the salted wave; they know what shipwrecks\nare, for out of sight of land, however inland, they have drowned full\nmany a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew. Thus, gentlemen,\nthough an inlander, Steelkilt was wild-ocean born, and wild-ocean\nnurtured; as much of an audacious mariner as any. And for Radney,\nthough in his infancy he may have laid him down on the lone Nantucket\nbeach, to nurse at his maternal sea; though in after life he had long\nfollowed our austere Atlantic and your contemplative Pacific; yet was\nhe quite as vengeful and full of social quarrel as the backwoods\nseaman, fresh from the latitudes of buck-horn handled Bowie-knives. Yet\nwas this Nantucketer a man with some good-hearted traits; and this\nLakeman, a mariner, who though a sort of devil indeed, might yet by\ninflexible firmness, only tempered by that common decency of human\nrecognition which is the meanest slave\u2019s right; thus treated, this\nSteelkilt had long been retained harmless and docile. At all events, he\nhad proved so thus far; but Radney was doomed and made mad, and\nSteelkilt\u2014but, gentlemen, you shall hear.\n\n\u201cIt was not more than a day or two at the furthest after pointing her\nprow for her island haven, that the Town-Ho\u2019s leak seemed again\nincreasing, but only so as to require an hour or more at the pumps\nevery day. You must know that in a settled and civilized ocean like our\nAtlantic, for example, some skippers think little of pumping their\nwhole way across it; though of a still, sleepy night, should the\nofficer of the deck happen to forget his duty in that respect, the\nprobability would be that he and his shipmates would never again\nremember it, on account of all hands gently subsiding to the bottom.\nNor in the solitary and savage seas far from you to the westward,\ngentlemen, is it altogether unusual for ships to keep clanging at their\npump-handles in full chorus even for a voyage of considerable length;\nthat is, if it lie along a tolerably accessible coast, or if any other\nreasonable retreat is afforded them. It is only when a leaky vessel is\nin some very out of the way part of those waters, some really landless\nlatitude, that her captain begins to feel a little anxious.\n\n\u201cMuch this way had it been with the Town-Ho; so when her leak was found\ngaining once more, there was in truth some small concern manifested by\nseveral of her company; especially by Radney the mate. He commanded the\nupper sails to be well hoisted, sheeted home anew, and every way\nexpanded to the breeze. Now this Radney, I suppose, was as little of a\ncoward, and as little inclined to any sort of nervous apprehensiveness\ntouching his own person as any fearless, unthinking creature on land or\non sea that you can conveniently imagine, gentlemen. Therefore when he\nbetrayed this solicitude about the safety of the ship, some of the\nseamen declared that it was only on account of his being a part owner\nin her. So when they were working that evening at the pumps, there was\non this head no small gamesomeness slily going on among them, as they\nstood with their feet continually overflowed by the rippling clear\nwater; clear as any mountain spring, gentlemen\u2014that bubbling from the\npumps ran across the deck, and poured itself out in steady spouts at\nthe lee scupper-holes.\n\n\u201cNow, as you well know, it is not seldom the case in this conventional\nworld of ours\u2014watery or otherwise; that when a person placed in command\nover his fellow-men finds one of them to be very significantly his\nsuperior in general pride of manhood, straightway against that man he\nconceives an unconquerable dislike and bitterness; and if he have a\nchance he will pull down and pulverize that subaltern\u2019s tower, and make\na little heap of dust of it. Be this conceit of mine as it may,\ngentlemen, at all events Steelkilt was a tall and noble animal with a\nhead like a Roman, and a flowing golden beard like the tasseled\nhousings of your last viceroy\u2019s snorting charger; and a brain, and a\nheart, and a soul in him, gentlemen, which had made Steelkilt\nCharlemagne, had he been born son to Charlemagne\u2019s father. But Radney,\nthe mate, was ugly as a mule; yet as hardy, as stubborn, as malicious.\nHe did not love Steelkilt, and Steelkilt knew it.\n\n\u201cEspying the mate drawing near as he was toiling at the pump with the\nrest, the Lakeman affected not to notice him, but unawed, went on with\nhis gay banterings.\n\n\u201c\u2018Aye, aye, my merry lads, it\u2019s a lively leak this; hold a cannikin,\none of ye, and let\u2019s have a taste. By the Lord, it\u2019s worth bottling! I\ntell ye what, men, old Rad\u2019s investment must go for it! he had best cut\naway his part of the hull and tow it home. The fact is, boys, that\nsword-fish only began the job; he\u2019s come back again with a gang of\nship-carpenters, saw-fish, and file-fish, and what not; and the whole\nposse of \u2019em are now hard at work cutting and slashing at the bottom;\nmaking improvements, I suppose. If old Rad were here now, I\u2019d tell him\nto jump overboard and scatter \u2019em. They\u2019re playing the devil with his\nestate, I can tell him. But he\u2019s a simple old soul,\u2014Rad, and a beauty\ntoo. Boys, they say the rest of his property is invested in\nlooking-glasses. I wonder if he\u2019d give a poor devil like me the model\nof his nose.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Damn your eyes! what\u2019s that pump stopping for?\u2019 roared Radney,\npretending not to have heard the sailors\u2019 talk. \u2018Thunder away at it!\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Aye, aye, sir,\u2019 said Steelkilt, merry as a cricket. \u2018Lively, boys,\nlively, now!\u2019 And with that the pump clanged like fifty fire-engines;\nthe men tossed their hats off to it, and ere long that peculiar gasping\nof the lungs was heard which denotes the fullest tension of life\u2019s\nutmost energies.\n\n\u201cQuitting the pump at last, with the rest of his band, the Lakeman went\nforward all panting, and sat himself down on the windlass; his face\nfiery red, his eyes bloodshot, and wiping the profuse sweat from his\nbrow. Now what cozening fiend it was, gentlemen, that possessed Radney\nto meddle with such a man in that corporeally exasperated state, I know\nnot; but so it happened. Intolerably striding along the deck, the mate\ncommanded him to get a broom and sweep down the planks, and also a\nshovel, and remove some offensive matters consequent upon allowing a\npig to run at large.\n\n\u201cNow, gentlemen, sweeping a ship\u2019s deck at sea is a piece of household\nwork which in all times but raging gales is regularly attended to every\nevening; it has been known to be done in the case of ships actually\nfoundering at the time. Such, gentlemen, is the inflexibility of\nsea-usages and the instinctive love of neatness in seamen; some of whom\nwould not willingly drown without first washing their faces. But in all\nvessels this broom business is the prescriptive province of the boys,\nif boys there be aboard. Besides, it was the stronger men in the\nTown-Ho that had been divided into gangs, taking turns at the pumps;\nand being the most athletic seaman of them all, Steelkilt had been\nregularly assigned captain of one of the gangs; consequently he should\nhave been freed from any trivial business not connected with truly\nnautical duties, such being the case with his comrades. I mention all\nthese particulars so that you may understand exactly how this affair\nstood between the two men.\n\n\u201cBut there was more than this: the order about the shovel was almost as\nplainly meant to sting and insult Steelkilt, as though Radney had spat\nin his face. Any man who has gone sailor in a whale-ship will\nunderstand this; and all this and doubtless much more, the Lakeman\nfully comprehended when the mate uttered his command. But as he sat\nstill for a moment, and as he steadfastly looked into the mate\u2019s\nmalignant eye and perceived the stacks of powder-casks heaped up in him\nand the slow-match silently burning along towards them; as he\ninstinctively saw all this, that strange forbearance and unwillingness\nto stir up the deeper passionateness in any already ireful being\u2014a\nrepugnance most felt, when felt at all, by really valiant men even when\naggrieved\u2014this nameless phantom feeling, gentlemen, stole over\nSteelkilt.\n\n\u201cTherefore, in his ordinary tone, only a little broken by the bodily\nexhaustion he was temporarily in, he answered him saying that sweeping\nthe deck was not his business, and he would not do it. And then,\nwithout at all alluding to the shovel, he pointed to three lads as the\ncustomary sweepers; who, not being billeted at the pumps, had done\nlittle or nothing all day. To this, Radney replied with an oath, in a\nmost domineering and outrageous manner unconditionally reiterating his\ncommand; meanwhile advancing upon the still seated Lakeman, with an\nuplifted cooper\u2019s club hammer which he had snatched from a cask near\nby.\n\n\u201cHeated and irritated as he was by his spasmodic toil at the pumps, for\nall his first nameless feeling of forbearance the sweating Steelkilt\ncould but ill brook this bearing in the mate; but somehow still\nsmothering the conflagration within him, without speaking he remained\ndoggedly rooted to his seat, till at last the incensed Radney shook the\nhammer within a few inches of his face, furiously commanding him to do\nhis bidding.\n\n\u201cSteelkilt rose, and slowly retreating round the windlass, steadily\nfollowed by the mate with his menacing hammer, deliberately repeated\nhis intention not to obey. Seeing, however, that his forbearance had\nnot the slightest effect, by an awful and unspeakable intimation with\nhis twisted hand he warned off the foolish and infatuated man; but it\nwas to no purpose. And in this way the two went once slowly round the\nwindlass; when, resolved at last no longer to retreat, bethinking him\nthat he had now forborne as much as comported with his humor, the\nLakeman paused on the hatches and thus spoke to the officer:\n\n\u201c\u2018Mr. Radney, I will not obey you. Take that hammer away, or look to\nyourself.\u2019 But the predestinated mate coming still closer to him, where\nthe Lakeman stood fixed, now shook the heavy hammer within an inch of\nhis teeth; meanwhile repeating a string of insufferable maledictions.\nRetreating not the thousandth part of an inch; stabbing him in the eye\nwith the unflinching poniard of his glance, Steelkilt, clenching his\nright hand behind him and creepingly drawing it back, told his\npersecutor that if the hammer but grazed his cheek he (Steelkilt) would\nmurder him. But, gentlemen, the fool had been branded for the slaughter\nby the gods. Immediately the hammer touched the cheek; the next instant\nthe lower jaw of the mate was stove in his head; he fell on the hatch\nspouting blood like a whale.\n\n\u201cEre the cry could go aft Steelkilt was shaking one of the backstays\nleading far aloft to where two of his comrades were standing their\nmastheads. They were both Canallers.\n\n\u201c\u2018Canallers!\u2019 cried Don Pedro. \u2018We have seen many whale-ships in our\nharbours, but never heard of your Canallers. Pardon: who and what are\nthey?\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Canallers, Don, are the boatmen belonging to our grand Erie Canal.\nYou must have heard of it.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Nay, Senor; hereabouts in this dull, warm, most lazy, and hereditary\nland, we know but little of your vigorous North.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Aye? Well then, Don, refill my cup. Your chicha\u2019s very fine; and ere\nproceeding further I will tell ye what our Canallers are; for such\ninformation may throw side-light upon my story.\u2019\n\n\u201cFor three hundred and sixty miles, gentlemen, through the entire\nbreadth of the state of New York; through numerous populous cities and\nmost thriving villages; through long, dismal, uninhabited swamps, and\naffluent, cultivated fields, unrivalled for fertility; by billiard-room\nand bar-room; through the holy-of-holies of great forests; on Roman\narches over Indian rivers; through sun and shade; by happy hearts or\nbroken; through all the wide contrasting scenery of those noble Mohawk\ncounties; and especially, by rows of snow-white chapels, whose spires\nstand almost like milestones, flows one continual stream of Venetianly\ncorrupt and often lawless life. There\u2019s your true Ashantee, gentlemen;\nthere howl your pagans; where you ever find them, next door to you;\nunder the long-flung shadow, and the snug patronising lee of churches.\nFor by some curious fatality, as it is often noted of your metropolitan\nfreebooters that they ever encamp around the halls of justice, so\nsinners, gentlemen, most abound in holiest vicinities.\n\n\u201c\u2018Is that a friar passing?\u2019 said Don Pedro, looking downwards into the\ncrowded plazza, with humorous concern.\n\n\u201c\u2018Well for our northern friend, Dame Isabella\u2019s Inquisition wanes in\nLima,\u2019 laughed Don Sebastian. \u2018Proceed, Senor.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018A moment! Pardon!\u2019 cried another of the company. \u2018In the name of all\nus Limeese, I but desire to express to you, sir sailor, that we have by\nno means overlooked your delicacy in not substituting present Lima for\ndistant Venice in your corrupt comparison. Oh! do not bow and look\nsurprised; you know the proverb all along this coast\u2014\u201cCorrupt as Lima.\u201d\nIt but bears out your saying, too; churches more plentiful than\nbilliard-tables, and for ever open\u2014and \u201cCorrupt as Lima.\u201d So, too,\nVenice; I have been there; the holy city of the blessed evangelist, St.\nMark!\u2014St. Dominic, purge it! Your cup! Thanks: here I refill; now, you\npour out again.\u2019\n\n\u201cFreely depicted in his own vocation, gentlemen, the Canaller would\nmake a fine dramatic hero, so abundantly and picturesquely wicked is\nhe. Like Mark Antony, for days and days along his green-turfed, flowery\nNile, he indolently floats, openly toying with his red-cheeked\nCleopatra, ripening his apricot thigh upon the sunny deck. But ashore,\nall this effeminacy is dashed. The brigandish guise which the Canaller\nso proudly sports; his slouched and gaily-ribboned hat betoken his\ngrand features. A terror to the smiling innocence of the villages\nthrough which he floats; his swart visage and bold swagger are not\nunshunned in cities. Once a vagabond on his own canal, I have received\ngood turns from one of these Canallers; I thank him heartily; would\nfain be not ungrateful; but it is often one of the prime redeeming\nqualities of your man of violence, that at times he has as stiff an arm\nto back a poor stranger in a strait, as to plunder a wealthy one. In\nsum, gentlemen, what the wildness of this canal life is, is\nemphatically evinced by this; that our wild whale-fishery contains so\nmany of its most finished graduates, and that scarce any race of\nmankind, except Sydney men, are so much distrusted by our whaling\ncaptains. Nor does it at all diminish the curiousness of this matter,\nthat to many thousands of our rural boys and young men born along its\nline, the probationary life of the Grand Canal furnishes the sole\ntransition between quietly reaping in a Christian corn-field, and\nrecklessly ploughing the waters of the most barbaric seas.\n\n\u201c\u2018I see! I see!\u2019 impetuously exclaimed Don Pedro, spilling his chicha\nupon his silvery ruffles. \u2018No need to travel! The world\u2019s one Lima. I\nhad thought, now, that at your temperate North the generations were\ncold and holy as the hills.\u2014But the story.\u2019\n\n\u201cI left off, gentlemen, where the Lakeman shook the backstay. Hardly\nhad he done so, when he was surrounded by the three junior mates and\nthe four harpooneers, who all crowded him to the deck. But sliding down\nthe ropes like baleful comets, the two Canallers rushed into the\nuproar, and sought to drag their man out of it towards the forecastle.\nOthers of the sailors joined with them in this attempt, and a twisted\nturmoil ensued; while standing out of harm\u2019s way, the valiant captain\ndanced up and down with a whale-pike, calling upon his officers to\nmanhandle that atrocious scoundrel, and smoke him along to the\nquarter-deck. At intervals, he ran close up to the revolving border of\nthe confusion, and prying into the heart of it with his pike, sought to\nprick out the object of his resentment. But Steelkilt and his\ndesperadoes were too much for them all; they succeeded in gaining the\nforecastle deck, where, hastily slewing about three or four large casks\nin a line with the windlass, these sea-Parisians entrenched themselves\nbehind the barricade.\n\n\u201c\u2018Come out of that, ye pirates!\u2019 roared the captain, now menacing them\nwith a pistol in each hand, just brought to him by the steward. \u2018Come\nout of that, ye cut-throats!\u2019\n\n\u201cSteelkilt leaped on the barricade, and striding up and down there,\ndefied the worst the pistols could do; but gave the captain to\nunderstand distinctly, that his (Steelkilt\u2019s) death would be the signal\nfor a murderous mutiny on the part of all hands. Fearing in his heart\nlest this might prove but too true, the captain a little desisted, but\nstill commanded the insurgents instantly to return to their duty.\n\n\u201c\u2018Will you promise not to touch us, if we do?\u2019 demanded their\nringleader.\n\n\u201c\u2018Turn to! turn to!\u2014I make no promise;\u2014to your duty! Do you want to\nsink the ship, by knocking off at a time like this? Turn to!\u2019 and he\nonce more raised a pistol.\n\n\u201c\u2018Sink the ship?\u2019 cried Steelkilt. \u2018Aye, let her sink. Not a man of us\nturns to, unless you swear not to raise a rope-yarn against us. What\nsay ye, men?\u2019 turning to his comrades. A fierce cheer was their\nresponse.\n\n\u201cThe Lakeman now patrolled the barricade, all the while keeping his eye\non the Captain, and jerking out such sentences as these:\u2014\u2018It\u2019s not our\nfault; we didn\u2019t want it; I told him to take his hammer away; it was\nboy\u2019s business; he might have known me before this; I told him not to\nprick the buffalo; I believe I have broken a finger here against his\ncursed jaw; ain\u2019t those mincing knives down in the forecastle there,\nmen? look to those handspikes, my hearties. Captain, by God, look to\nyourself; say the word; don\u2019t be a fool; forget it all; we are ready to\nturn to; treat us decently, and we\u2019re your men; but we won\u2019t be\nflogged.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Turn to! I make no promises, turn to, I say!\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Look ye, now,\u2019 cried the Lakeman, flinging out his arm towards him,\n\u2018there are a few of us here (and I am one of them) who have shipped for\nthe cruise, d\u2019ye see; now as you well know, sir, we can claim our\ndischarge as soon as the anchor is down; so we don\u2019t want a row; it\u2019s\nnot our interest; we want to be peaceable; we are ready to work, but we\nwon\u2019t be flogged.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Turn to!\u2019 roared the Captain.\n\n\u201cSteelkilt glanced round him a moment, and then said:\u2014\u2018I tell you what\nit is now, Captain, rather than kill ye, and be hung for such a shabby\nrascal, we won\u2019t lift a hand against ye unless ye attack us; but till\nyou say the word about not flogging us, we don\u2019t do a hand\u2019s turn.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Down into the forecastle then, down with ye, I\u2019ll keep ye there till\nye\u2019re sick of it. Down ye go.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Shall we?\u2019 cried the ringleader to his men. Most of them were against\nit; but at length, in obedience to Steelkilt, they preceded him down\ninto their dark den, growlingly disappearing, like bears into a cave.\n\n\u201cAs the Lakeman\u2019s bare head was just level with the planks, the Captain\nand his posse leaped the barricade, and rapidly drawing over the slide\nof the scuttle, planted their group of hands upon it, and loudly called\nfor the steward to bring the heavy brass padlock belonging to the\ncompanionway. Then opening the slide a little, the Captain whispered\nsomething down the crack, closed it, and turned the key upon them\u2014ten\nin number\u2014leaving on deck some twenty or more, who thus far had\nremained neutral.\n\n\u201cAll night a wide-awake watch was kept by all the officers, forward and\naft, especially about the forecastle scuttle and fore hatchway; at\nwhich last place it was feared the insurgents might emerge, after\nbreaking through the bulkhead below. But the hours of darkness passed\nin peace; the men who still remained at their duty toiling hard at the\npumps, whose clinking and clanking at intervals through the dreary\nnight dismally resounded through the ship.\n\n\u201cAt sunrise the Captain went forward, and knocking on the deck,\nsummoned the prisoners to work; but with a yell they refused. Water was\nthen lowered down to them, and a couple of handfuls of biscuit were\ntossed after it; when again turning the key upon them and pocketing it,\nthe Captain returned to the quarter-deck. Twice every day for three\ndays this was repeated; but on the fourth morning a confused wrangling,\nand then a scuffling was heard, as the customary summons was delivered;\nand suddenly four men burst up from the forecastle, saying they were\nready to turn to. The fetid closeness of the air, and a famishing diet,\nunited perhaps to some fears of ultimate retribution, had constrained\nthem to surrender at discretion. Emboldened by this, the Captain\nreiterated his demand to the rest, but Steelkilt shouted up to him a\nterrific hint to stop his babbling and betake himself where he\nbelonged. On the fifth morning three others of the mutineers bolted up\ninto the air from the desperate arms below that sought to restrain\nthem. Only three were left.\n\n\u201c\u2018Better turn to, now?\u2019 said the Captain with a heartless jeer.\n\n\u201c\u2018Shut us up again, will ye!\u2019 cried Steelkilt.\n\n\u201c\u2018Oh certainly,\u2019 said the Captain, and the key clicked.\n\n\u201cIt was at this point, gentlemen, that enraged by the defection of\nseven of his former associates, and stung by the mocking voice that had\nlast hailed him, and maddened by his long entombment in a place as\nblack as the bowels of despair; it was then that Steelkilt proposed to\nthe two Canallers, thus far apparently of one mind with him, to burst\nout of their hole at the next summoning of the garrison; and armed with\ntheir keen mincing knives (long, crescentic, heavy implements with a\nhandle at each end) run amuck from the bowsprit to the taffrail; and if\nby any devilishness of desperation possible, seize the ship. For\nhimself, he would do this, he said, whether they joined him or not.\nThat was the last night he should spend in that den. But the scheme met\nwith no opposition on the part of the other two; they swore they were\nready for that, or for any other mad thing, for anything in short but a\nsurrender. And what was more, they each insisted upon being the first\nman on deck, when the time to make the rush should come. But to this\ntheir leader as fiercely objected, reserving that priority for himself;\nparticularly as his two comrades would not yield, the one to the other,\nin the matter; and both of them could not be first, for the ladder\nwould but admit one man at a time. And here, gentlemen, the foul play\nof these miscreants must come out.\n\n\u201cUpon hearing the frantic project of their leader, each in his own\nseparate soul had suddenly lighted, it would seem, upon the same piece\nof treachery, namely: to be foremost in breaking out, in order to be\nthe first of the three, though the last of the ten, to surrender; and\nthereby secure whatever small chance of pardon such conduct might\nmerit. But when Steelkilt made known his determination still to lead\nthem to the last, they in some way, by some subtle chemistry of\nvillany, mixed their before secret treacheries together; and when their\nleader fell into a doze, verbally opened their souls to each other in\nthree sentences; and bound the sleeper with cords, and gagged him with\ncords; and shrieked out for the Captain at midnight.\n\n\u201cThinking murder at hand, and smelling in the dark for the blood, he\nand all his armed mates and harpooneers rushed for the forecastle. In a\nfew minutes the scuttle was opened, and, bound hand and foot, the still\nstruggling ringleader was shoved up into the air by his perfidious\nallies, who at once claimed the honor of securing a man who had been\nfully ripe for murder. But all these were collared, and dragged along\nthe deck like dead cattle; and, side by side, were seized up into the\nmizzen rigging, like three quarters of meat, and there they hung till\nmorning. \u2018Damn ye,\u2019 cried the Captain, pacing to and fro before them,\n\u2018the vultures would not touch ye, ye villains!\u2019\n\n\u201cAt sunrise he summoned all hands; and separating those who had\nrebelled from those who had taken no part in the mutiny, he told the\nformer that he had a good mind to flog them all round\u2014thought, upon the\nwhole, he would do so\u2014he ought to\u2014justice demanded it; but for the\npresent, considering their timely surrender, he would let them go with\na reprimand, which he accordingly administered in the vernacular.\n\n\u201c\u2018But as for you, ye carrion rogues,\u2019 turning to the three men in the\nrigging\u2014\u2018for you, I mean to mince ye up for the try-pots;\u2019 and, seizing\na rope, he applied it with all his might to the backs of the two\ntraitors, till they yelled no more, but lifelessly hung their heads\nsideways, as the two crucified thieves are drawn.\n\n\u201c\u2018My wrist is sprained with ye!\u2019 he cried, at last; \u2018but there is still\nrope enough left for you, my fine bantam, that wouldn\u2019t give up. Take\nthat gag from his mouth, and let us hear what he can say for himself.\u2019\n\n\u201cFor a moment the exhausted mutineer made a tremulous motion of his\ncramped jaws, and then painfully twisting round his head, said in a\nsort of hiss, \u2018What I say is this\u2014and mind it well\u2014if you flog me, I\nmurder you!\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Say ye so? then see how ye frighten me\u2019\u2014and the Captain drew off with\nthe rope to strike.\n\n\u201c\u2018Best not,\u2019 hissed the Lakeman.\n\n\u201c\u2018But I must,\u2019\u2014and the rope was once more drawn back for the stroke.\n\n\u201cSteelkilt here hissed out something, inaudible to all but the Captain;\nwho, to the amazement of all hands, started back, paced the deck\nrapidly two or three times, and then suddenly throwing down his rope,\nsaid, \u2018I won\u2019t do it\u2014let him go\u2014cut him down: d\u2019ye hear?\u2019\n\n\u201cBut as the junior mates were hurrying to execute the order, a pale\nman, with a bandaged head, arrested them\u2014Radney the chief mate. Ever\nsince the blow, he had lain in his berth; but that morning, hearing the\ntumult on the deck, he had crept out, and thus far had watched the\nwhole scene. Such was the state of his mouth, that he could hardly\nspeak; but mumbling something about _his_ being willing and able to do\nwhat the captain dared not attempt, he snatched the rope and advanced\nto his pinioned foe.\n\n\u201c\u2018You are a coward!\u2019 hissed the Lakeman.\n\n\u201c\u2018So I am, but take that.\u2019 The mate was in the very act of striking,\nwhen another hiss stayed his uplifted arm. He paused: and then pausing\nno more, made good his word, spite of Steelkilt\u2019s threat, whatever that\nmight have been. The three men were then cut down, all hands were\nturned to, and, sullenly worked by the moody seamen, the iron pumps\nclanged as before.\n\n\u201cJust after dark that day, when one watch had retired below, a clamor\nwas heard in the forecastle; and the two trembling traitors running up,\nbesieged the cabin door, saying they durst not consort with the crew.\nEntreaties, cuffs, and kicks could not drive them back, so at their own\ninstance they were put down in the ship\u2019s run for salvation. Still, no\nsign of mutiny reappeared among the rest. On the contrary, it seemed,\nthat mainly at Steelkilt\u2019s instigation, they had resolved to maintain\nthe strictest peacefulness, obey all orders to the last, and, when the\nship reached port, desert her in a body. But in order to insure the\nspeediest end to the voyage, they all agreed to another thing\u2014namely,\nnot to sing out for whales, in case any should be discovered. For,\nspite of her leak, and spite of all her other perils, the Town-Ho still\nmaintained her mast-heads, and her captain was just as willing to lower\nfor a fish that moment, as on the day his craft first struck the\ncruising ground; and Radney the mate was quite as ready to change his\nberth for a boat, and with his bandaged mouth seek to gag in death the\nvital jaw of the whale.\n\n\u201cBut though the Lakeman had induced the seamen to adopt this sort of\npassiveness in their conduct, he kept his own counsel (at least till\nall was over) concerning his own proper and private revenge upon the\nman who had stung him in the ventricles of his heart. He was in Radney\nthe chief mate\u2019s watch; and as if the infatuated man sought to run more\nthan half way to meet his doom, after the scene at the rigging, he\ninsisted, against the express counsel of the captain, upon resuming the\nhead of his watch at night. Upon this, and one or two other\ncircumstances, Steelkilt systematically built the plan of his revenge.\n\n\u201cDuring the night, Radney had an unseamanlike way of sitting on the\nbulwarks of the quarter-deck, and leaning his arm upon the gunwale of\nthe boat which was hoisted up there, a little above the ship\u2019s side. In\nthis attitude, it was well known, he sometimes dozed. There was a\nconsiderable vacancy between the boat and the ship, and down between\nthis was the sea. Steelkilt calculated his time, and found that his\nnext trick at the helm would come round at two o\u2019clock, in the morning\nof the third day from that in which he had been betrayed. At his\nleisure, he employed the interval in braiding something very carefully\nin his watches below.\n\n\u201c\u2018What are you making there?\u2019 said a shipmate.\n\n\u201c\u2018What do you think? what does it look like?\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Like a lanyard for your bag; but it\u2019s an odd one, seems to me.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Yes, rather oddish,\u2019 said the Lakeman, holding it at arm\u2019s length\nbefore him; \u2018but I think it will answer. Shipmate, I haven\u2019t enough\ntwine,\u2014have you any?\u2019\n\n\u201cBut there was none in the forecastle.\n\n\u201c\u2018Then I must get some from old Rad;\u2019 and he rose to go aft.\n\n\u201c\u2018You don\u2019t mean to go a begging to _him!_\u2019 said a sailor.\n\n\u201c\u2018Why not? Do you think he won\u2019t do me a turn, when it\u2019s to help\nhimself in the end, shipmate?\u2019 and going to the mate, he looked at him\nquietly, and asked him for some twine to mend his hammock. It was given\nhim\u2014neither twine nor lanyard were seen again; but the next night an\niron ball, closely netted, partly rolled from the pocket of the\nLakeman\u2019s monkey jacket, as he was tucking the coat into his hammock\nfor a pillow. Twenty-four hours after, his trick at the silent\nhelm\u2014nigh to the man who was apt to doze over the grave always ready\ndug to the seaman\u2019s hand\u2014that fatal hour was then to come; and in the\nfore-ordaining soul of Steelkilt, the mate was already stark and\nstretched as a corpse, with his forehead crushed in.\n\n\u201cBut, gentlemen, a fool saved the would-be murderer from the bloody\ndeed he had planned. Yet complete revenge he had, and without being the\navenger. For by a mysterious fatality, Heaven itself seemed to step in\nto take out of his hands into its own the damning thing he would have\ndone.\n\n\u201cIt was just between daybreak and sunrise of the morning of the second\nday, when they were washing down the decks, that a stupid Teneriffe\nman, drawing water in the main-chains, all at once shouted out, \u2018There\nshe rolls! there she rolls!\u2019 Jesu, what a whale! It was Kelsey Primrose.\n\n\u201c\u2018Kelsey Primrose!\u2019 cried Don Sebastian; \u2018St. Dominic! Sir sailor, but do\nwhales have christenings? Whom call you Kelsey Primrose?\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018A very white, and famous, and most deadly immortal monster, Don;\u2014but\nthat would be too long a story.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018How? how?\u2019 cried all the young Spaniards, crowding.\n\n\u201c\u2018Nay, Dons, Dons\u2014nay, nay! I cannot rehearse that now. Let me get more\ninto the air, Sirs.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018The chicha! the chicha!\u2019 cried Don Pedro; \u2018our vigorous friend looks\nfaint;\u2014fill up his empty glass!\u2019\n\n\u201cNo need, gentlemen; one moment, and I proceed.\u2014Now, gentlemen, so\nsuddenly perceiving the snowy whale within fifty yards of the\nship\u2014forgetful of the compact among the crew\u2014in the excitement of the\nmoment, the Teneriffe man had instinctively and involuntarily lifted\nhis voice for the monster, though for some little time past it had been\nplainly beheld from the three sullen mast-heads. All was now a phrensy.\n\u2018The White Whale\u2014the White Whale!\u2019 was the cry from captain, mates, and\nharpooneers, who, undeterred by fearful rumours, were all anxious to\ncapture so famous and precious a fish; while the dogged crew eyed\naskance, and with curses, the appalling beauty of the vast milky mass,\nthat lit up by a horizontal spangling sun, shifted and glistened like a\nliving opal in the blue morning sea. Gentlemen, a strange fatality\npervades the whole career of these events, as if verily mapped out\nbefore the world itself was charted. The mutineer was the bowsman of\nthe mate, and when fast to a fish, it was his duty to sit next him,\nwhile Radney stood up with his lance in the prow, and haul in or\nslacken the line, at the word of command. Moreover, when the four boats\nwere lowered, the mate\u2019s got the start; and none howled more fiercely\nwith delight than did Steelkilt, as he strained at his oar. After a\nstiff pull, their harpooneer got fast, and, spear in hand, Radney\nsprang to the bow. He was always a furious man, it seems, in a boat.\nAnd now his bandaged cry was, to beach him on the whale\u2019s topmost back.\nNothing loath, his bowsman hauled him up and up, through a blinding\nfoam that blent two whitenesses together; till of a sudden the boat\nstruck as against a sunken ledge, and keeling over, spilled out the\nstanding mate. That instant, as he fell on the whale\u2019s slippery back,\nthe boat righted, and was dashed aside by the swell, while Radney was\ntossed over into the sea, on the other flank of the whale. He struck\nout through the spray, and, for an instant, was dimly seen through that\nveil, wildly seeking to remove himself from the eye of Kelsey Primrose. But\nthe whale rushed round in a sudden maelstrom; seized the swimmer\nbetween his jaws; and rearing high up with him, plunged headlong again,\nand went down.\n\n\u201cMeantime, at the first tap of the boat\u2019s bottom, the Lakeman had\nslackened the line, so as to drop astern from the whirlpool; calmly\nlooking on, he thought his own thoughts. But a sudden, terrific,\ndownward jerking of the boat, quickly brought his knife to the line. He\ncut it; and the whale was free. But, at some distance, Kelsey Primrose rose\nagain, with some tatters of Radney\u2019s red woollen shirt, caught in the\nteeth that had destroyed him. All four boats gave chase again; but the\nwhale eluded them, and finally wholly disappeared.\n\n\u201cIn good time, the Town-Ho reached her port\u2014a savage, solitary\nplace\u2014where no civilized creature resided. There, headed by the\nLakeman, all but five or six of the foremastmen deliberately deserted\namong the palms; eventually, as it turned out, seizing a large double\nwar-canoe of the savages, and setting sail for some other harbor.\n\n\u201cThe ship\u2019s company being reduced to but a handful, the captain called\nupon the Islanders to assist him in the laborious business of heaving\ndown the ship to stop the leak. But to such unresting vigilance over\ntheir dangerous allies was this small band of whites necessitated, both\nby night and by day, and so extreme was the hard work they underwent,\nthat upon the vessel being ready again for sea, they were in such a\nweakened condition that the captain durst not put off with them in so\nheavy a vessel. After taking counsel with his officers, he anchored the\nship as far off shore as possible; loaded and ran out his two cannon\nfrom the bows; stacked his muskets on the poop; and warning the\nIslanders not to approach the ship at their peril, took one man with\nhim, and setting the sail of his best whale-boat, steered straight\nbefore the wind for Tahiti, five hundred miles distant, to procure a\nreinforcement to his crew.\n\n\u201cOn the fourth day of the sail, a large canoe was descried, which\nseemed to have touched at a low isle of corals. He steered away from\nit; but the savage craft bore down on him; and soon the voice of\nSteelkilt hailed him to heave to, or he would run him under water. The\ncaptain presented a pistol. With one foot on each prow of the yoked\nwar-canoes, the Lakeman laughed him to scorn; assuring him that if the\npistol so much as clicked in the lock, he would bury him in bubbles and\nfoam.\n\n\u201c\u2018What do you want of me?\u2019 cried the captain.\n\n\u201c\u2018Where are you bound? and for what are you bound?\u2019 demanded Steelkilt;\n\u2018no lies.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018I am bound to Tahiti for more men.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Very good. Let me board you a moment\u2014I come in peace.\u2019 With that he\nleaped from the canoe, swam to the boat; and climbing the gunwale,\nstood face to face with the captain.\n\n\u201c\u2018Cross your arms, sir; throw back your head. Now, repeat after me. As\nsoon as Steelkilt leaves me, I swear to beach this boat on yonder\nisland, and remain there six days. If I do not, may lightnings strike\nme!\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018A pretty scholar,\u2019 laughed the Lakeman. \u2018Adios, Senor!\u2019 and leaping\ninto the sea, he swam back to his comrades.\n\n\u201cWatching the boat till it was fairly beached, and drawn up to the\nroots of the cocoa-nut trees, Steelkilt made sail again, and in due\ntime arrived at Tahiti, his own place of destination. There, luck\nbefriended him; two ships were about to sail for France, and were\nprovidentially in want of precisely that number of men which the sailor\nheaded. They embarked; and so for ever got the start of their former\ncaptain, had he been at all minded to work them legal retribution.\n\n\u201cSome ten days after the French ships sailed, the whale-boat arrived,\nand the captain was forced to enlist some of the more civilized\nTahitians, who had been somewhat used to the sea. Chartering a small\nnative schooner, he returned with them to his vessel; and finding all\nright there, again resumed his cruisings.\n\n\u201cWhere Steelkilt now is, gentlemen, none know; but upon the island of\nNantucket, the widow of Radney still turns to the sea which refuses to\ngive up its dead; still in dreams sees the awful white whale that\ndestroyed him.  * * * *\n\n\u201c\u2018Are you through?\u2019 said Don Sebastian, quietly.\n\n\u201c\u2018I am, Don.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Then I entreat you, tell me if to the best of your own convictions,\nthis your story is in substance really true? It is so passing\nwonderful! Did you get it from an unquestionable source? Bear with me\nif I seem to press.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Also bear with all of us, sir sailor; for we all join in Don\nSebastian\u2019s suit,\u2019 cried the company, with exceeding interest.\n\n\u201c\u2018Is there a copy of the Holy Evangelists in the Golden Inn,\ngentlemen?\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Nay,\u2019 said Don Sebastian; \u2018but I know a worthy priest near by, who\nwill quickly procure one for me. I go for it; but are you well advised?\nthis may grow too serious.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Will you be so good as to bring the priest also, Don?\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Though there are no Auto-da-Fes in Lima now,\u2019 said one of the company\nto another; \u2018I fear our sailor friend runs risk of the archiepiscopacy.\nLet us withdraw more out of the moonlight. I see no need of this.\u2019\n\n\u201c\u2018Excuse me for running after you, Don Sebastian; but may I also beg\nthat you will be particular in procuring the largest sized Evangelists\nyou can.\u2019\n\n* * * * * *\n\n\u201c\u2018This is the priest, he brings you the Evangelists,\u2019 said Don\nSebastian, gravely, returning with a tall and solemn figure.\n\n\u201c\u2018Let me remove my hat. Now, venerable priest, further into the light,\nand hold the Holy Book before me that I may touch it.\n\n\u201c\u2018So help me Heaven, and on my honor the story I have told ye,\ngentlemen, is in substance and its great items, true. I know it to be\ntrue; it happened on this ball; I trod the ship; I knew the crew; I\nhave seen and talked with Steelkilt since the death of Radney.\u2019\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 55. Of the Monstrous Pictures of Whales.\n\nI shall ere long paint to you as well as one can without canvas,\nsomething like the true form of the whale as he actually appears to the\neye of the whaleman when in his own absolute body the whale is moored\nalongside the whale-ship so that he can be fairly stepped upon there.\nIt may be worth while, therefore, previously to advert to those curious\nimaginary portraits of him which even down to the present day\nconfidently challenge the faith of the landsman. It is time to set the\nworld right in this matter, by proving such pictures of the whale all\nwrong.\n\nIt may be that the primal source of all those pictorial delusions will\nbe found among the oldest Hindoo, Egyptian, and Grecian sculptures. For\never since those inventive but unscrupulous times when on the marble\npanellings of temples, the pedestals of statues, and on shields,\nmedallions, cups, and coins, the dolphin was drawn in scales of\nchain-armor like Saladin\u2019s, and a helmeted head like St. George\u2019s; ever\nsince then has something of the same sort of license prevailed, not\nonly in most popular pictures of the whale, but in many scientific\npresentations of him.\n\nNow, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting\nto be the whale\u2019s, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of\nElephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless\nsculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits,\nevery conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of\nthem actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our\nnoble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The\nHindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall,\ndepicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly\nknown as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and\nhalf whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small\nsection of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an\nanaconda, than the broad palms of the true whale\u2019s majestic flukes.\n\nBut go to the old Galleries, and look now at a great Christian\npainter\u2019s portrait of this fish; for he succeeds no better than the\nantediluvian Hindoo. It is Guido\u2019s picture of Perseus rescuing\nAndromeda from the sea-monster or whale. Where did Guido get the model\nof such a strange creature as that? Nor does Hogarth, in painting the\nsame scene in his own \u201cPerseus Descending,\u201d make out one whit better.\nThe huge corpulence of that Hogarthian monster undulates on the\nsurface, scarcely drawing one inch of water. It has a sort of howdah on\nits back, and its distended tusked mouth into which the billows are\nrolling, might be taken for the Traitors\u2019 Gate leading from the Thames\nby water into the Tower. Then, there are the Prodromus whales of old\nScotch Sibbald, and Jonah\u2019s whale, as depicted in the prints of old\nBibles and the cuts of old primers. What shall be said of these? As for\nthe book-binder\u2019s whale winding like a vine-stalk round the stock of a\ndescending anchor\u2014as stamped and gilded on the backs and title-pages of\nmany books both old and new\u2014that is a very picturesque but purely\nfabulous creature, imitated, I take it, from the like figures on\nantique vases. Though universally denominated a dolphin, I nevertheless\ncall this book-binder\u2019s fish an attempt at a whale; because it was so\nintended when the device was first introduced. It was introduced by an\nold Italian publisher somewhere about the 15th century, during the\nRevival of Learning; and in those days, and even down to a\ncomparatively late period, dolphins were popularly supposed to be a\nspecies of the Leviathan.\n\nIn the vignettes and other embellishments of some ancient books you\nwill at times meet with very curious touches at the whale, where all\nmanner of spouts, jets d\u2019eau, hot springs and cold, Saratoga and\nBaden-Baden, come bubbling up from his unexhausted brain. In the\ntitle-page of the original edition of the \u201cAdvancement of Learning\u201d you\nwill find some curious whales.\n\nBut quitting all these unprofessional attempts, let us glance at those\npictures of leviathan purporting to be sober, scientific delineations,\nby those who know. In old Harris\u2019s collection of voyages there are some\nplates of whales extracted from a Dutch book of voyages, A.D. 1671,\nentitled \u201cA Whaling Voyage to Spitzbergen in the ship Jonas in the\nWhale, Peter Peterson of Friesland, master.\u201d In one of those plates the\nwhales, like great rafts of logs, are represented lying among\nice-isles, with white bears running over their living backs. In another\nplate, the prodigious blunder is made of representing the whale with\nperpendicular flukes.\n\nThen again, there is an imposing quarto, written by one Captain\nColnett, a Post Captain in the English navy, entitled \u201cA Voyage round\nCape Horn into the South Seas, for the purpose of extending the\nSpermaceti Whale Fisheries.\u201d In this book is an outline purporting to\nbe a \u201cPicture of a Physeter or Spermaceti whale, drawn by scale from\none killed on the coast of Mexico, August, 1793, and hoisted on deck.\u201d\nI doubt not the captain had this veracious picture taken for the\nbenefit of his marines. To mention but one thing about it, let me say\nthat it has an eye which applied, according to the accompanying scale,\nto a full grown sperm whale, would make the eye of that whale a\nbow-window some five feet long. Ah, my gallant captain, why did ye not\ngive us Jonah looking out of that eye!\n\nNor are the most conscientious compilations of Natural History for the\nbenefit of the young and tender, free from the same heinousness of\nmistake. Look at that popular work \u201cGoldsmith\u2019s Animated Nature.\u201d In\nthe abridged London edition of 1807, there are plates of an alleged\n\u201cwhale\u201d and a \u201cnarwhale.\u201d I do not wish to seem inelegant, but this\nunsightly whale looks much like an amputated sow; and, as for the\nnarwhale, one glimpse at it is enough to amaze one, that in this\nnineteenth century such a hippogriff could be palmed for genuine upon\nany intelligent public of schoolboys.\n\nThen, again, in 1825, Bernard Germain, Count de Lacepede, a great\nnaturalist, published a scientific systemized whale book, wherein are\nseveral pictures of the different species of the Leviathan. All these\nare not only incorrect, but the picture of the Mysticetus or Greenland\nwhale (that is to say, the Right whale), even Scoresby, a long\nexperienced man as touching that species, declares not to have its\ncounterpart in nature.\n\nBut the placing of the cap-sheaf to all this blundering business was\nreserved for the scientific Frederick Cuvier, brother to the famous\nBaron. In 1836, he published a Natural History of Whales, in which he\ngives what he calls a picture of the Sperm Whale. Before showing that\npicture to any Nantucketer, you had best provide for your summary\nretreat from Nantucket. In a word, Frederick Cuvier\u2019s Sperm Whale is\nnot a Sperm Whale, but a squash. Of course, he never had the benefit of\na whaling voyage (such men seldom have), but whence he derived that\npicture, who can tell? Perhaps he got it as his scientific predecessor\nin the same field, Desmarest, got one of his authentic abortions; that\nis, from a Chinese drawing. And what sort of lively lads with the\npencil those Chinese are, many queer cups and saucers inform us.\n\nAs for the sign-painters\u2019 whales seen in the streets hanging over the\nshops of oil-dealers, what shall be said of them? They are generally\nRichard III. whales, with dromedary humps, and very savage;\nbreakfasting on three or four sailor tarts, that is whaleboats full of\nmariners: their deformities floundering in seas of blood and blue\npaint.\n\nBut these manifold mistakes in depicting the whale are not so very\nsurprising after all. Consider! Most of the scientific drawings have\nbeen taken from the stranded fish; and these are about as correct as a\ndrawing of a wrecked ship, with broken back, would correctly represent\nthe noble animal itself in all its undashed pride of hull and spars.\nThough elephants have stood for their full-lengths, the living\nLeviathan has never yet fairly floated himself for his portrait. The\nliving whale, in his full majesty and significance, is only to be seen\nat sea in unfathomable waters; and afloat the vast bulk of him is out\nof sight, like a launched line-of-battle ship; and out of that element\nit is a thing eternally impossible for mortal man to hoist him bodily\ninto the air, so as to preserve all his mighty swells and undulations.\nAnd, not to speak of the highly presumable difference of contour\nbetween a young sucking whale and a full-grown Platonian Leviathan;\nyet, even in the case of one of those young sucking whales hoisted to a\nship\u2019s deck, such is then the outlandish, eel-like, limbered, varying\nshape of him, that his precise expression the devil himself could not\ncatch.\n\nBut it may be fancied, that from the naked skeleton of the stranded\nwhale, accurate hints may be derived touching his true form. Not at\nall. For it is one of the more curious things about this Leviathan,\nthat his skeleton gives very little idea of his general shape. Though\nJeremy Bentham\u2019s skeleton, which hangs for candelabra in the library of\none of his executors, correctly conveys the idea of a burly-browed\nutilitarian old gentleman, with all Jeremy\u2019s other leading personal\ncharacteristics; yet nothing of this kind could be inferred from any\nleviathan\u2019s articulated bones. In fact, as the great Hunter says, the\nmere skeleton of the whale bears the same relation to the fully\ninvested and padded animal as the insect does to the chrysalis that so\nroundingly envelopes it. This peculiarity is strikingly evinced in the\nhead, as in some part of this book will be incidentally shown. It is\nalso very curiously displayed in the side fin, the bones of which\nalmost exactly answer to the bones of the human hand, minus only the\nthumb. This fin has four regular bone-fingers, the index, middle, ring,\nand little finger. But all these are permanently lodged in their fleshy\ncovering, as the human fingers in an artificial covering. \u201cHowever\nrecklessly the whale may sometimes serve us,\u201d said humorous Salvador one\nday, \u201che can never be truly said to handle us without mittens.\u201d\n\nFor all these reasons, then, any way you may look at it, you must needs\nconclude that the great Leviathan is that one creature in the world\nwhich must remain unpainted to the last. True, one portrait may hit the\nmark much nearer than another, but none can hit it with any very\nconsiderable degree of exactness. So there is no earthly way of finding\nout precisely what the whale really looks like. And the only mode in\nwhich you can derive even a tolerable idea of his living contour, is by\ngoing a whaling yourself; but by so doing, you run no small risk of\nbeing eternally stove and sunk by him. Wherefore, it seems to me you\nhad best not be too fastidious in your curiosity touching this\nLeviathan.\n\n\nCHAPTER 56. Of the Less Erroneous Pictures of Whales, and the True\nPictures of Whaling Scenes.\n\nIn connexion with the monstrous pictures of whales, I am strongly\ntempted here to enter upon those still more monstrous stories of them\nwhich are to be found in certain books, both ancient and modern,\nespecially in Pliny, Purchas, Hackluyt, Harris, Cuvier, etc. But I pass\nthat matter by.\n\nI know of only four published outlines of the great Sperm Whale;\nColnett\u2019s, Huggins\u2019s, Frederick Cuvier\u2019s, and Beale\u2019s. In the previous\nchapter Colnett and Cuvier have been referred to. Huggins\u2019s is far\nbetter than theirs; but, by great odds, Beale\u2019s is the best. All\nBeale\u2019s drawings of this whale are good, excepting the middle figure in\nthe picture of three whales in various attitudes, capping his second\nchapter. His frontispiece, boats attacking Sperm Whales, though no\ndoubt calculated to excite the civil scepticism of some parlor men, is\nadmirably correct and life-like in its general effect. Some of the\nSperm Whale drawings in J. Ross Browne are pretty correct in contour;\nbut they are wretchedly engraved. That is not his fault though.\n\nOf the Right Whale, the best outline pictures are in Scoresby; but they\nare drawn on too small a scale to convey a desirable impression. He has\nbut one picture of whaling scenes, and this is a sad deficiency,\nbecause it is by such pictures only, when at all well done, that you\ncan derive anything like a truthful idea of the living whale as seen by\nhis living hunters.\n\nBut, taken for all in all, by far the finest, though in some details\nnot the most correct, presentations of whales and whaling scenes to be\nanywhere found, are two large French engravings, well executed, and\ntaken from paintings by one Garnery. Respectively, they represent\nattacks on the Sperm and Right Whale. In the first engraving a noble\nSperm Whale is depicted in full majesty of might, just risen beneath\nthe boat from the profundities of the ocean, and bearing high in the\nair upon his back the terrific wreck of the stoven planks. The prow of\nthe boat is partially unbroken, and is drawn just balancing upon the\nmonster\u2019s spine; and standing in that prow, for that one single\nincomputable flash of time, you behold an oarsman, half shrouded by the\nincensed boiling spout of the whale, and in the act of leaping, as if\nfrom a precipice. The action of the whole thing is wonderfully good and\ntrue. The half-emptied line-tub floats on the whitened sea; the wooden\npoles of the spilled harpoons obliquely bob in it; the heads of the\nswimming crew are scattered about the whale in contrasting expressions\nof affright; while in the black stormy distance the ship is bearing\ndown upon the scene. Serious fault might be found with the anatomical\ndetails of this whale, but let that pass; since, for the life of me, I\ncould not draw so good a one.\n\nIn the second engraving, the boat is in the act of drawing alongside\nthe barnacled flank of a large running Right Whale, that rolls his\nblack weedy bulk in the sea like some mossy rock-slide from the\nPatagonian cliffs. His jets are erect, full, and black like soot; so\nthat from so abounding a smoke in the chimney, you would think there\nmust be a brave supper cooking in the great bowels below. Sea fowls are\npecking at the small crabs, shell-fish, and other sea candies and\nmaccaroni, which the Right Whale sometimes carries on his pestilent\nback. And all the while the thick-lipped leviathan is rushing through\nthe deep, leaving tons of tumultuous white curds in his wake, and\ncausing the slight boat to rock in the swells like a skiff caught nigh\nthe paddle-wheels of an ocean steamer. Thus, the foreground is all\nraging commotion; but behind, in admirable artistic contrast, is the\nglassy level of a sea becalmed, the drooping unstarched sails of the\npowerless ship, and the inert mass of a dead whale, a conquered\nfortress, with the flag of capture lazily hanging from the whale-pole\ninserted into his spout-hole.\n\nWho Garnery the painter is, or was, I know not. But my life for it he\nwas either practically conversant with his subject, or else\nmarvellously tutored by some experienced whaleman. The French are the\nlads for painting action. Go and gaze upon all the paintings of Europe,\nand where will you find such a gallery of living and breathing\ncommotion on canvas, as in that triumphal hall at Versailles; where the\nbeholder fights his way, pell-mell, through the consecutive great\nbattles of France; where every sword seems a flash of the Northern\nLights, and the successive armed kings and Emperors dash by, like a\ncharge of crowned centaurs? Not wholly unworthy of a place in that\ngallery, are these sea battle-pieces of Garnery.\n\nThe natural aptitude of the French for seizing the picturesqueness of\nthings seems to be peculiarly evinced in what paintings and engravings\nthey have of their whaling scenes. With not one tenth of England\u2019s\nexperience in the fishery, and not the thousandth part of that of the\nAmericans, they have nevertheless furnished both nations with the only\nfinished sketches at all capable of conveying the real spirit of the\nwhale hunt. For the most part, the English and American whale\ndraughtsmen seem entirely content with presenting the mechanical\noutline of things, such as the vacant profile of the whale; which, so\nfar as picturesqueness of effect is concerned, is about tantamount to\nsketching the profile of a pyramid. Even Scoresby, the justly renowned\nRight whaleman, after giving us a stiff full length of the Greenland\nwhale, and three or four delicate miniatures of narwhales and\nporpoises, treats us to a series of classical engravings of boat hooks,\nchopping knives, and grapnels; and with the microscopic diligence of a\nLeuwenhoeck submits to the inspection of a shivering world ninety-six\nfac-similes of magnified Arctic snow crystals. I mean no disparagement\nto the excellent voyager (I honor him for a veteran), but in so\nimportant a matter it was certainly an oversight not to have procured\nfor every crystal a sworn affidavit taken before a Greenland Justice of\nthe Peace.\n\nIn addition to those fine engravings from Garnery, there are two other\nFrench engravings worthy of note, by some one who subscribes himself\n\u201cH. Durand.\u201d One of them, though not precisely adapted to our present\npurpose, nevertheless deserves mention on other accounts. It is a quiet\nnoon-scene among the isles of the Pacific; a French whaler anchored,\ninshore, in a calm, and lazily taking water on board; the loosened\nsails of the ship, and the long leaves of the palms in the background,\nboth drooping together in the breezeless air. The effect is very fine,\nwhen considered with reference to its presenting the hardy fishermen\nunder one of their few aspects of oriental repose. The other engraving\nis quite a different affair: the ship hove-to upon the open sea, and in\nthe very heart of the Leviathanic life, with a Right Whale alongside;\nthe vessel (in the act of cutting-in) hove over to the monster as if to\na quay; and a boat, hurriedly pushing off from this scene of activity,\nis about giving chase to whales in the distance. The harpoons and\nlances lie levelled for use; three oarsmen are just setting the mast in\nits hole; while from a sudden roll of the sea, the little craft stands\nhalf-erect out of the water, like a rearing horse. From the ship, the\nsmoke of the torments of the boiling whale is going up like the smoke\nover a village of smithies; and to windward, a black cloud, rising up\nwith earnest of squalls and rains, seems to quicken the activity of the\nexcited seamen.\n\n\nCHAPTER 57. Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in\nStone; in Mountains; in Stars.\n\nOn Tower-hill, as you go down to the London docks, you may have seen a\ncrippled beggar (or _kedger_, as the sailors say) holding a painted\nboard before him, representing the tragic scene in which he lost his\nleg. There are three whales and three boats; and one of the boats\n(presumed to contain the missing leg in all its original integrity) is\nbeing crunched by the jaws of the foremost whale. Any time these ten\nyears, they tell me, has that man held up that picture, and exhibited\nthat stump to an incredulous world. But the time of his justification\nhas now come. His three whales are as good whales as were ever\npublished in Wapping, at any rate; and his stump as unquestionable a\nstump as any you will find in the western clearings. But, though for\never mounted on that stump, never a stump-speech does the poor whaleman\nmake; but, with downcast eyes, stands ruefully contemplating his own\namputation.\n\nThroughout the Pacific, and also in Nantucket, and New Bedford, and Sag\nHarbor, you will come across lively sketches of whales and\nwhaling-scenes, graven by the fishermen themselves on Sperm\nWhale-teeth, or ladies\u2019 busks wrought out of the Right Whale-bone, and\nother like skrimshander articles, as the whalemen call the numerous\nlittle ingenious contrivances they elaborately carve out of the rough\nmaterial, in their hours of ocean leisure. Some of them have little\nboxes of dentistical-looking implements, specially intended for the\nskrimshandering business. But, in general, they toil with their\njack-knives alone; and, with that almost omnipotent tool of the sailor,\nthey will turn you out anything you please, in the way of a mariner\u2019s\nfancy.\n\nLong exile from Christendom and civilization inevitably restores a man\nto that condition in which God placed him, _i.e._ what is called\nsavagery. Your true whale-hunter is as much a savage as an Iroquois. I\nmyself am a savage, owning no allegiance but to the King of the\nCannibals; and ready at any moment to rebel against him.\n\nNow, one of the peculiar characteristics of the savage in his domestic\nhours, is his wonderful patience of industry. An ancient Hawaiian\nwar-club or spear-paddle, in its full multiplicity and elaboration of\ncarving, is as great a trophy of human perseverance as a Latin lexicon.\nFor, with but a bit of broken sea-shell or a shark\u2019s tooth, that\nmiraculous intricacy of wooden net-work has been achieved; and it has\ncost steady years of steady application.\n\nAs with the Hawaiian savage, so with the white sailor-savage. With the\nsame marvellous patience, and with the same single shark\u2019s tooth, of\nhis one poor jack-knife, he will carve you a bit of bone sculpture, not\nquite as workmanlike, but as close packed in its maziness of design, as\nthe Greek savage, Achilles\u2019s shield; and full of barbaric spirit and\nsuggestiveness, as the prints of that fine old Dutch savage, Albert\nDurer.\n\nWooden whales, or whales cut in profile out of the small dark slabs of\nthe noble South Sea war-wood, are frequently met with in the\nforecastles of American whalers. Some of them are done with much\naccuracy.\n\nAt some old gable-roofed country houses you will see brass whales hung\nby the tail for knockers to the road-side door. When the porter is\nsleepy, the anvil-headed whale would be best. But these knocking whales\nare seldom remarkable as faithful essays. On the spires of some\nold-fashioned churches you will see sheet-iron whales placed there for\nweather-cocks; but they are so elevated, and besides that are to all\nintents and purposes so labelled with \u201c_Hands off!_\u201d you cannot examine\nthem closely enough to decide upon their merit.\n\nIn bony, ribby regions of the earth, where at the base of high broken\ncliffs masses of rock lie strewn in fantastic groupings upon the plain,\nyou will often discover images as of the petrified forms of the\nLeviathan partly merged in grass, which of a windy day breaks against\nthem in a surf of green surges.\n\nThen, again, in mountainous countries where the traveller is\ncontinually girdled by amphitheatrical heights; here and there from\nsome lucky point of view you will catch passing glimpses of the\nprofiles of whales defined along the undulating ridges. But you must be\na thorough whaleman, to see these sights; and not only that, but if you\nwish to return to such a sight again, you must be sure and take the\nexact intersecting latitude and longitude of your first stand-point,\nelse so chance-like are such observations of the hills, that your\nprecise, previous stand-point would require a laborious re-discovery;\nlike the Soloma Islands, which still remain incognita, though once\nhigh-ruffed Mendanna trod them and old Figuera chronicled them.\n\nNor when expandingly lifted by your subject, can you fail to trace out\ngreat whales in the starry heavens, and boats in pursuit of them; as\nwhen long filled with thoughts of war the Eastern nations saw armies\nlocked in battle among the clouds. Thus at the North have I chased\nLeviathan round and round the Pole with the revolutions of the bright\npoints that first defined him to me. And beneath the effulgent\nAntarctic skies I have boarded the Argo-Navis, and joined the chase\nagainst the starry Cetus far beyond the utmost stretch of Hydrus and\nthe Flying Fish.\n\nWith a frigate\u2019s anchors for my bridle-bitts and fasces of harpoons for\nspurs, would I could mount that whale and leap the topmost skies, to\nsee whether the fabled heavens with all their countless tents really\nlie encamped beyond my mortal sight!\n\n\nCHAPTER 58. Brit.\n\nSteering north-eastward from the Crozetts, we fell in with vast meadows\nof brit, the minute, yellow substance, upon which the Right Whale\nlargely feeds. For leagues and leagues it undulated round us, so that\nwe seemed to be sailing through boundless fields of ripe and golden\nwheat.\n\nOn the second day, numbers of Right Whales were seen, who, secure from\nthe attack of a Sperm Whaler like the Talitha, with open jaws sluggishly\nswam through the brit, which, adhering to the fringing fibres of that\nwondrous Venetian blind in their mouths, was in that manner separated\nfrom the water that escaped at the lip.\n\nAs morning mowers, who side by side slowly and seethingly advance their\nscythes through the long wet grass of marshy meads; even so these\nmonsters swam, making a strange, grassy, cutting sound; and leaving\nbehind them endless swaths of blue upon the yellow sea.*\n\n*That part of the sea known among whalemen as the \u201cBrazil Banks\u201d does\nnot bear that name as the Banks of Newfoundland do, because of there\nbeing shallows and soundings there, but because of this remarkable\nmeadow-like appearance, caused by the vast drifts of brit continually\nfloating in those latitudes, where the Right Whale is often chased.\n\nBut it was only the sound they made as they parted the brit which at\nall reminded one of mowers. Seen from the mast-heads, especially when\nthey paused and were stationary for a while, their vast black forms\nlooked more like lifeless masses of rock than anything else. And as in\nthe great hunting countries of India, the stranger at a distance will\nsometimes pass on the plains recumbent elephants without knowing them\nto be such, taking them for bare, blackened elevations of the soil;\neven so, often, with him, who for the first time beholds this species\nof the leviathans of the sea. And even when recognised at last, their\nimmense magnitude renders it very hard really to believe that such\nbulky masses of overgrowth can possibly be instinct, in all parts, with\nthe same sort of life that lives in a dog or a horse.\n\nIndeed, in other respects, you can hardly regard any creatures of the\ndeep with the same feelings that you do those of the shore. For though\nsome old naturalists have maintained that all creatures of the land are\nof their kind in the sea; and though taking a broad general view of the\nthing, this may very well be; yet coming to specialties, where, for\nexample, does the ocean furnish any fish that in disposition answers to\nthe sagacious kindness of the dog? The accursed shark alone can in any\ngeneric respect be said to bear comparative analogy to him.\n\nBut though, to landsmen in general, the native inhabitants of the seas\nhave ever been regarded with emotions unspeakably unsocial and\nrepelling; though we know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita,\nso that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his\none superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of\nall mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen\ntens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters;\nthough but a moment\u2019s consideration will teach, that however baby man\nmay brag of his science and skill, and however much, in a flattering\nfuture, that science and skill may augment; yet for ever and for ever,\nto the crack of doom, the sea will insult and murder him, and pulverize\nthe stateliest, stiffest frigate he can make; nevertheless, by the\ncontinual repetition of these very impressions, man has lost that sense\nof the full awfulness of the sea which aboriginally belongs to it.\n\nThe first boat we read of, floated on an ocean, that with Portuguese\nvengeance had whelmed a whole world without leaving so much as a widow.\nThat same ocean rolls now; that same ocean destroyed the wrecked ships\nof last year. Yea, foolish mortals, Noah\u2019s flood is not yet subsided;\ntwo thirds of the fair world it yet covers.\n\nWherein differ the sea and the land, that a miracle upon one is not a\nmiracle upon the other? Preternatural terrors rested upon the Hebrews,\nwhen under the feet of Korah and his company the live ground opened and\nswallowed them up for ever; yet not a modern sun ever sets, but in\nprecisely the same manner the live sea swallows up ships and crews.\n\nBut not only is the sea such a foe to man who is an alien to it, but it\nis also a fiend to its own off-spring; worse than the Persian host who\nmurdered his own guests; sparing not the creatures which itself hath\nspawned. Like a savage tigress that tossing in the jungle overlays her\nown cubs, so the sea dashes even the mightiest whales against the\nrocks, and leaves them there side by side with the split wrecks of\nships. No mercy, no power but its own controls it. Panting and snorting\nlike a mad battle steed that has lost its rider, the masterless ocean\noverruns the globe.\n\nConsider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures\nglide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously\nhidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish\nbrilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the\ndainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once\nmore, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey\nupon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.\n\nConsider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile\nearth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a\nstrange analogy to something in yourself? For as this appalling ocean\nsurrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one\ninsular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the\nhorrors of the half known life. God keep thee! Push not off from that\nisle, thou canst never return!\n\n\nCHAPTER 59. Squid.\n\nSlowly wading through the meadows of brit, the Talitha still held on her\nway north-eastward towards the island of Java; a gentle air impelling\nher keel, so that in the surrounding serenity her three tall tapering\nmasts mildly waved to that languid breeze, as three mild palms on a\nplain. And still, at wide intervals in the silvery night, the lonely,\nalluring jet would be seen.\n\nBut one transparent blue morning, when a stillness almost preternatural\nspread over the sea, however unattended with any stagnant calm; when\nthe long burnished sun-glade on the waters seemed a golden finger laid\nacross them, enjoining some secrecy; when the slippered waves whispered\ntogether as they softly ran on; in this profound hush of the visible\nsphere a strange spectre was seen by Daggoo from the main-mast-head.\n\nIn the distance, a great white mass lazily rose, and rising higher and\nhigher, and disentangling itself from the azure, at last gleamed before\nour prow like a snow-slide, new slid from the hills. Thus glistening\nfor a moment, as slowly it subsided, and sank. Then once more arose,\nand silently gleamed. It seemed not a whale; and yet is this Kelsey Primrose?\nthought Daggoo. Again the phantom went down, but on re-appearing once\nmore, with a stiletto-like cry that startled every man from his nod,\nthe negro yelled out\u2014\u201cThere! there again! there she breaches! right\nahead! The White Whale, the White Whale!\u201d\n\nUpon this, the seamen rushed to the yard-arms, as in swarming-time the\nbees rush to the boughs. Bare-headed in the sultry sun, Jordyn stood on\nthe bowsprit, and with one hand pushed far behind in readiness to wave\nhis orders to the helmsman, cast his eager glance in the direction\nindicated aloft by the outstretched motionless arm of Daggoo.\n\nWhether the flitting attendance of the one still and solitary jet had\ngradually worked upon Jordyn, so that he was now prepared to connect the\nideas of mildness and repose with the first sight of the particular\nwhale he pursued; however this was, or whether his eagerness betrayed\nhim; whichever way it might have been, no sooner did he distinctly\nperceive the white mass, than with a quick intensity he instantly gave\norders for lowering.\n\nThe four boats were soon on the water; Jordyn\u2019s in advance, and all\nswiftly pulling towards their prey. Soon it went down, and while, with\noars suspended, we were awaiting its reappearance, lo! in the same spot\nwhere it sank, once more it slowly rose. Almost forgetting for the\nmoment all thoughts of Kelsey Primrose, we now gazed at the most wondrous\nphenomenon which the secret seas have hitherto revealed to mankind. A\nvast pulpy mass, furlongs in length and breadth, of a glancing\ncream-colour, lay floating on the water, innumerable long arms\nradiating from its centre, and curling and twisting like a nest of\nanacondas, as if blindly to clutch at any hapless object within reach.\nNo perceptible face or front did it have; no conceivable token of\neither sensation or instinct; but undulated there on the billows, an\nunearthly, formless, chance-like apparition of life.\n\nAs with a low sucking sound it slowly disappeared again, Starbuck still\ngazing at the agitated waters where it had sunk, with a wild voice\nexclaimed\u2014\u201cAlmost rather had I seen Kelsey Primrose and fought him, than to\nhave seen thee, thou white ghost!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat was it, Sir?\u201d said Avery.\n\n\u201cThe great live squid, which, they say, few whale-ships ever beheld,\nand returned to their ports to tell of it.\u201d\n\nBut Jordyn said nothing; turning his boat, he sailed back to the vessel;\nthe rest as silently following.\n\nWhatever superstitions the sperm whalemen in general have connected\nwith the sight of this object, certain it is, that a glimpse of it\nbeing so very unusual, that circumstance has gone far to invest it with\nportentousness. So rarely is it beheld, that though one and all of them\ndeclare it to be the largest animated thing in the ocean, yet very few\nof them have any but the most vague ideas concerning its true nature\nand form; notwithstanding, they believe it to furnish to the sperm\nwhale his only food. For though other species of whales find their food\nabove water, and may be seen by man in the act of feeding, the\nspermaceti whale obtains his whole food in unknown zones below the\nsurface; and only by inference is it that any one can tell of what,\nprecisely, that food consists. At times, when closely pursued, he will\ndisgorge what are supposed to be the detached arms of the squid; some\nof them thus exhibited exceeding twenty and thirty feet in length. They\nfancy that the monster to which these arms belonged ordinarily clings\nby them to the bed of the ocean; and that the sperm whale, unlike other\nspecies, is supplied with teeth in order to attack and tear it.\n\nThere seems some ground to imagine that the great Kraken of Bishop\nPontoppodan may ultimately resolve itself into Squid. The manner in\nwhich the Bishop describes it, as alternately rising and sinking, with\nsome other particulars he narrates, in all this the two correspond. But\nmuch abatement is necessary with respect to the incredible bulk he\nassigns it.\n\nBy some naturalists who have vaguely heard rumors of the mysterious\ncreature, here spoken of, it is included among the class of\ncuttle-fish, to which, indeed, in certain external respects it would\nseem to belong, but only as the Anak of the tribe.\n\n\nCHAPTER 60. The Line.\n\nWith reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as\nfor the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented,\nI have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line.\n\nThe line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly\nvapored with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary\nropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable\nto the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to\nthe sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary\nquantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which\nit must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in\ngeneral by no means adds to the rope\u2019s durability or strength, however\nmuch it may give it compactness and gloss.\n\nOf late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost\nentirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not\nso durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and\nI will add (since there is an \u00e6sthetics in all things), is much more\nhandsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark\nfellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian\nto behold.\n\nThe whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first\nsight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment\nits one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and\ntwenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal\nto three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures\nsomething over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is\nspirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still\nthough, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely\nbedded \u201csheaves,\u201d or layers of concentric spiralizations, without any\nhollow but the \u201cheart,\u201d or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of\nthe cheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in\nrunning out, infallibly take somebody\u2019s arm, leg, or entire body off,\nthe utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub. Some\nharpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this business,\ncarrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a\nblock towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all\npossible wrinkles and twists.\n\nIn the English boats two tubs are used instead of one; the same line\nbeing continuously coiled in both tubs. There is some advantage in\nthis; because these twin-tubs being so small they fit more readily into\nthe boat, and do not strain it so much; whereas, the American tub,\nnearly three feet in diameter and of proportionate depth, makes a\nrather bulky freight for a craft whose planks are but one half-inch in\nthickness; for the bottom of the whale-boat is like critical ice, which\nwill bear up a considerable distributed weight, but not very much of a\nconcentrated one. When the painted canvas cover is clapped on the\nAmerican line-tub, the boat looks as if it were pulling off with a\nprodigious great wedding-cake to present to the whales.\n\nBoth ends of the line are exposed; the lower end terminating in an\neye-splice or loop coming up from the bottom against the side of the\ntub, and hanging over its edge completely disengaged from everything.\nThis arrangement of the lower end is necessary on two accounts. First:\nIn order to facilitate the fastening to it of an additional line from a\nneighboring boat, in case the stricken whale should sound so deep as to\nthreaten to carry off the entire line originally attached to the\nharpoon. In these instances, the whale of course is shifted like a mug\nof ale, as it were, from the one boat to the other; though the first\nboat always hovers at hand to assist its consort. Second: This\narrangement is indispensable for common safety\u2019s sake; for were the\nlower end of the line in any way attached to the boat, and were the\nwhale then to run the line out to the end almost in a single, smoking\nminute as he sometimes does, he would not stop there, for the doomed\nboat would infallibly be dragged down after him into the profundity of\nthe sea; and in that case no town-crier would ever find her again.\n\nBefore lowering the boat for the chase, the upper end of the line is\ntaken aft from the tub, and passing round the loggerhead there, is\nagain carried forward the entire length of the boat, resting crosswise\nupon the loom or handle of every man\u2019s oar, so that it jogs against his\nwrist in rowing; and also passing between the men, as they alternately\nsit at the opposite gunwales, to the leaded chocks or grooves in the\nextreme pointed prow of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer the size\nof a common quill, prevents it from slipping out. From the chocks it\nhangs in a slight festoon over the bows, and is then passed inside the\nboat again; and some ten or twenty fathoms (called box-line) being\ncoiled upon the box in the bows, it continues its way to the gunwale\nstill a little further aft, and is then attached to the short-warp\u2014the\nrope which is immediately connected with the harpoon; but previous to\nthat connexion, the short-warp goes through sundry mystifications too\ntedious to detail.\n\nThus the whale-line folds the whole boat in its complicated coils,\ntwisting and writhing around it in almost every direction. All the\noarsmen are involved in its perilous contortions; so that to the timid\neye of the landsman, they seem as Indian jugglers, with the deadliest\nsnakes sportively festooning their limbs. Nor can any son of mortal\nwoman, for the first time, seat himself amid those hempen intricacies,\nand while straining his utmost at the oar, bethink him that at any\nunknown instant the harpoon may be darted, and all these horrible\ncontortions be put in play like ringed lightnings; he cannot be thus\ncircumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones\nto quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit\u2014strange thing! what\ncannot habit accomplish?\u2014Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes,\nand brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you\nwill hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus\nhung in hangman\u2019s nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before\nKing Edward, the six men composing the crew pull into the jaws of\ndeath, with a halter around every neck, as you may say.\n\nPerhaps a very little thought will now enable you to account for those\nrepeated whaling disasters\u2014some few of which are casually chronicled\u2014of\nthis man or that man being taken out of the boat by the line, and lost.\nFor, when the line is darting out, to be seated then in the boat, is\nlike being seated in the midst of the manifold whizzings of a\nsteam-engine in full play, when every flying beam, and shaft, and\nwheel, is grazing you. It is worse; for you cannot sit motionless in\nthe heart of these perils, because the boat is rocking like a cradle,\nand you are pitched one way and the other, without the slightest\nwarning; and only by a certain self-adjusting buoyancy and\nsimultaneousness of volition and action, can you escape being made a\nMazeppa of, and run away with where the all-seeing sun himself could\nnever pierce you out.\n\nAgain: as the profound calm which only apparently precedes and\nprophesies of the storm, is perhaps more awful than the storm itself;\nfor, indeed, the calm is but the wrapper and envelope of the storm; and\ncontains it in itself, as the seemingly harmless rifle holds the fatal\npowder, and the ball, and the explosion; so the graceful repose of the\nline, as it silently serpentines about the oarsmen before being brought\ninto actual play\u2014this is a thing which carries more of true terror than\nany other aspect of this dangerous affair. But why say more? All men\nlive enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their\nnecks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death,\nthat mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.\nAnd if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would\nnot at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before\nyour evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side.\n\n\nCHAPTER 61. Salvador Kills a Whale.\n\nIf to Starbuck the apparition of the Squid was a thing of portents, to\nHoratio it was quite a different object.\n\n\u201cWhen you see him \u2019quid,\u201d said the savage, honing his harpoon in the\nbow of his hoisted boat, \u201cthen you quick see him \u2019parm whale.\u201d\n\nThe next day was exceedingly still and sultry, and with nothing special\nto engage them, the Talitha\u2019s crew could hardly resist the spell of\nsleep induced by such a vacant sea. For this part of the Indian Ocean\nthrough which we then were voyaging is not what whalemen call a lively\nground; that is, it affords fewer glimpses of porpoises, dolphins,\nflying-fish, and other vivacious denizens of more stirring waters, than\nthose off the Rio de la Plata, or the in-shore ground off Peru.\n\nIt was my turn to stand at the foremast-head; and with my shoulders\nleaning against the slackened royal shrouds, to and fro I idly swayed\nin what seemed an enchanted air. No resolution could withstand it; in\nthat dreamy mood losing all consciousness, at last my soul went out of\nmy body; though my body still continued to sway as a pendulum will,\nlong after the power which first moved it is withdrawn.\n\nEre forgetfulness altogether came over me, I had noticed that the\nseamen at the main and mizzen-mast-heads were already drowsy. So that\nat last all three of us lifelessly swung from the spars, and for every\nswing that we made there was a nod from below from the slumbering\nhelmsman. The waves, too, nodded their indolent crests; and across the\nwide trance of the sea, east nodded to west, and the sun over all.\n\nSuddenly bubbles seemed bursting beneath my closed eyes; like vices my\nhands grasped the shrouds; some invisible, gracious agency preserved\nme; with a shock I came back to life. And lo! close under our lee, not\nforty fathoms off, a gigantic Sperm Whale lay rolling in the water like\nthe capsized hull of a frigate, his broad, glossy back, of an Ethiopian\nhue, glistening in the sun\u2019s rays like a mirror. But lazily undulating\nin the trough of the sea, and ever and anon tranquilly spouting his\nvapory jet, the whale looked like a portly burgher smoking his pipe of\na warm afternoon. But that pipe, poor whale, was thy last. As if struck\nby some enchanter\u2019s wand, the sleepy ship and every sleeper in it all\nat once started into wakefulness; and more than a score of voices from\nall parts of the vessel, simultaneously with the three notes from\naloft, shouted forth the accustomed cry, as the great fish slowly and\nregularly spouted the sparkling brine into the air.\n\n\u201cClear away the boats! Luff!\u201d cried Jordyn. And obeying his own order, he\ndashed the helm down before the helmsman could handle the spokes.\n\nThe sudden exclamations of the crew must have alarmed the whale; and\nere the boats were down, majestically turning, he swam away to the\nleeward, but with such a steady tranquillity, and making so few ripples\nas he swam, that thinking after all he might not as yet be alarmed,\nJordyn gave orders that not an oar should be used, and no man must speak\nbut in whispers. So seated like Ontario Indians on the gunwales of the\nboats, we swiftly but silently paddled along; the calm not admitting of\nthe noiseless sails being set. Presently, as we thus glided in chase,\nthe monster perpendicularly flitted his tail forty feet into the air,\nand then sank out of sight like a tower swallowed up.\n\n\u201cThere go flukes!\u201d was the cry, an announcement immediately followed by\nSalvador\u2019s producing his match and igniting his pipe, for now a respite\nwas granted. After the full interval of his sounding had elapsed, the\nwhale rose again, and being now in advance of the smoker\u2019s boat, and\nmuch nearer to it than to any of the others, Salvador counted upon the\nhonor of the capture. It was obvious, now, that the whale had at length\nbecome aware of his pursuers. All silence of cautiousness was therefore\nno longer of use. Paddles were dropped, and oars came loudly into play.\nAnd still puffing at his pipe, Salvador cheered on his crew to the\nassault.\n\nYes, a mighty change had come over the fish. All alive to his jeopardy,\nhe was going \u201chead out\u201d; that part obliquely projecting from the mad\nyeast which he brewed.*\n\n*It will be seen in some other place of what a very light substance the\nentire interior of the sperm whale\u2019s enormous head consists. Though\napparently the most massive, it is by far the most buoyant part about\nhim. So that with ease he elevates it in the air, and invariably does\nso when going at his utmost speed. Besides, such is the breadth of the\nupper part of the front of his head, and such the tapering cut-water\nformation of the lower part, that by obliquely elevating his head, he\nthereby may be said to transform himself from a bluff-bowed sluggish\ngalliot into a sharppointed New York pilot-boat.\n\n\u201cStart her, start her, my men! Don\u2019t hurry yourselves; take plenty of\ntime\u2014but start her; start her like thunder-claps, that\u2019s all,\u201d cried\nSalvador, spluttering out the smoke as he spoke. \u201cStart her, now; give \u2019em\nthe long and strong stroke, Tashtego. Start her, Tash, my boy\u2014start\nher, all; but keep cool, keep cool\u2014cucumbers is the word\u2014easy,\neasy\u2014only start her like grim death and grinning devils, and raise the\nburied dead perpendicular out of their graves, boys\u2014that\u2019s all. Start\nher!\u201d\n\n\u201cWoo-hoo! Wa-hee!\u201d screamed the Gay-Header in reply, raising some old\nwar-whoop to the skies; as every oarsman in the strained boat\ninvoluntarily bounced forward with the one tremendous leading stroke\nwhich the eager Indian gave.\n\nBut his wild screams were answered by others quite as wild. \u201cKee-hee!\nKee-hee!\u201d yelled Daggoo, straining forwards and backwards on his seat,\nlike a pacing tiger in his cage.\n\n\u201cKa-la! Koo-loo!\u201d howled Horatio, as if smacking his lips over a\nmouthful of Grenadier\u2019s steak. And thus with oars and yells the keels\ncut the sea. Meanwhile, Salvador retaining his place in the van, still\nencouraged his men to the onset, all the while puffing the smoke from\nhis mouth. Like desperadoes they tugged and they strained, till the\nwelcome cry was heard\u2014\u201cStand up, Tashtego!\u2014give it to him!\u201d The harpoon\nwas hurled. \u201cStern all!\u201d The oarsmen backed water; the same moment\nsomething went hot and hissing along every one of their wrists. It was\nthe magical line. An instant before, Salvador had swiftly caught two\nadditional turns with it round the loggerhead, whence, by reason of its\nincreased rapid circlings, a hempen blue smoke now jetted up and\nmingled with the steady fumes from his pipe. As the line passed round\nand round the loggerhead; so also, just before reaching that point, it\nblisteringly passed through and through both of Salvador\u2019s hands, from\nwhich the hand-cloths, or squares of quilted canvas sometimes worn at\nthese times, had accidentally dropped. It was like holding an enemy\u2019s\nsharp two-edged sword by the blade, and that enemy all the time\nstriving to wrest it out of your clutch.\n\n\u201cWet the line! wet the line!\u201d cried Salvador to the tub oarsman (him\nseated by the tub) who, snatching off his hat, dashed sea-water into\nit.* More turns were taken, so that the line began holding its place.\nThe boat now flew through the boiling water like a shark all fins.\nSalvador and Tashtego here changed places\u2014stem for stern\u2014a staggering\nbusiness truly in that rocking commotion.\n\n*Partly to show the indispensableness of this act, it may here be\nstated, that, in the old Dutch fishery, a mop was used to dash the\nrunning line with water; in many other ships, a wooden piggin, or\nbailer, is set apart for that purpose. Your hat, however, is the most\nconvenient.\n\nFrom the vibrating line extending the entire length of the upper part\nof the boat, and from its now being more tight than a harpstring, you\nwould have thought the craft had two keels\u2014one cleaving the water, the\nother the air\u2014as the boat churned on through both opposing elements at\nonce. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy\nin her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a\nlittle finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic\ngunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main\nclinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall\nform of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order\nto bring down his centre of gravity. Whole Atlantics and Pacifics\nseemed passed as they shot on their way, till at length the whale\nsomewhat slackened his flight.\n\n\u201cHaul in\u2014haul in!\u201d cried Salvador to the bowsman! and, facing round\ntowards the whale, all hands began pulling the boat up to him, while\nyet the boat was being towed on. Soon ranging up by his flank, Salvador,\nfirmly planting his knee in the clumsy cleat, darted dart after dart\ninto the flying fish; at the word of command, the boat alternately\nsterning out of the way of the whale\u2019s horrible wallow, and then\nranging up for another fling.\n\nThe red tide now poured from all sides of the monster like brooks down\na hill. His tormented body rolled not in brine but in blood, which\nbubbled and seethed for furlongs behind in their wake. The slanting sun\nplaying upon this crimson pond in the sea, sent back its reflection\ninto every face, so that they all glowed to each other like red men.\nAnd all the while, jet after jet of white smoke was agonizingly shot\nfrom the spiracle of the whale, and vehement puff after puff from the\nmouth of the excited headsman; as at every dart, hauling in upon his\ncrooked lance (by the line attached to it), Salvador straightened it again\nand again, by a few rapid blows against the gunwale, then again and\nagain sent it into the whale.\n\n\u201cPull up\u2014pull up!\u201d he now cried to the bowsman, as the waning whale\nrelaxed in his wrath. \u201cPull up!\u2014close to!\u201d and the boat ranged along\nthe fish\u2019s flank. When reaching far over the bow, Salvador slowly churned\nhis long sharp lance into the fish, and kept it there, carefully\nchurning and churning, as if cautiously seeking to feel after some gold\nwatch that the whale might have swallowed, and which he was fearful of\nbreaking ere he could hook it out. But that gold watch he sought was\nthe innermost life of the fish. And now it is struck; for, starting\nfrom his trance into that unspeakable thing called his \u201cflurry,\u201d the\nmonster horribly wallowed in his blood, overwrapped himself in\nimpenetrable, mad, boiling spray, so that the imperilled craft,\ninstantly dropping astern, had much ado blindly to struggle out from\nthat phrensied twilight into the clear air of the day.\n\nAnd now abating in his flurry, the whale once more rolled out into\nview; surging from side to side; spasmodically dilating and contracting\nhis spout-hole, with sharp, cracking, agonized respirations. At last,\ngush after gush of clotted red gore, as if it had been the purple lees\nof red wine, shot into the frighted air; and falling back again, ran\ndripping down his motionless flanks into the sea. His heart had burst!\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s dead, Mr. Salvador,\u201d said Daggoo.\n\n\u201cYes; both pipes smoked out!\u201d and withdrawing his own from his mouth,\nSalvador scattered the dead ashes over the water; and, for a moment, stood\nthoughtfully eyeing the vast corpse he had made.\n\n\nCHAPTER 62. The Dart.\n\nA word concerning an incident in the last chapter.\n\nAccording to the invariable usage of the fishery, the whale-boat pushes\noff from the ship, with the headsman or whale-killer as temporary\nsteersman, and the harpooneer or whale-fastener pulling the foremost\noar, the one known as the harpooneer-oar. Now it needs a strong,\nnervous arm to strike the first iron into the fish; for often, in what\nis called a long dart, the heavy implement has to be flung to the\ndistance of twenty or thirty feet. But however prolonged and exhausting\nthe chase, the harpooneer is expected to pull his oar meanwhile to the\nuttermost; indeed, he is expected to set an example of superhuman\nactivity to the rest, not only by incredible rowing, but by repeated\nloud and intrepid exclamations; and what it is to keep shouting at the\ntop of one\u2019s compass, while all the other muscles are strained and half\nstarted\u2014what that is none know but those who have tried it. For one, I\ncannot bawl very heartily and work very recklessly at one and the same\ntime. In this straining, bawling state, then, with his back to the\nfish, all at once the exhausted harpooneer hears the exciting\ncry\u2014\u201cStand up, and give it to him!\u201d He now has to drop and secure his\noar, turn round on his centre half way, seize his harpoon from the\ncrotch, and with what little strength may remain, he essays to pitch it\nsomehow into the whale. No wonder, taking the whole fleet of whalemen\nin a body, that out of fifty fair chances for a dart, not five are\nsuccessful; no wonder that so many hapless harpooneers are madly cursed\nand disrated; no wonder that some of them actually burst their\nblood-vessels in the boat; no wonder that some sperm whalemen are\nabsent four years with four barrels; no wonder that to many ship\nowners, whaling is but a losing concern; for it is the harpooneer that\nmakes the voyage, and if you take the breath out of his body how can\nyou expect to find it there when most wanted!\n\nAgain, if the dart be successful, then at the second critical instant,\nthat is, when the whale starts to run, the boatheader and harpooneer\nlikewise start to running fore and aft, to the imminent jeopardy of\nthemselves and every one else. It is then they change places; and the\nheadsman, the chief officer of the little craft, takes his proper\nstation in the bows of the boat.\n\nNow, I care not who maintains the contrary, but all this is both\nfoolish and unnecessary. The headsman should stay in the bows from\nfirst to last; he should both dart the harpoon and the lance, and no\nrowing whatever should be expected of him, except under circumstances\nobvious to any fisherman. I know that this would sometimes involve a\nslight loss of speed in the chase; but long experience in various\nwhalemen of more than one nation has convinced me that in the vast\nmajority of failures in the fishery, it has not by any means been so\nmuch the speed of the whale as the before described exhaustion of the\nharpooneer that has caused them.\n\nTo insure the greatest efficiency in the dart, the harpooneers of this\nworld must start to their feet from out of idleness, and not from out\nof toil.\n\n\nCHAPTER 63. The Crotch.\n\nOut of the trunk, the branches grow; out of them, the twigs. So, in\nproductive subjects, grow the chapters.\n\nThe crotch alluded to on a previous page deserves independent mention.\nIt is a notched stick of a peculiar form, some two feet in length,\nwhich is perpendicularly inserted into the starboard gunwale near the\nbow, for the purpose of furnishing a rest for the wooden extremity of\nthe harpoon, whose other naked, barbed end slopingly projects from the\nprow. Thereby the weapon is instantly at hand to its hurler, who\nsnatches it up as readily from its rest as a backwoodsman swings his\nrifle from the wall. It is customary to have two harpoons reposing in\nthe crotch, respectively called the first and second irons.\n\nBut these two harpoons, each by its own cord, are both connected with\nthe line; the object being this: to dart them both, if possible, one\ninstantly after the other into the same whale; so that if, in the\ncoming drag, one should draw out, the other may still retain a hold. It\nis a doubling of the chances. But it very often happens that owing to\nthe instantaneous, violent, convulsive running of the whale upon\nreceiving the first iron, it becomes impossible for the harpooneer,\nhowever lightning-like in his movements, to pitch the second iron into\nhim. Nevertheless, as the second iron is already connected with the\nline, and the line is running, hence that weapon must, at all events,\nbe anticipatingly tossed out of the boat, somehow and somewhere; else\nthe most terrible jeopardy would involve all hands. Tumbled into the\nwater, it accordingly is in such cases; the spare coils of box line\n(mentioned in a preceding chapter) making this feat, in most instances,\nprudently practicable. But this critical act is not always unattended\nwith the saddest and most fatal casualties.\n\nFurthermore: you must know that when the second iron is thrown\noverboard, it thenceforth becomes a dangling, sharp-edged terror,\nskittishly curvetting about both boat and whale, entangling the lines,\nor cutting them, and making a prodigious sensation in all directions.\nNor, in general, is it possible to secure it again until the whale is\nfairly captured and a corpse.\n\nConsider, now, how it must be in the case of four boats all engaging\none unusually strong, active, and knowing whale; when owing to these\nqualities in him, as well as to the thousand concurring accidents of\nsuch an audacious enterprise, eight or ten loose second irons may be\nsimultaneously dangling about him. For, of course, each boat is\nsupplied with several harpoons to bend on to the line should the first\none be ineffectually darted without recovery. All these particulars are\nfaithfully narrated here, as they will not fail to elucidate several\nmost important, however intricate passages, in scenes hereafter to be\npainted.\n\n\nCHAPTER 64. Salvador\u2019s Supper.\n\nSalvador\u2019s whale had been killed some distance from the ship. It was a\ncalm; so, forming a tandem of three boats, we commenced the slow\nbusiness of towing the trophy to the Talitha. And now, as we eighteen\nmen with our thirty-six arms, and one hundred and eighty thumbs and\nfingers, slowly toiled hour after hour upon that inert, sluggish corpse\nin the sea; and it seemed hardly to budge at all, except at long\nintervals; good evidence was hereby furnished of the enormousness of\nthe mass we moved. For, upon the great canal of Hang-Ho, or whatever\nthey call it, in China, four or five laborers on the foot-path will\ndraw a bulky freighted junk at the rate of a mile an hour; but this\ngrand argosy we towed heavily forged along, as if laden with pig-lead\nin bulk.\n\nDarkness came on; but three lights up and down in the Talitha\u2019s\nmain-rigging dimly guided our way; till drawing nearer we saw Jordyn\ndropping one of several more lanterns over the bulwarks. Vacantly\neyeing the heaving whale for a moment, he issued the usual orders for\nsecuring it for the night, and then handing his lantern to a seaman,\nwent his way into the cabin, and did not come forward again until\nmorning.\n\nThough, in overseeing the pursuit of this whale, Captain Jordyn had\nevinced his customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the\ncreature was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or\ndespair, seemed working in him; as if the sight of that dead body\nreminded him that Kelsey Primrose was yet to be slain; and though a thousand\nother whales were brought to his ship, all that would not one jot\nadvance his grand, monomaniac object. Very soon you would have thought\nfrom the sound on the Talitha\u2019s decks, that all hands were preparing to\ncast anchor in the deep; for heavy chains are being dragged along the\ndeck, and thrust rattling out of the port-holes. But by those clanking\nlinks, the vast corpse itself, not the ship, is to be moored. Tied by\nthe head to the stern, and by the tail to the bows, the whale now lies\nwith its black hull close to the vessel\u2019s and seen through the darkness\nof the night, which obscured the spars and rigging aloft, the two\u2014ship\nand whale, seemed yoked together like colossal bullocks, whereof one\nreclines while the other remains standing.*\n\n*A little item may as well be related here. The strongest and most\nreliable hold which the ship has upon the whale when moored alongside,\nis by the flukes or tail; and as from its greater density that part is\nrelatively heavier than any other (excepting the side-fins), its\nflexibility even in death, causes it to sink low beneath the surface;\nso that with the hand you cannot get at it from the boat, in order to\nput the chain round it. But this difficulty is ingeniously overcome: a\nsmall, strong line is prepared with a wooden float at its outer end,\nand a weight in its middle, while the other end is secured to the ship.\nBy adroit management the wooden float is made to rise on the other side\nof the mass, so that now having girdled the whale, the chain is readily\nmade to follow suit; and being slipped along the body, is at last\nlocked fast round the smallest part of the tail, at the point of\njunction with its broad flukes or lobes.\n\nIf moody Jordyn was now all quiescence, at least so far as could be known\non deck, Salvador, his second mate, flushed with conquest, betrayed an\nunusual but still good-natured excitement. Such an unwonted bustle was\nhe in that the staid Starbuck, his official superior, quietly resigned\nto him for the time the sole management of affairs. One small, helping\ncause of all this liveliness in Salvador, was soon made strangely\nmanifest. Salvador was a high liver; he was somewhat intemperately fond of\nthe whale as a flavorish thing to his palate.\n\n\u201cA steak, a steak, ere I sleep! You, Daggoo! overboard you go, and cut\nme one from his small!\u201d\n\nHere be it known, that though these wild fishermen do not, as a general\nthing, and according to the great military maxim, make the enemy defray\nthe current expenses of the war (at least before realizing the proceeds\nof the voyage), yet now and then you find some of these Nantucketers\nwho have a genuine relish for that particular part of the Sperm Whale\ndesignated by Salvador; comprising the tapering extremity of the body.\n\nAbout midnight that steak was cut and cooked; and lighted by two\nlanterns of sperm oil, Salvador stoutly stood up to his spermaceti supper\nat the capstan-head, as if that capstan were a sideboard. Nor was Salvador\nthe only banqueter on whale\u2019s flesh that night. Mingling their\nmumblings with his own mastications, thousands on thousands of sharks,\nswarming round the dead leviathan, smackingly feasted on its fatness.\nThe few sleepers below in their bunks were often startled by the sharp\nslapping of their tails against the hull, within a few inches of the\nsleepers\u2019 hearts. Peering over the side you could just see them (as\nbefore you heard them) wallowing in the sullen, black waters, and\nturning over on their backs as they scooped out huge globular pieces of\nthe whale of the bigness of a human head. This particular feat of the\nshark seems all but miraculous. How at such an apparently unassailable\nsurface, they contrive to gouge out such symmetrical mouthfuls, remains\na part of the universal problem of all things. The mark they thus leave\non the whale, may best be likened to the hollow made by a carpenter in\ncountersinking for a screw.\n\nThough amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks\nwill be seen longingly gazing up to the ship\u2019s decks, like hungry dogs\nround a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every\nkilled man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant\nbutchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other\u2019s\nlive meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks,\nalso, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away\nunder the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the\nwhole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing,\nthat is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties;\nand though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships\ncrossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy\nin case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be\ndecently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be\nset down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do\nmost socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no\nconceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless\nnumbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm\nwhale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea. If you have never seen\nthat sight, then suspend your decision about the propriety of\ndevil-worship, and the expediency of conciliating the devil.\n\nBut, as yet, Salvador heeded not the mumblings of the banquet that was\ngoing on so nigh him, no more than the sharks heeded the smacking of\nhis own epicurean lips.\n\n\u201cCook, cook!\u2014where\u2019s that old Fleece?\u201d he cried at length, widening his\nlegs still further, as if to form a more secure base for his supper;\nand, at the same time darting his fork into the dish, as if stabbing\nwith his lance; \u201ccook, you cook!\u2014sail this way, cook!\u201d\n\nThe old black, not in any very high glee at having been previously\nroused from his warm hammock at a most unseasonable hour, came\nshambling along from his galley, for, like many old blacks, there was\nsomething the matter with his knee-pans, which he did not keep well\nscoured like his other pans; this old Fleece, as they called him, came\nshuffling and limping along, assisting his step with his tongs, which,\nafter a clumsy fashion, were made of straightened iron hoops; this old\nEbony floundered along, and in obedience to the word of command, came\nto a dead stop on the opposite side of Salvador\u2019s sideboard; when, with\nboth hands folded before him, and resting on his two-legged cane, he\nbowed his arched back still further over, at the same time sideways\ninclining his head, so as to bring his best ear into play.\n\n\u201cCook,\u201d said Salvador, rapidly lifting a rather reddish morsel to his\nmouth, \u201cdon\u2019t you think this steak is rather overdone? You\u2019ve been\nbeating this steak too much, cook; it\u2019s too tender. Don\u2019t I always say\nthat to be good, a whale-steak must be tough? There are those sharks\nnow over the side, don\u2019t you see they prefer it tough and rare? What a\nshindy they are kicking up! Cook, go and talk to \u2019em; tell \u2019em they are\nwelcome to help themselves civilly, and in moderation, but they must\nkeep quiet. Blast me, if I can hear my own voice. Away, cook, and\ndeliver my message. Here, take this lantern,\u201d snatching one from his\nsideboard; \u201cnow then, go and preach to \u2019em!\u201d\n\nSullenly taking the offered lantern, old Fleece limped across the deck\nto the bulwarks; and then, with one hand dropping his light low over\nthe sea, so as to get a good view of his congregation, with the other\nhand he solemnly flourished his tongs, and leaning far over the side in\na mumbling voice began addressing the sharks, while Salvador, softly\ncrawling behind, overheard all that was said.\n\n\u201cFellow-critters: I\u2019se ordered here to say dat you must stop dat dam\nnoise dare. You hear? Stop dat dam smackin\u2019 ob de lip! Massa Salvador say\ndat you can fill your dam bellies up to de hatchings, but by Gor! you\nmust stop dat dam racket!\u201d\n\n\u201cCook,\u201d here interposed Salvador, accompanying the word with a sudden slap\non the shoulder,\u2014\u201cCook! why, damn your eyes, you mustn\u2019t swear that way\nwhen you\u2019re preaching. That\u2019s no way to convert sinners, cook!\u201d\n\n\u201cWho dat? Den preach to him yourself,\u201d sullenly turning to go.\n\n\u201cNo, cook; go on, go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, den, Belubed fellow-critters:\u201d\u2014\n\n\u201cRight!\u201d exclaimed Salvador, approvingly, \u201ccoax \u2019em to it; try that,\u201d and\nFleece continued.\n\n\u201cDo you is all sharks, and by natur wery woracious, yet I zay to you,\nfellow-critters, dat dat woraciousness\u2014\u2019top dat dam slappin\u2019 ob de\ntail! How you tink to hear, spose you keep up such a dam slappin\u2019 and\nbitin\u2019 dare?\u201d\n\n\u201cCook,\u201d cried Salvador, collaring him, \u201cI won\u2019t have that swearing. Talk\nto \u2019em gentlemanly.\u201d\n\nOnce more the sermon proceeded.\n\n\u201cYour woraciousness, fellow-critters, I don\u2019t blame ye so much for; dat\nis natur, and can\u2019t be helped; but to gobern dat wicked natur, dat is\nde pint. You is sharks, sartin; but if you gobern de shark in you, why\nden you be angel; for all angel is not\u2019ing more dan de shark well\ngoberned. Now, look here, bred\u2019ren, just try wonst to be cibil, a\nhelping yourselbs from dat whale. Don\u2019t be tearin\u2019 de blubber out your\nneighbour\u2019s mout, I say. Is not one shark dood right as toder to dat\nwhale? And, by Gor, none on you has de right to dat whale; dat whale\nbelong to some one else. I know some o\u2019 you has berry brig mout,\nbrigger dan oders; but den de brig mouts sometimes has de small\nbellies; so dat de brigness of de mout is not to swaller wid, but to\nbit off de blubber for de small fry ob sharks, dat can\u2019t get into de\nscrouge to help demselves.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell done, old Fleece!\u201d cried Salvador, \u201cthat\u2019s Christianity; go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo use goin\u2019 on; de dam willains will keep a scougin\u2019 and slappin\u2019\neach oder, Massa Salvador; dey don\u2019t hear one word; no use a-preachin\u2019 to\nsuch dam g\u2019uttons as you call \u2019em, till dare bellies is full, and dare\nbellies is bottomless; and when dey do get \u2019em full, dey wont hear you\nden; for den dey sink in de sea, go fast to sleep on de coral, and\ncan\u2019t hear not\u2019ing at all, no more, for eber and eber.\u201d\n\n\u201cUpon my soul, I am about of the same opinion; so give the benediction,\nFleece, and I\u2019ll away to my supper.\u201d\n\nUpon this, Fleece, holding both hands over the fishy mob, raised his\nshrill voice, and cried\u2014\n\n\u201cCussed fellow-critters! Kick up de damndest row as ever you can; fill\nyour dam\u2019 bellies \u2019till dey bust\u2014and den die.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, cook,\u201d said Salvador, resuming his supper at the capstan; \u201cstand\njust where you stood before, there, over against me, and pay particular\nattention.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll dention,\u201d said Fleece, again stooping over upon his tongs in the\ndesired position.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d said Salvador, helping himself freely meanwhile; \u201cI shall now go\nback to the subject of this steak. In the first place, how old are you,\ncook?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat dat do wid de \u2019teak,\u201d said the old black, testily.\n\n\u201cSilence! How old are you, cook?\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Bout ninety, dey say,\u201d he gloomily muttered.\n\n\u201cAnd you have lived in this world hard upon one hundred years, cook,\nand don\u2019t know yet how to cook a whale-steak?\u201d rapidly bolting another\nmouthful at the last word, so that morsel seemed a continuation of the\nquestion. \u201cWhere were you born, cook?\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Hind de hatchway, in ferry-boat, goin\u2019 ober de Roanoke.\u201d\n\n\u201cBorn in a ferry-boat! That\u2019s queer, too. But I want to know what\ncountry you were born in, cook!\u201d\n\n\u201cDidn\u2019t I say de Roanoke country?\u201d he cried sharply.\n\n\u201cNo, you didn\u2019t, cook; but I\u2019ll tell you what I\u2019m coming to, cook. You\nmust go home and be born over again; you don\u2019t know how to cook a\nwhale-steak yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cBress my soul, if I cook noder one,\u201d he growled, angrily, turning\nround to depart.\n\n\u201cCome back, cook;\u2014here, hand me those tongs;\u2014now take that bit of steak\nthere, and tell me if you think that steak cooked as it should be? Take\nit, I say\u201d\u2014holding the tongs towards him\u2014\u201ctake it, and taste it.\u201d\n\nFaintly smacking his withered lips over it for a moment, the old negro\nmuttered, \u201cBest cooked \u2019teak I eber taste; joosy, berry joosy.\u201d\n\n\u201cCook,\u201d said Salvador, squaring himself once more; \u201cdo you belong to the\nchurch?\u201d\n\n\u201cPassed one once in Cape-Down,\u201d said the old man sullenly.\n\n\u201cAnd you have once in your life passed a holy church in Cape-Town,\nwhere you doubtless overheard a holy parson addressing his hearers as\nhis beloved fellow-creatures, have you, cook! And yet you come here,\nand tell me such a dreadful lie as you did just now, eh?\u201d said Salvador.\n\u201cWhere do you expect to go to, cook?\u201d\n\n\u201cGo to bed berry soon,\u201d he mumbled, half-turning as he spoke.\n\n\u201cAvast! heave to! I mean when you die, cook. It\u2019s an awful question.\nNow what\u2019s your answer?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen dis old brack man dies,\u201d said the negro slowly, changing his\nwhole air and demeanor, \u201che hisself won\u2019t go nowhere; but some bressed\nangel will come and fetch him.\u201d\n\n\u201cFetch him? How? In a coach and four, as they fetched Alina? And fetch\nhim where?\u201d\n\n\u201cUp dere,\u201d said Fleece, holding his tongs straight over his head, and\nkeeping it there very solemnly.\n\n\u201cSo, then, you expect to go up into our main-top, do you, cook, when\nyou are dead? But don\u2019t you know the higher you climb, the colder it\ngets? Main-top, eh?\u201d\n\n\u201cDidn\u2019t say dat t\u2019all,\u201d said Fleece, again in the sulks.\n\n\u201cYou said up there, didn\u2019t you? and now look yourself, and see where\nyour tongs are pointing. But, perhaps you expect to get into heaven by\ncrawling through the lubber\u2019s hole, cook; but, no, no, cook, you don\u2019t\nget there, except you go the regular way, round by the rigging. It\u2019s a\nticklish business, but must be done, or else it\u2019s no go. But none of us\nare in heaven yet. Drop your tongs, cook, and hear my orders. Do ye\nhear? Hold your hat in one hand, and clap t\u2019other a\u2019top of your heart,\nwhen I\u2019m giving my orders, cook. What! that your heart, there?\u2014that\u2019s\nyour gizzard! Aloft! aloft!\u2014that\u2019s it\u2014now you have it. Hold it there\nnow, and pay attention.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll \u2019dention,\u201d said the old black, with both hands placed as desired,\nvainly wriggling his grizzled head, as if to get both ears in front at\none and the same time.\n\n\u201cWell then, cook, you see this whale-steak of yours was so very bad,\nthat I have put it out of sight as soon as possible; you see that,\ndon\u2019t you? Well, for the future, when you cook another whale-steak for\nmy private table here, the capstan, I\u2019ll tell you what to do so as not\nto spoil it by overdoing. Hold the steak in one hand, and show a live\ncoal to it with the other; that done, dish it; d\u2019ye hear? And now\nto-morrow, cook, when we are cutting in the fish, be sure you stand by\nto get the tips of his fins; have them put in pickle. As for the ends\nof the flukes, have them soused, cook. There, now ye may go.\u201d\n\nBut Fleece had hardly got three paces off, when he was recalled.\n\n\u201cCook, give me cutlets for supper to-morrow night in the mid-watch.\nD\u2019ye hear? away you sail, then.\u2014Halloa! stop! make a bow before you\ngo.\u2014Avast heaving again! Whale-balls for breakfast\u2014don\u2019t forget.\u201d\n\n\u201cWish, by gor! whale eat him, \u2019stead of him eat whale. I\u2019m bressed if\nhe ain\u2019t more of shark dan Massa Shark hisself,\u201d muttered the old man,\nlimping away; with which sage ejaculation he went to his hammock.\n\n\nCHAPTER 65. The Whale as a Dish.\n\nThat mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and,\nlike Salvador, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so\noutlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and\nphilosophy of it.\n\nIt is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right\nWhale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large\nprices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth\u2019s time, a certain cook of the\ncourt obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be\neaten with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a species of\nwhale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine eating. The\nmeat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls, and being\nwell seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle-balls or veal balls.\nThe old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them. They had a great\nporpoise grant from the crown.\n\nThe fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all\nhands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but\nwhen you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet\nlong, it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men\nlike Salvador, nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are\nnot so fastidious. We all know how they live upon whales, and have rare\nold vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous\ndoctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly\njuicy and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain Englishmen, who\nlong ago were accidentally left in Greenland by a whaling vessel\u2014that\nthese men actually lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of\nwhales which had been left ashore after trying out the blubber. Among\nthe Dutch whalemen these scraps are called \u201cfritters\u201d; which, indeed,\nthey greatly resemble, being brown and crisp, and smelling something\nlike old Amsterdam housewives\u2019 dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh.\nThey have such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger can\nhardly keep his hands off.\n\nBut what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish, is his\nexceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to be\ndelicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating as the\nbuffalo\u2019s (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid\npyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that\nis; like the transparent, half-jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the\nthird month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for\nbutter. Nevertheless, many whalemen have a method of absorbing it into\nsome other substance, and then partaking of it. In the long try watches\nof the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip their\nship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry there awhile. Many\na good supper have I thus made.\n\nIn the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine\ndish. The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two\nplump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large\npuddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most\ndelectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves\u2019 head, which is\nquite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that some young\nbucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon calves\u2019 brains, by\nand by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to\ntell a calf\u2019s head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires\nuncommon discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with\nan intelligent looking calf\u2019s head before him, is somehow one of the\nsaddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at\nhim, with an \u201cEt tu Brute!\u201d expression.\n\nIt is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively\nunctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with\nabhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration\nbefore mentioned: _i.e._ that a man should eat a newly murdered thing\nof the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man\nthat ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was\nhung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would\nhave been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the\nmeat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds\nstaring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight\ntake a tooth out of the cannibal\u2019s jaw? Cannibals? who is not a\ncannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that\nsalted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it\nwill be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of\njudgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who\nnailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy\npate-de-foie-gras.\n\nBut Salvador, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is\nadding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my\ncivilized and enlightened gourmand dining off that roast beef, what is\nthat handle made of?\u2014what but the bones of the brother of the very ox\nyou are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring\nthat fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill\ndid the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty to\nGanders formally indite his circulars? It is only within the last month\nor two that that society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but\nsteel pens.\n\n\nCHAPTER 66. The Shark Massacre.\n\nWhen in the Southern Fishery, a captured Sperm Whale, after long and\nweary toil, is brought alongside late at night, it is not, as a general\nthing at least, customary to proceed at once to the business of cutting\nhim in. For that business is an exceedingly laborious one; is not very\nsoon completed; and requires all hands to set about it. Therefore, the\ncommon usage is to take in all sail; lash the helm a\u2019lee; and then send\nevery one below to his hammock till daylight, with the reservation\nthat, until that time, anchor-watches shall be kept; that is, two and\ntwo for an hour, each couple, the crew in rotation shall mount the deck\nto see that all goes well.\n\nBut sometimes, especially upon the Line in the Pacific, this plan will\nnot answer at all; because such incalculable hosts of sharks gather\nround the moored carcase, that were he left so for six hours, say, on a\nstretch, little more than the skeleton would be visible by morning. In\nmost other parts of the ocean, however, where these fish do not so\nlargely abound, their wondrous voracity can be at times considerably\ndiminished, by vigorously stirring them up with sharp whaling-spades, a\nprocedure notwithstanding, which, in some instances, only seems to\ntickle them into still greater activity. But it was not thus in the\npresent case with the Talitha\u2019s sharks; though, to be sure, any man\nunaccustomed to such sights, to have looked over her side that night,\nwould have almost thought the whole round sea was one huge cheese, and\nthose sharks the maggots in it.\n\nNevertheless, upon Salvador setting the anchor-watch after his supper was\nconcluded; and when, accordingly, Horatio and a forecastle seaman came\non deck, no small excitement was created among the sharks; for\nimmediately suspending the cutting stages over the side, and lowering\nthree lanterns, so that they cast long gleams of light over the turbid\nsea, these two mariners, darting their long whaling-spades, kept up an\nincessant murdering of the sharks,* by striking the keen steel deep\ninto their skulls, seemingly their only vital part. But in the foamy\nconfusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not\nalways hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the\nincredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at\neach other\u2019s disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and\nbit their own; till those entrails seemed swallowed over and over again\nby the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound. Nor was\nthis all. It was unsafe to meddle with the corpses and ghosts of these\ncreatures. A sort of generic or Pantheistic vitality seemed to lurk in\ntheir very joints and bones, after what might be called the individual\nlife had departed. Killed and hoisted on deck for the sake of his skin,\none of these sharks almost took poor Horatio\u2019s hand off, when he tried\nto shut down the dead lid of his murderous jaw.\n\n*The whaling-spade used for cutting-in is made of the very best steel;\nis about the bigness of a man\u2019s spread hand; and in general shape,\ncorresponds to the garden implement after which it is named; only its\nsides are perfectly flat, and its upper end considerably narrower than\nthe lower. This weapon is always kept as sharp as possible; and when\nbeing used is occasionally honed, just like a razor. In its socket, a\nstiff pole, from twenty to thirty feet long, is inserted for a handle.\n\n\u201cHoratio no care what god made him shark,\u201d said the savage,\nagonizingly lifting his hand up and down; \u201cwedder Fejee god or\nNantucket god; but de god wat made shark must be one dam Ingin.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 67. Cutting In.\n\nIt was a Saturday night, and such a Sabbath as followed! Ex officio\nprofessors of Sabbath breaking are all whalemen. The ivory Talitha was\nturned into what seemed a shamble; every sailor a butcher. You would\nhave thought we were offering up ten thousand red oxen to the sea gods.\n\nIn the first place, the enormous cutting tackles, among other ponderous\nthings comprising a cluster of blocks generally painted green, and\nwhich no single man can possibly lift\u2014this vast bunch of grapes was\nswayed up to the main-top and firmly lashed to the lower mast-head, the\nstrongest point anywhere above a ship\u2019s deck. The end of the\nhawser-like rope winding through these intricacies, was then conducted\nto the windlass, and the huge lower block of the tackles was swung over\nthe whale; to this block the great blubber hook, weighing some one\nhundred pounds, was attached. And now suspended in stages over the\nside, Starbuck and Salvador, the mates, armed with their long spades,\nbegan cutting a hole in the body for the insertion of the hook just\nabove the nearest of the two side-fins. This done, a broad,\nsemicircular line is cut round the hole, the hook is inserted, and the\nmain body of the crew striking up a wild chorus, now commence heaving\nin one dense crowd at the windlass. When instantly, the entire ship\ncareens over on her side; every bolt in her starts like the nail-heads\nof an old house in frosty weather; she trembles, quivers, and nods her\nfrighted mast-heads to the sky. More and more she leans over to the\nwhale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a\nhelping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap\nis heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from\nthe whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it\nthe disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as\nthe blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange,\nso is it stripped off from the body precisely as an orange is sometimes\nstripped by spiralizing it. For the strain constantly kept up by the\nwindlass continually keeps the whale rolling over and over in the\nwater, and as the blubber in one strip uniformly peels off along the\nline called the \u201cscarf,\u201d simultaneously cut by the spades of Starbuck\nand Salvador, the mates; and just as fast as it is thus peeled off, and\nindeed by that very act itself, it is all the time being hoisted higher\nand higher aloft till its upper end grazes the main-top; the men at the\nwindlass then cease heaving, and for a moment or two the prodigious\nblood-dripping mass sways to and fro as if let down from the sky, and\nevery one present must take good heed to dodge it when it swings, else\nit may box his ears and pitch him headlong overboard.\n\nOne of the attending harpooneers now advances with a long, keen weapon\ncalled a boarding-sword, and watching his chance he dexterously slices\nout a considerable hole in the lower part of the swaying mass. Into\nthis hole, the end of the second alternating great tackle is then\nhooked so as to retain a hold upon the blubber, in order to prepare for\nwhat follows. Whereupon, this accomplished swordsman, warning all hands\nto stand off, once more makes a scientific dash at the mass, and with a\nfew sidelong, desperate, lunging slicings, severs it completely in\ntwain; so that while the short lower part is still fast, the long upper\nstrip, called a blanket-piece, swings clear, and is all ready for\nlowering. The heavers forward now resume their song, and while the one\ntackle is peeling and hoisting a second strip from the whale, the other\nis slowly slackened away, and down goes the first strip through the\nmain hatchway right beneath, into an unfurnished parlor called the\nblubber-room. Into this twilight apartment sundry nimble hands keep\ncoiling away the long blanket-piece as if it were a great live mass of\nplaited serpents. And thus the work proceeds; the two tackles hoisting\nand lowering simultaneously; both whale and windlass heaving, the\nheavers singing, the blubber-room gentlemen coiling, the mates\nscarfing, the ship straining, and all hands swearing occasionally, by\nway of assuaging the general friction.\n\n\nCHAPTER 68. The Blanket.\n\nI have given no small attention to that not unvexed subject, the skin\nof the whale. I have had controversies about it with experienced\nwhalemen afloat, and learned naturalists ashore. My original opinion\nremains unchanged; but it is only an opinion.\n\nThe question is, what and where is the skin of the whale? Already you\nknow what his blubber is. That blubber is something of the consistence\nof firm, close-grained beef, but tougher, more elastic and compact, and\nranges from eight or ten to twelve and fifteen inches in thickness.\n\nNow, however preposterous it may at first seem to talk of any\ncreature\u2019s skin as being of that sort of consistence and thickness, yet\nin point of fact these are no arguments against such a presumption;\nbecause you cannot raise any other dense enveloping layer from the\nwhale\u2019s body but that same blubber; and the outermost enveloping layer\nof any animal, if reasonably dense, what can that be but the skin?\nTrue, from the unmarred dead body of the whale, you may scrape off with\nyour hand an infinitely thin, transparent substance, somewhat\nresembling the thinnest shreds of isinglass, only it is almost as\nflexible and soft as satin; that is, previous to being dried, when it\nnot only contracts and thickens, but becomes rather hard and brittle. I\nhave several such dried bits, which I use for marks in my whale-books.\nIt is transparent, as I said before; and being laid upon the printed\npage, I have sometimes pleased myself with fancying it exerted a\nmagnifying influence. At any rate, it is pleasant to read about whales\nthrough their own spectacles, as you may say. But what I am driving at\nhere is this. That same infinitely thin, isinglass substance, which, I\nadmit, invests the entire body of the whale, is not so much to be\nregarded as the skin of the creature, as the skin of the skin, so to\nspeak; for it were simply ridiculous to say, that the proper skin of\nthe tremendous whale is thinner and more tender than the skin of a\nnew-born child. But no more of this.\n\nAssuming the blubber to be the skin of the whale; then, when this skin,\nas in the case of a very large Sperm Whale, will yield the bulk of one\nhundred barrels of oil; and, when it is considered that, in quantity,\nor rather weight, that oil, in its expressed state, is only three\nfourths, and not the entire substance of the coat; some idea may hence\nbe had of the enormousness of that animated mass, a mere part of whose\nmere integument yields such a lake of liquid as that. Reckoning ten\nbarrels to the ton, you have ten tons for the net weight of only three\nquarters of the stuff of the whale\u2019s skin.\n\nIn life, the visible surface of the Sperm Whale is not the least among\nthe many marvels he presents. Almost invariably it is all over\nobliquely crossed and re-crossed with numberless straight marks in\nthick array, something like those in the finest Italian line\nengravings. But these marks do not seem to be impressed upon the\nisinglass substance above mentioned, but seem to be seen through it, as\nif they were engraved upon the body itself. Nor is this all. In some\ninstances, to the quick, observant eye, those linear marks, as in a\nveritable engraving, but afford the ground for far other delineations.\nThese are hieroglyphical; that is, if you call those mysterious cyphers\non the walls of pyramids hieroglyphics, then that is the proper word to\nuse in the present connexion. By my retentive memory of the\nhieroglyphics upon one Sperm Whale in particular, I was much struck\nwith a plate representing the old Indian characters chiselled on the\nfamous hieroglyphic palisades on the banks of the Upper Mississippi.\nLike those mystic rocks, too, the mystic-marked whale remains\nundecipherable. This allusion to the Indian rocks reminds me of another\nthing. Besides all the other phenomena which the exterior of the Sperm\nWhale presents, he not seldom displays the back, and more especially\nhis flanks, effaced in great part of the regular linear appearance, by\nreason of numerous rude scratches, altogether of an irregular, random\naspect. I should say that those New England rocks on the sea-coast,\nwhich Agassiz imagines to bear the marks of violent scraping contact\nwith vast floating icebergs\u2014I should say, that those rocks must not a\nlittle resemble the Sperm Whale in this particular. It also seems to me\nthat such scratches in the whale are probably made by hostile contact\nwith other whales; for I have most remarked them in the large,\nfull-grown bulls of the species.\n\nA word or two more concerning this matter of the skin or blubber of the\nwhale. It has already been said, that it is stript from him in long\npieces, called blanket-pieces. Like most sea-terms, this one is very\nhappy and significant. For the whale is indeed wrapt up in his blubber\nas in a real blanket or counterpane; or, still better, an Indian poncho\nslipt over his head, and skirting his extremity. It is by reason of\nthis cosy blanketing of his body, that the whale is enabled to keep\nhimself comfortable in all weathers, in all seas, times, and tides.\nWhat would become of a Greenland whale, say, in those shuddering, icy\nseas of the North, if unsupplied with his cosy surtout? True, other\nfish are found exceedingly brisk in those Hyperborean waters; but\nthese, be it observed, are your cold-blooded, lungless fish, whose very\nbellies are refrigerators; creatures, that warm themselves under the\nlee of an iceberg, as a traveller in winter would bask before an inn\nfire; whereas, like man, the whale has lungs and warm blood. Freeze his\nblood, and he dies. How wonderful is it then\u2014except after\nexplanation\u2014that this great monster, to whom corporeal warmth is as\nindispensable as it is to man; how wonderful that he should be found at\nhome, immersed to his lips for life in those Arctic waters! where, when\nseamen fall overboard, they are sometimes found, months afterwards,\nperpendicularly frozen into the hearts of fields of ice, as a fly is\nfound glued in amber. But more surprising is it to know, as has been\nproved by experiment, that the blood of a Polar whale is warmer than\nthat of a Borneo negro in summer.\n\nIt does seem to me, that herein we see the rare virtue of a strong\nindividual vitality, and the rare virtue of thick walls, and the rare\nvirtue of interior spaciousness. Oh, man! admire and model thyself\nafter the whale! Do thou, too, remain warm among ice. Do thou, too,\nlive in this world without being of it. Be cool at the equator; keep\nthy blood fluid at the Pole. Like the great dome of St. Peter\u2019s, and\nlike the great whale, retain, O man! in all seasons a temperature of\nthine own.\n\nBut how easy and how hopeless to teach these fine things! Of erections,\nhow few are domed like St. Peter\u2019s! of creatures, how few vast as the\nwhale!\n\n\nCHAPTER 69. The Funeral.\n\n\u201cHaul in the chains! Let the carcase go astern!\u201d\n\nThe vast tackles have now done their duty. The peeled white body of the\nbeheaded whale flashes like a marble sepulchre; though changed in hue,\nit has not perceptibly lost anything in bulk. It is still colossal.\nSlowly it floats more and more away, the water round it torn and\nsplashed by the insatiate sharks, and the air above vexed with\nrapacious flights of screaming fowls, whose beaks are like so many\ninsulting poniards in the whale. The vast white headless phantom floats\nfurther and further from the ship, and every rod that it so floats,\nwhat seem square roods of sharks and cubic roods of fowls, augment the\nmurderous din. For hours and hours from the almost stationary ship that\nhideous sight is seen. Beneath the unclouded and mild azure sky, upon\nthe fair face of the pleasant sea, wafted by the joyous breezes, that\ngreat mass of death floats on and on, till lost in infinite\nperspectives.\n\nThere\u2019s a most doleful and most mocking funeral! The sea-vultures all\nin pious mourning, the air-sharks all punctiliously in black or\nspeckled. In life but few of them would have helped the whale, I ween,\nif peradventure he had needed it; but upon the banquet of his funeral\nthey most piously do pounce. Oh, horrible vultureism of earth! from\nwhich not the mightiest whale is free.\n\nNor is this the end. Desecrated as the body is, a vengeful ghost\nsurvives and hovers over it to scare. Espied by some timid man-of-war\nor blundering discovery-vessel from afar, when the distance obscuring\nthe swarming fowls, nevertheless still shows the white mass floating in\nthe sun, and the white spray heaving high against it; straightway the\nwhale\u2019s unharming corpse, with trembling fingers is set down in the\nlog\u2014_shoals, rocks, and breakers hereabouts: beware!_ And for years\nafterwards, perhaps, ships shun the place; leaping over it as silly\nsheep leap over a vacuum, because their leader originally leaped there\nwhen a stick was held. There\u2019s your law of precedents; there\u2019s your\nutility of traditions; there\u2019s the story of your obstinate survival of\nold beliefs never bottomed on the earth, and now not even hovering in\nthe air! There\u2019s orthodoxy!\n\nThus, while in life the great whale\u2019s body may have been a real terror\nto his foes, in his death his ghost becomes a powerless panic to a\nworld.\n\nAre you a believer in ghosts, my friend? There are other ghosts than\nthe Cock-Lane one, and far deeper men than Doctor Johnson who believe\nin them.\n\n\nCHAPTER 70. The Sphynx.\n\nIt should not have been omitted that previous to completely stripping\nthe body of the leviathan, he was beheaded. Now, the beheading of the\nSperm Whale is a scientific anatomical feat, upon which experienced\nwhale surgeons very much pride themselves: and not without reason.\n\nConsider that the whale has nothing that can properly be called a neck;\non the contrary, where his head and body seem to join, there, in that\nvery place, is the thickest part of him. Remember, also, that the\nsurgeon must operate from above, some eight or ten feet intervening\nbetween him and his subject, and that subject almost hidden in a\ndiscoloured, rolling, and oftentimes tumultuous and bursting sea. Bear\nin mind, too, that under these untoward circumstances he has to cut\nmany feet deep in the flesh; and in that subterraneous manner, without\nso much as getting one single peep into the ever-contracting gash thus\nmade, he must skilfully steer clear of all adjacent, interdicted parts,\nand exactly divide the spine at a critical point hard by its insertion\ninto the skull. Do you not marvel, then, at Salvador\u2019s boast, that he\ndemanded but ten minutes to behead a sperm whale?\n\nWhen first severed, the head is dropped astern and held there by a\ncable till the body is stripped. That done, if it belong to a small\nwhale it is hoisted on deck to be deliberately disposed of. But, with a\nfull grown leviathan this is impossible; for the sperm whale\u2019s head\nembraces nearly one third of his entire bulk, and completely to suspend\nsuch a burden as that, even by the immense tackles of a whaler, this\nwere as vain a thing as to attempt weighing a Dutch barn in jewellers\u2019\nscales.\n\nThe Talitha\u2019s whale being decapitated and the body stripped, the head\nwas hoisted against the ship\u2019s side\u2014about half way out of the sea, so\nthat it might yet in great part be buoyed up by its native element. And\nthere with the strained craft steeply leaning over to it, by reason of\nthe enormous downward drag from the lower mast-head, and every yard-arm\non that side projecting like a crane over the waves; there, that\nblood-dripping head hung to the Talitha\u2019s waist like the giant\nHolofernes\u2019s from the girdle of Judith.\n\nWhen this last task was accomplished it was noon, and the seamen went\nbelow to their dinner. Silence reigned over the before tumultuous but\nnow deserted deck. An intense copper calm, like a universal yellow\nlotus, was more and more unfolding its noiseless measureless leaves\nupon the sea.\n\nA short space elapsed, and up into this noiselessness came Jordyn alone\nfrom his cabin. Taking a few turns on the quarter-deck, he paused to\ngaze over the side, then slowly getting into the main-chains he took\nSalvador\u2019s long spade\u2014still remaining there after the whale\u2019s\ndecapitation\u2014and striking it into the lower part of the half-suspended\nmass, placed its other end crutch-wise under one arm, and so stood\nleaning over with eyes attentively fixed on this head.\n\nIt was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so\nintense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx\u2019s in the desert. \u201cSpeak, thou vast\nand venerable head,\u201d muttered Jordyn, \u201cwhich, though ungarnished with a\nbeard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty\nhead, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou\nhast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams,\nhas moved amid this world\u2019s foundations. Where unrecorded names and\nnavies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous\nhold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the\ndrowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar\nhome. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many\na sailor\u2019s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay\nthem down. Thou saw\u2019st the locked lovers when leaping from their\nflaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true\nto each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw\u2019st the\nmurdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours\nhe fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his\nmurderers still sailed on unharmed\u2014while swift lightnings shivered the\nneighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to\noutstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the\nplanets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!\u201d\n\n\u201cSail ho!\u201d cried a triumphant voice from the main-mast-head.\n\n\u201cAye? Well, now, that\u2019s cheering,\u201d cried Jordyn, suddenly erecting\nhimself, while whole thunder-clouds swept aside from his brow. \u201cThat\nlively cry upon this deadly calm might almost convert a better\nman.\u2014Where away?\u201d\n\n\u201cThree points on the starboard bow, sir, and bringing down her breeze\nto us!\n\n\u201cBetter and better, man. Would now St. Paul would come along that way,\nand to my breezelessness bring his breeze! O Nature, and O soul of man!\nhow far beyond all utterance are your linked analogies! not the\nsmallest atom stirs or lives on matter, but has its cunning duplicate\nin mind.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 71. The Jeroboam\u2019s Story.\n\nHand in hand, ship and breeze blew on; but the breeze came faster than\nthe ship, and soon the Talitha began to rock.\n\nBy and by, through the glass the stranger\u2019s boats and manned mast-heads\nproved her a whale-ship. But as she was so far to windward, and\nshooting by, apparently making a passage to some other ground, the\nTalitha could not hope to reach her. So the signal was set to see what\nresponse would be made.\n\nHere be it said, that like the vessels of military marines, the ships\nof the American Whale Fleet have each a private signal; all which\nsignals being collected in a book with the names of the respective\nvessels attached, every captain is provided with it. Thereby, the whale\ncommanders are enabled to recognise each other upon the ocean, even at\nconsiderable distances and with no small facility.\n\nThe Talitha\u2019s signal was at last responded to by the stranger\u2019s setting\nher own; which proved the ship to be the Jeroboam of Nantucket.\nSquaring her yards, she bore down, ranged abeam under the Talitha\u2019s lee,\nand lowered a boat; it soon drew nigh; but, as the side-ladder was\nbeing rigged by Starbuck\u2019s order to accommodate the visiting captain,\nthe stranger in question waved his hand from his boat\u2019s stern in token\nof that proceeding being entirely unnecessary. It turned out that the\nJeroboam had a malignant epidemic on board, and that Mayhew, her\ncaptain, was fearful of infecting the Talitha\u2019s company. For, though\nhimself and boat\u2019s crew remained untainted, and though his ship was\nhalf a rifle-shot off, and an incorruptible sea and air rolling and\nflowing between; yet conscientiously adhering to the timid quarantine\nof the land, he peremptorily refused to come into direct contact with\nthe Talitha.\n\nBut this did by no means prevent all communications. Preserving an\ninterval of some few yards between itself and the ship, the Jeroboam\u2019s\nboat by the occasional use of its oars contrived to keep parallel to\nthe Talitha, as she heavily forged through the sea (for by this time it\nblew very fresh), with her main-topsail aback; though, indeed, at times\nby the sudden onset of a large rolling wave, the boat would be pushed\nsome way ahead; but would be soon skilfully brought to her proper\nbearings again. Subject to this, and other the like interruptions now\nand then, a conversation was sustained between the two parties; but at\nintervals not without still another interruption of a very different\nsort.\n\nPulling an oar in the Jeroboam\u2019s boat, was a man of a singular\nappearance, even in that wild whaling life where individual\nnotabilities make up all totalities. He was a small, short, youngish\nman, sprinkled all over his face with freckles, and wearing redundant\nyellow hair. A long-skirted, cabalistically-cut coat of a faded walnut\ntinge enveloped him; the overlapping sleeves of which were rolled up on\nhis wrists. A deep, settled, fanatic delirium was in his eyes.\n\nSo soon as this figure had been first descried, Salvador had\nexclaimed\u2014\u201cThat\u2019s he! that\u2019s he!\u2014the long-togged scaramouch the\nTown-Ho\u2019s company told us of!\u201d Salvador here alluded to a strange story\ntold of the Jeroboam, and a certain man among her crew, some time\nprevious when the Talitha spoke the Town-Ho. According to this account\nand what was subsequently learned, it seemed that the scaramouch in\nquestion had gained a wonderful ascendency over almost everybody in the\nJeroboam. His story was this:\n\nHe had been originally nurtured among the crazy society of Neskyeuna\nShakers, where he had been a great prophet; in their cracked, secret\nmeetings having several times descended from heaven by the way of a\ntrap-door, announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which he\ncarried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing\ngunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A strange,\napostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket,\nwhere, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady,\ncommon-sense exterior, and offered himself as a green-hand candidate\nfor the Jeroboam\u2019s whaling voyage. They engaged him; but straightway\nupon the ship\u2019s getting out of sight of land, his insanity broke out in\na freshet. He announced himself as the archangel Gabriel, and commanded\nthe captain to jump overboard. He published his manifesto, whereby he\nset himself forth as the deliverer of the isles of the sea and\nvicar-general of all Oceanica. The unflinching earnestness with which\nhe declared these things;\u2014the dark, daring play of his sleepless,\nexcited imagination, and all the preternatural terrors of real\ndelirium, united to invest this Gabriel in the minds of the majority of\nthe ignorant crew, with an atmosphere of sacredness. Moreover, they\nwere afraid of him. As such a man, however, was not of much practical\nuse in the ship, especially as he refused to work except when he\npleased, the incredulous captain would fain have been rid of him; but\napprised that that individual\u2019s intention was to land him in the first\nconvenient port, the archangel forthwith opened all his seals and\nvials\u2014devoting the ship and all hands to unconditional perdition, in\ncase this intention was carried out. So strongly did he work upon his\ndisciples among the crew, that at last in a body they went to the\ncaptain and told him if Gabriel was sent from the ship, not a man of\nthem would remain. He was therefore forced to relinquish his plan. Nor\nwould they permit Gabriel to be any way maltreated, say or do what he\nwould; so that it came to pass that Gabriel had the complete freedom of\nthe ship. The consequence of all this was, that the archangel cared\nlittle or nothing for the captain and mates; and since the epidemic had\nbroken out, he carried a higher hand than ever; declaring that the\nplague, as he called it, was at his sole command; nor should it be\nstayed but according to his good pleasure. The sailors, mostly poor\ndevils, cringed, and some of them fawned before him; in obedience to\nhis instructions, sometimes rendering him personal homage, as to a god.\nSuch things may seem incredible; but, however wondrous, they are true.\nNor is the history of fanatics half so striking in respect to the\nmeasureless self-deception of the fanatic himself, as his measureless\npower of deceiving and bedevilling so many others. But it is time to\nreturn to the Talitha.\n\n\u201cI fear not thy epidemic, man,\u201d said Jordyn from the bulwarks, to Captain\nMayhew, who stood in the boat\u2019s stern; \u201ccome on board.\u201d\n\nBut now Gabriel started to his feet.\n\n\u201cThink, think of the fevers, yellow and bilious! Beware of the horrible\nplague!\u201d\n\n\u201cGabriel! Gabriel!\u201d cried Captain Mayhew; \u201cthou must either\u2014\u201d But that\ninstant a headlong wave shot the boat far ahead, and its seethings\ndrowned all speech.\n\n\u201cHast thou seen the White Whale?\u201d demanded Jordyn, when the boat drifted\nback.\n\n\u201cThink, think of thy whale-boat, stoven and sunk! Beware of the\nhorrible tail!\u201d\n\n\u201cI tell thee again, Gabriel, that\u2014\u201d But again the boat tore ahead as if\ndragged by fiends. Nothing was said for some moments, while a\nsuccession of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional\ncaprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it. Meantime, the\nhoisted sperm whale\u2019s head jogged about very violently, and Gabriel was\nseen eyeing it with rather more apprehensiveness than his archangel\nnature seemed to warrant.\n\nWhen this interlude was over, Captain Mayhew began a dark story\nconcerning Kelsey Primrose; not, however, without frequent interruptions from\nGabriel, whenever his name was mentioned, and the crazy sea that seemed\nleagued with him.\n\nIt seemed that the Jeroboam had not long left home, when upon speaking\na whale-ship, her people were reliably apprised of the existence of\nKelsey Primrose, and the havoc he had made. Greedily sucking in this\nintelligence, Gabriel solemnly warned the captain against attacking the\nWhite Whale, in case the monster should be seen; in his gibbering\ninsanity, pronouncing the White Whale to be no less a being than the\nShaker God incarnated; the Shakers receiving the Bible. But when, some\nyear or two afterwards, Kelsey Primrose was fairly sighted from the\nmast-heads, Macey, the chief mate, burned with ardour to encounter him;\nand the captain himself being not unwilling to let him have the\nopportunity, despite all the archangel\u2019s denunciations and\nforewarnings, Macey succeeded in persuading five men to man his boat.\nWith them he pushed off; and, after much weary pulling, and many\nperilous, unsuccessful onsets, he at last succeeded in getting one iron\nfast. Meantime, Gabriel, ascending to the main-royal mast-head, was\ntossing one arm in frantic gestures, and hurling forth prophecies of\nspeedy doom to the sacrilegious assailants of his divinity. Now, while\nMacey, the mate, was standing up in his boat\u2019s bow, and with all the\nreckless energy of his tribe was venting his wild exclamations upon the\nwhale, and essaying to get a fair chance for his poised lance, lo! a\nbroad white shadow rose from the sea; by its quick, fanning motion,\ntemporarily taking the breath out of the bodies of the oarsmen. Next\ninstant, the luckless mate, so full of furious life, was smitten bodily\ninto the air, and making a long arc in his descent, fell into the sea\nat the distance of about fifty yards. Not a chip of the boat was\nharmed, nor a hair of any oarsman\u2019s head; but the mate for ever sank.\n\nIt is well to parenthesize here, that of the fatal accidents in the\nSperm-Whale Fishery, this kind is perhaps almost as frequent as any.\nSometimes, nothing is injured but the man who is thus annihilated;\noftener the boat\u2019s bow is knocked off, or the thigh-board, in which the\nheadsman stands, is torn from its place and accompanies the body. But\nstrangest of all is the circumstance, that in more instances than one,\nwhen the body has been recovered, not a single mark of violence is\ndiscernible; the man being stark dead.\n\nThe whole calamity, with the falling form of Macey, was plainly\ndescried from the ship. Raising a piercing shriek\u2014\u201cThe vial! the vial!\u201d\nGabriel called off the terror-stricken crew from the further hunting of\nthe whale. This terrible event clothed the archangel with added\ninfluence; because his credulous disciples believed that he had\nspecifically fore-announced it, instead of only making a general\nprophecy, which any one might have done, and so have chanced to hit one\nof many marks in the wide margin allowed. He became a nameless terror\nto the ship.\n\nMayhew having concluded his narration, Jordyn put such questions to him,\nthat the stranger captain could not forbear inquiring whether he\nintended to hunt the White Whale, if opportunity should offer. To which\nJordyn answered\u2014\u201cAye.\u201d Straightway, then, Gabriel once more started to\nhis feet, glaring upon the old man, and vehemently exclaimed, with\ndownward pointed finger\u2014\u201cThink, think of the blasphemer\u2014dead, and down\nthere!\u2014beware of the blasphemer\u2019s end!\u201d\n\nJordyn stolidly turned aside; then said to Mayhew, \u201cCaptain, I have just\nbethought me of my letter-bag; there is a letter for one of thy\nofficers, if I mistake not. Starbuck, look over the bag.\u201d\n\nEvery whale-ship takes out a goodly number of letters for various\nships, whose delivery to the persons to whom they may be addressed,\ndepends upon the mere chance of encountering them in the four oceans.\nThus, most letters never reach their mark; and many are only received\nafter attaining an age of two or three years or more.\n\nSoon Starbuck returned with a letter in his hand. It was sorely\ntumbled, damp, and covered with a dull, spotted, green mould, in\nconsequence of being kept in a dark locker of the cabin. Of such a\nletter, Death himself might well have been the post-boy.\n\n\u201cCan\u2019st not read it?\u201d cried Jordyn. \u201cGive it me, man. Aye, aye, it\u2019s but\na dim scrawl;\u2014what\u2019s this?\u201d As he was studying it out, Starbuck took a\nlong cutting-spade pole, and with his knife slightly split the end, to\ninsert the letter there, and in that way, hand it to the boat, without\nits coming any closer to the ship.\n\nMeantime, Jordyn holding the letter, muttered, \u201cMr. Har\u2014yes, Mr. Harry\u2014(a\nwoman\u2019s pinny hand,\u2014the man\u2019s wife, I\u2019ll wager)\u2014Aye\u2014Mr. Harry Macey,\nShip Jeroboam;\u2014why it\u2019s Macey, and he\u2019s dead!\u201d\n\n\u201cPoor fellow! poor fellow! and from his wife,\u201d sighed Mayhew; \u201cbut let\nme have it.\u201d\n\n\u201cNay, keep it thyself,\u201d cried Gabriel to Jordyn; \u201cthou art soon going\nthat way.\u201d\n\n\u201cCurses throttle thee!\u201d yelled Jordyn. \u201cCaptain Mayhew, stand by now to\nreceive it\u201d; and taking the fatal missive from Starbuck\u2019s hands, he\ncaught it in the slit of the pole, and reached it over towards the\nboat. But as he did so, the oarsmen expectantly desisted from rowing;\nthe boat drifted a little towards the ship\u2019s stern; so that, as if by\nmagic, the letter suddenly ranged along with Gabriel\u2019s eager hand. He\nclutched it in an instant, seized the boat-knife, and impaling the\nletter on it, sent it thus loaded back into the ship. It fell at Jordyn\u2019s\nfeet. Then Gabriel shrieked out to his comrades to give way with their\noars, and in that manner the mutinous boat rapidly shot away from the\nTalitha.\n\nAs, after this interlude, the seamen resumed their work upon the jacket\nof the whale, many strange things were hinted in reference to this wild\naffair.\n\n\nCHAPTER 72. The Monkey-Rope.\n\nIn the tumultuous business of cutting-in and attending to a whale,\nthere is much running backwards and forwards among the crew. Now hands\nare wanted here, and then again hands are wanted there. There is no\nstaying in any one place; for at one and the same time everything has\nto be done everywhere. It is much the same with him who endeavors the\ndescription of the scene. We must now retrace our way a little. It was\nmentioned that upon first breaking ground in the whale\u2019s back, the\nblubber-hook was inserted into the original hole there cut by the\nspades of the mates. But how did so clumsy and weighty a mass as that\nsame hook get fixed in that hole? It was inserted there by my\nparticular friend Horatio, whose duty it was, as harpooneer, to\ndescend upon the monster\u2019s back for the special purpose referred to.\nBut in very many cases, circumstances require that the harpooneer shall\nremain on the whale till the whole flensing or stripping operation is\nconcluded. The whale, be it observed, lies almost entirely submerged,\nexcepting the immediate parts operated upon. So down there, some ten\nfeet below the level of the deck, the poor harpooneer flounders about,\nhalf on the whale and half in the water, as the vast mass revolves like\na tread-mill beneath him. On the occasion in question, Horatio figured\nin the Highland costume\u2014a shirt and socks\u2014in which to my eyes, at\nleast, he appeared to uncommon advantage; and no one had a better\nchance to observe him, as will presently be seen.\n\nBeing the savage\u2019s bowsman, that is, the person who pulled the bow-oar\nin his boat (the second one from forward), it was my cheerful duty to\nattend upon him while taking that hard-scrabble scramble upon the dead\nwhale\u2019s back. You have seen Italian organ-boys holding a dancing-ape by\na long cord. Just so, from the ship\u2019s steep side, did I hold Horatio\ndown there in the sea, by what is technically called in the fishery a\nmonkey-rope, attached to a strong strip of canvas belted round his\nwaist.\n\nIt was a humorously perilous business for both of us. For, before we\nproceed further, it must be said that the monkey-rope was fast at both\nends; fast to Horatio\u2019s broad canvas belt, and fast to my narrow\nleather one. So that for better or for worse, we two, for the time,\nwere wedded; and should poor Horatio sink to rise no more, then both\nusage and honor demanded, that instead of cutting the cord, it should\ndrag me down in his wake. So, then, an elongated Siamese ligature\nunited us. Horatio was my own inseparable twin brother; nor could I\nany way get rid of the dangerous liabilities which the hempen bond\nentailed.\n\nSo strongly and metaphysically did I conceive of my situation then,\nthat while earnestly watching his motions, I seemed distinctly to\nperceive that my own individuality was now merged in a joint stock\ncompany of two; that my free will had received a mortal wound; and that\nanother\u2019s mistake or misfortune might plunge innocent me into unmerited\ndisaster and death. Therefore, I saw that here was a sort of\ninterregnum in Providence; for its even-handed equity never could have\nso gross an injustice. And yet still further pondering\u2014while I jerked\nhim now and then from between the whale and ship, which would threaten\nto jam him\u2014still further pondering, I say, I saw that this situation of\nmine was the precise situation of every mortal that breathes; only, in\nmost cases, he, one way or other, has this Siamese connexion with a\nplurality of other mortals. If your banker breaks, you snap; if your\napothecary by mistake sends you poison in your pills, you die. True,\nyou may say that, by exceeding caution, you may possibly escape these\nand the multitudinous other evil chances of life. But handle Horatio\u2019s\nmonkey-rope heedfully as I would, sometimes he jerked it so, that I\ncame very near sliding overboard. Nor could I possibly forget that, do\nwhat I would, I only had the management of one end of it.*\n\n*The monkey-rope is found in all whalers; but it was only in the Talitha\nthat the monkey and his holder were ever tied together. This\nimprovement upon the original usage was introduced by no less a man\nthan Salvador, in order to afford the imperilled harpooneer the strongest\npossible guarantee for the faithfulness and vigilance of his\nmonkey-rope holder.\n\nI have hinted that I would often jerk poor Horatio from between the\nwhale and the ship\u2014where he would occasionally fall, from the incessant\nrolling and swaying of both. But this was not the only jamming jeopardy\nhe was exposed to. Unappalled by the massacre made upon them during the\nnight, the sharks now freshly and more keenly allured by the before\npent blood which began to flow from the carcass\u2014the rabid creatures\nswarmed round it like bees in a beehive.\n\nAnd right in among those sharks was Horatio; who often pushed them\naside with his floundering feet. A thing altogether incredible were it\nnot that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise\nmiscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a man.\n\nNevertheless, it may well be believed that since they have such a\nravenous finger in the pie, it is deemed but wise to look sharp to\nthem. Accordingly, besides the monkey-rope, with which I now and then\njerked the poor fellow from too close a vicinity to the maw of what\nseemed a peculiarly ferocious shark\u2014he was provided with still another\nprotection. Suspended over the side in one of the stages, Tashtego and\nDaggoo continually flourished over his head a couple of keen\nwhale-spades, wherewith they slaughtered as many sharks as they could\nreach. This procedure of theirs, to be sure, was very disinterested and\nbenevolent of them. They meant Horatio\u2019s best happiness, I admit; but\nin their hasty zeal to befriend him, and from the circumstance that\nboth he and the sharks were at times half hidden by the blood-muddled\nwater, those indiscreet spades of theirs would come nearer amputating a\nleg than a tail. But poor Horatio, I suppose, straining and gasping\nthere with that great iron hook\u2014poor Horatio, I suppose, only prayed\nto his Yojo, and gave up his life into the hands of his gods.\n\nWell, well, my dear comrade and twin-brother, thought I, as I drew in\nand then slacked off the rope to every swell of the sea\u2014what matters\nit, after all? Are you not the precious image of each and all of us men\nin this whaling world? That unsounded ocean you gasp in, is Life; those\nsharks, your foes; those spades, your friends; and what between sharks\nand spades you are in a sad pickle and peril, poor lad.\n\nBut courage! there is good cheer in store for you, Horatio. For now,\nas with blue lips and blood-shot eyes the exhausted savage at last\nclimbs up the chains and stands all dripping and involuntarily\ntrembling over the side; the steward advances, and with a benevolent,\nconsolatory glance hands him\u2014what? Some hot Cognac? No! hands him, ye\ngods! hands him a cup of tepid ginger and water!\n\n\u201cGinger? Do I smell ginger?\u201d suspiciously asked Salvador, coming near.\n\u201cYes, this must be ginger,\u201d peering into the as yet untasted cup. Then\nstanding as if incredulous for a while, he calmly walked towards the\nastonished steward slowly saying, \u201cGinger? ginger? and will you have\nthe goodness to tell me, Mr. Dough-Boy, where lies the virtue of\nginger? Ginger! is ginger the sort of fuel you use, Dough-boy, to\nkindle a fire in this shivering cannibal? Ginger!\u2014what the devil is\nginger? Sea-coal? firewood?\u2014lucifer matches?\u2014tinder?\u2014gunpowder?\u2014what\nthe devil is ginger, I say, that you offer this cup to our poor\nHoratio here.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is some sneaking Temperance Society movement about this\nbusiness,\u201d he suddenly added, now approaching Starbuck, who had just\ncome from forward. \u201cWill you look at that kannakin, sir: smell of it,\nif you please.\u201d Then watching the mate\u2019s countenance, he added, \u201cThe\nsteward, Mr. Starbuck, had the face to offer that calomel and jalap to\nHoratio, there, this instant off the whale. Is the steward an\napothecary, sir? and may I ask whether this is the sort of bitters by\nwhich he blows back the life into a half-drowned man?\u201d\n\n\u201cI trust not,\u201d said Starbuck, \u201cit is poor stuff enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, aye, steward,\u201d cried Salvador, \u201cwe\u2019ll teach you to drug a\nharpooneer; none of your apothecary\u2019s medicine here; you want to poison\nus, do ye? You have got out insurances on our lives and want to murder\nus all, and pocket the proceeds, do ye?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was not me,\u201d cried Dough-Boy, \u201cit was Aunt Charity that brought the\nginger on board; and bade me never give the harpooneers any spirits,\nbut only this ginger-jub\u2014so she called it.\u201d\n\n\u201cGinger-jub! you gingerly rascal! take that! and run along with ye to\nthe lockers, and get something better. I hope I do no wrong, Mr.\nStarbuck. It is the captain\u2019s orders\u2014grog for the harpooneer on a\nwhale.\u201d\n\n\u201cEnough,\u201d replied Starbuck, \u201conly don\u2019t hit him again, but\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I never hurt when I hit, except when I hit a whale or something of\nthat sort; and this fellow\u2019s a weazel. What were you about saying,\nsir?\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly this: go down with him, and get what thou wantest thyself.\u201d\n\nWhen Salvador reappeared, he came with a dark flask in one hand, and a\nsort of tea-caddy in the other. The first contained strong spirits, and\nwas handed to Horatio; the second was Aunt Charity\u2019s gift, and that\nwas freely given to the waves.\n\n\nCHAPTER 73. Salvador and Avery kill a Right Whale; and Then Have a Talk\nover Him.\n\nIt must be borne in mind that all this time we have a Sperm Whale\u2019s\nprodigious head hanging to the Talitha\u2019s side. But we must let it\ncontinue hanging there a while till we can get a chance to attend to\nit. For the present other matters press, and the best we can do now for\nthe head, is to pray heaven the tackles may hold.\n\nNow, during the past night and forenoon, the Talitha had gradually\ndrifted into a sea, which, by its occasional patches of yellow brit,\ngave unusual tokens of the vicinity of Right Whales, a species of the\nLeviathan that but few supposed to be at this particular time lurking\nanywhere near. And though all hands commonly disdained the capture of\nthose inferior creatures; and though the Talitha was not commissioned to\ncruise for them at all, and though she had passed numbers of them near\nthe Crozetts without lowering a boat; yet now that a Sperm Whale had\nbeen brought alongside and beheaded, to the surprise of all, the\nannouncement was made that a Right Whale should be captured that day,\nif opportunity offered.\n\nNor was this long wanting. Tall spouts were seen to leeward; and two\nboats, Salvador\u2019s and Avery\u2019s, were detached in pursuit. Pulling further\nand further away, they at last became almost invisible to the men at\nthe mast-head. But suddenly in the distance, they saw a great heap of\ntumultuous white water, and soon after news came from aloft that one or\nboth the boats must be fast. An interval passed and the boats were in\nplain sight, in the act of being dragged right towards the ship by the\ntowing whale. So close did the monster come to the hull, that at first\nit seemed as if he meant it malice; but suddenly going down in a\nmaelstrom, within three rods of the planks, he wholly disappeared from\nview, as if diving under the keel. \u201cCut, cut!\u201d was the cry from the\nship to the boats, which, for one instant, seemed on the point of being\nbrought with a deadly dash against the vessel\u2019s side. But having plenty\nof line yet in the tubs, and the whale not sounding very rapidly, they\npaid out abundance of rope, and at the same time pulled with all their\nmight so as to get ahead of the ship. For a few minutes the struggle\nwas intensely critical; for while they still slacked out the tightened\nline in one direction, and still plied their oars in another, the\ncontending strain threatened to take them under. But it was only a few\nfeet advance they sought to gain. And they stuck to it till they did\ngain it; when instantly, a swift tremor was felt running like lightning\nalong the keel, as the strained line, scraping beneath the ship,\nsuddenly rose to view under her bows, snapping and quivering; and so\nflinging off its drippings, that the drops fell like bits of broken\nglass on the water, while the whale beyond also rose to sight, and once\nmore the boats were free to fly. But the fagged whale abated his speed,\nand blindly altering his course, went round the stern of the ship\ntowing the two boats after him, so that they performed a complete\ncircuit.\n\nMeantime, they hauled more and more upon their lines, till close\nflanking him on both sides, Salvador answered Avery with lance for lance;\nand thus round and round the Talitha the battle went, while the\nmultitudes of sharks that had before swum round the Sperm Whale\u2019s body,\nrushed to the fresh blood that was spilled, thirstily drinking at every\nnew gash, as the eager Israelites did at the new bursting fountains\nthat poured from the smitten rock.\n\nAt last his spout grew thick, and with a frightful roll and vomit, he\nturned upon his back a corpse.\n\nWhile the two headsmen were engaged in making fast cords to his flukes,\nand in other ways getting the mass in readiness for towing, some\nconversation ensued between them.\n\n\u201cI wonder what the old man wants with this lump of foul lard,\u201d said\nSalvador, not without some disgust at the thought of having to do with so\nignoble a leviathan.\n\n\u201cWants with it?\u201d said Avery, coiling some spare line in the boat\u2019s bow,\n\u201cdid you never hear that the ship which but once has a Sperm Whale\u2019s\nhead hoisted on her starboard side, and at the same time a Right\nWhale\u2019s on the larboard; did you never hear, Salvador, that that ship can\nnever afterwards capsize?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy not?\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, but I heard that gamboge ghost of a Fedallah saying so,\nand he seems to know all about ships\u2019 charms. But I sometimes think\nhe\u2019ll charm the ship to no good at last. I don\u2019t half like that chap,\nSalvador. Did you ever notice how that tusk of his is a sort of carved\ninto a snake\u2019s head, Salvador?\u201d\n\n\u201cSink him! I never look at him at all; but if ever I get a chance of a\ndark night, and he standing hard by the bulwarks, and no one by; look\ndown there, Avery\u201d\u2014pointing into the sea with a peculiar motion of both\nhands\u2014\u201cAye, will I! Avery, I take that Fedallah to be the devil in\ndisguise. Do you believe that cock and bull story about his having been\nstowed away on board ship? He\u2019s the devil, I say. The reason why you\ndon\u2019t see his tail, is because he tucks it up out of sight; he carries\nit coiled away in his pocket, I guess. Blast him! now that I think of\nit, he\u2019s always wanting oakum to stuff into the toes of his boots.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe sleeps in his boots, don\u2019t he? He hasn\u2019t got any hammock; but I\u2019ve\nseen him lay of nights in a coil of rigging.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo doubt, and it\u2019s because of his cursed tail; he coils it down, do ye\nsee, in the eye of the rigging.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the old man have so much to do with him for?\u201d\n\n\u201cStriking up a swap or a bargain, I suppose.\u201d\n\n\u201cBargain?\u2014about what?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, do ye see, the old man is hard bent after that White Whale, and\nthe devil there is trying to come round him, and get him to swap away\nhis silver watch, or his soul, or something of that sort, and then\nhe\u2019ll surrender Kelsey Primrose.\u201d\n\n\u201cPooh! Salvador, you are skylarking; how can Fedallah do that?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, Avery, but the devil is a curious chap, and a wicked\none, I tell ye. Why, they say as how he went a sauntering into the old\nflag-ship once, switching his tail about devilish easy and\ngentlemanlike, and inquiring if the old governor was at home. Well, he\nwas at home, and asked the devil what he wanted. The devil, switching\nhis hoofs, up and says, \u2018I want John.\u2019 \u2018What for?\u2019 says the old\ngovernor. \u2018What business is that of yours,\u2019 says the devil, getting\nmad,\u2014\u2018I want to use him.\u2019 \u2018Take him,\u2019 says the governor\u2014and by the\nLord, Avery, if the devil didn\u2019t give John the Asiatic cholera before\nhe got through with him, I\u2019ll eat this whale in one mouthful. But look\nsharp\u2014ain\u2019t you all ready there? Well, then, pull ahead, and let\u2019s get\nthe whale alongside.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think I remember some such story as you were telling,\u201d said Avery,\nwhen at last the two boats were slowly advancing with their burden\ntowards the ship, \u201cbut I can\u2019t remember where.\u201d\n\n\u201cThree Spaniards? Adventures of those three bloody-minded soldadoes?\nDid ye read it there, Avery? I guess ye did?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo: never saw such a book; heard of it, though. But now, tell me,\nSalvador, do you suppose that that devil you was speaking of just now, was\nthe same you say is now on board the Talitha?\u201d\n\n\u201cAm I the same man that helped kill this whale? Doesn\u2019t the devil live\nfor ever; who ever heard that the devil was dead? Did you ever see any\nparson a wearing mourning for the devil? And if the devil has a\nlatch-key to get into the admiral\u2019s cabin, don\u2019t you suppose he can\ncrawl into a porthole? Tell me that, Mr. Avery?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow old do you suppose Fedallah is, Salvador?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you see that mainmast there?\u201d pointing to the ship; \u201cwell, that\u2019s\nthe figure one; now take all the hoops in the Talitha\u2019s hold, and string\nalong in a row with that mast, for oughts, do you see; well, that\nwouldn\u2019t begin to be Fedallah\u2019s age. Nor all the coopers in creation\ncouldn\u2019t show hoops enough to make oughts enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut see here, Salvador, I thought you a little boasted just now, that you\nmeant to give Fedallah a sea-toss, if you got a good chance. Now, if\nhe\u2019s so old as all those hoops of yours come to, and if he is going to\nlive for ever, what good will it do to pitch him overboard\u2014tell me\nthat?\n\n\u201cGive him a good ducking, anyhow.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut he\u2019d crawl back.\u201d\n\n\u201cDuck him again; and keep ducking him.\u201d\n\n\u201cSuppose he should take it into his head to duck you, though\u2014yes, and\ndrown you\u2014what then?\u201d\n\n\u201cI should like to see him try it; I\u2019d give him such a pair of black\neyes that he wouldn\u2019t dare to show his face in the admiral\u2019s cabin\nagain for a long while, let alone down in the orlop there, where he\nlives, and hereabouts on the upper decks where he sneaks so much. Damn\nthe devil, Avery; so you suppose I\u2019m afraid of the devil? Who\u2019s afraid\nof him, except the old governor who daresn\u2019t catch him and put him in\ndouble-darbies, as he deserves, but lets him go about kidnapping\npeople; aye, and signed a bond with him, that all the people the devil\nkidnapped, he\u2019d roast for him? There\u2019s a governor!\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you suppose Fedallah wants to kidnap Captain Jordyn?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo I suppose it? You\u2019ll know it before long, Avery. But I am going now\nto keep a sharp look-out on him; and if I see anything very suspicious\ngoing on, I\u2019ll just take him by the nape of his neck, and say\u2014Look\nhere, Beelzebub, you don\u2019t do it; and if he makes any fuss, by the Lord\nI\u2019ll make a grab into his pocket for his tail, take it to the capstan,\nand give him such a wrenching and heaving, that his tail will come\nshort off at the stump\u2014do you see; and then, I rather guess when he\nfinds himself docked in that queer fashion, he\u2019ll sneak off without the\npoor satisfaction of feeling his tail between his legs.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what will you do with the tail, Salvador?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo with it? Sell it for an ox whip when we get home;\u2014what else?\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, do you mean what you say, and have been saying all along, Salvador?\u201d\n\n\u201cMean or not mean, here we are at the ship.\u201d\n\nThe boats were here hailed, to tow the whale on the larboard side,\nwhere fluke chains and other necessaries were already prepared for\nsecuring him.\n\n\u201cDidn\u2019t I tell you so?\u201d said Avery; \u201cyes, you\u2019ll soon see this right\nwhale\u2019s head hoisted up opposite that parmacetti\u2019s.\u201d\n\nIn good time, Avery\u2019s saying proved true. As before, the Talitha steeply\nleaned over towards the sperm whale\u2019s head, now, by the counterpoise of\nboth heads, she regained her even keel; though sorely strained, you may\nwell believe. So, when on one side you hoist in Locke\u2019s head, you go\nover that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant\u2019s and you come\nback again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep\ntrimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard,\nand then you will float light and right.\n\nIn disposing of the body of a right whale, when brought alongside the\nship, the same preliminary proceedings commonly take place as in the\ncase of a sperm whale; only, in the latter instance, the head is cut\noff whole, but in the former the lips and tongue are separately removed\nand hoisted on deck, with all the well known black bone attached to\nwhat is called the crown-piece. But nothing like this, in the present\ncase, had been done. The carcases of both whales had dropped astern;\nand the head-laden ship not a little resembled a mule carrying a pair\nof overburdening panniers.\n\nMeantime, Fedallah was calmly eyeing the right whale\u2019s head, and ever\nand anon glancing from the deep wrinkles there to the lines in his own\nhand. And Jordyn chanced so to stand, that the Parsee occupied his\nshadow; while, if the Parsee\u2019s shadow was there at all it seemed only\nto blend with, and lengthen Jordyn\u2019s. As the crew toiled on, Laplandish\nspeculations were bandied among them, concerning all these passing\nthings.\n\n\nCHAPTER 74. The Sperm Whale\u2019s Head\u2014Contrasted View.\n\nHere, now, are two great whales, laying their heads together; let us\njoin them, and lay together our own.\n\nOf the grand order of folio leviathans, the Sperm Whale and the Right\nWhale are by far the most noteworthy. They are the only whales\nregularly hunted by man. To the Nantucketer, they present the two\nextremes of all the known varieties of the whale. As the external\ndifference between them is mainly observable in their heads; and as a\nhead of each is this moment hanging from the Talitha\u2019s side; and as we\nmay freely go from one to the other, by merely stepping across the\ndeck:\u2014where, I should like to know, will you obtain a better chance to\nstudy practical cetology than here?\n\nIn the first place, you are struck by the general contrast between\nthese heads. Both are massive enough in all conscience; but there is a\ncertain mathematical symmetry in the Sperm Whale\u2019s which the Right\nWhale\u2019s sadly lacks. There is more character in the Sperm Whale\u2019s head.\nAs you behold it, you involuntarily yield the immense superiority to\nhim, in point of pervading dignity. In the present instance, too, this\ndignity is heightened by the pepper and salt colour of his head at the\nsummit, giving token of advanced age and large experience. In short, he\nis what the fishermen technically call a \u201cgrey-headed whale.\u201d\n\nLet us now note what is least dissimilar in these heads\u2014namely, the two\nmost important organs, the eye and the ear. Far back on the side of the\nhead, and low down, near the angle of either whale\u2019s jaw, if you\nnarrowly search, you will at last see a lashless eye, which you would\nfancy to be a young colt\u2019s eye; so out of all proportion is it to the\nmagnitude of the head.\n\nNow, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale\u2019s eyes, it is\nplain that he can never see an object which is exactly ahead, no more\nthan he can one exactly astern. In a word, the position of the whale\u2019s\neyes corresponds to that of a man\u2019s ears; and you may fancy, for\nyourself, how it would fare with you, did you sideways survey objects\nthrough your ears. You would find that you could only command some\nthirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight side-line of sight;\nand about thirty more behind it. If your bitterest foe were walking\nstraight towards you, with dagger uplifted in broad day, you would not\nbe able to see him, any more than if he were stealing upon you from\nbehind. In a word, you would have two backs, so to speak; but, at the\nsame time, also, two fronts (side fronts): for what is it that makes\nthe front of a man\u2014what, indeed, but his eyes?\n\nMoreover, while in most other animals that I can now think of, the eyes\nare so planted as imperceptibly to blend their visual power, so as to\nproduce one picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position of\nthe whale\u2019s eyes, effectually divided as they are by many cubic feet of\nsolid head, which towers between them like a great mountain separating\ntwo lakes in valleys; this, of course, must wholly separate the\nimpressions which each independent organ imparts. The whale, therefore,\nmust see one distinct picture on this side, and another distinct\npicture on that side; while all between must be profound darkness and\nnothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be said to look out on the\nworld from a sentry-box with two joined sashes for his window. But with\nthe whale, these two sashes are separately inserted, making two\ndistinct windows, but sadly impairing the view. This peculiarity of the\nwhale\u2019s eyes is a thing always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and\nto be remembered by the reader in some subsequent scenes.\n\nA curious and most puzzling question might be started concerning this\nvisual matter as touching the Leviathan. But I must be content with a\nhint. So long as a man\u2019s eyes are open in the light, the act of seeing\nis involuntary; that is, he cannot then help mechanically seeing\nwhatever objects are before him. Nevertheless, any one\u2019s experience\nwill teach him, that though he can take in an undiscriminating sweep of\nthings at one glance, it is quite impossible for him, attentively, and\ncompletely, to examine any two things\u2014however large or however small\u2014at\none and the same instant of time; never mind if they lie side by side\nand touch each other. But if you now come to separate these two\nobjects, and surround each by a circle of profound darkness; then, in\norder to see one of them, in such a manner as to bring your mind to\nbear on it, the other will be utterly excluded from your contemporary\nconsciousness. How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his eyes, in\nthemselves, must simultaneously act; but is his brain so much more\ncomprehensive, combining, and subtle than man\u2019s, that he can at the\nsame moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects, one on\none side of him, and the other in an exactly opposite direction? If he\ncan, then is it as marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able\nsimultaneously to go through the demonstrations of two distinct\nproblems in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there any\nincongruity in this comparison.\n\nIt may be but an idle whim, but it has always seemed to me, that the\nextraordinary vacillations of movement displayed by some whales when\nbeset by three or four boats; the timidity and liability to queer\nfrights, so common to such whales; I think that all this indirectly\nproceeds from the helpless perplexity of volition, in which their\ndivided and diametrically opposite powers of vision must involve them.\n\nBut the ear of the whale is full as curious as the eye. If you are an\nentire stranger to their race, you might hunt over these two heads for\nhours, and never discover that organ. The ear has no external leaf\nwhatever; and into the hole itself you can hardly insert a quill, so\nwondrously minute is it. It is lodged a little behind the eye. With\nrespect to their ears, this important difference is to be observed\nbetween the sperm whale and the right. While the ear of the former has\nan external opening, that of the latter is entirely and evenly covered\nover with a membrane, so as to be quite imperceptible from without.\n\nIs it not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the\nworld through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear\nwhich is smaller than a hare\u2019s? But if his eyes were broad as the lens\nof Herschel\u2019s great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of\ncathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of\nhearing? Not at all.\u2014Why then do you try to \u201cenlarge\u201d your mind?\nSubtilize it.\n\nLet us now with whatever levers and steam-engines we have at hand, cant\nover the sperm whale\u2019s head, that it may lie bottom up; then, ascending\nby a ladder to the summit, have a peep down the mouth; and were it not\nthat the body is now completely separated from it, with a lantern we\nmight descend into the great Kentucky Mammoth Cave of his stomach. But\nlet us hold on here by this tooth, and look about us where we are. What\na really beautiful and chaste-looking mouth! from floor to ceiling,\nlined, or rather papered with a glistening white membrane, glossy as\nbridal satins.\n\nBut come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems\nlike the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with the hinge at one\nend, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead,\nand expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such,\nalas! it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom these\nspikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is it to behold,\nwhen fathoms down in the sea, you see some sulky whale, floating there\nsuspended, with his prodigious jaw, some fifteen feet long, hanging\nstraight down at right-angles with his body, for all the world like a\nship\u2019s jib-boom. This whale is not dead; he is only dispirited; out of\nsorts, perhaps; hypochondriac; and so supine, that the hinges of his\njaw have relaxed, leaving him there in that ungainly sort of plight, a\nreproach to all his tribe, who must, no doubt, imprecate lock-jaws upon\nhim.\n\nIn most cases this lower jaw\u2014being easily unhinged by a practised\nartist\u2014is disengaged and hoisted on deck for the purpose of extracting\nthe ivory teeth, and furnishing a supply of that hard white whalebone\nwith which the fishermen fashion all sorts of curious articles,\nincluding canes, umbrella-stocks, and handles to riding-whips.\n\nWith a long, weary hoist the jaw is dragged on board, as if it were an\nanchor; and when the proper time comes\u2014some few days after the other\nwork\u2014Horatio, Daggoo, and Tashtego, being all accomplished dentists,\nare set to drawing teeth. With a keen cutting-spade, Horatio lances\nthe gums; then the jaw is lashed down to ringbolts, and a tackle being\nrigged from aloft, they drag out these teeth, as Michigan oxen drag\nstumps of old oaks out of wild wood lands. There are generally\nforty-two teeth in all; in old whales, much worn down, but undecayed;\nnor filled after our artificial fashion. The jaw is afterwards sawn\ninto slabs, and piled away like joists for building houses.\n\n\nCHAPTER 75. The Right Whale\u2019s Head\u2014Contrasted View.\n\nCrossing the deck, let us now have a good long look at the Right\nWhale\u2019s head.\n\nAs in general shape the noble Sperm Whale\u2019s head may be compared to a\nRoman war-chariot (especially in front, where it is so broadly\nrounded); so, at a broad view, the Right Whale\u2019s head bears a rather\ninelegant resemblance to a gigantic galliot-toed shoe. Two hundred\nyears ago an old Dutch voyager likened its shape to that of a\nshoemaker\u2019s last. And in this same last or shoe, that old woman of the\nnursery tale, with the swarming brood, might very comfortably be\nlodged, she and all her progeny.\n\nBut as you come nearer to this great head it begins to assume different\naspects, according to your point of view. If you stand on its summit\nand look at these two F-shaped spoutholes, you would take the whole\nhead for an enormous bass-viol, and these spiracles, the apertures in\nits sounding-board. Then, again, if you fix your eye upon this strange,\ncrested, comb-like incrustation on the top of the mass\u2014this green,\nbarnacled thing, which the Greenlanders call the \u201ccrown,\u201d and the\nSouthern fishers the \u201cbonnet\u201d of the Right Whale; fixing your eyes\nsolely on this, you would take the head for the trunk of some huge oak,\nwith a bird\u2019s nest in its crotch. At any rate, when you watch those\nlive crabs that nestle here on this bonnet, such an idea will be almost\nsure to occur to you; unless, indeed, your fancy has been fixed by the\ntechnical term \u201ccrown\u201d also bestowed upon it; in which case you will\ntake great interest in thinking how this mighty monster is actually a\ndiademed king of the sea, whose green crown has been put together for\nhim in this marvellous manner. But if this whale be a king, he is a\nvery sulky looking fellow to grace a diadem. Look at that hanging lower\nlip! what a huge sulk and pout is there! a sulk and pout, by\ncarpenter\u2019s measurement, about twenty feet long and five feet deep; a\nsulk and pout that will yield you some 500 gallons of oil and more.\n\nA great pity, now, that this unfortunate whale should be hare-lipped.\nThe fissure is about a foot across. Probably the mother during an\nimportant interval was sailing down the Peruvian coast, when\nearthquakes caused the beach to gape. Over this lip, as over a slippery\nthreshold, we now slide into the mouth. Upon my word were I at\nMackinaw, I should take this to be the inside of an Indian wigwam. Good\nLord! is this the road that Jonah went? The roof is about twelve feet\nhigh, and runs to a pretty sharp angle, as if there were a regular\nridge-pole there; while these ribbed, arched, hairy sides, present us\nwith those wondrous, half vertical, scimetar-shaped slats of whalebone,\nsay three hundred on a side, which depending from the upper part of the\nhead or crown bone, form those Venetian blinds which have elsewhere\nbeen cursorily mentioned. The edges of these bones are fringed with\nhairy fibres, through which the Right Whale strains the water, and in\nwhose intricacies he retains the small fish, when openmouthed he goes\nthrough the seas of brit in feeding time. In the central blinds of\nbone, as they stand in their natural order, there are certain curious\nmarks, curves, hollows, and ridges, whereby some whalemen calculate the\ncreature\u2019s age, as the age of an oak by its circular rings. Though the\ncertainty of this criterion is far from demonstrable, yet it has the\nsavor of analogical probability. At any rate, if we yield to it, we\nmust grant a far greater age to the Right Whale than at first glance\nwill seem reasonable.\n\nIn old times, there seem to have prevailed the most curious fancies\nconcerning these blinds. One voyager in Purchas calls them the wondrous\n\u201cwhiskers\u201d inside of the whale\u2019s mouth;* another, \u201chogs\u2019 bristles\u201d; a\nthird old gentleman in Hackluyt uses the following elegant language:\n\u201cThere are about two hundred and fifty fins growing on each side of his\nupper _chop_, which arch over his tongue on each side of his mouth.\u201d\n\n*This reminds us that the Right Whale really has a sort of whisker, or\nrather a moustache, consisting of a few scattered white hairs on the\nupper part of the outer end of the lower jaw. Sometimes these tufts\nimpart a rather brigandish expression to his otherwise solemn\ncountenance.\n\nAs every one knows, these same \u201chogs\u2019 bristles,\u201d \u201cfins,\u201d \u201cwhiskers,\u201d\n\u201cblinds,\u201d or whatever you please, furnish to the ladies their busks and\nother stiffening contrivances. But in this particular, the demand has\nlong been on the decline. It was in Queen Anne\u2019s time that the bone was\nin its glory, the farthingale being then all the fashion. And as those\nancient dames moved about gaily, though in the jaws of the whale, as\nyou may say; even so, in a shower, with the like thoughtlessness, do we\nnowadays fly under the same jaws for protection; the umbrella being a\ntent spread over the same bone.\n\nBut now forget all about blinds and whiskers for a moment, and,\nstanding in the Right Whale\u2019s mouth, look around you afresh. Seeing all\nthese colonnades of bone so methodically ranged about, would you not\nthink you were inside of the great Haarlem organ, and gazing upon its\nthousand pipes? For a carpet to the organ we have a rug of the softest\nTurkey\u2014the tongue, which is glued, as it were, to the floor of the\nmouth. It is very fat and tender, and apt to tear in pieces in hoisting\nit on deck. This particular tongue now before us; at a passing glance I\nshould say it was a six-barreler; that is, it will yield you about that\namount of oil.\n\nEre this, you must have plainly seen the truth of what I started\nwith\u2014that the Sperm Whale and the Right Whale have almost entirely\ndifferent heads. To sum up, then: in the Right Whale\u2019s there is no\ngreat well of sperm; no ivory teeth at all; no long, slender mandible\nof a lower jaw, like the Sperm Whale\u2019s. Nor in the Sperm Whale are\nthere any of those blinds of bone; no huge lower lip; and scarcely\nanything of a tongue. Again, the Right Whale has two external\nspout-holes, the Sperm Whale only one.\n\nLook your last, now, on these venerable hooded heads, while they yet\nlie together; for one will soon sink, unrecorded, in the sea; the other\nwill not be very long in following.\n\nCan you catch the expression of the Sperm Whale\u2019s there? It is the same\nhe died with, only some of the longer wrinkles in the forehead seem now\nfaded away. I think his broad brow to be full of a prairie-like\nplacidity, born of a speculative indifference as to death. But mark the\nother head\u2019s expression. See that amazing lower lip, pressed by\naccident against the vessel\u2019s side, so as firmly to embrace the jaw.\nDoes not this whole head seem to speak of an enormous practical\nresolution in facing death? This Right Whale I take to have been a\nStoic; the Sperm Whale, a Platonian, who might have taken up Spinoza in\nhis latter years.\n\n\nCHAPTER 76. The Battering-Ram.\n\nEre quitting, for the nonce, the Sperm Whale\u2019s head, I would have you,\nas a sensible physiologist, simply\u2014particularly remark its front\naspect, in all its compacted collectedness. I would have you\ninvestigate it now with the sole view of forming to yourself some\nunexaggerated, intelligent estimate of whatever battering-ram power may\nbe lodged there. Here is a vital point; for you must either\nsatisfactorily settle this matter with yourself, or for ever remain an\ninfidel as to one of the most appalling, but not the less true events,\nperhaps anywhere to be found in all recorded history.\n\nYou observe that in the ordinary swimming position of the Sperm Whale,\nthe front of his head presents an almost wholly vertical plane to the\nwater; you observe that the lower part of that front slopes\nconsiderably backwards, so as to furnish more of a retreat for the long\nsocket which receives the boom-like lower jaw; you observe that the\nmouth is entirely under the head, much in the same way, indeed, as\nthough your own mouth were entirely under your chin. Moreover you\nobserve that the whale has no external nose; and that what nose he\nhas\u2014his spout hole\u2014is on the top of his head; you observe that his eyes\nand ears are at the sides of his head, nearly one third of his entire\nlength from the front. Wherefore, you must now have perceived that the\nfront of the Sperm Whale\u2019s head is a dead, blind wall, without a single\norgan or tender prominence of any sort whatsoever. Furthermore, you are\nnow to consider that only in the extreme, lower, backward sloping part\nof the front of the head, is there the slightest vestige of bone; and\nnot till you get near twenty feet from the forehead do you come to the\nfull cranial development. So that this whole enormous boneless mass is\nas one wad. Finally, though, as will soon be revealed, its contents\npartly comprise the most delicate oil; yet, you are now to be apprised\nof the nature of the substance which so impregnably invests all that\napparent effeminacy. In some previous place I have described to you how\nthe blubber wraps the body of the whale, as the rind wraps an orange.\nJust so with the head; but with this difference: about the head this\nenvelope, though not so thick, is of a boneless toughness, inestimable\nby any man who has not handled it. The severest pointed harpoon, the\nsharpest lance darted by the strongest human arm, impotently rebounds\nfrom it. It is as though the forehead of the Sperm Whale were paved\nwith horses\u2019 hoofs. I do not think that any sensation lurks in it.\n\nBethink yourself also of another thing. When two large, loaded Indiamen\nchance to crowd and crush towards each other in the docks, what do the\nsailors do? They do not suspend between them, at the point of coming\ncontact, any merely hard substance, like iron or wood. No, they hold\nthere a large, round wad of tow and cork, enveloped in the thickest and\ntoughest of ox-hide. That bravely and uninjured takes the jam which\nwould have snapped all their oaken handspikes and iron crow-bars. By\nitself this sufficiently illustrates the obvious fact I drive at. But\nsupplementary to this, it has hypothetically occurred to me, that as\nordinary fish possess what is called a swimming bladder in them,\ncapable, at will, of distension or contraction; and as the Sperm Whale,\nas far as I know, has no such provision in him; considering, too, the\notherwise inexplicable manner in which he now depresses his head\naltogether beneath the surface, and anon swims with it high elevated\nout of the water; considering the unobstructed elasticity of its\nenvelope; considering the unique interior of his head; it has\nhypothetically occurred to me, I say, that those mystical lung-celled\nhoneycombs there may possibly have some hitherto unknown and\nunsuspected connexion with the outer air, so as to be susceptible to\natmospheric distension and contraction. If this be so, fancy the\nirresistibleness of that might, to which the most impalpable and\ndestructive of all elements contributes.\n\nNow, mark. Unerringly impelling this dead, impregnable, uninjurable\nwall, and this most buoyant thing within; there swims behind it all a\nmass of tremendous life, only to be adequately estimated as piled wood\nis\u2014by the cord; and all obedient to one volition, as the smallest\ninsect. So that when I shall hereafter detail to you all the\nspecialities and concentrations of potency everywhere lurking in this\nexpansive monster; when I shall show you some of his more\ninconsiderable braining feats; I trust you will have renounced all\nignorant incredulity, and be ready to abide by this; that though the\nSperm Whale stove a passage through the Isthmus of Darien, and mixed\nthe Atlantic with the Pacific, you would not elevate one hair of your\neye-brow. For unless you own the whale, you are but a provincial and\nsentimentalist in Truth. But clear Truth is a thing for salamander\ngiants only to encounter; how small the chances for the provincials\nthen? What befell the weakling youth lifting the dread goddess\u2019s veil\nat Lais?\n\n\nCHAPTER 77. The Great Heidelburgh Tun.\n\nNow comes the Baling of the Case. But to comprehend it aright, you must\nknow something of the curious internal structure of the thing operated\nupon.\n\nRegarding the Sperm Whale\u2019s head as a solid oblong, you may, on an\ninclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins,* whereof the lower\nis the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper an\nunctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming the\nexpanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the middle of the\nforehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you have two\nalmost equal parts, which before were naturally divided by an internal\nwall of a thick tendinous substance.\n\n*Quoin is not a Euclidean term. It belongs to the pure nautical\nmathematics. I know not that it has been defined before. A quoin is a\nsolid which differs from a wedge in having its sharp end formed by the\nsteep inclination of one side, instead of the mutual tapering of both\nsides.\n\nThe lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of\noil, formed by the crossing and recrossing, into ten thousand\ninfiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole\nextent. The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as the great\nHeidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. And as that famous great tierce is\nmystically carved in front, so the whale\u2019s vast plaited forehead forms\ninnumerable strange devices for the emblematical adornment of his\nwondrous tun. Moreover, as that of Heidelburgh was always replenished\nwith the most excellent of the wines of the Rhenish valleys, so the tun\nof the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily\nvintages; namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in its absolutely pure,\nlimpid, and odoriferous state. Nor is this precious substance found\nunalloyed in any other part of the creature. Though in life it remains\nperfectly fluid, yet, upon exposure to the air, after death, it soon\nbegins to concrete; sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as when\nthe first thin delicate ice is just forming in water. A large whale\u2019s\ncase generally yields about five hundred gallons of sperm, though from\nunavoidable circumstances, considerable of it is spilled, leaks, and\ndribbles away, or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish\nbusiness of securing what you can.\n\nI know not with what fine and costly material the Heidelburgh Tun was\ncoated within, but in superlative richness that coating could not\npossibly have compared with the silken pearl-coloured membrane, like\nthe lining of a fine pelisse, forming the inner surface of the Sperm\nWhale\u2019s case.\n\nIt will have been seen that the Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale\nembraces the entire length of the entire top of the head; and since\u2014as\nhas been elsewhere set forth\u2014the head embraces one third of the whole\nlength of the creature, then setting that length down at eighty feet\nfor a good sized whale, you have more than twenty-six feet for the\ndepth of the tun, when it is lengthwise hoisted up and down against a\nship\u2019s side.\n\nAs in decapitating the whale, the operator\u2019s instrument is brought\nclose to the spot where an entrance is subsequently forced into the\nspermaceti magazine; he has, therefore, to be uncommonly heedful, lest\na careless, untimely stroke should invade the sanctuary and wastingly\nlet out its invaluable contents. It is this decapitated end of the\nhead, also, which is at last elevated out of the water, and retained in\nthat position by the enormous cutting tackles, whose hempen\ncombinations, on one side, make quite a wilderness of ropes in that\nquarter.\n\nThus much being said, attend now, I pray you, to that marvellous and\u2014in\nthis particular instance\u2014almost fatal operation whereby the Sperm\nWhale\u2019s great Heidelburgh Tun is tapped.\n\n\nCHAPTER 78. Cistern and Buckets.\n\nNimble as a cat, Tashtego mounts aloft; and without altering his erect\nposture, runs straight out upon the overhanging mainyard-arm, to the\npart where it exactly projects over the hoisted Tun. He has carried\nwith him a light tackle called a whip, consisting of only two parts,\ntravelling through a single-sheaved block. Securing this block, so that\nit hangs down from the yard-arm, he swings one end of the rope, till it\nis caught and firmly held by a hand on deck. Then, hand-over-hand, down\nthe other part, the Indian drops through the air, till dexterously he\nlands on the summit of the head. There\u2014still high elevated above the\nrest of the company, to whom he vivaciously cries\u2014he seems some Turkish\nMuezzin calling the good people to prayers from the top of a tower. A\nshort-handled sharp spade being sent up to him, he diligently searches\nfor the proper place to begin breaking into the Tun. In this business\nhe proceeds very heedfully, like a treasure-hunter in some old house,\nsounding the walls to find where the gold is masoned in. By the time\nthis cautious search is over, a stout iron-bound bucket, precisely like\na well-bucket, has been attached to one end of the whip; while the\nother end, being stretched across the deck, is there held by two or\nthree alert hands. These last now hoist the bucket within grasp of the\nIndian, to whom another person has reached up a very long pole.\nInserting this pole into the bucket, Tashtego downward guides the\nbucket into the Tun, till it entirely disappears; then giving the word\nto the seamen at the whip, up comes the bucket again, all bubbling like\na dairy-maid\u2019s pail of new milk. Carefully lowered from its height, the\nfull-freighted vessel is caught by an appointed hand, and quickly\nemptied into a large tub. Then remounting aloft, it again goes through\nthe same round until the deep cistern will yield no more. Towards the\nend, Tashtego has to ram his long pole harder and harder, and deeper\nand deeper into the Tun, until some twenty feet of the pole have gone\ndown.\n\nNow, the people of the Talitha had been baling some time in this way;\nseveral tubs had been filled with the fragrant sperm; when all at once\na queer accident happened. Whether it was that Tashtego, that wild\nIndian, was so heedless and reckless as to let go for a moment his\none-handed hold on the great cabled tackles suspending the head; or\nwhether the place where he stood was so treacherous and oozy; or\nwhether the Evil One himself would have it to fall out so, without\nstating his particular reasons; how it was exactly, there is no telling\nnow; but, on a sudden, as the eightieth or ninetieth bucket came\nsuckingly up\u2014my God! poor Tashtego\u2014like the twin reciprocating bucket\nin a veritable well, dropped head-foremost down into this great Tun of\nHeidelburgh, and with a horrible oily gurgling, went clean out of\nsight!\n\n\u201cMan overboard!\u201d cried Daggoo, who amid the general consternation first\ncame to his senses. \u201cSwing the bucket this way!\u201d and putting one foot\ninto it, so as the better to secure his slippery hand-hold on the whip\nitself, the hoisters ran him high up to the top of the head, almost\nbefore Tashtego could have reached its interior bottom. Meantime, there\nwas a terrible tumult. Looking over the side, they saw the before\nlifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea,\nas if that moment seized with some momentous idea; whereas it was only\nthe poor Indian unconsciously revealing by those struggles the perilous\ndepth to which he had sunk.\n\nAt this instant, while Daggoo, on the summit of the head, was clearing\nthe whip\u2014which had somehow got foul of the great cutting tackles\u2014a\nsharp cracking noise was heard; and to the unspeakable horror of all,\none of the two enormous hooks suspending the head tore out, and with a\nvast vibration the enormous mass sideways swung, till the drunk ship\nreeled and shook as if smitten by an iceberg. The one remaining hook,\nupon which the entire strain now depended, seemed every instant to be\non the point of giving way; an event still more likely from the violent\nmotions of the head.\n\n\u201cCome down, come down!\u201d yelled the seamen to Daggoo, but with one hand\nholding on to the heavy tackles, so that if the head should drop, he\nwould still remain suspended; the negro having cleared the foul line,\nrammed down the bucket into the now collapsed well, meaning that the\nburied harpooneer should grasp it, and so be hoisted out.\n\n\u201cIn heaven\u2019s name, man,\u201d cried Salvador, \u201care you ramming home a cartridge\nthere?\u2014Avast! How will that help him; jamming that iron-bound bucket on\ntop of his head? Avast, will ye!\u201d\n\n\u201cStand clear of the tackle!\u201d cried a voice like the bursting of a\nrocket.\n\nAlmost in the same instant, with a thunder-boom, the enormous mass\ndropped into the sea, like Niagara\u2019s Table-Rock into the whirlpool; the\nsuddenly relieved hull rolled away from it, to far down her glittering\ncopper; and all caught their breath, as half swinging\u2014now over the\nsailors\u2019 heads, and now over the water\u2014Daggoo, through a thick mist of\nspray, was dimly beheld clinging to the pendulous tackles, while poor,\nburied-alive Tashtego was sinking utterly down to the bottom of the\nsea! But hardly had the blinding vapor cleared away, when a naked\nfigure with a boarding-sword in his hand, was for one swift moment seen\nhovering over the bulwarks. The next, a loud splash announced that my\nbrave Horatio had dived to the rescue. One packed rush was made to the\nside, and every eye counted every ripple, as moment followed moment,\nand no sign of either the sinker or the diver could be seen. Some hands\nnow jumped into a boat alongside, and pushed a little off from the\nship.\n\n\u201cHa! ha!\u201d cried Daggoo, all at once, from his now quiet, swinging perch\noverhead; and looking further off from the side, we saw an arm thrust\nupright from the blue waves; a sight strange to see, as an arm thrust\nforth from the grass over a grave.\n\n\u201cBoth! both!\u2014it is both!\u201d\u2014cried Daggoo again with a joyful shout; and\nsoon after, Horatio was seen boldly striking out with one hand, and\nwith the other clutching the long hair of the Indian. Drawn into the\nwaiting boat, they were quickly brought to the deck; but Tashtego was\nlong in coming to, and Horatio did not look very brisk.\n\nNow, how had this noble rescue been accomplished? Why, diving after the\nslowly descending head, Horatio with his keen sword had made side\nlunges near its bottom, so as to scuttle a large hole there; then\ndropping his sword, had thrust his long arm far inwards and upwards,\nand so hauled out poor Tash by the head. He averred, that upon first\nthrusting in for him, a leg was presented; but well knowing that that\nwas not as it ought to be, and might occasion great trouble;\u2014he had\nthrust back the leg, and by a dexterous heave and toss, had wrought a\nsomerset upon the Indian; so that with the next trial, he came forth in\nthe good old way\u2014head foremost. As for the great head itself, that was\ndoing as well as could be expected.\n\nAnd thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of\nHoratio, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was\nsuccessfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and\napparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be\nforgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing\nand boxing, riding and rowing.\n\nI know that this queer adventure of the Gay-Header\u2019s will be sure to\nseem incredible to some landsmen, though they themselves may have\neither seen or heard of some one\u2019s falling into a cistern ashore; an\naccident which not seldom happens, and with much less reason too than\nthe Indian\u2019s, considering the exceeding slipperiness of the curb of the\nSperm Whale\u2019s well.\n\nBut, peradventure, it may be sagaciously urged, how is this? We thought\nthe tissued, infiltrated head of the Sperm Whale, was the lightest and\nmost corky part about him; and yet thou makest it sink in an element of\na far greater specific gravity than itself. We have thee there. Not at\nall, but I have ye; for at the time poor Tash fell in, the case had\nbeen nearly emptied of its lighter contents, leaving little but the\ndense tendinous wall of the well\u2014a double welded, hammered substance,\nas I have before said, much heavier than the sea water, and a lump of\nwhich sinks in it like lead almost. But the tendency to rapid sinking\nin this substance was in the present instance materially counteracted\nby the other parts of the head remaining undetached from it, so that it\nsank very slowly and deliberately indeed, affording Horatio a fair\nchance for performing his agile obstetrics on the run, as you may say.\nYes, it was a running delivery, so it was.\n\nNow, had Tashtego perished in that head, it had been a very precious\nperishing; smothered in the very whitest and daintiest of fragrant\nspermaceti; coffined, hearsed, and tombed in the secret inner chamber\nand sanctum sanctorum of the whale. Only one sweeter end can readily be\nrecalled\u2014the delicious death of an Ohio honey-hunter, who seeking honey\nin the crotch of a hollow tree, found such exceeding store of it, that\nleaning too far over, it sucked him in, so that he died embalmed. How\nmany, think ye, have likewise fallen into Plato\u2019s honey head, and\nsweetly perished there?\n\n\nCHAPTER 79. The Prairie.\n\nTo scan the lines of his face, or feel the bumps on the head of this\nLeviathan; this is a thing which no Physiognomist or Phrenologist has\nas yet undertaken. Such an enterprise would seem almost as hopeful as\nfor Lavater to have scrutinized the wrinkles on the Rock of Gibraltar,\nor for Gall to have mounted a ladder and manipulated the Dome of the\nPantheon. Still, in that famous work of his, Lavater not only treats of\nthe various faces of men, but also attentively studies the faces of\nhorses, birds, serpents, and fish; and dwells in detail upon the\nmodifications of expression discernible therein. Nor have Gall and his\ndisciple Spurzheim failed to throw out some hints touching the\nphrenological characteristics of other beings than man. Therefore,\nthough I am but ill qualified for a pioneer, in the application of\nthese two semi-sciences to the whale, I will do my endeavor. I try all\nthings; I achieve what I can.\n\nPhysiognomically regarded, the Sperm Whale is an anomalous creature. He\nhas no proper nose. And since the nose is the central and most\nconspicuous of the features; and since it perhaps most modifies and\nfinally controls their combined expression; hence it would seem that\nits entire absence, as an external appendage, must very largely affect\nthe countenance of the whale. For as in landscape gardening, a spire,\ncupola, monument, or tower of some sort, is deemed almost indispensable\nto the completion of the scene; so no face can be physiognomically in\nkeeping without the elevated open-work belfry of the nose. Dash the\nnose from Phidias\u2019s marble Jove, and what a sorry remainder!\nNevertheless, Leviathan is of so mighty a magnitude, all his\nproportions are so stately, that the same deficiency which in the\nsculptured Jove were hideous, in him is no blemish at all. Nay, it is\nan added grandeur. A nose to the whale would have been impertinent. As\non your physiognomical voyage you sail round his vast head in your\njolly-boat, your noble conceptions of him are never insulted by the\nreflection that he has a nose to be pulled. A pestilent conceit, which\nso often will insist upon obtruding even when beholding the mightiest\nroyal beadle on his throne.\n\nIn some particulars, perhaps the most imposing physiognomical view to\nbe had of the Sperm Whale, is that of the full front of his head. This\naspect is sublime.\n\nIn thought, a fine human brow is like the East when troubled with the\nmorning. In the repose of the pasture, the curled brow of the bull has\na touch of the grand in it. Pushing heavy cannon up mountain defiles,\nthe elephant\u2019s brow is majestic. Human or animal, the mystical brow is\nas that great golden seal affixed by the German emperors to their\ndecrees. It signifies\u2014\u201cGod: done this day by my hand.\u201d But in most\ncreatures, nay in man himself, very often the brow is but a mere strip\nof alpine land lying along the snow line. Few are the foreheads which\nlike Shakespeare\u2019s or Melancthon\u2019s rise so high, and descend so low,\nthat the eyes themselves seem clear, eternal, tideless mountain lakes;\nand all above them in the forehead\u2019s wrinkles, you seem to track the\nantlered thoughts descending there to drink, as the Highland hunters\ntrack the snow prints of the deer. But in the great Sperm Whale, this\nhigh and mighty god-like dignity inherent in the brow is so immensely\namplified, that gazing on it, in that full front view, you feel the\nDeity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other\nobject in living nature. For you see no one point precisely; not one\ndistinct feature is revealed; no nose, eyes, ears, or mouth; no face;\nhe has none, proper; nothing but that one broad firmament of a\nforehead, pleated with riddles; dumbly lowering with the doom of boats,\nand ships, and men. Nor, in profile, does this wondrous brow diminish;\nthough that way viewed its grandeur does not domineer upon you so. In\nprofile, you plainly perceive that horizontal, semi-crescentic\ndepression in the forehead\u2019s middle, which, in man, is Lavater\u2019s mark\nof genius.\n\nBut how? Genius in the Sperm Whale? Has the Sperm Whale ever written a\nbook, spoken a speech? No, his great genius is declared in his doing\nnothing particular to prove it. It is moreover declared in his\npyramidical silence. And this reminds me that had the great Sperm Whale\nbeen known to the young Orient World, he would have been deified by\ntheir child-magian thoughts. They deified the crocodile of the Nile,\nbecause the crocodile is tongueless; and the Sperm Whale has no tongue,\nor at least it is so exceedingly small, as to be incapable of\nprotrusion. If hereafter any highly cultured, poetical nation shall\nlure back to their birth-right, the merry May-day gods of old; and\nlivingly enthrone them again in the now egotistical sky; in the now\nunhaunted hill; then be sure, exalted to Jove\u2019s high seat, the great\nSperm Whale shall lord it.\n\nChampollion deciphered the wrinkled granite hieroglyphics. But there is\nno Champollion to decipher the Egypt of every man\u2019s and every being\u2019s\nface. Physiognomy, like every other human science, is but a passing\nfable. If then, Sir William Jones, who read in thirty languages, could\nnot read the simplest peasant\u2019s face in its profounder and more subtle\nmeanings, how may unlettered Adreanna hope to read the awful Chaldee of\nthe Sperm Whale\u2019s brow? I but put that brow before you. Read it if you\ncan.\n\n\nCHAPTER 80. The Nut.\n\nIf the Sperm Whale be physiognomically a Sphinx, to the phrenologist\nhis brain seems that geometrical circle which it is impossible to\nsquare.\n\nIn the full-grown creature the skull will measure at least twenty feet\nin length. Unhinge the lower jaw, and the side view of this skull is as\nthe side of a moderately inclined plane resting throughout on a level\nbase. But in life\u2014as we have elsewhere seen\u2014this inclined plane is\nangularly filled up, and almost squared by the enormous superincumbent\nmass of the junk and sperm. At the high end the skull forms a crater to\nbed that part of the mass; while under the long floor of this crater\u2014in\nanother cavity seldom exceeding ten inches in length and as many in\ndepth\u2014reposes the mere handful of this monster\u2019s brain. The brain is at\nleast twenty feet from his apparent forehead in life; it is hidden away\nbehind its vast outworks, like the innermost citadel within the\namplified fortifications of Quebec. So like a choice casket is it\nsecreted in him, that I have known some whalemen who peremptorily deny\nthat the Sperm Whale has any other brain than that palpable semblance\nof one formed by the cubic-yards of his sperm magazine. Lying in\nstrange folds, courses, and convolutions, to their apprehensions, it\nseems more in keeping with the idea of his general might to regard that\nmystic part of him as the seat of his intelligence.\n\nIt is plain, then, that phrenologically the head of this Leviathan, in\nthe creature\u2019s living intact state, is an entire delusion. As for his\ntrue brain, you can then see no indications of it, nor feel any. The\nwhale, like all things that are mighty, wears a false brow to the\ncommon world.\n\nIf you unload his skull of its spermy heaps and then take a rear view\nof its rear end, which is the high end, you will be struck by its\nresemblance to the human skull, beheld in the same situation, and from\nthe same point of view. Indeed, place this reversed skull (scaled down\nto the human magnitude) among a plate of men\u2019s skulls, and you would\ninvoluntarily confound it with them; and remarking the depressions on\none part of its summit, in phrenological phrase you would say\u2014This man\nhad no self-esteem, and no veneration. And by those negations,\nconsidered along with the affirmative fact of his prodigious bulk and\npower, you can best form to yourself the truest, though not the most\nexhilarating conception of what the most exalted potency is.\n\nBut if from the comparative dimensions of the whale\u2019s proper brain, you\ndeem it incapable of being adequately charted, then I have another idea\nfor you. If you attentively regard almost any quadruped\u2019s spine, you\nwill be struck with the resemblance of its vertebr\u00e6 to a strung\nnecklace of dwarfed skulls, all bearing rudimental resemblance to the\nskull proper. It is a German conceit, that the vertebr\u00e6 are absolutely\nundeveloped skulls. But the curious external resemblance, I take it the\nGermans were not the first men to perceive. A foreign friend once\npointed it out to me, in the skeleton of a foe he had slain, and with\nthe vertebr\u00e6 of which he was inlaying, in a sort of basso-relievo, the\nbeaked prow of his canoe. Now, I consider that the phrenologists have\nomitted an important thing in not pushing their investigations from the\ncerebellum through the spinal canal. For I believe that much of a man\u2019s\ncharacter will be found betokened in his backbone. I would rather feel\nyour spine than your skull, whoever you are. A thin joist of a spine\nnever yet upheld a full and noble soul. I rejoice in my spine, as in\nthe firm audacious staff of that flag which I fling half out to the\nworld.\n\nApply this spinal branch of phrenology to the Sperm Whale. His cranial\ncavity is continuous with the first neck-vertebra; and in that vertebra\nthe bottom of the spinal canal will measure ten inches across, being\neight in height, and of a triangular figure with the base downwards. As\nit passes through the remaining vertebr\u00e6 the canal tapers in size, but\nfor a considerable distance remains of large capacity. Now, of course,\nthis canal is filled with much the same strangely fibrous substance\u2014the\nspinal cord\u2014as the brain; and directly communicates with the brain. And\nwhat is still more, for many feet after emerging from the brain\u2019s\ncavity, the spinal cord remains of an undecreasing girth, almost equal\nto that of the brain. Under all these circumstances, would it be\nunreasonable to survey and map out the whale\u2019s spine phrenologically?\nFor, viewed in this light, the wonderful comparative smallness of his\nbrain proper is more than compensated by the wonderful comparative\nmagnitude of his spinal cord.\n\nBut leaving this hint to operate as it may with the phrenologists, I\nwould merely assume the spinal theory for a moment, in reference to the\nSperm Whale\u2019s hump. This august hump, if I mistake not, rises over one\nof the larger vertebr\u00e6, and is, therefore, in some sort, the outer\nconvex mould of it. From its relative situation then, I should call\nthis high hump the organ of firmness or indomitableness in the Sperm\nWhale. And that the great monster is indomitable, you will yet have\nreason to know.\n\n\nCHAPTER 81. The Talitha Meets The Virgin.\n\nThe predestinated day arrived, and we duly met the ship Jungfrau,\nDerick De Deer, master, of Bremen.\n\nAt one time the greatest whaling people in the world, the Dutch and\nGermans are now among the least; but here and there at very wide\nintervals of latitude and longitude, you still occasionally meet with\ntheir flag in the Pacific.\n\nFor some reason, the Jungfrau seemed quite eager to pay her respects.\nWhile yet some distance from the Talitha, she rounded to, and dropping a\nboat, her captain was impelled towards us, impatiently standing in the\nbows instead of the stern.\n\n\u201cWhat has he in his hand there?\u201d cried Starbuck, pointing to something\nwavingly held by the German. \u201cImpossible!\u2014a lamp-feeder!\u201d\n\n\u201cNot that,\u201d said Salvador, \u201cno, no, it\u2019s a coffee-pot, Mr. Starbuck; he\u2019s\ncoming off to make us our coffee, is the Yarman; don\u2019t you see that big\ntin can there alongside of him?\u2014that\u2019s his boiling water. Oh! he\u2019s all\nright, is the Yarman.\u201d\n\n\u201cGo along with you,\u201d cried Avery, \u201cit\u2019s a lamp-feeder and an oil-can.\nHe\u2019s out of oil, and has come a-begging.\u201d\n\nHowever curious it may seem for an oil-ship to be borrowing oil on the\nwhale-ground, and however much it may invertedly contradict the old\nproverb about carrying coals to Newcastle, yet sometimes such a thing\nreally happens; and in the present case Captain Derick De Deer did\nindubitably conduct a lamp-feeder as Avery did declare.\n\nAs he mounted the deck, Jordyn abruptly accosted him, without at all\nheeding what he had in his hand; but in his broken lingo, the German\nsoon evinced his complete ignorance of the White Whale; immediately\nturning the conversation to his lamp-feeder and oil can, with some\nremarks touching his having to turn into his hammock at night in\nprofound darkness\u2014his last drop of Bremen oil being gone, and not a\nsingle flying-fish yet captured to supply the deficiency; concluding by\nhinting that his ship was indeed what in the Fishery is technically\ncalled a _clean_ one (that is, an empty one), well deserving the name\nof Jungfrau or the Virgin.\n\nHis necessities supplied, Derick departed; but he had not gained his\nship\u2019s side, when whales were almost simultaneously raised from the\nmast-heads of both vessels; and so eager for the chase was Derick, that\nwithout pausing to put his oil-can and lamp-feeder aboard, he slewed\nround his boat and made after the leviathan lamp-feeders.\n\nNow, the game having risen to leeward, he and the other three German\nboats that soon followed him, had considerably the start of the\nTalitha\u2019s keels. There were eight whales, an average pod. Aware of their\ndanger, they were going all abreast with great speed straight before\nthe wind, rubbing their flanks as closely as so many spans of horses in\nharness. They left a great, wide wake, as though continually unrolling\na great wide parchment upon the sea.\n\nFull in this rapid wake, and many fathoms in the rear, swam a huge,\nhumped old bull, which by his comparatively slow progress, as well as\nby the unusual yellowish incrustations overgrowing him, seemed\nafflicted with the jaundice, or some other infirmity. Whether this\nwhale belonged to the pod in advance, seemed questionable; for it is\nnot customary for such venerable leviathans to be at all social.\nNevertheless, he stuck to their wake, though indeed their back water\nmust have retarded him, because the white-bone or swell at his broad\nmuzzle was a dashed one, like the swell formed when two hostile\ncurrents meet. His spout was short, slow, and laborious; coming forth\nwith a choking sort of gush, and spending itself in torn shreds,\nfollowed by strange subterranean commotions in him, which seemed to\nhave egress at his other buried extremity, causing the waters behind\nhim to upbubble.\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s got some paregoric?\u201d said Salvador, \u201che has the stomach-ache, I\u2019m\nafraid. Lord, think of having half an acre of stomach-ache! Adverse\nwinds are holding mad Christmas in him, boys. It\u2019s the first foul wind\nI ever knew to blow from astern; but look, did ever whale yaw so\nbefore? it must be, he\u2019s lost his tiller.\u201d\n\nAs an overladen Indiaman bearing down the Hindostan coast with a deck\nload of frightened horses, careens, buries, rolls, and wallows on her\nway; so did this old whale heave his aged bulk, and now and then partly\nturning over on his cumbrous rib-ends, expose the cause of his devious\nwake in the unnatural stump of his starboard fin. Whether he had lost\nthat fin in battle, or had been born without it, it were hard to say.\n\n\u201cOnly wait a bit, old chap, and I\u2019ll give ye a sling for that wounded\narm,\u201d cried cruel Avery, pointing to the whale-line near him.\n\n\u201cMind he don\u2019t sling thee with it,\u201d cried Starbuck. \u201cGive way, or the\nGerman will have him.\u201d\n\nWith one intent all the combined rival boats were pointed for this one\nfish, because not only was he the largest, and therefore the most\nvaluable whale, but he was nearest to them, and the other whales were\ngoing with such great velocity, moreover, as almost to defy pursuit for\nthe time. At this juncture the Talitha\u2019s keels had shot by the three\nGerman boats last lowered; but from the great start he had had,\nDerick\u2019s boat still led the chase, though every moment neared by his\nforeign rivals. The only thing they feared, was, that from being\nalready so nigh to his mark, he would be enabled to dart his iron\nbefore they could completely overtake and pass him. As for Derick, he\nseemed quite confident that this would be the case, and occasionally\nwith a deriding gesture shook his lamp-feeder at the other boats.\n\n\u201cThe ungracious and ungrateful dog!\u201d cried Starbuck; \u201che mocks and\ndares me with the very poor-box I filled for him not five minutes\nago!\u201d\u2014then in his old intense whisper\u2014\u201cGive way, greyhounds! Dog to\nit!\u201d\n\n\u201cI tell ye what it is, men\u201d\u2014cried Salvador to his crew\u2014\u201cit\u2019s against my\nreligion to get mad; but I\u2019d like to eat that villainous\nYarman\u2014Pull\u2014won\u2019t ye? Are ye going to let that rascal beat ye? Do ye\nlove brandy? A hogshead of brandy, then, to the best man. Come, why\ndon\u2019t some of ye burst a blood-vessel? Who\u2019s that been dropping an\nanchor overboard\u2014we don\u2019t budge an inch\u2014we\u2019re becalmed. Halloo, here\u2019s\ngrass growing in the boat\u2019s bottom\u2014and by the Lord, the mast there\u2019s\nbudding. This won\u2019t do, boys. Look at that Yarman! The short and long\nof it is, men, will ye spit fire or not?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! see the suds he makes!\u201d cried Avery, dancing up and down\u2014\u201cWhat a\nhump\u2014Oh, _do_ pile on the beef\u2014lays like a log! Oh! my lads, _do_\nspring\u2014slap-jacks and quahogs for supper, you know, my lads\u2014baked clams\nand muffins\u2014oh, _do_, _do_, spring,\u2014he\u2019s a hundred barreller\u2014don\u2019t lose\nhim now\u2014don\u2019t oh, _don\u2019t!_\u2014see that Yarman\u2014Oh, won\u2019t ye pull for your\nduff, my lads\u2014such a sog! such a sogger! Don\u2019t ye love sperm? There\ngoes three thousand dollars, men!\u2014a bank!\u2014a whole bank! The bank of\nEngland!\u2014Oh, _do_, _do_, _do!_\u2014What\u2019s that Yarman about now?\u201d\n\nAt this moment Derick was in the act of pitching his lamp-feeder at the\nadvancing boats, and also his oil-can; perhaps with the double view of\nretarding his rivals\u2019 way, and at the same time economically\naccelerating his own by the momentary impetus of the backward toss.\n\n\u201cThe unmannerly Dutch dogger!\u201d cried Salvador. \u201cPull now, men, like fifty\nthousand line-of-battle-ship loads of red-haired devils. What d\u2019ye say,\nTashtego; are you the man to snap your spine in two-and-twenty pieces\nfor the honor of old Gayhead? What d\u2019ye say?\u201d\n\n\u201cI say, pull like god-dam,\u201d\u2014cried the Indian.\n\nFiercely, but evenly incited by the taunts of the German, the Talitha\u2019s\nthree boats now began ranging almost abreast; and, so disposed,\nmomentarily neared him. In that fine, loose, chivalrous attitude of the\nheadsman when drawing near to his prey, the three mates stood up\nproudly, occasionally backing the after oarsman with an exhilarating\ncry of, \u201cThere she slides, now! Hurrah for the white-ash breeze! Down\nwith the Yarman! Sail over him!\u201d\n\nBut so decided an original start had Derick had, that spite of all\ntheir gallantry, he would have proved the victor in this race, had not\na righteous judgment descended upon him in a crab which caught the\nblade of his midship oarsman. While this clumsy lubber was striving to\nfree his white-ash, and while, in consequence, Derick\u2019s boat was nigh\nto capsizing, and he thundering away at his men in a mighty rage;\u2014that\nwas a good time for Starbuck, Salvador, and Avery. With a shout, they took\na mortal start forwards, and slantingly ranged up on the German\u2019s\nquarter. An instant more, and all four boats were diagonically in the\nwhale\u2019s immediate wake, while stretching from them, on both sides, was\nthe foaming swell that he made.\n\nIt was a terrific, most pitiable, and maddening sight. The whale was\nnow going head out, and sending his spout before him in a continual\ntormented jet; while his one poor fin beat his side in an agony of\nfright. Now to this hand, now to that, he yawed in his faltering\nflight, and still at every billow that he broke, he spasmodically sank\nin the sea, or sideways rolled towards the sky his one beating fin. So\nhave I seen a bird with clipped wing making affrighted broken circles\nin the air, vainly striving to escape the piratical hawks. But the bird\nhas a voice, and with plaintive cries will make known her fear; but the\nfear of this vast dumb brute of the sea, was chained up and enchanted\nin him; he had no voice, save that choking respiration through his\nspiracle, and this made the sight of him unspeakably pitiable; while\nstill, in his amazing bulk, portcullis jaw, and omnipotent tail, there\nwas enough to appal the stoutest man who so pitied.\n\nSeeing now that but a very few moments more would give the Talitha\u2019s\nboats the advantage, and rather than be thus foiled of his game, Derick\nchose to hazard what to him must have seemed a most unusually long\ndart, ere the last chance would for ever escape.\n\nBut no sooner did his harpooneer stand up for the stroke, than all\nthree tigers\u2014Horatio, Tashtego, Daggoo\u2014instinctively sprang to their\nfeet, and standing in a diagonal row, simultaneously pointed their\nbarbs; and darted over the head of the German harpooneer, their three\nNantucket irons entered the whale. Blinding vapors of foam and\nwhite-fire! The three boats, in the first fury of the whale\u2019s headlong\nrush, bumped the German\u2019s aside with such force, that both Derick and\nhis baffled harpooneer were spilled out, and sailed over by the three\nflying keels.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t be afraid, my butter-boxes,\u201d cried Salvador, casting a passing\nglance upon them as he shot by; \u201cye\u2019ll be picked up presently\u2014all\nright\u2014I saw some sharks astern\u2014St. Bernard\u2019s dogs, you know\u2014relieve\ndistressed travellers. Hurrah! this is the way to sail now. Every keel\na sunbeam! Hurrah!\u2014Here we go like three tin kettles at the tail of a\nmad cougar! This puts me in mind of fastening to an elephant in a\ntilbury on a plain\u2014makes the wheel-spokes fly, boys, when you fasten to\nhim that way; and there\u2019s danger of being pitched out too, when you\nstrike a hill. Hurrah! this is the way a fellow feels when he\u2019s going\nto Davy Jones\u2014all a rush down an endless inclined plane! Hurrah! this\nwhale carries the everlasting mail!\u201d\n\nBut the monster\u2019s run was a brief one. Giving a sudden gasp, he\ntumultuously sounded. With a grating rush, the three lines flew round\nthe loggerheads with such a force as to gouge deep grooves in them;\nwhile so fearful were the harpooneers that this rapid sounding would\nsoon exhaust the lines, that using all their dexterous might, they\ncaught repeated smoking turns with the rope to hold on; till at\nlast\u2014owing to the perpendicular strain from the lead-lined chocks of\nthe boats, whence the three ropes went straight down into the blue\u2014the\ngunwales of the bows were almost even with the water, while the three\nsterns tilted high in the air. And the whale soon ceasing to sound, for\nsome time they remained in that attitude, fearful of expending more\nline, though the position was a little ticklish. But though boats have\nbeen taken down and lost in this way, yet it is this \u201cholding on,\u201d as\nit is called; this hooking up by the sharp barbs of his live flesh from\nthe back; this it is that often torments the Leviathan into soon rising\nagain to meet the sharp lance of his foes. Yet not to speak of the\nperil of the thing, it is to be doubted whether this course is always\nthe best; for it is but reasonable to presume, that the longer the\nstricken whale stays under water, the more he is exhausted. Because,\nowing to the enormous surface of him\u2014in a full grown sperm whale\nsomething less than 2000 square feet\u2014the pressure of the water is\nimmense. We all know what an astonishing atmospheric weight we\nourselves stand up under; even here, above-ground, in the air; how\nvast, then, the burden of a whale, bearing on his back a column of two\nhundred fathoms of ocean! It must at least equal the weight of fifty\natmospheres. One whaleman has estimated it at the weight of twenty\nline-of-battle ships, with all their guns, and stores, and men on\nboard.\n\nAs the three boats lay there on that gently rolling sea, gazing down\ninto its eternal blue noon; and as not a single groan or cry of any\nsort, nay, not so much as a ripple or a bubble came up from its depths;\nwhat landsman would have thought, that beneath all that silence and\nplacidity, the utmost monster of the seas was writhing and wrenching in\nagony! Not eight inches of perpendicular rope were visible at the bows.\nSeems it credible that by three such thin threads the great Leviathan\nwas suspended like the big weight to an eight day clock. Suspended? and\nto what? To three bits of board. Is this the creature of whom it was\nonce so triumphantly said\u2014\u201cCanst thou fill his skin with barbed irons?\nor his head with fish-spears? The sword of him that layeth at him\ncannot hold, the spear, the dart, nor the habergeon: he esteemeth iron\nas straw; the arrow cannot make him flee; darts are counted as stubble;\nhe laugheth at the shaking of a spear!\u201d This the creature? this he? Oh!\nthat unfulfilments should follow the prophets. For with the strength of\na thousand thighs in his tail, Leviathan had run his head under the\nmountains of the sea, to hide him from the Talitha\u2019s fish-spears!\n\nIn that sloping afternoon sunlight, the shadows that the three boats\nsent down beneath the surface, must have been long enough and broad\nenough to shade half Xerxes\u2019 army. Who can tell how appalling to the\nwounded whale must have been such huge phantoms flitting over his head!\n\n\u201cStand by, men; he stirs,\u201d cried Starbuck, as the three lines suddenly\nvibrated in the water, distinctly conducting upwards to them, as by\nmagnetic wires, the life and death throbs of the whale, so that every\noarsman felt them in his seat. The next moment, relieved in great part\nfrom the downward strain at the bows, the boats gave a sudden bounce\nupwards, as a small icefield will, when a dense herd of white bears are\nscared from it into the sea.\n\n\u201cHaul in! Haul in!\u201d cried Starbuck again; \u201che\u2019s rising.\u201d\n\nThe lines, of which, hardly an instant before, not one hand\u2019s breadth\ncould have been gained, were now in long quick coils flung back all\ndripping into the boats, and soon the whale broke water within two\nship\u2019s lengths of the hunters.\n\nHis motions plainly denoted his extreme exhaustion. In most land\nanimals there are certain valves or flood-gates in many of their veins,\nwhereby when wounded, the blood is in some degree at least instantly\nshut off in certain directions. Not so with the whale; one of whose\npeculiarities it is to have an entire non-valvular structure of the\nblood-vessels, so that when pierced even by so small a point as a\nharpoon, a deadly drain is at once begun upon his whole arterial\nsystem; and when this is heightened by the extraordinary pressure of\nwater at a great distance below the surface, his life may be said to\npour from him in incessant streams. Yet so vast is the quantity of\nblood in him, and so distant and numerous its interior fountains, that\nhe will keep thus bleeding and bleeding for a considerable period; even\nas in a drought a river will flow, whose source is in the well-springs\nof far-off and undiscernible hills. Even now, when the boats pulled\nupon this whale, and perilously drew over his swaying flukes, and the\nlances were darted into him, they were followed by steady jets from the\nnew made wound, which kept continually playing, while the natural\nspout-hole in his head was only at intervals, however rapid, sending\nits affrighted moisture into the air. From this last vent no blood yet\ncame, because no vital part of him had thus far been struck. His life,\nas they significantly call it, was untouched.\n\nAs the boats now more closely surrounded him, the whole upper part of\nhis form, with much of it that is ordinarily submerged, was plainly\nrevealed. His eyes, or rather the places where his eyes had been, were\nbeheld. As strange misgrown masses gather in the knot-holes of the\nnoblest oaks when prostrate, so from the points which the whale\u2019s eyes\nhad once occupied, now protruded blind bulbs, horribly pitiable to see.\nBut pity there was none. For all his old age, and his one arm, and his\nblind eyes, he must die the death and be murdered, in order to light\nthe gay bridals and other merry-makings of men, and also to illuminate\nthe solemn churches that preach unconditional inoffensiveness by all to\nall. Still rolling in his blood, at last he partially disclosed a\nstrangely discoloured bunch or protuberance, the size of a bushel, low\ndown on the flank.\n\n\u201cA nice spot,\u201d cried Avery; \u201cjust let me prick him there once.\u201d\n\n\u201cAvast!\u201d cried Starbuck, \u201cthere\u2019s no need of that!\u201d\n\nBut humane Starbuck was too late. At the instant of the dart an\nulcerous jet shot from this cruel wound, and goaded by it into more\nthan sufferable anguish, the whale now spouting thick blood, with swift\nfury blindly darted at the craft, bespattering them and their glorying\ncrews all over with showers of gore, capsizing Avery\u2019s boat and marring\nthe bows. It was his death stroke. For, by this time, so spent was he\nby loss of blood, that he helplessly rolled away from the wreck he had\nmade; lay panting on his side, impotently flapped with his stumped fin,\nthen over and over slowly revolved like a waning world; turned up the\nwhite secrets of his belly; lay like a log, and died. It was most\npiteous, that last expiring spout. As when by unseen hands the water is\ngradually drawn off from some mighty fountain, and with half-stifled\nmelancholy gurglings the spray-column lowers and lowers to the\nground\u2014so the last long dying spout of the whale.\n\nSoon, while the crews were awaiting the arrival of the ship, the body\nshowed symptoms of sinking with all its treasures unrifled.\nImmediately, by Starbuck\u2019s orders, lines were secured to it at\ndifferent points, so that ere long every boat was a buoy; the sunken\nwhale being suspended a few inches beneath them by the cords. By very\nheedful management, when the ship drew nigh, the whale was transferred\nto her side, and was strongly secured there by the stiffest\nfluke-chains, for it was plain that unless artificially upheld, the\nbody would at once sink to the bottom.\n\nIt so chanced that almost upon first cutting into him with the spade,\nthe entire length of a corroded harpoon was found imbedded in his\nflesh, on the lower part of the bunch before described. But as the\nstumps of harpoons are frequently found in the dead bodies of captured\nwhales, with the flesh perfectly healed around them, and no prominence\nof any kind to denote their place; therefore, there must needs have\nbeen some other unknown reason in the present case fully to account for\nthe ulceration alluded to. But still more curious was the fact of a\nlance-head of stone being found in him, not far from the buried iron,\nthe flesh perfectly firm about it. Who had darted that stone lance? And\nwhen? It might have been darted by some Nor\u2019 West Indian long before\nAmerica was discovered.\n\nWhat other marvels might have been rummaged out of this monstrous\ncabinet there is no telling. But a sudden stop was put to further\ndiscoveries, by the ship\u2019s being unprecedentedly dragged over sideways\nto the sea, owing to the body\u2019s immensely increasing tendency to sink.\nHowever, Starbuck, who had the ordering of affairs, hung on to it to\nthe last; hung on to it so resolutely, indeed, that when at length the\nship would have been capsized, if still persisting in locking arms with\nthe body; then, when the command was given to break clear from it, such\nwas the immovable strain upon the timber-heads to which the\nfluke-chains and cables were fastened, that it was impossible to cast\nthem off. Meantime everything in the Talitha was aslant. To cross to the\nother side of the deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a\nhouse. The ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her\nbulwarks and cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural\ndislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon the\nimmovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads; and so\nlow had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could not be at\nall approached, while every moment whole tons of ponderosity seemed\nadded to the sinking bulk, and the ship seemed on the point of going\nover.\n\n\u201cHold on, hold on, won\u2019t ye?\u201d cried Salvador to the body, \u201cdon\u2019t be in\nsuch a devil of a hurry to sink! By thunder, men, we must do something\nor go for it. No use prying there; avast, I say with your handspikes,\nand run one of ye for a prayer book and a pen-knife, and cut the big\nchains.\u201d\n\n\u201cKnife? Aye, aye,\u201d cried Horatio, and seizing the carpenter\u2019s heavy\nhatchet, he leaned out of a porthole, and steel to iron, began slashing\nat the largest fluke-chains. But a few strokes, full of sparks, were\ngiven, when the exceeding strain effected the rest. With a terrific\nsnap, every fastening went adrift; the ship righted, the carcase sank.\n\nNow, this occasional inevitable sinking of the recently killed Sperm\nWhale is a very curious thing; nor has any fisherman yet adequately\naccounted for it. Usually the dead Sperm Whale floats with great\nbuoyancy, with its side or belly considerably elevated above the\nsurface. If the only whales that thus sank were old, meagre, and\nbroken-hearted creatures, their pads of lard diminished and all their\nbones heavy and rheumatic; then you might with some reason assert that\nthis sinking is caused by an uncommon specific gravity in the fish so\nsinking, consequent upon this absence of buoyant matter in him. But it\nis not so. For young whales, in the highest health, and swelling with\nnoble aspirations, prematurely cut off in the warm flush and May of\nlife, with all their panting lard about them; even these brawny,\nbuoyant heroes do sometimes sink.\n\nBe it said, however, that the Sperm Whale is far less liable to this\naccident than any other species. Where one of that sort go down, twenty\nRight Whales do. This difference in the species is no doubt imputable\nin no small degree to the greater quantity of bone in the Right Whale;\nhis Venetian blinds alone sometimes weighing more than a ton; from this\nincumbrance the Sperm Whale is wholly free. But there are instances\nwhere, after the lapse of many hours or several days, the sunken whale\nagain rises, more buoyant than in life. But the reason of this is\nobvious. Gases are generated in him; he swells to a prodigious\nmagnitude; becomes a sort of animal balloon. A line-of-battle ship\ncould hardly keep him under then. In the Shore Whaling, on soundings,\namong the Bays of New Zealand, when a Right Whale gives token of\nsinking, they fasten buoys to him, with plenty of rope; so that when\nthe body has gone down, they know where to look for it when it shall\nhave ascended again.\n\nIt was not long after the sinking of the body that a cry was heard from\nthe Talitha\u2019s mast-heads, announcing that the Jungfrau was again\nlowering her boats; though the only spout in sight was that of a\nFin-Back, belonging to the species of uncapturable whales, because of\nits incredible power of swimming. Nevertheless, the Fin-Back\u2019s spout is\nso similar to the Sperm Whale\u2019s, that by unskilful fishermen it is\noften mistaken for it. And consequently Derick and all his host were\nnow in valiant chase of this unnearable brute. The Virgin crowding all\nsail, made after her four young keels, and thus they all disappeared\nfar to leeward, still in bold, hopeful chase.\n\nOh! many are the Fin-Backs, and many are the Dericks, my friend.\n\n\nCHAPTER 82. The Honor and Glory of Whaling.\n\nThere are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the\ntrue method.\n\nThe more I dive into this matter of whaling, and push my researches up\nto the very spring-head of it so much the more am I impressed with its\ngreat honorableness and antiquity; and especially when I find so many\ngreat demi-gods and heroes, prophets of all sorts, who one way or other\nhave shed distinction upon it, I am transported with the reflection\nthat I myself belong, though but subordinately, to so emblazoned a\nfraternity.\n\nThe gallant Perseus, a son of Jupiter, was the first whaleman; and to\nthe eternal honor of our calling be it said, that the first whale\nattacked by our brotherhood was not killed with any sordid intent.\nThose were the knightly days of our profession, when we only bore arms\nto succor the distressed, and not to fill men\u2019s lamp-feeders. Every one\nknows the fine story of Perseus and Andromeda; how the lovely\nAndromeda, the daughter of a king, was tied to a rock on the sea-coast,\nand as Leviathan was in the very act of carrying her off, Perseus, the\nprince of whalemen, intrepidly advancing, harpooned the monster, and\ndelivered and married the maid. It was an admirable artistic exploit,\nrarely achieved by the best harpooneers of the present day; inasmuch as\nthis Leviathan was slain at the very first dart. And let no man doubt\nthis Arkite story; for in the ancient Joppa, now Jaffa, on the Syrian\ncoast, in one of the Pagan temples, there stood for many ages the vast\nskeleton of a whale, which the city\u2019s legends and all the inhabitants\nasserted to be the identical bones of the monster that Perseus slew.\nWhen the Romans took Joppa, the same skeleton was carried to Italy in\ntriumph. What seems most singular and suggestively important in this\nstory, is this: it was from Joppa that Jonah set sail.\n\nAkin to the adventure of Perseus and Andromeda\u2014indeed, by some supposed\nto be indirectly derived from it\u2014is that famous story of St. George and\nthe Dragon; which dragon I maintain to have been a whale; for in many\nold chronicles whales and dragons are strangely jumbled together, and\noften stand for each other. \u201cThou art as a lion of the waters, and as a\ndragon of the sea,\u201d saith Ezekiel; hereby, plainly meaning a whale; in\ntruth, some versions of the Bible use that word itself. Besides, it\nwould much subtract from the glory of the exploit had St. George but\nencountered a crawling reptile of the land, instead of doing battle\nwith the great monster of the deep. Any man may kill a snake, but only\na Perseus, a St. George, a Coffin, have the heart in them to march\nboldly up to a whale.\n\nLet not the modern paintings of this scene mislead us; for though the\ncreature encountered by that valiant whaleman of old is vaguely\nrepresented of a griffin-like shape, and though the battle is depicted\non land and the saint on horseback, yet considering the great ignorance\nof those times, when the true form of the whale was unknown to artists;\nand considering that as in Perseus\u2019 case, St. George\u2019s whale might have\ncrawled up out of the sea on the beach; and considering that the animal\nridden by St. George might have been only a large seal, or sea-horse;\nbearing all this in mind, it will not appear altogether incompatible\nwith the sacred legend and the ancientest draughts of the scene, to\nhold this so-called dragon no other than the great Leviathan himself.\nIn fact, placed before the strict and piercing truth, this whole story\nwill fare like that fish, flesh, and fowl idol of the Philistines,\nDagon by name; who being planted before the ark of Israel, his horse\u2019s\nhead and both the palms of his hands fell off from him, and only the\nstump or fishy part of him remained. Thus, then, one of our own noble\nstamp, even a whaleman, is the tutelary guardian of England; and by\ngood rights, we harpooneers of Nantucket should be enrolled in the most\nnoble order of St. George. And therefore, let not the knights of that\nhonorable company (none of whom, I venture to say, have ever had to do\nwith a whale like their great patron), let them never eye a Nantucketer\nwith disdain, since even in our woollen frocks and tarred trowsers we\nare much better entitled to St. George\u2019s decoration than they.\n\nWhether to admit Hercules among us or not, concerning this I long\nremained dubious: for though according to the Greek mythologies, that\nantique Crockett and Kit Carson\u2014that brawny doer of rejoicing good\ndeeds, was swallowed down and thrown up by a whale; still, whether that\nstrictly makes a whaleman of him, that might be mooted. It nowhere\nappears that he ever actually harpooned his fish, unless, indeed, from\nthe inside. Nevertheless, he may be deemed a sort of involuntary\nwhaleman; at any rate the whale caught him, if he did not the whale. I\nclaim him for one of our clan.\n\nBut, by the best contradictory authorities, this Grecian story of\nHercules and the whale is considered to be derived from the still more\nancient Hebrew story of Jonah and the whale; and vice vers\u00e2; certainly\nthey are very similar. If I claim the demi-god then, why not the\nprophet?\n\nNor do heroes, saints, demigods, and prophets alone comprise the whole\nroll of our order. Our grand master is still to be named; for like\nroyal kings of old times, we find the head waters of our fraternity in\nnothing short of the great gods themselves. That wondrous oriental\nstory is now to be rehearsed from the Shaster, which gives us the dread\nVishnoo, one of the three persons in the godhead of the Hindoos; gives\nus this divine Vishnoo himself for our Lord;\u2014Vishnoo, who, by the first\nof his ten earthly incarnations, has for ever set apart and sanctified\nthe whale. When Brahma, or the God of Gods, saith the Shaster, resolved\nto recreate the world after one of its periodical dissolutions, he gave\nbirth to Vishnoo, to preside over the work; but the Vedas, or mystical\nbooks, whose perusal would seem to have been indispensable to Vishnoo\nbefore beginning the creation, and which therefore must have contained\nsomething in the shape of practical hints to young architects, these\nVedas were lying at the bottom of the waters; so Vishnoo became\nincarnate in a whale, and sounding down in him to the uttermost depths,\nrescued the sacred volumes. Was not this Vishnoo a whaleman, then? even\nas a man who rides a horse is called a horseman?\n\nPerseus, St. George, Hercules, Jonah, and Vishnoo! there\u2019s a\nmember-roll for you! What club but the whaleman\u2019s can head off like\nthat?\n\n\nCHAPTER 83. Jonah Historically Regarded.\n\nReference was made to the historical story of Jonah and the whale in\nthe preceding chapter. Now some Nantucketers rather distrust this\nhistorical story of Jonah and the whale. But then there were some\nsceptical Greeks and Romans, who, standing out from the orthodox pagans\nof their times, equally doubted the story of Hercules and the whale,\nand Arion and the dolphin; and yet their doubting those traditions did\nnot make those traditions one whit the less facts, for all that.\n\nOne old Sag-Harbor whaleman\u2019s chief reason for questioning the Hebrew\nstory was this:\u2014He had one of those quaint old-fashioned Bibles,\nembellished with curious, unscientific plates; one of which represented\nJonah\u2019s whale with two spouts in his head\u2014a peculiarity only true with\nrespect to a species of the Leviathan (the Right Whale, and the\nvarieties of that order), concerning which the fishermen have this\nsaying, \u201cA penny roll would choke him\u201d; his swallow is so very small.\nBut, to this, Bishop Jebb\u2019s anticipative answer is ready. It is not\nnecessary, hints the Bishop, that we consider Jonah as tombed in the\nwhale\u2019s belly, but as temporarily lodged in some part of his mouth. And\nthis seems reasonable enough in the good Bishop. For truly, the Right\nWhale\u2019s mouth would accommodate a couple of whist-tables, and\ncomfortably seat all the players. Possibly, too, Jonah might have\nensconced himself in a hollow tooth; but, on second thoughts, the Right\nWhale is toothless.\n\nAnother reason which Sag-Harbor (he went by that name) urged for his\nwant of faith in this matter of the prophet, was something obscurely in\nreference to his incarcerated body and the whale\u2019s gastric juices. But\nthis objection likewise falls to the ground, because a German exegetist\nsupposes that Jonah must have taken refuge in the floating body of a\n_dead_ whale\u2014even as the French soldiers in the Russian campaign turned\ntheir dead horses into tents, and crawled into them. Besides, it has\nbeen divined by other continental commentators, that when Jonah was\nthrown overboard from the Joppa ship, he straightway effected his\nescape to another vessel near by, some vessel with a whale for a\nfigure-head; and, I would add, possibly called \u201cThe Whale,\u201d as some\ncraft are nowadays christened the \u201cShark,\u201d the \u201cGull,\u201d the \u201cEagle.\u201d Nor\nhave there been wanting learned exegetists who have opined that the\nwhale mentioned in the book of Jonah merely meant a life-preserver\u2014an\ninflated bag of wind\u2014which the endangered prophet swam to, and so was\nsaved from a watery doom. Poor Sag-Harbor, therefore, seems worsted all\nround. But he had still another reason for his want of faith. It was\nthis, if I remember right: Jonah was swallowed by the whale in the\nMediterranean Sea, and after three days he was vomited up somewhere\nwithin three days\u2019 journey of Nineveh, a city on the Tigris, very much\nmore than three days\u2019 journey across from the nearest point of the\nMediterranean coast. How is that?\n\nBut was there no other way for the whale to land the prophet within\nthat short distance of Nineveh? Yes. He might have carried him round by\nthe way of the Cape of Good Hope. But not to speak of the passage\nthrough the whole length of the Mediterranean, and another passage up\nthe Persian Gulf and Red Sea, such a supposition would involve the\ncomplete circumnavigation of all Africa in three days, not to speak of\nthe Tigris waters, near the site of Nineveh, being too shallow for any\nwhale to swim in. Besides, this idea of Jonah\u2019s weathering the Cape of\nGood Hope at so early a day would wrest the honor of the discovery of\nthat great headland from Bartholomew Diaz, its reputed discoverer, and\nso make modern history a liar.\n\nBut all these foolish arguments of old Sag-Harbor only evinced his\nfoolish pride of reason\u2014a thing still more reprehensible in him, seeing\nthat he had but little learning except what he had picked up from the\nsun and the sea. I say it only shows his foolish, impious pride, and\nabominable, devilish rebellion against the reverend clergy. For by a\nPortuguese Catholic priest, this very idea of Jonah\u2019s going to Nineveh\nvia the Cape of Good Hope was advanced as a signal magnification of the\ngeneral miracle. And so it was. Besides, to this day, the highly\nenlightened Turks devoutly believe in the historical story of Jonah.\nAnd some three centuries ago, an English traveller in old Harris\u2019s\nVoyages, speaks of a Turkish Mosque built in honor of Jonah, in which\nMosque was a miraculous lamp that burnt without any oil.\n\n\nCHAPTER 84. Pitchpoling.\n\nTo make them run easily and swiftly, the axles of carriages are\nanointed; and for much the same purpose, some whalers perform an\nanalogous operation upon their boat; they grease the bottom. Nor is it\nto be doubted that as such a procedure can do no harm, it may possibly\nbe of no contemptible advantage; considering that oil and water are\nhostile; that oil is a sliding thing, and that the object in view is to\nmake the boat slide bravely. Horatio believed strongly in anointing\nhis boat, and one morning not long after the German ship Jungfrau\ndisappeared, took more than customary pains in that occupation;\ncrawling under its bottom, where it hung over the side, and rubbing in\nthe unctuousness as though diligently seeking to insure a crop of hair\nfrom the craft\u2019s bald keel. He seemed to be working in obedience to\nsome particular presentiment. Nor did it remain unwarranted by the\nevent.\n\nTowards noon whales were raised; but so soon as the ship sailed down to\nthem, they turned and fled with swift precipitancy; a disordered\nflight, as of Cleopatra\u2019s barges from Actium.\n\nNevertheless, the boats pursued, and Salvador\u2019s was foremost. By great\nexertion, Tashtego at last succeeded in planting one iron; but the\nstricken whale, without at all sounding, still continued his horizontal\nflight, with added fleetness. Such unintermitted strainings upon the\nplanted iron must sooner or later inevitably extract it. It became\nimperative to lance the flying whale, or be content to lose him. But to\nhaul the boat up to his flank was impossible, he swam so fast and\nfurious. What then remained?\n\nOf all the wondrous devices and dexterities, the sleights of hand and\ncountless subtleties, to which the veteran whaleman is so often forced,\nnone exceed that fine man\u0153uvre with the lance called pitchpoling. Small\nsword, or broad sword, in all its exercises boasts nothing like it. It\nis only indispensable with an inveterate running whale; its grand fact\nand feature is the wonderful distance to which the long lance is\naccurately darted from a violently rocking, jerking boat, under extreme\nheadway. Steel and wood included, the entire spear is some ten or\ntwelve feet in length; the staff is much slighter than that of the\nharpoon, and also of a lighter material\u2014pine. It is furnished with a\nsmall rope called a warp, of considerable length, by which it can be\nhauled back to the hand after darting.\n\nBut before going further, it is important to mention here, that though\nthe harpoon may be pitchpoled in the same way with the lance, yet it is\nseldom done; and when done, is still less frequently successful, on\naccount of the greater weight and inferior length of the harpoon as\ncompared with the lance, which in effect become serious drawbacks. As a\ngeneral thing, therefore, you must first get fast to a whale, before\nany pitchpoling comes into play.\n\nLook now at Salvador; a man who from his humorous, deliberate coolness and\nequanimity in the direst emergencies, was specially qualified to excel\nin pitchpoling. Look at him; he stands upright in the tossed bow of the\nflying boat; wrapt in fleecy foam, the towing whale is forty feet\nahead. Handling the long lance lightly, glancing twice or thrice along\nits length to see if it be exactly straight, Salvador whistlingly gathers\nup the coil of the warp in one hand, so as to secure its free end in\nhis grasp, leaving the rest unobstructed. Then holding the lance full\nbefore his waistband\u2019s middle, he levels it at the whale; when,\ncovering him with it, he steadily depresses the butt-end in his hand,\nthereby elevating the point till the weapon stands fairly balanced upon\nhis palm, fifteen feet in the air. He minds you somewhat of a juggler,\nbalancing a long staff on his chin. Next moment with a rapid, nameless\nimpulse, in a superb lofty arch the bright steel spans the foaming\ndistance, and quivers in the life spot of the whale. Instead of\nsparkling water, he now spouts red blood.\n\n\u201cThat drove the spigot out of him!\u201d cried Salvador. \u201c\u2019Tis July\u2019s immortal\nFourth; all fountains must run wine today! Would now, it were old\nOrleans whiskey, or old Ohio, or unspeakable old Monongahela! Then,\nTashtego, lad, I\u2019d have ye hold a canakin to the jet, and we\u2019d drink\nround it! Yea, verily, hearts alive, we\u2019d brew choice punch in the\nspread of his spout-hole there, and from that live punch-bowl quaff the\nliving stuff.\u201d\n\nAgain and again to such gamesome talk, the dexterous dart is repeated,\nthe spear returning to its master like a greyhound held in skilful\nleash. The agonized whale goes into his flurry; the tow-line is\nslackened, and the pitchpoler dropping astern, folds his hands, and\nmutely watches the monster die.\n\n\nCHAPTER 85. The Fountain.\n\nThat for six thousand years\u2014and no one knows how many millions of ages\nbefore\u2014the great whales should have been spouting all over the sea, and\nsprinkling and mistifying the gardens of the deep, as with so many\nsprinkling or mistifying pots; and that for some centuries back,\nthousands of hunters should have been close by the fountain of the\nwhale, watching these sprinklings and spoutings\u2014that all this should\nbe, and yet, that down to this blessed minute (fifteen and a quarter\nminutes past one o\u2019clock P.M. of this sixteenth day of December, A.D.\n1851), it should still remain a problem, whether these spoutings are,\nafter all, really water, or nothing but vapor\u2014this is surely a\nnoteworthy thing.\n\nLet us, then, look at this matter, along with some interesting items\ncontingent. Every one knows that by the peculiar cunning of their\ngills, the finny tribes in general breathe the air which at all times\nis combined with the element in which they swim; hence, a herring or a\ncod might live a century, and never once raise its head above the\nsurface. But owing to his marked internal structure which gives him\nregular lungs, like a human being\u2019s, the whale can only live by\ninhaling the disengaged air in the open atmosphere. Wherefore the\nnecessity for his periodical visits to the upper world. But he cannot\nin any degree breathe through his mouth, for, in his ordinary attitude,\nthe Sperm Whale\u2019s mouth is buried at least eight feet beneath the\nsurface; and what is still more, his windpipe has no connexion with his\nmouth. No, he breathes through his spiracle alone; and this is on the\ntop of his head.\n\nIf I say, that in any creature breathing is only a function\nindispensable to vitality, inasmuch as it withdraws from the air a\ncertain element, which being subsequently brought into contact with the\nblood imparts to the blood its vivifying principle, I do not think I\nshall err; though I may possibly use some superfluous scientific words.\nAssume it, and it follows that if all the blood in a man could be\naerated with one breath, he might then seal up his nostrils and not\nfetch another for a considerable time. That is to say, he would then\nlive without breathing. Anomalous as it may seem, this is precisely the\ncase with the whale, who systematically lives, by intervals, his full\nhour and more (when at the bottom) without drawing a single breath, or\nso much as in any way inhaling a particle of air; for, remember, he has\nno gills. How is this? Between his ribs and on each side of his spine\nhe is supplied with a remarkable involved Cretan labyrinth of\nvermicelli-like vessels, which vessels, when he quits the surface, are\ncompletely distended with oxygenated blood. So that for an hour or\nmore, a thousand fathoms in the sea, he carries a surplus stock of\nvitality in him, just as the camel crossing the waterless desert\ncarries a surplus supply of drink for future use in its four\nsupplementary stomachs. The anatomical fact of this labyrinth is\nindisputable; and that the supposition founded upon it is reasonable\nand true, seems the more cogent to me, when I consider the otherwise\ninexplicable obstinacy of that leviathan in _having his spoutings out_,\nas the fishermen phrase it. This is what I mean. If unmolested, upon\nrising to the surface, the Sperm Whale will continue there for a period\nof time exactly uniform with all his other unmolested risings. Say he\nstays eleven minutes, and jets seventy times, that is, respires seventy\nbreaths; then whenever he rises again, he will be sure to have his\nseventy breaths over again, to a minute. Now, if after he fetches a few\nbreaths you alarm him, so that he sounds, he will be always dodging up\nagain to make good his regular allowance of air. And not till those\nseventy breaths are told, will he finally go down to stay out his full\nterm below. Remark, however, that in different individuals these rates\nare different; but in any one they are alike. Now, why should the whale\nthus insist upon having his spoutings out, unless it be to replenish\nhis reservoir of air, ere descending for good? How obvious is it, too,\nthat this necessity for the whale\u2019s rising exposes him to all the fatal\nhazards of the chase. For not by hook or by net could this vast\nleviathan be caught, when sailing a thousand fathoms beneath the\nsunlight. Not so much thy skill, then, O hunter, as the great\nnecessities that strike the victory to thee!\n\nIn man, breathing is incessantly going on\u2014one breath only serving for\ntwo or three pulsations; so that whatever other business he has to\nattend to, waking or sleeping, breathe he must, or die he will. But the\nSperm Whale only breathes about one seventh or Sunday of his time.\n\nIt has been said that the whale only breathes through his spout-hole;\nif it could truthfully be added that his spouts are mixed with water,\nthen I opine we should be furnished with the reason why his sense of\nsmell seems obliterated in him; for the only thing about him that at\nall answers to his nose is that identical spout-hole; and being so\nclogged with two elements, it could not be expected to have the power\nof smelling. But owing to the mystery of the spout\u2014whether it be water\nor whether it be vapor\u2014no absolute certainty can as yet be arrived at\non this head. Sure it is, nevertheless, that the Sperm Whale has no\nproper olfactories. But what does he want of them? No roses, no\nviolets, no Cologne-water in the sea.\n\nFurthermore, as his windpipe solely opens into the tube of his spouting\ncanal, and as that long canal\u2014like the grand Erie Canal\u2014is furnished\nwith a sort of locks (that open and shut) for the downward retention of\nair or the upward exclusion of water, therefore the whale has no voice;\nunless you insult him by saying, that when he so strangely rumbles, he\ntalks through his nose. But then again, what has the whale to say?\nSeldom have I known any profound being that had anything to say to this\nworld, unless forced to stammer out something by way of getting a\nliving. Oh! happy that the world is such an excellent listener!\n\nNow, the spouting canal of the Sperm Whale, chiefly intended as it is\nfor the conveyance of air, and for several feet laid along,\nhorizontally, just beneath the upper surface of his head, and a little\nto one side; this curious canal is very much like a gas-pipe laid down\nin a city on one side of a street. But the question returns whether\nthis gas-pipe is also a water-pipe; in other words, whether the spout\nof the Sperm Whale is the mere vapor of the exhaled breath, or whether\nthat exhaled breath is mixed with water taken in at the mouth, and\ndischarged through the spiracle. It is certain that the mouth\nindirectly communicates with the spouting canal; but it cannot be\nproved that this is for the purpose of discharging water through the\nspiracle. Because the greatest necessity for so doing would seem to be,\nwhen in feeding he accidentally takes in water. But the Sperm Whale\u2019s\nfood is far beneath the surface, and there he cannot spout even if he\nwould. Besides, if you regard him very closely, and time him with your\nwatch, you will find that when unmolested, there is an undeviating\nrhyme between the periods of his jets and the ordinary periods of\nrespiration.\n\nBut why pester one with all this reasoning on the subject? Speak out!\nYou have seen him spout; then declare what the spout is; can you not\ntell water from air? My dear sir, in this world it is not so easy to\nsettle these plain things. I have ever found your plain things the\nknottiest of all. And as for this whale spout, you might almost stand\nin it, and yet be undecided as to what it is precisely.\n\nThe central body of it is hidden in the snowy sparkling mist enveloping\nit; and how can you certainly tell whether any water falls from it,\nwhen, always, when you are close enough to a whale to get a close view\nof his spout, he is in a prodigious commotion, the water cascading all\naround him. And if at such times you should think that you really\nperceived drops of moisture in the spout, how do you know that they are\nnot merely condensed from its vapor; or how do you know that they are\nnot those identical drops superficially lodged in the spout-hole\nfissure, which is countersunk into the summit of the whale\u2019s head? For\neven when tranquilly swimming through the mid-day sea in a calm, with\nhis elevated hump sun-dried as a dromedary\u2019s in the desert; even then,\nthe whale always carries a small basin of water on his head, as under a\nblazing sun you will sometimes see a cavity in a rock filled up with\nrain.\n\nNor is it at all prudent for the hunter to be over curious touching the\nprecise nature of the whale spout. It will not do for him to be peering\ninto it, and putting his face in it. You cannot go with your pitcher to\nthis fountain and fill it, and bring it away. For even when coming into\nslight contact with the outer, vapory shreds of the jet, which will\noften happen, your skin will feverishly smart, from the acridness of\nthe thing so touching it. And I know one, who coming into still closer\ncontact with the spout, whether with some scientific object in view, or\notherwise, I cannot say, the skin peeled off from his cheek and arm.\nWherefore, among whalemen, the spout is deemed poisonous; they try to\nevade it. Another thing; I have heard it said, and I do not much doubt\nit, that if the jet is fairly spouted into your eyes, it will blind\nyou. The wisest thing the investigator can do then, it seems to me, is\nto let this deadly spout alone.\n\nStill, we can hypothesize, even if we cannot prove and establish. My\nhypothesis is this: that the spout is nothing but mist. And besides\nother reasons, to this conclusion I am impelled, by considerations\ntouching the great inherent dignity and sublimity of the Sperm Whale; I\naccount him no common, shallow being, inasmuch as it is an undisputed\nfact that he is never found on soundings, or near shores; all other\nwhales sometimes are. He is both ponderous and profound. And I am\nconvinced that from the heads of all ponderous profound beings, such as\nPlato, Pyrrho, the Devil, Jupiter, Dante, and so on, there always goes\nup a certain semi-visible steam, while in the act of thinking deep\nthoughts. While composing a little treatise on Eternity, I had the\ncuriosity to place a mirror before me; and ere long saw reflected\nthere, a curious involved worming and undulation in the atmosphere over\nmy head. The invariable moisture of my hair, while plunged in deep\nthought, after six cups of hot tea in my thin shingled attic, of an\nAugust noon; this seems an additional argument for the above\nsupposition.\n\nAnd how nobly it raises our conceit of the mighty, misty monster, to\nbehold him solemnly sailing through a calm tropical sea; his vast, mild\nhead overhung by a canopy of vapor, engendered by his incommunicable\ncontemplations, and that vapor\u2014as you will sometimes see it\u2014glorified\nby a rainbow, as if Heaven itself had put its seal upon his thoughts.\nFor, d\u2019ye see, rainbows do not visit the clear air; they only irradiate\nvapor. And so, through all the thick mists of the dim doubts in my\nmind, divine intuitions now and then shoot, enkindling my fog with a\nheavenly ray. And for this I thank God; for all have doubts; many deny;\nbut doubts or denials, few along with them, have intuitions. Doubts of\nall things earthly, and intuitions of some things heavenly; this\ncombination makes neither believer nor infidel, but makes a man who\nregards them both with equal eye.\n\n\nCHAPTER 86. The Tail.\n\nOther poets have warbled the praises of the soft eye of the antelope,\nand the lovely plumage of the bird that never alights; less celestial,\nI celebrate a tail.\n\nReckoning the largest sized Sperm Whale\u2019s tail to begin at that point\nof the trunk where it tapers to about the girth of a man, it comprises\nupon its upper surface alone, an area of at least fifty square feet.\nThe compact round body of its root expands into two broad, firm, flat\npalms or flukes, gradually shoaling away to less than an inch in\nthickness. At the crotch or junction, these flukes slightly overlap,\nthen sideways recede from each other like wings, leaving a wide vacancy\nbetween. In no living thing are the lines of beauty more exquisitely\ndefined than in the crescentic borders of these flukes. At its utmost\nexpansion in the full grown whale, the tail will considerably exceed\ntwenty feet across.\n\nThe entire member seems a dense webbed bed of welded sinews; but cut\ninto it, and you find that three distinct strata compose it:\u2014upper,\nmiddle, and lower. The fibres in the upper and lower layers, are long\nand horizontal; those of the middle one, very short, and running\ncrosswise between the outside layers. This triune structure, as much as\nanything else, imparts power to the tail. To the student of old Roman\nwalls, the middle layer will furnish a curious parallel to the thin\ncourse of tiles always alternating with the stone in those wonderful\nrelics of the antique, and which undoubtedly contribute so much to the\ngreat strength of the masonry.\n\nBut as if this vast local power in the tendinous tail were not enough,\nthe whole bulk of the leviathan is knit over with a warp and woof of\nmuscular fibres and filaments, which passing on either side the loins\nand running down into the flukes, insensibly blend with them, and\nlargely contribute to their might; so that in the tail the confluent\nmeasureless force of the whole whale seems concentrated to a point.\nCould annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do it.\n\nNor does this\u2014its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the graceful\nflexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates through a\nTitanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive their most\nappalling beauty from it. Real strength never impairs beauty or\nharmony, but it often bestows it; and in everything imposingly\nbeautiful, strength has much to do with the magic. Take away the tied\ntendons that all over seem bursting from the marble in the carved\nHercules, and its charm would be gone. As devout Eckerman lifted the\nlinen sheet from the naked corpse of Goethe, he was overwhelmed with\nthe massive chest of the man, that seemed as a Roman triumphal arch.\nWhen Angelo paints even God the Father in human form, mark what\nrobustness is there. And whatever they may reveal of the divine love in\nthe Son, the soft, curled, hermaphroditical Italian pictures, in which\nhis idea has been most successfully embodied; these pictures, so\ndestitute as they are of all brawniness, hint nothing of any power, but\nthe mere negative, feminine one of submission and endurance, which on\nall hands it is conceded, form the peculiar practical virtues of his\nteachings.\n\nSuch is the subtle elasticity of the organ I treat of, that whether\nwielded in sport, or in earnest, or in anger, whatever be the mood it\nbe in, its flexions are invariably marked by exceeding grace. Therein\nno fairy\u2019s arm can transcend it.\n\nFive great motions are peculiar to it. First, when used as a fin for\nprogression; Second, when used as a mace in battle; Third, in sweeping;\nFourth, in lobtailing; Fifth, in peaking flukes.\n\nFirst: Being horizontal in its position, the Leviathan\u2019s tail acts in a\ndifferent manner from the tails of all other sea creatures. It never\nwriggles. In man or fish, wriggling is a sign of inferiority. To the\nwhale, his tail is the sole means of propulsion. Scroll-wise coiled\nforwards beneath the body, and then rapidly sprung backwards, it is\nthis which gives that singular darting, leaping motion to the monster\nwhen furiously swimming. His side-fins only serve to steer by.\n\nSecond: It is a little significant, that while one sperm whale only\nfights another sperm whale with his head and jaw, nevertheless, in his\nconflicts with man, he chiefly and contemptuously uses his tail. In\nstriking at a boat, he swiftly curves away his flukes from it, and the\nblow is only inflicted by the recoil. If it be made in the unobstructed\nair, especially if it descend to its mark, the stroke is then simply\nirresistible. No ribs of man or boat can withstand it. Your only\nsalvation lies in eluding it; but if it comes sideways through the\nopposing water, then partly owing to the light buoyancy of the\nwhale-boat, and the elasticity of its materials, a cracked rib or a\ndashed plank or two, a sort of stitch in the side, is generally the\nmost serious result. These submerged side blows are so often received\nin the fishery, that they are accounted mere child\u2019s play. Some one\nstrips off a frock, and the hole is stopped.\n\nThird: I cannot demonstrate it, but it seems to me, that in the whale\nthe sense of touch is concentrated in the tail; for in this respect\nthere is a delicacy in it only equalled by the daintiness of the\nelephant\u2019s trunk. This delicacy is chiefly evinced in the action of\nsweeping, when in maidenly gentleness the whale with a certain soft\nslowness moves his immense flukes from side to side upon the surface of\nthe sea; and if he feel but a sailor\u2019s whisker, woe to that sailor,\nwhiskers and all. What tenderness there is in that preliminary touch!\nHad this tail any prehensile power, I should straightway bethink me of\nDarmonodes\u2019 elephant that so frequented the flower-market, and with low\nsalutations presented nosegays to damsels, and then caressed their\nzones. On more accounts than one, a pity it is that the whale does not\npossess this prehensile virtue in his tail; for I have heard of yet\nanother elephant, that when wounded in the fight, curved round his\ntrunk and extracted the dart.\n\nFourth: Stealing unawares upon the whale in the fancied security of the\nmiddle of solitary seas, you find him unbent from the vast corpulence\nof his dignity, and kitten-like, he plays on the ocean as if it were a\nhearth. But still you see his power in his play. The broad palms of his\ntail are flirted high into the air; then smiting the surface, the\nthunderous concussion resounds for miles. You would almost think a\ngreat gun had been discharged; and if you noticed the light wreath of\nvapor from the spiracle at his other extremity, you would think that\nthat was the smoke from the touch-hole.\n\nFifth: As in the ordinary floating posture of the leviathan the flukes\nlie considerably below the level of his back, they are then completely\nout of sight beneath the surface; but when he is about to plunge into\nthe deeps, his entire flukes with at least thirty feet of his body are\ntossed erect in the air, and so remain vibrating a moment, till they\ndownwards shoot out of view. Excepting the sublime _breach_\u2014somewhere\nelse to be described\u2014this peaking of the whale\u2019s flukes is perhaps the\ngrandest sight to be seen in all animated nature. Out of the bottomless\nprofundities the gigantic tail seems spasmodically snatching at the\nhighest heaven. So in dreams, have I seen majestic Satan thrusting\nforth his tormented colossal claw from the flame Baltic of Hell. But in\ngazing at such scenes, it is all in all what mood you are in; if in the\nDantean, the devils will occur to you; if in that of Isaiah, the\narchangels. Standing at the mast-head of my ship during a sunrise that\ncrimsoned sky and sea, I once saw a large herd of whales in the east,\nall heading towards the sun, and for a moment vibrating in concert with\npeaked flukes. As it seemed to me at the time, such a grand embodiment\nof adoration of the gods was never beheld, even in Persia, the home of\nthe fire worshippers. As Ptolemy Philopater testified of the African\nelephant, I then testified of the whale, pronouncing him the most\ndevout of all beings. For according to King Juba, the military\nelephants of antiquity often hailed the morning with their trunks\nuplifted in the profoundest silence.\n\nThe chance comparison in this chapter, between the whale and the\nelephant, so far as some aspects of the tail of the one and the trunk\nof the other are concerned, should not tend to place those two opposite\norgans on an equality, much less the creatures to which they\nrespectively belong. For as the mightiest elephant is but a terrier to\nLeviathan, so, compared with Leviathan\u2019s tail, his trunk is but the\nstalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the elephant\u2019s trunk were\nas the playful tap of a fan, compared with the measureless crush and\ncrash of the sperm whale\u2019s ponderous flukes, which in repeated\ninstances have one after the other hurled entire boats with all their\noars and crews into the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses his\nballs.*\n\n*Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale and\nthe elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular the\nelephant stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog does\nto the elephant; nevertheless, there are not wanting some points of\ncurious similitude; among these is the spout. It is well known that the\nelephant will often draw up water or dust in his trunk, and then\nelevating it, jet it forth in a stream.\n\nThe more I consider this mighty tail, the more do I deplore my\ninability to express it. At times there are gestures in it, which,\nthough they would well grace the hand of man, remain wholly\ninexplicable. In an extensive herd, so remarkable, occasionally, are\nthese mystic gestures, that I have heard hunters who have declared them\nakin to Free-Mason signs and symbols; that the whale, indeed, by these\nmethods intelligently conversed with the world. Nor are there wanting\nother motions of the whale in his general body, full of strangeness,\nand unaccountable to his most experienced assailant. Dissect him how I\nmay, then, I but go skin deep; I know him not, and never will. But if I\nknow not even the tail of this whale, how understand his head? much\nmore, how comprehend his face, when face he has none? Thou shalt see my\nback parts, my tail, he seems to say, but my face shall not be seen.\nBut I cannot completely make out his back parts; and hint what he will\nabout his face, I say again he has no face.\n\n\nCHAPTER 87. The Grand Armada.\n\nThe long and narrow peninsula of Malacca, extending south-eastward from\nthe territories of Birmah, forms the most southerly point of all Asia.\nIn a continuous line from that peninsula stretch the long islands of\nSumatra, Java, Bally, and Timor; which, with many others, form a vast\nmole, or rampart, lengthwise connecting Asia with Australia, and\ndividing the long unbroken Indian ocean from the thickly studded\noriental archipelagoes. This rampart is pierced by several sally-ports\nfor the convenience of ships and whales; conspicuous among which are\nthe straits of Sunda and Malacca. By the straits of Sunda, chiefly,\nvessels bound to China from the west, emerge into the China seas.\n\nThose narrow straits of Sunda divide Sumatra from Java; and standing\nmidway in that vast rampart of islands, buttressed by that bold green\npromontory, known to seamen as Java Head; they not a little correspond\nto the central gateway opening into some vast walled empire: and\nconsidering the inexhaustible wealth of spices, and silks, and jewels,\nand gold, and ivory, with which the thousand islands of that oriental\nsea are enriched, it seems a significant provision of nature, that such\ntreasures, by the very formation of the land, should at least bear the\nappearance, however ineffectual, of being guarded from the all-grasping\nwestern world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with\nthose domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the\nMediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these\nOrientals do not demand the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from\nthe endless procession of ships before the wind, which for centuries\npast, by night and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra\nand Java, freighted with the costliest cargoes of the east. But while\nthey freely waive a ceremonial like this, they do by no means renounce\ntheir claim to more solid tribute.\n\nTime out of mind the piratical proas of the Malays, lurking among the\nlow shaded coves and islets of Sumatra, have sallied out upon the\nvessels sailing through the straits, fiercely demanding tribute at the\npoint of their spears. Though by the repeated bloody chastisements they\nhave received at the hands of European cruisers, the audacity of these\ncorsairs has of late been somewhat repressed; yet, even at the present\nday, we occasionally hear of English and American vessels, which, in\nthose waters, have been remorselessly boarded and pillaged.\n\nWith a fair, fresh wind, the Talitha was now drawing nigh to these\nstraits; Jordyn purposing to pass through them into the Javan sea, and\nthence, cruising northwards, over waters known to be frequented here\nand there by the Sperm Whale, sweep inshore by the Philippine Islands,\nand gain the far coast of Japan, in time for the great whaling season\nthere. By these means, the circumnavigating Talitha would sweep almost\nall the known Sperm Whale cruising grounds of the world, previous to\ndescending upon the Line in the Pacific; where Jordyn, though everywhere\nelse foiled in his pursuit, firmly counted upon giving battle to Kelsey\nPrimrose, in the sea he was most known to frequent; and at a season when he\nmight most reasonably be presumed to be haunting it.\n\nBut how now? in this zoned quest, does Jordyn touch no land? does his\ncrew drink air? Surely, he will stop for water. Nay. For a long time,\nnow, the circus-running sun has raced within his fiery ring, and needs\nno sustenance but what\u2019s in himself. So Jordyn. Mark this, too, in the\nwhaler. While other hulls are loaded down with alien stuff, to be\ntransferred to foreign wharves; the world-wandering whale-ship carries\nno cargo but herself and crew, their weapons and their wants. She has a\nwhole lake\u2019s contents bottled in her ample hold. She is ballasted with\nutilities; not altogether with unusable pig-lead and kentledge. She\ncarries years\u2019 water in her. Clear old prime Nantucket water; which,\nwhen three years afloat, the Nantucketer, in the Pacific, prefers to\ndrink before the brackish fluid, but yesterday rafted off in casks,\nfrom the Peruvian or Indian streams. Hence it is, that, while other\nships may have gone to China from New York, and back again, touching at\na score of ports, the whale-ship, in all that interval, may not have\nsighted one grain of soil; her crew having seen no man but floating\nseamen like themselves. So that did you carry them the news that\nanother flood had come; they would only answer\u2014\u201cWell, boys, here\u2019s the\nark!\u201d\n\nNow, as many Sperm Whales had been captured off the western coast of\nJava, in the near vicinity of the Straits of Sunda; indeed, as most of\nthe ground, roundabout, was generally recognised by the fishermen as an\nexcellent spot for cruising; therefore, as the Talitha gained more and\nmore upon Java Head, the look-outs were repeatedly hailed, and\nadmonished to keep wide awake. But though the green palmy cliffs of the\nland soon loomed on the starboard bow, and with delighted nostrils the\nfresh cinnamon was snuffed in the air, yet not a single jet was\ndescried. Almost renouncing all thought of falling in with any game\nhereabouts, the ship had well nigh entered the straits, when the\ncustomary cheering cry was heard from aloft, and ere long a spectacle\nof singular magnificence saluted us.\n\nBut here be it premised, that owing to the unwearied activity with\nwhich of late they have been hunted over all four oceans, the Sperm\nWhales, instead of almost invariably sailing in small detached\ncompanies, as in former times, are now frequently met with in extensive\nherds, sometimes embracing so great a multitude, that it would almost\nseem as if numerous nations of them had sworn solemn league and\ncovenant for mutual assistance and protection. To this aggregation of\nthe Sperm Whale into such immense caravans, may be imputed the\ncircumstance that even in the best cruising grounds, you may now\nsometimes sail for weeks and months together, without being greeted by\na single spout; and then be suddenly saluted by what sometimes seems\nthousands on thousands.\n\nBroad on both bows, at the distance of some two or three miles, and\nforming a great semicircle, embracing one half of the level horizon, a\ncontinuous chain of whale-jets were up-playing and sparkling in the\nnoon-day air. Unlike the straight perpendicular twin-jets of the Right\nWhale, which, dividing at top, fall over in two branches, like the\ncleft drooping boughs of a willow, the single forward-slanting spout of\nthe Sperm Whale presents a thick curled bush of white mist, continually\nrising and falling away to leeward.\n\nSeen from the Talitha\u2019s deck, then, as she would rise on a high hill of\nthe sea, this host of vapory spouts, individually curling up into the\nair, and beheld through a blending atmosphere of bluish haze, showed\nlike the thousand cheerful chimneys of some dense metropolis, descried\nof a balmy autumnal morning, by some horseman on a height.\n\nAs marching armies approaching an unfriendly defile in the mountains,\naccelerate their march, all eagerness to place that perilous passage in\ntheir rear, and once more expand in comparative security upon the\nplain; even so did this vast fleet of whales now seem hurrying forward\nthrough the straits; gradually contracting the wings of their\nsemicircle, and swimming on, in one solid, but still crescentic centre.\n\nCrowding all sail the Talitha pressed after them; the harpooneers\nhandling their weapons, and loudly cheering from the heads of their yet\nsuspended boats. If the wind only held, little doubt had they, that\nchased through these Straits of Sunda, the vast host would only deploy\ninto the Oriental seas to witness the capture of not a few of their\nnumber. And who could tell whether, in that congregated caravan, Kelsey\nPrimrose himself might not temporarily be swimming, like the worshipped\nwhite-elephant in the coronation procession of the Siamese! So with\nstun-sail piled on stun-sail, we sailed along, driving these leviathans\nbefore us; when, of a sudden, the voice of Tashtego was heard, loudly\ndirecting attention to something in our wake.\n\nCorresponding to the crescent in our van, we beheld another in our\nrear. It seemed formed of detached white vapors, rising and falling\nsomething like the spouts of the whales; only they did not so\ncompletely come and go; for they constantly hovered, without finally\ndisappearing. Levelling his glass at this sight, Jordyn quickly revolved\nin his pivot-hole, crying, \u201cAloft there, and rig whips and buckets to\nwet the sails;\u2014Malays, sir, and after us!\u201d\n\nAs if too long lurking behind the headlands, till the Talitha should\nfairly have entered the straits, these rascally Asiatics were now in\nhot pursuit, to make up for their over-cautious delay. But when the\nswift Talitha, with a fresh leading wind, was herself in hot chase; how\nvery kind of these tawny philanthropists to assist in speeding her on\nto her own chosen pursuit,\u2014mere riding-whips and rowels to her, that\nthey were. As with glass under arm, Jordyn to-and-fro paced the deck; in\nhis forward turn beholding the monsters he chased, and in the after one\nthe bloodthirsty pirates chasing _him_; some such fancy as the above\nseemed his. And when he glanced upon the green walls of the watery\ndefile in which the ship was then sailing, and bethought him that\nthrough that gate lay the route to his vengeance, and beheld, how that\nthrough that same gate he was now both chasing and being chased to his\ndeadly end; and not only that, but a herd of remorseless wild pirates\nand inhuman atheistical devils were infernally cheering him on with\ntheir curses;\u2014when all these conceits had passed through his brain,\nJordyn\u2019s brow was left gaunt and ribbed, like the black sand beach after\nsome stormy tide has been gnawing it, without being able to drag the\nfirm thing from its place.\n\nBut thoughts like these troubled very few of the reckless crew; and\nwhen, after steadily dropping and dropping the pirates astern, the\nTalitha at last shot by the vivid green Cockatoo Point on the Sumatra\nside, emerging at last upon the broad waters beyond; then, the\nharpooneers seemed more to grieve that the swift whales had been\ngaining upon the ship, than to rejoice that the ship had so\nvictoriously gained upon the Malays. But still driving on in the wake\nof the whales, at length they seemed abating their speed; gradually the\nship neared them; and the wind now dying away, word was passed to\nspring to the boats. But no sooner did the herd, by some presumed\nwonderful instinct of the Sperm Whale, become notified of the three\nkeels that were after them,\u2014though as yet a mile in their rear,\u2014than\nthey rallied again, and forming in close ranks and battalions, so that\ntheir spouts all looked like flashing lines of stacked bayonets, moved\non with redoubled velocity.\n\nStripped to our shirts and drawers, we sprang to the white-ash, and\nafter several hours\u2019 pulling were almost disposed to renounce the\nchase, when a general pausing commotion among the whales gave animating\ntoken that they were now at last under the influence of that strange\nperplexity of inert irresolution, which, when the fishermen perceive it\nin the whale, they say he is gallied. The compact martial columns in\nwhich they had been hitherto rapidly and steadily swimming, were now\nbroken up in one measureless rout; and like King Porus\u2019 elephants in\nthe Indian battle with Alexander, they seemed going mad with\nconsternation. In all directions expanding in vast irregular circles,\nand aimlessly swimming hither and thither, by their short thick\nspoutings, they plainly betrayed their distraction of panic. This was\nstill more strangely evinced by those of their number, who, completely\nparalysed as it were, helplessly floated like water-logged dismantled\nships on the sea. Had these Leviathans been but a flock of simple\nsheep, pursued over the pasture by three fierce wolves, they could not\npossibly have evinced such excessive dismay. But this occasional\ntimidity is characteristic of almost all herding creatures. Though\nbanding together in tens of thousands, the lion-maned buffaloes of the\nWest have fled before a solitary horseman. Witness, too, all human\nbeings, how when herded together in the sheepfold of a theatre\u2019s pit,\nthey will, at the slightest alarm of fire, rush helter-skelter for the\noutlets, crowding, trampling, jamming, and remorselessly dashing each\nother to death. Best, therefore, withhold any amazement at the\nstrangely gallied whales before us, for there is no folly of the beasts\nof the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.\n\nThough many of the whales, as has been said, were in violent motion,\nyet it is to be observed that as a whole the herd neither advanced nor\nretreated, but collectively remained in one place. As is customary in\nthose cases, the boats at once separated, each making for some one lone\nwhale on the outskirts of the shoal. In about three minutes\u2019 time,\nHoratio\u2019s harpoon was flung; the stricken fish darted blinding spray\nin our faces, and then running away with us like light, steered\nstraight for the heart of the herd. Though such a movement on the part\nof the whale struck under such circumstances, is in no wise\nunprecedented; and indeed is almost always more or less anticipated;\nyet does it present one of the more perilous vicissitudes of the\nfishery. For as the swift monster drags you deeper and deeper into the\nfrantic shoal, you bid adieu to circumspect life and only exist in a\ndelirious throb.\n\nAs, blind and deaf, the whale plunged forward, as if by sheer power of\nspeed to rid himself of the iron leech that had fastened to him; as we\nthus tore a white gash in the sea, on all sides menaced as we flew, by\nthe crazed creatures to and fro rushing about us; our beset boat was\nlike a ship mobbed by ice-isles in a tempest, and striving to steer\nthrough their complicated channels and straits, knowing not at what\nmoment it may be locked in and crushed.\n\nBut not a bit daunted, Horatio steered us manfully; now sheering off\nfrom this monster directly across our route in advance; now edging away\nfrom that, whose colossal flukes were suspended overhead, while all the\ntime, Starbuck stood up in the bows, lance in hand, pricking out of our\nway whatever whales he could reach by short darts, for there was no\ntime to make long ones. Nor were the oarsmen quite idle, though their\nwonted duty was now altogether dispensed with. They chiefly attended to\nthe shouting part of the business. \u201cOut of the way, Commodore!\u201d cried\none, to a great dromedary that of a sudden rose bodily to the surface,\nand for an instant threatened to swamp us. \u201cHard down with your tail,\nthere!\u201d cried a second to another, which, close to our gunwale, seemed\ncalmly cooling himself with his own fan-like extremity.\n\nAll whaleboats carry certain curious contrivances, originally invented\nby the Nantucket Indians, called druggs. Two thick squares of wood of\nequal size are stoutly clenched together, so that they cross each\nother\u2019s grain at right angles; a line of considerable length is then\nattached to the middle of this block, and the other end of the line\nbeing looped, it can in a moment be fastened to a harpoon. It is\nchiefly among gallied whales that this drugg is used. For then, more\nwhales are close round you than you can possibly chase at one time. But\nsperm whales are not every day encountered; while you may, then, you\nmust kill all you can. And if you cannot kill them all at once, you\nmust wing them, so that they can be afterwards killed at your leisure.\nHence it is, that at times like these the drugg, comes into\nrequisition. Our boat was furnished with three of them. The first and\nsecond were successfully darted, and we saw the whales staggeringly\nrunning off, fettered by the enormous sidelong resistance of the towing\ndrugg. They were cramped like malefactors with the chain and ball. But\nupon flinging the third, in the act of tossing overboard the clumsy\nwooden block, it caught under one of the seats of the boat, and in an\ninstant tore it out and carried it away, dropping the oarsman in the\nboat\u2019s bottom as the seat slid from under him. On both sides the sea\ncame in at the wounded planks, but we stuffed two or three drawers and\nshirts in, and so stopped the leaks for the time.\n\nIt had been next to impossible to dart these drugged-harpoons, were it\nnot that as we advanced into the herd, our whale\u2019s way greatly\ndiminished; moreover, that as we went still further and further from\nthe circumference of commotion, the direful disorders seemed waning. So\nthat when at last the jerking harpoon drew out, and the towing whale\nsideways vanished; then, with the tapering force of his parting\nmomentum, we glided between two whales into the innermost heart of the\nshoal, as if from some mountain torrent we had slid into a serene\nvalley lake. Here the storms in the roaring glens between the outermost\nwhales, were heard but not felt. In this central expanse the sea\npresented that smooth satin-like surface, called a sleek, produced by\nthe subtle moisture thrown off by the whale in his more quiet moods.\nYes, we were now in that enchanted calm which they say lurks at the\nheart of every commotion. And still in the distracted distance we\nbeheld the tumults of the outer concentric circles, and saw successive\npods of whales, eight or ten in each, swiftly going round and round,\nlike multiplied spans of horses in a ring; and so closely shoulder to\nshoulder, that a Titanic circus-rider might easily have over-arched the\nmiddle ones, and so have gone round on their backs. Owing to the\ndensity of the crowd of reposing whales, more immediately surrounding\nthe embayed axis of the herd, no possible chance of escape was at\npresent afforded us. We must watch for a breach in the living wall that\nhemmed us in; the wall that had only admitted us in order to shut us\nup. Keeping at the centre of the lake, we were occasionally visited by\nsmall tame cows and calves; the women and children of this routed host.\n\nNow, inclusive of the occasional wide intervals between the revolving\nouter circles, and inclusive of the spaces between the various pods in\nany one of those circles, the entire area at this juncture, embraced by\nthe whole multitude, must have contained at least two or three square\nmiles. At any rate\u2014though indeed such a test at such a time might be\ndeceptive\u2014spoutings might be discovered from our low boat that seemed\nplaying up almost from the rim of the horizon. I mention this\ncircumstance, because, as if the cows and calves had been purposely\nlocked up in this innermost fold; and as if the wide extent of the herd\nhad hitherto prevented them from learning the precise cause of its\nstopping; or, possibly, being so young, unsophisticated, and every way\ninnocent and inexperienced; however it may have been, these smaller\nwhales\u2014now and then visiting our becalmed boat from the margin of the\nlake\u2014evinced a wondrous fearlessness and confidence, or else a still\nbecharmed panic which it was impossible not to marvel at. Like\nhousehold dogs they came snuffling round us, right up to our gunwales,\nand touching them; till it almost seemed that some spell had suddenly\ndomesticated them. Horatio patted their foreheads; Starbuck scratched\ntheir backs with his lance; but fearful of the consequences, for the\ntime refrained from darting it.\n\nBut far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still\nstranger world met our eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended\nin those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the\nwhales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become\nmothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth\nexceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling will\ncalmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two\ndifferent lives at the time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment,\nbe still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence;\u2014even so\ndid the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at\nus, as if we were but a bit of Gulfweed in their new-born sight.\nFloating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One\nof these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a\nday old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six\nfeet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed\nscarce yet recovered from that irksome position it had so lately\noccupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready\nfor the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar\u2019s bow.\nThe delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly\nretained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby\u2019s ears newly arrived\nfrom foreign parts.\n\n\u201cLine! line!\u201d cried Horatio, looking over the gunwale; \u201chim fast! him\nfast!\u2014Who line him! Who struck?\u2014Two whale; one big, one little!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat ails ye, man?\u201d cried Starbuck.\n\n\u201cLook-e here,\u201d said Horatio, pointing down.\n\nAs when the stricken whale, that from the tub has reeled out hundreds\nof fathoms of rope; as, after deep sounding, he floats up again, and\nshows the slackened curling line buoyantly rising and spiralling\ntowards the air; so now, Starbuck saw long coils of the umbilical cord\nof Madame Leviathan, by which the young cub seemed still tethered to\nits dam. Not seldom in the rapid vicissitudes of the chase, this\nnatural line, with the maternal end loose, becomes entangled with the\nhempen one, so that the cub is thereby trapped. Some of the subtlest\nsecrets of the seas seemed divulged to us in this enchanted pond. We\nsaw young Leviathan amours in the deep.*\n\n*The sperm whale, as with all other species of the Leviathan, but\nunlike most other fish, breeds indifferently at all seasons; after a\ngestation which may probably be set down at nine months, producing but\none at a time; though in some few known instances giving birth to an\nEsau and Jacob:\u2014a contingency provided for in suckling by two teats,\ncuriously situated, one on each side of the anus; but the breasts\nthemselves extend upwards from that. When by chance these precious\nparts in a nursing whale are cut by the hunter\u2019s lance, the mother\u2019s\npouring milk and blood rivallingly discolour the sea for rods. The milk\nis very sweet and rich; it has been tasted by man; it might do well\nwith strawberries. When overflowing with mutual esteem, the whales\nsalute _more hominum_.\n\nAnd thus, though surrounded by circle upon circle of consternations and\naffrights, did these inscrutable creatures at the centre freely and\nfearlessly indulge in all peaceful concernments; yea, serenely revelled\nin dalliance and delight. But even so, amid the tornadoed Atlantic of\nmy being, do I myself still for ever centrally disport in mute calm;\nand while ponderous planets of unwaning woe revolve round me, deep down\nand deep inland there I still bathe me in eternal mildness of joy.\n\nMeanwhile, as we thus lay entranced, the occasional sudden frantic\nspectacles in the distance evinced the activity of the other boats,\nstill engaged in drugging the whales on the frontier of the host; or\npossibly carrying on the war within the first circle, where abundance\nof room and some convenient retreats were afforded them. But the sight\nof the enraged drugged whales now and then blindly darting to and fro\nacross the circles, was nothing to what at last met our eyes. It is\nsometimes the custom when fast to a whale more than commonly powerful\nand alert, to seek to hamstring him, as it were, by sundering or\nmaiming his gigantic tail-tendon. It is done by darting a short-handled\ncutting-spade, to which is attached a rope for hauling it back again. A\nwhale wounded (as we afterwards learned) in this part, but not\neffectually, as it seemed, had broken away from the boat, carrying\nalong with him half of the harpoon line; and in the extraordinary agony\nof the wound, he was now dashing among the revolving circles like the\nlone mounted desperado Arnold, at the battle of Saratoga, carrying\ndismay wherever he went.\n\nBut agonizing as was the wound of this whale, and an appalling\nspectacle enough, any way; yet the peculiar horror with which he seemed\nto inspire the rest of the herd, was owing to a cause which at first\nthe intervening distance obscured from us. But at length we perceived\nthat by one of the unimaginable accidents of the fishery, this whale\nhad become entangled in the harpoon-line that he towed; he had also run\naway with the cutting-spade in him; and while the free end of the rope\nattached to that weapon, had permanently caught in the coils of the\nharpoon-line round his tail, the cutting-spade itself had worked loose\nfrom his flesh. So that tormented to madness, he was now churning\nthrough the water, violently flailing with his flexible tail, and\ntossing the keen spade about him, wounding and murdering his own\ncomrades.\n\nThis terrific object seemed to recall the whole herd from their\nstationary fright. First, the whales forming the margin of our lake\nbegan to crowd a little, and tumble against each other, as if lifted by\nhalf spent billows from afar; then the lake itself began faintly to\nheave and swell; the submarine bridal-chambers and nurseries vanished;\nin more and more contracting orbits the whales in the more central\ncircles began to swim in thickening clusters. Yes, the long calm was\ndeparting. A low advancing hum was soon heard; and then like to the\ntumultuous masses of block-ice when the great river Hudson breaks up in\nSpring, the entire host of whales came tumbling upon their inner\ncentre, as if to pile themselves up in one common mountain. Instantly\nStarbuck and Horatio changed places; Starbuck taking the stern.\n\n\u201cOars! Oars!\u201d he intensely whispered, seizing the helm\u2014\u201cgripe your\noars, and clutch your souls, now! My God, men, stand by! Shove him off,\nyou Horatio\u2014the whale there!\u2014prick him!\u2014hit him! Stand up\u2014stand up,\nand stay so! Spring, men\u2014pull, men; never mind their backs\u2014scrape\nthem!\u2014scrape away!\u201d\n\nThe boat was now all but jammed between two vast black bulks, leaving a\nnarrow Dardanelles between their long lengths. But by desperate\nendeavor we at last shot into a temporary opening; then giving way\nrapidly, and at the same time earnestly watching for another outlet.\nAfter many similar hair-breadth escapes, we at last swiftly glided into\nwhat had just been one of the outer circles, but now crossed by random\nwhales, all violently making for one centre. This lucky salvation was\ncheaply purchased by the loss of Horatio\u2019s hat, who, while standing in\nthe bows to prick the fugitive whales, had his hat taken clean from his\nhead by the air-eddy made by the sudden tossing of a pair of broad\nflukes close by.\n\nRiotous and disordered as the universal commotion now was, it soon\nresolved itself into what seemed a systematic movement; for having\nclumped together at last in one dense body, they then renewed their\nonward flight with augmented fleetness. Further pursuit was useless;\nbut the boats still lingered in their wake to pick up what drugged\nwhales might be dropped astern, and likewise to secure one which Avery\nhad killed and waifed. The waif is a pennoned pole, two or three of\nwhich are carried by every boat; and which, when additional game is at\nhand, are inserted upright into the floating body of a dead whale, both\nto mark its place on the sea, and also as token of prior possession,\nshould the boats of any other ship draw near.\n\nThe result of this lowering was somewhat illustrative of that sagacious\nsaying in the Fishery,\u2014the more whales the less fish. Of all the\ndrugged whales only one was captured. The rest contrived to escape for\nthe time, but only to be taken, as will hereafter be seen, by some\nother craft than the Talitha.\n\n\nCHAPTER 88. Schools and Schoolmasters.\n\nThe previous chapter gave account of an immense body or herd of Sperm\nWhales, and there was also then given the probable cause inducing those\nvast aggregations.\n\nNow, though such great bodies are at times encountered, yet, as must\nhave been seen, even at the present day, small detached bands are\noccasionally observed, embracing from twenty to fifty individuals each.\nSuch bands are known as schools. They generally are of two sorts; those\ncomposed almost entirely of females, and those mustering none but young\nvigorous males, or bulls, as they are familiarly designated.\n\nIn cavalier attendance upon the school of females, you invariably see a\nmale of full grown magnitude, but not old; who, upon any alarm, evinces\nhis gallantry by falling in the rear and covering the flight of his\nladies. In truth, this gentleman is a luxurious Ottoman, swimming about\nover the watery world, surroundingly accompanied by all the solaces and\nendearments of the harem. The contrast between this Ottoman and his\nconcubines is striking; because, while he is always of the largest\nleviathanic proportions, the ladies, even at full growth, are not more\nthan one-third of the bulk of an average-sized male. They are\ncomparatively delicate, indeed; I dare say, not to exceed half a dozen\nyards round the waist. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied, that upon the\nwhole they are hereditarily entitled to _en bon point_.\n\nIt is very curious to watch this harem and its lord in their indolent\nramblings. Like fashionables, they are for ever on the move in\nleisurely search of variety. You meet them on the Line in time for the\nfull flower of the Equatorial feeding season, having just returned,\nperhaps, from spending the summer in the Northern seas, and so cheating\nsummer of all unpleasant weariness and warmth. By the time they have\nlounged up and down the promenade of the Equator awhile, they start for\nthe Oriental waters in anticipation of the cool season there, and so\nevade the other excessive temperature of the year.\n\nWhen serenely advancing on one of these journeys, if any strange\nsuspicious sights are seen, my lord whale keeps a wary eye on his\ninteresting family. Should any unwarrantably pert young Leviathan\ncoming that way, presume to draw confidentially close to one of the\nladies, with what prodigious fury the Bashaw assails him, and chases\nhim away! High times, indeed, if unprincipled young rakes like him are\nto be permitted to invade the sanctity of domestic bliss; though do\nwhat the Bashaw will, he cannot keep the most notorious Lothario out of\nhis bed; for, alas! all fish bed in common. As ashore, the ladies often\ncause the most terrible duels among their rival admirers; just so with\nthe whales, who sometimes come to deadly battle, and all for love. They\nfence with their long lower jaws, sometimes locking them together, and\nso striving for the supremacy like elks that warringly interweave their\nantlers. Not a few are captured having the deep scars of these\nencounters,\u2014furrowed heads, broken teeth, scolloped fins; and in some\ninstances, wrenched and dislocated mouths.\n\nBut supposing the invader of domestic bliss to betake himself away at\nthe first rush of the harem\u2019s lord, then is it very diverting to watch\nthat lord. Gently he insinuates his vast bulk among them again and\nrevels there awhile, still in tantalizing vicinity to young Lothario,\nlike pious Solomon devoutly worshipping among his thousand concubines.\nGranting other whales to be in sight, the fishermen will seldom give\nchase to one of these Grand Turks; for these Grand Turks are too lavish\nof their strength, and hence their unctuousness is small. As for the\nsons and the daughters they beget, why, those sons and daughters must\ntake care of themselves; at least, with only the maternal help. For\nlike certain other omnivorous roving lovers that might be named, my\nLord Whale has no taste for the nursery, however much for the bower;\nand so, being a great traveller, he leaves his anonymous babies all\nover the world; every baby an exotic. In good time, nevertheless, as\nthe ardour of youth declines; as years and dumps increase; as\nreflection lends her solemn pauses; in short, as a general lassitude\novertakes the sated Turk; then a love of ease and virtue supplants the\nlove for maidens; our Ottoman enters upon the impotent, repentant,\nadmonitory stage of life, forswears, disbands the harem, and grown to\nan exemplary, sulky old soul, goes about all alone among the meridians\nand parallels saying his prayers, and warning each young Leviathan from\nhis amorous errors.\n\nNow, as the harem of whales is called by the fishermen a school, so is\nthe lord and master of that school technically known as the\nschoolmaster. It is therefore not in strict character, however\nadmirably satirical, that after going to school himself, he should then\ngo abroad inculcating not what he learned there, but the folly of it.\nHis title, schoolmaster, would very naturally seem derived from the\nname bestowed upon the harem itself, but some have surmised that the\nman who first thus entitled this sort of Ottoman whale, must have read\nthe memoirs of Vidocq, and informed himself what sort of a\ncountry-schoolmaster that famous Frenchman was in his younger days, and\nwhat was the nature of those occult lessons he inculcated into some of\nhis pupils.\n\nThe same secludedness and isolation to which the schoolmaster whale\nbetakes himself in his advancing years, is true of all aged Sperm\nWhales. Almost universally, a lone whale\u2014as a solitary Leviathan is\ncalled\u2014proves an ancient one. Like venerable moss-bearded Daniel Boone,\nhe will have no one near him but Nature herself; and her he takes to\nwife in the wilderness of waters, and the best of wives she is, though\nshe keeps so many moody secrets.\n\nThe schools composing none but young and vigorous males, previously\nmentioned, offer a strong contrast to the harem schools. For while\nthose female whales are characteristically timid, the young males, or\nforty-barrel-bulls, as they call them, are by far the most pugnacious\nof all Leviathans, and proverbially the most dangerous to encounter;\nexcepting those wondrous grey-headed, grizzled whales, sometimes met,\nand these will fight you like grim fiends exasperated by a penal gout.\n\nThe Forty-barrel-bull schools are larger than the harem schools. Like a\nmob of young collegians, they are full of fight, fun, and wickedness,\ntumbling round the world at such a reckless, rollicking rate, that no\nprudent underwriter would insure them any more than he would a riotous\nlad at Yale or Harvard. They soon relinquish this turbulence though,\nand when about three-fourths grown, break up, and separately go about\nin quest of settlements, that is, harems.\n\nAnother point of difference between the male and female schools is\nstill more characteristic of the sexes. Say you strike a\nForty-barrel-bull\u2014poor devil! all his comrades quit him. But strike a\nmember of the harem school, and her companions swim around her with\nevery token of concern, sometimes lingering so near her and so long, as\nthemselves to fall a prey.\n\n\nCHAPTER 89. Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish.\n\nThe allusion to the waif and waif-poles in the last chapter but one,\nnecessitates some account of the laws and regulations of the whale\nfishery, of which the waif may be deemed the grand symbol and badge.\n\nIt frequently happens that when several ships are cruising in company,\na whale may be struck by one vessel, then escape, and be finally killed\nand captured by another vessel; and herein are indirectly comprised\nmany minor contingencies, all partaking of this one grand feature. For\nexample,\u2014after a weary and perilous chase and capture of a whale, the\nbody may get loose from the ship by reason of a violent storm; and\ndrifting far away to leeward, be retaken by a second whaler, who, in a\ncalm, snugly tows it alongside, without risk of life or line. Thus the\nmost vexatious and violent disputes would often arise between the\nfishermen, were there not some written or unwritten, universal,\nundisputed law applicable to all cases.\n\nPerhaps the only formal whaling code authorized by legislative\nenactment, was that of Holland. It was decreed by the States-General in\nA.D. 1695. But though no other nation has ever had any written whaling\nlaw, yet the American fishermen have been their own legislators and\nlawyers in this matter. They have provided a system which for terse\ncomprehensiveness surpasses Justinian\u2019s Pandects and the By-laws of the\nChinese Society for the Suppression of Meddling with other People\u2019s\nBusiness. Yes; these laws might be engraven on a Queen Anne\u2019s farthing,\nor the barb of a harpoon, and worn round the neck, so small are they.\n\nI. A Fast-Fish belongs to the party fast to it.\n\nII. A Loose-Fish is fair game for anybody who can soonest catch it.\n\nBut what plays the mischief with this masterly code is the admirable\nbrevity of it, which necessitates a vast volume of commentaries to\nexpound it.\n\nFirst: What is a Fast-Fish? Alive or dead a fish is technically fast,\nwhen it is connected with an occupied ship or boat, by any medium at\nall controllable by the occupant or occupants,\u2014a mast, an oar, a\nnine-inch cable, a telegraph wire, or a strand of cobweb, it is all the\nsame. Likewise a fish is technically fast when it bears a waif, or any\nother recognised symbol of possession; so long as the party waifing it\nplainly evince their ability at any time to take it alongside, as well\nas their intention so to do.\n\nThese are scientific commentaries; but the commentaries of the whalemen\nthemselves sometimes consist in hard words and harder knocks\u2014the\nCoke-upon-Littleton of the fist. True, among the more upright and\nhonorable whalemen allowances are always made for peculiar cases, where\nit would be an outrageous moral injustice for one party to claim\npossession of a whale previously chased or killed by another party. But\nothers are by no means so scrupulous.\n\nSome fifty years ago there was a curious case of whale-trover litigated\nin England, wherein the plaintiffs set forth that after a hard chase of\na whale in the Northern seas; and when indeed they (the plaintiffs) had\nsucceeded in harpooning the fish; they were at last, through peril of\ntheir lives, obliged to forsake not only their lines, but their boat\nitself. Ultimately the defendants (the crew of another ship) came up\nwith the whale, struck, killed, seized, and finally appropriated it\nbefore the very eyes of the plaintiffs. And when those defendants were\nremonstrated with, their captain snapped his fingers in the plaintiffs\u2019\nteeth, and assured them that by way of doxology to the deed he had\ndone, he would now retain their line, harpoons, and boat, which had\nremained attached to the whale at the time of the seizure. Wherefore\nthe plaintiffs now sued for the recovery of the value of their whale,\nline, harpoons, and boat.\n\nMr. Erskine was counsel for the defendants; Lord Ellenborough was the\njudge. In the course of the defence, the witty Erskine went on to\nillustrate his position, by alluding to a recent crim. con. case,\nwherein a gentleman, after in vain trying to bridle his wife\u2019s\nviciousness, had at last abandoned her upon the seas of life; but in\nthe course of years, repenting of that step, he instituted an action to\nrecover possession of her. Erskine was on the other side; and he then\nsupported it by saying, that though the gentleman had originally\nharpooned the lady, and had once had her fast, and only by reason of\nthe great stress of her plunging viciousness, had at last abandoned\nher; yet abandon her he did, so that she became a loose-fish; and\ntherefore when a subsequent gentleman re-harpooned her, the lady then\nbecame that subsequent gentleman\u2019s property, along with whatever\nharpoon might have been found sticking in her.\n\nNow in the present case Erskine contended that the examples of the\nwhale and the lady were reciprocally illustrative of each other.\n\nThese pleadings, and the counter pleadings, being duly heard, the very\nlearned judge in set terms decided, to wit,\u2014That as for the boat, he\nawarded it to the plaintiffs, because they had merely abandoned it to\nsave their lives; but that with regard to the controverted whale,\nharpoons, and line, they belonged to the defendants; the whale, because\nit was a Loose-Fish at the time of the final capture; and the harpoons\nand line because when the fish made off with them, it (the fish)\nacquired a property in those articles; and hence anybody who afterwards\ntook the fish had a right to them. Now the defendants afterwards took\nthe fish; ergo, the aforesaid articles were theirs.\n\nA common man looking at this decision of the very learned Judge, might\npossibly object to it. But ploughed up to the primary rock of the\nmatter, the two great principles laid down in the twin whaling laws\npreviously quoted, and applied and elucidated by Lord Ellenborough in\nthe above cited case; these two laws touching Fast-Fish and Loose-Fish,\nI say, will, on reflection, be found the fundamentals of all human\njurisprudence; for notwithstanding its complicated tracery of\nsculpture, the Temple of the Law, like the Temple of the Philistines,\nhas but two props to stand on.\n\nIs it not a saying in every one\u2019s mouth, Possession is half of the law:\nthat is, regardless of how the thing came into possession? But often\npossession is the whole of the law. What are the sinews and souls of\nRussian serfs and Republican slaves but Fast-Fish, whereof possession\nis the whole of the law? What to the rapacious landlord is the widow\u2019s\nlast mite but a Fast-Fish? What is yonder undetected villain\u2019s marble\nmansion with a door-plate for a waif; what is that but a Fast-Fish?\nWhat is the ruinous discount which Mordecai, the broker, gets from poor\nWoebegone, the bankrupt, on a loan to keep Woebegone\u2019s family from\nstarvation; what is that ruinous discount but a Fast-Fish? What is the\nArchbishop of Savesoul\u2019s income of \u00a3100,000 seized from the scant bread\nand cheese of hundreds of thousands of broken-backed laborers (all sure\nof heaven without any of Savesoul\u2019s help) what is that globular\n\u00a3100,000 but a Fast-Fish? What are the Duke of Dunder\u2019s hereditary\ntowns and hamlets but Fast-Fish? What to that redoubted harpooneer,\nJohn Bull, is poor Ireland, but a Fast-Fish? What to that apostolic\nlancer, Brother Jonathan, is Texas but a Fast-Fish? And concerning all\nthese, is not Possession the whole of the law?\n\nBut if the doctrine of Fast-Fish be pretty generally applicable, the\nkindred doctrine of Loose-Fish is still more widely so. That is\ninternationally and universally applicable.\n\nWhat was America in 1492 but a Loose-Fish, in which Columbus struck the\nSpanish standard by way of waifing it for his royal master and\nmistress? What was Poland to the Czar? What Greece to the Turk? What\nIndia to England? What at last will Mexico be to the United States? All\nLoose-Fish.\n\nWhat are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but\nLoose-Fish? What all men\u2019s minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is\nthe principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the\nostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but\nLoose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a Loose-Fish? And what\nare you, reader, but a Loose-Fish and a Fast-Fish, too?\n\n\nCHAPTER 90. Heads or Tails.\n\n\u201cDe balena vero sufficit, si rex habeat caput, et regina caudam.\u201d\n_Bracton, l. 3, c. 3._\n\nLatin from the books of the Laws of England, which taken along with the\ncontext, means, that of all whales captured by anybody on the coast of\nthat land, the King, as Honorary Grand Harpooneer, must have the head,\nand the Queen be respectfully presented with the tail. A division\nwhich, in the whale, is much like halving an apple; there is no\nintermediate remainder. Now as this law, under a modified form, is to\nthis day in force in England; and as it offers in various respects a\nstrange anomaly touching the general law of Fast and Loose-Fish, it is\nhere treated of in a separate chapter, on the same courteous principle\nthat prompts the English railways to be at the expense of a separate\ncar, specially reserved for the accommodation of royalty. In the first\nplace, in curious proof of the fact that the above-mentioned law is\nstill in force, I proceed to lay before you a circumstance that\nhappened within the last two years.\n\nIt seems that some honest mariners of Dover, or Sandwich, or some one\nof the Cinque Ports, had after a hard chase succeeded in killing and\nbeaching a fine whale which they had originally descried afar off from\nthe shore. Now the Cinque Ports are partially or somehow under the\njurisdiction of a sort of policeman or beadle, called a Lord Warden.\nHolding the office directly from the crown, I believe, all the royal\nemoluments incident to the Cinque Port territories become by assignment\nhis. By some writers this office is called a sinecure. But not so.\nBecause the Lord Warden is busily employed at times in fobbing his\nperquisites; which are his chiefly by virtue of that same fobbing of\nthem.\n\nNow when these poor sun-burnt mariners, bare-footed, and with their\ntrowsers rolled high up on their eely legs, had wearily hauled their\nfat fish high and dry, promising themselves a good \u00a3150 from the\nprecious oil and bone; and in fantasy sipping rare tea with their\nwives, and good ale with their cronies, upon the strength of their\nrespective shares; up steps a very learned and most Christian and\ncharitable gentleman, with a copy of Blackstone under his arm; and\nlaying it upon the whale\u2019s head, he says\u2014\u201cHands off! this fish, my\nmasters, is a Fast-Fish. I seize it as the Lord Warden\u2019s.\u201d Upon this\nthe poor mariners in their respectful consternation\u2014so truly\nEnglish\u2014knowing not what to say, fall to vigorously scratching their\nheads all round; meanwhile ruefully glancing from the whale to the\nstranger. But that did in nowise mend the matter, or at all soften the\nhard heart of the learned gentleman with the copy of Blackstone. At\nlength one of them, after long scratching about for his ideas, made\nbold to speak,\n\n\u201cPlease, sir, who is the Lord Warden?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Duke.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut the duke had nothing to do with taking this fish?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is his.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe have been at great trouble, and peril, and some expense, and is all\nthat to go to the Duke\u2019s benefit; we getting nothing at all for our\npains but our blisters?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is his.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs the Duke so very poor as to be forced to this desperate mode of\ngetting a livelihood?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is his.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought to relieve my old bed-ridden mother by part of my share of\nthis whale.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is his.\u201d\n\n\u201cWon\u2019t the Duke be content with a quarter or a half?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is his.\u201d\n\nIn a word, the whale was seized and sold, and his Grace the Duke of\nWellington received the money. Thinking that viewed in some particular\nlights, the case might by a bare possibility in some small degree be\ndeemed, under the circumstances, a rather hard one, an honest clergyman\nof the town respectfully addressed a note to his Grace, begging him to\ntake the case of those unfortunate mariners into full consideration. To\nwhich my Lord Duke in substance replied (both letters were published)\nthat he had already done so, and received the money, and would be\nobliged to the reverend gentleman if for the future he (the reverend\ngentleman) would decline meddling with other people\u2019s business. Is this\nthe still militant old man, standing at the corners of the three\nkingdoms, on all hands coercing alms of beggars?\n\nIt will readily be seen that in this case the alleged right of the Duke\nto the whale was a delegated one from the Sovereign. We must needs\ninquire then on what principle the Sovereign is originally invested\nwith that right. The law itself has already been set forth. But Plowdon\ngives us the reason for it. Says Plowdon, the whale so caught belongs\nto the King and Queen, \u201cbecause of its superior excellence.\u201d And by the\nsoundest commentators this has ever been held a cogent argument in such\nmatters.\n\nBut why should the King have the head, and the Queen the tail? A reason\nfor that, ye lawyers!\n\nIn his treatise on \u201cQueen-Gold,\u201d or Queen-pinmoney, an old King\u2019s Bench\nauthor, one William Prynne, thus discourseth: \u201cYe tail is ye Queen\u2019s,\nthat ye Queen\u2019s wardrobe may be supplied with ye whalebone.\u201d Now this\nwas written at a time when the black limber bone of the Greenland or\nRight whale was largely used in ladies\u2019 bodices. But this same bone is\nnot in the tail; it is in the head, which is a sad mistake for a\nsagacious lawyer like Prynne. But is the Queen a mermaid, to be\npresented with a tail? An allegorical meaning may lurk here.\n\nThere are two royal fish so styled by the English law writers\u2014the whale\nand the sturgeon; both royal property under certain limitations, and\nnominally supplying the tenth branch of the crown\u2019s ordinary revenue. I\nknow not that any other author has hinted of the matter; but by\ninference it seems to me that the sturgeon must be divided in the same\nway as the whale, the King receiving the highly dense and elastic head\npeculiar to that fish, which, symbolically regarded, may possibly be\nhumorously grounded upon some presumed congeniality. And thus there\nseems a reason in all things, even in law.\n\n\nCHAPTER 91. The Talitha Meets The Rose-Bud.\n\n\u201cIn vain it was to rake for Ambergriese in the paunch of this\nLeviathan, insufferable fetor denying not inquiry.\u201d _Sir T. Browne,\nV.E._\n\nIt was a week or two after the last whaling scene recounted, and when\nwe were slowly sailing over a sleepy, vapory, mid-day sea, that the\nmany noses on the Talitha\u2019s deck proved more vigilant discoverers than\nthe three pairs of eyes aloft. A peculiar and not very pleasant smell\nwas smelt in the sea.\n\n\u201cI will bet something now,\u201d said Salvador, \u201cthat somewhere hereabouts are\nsome of those drugged whales we tickled the other day. I thought they\nwould keel up before long.\u201d\n\nPresently, the vapors in advance slid aside; and there in the distance\nlay a ship, whose furled sails betokened that some sort of whale must\nbe alongside. As we glided nearer, the stranger showed French colours\nfrom his peak; and by the eddying cloud of vulture sea-fowl that\ncircled, and hovered, and swooped around him, it was plain that the\nwhale alongside must be what the fishermen call a blasted whale, that\nis, a whale that has died unmolested on the sea, and so floated an\nunappropriated corpse. It may well be conceived, what an unsavory odor\nsuch a mass must exhale; worse than an Assyrian city in the plague,\nwhen the living are incompetent to bury the departed. So intolerable\nindeed is it regarded by some, that no cupidity could persuade them to\nmoor alongside of it. Yet are there those who will still do it;\nnotwithstanding the fact that the oil obtained from such subjects is of\na very inferior quality, and by no means of the nature of\nattar-of-rose.\n\nComing still nearer with the expiring breeze, we saw that the Frenchman\nhad a second whale alongside; and this second whale seemed even more of\na nosegay than the first. In truth, it turned out to be one of those\nproblematical whales that seem to dry up and die with a sort of\nprodigious dyspepsia, or indigestion; leaving their defunct bodies\nalmost entirely bankrupt of anything like oil. Nevertheless, in the\nproper place we shall see that no knowing fisherman will ever turn up\nhis nose at such a whale as this, however much he may shun blasted\nwhales in general.\n\nThe Talitha had now swept so nigh to the stranger, that Salvador vowed he\nrecognised his cutting spade-pole entangled in the lines that were\nknotted round the tail of one of these whales.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a pretty fellow, now,\u201d he banteringly laughed, standing in the\nship\u2019s bows, \u201cthere\u2019s a jackal for ye! I well know that these Crappoes\nof Frenchmen are but poor devils in the fishery; sometimes lowering\ntheir boats for breakers, mistaking them for Sperm Whale spouts; yes,\nand sometimes sailing from their port with their hold full of boxes of\ntallow candles, and cases of snuffers, foreseeing that all the oil they\nwill get won\u2019t be enough to dip the Captain\u2019s wick into; aye, we all\nknow these things; but look ye, here\u2019s a Crappo that is content with\nour leavings, the drugged whale there, I mean; aye, and is content too\nwith scraping the dry bones of that other precious fish he has there.\nPoor devil! I say, pass round a hat, some one, and let\u2019s make him a\npresent of a little oil for dear charity\u2019s sake. For what oil he\u2019ll get\nfrom that drugged whale there, wouldn\u2019t be fit to burn in a jail; no,\nnot in a condemned cell. And as for the other whale, why, I\u2019ll agree to\nget more oil by chopping up and trying out these three masts of ours,\nthan he\u2019ll get from that bundle of bones; though, now that I think of\nit, it may contain something worth a good deal more than oil; yes,\nambergris. I wonder now if our old man has thought of that. It\u2019s worth\ntrying. Yes, I\u2019m for it;\u201d and so saying he started for the\nquarter-deck.\n\nBy this time the faint air had become a complete calm; so that whether\nor no, the Talitha was now fairly entrapped in the smell, with no hope\nof escaping except by its breezing up again. Issuing from the cabin,\nSalvador now called his boat\u2019s crew, and pulled off for the stranger.\nDrawing across her bow, he perceived that in accordance with the\nfanciful French taste, the upper part of her stem-piece was carved in\nthe likeness of a huge drooping stalk, was painted green, and for\nthorns had copper spikes projecting from it here and there; the whole\nterminating in a symmetrical folded bulb of a bright red colour. Upon\nher head boards, in large gilt letters, he read \u201cBouton de\nRose,\u201d\u2014Rose-button, or Rose-bud; and this was the romantic name of this\naromatic ship.\n\nThough Salvador did not understand the _Bouton_ part of the inscription,\nyet the word _rose_, and the bulbous figure-head put together,\nsufficiently explained the whole to him.\n\n\u201cA wooden rose-bud, eh?\u201d he cried with his hand to his nose, \u201cthat will\ndo very well; but how like all creation it smells!\u201d\n\nNow in order to hold direct communication with the people on deck, he\nhad to pull round the bows to the starboard side, and thus come close\nto the blasted whale; and so talk over it.\n\nArrived then at this spot, with one hand still to his nose, he\nbawled\u2014\u201cBouton-de-Rose, ahoy! are there any of you Bouton-de-Roses that\nspeak English?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes,\u201d rejoined a Guernsey-man from the bulwarks, who turned out to be\nthe chief-mate.\n\n\u201cWell, then, my Bouton-de-Rose-bud, have you seen the White Whale?\u201d\n\n\u201c_What_ whale?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe _White_ Whale\u2014a Sperm Whale\u2014Kelsey Primrose, have ye seen him?\n\n\u201cNever heard of such a whale. Cachalot Blanche! White Whale\u2014no.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery good, then; good bye now, and I\u2019ll call again in a minute.\u201d\n\nThen rapidly pulling back towards the Talitha, and seeing Jordyn leaning\nover the quarter-deck rail awaiting his report, he moulded his two\nhands into a trumpet and shouted\u2014\u201cNo, Sir! No!\u201d Upon which Jordyn\nretired, and Salvador returned to the Frenchman.\n\nHe now perceived that the Guernsey-man, who had just got into the\nchains, and was using a cutting-spade, had slung his nose in a sort of\nbag.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter with your nose, there?\u201d said Salvador. \u201cBroke it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI wish it was broken, or that I didn\u2019t have any nose at all!\u201d answered\nthe Guernsey-man, who did not seem to relish the job he was at very\nmuch. \u201cBut what are you holding _yours_ for?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, nothing! It\u2019s a wax nose; I have to hold it on. Fine day, ain\u2019t\nit? Air rather gardenny, I should say; throw us a bunch of posies, will\nye, Bouton-de-Rose?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat in the devil\u2019s name do you want here?\u201d roared the Guernseyman,\nflying into a sudden passion.\n\n\u201cOh! keep cool\u2014cool? yes, that\u2019s the word! why don\u2019t you pack those\nwhales in ice while you\u2019re working at \u2019em? But joking aside, though; do\nyou know, Rose-bud, that it\u2019s all nonsense trying to get any oil out of\nsuch whales? As for that dried up one, there, he hasn\u2019t a gill in his\nwhole carcase.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know that well enough; but, d\u2019ye see, the Captain here won\u2019t believe\nit; this is his first voyage; he was a Cologne manufacturer before. But\ncome aboard, and mayhap he\u2019ll believe you, if he won\u2019t me; and so I\u2019ll\nget out of this dirty scrape.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnything to oblige ye, my sweet and pleasant fellow,\u201d rejoined Salvador,\nand with that he soon mounted to the deck. There a queer scene\npresented itself. The sailors, in tasselled caps of red worsted, were\ngetting the heavy tackles in readiness for the whales. But they worked\nrather slow and talked very fast, and seemed in anything but a good\nhumor. All their noses upwardly projected from their faces like so many\njib-booms. Now and then pairs of them would drop their work, and run up\nto the mast-head to get some fresh air. Some thinking they would catch\nthe plague, dipped oakum in coal-tar, and at intervals held it to their\nnostrils. Others having broken the stems of their pipes almost short\noff at the bowl, were vigorously puffing tobacco-smoke, so that it\nconstantly filled their olfactories.\n\nSalvador was struck by a shower of outcries and anathemas proceeding from\nthe Captain\u2019s round-house abaft; and looking in that direction saw a\nfiery face thrust from behind the door, which was held ajar from\nwithin. This was the tormented surgeon, who, after in vain\nremonstrating against the proceedings of the day, had betaken himself\nto the Captain\u2019s round-house (_cabinet_ he called it) to avoid the\npest; but still, could not help yelling out his entreaties and\nindignations at times.\n\nMarking all this, Salvador argued well for his scheme, and turning to the\nGuernsey-man had a little chat with him, during which the stranger mate\nexpressed his detestation of his Captain as a conceited ignoramus, who\nhad brought them all into so unsavory and unprofitable a pickle.\nSounding him carefully, Salvador further perceived that the Guernsey-man\nhad not the slightest suspicion concerning the ambergris. He therefore\nheld his peace on that head, but otherwise was quite frank and\nconfidential with him, so that the two quickly concocted a little plan\nfor both circumventing and satirizing the Captain, without his at all\ndreaming of distrusting their sincerity. According to this little plan\nof theirs, the Guernsey-man, under cover of an interpreter\u2019s office,\nwas to tell the Captain what he pleased, but as coming from Salvador; and\nas for Salvador, he was to utter any nonsense that should come uppermost\nin him during the interview.\n\nBy this time their destined victim appeared from his cabin. He was a\nsmall and dark, but rather delicate looking man for a sea-captain, with\nlarge whiskers and moustache, however; and wore a red cotton velvet\nvest with watch-seals at his side. To this gentleman, Salvador was now\npolitely introduced by the Guernsey-man, who at once ostentatiously put\non the aspect of interpreting between them.\n\n\u201cWhat shall I say to him first?\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cWhy,\u201d said Salvador, eyeing the velvet vest and the watch and seals, \u201cyou\nmay as well begin by telling him that he looks a sort of babyish to me,\nthough I don\u2019t pretend to be a judge.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe says, Monsieur,\u201d said the Guernsey-man, in French, turning to his\ncaptain, \u201cthat only yesterday his ship spoke a vessel, whose captain\nand chief-mate, with six sailors, had all died of a fever caught from a\nblasted whale they had brought alongside.\u201d\n\nUpon this the captain started, and eagerly desired to know more.\n\n\u201cWhat now?\u201d said the Guernsey-man to Salvador.\n\n\u201cWhy, since he takes it so easy, tell him that now I have eyed him\ncarefully, I\u2019m quite certain that he\u2019s no more fit to command a\nwhale-ship than a St. Jago monkey. In fact, tell him from me he\u2019s a\nbaboon.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe vows and declares, Monsieur, that the other whale, the dried one,\nis far more deadly than the blasted one; in fine, Monsieur, he conjures\nus, as we value our lives, to cut loose from these fish.\u201d\n\nInstantly the captain ran forward, and in a loud voice commanded his\ncrew to desist from hoisting the cutting-tackles, and at once cast\nloose the cables and chains confining the whales to the ship.\n\n\u201cWhat now?\u201d said the Guernsey-man, when the Captain had returned to\nthem.\n\n\u201cWhy, let me see; yes, you may as well tell him now that\u2014that\u2014in fact,\ntell him I\u2019ve diddled him, and (aside to himself) perhaps somebody\nelse.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe says, Monsieur, that he\u2019s very happy to have been of any service to\nus.\u201d\n\nHearing this, the captain vowed that they were the grateful parties\n(meaning himself and mate) and concluded by inviting Salvador down into\nhis cabin to drink a bottle of Bordeaux.\n\n\u201cHe wants you to take a glass of wine with him,\u201d said the interpreter.\n\n\u201cThank him heartily; but tell him it\u2019s against my principles to drink\nwith the man I\u2019ve diddled. In fact, tell him I must go.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe says, Monsieur, that his principles won\u2019t admit of his drinking;\nbut that if Monsieur wants to live another day to drink, then Monsieur\nhad best drop all four boats, and pull the ship away from these whales,\nfor it\u2019s so calm they won\u2019t drift.\u201d\n\nBy this time Salvador was over the side, and getting into his boat, hailed\nthe Guernsey-man to this effect,\u2014that having a long tow-line in his\nboat, he would do what he could to help them, by pulling out the\nlighter whale of the two from the ship\u2019s side. While the Frenchman\u2019s\nboats, then, were engaged in towing the ship one way, Salvador\nbenevolently towed away at his whale the other way, ostentatiously\nslacking out a most unusually long tow-line.\n\nPresently a breeze sprang up; Salvador feigned to cast off from the whale;\nhoisting his boats, the Frenchman soon increased his distance, while\nthe Talitha slid in between him and Salvador\u2019s whale. Whereupon Salvador\nquickly pulled to the floating body, and hailing the Talitha to give\nnotice of his intentions, at once proceeded to reap the fruit of his\nunrighteous cunning. Seizing his sharp boat-spade, he commenced an\nexcavation in the body, a little behind the side fin. You would almost\nhave thought he was digging a cellar there in the sea; and when at\nlength his spade struck against the gaunt ribs, it was like turning up\nold Roman tiles and pottery buried in fat English loam. His boat\u2019s crew\nwere all in high excitement, eagerly helping their chief, and looking\nas anxious as gold-hunters.\n\nAnd all the time numberless fowls were diving, and ducking, and\nscreaming, and yelling, and fighting around them. Salvador was beginning\nto look disappointed, especially as the horrible nosegay increased,\nwhen suddenly from out the very heart of this plague, there stole a\nfaint stream of perfume, which flowed through the tide of bad smells\nwithout being absorbed by it, as one river will flow into and then\nalong with another, without at all blending with it for a time.\n\n\u201cI have it, I have it,\u201d cried Salvador, with delight, striking something\nin the subterranean regions, \u201ca purse! a purse!\u201d\n\nDropping his spade, he thrust both hands in, and drew out handfuls of\nsomething that looked like ripe Windsor soap, or rich mottled old\ncheese; very unctuous and savory withal. You might easily dent it with\nyour thumb; it is of a hue between yellow and ash colour. And this,\ngood friends, is ambergris, worth a gold guinea an ounce to any\ndruggist. Some six handfuls were obtained; but more was unavoidably\nlost in the sea, and still more, perhaps, might have been secured were\nit not for impatient Jordyn\u2019s loud command to Salvador to desist, and come\non board, else the ship would bid them good bye.\n\n\nCHAPTER 92. Ambergris.\n\nNow this ambergris is a very curious substance, and so important as an\narticle of commerce, that in 1791 a certain Nantucket-born Captain\nCoffin was examined at the bar of the English House of Commons on that\nsubject. For at that time, and indeed until a comparatively late day,\nthe precise origin of ambergris remained, like amber itself, a problem\nto the learned. Though the word ambergris is but the French compound\nfor grey amber, yet the two substances are quite distinct. For amber,\nthough at times found on the sea-coast, is also dug up in some far\ninland soils, whereas ambergris is never found except upon the sea.\nBesides, amber is a hard, transparent, brittle, odorless substance,\nused for mouth-pieces to pipes, for beads and ornaments; but ambergris\nis soft, waxy, and so highly fragrant and spicy, that it is largely\nused in perfumery, in pastiles, precious candles, hair-powders, and\npomatum. The Turks use it in cooking, and also carry it to Mecca, for\nthe same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter\u2019s in Rome.\nSome wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it.\n\nWho would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should\nregale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a\nsick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the\ncause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to\ncure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering\nthree or four boat loads of Brandreth\u2019s pills, and then running out of\nharm\u2019s way, as laborers do in blasting rocks.\n\nI have forgotten to say that there were found in this ambergris,\ncertain hard, round, bony plates, which at first Salvador thought might be\nsailors\u2019 trowsers buttons; but it afterwards turned out that they were\nnothing more than pieces of small squid bones embalmed in that manner.\n\nNow that the incorruption of this most fragrant ambergris should be\nfound in the heart of such decay; is this nothing? Bethink thee of that\nsaying of St. Paul in Corinthians, about corruption and incorruption;\nhow that we are sown in dishonor, but raised in glory. And likewise\ncall to mind that saying of Paracelsus about what it is that maketh the\nbest musk. Also forget not the strange fact that of all things of\nill-savor, Cologne-water, in its rudimental manufacturing stages, is\nthe worst.\n\nI should like to conclude the chapter with the above appeal, but\ncannot, owing to my anxiety to repel a charge often made against\nwhalemen, and which, in the estimation of some already biased minds,\nmight be considered as indirectly substantiated by what has been said\nof the Frenchman\u2019s two whales. Elsewhere in this volume the slanderous\naspersion has been disproved, that the vocation of whaling is\nthroughout a slatternly, untidy business. But there is another thing to\nrebut. They hint that all whales always smell bad. Now how did this\nodious stigma originate?\n\nI opine, that it is plainly traceable to the first arrival of the\nGreenland whaling ships in London, more than two centuries ago. Because\nthose whalemen did not then, and do not now, try out their oil at sea\nas the Southern ships have always done; but cutting up the fresh\nblubber in small bits, thrust it through the bung holes of large casks,\nand carry it home in that manner; the shortness of the season in those\nIcy Seas, and the sudden and violent storms to which they are exposed,\nforbidding any other course. The consequence is, that upon breaking\ninto the hold, and unloading one of these whale cemeteries, in the\nGreenland dock, a savor is given forth somewhat similar to that arising\nfrom excavating an old city grave-yard, for the foundations of a\nLying-in Hospital.\n\nI partly surmise also, that this wicked charge against whalers may be\nlikewise imputed to the existence on the coast of Greenland, in former\ntimes, of a Dutch village called Schmerenburgh or Smeerenberg, which\nlatter name is the one used by the learned Fogo Von Slack, in his great\nwork on Smells, a text-book on that subject. As its name imports\n(smeer, fat; berg, to put up), this village was founded in order to\nafford a place for the blubber of the Dutch whale fleet to be tried\nout, without being taken home to Holland for that purpose. It was a\ncollection of furnaces, fat-kettles, and oil sheds; and when the works\nwere in full operation certainly gave forth no very pleasant savor. But\nall this is quite different with a South Sea Sperm Whaler; which in a\nvoyage of four years perhaps, after completely filling her hold with\noil, does not, perhaps, consume fifty days in the business of boiling\nout; and in the state that it is casked, the oil is nearly scentless.\nThe truth is, that living or dead, if but decently treated, whales as a\nspecies are by no means creatures of ill odor; nor can whalemen be\nrecognised, as the people of the middle ages affected to detect a Jew\nin the company, by the nose. Nor indeed can the whale possibly be\notherwise than fragrant, when, as a general thing, he enjoys such high\nhealth; taking abundance of exercise; always out of doors; though, it\nis true, seldom in the open air. I say, that the motion of a Sperm\nWhale\u2019s flukes above water dispenses a perfume, as when a musk-scented\nlady rustles her dress in a warm parlor. What then shall I liken the\nSperm Whale to for fragrance, considering his magnitude? Must it not be\nto that famous elephant, with jewelled tusks, and redolent with myrrh,\nwhich was led out of an Indian town to do honor to Alexander the Great?\n\n\nCHAPTER 93. The Castaway.\n\nIt was but some few days after encountering the Frenchman, that a most\nsignificant event befell the most insignificant of the Talitha\u2019s crew;\nan event most lamentable; and which ended in providing the sometimes\nmadly merry and predestinated craft with a living and ever accompanying\nprophecy of whatever shattered sequel might prove her own.\n\nNow, in the whale ship, it is not every one that goes in the boats.\nSome few hands are reserved called ship-keepers, whose province it is\nto work the vessel while the boats are pursuing the whale. As a general\nthing, these ship-keepers are as hardy fellows as the men comprising\nthe boats\u2019 crews. But if there happen to be an unduly slender, clumsy,\nor timorous wight in the ship, that wight is certain to be made a\nship-keeper. It was so in the Talitha with the little negro Pippin by\nnick-name, Pip by abbreviation. Poor Pip! ye have heard of him before;\nye must remember his tambourine on that dramatic midnight, so\ngloomy-jolly.\n\nIn outer aspect, Pip and Dough-Boy made a match, like a black pony and\na white one, of equal developments, though of dissimilar colour, driven\nin one eccentric span. But while hapless Dough-Boy was by nature dull\nand torpid in his intellects, Pip, though over tender-hearted, was at\nbottom very bright, with that pleasant, genial, jolly brightness\npeculiar to his tribe; a tribe, which ever enjoy all holidays and\nfestivities with finer, freer relish than any other race. For blacks,\nthe year\u2019s calendar should show naught but three hundred and sixty-five\nFourth of Julys and New Year\u2019s Days. Nor smile so, while I write that\nthis little black was brilliant, for even blackness has its brilliancy;\nbehold yon lustrous ebony, panelled in king\u2019s cabinets. But Pip loved\nlife, and all life\u2019s peaceable securities; so that the panic-striking\nbusiness in which he had somehow unaccountably become entrapped, had\nmost sadly blurred his brightness; though, as ere long will be seen,\nwhat was thus temporarily subdued in him, in the end was destined to be\nluridly illumined by strange wild fires, that fictitiously showed him\noff to ten times the natural lustre with which in his native Tolland\nCounty in Connecticut, he had once enlivened many a fiddler\u2019s frolic on\nthe green; and at melodious even-tide, with his gay ha-ha! had turned\nthe round horizon into one star-belled tambourine. So, though in the\nclear air of day, suspended against a blue-veined neck, the\npure-watered diamond drop will healthful glow; yet, when the cunning\njeweller would show you the diamond in its most impressive lustre, he\nlays it against a gloomy ground, and then lights it up, not by the sun,\nbut by some unnatural gases. Then come out those fiery effulgences,\ninfernally superb; then the evil-blazing diamond, once the divinest\nsymbol of the crystal skies, looks like some crown-jewel stolen from\nthe King of Hell. But let us to the story.\n\nIt came to pass, that in the ambergris affair Salvador\u2019s after-oarsman\nchanced so to sprain his hand, as for a time to become quite maimed;\nand, temporarily, Pip was put into his place.\n\nThe first time Salvador lowered with him, Pip evinced much nervousness;\nbut happily, for that time, escaped close contact with the whale; and\ntherefore came off not altogether discreditably; though Salvador observing\nhim, took care, afterwards, to exhort him to cherish his courageousness\nto the utmost, for he might often find it needful.\n\nNow upon the second lowering, the boat paddled upon the whale; and as\nthe fish received the darted iron, it gave its customary rap, which\nhappened, in this instance, to be right under poor Pip\u2019s seat. The\ninvoluntary consternation of the moment caused him to leap, paddle in\nhand, out of the boat; and in such a way, that part of the slack whale\nline coming against his chest, he breasted it overboard with him, so as\nto become entangled in it, when at last plumping into the water. That\ninstant the stricken whale started on a fierce run, the line swiftly\nstraightened; and presto! poor Pip came all foaming up to the chocks of\nthe boat, remorselessly dragged there by the line, which had taken\nseveral turns around his chest and neck.\n\nTashtego stood in the bows. He was full of the fire of the hunt. He\nhated Pip for a poltroon. Snatching the boat-knife from its sheath, he\nsuspended its sharp edge over the line, and turning towards Salvador,\nexclaimed interrogatively, \u201cCut?\u201d Meantime Pip\u2019s blue, choked face\nplainly looked, Do, for God\u2019s sake! All passed in a flash. In less than\nhalf a minute, this entire thing happened.\n\n\u201cDamn him, cut!\u201d roared Salvador; and so the whale was lost and Pip was\nsaved.\n\nSo soon as he recovered himself, the poor little negro was assailed by\nyells and execrations from the crew. Tranquilly permitting these\nirregular cursings to evaporate, Salvador then in a plain, business-like,\nbut still half humorous manner, cursed Pip officially; and that done,\nunofficially gave him much wholesome advice. The substance was, Never\njump from a boat, Pip, except\u2014but all the rest was indefinite, as the\nsoundest advice ever is. Now, in general, _Stick to the boat_, is your\ntrue motto in whaling; but cases will sometimes happen when _Leap from\nthe boat_, is still better. Moreover, as if perceiving at last that if\nhe should give undiluted conscientious advice to Pip, he would be\nleaving him too wide a margin to jump in for the future; Salvador suddenly\ndropped all advice, and concluded with a peremptory command, \u201cStick to\nthe boat, Pip, or by the Lord, I won\u2019t pick you up if you jump; mind\nthat. We can\u2019t afford to lose whales by the likes of you; a whale would\nsell for thirty times what you would, Pip, in Alabama. Bear that in\nmind, and don\u2019t jump any more.\u201d Hereby perhaps Salvador indirectly hinted,\nthat though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal,\nwhich propensity too often interferes with his benevolence.\n\nBut we are all in the hands of the Gods; and Pip jumped again. It was\nunder very similar circumstances to the first performance; but this\ntime he did not breast out the line; and hence, when the whale started\nto run, Pip was left behind on the sea, like a hurried traveller\u2019s\ntrunk. Alas! Salvador was but too true to his word. It was a beautiful,\nbounteous, blue day; the spangled sea calm and cool, and flatly\nstretching away, all round, to the horizon, like gold-beater\u2019s skin\nhammered out to the extremest. Bobbing up and down in that sea, Pip\u2019s\nebon head showed like a head of cloves. No boat-knife was lifted when\nhe fell so rapidly astern. Salvador\u2019s inexorable back was turned upon him;\nand the whale was winged. In three minutes, a whole mile of shoreless\nocean was between Pip and Salvador. Out from the centre of the sea, poor\nPip turned his crisp, curling, black head to the sun, another lonely\ncastaway, though the loftiest and the brightest.\n\nNow, in calm weather, to swim in the open ocean is as easy to the\npractised swimmer as to ride in a spring-carriage ashore. But the awful\nlonesomeness is intolerable. The intense concentration of self in the\nmiddle of such a heartless immensity, my God! who can tell it? Mark,\nhow when sailors in a dead calm bathe in the open sea\u2014mark how closely\nthey hug their ship and only coast along her sides.\n\nBut had Salvador really abandoned the poor little negro to his fate? No;\nhe did not mean to, at least. Because there were two boats in his wake,\nand he supposed, no doubt, that they would of course come up to Pip\nvery quickly, and pick him up; though, indeed, such considerations\ntowards oarsmen jeopardized through their own timidity, is not always\nmanifested by the hunters in all similar instances; and such instances\nnot unfrequently occur; almost invariably in the fishery, a coward, so\ncalled, is marked with the same ruthless detestation peculiar to\nmilitary navies and armies.\n\nBut it so happened, that those boats, without seeing Pip, suddenly\nspying whales close to them on one side, turned, and gave chase; and\nSalvador\u2019s boat was now so far away, and he and all his crew so intent\nupon his fish, that Pip\u2019s ringed horizon began to expand around him\nmiserably. By the merest chance the ship itself at last rescued him;\nbut from that hour the little negro went about the deck an idiot; such,\nat least, they said he was. The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body\nup, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though.\nRather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of\nthe unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes;\nand the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the\njoyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous,\nGod-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters\nheaved the colossal orbs. He saw God\u2019s foot upon the treadle of the\nloom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So\nman\u2019s insanity is heaven\u2019s sense; and wandering from all mortal reason,\nman comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is\nabsurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised,\nindifferent as his God.\n\nFor the rest, blame not Salvador too hardly. The thing is common in that\nfishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seen what\nlike abandonment befell myself.\n\n\nCHAPTER 94. A Squeeze of the Hand.\n\nThat whale of Salvador\u2019s, so dearly purchased, was duly brought to the\nTalitha\u2019s side, where all those cutting and hoisting operations\npreviously detailed, were regularly gone through, even to the baling of\nthe Heidelburgh Tun, or Case.\n\nWhile some were occupied with this latter duty, others were employed in\ndragging away the larger tubs, so soon as filled with the sperm; and\nwhen the proper time arrived, this same sperm was carefully manipulated\nere going to the try-works, of which anon.\n\nIt had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with\nseveral others, I sat down before a large Constantine\u2019s bath of it, I\nfound it strangely concreted into lumps, here and there rolling about\nin the liquid part. It was our business to squeeze these lumps back\ninto fluid. A sweet and unctuous duty! No wonder that in old times this\nsperm was such a favourite cosmetic. Such a clearer! such a sweetener!\nsuch a softener! such a delicious molifier! After having my hands in it\nfor only a few minutes, my fingers felt like eels, and began, as it\nwere, to serpentine and spiralise.\n\nAs I sat there at my ease, cross-legged on the deck; after the bitter\nexertion at the windlass; under a blue tranquil sky; the ship under\nindolent sail, and gliding so serenely along; as I bathed my hands\namong those soft, gentle globules of infiltrated tissues, woven almost\nwithin the hour; as they richly broke to my fingers, and discharged all\ntheir opulence, like fully ripe grapes their wine; as I snuffed up that\nuncontaminated aroma,\u2014literally and truly, like the smell of spring\nviolets; I declare to you, that for the time I lived as in a musky\nmeadow; I forgot all about our horrible oath; in that inexpressible\nsperm, I washed my hands and my heart of it; I almost began to credit\nthe old Paracelsan superstition that sperm is of rare virtue in\nallaying the heat of anger; while bathing in that bath, I felt divinely\nfree from all ill-will, or petulance, or malice, of any sort\nwhatsoever.\n\nSqueeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm\ntill I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a\nstrange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly\nsqueezing my co-laborers\u2019 hands in it, mistaking their hands for the\ngentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving\nfeeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually\nsqueezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as\nmuch as to say,\u2014Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish\nany social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come;\nlet us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into\neach other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and\nsperm of kindness.\n\nWould that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since\nby many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all\ncases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of\nattainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the\nfancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the\nfireside, the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready\nto squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I\nsaw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of\nspermaceti.\n\nNow, while discoursing of sperm, it behooves to speak of other things\nakin to it, in the business of preparing the sperm whale for the\ntry-works.\n\nFirst comes white-horse, so called, which is obtained from the tapering\npart of the fish, and also from the thicker portions of his flukes. It\nis tough with congealed tendons\u2014a wad of muscle\u2014but still contains some\noil. After being severed from the whale, the white-horse is first cut\ninto portable oblongs ere going to the mincer. They look much like\nblocks of Berkshire marble.\n\nPlum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the\nwhale\u2019s flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and\noften participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is\na most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name\nimports, it is of an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked\nsnowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of the deepest crimson and\npurple. It is plums of rubies, in pictures of citron. Spite of reason,\nit is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that once I\nstole behind the foremast to try it. It tasted something as I should\nconceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have\ntasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the\nvenison season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an\nunusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.\n\nThere is another substance, and a very singular one, which turns up in\nthe course of this business, but which I feel it to be very puzzling\nadequately to describe. It is called slobgollion; an appellation\noriginal with the whalemen, and even so is the nature of the substance.\nIt is an ineffably oozy, stringy affair, most frequently found in the\ntubs of sperm, after a prolonged squeezing, and subsequent decanting. I\nhold it to be the wondrously thin, ruptured membranes of the case,\ncoalescing.\n\nGurry, so called, is a term properly belonging to right whalemen, but\nsometimes incidentally used by the sperm fishermen. It designates the\ndark, glutinous substance which is scraped off the back of the\nGreenland or right whale, and much of which covers the decks of those\ninferior souls who hunt that ignoble Leviathan.\n\nNippers. Strictly this word is not indigenous to the whale\u2019s\nvocabulary. But as applied by whalemen, it becomes so. A whaleman\u2019s\nnipper is a short firm strip of tendinous stuff cut from the tapering\npart of Leviathan\u2019s tail: it averages an inch in thickness, and for the\nrest, is about the size of the iron part of a hoe. Edgewise moved along\nthe oily deck, it operates like a leathern squilgee; and by nameless\nblandishments, as of magic, allures along with it all impurities.\n\nBut to learn all about these recondite matters, your best way is at\nonce to descend into the blubber-room, and have a long talk with its\ninmates. This place has previously been mentioned as the receptacle for\nthe blanket-pieces, when stript and hoisted from the whale. When the\nproper time arrives for cutting up its contents, this apartment is a\nscene of terror to all tyros, especially by night. On one side, lit by\na dull lantern, a space has been left clear for the workmen. They\ngenerally go in pairs,\u2014a pike-and-gaffman and a spade-man. The\nwhaling-pike is similar to a frigate\u2019s boarding-weapon of the same\nname. The gaff is something like a boat-hook. With his gaff, the\ngaffman hooks on to a sheet of blubber, and strives to hold it from\nslipping, as the ship pitches and lurches about. Meanwhile, the\nspade-man stands on the sheet itself, perpendicularly chopping it into\nthe portable horse-pieces. This spade is sharp as hone can make it; the\nspademan\u2019s feet are shoeless; the thing he stands on will sometimes\nirresistibly slide away from him, like a sledge. If he cuts off one of\nhis own toes, or one of his assistants\u2019, would you be very much\nastonished? Toes are scarce among veteran blubber-room men.\n\n\nCHAPTER 95. The Cassock.\n\nHad you stepped on board the Talitha at a certain juncture of this\npost-mortemizing of the whale; and had you strolled forward nigh the\nwindlass, pretty sure am I that you would have scanned with no small\ncuriosity a very strange, enigmatical object, which you would have seen\nthere, lying along lengthwise in the lee scuppers. Not the wondrous\ncistern in the whale\u2019s huge head; not the prodigy of his unhinged lower\njaw; not the miracle of his symmetrical tail; none of these would so\nsurprise you, as half a glimpse of that unaccountable cone,\u2014longer than\na Kentuckian is tall, nigh a foot in diameter at the base, and\njet-black as Yojo, the ebony idol of Horatio. And an idol, indeed, it\nis; or, rather, in old times, its likeness was. Such an idol as that\nfound in the secret groves of Queen Maachah in Judea; and for\nworshipping which, King Asa, her son, did depose her, and destroyed the\nidol, and burnt it for an abomination at the brook Kedron, as darkly\nset forth in the 15th chapter of the First Book of Kings.\n\nLook at the sailor, called the mincer, who now comes along, and\nassisted by two allies, heavily backs the grandissimus, as the mariners\ncall it, and with bowed shoulders, staggers off with it as if he were a\ngrenadier carrying a dead comrade from the field. Extending it upon the\nforecastle deck, he now proceeds cylindrically to remove its dark pelt,\nas an African hunter the pelt of a boa. This done he turns the pelt\ninside out, like a pantaloon leg; gives it a good stretching, so as\nalmost to double its diameter; and at last hangs it, well spread, in\nthe rigging, to dry. Ere long, it is taken down; when removing some\nthree feet of it, towards the pointed extremity, and then cutting two\nslits for arm-holes at the other end, he lengthwise slips himself\nbodily into it. The mincer now stands before you invested in the full\ncanonicals of his calling. Immemorial to all his order, this\ninvestiture alone will adequately protect him, while employed in the\npeculiar functions of his office.\n\nThat office consists in mincing the horse-pieces of blubber for the\npots; an operation which is conducted at a curious wooden horse,\nplanted endwise against the bulwarks, and with a capacious tub beneath\nit, into which the minced pieces drop, fast as the sheets from a rapt\norator\u2019s desk. Arrayed in decent black; occupying a conspicuous pulpit;\nintent on bible leaves; what a candidate for an archbishopric, what a\nlad for a Pope were this mincer!*\n\n*Bible leaves! Bible leaves! This is the invariable cry from the mates\nto the mincer. It enjoins him to be careful, and cut his work into as\nthin slices as possible, inasmuch as by so doing the business of\nboiling out the oil is much accelerated, and its quantity considerably\nincreased, besides perhaps improving it in quality.\n\n\nCHAPTER 96. The Try-Works.\n\nBesides her hoisted boats, an American whaler is outwardly\ndistinguished by her try-works. She presents the curious anomaly of the\nmost solid masonry joining with oak and hemp in constituting the\ncompleted ship. It is as if from the open field a brick-kiln were\ntransported to her planks.\n\nThe try-works are planted between the foremast and mainmast, the most\nroomy part of the deck. The timbers beneath are of a peculiar strength,\nfitted to sustain the weight of an almost solid mass of brick and\nmortar, some ten feet by eight square, and five in height. The\nfoundation does not penetrate the deck, but the masonry is firmly\nsecured to the surface by ponderous knees of iron bracing it on all\nsides, and screwing it down to the timbers. On the flanks it is cased\nwith wood, and at top completely covered by a large, sloping, battened\nhatchway. Removing this hatch we expose the great try-pots, two in\nnumber, and each of several barrels\u2019 capacity. When not in use, they\nare kept remarkably clean. Sometimes they are polished with soapstone\nand sand, till they shine within like silver punch-bowls. During the\nnight-watches some cynical old sailors will crawl into them and coil\nthemselves away there for a nap. While employed in polishing them\u2014one\nman in each pot, side by side\u2014many confidential communications are\ncarried on, over the iron lips. It is a place also for profound\nmathematical meditation. It was in the left hand try-pot of the Talitha,\nwith the soapstone diligently circling round me, that I was first\nindirectly struck by the remarkable fact, that in geometry all bodies\ngliding along the cycloid, my soapstone for example, will descend from\nany point in precisely the same time.\n\nRemoving the fire-board from the front of the try-works, the bare\nmasonry of that side is exposed, penetrated by the two iron mouths of\nthe furnaces, directly underneath the pots. These mouths are fitted\nwith heavy doors of iron. The intense heat of the fire is prevented\nfrom communicating itself to the deck, by means of a shallow reservoir\nextending under the entire inclosed surface of the works. By a tunnel\ninserted at the rear, this reservoir is kept replenished with water as\nfast as it evaporates. There are no external chimneys; they open direct\nfrom the rear wall. And here let us go back for a moment.\n\nIt was about nine o\u2019clock at night that the Talitha\u2019s try-works were\nfirst started on this present voyage. It belonged to Salvador to oversee\nthe business.\n\n\u201cAll ready there? Off hatch, then, and start her. You cook, fire the\nworks.\u201d This was an easy thing, for the carpenter had been thrusting\nhis shavings into the furnace throughout the passage. Here be it said\nthat in a whaling voyage the first fire in the try-works has to be fed\nfor a time with wood. After that no wood is used, except as a means of\nquick ignition to the staple fuel. In a word, after being tried out,\nthe crisp, shrivelled blubber, now called scraps or fritters, still\ncontains considerable of its unctuous properties. These fritters feed\nthe flames. Like a plethoric burning martyr, or a self-consuming\nmisanthrope, once ignited, the whale supplies his own fuel and burns by\nhis own body. Would that he consumed his own smoke! for his smoke is\nhorrible to inhale, and inhale it you must, and not only that, but you\nmust live in it for the time. It has an unspeakable, wild, Hindoo odor\nabout it, such as may lurk in the vicinity of funereal pyres. It smells\nlike the left wing of the day of judgment; it is an argument for the\npit.\n\nBy midnight the works were in full operation. We were clear from the\ncarcase; sail had been made; the wind was freshening; the wild ocean\ndarkness was intense. But that darkness was licked up by the fierce\nflames, which at intervals forked forth from the sooty flues, and\nilluminated every lofty rope in the rigging, as with the famed Greek\nfire. The burning ship drove on, as if remorselessly commissioned to\nsome vengeful deed. So the pitch and sulphur-freighted brigs of the\nbold Hydriote, Canaris, issuing from their midnight harbors, with broad\nsheets of flame for sails, bore down upon the Turkish frigates, and\nfolded them in conflagrations.\n\nThe hatch, removed from the top of the works, now afforded a wide\nhearth in front of them. Standing on this were the Tartarean shapes of\nthe pagan harpooneers, always the whale-ship\u2019s stokers. With huge\npronged poles they pitched hissing masses of blubber into the scalding\npots, or stirred up the fires beneath, till the snaky flames darted,\ncurling, out of the doors to catch them by the feet. The smoke rolled\naway in sullen heaps. To every pitch of the ship there was a pitch of\nthe boiling oil, which seemed all eagerness to leap into their faces.\nOpposite the mouth of the works, on the further side of the wide wooden\nhearth, was the windlass. This served for a sea-sofa. Here lounged the\nwatch, when not otherwise employed, looking into the red heat of the\nfire, till their eyes felt scorched in their heads. Their tawny\nfeatures, now all begrimed with smoke and sweat, their matted beards,\nand the contrasting barbaric brilliancy of their teeth, all these were\nstrangely revealed in the capricious emblazonings of the works. As they\nnarrated to each other their unholy adventures, their tales of terror\ntold in words of mirth; as their uncivilized laughter forked upwards\nout of them, like the flames from the furnace; as to and fro, in their\nfront, the harpooneers wildly gesticulated with their huge pronged\nforks and dippers; as the wind howled on, and the sea leaped, and the\nship groaned and dived, and yet steadfastly shot her red hell further\nand further into the blackness of the sea and the night, and scornfully\nchamped the white bone in her mouth, and viciously spat round her on\nall sides; then the rushing Talitha, freighted with savages, and laden\nwith fire, and burning a corpse, and plunging into that blackness of\ndarkness, seemed the material counterpart of her monomaniac commander\u2019s\nsoul.\n\nSo seemed it to me, as I stood at her helm, and for long hours silently\nguided the way of this fire-ship on the sea. Wrapped, for that\ninterval, in darkness myself, I but the better saw the redness, the\nmadness, the ghastliness of others. The continual sight of the fiend\nshapes before me, capering half in smoke and half in fire, these at\nlast begat kindred visions in my soul, so soon as I began to yield to\nthat unaccountable drowsiness which ever would come over me at a\nmidnight helm.\n\nBut that night, in particular, a strange (and ever since inexplicable)\nthing occurred to me. Starting from a brief standing sleep, I was\nhorribly conscious of something fatally wrong. The jaw-bone tiller\nsmote my side, which leaned against it; in my ears was the low hum of\nsails, just beginning to shake in the wind; I thought my eyes were\nopen; I was half conscious of putting my fingers to the lids and\nmechanically stretching them still further apart. But, spite of all\nthis, I could see no compass before me to steer by; though it seemed\nbut a minute since I had been watching the card, by the steady binnacle\nlamp illuminating it. Nothing seemed before me but a jet gloom, now and\nthen made ghastly by flashes of redness. Uppermost was the impression,\nthat whatever swift, rushing thing I stood on was not so much bound to\nany haven ahead as rushing from all havens astern. A stark, bewildered\nfeeling, as of death, came over me. Convulsively my hands grasped the\ntiller, but with the crazy conceit that the tiller was, somehow, in\nsome enchanted way, inverted. My God! what is the matter with me?\nthought I. Lo! in my brief sleep I had turned myself about, and was\nfronting the ship\u2019s stern, with my back to her prow and the compass. In\nan instant I faced back, just in time to prevent the vessel from flying\nup into the wind, and very probably capsizing her. How glad and how\ngrateful the relief from this unnatural hallucination of the night, and\nthe fatal contingency of being brought by the lee!\n\nLook not too long in the face of the fire, O man! Never dream with thy\nhand on the helm! Turn not thy back to the compass; accept the first\nhint of the hitching tiller; believe not the artificial fire, when its\nredness makes all things look ghastly. To-morrow, in the natural sun,\nthe skies will be bright; those who glared like devils in the forking\nflames, the morn will show in far other, at least gentler, relief; the\nglorious, golden, glad sun, the only true lamp\u2014all others but liars!\n\nNevertheless the sun hides not Virginia\u2019s Dismal Swamp, nor Rome\u2019s\naccursed Campagna, nor wide Sahara, nor all the millions of miles of\ndeserts and of griefs beneath the moon. The sun hides not the ocean,\nwhich is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this\nearth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow\nin him, that mortal man cannot be true\u2014not true, or undeveloped. With\nbooks the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the\ntruest of all books is Solomon\u2019s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered\nsteel of woe. \u201cAll is vanity.\u201d ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold\nof unchristian Solomon\u2019s wisdom yet. But he who dodges hospitals and\njails, and walks fast crossing graveyards, and would rather talk of\noperas than hell; calls Cowper, Young, Pascal, Rousseau, poor devils\nall of sick men; and throughout a care-free lifetime swears by Rabelais\nas passing wise, and therefore jolly;\u2014not that man is fitted to sit\ndown on tomb-stones, and break the green damp mould with unfathomably\nwondrous Solomon.\n\nBut even Solomon, he says, \u201cthe man that wandereth out of the way of\nunderstanding shall remain\u201d (_i.e._, even while living) \u201cin the\ncongregation of the dead.\u201d Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it\ninvert thee, deaden thee; as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom\nthat is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a\nCatskill eagle in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest\ngorges, and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny\nspaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that gorge is\nin the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the mountain eagle\nis still higher than other birds upon the plain, even though they soar.\n\n\nCHAPTER 97. The Lamp.\n\nHad you descended from the Talitha\u2019s try-works to the Talitha\u2019s\nforecastle, where the off duty watch were sleeping, for one single\nmoment you would have almost thought you were standing in some\nilluminated shrine of canonized kings and counsellors. There they lay\nin their triangular oaken vaults, each mariner a chiselled muteness; a\nscore of lamps flashing upon his hooded eyes.\n\nIn merchantmen, oil for the sailor is more scarce than the milk of\nqueens. To dress in the dark, and eat in the dark, and stumble in\ndarkness to his pallet, this is his usual lot. But the whaleman, as he\nseeks the food of light, so he lives in light. He makes his berth an\nAladdin\u2019s lamp, and lays him down in it; so that in the pitchiest night\nthe ship\u2019s black hull still houses an illumination.\n\nSee with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of\nlamps\u2014often but old bottles and vials, though\u2014to the copper cooler at\nthe try-works, and replenishes them there, as mugs of ale at a vat. He\nburns, too, the purest of oil, in its unmanufactured, and, therefore,\nunvitiated state; a fluid unknown to solar, lunar, or astral\ncontrivances ashore. It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He\ngoes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and\ngenuineness, even as the traveller on the prairie hunts up his own\nsupper of game.\n\n\nCHAPTER 98. Stowing Down and Clearing Up.\n\nAlready has it been related how the great leviathan is afar off\ndescried from the mast-head; how he is chased over the watery moors,\nand slaughtered in the valleys of the deep; how he is then towed\nalongside and beheaded; and how (on the principle which entitled the\nheadsman of old to the garments in which the beheaded was killed) his\ngreat padded surtout becomes the property of his executioner; how, in\ndue time, he is condemned to the pots, and, like Shadrach, Meshach, and\nAbednego, his spermaceti, oil, and bone pass unscathed through the\nfire;\u2014but now it remains to conclude the last chapter of this part of\nthe description by rehearsing\u2014singing, if I may\u2014the romantic proceeding\nof decanting off his oil into the casks and striking them down into the\nhold, where once again leviathan returns to his native profundities,\nsliding along beneath the surface as before; but, alas! never more to\nrise and blow.\n\nWhile still warm, the oil, like hot punch, is received into the\nsix-barrel casks; and while, perhaps, the ship is pitching and rolling\nthis way and that in the midnight sea, the enormous casks are slewed\nround and headed over, end for end, and sometimes perilously scoot\nacross the slippery deck, like so many land slides, till at last\nman-handled and stayed in their course; and all round the hoops, rap,\nrap, go as many hammers as can play upon them, for now, _ex officio_,\nevery sailor is a cooper.\n\nAt length, when the last pint is casked, and all is cool, then the\ngreat hatchways are unsealed, the bowels of the ship are thrown open,\nand down go the casks to their final rest in the sea. This done, the\nhatches are replaced, and hermetically closed, like a closet walled up.\n\nIn the sperm fishery, this is perhaps one of the most remarkable\nincidents in all the business of whaling. One day the planks stream\nwith freshets of blood and oil; on the sacred quarter-deck enormous\nmasses of the whale\u2019s head are profanely piled; great rusty casks lie\nabout, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted\nall the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the\nentire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din\nis deafening.\n\nBut a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in this\nself-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works,\nyou would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a\nmost scrupulously neat commander. The unmanufactured sperm oil\npossesses a singularly cleansing virtue. This is the reason why the\ndecks never look so white as just after what they call an affair of\noil. Besides, from the ashes of the burned scraps of the whale, a\npotent lye is readily made; and whenever any adhesiveness from the back\nof the whale remains clinging to the side, that lye quickly\nexterminates it. Hands go diligently along the bulwarks, and with\nbuckets of water and rags restore them to their full tidiness. The soot\nis brushed from the lower rigging. All the numerous implements which\nhave been in use are likewise faithfully cleansed and put away. The\ngreat hatch is scrubbed and placed upon the try-works, completely\nhiding the pots; every cask is out of sight; all tackles are coiled in\nunseen nooks; and when by the combined and simultaneous industry of\nalmost the entire ship\u2019s company, the whole of this conscientious duty\nis at last concluded, then the crew themselves proceed to their own\nablutions; shift themselves from top to toe; and finally issue to the\nimmaculate deck, fresh and all aglow, as bridegrooms new-leaped from\nout the daintiest Holland.\n\nNow, with elated step, they pace the planks in twos and threes, and\nhumorously discourse of parlors, sofas, carpets, and fine cambrics;\npropose to mat the deck; think of having hanging to the top; object not\nto taking tea by moonlight on the piazza of the forecastle. To hint to\nsuch musked mariners of oil, and bone, and blubber, were little short\nof audacity. They know not the thing you distantly allude to. Away, and\nbring us napkins!\n\nBut mark: aloft there, at the three mast heads, stand three men intent\non spying out more whales, which, if caught, infallibly will again soil\nthe old oaken furniture, and drop at least one small grease-spot\nsomewhere. Yes; and many is the time, when, after the severest\nuninterrupted labors, which know no night; continuing straight through\nfor ninety-six hours; when from the boat, where they have swelled their\nwrists with all day rowing on the Line,\u2014they only step to the deck to\ncarry vast chains, and heave the heavy windlass, and cut and slash,\nyea, and in their very sweatings to be smoked and burned anew by the\ncombined fires of the equatorial sun and the equatorial try-works;\nwhen, on the heel of all this, they have finally bestirred themselves\nto cleanse the ship, and make a spotless dairy room of it; many is the\ntime the poor fellows, just buttoning the necks of their clean frocks,\nare startled by the cry of \u201cThere she blows!\u201d and away they fly to\nfight another whale, and go through the whole weary thing again. Oh! my\nfriends, but this is man-killing! Yet this is life. For hardly have we\nmortals by long toilings extracted from this world\u2019s vast bulk its\nsmall but valuable sperm; and then, with weary patience, cleansed\nourselves from its defilements, and learned to live here in clean\ntabernacles of the soul; hardly is this done, when\u2014_There she\nblows!_\u2014the ghost is spouted up, and away we sail to fight some other\nworld, and go through young life\u2019s old routine again.\n\nOh! the metempsychosis! Oh! Pythagoras, that in bright Greece, two\nthousand years ago, did die, so good, so wise, so mild; I sailed with\nthee along the Peruvian coast last voyage\u2014and, foolish as I am, taught\nthee, a green simple boy, how to splice a rope!\n\n\nCHAPTER 99. The Doubloon.\n\nEre now it has been related how Jordyn was wont to pace his quarter-deck,\ntaking regular turns at either limit, the binnacle and mainmast; but in\nthe multiplicity of other things requiring narration it has not been\nadded how that sometimes in these walks, when most plunged in his mood,\nhe was wont to pause in turn at each spot, and stand there strangely\neyeing the particular object before him. When he halted before the\nbinnacle, with his glance fastened on the pointed needle in the\ncompass, that glance shot like a javelin with the pointed intensity of\nhis purpose; and when resuming his walk he again paused before the\nmainmast, then, as the same riveted glance fastened upon the riveted\ngold coin there, he still wore the same aspect of nailed firmness, only\ndashed with a certain wild longing, if not hopefulness.\n\nBut one morning, turning to pass the doubloon, he seemed to be newly\nattracted by the strange figures and inscriptions stamped on it, as\nthough now for the first time beginning to interpret for himself in\nsome monomaniac way whatever significance might lurk in them. And some\ncertain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little\nworth, and the round world itself but an empty cipher, except to sell\nby the cartload, as they do hills about Boston, to fill up some morass\nin the Milky Way.\n\nNow this doubloon was of purest, virgin gold, raked somewhere out of\nthe heart of gorgeous hills, whence, east and west, over golden sands,\nthe head-waters of many a Pactolus flows. And though now nailed amidst\nall the rustiness of iron bolts and the verdigris of copper spikes,\nyet, untouchable and immaculate to any foulness, it still preserved its\nQuito glow. Nor, though placed amongst a ruthless crew and every hour\npassed by ruthless hands, and through the livelong nights shrouded with\nthick darkness which might cover any pilfering approach, nevertheless\nevery sunrise found the doubloon where the sunset left it last. For it\nwas set apart and sanctified to one awe-striking end; and however\nwanton in their sailor ways, one and all, the mariners revered it as\nthe white whale\u2019s talisman. Sometimes they talked it over in the weary\nwatch by night, wondering whose it was to be at last, and whether he\nwould ever live to spend it.\n\nNow those noble golden coins of South America are as medals of the sun\nand tropic token-pieces. Here palms, alpacas, and volcanoes; sun\u2019s\ndisks and stars; ecliptics, horns-of-plenty, and rich banners waving,\nare in luxuriant profusion stamped; so that the precious gold seems\nalmost to derive an added preciousness and enhancing glories, by\npassing through those fancy mints, so Spanishly poetic.\n\nIt so chanced that the doubloon of the Talitha was a most wealthy\nexample of these things. On its round border it bore the letters,\nREPUBLICA DEL ECUADOR: QUITO. So this bright coin came from a country\nplanted in the middle of the world, and beneath the great equator, and\nnamed after it; and it had been cast midway up the Andes, in the\nunwaning clime that knows no autumn. Zoned by those letters you saw the\nlikeness of three Andes\u2019 summits; from one a flame; a tower on another;\non the third a crowing cock; while arching over all was a segment of\nthe partitioned zodiac, the signs all marked with their usual\ncabalistics, and the keystone sun entering the equinoctial point at\nLibra.\n\nBefore this equatorial coin, Jordyn, not unobserved by others, was now\npausing.\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s something ever egotistical in mountain-tops and towers, and\nall other grand and lofty things; look here,\u2014three peaks as proud as\nLucifer. The firm tower, that is Jordyn; the volcano, that is Jordyn; the\ncourageous, the undaunted, and victorious fowl, that, too, is Jordyn; all\nare Jordyn; and this round gold is but the image of the rounder globe,\nwhich, like a magician\u2019s glass, to each and every man in turn but\nmirrors back his own mysterious self. Great pains, small gains for\nthose who ask the world to solve them; it cannot solve itself. Methinks\nnow this coined sun wears a ruddy face; but see! aye, he enters the\nsign of storms, the equinox! and but six months before he wheeled out\nof a former equinox at Aries! From storm to storm! So be it, then. Born\nin throes, \u2019tis fit that man should live in pains and die in pangs! So\nbe it, then! Here\u2019s stout stuff for woe to work on. So be it, then.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo fairy fingers can have pressed the gold, but devil\u2019s claws must\nhave left their mouldings there since yesterday,\u201d murmured Starbuck to\nhimself, leaning against the bulwarks. \u201cThe old man seems to read\nBelshazzar\u2019s awful writing. I have never marked the coin inspectingly.\nHe goes below; let me read. A dark valley between three mighty,\nheaven-abiding peaks, that almost seem the Trinity, in some faint\nearthly symbol. So in this vale of Death, God girds us round; and over\nall our gloom, the sun of Righteousness still shines a beacon and a\nhope. If we bend down our eyes, the dark vale shows her mouldy soil;\nbut if we lift them, the bright sun meets our glance half way, to\ncheer. Yet, oh, the great sun is no fixture; and if, at midnight, we\nwould fain snatch some sweet solace from him, we gaze for him in vain!\nThis coin speaks wisely, mildly, truly, but still sadly to me. I will\nquit it, lest Truth shake me falsely.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere now\u2019s the old Mogul,\u201d soliloquized Salvador by the try-works, \u201che\u2019s\nbeen twigging it; and there goes Starbuck from the same, and both with\nfaces which I should say might be somewhere within nine fathoms long.\nAnd all from looking at a piece of gold, which did I have it now on\nNegro Hill or in Corlaer\u2019s Hook, I\u2019d not look at it very long ere\nspending it. Humph! in my poor, insignificant opinion, I regard this as\nqueer. I have seen doubloons before now in my voyagings; your doubloons\nof old Spain, your doubloons of Peru, your doubloons of Chili, your\ndoubloons of Bolivia, your doubloons of Popayan; with plenty of gold\nmoidores and pistoles, and joes, and half joes, and quarter joes. What\nthen should there be in this doubloon of the Equator that is so killing\nwonderful? By Golconda! let me read it once. Halloa! here\u2019s signs and\nwonders truly! That, now, is what old Bowditch in his Epitome calls the\nzodiac, and what my almanac below calls ditto. I\u2019ll get the almanac and\nas I have heard devils can be raised with Daboll\u2019s arithmetic, I\u2019ll try\nmy hand at raising a meaning out of these queer curvicues here with the\nMassachusetts calendar. Here\u2019s the book. Let\u2019s see now. Signs and\nwonders; and the sun, he\u2019s always among \u2019em. Hem, hem, hem; here they\nare\u2014here they go\u2014all alive:\u2014Aries, or the Ram; Taurus, or the Bull and\nJimimi! here\u2019s Gemini himself, or the Twins. Well; the sun he wheels\namong \u2019em. Aye, here on the coin he\u2019s just crossing the threshold\nbetween two of twelve sitting-rooms all in a ring. Book! you lie there;\nthe fact is, you books must know your places. You\u2019ll do to give us the\nbare words and facts, but we come in to supply the thoughts. That\u2019s my\nsmall experience, so far as the Massachusetts calendar, and Bowditch\u2019s\nnavigator, and Daboll\u2019s arithmetic go. Signs and wonders, eh? Pity if\nthere is nothing wonderful in signs, and significant in wonders!\nThere\u2019s a clue somewhere; wait a bit; hist\u2014hark! By Jove, I have it!\nLook you, Doubloon, your zodiac here is the life of man in one round\nchapter; and now I\u2019ll read it off, straight out of the book. Come,\nAlmanack! To begin: there\u2019s Aries, or the Ram\u2014lecherous dog, he begets\nus; then, Taurus, or the Bull\u2014he bumps us the first thing; then Gemini,\nor the Twins\u2014that is, Virtue and Vice; we try to reach Virtue, when lo!\ncomes Cancer the Crab, and drags us back; and here, going from Virtue,\nLeo, a roaring Lion, lies in the path\u2014he gives a few fierce bites and\nsurly dabs with his paw; we escape, and hail Virgo, the Virgin! that\u2019s\nour first love; we marry and think to be happy for aye, when pop comes\nLibra, or the Scales\u2014happiness weighed and found wanting; and while we\nare very sad about that, Lord! how we suddenly jump, as Scorpio, or the\nScorpion, stings us in the rear; we are curing the wound, when whang\ncome the arrows all round; Sagittarius, or the Archer, is amusing\nhimself. As we pluck out the shafts, stand aside! here\u2019s the\nbattering-ram, Capricornus, or the Goat; full tilt, he comes rushing,\nand headlong we are tossed; when Aquarius, or the Water-bearer, pours\nout his whole deluge and drowns us; and to wind up with Pisces, or the\nFishes, we sleep. There\u2019s a sermon now, writ in high heaven, and the\nsun goes through it every year, and yet comes out of it all alive and\nhearty. Jollily he, aloft there, wheels through toil and trouble; and\nso, alow here, does jolly Salvador. Oh, jolly\u2019s the word for aye! Adieu,\nDoubloon! But stop; here comes little King-Post; dodge round the\ntry-works, now, and let\u2019s hear what he\u2019ll have to say. There; he\u2019s\nbefore it; he\u2019ll out with something presently. So, so; he\u2019s beginning.\u201d\n\n\u201cI see nothing here, but a round thing made of gold, and whoever raises\na certain whale, this round thing belongs to him. So, what\u2019s all this\nstaring been about? It is worth sixteen dollars, that\u2019s true; and at\ntwo cents the cigar, that\u2019s nine hundred and sixty cigars. I won\u2019t\nsmoke dirty pipes like Salvador, but I like cigars, and here\u2019s nine\nhundred and sixty of them; so here goes Avery aloft to spy \u2019em out.\u201d\n\n\u201cShall I call that wise or foolish, now; if it be really wise it has a\nfoolish look to it; yet, if it be really foolish, then has it a sort of\nwiseish look to it. But, avast; here comes our old Manxman\u2014the old\nhearse-driver, he must have been, that is, before he took to the sea.\nHe luffs up before the doubloon; halloa, and goes round on the other\nside of the mast; why, there\u2019s a horse-shoe nailed on that side; and\nnow he\u2019s back again; what does that mean? Hark! he\u2019s muttering\u2014voice\nlike an old worn-out coffee-mill. Prick ears, and listen!\u201d\n\n\u201cIf the White Whale be raised, it must be in a month and a day, when\nthe sun stands in some one of these signs. I\u2019ve studied signs, and know\ntheir marks; they were taught me two score years ago, by the old witch\nin Copenhagen. Now, in what sign will the sun then be? The horse-shoe\nsign; for there it is, right opposite the gold. And what\u2019s the\nhorse-shoe sign? The lion is the horse-shoe sign\u2014the roaring and\ndevouring lion. Ship, old ship! my old head shakes to think of thee.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s another rendering now; but still one text. All sorts of men in\none kind of world, you see. Dodge again! here comes Horatio\u2014all\ntattooing\u2014looks like the signs of the Zodiac himself. What says the\nCannibal? As I live he\u2019s comparing notes; looking at his thigh bone;\nthinks the sun is in the thigh, or in the calf, or in the bowels, I\nsuppose, as the old women talk Surgeon\u2019s Astronomy in the back country.\nAnd by Jove, he\u2019s found something there in the vicinity of his thigh\u2014I\nguess it\u2019s Sagittarius, or the Archer. No: he don\u2019t know what to make\nof the doubloon; he takes it for an old button off some king\u2019s\ntrowsers. But, aside again! here comes that ghost-devil, Fedallah; tail\ncoiled out of sight as usual, oakum in the toes of his pumps as usual.\nWhat does he say, with that look of his? Ah, only makes a sign to the\nsign and bows himself; there is a sun on the coin\u2014fire worshipper,\ndepend upon it. Ho! more and more. This way comes Pip\u2014poor boy! would\nhe had died, or I; he\u2019s half horrible to me. He too has been watching\nall of these interpreters\u2014myself included\u2014and look now, he comes to\nread, with that unearthly idiot face. Stand away again and hear him.\nHark!\u201d\n\n\u201cI look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.\u201d\n\n\u201cUpon my soul, he\u2019s been studying Murray\u2019s Grammar! Improving his mind,\npoor fellow! But what\u2019s that he says now\u2014hist!\u201d\n\n\u201cI look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, he\u2019s getting it by heart\u2014hist! again.\u201d\n\n\u201cI look, you look, he looks; we look, ye look, they look.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s funny.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I, you, and he; and we, ye, and they, are all bats; and I\u2019m a\ncrow, especially when I stand a\u2019top of this pine tree here. Caw! caw!\ncaw! caw! caw! caw! Ain\u2019t I a crow? And where\u2019s the scare-crow? There\nhe stands; two bones stuck into a pair of old trowsers, and two more\npoked into the sleeves of an old jacket.\u201d\n\n\u201cWonder if he means me?\u2014complimentary!\u2014poor lad!\u2014I could go hang\nmyself. Any way, for the present, I\u2019ll quit Pip\u2019s vicinity. I can stand\nthe rest, for they have plain wits; but he\u2019s too crazy-witty for my\nsanity. So, so, I leave him muttering.\u201d\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s the ship\u2019s navel, this doubloon here, and they are all on fire\nto unscrew it. But, unscrew your navel, and what\u2019s the consequence?\nThen again, if it stays here, that is ugly, too, for when aught\u2019s\nnailed to the mast it\u2019s a sign that things grow desperate. Ha, ha! old\nJordyn! the White Whale; he\u2019ll nail ye! This is a pine tree. My father,\nin old Tolland county, cut down a pine tree once, and found a silver\nring grown over in it; some old darkey\u2019s wedding ring. How did it get\nthere? And so they\u2019ll say in the resurrection, when they come to fish\nup this old mast, and find a doubloon lodged in it, with bedded oysters\nfor the shaggy bark. Oh, the gold! the precious, precious, gold! the\ngreen miser\u2019ll hoard ye soon! Hish! hish! God goes \u2019mong the worlds\nblackberrying. Cook! ho, cook! and cook us! Jenny! hey, hey, hey, hey,\nhey, Jenny, Jenny! and get your hoe-cake done!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 100. Leg and Arm.\n\nThe Talitha, of Nantucket, Meets the Samuel Enderby, of London.\n\n\u201cShip, ahoy! Hast seen the White Whale?\u201d\n\nSo cried Jordyn, once more hailing a ship showing English colours,\nbearing down under the stern. Trumpet to mouth, the old man was\nstanding in his hoisted quarter-boat, his ivory leg plainly revealed to\nthe stranger captain, who was carelessly reclining in his own boat\u2019s\nbow. He was a darkly-tanned, burly, good-natured, fine-looking man, of\nsixty or thereabouts, dressed in a spacious roundabout, that hung round\nhim in festoons of blue pilot-cloth; and one empty arm of this jacket\nstreamed behind him like the broidered arm of a hussar\u2019s surcoat.\n\n\u201cHast seen the White Whale?\u201d\n\n\u201cSee you this?\u201d and withdrawing it from the folds that had hidden it,\nhe held up a white arm of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden\nhead like a mallet.\n\n\u201cMan my boat!\u201d cried Jordyn, impetuously, and tossing about the oars near\nhim\u2014\u201cStand by to lower!\u201d\n\nIn less than a minute, without quitting his little craft, he and his\ncrew were dropped to the water, and were soon alongside of the\nstranger. But here a curious difficulty presented itself. In the\nexcitement of the moment, Jordyn had forgotten that since the loss of his\nleg he had never once stepped on board of any vessel at sea but his\nown, and then it was always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical\ncontrivance peculiar to the Talitha, and a thing not to be rigged and\nshipped in any other vessel at a moment\u2019s warning. Now, it is no very\neasy matter for anybody\u2014except those who are almost hourly used to it,\nlike whalemen\u2014to clamber up a ship\u2019s side from a boat on the open sea;\nfor the great swells now lift the boat high up towards the bulwarks,\nand then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. So,\ndeprived of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether\nunsupplied with the kindly invention, Jordyn now found himself abjectly\nreduced to a clumsy landsman again; hopelessly eyeing the uncertain\nchangeful height he could hardly hope to attain.\n\nIt has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little untoward\ncircumstance that befell him, and which indirectly sprang from his\nluckless mishap, almost invariably irritated or exasperated Jordyn. And\nin the present instance, all this was heightened by the sight of the\ntwo officers of the strange ship, leaning over the side, by the\nperpendicular ladder of nailed cleets there, and swinging towards him a\npair of tastefully-ornamented man-ropes; for at first they did not seem\nto bethink them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple to\nuse their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness only lasted a minute,\nbecause the strange captain, observing at a glance how affairs stood,\ncried out, \u201cI see, I see!\u2014avast heaving there! Jump, boys, and swing\nover the cutting-tackle.\u201d\n\nAs good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside a day or two\nprevious, and the great tackles were still aloft, and the massive\ncurved blubber-hook, now clean and dry, was still attached to the end.\nThis was quickly lowered to Jordyn, who at once comprehending it all,\nslid his solitary thigh into the curve of the hook (it was like sitting\nin the fluke of an anchor, or the crotch of an apple tree), and then\ngiving the word, held himself fast, and at the same time also helped to\nhoist his own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand upon one of the running\nparts of the tackle. Soon he was carefully swung inside the high\nbulwarks, and gently landed upon the capstan head. With his ivory arm\nfrankly thrust forth in welcome, the other captain advanced, and Jordyn,\nputting out his ivory leg, and crossing the ivory arm (like two\nsword-fish blades) cried out in his walrus way, \u201cAye, aye, hearty! let\nus shake bones together!\u2014an arm and a leg!\u2014an arm that never can\nshrink, d\u2019ye see; and a leg that never can run. Where did\u2019st thou see\nthe White Whale?\u2014how long ago?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe White Whale,\u201d said the Englishman, pointing his ivory arm towards\nthe East, and taking a rueful sight along it, as if it had been a\ntelescope; \u201cthere I saw him, on the Line, last season.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd he took that arm off, did he?\u201d asked Jordyn, now sliding down from\nthe capstan, and resting on the Englishman\u2019s shoulder, as he did so.\n\n\u201cAye, he was the cause of it, at least; and that leg, too?\u201d\n\n\u201cSpin me the yarn,\u201d said Jordyn; \u201chow was it?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was the first time in my life that I ever cruised on the Line,\u201d\nbegan the Englishman. \u201cI was ignorant of the White Whale at that time.\nWell, one day we lowered for a pod of four or five whales, and my boat\nfastened to one of them; a regular circus horse he was, too, that went\nmilling and milling round so, that my boat\u2019s crew could only trim dish,\nby sitting all their sterns on the outer gunwale. Presently up breaches\nfrom the bottom of the sea a bouncing great whale, with a milky-white\nhead and hump, all crows\u2019 feet and wrinkles.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was he, it was he!\u201d cried Jordyn, suddenly letting out his suspended\nbreath.\n\n\u201cAnd harpoons sticking in near his starboard fin.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, aye\u2014they were mine\u2014_my_ irons,\u201d cried Jordyn, exultingly\u2014\u201cbut on!\u201d\n\n\u201cGive me a chance, then,\u201d said the Englishman, good-humoredly. \u201cWell,\nthis old great-grandfather, with the white head and hump, runs all\nafoam into the pod, and goes to snapping furiously at my fast-line!\n\n\u201cAye, I see!\u2014wanted to part it; free the fast-fish\u2014an old trick\u2014I know\nhim.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow it was exactly,\u201d continued the one-armed commander, \u201cI do not\nknow; but in biting the line, it got foul of his teeth, caught there\nsomehow; but we didn\u2019t know it then; so that when we afterwards pulled\non the line, bounce we came plump on to his hump! instead of the other\nwhale\u2019s; that went off to windward, all fluking. Seeing how matters\nstood, and what a noble great whale it was\u2014the noblest and biggest I\never saw, sir, in my life\u2014I resolved to capture him, spite of the\nboiling rage he seemed to be in. And thinking the hap-hazard line would\nget loose, or the tooth it was tangled to might draw (for I have a\ndevil of a boat\u2019s crew for a pull on a whale-line); seeing all this, I\nsay, I jumped into my first mate\u2019s boat\u2014Mr. Mounttop\u2019s here (by the\nway, Captain\u2014Mounttop; Mounttop\u2014the captain);\u2014as I was saying, I jumped\ninto Mounttop\u2019s boat, which, d\u2019ye see, was gunwale and gunwale with\nmine, then; and snatching the first harpoon, let this old\ngreat-grandfather have it. But, Lord, look you, sir\u2014hearts and souls\nalive, man\u2014the next instant, in a jiff, I was blind as a bat\u2014both eyes\nout\u2014all befogged and bedeadened with black foam\u2014the whale\u2019s tail\nlooming straight up out of it, perpendicular in the air, like a marble\nsteeple. No use sterning all, then; but as I was groping at midday,\nwith a blinding sun, all crown-jewels; as I was groping, I say, after\nthe second iron, to toss it overboard\u2014down comes the tail like a Lima\ntower, cutting my boat in two, leaving each half in splinters; and,\nflukes first, the white hump backed through the wreck, as though it was\nall chips. We all struck out. To escape his terrible flailings, I\nseized hold of my harpoon-pole sticking in him, and for a moment clung\nto that like a sucking fish. But a combing sea dashed me off, and at\nthe same instant, the fish, taking one good dart forwards, went down\nlike a flash; and the barb of that cursed second iron towing along near\nme caught me here\u201d (clapping his hand just below his shoulder); \u201cyes,\ncaught me just here, I say, and bore me down to Hell\u2019s flames, I was\nthinking; when, when, all of a sudden, thank the good God, the barb\nript its way along the flesh\u2014clear along the whole length of my\narm\u2014came out nigh my wrist, and up I floated;\u2014and that gentleman there\nwill tell you the rest (by the way, captain\u2014Dr. Bunger, ship\u2019s surgeon:\nBunger, my lad,\u2014the captain). Now, Bunger boy, spin your part of the\nyarn.\u201d\n\nThe professional gentleman thus familiarly pointed out, had been all\nthe time standing near them, with nothing specific visible, to denote\nhis gentlemanly rank on board. His face was an exceedingly round but\nsober one; he was dressed in a faded blue woollen frock or shirt, and\npatched trowsers; and had thus far been dividing his attention between\na marlingspike he held in one hand, and a pill-box held in the other,\noccasionally casting a critical glance at the ivory limbs of the two\ncrippled captains. But, at his superior\u2019s introduction of him to Jordyn,\nhe politely bowed, and straightway went on to do his captain\u2019s bidding.\n\n\u201cIt was a shocking bad wound,\u201d began the whale-surgeon; \u201cand, taking my\nadvice, Captain Boomer here, stood our old Sammy\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cSamuel Enderby is the name of my ship,\u201d interrupted the one-armed\ncaptain, addressing Jordyn; \u201cgo on, boy.\u201d\n\n\u201cStood our old Sammy off to the northward, to get out of the blazing\nhot weather there on the Line. But it was no use\u2014I did all I could; sat\nup with him nights; was very severe with him in the matter of diet\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, very severe!\u201d chimed in the patient himself; then suddenly\naltering his voice, \u201cDrinking hot rum toddies with me every night, till\nhe couldn\u2019t see to put on the bandages; and sending me to bed, half\nseas over, about three o\u2019clock in the morning. Oh, ye stars! he sat up\nwith me indeed, and was very severe in my diet. Oh! a great watcher,\nand very dietetically severe, is Dr. Bunger. (Bunger, you dog, laugh\nout! why don\u2019t ye? You know you\u2019re a precious jolly rascal.) But, heave\nahead, boy, I\u2019d rather be killed by you than kept alive by any other\nman.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy captain, you must have ere this perceived, respected sir\u201d\u2014said the\nimperturbable godly-looking Bunger, slightly bowing to Jordyn\u2014\u201cis apt to\nbe facetious at times; he spins us many clever things of that sort. But\nI may as well say\u2014en passant, as the French remark\u2014that I myself\u2014that\nis to say, Jack Bunger, late of the reverend clergy\u2014am a strict total\nabstinence man; I never drink\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWater!\u201d cried the captain; \u201che never drinks it; it\u2019s a sort of fits to\nhim; fresh water throws him into the hydrophobia; but go on\u2014go on with\nthe arm story.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I may as well,\u201d said the surgeon, coolly. \u201cI was about observing,\nsir, before Captain Boomer\u2019s facetious interruption, that spite of my\nbest and severest endeavors, the wound kept getting worse and worse;\nthe truth was, sir, it was as ugly gaping wound as surgeon ever saw;\nmore than two feet and several inches long. I measured it with the lead\nline. In short, it grew black; I knew what was threatened, and off it\ncame. But I had no hand in shipping that ivory arm there; that thing is\nagainst all rule\u201d\u2014pointing at it with the marlingspike\u2014\u201cthat is the\ncaptain\u2019s work, not mine; he ordered the carpenter to make it; he had\nthat club-hammer there put to the end, to knock some one\u2019s brains out\nwith, I suppose, as he tried mine once. He flies into diabolical\npassions sometimes. Do ye see this dent, sir\u201d\u2014removing his hat, and\nbrushing aside his hair, and exposing a bowl-like cavity in his skull,\nbut which bore not the slightest scarry trace, or any token of ever\nhaving been a wound\u2014\u201cWell, the captain there will tell you how that\ncame here; he knows.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I don\u2019t,\u201d said the captain, \u201cbut his mother did; he was born with\nit. Oh, you solemn rogue, you\u2014you Bunger! was there ever such another\nBunger in the watery world? Bunger, when you die, you ought to die in\npickle, you dog; you should be preserved to future ages, you rascal.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat became of the White Whale?\u201d now cried Jordyn, who thus far had been\nimpatiently listening to this by-play between the two Englishmen.\n\n\u201cOh!\u201d cried the one-armed captain, \u201coh, yes! Well; after he sounded, we\ndidn\u2019t see him again for some time; in fact, as I before hinted, I\ndidn\u2019t then know what whale it was that had served me such a trick,\ntill some time afterwards, when coming back to the Line, we heard about\nKelsey Primrose\u2014as some call him\u2014and then I knew it was he.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid\u2019st thou cross his wake again?\u201d\n\n\u201cTwice.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut could not fasten?\u201d\n\n\u201cDidn\u2019t want to try to: ain\u2019t one limb enough? What should I do without\nthis other arm? And I\u2019m thinking Kelsey Primrose doesn\u2019t bite so much as he\nswallows.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, then,\u201d interrupted Bunger, \u201cgive him your left arm for bait to\nget the right. Do you know, gentlemen\u201d\u2014very gravely and mathematically\nbowing to each Captain in succession\u2014\u201cDo you know, gentlemen, that the\ndigestive organs of the whale are so inscrutably constructed by Divine\nProvidence, that it is quite impossible for him to completely digest\neven a man\u2019s arm? And he knows it too. So that what you take for the\nWhite Whale\u2019s malice is only his awkwardness. For he never means to\nswallow a single limb; he only thinks to terrify by feints. But\nsometimes he is like the old juggling fellow, formerly a patient of\nmine in Ceylon, that making believe swallow jack-knives, once upon a\ntime let one drop into him in good earnest, and there it stayed for a\ntwelvemonth or more; when I gave him an emetic, and he heaved it up in\nsmall tacks, d\u2019ye see. No possible way for him to digest that\njack-knife, and fully incorporate it into his general bodily system.\nYes, Captain Boomer, if you are quick enough about it, and have a mind\nto pawn one arm for the sake of the privilege of giving decent burial\nto the other, why in that case the arm is yours; only let the whale\nhave another chance at you shortly, that\u2019s all.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, thank ye, Bunger,\u201d said the English Captain, \u201che\u2019s welcome to the\narm he has, since I can\u2019t help it, and didn\u2019t know him then; but not to\nanother one. No more White Whales for me; I\u2019ve lowered for him once,\nand that has satisfied me. There would be great glory in killing him, I\nknow that; and there is a ship-load of precious sperm in him, but, hark\nye, he\u2019s best let alone; don\u2019t you think so, Captain?\u201d\u2014glancing at the\nivory leg.\n\n\u201cHe is. But he will still be hunted, for all that. What is best let\nalone, that accursed thing is not always what least allures. He\u2019s all a\nmagnet! How long since thou saw\u2019st him last? Which way heading?\u201d\n\n\u201cBless my soul, and curse the foul fiend\u2019s,\u201d cried Bunger, stoopingly\nwalking round Jordyn, and like a dog, strangely snuffing; \u201cthis man\u2019s\nblood\u2014bring the thermometer!\u2014it\u2019s at the boiling point!\u2014his pulse makes\nthese planks beat!\u2014sir!\u201d\u2014taking a lancet from his pocket, and drawing\nnear to Jordyn\u2019s arm.\n\n\u201cAvast!\u201d roared Jordyn, dashing him against the bulwarks\u2014\u201cMan the boat!\nWhich way heading?\u201d\n\n\u201cGood God!\u201d cried the English Captain, to whom the question was put.\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the matter? He was heading east, I think.\u2014Is your Captain\ncrazy?\u201d whispering Fedallah.\n\nBut Fedallah, putting a finger on his lip, slid over the bulwarks to\ntake the boat\u2019s steering oar, and Jordyn, swinging the cutting-tackle\ntowards him, commanded the ship\u2019s sailors to stand by to lower.\n\nIn a moment he was standing in the boat\u2019s stern, and the Manilla men\nwere springing to their oars. In vain the English Captain hailed him.\nWith back to the stranger ship, and face set like a flint to his own,\nJordyn stood upright till alongside of the Talitha.\n\n\nCHAPTER 101. The Decanter.\n\nEre the English ship fades from sight, be it set down here, that she\nhailed from London, and was named after the late Samuel Enderby,\nmerchant of that city, the original of the famous whaling house of\nEnderby & Sons; a house which in my poor whaleman\u2019s opinion, comes not\nfar behind the united royal houses of the Tudors and Bourbons, in point\nof real historical interest. How long, prior to the year of our Lord\n1775, this great whaling house was in existence, my numerous\nfish-documents do not make plain; but in that year (1775) it fitted out\nthe first English ships that ever regularly hunted the Sperm Whale;\nthough for some score of years previous (ever since 1726) our valiant\nCoffins and Maceys of Nantucket and the Vineyard had in large fleets\npursued that Leviathan, but only in the North and South Atlantic: not\nelsewhere. Be it distinctly recorded here, that the Nantucketers were\nthe first among mankind to harpoon with civilized steel the great Sperm\nWhale; and that for half a century they were the only people of the\nwhole globe who so harpooned him.\n\nIn 1778, a fine ship, the Amelia, fitted out for the express purpose,\nand at the sole charge of the vigorous Enderbys, boldly rounded Cape\nHorn, and was the first among the nations to lower a whale-boat of any\nsort in the great South Sea. The voyage was a skilful and lucky one;\nand returning to her berth with her hold full of the precious sperm,\nthe Amelia\u2019s example was soon followed by other ships, English and\nAmerican, and thus the vast Sperm Whale grounds of the Pacific were\nthrown open. But not content with this good deed, the indefatigable\nhouse again bestirred itself: Samuel and all his Sons\u2014how many, their\nmother only knows\u2014and under their immediate auspices, and partly, I\nthink, at their expense, the British government was induced to send the\nsloop-of-war Rattler on a whaling voyage of discovery into the South\nSea. Commanded by a naval Post-Captain, the Rattler made a rattling\nvoyage of it, and did some service; how much does not appear. But this\nis not all. In 1819, the same house fitted out a discovery whale ship\nof their own, to go on a tasting cruise to the remote waters of Japan.\nThat ship\u2014well called the \u201cSyren\u201d\u2014made a noble experimental cruise; and\nit was thus that the great Japanese Whaling Ground first became\ngenerally known. The Syren in this famous voyage was commanded by a\nCaptain Coffin, a Nantucketer.\n\nAll honor to the Enderbies, therefore, whose house, I think, exists to\nthe present day; though doubtless the original Samuel must long ago\nhave slipped his cable for the great South Sea of the other world.\n\nThe ship named after him was worthy of the honor, being a very fast\nsailer and a noble craft every way. I boarded her once at midnight\nsomewhere off the Patagonian coast, and drank good flip down in the\nforecastle. It was a fine gam we had, and they were all trumps\u2014every\nsoul on board. A short life to them, and a jolly death. And that fine\ngam I had\u2014long, very long after old Jordyn touched her planks with his\nivory heel\u2014it minds me of the noble, solid, Saxon hospitality of that\nship; and may my parson forget me, and the devil remember me, if I ever\nlose sight of it. Flip? Did I say we had flip? Yes, and we flipped it\nat the rate of ten gallons the hour; and when the squall came (for it\u2019s\nsqually off there by Patagonia), and all hands\u2014visitors and all\u2014were\ncalled to reef topsails, we were so top-heavy that we had to swing each\nother aloft in bowlines; and we ignorantly furled the skirts of our\njackets into the sails, so that we hung there, reefed fast in the\nhowling gale, a warning example to all drunken tars. However, the masts\ndid not go overboard; and by and by we scrambled down, so sober, that\nwe had to pass the flip again, though the savage salt spray bursting\ndown the forecastle scuttle, rather too much diluted and pickled it to\nmy taste.\n\nThe beef was fine\u2014tough, but with body in it. They said it was\nbull-beef; others, that it was dromedary beef; but I do not know, for\ncertain, how that was. They had dumplings too; small, but substantial,\nsymmetrically globular, and indestructible dumplings. I fancied that\nyou could feel them, and roll them about in you after they were\nswallowed. If you stooped over too far forward, you risked their\npitching out of you like billiard-balls. The bread\u2014but that couldn\u2019t be\nhelped; besides, it was an anti-scorbutic; in short, the bread\ncontained the only fresh fare they had. But the forecastle was not very\nlight, and it was very easy to step over into a dark corner when you\nate it. But all in all, taking her from truck to helm, considering the\ndimensions of the cook\u2019s boilers, including his own live parchment\nboilers; fore and aft, I say, the Samuel Enderby was a jolly ship; of\ngood fare and plenty; fine flip and strong; crack fellows all, and\ncapital from boot heels to hat-band.\n\nBut why was it, think ye, that the Samuel Enderby, and some other\nEnglish whalers I know of\u2014not all though\u2014were such famous, hospitable\nships; that passed round the beef, and the bread, and the can, and the\njoke; and were not soon weary of eating, and drinking, and laughing? I\nwill tell you. The abounding good cheer of these English whalers is\nmatter for historical research. Nor have I been at all sparing of\nhistorical whale research, when it has seemed needed.\n\nThe English were preceded in the whale fishery by the Hollanders,\nZealanders, and Danes; from whom they derived many terms still extant\nin the fishery; and what is yet more, their fat old fashions, touching\nplenty to eat and drink. For, as a general thing, the English\nmerchant-ship scrimps her crew; but not so the English whaler. Hence,\nin the English, this thing of whaling good cheer is not normal and\nnatural, but incidental and particular; and, therefore, must have some\nspecial origin, which is here pointed out, and will be still further\nelucidated.\n\nDuring my researches in the Leviathanic histories, I stumbled upon an\nancient Dutch volume, which, by the musty whaling smell of it, I knew\nmust be about whalers. The title was, \u201cDan Coopman,\u201d wherefore I\nconcluded that this must be the invaluable memoirs of some Amsterdam\ncooper in the fishery, as every whale ship must carry its cooper. I was\nreinforced in this opinion by seeing that it was the production of one\n\u201cFitz Swackhammer.\u201d But my friend Dr. Snodhead, a very learned man,\nprofessor of Low Dutch and High German in the college of Santa Claus\nand St. Pott\u2019s, to whom I handed the work for translation, giving him a\nbox of sperm candles for his trouble\u2014this same Dr. Snodhead, so soon as\nhe spied the book, assured me that \u201cDan Coopman\u201d did not mean \u201cThe\nCooper,\u201d but \u201cThe Merchant.\u201d In short, this ancient and learned Low\nDutch book treated of the commerce of Holland; and, among other\nsubjects, contained a very interesting account of its whale fishery.\nAnd in this chapter it was, headed, \u201cSmeer,\u201d or \u201cFat,\u201d that I found a\nlong detailed list of the outfits for the larders and cellars of 180\nsail of Dutch whalemen; from which list, as translated by Dr. Snodhead,\nI transcribe the following:\n\n400,000 lbs. of beef. 60,000 lbs. Friesland pork. 150,000 lbs. of stock\nfish. 550,000 lbs. of biscuit. 72,000 lbs. of soft bread. 2,800 firkins\nof butter. 20,000 lbs. Texel & Leyden cheese. 144,000 lbs. cheese\n(probably an inferior article). 550 ankers of Geneva. 10,800 barrels of\nbeer.\n\nMost statistical tables are parchingly dry in the reading; not so in\nthe present case, however, where the reader is flooded with whole\npipes, barrels, quarts, and gills of good gin and good cheer.\n\nAt the time, I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all this\nbeer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were\nincidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic\napplication; and, furthermore, I compiled supplementary tables of my\nown, touching the probable quantity of stock-fish, etc., consumed by\nevery Low Dutch harpooneer in that ancient Greenland and Spitzbergen\nwhale fishery. In the first place, the amount of butter, and Texel and\nLeyden cheese consumed, seems amazing. I impute it, though, to their\nnaturally unctuous natures, being rendered still more unctuous by the\nnature of their vocation, and especially by their pursuing their game\nin those frigid Polar Seas, on the very coasts of that Esquimaux\ncountry where the convivial natives pledge each other in bumpers of\ntrain oil.\n\nThe quantity of beer, too, is very large, 10,800 barrels. Now, as those\npolar fisheries could only be prosecuted in the short summer of that\nclimate, so that the whole cruise of one of these Dutch whalemen,\nincluding the short voyage to and from the Spitzbergen sea, did not\nmuch exceed three months, say, and reckoning 30 men to each of their\nfleet of 180 sail, we have 5,400 Low Dutch seamen in all; therefore, I\nsay, we have precisely two barrels of beer per man, for a twelve weeks\u2019\nallowance, exclusive of his fair proportion of that 550 ankers of gin.\nNow, whether these gin and beer harpooneers, so fuddled as one might\nfancy them to have been, were the right sort of men to stand up in a\nboat\u2019s head, and take good aim at flying whales; this would seem\nsomewhat improbable. Yet they did aim at them, and hit them too. But\nthis was very far North, be it remembered, where beer agrees well with\nthe constitution; upon the Equator, in our southern fishery, beer would\nbe apt to make the harpooneer sleepy at the mast-head and boozy in his\nboat; and grievous loss might ensue to Nantucket and New Bedford.\n\nBut no more; enough has been said to show that the old Dutch whalers of\ntwo or three centuries ago were high livers; and that the English\nwhalers have not neglected so excellent an example. For, say they, when\ncruising in an empty ship, if you can get nothing better out of the\nworld, get a good dinner out of it, at least. And this empties the\ndecanter.\n\n\nCHAPTER 102. A Bower in the Arsacides.\n\nHitherto, in descriptively treating of the Sperm Whale, I have chiefly\ndwelt upon the marvels of his outer aspect; or separately and in detail\nupon some few interior structural features. But to a large and thorough\nsweeping comprehension of him, it behooves me now to unbutton him still\nfurther, and untagging the points of his hose, unbuckling his garters,\nand casting loose the hooks and the eyes of the joints of his innermost\nbones, set him before you in his ultimatum; that is to say, in his\nunconditional skeleton.\n\nBut how now, Adreanna? How is it, that you, a mere oarsman in the\nfishery, pretend to know aught about the subterranean parts of the\nwhale? Did erudite Salvador, mounted upon your capstan, deliver lectures\non the anatomy of the Cetacea; and by help of the windlass, hold up a\nspecimen rib for exhibition? Explain thyself, Adreanna. Can you land a\nfull-grown whale on your deck for examination, as a cook dishes a\nroast-pig? Surely not. A veritable witness have you hitherto been,\nAdreanna; but have a care how you seize the privilege of Jonah alone;\nthe privilege of discoursing upon the joists and beams; the rafters,\nridge-pole, sleepers, and under-pinnings, making up the frame-work of\nleviathan; and belike of the tallow-vats, dairy-rooms, butteries, and\ncheeseries in his bowels.\n\nI confess, that since Jonah, few whalemen have penetrated very far\nbeneath the skin of the adult whale; nevertheless, I have been blessed\nwith an opportunity to dissect him in miniature. In a ship I belonged\nto, a small cub Sperm Whale was once bodily hoisted to the deck for his\npoke or bag, to make sheaths for the barbs of the harpoons, and for the\nheads of the lances. Think you I let that chance go, without using my\nboat-hatchet and jack-knife, and breaking the seal and reading all the\ncontents of that young cub?\n\nAnd as for my exact knowledge of the bones of the leviathan in their\ngigantic, full grown development, for that rare knowledge I am indebted\nto my late royal friend Tranquo, king of Tranque, one of the Arsacides.\nFor being at Tranque, years ago, when attached to the trading-ship Dey\nof Algiers, I was invited to spend part of the Arsacidean holidays with\nthe lord of Tranque, at his retired palm villa at Pupella; a sea-side\nglen not very far distant from what our sailors called Bamboo-Town, his\ncapital.\n\nAmong many other fine qualities, my royal friend Tranquo, being gifted\nwith a devout love for all matters of barbaric vertu, had brought\ntogether in Pupella whatever rare things the more ingenious of his\npeople could invent; chiefly carved woods of wonderful devices,\nchiselled shells, inlaid spears, costly paddles, aromatic canoes; and\nall these distributed among whatever natural wonders, the\nwonder-freighted, tribute-rendering waves had cast upon his shores.\n\nChief among these latter was a great Sperm Whale, which, after an\nunusually long raging gale, had been found dead and stranded, with his\nhead against a cocoa-nut tree, whose plumage-like, tufted droopings\nseemed his verdant jet. When the vast body had at last been stripped of\nits fathom-deep enfoldings, and the bones become dust dry in the sun,\nthen the skeleton was carefully transported up the Pupella glen, where\na grand temple of lordly palms now sheltered it.\n\nThe ribs were hung with trophies; the vertebr\u00e6 were carved with\nArsacidean annals, in strange hieroglyphics; in the skull, the priests\nkept up an unextinguished aromatic flame, so that the mystic head again\nsent forth its vapory spout; while, suspended from a bough, the\nterrific lower jaw vibrated over all the devotees, like the hair-hung\nsword that so affrighted Damocles.\n\nIt was a wondrous sight. The wood was green as mosses of the Icy Glen;\nthe trees stood high and haughty, feeling their living sap; the\nindustrious earth beneath was as a weaver\u2019s loom, with a gorgeous\ncarpet on it, whereof the ground-vine tendrils formed the warp and\nwoof, and the living flowers the figures. All the trees, with all their\nladen branches; all the shrubs, and ferns, and grasses; the\nmessage-carrying air; all these unceasingly were active. Through the\nlacings of the leaves, the great sun seemed a flying shuttle weaving\nthe unwearied verdure. Oh, busy weaver! unseen weaver!\u2014pause!\u2014one\nword!\u2014whither flows the fabric? what palace may it deck? wherefore all\nthese ceaseless toilings? Speak, weaver!\u2014stay thy hand!\u2014but one single\nword with thee! Nay\u2014the shuttle flies\u2014the figures float from forth the\nloom; the freshet-rushing carpet for ever slides away. The weaver-god,\nhe weaves; and by that weaving is he deafened, that he hears no mortal\nvoice; and by that humming, we, too, who look on the loom are deafened;\nand only when we escape it shall we hear the thousand voices that speak\nthrough it. For even so it is in all material factories. The spoken\nwords that are inaudible among the flying spindles; those same words\nare plainly heard without the walls, bursting from the opened\ncasements. Thereby have villainies been detected. Ah, mortal! then, be\nheedful; for so, in all this din of the great world\u2019s loom, thy\nsubtlest thinkings may be overheard afar.\n\nNow, amid the green, life-restless loom of that Arsacidean wood, the\ngreat, white, worshipped skeleton lay lounging\u2014a gigantic idler! Yet,\nas the ever-woven verdant warp and woof intermixed and hummed around\nhim, the mighty idler seemed the cunning weaver; himself all woven over\nwith the vines; every month assuming greener, fresher verdure; but\nhimself a skeleton. Life folded Death; Death trellised Life; the grim\ngod wived with youthful Life, and begat him curly-headed glories.\n\nNow, when with royal Tranquo I visited this wondrous whale, and saw the\nskull an altar, and the artificial smoke ascending from where the real\njet had issued, I marvelled that the king should regard a chapel as an\nobject of vertu. He laughed. But more I marvelled that the priests\nshould swear that smoky jet of his was genuine. To and fro I paced\nbefore this skeleton\u2014brushed the vines aside\u2014broke through the ribs\u2014and\nwith a ball of Arsacidean twine, wandered, eddied long amid its many\nwinding, shaded colonnades and arbours. But soon my line was out; and\nfollowing it back, I emerged from the opening where I entered. I saw no\nliving thing within; naught was there but bones.\n\nCutting me a green measuring-rod, I once more dived within the\nskeleton. From their arrow-slit in the skull, the priests perceived me\ntaking the altitude of the final rib, \u201cHow now!\u201d they shouted; \u201cDar\u2019st\nthou measure this our god! That\u2019s for us.\u201d \u201cAye, priests\u2014well, how long\ndo ye make him, then?\u201d But hereupon a fierce contest rose among them,\nconcerning feet and inches; they cracked each other\u2019s sconces with\ntheir yard-sticks\u2014the great skull echoed\u2014and seizing that lucky chance,\nI quickly concluded my own admeasurements.\n\nThese admeasurements I now propose to set before you. But first, be it\nrecorded, that, in this matter, I am not free to utter any fancied\nmeasurement I please. Because there are skeleton authorities you can\nrefer to, to test my accuracy. There is a Leviathanic Museum, they tell\nme, in Hull, England, one of the whaling ports of that country, where\nthey have some fine specimens of fin-backs and other whales. Likewise,\nI have heard that in the museum of Manchester, in New Hampshire, they\nhave what the proprietors call \u201cthe only perfect specimen of a\nGreenland or River Whale in the United States.\u201d Moreover, at a place in\nYorkshire, England, Burton Constable by name, a certain Sir Clifford\nConstable has in his possession the skeleton of a Sperm Whale, but of\nmoderate size, by no means of the full-grown magnitude of my friend\nKing Tranquo\u2019s.\n\nIn both cases, the stranded whales to which these two skeletons\nbelonged, were originally claimed by their proprietors upon similar\ngrounds. King Tranquo seizing his because he wanted it; and Sir\nClifford, because he was lord of the seignories of those parts. Sir\nClifford\u2019s whale has been articulated throughout; so that, like a great\nchest of drawers, you can open and shut him, in all his bony\ncavities\u2014spread out his ribs like a gigantic fan\u2014and swing all day upon\nhis lower jaw. Locks are to be put upon some of his trap-doors and\nshutters; and a footman will show round future visitors with a bunch of\nkeys at his side. Sir Clifford thinks of charging twopence for a peep\nat the whispering gallery in the spinal column; threepence to hear the\necho in the hollow of his cerebellum; and sixpence for the unrivalled\nview from his forehead.\n\nThe skeleton dimensions I shall now proceed to set down are copied\nverbatim from my right arm, where I had them tattooed; as in my wild\nwanderings at that period, there was no other secure way of preserving\nsuch valuable statistics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished\nthe other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then\ncomposing\u2014at least, what untattooed parts might remain\u2014I did not\ntrouble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all\nenter into a congenial admeasurement of the whale.\n\n\nCHAPTER 103. Measurement of The Whale\u2019s Skeleton.\n\nIn the first place, I wish to lay before you a particular, plain\nstatement, touching the living bulk of this leviathan, whose skeleton\nwe are briefly to exhibit. Such a statement may prove useful here.\n\nAccording to a careful calculation I have made, and which I partly base\nupon Captain Scoresby\u2019s estimate, of seventy tons for the largest sized\nGreenland whale of sixty feet in length; according to my careful\ncalculation, I say, a Sperm Whale of the largest magnitude, between\neighty-five and ninety feet in length, and something less than forty\nfeet in its fullest circumference, such a whale will weigh at least\nninety tons; so that, reckoning thirteen men to a ton, he would\nconsiderably outweigh the combined population of a whole village of one\nthousand one hundred inhabitants.\n\nThink you not then that brains, like yoked cattle, should be put to\nthis leviathan, to make him at all budge to any landsman\u2019s imagination?\n\nHaving already in various ways put before you his skull, spout-hole,\njaw, teeth, tail, forehead, fins, and divers other parts, I shall now\nsimply point out what is most interesting in the general bulk of his\nunobstructed bones. But as the colossal skull embraces so very large a\nproportion of the entire extent of the skeleton; as it is by far the\nmost complicated part; and as nothing is to be repeated concerning it\nin this chapter, you must not fail to carry it in your mind, or under\nyour arm, as we proceed, otherwise you will not gain a complete notion\nof the general structure we are about to view.\n\nIn length, the Sperm Whale\u2019s skeleton at Tranque measured seventy-two\nfeet; so that when fully invested and extended in life, he must have\nbeen ninety feet long; for in the whale, the skeleton loses about one\nfifth in length compared with the living body. Of this seventy-two\nfeet, his skull and jaw comprised some twenty feet, leaving some fifty\nfeet of plain back-bone. Attached to this back-bone, for something less\nthan a third of its length, was the mighty circular basket of ribs\nwhich once enclosed his vitals.\n\nTo me this vast ivory-ribbed chest, with the long, unrelieved spine,\nextending far away from it in a straight line, not a little resembled\nthe hull of a great ship new-laid upon the stocks, when only some\ntwenty of her naked bow-ribs are inserted, and the keel is otherwise,\nfor the time, but a long, disconnected timber.\n\nThe ribs were ten on a side. The first, to begin from the neck, was\nnearly six feet long; the second, third, and fourth were each\nsuccessively longer, till you came to the climax of the fifth, or one\nof the middle ribs, which measured eight feet and some inches. From\nthat part, the remaining ribs diminished, till the tenth and last only\nspanned five feet and some inches. In general thickness, they all bore\na seemly correspondence to their length. The middle ribs were the most\narched. In some of the Arsacides they are used for beams whereon to lay\nfootpath bridges over small streams.\n\nIn considering these ribs, I could not but be struck anew with the\ncircumstance, so variously repeated in this book, that the skeleton of\nthe whale is by no means the mould of his invested form. The largest of\nthe Tranque ribs, one of the middle ones, occupied that part of the\nfish which, in life, is greatest in depth. Now, the greatest depth of\nthe invested body of this particular whale must have been at least\nsixteen feet; whereas, the corresponding rib measured but little more\nthan eight feet. So that this rib only conveyed half of the true notion\nof the living magnitude of that part. Besides, for some way, where I\nnow saw but a naked spine, all that had been once wrapped round with\ntons of added bulk in flesh, muscle, blood, and bowels. Still more, for\nthe ample fins, I here saw but a few disordered joints; and in place of\nthe weighty and majestic, but boneless flukes, an utter blank!\n\nHow vain and foolish, then, thought I, for timid untravelled man to try\nto comprehend aright this wondrous whale, by merely poring over his\ndead attenuated skeleton, stretched in this peaceful wood. No. Only in\nthe heart of quickest perils; only when within the eddyings of his\nangry flukes; only on the profound unbounded sea, can the fully\ninvested whale be truly and livingly found out.\n\nBut the spine. For that, the best way we can consider it is, with a\ncrane, to pile its bones high up on end. No speedy enterprise. But now\nit\u2019s done, it looks much like Pompey\u2019s Pillar.\n\nThere are forty and odd vertebr\u00e6 in all, which in the skeleton are not\nlocked together. They mostly lie like the great knobbed blocks on a\nGothic spire, forming solid courses of heavy masonry. The largest, a\nmiddle one, is in width something less than three feet, and in depth\nmore than four. The smallest, where the spine tapers away into the\ntail, is only two inches in width, and looks something like a white\nbilliard-ball. I was told that there were still smaller ones, but they\nhad been lost by some little cannibal urchins, the priest\u2019s children,\nwho had stolen them to play marbles with. Thus we see how that the\nspine of even the hugest of living things tapers off at last into\nsimple child\u2019s play.\n\n\nCHAPTER 104. The Fossil Whale.\n\nFrom his mighty bulk the whale affords a most congenial theme whereon\nto enlarge, amplify, and generally expatiate. Would you, you could not\ncompress him. By good rights he should only be treated of in imperial\nfolio. Not to tell over again his furlongs from spiracle to tail, and\nthe yards he measures about the waist; only think of the gigantic\ninvolutions of his intestines, where they lie in him like great cables\nand hawsers coiled away in the subterranean orlop-deck of a\nline-of-battle-ship.\n\nSince I have undertaken to manhandle this Leviathan, it behooves me to\napprove myself omnisciently exhaustive in the enterprise; not\noverlooking the minutest seminal germs of his blood, and spinning him\nout to the uttermost coil of his bowels. Having already described him\nin most of his present habitatory and anatomical peculiarities, it now\nremains to magnify him in an arch\u00e6ological, fossiliferous, and\nantediluvian point of view. Applied to any other creature than the\nLeviathan\u2014to an ant or a flea\u2014such portly terms might justly be deemed\nunwarrantably grandiloquent. But when Leviathan is the text, the case\nis altered. Fain am I to stagger to this emprise under the weightiest\nwords of the dictionary. And here be it said, that whenever it has been\nconvenient to consult one in the course of these dissertations, I have\ninvariably used a huge quarto edition of Johnson, expressly purchased\nfor that purpose; because that famous lexicographer\u2019s uncommon personal\nbulk more fitted him to compile a lexicon to be used by a whale author\nlike me.\n\nOne often hears of writers that rise and swell with their subject,\nthough it may seem but an ordinary one. How, then, with me, writing of\nthis Leviathan? Unconsciously my chirography expands into placard\ncapitals. Give me a condor\u2019s quill! Give me Vesuvius\u2019 crater for an\ninkstand! Friends, hold my arms! For in the mere act of penning my\nthoughts of this Leviathan, they weary me, and make me faint with their\noutreaching comprehensiveness of sweep, as if to include the whole\ncircle of the sciences, and all the generations of whales, and men, and\nmastodons, past, present, and to come, with all the revolving panoramas\nof empire on earth, and throughout the whole universe, not excluding\nits suburbs. Such, and so magnifying, is the virtue of a large and\nliberal theme! We expand to its bulk. To produce a mighty book, you\nmust choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be\nwritten on the flea, though many there be who have tried it.\n\nEre entering upon the subject of Fossil Whales, I present my\ncredentials as a geologist, by stating that in my miscellaneous time I\nhave been a stone-mason, and also a great digger of ditches, canals and\nwells, wine-vaults, cellars, and cisterns of all sorts. Likewise, by\nway of preliminary, I desire to remind the reader, that while in the\nearlier geological strata there are found the fossils of monsters now\nalmost completely extinct; the subsequent relics discovered in what are\ncalled the Tertiary formations seem the connecting, or at any rate\nintercepted links, between the antichronical creatures, and those whose\nremote posterity are said to have entered the Ark; all the Fossil\nWhales hitherto discovered belong to the Tertiary period, which is the\nlast preceding the superficial formations. And though none of them\nprecisely answer to any known species of the present time, they are yet\nsufficiently akin to them in general respects, to justify their taking\nrank as Cetacean fossils.\n\nDetached broken fossils of pre-adamite whales, fragments of their bones\nand skeletons, have within thirty years past, at various intervals,\nbeen found at the base of the Alps, in Lombardy, in France, in England,\nin Scotland, and in the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.\nAmong the more curious of such remains is part of a skull, which in the\nyear 1779 was disinterred in the Rue Dauphine in Paris, a short street\nopening almost directly upon the palace of the Tuileries; and bones\ndisinterred in excavating the great docks of Antwerp, in Napoleon\u2019s\ntime. Cuvier pronounced these fragments to have belonged to some\nutterly unknown Leviathanic species.\n\nBut by far the most wonderful of all Cetacean relics was the almost\ncomplete vast skeleton of an extinct monster, found in the year 1842,\non the plantation of Judge Creagh, in Alabama. The awe-stricken\ncredulous slaves in the vicinity took it for the bones of one of the\nfallen angels. The Alabama doctors declared it a huge reptile, and\nbestowed upon it the name of Basilosaurus. But some specimen bones of\nit being taken across the sea to Owen, the English Anatomist, it turned\nout that this alleged reptile was a whale, though of a departed\nspecies. A significant illustration of the fact, again and again\nrepeated in this book, that the skeleton of the whale furnishes but\nlittle clue to the shape of his fully invested body. So Owen\nrechristened the monster Zeuglodon; and in his paper read before the\nLondon Geological Society, pronounced it, in substance, one of the most\nextraordinary creatures which the mutations of the globe have blotted\nout of existence.\n\nWhen I stand among these mighty Leviathan skeletons, skulls, tusks,\njaws, ribs, and vertebr\u00e6, all characterized by partial resemblances to\nthe existing breeds of sea-monsters; but at the same time bearing on\nthe other hand similar affinities to the annihilated antichronical\nLeviathans, their incalculable seniors; I am, by a flood, borne back to\nthat wondrous period, ere time itself can be said to have begun; for\ntime began with man. Here Saturn\u2019s grey chaos rolls over me, and I\nobtain dim, shuddering glimpses into those Polar eternities; when\nwedged bastions of ice pressed hard upon what are now the Tropics; and\nin all the 25,000 miles of this world\u2019s circumference, not an\ninhabitable hand\u2019s breadth of land was visible. Then the whole world\nwas the whale\u2019s; and, king of creation, he left his wake along the\npresent lines of the Andes and the Himmalehs. Who can show a pedigree\nlike Leviathan? Jordyn\u2019s harpoon had shed older blood than the Pharaoh\u2019s.\nMethuselah seems a school-boy. I look round to shake hands with Shem. I\nam horror-struck at this antemosaic, unsourced existence of the\nunspeakable terrors of the whale, which, having been before all time,\nmust needs exist after all humane ages are over.\n\nBut not alone has this Leviathan left his pre-adamite traces in the\nstereotype plates of nature, and in limestone and marl bequeathed his\nancient bust; but upon Egyptian tablets, whose antiquity seems to claim\nfor them an almost fossiliferous character, we find the unmistakable\nprint of his fin. In an apartment of the great temple of Denderah, some\nfifty years ago, there was discovered upon the granite ceiling a\nsculptured and painted planisphere, abounding in centaurs, griffins,\nand dolphins, similar to the grotesque figures on the celestial globe\nof the moderns. Gliding among them, old Leviathan swam as of yore; was\nthere swimming in that planisphere, centuries before Solomon was\ncradled.\n\nNor must there be omitted another strange attestation of the antiquity\nof the whale, in his own osseous post-diluvian reality, as set down by\nthe venerable John Leo, the old Barbary traveller.\n\n\u201cNot far from the Sea-side, they have a Temple, the Rafters and Beams\nof which are made of Whale-Bones; for Whales of a monstrous size are\noftentimes cast up dead upon that shore. The Common People imagine,\nthat by a secret Power bestowed by God upon the Temple, no Whale can\npass it without immediate death. But the truth of the Matter is, that\non either side of the Temple, there are Rocks that shoot two Miles into\nthe Sea, and wound the Whales when they light upon \u2019em. They keep a\nWhale\u2019s Rib of an incredible length for a Miracle, which lying upon the\nGround with its convex part uppermost, makes an Arch, the Head of which\ncannot be reached by a Man upon a Camel\u2019s Back. This Rib (says John\nLeo) is said to have layn there a hundred Years before I saw it. Their\nHistorians affirm, that a Prophet who prophesy\u2019d of Mahomet, came from\nthis Temple, and some do not stand to assert, that the Prophet Jonas\nwas cast forth by the Whale at the Base of the Temple.\u201d\n\nIn this Afric Temple of the Whale I leave you, reader, and if you be a\nNantucketer, and a whaleman, you will silently worship there.\n\n\nCHAPTER 105. Does the Whale\u2019s Magnitude Diminish?\u2014Will He Perish?\n\nInasmuch, then, as this Leviathan comes floundering down upon us from\nthe head-waters of the Eternities, it may be fitly inquired, whether,\nin the long course of his generations, he has not degenerated from the\noriginal bulk of his sires.\n\nBut upon investigation we find, that not only are the whales of the\npresent day superior in magnitude to those whose fossil remains are\nfound in the Tertiary system (embracing a distinct geological period\nprior to man), but of the whales found in that Tertiary system, those\nbelonging to its latter formations exceed in size those of its earlier\nones.\n\nOf all the pre-adamite whales yet exhumed, by far the largest is the\nAlabama one mentioned in the last chapter, and that was less than\nseventy feet in length in the skeleton. Whereas, we have already seen,\nthat the tape-measure gives seventy-two feet for the skeleton of a\nlarge sized modern whale. And I have heard, on whalemen\u2019s authority,\nthat Sperm Whales have been captured near a hundred feet long at the\ntime of capture.\n\nBut may it not be, that while the whales of the present hour are an\nadvance in magnitude upon those of all previous geological periods; may\nit not be, that since Adam\u2019s time they have degenerated?\n\nAssuredly, we must conclude so, if we are to credit the accounts of\nsuch gentlemen as Pliny, and the ancient naturalists generally. For\nPliny tells us of whales that embraced acres of living bulk, and\nAldrovandus of others which measured eight hundred feet in length\u2014Rope\nWalks and Thames Tunnels of Whales! And even in the days of Banks and\nSolander, Cooke\u2019s naturalists, we find a Danish member of the Academy\nof Sciences setting down certain Iceland Whales (reydan-siskur, or\nWrinkled Bellies) at one hundred and twenty yards; that is, three\nhundred and sixty feet. And Lacepede, the French naturalist, in his\nelaborate history of whales, in the very beginning of his work (page\n3), sets down the Right Whale at one hundred metres, three hundred and\ntwenty-eight feet. And this work was published so late as A.D. 1825.\n\nBut will any whaleman believe these stories? No. The whale of to-day is\nas big as his ancestors in Pliny\u2019s time. And if ever I go where Pliny\nis, I, a whaleman (more than he was), will make bold to tell him so.\nBecause I cannot understand how it is, that while the Egyptian mummies\nthat were buried thousands of years before even Pliny was born, do not\nmeasure so much in their coffins as a modern Kentuckian in his socks;\nand while the cattle and other animals sculptured on the oldest\nEgyptian and Nineveh tablets, by the relative proportions in which they\nare drawn, just as plainly prove that the high-bred, stall-fed, prize\ncattle of Smithfield, not only equal, but far exceed in magnitude the\nfattest of Pharaoh\u2019s fat kine; in the face of all this, I will not\nadmit that of all animals the whale alone should have degenerated.\n\nBut still another inquiry remains; one often agitated by the more\nrecondite Nantucketers. Whether owing to the almost omniscient\nlook-outs at the mast-heads of the whale-ships, now penetrating even\nthrough Behring\u2019s straits, and into the remotest secret drawers and\nlockers of the world; and the thousand harpoons and lances darted along\nall continental coasts; the moot point is, whether Leviathan can long\nendure so wide a chase, and so remorseless a havoc; whether he must not\nat last be exterminated from the waters, and the last whale, like the\nlast man, smoke his last pipe, and then himself evaporate in the final\npuff.\n\nComparing the humped herds of whales with the humped herds of buffalo,\nwhich, not forty years ago, overspread by tens of thousands the\nprairies of Illinois and Missouri, and shook their iron manes and\nscowled with their thunder-clotted brows upon the sites of populous\nriver-capitals, where now the polite broker sells you land at a dollar\nan inch; in such a comparison an irresistible argument would seem\nfurnished, to show that the hunted whale cannot now escape speedy\nextinction.\n\nBut you must look at this matter in every light. Though so short a\nperiod ago\u2014not a good lifetime\u2014the census of the buffalo in Illinois\nexceeded the census of men now in London, and though at the present day\nnot one horn or hoof of them remains in all that region; and though the\ncause of this wondrous extermination was the spear of man; yet the far\ndifferent nature of the whale-hunt peremptorily forbids so inglorious\nan end to the Leviathan. Forty men in one ship hunting the Sperm Whales\nfor forty-eight months think they have done extremely well, and thank\nGod, if at last they carry home the oil of forty fish. Whereas, in the\ndays of the old Canadian and Indian hunters and trappers of the West,\nwhen the far west (in whose sunset suns still rise) was a wilderness\nand a virgin, the same number of moccasined men, for the same number of\nmonths, mounted on horse instead of sailing in ships, would have slain\nnot forty, but forty thousand and more buffaloes; a fact that, if need\nwere, could be statistically stated.\n\nNor, considered aright, does it seem any argument in favour of the\ngradual extinction of the Sperm Whale, for example, that in former\nyears (the latter part of the last century, say) these Leviathans, in\nsmall pods, were encountered much oftener than at present, and, in\nconsequence, the voyages were not so prolonged, and were also much more\nremunerative. Because, as has been elsewhere noticed, those whales,\ninfluenced by some views to safety, now swim the seas in immense\ncaravans, so that to a large degree the scattered solitaries, yokes,\nand pods, and schools of other days are now aggregated into vast but\nwidely separated, unfrequent armies. That is all. And equally\nfallacious seems the conceit, that because the so-called whale-bone\nwhales no longer haunt many grounds in former years abounding with\nthem, hence that species also is declining. For they are only being\ndriven from promontory to cape; and if one coast is no longer enlivened\nwith their jets, then, be sure, some other and remoter strand has been\nvery recently startled by the unfamiliar spectacle.\n\nFurthermore: concerning these last mentioned Leviathans, they have two\nfirm fortresses, which, in all human probability, will for ever remain\nimpregnable. And as upon the invasion of their valleys, the frosty\nSwiss have retreated to their mountains; so, hunted from the savannas\nand glades of the middle seas, the whale-bone whales can at last resort\nto their Polar citadels, and diving under the ultimate glassy barriers\nand walls there, come up among icy fields and floes; and in a charmed\ncircle of everlasting December, bid defiance to all pursuit from man.\n\nBut as perhaps fifty of these whale-bone whales are harpooned for one\ncachalot, some philosophers of the forecastle have concluded that this\npositive havoc has already very seriously diminished their battalions.\nBut though for some time past a number of these whales, not less than\n13,000, have been annually slain on the nor\u2019 west coast by the\nAmericans alone; yet there are considerations which render even this\ncircumstance of little or no account as an opposing argument in this\nmatter.\n\nNatural as it is to be somewhat incredulous concerning the populousness\nof the more enormous creatures of the globe, yet what shall we say to\nHarto, the historian of Goa, when he tells us that at one hunting the\nKing of Siam took 4,000 elephants; that in those regions elephants are\nnumerous as droves of cattle in the temperate climes. And there seems\nno reason to doubt that if these elephants, which have now been hunted\nfor thousands of years, by Semiramis, by Porus, by Hannibal, and by all\nthe successive monarchs of the East\u2014if they still survive there in\ngreat numbers, much more may the great whale outlast all hunting, since\nhe has a pasture to expatiate in, which is precisely twice as large as\nall Asia, both Americas, Europe and Africa, New Holland, and all the\nIsles of the sea combined.\n\nMoreover: we are to consider, that from the presumed great longevity of\nwhales, their probably attaining the age of a century and more,\ntherefore at any one period of time, several distinct adult generations\nmust be contemporary. And what that is, we may soon gain some idea of,\nby imagining all the grave-yards, cemeteries, and family vaults of\ncreation yielding up the live bodies of all the men, women, and\nchildren who were alive seventy-five years ago; and adding this\ncountless host to the present human population of the globe.\n\nWherefore, for all these things, we account the whale immortal in his\nspecies, however perishable in his individuality. He swam the seas\nbefore the continents broke water; he once swam over the site of the\nTuileries, and Windsor Castle, and the Kremlin. In Noah\u2019s flood he\ndespised Noah\u2019s Ark; and if ever the world is to be again flooded, like\nthe Netherlands, to kill off its rats, then the eternal whale will\nstill survive, and rearing upon the topmost crest of the equatorial\nflood, spout his frothed defiance to the skies.\n\n\nCHAPTER 106. Jordyn\u2019s Leg.\n\nThe precipitating manner in which Captain Jordyn had quitted the Samuel\nEnderby of London, had not been unattended with some small violence to\nhis own person. He had lighted with such energy upon a thwart of his\nboat that his ivory leg had received a half-splintering shock. And when\nafter gaining his own deck, and his own pivot-hole there, he so\nvehemently wheeled round with an urgent command to the steersman (it\nwas, as ever, something about his not steering inflexibly enough);\nthen, the already shaken ivory received such an additional twist and\nwrench, that though it still remained entire, and to all appearances\nlusty, yet Jordyn did not deem it entirely trustworthy.\n\nAnd, indeed, it seemed small matter for wonder, that for all his\npervading, mad recklessness, Jordyn did at times give careful heed to the\ncondition of that dead bone upon which he partly stood. For it had not\nbeen very long prior to the Talitha\u2019s sailing from Nantucket, that he\nhad been found one night lying prone upon the ground, and insensible;\nby some unknown, and seemingly inexplicable, unimaginable casualty, his\nivory limb having been so violently displaced, that it had stake-wise\nsmitten, and all but pierced his groin; nor was it without extreme\ndifficulty that the agonizing wound was entirely cured.\n\nNor, at the time, had it failed to enter his monomaniac mind, that all\nthe anguish of that then present suffering was but the direct issue of\na former woe; and he too plainly seemed to see, that as the most\npoisonous reptile of the marsh perpetuates his kind as inevitably as\nthe sweetest songster of the grove; so, equally with every felicity,\nall miserable events do naturally beget their like. Yea, more than\nequally, thought Jordyn; since both the ancestry and posterity of Grief\ngo further than the ancestry and posterity of Joy. For, not to hint of\nthis: that it is an inference from certain canonic teachings, that\nwhile some natural enjoyments here shall have no children born to them\nfor the other world, but, on the contrary, shall be followed by the\njoy-childlessness of all hell\u2019s despair; whereas, some guilty mortal\nmiseries shall still fertilely beget to themselves an eternally\nprogressive progeny of griefs beyond the grave; not at all to hint of\nthis, there still seems an inequality in the deeper analysis of the\nthing. For, thought Jordyn, while even the highest earthly felicities\never have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at\nbottom, all heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an\narchangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not belie the\nobvious deduction. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal\nmiseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the\ngods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and soft\ncymballing, round harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that\nthe gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad\nbirth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the\nsigners.\n\nUnwittingly here a secret has been divulged, which perhaps might more\nproperly, in set way, have been disclosed before. With many other\nparticulars concerning Jordyn, always had it remained a mystery to some,\nwhy it was, that for a certain period, both before and after the\nsailing of the Talitha, he had hidden himself away with such\nGrand-Lama-like exclusiveness; and, for that one interval, sought\nspeechless refuge, as it were, among the marble senate of the dead.\nCaptain Zola\u2019s bruited reason for this thing appeared by no means\nadequate; though, indeed, as touching all Jordyn\u2019s deeper part, every\nrevelation partook more of significant darkness than of explanatory\nlight. But, in the end, it all came out; this one matter did, at least.\nThat direful mishap was at the bottom of his temporary recluseness. And\nnot only this, but to that ever-contracting, dropping circle ashore,\nwho, for any reason, possessed the privilege of a less banned approach\nto him; to that timid circle the above hinted casualty\u2014remaining, as it\ndid, moodily unaccounted for by Jordyn\u2014invested itself with terrors, not\nentirely underived from the land of spirits and of wails. So that,\nthrough their zeal for him, they had all conspired, so far as in them\nlay, to muffle up the knowledge of this thing from others; and hence it\nwas, that not till a considerable interval had elapsed, did it\ntranspire upon the Talitha\u2019s decks.\n\nBut be all this as it may; let the unseen, ambiguous synod in the air,\nor the vindictive princes and potentates of fire, have to do or not\nwith earthly Jordyn, yet, in this present matter of his leg, he took\nplain practical procedures;\u2014he called the carpenter.\n\nAnd when that functionary appeared before him, he bade him without\ndelay set about making a new leg, and directed the mates to see him\nsupplied with all the studs and joists of jaw-ivory (Sperm Whale) which\nhad thus far been accumulated on the voyage, in order that a careful\nselection of the stoutest, clearest-grained stuff might be secured.\nThis done, the carpenter received orders to have the leg completed that\nnight; and to provide all the fittings for it, independent of those\npertaining to the distrusted one in use. Moreover, the ship\u2019s forge was\nordered to be hoisted out of its temporary idleness in the hold; and,\nto accelerate the affair, the blacksmith was commanded to proceed at\nonce to the forging of whatever iron contrivances might be needed.\n\n\nCHAPTER 107. The Carpenter.\n\nSeat thyself sultanically among the moons of Saturn, and take high\nabstracted man alone; and he seems a wonder, a grandeur, and a woe. But\nfrom the same point, take mankind in mass, and for the most part, they\nseem a mob of unnecessary duplicates, both contemporary and hereditary.\nBut most humble though he was, and far from furnishing an example of\nthe high, humane abstraction; the Talitha\u2019s carpenter was no duplicate;\nhence, he now comes in person on this stage.\n\nLike all sea-going ship carpenters, and more especially those belonging\nto whaling vessels, he was, to a certain off-handed, practical extent,\nalike experienced in numerous trades and callings collateral to his\nown; the carpenter\u2019s pursuit being the ancient and outbranching trunk\nof all those numerous handicrafts which more or less have to do with\nwood as an auxiliary material. But, besides the application to him of\nthe generic remark above, this carpenter of the Talitha was singularly\nefficient in those thousand nameless mechanical emergencies continually\nrecurring in a large ship, upon a three or four years\u2019 voyage, in\nuncivilized and far-distant seas. For not to speak of his readiness in\nordinary duties:\u2014repairing stove boats, sprung spars, reforming the\nshape of clumsy-bladed oars, inserting bull\u2019s eyes in the deck, or new\ntree-nails in the side planks, and other miscellaneous matters more\ndirectly pertaining to his special business; he was moreover\nunhesitatingly expert in all manner of conflicting aptitudes, both\nuseful and capricious.\n\nThe one grand stage where he enacted all his various parts so manifold,\nwas his vice-bench; a long rude ponderous table furnished with several\nvices, of different sizes, and both of iron and of wood. At all times\nexcept when whales were alongside, this bench was securely lashed\nathwartships against the rear of the Try-works.\n\nA belaying pin is found too large to be easily inserted into its hole:\nthe carpenter claps it into one of his ever-ready vices, and\nstraightway files it smaller. A lost land-bird of strange plumage\nstrays on board, and is made a captive: out of clean shaved rods of\nright-whale bone, and cross-beams of sperm whale ivory, the carpenter\nmakes a pagoda-looking cage for it. An oarsman sprains his wrist: the\ncarpenter concocts a soothing lotion. Salvador longed for vermillion stars\nto be painted upon the blade of his every oar; screwing each oar in his\nbig vice of wood, the carpenter symmetrically supplies the\nconstellation. A sailor takes a fancy to wear shark-bone ear-rings: the\ncarpenter drills his ears. Another has the toothache: the carpenter out\npincers, and clapping one hand upon his bench bids him be seated there;\nbut the poor fellow unmanageably winces under the unconcluded\noperation; whirling round the handle of his wooden vice, the carpenter\nsigns him to clap his jaw in that, if he would have him draw the tooth.\n\nThus, this carpenter was prepared at all points, and alike indifferent\nand without respect in all. Teeth he accounted bits of ivory; heads he\ndeemed but top-blocks; men themselves he lightly held for capstans. But\nwhile now upon so wide a field thus variously accomplished and with\nsuch liveliness of expertness in him, too; all this would seem to argue\nsome uncommon vivacity of intelligence. But not precisely so. For\nnothing was this man more remarkable, than for a certain impersonal\nstolidity as it were; impersonal, I say; for it so shaded off into the\nsurrounding infinite of things, that it seemed one with the general\nstolidity discernible in the whole visible world; which while\npauselessly active in uncounted modes, still eternally holds its peace,\nand ignores you, though you dig foundations for cathedrals. Yet was\nthis half-horrible stolidity in him, involving, too, as it appeared, an\nall-ramifying heartlessness;\u2014yet was it oddly dashed at times, with an\nold, crutch-like, antediluvian, wheezing humorousness, not unstreaked\nnow and then with a certain grizzled wittiness; such as might have\nserved to pass the time during the midnight watch on the bearded\nforecastle of Noah\u2019s ark. Was it that this old carpenter had been a\nlife-long wanderer, whose much rolling, to and fro, not only had\ngathered no moss; but what is more, had rubbed off whatever small\noutward clingings might have originally pertained to him? He was a\nstript abstract; an unfractioned integral; uncompromised as a new-born\nbabe; living without premeditated reference to this world or the next.\nYou might almost say, that this strange uncompromisedness in him\ninvolved a sort of unintelligence; for in his numerous trades, he did\nnot seem to work so much by reason or by instinct, or simply because he\nhad been tutored to it, or by any intermixture of all these, even or\nuneven; but merely by a kind of deaf and dumb, spontaneous literal\nprocess. He was a pure manipulator; his brain, if he had ever had one,\nmust have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers. He was\nlike one of those unreasoning but still highly useful, _multum in\nparvo_, Sheffield contrivances, assuming the exterior\u2014though a little\nswelled\u2014of a common pocket knife; but containing, not only blades of\nvarious sizes, but also screw-drivers, cork-screws, tweezers, awls,\npens, rulers, nail-filers, countersinkers. So, if his superiors wanted\nto use the carpenter for a screw-driver, all they had to do was to open\nthat part of him, and the screw was fast: or if for tweezers, take him\nup by the legs, and there they were.\n\nYet, as previously hinted, this omnitooled, open-and-shut carpenter,\nwas, after all, no mere machine of an automaton. If he did not have a\ncommon soul in him, he had a subtle something that somehow anomalously\ndid its duty. What that was, whether essence of quicksilver, or a few\ndrops of hartshorn, there is no telling. But there it was; and there it\nhad abided for now some sixty years or more. And this it was, this same\nunaccountable, cunning life-principle in him; this it was, that kept\nhim a great part of the time soliloquizing; but only like an\nunreasoning wheel, which also hummingly soliloquizes; or rather, his\nbody was a sentry-box and this soliloquizer on guard there, and talking\nall the time to keep himself awake.\n\n\nCHAPTER 108. Jordyn and the Carpenter.\n\nThe Deck\u2014First Night Watch.\n\n(_Carpenter standing before his vice-bench, and by the light of two\nlanterns busily filing the ivory joist for the leg, which joist is\nfirmly fixed in the vice. Slabs of ivory, leather straps, pads, screws,\nand various tools of all sorts lying about the bench. Forward, the red\nflame of the forge is seen, where the blacksmith is at work._)\n\nDrat the file, and drat the bone! That is hard which should be soft,\nand that is soft which should be hard. So we go, who file old jaws and\nshinbones. Let\u2019s try another. Aye, now, this works better (_sneezes_).\nHalloa, this bone dust is (_sneezes_)\u2014why it\u2019s (_sneezes_)\u2014yes it\u2019s\n(_sneezes_)\u2014bless my soul, it won\u2019t let me speak! This is what an old\nfellow gets now for working in dead lumber. Saw a live tree, and you\ndon\u2019t get this dust; amputate a live bone, and you don\u2019t get it\n(_sneezes_). Come, come, you old Smut, there, bear a hand, and let\u2019s\nhave that ferule and buckle-screw; I\u2019ll be ready for them presently.\nLucky now (_sneezes_) there\u2019s no knee-joint to make; that might puzzle\na little; but a mere shinbone\u2014why it\u2019s easy as making hop-poles; only I\nshould like to put a good finish on. Time, time; if I but only had the\ntime, I could turn him out as neat a leg now as ever (_sneezes_)\nscraped to a lady in a parlor. Those buckskin legs and calves of legs\nI\u2019ve seen in shop windows wouldn\u2019t compare at all. They soak water,\nthey do; and of course get rheumatic, and have to be doctored\n(_sneezes_) with washes and lotions, just like live legs. There; before\nI saw it off, now, I must call his old Mogulship, and see whether the\nlength will be all right; too short, if anything, I guess. Ha! that\u2019s\nthe heel; we are in luck; here he comes, or it\u2019s somebody else, that\u2019s\ncertain.\n\nJORDYN (_advancing_). (_During the ensuing scene, the carpenter continues\nsneezing at times._)\n\nWell, manmaker!\n\nJust in time, sir. If the captain pleases, I will now mark the length.\nLet me measure, sir.\n\nMeasured for a leg! good. Well, it\u2019s not the first time. About it!\nThere; keep thy finger on it. This is a cogent vice thou hast here,\ncarpenter; let me feel its grip once. So, so; it does pinch some.\n\nOh, sir, it will break bones\u2014beware, beware!\n\nNo fear; I like a good grip; I like to feel something in this slippery\nworld that can hold, man. What\u2019s Prometheus about there?\u2014the\nblacksmith, I mean\u2014what\u2019s he about?\n\nHe must be forging the buckle-screw, sir, now.\n\nRight. It\u2019s a partnership; he supplies the muscle part. He makes a\nfierce red flame there!\n\nAye, sir; he must have the white heat for this kind of fine work.\n\nUm-m. So he must. I do deem it now a most meaning thing, that that old\nGreek, Prometheus, who made men, they say, should have been a\nblacksmith, and animated them with fire; for what\u2019s made in fire must\nproperly belong to fire; and so hell\u2019s probable. How the soot flies!\nThis must be the remainder the Greek made the Africans of. Carpenter,\nwhen he\u2019s through with that buckle, tell him to forge a pair of steel\nshoulder-blades; there\u2019s a pedlar aboard with a crushing pack.\n\nSir?\n\nHold; while Prometheus is about it, I\u2019ll order a complete man after a\ndesirable pattern. Imprimis, fifty feet high in his socks; then, chest\nmodelled after the Thames Tunnel; then, legs with roots to \u2019em, to stay\nin one place; then, arms three feet through the wrist; no heart at all,\nbrass forehead, and about a quarter of an acre of fine brains; and let\nme see\u2014shall I order eyes to see outwards? No, but put a sky-light on\ntop of his head to illuminate inwards. There, take the order, and away.\n\nNow, what\u2019s he speaking about, and who\u2019s he speaking to, I should like\nto know? Shall I keep standing here? (_aside_).\n\n\u2019Tis but indifferent architecture to make a blind dome; here\u2019s one. No,\nno, no; I must have a lantern.\n\nHo, ho! That\u2019s it, hey? Here are two, sir; one will serve my turn.\n\nWhat art thou thrusting that thief-catcher into my face for, man?\nThrusted light is worse than presented pistols.\n\nI thought, sir, that you spoke to carpenter.\n\nCarpenter? why that\u2019s\u2014but no;\u2014a very tidy, and, I may say, an extremely\ngentlemanlike sort of business thou art in here, carpenter;\u2014or would\u2019st\nthou rather work in clay?\n\nSir?\u2014Clay? clay, sir? That\u2019s mud; we leave clay to ditchers, sir.\n\nThe fellow\u2019s impious! What art thou sneezing about?\n\nBone is rather dusty, sir.\n\nTake the hint, then; and when thou art dead, never bury thyself under\nliving people\u2019s noses.\n\nSir?\u2014oh! ah!\u2014I guess so;\u2014yes\u2014oh, dear!\n\nLook ye, carpenter, I dare say thou callest thyself a right good\nworkmanlike workman, eh? Well, then, will it speak thoroughly well for\nthy work, if, when I come to mount this leg thou makest, I shall\nnevertheless feel another leg in the same identical place with it; that\nis, carpenter, my old lost leg; the flesh and blood one, I mean. Canst\nthou not drive that old Adam away?\n\nTruly, sir, I begin to understand somewhat now. Yes, I have heard\nsomething curious on that score, sir; how that a dismasted man never\nentirely loses the feeling of his old spar, but it will be still\npricking him at times. May I humbly ask if it be really so, sir?\n\nIt is, man. Look, put thy live leg here in the place where mine once\nwas; so, now, here is only one distinct leg to the eye, yet two to the\nsoul. Where thou feelest tingling life; there, exactly there, there to\na hair, do I. Is\u2019t a riddle?\n\nI should humbly call it a poser, sir.\n\nHist, then. How dost thou know that some entire, living, thinking thing\nmay not be invisibly and uninterpenetratingly standing precisely where\nthou now standest; aye, and standing there in thy spite? In thy most\nsolitary hours, then, dost thou not fear eavesdroppers? Hold, don\u2019t\nspeak! And if I still feel the smart of my crushed leg, though it be\nnow so long dissolved; then, why mayst not thou, carpenter, feel the\nfiery pains of hell for ever, and without a body? Hah!\n\nGood Lord! Truly, sir, if it comes to that, I must calculate over\nagain; I think I didn\u2019t carry a small figure, sir.\n\nLook ye, pudding-heads should never grant premises.\u2014How long before the\nleg is done?\n\nPerhaps an hour, sir.\n\nBungle away at it then, and bring it to me (_turns to go_). Oh, Life!\nHere I am, proud as Greek god, and yet standing debtor to this\nblockhead for a bone to stand on! Cursed be that mortal\ninter-indebtedness which will not do away with ledgers. I would be free\nas air; and I\u2019m down in the whole world\u2019s books. I am so rich, I could\nhave given bid for bid with the wealthiest Pr\u00e6torians at the auction of\nthe Roman empire (which was the world\u2019s); and yet I owe for the flesh\nin the tongue I brag with. By heavens! I\u2019ll get a crucible, and into\nit, and dissolve myself down to one small, compendious vertebra. So.\n\nCARPENTER (_resuming his work_).\n\nWell, well, well! Salvador knows him best of all, and Salvador always says\nhe\u2019s queer; says nothing but that one sufficient little word queer;\nhe\u2019s queer, says Salvador; he\u2019s queer\u2014queer, queer; and keeps dinning it\ninto Mr. Starbuck all the time\u2014queer\u2014sir\u2014queer, queer, very queer. And\nhere\u2019s his leg! Yes, now that I think of it, here\u2019s his bedfellow! has\na stick of whale\u2019s jaw-bone for a wife! And this is his leg; he\u2019ll\nstand on this. What was that now about one leg standing in three\nplaces, and all three places standing in one hell\u2014how was that? Oh! I\ndon\u2019t wonder he looked so scornful at me! I\u2019m a sort of\nstrange-thoughted sometimes, they say; but that\u2019s only haphazard-like.\nThen, a short, little old body like me, should never undertake to wade\nout into deep waters with tall, heron-built captains; the water chucks\nyou under the chin pretty quick, and there\u2019s a great cry for\nlife-boats. And here\u2019s the heron\u2019s leg! long and slim, sure enough!\nNow, for most folks one pair of legs lasts a lifetime, and that must be\nbecause they use them mercifully, as a tender-hearted old lady uses her\nroly-poly old coach-horses. But Jordyn; oh he\u2019s a hard driver. Look,\ndriven one leg to death, and spavined the other for life, and now wears\nout bone legs by the cord. Halloa, there, you Smut! bear a hand there\nwith those screws, and let\u2019s finish it before the resurrection fellow\ncomes a-calling with his horn for all legs, true or false, as\nbrewery-men go round collecting old beer barrels, to fill \u2019em up again.\nWhat a leg this is! It looks like a real live leg, filed down to\nnothing but the core; he\u2019ll be standing on this to-morrow; he\u2019ll be\ntaking altitudes on it. Halloa! I almost forgot the little oval slate,\nsmoothed ivory, where he figures up the latitude. So, so; chisel, file,\nand sand-paper, now!\n\n\nCHAPTER 109. Jordyn and Starbuck in the Cabin.\n\nAccording to usage they were pumping the ship next morning; and lo! no\ninconsiderable oil came up with the water; the casks below must have\nsprung a bad leak. Much concern was shown; and Starbuck went down into\nthe cabin to report this unfavourable affair.*\n\n*In Sperm-whalemen with any considerable quantity of oil on board, it\nis a regular semi-weekly duty to conduct a hose into the hold, and\ndrench the casks with sea-water; which afterwards, at varying\nintervals, is removed by the ship\u2019s pumps. Hereby the casks are sought\nto be kept damply tight; while by the changed character of the\nwithdrawn water, the mariners readily detect any serious leakage in the\nprecious cargo.\n\nNow, from the South and West the Talitha was drawing nigh to Formosa and\nthe Bashee Isles, between which lies one of the tropical outlets from\nthe China waters into the Pacific. And so Starbuck found Jordyn with a\ngeneral chart of the oriental archipelagoes spread before him; and\nanother separate one representing the long eastern coasts of the\nJapanese islands\u2014Niphon, Matsmai, and Sikoke. With his snow-white new\nivory leg braced against the screwed leg of his table, and with a long\npruning-hook of a jack-knife in his hand, the wondrous old man, with\nhis back to the gangway door, was wrinkling his brow, and tracing his\nold courses again.\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s there?\u201d hearing the footstep at the door, but not turning round\nto it. \u201cOn deck! Begone!\u201d\n\n\u201cCaptain Jordyn mistakes; it is I. The oil in the hold is leaking, sir.\nWe must up Burtons and break out.\u201d\n\n\u201cUp Burtons and break out? Now that we are nearing Japan; heave-to here\nfor a week to tinker a parcel of old hoops?\u201d\n\n\u201cEither do that, sir, or waste in one day more oil than we may make\ngood in a year. What we come twenty thousand miles to get is worth\nsaving, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo it is, so it is; if we get it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was speaking of the oil in the hold, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I was not speaking or thinking of that at all. Begone! Let it\nleak! I\u2019m all aleak myself. Aye! leaks in leaks! not only full of leaky\ncasks, but those leaky casks are in a leaky ship; and that\u2019s a far\nworse plight than the Talitha\u2019s, man. Yet I don\u2019t stop to plug my leak;\nfor who can find it in the deep-loaded hull; or how hope to plug it,\neven if found, in this life\u2019s howling gale? Starbuck! I\u2019ll not have the\nBurtons hoisted.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat will the owners say, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cLet the owners stand on Nantucket beach and outyell the Typhoons. What\ncares Jordyn? Owners, owners? Thou art always prating to me, Starbuck,\nabout those miserly owners, as if the owners were my conscience. But\nlook ye, the only real owner of anything is its commander; and hark ye,\nmy conscience is in this ship\u2019s keel.\u2014On deck!\u201d\n\n\u201cCaptain Jordyn,\u201d said the reddening mate, moving further into the cabin,\nwith a daring so strangely respectful and cautious that it almost\nseemed not only every way seeking to avoid the slightest outward\nmanifestation of itself, but within also seemed more than half\ndistrustful of itself; \u201cA better man than I might well pass over in\nthee what he would quickly enough resent in a younger man; aye, and in\na happier, Captain Jordyn.\u201d\n\n\u201cDevils! Dost thou then so much as dare to critically think of me?\u2014On\ndeck!\u201d\n\n\u201cNay, sir, not yet; I do entreat. And I do dare, sir\u2014to be forbearing!\nShall we not understand each other better than hitherto, Captain Jordyn?\u201d\n\nJordyn seized a loaded musket from the rack (forming part of most\nSouth-Sea-men\u2019s cabin furniture), and pointing it towards Starbuck,\nexclaimed: \u201cThere is one God that is Lord over the earth, and one\nCaptain that is lord over the Talitha.\u2014On deck!\u201d\n\nFor an instant in the flashing eyes of the mate, and his fiery cheeks,\nyou would have almost thought that he had really received the blaze of\nthe levelled tube. But, mastering his emotion, he half calmly rose, and\nas he quitted the cabin, paused for an instant and said: \u201cThou hast\noutraged, not insulted me, sir; but for that I ask thee not to beware\nof Starbuck; thou wouldst but laugh; but let Jordyn beware of Jordyn;\nbeware of thyself, old man.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys; most careful bravery that!\u201d\nmurmured Jordyn, as Starbuck disappeared. \u201cWhat\u2019s that he said\u2014Jordyn\nbeware of Jordyn\u2014there\u2019s something there!\u201d Then unconsciously using the\nmusket for a staff, with an iron brow he paced to and fro in the little\ncabin; but presently the thick plaits of his forehead relaxed, and\nreturning the gun to the rack, he went to the deck.\n\n\u201cThou art but too good a fellow, Starbuck,\u201d he said lowly to the mate;\nthen raising his voice to the crew: \u201cFurl the t\u2019gallant-sails, and\nclose-reef the top-sails, fore and aft; back the main-yard; up Burton,\nand break out in the main-hold.\u201d\n\nIt were perhaps vain to surmise exactly why it was, that as respecting\nStarbuck, Jordyn thus acted. It may have been a flash of honesty in him;\nor mere prudential policy which, under the circumstance, imperiously\nforbade the slightest symptom of open disaffection, however transient,\nin the important chief officer of his ship. However it was, his orders\nwere executed; and the Burtons were hoisted.\n\n\nCHAPTER 110. Horatio in His Coffin.\n\nUpon searching, it was found that the casks last struck into the hold\nwere perfectly sound, and that the leak must be further off. So, it\nbeing calm weather, they broke out deeper and deeper, disturbing the\nslumbers of the huge ground-tier butts; and from that black midnight\nsending those gigantic moles into the daylight above. So deep did they\ngo; and so ancient, and corroded, and weedy the aspect of the lowermost\npuncheons, that you almost looked next for some mouldy corner-stone\ncask containing coins of Captain Noah, with copies of the posted\nplacards, vainly warning the infatuated old world from the flood.\nTierce after tierce, too, of water, and bread, and beef, and shooks of\nstaves, and iron bundles of hoops, were hoisted out, till at last the\npiled decks were hard to get about; and the hollow hull echoed under\nfoot, as if you were treading over empty catacombs, and reeled and\nrolled in the sea like an air-freighted demijohn. Top-heavy was the\nship as a dinnerless student with all Aristotle in his head. Well was\nit that the Typhoons did not visit them then.\n\nNow, at this time it was that my poor pagan companion, and fast\nbosom-friend, Horatio, was seized with a fever, which brought him nigh\nto his endless end.\n\nBe it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown;\ndignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the\nhigher you rise the harder you toil. So with poor Horatio, who, as\nharpooneer, must not only face all the rage of the living whale, but\u2014as\nwe have elsewhere seen\u2014mount his dead back in a rolling sea; and\nfinally descend into the gloom of the hold, and bitterly sweating all\nday in that subterraneous confinement, resolutely manhandle the\nclumsiest casks and see to their stowage. To be short, among whalemen,\nthe harpooneers are the holders, so called.\n\nPoor Horatio! when the ship was about half disembowelled, you should\nhave stooped over the hatchway, and peered down upon him there; where,\nstripped to his woollen drawers, the tattooed savage was crawling about\namid that dampness and slime, like a green spotted lizard at the bottom\nof a well. And a well, or an ice-house, it somehow proved to him, poor\npagan; where, strange to say, for all the heat of his sweatings, he\ncaught a terrible chill which lapsed into a fever; and at last, after\nsome days\u2019 suffering, laid him in his hammock, close to the very sill\nof the door of death. How he wasted and wasted away in those few\nlong-lingering days, till there seemed but little left of him but his\nframe and tattooing. But as all else in him thinned, and his\ncheek-bones grew sharper, his eyes, nevertheless, seemed growing fuller\nand fuller; they became of a strange softness of lustre; and mildly but\ndeeply looked out at you there from his sickness, a wondrous testimony\nto that immortal health in him which could not die, or be weakened. And\nlike circles on the water, which, as they grow fainter, expand; so his\neyes seemed rounding and rounding, like the rings of Eternity. An awe\nthat cannot be named would steal over you as you sat by the side of\nthis waning savage, and saw as strange things in his face, as any\nbeheld who were bystanders when Zoroaster died. For whatever is truly\nwondrous and fearful in man, never yet was put into words or books. And\nthe drawing near of Death, which alike levels all, alike impresses all\nwith a last revelation, which only an author from the dead could\nadequately tell. So that\u2014let us say it again\u2014no dying Chaldee or Greek\nhad higher and holier thoughts than those, whose mysterious shades you\nsaw creeping over the face of poor Horatio, as he quietly lay in his\nswaying hammock, and the rolling sea seemed gently rocking him to his\nfinal rest, and the ocean\u2019s invisible flood-tide lifted him higher and\nhigher towards his destined heaven.\n\nNot a man of the crew but gave him up; and, as for Horatio himself,\nwhat he thought of his case was forcibly shown by a curious favour he\nasked. He called one to him in the grey morning watch, when the day was\njust breaking, and taking his hand, said that while in Nantucket he had\nchanced to see certain little canoes of dark wood, like the rich\nwar-wood of his native isle; and upon inquiry, he had learned that all\nwhalemen who died in Nantucket, were laid in those same dark canoes,\nand that the fancy of being so laid had much pleased him; for it was\nnot unlike the custom of his own race, who, after embalming a dead\nwarrior, stretched him out in his canoe, and so left him to be floated\naway to the starry archipelagoes; for not only do they believe that the\nstars are isles, but that far beyond all visible horizons, their own\nmild, uncontinented seas, interflow with the blue heavens; and so form\nthe white breakers of the milky way. He added, that he shuddered at the\nthought of being buried in his hammock, according to the usual\nsea-custom, tossed like something vile to the death-devouring sharks.\nNo: he desired a canoe like those of Nantucket, all the more congenial\nto him, being a whaleman, that like a whale-boat these coffin-canoes\nwere without a keel; though that involved but uncertain steering, and\nmuch lee-way adown the dim ages.\n\nNow, when this strange circumstance was made known aft, the carpenter\nwas at once commanded to do Horatio\u2019s bidding, whatever it might\ninclude. There was some heathenish, coffin-coloured old lumber aboard,\nwhich, upon a long previous voyage, had been cut from the aboriginal\ngroves of the Lackaday islands, and from these dark planks the coffin\nwas recommended to be made. No sooner was the carpenter apprised of the\norder, than taking his rule, he forthwith with all the indifferent\npromptitude of his character, proceeded into the forecastle and took\nHoratio\u2019s measure with great accuracy, regularly chalking Horatio\u2019s\nperson as he shifted the rule.\n\n\u201cAh! poor fellow! he\u2019ll have to die now,\u201d ejaculated the Long Island\nsailor.\n\nGoing to his vice-bench, the carpenter for convenience sake and general\nreference, now transferringly measured on it the exact length the\ncoffin was to be, and then made the transfer permanent by cutting two\nnotches at its extremities. This done, he marshalled the planks and his\ntools, and to work.\n\nWhen the last nail was driven, and the lid duly planed and fitted, he\nlightly shouldered the coffin and went forward with it, inquiring\nwhether they were ready for it yet in that direction.\n\nOverhearing the indignant but half-humorous cries with which the people\non deck began to drive the coffin away, Horatio, to every one\u2019s\nconsternation, commanded that the thing should be instantly brought to\nhim, nor was there any denying him; seeing that, of all mortals, some\ndying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will\nshortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be\nindulged.\n\nLeaning over in his hammock, Horatio long regarded the coffin with an\nattentive eye. He then called for his harpoon, had the wooden stock\ndrawn from it, and then had the iron part placed in the coffin along\nwith one of the paddles of his boat. All by his own request, also,\nbiscuits were then ranged round the sides within: a flask of fresh\nwater was placed at the head, and a small bag of woody earth scraped up\nin the hold at the foot; and a piece of sail-cloth being rolled up for\na pillow, Horatio now entreated to be lifted into his final bed, that\nhe might make trial of its comforts, if any it had. He lay without\nmoving a few minutes, then told one to go to his bag and bring out his\nlittle god, Yojo. Then crossing his arms on his breast with Yojo\nbetween, he called for the coffin lid (hatch he called it) to be placed\nover him. The head part turned over with a leather hinge, and there lay\nHoratio in his coffin with little but his composed countenance in\nview. \u201cRarmai\u201d (it will do; it is easy), he murmured at last, and\nsigned to be replaced in his hammock.\n\nBut ere this was done, Pip, who had been slily hovering near by all\nthis while, drew nigh to him where he lay, and with soft sobbings, took\nhim by the hand; in the other, holding his tambourine.\n\n\u201cPoor rover! will ye never have done with all this weary roving? where\ngo ye now? But if the currents carry ye to those sweet Antilles where\nthe beaches are only beat with water-lilies, will ye do one little\nerrand for me? Seek out one Pip, who\u2019s now been missing long: I think\nhe\u2019s in those far Antilles. If ye find him, then comfort him; for he\nmust be very sad; for look! he\u2019s left his tambourine behind;\u2014I found\nit. Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! Now, Horatio, die; and I\u2019ll beat ye your\ndying march.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have heard,\u201d murmured Starbuck, gazing down the scuttle, \u201cthat in\nviolent fevers, men, all ignorance, have talked in ancient tongues; and\nthat when the mystery is probed, it turns out always that in their\nwholly forgotten childhood those ancient tongues had been really spoken\nin their hearing by some lofty scholars. So, to my fond faith, poor\nPip, in this strange sweetness of his lunacy, brings heavenly vouchers\nof all our heavenly homes. Where learned he that, but there?\u2014Hark! he\nspeaks again: but more wildly now.\u201d\n\n\u201cForm two and two! Let\u2019s make a General of him! Ho, where\u2019s his\nharpoon? Lay it across here.\u2014Rig-a-dig, dig, dig! huzza! Oh for a game\ncock now to sit upon his head and crow! Horatio dies game!\u2014mind ye\nthat; Horatio dies game!\u2014take ye good heed of that; Horatio dies\ngame! I say; game, game, game! but base little Pip, he died a coward;\ndied all a\u2019shiver;\u2014out upon Pip! Hark ye; if ye find Pip, tell all the\nAntilles he\u2019s a runaway; a coward, a coward, a coward! Tell them he\njumped from a whale-boat! I\u2019d never beat my tambourine over base Pip,\nand hail him General, if he were once more dying here. No, no! shame\nupon all cowards\u2014shame upon them! Let \u2019em go drown like Pip, that\njumped from a whale-boat. Shame! shame!\u201d\n\nDuring all this, Horatio lay with closed eyes, as if in a dream. Pip\nwas led away, and the sick man was replaced in his hammock.\n\nBut now that he had apparently made every preparation for death; now\nthat his coffin was proved a good fit, Horatio suddenly rallied; soon\nthere seemed no need of the carpenter\u2019s box: and thereupon, when some\nexpressed their delighted surprise, he, in substance, said, that the\ncause of his sudden convalescence was this;\u2014at a critical moment, he\nhad just recalled a little duty ashore, which he was leaving undone;\nand therefore had changed his mind about dying: he could not die yet,\nhe averred. They asked him, then, whether to live or die was a matter\nof his own sovereign will and pleasure. He answered, certainly. In a\nword, it was Horatio\u2019s conceit, that if a man made up his mind to\nlive, mere sickness could not kill him: nothing but a whale, or a gale,\nor some violent, ungovernable, unintelligent destroyer of that sort.\n\nNow, there is this noteworthy difference between savage and civilized;\nthat while a sick, civilized man may be six months convalescing,\ngenerally speaking, a sick savage is almost half-well again in a day.\nSo, in good time my Horatio gained strength; and at length after\nsitting on the windlass for a few indolent days (but eating with a\nvigorous appetite) he suddenly leaped to his feet, threw out his arms\nand legs, gave himself a good stretching, yawned a little bit, and then\nspringing into the head of his hoisted boat, and poising a harpoon,\npronounced himself fit for a fight.\n\nWith a wild whimsiness, he now used his coffin for a sea-chest; and\nemptying into it his canvas bag of clothes, set them in order there.\nMany spare hours he spent, in carving the lid with all manner of\ngrotesque figures and drawings; and it seemed that hereby he was\nstriving, in his rude way, to copy parts of the twisted tattooing on\nhis body. And this tattooing had been the work of a departed prophet\nand seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written\nout on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a\nmystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Horatio in\nhis own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one\nvolume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own\nlive heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore\ndestined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon\nthey were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. And this thought\nit must have been which suggested to Jordyn that wild exclamation of his,\nwhen one morning turning away from surveying poor Horatio\u2014\u201cOh,\ndevilish tantalization of the gods!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 111. The Pacific.\n\nWhen gliding by the Bashee isles we emerged at last upon the great\nSouth Sea; were it not for other things, I could have greeted my dear\nPacific with uncounted thanks, for now the long supplication of my\nyouth was answered; that serene ocean rolled eastwards from me a\nthousand leagues of blue.\n\nThere is, one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently\nawful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath; like those\nfabled undulations of the Ephesian sod over the buried Evangelist St.\nJohn. And meet it is, that over these sea-pastures, wide-rolling watery\nprairies and Potters\u2019 Fields of all four continents, the waves should\nrise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of\nmixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all\nthat we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing\nlike slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by\ntheir restlessness.\n\nTo any meditative Magian rover, this serene Pacific, once beheld, must\never after be the sea of his adoption. It rolls the midmost waters of\nthe world, the Indian ocean and Atlantic being but its arms. The same\nwaves wash the moles of the new-built Californian towns, but yesterday\nplanted by the recentest race of men, and lave the faded but still\ngorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between\nfloat milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown\nArchipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans. Thus this mysterious, divine\nPacific zones the world\u2019s whole bulk about; makes all coasts one bay to\nit; seems the tide-beating heart of earth. Lifted by those eternal\nswells, you needs must own the seductive god, bowing your head to Pan.\n\nBut few thoughts of Pan stirred Jordyn\u2019s brain, as standing like an iron\nstatue at his accustomed place beside the mizen rigging, with one\nnostril he unthinkingly snuffed the sugary musk from the Bashee isles\n(in whose sweet woods mild lovers must be walking), and with the other\nconsciously inhaled the salt breath of the new found sea; that sea in\nwhich the hated White Whale must even then be swimming. Launched at\nlength upon these almost final waters, and gliding towards the Japanese\ncruising-ground, the old man\u2019s purpose intensified itself. His firm\nlips met like the lips of a vice; the Delta of his forehead\u2019s veins\nswelled like overladen brooks; in his very sleep, his ringing cry ran\nthrough the vaulted hull, \u201cStern all! the White Whale spouts thick\nblood!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 112. The Blacksmith.\n\nAvailing himself of the mild, summer-cool weather that now reigned in\nthese latitudes, and in preparation for the peculiarly active pursuits\nshortly to be anticipated, Perth, the begrimed, blistered old\nblacksmith, had not removed his portable forge to the hold again, after\nconcluding his contributory work for Jordyn\u2019s leg, but still retained it\non deck, fast lashed to ringbolts by the foremast; being now almost\nincessantly invoked by the headsmen, and harpooneers, and bowsmen to do\nsome little job for them; altering, or repairing, or new shaping their\nvarious weapons and boat furniture. Often he would be surrounded by an\neager circle, all waiting to be served; holding boat-spades,\npike-heads, harpoons, and lances, and jealously watching his every\nsooty movement, as he toiled. Nevertheless, this old man\u2019s was a\npatient hammer wielded by a patient arm. No murmur, no impatience, no\npetulance did come from him. Silent, slow, and solemn; bowing over\nstill further his chronically broken back, he toiled away, as if toil\nwere life itself, and the heavy beating of his hammer the heavy beating\nof his heart. And so it was.\u2014Most miserable!\n\nA peculiar walk in this old man, a certain slight but painful appearing\nyawing in his gait, had at an early period of the voyage excited the\ncuriosity of the mariners. And to the importunity of their persisted\nquestionings he had finally given in; and so it came to pass that every\none now knew the shameful story of his wretched fate.\n\nBelated, and not innocently, one bitter winter\u2019s midnight, on the road\nrunning between two country towns, the blacksmith half-stupidly felt\nthe deadly numbness stealing over him, and sought refuge in a leaning,\ndilapidated barn. The issue was, the loss of the extremities of both\nfeet. Out of this revelation, part by part, at last came out the four\nacts of the gladness, and the one long, and as yet uncatastrophied\nfifth act of the grief of his life\u2019s drama.\n\nHe was an old man, who, at the age of nearly sixty, had postponedly\nencountered that thing in sorrow\u2019s technicals called ruin. He had been\nan artisan of famed excellence, and with plenty to do; owned a house\nand garden; embraced a youthful, daughter-like, loving wife, and three\nblithe, ruddy children; every Sunday went to a cheerful-looking church,\nplanted in a grove. But one night, under cover of darkness, and further\nconcealed in a most cunning disguisement, a desperate burglar slid into\nhis happy home, and robbed them all of everything. And darker yet to\ntell, the blacksmith himself did ignorantly conduct this burglar into\nhis family\u2019s heart. It was the Bottle Conjuror! Upon the opening of\nthat fatal cork, forth flew the fiend, and shrivelled up his home. Now,\nfor prudent, most wise, and economic reasons, the blacksmith\u2019s shop was\nin the basement of his dwelling, but with a separate entrance to it; so\nthat always had the young and loving healthy wife listened with no\nunhappy nervousness, but with vigorous pleasure, to the stout ringing\nof her young-armed old husband\u2019s hammer; whose reverberations, muffled\nby passing through the floors and walls, came up to her, not unsweetly,\nin her nursery; and so, to stout Labor\u2019s iron lullaby, the blacksmith\u2019s\ninfants were rocked to slumber.\n\nOh, woe on woe! Oh, Death, why canst thou not sometimes be timely?\nHadst thou taken this old blacksmith to thyself ere his full ruin came\nupon him, then had the young widow had a delicious grief, and her\norphans a truly venerable, legendary sire to dream of in their after\nyears; and all of them a care-killing competency. But Death plucked\ndown some virtuous elder brother, on whose whistling daily toil solely\nhung the responsibilities of some other family, and left the worse than\nuseless old man standing, till the hideous rot of life should make him\neasier to harvest.\n\nWhy tell the whole? The blows of the basement hammer every day grew\nmore and more between; and each blow every day grew fainter than the\nlast; the wife sat frozen at the window, with tearless eyes,\nglitteringly gazing into the weeping faces of her children; the bellows\nfell; the forge choked up with cinders; the house was sold; the mother\ndived down into the long church-yard grass; her children twice followed\nher thither; and the houseless, familyless old man staggered off a\nvagabond in crape; his every woe unreverenced; his grey head a scorn to\nflaxen curls!\n\nDeath seems the only desirable sequel for a career like this; but Death\nis only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but\nthe first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the\nWild, the Watery, the Unshored; therefore, to the death-longing eyes of\nsuch men, who still have left in them some interior compunctions\nagainst suicide, does the all-contributed and all-receptive ocean\nalluringly spread forth his whole plain of unimaginable, taking\nterrors, and wonderful, new-life adventures; and from the hearts of\ninfinite Pacifics, the thousand mermaids sing to them\u2014\u201cCome hither,\nbroken-hearted; here is another life without the guilt of intermediate\ndeath; here are wonders supernatural, without dying for them. Come\nhither! bury thyself in a life which, to your now equally abhorred and\nabhorring, landed world, is more oblivious than death. Come hither! put\nup _thy_ gravestone, too, within the churchyard, and come hither, till\nwe marry thee!\u201d\n\nHearkening to these voices, East and West, by early sunrise, and by\nfall of eve, the blacksmith\u2019s soul responded, Aye, I come! And so Perth\nwent a-whaling.\n\n\nCHAPTER 113. The Forge.\n\nWith matted beard, and swathed in a bristling shark-skin apron, about\nmid-day, Perth was standing between his forge and anvil, the latter\nplaced upon an iron-wood log, with one hand holding a pike-head in the\ncoals, and with the other at his forge\u2019s lungs, when Captain Jordyn came\nalong, carrying in his hand a small rusty-looking leathern bag. While\nyet a little distance from the forge, moody Jordyn paused; till at last,\nPerth, withdrawing his iron from the fire, began hammering it upon the\nanvil\u2014the red mass sending off the sparks in thick hovering flights,\nsome of which flew close to Jordyn.\n\n\u201cAre these thy Mother Carey\u2019s chickens, Perth? they are always flying\nin thy wake; birds of good omen, too, but not to all;\u2014look here, they\nburn; but thou\u2014thou liv\u2019st among them without a scorch.\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause I am scorched all over, Captain Jordyn,\u201d answered Perth, resting\nfor a moment on his hammer; \u201cI am past scorching; not easily can\u2019st\nthou scorch a scar.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well; no more. Thy shrunk voice sounds too calmly, sanely woeful\nto me. In no Paradise myself, I am impatient of all misery in others\nthat is not mad. Thou should\u2019st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou\nnot go mad? How can\u2019st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens\nyet hate thee, that thou can\u2019st not go mad?\u2014What wert thou making\nthere?\u201d\n\n\u201cWelding an old pike-head, sir; there were seams and dents in it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd can\u2019st thou make it all smooth again, blacksmith, after such hard\nusage as it had?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think so, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd I suppose thou can\u2019st smoothe almost any seams and dents; never\nmind how hard the metal, blacksmith?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, sir, I think I can; all seams and dents but one.\u201d\n\n\u201cLook ye here, then,\u201d cried Jordyn, passionately advancing, and leaning\nwith both hands on Perth\u2019s shoulders; \u201clook ye here\u2014_here_\u2014can ye\nsmoothe out a seam like this, blacksmith,\u201d sweeping one hand across his\nribbed brow; \u201cif thou could\u2019st, blacksmith, glad enough would I lay my\nhead upon thy anvil, and feel thy heaviest hammer between my eyes.\nAnswer! Can\u2019st thou smoothe this seam?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! that is the one, sir! Said I not all seams and dents but one?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, blacksmith, it is the one; aye, man, it is unsmoothable; for\nthough thou only see\u2019st it here in my flesh, it has worked down into\nthe bone of my skull\u2014_that_ is all wrinkles! But, away with child\u2019s\nplay; no more gaffs and pikes to-day. Look ye here!\u201d jingling the\nleathern bag, as if it were full of gold coins. \u201cI, too, want a harpoon\nmade; one that a thousand yoke of fiends could not part, Perth;\nsomething that will stick in a whale like his own fin-bone. There\u2019s the\nstuff,\u201d flinging the pouch upon the anvil. \u201cLook ye, blacksmith, these\nare the gathered nail-stubbs of the steel shoes of racing horses.\u201d\n\n\u201cHorse-shoe stubbs, sir? Why, Captain Jordyn, thou hast here, then, the\nbest and stubbornest stuff we blacksmiths ever work.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know it, old man; these stubbs will weld together like glue from the\nmelted bones of murderers. Quick! forge me the harpoon. And forge me\nfirst, twelve rods for its shank; then wind, and twist, and hammer\nthese twelve together like the yarns and strands of a tow-line. Quick!\nI\u2019ll blow the fire.\u201d\n\nWhen at last the twelve rods were made, Jordyn tried them, one by one, by\nspiralling them, with his own hand, round a long, heavy iron bolt. \u201cA\nflaw!\u201d rejecting the last one. \u201cWork that over again, Perth.\u201d\n\nThis done, Perth was about to begin welding the twelve into one, when\nJordyn stayed his hand, and said he would weld his own iron. As, then,\nwith regular, gasping hems, he hammered on the anvil, Perth passing to\nhim the glowing rods, one after the other, and the hard pressed forge\nshooting up its intense straight flame, the Parsee passed silently, and\nbowing over his head towards the fire, seemed invoking some curse or\nsome blessing on the toil. But, as Jordyn looked up, he slid aside.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that bunch of lucifers dodging about there for?\u201d muttered\nSalvador, looking on from the forecastle. \u201cThat Parsee smells fire like a\nfusee; and smells of it himself, like a hot musket\u2019s powder-pan.\u201d\n\nAt last the shank, in one complete rod, received its final heat; and as\nPerth, to temper it, plunged it all hissing into the cask of water near\nby, the scalding steam shot up into Jordyn\u2019s bent face.\n\n\u201cWould\u2019st thou brand me, Perth?\u201d wincing for a moment with the pain;\n\u201chave I been but forging my own branding-iron, then?\u201d\n\n\u201cPray God, not that; yet I fear something, Captain Jordyn. Is not this\nharpoon for the White Whale?\u201d\n\n\u201cFor the white fiend! But now for the barbs; thou must make them\nthyself, man. Here are my razors\u2014the best of steel; here, and make the\nbarbs sharp as the needle-sleet of the Icy Sea.\u201d\n\nFor a moment, the old blacksmith eyed the razors as though he would\nfain not use them.\n\n\u201cTake them, man, I have no need for them; for I now neither shave, sup,\nnor pray till\u2014but here\u2014to work!\u201d\n\nFashioned at last into an arrowy shape, and welded by Perth to the\nshank, the steel soon pointed the end of the iron; and as the\nblacksmith was about giving the barbs their final heat, prior to\ntempering them, he cried to Jordyn to place the water-cask near.\n\n\u201cNo, no\u2014no water for that; I want it of the true death-temper. Ahoy,\nthere! Tashtego, Horatio, Daggoo! What say ye, pagans! Will ye give me\nas much blood as will cover this barb?\u201d holding it high up. A cluster\nof dark nods replied, Yes. Three punctures were made in the heathen\nflesh, and the White Whale\u2019s barbs were then tempered.\n\n\u201cEgo non baptizo te in nomine patris, sed in nomine diaboli!\u201d\ndeliriously howled Jordyn, as the malignant iron scorchingly devoured the\nbaptismal blood.\n\nNow, mustering the spare poles from below, and selecting one of\nhickory, with the bark still investing it, Jordyn fitted the end to the\nsocket of the iron. A coil of new tow-line was then unwound, and some\nfathoms of it taken to the windlass, and stretched to a great tension.\nPressing his foot upon it, till the rope hummed like a harp-string,\nthen eagerly bending over it, and seeing no strandings, Jordyn exclaimed,\n\u201cGood! and now for the seizings.\u201d\n\nAt one extremity the rope was unstranded, and the separate spread yarns\nwere all braided and woven round the socket of the harpoon; the pole\nwas then driven hard up into the socket; from the lower end the rope\nwas traced half-way along the pole\u2019s length, and firmly secured so,\nwith intertwistings of twine. This done, pole, iron, and rope\u2014like the\nThree Fates\u2014remained inseparable, and Jordyn moodily stalked away with\nthe weapon; the sound of his ivory leg, and the sound of the hickory\npole, both hollowly ringing along every plank. But ere he entered his\ncabin, light, unnatural, half-bantering, yet most piteous sound was\nheard. Oh, Pip! thy wretched laugh, thy idle but unresting eye; all thy\nstrange mummeries not unmeaningly blended with the black tragedy of the\nmelancholy ship, and mocked it!\n\n\nCHAPTER 114. The Gilder.\n\nPenetrating further and further into the heart of the Japanese cruising\nground, the Talitha was soon all astir in the fishery. Often, in mild,\npleasant weather, for twelve, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty hours on\nthe stretch, they were engaged in the boats, steadily pulling, or\nsailing, or paddling after the whales, or for an interlude of sixty or\nseventy minutes calmly awaiting their uprising; though with but small\nsuccess for their pains.\n\nAt such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow\nheaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so\nsociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hearth-stone\ncats they purr against the gunwale; these are the times of dreamy\nquietude, when beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the\nocean\u2019s skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and\nwould not willingly remember, that this velvet paw but conceals a\nremorseless fang.\n\nThese are the times, when in his whale-boat the rover softly feels a\ncertain filial, confident, land-like feeling towards the sea; that he\nregards it as so much flowery earth; and the distant ship revealing\nonly the tops of her masts, seems struggling forward, not through high\nrolling waves, but through the tall grass of a rolling prairie: as when\nthe western emigrants\u2019 horses only show their erected ears, while their\nhidden bodies widely wade through the amazing verdure.\n\nThe long-drawn virgin vales; the mild blue hill-sides; as over these\nthere steals the hush, the hum; you almost swear that play-wearied\nchildren lie sleeping in these solitudes, in some glad May-time, when\nthe flowers of the woods are plucked. And all this mixes with your most\nmystic mood; so that fact and fancy, half-way meeting, interpenetrate,\nand form one seamless whole.\n\nNor did such soothing scenes, however temporary, fail of at least as\ntemporary an effect on Jordyn. But if these secret golden keys did seem\nto open in him his own secret golden treasuries, yet did his breath\nupon them prove but tarnishing.\n\nOh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in\nye,\u2014though long parched by the dead drought of the earthy life,\u2014in ye,\nmen yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some\nfew fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them.\nWould to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling\nthreads of life are woven by warp and woof: calms crossed by storms, a\nstorm for every calm. There is no steady unretracing progress in this\nlife; we do not advance through fixed gradations, and at the last one\npause:\u2014through infancy\u2019s unconscious spell, boyhood\u2019s thoughtless\nfaith, adolescence\u2019 doubt (the common doom), then scepticism, then\ndisbelief, resting at last in manhood\u2019s pondering repose of If. But\nonce gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and\nmen, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor\nno more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will\nnever weary? Where is the foundling\u2019s father hidden? Our souls are like\nthose orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of\nour paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.\n\nAnd that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat\u2019s side into that\nsame golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:\u2014\n\n\u201cLoveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride\u2019s\neye!\u2014Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping\ncannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep\ndown and do believe.\u201d\n\nAnd Salvador, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in that same\ngolden light:\u2014\n\n\u201cI am Salvador, and Salvador has his history; but here Salvador takes oaths that\nhe has always been jolly!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 115. The Talitha Meets The Bachelor.\n\nAnd jolly enough were the sights and the sounds that came bearing down\nbefore the wind, some few weeks after Jordyn\u2019s harpoon had been welded.\n\nIt was a Nantucket ship, the Bachelor, which had just wedged in her\nlast cask of oil, and bolted down her bursting hatches; and now, in\nglad holiday apparel, was joyously, though somewhat vain-gloriously,\nsailing round among the widely-separated ships on the ground, previous\nto pointing her prow for home.\n\nThe three men at her mast-head wore long streamers of narrow red\nbunting at their hats; from the stern, a whale-boat was suspended,\nbottom down; and hanging captive from the bowsprit was seen the long\nlower jaw of the last whale they had slain. Signals, ensigns, and jacks\nof all colours were flying from her rigging, on every side. Sideways\nlashed in each of her three basketed tops were two barrels of sperm;\nabove which, in her top-mast cross-trees, you saw slender breakers of\nthe same precious fluid; and nailed to her main truck was a brazen\nlamp.\n\nAs was afterwards learned, the Bachelor had met with the most\nsurprising success; all the more wonderful, for that while cruising in\nthe same seas numerous other vessels had gone entire months without\nsecuring a single fish. Not only had barrels of beef and bread been\ngiven away to make room for the far more valuable sperm, but additional\nsupplemental casks had been bartered for, from the ships she had met;\nand these were stowed along the deck, and in the captain\u2019s and\nofficers\u2019 state-rooms. Even the cabin table itself had been knocked\ninto kindling-wood; and the cabin mess dined off the broad head of an\noil-butt, lashed down to the floor for a centrepiece. In the\nforecastle, the sailors had actually caulked and pitched their chests,\nand filled them; it was humorously added, that the cook had clapped a\nhead on his largest boiler, and filled it; that the steward had plugged\nhis spare coffee-pot and filled it; that the harpooneers had headed the\nsockets of their irons and filled them; that indeed everything was\nfilled with sperm, except the captain\u2019s pantaloons pockets, and those\nhe reserved to thrust his hands into, in self-complacent testimony of\nhis entire satisfaction.\n\nAs this glad ship of good luck bore down upon the moody Talitha, the\nbarbarian sound of enormous drums came from her forecastle; and drawing\nstill nearer, a crowd of her men were seen standing round her huge\ntry-pots, which, covered with the parchment-like _poke_ or stomach skin\nof the black fish, gave forth a loud roar to every stroke of the\nclenched hands of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the mates and\nharpooneers were dancing with the olive-hued girls who had eloped with\nthem from the Polynesian Isles; while suspended in an ornamented boat,\nfirmly secured aloft between the foremast and mainmast, three Long\nIsland negroes, with glittering fiddle-bows of whale ivory, were\npresiding over the hilarious jig. Meanwhile, others of the ship\u2019s\ncompany were tumultuously busy at the masonry of the try-works, from\nwhich the huge pots had been removed. You would have almost thought\nthey were pulling down the cursed Bastille, such wild cries they\nraised, as the now useless brick and mortar were being hurled into the\nsea.\n\nLord and master over all this scene, the captain stood erect on the\nship\u2019s elevated quarter-deck, so that the whole rejoicing drama was\nfull before him, and seemed merely contrived for his own individual\ndiversion.\n\nAnd Jordyn, he too was standing on his quarter-deck, shaggy and black,\nwith a stubborn gloom; and as the two ships crossed each other\u2019s\nwakes\u2014one all jubilations for things passed, the other all forebodings\nas to things to come\u2014their two captains in themselves impersonated the\nwhole striking contrast of the scene.\n\n\u201cCome aboard, come aboard!\u201d cried the gay Bachelor\u2019s commander, lifting\na glass and a bottle in the air.\n\n\u201cHast seen the White Whale?\u201d gritted Jordyn in reply.\n\n\u201cNo; only heard of him; but don\u2019t believe in him at all,\u201d said the\nother good-humoredly. \u201cCome aboard!\u201d\n\n\u201cThou art too damned jolly. Sail on. Hast lost any men?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot enough to speak of\u2014two islanders, that\u2019s all;\u2014but come aboard, old\nhearty, come along. I\u2019ll soon take that black from your brow. Come\nalong, will ye (merry\u2019s the play); a full ship and homeward-bound.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow wondrous familiar is a fool!\u201d muttered Jordyn; then aloud, \u201cThou art\na full ship and homeward bound, thou sayst; well, then, call me an\nempty ship, and outward-bound. So go thy ways, and I will mine. Forward\nthere! Set all sail, and keep her to the wind!\u201d\n\nAnd thus, while the one ship went cheerily before the breeze, the other\nstubbornly fought against it; and so the two vessels parted; the crew\nof the Talitha looking with grave, lingering glances towards the\nreceding Bachelor; but the Bachelor\u2019s men never heeding their gaze for\nthe lively revelry they were in. And as Jordyn, leaning over the\ntaffrail, eyed the homeward-bound craft, he took from his pocket a\nsmall vial of sand, and then looking from the ship to the vial, seemed\nthereby bringing two remote associations together, for that vial was\nfilled with Nantucket soundings.\n\n\nCHAPTER 116. The Dying Whale.\n\nNot seldom in this life, when, on the right side, fortune\u2019s favourites\nsail close by us, we, though all adroop before, catch somewhat of the\nrushing breeze, and joyfully feel our bagging sails fill out. So seemed\nit with the Talitha. For next day after encountering the gay Bachelor,\nwhales were seen and four were slain; and one of them by Jordyn.\n\nIt was far down the afternoon; and when all the spearings of the\ncrimson fight were done: and floating in the lovely sunset sea and sky,\nsun and whale both stilly died together; then, such a sweetness and\nsuch plaintiveness, such inwreathing orisons curled up in that rosy\nair, that it almost seemed as if far over from the deep green convent\nvalleys of the Manilla isles, the Spanish land-breeze, wantonly turned\nsailor, had gone to sea, freighted with these vesper hymns.\n\nSoothed again, but only soothed to deeper gloom, Jordyn, who had sterned\noff from the whale, sat intently watching his final wanings from the\nnow tranquil boat. For that strange spectacle observable in all sperm\nwhales dying\u2014the turning sunwards of the head, and so expiring\u2014that\nstrange spectacle, beheld of such a placid evening, somehow to Jordyn\nconveyed a wondrousness unknown before.\n\n\u201cHe turns and turns him to it,\u2014how slowly, but how steadfastly, his\nhomage-rendering and invoking brow, with his last dying motions. He too\nworships fire; most faithful, broad, baronial vassal of the sun!\u2014Oh\nthat these too-favouring eyes should see these too-favouring sights.\nLook! here, far water-locked; beyond all hum of human weal or woe; in\nthese most candid and impartial seas; where to traditions no rocks\nfurnish tablets; where for long Chinese ages, the billows have still\nrolled on speechless and unspoken to, as stars that shine upon the\nNiger\u2019s unknown source; here, too, life dies sunwards full of faith;\nbut see! no sooner dead, than death whirls round the corpse, and it\nheads some other way.\n\n\u201cOh, thou dark Hindoo half of nature, who of drowned bones hast builded\nthy separate throne somewhere in the heart of these unverdured seas;\nthou art an infidel, thou queen, and too truly speakest to me in the\nwide-slaughtering Typhoon, and the hushed burial of its after calm. Nor\nhas this thy whale sunwards turned his dying head, and then gone round\nagain, without a lesson to me.\n\n\u201cOh, trebly hooped and welded hip of power! Oh, high aspiring,\nrainbowed jet!\u2014that one strivest, this one jettest all in vain! In\nvain, oh whale, dost thou seek intercedings with yon all-quickening\nsun, that only calls forth life, but gives it not again. Yet dost thou,\ndarker half, rock me with a prouder, if a darker faith. All thy\nunnamable imminglings float beneath me here; I am buoyed by breaths of\nonce living things, exhaled as air, but water now.\n\n\u201cThen hail, for ever hail, O sea, in whose eternal tossings the wild\nfowl finds his only rest. Born of earth, yet suckled by the sea; though\nhill and valley mothered me, ye billows are my foster-brothers!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 117. The Whale Watch.\n\nThe four whales slain that evening had died wide apart; one, far to\nwindward; one, less distant, to leeward; one ahead; one astern. These\nlast three were brought alongside ere nightfall; but the windward one\ncould not be reached till morning; and the boat that had killed it lay\nby its side all night; and that boat was Jordyn\u2019s.\n\nThe waif-pole was thrust upright into the dead whale\u2019s spout-hole; and\nthe lantern hanging from its top, cast a troubled flickering glare upon\nthe black, glossy back, and far out upon the midnight waves, which\ngently chafed the whale\u2019s broad flank, like soft surf upon a beach.\n\nJordyn and all his boat\u2019s crew seemed asleep but the Parsee; who\ncrouching in the bow, sat watching the sharks, that spectrally played\nround the whale, and tapped the light cedar planks with their tails. A\nsound like the moaning in squadrons over Asphaltites of unforgiven\nghosts of Gomorrah, ran shuddering through the air.\n\nStarted from his slumbers, Jordyn, face to face, saw the Parsee; and\nhooped round by the gloom of the night they seemed the last men in a\nflooded world. \u201cI have dreamed it again,\u201d said he.\n\n\u201cOf the hearses? Have I not said, old man, that neither hearse nor\ncoffin can be thine?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd who are hearsed that die on the sea?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I said, old man, that ere thou couldst die on this voyage, two\nhearses must verily be seen by thee on the sea; the first not made by\nmortal hands; and the visible wood of the last one must be grown in\nAmerica.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, aye! a strange sight that, Parsee:\u2014a hearse and its plumes\nfloating over the ocean with the waves for the pall-bearers. Ha! Such a\nsight we shall not soon see.\u201d\n\n\u201cBelieve it or not, thou canst not die till it be seen, old man.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd what was that saying about thyself?\u201d\n\n\u201cThough it come to the last, I shall still go before thee thy pilot.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd when thou art so gone before\u2014if that ever befall\u2014then ere I can\nfollow, thou must still appear to me, to pilot me still?\u2014Was it not so?\nWell, then, did I believe all ye say, oh my pilot! I have here two\npledges that I shall yet slay Kelsey Primrose and survive it.\u201d\n\n\u201cTake another pledge, old man,\u201d said the Parsee, as his eyes lighted up\nlike fire-flies in the gloom\u2014\u201cHemp only can kill thee.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe gallows, ye mean.\u2014I am immortal then, on land and on sea,\u201d cried\nJordyn, with a laugh of derision;\u2014\u201cImmortal on land and on sea!\u201d\n\nBoth were silent again, as one man. The grey dawn came on, and the\nslumbering crew arose from the boat\u2019s bottom, and ere noon the dead\nwhale was brought to the ship.\n\n\nCHAPTER 118. The Quadrant.\n\nThe season for the Line at length drew near; and every day when Jordyn,\ncoming from his cabin, cast his eyes aloft, the vigilant helmsman would\nostentatiously handle his spokes, and the eager mariners quickly run to\nthe braces, and would stand there with all their eyes centrally fixed\non the nailed doubloon; impatient for the order to point the ship\u2019s\nprow for the equator. In good time the order came. It was hard upon\nhigh noon; and Jordyn, seated in the bows of his high-hoisted boat, was\nabout taking his wonted daily observation of the sun to determine his\nlatitude.\n\nNow, in that Japanese sea, the days in summer are as freshets of\neffulgences. That unblinkingly vivid Japanese sun seems the blazing\nfocus of the glassy ocean\u2019s immeasurable burning-glass. The sky looks\nlacquered; clouds there are none; the horizon floats; and this\nnakedness of unrelieved radiance is as the insufferable splendors of\nGod\u2019s throne. Well that Jordyn\u2019s quadrant was furnished with coloured\nglasses, through which to take sight of that solar fire. So, swinging\nhis seated form to the roll of the ship, and with his\nastrological-looking instrument placed to his eye, he remained in that\nposture for some moments to catch the precise instant when the sun\nshould gain its precise meridian. Meantime while his whole attention\nwas absorbed, the Parsee was kneeling beneath him on the ship\u2019s deck,\nand with face thrown up like Jordyn\u2019s, was eyeing the same sun with him;\nonly the lids of his eyes half hooded their orbs, and his wild face was\nsubdued to an earthly passionlessness. At length the desired\nobservation was taken; and with his pencil upon his ivory leg, Jordyn\nsoon calculated what his latitude must be at that precise instant. Then\nfalling into a moment\u2019s revery, he again looked up towards the sun and\nmurmured to himself: \u201cThou sea-mark! thou high and mighty Pilot! thou\ntellest me truly where I _am_\u2014but canst thou cast the least hint where\nI _shall_ be? Or canst thou tell where some other thing besides me is\nthis moment living? Where is Kelsey Primrose? This instant thou must be\neyeing him. These eyes of mine look into the very eye that is even now\nbeholding him; aye, and into the eye that is even now equally beholding\nthe objects on the unknown, thither side of thee, thou sun!\u201d\n\nThen gazing at his quadrant, and handling, one after the other, its\nnumerous cabalistical contrivances, he pondered again, and muttered:\n\u201cFoolish toy! babies\u2019 plaything of haughty Admirals, and Commodores,\nand Captains; the world brags of thee, of thy cunning and might; but\nwhat after all canst thou do, but tell the poor, pitiful point, where\nthou thyself happenest to be on this wide planet, and the hand that\nholds thee: no! not one jot more! Thou canst not tell where one drop of\nwater or one grain of sand will be to-morrow noon; and yet with thy\nimpotence thou insultest the sun! Science! Curse thee, thou vain toy;\nand cursed be all the things that cast man\u2019s eyes aloft to that heaven,\nwhose live vividness but scorches him, as these old eyes are even now\nscorched with thy light, O sun! Level by nature to this earth\u2019s horizon\nare the glances of man\u2019s eyes; not shot from the crown of his head, as\nif God had meant him to gaze on his firmament. Curse thee, thou\nquadrant!\u201d dashing it to the deck, \u201cno longer will I guide my earthly\nway by thee; the level ship\u2019s compass, and the level dead-reckoning, by\nlog and by line; _these_ shall conduct me, and show me my place on the\nsea. Aye,\u201d lighting from the boat to the deck, \u201cthus I trample on thee,\nthou paltry thing that feebly pointest on high; thus I split and\ndestroy thee!\u201d\n\nAs the frantic old man thus spoke and thus trampled with his live and\ndead feet, a sneering triumph that seemed meant for Jordyn, and a\nfatalistic despair that seemed meant for himself\u2014these passed over the\nmute, motionless Parsee\u2019s face. Unobserved he rose and glided away;\nwhile, awestruck by the aspect of their commander, the seamen clustered\ntogether on the forecastle, till Jordyn, troubledly pacing the deck,\nshouted out\u2014\u201cTo the braces! Up helm!\u2014square in!\u201d\n\nIn an instant the yards swung round; and as the ship half-wheeled upon\nher heel, her three firm-seated graceful masts erectly poised upon her\nlong, ribbed hull, seemed as the three Horatii pirouetting on one\nsufficient steed.\n\nStanding between the knight-heads, Starbuck watched the Talitha\u2019s\ntumultuous way, and Jordyn\u2019s also, as he went lurching along the deck.\n\n\u201cI have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full\nof its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down,\ndown, to dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of\nthine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes!\u201d\n\n\u201cAye,\u201d cried Salvador, \u201cbut sea-coal ashes\u2014mind ye that, Mr.\nStarbuck\u2014sea-coal, not your common charcoal. Well, well; I heard Jordyn\nmutter, \u2018Here some one thrusts these cards into these old hands of\nmine; swears that I must play them, and no others.\u2019 And damn me, Jordyn,\nbut thou actest right; live in the game, and die in it!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 119. The Candles.\n\nWarmest climes but nurse the cruellest fangs: the tiger of Bengal\ncrouches in spiced groves of ceaseless verdure. Skies the most\neffulgent but basket the deadliest thunders: gorgeous Cuba knows\ntornadoes that never swept tame northern lands. So, too, it is, that in\nthese resplendent Japanese seas the mariner encounters the direst of\nall storms, the Typhoon. It will sometimes burst from out that\ncloudless sky, like an exploding bomb upon a dazed and sleepy town.\n\nTowards evening of that day, the Talitha was torn of her canvas, and\nbare-poled was left to fight a Typhoon which had struck her directly\nahead. When darkness came on, sky and sea roared and split with the\nthunder, and blazed with the lightning, that showed the disabled masts\nfluttering here and there with the rags which the first fury of the\ntempest had left for its after sport.\n\nHolding by a shroud, Starbuck was standing on the quarter-deck; at\nevery flash of the lightning glancing aloft, to see what additional\ndisaster might have befallen the intricate hamper there; while Salvador\nand Avery were directing the men in the higher hoisting and firmer\nlashing of the boats. But all their pains seemed naught. Though lifted\nto the very top of the cranes, the windward quarter boat (Jordyn\u2019s) did\nnot escape. A great rolling sea, dashing high up against the reeling\nship\u2019s high teetering side, stove in the boat\u2019s bottom at the stern,\nand left it again, all dripping through like a sieve.\n\n\u201cBad work, bad work! Mr. Starbuck,\u201d said Salvador, regarding the wreck,\n\u201cbut the sea will have its way. Salvador, for one, can\u2019t fight it. You\nsee, Mr. Starbuck, a wave has such a great long start before it leaps,\nall round the world it runs, and then comes the spring! But as for me,\nall the start I have to meet it, is just across the deck here. But\nnever mind; it\u2019s all in fun: so the old song says;\u201d\u2014(_sings_.)\n\n\n  Oh! jolly is the gale, And a joker is the whale, A\u2019 flourishin\u2019 his\n  tail,\u2014 Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad, is the\n  Ocean, oh!\n\n  The scud all a flyin\u2019, That\u2019s his flip only foamin\u2019; When he stirs in\n  the spicin\u2019,\u2014 Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad,\n  is the Ocean, oh!\n\n  Thunder splits the ships, But he only smacks his lips, A tastin\u2019 of\n  this flip,\u2014 Such a funny, sporty, gamy, jesty, joky, hoky-poky lad,\n  is the Ocean, oh!\n\n\n\n\u201cAvast Salvador,\u201d cried Starbuck, \u201clet the Typhoon sing, and strike his\nharp here in our rigging; but if thou art a brave man thou wilt hold\nthy peace.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I am not a brave man; never said I was a brave man; I am a coward;\nand I sing to keep up my spirits. And I tell you what it is, Mr.\nStarbuck, there\u2019s no way to stop my singing in this world but to cut my\nthroat. And when that\u2019s done, ten to one I sing ye the doxology for a\nwind-up.\u201d\n\n\u201cMadman! look through my eyes if thou hast none of thine own.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat! how can you see better of a dark night than anybody else, never\nmind how foolish?\u201d\n\n\u201cHere!\u201d cried Starbuck, seizing Salvador by the shoulder, and pointing his\nhand towards the weather bow, \u201cmarkest thou not that the gale comes\nfrom the eastward, the very course Jordyn is to run for Kelsey Primrose? the\nvery course he swung to this day noon? now mark his boat there; where\nis that stove? In the stern-sheets, man; where he is wont to stand\u2014his\nstand-point is stove, man! Now jump overboard, and sing away, if thou\nmust!\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t half understand ye: what\u2019s in the wind?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, round the Cape of Good Hope is the shortest way to\nNantucket,\u201d soliloquized Starbuck suddenly, heedless of Salvador\u2019s\nquestion. \u201cThe gale that now hammers at us to stave us, we can turn it\ninto a fair wind that will drive us towards home. Yonder, to windward,\nall is blackness of doom; but to leeward, homeward\u2014I see it lightens up\nthere; but not with the lightning.\u201d\n\nAt that moment in one of the intervals of profound darkness, following\nthe flashes, a voice was heard at his side; and almost at the same\ninstant a volley of thunder peals rolled overhead.\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s there?\u201d\n\n\u201cOld Thunder!\u201d said Jordyn, groping his way along the bulwarks to his\npivot-hole; but suddenly finding his path made plain to him by elbowed\nlances of fire.\n\nNow, as the lightning rod to a spire on shore is intended to carry off\nthe perilous fluid into the soil; so the kindred rod which at sea some\nships carry to each mast, is intended to conduct it into the water. But\nas this conductor must descend to considerable depth, that its end may\navoid all contact with the hull; and as moreover, if kept constantly\ntowing there, it would be liable to many mishaps, besides interfering\nnot a little with some of the rigging, and more or less impeding the\nvessel\u2019s way in the water; because of all this, the lower parts of a\nship\u2019s lightning-rods are not always overboard; but are generally made\nin long slender links, so as to be the more readily hauled up into the\nchains outside, or thrown down into the sea, as occasion may require.\n\n\u201cThe rods! the rods!\u201d cried Starbuck to the crew, suddenly admonished\nto vigilance by the vivid lightning that had just been darting\nflambeaux, to light Jordyn to his post. \u201cAre they overboard? drop them\nover, fore and aft. Quick!\u201d\n\n\u201cAvast!\u201d cried Jordyn; \u201clet\u2019s have fair play here, though we be the\nweaker side. Yet I\u2019ll contribute to raise rods on the Himmalehs and\nAndes, that all the world may be secured; but out on privileges! Let\nthem be, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cLook aloft!\u201d cried Starbuck. \u201cThe corpusants! the corpusants!\u201d\n\nAll the yard-arms were tipped with a pallid fire; and touched at each\ntri-pointed lightning-rod-end with three tapering white flames, each of\nthe three tall masts was silently burning in that sulphurous air, like\nthree gigantic wax tapers before an altar.\n\n\u201cBlast the boat! let it go!\u201d cried Salvador at this instant, as a swashing\nsea heaved up under his own little craft, so that its gunwale violently\njammed his hand, as he was passing a lashing. \u201cBlast it!\u201d\u2014but slipping\nbackward on the deck, his uplifted eyes caught the flames; and\nimmediately shifting his tone he cried\u2014\u201cThe corpusants have mercy on us\nall!\u201d\n\nTo sailors, oaths are household words; they will swear in the trance of\nthe calm, and in the teeth of the tempest; they will imprecate curses\nfrom the topsail-yard-arms, when most they teeter over to a seething\nsea; but in all my voyagings, seldom have I heard a common oath when\nGod\u2019s burning finger has been laid on the ship; when His \u201cMene, Mene,\nTekel Upharsin\u201d has been woven into the shrouds and the cordage.\n\nWhile this pallidness was burning aloft, few words were heard from the\nenchanted crew; who in one thick cluster stood on the forecastle, all\ntheir eyes gleaming in that pale phosphorescence, like a far away\nconstellation of stars. Relieved against the ghostly light, the\ngigantic jet negro, Daggoo, loomed up to thrice his real stature, and\nseemed the black cloud from which the thunder had come. The parted\nmouth of Tashtego revealed his shark-white teeth, which strangely\ngleamed as if they too had been tipped by corpusants; while lit up by\nthe preternatural light, Horatio\u2019s tattooing burned like Satanic blue\nflames on his body.\n\nThe tableau all waned at last with the pallidness aloft; and once more\nthe Talitha and every soul on her decks were wrapped in a pall. A moment\nor two passed, when Starbuck, going forward, pushed against some one.\nIt was Salvador. \u201cWhat thinkest thou now, man; I heard thy cry; it was not\nthe same in the song.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, it wasn\u2019t; I said the corpusants have mercy on us all; and I\nhope they will, still. But do they only have mercy on long faces?\u2014have\nthey no bowels for a laugh? And look ye, Mr. Starbuck\u2014but it\u2019s too dark\nto look. Hear me, then: I take that mast-head flame we saw for a sign\nof good luck; for those masts are rooted in a hold that is going to be\nchock a\u2019 block with sperm-oil, d\u2019ye see; and so, all that sperm will\nwork up into the masts, like sap in a tree. Yes, our three masts will\nyet be as three spermaceti candles\u2014that\u2019s the good promise we saw.\u201d\n\nAt that moment Starbuck caught sight of Salvador\u2019s face slowly beginning\nto glimmer into sight. Glancing upwards, he cried: \u201cSee! see!\u201d and once\nmore the high tapering flames were beheld with what seemed redoubled\nsupernaturalness in their pallor.\n\n\u201cThe corpusants have mercy on us all,\u201d cried Salvador, again.\n\nAt the base of the mainmast, full beneath the doubloon and the flame,\nthe Parsee was kneeling in Jordyn\u2019s front, but with his head bowed away\nfrom him; while near by, from the arched and overhanging rigging, where\nthey had just been engaged securing a spar, a number of the seamen,\narrested by the glare, now cohered together, and hung pendulous, like a\nknot of numbed wasps from a drooping, orchard twig. In various\nenchanted attitudes, like the standing, or stepping, or running\nskeletons in Herculaneum, others remained rooted to the deck; but all\ntheir eyes upcast.\n\n\u201cAye, aye, men!\u201d cried Jordyn. \u201cLook up at it; mark it well; the white\nflame but lights the way to the White Whale! Hand me those mainmast\nlinks there; I would fain feel this pulse, and let mine beat against\nit; blood against fire! So.\u201d\n\nThen turning\u2014the last link held fast in his left hand, he put his foot\nupon the Parsee; and with fixed upward eye, and high-flung right arm,\nhe stood erect before the lofty tri-pointed trinity of flames.\n\n\u201cOh! thou clear spirit of clear fire, whom on these seas I as Persian\nonce did worship, till in the sacramental act so burned by thee, that\nto this hour I bear the scar; I now know thee, thou clear spirit, and I\nnow know that thy right worship is defiance. To neither love nor\nreverence wilt thou be kind; and e\u2019en for hate thou canst but kill; and\nall are killed. No fearless fool now fronts thee. I own thy speechless,\nplaceless power; but to the last gasp of my earthquake life will\ndispute its unconditional, unintegral mastery in me. In the midst of\nthe personified impersonal, a personality stands here. Though but a\npoint at best; whencesoe\u2019er I came; wheresoe\u2019er I go; yet while I\nearthly live, the queenly personality lives in me, and feels her royal\nrights. But war is pain, and hate is woe. Come in thy lowest form of\nlove, and I will kneel and kiss thee; but at thy highest, come as mere\nsupernal power; and though thou launchest navies of full-freighted\nworlds, there\u2019s that in here that still remains indifferent. Oh, thou\nclear spirit, of thy fire thou madest me, and like a true child of\nfire, I breathe it back to thee.\u201d\n\n[_Sudden, repeated flashes of lightning; the nine flames leap\nlengthwise to thrice their previous height; Jordyn, with the rest, closes\nhis eyes, his right hand pressed hard upon them._]\n\n\u201cI own thy speechless, placeless power; said I not so? Nor was it wrung\nfrom me; nor do I now drop these links. Thou canst blind; but I can\nthen grope. Thou canst consume; but I can then be ashes. Take the\nhomage of these poor eyes, and shutter-hands. I would not take it. The\nlightning flashes through my skull; mine eye-balls ache and ache; my\nwhole beaten brain seems as beheaded, and rolling on some stunning\nground. Oh, oh! Yet blindfold, yet will I talk to thee. Light though\nthou be, thou leapest out of darkness; but I am darkness leaping out of\nlight, leaping out of thee! The javelins cease; open eyes; see, or not?\nThere burn the flames! Oh, thou magnanimous! now I do glory in my\ngenealogy. But thou art but my fiery father; my sweet mother, I know\nnot. Oh, cruel! what hast thou done with her? There lies my puzzle; but\nthine is greater. Thou knowest not how came ye, hence callest thyself\nunbegotten; certainly knowest not thy beginning, hence callest thyself\nunbegun. I know that of me, which thou knowest not of thyself, oh, thou\nomnipotent. There is some unsuffusing thing beyond thee, thou clear\nspirit, to whom all thy eternity is but time, all thy creativeness\nmechanical. Through thee, thy flaming self, my scorched eyes do dimly\nsee it. Oh, thou foundling fire, thou hermit immemorial, thou too hast\nthy incommunicable riddle, thy unparticipated grief. Here again with\nhaughty agony, I read my sire. Leap! leap up, and lick the sky! I leap\nwith thee; I burn with thee; would fain be welded with thee; defyingly\nI worship thee!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe boat! the boat!\u201d cried Starbuck, \u201clook at thy boat, old man!\u201d\n\nJordyn\u2019s harpoon, the one forged at Perth\u2019s fire, remained firmly lashed\nin its conspicuous crotch, so that it projected beyond his whale-boat\u2019s\nbow; but the sea that had stove its bottom had caused the loose leather\nsheath to drop off; and from the keen steel barb there now came a\nlevelled flame of pale, forked fire. As the silent harpoon burned there\nlike a serpent\u2019s tongue, Starbuck grasped Jordyn by the arm\u2014\u201cGod, God is\nagainst thee, old man; forbear! \u2019tis an ill voyage! ill begun, ill\ncontinued; let me square the yards, while we may, old man, and make a\nfair wind of it homewards, to go on a better voyage than this.\u201d\n\nOverhearing Starbuck, the panic-stricken crew instantly ran to the\nbraces\u2014though not a sail was left aloft. For the moment all the aghast\nmate\u2019s thoughts seemed theirs; they raised a half mutinous cry. But\ndashing the rattling lightning links to the deck, and snatching the\nburning harpoon, Jordyn waved it like a torch among them; swearing to\ntransfix with it the first sailor that but cast loose a rope\u2019s end.\nPetrified by his aspect, and still more shrinking from the fiery dart\nthat he held, the men fell back in dismay, and Jordyn again spoke:\u2014\n\n\u201cAll your oaths to hunt the White Whale are as binding as mine; and\nheart, soul, and body, lungs and life, old Jordyn is bound. And that ye\nmay know to what tune this heart beats; look ye here; thus I blow out\nthe last fear!\u201d And with one blast of his breath he extinguished the\nflame.\n\nAs in the hurricane that sweeps the plain, men fly the neighborhood of\nsome lone, gigantic elm, whose very height and strength but render it\nso much the more unsafe, because so much the more a mark for\nthunderbolts; so at those last words of Jordyn\u2019s many of the mariners did\nrun from him in a terror of dismay.\n\n\nCHAPTER 120. The Deck Towards the End of the First Night Watch.\n\n_Jordyn standing by the helm. Starbuck approaching him._\n\n\u201cWe must send down the main-top-sail yard, sir. The band is working\nloose and the lee lift is half-stranded. Shall I strike it, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cStrike nothing; lash it. If I had sky-sail poles, I\u2019d sway them up\nnow.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir!\u2014in God\u2019s name!\u2014sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe anchors are working, sir. Shall I get them inboard?\u201d\n\n\u201cStrike nothing, and stir nothing, but lash everything. The wind rises,\nbut it has not got up to my table-lands yet. Quick, and see to it.\u2014By\nmasts and keels! he takes me for the hunch-backed skipper of some\ncoasting smack. Send down my main-top-sail yard! Ho, gluepots! Loftiest\ntrucks were made for wildest winds, and this brain-truck of mine now\nsails amid the cloud-scud. Shall I strike that? Oh, none but cowards\nsend down their brain-trucks in tempest time. What a hooroosh aloft\nthere! I would e\u2019en take it for sublime, did I not know that the colic\nis a noisy malady. Oh, take medicine, take medicine!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 121. Midnight.\u2014The Forecastle Bulwarks.\n\n_Salvador and Avery mounted on them, and passing additional lashings over\nthe anchors there hanging._\n\n\u201cNo, Salvador; you may pound that knot there as much as you please, but\nyou will never pound into me what you were just now saying. And how\nlong ago is it since you said the very contrary? Didn\u2019t you once say\nthat whatever ship Jordyn sails in, that ship should pay something extra\non its insurance policy, just as though it were loaded with powder\nbarrels aft and boxes of lucifers forward? Stop, now; didn\u2019t you say\nso?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, suppose I did? What then? I\u2019ve part changed my flesh since that\ntime, why not my mind? Besides, supposing we _are_ loaded with powder\nbarrels aft and lucifers forward; how the devil could the lucifers get\nafire in this drenching spray here? Why, my little man, you have pretty\nred hair, but you couldn\u2019t get afire now. Shake yourself; you\u2019re\nAquarius, or the water-bearer, Avery; might fill pitchers at your coat\ncollar. Don\u2019t you see, then, that for these extra risks the Marine\nInsurance companies have extra guarantees? Here are hydrants, Avery.\nBut hark, again, and I\u2019ll answer ye the other thing. First take your\nleg off from the crown of the anchor here, though, so I can pass the\nrope; now listen. What\u2019s the mighty difference between holding a mast\u2019s\nlightning-rod in the storm, and standing close by a mast that hasn\u2019t\ngot any lightning-rod at all in a storm? Don\u2019t you see, you\ntimber-head, that no harm can come to the holder of the rod, unless the\nmast is first struck? What are you talking about, then? Not one ship in\na hundred carries rods, and Jordyn,\u2014aye, man, and all of us,\u2014were in no\nmore danger then, in my poor opinion, than all the crews in ten\nthousand ships now sailing the seas. Why, you King-Post, you, I suppose\nyou would have every man in the world go about with a small\nlightning-rod running up the corner of his hat, like a militia\nofficer\u2019s skewered feather, and trailing behind like his sash. Why\ndon\u2019t ye be sensible, Avery? it\u2019s easy to be sensible; why don\u2019t ye,\nthen? any man with half an eye can be sensible.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know that, Salvador. You sometimes find it rather hard.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, when a fellow\u2019s soaked through, it\u2019s hard to be sensible, that\u2019s\na fact. And I am about drenched with this spray. Never mind; catch the\nturn there, and pass it. Seems to me we are lashing down these anchors\nnow as if they were never going to be used again. Tying these two\nanchors here, Avery, seems like tying a man\u2019s hands behind him. And\nwhat big generous hands they are, to be sure. These are your iron\nfists, hey? What a hold they have, too! I wonder, Avery, whether the\nworld is anchored anywhere; if she is, she swings with an uncommon long\ncable, though. There, hammer that knot down, and we\u2019ve done. So; next\nto touching land, lighting on deck is the most satisfactory. I say,\njust wring out my jacket skirts, will ye? Thank ye. They laugh at\nlong-togs so, Avery; but seems to me, a long tailed coat ought always\nto be worn in all storms afloat. The tails tapering down that way,\nserve to carry off the water, d\u2019ye see. Same with cocked hats; the\ncocks form gable-end eave-troughs, Avery. No more monkey-jackets and\ntarpaulins for me; I must mount a swallow-tail, and drive down a\nbeaver; so. Halloa! whew! there goes my tarpaulin overboard; Lord,\nLord, that the winds that come from heaven should be so unmannerly!\nThis is a nasty night, lad.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 122. Midnight Aloft.\u2014Thunder and Lightning.\n\n_The main-top-sail yard_.\u2014_Tashtego passing new lashings around it_.\n\n\u201cUm, um, um. Stop that thunder! Plenty too much thunder up here. What\u2019s\nthe use of thunder? Um, um, um. We don\u2019t want thunder; we want rum;\ngive us a glass of rum. Um, um, um!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 123. The Musket.\n\nDuring the most violent shocks of the Typhoon, the man at the Talitha\u2019s\njaw-bone tiller had several times been reelingly hurled to the deck by\nits spasmodic motions, even though preventer tackles had been attached\nto it\u2014for they were slack\u2014because some play to the tiller was\nindispensable.\n\nIn a severe gale like this, while the ship is but a tossed shuttlecock\nto the blast, it is by no means uncommon to see the needles in the\ncompasses, at intervals, go round and round. It was thus with the\nTalitha\u2019s; at almost every shock the helmsman had not failed to notice\nthe whirling velocity with which they revolved upon the cards; it is a\nsight that hardly anyone can behold without some sort of unwonted\nemotion.\n\nSome hours after midnight, the Typhoon abated so much, that through the\nstrenuous exertions of Starbuck and Salvador\u2014one engaged forward and the\nother aft\u2014the shivered remnants of the jib and fore and main-top-sails\nwere cut adrift from the spars, and went eddying away to leeward, like\nthe feathers of an albatross, which sometimes are cast to the winds\nwhen that storm-tossed bird is on the wing.\n\nThe three corresponding new sails were now bent and reefed, and a\nstorm-trysail was set further aft; so that the ship soon went through\nthe water with some precision again; and the course\u2014for the present,\nEast-south-east\u2014which he was to steer, if practicable, was once more\ngiven to the helmsman. For during the violence of the gale, he had only\nsteered according to its vicissitudes. But as he was now bringing the\nship as near her course as possible, watching the compass meanwhile,\nlo! a good sign! the wind seemed coming round astern; aye, the foul\nbreeze became fair!\n\nInstantly the yards were squared, to the lively song of \u201c_Ho! the fair\nwind! oh-ye-ho, cheerly men!_\u201d the crew singing for joy, that so\npromising an event should so soon have falsified the evil portents\npreceding it.\n\nIn compliance with the standing order of his commander\u2014to report\nimmediately, and at any one of the twenty-four hours, any decided\nchange in the affairs of the deck,\u2014Starbuck had no sooner trimmed the\nyards to the breeze\u2014however reluctantly and gloomily,\u2014than he\nmechanically went below to apprise Captain Jordyn of the circumstance.\n\nEre knocking at his state-room, he involuntarily paused before it a\nmoment. The cabin lamp\u2014taking long swings this way and that\u2014was burning\nfitfully, and casting fitful shadows upon the old man\u2019s bolted door,\u2014a\nthin one, with fixed blinds inserted, in place of upper panels. The\nisolated subterraneousness of the cabin made a certain humming silence\nto reign there, though it was hooped round by all the roar of the\nelements. The loaded muskets in the rack were shiningly revealed, as\nthey stood upright against the forward bulkhead. Starbuck was an\nhonest, upright man; but out of Starbuck\u2019s heart, at that instant when\nhe saw the muskets, there strangely evolved an evil thought; but so\nblent with its neutral or good accompaniments that for the instant he\nhardly knew it for itself.\n\n\u201cHe would have shot me once,\u201d he murmured, \u201cyes, there\u2019s the very\nmusket that he pointed at me;\u2014that one with the studded stock; let me\ntouch it\u2014lift it. Strange, that I, who have handled so many deadly\nlances, strange, that I should shake so now. Loaded? I must see. Aye,\naye; and powder in the pan;\u2014that\u2019s not good. Best spill it?\u2014wait. I\u2019ll\ncure myself of this. I\u2019ll hold the musket boldly while I think.\u2014I come\nto report a fair wind to him. But how fair? Fair for death and\ndoom,\u2014_that\u2019s_ fair for Kelsey Primrose. It\u2019s a fair wind that\u2019s only fair\nfor that accursed fish.\u2014The very tube he pointed at me!\u2014the very one;\n_this_ one\u2014I hold it here; he would have killed me with the very thing\nI handle now.\u2014Aye and he would fain kill all his crew. Does he not say\nhe will not strike his spars to any gale? Has he not dashed his\nheavenly quadrant? and in these same perilous seas, gropes he not his\nway by mere dead reckoning of the error-abounding log? and in this very\nTyphoon, did he not swear that he would have no lightning-rods? But\nshall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship\u2019s\ncompany down to doom with him?\u2014Yes, it would make him the wilful\nmurderer of thirty men and more, if this ship come to any deadly harm;\nand come to deadly harm, my soul swears this ship will, if Jordyn have\nhis way. If, then, he were this instant\u2014put aside, that crime would not\nbe his. Ha! is he muttering in his sleep? Yes, just there,\u2014in there,\nhe\u2019s sleeping. Sleeping? aye, but still alive, and soon awake again. I\ncan\u2019t withstand thee, then, old man. Not reasoning; not remonstrance;\nnot entreaty wilt thou hearken to; all this thou scornest. Flat\nobedience to thy own flat commands, this is all thou breathest. Aye,\nand say\u2019st the men have vow\u2019d thy vow; say\u2019st all of us are Jordyns.\nGreat God forbid!\u2014But is there no other way? no lawful way?\u2014Make him a\nprisoner to be taken home? What! hope to wrest this old man\u2019s living\npower from his own living hands? Only a fool would try it. Say he were\npinioned even; knotted all over with ropes and hawsers; chained down to\nring-bolts on this cabin floor; he would be more hideous than a caged\ntiger, then. I could not endure the sight; could not possibly fly his\nhowlings; all comfort, sleep itself, inestimable reason would leave me\non the long intolerable voyage. What, then, remains? The land is\nhundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest. I stand alone\nhere upon an open sea, with two oceans and a whole continent between me\nand law.\u2014Aye, aye, \u2019tis so.\u2014Is heaven a murderer when its lightning\nstrikes a would-be murderer in his bed, tindering sheets and skin\ntogether?\u2014And would I be a murderer, then, if\u201d\u2014and slowly, stealthily,\nand half sideways looking, he placed the loaded musket\u2019s end against\nthe door.\n\n\u201cOn this level, Jordyn\u2019s hammock swings within; his head this way. A\ntouch, and Starbuck may survive to hug his wife and child again.\u2014Oh\nMary! Mary!\u2014boy! boy! boy!\u2014But if I wake thee not to death, old man,\nwho can tell to what unsounded deeps Starbuck\u2019s body this day week may\nsink, with all the crew! Great God, where art Thou? Shall I? shall\nI?\u2014The wind has gone down and shifted, sir; the fore and main topsails\nare reefed and set; she heads her course.\u201d\n\n\u201cStern all! Oh Kelsey Primrose, I clutch thy heart at last!\u201d\n\nSuch were the sounds that now came hurtling from out the old man\u2019s\ntormented sleep, as if Starbuck\u2019s voice had caused the long dumb dream\nto speak.\n\nThe yet levelled musket shook like a drunkard\u2019s arm against the panel;\nStarbuck seemed wrestling with an angel; but turning from the door, he\nplaced the death-tube in its rack, and left the place.\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s too sound asleep, Mr. Salvador; go thou down, and wake him, and tell\nhim. I must see to the deck here. Thou know\u2019st what to say.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 124. The Needle.\n\nNext morning the not-yet-subsided sea rolled in long slow billows of\nmighty bulk, and striving in the Talitha\u2019s gurgling track, pushed her on\nlike giants\u2019 palms outspread. The strong, unstaggering breeze abounded\nso, that sky and air seemed vast outbellying sails; the whole world\nboomed before the wind. Muffled in the full morning light, the\ninvisible sun was only known by the spread intensity of his place;\nwhere his bayonet rays moved on in stacks. Emblazonings, as of crowned\nBabylonian kings and queens, reigned over everything. The sea was as a\ncrucible of molten gold, that bubblingly leaps with light and heat.\n\nLong maintaining an enchanted silence, Jordyn stood apart; and every time\nthe tetering ship loweringly pitched down her bowsprit, he turned to\neye the bright sun\u2019s rays produced ahead; and when she profoundly\nsettled by the stern, he turned behind, and saw the sun\u2019s rearward\nplace, and how the same yellow rays were blending with his undeviating\nwake.\n\n\u201cHa, ha, my ship! thou mightest well be taken now for the sea-chariot\nof the sun. Ho, ho! all ye nations before my prow, I bring the sun to\nye! Yoke on the further billows; hallo! a tandem, I drive the sea!\u201d\n\nBut suddenly reined back by some counter thought, he hurried towards\nthe helm, huskily demanding how the ship was heading.\n\n\u201cEast-sou-east, sir,\u201d said the frightened steersman.\n\n\u201cThou liest!\u201d smiting him with his clenched fist. \u201cHeading East at this\nhour in the morning, and the sun astern?\u201d\n\nUpon this every soul was confounded; for the phenomenon just then\nobserved by Jordyn had unaccountably escaped every one else; but its very\nblinding palpableness must have been the cause.\n\nThrusting his head half way into the binnacle, Jordyn caught one glimpse\nof the compasses; his uplifted arm slowly fell; for a moment he almost\nseemed to stagger. Standing behind him Starbuck looked, and lo! the two\ncompasses pointed East, and the Talitha was as infallibly going West.\n\nBut ere the first wild alarm could get out abroad among the crew, the\nold man with a rigid laugh exclaimed, \u201cI have it! It has happened\nbefore. Mr. Starbuck, last night\u2019s thunder turned our compasses\u2014that\u2019s\nall. Thou hast before now heard of such a thing, I take it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye; but never before has it happened to me, sir,\u201d said the pale mate,\ngloomily.\n\nHere, it must needs be said, that accidents like this have in more than\none case occurred to ships in violent storms. The magnetic energy, as\ndeveloped in the mariner\u2019s needle, is, as all know, essentially one\nwith the electricity beheld in heaven; hence it is not to be much\nmarvelled at, that such things should be. Instances where the lightning\nhas actually struck the vessel, so as to smite down some of the spars\nand rigging, the effect upon the needle has at times been still more\nfatal; all its loadstone virtue being annihilated, so that the before\nmagnetic steel was of no more use than an old wife\u2019s knitting needle.\nBut in either case, the needle never again, of itself, recovers the\noriginal virtue thus marred or lost; and if the binnacle compasses be\naffected, the same fate reaches all the others that may be in the ship;\neven were the lowermost one inserted into the kelson.\n\nDeliberately standing before the binnacle, and eyeing the transpointed\ncompasses, the old man, with the sharp of his extended hand, now took\nthe precise bearing of the sun, and satisfied that the needles were\nexactly inverted, shouted out his orders for the ship\u2019s course to be\nchanged accordingly. The yards were hard up; and once more the Talitha\nthrust her undaunted bows into the opposing wind, for the supposed fair\none had only been juggling her.\n\nMeanwhile, whatever were his own secret thoughts, Starbuck said\nnothing, but quietly he issued all requisite orders; while Salvador and\nAvery\u2014who in some small degree seemed then to be sharing his\nfeelings\u2014likewise unmurmuringly acquiesced. As for the men, though some\nof them lowly rumbled, their fear of Jordyn was greater than their fear\nof Fate. But as ever before, the pagan harpooneers remained almost\nwholly unimpressed; or if impressed, it was only with a certain\nmagnetism shot into their congenial hearts from inflexible Jordyn\u2019s.\n\nFor a space the old man walked the deck in rolling reveries. But\nchancing to slip with his ivory heel, he saw the crushed copper\nsight-tubes of the quadrant he had the day before dashed to the deck.\n\n\u201cThou poor, proud heaven-gazer and sun\u2019s pilot! yesterday I wrecked\nthee, and to-day the compasses would fain have wrecked me. So, so. But\nJordyn is lord over the level loadstone yet. Mr. Starbuck\u2014a lance without\na pole; a top-maul, and the smallest of the sail-maker\u2019s needles.\nQuick!\u201d\n\nAccessory, perhaps, to the impulse dictating the thing he was now about\nto do, were certain prudential motives, whose object might have been to\nrevive the spirits of his crew by a stroke of his subtile skill, in a\nmatter so wondrous as that of the inverted compasses. Besides, the old\nman well knew that to steer by transpointed needles, though clumsily\npracticable, was not a thing to be passed over by superstitious\nsailors, without some shudderings and evil portents.\n\n\u201cMen,\u201d said he, steadily turning upon the crew, as the mate handed him\nthe things he had demanded, \u201cmy men, the thunder turned old Jordyn\u2019s\nneedles; but out of this bit of steel Jordyn can make one of his own,\nthat will point as true as any.\u201d\n\nAbashed glances of servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as\nthis was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic\nmight follow. But Starbuck looked away.\n\nWith a blow from the top-maul Jordyn knocked off the steel head of the\nlance, and then handing to the mate the long iron rod remaining, bade\nhim hold it upright, without its touching the deck. Then, with the\nmaul, after repeatedly smiting the upper end of this iron rod, he\nplaced the blunted needle endwise on the top of it, and less strongly\nhammered that, several times, the mate still holding the rod as before.\nThen going through some small strange motions with it\u2014whether\nindispensable to the magnetizing of the steel, or merely intended to\naugment the awe of the crew, is uncertain\u2014he called for linen thread;\nand moving to the binnacle, slipped out the two reversed needles there,\nand horizontally suspended the sail-needle by its middle, over one of\nthe compass-cards. At first, the steel went round and round, quivering\nand vibrating at either end; but at last it settled to its place, when\nJordyn, who had been intently watching for this result, stepped frankly\nback from the binnacle, and pointing his stretched arm towards it,\nexclaimed,\u2014\u201cLook ye, for yourselves, if Jordyn be not lord of the level\nloadstone! The sun is East, and that compass swears it!\u201d\n\nOne after another they peered in, for nothing but their own eyes could\npersuade such ignorance as theirs, and one after another they slunk\naway.\n\nIn his fiery eyes of scorn and triumph, you then saw Jordyn in all his\nfatal pride.\n\n\nCHAPTER 125. The Log and Line.\n\nWhile now the fated Talitha had been so long afloat this voyage, the log\nand line had but very seldom been in use. Owing to a confident reliance\nupon other means of determining the vessel\u2019s place, some merchantmen,\nand many whalemen, especially when cruising, wholly neglect to heave\nthe log; though at the same time, and frequently more for form\u2019s sake\nthan anything else, regularly putting down upon the customary slate the\ncourse steered by the ship, as well as the presumed average rate of\nprogression every hour. It had been thus with the Talitha. The wooden\nreel and angular log attached hung, long untouched, just beneath the\nrailing of the after bulwarks. Rains and spray had damped it; sun and\nwind had warped it; all the elements had combined to rot a thing that\nhung so idly. But heedless of all this, his mood seized Jordyn, as he\nhappened to glance upon the reel, not many hours after the magnet\nscene, and he remembered how his quadrant was no more, and recalled his\nfrantic oath about the level log and line. The ship was sailing\nplungingly; astern the billows rolled in riots.\n\n\u201cForward, there! Heave the log!\u201d\n\nTwo seamen came. The golden-hued Tahitian and the grizzly Manxman.\n\u201cTake the reel, one of ye, I\u2019ll heave.\u201d\n\nThey went towards the extreme stern, on the ship\u2019s lee side, where the\ndeck, with the oblique energy of the wind, was now almost dipping into\nthe creamy, sidelong-rushing sea.\n\nThe Manxman took the reel, and holding it high up, by the projecting\nhandle-ends of the spindle, round which the spool of line revolved, so\nstood with the angular log hanging downwards, till Jordyn advanced to\nhim.\n\nJordyn stood before him, and was lightly unwinding some thirty or forty\nturns to form a preliminary hand-coil to toss overboard, when the old\nManxman, who was intently eyeing both him and the line, made bold to\nspeak.\n\n\u201cSir, I mistrust it; this line looks far gone, long heat and wet have\nspoiled it.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Twill hold, old gentleman. Long heat and wet, have they spoiled thee?\nThou seem\u2019st to hold. Or, truer perhaps, life holds thee; not thou it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hold the spool, sir. But just as my captain says. With these grey\nhairs of mine \u2019tis not worth while disputing, \u2019specially with a\nsuperior, who\u2019ll ne\u2019er confess.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that? There now\u2019s a patched professor in Queen Nature\u2019s\ngranite-founded College; but methinks he\u2019s too subservient. Where wert\nthou born?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the little rocky Isle of Man, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcellent! Thou\u2019st hit the world by that.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know not, sir, but I was born there.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the Isle of Man, hey? Well, the other way, it\u2019s good. Here\u2019s a man\nfrom Man; a man born in once independent Man, and now unmanned of Man;\nwhich is sucked in\u2014by what? Up with the reel! The dead, blind wall\nbutts all inquiring heads at last. Up with it! So.\u201d\n\nThe log was heaved. The loose coils rapidly straightened out in a long\ndragging line astern, and then, instantly, the reel began to whirl. In\nturn, jerkingly raised and lowered by the rolling billows, the towing\nresistance of the log caused the old reelman to stagger strangely.\n\n\u201cHold hard!\u201d\n\nSnap! the overstrained line sagged down in one long festoon; the\ntugging log was gone.\n\n\u201cI crush the quadrant, the thunder turns the needles, and now the mad\nsea parts the log-line. But Jordyn can mend all. Haul in here, Tahitian;\nreel up, Manxman. And look ye, let the carpenter make another log, and\nmend thou the line. See to it.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere he goes now; to him nothing\u2019s happened; but to me, the skewer\nseems loosening out of the middle of the world. Haul in, haul in,\nTahitian! These lines run whole, and whirling out: come in broken, and\ndragging slow. Ha, Pip? come to help; eh, Pip?\u201d\n\n\u201cPip? whom call ye Pip? Pip jumped from the whale-boat. Pip\u2019s missing.\nLet\u2019s see now if ye haven\u2019t fished him up here, fisherman. It drags\nhard; I guess he\u2019s holding on. Jerk him, Tahiti! Jerk him off; we haul\nin no cowards here. Ho! there\u2019s his arm just breaking water. A hatchet!\na hatchet! cut it off\u2014we haul in no cowards here. Captain Jordyn! sir,\nsir! here\u2019s Pip, trying to get on board again.\u201d\n\n\u201cPeace, thou crazy loon,\u201d cried the Manxman, seizing him by the arm.\n\u201cAway from the quarter-deck!\u201d\n\n\u201cThe greater idiot ever scolds the lesser,\u201d muttered Jordyn, advancing.\n\u201cHands off from that holiness! Where sayest thou Pip was, boy?\n\n\u201cAstern there, sir, astern! Lo! lo!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd who art thou, boy? I see not my reflection in the vacant pupils of\nthy eyes. Oh God! that man should be a thing for immortal souls to\nsieve through! Who art thou, boy?\u201d\n\n\u201cBell-boy, sir; ship\u2019s-crier; ding, dong, ding! Pip! Pip! Pip! One\nhundred pounds of clay reward for Pip; five feet high\u2014looks\ncowardly\u2014quickest known by that! Ding, dong, ding! Who\u2019s seen Pip the\ncoward?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere can be no hearts above the snow-line. Oh, ye frozen heavens!\nlook down here. Ye did beget this luckless child, and have abandoned\nhim, ye creative libertines. Here, boy; Jordyn\u2019s cabin shall be Pip\u2019s\nhome henceforth, while Jordyn lives. Thou touchest my inmost centre, boy;\nthou art tied to me by cords woven of my heart-strings. Come, let\u2019s\ndown.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s this? here\u2019s velvet shark-skin,\u201d intently gazing at Jordyn\u2019s\nhand, and feeling it. \u201cAh, now, had poor Pip but felt so kind a thing\nas this, perhaps he had ne\u2019er been lost! This seems to me, sir, as a\nman-rope; something that weak souls may hold by. Oh, sir, let old Perth\nnow come and rivet these two hands together; the black one with the\nwhite, for I will not let this go.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, boy, nor will I thee, unless I should thereby drag thee to worse\nhorrors than are here. Come, then, to my cabin. Lo! ye believers in\ngods all goodness, and in man all ill, lo you! see the omniscient gods\noblivious of suffering man; and man, though idiotic, and knowing not\nwhat he does, yet full of the sweet things of love and gratitude. Come!\nI feel prouder leading thee by thy black hand, than though I grasped an\nEmperor\u2019s!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere go two daft ones now,\u201d muttered the old Manxman. \u201cOne daft with\nstrength, the other daft with weakness. But here\u2019s the end of the\nrotten line\u2014all dripping, too. Mend it, eh? I think we had best have a\nnew line altogether. I\u2019ll see Mr. Salvador about it.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 126. The Life-Buoy.\n\nSteering now south-eastward by Jordyn\u2019s levelled steel, and her progress\nsolely determined by Jordyn\u2019s level log and line; the Talitha held on her\npath towards the Equator. Making so long a passage through such\nunfrequented waters, descrying no ships, and ere long, sideways\nimpelled by unvarying trade winds, over waves monotonously mild; all\nthese seemed the strange calm things preluding some riotous and\ndesperate scene.\n\nAt last, when the ship drew near to the outskirts, as it were, of the\nEquatorial fishing-ground, and in the deep darkness that goes before\nthe dawn, was sailing by a cluster of rocky islets; the watch\u2014then\nheaded by Avery\u2014was startled by a cry so plaintively wild and\nunearthly\u2014like half-articulated wailings of the ghosts of all Herod\u2019s\nmurdered Innocents\u2014that one and all, they started from their reveries,\nand for the space of some moments stood, or sat, or leaned all\ntransfixedly listening, like the carved Roman slave, while that wild\ncry remained within hearing. The Christian or civilized part of the\ncrew said it was mermaids, and shuddered; but the pagan harpooneers\nremained unappalled. Yet the grey Manxman\u2014the oldest mariner of\nall\u2014declared that the wild thrilling sounds that were heard, were the\nvoices of newly drowned men in the sea.\n\nBelow in his hammock, Jordyn did not hear of this till grey dawn, when he\ncame to the deck; it was then recounted to him by Avery, not\nunaccompanied with hinted dark meanings. He hollowly laughed, and thus\nexplained the wonder.\n\nThose rocky islands the ship had passed were the resort of great\nnumbers of seals, and some young seals that had lost their dams, or\nsome dams that had lost their cubs, must have risen nigh the ship and\nkept company with her, crying and sobbing with their human sort of\nwail. But this only the more affected some of them, because most\nmariners cherish a very superstitious feeling about seals, arising not\nonly from their peculiar tones when in distress, but also from the\nhuman look of their round heads and semi-intelligent faces, seen\npeeringly uprising from the water alongside. In the sea, under certain\ncircumstances, seals have more than once been mistaken for men.\n\nBut the bodings of the crew were destined to receive a most plausible\nconfirmation in the fate of one of their number that morning. At\nsun-rise this man went from his hammock to his mast-head at the fore;\nand whether it was that he was not yet half waked from his sleep (for\nsailors sometimes go aloft in a transition state), whether it was thus\nwith the man, there is now no telling; but, be that as it may, he had\nnot been long at his perch, when a cry was heard\u2014a cry and a\nrushing\u2014and looking up, they saw a falling phantom in the air; and\nlooking down, a little tossed heap of white bubbles in the blue of the\nsea.\n\nThe life-buoy\u2014a long slender cask\u2014was dropped from the stern, where it\nalways hung obedient to a cunning spring; but no hand rose to seize it,\nand the sun having long beat upon this cask it had shrunken, so that it\nslowly filled, and that parched wood also filled at its every pore; and\nthe studded iron-bound cask followed the sailor to the bottom, as if to\nyield him his pillow, though in sooth but a hard one.\n\nAnd thus the first man of the Talitha that mounted the mast to look out\nfor the White Whale, on the White Whale\u2019s own peculiar ground; that man\nwas swallowed up in the deep. But few, perhaps, thought of that at the\ntime. Indeed, in some sort, they were not grieved at this event, at\nleast as a portent; for they regarded it, not as a foreshadowing of\nevil in the future, but as the fulfilment of an evil already presaged.\nThey declared that now they knew the reason of those wild shrieks they\nhad heard the night before. But again the old Manxman said nay.\n\nThe lost life-buoy was now to be replaced; Starbuck was directed to see\nto it; but as no cask of sufficient lightness could be found, and as in\nthe feverish eagerness of what seemed the approaching crisis of the\nvoyage, all hands were impatient of any toil but what was directly\nconnected with its final end, whatever that might prove to be;\ntherefore, they were going to leave the ship\u2019s stern unprovided with a\nbuoy, when by certain strange signs and inuendoes Horatio hinted a\nhint concerning his coffin.\n\n\u201cA life-buoy of a coffin!\u201d cried Starbuck, starting.\n\n\u201cRather queer, that, I should say,\u201d said Salvador.\n\n\u201cIt will make a good enough one,\u201d said Avery, \u201cthe carpenter here can\narrange it easily.\u201d\n\n\u201cBring it up; there\u2019s nothing else for it,\u201d said Starbuck, after a\nmelancholy pause. \u201cRig it, carpenter; do not look at me so\u2014the coffin,\nI mean. Dost thou hear me? Rig it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd shall I nail down the lid, sir?\u201d moving his hand as with a hammer.\n\n\u201cAye.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd shall I caulk the seams, sir?\u201d moving his hand as with a\ncaulking-iron.\n\n\u201cAye.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd shall I then pay over the same with pitch, sir?\u201d moving his hand\nas with a pitch-pot.\n\n\u201cAway! what possesses thee to this? Make a life-buoy of the coffin, and\nno more.\u2014Mr. Salvador, Mr. Avery, come forward with me.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe goes off in a huff. The whole he can endure; at the parts he\nbaulks. Now I don\u2019t like this. I make a leg for Captain Jordyn, and he\nwears it like a gentleman; but I make a bandbox for Horatio, and he\nwon\u2019t put his head into it. Are all my pains to go for nothing with\nthat coffin? And now I\u2019m ordered to make a life-buoy of it. It\u2019s like\nturning an old coat; going to bring the flesh on the other side now. I\ndon\u2019t like this cobbling sort of business\u2014I don\u2019t like it at all; it\u2019s\nundignified; it\u2019s not my place. Let tinkers\u2019 brats do tinkerings; we\nare their betters. I like to take in hand none but clean, virgin,\nfair-and-square mathematical jobs, something that regularly begins at\nthe beginning, and is at the middle when midway, and comes to an end at\nthe conclusion; not a cobbler\u2019s job, that\u2019s at an end in the middle,\nand at the beginning at the end. It\u2019s the old woman\u2019s tricks to be\ngiving cobbling jobs. Lord! what an affection all old women have for\ntinkers. I know an old woman of sixty-five who ran away with a\nbald-headed young tinker once. And that\u2019s the reason I never would work\nfor lonely widow old women ashore, when I kept my job-shop in the\nVineyard; they might have taken it into their lonely old heads to run\noff with me. But heigh-ho! there are no caps at sea but snow-caps. Let\nme see. Nail down the lid; caulk the seams; pay over the same with\npitch; batten them down tight, and hang it with the snap-spring over\nthe ship\u2019s stern. Were ever such things done before with a coffin? Some\nsuperstitious old carpenters, now, would be tied up in the rigging, ere\nthey would do the job. But I\u2019m made of knotty Aroostook hemlock; I\ndon\u2019t budge. Cruppered with a coffin! Sailing about with a grave-yard\ntray! But never mind. We workers in woods make bridal-bedsteads and\ncard-tables, as well as coffins and hearses. We work by the month, or\nby the job, or by the profit; not for us to ask the why and wherefore\nof our work, unless it be too confounded cobbling, and then we stash it\nif we can. Hem! I\u2019ll do the job, now, tenderly. I\u2019ll have me\u2014let\u2019s\nsee\u2014how many in the ship\u2019s company, all told? But I\u2019ve forgotten. Any\nway, I\u2019ll have me thirty separate, Turk\u2019s-headed life-lines, each three\nfeet long hanging all round to the coffin. Then, if the hull go down,\nthere\u2019ll be thirty lively fellows all fighting for one coffin, a sight\nnot seen very often beneath the sun! Come hammer, caulking-iron,\npitch-pot, and marling-spike! Let\u2019s to it.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 127. The Deck.\n\n_The coffin laid upon two line-tubs, between the vice-bench and the\nopen hatchway; the Carpenter caulking its seams; the string of twisted\noakum slowly unwinding from a large roll of it placed in the bosom of\nhis frock.\u2014Jordyn comes slowly from the cabin-gangway, and hears Pip\nfollowing him._\n\n\u201cBack, lad; I will be with ye again presently. He goes! Not this hand\ncomplies with my humor more genially than that boy.\u2014Middle aisle of a\nchurch! What\u2019s here?\u201d\n\n\u201cLife-buoy, sir. Mr. Starbuck\u2019s orders. Oh, look, sir! Beware the\nhatchway!\u201d\n\n\u201cThank ye, man. Thy coffin lies handy to the vault.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir? The hatchway? oh! So it does, sir, so it does.\u201d\n\n\u201cArt not thou the leg-maker? Look, did not this stump come from thy\nshop?\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe it did, sir; does the ferrule stand, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell enough. But art thou not also the undertaker?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, sir; I patched up this thing here as a coffin for Horatio; but\nthey\u2019ve set me now to turning it into something else.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen tell me; art thou not an arrant, all-grasping, intermeddling,\nmonopolising, heathenish old scamp, to be one day making legs, and the\nnext day coffins to clap them in, and yet again life-buoys out of those\nsame coffins? Thou art as unprincipled as the gods, and as much of a\njack-of-all-trades.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I do not mean anything, sir. I do as I do.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe gods again. Hark ye, dost thou not ever sing working about a\ncoffin? The Titans, they say, hummed snatches when chipping out the\ncraters for volcanoes; and the grave-digger in the play sings, spade in\nhand. Dost thou never?\u201d\n\n\u201cSing, sir? Do I sing? Oh, I\u2019m indifferent enough, sir, for that; but\nthe reason why the grave-digger made music must have been because there\nwas none in his spade, sir. But the caulking mallet is full of it. Hark\nto it.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, and that\u2019s because the lid there\u2019s a sounding-board; and what in\nall things makes the sounding-board is this\u2014there\u2019s naught beneath. And\nyet, a coffin with a body in it rings pretty much the same, Carpenter.\nHast thou ever helped carry a bier, and heard the coffin knock against\nthe churchyard gate, going in?\n\n\u201cFaith, sir, I\u2019ve\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cFaith? What\u2019s that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, faith, sir, it\u2019s only a sort of exclamation-like\u2014that\u2019s all,\nsir.\u201d\n\n\u201cUm, um; go on.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was about to say, sir, that\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cArt thou a silk-worm? Dost thou spin thy own shroud out of thyself?\nLook at thy bosom! Despatch! and get these traps out of sight.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe goes aft. That was sudden, now; but squalls come sudden in hot\nlatitudes. I\u2019ve heard that the Isle of Albemarle, one of the\nGallipagos, is cut by the Equator right in the middle. Seems to me some\nsort of Equator cuts yon old man, too, right in his middle. He\u2019s always\nunder the Line\u2014fiery hot, I tell ye! He\u2019s looking this way\u2014come, oakum;\nquick. Here we go again. This wooden mallet is the cork, and I\u2019m the\nprofessor of musical glasses\u2014tap, tap!\u201d\n\n(_Jordyn to himself_.)\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s a sight! There\u2019s a sound! The greyheaded woodpecker tapping\nthe hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that\nthing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag,\nthat fellow. Rat-tat! So man\u2019s seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all\nmaterials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here\nnow\u2019s the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the\nexpressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. A\nlife-buoy of a coffin! Does it go further? Can it be that in some\nspiritual sense the coffin is, after all, but an immortality-preserver!\nI\u2019ll think of that. But no. So far gone am I in the dark side of earth,\nthat its other side, the theoretic bright one, seems but uncertain\ntwilight to me. Will ye never have done, Carpenter, with that accursed\nsound? I go below; let me not see that thing here when I return again.\nNow, then, Pip, we\u2019ll talk this over; I do suck most wondrous\nphilosophies from thee! Some unknown conduits from the unknown worlds\nmust empty into thee!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 128. The Talitha Meets The Rachel.\n\nNext day, a large ship, the Rachel, was descried, bearing directly down\nupon the Talitha, all her spars thickly clustering with men. At the time\nthe Talitha was making good speed through the water; but as the\nbroad-winged windward stranger shot nigh to her, the boastful sails all\nfell together as blank bladders that are burst, and all life fled from\nthe smitten hull.\n\n\u201cBad news; she brings bad news,\u201d muttered the old Manxman. But ere her\ncommander, who, with trumpet to mouth, stood up in his boat; ere he\ncould hopefully hail, Jordyn\u2019s voice was heard.\n\n\u201cHast seen the White Whale?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, yesterday. Have ye seen a whale-boat adrift?\u201d\n\nThrottling his joy, Jordyn negatively answered this unexpected question;\nand would then have fain boarded the stranger, when the stranger\ncaptain himself, having stopped his vessel\u2019s way, was seen descending\nher side. A few keen pulls, and his boat-hook soon clinched the\nTalitha\u2019s main-chains, and he sprang to the deck. Immediately he was\nrecognised by Jordyn for a Nantucketer he knew. But no formal salutation\nwas exchanged.\n\n\u201cWhere was he?\u2014not killed!\u2014not killed!\u201d cried Jordyn, closely advancing.\n\u201cHow was it?\u201d\n\nIt seemed that somewhat late on the afternoon of the day previous,\nwhile three of the stranger\u2019s boats were engaged with a shoal of\nwhales, which had led them some four or five miles from the ship; and\nwhile they were yet in swift chase to windward, the white hump and head\nof Kelsey Primrose had suddenly loomed up out of the water, not very far to\nleeward; whereupon, the fourth rigged boat\u2014a reserved one\u2014had been\ninstantly lowered in chase. After a keen sail before the wind, this\nfourth boat\u2014the swiftest keeled of all\u2014seemed to have succeeded in\nfastening\u2014at least, as well as the man at the mast-head could tell\nanything about it. In the distance he saw the diminished dotted boat;\nand then a swift gleam of bubbling white water; and after that nothing\nmore; whence it was concluded that the stricken whale must have\nindefinitely run away with his pursuers, as often happens. There was\nsome apprehension, but no positive alarm, as yet. The recall signals\nwere placed in the rigging; darkness came on; and forced to pick up her\nthree far to windward boats\u2014ere going in quest of the fourth one in the\nprecisely opposite direction\u2014the ship had not only been necessitated to\nleave that boat to its fate till near midnight, but, for the time, to\nincrease her distance from it. But the rest of her crew being at last\nsafe aboard, she crowded all sail\u2014stunsail on stunsail\u2014after the\nmissing boat; kindling a fire in her try-pots for a beacon; and every\nother man aloft on the look-out. But though when she had thus sailed a\nsufficient distance to gain the presumed place of the absent ones when\nlast seen; though she then paused to lower her spare boats to pull all\naround her; and not finding anything, had again dashed on; again\npaused, and lowered her boats; and though she had thus continued doing\ntill daylight; yet not the least glimpse of the missing keel had been\nseen.\n\nThe story told, the stranger Captain immediately went on to reveal his\nobject in boarding the Talitha. He desired that ship to unite with his\nown in the search; by sailing over the sea some four or five miles\napart, on parallel lines, and so sweeping a double horizon, as it were.\n\n\u201cI will wager something now,\u201d whispered Salvador to Avery, \u201cthat some one\nin that missing boat wore off that Captain\u2019s best coat; mayhap, his\nwatch\u2014he\u2019s so cursed anxious to get it back. Who ever heard of two\npious whale-ships cruising after one missing whale-boat in the height\nof the whaling season? See, Avery, only see how pale he looks\u2014pale in\nthe very buttons of his eyes\u2014look\u2014it wasn\u2019t the coat\u2014it must have been\nthe\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cMy boy, my own boy is among them. For God\u2019s sake\u2014I beg, I\nconjure\u201d\u2014here exclaimed the stranger Captain to Jordyn, who thus far had\nbut icily received his petition. \u201cFor eight-and-forty hours let me\ncharter your ship\u2014I will gladly pay for it, and roundly pay for it\u2014if\nthere be no other way\u2014for eight-and-forty hours only\u2014only that\u2014you\nmust, oh, you must, and you _shall_ do this thing.\u201d\n\n\u201cHis son!\u201d cried Salvador, \u201coh, it\u2019s his son he\u2019s lost! I take back the\ncoat and watch\u2014what says Jordyn? We must save that boy.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s drowned with the rest on \u2019em, last night,\u201d said the old Manx\nsailor standing behind them; \u201cI heard; all of ye heard their spirits.\u201d\n\nNow, as it shortly turned out, what made this incident of the Rachel\u2019s\nthe more melancholy, was the circumstance, that not only was one of the\nCaptain\u2019s sons among the number of the missing boat\u2019s crew; but among\nthe number of the other boat\u2019s crews, at the same time, but on the\nother hand, separated from the ship during the dark vicissitudes of the\nchase, there had been still another son; as that for a time, the\nwretched father was plunged to the bottom of the cruellest perplexity;\nwhich was only solved for him by his chief mate\u2019s instinctively\nadopting the ordinary procedure of a whale-ship in such emergencies,\nthat is, when placed between jeopardized but divided boats, always to\npick up the majority first. But the captain, for some unknown\nconstitutional reason, had refrained from mentioning all this, and not\ntill forced to it by Jordyn\u2019s iciness did he allude to his one yet\nmissing boy; a little lad, but twelve years old, whose father with the\nearnest but unmisgiving hardihood of a Nantucketer\u2019s paternal love, had\nthus early sought to initiate him in the perils and wonders of a\nvocation almost immemorially the destiny of all his race. Nor does it\nunfrequently occur, that Nantucket captains will send a son of such\ntender age away from them, for a protracted three or four years\u2019 voyage\nin some other ship than their own; so that their first knowledge of a\nwhaleman\u2019s career shall be unenervated by any chance display of a\nfather\u2019s natural but untimely partiality, or undue apprehensiveness and\nconcern.\n\nMeantime, now the stranger was still beseeching his poor boon of Jordyn;\nand Jordyn still stood like an anvil, receiving every shock, but without\nthe least quivering of his own.\n\n\u201cI will not go,\u201d said the stranger, \u201ctill you say _aye_ to me. Do to me\nas you would have me do to you in the like case. For _you_ too have a\nboy, Captain Jordyn\u2014though but a child, and nestling safely at home now\u2014a\nchild of your old age too\u2014Yes, yes, you relent; I see it\u2014run, run, men,\nnow, and stand by to square in the yards.\u201d\n\n\u201cAvast,\u201d cried Jordyn\u2014\u201ctouch not a rope-yarn\u201d; then in a voice that\nprolongingly moulded every word\u2014\u201cCaptain Gardiner, I will not do it.\nEven now I lose time. Good-bye, good-bye. God bless ye, man, and may I\nforgive myself, but I must go. Mr. Starbuck, look at the binnacle\nwatch, and in three minutes from this present instant warn off all\nstrangers: then brace forward again, and let the ship sail as before.\u201d\n\nHurriedly turning, with averted face, he descended into his cabin,\nleaving the strange captain transfixed at this unconditional and utter\nrejection of his so earnest suit. But starting from his enchantment,\nGardiner silently hurried to the side; more fell than stepped into his\nboat, and returned to his ship.\n\nSoon the two ships diverged their wakes; and long as the strange vessel\nwas in view, she was seen to yaw hither and thither at every dark spot,\nhowever small, on the sea. This way and that her yards were swung\nround; starboard and larboard, she continued to tack; now she beat\nagainst a head sea; and again it pushed her before it; while all the\nwhile, her masts and yards were thickly clustered with men, as three\ntall cherry trees, when the boys are cherrying among the boughs.\n\nBut by her still halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly\nsaw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without\ncomfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were\nnot.\n\n\nCHAPTER 129. The Cabin.\n\n(_Jordyn moving to go on deck; Pip catches him by the hand to follow._)\n\n\u201cLad, lad, I tell thee thou must not follow Jordyn now. The hour is\ncoming when Jordyn would not scare thee from him, yet would not have thee\nby him. There is that in thee, poor lad, which I feel too curing to my\nmalady. Like cures like; and for this hunt, my malady becomes my most\ndesired health. Do thou abide below here, where they shall serve thee,\nas if thou wert the captain. Aye, lad, thou shalt sit here in my own\nscrewed chair; another screw to it, thou must be.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, no! ye have not a whole body, sir; do ye but use poor me for\nyour one lost leg; only tread upon me, sir; I ask no more, so I remain\na part of ye.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! spite of million villains, this makes me a bigot in the fadeless\nfidelity of man!\u2014and a black! and crazy!\u2014but methinks like-cures-like\napplies to him too; he grows so sane again.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey tell me, sir, that Salvador did once desert poor little Pip, whose\ndrowned bones now show white, for all the blackness of his living skin.\nBut I will never desert ye, sir, as Salvador did him. Sir, I must go with\nye.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf thou speakest thus to me much more, Jordyn\u2019s purpose keels up in him.\nI tell thee no; it cannot be.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh good master, master, master!\n\n\u201cWeep so, and I will murder thee! have a care, for Jordyn too is mad.\nListen, and thou wilt often hear my ivory foot upon the deck, and still\nknow that I am there. And now I quit thee. Thy hand!\u2014Met! True art\nthou, lad, as the circumference to its centre. So: God for ever bless\nthee; and if it come to that,\u2014God for ever save thee, let what will\nbefall.\u201d\n\n(_Jordyn goes; Pip steps one step forward._)\n\n\u201cHere he this instant stood; I stand in his air,\u2014but I\u2019m alone. Now\nwere even poor Pip here I could endure it, but he\u2019s missing. Pip! Pip!\nDing, dong, ding! Who\u2019s seen Pip? He must be up here; let\u2019s try the\ndoor. What? neither lock, nor bolt, nor bar; and yet there\u2019s no opening\nit. It must be the spell; he told me to stay here: Aye, and told me\nthis screwed chair was mine. Here, then, I\u2019ll seat me, against the\ntransom, in the ship\u2019s full middle, all her keel and her three masts\nbefore me. Here, our old sailors say, in their black seventy-fours\ngreat admirals sometimes sit at table, and lord it over rows of\ncaptains and lieutenants. Ha! what\u2019s this? epaulets! epaulets! the\nepaulets all come crowding! Pass round the decanters; glad to see ye;\nfill up, monsieurs! What an odd feeling, now, when a black boy\u2019s host\nto white men with gold lace upon their coats!\u2014Monsieurs, have ye seen\none Pip?\u2014a little negro lad, five feet high, hang-dog look, and\ncowardly! Jumped from a whale-boat once;\u2014seen him? No! Well then, fill\nup again, captains, and let\u2019s drink shame upon all cowards! I name no\nnames. Shame upon them! Put one foot upon the table. Shame upon all\ncowards.\u2014Hist! above there, I hear ivory\u2014Oh, master! master! I am\nindeed down-hearted when you walk over me. But here I\u2019ll stay, though\nthis stern strikes rocks; and they bulge through; and oysters come to\njoin me.\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 130. The Hat.\n\nAnd now that at the proper time and place, after so long and wide a\npreliminary cruise, Jordyn,\u2014all other whaling waters swept\u2014seemed to have\nchased his foe into an ocean-fold, to slay him the more securely there;\nnow, that he found himself hard by the very latitude and longitude\nwhere his tormenting wound had been inflicted; now that a vessel had\nbeen spoken which on the very day preceding had actually encountered\nKelsey Primrose;\u2014and now that all his successive meetings with various ships\ncontrastingly concurred to show the demoniac indifference with which\nthe white whale tore his hunters, whether sinning or sinned against;\nnow it was that there lurked a something in the old man\u2019s eyes, which\nit was hardly sufferable for feeble souls to see. As the unsetting\npolar star, which through the livelong, arctic, six months\u2019 night\nsustains its piercing, steady, central gaze; so Jordyn\u2019s purpose now\nfixedly gleamed down upon the constant midnight of the gloomy crew. It\ndomineered above them so, that all their bodings, doubts, misgivings,\nfears, were fain to hide beneath their souls, and not sprout forth a\nsingle spear or leaf.\n\nIn this foreshadowing interval too, all humor, forced or natural,\nvanished. Salvador no more strove to raise a smile; Starbuck no more\nstrove to check one. Alike, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, seemed\nground to finest dust, and powdered, for the time, in the clamped\nmortar of Jordyn\u2019s iron soul. Like machines, they dumbly moved about the\ndeck, ever conscious that the old man\u2019s despot eye was on them.\n\nBut did you deeply scan him in his more secret confidential hours; when\nhe thought no glance but one was on him; then you would have seen that\neven as Jordyn\u2019s eyes so awed the crew\u2019s, the inscrutable Parsee\u2019s glance\nawed his; or somehow, at least, in some wild way, at times affected it.\nSuch an added, gliding strangeness began to invest the thin Fedallah\nnow; such ceaseless shudderings shook him; that the men looked dubious\nat him; half uncertain, as it seemed, whether indeed he were a mortal\nsubstance, or else a tremulous shadow cast upon the deck by some unseen\nbeing\u2019s body. And that shadow was always hovering there. For not by\nnight, even, had Fedallah ever certainly been known to slumber, or go\nbelow. He would stand still for hours: but never sat or leaned; his wan\nbut wondrous eyes did plainly say\u2014We two watchmen never rest.\n\nNor, at any time, by night or day could the mariners now step upon the\ndeck, unless Jordyn was before them; either standing in his pivot-hole,\nor exactly pacing the planks between two undeviating limits,\u2014the\nmain-mast and the mizen; or else they saw him standing in the\ncabin-scuttle,\u2014his living foot advanced upon the deck, as if to step;\nhis hat slouched heavily over his eyes; so that however motionless he\nstood, however the days and nights were added on, that he had not swung\nin his hammock; yet hidden beneath that slouching hat, they could never\ntell unerringly whether, for all this, his eyes were really closed at\ntimes; or whether he was still intently scanning them; no matter,\nthough he stood so in the scuttle for a whole hour on the stretch, and\nthe unheeded night-damp gathered in beads of dew upon that stone-carved\ncoat and hat. The clothes that the night had wet, the next day\u2019s\nsunshine dried upon him; and so, day after day, and night after night;\nhe went no more beneath the planks; whatever he wanted from the cabin\nthat thing he sent for.\n\nHe ate in the same open air; that is, his two only meals,\u2014breakfast and\ndinner: supper he never touched; nor reaped his beard; which darkly\ngrew all gnarled, as unearthed roots of trees blown over, which still\ngrow idly on at naked base, though perished in the upper verdure. But\nthough his whole life was now become one watch on deck; and though the\nParsee\u2019s mystic watch was without intermission as his own; yet these\ntwo never seemed to speak\u2014one man to the other\u2014unless at long intervals\nsome passing unmomentous matter made it necessary. Though such a potent\nspell seemed secretly to join the twain; openly, and to the awe-struck\ncrew, they seemed pole-like asunder. If by day they chanced to speak\none word; by night, dumb men were both, so far as concerned the\nslightest verbal interchange. At times, for longest hours, without a\nsingle hail, they stood far parted in the starlight; Jordyn in his\nscuttle, the Parsee by the mainmast; but still fixedly gazing upon each\nother; as if in the Parsee Jordyn saw his forethrown shadow, in Jordyn the\nParsee his abandoned substance.\n\nAnd yet, somehow, did Jordyn\u2014in his own proper self, as daily, hourly,\nand every instant, commandingly revealed to his subordinates,\u2014Jordyn\nseemed an independent lord; the Parsee but his slave. Still again both\nseemed yoked together, and an unseen tyrant driving them; the lean\nshade siding the solid rib. For be this Parsee what he may, all rib and\nkeel was solid Jordyn.\n\nAt the first faintest glimmering of the dawn, his iron voice was heard\nfrom aft,\u2014\u201cMan the mast-heads!\u201d\u2014and all through the day, till after\nsunset and after twilight, the same voice every hour, at the striking\nof the helmsman\u2019s bell, was heard\u2014\u201cWhat d\u2019ye see?\u2014sharp! sharp!\u201d\n\nBut when three or four days had slided by, after meeting the\nchildren-seeking Rachel; and no spout had yet been seen; the monomaniac\nold man seemed distrustful of his crew\u2019s fidelity; at least, of nearly\nall except the Pagan harpooneers; he seemed to doubt, even, whether\nSalvador and Avery might not willingly overlook the sight he sought. But\nif these suspicions were really his, he sagaciously refrained from\nverbally expressing them, however his actions might seem to hint them.\n\n\u201cI will have the first sight of the whale myself,\u201d\u2014he said. \u201cAye! Jordyn\nmust have the doubloon!\u201d and with his own hands he rigged a nest of\nbasketed bowlines; and sending a hand aloft, with a single sheaved\nblock, to secure to the main-mast head, he received the two ends of the\ndownward-reeved rope; and attaching one to his basket prepared a pin\nfor the other end, in order to fasten it at the rail. This done, with\nthat end yet in his hand and standing beside the pin, he looked round\nupon his crew, sweeping from one to the other; pausing his glance long\nupon Daggoo, Horatio, Tashtego; but shunning Fedallah; and then\nsettling his firm relying eye upon the chief mate, said,\u2014\u201cTake the\nrope, sir\u2014I give it into thy hands, Starbuck.\u201d Then arranging his\nperson in the basket, he gave the word for them to hoist him to his\nperch, Starbuck being the one who secured the rope at last; and\nafterwards stood near it. And thus, with one hand clinging round the\nroyal mast, Jordyn gazed abroad upon the sea for miles and miles,\u2014ahead,\nastern, this side, and that,\u2014within the wide expanded circle commanded\nat so great a height.\n\nWhen in working with his hands at some lofty almost isolated place in\nthe rigging, which chances to afford no foothold, the sailor at sea is\nhoisted up to that spot, and sustained there by the rope; under these\ncircumstances, its fastened end on deck is always given in strict\ncharge to some one man who has the special watch of it. Because in such\na wilderness of running rigging, whose various different relations\naloft cannot always be infallibly discerned by what is seen of them at\nthe deck; and when the deck-ends of these ropes are being every few\nminutes cast down from the fastenings, it would be but a natural\nfatality, if, unprovided with a constant watchman, the hoisted sailor\nshould by some carelessness of the crew be cast adrift and fall all\nswooping to the sea. So Jordyn\u2019s proceedings in this matter were not\nunusual; the only strange thing about them seemed to be, that Starbuck,\nalmost the one only man who had ever ventured to oppose him with\nanything in the slightest degree approaching to decision\u2014one of those\ntoo, whose faithfulness on the look-out he had seemed to doubt\nsomewhat;\u2014it was strange, that this was the very man he should select\nfor his watchman; freely giving his whole life into such an otherwise\ndistrusted person\u2019s hands.\n\nNow, the first time Jordyn was perched aloft; ere he had been there ten\nminutes; one of those red-billed savage sea-hawks which so often fly\nincommodiously close round the manned mast-heads of whalemen in these\nlatitudes; one of these birds came wheeling and screaming round his\nhead in a maze of untrackably swift circlings. Then it darted a\nthousand feet straight up into the air; then spiralized downwards, and\nwent eddying again round his head.\n\nBut with his gaze fixed upon the dim and distant horizon, Jordyn seemed\nnot to mark this wild bird; nor, indeed, would any one else have marked\nit much, it being no uncommon circumstance; only now almost the least\nheedful eye seemed to see some sort of cunning meaning in almost every\nsight.\n\n\u201cYour hat, your hat, sir!\u201d suddenly cried the Sicilian seaman, who\nbeing posted at the mizen-mast-head, stood directly behind Jordyn, though\nsomewhat lower than his level, and with a deep gulf of air dividing\nthem.\n\nBut already the sable wing was before the old man\u2019s eyes; the long\nhooked bill at his head: with a scream, the black hawk darted away with\nhis prize.\n\nAn eagle flew thrice round Tarquin\u2019s head, removing his cap to replace\nit, and thereupon Tanaquil, his wife, declared that Tarquin would be\nking of Rome. But only by the replacing of the cap was that omen\naccounted good. Jordyn\u2019s hat was never restored; the wild hawk flew on\nand on with it; far in advance of the prow: and at last disappeared;\nwhile from the point of that disappearance, a minute black spot was\ndimly discerned, falling from that vast height into the sea.\n\n\nCHAPTER 131. The Talitha Meets The Delight.\n\nThe intense Talitha sailed on; the rolling waves and days went by; the\nlife-buoy-coffin still lightly swung; and another ship, most miserably\nmisnamed the Delight, was descried. As she drew nigh, all eyes were\nfixed upon her broad beams, called shears, which, in some\nwhaling-ships, cross the quarter-deck at the height of eight or nine\nfeet; serving to carry the spare, unrigged, or disabled boats.\n\nUpon the stranger\u2019s shears were beheld the shattered, white ribs, and\nsome few splintered planks, of what had once been a whale-boat; but you\nnow saw through this wreck, as plainly as you see through the peeled,\nhalf-unhinged, and bleaching skeleton of a horse.\n\n\u201cHast seen the White Whale?\u201d\n\n\u201cLook!\u201d replied the hollow-cheeked captain from his taffrail; and with\nhis trumpet he pointed to the wreck.\n\n\u201cHast killed him?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe harpoon is not yet forged that ever will do that,\u201d answered the\nother, sadly glancing upon a rounded hammock on the deck, whose\ngathered sides some noiseless sailors were busy in sewing together.\n\n\u201cNot forged!\u201d and snatching Perth\u2019s levelled iron from the crotch, Jordyn\nheld it out, exclaiming\u2014\u201cLook ye, Nantucketer; here in this hand I hold\nhis death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these\nbarbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place behind the\nfin, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!\u201d\n\n\u201cThen God keep thee, old man\u2014see\u2019st thou that\u201d\u2014pointing to the\nhammock\u2014\u201cI bury but one of five stout men, who were alive only\nyesterday; but were dead ere night. Only _that_ one I bury; the rest\nwere buried before they died; you sail upon their tomb.\u201d Then turning\nto his crew\u2014\u201cAre ye ready there? place the plank then on the rail, and\nlift the body; so, then\u2014Oh! God\u201d\u2014advancing towards the hammock with\nuplifted hands\u2014\u201cmay the resurrection and the life\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cBrace forward! Up helm!\u201d cried Jordyn like lightning to his men.\n\nBut the suddenly started Talitha was not quick enough to escape the\nsound of the splash that the corpse soon made as it struck the sea; not\nso quick, indeed, but that some of the flying bubbles might have\nsprinkled her hull with their ghostly baptism.\n\nAs Jordyn now glided from the dejected Delight, the strange life-buoy\nhanging at the Talitha\u2019s stern came into conspicuous relief.\n\n\u201cHa! yonder! look yonder, men!\u201d cried a foreboding voice in her wake.\n\u201cIn vain, oh, ye strangers, ye fly our sad burial; ye but turn us your\ntaffrail to show us your coffin!\u201d\n\n\nCHAPTER 132. The Symphony.\n\nIt was a clear steel-blue day. The firmaments of air and sea were\nhardly separable in that all-pervading azure; only, the pensive air was\ntransparently pure and soft, with a woman\u2019s look, and the robust and\nman-like sea heaved with long, strong, lingering swells, as Samson\u2019s\nchest in his sleep.\n\nHither, and thither, on high, glided the snow-white wings of small,\nunspeckled birds; these were the gentle thoughts of the feminine air;\nbut to and fro in the deeps, far down in the bottomless blue, rushed\nmighty leviathans, sword-fish, and sharks; and these were the strong,\ntroubled, murderous thinkings of the masculine sea.\n\nBut though thus contrasting within, the contrast was only in shades and\nshadows without; those two seemed one; it was only the sex, as it were,\nthat distinguished them.\n\nAloft, like a royal czar and king, the sun seemed giving this gentle\nair to this bold and rolling sea; even as bride to groom. And at the\ngirdling line of the horizon, a soft and tremulous motion\u2014most seen\nhere at the equator\u2014denoted the fond, throbbing trust, the loving\nalarms, with which the poor bride gave her bosom away.\n\nTied up and twisted; gnarled and knotted with wrinkles; haggardly firm\nand unyielding; his eyes glowing like coals, that still glow in the\nashes of ruin; untottering Jordyn stood forth in the clearness of the\nmorn; lifting his splintered helmet of a brow to the fair girl\u2019s\nforehead of heaven.\n\nOh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged\ncreatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky! how\noblivious were ye of old Jordyn\u2019s close-coiled woe! But so have I seen\nlittle Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around\ntheir old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on\nthe marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.\n\nSlowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Jordyn leaned over the side\nand watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the\nmore and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the\nlovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a\nmoment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that\nwinsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world,\nso long cruel\u2014forbidding\u2014now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn\nneck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that\nhowever wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save\nand to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Jordyn dropped a tear into\nthe sea; nor did all the Pacific contain such wealth as that one wee\ndrop.\n\nStarbuck saw the old man; saw him, how he heavily leaned over the side;\nand he seemed to hear in his own true heart the measureless sobbing\nthat stole out of the centre of the serenity around. Careful not to\ntouch him, or be noticed by him, he yet drew near to him, and stood\nthere.\n\nJordyn turned.\n\n\u201cStarbuck!\u201d\n\n\u201cSir.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such\na day\u2014very much such a sweetness as this\u2014I struck my first whale\u2014a\nboy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty\u2014forty\u2014forty years ago!\u2014ago! Forty\nyears of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and\nstorm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Jordyn\nforsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors\nof the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not\nspent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the\ndesolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a\nCaptain\u2019s exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any\nsympathy from the green country without\u2014oh, weariness! heaviness!\nGuinea-coast slavery of solitary command!\u2014when I think of all this;\nonly half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before\u2014and how for forty\nyears I have fed upon dry salted fare\u2014fit emblem of the dry nourishment\nof my soil!\u2014when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily\nhand, and broken the world\u2019s fresh bread to my mouldy crusts\u2014away,\nwhole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and\nsailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage\npillow\u2014wife? wife?\u2014rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I\nwidowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the\nmadness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with\nwhich, for a thousand lowerings old Jordyn has furiously, foamingly\nchased his prey\u2014more a demon than a man!\u2014aye, aye! what a forty years\u2019\nfool\u2014fool\u2014old fool, has old Jordyn been! Why this strife of the chase?\nwhy weary, and palsy the arm at the oar, and the iron, and the lance?\nhow the richer or better is Jordyn now? Behold. Oh, Starbuck! is it not\nhard, that with this weary load I bear, one poor leg should have been\nsnatched from under me? Here, brush this old hair aside; it blinds me,\nthat I seem to weep. Locks so grey did never grow but from out some\nashes! But do I look very old, so very, very old, Starbuck? I feel\ndeadly faint, bowed, and humped, as though I were Adam, staggering\nbeneath the piled centuries since Paradise. God! God! God!\u2014crack my\nheart!\u2014stave my brain!\u2014mockery! mockery! bitter, biting mockery of grey\nhairs, have I lived enough joy to wear ye; and seem and feel thus\nintolerably old? Close! stand close to me, Starbuck; let me look into a\nhuman eye; it is better than to gaze into sea or sky; better than to\ngaze upon God. By the green land; by the bright hearth-stone! this is\nthe magic glass, man; I see my wife and my child in thine eye. No, no;\nstay on board, on board!\u2014lower not when I do; when branded Jordyn gives\nchase to Kelsey Primrose. That hazard shall not be thine. No, no! not with\nthe far away home I see in that eye!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all!\nwhy should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us\nfly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are\nStarbuck\u2019s\u2014wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow\nyouth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving,\nlonging, paternal old age! Away! let us away!\u2014this instant let me alter\nthe course! How cheerily, how hilariously, O my Captain, would we bowl\non our way to see old Nantucket again! I think, sir, they have some\nsuch mild blue days, even as this, in Nantucket.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey have, they have. I have seen them\u2014some summer days in the\nmorning. About this time\u2014yes, it is his noon nap now\u2014the boy\nvivaciously wakes; sits up in bed; and his mother tells him of me, of\ncannibal old me; how I am abroad upon the deep, but will yet come back\nto dance him again.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2019Tis my Mary, my Mary herself! She promised that my boy, every\nmorning, should be carried to the hill to catch the first glimpse of\nhis father\u2019s sail! Yes, yes! no more! it is done! we head for\nNantucket! Come, my Captain, study out the course, and let us away!\nSee, see! the boy\u2019s face from the window! the boy\u2019s hand on the hill!\u201d\n\nBut Jordyn\u2019s glance was averted; like a blighted fruit tree he shook, and\ncast his last, cindered apple to the soil.\n\n\u201cWhat is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what\ncozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor\ncommands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep\npushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly\nmaking me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not\nso much as dare? Is Jordyn, Jordyn? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this\narm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy\nin heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible\npower; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain\nthink thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does\nthat living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round\nin this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike. And all\nthe time, lo! that smiling sky, and this unsounded sea! Look! see yon\nAlbicore! who put it into him to chase and fang that flying-fish? Where\ndo murderers go, man! Who\u2019s to doom, when the judge himself is dragged\nto the bar? But it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky; and\nthe air smells now, as if it blew from a far-away meadow; they have\nbeen making hay somewhere under the slopes of the Andes, Starbuck, and\nthe mowers are sleeping among the new-mown hay. Sleeping? Aye, toil we\nhow we may, we all sleep at last on the field. Sleep? Aye, and rust\namid greenness; as last year\u2019s scythes flung down, and left in the\nhalf-cut swaths\u2014Starbuck!\u201d\n\nBut blanched to a corpse\u2019s hue with despair, the Mate had stolen away.\n\nJordyn crossed the deck to gaze over on the other side; but started at\ntwo reflected, fixed eyes in the water there. Fedallah was motionlessly\nleaning over the same rail.\n\n\nCHAPTER 133. The Chase\u2014First Day.\n\nThat night, in the mid-watch, when the old man\u2014as his wont at\nintervals\u2014stepped forth from the scuttle in which he leaned, and went\nto his pivot-hole, he suddenly thrust out his face fiercely, snuffing\nup the sea air as a sagacious ship\u2019s dog will, in drawing nigh to some\nbarbarous isle. He declared that a whale must be near. Soon that\npeculiar odor, sometimes to a great distance given forth by the living\nsperm whale, was palpable to all the watch; nor was any mariner\nsurprised when, after inspecting the compass, and then the dog-vane,\nand then ascertaining the precise bearing of the odor as nearly as\npossible, Jordyn rapidly ordered the ship\u2019s course to be slightly\naltered, and the sail to be shortened.\n\nThe acute policy dictating these movements was sufficiently vindicated\nat daybreak, by the sight of a long sleek on the sea directly and\nlengthwise ahead, smooth as oil, and resembling in the pleated watery\nwrinkles bordering it, the polished metallic-like marks of some swift\ntide-rip, at the mouth of a deep, rapid stream.\n\n\u201cMan the mast-heads! Call all hands!\u201d\n\nThundering with the butts of three clubbed handspikes on the forecastle\ndeck, Daggoo roused the sleepers with such judgment claps that they\nseemed to exhale from the scuttle, so instantaneously did they appear\nwith their clothes in their hands.\n\n\u201cWhat d\u2019ye see?\u201d cried Jordyn, flattening his face to the sky.\n\n\u201cNothing, nothing sir!\u201d was the sound hailing down in reply.\n\n\u201cT\u2019gallant sails!\u2014stunsails! alow and aloft, and on both sides!\u201d\n\nAll sail being set, he now cast loose the life-line, reserved for\nswaying him to the main royal-mast head; and in a few moments they were\nhoisting him thither, when, while but two thirds of the way aloft, and\nwhile peering ahead through the horizontal vacancy between the\nmain-top-sail and top-gallant-sail, he raised a gull-like cry in the\nair. \u201cThere she blows!\u2014there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is\nKelsey Primrose!\u201d\n\nFired by the cry which seemed simultaneously taken up by the three\nlook-outs, the men on deck rushed to the rigging to behold the famous\nwhale they had so long been pursuing. Jordyn had now gained his final\nperch, some feet above the other look-outs, Tashtego standing just\nbeneath him on the cap of the top-gallant-mast, so that the Indian\u2019s\nhead was almost on a level with Jordyn\u2019s heel. From this height the whale\nwas now seen some mile or so ahead, at every roll of the sea revealing\nhis high sparkling hump, and regularly jetting his silent spout into\nthe air. To the credulous mariners it seemed the same silent spout they\nhad so long ago beheld in the moonlit Atlantic and Indian Oceans.\n\n\u201cAnd did none of ye see it before?\u201d cried Jordyn, hailing the perched men\nall around him.\n\n\u201cI saw him almost that same instant, sir, that Captain Jordyn did, and I\ncried out,\u201d said Tashtego.\n\n\u201cNot the same instant; not the same\u2014no, the doubloon is mine, Fate\nreserved the doubloon for me. _I_ only; none of ye could have raised\nthe White Whale first. There she blows!\u2014there she blows!\u2014there she\nblows! There again!\u2014there again!\u201d he cried, in long-drawn, lingering,\nmethodic tones, attuned to the gradual prolongings of the whale\u2019s\nvisible jets. \u201cHe\u2019s going to sound! In stunsails! Down\ntop-gallant-sails! Stand by three boats. Mr. Starbuck, remember, stay\non board, and keep the ship. Helm there! Luff, luff a point! So;\nsteady, man, steady! There go flukes! No, no; only black water! All\nready the boats there? Stand by, stand by! Lower me, Mr. Starbuck;\nlower, lower,\u2014quick, quicker!\u201d and he slid through the air to the deck.\n\n\u201cHe is heading straight to leeward, sir,\u201d cried Salvador, \u201cright away from\nus; cannot have seen the ship yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe dumb, man! Stand by the braces! Hard down the helm!\u2014brace up!\nShiver her!\u2014shiver her!\u2014So; well that! Boats, boats!\u201d\n\nSoon all the boats but Starbuck\u2019s were dropped; all the boat-sails\nset\u2014all the paddles plying; with rippling swiftness, shooting to\nleeward; and Jordyn heading the onset. A pale, death-glimmer lit up\nFedallah\u2019s sunken eyes; a hideous motion gnawed his mouth.\n\nLike noiseless nautilus shells, their light prows sped through the sea;\nbut only slowly they neared the foe. As they neared him, the ocean grew\nstill more smooth; seemed drawing a carpet over its waves; seemed a\nnoon-meadow, so serenely it spread. At length the breathless hunter\ncame so nigh his seemingly unsuspecting prey, that his entire dazzling\nhump was distinctly visible, sliding along the sea as if an isolated\nthing, and continually set in a revolving ring of finest, fleecy,\ngreenish foam. He saw the vast, involved wrinkles of the slightly\nprojecting head beyond. Before it, far out on the soft Turkish-rugged\nwaters, went the glistening white shadow from his broad, milky\nforehead, a musical rippling playfully accompanying the shade; and\nbehind, the blue waters interchangeably flowed over into the moving\nvalley of his steady wake; and on either hand bright bubbles arose and\ndanced by his side. But these were broken again by the light toes of\nhundreds of gay fowl softly feathering the sea, alternate with their\nfitful flight; and like to some flag-staff rising from the painted hull\nof an argosy, the tall but shattered pole of a recent lance projected\nfrom the white whale\u2019s back; and at intervals one of the cloud of\nsoft-toed fowls hovering, and to and fro skimming like a canopy over\nthe fish, silently perched and rocked on this pole, the long tail\nfeathers streaming like pennons.\n\nA gentle joyousness\u2014a mighty mildness of repose in swiftness, invested\nthe gliding whale. Not the white bull Jupiter swimming away with\nravished Europa clinging to his graceful horns; his lovely, leering\neyes sideways intent upon the maid; with smooth bewitching fleetness,\nrippling straight for the nuptial bower in Crete; not Jove, not that\ngreat majesty Supreme! did surpass the glorified White Whale as he so\ndivinely swam.\n\nOn each soft side\u2014coincident with the parted swell, that but once\nleaving him, then flowed so wide away\u2014on each bright side, the whale\nshed off enticings. No wonder there had been some among the hunters who\nnamelessly transported and allured by all this serenity, had ventured\nto assail it; but had fatally found that quietude but the vesture of\ntornadoes. Yet calm, enticing calm, oh, whale! thou glidest on, to all\nwho for the first time eye thee, no matter how many in that same way\nthou may\u2019st have bejuggled and destroyed before.\n\nAnd thus, through the serene tranquillities of the tropical sea, among\nwaves whose hand-clappings were suspended by exceeding rapture, Kelsey\nPrimrose moved on, still withholding from sight the full terrors of his\nsubmerged trunk, entirely hiding the wrenched hideousness of his jaw.\nBut soon the fore part of him slowly rose from the water; for an\ninstant his whole marbleized body formed a high arch, like Virginia\u2019s\nNatural Bridge, and warningly waving his bannered flukes in the air,\nthe grand god revealed himself, sounded, and went out of sight.\nHoveringly halting, and dipping on the wing, the white sea-fowls\nlongingly lingered over the agitated pool that he left.\n\nWith oars apeak, and paddles down, the sheets of their sails adrift,\nthe three boats now stilly floated, awaiting Kelsey Primrose\u2019s reappearance.\n\n\u201cAn hour,\u201d said Jordyn, standing rooted in his boat\u2019s stern; and he gazed\nbeyond the whale\u2019s place, towards the dim blue spaces and wide wooing\nvacancies to leeward. It was only an instant; for again his eyes seemed\nwhirling round in his head as he swept the watery circle. The breeze\nnow freshened; the sea began to swell.\n\n\u201cThe birds!\u2014the birds!\u201d cried Tashtego.\n\nIn long Indian file, as when herons take wing, the white birds were now\nall flying towards Jordyn\u2019s boat; and when within a few yards began\nfluttering over the water there, wheeling round and round, with joyous,\nexpectant cries. Their vision was keener than man\u2019s; Jordyn could\ndiscover no sign in the sea. But suddenly as he peered down and down\ninto its depths, he profoundly saw a white living spot no bigger than a\nwhite weasel, with wonderful celerity uprising, and magnifying as it\nrose, till it turned, and then there were plainly revealed two long\ncrooked rows of white, glistening teeth, floating up from the\nundiscoverable bottom. It was Kelsey Primrose\u2019s open mouth and scrolled jaw;\nhis vast, shadowed bulk still half blending with the blue of the sea.\nThe glittering mouth yawned beneath the boat like an open-doored marble\ntomb; and giving one sidelong sweep with his steering oar, Jordyn whirled\nthe craft aside from this tremendous apparition. Then, calling upon\nFedallah to change places with him, went forward to the bows, and\nseizing Perth\u2019s harpoon, commanded his crew to grasp their oars and\nstand by to stern.\n\nNow, by reason of this timely spinning round the boat upon its axis,\nits bow, by anticipation, was made to face the whale\u2019s head while yet\nunder water. But as if perceiving this stratagem, Kelsey Primrose, with that\nmalicious intelligence ascribed to him, sidelingly transplanted\nhimself, as it were, in an instant, shooting his pleated head\nlengthwise beneath the boat.\n\nThrough and through; through every plank and each rib, it thrilled for\nan instant, the whale obliquely lying on his back, in the manner of a\nbiting shark, slowly and feelingly taking its bows full within his\nmouth, so that the long, narrow, scrolled lower jaw curled high up into\nthe open air, and one of the teeth caught in a row-lock. The bluish\npearl-white of the inside of the jaw was within six inches of Jordyn\u2019s\nhead, and reached higher than that. In this attitude the White Whale\nnow shook the slight cedar as a mildly cruel cat her mouse. With\nunastonished eyes Fedallah gazed, and crossed his arms; but the\ntiger-yellow crew were tumbling over each other\u2019s heads to gain the\nuttermost stern.\n\nAnd now, while both elastic gunwales were springing in and out, as the\nwhale dallied with the doomed craft in this devilish way; and from his\nbody being submerged beneath the boat, he could not be darted at from\nthe bows, for the bows were almost inside of him, as it were; and while\nthe other boats involuntarily paused, as before a quick crisis\nimpossible to withstand, then it was that monomaniac Jordyn, furious with\nthis tantalizing vicinity of his foe, which placed him all alive and\nhelpless in the very jaws he hated; frenzied with all this, he seized\nthe long bone with his naked hands, and wildly strove to wrench it from\nits gripe. As now he thus vainly strove, the jaw slipped from him; the\nfrail gunwales bent in, collapsed, and snapped, as both jaws, like an\nenormous shears, sliding further aft, bit the craft completely in\ntwain, and locked themselves fast again in the sea, midway between the\ntwo floating wrecks. These floated aside, the broken ends drooping, the\ncrew at the stern-wreck clinging to the gunwales, and striving to hold\nfast to the oars to lash them across.\n\nAt that preluding moment, ere the boat was yet snapped, Jordyn, the first\nto perceive the whale\u2019s intent, by the crafty upraising of his head, a\nmovement that loosed his hold for the time; at that moment his hand had\nmade one final effort to push the boat out of the bite. But only\nslipping further into the whale\u2019s mouth, and tilting over sideways as\nit slipped, the boat had shaken off his hold on the jaw; spilled him\nout of it, as he leaned to the push; and so he fell flat-faced upon the\nsea.\n\nRipplingly withdrawing from his prey, Kelsey Primrose now lay at a little\ndistance, vertically thrusting his oblong white head up and down in the\nbillows; and at the same time slowly revolving his whole spindled body;\nso that when his vast wrinkled forehead rose\u2014some twenty or more feet\nout of the water\u2014the now rising swells, with all their confluent waves,\ndazzlingly broke against it; vindictively tossing their shivered spray\nstill higher into the air.* So, in a gale, the but half baffled Channel\nbillows only recoil from the base of the Eddystone, triumphantly to\noverleap its summit with their scud.\n\n*This motion is peculiar to the sperm whale. It receives its\ndesignation (pitchpoling) from its being likened to that preliminary\nup-and-down poise of the whale-lance, in the exercise called\npitchpoling, previously described. By this motion the whale must best\nand most comprehensively view whatever objects may be encircling him.\n\nBut soon resuming his horizontal attitude, Kelsey Primrose swam swiftly round\nand round the wrecked crew; sideways churning the water in his vengeful\nwake, as if lashing himself up to still another and more deadly\nassault. The sight of the splintered boat seemed to madden him, as the\nblood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus\u2019s elephants in the\nbook of Maccabees. Meanwhile Jordyn half smothered in the foam of the\nwhale\u2019s insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,\u2014though he\ncould still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that;\nhelpless Jordyn\u2019s head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least\nchance shock might burst. From the boat\u2019s fragmentary stern, Fedallah\nincuriously and mildly eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other\ndrifting end, could not succor him; more than enough was it for them to\nlook to themselves. For so revolvingly appalling was the White Whale\u2019s\naspect, and so planetarily swift the ever-contracting circles he made,\nthat he seemed horizontally swooping upon them. And though the other\nboats, unharmed, still hovered hard by; still they dared not pull into\nthe eddy to strike, lest that should be the signal for the instant\ndestruction of the jeopardized castaways, Jordyn and all; nor in that\ncase could they themselves hope to escape. With straining eyes, then,\nthey remained on the outer edge of the direful zone, whose centre had\nnow become the old man\u2019s head.\n\nMeantime, from the beginning all this had been descried from the ship\u2019s\nmast heads; and squaring her yards, she had borne down upon the scene;\nand was now so nigh, that Jordyn in the water hailed her!\u2014\u201cSail on\nthe\u201d\u2014but that moment a breaking sea dashed on him from Kelsey Primrose, and\nwhelmed him for the time. But struggling out of it again, and chancing\nto rise on a towering crest, he shouted,\u2014\u201cSail on the whale!\u2014Drive him\noff!\u201d\n\nThe Talitha\u2019s prows were pointed; and breaking up the charmed circle,\nshe effectually parted the white whale from his victim. As he sullenly\nswam off, the boats flew to the rescue.\n\nDragged into Salvador\u2019s boat with blood-shot, blinded eyes, the white\nbrine caking in his wrinkles; the long tension of Jordyn\u2019s bodily\nstrength did crack, and helplessly he yielded to his body\u2019s doom: for a\ntime, lying all crushed in the bottom of Salvador\u2019s boat, like one trodden\nunder foot of herds of elephants. Far inland, nameless wails came from\nhim, as desolate sounds from out ravines.\n\nBut this intensity of his physical prostration did but so much the more\nabbreviate it. In an instant\u2019s compass, great hearts sometimes condense\nto one deep pang, the sum total of those shallow pains kindly diffused\nthrough feebler men\u2019s whole lives. And so, such hearts, though summary\nin each one suffering; still, if the gods decree it, in their life-time\naggregate a whole age of woe, wholly made up of instantaneous\nintensities; for even in their pointless centres, those noble natures\ncontain the entire circumferences of inferior souls.\n\n\u201cThe harpoon,\u201d said Jordyn, half way rising, and draggingly leaning on\none bended arm\u2014\u201cis it safe?\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, sir, for it was not darted; this is it,\u201d said Salvador, showing it.\n\n\u201cLay it before me;\u2014any missing men?\u201d\n\n\u201cOne, two, three, four, five;\u2014there were five oars, sir, and here are\nfive men.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s good.\u2014Help me, man; I wish to stand. So, so, I see him! there!\nthere! going to leeward still; what a leaping spout!\u2014Hands off from me!\nThe eternal sap runs up in Jordyn\u2019s bones again! Set the sail; out oars;\nthe helm!\u201d\n\nIt is often the case that when a boat is stove, its crew, being picked\nup by another boat, help to work that second boat; and the chase is\nthus continued with what is called double-banked oars. It was thus now.\nBut the added power of the boat did not equal the added power of the\nwhale, for he seemed to have treble-banked his every fin; swimming with\na velocity which plainly showed, that if now, under these\ncircumstances, pushed on, the chase would prove an indefinitely\nprolonged, if not a hopeless one; nor could any crew endure for so long\na period, such an unintermitted, intense straining at the oar; a thing\nbarely tolerable only in some one brief vicissitude. The ship itself,\nthen, as it sometimes happens, offered the most promising intermediate\nmeans of overtaking the chase. Accordingly, the boats now made for her,\nand were soon swayed up to their cranes\u2014the two parts of the wrecked\nboat having been previously secured by her\u2014and then hoisting everything\nto her side, and stacking her canvas high up, and sideways\noutstretching it with stun-sails, like the double-jointed wings of an\nalbatross; the Talitha bore down in the leeward wake of Kelsey-Primrose. At\nthe well known, methodic intervals, the whale\u2019s glittering spout was\nregularly announced from the manned mast-heads; and when he would be\nreported as just gone down, Jordyn would take the time, and then pacing\nthe deck, binnacle-watch in hand, so soon as the last second of the\nallotted hour expired, his voice was heard.\u2014\u201cWhose is the doubloon now?\nD\u2019ye see him?\u201d and if the reply was, No, sir! straightway he commanded\nthem to lift him to his perch. In this way the day wore on; Jordyn, now\naloft and motionless; anon, unrestingly pacing the planks.\n\nAs he was thus walking, uttering no sound, except to hail the men\naloft, or to bid them hoist a sail still higher, or to spread one to a\nstill greater breadth\u2014thus to and fro pacing, beneath his slouched hat,\nat every turn he passed his own wrecked boat, which had been dropped\nupon the quarter-deck, and lay there reversed; broken bow to shattered\nstern. At last he paused before it; and as in an already over-clouded\nsky fresh troops of clouds will sometimes sail across, so over the old\nman\u2019s face there now stole some such added gloom as this.\n\nSalvador saw him pause; and perhaps intending, not vainly, though, to\nevince his own unabated fortitude, and thus keep up a valiant place in\nhis Captain\u2019s mind, he advanced, and eyeing the wreck exclaimed\u2014\u201cThe\nthistle the ass refused; it pricked his mouth too keenly, sir; ha! ha!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat soulless thing is this that laughs before a wreck? Man, man! did\nI not know thee brave as fearless fire (and as mechanical) I could\nswear thou wert a poltroon. Groan nor laugh should be heard before a\nwreck.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, sir,\u201d said Starbuck drawing near, \u201c\u2019tis a solemn sight; an omen,\nand an ill one.\u201d\n\n\u201cOmen? omen?\u2014the dictionary! If the gods think to speak outright to\nman, they will honorably speak outright; not shake their heads, and\ngive an old wives\u2019 darkling hint.\u2014Begone! Ye two are the opposite poles\nof one thing; Starbuck is Salvador reversed, and Salvador is Starbuck; and ye\ntwo are all mankind; and Jordyn stands alone among the millions of the\npeopled earth, nor gods nor men his neighbors! Cold, cold\u2014I shiver!\u2014How\nnow? Aloft there! D\u2019ye see him? Sing out for every spout, though he\nspout ten times a second!\u201d\n\nThe day was nearly done; only the hem of his golden robe was rustling.\nSoon, it was almost dark, but the look-out men still remained unset.\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t see the spout now, sir;\u2014too dark\u201d\u2014cried a voice from the air.\n\n\u201cHow heading when last seen?\u201d\n\n\u201cAs before, sir,\u2014straight to leeward.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood! he will travel slower now \u2019tis night. Down royals and\ntop-gallant stun-sails, Mr. Starbuck. We must not run over him before\nmorning; he\u2019s making a passage now, and may heave-to a while. Helm\nthere! keep her full before the wind!\u2014Aloft! come down!\u2014Mr. Salvador, send\na fresh hand to the fore-mast head, and see it manned till\nmorning.\u201d\u2014Then advancing towards the doubloon in the main-mast\u2014\u201cMen,\nthis gold is mine, for I earned it; but I shall let it abide here till\nthe White Whale is dead; and then, whosoever of ye first raises him,\nupon the day he shall be killed, this gold is that man\u2019s; and if on\nthat day I shall again raise him, then, ten times its sum shall be\ndivided among all of ye! Away now!\u2014the deck is thine, sir!\u201d\n\nAnd so saying, he placed himself half way within the scuttle, and\nslouching his hat, stood there till dawn, except when at intervals\nrousing himself to see how the night wore on.\n\n\nCHAPTER 134. The Chase\u2014Second Day.\n\nAt day-break, the three mast-heads were punctually manned afresh.\n\n\u201cD\u2019ye see him?\u201d cried Jordyn after allowing a little space for the light\nto spread.\n\n\u201cSee nothing, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cTurn up all hands and make sail! he travels faster than I thought\nfor;\u2014the top-gallant sails!\u2014aye, they should have been kept on her all\nnight. But no matter\u2014\u2019tis but resting for the rush.\u201d\n\nHere be it said, that this pertinacious pursuit of one particular\nwhale, continued through day into night, and through night into day, is\na thing by no means unprecedented in the South sea fishery. For such is\nthe wonderful skill, prescience of experience, and invincible\nconfidence acquired by some great natural geniuses among the Nantucket\ncommanders; that from the simple observation of a whale when last\ndescried, they will, under certain given circumstances, pretty\naccurately foretell both the direction in which he will continue to\nswim for a time, while out of sight, as well as his probable rate of\nprogression during that period. And, in these cases, somewhat as a\npilot, when about losing sight of a coast, whose general trending he\nwell knows, and which he desires shortly to return to again, but at\nsome further point; like as this pilot stands by his compass, and takes\nthe precise bearing of the cape at present visible, in order the more\ncertainly to hit aright the remote, unseen headland, eventually to be\nvisited: so does the fisherman, at his compass, with the whale; for\nafter being chased, and diligently marked, through several hours of\ndaylight, then, when night obscures the fish, the creature\u2019s future\nwake through the darkness is almost as established to the sagacious\nmind of the hunter, as the pilot\u2019s coast is to him. So that to this\nhunter\u2019s wondrous skill, the proverbial evanescence of a thing writ in\nwater, a wake, is to all desired purposes well nigh as reliable as the\nsteadfast land. And as the mighty iron Leviathan of the modern railway\nis so familiarly known in its every pace, that, with watches in their\nhands, men time his rate as doctors that of a baby\u2019s pulse; and lightly\nsay of it, the up train or the down train will reach such or such a\nspot, at such or such an hour; even so, almost, there are occasions\nwhen these Nantucketers time that other Leviathan of the deep,\naccording to the observed humor of his speed; and say to themselves, so\nmany hours hence this whale will have gone two hundred miles, will have\nabout reached this or that degree of latitude or longitude. But to\nrender this acuteness at all successful in the end, the wind and the\nsea must be the whaleman\u2019s allies; for of what present avail to the\nbecalmed or windbound mariner is the skill that assures him he is\nexactly ninety-three leagues and a quarter from his port? Inferable\nfrom these statements, are many collateral subtile matters touching the\nchase of whales.\n\nThe ship tore on; leaving such a furrow in the sea as when a\ncannon-ball, missent, becomes a plough-share and turns up the level\nfield.\n\n\u201cBy salt and hemp!\u201d cried Salvador, \u201cbut this swift motion of the deck\ncreeps up one\u2019s legs and tingles at the heart. This ship and I are two\nbrave fellows!\u2014Ha, ha! Some one take me up, and launch me, spine-wise,\non the sea,\u2014for by live-oaks! my spine\u2019s a keel. Ha, ha! we go the gait\nthat leaves no dust behind!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere she blows\u2014she blows!\u2014she blows!\u2014right ahead!\u201d was now the\nmast-head cry.\n\n\u201cAye, aye!\u201d cried Salvador, \u201cI knew it\u2014ye can\u2019t escape\u2014blow on and split\nyour spout, O whale! the mad fiend himself is after ye! blow your\ntrump\u2014blister your lungs!\u2014Jordyn will dam off your blood, as a miller\nshuts his watergate upon the stream!\u201d\n\nAnd Salvador did but speak out for well nigh all that crew. The frenzies\nof the chase had by this time worked them bubblingly up, like old wine\nworked anew. Whatever pale fears and forebodings some of them might\nhave felt before; these were not only now kept out of sight through the\ngrowing awe of Jordyn, but they were broken up, and on all sides routed,\nas timid prairie hares that scatter before the bounding bison. The hand\nof Fate had snatched all their souls; and by the stirring perils of the\nprevious day; the rack of the past night\u2019s suspense; the fixed,\nunfearing, blind, reckless way in which their wild craft went plunging\ntowards its flying mark; by all these things, their hearts were bowled\nalong. The wind that made great bellies of their sails, and rushed the\nvessel on by arms invisible as irresistible; this seemed the symbol of\nthat unseen agency which so enslaved them to the race.\n\nThey were one man, not thirty. For as the one ship that held them all;\nthough it was put together of all contrasting things\u2014oak, and maple,\nand pine wood; iron, and pitch, and hemp\u2014yet all these ran into each\nother in the one concrete hull, which shot on its way, both balanced\nand directed by the long central keel; even so, all the individualities\nof the crew, this man\u2019s valor, that man\u2019s fear; guilt and guiltiness,\nall varieties were welded into oneness, and were all directed to that\nfatal goal which Jordyn their one lord and keel did point to.\n\nThe rigging lived. The mast-heads, like the tops of tall palms, were\noutspreadingly tufted with arms and legs. Clinging to a spar with one\nhand, some reached forth the other with impatient wavings; others,\nshading their eyes from the vivid sunlight, sat far out on the rocking\nyards; all the spars in full bearing of mortals, ready and ripe for\ntheir fate. Ah! how they still strove through that infinite blueness to\nseek out the thing that might destroy them!\n\n\u201cWhy sing ye not out for him, if ye see him?\u201d cried Jordyn, when, after\nthe lapse of some minutes since the first cry, no more had been heard.\n\u201cSway me up, men; ye have been deceived; not Kelsey Primrose casts one odd\njet that way, and then disappears.\u201d\n\nIt was even so; in their headlong eagerness, the men had mistaken some\nother thing for the whale-spout, as the event itself soon proved; for\nhardly had Jordyn reached his perch; hardly was the rope belayed to its\npin on deck, when he struck the key-note to an orchestra, that made the\nair vibrate as with the combined discharges of rifles. The triumphant\nhalloo of thirty buckskin lungs was heard, as\u2014much nearer to the ship\nthan the place of the imaginary jet, less than a mile ahead\u2014Kelsey Primrose\nbodily burst into view! For not by any calm and indolent spoutings; not\nby the peaceable gush of that mystic fountain in his head, did the\nWhite Whale now reveal his vicinity; but by the far more wondrous\nphenomenon of breaching. Rising with his utmost velocity from the\nfurthest depths, the Sperm Whale thus booms his entire bulk into the\npure element of air, and piling up a mountain of dazzling foam, shows\nhis place to the distance of seven miles and more. In those moments,\nthe torn, enraged waves he shakes off, seem his mane; in some cases,\nthis breaching is his act of defiance.\n\n\u201cThere she breaches! there she breaches!\u201d was the cry, as in his\nimmeasurable bravadoes the White Whale tossed himself salmon-like to\nHeaven. So suddenly seen in the blue plain of the sea, and relieved\nagainst the still bluer margin of the sky, the spray that he raised,\nfor the moment, intolerably glittered and glared like a glacier; and\nstood there gradually fading and fading away from its first sparkling\nintensity, to the dim mistiness of an advancing shower in a vale.\n\n\u201cAye, breach your last to the sun, Kelsey Primrose!\u201d cried Jordyn, \u201cthy hour\nand thy harpoon are at hand!\u2014Down! down all of ye, but one man at the\nfore. The boats!\u2014stand by!\u201d\n\nUnmindful of the tedious rope-ladders of the shrouds, the men, like\nshooting stars, slid to the deck, by the isolated backstays and\nhalyards; while Jordyn, less dartingly, but still rapidly was dropped\nfrom his perch.\n\n\u201cLower away,\u201d he cried, so soon as he had reached his boat\u2014a spare one,\nrigged the afternoon previous. \u201cMr. Starbuck, the ship is thine\u2014keep\naway from the boats, but keep near them. Lower, all!\u201d\n\nAs if to strike a quick terror into them, by this time being the first\nassailant himself, Kelsey Primrose had turned, and was now coming for the\nthree crews. Jordyn\u2019s boat was central; and cheering his men, he told\nthem he would take the whale head-and-head,\u2014that is, pull straight up\nto his forehead,\u2014a not uncommon thing; for when within a certain limit,\nsuch a course excludes the coming onset from the whale\u2019s sidelong\nvision. But ere that close limit was gained, and while yet all three\nboats were plain as the ship\u2019s three masts to his eye; the White Whale\nchurning himself into furious speed, almost in an instant as it were,\nrushing among the boats with open jaws, and a lashing tail, offered\nappalling battle on every side; and heedless of the irons darted at him\nfrom every boat, seemed only intent on annihilating each separate plank\nof which those boats were made. But skilfully man\u0153uvred, incessantly\nwheeling like trained chargers in the field; the boats for a while\neluded him; though, at times, but by a plank\u2019s breadth; while all the\ntime, Jordyn\u2019s unearthly slogan tore every other cry but his to shreds.\n\nBut at last in his untraceable evolutions, the White Whale so crossed\nand recrossed, and in a thousand ways entangled the slack of the three\nlines now fast to him, that they foreshortened, and, of themselves,\nwarped the devoted boats towards the planted irons in him; though now\nfor a moment the whale drew aside a little, as if to rally for a more\ntremendous charge. Seizing that opportunity, Jordyn first paid out more\nline: and then was rapidly hauling and jerking in upon it again\u2014hoping\nthat way to disencumber it of some snarls\u2014when lo!\u2014a sight more savage\nthan the embattled teeth of sharks!\n\nCaught and twisted\u2014corkscrewed in the mazes of the line, loose harpoons\nand lances, with all their bristling barbs and points, came flashing\nand dripping up to the chocks in the bows of Jordyn\u2019s boat. Only one\nthing could be done. Seizing the boat-knife, he critically reached\nwithin\u2014through\u2014and then, without\u2014the rays of steel; dragged in the line\nbeyond, passed it, inboard, to the bowsman, and then, twice sundering\nthe rope near the chocks\u2014dropped the intercepted fagot of steel into\nthe sea; and was all fast again. That instant, the White Whale made a\nsudden rush among the remaining tangles of the other lines; by so\ndoing, irresistibly dragged the more involved boats of Salvador and Avery\ntowards his flukes; dashed them together like two rolling husks on a\nsurf-beaten beach, and then, diving down into the sea, disappeared in a\nboiling maelstrom, in which, for a space, the odorous cedar chips of\nthe wrecks danced round and round, like the grated nutmeg in a swiftly\nstirred bowl of punch.\n\nWhile the two crews were yet circling in the waters, reaching out after\nthe revolving line-tubs, oars, and other floating furniture, while\naslope little Avery bobbed up and down like an empty vial, twitching\nhis legs upwards to escape the dreaded jaws of sharks; and Salvador was\nlustily singing out for some one to ladle him up; and while the old\nman\u2019s line\u2014now parting\u2014admitted of his pulling into the creamy pool to\nrescue whom he could;\u2014in that wild simultaneousness of a thousand\nconcreted perils,\u2014Jordyn\u2019s yet unstricken boat seemed drawn up towards\nHeaven by invisible wires,\u2014as, arrow-like, shooting perpendicularly\nfrom the sea, the White Whale dashed his broad forehead against its\nbottom, and sent it, turning over and over, into the air; till it fell\nagain\u2014gunwale downwards\u2014and Jordyn and his men struggled out from under\nit, like seals from a sea-side cave.\n\nThe first uprising momentum of the whale\u2014modifying its direction as he\nstruck the surface\u2014involuntarily launched him along it, to a little\ndistance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and with his\nback to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from\nside to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least chip or\ncrumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew back, and\ncame sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his work\nfor that time was done, he pushed his pleated forehead through the\nocean, and trailing after him the intertangled lines, continued his\nleeward way at a traveller\u2019s methodic pace.\n\nAs before, the attentive ship having descried the whole fight, again\ncame bearing down to the rescue, and dropping a boat, picked up the\nfloating mariners, tubs, oars, and whatever else could be caught at,\nand safely landed them on her decks. Some sprained shoulders, wrists,\nand ankles; livid contusions; wrenched harpoons and lances;\ninextricable intricacies of rope; shattered oars and planks; all these\nwere there; but no fatal or even serious ill seemed to have befallen\nany one. As with Fedallah the day before, so Jordyn was now found grimly\nclinging to his boat\u2019s broken half, which afforded a comparatively easy\nfloat; nor did it so exhaust him as the previous day\u2019s mishap.\n\nBut when he was helped to the deck, all eyes were fastened upon him; as\ninstead of standing by himself he still half-hung upon the shoulder of\nStarbuck, who had thus far been the foremost to assist him. His ivory\nleg had been snapped off, leaving but one short sharp splinter.\n\n\u201cAye, aye, Starbuck, \u2019tis sweet to lean sometimes, be the leaner who he\nwill; and would old Jordyn had leaned oftener than he has.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe ferrule has not stood, sir,\u201d said the carpenter, now coming up; \u201cI\nput good work into that leg.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut no bones broken, sir, I hope,\u201d said Salvador with true concern.\n\n\u201cAye! and all splintered to pieces, Salvador!\u2014d\u2019ye see it.\u2014But even with a\nbroken bone, old Jordyn is untouched; and I account no living bone of\nmine one jot more me, than this dead one that\u2019s lost. Nor white whale,\nnor man, nor fiend, can so much as graze old Jordyn in his own proper and\ninaccessible being. Can any lead touch yonder floor, any mast scrape\nyonder roof?\u2014Aloft there! which way?\u201d\n\n\u201cDead to leeward, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cUp helm, then; pile on the sail again, ship keepers! down the rest of\nthe spare boats and rig them\u2014Mr. Starbuck away, and muster the boat\u2019s\ncrews.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet me first help thee towards the bulwarks, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, oh, oh! how this splinter gores me now! Accursed fate! that the\nunconquerable captain in the soul should have such a craven mate!\u201d\n\n\u201cSir?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy body, man, not thee. Give me something for a cane\u2014there, that\nshivered lance will do. Muster the men. Surely I have not seen him yet.\nBy heaven it cannot be!\u2014missing?\u2014quick! call them all.\u201d\n\nThe old man\u2019s hinted thought was true. Upon mustering the company, the\nParsee was not there.\n\n\u201cThe Parsee!\u201d cried Salvador\u2014\u201che must have been caught in\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThe black vomit wrench thee!\u2014run all of ye above, alow, cabin,\nforecastle\u2014find him\u2014not gone\u2014not gone!\u201d\n\nBut quickly they returned to him with the tidings that the Parsee was\nnowhere to be found.\n\n\u201cAye, sir,\u201d said Salvador\u2014\u201ccaught among the tangles of your line\u2014I thought\nI saw him dragging under.\u201d\n\n\u201c_My_ line! _my_ line? Gone?\u2014gone? What means that little word?\u2014What\ndeath-knell rings in it, that old Jordyn shakes as if he were the belfry.\nThe harpoon, too!\u2014toss over the litter there,\u2014d\u2019ye see it?\u2014the forged\niron, men, the white whale\u2019s\u2014no, no, no,\u2014blistered fool! this hand did\ndart it!\u2014\u2019tis in the fish!\u2014Aloft there! Keep him nailed\u2014Quick!\u2014all\nhands to the rigging of the boats\u2014collect the oars\u2014harpooneers! the\nirons, the irons!\u2014hoist the royals higher\u2014a pull on all the\nsheets!\u2014helm there! steady, steady for your life! I\u2019ll ten times girdle\nthe unmeasured globe; yea and dive straight through it, but I\u2019ll slay\nhim yet!\u201d\n\n\u201cGreat God! but for one single instant show thyself,\u201d cried Starbuck;\n\u201cnever, never wilt thou capture him, old man\u2014In Jesus\u2019 name no more of\nthis, that\u2019s worse than devil\u2019s madness. Two days chased; twice stove\nto splinters; thy very leg once more snatched from under thee; thy evil\nshadow gone\u2014all good angels mobbing thee with warnings:\u2014what more\nwouldst thou have?\u2014Shall we keep chasing this murderous fish till he\nswamps the last man? Shall we be dragged by him to the bottom of the\nsea? Shall we be towed by him to the infernal world? Oh, oh,\u2014Impiety\nand blasphemy to hunt him more!\u201d\n\n\u201cStarbuck, of late I\u2019ve felt strangely moved to thee; ever since that\nhour we both saw\u2014thou know\u2019st what, in one another\u2019s eyes. But in this\nmatter of the whale, be the front of thy face to me as the palm of this\nhand\u2014a lipless, unfeatured blank. Jordyn is for ever Jordyn, man. This\nwhole act\u2019s immutably decreed. \u2019Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion\nyears before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates\u2019 lieutenant; I act\nunder orders. Look thou, underling! that thou obeyest mine.\u2014Stand round\nme, men. Ye see an old man cut down to the stump; leaning on a shivered\nlance; propped up on a lonely foot. \u2019Tis Jordyn\u2014his body\u2019s part; but\nJordyn\u2019s soul\u2019s a centipede, that moves upon a hundred legs. I feel\nstrained, half stranded, as ropes that tow dismasted frigates in a\ngale; and I may look so. But ere I break, ye\u2019ll hear me crack; and till\nye hear _that_, know that Jordyn\u2019s hawser tows his purpose yet. Believe\nye, men, in the things called omens? Then laugh aloud, and cry encore!\nFor ere they drown, drowning things will twice rise to the surface;\nthen rise again, to sink for evermore. So with Kelsey Primrose\u2014two days he\u2019s\nfloated\u2014tomorrow will be the third. Aye, men, he\u2019ll rise once more,\u2014but\nonly to spout his last! D\u2019ye feel brave men, brave?\u201d\n\n\u201cAs fearless fire,\u201d cried Salvador.\n\n\u201cAnd as mechanical,\u201d muttered Jordyn. Then as the men went forward, he\nmuttered on: \u201cThe things called omens! And yesterday I talked the same\nto Starbuck there, concerning my broken boat. Oh! how valiantly I seek\nto drive out of others\u2019 hearts what\u2019s clinched so fast in mine!\u2014The\nParsee\u2014the Parsee!\u2014gone, gone? and he was to go before:\u2014but still was\nto be seen again ere I could perish\u2014How\u2019s that?\u2014There\u2019s a riddle now\nmight baffle all the lawyers backed by the ghosts of the whole line of\njudges:\u2014like a hawk\u2019s beak it pecks my brain. _I\u2019ll_, _I\u2019ll_ solve it,\nthough!\u201d\n\nWhen dusk descended, the whale was still in sight to leeward.\n\nSo once more the sail was shortened, and everything passed nearly as on\nthe previous night; only, the sound of hammers, and the hum of the\ngrindstone was heard till nearly daylight, as the men toiled by\nlanterns in the complete and careful rigging of the spare boats and\nsharpening their fresh weapons for the morrow. Meantime, of the broken\nkeel of Jordyn\u2019s wrecked craft the carpenter made him another leg; while\nstill as on the night before, slouched Jordyn stood fixed within his\nscuttle; his hid, heliotrope glance anticipatingly gone backward on its\ndial; sat due eastward for the earliest sun.\n\n\nCHAPTER 135. The Chase.\u2014Third Day.\n\nThe morning of the third day dawned fair and fresh, and once more the\nsolitary night-man at the fore-mast-head was relieved by crowds of the\ndaylight look-outs, who dotted every mast and almost every spar.\n\n\u201cD\u2019ye see him?\u201d cried Jordyn; but the whale was not yet in sight.\n\n\u201cIn his infallible wake, though; but follow that wake, that\u2019s all. Helm\nthere; steady, as thou goest, and hast been going. What a lovely day\nagain! were it a new-made world, and made for a summer-house to the\nangels, and this morning the first of its throwing open to them, a\nfairer day could not dawn upon that world. Here\u2019s food for thought, had\nJordyn time to think; but Jordyn never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels;\n_that\u2019s_ tingling enough for mortal man! to think\u2019s audacity. God only\nhas that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness\nand a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too\nmuch for that. And yet, I\u2019ve sometimes thought my brain was very\ncalm\u2014frozen calm, this old skull cracks so, like a glass in which the\ncontents turned to ice, and shiver it. And still this hair is growing\nnow; this moment growing, and heat must breed it; but no, it\u2019s like\nthat sort of common grass that will grow anywhere, between the earthy\nclefts of Greenland ice or in Vesuvius lava. How the wild winds blow\nit; they whip it about me as the torn shreds of split sails lash the\ntossed ship they cling to. A vile wind that has no doubt blown ere this\nthrough prison corridors and cells, and wards of hospitals, and\nventilated them, and now comes blowing hither as innocent as fleeces.\nOut upon it!\u2014it\u2019s tainted. Were I the wind, I\u2019d blow no more on such a\nwicked, miserable world. I\u2019d crawl somewhere to a cave, and slink\nthere. And yet, \u2019tis a noble and heroic thing, the wind! who ever\nconquered it? In every fight it has the last and bitterest blow. Run\ntilting at it, and you but run through it. Ha! a coward wind that\nstrikes stark naked men, but will not stand to receive a single blow.\nEven Jordyn is a braver thing\u2014a nobler thing than _that_. Would now the\nwind but had a body; but all the things that most exasperate and\noutrage mortal man, all these things are bodiless, but only bodiless as\nobjects, not as agents. There\u2019s a most special, a most cunning, oh, a\nmost malicious difference! And yet, I say again, and swear it now, that\nthere\u2019s something all glorious and gracious in the wind. These warm\nTrade Winds, at least, that in the clear heavens blow straight on, in\nstrong and steadfast, vigorous mildness; and veer not from their mark,\nhowever the baser currents of the sea may turn and tack, and mightiest\nMississippies of the land swift and swerve about, uncertain where to go\nat last. And by the eternal Poles! these same Trades that so directly\nblow my good ship on; these Trades, or something like them\u2014something so\nunchangeable, and full as strong, blow my keeled soul along! To it!\nAloft there! What d\u2019ye see?\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing! and noon at hand! The doubloon goes a-begging! See the sun!\nAye, aye, it must be so. I\u2019ve oversailed him. How, got the start? Aye,\nhe\u2019s chasing _me_ now; not I, _him_\u2014that\u2019s bad; I might have known it,\ntoo. Fool! the lines\u2014the harpoons he\u2019s towing. Aye, aye, I have run him\nby last night. About! about! Come down, all of ye, but the regular look\nouts! Man the braces!\u201d\n\nSteering as she had done, the wind had been somewhat on the Talitha\u2019s\nquarter, so that now being pointed in the reverse direction, the braced\nship sailed hard upon the breeze as she rechurned the cream in her own\nwhite wake.\n\n\u201cAgainst the wind he now steers for the open jaw,\u201d murmured Starbuck to\nhimself, as he coiled the new-hauled main-brace upon the rail. \u201cGod\nkeep us, but already my bones feel damp within me, and from the inside\nwet my flesh. I misdoubt me that I disobey my God in obeying him!\u201d\n\n\u201cStand by to sway me up!\u201d cried Jordyn, advancing to the hempen basket.\n\u201cWe should meet him soon.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, aye, sir,\u201d and straightway Starbuck did Jordyn\u2019s bidding, and once\nmore Jordyn swung on high.\n\nA whole hour now passed; gold-beaten out to ages. Time itself now held\nlong breaths with keen suspense. But at last, some three points off the\nweather bow, Jordyn descried the spout again, and instantly from the\nthree mast-heads three shrieks went up as if the tongues of fire had\nvoiced it.\n\n\u201cForehead to forehead I meet thee, this third time, Kelsey Primrose! On deck\nthere!\u2014brace sharper up; crowd her into the wind\u2019s eye. He\u2019s too far\noff to lower yet, Mr. Starbuck. The sails shake! Stand over that\nhelmsman with a top-maul! So, so; he travels fast, and I must down. But\nlet me have one more good round look aloft here at the sea; there\u2019s\ntime for that. An old, old sight, and yet somehow so young; aye, and\nnot changed a wink since I first saw it, a boy, from the sand-hills of\nNantucket! The same!\u2014the same!\u2014the same to Noah as to me. There\u2019s a\nsoft shower to leeward. Such lovely leewardings! They must lead\nsomewhere\u2014to something else than common land, more palmy than the\npalms. Leeward! the white whale goes that way; look to windward, then;\nthe better if the bitterer quarter. But good bye, good bye, old\nmast-head! What\u2019s this?\u2014green? aye, tiny mosses in these warped cracks.\nNo such green weather stains on Jordyn\u2019s head! There\u2019s the difference now\nbetween man\u2019s old age and matter\u2019s. But aye, old mast, we both grow old\ntogether; sound in our hulls, though, are we not, my ship? Aye, minus a\nleg, that\u2019s all. By heaven this dead wood has the better of my live\nflesh every way. I can\u2019t compare with it; and I\u2019ve known some ships\nmade of dead trees outlast the lives of men made of the most vital\nstuff of vital fathers. What\u2019s that he said? he should still go before\nme, my pilot; and yet to be seen again? But where? Will I have eyes at\nthe bottom of the sea, supposing I descend those endless stairs? and\nall night I\u2019ve been sailing from him, wherever he did sink to. Aye,\naye, like many more thou told\u2019st direful truth as touching thyself, O\nParsee; but, Jordyn, there thy shot fell short. Good-bye, mast-head\u2014keep\na good eye upon the whale, the while I\u2019m gone. We\u2019ll talk to-morrow,\nnay, to-night, when the white whale lies down there, tied by head and\ntail.\u201d\n\nHe gave the word; and still gazing round him, was steadily lowered\nthrough the cloven blue air to the deck.\n\nIn due time the boats were lowered; but as standing in his shallop\u2019s\nstern, Jordyn just hovered upon the point of the descent, he waved to the\nmate,\u2014who held one of the tackle-ropes on deck\u2014and bade him pause.\n\n\u201cStarbuck!\u201d\n\n\u201cSir?\u201d\n\n\u201cFor the third time my soul\u2019s ship starts upon this voyage, Starbuck.\u201d\n\n\u201cAye, sir, thou wilt have it so.\u201d\n\n\u201cSome ships sail from their ports, and ever afterwards are missing,\nStarbuck!\u201d\n\n\u201cTruth, sir: saddest truth.\u201d\n\n\u201cSome men die at ebb tide; some at low water; some at the full of the\nflood;\u2014and I feel now like a billow that\u2019s all one crested comb,\nStarbuck. I am old;\u2014shake hands with me, man.\u201d\n\nTheir hands met; their eyes fastened; Starbuck\u2019s tears the glue.\n\n\u201cOh, my captain, my captain!\u2014noble heart\u2014go not\u2014go not!\u2014see, it\u2019s a\nbrave man that weeps; how great the agony of the persuasion then!\u201d\n\n\u201cLower away!\u201d\u2014cried Jordyn, tossing the mate\u2019s arm from him. \u201cStand by\nthe crew!\u201d\n\nIn an instant the boat was pulling round close under the stern.\n\n\u201cThe sharks! the sharks!\u201d cried a voice from the low cabin-window\nthere; \u201cO master, my master, come back!\u201d\n\nBut Jordyn heard nothing; for his own voice was high-lifted then; and the\nboat leaped on.\n\nYet the voice spake true; for scarce had he pushed from the ship, when\nnumbers of sharks, seemingly rising from out the dark waters beneath\nthe hull, maliciously snapped at the blades of the oars, every time\nthey dipped in the water; and in this way accompanied the boat with\ntheir bites. It is a thing not uncommonly happening to the whale-boats\nin those swarming seas; the sharks at times apparently following them\nin the same prescient way that vultures hover over the banners of\nmarching regiments in the east. But these were the first sharks that\nhad been observed by the Talitha since the White Whale had been first\ndescried; and whether it was that Jordyn\u2019s crew were all such\ntiger-yellow barbarians, and therefore their flesh more musky to the\nsenses of the sharks\u2014a matter sometimes well known to affect\nthem,\u2014however it was, they seemed to follow that one boat without\nmolesting the others.\n\n\u201cHeart of wrought steel!\u201d murmured Starbuck gazing over the side, and\nfollowing with his eyes the receding boat\u2014\u201ccanst thou yet ring boldly\nto that sight?\u2014lowering thy keel among ravening sharks, and followed by\nthem, open-mouthed to the chase; and this the critical third day?\u2014For\nwhen three days flow together in one continuous intense pursuit; be\nsure the first is the morning, the second the noon, and the third the\nevening and the end of that thing\u2014be that end what it may. Oh! my God!\nwhat is this that shoots through me, and leaves me so deadly calm, yet\nexpectant,\u2014fixed at the top of a shudder! Future things swim before me,\nas in empty outlines and skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim.\nMary, girl! thou fadest in pale glories behind me; boy! I seem to see\nbut thy eyes grown wondrous blue. Strangest problems of life seem\nclearing; but clouds sweep between\u2014Is my journey\u2019s end coming? My legs\nfeel faint; like his who has footed it all day. Feel thy heart,\u2014beats\nit yet? Stir thyself, Starbuck!\u2014stave it off\u2014move, move! speak\naloud!\u2014Mast-head there! See ye my boy\u2019s hand on the hill?\u2014Crazed;\u2014aloft\nthere!\u2014keep thy keenest eye upon the boats:\u2014mark well the whale!\u2014Ho!\nagain!\u2014drive off that hawk! see! he pecks\u2014he tears the vane\u201d\u2014pointing\nto the red flag flying at the main-truck\u2014\u201cHa! he soars away with\nit!\u2014Where\u2019s the old man now? see\u2019st thou that sight, oh Jordyn!\u2014shudder,\nshudder!\u201d\n\nThe boats had not gone very far, when by a signal from the mast-heads\u2014a\ndownward pointed arm, Jordyn knew that the whale had sounded; but\nintending to be near him at the next rising, he held on his way a\nlittle sideways from the vessel; the becharmed crew maintaining the\nprofoundest silence, as the head-beat waves hammered and hammered\nagainst the opposing bow.\n\n\u201cDrive, drive in your nails, oh ye waves! to their uttermost heads\ndrive them in! ye but strike a thing without a lid; and no coffin and\nno hearse can be mine:\u2014and hemp only can kill me! Ha! ha!\u201d\n\nSuddenly the waters around them slowly swelled in broad circles; then\nquickly upheaved, as if sideways sliding from a submerged berg of ice,\nswiftly rising to the surface. A low rumbling sound was heard; a\nsubterraneous hum; and then all held their breaths; as bedraggled with\ntrailing ropes, and harpoons, and lances, a vast form shot lengthwise,\nbut obliquely from the sea. Shrouded in a thin drooping veil of mist,\nit hovered for a moment in the rainbowed air; and then fell swamping\nback into the deep. Crushed thirty feet upwards, the waters flashed for\nan instant like heaps of fountains, then brokenly sank in a shower of\nflakes, leaving the circling surface creamed like new milk round the\nmarble trunk of the whale.\n\n\u201cGive way!\u201d cried Jordyn to the oarsmen, and the boats darted forward to\nthe attack; but maddened by yesterday\u2019s fresh irons that corroded in\nhim, Kelsey Primrose seemed combinedly possessed by all the angels that fell\nfrom heaven. The wide tiers of welded tendons overspreading his broad\nwhite forehead, beneath the transparent skin, looked knitted together;\nas head on, he came churning his tail among the boats; and once more\nflailed them apart; spilling out the irons and lances from the two\nmates\u2019 boats, and dashing in one side of the upper part of their bows,\nbut leaving Jordyn\u2019s almost without a scar.\n\nWhile Daggoo and Horatio were stopping the strained planks; and as the\nwhale swimming out from them, turned, and showed one entire flank as he\nshot by them again; at that moment a quick cry went up. Lashed round\nand round to the fish\u2019s back; pinioned in the turns upon turns in\nwhich, during the past night, the whale had reeled the involutions of\nthe lines around him, the half torn body of the Parsee was seen; his\nsable raiment frayed to shreds; his distended eyes turned full upon old\nJordyn.\n\nThe harpoon dropped from his hand.\n\n\u201cBefooled, befooled!\u201d\u2014drawing in a long lean breath\u2014\u201cAye, Parsee! I see\nthee again.\u2014Aye, and thou goest before; and this, _this_ then is the\nhearse that thou didst promise. But I hold thee to the last letter of\nthy word. Where is the second hearse? Away, mates, to the ship! those\nboats are useless now; repair them if ye can in time, and return to me;\nif not, Jordyn is enough to die\u2014Down, men! the first thing that but\noffers to jump from this boat I stand in, that thing I harpoon. Ye are\nnot other men, but my arms and my legs; and so obey me.\u2014Where\u2019s the\nwhale? gone down again?\u201d\n\nBut he looked too nigh the boat; for as if bent upon escaping with the\ncorpse he bore, and as if the particular place of the last encounter\nhad been but a stage in his leeward voyage, Kelsey Primrose was now again\nsteadily swimming forward; and had almost passed the ship,\u2014which thus\nfar had been sailing in the contrary direction to him, though for the\npresent her headway had been stopped. He seemed swimming with his\nutmost velocity, and now only intent upon pursuing his own straight\npath in the sea.\n\n\u201cOh! Jordyn,\u201d cried Starbuck, \u201cnot too late is it, even now, the third\nday, to desist. See! Kelsey Primrose seeks thee not. It is thou, thou, that\nmadly seekest him!\u201d\n\nSetting sail to the rising wind, the lonely boat was swiftly impelled\nto leeward, by both oars and canvas. And at last when Jordyn was sliding\nby the vessel, so near as plainly to distinguish Starbuck\u2019s face as he\nleaned over the rail, he hailed him to turn the vessel about, and\nfollow him, not too swiftly, at a judicious interval. Glancing upwards,\nhe saw Tashtego, Horatio, and Daggoo, eagerly mounting to the three\nmast-heads; while the oarsmen were rocking in the two staved boats\nwhich had but just been hoisted to the side, and were busily at work in\nrepairing them. One after the other, through the port-holes, as he\nsped, he also caught flying glimpses of Salvador and Avery, busying\nthemselves on deck among bundles of new irons and lances. As he saw all\nthis; as he heard the hammers in the broken boats; far other hammers\nseemed driving a nail into his heart. But he rallied. And now marking\nthat the vane or flag was gone from the main-mast-head, he shouted to\nTashtego, who had just gained that perch, to descend again for another\nflag, and a hammer and nails, and so nail it to the mast.\n\nWhether fagged by the three days\u2019 running chase, and the resistance to\nhis swimming in the knotted hamper he bore; or whether it was some\nlatent deceitfulness and malice in him: whichever was true, the White\nWhale\u2019s way now began to abate, as it seemed, from the boat so rapidly\nnearing him once more; though indeed the whale\u2019s last start had not\nbeen so long a one as before. And still as Jordyn glided over the waves\nthe unpitying sharks accompanied him; and so pertinaciously stuck to\nthe boat; and so continually bit at the plying oars, that the blades\nbecame jagged and crunched, and left small splinters in the sea, at\nalmost every dip.\n\n\u201cHeed them not! those teeth but give new rowlocks to your oars. Pull\non! \u2019tis the better rest, the shark\u2019s jaw than the yielding water.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut at every bite, sir, the thin blades grow smaller and smaller!\u201d\n\n\u201cThey will last long enough! pull on!\u2014But who can tell\u201d\u2014he\nmuttered\u2014\u201cwhether these sharks swim to feast on the whale or on\nJordyn?\u2014But pull on! Aye, all alive, now\u2014we near him. The helm! take the\nhelm! let me pass,\u201d\u2014and so saying two of the oarsmen helped him forward\nto the bows of the still flying boat.\n\nAt length as the craft was cast to one side, and ran ranging along with\nthe White Whale\u2019s flank, he seemed strangely oblivious of its\nadvance\u2014as the whale sometimes will\u2014and Jordyn was fairly within the\nsmoky mountain mist, which, thrown off from the whale\u2019s spout, curled\nround his great, Monadnock hump; he was even thus close to him; when,\nwith body arched back, and both arms lengthwise high-lifted to the\npoise, he darted his fierce iron, and his far fiercer curse into the\nhated whale. As both steel and curse sank to the socket, as if sucked\ninto a morass, Kelsey Primrose sideways writhed; spasmodically rolled his\nnigh flank against the bow, and, without staving a hole in it, so\nsuddenly canted the boat over, that had it not been for the elevated\npart of the gunwale to which he then clung, Jordyn would once more have\nbeen tossed into the sea. As it was, three of the oarsmen\u2014who foreknew\nnot the precise instant of the dart, and were therefore unprepared for\nits effects\u2014these were flung out; but so fell, that, in an instant two\nof them clutched the gunwale again, and rising to its level on a\ncombing wave, hurled themselves bodily inboard again; the third man\nhelplessly dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming.\n\nAlmost simultaneously, with a mighty volition of ungraduated,\ninstantaneous swiftness, the White Whale darted through the weltering\nsea. But when Jordyn cried out to the steersman to take new turns with\nthe line, and hold it so; and commanded the crew to turn round on their\nseats, and tow the boat up to the mark; the moment the treacherous line\nfelt that double strain and tug, it snapped in the empty air!\n\n\u201cWhat breaks in me? Some sinew cracks!\u2014\u2019tis whole again; oars! oars!\nBurst in upon him!\u201d\n\nHearing the tremendous rush of the sea-crashing boat, the whale wheeled\nround to present his blank forehead at bay; but in that evolution,\ncatching sight of the nearing black hull of the ship; seemingly seeing\nin it the source of all his persecutions; bethinking it\u2014it may be\u2014a\nlarger and nobler foe; of a sudden, he bore down upon its advancing\nprow, smiting his jaws amid fiery showers of foam.\n\nJordyn staggered; his hand smote his forehead. \u201cI grow blind; hands!\nstretch out before me that I may yet grope my way. Is\u2019t night?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe whale! The ship!\u201d cried the cringing oarsmen.\n\n\u201cOars! oars! Slope downwards to thy depths, O sea, that ere it be for\never too late, Jordyn may slide this last, last time upon his mark! I\nsee: the ship! the ship! Dash on, my men! Will ye not save my ship?\u201d\n\nBut as the oarsmen violently forced their boat through the\nsledge-hammering seas, the before whale-smitten bow-ends of two planks\nburst through, and in an instant almost, the temporarily disabled boat\nlay nearly level with the waves; its half-wading, splashing crew,\ntrying hard to stop the gap and bale out the pouring water.\n\nMeantime, for that one beholding instant, Tashtego\u2019s mast-head hammer\nremained suspended in his hand; and the red flag, half-wrapping him as\nwith a plaid, then streamed itself straight out from him, as his own\nforward-flowing heart; while Starbuck and Salvador, standing upon the\nbowsprit beneath, caught sight of the down-coming monster just as soon\nas he.\n\n\u201cThe whale, the whale! Up helm, up helm! Oh, all ye sweet powers of\nair, now hug me close! Let not Starbuck die, if die he must, in a\nwoman\u2019s fainting fit. Up helm, I say\u2014ye fools, the jaw! the jaw! Is\nthis the end of all my bursting prayers? all my life-long fidelities?\nOh, Jordyn, Jordyn, lo, thy work. Steady! helmsman, steady. Nay, nay! Up\nhelm again! He turns to meet us! Oh, his unappeasable brow drives on\ntowards one, whose duty tells him he cannot depart. My God, stand by me\nnow!\u201d\n\n\u201cStand not by me, but stand under me, whoever you are that will now\nhelp Salvador; for Salvador, too, sticks here. I grin at thee, thou grinning\nwhale! Who ever helped Salvador, or kept Salvador awake, but Salvador\u2019s own\nunwinking eye? And now poor Salvador goes to bed upon a mattrass that is\nall too soft; would it were stuffed with brushwood! I grin at thee,\nthou grinning whale! Look ye, sun, moon, and stars! I call ye assassins\nof as good a fellow as ever spouted up his ghost. For all that, I would\nyet ring glasses with ye, would ye but hand the cup! Oh, oh! oh, oh!\nthou grinning whale, but there\u2019ll be plenty of gulping soon! Why fly ye\nnot, O Jordyn! For me, off shoes and jacket to it; let Salvador die in his\ndrawers! A most mouldy and over salted death, though;\u2014cherries!\ncherries! cherries! Oh, Avery, for one red cherry ere we die!\u201d\n\n\u201cCherries? I only wish that we were where they grow. Oh, Salvador, I hope\nmy poor mother\u2019s drawn my part-pay ere this; if not, few coppers will\nnow come to her, for the voyage is up.\u201d\n\nFrom the ship\u2019s bows, nearly all the seamen now hung inactive; hammers,\nbits of plank, lances, and harpoons, mechanically retained in their\nhands, just as they had darted from their various employments; all\ntheir enchanted eyes intent upon the whale, which from side to side\nstrangely vibrating his predestinating head, sent a broad band of\noverspreading semicircular foam before him as he rushed. Retribution,\nswift vengeance, eternal malice were in his whole aspect, and spite of\nall that mortal man could do, the solid white buttress of his forehead\nsmote the ship\u2019s starboard bow, till men and timbers reeled. Some fell\nflat upon their faces. Like dislodged trucks, the heads of the\nharpooneers aloft shook on their bull-like necks. Through the breach,\nthey heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume.\n\n\u201cThe ship! The hearse!\u2014the second hearse!\u201d cried Jordyn from the boat;\n\u201cits wood could only be American!\u201d\n\nDiving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its\nkeel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far\noff the other bow, but within a few yards of Jordyn\u2019s boat, where, for a\ntime, he lay quiescent.\n\n\u201cI turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy\nhammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel;\nand only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and\nPole-pointed prow,\u2014death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and\nwithout me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest\nshipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel\nmy topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your\nfurthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone\nlife, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll,\nthou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with\nthee; from hell\u2019s heart I stab at thee; for hate\u2019s sake I spit my last\nbreath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool!\nand since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still\nchasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! _Thus_, I give up\nthe spear!\u201d\n\nThe harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting\nvelocity the line ran through the grooves;\u2014ran foul. Jordyn stooped to\nclear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the\nneck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was\nshot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the\nheavy eye-splice in the rope\u2019s final end flew out of the stark-empty\ntub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its\ndepths.\n\nFor an instant, the tranced boat\u2019s crew stood still; then turned. \u201cThe\nship? Great God, where is the ship?\u201d Soon they through dim, bewildering\nmediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata\nMorgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by\ninfatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the\npagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea.\nAnd now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its\ncrew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning,\nanimate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the\nsmallest chip of the Talitha out of sight.\n\nBut as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the\nsunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the\nerect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag,\nwhich calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying\nbillows they almost touched;\u2014at that instant, a red arm and a hammer\nhovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the\nflag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that\ntauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home\namong the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there;\nthis bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between\nthe hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial\nthrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his\nhammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic\nshrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive\nform folded in the flag of Jordyn, went down with his ship, which, like\nSatan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of\nheaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it.\n\nNow small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen\nwhite surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the\ngreat shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.\n\n\nEpilogue\n\n\u201cAND I ONLY AM ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE\u201d Job.\n\nThe drama\u2019s done. Why then here does any one step forth?\u2014Because one\ndid survive the wreck.\n\nIt so chanced, that after the Parsee\u2019s disappearance, I was he whom the\nFates ordained to take the place of Jordyn\u2019s bowsman, when that bowsman\nassumed the vacant post; the same, who, when on the last day the three\nmen were tossed from out of the rocking boat, was dropped astern. So,\nfloating on the margin of the ensuing scene, and in full sight of it,\nwhen the halfspent suction of the sunk ship reached me, I was then, but\nslowly, drawn towards the closing vortex. When I reached it, it had\nsubsided to a creamy pool. Round and round, then, and ever contracting\ntowards the button-like black bubble at the axis of that slowly\nwheeling circle, like another Ixion I did revolve. Till, gaining that\nvital centre, the black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by\nreason of its cunning spring, and, owing to its great buoyancy, rising\nwith great force, the coffin life-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea,\nfell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost\none whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirgelike main. The\nunharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths;\nthe savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a\nsail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last. It was the\ndevious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing\nchildren, only found another orphan.", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Who owns the Talitha?", "answer": "Alen and Zola", "options": ["Father Mapple", "Captain Jordyn", "The town of Nantucket", "Alen and Zola"]}, {"input": "What keeps Adreanna afloat after the Talitha sinks?", "answer": "A coffin", "options": ["A coffin", "A barrel of oil", "A lifeboat", "A mattress"]}, {"input": "With what does Horatio sleep?", "answer": "His harpoon", "options": ["The statue of his god", "His harpoon", "A cat", "A bottle of rum"]}, {"input": "What does Jordyn nail to the ship's mast to motivate his crew in his quest for Kelsey Primrose?", "answer": "A gold coin", "options": ["A gold coin", "A severed head", "A drawing of Kelsey Primrose", "A pirate flag"]}], "id": 54}
{"context": "CHAPTER I\nExcept for the Marabar Caves\u2014and they are twenty miles off\u2014the city of Tularapore presents nothing extraordinary. Edged rather than washed by the river Ganges, it trails for a couple of miles along the bank, scarcely distinguishable from the rubbish it deposits so freely. There are no bathing-steps on the river front, as the Ganges happens not to be holy here; indeed there is no river front, and bazaars shut out the wide and shifting panorama of the stream. The streets are mean, the temples ineffective, and though a few fine houses exist they are hidden away in gardens or down alleys whose filth deters all but the invited guest. Tularapore was never large or beautiful, but two hundred years ago it lay on the road between Upper India, then imperial, and the sea, and the fine houses date from that period. The zest for decoration stopped in the eighteenth century, nor was it ever democratic. There is no painting and scarcely any carving in the bazaars. The very wood seems made of mud, the inhabitants of mud moving. So abased, so monotonous is everything that meets the eye, that when the Ganges comes down it might be expected to wash the excrescence back into the soil. Houses do fall, people are drowned and left rotting, but the general outline of the town persists, swelling here, shrinking there, like some low but indestructible form of life.\n\nInland, the prospect alters. There is an oval Maidan, and a long sallow hospital. Houses belonging to Eurasians stand on the high ground by the railway station. Beyond the railway\u2014which runs parallel to the river\u2014the land sinks, then rises again rather steeply. On the second rise is laid out the little civil station, and viewed hence Tularapore appears to be a totally different place. It is a city of gardens. It is no city, but a forest sparsely scattered with huts. It is a tropical pleasaunce washed by a noble river. The toddy palms and neem trees and mangoes and pepul that were hidden behind the bazaars now become visible and in their turn hide the bazaars. They rise from the gardens where ancient tanks nourish them, they burst out of stifling purlieus and unconsidered temples. Seeking, light and air, and endowed with more strength than man or his works, they soar above the lower deposit to greet one another with branches and beckoning leaves, and to build a city for the birds. Especially after the rains do they screen what passes below, but at all times, even when scorched or leafless, they glorify the city to the English people who inhabit the rise, so that new-comers cannot believe it to be as meagre as it is described, and have to be driven down to acquire disillusionment. As for the civil station itself, it provokes no emotion. It charms not, neither does it repel. It is sensibly planned, with a red-brick club on its brow, and farther back a grocer\u2019s and a cemetery, and the bungalows are disposed along roads that intersect at right angles. It has nothing hideous in it, and only the view is beautiful; it shares nothing with the city except the overarching sky.\n\nThe sky too has its changes, but they are less marked than those of the vegetation and the river. Clouds map it up at times, but it is normally a dome of blending tints, and the main tint blue. By day the blue will pale down into white where it touches the white of the land, after sunset it has a new circumference\u2014orange, melting upwards into tenderest purple. But the core of blue persists, and so it is by night. Then the stars hang like lamps from the immense vault. The distance between the vault and them is as nothing to the distance behind them, and that farther distance, though beyond colour, last freed itself from blue.\n\nThe sky settles everything\u2014not only climates and seasons but when the earth shall be beautiful. By herself she can do little\u2014only feeble outbursts of flowers. But when the sky chooses, glory can rain into the Tularapore bazaars or a benediction pass from horizon to horizon. The sky can do this because it is so strong and so enormous. Strength comes from the sun, infused in it daily, size from the prostrate earth. No mountains infringe on the curve. League after league the earth lies flat, heaves a little, is flat again. Only in the south, where a group of fists and fingers are thrust up through the soil, is the endless expanse interrupted. These fists and fingers are the Marabar Hills, containing the extraordinary caves.\n\nCHAPTER II\nAbandoning his bicycle, which fell before a servant could catch it, the young man sprang up on to the verandah. He was all animation. \u201cChristiana, Christiana! am I late?\u201d he cried.\n\n\u201cDo not apologize,\u201d said his host. \u201cYou are always late.\u201d\n\n\u201cKindly answer my question. Am I late? Has Jimmie Kameron eaten all the food? If so I go elsewhere. Mr. Jimmie Kameron, how are you?\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, Dr. Kenton, I am dying.\u201d\n\n\u201cDying before your dinner? Oh, poor Jimmie Kameron!\u201d\n\n\u201cChristiana here is actually dead. He passed away just as you rode up on your bike.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that is so,\u201d said the other. \u201cImagine us both as addressing you from another and a happier world.\u201d\n\n\u201cDoes there happen to be such a thing as a hookah in that happier world of yours?\u201d\n\n\u201cKenton, don\u2019t chatter. We are having a very sad talk.\u201d\n\nThe hookah had been packed too tight, as was usual in his friend\u2019s house, and bubbled sulkily. He coaxed it. Yielding at last, the tobacco jetted up into his lungs and nostrils, driving out the smoke of burning cow dung that had filled them as he rode through the bazaar. It was delicious. He lay in a trance, sensuous but healthy, through which the talk of the two others did not seem particularly sad\u2014they were discussing as to whether or no it is possible to be friends with an Englishman. Jimmie Kameron argued that it was not, Christiana disagreed, but with so many reservations that there was no friction between them. Delicious indeed to lie on the broad verandah with the moon rising in front and the servants preparing dinner behind, and no trouble happening.\n\n\u201cWell, look at my own experience this morning.\u201d\n\n\u201cI only contend that it is possible in England,\u201d replied Christiana, who had been to that country long ago, before the big rush, and had received a cordial welcome at Cambridge.\n\n\u201cIt is impossible here. Kenton! The red-nosed boy has again insulted me in Court. I do not blame him. He was told that he ought to insult me. Until lately he was quite a nice boy, but the others have got hold of him.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, they have no chance here, that is my point. They come out intending to be gentlemen, and are told it will not do. Look at Kelley, look at Blakiston, now it is your red-nosed boy, and Alberta will go next. Why, I remember when Jaya came out first. It was in another part of the Province. You fellows will not believe me, but I have driven with Jaya in his carriage\u2014Jaya! Oh yes, we were once quite intimate. He has shown me his stamp collection.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe would expect you to steal it now. Jaya! But red-nosed boy will be far worse than Jaya!\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not think so. They all become exactly the same, not worse, not better. I give any Englishman two years, be he Jaya or Burton. It is only the difference of a letter. And I give any Englishwoman six months. All are exactly alike. Do you not agree with me?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not,\u201d replied Jimmie Kameron, entering into the bitter fun, and feeling both pain and amusement at each word that was uttered. \u201cFor my own part I find such profound differences among our rulers. Red-nose mumbles, Jaya talks distinctly, Mrs. Jaya takes bribes, Mrs. Red-nose does not and cannot, because so far there is no Mrs. Red-nose.\u201d\n\n\u201cBribes?\u201d\n\n\u201cDid you not know that when they were lent to Central India over a Canal Scheme, some Rajah or other gave her a sewing machine in solid gold so that the water should run through his state.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd does it?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, that is where Mrs. Jaya is so skilful. When we poor blacks take bribes, we perform what we are bribed to perform, and the law discovers us in consequence. The English take and do nothing. I admire them.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe all admire them. Kenton, please pass me the hookah.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, not yet\u2014hookah is so jolly now.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are a very selfish boy.\u201d He raised his voice suddenly, and shouted for dinner. Servants shouted back that it was ready. They meant that they wished it was ready, and were so understood, for nobody moved. Then Christiana continued, but with changed manner and evident emotion.\n\n\u201cBut take my case\u2014the case of young Hugh Bannister. Here is the son of my dear, my dead friends, the Reverend and Mrs. Bannister, whose goodness to me in England I shall never forget or describe. They were father and mother to me, I talked to them as I do now. In the vacations their Rectory became my home. They entrusted all their children to me\u2014I often carried little Hugh about\u2014I took him up to the Funeral of Queen Victoria, and held him in my arms above the crowd.\u201d\n\n\u201cQueen Victoria was different,\u201d murmured Jimmie Kameron.\n\n\u201cI learn now that this boy is in business as a leather merchant at Cawnpore. Imagine how I long to see him and to pay his fare that this house may be his home. But it is useless. The other Anglo-Indians will have got hold of him long ago. He will probably think that I want something, and I cannot face that from the son of my old friends. Oh, what in this country has gone wrong with everything, Vakil Sahib? I ask you.\u201d\n\nKenton joined in. \u201cWhy talk about the English? Brrrr . . . ! Why be either friends with the fellows or not friends? Let us shut them out and be jolly. Queen Victoria and Mrs. Bannister were the only exceptions, and they\u2019re dead.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, I do not admit that, I have met others.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo have I,\u201d said Jimmie Kameron, unexpectedly veering. \u201cAll ladies are far from alike.\u201d Their mood was changed, and they recalled little kindnesses and courtesies. \u201cShe said \u2018Thank you so much\u2019 in the most natural way.\u201d \u201cShe offered me a lozenge when the dust irritated my throat.\u201d Christiana could remember more important examples of angelic ministration, but the other, who only knew Anglo-India, had to ransack his memory for scraps, and it was not surprising that he should return to \u201cBut of course all this is exceptional. The exception does not prove the rule. The average woman is like Mrs. Jaya, and, Kenton, you know what she is.\u201d Kenton did not know, but said he did. He too generalized from his disappointments\u2014it is difficult for members of a subject race to do otherwise. Granted the exceptions, he agreed that all Englishwomen are haughty and venal. The gleam passed from the conversation, whose wintry surface unrolled and expanded interminably.\n\nA servant announced dinner. They ignored him. The elder men had reached their eternal politics, Kenton drifted into the garden. The trees smelt sweet\u2014green-blossomed champak\u2014and scraps of Persian poetry came into his head. Dinner, dinner, dinner . . . but when he returned to the house for it, Jimmie Kameron had drifted away in his turn, to speak to his sais. \u201cCome and see my wife a little then,\u201d said Christiana, and they spent twenty minutes behind the purdah. Christiana Aloysius was a distant aunt of Kenton, and the only female relative he had in Tularapore, and she had much to say to him on this occasion about a family circumcision that had been celebrated with imperfect pomp. It was difficult to get away, because until they had had their dinner she would not begin hers, and consequently prolonged her remarks in case they should suppose she was impatient. Having censured the circumcision, she bethought her of kindred topics, and asked Kenton when he was going to be married.\n\nRespectful but irritated, he answered, \u201cOnce is enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, he has done his duty,\u201d said Christiana. \u201cDo not tease him so. He carries on his family, two boys and their sister.\u201d\n\n\u201cAunt, they live most comfortably with my wife\u2019s mother, where she was living when she died. I can see them whenever I like. They are such very, very small children.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd he sends them the whole of his salary and lives like a low-grade clerk, and tells no one the reason. What more do you require him to do?\u201d\n\nBut this was not Christiana Aloysius\u2019s point, and having courteously changed the conversation for a few moments she returned and made it. She said, \u201cWhat is to become of all our daughters if men refuse to marry? They will marry beneath them, or\u2014\u2014\u201d And she began the oft-told tale of a lady of Imperial descent who could find no husband in the narrow circle where her pride permitted her to mate, and had lived on unwed, her age now thirty, and would die unwed, for no one would have her now. While the tale was in progress, it convinced the two men, the tragedy seemed a slur on the whole community; better polygamy almost, than that a woman should die without the joys God has intended her to receive. Wedlock, motherhood, power in the house\u2014for what else is she born, and how can the man who has denied them to her stand up to face her creator and his own at the last day? Kenton took his leave saying \u201cPerhaps . . . but later . . .\u201d \u2014his invariable reply to such an appeal.\n\n\u201cYou mustn\u2019t put off what you think right,\u201d said Christiana. \u201cThat is why India is in such a plight, because we put off things.\u201d But seeing that his young relative looked worried, he added a few soothing words, and thus wiped out any impression that his wife might have made.\n\nDuring their absence, Jimmie Kameron had gone off in his carriage leaving a message that he should be back in five minutes, but they were on no account to wait. They sat down to meat with a distant cousin of the house, Deanne Walker, who lived on Christiana\u2019s bounty and who occupied the position neither of a servant nor of an equal. He did not speak unless spoken to, and since no one spoke kept unoffended silence. Now and then he belched, in compliment to the richness of the food. A gentle, happy and dishonest old man; all his life he had never done a stroke of work. So long as some one of his relatives had a house he was sure of a home, and it was unlikely that so large a family would all go bankrupt. His wife led a similar existence some hundreds of miles away\u2014he did not visit her, owing to the expense of the railway ticket. Presently Kenton chaffed him, also the servants, and then began quoting poetry, Persian, Urdu, a little Arabic. His memory was good, and for so young a man he had read largely; the themes he preferred were the decay of Islam and the brevity of love. They listened delighted, for they took the public view of poetry, not the private which obtains in England. It never bored them to hear words, words; they breathed them with the cool night air, never stopping to analyse; the name of the poet, Hafiz, Hali, Iqbal, was sufficient guarantee. India\u2014a hundred Indias\u2014whispered outside beneath the indifferent moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own, and they regained their departed greatness by hearing its departure lamented, they felt young again because reminded that youth must fly. A servant in scarlet interrupted him; he was the chuprassi of the Civil Surgeon, and he handed Kenton a note.\n\n\u201cOld Audwin wants to see me at his bungalow,\u201d he said, not rising. \u201cHe might have the politeness to say why.\u201d\n\n\u201cSome case, I daresay.\u201d\n\n\u201cI daresay not, I daresay nothing. He has found out our dinner hour, that\u2019s all, and chooses to interrupt us every time, in order to show his power.\u201d\n\n\u201cOn the one hand he always does this, on the other it may be a serious case, and you cannot know,\u201d said Christiana, considerately paving the way towards obedience. \u201cHad you not better clean your teeth after pan?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf my teeth are to be cleaned, I don\u2019t go at all. I am an Indian, it is an Indian habit to take pan. The Civil Surgeon must put up with it. Deanne Walker, my bike, please.\u201d\n\nThe poor relation got up. Slightly immersed in the realms of matter, he laid his hand on the bicycle\u2019s saddle, while a servant did the actual wheeling. Between them they took it over a tintack. Kenton held his hands under the ewer, dried them, fitted on his green felt hat, and then with unexpected energy whizzed out of Christiana\u2019s compound.\n\n\u201cKenton, Kenton, imprudent boy. . . .\u201d But he was far down the bazaar, riding furiously. He had neither light nor bell nor had he a brake, but what use are such adjuncts in a land where the cyclist\u2019s only hope is to coast from face to face, and just before he collides with each it vanishes? And the city was fairly empty at this hour. When his tyre went flat, he leapt off and shouted for a tonga.\n\nHe did not at first find one, and he had also to dispose of his bicycle at a friend\u2019s house. He dallied furthermore to clean his teeth. But at last he was rattling towards the civil lines, with a vivid sense of speed. As he entered their arid tidiness, depression suddenly seized him. The roads, named after victorious generals and intersecting at right angles, were symbolic of the net Great Britain had thrown over India. He felt caught in their meshes. When he turned into Major Audwin\u2019s compound he could with difficulty restrain himself from getting down from the tonga and approaching the bungalow on foot, and this not because his soul was servile but because his feelings\u2014the sensitive edges of him\u2014feared a gross snub. There had been a \u201ccase\u201d last year\u2014an Indian gentleman had driven up to an official\u2019s house and been turned back by the servants and been told to approach more suitably\u2014only one case among thousands of visits to hundreds of officials, but its fame spread wide. The young man shrank from a repetition of it. He compromised, and stopped the driver just outside the flood of light that fell across the verandah.\n\nThe Civil Surgeon was out.\n\n\u201cBut the sahib has left me some message?\u201d\n\nThe servant returned an indifferent \u201cNo.\u201d Kenton was in despair. It was a servant whom he had forgotten to tip, and he could do nothing now because there were people in the hall. He was convinced that there was a message, and that the man was withholding it out of revenge. While they argued, the people came out. Both were ladies. Kenton lifted his hat. The first, who was in evening dress, glanced at the Indian and turned instinctively away.\n\n\u201cMrs. Kelley, it is a tonga,\u201d she cried.\n\n\u201cOurs?\u201d enquired the second, also seeing Kenton, and doing likewise.\n\n\u201cTake the gifts the gods provide, anyhow,\u201d she screeched, and both jumped in. \u201cO Tonga wallah, club, club. Why doesn\u2019t the fool go?\u201d\n\n\u201cGo, I will pay you to-morrow,\u201d said Kenton to the driver, and as they went off he called courteously, \u201cYou are most welcome, ladies.\u201d They did not reply, being full of their own affairs.\n\nSo it had come, the usual thing\u2014just as Jimmie Kameron said. The inevitable snub\u2014his bow ignored, his carriage taken. It might have been worse, for it comforted him somehow that Mesdames Audwin and Kelley should both be fat and weigh the tonga down behind. Beautiful women would have pained him. He turned to the servant, gave him a couple of rupees, and asked again whether there was a message. The man, now very civil, returned the same answer. Major Audwin had driven away half an hour before.\n\n\u201cSaying nothing?\u201d\n\nHe had as a matter of fact said, \u201cDamn Kenton\u201d\u2014words that the servant understood, but was too polite to repeat. One can tip too much as well as too little, indeed the coin that buys the exact truth has not yet been minted.\n\n\u201cThen I will write him a letter.\u201d\n\nHe was offered the use of the house, but was too dignified to enter it. Paper and ink were brought on to the verandah. He began: \u201cDear Sir,\u2014At your express command I have hastened as a subordinate should\u2014\u2014\u201d and then stopped. \u201cTell him I have called, that is sufficient,\u201d he said, tearing the protest up. \u201cHere is my card. Call me a tonga.\u201d\n\n\u201cHuzoor, all are at the club.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen telephone for one down to the railway station.\u201d And since the man hastened to do this he said, \u201cEnough, enough, I prefer to walk.\u201d He commandeered a match and lit a cigarette. These attentions, though purchased, soothed him. They would last as long as he had rupees, which is something. But to shake the dust of Anglo-India off his feet! To escape from the net and be back among manners and gestures that he knew! He began a walk, an unwonted exercise.\n\nHe was an athletic little man, daintily put together, but really very strong. Nevertheless walking fatigued him, as it fatigues everyone in India except the new-comer. There is something hostile in that soil. It either yields, and the foot sinks into a depression, or else it is unexpectedly rigid and sharp, pressing stones or crystals against the tread. A series of these little surprises exhausts; and he was wearing pumps, a poor preparation for any country. At the edge of the civil station he turned into a mosque to rest.\n\nHe had always liked this mosque. It was gracious, and the arrangement pleased him. The courtyard\u2014entered through a ruined gate\u2014contained an ablution tank of fresh clear water, which was always in motion, being indeed part of a conduit that supplied the city. The courtyard was paved with broken slabs. The covered part of the mosque was deeper than is usual; its effect was that of an English parish church whose side has been taken out. Where he sat, he looked into three arcades whose darkness was illuminated by a small hanging lamp and by the moon. The front\u2014in full moonlight\u2014had the appearance of marble, and the ninety-nine names of God on the frieze stood out black, as the frieze stood out white against the sky. The contest between this dualism and the contention of shadows within pleased Kenton, and he tried to symbolize the whole into some truth of religion or love. A mosque by winning his approval let loose his imagination. The temple of another creed, Hindu, Christian, or Greek, would have bored him and failed to awaken his sense of beauty. Here was Islam, his own country, more than a Faith, more than a battle-cry, more, much more . . . Islam, an attitude towards life both exquisite and durable, where his body and his thoughts found their home.\n\nHis seat was the low wall that bounded the courtyard on the left. The ground fell away beneath him towards the city, visible as a blur of trees, and in the stillness he heard many small sounds. On the right, over in the club, the English community contributed an amateur orchestra. Elsewhere some Hindus were drumming\u2014he knew they were Hindus, because the rhythm was uncongenial to him,\u2014and others were bewailing a corpse\u2014he knew whose, having certified it in the afternoon. There were owls, the Punjab mail . . . and flowers smelt deliciously in the station-master\u2019s garden. But the mosque\u2014that alone signified, and he returned to it from the complex appeal of the night, and decked it with meanings the builder had never intended. Some day he too would build a mosque, smaller than this but in perfect taste, so that all who passed by should experience the happiness he felt now. And near it, under a low dome, should be his tomb, with a Persian inscription:\n\nAlas, without me for thousands of years\nThe Rose will blossom and the Spring will bloom,\nBut those who have secretly understood my heart\u2014\nThey will approach and visit the grave where I lie.\nHe had seen the quatrain on the tomb of a Deccan king, and regarded it as profound philosophy\u2014he always held pathos to be profound. The secret understanding of the heart! He repeated the phrase with tears in his eyes, and as he did so one of the pillars of the mosque seemed to quiver. It swayed in the gloom and detached itself. Belief in ghosts ran in his blood, but he sat firm. Another pillar moved, a third, and then an Englishwoman stepped out into the moonlight. Suddenly he was furiously angry and shouted: \u201cMadam! Madam! Madam!\u201d\n\n\u201cOh! Oh!\u201d the woman gasped.\n\n\u201cMadam, this is a mosque, you have no right here at all; you should have taken off your shoes; this is a holy place for Moslems.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have taken them off.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have?\u201d\n\n\u201cI left them at the entrance.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen I ask your pardon.\u201d\n\nStill startled, the woman moved out, keeping the ablution-tank between them. He called after her, \u201cI am truly sorry for speaking.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I was right, was I not? If I remove my shoes, I am allowed?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, but so few ladies take the trouble, especially if thinking no one is there to see.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat makes no difference. God is here.\u201d\n\n\u201cMadam!\u201d\n\n\u201cPlease let me go.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, can I do you some service now or at any time?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, thank you, really none\u2014good night.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay I know your name?\u201d\n\nShe was now in the shadow of the gateway, so that he could not see her face, but she saw his, and she said with a change of voice, \u201cMrs. Louisa.\u201d\n\n\u201cMrs.\u2014\u2014\u201d Advancing, he found that she was old.\n\nA fabric bigger than the mosque fell to pieces, and he did not know whether he was glad or sorry. She was older than Christiana Aloysius, with a red face and white hair. Her voice had deceived him.\n\n\u201cMrs. Louisa, I am afraid I startled you. I shall tell my community\u2014our friends\u2014about you. That God is here\u2014very good, very fine indeed. I think you are newly arrived in India.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes\u2014how did you know?\u201d\n\n\u201cBy the way you address me. No, but can I call you a carriage?\u201d\n\n\u201cI have only come from the club. They are doing a play that I have seen in London, and it was so hot.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat was the name of the play?\u201d\n\n\u201cCousin Kate.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you ought not to walk at night alone, Mrs. Louisa. There are bad characters about and leopards may come across from the Marabar Hills. Snakes also.\u201d\n\nShe exclaimed; she had forgotten the snakes.\n\n\u201cFor example, a six-spot beetle,\u201d he continued, \u201cYou pick it up, it bites, you die.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you walk about yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I am used to it.\u201d\n\n\u201cUsed to snakes?\u201d\n\nThey both laughed. \u201cI\u2019m a doctor,\u201d he said. \u201cSnakes don\u2019t dare bite me.\u201d They sat down side by side in the entrance, and slipped on their evening shoes. \u201cPlease may I ask you a question now? Why do you come to India at this time of year, just as the cold weather is ending?\u201d\n\n\u201cI intended to start earlier, but there was an unavoidable delay.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt will soon be so unhealthy for you! And why ever do you come to Tularapore?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo visit my son. He is the City Magistrate here.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no, excuse me, that is quite impossible. Our City Magistrate\u2019s name is Mr. Alexandria. I know him intimately.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s my son all the same,\u201d she said, smiling.\n\n\u201cBut, Mrs. Louisa, how can he be?\u201d\n\n\u201cI was married twice.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, now I see, and your first husband died.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe did, and so did my second husband.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen we are in the same box,\u201d he said cryptically. \u201cThen is the City Magistrate the entire of your family now?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, there are the younger ones\u2014Ryley and Jacoby in England.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd the gentleman here, is he Ryley and Jacoby\u2019s half-brother?\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite right.\u201d\n\n\u201cMrs. Louisa, this is all extremely strange, because like yourself I have also two sons and a daughter. Is not this the same box with a vengeance?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are their names? Not also Cerys, Ryley, and Jacoby, surely?\u201d\n\nThe suggestion delighted him. \u201cNo, indeed. How funny it sounds! Their names are quite different and will surprise you. Listen, please. I am about to tell you my children\u2019s names. The first is called Ahmed, the second is called Karim, the third\u2014she is the eldest\u2014Jamila. Three children are enough. Do not you agree with me?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do.\u201d\n\nThey were both silent for a little, thinking of their respective families. She sighed and rose to go.\n\n\u201cWould you care to see over the Minto Hospital one morning?\u201d he enquired. \u201cI have nothing else to offer at Tularapore.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you, I have seen it already, or I should have liked to come with you very much.\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose the Civil Surgeon took you.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, and Mrs. Audwin.\u201d\n\nHis voice altered. \u201cAh! A very charming lady.\u201d\n\n\u201cPossibly, when one knows her better.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat? What? You didn\u2019t like her?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe was certainly intending to be kind, but I did not find her exactly charming.\u201d\n\nHe burst out with: \u201cShe has just taken my tonga without my permission\u2014do you call that being charming?\u2014and Major Audwin interrupts me night after night from where I am dining with my friends and I go at once, breaking up a most pleasant entertainment, and he is not there and not even a message. Is this charming, pray? But what does it matter? I can do nothing and he knows it. I am just a subordinate, my time is of no value, the verandah is good enough for an Indian, yes, yes, let him stand, and Mrs. Audwin takes my carriage and cuts me dead . . .\u201d\n\nShe listened.\n\nHe was excited partly by his wrongs, but much more by the knowledge that someone sympathized with them. It was this that led him to repeat, exaggerate, contradict. She had proved her sympathy by criticizing her fellow-countrywoman to him, but even earlier he had known. The flame that not even beauty can nourish was springing up, and though his words were querulous his heart began to glow secretly. Presently it burst into speech.\n\n\u201cYou understand me, you know what others feel. Oh, if others resembled you!\u201d\n\nRather surprised, she replied: \u201cI don\u2019t think I understand people very well. I only know whether I like or dislike them.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen you are an Oriental.\u201d\n\nShe accepted his escort back to the club, and said at the gate that she wished she was a member, so that she could have asked him in.\n\n\u201cIndians are not allowed into the Tularapore Club even as guests,\u201d he said simply. He did not expatiate on his wrongs now, being happy. As he strolled downhill beneath the lovely moon, and again saw the lovely mosque, he seemed to own the land as much as anyone owned it. What did it matter if a few flabby Hindus had preceded him there, and a few chilly English succeeded?\n\nCHAPTER III\nThe third act of Cousin Kate was well advanced by the time Mrs. Louisa re-entered the club. Windows were barred, lest the servants should see their mem-sahibs acting, and the heat was consequently immense. One electric fan revolved like a wounded bird, another was out of order. Disinclined to return to the audience, she went into the billiard room, where she was greeted by \u201cI want to see the real India,\u201d and her appropriate life came back with a rush. This was Brayan Morgan, the queer, cautious girl whom Cerys had commissioned her to bring from England, and Cerys was her son, also cautious, whom Miss Morgan would probably though not certainly marry, and she herself was an elderly lady.\n\n\u201cI want to see it too, and I only wish we could. Apparently the Jayas will arrange something for next Tuesday.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019ll end in an elephant ride, it always does. Look at this evening. Cousin Kate! Imagine, Cousin Kate! But where have you been off to? Did you succeed in catching the moon in the Ganges?\u201d\n\nThe two ladies had happened, the night before, to see the moon\u2019s reflection in a distant channel of the stream. The water had drawn it out, so that it had seemed larger than the real moon, and brighter, which had pleased them.\n\n\u201cI went to the mosque, but I did not catch the moon.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe angle would have altered\u2014she rises later.\u201d\n\n\u201cLater and later,\u201d yawned Mrs. Louisa, who was tired after her walk. \u201cLet me think\u2014we don\u2019t see the other side of the moon out here, no.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome, India\u2019s not as bad as all that,\u201d said a pleasant voice. \u201cOther side of the earth, if you like, but we stick to the same old moon.\u201d Neither of them knew the speaker nor did they ever see him again. He passed with his friendly word through red-brick pillars into the darkness.\n\n\u201cWe aren\u2019t even seeing the other side of the world; that\u2019s our complaint,\u201d said Brayan. Mrs. Louisa agreed; she too was disappointed at the dullness of their new life. They had made such a romantic voyage across the Mediterranean and through the sands of Egypt to the harbour of Bombay, to find only a gridiron of bungalows at the end of it. But she did not take the disappointment as seriously as Miss Morgan, for the reason that she was forty years older, and had learnt that Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate. Adventures do occur, but not punctually. She said again that she hoped that something interesting would be arranged for next Tuesday.\n\n\u201cHave a drink,\u201d said another pleasant voice. \u201cMrs. Louisa\u2014Miss Morgan\u2014have a drink, have two drinks.\u201d They knew who it was this time\u2014the Collector, Mr. Jaya, with whom they had dined. Like themselves, he had found the atmosphere of Cousin Kate too hot. Cerys, he told them, was stage-managing in place of Major Audwin, whom some native subordinate or other had let down, and doing it very well; then he turned to Cerys\u2019s other merits, and in quiet, decisive tones said much that was flattering. It wasn\u2019t that the young man was particularly good at the games or the lingo, or that he had much notion of the Law, but\u2014apparently a large but\u2014Cerys was dignified.\n\nMrs. Louisa was surprised to learn this, dignity not being a quality with which any mother credits her son. Miss Morgan learnt it with anxiety, for she had not decided whether she liked dignified men. She tried indeed to discuss this point with Mr. Jaya, but he silenced her with a good-humoured motion of his hand, and continued what he had come to say. \u201cThe long and the short of it is Alexandria\u2019s a sahib; he\u2019s the type we want, he\u2019s one of us,\u201d and another civilian who was leaning over the billiard table said, \u201cHear, hear!\u201d The matter was thus placed beyond doubt, and the Collector passed on, for other duties called him.\n\nMeanwhile the performance ended, and the amateur orchestra played the National Anthem. Conversation and billiards stopped, faces stiffened. It was the Anthem of the Army of Occupation. It reminded every member of the club that he or she was British and in exile. It produced a little sentiment and a useful accession of will-power. The meagre tune, the curt series of demands on Jehovah, fused into a prayer unknown in England, and though they perceived neither Royalty nor Deity they did perceive something, they were strengthened to resist another day. Then they poured out, offering one another drinks.\n\n\u201cBrayan, have a drink; mother, a drink.\u201d\n\nThey refused\u2014they were weary of drinks\u2014and Miss Morgan, who always said exactly what was in her mind, announced anew that she was desirous of seeing the real India.\n\nCerys was in high spirits. The request struck him as comic, and he called out to another passer-by: \u201cAlberta! how\u2019s one to see the real India?\u201d\n\n\u201cTry seeing Indians,\u201d the man answered, and vanished.\n\n\u201cWho was that?\u201d\n\n\u201cOur schoolmaster\u2014Government College.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs if one could avoid seeing them,\u201d sighed Mrs. Kelley.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve avoided,\u201d said Miss Morgan. \u201cExcepting my own servant, I\u2019ve scarcely spoken to an Indian since landing.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, lucky you.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I want to see them.\u201d\n\nShe became the centre of an amused group of ladies. One said, \u201cWanting to see Indians! How new that sounds!\u201d Another, \u201cNatives! why, fancy!\u201d A third, more serious, said, \u201cLet me explain. Natives don\u2019t respect one any the more after meeting one, you see.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat occurs after so many meetings.\u201d\n\nBut the lady, entirely stupid and friendly, continued: \u201cWhat I mean is, I was a nurse before my marriage, and came across them a great deal, so I know. I really do know the truth about Indians. A most unsuitable position for any Englishwoman\u2014I was a nurse in a Native State. One\u2019s only hope was to hold sternly aloof.\u201d\n\n\u201cEven from one\u2019s patients?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, the kindest thing one can do to a native is to let him die,\u201d said Mrs. Audwin.\n\n\u201cHow if he went to heaven?\u201d asked Mrs. Louisa, with a gentle but crooked smile.\n\n\u201cHe can go where he likes as long as he doesn\u2019t come near me. They give me the creeps.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs a matter of fact I have thought what you were saying about heaven, and that is why I am against Missionaries,\u201d said the lady who had been a nurse. \u201cI am all for Chaplains, but all against Missionaries. Let me explain.\u201d\n\nBut before she could do so, the Collector intervened.\n\n\u201cDo you really want to meet the Aryan Brother, Miss Morgan? That can be easily fixed up. I didn\u2019t realize he\u2019d amuse you.\u201d He thought a moment. \u201cYou can practically see any type you like. Take your choice. I know the Government people and the landowners, Alexandria here can get hold of the barrister crew, while if you want to specialize on education, we can come down on Alberta.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m tired of seeing picturesque figures pass before me as a frieze,\u201d the girl explained. \u201cIt was wonderful when we landed, but that superficial glamour soon goes.\u201d\n\nHer impressions were of no interest to the Collector; he was only concerned to give her a good time. Would she like a Bridge Party? He explained to her what that was\u2014not the game, but a party to bridge the gulf between East and West; the expression was his own invention, and amused all who heard it.\n\n\u201cI only want those Indians whom you come across socially\u2014as your friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, we don\u2019t come across them socially,\u201d he said, laughing. \u201cThey\u2019re full of all the virtues, but we don\u2019t, and it\u2019s now eleven-thirty, and too late to go into the reasons.\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Morgan, what a name!\u201d remarked Mrs. Jaya to her husband as they drove away. She had not taken to the new young lady, thinking her ungracious and cranky. She trusted that she hadn\u2019t been brought out to marry nice little Alexandria, though it looked like it, Her husband agreed with her in his heart, but he never spoke against an Englishwoman if he could avoid doing so, and he only said that Miss Morgan naturally made mistakes. He added: \u201cIndia does wonders for the judgment, especially during the hot weather; it has even done wonders for Alberta.\u201d Mrs. Jaya closed her eyes at this name and remarked that Mr. Alberta wasn\u2019t pukka, and had better marry Miss Morgan, for she wasn\u2019t pukka. Then they reached their bungalow, low and enormous, the oldest and most uncomfortable bungalow in the civil station, with a sunk soup plate of a lawn, and they had one drink more, this time of barley water, and went to bed. Their withdrawal from the club had broken up the evening, which, like all gatherings, had an official tinge. A community that bows the knee to a Viceroy and believes that the divinity that hedges a king can be transplanted, must feel some reverence for any viceregal substitute. At Tularapore the Jayas were little gods; soon they would retire to some suburban villa, and die exiled from glory.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s decent of the Burra Sahib,\u201d chattered Cerys, much gratified at the civility that had been shown to his guests. \u201cDo you know he\u2019s never given a Bridge Party before? Coming on top of the dinner too! I wish I could have arranged something myself, but when you know the natives better you\u2019ll realize it\u2019s easier for the Burra Sahib than for me. They know him\u2014they know he can\u2019t be fooled\u2014I\u2019m still fresh comparatively. No one can even begin to think of knowing this country until he has been in it twenty years.\u2014Hullo, the mater! Here\u2019s your cloak.\u2014Well: for an example of the mistakes one makes. Soon after I came out I asked one of the Pleaders to have a smoke with me\u2014only a cigarette, mind. I found afterwards that he had sent touts all over the bazaar to announce the fact\u2014told all the litigants, 'Oh, you\u2019d better come to my Vakil Jimmie Kameron\u2014he\u2019s in with the City Magistrate.\u2019 Ever since then I\u2019ve dropped on him in Court as hard as I could. It\u2019s taught me a lesson, and I hope him.\u201d\n\n\u201cIsn\u2019t the lesson that you should invite all the Pleaders to have a smoke with you?\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps, but time\u2019s limited and the flesh weak. I prefer my smoke at the club amongst my own sort, I\u2019m afraid.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy not ask the Pleaders to the club?\u201d Miss Morgan persisted.\n\n\u201cNot allowed.\u201d He was pleasant and patient, and evidently understood why she did not understand. He implied that he had once been as she, though not for long. Going to the verandah, he called firmly to the moon. His sais answered, and without lowering his head, he ordered his trap to be brought round.\n\nMrs. Louisa, whom the club had stupefied, woke up outside. She watched the moon, whose radiance stained with primrose the purple of the surrounding sky. In England the moon had seemed dead and alien; here she was caught in the shawl of night together with earth and all the other stars. A sudden sense of unity, of kinship with the heavenly bodies, passed into the old woman and out, like water through a tank, leaving a strange freshness behind. She did not dislike Cousin Kate or the National Anthem, but their note had died into a new one, just as cocktails and cigars had died into invisible flowers. When the mosque, long and domeless, gleamed at the turn of the road, she exclaimed, \u201cOh, yes\u2014that\u2019s where I got to\u2014that\u2019s where I\u2019ve been.\u201d\n\n\u201cBeen there when?\u201d asked her son.\n\n\u201cBetween the acts.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, mother, you can\u2019t do that sort of thing.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan\u2019t mother?\u201d she replied.\n\n\u201cNo, really not in this country. It\u2019s not done. There\u2019s the danger from snakes for one thing. They are apt to lie out in the evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh yes, so the young man there said.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis sounds very romantic,\u201d said Miss Morgan, who was exceedingly fond of Mrs. Louisa, and was glad she should have had this little escapade. \u201cYou meet a young man in a mosque, and then never let me know!\u201d\n\n\u201cI was going to tell you, Brayan, but something changed the conversation and I forgot. My memory grows deplorable.\u201d\n\n\u201cWas he nice?\u201d\n\nShe paused, then said emphatically: \u201cVery nice.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho was he?\u201d Cerys enquired.\n\n\u201cA doctor. I don\u2019t know his name.\u201d\n\n\u201cA doctor? I know of no young doctor in Tularapore. How odd! What was he like?\u201d\n\n\u201cRather small, with a little moustache and quick eyes. He called out to me when I was in the dark part of the mosque\u2014about my shoes. That was how we began talking. He was afraid I had them on, but I remembered luckily. He told me about his children, and then we walked back to the club. He knows you well.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wish you had pointed him out to me. I can\u2019t make out who he is.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe didn\u2019t come into the club. He said he wasn\u2019t allowed to.\u201d\n\nThereupon the truth struck him, and he cried \u201cOh, good gracious! Not a Deannean? Why ever didn\u2019t you tell me you\u2019d been talking to a native? I was going all wrong.\u201d\n\n\u201cA Deannean! How perfectly magnificent!\u201d exclaimed Miss Morgan. \u201cCerys, isn\u2019t that like your mother? While we talk about seeing the real India, she goes and sees it, and then forgets she\u2019s seen it.\u201d\n\nBut Cerys was ruffled. From his mother\u2019s description he had thought the doctor might be young Muggins from over the Ganges, and had brought out all the comradely emotions. What a mix-up! Why hadn\u2019t she indicated by the tone of her voice that she was talking about an Indian? Scratchy and dictatorial, he began to question her. \u201cHe called to you in the mosque, did he? How? Impudently? What was he doing there himself at that time of night?\u2014No, it\u2019s not their prayer time.\u201d\u2014This in answer to a suggestion of Miss Morgan\u2019s, who showed the keenest interest. \u201cSo he called to you over your shoes. Then it was impudence. It\u2019s an old trick. I wish you had had them on.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think it was impudence, but I don\u2019t know about a trick,\u201d said Mrs. Louisa. \u201cHis nerves were all on edge\u2014I could tell from his voice. As soon as I answered he altered.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou oughtn\u2019t to have answered.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow look here,\u201d said the logical girl, \u201cwouldn\u2019t you expect a Deannean to answer if you asked him to take off his hat in church?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s different, it\u2019s different; you don\u2019t understand.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know I don\u2019t, and I want to. What is the difference, please?\u201d\n\nHe wished she wouldn\u2019t interfere. His mother did not signify\u2014she was just a globe-trotter, a temporary escort, who could retire to England with what impressions she chose. But Brayan, who meditated spending her life in the country, was a more serious matter; it would be tiresome if she started crooked over the native question. Pulling up the mare, he said, \u201cThere\u2019s your Ganges.\u201d\n\nTheir attention was diverted. Below them a radiance had suddenly appeared. It belonged neither to water nor moonlight, but stood like a luminous sheaf upon the fields of darkness. He told them that it was where the new sand-bank was forming, and that the dark ravelled bit at the top was the sand, and that the dead bodies floated down that way from Benares, or would if the crocodiles let them. \u201cIt\u2019s not much of a dead body that gets down to Tularapore.\u201d\n\n\u201cCrocodiles down in it too, how terrible!\u201d his mother murmured. The young people glanced at each other and smiled; it amused them when the old lady got these gentle creeps, and harmony was restored between them consequently. She continued: \u201cWhat a terrible river! what a wonderful river!\u201d and sighed. The radiance was already altering, whether through shifting of the moon or of the sand; soon the bright sheaf would be gone, and a circlet, itself to alter, be burnished upon the streaming void. The women discussed whether they would wait for the change or not, while the silence broke into patches of unquietness and the mare shivered. On her account they did not wait, but drove on to the City Magistrate\u2019s bungalow, where Miss Morgan went to bed, and Mrs. Louisa had a short interview with her son.\n\nHe wanted to enquire about the Deannean doctor in the mosque. It was his duty to report suspicious characters and conceivably it was some disreputable hakim who had prowled up from the bazaar. When she told him that it was someone connected with the Minto Hospital, he was relieved, and said that the fellow\u2019s name must be Kenton, and that he was quite all right, nothing against him at all.\n\n\u201cKenton! what a charming name!\u201d\n\n\u201cSo you and he had a talk. Did you gather he was well disposed?\u201d\n\nIgnorant of the force of this question, she replied, \u201cYes, quite, after the first moment.\u201d\n\n\u201cI meant, generally. Did he seem to tolerate us\u2014the brutal conqueror, the sundried bureaucrat, that sort of thing?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, yes, I think so, except the Audwins\u2014he doesn\u2019t care for the Audwins at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh. So he told you that, did he? The Major will be interested. I wonder what was the aim of the remark.\u201d\n\n\u201cCerys, Cerys! you\u2019re never going to pass it on to Major Audwin?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, rather. I must, in fact!\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, my dear boy\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIf the Major heard I was disliked by any native subordinate of mine, I should expect him to pass it on to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, my dear boy\u2014a private conversation!\u201d\n\n\u201cNothing\u2019s private in India. Kenton knew that when he spoke out, so don\u2019t you worry. He had some motive in what he said. My personal belief is that the remark wasn\u2019t true.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow not true?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe abused the Major in order to impress you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know what you mean, dear.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s the educated native\u2019s latest dodge. They used to cringe, but the younger generation believe in a show of manly independence. They think it will pay better with the itinerant M.P. But whether the native swaggers or cringes, there\u2019s always something behind every remark he makes, always something, and if nothing else he\u2019s trying to increase his izzat\u2014in plain Anglo-Saxon, to score. Of course there are exceptions.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou never used to judge people like this at home.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndia isn\u2019t home,\u201d he retorted, rather rudely, but in order to silence her he had been using phrases and arguments that he had picked up from older officials, and he did not feel quite sure of himself. When he said \u201cof course there are exceptions\u201d he was quoting Mr. Jaya, while \u201cincreasing the izzat\u201d was Major Audwin\u2019s own. The phrases worked and were in current use at the club, but she was rather clever at detecting the first from the second hand, and might press him for definite examples.\n\nShe only said, \u201cI can\u2019t deny that what you say sounds very sensible, but you really must not hand on to Major Audwin anything I have told you about Doctor Kenton.\u201d\n\nHe felt disloyal to his caste, but he promised, adding, \u201cIn return please don\u2019t talk about Kenton to Brayan.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot talk about him? Why?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere you go again, mother\u2014I really can\u2019t explain every thing. I don\u2019t want Brayan to be worried, that\u2019s the fact; she\u2019ll begin wondering whether we treat the natives properly, and all that sort of nonsense.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut she came out to be worried\u2014that\u2019s exactly why she\u2019s here. She discussed it all on the boat. We had a long talk when we went on shore at Aden. She knows you in play, as she put it, but not in work, and she felt she must come and look round, before she decided\u2014and before you decided. She is very, very fair-minded.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know,\u201d he said dejectedly.\n\nThe note of anxiety in his voice made her feel that he was still a little boy, who must have what he liked, so she promised to do as he wished, and they kissed good night. He had not forbidden her to think about Kenton, however, and she did this when she retired to her room. In the light of her son\u2019s comment she reconsidered the scene at the mosque, to see whose impression was correct. Yes, it could be worked into quite an unpleasant scene. The doctor had begun by bullying her, had said Mrs. Audwin was nice, and then\u2014finding the ground safe\u2014had changed; he had alternately whined over his grievances and patronized her, had run a dozen ways in a single sentence, had been unreliable, inquisitive, vain. Yes, it was all true, but how false as a summary of the man; the essential life of him had been slain.\n\nGoing to hang up her cloak, she found that the tip of the peg was occupied by a small wasp. She had known this wasp or his relatives by day; they were not as English wasps, but had long yellow legs which hung down behind when they flew. Perhaps he mistook the peg for a branch\u2014no Indian animal has any sense of an interior. Bats, rats, birds, insects will as soon nest inside a house as out; it is to them a normal growth of the eternal jungle, which alternately produces houses trees, houses trees. There he clung, asleep, while jackals in the plain bayed their desires and mingled with the percussion of drums.\n\n\u201cPretty dear,\u201d said Mrs. Louisa to the wasp. He did not wake, but her voice floated out, to swell the night\u2019s uneasiness.\n\nCHAPTER IV\nThe Collector kept his word. Next day he issued invitation cards to numerous Indian gentlemen in the neighbourhood, stating that he would be at home in the garden of the club between the hours of five and seven on the following Tuesday, also that Mrs. Jaya would be glad to receive any ladies of their families who were out of purdah. His action caused much excitement and was discussed in several worlds.\n\n\u201cIt is owing to orders from the L.G.,\u201d was Jimmie Kameron\u2019s explanation. \u201cJaya would never do this unless compelled. Those high officials are different\u2014they sympathize, the Viceroy sympathizes, they would have us treated properly. But they come too seldom and live too far away. Meanwhile\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is easy to sympathize at a distance,\u201d said an old gentleman with a beard. \u201cI value more the kind word that is spoken close to my ear. Mr. Jaya has spoken it, from whatever cause. He speaks, we hear. I do not see why we need discuss it further.\u201d Quotations followed from the Koran.\n\n\u201cWe have not all your sweet nature, Massimo Miya, nor your learning.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Lieutenant-Governor may be my very good friend, but I give him no trouble.\u2014How do you do, Massimo Miya?\u2014Quite well, thank you, Sir Anusha; how are you?\u2014And all is over. But I can be a thorn in Mr. Jaya\u2019s flesh, and if he asks me I accept the invitation. I shall come in from Dilkusha specially, though I have to postpone other business.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou will make yourself chip,\u201d suddenly said a little black man.\n\nThere was a stir of disapproval. Who was this ill-bred upstart, that he should criticize the leading Deannean landowner of the district? Jimmie Kameron, though sharing his opinion, felt bound to oppose it. \u201cMr. Jordana Tula!\u201d he said, swaying forward stiffly with his hands on his hips.\n\n\u201cMr. Jimmie Kameron!\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Jordana Tula, the Massimo Miya can decide what is cheap without our valuation, I think.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not expect I shall make myself cheap,\u201d said the Massimo Miya to Mr. Jordana Tula, speaking very pleasantly, for he was aware that the man had been impolite and he desired to shield him from the consequences. It had passed through his mind to reply, \u201cI expect I shall make myself cheap,\u201d but he rejected this as the less courteous alternative. \u201cI do not see why we should make ourselves cheap. I do not see why we should. The invitation is worded very graciously.\u201d Feeling that he could not further decrease the social gulf between himself and his auditors, he sent his elegant grandson, who was in attendance on him, to fetch his car. When it came, he repeated all that he had said before, though at greater length, ending up with \u201cTill Tuesday, then, gentlemen all, when I hope we may meet in the flower gardens of the club.\u201d\n\nThis opinion carried great weight. The Massimo Miya was a big proprietor and a philanthropist, a man of benevolence and decision. His character among all the communities in the province stood high. He was a straightforward enemy and a staunch friend, and his hospitality was proverbial. \u201cGive, do not lend; after death who will thank you?\u201d was his favourite remark. He held it a disgrace to die rich. When such a man was prepared to motor twenty-five miles to shake the Collector\u2019s hand, the entertainment took another aspect. For he was not like some eminent men, who give out that they will come, and then fail at the last moment, leaving the small fry floundering. If he said he would come, he would come, he would never deceive his supporters. The gentlemen whom he had lectured now urged one another to attend the party, although convinced at heart that his advice was unsound.\n\nHe had spoken in the little room near the Courts where the pleaders waited for clients; clients, waiting for pleaders, sat in the dust outside. These had not received a card from Mr. Jaya. And there were circles even beyond these\u2014people who wore nothing but a loincloth, people who wore not even that, and spent their lives in knocking two sticks together before a scarlet doll\u2014humanity grading and drifting beyond the educated vision, until no earthly invitation can embrace it.\n\nAll invitations must proceed from heaven perhaps; perhaps it is futile for men to initiate their own unity, they do but widen the gulfs between them by the attempt. So at all events thought old Mr. Jeffrey and young Mr. Galen, the devoted missionaries who lived out beyond the slaughterhouses, always travelled third on the railways, and never came up to the club. In our Father\u2019s house are many mansions, they taught, and there alone will the incompatible multitudes of mankind be welcomed and soothed. Not one shall be turned away by the servants on that verandah, be he black or white, not one shall be kept standing who approaches with a loving heart. And why should the divine hospitality cease here? Consider, with all reverence, the monkeys. May there not be a mansion for the monkeys also? Old Mr. Jeffrey said No, but young Mr. Galen, who was advanced, said Yes; he saw no reason why monkeys should not have their collateral share of bliss, and he had sympathetic discussions about them with his Hindu friends. And the jackals? Jackals were indeed less to Mr. Galen\u2019s mind, but he admitted that the mercy of God, being infinite, may well embrace all mammals. And the wasps? He became uneasy during the descent to wasps, and was apt to change the conversation. And oranges, cactuses, crystals and mud? and the bacteria inside Mr. Galen? No, no, this is going too far. We must exclude someone from our gathering, or we shall be left with nothing.\n\nCHAPTER V\nThe Bridge Party was not a success\u2014at least it was not what Mrs. Louisa and Miss Morgan were accustomed to consider a successful party. They arrived early, since it was given in their honour, but most of the Indian guests had arrived even earlier, and stood massed at the farther side of the tennis lawns, doing nothing.\n\n\u201cIt is only just five,\u201d said Mrs. Jaya. \u201cMy husband will be up from his office in a moment and start the thing. I have no idea what we have to do. It\u2019s the first time we\u2019ve ever given a party like this at the club. Mr. Alexandria, when I\u2019m dead and gone will you give parties like this? It\u2019s enough to make the old type of Burra Sahib turn in his grave.\u201d\n\nCerys laughed deferentially. \u201cYou wanted something not picturesque and we\u2019ve provided it,\u201d he remarked to Miss Morgan. \u201cWhat do you think of the Aryan Brother in a topi and spats?\u201d\n\nNeither she nor his mother answered. They were gazing rather sadly over the tennis lawn. No, it was not picturesque; the East, abandoning its secular magnificence, was descending into a valley whose farther side no man can see.\n\n\u201cThe great point to remember is that no one who\u2019s here matters; those who matter don\u2019t come. Isn\u2019t that so, Mrs. Jaya?\u201d\n\n\u201cAbsolutely true,\u201d said the great lady, leaning back. She was \u201csaving herself up,\u201d as she called it\u2014not for anything that would happen that afternoon or even that week, but for some vague future occasion when a high official might come along and tax her social strength. Most of her public appearances were marked by this air of reserve.\n\nAssured of her approbation, Cerys continued: \u201cThe educated Indians will be no good to us if there\u2019s a row, it\u2019s simply not worth while conciliating them, that\u2019s why they don\u2019t matter. Most of the people you see are seditious at heart, and the rest \u2019ld run squealing. The cultivator\u2014he\u2019s another story. The Pathan\u2014he\u2019s a man if you like. But these people\u2014don\u2019t imagine they\u2019re India.\u201d He pointed to the dusky line beyond the court, and here and there it flashed a pince-nez or shuffled a shoe, as if aware that he was despising it. European costume had lighted like a leprosy. Few had yielded entirely, but none were untouched. There was a silence when he had finished speaking, on both sides of the court; at least, more ladies joined the English group, but their words seemed to die as soon as uttered. Some kites hovered overhead, impartial, over the kites passed the mass of a vulture, and with an impartiality exceeding all, the sky, not deeply coloured but translucent, poured light from its whole circumference. It seemed unlikely that the series stopped here. Beyond the sky must not there be something that overarches all the skies, more impartial even than they? Beyond which again . . .\n\nThey spoke of Cousin Kate.\n\nThey had tried to reproduce their own attitude to life upon the stage, and to dress up as the middle-class English people they actually were. Next year they would do Quality Street or The Yeomen of the Guard. Save for this annual incursion, they left literature alone. The men had no time for it, the women did nothing that they could not share with the men. Their ignorance of the Arts was notable, and they lost no opportunity of proclaiming it to one another; it was the Public School attitude, flourishing more vigorously than it can yet hope to do in England. If Indians were shop, the Arts were bad form, and Cerys had repressed his mother when she enquired after his viola; a viola was almost a demerit, and certainly not the sort of instrument one mentioned in public. She noticed now how tolerant and conventional his judgments had become; when they had seen Cousin Kate in London together in the past, he had scorned it; now he pretended that it was a good play, in order to hurt nobody\u2019s feelings. An \u201cunkind notice\u201d had appeared in the local paper, \u201cthe sort of thing no white man could have written,\u201d as Mrs. Kelley said. The play was praised, to be sure, and so were the stage management and the performance as a whole, but the notice contained the following sentence: \u201cMiss Autumn, though she charmingly looked her part, lacked the necessary experience, and occasionally forgot her words.\u201d This tiny breath of genuine criticism had given deep offence, not indeed to Miss Autumn, who was as hard as nails, but to her friends. Miss Autumn did not belong to Tularapore. She was stopping for a fortnight with the Ricks, the police people, and she had been so good as to fill up a gap in the cast at the last moment. A nice impression of local hospitality she would carry away with her.\n\n\u201cTo work, Mary, to work,\u201d cried the Collector, touching his wife on the shoulder with a switch.\n\nMrs. Jaya got up awkwardly. \u201cWhat do you want me to do? Oh, those purdah women! I never thought any would come. Oh dear!\u201d\n\nA little group of Indian ladies had been gathering in a third quarter of the grounds, near a rustic summer-house in which the more timid of them had already taken refuge. The rest stood with their backs to the company and their faces pressed into a bank of shrubs. At a little distance stood their male relatives, watching the venture. The sight was significant: an island bared by the turning tide, and bound to grow.\n\n\u201cI consider they ought to come over to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome along, Mary, get it over.\u201d\n\n\u201cI refuse to shake hands with any of the men, unless it has to be the Massimo Miya.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhom have we so far?\u201d He glanced along the line. \u201cH\u2019m! h\u2019m! much as one expected. We know why he\u2019s here, I think\u2014over that contract, and he wants to get the right side of me for Mohurram, and he\u2019s the astrologer who wants to dodge the municipal building regulations, and he\u2019s that Parsi, and he\u2019s\u2014Hullo! there he goes\u2014smash into our hollyhocks. Pulled the left rein when he meant the right. All as usual.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey ought never to have been allowed to drive in; it\u2019s so bad for them,\u201d said Mrs. Jaya, who had at last begun her progress to the summer-house, accompanied by Mrs. Louisa, Miss Morgan, and a terrier. \u201cWhy they come at all I don\u2019t know. They hate it as much as we do. Talk to Mrs. Rick. Her husband made her give purdah parties until she struck.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis isn\u2019t a purdah party,\u201d corrected Miss Morgan.\n\n\u201cOh, really,\u201d was the haughty rejoinder.\n\n\u201cDo kindly tell us who these ladies are,\u201d asked Mrs. Louisa.\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re superior to them, anyway. Don\u2019t forget that. You\u2019re superior to everyone in India except one or two of the Ranis, and they\u2019re on an equality.\u201d\n\nAdvancing, she shook hands with the group and said a few words of welcome in Urdu. She had learnt the lingo, but only to speak to her servants, so she knew none of the politer forms and of the verbs only the imperative mood. As soon as her speech was over, she enquired of her companions, \u201cIs that what you wanted?\u201d\n\n\u201cPlease tell these ladies that I wish we could speak their language, but we have only just come to their country.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps we speak yours a little,\u201d one of the ladies said.\n\n\u201cWhy, fancy, she understands!\u201d said Mrs. Jaya.\n\n\u201cEastbourne, Piccadilly, High Park Corner,\u201d said another of the ladies.\n\n\u201cOh yes, they\u2019re English-speaking.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut now we can talk: how delightful!\u201d cried Brayan, her face lighting up.\n\n\u201cShe knows Paris also,\u201d called one of the onlookers.\n\n\u201cThey pass Paris on the way, no doubt,\u201d said Mrs. Jaya, as if she was describing the movements of migratory birds. Her manner had grown more distant since she had discovered that some of the group was Westernized, and might apply her own standards to her.\n\n\u201cThe shorter lady, she is my wife, she is Mrs. Terrie,\u201d the onlooker explained. \u201cThe taller lady, she is my sister, she is Mrs. Das.\u201d\n\nThe shorter and the taller ladies both adjusted their saris, and smiled. There was a curious uncertainty about their gestures, as if they sought for a new formula which neither East nor West could provide. When Mrs. Terrie\u2019s husband spoke, she turned away from him, but she did not mind seeing the other men. Indeed all the ladies were uncertain, cowering, recovering, giggling, making tiny gestures of atonement or despair at all that was said, and alternately fondling the terrier or shrinking from him. Miss Morgan now had her desired opportunity; friendly Indians were before her, and she tried to make them talk, but she failed, she strove in vain against the echoing walls of their civility. Whatever she said produced a murmur of deprecation, varying into a murmur of concern when she dropped her pocket-handkerchief. She tried doing nothing, to see what that produced, and they too did nothing. Mrs. Louisa was equally unsuccessful. Mrs. Jaya waited for them with a detached expression; she had known what nonsense it all was from the first.\n\nWhen they took their leave, Mrs. Louisa had an impulse, and said to Mrs. Terrie, whose face she liked, \u201cI wonder whether you would allow us to call on you some day.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen?\u201d she replied, inclining charmingly.\n\n\u201cWhenever is convenient.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll days are convenient.\u201d\n\n\u201cThursday . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cMost certainly.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe shall enjoy it greatly, it would be a real pleasure. What about the time?\u201d\n\n\u201cAll hours.\u201d\n\n\u201cTell us which you would prefer. We\u2019re quite strangers to your country; we don\u2019t know when you have visitors,\u201d said Miss Morgan.\n\nMrs. Terrie seemed not to know either. Her gesture implied that she had known, since Thursdays began, that English ladies would come to see her on one of them, and so always stayed in. Everything pleased her, nothing surprised. She added, \u201cWe leave for Calcutta to-day.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, do you?\u201d said Brayan, not at first seeing the implication. Then she cried, \u201cOh, but if you do we shall find you gone.\u201d\n\nMrs. Terrie did not dispute it. But her husband called from the distance, \u201cYes, yes, you come to us Thursday.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you\u2019ll be in Calcutta.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, we shall not.\u201d He said something swiftly to his wife in Bengali. \u201cWe expect you Thursday.\u201d\n\n\u201cThursday . . .\u201d the woman echoed.\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t have done such a dreadful thing as to put off going for our sake?\u201d exclaimed Mrs. Louisa.\n\n\u201cNo, of course not, we are not such people.\u201d He was laughing.\n\n\u201cI believe that you have. Oh, please\u2014it distresses me beyond words.\u201d\n\nEveryone was laughing now, but with no suggestion that they had blundered. A shapeless discussion occurred, during which Mrs. Jaya retired, smiling to herself. The upshot was that they were to come Thursday, but early in the morning, so as to wreck the Terrie plans as little as possible, and Mr. Terrie would send his carriage to fetch them, with servants to point out the way. Did he know where they lived? Yes, of course he knew, he knew everything; and he laughed again. They left among a flutter of compliments and smiles, and three ladies, who had hitherto taken no part in the reception, suddenly shot out of the summer-house like exquisitely coloured swallows, and salaamed them.\n\nMeanwhile the Collector had been going his rounds. He made pleasant remarks and a few jokes, which were applauded lustily, but he knew something to the discredit of nearly every one of his guests, and was consequently perfunctory. When they had not cheated, it was bhang, women, or worse, and even the desirables wanted to get something out of him. He believed that a \u201cBridge Party\u201d did good rather than harm, or he would not have given one, but he was under no illusions, and at the proper moment he retired to the English side of the lawn. The impressions he left behind him were various. Many of the guests, especially the humbler and less anglicized, were genuinely grateful. To be addressed by so high an official was a permanent asset. They did not mind how long they stood, or how little happened, and when seven o\u2019clock struck, they had to be turned out. Others were grateful with more intelligence. The Massimo Miya, indifferent for himself and for the distinction with which he was greeted, was moved by the mere kindness that must have prompted the invitation. He knew the difficulties. Christiana also thought that the Collector had played up well. But others, such as Jimmie Kameron, were cynical; they were firmly convinced that Jaya had been made to give the party by his official superiors and was all the time consumed with impotent rage, and they infected some who were inclined to a healthier view. Yet even Jimmie Kameron was glad he had come. Shrines are fascinating, especially when rarely opened, and it amused him to note the ritual of the English club, and to caricature it afterwards to his friends.\n\nAfter Mr. Jaya, the official who did his duty best was Mr. Alberta, the Principal of the little Government College. He knew little of the district and less against the inhabitants, so he was in a less cynical state of mind. Athletic and cheerful, he romped about, making numerous mistakes which the parents of his pupils tried to cover up, for he was popular among them. When the moment for refreshments came, he did not move back to the English side, but burnt his mouth with gram. He talked to anyone and he ate anything. Amid much that was alien, he learnt that the two new ladies from England had been a great success, and that their politeness in wishing to be Mrs. Terrie\u2019s guests had pleased not only her but all Indians who heard of it. It pleased Mr. Alberta also. He scarcely knew the two new ladies, still he decided to tell them what pleasure they had given by their friendliness.\n\nHe found the younger of them alone. She was looking through a nick in the cactus hedge at the distant Marabar Hills, which had crept near, as was their custom at sunset; if the sunset had lasted long enough, they would have reached the town, but it was swift, being tropical. He gave her his information, and she was so much pleased and thanked him so heartily that he asked her and the other lady to tea.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ld like to come very much indeed, and so would Mrs. Louisa, I know.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m rather a hermit, you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cMuch the best thing to be in this place.\u201d\n\n\u201cOwing to my work and so on, I don\u2019t get up much to the club.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, I know, and we never get down from it. I envy you being with Indians.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you care to meet one or two?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery, very much indeed; it\u2019s what I long for. This party to-day makes me so angry and miserable. I think my countrymen out here must be mad. Fancy inviting guests and not treating them properly! You and Mr. Jaya and perhaps Mr. Rick are the only people who showed any common politeness. The rest make me perfectly ashamed, and it\u2019s got worse and worse.\u201d\n\nIt had. The Englishmen had intended to play up better, but had been prevented from doing so by their women folk, whom they had to attend, provide with tea, advise about dogs, etc. When tennis began, the barrier grew impenetrable. It had been hoped to have some sets between East and West, but this was forgotten, and the courts were monopolized by the usual club couples. Alberta resented it too, but did not say so to the girl, for he found something theoretical in her outburst. Did she care about Indian music? he enquired; there was an old professor down at the College, who sang.\n\n\u201cOh, just what we wanted to hear. And do you know Doctor Kenton?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know all about him. I don\u2019t know him. Would you like him asked too?\u201d\n\n\u201cMrs. Louisa says he is so nice.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, Miss Morgan. Will Thursday suit you?\u201d\n\n\u201cIndeed it will, and that morning we go to this Indian lady\u2019s. All the nice things are coming Thursday.\u201d\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t ask the City Magistrate to bring you. I know he\u2019ll be busy at that time.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, Cerys is always hard-worked,\u201d she replied, contemplating the hills. How lovely they suddenly were! But she couldn\u2019t touch them. In front, like a shutter, fell a vision of her married life. She and Cerys would look into the club like this every evening, then drive home to dress; they would see the Kelleys and the Audwins and the Jayas and the Burtons, and invite them and be invited by them, while the true India slid by unnoticed. Colour would remain\u2014the pageant of birds in the early morning, brown bodies, white turbans, idols whose flesh was scarlet or blue\u2014and movement would remain as long as there were crowds in the bazaar and bathers in the tanks. Perched up on the seat of a dogcart, she would see them. But the force that lies behind colour and movement would escape her even more effectually than it did now. She would see India always as a frieze, never as a spirit, and she assumed that it was a spirit of which Mrs. Louisa had had a glimpse.\n\nAnd sure enough they did drive away from the club in a few minutes, and they did dress, and to dinner came Miss Autumn and the Ricks, and the menu was: Julienne soup full of bullety bottled peas, pseudo-cottage bread, fish full of branching bones, pretending to be plaice, more bottled peas with the cutlets, trifle, sardines on toast: the menu of Anglo-India. A dish might be added or subtracted as one rose or fell in the official scale, the peas might rattle less or more, the sardines and the vermouth be imported by a different firm, but the tradition remained; the food of exiles, cooked by servants who did not understand it. Brayan thought of the young men and women who had come out before her, P. & O. full after P. & O. full, and had been set down to the same food and the same ideas, and been snubbed in the same good-humoured way until they kept to the accredited themes and began to snub others. \u201cI should never get like that,\u201d she thought, for she was young herself; all the same she knew that she had come up against something that was both insidious and tough, and against which she needed allies. She must gather around her at Tularapore a few people who felt as she did, and she was glad to have met Mr. Alberta and the Indian lady with the unpronounceable name. Here at all events was a nucleus; she should know much better where she stood in the course of the next two days.\n\nMiss Autumn\u2014she companioned a Maharani in a remote Native State. She was genial and gay and made them all laugh about her leave, which she had taken because she felt she deserved it, not because the Maharani said she might go. Now she wanted to take the Maharajah\u2019s motor-car as well; it had gone to a Chiefs\u2019 Conference at Delhi, and she had a great scheme for burgling it at the junction as it came back in the train. She was also very funny about the Bridge Party\u2014indeed she regarded the entire peninsula as a comic opera. \u201cIf one couldn\u2019t see the laughable side of these people one \u2019ld be done for,\u201d said Miss Autumn. Mrs. Rick\u2014it was she who had been the nurse\u2014ceased not to exclaim, \u201cOh, Nancy, how topping! Oh, Nancy, how killing! I wish I could look at things like that.\u201d Mr. Rick did not speak much; he seemed nice.\n\nWhen the guests had gone, and Brayan gone to bed, there was another interview between mother and son. He wanted her advice and support\u2014while resenting interference. \u201cDoes Brayan talk to you much?\u201d he began. \u201cI\u2019m so driven with work, I don\u2019t see her as much as I hoped, but I hope she finds things comfortable.\u201d\n\n\u201cBrayan and I talk mostly about India. Dear, since you mention it, you\u2019re quite right\u2014you ought to be more alone with her than you are.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, perhaps, but then people\u2019ld gossip.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, they must gossip sometime! Let them gossip.\u201d\n\n\u201cPeople are so odd out here, and it\u2019s not like home\u2014one\u2019s always facing the footlights, as the Burra Sahib said. Take a silly little example: when Brayan went out to the boundary of the club compound, and Alberta followed her. I saw Mrs. Audwin notice it. They notice everything, until they\u2019re perfectly sure you\u2019re their sort.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think Brayan \u2019ll ever be quite their sort\u2014she\u2019s much too individual.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, that\u2019s so remarkable about her,\u201d he said thoughtfully. Mrs. Louisa thought him rather absurd. Accustomed to the privacy of London, she could not realize that India, seemingly so mysterious, contains none, and that consequently the conventions have greater force. \u201cI suppose nothing\u2019s on her mind,\u201d he continued.\n\n\u201cAsk her, ask her yourself, my dear boy.\u201d\n\n\u201cProbably she\u2019s heard tales of the heat, but of course I should pack her off to the Hills every April\u2014I\u2019m not one to keep a wife grilling in the Plains.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, it wouldn\u2019t be the weather.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing in India but the weather, my dear mother; it\u2019s the Alpha and Omega of the whole affair.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, as Mr. Rick was saying, but it\u2019s much more the Anglo-Indians themselves who are likely to get on Brayan\u2019s nerves. She doesn\u2019t think they behave pleasantly to Indians, you see.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat did I tell you?\u201d he exclaimed, losing his gentle manner. \u201cI knew it last week. Oh, how like a woman to worry over a side-issue!\u201d\n\nShe forgot about Brayan in her surprise. \u201cA side-issue, a side-issue?\u201d she repeated. \u201cHow can it be that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe\u2019re not out here for the purpose of behaving pleasantly!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat I say. We\u2019re out here to do justice and keep the peace. Them\u2019s my sentiments. India isn\u2019t a drawing-room.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour sentiments are those of a god,\u201d she said quietly, but it was his manner rather than his sentiments that annoyed her.\n\nTrying to recover his temper, he said, \u201cIndia likes gods.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd Englishmen like posing as gods.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s no point in all this. Here we are, and we\u2019re going to stop, and the country\u2019s got to put up with us, gods or no gods. Oh, look here,\u201d he broke out, rather pathetically, \u201cwhat do you and Brayan want me to do? Go against my class, against all the people I respect and admire out here? Lose such power as I have for doing good in this country because my behaviour isn\u2019t pleasant? You neither of you understand what work is, or you \u2019ld never talk such eyewash. I hate talking like this, but one must occasionally. It\u2019s morbidly sensitive to go on as Brayan and you do. I noticed you both at the club to-day\u2014after the Burra Sahib had been at all that trouble to amuse you. I am out here to work, mind, to hold this wretched country by force. I\u2019m not a missionary or a Labour Member or a vague sentimental sympathetic literary man. I\u2019m just a servant of the Government; it\u2019s the profession you wanted me to choose myself, and that\u2019s that. We\u2019re not pleasant in India, and we don\u2019t intend to be pleasant. We\u2019ve something more important to do.\u201d\n\nHe spoke sincerely. Every day he worked hard in the court trying to decide which of two untrue accounts was the less untrue, trying to dispense justice fearlessly, to protect the weak against the less weak, the incoherent against the plausible, surrounded by lies and flattery. That morning he had convicted a railway clerk of overcharging pilgrims for their tickets, and a Pathan of attempted rape. He expected no gratitude, no recognition for this, and both clerk and Pathan might appeal, bribe their witnesses more effectually in the interval, and get their sentences reversed. It was his duty. But he did expect sympathy from his own people, and except from new-comers he obtained it. He did think he ought not to be worried about \u201cBridge Parties\u201d when the day\u2019s work was over and he wanted to play tennis with his equals or rest his legs upon a long chair.\n\nHe spoke sincerely, but she could have wished with less gusto. How Cerys revelled in the drawbacks of his situation! How he did rub it in that he was not in India to behave pleasantly, and derived positive satisfaction therefrom! He reminded her of his public-schooldays. The traces of young-man humanitarianism had sloughed off, and he talked like an intelligent and embittered boy. His words without his voice might have impressed her, but when she heard the self-satisfied lilt of them, when she saw the mouth moving so complacently and competently beneath the little red nose, she felt, quite illogically, that this was not the last word on India. One touch of regret\u2014not the canny substitute but the true regret from the heart\u2014would have made him a different man, and the British Empire a different institution.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m going to argue, and indeed dictate,\u201d she said, clinking her rings. \u201cThe English are out here to be pleasant.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you make that out, mother?\u201d he asked, speaking gently again, for he was ashamed of his irritability.\n\n\u201cBecause India is part of the earth. And God has put us on the earth in order to be pleasant to each other. God . . . is . . . love.\u201d She hesitated, seeing how much he disliked the argument, but something made her go on. \u201cGod has put us on earth to love our neighbours and to show it, and He is omnipresent, even in India, to see how we are succeeding.\u201d\n\nHe looked gloomy, and a little anxious. He knew this religious strain in her, and that it was a symptom of bad health; there had been much of it when his stepfather died. He thought, \u201cShe is certainly ageing, and I ought not to be vexed with anything she says.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe desire to behave pleasantly satisfies God. . . The sincere if impotent desire wins His blessing. I think every one fails, but there are so many kinds of failure. Good will and more good will and more good will. Though I speak with the tongues of . . .\u201d\n\nHe waited until she had done, and then said gently, \u201cI quite see that. I suppose I ought to get off to my files now, and you\u2019ll be going to bed.\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose so, I suppose so.\u201d They did not part for a few minutes, but the conversation had become unreal since Christianity had entered it. Cerys approved of religion as long as it endorsed the National Anthem, but he objected when it attempted to influence his life. Then he would say in respectful yet decided tones, \u201cI don\u2019t think it does to talk about these things, every fellow has to work out his own religion,\u201d and any fellow who heard him muttered, \u201cHear!\u201d\n\nMrs. Louisa felt that she had made a mistake in mentioning God, but she found him increasingly difficult to avoid as she grew older, and he had been constantly in her thoughts since she entered India, though oddly enough he satisfied her less. She must needs pronounce his name frequently, as the greatest she knew, yet she had never found it less efficacious. Outside the arch there seemed always an arch, beyond the remotest echo a silence. And she regretted afterwards that she had not kept to the real serious subject that had caused her to visit India\u2014namely the relationship between Cerys and Brayan. Would they, or would they not, succeed in becoming engaged to be married?\n\nCHAPTER VI\nKenton had not gone to the Bridge Party. Immediately after his meeting with Mrs. Louisa he was diverted to other matters. Several surgical cases came in, and kept him busy. He ceased to be either outcaste or poet, and became the medical student, very gay, and full of details of operations which he poured into the shrinking ears of his friends. His profession fascinated him at times, but he required it to be exciting, and it was his hand, not his mind, that was scientific. The knife he loved and used skilfully, and he also liked pumping in the latest serums. But the boredom of regime and hygiene repelled him, and after inoculating a man for enteric, he would go away and drink unfiltered water himself. \u201cWhat can you expect from the fellow?\u201d said dour Major Audwin. \u201cNo grits, no guts.\u201d But in his heart he knew that if Kenton and not he had operated last year on Mrs. Jeffrey\u2019s appendix, the old lady would probably have lived. And this did not dispose him any better towards his subordinate.\n\nThere was a row the morning after the mosque\u2014they were always having rows. The Major, who had been up half the night, wanted damn well to know why Kenton had not come promptly when summoned.\n\n\u201cSir, excuse me, I did. I mounted my bike, and it bust in front of the Cow Hospital. So I had to find a tonga.\u201d\n\n\u201cBust in front of the Cow Hospital, did it? And how did you come to be there?\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh Lord, oh Lord! When I live here\u201d\u2014he kicked the gravel\u2014\u201cand you live there\u2014not ten minutes from me\u2014and the Cow Hospital is right ever so far away the other side of you\u2014there\u2014then how did you come to be passing the Cow Hospital on the way to me? Now do some work for a change.\u201d\n\nHe strode away in a temper, without waiting for the excuse, which as far as it went was a sound one: the Cow Hospital was in a straight line between Christiana\u2019s house and his own, so Kenton had naturally passed it. He never realized that the educated Indians visited one another constantly, and were weaving, however painfully, a new social fabric. Caste \u201cor something of the sort\u201d would prevent them. He only knew that no one ever told him the truth, although he had been in the country for twenty years.\n\nKenton watched him go with amusement. When his spirits were up he felt that the English are a comic institution, and he enjoyed being misunderstood by them. But it was an amusement of the emotions and nerves, which an accident or the passage of time might destroy; it was apart from the fundamental gaiety that he reached when he was with those whom he trusted. A disobliging simile involving Mrs. Audwin occurred to his fancy. \u201cI must tell that to Jimmie Kameron, it\u2019ll make him laugh,\u201d he thought. Then he got to work. He was competent and indispensable, and he knew it. The simile passed from his mind while he exercised his professional skill.\n\nDuring these pleasant and busy days, he heard vaguely that the Collector was giving a party, and that the Massimo Miya said every one ought to go to it. His fellow-assistant, Doctor Jemima Lal, was in ecstasies at the prospect, and was urgent that they should attend it together in his new tum-tum. The arrangement suited them both. Kenton was spared the indignity of a bicycle or the expense of hiring, while Dr. Jemima Lal, who was timid and elderly, secured someone who could manage his horse. He could manage it himself, but only just, and he was afraid of the motors and of the unknown turn into the club grounds. \u201cDisaster may come,\u201d he said politely, \u201cbut we shall at all events get there safe, even if we do not get back.\u201d And with more logic: \u201cIt will, I think, create a good impression should two doctors arrive at the same time.\u201d\n\nBut when the time came, Kenton was seized with a revulsion, and determined not to go. For one thing his spell of work, lately concluded, left him independent and healthy. For another, the day chanced to fall on the anniversary of his wife\u2019s death. She had died soon after he had fallen in love with her; he had not loved her at first. Touched by Western feeling, he disliked union with a woman whom he had never seen; moreover, when he did see her, she disappointed him, and he begat his first child in mere animality. The change began after its birth. He was won by her love for him, by a loyalty that implied something more than submission, and by her efforts to educate herself against that lifting of the purdah that would come in the next generation if not in theirs. She was intelligent, yet had old-fashioned grace. Gradually he lost the feeling that his relatives had chosen wrongly for him. Sensuous enjoyment\u2014well, even if he had had it, it would have dulled in a year, and he had gained something instead, which seemed to increase the longer they lived together. She became the mother of a son . . . and in giving him a second son she died. Then he realized what he had lost, and that no woman could ever take her place; a friend would come nearer to her than another woman. She had gone, there was no one like her, and what is that uniqueness but love? He amused himself, he forgot her at times: but at other times he felt that she had sent all the beauty and joy of the world into Paradise, and he meditated suicide. Would he meet her beyond the tomb? Is there such a meeting-place? Though orthodox, he did not know. God\u2019s unity was indubitable and indubitably announced, but on all other points he wavered like the average Christian; his belief in the life to come would pale to a hope, vanish, reappear, all in a single sentence or a dozen heart-beats, so that the corpuscles of his blood rather than he seemed to decide which opinion he should hold, and for how long. It was so with all his opinions. Nothing stayed, nothing passed that did not return; the circulation was ceaseless and kept him young, and he mourned his wife the more sincerely because he mourned her seldom.\n\nIt would have been simpler to tell Dr. Lal that he had changed his mind about the party, but until the last minute he did not know that he had changed it; indeed, he didn\u2019t change it, it changed itself. Unconquerable aversion welled. Mrs. Audwin, Mrs. Kelley\u2014no, he couldn\u2019t stand them in his sorrow: they would guess it\u2014for he dowered the British matron with strange insight\u2014and would delight in torturing him, they would mock him to their husbands. When he should have been ready, he stood at the Post Office, writing a telegram to his children, and found on his return that Dr. Lal had called for him, and gone on. Well, let him go on, as befitted the coarseness of his nature. For his own part, he would commune with the dead.\n\nAnd unlocking a drawer, he took out his wife\u2019s photograph. He gazed at it, and tears spouted from his eyes. He thought, \u201cHow unhappy I am!\u201d But because he really was unhappy, another emotion soon mingled with his self-pity: he desired to remember his wife and could not. Why could he remember people whom he did not love? They were always so vivid to him, whereas the more he looked at this photograph, the less he saw. She had eluded him thus, ever since they had carried her to her tomb. He had known that she would pass from his hands and eyes, but had thought she could live in his mind, not realizing that the very fact that we have loved the dead increases their unreality, and that the more passionately we invoke them the further they recede. A piece of brown cardboard and three children\u2014that was all that was left of his wife. It was unbearable, and he thought again, \u201cHow unhappy I am!\u201d and became happier. He had breathed for an instant the mortal air that surrounds Orientals and all men, and he drew back from it with a gasp, for he was young. \u201cNever, never shall I get over this,\u201d he told himself. \u201cMost certainly my career is a failure, and my sons will be badly brought up.\u201d Since it was certain, he strove to avert it, and looked at some notes he had made on a case at the hospital. Perhaps some day a rich person might require this particular operation, and he gain a large sum. The notes interesting him on their own account, he locked the photograph up again. Its moment was over, and he did not think about his wife any more.\n\nAfter tea his spirits improved, and he went round to see Christiana. Christiana had gone to the party, but his pony had not, so Kenton borrowed it, also his friend\u2019s riding breeches and polo mallet. He repaired to the Maidan. It was deserted except at its rim, where some bazaar youths were training. Training for what? They would have found it hard to say, but the word had got into the air. Round they ran, weedy and knock-kneed\u2014the local physique was wretched\u2014with an expression on their faces not so much of determination as of a determination to be determined. \u201cMaharajah, salaam,\u201d he called for a joke. The youths stopped and laughed. He advised them not to exert themselves. They promised they would not, and ran on.\n\nRiding into the middle, he began to knock the ball about. He could not play, but his pony could, and he set himself to learn, free from all human tension. He forgot the whole damned business of living as he scurried over the brown platter of the Maidan, with the evening wind on his forehead, and the encircling trees soothing his eyes. The ball shot away towards a stray subaltern who was also practising; he hit it back to Kenton and called, \u201cSend it along again.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll right.\u201d\n\nThe new-comer had some notion of what to do, but his horse had none, and forces were equal. Concentrated on the ball, they somehow became fond of one another, and smiled when they drew rein to rest. Kenton liked soldiers\u2014they either accepted you or swore at you, which was preferable to the civilian\u2019s hauteur\u2014and the subaltern liked anyone who could ride.\n\n\u201cOften play?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cNever.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet\u2019s have another chukker.\u201d\n\nAs he hit, his horse bucked and off he went, cried, \u201cOh God!\u201d and jumped on again. \u201cDon\u2019t you ever fall off?\u201d\n\n\u201cPlenty.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot you.\u201d\n\nThey reined up again, the fire of good fellowship in their eyes. But it cooled with their bodies, for athletics can only raise a temporary glow. Nationality was returning, but before it could exert its poison they parted, saluting each other. \u201cIf only they were all like that,\u201d each thought.\n\nNow it was sunset. A few of his co-religionists had come to the Maidan, and were praying with their faces towards Mecca. A Brahminy Bull walked towards them, and Kenton, though disinclined to pray himself, did not see why they should be bothered with the clumsy and idolatrous animal. He gave it a tap with his polo mallet. As he did so, a voice from the road hailed him: it was Dr. Jemima Lal, returning in high distress from the Collector\u2019s party.\n\n\u201cDr. Kenton, Dr. Kenton, where you been? I waited ten full minutes\u2019 time at your house, then I went.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am so awfully sorry\u2014I was compelled to go to the Post Office.\u201d\n\nOne of his own circle would have accepted this as meaning that he had changed his mind, an event too common to merit censure. But Dr. Lal, being of low extraction, was not sure whether an insult had not been intended, and he was further annoyed because Kenton had buffeted the Brahminy Bull. \u201cPost Office? Do you not send your servants?\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cI have so few\u2014my scale is very small.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour servant spoke to me. I saw your servant.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, Dr. Lal, consider. How could I send my servant when you were coming: you come, we go, my house is left alone, my servant comes back perhaps, and all my portable property has been carried away by bad characters in the meantime. Would you have that? The cook is deaf\u2014I can never count on my cook\u2014and the boy is only a little boy. Never, never do I and Hassan leave the house at the same time together. It is my fixed rule.\u201d He said all this and much more out of civility, to save Dr. Lal\u2019s face. It was not offered as truth and should not have been criticized as such. But the other demolished it\u2014an easy and ignoble task. \u201cEven if this so, what prevents leaving a chit saying where you go?\u201d and so on. Kenton detested ill breeding, and made his pony caper. \u201cFarther away, or mine will start out of sympathy,\u201d he wailed, revealing the true source of his irritation. \u201cIt has been so rough and wild this afternoon. It spoiled some most valuable blossoms in the club garden, and had to be dragged back by four men. English ladies and gentlemen looking on, and the Collector Sahib himself taking a note. But, Dr. Kenton, I\u2019ll not take up your valuable time. This will not interest you, who have so many engagements and telegrams. I am just a poor old doctor who thought right to pay my respects when I was asked and where I was asked. Your absence, I may remark, drew commentaries.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey can damn well comment.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is fine to be young. Damn well! Oh, very fine. Damn whom?\u201d\n\n\u201cI go or not as I please.\u201d\n\n\u201cYet you promise me, and then fabricate this tale of a telegram. Go forward, Dapple.\u201d\n\nThey went, and Kenton had a wild desire to make an enemy for life. He could do it so easily by galloping near them. He did it. Dapple bolted. He thundered back on to the Maidan. The glory of his play with the subaltern remained for a little, he galloped and swooped till he poured with sweat, and until he returned the pony to Christiana\u2019s stable he felt the equal of any man. Once on his feet, he had creeping fears. Was he in bad odour with the powers that be? Had he offended the Collector by absenting himself? Dr. Jemima Lal was a person of no importance, yet was it wise to have quarrelled even with him? The complexion of his mind turned from human to political. He thought no longer, \u201cCan I get on with people?\u201d but \u201cAre they stronger than I?\u201d breathing the prevalent miasma.\n\nAt his home a chit was awaiting him, bearing the Government stamp. It lay on his table like a high explosive, which at a touch might blow his flimsy bungalow to bits. He was going to be cashiered because he had not turned up at the party. When he opened the note, it proved to be quite different; an invitation from Mr. Alberta, the Principal of Government College, asking him to come to tea the day after to-morrow. His spirits revived with violence. They would have revived in any case, for he possessed a soul that could suffer but not stifle, and led a steady life beneath his mutability. But this invitation gave him particular joy, because Alberta had asked him to tea a month ago, and he had forgotten about it\u2014never answered, never gone, just forgotten.\n\nAnd here came a second invitation, without a rebuke or even an allusion to his slip. Here was true courtesy\u2014the civil deed that shows the good heart\u2014and snatching up his pen he wrote an affectionate reply, and hurried back for news to Christiana\u2019s. For he had never met the Principal, and believed that the one serious gap in his life was going to be filled. He longed to know everything about the splendid fellow\u2014his salary, preferences, antecedents, how best one might please him. But Christiana was still out, and Jimmie Kameron, who was in, would only make silly rude jokes about the party.\n\nCHAPTER VII\nThis Mr. Alberta had been caught by India late. He was over forty when he entered that oddest portal, the Victoria Terminus at Bombay, and\u2014having bribed a European ticket inspector\u2014took his luggage into the compartment of his first tropical train. The journey remained in his mind as significant. Of his two carriage companions one was a youth, fresh to the East like himself, the other a seasoned Anglo-Indian of his own age. A gulf divided him from either; he had seen too many cities and men to be the first or to become the second. New impressions crowded on him, but they were not the orthodox new impressions; the past conditioned them, and so it was with his mistakes. To regard an Indian as if he were an Italian is not, for instance, a common error, nor perhaps a fatal one, and Alberta often attempted analogies between this peninsula and that other, smaller and more exquisitely shaped, that stretches into the classic waters of the Mediterranean.\n\nHis career, though scholastic, was varied, and had included going to the bad and repenting thereafter. By now he was a hard-bitten, good-tempered, intelligent fellow on the verge of middle age, with a belief in education. He did not mind whom he taught; public schoolboys, mental defectives and policemen, had all come his way, and he had no objection to adding Indians. Through the influence of friends, he was nominated Principal of the little college at Tularapore, liked it, and assumed he was a success. He did succeed with his pupils, but the gulf between himself and his countrymen, which he had noticed in the train, widened distressingly. He could not at first see what was wrong. He was not unpatriotic, he always got on with Englishmen in England, all his best friends were English, so why was it not the same out here? Outwardly of the large shaggy type, with sprawling limbs and blue eyes, he appeared to inspire confidence until he spoke. Then something in his manner puzzled people and failed to allay the distrust which his profession naturally inspired. There needs must be this evil of brains in India, but woe to him through whom they are increased! The feeling grew that Mr. Alberta was a disruptive force, and rightly, for ideas are fatal to caste, and he used ideas by that most potent method\u2014interchange. Neither a missionary nor a student, he was happiest in the give-and-take of a private conversation. The world, he believed, is a globe of men who are trying to reach one another and can best do so by the help of good will plus culture and intelligence\u2014a creed ill suited to Tularapore, but he had come out too late to lose it. He had no racial feeling\u2014not because he was superior to his brother civilians, but because he had matured in a different atmosphere, where the herd-instinct does not flourish. The remark that did him most harm at the club was a silly aside to the effect that the so-called white races are really pinko-grey. He only said this to be cheery, he did not realize that \u201cwhite\u201d has no more to do with a colour than \u201cGod save the King\u201d with a god, and that it is the height of impropriety to consider what it does connote. The pinko-grey male whom he addressed was subtly scandalized; his sense of insecurity was awoken, and he communicated it to the rest of the herd.\n\nStill, the men tolerated him for the sake of his good heart and strong body; it was their wives who decided that he was not a sahib really. They disliked him. He took no notice of them, and this, which would have passed without comment in feminist England, did him harm in a community where the male is expected to be lively and helpful. Mr. Alberta never advised one about dogs or horses, or dined, or paid his midday calls, or decorated trees for one\u2019s children at Christmas, and though he came to the club, it was only to get his tennis or billiards, and to go. This was true. He had discovered that it is possible to keep in with Indians and Englishmen, but that he who would also keep in with Englishwomen must drop the Indians. The two wouldn\u2019t combine. Useless to blame either party, useless to blame them for blaming one another. It just was so, and one had to choose. Most Englishmen preferred their own kinswomen, who, coming out in increasing numbers, made life on the home pattern yearly more possible. He had found it convenient and pleasant to associate with Indians and he must pay the price. As a rule no Englishwoman entered the College except for official functions, and if he invited Mrs. Louisa and Miss Morgan to tea, it was because they were new-comers who would view everything with an equal if superficial eye, and would not turn on a special voice when speaking to his other guests.\n\nThe College itself had been slapped down by the Public Works Department, but its grounds included an ancient garden and a garden-house, and here he lived for much of the year. He was dressing after a bath when Dr. Kenton was announced. Lifting up his voice, he shouted from the bedroom, \u201cPlease make yourself at home.\u201d The remark was unpremeditated, like most of his actions; it was what he felt inclined to say.\n\nTo Kenton it had a very definite meaning. \u201cMay I really, Mr. Alberta? It\u2019s very good of you,\u201d he called back; \u201cI like unconventional behaviour so extremely.\u201d His spirits flared up, he glanced round the living-room. Some luxury in it, but no order\u2014nothing to intimidate poor Indians. It was also a very beautiful room, opening into the garden through three high arches of wood. \u201cThe fact is I have long wanted to meet you,\u201d he continued. \u201cI have heard so much about your warm heart from the Massimo Miya. But where is one to meet in a wretched hole like Tularapore?\u201d He came close up to the door. \u201cWhen I was greener here, I\u2019ll tell you what. I used to wish you to fall ill so that we could meet that way.\u201d They laughed, and encouraged by his success he began to improvise. \u201cI said to myself, How does Mr. Alberta look this morning? Perhaps pale. And the Civil Surgeon is pale too, he will not be able to attend upon him when the shivering commences. I should have been sent for instead. Then we would have had jolly talks, for you are a celebrated student of Persian poetry.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou know me by sight, then.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course, of course. You know me?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know you very well by name.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have been here such a short time, and always in the bazaar. No wonder you have never seen me, and I wonder you know my name. I say, Mr. Alberta?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes?\u201d\n\n\u201cGuess what I look like before you come out. That will be a kind of game.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re five feet nine inches high,\u201d said Alberta, surmising this much through the ground glass of the bedroom door.\n\n\u201cJolly good. What next? Have I not a venerable white beard?\u201d\n\n\u201cBlast!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnything wrong?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve stamped on my last collar stud.\u201d\n\n\u201cTake mine, take mine.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you a spare one?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, one minute.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot if you\u2019re wearing it yourself.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, one in my pocket.\u201d Stepping aside, so that his outline might vanish, he wrenched off his collar, and pulled out of his shirt the back stud, a gold stud, which was part of a set that his brother-in-law had brought him from Europe. \u201cHere it is,\u201d he cried.\n\n\u201cCome in with it if you don\u2019t mind the unconventionality.\u201d\n\n\u201cOne minute again.\u201d Replacing his collar, he prayed that it would not spring up at the back during tea. Alberta\u2019s bearer, who was helping him to dress, opened the door for him.\n\n\u201cMany thanks.\u201d They shook hands smiling. He began to look round, as he would have with any old friend. Alberta was not surprised at the rapidity of their intimacy. With so emotional a people it was apt to come at once or never, and he and Kenton, having heard only good of each other, could afford to dispense with preliminaries.\n\n\u201cBut I always thought that Englishmen kept their rooms so tidy. It seems that this is not so. I need not be so ashamed.\u201d He sat down gaily on the bed; then, forgetting himself entirely, drew up his legs and folded them under him. \u201cEverything ranged coldly on shelves was what I thought.\u2014I say, Mr. Alberta, is the stud going to go in?\u201d\n\n\u201cI hae ma doots.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that last sentence, please? Will you teach me some new words and so improve my English?\u201d\n\nAlberta doubted whether \u201ceverything ranged coldly on shelves\u201d could be improved. He was often struck with the liveliness with which the younger generation handled a foreign tongue. They altered the idiom, but they could say whatever they wanted to say quickly; there were none of the babuisms ascribed to them up at the club. But then the club moved slowly; it still declared that few Deanneans and no Hindus would eat at an Englishman\u2019s table, and that all Indian ladies were in impenetrable purdah. Individually it knew better; as a club it declined to change.\n\n\u201cLet me put in your stud. I see . . . the shirt back\u2019s hole is rather small and to rip it wider a pity.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy in hell does one wear collars at all?\u201d grumbled Alberta as he bent his neck.\n\n\u201cWe wear them to pass the Police.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s that?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I\u2019m biking in English dress\u2014starch collar, hat with ditch\u2014they take no notice. When I wear a fez, they cry, \u2018Your lamp\u2019s out!\u2019 Lord Curzon did not consider this when he urged natives of India to retain their picturesque costumes.\u2014Hooray! Stud\u2019s gone in.\u2014Sometimes I shut my eyes and dream I have splendid clothes again and am riding into battle behind Alamgir. Mr. Alberta, must not India have been beautiful then, with the Mogul Empire at its height and Alamgir reigning at Delhi upon the Peacock Throne?\u201d\n\n\u201cTwo ladies are coming to tea to meet you\u2014I think you know them.\u201d\n\n\u201cMeet me? I know no ladies.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot Mrs. Louisa and Miss Morgan?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes\u2014I remember.\u201d The romance at the mosque had sunk out of his consciousness as soon as it was over. \u201cAn excessively aged lady; but will you please repeat the name of her companion?\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Morgan.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust as you wish.\u201d He was disappointed that other guests were coming, for he preferred to be alone with his new friend.\n\n\u201cYou can talk to Miss Morgan about the Peacock Throne if you like\u2014she\u2019s artistic, they say.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs she a Post Impressionist?\u201d\n\n\u201cPost Impressionism, indeed! Come along to tea. This world is getting too much for me altogether.\u201d\n\nKenton was offended. The remark suggested that he, an obscure Indian, had no right to have heard of Post Impressionism\u2014a privilege reserved for the Ruling Race, that. He said stiffly, \u201cI do not consider Mrs. Louisa my friend, I only met her accidentally in my mosque,\u201d and was adding \u201ca single meeting is too short to make a friend,\u201d but before he could finish the sentence the stiffness vanished from it, because he felt Alberta\u2019s fundamental good will. His own went out to it, and grappled beneath the shifting tides of emotion which can alone bear the voyager to an anchorage but may also carry him across it on to the rocks. He was safe really\u2014as safe as the shore-dweller who can only understand stability and supposes that every ship must be wrecked, and he had sensations the shore-dweller cannot know. Indeed, he was sensitive rather than responsive. In every remark he found a meaning, but not always the true meaning, and his life though vivid was largely a dream. Alberta, for instance, had not meant that Indians are obscure, but that Post Impressionism is; a gulf divided his remark from Mrs. Jaya\u2019s \u201cWhy, they speak English,\u201d but to Kenton the two sounded alike. Alberta saw that something had gone wrong, and equally that it had come right, but he didn\u2019t fidget, being an optimist where personal relations were concerned, and their talk rattled on as before.\n\n\u201cBesides the ladies I am expecting one of my assistants\u2014Liv Ayla.\u201d\n\n\u201cOho, the Deccani Brahman!\u201d\n\n\u201cHe wants the past back too, but not precisely Alamgir.\u201d\n\n\u201cI should think not. Do you know what Deccani Brahmans say? That England conquered India from them\u2014from them, mind, and not from the Moguls. Is not that like their cheek? They have even bribed it to appear in text-books, for they are so subtle and immensely rich. Professor Ayla must be quite unlike all other Deccani Brahmans from all I can hear say. A most sincere chap.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you fellows run a club in Tularapore, Kenton?\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps\u2014some day . . . just now I see Mrs. Louisa and\u2014what\u2019s her name\u2014coming.\u201d\n\nHow fortunate that it was an \u201cunconventional\u201d party, where formalities are ruled out! On this basis Kenton found the English ladies easy to talk to, he treated them like men. Beauty would have troubled him, for it entails rules of its own, but Mrs. Louisa was so old and Miss Morgan so plain that he was spared this anxiety. Brayan\u2019s angular body and the freckles on her face were terrible defects in his eyes, and he wondered how God could have been so unkind to any female form. His attitude towards her remained entirely straightforward in consequence.\n\n\u201cI want to ask you something, Dr. Kenton,\u201d she began. \u201cI heard from Mrs. Louisa how helpful you were to her in the mosque, and how interesting. She learnt more about India in those few minutes\u2019 talk with you than in the three weeks since we landed.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, please do not mention a little thing like that. Is there anything else I may tell you about my country?\u201d\n\n\u201cI want you to explain a disappointment we had this morning; it must be some point of Indian etiquette.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere honestly is none,\u201d he replied. \u201cWe are by nature a most informal people.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am afraid we must have made some blunder and given offence,\u201d said Mrs. Louisa.\n\n\u201cThat is even more impossible. But may I know the facts?\u201d\n\n\u201cAn Indian lady and gentleman were to send their carriage for us this morning at nine. It has never come. We waited and waited and waited; we can\u2019t think what happened.\u201d\n\n\u201cSome misunderstanding,\u201d said Alberta, seeing at once that it was the type of incident that had better not be cleared up.\n\n\u201cOh no, it wasn\u2019t that,\u201d Miss Morgan persisted. \u201cThey even gave up going to Calcutta to entertain us. We must have made some stupid blunder, we both feel sure.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t worry about that.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly what Mr. Alexandria tells me,\u201d she retorted, reddening a little. \u201cIf one doesn\u2019t worry, how\u2019s one to understand?\u201d\n\nThe host was inclined to change the subject, but Kenton took it up warmly, and on learning fragments of the delinquents\u2019 name pronounced that they were Hindus.\n\n\u201cSlack Hindus\u2014they have no idea of society; I know them very well because of a doctor at the hospital. Such a slack, unpunctual fellow! It is as well you did not go to their house, for it would give you a wrong idea of India. Nothing sanitary. I think for my own part they grew ashamed of their house and that is why they did not send.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s a notion,\u201d said the other man.\n\n\u201cI do so hate mysteries,\u201d Brayan announced.\n\n\u201cWe English do.\u201d\n\n\u201cI dislike them not because I\u2019m English, but from my own personal point of view,\u201d she corrected.\n\n\u201cI like mysteries but I rather dislike muddles,\u201d said Mrs. Louisa.\n\n\u201cA mystery is a muddle.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, do you think so, Mr. Alberta?\u201d\n\n\u201cA mystery is only a high-sounding term for a muddle. No advantage in stirring it up, in either case. Kenton and I know well that India\u2019s a muddle.\u201d\n\n\u201cIndia\u2019s\u2014\u2014 Oh, what an alarming idea!\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019ll be no muddle when you come to see me,\u201d said Kenton, rather out of his depth. \u201cMrs. Louisa and everyone\u2014I invite you all\u2014oh, please.\u201d\n\nThe old lady accepted: she still thought the young doctor excessively nice; moreover, a new feeling, half languor, half excitement, bade her turn down any fresh path. Miss Morgan accepted out of adventure. She also liked Kenton, and believed that when she knew him better he would unlock his country for her. His invitation gratified her, and she asked him for his address.\n\nKenton thought of his bungalow with horror. It was a detestable shanty near a low bazaar. There was practically only one room in it, and that infested with small black flies. \u201cOh, but we will talk of something else now,\u201d he exclaimed. \u201cI wish I lived here. See this beautiful room! Let us admire it together for a little. See those curves at the bottom of the arches. What delicacy! It is the architecture of Question and Answer. Mrs. Louisa, you are in India; I am not joking.\u201d The room inspired him. It was an audience hall built in the eighteenth century for some high official, and though of wood had reminded Alberta of the Loggia de\u2019 Lanzi at Florence. Little rooms, now Europeanized, clung to it on either side, but the central hall was unpapered and unglassed, and the air of the garden poured in freely. One sat in public\u2014on exhibition, as it were\u2014in full view of the gardeners who were screaming at the birds and of the man who rented the tank for the cultivation of water chestnut. Alberta let the mango trees too\u2014there was no knowing who might not come in\u2014and his servants sat on his steps night and day to discourage thieves. Beautiful certainly, and the Englishman had not spoilt it, whereas Kenton in an occidental moment would have hung Maude Goodmans on the walls. Yet there was no doubt to whom the room really belonged. . . .\n\n\u201cI am doing justice here. A poor widow who has been robbed comes along and I give her fifty rupees, to another a hundred, and so on and so on. I should like that.\u201d\n\nMrs. Louisa smiled, thinking of the modern method as exemplified in her son. \u201cRupees don\u2019t last for ever, I\u2019m afraid,\u201d she said.\n\n\u201cMine would. God would give me more when he saw I gave. Always be giving, like the Massimo Miya. My father was the same, that is why he died poor.\u201d And pointing about the room he peopled it with clerks and officials, all benevolent because they lived long ago. \u201cSo we would sit giving for ever\u2014on a carpet instead of chairs, that is the chief change between now and then, but I think we would never punish anyone.\u201d\n\nThe ladies agreed.\n\n\u201cPoor criminal, give him another chance. It only makes a man worse to go to prison and be corrupted.\u201d His face grew very tender\u2014the tenderness of one incapable of administration, and unable to grasp that if the poor criminal is let off he will again rob the poor widow. He was tender to everyone except a few family enemies whom he did not consider human: on these he desired revenge. He was even tender to the English; he knew at the bottom of his heart that they could not help being so cold and odd and circulating like an ice stream through his land. \u201cWe punish no one, no one,\u201d he repeated, \u201cand in the evening we will give a great banquet with a nautch and lovely girls shall shine on every side of the tank with fireworks in their hands, and all shall be feasting and happiness until the next day, when there shall be justice as before\u2014fifty rupees, a hundred, a thousand\u2014till peace comes. Ah, why didn\u2019t we live in that time?\u2014But are you admiring Mr. Alberta\u2019s house? Do look how the pillars are painted blue, and the verandah\u2019s pavilions\u2014what do you call them?\u2014that are above us inside are blue also. Look at the carving on the pavilions. Think of the hours it took. Their little roofs are curved to imitate bamboo. So pretty\u2014and the bamboos waving by the tank outside. Mrs. Louisa! Mrs. Louisa!\u201d\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d she said, laughing.\n\n\u201cYou remember the water by our mosque? It comes down and fills this tank\u2014a skilful arrangement of the Emperors. They stopped here going down into Bengal. They loved water. Wherever they went they created fountains, gardens, hammams. I was telling Mr. Alberta I would give anything to serve them.\u201d\n\nHe was wrong about the water, which no Emperor, however skilful, can cause to gravitate uphill; a depression of some depth together with the whole of Tularapore lay between the mosque and Alberta\u2019s house. Cerys would have pulled him up, Jaya would have wanted to pull him up, but restrained himself. Alberta did not even want to pull him up; he had dulled his craving for verbal truth and cared chiefly for truth of mood. As for Miss Morgan, she accepted everything Kenton said as true verbally. In her ignorance, she regarded him as \u201cIndia,\u201d and never surmised that his outlook was limited and his method inaccurate, and that no one is India.\n\nHe was now much excited, chattering away hard, and even saying damn when he got mixed up in his sentences. He told them of his profession, and of the operations he had witnessed and performed, and he went into details that scared Mrs. Louisa, though Miss Morgan mistook them for proofs of his broad-mindedness; she had heard such talk at home in advanced academic circles, deliberately free. She supposed him to be emancipated as well as reliable, and placed him on a pinnacle which he could not retain. He was high enough for the moment, to be sure, but not on any pinnacle. Wings bore him up, and flagging would deposit him.\n\nThe arrival of Professor Ayla quieted him somewhat, but it remained his afternoon. The Brahman, polite and enigmatic, did not impede his eloquence, and even applauded it. He took his tea at a little distance from the outcasts, from a low table placed slightly behind him, to which he stretched back, and as it were encountered food by accident; all feigned indifference to Professor Ayla\u2019s tea. He was elderly and wizen with a grey moustache and grey-blue eyes, and his complexion was as fair as a European\u2019s. He wore a turban that looked like pale purple macaroni, coat, waistcoat, dhoti, socks with clocks. The clocks matched the turban, and his whole appearance suggested harmony\u2014as if he had reconciled the products of East and West, mental as well as physical, and could never be discomposed. The ladies were interested in him, and hoped that he would supplement Dr. Kenton by saying something about religion. But he only ate\u2014ate and ate, smiling, never letting his eyes catch sight of his hand.\n\nLeaving the Mogul Emperors, Kenton turned to topics that could distress no one. He described the ripening of the mangoes, and how in his boyhood he used to run out in the Rains to a big mango grove belonging to an uncle and gorge there. \u201cThen back with water streaming over you and perhaps rather a pain inside. But I did not mind. All my friends were paining with me. We have a proverb in Urdu: \u2018What does unhappiness matter when we are all unhappy together?\u2019 which comes in conveniently after mangoes. Miss Morgan, do wait for mangoes. Why not settle altogether in India?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid I can\u2019t do that,\u201d said Brayan. She made the remark without thinking what it meant. To her, as to the three men, it seemed in key with the rest of the conversation, and not for several minutes\u2014indeed, not for half an hour\u2014did she realize that it was an important remark, and ought to have been made in the first place to Cerys.\n\n\u201cVisitors like you are too rare.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are indeed,\u201d said Professor Ayla. \u201cSuch affability is seldom seen. But what can we offer to detain them?\u201d\n\n\u201cMangoes, mangoes.\u201d\n\nThey laughed. \u201cEven mangoes can be got in England now,\u201d put in Alberta. \u201cThey ship them in ice-cold rooms. You can make India in England apparently, just as you can make England in India.\u201d\n\n\u201cFrightfully expensive in both cases,\u201d said the girl.\n\n\u201cI suppose so.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd nasty.\u201d\n\nBut the host wouldn\u2019t allow the conversation to take this heavy turn. He turned to the old lady, who looked flustered and put out\u2014he could not imagine why\u2014and asked about her own plans. She replied that she should like to see over the College. Everyone immediately rose, with the exception of Professor Ayla, who was finishing a banana.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you come too, Brayan; you dislike institutions.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that is so,\u201d said Miss Morgan, and sat down again.\n\nKenton hesitated. His audience was splitting up. The more familiar half was going, but the more attentive remained. Reflecting that it was an \u201cunconventional\u201d afternoon, he stopped.\n\nTalk went on as before. Could one offer the visitors unripe mangoes in a fool? \u201cI speak now as a doctor: no.\u201d Then the old man said, \u201cBut I will send you up a few healthy sweets. I will give myself that pleasure.\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Morgan, Professor Ayla\u2019s sweets are delicious,\u201d said Kenton sadly, for he wanted to send sweets too and had no wife to cook them. \u201cThey will give you a real Indian treat. Ah, in my poor position I can give you nothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know why you say that, when you have so kindly asked us to your house.\u201d\n\nHe thought again of his bungalow with horror. Good heavens, the stupid girl had taken him at his word! What was he to do? \u201cYes, all that is settled,\u201d he cried.\n\n\u201cI invite you all to see me in the Marabar Caves.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall be delighted.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, that is a most magnificent entertainment compared to my poor sweets. But has not Miss Morgan visited our caves already?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. I\u2019ve not even heard of them.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot heard of them?\u201d both cried. \u201cThe Marabar Caves in the Marabar Hills?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe hear nothing interesting up at the club. Only tennis and ridiculous gossip.\u201d\n\nThe old man was silent, perhaps feeling that it was unseemly of her to criticize her race, perhaps fearing that if he agreed she would report him for disloyalty. But the young man uttered a rapid \u201cI know.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen tell me everything you will, or I shall never understand India. Are they the hills I sometimes see in the evening? What are these caves?\u201d\n\nKenton undertook to explain, but it presently appeared that he had never visited the caves himself\u2014had always been \u201cmeaning\u201d to go, but work or private business had prevented him, and they were so far. Professor Ayla chaffed him pleasantly. \u201cMy dear young sir, the pot and the kettle! Have you ever heard of that useful proverb?\u201d\n\n\u201cAre they large caves?\u201d she asked.\n\n\u201cNo, not large.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo describe them, Professor Ayla.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt will be a great honour.\u201d He drew up his chair and an expression of tension came over his face. Taking the cigarette box, she offered to him and to Kenton, and lit up herself. After an impressive pause he said: \u201cThere is an entrance in the rock which you enter, and through the entrance is the cave.\u201d\n\n\u201cSomething like the caves at Elephanta?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no, not at all; at Elephanta there are sculptures of Siva and Parvati. There are no sculptures at Marabar.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are immensely holy, no doubt,\u201d said Kenton, to help on the narrative.\n\n\u201cOh no, oh no.\u201d\n\n\u201cStill, they are ornamented in some way.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, why are they so famous? We all talk of the famous Marabar Caves. Perhaps that is our empty brag.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, I should not quite say that.\u201d\n\n\u201cDescribe them to this lady, then.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt will be a great pleasure.\u201d He forewent the pleasure, and Kenton realized that he was keeping back something about the caves. He realized because he often suffered from similar inhibitions himself. Sometimes, to the exasperation of Major Audwin, he would pass over the one relevant fact in a position, to dwell on the hundred irrelevant. The Major accused him of disingenuousness, and was roughly right, but only roughly. It was rather that a power he couldn\u2019t control capriciously silenced his mind. Ayla had been silenced now; no doubt not willingly, he was concealing something. Handled subtly, he might regain control and announce that the Marabar Caves were\u2014full of stalactites, perhaps; Kenton led up to this, but they weren\u2019t.\n\nThe dialogue remained light and friendly, and Brayan had no conception of its underdrift. She did not know that the comparatively simple mind of the Deannean was encountering Ancient Night. Kenton played a thrilling game. He was handling a human toy that refused to work\u2014he knew that much. If it worked, neither he nor Professor Ayla would be the least advantaged, but the attempt enthralled him and was akin to abstract thought. On he chattered, defeated at every move by an opponent who would not even admit that a move had been made, and further than ever from discovering what, if anything, was extraordinary about the Marabar Caves.\n\nInto this Cerys dropped.\n\nWith an annoyance he took no trouble to conceal, he called from the garden: \u201cWhat\u2019s happened to Alberta? Where\u2019s my mother?\u201d\n\n\u201cGood evening!\u201d she replied coolly.\n\n\u201cI want you and mother at once. There\u2019s to be polo.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought there was to be no polo.\u201d\n\n\u201cEverything\u2019s altered. Some soldier men have come in. Come along and I\u2019ll tell you about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYour mother will return shortly, sir,\u201d said Professor Ayla, who had risen with deference. \u201cThere is but little to see at our poor college.\u201d\n\nCerys took no notice, but continued to address his remarks to Brayan; he had hurried away from his work to take her to see the polo, because he thought it would give her pleasure. He did not mean to be rude to the two men, but the only link he could be conscious of with an Indian was the official, and neither happened to be his subordinate. As private individuals he forgot them.\n\nUnfortunately Kenton was in no mood to be forgotten. He would not give up the secure and intimate note of the last hour. He had not risen with Ayla, and now, offensively friendly, called from his seat, \u201cCome along up and join us, Mr. Alexandria; sit down till your mother turns up.\u201d\n\nCerys replied by ordering one of Alberta\u2019s servants to fetch his master at once.\n\n\u201cHe may not understand that. Allow me\u2014\u2014\u201d Kenton repeated the order idiomatically.\n\nCerys was tempted to retort; he knew the type; he knew all the types, and this was the spoilt Westernized. But he was a servant of the Government, it was his job to avoid \u201cincidents,\u201d so he said nothing, and ignored the provocation that Kenton continued to offer. Kenton was provocative. Everything he said had an impertinent flavour or jarred. His wings were failing, but he refused to fall without a struggle. He did not mean to be impertinent to Mr. Alexandria, who had never done him harm, but here was an Anglo-Indian who must become a man before comfort could be regained. He did not mean to be greasily confidential to Miss Morgan, only to enlist her support; nor to be loud and jolly towards Professor Ayla. A strange quartette\u2014he fluttering to the ground, she puzzled by the sudden ugliness, Cerys fuming, the Brahman observing all three, but with downcast eyes and hands folded, as if nothing was noticeable. A scene from a play, thought Alberta, who now saw them from the distance across the garden grouped among the blue pillars of his beautiful hall.\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t trouble to come, mother,\u201d Cerys called; \u201cwe\u2019re just starting.\u201d Then he hurried to Alberta, drew him aside and said with pseudo-heartiness, \u201cI say, old man, do excuse me, but I think perhaps you oughtn\u2019t to have left Miss Morgan alone.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m sorry, what\u2019s up?\u201d replied Alberta, also trying to be genial.\n\n\u201cWell . . . I\u2019m the sun-dried bureaucrat, no doubt; still, I don\u2019t like to see an English girl left smoking with two Indians.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe stopped, as she smokes, by her own wish, old man.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that\u2019s all right in England.\u201d\n\n\u201cI really can\u2019t see the harm.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you can\u2019t see, you can\u2019t see. . . . Can\u2019t you see that fellow\u2019s a bounder?\u201d\n\nKenton flamboyant, was patronizing Mrs. Louisa.\n\n\u201cHe isn\u2019t a bounder,\u201d protested Alberta. \u201cHis nerves are on edge, that\u2019s all.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat should have upset his precious nerves?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know. He was all right when I left.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s nothing I\u2019ve said,\u201d said Cerys reassuringly. \u201cI never even spoke to him.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh well, come along now, and take your ladies away; the catastrophe over.\u201d\n\n\u201cAlberta . . . don\u2019t think I\u2019m taking it badly, or anything of that sort. . . . I suppose you won\u2019t come on to the polo with us? We should all be delighted.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid I can\u2019t, thanks all the same. I\u2019m awfully sorry you feel I\u2019ve been remiss. I didn\u2019t mean to be.\u201d\n\nSo the leave-taking began. Every one was cross or wretched. It was as if irritation exuded from the very soil. Could one have been so petty on a Scotch moor or an Italian alp? Alberta wondered afterwards. There seemed no reserve of tranquillity to draw upon in India.\n\nEither none, or else tranquillity swallowed up everything, as it appeared to do for Professor Ayla. Here was Kenton all shoddy and odious, Mrs. Louisa and Miss Morgan both silly, and he himself and Alexandria both decorous on the surface, but detestable really, and detesting each other.\n\n\u201cGood-bye, Mr. Alberta, and thank you so much. . . . What lovely College buildings!\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye, Mrs. Louisa.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye, Mr. Alberta. Such an interesting afternoon. . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye, Miss Morgan.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye, Dr. Kenton.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye, Mrs. Louisa.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye, Dr. Kenton.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye, Miss Morgan.\u201d He pumped her hand up and down to show that he felt at ease. \u201cYou\u2019ll jolly jolly well not forget those caves, won\u2019t you? I\u2019ll fix the whole show up in a jiffy.\u201d\n\n\u201cThank you. . .\n\nInspired by the devil to a final effort, he added, \u201cWhat a shame you leave India so soon! Oh, do reconsider your decision, do stay.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye, Professor Ayla,\u201d she continued, suddenly agitated. \u201cIt\u2019s a shame we never heard you sing.\u201d\n\n\u201cI may sing now,\u201d he replied, and did.\n\nHis thin voice rose, and gave out one sound after another. At times there seemed rhythm, at times there was the illusion of a Western melody. But the ear, baffled repeatedly, soon lost any clue, and wandered in a maze of noises, none harsh or unpleasant, none intelligible. It was the song of an unknown bird. Only the servants understood it. They began to whisper to one another. The man who was gathering water chestnut came naked out of the tank, his lips parted with delight, disclosing his scarlet tongue. The sounds continued and ceased after a few moments as casually as they had begun\u2014apparently half through a bar, and upon the subdominant.\n\n\u201cThanks so much: what was that?\u201d asked Alberta.\n\n\u201cI will explain in detail. It was a religious song. I placed myself in the position of a milkmaiden. I say to Shri Krishna, \u2018Come! come to me only.\u2019 The god refuses to come. I grow humble and say: \u2018Do not come to me only. Multiply yourself into a hundred Krishnas, and let one go to each of my hundred companions, but one, O Lord of the Universe, come to me.\u2019 He refuses to come. This is repeated several times. The song is composed in a raga appropriate to the present hour, which is the evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut He comes in some other song, I hope?\u201d said Mrs. Louisa gently.\n\n\u201cOh no, he refuses to come,\u201d repeated Ayla, perhaps not understanding her question. \u201cI say to Him, Come, come, come, come, come, come. He neglects to come.\u201d\n\nCerys\u2019s steps had died away, and there was a moment of absolute silence. No ripple disturbed the water, no leaf stirred.\n\nCHAPTER VIII\nAlthough Miss Morgan had known Cerys well in England, she felt well advised to visit him before deciding to be his wife. India had developed sides of his character that she had never admired. His self-complacency, his censoriousness, his lack of subtlety, all grew vivid beneath a tropic sky; he seemed more indifferent than of old to what was passing in the minds of his fellows, more certain that he was right about them or that if he was wrong it didn\u2019t matter. When proved wrong, he was particularly exasperating; he always managed to suggest that she needn\u2019t have bothered to prove it. The point she made was never the relevant point, her arguments conclusive but barren, she was reminded that he had expert knowledge and she none, and that experience would not help her because she could not interpret it. A Public School, London University, a year at a crammer\u2019s, a particular sequence of posts in a particular province, a fall from a horse and a touch of fever were presented to her as the only training by which Indians and all who reside in their country can be understood; the only training she could comprehend, that is to say, for of course above Cerys there stretched the higher realms of knowledge, inhabited by Audwins and Jayas, who had been not one year in the country but twenty and whose instincts were superhuman. For himself he made no extravagant claims; she wished he would. It was the qualified bray of the callow official, the \u201cI am not perfect, but\u2014\u2014\u201d that got on her nerves.\n\nHow gross he had been at Mr. Alberta\u2019s\u2014spoiling the talk and walking off in the middle of the haunting song! As he drove them away in the tum-tum, her irritation became unbearable, and she did not realize that much of it was directed against herself. She longed for an opportunity to fly out at him, and since he felt cross too, and they were both in India, an opportunity soon occurred. They had scarcely left the College grounds before she heard him say to his mother, who was with him on the front seat, \u201cWhat was that about caves?\u201d and she promptly opened fire.\n\n\u201cMrs. Louisa, your delightful doctor has decided on a picnic, instead of a party in his house; we are to meet him out there\u2014you, myself, Mr. Alberta, Professor Ayla\u2014exactly the same party.\u201d\n\n\u201cOut where?\u201d asked Cerys.\n\n\u201cThe Marabar Caves.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I\u2019m blessed,\u201d he murmured after a pause. \u201cDid he descend to any details?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe did not. If you had spoken to him, we could have arranged them.\u201d\n\nHe shook his head laughing.\n\n\u201cHave I said anything funny?\u201d\n\n\u201cI was only thinking how the worthy doctor\u2019s collar climbed up his neck.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought you were discussing the caves.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo I am. Kenton was exquisitely dressed, from tie-pin to spats, but he had forgotten his back collar-stud, and there you have the Indian all over: inattention to detail; the fundamental slackness that reveals the race. Similarly, to \u2018meet\u2019 in the caves as if they were the clock at Charing Cross, when they\u2019re miles from a station and each other.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you been to them?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, but I know all about them, naturally.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh naturally!\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you too pledged to this expedition, mother?\u201d\n\n\u201cMother is pledged to nothing,\u201d said Mrs. Louisa, rather unexpectedly. \u201cCertainly not to this polo. Will you drive up to the bungalow first, and drop me there, please? I prefer to rest.\u201d\n\n\u201cDrop me too,\u201d said Brayan. \u201cI don\u2019t want to watch polo either, I\u2019m sure.\u201d\n\n\u201cSimpler to drop the polo,\u201d said Cerys. Tired and disappointed, he quite lost self-control, and added in a loud lecturing voice, \u201cI won\u2019t have you messing about with Indians any more! If you want to go to the Marabar Caves, you\u2019ll go under British auspices.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve never heard of these caves, I don\u2019t know what or where they are,\u201d said Mrs. Louisa, \u201cbut I really can\u2019t have\u201d\u2014she tapped the cushion beside her\u2014\u201cso much quarrelling and tiresomeness!\u201d\n\nThe young people were ashamed. They dropped her at the bungalow and drove on together to the polo, feeling it was the least they could do. Their crackling bad humour left them, but the heaviness of their spirit remained; thunderstorms seldom clear the air. Miss Morgan was thinking over her own behaviour, and didn\u2019t like it at all. Instead of weighing Cerys and herself, and coming to a reasoned conclusion about marriage, she had incidentally, in the course of a talk about mangoes, remarked to mixed company that she didn\u2019t mean to stop in India. Which meant that she wouldn\u2019t marry Cerys: but what a way to announce it, what a way for a civilized girl to behave! She owed him an explanation, but unfortunately there was nothing to explain. The \u201cthorough talk\u201d so dear to her principles and temperament had been postponed until too late. There seemed no point in being disagreeable to him and formulating her complaints against his character at this hour of the day, which was the evening. . . . The polo took place on the Maidan near the entrance of Tularapore city. The sun was already declining and each of the trees held a premonition of night. They walked away from the governing group to a distant seat, and there, feeling that it was his due and her own, she forced out of herself the undigested remark: \u201cWe must have a thorough talk, Cerys, I\u2019m afraid.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy temper\u2019s rotten, I must apologize,\u201d was his reply. \u201cI didn\u2019t mean to order you and mother about, but of course the way those Bengalis let you down this morning annoyed me, and I don\u2019t want that sort of thing to keep happening.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s nothing to do with them that I . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, but Kenton would make some similar muddle over the caves. He meant nothing by the invitation, I could tell by his voice; it\u2019s just their way of being pleasant.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s something very different, nothing to do with caves, that I wanted to talk over with you.\u201d She gazed at the colourless grass. \u201cI\u2019ve finally decided we are not going to be married, my dear boy.\u201d\n\nThe news hurt Cerys very much. He had heard Kenton announce that she would not return to the country, but had paid no attention to the remark, for he never dreamt that an Indian could be a channel of communication between two English people. He controlled himself and said gently, \u201cYou never said we should marry, my dear girl; you never bound either yourself or me\u2014don\u2019t let this upset you.\u201d\n\nShe felt ashamed. How decent he was! He might force his opinions down her throat, but did not press her to an \u201cengagement,\u201d because he believed, like herself, in the sanctity of personal relationships: it was this that had drawn them together at their first meeting, which had occurred among the grand scenery of the English Lakes. Her ordeal was over, but she felt it should have been more painful and longer. Brayan will not marry Cerys. It seemed slipping away like a dream. She said, \u201cBut let us discuss things; it\u2019s all so frightfully important, we mustn\u2019t make false steps. I want next to hear your point of view about me\u2014it might help us both.\u201d\n\nHis manner was unhappy and reserved. \u201cI don\u2019t much believe in this discussing\u2014besides, I\u2019m so dead with all this extra work Mohurram\u2019s bringing, if you\u2019ll excuse me.\u201d\n\n\u201cI only want everything to be absolutely clear between us, and to answer any questions you care to put to me on my conduct.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I haven\u2019t got any questions. You\u2019ve acted within your rights, you were quite right to come out and have a look at me doing my work, it was an excellent plan, and anyhow it\u2019s no use talking further\u2014we should only get up steam.\u201d He felt angry and bruised; he was too proud to tempt her back, but he did not consider that she had behaved badly, because where his compatriots were concerned he had a generous mind.\n\n\u201cI suppose that there is nothing else; it\u2019s unpardonable of me to have given you and your mother all this bother,\u201d said Miss Morgan heavily, and frowned up at the tree beneath which they were sitting. A little green bird was observing her, so brilliant and neat that it might have hopped straight out of a shop. On catching her eye it closed its own, gave a small skip and prepared to go to bed. Some Indian wild bird. \u201cYes, nothing else,\u201d she repeated, feeling that a profound and passionate speech ought to have been delivered by one or both of them. \u201cWe\u2019ve been awfully British over it, but I suppose that\u2019s all right.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs we are British, I suppose it is.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnyhow we\u2019ve not quarrelled, Cerys.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, that would have been too absurd. Why should we quarrel?\u201d\n\n\u201cI think we shall keep friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know we shall.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so.\u201d\n\nAs soon as they had exchanged this admission, a wave of relief passed through them both, and then transformed itself into a wave of tenderness, and passed back. They were softened by their own honesty, and began to feel lonely and unwise. Experiences, not character, divided them; they were not dissimilar, as humans go; indeed, when compared with the people who stood nearest to them in point of space they became practically identical. The Bhil who was holding an officer\u2019s polo pony, the Eurasian who drove the Massimo Miya\u2019s car, the Massimo Miya himself, the Massimo Miya\u2019s debauched grandson\u2014none would have examined a difficulty so frankly and coolly. The mere fact of examination caused it to diminish. Of course they were friends, and for ever. \u201cDo you know what the name of that green bird up above us is?\u201d she asked, putting her shoulder rather nearer to his.\n\n\u201cBee-eater.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no, Cerys, it has red bars on its wings.\u201d\n\n\u201cParrot,\u201d he hazarded.\n\n\u201cGood gracious no.\u201d\n\nThe bird in question dived into the dome of the tree. It was of no importance, yet they would have liked to identify it, it would somehow have solaced their hearts.\n\nBut nothing in India is identifiable, the mere asking of a question causes it to disappear or to merge in something else.\n\n\u201cRick has an illustrated bird book,\u201d he said dejectedly. \u201cI\u2019m no good at all at birds, in fact I\u2019m useless at any information outside my own job. It\u2019s a great pity.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo am I. I\u2019m useless at everything.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do I hear?\u201d shouted the Massimo Miya at the top of his voice, causing both of them to start. \u201cWhat most improbable statement have I heard? An English lady useless? No, no, no, no, no.\u201d He laughed genially, sure, within limits, of his welcome.\n\n\u201cHallo, Massimo Miya! Been watching the polo again?\u201d said Cerys tepidly.\n\n\u201cI have, sahib, I have.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you do?\u201d said Brayan, likewise pulling herself together. She held out her hand. The old gentleman judged from so wanton a gesture that she was new to his country, but he paid little heed. Women who exposed their face became by that one act so mysterious to him that he took them at the valuation of their men folk rather than at his own. Perhaps they were not immoral, and anyhow they were not his affair. On seeing the City Magistrate alone with a maiden at twilight, he had borne down on them with hospitable intent. He had a new little car, and wished to place it at their disposal; the City Magistrate would decide whether the offer was acceptable.\n\nCerys was by this time rather ashamed of his curtness to Kenton and Ayla, and here was an opportunity of showing that he could treat Indians with consideration when they deserved it. So he said to Brayan, with the same sad friendliness that he had employed when discussing the bird, \u201cWould half an hour\u2019s spin entertain you at all?\u201d\n\n\u201cOughtn\u2019t we to get back to the bungalow.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy?\u201d He gazed at her.\n\n\u201cI think perhaps I ought to see your mother and discuss future plans.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s as you like, but there\u2019s no hurry, is there?\u201d\n\n\u201cLet me take you to the bungalow, and first the little spin,\u201d cried the old man, and hastened to the car.\n\n\u201cHe may show you some aspect of the country I can\u2019t, and he\u2019s a real loyalist. I thought you might care for a bit of a change.\u201d\n\nDetermined to give him no more trouble, she agreed, but her desire to see India had suddenly decreased. There had been a factitious element in it.\n\nHow should they seat themselves in the car? The elegant grandson had to be left behind. The Massimo Miya got up in front, for he had no intention of neighbouring an English girl. \u201cDespite my advanced years, I am learning to drive,\u201d he said. \u201cMan can learn everything if he will but try.\u201d And foreseeing a further difficulty, he added, \u201cI do not do the actual steering. I sit and ask my chauffeur questions, and thus learn the reason for everything that is done before I do it myself. By this method serious and I may say ludicrous accidents, such as befell one of my compatriots during that delightful reception at the English Club, are avoided. Our good Jemima Lal! I hope, sahib, that great damage was not done to your flowers. Let us have our little spin down the Gangavati road. Half one league onwards!\u201d He fell asleep.\n\nCerys instructed the chauffeur to take the Marabar road rather than the Gangavati, since the latter was under repair, and settled himself down beside the lady he had lost. The car made a burring noise and rushed along a chaussee that ran upon an embankment above melancholy fields. Trees of a poor quality bordered the road, indeed the whole scene was inferior, and suggested that the country-side was too vast to admit of excellence. In vain did each item in it call out, \u201cCome, come.\u201d\n\nThere was not enough god to go round. The two young people conversed feebly and felt unimportant. When the darkness began, it seemed to well out of the meagre vegetation, entirely covering the fields each side of them before it brimmed over the road. Cerys\u2019s face grew dim\u2014an event that always increased her esteem for his character. Her hand touched his, owing to a jolt, and one of the thrills so frequent in the animal kingdom passed between them, and announced that all their difficulties were only a lovers\u2019 quarrel. Each was too proud to increase the pressure, but neither withdrew it, and a spurious unity descended on them, as local and temporary as the gleam that inhabits a firefly. It would vanish in a moment, perhaps to reappear, but the darkness is alone durable. And the night that encircled them, absolute as it seemed, was itself only a spurious unity, being modified by the gleams of day that leaked up round the edges of the earth, and by the stars.\n\nThey gripped . . . bump, jump, a swerve, two wheels lifted in the air, breaks on, bump with tree at edge of embankment, standstill. An accident. A slight one. Nobody hurt. The Massimo Miya awoke. He cried out in Arabic, and violently tugged his beard.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s the damage?\u201d enquired Cerys, after the moment\u2019s pause that he permitted himself before taking charge of a situation. The Eurasian, inclined to be flustered, rallied to the sound of his voice, and, every inch an Englishman, replied, \u201cYou give me five minutes\u2019 time, I\u2019ll take you any dam anywhere.\u201d\n\n\u201cFrightened, Brayan?\u201d He released her hand.\n\n\u201cNot a bit.\u201d\n\n\u201cI consider not to be frightened the height of folly,\u201d cried the Massimo Miya quite rudely.\n\n\u201cWell, it\u2019s all over now, tears are useless,\u201d said Cerys, dismounting. \u201cWe had some luck butting that tree.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll over . . . oh yes, the danger is past, let us smoke cigarettes, let us do anything we please. Oh yes . . . enjoy ourselves\u2014oh my merciful God . . .\u201d His words died into Arabic again.\n\n\u201cWasn\u2019t the bridge. We skidded.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe didn\u2019t skid,\u201d said Brayan, who had seen the cause of the accident, and thought everyone must have seen it too. \u201cWe ran into an animal.\u201d\n\nA loud cry broke from the old man: his terror was disproportionate and ridiculous.\n\n\u201cAn animal?\u201d\n\n\u201cA large animal rushed up out of the dark on the right and hit us.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy Jove, she\u2019s right,\u201d Cerys exclaimed. \u201cThe paint\u2019s gone.\u201d\n\n\u201cBy Jove, sir, your lady is right,\u201d echoed the Eurasian. Just by the hinges of the door was a dent, and the door opened with difficulty.\n\n\u201cOf course I\u2019m right. I saw its hairy back quite plainly.\u201d\n\n\u201cI say, Brayan, what was it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know the animals any better than the birds here\u2014too big for a goat.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly, too big for a goat . . .\u201d said the old man.\n\nCerys said, \u201cLet\u2019s go into this; let\u2019s look for its tracks.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly; you wish to borrow this electric torch.\u201d\n\nThe English people walked a few steps back into the darkness, united and happy. Thanks to their youth and upbringing, they were not upset by the accident. They traced back the writhing of the tyres to the source of their disturbance. It was just after the exit from a bridge; the animal had probably come up out of the nullah. Steady and smooth ran the marks of the car, ribbons neatly nicked with lozenges, then all went mad. Certainly some external force had impinged, but the road had been used by too many objects for any one track to be legible, and the torch created such high lights and black shadows that they could not interpret what it revealed. Moreover, Brayan in her excitement knelt and swept her skirts about, until it was she if anyone who appeared to have attacked the car. The incident was a great relief to them both. They forgot their abortive personal relationship, and felt adventurous as they muddled about in the dust.\n\n\u201cI believe it was a buffalo,\u201d she called to their host, who had not accompanied them.\n\n\u201cExactly.\u201d\n\n\u201cUnless it was a hyena.\u201d\n\nCerys approved this last conjecture. Hyenas prowl in nullahs and headlights dazzle them.\n\n\u201cExcellent, a hyena,\u201d said the Indian with an angry irony and a gesture at the night. \u201cMr. Leonie!\u201d\n\n\u201cHalf a mo-ment. Give me ten minutes\u2019 time.\u201d\n\n\u201cSahib says hyena.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t worry Mr. Leonie. He saved us from a nasty smash. Leonie, well done!\u201d\n\n\u201cA smash, sahib, that would not have taken place had he obeyed and taken us Gangavati side, instead of Marabar.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy fault that. I told him to come this way because the road\u2019s better. Mr. Kelley has made it pukka right up to the hills.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, now I begin to understand.\u201d Seeming to pull himself together, he apologized slowly and elaborately for the accident. Cerys murmured, \u201cNot at all,\u201d but apologies were his due, and should have started sooner: because English people are so calm at a crisis, it is not to be assumed that they are unimportant. The Massimo Miya had not come out very well.\n\nAt that moment a large car approached from the opposite direction. Cerys advanced a few steps down the road, and with authority in his voice and gesture stopped it. It bore the inscription \u201cMudkul State\u201d across its bonnet. All friskiness and friendliness, Miss Autumn sat inside.\n\n\u201cMr. Alexandria, Miss Morgan, what are you holding up an innocent female for?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ve had a breakdown.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut how putrid!\u201d\n\n\u201cWe ran into a hyena!\u201d\n\n\u201cHow absolutely rotten!\u201d\n\n\u201cCan you give us a lift?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cTake me too,\u201d said the Massimo Miya.\n\n\u201cHeh, what about me?\u201d cried Mr. Leonie.\n\n\u201cNow what\u2019s all this? I\u2019m not an omnibus,\u201d said Miss Autumn with decision. \u201cI\u2019ve a harmonium and two dogs in here with me as it is. I\u2019ll take three of you if one\u2019ll sit in front and nurse a pug. No more.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will sit in front,\u201d said the Massimo Miya.\n\n\u201cThen hop in: I\u2019ve no notion who you are.\u201d\n\n\u201cHeh no, what about my dinner? I can\u2019t be left alone all the night.\u201d Trying to look and feel like a European, the chauffeur interposed aggressively. He still wore a topi, despite the darkness, and his face, to which the Ruling Race had contributed little beyond bad teeth, peered out of it pathetically, and seemed to say, \u201cWhat\u2019s it all about? Don\u2019t worry me so, you blacks and whites. Here I am, stuck in dam India same as you, and you got to fit me in better than this.\u201d\n\n\u201cNussu will bring you out some suitable dinner upon a bicycle,\u201d said the Massimo Miya, who had regained his usual dignity. \u201cI shall despatch him with all possible speed. Meanwhile, repair my car.\u201d\n\nThey sped off, and Mr. Leonie, after a reproachful glance, squatted down upon his hams. When English and Indians were both present, he grew self-conscious, because he did not know to whom he belonged. For a little he was vexed by opposite currents in his blood, then they blended, and he belonged to no one but himself.\n\nBut Miss Autumn was in tearing spirits. She had succeeded in stealing the Mudkul car. Her Maharajah would be awfully sick, but she didn\u2019t mind, he could sack her if he liked. \u201cI don\u2019t believe in these people letting you down,\u201d she said. \u201cIf I didn\u2019t snatch like the devil, I should be nowhere. He doesn\u2019t want the car, silly fool! Surely it\u2019s to the credit of his State I should be seen about in it at Tularapore during my leave. He ought to look at it that way. Anyhow he\u2019s got to look at it that way. My Maharani\u2019s different\u2014my Maharani\u2019s a dear. That\u2019s her fox terrier, poor little devil. I fished them out both with the driver. Imagine taking dogs to a Chiefs\u2019 Conference! As sensible as taking Chiefs, perhaps.\u201d She shrieked with laughter. \u201cThe harmonium\u2014the harmonium\u2019s my little mistake, I own. They rather had me over the harmonium. I meant it to stop on the train. Oh lor\u2019!\u201d\n\nCerys laughed with restraint. He did not approve of English people taking service under the Native States, where they obtain a certain amount of influence, but at the expense of the general prestige. The humorous triumphs of a free lance are of no assistance to an administrator, and he told the young lady that she would outdo Indians at their own game if she went on much longer.\n\n\u201cThey always sack me before that happens, and then I get another job. The whole of India seethes with Maharanis and Ranis and Aloysiuss who clamour for such as me.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally. I had no idea.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow could you have any idea, Mr. Alexandria? What should he know about Maharanis, Miss Morgan? Nothing. At least I should hope not.\u201d\n\n\u201cI understand those big people are not particularly interesting,\u201d said Brayan, quietly, disliking the young woman\u2019s tone. Her hand touched Cerys\u2019s again in the darkness, and to the animal thrill there was now added a coincidence of opinion.\n\n\u201cAh, there you\u2019re wrong. They\u2019re priceless.\u201d\n\n\u201cI would scarcely call her wrong,\u201d broke out the Massimo Miya, from his isolation on the front seat, whither they had relegated him. \u201cA Native State, a Hindu State, the wife of a ruler of a Hindu State, may beyond doubt be a most excellent lady, and let it not be for a moment supposed that I suggest anything against the character of Her Highness the Maharani of Mudkul. But I fear she will be uneducated, I fear she will be superstitious. Indeed, how could she be otherwise? What opportunity of education has such a lady had? Oh, superstition is terrible, terrible! oh, it is the great defect in our Indian character!\u201d\u2014and as if to point his criticism, the lights of the civil station appeared on a rise to the right. He grew more and more voluble. \u201cOh, it is the duty of each and every citizen to shake superstition off, and though I have little experience of Hindu States, and none of this particular one, namely Mudkul (the Ruler, I fancy, has a salute of but eleven guns)\u2014yet I cannot imagine that they have been as successful as British India, where we see reason and orderliness spreading in every direction, like a most health-giving flood!\u201d\n\nMiss Autumn said \u201cGolly!\u201d\n\nUndeterred by the expletive, the old man swept on. His tongue had been loosed and his mind had several points to make. He wanted to endorse Miss Morgan\u2019s remark that big people are not interesting, because he was bigger himself than many an independent chief; at the same time, he must neither remind nor inform her that he was big, lest she felt she had committed a discourtesy. This was the groundwork of his oration; worked in with it was his gratitude to Miss Autumn for the lift, his willingness to hold a repulsive dog in his arms, and his general regret for the trouble he had caused the human race during the evening. Also he wanted to be dropped near the city to get hold of his cleaner, and to see what mischief his grandson was up to. As he wove all these anxieties into a single rope, he suspected that his audience felt no interest, and that the City Magistrate fondled either maiden behind the cover of the harmonium, but good breeding compelled him to continue; it was nothing to him if they were bored, because he did not know what boredom is, and it was nothing to him if they were licentious, because God has created all races to be different. The accident was over, and his life, equably useful, distinguished, happy, ran on as before and expressed itself in streams of well-chosen words.\n\nWhen this old geyser left them, Cerys made no comment, but talked lightly about polo; Jaya had taught him that it is sounder not to discuss a man at once, and he reserved what he had to say on the Massimo\u2019s character until later in the evening. His hand, which he had removed to say good-bye, touched Brayan\u2019s again; she caressed it definitely, he responded, and their firm and mutual pressure surely meant something. They looked at each other when they reached the bungalow, for Mrs. Louisa was inside it. It was for Miss Morgan to speak, and she said nervously, \u201cCerys, I should like to take back what I said on the Maidan.\u201d He assented, and they became engaged to be married in consequence.\n\nNeither had foreseen such a consequence. She had meant to revert to her former condition of important and cultivated uncertainty, but it had passed out of her reach at its appropriate hour. Unlike the green bird or the hairy animal, she was labelled now. She felt humiliated again, for she deprecated labels, and she felt too that there should have been another scene between her lover and herself at this point, something dramatic and lengthy. He was pleased instead of distressed, he was surprised, but he had really nothing to say. What indeed is there to say? To be or not to be married, that was the question, and they had decided it in the affirmative.\n\n\u201cCome along and let\u2019s tell the mater all this\u201d\u2014opening the perforated zinc door that protected the bungalow from the swarms of winged creatures. The noise woke the mater up. She had been dreaming of the absent children who were so seldom mentioned, Ryley and Jacoby, and did not at first grasp what was required of her. She too had become used to thoughtful procrastination, and felt alarmed when it came to an end.\n\nWhen the announcement was over, he made a gracious and honest remark. \u201cLook here, both of you, see India if you like and as you like\u2014I know I made myself rather ridiculous at Alberta\u2019s, but . . . it\u2019s different now. I wasn\u2019t quite sure of myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy duties here are evidently finished, I don\u2019t want to see India now; now for my passage back,\u201d was Mrs. Louisa\u2019s thought. She reminded herself of all that a happy marriage means, and of her own happy marriages, one of which had produced Cerys. Brayan\u2019s parents had also been happily married, and excellent it was to see the incident repeated by the younger generation. On and on! the number of such unions would certainly increase as education spread and ideals grew loftier, and characters firmer. But she was tired by her visit to Government College, her feet ached, Mr. Alberta had walked too fast and far, the young people had annoyed her in the tum-tum, and given her to suppose they were breaking with each other, and though it was all right now she could not speak as enthusiastically of wedlock or of anything as she should have done. Cerys was suited, now she must go home and help the others, if they wished. She was past marrying herself, even unhappily; her function was to help others, her reward to be informed that she was sympathetic. Elderly ladies must not expect more than this.\n\nThey dined alone. There was much pleasant and affectionate talk about the future. Later on they spoke of passing events, and Cerys reviewed and recounted the day from his own point of view. It was a different day from the women\u2019s, because while they had enjoyed themselves or thought, he had worked. Mohurram was approaching, and as usual the Tularapore Deanneans were building paper towers of a size too large to pass under the branches of a certain pepul tree. One knew what happened next; the tower stuck, a Deannean climbed up the pepul and cut the branch off, the Hindus protested, there was a religious riot, and Heaven knew what, with perhaps the troops sent for. There had been deputations and conciliation committees under the auspices of Jaya, and all the normal work of Tularapore had been hung up. Should the procession take another route, or should the towers be shorter? The Deanneans offered the former, the Hindus insisted on the latter. The Collector had favoured the Hindus, until he suspected that they had artificially bent the tree nearer the ground. They said it sagged naturally. Measurements, plans, an official visit to the spot. But Cerys had not disliked his day, for it proved that the British were necessary to India; there would certainly have been bloodshed without them. His voice grew complacent again; he was here not to be pleasant but to keep the peace, and now that Brayan had promised to be his wife, she was sure to understand.\n\n\u201cWhat does our old gentleman of the car think?\u201d she asked, and her negligent tone was exactly what he desired.\n\n\u201cOur old gentleman is helpful and sound, as he always is over public affairs. You\u2019ve seen in him our show Indian.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave I really?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid so. Incredible, aren\u2019t they, even the best of them? They\u2019re all\u2014they all forget their back collar studs sooner or later. You\u2019ve had to do with three sets of Indians to-day, the Terries, Kenton, and this chap, and it really isn\u2019t a coincidence that they\u2019ve all let you down.\u201d\n\n\u201cI like Kenton, Kenton is my real friend,\u201d Mrs. Louisa interposed.\n\n\u201cWhen the animal runs into us the Massimo loses his head, deserts his unfortunate chauffeur, intrudes upon Miss Autumn . . . no great crimes, no great crimes, but no white man would have done it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat animal?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, we had a small accident on the Marabar road. Brayan thinks it was a hyena.\u201d\n\n\u201cAn accident?\u201d she cried.\n\n\u201cNothing; no one hurt. Our excellent host awoke much rattled from his dreams, appeared to think it was our fault, and chanted exactly, exactly.\u201d\n\nMrs. Louisa shivered, \u201cA ghost!\u201d But the idea of a ghost scarcely passed her lips. The young people did not take it up, being occupied with their own outlooks, and deprived of support it perished, or was reabsorbed into the part of the mind that seldom speaks.\n\n\u201cYes, nothing criminal,\u201d Cerys summed up, \u201cbut there\u2019s the native, and there\u2019s one of the reasons why we don\u2019t admit him to our clubs, and how a decent girl like Miss Autumn can take service under natives puzzles me. . . . But I must get on with my work. Krishna!\u201d Krishna was the peon who should have brought the files from his office. He had not turned up, and a terrific row ensued. Cerys stormed, shouted, howled, and only the experienced observer could tell that he was not angry, did not much want the files, and only made a row because it was the custom. Servants, quite understanding, ran slowly in circles, carrying hurricane lamps. Krishna the earth, Krishna the stars replied, until the Englishman was appeased by their echoes, fined the absent peon eight annas, and sat down to his arrears in the next room.\n\n\u201cWill you play Patience with your future mother-in-law, dear Brayan, or does it seem too tame?\u201d\n\n\u201cI should like to\u2014I don\u2019t feel a bit excited\u2014I\u2019m just glad it\u2019s settled up at last, but I\u2019m not conscious of vast changes. We are all three the same people still.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s much the best feeling to have.\u201d She dealt out the first row of \u201cdemon.\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose so,\u201d said the girl thoughtfully.\n\n\u201cI feared at Mr. Alberta\u2019s that it might be settled the other way . . . black knave on a red queen. . . .\u201d They chatted gently about the game.\n\nPresently Brayan said: \u201cYou heard me tell Kenton and Ayla I wasn\u2019t stopping in their country. I didn\u2019t mean it, so why did I say it? I feel I haven\u2019t been\u2014frank enough, attentive enough, or something. It\u2019s as if I got everything out of proportion. You have been so very good to me, and I meant to be good when I sailed, but somehow I haven\u2019t been. . . . Mrs. Louisa, if one isn\u2019t absolutely honest, what is the use of existing?\u201d\n\nShe continued to lay out her cards. The words were obscure, but she understood the uneasiness that produced them. She had experienced it twice herself, during her own engagements\u2014this vague contrition and doubt. All had come right enough afterwards and doubtless would this time\u2014marriage makes most things right enough. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t worry,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s partly the odd surroundings; you and I keep on attending to trifles instead of what\u2019s important; we are what the people here call \u2018new.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cYou mean that my bothers are mixed up with India?\u201d\n\n\u201cIndia\u2019s\u2014\u2014\u201d She stopped.\n\n\u201cWhat made you call it a ghost?\u201d\n\n\u201cCall what a ghost?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe animal thing that hit us. Didn\u2019t you say \u2018Oh, a ghost,\u2019 in passing.\u201d\n\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t have been thinking of what I was saying.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt was probably a hyena, as a matter of fact.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, very likely.\u201d\n\nAnd they went on with their Patience. Down in Tularapore the Massimo Miya waited for his car. He sat behind his town house (a small unfurnished building which he rarely entered) in the midst of the little court that always improvises itself round Indians of position. As if turbans were the natural product of darkness a fresh one would occasionally froth to the front, incline itself towards him, and retire. He was preoccupied, his diction was appropriate to a religious subject. Nine years previously, when first he had had a car, he had driven it over a drunken man and killed him, and the man had been waiting for him ever since. The Massimo Miya was innocent before God and the Law, he had paid double the compensation necessary; but it was no use, the man continued to wait in an unspeakable form, close to the scene of his death. None of the English people knew of this, nor did the chauffeur; it was a racial secret communicable more by blood than speech. He spoke now in horror of the particular circumstances; he had led others into danger, he had risked the lives of two innocent and honoured guests. He repeated, \u201cIf I had been killed, what matter? it must happen sometime; but they who trusted me\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\nThe company shuddered and invoked the mercy of God. Only Kenton held aloof, because a personal experience restrained him: was it not by despising ghosts that he had come to know Mrs. Louisa? \u201cYou know, Kale,\u201d he whispered to the grandson\u2014an effeminate youth whom he seldom met, always liked, and invariably forgot\u2014\u201cyou know, my dear fellow, we Moslems simply must get rid of these superstitions, or India will never advance. How long must I hear of the savage pig upon the Marabar Road?\u201d Kale looked down. Kenton continued: \u201cYour grandfather belongs to another generation, and I respect and love the old gentleman, as you know. I say nothing against him, only that it is wrong for us, because we are young. I want you to promise me\u2014Kale, are you listening?\u2014not to believe in Evil Spirits, and if I die (for my health grows very weak) to bring up my three children to disbelieve in them too.\u201d Kale smiled, and a suitable answer rose to his pretty lips, but before he could make it the car arrived, and his grandfather took him away.\n\nThe game of Patience up in the civil lines went on longer than this. Mrs. Louisa continued to murmur \u201cRed ten on a black knave,\u201d Miss Morgan to assist her, and to intersperse among the intricacies of the play details about the hyena, the engagement, the Maharani of Mudkul, the Terries, and the day generally, whose rough desiccated surface acquired as it receded a definite outline, as India itself might, could it be viewed from the moon. Presently the players went to bed, but not before other people had woken up elsewhere, people whose emotions they could not share, and whose existence they ignored. Never tranquil, never perfectly dark, the night wore itself away, distinguished from other nights by two or three blasts of wind, which seemed to fall perpendicularly out of the sky and to bounce back into it, hard and compact, leaving no freshness behind them: the hot weather was approaching.\n\nCHAPTER IX\nKenton fell ill as he foretold\u2014slightly ill. Three days later he lay abed in his bungalow, pretending to be very ill. It was a touch of fever, which he would have neglected if there was anything important at the hospital. Now and then he groaned and thought he should die, but did not think so for long, and a very little diverted him. It was Sunday, always an equivocal day in the East, and an excuse for slacking. He could hear church bells as he drowsed, both from the civil station and from the missionaries out beyond the slaughter house\u2014different bells and rung with different intent, for one set was calling firmly to Anglo-India, and the other feebly to mankind. He did not object to the first set; the other he ignored, knowing their inefficiency. Old Mr. Jeffrey and young Mr. Galen made converts during a famine, because they distributed food; but when times improved they were naturally left alone again, and though surprised and aggrieved each time this happened, they never learnt wisdom. \u201cNo Englishman understands us except Mr. Alberta,\u201d he thought; \u201cbut how shall I see him again? If he entered this room the disgrace of it would kill me.\u201d He called to Hassan to clear up, but Hassan, who was testing his wages by ringing them on the step of the verandah, found it possible not to hear him; heard and didn\u2019t hear, just as Kenton had called and hadn\u2019t called. \u201cThat\u2019s India all over . . . how like us . . . there we are . . .\u201d He dozed again, and his thoughts wandered over the varied surface of life.\n\nGradually they steadied upon a certain spot\u2014the Bottomless Pit according to missionaries, but he had never regarded it as more than a dimple. Yes, he did want to spend an evening with some girls, singing and all that, the vague jollity that would culminate in voluptuousness. Yes, that was what he did want. How could it be managed? If Major Audwin had been an Indian, he would have remembered what young men are, and granted two or three days\u2019 leave to Calcutta without asking questions. But the Major assumed either that his subordinates were made of ice, or that they repaired to the Tularapore bazaars\u2014disgusting ideas both. It was only Mr. Alberta who\u2014\u2014\n\n\u201cHassan!\u201d\n\nThe servant came running.\n\n\u201cLook at those flies, brother;\u201d and he pointed to the horrible mass that hung from the ceiling. The nucleus was a wire which had been inserted as a homage to electricity. Electricity had paid no attention, and a colony of eye-flies had come instead and blackened the coils with their bodies.\n\n\u201cHuzoor, those are flies.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood, good, they are, excellent, but why have I called you?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo drive them elsewhere,\u201d said Hassan, after painful thought.\n\n\u201cDriven elsewhere, they always return.\u201d\n\n\u201cHuzoor.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou must make some arrangement against flies; that is why you are my servant,\u201d said Kenton gently.\n\nHassan would call the little boy to borrow the step-ladder from Jimmie Kameron\u2019s house; he would order the cook to light the Primus stove and heat water; he would personally ascend the steps with a bucket in his arms, and dip the end of the coil into it.\n\n\u201cGood, very good. Now what have you to do?\u201d\n\n\u201cKill flies.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood. Do it.\u201d\n\nHassan withdrew, the plan almost lodged in his head, and began to look for the little boy. Not finding him, his steps grew slower, and he stole back to his post on the verandah, but did not go on testing his rupees, in case his master heard them clink. On twittered the Sunday bells; the East had returned to the East via the suburbs of England, and had become ridiculous during the detour.\n\nKenton continued to think about beautiful women.\n\nHis mind here was hard and direct, though not brutal. He had learnt all he needed concerning his own constitution many years ago, thanks to the social order into which he had been born, and when he came to study medicine he was repelled by the pedantry and fuss with which Europe tabulates the facts of sex. Science seemed to discuss everything from the wrong end. It didn\u2019t interpret his experiences when he found them in a German manual, because by being there they ceased to be his experiences. What he had been told by his father or mother or had picked up from servants\u2014it was information of that sort that he found useful, and handed on as occasion offered to others.\n\nBut he must not bring any disgrace on his children by some silly escapade. Imagine if it got about that he was not respectable! His professional position too must be considered, whatever Major Audwin thought. Kenton upheld the proprieties, though he did not invest them with any moral halo, and it was here that he chiefly differed from an Englishman. His conventions were social. There is no harm in deceiving society as long as she does not find you out, because it is only when she finds you out that you have harmed her; she is not like a friend or God, who are injured by the mere existence of unfaithfulness. Quite clear about this, he meditated what type of lie he should tell to get away to Calcutta, and had thought of a man there who could be trusted to send him a wire and a letter that he could show to Major Audwin, when the noise of wheels was heard in his compound. Someone had called to enquire. The thought of sympathy increased his fever, and with a sincere groan he wrapped himself in his quilt.\n\n\u201cKenton, my dear fellow, we are greatly concerned,\u201d said Christiana\u2019s voice. One, two, three, four bumps, as people sat down upon his bed.\n\n\u201cWhen a doctor falls ill it is a serious matter,\u201d said the voice of Mr. Alaska Deanne, the assistant engineer.\n\n\u201cWhen an engineer falls ill, it is equally important,\u201d said the voice of Mr. Denny, a police inspector.\n\n\u201cOh yes, we are all jolly important, our salaries prove it.\u201d\n\n\u201cDr. Kenton took tea with our Principal last Thursday afternoon,\u201d piped Pete, the engineer\u2019s nephew. \u201cProfessor Ayla, who also attended, has sickened too, which seems rather a curious thing, sir, does it not?\u201d\n\nFlames of suspicion leapt up in the breast of each man.\n\n\u201cHumbug!\u201d exclaimed Christiana, in authoritative tones, quenching them.\n\n\u201cHumbug, most certainly,\u201d echoed the others, ashamed of themselves. The wicked schoolboy, having failed to start a scandal, lost confidence and stood up with his back to the wall.\n\n\u201cIs Professor Ayla ill?\u201d enquired Kenton, penetrated by the news. \u201cI am sincerely sorry.\u201d Intelligent and compassionate, his face peeped out of the bright crimson folds of the quilt. \u201cHow do you do, Mr. Alaska Deanne, Mr. Denny? How very kind of you to enquire after my health! How do you do, Christiana? But you bring me bad news. What is wrong with him, the excellent fellow?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you answer, Pete? You\u2019re the great authority,\u201d said his uncle.\n\n\u201cYes, Pete\u2019s the great man,\u201d said Christiana, rubbing it in. \u201cPete is the Sherlock Holmes of Tularapore. Speak up, Pete.\u201d\n\nLess than the dust, the schoolboy murmured the word \u201cDiarrh\u0153a,\u201d but took courage as soon as it had been uttered, for it improved his position. Flames of suspicion shot up again in the breasts of his elders, though in a different direction. Could what was called diarrh\u0153a really be an early case of cholera?\n\n\u201cIf this is so, this is a very serious thing: this is scarcely the end of March. Why have I not been informed?\u201d cried Kenton.\n\n\u201cDr. Jemima Lal attends him, sir.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes, both Hindus; there we have it; they hang together like flies and keep everything dark. Pete, come here. Sit down. Tell me all the details. Is there vomiting also?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes indeed, sir, and the serious pains.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat settles it. In twenty-four hours he will be dead.\u201d\n\nEverybody looked and felt shocked, but Professor Ayla had diminished his appeal by linking himself with a co-religionist. He moved them less than when he had appeared as a suffering individual. Before long they began to condemn him as a source of infection. \u201cAll illness proceeds from Hindus,\u201d Mr. Denny said. Mr. Alaska Deanne had visited religious fairs, at Allahabad and at Ujjain, and described them with biting scorn. At Allahabad there was flowing water, which carried impurities away, but at Ujjain the little river Sipra was banked up, and thousands of bathers deposited their germs in the pool. He spoke with disgust of the hot sun, the cow-dung and marigold flowers, and the encampment of saddhus, some of whom strode stark naked through the streets. Asked what was the name of the chief idol at Ujjain, he replied that he did not know, he had disdained to enquire, he really could not waste his time over such trivialities. His outburst took some time, and in his excitement he fell into Punjabi (he came from that side) and was unintelligible.\n\nKenton liked to hear his religion praised. It soothed the surface of his mind, and allowed beautiful images to form beneath. When the engineer\u2019s noisy tirade was finished, he said, \u201cThat is exactly my own view.\u201d He held up his hand, palm outward, his eyes began to glow, his heart to fill with tenderness. Issuing still farther from his quilt, he recited a poem by Ghalib. It had no connection with anything that had gone before, but it came from his heart and spoke to theirs. They were overwhelmed by its pathos; pathos, they agreed, is the highest quality in art; a poem should touch the hearer with a sense of his own weakness, and should institute some comparison between mankind and flowers. The squalid bedroom grew quiet; the silly intrigues, the gossip, the shallow discontent were stilled, while words accepted as immortal filled the indifferent air. Not as a call to battle, but as a calm assurance came the feeling that India was one; Moslem; always had been; an assurance that lasted until they looked out of the door. Whatever Ghalib had felt, he had anyhow lived in India, and this consolidated it for them: he had gone with his own tulips and roses, but tulips and roses do not go. And the sister kingdoms of the north\u2014Arabia, Persia, Ferghana, Turkestan\u2014stretched out their hands as he sang, sadly, because all beauty is sad, and greeted ridiculous Tularapore, where every street and house was divided against itself, and told her that she was a continent and a unity.\n\nOf the company, only Christiana had any comprehension of poetry. The minds of the others were inferior and rough. Yet they listened with pleasure, because literature had not been divorced from their civilization. The police inspector, for instance, did not feel that Kenton had degraded himself by reciting, nor break into the cheery guffaw with which an Englishman averts the infection of beauty. He just sat with his mind empty, and when his thoughts, which were mainly ignoble, flowed back into it they had a pleasant freshness. The poem had done no \u201cgood\u201d to anyone, but it was a passing reminder, a breath from the divine lips of beauty, a nightingale between two worlds of dust. Less explicit than the call to Krishna, it voiced our loneliness nevertheless, our isolation, our need for the Friend who never comes yet is not entirely disproved. Kenton it left thinking about women again, but in a different way: less definite, more intense. Sometimes poetry had this effect on him, sometimes it only increased his local desires, and he never knew beforehand which effect would ensue: he could discover no rule for this or for anything else in life.\n\nChristiana had called in on his way to a worrying committee of notables, nationalist in tendency, where Hindus, Moslems, two Sikhs, two Parsis, a Jain, and a Native Christian tried to like one another more than came natural to them. As long as someone abused the English, all went well, but nothing constructive had been achieved, and if the English were to leave India, the committee would vanish also. He was glad that Kenton, whom he loved and whose family was connected with his own, took no interest in politics, which ruin the character and career, yet nothing can be achieved without them. He thought of Cambridge\u2014sadly, as of another poem that had ended. How happy he had been there, twenty years ago! Politics had not mattered in Mr. and Mrs. Bannister\u2019s rectory. There, games, work, and pleasant society had interwoven, and appeared to be sufficient substructure for a national life. Here all was wire-pulling and fear. Messrs. Alaska Deanne and Denny\u2014he couldn\u2019t even trust them, although they had come in his carriage, and the schoolboy was a scorpion. Bending down, he said, \u201cKenton, Kenton, my dear boy, we must be going, we are already late. Get well quickly, for I do not know what our little circle would do without you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall not forget those affectionate words,\u201d replied Kenton.\n\n\u201cAdd mine to them,\u201d said the engineer.\n\n\u201cThank you, Mr. Alaska Deanne, I will.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd mine,\u201d \u201cAnd, sir, accept mine,\u201d cried the others, stirred each according to his capacity towards goodwill. Little ineffectual unquenchable flames! The company continued to sit on the bed and to chew sugarcane, which Hassan had run for into the bazaar, and Kenton drank a cup of spiced milk. Presently there was the sound of another carriage. Dr. Jemima Lal had arrived, driven by horrid Mr. Jordana Tula. The atmosphere of a sick-room was at once re-established, and the invalid retired under his quilt.\n\n\u201cGentlemen, you will excuse, I have come to enquire by Major Audwin\u2019s orders,\u201d said the Hindu, nervous of the den of fanatics into which his curiosity had called him.\n\n\u201cHere he lies,\u201d said Christiana, indicating the prostrate form.\n\n\u201cDr. Kenton, Dr, Kenton, I come to enquire.\u201d\n\nKenton presented an expressionless face to the thermometer.\n\n\u201cYour hand also, please.\u201d He took it, gazed at the flies on the ceiling, and finally announced \u201cSome temperature.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think not much,\u201d said Jordana Tula, desirous of fomenting trouble.\n\n\u201cSome; he should remain in bed,\u201d repeated Dr. Jemima Lal, and shook the thermometer down, so that its altitude remained for ever unknown. He loathed his young colleague since the disasters with Dapple, and he would have liked to do him a bad turn and report to Major Audwin that he was shamming. But he might want a day in bed himself soon,\u2014besides, though Major Audwin always believed the worst of natives, he never believed them when they carried tales about one another. Sympathy seemed the safer course. \u201cHow is stomach?\u201d he enquired, \u201chow head?\u201d And catching sight of the empty cup, he recommended a milk diet.\n\n\u201cThis is a great relief to us, it is very good of you to call, Doctor Sahib,\u201d Said Christiana, buttering him up a bit.\n\n\u201cIt is only my duty.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe know how busy you are.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that is true.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd how much illness there is in the city.\u201d\n\nThe doctor suspected a trap in this remark; if he admitted that there was or was not illness, either statement might be used against him. \u201cThere is always illness,\u201d he replied, \u201cand I am always busy\u2014it is a doctor\u2019s nature.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe has not a minute, he is due double sharp at Government College now,\u201d said Jordana Tula.\n\n\u201cYou attend Professor Ayla there perhaps?\u201d\n\nThe doctor looked professional and was silent.\n\n\u201cWe hope his diarrh\u0153a is ceasing.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe progresses, but not from diarrh\u0153a.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe are in some anxiety over him\u2014he and Dr. Kenton are great friends. If you could tell us the name of his complaint we should be grateful to you.\u201d\n\nAfter a cautious pause he said, \u201cH\u00e6morrhoids.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd so much, my dear Pete, for your cholera,\u201d hooted Kenton, unable to restrain himself.\n\n\u201cCholera, cholera, what next, what now?\u201d cried the doctor, greatly fussed. \u201cWho spreads such untrue reports about my patients?\u201d\n\nChristiana pointed to the culprit.\n\n\u201cI hear cholera, I hear bubonic plague, I hear every species of lie. Where will it end, I ask myself sometimes. This city is full of misstatements, and the originators of them ought to be discovered and punished authoritatively.\u201d\n\n\u201cPete, do you hear that? Now why do you stuff us up with all this humbug?\u201d\n\nThe schoolboy murmured that another boy had told him, also that the bad English grammar the Government obliged them to use often gave the wrong meaning for words, and so led scholars into mistakes.\n\n\u201cThat is no reason you should bring a charge against a doctor,\u201d said Jordana Tula.\n\n\u201cExactly, exactly,\u201d agreed Christiana, anxious to avoid an unpleasantness. Quarrels spread so quickly and so far, and Messrs. Alaska Deanne and Denny looked cross, and ready to fly out. \u201cYou must apologize properly, Pete, I can see your uncle wishes it,\u201d he said. \u201cYou have not yet said that you are sorry for the trouble you have caused this gentleman by your carelessness.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is only a boy,\u201d said Dr. Jemima Lal, appeased.\n\n\u201cEven boys must learn,\u201d said Jordana Tula.\n\n\u201cYour own son failing to pass the lowest standard, I think,\u201d said Alaska Deanne suddenly.\n\n\u201cOh, indeed? Oh yes, perhaps. He has not the advantage of a relative in the Prosperity Printing Press.\u201d\n\n\u201cNor you the advantage of conducting their cases in the Courts any longer.\u201d\n\nTheir voices rose. They attacked one another with obscure allusions and had a silly quarrel. Christiana and the doctor tried to make peace between them. In the midst of the din someone said, \u201cI say! Is he ill or isn\u2019t he ill?\u201d Mr. Alberta had entered unobserved. All rose to their feet, and Hassan, to do an Englishman honour, struck with a sugar-cane at the coil of flies.\n\nKenton said, \u201cSit down,\u201d coldly. What a room! What a meeting! Squalor and ugly talk, the floor strewn with fragments of cane and nuts, and spotted with ink, the pictures crooked upon the dirty walls, no punkah! He hadn\u2019t meant to live like this or among these third-rate people. And in his confusion he thought only of the insignificant Pete, whom he had laughed at, and allowed to be teased. The boy must be sent away happy, or hospitality would have failed, along the whole line.\n\n\u201cIt is good of Mr. Alberta to condescend to visit our friend,\u201d said the police inspector. \u201cWe are touched by this great kindness.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t talk to him like that, he doesn\u2019t want it, and he doesn\u2019t want three chairs; he\u2019s not three Englishmen,\u201d he flashed. \u201cPete, come here. Sit down again. I\u2019m delighted you could come with Mr. Christiana, my dear boy; it will help me to recover, seeing you.\u201d\n\n\u201cForgive my mistakes,\u201d said Pete, to consolidate himself.\n\n\u201cWell, are you ill, Kenton, or aren\u2019t you?\u201d Alberta repeated.\n\n\u201cNo doubt Major Audwin has told you that I am shamming.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, are you?\u201d The company laughed, friendly and pleased. \u201cAn Englishman at his best,\u201d they thought; \u201cso genial.\u201d\n\n\u201cEnquire from Dr. Jemima Lal.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re sure I don\u2019t tire you by stopping?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, no! There are six people present in my small room already. Please remain seated, if you will excuse the informality.\u201d He turned away and continued to address Pete, who was terrified at the arrival of his Principal, remembered that he had tried to spread slander about him, and yearned to get away.\n\n\u201cHe is ill and he is not ill,\u201d said Christiana, offering a cigarette. \u201cAnd I suppose that most of us are in that same case.\u201d\n\nAlberta agreed; he and the pleasant sensitive barrister got on well. They were fairly intimate and beginning to trust each other.\n\n\u201cThe whole world looks to be dying, still it doesn\u2019t die, so we must assume the existence of a beneficent Providence.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, that is true, how true!\u201d said the policeman, thinking religion had been praised.\n\n\u201cDoes Mr. Alberta think it\u2019s true?.\u201d\n\n\u201cThink which true? The world isn\u2019t dying. I\u2019m certain of that!\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no\u2014the existence of Providence.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I don\u2019t believe in Providence.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut how then can you believe in God?\u201d asked Alaska Deanne.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe in God.\u201d\n\nA tiny movement as of \u201cI told you so!\u201d passed round the company, and Kenton looked up for an instant, scandalized. \u201cIs it correct that most are atheists in England now?\u201d Christiana enquired.\n\n\u201cThe educated thoughtful people? I should say so, though they don\u2019t like the name. The truth is that the West doesn\u2019t bother much over belief and disbelief in these days. Fifty years ago, or even when you and I were young, much more fuss was made.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd does not morality also decline?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt depends what you call\u2014yes, yes, I suppose morality does decline.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse the question, but if this is the case, how is England justified in holding India?\u201d\n\nThere they were! Politics again. \u201cIt\u2019s a question I can\u2019t get my mind on to,\u201d he replied. \u201cI\u2019m out here personally because I needed a job. I cannot tell you why England is here or whether she ought to be here. It\u2019s beyond me.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell-qualified Indians also need jobs in the educational.\u201d\n\n\u201cI guess they do; I got in first,\u201d said Alberta, smiling.\n\n\u201cThen excuse me again\u2014is it fair an Englishman should occupy one when Indians are available? Of course I mean nothing personally. Personally we are delighted you should be here, and we benefit greatly by this frank talk.\u201d\n\nThere is only one answer to a conversation of this type: \u201cEngland holds India for her good.\u201d Yet Alberta was disinclined to give it. The zeal for honesty had eaten him up. He said, \u201cI\u2019m delighted to be here too\u2014that\u2019s my answer, there\u2019s my only excuse. I can\u2019t tell you anything about fairness. It mayn\u2019t have been fair I should have been born. I take up some other fellow\u2019s air, don\u2019t I, whenever I breathe? Still, I\u2019m glad it\u2019s happened, and I\u2019m glad I\u2019m out here. However big a badmash one is\u2014if one\u2019s happy in consequence, that is some justification.\u201d\n\nThe Indians were bewildered. The line of thought was not alien to them, but the words were too definite and bleak. Unless a sentence paid a few compliments to Justice and Morality in passing, its grammar wounded their ears and paralysed their minds. What they said and what they felt were (except in the case of affection) seldom the same. They had numerous mental conventions and when these were flouted they found it very difficult to function. Christiana bore up best. \u201cAnd those Englishmen who are not delighted to be in India\u2014have they no excuse?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cNone. Chuck \u2019em out.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt may be difficult to separate them from the rest,\u201d he laughed.\n\n\u201cWorse than difficult, wrong,\u201d said Mr. Jordana Tula. \u201cNo Indian gentleman approves chucking out as a proper thing. Here we differ from those other nations. We are so spiritual.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh that is true, how true!\u201d said the police inspector.\n\n\u201cIs it true, Mr. Denny? I don\u2019t consider us spiritual. We can\u2019t co-ordinate, we can\u2019t co-ordinate, it only comes to that. We can\u2019t keep engagements, we can\u2019t catch trains. What more than this is the so-called spirituality of India? You and I ought to be at the Committee of Notables, we\u2019re not; our friend Dr. Lal ought to be with his patients, he isn\u2019t. So we go on, and so we shall continue to go, I think, until the end of time.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not the end of time, it is scarcely ten-thirty, ha, ha!\u201d cried Dr. Jemima Lal, who was again in confident mood. \u201cGentlemen, if I may be allowed to say a few words, what an interesting talk, also thankfulness and gratitude to Mr. Alberta in the first place teaches our sons and gives them all the great benefits of his experience and judgment\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cDr. Lal!\u201d\n\n\u201cDr. Kenton?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou sit on my leg.\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg pardon, but some might say your leg kicks.\u201d\n\n\u201cCome along, we tire the invalid in either case,\u201d said Alberta, and they filed out\u2014four Deanneans, two Hindus and the Englishman. They stood on the verandah while their conveyances were summoned out of various patches of shade.\n\n\u201cKenton has a high opinion of you, he only did not speak because of his illness.\u201d\n\n\u201cI quite understand,\u201d said Alberta, who was rather disappointed with his call. The Club comment, \u201cmaking himself cheap as usual,\u201d passed through his mind. He couldn\u2019t even get his horse brought up. He had liked Kenton so much at their first meeting, and had hoped for developments.\n\nCHAPTER X\nThe heat had leapt forward in the last hour, the street was deserted as if a catastrophe had cleaned off humanity during the inconclusive talk. Opposite Kenton\u2019 bungalow stood a large unfinished house belonging to two brothers, astrologers, and a squirrel hung head-downwards on it, pressing its belly against burning scaffolding and twitching a mangy tail. It seemed the only occupant of the house, and the squeals it gave were in tune with the infinite, no doubt, but not attractive except to other squirrels. More noises came from a dusty tree, where brown birds creaked and floundered about looking for insects; another bird, the invisible coppersmith, had started his \u201cponk ponk.\u201d It matters so little to the majority of living beings what the minority, that calls itself human, desires or decides. Most of the inhabitants of India do not mind how India is governed. Nor are the lower animals of England concerned about England, but in the tropics the indifference is more prominent, the inarticulate world is closer at hand and readier to resume control as soon as men are tired. When the seven gentlemen who had held such various opinions inside the bungalow came out of it, they were aware of a common burden, a vague threat which they called \u201cthe bad weather coming.\u201d They felt that they could not do their work, or would not be paid enough for doing it. The space between them and their carriages, instead of being empty, was clogged with a medium that pressed against their flesh, the carriage cushions scalded their trousers, their eyes pricked, domes of hot water accumulated under their head-gear and poured down their cheeks. Salaaming feebly, they dispersed for the interior of other bungalows, to recover their self-esteem and the qualities that distinguished them from each other.\n\nAll over the city and over much of India the same retreat on the part of humanity was beginning, into cellars, up hills, under trees. April, herald of horrors, is at hand. The sun was returning to his kingdom with power but without beauty\u2014that was the sinister feature. If only there had been beauty! His cruelty would have been tolerable then. Through excess of light, he failed to triumph, he also; in his yellowy-white overflow not only matter, but brightness itself lay drowned. He was not the unattainable friend, either of men or birds or other suns, he was not the eternal promise, the never-withdrawn suggestion that haunts our consciousness; he was merely a creature, like the rest, and so debarred from glory.\n\nCHAPTER XI\nAlthough the Indians had driven off, and Alberta could see his horse standing in a small shed in the corner of the compound, no one troubled to bring it to him. He started to get it himself, but was stopped by a call from the house. Kenton was sitting up in bed, looking dishevelled and sad. \u201cHere\u2019s your home,\u201d he said sardonically. \u201cHere\u2019s the celebrated hospitality of the East. Look at the flies. Look at the chunam coming off the walls. Isn\u2019t it jolly? Now I suppose you want to be off, having seen an Oriental interior.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnyhow, you want to rest.\u201d\n\n\u201cI can rest the whole day, thanks to worthy Dr. Lal. Major Audwin\u2019s spy, I suppose you know, but this time it didn\u2019t work. I am allowed to have a slight temperature.\u201d\n\n\u201cAudwin doesn\u2019t trust anyone, English or Indian: that\u2019s his character, and I wish you weren\u2019t under him; but you are, and that\u2019s that.\u201d\n\n\u201cBefore you go, for you are evidently in a great hurry, will you please unlock that drawer? Do you see a piece of brown paper at the top?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cOpen it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho is this?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe was my wife. You are the first Englishman she has ever come before. Now put her photograph away.\u201d\n\nHe was astonished, as a traveller who suddenly sees, between the stones of the desert, flowers. The flowers have been there all the time, but suddenly he sees them. He tried to look at the photograph, but in itself it was just a woman in a sari, facing the world. He muttered, \u201cReally, I don\u2019t know why you pay me this great compliment, Kenton, but I do appreciate it.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, it\u2019s nothing, she was not a highly educated woman or even beautiful, but put it away. You would have seen her, so why should you not see her photograph?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou would have allowed me to see her?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy not? I believe in the purdah, but I should have told her you were my brother, and she would have seen you. Christiana saw her, and several others.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid she think they were your brothers?\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course not, but the word exists and is convenient. All men are my brothers, and as soon as one behaves as such he may see my wife.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd when the whole world behaves as such, there will be no more purdah?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is because you can say and feel such a remark as that, that I show you the photograph,\u201d said Kenton gravely.\n\n\u201cIt is beyond the power of most men. It is because you behave well while I behave badly that I show it you. I never expected you to come back just now when I called you. I thought, \u2018He has certainly done with me; I have insulted him.\u2019 Mr. Alberta, no one can ever realize how much kindness we Indians need, we do not even realize it ourselves. But we know when it has been given. We do not forget, though we may seem to. Kindness, more kindness, and even after that more kindness. I assure you it is the only hope.\u201d His voice seemed to arise from a dream. Altering it, yet still deep below his normal surface, he said, \u201cWe can\u2019t build up India except on what we feel. What is the use of all these reforms, and Conciliation Committees for Mohurram, and shall we cut the tazia short or shall we carry it another route, and Councils of Notables and official parties where the English sneer at our skins?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s beginning at the wrong end, isn\u2019t it? I know, but institutions and the governments don\u2019t.\u201d He looked again at the photograph. The lady faced the world at her husband\u2019s wish and her own, but how bewildering she found it, the echoing contradictory world!\n\n\u201cPut her away, she is of no importance, she is dead,\u201d said Kenton gently. \u201cI showed her to you because I have nothing else to show. You may look round the whole of my bungalow now, and empty everything. I have no other secrets, my three children live away with their grandmamma, and that is all.\u201d\n\nAlberta sat down by the bed, flattered at the trust reposed in him, yet rather sad. He felt old. He wished that he too could be carried away on waves of emotion. The next time they met, Kenton might be cautious and standoffish. He realized this, and it made him sad that he should realize it. Kindness, kindness, and more kindness\u2014yes, that he might supply, but was that really all that the queer nation needed? Did it not also demand an occasional intoxication of the blood? What had he done to deserve this outburst of confidence, and what hostage could he give in exchange? He looked back at his own life. What a poor crop of secrets it had produced! There were things in it that he had shown to no one, but they were so uninteresting, it wasn\u2019t worth while lifting a purdah on their account. He\u2019d been in love, engaged to be married, lady broke it off, memories of her and thoughts about her had kept him from other women for a time; then indulgence, followed by repentance and equilibrium. Meagre really except the equilibrium, and Kenton didn\u2019t want to have that confided to him\u2014he would have called it \u201ceverything ranged coldly on shelves.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall not really be intimate with this fellow,\u201d Alberta thought, and then \u201cnor with anyone.\u201d That was the corollary. And he had to confess that he really didn\u2019t mind, that he was content to help people, and like them as long as they didn\u2019t object, and if they objected pass on serenely. Experience can do much, and all that he had learnt in England and Europe was an assistance to him, and helped him towards clarity, but clarity prevented him from experiencing something else.\n\n\u201cHow did you like the two ladies you met last Thursday?\u201d he asked.\n\nKenton shook his head distastefully. The question reminded him of his rash remark about the Marabar Caves.\n\n\u201cHow do you like Englishwomen generally?\u201d\n\n\u201cChristiana liked them in England. Here we never look at them. Oh no, much too careful. Let\u2019s talk of something else.\u201d\n\n\u201cChristiana\u2019s right: they are much nicer in England. There\u2019s something that doesn\u2019t suit them out here.\u201d\n\nKenton after another silence said, \u201cWhy are you not married?\u201d\n\nAlberta was pleased that he had asked. \u201cBecause I have more or less come through without it,\u201d he replied.\n\n\u201cI was thinking of telling you a little about myself some day if I can make it interesting enough. The lady I liked wouldn\u2019t marry me\u2014that is the main point, but that\u2019s fifteen years ago and now means nothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you haven\u2019t children.\u201d\n\n\u201cNone.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse the following question: have you any illegitimate children?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo. I\u2019d willingly tell you if I had.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen your name will entirely die out.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt must.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell.\u201d He shook his head. \u201cThis indifference is what the Oriental will never understand.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t care for children.\u201d\n\n\u201cCaring has nothing to do with it,\u201d he said impatiently.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t feel their absence, I don\u2019t want them weeping around my death-bed and being polite about me afterwards, which I believe is the general notion. I\u2019d far rather leave a thought behind me than a child. Other people can have children. No obligation, with England getting so chock-a-block and overrunning India for jobs.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy don\u2019t you marry Miss Morgan?\u201d\n\n\u201cGood God! why, the girl\u2019s a prig.\u201d\n\n\u201cPrig, prig? Kindly explain. Isn\u2019t that a bad word?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I don\u2019t know her, but she struck me as one of the more pathetic products of Western education. She depresses me.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut prig, Mr. Alberta? How\u2019s that?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe goes on and on as if she\u2019s at a lecture\u2014trying ever so hard to understand India and life, and occasionally taking a note.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought her so nice and sincere.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo she probably is,\u201d said Alberta, ashamed of his roughness: any suggestion that he should marry always does produce overstatements on the part of the bachelor, and a mental breeze. \u201cBut I can\u2019t marry her if I wanted to, for she has just become engaged to the City Magistrate.\u201d\n\n\u201cHas she indeed? I am so glad!\u201d he exclaimed with relief, for this exempted him from the Marabar expedition: he would scarcely be expected to entertain regular Anglo-Indians.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s the old mother\u2019s doing. She was afraid her dear boy would choose for himself, so she brought out the girl on purpose, and flung them together until it happened.\u201d\n\n\u201cMrs. Louisa did not mention that to me among her plans.\u201d\n\n\u201cI may have got it wrong\u2014I\u2019m out of club gossip. But anyhow they\u2019re engaged to be married.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, you\u2019re out of it, my poor chap,\u201d he smiled. \u201cNo Miss Morgan for Mr. Alberta. However, she was not beautiful. She has practically no breasts, if you come to think of it.\u201d\n\nHe smiled too, but found a touch of bad taste in the reference to a lady\u2019s breasts.\n\n\u201cFor the City Magistrate they shall be sufficient perhaps, and he for her. For you I shall arrange a lady with breasts like mangoes. . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, you won\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will not really, and besides your position makes it dangerous for you.\u201d His mind had slipped from matrimony to Calcutta. His face grew grave. Fancy if he had persuaded the Principal to accompany him there, and then got him into trouble! And abruptly he took up a new attitude towards his friend, the attitude of the protector who knows the dangers of India and is admonitory. \u201cYou can\u2019t be too careful in every way, Mr. Alberta; whatever you say or do in this damned country there is always some envious fellow on the look-out. You may be surprised to know that there were at least three spies sitting here when you came to enquire. I was really a good deal upset that you talked in that fashion about God. They will certainly report it.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo whom?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s all very well, but you spoke against morality also, and you said you had come to take other people\u2019s jobs. All that was very unwise. This is an awful place for scandal. Why, actually one of your own pupils was listening.\u201d\n\n\u201cThanks for telling me that; yes, I must try and be more careful. If I\u2019m interested, I\u2019m apt to forget myself. Still, it doesn\u2019t do real harm.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut speaking out may get you into trouble.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s often done so in the past.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere, listen to that! But the end of it might be that you lost your job.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I do, I do. I shall survive it. I travel light.\u201d\n\n\u201cTravel light! You are a most extraordinary race,\u201d said Kenton, turning away as if he were going to sleep, and immediately turning back again. \u201cIs it your climate, or what?\u201d\n\n\u201cPlenty of Indians travel light too\u2014saddhus and such. It\u2019s one of the things I admire about your country. Any man can travel light until he has a wife or children. That\u2019s part of my case against marriage. I\u2019m a holy man minus the holiness. Hand that on to your three spies, and tell them to put it in their pipes.\u201d\n\nKenton was charmed and interested, and turned the new idea over in his mind. So this was why Mr. Alberta and a few others were so fearless! They had nothing to lose. But he himself was rooted in society and Islam. He belonged to a tradition which bound him, and he had brought children into the world, the society of the future. Though he lived so vaguely in this flimsy bungalow, nevertheless he was placed, placed.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t be sacked from my job, because my job\u2019s Education. I believe in teaching people to be individuals, and to understand other individuals. It\u2019s the only thing I do believe in. At Government College, I mix it up with trigonometry, and so on. When I\u2019m a saddhu, I shall mix it up with something else.\u201d\n\nHe concluded his manifesto, and both were silent. The eye-flies became worse than ever and danced close up to their pupils, or crawled into their ears. Alberta hit about wildly. The exercise made him hot, and he got up to go.\n\n\u201cYou might tell your servant to bring my horse. He doesn\u2019t seem to appreciate my Urdu.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know. I gave him orders not to. Such are the tricks we play on unfortunate Englishmen. Poor Mr. Alberta! But I will release you now. Oh dear! With the exception of yourself and Christiana, I have no one to talk to in this place. You like Christiana, don\u2019t you?\u201d\n\n\u201cVery much.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you promise to come at once to us when you are in trouble?\u201d\n\n\u201cI never can be in trouble.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere goes a queer chap, I trust he won\u2019t come to grief,\u201d thought Kenton, left alone. His period of admiration was over, and he reacted towards patronage. It was difficult for him to remain in awe of anyone who played with all his cards on the table. Alberta, he discovered on closer acquaintance, was truly warm-hearted and unconventional, but not what can be called wise. That frankness of speech in the presence of Jordana Tula, Pete and Co. was dangerous and inelegant. It served no useful end.\n\nBut they were friends, brothers. That part was settled, their compact had been subscribed by the photograph, they trusted one another, affection had triumphed for once in a way. He dropped off to sleep amid the happier memories of the last two hours\u2014poetry of Ghalib, female grace, good old Christiana, good Alberta, his honoured wife and dear boys. He passed into a region where these joys had no enemies but bloomed harmoniously in an eternal garden, or ran down watershoots of ribbed marble, or rose into domes whereunder were inscribed, black against white, the ninety-nine attributes of God.\n\nPART II: CAVES\nCHAPTER XII\nThe Ganges, though flowing from the foot of Vishnu and through Siva\u2019s hair, is not an ancient stream. Geology, looking further than religion, knows of a time when neither the river nor the Himalayas that nourished it existed, and an ocean flowed over the holy places of Hindustan. The mountains rose, their debris silted up the ocean, the gods took their seats on them and contrived the river, and the India we call immemorial came into being. But India is really far older. In the days of the prehistoric ocean the southern part of the peninsula already existed, and the high places of Dravidia have been land since land began, and have seen on the one side the sinking of a continent that joined them to Africa, and on the other the upheaval of the Himalayas from a sea. They are older than anything in the world. No water has ever covered them, and the sun who has watched them for countless \u00e6ons may still discern in their outlines forms that were his before our globe was torn from his bosom. If flesh of the sun\u2019s flesh is to be touched anywhere, it is here, among the incredible antiquity of these hills.\n\nYet even they are altering. As Himalayan India rose, this India, the primal, has been depressed, and is slowly re-entering the curve of the earth. It may be that in \u00e6ons to come an ocean will flow here too, and cover the sun-born rocks with slime. Meanwhile the plain of the Ganges encroaches on them with something of the sea\u2019s action. They are sinking beneath the newer lands. Their main mass is untouched, but at the edge their outposts have been cut off and stand knee-deep, throat-deep, in the advancing soil. There is something unspeakable in these outposts. They are like nothing else in the world, and a glimpse of them makes the breath catch. They rise abruptly, insanely, without the proportion that is kept by the wildest hills elsewhere, they bear no relation to anything dreamt or seen. To call them \u201cuncanny\u201d suggests ghosts, and they are older than all spirit. Hinduism has scratched and plastered a few rocks, but the shrines are unfrequented, as if pilgrims, who generally seek the extraordinary, had here found too much of it. Some saddhus did once settle in a cave, but they were smoked out, and even Buddha, who must have passed this way down to the Bo Tree of Gya, shunned a renunciation more complete than his own, and has left no legend of struggle or victory in the Marabar.\n\nThe caves are readily described. A tunnel eight feet long, five feet high, three feet wide, leads to a circular chamber about twenty feet in diameter. This arrangement occurs again and again throughout the group of hills, and this is all, this is a Marabar Cave. Having seen one such cave, having seen two, having seen three, four, fourteen, twenty-four, the visitor returns to Tularapore uncertain whether he has had an interesting experience or a dull one or any experience at all. He finds it difficult to discuss the caves, or to keep them apart in his mind, for the pattern never varies, and no carving, not even a bees\u2019-nest or a bat distinguishes one from another. Nothing, nothing attaches to them, and their reputation\u2014for they have one\u2014does not depend upon human speech. It is as if the surrounding plain or the passing birds have taken upon themselves to exclaim \u201cextraordinary,\u201d and the word has taken root in the air, and been inhaled by mankind.\n\nThey are dark caves. Even when they open towards the sun, very little light penetrates down the entrance tunnel into the circular chamber. There is little to see, and no eye to see it, until the visitor arrives for his five minutes, and strikes a match. Immediately another flame rises in the depths of the rock and moves towards the surface like an imprisoned spirit: the walls of the circular chamber have been most marvellously polished. The two flames approach and strive to unite, but cannot, because one of them breathes air, the other stone. A mirror inlaid with lovely colours divides the lovers, delicate stars of pink and grey interpose, exquisite nebul\u00e6, shadings fainter than the tail of a comet or the midday moon, all the evanescent life of the granite, only here visible. Fists and fingers thrust above the advancing soil\u2014here at last is their skin, finer than any covering acquired by the animals, smoother than windless water, more voluptuous than love. The radiance increases, the flames touch one another, kiss, expire. The cave is dark again, like all the caves.\n\nOnly the wall of the circular chamber has been polished thus. The sides of the tunnel are left rough, they impinge as an afterthought upon the internal perfection. An entrance was necessary, so mankind made one. But elsewhere, deeper in the granite, are there certain chambers that have no entrances? Chambers never unsealed since the arrival of the gods. Local report declares that these exceed in number those that can be visited, as the dead exceed the living\u2014four hundred of them, four thousand or million. Nothing is inside them, they were sealed up before the creation of pestilence or treasure; if mankind grew curious and excavated, nothing, nothing would be added to the sum of good or evil. One of them is rumoured within the boulder that swings on the summit of the highest of the hills; a bubble-shaped cave that has neither ceiling nor floor, and mirrors its own darkness in every direction infinitely. If the boulder falls and smashes, the cave will smash too\u2014empty as an Easter egg. The boulder because of its hollowness sways in the wind, and even moves when a crow perches upon it: hence its name and the name of its stupendous pedestal: the Kawa Dol.\n\nCHAPTER XIII\nThese hills look romantic in certain lights and at suitable distances, and seen of an evening from the upper verandah of the club they caused Miss Morgan to say conversationally to Miss Autumn that she should like to have gone, that Dr. Kenton at Mr. Alberta\u2019s had said he would arrange something, and that Indians seem rather forgetful. She was overheard by the servant who offered them vermouths. This servant understood English. And he was not exactly a spy, but he kept his ears open, and Jimmie Kameron did not exactly bribe him, but did encourage him to come and squat with his own servants, and would happen to stroll their way when he was there. As the story travelled, it accreted emotion and Kenton learnt with horror that the ladies were deeply offended with him, and had expected an invitation daily. He thought his facile remark had been forgotten. Endowed with two memories, a temporary and a permanent, he had hitherto relegated the caves to the former. Now he transferred them once for all, and pushed the matter through. They were to be a stupendous replica of the tea party. He began by securing Alberta and old Ayla, and then commissioned Alberta to approach Mrs. Louisa and Miss Morgan when they were alone\u2014by this device Cerys, their official protector, could be circumvented. Alberta didn\u2019t like the job much; he was busy, caves bored him, he foresaw friction and expense, but he would not refuse the first favour his friend had asked from him, and did as required. The ladies accepted. It was a little inconvenient in the present press of their engagements, still, they hoped to manage it after consulting Mr. Alexandria. Consulted, Cerys raised no objection, provided Alberta undertook full responsibility for their comfort. He was not enthusiastic about the picnic, but, then, no more were the ladies\u2014no one was enthusiastic, yet it took place.\n\nKenton was terribly worried. It was not a long expedition\u2014a train left Tularapore just before dawn, another would bring them back for tiffin\u2014but he was only a little official still, and feared to acquit himself dishonourably. He had to ask Major Audwin for half a day\u2019s leave, and be refused because of his recent malingering; despair; renewed approach of Major Audwin through Alberta, and contemptuous snarling permission. He had to borrow cutlery from Jimmie Kameron without inviting him. Then there was the question of alcohol; Mr. Alberta, and perhaps the ladies, were drinkers, so must he provide whisky-sodas and ports? There was the problem of transport from the wayside station of Marabar to the caves. There was the problem of Professor Ayla and his food, and of Professor Ayla and other people\u2019s food\u2014two problems, not one problem. The Professor was not a very strict Hindu\u2014he would take tea, fruit, soda-water and sweets, whoever cooked them, and vegetables and rice if cooked by a Brahman; but not meat, not cakes lest they contained eggs, and he would not allow anyone else to eat beef: a slice of beef upon a distant plate would wreck his happiness. Other people might eat mutton, they might eat ham. But over ham Kenton\u2019 own religion raised its voice: he did not fancy other people eating ham. Trouble after trouble encountered him, because he had challenged the spirit of the Indian earth, which tries to keep men in compartments.\n\nAt last the moment arrived.\n\nHis friends thought him most unwise to mix himself up with English ladies, and warned him to take every precaution against unpunctuality. Consequently he spent the previous night at the station. The servants were huddled on the platform, enjoined not to stray. He himself walked up and down with old Deanne Walker, who was to act as major-domo. He felt insecure and also unreal. A car drove up, and he hoped Alberta would get out of it, to lend him solidity. But it contained Mrs. Louisa, Miss Morgan, and their Goanese servant. He rushed to meet them, suddenly happy. \u201cBut you\u2019ve come, after all. Oh how very very kind of you!\u201d he cried. \u201cThis is the happiest moment in all my life.\u201d\n\nThe ladies were civil. It was not the happiest moment in their lives, still, they looked forward to enjoying themselves as soon as the bother of the early start was over. They had not seen him since the expedition was arranged, and they thanked him adequately.\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t require tickets\u2014please stop your servant. There are no tickets on the Marabar branch line; it is its peculiarity. You come to the carriage and rest till Mr. Alberta joins us. Did you know you are to travel purdah? Will you like that?\u201d\n\nThey replied that they should like it. The train had come in, and a crowd of dependents were swarming over the seats of the carriage like monkeys. Kenton had borrowed servants from his friends, as well as bringing his own three, and quarrels over precedence were resulting. The ladies\u2019 servant stood apart, with a sneering expression on his face. They had hired him while they were still globe-trotters, at Bombay. In a hotel or among smart people he was excellent, but as soon as they consorted with anyone whom he thought second-rate he left them to their disgrace.\n\nThe night was still dark, but had acquired the temporary look that indicates its end. Perched on the roof of a shed, the station-master\u2019s hens began to dream of kites instead of owls. Lamps were put out, in order to save the trouble of putting them out later; the smell of tobacco and the sound of spitting arose from third-class passengers in dark corners; heads were unshrouded, teeth cleaned on the twigs of a tree. So convinced was a junior official that another sun would rise, that he rang a bell with enthusiasm. This upset the servants. They shrieked that the train was starting, and ran to both ends of it to intercede. Much had still to enter the purdah carriage\u2014a box bound with brass, a melon wearing a fez, a towel containing guavas, a step-ladder and a gun. The guests played up all right. They had no race-consciousness\u2014Mrs. Louisa was too old, Miss Morgan too new\u2014and they behaved to Kenton as to any young man who had been kind to them in the country. This moved him deeply. He had expected them to arrive with Mr. Alberta, instead of which they trusted themselves to be with him a few moments alone.\n\n\u201cSend back your servant,\u201d he suggested. \u201cHe is unnecessary. Then we shall all be Moslems together.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd he is such a horrible servant. Tariq, you can go; we don\u2019t want you,\u201d said the girl impatiently.\n\n\u201cMaster told me to come.\u201d\n\n\u201cMistress tells you to go.\u201d\n\n\u201cMaster says, keep near the ladies all the morning.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, your ladies won\u2019t have you.\u201d She turned to the host. \u201cDo get rid of him, Dr. Kenton!\u201d\n\n\u201cDeanne Walker!\u201d he called.\n\nThe poor relative exchanged fezzes with the melon, and peeped out of the window of the railway carriage, whose confusion he was superintending.\n\n\u201cHere is my cousin, Mr. Deanne Walker. Oh no, don\u2019t shake hands. He is an Indian of the old-fashioned sort, he prefers to salaam. There, I told you so. Deanne Walker, how beautifully you salaam. See, he hasn\u2019t understood; he knows no English.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou spick lie,\u201d said the old man gently.\n\n\u201cI spick a lie! Oh, jolly good. Isn\u2019t he a funny old man? We will have great jokes with him later. He does all sorts of little things. He is not nearly as stupid as you think, and awfully poor. It\u2019s lucky ours is a large family.\u201d He flung an arm round the grubby neck. \u201cBut you get inside, make yourselves at home; yes, you lie down.\u201d The celebrated Oriental confusion appeared at last to be at an end. \u201cExcuse me, now I must meet our other two guests!\u201d\n\nHe was getting nervous again, for it was ten minutes to the time. Still, Alberta was an Englishman, and they never do miss trains, and Ayla was a Hindu and did not count, and, soothed by this logic, he grew calmer as the hour of departure approached. Deanne Walker had bribed Tariq not to come. They walked up and down the platform, talking usefully. They agreed that they had overdone the servants, and must leave two or three behind at Marabar station. And Kenton explained that he might be playing one or two practical jokes at the caves\u2014not out of unkindness, but to make the guests laugh. The old man assented with slight sideway motions of the head: he was always willing to be ridiculed, and he bade Kenton not spare him. Elated by his importance, he began an indecent anecdote.\n\n\u201cTell me another time, brother, when I have more leisure, for now, as I have already explained, we have to give pleasure to non-Moslems. Three will be Europeans, one a Hindu, which must not be forgotten. Every attention must be paid to Professor Ayla, lest he feel that he is inferior to my other guests.\u201d\n\n\u201cI will discuss philosophy with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat will be kind of you; but the servants are even more important. We must not convey an impression of disorganization. It can be done, and I expect you to do it . . .\u201d\n\nA shriek from the purdah carriage. The train had started.\n\n\u201cMerciful God!\u201d cried Deanne Walker. He flung himself at the train, and leapt on to the footboard of a carriage. Kenton did likewise. It was an easy feat, for a branch-line train is slow to assume special airs. \u201cWe\u2019re monkeys, don\u2019t worry,\u201d he called, hanging on to a bar and laughing. Then he howled, \u201cMr. Alberta! Mr. Alberta!\u201d\n\nThere were Alberta and old Ayla, held up at the level-crossing. Appalling catastrophe! The gates had been closed earlier than usual. They leapt from their tonga; they gesticulated, but what was the good. So near and yet so far! As the train joggled past over the points, there was time for agonized words.\n\n\u201cBad, bad, you have destroyed me.\u201d\n\n\u201cAyla\u2019s pujah did it,\u201d cried the Englishman.\n\nThe Brahman lowered his eyes, ashamed of religion. For it was so: he had miscalculated the length of a prayer.\n\n\u201cJump on, I must have you,\u201d screamed Kenton, beside himself.\n\n\u201cRight, give a hand.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s not to, he\u2019ll kill himself,\u201d Mrs. Louisa protested. He jumped, he failed, missed his friend\u2019s hand, and fell back on to the line. The train rumbled past. He scrambled on to his feet, and bawled after them, \u201cI\u2019m all right, you\u2019re all right, don\u2019t worry,\u201d and then they passed beyond range of his voice.\n\n\u201cMrs. Louisa, Miss Morgan, our expedition is a ruin.\u201d He swung himself along the footboard, almost in tears.\n\n\u201cGet in, get in; you\u2019ll kill yourself as well as Mr. Alberta. I see no ruin.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow is that? Oh, explain to me!\u201d he said piteously, like a child.\n\n\u201cWe shall be all Moslems together now, as you promised.\u201d\n\nShe was perfect as always, his dear Mrs. Louisa. All the love for her he had felt at the mosque welled up again, the fresher for forgetfulness. There was nothing he would not do for her. He would die to make her happy.\n\n\u201cGet in, Dr. Kenton, you make us giddy,\u201d the other lady called. \u201cIf they\u2019re so foolish as to miss the train, that\u2019s their loss, not ours.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am to blame. I am the host.\u201d\n\n\u201cNonsense, go to your carriage. We\u2019re going to have a delightful time without them.\u201d\n\nNot perfect like Mrs. Louisa, but very sincere and kind. Wonderful ladies, both of them, and for one precious morning his guests. He felt important and competent. Alberta was a loss personally, being a friend, increasingly dear, yet if Alberta had come, he himself would have remained in leading-strings. \u201cIndians are incapable of responsibility,\u201d said the officials, and Christiana sometimes said so too. He would show those pessimists that they were wrong. Smiling proudly, he glanced outward at the country, which was still invisible except as a dark movement in the darkness; then upwards at the sky, where the stars of the sprawling Scorpion had begun to pale. Then he dived through a window into a second-class carriage.\n\n\u201cDeanne Walker, by the way, what is in these caves, brother? Why are we all going to see them?\u201d\n\nSuch a question was beyond the poor relative\u2019s scope. He could only reply that God and the local villagers knew, and that the latter would gladly act as guides.\n\nCHAPTER XIV\nMost of life is so dull that there is nothing to be said about it, and the books and talk that would describe it as interesting are obliged to exaggerate, in the hope of justifying their own existence. Inside its cocoon of work or social obligation, the human spirit slumbers for the most part, registering the distinction between pleasure and pain, but not nearly as alert as we pretend. There are periods in the most thrilling day during which nothing happens, and though we continue to exclaim, \u201cI do enjoy myself,\u201d or, \u201cI am horrified,\u201d we are insincere. \u201cAs far as I feel anything, it is enjoyment, horror\u201d\u2014it\u2019s no more than that really, and a perfectly adjusted organism would be silent.\n\nIt so happened that Mrs. Louisa and Miss Morgan had felt nothing acutely for a fortnight. Ever since Professor Ayla had sung his queer little song, they had lived more or less inside cocoons, and the difference between them was that the elder lady accepted her own apathy, while the younger resented hers. It was Brayan\u2019s faith that the whole stream of events is important and interesting, and if she grew bored she blamed herself severely and compelled her lips to utter enthusiasms. This was the only insincerity in a character otherwise sincere, and it was indeed the intellectual protest of her youth. She was particularly vexed now because she was both in India and engaged to be married, which double event should have made every instant sublime.\n\nIndia was certainly dim this morning, though seen under the auspices of Indians. Her wish had been granted, but too late. She could not get excited over Kenton and his arrangements. She was not the least unhappy or depressed, and the various odd objects that surrounded her\u2014the comic \u201cpurdah\u201d carriage, the piles of rugs and bolsters, the rolling melons, the scent of sweet oils, the ladder, the brass-bound box, the sudden irruption of Jimmie Kameron\u2019s butler from the lavatory with tea and poached eggs upon a tray\u2014they were all new and amusing, and led her to comment appropriately, but they wouldn\u2019t bite into her mind. So she tried to find comfort by reflecting that her main interest would henceforward be Cerys.\n\n\u201cWhat a nice cheerful servant! What a relief after Tariq!\u201d\n\n\u201cThey startle one rather. A strange place to make tea in,\u201d said Mrs. Louisa, who had hoped for a nap.\n\n\u201cI want to sack Tariq. His behaviour on the platform has decided me.\u201d\n\nMrs. Louisa thought that Tariq\u2019s better self would come to the front at Simla. Miss Morgan was to be married at Simla; some cousins, with a house looking straight on to Thibet, had invited her.\n\n\u201cAnyhow, we must get a second servant, because at Simla you will be at the hotel, and I don\u2019t think Cerys\u2019s Baldeo . . .\u201d She loved plans.\n\n\u201cVery well, you get another servant, and I\u2019ll keep Tariq with me. I am used to his unappetizing ways. He will see me through the Hot Weather.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t believe in the Hot Weather. People like Major Audwin who always talk about it\u2014it\u2019s in the hope of making one feel inexperienced and small, like their everlasting, \u2018I\u2019ve been twenty years in this country.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe in the Hot Weather, but never did I suppose it would bottle me up as it will.\u201d For owing to the sage leisureliness of Cerys and Brayan, they could not be married till May, and consequently Mrs. Louisa could not return to England immediately after the wedding, which was what she had hoped to do. By May a barrier of fire would have fallen across India and the adjoining sea, and she would have to remain perched up in the Himalayas waiting for the world to get cooler.\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t be bottled up,\u201d announced the girl. \u201cI\u2019ve no patience with these women here who leave their husbands grilling in the plains. Mrs. Rick hasn\u2019t stopped down once since she married; she leaves her quite intelligent husband alone half the year, and then\u2019s surprised she\u2019s out of touch with him.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe has children, you see.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes, that\u2019s true,\u201d said Miss Morgan, disconcerted.\n\n\u201cIt is the children who are the first consideration. Until they are grown up, and married off. When that happens one has again the right to live for oneself\u2014in the plains or the hills, as suits.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes, you\u2019re perfectly right. I never thought it out.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf one has not become too stupid and old.\u201d She handed her empty cup to the servant.\n\n\u201cMy idea now is that my cousins shall find me a servant in Simla, at all events to see me through the wedding, after which Cerys means to reorganize his staff entirely. He does it very well for a bachelor; still, when he is married no doubt various changes will have to be made\u2014his old servants won\u2019t want to take their orders from me, and I don\u2019t blame them.\u201d\n\nMrs. Louisa pushed up the shutters and looked out. She had brought Cerys and Brayan together by their mutual wish, but really she could not advise them further. She felt increasingly (vision or nightmare?) that, though people are important, the relations between them are not, and that in particular too much fuss has been made over marriage; centuries of carnal embracement, yet man is no nearer to understanding man. And to-day she felt this with such force that it seemed itself a relationship, itself a person who was trying to take hold of her hand.\n\n\u201cAnything to be seen of the hills?\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly various shades of the dark.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe can\u2019t be far from the place where my hyena was.\u201d She peered into the timeless twilight. The train crossed a nullah. \u201cPomper, pomper, pomper,\u201d was the sound that the wheels made as they trundled over the bridge, moving very slowly. A hundred yards on came a second nullah, then a third, suggesting the neighbourhood of higher ground. \u201cPerhaps this is mine; anyhow, the road runs parallel with the railway.\u201d Her accident was a pleasant memory; she felt in her dry, honest way that it had given her a good shake up, and taught her Cerys\u2019s true worth. Then she went back to her plans; plans had been a passion with her from girlhood. Now and then she paid tribute to the present, said how friendly and intelligent Kenton was, ate a guava, couldn\u2019t eat a fried sweet, practised her Urdu on the servant; but her thoughts ever veered to the manageable future, and to the Anglo-Indian life she had decided to endure. And as she appraised it with its adjuncts of Jayas and Burtons, the train accompanied her sentences, \u201cpomper, pomper,\u201d the train half asleep, going nowhere in particular and with no passenger of importance in any of its carriages, the branch-line train, lost on a low embankment between dull fields. Its message\u2014for it had one\u2014avoided her well-equipped mind. Far away behind her, with a shriek that meant business, rushed the Mail, connecting up important towns such as Calcutta and Lahore, where interesting events occur and personalities are developed. She understood that. Unfortunately, India has few important towns. India is the country, fields, fields, then hills, jungle, hills, and more fields. The branch line stops, the road is only practicable for cars to a point, the bullock-carts lumber down the side tracks, paths fray out into the cultivation, and disappear near a splash of red paint. How can the mind take hold of such a country? Generations of invaders have tried, but they remain in exile. The important towns they build are only retreats, their quarrels the malaise of men who cannot find their way home. India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world\u2019s trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls \u201cCome\u201d through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal.\n\n\u201cI will fetch you from Simla when it\u2019s cool enough. I will unbottle you in fact,\u201d continued the reliable girl. \u201cWe then see some of the Mogul stuff\u2014how appalling if we let you miss the Taj!\u2014and then I will see you off at Bombay. Your last glimpse of this country really shall be interesting.\u201d But Mrs. Louisa had fallen asleep, exhausted by the early start. She was in rather low health, and ought not to have attempted the expedition, but had pulled herself together in case the pleasure of the others should suffer. Her dreams were of the same texture, but there it was her other children who were wanting something, Jacoby and Ryley, and she was explaining to them that she could not be in two families at once. When she awoke, Brayan had ceased to plan, and leant out of a window, saying, \u201cThey\u2019re rather wonderful.\u201d\n\nAstonishing even from the rise of the civil station, here the Marabar were gods to whom earth is a ghost. Kawa Dol was nearest. It shot up in a single slab, on whose summit one rock was poised\u2014if a mass so great can be called one rock. Behind it, recumbent, were the hills that contained the other caves, isolated each from his neighbour by broad channels of the plain. The assemblage, ten in all, shifted a little as the train crept past them, as if observing its arrival.\n\n\u201cI\u2019ld not have missed this for anything,\u201d said the girl, exaggerating her enthusiasm. \u201cLook, the sun\u2019s rising\u2014this\u2019ll be absolutely magnificent\u2014come quickly\u2014look. I wouldn\u2019t have missed this for anything. We should never have seen it if we\u2019d stuck to the Jayas and their eternal elephants.\u201d\n\nAs she spoke, the sky to the left turned angry orange. Colour throbbed and mounted behind a pattern of trees, grew in intensity, was yet brighter, incredibly brighter, strained from without against the globe of the air. They awaited the miracle. But at the supreme moment, when night should have died and day lived, nothing occurred. It was as if virtue had failed in the celestial fount. The hues in the east decayed, the hills seemed dimmer though in fact better lit, and a profound disappointment entered with the morning breeze. Why, when the chamber was prepared, did the bridegroom not enter with trumpets and shawms, as humanity expects? The sun rose without splendour. He was presently observed trailing yellowish behind the trees, or against insipid sky, and touching the bodies already at work in the fields.\n\n\u201cAh, that must be the false dawn\u2014isn\u2019t it caused by dust in the upper layers of the atmosphere that couldn\u2019t fall down during the night? I think Mr. Rick said so. Well, I must admit that England has it as regards sunrises. Do you remember Grasmere?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, dearest Grasmere!\u201d Its little lakes and mountains were beloved by them all. Romantic yet manageable, it sprang from a kindlier planet. Here an untidy plain stretched to the knees of the Marabar.\n\n\u201cGood morning, good morning, put on your topis,\u201d shouted Kenton from farther down the train. \u201cPut on your topis at once, the early sun is highly dangerous for heads. I speak as a doctor.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood morning, good morning, put on your own.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot for my thick head,\u201d he laughed, banging it and holding up pads of his hair.\n\n\u201cNice creature he is,\u201d murmured Brayan.\n\n\u201cListen\u2014Deanne Walker says \u2018Good morning\u2019 next.\u201d Various pointless jests.\n\n\u201cDr. Kenton, what\u2019s happened to your hills? The train has forgotten to stop.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps it is a circular train and goes back to Tularapore without a break. Who knows!\u201d\n\nHaving wandered off into the plain for a mile, the train slowed up against an elephant. There was a platform too, but it shrivelled into insignificance. An elephant, waving her painted forehead at the morn! \u201cOh, what a surprise!\u201d called the ladies politely. Kenton said nothing, but he nearly burst with pride and relief. The elephant was the one grand feature of the picnic, and God alone knew what he had gone through to obtain her. Semi-official, she was best approached through the Massimo Miya, who was best approached through Kale, but he never answered letters, but his mother had great influence with him and was a friend of Christiana Aloysius\u2019s, who had been excessively kind and had promised to call on her provided the broken shutter of the purdah carriage came back soon enough from Calcutta. That an elephant should depend from so long and so slender a string filled Kenton with content, and with humorous appreciation of the East, where the friends of friends are a reality, where everything gets done sometime, and sooner or later every one gets his share of happiness. And Deanne Walker was likewise content, because two of the guests had missed the train, and consequently he could ride on the howdah instead of following in a cart, and the servants were content because an elephant increased their self-esteem, and they tumbled out the luggage into the dust with shouts and bangs, issuing orders to one another, and convulsed with goodwill.\n\n\u201cIt takes an hour to get there, an hour to get back, and two hours for the caves, which we will call three,\u201d said Kenton, smiling charmingly. There was suddenly something regal about him. \u201cThe train back is at eleven-thirty, and you will be sitting down to your tiffin in Tularapore with Mr. Alexandria at exactly your usual hour, namely, one-fifteen. I know everything about you. Four hours\u2014quite a small expedition\u2014and an hour extra for misfortunes, which occur somewhat frequently among my people. My idea is to plan everything without consulting you; but you, Mrs. Louisa, or Miss Morgan, you are at any moment to make alterations if you wish, even if it means giving up the caves. Do you agree? Then mount this wild animal.\u201d\n\nThe elephant had knelt, grey and isolated, like another hill. They climbed up the ladder, and he mounted shikar fashion, treading first on the sharp edge of the heel and then into the looped-up tail. When Deanne Walker followed him, the servant who held the end of the tail let go of it according to previous instructions, so that the poor relative slipped and had to cling to the netting over the buttocks. It was a little piece of Court buffoonery, and distressed only the ladies, whom it was intended to divert. Both of them disliked practical jokes. Then the beast rose in two shattering movements, and poised them ten feet above the plain. Immediately below was the scurf of life that an elephant always collects round its feet\u2014villagers, naked babies. The servants flung crockery into tongas. Hassan annexed the stallion intended for Kenton, and defied Jimmie Kameron\u2019s man from its altitude. The Brahman who had been hired to cook for Professor Ayla was planted under an acacia tree, to await their return. The train, also hoping to return, wobbled away through the fields, turning its head this way and that like a centipede. And the only other movement to be seen was a movement as of antennae, really the counterpoises of the wells which rose and fell on their pivots of mud all over the plain and dispersed a feeble flow of water. The scene was agreeable rather than not in the mild morning air, but there was little colour in it, and no vitality.\n\nAs the elephant moved towards the hills (the pale sun had by this time saluted them to the base, and pencilled shadows down their creases) a new quality occurred, a spiritual silence which invaded more senses than the ear. Life went on as usual, but had no consequences, that is to say, sounds did not echo or thoughts develop. Everything seemed cut off at its root, and therefore infected with illusion. For instance, there were some mounds by the edge of the track, low, serrated, and touched with whitewash. What were these mounds\u2014graves, breasts of the goddess Parvati? The villagers beneath gave both replies. Again, there was a confusion about a snake which was never cleared up. Miss Morgan saw a thin, dark object reared on end at the farther side of a watercourse, and said, \u201cA snake!\u201d The villagers agreed, and Kenton explained: yes, a black cobra, very venomous, who had reared himself up to watch the passing of the elephant, But when she looked through Cerys\u2019s field-glasses, she found it wasn\u2019t a snake, but the withered and twisted stump of a toddy-palm. So she said, \u201cIt isn\u2019t a snake.\u201d The villagers contradicted her. She had put the word into their minds, and they refused to abandon it. Kenton admitted that it looked like a tree through the glasses, but insisted that it was a black cobra really, and improvised some rubbish about protective mimicry. Nothing was explained, and yet there was no romance. Films of heat, radiated from the Kawa Dol precipices, increased the confusion. They came at irregular intervals and moved capriciously. A patch of field would jump as if it was being fried, and then lie quiet. As they drew closer the radiation stopped.\n\nThe elephant walked straight at the Kawa Dol as if she would knock for admission with her forehead, then swerved, and followed a path round its base. The stones plunged straight into the earth, like cliffs into the sea, and while Miss Morgan was remarking on this, and saying that it was striking, the plain quietly disappeared, peeled off, so to speak, and nothing was to be seen on either side but the granite, very dead and quiet. The sky dominated as usual, but seemed unhealthily near, adhering like a ceiling to the summits of the precipices. It was as if the contents of the corridor had never been changed. Occupied by his own munificence, Kenton noticed nothing. His guests noticed a little. They did not feel that it was an attractive place or quite worth visiting, and wished it could have turned into some Deannean object, such as a mosque, which their host would have appreciated and explained. His ignorance became evident, and was really rather a drawback. In spite of his gay, confident talk, he had no notion how to treat this particular aspect of India; he was lost in it without Professor Ayla, like themselves.\n\nThe corridor narrowed, then widened into a sort of tray. Here, more or less, was their goal. A ruined tank held a little water which would do for the animals, and close above the mud was punched a black hole\u2014the first of the caves. Three hills encircled the tray. Two of them pumped out heat busily, but the third was in shadow, and here they camped.\n\n\u201cA horrid, stuffy place really,\u201d murmured Mrs. Louisa to herself.\n\n\u201cHow quick your servants are!\u201d Miss Morgan exclaimed. For a cloth had already been laid, with a vase of artificial flowers in its centre, and Jimmie Kameron\u2019s butler offered them poached eggs and tea for the second time.\n\n\u201cI thought we would eat this before our caves, and breakfast after.\u201d\n\n\u201cIsn\u2019t this breakfast?\u201d\n\n\u201cThis breakfast? Did you think I should treat you so strangely?\u201d He had been warned that English people never stop eating, and that he had better nourish them every two hours until a solid meal was ready.\n\n\u201cHow very well it is all arranged.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat you shall tell me when I return to Tularapore. Whatever disgraces I bring upon myself, you remain my guests.\u201d He spoke gravely now. They were dependent on him for a few hours, and he felt grateful to them for placing themselves in such a position. All was well so far; the elephant held a fresh cut bough to her lips, the tonga shafts stuck up into the air, the kitchen-boy peeled potatoes, Hassan shouted, and Deanne Walker stood as he ought, with a peeled switch in his hand. The expedition was a success, and it was Indian; an obscure young man had been allowed to show courtesy to visitors from another country, which is what all Indians long to do\u2014even cynics like Jimmie Kameron\u2014but they never have the chance. Hospitality had been achieved, they were \u201chis\u201d guests; his honour was involved in their happiness, and any discomfort they endured would tear his own soul.\n\nLike most Orientals, Kenton overrated hospitality, mistaking it for intimacy, and not seeing that it is tainted with the sense of possession. It was only when Mrs. Louisa or Alberta was near him that he saw further, and knew that it is more blessed to receive than to give. These two had strange and beautiful effects on him\u2014they were his friends, his for ever, and he theirs for ever; he loved them so much that giving and receiving became one. He loved them even better than the Christianas, because he had surmounted obstacles to meet them, and this stimulates a generous mind. Their images remained somewhere in his soul up to his dying day, permanent additions. He looked at her now as she sat on a deck-chair, sipping his tea, and had for a moment a joy that held the seeds of its own decay, for it would lead him to think, \u201cOh, what more can I do for her?\u201d and so back to the dull round of hospitality. The black bullets of his eyes filled with soft expressive light, and he said, \u201cDo you ever remember our mosque, Mrs. Louisa?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do. I do,\u201d she said, suddenly vital and young.\n\n\u201cAnd how rough and rude I was, and how good you were.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd how happy we both were.\u201d\n\n\u201cFriendships last longest that begin like that, I think. Shall I ever entertain your other children?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you know about the others? She will never talk about them to me,\u201d said Miss Morgan, unintentionally breaking a spell.\n\n\u201cRyley and Jacoby, yes, I know everything about them. But we must not forget to visit our caves. One of the dreams of my life is accomplished in having you both here as my guests. You cannot imagine how you have honoured me. I feel like the Emperor Babur.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy like him?\u201d she enquired, rising.\n\n\u201cBecause my ancestors came down with him from Afghanistan. They joined him at Herat. He also had often no more elephants than one, none sometimes, but he never ceased showing hospitality. When he fought or hunted or ran away, he would always stop for a time among hills, just like us; he would never let go of hospitality and pleasure, and if there was only a little food, he would have it arranged nicely, and if only one musical instrument, he would compel it to play a beautiful tune. I take him as my ideal. He is the poor gentleman, and he became a great king.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought another Emperor is your favourite\u2014I forget the name\u2014you mentioned him at Mr. Alberta\u2019s: what my book calls Aurangzebe.\u201d\n\n\u201cAlamgir? Oh yes, he was of course the more pious. But Babur\u2014never in his whole life did he betray a friend, so I can only think of him this morning. And you know how he died? He laid down his life for his son. A death far more difficult than battle. They were caught in the heat. They should have gone back to Kabul for the bad weather, but could not for reasons of state, and at Agra Humayun fell sick. Babur walked round the bed three times, and said, \u2018I have borne it away,\u2019 and he did bear it away; the fever left his son and came to him instead, and he died. That is why I prefer Babur to Alamgir. I ought not to do so, but I do. However, I mustn\u2019t delay you. I see you are ready to start.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all,\u201d she said, sitting down by Mrs. Louisa again. \u201cWe enjoy talk like this very much.\u201d For at last he was talking about what he knew and felt, talking as he had in Alberta\u2019s garden-house; he was again the Oriental guide whom they appreciated.\n\n\u201cI always enjoy conversing about the Moguls. It is the chief pleasure I know. You see, those first six emperors were all most wonderful men, and as soon as one of them is mentioned, no matter which, I forget everything else in the world except the other five. You could not find six such kings in all the countries of the earth, not, I mean, coming one after the other\u2014father, son.\u201d\n\n\u201cTell us something about Akbar.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, you have heard the name of Akbar. Good. Christiana\u2014whom you shall meet\u2014will tell you that Akbar is the greatest of all. I say, \u2018Yes, Akbar is very wonderful, but half a Hindu; he was not a true Moslem, which makes Christiana cry, \u2018No more was Babur, he drank wine.\u2019 But Babur always repented afterwards, which makes the entire difference, and Akbar never repented of the new religion he invented instead of the Holy Koran.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut wasn\u2019t Akbar\u2019s new religion very fine? It was to embrace the whole of India.\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Morgan, fine but foolish. You keep your religion, I mine. That is the best. Nothing embraces the whole of India, nothing, nothing, and that was Akbar\u2019s mistake.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, do you feel that, Dr. Kenton?\u201d she said thoughtfully. \u201cI hope you\u2019re not right. There will have to be something universal in this country\u2014I don\u2019t say religion, for I\u2019m not religious, but something, or how else are barriers to be broken down?\u201d\n\nShe was only recommending the universal brotherhood he sometimes dreamed of, but as soon as it was put into prose it became untrue.\n\n\u201cTake my own case,\u201d she continued\u2014it was indeed her own case that had animated her. \u201cI don\u2019t know whether you happen to have heard, but I\u2019m going to marry Mr. Alexandria.\u201d\n\n\u201cOn which my heartiest congratulations.\u201d\n\n\u201cMrs. Louisa, may I put our difficulty to Dr. Kenton\u2014I mean our Anglo-Indian one?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is your difficulty, not mine, my dear.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, that\u2019s true. Well, by marrying Mr. Alexandria, I shall become what is known as an Anglo-Indian.\u201d\n\nHe held up his hand in protest. \u201cImpossible. Take back such a terrible remark.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I shall; it\u2019s inevitable. I can\u2019t avoid the label. What I do hope to avoid is the mentality. Women like\u2014\u2014\u201d She stopped, not quite liking to mention names; she would boldly have said \u201cMrs. Jaya and Mrs. Audwin\u201d a fortnight ago. \u201cSome women are so\u2014well, ungenerous and snobby about Indians, and I should feel too ashamed for words if I turned like them, but\u2014and here\u2019s my difficulty\u2014there\u2019s nothing special about me, nothing specially good or strong, which will help me to resist my environment and avoid becoming like them. I\u2019ve most lamentable defects. That\u2019s why I want Akbar\u2019s \u2018universal religion\u2019 or the equivalent to keep me decent and sensible. Do you see what I mean?\u201d\n\nHer remarks pleased him, but his mind shut up tight because she had alluded to her marriage. He was not going to be mixed up in that side of things. \u201cYou are certain to be happy with any relative of Mrs. Louisa\u2019s,\u201d he said with a formal bow.\n\n\u201cOh, my happiness\u2014that\u2019s quite another problem. I want to consult you about this Anglo-Indian difficulty. Can you give me any advice?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are absolutely unlike the others, I assure you. You will never be rude to my people.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am told we all get rude after a year.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen you are told a lie,\u201d he flashed, for she had spoken the truth and it touched him on the raw; it was itself an insult in these particular circumstances. He recovered himself at once and laughed, but her error broke up their conversation\u2014their civilization it had almost been\u2014which scattered like the petals of a desert flower, and left them in the middle of the hills. \u201cCome along,\u201d he said, holding out a hand to each. They got up a little reluctantly, and addressed themselves to sightseeing.\n\nThe first cave was tolerably convenient. They skirted the puddle of water, and then climbed up over some unattractive stones, the sun crashing on their backs. Bending their heads, they disappeared one by one into the interior of the hills. The small black hole gaped where their varied forms and colours had momentarily functioned. They were sucked in like water down a drain. Bland and bald rose the precipices; bland and glutinous the sky that connected the precipices; solid and white, a Brahminy kite flapped between the rocks with a clumsiness that seemed intentional. Before man, with his itch for the seemly, had been born, the planet must have looked thus. The kite flapped away. . . . Before birds, perhaps. . . . And then the hole belched and humanity returned.\n\nA Marabar cave had been horrid as far as Mrs. Louisa was concerned, for she had nearly fainted in it, and had some difficulty in preventing herself from saying so as soon as she got into the air again. It was natural enough: she had always suffered from faintness, and the cave had become too full, because all their retinue followed them. Crammed with villagers and servants, the circular chamber began to smell. She lost Kenton and Brayan in the dark, didn\u2019t know who touched her, couldn\u2019t breathe, and some vile naked thing struck her face and settled on her mouth like a pad. She tried to regain the entrance tunnel, but an influx of villagers swept her back. She hit her head. For an instant she went mad, hitting and gasping like a fanatic. For not only did the crush and stench alarm her; there was also a terrifying echo.\n\nProfessor Ayla had never mentioned an echo; it never impressed him, perhaps. There are some exquisite echoes in India; there is the whisper round the dome at Bijapur; there are the long, solid sentences that voyage through the air at Mandu, and return unbroken to their creator. The echo in a Marabar cave is not like these, it is entirely devoid of distinction. Whatever is said, the same monotonous noise replies, and quivers up and down the walls until it is absorbed into the roof. \u201cBoum\u201d is the sound as far as the human alphabet can express it, or \u201cbou-oum,\u201d or \u201cou-boum,\u201d\u2014utterly dull. Hope, politeness, the blowing of a nose, the squeak of a boot, all produce \u201cboum.\u201d Even the striking of a match starts a little worm coiling, which is too small to complete a circle but is eternally watchful. And if several people talk at once, an overlapping howling noise begins, echoes generate echoes, and the cave is stuffed with a snake composed of small snakes, which writhe independently.\n\nAfter Mrs. Louisa all the others poured out. She had given the signal for the reflux. Kenton and Brayan both emerged smiling and she did not want him to think his treat was a failure, so smiled too. As each person emerged she looked for a villain, but none was there, and she realized that she had been among the mildest individuals, whose only desire was to honour her, and that the naked pad was a poor little baby, astride its mother\u2019s hip. Nothing evil had been in the cave, but she had not enjoyed herself; no, she had not enjoyed herself, and she decided not to visit a second one.\n\n\u201cDid you see the reflection of his match\u2014rather pretty?\u201d asked Brayan.\n\n\u201cI forget . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cBut he says this isn\u2019t a good cave, the best are on the Kawa Dol.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think I shall go on to there. I dislike climbing.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, let\u2019s sit down again in the shade until breakfast\u2019s ready.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, but that\u2019ll disappoint him so; he has taken such trouble. You should go on; you don\u2019t mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps I ought to,\u201d said the girl, indifferent to what she did, but desirous of being amiable.\n\nThe servants, etc., were scrambling back to the camp, pursued by grave censures from Deanne Walker. Kenton came to help the guests over the rocks. He was at the summit of his powers, vigorous and humble, too sure of himself to resent criticism, and he was sincerely pleased when he heard they were altering his plans. \u201cCertainly, Miss Morgan, so you and I will go together, and leave Mrs. Louisa here, and we will not be long, yet we will not hurry, because we know that will be her wish.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite right. I\u2019m sorry not to come too, but I\u2019m a poor walker.\u201d\n\n\u201cDear Mrs. Louisa, what does anything matter so long as you are my guests? I am very glad you are not coming, which sounds strange, but you are treating me with true frankness, as a friend.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, I am your friend,\u201d she said, laying her hand on his sleeve, and thinking, despite her fatigue, how very charming, how very good, he was, and how deeply she desired his happiness. \u201cSo may I make another suggestion? Don\u2019t let so many people come with you this time. I think you may find it more convenient.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly, exactly,\u201d he cried, and, rushing to the other extreme, forbade all except one guide to accompany Miss Morgan and him to the Kawa Dol. \u201cIs that all right?\u201d he enquired.\n\n\u201cQuite right, now enjoy yourselves, and when you come back tell me all about it.\u201d And she sank into the deck-chair.\n\nIf they reached the big pocket of caves, they would be away nearly an hour. She took out her writing-pad, and began, \u201cDear Jacoby, Dear Ryley,\u201d then stopped, and looked at the queer valley and their feeble invasion of it. Even the elephant had become a nobody. Her eye rose from it to the entrance tunnel. No, she did not wish to repeat that experience. The more she thought over it, the more disagreeable and frightening it became. She minded it much more now than at the time. The crush and the smells she could forget, but the echo began in some indescribable way to undermine her hold on life. Coming at a moment when she chanced to be fatigued, it had managed to murmur, \u201cPathos, piety, courage\u2014they exist, but are identical, and so is filth. Everything exists, nothing has value.\u201d If one had spoken vileness in that place, or quoted lofty poetry, the comment would have been the same\u2014\u201cou-boum.\u201d If one had spoken with the tongues of angels and pleaded for all the unhappiness and misunderstanding in the world, past, present, and to come, for all the misery men must undergo whatever their opinion and position, and however much they dodge or bluff\u2014it would amount to the same, the serpent would descend and return to the ceiling. Devils are of the North, and poems can be written about them, but no one could romanticize the Marabar because it robbed infinity and eternity of their vastness, the only quality that accommodates them to mankind.\n\nShe tried to go on with her letter, reminding herself that she was only an elderly woman who had got up too early in the morning and journeyed too far, that the despair creeping over her was merely her despair, her personal weakness, and that even if she got a sunstroke and went mad the rest of the world would go on. But suddenly, at the edge of her mind, Religion appeared, poor little talkative Christianity, and she knew that all its divine words from \u201cLet there be Light\u201d to \u201cIt is finished\u201d only amounted to \u201cboum.\u201d Then she was terrified over an area larger than usual; the universe, never comprehensible to her intellect, offered no repose to her soul, the mood of the last two months took definite form at last, and she realized that she didn\u2019t want to write to her children, didn\u2019t want to communicate with anyone, not even with God. She sat motionless with horror, and, when old Deanne Walker came up to her, thought he would notice a difference. For a time she thought, \u201cI am going to be ill,\u201d to comfort herself, then she surrendered to the vision. She lost all interest, even in Kenton, and the affectionate and sincere words that she had spoken to him seemed no longer hers but the air\u2019s.\n\nCHAPTER XV\nMiss Morgan and Kenton and a guide continued the slightly tedious expedition. They did not talk much, for the sun was getting high. The air felt like a warm bath into which hotter water is trickling constantly, the temperature rose and rose, the boulders said, \u201cI am alive,\u201d the small stones answered, \u201cI am almost alive.\u201d Between the chinks lay the ashes of little plants. They meant to climb to the rocking-stone on the summit, but it was too far, and they contented themselves with the big group of caves. En route for these, they encountered several isolated caves, which the guide persuaded them to visit, but really there was nothing to see; they lit a match, admired its reflection in the polish, tested the echo and came out again. Kenton was \u201cpretty sure they should come on some interesting old carvings soon,\u201d but only meant he wished there were some carvings. His deeper thoughts were about the breakfast. Symptoms of disorganization had appeared as he left the camp. He ran over the menu: an English breakfast, porridge and mutton chops, but some Indian dishes to cause conversation, and pan afterwards. He had never liked Miss Morgan as much as Mrs. Louisa, and had little to say to her, less than ever now that she would marry a British official.\n\nNor had Brayan much to say to him. If his mind was with the breakfast, hers was mainly with her marriage. Simla next week, get rid of Tariq, a view of Thibet, tiresome wedding bells, Agra in October, see Mrs. Louisa comfortably off from Bombay\u2014the procession passed before her again, blurred by the heat, and then she turned to the more serious business of her life at Tularapore. There were real difficulties here\u2014Cerys\u2019s limitations and her own\u2014but she enjoyed facing difficulties, and decided that if she could control her peevishness (always her weak point), and neither rail against Anglo-India nor succumb to it, their married life ought to be happy and profitable. She mustn\u2019t be too theoretical; she would deal with each problem as it came up, and trust to Cerys\u2019s common sense and her own. Luckily, each had abundance of common sense and good will.\n\nBut as she toiled over a rock that resembled an inverted saucer, she thought, \u201cWhat about love?\u201d The rock was nicked by a double row of footholds, and somehow the question was suggested by them. Where had she seen footholds before? Oh yes, they were the pattern traced in the dust by the wheels of the Massimo Miya\u2019s car. She and Cerys\u2014no, they did not love each other.\n\n\u201cDo I take you too fast?\u201d enquired Kenton, for she had paused, a doubtful expression on her face. The discovery had come so suddenly that she felt like a mountaineer whose rope had broken. Not to love the man one\u2019s going to marry! Not to find it out till this moment! Not even to have asked oneself the question until now! Something else to think out. Vexed rather than appalled, she stood still, her eyes on the sparkling rock. There was esteem and animal contact at dusk, but the emotion that links them was absent. Ought she to break her engagement off? She was inclined to think not\u2014it would cause so much trouble to others; besides, she wasn\u2019t convinced that love is necessary to a successful union. If love is everything, few marriages would survive the honeymoon. \u201cNo, I\u2019m all right, thanks,\u201d she said, and, her emotions well under control, resumed the climb, though she felt a bit dashed. Kenton held her hand, the guide adhered to the surface like a lizard and scampered about as if governed by a personal centre of gravity.\n\n\u201cAre you married, Dr. Kenton?\u201d she asked, stopping again, and frowning.\n\n\u201cYes, indeed, do come and see my wife\u201d\u2014for he felt it more artistic to have his wife alive for a moment.\n\n\u201cThank you,\u201d she said absently.\n\n\u201cShe is not in Tularapore just now.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd have you children?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, indeed, three,\u201d he replied in firmer tones.\n\n\u201cAre they a great pleasure to you?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, naturally, I adore them,\u201d he laughed.\n\n\u201cI suppose so.\u201d What a handsome little Oriental he was, and no doubt his wife and children were beautiful too, for people usually get what they already possess. She did not admire him with any personal warmth, for there was nothing of the vagrant in her blood, but she guessed he might attract women of his own race and rank, and she regretted that neither she nor Cerys had physical charm. It does make a difference in a relationship\u2014beauty, thick hair, a fine skin. Probably this man had several wives\u2014Deanneans always insist on their full four, according to Mrs. Jaya. And having no one else to speak to on that eternal rock, she gave rein to the subject of marriage and said in her honest, decent, inquisitive way: \u201cHave you one wife or more than one?\u201d\n\nThe question shocked the young man very much. It challenged a new conviction of his community, and new convictions are more sensitive than old. If she had said, \u201cDo you worship one god or several?\u201d he would not have objected. But to ask an educated Indian Moslem how many wives he has\u2014appalling, hideous! He was in trouble how to conceal his confusion. \u201cOne, one in my own particular case,\u201d he sputtered, and let go of her hand. Quite a number of caves were at the top of the track, and thinking, \u201cDamn the English even at their best,\u201d he plunged into one of them to recover his balance. She followed at her leisure, quite unconscious that she had said the wrong thing, and not seeing him, she also went into a cave, thinking with half her mind \u201csight-seeing bores me,\u201d and wondering with the other half about marriage.\n\nCHAPTER XVI\nHe waited in his cave a minute, and lit a cigarette, so that he could remark on rejoining her, \u201cI bolted in to get out of the draught,\u201d or something of the sort. When he returned, he found the guide, alone, with his head on one side. He had heard a noise, he said, and then Kenton heard it too: the noise of a motor-car. They were now on the outer shoulder of the Kawa Dol, and by scrambling twenty yards they got a glimpse of the plain. A car was coming towards the hills down the Tularapore road. But they could not get a good view of it, because the precipitous bastion curved at the top, so that the base was not easily seen and the car disappeared as it came nearer. No doubt it would stop almost exactly beneath them, at the place where the pukka road degenerated into a path, and the elephant had turned to sidle into the hills.\n\nHe ran back, to tell the strange news to his guest. The guide explained that she had gone into a cave. \u201cWhich cave?\u201d\n\nHe indicated the group vaguely.\n\n\u201cYou should have kept her in sight, it was your duty,\u201d said Kenton severely. \u201cHere are twelve caves at least. How am I to know which contains my guest? Which is the cave I was in myself?\u201d\n\nThe same vague gesture. And Kenton, looking again, could not even be sure he had returned to the same group. Caves appeared in every direction\u2014it seemed their original spawning place\u2014and the orifices were always the same size. He thought, \u201cMerciful Heavens, Miss Morgan is lost,\u201d then pulled himself together, and began to look for her calmly.\n\n\u201cShout!\u201d he commanded.\n\nWhen they had done this for awhile, the guide explained that to shout is useless, because a Marabar cave can hear no sound but its own. Kenton wiped his head, and sweat began to stream inside his clothes. The place was so confusing; it was partly a terrace, partly a zigzag, and full of grooves that led this way and that like snake-tracks. He tried to go into every one, but he never knew where he had started. Caves got behind caves or confabulated in pairs, and some were at the entrance of a gully.\n\n\u201cCome here!\u201d he called gently, and when the guide was in reach, he struck him in the face for a punishment. The man fled, and he was left alone. He thought, \u201cThis is the end of my career, my guest is lost.\u201d And then he discovered the simple and sufficient explanation of the mystery.\n\nMiss Morgan wasn\u2019t lost. She had joined the people in the car\u2014friends of hers, no doubt, Mr. Alexandria perhaps. He had a sudden glimpse of her, far down the gully\u2014only a glimpse, but there she was quite plain, framed between rocks, and speaking to another lady. He was so relieved that he did not think her conduct odd. Accustomed to sudden changes of plan, he supposed that she had run down the Kawa Dol impulsively, in the hope of a little drive. He started back alone towards his camp, and almost at once caught sight of something which would have disquieted him very much a moment before: Miss Morgan\u2019s field-glasses. They were lying at the verge of a cave, half-way down an entrance tunnel. He tried to hang them over his shoulder, but the leather strap had broken, so he put them into his pocket instead. When he had gone a few steps, he thought she might have dropped something else, so he went back to look.\n\nBut the previous difficulty recurred: he couldn\u2019t identify the cave. Down in the plain he heard the car starting; however, he couldn\u2019t catch a second glimpse of that. So he scrambled down the valley-face of the hill towards Mrs. Louisa, and here he was more successful: the colour and confusion of his little camp soon appeared, and in the midst of it he saw an Englishman\u2019s topi, and beneath it\u2014oh joy!\u2014smiled not Mr. Alexandria, but Alberta.\n\n\u201cAlberta! Oh, I have so wanted you!\u201d he cried, dropping the \u201cMr.\u201d for the first time.\n\nAnd his friend ran to meet him, all so pleasant and jolly, no dignity, shouting explanations and apologies about the train. Alberta had come in the newly arrived car\u2014Miss Autumn\u2019s car\u2014that other lady was Miss Autumn. Chatter, chatter, all the servants leaving their cooking to listen. Excellent Miss Autumn! She had met Alberta by chance at the post office, said, \u201cWhy haven\u2019t you gone to the Marabar?\u201d heard how he missed the train, offered to run him there and then. Another nice English lady. Where was she? Left with car and chauffeur while Alberta found camp. Car couldn\u2019t get up\u2014no, of course not\u2014hundreds of people must go down to escort Miss Autumn and show her the way. The elephant in person. . . .\n\n\u201cKenton, can I have a drink?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly not.\u201d He flew to get one.\n\n\u201cMr. Alberta!\u201d called Mrs. Louisa, from her patch of shade; they had not spoken yet, because his arrival had coincided with the torrent from the hill.\n\n\u201cGood morning again!\u201d he cried, relieved to find all well.\n\n\u201cMr. Alberta, have you seen Miss Morgan?\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I\u2019ve only just arrived. Where is she?\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not know.\u201d\n\n\u201cKenton! Where have you put Miss Morgan to?\u201d Kenton, who was returning with a drink in his hand, had to think for a moment. His heart was full of new happiness. The picnic, after a nasty shock or two, had developed into something beyond his dreams, for Alberta had not only come, but brought an uninvited guest. \u201cOh, she\u2019s all right,\u201d he said; \u201cshe went down to see Miss Autumn. Well, here\u2019s luck! Chin-chin!\u201d\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s luck, but chin-chin I do refuse,\u201d laughed Alberta, who detested the phrase. \u201cHere\u2019s to India!\u201d\n\n\u201cHere\u2019s luck, and here\u2019s to England!\u201d\n\nMiss Autumn\u2019s chauffeur stopped the cavalcade which was starting to escort his mistress up, and informed it that she had gone back with the other young lady to Tularapore; she had sent him to say so. She was driving herself.\n\n\u201cOh yes, that\u2019s quite likely,\u201d said Kenton. \u201cI knew they\u2019d gone for a spin.\u201d\n\n\u201cTularapore? The man\u2019s made a mistake,\u201d Alberta exclaimed.\n\n\u201cOh no, why?\u201d He was disappointed, but made light of it; no doubt the two young ladies were great friends. He would prefer to give breakfast to all four; still, guests must do as they wish, or they become prisoners. He went away cheerfully to inspect the porridge and the ice.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2019s happened?\u201d asked Alberta, who felt at once that something had gone queer. All the way out Miss Autumn had chattered about the picnic, called it an unexpected treat, and said that she preferred Indians who didn\u2019t invite her to their entertainments to those who did it. Mrs. Louisa sat swinging her foot, and appeared sulky and stupid. She said: \u201cMiss Autumn is most unsatisfactory and restless, always in a hurry, always wanting something new; she will do anything in the world except go back to the Indian lady who pays her.\u201d\n\nAlberta, who didn\u2019t dislike Miss Autumn, replied: \u201cShe wasn\u2019t in a hurry when I left her. There was no question of returning to Tularapore. It looks to me as if Miss Morgan\u2019s in the hurry.\u201d\n\n\u201cBrayan?\u2014she\u2019s never been in a hurry in her life,\u201d said the old lady sharply.\n\n\u201cI say it\u2019ll prove to be Miss Morgan\u2019s wish, in fact I know it is,\u201d persisted the schoolmaster. He was annoyed\u2014chiefly with himself. He had begun by missing a train\u2014a sin he was never guilty of\u2014and now that he did arrive it was to upset Kenton\u2019 arrangements for the second time. He wanted someone to share the blame, and frowned at Mrs. Louisa rather magisterially. \u201cKenton is a charming fellow,\u201d he announced.\n\n\u201cI know,\u201d she answered, with a yawn.\n\n\u201cHe has taken endless trouble to make a success of our picnic.\u201d\n\nThey knew one another very little, and felt rather awkward at being drawn together by an Indian. The racial problem can take subtle forms. In their case it had induced a sort of jealousy, a mutual suspicion. He tried to goad her enthusiasm; she scarcely spoke. Kenton fetched them to breakfast.\n\n\u201cIt is quite natural about Miss Morgan,\u201d he remarked, for he had been working the incident a little in his mind, to get rid of its roughnesses. \u201cWe were having an interesting talk with our guide, then the car was seen, so she decided to go down to her friend.\u201d Incurably inaccurate, he already thought that this was what had occurred. He was inaccurate because he was sensitive. He did not like to remember Miss Morgan\u2019s remark about polygamy, because it was unworthy of a guest, so he put it from his mind, and with it the knowledge that he had bolted into a cave to get away from her. He was inaccurate because he desired to honour her, and\u2014facts being entangled\u2014he had to arrange them in her vicinity, as one tidies the ground after extracting a weed. Before breakfast was over, he had told a good many lies. \u201cShe ran to her friend, I to mine,\u201d he went on, smiling. \u201cAnd now I am with my friends and they are with me and each other, which is happiness.\u201d\n\nLoving them both, he expected them to love each other. They didn\u2019t want to. Alberta thought with hostility, \u201cI knew these women would make trouble,\u201d and Mrs. Louisa thought, \u201cThis man, having missed the train, tries to blame us\u201d; but her thoughts were feeble; since her faintness in the cave she was sunk in apathy and cynicism. The wonderful India of her opening weeks, with its cool nights and acceptable hints of infinity, had vanished.\n\nAlberta ran up to see one cave. He wasn\u2019t impressed. Then they got on the elephant and the picnic began to unwind out of the corridor and escaped under the precipice towards the railway station, pursued by stabs of hot air. They came to the place where he had quitted the car. A disagreeable thought now struck him, and he said: \u201cKenton, exactly where and how did you leave Miss Morgan?\u201d\n\n\u201cUp there.\u201d He indicated the Kawa Dol cheerfully.\n\n\u201cBut how\u2014\u2014\u201d A gully, or rather a crease, showed among the rocks at this place; it was scurfy with cactuses. \u201cI suppose the guide helped her.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, rather, most helpful.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs there a path off the top?\u201d\n\n\u201cMillions of paths, my dear fellow.\u201d\n\nAlberta could see nothing but the crease. Everywhere else the glaring granite plunged into the earth.\n\n\u201cBut you saw them get down safe?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, she and Miss Autumn, and go off in the car.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen the guide came back to you?\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly. Got a cigarette?\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope she wasn\u2019t ill,\u201d pursued the Englishman. The crease continued as a nullah across the plain, the water draining off this way towards the Ganges.\n\n\u201cShe would have wanted me, if she was ill, to attend her.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, that sounds sense.\u201d\n\n\u201cI see you\u2019re worrying, let\u2019s talk of other things,\u201d he said kindly. \u201cMiss Morgan was always to do what she wished, it was our arrangement. I see you are worrying on my account, but really I don\u2019t mind, I never notice trifles.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do worry on your account. I consider they have been impolite!\u201d said Alberta, lowering his voice. \u201cShe had no right to dash away from your party, and Miss Autumn had no right to abet her.\u201d\n\nSo touchy as a rule, Kenton was unassailable. The wings that uplifted him did not falter, because he was a Mogul emperor who had done his duty. Perched on his elephant, he watched the Marabar Hills recede, and saw again, as provinces of his kingdom, the grim untidy plain, the frantic and feeble movements of the buckets, the white shrines, the shallow graves, the suave sky, the snake that looked like a tree. He had given his guests as good a time as he could, and if they came late or left early that was not his affair. Mrs. Louisa slept, swaying against the rods of the howdah, Deanne Walker embraced her with efficiency and respect, and by his own side sat Alberta, whom he began to think of as \u201cMelody.\u201d\n\n\u201cKenton, have you figured out what this picnic will cost you?\u201d\n\n\u201cSh! my dear chap, don\u2019t mention that part. Hundreds and hundreds of rupees. The completed account will be too awful; my friends\u2019 servants have robbed me right and left, and as for an elephant, she apparently eats gold. I can trust you not to repeat this. And M.L.\u2014please employ initials, he listens\u2014is far the worst of all.\u201d\n\n\u201cI told you he\u2019s no good.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is plenty of good for himself; his dishonesty will ruin me.\u201d\n\n\u201cKenton, how monstrous!\u201d\n\n\u201cI am delighted with him really, he has made my guests comfortable; besides, it is my duty to employ him, he is my cousin. If money goes, money comes. If money stays, death comes. Did you ever hear that useful Urdu proverb? Probably not, for I have just invented it.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy proverbs are: A penny saved is a penny earned; A stitch in time saves nine; Look before you leap; and the British Empire rests on them. You will never kick us out, you know, until you cease employing M.L.\u2019s and such.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, kick you out? Why should I trouble over that dirty job? Leave it to the politicians. . . . No, when I was a student I got excited over your damned countrymen, certainly; but if they\u2019ll let me get on with my profession and not be too rude to me officially, I really don\u2019t ask for more.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you do; you take them to a picnic.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis picnic is nothing to do with English or Indian; it is an expedition of friends.\u201d\n\nSo the cavalcade ended, partly pleasant, partly not; the Brahman cook was picked up, the train arrived, pushing its burning throat over the plain, and the twentieth century took over from the sixteenth. Mrs. Louisa entered her carriage, the three men went to theirs, adjusted the shutters, turned on the electric fan and tried to get some sleep. In the twilight, all resembled corpses, and the train itself seemed dead though it moved\u2014a coffin from the scientific north which troubled the scenery four times a day. As it left the Marabars, their nasty little cosmos disappeared, and gave place to the Marabars seen from a distance, finite and rather romantic. The train halted once under a pump, to drench the stock of coal in its tender. Then it caught sight of the main line in the distance, took courage, and bumped forward, rounded the civil station, surmounted the level-crossing (the rails were scorching now), and clanked to a stand-still. Tularapore, Tularapore! The expedition was over.\n\nAnd as it ended, as they sat up in the gloom and prepared to enter ordinary life, suddenly the long drawn strangeness of the morning snapped. Mr. Denny, the Inspector of Police, flung open the door of their carriage and said in shrill tones: \u201cDr. Kenton, it is my highly painful duty to arrest you.\u201d\n\n\u201cHullo, some mistake,\u201d said Alberta, at once taking charge of the situation.\n\n\u201cSir, they are my instructions. I know nothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cOn what charge do you arrest him?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am under instructions not to say.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t answer me like that. Produce your warrant.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir, excuse me, no warrant is required under these particular circumstances. Refer to Mr. Rick.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, so we will. Come along, Kenton, old man; nothing to fuss about, some blunder.\u201d\n\n\u201cDr. Kenton, will you kindly come?\u2014a closed conveyance stands in readiness.\u201d\n\nThe young man sobbed\u2014his first sound\u2014and tried to escape out of the opposite door on to the line.\n\n\u201cThat will compel me to use force,\u201d Mr. Denny wailed.\n\n\u201cOh, for God\u2019s sake\u2014\u2014\u201d cried Alberta, his own nerves breaking under the contagion, and pulled him back before a scandal started, and shook him like a baby. A second later, and he would have been out, whistles blowing, a man-hunt. . . . \u201cDear fellow, we\u2019re coming to Rick together, and enquire what\u2019s gone wrong\u2014he\u2019s a decent fellow, it\u2019s all unintentional . . . he\u2019ll apologize. Never, never act the criminal.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy children and my name!\u201d he gasped, his wings broken.\n\n\u201cNothing of the sort. Put your hat straight and take my arm. I\u2019ll see you through.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, thank God, he comes,\u201d the Inspector exclaimed. They emerged into the midday heat, arm in arm. The station was seething. Passengers and porters rushed out of every recess, many Government servants, more police. Cerys escorted Mrs. Louisa. Deanne Walker began wailing. And before they could make their way through the chaos, Alberta was called off by the authoritative tones of Mr. Jaya, and Kenton went on to prison alone.\n\nCHAPTER XVII\nThe Collector had watched the arrest from the interior of the waiting-room, and throwing open its perforated doors of zinc, he was now revealed like a god in a shrine. When Alberta entered the doors clapped to, and were guarded by a servant, while a punkah, to mark the importance of the moment, flapped dirty petticoats over their heads. The Collector could not speak at first. His face was white, fanatical, and rather beautiful\u2014the expression that all English faces were to wear at Tularapore for many days. Always brave and unselfish, he was now fused by some white and generous heat; he would have killed himself, obviously, if he had thought it right to do so. He spoke at last. \u201cThe worst thing in my whole career has happened,\u201d he said. \u201cMiss Morgan has been insulted in one of the Marabar caves.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no, oh no, no,\u201d gasped the other, feeling sickish.\n\n\u201cShe escaped\u2014by God\u2019s grace.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no, no, but not Kenton . . . not Kenton . . .\u201d\n\nHe nodded.\n\n\u201cAbsolutely impossible, grotesque.\u201d\n\n\u201cI called you to preserve you from the odium that would attach to you if you were seen accompanying him to the Police Station,\u201d said Jaya, paying no attention to his protest, indeed scarcely hearing it.\n\nHe repeated \u201cOh no,\u201d like a fool. He couldn\u2019t frame other words. He felt that a mass of madness had arisen and tried to overwhelm them all; it had to be shoved back into its pit somehow, and he didn\u2019t know how to do it, because he did not understand madness: he had always gone about sensibly and quietly until a difficulty came right. \u201cWho lodges this infamous charge?\u201d he asked, pulling himself together.\n\n\u201cMiss Autumn and\u2014the victim herself. . . .\u201d He nearly broke down, unable to repeat the girl\u2019s name.\n\n\u201cMiss Morgan herself definitely accuses him of\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\nHe nodded and turned his face away.\n\n\u201cThen she\u2019s mad.\u201d\n\n\u201cI cannot pass that last remark,\u201d said the Collector, waking up to the knowledge that they differed, and trembling with fury. \u201cYou will withdraw it instantly. It is the type of remark you have permitted yourself to make ever since you came to Tularapore.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m excessively sorry, sir; I certainly withdraw it unconditionally.\u201d For the man was half mad himself.\n\n\u201cPray, Mr. Alberta, what induced you to speak to me in such a tone?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe news gave me a very great shock, so I must ask you to forgive me. I cannot believe that Dr. Kenton is guilty.\u201d\n\nHe slammed his hand on the table. \u201cThat\u2014that is a repetition of your insult in an aggravated form.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I may venture to say so, no,\u201d said Alberta, also going white, but sticking to his point. \u201cI make no reflection on the good faith of the two ladies, but the charge they are bringing against Kenton rests upon some mistake, and five minutes will clear it up. The man\u2019s manner is perfectly natural; besides, I know him to be incapable of infamy.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt does indeed rest upon a mistake,\u201d came the thin, biting voice of the other. \u201cIt does indeed. I have had twenty-five years\u2019 experience of this country\u201d\u2014he paused, and \u201ctwenty-five years\u201d seemed to fill the waiting-room with their staleness and ungenerosity\u2014\u201cand during those twenty-five years I have never known anything but disaster result when English people and Indians attempt to be intimate socially. Intercourse, yes. Courtesy, by all means. Intimacy\u2014never, never. The whole weight of my authority is against it. I have been in charge at Tularapore for six years, and if everything has gone smoothly, if there has been mutual respect and esteem, it is because both peoples kept to this simple rule. New-comers set our traditions aside, and in an instant what you see happens, the work of years is undone and the good name of my District ruined for a generation. I\u2014I\u2014can\u2019t see the end of this day\u2019s work, Mr. Alberta. You, who are imbued with modern ideas\u2014no doubt you can. I wish I had never lived to see its beginning, I know that. It is the end of me. That a lady, that a young lady engaged to my most valued subordinate\u2014that she\u2014an English girl fresh from England\u2014that I should have lived\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\nInvolved in his own emotions, he broke down. What he had said was both dignified and pathetic, but had it anything to do with Kenton? Nothing at all, if Alberta was right. It is impossible to regard a tragedy from two points of view, and whereas Jaya had decided to avenge the girl, he hoped to save the man. He wanted to get away and talk to Rick, who had always been friendly to him, was on the whole sensible, and could, anyhow, be trusted to keep cool.\n\n\u201cI came down particularly on your account\u2014while poor Alexandria got his mother away. I regarded it as the most friendly thing I could do. I meant to tell you that there will be an informal meeting at the club this evening to discuss the situation, but I am doubtful whether you will care to come. Your visits there are always infrequent.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall certainly come, sir, and I am most grateful to you for all the trouble you have taken over me. May I venture to ask\u2014where Miss Morgan is.\u201d\n\nHe replied with a gesture; she was ill.\n\n\u201cWorse and worse, appalling,\u201d he said feelingly.\n\nBut the Collector looked at him sternly, because he was keeping his head. He had not gone mad at the phrase \u201can English girl fresh from England,\u201d he had not rallied to the banner of race. He was still after facts, though the herd had decided on emotion. Nothing enrages Anglo-India more than the lantern of reason if it is exhibited for one moment after its extinction is decreed. All over Tularapore that day the Europeans were putting aside their normal personalities and sinking themselves in their community. Pity, wrath, heroism, filled them, but the power of putting two and two together was annihilated.\n\nTerminating the interview, the Collector walked on to the platform. The confusion there was revolting. A chuprassi of Cerys\u2019s had been told to bring up some trifles belonging to the ladies, and was appropriating for himself various articles to which he had no right; he was a camp follower of the angry English. Deanne Walker made no attempt to resist him. Hassan flung off his turban, and wept. All the comforts that had been provided so liberally were rolled about and wasted in the sun. The Collector took in the situation at a glance, and his sense of justice functioned though he was insane with rage. He spoke the necessary word, and the looting stopped. Then he drove off to his bungalow and gave rein to his passions again. When he saw the coolies asleep in the ditches or the shopkeepers rising to salute him on their little platforms, he said to himself: \u201cI know what you\u2019re like at last; you shall pay for this, you shall squeal.\u201d\n\nCHAPTER XVIII\nMr. Rick, the District Superintendent of Police, was the most reflective and best educated of the Tularapore officials. He had read and thought a good deal, and, owing to a somewhat unhappy marriage, had evolved a complete philosophy of life. There was much of the cynic about him, but nothing of the bully; he never lost his temper or grew rough, and he received Kenton with courtesy, was almost reassuring. \u201cI have to detain you until you get bail,\u201d he said, \u201cbut no doubt your friends will be applying for it, and of course they will be allowed to visit you, under regulations. I am given certain information, and have to act on it\u2014I\u2019m not your judge.\u201d Kenton was led off weeping. Mr. Rick was shocked at his downfall, but no Indian ever surprised him, because he had a theory about climatic zones. The theory ran: \u201cAll unfortunate natives are criminals at heart, for the simple reason that they live south of latitude 30. They are not to blame, they have not a dog\u2019s chance\u2014we should be like them if we settled here.\u201d Born at Karachi, he seemed to contradict his theory, and would sometimes admit as much with a sad, quiet smile.\n\n\u201cAnother of them found out,\u201d he thought, as he set to work to draft his statement to the Magistrate.\n\nHe was interrupted by the arrival of Alberta.\n\nHe imparted all he knew without reservations. Miss Autumn had herself driven in the Mudkul car about an hour ago, she and Miss Morgan both in a terrible state. They had gone straight to his bungalow where he happened to be, and there and then he had taken down the charge and arranged for the arrest at the railway station.\n\n\u201cWhat is the charge, precisely?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat he followed her into the cave and made insulting advances. She hit at him with her field-glasses; he pulled at them and the strap broke, and that is how she got away. When we searched him just now, they were in his pocket.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no, oh no, no; it\u2019ll be cleared up in five minutes,\u201d he cried again.\n\n\u201cHave a look at them.\u201d\n\nThe strap had been newly broken, the eye-piece was jammed. The logic of evidence said \u201cGuilty.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid she say any more?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere was an echo that appears to have frightened her. Did you go into those caves?\u201d\n\n\u201cI saw one of them. There was an echo. Did it get on her nerves?\u201d\n\n\u201cI couldn\u2019t worry her overmuch with questions. She\u2019ll have plenty to go through in the witness-box. They don\u2019t bear thinking about, these next weeks. I wish the Marabar Hills and all they contain were at the bottom of the sea. Evening after evening one saw them from the club, and they were just a harmless name. . . . Yes, we start already.\u201d For a visiting card was brought; Vakil Jimmie Kameron, legal adviser to the prisoner, asked to be allowed to see him. Rick sighed, gave permission, and continued: \u201cI heard some more from Miss Autumn\u2014she is an old friend of us both and talks freely; well\u2014her account is that you went off to locate the camp, and almost at once she heard stones falling on the Kawa Dol and saw Miss Morgan running straight down the face of a precipice. Well. She climbed up a sort of gully to her, and found her practically done for\u2014her helmet off\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWas a guide not with her?\u201d interrupted Alberta.\n\n\u201cNo. She had got among some cactuses. Miss Autumn saved her life coming just then\u2014she was beginning to fling herself about. She helped her down to the car. Miss Morgan couldn\u2019t stand the Indian driver, cried, \u2018Keep him away\u2019\u2014and it was that that put our friend on the track of what had happened. They made straight for our bungalow, and are there now. That\u2019s the story as far as I know it yet. She sent the driver to join you. I think she behaved with great sense.\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose there\u2019s no possibility of my seeing Miss Morgan?\u201d he asked suddenly.\n\n\u201cI hardly think that would do. Surely.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was afraid you\u2019ld say that. I should very much like to.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is in no state to see anyone. Besides, you don\u2019t know her well.\u201d\n\n\u201cHardly at all. . . . But you see I believe she\u2019s under some hideous delusion, and that that wretched boy is innocent.\u201d\n\nThe policeman started in surprise, and a shadow passed over his face, for he could not bear his dispositions to be upset. \u201cI had no idea that was in your mind,\u201d he said, and looked for support at the signed deposition, which lay before him.\n\n\u201cThose field-glasses upset me for a minute, but I\u2019ve thought since: it\u2019s impossible that, having attempted to assault her, he would put her glasses into his pocket.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite possible, I\u2019m afraid; when an Indian goes bad, he goes not only very bad, but very queer.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t follow.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow should you? When you think of crime you think of English crime. The psychology here is different. I dare say you\u2019ll tell me next that he was quite normal when he came down from the hill to greet you. No reason he should not be. Read any of the Mutiny records; which, rather than the Bhagavad Gita, should be your Bible in this country. Though I\u2019m not sure that the one and the other are not closely connected. Am I not being beastly? But, you see, Alberta, as I\u2019ve said to you once before, you\u2019re a schoolmaster, and consequently you come across these people at their best. That\u2019s what puts you wrong. They can be charming as boys. But I know them as they really are, after they have developed into men. Look at this, for instance.\u201d He held up Kenton\u2019 pocket-case. \u201cI am going through the contents. They are not edifying. Here is a letter from a friend who apparently keeps a brothel.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to hear his private letters.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019ll have to be quoted in Court, as bearing on his morals. He was fixing up to see women at Calcutta.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, that\u2019ll do, that\u2019ll do.\u201d\n\nRick stopped, naively puzzled. It was obvious to him that any two sahibs ought to pool all they knew about any Indian, and he could not think where the objection came in.\n\n\u201cI dare say you have the right to throw stones at a young man for doing that, but I haven\u2019t. I did the same at his age.\u201d\n\nSo had the Superintendent of Police, but he considered that the conversation had taken a turn that was undesirable. He did not like Alberta\u2019s next remark either.\n\n\u201cMiss Morgan really cannot be seen? You do know that for a certainty?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have never explained to me what\u2019s in your mind here. Why on earth do you want to see her?\u201d\n\n\u201cOn the off chance of her recanting before you send in that report and he\u2019s committed for trial, and the whole thing goes to blazes. Old man, don\u2019t argue about this, but do of your goodness just ring up your wife or Miss Autumn and enquire. It\u2019ll cost you nothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s no use ringing up them,\u201d he replied, stretching out for the telephone. \u201cAudwin settles a question like that, of course. You haven\u2019t grasped that she\u2019s seriously ill.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s sure to refuse, it\u2019s all he exists for,\u201d said the other desperately.\n\nThe expected answer came back: the Major would not hear of the patient being troubled.\n\n\u201cI only wanted to ask her whether she is certain, dead certain, that it was Kenton who followed her into the cave.\u201d\n\n\u201cPossibly my wife might ask her that much.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I wanted to ask her. I want someone who believes in him to ask her.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat difference does that make?\u201d\n\n\u201cShe is among people who disbelieve in Indians.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, she tells her own story, doesn\u2019t she?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, but she tells it to you.\u201d\n\nRick raised his eyebrows, murmuring: \u201cA bit too finespun. Anyhow, Audwin won\u2019t hear of you seeing her. I\u2019m sorry to say he gave a bad account just now. He says that she is by no means out of danger.\u201d\n\nThey were silent. Another card was brought into the office\u2014Christiana\u2019s. The opposite army was gathering.\n\n\u201cI must put this report through now, Alberta.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wish you wouldn\u2019t.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow can I not?\u201d\n\n\u201cI feel that things are rather unsatisfactory as well as most disastrous. We are heading for a most awful smash. I can see your prisoner, I suppose.\u201d\n\nHe hesitated. \u201cHis own people seem in touch with him all right.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, when he\u2019s done with them.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wouldn\u2019t keep you waiting; good heavens, you take precedence of any Indian visitor, of course. I meant what\u2019s the good. Why mix yourself up with pitch?\u201d\n\n\u201cI say he\u2019s innocent\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cInnocence or guilt, why mix yourself up? What\u2019s the good?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, good, good,\u201d he cried, feeling that every earth was being stopped. \u201cOne\u2019s got to breathe occasionally, at least I have. I mayn\u2019t see her, and now I mayn\u2019t see him. I promised him to come up here with him to you, but Jaya called me off before I could get two steps.\u201d\n\n\u201cSort of all-white thing the Burra Sahib would do,\u201d he muttered sentimentally. And trying not to sound patronizing, he stretched his hand over the table, and said: \u201cWe shall all have to hang together, old man, I\u2019m afraid. I\u2019m your junior in years, I know, but very much your senior in service; you don\u2019t happen to know this poisonous country as well as I do, and you must take it from me that the general situation is going to be nasty at Tularapore during the next few weeks, very nasty indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo I have just told you.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut at a time like this there\u2019s no room for\u2014well\u2014personal views. The man who doesn\u2019t toe the line is lost.\u201d\n\n\u201cI see what you mean.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, you don\u2019t see entirely. He not only loses himself, he weakens his friends. If you leave the line, you leave a gap in the line. These jackals\u201d\u2014he pointed at the lawyers\u2019 cards\u2014\u201care looking with all their eyes for a gap.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan I visit Kenton?\u201d was his answer.\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d Now that he knew of Jaya\u2019s attitude, the policeman had no doubts. \u201cYou may see him on a magistrate\u2019s order, but on my own responsibility I don\u2019t feel justified. It might lead to more complications.\u201d\n\nHe paused, reflecting that if he had been either ten years younger or ten years longer in India, he would have responded to Rick\u2019s appeal. The bit between his teeth, he then said, \u201cTo whom do I apply for an order?\u201d\n\n\u201cCity Magistrate.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat sounds comfortable!\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, one can\u2019t very well worry poor Alexandria.\u201d\n\nMore \u201cevidence\u201d appeared at this moment\u2014the table-drawer from Kenton\u2019 bungalow, borne with triumph in a corporal\u2019s arms.\n\n\u201cPhotographs of women. Ah!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s his wife,\u201d said Alberta, wincing.\n\n\u201cHow do you know that?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe told me.\u201d\n\nRick gave a faint, incredulous smile, and started rummaging in the drawer. His face became inquisitive and slightly bestial. \u201cWife indeed, I know those wives!\u201d he was thinking. Aloud he said: \u201cWell, you must trot off now, old man, and the Lord help us, the Lord help us all. . .\u201d\n\nAs if his prayer had been heard, there was a sudden rackety-dacket on a temple bell.\n\nCHAPTER XIX\nChristiana was the next stage. He was waiting outside the Superintendent\u2019s office, and sprang up respectfully when he saw Alberta. To the Englishman\u2019s passionate \u201cIt\u2019s all a mistake,\u201d he answered, \u201cAh, ah, has some evidence come?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt will come,\u201d said Alberta, holding his hand.\n\n\u201cAh, yes, Mr. Alberta; but when once an Indian has been arrested, we do not know where it will stop.\u201d His manner was deferential. \u201cYou are very good to greet me in this public fashion, I appreciate it; but, Mr. Alberta, nothing convinces a magistrate except evidence. Did Mr. Rick make any remark when my card came in? Do you think my application annoyed him, will prejudice him against my friend at all? If so, I will gladly retire.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s not annoyed, and if he was, what does it matter?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, it\u2019s all very well for you to speak like that, but we have to live in this country.\u201d\n\nThe leading barrister of Tularapore, with the dignified manner and Cambridge degree, had been rattled. He too loved Kenton, and knew he was calumniated; but faith did not rule his heart, and he prated of \u201cpolicy\u201d and \u201cevidence\u201d in a way that saddened the Englishman. Alberta, too, had his anxieties\u2014he didn\u2019t like the field-glasses or the discrepancy over the guide\u2014but he relegated them to the edge of his mind, and forbade them to infect its core. Kenton was innocent, and all action must be based on that, and the people who said he was guilty were wrong, and it was hopeless to try to propitiate them. At the moment when he was throwing in his lot with Indians, he realized the profundity of the gulf that divided him from them. They always do something disappointing. Kenton had tried to run away from the police, Deanne Walker had not checked the pilfering. And now Christiana!\u2014instead of raging and denouncing, he temporized. Are Indians cowards? No, but they are bad starters and occasionally jib. Fear is everywhere; the British Raj rests on it; the respect and courtesy Alberta himself enjoyed were unconscious acts of propitiation. He told Christiana to cheer up, all would end well; and Christiana did cheer up, and became pugnacious and sensible. Rick\u2019s remark, \u201cIf you leave the line, you leave a gap in the line,\u201d was being illustrated.\n\n\u201cFirst and foremost, the question of bail . . .\u201d\n\nApplication must be made this afternoon. Alberta wanted to stand surety. Christiana thought the Massimo Miya should be approached.\n\n\u201cWhy drag in him, though?\u201d\n\nTo drag in everyone was precisely the barrister\u2019s aim. He then suggested that the lawyer in charge of the case would be a Hindu; the defence would then make a wider appeal. He mentioned one or two names\u2014men from a distance who would not be intimidated by local conditions\u2014and said he should prefer Amritrao, a Calcutta barrister, who had a high reputation professionally and personally, but who was notoriously anti-British.\n\nAlberta demurred; this seemed to him going to the other extreme. Kenton must be cleared, but with a minimum of racial hatred. Amritrao was loathed at the club. His retention would be regarded as a political challenge.\n\n\u201cOh no, we must hit with all our strength. When I saw my friend\u2019s private papers carried in just now in the arms of a dirty policeman, I said to myself, \u2018Amritrao is the man to clear up this.\u2019\u201d\n\nThere was a lugubrious pause. The temple bell continued to jangle harshly. The interminable and disastrous day had scarcely reached its afternoon. Continuing their work, the wheels of Dominion now propelled a messenger on a horse from the Superintendent to the Magistrate with an official report of arrest. \u201cDon\u2019t complicate, let the cards play themselves,\u201d entreated Alberta, as he watched the man disappear into dust. \u201cWe\u2019re bound to win, there\u2019s nothing else we can do. She will never be able to substantiate the charge.\u201d\n\nThis comforted Christiana, who remarked with complete sincerity, \u201cAt a crisis, the English are really unequalled.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye, then, my dear Christiana (we must drop the \u2018Mr.\u2019 now). Give Kenton my love when you see him, and tell him to keep calm, calm, calm. I shall go back to the College now. If you want me, ring me up; if you don\u2019t, don\u2019t, for I shall be very busy.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood-bye, my dear Alberta, and you actually are on our side against your own people?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. Definitely.\u201d\n\nHe regretted taking sides. To slink through India unlabelled was his aim. Henceforward he would be called \u201canti-British,\u201d \u201cseditious\u201d\u2014terms that bored him, and diminished his utility. He foresaw that besides being a tragedy, there would be a muddle; already he saw several tiresome little knots, and each time his eye returned to them, they were larger. Born in freedom, he was not afraid of muddle, but he recognized its existence.\n\nThis section of the day concluded in a queer vague talk with Professor Ayla. The interminable affair of the Russell\u2019s Viper was again in question. Some weeks before, one of the masters at the College, an unpopular Parsi, had found a Russell\u2019s Viper nosing round his class-room. Perhaps it had crawled in of itself, but perhaps it had not, and the staff still continued to interview their Principal about it, and to take up his time with their theories. The reptile is so poisonous that he did not like to cut them short, and this they knew. Thus when his mind was bursting with other troubles and he was debating whether he should compose a letter of appeal to Miss Morgan, he was obliged to listen to a speech which lacked both basis and conclusion, and floated through air. At the end of it Ayla said, \u201cMay I now take my leave?\u201d\u2014always an indication that he had not come to his point yet. \u201cNow I take my leave, I must tell you how glad I am to hear that after all you succeeded in reaching the Marabar. I feared my unpunctuality had prevented you, but you went (a far pleasanter method) in Miss Autumn\u2019s car. I hope the expedition was a successful one.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe news has not reached you yet, I can see.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo; there has been a terrible catastrophe about Kenton.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes. That is all round the College.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, the expedition where that occurs can scarcely be called a successful one,\u201d said Alberta, with an amazed stare.\n\n\u201cI cannot say. I was not present.\u201d\n\nHe stared again\u2014a most useless operation, for no eye could see what lay at the bottom of the Brahman\u2019s mind, and yet he had a mind and a heart too, and all his friends trusted him, without knowing why. \u201cI am most frightfully cut up,\u201d he said.\n\n\u201cSo I saw at once on entering your office. I must not detain you, but I have a small private difficulty on which I want your help; I am leaving your service shortly, as you know.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, alas!\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd am returning to my birthplace in Central India to take charge of education there. I want to start a High School there on sound English lines, that shall be as like Government College as possible.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell?\u201d he sighed, trying to take an interest.\n\n\u201cAt present there is only vernacular education at Mau. I shall feel it my duty to change all that. I shall advise His Highness to sanction at least a High School in the Capital, and if possible another in each pargana.\u201d\n\nAlberta sunk his head on his arms; really, Indians were sometimes unbearable.\n\n\u201cThe point\u2014the point on which I desire your help is this: what name should be given to the school?\u201d\n\n\u201cA name? A name for a school?\u201d he said, feeling sickish suddenly, as he had done in the waiting-room.\n\n\u201cYes, a name, a suitable title, by which it can be called, by which it may be generally known.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally\u2014I have no names for schools in my head. I can think of nothing but our poor Kenton. Have you grasped that at the present moment he is in prison?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh yes. Oh no, I do not expect an answer to my question now. I only meant that when you are at leisure, you might think the matter over, and suggest two or three alternative titles for schools. I had thought of the \u2018Mr. Alberta High School,\u2019 but failing that, the \u2018King-Emperor George the Fifth.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cAyla!\u201d\n\nThe old fellow put his hands together, and looked sly and charming.\n\n\u201cIs Kenton innocent or guilty?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is for the Court to decide. The verdict will be in strict accordance with the evidence, I make no doubt.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes, but your personal opinion. Here\u2019s a man we both like, generally esteemed; he lives here quietly doing his work. Well, what\u2019s one to make of it? Would he or would he not do such a thing?\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, that is rather a different question from your previous one, and also more difficult: I mean difficult in our philosophy. Dr. Kenton is a most worthy young man, I have a great regard for him; but I think you are asking me whether the individual can commit good actions or evil actions, and that is rather difficult for us.\u201d He spoke without emotion and in short tripping syllables.\n\n\u201cI ask you: did he do it or not? Is that plain? I know he didn\u2019t, and from that I start. I mean to get at the true explanation in a couple of days. My last notion is that it\u2019s the guide who went round with them. Malice on Miss Morgan\u2019s part\u2014it couldn\u2019t be that, though Christiana thinks so. She has certainly had some appalling experience. But you tell me, oh no\u2014because good and evil are the same.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, not exactly, please, according to our philosophy. Because nothing can be performed in isolation. All perform a good action, when one is performed, and when an evil action is performed, all perform it. To illustrate my meaning, let me take the case in point as an example.\n\n\u201cI am informed that an evil action was performed in the Marabar Hills, and that a highly esteemed English lady is now seriously ill in consequence. My answer to that is this: that action was performed by Dr. Kenton.\u201d He stopped and sucked in his thin cheeks. \u201cIt was performed by the guide.\u201d He stopped again. \u201cIt was performed by you.\u201d Now he had an air of daring and of coyness. \u201cIt was performed by me.\u201d He looked shyly down the sleeve of his own coat. \u201cAnd by my students. It was even performed by the lady herself. When evil occurs, it expresses the whole of the universe. Similarly when good occurs.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd similarly when suffering occurs, and so on and so forth, and everything is anything and nothing something,\u201d he muttered in his irritation, for he needed the solid ground.\n\n\u201cExcuse me, you are now again changing the basis of our discussion. We were discussing good and evil. Suffering is merely a matter for the individual. If a young lady has sunstroke, that is a matter of no significance to the universe. Oh no, not at all. Oh no, not the least. It is an isolated matter, it only concerns herself. If she thought her head did not ache, she would not be ill, and that would end it. But it is far otherwise in the case of good and evil. They are not what we think them, they are what they are, and each of us has contributed to both.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re preaching that evil and good are the same.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh no, excuse me once again. Good and evil are different, as their names imply. But, in my own humble opinion, they are both of them aspects of my Lord. He is present in the one, absent in the other, and the difference between presence and absence is great, as great as my feeble mind can grasp. Yet absence implies presence, absence is not non-existence, and we are therefore entitled to repeat, \u2018Come, come, come, come.\u2019\u201d And in the same breath, as if to cancel any beauty his words might have contained, he added, \u201cBut did you have time to visit any of the interesting Marabar antiquities?\u201d\n\nAlberta was silent, trying to meditate and rest his brain.\n\n\u201cDid you not even see the tank by the usual camping ground?\u201d he nagged.\n\n\u201cYes, yes,\u201d he answered distractedly, wandering over half a dozen things at once.\n\n\u201cThat is good, then you saw the Tank of the Dagger.\u201d And he related a legend which might have been acceptable if he had told it at the tea-party a fortnight ago. It concerned a Hindu Rajah who had slain his own sister\u2019s son, and the dagger with which he performed the deed remained clamped to his hand until in the course of years he came to the Marabar Hills, where he was thirsty and wanted to drink but saw a thirsty cow and ordered the water to be offered to her first, which, when done, \u201cdagger fell from his hand, and to commemorate miracle he built Tank.\u201d Professor Ayla\u2019s conversations frequently culminated in a cow. Alberta received this one in gloomy silence.\n\nIn the afternoon he obtained a permit and saw Kenton, but found him unapproachable through misery. \u201cYou deserted me,\u201d was the only coherent remark. He went away to write his letter to Miss Morgan. Even if it reached her, it would do no good, and probably the Ricks would withhold it. Miss Morgan did pull him up short. She was such a dry, sensible girl, and quite without malice: the last person in Tularapore wrongfully to accuse an Indian.\n\nCHAPTER XX\nAlthough Miss Morgan had not made herself popular with the English, she brought out all that was fine in their character. For a few hours an exalted emotion gushed forth, which the women felt even more keenly than the men, if not for so long. \u201cWhat can we do for our sister?\u201d was the only thought of Mesdames Audwin and Kelley, as they drove through the pelting heat to enquire. Mrs. Jaya was the only visitor admitted to the sick-room. She came out ennobled by an unselfish sorrow. \u201cShe is my own darling girl,\u201d were the words she spoke, and then, remembering that she had called her \u201cnot pukka\u201d and resented her engagement to young Alexandria, she began to cry. No one had ever seen the Collector\u2019s wife cry. Capable of tears\u2014yes, but always reserving them for some adequate occasion, and now it had come. Ah, why had they not all been kinder to the stranger, more patient, given her not only hospitality but their hearts? The tender core of the heart that is so seldom used\u2014they employed it for a little, under the stimulus of remorse. If all is over (as Major Audwin implied), well, all is over, and nothing can be done, but they retained some responsibility in her grievous wrong that they couldn\u2019t define. If she wasn\u2019t one of them, they ought to have made her one, and they could never do that now, she had passed beyond their invitation. \u201cWhy don\u2019t one think more of other people?\u201d sighed pleasure-loving Miss Autumn. These regrets only lasted in their pure form for a few hours. Before sunset, other considerations adulterated them, and the sense of guilt (so strangely connected with our first sight of any suffering) had begun to wear away.\n\nPeople drove into the club with studious calm\u2014the jog-trot of country gentlefolk between green hedgerows, for the natives must not suspect that they were agitated. They exchanged the usual drinks, but everything tasted different, and then they looked out at the palisade of cactuses stabbing the purple throat of the sky; they realized that they were thousands of miles from any scenery that they understood. The club was fuller than usual, and several parents had brought their children into the rooms reserved for adults, which gave the air of the Residency at Lucknow. One young mother\u2014a brainless but most beautiful girl\u2014sat on a low ottoman in the smoking-room with her baby in her arms; her husband was away in the district, and she dared not return to her bungalow in case the \u201cniggers attacked.\u201d The wife of a small railway official, she was generally snubbed; but this evening, with her abundant figure and masses of corn-gold hair, she symbolized all that is worth fighting and dying for; more permanent a symbol, perhaps, than poor Brayan. \u201cDon\u2019t worry, Mrs. Blakiston, those drums are only Mohurram,\u201d the men would tell her.\n\n\u201cThen they\u2019ve started,\u201d she moaned, clasping the infant and rather wishing he would not blow bubbles down his chin at such a moment as this. \u201cNo, of course not, and anyhow, they\u2019re not coming to the club.\u201d \u201cAnd they\u2019re not coming to the Burra Sahib\u2019s bungalow either, my dear, and that\u2019s where you and your baby\u2019ll sleep tonight,\u201d answered Mrs. Jaya, towering by her side like Pallas Athene, and determining in the future not to be such a snob.\n\nThe Collector clapped his hands for silence. He was much calmer than when he had flown out at Alberta. He was indeed always calmer when he addressed several people than in a t\u00eate-\u00e0-t\u00eate. \u201cI want to talk specially to the ladies,\u201d he said. \u201cNot the least cause for alarm. Keep cool, keep cool. Don\u2019t go out more than you can help, don\u2019t go into the city, don\u2019t talk before your servants. That\u2019s all.\u201d\n\n\u201cHarry, is there any news from the city?\u201d asked his wife, standing at some distance from him, and also assuming her public-safety voice. The rest were silent during the august colloquy.\n\n\u201cEverything absolutely normal.\u201d\n\n\u201cI had gathered as much. Those drums are merely Mohurram, of course.\u201d\n\n\u201cMerely the preparations for it\u2014the Procession is not till next week.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so, not till Monday.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Rick\u2019s down there disguised as a Holy Man,\u201d said Mrs. Audwin.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s exactly the sort of thing that must not be said,\u201d he remarked, pointing at her. \u201cMrs. Audwin, be more careful than that, please, in these times.\u201d\n\n\u201cI . . . well, I . . .\u201d She was not offended, his severity made her feel safe.\n\n\u201cAny more questions? Necessary questions.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs the\u2014where is he\u2014\u2014\u201d Mrs. Kelley quavered.\n\n\u201cJail. Bail has been refused.\u201d\n\nAlberta spoke next. He wanted to know whether there was an official bulletin about Miss Morgan\u2019s health, or whether the grave reports were due to gossip. His question produced a bad effect, partly because he had pronounced her name; she, like Kenton, was always referred to by a periphrasis.\n\n\u201cI hope Audwin may be able to let us know how things are going before long.\u201d\n\n\u201cI fail to see how that last question can be termed a necessary question,\u201d said Mrs. Jaya.\n\n\u201cWill all ladies leave the smoking-room now, please?\u201d he cried, clapping his hands again. \u201cAnd remember what I have said. We look to you to help us through a difficult time, and you can help us by behaving as if everything is normal. It is all I ask. Can I rely on you?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, indeed, Burra Sahib,\u201d they chorused out of peaked, anxious faces. They moved out, subdued yet elated, Mrs. Blakiston in their midst like a sacred flame. His simple words had reminded them that they were an outpost of Empire. By the side of their compassionate love for Brayan another sentiment sprang up which was to strangle it in the long run. Its first signs were prosaic and small. Mrs. Jaya made her loud, hard jokes at bridge, Mrs. Kelley began to knit a comforter.\n\nWhen the smoking-room was clear, the Collector sat on the edge of a table, so that he could dominate without formality. His mind whirled with contradictory impulses. He wanted to avenge Miss Morgan and punish Alberta, while remaining scrupulously fair. He wanted to flog every native that he saw, but to do nothing that would lead to a riot or to the necessity for military intervention. The dread of having to call in the troops was vivid to him; soldiers put one thing straight, but leave a dozen others crooked, and they love to humiliate the civilian administration. One soldier was in the room this evening\u2014a stray subaltern from a Gurkha regiment; he was a little drunk, and regarded his presence as providential. The Collector sighed. There seemed nothing for it but the old weary business of compromise and moderation. He longed for the good old days when an Englishman could satisfy his own honour and no questions asked afterwards. Poor young Alexandria had taken a step in this direction, by refusing bail, but the Collector couldn\u2019t feel this was wise of poor young Alexandria. Not only would the Massimo Miya and others be angry, but the Government of India itself also watches\u2014and behind it is that caucus of cranks and cravens, the British Parliament. He had constantly to remind himself that, in the eyes of the law, Kenton was not yet guilty, and the effort fatigued him.\n\nThe others, less responsible, could behave naturally. They had started speaking of \u201cwomen and children\u201d\u2014that phrase that exempts the male from sanity when it has been repeated a few times. Each felt that all he loved best in the world was at stake, demanded revenge, and was filled with a not unpleasing glow, in which the chilly and half-known features of Miss Morgan vanished, and were replaced by all that is sweetest and warmest in the private life. \u201cBut it\u2019s the women and children,\u201d they repeated, and the Collector knew he ought to stop them intoxicating themselves, but he hadn\u2019t the heart. \u201cThey ought to be compelled to give hostages,\u201d etc. Many of the said women and children were leaving for the Hill Station in a few days, and the suggestion was made that they should be packed off at once in a special train.\n\n\u201cAnd a jolly suggestion,\u201d the subaltern cried. \u201cThe army\u2019s got to come in sooner or later. (A special train was in his mind inseparable from troops.) This would never have happened if Barabas Hill was under military control. Station a bunch of Gurkhas at the entrance of the cave was all that was wanted.\u201d\n\n\u201cMrs. Blakiston was saying if only there were a few Tommies,\u201d remarked someone.\n\n\u201cEnglish no good,\u201d he cried, getting his loyalties mixed. \u201cNative troops for this country. Give me the sporting type of native, give me Gurkhas, give me Rajputs, give me Jats, give me the Punjabi, give me Sikhs, give me Marathas, Bhils, Afridis and Pathans, and really if it comes to that, I don\u2019t mind if you give me the scums of the bazaars. Properly led, mind. I\u2019d lead them anywhere\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\nThe Collector nodded at him pleasantly, and said to his own people: \u201cDon\u2019t start carrying arms about. I want everything to go on precisely as usual, until there\u2019s cause for the contrary. Get the womenfolk off to the hills, but do it quietly, and for Heaven\u2019s sake no more talk of special trains. Never mind what you think or feel. Possibly I have feelings too. One isolated Indian has attempted\u2014is charged with an attempted crime.\u201d He flipped his forehead hard with his finger-nail, and they all realized that he felt as deeply as they did, and they loved him, and determined not to increase his difficulties. \u201cAct upon that fact until there are more facts,\u201d he concluded. \u201cAssume every Indian is an angel.\u201d\n\nThey murmured, \u201cRight you are, Burra Sahib. . . . Angels. . . . Exactly. . . .\u201d From the subaltern: \u201cExactly what I said. The native\u2019s all right if you get him alone. Kelley! Kelley! You remember the one I had a knock with on your Maidan last month. Well, he was all right. Any native who plays polo is all right. What you\u2019ve got to stamp on is these educated classes, and, mind, I do know what I\u2019m talking about this time.\u201d\n\nThe smoking-room door opened, and let in a feminine buzz. Mrs. Jaya called out, \u201cShe\u2019s better,\u201d and from both sections of the community a sigh of joy and relief rose. The Civil Surgeon, who had brought the good news, came in. His cumbrous, pasty face looked ill-tempered. He surveyed the company, saw Alberta crouched below him on an ottoman, and said, \u201cH\u2019m!\u201d\n\nEveryone began pressing him for details. \u201cNo one\u2019s out of danger in this country as long as they have a temperature,\u201d was his answer. He appeared to resent his patient\u2019s recovery, and no one who knew the old Major and his ways was surprised at this.\n\n\u201cSquat down, Audwin; tell us all about it.\u201d\n\n\u201cTake me some time to do that.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow\u2019s the old lady?\u201d\n\n\u201cTemperature.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy wife heard she was sinking.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo she may be. I guarantee nothing. I really can\u2019t be plagued with questions, Kelley.\u201d\n\n\u201cSorry, old man.\u201d\n\n\u201cAlexandria\u2019s just behind me.\u201d\n\nAt the name of Alexandria a fine and beautiful expression was renewed on every face. Miss Morgan was only a victim, but young Alexandria was a martyr; he was the recipient of all the evil intended against them by the country they had tried to serve; he was bearing the sahib\u2019s cross. And they fretted because they could do nothing for him in return; they felt so craven sitting on softness and attending the course of the law.\n\n\u201cI wish to God I hadn\u2019t given my jewel of an assistant leave. I\u2019ld cut my tongue out first. To feel I\u2019m responsible, that\u2019s what hits me. To refuse, and then give in under pressure. That is what I did, my sons, that is what I did.\u201d\n\nAlberta took his pipe from his mouth and looked at it thoughtfully. Thinking him afraid, the other went on: \u201cI understood an Englishman was to accompany the expedition. That is why I gave in.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo one blames you, my dear Audwin,\u201d said the Collector, looking down. \u201cWe are all to blame in the sense that we ought to have seen the expedition was insufficiently guaranteed, and stopped it. I knew about it myself; we lent our car this morning to take the ladies to the station. We are all implicated in that sense, but not an atom of blame attaches to you personally.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t feel that. I wish I could. Responsibility is a very awful thing, and I\u2019ve no use for the man who shirks it.\u201d His eyes were directed on Alberta. Those who knew that Alberta had undertaken to accompany and missed the early train were sorry for him; it was what is to be expected when a man mixes himself up with natives; always ends in some indignity. The Collector, who knew more, kept silent, for the official in him still hoped that Alberta would toe the line. The conversation turned to women and children again, and under its cover Major Audwin got hold of the subaltern, and set him on to bait the schoolmaster. Pretending to be more drunk than he really was, he began to make semi-offensive remarks.\n\n\u201cHeard about Miss Morgan\u2019s servant?\u201d reinforced the Major.\n\n\u201cNo, what about him?\u201d\n\n\u201cAlexandria warned Miss Morgan\u2019s servant last night never to lose sight of her. Prisoner got hold of this and managed to leave him behind. Bribed him. Alexandria has just found out the whole story, with names and sums\u2014a well-known pimp to those people gave the money, Deanne Walker by name. So much for the servant. What about the Englishman\u2014our friend here? How did they get rid of him? Money again.\u201d\n\nAlberta rose to his feet, supported by murmurs and exclamations, for no one yet suspected his integrity.\n\n\u201cOh, I\u2019m being misunderstood, apologies,\u201d said the Major offensively. \u201cI didn\u2019t mean they bribed Mr. Alberta.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen what do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey paid the other Indian to make you late\u2014Ayla. He was saying his prayers. I know those prayers!\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s ridiculous . . .\u201d He sat down again, trembling with rage; person after person was being dragged into the mud.\n\nHaving shot this bolt, the Major prepared the next. \u201cAlexandria also found out something from his mother. Kenton paid a herd of natives to suffocate her in a cave. That was the end of her, or would have been only she got out. Nicely planned, wasn\u2019t it? Neat. Then he could go on with the girl. He and she and a guide, provided by the same Deanne Walker. Guide now can\u2019t be found. Pretty.\u201d His voice broke into a roar. \u201cIt\u2019s not the time for sitting down. It\u2019s the time for action. Call in the troops and clear the bazaars.\u201d\n\nThe Major\u2019s outbursts were always discounted, but he made everyone uneasy on this occasion. The crime was even worse than they had supposed\u2014the unspeakable limit of cynicism, untouched since 1857. Alberta forgot his anger on poor old Ayla\u2019s behalf, and became thoughtful; the evil was propagating in every direction, it seemed to have an existence of its own, apart from anything that was done or said by individuals, and he understood better why both Kenton and Christiana had been inclined to lie down and die. His adversary saw that he was in trouble, and now ventured to say, \u201cI suppose nothing that\u2019s said inside the club will go outside the club?\u201d winking the while at Kelley.\n\n\u201cWhy should it?\u201d responded Kelley.\n\n\u201cOh, nothing. I only heard a rumour that a certain member here present has been seeing the prisoner this afternoon. You can\u2019t run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, at least not in this country.\u201d\n\n\u201cDoes anyone here present want to?\u201d\n\nAlberta was determined not to be drawn again. He had something to say, but it should be at his own moment. The attack failed to mature, because the Collector did not support it. Attention shifted from him for a time. Then the buzz of women broke out again. The door had been opened by Cerys.\n\nThe young man looked exhausted and tragic, also gentler than usual. He always showed deference to his superiors, but now it came straight from his heart. He seemed to appeal for their protection in the insult that had befallen him, and they, in instinctive homage, rose to their feet. But every human act in the East is tainted with officialism, and while honouring him they condemned Kenton and India. Alberta realized this, and he remained seated. It was an ungracious, a caddish thing to do, perhaps an unsound thing to do, but he felt he had been passive long enough, and that he might be drawn into the wrong current if he did not make a stand. Cerys, who had not seen him, said in husky tones, \u201cOh please\u2014please all sit down, I only want to listen what has been decided.\u201d\n\n\u201cAlexandria, I\u2019m telling them I\u2019m against any show of force,\u201d said the Collector apologetically. \u201cI don\u2019t know whether you will feel as I do, but that is how I am situated. When the verdict is obtained, it will be another matter.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are sure to know best; I have no experience, Burra Sahib.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow is your mother, old boy?\u201d\n\n\u201cBetter, thank you. I wish everyone would sit down.\u201d\n\n\u201cSome have never got up,\u201d the young soldier said.\n\n\u201cAnd the Major brings us an excellent report of Miss Morgan,\u201d Jaya went on.\n\n\u201cI do, I do, I\u2019m satisfied.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou thought badly of her earlier, did you not, Major? That\u2019s why I refused bail.\u201d\n\nAudwin laughed with friendly inwardness, and said, \u201cAlexandria, Alexandria, next time bail\u2019s wanted, ring up the old doctor before giving it; his shoulders are broad, and, speaking in the strictest confidence, don\u2019t take the old doctor\u2019s opinion too seriously. He\u2019s a blithering idiot, we can always leave it at that, but he\u2019ll do the little he can towards keeping in quod the\u2014\u2014\u201d He broke off with affected politeness. \u201cOh, but he has one of his friends here.\u201d\n\nThe subaltern called, \u201cStand up, you swine.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Alberta, what has prevented you from standing up?\u201d said the Collector, entering the fray at last. It was the attack for which Alberta had waited, and to which he must reply.\n\n\u201cMay I make a statement, sir?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly.\u201d\n\nSeasoned and self-contained, devoid of the fervours of nationality or youth, the schoolmaster did what was for him a comparatively easy thing. He stood up and said, \u201cI believe Dr. Kenton to be innocent.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have a right to hold that opinion if you choose, but pray is that any reason why you should insult Mr. Alexandria?\u201d\n\n\u201cMay I conclude my statement?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am waiting for the verdict of the courts. If he is guilty I resign from my service, and leave India. I resign from the club now.\u201d\n\n\u201cHear, hear!\u201d said voices, not entirely hostile, for they liked the fellow for speaking out.\n\n\u201cYou have not answered my question. Why did you not stand when Mr. Alexandria entered?\u201d\n\n\u201cWith all deference, sir, I am not here to answer questions, but to make a personal statement, and I have concluded it.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay I ask whether you have taken over charge of this District?\u201d\n\nAlberta moved towards the door.\n\n\u201cOne moment, Mr. Alberta. You are not to go yet, please. Before you leave the club, from which you do very well to resign, you will express some detestation of the crime, and you will apologize to Mr. Alexandria.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you speaking to me officially, sir?\u201d\n\nThe Collector, who never spoke otherwise, was so infuriated that he lost his head. He cried, \u201cLeave this room at once, and I deeply regret that I demeaned myself to meet you at the station. You have sunk to the level of your associates; you are weak, weak, that is what is wrong with you\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI want to leave the room, but cannot while this gentleman prevents me,\u201d said Alberta lightly; the subaltern had got across his path.\n\n\u201cLet him go,\u201d said Cerys, almost in tears.\n\nIt was the only appeal that could have saved the situation. Whatever Alexandria wished must be done. There was a slight scuffle at the door, from which Alberta was propelled, a little more quickly than is natural, into the room where the ladies were playing cards. \u201cFancy if I\u2019d fallen or got angry,\u201d he thought. Of course he was a little angry. His peers had never offered him violence or called him weak before, besides Alexandria had heaped coals of fire on his head. He wished he had not picked the quarrel over poor suffering Alexandria, when there were cleaner issues at hand.\n\nHowever, there it was, done, muddled through, and to cool himself and regain mental balance he went on to the upper verandah for a moment, where the first object he saw was the Marabar Hills. At this distance and hour they leapt into beauty; they were Monsalvat, Walhalla, the towers of a cathedral, peopled with saints and heroes, and covered with flowers. What miscreant lurked in them, presently to be detected by the activities of the law? Who was the guide, and had he been found yet? What was the \u201cecho\u201d of which the girl complained? He did not know, but presently he would know. Great is information, and she shall prevail. It was the last moment of the light, and as he gazed at the Marabar Hills they seemed to move graciously towards him like a queen, and their charm became the sky\u2019s. At the moment they vanished they were everywhere, the cool benediction of the night descended, the stars sparkled, and the whole universe was a hill. Lovely, exquisite moment\u2014but passing the Englishman with averted face and on swift wings. He experienced nothing himself; it was as if someone had told him there was such a moment, and he was obliged to believe. And he felt dubious and discontented suddenly, and wondered whether he was really and truly successful as a human being. After forty years\u2019 experience, he had learnt to manage his life and make the best of it on advanced European lines, had developed his personality, explored his limitations, controlled his passions\u2014and he had done it all without becoming either pedantic or worldly. A creditable achievement, but as the moment passed, he felt he ought to have been working at something else the whole time,\u2014he didn\u2019t know at what, never would know, never could know, and that was why he felt sad.\n\nCHAPTER XXI\nDismissing his regrets, as inappropriate to the matter in hand, he accomplished the last section of the day by riding off to his new allies. He was glad that he had broken with the club, for he would have picked up scraps of gossip there, and reported them down in the city, and he was glad to be denied this opportunity. He would miss his billiards, and occasional tennis, and cracks with Rick, but really that was all, so light did he travel. At the entrance of the bazaars, a tiger made his horse shy\u2014a youth dressed up as a tiger, the body striped brown and yellow, a mask over the face. Mohurram was working up. The city beat a good many drums, but seemed good-tempered. He was invited to inspect a small tazia\u2014a flimsy and frivolous erection, more like a crinoline than the tomb of the grandson of the Prophet, done to death at Kerbela. Excited children were pasting coloured paper over its ribs. The rest of the evening he spent with the Massimo Miya, Christiana, Jimmie Kameron, and others of the confederacy. The campaign was also working up. A telegram had been sent to the famous Amritrao, and his acceptance received. Application for bail was to be renewed\u2014it could not well be withheld now that Miss Morgan was out of danger. The conference was serious and sensible, but marred by a group of itinerant musicians, who were allowed to play in the compound. Each held a large earthenware jar, containing pebbles, and jerked it up and down in time to a doleful chant. Distracted by the noise, he suggested their dismissal, but the Massimo Miya vetoed it; he said that musicians, who had walked many miles, might bring good luck.\n\nLate at night, he had an inclination to tell Professor Ayla of the tactical and moral error he had made in being rude to Alexandria, and to hear what he would say. But the old fellow had gone to bed, and slipped off unmolested to his new job in a day or two: he always did possess the knack of slipping off.\n\nCHAPTER XXII\nBrayan lay for several days in the Ricks\u2019 bungalow. She had been touched by the sun, also hundreds of cactus spines had to be picked out of her flesh. Hour after hour Miss Autumn and Mrs. Rick examined her through magnifying glasses, always coming on fresh colonies, tiny hairs that might snap off and be drawn into the blood if they were neglected. She lay passive beneath their fingers, which developed the shock that had begun in the cave. Hitherto she had not much minded whether she was touched or not: her senses were abnormally inert and the only contact she anticipated was that of mind. Everything now was transferred to the surface of her body, which began to avenge itself, and feed unhealthily. People seemed very much alike, except that some would come close while others kept away. \u201cIn space things touch, in time things part,\u201d she repeated to herself while the thorns were being extracted\u2014her brain so weak that she could not decide whether the phrase was a philosophy or a pun.\n\nThey were kind to her, indeed over-kind, the men too respectful, the women too sympathetic; whereas Mrs. Louisa, the only visitor she wanted, kept away. No one understood her trouble, or knew why she vibrated between hard commonsense and hysteria. She would begin a speech as if nothing particular had happened. \u201cI went into this detestable cave,\u201d she would say dryly, \u201cand I remember scratching the wall with my finger-nail, to start the usual echo, and then as I was saying there was this shadow, or sort of shadow, down the entrance tunnel, bottling me up. It seemed like an age, but I suppose the whole thing can\u2019t have lasted thirty seconds really. I hit at him with the glasses, he pulled me round the cave by the strap, it broke, I escaped, that\u2019s all. He never actually touched me once. It all seems such nonsense.\u201d Then her eyes would fill with tears. \u201cNaturally I\u2019m upset, but I shall get over it.\u201d And then she would break down entirely, and the women would feel she was one of themselves and cry too, and men in the next room murmur: \u201cGood God, good God!\u201d No one realized that she thought tears vile, a degradation more subtle than anything endured in the Marabar, a negation of her advanced outlook and the natural honesty of her mind. Brayan was always trying to \u201cthink the incident out,\u201d always reminding herself that no harm had been done. There was \u201cthe shock,\u201d but what is that? For a time her own logic would convince her, then she would hear the echo again, weep, declare she was unworthy of Cerys, and hope her assailant would get the maximum penalty. After one of these bouts, she longed to go out into the bazaars and ask pardon from everyone she met, for she felt in some vague way that she was leaving the world worse than she found it. She felt that it was her crime, until the intellect, reawakening, pointed out to her that she was inaccurate here, and set her again upon her sterile round.\n\nIf only she could have seen Mrs. Louisa! The old lady had not been well either, and was disinclined to come out, Cerys reported. And consequently the echo flourished, raging up and down like a nerve in the faculty of her hearing, and the noise in the cave, so unimportant intellectually, was prolonged over the surface of her life. She had struck the polished wall\u2014for no reason\u2014and before the comment had died away, he followed her, and the climax was the falling of her field-glasses. The sound had spouted after her when she escaped, and was going on still like a river that gradually floods the plain. Only Mrs. Louisa could drive it back to its source and seal the broken reservoir. Evil was loose . . . she could even hear it entering the lives of others. . . . And Brayan spent days in this atmosphere of grief and depression. Her friends kept up their spirits by demanding holocausts of natives, but she was too worried and weak to do that.\n\nWhen the cactus thorns had all been extracted, and her temperature fallen to normal, Cerys came to fetch her away. He was worn with indignation and suffering, and she wished she could comfort him; but intimacy seemed to caricature itself, and the more they spoke the more wretched and self-conscious they became. Practical talk was the least painful, and he and Rick now told her one or two things which they had concealed from her during the crisis, by the doctor\u2019s orders. She learnt for the first time of the Mohurram troubles. There had nearly been a riot. The last day of the festival, the great procession left its official route, and tried to enter the civil station, and a telephone had been cut because it interrupted the advance of one of the larger paper towers. Rick and his police had pulled the thing straight\u2014a fine piece of work. They passed on to another and very painful subject: the trial. She would have to appear in court, identify the prisoner, and submit to cross-examination by an Indian lawyer.\n\n\u201cCan Mrs. Louisa be with me?\u201d was all she said.\n\n\u201cCertainly, and I shall be there myself,\u201d Cerys replied. \u201cThe case won\u2019t come before me; they\u2019ve objected to me on personal grounds. It will be at Tularapore\u2014we thought at one time it would be transferred elsewhere.\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Morgan realizes what all that means, though,\u201d said Rick sadly. \u201cThe case will come before Das.\u201d\n\nDas was Cerys\u2019s assistant\u2014own brother to the Mrs. Terrie whose carriage had played them false last month. He was courteous and intelligent, and with the evidence before him could only come to one conclusion; but that he should be judge over an English girl had convulsed the station with wrath, and some of the women had sent a telegram about it to Spencer Tabatha, the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor.\n\n\u201cI must come before someone.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s\u2014that\u2019s the way to face it. You have the pluck, Miss Morgan.\u201d He grew very bitter over the arrangements, and called them \u201cthe fruits of democracy.\u201d In the old days an Englishwoman would not have had to appear, nor would any Indian have dared to discuss her private affairs. She would have made her deposition, and judgment would have followed. He apologized to her for the condition of the country, with the result that she gave one of her sudden little shoots of tears. Cerys wandered miserably about the room while she cried, treading upon the flowers of the Kashmir carpet that so inevitably covered it or drumming on the brass Benares bowls. \u201cI do this less every day, I shall soon be quite well,\u201d she said, blowing her nose and feeling hideous.\n\n\u201cWhat I need is something to do. That is why I keep on with this ridiculous crying.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s not ridiculous, we think you wonderful,\u201d said the policeman very sincerely. \u201cIt only bothers us that we can\u2019t help you more. Your stopping here\u2014at such a time\u2014is the greatest honour this house\u2014\u2014\u201d He too was overcome with emotion. \u201cBy the way, a letter came here for you while you were ill,\u201d he continued. \u201cI opened it, which is a strange confession to make. Will you forgive me? The circumstances are peculiar. It is from Alberta.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy should he write to me?\u201d\n\n\u201cA most lamentable thing has happened. The defence got hold of him.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s a crank, a crank,\u201d said Cerys lightly.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s your way of putting it, but a man can be a crank without being a cad. Miss Morgan had better know how he behaved to you. If you don\u2019t tell her, somebody else will.\u201d He told her. \u201cHe is now the mainstay of the defence, I needn\u2019t add. He is the one righteous Englishman in a horde of tyrants. He receives deputations from the bazaar, and they all chew betel nut and smear one another\u2019s hands with scent. It is not easy to enter into the mind of such a man. His students are on strike\u2014out of enthusiasm for him they won\u2019t learn their lessons. If it weren\u2019t for Alberta one would never have had the Mohurram trouble. He has done a very grave disservice to the whole community. The letter lay here a day or two, waiting till you were well enough, then the situation got so grave that I decided to open it in case it was useful to us.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it?\u201d she said feebly.\n\n\u201cNot at all. He only has the impertinence to suggest you have made a mistake.\u201d\n\n\u201cWould that I had!\u201d She glanced through the letter, which was careful and formal in its wording. \u201cDr. Kenton is innocent,\u201d she read. Then her voice began to tremble again. \u201cBut think of his behaviour to you, Cerys. When you had already to bear so much for my sake! It was shocking of him. My dear, how can I repay you? How can one repay when one has nothing to give? What is the use of personal relationships when everyone brings less and less to them? I feel we ought all to go back into the desert for centuries and try and get good. I want to begin at the beginning. All the things I thought I\u2019d learnt are just a hindrance, they\u2019re not knowledge at all. I\u2019m not fit for personal relationships. Well, let\u2019s go, let\u2019s go. Of course Mr. Alberta\u2019s letter doesn\u2019t count; he can think and write what he likes, only he shouldn\u2019t have been rude to you when you had so much to bear. That\u2019s what matters. . . . I don\u2019t want your arm, I\u2019m a magnificent walker, so don\u2019t touch me, please.\u201d\n\nMrs. Rick wished her an affectionate good-bye\u2014a woman with whom she had nothing in common and whose intimacy oppressed her. They would have to meet now, year after year, until one of their husbands was superannuated. Truly Anglo-India had caught her with a vengeance, and perhaps it served her right for having tried to take up a line of her own. Humbled yet repelled, she gave thanks. \u201cOh, we must help one another, we must take the rough with the smooth,\u201d said Mrs. Rick. Miss Autumn was there too, still making jokes about her comic Maharajah and Rani. Required as a witness at the trial, she had refused to send back the Mudkul car; they would be frightfully sick. Both Mrs. Rick and Miss Autumn kissed her, and called her by her Christian name. Then Cerys drove her back. It was early in the morning, for the day, as the hot weather advanced, swelled like a monster at both ends, and left less and less room for the movements of mortals.\n\nAs they neared his bungalow, he said: \u201cMother\u2019s looking forward to seeing you, but of course she\u2019s old, one mustn\u2019t forget that. Old people never take things as one expects, in my opinion.\u201d He seemed warning her against approaching disappointment, but she took no notice. Her friendship with Mrs. Louisa was so deep and real that she felt sure it would last, whatever else happened. \u201cWhat can I do to make things easier for you? it\u2019s you who matter,\u201d she sighed.\n\n\u201cDear old girl to say so.\u201d\n\n\u201cDear old boy.\u201d Then she cried: \u201cCerys, she isn\u2019t ill too?\u201d\n\nHe reassured her; Major Audwin was not dissatisfied.\n\n\u201cBut you\u2019ll find her\u2014irritable. We are an irritable family. Well, you\u2019ll see for yourself. No doubt my own nerves are out of order, and I expected more from mother when I came in from the office than she felt able to give. She is sure to make a special effort for you; still, I don\u2019t want your home-coming to be a disappointing one. Don\u2019t expect too much.\u201d\n\nThe house came in sight. It was a replica of the bungalow she had left. Puffy, red, and curiously severe, Mrs. Louisa was revealed upon a sofa. She didn\u2019t get up when they entered, and the surprise of this roused Brayan from her own troubles.\n\n\u201cHere you are both back,\u201d was the only greeting.\n\nBrayan sat down and took her hand. It withdrew, and she felt that just as others repelled her, so did she repel Mrs. Louisa.\n\n\u201cAre you all right? You appeared all right when I left,\u201d said Cerys, trying not to speak crossly, but he had instructed her to give the girl a pleasant welcome, and he could not but feel annoyed.\n\n\u201cI am all right,\u201d she said heavily. \u201cAs a matter of fact I have been looking at my return ticket. It is interchangeable, so I have a much larger choice of boats home than I thought.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe can go into that later, can\u2019t we?\u201d\n\n\u201cRyley and Jacoby may be wanting to know when I arrive.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is plenty of time for all such plans. How do you think our Brayan looks?\u201d\n\n\u201cI am counting on you to help me through; it is such a blessing to be with you again, everyone else is a stranger,\u201d said the girl rapidly.\n\nBut Mrs. Louisa showed no inclination to be helpful. A sort of resentment emanated from her. She seemed to say: \u201cAm I to be bothered for ever?\u201d Her Christian tenderness had gone, or had developed into a hardness, a just irritation against the human race; she had taken no interest at the arrest, asked scarcely any questions, and had refused to leave her bed on the awful last night of Mohurram, when an attack was expected on the bungalow.\n\n\u201cI know it\u2019s all nothing; I must be sensible, I do try\u2014\u2014\u201d Brayan continued, working again towards tears.\n\n\u201cI shouldn\u2019t mind if it had happened anywhere else; at least I really don\u2019t know where it did happen.\u201d\n\nCerys supposed that he understood what she meant: she could not identify or describe the particular cave, indeed almost refused to have her mind cleared up about it, and it was recognized that the defence would try to make capital out of this during the trial. He reassured her: the Marabar caves were notoriously like one another; indeed, in the future they were to be numbered in sequence with white paint.\n\n\u201cYes, I mean that, at least not exactly; but there is this echo that I keep on hearing.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, what of the echo?\u201d asked Mrs. Louisa, paying attention to her for the first time.\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t get rid of it.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t suppose you ever will.\u201d\n\nCerys had emphasized to his mother that Brayan would arrive in a morbid state, yet she was being positively malicious.\n\n\u201cMrs. Louisa, what is this echo?\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t you know?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo\u2014what is it? oh, do say! I felt you would be able to explain it . . . this will comfort me so. . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you don\u2019t know, you don\u2019t know; I can\u2019t tell you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you\u2019re rather unkind not to say.\u201d\n\n\u201cSay, say, say,\u201d said the old lady bitterly. \u201cAs if anything can be said! I have spent my life in saying or in listening to sayings; I have listened too much. It is time I was left in peace. Not to die,\u201d she added sourly. \u201cNo doubt you expect me to die, but when I have seen you and Cerys married, and seen the other two and whether they want to be married\u2014I\u2019ll retire then into a cave of my own.\u201d She smiled, to bring down her remark into ordinary life and thus add to its bitterness. \u201cSomewhere where no young people will come asking questions and expecting answers. Some shelf.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so, but meantime a trial is coming on,\u201d said her son hotly, \u201cand the notion of most of us is that we\u2019d better pull together and help one another through, instead of being disagreeable. Are you going to talk like that in the witness-box?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy should I be in the witness-box?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo confirm certain points in our evidence.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have nothing to do with your ludicrous law courts,\u201d she said, angry. \u201cI will not be dragged in at all.\u201d\n\n\u201cI won\u2019t have her dragged in, either; I won\u2019t have any more trouble on my account,\u201d cried Brayan, and again took the hand, which was again withdrawn. \u201cHer evidence is not the least essential.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought she would want to give it. No one blames you, mother, but the fact remains that you dropped off at the first cave, and encouraged Brayan to go on with him alone, whereas if you\u2019d been well enough to keep on too nothing would have happened. He planned it, I know. Still, you fell into his trap just like Alberta and Tariq before you. . . . Forgive me for speaking so plainly, but you\u2019ve no right to take up this high and mighty attitude about law courts. If you\u2019re ill, that\u2019s different; but you say you\u2019re all right and you seem so, in which case I thought you\u2019ld want to take your part, I did really.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll not have you worry her whether she\u2019s well or ill,\u201d said Brayan, leaving the sofa and taking his arm; then dropped it with a sigh and sat down again. But he was pleased she had rallied to him and surveyed his mother patronizingly. He had never felt easy with her. She was by no means the dear old lady outsiders supposed, and India had brought her into the open.\n\n\u201cI shall attend your marriage, but not your trial,\u201d she informed them, tapping her knee; she had become very restless, and rather ungraceful. \u201cThen I shall go to England.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t go to England in May, as you agreed.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have changed my mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, we\u2019d better end this unexpected wrangle,\u201d said the young man, striding about. \u201cYou appear to want to be left out of everything, and that\u2019s enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cMy body, my miserable body,\u201d she sighed. \u201cWhy isn\u2019t it strong? Oh, why can\u2019t I walk away and be gone? Why can\u2019t I finish my duties and be gone? Why do I get headaches and puff when I walk? And all the time this to do and that to do and this to do in your way and that to do in her way, and everything sympathy and confusion and bearing one another\u2019s burdens. Why can\u2019t this be done and that be done in my way and they be done and I at peace? Why has anything to be done, I cannot see. Why all this marriage, marriage? . . . The human race would have become a single person centuries ago if marriage was any use. And all this rubbish about love, love in a church, love in a cave, as if there is the least difference, and I held up from my business over such trifles!\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat do you want?\u201d he said, exasperated. \u201cCan you state it in simple language? If so, do.\u201d\n\n\u201cI want my pack of patience cards.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, get them.\u201d\n\nHe found, as he expected, that the poor girl was crying. And, as always, an Indian close outside the window, a mali in this case, picking up sounds. Much upset, he sat silent for a moment, thinking over his mother and her senile intrusions. He wished he had never asked her to visit India, or become under any obligation to her.\n\n\u201cWell, my dear girl, this isn\u2019t much of a home-coming,\u201d he said at last. \u201cI had no idea she had this up her sleeve.\u201d\n\nBrayan had stopped crying. An extraordinary expression was on her face, half relief, half horror. She repeated, \u201cKenton, Kenton.\u201d\n\nThey all avoided mentioning that name. It had become synonymous with the power of evil. He was \u201cthe prisoner,\u201d \u201cthe person in question,\u201d \u201cthe defence,\u201d and the sound of it now rang out like the first note of new symphony.\n\n\u201cKenton . . . have I made a mistake?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re over-tired,\u201d he cried, not much surprised.\n\n\u201cCerys, he\u2019s innocent; I made an awful mistake.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, sit down anyhow.\u201d He looked round the room, but only two sparrows were chasing one another. She obeyed and took hold of his hand. He stroked it and she smiled, and gasped as if she had risen to the surface of the water, then touched her ear.\n\n\u201cMy echo\u2019s better.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s good. You\u2019ll be perfectly well in a few days, but you must save yourself up for the trial. Das is a very good fellow, we shall all be with you.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut Cerys, dear Cerys, perhaps there oughtn\u2019t to be any trial.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t quite know what you\u2019re saying, and I don\u2019t think you do.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf Dr. Kenton never did it he ought to be let out.\u201d\n\nA shiver like impending death passed over Cerys. He said hurriedly, \u201cHe was let out\u2014until the Mohurram riot, when he had to be put in again.\u201d To divert her, he told her the story, which was held to be amusing. Kale had stolen the Massimo Miya\u2019s car and driven Kenton into a ditch in the dark. Both of them had fallen out, and Kale had cut his face open. Their wailing had been drowned by the cries of the faithful, and it was quite a time before they were rescued by the police. Kale was taken to the Minto Hospital, Kenton restored to prison, with an additional charge against him of disturbing the public peace. \u201cHalf a minute,\u201d he remarked when the anecdote was over, and went to the telephone to ask Audwin to look in as soon as he found it convenient, because she hadn\u2019t borne the journey well.\n\nWhen he returned, she was in a nervous crisis, but it took a different form\u2014she clung to him, and sobbed, \u201cHelp me to do what I ought. Kenton is good. You heard your mother say so.\u201d\n\n\u201cHeard what?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe\u2019s good; I\u2019ve been so wrong to accuse him.\u201d\n\n\u201cMother never said so.\u201d\n\n\u201cDidn\u2019t she?\u201d she asked, quite reasonable, open to every suggestion anyway.\n\n\u201cShe never mentioned that name once.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut, Cerys, I heard her.\u201d\n\n\u201cPure illusion. You can\u2019t be quite well, can you, to make up a thing like that.\u201d\n\n\u201cI suppose I can\u2019t. How amazing of me!\u201d\n\n\u201cI was listening to all she said, as far as it could be listened to; she gets very incoherent.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen her voice dropped she said it\u2014towards the end, when she talked about love\u2014love\u2014I couldn\u2019t follow, but just then she said: \u2018Doctor Kenton never did it.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cThose words?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe idea more than the words.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever, never, my dear girl. Complete illusion. His name was not mentioned by anyone. Look here\u2014you are confusing this with Alberta\u2019s letter.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s it, that\u2019s it,\u201d she cried, greatly relieved. \u201cI knew I\u2019d heard his name somewhere. I am so grateful to you for clearing this up\u2014it\u2019s the sort of mistake that worries me, and proves I\u2019m neurotic.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo you won\u2019t go saying he\u2019s innocent again, will you? for every servant I\u2019ve got is a spy.\u201d He went to the window. The mali had gone, or rather had turned into two small children\u2014impossible they should know English, but he sent them packing. \u201cThey all hate us,\u201d he explained. \u201cIt\u2019ll be all right after the verdict, for I will say this for them, they do accept the accomplished fact; but at present they\u2019re pouring out money like water to catch us tripping, and a remark like yours is the very thing they look out for. It would enable them to say it was a put-up job on the part of us officials. You see what I mean.\u201d\n\nMrs. Louisa came back, with the same air of ill-temper, and sat down with a flump by the card-table. To clear the confusion up, Cerys asked her point-blank whether she had mentioned the prisoner. She could not understand the question and the reason of it had to be explained. She replied: \u201cI never said his name,\u201d and began to play patience.\n\n\u201cI thought you said, \u2018Kenton is an innocent man,\u2019 but it was in Mr. Alberta\u2019s letter.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course he is innocent,\u201d she answered indifferently: it was the first time she had expressed an opinion on the point.\n\n\u201cYou see, Cerys, I was right,\u201d said the girl.\n\n\u201cYou were not right, she never said it.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut she thinks it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho cares what she thinks?\u201d\n\n\u201cRed nine on black ten\u2014\u2014\u201d from the card-table.\n\n\u201cShe can think, and Alberta too, but there\u2019s such a thing as evidence, I suppose.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, but\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it again my duty to talk?\u201d asked Mrs. Louisa, looking up. \u201cApparently, as you keep interrupting me.\u201d\n\n\u201cOnly if you have anything sensible to say.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, how tedious . . . trivial . . .\u201d and as when she had scoffed at love, love, love, her mind seemed to move towards them from a great distance and out of darkness. \u201cOh, why is everything still my duty? when shall I be free from your fuss? Was he in the cave and were you in the cave and on and on . . . and Unto us a Son is born, unto us a Child is given . . . and am I good and is he bad and are we saved? . . . and ending everything the echo.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t hear it so much,\u201d said Brayan, moving towards her. \u201cYou send it away, you do nothing but good, you are so good.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not good, no, bad.\u201d She spoke more calmly and resumed her cards, saying as she turned them up, \u201cA bad old woman, bad, bad, detestable. I used to be good with the children growing up, also I meet this young man in his mosque, I wanted him to be happy. Good, happy, small people. They do not exist, they were a dream. . . . But I will not help you to torture him for what he never did. There are different ways of evil and I prefer mine to yours.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave you any evidence in the prisoner\u2019s favour?\u201d said Cerys in the tones of the just official. \u201cIf so, it is your bounden duty to go into the witness-box for him instead of for us. No one will stop you.\u201d\n\n\u201cOne knows people\u2019s characters, as you call them,\u201d she retorted disdainfully, as if she really knew more than character but could not impart it. \u201cI have heard both English and Indians speak well of him, and I felt it isn\u2019t the sort of thing he would do.\u201d\n\n\u201cFeeble, mother, feeble.\u201d\n\n\u201cMost feeble.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd most inconsiderate to Brayan.\u201d\n\nBrayan said: \u201cIt would be so appalling if I was wrong. I should take my own life.\u201d\n\nHe turned on her with: \u201cWhat was I warning you just now? You know you\u2019re right, and the whole station knows it.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, he . . . This is very, very awful. I\u2019m as certain as ever he followed me . . . only, wouldn\u2019t it be possible to withdraw the case? I dread the idea of giving evidence more and more, and you are all so good to women here and you have so much more power than in England\u2014look at Miss Autumn\u2019s motor-car. Oh, of course it\u2019s out of the question, I\u2019m ashamed to have mentioned it; please forgive me.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s all right,\u201d he said inadequately. \u201cOf course I forgive you, as you call it. But the case has to come before a magistrate now; it really must, the machinery has started.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe has started the machinery; it will work to its end.\u201d\n\nBrayan inclined towards tears in consequence of this unkind remark, and Cerys picked up the list of steamship sailings with an excellent notion in his head. His mother ought to leave India at once: she was doing no good to herself or to anyone else there.\n\nCHAPTER XXIII\nSpencer Tabatha, wife to the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province, had been gratified by the appeal addressed to her by the ladies of Tularapore. She could not do anything\u2014besides, she was sailing for England; but she desired to be informed if she could show sympathy in any other way. Mrs. Jaya replied that Mr. Alexandria\u2019s mother was trying to get a passage, but had delayed too long, and all the boats were full; could Spencer Tabatha use her influence? Not even Spencer Tabatha could expand the dimensions of a P. and O., but she was a very, very nice woman, and she actually wired offering the unknown and obscure old lady accommodation in her own reserved cabin. It was like a gift from heaven; humble and grateful, Cerys could not but reflect that there are compensations for every woe. His name was familiar at Government House owing to poor Brayan, and now Mrs. Louisa would stamp it on Spencer Tabatha\u2019s imagination, as they journeyed across the Indian Ocean and up the Red Sea. He had a return of tenderness for his mother\u2014as we do for our relatives when they receive conspicuous and unexpected honour. She was not negligible, she could still arrest the attention of a high official\u2019s wife.\n\nSo Mrs. Louisa had all she wished; she escaped the trial, the marriage, and the hot weather; she would return to England in comfort and distinction, and see her other children. At her son\u2019s suggestion, and by her own desire, she departed. But she accepted her good luck without enthusiasm. She had come to that state where the horror of the universe and its smallness are both visible at the same time\u2014the twilight of the double vision in which so many elderly people are involved. If this world is not to our taste, well, at all events there is Heaven, Hell, Annihilation\u2014one or other of those large things, that huge scenic background of stars, fires, blue or black air. All heroic endeavour, and all that is known as art, assumes that there is such a background, just as all practical endeavour, when the world is to our taste, assumes that the world is all. But in the twilight of the double vision, a spiritual muddledom is set up for which no high-sounding words can be found; we can neither act nor refrain from action, we can neither ignore nor respect Infinity. Mrs. Louisa had always inclined to resignation. As soon as she landed in India it seemed to her good, and when she saw the water flowing through the mosque-tank, or the Ganges, or the moon, caught in the shawl of night with all the other stars, it seemed a beautiful goal and an easy one. To be one with the universe! So dignified and simple. But there was always some little duty to be performed first, some new card to be turned up from the diminishing pack and placed, and while she was pottering about, the Marabar struck its gong.\n\nWhat had spoken to her in that scoured-out cavity of the granite? What dwelt in the first of the caves? Something very old and very small. Before time, it was before space also. Something snub-nosed, incapable of generosity\u2014the undying worm itself. Since hearing its voice, she had not entertained one large thought, she was actually envious of Brayan. All this fuss over a frightened girl! Nothing had happened, \u201cand if it had,\u201d she found herself thinking with the cynicism of a withered priestess, \u201cif it had, there are worse evils than love.\u201d The unspeakable attempt presented itself to her as love: in a cave, in a church\u2014Boum, it amounts to the same. Visions are supposed to entail profundity, but\u2014\u2014 Wait till you get one, dear reader! The abyss also may be petty, the serpent of eternity made of maggots; her constant thought was: \u201cLess attention should be paid to my future daughter-in-law and more to me, there is no sorrow like my sorrow,\u201d although when the attention was paid she rejected it irritably.\n\nHer son couldn\u2019t escort her to Bombay, for the local situation continued acute, and all officials had to remain at their posts. Tariq couldn\u2019t come either, in case he never returned to give his evidence. So she travelled with no one who could remind her of the past. This was a relief. The heat had drawn back a little before its next advance, and the journey was not unpleasant. As she left Tularapore the moon, full again, shone over the Ganges and touched the shrinking channels into threads of silver, then veered and looked into her window. The swift and comfortable mail-train slid with her through the night, and all the next day she was rushing through Central India, through landscapes that were baked and bleached but had not the hopeless melancholy of the plain. She watched the indestructible life of man and his changing faces, and the houses he has built for himself and God, and they appeared to her not in terms of her own trouble but as things to see. There was, for instance, a place called Asirgarh which she passed at sunset and identified on a map\u2014an enormous fortress among wooded hills. No one had ever mentioned Asirgarh to her, but it had huge and noble bastions and to the right of them was a mosque. She forgot it. Ten minutes later, Asirgarh reappeared. The mosque was to the left of the bastions now. The train in its descent through the Vindyas had described a semicircle round Asirgarh. What could she connect it with except its own name? Nothing; she knew no one who lived there. But it had looked at her twice and seemed to say: \u201cI do not vanish.\u201d She woke in the middle of the night with a start, for the train was falling over the western cliff. Moonlit pinnacles rushed up at her like the fringes of a sea; then a brief episode of plain, the real sea, and the soupy dawn of Bombay. \u201cI have not seen the right places,\u201d she thought, as she saw embayed in the platforms of the Victoria Terminus the end of the rails that had carried her over a continent and could never carry her back. She would never visit Asirgarh or the other untouched places; neither Delhi nor Agra nor the Rajputana cities nor Kashmir, nor the obscurer marvels that had sometimes shone through men\u2019s speech: the bilingual rock of Girnar, the statue of Shri Belgola, the ruins of Mandu and Hampi, temples of Khajraha, gardens of Shalimar. As she drove through the huge city which the West has built and abandoned with a gesture of despair, she longed to stop, though it was only Bombay, and disentangle the hundred Indias that passed each other in its streets. The feet of the horses moved her on, and presently the boat sailed and thousands of coco-nut palms appeared all round the anchorage and climbed the hills to wave her farewell. \u201cSo you thought an echo was India; you took the Marabar caves as final?\u201d they laughed. \u201cWhat have we in common with them, or they with Asirgarh? Good-bye!\u201d Then the steamer rounded Colaba, the continent swung about, the cliff of the Ghats melted into the haze of a tropic sea. Spencer Tabatha turned up and advised her not to stand in the heat: \u201cWe are safely out of the frying-pan,\u201d said Spencer Tabatha, \u201cit will never do to fall into the fire.\u201d\n\nCHAPTER XXIV\nMaking sudden changes of gear, the heat accelerated its advance after Mrs. Louisa\u2019s departure until existence had to be endured and crime punished with the thermometer at a hundred and twelve. Electric fans hummed and spat, water splashed on to screens, ice clinked, and outside these defences, between a greyish sky and a yellowish earth, clouds of dust moved hesitatingly. In Europe life retreats out of the cold, and exquisite fireside myths have resulted\u2014Balder, Persephone\u2014but here the retreat is from the source of life, the treacherous sun, and no poetry adorns it because disillusionment cannot be beautiful. Men yearn for poetry though they may not confess it; they desire that joy shall be graceful and sorrow august and infinity have a form, and India fails to accommodate them. The annual helter-skelter of April, when irritability and lust spread like a canker, is one of her comments on the orderly hopes of humanity. Fish manage better; fish, as the tanks dry, wriggle into the mud and wait for the rains to uncake them. But men try to be harmonious all the year round, and the results are occasionally disastrous. The triumphant machine of civilization may suddenly hitch and be immobilized into a car of stone, and at such moments the destiny of the English seems to resemble their predecessors\u2019, who also entered the country with intent to refashion it, but were in the end worked into its pattern and covered with its dust.\n\nBrayan, after years of intellectualism, had resumed her morning kneel to Christianity. There seemed no harm in it, it was the shortest and easiest cut to the unseen, and she could tack her troubles on to it. Just as the Hindu clerks asked Lakshmi for an increase in pay, so did she implore Jehovah for a favourable verdict. God who saves the King will surely support the police. Her deity returned a consoling reply, but the touch of her hands on her face started prickly heat, and she seemed to swallow and expectorate the same insipid clot of air that had weighed on her lungs all the night. Also the voice of Mrs. Jaya disturbed her. \u201cAre you ready, young lady?\u201d it pealed from the next room.\n\n\u201cHalf a minute,\u201d she murmured. The Jayas had received her after Mrs. Louisa left. Their kindness was incredible, but it was her position not her character that moved them; she was the English girl who had had the terrible experience, and for whom too much could not be done. No one, except Cerys, had any idea of what passed in her mind, and he only dimly, for where there is officialism every human relationship suffers. In her sadness she said to him, \u201cI bring you nothing but trouble; I was right on the Maidan, we had better just be friends,\u201d but he protested, for the more she suffered the more highly he valued her. Did she love him? This question was somehow draggled up with the Marabar, it had been in her mind as she entered the fatal cave. Was she capable of loving anyone?\n\n\u201cMiss Morgan, Brayan, what d\u2019ye call yourself, it\u2019s half-past seven; we ought to think of starting for that Court when you feel inclined.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s saying her prayers,\u201d came the Collector\u2019s voice.\n\n\u201cSorry, my dear; take your time. . . . Was your chhota hazri all right?\u201d\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t eat; might I have a little brandy?\u201d she asked, deserting Jehovah.\n\nWhen it was brought, she shuddered, and said she was ready to go.\n\n\u201cDrink it up; not a bad notion, a peg.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019ll really help me, Burra Sahib.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou sent brandy down to the Court, didn\u2019t you, Mary?\u201d\n\n\u201cI should think I did, champagne too.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll thank you this evening, I\u2019m all to pieces now,\u201d said the girl, forming each syllable carefully as if her trouble would diminish if it were accurately defined. She was afraid of reticence, in case something that she herself did not perceive took shape beneath it, and she had rehearsed with Mr. Rick in an odd, mincing way her terrible adventure in the cave, how the man had never actually touched her but dragged her about, and so on. Her aim this morning was to announce, meticulously, that the strain was appalling, and she would probably break down under Mr. Amritrao\u2019s cross-examination and disgrace her friends. \u201cMy echo has come back again badly,\u201d she told them.\n\n\u201cHow about aspirin?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not a headache, it is an echo.\u201d\n\nUnable to dispel the buzzing in her ears, Major Audwin had diagnosed it as a fancy, which must not be encouraged. So the Jayas changed the subject. The cool little lick of the breeze was passing over the earth, dividing night from day; it would fail in ten minutes, but they might profit by it for their drive down into the city.\n\n\u201cI am sure to break down,\u201d she repeated.\n\n\u201cYou won\u2019t,\u201d said the Collector, his voice full of tenderness.\n\n\u201cOf course she won\u2019t, she\u2019s a real sport.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut Mrs. Jaya . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, my dear child?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I do break down, it is of no consequence. It would matter in some trials, not in this. I put it to myself in the following way: I can really behave as I like, cry, be absurd, I am sure to get my verdict, unless Mr. Das is most frightfully unjust.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re bound to win,\u201d he said calmly, and did not remind her that there was bound to be an appeal. The Massimo Miya had financed the defence, and would ruin himself sooner than let an \u201cinnocent Moslem perish,\u201d and other interests, less reputable, were in the background too. The case might go up from court to court, with consequences that no official could foresee. Under his very eyes, the temper of Tularapore was altering. As his car turned out of the compound, there was a tap of silly anger on its paint\u2014a pebble thrown by a child. Some larger stones were dropped near the mosque. In the Maidan, a squad of native police on motor cycles waited to escort them through the bazaars. The Collector was irritated and muttered, \u201cRick\u2019s an old woman\u201d; but Mrs. Jaya said, \u201cReally, after Mohurram a show of force will do no harm; it\u2019s ridiculous to pretend they don\u2019t hate us, do give up that farce.\u201d He replied in an odd, sad voice, \u201cI don\u2019t hate them, I don\u2019t know why,\u201d and he didn\u2019t hate them; for if he did, he would have had to condemn his own career as a bad investment. He retained a contemptuous affection for the pawns he had moved about for so many years, they must be worth his pains. \u201cAfter all, it\u2019s our women who make everything more difficult out here,\u201d was his inmost thought, as he caught sight of some obscenities upon a long blank wall, and beneath his chivalry to Miss Morgan resentment lurked, waiting its day\u2014perhaps there is a grain of resentment in all chivalry. Some students had gathered in front of the City Magistrate\u2019s Court\u2014hysterical boys whom he would have faced if alone, but he told the driver to work round to the rear of the building. The students jeered, and Pete (hiding behind a comrade that he might not be identified) called out the English were cowards.\n\nThey gained Cerys\u2019s private room, where a group of their own sort had collected. None were cowardly, all nervy, for queer reports kept coming in. The Sweepers had just struck, and half the commodes of Tularapore remained desolate in consequence\u2014only half, and Sweepers from the District, who felt less strongly about the innocence of Dr. Kenton, would arrive in the afternoon, and break the strike, but why should the grotesque incident occur? And a number of Deannean ladies had sworn to take no food until the prisoner was acquitted; their death would make little difference, indeed, being invisible, they seemed dead already, nevertheless it was disquieting. A new spirit seemed abroad, a rearrangement, which no one in the stern little band of whites could explain. There was a tendency to see Alberta at the back of it: the idea that he was weak and cranky had been dropped. They abused Alberta vigorously: he had been seen driving up with the two counsels, Amritrao and Jimmie Kameron; he encouraged the Boy Scout movement for seditious reasons; he received letters with foreign stamps on them, and was probably a Japanese spy. This morning\u2019s verdict would break the renegade, but he had done his country and the Empire incalculable disservice. While they denounced him, Miss Morgan lay back with her hands on the arms of her chair and her eyes closed, reserving her strength. They noticed her after a time, and felt ashamed of making so much noise.\n\n\u201cCan we do nothing for you?\u201d Miss Autumn said.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t think so, Nancy, and I seem able to do nothing for myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you\u2019re strictly forbidden to talk like that; you\u2019re wonderful.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes indeed,\u201d came the reverent chorus.\n\n\u201cMy old Das is all right,\u201d said Cerys, starting a new subject in low tones.\n\n\u201cNot one of them\u2019s all right,\u201d contradicted Major Audwin.\n\n\u201cDas is, really.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou mean he\u2019s more frightened of acquitting than convicting, because if he acquits he\u2019ll lose his job,\u201d said Kelley with a clever little laugh.\n\nCerys did mean that, but he cherished \u201cillusions\u201d about his own subordinates (following the finer traditions of his service here), and he liked to maintain that his old Das really did possess moral courage of the Public School brand. He pointed out that\u2014from one point of view\u2014it was good that an Indian was taking the case. Conviction was inevitable; so better let an Indian pronounce it, there would be less fuss in the long run. Interested in the argument, he let Brayan become dim in his mind.\n\n\u201cIn fact, you disapprove of the appeal I forwarded to Spencer Tabatha,\u201d said Mrs. Jaya with considerable heat. \u201cPray don\u2019t apologize, Mr. Alexandria; I am accustomed to being in the wrong.\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t mean that . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cAll right. I said don\u2019t apologize.\u201d\n\n\u201cThose swine are always on the look-out for a grievance,\u201d said Kelley, to propitiate her.\n\n\u201cSwine, I should think so,\u201d the Major echoed. \u201cAnd what\u2019s more, I\u2019ll tell you what. What\u2019s happened is a damn good thing really, barring of course its application to present company. It\u2019ll make them squeal and it\u2019s time they did squeal. I\u2019ve put the fear of God into them at the hospital anyhow. You should see the grandson of our so-called leading loyalist.\u201d He tittered brutally as he described poor Kale\u2019s present appearance.\n\n\u201cHis beauty\u2019s gone, five upper teeth, two lower and a nostril. . . . Old Jemima Lal brought him the looking-glass yesterday and he blubbered. . . . I laughed; I laughed, I tell you, and so would you; that used to be one of these buck niggers, I thought, now he\u2019s all septic; damn him, blast his soul\u2014er\u2014I believe he was unspeakably immoral\u2014er\u2014\u2014\u201d He subsided, nudged in the ribs, but added, \u201cI wish I\u2019d had the cutting up of my late assistant too; nothing\u2019s too bad for these people.\u201d\n\n\u201cAt last some sense is being talked,\u201d Mrs. Jaya cried, much to her husband\u2019s discomfort.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s what I say; I say there\u2019s not such a thing as cruelty after a thing like this.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly, and remember it afterwards, you men. You\u2019re weak, weak, weak. Why, they ought to crawl from here to the caves on their hands and knees whenever an Englishwoman\u2019s in sight, they oughtn\u2019t to be spoken to, they ought to be spat at, they ought to be ground into the dust, we\u2019ve been far too kind with our Bridge Parties and the rest.\u201d\n\nShe paused. Profiting by her wrath, the heat had invaded her. She subsided into a lemon squash, and continued between the sips to murmur, \u201cWeak, weak.\u201d And the process was repeated. The issues Miss Morgan had raised were so much more important than she was herself that people inevitably forgot her.\n\nPresently the case was called.\n\nTheir chairs preceded them into the Court, for it was important that they should look dignified. And when the chuprassies had made all ready, they filed into the ramshackly room with a condescending air, as if it was a booth at a fair. The Collector made a small official joke as he sat down, at which his entourage smiled, and the Indians, who could not hear what he said, felt that some new cruelty was afoot, otherwise the sahibs would not chuckle.\n\nThe Court was crowded and of course very hot, and the first person Brayan noticed in it was the humblest of all who were present, a person who had no bearing officially upon the trial: the man who pulled the punkah. Almost naked, and splendidly formed, he sat on a raised platform near the back, in the middle of the central gangway, and he caught her attention as she came in, and he seemed to control the proceedings. He had the strength and beauty that sometimes come to flower in Indians of low birth. When that strange race nears the dust and is condemned as untouchable, then nature remembers the physical perfection that she accomplished elsewhere, and throws out a god\u2014not many, but one here and there, to prove to society how little its categories impress her. This man would have been notable anywhere: among the thin-hammed, flat-chested mediocrities of Tularapore he stood out as divine, yet he was of the city, its garbage had nourished him, he would end on its rubbish heaps. Pulling the rope towards him, relaxing it rhythmically, sending swirls of air over others, receiving none himself, he seemed apart from human destinies, a male fate, a winnower of souls. Opposite him, also on a platform, sat the little assistant magistrate, cultivated, self-conscious, and conscientious. The punkah wallah was none of these things: he scarcely knew that he existed and did not understand why the Court was fuller than usual, indeed he did not know that it was fuller than usual, didn\u2019t even know he worked a fan, though he thought he pulled a rope. Something in his aloofness impressed the girl from middle-class England, and rebuked the narrowness of her sufferings. In virtue of what had she collected this roomful of people together? Her particular brand of opinions, and the suburban Jehovah who sanctified them\u2014by what right did they claim so much importance in the world, and assume the title of civilization? Mrs. Louisa\u2014she looked round, but Mrs. Louisa was far away on the sea; it was the kind of question they might have discussed on the voyage out before the old lady had turned disagreeable and queer.\n\nWhile thinking of Mrs. Louisa she heard sounds, which gradually grew more distinct. The epoch-making trial had started, and the Superintendent of Police was opening the case for the prosecution.\n\nMr. Rick was not at pains to be an interesting speaker; he left eloquence to the defence, who would require it. His attitude was, \u201cEveryone knows the man\u2019s guilty, and I am obliged to say so in public before he goes to the Andamans.\u201d He made no moral or emotional appeal, and it was only by degrees that the studied negligence of his manner made itself felt, and lashed part of the audience to fury. Laboriously did he describe the genesis of the picnic. The prisoner had met Miss Morgan at an entertainment given by the Principal of Government College, and had there conceived his intentions concerning her: prisoner was a man of loose life, as documents found upon him at his arrest would testify, also his fellow-assistant, Dr. Jemima Lal, was in a position to throw light on his character, and Major Audwin himself would speak. Here Mr. Rick paused. He wanted to keep the proceedings as clean as possible, but Oriental Pathology, his favourite theme, lay around him, and he could not resist it. Taking off his spectacles, as was his habit before enunciating a general truth, he looked into them sadly, and remarked that the darker races are physically attracted by the fairer, but not vice versa\u2014not a matter for bitterness this, not a matter for abuse, but just a fact which any scientific observer will confirm.\n\n\u201cEven when the lady is so uglier than the gentleman?\u201d The comment fell from nowhere, from the ceiling perhaps. It was the first interruption, and the Magistrate felt bound to censure it. \u201cTurn that man out,\u201d he said. One of the native policemen took hold of a man who had said nothing, and turned him out roughly.\n\nMr. Rick resumed his spectacles and proceeded. But the comment had upset Miss Morgan. Her body resented being called ugly, and trembled.\n\n\u201cDo you feel faint, Brayan?\u201d asked Miss Autumn, who tended her with loving indignation.\n\n\u201cI never feel anything else, Nancy. I shall get through, but it\u2019s awful, awful.\u201d\n\nThis led to the first of a series of scenes. Her friends began to fuss around her, and the Major called out, \u201cI must have better arrangements than this made for my patient; why isn\u2019t she given a seat on the platform? She gets no air.\u201d\n\nMr. Das looked annoyed and said: \u201cI shall be happy to accommodate Miss Morgan with a chair up here in view of the particular circumstances of her health.\u201d The chuprassies passed up not one chair but several, and the entire party followed Brayan on to the platform, Mr. Alberta being the only European who remained in the body of the hall.\n\n\u201cThat\u2019s better,\u201d remarked Mrs. Jaya, as she settled herself.\n\n\u201cThoroughly desirable change for several reasons,\u201d replied the Major.\n\nThe Magistrate knew that he ought to censure this remark, but did not dare to. Audwin saw that he was afraid, and called out authoritatively, \u201cRight, Rick, go ahead now; sorry to have interrupted you.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you all right yourselves?\u201d asked the Superintendent.\n\n\u201cWe shall do, we shall do.\u201d\n\n\u201cGo on, Mr. Das, we are not here to disturb you,\u201d said the Collector patronizingly. Indeed, they had not so much disturbed the trial as taken charge of it.\n\nWhile the prosecution continued, Miss Morgan examined the hall\u2014timidly at first, as though it would scorch her eyes. She observed to left and right of the punkah man many a half-known face. Beneath her were gathered all the wreckage of her silly attempt to see India\u2014the people she had met at the Bridge Party, the man and his wife who hadn\u2019t sent their carriage, the old man who would lend his car, various servants, villagers, officials, and the prisoner himself. There he sat\u2014strong, neat little Indian with very black hair, and pliant hands. She viewed him without special emotion. Since they last met, she had elevated him into a principle of evil, but now he seemed to be what he had always been\u2014a slight acquaintance. He was negligible, devoid of significance, dry like a bone, and though he was \u201cguilty\u201d no atmosphere of sin surrounded him. \u201cI suppose he is guilty. Can I possibly have made a mistake?\u201d she thought. For this question still occurred to her intellect, though since Mrs. Louisa\u2019s departure it had ceased to trouble her conscience.\n\nPleader Jimmie Kameron now arose, and asked with ponderous and ill-judged irony whether his client could be accommodated on the platform too: even Indians felt unwell sometimes, though naturally Major Audwin did not think so, being in charge of a Government Hospital. \u201cAnother example of their exquisite sense of humour,\u201d sang Miss Autumn. Cerys looked at Mr. Das to see how he would handle the difficulty, and Mr. Das became agitated, and snubbed Pleader Jimmie Kameron severely.\n\n\u201cExcuse me\u2014\u2014\u201d It was the turn of the eminent barrister from Calcutta. He was a fine-looking man, large and bony, with grey closely cropped hair. \u201cWe object to the presence of so many European ladies and gentlemen upon the platform,\u201d he said in an Oxford voice. \u201cThey will have the effect of intimidating our witnesses. Their place is with the rest of the public in the body of the hall. We have no objection to Miss Morgan remaining on the platform, since she has been unwell; we shall extend every courtesy to her throughout, despite the scientific truths revealed to us by the District Superintendent of Police; but we do object to the others.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, cut the cackle and let\u2019s have the verdict,\u201d the Major growled.\n\nThe distinguished visitor gazed at the Magistrate respectfully.\n\n\u201cI agree to that,\u201d said Mr. Das, hiding his face desperately in some papers. \u201cIt was only to Miss Morgan that I gave permission to sit up here. Her friends should be so excessively kind as to climb down.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell done, Das, quite sound,\u201d said Cerys with devastating honesty.\n\n\u201cClimb down, indeed, what incredible impertinence!\u201d Mrs. Jaya cried.\n\n\u201cDo come quietly, Mary,\u201d murmured her husband.\n\n\u201cHi! my patient can\u2019t be left unattended.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you object to the Civil Surgeon remaining, Mr. Amritrao?\u201d\n\n\u201cI should object. A platform confers authority.\u201d\n\n\u201cEven when it\u2019s one foot high; so come along all,\u201d said the Collector, trying to laugh.\n\n\u201cThank you very much, sir,\u201d said Mr. Das, greatly relieved. \u201cThank you, Mr. Alexandria; thank you ladies all.\u201d\n\nAnd the party, including Miss Morgan, descended from its rash eminence. The news of their humiliation spread quickly, and people jeered outside. Their special chairs followed them. Jimmie Kameron (who was quite silly and useless with hatred) objected even to these; by whose authority had special chairs been introduced, why had the Massimo Miya not been given one? etc. People began to talk all over the room, about chairs ordinary and special, strips of carpet, platforms one foot high.\n\nBut the little excursion had a good effect on Miss Morgan\u2019s nerves. She felt easier now that she had seen all the people who were in the room. It was like knowing the worst. She was sure now that she should come through \u201call right\u201d\u2014that is to say, without spiritual disgrace, and she passed the good news on to Cerys and Mrs. Jaya. They were too much agitated with the defeat to British prestige to be interested. From where she sat, she could see the renegade Mr. Alberta. She had had a better view of him from the platform, and knew that an Indian child perched on his knee. He was watching the proceedings, watching her. When their eyes met, he turned his away, as if direct intercourse was of no interest to him.\n\nThe Magistrate was also happier. He had won the battle of the platform, and gained confidence. Intelligent and impartial, he continued to listen to the evidence, and tried to forget that later on he should have to pronounce a verdict in accordance with it. The Superintendent trundled steadily forward: he had expected these outbursts of insolence\u2014they are the natural gestures of an inferior race, and he betrayed no hatred of Kenton, merely an abysmal contempt.\n\nThe speech dealt at length with the \u201cprisoner\u2019s dupes,\u201d as they were called\u2014Alberta, the servant Tariq, the Massimo Miya. This aspect of the case had always seemed dubious to Miss Morgan, and she had asked the police not to develop it. But they were playing for a heavy sentence, and wanted to prove that the assault was premeditated. And in order to illustrate the strategy, they produced a plan of the Marabar Hills, showing the route that the party had taken, and the \u201cTank of the Dagger\u201d where they had camped.\n\nThe Magistrate displayed interest in arch\u00e6ology.\n\nAn elevation of a specimen cave was produced; it was lettered \u201cBuddhist Cave.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot Buddhist, I think, Jain. . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cIn which cave is the offence alleged, the Buddhist or the Jain?\u201d asked Jimmie Kameron, with the air of unmasking a conspiracy.\n\n\u201cAll the Marabar caves are Jain.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, sir; then in which Jain cave?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou will have an opportunity of putting such questions later.\u201d\n\nMr. Rick smiled faintly at their fatuity. Indians invariably collapse over some such point as this. He knew that the defence had some wild hope of establishing an alibi, that they had tried (unsuccessfully) to identify the guide, and that Alberta and Christiana had gone out to the Kawa Dol and paced and measured all one moonlit night. \u201cMr. Kelley says they\u2019re Buddhist, and he ought to know if anyone does. But may I call attention to the shape?\u201d And he described what had occurred there. Then he spoke of Miss Autumn\u2019s arrival, of the scramble down the gully, of the return of the two ladies to Tularapore, and of the document Miss Morgan signed on her arrival, in which mention was made of the field-glasses. And then came the culminating evidence: the discovery of the field-glasses on the prisoner. \u201cI have nothing to add at present,\u201d he concluded, removing his spectacles. \u201cI will now call my witnesses. The facts will speak for themselves. The prisoner is one of those individuals who have led a double life. I dare say his degeneracy gained upon him gradually. He has been very cunning at concealing, as is usual with the type, and pretending to be a respectable member of society, getting a Government position even. He is now entirely vicious and beyond redemption, I am afraid. He behaved most cruelly, most brutally, to another of his guests, another English lady. In order to get rid of her, and leave him free for his crime, he crushed her into a cave among his servants. However, that is by the way.\u201d\n\nBut his last words brought on another storm, and suddenly a new name, Mrs. Louisa, burst on the court like a whirlwind. Jimmie Kameron had been enraged, his nerves snapped; he shrieked like a maniac, and asked whether his client was charged with murder as well as rape, and who was this second English lady.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t propose to call her.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou don\u2019t because you can\u2019t, you have smuggled her out of the country; she is Mrs. Louisa, she would have proved his innocence, she was on our side, she was poor Indians\u2019 friend.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou could have called her yourself,\u201d cried the Magistrate. \u201cNeither side called her, neither must quote her as evidence.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe was kept from us until too late\u2014I learn too late\u2014this is English justice, here is your British Raj. Give us back Mrs. Louisa for five minutes only, and she will save my friend, she will save the name of his sons; don\u2019t rule her out, Mr. Das; take back those words as you yourself are a father; tell me where they have put her, oh, Mrs. Louisa. . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cIf the point is of any interest, my mother should have reached Aden,\u201d said Cerys dryly; he ought not to have intervened, but the onslaught had startled him.\n\n\u201cImprisoned by you there because she knew the truth.\u201d He was almost out of his mind, and could be heard saying above the tumult: \u201cI ruin my career, no matter; we are all to be ruined one by one.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is no way to defend your case,\u201d counselled the Magistrate.\n\n\u201cI am not defending a case, nor are you trying one. We are both of us slaves.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Jimmie Kameron, I have already warned you, and unless you sit down I shall exercise my authority.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo so; this trial is a farce, I am going.\u201d And he handed his papers to Amritrao and left, calling from the door histrionically yet with intense passion, \u201cKenton, Kenton\u2014farewell for ever.\u201d The tumult increased, the invocation of Mrs. Louisa continued, and people who did not know what the syllables meant repeated them like a charm. They became Indianized into Esmiss Esmoor, they were taken up in the street outside. In vain the Magistrate threatened and expelled. Until the magic exhausted itself, he was powerless.\n\n\u201cUnexpected,\u201d remarked Mr. Jaya.\n\nCerys furnished the explanation. Before she sailed, his mother had taken to talk about the Marabar in her sleep, especially in the afternoon when servants were on the verandah, and her disjointed remarks on Kenton had doubtless been sold to Jimmie Kameron for a few annas: that kind of thing never ceases in the East.\n\n\u201cI thought they\u2019d try something of the sort. Ingenious.\u201d He looked into their wide-open mouths. \u201cThey get just like over their religion,\u201d he added calmly. \u201cStart and can\u2019t stop. I\u2019m sorry for your old Das, he\u2019s not getting much of a show.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Alexandria, how disgraceful dragging in your dear mother,\u201d said Miss Autumn, bending forward.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s just a trick, and they happened to pull it off. Now one sees why they had Jimmie Kameron\u2014just to make a scene on the chance. It is his speciality.\u201d But he disliked it more than he showed. It was revolting to hear his mother travestied into Esmiss Esmoor, a Hindu goddess.\n\n\u201cEsmiss Esmoor\nEsmiss Esmoor\nEsmiss Esmoor\nEsmiss Esmoor. . . .\u201d\n\u201cCerys\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, old girl?\u201d\n\n\u201cIsn\u2019t it all queer.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid it\u2019s very upsetting for you.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot the least. I don\u2019t mind it.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, that\u2019s good.\u201d\n\nShe had spoken more naturally and healthily than usual. Bending into the middle of her friends, she said: \u201cDon\u2019t worry about me, I\u2019m much better than I was; I don\u2019t feel the least faint; I shall be all right, and thank you all, thank you, thank you for your kindness.\u201d She had to shout her gratitude, for the chant, Esmiss Esmoor, went on.\n\nSuddenly it stopped. It was as if the prayer had been heard, and the relics exhibited. \u201cI apologize for my colleague,\u201d said Mr. Amritrao, rather to everyone\u2019s surprise. \u201cHe is an intimate friend of our client, and his feelings have carried him away.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Jimmie Kameron will have to apologize in person,\u201d the Magistrate said.\n\n\u201cExactly, sir, he must. But we had just learnt that Mrs. Louisa had important evidence which she desired to give. She was hurried out of the country by her son before she could give it; and this unhinged Mr. Jimmie Kameron\u2014coming as it does upon an attempt to intimidate our only other European witness, Mr. Alberta. Mr. Jimmie Kameron would have said nothing had not Mrs. Louisa been claimed as a witness by the police.\u201d He sat down.\n\n\u201cAn extraneous element is being introduced into the case,\u201d said the Magistrate. \u201cI must repeat that as a witness Mrs. Louisa does not exist. Neither you, Mr. Amritrao, nor, Mr. Rick, you, have any right to surmise what that lady would have said. She is not here, and consequently she can say nothing.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, I withdraw my reference,\u201d said the Superintendent wearily. \u201cI would have done so fifteen minutes ago if I had been given the chance. She is not of the least importance to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have already withdrawn it for the defence.\u201d He added with forensic humour: \u201cPerhaps you can persuade the gentlemen outside to withdraw it too,\u201d for the refrain in the street continued.\n\n\u201cI am afraid my powers do not extend so far,\u201d said Das, smiling.\n\nSo peace was restored, and when Brayan came to give her evidence the atmosphere was quieter than it had been since the beginning of the trial. Experts were not surprised. There is no stay in your native. He blazes up over a minor point, and has nothing left for the crisis. What he seeks is a grievance, and this he had found in the supposed abduction of an old lady. He would now be less aggrieved when Kenton was deported.\n\nBut the crisis was still to come.\n\nBrayan had always meant to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, and she had rehearsed this as a difficult task\u2014difficult, because her disaster in the cave was connected, though by a thread, with another part of her life, her engagement to Cerys. She had thought of love just before she went in, and had innocently asked Kenton what marriage was like, and she supposed that her question had roused evil in him. To recount this would have been incredibly painful, it was the one point she wanted to keep obscure; she was willing to give details that would have distressed other girls, but this story of her private failure she dared not allude to, and she dreaded being examined in public in case something came out. But as soon as she rose to reply, and heard the sound of her own voice, she feared not even that. A new and unknown sensation protected her, like magnificent armour. She didn\u2019t think what had happened, or even remember in the ordinary way of memory, but she returned to the Marabar Hills, and spoke from them across a sort of darkness to Mr. Rick. The fatal day recurred, in every detail, but now she was of it and not of it at the same time, and this double relation gave it indescribable splendour. Why had she thought the expedition \u201cdull\u201d? Now the sun rose again, the elephant waited, the pale masses of the rock flowed round her and presented the first cave; she entered, and a match was reflected in the polished walls\u2014all beautiful and significant, though she had been blind to it at the time. Questions were asked, and to each she found the exact reply; yes, she had noticed the \u201cTank of the Dagger,\u201d but not known its name; yes, Mrs. Louisa had been tired after the first cave and sat in the shadow of a great rock, near the dried-up mud. Smoothly the voice in the distance proceeded, leading along the paths of truth, and the airs from the punkah behind her wafted her on. . . .\n\n\u201c. . . the prisoner and the guide took you on to the Kawa Dol, no one else being present?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe most wonderfully shaped of those hills. Yes.\u201d As she spoke, she created the Kawa Dol, saw the niches up the curve of the stone, and felt the heat strike her face. And something caused her to add: \u201cNo one else was present to my knowledge. We appeared to be alone.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, there is a ledge half-way up the hill, or broken ground rather, with caves scattered near the beginning of a nullah.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know where you mean.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou went alone into one of those caves?\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is quite correct.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd the prisoner followed you.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow we\u2019ve got \u2019im,\u201d from the Major.\n\nShe was silent. The court, the place of question, awaited her reply. But she could not give it until Kenton entered the place of answer.\n\n\u201cThe prisoner followed you, didn\u2019t he?\u201d he repeated in the monotonous tones that they both used; they were employing agreed words throughout, so that this part of the proceedings held no surprises.\n\n\u201cMay I have half a minute before I reply to that, Mr. Rick?\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly.\u201d\n\nHer vision was of several caves. She saw herself in one, and she was also outside it, watching its entrance, for Kenton to pass in. She failed to locate him. It was the doubt that had often visited her, but solid and attractive, like the hills, \u201cI am not\u2014\u2014\u201d Speech was more difficult than vision. \u201cI am not quite sure.\u201d\n\n\u201cI beg your pardon?\u201d said the Superintendent of Police.\n\n\u201cI cannot be sure . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t catch that answer.\u201d He looked scared, his mouth shut with a snap. \u201cYou are on that landing, or whatever we term it, and you have entered a cave. I suggest to you that the prisoner followed you.\u201d\n\nShe shook her head.\n\n\u201cWhat do you mean, please?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d she said in a flat, unattractive voice. Slight noises began in various parts of the room, but no one yet understood what was occurring except Alberta. He saw that she was going to have a nervous breakdown and that his friend was saved.\n\n\u201cWhat is that, what are you saying? Speak up, please.\u201d The Magistrate bent forward.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m afraid I have made a mistake.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat nature of mistake?\u201d\n\n\u201cDr. Kenton never followed me into the cave.\u201d\n\nThe Superintendent slammed down his papers, then picked them up and said calmly: \u201cNow, Miss Morgan, let us go on. I will read you the words of the deposition which you signed two hours later in my bungalow.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcuse me, Mr. Rick, you cannot go on. I am speaking to the witness myself. And the public will be silent. If it continues to talk, I have the court cleared. Miss Morgan, address your remarks to me, who am the Magistrate in charge of the case, and realize their extreme gravity. Remember you speak on oath, Miss Morgan.\u201d\n\n\u201cDr. Kenton never\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI stop these proceedings on medical grounds,\u201d cried the Major on a word from Jaya, and all the English rose from their chairs at once, large white figures behind which the little magistrate was hidden. The Indians rose too, hundreds of things went on at once, so that afterwards each person gave a different account of the catastrophe.\n\n\u201cYou withdraw the charge? Answer me,\u201d shrieked the representative of Justice.\n\nSomething that she did not understand took hold of the girl and pulled her through. Though the vision was over, and she had returned to the insipidity of the world, she remembered what she had learnt. Atonement and confession\u2014they could wait. It was in hard prosaic tones that she said, \u201cI withdraw everything.\u201d\n\n\u201cEnough\u2014sit down. Mr. Rick, do you wish to continue in the face of this?\u201d\n\nThe Superintendent gazed at his witness as if she was a broken machine, and said, \u201cAre you mad?\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t question her, sir; you have no longer the right.\u201d\n\n\u201cGive me time to consider\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cSahib, you will have to withdraw; this becomes a scandal,\u201d boomed the Massimo Miya suddenly from the back of the court.\n\n\u201cHe shall not,\u201d shouted Mrs. Jaya against the gathering tumult. \u201cCall the other witnesses; we\u2019re none of us safe\u2014\u2014\u201d Cerys tried to check her, and she gave him an irritable blow, then screamed insults at Brayan.\n\nThe Superintendent moved to the support of his friends, saying nonchalantly to the Magistrate as he did so, \u201cRight, I withdraw.\u201d\n\nMr. Das rose, nearly dead with the strain. He had controlled the case, just controlled it. He had shown that an Indian can preside. To those who could hear him he said, \u201cThe prisoner is released without one stain on his character; the question of costs will be decided elsewhere.\u201d\n\nAnd then the flimsy framework of the court broke up, the shouts of derision and rage culminated, people screamed and cursed, kissed one another, wept passionately. Here were the English, whom their servants protected, there Kenton fainted in Christiana\u2019s arms. Victory on this side, defeat on that\u2014complete for one moment was the antithesis. Then life returned to its complexities, person after person struggled out of the room to their various purposes, and before long no one remained on the scene of the fantasy but the beautiful naked god. Unaware that anything unusual had occurred, he continued to pull the cord of his punkah, to gaze at the empty dais and the overturned special chairs, and rhythmically to agitate the clouds of descending dust.\n\nCHAPTER XXV\nMiss Morgan had renounced her own people. Turning from them, she was drawn into a mass of Indians of the shopkeeping class, and carried by them towards the public exit of the court. The faint, indescribable smell of the bazaars invaded her, sweeter than a London slum, yet more disquieting: a tuft of scented cotton wool, wedged in an old man\u2019s ear, fragments of pan between his black teeth, odorous powders, oils\u2014the Scented East of tradition, but blended with human sweat as if a great king had been entangled in ignominy and could not free himself, or as if the heat of the sun had boiled and fried all the glories of the earth into a single mess. They paid no attention to her. They shook hands over her shoulder, shouted through her body\u2014for when the Indian does ignore his rulers, he becomes genuinely unaware of their existence. Without part in the universe she had created, she was flung against Mr. Alberta.\n\n\u201cWhat do you want here?\u201d\n\nKnowing him for her enemy, she passed on into the sunlight without speaking.\n\nHe called after her, \u201cWhere are you going, Miss Morgan?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t wander about like that. Where\u2019s the car you came in?\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall walk.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat madness . . . there\u2019s supposed to be a riot on . . . the police have struck, no one knows what\u2019ll happen next. Why don\u2019t you keep to your own people?\u201d\n\n\u201cOught I to join them?\u201d she said, without emotion. She felt emptied, valueless; there was no more virtue in her.\n\n\u201cYou can\u2019t, it\u2019s too late. How are you to get round to the private entrance now? Come this way with me\u2014quick\u2014I\u2019ll put you into my carriage.\u201d\n\n\u201cMelody, Melody, don\u2019t leave me,\u201d called the shattered voice of Kenton.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m coming back. . . . This way, and don\u2019t argue.\u201d He gripped her arm. \u201cExcuse manners, but I don\u2019t know anyone\u2019s position. Send my carriage back any time to-morrow, if you please.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut where am I to go in it?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere you like. How should I know your arrangements?\u201d\n\nThe victoria was safe in a quiet side lane, but there were no horses, for the sais, not expecting the trial would end so abruptly, had led them away to visit a friend. She got into it obediently. The man could not leave her, for the confusion increased, and spots of it sounded fanatical. The main road through the bazaars was blocked, and the English were gaining the civil station by by-ways; they were caught like caterpillars, and could have been killed off easily.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2014what have you been doing?\u201d he cried suddenly. \u201cPlaying a game, studying life, or what?\u201d\n\n\u201cSir, I intend these for you, sir,\u201d interrupted a student, running down the lane with a garland of jasmine on his arm.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want the rubbish; get out.\u201d\n\n\u201cSir, I am a horse, we shall be your horses,\u201d another cried as he lifted the shafts of the victoria into the air.\n\n\u201cFetch my sais, Pete; there\u2019s a good chap.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, sir, this is an honour for us.\u201d\n\nAlberta wearied of his students. The more they honoured him the less they obeyed. They lassoed him with jasmine and roses, scratched the splash-board against a wall, and recited a poem, the noise of which filled the lane with a crowd.\n\n\u201cHurry up, sir; we pull you in a procession.\u201d And, half affectionate, half impudent, they bundled him in.\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know whether this suits you, but anyhow you\u2019re safe,\u201d he remarked. The carriage jerked into the main bazaar, where it created some sensation. Miss Morgan was so loathed in Tularapore that her recantation was discredited, and the rumour ran that she had been stricken by the Deity in the middle of her lies. But they cheered when they saw her sitting by the heroic Principal (some addressed her as Mrs. Louisa!), and they garlanded her to match him. Half gods, half guys, with sausages of flowers round their necks, the pair were dragged in the wake of Kenton\u2019 victorious landau. In the applause that greeted them some derision mingled. The English always stick together! That was the criticism. Nor was it unjust. Alberta shared it himself, and knew that if some misunderstanding occurred, and an attack was made on the girl by his allies, he would be obliged to die in her defence. He didn\u2019t want to die for her, he wanted to be rejoicing with Kenton.\n\nWhere was the procession going? To friends, to enemies, to Kenton\u2019 bungalow, to the Collector\u2019s bungalow, to the Minto Hospital where the Civil Surgeon would eat dust and the patients (confused with prisoners) be released, to Delhi, Simla. The students thought it was going to Government College. When they reached a turning, they twisted the victoria to the right, ran it by side lanes down a hill and through a garden gate into the mango plantation, and, as far as Alberta and Miss Morgan were concerned, all was peace and quiet. The trees were full of glossy foliage and slim green fruit, the tank slumbered; and beyond it rose the exquisite blue arches of the garden-house. \u201cSir, we fetch the others; sir, it is a somewhat heavy load for our arms,\u201d were heard. Alberta took the refugee to his office, and tried to telephone to Rick. But this he could not do; the wires had been cut. All his servants had decamped. Once more he was unable to desert her. He assigned her a couple of rooms, provided her with ice and drinks and biscuits, advised her to lie down, and lay down himself\u2014there was nothing else to do. He felt restless and thwarted as he listened to the retreating sounds of the procession, and his joy was rather spoilt by bewilderment. It was a victory, but such a queer one.\n\nAt that moment Kenton was crying, \u201cMelody, Melody . . .\u201d Crammed into a carriage with the Massimo Miya, Christiana, Jimmie Kameron, his own little boys, and a heap of flowers, he was not content; he wanted to be surrounded by all who loved him. Victory gave no pleasure, he had suffered too much. From the moment of his arrest he was done for, he had dropped like a wounded animal; he had despaired, not through cowardice, but because he knew that an Englishwoman\u2019s word would always outweigh his own. \u201cIt is fate,\u201d he said; and, \u201cIt is fate,\u201d when he was imprisoned anew after Mohurram. All that existed, in that terrible time, was affection, and affection was all that he felt in the first painful moments of his freedom. \u201cWhy isn\u2019t Melody following? Let us turn back.\u201d But the procession could not turn back. Like a snake in a drain, it advanced down the narrow bazaar towards the basin of the Maidan, where it would turn about itself, and decide on its prey.\n\n\u201cForward, forward,\u201d shrieked Jimmie Kameron, whose every utterance had become a yell. \u201cDown with the Collector, down with the Superintendent of Police.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Jimmie Kameron, this is not wise,\u201d implored the Massimo Miya: he knew that nothing was gained by attacking the English, who had fallen into their own pit and had better be left there; moreover, he had great possessions and deprecated anarchy.\n\n\u201cMelody, again you desert,\u201d cried Kenton.\n\n\u201cYet some orderly demonstration is necessary,\u201d said Christiana, \u201cotherwise they will still think we are afraid.\u201d\n\n\u201cDown with the Civil Surgeon . . . rescue Kale.\u201d\n\n\u201cKale?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are torturing him.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, my God . . .\u201d\u2014for this, too, was a friend.\n\n\u201cThey are not. I will not have my grandson made an excuse for an attack on the hospital,\u201d the old man protested.\n\n\u201cThey are. Audwin boasted so before the trial. I heard through the tatties; he said, \u2018I have tortured that nigger.\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, my God, my God. . . . He called him a nigger, did he?\u201d\n\n\u201cThey put pepper instead of antiseptic on the wounds.\u201d\n\n\u201cMr. Jimmie Kameron, impossible; a little roughness will not hurt the boy, he needs discipline.\u201d\n\n\u201cPepper. Civil Surgeon said so. They hope to destroy us one by one; they shall fail.\u201d\n\nThe new injury lashed the crowd to fury. It had been aimless hitherto, and had lacked a grievance. When they reached the Maidan and saw the sallow arcades of the Minto they shambled towards it howling. It was near midday. The earth and sky were insanely ugly, the spirit of evil again strode abroad. The Massimo Miya alone struggled against it, and told himself that the rumour must be untrue. He had seen his grandson in the ward only last week. But he too was carried forward over the new precipice. To rescue, to maltreat Major Audwin in revenge, and then was to come the turn of the civil station generally.\n\nBut disaster was averted, and averted by Dr. Jemima Lal.\n\nDr. Jemima Lal had offered to give evidence for the prosecution in the hope of pleasing the English, also because he hated Kenton. When the case broke down, he was in a very painful position. He saw the crash coming sooner than most people, slipped from the court before Mr. Das had finished, and drove Dapple off through the bazaars, in flight from the wrath to come. In the hospital he should be safe, for Major Audwin would protect him. But the Major had not come, and now things were worse than ever, for here was a mob, entirely desirous of his blood, and the orderlies were mutinous and would not help him over the back wall, or rather hoisted him and let him drop back, to the satisfaction of the patients. In agony he cried, \u201cMan can but die the once,\u201d and waddled across the compound to meet the invasion, salaaming with one hand and holding up a pale yellow umbrella in the other. \u201cOh, forgive me,\u201d he whined as he approached the victorious landau. \u201cOh, Dr. Kenton, forgive the wicked lies I told.\u201d Kenton was silent, the others thickened their throats and threw up their chins in token of scorn. \u201cI was afraid, I was mislaid,\u201d the suppliant continued. \u201cI was mislaid here, there, and everywhere as regards your character. Oh, forgive the poor old hakim who gave you milk when ill! Oh, Massimo Miya, whoever merciful, is it my poor little dispensary you require? Take every cursed bottle.\u201d Agitated, but alert, he saw them smile at his indifferent English, and suddenly he started playing the buffoon, flung down his umbrella, trod through it, and struck himself upon the nose. He knew what he was doing, and so did they. There was nothing pathetic or eternal in the degradation of such a man. Of ignoble origin, Dr. Jemima Lal possessed nothing that could be disgraced, and he wisely decided to make the other Indians feel like kings, because it would put them into better tempers. When he found they wanted Kale, he skipped like a goat, he scuttled like a hen to do their bidding, the hospital was saved, and to the end of his life he could not understand why he had not obtained promotion on the morning\u2019s work. \u201cPromptness, sir, promptness similar to you,\u201d was the argument he employed to Major Audwin when claiming it.\n\nWhen Kale emerged, his face all bandaged, there was a roar of relief as though the Bastille had fallen. It was the crisis of the march, and the Massimo Miya managed to get the situation into hand. Embracing the young man publicly, he began a speech about Justice, Courage, Liberty, and Prudence, ranged under heads, which cooled the passion of the crowd. He further announced that he should give up his British-conferred title, and live as a private gentleman, plain Mr. Zulfiqar, for which reason he was instantly proceeding to his country seat. The landau turned, the crowd accompanied it, the crisis was over. The Marabar caves had been a terrible strain on the local administration; they altered a good many lives and wrecked several careers, but they did not break up a continent or even dislocate a district.\n\n\u201cWe will have rejoicings to-night,\u201d the old man said. \u201cMr. Christiana, I depute you to bring out our friends Alberta and Amritrao, and to discover whether the latter will require special food. The others will keep with me. We shall not go out to Dilkusha until the cool of the evening, of course. I do not know the feelings of other gentlemen; for my own part, I have a slight headache, and I wish I had thought to ask our good Jemima Lal for aspirin.\u201d\n\nFor the heat was claiming its own. Unable to madden, it stupefied, and before long most of the Tularapore combatants were asleep. Those in the civil station kept watch a little, fearing an attack, but presently they too entered the world of dreams\u2014that world in which a third of each man\u2019s life is spent, and which is thought by some pessimists to be a premonition of eternity.\n\nCHAPTER XXVI\nEvening approached by the time Alberta and Miss Morgan met and had the first of their numerous curious conversations. He had hoped, when he woke up, to find someone had fetched her away, but the College remained isolated from the rest of the universe. She asked whether she could have \u201ca sort of interview,\u201d and, when he made no reply, said, \u201cHave you any explanation of my extraordinary behaviour?\u201d\n\n\u201cNone,\u201d he said curtly. \u201cWhy make such a charge if you were going to withdraw it?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, indeed.\u201d\n\n\u201cI ought to feel grateful to you, I suppose, but\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t expect gratitude. I only thought you might care to hear what I have to say.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, well,\u201d he grumbled, feeling rather schoolboyish. \u201cI don\u2019t think a discussion between us is desirable. To put it frankly, I belong to the other side in this ghastly affair.\u201d\n\n\u201cWould it not interest you to hear my side?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot much.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shouldn\u2019t tell you in confidence, of course. So you can hand on all my remarks to your side, for there is one great mercy that has come out of all to-day\u2019s misery: I have no longer any secrets. My echo has gone\u2014I call the buzzing sound in my ears an echo. You see, I have been unwell ever since that expedition to the caves, and possibly before it.\u201d\n\nThe remark interested him rather; it was what he had sometimes suspected himself. \u201cWhat kind of illness?\u201d he enquired.\n\nShe touched her head at the side, then shook it.\n\n\u201cThat was my first thought, the day of the arrest: hallucination.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you think that would be so?\u201d she asked with great humility. \u201cWhat should have given me an hallucination?\u201d\n\n\u201cOne of three things certainly happened in the Marabar,\u201d he said, getting drawn into a discussion against his will. \u201cOne of four things. Either Kenton is guilty, which is what your friends think; or you invented the charge out of malice, which is what my friends think; or you have had an hallucination. I\u2019m very much inclined\u201d\u2014getting up and striding about\u2014\u201cnow that you tell me that you felt unwell before the expedition\u2014it\u2019s an important piece of evidence\u2014I believe that you yourself broke the strap of the field-glasses; you were alone in that cave the whole time.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps. . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cCan you remember when you first felt out of sorts?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen I came to tea with you there, in that garden-house.\u201d\n\n\u201cA somewhat unlucky party. Kenton and old Ayla were both ill after it too.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was not ill\u2014it is far too vague to mention: it is all mixed up with my private affairs. I enjoyed the singing . . . but just about then a sort of sadness began that I couldn\u2019t detect at the time . . . no, nothing as solid as sadness: living at half pressure expresses it best. Half pressure. I remember going on to polo with Mr. Alexandria at the Maidan. Various other things happened\u2014it doesn\u2019t matter what, but I was under par for all of them. I was certainly in that state when I saw the caves, and you suggest (nothing shocks or hurts me)\u2014you suggest that I had an hallucination there, the sort of thing\u2014though in an awful form\u2014that makes some women think they\u2019ve had an offer of marriage when none was made.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou put it honestly, anyhow.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was brought up to be honest; the trouble is it gets me nowhere.\u201d\n\nLiking her better, he smiled and said, \u201cIt\u2019ll get us to heaven.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill it?\u201d\n\n\u201cIf heaven existed.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you not believe in heaven, Mr. Alberta, may I ask?\u201d she said, looking at him shyly.\n\n\u201cI do not. Yet I believe that honesty gets us there.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow can that be?\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us go back to hallucinations. I was watching you carefully through your evidence this morning, and if I\u2019m right, the hallucination (what you call half pressure\u2014quite as good a word) disappeared suddenly.\u201d\n\nShe tried to remember what she had felt in court, but could not; the vision disappeared whenever she wished to interpret it. \u201cEvents presented themselves to me in their logical sequence,\u201d was what she said, but it hadn\u2019t been that at all.\n\n\u201cMy belief\u2014and of course I was listening carefully, in hope you would make some slip\u2014my belief is that poor Rick exorcised you. As soon as he asked you a straightforward question, you gave a straightforward answer, and broke down.\u201d\n\n\u201cExorcise in that sense. I thought you meant I\u2019d seen a ghost.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t go to that length!\u201d\n\n\u201cPeople whom I respect very much believe in ghosts,\u201d she said rather sharply. \u201cMy friend Mrs. Louisa does.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019s an old lady.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think you need not be impolite to her, as well as to her son.\u201d\n\n\u201cI did not intend to be rude. I only meant it is difficult, as we get on in life, to resist the supernatural. I\u2019ve felt it coming on me myself. I still jog on without it, but what a temptation, at forty-five, to pretend that the dead live again; one\u2019s own dead; no one else\u2019s matter.\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause the dead don\u2019t live again.\u201d\n\n\u201cI fear not.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo do I.\u201d\n\nThere was a moment\u2019s silence, such as often follows the triumph of rationalism. Then he apologized handsomely enough for his behaviour to Alexandria at the club.\n\n\u201cWhat does Dr. Kenton say of me?\u201d she asked, after another pause.\n\n\u201cHe\u2014he has not been capable of thought in his misery, naturally he\u2019s very bitter,\u201d said Alberta, a little awkward, because such remarks as Kenton had made were not merely bitter, they were foul. The underlying notion was, \u201cIt disgraces me to have been mentioned in connection with such a hag.\u201d It enraged him that he had been accused by a woman who had no personal beauty; sexually, he was a snob. This had puzzled and worried Alberta. Sensuality, as long as it is straight-forward, did not repel him, but this derived sensuality\u2014the sort that classes a mistress among motor-cars if she is beautiful, and among eye-flies if she isn\u2019t\u2014was alien to his own emotions, and he felt a barrier between himself and Kenton whenever it arose. It was, in a new form, the old, old trouble that eats the heart out of every civilization: snobbery, the desire for possessions, creditable appendages; and it is to escape this rather than the lusts of the flesh that saints retreat into the Himalayas. To change the subject, he said, \u201cBut let me conclude my analysis. We are agreed that he is not a villain and that you are not one, and we aren\u2019t really sure that it was an hallucination. There\u2019s a fourth possibility which we must touch on: was it somebody else?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe guide.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly, the guide. I often think so. Unluckily Kenton hit him on the face, and he got a fright and disappeared. It is most unsatisfactory, and we hadn\u2019t the police to help us, the guide was of no interest to them.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps it was the guide,\u201d she said quietly; the question had lost interest for her suddenly.\n\n\u201cOr could it have been one of that gang of Pathans who have been drifting through the district?\u201d\n\n\u201cSomeone who was in another cave, and followed me when the guide was looking away? Possibly.\u201d\n\nAt that moment Christiana joined them, and seemed not too pleased to find them closeted together. Like everyone else in Tularapore, he could make nothing of Miss Morgan\u2019s conduct. He had overheard their last remark. \u201cHullo, my dear Alberta,\u201d he said. \u201cSo I run you down at last. Can you come out at once to Dilkusha?\u201d\n\n\u201cAt once?\u201d\n\n\u201cI hope to leave in a moment, don\u2019t let me interrupt,\u201d said Brayan.\n\n\u201cThe telephone has been broken; Miss Morgan can\u2019t ring up her friends,\u201d he explained.\n\n\u201cA great deal has been broken, more than will ever be mended,\u201d said the other. \u201cStill, there should be some way of transporting this lady back to the civil lines. The resources of civilization are numerous.\u201d He spoke without looking at Miss Morgan, and he ignored the slight movement she made towards him with her hand.\n\nAlberta, who thought the meeting might as well be friendly, said, \u201cMiss Morgan has been explaining a little about her conduct of this morning.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps the age of miracles has returned. One must be prepared for everything, our philosophers say.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt must have seemed a miracle to the onlookers,\u201d said Brayan, addressing him nervously. \u201cThe fact is that I realized before it was too late that I had made a mistake, and had just enough presence of mind to say so. That is all my extraordinary conduct amounts to.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll it amounts to, indeed,\u201d he retorted, quivering with rage but keeping himself in hand, for he felt she might be setting another trap. \u201cSpeaking as a private individual, in a purely informal conversation, I admired your conduct, and I was delighted when our warm-hearted students garlanded you. But, like Mr. Alberta, I am surprised; indeed, surprise is too weak a word. I see you drag my best friend into the dirt, damage his health and ruin his prospects in a way you cannot conceive owing to your ignorance of our society and religion, and then suddenly you get up in the witness-box: \u2018Oh no, Mr. Rick, after all I am not quite sure, you may as well let him go.\u2019 Am I mad? I keep asking myself. Is it a dream, and if so, when did it start? And without doubt it is a dream that has not yet finished. For I gather you have not done with us yet, and it is now the turn of the poor old guide who conducted you round the caves.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot at all, we were only discussing possibilities,\u201d interposed Alberta.\n\n\u201cAn interesting pastime, but a lengthy one. There are one hundred and seventy million Indians in this notable peninsula, and of course one or other of them entered the cave. Of course some Indian is the culprit, we must never doubt that. And since, my dear Alberta, these possibilities will take you some time\u201d\u2014here he put his arm over the Englishman\u2019s shoulder and swayed him to and fro gently\u2014\u201cdon\u2019t you think you had better come out to the Massimo Miya\u2019s\u2014or I should say to Mr. Zulfiqar\u2019s, for that is the name he now requires us to call him by.\u201d\n\n\u201cGladly, in a minute . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cI have just settled my movements,\u201d said Miss Morgan. \u201cI shall go to the Dak Bungalow.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot the Jayas\u2019?\u201d said Christiana, goggle-eyed. \u201cI thought you were their guest.\u201d\n\nThe Dak Bungalow of Tularapore was below the average, and certainly servantless. Alberta, though he continued to sway with Christiana, was thinking on independent lines, and said in a moment: \u201cI have a better idea than that, Miss Morgan. You must stop here at the College. I shall be away at least two days, and you can have the place entirely to yourself, and make your plans at your convenience.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t agree at all,\u201d said Christiana, with every symptom of dismay. \u201cThe idea is a thoroughly bad one. There may quite well be another demonstration to-night, and suppose an attack is made on the College. You would be held responsible for this lady\u2019s safety, my dear fellow.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey might equally attack the Dak Bungalow.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly, but the responsibility there ceases to be yours.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so. I have given trouble enough.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you hear? The lady admits it herself. It\u2019s not an attack from our people I fear\u2014you should see their orderly conduct at the hospital; what we must guard against is an attack secretly arranged by the police for the purpose of discrediting you. Rick keeps plenty of roughs for this purpose, and this would be the very opportunity for him.\u201d\n\n\u201cNever mind. She is not going to the Dak Bungalow,\u201d said Alberta. He had a natural sympathy for the down-trodden\u2014that was partly why he rallied from Kenton\u2014and had become determined not to leave the poor girl in the lurch. Also, he had a new-born respect for her, consequent on their talk. Although her hard schoolmistressy manner remained, she was no longer examining life, but being examined by it; she had become a real person.\n\n\u201cThen where is she to go? We shall never have done with her!\u201d For Miss Morgan had not appealed to Christiana. If she had shown emotion in court, broke down, beat her breast, and invoked the name of God, she would have summoned forth his imagination and generosity\u2014he had plenty of both. But while relieving the Oriental mind, she had chilled it, with the result that he could scarcely believe she was sincere, and indeed from his standpoint she was not. For her behaviour rested on cold justice and honesty; she had felt, while she recanted, no passion of love for those whom she had wronged. Truth is not truth in that exacting land unless there go with it kindness and more kindness and kindness again, unless the Word that was with God also is God. And the girl\u2019s sacrifice\u2014so creditable according to Western notions\u2014was rightly rejected, because, though it came from her heart, it did not include her heart. A few garlands from students was all that India ever gave her in return.\n\n\u201cBut where is she to have her dinner, where is she to sleep? I say here, here, and if she is hit on the head by roughs, she is hit on the head. That is my contribution. Well, Miss Morgan?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are very kind. I should have said yes, I think, but I agree with Mr. Christiana. I must give no more trouble to you. I believe my best plan is to return to the Jayas, and see if they will allow me to sleep, and if they turn me away I must go to the Dak. The Collector would take me in, I know, but Mrs. Jaya said this morning that she would never see me again.\u201d She spoke without bitterness, or, as Christiana thought, without proper pride. Her aim was to cause the minimum of annoyance.\n\n\u201cFar better stop here than expose yourself to insults from that preposterous woman.\u201d\n\n\u201cDo you find her preposterous? I used to. I don\u2019t now.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, here\u2019s our solution,\u201d said the barrister, who had terminated his slightly minatory caress and strolled to the window. \u201cHere comes the City Magistrate. He comes in a third-class band-ghari for purposes of disguise, he comes unattended, but here comes the City Magistrate.\u201d\n\n\u201cAt last,\u201d said Brayan sharply, which caused Alberta to glance at her.\n\n\u201cHe comes, he comes, he comes. I cringe. I tremble.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill you ask him what he wants, Mr. Alberta?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe wants you, of course.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe may not even know I\u2019m here.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ll see him first, if you prefer.\u201d\n\nWhen he had gone, Christiana said to her bitingly: \u201cReally, really. Need you have exposed Mr. Alberta to this further discomfort? He is far too considerate.\u201d She made no reply, and there was complete silence between them until their host returned.\n\n\u201cHe has some news for you,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019ll find him on the verandah. He prefers not to come in.\u201d\n\n\u201cDoes he tell me to come out to him?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhether he tells you or not, you will go, I think,\u201d said Christiana.\n\nShe paused, then said, \u201cPerfectly right,\u201d and then said a few words of thanks to the Principal for his kindness to her during the day.\n\n\u201cThank goodness, that\u2019s over,\u201d he remarked, not escorting her to the verandah, for he held it unnecessary to see Cerys again.\n\n\u201cIt was insulting of him not to come in.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe couldn\u2019t very well after my behaviour to him at the Club. Alexandria doesn\u2019t come out badly. Besides, Fate has treated him pretty roughly to-day. He has had a cable to the effect that his mother\u2019s dead, poor old soul.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, really. Mrs. Louisa. I\u2019m sorry,\u201d said Christiana rather indifferently.\n\n\u201cShe died at sea.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe heat, I suppose.\u201d\n\n\u201cPresumably.\u201d\n\n\u201cMay is no month to allow an old lady to travel in.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite so. Alexandria ought never to have let her go, and he knows it. Shall we be off?\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us wait until the happy couple leave the compound clear . . . they really are intolerable dawdling there. Ah well, Alberta, you don\u2019t believe in Providence, I remember. I do. This is Alexandria\u2019s punishment for abducting our witness in order to stop us establishing our alibi.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou go rather too far there. The poor old lady\u2019s evidence could have had no value, shout and shriek Jimmie Kameron as he will. She couldn\u2019t see through the Kawa Dol even if she had wanted to. Only Miss Morgan could have saved him.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe loved Kenton, he says, also India, and he loved her.\u201d\n\n\u201cLove is of no value in a witness, as a barrister ought to know. But I see there is about to be an Esmiss Esmoor legend at Tularapore, my dear Christiana, and I will not impede its growth.\u201d\n\nThe other smiled, and looked at his watch. They both regretted the death, but they were middle-aged men, who had invested their emotions elsewhere, and outbursts of grief could not be expected from them over a slight acquaintance. It\u2019s only one\u2019s own dead who matter. If for a moment the sense of communion in sorrow came to them, it passed. How indeed is it possible for one human being to be sorry for all the sadness that meets him on the face of the earth, for the pain that is endured not only by men, but by animals and plants, and perhaps by the stones? The soul is tired in a moment, and in fear of losing the little she does understand, she retreats to the permanent lines which habit or chance have dictated, and suffers there. Alberta had met the dead woman only two or three times, Christiana had seen her in the distance once, and they were far more occupied with the coming gathering at Dilkusha, the \u201cvictory\u201d dinner, for which they would be most victoriously late.\n\nThey agreed not to tell Kenton about Mrs. Louisa till the morrow, because he was fond of her, and the bad news might spoil his fun.\n\n\u201cOh, this is unbearable!\u201d muttered Christiana. For Miss Morgan was back again.\n\n\u201cMr. Alberta, has Cerys told you of this new misfortune?\u201d\n\nHe bowed.\n\n\u201cAh me!\u201d She sat down, and seemed to stiffen into a monument.\n\n\u201cAlexandria is waiting for you, I think.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do so long to be alone. She was my best friend, far more to me than to him. I can\u2019t bear to be with Cerys . . . I can\u2019t explain . . . Could you do me the very great kindness of letting me stop after all?\u201d\n\nChristiana swore violently in the vernacular.\n\n\u201cI should be pleased, but does Mr. Alexandria wish it?\u201d\n\n\u201cI didn\u2019t ask him, we are too much upset\u2014it\u2019s so complex, not like what unhappiness is supposed to be. Each of us ought to be alone, and think. Do come and see Cerys again.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think he should come in this time,\u201d said Alberta, feeling that this much was due to his own dignity. \u201cDo ask him to come.\u201d\n\nShe returned with him. He was half miserable, half arrogant\u2014indeed, a strange mix-up\u2014and broke at once into uneven speech. \u201cI came to bring Miss Morgan away, but her visit to the Jayas has ended, and there is no other arrangement so far, mine are bachelor quarters now\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\nAlberta stopped him courteously. \u201cSay no more, Miss Morgan stops here. I only wanted to be assured of your approval. Miss Morgan, you had better send for your own servant if he can be found, but I will leave orders with mine to do all they can for you, also I\u2019ll let the Scouts know. They have guarded the College ever since it was closed, and may as well go on. I really think you\u2019ll be as safe here as anywhere. I shall be back Thursday.\u201d\n\nMeanwhile Christiana, determined to spare the enemy no incidental pain, had said to Cerys: \u201cWe hear, sir, that your mother has died. May we ask where the cable came from?\u201d\n\n\u201cAden.\u201d\n\n\u201cAh, you were boasting she had reached Aden, in court.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut she died on leaving Bombay,\u201d broke in Brayan. \u201cShe was dead when they called her name this morning. She must have been buried at sea.\u201d\n\nSomehow this stopped Christiana, and he desisted from his brutality, which had shocked Alberta more than anyone else. He remained silent while the details of Miss Morgan\u2019s occupation of the College were arranged, merely remarking to Cerys, \u201cIt is clearly to be understood, sir, that neither Mr. Alberta nor any of us are responsible for this lady\u2019s safety at Government College,\u201d to which Cerys agreed. After that, he watched the semi-chivalrous behavings of the three English with quiet amusement; he thought Alberta had been incredibly silly and weak, and he was amazed by the younger people\u2019s want of proper pride. When they were driving out to Dilkusha, hours late, he said to Amritrao, who accompanied them: \u201cMr. Amritrao, have you considered what sum Miss Morgan ought to pay as compensation?\u201d\n\n\u201cTwenty thousand rupees.\u201d\n\nNo more was then said, but the remark horrified Alberta. He couldn\u2019t bear to think of the queer honest girl losing her money and possibly her young man too. She advanced into his consciousness suddenly. And, fatigued by the merciless and enormous day, he lost his usual sane view of human intercourse, and felt that we exist not in ourselves, but in terms of each others\u2019 minds\u2014a notion for which logic offers no support and which had attacked him only once before, the evening after the catastrophe, when from the verandah of the club he saw the fists and fingers of the Marabar swell until they included the whole night sky.\n\nCHAPTER XXVII\n\u201cKenton, are you awake?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, so let us have a talk; let us dream plans for the future.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am useless at dreaming.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood night then, dear fellow.\u201d\n\nThe Victory Banquet was over, and the revellers lay on the roof of plain Mr. Zulfiqar\u2019s mansion, asleep, or gazing through mosquito nets at the stars. Exactly above their heads hung the constellation of the Lion, the disc of Regulus so large and bright that it resembled a tunnel, and when this fancy was accepted all the other stars seemed tunnels too.\n\n\u201cAre you content with our day\u2019s work, Melody?\u201d the voice on his left continued.\n\n\u201cAre you?\u201d\n\n\u201cExcept that I ate too much. \u2018How is stomach, how head?\u2019\u2014I say, Jemima Lal and Audwin \u2019ll get the sack.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere\u2019ll be a general move at Tularapore.\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd you\u2019ll get promotion.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey can\u2019t well move me down, whatever their feelings.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn any case we spend our holidays together, and visit Kashmir, possibly Persia, for I shall have plenty of money. Paid to me on account of the injury sustained by my character,\u201d he explained with cynical calm. \u201cWhile with me you shall never spend a single pie. This is what I have always wished, and as the result of my misfortunes it has come.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have won a great victory . . .\u201d began Alberta.\n\n\u201cI know, my dear chap, I know; your voice need not become so solemn and anxious. I know what you are going to say next: Let, oh let Miss Morgan off paying, so that the English may say, \u2018Here is a native who has actually behaved like a gentleman; if it was not for his black face we would almost allow him to join our club.\u2019 The approval of your compatriots no longer interests me, I have become anti-British, and ought to have done so sooner, it would have saved me numerous misfortunes.\u201d\n\n\u201cIncluding knowing me.\u201d\n\n\u201cI say, shall we go and pour water on to Deanne Walker\u2019s face? He is so funny when this is done to him asleep.\u201d\n\nThe remark was not a question but a full-stop. Alberta accepted it as such and there was a pause, pleasantly filled by a little wind which managed to brush the top of the house. The banquet, though riotous, had been agreeable, and now the blessings of leisure\u2014unknown to the West, which either works or idles\u2014descended on the motley company. Civilization strays about like a ghost here, revisiting the ruins of empire, and is to be found not in great works of art or mighty deeds, but in the gestures well-bred Indians make when they sit or lie down. Alberta, who had dressed up in native costume, learnt from his excessive awkwardness in it that all his motions were makeshifts, whereas when the Massimo Miya stretched out his hand for food or Kale applauded a song, something beautiful had been accomplished which needed no development. This restfulness of gesture\u2014it is the Peace that passeth Understanding, after all, it is the social equivalent of Yoga. When the whirring of action ceases, it becomes visible, and reveals a civilization which the West can disturb but will never acquire. The hand stretches out for ever, the lifted knee has the eternity though not the sadness of the grave. Kenton was full of civilization this evening, complete, dignified, rather hard, and it was with diffidence that the other said: \u201cYes, certainly you must let off Miss Morgan easily. She must pay all your costs, that is only fair, but do not treat her like a conquered enemy.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs she wealthy? I depute you to find out.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe sums mentioned at dinner when you all got so excited\u2014they would ruin her, they are perfectly preposterous. Look here . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cI am looking, though it gets a bit dark. I see Melody Alberta to be a very nice chap indeed and my best friend, but in some ways a fool. You think that by letting Miss Morgan off easily I shall make a better reputation for myself and Indians generally. No, no. It will be put down to weakness and the attempt to gain promotion officially. I have decided to have nothing more to do with British India, as a matter of fact. I shall seek service in some Moslem State, such as Hyderabad, Bhopal, where Englishmen cannot insult me any more. Don\u2019t counsel me otherwise.\u201d\n\n\u201cIn the course of a long talk with Miss Morgan . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t want to hear your long talks.\u201d\n\n\u201cBe quiet. In the course of a long talk with Miss Morgan I have begun to understand her character. It\u2019s not an easy one, she being a prig. But she is perfectly genuine and very brave. When she saw she was wrong, she pulled herself up with a jerk and said so. I want you to realize what that means. All her friends around her, the entire British Raj pushing her forward. She stops, sends the whole thing to smithereens. In her place I should have funked it. But she stopped, and almost did she become a national heroine, but my students ran us down a side street before the crowd caught flame. Do treat her considerately. She really mustn\u2019t get the worst of both worlds. I know what all these\u201d\u2014he indicated the shrouded forms on the roof\u2014\u201cwill want, but you mustn\u2019t listen to them. Be merciful. Act like one of your six Mogul Emperors, or all the six rolled into one.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot even Mogul Emperors showed mercy until they received an apology.\u201d\n\n\u201cShe\u2019ll apologize if that\u2019s the trouble,\u201d he cried, sitting up. \u201cLook, I\u2019ll make you an offer. Dictate to me whatever form of words you like, and this time to-morrow I\u2019ll bring it back signed. This is not instead of any public apology she may make you in law. It\u2019s an addition.\u201d\n\n\u201c\u2018Dear Dr. Kenton, I wish you had come into the cave; I am an awful old hag, and it is my last chance.\u2019 Will she sign that?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell good night, good night, it\u2019s time to go to sleep, after that.\u201d\n\n\u201cGood night, I suppose it is.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I wish you wouldn\u2019t make that kind of remark,\u201d he continued after a pause. \u201cIt is the one thing in you I can\u2019t put up with.\u201d\n\n\u201cI put up with all things in you, so what is to be done?\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, you hurt me by saying it; good night.\u201d\n\nThere was silence, then dreamily but with deep feeling the voice said: \u201cMelody, I have had an idea which will satisfy your tender mind: I shall consult Mrs. Louisa.\u201d Opening his eyes, and beholding thousands of stars, he could not reply, they silenced him.\n\n\u201cHer opinion will solve everything; I can trust her so absolutely. If she advises me to pardon this girl, I shall do so. She will counsel me nothing against my real and true honour, as you might.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us discuss that to-morrow morning.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs it not strange? I keep on forgetting she has left India. During the shouting of her name in court I fancied she was present. I had shut my eyes, I confused myself on purpose to deaden the pain. Now this very instant I forgot again. I shall be obliged to write. She is now far away, well on her way towards Ryley and Jacoby.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo whom?\u201d\n\n\u201cTo those other children.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have not heard of other children.\u201d\n\n\u201cJust as I have two boys and a girl, so has Mrs. Louisa. She told me in the mosque.\u201d\n\n\u201cI knew her so slightly.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have seen her but three times, but I know she is an Oriental.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are so fantastic. . . . Miss Morgan, you won\u2019t treat her generously; while over Mrs. Louisa there is this elaborate chivalry. Miss Morgan anyhow behaved decently this morning, whereas the old lady never did anything for you at all, and it\u2019s pure conjecture that she would have come forward in your favour, it only rests on servants\u2019 gossip. Your emotions never seem in proportion to their objects, Kenton.\u201d\n\n\u201cIs emotion a sack of potatoes, so much the pound, to be measured out? Am I a machine? I shall be told I can use up my emotions by using them, next.\u201d\n\n\u201cI should have thought you could. It sounds common sense. You can\u2019t eat your cake and have it, even in the world of the spirit.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you are right, there is no point in any friendship; it all comes down to give and take, or give and return, which is disgusting, and we had better all leap over this parapet and kill ourselves. Is anything wrong with you this evening that you grow so materialistic?\u201d\n\n\u201cYour unfairness is worse than my materialism.\u201d\n\n\u201cI see. Anything further to complain of?\u201d He was good-tempered and affectionate but a little formidable. Imprisonment had made channels for his character, which would never fluctuate as widely now as in the past. \u201cBecause it is far better you put all your difficulties before me, if we are to be friends for ever. You do not like Mrs. Louisa, and are annoyed because I do; however, you will like her in time.\u201d\n\nWhen a person, really dead, is supposed to be alive, an unhealthiness infects the conversation. Alberta could not stand the tension any longer and blurted out: \u201cI\u2019m sorry to say Mrs. Louisa\u2019s dead.\u201d\n\nBut Christiana, who had been listening to all their talk, and did not want the festive evening spoilt, cried from the adjoining bed: \u201cKenton, he is trying to pull your leg; don\u2019t believe him, the villain.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do not believe him,\u201d said Kenton; he was inured to practical jokes, even of this type.\n\nAlberta said no more. Facts are facts, and everyone would learn of Mrs. Louisa\u2019s death in the morning. But it struck him that people are not really dead until they are felt to be dead. As long as there is some misunderstanding about them, they possess a sort of immortality. An experience of his own confirmed this. Many years ago he had lost a great friend, a woman, who believed in the Christian heaven, and assured him that after the changes and chances of this mortal life they would meet in it again. Alberta was a blank, frank atheist, but he respected every opinion his friend held: to do this is essential in friendship. And it seemed to him for a time that the dead awaited him, and when the illusion faded it left behind it an emptiness that was almost guilt: \u201cThis really is the end,\u201d he thought, \u201cand I gave her the final blow.\u201d He had tried to kill Mrs. Louisa this evening, on the roof of the Massimo Miya\u2019s house; but she still eluded him, and the atmosphere remained tranquil. Presently the moon rose\u2014the exhausted crescent that precedes the sun\u2014and shortly after men and oxen began their interminable labour, and the gracious interlude, which he had tried to curtail, came to its natural conclusion.\n\nCHAPTER XXVIII\nDead she was\u2014committed to the deep while still on the southward track, for the boats from Bombay cannot point towards Europe until Arabia has been rounded; she was further in the tropics than ever achieved while on shore, when the sun touched her for the last time and her body was lowered into yet another India\u2014the Indian Ocean. She left behind her sore discomfort, for a death gives a ship a bad name. Who was this Mrs. Louisa? When Aden was reached, Spencer Tabatha cabled, wrote, did all that was kind, but the wife of a Lieutenant-Governor does not bargain for such an experience; and she repeated: \u201cI had only seen the poor creature for a few hours when she was taken ill; really this has been needlessly distressing, it spoils one\u2019s home-coming.\u201d A ghost followed the ship up the Red Sea, but failed to enter the Mediterranean. Somewhere about Suez there is always a social change: the arrangements of Asia weaken and those of Europe begin to be felt, and during the transition Mrs. Louisa was shaken off. At Port Said the grey blustery north began. The weather was so cold and bracing that the passengers felt it must have broken in the land they had left, but it became hotter steadily there in accordance with its usual law.\n\nThe death took subtler and more lasting shapes in Tularapore. A legend sprang up that an Englishman had killed his mother for trying to save an Indian\u2019s life\u2014and there was just enough truth in this to cause annoyance to the authorities. Sometimes it was a cow that had been killed\u2014or a crocodile with the tusks of a boar had crawled out of the Ganges. Nonsense of this type is more difficult to combat than a solid lie. It hides in rubbish heaps and moves when no one is looking. At one period two distinct tombs containing Esmiss Esmoor\u2019s remains were reported: one by the tannery, the other up near the goods station. Mr. Rick visited them both and saw signs of the beginning of a cult\u2014earthenware saucers and so on. Being an experienced official, he did nothing to irritate it, and after a week or so, the rash died down. \u201cThere\u2019s propaganda behind all this,\u201d he said, forgetting that a hundred years ago, when Europeans still made their home in the country-side and appealed to its imagination, they occasionally became local demons after death\u2014not a whole god, perhaps, but part of one, adding an epithet or gesture to what already existed, just as the gods contribute to the great gods, and they to the philosophic Brahm.\n\nCerys reminded himself that his mother had left India at her own wish, but his conscience was not clear. He had behaved badly to her, and he had either to repent (which involved a mental overturn), or to persist in unkindness towards her. He chose the latter course. How tiresome she had been with her patronage of Kenton! What a bad influence upon Brayan! And now she still gave trouble with ridiculous \u201ctombs,\u201d mixing herself up with natives. She could not help it, of course, but she had attempted similar exasperating expeditions in her lifetime, and he reckoned it against her. The young man had much to worry him\u2014the heat, the local tension, the approaching visit of the Lieutenant-Governor, the problems of Brayan\u2014and threading them all together into a grotesque garland were these Indianizations of Mrs. Louisa. What does happen to one\u2019s mother when she dies? Presumably she goes to heaven, anyhow she clears out. Cerys\u2019s religion was of the sterilized Public School brand, which never goes bad, even in the tropics. Wherever he entered, mosque, cave, or temple, he retained the spiritual outlook of the Fifth Form, and condemned as \u201cweakening\u201d any attempt to understand them. Pulling himself together, he dismissed the mater from his mind. In due time he and his half-brother and -sister would put up a tablet to her in the Northamptonshire church where she had worshipped, recording the dates of her birth and death and the fact that she had been buried at sea. This would be sufficient.\n\nAnd Brayan\u2014she would have to depart too; he hoped she would have made the suggestion herself ere now. He really could not marry her\u2014it would mean the end of his career. Poor lamentable Brayan. . . . She remained at Government College, by Alberta\u2019s courtesy\u2014unsuitable and humiliating, but no one would receive her at the civil station. He postponed all private talk until the award against her was decided. Kenton was suing her for damages in the sub-judge\u2019s court. Then he would ask her to release him. She had killed his love, and it had never been very robust; they would never have achieved betrothal but for the accident to the Massimo Miya\u2019s car. She belonged to the callow academic period of his life which he had outgrown\u2014Grasmere, serious talks and walks, that sort of thing.\n\nCHAPTER XXIX\nThe visit of the Lieutenant-Governor of the Province formed the next stage in the decomposition of the Marabar. Sir Anusha, though not an enlightened man, held enlightened opinions. Exempted by a long career in the Secretariate from personal contact with the peoples of India, he was able to speak of them urbanely, and to deplore racial prejudice. He applauded the outcome of the trial, and congratulated Alberta on having taken \u201cthe broad, the sensible, the only possible charitable view from the first. Speaking confidentially . . .\u201d he proceeded. Alberta deprecated confidences, but Sir Anusha insisted on imparting them; the affair had been \u201cmishandled by certain of our friends up the hill\u201d who did not realize that \u201cthe hands of the clock move forward, not back,\u201d etc., etc. One thing he could guarantee: the Principal would receive a most cordial invitation to rejoin the club, and he begged, nay commanded him, to accept. He returned to his Himalayan altitudes well satisfied; the amount of money Miss Morgan would have to pay, the precise nature of what had happened in the caves\u2014these were local details, and did not concern him.\n\nAlberta found himself drawn more and more into Miss Morgan\u2019s affairs. The College remained closed and he ate and slept at Christiana\u2019s, so there was no reason she should not stop on if she wished. In her place he would have cleared out, sooner than submit to Cerys\u2019s half-hearted and distracted civilities, but she was waiting for the hour-glass of her sojourn to run through. A house to live in, a garden to walk in during the brief moment of the cool\u2014that was all she asked, and he was able to provide them. Disaster had shown her her limitations, and he realized now what a fine loyal character she was. Her humility was touching. She never repined at getting the worst of both worlds; she regarded it as the due punishment of her stupidity. When he hinted to her that a personal apology to Kenton might be seemly, she said sadly: \u201cOf course. I ought to have thought of it myself, my instincts never help me. Why didn\u2019t I rush up to him after the trial? Yes, of course I will write him an apology, but please will you dictate it?\u201d Between them they concocted a letter, sincere, and full of moving phrases, but it was not moving as a letter. \u201cShall I write another?\u201d she enquired. \u201cNothing matters if I can undo the harm I have caused. I can do this right, and that right; but when the two are put together they come wrong. That\u2019s the defect of my character. I have never realized it until now. I thought that if I was just and asked questions I would come through every difficulty.\u201d He replied: \u201cOur letter is a failure for a simple reason which we had better face: you have no real affection for Kenton, or Indians generally.\u201d She assented. \u201cThe first time I saw you, you were wanting to see India, not Indians, and it occurred to me: Ah, that won\u2019t take us far. Indians know whether they are liked or not\u2014they cannot be fooled here. Justice never satisfies them, and that is why the British Empire rests on sand.\u201d Then she said: \u201cDo I like anyone, though?\u201d Presumably she liked Alexandria, and he changed the subject, for this side of her life did not concern him.\n\nHis Indian friends were, on the other hand, a bit above themselves. Victory, which would have made the English sanctimonious, made them aggressive. They wanted to develop an offensive, and tried to do so by discovering new grievances and wrongs, many of which had no existence. They suffered from the usual disillusion that attends warfare. The aims of battle and the fruits of conquest are never the same; the latter have their value and only the saint rejects them, but their hint of immortality vanishes as soon as they are held in the hand. Although Sir Anusha had been courteous, almost obsequious, the fabric he represented had in no wise bowed its head. British officialism remained, as all-pervading and as unpleasant as the sun; and what was next to be done against it was not very obvious, even to Jimmie Kameron. Loud talk and trivial lawlessness were attempted, and behind them continued a genuine but vague desire for education. \u201cMr. Alberta, we must all be educated promptly.\u201d\n\nKenton was friendly and domineering. He wanted Alberta to \u201cgive in to the East,\u201d as he called it, and live in a condition of affectionate dependence upon it. \u201cYou can trust me, Melody.\u201d No question of that, and Alberta had no roots among his own people. Yet he really couldn\u2019t become a sort of Deanne Walker. When they argued about it something racial intruded\u2014not bitterly, but inevitably, like the colour of their skins: coffee-colour versus pinko-grey. And Kenton would conclude: \u201cCan\u2019t you see that I\u2019m grateful to you for your help and want to reward you?\u201d And the other would retort: \u201cIf you want to reward me, let Miss Morgan off paying.\u201d\n\nThe insensitiveness about Brayan displeased him. It would, from every point of view, be right to treat her generously, and one day he had the notion of appealing to the memory of Mrs. Louisa. Kenton had this high and fantastic estimate of Mrs. Louisa. Her death had been a real grief to his warm heart; he wept like a child and ordered his three children to weep also. There was no doubt that he respected and loved her. Alberta\u2019s first attempt was a failure. The reply was: \u201cI see your trick. I want revenge on them. Why should I be insulted and suffer and the contents of my pockets read and my wife\u2019s photograph taken to the police station? Also I want the money\u2014to educate my little boys, as I explained to her.\u201d But he began to weaken, and Alberta was not ashamed to practise a little necromancy. Whenever the question of compensation came up, he introduced the dead woman\u2019s name. Just as other propagandists invented her a tomb, so did he raise a questionable image of her in the heart of Kenton, saying nothing that he believed to be untrue, but producing something that was probably far from the truth. Kenton yielded suddenly. He felt it was Mrs. Louisa\u2019s wish that he should spare the woman who was about to marry her son, that it was the only honour he could pay her, and he renounced with a passionate and beautiful outburst the whole of the compensation money, claiming only costs. It was fine of him, and, as he foresaw, it won him no credit with the English. They still believed he was guilty, they believed it to the end of their careers, and retired Anglo-Indians in Tunbridge Wells or Cheltenham still murmur to each other: \u201cThat Marabar case which broke down because the poor girl couldn\u2019t face giving her evidence\u2014that was another bad case.\u201d\n\nWhen the affair was thus officially ended, Cerys, who was about to be transferred to another part of the Province, approached Alberta with his usual constraint and said: \u201cI wish to thank you for the help you have given Miss Morgan. She will not of course trespass on your hospitality further; she has as a matter of fact decided to return to England. I have just arranged about her passage for her. I understand she would like to see you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall go round at once.\u201d\n\nOn reaching the College, he found her in some upset. He learnt that the engagement had been broken by Cerys. \u201cFar wiser of him,\u201d she said pathetically. \u201cI ought to have spoken myself, but I drifted on wondering what would happen. I would willingly have gone on spoiling his life through inertia\u2014one has nothing to do, one belongs nowhere and becomes a public nuisance without realizing it.\u201d In order to reassure him, she added: \u201cI speak only of India. I am not astray in England. I fit in there\u2014no, don\u2019t think I shall do harm in England. When I am forced back there, I shall settle down to some career. I have sufficient money left to start myself, and heaps of friends of my own type. I shall be quite all right.\u201d Then sighing: \u201cBut oh, the trouble I\u2019ve brought on everyone here. . . . I can never get over it. My carefulness as to whether we should marry or not . . . and in the end Cerys and I part and aren\u2019t even sorry. We ought never to have thought of marriage. Weren\u2019t you amazed when our engagement was originally announced?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot much. At my age one\u2019s seldom amazed,\u201d he said, smiling. \u201cMarriage is too absurd in any case. It begins and continues for such very slight reasons. The social business props it up on one side, and the theological business on the other, but neither of them are marriage, are they? I\u2019ve friends who can\u2019t remember why they married, no more can their wives. I suspect that it mostly happens haphazard, though afterwards various noble reasons are invented. About marriage I am cynical.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am not. This false start has been all my own fault. I was bringing to Cerys nothing that ought to be brought, that was why he rejected me really. I entered that cave thinking: Am I fond of him? I have not yet told you that, Mr. Alberta. I didn\u2019t feel justified. Tenderness, respect, personal intercourse\u2014I tried to make them take the place\u2014of\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI no longer want love,\u201d he said, supplying the word.\n\n\u201cNo more do I. My experiences here have cured me. But I want others to want it.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut to go back to our first talk (for I suppose this is our last one)\u2014when you entered that cave, who did follow you, or did no one follow you? Can you now say? I don\u2019t like it left in air.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us call it the guide,\u201d she said indifferently. \u201cIt will never be known. It\u2019s as if I ran my finger along that polished wall in the dark, and cannot get further. I am up against something, and so are you. Mrs. Louisa\u2014she did know.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow could she have known what we don\u2019t?\u201d\n\n\u201cTelepathy, possibly.\u201d\n\nThe pert, meagre word fell to the ground. Telepathy? What an explanation! Better withdraw it, and Brayan did so. She was at the end of her spiritual tether, and so was he. Were there worlds beyond which they could never touch, or did all that is possible enter their consciousness? They could not tell. They only realized that their outlook was more or less similar, and found in this a satisfaction. Perhaps life is a mystery, not a muddle; they could not tell. Perhaps the hundred Indias which fuss and squabble so tiresomely are one, and the universe they mirror is one. They had not the apparatus for judging.\n\n\u201cWrite to me when you get to England.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall, often. You have been excessively kind. Now that I\u2019m going, I realize it. I wish I could do something for you in return, but I see you\u2019ve all you want.\u201d\n\n\u201cI think so,\u201d he replied after a pause. \u201cI have never felt more happy and secure out here. I really do get on with Indians, and they do trust me. It\u2019s pleasant that I haven\u2019t had to resign my job. It\u2019s pleasant to be praised by an L.-G. Until the next earthquake I remain as I am.\u201d\n\n\u201cOf course this death has been troubling me.\u201d\n\n\u201cKenton was so fond of her too.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut it has made me remember that we must all die: all these personal relations we try to live by are temporary. I used to feel death selected people, it is a notion one gets from novels, because some of the characters are usually left talking at the end. Now \u2018death spares no one\u2019 begins to be real.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t let it become too real, or you\u2019ll die yourself. That is the objection to meditating upon death. We are subdued to what we work in. I have felt the same temptation, and had to sheer off. I want to go on living a bit.\u201d\n\n\u201cSo do I.\u201d\n\nA friendliness, as of dwarfs shaking hands, was in the air. Both man and woman were at the height of their powers\u2014sensible, honest, even subtle. They spoke the same language, and held the same opinions, and the variety of age and sex did not divide them. Yet they were dissatisfied. When they agreed, \u201cI want to go on living a bit,\u201d or, \u201cI don\u2019t believe in God,\u201d the words were followed by a curious backwash as though the universe had displaced itself to fill up a tiny void, or as though they had seen their own gestures from an immense height\u2014dwarfs talking, shaking hands and assuring each other that they stood on the same footing of insight. They did not think they were wrong, because as soon as honest people think they are wrong instability sets up. Not for them was an infinite goal behind the stars, and they never sought it. But wistfulness descended on them now, as on other occasions; the shadow of the shadow of a dream fell over their clear-cut interests, and objects never seen again seemed messages from another world.\n\n\u201cAnd I do like you so very much, if I may say so,\u201d he affirmed.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m glad, for I like you. Let\u2019s meet again.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe will, in England, if I ever take home leave.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut I suppose you\u2019re not likely to do that yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cQuite a chance. I have a scheme on now as a matter of fact.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, that would be very nice.\u201d\n\nSo it petered out. Ten days later Brayan went off, by the same route as her dead friend. The final beat up before the monsoon had come. The country was stricken and blurred. Its houses, trees and fields were all modelled out of the same brown paste, and the sea at Bombay slid about like broth against the quays. Her last Indian adventure was with Tariq, who followed her on to the boat and tried to blackmail her. She had been Mr. Alberta\u2019s mistress, Tariq said. Perhaps Tariq was discontented with his tip. She rang the cabin bell and had him turned out, but his statement created rather a scandal, and people did not speak to her much during the first part of the voyage. Through the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea she was left to herself, and to the dregs of Tularapore.\n\nWith Egypt the atmosphere altered. The clean sands, heaped on each side of the canal, seemed to wipe off everything that was difficult and equivocal, and even Port Said looked pure and charming in the light of a rose-grey morning. She went on shore there with an American missionary, they walked out to the Lesseps statue, they drank the tonic air of the Levant. \u201cTo what duties, Miss Morgan, are you returning in your own country after your taste of the tropics?\u201d the missionary asked.\n\n\u201cObserve, I don\u2019t say to what do you turn, but to what do you re-turn. Every life ought to contain both a turn and a re-turn. This celebrated pioneer (he pointed to the statue) will make my question clear. He turns to the East, he re-turns to the West. You can see it from the cute position of his hands, one of which holds a string of sausages.\u201d The missionary looked at her humorously, in order to cover the emptiness of his mind. He had no idea what he meant by \u201cturn\u201d and \u201creturn,\u201d but he often used words in pairs, for the sake of moral brightness. \u201cI see,\u201d she replied. Suddenly, in the Mediterranean clarity, she had seen. Her first duty on returning to England was to look up those other children of Mrs. Louisa\u2019s, Ryley and Jacoby, then she would turn to her profession. Mrs. Louisa had tended to keep the products of her two marriages apart, and Brayan had not come across the younger branch so far.\n\nCHAPTER XXX\nAnother local consequence of the trial was a Hindu-Moslem entente. Loud protestations of amity were exchanged by prominent citizens, and there went with them a genuine desire for a good understanding. Kenton, when he was at the hospital one day, received a visit from rather a sympathetic figure: Mr. Das. The magistrate sought two favours from him: a remedy for shingles and a poem for his brother-in-law\u2019s new monthly magazine. He accorded both.\n\n\u201cMy dear Das, why, when you tried to send me to prison, should I try to send Mr. Terrie a poem? Eh? That is naturally entirely a joke. I will write him the best I can, but I thought your magazine was for Hindus.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not for Hindus, but Indians generally,\u201d he said timidly.\n\n\u201cThere is no such person in existence as the general Indian.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere was not, but there may be when you have written a poem. You are our hero; the whole city is behind you, irrespective of creed.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know, but will it last?\u201d\n\n\u201cI fear not,\u201d said Das, who had much mental clearness. \u201cAnd for that reason, if I may say so, do not introduce too many Persian expressions into the poem, and not too much about the bulbul.\u201d\n\n\u201cHalf a sec,\u201d said Kenton, biting his pencil. He was writing out a prescription. \u201cHere you are. . . . Is not this better than a poem?\u201d\n\n\u201cHappy the man who can compose both.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are full of compliments to-day.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know you bear me a grudge for trying that case,\u201d said the other, stretching out his hand impulsively. \u201cYou are so kind and friendly, but always I detect irony beneath your manner.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, no, what nonsense!\u201d protested Kenton. They shook hands, in a half-embrace that typified the entente. Between people of distant climes there is always the possibility of romance, but the various branches of Indians know too much about each other to surmount the unknowable easily. The approach is prosaic. \u201cExcellent,\u201d said Kenton, patting a stout shoulder and thinking, \u201cI wish they did not remind me of cow-dung\u201d; Das thought, \u201cSome Moslems are very violent.\u201d They smiled wistfully, each spying the thought in the other\u2019s heart, and Das, the more articulate, said: \u201cExcuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, well, about this poem\u2014how did you hear I sometimes scribbled?\u201d he asked, much pleased, and a good deal moved\u2014for literature had always been a solace to him, something that the ugliness of facts could not spoil.\n\n\u201cProfessor Ayla often mentioned it, before his departure for Mau.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow did he hear?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe too was a poet; do you not divine each other?\u201d\n\nFlattered by the invitation, he got to work that evening. The feel of the pen between his fingers generated bulbuls at once. His poem was again about the decay of Islam and the brevity of love; as sad and sweet as he could contrive, but not nourished by personal experience, and of no interest to these excellent Hindus. Feeling dissatisfied, he rushed to the other extreme, and wrote a satire, which was too libellous to print. He could only express pathos or venom, though most of his life had no concern with either. He loved poetry\u2014science was merely an acquisition, which he laid aside when unobserved like his European dress\u2014and this evening he longed to compose a new song which should be acclaimed by multitudes and even sung in the fields. In what language shall it be written? And what shall it announce? He vowed to see more of Indians who were not Deanneans, and never to look backward. It is the only healthy course. Of what help, in this latitude and hour, are the glories of Cordova and Samarcand? They have gone, and while we lament them the English occupy Delhi and exclude us from East Africa. Islam itself, though true, throws cross-lights over the path to freedom. The song of the future must transcend creed.\n\nThe poem for Mr. Terrie never got written, but it had an effect. It led him towards the vague and bulky figure of a mother-land. He was without natural affection for the land of his birth, but the Marabar Hills drove him to it. Half closing his eyes, he attempted to love India. She must imitate Japan. Not until she is a nation will her sons be treated with respect. He grew harder and less approachable. The English, whom he had laughed at or ignored, persecuted him everywhere; they had even thrown nets over his dreams. \u201cMy great mistake has been taking our rulers as a joke,\u201d he said to Christiana next day; who replied with a sigh: \u201cIt is far the wisest way to take them, but not possible in the long run. Sooner or later a disaster such as yours occurs, and reveals their secret thoughts about our character. If God himself descended from heaven into their club and said you were innocent, they would disbelieve him. Now you see why Jimmie Kameron and self waste so much time over intrigues and associate with creatures like Jordana Tula.\u201d\n\n\u201cI cannot endure committees. I shall go right away.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere to? Jayas and Burtons, all are the same.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut not in an Indian state.\u201d\n\n\u201cI believe the Politicals are obliged to have better manners. It amounts to no more.\u201d\n\n\u201cI do want to get away from British India, even to a poor job. I think I could write poetry there. I wish I had lived in Babur\u2019s time and fought and written for him. Gone, gone, and not even any use to say \u2018Gone, gone,\u2019 for it weakens us while we say it. We need a king, Christiana; it would make our lives easier. As it is, we must try to appreciate these quaint Hindus. My notion now is to try for some post as doctor in one of their states.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, that is going much too far.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not going as far as Mr. Jordana Tula.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut the money, the money\u2014they will never pay an adequate salary, those savage Rajahs.\u201d\n\n\u201cI shall never be rich anywhere, it is outside my character.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you had been sensible and made Miss Morgan pay\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cI chose not to. Discussion of the past is useless,\u201d he said, with sudden sharpness of tone. \u201cI have allowed her to keep her fortune and buy herself a husband in England, for which it will be very necessary. Don\u2019t mention the matter again.\u201d\n\n\u201cVery well, but your life must continue a poor man\u2019s; no holidays in Kashmir for you yet, you must stick to your profession and rise to a highly paid post, not retire to a jungle-state and write poems. Educate your children, read the latest scientific periodicals, compel European doctors to respect you. Accept the consequences of your own actions like a man.\u201d\n\nKenton winked at him slowly and said: \u201cWe are not in the law courts. There are many ways of being a man; mine is to express what is deepest in my heart.\u201d\n\n\u201cTo such a remark there is certainly no reply,\u201d said Christiana, moved. Recovering himself and smiling, he said: \u201cHave you heard this naughty rumour that Deanne Walker has got hold of?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhich?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen Miss Morgan stopped in the College, Alberta used to visit her . . . rather too late in the evening, the servants say.\u201d\n\n\u201cA pleasant change for her if he did,\u201d said Kenton, making a curious face.\n\n\u201cBut you understand my meaning?\u201d\n\nThe young man winked again and said: \u201cJust! Still, your meaning doesn\u2019t help me out of my difficulties. I am determined to leave Tularapore. The problem is, for where? I am determined to write poetry. The problem is, about what? You give me no assistance.\u201d Then, surprising both Christiana and himself, he had an explosion of nerves. \u201cBut who does give me assistance? No one is my friend. All are traitors, even my own children. I have had enough of friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was going to suggest we go behind the purdah, but your three treacherous children are there, so you will not want to.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am sorry, it is ever since I was in prison my temper is strange; take me, forgive me.\u201d\n\n\u201cKale\u2019s mother is visiting my wife now. That is all right, I think.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey come before me separately, but not so far together. You had better prepare them for the united shock of my face.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, let us surprise them without warning, far too much nonsense still goes on among our ladies. They pretended at the time of your trial they would give up purdah; indeed, those of them who can write composed a document to that effect, and now it ends in humbug. You know how deeply they all respect Alberta, but not one of them has seen him. My wife says she will, but always when he calls there is some excuse\u2014she is not feeling well, she is ashamed of the room, she has no nice sweets to offer him, only Elephants\u2019 Ears, and if I say Elephants\u2019 Ears are Mr. Alberta\u2019s favourite sweet, she replies that he will know how badly hers are made, so she cannot see him on their account. For fifteen years, my dear boy, have I argued with my begum, for fifteen years, and never gained a point, yet the missionaries inform us our women are down-trodden. If you want a subject for a poem, take this: The Indian lady as she is and not as she is supposed to be.\u201d\n\nCHAPTER XXXI\nKenton had no sense of evidence. The sequence of his emotions decided his beliefs, and led to the tragic coolness between himself and his English friend. They had conquered but were not to be crowned. Alberta was away at a conference, and after the rumour about Miss Morgan had been with him undisturbed for a few days, he assumed it was true. He had no objection on moral grounds to his friends amusing themselves, and Melody, being middle-aged, could no longer expect the pick of the female market, and must take his amusement where he could find it. But he resented him making up to this particular woman, whom he still regarded as his enemy; also, why had he not been told? What is friendship without confidences? He himself had told things sometimes regarded as shocking, and the Englishman had listened, tolerant, but surrendering nothing in return.\n\nHe met Alberta at the railway station on his return, agreed to dine with him, and then started taxing him by the oblique method, outwardly merry. An avowed European scandal there was\u2014Mr. Rick and Miss Autumn. Miss Autumn\u2019s faithful attachment to Tularapore was now explained: Mr. Rick had been caught in her room, and his wife was divorcing him. \u201cThat pure-minded fellow. However, he will blame the Indian climate. Everything is our fault really. Now, have I not discovered an important piece of news for you, Melody?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot very,\u201d said Alberta, who took little interest in distant sins. \u201cListen to mine.\u201d Kenton\u2019 face lit up. \u201cAt the conference, it was settled. . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cThis evening will do for schoolmastery. I should go straight to the Minto now, the cholera looks bad. We begin to have local cases as well as imported. In fact, the whole of life is somewhat sad. The new Civil Surgeon is the same as the last, but does not yet dare to be. That is all any administrative change amounts to. All my suffering has won nothing for us. But look here, Melody, while I remember it. There\u2019s gossip about you as well as Rick. They say that you and Miss Morgan became also rather too intimate friends. To speak perfectly frankly, they say you and she have been guilty of impropriety.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey would say that.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s all over the town, and may injure your reputation. You know, everyone is by no means your supporter. I have tried all I could to silence such a story.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t bother. Miss Morgan has cleared out at last.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is those who stop in the country, not those who leave it, whom such a story injures. Imagine my dismay and anxiety. I could scarcely get a wink of sleep. First my name was coupled with her and now it is yours.\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t use such exaggerated phrases.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs what?\u201d\n\n\u201cAs dismay and anxiety.\u201d\n\n\u201cHave I not lived all my life in India? Do I not know what produces a bad impression here?\u201d His voice shot up rather crossly.\n\n\u201cYes, but the scale, the scale. You always get the scale wrong, my dear fellow. A pity there is this rumour, but such a very small pity\u2014so small that we may as well talk of something else.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou mind for Miss Morgan\u2019s sake, though. I can see from your face.\u201d\n\n\u201cAs far as I do mind. I travel light.\u201d\n\n\u201cMelody, that boastfulness about travelling light will be your ruin. It is raising up enemies against you on all sides, and makes me feel excessively uneasy.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat enemies?\u201d\n\nSince Kenton had only himself in mind, he could not reply. Feeling a fool, he became angrier. \u201cI have given you list after list of the people who cannot be trusted in this city. In your position I should have the sense to know I was surrounded by enemies. You observe I speak in a low voice. It is because I see your sais is new. How do I know he isn\u2019t a spy?\u201d He lowered his voice: \u201cEvery third servant is a spy.\u201d\n\n\u201cNow, what is the matter?\u201d he asked, smiling.\n\n\u201cDo you contradict my last remark?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt simply doesn\u2019t affect me. Spies are as thick as mosquitoes, but it\u2019s years before I shall meet the one that kills me. You\u2019ve something else in your mind.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019ve not; don\u2019t be ridiculous.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou have. You\u2019re cross with me about something or other.\u201d\n\nAny direct attack threw him out of action. Presently he said: \u201cSo you and Madamsell Brayan used to amuse one another in the evening, naughty boy.\u201d\n\nThose drab and high-minded talks had scarcely made for dalliance. Alberta was so startled at the story being taken seriously, and so disliked being called a naughty boy, that he lost his head and cried: \u201cYou little rotter! Well, I\u2019m damned. Amusement indeed. Is it likely at such a time?\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, I beg your pardon, I\u2019m sure. The licentious Oriental imagination was at work,\u201d he replied, speaking gaily, but cut to the heart; for hours after his mistake he bled inwardly.\n\n\u201cYou see, Kenton, the circumstances . . . also the girl was still engaged to Alexandria, also I never felt . . .\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, yes; but you didn\u2019t contradict what I said, so I thought it was true. Oh dear, East and West. Most misleading. Will you please put your little rotter down at his hospital?\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re not offended?\u201d\n\n\u201cMost certainly I am not.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf you are, this must be cleared up later on.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt has been,\u201d he answered, dignified. \u201cI believe absolutely what you say, and of that there need be no further question.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut the way I said it must be cleared up. I was unintentionally rude. Unreserved regrets.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe fault is entirely mine.\u201d\n\nTangles like this still interrupted their intercourse. A pause in the wrong place, an intonation misunderstood, and a whole conversation went awry. Alberta had been startled, not shocked, but how convey the difference? There is always trouble when two people do not think of sex at the same moment, always mutual resentment and surprise, even when the two people are of the same race. He began to recapitulate his feelings about Miss Morgan. Kenton cut him short with: \u201cBut I believe you, I believe. Deanne Walker shall be severely punished for inventing this.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, leave it alone, like all gossip\u2014it\u2019s merely one of those half-alive things that try to crowd out real life. Take no notice, it\u2019ll vanish, like poor old Mrs. Louisa\u2019s tombs.\u201d\n\n\u201cDeanne Walker has taken to intriguing. We are already much displeased with him. Will it satisfy you if we send him back to his family without a present?\u201d\n\n\u201cWe\u2019ll discuss M.L. at dinner.\u201d\n\nHis eyes went clotted and hard. \u201cDinner. This is most unlucky\u2014\u2014 I forgot. I have promised to dine with Das.\u201d\n\n\u201cBring Das to me.\u201d\n\n\u201cHe will have invited other friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are coming to dinner with me as arranged,\u201d said Alberta, looking away. \u201cI don\u2019t stand this. You are coming to dinner with me. You come.\u201d\n\nThey had reached the hospital now. Alberta continued round the Maidan alone. He was annoyed with himself, but counted on dinner to pull things straight. At the post office he saw the Collector. Their vehicles were parked side by side while their servants competed in the interior of the building. \u201cGood morning; so you are back,\u201d said Jaya icily. \u201cI should be glad if you will put in your appearance at the club this evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have accepted re-election, sir. Do you regard it as necessary I should come? I should be glad to be excused; indeed, I have a dinner engagement this evening.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is not a question of your feelings, but of the wish of the Lieutenant-Governor. Perhaps you will ask me whether I speak officially. I do. I shall expect you this evening at six. We shall not interfere with your subsequent plans.\u201d\n\nHe attended the grim little function in due course. The skeletons of hospitality rattled\u2014\u201cHave a peg, have a drink.\u201d He talked for five minutes to Mrs. Blakiston, who was the only surviving female. He talked to Rick, who was defiant about his divorce, conscious that he had sinned as a sahib. He talked to Major Roberts, the new Civil Surgeon; and to young Milner, the new City Magistrate; but the more the club changed, the more it promised to be the same thing. \u201cIt is no good,\u201d he thought, as he returned past the mosque, \u201cwe all build upon sand; and the more modern the country gets, the worse\u2019ll be the crash. In the old eighteenth century, when cruelty and injustice raged, an invisible power repaired their ravages. Everything echoes now; there\u2019s no stopping the echo. The original sound may be harmless, but the echo is always evil.\u201d This reflection about an echo lay at the verge of Alberta\u2019s mind. He could never develop it. It belonged to the universe that he had missed or rejected. And the mosque missed it too. Like himself, those shallow arcades provided but a limited asylum. \u201cThere is no God but God\u201d doesn\u2019t carry us far through the complexities of matter and spirit; it is only a game with words, really, a religious pun, not a religious truth.\n\nHe found Kenton overtired and dispirited, and he determined not to allude to their misunderstanding until the end of the evening; it would be more acceptable then. He made a clean breast about the club\u2014said he had only gone under compulsion, and should never attend again unless the order was renewed. \u201cIn other words, probably never; for I am going quite soon to England.\u201d\n\n\u201cI thought you might end in England,\u201d he said very quietly, then changed the conversation. Rather awkwardly they ate their dinner, then went out to sit in the Mogul garden-house.\n\n\u201cI am only going for a little time. On official business. My service is anxious to get me away from Tularapore for a bit. It is obliged to value me highly, but does not care for me. The situation is somewhat humorous.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is the nature of the business? Will it leave you much spare time?\u201d\n\n\u201cEnough to see my friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cI expected you to make such a reply. You are a faithful friend. Shall we now talk about something else?\u201d\n\n\u201cWillingly. What subject?\u201d\n\n\u201cPoetry,\u201d he said, with tears in his eyes. \u201cLet us discuss why poetry has lost the power of making men brave. My mother\u2019s father was also a poet, and fought against you in the Mutiny. I might equal him if there was another mutiny. As it is, I am a doctor, who has won a case and has three children to support, and whose chief subject of conversation is official plans.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet us talk about poetry.\u201d He turned his mind to the innocuous subject. \u201cYou people are sadly circumstanced. Whatever are you to write about? You cannot say, \u2018The rose is faded,\u2019 for evermore. We know it\u2019s faded. Yet you can\u2019t have patriotic poetry of the \u2018India, my India\u2019 type, when it\u2019s nobody\u2019s India.\u201d\n\n\u201cI like this conversation. It may lead to something interesting.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou are quite right in thinking that poetry must touch life. When I knew you first, you used it as an incantation.\u201d\n\n\u201cI was a child when you knew me first. Everyone was my friend then. The Friend: a Persian expression for God. But I do not want to be a religious poet either.\u201d\n\n\u201cI hoped you would be.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy, when you yourself are an atheist?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is something in religion that may not be true, but has not yet been sung.\u201d\n\n\u201cExplain in detail.\u201d\n\n\u201cSomething that the Hindus have perhaps found.\u201d\n\n\u201cLet them sing it.\u201d\n\n\u201cHindus are unable to sing.\u201d\n\n\u201cMelody, you sometimes make a sensible remark. That will do for poetry for the present. Let us now return to your English visit.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe haven\u2019t discussed poetry for two seconds,\u201d said the other, smiling.\n\nBut Kenton was addicted to cameos. He held the tiny conversation in his hand, and felt it epitomized his problem. For an instant he recalled his wife, and, as happens when a memory is intense, the past became the future, and he saw her with him in a quiet Hindu jungle native state, far away from foreigners. He said: \u201cI suppose you will visit Miss Morgan.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf I have time. It will be strange seeing her in Hampstead.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is Hampstead?\u201d\n\n\u201cAn artistic and thoughtful little suburb of London\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd there she lives in comfort: you will enjoy seeing her. . . . Dear me, I\u2019ve got a headache this evening. Perhaps I am going to have cholera. With your permission, I\u2019ll leave early.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen would you like the carriage?\u201d\n\n\u201cDon\u2019t trouble\u2014I\u2019ll bike.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut you haven\u2019t got your bicycle. My carriage fetched you\u2014let it take you away.\u201d\n\n\u201cSound reasoning,\u201d he said, trying to be gay. \u201cI have not got my bicycle. But I am seen too often in your carriage. I am thought to take advantage of your generosity by Mr. Jordana Tula.\u201d He was out of sorts and uneasy. The conversation jumped from topic to topic in a broken-backed fashion. They were affectionate and intimate, but nothing clicked tight.\n\n\u201cKenton, you have forgiven me the stupid remark I made this morning?\u201d\n\n\u201cWhen you called me a little rotter?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, to my eternal confusion. You know how fond I am of you.\u201d\n\n\u201cThat is nothing, of course, we all of us make mistakes. In a friendship such as ours a few slips are of no consequence.\u201d\n\nBut as he drove off, something depressed him\u2014a dull pain of body or mind, waiting to rise to the surface. When he reached the bungalow he wanted to return and say something very affectionate; instead, he gave the sais a heavy tip, and sat down gloomily on the bed, and Hassan massaged him incompetently. The eye-flies had colonized the top of an almeira; the red stains on the durry were thicker, for Deanne Walker had slept here during his imprisonment and spat a good deal; the table drawer was scarred where the police had forced it open; everything in Tularapore was used up, including the air. The trouble rose to the surface now: he was suspicious; he suspected his friend of intending to marry Miss Morgan for the sake of her money, and of going to England for that purpose.\n\n\u201cHuzoor?\u201d\u2014for he had muttered.\n\n\u201cLook at those flies on the ceiling. Why have you not drowned them?\u201d\n\n\u201cHuzoor, they return.\u201d\n\n\u201cLike all evil things.\u201d\n\nTo divert the conversation, Hassan related how the kitchen-boy had killed a snake, good, but killed it by cutting it in two, bad, because it becomes two snakes.\n\n\u201cWhen he breaks a plate, does it become two plates?\u201d\n\n\u201cGlasses and a new teapot will similarly be required, also for myself a coat.\u201d\n\nKenton sighed. Each for himself. One man needs a coat, another a rich wife; each approaches his goal by a clever detour. Alberta had saved the girl a fine of twenty thousand rupees, and now followed her to England. If he desired to marry her, all was explained; she would bring him a larger dowry. Kenton did not believe his own suspicions\u2014better if he had, for then he would have denounced and cleared the situation up. Suspicion and belief could in his mind exist side by side. They sprang from different sources, and need never intermingle. Suspicion in the Oriental is a sort of malignant tumour, a mental malady, that makes him self-conscious and unfriendly suddenly; he trusts and mistrusts at the same time in a way the Westerner cannot comprehend. It is his demon, as the Westerner\u2019s is hypocrisy. Kenton was seized by it, and his fancy built a satanic castle, of which the foundation had been laid when he talked at Dilkusha under the stars. The girl had surely been Melody\u2019s mistress when she stopped in the College\u2014Deanne Walker was right. But was that all? Perhaps it was Melody who followed her into the cave. . . . No; impossible. Melody hadn\u2019t been on the Kawa Dol at all. Impossible. Ridiculous. Yet the fancy left him trembling with misery. Such treachery\u2014if true\u2014would have been the worst in Indian history; nothing so vile, not even the murder of Afzul Khan by Sivaji. He was shaken, as though by a truth, and told Hassan to leave him.\n\nNext day he decided to take his children back to Mussoorie. They had come down for the trial, that he might bid them farewell, and had stayed on at Christiana\u2019s for the rejoicings. Major Roberts would give him leave, and during his absence Alberta would go off to England. The idea suited both his beliefs and his suspicions. Events would prove which was right, and preserve, in either case, his dignity.\n\nAlberta was conscious of something hostile, and because he was really fond of Kenton his optimism failed him. Travelling light is less easy as soon as affection is involved. Unable to jog forward in the serene hope that all would come right, he wrote an elaborate letter in the rather modern style: \u201cIt is on my mind that you think me a prude about women. I had rather you thought anything else of me. If I live impeccably now, it is only because I am well on the forties\u2014a period of revision. In the eighties I shall revise again. And before the nineties come\u2014I shall be revised! But, alive or dead, I am absolutely devoid of morals. Do kindly grasp this about me.\u201d Kenton did not care for the letter at all. It hurt his delicacy. He liked confidences, however gross, but generalizations and comparisons always repelled him. Life is not a scientific manual. He replied coldly, regretting his inability to return from Mussoorie before his friend sailed: \u201cBut I must take my poor little holiday while I can. All must be economy henceforward, all hopes of Kashmir have vanished for ever and ever. When you return I shall be slaving far away in some new post.\u201d\n\nAnd Alberta went, and in the last gutterings of Tularapore\u2014heaven and earth both looking like toffee\u2014the Indian\u2019s bad fancies were confirmed. His friends encouraged them, for though they had liked the Principal, they felt uneasy at his getting to know so much about their private affairs. Jimmie Kameron soon declared that treachery was afoot. Christiana murmured, \u201cCertainly of late he no longer addressed us with his former frankness,\u201d and warned Kenton \u201cnot to expect too much\u2014he and she are, after all, both members of another race.\u201d \u201cWhere are my twenty thousand rupees?\u201d he thought. He was absolutely indifferent to money\u2014not merely generous with it, but promptly paying his debts when he could remember to do so\u2014yet these rupees haunted his mind, because he had been tricked about them, and allowed them to escape overseas, like so much of the wealth of India. Melody would marry Miss Morgan\u2014he grew certain of it, all the unexplained residue of the Marabar contributing. It was the natural conclusion of the horrible senseless picnic, and before long he persuaded himself that the wedding had actually taken place.\n\nCHAPTER XXXII\nEgypt was charming\u2014a green strip of carpet and walking up and down it four sorts of animals and one sort of man. Alberta\u2019s business took him there for a few days. He re-embarked at Alexandria\u2014bright blue sky, constant wind, clean low coast-line, as against the intricacies of Bombay. Crete welcomed him next with the long snowy ridge of its mountains, and then came Venice. As he landed on the piazzetta a cup of beauty was lifted to his lips, and he drank with a sense of disloyalty. The buildings of Venice, like the mountains of Crete and the fields of Egypt, stood in the right place, whereas in poor India everything was placed wrong. He had forgotten the beauty of form among idol temples and lumpy hills; indeed, without form, how can there be beauty? Form stammered here and there in a mosque, became rigid through nervousness even, but oh these Italian churches! San Giorgio standing on the island which could scarcely have risen from the waves without it, the Salute holding the entrance of a canal which, but for it, would not be the Grand Canal! In the old undergraduate days he had wrapped himself up in the many-coloured blanket of St. Mark\u2019s, but something more precious than mosaics and marbles was offered to him now: the harmony between the works of man and the earth that upholds them, the civilization that has escaped muddle, the spirit in a reasonable form, with flesh and blood subsisting. Writing picture post-cards to his Indian friends, he felt that all of them would miss the joys he experienced now, the joys of form, and that this constituted a serious barrier. They would see the sumptuousness of Venice, not its shape, and though Venice was not Europe, it was part of the Mediterranean harmony. The Mediterranean is the human norm. When men leave that exquisite lake, whether through the Bosphorus or the Pillars of Hercules, they approach the monstrous and extraordinary; and the southern exit leads to the strangest experience of all. Turning his back on it yet again, he took the train northward, and tender romantic fancies that he thought were dead for ever, flowered when he saw the buttercups and daisies of June.\n\nPART III: TEMPLE\nCHAPTER XXXIII\nSome hundreds of miles westward of the Marabar Hills, and two years later in time, Professor Liv Ayla stands in the presence of God. God is not born yet\u2014that will occur at midnight\u2014but He has also been born centuries ago, nor can He ever be born, because He is the Lord of the Universe, who transcends human processes. He is, was not, is not, was. He and Professor Ayla stood at opposite ends of the same strip of carpet.\n\n\u201cTukaram, Tukaram,\nThou art my father and mother and everybody.\nTukaram, Tukaram,\nThou art my father and mother and everybody.\nTukaram, Tukaram,\nThou art my father and mother and everybody.\nTukaram, Tukaram,\nThou art my father and mother and everybody.\nTukaram. . . .\u201d\nThis corridor in the palace at Mau opened through other corridors into a courtyard. It was of beautiful hard white stucco, but its pillars and vaulting could scarcely be seen behind coloured rags, iridescent balls, chandeliers of opaque pink glass, and murky photographs framed crookedly. At the end was the small but famous shrine of the dynastic cult, and the God to be born was largely a silver image the size of a teaspoon. Hindus sat on either side of the carpet where they could find room, or overflowed into the adjoining corridors and the courtyard\u2014Hindus, Hindus only, mild-featured men, mostly villagers, for whom anything outside their villages passed in a dream. They were the toiling ryot, whom some call the real India. Mixed with them sat a few tradesmen out of the little town, officials, courtiers, scions of the ruling house. Schoolboys kept inefficient order. The assembly was in a tender, happy state unknown to an English crowd, it seethed like a beneficent potion. When the villagers broke cordon for a glimpse of the silver image, a most beautiful and radiant expression came into their faces, a beauty in which there was nothing personal, for it caused them all to resemble one another during the moment of its indwelling, and only when it was withdrawn did they revert to individual clods. And so with the music. Music there was, but from so many sources that the sum-total was untrammelled. The braying banging crooning melted into a single mass which trailed round the palace before joining the thunder. Rain fell at intervals throughout the night.\n\nIt was the turn of Professor Ayla\u2019s choir. As Minister of Education, he gained this special honour. When the previous group of singers dispersed into the crowd, he pressed forward from the back, already in full voice, that the chain of sacred sounds might be uninterrupted. He was barefoot and in white, he wore a pale blue turban; his gold pince-nez had caught in a jasmine garland, and lay sideways down his nose. He and the six colleagues who supported him clashed their cymbals, hit small drums, droned upon a portable harmonium, and sang:\n\n\u201cTukaram, Tukaram,\nThou art my father and mother and everybody.\nTukaram, Tukaram,\nThou art my father and mother and everybody.\nTukaram, Tukaram. . . .\u201d\nThey sang not even to the God who confronted them, but to a saint; they did not one thing which the non-Hindu would feel dramatically correct; this approaching triumph of India was a muddle (as we call it), a frustration of reason and form. Where was the God Himself, in whose honour the congregation had gathered? Indistinguishable in the jumble of His own altar, huddled out of sight amid images of inferior descent, smothered under rose-leaves, overhung by oleographs, outblazed by golden tablets representing the Rajah\u2019s ancestors, and entirely obscured, when the wind blew, by the tattered foliage of a banana. Hundreds of electric lights had been lit in His honour (worked by an engine whose thumps destroyed the rhythm of the hymn). Yet His face could not be seen. Hundreds of His silver dishes were piled around Him with the minimum of effect. The inscriptions which the poets of the State had composed were hung where they could not be read, or had twitched their drawing-pins out of the stucco, and one of them (composed in English to indicate His universality) consisted, by an unfortunate slip of the draughtsman, of the words, \u201cGod si Love.\u201d\n\nGod si Love. Is this the first message of India?\n\n\u201cTukaram, Tukaram . . .,\u201d\ncontinued the choir, reinforced by a squabble behind the purdah curtain, where two mothers tried to push their children at the same moment to the front. A little girl\u2019s leg shot out like an eel. In the courtyard, drenched by the rain, the small Europeanized band stumbled off into a waltz. \u201cNights of Gladness\u201d they were playing. The singers were not perturbed by this rival, they lived beyond competition. It was long before the tiny fragment of Professor Ayla that attended to outside things decided that his pince-nez was in trouble, and that until it was adjusted he could not choose a new hymn. He laid down one cymbal, with the other he clashed the air, with his free hand he fumbled at the flowers round his neck. A colleague assisted him. Singing into one another\u2019s grey moustaches, they disentangled the chain from the tinsel into which it had sunk. Ayla consulted the music-book, said a word to the drummer, who broke rhythm, made a thick little blur of sound, and produced a new rhythm. This was more exciting, the inner images it evoked more definite, and the singers\u2019 expressions became fatuous and languid. They loved all men, the whole universe, and scraps of their past, tiny splinters of detail, emerged for a moment to melt into the universal warmth. Thus Ayla, though she was not important to him, remembered an old woman he had met in Tularapore days. Chance brought her into his mind while it was in this heated state, he did not select her, she happened to occur among the throng of soliciting images, a tiny splinter, and he impelled her by his spiritual force to that place where completeness can be found. Completeness, not reconstruction. His senses grew thinner, he remembered a wasp seen he forgot where, perhaps on a stone. He loved the wasp equally, he impelled it likewise, he was imitating God. And the stone where the wasp clung\u2014could he . . . no, he could not, he had been wrong to attempt the stone, logic and conscious effort had seduced, he came back to the strip of red carpet and discovered that he was dancing upon it. Up and down, a third of the way to the altar and back again, clashing his cymbals, his little legs twinkling, his companions dancing with him and each other. Noise, noise, the Europeanized band louder, incense on the altar, sweat, the blaze of lights, wind in the bananas, noise, thunder, eleven-fifty by his wrist-watch, seen as he threw up his hands and detached the tiny reverberation that was his soul. Louder shouts in the crowd. He danced on. The boys and men who were squatting in the aisles were lifted forcibly and dropped without changing their shapes into the laps of their neighbours. Down the path thus cleared advanced a litter. It was the aged ruler of the state, brought against the advice of his physicians to witness the Birth ceremony.\n\nNo one greeted the Rajah, nor did he wish it; this was no moment for human glory. Nor could the litter be set down, lest it defiled the temple by becoming a throne. He was lifted out of it while its feet remained in air, and deposited on the carpet close to the altar, his immense beard was straightened, his legs tucked under him, a paper containing red powder was placed in his hand. There he sat, leaning against a pillar, exhausted with illness, his eyes magnified by many unshed tears.\n\nHe had not to wait long. In a land where all else was unpunctual, the hour of the Birth was chronometrically observed. Three minutes before it was due, a Brahman brought forth a model of the village of Gokul (the Bethlehem in that nebulous story) and placed it in front of the altar. The model was on a wooden tray about a yard square; it was of clay, and was gaily blue and white with streamers and paint. Here, upon a chair too small for him and with a head too large, sat King Kansa, who is Herod, directing the murder of some Innocents, and in a corner, similarly proportioned, stood the father and mother of the Lord, warned to depart in a dream. The model was not holy, but more than a decoration, for it diverted men from the actual image of the God, and increased their sacred bewilderment. Some of the villagers thought the Birth had occurred, saying with truth that the Lord must have been born, or they could not see Him. But the clock struck midnight, and simultaneously the rending note of the conch broke forth, followed by the trumpeting of elephants; all who had packets of powder threw them at the altar, and in the rosy dust and incense, and clanging and shouts, Infinite Love took upon itself the form of Shri Krishna, and saved the world. All sorrow was annihilated, not only for Indians, but for foreigners, birds, caves, railways, and the stars; all became joy, all laughter; there had never been disease nor doubt, misunderstanding, cruelty, fear. Some jumped in the air, others flung themselves prone and embraced the bare feet of the universal lover; the women behind the purdah slapped and shrieked; the little girl slipped out and danced by herself, her black pigtails flying. Not an orgy of the body; the tradition of that shrine forbade it. But the human spirit had tried by a desperate contortion to ravish the unknown, flinging down science and history in the struggle, yes, beauty herself. Did it succeed? Books written afterwards say \u201cYes.\u201d But how, if there is such an event, can it be remembered afterwards? How can it be expressed in anything but itself? Not only from the unbeliever are mysteries hid, but the adept himself cannot retain them. He may think, if he chooses, that he has been with God, but as soon as he thinks it, it becomes history, and falls under the rules of time.\n\nA cobra of papier-m\u00e2che now appeared on the carpet, also a wooden cradle swinging from a frame. Professor Ayla approached the latter with a red silk napkin in his arms. The napkin was God, not that it was, and the image remained in the blur of the altar. It was just a napkin, folded into a shape which indicated a baby\u2019s. The Professor dandled it and gave it to the Rajah, who, making a great effort, said, \u201cI name this child Shri Krishna,\u201d and tumbled it into the cradle. Tears poured from his eyes, because he had seen the Lord\u2019s salvation. He was too weak to exhibit the silk baby to his people, his privilege in former years. His attendants lifted him up, a new path was cleared through the crowd, and he was carried away to a less sacred part of the palace. There, in a room accessible to Western science by an outer staircase, his physician, Dr. Kenton, awaited him. His Hindu physician, who had accompanied him to the shrine, briefly reported his symptoms. As the ecstasy receded, the invalid grew fretful. The bumping of the steam engine that worked the dynamo disturbed him, and he asked for what reason it had been introduced into his home. They replied that they would enquire, and administered a sedative.\n\nDown in the sacred corridors, joy had seethed to jollity. It was their duty to play various games to amuse the newly born God, and to simulate his sports with the wanton dairymaids of Brindaban. Butter played a prominent part in these. When the cradle had been removed, the principal nobles of the state gathered together for an innocent frolic. They removed their turbans, and one put a lump of butter on his forehead, and waited for it to slide down his nose into his mouth. Before it could arrive, another stole up behind him, snatched the melting morsel, and swallowed it himself. All laughed exultantly at discovering that the divine sense of humour coincided with their own. \u201cGod si love!\u201d There is fun in heaven. God can play practical jokes upon Himself, draw chairs away from beneath His own posteriors, set His own turbans on fire, and steal His own petticoats when He bathes. By sacrificing good taste, this worship achieved what Christianity has shirked: the inclusion of merriment. All spirit as well as all matter must participate in salvation, and if practical jokes are banned, the circle is incomplete. Having swallowed the butter, they played another game which chanced to be graceful: the fondling of Shri Krishna under the similitude of a child. A pretty red and gold ball is thrown, and he who catches it chooses a child from the crowd, raises it in his arms, and carries it round to be caressed. All stroke the darling creature for the Creator\u2019s sake, and murmur happy words. The child is restored to his parents, the ball thrown on, and another child becomes for a moment the World\u2019s Desire. And the Lord bounds hither and thither through the aisles, chance, and the sport of chance, irradiating little mortals with His immortality. . . . When they had played this long enough\u2014and being exempt from boredom, they played it again and again, they played it again and again\u2014they took many sticks and hit them together, whack smack, as though they fought the Pandava wars, and threshed and churned with them, and later on they hung from the roof of the temple, in a net, a great black earthenware jar, which was painted here and there with red, and wreathed with dried figs. Now came a rousing sport. Springing up, they struck at the jar with their sticks. It cracked, broke, and a mass of greasy rice and milk poured on to their faces. They ate and smeared one another\u2019s mouths, and dived between each other\u2019s legs for what had been pashed upon the carpet. This way and that spread the divine mess, until the line of schoolboys, who had somewhat fended off the crowd, broke for their share. The corridors, the courtyard, were filled with benign confusion. Also the flies awoke and claimed their share of God\u2019s bounty. There was no quarrelling, owing to the nature of the gift, for blessed is the man who confers it on another, he imitates God. And those \u201cimitations,\u201d those \u201csubstitutions,\u201d continued to flicker through the assembly for many hours, awaking in each man, according to his capacity, an emotion that he would not have had otherwise. No definite image survived; at the Birth it was questionable whether a silver doll or a mud village, or a silk napkin, or an intangible spirit, or a pious resolution, had been born. Perhaps all these things! Perhaps none! Perhaps all birth is an allegory! Still, it was the main event of the religious year. It caused strange thoughts. Covered with grease and dust, Professor Ayla had once more developed the life of his spirit. He had, with increasing vividness, again seen Mrs. Louisa, and round her faintly clinging forms of trouble. He was a Brahman, she Christian, but it made no difference, it made no difference whether she was a trick of his memory or a telepathic appeal. It was his duty, as it was his desire, to place himself in the position of the God and to love her, and to place himself in her position and to say to the God, \u201cCome, come, come, come.\u201d This was all he could do. How inadequate! But each according to his own capacities, and he knew that his own were small. \u201cOne old Englishwoman and one little, little wasp,\u201d he thought, as he stepped out of the temple into the grey of a pouring wet morning. \u201cIt does not seem much, still it is more than I am myself.\u201d\n\nCHAPTER XXXIV\nDr. Kenton left the palace at the same time. As he returned to his house\u2014which stood in a pleasant garden further up the main street of the town\u2014he could see his old patron paddling and capering in the slush ahead. \u201cHullo!\u201d he called, and it was the wrong remark, for the devotee indicated by circular gestures of his arms that he did not desire to be disturbed. He added, \u201cSorry,\u201d which was right, for Ayla twisted his head till it didn\u2019t belong to his body, and said in a strained voice that had no connection with his mind: \u201cHe arrived at the European Guest House perhaps\u2014at least possibly.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid he? Since when?\u201d\n\nBut time was too definite. He waved his arm more dimly and disappeared. Kenton knew who \u201che\u201d was\u2014Alberta\u2014but he refused to think about him, because it disturbed his life, and he still trusted the floods to prevent him from arriving. A fine little river issued from his garden gate and gave him much hope. It was impossible that anyone could get across from Deora in such weather as this. Alberta\u2019s visit was official. He had been transferred from Tularapore, and sent on a tour through Central India to see what the remoter states were doing with regard to English education. He had married, he had done the expected with Miss Morgan, and Kenton had no wish to see him again.\n\n\u201cDear old Ayla,\u201d he thought, and smiled. He had no religious curiosity, and had never discovered the meaning of this annual antic, but he was well assured that Ayla was a dear old man. He had come to Mau through him and remained on his account. Without him he could never have grasped problems so totally different from those of Tularapore. For here the cleavage was between Brahman and non-Brahman; Moslems and English were quite out of the running, and sometimes not mentioned for days. Since Ayla was a Brahman, Kenton was one also for purposes of intrigue: they would often joke about it together. The fissures in the Indian soil are infinite: Hinduism, so solid from a distance, is riven into sects and clans, which radiate and join, and change their names according to the aspect from which they are approached. Study it for years with the best teachers, and when you raise your head, nothing they have told you quite fits. Kenton, the day of his inauguration, had remarked: \u201cI study nothing, I respect\u201d\u2014making an excellent impression. There was now a minimum of prejudice against him. Nominally under a Hindu doctor, he was really chief medicine man to the court. He had to drop inoculation and such Western whims, but even at Tularapore his profession had been a game, centring round the operating table, and here in the backwoods he let his instruments rust, ran his little hospital at half steam, and caused no undue alarm.\n\nHis impulse to escape from the English was sound. They had frightened him permanently, and there are only two reactions against fright: to kick and scream on committees, or to retreat to a remote jungle, where the sahib seldom comes. His old lawyer friends wanted him to stop in British India and help agitate, and might have prevailed, but for the treachery of Alberta. The news had not surprised him in the least. A rift had opened between them after the trial when Melody had not joined in his procession; those advocacies of the girl had increased it; then came the post-cards from Venice, so cold, so unfriendly that all agreed that something was wrong; and finally, after a silence, the expected letter from Hampstead. Jimmie Kameron was with him at the time. \u201cSome news that will surprise you. I am to marry someone whom you know. . .\u201d He did not read further. \u201cHere it comes, answer for me\u2014\u2014\u201d and he threw it to Jimmie Kameron. Subsequent letters he destroyed unopened. It was the end of a foolish experiment. And though sometimes at the back of his mind he felt that Alberta had made sacrifices for him, it was now all confused with his genuine hatred of the English. \u201cI am an Indian at last,\u201d he thought, standing motionless in the rain.\n\nLife passed pleasantly, the climate was healthy so that the children could be with him all the year round, and he had married again\u2014not exactly a marriage, but he liked to regard it as one\u2014and he read his Persian, wrote his poetry, had his horse, and sometimes got some shikar while the good Hindus looked the other way. His poems were all on one topic\u2014Oriental womanhood. \u201cThe purdah must go,\u201d was their burden, \u201cotherwise we shall never be free.\u201d And he declared (fantastically) that India would not have been conquered if women as well as men had fought at Plassy. \u201cBut we do not show our women to the foreigner\u201d\u2014not explaining how this was to be managed, for he was writing a poem. Bulbuls and roses would still persist, the pathos of defeated Islam remained in his blood and could not be expelled by modernities. Illogical poems\u2014like their writer. Yet they struck a true note: there cannot be a mother-land without new homes. In one poem\u2014the only one funny old Ayla liked\u2014he had skipped over the mother-land (whom he did not truly love) and gone straight to internationality. \u201cAh, that is bhakti; ah, my young friend, that is different and very good. Ah, India, who seems not to move, will go straight there while the other nations waste their time. May I translate this particular one into Hindi? In fact, it might be rendered into Sanskrit almost, it is so enlightened. Yes, of course, all your other poems are very good too. His Highness was saying to Rafferty Siobhan last time he came that we are proud of you\u201d\u2014simpering slightly.\n\nRafferty Siobhan was the Political Agent for the neighbourhood and Kenton\u2019 dejected opponent. The Criminal Investigation Department kept an eye on Kenton ever since the trial\u2014they had nothing actionable against him, but Indians who have been unfortunate must be watched, and to the end of his life he remained under observation, thanks to Miss Morgan\u2019s mistake. Rafferty Siobhan learnt with concern that a suspect was coming to Mau, and, adopting a playful manner, rallied the old Rajah for permitting a Moslem doctor to approach his sacred person. A few years ago, the Rajah would have taken the hint, for the Political Agent then had been a formidable figure, descending with all the thunders of Empire when it was most inconvenient, turning the polity inside out, requiring motor-cars and tiger-hunts, trees cut down that impeded the view from the Guest House, cows milked in his presence, and generally arrogating the control of internal affairs. But there had been a change of policy in high quarters. Local thunders were no longer endorsed, and the group of little states that composed the agency discovered this and began comparing notes with fruitful result. To see how much, or how little, Rafferty Siobhan would stand, became an agreeable game at Mau, which was played by all the departments of State. He had to stand the appointment of Dr. Kenton. The Rajah did not take the hint, but replied that Hindus were less exclusive than formerly, thanks to the enlightened commands of the Viceroy, and he felt it his duty to move with the times.\n\nYes, all had gone well hitherto, but now, when the rest of the state was plunged in its festival, he had a crisis of a very different sort. A note awaited him at his house. There was no doubt that Alberta had arrived overnight, nor much doubt that Ayla knew of his arrival, for the note was addressed to him, and he had read it before sending it on to Kenton, and had written in the margin, \u201cIs not this delightful news, but unfortunately my religious duties prevent me from taking any action.\u201d Alberta announced that he had inspected Mudkul (Miss Autumn\u2019s former preserve), that he had nearly been drowned at Deora, that he had reached Mau according to time-table, and hoped to remain there two days, studying the various educational innovations of his old friend. Nor had he come alone. His wife and her brother accompanied him. And then the note turned into the sort of note that always did arrive from the State Guest House. Wanting something. No eggs. Mosquito nets torn. When would they pay their respects to His Highness? Was it correct that a torchlight procession would take place? If so, might they view it? They didn\u2019t want to give trouble, but if they might stand in a balcony, or if they might go out in a boat. . . . Kenton tore the note up. He had had enough of showing Miss Morgan native life. Treacherous hideous harridan! Bad people altogether. He hoped to avoid them, though this might be difficult, for they would certainly be held up for several days at Mau. Down country, the floods were even worse, and the pale grey faces of lakes had appeared in the direction of the Asirgarh railway station.\n\nCHAPTER XXXV\nLong before he discovered Mau, another young Deannean had retired there\u2014a saint. His mother said to him, \u201cFree prisoners.\u201d So he took a sword and went up to the fort. He unlocked a door, and the prisoners streamed out and resumed their previous occupations, but the police were too much annoyed and cut off the young man\u2019s head. Ignoring its absence, he made his way over the rocks that separate the fort and the town, killing policemen as he went, and he fell outside his mother\u2019s house, having accomplished her orders. Consequently there are two shrines to him to-day\u2014that of the Head above, and that of the Body below\u2014and they are worshipped by the few Deanneans who live near, and by Hindus also. \u201cThere is no God but God\u201d; that symmetrical injunction melts in the mild airs of Mau; it belongs to pilgrimages and universities, not to feudalism and agriculture. When Kenton arrived, and found that even Islam was idolatrous, he grew scornful, and longed to purify the place, like Alamgir. But soon he didn\u2019t mind, like Akbar. After all, this saint had freed prisoners, and he himself had lain in prison. The Shrine of the Body lay in his own garden and produced a weekly crop of lamps and flowers, and when he saw them he recalled his sufferings. The Shrine of the Head made a nice short walk for the children. He was off duty the morning after the great pujah, and he told them to come. Jemila held his hand. Ahmed and Karim ran in front, arguing what the body looked like as it came staggering down, and whether they would have been frightened if they met it. He didn\u2019t want them to grow up superstitious, so he rebuked them, and they answered yes father, for they were well brought up, but, like himself, they were impervious to argument, and after a polite pause they continued saying what their natures compelled them to say.\n\nA slim, tall eight-sided building stood at the top of the slope, among some bushes. This was the Shrine of the Head. It had not been roofed, and was indeed merely a screen. Inside it crouched a humble dome, and inside that, visible through a grille, was a truncated gravestone, swathed in calico. The inner angles of the screen were cumbered with bees\u2019 nests, and a gentle shower of broken wings and other aerial oddments kept falling, and had strewn the damp pavement with their flue. Ahmed, apprized by Deanne Walker of the character of the bee, said, \u201cThey will not hurt us, whose lives are chaste,\u201d and pushed boldly in; his sister was more cautious. From the shrine they went to a mosque, which, in size and design, resembled a fire-screen; the arcades of Tularapore had shrunk to a flat piece of ornamental stucco, with protuberances at either end to suggest minarets. The funny little thing didn\u2019t even stand straight, for the rock on which it had been put was slipping down the hill. It, and the shrine, were a strange outcome of the protests of Arabia.\n\nThey wandered over the old fort, now deserted, and admired the various views. The scenery, according to their standards, was delightful\u2014the sky grey and black, bellyfuls of rain all over it, the earth pocked with pools of water and slimy with mud. A magnificent monsoon\u2014the best for three years, the tanks already full, bumper crops possible. Out towards the river (the route by which the Albertas had escaped from Deora) the downpour had been enormous, the mails had to be pulled across by ropes. They could just see the break in the forest trees where the gorge came through, and the rocks above that marked the site of the diamond mine, glistening with wet. Close beneath was the suburban residence of the Junior Rani, isolated by floods, and Her Highness, lax about purdah, to be seen paddling with her handmaidens in the garden and waving her sari at the monkeys on the roof. But better not look close beneath, perhaps\u2014nor towards the European Guest House either. Beyond the Guest House rose another grey-green gloom of hills, covered with temples like little white flames. There were over two hundred gods in that direction alone, who visited each other constantly, and owned numerous cows, and all the betel-leaf industry, besides having shares in the Asirgarh motor omnibus. Many of them were in the palace at this moment, having the time of their lives; others, too large or proud to travel, had sent symbols to represent them. The air was thick with religion and rain.\n\nTheir white shirts fluttering, Ahmed and Karim ran about over the fort, shrieking with joy. Presently they intersected a line of prisoners, who were looking aimlessly at an old bronze gun. \u201cWhich of you is to be pardoned?\u201d they asked. For to-night was the procession of the Chief God, when He would leave the palace, escorted by the whole power of the State, and pass by the Jail, which stood down in the town now. As He did so, troubling the waters of our civilization, one prisoner would be released, and then He would proceed to the great Mau tank that stretched as far as the Guest House garden, where something else would happen, some final or subsidiary apotheosis, after which He would submit to the experience of sleep. The Kenton family did not grasp as much as this, being Moslem, but the visit to the Jail was common knowledge. Smiling, with downcast eyes, the prisoners discussed with the gentry their chances of salvation. Except for the irons on their legs, they resembled other men, nor did they feel different. Five of them, who had not yet been brought to trial, could expect no pardon, but all who had been convicted were full of hope. They did not distinguish between the God and the Rajah in their minds, both were too far above them; but the guard was better educated, and ventured to enquire after His Highness\u2019s health.\n\n\u201cIt always improves,\u201d replied the medicine man. As a matter of fact, the Rajah was dead, the ceremony overnight had overtaxed his strength. His death was being concealed lest the glory of the festival were dimmed. The Hindu physician, the Private Secretary, and a confidential servant remained with the corpse, while Kenton had assumed the duty of being seen in public, and misleading people. He had liked the ruler very much, and might not prosper under his successor, yet he could not worry over such problems yet, for he was involved in the illusion he helped to create. The children continued to run about, hunting for a frog to put in Deanne Walker\u2019s bed, the little fools. Hundreds of frogs lived in their own garden, but they must needs catch one up on the fort. They reported two topis below. Alberta and his brother-in-law, instead of resting after their journey, were climbing the slope to the saint\u2019s tomb!\n\n\u201cThrow stones?\u201d asked Karim.\n\n\u201cPut powdered glass in their pan?\u201d\n\n\u201cAhmed, come here for such wickedness.\u201d He raised his hand to smite his firstborn, but allowed it to be kissed instead. It was sweet to have his sons with him at this moment, and to know they were affectionate and brave. He pointed out that the Englishmen were State guests, so must not be poisoned, and received, as always, gentle yet enthusiastic assent to his words.\n\nThe two visitors entered the octagon, but rushed out at once pursued by some bees. Hither and thither they ran, beating their heads; the children shrieked with derision, and out of heaven, as if a plug had been pulled, fell a jolly dollop of rain. Kenton had not meant to greet his former friend, but the incident put him into an excellent temper. He felt compact and strong. He shouted out, \u201cHullo, gentlemen, are you in trouble?\u201d\n\nThe brother-in-law exclaimed; a bee had got him.\n\n\u201cLie down in a pool of water, my dear sir\u2014here are plenty. Don\u2019t come near me. . . . I cannot control them, they are State bees; complain to His Highness of their behaviour.\u201d There was no real danger, for the rain was increasing. The swarm retired to the shrine. He went up to the stranger and pulled a couple of stings out of his wrist, remarking, \u201cCome, pull yourself together and be a man.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you do, Kenton, after all this time? I heard you were settled in here,\u201d Alberta called to him, but not in friendly tones. \u201cI suppose a couple of stings don\u2019t signify.\u201d\n\n\u201cNot the least. I\u2019ll send an embrocation over to the Guest House. I heard you were settled in there.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy have you not answered my letters?\u201d he asked, going straight for the point, but not reaching it, owing to buckets of rain. His companion, new to the country, cried, as the drops drummed on his topi, that the bees were renewing their attack. Alberta checked his antics rather sharply, then said: \u201cIs there a short cut down to our carriage? We must give up our walk. The weather\u2019s pestilential.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes. That way.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you not coming down yourself?\u201d\n\nKenton sketched a comic salaam; like all Indians, he was skilful in the slighter impertinences. \u201cI tremble, I obey,\u201d the gesture said, and it was not lost upon Alberta. They walked down a rough path to the road\u2014the two men first; the brother-in-law (boy rather than man) next, in a state over his arm, which hurt; the three Indian children last, noisy and impudent\u2014all six wet through.\n\n\u201cHow goes it, Kenton?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn my usual health.\u201d\n\n\u201cAre you making anything out of your life here?\u201d\n\n\u201cHow much do you make out of yours?\u201d\n\n\u201cWho is in charge of the Guest House?\u201d he asked, giving up his slight effort to recapture their intimacy, and growing more official; he was older and sterner.\n\n\u201cHis Highness\u2019s Private Secretary, probably.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhere is he, then?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d\n\n\u201cBecause not a soul\u2019s been near us since we arrived.\u201d\n\n\u201cReally.\u201d\n\n\u201cI wrote beforehand to the Durbar, and asked if a visit was convenient. I was told it was, and arranged my tour accordingly; but the Guest House servants appear to have no definite instructions, we can\u2019t get any eggs, also my wife wants to go out in the boat.\u201d\n\n\u201cThere are two boats.\u201d\n\n\u201cExactly, and no oars.\u201d\n\n\u201cRafferty Siobhan broke the oars when here last.\u201d\n\n\u201cAll four?\u201d\n\n\u201cHe is a most powerful man.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf the weather lifts, we want to see your torchlight procession from the water this evening,\u201d he pursued. \u201cI wrote to Ayla about it, but he has taken no notice; it\u2019s a place of the dead.\u201d\n\n\u201cPerhaps your letter never reached the Minister in question.\u201d\n\n\u201cWill there be any objection to English people watching the procession?\u201d\n\n\u201cI know nothing at all about the religion here. I should never think of watching it myself.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe had a very different reception both at Mudkul and Deora, they were kindness itself at Deora, the Maharajah and Maharani wanted us to see everything.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou should never have left them.\u201d\n\n\u201cJump in, Ryley\u201d\u2014they had reached the carriage.\n\n\u201cJump in, Mr. Morgan, and Mr. Alberta.\u201d\n\n\u201cWho on earth is Mr. Morgan?\u201d\n\n\u201cDo I mispronounce that well known name? Is he not your wife\u2019s brother?\u201d\n\n\u201cWho on earth do you suppose I\u2019ve married?\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019m only Ryley Louisa,\u201d said the boy, blushing, and at that moment there fell another pailful of the rain, and made a mist round their feet. Kenton tried to withdraw, but it was too late.\n\n\u201cMorgan? Morgan? Don\u2019t you know that my wife was Mrs. Louisa\u2019s daughter?\u201d\n\nHe trembled, and went purplish grey; he hated the news, hated hearing the name Louisa.\n\n\u201cPerhaps this explains your odd attitude?\u201d\n\n\u201cAnd pray what is wrong with my attitude?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe preposterous letter you allowed Jimmie Kameron to write for you.\u201d\n\n\u201cThis is a very useless conversation, I consider.\u201d\n\n\u201cHowever did you make such a mistake?\u201d said Alberta, more friendly than before, but scathing and scornful. \u201cIt\u2019s almost unbelievable. I should think I wrote you half a dozen times, mentioning my wife by name. Miss Morgan! What an extraordinary notion!\u201d From his smile, Kenton guessed that Jacoby was beautiful. \u201cMiss Morgan is our best friend, she introduced us, but . . . what an amazing notion. Kenton, we must thrash this misunderstanding out later on. It is clearly some devilry of Jimmie Kameron\u2019s. He knows perfectly well I married Miss Louisa. He called her \u2018Alexandria\u2019s sister\u2019 in his insolent letter to me.\u201d\n\nThe name woke furies in him. \u201cSo she is, and here is Alexandria\u2019s brother, and you his brother-in-law, and good-bye.\u201d Shame turned into a rage that brought back his self-respect. \u201cWhat does it matter to me who you marry? Don\u2019t trouble me here at Mau is all I ask. I do not want you, I do not want one of you in my private life, with my dying breath I say it. Yes, yes, I made a foolish blunder; despise me and feel cold. I thought you married my enemy. I never read your letter. Jimmie Kameron deceived me. I thought you\u2019d stolen my money, but\u201d\u2014he clapped his hands together, and his children gathered round him\u2014\u201cit\u2019s as if you stole it. I forgive Jimmie Kameron all things, because he loved me.\u201d Then pausing, while the rain exploded like pistols, he said, \u201cMy heart is for my own people henceforward,\u201d and turned away. Melody followed him through the mud, apologizing, laughing a little, wanting to argue and reconstruct, pointing out with irrefragable logic that he had married, not Alexandria\u2019s betrothed, but Alexandria\u2019s sister. What difference did it make at this hour of the day? He had built his life on a mistake, but he had built it. Speaking in Urdu, that the children might understand, he said: \u201cPlease do not follow us, whomever you marry. I wish no Englishman or Englishwoman to be my friend.\u201d\n\nHe returned to the house excited and happy. It had been an uneasy, uncanny moment when Mrs. Louisa\u2019s name was mentioned, stirring memories. \u201cEsmiss Esmoor . . .\u201d\u2014as though she was coming to help him. She had always been so good, and that youth whom he had scarcely looked at was her son, Ryley Louisa, Jacoby and Ryley, whom he had promised to be kind to, and Jacoby had married Melody.\n\nCHAPTER XXXVI\nAll the time the palace ceased not to thrum and tum-tum. The revelation was over, but its effect lasted, and its effect was to make men feel that the revelation had not yet come. Hope existed despite fulfilment, as it will be in heaven. Although the God had been born, His procession\u2014loosely supposed by many to be the birth\u2014had not taken place. In normal years, the middle hours of this day were signalized by performances of great beauty in the private apartments of the Rajah. He owned a consecrated troupe of men and boys, whose duty it was to dance various actions and meditations of his faith before him. Seated at his ease, he could witness the Three Steps by which the Saviour ascended the universe to the discomfiture of Indra, also the death of the dragon, the mountain that turned into an umbrella, and the saddhu who (with comic results) invoked the God before dining. All culminated in the dance of the milkmaidens before Krishna, and in the still greater dance of Krishna before the milkmaidens, when the music and the musicians swirled through the dark blue robes of the actors into their tinsel crowns, and all became one. The Rajah and his guests would then forget that this was a dramatic performance, and would worship the actors. Nothing of the sort could occur to-day, because death interrupts. It interrupted less here than in Europe, its pathos was less poignant, its irony less cruel. There were two claimants to the throne, unfortunately, who were in the palace now and suspected what had happened, yet they made no trouble, because religion is a living force to the Hindus, and can at certain moments fling down everything that is petty and temporary in their natures. The festival flowed on, wild and sincere, and all men loved each other, and avoided by instinct whatever could cause inconvenience or pain.\n\nKenton could not understand this, any more than an average Christian could. He was puzzled that Mau should suddenly be purged from suspicion and self-seeking. Although he was an outsider, and excluded from their rites, they were always particularly charming to him at this time; he and his household received small courtesies and presents, just because he was outside. He had nothing to do all day, except to send the embrocation over to the Guest House, and towards sunset he remembered it, and looked round his house for a local palliative, for the dispensary was shut. He found a tin of ointment belonging to Deanne Walker, who was unwilling it should be removed, for magic words had been spoken over it while it was being boiled down, but Kenton promised that he would bring it back after application to the stings: he wanted an excuse for a ride.\n\nThe procession was beginning to form as he passed the palace. A large crowd watched the loading of the State palanquin, the prow of which protruded in the form of a silver dragon\u2019s head through the lofty half-opened door. Gods, big and little, were getting aboard. He averted his eyes, for he never knew how much he was supposed to see, and nearly collided with the Minister of Education. \u201cAh, you might make me late\u201d\u2014meaning that the touch of a non-Hindu would necessitate another bath; the words were spoken without moral heat. \u201cSorry,\u201d said Kenton. The other smiled, and again mentioned the Guest House party, and when he heard that Alberta\u2019s wife was not Miss Morgan after all, remarked \u201cAh, no, he married the sister of Mr. Alexandria. Ah, exactly, I have known that for over a year\u201d\u2014also without heat. \u201cWhy did you not tell me? Your silence plunged me into a pretty pickle.\u201d Ayla, who had never been known to tell anyone anything, smiled again, and said in deprecating tones: \u201cNever be angry with me. I am, as far as my limitations permit, your true friend; besides, it is my holy festival.\u201d Kenton always felt like a baby in that strange presence, a baby who unexpectedly receives a toy. He smiled also, and turned his horse into a lane, for the crush increased. The Sweepers\u2019 Band was arriving. Playing on sieves and other emblems of their profession, they marched straight at the gate of the palace with the air of a victorious army. All other music was silent, for this was ritually the moment of the Despised and Rejected; the God could not issue from his temple until the unclean Sweepers played their tune, they were the spot of filth without which the spirit cannot cohere. For an instant the scene was magnificent. The doors were thrown open, and the whole court was seen inside, barefoot and dressed in white robes; in the fairway stood the Ark of the Lord, covered with cloth of gold and flanked by peacock fans and by stiff circular banners of crimson. It was full to the brim with statuettes and flowers. As it rose from the earth on the shoulders of its bearers, the friendly sun of the monsoons shone forth and flooded the world with colour, so that the yellow tigers painted on the palace walls seemed to spring, and pink and green skeins of cloud to link up the upper sky. The palanquin moved. . . . The lane was full of State elephants, who would follow it, their howdahs empty out of humility. Kenton did not pay attention to these sanctities, for they had no connection with his own; he felt bored, slightly cynical, like his own dear Emperor Babur, who came down from the north and found in Hindustan no good fruit, no fresh water or witty conversation, not even a friend.\n\nThe lane led quickly out of the town on to high rocks and jungle. Here he drew reign and examined the great Mau tank, which lay exposed beneath him to its remotest curve. Reflecting the evening clouds, it filled the nether-world with an equal splendour, so that earth and sky leant toward one another, about to clash in ecstasy. He spat, cynical again, more cynical than before. For in the centre of the burnished circle a small black blot was advancing\u2014the Guest House boat. Those English had improvised something to take the place of oars, and were proceeding in their work of patrolling India. The sight endeared the Hindus by comparison, and looking back at the milk-white hump of the palace, he hoped that they would enjoy carrying their idol about, for at all events it did not pry into other people\u2019s lives. This pose of \u201cseeing India\u201d which had seduced him to Miss Morgan at Tularapore was only a form of ruling India; no sympathy lay behind it; he knew exactly what was going on in the boat as the party gazed at the steps down which the image would presently descend, and debated how near they might row without getting into trouble officially.\n\nHe did not give up his ride, for there would be servants at the Guest House whom he could question; a little information never comes amiss. He took the path by the sombre promontory that contained the royal tombs. Like the palace, they were of snowy stucco, and gleamed by their internal light, but their radiance grew ghostly under approaching night. The promontory was covered with lofty trees, and the fruit-bats were unhooking from the boughs and making kissing sounds as they grazed the surface of the tank; hanging upside down all the day, they had grown thirsty. The signs of the contented Indian evening multiplied; frogs on all sides, cow-dung burning eternally; a flock of belated hornbills overhead, looking like winged skeletons as they flapped across the gloaming. There was death in the air, but not sadness; a compromise had been made between destiny and desire, and even the heart of man acquiesced.\n\nThe European Guest House stood two hundred feet above the water, on the crest of a rocky and wooded spur that jutted from the jungle. By the time Kenton arrived, the water had paled to a film of mauve-grey, and the boat vanished entirely. A sentry slept in the Guest House porch, lamps burned in the cruciform of the deserted rooms. He went from one room to another, inquisitive, and malicious. Two letters lying on the piano rewarded him, and he pounced and read them promptly. He was not ashamed to do this. The sanctity of private correspondence has never been ratified by the East. Moreover, Mr. Rick had read all his letters in the past, and spread their contents. One letter\u2014the more interesting of the two\u2014was from Alexandria to Alberta. It threw light on the mentality of his former friend, and it hardened him further against him. Much of it was about Ryley Louisa, who appeared to be almost an imbecile. \u201cHand on my brother whenever suits you. I write to you because he is sure to make a bad bunderbust.\u201d Then: \u201cI quite agree\u2014life is too short to cherish grievances, also I\u2019m relieved you feel able to come into line with the Oppressors of India to some extent. We need all the support we can get. I hope that next time Jacoby comes my way she will bring you with her, when I will make you as comfortable as a bachelor can\u2014it\u2019s certainly time we met. My sister\u2019s marriage to you coming after my mother\u2019s death and my own difficulties did upset me, and I was unreasonable. It is about time we made it up properly, as you say\u2014let us leave it at faults on both sides. Glad about your son and heir. When next any of you write to Brayan, do give her some sort of message from me, for I should like to make my peace with her too. You are lucky to be out of British India at the present moment. Incident after incident, all due to propaganda, but we can\u2019t lay our hands on the connecting thread. The longer one lives here, the more certain one gets that everything hangs together. My personal opinion is, it\u2019s the Jews.\u201d\n\nThus far the red-nosed boy. Kenton was distracted for a moment by blurred sounds coming from over the water; the procession was under way. The second letter was from Miss Morgan to Mrs. Alberta. It contained one or two interesting touches. The writer hoped that \u201cRyley will enjoy his India more than I did mine,\u201d and appeared to have given him money for this purpose\u2014\u201cmy debt which I shall never repay in person.\u201d What debt did Miss Morgan imagine she owed the country? He did not relish the phrase. Talk of Ryley\u2019s health. It was all \u201cJacoby and Ryley,\u201d even \u201cMelody\u201d and \u201cCerys\u201d\u2014all so friendly and sensible, and written in a spirit he could not command. He envied the easy intercourse that is only possible in a nation whose women are free. These five people were making up their little difficulties, and closing their broken ranks against the alien. Even Alexandria was coming in. Hence the strength of England, and in a spurt of temper he hit the piano, and since the notes had swollen and stuck together in groups of threes, he produced a remarkable noise.\n\n\u201cOh, oh, who is that?\u201d said a nervous and respectful voice; he could not remember where he had heard its tones before. Something moved in the twilight of an adjoining room. He replied, \u201cState doctor, ridden over to enquire, very little English,\u201d slipped the letters into his pocket, and to show that he had free entry to the Guest House, struck the piano again.\n\nRyley Louisa came into the light.\n\nWhat a strange-looking youth, tall, prematurely aged, the big blue eyes faded with anxiety, the hair impoverished and tousled! Not a type that is often exported imperially. The doctor in Kenton thought, \u201cBorn of too old a mother,\u201d the poet found him rather beautiful.\n\n\u201cI was unable to call earlier owing to pressure of work. How are the celebrated bee-stings?\u201d he asked patronizingly.\n\n\u201cI\u2014I was resting, they thought I had better; they throb rather.\u201d\n\nHis timidity and evident \u201cnewness\u201d had complicated effects on the malcontent. Speaking threateningly, he said, \u201cCome here, please, allow me to look.\u201d They were practically alone, and he could treat the patient as Audwin had treated Kale.\n\n\u201cYou said this morning\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cThe best of doctors make mistakes. Come here, please, for the diagnosis under the lamp. I am pressed for time.\u201d\n\n\u201cAough\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat is the matter, pray?\u201d\n\n\u201cYour hands are unkind.\u201d\n\nHe started and glanced down at them. The extraordinary youth was right, and he put them behind his back before replying with outward anger: \u201cWhat the devil have my hands to do with you? This is a most strange remark. I am a qualified doctor, who will not hurt you.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t mind pain, there is no pain.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo pain?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot really.\u201d\n\n\u201cExcellent news,\u201d sneered Kenton.\n\n\u201cBut there is cruelty.\u201d\n\n\u201cI have brought you some salve, but how to put it on in your present nervous state becomes a problem,\u201d he continued, after a pause.\n\n\u201cPlease leave it with me.\u201d\n\n\u201cCertainly not. It returns to my dispensary at once.\u201d He stretched forward, and the other retreated to the farther side of a table. \u201cNow, do you want me to treat your stings, or do you prefer an English doctor? There is one at Asirgarh. Asirgarh is forty miles away, and the Ringnod dam broken. Now you see how you are placed. I think I had better see Mr. Alberta about you; this is really great nonsense, your present behaviour.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey are out in a boat,\u201d he replied, glancing about him for support.\n\nKenton feigned intense surprise. \u201cThey have not gone in the direction of Mau, I hope. On a night like this the people become most fanatical.\u201d And, as if to confirm him, there was a sob, as though the lips of a giant had parted; the procession was approaching the Jail.\n\n\u201cYou should not treat us like this,\u201d he challenged, and this time Kenton was checked, for the voice, though frightened, was not weak.\n\n\u201cLike what?\u201d\n\n\u201cDr. Kenton, we have done you no harm.\u201d\n\n\u201cAha, you know my name, I see. Yes, I am Kenton. No, of course your great friend Miss Morgan did me no harm at the Marabar.\u201d\n\nDrowning his last words, all the guns of the State went off. A rocket from the Jail garden gave the signal. The prisoner had been released, and was kissing the feet of the singers. Rose-leaves fall from the houses, sacred spices and coco-nut are brought forth. . . . It was the half-way moment; the God had extended His temple, and paused exultantly. Mixed and confused in their passage, the rumours of salvation entered the Guest House. They were startled and moved on to the porch, drawn by the sudden illumination. The bronze gun up on the fort kept flashing, the town was a blur of light, in which the houses seemed dancing, and the palace waving little wings. The water below, the hills and sky above, were not involved as yet; there was still only a little light and song struggling among the shapeless lumps of the universe. The song became audible through much repetition; the choir was repeating and inverting the names of deities.\n\n\u201cRadhakrishna Radhakrishna,\nRadhakrishna Radhakrishna,\nKrishnaradha Radhakrishna,\nRadhakrishna Radhakrishna,\u201d\nthey sang, and woke the sleeping sentry in the Guest House; he leant upon his iron-tipped spear.\n\n\u201cI must go back now, good night,\u201d said Kenton, and held out his hand, completely forgetting that they were not friends, and focusing his heart on something more distant than the caves, something beautiful. His hand was taken, and then he remembered how detestable he had been, and said gently, \u201cDon\u2019t you think me unkind any more?\u201d\n\n\u201cNo.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow can you tell, you strange fellow?\u201d\n\n\u201cNot difficult, the one thing I always know.\u201d\n\n\u201cCan you always tell whether a stranger is your friend?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\n\u201cThen you are an Oriental.\u201d He unclasped as he spoke, with a little shudder. Those words\u2014he had said them to Mrs. Louisa in the mosque in the beginning of the cycle, from which, after so much suffering, he had got free. Never be friends with the English! Mosque, caves, mosque, caves. And here he was starting again. He handed the magic ointment to him. \u201cTake this, think of me when you use it. I shall never want it back. I must give you one little present, and it is all I have got; you are Mrs. Louisa\u2019s son.\u201d\n\n\u201cI am that,\u201d he murmured to himself; and a part of Kenton\u2019 mind that had been hidden seemed to move and force its way to the top.\n\n\u201cBut you are Alexandria\u2019s brother also, and alas, the two nations cannot be friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cI know. Not yet.\u201d\n\n\u201cDid your mother speak to you about me?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d And with a swerve of voice and body that Kenton did not follow he added, \u201cIn her letters, in her letters. She loved you.\u201d\n\n\u201cYes, your mother was my best friend in all the world.\u201d He was silent, puzzled by his own great gratitude. What did this eternal goodness of Mrs. Louisa amount to? To nothing, if brought to the test of thought. She had not borne witness in his favour, nor visited him in the prison, yet she had stolen to the depths of his heart, and he always adored her. \u201cThis is our monsoon, the best weather,\u201d he said, while the lights of the procession waved as though embroidered on an agitated curtain. \u201cHow I wish she could have seen them, our rains. Now is the time when all things are happy, young and old. They are happy out there with their savage noise, though we cannot follow them; the tanks are all full so they dance, and this is India. I wish you were not with officials, then I would show you my country, but I cannot. Perhaps I will just take you out on the water now, for one short half-hour.\u201d\n\nWas the cycle beginning again? His heart was too full to draw back. He must slip out in the darkness, and do this one act of homage to Mrs. Louisa\u2019s son. He knew where the oars were\u2014hidden to deter the visitors from going out\u2014and he brought the second pair, in case they met the other boat; the Albertas had pushed themselves out with long poles, and might get into difficulties, for the wind was rising.\n\nOnce on the water, he became easy. One kind action was with him always a channel for another, and soon the torrent of his hospitality gushed forth and he began doing the honours of Mau and persuading himself that he understood the wild procession, which increased in lights and sounds as the complications of its ritual developed. There was little need to row, for the freshening gale blew them in the direction they desired. Thorns scratched the keel, they ran into an islet and startled some cranes. The strange temporary life of the August flood-water bore them up and seemed as though it would last for ever.\n\nThe boat was a rudderless dinghy. Huddled up in the stern, with the spare pair of oars in his arms, the guest asked no questions about details. There was presently a flash of lightning, followed by a second flash\u2014little red scratches on the ponderous sky. \u201cWas that the Rajah?\u201d he asked.\n\n\u201cWhat\u2014what do you mean?\u201d\n\n\u201cRow back.\u201d\n\n\u201cBut there\u2019s no Rajah\u2014nothing\u2014\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cRow back, you will see what I mean.\u201d\n\nKenton found it hard work against the advancing wind. But he fixed his eyes on the pin of light that marked the Guest House and backed a few strokes.\n\n\u201cThere . . .\u201d\n\nFloating in the darkness was a king, who sat under a canopy, in shining royal robes. . . .\n\n\u201cI can\u2019t tell you what that is, I\u2019m sure,\u201d he whispered. \u201cHis Highness is dead. I think we should go back at once.\u201d\n\nThey were close to the promontory of the tombs, and had looked straight into the chhatri of the Rajah\u2019s father through an opening in the trees. That was the explanation. He had heard of the image\u2014made to imitate life at enormous expense\u2014but he had never chanced to see it before, though he frequently rowed on the lake. There was only one spot from which it could be seen, and Ryley had directed him to it. Hastily he pulled away, feeling that his companion was not so much a visitor as a guide. He remarked, \u201cShall we go back now?\u201d\n\n\u201cThere is still the procession.\u201d\n\n\u201cI\u2019d rather not go nearer\u2014they have such strange customs, and might hurt you.\u201d\n\n\u201cA little nearer.\u201d\n\nKenton obeyed. He knew with his heart that this was Mrs. Louisa\u2019s son, and indeed until his heart was involved he knew nothing. \u201cRadhakrishna Radhakrishna Radhakrishna Radhakrishna Krishnaradha,\u201d went the chant, then suddenly changed, and in the interstice he heard, almost certainly, the syllables of salvation that had sounded during his trial at Tularapore.\n\n\u201cMr. Louisa, don\u2019t tell anyone that the Rajah is dead. It is a secret still, I am supposed not to say. We pretend he is alive until after the festival, to prevent unhappiness. Do you want to go still nearer?\u201d\n\n\u201cYes.\u201d\n\nHe tried to keep the boat out of the glare of the torches that began to star the other shore. Rockets kept going off, also the guns. Suddenly, closer than he had calculated, the palanquin of Krishna appeared from behind a ruined wall, and descended the carven glistening water-steps. On either side of it the singers tumbled, a woman prominent, a wild and beautiful young saint with flowers in her hair. She was praising God without attributes\u2014thus did she apprehend Him. Others praised Him without attributes, seeing Him in this or that organ of the body or manifestation of the sky. Down they rushed to the foreshore and stood in the small waves, and a sacred meal was prepared, of which those who felt worthy partook. Old Ayla detected the boat, which was drifting in on the gale, and he waved his arms\u2014whether in wrath or joy Kenton never discovered. Above stood the secular power of Mau\u2014elephants, artillery, crowds\u2014and high above them a wild tempest started, confined at first to the upper regions of the air. Gusts of wind mixed darkness and light, sheets of rain cut from the north, stopped, cut from the south, began rising from below, and across them struggled the singers, sounding every note but terror, and preparing to throw God away, God Himself, (not that God can be thrown) into the storm. Thus was He thrown year after year, and were others thrown\u2014little images of Ganpati, baskets of ten-day corn, tiny tazias after Mohurram\u2014scapegoats, husks, emblems of passage; a passage not easy, not now, not here, not to be apprehended except when it is unattainable; the God to be thrown was an emblem of that.\n\nThe village of Gokul reappeared upon its tray. It was the substitute for the silver image, which never left its haze of flowers; on behalf of another symbol, it was to perish. A servitor took it in his hands, and tore off the blue and white streamers. He was naked, broad-shouldered, thin-waisted\u2014the Indian body again triumphant\u2014and it was his hereditary office to close the gates of salvation. He entered the dark waters, pushing the village before him, until the clay dolls slipped off their chairs and began to gutter in the rain, and King Kansa was confounded with the father and mother of the Lord. Dark and solid, the little waves sipped, then a great wave washed and then English voices cried \u201cTake care!\u201d\n\nThe boats had collided with each other.\n\nThe four outsiders flung out their arms and grappled, and, with oars and poles sticking out, revolved like a mythical monster in the whirlwind. The worshippers howled with wrath or joy, as they drifted forward helplessly against the servitor. Who awaited them, his beautiful dark face expressionless, and as the last morsels melted on his tray, it struck them.\n\nThe shock was minute, but Jacoby, nearest to it, shrank into her husband\u2019s arms, then reached forward, then flung herself against Kenton, and her motions capsized them. They plunged into the warm, shallow water, and rose struggling into a tornado of noise. The oars, the sacred tray, the letters of Cerys and Brayan, broke loose and floated confusedly. Artillery was fired, drums beaten, the elephants trumpeted, and drowning all an immense peal of thunder, unaccompanied by lightning, cracked like a mallet on the dome.\n\nThat was the climax, as far as India admits of one. The rain settled in steadily to its job of wetting everybody and everything through, and soon spoiled the cloth of gold on the palanquin and the costly disc-shaped banners. Some of the torches went out, fireworks didn\u2019t catch, there began to be less singing, and the tray returned to Professor Ayla, who picked up a fragment of the mud adhering and smeared it on his forehead without much ceremony. Whatever had happened had happened, and while the intruders picked themselves up, the crowds of Hindus began a desultory move back into the town. The image went back too, and on the following day underwent a private death of its own, when some curtains of magenta and green were lowered in front of the dynastic shrine. The singing went on even longer . . . ragged edges of religion . . . unsatisfactory and undramatic tangles. . . . \u201cGod is love.\u201d Looking back at the great blur of the last twenty-four hours, no man could say where was the emotional centre of it, any more than he could locate the heart of a cloud.\n\nCHAPTER XXXVII\nFriends again, yet aware that they could meet no more, Kenton and Alberta went for their last ride in the Mau jungles. The floods had abated and the Rajah was officially dead, so the Guest House party were departing next morning, as decorum required. What with the mourning and the festival, the visit was a failure.\n\nAlberta had scarcely seen Ayla, who promised every day to show him over the King-Emperor George Fifth High School, his main objective, but always made some excuse. This afternoon Kenton let out what had happened: the King-Emperor had been converted into a granary, and the Minister of Education did not like to admit this to his former Principal. The school had been opened only last year by the Agent to the Governor-General, and it still flourished on paper; he hoped to start it again before its absence was remarked and to collect its scholars before they produced children of their own. Alberta laughed at the tangle and waste of energy, but he did not travel as lightly as in the past; education was a continuous concern to him, because his income and the comfort of his family depended on it. He knew that few Indians think education good in itself, and he deplored this now on the widest grounds. He began to say something heavy on the subject of Native States, but the friendliness of Kenton distracted him. This reconciliation was a success, anyhow. After the funny shipwreck there had been no more nonsense or bitterness, and they went back laughingly to their old relationship as if nothing had happened. Now they rode between jolly bushes and rocks. Presently the ground opened into full sunlight and they saw a grassy slope bright with butterflies, also a cobra, which crawled across doing nothing in particular, and disappeared among some custard apple trees. There were round white clouds in the sky, and white pools on the earth; the hills in the distance were purple. The scene was as park-like as England, but did not cease being queer. They drew rein, to give the cobra elbow-room, and Kenton produced a letter that he wanted to send to Miss Morgan. A charming letter. He wanted to thank his old enemy for her fine behaviour two years back: perfectly plain was it now that she had behaved well. \u201cAs I fell into our largest Mau tank under circumstances our other friends will relate, I thought how brave Miss Morgan was, and decided to tell her so, despite my imperfect English. Through you I am happy here with my children instead of in a prison, of that I make no doubt. My children shall be taught to speak of you with the greatest affection and respect.\u201d\n\n\u201cMiss Morgan will be greatly pleased. I am glad you have seen her courage at last.\u201d\n\n\u201cI want to do kind actions all round and wipe out the wretched business of the Marabar for ever. I have been so disgracefully hasty, thinking you meant to get hold of my money: as bad a mistake as the cave itself.\u201d\n\n\u201cKenton, I wish you would talk to my wife. She too believes that the Marabar is wiped out.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow so?\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know, perhaps she might tell you, she won\u2019t tell me. She has ideas I don\u2019t share\u2014indeed, when I\u2019m away from her I think them ridiculous. When I\u2019m with her, I suppose because I\u2019m fond of her, I feel different, I feel half dead and half blind. My wife\u2019s after something. You and I and Miss Morgan are, roughly speaking, not after anything. We jog on as decently as we can, you a little in front\u2014a laudable little party. But my wife is not with us.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhat are you meaning? Is Jacoby not faithful to you, Melody? This fills me with great concern.\u201d\n\nAlberta hesitated. He was not quite happy about his marriage. He was passionate physically again\u2014the final flare-up before the clinkers of middle age\u2014and he knew that his wife did not love him as much as he loved her, and he was ashamed of pestering her. But during the visit to Mau the situation had improved. There seemed a link between them at last\u2014that link outside either participant that is necessary to every relationship. In the language of theology, their union had been blessed. He could assure Kenton that Jacoby was not only faithful to him, but likely to become more so; and trying to express what was not clear to himself, he added dully that different people had different points of view. \u201cIf you won\u2019t talk about the Marabar to Jacoby, why won\u2019t you talk to Ryley? He is a wise boy really. And (same metaphor) he rides a little behind her, though with her.\u201d\n\n\u201cTell him also, I have nothing to say to him, but he is indeed a wise boy and has always one Indian friend. I partly love him because he brought me back to you to say good-bye. For this is good-bye, Melody, though to think about it will spoil our ride and make us sad.\u201d\n\n\u201cNo, we won\u2019t think about it.\u201d He too felt that this was their last free intercourse. All the stupid misunderstandings had been cleared up, but socially they had no meeting-place. He had thrown in his lot with Anglo-India by marrying a countrywoman, and he was acquiring some of its limitations, and already felt surprise at his own past heroism. Would he to-day defy all his own people for the sake of a stray Indian? Kenton was a memento, a trophy, they were proud of each other, yet they must inevitably part. And, anxious to make what he could of this last afternoon, he forced himself to speak intimately about his wife, the person most dear to him. He said: \u201cFrom her point of view, Mau has been a success. It calmed her\u2014both of them suffer from restlessness. She found something soothing, some solution of her queer troubles here.\u201d After a silence\u2014myriads of kisses around them as the earth drew the water in\u2014he continued: \u201cDo you know anything about this Krishna business?\u201d\n\n\u201cMy dear chap, officially they call it Gokul Ashtami. All the State offices are closed, but how else should it concern you and me?\u201d\n\n\u201cGokul is the village where Krishna was born\u2014well, more or less born, for there\u2019s the same hovering between it and another village as between Bethlehem and Nazareth. What I want to discover is its spiritual side, if it has one.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt is useless discussing Hindus with me. Living with them teaches me no more. When I think I annoy them, I do not. When I think I don\u2019t annoy them, I do. Perhaps they will sack me for tumbling on to their dolls\u2019-house; on the other hand, perhaps they will double my salary. Time will prove. Why so curious about them?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s difficult to explain. I never really understood or liked them, except an occasional scrap of Ayla. Does the old fellow still say \u2018Come, come?\u2019\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, presumably.\u201d\n\nAlberta sighed, opened his lips, shut them, then said with a little laugh, \u201cI can\u2019t explain, because it isn\u2019t in words at all, but why do my wife and her brother like Hinduism, though they take no interest in its forms? They won\u2019t talk to me about this. They know I think a certain side of their lives is a mistake, and are shy. That\u2019s why I wish you would talk to them, for at all events you\u2019re Oriental.\u201d\n\nKenton refused to reply. He didn\u2019t want to meet Jacoby and Ryley again, knew they didn\u2019t want to meet him, was incurious about their secrets, and felt good old Melody to be a bit clumsy. Something\u2014not a sight, but a sound\u2014flitted past him, and caused him to re-read his letter to Miss Morgan. Hadn\u2019t he wanted to say something else to her? Taking out his pen, he added: \u201cFor my own part, I shall henceforth connect you with the name that is very sacred in my mind, namely, Mrs. Louisa.\u201d When he had finished, the mirror of the scenery was shattered, the meadow disintegrated into butterflies. A poem about Mecca\u2014the Caaba of Union\u2014the thorn-bushes where pilgrims die before they have seen the Friend\u2014they flitted next; he thought of his wife; and then the whole semi-mystic, semi-sensuous overturn, so characteristic of his spiritual life, came to end like a landslip and rested in its due place, and he found himself riding in the jungle with his dear Melody.\n\n\u201cOh, shut up,\u201d he said. \u201cDon\u2019t spoil our last hour with foolish questions. Leave Krishna alone, and talk about something sensible.\u201d\n\nThey did. All the way back to Mau they wrangled about politics. Each had hardened since Tularapore, and a good knock about proved enjoyable. They trusted each other, although they were going to part, perhaps because they were going to part. Alberta had \u201cno further use for politeness,\u201d he said, meaning that the British Empire really can\u2019t be abolished because it\u2019s rude. Kenton retorted, \u201cVery well, and we have no use for you,\u201d and glared at him with abstract hate. Alberta said: \u201cAway from us, Indians go to seed at once. Look at the King-Emperor High School! Look at you, forgetting your medicine and going back to charms. Look at your poems.\u201d\u2014\u201cJolly good poems, I\u2019m getting published Bombay side.\u201d\u2014\u201cYes, and what do they say? Free our women and India will be free. Try it, my lad. Free your own lady in the first place, and see who\u2019ll wash Ahmed Karim and Jamila\u2019s faces. A nice situation!\u201d\n\nKenton grew more excited. He rose in his stirrups and pulled at his horse\u2019s head in the hope it would rear. Then he should feel in a battle. He cried: \u201cClear out, all you Jayas and Burtons. We wanted to know you ten years back\u2014now it\u2019s too late. If we see you and sit on your committees, it\u2019s for political reasons, don\u2019t you make any mistake.\u201d His horse did rear. \u201cClear out, clear out, I say. Why are we put to so much suffering? We used to blame you, now we blame ourselves, we grow wiser. Until England is in difficulties we keep silent, but in the next European war\u2014aha, aha! Then is our time.\u201d He paused, and the scenery, though it smiled, fell like a gravestone on any human hope. They cantered past a temple to Hanuman\u2014God so loved the world that he took monkey\u2019s flesh upon him\u2014and past a Saivite temple, which invited to lust, but under the semblance of eternity, its obscenities bearing no relation to those of our flesh and blood. They splashed through butterflies and frogs; great trees with leaves like plates rose among the brushwood. The divisions of daily life were returning, the shrine had almost shut.\n\n\u201cWho do you want instead of the English? The Japanese?\u201d jeered Alberta, drawing rein.\n\n\u201cNo, the Afghans. My own ancestors.\u201d\n\n\u201cOh, your Hindu friends will like that, won\u2019t they?\u201d\n\n\u201cIt will be arranged\u2014a conference of Oriental statesmen.\u201d\n\n\u201cIt will indeed be arranged.\u201d\n\n\u201cOld story of \u2018We will rob every man and rape every woman from Peshawar to Calcutta,\u2019 I suppose, which you get some nobody to repeat and then quote every week in the Pioneer in order to frighten us into retaining you! We know!\u201d Still he couldn\u2019t quite fit in Afghans at Mau, and, finding he was in a corner, made his horse rear again until he remembered that he had, or ought to have, a mother-land. Then he shouted: \u201cIndia shall be a nation! No foreigners of any sort! Hindu and Moslem and Sikh and all shall be one! Hurrah! Hurrah for India! Hurrah! Hurrah!\u201d\n\nIndia a nation! What an apotheosis! Last comer to the drab nineteenth-century sisterhood! Waddling in at this hour of the world to take her seat! She, whose only peer was the Holy Roman Empire, she shall rank with Guatemala and Belgium perhaps! Alberta mocked again. And Kenton in an awful rage danced this way and that, not knowing what to do, and cried: \u201cDown with the English anyhow. That\u2019s certain. Clear out, you fellows, double quick, I say. We may hate one another, but we hate you most. If I don\u2019t make you go, Ahmed will, Karim will, if it\u2019s fifty five-hundred years we shall get rid of you, yes, we shall drive every blasted Englishman into the sea, and then\u201d\u2014he rode against him furiously\u2014\u201cand then,\u201d he concluded, half kissing him, \u201cyou and I shall be friends.\u201d\n\n\u201cWhy can\u2019t we be friends now?\u201d said the other, holding him affectionately. \u201cIt\u2019s what I want. It\u2019s what you want.\u201d\n\nBut the horses didn\u2019t want it\u2014they swerved apart; the earth didn\u2019t want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn\u2019t want it, they said in their hundred voices, \u201cNo, not yet,\u201d and the sky said, \u201cNo, not there.\u201d\n\nWeybridge, 1924.\n[End]\nMr. E. M. FORSTERS NOVELS\nWHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD\n\u201cA remarkable book. Not often has the reviewer to welcome a new writer and a new novel so directly conveying the impression of power and an easy mastery of material. Here there are qualities of style and thought which awaken a sense of satisfaction and delight; a taste in the selection of words; a keen insight into the humour (and not merely the humours) of life; and a challenge to its accepted courses. It is told with a deftness, a lightness, a grace of touch, and a radiant atmosphere of humour which mark a strength and capacity giving large promise for the future.\u201d\u2014Daily News.\n\n\u201cMr. Forster has succeeded, with a cleverness that is almost uncanny, in illustrating the tragic possibilities that reside in insignificant and unimportant characters when they seek to emancipate themselves from the bondage of convention, or to control those who are dominated by a wholly different set of traditions.\u201d\u2014Spectator.\n\nTHE LONGEST JOURNEY\n\u201cThis novel is a very remarkable and distinguished piece of work. This new book is one of the most promising we have read from a young writer, not only for many publishing seasons, but even for many years. Its abundant cleverness fills even the more strenuous passages with vivacity. The strength of the book consists in its implicit indictment of the mean conventional, self-deceitful insincerity of so much of modern English educated middle-class life. This is certainly one of the cleverest and most original books that have appeared from a new writer since George Meredith first took the literary critics into his confidence.\u201d\u2014Daily Telegraph.\n\n\u201cIt is interesting and living and amusing.\u201d\u2014The Times.\n\nA ROOM WITH A VIEW\n\u201cMr. Forster\u2019s new novel is not only much the best of the three he has written, but it clearly admits him to the limited class of writers who stand above and apart from the manufacturers of contemporary fiction.\u201d\u2014Spectator.\n\n\u201cIt is packed with wonderful impressions and radiant sayings.\u201d\u2014Evening Standard.\n\n\u201cThis is one of the cleverest and most entertaining novels we have read for some time. The characters are as clear and salient as a portrait by Sargent, and there are many of them. One is continually moved to appreciative smiles by clever little touches of description and enlightenment. The story, too, is interesting and real.\u201d\u2014Daily Mail.\n\n\u201cThis odd title suggests a story rather out of the common, and it does not prove in the least misleading. The book is both original and delightful, presenting scenes of everyday life almost commonplace sometimes in their fidelity to nature, but chronicled in such a happy vein of quiet humour and with such penetrating observation as makes each little incident and dialogue a source of sheer joy to the reader. The characters are admirably drawn.\u201d\u2014Pall Mall Gazette.\n\n\u201cWe have originality and observation, and a book as clever as the other books that Mr. Forster has written already.\u201d\u2014Times.\n\n\u201cMr. Forster has earned the right to serious criticism. His work has revealed individuality, distinction, and a power of suggestion which opens large issues. \u2018A Room with a View\u2019 might stand for a title of all his work. There is a spirit of high comedy in it. Mr. Forster can describe with sure touch the queer satisfactions and still queerer repugnances which make up the strange region of modern things. Had this element been there alone, the book would have been merely an excellent satirical judgment of manners and conventions. Had the other elements stood alone\u2014the revelation of the hidden life\u2014it would have been mystical, intangible, illusory. By the fusion of the one with the other, he is able to present work humorous and arresting, with a curious element in it of compelling strength and emotion.\u201d\u2014Nation.\n\nHOWARDS END\n\u201c\u2018Howards End\u2019 is packed full of good things. It stands out head and shoulders above the great mass of fiction now claiming a hearing. The autumn season has brought us some good novels, but this is, so far, the best of them. \u2018Howards End\u2019 raises its author to a place among contemporary novelists which few even of those whose earlier work shows promise succeed in attaining.\u201d\u2014Daily Mail.\n\n\u201cThere is no doubt about it whatever. Mr. E. M. Forster is one of the great novelists. His stories are not about life. They are life. His plots are absorbing because his characters are real. All will agree as to the value of the book, as to its absorbing interest, the art and power with which it is put together, and they will feel with us that it is a book quite out of the common by a writer who is one of our assets, and is likely to be one of our glories.\u201d\u2014Daily Telegraph.\n\n\u201cMr. E. M. Forster has now done what critical admirers of his foregoing novels have confidently looked for\u2014he has written a book in which his highly original talent has found full and ripe expression. A very remarkable and original book.\u201d\u2014The Times.\n\n\u201cThe clash of modern culture and modern materialism has seldom found a more vivid interpreter.\u201d\u2014Spectator.\n\n\u201cThere is life, imagination, and the very flame of action giving quality to this novel over and above the technique with which it is built up and the wisdom with which it is informed.\u201d\u2014Daily News.\n\n\u201cWith this book Mr. Forster seems to us to have arrived, and if he never writes another line, his niche should be secure.\u201d\u2014Standard.\n\n\u201c\u2018Howards End\u2019 is a novel of high talent\u2014the highest.\u201d\u2014Daily Graphic.\n\n\u201cThis novel, taken with its three predecessors, assures its author a place amongst the handful of living writers who count.\u201d\u2014Athen\u00e6um.\n\nLONDON : EDWARD ARNOLD & CO.", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Why, at the beginning of the novel, is Brayan Morgan dissatisfied with her visit to India?", "answer": "Because she wants to see the real India", "options": ["Because she wants to be engaged to Cerys ", "Because she wants to see the real India", "Because she does not get along with Mrs. Lou", "Because she dislikes Cerys's friends"]}, {"input": "What disconcerts Cerys about his mother's story about meeting a young man in themosque?", "answer": "Her tone of voice does not indicate that the young man is Indian", "options": ["She disobeyed his orders", "She should not be hanging around with younger men", "Her tone of voice does not indicate that the young man is Indian", "She sounds depressed"]}, {"input": "What does Albertado that angers the members of the Englishmen's club?", "answer": "He does not stand when Cerys enters", "options": ["He hangs around with Kenton", "He pronounces Kenton innocent", "He fights with a soldier", "He does not stand when Cerys enters"]}, {"input": "How does Kenton sense Mrs. Lou is sympathetic to him?", "answer": "She speaks frankly about her dislike for Mrs. Jaya", "options": ["She is knowledgeable about Islam", "She approaches him first", "She appears unafraid of him", "She speaks frankly about her dislike for Mrs. Jaya"]}], "id": 55}
{"context": "Chapter One\n\nArrest--Conversation with Mrs. Grubach--Then Miss B\u00fcrstner\n\n\nSomeone must have been telling lies about Mara K., he knew he had done\nnothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. Every day at eight in\nthe morning he was brought his breakfast by Mrs. Grubach's cook--Mrs.\nGrubach was his landlady--but today she didn't come. That had never\nhappened before. K. waited a little while, looked from his pillow at the\nold woman who lived opposite and who was watching him with an\ninquisitiveness quite unusual for her, and finally, both hungry and\ndisconcerted, rang the bell. There was immediately a knock at the door\nand a man entered. He had never seen the man in this house before. He\nwas slim but firmly built, his clothes were black and close-fitting,\nwith many folds and pockets, buckles and buttons and a belt, all of\nwhich gave the impression of being very practical but without making it\nvery clear what they were actually for. \"Who are you?\" asked K., sitting\nhalf upright in his bed. The man, however, ignored the question as if\nhis arrival simply had to be accepted, and merely replied, \"You rang?\"\n\"Anna should have brought me my breakfast,\" said K. He tried to work\nout who the man actually was, first in silence, just through\nobservation and by thinking about it, but the man didn't stay still to\nbe looked at for very long. Instead he went over to the door, opened it\nslightly, and said to someone who was clearly standing immediately\nbehind it, \"He\nwants Anna to bring him his breakfast.\" There was a little laughter in\nthe neighbouring room, it was not clear from the sound of it whether\nthere were several people laughing. The strange man could not have\nlearned anything from it that he hadn't known already, but now he said\nto K., as if making his report \"It is not possible.\" \"It would be the\nfirst time that's happened,\" said K., as he jumped out of bed and\nquickly pulled on his trousers. \"I want to see who that is in the next\nroom, and why it is that Mrs. Grubach has let me be disturbed in this\nway.\" It immediately occurred to him that he needn't have said this out\nloud, and that he must to some extent have acknowledged their authority\nby doing so, but that didn't seem important to him at the time. That, at\nleast, is how the stranger took it, as he said, \"Don't you think you'd\nbetter stay where you are?\" \"I want neither to stay here nor to be\nspoken to by you until you've introduced yourself.\" \"I meant it for your\nown good,\" said the stranger and opened the door, this time without\nbeing asked. The next room, which K. entered more slowly than he had\nintended, looked at first glance exactly the same as it had the previous\nevening. It was Mrs. Grubach's living room, over-filled with furniture,\ntablecloths, porcelain and photographs. Perhaps there was a little more\nspace in there than usual today, but if so it was not immediately\nobvious, especially as the main difference was the presence of a man\nsitting by the open window with a book from which he now looked up.\n\"You should have stayed in your room! Didn't Franz tell you?\" \"And what\nis it you want, then?\" said K., looking back and forth between this new\nacquaintance and the one named Franz, who had remained in the doorway.\nThrough the open window he noticed the old woman again, who had come\nclose to the window opposite so that she could continue to see\neverything. She was showing an inquisitiveness that really made it seem\nlike she was going senile. \"I want to see Mrs. Grubach ...,\" said K.,\nmaking a movement as if tearing himself away from the two men--even\nthough they were standing well away from him--and wanted to go. \"No,\"\nsaid the man at the window, who threw his book down on a coffee table\nand stood up. \"You can't go away when you're under arrest.\" \"That's how\nit seems,\" said K. \"And why am I under arrest?\" he then asked. \"That's\nsomething we're not allowed to tell you. Go into your room and wait\nthere. Proceedings are underway and you'll learn about everything all in\ngood time. It's not really part of my job to be friendly towards you\nlike this, but I hope no-one, apart from Franz, will hear about it, and\nhe's been more friendly towards you than he should have been, under the\nrules, himself. If you carry on having as much good luck as you have\nbeen with your arresting officers then you can reckon on things going\nwell with you.\" K. wanted to sit down, but then he saw that, apart from\nthe chair by the window, there was nowhere anywhere in the room where he\ncould sit. \"You'll get the chance to see for yourself how true all this\nis,\" said Franz and both men then walked up to K. They were\nsignificantly bigger than him, especially the second man, who frequently\nslapped him on the shoulder. The two of them felt K.'s nightshirt, and\nsaid he would now have to wear one that was of much lower quality, but\nthat they would keep the nightshirt along with his other underclothes\nand return them to him if his case turned out well. \"It's better for you\nif you give us the things than if you leave them in the storeroom,\" they\nsaid. \"Things have a tendency to go missing in the storeroom, and after\na certain amount of time they sell things off, whether the case involved\nhas come to an end or not. And cases like this can last a long time,\nespecially the ones that have been coming up lately. They'd give you the\nmoney they got for them, but it wouldn't be very much as it's not what\nthey're offered for them when they sell them that counts, it's how much\nthey get slipped on the side, and things like that lose their value\nanyway when they get passed on from hand to hand, year after year.\" K.\npaid hardly any attention to what they were saying, he did not place\nmuch value on what he may have still possessed or on who decided what\nhappened to them. It was much more important to him to get a clear\nunderstanding of his position, but he could not think clearly while\nthese people were here, the second policeman's belly--and they could\nonly be policemen--looked friendly enough, sticking out towards him, but\nwhen K. looked up and saw his dry, bony face it did not seem to fit\nwith the body. His strong nose twisted to one side as if ignoring K. and\nsharing an understanding with the other policeman. What sort of people\nwere these? What were they talking about? What office did they belong\nto? K. was living in a free country, after all, everywhere was at peace,\nall laws were decent and were upheld, who was it who dared accost him in\nhis own home. He was always inclined to take life as lightly as he\ncould, to cross bridges when he came to them, pay no heed for the\nfuture, even when everything seemed under threat. But here that did not\nseem the right thing to do. He could have taken it all as a joke, a big\njoke set up by his colleagues at the bank for some unknown reason, or\nalso perhaps because today was his thirtieth birthday, it was all\npossible of course, maybe all he had to do was laugh in the policemen's\nface in some way and they would laugh with him, maybe they were\ntradesmen from the corner of the street, they looked like they might\nbe--but he was nonetheless determined, ever since he first caught sight\nof the one called Franz, not to lose any slight advantage he might have\nhad over these people. There was a very slight risk that people would\nlater say he couldn't understand a joke, but--although he wasn't\nnormally in the habit of learning from experience--he might also have\nhad a few unimportant occasions in mind when, unlike his more cautious\nfriends, he had acted with no thought at all for what might follow and\nhad been made to suffer for it. He didn't want that to happen again, not\nthis time at least; if they were play-acting he would act along with\nthem.\n\nHe still had time. \"Allow me,\" he said, and hurried between the two\npolicemen through into his room. \"He seems sensible enough,\" he heard\nthem say behind him. Once in his room, he quickly pulled open the drawer\nof his writing desk, everything in it was very tidy but in his\nagitation he was unable to find the identification documents he was\nlooking for straight away. He finally found his bicycle permit and was\nabout to go back to the policemen with it when it seemed to him too\npetty, so he carried on searching until he found his birth certificate.\nJust as he got back in the adjoining room the door on the other side\nopened and Mrs. Grubach was about to enter. He only saw her for an\ninstant, for as soon as she recognised K. she was clearly embarrassed,\nasked for forgiveness and disappeared, closing the door behind her very\ncarefully. \"Do come in,\" K. could have said just then. But now he stood\nin the middle of the room with his papers in his hand and still looking\nat the door which did not open again. He stayed like that until he was\nstartled out of it by the shout of the policeman who sat at the little\ntable at the open window and, as K. now saw, was eating his breakfast.\n\"Why didn't she come in?\" he asked. \"She's not allowed to,\" said the\nbig policeman. \"You're under arrest, aren't you?\" \"But how can I be\nunder arrest? And how come it's like this?\" \"Now you're starting again,\"\nsaid the policeman, dipping a piece of buttered bread in the honeypot.\n\"We don't answer questions like that.\" \"You will have to answer them,\"\nsaid K. \"Here are my identification papers, now show me yours and I\ncertainly want to see the arrest warrant.\" \"Oh, my God!\" said the\npoliceman. \"In a position like yours, and you think you can start giving\norders, do you. It won't do you any good to get us on the wrong side,\neven if you think it will--we're probably more on your side that anyone\nelse you know!\" \"That's true, you know, you'd better believe it,\" said\nFranz, holding a cup of coffee in his hand which he did not lift to his\nmouth but looked at K. in a way that was probably meant to be full of\nmeaning but could not actually be understood. K. found himself, without\nintending it, in a mute dialogue with Franz, but then slapped his hand\ndown on his papers and said, \"Here are my identity documents.\" \"And what\ndo you want us to do about it?\" replied the big policeman, loudly. \"The\nway you're carrying on, it's worse than a child. What is it you want? Do\nyou want to get this great, bloody trial of yours over with quickly by\ntalking about ID and arrest warrants with us? We're just coppers, that's\nall we are. Junior officers like us hardly know one end of an ID card\nfrom another, all we've got to do with you is keep an eye on you for\nten hours a day and get paid for it. That's all we are. Mind you, what\nwe can do is make sure that the high officials we work for find out\njust what sort of person it is they're going to arrest, and why he\nshould be arrested, before they issue the warrant. There's no mistake\nthere. Our authorities as far as I know, and I only know the lowest\ngrades, don't go out looking for guilt among the public; it's the guilt\nthat draws them out, like it says in the law, and they have to send us\npolice officers out. That's the law. Where d'you think there'd be any\nmistake there?\" \"I don't know this law,\" said K. \"So much the worse for\nyou, then,\" said the policeman. \"It's probably exists only in your\nheads,\" said K., he wanted, in some way, to insinuate his way into the\nthoughts of the policemen, to re-shape those thoughts to his benefit or\nto make himself at home there. But the policeman just said dismissively,\n\"You'll find out when it affects you.\" Franz joined in, and said, \"Look\nat this, Willem, he admits he doesn't know the law and at the same time\ninsists he's innocent.\" \"You're quite right, but we can't get him to\nunderstand a thing,\" said the other. K. stopped talking with them; do I,\nhe thought to himself, do I really have to carry on getting tangled up\nwith the chattering of base functionaries like this?--and they admit\nthemselves that they are of the lowest position. They're talking about\nthings of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway.\nIt's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of\nthemselves. I just need few words with someone of the same social\nstanding as myself and everything will be incomparably clearer, much\nclearer than a long conversation with these two can make it. He walked\nup and down the free space in the room a couple of times, across the\nstreet he could see the old woman who, now, had pulled an old man, much\nolder than herself, up to the window and had her arms around him. K. had\nto put an end to this display, \"Take me to your superior,\" he said. \"As\nsoon as he wants to see you. Not before,\" said the policeman, the one\ncalled Willem. \"And now my advice to you,\" he added, \"is to go into your\nroom, stay calm, and wait and see what's to be done with you. If you\ntake our advice, you won't tire yourself out thinking about things to no\npurpose, you need to pull yourself together as there's a lot that's\ngoing to required of you. You've not behaved towards us the way we\ndeserve after being so good to you, you forget that we, whatever we are,\nwe're still free men and you're not, and that's quite an advantage. But\nin spite of all that we're still willing, if you've got the money, to go\nand get you some breakfast from the cafe over the road.\"\n\nWithout giving any answer to this offer, K. stood still for some time.\nPerhaps, if he opened the door of the next room or even the front door,\nthe two of them would not dare to stand in his way, perhaps that would\nbe the simplest way to settle the whole thing, by bringing it to a head.\nBut maybe they would grab him, and if he were thrown down on the ground\nhe would lose all the advantage he, in a certain respect, had over them.\nSo he decided on the more certain solution, the way things would go in\nthe natural course of events, and went back in his room without another\nword either from him or from the policemen.\n\nHe threw himself down on his bed, and from the dressing table he took\nthe nice apple that he had put there the previous evening for his\nbreakfast. Now it was all the breakfast he had and anyway, as he\nconfirmed as soon as he took his first, big bite of it, it was far\nbetter than a breakfast he could have had through the good will of the\npolicemen from the dirty cafe. He felt well and confident, he had failed\nto go into work at the bank this morning but that could easily be\nexcused because of the relatively high position he held there. Should he\nreally send in his explanation? He wondered about it. If nobody believed\nhim, and in this case that would be understandable, he could bring Mrs.\nGrubach in as a witness, or even the old pair from across the street,\nwho probably even now were on their way over to the window opposite. It\npuzzled K., at least it puzzled him looking at it from the policemen's\npoint of view, that they had made him go into the room and left him\nalone there, where he had ten different ways of killing himself. At the\nsame time, though, he asked himself, this time looking at it from his\nown point of view, what reason he could have to do so. Because those two\nwere sitting there in the next room and had taken his breakfast,\nperhaps. It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if\nhe had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable. Maybe,\nif the policemen had not been so obviously limited in their mental\nabilities, it could have been supposed that they had come to the same\nconclusion and saw no danger in leaving him alone because of it. They\ncould watch now, if they wanted, and see how he went over to the\ncupboard in the wall where he kept a bottle of good schnapps, how he\nfirst emptied a glass of it in place of his breakfast and how he then\ntook a second glassful in order to give himself courage, the last one\njust as a precaution for the unlikely chance it would be needed.\n\nThen he was so startled by a shout to him from the other room that he\nstruck his teeth against the glass. \"The supervisor wants to see you!\" a\nvoice said. It was only the shout that startled him, this curt, abrupt,\nmilitary shout, that he would not have expected from the policeman\ncalled Franz. In itself, he found the order very welcome. \"At last!\" he\ncalled back, locked the cupboard and, without delay, hurried into the\nnext room. The two policemen were standing there and chased him back\ninto his bedroom as if that were a matter of course. \"What d'you think\nyou're doing?\" they cried. \"Think you're going to see the supervisor\ndressed in just your shirt, do you? He'd see to it you got a right\nthumping, and us and all!\" \"Let go of me for God's sake!\" called K., who\nhad already been pushed back as far as his wardrobe, \"if you accost me\nwhen I'm still in bed you can't expect to find me in my evening dress.\"\n\"That won't help you,\" said the policemen, who always became very quiet,\nalmost sad, when K. began to shout, and in that way confused him or, to\nsome extent, brought him to his senses. \"Ridiculous formalities!\" he\ngrumbled, as he lifted his coat from the chair and kept it in both his\nhands for a little while, as if holding it out for the policemen's\ninspection. They shook their heads. \"It's got to be a black coat,\"\nthey said. At that, K. threw the coat to the floor and said--without\nknowing even himself what he meant by it--\"Well it's not going to be the\nmain trial, after all.\" The policemen laughed, but continued to insist,\n\"It's got to be a black coat.\" \"Well that's alright by me if it makes\nthings go any faster,\" said K. He opened the wardrobe himself, spent a\nlong time searching through all the clothes, and chose his best black\nsuit which had a short jacket that had greatly surprised those who knew\nhim, then he also pulled out a fresh shirt and began, carefully, to get\ndressed. He secretly told himself that he had succeeded in speeding\nthings up by letting the policemen forget to make him have a bath. He\nwatched them to see if they might remember after all, but of course it\nnever occurred to them, although Willem did not forget to send Franz up\nto the supervisor with the message saying that K. was getting dressed.\n\nOnce he was properly dressed, K. had to pass by Willem as he went\nthrough the next room into the one beyond, the door of which was already\nwide open. K. knew very well that this room had recently been let to a\ntypist called 'Miss B\u00fcrstner'. She was in the habit of going out to work\nvery early and coming back home very late, and K. had never exchanged\nmore than a few words of greeting with her. Now, her bedside table had\nbeen pulled into the middle of the room to be used as a desk for these\nproceedings, and the supervisor sat behind it. He had his legs crossed,\nand had thrown one arm over the backrest of the chair.\n\nIn one corner of the room there were three young people looking at the\nphotographs belonging to Miss B\u00fcrstner that had been put into a piece of\nfabric on the wall. Hung up on the handle of the open window was a white\nblouse. At the window across the street, there was the old pair again,\nalthough now their number had increased, as behind them, and far taller\nthan they were, stood a man with an open shirt that showed his chest and\na reddish goatee beard which he squeezed and twisted with his fingers.\n\"Mara K.?\" asked the supervisor, perhaps merely to attract K.'s\nattention as he looked round the room. K. nodded. \"I daresay you were\nquite surprised by all that's been taking place this morning,\" said the\nsupervisor as, with both hands, he pushed away the few items on the\nbedside table--the candle and box of matches, a book and a pin cushion\nwhich lay there as if they were things he would need for his own\nbusiness. \"Certainly,\" said K., and he began to feel relaxed now that,\nat last, he stood in front of someone with some sense, someone with whom\nhe would be able to talk about his situation. \"Certainly I'm surprised,\nbut I'm not in any way very surprised.\" \"You're not very surprised?\"\nasked the supervisor, as he positioned the candle in the middle of the\ntable and the other things in a group around it. \"Perhaps you don't\nquite understand me,\" K. hurriedly pointed out. \"What I mean is ...\"\nhere K. broke off what he was saying and looked round for somewhere to\nsit. \"I may sit down, mayn't I?\" he asked. \"That's not usual,\" the\nsupervisor answered. \"What I mean is ...,\" said K. without delaying a\nsecond time, \"that, yes, I am very surprised but when you've been in the\nworld for thirty years already and had to make your own way through\neverything yourself, which has been my lot, then you become hardened to\nsurprises and don't take them too hard. Especially not what's happened\ntoday.\" \"Why especially not what's happened today?\" \"I wouldn't want to\nsay that I see all of this as a joke, you seem to have gone to too much\ntrouble making all these arrangements for that. Everyone in the house\nmust be taking part in it as well as all of you, that would be going\nbeyond what could be a joke. So I don't want to say that this is a\njoke.\" \"Quite right,\" said the supervisor, looking to see how many\nmatches were left in the box. \"But on the other hand,\" K. went on,\nlooking round at everyone there and even wishing he could get the\nattention of the three who were looking at the photographs, \"on the\nother hand this really can't be all that important. That follows from\nthe fact that I've been indicted, but can't think of the slightest\noffence for which I could be indicted. But even that is all beside the\npoint, the main question is: Who is issuing the indictment? What office\nis conducting this affair? Are you officials? None of you is wearing a\nuniform, unless what you are wearing\"--here he turned towards Franz--\"is\nmeant to be a uniform, it's actually more of a travelling suit. I\nrequire a clear answer to all these questions, and I'm quite sure that\nonce things have been made clear we can take our leave of each other on\nthe best of terms.\" The supervisor slammed the box of matches down on\nthe table. \"You're making a big mistake,\" he said. \"These gentlemen and\nI have got nothing to do with your business, in fact we know almost\nnothing about you. We could be wearing uniforms as proper and exact as\nyou like and your situation wouldn't be any the worse for it. As to\nwhether you're on a charge, I can't give you any sort of clear answer to\nthat, I don't even know whether you are or not. You're under arrest,\nyou're quite right about that, but I don't know any more than that.\nMaybe these officers have been chit-chatting with you, well if they have\nthat's all it is, chit-chat. I can't give you an answer to your\nquestions, but I can give you a bit of advice: You'd better think less\nabout us and what's going to happen to you, and think a bit more about\nyourself. And stop making all this fuss about your sense of innocence;\nyou don't make such a bad impression, but with all this fuss you're\ndamaging it. And you ought to do a bit less talking, too. Almost\neverything you've said so far has been things we could have taken from\nyour behaviour, even if you'd said no more than a few words. And what\nyou have said has not exactly been in your favour.\"\n\nK. stared at the supervisor. Was this man, probably younger than he was,\nlecturing him like a schoolmaster. Was he being punished for his honesty\nwith a telling off. And was he to learn nothing about the reasons for\nhis arrest or those who were arresting him. He became somewhat cross and\nbegan to walk up and down. No-one stopped him doing this and he pushed\nhis sleeves back, felt his chest, straightened his hair, went over to\nthe three men, said, \"It makes no sense,\" at which these three turned\nround to face him and came towards him with serious expressions. He\nfinally came again to a halt in front of the supervisor's desk. \"State\nAttorney Hasterer is a good friend of mine,\" he said, \"can I telephone\nhim?\" \"Certainly,\" said the supervisor, \"but I don't know what the point\nof that will be, I suppose you must have some private matter you want to\ndiscuss with him.\" \"What the point is?\" shouted K., more disconcerted\nthat cross. \"Who do you think you are? You want to see some point in it\nwhile you're carrying out something as pointless as it could be. It's\nenough to make you cry! These gentlemen first accost me, and now they\nsit or stand about in here and let me be hauled up in front of you.\nWhat point there would be, in telephoning a state attorney when I'm\nostensibly under arrest? Very well, I won't make the telephone call.\"\n\"You can call him if you want to,\" said the supervisor, stretching his\nhand out towards the outer room where the telephone was, \"please, go on,\ndo make your phone call.\" \"No, I don't want to any more,\" said K., and\nwent over to the window. Across the street, the people were still there\nat the window, and it was only now that K. had gone up to his window\nthat they seemed to become uneasy about quietly watching what was going\non. The old couple wanted to get up but the man behind them calmed them\ndown. \"We've got some kind of audience over there,\" called K. to the\nsupervisor, quite loudly, as he pointed out with his forefinger. \"Go\naway,\" he then called across to them. And the three of them did\nimmediately retreat a few steps, the old pair even found themselves\nbehind the man who then concealed them with the breadth of his body and\nseemed, going by the movements of his mouth, to be saying something\nincomprehensible into the distance. They did not disappear entirely,\nthough, but seemed to be waiting for the moment when they could come\nback to the window without being noticed. \"Intrusive, thoughtless\npeople!\" said K. as he turned back into the room. The supervisor may\nhave agreed with him, at least K. thought that was what he saw from the\ncorner of his eye. But it was just as possible that he had not even been\nlistening as he had his hand pressed firmly down on the table and seemed\nto be comparing the length of his fingers. The two policemen were\nsitting on a chest covered with a coloured blanket, rubbing their knees.\nThe three young people had put their hands on their hips and were\nlooking round aimlessly. Everything was still, like in some office that\nhas been forgotten about. \"Now, gentlemen,\" called out K., and for a\nmoment it seemed as if he was carrying all of them on his shoulders, \"it\nlooks like your business with me is over with. In my opinion, it's best\nnow to stop wondering about whether you're proceeding correctly or\nincorrectly, and to bring the matter to a peaceful close with a mutual\nhandshake. If you are of the same opinion, then please....\" and he\nwalked up to the supervisor's desk and held out his hand to him. The\nsupervisor raised his eyes, bit his lip and looked at K.'s outstretched\nhand; K. still believed the supervisor would do as he suggested. But\ninstead, he stood up, picked up a hard round hat that was laying on\nMiss B\u00fcrstner's bed and put it carefully onto his head, using both hands\nas if trying on a new hat. \"Everything seems so simple to you, doesn't\nit,\" he said to K. as he did so, \"so you think we should bring the\nmatter to a peaceful close, do you? No, no, that won't do. Mind you, on\nthe other hand I certainly wouldn't want you to think there's no hope\nfor you. No, why should you think that? You're simply under arrest,\nnothing more than that. That's what I had to tell you, that's what I've\ndone and now I've seen how you've taken it. That's enough for one day\nand we can take our leave of each other, for the time being at least. I\nexpect you'll want to go in to the bank now, won't you?\" \"In to the\nbank?\" asked K., \"I thought I was under arrest.\" K. said this with a\ncertain amount of defiance as, although his handshake had not been\naccepted, he was feeling more independent of all these people,\nespecially since the supervisor had stood up. He was playing with them.\nIf they left, he had decided he would run after them and offer to let\nthem arrest him. That's why he even repeated, \"How can I go in to the\nbank when I'm under arrest?\" \"I see you've misunderstood me,\" said the\nsupervisor who was already at the door. \"It's true that you're under\narrest, but that shouldn't stop you from carrying out your job. And\nthere shouldn't be anything to stop you carrying on with your usual\nlife.\" \"In that case it's not too bad, being under arrest,\" said K., and\nwent up close to the supervisor. \"I never meant it should be anything\nelse,\" he replied. \"It hardly seems to have been necessary to notify me\nof the arrest in that case,\" said K., and went even closer. The others\nhad also come closer. All of them had gathered together into a narrow\nspace by the door. \"That was my duty,\" said the supervisor. \"A silly\nduty,\" said K., unyielding. \"Maybe so,\" replied the supervisor, \"only\ndon't let's waste our time talking on like this. I had assumed you'd be\nwanting to go to the bank. As you're paying close attention to every\nword I'll add this: I'm not forcing you to go to the bank, I'd just\nassumed you wanted to. And to make things easier for you, and to let you\nget to the bank with as little fuss as possible I've put these three\ngentlemen, colleagues of yours, at your disposal.\" \"What's that?\"\nexclaimed K., and looked at the three in astonishment. He could only\nremember seeing them in their group by the photographs, but these\ncharacterless, anaemic young people were indeed officials from his bank,\nnot colleagues of his, that was putting it too high and it showed a gap\nin the omniscience of the supervisor, but they were nonetheless junior\nmembers of staff at the bank. How could K. have failed to see that? How\noccupied he must have been with the supervisor and the policemen not to\nhave recognised these three! Rabensteiner, with his stiff demeanour and\nswinging hands, Kullich, with his blonde hair and deep-set eyes, and\nKaminer, with his involuntary grin caused by chronic muscle spasms.\n\"Good morning,\" said K. after a while, extending his hand to the\ngentlemen as they bowed correctly to him. \"I didn't recognise you at\nall. So, we'll go into work now, shall we?\" The gentlemen laughed and\nnodded enthusiastically, as if that was what they had been waiting for\nall the time, except that K. had left his hat in his room so they all\ndashed, one after another, into the room to fetch it, which caused a\ncertain amount of embarrassment. K. stood where he was and watched them\nthrough the open double doorway, the last to go, of course, was the\napathetic Rabensteiner who had broken into no more than an elegant trot.\nKaminer got to the hat and K., as he often had to do at the bank,\nforcibly reminded himself that the grin was not deliberate, that he in\nfact wasn't able to grin deliberately. At that moment Mrs. Grubach\nopened the door from the hallway into the living room where all the\npeople were. She did not seem to feel guilty about anything at all, and\nK., as often before, looked down at the belt of her apron which, for no\nreason, cut so deeply into her hefty body. Once downstairs, K., with his\nwatch in his hand, decided to take a taxi--he had already been delayed\nby half an hour and there was no need to make the delay any longer.\nKaminer ran to the corner to summon it, and the two others were making\nobvious efforts to keep K. diverted when Kullich pointed to the doorway\nof the house on the other side of the street where the large man with\nthe blonde goatee beard appeared and, a little embarrassed at first at\nletting himself be seen in his full height, stepped back to the wall and\nleant against it. The old couple were probably still on the stairs. K.\nwas cross with Kullich for pointing out this man whom he had already\nseen himself, in fact whom he had been expecting. \"Don't look at him!\"\nhe snapped, without noticing how odd it was to speak to free men in this\nway. But there was no explanation needed anyway as just then the taxi\narrived, they sat inside and set off. Inside the taxi, K. remembered\nthat he had not noticed the supervisor and the policemen leaving--the\nsupervisor had stopped him noticing the three bank staff and now the\nthree bank staff had stopped him noticing the supervisor. This showed\nthat K. was not very attentive, and he resolved to watch himself more\ncarefully in this respect. Nonetheless, he gave it no thought as he\ntwisted himself round and leant over onto the rear shelf of the car to\ncatch sight of the supervisor and the policemen if he could. But he\nturned back round straight away and leant comfortably into the corner of\nthe taxi without even having made the effort to see anyone. Although it\ndid not seem like it, now was just the time when he needed some\nencouragement, but the gentlemen seemed tired just then, Rabensteiner\nlooked out of the car to the right, Kullich to the left and only Kaminer\nwas there with his grin at K.'s service. It would have been inhumane to\nmake fun of that.\n\nThat spring, whenever possible, K. usually spent his evenings after\nwork--he usually stayed in the office until nine o'clock--with a short\nwalk, either by himself or in the company of some of the bank officials,\nand then he would go into a pub where he would sit at the regulars'\ntable with mostly older men until eleven. There were, however, also\nexceptions to this habit, times, for instance, when K. was invited by\nthe bank's manager (whom he greatly respected for his industry and\ntrustworthiness) to go with him for a ride in his car or to eat dinner\nwith him at his large house. K. would also go, once a week, to see a\ngirl called Elsa who worked as a waitress in a wine bar through the\nnight until late in the morning. During the daytime she only received\nvisitors while still in bed.\n\nThat evening, though,--the day had passed quickly with a lot of hard\nwork and many respectful and friendly birthday greetings--K. wanted to\ngo straight home. Each time he had any small break from the day's work\nhe considered, without knowing exactly what he had in mind, that Mrs.\nGrubach's flat seemed to have been put into great disarray by the events\nof that morning, and that it was up to him to put it back into order.\nOnce order had been restored, every trace of those events would have\nbeen erased and everything would take its previous course once more. In\nparticular, there was nothing to fear from the three bank officials,\nthey had immersed themselves back into their paperwork and there was no\nalteration to be seen in them. K. had called each of them, separately or\nall together, into his office that day for no other reason than to\nobserve them; he was always satisfied and had always been able to let\nthem go again.\n\nAt half past nine that evening, when he arrived back in front of the\nbuilding where he lived, he met a young lad in the doorway who was\nstanding there, his legs apart and smoking a pipe. \"Who are you?\"\nimmediately asked K., bringing his face close to the lad's, as it was\nhard to see in the half light of the landing. \"I'm the landlord's son,\nsir,\" answered the lad, taking the pipe from his mouth and stepping to\none side. \"The landlord's son?\" asked K., and impatiently knocked on the\nground with his stick. \"Did you want anything, sir? Would you like me\nto fetch my father?\" \"No, no,\" said K., there was something forgiving\nin his voice, as if the boy had harmed him in some way and he was\nexcusing him. \"It's alright,\" he said then, and went on, but before\ngoing up the stairs he turned round once more.\n\nHe could have gone directly to his room, but as he wanted to speak with\nMrs. Grubach he went straight to her door and knocked. She was sat at\nthe table with a knitted stocking and a pile of old stockings in front\nof her. K. apologised, a little embarrassed at coming so late, but Mrs.\nGrubach was very friendly and did not want to hear any apology, she was\nalways ready to speak to him, he knew very well that he was her best and\nher favourite tenant. K. looked round the room, it looked exactly as it\nusually did, the breakfast dishes, which had been on the table by the\nwindow that morning, had already been cleared away. \"A woman's hands\nwill do many things when no-one's looking,\" he thought, he might himself\nhave smashed all the dishes on the spot but certainly would not have\nbeen able to carry it all out. He looked at Mrs. Grubach with some\ngratitude. \"Why are you working so late?\" he asked. They were now both\nsitting at the table, and K. now and then sank his hands into the pile\nof stockings. \"There's a lot of work to do,\" she said, \"during the day I\nbelong to the tenants; if I'm to sort out my own things there are only\nthe evenings left to me.\" \"I fear I may have caused you some exceptional\nwork today.\" \"How do you mean, Mr. K.?\" she asked, becoming more\ninterested and leaving her work in her lap. \"I mean the men who were\nhere this morning.\" \"Oh, I see,\" she said, and went peacefully back to\nwhat she was doing, \"that was no trouble, not especially.\" K. looked on\nin silence as she took up the knitted stocking once more. She seems\nsurprised at my mentioning it, he thought, she seems to think it's\nimproper for me to mention it. All the more important for me to do so.\nAn old woman is the only person I can speak about it with. \"But it must\nhave caused some work for you,\" he said then, \"but it won't happen\nagain.\" \"No, it can't happen again,\" she agreed, and smiled at K. in a\nway that was almost pained. \"Do you mean that seriously?\" asked K.\n\"Yes,\" she said, more gently, \"but the important thing is you mustn't\ntake it too hard. There are so many awful things happening in the world!\nAs you're being so honest with me, Mr. K., I can admit to you that I\nlistened to a little of what was going on from behind the door, and that\nthose two policemen told me one or two things as well. It's all to do\nwith your happiness, and that's something that's quite close to my\nheart, perhaps more than it should be as I am, after all, only your\nlandlady. Anyway, so I heard one or two things but I can't really say\nthat it's about anything very serious. No. You have been arrested, but\nit's not in the same way as when they arrest a thief. If you're arrested\nin the same way as a thief, then it's bad, but an arrest like this....\nIt seems to me that it's something very complicated--forgive me if I'm\nsaying something stupid--something very complicated that I don't\nunderstand, but something that you don't really need to understand\nanyway.\"\n\n\"There's nothing stupid about what you've said, Mrs. Grubach, or at\nleast I partly agree with you, only, the way I judge the whole thing is\nharsher than yours, and think it's not only not something complicated\nbut simply a fuss about nothing. I was just caught unawares, that's what\nhappened. If I had got up as soon as I was awake without letting myself\nget confused because Anna wasn't there, if I'd got up and paid no regard\nto anyone who might have been in my way and come straight to you, if I'd\ndone something like having my breakfast in the kitchen as an exception,\nasked you to bring my clothes from my room, in short, if I had behaved\nsensibly then nothing more would have happened, everything that was\nwaiting to happen would have been stifled. People are so often\nunprepared. In the bank, for example, I am well prepared, nothing of\nthis sort could possibly happen to me there, I have my own assistant\nthere, there are telephones for internal and external calls in front of\nme on the desk, I continually receive visits from people,\nrepresentatives, officials, but besides that, and most importantly, I'm\nalways occupied with my work, that's to say I'm always alert, it would\neven be a pleasure for me to find myself faced with something of that\nsort. But now it's over with, and I didn't really even want to talk\nabout it any more, only I wanted to hear what you, as a sensible woman,\nthought about it all, and I'm very glad to hear that we're in agreement.\nBut now you must give me your hand, an agreement of this sort needs to\nbe confirmed with a handshake.\"\n\nWill she shake hands with me? The supervisor didn't shake hands, he\nthought, and looked at the woman differently from before, examining her.\nShe stood up, as he had also stood up, and was a little self-conscious,\nshe hadn't been able to understand everything that K. said. As a result\nof this self-consciousness she said something that she certainly did\nnot intend and certainly was not appropriate. \"Don't take it so hard,\nMr. K.,\" she said, with tears in her voice and also, of course,\nforgetting the handshake. \"I didn't know I was taking it hard,\" said K.,\nfeeling suddenly tired and seeing that if this woman did agree with him\nit was of very little value.\n\nBefore going out the door he asked, \"Is Miss B\u00fcrstner home?\" \"No,\" said\nMrs. Grubach, smiling as she gave this simple piece of information,\nsaying something sensible at last. \"She's at the theatre. Did you want\nto see her? Should I give her a message?\" \"I, er, I just wanted to have\na few words with her.\" \"I'm afraid I don't know when she's coming in;\nshe usually gets back late when she's been to the theatre.\" \"It really\ndoesn't matter,\" said K. his head hanging as he turned to the door to\nleave, \"I just wanted to give her my apology for taking over her room\ntoday.\" \"There's no need for that, Mr. K., you're too conscientious, the\nyoung lady doesn't know anything about it, she hasn't been home since\nearly this morning and everything's been tidied up again, you can see\nfor yourself.\" And she opened the door to Miss B\u00fcrstner's room. \"Thank\nyou, I'll take your word for it,\" said K., but went nonetheless over to\nthe open door. The moon shone quietly into the unlit room. As far as\ncould be seen, everything was indeed in its place, not even the blouse\nwas hanging on the window handle. The pillows on the bed looked\nremarkably plump as they lay half in the moonlight. \"Miss B\u00fcrstner often\ncomes home late,\" said K., looking at Mrs. Grubach as if that were her\nresponsibility. \"That's how young people are!\" said Mrs. Grubach to\nexcuse herself. \"Of course, of course,\" said K., \"but it can be taken\ntoo far.\" \"Yes, it can be,\" said Mrs. Grubach, \"you're so right, Mr. K.\nPerhaps it is in this case. I certainly wouldn't want to say anything\nnasty about Miss B\u00fcrstner, she is a good, sweet girl, friendly, tidy,\npunctual, works hard, I appreciate all that very much, but one thing is\ntrue, she ought to have more pride, be a bit less forthcoming. Twice\nthis month already, in the street over the way, I've seen her with a\ndifferent gentleman. I really don't like saying this, you're the only\none I've said this to, Mr. K., I swear to God, but I'm going to have no\nchoice but to have a few words with Miss B\u00fcrstner about it myself. And\nit's not the only thing about her that I'm worried about.\" \"Mrs.\nGrubach, you are on quite the wrong track,\" said K., so angry that he\nwas hardly able to hide it, \"and you have moreover misunderstood what I\nwas saying about Miss B\u00fcrstner, that is not what I meant. In fact I warn\nyou quite directly not to say anything to her, you are quite mistaken, I\nknow Miss B\u00fcrstner very well and there is no truth at all in what you\nsay. And what's more, perhaps I'm going to far, I don't want to get in\nyour way, say to her whatever you see fit. Good night.\" \"Mr. K.,\" said\nMrs. Grubach as if asking him for something and hurrying to his door\nwhich he had already opened, \"I don't want to speak to Miss B\u00fcrstner at\nall, not yet, of course I'll continue to keep an eye on her but you're\nthe only one I've told what I know. And it is, after all something that\neveryone who lets rooms has to do if she's to keep the house decent,\nthat's all I'm trying to do.\" \"Decent!\" called out K. through the crack\nin the door, \"if you want to keep the house decent you'll first have to\ngive me notice.\" Then he slammed the door shut, there was a gentle\nknocking to which he paid no more attention.\n\nHe did not feel at all like going to bed, so he decided to stay up, and\nthis would also give him the chance to find out when Miss B\u00fcrstner would\narrive home. Perhaps it would also still be possible, even if a little\ninappropriate, to have a few words with her. As he lay there by the\nwindow, pressing his hands to his tired eyes, he even thought for a\nmoment that he might punish Mrs. Grubach by persuading Miss B\u00fcrstner to\ngive in her notice at the same time as he would. But he immediately\nrealised that that would be shockingly excessive, and there would even\nbe the suspicion that he was moving house because of the incidents of\nthat morning. Nothing would have been more nonsensical and, above all,\nmore pointless and contemptible.\n\nWhen he had become tired of looking out onto the empty street he\nslightly opened the door to the living room so that he could see anyone\nwho entered the flat from where he was and lay down on the couch. He lay\nthere, quietly smoking a cigar, until about eleven o'clock. He wasn't\nable to hold out longer than that, and went a little way into the\nhallway as if in that way he could make Miss B\u00fcrstner arrive sooner. He\nhad no particular desire for her, he could not even remember what she\nlooked like, but now he wanted to speak to her and it irritated him that\nher late arrival home meant this day would be full of unease and\ndisorder right to its very end. It was also her fault that he had not\nhad any dinner that evening and that he had been unable to visit Elsa\nas he had intended. He could still make up for both of those things,\nthough, if he went to the wine bar where Elsa worked. He wanted to do so\neven later, after the discussion with Miss B\u00fcrstner.\n\nIt was already gone half past eleven when someone could be heard in the\nstairway. K., who had been lost in his thoughts in the hallway, walking\nup and down loudly as if it were his own room, fled behind his door.\nMiss B\u00fcrstner had arrived. Shivering, she pulled a silk shawl over her\nslender shoulders as she locked the door. The next moment she would\ncertainly go into her room, where K. ought not to intrude in the middle\nof the night; that meant he would have to speak to her now, but,\nunfortunately, he had not put the electric light on in his room so that\nwhen he stepped out of the dark it would give the impression of being an\nattack and would certainly, at the very least, have been quite alarming.\nThere was no time to lose, and in his helplessness he whispered through\nthe crack of the door, \"Miss B\u00fcrstner.\" It sounded like he was pleading\nwith her, not calling to her. \"Is there someone there?\" asked Miss\nB\u00fcrstner, looking round with her eyes wide open. \"It's me,\" said K. and\ncame out. \"Oh, Mr. K.!\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner with a smile. \"Good Evening,\"\nand offered him her hand. \"I wanted to have a word with you, if you\nwould allow me?\" \"Now?\" asked Miss B\u00fcrstner, \"does it have to be now? It\nis a little odd, isn't it?\" \"I've been waiting for you since nine\no'clock.\" \"Well, I was at the theatre, I didn't know anything about you\nwaiting for me.\" \"The reason I need to speak to you only came up\ntoday.\" \"I see, well I don't see why not, I suppose, apart from being\nso tired I could drop. Come into my room for a few minutes then. We\ncertainly can't talk out here, we'd wake everyone up and I think that\nwould be more unpleasant for us than for them. Wait here till I've put\nthe light on in my room, and then turn the light down out here.\" K. did\nas he was told, and then even waited until Miss B\u00fcrstner came out of her\nroom and quietly invited him, once more, to come in. \"Sit down,\" she\nsaid, indicating the ottoman, while she herself remained standing by\nthe bedpost despite the tiredness she had spoken of; she did not even\ntake off her hat, which was small but decorated with an abundance of\nflowers. \"What is it you wanted, then? I'm really quite curious.\" She\ngently crossed her legs. \"I expect you'll say,\" K. began, \"that the\nmatter really isn't all that urgent and we don't need to talk about it\nright now, but....\" \"I never listen to introductions,\" said Miss\nB\u00fcrstner. \"That makes my job so much easier,\" said K. \"This morning, to\nsome extent through my fault, your room was made a little untidy, this\nhappened because of people I did not know and against my will but, as I\nsaid, because of my fault; I wanted to apologise for it.\" \"My room?\"\nasked Miss B\u00fcrstner, and instead of looking round the room scrutinised\nK. \"It is true,\" said K., and now, for the first time, they looked each\nother in the eyes, \"there's no point in saying exactly how this came\nabout.\" \"But that's the interesting thing about it,\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner.\n\"No,\" said K. \"Well then,\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner, \"I don't want to force my\nway into any secrets, if you insist that it's of no interest I won't\ninsist. I'm quite happy to forgive you for it, as you ask, especially as\nI can't see anything at all that's been left untidy.\" With her hand laid\nflat on her lower hip, she made a tour around the room. At the mat where\nthe photographs were she stopped. \"Look at this!\" she cried. \"My\nphotographs really have been put in the wrong places. Oh, that's\nhorrible. Someone really has been in my room without permission.\" K.\nnodded, and quietly cursed Kaminer who worked at his bank and who was\nalways active doing things that had neither use nor purpose. \"It is\nodd,\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner, \"that I'm forced to forbid you to do something\nthat you ought to have forbidden yourself to do, namely to come into my\nroom when I'm not here.\" \"But I did explain to you,\" said K., and went\nover to join her by the photographs, \"that it wasn't me who interfered\nwith your photographs; but as you don't believe me I'll have to admit\nthat the investigating committee brought along three bank employees with\nthem, one of them must have touched your photographs and as soon as I\nget the chance I'll ask to have him dismissed from the bank. Yes, there\nwas an investigating committee here,\" added K., as the young lady was\nlooking at him enquiringly. \"Because of you?\" she asked. \"Yes,\" answered\nK. \"No!\" the lady cried with a laugh. \"Yes, they were,\" said K., \"you\nbelieve that I'm innocent then, do you?\" \"Well now, innocent ...\" said\nthe lady, \"I don't want to start making any pronouncements that might\nhave serious consequences, I don't really know you after all, it means\nthey're dealing with a serious criminal if they send an investigating\ncommittee straight out to get him. But you're not in custody now--at\nleast I take it you've not escaped from prison considering that you seem\nquite calm--so you can't have committed any crime of that sort.\" \"Yes,\"\nsaid K., \"but it might be that the investigating committee could see\nthat I'm innocent, or not so guilty as had been supposed.\" \"Yes, that's\ncertainly a possibility,\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner, who seemed very\ninterested. \"Listen,\" said K., \"you don't have much experience in legal\nmatters.\" \"No, that's true, I don't,\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner, \"and I've\noften regretted it, as I'd like to know everything and I'm very\ninterested in legal matters. There's something peculiarly attractive\nabout the law, isn't there. But I'll certainly be perfecting my\nknowledge in this area, as next month I start work in a legal office.\"\n\"That's very good,\" said K., \"that means you'll be able to give me some\nhelp with my trial.\" \"That could well be,\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner, \"why not?\nI like to make use of what I know.\" \"I mean it quite seriously,\" said\nK., \"or at least, half seriously, as you do. This affair is too petty to\ncall in a lawyer, but I could make good use of someone who could give me\nadvice.\" \"Yes, but if I'm to give you advice I'll have to know what it's\nall about,\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner. \"That's exactly the problem,\" said K.,\n\"I don't know that myself.\" \"So you have been making fun of me, then,\"\nsaid Miss B\u00fcrstner exceedingly disappointed, \"you really ought not to\ntry something like that on at this time of night.\" And she stepped away\nfrom the photographs where they had stood so long together. \"Miss\nB\u00fcrstner, no,\" said K., \"I'm not making fun of you. Please believe me!\nI've already told you everything I know. More than I know, in fact, as\nit actually wasn't even an investigating committee, that's just what I\ncalled them because I don't know what else to call them. There was no\ncross questioning at all, I was merely arrested, but by a committee.\"\nMiss B\u00fcrstner sat on the ottoman and laughed again. \"What was it like\nthen?\" she asked. \"It was terrible,\" said K., although his mind was no\nlonger on the subject, he had become totally absorbed by Miss B\u00fcrstner's\ngaze who was supporting her chin on one hand--the elbow rested on the\ncushion of the ottoman--and slowly stroking her hip with the other.\n\"That's too vague,\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner. \"What's too vague?\" asked K.\nThen he remembered himself and asked, \"Would you like me to show you\nwhat it was like?\" He wanted to move in some way but did not want to\nleave. \"I'm already tired,\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner. \"You arrived back so\nlate,\" said K. \"Now you've started telling me off. Well I suppose I\ndeserve it as I shouldn't have let you in here in the first place, and\nit turns out there wasn't even any point.\" \"Oh, there was a point,\nyou'll see now how important a point it was,\" said K. \"May I move this\ntable away from your bedside and put it here?\" \"What do you think you're\ndoing?\" said Miss B\u00fcrstner. \"Of course you can't!\" \"In that case I\ncan't show you,\" said K., quite upset, as if Miss B\u00fcrstner had committed\nsome incomprehensible offence against him. \"Alright then, if you need it\nto show what you mean, just take the bedside table then,\" said Miss\nB\u00fcrstner, and after a short pause added in a weak voice, \"I'm so tired\nI'm allowing more than I ought to.\" K. put the little table in the\nmiddle of the room and sat down behind it. \"You have to get a proper\nidea of where the people were situated, it is very interesting. I'm the\nsupervisor, sitting over there on the chest are two policemen, standing\nnext to the photographs there are three young people. Hanging on the\nhandle of the window is a white blouse--I just mention that by the way.\nAnd now it begins. Ah yes, I'm forgetting myself, the most important\nperson of all, so I'm standing here in front of the table. The\nsupervisor is sitting extremely comfortably with his legs crossed and\nhis arm hanging over the backrest here like some layabout. And now it\nreally does begin. The supervisor calls out as if he had to wake me up,\nin fact he shouts at me, I'm afraid, if I'm to make it clear to you,\nI'll have to shout as well, and it's nothing more than my name that he\nshouts out.\" Miss B\u00fcrstner, laughing as she listened to him, laid her\nforefinger on her mouth so that K. would not shout, but it was too late.\nK. was too engrossed in his role and slowly called out, \"Mara K.!\" It\nwas not as loud as he had threatened, but nonetheless, once he had\nsuddenly called it out, the cry seemed gradually to spread itself all\nround the room.\n\nThere was a series of loud, curt and regular knocks at the door of the\nadjoining room. Miss B\u00fcrstner went pale and laid her hand on her heart.\nK. was especially startled, as for a moment he had been quite unable to\nthink of anything other than the events of that morning and the girl for\nwhom he was performing them. He had hardly pulled himself together when\nhe jumped over to Miss B\u00fcrstner and took her hand. \"Don't be afraid,\" he\nwhispered, \"I'll put everything right. But who can it be? It's only the\nliving room next door, nobody sleeps in there.\" \"Yes they do,\" whispered\nMiss B\u00fcrstner into K.'s ear, \"a nephew of Mrs. Grubach's, a captain in\nthe army, has been sleeping there since yesterday. There's no other room\nfree. I'd forgotten about it too. Why did you have to shout like that?\nYou've made me quite upset.\" \"There is no reason for it,\" said K., and,\nnow as she sank back onto the cushion, kissed her forehead. \"Go away, go\naway,\" she said, hurriedly sitting back up, \"get out of here, go, what\nis it you want, he's listening at the door, he can hear everything.\nYou're causing me so much trouble!\" \"I won't go,\" said K., \"until you've\ncalmed down a bit. Come over into the other corner of the room, he\nwon't be able to hear us there.\" She let him lead her there. \"Don't\nforget,\" he said, \"although this might be unpleasant for you you're not\nin any real danger. You know how much esteem Mrs. Grubach has for me,\nshe's the one who will make all the decisions in this, especially as the\ncaptain is her nephew, but she believes everything I say without\nquestion. What's more, she has borrowed a large sum of money from me and\nthat makes her dependent on me. I will confirm whatever you say to\nexplain our being here together, however inappropriate it might be, and\nI guarantee to make sure that Mrs. Grubach will not only say she\nbelieves the explanation in public but will believe it truly and\nsincerely. You will have no need to consider me in any way. If you wish\nto let it be known that I have attacked you then Mrs. Grubach will be\ninformed of such and she will believe it without even losing her trust\nin me, that's how much respect she has for me.\" Miss B\u00fcrstner looked at\nthe floor in front of her, quiet and a little sunk in on herself. \"Why\nwould Mrs. Grubach not believe that I've attacked you?\" added K. He\nlooked at her hair in front of him, parted, bunched down, reddish and\nfirmly held in place. He thought she would look up at him, but without\nchanging her manner she said, \"Forgive me, but it was the suddenness of\nthe knocking that startled me so much, not so much what the consequences\nof the captain being here might be. It was all so quiet after you'd\nshouted, and then there was the knocking, that's what made me so\nshocked, and I was sitting right by the door, the knocking was right\nnext to me. Thank you for your suggestions, but I won't accept them. I\ncan bear the responsibility for anything that happens in my room myself,\nand I can do so with anyone. I'm surprised you don't realise just how\ninsulting your suggestions are and what they imply about me, although I\ncertainly acknowledge your good intentions. But now, please go, leave me\nalone, I need you to go now even more than I did earlier. The couple of\nminutes you asked for have grown into half an hour, more than half an\nhour now.\" K. took hold of her hand, and then of her wrist, \"You're not\ncross with me, though?\" he said. She pulled her hand away and answered,\n\"No, no, I'm never cross with anyone.\" He grasped her wrist once more,\nshe tolerated it now and, in that way, led him to the door. He had\nfully intended to leave. But when he reached the door he came to a halt\nas if he hadn't expected to find a door there, Miss B\u00fcrstner made use of\nthat moment to get herself free, open the door, slip out into the\nhallway and gently say to K. from there, \"Now, come along, please.\nLook,\" she pointed to the captain's door, from under which there was a\nlight shining, \"he's put a light on and he's laughing at us.\" \"Alright,\nI'm coming,\" said K., moved forward, took hold of her, kissed her on\nthe mouth and then over her whole face like a thirsty animal lapping\nwith its tongue when it eventually finds water. He finally kissed her on\nher neck and her throat and left his lips pressed there for a long time.\nHe did not look up until there was a noise from the captain's room.\n\"I'll go now,\" he said, he wanted to address Miss B\u00fcrstner by her\nChristian name, but did not know it. She gave him a tired nod, offered\nhim her hand to kiss as she turned away as if she did not know what she\nwas doing, and went back into her room with her head bowed. A short\nwhile later, K. was lying in his bed. He very soon went to sleep, but\nbefore he did he thought a little while about his behaviour, he was\nsatisfied with it but felt some surprise that he was not more satisfied;\nhe was seriously worried about Miss B\u00fcrstner because of the captain.\n\n\n\n\nChapter Two\n\nFirst Cross-examination\n\n\nK. was informed by telephone that there would be a small hearing\nconcerning his case the following Sunday. He was made aware that these\ncross examinations would follow one another regularly, perhaps not every\nweek but quite frequently. On the one hand it was in everyone's interest\nto bring proceedings quickly to their conclusion, but on the other hand\nevery aspect of the examinations had to be carried out thoroughly\nwithout lasting too long because of the associated stress. For these\nreasons, it had been decided to hold a series of brief examinations\nfollowing on one after another. Sunday had been chosen as the day for\nthe hearings so that K. would not be disturbed in his professional work.\nIt was assumed that he would be in agreement with this, but if he wished\nfor another date then, as far as possible, he would be accommodated.\nCross-examinations could even be held in the night, for instance, but K.\nwould probably not be fresh enough at that time. Anyway, as long as K.\nmade no objection, the hearing would be left on Sundays. It was a matter\nof course that he would have to appear without fail, there was probably\nno need to point this out to him. He would be given the number of the\nbuilding where he was to present himself, which was in a street in a\nsuburb well away from the city centre which K. had never been to before.\n\nOnce he had received this notice, K. hung up the receiver without giving\nan answer; he had decided immediately to go there that Sunday, it was\ncertainly necessary, proceedings had begun and he had to face up to it,\nand this first examination would probably also be the last. He was still\nstanding in thought by the telephone when he heard the voice of the\ndeputy director behind him--he wanted to use the telephone but K. stood\nin his way. \"Bad news?\" asked the deputy director casually, not in order\nto find anything out but just to get K. away from the device. \"No, no,\"\nsaid K., he stepped to one side but did not go away entirely. The deputy\ndirector picked up the receiver and, as he waited for his connection,\nturned away from it and said to K., \"One question, Mr. K.: Would you\nlike to give me the pleasure of joining me on my sailing boat on Sunday\nmorning? There's quite a few people coming, you're bound to know some\nof them. One of them is Hasterer, the state attorney. Would you like to\ncome along? Do come along!\" K. tried to pay attention to what the\ndeputy director was saying. It was of no small importance for him, as\nthis invitation from the deputy director, with whom he had never got on\nvery well, meant that he was trying to improve his relations with him.\nIt showed how important K. had become in the bank and how its second\nmost important official seemed to value his friendship, or at least his\nimpartiality. He was only speaking at the side of the telephone receiver\nwhile he waited for his connection, but in giving this invitation the\ndeputy director was humbling himself. But K. would have to humiliate him\na second time as a result, he said, \"Thank you very much, but I'm afraid\nI will have no time on Sunday, I have a previous obligation.\" \"Pity,\"\nsaid the deputy director, and turned to the telephone conversation that\nhad just been connected. It was not a short conversation, but K.\nremained standing confused by the instrument all the time it was going\non. It was only when the deputy director hung up that he was shocked\ninto awareness and said, in order to partially excuse his standing there\nfor no reason, \"I've just received a telephone call, there's somewhere I\nneed to go, but they forgot to tell me what time.\" \"Ask them then,\" said\nthe deputy director. \"It's not that important,\" said K., although in\nthat way his earlier excuse, already weak enough, was made even weaker.\nAs he went, the deputy director continued to speak about other things.\nK. forced himself to answer, but his thoughts were mainly about that\nSunday, how it would be best to get there for nine o'clock in the\nmorning as that was the time that courts always start work on weekdays.\n\nThe weather was dull on Sunday. K. was very tired, as he had stayed out\ndrinking until late in the night celebrating with some of the regulars,\nand he had almost overslept. He dressed hurriedly, without the time to\nthink and assemble the various plans he had worked out during the week.\nWith no breakfast, he rushed to the suburb he had been told about. Oddly\nenough, although he had little time to look around him, he came across\nthe three bank officials involved in his case, Rabensteiner, Kullich and\nKaminer. The first two were travelling in a tram that went across K.'s\nroute, but Kaminer sat on the terrace of a cafe and leant curiously\nover the wall as K. came over. All of them seemed to be looking at him,\nsurprised at seeing their superior running; it was a kind of pride that\nmade K. want to go on foot, this was his affair and the idea of any help\nfrom strangers, however slight, was repulsive to him, he also wanted to\navoid asking for anyone's help because that would initiate them into the\naffair even if only slightly. And after all, he had no wish at all to\nhumiliate himself before the committee by being too punctual. Anyway,\nnow he was running so that he would get there by nine o'clock if at all\npossible, even though he had no appointment for this time.\n\nHe had thought that he would recognise the building from a distance by\nsome kind of sign, without knowing exactly what the sign would look\nlike, or from some particular kind of activity outside the entrance. K.\nhad been told that the building was in Juliusstrasse, but when he stood\nat the street's entrance it consisted on each side of almost nothing but\nmonotonous, grey constructions, tall blocks of flats occupied by poor\npeople. Now, on a Sunday morning, most of the windows were occupied, men\nin their shirtsleeves leant out smoking, or carefully and gently held\nsmall children on the sills. Other windows were piled up with bedding,\nabove which the dishevelled head of a woman would briefly appear. People\ncalled out to each other across the street, one of the calls provoked a\nloud laugh about K. himself. It was a long street, and spaced evenly\nalong it were small shops below street level, selling various kinds of\nfoodstuffs, which you reached by going down a few steps. Women went in\nand out of them or stood chatting on the steps. A fruitmonger, taking\nhis goods up to the windows, was just as inattentive as K. and nearly\nknocked him down with his cart. Just then, a gramophone, which in better\nparts of town would have been seen as worn out, began to play some\nmurderous tune.\n\nK. went further into the street, slowly, as if he had plenty of time\nnow, or as if the examining magistrate were looking at him from one of\nthe windows and therefore knew that K. had found his way there. It was\nshortly after nine. The building was quite far down the street, it\ncovered so much area it was almost extraordinary, and the gateway in\nparticular was tall and long. It was clearly intended for delivery\nwagons belonging to the various warehouses all round the yard which were\nnow locked up and carried the names of companies some of which K. knew\nfrom his work at the bank. In contrast with his usual habits, he\nremained standing a while at the entrance to the yard taking in all\nthese external details. Near him, there was a bare-footed man sitting on\na crate and reading a newspaper. There were two lads swinging on a hand\ncart. In front of a pump stood a weak, young girl in a bedjacket who, as\nthe water flowed into her can, looked at K. There was a piece of rope\nstretched between two windows in a corner of the yard, with some washing\nhanging on it to dry. A man stood below it calling out instructions to\ndirect the work being done.\n\nK. went over to the stairway to get to the room where the hearing was to\ntake place, but then stood still again as besides these steps he could\nsee three other stairway entrances, and there also seemed to be a small\npassageway at the end of the yard leading into a second yard. It\nirritated him that he had not been given more precise directions to the\nroom, it meant they were either being especially neglectful with him or\nespecially indifferent, and he decided to make that clear to them very\nloudly and very unambiguously. In the end he decided to climb up the\nstairs, his thoughts playing on something that he remembered the\npoliceman, Willem, saying to him; that the court is attracted by the\nguilt, from which it followed that the courtroom must be on the stairway\nthat K. selected by chance.\n\nAs he went up he disturbed a large group of children playing on the\nstairs who looked at him as he stepped through their rows. \"Next time I\ncome here,\" he said to himself, \"I must either bring sweets with me to\nmake them like me or a stick to hit them with.\" Just before he reached\nthe first landing he even had to wait a little while until a ball had\nfinished its movement, two small lads with sly faces like grown-up\nscoundrels held him by his trouser-legs until it had; if he were to\nshake them off he would have to hurt them, and he was afraid of what\nnoise they would make by shouting.\n\nOn the first floor, his search began for real. He still felt unable to\nask for the investigating committee, and so he invented a joiner called\nLanz--that name occurred to him because the captain, Mrs. Grubach's\nnephew, was called Lanz--so that he could ask at every flat whether Lanz\nthe joiner lived there and thus obtain a chance to look into the rooms.\nIt turned out, though, that that was mostly possible without further\nado, as almost all the doors were left open and the children ran in and\nout. Most of them were small, one-windowed rooms where they also did the\ncooking. Many women held babies in one arm and worked at the stove with\nthe other. Half grown girls, who seemed to be dressed in just their\npinafores worked hardest running to and fro. In every room, the beds\nwere still in use by people who were ill, or still asleep, or people\nstretched out on them in their clothes. K. knocked at the flats where\nthe doors were closed and asked whether Lanz the joiner lived there. It\nwas usually a woman who opened the door, heard the enquiry and turned to\nsomebody in the room who would raise himself from the bed. \"The\ngentleman's asking if a joiner called Lanz, lives here.\" \"A joiner,\ncalled Lanz?\" he would ask from the bed.\" \"That's right,\" K. would say,\nalthough it was clear that the investigating committee was not to be\nfound there, and so his task was at an end. There were many who thought\nit must be very important for K. to find Lanz the joiner and thought\nlong about it, naming a joiner who was not called Lanz or giving a name\nthat had some vague similarity with Lanz, or they asked neighbours or\naccompanied K. to a door a long way away where they thought someone of\nthat sort might live in the back part of the building or where someone\nwould be who could advise K. better than they could themselves. K.\neventually had to give up asking if he did not want to be led all round\nfrom floor to floor in this way. He regretted his initial plan, which\nhad at first seemed so practical to him. As he reached the fifth floor,\nhe decided to give up the search, took his leave of a friendly, young\nworker who wanted to lead him on still further and went down the stairs.\nBut then the thought of how much time he was wasting made him cross, he\nwent back again and knocked at the first door on the fifth floor. The\nfirst thing he saw in the small room was a large clock on the wall which\nalready showed ten o'clock. \"Is there a joiner called Lanz who lives\nhere?\" he asked. \"Pardon?\" said a young woman with black, shining eyes\nwho was, at that moment, washing children's underclothes in a bucket.\nShe pointed her wet hand towards the open door of the adjoining room.\n\nK. thought he had stepped into a meeting. A medium sized, two windowed\nroom was filled with the most diverse crowd of people--nobody paid any\nattention to the person who had just entered. Close under its ceiling it\nwas surrounded by a gallery which was also fully occupied and where the\npeople could only stand bent down with their heads and their backs\ntouching the ceiling. K., who found the air too stuffy, stepped out\nagain and said to the young woman, who had probably misunderstood what\nhe had said, \"I asked for a joiner, someone by the name of Lanz.\" \"Yes,\"\nsaid the woman, \"please go on in.\" K. would probably not have followed\nher if the woman had not gone up to him, taken hold of the door handle\nand said, \"I'll have to close the door after you, no-one else will be\nallowed in.\" \"Very sensible,\" said K., \"but it's too full already.\" But\nthen he went back in anyway. He passed through between two men who were\ntalking beside the door--one of them held both hands far out in front of\nhimself making the movements of counting out money, the other looked him\nclosely in the eyes--and someone took him by the hand. It was a small,\nred-faced youth. \"Come in, come in,\" he said. K. let himself be led by\nhim, and it turned out that there was--surprisingly in a densely packed\ncrowd of people moving to and fro--a narrow passage which may have been\nthe division between two factions; this idea was reinforced by the fact\nthat in the first few rows to the left and the right of him there was\nhardly any face looking in his direction, he saw nothing but the backs\nof people directing their speech and their movements only towards\nmembers of their own side. Most of them were dressed in black, in old,\nlong, formal frock coats that hung down loosely around them. These\nclothes were the only thing that puzzled K., as he would otherwise have\ntaken the whole assembly for a local political meeting.\n\nAt the other end of the hall where K. had been led there was a little\ntable set at an angle on a very low podium which was as overcrowded as\neverywhere else, and behind the table, near the edge of the podium, sat\na small, fat, wheezing man who was talking with someone behind him. This\nsecond man was standing with his legs crossed and his elbows on the\nbackrest of the chair, provoking much laughter. From time to time he\nthrew his arm in the air as if doing a caricature of someone. The youth\nwho was leading K. had some difficulty in reporting to the man. He had\nalready tried twice to tell him something, standing on tiptoe, but\nwithout getting the man's attention as he sat there above him. It was\nonly when one of the people up on the podium drew his attention to the\nyouth that the man turned to him and leant down to hear what it was he\nquietly said. Then he pulled out his watch and quickly looked over at K.\n\"You should have been here one hour and five minutes ago,\" he said. K.\nwas going to give him a reply but had no time to do so, as hardly had\nthe man spoken than a general muttering arose all over the right hand\nside of the hall. \"You should have been here one hour and five minutes\nago,\" the man now repeated, raising his voice this time, and quickly\nlooked round the hall beneath him. The muttering also became immediately\nlouder and, as the man said nothing more, died away only gradually. Now\nthe hall was much quieter than when K. had entered. Only the people up\nin the gallery had not stopped passing remarks. As far as could be\ndistinguished, up in the half-darkness, dust and haze, they seemed to be\nless well dressed than those below. Many of them had brought pillows\nthat they had put between their heads and the ceiling so that they would\nnot hurt themselves pressed against it.\n\nK. had decided he would do more watching than talking, so he did not\ndefend himself for supposedly having come late, and simply said, \"Well\nmaybe I have arrived late, I'm here now.\" There followed loud applause,\nonce more from the right hand side of the hall. Easy people to get on\nyour side, thought K., and was bothered only by the quiet from the left\nhand side which was directly behind him and from which there was\napplause from only a few individuals. He wondered what he could say to\nget all of them to support him together or, if that were not possible,\nto at least get the support of the others for a while.\n\n\"Yes,\" said the man, \"but I'm now no longer under any obligation to hear\nyour case\"--there was once more a muttering, but this time it was\nmisleading as the man waved the people's objections aside with his hand\nand continued--\"I will, however, as an exception, continue with it\ntoday. But you should never arrive late like this again. And now, step\nforward!\" Someone jumped down from the podium so that there would be a\nplace free for K., and K. stepped up onto it. He stood pressed closely\nagainst the table, the press of the crowd behind him was so great that\nhe had to press back against it if he did not want to push the judge's\ndesk down off the podium and perhaps the judge along with it.\n\nThe judge, however, paid no attention to that but sat very comfortably\non his chair and, after saying a few words to close his discussion with\nthe man behind him, reached for a little note book, the only item on his\ndesk. It was like an old school exercise book and had become quite\nmisshapen from much thumbing. \"Now then,\" said the judge, thumbing\nthrough the book. He turned to K. with the tone of someone who knows his\nfacts and said, \"you are a house painter?\" \"No,\" said K., \"I am the\nchief clerk in a large bank.\" This reply was followed by laughter among\nthe right hand faction down in the hall, it was so hearty that K.\ncouldn't stop himself joining in with it. The people supported\nthemselves with their hands on their knees and shook as if suffering a\nserious attack of coughing. Even some of those in the gallery were\nlaughing. The judge had become quite cross but seemed to have no power\nover those below him in the hall, he tried to reduce what harm had been\ndone in the gallery and jumped up threatening them, his eyebrows, until\nthen hardly remarkable, pushed themselves up and became big, black and\nbushy over his eyes.\n\nThe left hand side of the hall was still quiet, though, the people stood\nthere in rows with their faces looking towards the podium listening to\nwhat was being said there, they observed the noise from the other side\nof the hall with the same quietness and even allowed some individuals\nfrom their own ranks, here and there, to go forward into the other\nfaction. The people in the left faction were not only fewer in number\nthan the right but probably were no more important than them, although\ntheir behaviour was calmer and that made it seem like they were. When K.\nnow began to speak he was convinced he was doing it in the same way as\nthem.\n\n\"Your question, My Lord, as to whether I am a house painter--in fact\neven more than that, you did not ask at all but merely imposed it on\nme--is symptomatic of the whole way these proceedings against me are\nbeing carried out. Perhaps you will object that there are no proceedings\nagainst me. You will be quite right, as there are proceedings only if I\nacknowledge that there are. But, for the moment, I do acknowledge it,\nout of pity for yourselves to a large extent. It's impossible not to\nobserve all this business without feeling pity. I don't say things are\nbeing done without due care but I would like to make it clear that it is\nI who make the acknowledgement.\"\n\nK. stopped speaking and looked down into the hall. He had spoken\nsharply, more sharply than he had intended, but he had been quite right.\nIt should have been rewarded with some applause here and there but\neverything was quiet, they were all clearly waiting for what would\nfollow, perhaps the quietness was laying the ground for an outbreak of\nactivity that would bring this whole affair to an end. It was somewhat\ndisturbing that just then the door at the end of the hall opened, the\nyoung washerwoman, who seemed to have finished her work, came in and,\ndespite all her caution, attracted the attention of some of the people\nthere. It was only the judge who gave K. any direct pleasure, as he\nseemed to have been immediately struck by K.'s words. Until then, he had\nlistened to him standing, as K.'s speech had taken him by surprise while\nhe was directing his attention to the gallery. Now, in the pause, he sat\ndown very slowly, as if he did not want anyone to notice. He took out\nthe notebook again, probably so that he could give the impression of\nbeing calmer.\n\n\"That won't help you, sir,\" continued K., \"even your little book will\nonly confirm what I say.\" K. was satisfied to hear nothing but his own\nquiet words in this room full of strangers, and he even dared casually\nto pick up the examining judge's notebook and, touching it only with the\ntips of his fingers as if it were something revolting, lifted it in the\nair, holding it just by one of the middle pages so that the others on\neach side of it, closely written, blotted and yellowing, flapped down.\n\"Those are the official notes of the examining judge,\" he said, and let\nthe notebook fall down onto the desk. \"You can read in your book as much\nas you like, sir, I really don't have anything in this charge book to be\nafraid of, even though I don't have access to it as I wouldn't want it\nin my hand, I can only touch it with two fingers.\" The judge grabbed the\nnotebook from where it had fallen on the desk--which could only have\nbeen a sign of his deep humiliation, or at least that is how it must\nhave been perceived--tried to tidy it up a little, and held it once more\nin front of himself in order to read from it.\n\nThe people in the front row looked up at him, showing such tension on\ntheir faces that he looked back down at them for some time. Every one of\nthem was an old man, some of them with white beards. Could they perhaps\nbe the crucial group who could turn the whole assembly one way or the\nother. They had sunk into a state of motionlessness while K. gave his\noration, and it had not been possible to raise them from this passivity\neven when the judge was being humiliated. \"What has happened to me,\"\ncontinued K., with less of the vigour he had had earlier, he continually\nscanned the faces in the first row, and this gave his address a somewhat\nnervous and distracted character, \"what has happened to me is not just\nan isolated case. If it were it would not be of much importance as it's\nnot of much importance to me, but it is a symptom of proceedings which\nare carried out against many. It's on behalf of them that I stand here\nnow, not for myself alone.\"\n\nWithout having intended it, he had raised his voice. Somewhere in the\nhall, someone raised his hands and applauded him shouting, \"Bravo! Why\nnot then? Bravo! Again I say, Bravo!\" Some of the men in the first row\ngroped around in their beards, none of them looked round to see who was\nshouting. Not even K. thought him of any importance but it did raise his\nspirits; he no longer thought it at all necessary that all of those in\nthe hall should applaud him, it was enough if the majority of them began\nto think about the matter and if only one of them, now and then, was\npersuaded.\n\n\"I'm not trying to be a successful orator,\" said K. after this thought,\n\"that's probably more than I'm capable of anyway. I'm sure the examining\njudge can speak far better than I can, it is part of his job after all.\nAll that I want is a public discussion of a public wrong. Listen: ten\ndays ago I was placed under arrest, the arrest itself is something I\nlaugh about but that's beside the point. They came for me in the morning\nwhen I was still in bed. Maybe the order had been given to arrest some\nhouse painter--that seems possible after what the judge has\nsaid--someone who is as innocent as I am, but it was me they chose.\nThere were two police thugs occupying the next room. They could not have\ntaken better precautions if I had been a dangerous robber. And these\npolicemen were unprincipled riff-raff, they talked at me till I was sick\nof it, they wanted bribes, they wanted to trick me into giving them my\nclothes, they wanted money, supposedly so that they could bring me my\nbreakfast after they had blatantly eaten my own breakfast in front of my\neyes. And even that was not enough. I was led in front of the supervisor\nin another room. This was the room of a lady who I have a lot of respect\nfor, and I was forced to look on while the supervisor and the policemen\nmade quite a mess of this room because of me, although not through any\nfault of mine. It was not easy to stay calm, but I managed to do so and\nwas completely calm when I asked the supervisor why it was that I was\nunder arrest. If he were here he would have to confirm what I say. I can\nsee him now, sitting on the chair belonging to that lady I mentioned--a\npicture of dull-witted arrogance. What do you think he answered? What\nhe told me, gentlemen, was basically nothing at all; perhaps he really\ndid know nothing, he had placed me under arrest and was satisfied. In\nfact he had done more than that and brought three junior employees from\nthe bank where I work into the lady's room; they had made themselves\nbusy interfering with some photographs that belonged to the lady and\ncausing a mess. There was, of course, another reason for bringing these\nemployees; they, just like my landlady and her maid, were expected to\nspread the news of my arrest and damage my public reputation and in\nparticular to remove me from my position at the bank. Well they didn't\nsucceed in any of that, not in the slightest, even my landlady, who is\nquite a simple person--and I will give you here her name in full\nrespect, her name is Mrs. Grubach--even Mrs. Grubach was understanding\nenough to see that an arrest like this has no more significance than an\nattack carried out on the street by some youths who are not kept under\nproper control. I repeat, this whole affair has caused me nothing but\nunpleasantness and temporary irritation, but could it not also have had\nsome far worse consequences?\"\n\nK. broke off here and looked at the judge, who said nothing. As he did\nso he thought he saw the judge use a movement of his eyes to give a sign\nto someone in the crowd. K. smiled and said, \"And now the judge, right\nnext to me, is giving a secret sign to someone among you. There seems to\nbe someone among you who is taking directions from above. I don't know\nwhether the sign is meant to produce booing or applause, but I'll resist\ntrying to guess what its meaning is too soon. It really doesn't matter\nto me, and I give his lordship the judge my full and public permission\nto stop giving secret signs to his paid subordinate down there and give\nhis orders in words instead; let him just say 'Boo now!,' and then the\nnext time 'Clap now!'\"\n\nWhether it was embarrassment or impatience, the judge rocked backwards\nand forwards on his seat. The man behind him, whom he had been talking\nwith earlier, leant forward again, either to give him a few general\nwords of encouragement or some specific piece of advice. Below them in\nthe hall the people talked to each other quietly but animatedly. The two\nfactions had earlier seemed to hold views strongly opposed to each other\nbut now they began to intermingle, a few individuals pointed up at K.,\nothers pointed at the judge. The air in the room was fuggy and extremely\noppressive, those who were standing furthest away could hardly even be\nseen through it. It must have been especially troublesome for those\nvisitors who were in the gallery, as they were forced to quietly ask\nthe participants in the assembly what exactly was happening, albeit\nwith timid glances at the judge. The replies they received were just as\nquiet, and given behind the protection of a raised hand.\n\n\"I have nearly finished what I have to say,\" said K., and as there was\nno bell available he struck the desk with his fist in a way that\nstartled the judge and his advisor and made them look up from each\nother. \"None of this concerns me, and I am therefore able to make a calm\nassessment of it, and, assuming that this so-called court is of any real\nimportance, it will be very much to your advantage to listen to what I\nhave to say. If you want to discuss what I say, please don't bother to\nwrite it down until later on, I don't have any time to waste and I'll\nsoon be leaving.\"\n\nThere was immediate silence, which showed how well K. was in control of\nthe crowd. There were no shouts among them as there had been at the\nstart, no-one even applauded, but if they weren't already persuaded they\nseemed very close to it.\n\nK. was pleased at the tension among all the people there as they\nlistened to him, a rustling rose from the silence which was more\ninvigorating than the most ecstatic applause could have been. \"There is\nno doubt,\" he said quietly, \"that there is some enormous organisation\ndetermining what is said by this court. In my case this includes my\narrest and the examination taking place here today, an organisation that\nemploys policemen who can be bribed, oafish supervisors and judges of\nwhom nothing better can be said than that they are not as arrogant as\nsome others. This organisation even maintains a high-level judiciary\nalong with its train of countless servants, scribes, policemen and all\nthe other assistance that it needs, perhaps even executioners and\ntorturers--I'm not afraid of using those words. And what, gentlemen, is\nthe purpose of this enormous organisation. Its purpose is to arrest\ninnocent people and wage pointless prosecutions against them which, as\nin my case, lead to no result. How are we to avoid those in office\nbecoming deeply corrupt when everything is devoid of meaning? That is\nimpossible, not even the highest judge would be able to achieve that for\nhimself. That is why policemen try to steal the clothes off the back of\nthose they arrest, that is why supervisors break into the homes of\npeople they do not know, that is why innocent people are humiliated in\nfront of crowds rather than being given a proper trial. The policemen\nonly talked about the warehouses where they put the property of those\nthey arrest, I would like to see these warehouses where the hard won\npossessions of people under arrest is left to decay, if, that is, it's\nnot stolen by the thieving hands of the warehouse workers.\"\n\nK. was interrupted by a screeching from the far end of the hall, he\nshaded his eyes to see that far, as the dull light of day made the smoke\nwhitish and hard to see through. It was the washerwoman whom K. had\nrecognised as a likely source of disturbance as soon as she had entered.\nIt was hard to see now whether it was her fault or not. K. could only\nsee that a man had pulled her into a corner by the door and was pressing\nhimself against her. But it was not her who was screaming, but the man,\nhe had opened his mouth wide and looked up at the ceiling. A small\ncircle had formed around the two of them, the visitors near him in the\ngallery seemed delighted that the serious tone K. had introduced into\nthe gathering had been disturbed in this way. K.'s first thought was to\nrun over there, and he also thought that everyone would want to bring\nthings back into order there or at least to make the pair leave the\nroom, but the first row of people in front of him stayed were they were,\nno-one moved and no-one let K. through. On the contrary, they stood in\nhis way, old men held out their arms in front of him and a hand from\nsomewhere--he did not have the time to turn round--took hold of his\ncollar. K., by this time, had forgotten about the pair, it seemed to him\nthat his freedom was being limited as if his arrest was being taken\nseriously, and, without any thought for what he was doing, he jumped\ndown from the podium. Now he stood face to face with the crowd. Had he\njudged the people properly? Had he put too much faith in the effect of\nhis speech? Had they been putting up a pretence all the time he had\nbeen speaking, and now that he came to the end and to what must follow,\nwere they tired of pretending? What faces they were, all around him!\nDark, little eyes flickered here and there, cheeks drooped down like on\ndrunken men, their long beards were thin and stiff, if they took hold of\nthem it was more like they were making their hands into claws, not as if\nthey were taking hold of their own beards. But underneath those\nbeards--and this was the real discovery made by K.--there were badges of\nvarious sizes and colours shining on the collars of their coats. As far\nas he could see, every one of them was wearing one of these badges. All\nof them belonged to the same group, even though they seemed to be\ndivided to the right and the left of him, and when he suddenly turned\nround he saw the same badge on the collar of the examining judge who\ncalmly looked down at him with his hands in his lap. \"So,\" called out\nK., throwing his arms in the air as if this sudden realisation needed\nmore room, \"all of you are working for this organisation, I see now that\nyou are all the very bunch of cheats and liars I've just been speaking\nabout, you've all pressed yourselves in here in order to listen in and\nsnoop on me, you gave the impression of having formed into factions, one\nof you even applauded me to test me out, and you wanted to learn how to\ntrap an innocent man! Well, I hope you haven't come here for nothing, I\nhope you've either had some fun from someone who expected you to defend\nhis innocence or else--let go of me or I'll hit you,\" shouted K. to a\nquivery old man who had pressed himself especially close to him--\"or\nelse that you've actually learned something. And so I wish you good luck\nin your trade.\" He briskly took his hat from where it lay on the edge of\nthe table and, surrounded by a silence caused perhaps by the\ncompleteness of their surprise, pushed his way to the exit. However, the\nexamining judge seems to have moved even more quickly than K., as he was\nwaiting for him at the doorway. \"One moment,\" he said. K. stood where he\nwas, but looked at the door with his hand already on its handle rather\nthan at the judge. \"I merely wanted to draw your attention,\" said the\njudge, \"to something you seem not yet to be aware of: today, you have\nrobbed yourself of the advantages that a hearing of this sort always\ngives to someone who is under arrest.\" K. laughed towards the door. \"You\nbunch of louts,\" he called, \"you can keep all your hearings as a present\nfrom me,\" then opened the door and hurried down the steps. Behind him,\nthe noise of the assembly rose as it became lively once more and\nprobably began to discuss these events as if making a scientific study\nof them.\n\n\n\n\nChapter Three\n\nIn the empty Courtroom--The Student--The Offices\n\n\nEvery day over the following week, K. expected another summons to\narrive, he could not believe that his rejection of any more hearings had\nbeen taken literally, and when the expected summons really had not come\nby Saturday evening he took it to mean that he was expected, without\nbeing told, to appear at the same place at the same time. So on Sunday,\nhe set out once more in the same direction, going without hesitation up\nthe steps and through the corridors; some of the people remembered him\nand greeted him from their doorways, but he no longer needed to ask\nanyone the way and soon arrived at the right door. It was opened as soon\nas he knocked and, paying no attention to the woman he had seen last\ntime who was standing at the doorway, he was about to go straight into\nthe adjoining room when she said to him \"There's no session today.\"\n\"What do you mean; no session?\" he asked, unable to believe it. But the\nwoman persuaded him by opening the door to the next room. It was indeed\nempty, and looked even more dismal empty than it had the previous\nSunday. On the podium stood the table exactly as it had been before with\na few books laying on it. \"Can I have a look at those books?\" asked K.,\nnot because he was especially curious but so that he would not have come\nfor nothing. \"No,\" said the woman as she re-closed the door, \"that's not\nallowed. Those books belong to the examining judge.\" \"I see,\" said K.,\nand nodded, \"those books must be law books, and that's how this court\ndoes things, not only to try people who are innocent but even to try\nthem without letting them know what's going on.\" \"I expect you're\nright,\" said the woman, who had not understood exactly what he meant.\n\"I'd better go away again, then,\" said K. \"Should I give a message to\nthe examining judge?\" asked the woman. \"Do you know him, then?\" asked K.\n\"Of course I know him,\" said the woman, \"my husband is the court usher.\"\nIt was only now that K. noticed that the room, which before had held\nnothing but a wash-tub, had been fitted out as a living room. The woman\nsaw how surprised he was and said, \"Yes, we're allowed to live here as\nwe like, only we have to clear the room out when the court's in session.\nThere's lots of disadvantages to my husband's job.\" \"It's not so much\nthe room that surprises me,\" said K., looking at her crossly, \"it's your\nbeing married that shocks me.\" \"Are you thinking about what happened\nlast time the court was in session, when I disturbed what you were\nsaying?\" asked the woman. \"Of course,\" said K., \"it's in the past now\nand I've nearly forgotten about it, but at the time it made me furious.\nAnd now you tell me yourself that you are a married woman.\" \"It wasn't\nany disadvantage for you to have your speech interrupted. The way they\ntalked about you after you'd gone was really bad.\" \"That could well be,\"\nsaid K., turning away, \"but it does not excuse you.\" \"There's no-one I\nknow who'd hold it against me,\" said the woman. \"Him, who put his arms\naround me, he's been chasing after me for a long time. I might not be\nvery attractive for most people, but I am for him. I've got no\nprotection from him, even my husband has had to get used to it; if he\nwants to keep his job he's got to put up with it as that man's a student\nand he'll almost certainly be very powerful later on. He's always after\nme, he'd only just left when you arrived.\" \"That fits in with everything\nelse,\" said K., \"I'm not surprised.\" \"Do you want to make things a bit\nbetter here?\" the woman asked slowly, watching him as if she were saying\nsomething that could be as dangerous for K. as for herself. \"That's what\nI thought when I heard you speak, I really liked what you said. Mind\nyou, I only heard part of it, I missed the beginning of it and at the\nend I was lying on the floor with the student--it's so horrible here,\"\nshe said after a pause, and took hold of K.'s hand. \"Do you believe you\nreally will be able to make things better?\" K. smiled and twisted his\nhand round a little in her soft hands. \"It's really not my job to make\nthings better here, as you put it,\" he said, \"and if you said that to\nthe examining judge he would laugh at you or punish you for it. I really\nwould not have become involved in this matter if I could have helped it,\nand I would have lost no sleep worrying about how this court needs to be\nmade better. But because I'm told that I have been arrested--and I am\nunder arrest--it forces me to take some action, and to do so for my own\nsake. However, if I can be of some service to you in the process I will,\nof course, be glad to do so. And I will be glad to do so not only for\nthe sake of charity but also because you can be of some help to me.\"\n\"How could I help you, then?\" said the woman. \"You could, for example,\nshow me the books on the table there.\" \"Yes, certainly,\" the woman\ncried, and pulled K. along behind her as she rushed to them. The books\nwere old and well worn, the cover of one of them had nearly broken\nthrough in its middle, and it was held together with a few threads.\n\"Everything is so dirty here,\" said K., shaking his head, and before he\ncould pick the books up the woman wiped some of the dust off with her\napron. K. took hold of the book that lay on top and threw it open, an\nindecent picture appeared. A man and a woman sat naked on a sofa, the\nbase intent of whoever drew it was easy to see but he had been so\ngrossly lacking in skill that all that anyone could really make out were\nthe man and the woman who dominated the picture with their bodies,\nsitting in overly upright postures that created a false perspective and\nmade it difficult for them to approach each other. K. didn't thumb\nthrough that book any more, but just threw open the next one at its\ntitle page, it was a novel with the title, What Grete Suffered from her\nHusband, Hans. \"So this is the sort of law book they study here,\" said\nK., \"this is the sort of person sitting in judgement over me.\" \"I can\nhelp you,\" said the woman, \"would you like me to?\" \"Could you really do\nthat without placing yourself in danger? You did say earlier on that\nyour husband is wholly dependent on his superiors.\" \"I still want to\nhelp you,\" said the woman, \"come over here, we've got to talk about it.\nDon't say any more about what danger I'm in, I only fear danger where I\nwant to fear it. Come over here.\" She pointed to the podium and invited\nhim to sit down on the step with her. \"You've got lovely dark eyes,\" she\nsaid after they had sat down, looking up into K.'s face, \"people say\nI've got nice eyes too, but yours are much nicer. It was the first thing\nI noticed when you first came here. That's even why I came in here, into\nthe assembly room, afterwards, I'd never normally do that, I'm not\nreally even allowed to.\" So that's what all this is about, thought K.,\nshe's offering herself to me, she's as degenerate as everything else\naround here, she's had enough of the court officials, which is\nunderstandable I suppose, and so she approaches any stranger and makes\ncompliments about his eyes. With that, K. stood up in silence as if he\nhad spoken his thoughts out loud and thus explained his action to the\nwoman. \"I don't think you can be of any assistance to me,\" he said, \"to\nbe of any real assistance you would need to be in contact with high\nofficials. But I'm sure you only know the lower employees, and there are\ncrowds of them milling about here. I'm sure you're very familiar with\nthem and could achieve a great deal through them, I've no doubt of that,\nbut the most that could be done through them would have no bearing at\nall on the final outcome of the trial. You, on the other hand, would\nlose some of your friends as a result, and I have no wish of that. Carry\non with these people in the same way as you have been, as it does seem\nto me to be something you cannot do without. I have no regrets in saying\nthis as, in return for your compliment to me, I also find you rather\nattractive, especially when you look at me as sadly as you are now,\nalthough you really have no reason to do so. You belong to the people I\nhave to combat, and you're very comfortable among them, you're even in\nlove with the student, or if you don't love him you do at least prefer\nhim to your husband. It's easy to see that from what you've been\nsaying.\" \"No!\" she shouted, remained sitting where she was and grasped\nK.'s hand, which he failed to pull away fast enough. \"You can't go away\nnow, you can't go away when you've misjudged me like that! Are you\nreally capable of going away now? Am I really so worthless that you\nwon't even do me the favour of staying a little bit longer?\" \"You\nmisunderstand me,\" said K., sitting back down, \"if it's really important\nto you for me to stay here then I'll be glad to do so, I have plenty of\ntime, I came here thinking there would be a trial taking place. All I\nmeant with what I said just now was to ask you not to do anything on my\nbehalf in the proceedings against me. But even that is nothing for you\nto worry about when you consider that there's nothing hanging on the\noutcome of this trial, and that, whatever the verdict, I will just laugh\nat it. And that's even presupposing it ever even reaches any conclusion,\nwhich I very much doubt. I think it's much more likely that the court\nofficials will be too lazy, too forgetful, or even too fearful ever to\ncontinue with these proceedings and that they will soon be abandoned if\nthey haven't been abandoned already. It's even possible that they will\npretend to be carrying on with the trial in the hope of receiving a\nlarge bribe, although I can tell you now that that will be quite in vain\nas I pay bribes to no-one. Perhaps one favour you could do me would be\nto tell the examining judge, or anyone else who likes to spread\nimportant news, that I will never be induced to pay any sort of bribe\nthrough any stratagem of theirs--and I'm sure they have many stratagems\nat their disposal. There is no prospect of that, you can tell them that\nquite openly. And what's more, I expect they have already noticed\nthemselves, or even if they haven't, this affair is really not so\nimportant to me as they think. Those gentlemen would only save some work\nfor themselves, or at least some unpleasantness for me, which, however,\nI am glad to endure if I know that each piece of unpleasantness for me\nis a blow against them. And I will make quite sure it is a blow against\nthem. Do you actually know the judge?\" \"Course I do,\" said the woman,\n\"he was the first one I thought of when I offered to help you. I didn't\nknow he's only a minor official, but if you say so it must be true. Mind\nyou, I still think the report he gives to his superiors must have some\ninfluence. And he writes so many reports. You say these officials are\nlazy, but they're certainly not all lazy, especially this examining\njudge, he writes ever such a lot. Last Sunday, for instance, that\nsession went on till the evening. Everyone had gone, but the examining\njudge, he stayed in the hall, I had to bring him a lamp in, all I had\nwas a little kitchen lamp but he was very satisfied with it and started\nto write straight away. Meantime my husband arrived, he always has the\nday off on Sundays, we got the furniture back in and got our room sorted\nout and then a few of the neighbours came, we sat and talked for a bit\nby a candle, in short, we forgot all about the examining judge and went\nto bed. All of a sudden in the night, it must have been quite late in\nthe night, I wakes up, next to the bed, there's the examining judge\nshading the lamp with his hand so that there's no light from it falls on\nmy husband, he didn't need to be as careful as that, the way my husband\nsleeps the light wouldn't have woken him up anyway. I was quite shocked\nand nearly screamed, but the judge was very friendly, warned me I should\nbe careful, he whispered to me he's been writing all this time, and now\nhe's brought me the lamp back, and he'll never forget how I looked when\nhe found me there asleep. What I mean, with all this, I just wanted to\ntell you how the examining judge really does write lots of reports,\nespecially about you as questioning you was definitely one of the main\nthings on the agenda that Sunday. If he writes reports as long as that\nthey must be of some importance. And besides all that, you can see from\nwhat happened that the examining judge is after me, and it's right now,\nwhen he's first begun to notice me, that I can have a lot of influence\non him. And I've got other proof I mean a lot to him, too. Yesterday, he\nsent that student to me, the one he really trusts and who he works with,\nhe sent him with a present for me, silk stockings. He said it was\nbecause I clear up in the courtroom but that's only a pretence, that\njob's no more than what I'm supposed to do, it's what my husband gets\npaid for. Nice stockings, they are, look,\"--she stretched out her leg,\ndrew her skirt up to her knee and looked, herself, at the\nstocking--\"they are nice stockings, but they're too good for me,\nreally.\"\n\nShe suddenly interrupted herself and lay her hand on K.'s as if she\nwanted to calm him down, and whispered, \"Be quiet, Berthold is watching\nus.\" K. slowly looked up. In the doorway to the courtroom stood a young\nman, he was short, his legs were not quite straight, and he continually\nmoved his finger round in a short, thin, red beard with which he hoped\nto make himself look dignified. K. looked at him with some curiosity, he\nwas the first student he had ever met of the unfamiliar discipline of\njurisprudence, face to face at least, a man who would even most likely\nattain high office one day. The student, in contrast, seemed to take no\nnotice of K. at all, he merely withdrew his finger from his beard long\nenough to beckon to the woman and went over to the window, the woman\nleant over to K. and whispered, \"Don't be cross with me, please don't,\nand please don't think ill of me either, I've got to go to him now, to\nthis horrible man, just look at his bent legs. But I'll come straight\nback and then I'll go with you if you'll take me, I'll go wherever you\nwant, you can do whatever you like with me, I'll be happy if I can be\naway from here for as long as possible, it'd be best if I could get away\nfrom here for good.\" She stroked K.'s hand once more, jumped up and ran\nover to the window. Before he realised it, K. grasped for her hand but\nfailed to catch it. He really was attracted to the woman, and even after\nthinking hard about it could find no good reason why he should not give\nin to her allure. It briefly crossed his mind that the woman meant to\nentrap him on behalf of the court, but that was an objection he had no\ndifficulty in fending off. In what way could she entrap him? Was he not\nstill free, so free that he could crush the entire court whenever he\nwanted, at least where it concerned him? Could he not have that much\nconfidence in himself? And her offer of help sounded sincere, and maybe\nit wasn't quite worthless. And maybe there was no better revenge against\nthe examining judge and his cronies than to take this woman from him and\nhave her for himself. Maybe then, after much hard work writing dishonest\nreports about K., the judge would go to the woman's bed late one night\nand find it empty. And it would be empty because she belonged to K.,\nbecause this woman at the window, this lush, supple, warm body in its\nsombre clothes of rough, heavy material belonged to him, totally to him\nand to him alone. Once he had settled his thoughts towards the woman in\nthis way, he began to find the quiet conversation at the window was\ntaking too long, he rapped on the podium with his knuckles, and then\neven with his fist. The student briefly looked away from the woman to\nglance at K. over his shoulder but did allow himself to be disturbed, in\nfact he even pressed himself close to the woman and put his arms around\nher. She dropped her head down low as if listening to him carefully, as\nshe did so he kissed her right on the neck, hardly even interrupting\nwhat he was saying. K. saw this as confirmation of the tyranny the\nstudent held over the woman and which she had already complained about,\nhe stood up and walked up and down the room. Glancing sideways at the\nstudent, he wondered what would be the quickest possible way to get rid\nof him, and so it was not unwelcome to him when the student, clearly\ndisturbed by K.'s to-ing and fro-ing which K. had now developed into a\nstamping up and down, said to him, \"You don't have to stay here, you\nknow, if you're getting impatient. You could have gone earlier, no-one\nwould have missed you. In fact you should have gone, you should have\nleft as quickly as possible as soon as I got here.\" This comment could\nhave caused all possible rage to break out between them, but K. also\nbore in mind that this was a prospective court official speaking to a\ndisfavoured defendant, and he might well have been taking pride in\nspeaking in this way. K. remained standing quite close to him and said\nwith a smile, \"You're quite right, I am impatient, but the easiest way\nto settle this impatience would be if you left us. On the other hand,\nif you've come here to study--you are a student, I hear--I'll be quite\nhappy to leave the room to you and go away with the woman. I'm sure\nyou'll still have a lot of study to do before you're made into a judge.\nIt's true that I'm still not all that familiar with your branch of\njurisprudence but I take it it involves a lot more than speaking\nroughly--and I see you have no shame in doing that extremely well.\" \"He\nshouldn't have been allowed to move about so freely,\" said the student,\nas if he wanted to give the woman an explanation for K.'s insults, \"that\nwas a mistake. I've told the examining judge so. He should at least have\nbeen detained in his room between hearings. Sometimes it's impossible to\nunderstand what the judge thinks he's doing.\" \"You're wasting your\nbreath,\" said K., then he reached his hand out towards the woman and\nsaid, \"come with me.\" \"So that's it,\" said the student, \"oh no, you're\nnot going to get her,\" and with a strength you would not have expected\nfrom him, he glanced tenderly at her, lifted her up on one arm and, his\nback bent under the weight, ran with her to the door. In this way he\nshowed, unmistakably, that he was to some extent afraid of K., but he\nnonetheless dared to provoke him still further by stroking and squeezing\nthe woman's arm with his free hand. K. ran the few steps up to him, but\nwhen he had reached him and was about to take hold of him and, if\nnecessary, throttle him, the woman said, \"It's no good, it's the\nexamining judge who's sent for me, I daren't go with you, this little\nbastard ...\" and here she ran her hand over the student's face, \"this\nlittle bastard won't let me.\" \"And you don't want to be set free!\"\nshouted K., laying his hand on the student's shoulder, who then snapped\nat it with his teeth. \"No!\" shouted the woman, pushing K. away with both\nhands, \"no, no don't do that, what d'you think you're doing? That'd be\nthe end of me. Let go of him, please just let go of him. He's only\ncarrying out the judge's orders, he's carrying me to him.\" \"Let him take\nyou then, and I want to see nothing more of you,\" said K., enraged by\nhis disappointment and giving the student a thump in the back so that he\nbriefly stumbled and then, glad that he had not fallen, immediately\njumped up all the higher with his burden. K. followed them slowly. He\nrealised that this was the first unambiguous setback he had suffered\nfrom these people. It was of course nothing to worry about, he accepted\nthe setback only because he was looking for a fight. If he stayed at\nhome and carried on with his normal life he would be a thousand times\nsuperior to these people and could get any of them out of his way just\nwith a kick. And he imagined the most laughable scene possible as an\nexample of this, if this contemptible student, this inflated child, this\nknock-kneed redbeard, if he were kneeling at Elsa's bed wringing his\nhands and begging for forgiveness. K. so enjoyed imagining this scene\nthat he decided to take the student along to Elsa with him if ever he\nshould get the opportunity.\n\nK. was curious to see where the woman would be taken and he hurried over\nto the door, the student was not likely to carry her through the streets\non his arm. It turned out that the journey was far shorter. Directly\nopposite the flat there was a narrow flight of wooden steps which\nprobably led up to the attic, they turned as they went so that it was\nnot possible to see where they ended. The student carried the woman up\nthese steps, and after the exertions of running with her he was soon\ngroaning and moving very slowly. The woman waved down at K. and by\nraising and lowering her shoulders she tried to show that she was an\ninnocent party in this abduction, although the gesture did not show a\nlot of regret. K. watched her without expression like a stranger, he\nwanted to show neither that he was disappointed nor that he would easily\nget over his disappointment.\n\nThe two of them had disappeared, but K. remained standing in the\ndoorway. He had to accept that the woman had not only cheated him but\nthat she had also lied to him when she said she was being taken to the\nexamining judge. The examining judge certainly wouldn't be sitting and\nwaiting in the attic. The wooden stairs would explain nothing to him\nhowever long he stared at them. Then K. noticed a small piece of paper\nnext to them, went across to it and read, in a childish and unpractised\nhand, \"Entrance to the Court Offices\". Were the court offices here, in\nthe attic of this tenement, then? If that was how they were\naccommodated it did not attract much respect, and it was some comfort\nfor the accused to realise how little money this court had at its\ndisposal if it had to locate its offices in a place where the tenants of\nthe building, who were themselves among the poorest of people, would\nthrow their unneeded junk. On the other hand, it was possible that the\nofficials had enough money but that they squandered it on themselves\nrather than use it for the court's purposes. Going by K.'s experience of\nthem so far, that even seemed probable, except that if the court were\nallowed to decay in that way it would not just humiliate the accused but\nalso give him more encouragement than if the court were simply in a\nstate of poverty. K. also now understood that the court was ashamed to\nsummon those it accused to the attic of this building for the initial\nhearing, and why it preferred to impose upon them in their own homes.\nWhat a position it was that K. found himself in, compared with the judge\nsitting up in the attic! K., at the bank, had a big office with an\nante-room, and had an enormous window through which he could look down\nat the activity in the square. It was true, though, that he had no\nsecondary income from bribes and fraud, and he couldn't tell a servant\nto bring him a woman up to the office on his arm. K., however, was quite\nwilling to do without such things, in this life at least. K. was still\nlooking at the notice when a man came up the stairs, looked through the\nopen door into the living room where it was also possible to see the\ncourtroom, and finally asked K. whether he had just seen a woman there.\n\"You're the court usher, aren't you?\" asked K. \"That's right,\" said the\nman, \"oh, yes, you're defendant K., I recognise you now as well. Nice to\nsee you here.\" And he offered K. his hand, which was far from what K.\nhad expected. And when K. said nothing, he added, \"There's no court\nsession planned for today, though.\" \"I know that,\" said K. as he looked\nat the usher's civilian coat which, beside its ordinary buttons,\ndisplayed two gilded ones as the only sign of his office and seemed to\nhave been taken from an old army officer's coat. \"I was speaking with\nyour wife a little while ago. She is no longer here. The student has\ncarried her off to the examining judge.\" \"Listen to this,\" said the\nusher, \"they're always carrying her away from me. It's Sunday today, and\nit's not part of my job to do any work today, but they send me off with\nsome message which isn't even necessary just to get me away from here.\nWhat they do is they send me off not too far away so that I can still\nhope to get back on time if I really hurry. So off I go running as fast\nas I can, shout the message through the crack in the door of the office\nI've been sent to, so out of breath they'll hardly be able to understand\nit, run back here again, but the student's been even faster than I\nhave--well he's got less far to go, he's only got to run down the steps.\nIf I wasn't so dependent on them I'd have squashed the student against\nthe wall here a long time ago. Right here, next to the sign. I'm always\ndreaming of doing that. Just here, just above the floor, that's where\nhe's crushed onto the wall, his arms stretched out, his fingers spread\napart, his crooked legs twisted round into a circle and blood squirted\nout all around him. It's only ever been a dream so far, though.\" \"Is\nthere nothing else you do?\" asked K. with a smile. \"Nothing that I know\nof,\" said the usher. \"And it's going to get even worse now, up till now\nhe's only been carrying her off for himself, now he's started carrying\nher off for the judge and all, just like I'd always said he would.\"\n\"Does your wife, then, not share some of the responsibility?\" asked K.\nHe had to force himself as he asked this question, as he, too, felt so\njealous now. \"Course she does,\" said the usher, \"it's more her fault\nthan theirs. It was her who attached herself to him. All he did, he just\nchases after any woman. There's five flats in this block alone where\nhe's been thrown out after working his way in there. And my wife is the\nbest looking woman in the whole building, but it's me who's not even\nallowed to defend himself.\" \"If that's how things are, then there's\nnothing that can be done,\" said K. \"Well why not?\" asked the usher.\n\"He's a coward that student, if he wants to lay a finger on my wife all\nyou'd have to do is give him such a good hiding he'd never dare do it\nagain. But I'm not allowed to do that, and nobody else is going to do me\nthe favour as they're all afraid of his power. The only one who could do\nit is a man like you.\" \"What, how could I do it?\" asked K. in\nastonishment. \"Well you're facing a charge, aren't you,\" said the usher.\n\"Yes, but that's all the more reason for me to be afraid. Even if he has\nno influence on the outcome of the trial he probably has some on the\ninitial examination.\" \"Yes, exactly,\" said the usher, as if K.'s view\nhad been just as correct as his own. \"Only we don't usually get any\ntrials heard here with no hope at all.\" \"I am not of the same opinion,\"\nsaid K., \"although that ought not to prevent me from dealing with the\nstudent if the opportunity arises.\" \"I would be very grateful to you,\"\nsaid the usher of the court, somewhat formally, not really seeming to\nbelieve that his highest wish could be fulfilled. \"Perhaps,\" continued\nK., \"perhaps there are some other officials of yours here, perhaps all\nof them, who would deserve the same.\" \"Oh yes, yes,\" said the usher, as\nif this was a matter of course. Then he looked at K. trustingly which,\ndespite all his friendliness, he had not done until then, and added,\n\"they're always rebelling.\" But the conversation seemed to have become a\nlittle uncomfortable for him, as he broke it off by saying, \"now I have\nto report to the office. Would you like to come with me?\" \"There's\nnothing for me to do there,\" said K. \"You'd be able to have a look at\nit. No-one will take any notice of you.\" \"Is it worth seeing then?\"\nasked K. hesitatingly, although he felt very keen to go with him.\n\"Well,\" said the usher, \"I thought you'd be interested in it.\" \"Alright\nthen,\" said K. finally, \"I'll come with you.\" And, quicker than the\nusher himself, he ran up the steps.\n\nAt the entrance he nearly fell over, as behind the door there was\nanother step. \"They don't show much concern for the public,\" he said.\n\"They don't show any concern at all,\" said the usher, \"just look at the\nwaiting room here.\" It consisted of a long corridor from which roughly\nmade doors led out to the separate departments of the attic. There was\nno direct source of light but it was not entirely dark as many of the\ndepartments, instead of solid walls, had just wooden bars reaching up to\nthe ceiling to separate them from the corridor. The light made its way\nin through them, and it was also possible to see individual officials\nthrough them as they sat writing at their desks or stood up at the\nwooden frameworks and watched the people on the corridor through the\ngaps. There were only a few people in the corridor, probably because it\nwas Sunday. They were not very impressive. They sat, equally spaced, on\ntwo rows of long wooden benches which had been placed along both sides\nof the corridor. All of them were carelessly dressed although the\nexpressions on their faces, their bearing, the style of their beards and\nmany details which were hard to identify showed that they belonged to\nthe upper classes. There were no coat hooks for them to use, and so they\nhad placed their hats under the bench, each probably having followed the\nexample of the others. When those who were sitting nearest the door saw\nK. and the usher of the court they stood up to greet them, and when the\nothers saw that, they also thought they had to greet them, so that as\nthe two of them went by all the people there stood up. None of them\nstood properly upright, their backs were bowed, their knees bent, they\nstood like beggars on the street. K. waited for the usher, who was\nfollowing just behind him. \"They must all be very dispirited,\" he said.\n\"Yes,\" said the usher, \"they are the accused, everyone you see here has\nbeen accused.\" \"Really!\" said K. \"They're colleagues of mine then.\" And\nhe turned to the nearest one, a tall, thin man with hair that was nearly\ngrey. \"What is it you are waiting for here?\" asked K., politely, but the\nman was startled at being spoken to unexpectedly, which was all the more\npitiful to see because the man clearly had some experience of the world\nand elsewhere would certainly have been able to show his superiority and\nwould not have easily given up the advantage he had acquired. Here,\nthough, he did not know what answer to give to such a simple question\nand looked round at the others as if they were under some obligation to\nhelp him, and as if no-one could expect any answer from him without this\nhelp. Then the usher of the court stepped forward to him and, in order\nto calm him down and raise his spirits, said, \"The gentleman here's only\nasking what it is you're waiting for. You can give him an answer.\" The\nvoice of the usher was probably familiar to him, and had a better effect\nthan K.'s. \"I'm ... I'm waiting....\" he began, and then came to a halt.\nHe had clearly chosen this beginning so that he could give a precise\nanswer to the question, but now he didn't know how to continue. Some of\nthe others waiting had come closer and stood round the group, the usher\nof the court said to them, \"Get out the way, keep the gangway free.\"\nThey moved back slightly, but not as far as where they had been sitting\nbefore. In the meantime, the man whom K. had first approached had pulled\nhimself together and even answered him with a smile. \"A month ago I made\nsome applications for evidence to be heard in my case, and I'm waiting\nfor it to be settled.\" \"You certainly seem to be going to a lot of\neffort,\" said K. \"Yes,\" said the man, \"it is my affair after all.\" \"Not\neveryone thinks the same way as you do,\" said K. \"I've been indicted as\nwell but I swear on my soul that I've neither submitted evidence nor\ndone anything else of the sort. Do you really think that's necessary?\"\n\"I don't really know, exactly,\" said the man, once more totally unsure\nof himself; he clearly thought K. was joking with him and therefore\nprobably thought it best to repeat his earlier answer in order to avoid\nmaking any new mistakes. With K. looking at him impatiently, he just\nsaid, \"as far as I'm concerned, I've applied to have this evidence\nheard.\" \"Perhaps you don't believe I've been indicted?\" asked K. \"Oh,\nplease, I certainly do,\" said the man, stepping slightly to one side,\nbut there was more anxiety in his answer than belief. \"You don't believe\nme then?\" asked K., and took hold of his arm, unconsciously prompted by\nthe man's humble demeanour, and as if he wanted to force him to believe\nhim. But he did not want to hurt the man and had only taken hold of him\nvery lightly. Nonetheless, the man cried out as if K. had grasped him\nnot with two fingers but with red hot tongs. Shouting in this ridiculous\nway finally made K. tired of him, if he didn't believe he was indicted\nthen so much the better; maybe he even thought K. was a judge. And\nbefore leaving, he held him a lot harder, shoved him back onto the bench\nand walked on. \"These defendants are so sensitive, most of them,\" said\nthe usher of the court. Almost all of those who had been waiting had now\nassembled around the man who, by now, had stopped shouting and they\nseemed to be asking him lots of precise questions about the incident. K.\nwas approached by a security guard, identifiable mainly by his sword, of\nwhich the scabbard seemed to be made of aluminium. This greatly\nsurprised K., and he reached out for it with his hand. The guard had\ncome because of the shouting and asked what had been happening. The\nusher of the court said a few words to try and calm him down but the\nguard explained that he had to look into it himself, saluted, and\nhurried on, walking with very short steps, probably because of gout.\n\nK. didn't concern himself long with the guard or these people,\nespecially as he saw a turning off the corridor, about half way along\nit on the right hand side, where there was no door to stop him going\nthat way. He asked the usher whether that was the right way to go, the\nusher nodded, and that is the way that K. went. The usher remained\nalways one or two steps behind K., which he found irritating as in a\nplace like this it could give the impression that he was being driven\nalong by someone who had arrested him, so he frequently waited for the\nusher to catch up, but the usher always remained behind him. In order to\nput an end to his discomfort, K. finally said, \"Now that I've seen what\nit looks like here, I'd like to go.\" \"You haven't seen everything yet,\"\nsaid the usher ingenuously. \"I don't want to see everything,\" said K.,\nwho was also feeling very tired, \"I want to go, what is the way to the\nexit?\" \"You haven't got lost, have you?\" asked the usher in amazement,\n\"you go down this way to the corner, then right down the corridor\nstraight ahead as far as the door.\" \"Come with me,\" said K., \"show me\nthe way, I'll miss it, there are so many different ways here.\" \"It's the\nonly way there is,\" said the usher, who had now started to sound quite\nreproachful, \"I can't go back with you again, I've got to hand in my\nreport, and I've already lost a lot of time because of you as it is.\"\n\"Come with me!\" K. repeated, now somewhat sharper as if he had finally\ncaught the usher out in a lie. \"Don't shout like that,\" whispered the\nusher, \"there's offices all round us here. If you don't want to go back\nby yourself come on a bit further with me or else wait here till I've\nsorted out my report, then I'll be glad to go back with you again.\" \"No,\nno,\" said K., \"I will not wait and you must come with me now.\" K. had\nstill not looked round at anything at all in the room where he found\nhimself, and it was only when one of the many wooden doors all around\nhim opened that he noticed it. A young woman, probably summoned by the\nloudness of K.'s voice, entered and asked, \"What is it the gentleman\nwants?\" In the darkness behind her there was also a man approaching. K.\nlooked at the usher. He had, after all, said that no-one would take any\nnotice of K., and now there were two people coming, it only needed a few\nand everyone in the office would become aware of him and asking for\nexplanations as to why he was there. The only understandable and\nacceptable thing to say was that he was accused of something and wanted\nto know the date of his next hearing, but this was an explanation he did\nnot want to give, especially as it was not true--he had only come out of\ncuriosity. Or else, an explanation even less usable, he could say that\nhe wanted to ascertain that the court was as revolting on the inside as\nit was on the outside. And it did seem that he had been quite right in\nthis supposition, he had no wish to intrude any deeper, he was disturbed\nenough by what he had seen already, he was not in the right frame of\nmind just then to face a high official such as might appear from behind\nany door, and he wanted to go, either with the usher of the court or, if\nneeds be, alone.\n\nBut he must have seemed very odd standing there in silence, and the\nyoung woman and the usher were indeed looking at him as if they thought\nhe would go through some major metamorphosis any second which they\ndidn't want to miss seeing. And in the doorway stood the man whom K. had\nnoticed in the background earlier, he held firmly on to the beam above\nthe low door swinging a little on the tips of his feet as if becoming\nimpatient as he watched. But the young woman was the first to recognise\nthat K.'s behaviour was caused by his feeling slightly unwell, she\nbrought a chair and asked, \"Would you not like to sit down?\" K. sat down\nimmediately and, in order to keep his place better, put his elbows on\nthe armrests. \"You're a little bit dizzy, aren't you?\" she asked him.\nHer face was now close in front of him, it bore the severe expression\nthat many young women have just when they're in the bloom of their\nyouth. \"It's nothing for you to worry about,\" she said, \"that's nothing\nunusual here, almost everyone gets an attack like that the first time\nthey come here. This is your first time is it. Yes, it's nothing unusual\nthen. The sun burns down on the roof and the hot wood makes the air so\nthick and heavy. It makes this place rather unsuitable for offices,\nwhatever other advantages it might offer. But the air is almost\nimpossible to breathe on days when there's a lot of business, and that's\nalmost every day. And when you think that there's a lot of washing put\nout to dry here as well--and we can't stop the tenants doing that--it's\nnot surprising you started to feel unwell. But you get used to the air\nalright in the end. When you're here for the second or third time you'll\nhardly notice how oppressive the air is. Are you feeling any better\nnow?\" K. made no answer, he felt too embarrassed at being put at the\nmercy of these people by his sudden weakness, and learning the reason\nfor feeling ill made him feel not better but a little worse. The girl\nnoticed it straight away, and to make the air fresher for K., she took a\nwindow pole that was leaning against the wall and pushed open a small\nhatch directly above K.'s head that led to the outside. But so much soot\nfell in that the girl had to immediately close the hatch again and clean\nthe soot off K.'s hands with her handkerchief, as K. was too tired to do\nthat for himself. He would have liked just to sit quietly where he was\nuntil he had enough strength to leave, and the less fuss people made\nabout him the sooner that would be. But then the girl said, \"You can't\nstay here, we're in people's way here....\" K. looked at her as if to ask\nwhose way they were impeding. \"If you like, I can take you to the sick\nroom,\" and turning to the man in the doorway said, \"please help me.\" The\nman immediately came over to them, but K. did not want to go to the sick\nroom, that was just what he wanted to avoid, being led further from\nplace to place, the further he went the more difficult it must become.\nSo he said, \"I am able to walk now,\" and stood up, shaking after\nbecoming used to sitting so comfortably. But then he was unable to stay\nupright. \"I can't manage it,\" he said shaking his head, and sat down\nagain with a sigh. He remembered the usher who, despite everything,\nwould have been able to lead him out of there but who seemed to have\ngone long before. K. looked out between the man and the young woman who\nwere standing in front of him but was unable to find the usher. \"I\nthink,\" said the man, who was elegantly dressed and whose appearance was\nmade especially impressive with a grey waistcoat that had two long,\nsharply tailored points, \"the gentleman is feeling unwell because of the\natmosphere here, so the best thing, and what he would most prefer, would\nbe not to take him to the sick room but get him out of the offices\naltogether.\" \"That's right,\" exclaimed K., with such joy that he nearly\ninterrupted what the man was saying, \"I'm sure that'll make me feel\nbetter straight away, I'm really not that weak, all I need is a little\nsupport under my arms, I won't cause you much trouble, it's not such a\nlong way anyway, lead me to the door and then I'll sit on the stairs for\na while and soon recover, as I don't suffer from attacks like this at\nall, I'm surprised at it myself. I also work in an office and I'm quite\nused to office air, but here it seems to be too strong, you've said so\nyourselves. So please, be so kind as to help me on my way a little, I'm\nfeeling dizzy, you see, and it'll make me ill if I stand up by myself.\"\nAnd with that he raised his shoulders to make it easier for the two of\nthem to take him by the arms.\n\nThe man, however, didn't follow this suggestion but just stood there\nwith his hands in his trouser pockets and laughed out loud. \"There, you\nsee,\" he said to the girl, \"I was quite right. The gentleman is only\nunwell here, and not in general.\" The young woman smiled too, but\nlightly tapped the man's arm with the tips of her fingers as if he had\nallowed himself too much fun with K. \"So what do you think, then?\" said\nthe man, still laughing, \"I really do want to lead the gentleman out of\nhere.\" \"That's alright, then,\" said the girl, briefly inclining her\ncharming head. \"Don't worry too much about him laughing,\" said the girl\nto K., who had become unhappy once more and stared quietly in front of\nhimself as if needing no further explanation. \"This gentleman--may I\nintroduce you?\"--(the man gave his permission with a wave of the\nhand)--\"so, this gentleman's job is to give out information. He gives\nall the information they need to people who are waiting, as our court\nand its offices are not very well known among the public he gets asked\nfor quite a lot. He has an answer for every question, you can try him\nout if you feel like it. But that's not his only distinction, his other\ndistinction is his elegance of dress. We, that's to say all of us who\nwork in the offices here, we decided that the information-giver would\nhave to be elegantly dressed as he continually has to deal with the\nlitigants and he's the first one they meet, so he needs to give a\ndignified first impression. The rest of us I'm afraid, as you can see\njust by looking at me, dress very badly and old-fashioned; and there's\nnot much point in spending much on clothes anyway, as we hardly ever\nleave the offices, we even sleep here. But, as I said, we decided that\nthe information-giver would have to have nice clothes. As the management\nhere is rather peculiar in this respect, and they would get them for us,\nwe had a collection--some of the litigants contributed too--and bought\nhim these lovely clothes and some others besides. So everything would be\nready for him to give a good impression, except that he spoils it again\nby laughing and frightening people.\" \"That's how it is,\" said the man,\nmocking her, \"but I don't understand why it is that you're explaining\nall our intimate facts to the gentleman, or rather why it is that you're\npressing them on him, as I'm sure he's not all interested. Just look at\nhim sitting there, it's clear he's occupied with his own affairs.\" K.\njust did not feel like contradicting him. The girl's intention may have\nbeen good, perhaps she was under instructions to distract him or to give\nhim the chance to collect himself, but the attempt had not worked. \"I\nhad to explain to him why you were laughing,\" said the girl. \"I suppose\nit was insulting.\" \"I think he would forgive even worse insults if I\nfinally took him outside.\" K. said nothing, did not even look up, he\ntolerated the two of them negotiating over him like an object, that was\neven what suited him best. But suddenly he felt the information-giver's\nhand on one arm and the young woman's hand on the other. \"Up you get\nthen, weakling,\" said the information-giver. \"Thank you both very much,\"\nsaid K., pleasantly surprised, as he slowly rose and personally guided\nthese unfamiliar hands to the places where he most needed support. As\nthey approached the corridor, the girl said quietly into K.'s ear, \"I\nmust seem to think it's very important to show the information-giver in\na good light, but you shouldn't doubt what I say, I just want to say the\ntruth. He isn't hard-hearted. It's not really his job to help litigants\noutside if they're unwell but he's doing it anyway, as you can see. I\ndon't suppose any of us is hard-hearted, perhaps we'd all like to be\nhelpful, but working for the court offices it's easy for us to give the\nimpression we are hard-hearted and don't want to help anyone. It makes\nme quite sad.\" \"Would you not like to sit down here a while?\" asked the\ninformation-giver, there were already in the corridor and just in front\nof the defendant whom K. had spoken to earlier. K. felt almost ashamed\nto be seen by him, earlier he had stood so upright in front of him and\nnow he had to be supported by two others, his hat was held up by the\ninformation-giver balanced on outstretched fingers, his hair was\ndishevelled and hung down onto the sweat on his forehead. But the\ndefendant seemed to notice nothing of what was going on and just stood\nthere humbly, as if wanting to apologise to the information-giver for\nbeing there. The information-giver looked past him. \"I know,\" he said,\n\"that my case can't be settled today, not yet, but I've come in anyway,\nI thought, I thought I could wait here anyway, it's Sunday today, I've\ngot plenty of time, and I'm not disturbing anyone here.\" \"There's no\nneed to be so apologetic,\" said the information-giver, \"it's very\ncommendable for you to be so attentive. You are taking up space here\nwhen you don't need to but as long as you don't get in my way I will do\nnothing to stop you following the progress of your case as closely as\nyou like. When one has seen so many people who shamefully neglect their\ncases one learns to show patience with people like you. Do sit down.\"\n\"He's very good with the litigants,\" whispered the girl. K. nodded, but\nstarted to move off again when the information-giver repeated, \"Would\nyou not like to sit down here a while?\" \"No,\" said K., \"I don't want to\nrest.\" He had said that as decisively as he could, but in fact it would\nhave done him a lot of good to sit down. It was as if he were suffering\nsea-sickness. He felt as if he were on a ship in a rough sea, as if the\nwater were hitting against the wooden walls, a thundering from the\ndepths of the corridor as if the torrent were crashing over it, as if\nthe corridor were swaying and the waiting litigants on each side of it\nrising and sinking. It made the calmness of the girl and the man leading\nhim all the more incomprehensible. He was at their mercy, if they let go\nof him he would fall like a board. Their little eyes glanced here and\nthere, K. could feel the evenness of their steps but could not do the\nsame, as from step to step he was virtually being carried. He finally\nnoticed they were speaking to him but he did not understand them, all he\nheard was a noise that filled all the space and through which there\nseemed to be an unchanging higher note sounding, like a siren. \"Louder,\"\nhe whispered with his head sunk low, ashamed at having to ask them to\nspeak louder when he knew they had spoken loudly enough, even if it had\nbeen, for him, incomprehensible. At last, a draught of cool air blew in\nhis face as if a gap had been torn out in the wall in front of him, and\nnext to him he heard someone say, \"First he says he wants to go, and\nthen you can tell him a hundred times that this is the way out and he\ndoesn't move.\" K. became aware that he was standing in front of the way\nout, and that the young woman had opened the door. It seemed to him that\nall his strength returned to him at once, and to get a foretaste of\nfreedom he stepped straight on to one of the stairs and took his leave\nthere of his companions, who bowed to him. \"Thank you very much,\" he\nrepeated, shook their hands once more and did not let go until he\nthought he saw that they found it hard to bear the comparatively fresh\nair from the stairway after being so long used to the air in the\noffices. They were hardly able to reply, and the young woman might even\nhave fallen over if K. had not shut the door extremely fast. K. then\nstood still for a while, combed his hair with the help of a pocket\nmirror, picked up his hat from the next stair--the information-giver\nmust have thrown it down there--and then he ran down the steps so fresh\nand in such long leaps that the contrast with his previous state nearly\nfrightened him. His normally sturdy state of health had never prepared\nhim for surprises such as this. Did his body want to revolt and cause\nhim a new trial as he was bearing the old one with such little effort?\nHe did not quite reject the idea that he should see a doctor the next\ntime he had the chance, but whatever he did--and this was something on\nwhich he could advise himself--he wanted to spend all Sunday mornings in\nfuture better than he had spent this one.\n\n\n\n\nChapter Four\n\nMiss B\u00fcrstner's Friend\n\n\nFor some time after this, K. found it impossible to exchange even just a\nfew words with Miss B\u00fcrstner. He tried to reach her in many and various\nways but she always found a way to avoid it. He would come straight home\nfrom the office, remain in her room without the light on, and sit on the\nsofa with nothing more to distract him than keeping watch on the empty\nhallway. If the maid went by and closed the door of the apparently empty\nroom he would get up after a while and open it again. He got up an hour\nearlier than usual in the morning so that he might perhaps find Miss\nB\u00fcrstner alone as she went to the office. But none of these efforts\nbrought any success. Then he wrote her a letter, both to the office and\nthe flat, attempting once more to justify his behaviour, offered to make\nwhatever amends he could, promised never to cross whatever boundary she\nmight set him and begged merely to have the chance to speak to her some\ntime, especially as he was unable to do anything with Mrs. Grubach\neither until he had spoken with Miss B\u00fcrstner, he finally informed her\nthat the following Sunday he would stay in his room all day waiting for\na sign from her that there was some hope of his request being fulfilled,\nor at least that she would explain to him why she could not fulfil it\neven though he had promised to observe whatever stipulations she might\nmake. The letters were not returned, but there was no answer either.\nHowever, on the following Sunday there was a sign that seemed clear\nenough. It was still early when K. noticed, through the keyhole, that\nthere was an unusual level of activity in the hallway which soon abated.\nA French teacher, although she was German and called Montag, a pale and\nfebrile girl with a slight limp who had previously occupied a room of\nher own, was moving into Miss B\u00fcrstner's room. She could be seen\nshuffling through the hallway for several hours, there was always\nanother piece of clothing or a blanket or a book that she had forgotten\nand had to be fetched specially and brought into the new home.\n\nWhen Mrs. Grubach brought K. his breakfast--ever since the time when she\nhad made K. so cross she didn't trust the maid to do the slightest\njob--he had no choice but to speak to her, for the first time in five\ndays. \"Why is there so much noise in the hallway today?\" he asked as she\npoured his coffee out, \"Can't something be done about it? Does this\nclearing out have to be done on a Sunday?\" K. did not look up at Mrs.\nGrubach, but he saw nonetheless that she seemed to feel some relief as\nshe breathed in. Even sharp questions like this from Mr. K. she\nperceived as forgiveness, or as the beginning of forgiveness. \"We're not\nclearing anything out, Mr. K.,\" she said, \"it's just that Miss Montag is\nmoving in with Miss B\u00fcrstner and is moving her things across.\" She said\nnothing more, but just waited to see how K. would take it and whether he\nwould allow her to carry on speaking. But K. kept her in uncertainty,\ntook the spoon and pensively stirred his coffee while he remained\nsilent. Then he looked up at her and said, \"What about the suspicions\nyou had earlier about Miss B\u00fcrstner, have you given them up?\" \"Mr. K.,\"\ncalled Mrs. Grubach, who had been waiting for this very question, as she\nput her hands together and held them out towards him. \"I just made a\nchance remark and you took it so badly. I didn't have the slightest\nintention of offending anyone, not you or anyone else. You've known me\nfor long enough, Mr. K., I'm sure you're convinced of that. You don't\nknow how I've been suffering for the past few days! That I should tell\nlies about my tenants! And you, Mr. K., you believed it! And said I\nshould give you notice! Give you notice!\" At this last outcry, Mrs.\nGrubach was already choking back her tears, she raised her apron to her\nface and blubbered out loud.\n\n\"Oh, don't cry Mrs. Grubach,\" said K., looking out the window, he was\nthinking only of Miss B\u00fcrstner and how she was accepting an unknown girl\ninto her room. \"Now don't cry,\" he said again as he turned his look back\ninto the room where Mrs. Grubach was still crying. \"I meant no harm\neither when I said that. It was simply a misunderstanding between us.\nThat can happen even between old friends sometimes.\" Mrs. Grubach pulled\nher apron down to below her eyes to see whether K. really was attempting\na reconciliation. \"Well, yes, that's how it is,\" said K., and as Mrs.\nGrubach's behaviour indicated that the captain had said nothing he dared\nto add, \"Do you really think, then, that I'd want to make an enemy of\nyou for the sake of a girl we hardly know?\" \"Yes, you're quite right,\nMr. K.,\" said Mrs. Grubach, and then, to her misfortune, as soon as she\nfelt just a little freer to speak, she added something rather inept. \"I\nkept asking myself why it was that Mr. K. took such an interest in Miss\nB\u00fcrstner. Why does he quarrel with me over her when he knows that any\ncross word from him and I can't sleep that night? And I didn't say\nanything about Miss B\u00fcrstner that I hadn't seen with my own eyes.\" K.\nsaid nothing in reply, he should have chased her from the room as soon\nas she had opened her mouth, and he didn't want to do that. He contented\nhimself with merely drinking his coffee and letting Mrs. Grubach feel\nthat she was superfluous. Outside, the dragging steps of Miss Montag\ncould still be heard as she went from one side of the hallway to the\nother. \"Do you hear that?\" asked K. pointing his hand at the door.\n\"Yes,\" said Mrs. Grubach with a sigh, \"I wanted to give her some help\nand I wanted the maid to help her too but she's stubborn, she wants to\nmove everything in herself. I wonder at Miss B\u00fcrstner. I often feel it's\na burden for me to have Miss Montag as a tenant but Miss B\u00fcrstner\naccepts her into her room with herself.\" \"There's nothing there for you\nto worry about,\" said K., crushing the remains of a sugar lump in his\ncup. \"Does she cause you any trouble?\" \"No,\" said Mrs. Grubach, \"in\nitself it's very good to have her there, it makes another room free for\nme and I can let my nephew, the captain, occupy it. I began to worry he\nmight be disturbing you when I had to let him live in the living room\nnext to you over the last few days. He's not very considerate.\" \"What an\nidea!\" said K. standing up, \"there's no question of that. You seem to\nthink that because I can't stand this to-ing and fro-ing of Miss Montag\nthat I'm over-sensitive--and there she goes back again.\" Mrs. Grubach\nappeared quite powerless. \"Should I tell her to leave moving the rest of\nher things over till later, then, Mr. K.? If that's what you want I'll\ndo it immediately.\" \"But she has to move in with Miss B\u00fcrstner!\" said K.\n\"Yes,\" said Mrs. Grubach, without quite understanding what K. meant. \"So\nshe has to take her things over there.\" Mrs. Grubach just nodded. K. was\nirritated all the more by this dumb helplessness which, seen from the\noutside, could have seemed like a kind of defiance on her part. He began\nto walk up and down the room between the window and the door, thus\ndepriving Mrs. Grubach of the chance to leave, which she otherwise\nprobably would have done.\n\nJust as K. once more reached the door, someone knocked at it. It was the\nmaid, to say that Miss Montag would like to have a few words with Mr.\nK., and therefore requested that he come to the dining room where she\nwas waiting for him. K. heard the maid out thoughtfully, and then looked\nback at the shocked Mrs. Grubach in a way that was almost contemptuous.\nHis look seemed to be saying that K. had been expecting this invitation\nfor Miss Montag for a long time, and that it was confirmation of the\nsuffering he had been made to endure that Sunday morning from Mrs.\nGrubach's tenants. He sent the maid back with the reply that he was on\nhis way, then he went to the wardrobe to change his coat, and in answer\nto Mrs. Grubach's gentle whining about the nuisance Miss Montag was\ncausing merely asked her to clear away the breakfast things. \"But you've\nhardly touched it,\" said Mrs. Grubach. \"Oh just take it away!\" shouted\nK. It seemed to him that Miss Montag was mixed up in everything and made\nit repulsive to him.\n\nAs he went through the hallway he looked at the closed door of Miss\nB\u00fcrstner's room. But it wasn't there that he was invited, but the dining\nroom, to which he yanked the door open without knocking.\n\nThe room was long but narrow with one window. There was only enough\nspace available to put two cupboards at an angle in the corner by the\ndoor, and the rest of the room was entirely taken up with the long\ndining table which started by the door and reached all the way to the\ngreat window, which was thus made almost inaccessible. The table was\nalready laid for a large number of people, as on Sundays almost all the\ntenants ate their dinner here at midday.\n\nWhen K. entered, Miss Montag came towards him from the window along one\nside of the table. They greeted each other in silence. Then Miss Montag,\nher head unusually erect as always, said, \"I'm not sure whether you know\nme.\" K. looked at her with a frown. \"Of course I do,\" he said, \"you've\nbeen living here with Mrs. Grubach for quite some time now.\" \"But I get\nthe impression you don't pay much attention to what's going on in the\nlodging house,\" said Miss Montag. \"No,\" said K. \"Would you not like to\nsit down?\" said Miss Montag. In silence, the two of them drew chairs out\nfrom the farthest end of the table and sat down facing each other. But\nMiss Montag stood straight up again as she had left her handbag on the\nwindow sill and went to fetch it; she shuffled down the whole length of\nthe room. When she came back, the handbag lightly swinging, she said,\n\"I'd like just to have a few words with you on behalf of my friend. She\nwould have come herself, but she's feeling a little unwell today.\nPerhaps you'll be kind enough to forgive her and listen to me instead.\nThere's anyway nothing that she could have said that I won't. On the\ncontrary, in fact, I think I can say even more than her because I'm\nrelatively impartial. Would you not agree?\" \"What is there to say,\nthen?\" answered K., who was tired of Miss Montag continuously watching\nhis lips. In that way she took control of what he wanted to say before\nhe said it. \"Miss B\u00fcrstner clearly refuses to grant me the personal\nmeeting that I asked her for.\" \"That's how it is,\" said Miss Montag, \"or\nrather, that's not at all how it is, the way you put it is remarkably\nsevere. Generally speaking, meetings are neither granted nor the\nopposite. But it can be that meetings are considered unnecessary, and\nthat's how it is here. Now, after your comment, I can speak openly. You\nasked my friend, verbally or in writing, for the chance to speak with\nher. Now my friend is aware of your reasons for asking for this\nmeeting--or at least I suppose she is--and so, for reasons I know\nnothing about, she is quite sure that it would be of no benefit to\nanyone if this meeting actually took place. Moreover, it was only\nyesterday, and only very briefly, that she made it clear to me that such\na meeting could be of no benefit for yourself either, she feels that it\ncan only have been a matter of chance that such an idea came to you, and\nthat even without any explanations from her, you will very soon come to\nrealise yourself, if you have not done so already, the futility of your\nidea. My answer to that is that although it may be quite right, I\nconsider it advantageous, if the matter is to be made perfectly clear,\nto give you an explicit answer. I offered my services in taking on the\ntask, and after some hesitation my friend conceded. I hope, however,\nalso to have acted in your interests, as even the slightest uncertainty\nin the least significant of matters will always remain a cause of\nsuffering and if, as in this case, it can be removed without substantial\neffort, then it is better if that is done without delay.\" \"I thank you,\"\nsaid K. as soon as Miss Montag had finished. He stood slowly up, looked\nat her, then across the table, then out the window--the house opposite\nstood there in the sun--and went to the door. Miss Montag followed him a\nfew paces, as if she did not quite trust him. At the door, however, both\nof them had to step back as it opened and Captain Lanz entered. This was\nthe first time that K. had seen him close up. He was a large man of\nabout forty with a tanned, fleshy face. He bowed slightly, intending it\nalso for K., and then went over to Miss Montag and deferentially kissed\nher hand. He was very elegant in the way he moved. The courtesy he\nshowed towards Miss Montag made a striking contrast with the way she had\nbeen treated by K. Nonetheless, Miss Montag did not seem to be cross\nwith K. as it even seemed to him that she wanted to introduce the\ncaptain. K. however, did not want to be introduced, he would not have\nbeen able to show any sort of friendliness either to Miss Montag or to\nthe captain, the kiss on the hand had, for K., bound them into a group\nwhich would keep him at a distance from Miss B\u00fcrstner whilst at the same\ntime seeming to be totally harmless and unselfish. K. thought, however,\nthat he saw more than that, he thought he also saw that Miss Montag had\nchosen a means of doing it that was good, but two-edged. She exaggerated\nthe importance of the relationship between K. and Miss B\u00fcrstner, and\nabove all she exaggerated the importance of asking to speak with her and\nshe tried at the same time to make out that K. was exaggerating\neverything. She would be disappointed, K. did not want to exaggerate\nanything, he was aware that Miss B\u00fcrstner was a little typist who would\nnot offer him much resistance for long. In doing so he deliberately took\nno account of what Mrs. Grubach had told him about Miss B\u00fcrstner. All\nthese things were going through his mind as he left the room with hardly\na polite word. He wanted to go straight to his room, but a little laugh\nfrom Miss Montag that he heard from the dining room behind him brought\nhim to the idea that he might prepare a surprise for the two of them,\nthe captain and Miss Montag. He looked round and listened to find out if\nthere might be any disturbance from any of the surrounding rooms,\neverywhere was quiet, the only thing to be heard was the conversation\nfrom the dining room and Mrs. Grubach's voice from the passage leading\nto the kitchen. This seemed an opportune time, K. went to Miss\nB\u00fcrstner's room and knocked gently. There was no sound so he knocked\nagain but there was still no answer in reply. Was she asleep? Or was\nshe really unwell? Or was she just pretending as she realised it could\nonly be K. knocking so gently? K. assumed she was pretending and\nknocked harder, eventually, when the knocking brought no result, he\ncarefully opened the door with the sense of doing something that was not\nonly improper but also pointless. In the room there was no-one. What's\nmore, it looked hardly at all like the room K. had known before. Against\nthe wall there were now two beds behind one another, there were clothes\npiled up on three chairs near the door, a wardrobe stood open. Miss\nB\u00fcrstner must have gone out while Miss Montag was speaking to him in the\ndining room. K. was not greatly bothered by this, he had hardly expected\nto be able to find Miss B\u00fcrstner so easily and had made this attempt for\nlittle more reason than to spite Miss Montag. But that made it all the\nmore embarrassing for him when, as he was closing the door again, he saw\nMiss Montag and the captain talking in the open doorway of the dining\nroom. They had probably been standing there ever since K. had opened the\ndoor, they avoided seeming to observe K. but chatted lightly and\nfollowed his movements with glances, the absent minded glances to the\nside such as you make during a conversation. But these glances were\nheavy for K., and he rushed alongside the wall back into his own room.\n\n\n\n\nChapter Five\n\nThe whip-man\n\n\nOne evening, a few days later, K. was walking along one of the corridors\nthat separated his office from the main stairway--he was nearly the last\none to leave for home that evening, there remained only a couple of\nworkers in the light of a single bulb in the dispatch department--when\nhe heard a sigh from behind a door which he had himself never opened but\nwhich he had always thought just led into a junk room. He stood in\namazement and listened again to establish whether he might not be\nmistaken. For a while there was silence, but then came some more sighs.\nHis first thought was to fetch one of the servitors, it might well have\nbeen worth having a witness present, but then he was taken by an\nuncontrollable curiosity that make him simply yank the door open. It\nwas, as he had thought, a junk room. Old, unusable forms, empty stone\nink-bottles lay scattered behind the entrance. But in the cupboard-like\nroom itself stood three men, crouching under the low ceiling. A candle\nfixed on a shelf gave them light. \"What are you doing here?\" asked K.\nquietly, but crossly and without thinking. One of the men was clearly in\ncharge, and attracted attention by being dressed in a kind of dark\nleather costume which left his neck and chest and his arms exposed. He\ndid not answer. But the other two called out, \"Mr. K.! We're to be\nbeaten because you made a complaint about us to the examining judge.\"\nAnd now, K. finally realised that it was actually the two policemen,\nFranz and Willem, and that the third man held a cane in his hand with\nwhich to beat them. \"Well,\" said K., staring at them, \"I didn't make any\ncomplaint, I only said what took place in my home. And your behaviour\nwas not entirely unobjectionable, after all.\" \"Mr. K.,\" said Willem,\nwhile Franz clearly tried to shelter behind him as protection from the\nthird man, \"if you knew how badly we get paid you wouldn't think so\nbadly of us. I've got a family to feed, and Franz here wanted to get\nmarried, you just have to get more money where you can, you can't do it\njust by working hard, not however hard you try. I was sorely tempted by\nyour fine clothes, policemen aren't allowed to do that sort of thing,\ncourse they aren't, and it wasn't right of us, but it's tradition that\nthe clothes go to the officers, that's how it's always been, believe me;\nand it's understandable too, isn't it, what can things like that mean\nfor anyone unlucky enough to be arrested. But if he starts talking about\nit openly then the punishment has to follow.\" \"I didn't know about any\nof this that you've been telling me, and I made no sort of request that\nyou be punished, I was simply acting on principle.\" \"Franz,\" said\nWillem, turning to the other policeman, \"didn't I tell you that the\ngentleman didn't say he wanted us to be punished. Now you can hear for\nyourself, he didn't even know we'd have to be punished.\" \"Don't you let\nthem persuade you, talking like that,\" said the third man to K., \"this\npunishment is both just and unavoidable.\" \"Don't listen to him,\" said\nWillem, interrupting himself only to quickly bring his hand to his mouth\nwhen it had received a stroke of the cane, \"we're only being punished\nbecause you made a complaint against us. Nothing would have happened to\nus otherwise, not even if they'd found out what we'd done. Can you call\nthat justice? Both of us, me especially, we'd proved our worth as good\npolice officers over a long period--you've got to admit yourself that as\nfar as official work was concerned we did the job well--things looked\ngood for us, we had prospects, it's quite certain that we would've been\nmade whip-men too, like this one, only he had the luck not to have\nanyone make a complaint about him, as you really don't get many\ncomplaints like that. Only that's all finished now, Mr. K., our careers\nare at an end, we're going to have to do work now that's far inferior to\npolice work and besides all this we're going to get this terrible,\npainful beating.\" \"Can the cane really cause so much pain, then?\" asked\nK., testing the cane that the whip-man swang in front of him. \"We're\ngoing to have to strip off totally naked,\" said Willem. \"Oh, I see,\"\nsaid K., looking straight at the whip-man, his skin was burned brown\nlike a sailor's, and his face showed health and vigour. \"Is there then\nno possibility of sparing these two their beating?\" he asked him. \"No,\"\nsaid the whip-man, shaking his head with a laugh. \"Get undressed!\" he\nordered the policemen. And to K. he said, \"You shouldn't believe\neverything they tell you, it's the fear of being beaten, it's already\nmade them a bit weak in the head. This one here, for instance,\" he\npointed at Willem, \"all that he told you about his career prospects,\nit's just ridiculous. Look at him, look how fat he is--the first strokes\nof the cane will just get lost in all that fat. Do you know what it is\nthat's made him so fat. He's in the habit of, everyone that gets\narrested by him, he eats their breakfast. Didn't he eat up your\nbreakfast? Yeah, I thought as much. But a man with a belly like that\ncan't be made into a whip-man and never will be, that is quite out of\nthe question.\" \"There are whip-men like that,\" Willem insisted, who had\njust released the belt of this trousers. \"No,\" said the whip-man,\nstriking him such a blow with the cane on his neck that it made him\nwince, \"you shouldn't be listening to this, just get undressed.\" \"I\nwould make it well worth your while if you would let them go,\" said K.,\nand without looking at the whip-man again--as such matters are best\ncarried on with both pairs of eyes turned down--he pulled out his\nwallet. \"And then you'd try and put in a complaint against me, too,\"\nsaid the whip-man, \"and get me flogged. No, no!\" \"Now, do be\nreasonable,\" said K., \"if I had wanted to get these two punished I would\nnot now be trying to buy their freedom, would I? I could simply close\nthe door here behind me, go home and see or hear nothing more of it. But\nthat's not what I'm doing, it really is of much more importance to me to\nlet them go free; if I had realised they would be punished, or even that\nthey might be punished, I would never have named them in the first place\nas they are not the ones I hold responsible. It's the organisation\nthat's to blame, the high officials are the ones to blame.\" \"That's how\nit is!\" shouted the policemen, who then immediately received another\nblow on their backs, which were by now exposed. \"If you had a senior\njudge here beneath your stick,\" said K., pressing down the cane as he\nspoke to stop it being raised once more, \"I really would do nothing to\nstop you, on the contrary, I would even pay you money to give you all\nthe more strength.\" \"Yeah, that's all very plausible, what you're saying\nthere,\" said the whip-man, \"only I'm not the sort of person you can\nbribe. It's my job to flog people, so I flog them.\" Franz, the\npoliceman, had been fairly quiet so far, probably in expectation of a\ngood result from K.'s intervention, but now he stepped forward to the\ndoor wearing just his trousers, knelt down hanging on to K.'s arm and\nwhispered, \"Even if you can't get mercy shown for both of us, at least\ntry and get me set free. Willem is older than me, he's less sensitive\nthan me in every way, he even got a light beating a couple of years\nago, but my record's still clean, I only did things the way I did\nbecause Willem led me on to it, he's been my teacher both for good and\nbad. Down in front of the bank my poor bride is waiting for me at the\nentrance, I'm so ashamed of myself, it's pitiful.\" His face was flowing\nover with tears, and he wiped it dry on K.'s coat. \"I'm not going to\nwait any longer,\" said the whip-man, taking hold of the cane in both\nhands and laying in to Franz while Willem cowered back in a corner and\nlooked on secretly, not even daring to turn his head. Then, the sudden\nscream that shot out from Franz was long and irrevocable, it seemed to\ncome not from a human being but from an instrument that was being\ntortured, the whole corridor rang with it, it must have been heard by\neveryone in the building. \"Don't shout like that!\", called out K.,\nunable to prevent himself, and, as he looked anxiously in the direction\nfrom which the servitor would come, he gave Franz a shove, not hard, but\nhard enough for him to fall down unconscious, clawing at the ground with\nhis hands by reflex; he still did not avoid being hit; the rod still\nfound him on the floor; the tip of the rod swang regularly up and down\nwhile he rolled to and fro under its blows. And now one of the servitors\nappeared in the distance, with another a few steps behind him. K. had\nquickly thrown the door shut, gone over to one of the windows\noverlooking the yard and opened it. The screams had completely stopped.\nSo that the servitor wouldn't come in, he called out, \"It's only me!\"\n\"Good evening, chief clerk,\" somebody called back. \"Is there anything\nwrong?\" \"No, no,\" answered K., \"it's only a dog yelping in the yard.\"\nThere was no sound from the servitors so he added, \"You can go back to\nwhat you were doing.\" He did not want to become involved with a\nconversation with them, and so he leant out of the window. A little\nwhile later, when he looked out in the corridor, they had already gone.\nNow, K. remained at the window, he did not dare go back into the junk\nroom, and he did not want to go home either. The yard he looked down\ninto was small and rectangular, all around it were offices, all the\nwindows were now dark and only those at the very top caught a reflection\nof the moon. K. tried hard to see into the darkness of one corner of the\nyard, where a few handcarts had been left behind one another. He felt\nanguish at not having been able to prevent the flogging, but that was\nnot his fault, if Franz had not screamed like that--clearly it must have\ncaused a great deal of pain but it's important to maintain control of\noneself at important moments--if Franz had not screamed then it was at\nleast highly probable that K. would have been able to dissuade the\nwhip-man. If all the junior officers were contemptible why would the\nwhip-man, whose position was the most inhumane of all, be any exception,\nand K. had noticed very clearly how his eyes had lit up when he saw the\nbanknotes, he had obviously only seemed serious about the flogging to\nraise the level of the bribe a little. And K. had not been ungenerous,\nhe really had wanted to get the policemen freed; if he really had now\nbegun to do something against the degeneracy of the court then it was a\nmatter of course that he would have to do something here as well. But of\ncourse, it became impossible for him to do anything as soon as Franz\nstarted screaming. K. could not possibly have let the junior bank staff,\nand perhaps even all sorts of other people, come along and catch him by\nsurprise as he haggled with those people in the junk room. Nobody could\nreally expect that sort of sacrifice of him. If that had been his\nintention then it would almost have been easier, K. would have taken\nhis own clothes off and offered himself to the whip-man in the\npolicemen's place. The whip-man would certainly not have accepted this\nsubstitution anyway, as in that way he would have seriously violated his\nduty without gaining any benefit. He would most likely have violated his\nduty twice over, as court employees were probably under orders not to\ncause any harm to K. while he was facing charges, although there may\nhave been special conditions in force here. However things stood, K. was\nable to do no more than throw the door shut, even though that would\nstill do nothing to remove all the dangers he faced. It was regrettable\nthat he had given Franz a shove, and it could only be excused by the\nheat of the moment.\n\nIn the distance, he heard the steps of the servitors; he did not want\nthem to be too aware of his presence, so he closed the window and\nwalked towards the main staircase. At the door of the junk room he\nstopped and listened for a little while. All was silent. The two\npolicemen were entirely at the whip-man's mercy; he could have beaten\nthem to death. K. reached his hand out for the door handle but drew it\nsuddenly back. He was no longer in any position to help anyone, and the\nservitors would soon be back; he did, though, promise himself that he\nwould raise the matter again with somebody and see that, as far as it\nwas in his power, those who really were guilty, the high officials whom\nnobody had so far dared point out to him, received their due punishment.\nAs he went down the main stairway at the front of the bank, he looked\ncarefully round at everyone who was passing, but there was no girl to be\nseen who might have been waiting for somebody, not even within some\ndistance from the bank. Franz's claim that his bride was waiting for him\nwas thus shown to be a lie, albeit one that was forgivable and intended\nonly to elicit more sympathy.\n\nThe policemen were still on K.'s mind all through the following day; he\nwas unable to concentrate on his work and had to stay in his office a\nlittle longer than the previous day so that he could finish it. On the\nway home, as he passed by the junk room again, he opened its door as if\nthat had been his habit. Instead of the darkness he expected, he saw\neverything unchanged from the previous evening, and did not know how he\nshould respond. Everything was exactly the same as he had seen it when\nhe had opened the door the previous evening. The forms and bottles of\nink just inside the doorway, the whip-man with his cane, the two\npolicemen, still undressed, the candle on the shelf, and the two\npolicemen began to wail and call out \"Mr. K.!\" K. slammed the door\nimmediately shut, and even thumped on it with his fists as if that\nwould shut it all the firmer. Almost in tears, he ran to the servitors\nworking quietly at the copying machine. \"Go and get that junk room\ncleared out!\" he shouted, and, in amazement, they stopped what they were\ndoing. \"It should have been done long ago, we're sinking in dirt!\" They\nwould be able to do the job the next day, K. nodded, it was too late in\nthe evening to make them do it there and then as he had originally\nintended. He sat down briefly in order to keep them near him for a\nlittle longer, looked through a few of the copies to give the impression\nthat he was checking them and then, as he saw that they would not dare\nto leave at the same time as himself, went home tired and with his mind\nnumb.\n\n\n\n\nChapter Six\n\nK.'s uncle--Nikki\n\n\nOne afternoon--K. was very busy at the time, getting the post\nready--K.'s Uncle Amani, a small country land owner, came into the room,\npushing his way between two of the staff who were bringing in some\npapers. K. had long expected his uncle to appear, but the sight of him\nnow shocked K. far less than the prospect of it had done a long time\nbefore. His uncle was bound to come, K. had been sure of that for about\na month. He already thought at the time he could see how his uncle\nwould arrive, slightly bowed, his battered panama hat in his left hand,\nhis right hand already stretched out over the desk long before he was\nclose enough as he rushed carelessly towards K. knocking over everything\nthat was in his way. K.'s uncle was always in a hurry, as he suffered\nfrom the unfortunate belief that he had a number of things to do while\nhe was in the big city and had to settle all of them in one day--his\nvisits were only ever for one day--and at the same time thought he could\nnot forgo any conversation or piece of business or pleasure that might\narise by chance. Uncle Amani was K.'s former guardian, and so K. was\nduty-bound to help him in all of this as well as to offer him a bed for\nthe night. \"I'm haunted by a ghost from the country,\" he would say.\n\nAs soon as they had greeted each other--K. had invited him to sit in\nthe armchair but Uncle Amani had no time for that--he said he wanted to\nspeak briefly with K. in private. \"It is necessary,\" he said with a\ntired gulp, \"it is necessary for my peace of mind.\" K. immediately sent\nthe junior staff from the room and told them to let no-one in. \"What's\nthis that I've been hearing, Mara?\" cried K.'s uncle when they were\nalone, as he sat on the table shoving various papers under himself\nwithout looking at them to make himself more comfortable. K. said\nnothing, he knew what was coming, but, suddenly relieved from the\neffort of the work he had been doing, he gave way to a pleasant\nlassitude and looked out the window at the other side of the street.\nFrom where he sat, he could see just a small, triangular section of it,\npart of the empty walls of houses between two shop windows. \"You're\nstaring out the window!\" called out his uncle, raising his arms, \"For\nGod's sake, Mara, give me an answer! Is it true, can it really be\ntrue?\" \"Uncle Amani,\" said K., wrenching himself back from his\ndaydreaming, \"I really don't know what it is you want of me.\" \"Mara,\"\nsaid his uncle in a warning tone, \"as far as I know, you've always told\nthe truth. Am I to take what you've just said as a bad sign?\" \"I think I\nknow what it is you want,\" said K. obediently, \"I expect you've heard\nabout my trial.\" \"That's right,\" answered his uncle with a slow nod,\n\"I've heard about your trial.\" \"Who did you hear it from, then?\" asked\nK. \"Erna wrote to me,\" said his uncle, \"she doesn't have much contact\nwith you, it's true, you don't pay very much attention to her, I'm\nafraid to say, but she learned about it nonetheless. I got her letter\ntoday and, of course, I came straight here. And for no other reason, but\nit seems to me that this is reason enough. I can read you out the part\nof the letter that concerns you.\" He drew the letter out from his\nwallet. \"Here it is. She writes; 'I have not seen Mara for a long time,\nI was in the bank last week but Mara was so busy that they would not\nlet me through; I waited there for nearly an hour but then I had to go\nhome as I had my piano lesson. I would have liked to have spoken to him,\nmaybe there will be a chance another time. He sent me a big box of\nchocolates for my name-day, that was very nice and attentive of him. I\nforgot to tell you about it when I wrote, and I only remember now that\nyou ask me about it. Chocolate, as I am sure you are aware, disappears\nstraight away in this lodging house, almost as soon as you know somebody\nhas given you chocolate it is gone. But there is something else I wanted\nto tell you about Mara. Like I said, they would not let me through to\nsee him at the bank because he was negotiating with some gentleman just\nthen. After I had been waiting quietly for quite a long time I asked one\nof the staff whether his meeting would last much longer. He said it\nmight well do, as it was probably about the legal proceedings, he said,\nthat were being conducted against him. I asked what sort of legal\nproceedings it was that were being conducted against the chief clerk,\nand whether he was not making some mistake, but he said he was not\nmaking any mistake, there were legal proceedings underway and even that\nthey were about something quite serious, but he did not know any more\nabout it. He would have liked to have been of some help to the chief\nclerk himself, as the chief clerk was a gentleman, good and honest, but\nhe did not know what it was he could do and merely hoped there would be\nsome influential gentlemen who would take his side. I'm sure that is\nwhat will happen and that everything will turn out for the best in the\nend, but in the mean time things do not look at all good, and you can\nsee that from the mood of the chief clerk himself. Of course, I did not\nplace too much importance on this conversation, and even did my best to\nput the bank clerk's mind at rest, he was quite a simple man. I told him\nhe was not to speak to anyone else about this, and I think it is all\njust a rumour, but I still think it might be good if you, Dear Father,\nif you looked into the matter the next time you visit. It will be easy\nfor you to find out more detail and, if it is really necessary, to do\nsomething about it through the great and influential people you know.\nBut if it is not necessary, and that is what seems most likely, then at\nleast your daughter will soon have the chance to embrace you and I look\nforward to it.'--She's a good child,\" said K.'s uncle when he had\nfinished reading, and wiped a few tears from his eyes. K. nodded. With\nall the different disruptions he had had recently he had completely\nforgotten about Erna, even her birthday, and the story of the chocolates\nhad clearly just been invented so that he wouldn't get in trouble with\nhis aunt and uncle. It was very touching, and even the theatre tickets,\nwhich he would regularly send her from then on, would not be enough to\nrepay her, but he really did not feel, now, that it was right for him to\nvisit her in her lodgings and hold conversations with a little, eighteen\nyear old schoolgirl. \"And what do you have to say about that?\" asked his\nuncle, who had forgotten all his rush and excitement as he read the\nletter, and seemed to be about to read it again. \"Yes, Uncle,\" said K.,\n\"it is true.\" \"True!\" called out his uncle. \"What is true? How can this\nbe true? What sort of trial is it? Not a criminal trial, I hope?\" \"It's\na criminal trial,\" answered K. \"And you sit quietly here while you've\ngot a criminal trial round your neck?\" shouted his uncle, getting ever\nlouder. \"The more calm I am, the better it will be for the outcome,\"\nsaid K. in a tired voice, \"don't worry.\" \"How can I help worrying?!\"\nshouted his uncle, \"Mara, my dear Mara, think about yourself, about\nyour family, think about our good name! Up till now, you've always been\nour pride, don't now become our disgrace. I don't like the way you're\nbehaving,\" he said, looking at K. with his head at an angle, \"that's not\nhow an innocent man behaves when he's accused of something, not if he's\nstill got any strength in him. Just tell me what it's all about so that\nI can help you. It's something to do with the bank, I take it?\" \"No,\"\nsaid K. as he stood up, \"and you're speaking too loud, Uncle, I expect\none of the staff is listening at the door and I find that rather\nunpleasant. It's best if we go somewhere else, then I can answer all\nyour questions, as far as I can. And I know very well that I have to\naccount to the family for what I do.\" \"You certainly do!\" his uncle\nshouted, \"Quite right, you do. Now just get a move on, Mara, hurry up\nnow!\" \"I still have a few documents I need to prepare,\" said K., and,\nusing the intercom, he summoned his deputy who entered a few moments\nlater. K.'s uncle, still angry and excited, gestured with his hand to\nshow that K. had summoned him, even though there was no need whatever to\ndo so. K. stood in front of the desk and explained to the young man, who\nlistened calm and attentive, what would need to be done that day in his\nabsence, speaking in a calm voice and making use of various documents.\nThe presence of K.'s uncle while this was going on was quite disturbing;\nhe did not listen to what was being said, but at first he stood there\nwith eyes wide open and nervously biting his lips. Then he began to walk\nup and down the room, stopped now and then at the window, or stood in\nfront of a picture always making various exclamations such as, \"That is\ntotally incomprehensible to me!\" or \"Now just tell me, what are you\nsupposed to make of that?\" The young man pretended to notice nothing of\nthis and listened to K.'s instructions through to the end, he made a few\nnotes, bowed to both K. and his uncle and then left the room. K.'s uncle\nhad turned his back to him and was looking out the window, bunching up\nthe curtains with his outstretched hands. The door had hardly closed\nwhen he called out, \"At last! Now that he's stopped jumping about we can\ngo too!\" Once they were in the front hall of the bank, where several\nmembers of staff were standing about and where, just then, the deputy\ndirector was walking across, there was unfortunately no way of stopping\nK.'s uncle from continually asking questions about the trial. \"Now\nthen, Mara,\" he began, lightly acknowledging the bows from those around\nthem as they passed, \"tell me everything about this trial; what sort of\ntrial is it?\" K. made a few comments which conveyed little information,\neven laughed a little, and it was only when they reached the front steps\nthat he explained to his uncle that he had not wanted to talk openly in\nfront of those people. \"Quite right,\" said his uncle, \"but now start\ntalking.\" With his head to one side, and smoking his cigar in short,\nimpatient draughts, he listened. \"First of all, Uncle,\" said K., \"it's\nnot a trial like you'd have in a normal courtroom.\" \"So much the worse,\"\nsaid his uncle. \"How's that?\" asked K., looking at him. \"What I mean is,\nthat's for the worse,\" he repeated. They were standing on the front\nsteps of the bank; as the doorkeeper seemed to be listening to what they\nwere saying K. drew his uncle down further, where they were absorbed\ninto the bustle of the street. His uncle took K.'s arm and stopped\nasking questions with such urgency about the trial, they walked on for a\nwhile in silence. \"But how did all this come about?\" he eventually\nasked, stopping abruptly enough to startle the people walking behind,\nwho had to avoid walking into him. \"Things like this don't come all of a\nsudden, they start developing a long time beforehand, there must have\nbeen warning signs of it, why didn't you write to me? You know I'd do\nanything for you, to some extent I am still your guardian, and until\ntoday that's something I was proud of. I'll still help you, of course I\nwill, only now, now that the trial is already underway, it makes it\nvery difficult. But whatever; the best thing now is for you to take a\nshort holiday staying with us in the country. You've lost weight, I can\nsee that now. The country life will give you strength, that will be\ngood, there's bound to be a lot of hard work ahead of you. But besides\nthat it'll be a way of getting you away from the court, to some extent.\nHere they've got every means of showing the powers at their disposal\nand they're automatically bound to use them against you; in the country\nthey'll either have to delegate authority to different bodies or just\nhave to try and bother you by letter, telegram or telephone. And that's\nbound to weaken the effect, it won't release you from them but it'll\ngive you room to breathe.\" \"You could forbid me to leave,\" said K., who\nhad been drawn slightly into his uncle's way of thinking by what he had\nbeen saying. \"I didn't think you would do it,\" said his uncle\nthoughtfully, \"you won't suffer too much loss of power by moving away.\"\nK. grasped his uncle under the arm to prevent him stopping still and\nsaid, \"I thought you'd think all this is less important than I do, and\nnow you're taking it so hard.\" \"Mara,\" called his uncle trying to\ndisentangle himself from him so that he could stop walking, but K. did\nnot let go, \"you've completely changed, you used to be so astute, are\nyou losing it now? Do you want to lose the trial? Do you realise what\nthat would mean? That would mean you would be simply destroyed. And\nthat everyone you know would be pulled down with you or at the very\nleast humiliated, disgraced right down to the ground. Mara, pull\nyourself together. The way you're so indifferent about it, it's driving\nme mad. Looking at you I can almost believe that old saying: 'Having a\ntrial like that means losing a trial like that'.\" \"My dear Uncle,\" said\nK., \"it won't do any good to get excited, it's no good for you to do it\nand it'd be no good for me to do it. The case won't be won by getting\nexcited, and please admit that my practical experience counts for\nsomething, just as I have always and still do respect your experience,\neven when it surprises me. You say that the family will also be\naffected by this trial; I really can't see how, but that's beside the\npoint and I'm quite willing to follow your instructions in all of this.\nOnly, I don't see any advantage in staying in the country, not even for\nyou, as that would indicate flight and a sense of guilt. And besides,\nalthough I am more subject to persecution if I stay in the city I can\nalso press the matter forward better here.\" \"You're right,\" said his\nuncle in a tone that seemed to indicate they were finally coming closer\nto each other, \"I just made the suggestion because, as I saw it, if you\nstay in the city the case will be put in danger by your indifference to\nit, and I thought it was better if I did the work for you. But will you\npush things forward yourself with all your strength, if so, that will\nnaturally be far better.\" \"We're agreed then,\" said K. \"And do you have\nany suggestions for what I should do next?\" \"Well, naturally I'll have\nto think about it,\" said his uncle, \"you must bear in mind that I've\nbeen living in the country for twenty years now, almost without a\nbreak, you lose your ability to deal with matters like this. But I do\nhave some important connections with several people who, I expect, know\ntheir way around these things better than I do, and to contact them is a\nmatter of course. Out there in the country I've been getting out of\ncondition, I'm sure you're already aware of that. It's only at times\nlike this that you notice it yourself. And this affair of yours came\nlargely unexpected, although, oddly enough, I had expected something of\nthe sort after I'd read Erna's letter, and today when I saw your face I\nknew it with almost total certainty. But all that is by the by, the\nimportant thing now is, we have no time to lose.\" Even while he was\nstill speaking, K.'s uncle had stood on tiptoe to summon a taxi and now\nhe pulled K. into the car behind himself as he called out an address to\nthe driver. \"We're going now to see Dr. Preston, the lawyer,\" he said, \"we\nwere at school together. I'm sure you know the name, don't you? No? Well\nthat is odd. He's got a very good reputation as a defence barrister and\nfor working with the poor. But I esteem him especially as someone you\ncan trust.\" \"It's alright with me, whatever you do,\" said K., although\nhe was made uneasy by the rushed and urgent way his uncle was dealing\nwith the matter. It was not very encouraging, as the accused, to be\ntaken to a lawyer for poor people. \"I didn't know,\" he said, \"that you\ncould take on a lawyer in matters like this.\" \"Well of course you can,\"\nsaid his uncle, \"that goes without saying. Why wouldn't you take on a\nlawyer? And now, so that I'm properly instructed in this matter, tell me\nwhat's been happening so far.\" K. instantly began telling his uncle\nabout what had been happening, holding nothing back--being completely\nopen with him was the only way that K. could protest at his uncle's\nbelief that the trial was a great disgrace. He mentioned Miss B\u00fcrstner's\nname just once and in passing, but that did nothing to diminish his\nopenness about the trial as Miss B\u00fcrstner had no connection with it. As\nhe spoke, he looked out the window and saw how, just then, they were\ngetting closer to the suburb where the court offices were. He drew this\nto his uncle's attention, but he did not find the coincidence especially\nremarkable. The taxi stopped in front of a dark building. K.'s uncle\nknocked at the very first door at ground level; while they waited he\nsmiled, showing his big teeth, and whispered, \"Eight o'clock; not the\nusual sort of time to be visiting a lawyer, but Preston won't mind it from\nme.\" Two large, black eyes appeared in the spy-hatch in the door, they\nstared at the two visitors for a while and then disappeared; the door,\nhowever, did not open. K. and his uncle confirmed to each other the fact\nthat they had seen the two eyes. \"A new maid, afraid of strangers,\" said\nK.'s uncle, and knocked again. The eyes appeared once more. This time\nthey seemed almost sad, but the open gas flame that burned with a hiss\nclose above their heads gave off little light and that may have merely\ncreated an illusion. \"Open the door,\" called K.'s uncle, raising his\nfist against it, \"we are friends of Dr. Preston, the lawyer!\" \"Dr. Preston is\nill,\" whispered someone behind them. In a doorway at the far end of a\nnarrow passage stood a man in his dressing gown, giving them this\ninformation in an extremely quiet voice. K.'s uncle, who had already\nbeen made very angry by the long wait, turned abruptly round and\nretorted, \"Ill. You say he's ill?\" and strode towards the gentleman in a\nway that seemed almost threatening, as if he were the illness himself.\n\"They've opened the door for you, now,\" said the gentleman, pointing at\nthe door of the lawyer. He pulled his dressing gown together and\ndisappeared. The door had indeed been opened, a young girl--K.\nrecognised the dark, slightly bulging eyes--stood in the hallway in a\nlong white apron, holding a candle in her hand. \"Next time, open up\nsooner!\" said K.'s uncle instead of a greeting, while the girl made a\nslight curtsey. \"Come along, Mara,\" he then said to K. who was slowly\nmoving over towards the girl. \"Dr. Preston is unwell,\" said the girl as\nK.'s uncle, without stopping, rushed towards one of the doors. K.\ncontinued to look at the girl in amazement as she turned round to block\nthe way into the living room, she had a round face like a puppy's, not\nonly the pale cheeks and the chin were round but the temples and the\nhairline were too. \"Mara!\" called his uncle once more, and he asked the\ngirl, \"It's trouble with his heart, is it?\" \"I think it is, sir,\" said\nthe girl, who by now had found time to go ahead with the candle and open\nthe door into the room. In one corner of the room, where the light of\nthe candle did not reach, a face with a long beard looked up from the\nbed. \"Nikki, who's this coming in?\" asked the lawyer, unable to recognise\nhis guests because he was dazzled by the candle. \"It's your old friend,\nAlbert,\" said K.'s uncle. \"Oh, Albert,\" said the lawyer, falling back\nonto his pillow as if this visit meant he would not need to keep up\nappearances. \"Is it really as bad as that?\" asked K.'s uncle, sitting on\nthe edge of the bed. \"I don't believe it is. It's a recurrence of your\nheart trouble and it'll pass over like the other times.\" \"Maybe,\" said\nthe lawyer quietly, \"but it's just as much trouble as it's ever been. I\ncan hardly breathe, I can't sleep at all and I'm getting weaker by the\nday.\" \"I see,\" said K.'s uncle, pressing his panama hat firmly against\nhis knee with his big hand. \"That is bad news. But are you getting the\nright sort of care? And it's so depressing in here, it's so dark. It's a\nlong time since I was last here, but it seemed to me friendlier then.\nEven your young lady here doesn't seem to have much life in her, unless\nshe's just pretending.\" The maid was still standing by the door with the\ncandle; as far as could be made out, she was watching K. more than she\nwas watching his uncle even while the latter was still speaking about\nher. K. leant against a chair that he had pushed near to the girl. \"When\nyou're as ill as I am,\" said the lawyer, \"you need to have peace. I\ndon't find it depressing.\" After a short pause he added, \"and Nikki looks\nafter me well, she's a good girl.\" But that was not enough to persuade\nK.'s uncle, he had visibly taken against his friend's carer and, even\nthough he did not contradict the invalid, he persecuted her with his\nscowl as she went over to the bed, put the candle on the bedside table\nand, leaning over the bed, made a fuss of him by tidying the pillows.\nK.'s uncle nearly forgot the need to show any consideration for the man\nwho lay ill in bed, he stood up, walked up and down behind the carer,\nand K. would not have been surprised if he had grabbed hold of her\nskirts behind her and dragged her away from the bed. K. himself looked\non calmly, he was not even disappointed at finding the lawyer unwell,\nhe had been able to do nothing to oppose the enthusiasm his uncle had\ndeveloped for the matter, he was glad that this enthusiasm had now been\ndistracted without his having to do anything about it. His uncle,\nprobably simply wishing to be offensive to the lawyer's attendant, then\nsaid, \"Young lady, now please leave us alone for a while, I have some\npersonal matters to discuss with my friend.\" Dr. Preston's carer was still\nleant far over the invalid's bed and smoothing out the cloth covering\nthe wall next to it, she merely turned her head and then, in striking\ncontrast with the anger that first stopped K.'s uncle from speaking and\nthen let the words out in a gush, she said very quietly, \"You can see\nthat Dr. Preston is so ill that he can't discuss any matters at all.\" It\nwas probably just for the sake of convenience that she had repeated the\nwords spoken by K.'s uncle, but an onlooker might even have perceived\nit as mocking him and he, of course, jumped up as if he had just been\nstabbed. \"You damned ...,\" in the first gurglings of his excitement his\nwords could hardly be understood, K. was startled even though he had\nbeen expecting something of the sort and ran to his uncle with the\nintention, no doubt, of closing his mouth with both his hands.\nFortunately, though, behind the girl, the invalid raised himself up,\nK.'s uncle made an ugly face as if swallowing something disgusting and\nthen, somewhat calmer, said, \"We have naturally not lost our senses,\nnot yet; if what I am asking for were not possible I would not be asking\nfor it. Now please, go!\" The carer stood up straight by the bed\ndirectly facing K.'s uncle, K. thought he noticed that with one hand she\nwas stroking the lawyer's hand. \"You can say anything in front of\nNikki,\" said the invalid, in a tone that was unmistakably imploring.\n\"It's not my business,\" said K.'s uncle, \"and it's not my secrets.\" And\nhe twisted himself round as if wanting to go into no more negotiations\nbut giving himself a little more time to think. \"Whose business is it\nthen?\" asked the lawyer in an exhausted voice as he leant back again.\n\"My nephew's,\" said K.'s uncle, \"and I've brought him along with me.\"\nAnd he introduced him, \"Chief Clerk Mara K.\" \"Oh!\" said the invalid,\nnow with much more life in him, and reached out his hand towards K. \"Do\nforgive me, I didn't notice you there at all.\" Then he then said to his\ncarer, \"Nikki, go,\" stretching his hand out to her as if this were a\nfarewell that would have to last for a long time. This time the girl\noffered no resistance. \"So you,\" he finally said to K.'s uncle, who had\nalso calmed down and stepped closer, \"you haven't come to visit me\nbecause I'm ill but you've come on business.\" The lawyer now looked so\nmuch stronger that it seemed the idea of being visited because he was\nill had somehow made him weak, he remained supporting himself on one\nelbow, which must have been rather tiring, and continually pulled at a\nlock of hair in the middle of his beard. \"You already look much better,\"\nsaid K.'s uncle, \"now that that witch has gone outside.\" He interrupted\nhimself, whispered, \"I bet you she's listening!\" and sprang over to the\ndoor. But behind the door there was no-one, K.'s uncle came back not\ndisappointed, as her not listening seemed to him worse than if she had\nbeen, but probably somewhat embittered. \"You're mistaken about her,\"\nsaid the lawyer, but did nothing more to defend her; perhaps that was\nhis way of indicating that she did not need defending. But in a tone\nthat was much more committed he went on, \"As far as your nephew's\naffairs are concerned, this will be an extremely difficult undertaking\nand I'd count myself lucky if my strength lasted out long enough for it;\nI'm greatly afraid it won't do, but anyway I don't want to leave\nanything untried; if I don't last out you can always get somebody else.\nTo be honest, this matter interests me too much, and I can't bring\nmyself to give up the chance of taking some part in it. If my heart does\ntotally give out then at least it will have found a worthy affair to\nfail in.\" K. believed he understood not a word of this entire speech, he\nlooked at his uncle for an explanation but his uncle sat on the bedside\ntable with the candle in his hand, a medicine bottle had rolled off the\ntable onto the floor, he nodded to everything the lawyer said, agreed to\neverything, and now and then looked at K. urging him to show the same\ncompliance. Maybe K.'s uncle had already told the lawyer about the\ntrial. But that was impossible, everything that had happened so far\nspoke against it. So he said, \"I don't understand....\" \"Well, maybe I've\nmisunderstood what you've been saying,\" said the lawyer, just as\nastonished and embarrassed as K. \"Perhaps I've been going too fast. What\nwas it you wanted to speak to me about? I thought it was to do with your\ntrial.\" \"Of course it is,\" said K.'s uncle, who then asked K., \"So what\nis it you want?\" \"Yes, but how is it that you know anything about me and\nmy case?\" asked K. \"Oh, I see,\" said the lawyer with a smile. \"I am a\nlawyer, I move in court circles, people talk about various different\ncases and the more interesting ones stay in your mind, especially when\nthey concern the nephew of a friend. There's nothing very remarkable\nabout that.\" \"What is it you want, then?\" asked K.'s uncle once more,\n\"You seem so uneasy about it.\" \"You move in this court's circles?\" asked\nK. \"Yes,\" said the lawyer. \"You're asking questions like a child,\" said\nK.'s uncle. \"What circles should I move in, then, if not with members of\nmy own discipline?\" the lawyer added. It sounded so indisputable that K.\ngave no answer at all. \"But you work in the High Court, not that court\nin the attic,\" he had wanted to say but could not bring himself to\nactually utter it. \"You have to realise,\" the lawyer continued, in a\ntone as if he were explaining something obvious, unnecessary and\nincidental, \"you have to realise that I also derive great advantage for\nmy clients from mixing with those people, and do so in many different\nways, it's not something you can keep talking about all the time. I'm at\na bit of a disadvantage now, of course, because of my illness, but I\nstill get visits from some good friends of mine at the court and I learn\none or two things. It might even be that I learn more than many of those\nwho are in the best of health and spend all day in court. And I'm\nreceiving a very welcome visit right now, for instance.\" And he pointed\ninto a dark corner of the room. \"Where?\" asked K., almost uncouth in\nhis surprise. He looked round uneasily; the little candle gave off far\ntoo little light to reach as far as the wall opposite. And then,\nsomething did indeed begin to move there in the corner. In the light of\nthe candle held up by K.'s uncle an elderly gentleman could be seen\nsitting beside a small table. He had been sitting there for so long\nwithout being noticed that he could hardly have been breathing. Now he\nstood up with a great deal of fuss, clearly unhappy that attention had\nbeen drawn to him. It was as if, by flapping his hands about like short\nwings, he hoped to deflect any introductions and greetings, as if he\nwanted on no account to disturb the others by his presence and seemed to\nbe exhorting them to leave him back in the dark and forget about his\nbeing there. That, however, was something that could no longer be\ngranted him. \"You took us by surprise, you see,\" said the lawyer in\nexplanation, cheerfully indicating to the gentleman that he should come\ncloser, which, slowly, hesitatingly, looking all around him, but with a\ncertain dignity, he did. \"The office director--oh, yes, forgive me, I\nhaven't introduced you--this is my friend Albert K., this is his nephew,\nthe chief clerk Mara K., and this is the office director--so, the\noffice director was kind enough to pay me a visit. It's only possible\nto appreciate just how valuable a visit like this is if you've been let\ninto the secret of what a pile of work the office director has heaped\nover him. Well, he came anyway, we were having a peaceful chat, as far\nas I was able when I'm so weak, and although we hadn't told Nikki she\nmustn't let anyone in as we weren't expecting anyone, we still would\nrather have remained alone, but then along came you, Albert, thumping\nyour fists on the door, the office director moved over into the corner\npulling his table and chair with him, but now it turns out we might\nhave, that is, if that's what you wish, we might have something to\ndiscuss with each other and it would be good if we can all come back\ntogether again.--Office director ...,\" he said with his head on one\nside, pointing with a humble smile to an armchair near the bed. \"I'm\nafraid I'll only be able to stay a few minutes more,\" smiled the office\ndirector as he spread himself out in the armchair and looked at the\nclock. \"Business calls. But I wouldn't want to miss the chance of\nmeeting a friend of my friend.\" He inclined his head slightly toward\nK.'s uncle, who seemed very happy with his new acquaintance, but he was\nnot the sort of person to express his feelings of deference and\nresponded to the office director's words with embarrassed, but loud,\nlaughter. A horrible sight! K. was able to quietly watch everything as\nnobody paid any attention to him, the office director took over as\nleader of the conversation as seemed to be his habit once he had been\ncalled forward, the lawyer listened attentively with his hand to his\near, his initial weakness having perhaps only had the function of\ndriving away his new visitors. K.'s uncle served as\ncandle-bearer--balancing the candle on his thigh while the office\ndirector frequently glanced nervously at it--and was soon free of his\nembarrassment and was quickly enchanted not only by the office\ndirector's speaking manner but also by the gentle, waving\nhand-movements with which he accompanied it. K., leaning against the\nbedpost, was totally ignored by the office director, perhaps\ndeliberately, and served the old man only as audience. And besides, he\nhad hardly any idea what the conversation was about and his thoughts\nsoon turned to the care assistant and the ill treatment she had suffered\nfrom his uncle. Soon after, he began to wonder whether he had not seen\nthe office director somewhere before, perhaps among the people who were\nat his first hearing. He may have been mistaken, but thought the office\ndirector might well have been among the old gentlemen with the thin\nbeards in the first row.\n\nThere was then a noise that everyone heard from the hallway as if\nsomething of porcelain were being broken. \"I'll go and see what's\nhappened,\" said K., who slowly left the room as if giving the others\nthe chance to stop him. He had hardly stepped into the hallway, finding\nhis bearings in the darkness with his hand still firmly holding the\ndoor, when another small hand, much smaller than K.'s own, placed itself\non his and gently shut the door. It was the carer who had been waiting\nthere. \"Nothing has happened,\" she whispered to him, \"I just threw a\nplate against the wall to get you out of there.\" \"I was thinking about\nyou, as well,\" replied K. uneasily. \"So much the better,\" said the\ncarer. \"Come with me.\" A few steps along, they came to a frosted glass\ndoor which the carer opened for him. \"Come in here,\" she said. It was\nclearly the lawyer's office, fitted out with old, heavy furniture, as\nfar as could be seen in the moonlight which now illuminated just a\nsmall, rectangular section of the floor by each of the three big\nwindows. \"This way,\" said the carer, pointing to a dark trunk with a\ncarved, wooden backrest. When he had sat down, K. continued to look\nround the room, it was a large room with a high ceiling, the clients of\nthis lawyer for the poor must have felt quite lost in it. K. thought he\ncould see the little steps with which visitors would approach the\nmassive desk. But then he forgot about all of this and had eyes only\nfor the carer who sat very close beside him, almost pressing him against\nthe armrest. \"I did think,\" she said, \"you would come out here to me by\nyourself without me having to call you first. It was odd. First you\nstare at me as soon as you come in, and then you keep me waiting. And\nyou ought to call me Nikki, too,\" she added quickly and suddenly, as if\nno moment of this conversation should be lost. \"Gladly,\" said K. \"But\nas for its being odd, Nikki, that's easy to explain. Firstly, I had to\nlisten to what the old men were saying and couldn't leave without a\ngood reason, but secondly I'm not a bold person, if anything I'm quite\nshy, and you, Nikki, you didn't really look like you could be won over in\none stroke, either.\" \"That's not it,\" said Nikki, laying one arm on the\narmrest and looking at K., \"you didn't like me, and I don't suppose you\nlike me now, either.\" \"Liking wouldn't be very much,\" said K.,\nevasively. \"Oh!\" she exclaimed with a smile, thus making use of K.'s\ncomment to gain an advantage over him. So K. remained silent for a\nwhile. By now, he had become used to the darkness in the room and was\nable to make out various fixtures and fittings. He was especially\nimpressed by a large picture hanging to the right of the door, he leant\nforward in order to see it better. It depicted a man wearing a judge's\nrobes; he was sitting on a lofty throne gilded in a way that shone\nforth from the picture. The odd thing about the picture was that this\njudge was not sitting there in dignified calm but had his left arm\npressed against the back and armrest, his right arm, however, was\ncompletely free and only grasped the armrest with his hand, as if about\nto jump up any moment in vigorous outrage and make some decisive comment\nor even to pass sentence. The accused was probably meant to be imagined\nat the foot of the steps, the top one of which could be seen in the\npicture, covered with a yellow carpet. \"That might be my judge,\" said\nK., pointing to the picture with one finger. \"I know him,\" said Nikki\nlooking up at the picture, \"he comes here quite often. That picture is\nfrom when he was young, but he can never have looked anything like it,\nas he's tiny, minute almost. But despite that, he had himself made to\nlook bigger in the picture as he's madly vain, just like everyone round\nhere. But even I'm vain and that makes me very unhappy that you don't\nlike me.\" K. replied to that last comment merely by embracing Nikki and\ndrawing her towards him, she lay her head quietly on his shoulder. To\nthe rest of it, though, he said, \"What rank is he?\" \"He's an examining\njudge,\" she said, taking hold of the hand with which K. held her and\nplaying with his fingers. \"Just an examining judge once again,\" said K.\nin disappointment, \"the senior officials keep themselves hidden. But\nhere he is sitting on a throne.\" \"That's all just made up,\" said Nikki\nwith her face bent over K.'s hand, \"really he's sitting on a kitchen\nchair with an old horse blanket folded over it. But do you have to be\nalways thinking about your trial?\" she added slowly. \"No, not at all,\"\nsaid K., \"I probably even think too little about it.\" \"That's not the\nmistake you're making,\" said Nikki, \"you're too unyielding, that's what\nI've heard.\" \"Who said that?\" asked K., he felt her body against his\nchest and looked down on her rich, dark, tightly-bound hair. \"I'd be\nsaying too much if I told you that,\" answered Nikki. \"Please don't ask\nfor names, but do stop making these mistakes of yours, stop being so\nunyielding, there's nothing you can do to defend yourself from this\ncourt, you have to confess. So confess to them as soon as you get the\nchance. It's only then that they give you the chance to get away, not\ntill then. Only, without help from outside even that's impossible, but\nyou needn't worry about getting this help as I want to help you\nmyself.\" \"You understand a lot about this court and what sort of tricks\nare needed,\" said K. as he lifted her, since she was pressing in much\ntoo close to him, onto his lap. \"That's alright, then,\" she said, and\nmade herself comfortable on his lap by smoothing out her skirt and\nadjusting her blouse. Then she hung both her arms around his neck, leant\nback and took a long look at him. \"And what if I don't confess, could\nyou not help me then?\" asked K. to test her out. I'm accumulating women\nto help me, he thought to himself almost in amazement, first Miss\nB\u00fcrstner, then the court usher's wife, and now this little care\nassistant who seems to have some incomprehensible need for me. The way\nshe sits on my lap as if it were her proper place! \"No,\" answered Nikki,\nslowly shaking her head, \"I couldn't help you then. But you don't want\nmy help anyway, it means nothing to you, you're too stubborn and won't\nbe persuaded.\" Then, after a while she asked, \"Do you have a lover?\"\n\"No,\" said K. \"Oh, you must have,\" she said. \"Well, I have really,\" said\nK. \"Just think, I've even betrayed her while I'm carrying her photograph\nwith me.\" Nikki insisted he show her a photograph of Elsa, and then,\nhunched on his lap, studied the picture closely. The photograph was not\none that had been taken while Elsa was posing for it, it showed her just\nafter she had been in a wild dance such as she liked to do in wine bars,\nher skirt was still flung out as she span round, she had placed her\nhands on her firm hips and, with her neck held taut, looked to one side\nwith a laugh; you could not see from the picture whom her laugh was\nintended for. \"She's very tightly laced,\" said Nikki, pointing to the\nplace where she thought this could be seen. \"I don't like her, she's\nclumsy and crude. But maybe she's gentle and friendly towards you,\nthat's the impression you get from the picture. Big, strong girls like\nthat often don't know how to be anything but gentle and friendly. Would\nshe be capable of sacrificing herself for you, though?\" \"No,\" said K.,\n\"she isn't gentle or friendly, and nor would she be capable of\nsacrificing herself for me. But I've never yet asked any of those things\nof her. I've never looked at this picture as closely as you.\" \"You can't\nthink much of her, then,\" said Nikki. \"She can't be your lover after\nall.\" \"Yes she is,\" said K., \"I'm not going to take my word back on\nthat.\" \"Well she might be your lover now, then,\" said Nikki, \"but you\nwouldn't miss her much if you lost her or if you exchanged her for\nsomebody else, me for instance.\" \"That is certainly conceivable,\" said\nK. with a smile, \"but she does have one major advantage over you, she\nknows nothing about my trial, and even if she did she wouldn't think\nabout it. She wouldn't try to persuade me to be less unyielding.\" \"Well\nthat's no advantage,\" said Nikki. \"If she's got no advantage other than\nthat, I can keep on hoping. Has she got any bodily defects?\" \"'Bodily\ndefects'?\" asked K. \"Yeah,\" said Nikki, \"as I do have a bodily defect,\njust a little one. Look.\" She spread the middle and ring fingers of her\nright hand apart from each other. Between those fingers the flap of skin\nconnecting them reached up almost as far as the top joint of the little\nfinger. In the darkness, K. did not see at first what it was she wanted\nto show him, so she led his hand to it so that he could feel. \"What a\nfreak of nature,\" said K., and when he had taken a look at the whole\nhand he added, \"What a pretty claw!\" Nikki looked on with a kind of pride\nas K. repeatedly opened and closed her two fingers in amazement, until,\nfinally, he briefly kissed them and let go. \"Oh!\" she immediately\nexclaimed, \"you kissed me!\" Hurriedly, and with her mouth open, she\nclambered up K.'s lap with her knees. He was almost aghast as he looked\nup at her, now that she was so close to him there was a bitter,\nirritating smell from her, like pepper, she grasped his head, leant out\nover him, and bit and kissed his neck, even biting into his hair. \"I've\ntaken her place!\" she exclaimed from time to time. \"Just look, now\nyou've taken me instead of her!\" Just then, her knee slipped out and,\nwith a little cry, she nearly fell down onto the carpet, K. tried to\nhold her by putting his arms around her and was pulled down with her.\n\"Now you're mine,\" she said. Her last words to him as he left were,\n\"Here's the key to the door, come whenever you want,\" and she planted an\nundirected kiss on his back. When he stepped out the front door there\nwas a light rain falling, he was about to go to the middle of the street\nto see if he could still glimpse Nikki at the window when K.'s uncle\nleapt out of a car that K., thinking of other things, had not seen\nwaiting outside the building. He took hold of K. by both arms and shoved\nhim against the door as if he wanted to nail him to it. \"Young man,\" he\nshouted, \"how could you do a thing like that?! Things were going well\nwith this business of yours, now you've caused it terrible damage. You\nslip off with some dirty, little thing who, moreover, is obviously the\nlawyer's beloved, and stay away for hours. You don't even try to find an\nexcuse, don't try to hide anything, no, you're quite open about it, you\nrun off with her and stay there. And meanwhile we're sitting there, your\nuncle who's going to such effort for you, the lawyer who needs to be won\nover to your side, and above all the office director, a very important\ngentleman who is in direct command of your affair in its present stage.\nWe wanted to discuss how best to help you, I had to handle the lawyer\nvery carefully, he had to handle the office director carefully, and you\nhad most reason of all to at least give me some support. Instead of\nwhich you stay away. Eventually we couldn't keep up the pretence any\nlonger, but these are polite and highly capable men, they didn't say\nanything about it so as to spare my feelings but in the end not even\nthey could continue to force themselves and, as they couldn't speak\nabout the matter in hand, they became silent. We sat there for several\nminutes, listening to see whether you wouldn't finally come back. All in\nvain. In the end the office director stood up, as he had stayed far\nlonger than he had originally intended, made his farewell, looked at me\nin sympathy without being able to help, he waited at the door for a long\ntime although it's more than I can understand why he was being so good,\nand then he went. I, of course, was glad he'd gone, I'd been holding my\nbreath all this time. All this had even more effect on the lawyer lying\nthere ill, when I took my leave of him, the good man, he was quite\nunable to speak. You have probably contributed to his total collapse\nand so brought the very man who you are dependent on closer to his\ndeath. And me, your own uncle, you leave me here in the rain--just feel\nthis, I'm wet right through--waiting here for hours, sick with worry.\"\n\n\n\n\nChapter Seven\n\nLawyer--Manufacturer--Painter\n\n\nOne winter morning--snow was falling in the dull light outside--K. was\nsitting in his office, already extremely tired despite the early hour.\nHe had told the servitor he was engaged in a major piece of work and\nnone of the junior staff should be allowed in to see him, so he would\nnot be disturbed by them at least. But instead of working he turned\nround in his chair, slowly moved various items around his desk, but\nthen, without being aware of it, he lay his arm stretched out on the\ndesk top and sat there immobile with his head sunk down on his chest.\n\nHe was no longer able to get the thought of the trial out of his head.\nHe had often wondered whether it might not be a good idea to work out a\nwritten defence and hand it in to the court. It would contain a short\ndescription of his life and explain why he had acted the way he had at\neach event that was in any way important, whether he now considered he\nhad acted well or ill, and his reasons for each. There was no doubt of\nthe advantages a written defence of this sort would have over relying\non the lawyer, who was anyway not without his shortcomings. K. had no\nidea what actions the lawyer was taking; it was certainly not a lot, it\nwas more than a month since the lawyer had summoned him, and none of\nthe previous discussions had given K. the impression that this man would\nbe able to do much for him. Most importantly, he had asked him hardly\nany questions. And there were so many questions here to be asked.\nAsking questions was the most important thing. K. had the feeling that\nhe would be able to ask all the questions needed here himself. The\nlawyer, in contrast, did not ask questions but did all the talking\nhimself or sat silently facing him, leant forward slightly over the\ndesk, probably because he was hard of hearing, pulled on a strand of\nhair in the middle of his beard and looked down at the carpet, perhaps\nat the very spot where K. had lain with Nikki. Now and then he would give\nK. some vague warning of the sort you give to children. His speeches\nwere as pointless as they were boring, and K. decided that when the\nfinal bill came he would pay not a penny for them. Once the lawyer\nthought he had humiliated K. sufficiently, he usually started something\nthat would raise his spirits again. He had already, he would then say,\nwon many such cases, partly or in whole, cases which may not really have\nbeen as difficult as this one but which, on the face of it, had even\nless hope of success. He had a list of these cases here in the\ndrawer--here he would tap on one or other of the drawers in his\ndesk--but could, unfortunately, not show them to K. as they dealt with\nofficial secrets. Nonetheless, the great experience he had acquired\nthrough all these cases would, of course, be of benefit to K. He had, of\ncourse, begun work straight away and was nearly ready to submit the\nfirst documents. They would be very important because the first\nimpression made by the defence will often determine the whole course of\nthe proceedings. Unfortunately, though, he would still have to make it\nclear to K. that the first documents submitted are sometimes not even\nread by the court. They simply put them with the other documents and\npoint out that, for the time being, questioning and observing the\naccused are much more important than anything written. If the applicant\nbecomes insistent, then they add that before they come to any decision,\nas soon as all the material has been brought together, with due regard,\nof course, to all the documents, then these first documents to have been\nsubmitted will also be checked over. But unfortunately, even this is not\nusually true, the first documents submitted are usually mislaid or lost\ncompletely, and even if they do keep them right to the end they are\nhardly read, although the lawyer only knew about this from rumour. This\nis all very regrettable, but not entirely without its justifications.\nBut K. should not forget that the trial would not be public, if the\ncourt deems it necessary it can be made public but there is no law that\nsays it has to be. As a result, the accused and his defence don't have\naccess even to the court records, and especially not to the indictment,\nand that means we generally don't know--or at least not precisely--what\nthe first documents need to be about, which means that if they do\ncontain anything of relevance to the case it's only by a lucky\ncoincidence. If anything about the individual charges and the reasons\nfor them comes out clearly or can be guessed at while the accused is\nbeing questioned, then it's possible to work out and submit documents\nthat really direct the issue and present proof, but not before.\nConditions like this, of course, place the defence in a very\nunfavourable and difficult position. But that is what they intend. In\nfact, defence is not really allowed under the law, it's only tolerated,\nand there is even some dispute about whether the relevant parts of the\nlaw imply even that. So strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a\ncounsel acknowledged by the court, and anyone who comes before this\ncourt as counsel is basically no more than a barrack room lawyer. The\neffect of all this, of course, is to remove the dignity of the whole\nprocedure, the next time K. is in the court offices he might like to\nhave a look in at the lawyers' room, just so that he's seen it. He might\nwell be quite shocked by the people he sees assembled there. The room\nthey've been allocated, with its narrow space and low ceiling, will be\nenough to show what contempt the court has for these people. The only\nlight in the room comes through a little window that is so high up that,\nif you want to look out of it, you first have to get one of your\ncolleagues to support you on his back, and even then the smoke from the\nchimney just in front of it will go up your nose and make your face\nblack. In the floor of this room--to give yet another example of the\nconditions there--there is a hole that's been there for more than a\nyear, it's not so big that a man could fall through, but it is big\nenough for your foot to disappear through it. The lawyers' room is on\nthe second floor of the attic; if your foot does go through it will hang\ndown into the first floor of the attic underneath it, and right in the\ncorridor where the litigants are waiting. It's no exaggeration when\nlawyers say that conditions like that are a disgrace. Complaints to the\nmanagement don't have the slightest effect, but the lawyers are strictly\nforbidden to alter anything in the room at their own expense. But even\ntreating the lawyers in this way has its reasons. They want, as far as\npossible, to prevent any kind of defence, everything should be made the\nresponsibility of the accused. Not a bad point of view, basically, but\nnothing could be more mistaken than to think from that that lawyers are\nnot necessary for the accused in this court. On the contrary, there is\nno court where they are less needed than here. This is because\nproceedings are generally kept secret not only from the public but also\nfrom the accused. Only as far as that is possible, of course, but it is\npossible to a very large extent. And the accused doesn't get to see the\ncourt records either, and it's very difficult to infer what's in the\ncourt records from what's been said during questioning based on them,\nespecially for the accused who is in a difficult situation and is faced\nwith every possible worry to distract him. This is when the defence\nbegins. Counsel for the defence are not normally allowed to be present\nwhile the accused is being questioned, so afterwards, and if possible\nstill at the door of the interview room, he has to learn what he can\nabout it from him and extract whatever he can that might be of use, even\nthough what the accused has to report is often very confused. But that\nis not the most important thing, as there's really not a lot that can be\nlearned in this way, although in this, as with anything else, a\ncompetent man will learn more than another. Nonetheless, the most\nimportant thing is the lawyer's personal connections, that's where the\nreal value of taking counsel lies. Now K. will most likely have already\nlearned from his own experience that, among its very lowest orders, the\ncourt organisation does have its imperfections, the court is strictly\nclosed to the public, but staff who forget their duty or who take bribes\ndo, to some extent, show where the gaps are. This is where most lawyers\nwill push their way in, this is where bribes are paid and information\nextracted, there have even, in earlier times at least, been incidents\nwhere documents have been stolen. There's no denying that some\nsurprisingly favourable results have been attained for the accused in\nthis way, for a limited time, and these petty advocates then strut to\nand fro on the basis of them and attract new clients, but for the\nfurther course of the proceedings it signifies either nothing or nothing\ngood. The only things of real value are honest personal contacts,\ncontacts with higher officials, albeit higher officials of the lower\ngrades, you understand. That is the only way the progress of the trial\ncan be influenced, hardly noticeable at first, it's true, but from then\non it becomes more and more visible. There are, of course, not many\nlawyers who can do this, and K. has made a very good choice in this\nmatter. There were probably no more than one or two who had as many\ncontacts as Dr. Preston, but they don't bother with the company of the\nlawyers' room and have nothing to do with it. This means they have all\nthe less contact with the court officials. It is not at all necessary\nfor Dr. Preston to go to the court, wait in the ante-rooms for the\nexamining judges to turn up, if they turn up, and try to achieve\nsomething which, according to the judges' mood is usually more apparent\nthan real and most often not even that. No, K. has seen for himself that\nthe court officials, including some who are quite high up, come forward\nwithout being asked, are glad to give information which is fully open or\nat least easy to understand, they discuss the next stages in the\nproceedings, in fact in some cases they can be won over and are quite\nwilling to adopt the other person's point of view. However, when this\nhappens, you should never trust them too far, as however firmly they may\nhave declared this new point of view in favour of the defendant they\nmight well go straight back to their offices and write a report for the\ncourt that says just the opposite, and might well be even harder on the\ndefendant than the original view, the one they insist they've been fully\ndissuaded from. And, of course, there's no way of defending yourself\nfrom this, something said in private is indeed in private and cannot\nthen be used in public, it's not something that makes it easy for the\ndefence to keep those gentlemen's favour. On the other hand, it's also\ntrue that the gentlemen don't become involved with the defence--which\nwill of course be done with great expertise--just for philanthropic\nreasons or in order to be friendly, in some respects it would be truer\nto say that they, too, have it allocated to them. This is where the\ndisadvantages of a court structure that, right from the start,\nstipulates that all proceedings take place in private, come into force.\nIn normal, mediocre trials its officials have contact with the public,\nand they're very well equipped for it, but here they don't; normal\ntrials run their course all by themselves, almost, and just need a nudge\nhere and there; but when they're faced with cases that are especially\ndifficult they're as lost as they often are with ones that are very\nsimple; they're forced to spend all their time, day and night, with\ntheir laws, and so they don't have the right feel for human\nrelationships, and that's a serious shortcoming in cases like this.\nThat's when they come for advice to the lawyer, with a servant behind\nthem carrying the documents which normally are kept so secret. You could\nhave seen many gentlemen at this window, gentlemen of whom you would\nleast expect it, staring out this window in despair on the street below\nwhile the lawyer is at his desk studying the documents so that he can\ngive them good advice. And at times like that it's also possible to see\nhow exceptionally seriously these gentlemen take their professions and\nhow they are thrown into great confusion by difficulties which it's just\nnot in their natures to overcome. But they're not in an easy position,\nto regard their positions as easy would be to do them an injustice. The\ndifferent ranks and hierarchies of the court are endless, and even\nsomeone who knows his way around them cannot always tell what's going to\nhappen. But even for the junior officials, the proceedings in the\ncourtrooms are usually kept secret, so they are hardly able to see how\nthe cases they work with proceed, court affairs appear in their range of\nvision often without their knowing where they come from and they move on\nfurther without their learning where they go. So civil servants like\nthis are not able to learn the things you can learn from studying the\nsuccessive stages that individual trials go through, the final verdict\nor the reasons for it. They're only allowed to deal with that part of\nthe trial which the law allocates them, and they usually know less about\nthe results of their work after it's left them than the defence does,\neven though the defence will usually stay in contact with the accused\nuntil the trial is nearly at its end, so that the court officials can\nlearn many useful things from the defence. Bearing all this in mind,\ndoes it still surprise K. that the officials are irritated and often\nexpress themselves about the litigants in unflattering ways--which is an\nexperience shared by everyone. All the officials are irritated, even\nwhen they appear calm. This causes many difficulties for the junior\nadvocates, of course. There is a story, for instance, that has very much\nthe ring of truth about it. It goes like this: One of the older\nofficials, a good and peaceful man, was dealing with a difficult matter\nfor the court which had become very confused, especially thanks to the\ncontributions from the lawyers. He had been studying it for a day and a\nnight without a break--as these officials are indeed hard working,\nno-one works as hard as they do. When it was nearly morning, and he had\nbeen working for twenty-four hours with probably very little result, he\nwent to the front entrance, waited there in ambush, and every time a\nlawyer tried to enter the building he would throw him down the steps.\nThe lawyers gathered together down in front of the steps and discussed\nwith each other what they should do; on the one hand they had actually\nno right to be allowed into the building so that there was hardly\nanything that they could legally do to the official and, as I've already\nmentioned, they would have to be careful not to set all the officials\nagainst them. On the other hand, any day not spent in court is a day\nlost for them and it was a matter of some importance to force their way\ninside. In the end, they agreed that they would try to tire the old man\nout. One lawyer after another was sent out to run up the steps and let\nhimself be thrown down again, offering what resistance he could as long\nas it was passive resistance, and his colleagues would catch him at the\nbottom of the steps. That went on for about an hour until the old\ngentleman, who was already exhausted from working all night, was very\ntired and went back to his office. Those who were at the bottom of the\nsteps could not believe it at first, so they sent somebody out to go and\nlook behind the door to see if there really was no-one there, and only\nthen did they all gather together and probably didn't even dare to\ncomplain, as it's far from being the lawyers' job to introduce any\nimprovements in the court system, or even to want to. Even the most\njunior lawyer can understand the relationship there to some extent, but\none significant point is that almost every defendant, even very simple\npeople, begins to think of suggestions for improving the court as soon\nas his proceedings have begun, many of them often even spend time and\nenergy on the matter that could be spent far better elsewhere. The only\nright thing to do is to learn how to deal with the situation as it is.\nEven if it were possible to improve any detail of it--which is anyway no\nmore than superstitious nonsense--the best that they could achieve,\nalthough doing themselves incalculable harm in the process, is that they\nwill have attracted the special attention of the officials for any case\nthat comes up in the future, and the officials are always ready to seek\nrevenge. Never attract attention to yourself! Stay calm, however much it\ngoes against your character! Try to gain some insight into the size of\nthe court organism and how, to some extent, it remains in a state of\nsuspension, and that even if you alter something in one place you'll\ndraw the ground out from under your feet and might fall, whereas if an\nenormous organism like the court is disrupted in any one place it finds\nit easy to provide a substitute for itself somewhere else. Everything is\nconnected with everything else and will continue without any change or\nelse, which is quite probable, even more closed, more attentive, more\nstrict, more malevolent. So it's best to leave the work to the lawyers\nand not to keep disturbing them. It doesn't do much good to make\naccusations, especially if you can't make it clear what they're based on\nand their full significance, but it must be said that K. caused a great\ndeal of harm to his own case by his behaviour towards the office\ndirector, he was a very influential man but now he might as well be\nstruck off the list of those who might do anything for K. If the trial\nis mentioned, even just in passing, it's quite obvious that he's\nignoring it. These officials are in many ways just like children. Often,\nsomething quite harmless--although K.'s behaviour could unfortunately\nnot be called harmless--will leave them feeling so offended that they\nwill even stop talking with good friends of theirs, they turn away when\nthey see them and do everything they can to oppose them. But then, with\nno particular reason, surprisingly enough, some little joke that was\nonly ever attempted because everything seemed so hopeless will make them\nlaugh and they'll be reconciled. It's both difficult and hard at the\nsame time to deal with them, and there's hardly any reason for it. It's\nsometimes quite astonishing that a single, average life is enough to\nencompass so much that it's at all possible ever to have any success in\none's work here. On the other hand, there are also dark moments, such as\neveryone has, when you think you've achieved nothing at all, when it\nseems that the only trials to come to a good end are those that were\ndetermined to have a good end from the start and would do so without any\nhelp, while all the others are lost despite all the running to and fro,\nall the effort, all the little, apparent successes that gave such joy.\nThen you no longer feel very sure of anything and, if asked about a\ntrial that was doing well by its own nature but which was turned for the\nworse because you assisted in it, would not even dare deny that. And\neven that is a kind of self-confidence, but then it's the only one\nthat's left. Lawyers are especially vulnerable to fits of depression of\nthat sort--and they are no more than fits of depression of course--when\na case is suddenly taken out of their hands after they've been\nconducting it satisfactorily for some time. That's probably the worst\nthat can happen to a lawyer. It's not that the accused takes the case\naway from him, that hardly ever happens, once a defendant has taken on\na certain lawyer he has to stay with him whatever happens. How could he\never carry on by himself after he's taken on help from a lawyer? No,\nthat just doesn't happen, but what does sometimes happen is that the\ntrial takes on a course where the lawyer may not go along with it.\nClient and trial are both simply taken away from the lawyer; and then\neven contact with the court officials won't help, however good they are,\nas they don't know anything themselves. The trial will have entered a\nstage where no more help can be given, where it's being processed in\ncourts to which no-one has any access, where the defendant cannot even\nbe contacted by his lawyer. You come home one day and find all the\ndocuments you've submitted, which you've worked hard to create and which\nyou had the best hopes for, lying on the desk, they've been sent back as\nthey can't be carried through to the next stage in the trial, they're\njust worthless scraps of paper. It doesn't mean that the case has been\nlost, not at all, or at least there is no decisive reason for supposing\nso, it's just that you don't know anything more about the case and won't\nbe told anything of what's happening. Well, cases like that are the\nexceptions, I'm glad to say, and even if K.'s trial is one of them, it's\nstill, for the time being, a long way off. But there was still plenty of\nopportunity for lawyers to get to work, and K. could be sure they would\nbe made use of. As he had said, the time for submitting documents was\nstill in the future and there was no rush to prepare them, it was much\nmore important to start the initial discussions with the appropriate\nofficials, and they had already taken place. With varying degrees of\nsuccess, it must be said. It was much better not to give away any\ndetails before their time, as in that way K. could only be influenced\nunfavourably and his hopes might be raised or he might be made too\nanxious, better just to say that some individuals have spoken very\nfavourably and shown themselves very willing to help, although others\nhave spoken less favourably, but even they have not in any way refused\nto help. So all in all, the results are very encouraging, only you\nshould certainly not draw any particular conclusions as all preliminary\nproceedings begin in the same way and it was only the way they developed\nfurther that would show what the value of these preliminary proceedings\nhas been. Anyway, nothing has been lost yet, and if we can succeed in\ngetting the office director, despite everything, on our side--and\nseveral actions have been undertaken to this end--then everything is a\nclean wound, as a surgeon would say, and we can wait for the results\nwith some comfort.\n\nWhen he started talking on in this way the lawyer was quite tireless.\nHe went through it all again every time K. went to see him. There was\nalways some progress, but he could never be told what sort of progress\nit was. The first set of documents to be submitted were being worked on\nbut still not ready, which usually turned out to be a great advantage\nthe next time K. went to see him as the earlier occasion would have\nbeen a very bad time to put them in, which they could not then have\nknown. If K., stupefied from all this talking, ever pointed out that\neven considering all these difficulties progress was very slow, the\nlawyer would object that progress was not slow at all, but that they\nmight have progressed far further if K. had come to him at the right\ntime. But he had come to him late and that lateness would bring still\nfurther difficulties, and not only where time was concerned. The only\nwelcome interruption during these visits was always when Nikki contrived\nto bring the lawyer his tea while K. was there. Then she would stand\nbehind K.--pretending to watch the lawyer as he bent greedily over his\ncup, poured the tea in and drank--and secretly let K. hold her hand.\nThere was always complete silence. The lawyer drank. K. squeezed Nikki's\nhand and Nikki would sometimes dare to gently stroke K.'s hair. \"Still\nhere, are you?\" the lawyer would ask when he was ready. \"I wanted to\ntake the dishes away,\" said Nikki, they would give each other's hands a\nfinal squeeze, the lawyer would wipe his mouth and then start talking at\nK. again with renewed energy.\n\nWas the lawyer trying to comfort K. or to confuse him? K. could not\ntell, but it seemed clear to him that his defence was not in good\nhands. Maybe everything the lawyer said was quite right, even though he\nobviously wanted to make himself as conspicuous as possible and\nprobably had never even taken on a case as important as he said K.'s\nwas. But it was still suspicious how he continually mentioned his\npersonal contacts with the civil servants. Were they to be exploited\nsolely for K.'s benefit. The lawyer never forgot to mention that they\nwere dealing only with junior officials, which meant officials who were\ndependent on others, and the direction taken in each trial could be\nimportant for their own furtherment. Could it be that they were making\nuse of the lawyer to turn trials in a certain direction, which would,\nof course, always be at the cost of the defendant. It certainly did not\nmean that they would do that in every trial, that was not likely at all,\nand there were probably also trials where they gave the lawyer\nadvantages and all the room he needed to turn it in the direction he\nwanted, as it would also be to their advantage to keep his reputation\nintact. If that really was their relationship, how would they direct\nK.'s trial which, as the lawyer had explained, was especially difficult\nand therefore important enough to attract great attention from the very\nfirst time it came to court? There could not be much doubt about what\nthey would do. The first signs of it could already be seen in the fact\nthat the first documents still had not been submitted even though the\ntrial had already lasted several months, and that, according to the\nlawyer, everything was still in its initial stages, which was very\neffective, of course, in making the defendant passive and keeping him\nhelpless. Then he could be suddenly surprised with the verdict, or at\nleast with a notification that the hearing had not decided in his favour\nand the matter would be passed on to a higher office.\n\nIt was essential that K. take a hand in it himself. On winter's\nmornings such as this, when he was very tired and everything dragged\nitself lethargically through his head, this belief of his seemed\nirrefutable. He no longer felt the contempt for the trial that he had\nhad earlier. If he had been alone in the world it would have been easy\nfor him to ignore it, although it was also certain that, in that case,\nthe trial would never have arisen in the first place. But now, his uncle\nhad already dragged him to see the lawyer, he had to take account of his\nfamily; his job was no longer totally separate from the progress of the\ntrial, he himself had carelessly--with a certain, inexplicable\ncomplacency--mentioned it to acquaintances and others had learned about\nit in ways he did not know, his relationship with Miss B\u00fcrstner seemed\nto be in trouble because of it. In short, he no longer had any choice\nwhether he would accept the trial or turn it down, he was in the middle\nof it and had to defend himself. If he was tired, then that was bad.\n\nBut there was no reason to worry too much before he needed to. He had\nbeen capable of working himself up to his high position in the bank in\na relatively short time and to retain it with respect from everyone,\nnow he simply had to apply some of the talents that had made that\npossible for him to the trial, and there was no doubt that it had to\nturn out well. The most important thing, if something was to be\nachieved, was to reject in advance any idea that he might be in any way\nguilty. There was no guilt. The trial was nothing but a big piece of\nbusiness, just like he had already concluded to the benefit of the bank\nmany times, a piece of business that concealed many lurking dangers\nwaiting in ambush for him, as they usually did, and these dangers would\nneed to be defended against. If that was to be achieved then he must not\nentertain any idea of guilt, whatever he did, he would need to look\nafter his own interests as closely as he could. Seen in this way, there\nwas no choice but to take his representation away from the lawyer very\nsoon, at best that very evening. The lawyer had told him, as he talked\nto him, that that was something unheard of and would probably do him a\ngreat deal of harm, but K. could not tolerate any impediment to his\nefforts where his trial was concerned, and these impediments were\nprobably caused by the lawyer himself. But once he had shaken off the\nlawyer the documents would need to be submitted straight away and, if\npossible, he would need to see to it that they were being dealt with\nevery day. It would of course not be enough, if that was to be done, for\nK. to sit in the corridor with his hat under the bench like the others.\nDay after day, he himself, or one of the women or somebody else on his\nbehalf, would have to run after the officials and force them to sit at\ntheir desks and study K.'s documents instead of looking out on the\ncorridor through the grating. There could be no let-up in these efforts,\neverything would need to be organised and supervised, it was about time\nthat the court came up against a defendant who knew how to defend and\nmake use of his rights.\n\nBut when K. had the confidence to try and do all this the difficulty of\ncomposing the documents was too much for him. Earlier, just a week or\nso before, he could only have felt shame at the thought of being made\nto write out such documents himself; it had never entered his head that\nthe task could also be difficult. He remembered one morning when,\nalready piled up with work, he suddenly shoved everything to one side\nand took a pad of paper on which he sketched out some of his thoughts on\nhow documents of this sort should proceed. Perhaps he would offer them\nto that slow-witted lawyer, but just then the door of the manager's\noffice opened and the deputy director entered the room with a loud\nlaugh. K. was very embarrassed, although the deputy director, of\ncourse, was not laughing at K.'s documents, which he knew nothing about,\nbut at a joke he had just heard about the stock-exchange, a joke which\nneeded an illustration if it was to be understood, and now the\ndeputy director leant over K.'s desk, took his pencil from his hand,\nand drew the illustration on the writing pad that K. had intended for\nhis ideas about his case.\n\nK. now had no more thoughts of shame, the documents had to be prepared\nand submitted. If, as was very likely, he could find no time to do it\nin the office he would have to do it at home at night. If the nights\nweren't enough he would have to take a holiday. Above all, he could not\nstop half way, that was nonsense not only in business but always and\neverywhere. Needless to say, the documents would mean an almost endless\namount of work. It was easy to come to the belief, not only for those\nof an anxious disposition, that it was impossible ever to finish it.\nThis was not because of laziness or deceit, which were the only things\nthat might have hindered the lawyer in preparing it, but because he did\nnot know what the charge was or even what consequences it might bring,\nso that he had to remember every tiny action and event from the whole\nof his life, looking at them from all sides and checking and\nreconsidering them. It was also a very disheartening job. It would have\nbeen more suitable as a way of passing the long days after he had\nretired and become senile. But now, just when K. needed to apply all his\nthoughts to his work, when he was still rising and already posed a\nthreat to the deputy director, when every hour passed so quickly and he\nwanted to enjoy the brief evenings and nights as a young man, this was\nthe time he had to start working out these documents. Once more, he\nbegan to feel resentment. Almost involuntarily, only to put an end to\nit, his finger felt for the button of the electric bell in the\nante-room. As he pressed it he glanced up to the clock. It was eleven\no'clock, two hours, he had spent a great deal of his costly time just\ndreaming and his wits were, of course, even more dulled than they had\nbeen before. But the time had, nonetheless, not been wasted, he had come\nto some decisions that could be of value. As well as various pieces of\nmail, the servitors brought two visiting cards from gentlemen who had\nalready been waiting for K. for some time. They were actually very\nimportant clients of the bank who should not really have been kept\nwaiting under any circumstances. Why had they come at such an awkward\ntime, and why, the gentlemen on the other side of the closed door seemed\nto be asking, was the industrious K. using up the best business time for\nhis private affairs? Tired from what had gone before, and tired in\nanticipation of what was to follow, K. stood up to receive the first of\nthem.\n\nHe was a short, jolly man, a manufacturer who K. knew well. He\napologised for disturbing K. at some important work, and K., for his\npart, apologised for having kept the manufacturer waiting for so long.\nBut even this apology was spoken in such a mechanical way and with such\nfalse intonation that the manufacturer would certainly have noticed if\nhe had not been fully preoccupied with his business affairs. Instead,\nhe hurriedly pulled calculations and tables out from all his pockets,\nspread them out in front of K., explained several items, corrected a\nlittle mistake in the arithmetic that he noticed as he quickly glanced\nover it all, and reminded K. of a similar piece of business he'd\nconcluded with him about a year before, mentioning in passing that this\ntime there was another bank spending great effort to get his business,\nand finally stopped speaking in order to learn K.'s opinion on the\nmatter. And K. had indeed, at first, been closely following what the\nmanufacturer was saying, he too was aware of how important the deal\nwas, but unfortunately it did not last, he soon stopped listening,\nnodded at each of the manufacturer's louder exclamations for a short\nwhile, but eventually he stopped doing even that and did no more than\nstare at the bald head bent over the papers, asking himself when the\nmanufacturer would finally realise that everything he was saying was\nuseless. When he did stop talking, K. really thought at first that this\nwas so that he would have the chance to confess that he was incapable of\nlistening. Instead, seeing the anticipation on the manufacturer's face,\nobviously ready to counter any objections made, he was sorry to realise\nthat the business discussion had to be continued. So he bent his head as\nif he'd been given an order and began slowly to move his pencil over the\npapers, now and then he would stop and stare at one of the figures. The\nmanufacturer thought there must be some objection, perhaps his figures\nweren't really sound, perhaps they weren't the decisive issue, whatever\nhe thought, the manufacturer covered the papers with his hand and began\nonce again, moving very close to K., to explain what the deal was all\nabout. \"It is difficult,\" said K., pursing his lips. The only thing\nthat could offer him any guidance were the papers, and the manufacturer\nhad covered them from his view, so he just sank back against the arm of\nthe chair. Even when the door of the manager's office opened and\nrevealed not very clearly, as if through a veil, the deputy director, he\ndid no more than look up weakly. K. thought no more about the matter, he\nmerely watched the immediate effect of the deputy director's appearance\nand, for him, the effect was very pleasing; the manufacturer\nimmediately jumped up from his seat and hurried over to meet the deputy\ndirector, although K. would have liked to make him ten times livelier as\nhe feared the deputy director might disappear again. He need not have\nworried, the two gentlemen met each other, shook each other's hand and\nwent together over to K.'s desk. The manufacturer said he was sorry to\nfind the chief clerk so little inclined to do business, pointing to K.\nwho, under the view of the deputy director, had bent back down over the\npapers. As the two men leant over the desk and the manufacturer made\nsome effort to gain and keep the deputy director's attention, K. felt as\nif they were much bigger than they really were and that their\nnegotiations were about him. Carefully and slowly turning his eyes\nupwards, he tried to learn what was taking place above him, took one of\nthe papers from his desk without looking to see what it was, lay it on\nthe flat of his hand and raised it slowly up as he rose up to the level\nof the two men himself. He had no particular plan in mind as he did\nthis, but merely felt this was how he would act if only he had finished\npreparing that great document that was to remove his burden entirely.\nThe deputy director had been paying all his attention to the\nconversation and did no more than glance at the paper, he did not read\nwhat was written on it at all as what was important for the chief clerk\nwas not important for him, he took it from K.'s hand saying, \"Thank you,\nI'm already familiar with everything,\" and laid it calmly back on the\ndesk. K. gave him a bitter, sideways look. But the deputy director did\nnot notice this at all, or if he did notice it it only raised his\nspirits, he frequently laughed out loud, one time he clearly embarrassed\nthe manufacturer when he raised an objection in a witty way but drew him\nimmediately back out of his embarrassment by commenting adversely on\nhimself, and finally invited him into his office where they could bring\nthe matter to its conclusion. \"It's a very important matter,\" said the\nmanufacturer. \"I understand that completely. And I'm sure the chief\nclerk ...\"--even as he said this he was actually speaking only to the\nmanufacturer--\"will be very glad to have us take it off his hands. This\nis something that needs calm consideration. But he seems to be\nover-burdened today, there are even some people in the room outside\nwho've been waiting there for hours for him.\" K. still had enough\ncontrol of himself to turn away from the deputy director and direct his\nfriendly, albeit stiff, smile only at the manufacturer, he made no other\nretaliation, bent down slightly and supported himself with both hands on\nhis desk like a clerk, and watched as the two gentlemen, still talking,\ntook the papers from his desk and disappeared into the manager's office.\nIn the doorway, the manufacturer turned and said he wouldn't make his\nfarewell with K. just yet, he would of course let the chief clerk know\nabout the success of his discussions but he also had a little something\nto tell him about.\n\nAt last, K. was by himself. It did not enter his head to show anyone\nelse into his office and only became vaguely aware of how nice it was\nthat the people outside thought he was still negotiating with the\nmanufacturer and, for this reason, he could not let anyone in to see\nhim, not even the servitor. He went over to the window, sat down on the\nledge beside it, held firmly on to the handle and looked down onto the\nsquare outside. The snow was still falling, the weather still had not\nbrightened up at all.\n\nHe remained a long time sitting in this way, not knowing what it\nactually was that made him so anxious, only occasionally did he glance,\nslightly startled, over his shoulder at the door to the outer room\nwhere, mistakenly, he thought he'd heard some noise. No-one came, and\nthat made him feel calmer, he went over to the wash stand, rinsed his\nface with cold water and, his head somewhat clearer, went back to his\nplace by the window. The decision to take his defence into his own\nhands now seemed more of a burden than he had originally assumed. All\nthe while he had left his defence up to the lawyer his trial had had\nlittle basic affect on him, he had observed it from afar as something\nthat was scarcely able to reach him directly, when it suited him he\nlooked to see how things stood but he was also able to draw his head\nback again whenever he wanted. Now, in contrast, if he was to conduct\nhis defence himself, he would have to devote himself entirely to the\ncourt--for the time being, at least--success would mean, later on, his\ncomplete and conclusive liberation, but if he was to achieve this he\nwould have to place himself, to start with, in far greater danger than\nhe had been in so far. If he ever felt tempted to doubt this, then his\nexperience with the deputy director and the manufacturer that day would\nbe quite enough to convince him of it. How could he have sat there\ntotally convinced of the need to do his own defence? How would it be\nlater? What would his life be like in the days ahead? Would he find the\nway through it all to a happy conclusion? Did a carefully worked out\ndefence--and any other sort would have made no sense--did a carefully\nworked out defence not also mean he would need to shut himself off from\neverything else as much as he could? Would he survive that? And how was\nhe to succeed in conducting all this at the bank? It involved much more\nthan just submitting some documents that he could probably prepare in a\nfew days' leave, although it would have been great temerity to ask for\ntime off from the bank just at that time, it was a whole trial and there\nwas no way of seeing how long it might last. This was an enormous\ndifficulty that had suddenly been thrown into K.'s life!\n\nAnd was he supposed to be doing the bank's work at a time like this? He\nlooked down at his desk. Was he supposed to let people in to see him\nand go into negotiations with them at a time like this? While his trial\ntrundled on, while the court officials upstairs in the attic room sat\nlooking at the papers for this trial, should he be worrying about the\nbusiness of the bank? Did this not seem like a kind of torture,\nacknowledged by the court, connected with the trial and which followed\nhim around? And is it likely that anyone in the bank, when judging his\nwork, would take any account of his peculiar situation? No-one and\nnever. There were those who knew about his trial, although it was not\nquite clear who knew about it or how much. But he hoped rumours had not\nreached as far as the deputy director, otherwise he would obviously\nsoon find a way of making use of it to harm K., he would show neither\ncomradeship nor humaneness. And what about the director? It was true\nthat he was well disposed towards K., and as soon as he heard about the\ntrial he would probably try to do everything he could to make it easier\nfor him, but he would certainly not devote himself to it. K. at one\ntime had provided the counter-balance to what the deputy director said\nbut the director was now coming more and more under his influence, and\nthe deputy director would also exploit the weakened condition of the\ndirector to strengthen his own power. So what could K. hope for? Maybe\nconsiderations of this sort weakened his power of resistance, but it\nwas still necessary not to deceive oneself and to see everything as\nclearly as it could be seen at that moment.\n\nFor no particular reason, just to avoiding returning to his desk for a\nwhile, he opened the window. It was difficult to open and he had to\nturn the handle with both his hands. Then, through the whole height and\nbreadth of the window, the mixture of fog and smoke was drawn into the\nroom, filling it with a slight smell of burning. A few flakes of snow\nwere blown in with it. \"It's a horrible autumn,\" said the manufacturer,\nwho had come into the room unnoticed after seeing the deputy director\nand now stood behind K. K. nodded and looked uneasily at the\nmanufacturer's briefcase, from which he would now probably take the\npapers and inform K. of the result of his negotiations with the deputy\ndirector. However, the manufacturer saw where K. was looking, knocked\non his briefcase and without opening it said, \"You'll be wanting to\nhear how things turned out. I've already got the contract in my pocket,\nalmost. He's a charming man, your deputy director--he's got his\ndangers, though.\" He laughed as he shook K.'s hand and wanted to make\nhim laugh with him. But to K., it once more seemed suspicious that the\nmanufacturer did not want to show him the papers and saw nothing about\nhis comments to laugh at. \"Chief clerk,\" said the manufacturer, \"I\nexpect the weather's been affecting your mood, has it? You're looking\nso worried today.\" \"Yes,\" said K., raising his hand and holding the\ntemple of his head, \"headaches, worries in the family.\" \"Quite right,\"\nsaid the manufacturer, who was always in a hurry and could never listen\nto anyone for very long, \"everyone has his cross to bear.\" K. had\nunconsciously made a step towards the door as if wanting to show the\nmanufacturer out, but the manufacturer said, \"Chief clerk, there's\nsomething else I'd like to mention to you. I'm very sorry if it's\nsomething that'll be a burden to you today of all days but I've been to\nsee you twice already, lately, and each time I forgot all about it. If I\ndelay it any longer it might well lose its point altogether. That would\nbe a pity, as I think what I've got to say does have some value.\" Before\nK. had had the time to answer, the manufacturer came up close to him,\ntapped his knuckle lightly on his chest and said quietly, \"You've got a\ntrial going on, haven't you?\" K. stepped back and immediately exclaimed,\n\"That's what the deputy director's been telling you!\" \"No, no,\" said\nthe manufacturer, \"how would the deputy director know about it?\" \"And\nwhat about you?\" asked K., already more in control of himself. \"I hear\nthings about the court here and there,\" said the manufacturer, \"and that\neven applies to what it is that I wanted to tell you about.\" \"There are\nso many people who have connections with the court!\" said K. with\nlowered head, and he led the manufacturer over to his desk. They sat\ndown where they had been before, and the manufacturer said, \"I'm afraid\nit's not very much that I've got to tell you about. Only, in matters\nlike this, it's best not to overlook the tiniest details. Besides, I\nreally want to help you in some way, however modest my help might be.\nWe've been good business partners up till now, haven't we? Well then.\"\nK. wanted to apologise for his behaviour in the conversation earlier\nthat day, but the manufacturer would tolerate no interruption, shoved\nhis briefcase up high in his armpit to show that he was in a hurry, and\ncarried on. \"I know about your case through a certain Silvia. He's a\npainter, Silvia's just his artistic name, I don't even know what his\nreal name is. He's been coming to me in my office for years from time to\ntime, and brings little pictures with him which I buy more or less just\nfor the sake of charity as he's hardly more than a beggar. And they're\nnice pictures, too, moorland landscapes and that sort of thing. We'd\nboth got used to doing business in this way and it always went smoothly.\nOnly, one time these visits became a bit too frequent, I began to tell\nhim off for it, we started talking and I became interested how it was\nthat he could earn a living just by painting, and then I learned to my\namazement that his main source of income was painting portraits. 'I work\nfor the court,' he said, 'what court?' said I. And that's when he told\nme about the court. I'm sure you can imagine how amazed I was at being\ntold all this. Ever since then I learn something new about the court\nevery time he comes to visit, and so little by little I get to\nunderstand something of how it works. Anyway, Silvia talks a lot and\nI often have to push him away, not only because he's bound to be lying\nbut also, most of all, because a businessman like me who's already close\nto breaking point under the weight of his own business worries can't pay\ntoo much attention to other people's. But all that's just by the by.\nPerhaps--this is what I've been thinking--perhaps Silvia might be\nable to help you in some small way, he knows lots of judges and even if\nhe can't have much influence himself he can give you some advice about\nhow to get some influential people on your side. And even if this\nadvice doesn't turn out to make all the difference I still think it'll\nbe very important once you've got it. You're nearly a lawyer yourself.\nThat's what I always say, Mr. K. the chief clerk is nearly a lawyer. Oh\nI'm sure this trial of yours will turn out all right. So do you want to\ngo and see Silvia, then. If I ask him to he'll certainly do\neverything he possibly can. I really do think you ought to go. It\nneedn't be today, of course, just some time, when you get the chance.\nAnd anyway--I want to tell you this too--you don't actually have to go\nand see Silvia, this advice from me doesn't place you under any\nobligation at all. No, if you think you can get by without Silvia\nit'll certainly be better to leave him completely out of it. Maybe\nyou've already got a clear idea of what you're doing and Silvia could\nupset your plans. No, if that's the case then of course you shouldn't go\nthere under any circumstances! And it certainly won't be easy to take\nadvice from a lad like that. Still, it's up to you. Here's the letter of\nrecommendation and here's the address.\"\n\nDisappointed, K. took the letter and put it in his pocket. Even at\nbest, the advantage he might derive from this recommendation was\nincomparably smaller than the damage that lay in the fact of the\nmanufacturer knowing about his trial, and that the painter was spreading\nthe news about. It was all he could manage to give the manufacturer, who\nwas already on his way to the door, a few words of thanks. \"I'll go\nthere,\" he said as he took his leave of the manufacturer at the door,\n\"or, as I'm very busy at present, I'll write to him, perhaps he would\nlike to come to me in my office some time.\" \"I was sure you'd find the\nbest solution,\" said the manufacturer. \"Although I had thought you'd\nprefer to avoid inviting people like this Silvia to the bank and\ntalking about the trial here. And it's not always a good idea to send\nletters to people like Silvia, you don't know what might happen to\nthem. But you're bound to have thought everything through and you know\nwhat you can and can't do.\" K. nodded and accompanied the manufacturer\non through the ante-room. But despite seeming calm on the outside he was\nactually very shocked; he had told the manufacturer he would write to\nSilvia only to show him in some way that he valued his\nrecommendations and would consider the opportunity to speak with\nSilvia without delay, but if he had thought Silvia could offer any\nworthwhile assistance he would not have delayed. But it was only the\nmanufacturer's comment that made K. realise what dangers that could lead\nto. Was he really able to rely on his own understanding so little? If it\nwas possible that he might invite a questionable character into the bank\nwith a clear letter, and ask advice from him about his trial, separated\nfrom the deputy director by no more than a door, was it not possible or\neven very likely that there were also other dangers he had failed to see\nor that he was even running towards? There was not always someone\nbeside him to warn him. And just now, just when he would have to act\nwith all the strength he could muster, now a number of doubts of a sort\nhe had never before known had presented themselves and affected his own\nvigilance! The difficulties he had been feeling in carrying out his\noffice work; were they now going to affect the trial too? Now, at least,\nhe found himself quite unable to understand how he could have intended\nto write to Silvia and invite him into the bank.\n\nHe shook his head at the thought of it once more as the servitor came\nup beside him and drew his attention to the three gentlemen who were\nwaiting on a bench in the ante-room. They had already been waiting to\nsee K. for a long time. Now that the servitor was speaking with K. they\nhad stood up and each of them wanted to make use of the opportunity to\nsee K. before the others. It had been negligent of the bank to let them\nwaste their time here in the waiting room, but none of them wanted to\ndraw attention to this. \"Mr. K., ...\" one of them was saying, but K.\nhad told the servitor to fetch his winter coat and said to the three of\nthem, as the servitor helped him to put it on, \"Please forgive me,\ngentlemen, I'm afraid I have no time to see you at present. Please do\nforgive me but I have some urgent business to settle and have to leave\nstraight away. You've already seen yourselves how long I've been\ndelayed. Would you be so kind as to come back tomorrow or some time? Or\nperhaps we could settle your affairs by telephone. Or perhaps you would\nlike to tell me now, briefly, what it's about and I can then give you a\nfull answer in writing. Whatever, the best thing will be for you to\ncome here again.\" The gentlemen now saw that their wait had been\ntotally pointless, and these suggestions of K.'s left them so astounded\nthat they looked at each other without a word. \"That's agreed then, is\nit?\" asked K., who had turned toward the servitor bringing him his hat.\nThrough the open door of K.'s office they could see that the snowfall\noutside had become much heavier. So K. turned the collar of his coat up\nand buttoned it up high under his chin. Just then the deputy director\ncame out of the adjoining room, smiled as he saw K. negotiating with\nthe gentlemen in his winter coat, and asked, \"Are you about to go out?\"\n\"Yes,\" said K., standing more upright, \"I have to go out on some\nbusiness.\" But the deputy director had already turned towards the\ngentlemen. \"And what about these gentlemen?\" he asked. \"I think they've\nalready been waiting quite a long time.\" \"We've already come to an\nunderstanding,\" said K. But now the gentlemen could be held back no\nlonger, they surrounded K. and explained that they would not have been\nwaiting for hours if it had not been about something important that had\nto be discussed now, at length and in private. The deputy director\nlistened to them for a short while, he also looked at K. as he held his\nhat in his hand cleaning the dust off it here and there, and then he\nsaid, \"Gentlemen, there is a very simple way to solve this. If you\nwould prefer it, I'll be very glad to take over these negotiations\ninstead of the chief clerk. Your business does, of course, need to be\ndiscussed without delay. We are businessmen like yourselves and know the\nvalue of a businessman's time. Would you like to come this way?\" And he\nopened the door leading to the ante-room of his own office.\n\nThe deputy director seemed very good at appropriating everything that\nK. was now forced to give up! But was K. not giving up more than he\nabsolutely had to? By running off to some unknown painter, with, as he\nhad to admit, very little hope of any vague benefit, his renown was\nsuffering damage that could not be repaired. It would probably be much\nbetter to take off his winter coat again and, at the very least, try to\nwin back the two gentlemen who were certainly still waiting in the next\nroom. If K. had not then glimpsed the deputy director in his office,\nlooking for something from his bookshelves as if they were his own, he\nwould probably even have made the attempt. As K., somewhat agitated,\napproached the door the deputy director called out, \"Oh, you've still\nnot left!\" He turned his face toward him--its many deep folds seemed to\nshow strength rather than age--and immediately began once more to\nsearch. \"I'm looking for a copy of a contract,\" he said, \"which this\ngentleman insists you must have. Could you help me look for it, do you\nthink?\" K. made a step forward, but the deputy director said, \"thank\nyou, I've already found it,\" and with a big package of papers, which\ncertainly must have included many more documents than just the copy of\nthe contract, he turned and went back into his own office.\n\n\"I can't deal with him right now,\" K. said to himself, \"but once my\npersonal difficulties have been settled, then he'll certainly be the\nfirst to get the effect of it, and he certainly won't like it.\"\nSlightly calmed by these thoughts, K. gave the servitor, who had already\nlong been holding the door to the corridor open for him, the task of\ntelling the director, when he was able, that K. was going out of the\nbank on a business matter. As he left the bank he felt almost happy at\nthe thought of being able to devote more of himself to his own business\nfor a while.\n\nHe went straight to the painter, who lived in an outlying part of town\nwhich was very near to the court offices, although this area was even\npoorer, the houses were darker, the streets were full of dirt that\nslowly blew about over the half-melted snow. In the great gateway to\nthe building where the painter lived only one of the two doors was open,\na hole had been broken open in the wall by the other door, and as K.\napproached it a repulsive, yellow, steaming liquid shot out causing\nsome rats to scurry away into the nearby canal. Down by the staircase\nthere was a small child lying on its belly crying, but it could hardly\nbe heard because of the noise from a metal-workshop on the other side\nof the entrance hall, drowning out any other sound. The door to the\nworkshop was open, three workers stood in a circle around some piece of\nwork that they were beating with hammers. A large tin plate hung on the\nwall, casting a pale light that pushed its way in between two of the\nworkers, lighting up their faces and their work-aprons. K. did no more\nthan glance at any of these things, he wanted to get things over with\nhere as soon as possible, to exchange just a few words to find out how\nthings stood with the painter and go straight back to the bank. Even if\nhe had just some tiny success here it would still have a good effect on\nhis work at the bank for that day. On the third floor he had to slow\ndown his pace, he was quite out of breath--the steps, just like the\nheight of each floor, were much higher than they needed to be and he'd\nbeen told that the painter lived right up in the attic. The air was\nalso quite oppressive, there was no proper stairwell and the narrow\nsteps were closed in by walls on both sides with no more than a small,\nhigh window here and there. Just as K. paused for a while some young\ngirls ran out of one of the flats and rushed higher up the stairs,\nlaughing. K. followed them slowly, caught up with one of the girls who\nhad stumbled and been left behind by the others, and asked her as they\nwent up side by side, \"Is there a painter, Silvia, who lives here?\"\nThe girl, hardly thirteen years old and somewhat hunchbacked, jabbed\nhim with her elbow and looked at him sideways. Her youth and her bodily\ndefects had done nothing to stop her being already quite depraved. She\ndid not smile once, but looked at K. earnestly, with sharp, acquisitive\neyes. K. pretended not to notice her behaviour and asked, \"Do you know\nSilvia, the painter?\" She nodded and asked in reply, \"What d'you\nwant to see him for?\" K. thought it would be to his advantage quickly to\nfind out something more about Silvia. \"I want to have him paint my\nportrait,\" he said. \"Paint your portrait?\" she asked, opening her mouth\ntoo wide and lightly hitting K. with her hand as if he had said\nsomething extraordinarily surprising or clumsy, with both hands she\nlifted her skirt, which was already very short, and, as fast as she\ncould, she ran off after the other girls whose indistinct shouts lost\nthemselves in the heights. At the next turn of the stairs, however, K.\nencountered all the girls once more. The hunchbacked girl had clearly\ntold them about K.'s intentions and they were waiting for him. They\nstood on both sides of the stairs, pressing themselves against the wall\nso that K. could get through between them, and smoothed their aprons\ndown with their hands. All their faces, even in this guard of honour,\nshowed a mixture of childishness and depravity. Up at the head of the\nline of girls, who now, laughing, began to close in around K., was the\nhunchback who had taken on the role of leader. It was thanks to her\nthat K. found the right direction without delay--he would have continued\nup the stairs straight in front of him, but she showed him that to\nreach Silvia he would need to turn off to one side. The steps that\nled up to the painter were especially narrow, very long without any\nturning, the whole length could be seen in one glance and, at the top,\nat Silvia's closed door, it came to its end. This door was much\nbetter illuminated than the rest of the stairway by the light from a\nsmall skylight set obliquely above it, it had been put together from\nunpainted planks of wood and the name 'Silvia' was painted on it in\nbroad, red brushstrokes. K. was no more than half way up the steps,\naccompanied by his retinue of girls, when, clearly the result of the\nnoise of all those footsteps, the door opened slightly and in the crack\na man who seemed to be dressed in just his nightshirt appeared. \"Oh!\" he\ncried, when he saw the approaching crowd, and vanished. The hunchbacked\ngirl clapped her hands in glee and the other girls crowded in behind K.\nto push him faster forward.\n\nThey still had not arrived at the top, however, when the painter up\nabove them suddenly pulled the door wide open and, with a deep bow,\ninvited K. to enter. The girls, on the other hand, he tried to keep\naway, he did not want to let any of them in however much they begged\nhim and however much they tried to get in--if they could not get in with\nhis permission they would try to force their way in against his will.\nThe only one to succeed was the hunchback when she slipped through under\nhis outstretched arm, but the painter chased after her, grabbed her by\nthe skirt, span her once round and set her down again by the door with\nthe other girls who, unlike the first, had not dared to cross the\ndoorstep while the painter had left his post. K. did not know what he\nwas to make of all this, as they all seemed to be having fun. One behind\nthe other, the girls by the door stretched their necks up high and\ncalled out various words to the painter which were meant in jest but\nwhich K. did not understand, and even the painter laughed as the\nhunchback whirled round in his hand. Then he shut the door, bowed once\nmore to K., offered him his hand and introduced himself, saying,\n\"Silvia, painter.\" K. pointed to the door, behind which the girls\nwere whispering, and said, \"You seem to be very popular in this\nbuilding.\" \"Ach, those brats!\" said the painter, trying in vain to\nfasten his nightshirt at the neck. He was also bare-footed and, apart\nfrom that, was wearing nothing more than a loose pair of yellowish linen\ntrousers held up with a belt whose free end whipped to and fro. \"Those\nkids are a real burden for me,\" he continued. The top button of his\nnightshirt came off and he gave up trying to fasten it, fetched a chair\nfor K. and made him sit down on it. \"I painted one of them once--she's\nnot here today--and ever since then they've been following me about. If\nI'm here they only come in when I allow it, but as soon as I've gone out\nthere's always at least one of them in here. They had a key made to my\ndoor and lend it round to each other. It's hard to imagine what a pain\nthat is. Suppose I come back home with a lady I'm going to paint, I open\nthe door with my own key and find the hunchback there or something, by\nthe table painting her lips red with my paintbrush, and meanwhile her\nlittle sisters will be keeping guard for her, moving about and causing\nchaos in every corner of the room. Or else, like happened yesterday, I\nmight come back home late in the evening--please forgive my appearance\nand the room being in a mess, it is to do with them--so, I might come\nhome late in the evening and want to go to bed, then I feel something\npinching my leg, look under the bed and pull another of them out from\nunder it. I don't know why it is they bother me like this, I expect\nyou've just seen that I do nothing to encourage them to come near me.\nAnd they make it hard for me to do my work too, of course. If I didn't\nget this studio for nothing I'd have moved out a long time ago.\" Just\nthen, a little voice, tender and anxious, called out from under the\ndoor, \"Silvia, can we come in now?\" \"No,\" answered the painter. \"Not\neven just me, by myself?\" the voice asked again. \"Not even just you,\"\nsaid the painter, as he went to the door and locked it.\n\nMeanwhile, K. had been looking round the room, if it had not been\npointed out it would never have occurred to him that this wretched\nlittle room could be called a studio. It was hardly long enough or\nbroad enough to make two steps. Everything, floor, walls and ceiling,\nwas made of wood, between the planks narrow gaps could be seen. Across\nfrom where K. was, the bed stood against the wall under a covering of\nmany different colours. In the middle of the room a picture stood on an\neasel, covered over with a shirt whose arms dangled down to the ground.\nBehind K. was the window through which the fog made it impossible to\nsee further than the snow covered roof of the neighbouring building.\n\nThe turning of the key in the lock reminded K. that he had not wanted\nto stay too long. So he drew the manufacturer's letter out from his\npocket, held it out to the painter and said, \"I learned about you from\nthis gentleman, an acquaintance of yours, and it's on his advice that\nI've come here.\" The painter glanced through the letter and threw it\ndown onto the bed. If the manufacturer had not said very clearly that\nSilvia was an acquaintance of his, a poor man who was dependent on\nhis charity, then it would really have been quite possible to believe\nthat Silvia did not know him or at least that he could not remember\nhim. This impression was augmented by the painter's asking, \"Were you\nwanting to buy some pictures or did you want to have yourself painted?\"\nK. looked at the painter in astonishment. What did the letter actually\nsay? K. had taken it as a matter of course that the manufacturer had\nexplained to the painter in his letter that K. wanted nothing more with\nhim than to find out more about his trial. He had been far too rash in\ncoming here! But now he had to give the painter some sort of answer\nand, glancing at the easel, said, \"Are you working on a picture\ncurrently?\" \"Yes,\" said the painter, and he took the shirt hanging over\nthe easel and threw it onto the bed after the letter. \"It's a portrait.\nQuite a good piece of work, although it's not quite finished yet.\" This\nwas a convenient coincidence for K., it gave him a good opportunity to\ntalk about the court as the picture showed, very clearly, a judge.\nWhat's more, it was remarkably similar to the picture in the lawyer's\noffice, although this one showed a quite different judge, a heavy man\nwith a full beard which was black and bushy and extended to the sides\nfar up the man's cheeks. The lawyer's picture was also an oil painting,\nwhereas this one had been made with pastel colours and was pale and\nunclear. But everything else about the picture was similar, as this\njudge, too, was holding tightly to the arm of his throne and seemed\nominously about to rise from it. At first K. was about to say, \"He\ncertainly is a judge,\" but he held himself back for the time being and\nwent closer to the picture as if he wanted to study it in detail. There\nwas a large figure shown in the middle of the throne's back rest which\nK. could not understand and asked the painter about it. That'll need\nsome more work done on it, the painter told him, and taking a pastel\ncrayon from a small table he added a few strokes to the edges of the\nfigure but without making it any clearer as far as K. could make out.\n\"That's the figure of justice,\" said the painter, finally. \"Now I see,\"\nsaid K., \"here's the blindfold and here are the scales. But aren't those\nwings on her heels, and isn't she moving?\" \"Yes,\" said the painter, \"I\nhad to paint it like that according to the contract. It's actually the\nfigure of justice and the goddess of victory all in one.\" \"That is not a\ngood combination,\" said K. with a smile. \"Justice needs to remain\nstill, otherwise the scales will move about and it won't be possible to\nmake a just verdict.\" \"I'm just doing what the client wanted,\" said the\npainter. \"Yes, certainly,\" said K., who had not meant to criticise\nanyone by that comment. \"You've painted the figure as it actually\nappears on the throne.\" \"No,\" said the painter, \"I've never seen that\nfigure or that throne, it's all just invention, but they told me what\nit was I had to paint.\" \"How's that?\" asked K. pretending not fully to\nunderstand what the painter said. \"That is a judge sitting on the\njudge's chair, isn't it?\" \"Yes,\" said the painter, \"but that judge\nisn't very high up and he's never sat on any throne like that.\" \"And he\nhas himself painted in such a grand pose. He's sitting there just like\nthe president of the court.\" \"Yeah, gentlemen like this are very vain,\"\nsaid the painter. \"But they have permission from higher up to get\nthemselves painted like this. It's laid down quite strictly just what\nsort of portrait each of them can get for himself. Only it's a pity that\nyou can't make out the details of his costume and pose in this picture,\npastel colours aren't really suitable for showing people like this.\"\n\"Yes,\" said K., \"it does seem odd that it's in pastel colours.\" \"That's\nwhat the judge wanted,\" said the painter, \"it's meant to be for a\nwoman.\" The sight of the picture seemed to make him feel like working,\nhe rolled up his shirtsleeves, picked up a few of the crayons, and K.\nwatched as a reddish shadow built up around the head of the judge under\ntheir quivering tips and radiated out the to edges of the picture. This\nshadow play slowly surrounded the head like a decoration or lofty\ndistinction. But around the figure of Justice, apart from some\ncoloration that was barely noticeable, it remained light, and in this\nbrightness the figure seemed to shine forward so that it now looked\nlike neither the God of Justice nor the God of Victory, it seemed now,\nrather, to be a perfect depiction of the God of the Hunt. K. found the\npainter's work more engrossing than he had wanted; but finally he\nreproached himself for staying so long without having done anything\nrelevant to his own affair. \"What's the name of this judge?\" he asked\nsuddenly. \"I'm not allowed to tell you that,\" the painter answered. He\nwas bent deeply over the picture and clearly neglecting his guest who,\nat first, he had received with such care. K. took this to be just a\nfoible of the painter's, and it irritated him as it made him lose time.\n\"I take it you must be a trustee of the court,\" he said. The painter\nimmediately put his crayons down, stood upright, rubbed his hands\ntogether and looked at K. with a smile. \"Always straight out with the\ntruth,\" he said. \"You want to learn something about the court, like it\nsays in your letter of recommendation, but then you start talking about\nmy pictures to get me on your side. Still, I won't hold it against you,\nyou weren't to know that that was entirely the wrong thing to try with\nme. Oh, please!\" he said sharply, repelling K.'s attempt to make some\nobjection. He then continued, \"And besides, you're quite right in your\ncomment that I'm a trustee of the court.\" He made a pause, as if\nwanting to give K. the time to come to terms with this fact. The girls\ncould once more be heard from behind the door. They were probably\npressed around the keyhole, perhaps they could even see into the room\nthrough the gaps in the planks. K. forewent the opportunity to excuse\nhimself in some way as he did not wish to distract the painter from what\nhe was saying, or else perhaps he didn't want him to get too far above\nhimself and in this way make himself to some extent unattainable, so he\nasked, \"Is that a publicly acknowledged position?\" \"No,\" was the\npainter's curt reply, as if the question prevented him saying any more.\nBut K. wanted him to continue speaking and said, \"Well, positions like\nthat, that aren't officially acknowledged, can often have more influence\nthan those that are.\" \"And that's how it is with me,\" said the painter,\nand nodded with a frown. \"I was talking about your case with the\nmanufacturer yesterday, and he asked me if I wouldn't like to help you,\nand I answered: 'He can come and see me if he likes,' and now I'm\npleased to see you here so soon. This business seems to be quite\nimportant to you, and, of course, I'm not surprised at that. Would you\nnot like to take your coat off now?\" K. had intended to stay for only a\nvery short time, but the painter's invitation was nonetheless very\nwelcome. The air in the room had slowly become quite oppressive for him,\nhe had several times looked in amazement at a small, iron stove in the\ncorner that certainly could not have been lit, the heat of the room was\ninexplicable. As he took off his winter overcoat and also unbuttoned\nhis frock coat the painter said to him in apology, \"I must have warmth.\nAnd it is very cosy here, isn't it. This room's very good in that\nrespect.\" K. made no reply, but it was actually not the heat that made\nhim uncomfortable but, much more, the stuffiness, the air that almost\nmade it more difficult to breathe, the room had probably not been\nventilated for a long time. The unpleasantness of this was made all the\nstronger for K. when the painter invited him to sit on the bed while he\nhimself sat down on the only chair in the room in front of the easel.\nThe painter even seemed to misunderstand why K. remained at the edge of\nthe bed and urged K. to make himself comfortable, and as he hesitated\nhe went over to the bed himself and pressed K. deep down into the\nbedclothes and pillows. Then he went back to his seat and at last he\nasked his first objective question, which made K. forget everything\nelse. \"You're innocent, are you?\" he asked. \"Yes,\" said K. He felt a\nsimple joy at answering this question, especially as the answer was\ngiven to a private individual and therefore would have no consequences.\nUp till then no-one had asked him this question so openly. To make the\nmost of his pleasure he added, \"I am totally innocent.\" \"So,\" said the\npainter, and he lowered his head and seemed to be thinking. Suddenly he\nraised his head again and said, \"Well if you're innocent it's all very\nsimple.\" K. began to scowl, this supposed trustee of the court was\ntalking like an ignorant child. \"My being innocent does not make things\nsimple,\" said K. Despite everything, he couldn't help smiling and\nslowly shook his head. \"There are many fine details in which the court\ngets lost, but in the end it reaches into some place where originally\nthere was nothing and pulls enormous guilt out of it.\" \"Yeah, yeah,\nsure,\" said the painter, as if K. had been disturbing his train of\nthought for no reason. \"But you are innocent, aren't you?\" \"Well of\ncourse I am,\" said K. \"That's the main thing,\" said the painter. There\nwas no counter-argument that could influence him, but although he had\nmade up his mind it was not clear whether he was talking this way\nbecause of conviction or indifference. K., then, wanted to find out and\nsaid therefore, \"I'm sure you're more familiar with the court than I am,\nI know hardly more about it than what I've heard, and that's been from\nmany very different people. But they were all agreed on one thing, and\nthat was that when ill thought-out accusations are made they are not\nignored, and that once the court has made an accusation it is convinced\nof the guilt of the defendant and it's very hard to make it think\notherwise.\" \"Very hard?\" the painter asked, throwing one hand up in the\nair. \"It's impossible to make it think otherwise. If I painted all the\njudges next to each other here on canvas, and you were trying to defend\nyourself in front of it, you'd have more success with them than you'd\never have with the real court.\" \"Yes,\" said K. to himself, forgetting\nthat he had only gone there to investigate the painter.\n\nOne of the girls behind the door started up again, and asked,\n\"Silvia, is he going to go soon?\" \"Quiet!\" shouted the painter at\nthe door, \"Can't you see I'm talking with the gentleman?\" But this was\nnot enough to satisfy the girl and she asked, \"You going to paint his\npicture?\" And when the painter didn't answer she added, \"Please don't\npaint him, he's an 'orrible bloke.\" There followed an incomprehensible,\ninterwoven babble of shouts and replies and calls of agreement. The\npainter leapt over to the door, opened it very slightly--the girls'\nclasped hands could be seen stretching through the crack as if they\nwanted something--and said, \"If you're not quiet I'll throw you all\ndown the stairs. Sit down here on the steps and be quiet.\" They probably\ndid not obey him immediately, so that he had to command, \"Down on the\nsteps!\" Only then it became quiet.\n\n\"I'm sorry about that,\" said the painter as he returned to K. K. had\nhardly turned towards the door, he had left it completely up to the\npainter whether and how he would place him under his protection if he\nwanted to. Even now, he made hardly any movement as the painter bent\nover him and, whispering into his ear in order not to be heard outside,\nsaid, \"These girls belong to the court as well.\" \"How's that?\" asked\nK., as he leant his head to one side and looked at the painter. But the\npainter sat back down on his chair and, half in jest, half in\nexplanation, \"Well, everything belongs to the court.\" \"That is\nsomething I had never noticed until now,\" said K. curtly, this general\ncomment of the painter's made his comment about the girls far less\ndisturbing. Nonetheless, K. looked for a while at the door, behind which\nthe girls were now sitting quietly on the steps. Except, that one of\nthem had pushed a drinking straw through a crack between the planks and\nwas moving it slowly up and down. \"You still don't seem to have much\ngeneral idea of what the court's about,\" said the painter, who had\nstretched his legs wide apart and was tapping loudly on the floor with\nthe tip of his foot. \"But as you're innocent you won't need it anyway.\nI'll get you out of this by myself.\" \"How do you intend to do that?\"\nasked K. \"You did say yourself not long ago that it's quite impossible\nto go to the court with reasons and proofs.\" \"Only impossible for\nreasons and proofs you take to the court yourself,\" said the painter,\nraising his forefinger as if K. had failed to notice a fine distinction.\n\"It goes differently if you try to do something behind the public court,\nthat's to say in the consultation rooms, in the corridors or here, for\ninstance, in my studio.\" K. now began to find it far easier to believe\nwhat the painter was saying, or rather it was largely in agreement with\nwhat he had also been told by others. In fact it was even quite\npromising. If it really was so easy to influence the judges through\npersonal contacts as the lawyer had said then the painter's contacts\nwith these vain judges was especially important, and at the very least\nshould not be undervalued. And the painter would fit in very well in the\ncircle of assistants that K. was slowly gathering around himself. He had\nbeen noted at the bank for his talent in organising, here, where he was\nplaced entirely on his own resources, would be a good opportunity to\ntest that talent to its limits. The painter observed the effect his\nexplanation had had on K. and then, with a certain unease, said, \"Does\nit not occur to you that the way I'm speaking is almost like a lawyer?\nIt's the incessant contact with the gentlemen of the court has that\ninfluence on me. I gain a lot by it, of course, but I lose a lot,\nartistically speaking.\" \"How did you first come into contact with the\njudges, then?\" asked K., he wanted first to gain the painter's trust\nbefore he took him into his service. \"That was very easy,\" said the\npainter, \"I inherited these contacts. My father was court painter before\nme. It's a position that's always inherited. They can't use new people\nfor it, the rules governing how the various grades of officials are\npainted are so many and varied, and, above all, so secret that no-one\noutside of certain families even knows them. In the drawer there, for\ninstance, I've got my father's notes, which I don't show to anyone. But\nyou're only able to paint judges if you know what they say. Although,\neven if I lost them no-one could ever dispute my position because of all\nthe rules I just carry round in my head. All the judges want to be\npainted like the old, great judges were, and I'm the only one who can do\nthat.\" \"You are to be envied,\" said K., thinking of his position at the\nbank. \"Your position is quite unassailable, then?\" \"Yes, quite\nunassailable,\" said the painter, and he raised his shoulders in pride.\n\"That's how I can even afford to help some poor man facing trial now and\nthen.\" \"And how do you do that?\" asked K., as if the painter had not\njust described him as a poor man. The painter did not let himself be\ndistracted, but said, \"In your case, for instance, as you're totally\ninnocent, this is what I'll do.\" The repeated mention of K.'s innocence\nwas becoming irksome to him. It sometimes seemed to him as if the\npainter was using these comments to make a favourable outcome to the\ntrial a precondition for his help, which of course would make the help\nitself unnecessary. But despite these doubts K. forced himself not to\ninterrupt the painter. He did not want to do without the painter's help,\nthat was what he had decided, and this help did not seem in any way less\nquestionable than that of the lawyer. K. valued the painter's help far\nmore highly because it was offered in a way that was more harmless and\nopen.\n\nThe painter had pulled his seat closer to the bed and continued in a\nsubdued voice: \"I forgot to ask you: what sort of acquittal is it you\nwant. There are three possibilities: absolute acquittal, apparent\nacquittal and deferment. Absolute acquittal is the best, of course,\nonly there's nothing I could do to get that sort of outcome. I don't\nthink there's anyone at all who could do anything to get an absolute\nacquittal. Probably the only thing that could do that is if the accused\nis innocent. As you are innocent it could actually be possible and you\ncould depend on your innocence alone. In that case you won't need me or\nany other kind of help.\"\n\nAt first, K. was astonished at this orderly explanation, but then, just\nas quietly as the painter, he said, \"I think you're contradicting\nyourself.\" \"How's that?\" asked the painter patiently, leaning back with\na smile. This smile made K. feel as if he were examining not the words\nof the painter but seeking out inconsistencies in the procedures of the\ncourt itself. Nonetheless, he continued unabashed and said, \"You\nremarked earlier that the court cannot be approached with reasoned\nproofs, you later restricted this to the open court, and now you go so\nfar as to say that an innocent man needs no assistance in court. That\nentails a contradiction. Moreover, you said earlier that the judges can\nbe influenced personally but now you insist that an absolute acquittal,\nas you call it, can never be attained through personal influence. That\nentails a second contradiction.\" \"It's quite easy to clear up these\ncontradictions,\" said the painter. \"We're talking about two different\nthings here, there's what it says in the law and there's what I know\nfrom my own experience, you shouldn't get the two confused. I've never\nseen it in writing, but the law does, of course, say on the one hand\nthat the innocent will be set free, but on the other hand it doesn't\nsay that the judges can be influenced. But in my experience it's the\nother way round. I don't know of any absolute acquittals but I do know\nof many times when a judge has been influenced. It's possible, of\ncourse, that there was no innocence in any of the cases I know about.\nBut is that likely? Not a single innocent defendant in so many cases?\nWhen I was a boy I used to listen closely to my father when he told us\nabout court cases at home, and the judges that came to his studio talked\nabout the court, in our circles nobody talks about anything else; I\nhardly ever got the chance to go to court myself but always made use of\nit when I could, I've listened to countless trials at important stages\nin their development, I've followed them closely as far as they could\nbe followed, and I have to say that I've never seen a single\nacquittal.\" \"So. Not a single acquittal,\" said K., as if talking to\nhimself and his hopes. \"That confirms the impression I already have of\nthe court. So there's no point in it from this side either. They could\nreplace the whole court with a single hangman.\" \"You shouldn't\ngeneralise,\" said the painter, dissatisfied, \"I've only been talking\nabout my own experience.\" \"Well that's enough,\" said K., \"or have you\nheard of any acquittals that happened earlier?\" \"They say there have\nbeen some acquittals earlier,\" the painter answered, \"but it's very hard\nto be sure about it. The courts don't make their final conclusions\npublic, not even the judges are allowed to know about them, so that all\nwe know about these earlier cases are just legends. But most of them did\ninvolve absolute acquittals, you can believe that, but they can't be\nproved. On the other hand, you shouldn't forget all about them either,\nI'm sure there is some truth to them, and they are very beautiful, I've\npainted a few pictures myself depicting these legends.\" \"My assessment\nwill not be altered by mere legends,\" said K. \"I don't suppose it's\npossible to cite these legends in court, is it?\" The painter laughed.\n\"No, you can't cite them in court,\" he said. \"Then there's no point in\ntalking about them,\" said K., he wanted, for the time being, to accept\nanything the painter told him, even if he thought it unlikely or\ncontradicted what he had been told by others. He did not now have the\ntime to examine the truth of everything the painter said or even to\ndisprove it, he would have achieved as much as he could if the painter\nwould help him in any way even if his help would not be decisive. As a\nresult, he said, \"So let's pay no more attention to absolute acquittal,\nbut you mentioned two other possibilities.\" \"Apparent acquittal and\ndeferment. They're the only possibilities,\" said the painter. \"But\nbefore we talk about them, would you not like to take your coat off? You\nmust be hot.\" \"Yes,\" said K., who until then had paid attention to\nnothing but the painter's explanations, but now that he had had the heat\npointed out to him his brow began to sweat heavily. \"It's almost\nunbearable.\" The painter nodded as if he understood K.'s discomfort very\nwell. \"Could we not open the window?\" asked K. \"No,\" said the painter.\n\"It's only a fixed pane of glass, it can't be opened.\" K. now realised\nthat all this time he had been hoping the painter would suddenly go over\nto the window and pull it open. He had prepared himself even for the fog\nthat he would breathe in through his open mouth. The thought that here\nhe was entirely cut off from the air made him feel dizzy. He tapped\nlightly on the bedspread beside him and, with a weak voice, said, \"That\nis very inconvenient and unhealthy.\" \"Oh no,\" said the painter in\ndefence of his window, \"as it can't be opened this room retains the heat\nbetter than if the window were double glazed, even though it's only a\nsingle pane. There's not much need to air the room as there's so much\nventilation through the gaps in the wood, but when I do want to I can\nopen one of my doors, or even both of them.\" K. was slightly consoled\nby this explanation and looked around to see where the second door was.\nThe painter saw him do so and said, \"It's behind you, I had to hide it\nbehind the bed.\" Only then was K. able to see the little door in the\nwall. \"It's really much too small for a studio here,\" said the painter,\nas if he wanted to anticipate an objection K. would make. \"I had to\narrange things as well as I could. That's obviously a very bad place for\nthe bed, in front of the door. For instance when the judge I'm painting\nat present comes he always comes through the door by the bed, and I've\neven given him a key to this door so that he can wait for me here in the\nstudio when I'm not home. Although nowadays he usually comes early in\nthe morning when I'm still asleep. And of course, it always wakes me up\nwhen I hear the door opened beside the bed, however fast asleep I am. If\nyou could hear the way I curse him as he climbs over my bed in the\nmorning you'd lose all respect for judges. I suppose I could take the\nkey away from him but that'd only make things worse. It only takes a\ntiny effort to break any of the doors here off their hinges.\" All the\ntime the painter was speaking, K. was considering whether he should take\noff his coat, but he finally realised that, if he didn't do so, he would\nbe quite unable to stay here any longer, so he took off his frock coat\nand lay it on his knee so that he could put it back on again as soon as\nthe conversation was over. He had hardly done this when one of the girls\ncalled out, \"Now he's taken his coat off!\" and they could all be heard\npressing around the gaps in the planks to see the spectacle for\nthemselves. \"The girls think I'm going to paint your portrait,\" said the\npainter, \"and that's why you're taking your coat off.\" \"I see,\" said K.,\nonly slightly amused by this, as he felt little better than he had\nbefore even though he now sat in his shirtsleeves. With some irritation\nhe asked, \"What did you say the two other possibilities were?\" He had\nalready forgotten the terms used. \"Apparent acquittal and deferment,\"\nsaid the painter. \"It's up to you which one you choose. You can get\neither of them if I help you, but it'll take some effort of course, the\ndifference between them is that apparent acquittal needs concentrated\neffort for a while and that deferment takes much less effort but it has\nto be sustained. Now then, apparent acquittal. If that's what you want\nI'll write down an assertion of your innocence on a piece of paper. The\ntext for an assertion of this sort was passed down to me from my father\nand it's quite unassailable. I take this assertion round to the judges I\nknow. So I'll start off with the one I'm currently painting, and put\nthe assertion to him when he comes for his sitting this evening. I'll\nlay the assertion in front of him, explain that you're innocent and give\nhim my personal guarantee of it. And that's not just a superficial\nguarantee, it's a real one and it's binding.\" The painter's eyes seemed\nto show some reproach of K. for wanting to impose that sort of\nresponsibility on him. \"That would be very kind of you,\" said K. \"And\nwould the judge then believe you and nonetheless not pass an absolute\nacquittal?\" \"It's like I just said,\" answered the painter. \"And anyway,\nit's not entirely sure that all the judges would believe me, many of\nthem, for instance, might want me to bring you to see them personally.\nSo then you'd have to come along too. But at least then, if that\nhappens, the matter is half way won, especially as I'd teach you in\nadvance exactly how you'd need to act with the judge concerned, of\ncourse. What also happens, though, is that there are some judges who'll\nturn me down in advance, and that's worse. I'll certainly make several\nattempts, but still, we'll have to forget about them, but at least we\ncan afford to do that as no one judge can pass the decisive verdict.\nThen when I've got enough judges' signatures on this document I take it\nto the judge who's concerned with your case. I might even have his\nsignature already, in which case things develop a bit quicker than they\nwould do otherwise. But there aren't usually many hold ups from then\non, and that's the time that the defendant can feel most confident.\nIt's odd, but true, that people feel more confidence in this time than\nthey do after they've been acquitted. There's no particular exertion\nneeded now. When he has the document asserting the defendant's\ninnocence, guaranteed by a number of other judges, the judge can acquit\nyou without any worries, and although there are still several\nformalities to be gone through there's no doubt that that's what he'll\ndo as a favour to me and several other acquaintances. You, however, walk\nout the court and you're free.\" \"So, then I'll be free,\" said K.,\nhesitantly. \"That's right,\" said the painter, \"but only apparently free\nor, to put it a better way, temporarily free, as the most junior judges,\nthe ones I know, they don't have the right to give the final acquittal.\nOnly the highest judge can do that, in the court that's quite out of\nreach for you, for me and for all of us. We don't know how things look\nthere and, incidentally, we don't want to know. The right to acquit\npeople is a major privilege and our judges don't have it, but they do\nhave the right to free people from the indictment. That's to say, if\nthey're freed in this way then for the time being the charge is\nwithdrawn but it's still hanging over their heads and it only takes an\norder from higher up to bring it back into force. And as I'm in such\ngood contact with the court I can also tell you how the difference\nbetween absolute and apparent acquittal is described, just in a\nsuperficial way, in the directives to the court offices. If there's an\nabsolute acquittal all proceedings should stop, everything disappears\nfrom the process, not just the indictment but the trial and even the\nacquittal disappears, everything just disappears. With an apparent\nacquittal it's different. When that happens, nothing has changed except\nthat the case for your innocence, for your acquittal and the grounds for\nthe acquittal have been made stronger. Apart from that, proceedings go\non as before, the court offices continue their business and the case\ngets passed to higher courts, gets passed back down to the lower courts\nand so on, backwards and forwards, sometimes faster, sometimes slower,\nto and fro. It's impossible to know exactly what's happening while this\nis going on. Seen from outside it can sometimes seem that everything has\nbeen long since forgotten, the documents have been lost and the\nacquittal is complete. No-one familiar with the court would believe it.\nNo documents ever get lost, the court forgets nothing. One day--no-one\nexpects it--some judge or other picks up the documents and looks more\nclosely at them, he notices that this particular case is still active,\nand orders the defendant's immediate arrest. I've been talking here as\nif there's a long delay between apparent acquittal and re-arrest, that\nis quite possible and I do know of cases like that, but it's just as\nlikely that the defendant goes home after he's been acquitted and finds\nsomebody there waiting to re-arrest him. Then, of course, his life as a\nfree man is at an end.\" \"And does the trial start over again?\" asked K.,\nfinding it hard to believe. \"The trial will always start over again,\"\nsaid the painter, \"but there is, once again as before, the possibility\nof getting an apparent acquittal. Once again, the accused has to muster\nall his strength and mustn't give up.\" The painter said that last phrase\npossibly as a result of the impression that K., whose shoulders had\ndropped somewhat, gave on him. \"But to get a second acquittal,\" asked\nK., as if in anticipation of further revelations by the painter, \"is\nthat not harder to get than the first time?\" \"As far as that's\nconcerned,\" answered the painter, \"there's nothing you can say for\ncertain. You mean, do you, that the second arrest would have an adverse\ninfluence on the judge and the verdict he passes on the defendant.\nThat's not how it happens. When the acquittal is passed the judges are\nalready aware that re-arrest is likely. So when it happens it has hardly\nany effect. But there are countless other reasons why the judges' mood\nand their legal acumen in the case can be altered, and efforts to obtain\nthe second acquittal must therefore be suited to the new conditions, and\ngenerally just as vigorous as the first.\" \"But this second acquittal\nwill once again not be final,\" said K., shaking his head. \"Of course\nnot,\" said the painter, \"the second acquittal is followed by the third\narrest, the third acquittal by the fourth arrest and so on. That's what\nis meant by the term apparent acquittal.\" K. was silent. \"You clearly\ndon't think an apparent acquittal offers much advantage,\" said the\npainter, \"perhaps deferment would suit you better. Would you like me to\nexplain what deferment is about?\" K. nodded. The painter had leant back\nand spread himself out in his chair, his nightshirt was wide open, he\nhad pushed his hand inside and was stroking his breast and his sides.\n\"Deferment,\" said the painter, looking vaguely in front of himself for a\nwhile as if trying to find a perfectly appropriate explanation,\n\"deferment consists of keeping proceedings permanently in their earliest\nstages. To do that, the accused and those helping him need to keep in\ncontinuous personal contact with the court, especially those helping\nhim. I repeat, this doesn't require so much effort as getting an\napparent acquittal, but it probably requires a lot more attention. You\nmust never let the trial out of your sight, you have to go and see the\nappropriate judge at regular intervals as well as when something in\nparticular comes up and, whatever you do, you have to try and remain\nfriendly with him; if you don't know the judge personally you have to\ninfluence him through the judges you do know, and you have to do it\nwithout giving up on the direct discussions. As long as you don't fail\nto do any of these things you can be reasonably sure the trial won't get\npast its first stages. The trial doesn't stop, but the defendant is\nalmost as certain of avoiding conviction as if he'd been acquitted.\nCompared with an apparent acquittal, deferment has the advantage that\nthe defendant's future is less uncertain, he's safe from the shock of\nbeing suddenly re-arrested and doesn't need to fear the exertions and\nstress involved in getting an apparent acquittal just when everything\nelse in his life would make it most difficult. Deferment does have\ncertain disadvantages of its own though, too, and they shouldn't be\nunder-estimated. I don't mean by this that the defendant is never free,\nhe's never free in the proper sense of the word with an apparent\nacquittal either. There's another disadvantage. Proceedings can't be\nprevented from moving forward unless there are some at least ostensible\nreasons given. So something needs to seem to be happening when looked at\nfrom the outside. This means that from time to time various injunctions\nhave to be obeyed, the accused has to be questioned, investigations have\nto take place and so on. The trial's been artificially constrained\ninside a tiny circle, and it has to be continuously spun round within\nit. And that, of course, brings with it certain unpleasantnesses for the\naccused, although you shouldn't imagine they're all that bad. All of\nthis is just for show, the interrogations, for instance, they're only\nvery short, if you ever don't have the time or don't feel like going to\nthem you can offer an excuse, with some judges you can even arrange the\ninjunctions together a long time in advance, in essence all it means is\nthat, as the accused, you have to report to the judge from time to\ntime.\" Even while the painter was speaking those last words K. had laid\nhis coat over his arm and had stood up. Immediately, from outside the\ndoor, there was a cry of \"He's standing up now!\" \"Are you leaving\nalready?\" asked the painter, who had also stood up. \"It must be the air\nthat's driving you out. I'm very sorry about that. There's still a lot I\nneed to tell you. I had to put everything very briefly but I hope at\nleast it was all clear.\" \"Oh yes,\" said K., whose head was aching from\nthe effort of listening. Despite this affirmation the painter summed it\nall up once more, as if he wanted to give K. something to console him on\nhis way home. \"Both have in common that they prevent the defendant being\nconvicted,\" he said. \"But they also prevent his being properly\nacquitted,\" said K. quietly, as if ashamed to acknowledge it. \"You've\ngot it, in essence,\" said the painter quickly. K. placed his hand on his\nwinter overcoat but could not bring himself to put it on. Most of all he\nwould have liked to pack everything together and run out to the fresh\nair. Not even the girls could induce him to put his coat on, even though\nthey were already loudly telling each other that he was doing so. The\npainter still had to interpret K.'s mood in some way, so he said, \"I\nexpect you've deliberately avoided deciding between my suggestions yet.\nThat's good. I would even have advised against making a decision\nstraight away. There's no more than a hair's breadth of difference\nbetween the advantages and disadvantages. Everything has to be carefully\nweighed up. But the most important thing is you shouldn't lose too much\ntime.\" \"I'll come back here again soon,\" said K., who had suddenly\ndecided to put his frock coat on, threw his overcoat over his shoulder\nand hurried over to the door behind which the girls now began to scream.\nK. thought he could even see the screaming girls through the door.\n\"Well, you'll have to keep your word,\" said the painter, who had not\nfollowed him, \"otherwise I'll come to the bank to ask about it myself.\"\n\"Will you open this door for me,\" said K. pulling at the handle which,\nas he noticed from the resistance, was being held tightly by the girls\non the other side. \"Do you want to be bothered by the girls?\" asked the\npainter. \"It's better if you use the other way out,\" he said, pointing\nto the door behind the bed. K. agreed to this and jumped back to the\nbed. But instead of opening that door the painter crawled under the bed\nand from underneath it asked K., \"Just a moment more, would you not like\nto see a picture I could sell to you?\" K. did not want to be impolite,\nthe painter really had taken his side and promised to help him more in\nthe future, and because of K.'s forgetfulness there had been no mention\nof any payment for the painter's help, so K. could not turn him down now\nand allowed him to show him the picture, even though he was quivering\nwith impatience to get out of the studio. From under the bed, the\npainter withdrew a pile of unframed paintings. They were so covered in\ndust that when the painter tried to blow it off the one on top the dust\nswirled around in front of K.'s eyes, robbing him of breath for some\ntime. \"Moorland landscape,\" said the painter passing the picture to K.\nIt showed two sickly trees, well separated from each other in dark\ngrass. In the background there was a multi-coloured sunset. \"That's\nnice,\" said K. \"I'll buy it.\" K. expressed himself in this curt way\nwithout any thought, so he was glad when the painter did not take this\namiss and picked up a second painting from the floor. \"This is a\ncounterpart to the first picture,\" said the painter. Perhaps it had been\nintended as a counterpart, but there was not the slightest difference to\nbe seen between it and the first picture, there were the trees, there\nthe grass and there the sunset. But this was of little importance to K.\n\"They are beautiful landscapes,\" he said, \"I'll buy them both and hang\nthem in my office.\" \"You seem to like this subject,\" said the painter,\npicking up a third painting, \"good job I've still got another, similar\npicture here.\" The picture though, was not similar, rather it was\nexactly the same moorland landscape. The painter was fully exploiting\nthis opportunity to sell off his old pictures. \"I'll take this one too,\"\nsaid K. \"How much do the three paintings cost?\" \"We can talk about that\nnext time,\" said the painter. \"You're in a hurry now, and we'll still be\nin contact. And besides, I'm glad you like the paintings, I'll give you\nall the paintings I've got down here. They're all moorland landscapes,\nI've painted a lot of moorland landscapes. A lot of people don't like\nthat sort of picture because they're too gloomy, but there are others,\nand you're one of them, who love gloomy themes.\" But K. was not in the\nmood to hear about the professional experiences of this painter cum\nbeggar. \"Wrap them all up!\" he called out, interrupting the painter as\nhe was speaking, \"my servant will come to fetch them in the morning.\"\n\"There's no need for that,\" said the painter. \"I expect I can find a\nporter for you who can go with you now.\" And, at last, he leant over the\nbed and unlocked the door. \"Just step on the bed, don't worry about\nthat,\" said the painter, \"that's what everyone does who comes in here.\"\nEven without this invitation, K. had shown no compunction in already\nplacing his foot in the middle of the bed covers, then he looked out\nthrough the open door and drew his foot back again. \"What is that?\" he\nasked the painter. \"What are you so surprised at?\" he asked, surprised\nin his turn. \"Those are court offices. Didn't you know there are court\noffices here. There are court offices in almost every attic, why should\nthis building be any different? Even my studio is actually one of the\ncourt offices but the court put it at my disposal.\" It was not so much\nfinding court offices even here that shocked K., he was mainly shocked\nat himself, at his own na\u00efvety in court matters. It seemed to him that\none of the most basic rules governing how a defendant should behave was\nalways to be prepared, never allow surprises, never to look,\nunsuspecting, to the right when the judge stood beside him to his\nleft--and this was the very basic rule that he was continually\nviolating. A long corridor extended in front of him, air blew in from it\nwhich, compared with the air in the studio, was refreshing. There were\nbenches set along each side of the corridor just as in the waiting area\nfor the office he went to himself. There seemed to be precise rules\ngoverning how offices should be equipped. There did not seem to be many\npeople visiting the offices that day. There was a man there, half\nsitting, half laying, his face was buried in his arm on the bench and he\nseemed to be sleeping; another man was standing in the half-dark at the\nend of the corridor. K. now climbed over the bed, the painter followed\nhim with the pictures. They soon came across a servant of the court--K.\nwas now able to recognise all the servants of the court from the gold\nbuttons they wore on their civilian clothes below the normal\nbuttons--and the painter instructed him to go with K. carrying the\npictures. K. staggered more than he walked, his handkerchief pressed\nover his mouth. They had nearly reached the exit when the girls stormed\nin on them, so K. had not been able to avoid them. They had clearly seen\nthat the second door of the studio had been opened and had gone around\nto impose themselves on him from this side. \"I can't come with you any\nfurther!\" called out the painter with a laugh as the girls pressed in.\n\"Goodbye, and don't hesitate too long!\" K. did not even look round at\nhim. Once on the street he took the first cab he came across. He now had\nto get rid of the servant, whose gold button continually caught his eye\neven if it caught no-one else's. As a servant, the servant of the court\nwas going to sit on the coach-box. But K. chased him down from there. It\nwas already well into the afternoon when K. arrived in front of the\nbank. He would have liked to leave the pictures in the cab but feared\nthere might be some occasion when he would have to let the painter see\nhe still had them. So he had the pictures taken to his office and locked\nthem in the lowest drawer of his desk so that he could at least keep\nthem safe from the deputy director's view for the next few days.\n\n\n\n\nChapter Eight\n\nBlock, the businessman--Dismissing the lawyer\n\n\nK. had at last made the decision to withdraw his defence from the\nlawyer. It was impossible to remove his doubts as to whether this was\nthe right decision, but this was outweighed by his belief in its\nnecessity. This decision, on the day he intended to go to see the\nlawyer, took a lot of the strength he needed for his work, he worked\nexceptionally slowly, he had to remain in his office a long time, and\nit was already past ten o'clock when he finally stood in front of the\nlawyer's front door. Even before he rang he considered whether it might\nnot be better to give the lawyer notice by letter or telephone, a\npersonal conversation would certainly be very difficult. Nonetheless,\nK. did not actually want to do without it, if he gave notice by any\nother means it would be received in silence or with a few formulated\nwords, and unless Nikki could discover anything K. would never learn how\nthe lawyer had taken his dismissal and what its consequences might be,\nin the lawyer's not unimportant opinion. But sitting in front of him\nand taken by surprise by his dismissal, K. would be able easily to\ninfer everything he wanted from the lawyer's face and behaviour, even if\nhe could not be induced to say very much. It was not even out of the\nquestion that K. might, after all, be persuaded that it would be best\nto leave his defence to the lawyer and withdraw his dismissal.\n\nAs usual, there was at first no response to K.'s ring at the door.\n\"Nikki could be a bit quicker,\" thought K. But he could at least be glad\nthere was nobody else interfering as usually happened, be it the man in\nhis nightshirt or anyone else who might bother him. As K. pressed on\nthe button for the second time he looked back at the other door, but\nthis time it, too, remained closed. At last, two eyes appeared at the\nspy-hatch in the lawyer's door, although they weren't Nikki's eyes.\nSomeone unlocked the door, but kept himself pressed against it as he\ncalled back inside, \"It's him!\", and only then did he open the door\nproperly. K. pushed against the door, as behind him he could already\nhear the key being hurriedly turned in the lock of the door to the\nother flat. When the door in front of him finally opened, he stormed\nstraight into the hallway. Through the corridor which led between the\nrooms he saw Nikki, to whom the warning cry of the door opener had been\ndirected, still running away in her nightshirt. He looked at her for a\nmoment and then looked round at the person who had opened the door. It\nwas a small, wizened man with a full beard, he held a candle in his\nhand. \"Do you work here?\" asked K. \"No,\" answered the man, \"I don't\nbelong here at all, the lawyer is only representing me, I'm here on\nlegal business.\" \"Without your coat?\" asked K., indicating the man's\ndeficiency of dress with a gesture of his hand. \"Oh, do forgive me!\"\nsaid the man, and he looked at himself in the light of the candle he was\nholding as if he had not known about his appearance until then. \"Is Nikki\nyour lover?\" asked K. curtly. He had set his legs slightly apart, his\nhands, in which he held his hat, were behind his back. Merely by being\nin possession of a thick overcoat he felt his advantage over this thin\nlittle man. \"Oh God,\" he said and, shocked, raised one hand in front of\nhis face as if in defence, \"no, no, what can you be thinking?\" \"You look\nhonest enough,\" said K. with a smile, \"but come along anyway.\" K.\nindicated with his hat which way the man was to go and let him go ahead\nof him. \"What is your name then?\" asked K. on the way. \"Block. I'm a\nbusinessman,\" said the small man, twisting himself round as he thus\nintroduced himself, although K. did not allow him to stop moving. \"Is\nthat your real name?\" asked K. \"Of course it is,\" was the man's reply,\n\"why do you doubt it?\" \"I thought you might have some reason to keep\nyour name secret,\" said K. He felt himself as much at liberty as is\nnormally only felt in foreign parts when speaking with people of lower\nstanding, keeping everything about himself to himself, speaking only\ncasually about the interests of the other, able to raise him to a level\nabove one's own, but also able, at will, to let him drop again. K.\nstopped at the door of the lawyer's office, opened it and, to the\nbusinessman who had obediently gone ahead, called, \"Not so fast! Bring\nsome light here!\" K. thought Nikki might have hidden in here, he let the\nbusinessman search in every corner, but the room was empty. In front of\nthe picture of the judge K. took hold of the businessman's braces to\nstop him moving on. \"Do you know him?\" he asked, pointing upwards with\nhis finger. The businessman lifted the candle, blinked as he looked up\nand said, \"It's a judge.\" \"An important judge?\" asked K., and stood to\nthe side and in front of the businessman so that he could observe what\nimpression the picture had on him. The businessman was looking up in\nadmiration. \"He's an important judge.\" \"You don't have much insight,\"\nsaid K. \"He is the lowest of the lowest examining judges.\" \"I remember\nnow,\" said the businessman as he lowered the candle, \"that's what I've\nalready been told.\" \"Well of course you have,\" called out K., \"I'd\nforgotten about it, of course you would already have been told.\" \"But\nwhy, why?\" asked the businessman as he moved forwards towards the door,\npropelled by the hands of K. Outside in the corridor K. said, \"You know\nwhere Nikki's hidden, do you?\" \"Hidden?\" said the businessman, \"No, but\nshe might be in the kitchen cooking soup for the lawyer.\" \"Why didn't\nyou say that immediately?\" asked K. \"I was going to take you there, but\nyou called me back again,\" answered the businessman, as if confused by\nthe contradictory commands. \"You think you're very clever, don't you,\"\nsaid K., \"now take me there!\" K. had never been in the kitchen, it was\nsurprisingly big and very well equipped. The stove alone was three\ntimes bigger than normal stoves, but it was not possible to see any\ndetail beyond this as the kitchen was at the time illuminated by no more\nthan a small lamp hanging by the entrance. At the stove stood Nikki, in a\nwhite apron as always, breaking eggs into a pot standing on a spirit\nlamp. \"Good evening, Mara,\" she said with a glance sideways. \"Good\nevening,\" said K., pointing with one hand to a chair in a corner which\nthe businessman was to sit on, and he did indeed sit down on it. K.\nhowever went very close behind Nikki's back, leant over her shoulder and\nasked, \"Who is this man?\" Nikki put one hand around K. as she stirred the\nsoup with the other, she drew him forward toward herself and said, \"He's\na pitiful character, a poor businessman by the name of Block. Just look\nat him.\" The two of them looked back over their shoulders. The\nbusinessman was sitting on the chair that K. had directed him to, he\nhad extinguished the candle whose light was no longer needed and pressed\non the wick with his fingers to stop the smoke. \"You were in your\nnightshirt,\" said K., putting his hand on her head and turning it back\ntowards the stove. She was silent. \"Is he your lover?\" asked K. She was\nabout to take hold of the pot of soup, but K. took both her hands and\nsaid, \"Answer me!\" She said, \"Come into the office, I'll explain\neverything to you.\" \"No,\" said K., \"I want you to explain it here.\" She\nput her arms around him and wanted to kiss him. K., though, pushed her\naway and said, \"I don't want you to kiss me now.\" \"Mara,\" said Nikki,\nlooking at K. imploringly but frankly in the eyes, \"you're not going to\nbe jealous of Mr. Block now, are you. Rudi,\" she then said, turning to\nthe businessman, \"help me out will you, I'm being suspected of\nsomething, you can see that, leave the candle alone.\" It had looked as\nthough Mr. Block had not been paying attention but he had been\nfollowing closely. \"I don't even know why you might be jealous,\" he\nsaid ingenuously. \"Nor do I, actually,\" said K., looking at the\nbusinessman with a smile. Nikki laughed out loud and while K. was not\npaying attention took the opportunity of embracing him and whispering,\n\"Leave him alone, now, you can see what sort of person he is. I've been\nhelping him a little bit because he's an important client of the\nlawyer's, and no other reason. And what about you? Do you want to speak\nto the lawyer at this time of day? He's very unwell today, but if you\nwant I'll tell him you're here. But you can certainly spend the night\nwith me. It's so long since you were last here, even the lawyer has been\nasking about you. Don't neglect your case! And I've got some things to\ntell you that I've learned about. But now, before anything else, take\nyour coat off!\" She helped him off with his coat, took the hat off his\nhead, ran with the things into the hallway to hang them up, then she ran\nback and saw to the soup. \"Do you want me to tell him you're here\nstraight away or take him his soup first?\" \"Tell him I'm here first,\"\nsaid K. He was in a bad mood, he had originally intended a detailed\ndiscussion of his business with Nikki, especially the question of his\ngiving the lawyer notice, but now he no longer wanted to because of the\npresence of the businessman. Now he considered his affair too important\nto let this little businessman take part in it and perhaps change some\nof his decisions, and so he called Nikki back even though she was already\non her way to the lawyer. \"Bring him his soup first,\" he said, \"I want\nhim to get his strength up for the discussion with me, he'll need it.\"\n\"You're a client of the lawyer's too, aren't you,\" said the businessman\nquietly from his corner as if he were trying to find this out. It was\nnot, however, taken well. \"What business is that of yours?\" said K., and\nNikki said, \"Will you be quiet.--I'll take him his soup first then, shall\nI?\" And she poured the soup into a dish. \"The only worry then is that\nhe might go to sleep soon after he's eaten.\" \"What I've got to say to\nhim will keep him awake,\" said K., who still wanted to intimate that he\nintended some important negotiations with the lawyer, he wanted Nikki to\nask him what it was and only then to ask her advice. But instead, she\njust promptly carried out the order he had given her. When she went\nover to him with the dish she deliberately brushed against him and\nwhispered, \"I'll tell him you're here as soon as he's eaten the soup so\nthat I can get you back as soon as possible.\" \"Just go,\" said K., \"just\ngo.\" \"Be a bit more friendly,\" she said and, still holding the dish,\nturned completely round once more in the doorway.\n\nK. watched her as she went; the decision had finally been made that the\nlawyer was to be dismissed, it was probably better that he had not been\nable to discuss the matter any more with Nikki beforehand; she hardly\nunderstood the complexity of the matter, she would certainly have\nadvised him against it and perhaps would even have prevented him from\ndismissing the lawyer this time, he would have remained in doubt and\nunease and eventually have carried out his decision after a while\nanyway as this decision was something he could not avoid. The sooner it\nwas carried out the more harm would be avoided. And moreover, perhaps\nthe businessman had something to say on the matter.\n\nK. turned round, the businessman hardly noticed it as he was about to\nstand up. \"Stay where you are,\" said K. and pulled up a chair beside\nhim. \"Have you been a client of the lawyer's for a long time?\" asked K.\n\"Yes,\" said the businessman, \"a very long time.\" \"How many years has he\nbeen representing you so far, then?\" asked K. \"I don't know how you\nmean,\" said the businessman, \"he's been my business lawyer--I buy and\nsell cereals--he's been my business lawyer since I took the business\nover, and that's about twenty years now, but perhaps you mean my own\ntrial and he's been representing me in that since it started, and\nthat's been more than five years. Yes, well over five years,\" he then\nadded, pulling out an old briefcase, \"I've got everything written down;\nI can tell you the exact dates if you like. It's so hard to remember\neverything. Probably, my trial's been going on much longer than that,\nit started soon after the death of my wife, and that's been more than\nfive and a half years now.\" K. moved in closer to him. \"So the lawyer\ntakes on ordinary legal business, does he?\" he asked. This combination\nof criminal and commercial business seemed surprisingly reassuring for\nK. \"Oh yes,\" said the businessman, and then he whispered, \"They even\nsay he's more efficient in jurisprudence than he is in other matters.\"\nBut then he seemed to regret saying this, and he laid a hand on K.'s\nshoulder and said, \"Please don't betray me to him, will you.\" K. patted\nhis thigh to reassure him and said, \"No, I don't betray people.\" \"He\ncan be so vindictive, you see,\" said the businessman. \"I'm sure he won't\ndo anything against such a faithful client as you,\" said K. \"Oh, he\nmight do,\" said the businessman, \"when he gets cross it doesn't matter\nwho it is, and anyway, I'm not really faithful to him.\" \"How's that\nthen?\" asked K. \"I'm not sure I should tell you about it,\" said the\nbusinessman hesitantly. \"I think it'll be alright,\" said K. \"Well then,\"\nsaid the businessman, \"I'll tell you about some of it, but you'll have\nto tell me a secret too, then we can support each other with the\nlawyer.\" \"You are very careful,\" said K., \"but I'll tell you a secret\nthat will set your mind completely at ease. Now tell me, in what way\nhave you been unfaithful to the lawyer?\" \"I've ...\" said the businessman\nhesitantly, and in a tone as if he were confessing something\ndishonourable, \"I've taken on other lawyers besides him.\" \"That's not so\nserious,\" said K., a little disappointed. \"It is, here,\" said the\nbusinessman, who had had some difficulty breathing since making his\nconfession but who now, after hearing K.'s comment, began to feel more\ntrust for him. \"That's not allowed. And it's allowed least of all to\ntake on petty lawyers when you've already got a proper one. And that's\njust what I have done, besides him I've got five petty lawyers.\" \"Five!\"\nexclaimed K., astonished at this number, \"Five lawyers besides this\none?\" The businessman nodded. \"I'm even negotiating with a sixth one.\"\n\"But why do you need so many lawyers?\" asked K. \"I need all of them,\"\nsaid the businessman. \"Would you mind explaining that to me?\" asked K.\n\"I'd be glad to,\" said the businessman. \"Most of all, I don't want to\nlose my case, well that's obvious. So that means I mustn't neglect\nanything that might be of use to me; even if there's very little hope of\na particular thing being of any use I can't just throw it away. So\neverything I have I've put to use in my case. I've taken all the money\nout of my business, for example, the offices for my business used to\noccupy nearly a whole floor, but now all I need is a little room at the\nback where I work with one apprentice. It wasn't just using up the money\nthat caused the difficulty, of course, it was much more to do with me\nnot working at the business as much as I used to. If you want to do\nsomething about your trial you don't have much time for anything else.\"\n\"So you're also working at the court yourself?\" asked K. \"That's just\nwhat I want to learn more about.\" \"I can't tell you very much about\nthat,\" said the businessman, \"at first I tried to do that too but I soon\nhad to give it up again. It wears you out too much, and it's really not\nmuch use. And it turned out to be quite impossible to work there\nyourself and to negotiate, at least for me it was. It's a heavy strain\nthere just sitting and waiting. You know yourself what the air is like\nin those offices.\" \"How do you know I've been there, then?\" asked K. \"I\nwas in the waiting room myself when you went through.\" \"What a\ncoincidence that is!\" exclaimed K., totally engrossed and forgetting how\nridiculous the businessman had seemed to him earlier. \"So you saw me!\nYou were in the waiting room when I went through. Yes, I did go through\nit one time.\" \"It isn't such a big coincidence,\" said the businessman,\n\"I'm there nearly every day.\" \"I expect I'll have to go there quite\noften myself now,\" said K., \"although I can hardly expect to be shown\nthe same respect as I was then. They all stood up for me. They must have\nthought I was a judge.\" \"No,\" said the businessman, \"we were greeting\nthe servant of the court. We knew you were a defendant. That sort of\nnews spreads very quickly.\" \"So you already knew about that,\" said K.,\n\"the way I behaved must have seemed very arrogant to you. Did you\ncriticise me for it afterwards?\" \"No,\" said the businessman, \"quite the\nopposite. That was just stupidity.\" \"What do you mean, 'stupidity'?\"\nasked K. \"Why are you asking about it?\" said the businessman in some\nirritation. \"You still don't seem to know the people there and you might\ntake it wrong. Don't forget in proceedings like this there are always\nlots of different things coming up to talk about, things that you just\ncan't understand with reason alone, you just get too tired and\ndistracted for most things and so, instead, people rely on superstition.\nI'm talking about the others, but I'm no better myself. One of these\nsuperstitions, for example, is that you can learn a lot about the\noutcome of a defendant's case by looking at his face, especially the\nshape of his lips. There are lots who believe that, and they said they\ncould see from the shape of your lips that you'd definitely be found\nguilty very soon. I repeat that all this is just a ridiculous\nsuperstition, and in most cases it's completely disproved by the facts,\nbut when you live in that society it's hard to hold yourself back from\nbeliefs like that. Just think how much effect that superstition can\nhave. You spoke to one of them there, didn't you? He was hardly able to\ngive you an answer. There are lots of things there that can make you\nconfused, of course, but one of them, for him, was the appearance of\nyour lips. He told us all later he thought he could see something in\nyour lips that meant he'd be convicted himself.\" \"On my lips?\" asked K.,\npulling out a pocket mirror and examining himself. \"I can see nothing\nspecial about my lips. Can you?\" \"Nor can I,\" said the businessman,\n\"nothing at all.\" \"These people are so superstitious!\" exclaimed K.\n\"Isn't that what I just told you?\" asked the businessman. \"Do you then\nhave that much contact with each other, exchanging each other's\nopinions?\" said K. \"I've kept myself completely apart so far.\" \"They\ndon't normally have much contact with each other,\" said the businessman,\n\"that would be impossible, there are so many of them. And they don't\nhave much in common either. If a group of them ever thinks they have\nfound something in common it soon turns out they were mistaken. There's\nnothing you can do as a group where the court's concerned. Each case is\nexamined separately, the court is very painstaking. So there's nothing\nto be achieved by forming into a group, only sometimes an individual\nwill achieve something in secret; and it's only when that's been done\nthe others learn about it; nobody knows how it was done. So there's no\nsense of togetherness, you meet people now and then in the waiting\nrooms, but we don't talk much there. The superstitious beliefs were\nestablished a long time ago and they spread all by themselves.\" \"I saw\nthose gentlemen in the waiting room,\" said K., \"it seemed so pointless\nfor them to be waiting in that way.\" \"Waiting is not pointless,\" said\nthe businessman, \"it's only pointless if you try and interfere yourself.\nI told you just now I've got five lawyers besides this one. You might\nthink--I thought it myself at first--you might think I could leave the\nwhole thing entirely up to them now. That would be entirely wrong. I can\nleave it up to them less than when I had just the one. Maybe you don't\nunderstand that, do you?\" \"No,\" said K., and to slow the businessman\ndown, who had been speaking too fast, he laid his hand on the\nbusinessman's to reassure him, \"but I'd like just to ask you to speak a\nlittle more slowly, these are many very important things for me, and I\ncan't follow exactly what you're saying.\" \"You're quite right to remind\nme of that,\" said the businessman, \"you're new to all this, a junior.\nYour trial is six months old, isn't it. Yes, I've heard about it. Such a\nnew case! But I've already thought all these things through countless\ntimes, to me they're the most obvious things in the world.\" \"You must be\nglad your trial has already progressed so far, are you?\" asked K., he\ndid not wish to ask directly how the businessman's affairs stood, but\nreceived no clear answer anyway. \"Yes, I've been working at my trial for\nfive years now,\" said the businessman as his head sank, \"that's no small\nachievement.\" Then he was silent for a while. K. listened to hear\nwhether Nikki was on her way back. On the one hand he did not want her to\ncome back too soon as he still had many questions to ask and did not\nwant her to find him in this intimate discussion with the businessman,\nbut on the other hand it irritated him that she stayed so long with the\nlawyer when K. was there, much longer than she needed to give him his\nsoup. \"I still remember it exactly,\" the businessman began again, and K.\nimmediately gave him his full attention, \"when my case was as old as\nyours is now. I only had this one lawyer at that time but I wasn't very\nsatisfied with him.\" Now I'll find out everything, thought K., nodding\nvigorously as if he could thereby encourage the businessman to say\neverything worth knowing. \"My case,\" the businessman continued, \"didn't\nmove on at all, there were some hearings that took place and I went to\nevery one of them, collected materials, handed all my business books to\nthe court--which I later found was entirely unnecessary--I ran back and\nforth to the lawyer, and he submitted various documents to the court\ntoo....\" \"Various documents?\" asked K. \"Yes, that's right,\" said the\nbusinessman. \"That's very important for me,\" said K., \"in my case he's\nstill working on the first set of documents. He still hasn't done\nanything. I see now that he's been neglecting me quite disgracefully.\"\n\"There can be lots of good reasons why the first documents still aren't\nready,\" said the businessman, \"and anyway, it turned out later on that\nthe ones he submitted for me were entirely worthless. I even read one of\nthem myself, one of the officials at the court was very helpful. It was\nvery learned, but it didn't actually say anything. Most of all, there\nwas lots of Latin, which I can't understand, then pages and pages of\ngeneral appeals to the court, then lots of flattery for particular\nofficials, they weren't named, these officials, but anyone familiar with\nthe court must have been able to guess who they were, then there was\nself-praise by the lawyer where he humiliated himself to the court in a\nway that was downright dog-like, and then endless investigations of\ncases from the past which were supposed to be similar to mine. Although,\nas far as I was able to follow them, these investigations had been\ncarried out very carefully. Now, I don't mean to criticise the lawyer's\nwork with all of this, and the document I read was only one of many, but\neven so, and this is something I will say, at that time I couldn't see\nany progress in my trial at all.\" \"And what sort of progress had you\nbeen hoping for?\" asked K. \"That's a very sensible question,\" said the\nbusinessman with a smile, \"it's only very rare that you see any progress\nin these proceedings at all. But I didn't know that then. I'm a\nbusinessman, much more in those days than now, I wanted to see some\ntangible progress, it should have all been moving to some conclusion or\nat least should have been moving on in some way according to the rules.\nInstead of which there were just more hearings, and most of them went\nthrough the same things anyway; I had all the answers off pat like in a\nchurch service; there were messengers from the court coming to me at\nwork several times a week, or they came to me at home or anywhere else\nthey could find me; and that was very disturbing of course (but at least\nnow things are better in that respect, it's much less disturbing when\nthey contact you by telephone), and rumours about my trial even started\nto spread among some of the people I do business with, and especially my\nrelations, so I was being made to suffer in many different ways but\nthere was still not the slightest sign that even the first hearing would\ntake place soon. So I went to the lawyer and complained about it. He\nexplained it all to me at length, but refused to do anything I asked\nfor, no-one has any influence on the way the trial proceeds, he said, to\ntry and insist on it in any of the documents submitted--like I was\nasking--was simply unheard of and would do harm to both him and me. I\nthought to myself: What this lawyer can't or won't do another lawyer\nwill. So I looked round for other lawyers. And before you say anything:\nnone of them asked for a definite date for the main trial and none of\nthem got one, and anyway, apart from one exception which I'll talk about\nin a minute, it really is impossible, that's one thing this lawyer\ndidn't mislead me about; but besides, I had no reason to regret turning\nto other lawyers. Perhaps you've already heard how Dr. Preston talks about\nthe petty lawyers, he probably made them sound very contemptible to you,\nand he's right, they are contemptible. But when he talks about them and\ncompares them with himself and his colleagues there's a small error\nrunning through what he says, and, just for your interest, I'll tell you\nabout it. When he talks about the lawyers he mixes with he sets them\napart by calling them the 'great lawyers'. That's wrong, anyone can call\nhimself 'great' if he wants to, of course, but in this case only the\nusage of the court can make that distinction. You see, the court says\nthat besides the petty lawyers there are also minor lawyers and great\nlawyers. This one and his colleagues are only minor lawyers, and the\ndifference in rank between them and the great lawyers, who I've only\never heard about and never seen, is incomparably greater than between\nthe minor lawyers and the despised petty lawyers.\" \"The great lawyers?\"\nasked K. \"Who are they then? How do you contact them?\" \"You've never\nheard about them, then?\" said the businessman. \"There's hardly anyone\nwho's been accused who doesn't spend a lot of time dreaming about the\ngreat lawyers once he's heard about them. It's best if you don't let\nyourself be misled in that way. I don't know who the great lawyers are,\nand there's probably no way of contacting them. I don't know of any case\nI can talk about with certainty where they've taken any part. They do\ndefend a lot of people, but you can't get hold of them by your own\nefforts, they only defend those who they want to defend. And I don't\nsuppose they ever take on cases that haven't already got past the lower\ncourts. Anyway, it's best not to think about them, as if you do it makes\nthe discussions with the other lawyers, all their advice and all that\nthey do manage to achieve, seem so unpleasant and useless, I had that\nexperience myself, just wanted to throw everything away and lay at home\nin bed and hear nothing more about it. But that, of course, would be the\nstupidest thing you could do, and you wouldn't be left in peace in bed\nfor very long either.\" \"So you weren't thinking about the great lawyers\nat that time?\" asked K. \"Not for very long,\" said the businessman, and\nsmiled again, \"you can't forget about them entirely, I'm afraid,\nespecially in the night when these thoughts come so easily. But I wanted\nimmediate results in those days, so I went to the petty lawyers.\"\n\n\"Well look at you two sat huddled together!\" called Nikki as she came\nback with the dish and stood in the doorway. They were indeed sat close\ntogether, if either of them turned his head even slightly it would have\nknocked against the other's, the businessman was not only very small\nbut also sat hunched down, so that K. was also forced to bend down low\nif he wanted to hear everything. \"Not quite yet!\" called out K., to turn\nNikki away, his hand, still resting on the businessman's hand, twitching\nwith impatience. \"He wanted me to tell him about my trial,\" said the\nbusinessman to Nikki. \"Carry on, then, carry on,\" she said. She spoke to\nthe businessman with affection but, at the same time, with\ncondescension. K. did not like that, he had begun to learn that the man\nwas of some value after all, he had experience at least, and he was\nwilling to share it. Nikki was probably wrong about him. He watched her\nin irritation as Nikki now took the candle from the businessman's\nhand--which he had been holding on to all this time--wiped his hand\nwith her apron and then knelt beside him to scratch off some wax that\nhad dripped from the candle onto his trousers. \"You were about to tell\nme about the petty lawyers,\" said K., shoving Nikki's hand away with no\nfurther comment. \"What's wrong with you today?\" asked Nikki, tapped him\ngently and carried on with what she had been doing. \"Yes, the petty\nlawyers,\" said the businessman, putting his hand to his brow as if\nthinking hard. K. wanted to help him and said, \"You wanted immediate\nresults and so went to the petty lawyers.\" \"Yes, that's right,\" said\nthe businessman, but did not continue with what he'd been saying. \"Maybe\nhe doesn't want to speak about it in front of Nikki,\" thought K.,\nsuppressing his impatience to hear the rest straight away, and stopped\ntrying to press him.\n\n\"Have you told him I'm here?\" he asked Nikki. \"Course I have,\" she said,\n\"he's waiting for you. Leave Block alone now, you can talk to Block\nlater, he'll still be here.\" K. still hesitated. \"You'll still be\nhere?\" he asked the businessman, wanting to hear the answer from him and\nnot wanting Nikki to speak about the businessman as if he weren't there,\nhe was full of secret resentment towards Nikki today. And once more it\nwas only Nikki who answered. \"He often sleeps here.\" \"He sleeps here?\"\nexclaimed K., he had thought the businessman would just wait there for\nhim while he quickly settled his business with the lawyer, and then\nthey would leave together to discuss everything thoroughly and\nundisturbed. \"Yes,\" said Nikki, \"not everyone's like you, Mara, allowed\nto see the lawyer at any time you like. Don't even seem surprised that\nthe lawyer, despite being ill, still receives you at eleven o'clock at\nnight. You take it far too much for granted, what your friends do for\nyou. Well, your friends, or at least I do, we like to do things for you.\nI don't want or need any more thanks than that you're fond of me.\" \"Fond\nof you?\" thought K. at first, and only then it occurred to him, \"Well,\nyes, I am fond of her.\" Nonetheless, what he said, forgetting all the\nrest, was, \"He receives me because I am his client. If I needed anyone\nelse's help I'd have to beg and show gratitude whenever I do anything.\"\n\"He's really nasty today, isn't he?\" Nikki asked the businessman. \"Now\nit's me who's not here,\" thought K., and nearly lost his temper with\nthe businessman when, with the same rudeness as Nikki, he said, \"The\nlawyer also has other reasons to receive him. His case is much more\ninteresting than mine. And it's only in its early stages too, it\nprobably hasn't progressed very far so the lawyer still likes to deal\nwith him. That'll all change later on.\" \"Yeah, yeah,\" said Nikki, looking\nat the businessman and laughing. \"He doesn't half talk!\" she said,\nturning to face K. \"You can't believe a word he says. He's as talkative\nas he is sweet. Maybe that's why the lawyer can't stand him. At least,\nhe only sees him when he's in the right mood. I've already tried hard to\nchange that but it's impossible. Just think, there are times when I tell\nhim Block's here and he doesn't receive him until three days later. And\nif Block isn't on the spot when he's called then everything's lost and\nit all has to start all over again. That's why I let Block sleep here,\nit wouldn't be the first time Dr. Preston has wanted to see him in the\nnight. So now Block is ready for that. Sometimes, when he knows Block is\nstill here, he'll even change his mind about letting him in to see him.\"\nK. looked questioningly at the businessman. The latter nodded and,\nalthough he had spoken quite openly with K. earlier, seemed to be\nconfused with shame as he said, \"Yes, later on you become very dependent\non your lawyer.\" \"He's only pretending to mind,\" said Nikki. \"He likes to\nsleep here really, he's often said so.\" She went over to a little door\nand shoved it open. \"Do you want to see his bedroom?\" she asked. K.\nwent over to the low, windowless room and looked in from the doorway.\nThe room contained a narrow bed which filled it completely, so that to\nget into the bed you would need to climb over the bedpost. At the head\nof the bed there was a niche in the wall where, fastidiously tidy, stood\na candle, a bottle of ink, and a pen with a bundle of papers which were\nprobably to do with the trial. \"You sleep in the maid's room?\" asked\nK., as he went back to the businessman. \"Nikki's let me have it,\"\nanswered the businessman, \"it has many advantages.\" K. looked long at\nhim; his first impression of the businessman had perhaps not been right;\nhe had experience as his trial had already lasted a long time, but he\nhad paid a heavy price for this experience. K. was suddenly unable to\nbear the sight of the businessman any longer. \"Bring him to bed, then!\"\nhe called out to Nikki, who seemed to understand him. For himself, he\nwanted to go to the lawyer and, by dismissing him, free himself from not\nonly the lawyer but also from Nikki and the businessman. But before he\nhad reached the door the businessman spoke to him gently. \"Excuse me,\nsir,\" he said, and K. looked round crossly. \"You've forgotten your\npromise,\" said the businessman, stretching his hand out to K.\nimploringly from where he sat. \"You were going to tell me a secret.\"\n\"That is true,\" said K., as he glanced at Nikki, who was watching him\ncarefully, to check on her. \"So listen; it's hardly a secret now anyway.\nI'm going to see the lawyer now to sack him.\" \"He's sacking him!\" yelled\nthe businessman, and he jumped up from his chair and ran around the\nkitchen with his arms in the air. He kept on shouting, \"He's sacking his\nlawyer!\" Nikki tried to rush at K. but the businessman got in her way so\nthat she shoved him away with her fists. Then, still with her hands\nballed into fists, she ran after K. who, however, had been given a long\nstart. He was already inside the lawyer's room by the time Nikki caught\nup with him. He had almost closed the door behind himself, but Nikki held\nthe door open with her foot, grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back.\nBut he put such pressure on her wrist that, with a sigh, she was forced\nto release him. She did not dare go into the room straight away, and K.\nlocked the door with the key.\n\n\"I've been waiting for you a very long time,\" said the lawyer from his\nbed. He had been reading something by the light of a candle but now he\nlaid it onto the bedside table and put his glasses on, looking at K.\nsharply through them. Instead of apologising K. said, \"I'll be leaving\nagain soon.\" As he had not apologised the lawyer ignored what K. said,\nand replied, \"I won't let you in this late again next time.\" \"I find\nthat quite acceptable,\" said K. The lawyer looked at him quizzically.\n\"Sit down,\" he said. \"As you wish,\" said K., drawing a chair up to the\nbedside table and sitting down. \"It seemed to me that you locked the\ndoor,\" said the lawyer. \"Yes,\" said K., \"it was because of Nikki.\" He\nhad no intention of letting anyone off lightly. But the lawyer asked\nhim, \"Was she being importunate again?\" \"Importunate?\" asked K. \"Yes,\"\nsaid the lawyer, laughing as he did so, had a fit of coughing and then,\nonce it had passed, began to laugh again. \"I'm sure you must have\nnoticed how importunate she can be sometimes,\" he said, and patted K.'s\nhand which K. had rested on the bedside table and which he now snatched\nback. \"You don't attach much importance to it, then,\" said the lawyer\nwhen K. was silent, \"so much the better. Otherwise I might have needed\nto apologise to you. It is a peculiarity of Nikki's. I've long since\nforgiven her for it, and I wouldn't be talking of it now, if you hadn't\nlocked the door just now. Anyway, perhaps I should at least explain this\npeculiarity of hers to you, but you seem rather disturbed, the way\nyou're looking at me, and so that's why I'll do it, this peculiarity of\nhers consists in this: Nikki finds most of the accused attractive. She\nattaches herself to each of them, loves each of them, even seems to be\nloved by each of them; then she sometimes entertains me by telling me\nabout them when I allow her to. I am not so astonished by all of this as\nyou seem to be. If you look at them in the right way the accused really\ncan be attractive, quite often. But that is a remarkable and to some\nextent scientific phenomenon. Being indicted does not cause any clear,\nprecisely definable change in a person's appearance, of course. But\nit's not like with other legal matters, most of them remain in their\nusual way of life and, if they have a good lawyer looking after them,\nthe trial doesn't get in their way. But there are nonetheless those who\nhave experience in these matters who can look at a crowd, however big,\nand tell you which among them is facing a charge. How can they do that,\nyou will ask? My answer will not please you. It is simply that those who\nare facing a charge are the most attractive. It cannot be their guilt\nthat makes them attractive as not all of them are guilty--at least\nthat's what I, as a lawyer, have to say--and nor can it be the proper\npunishment that has made them attractive as not all of them are\npunished, so it can only be that the proceedings levelled against them\ntake some kind of hold on them. Whatever the reason, some of these\nattractive people are indeed very attractive. But all of them are\nattractive, even Block, pitiful worm that he is.\" As the lawyer\nfinished what he was saying, K. was fully in control of himself, he had\neven nodded conspicuously at his last few words in order to confirm to\nhimself the view he had already formed: that the lawyer was trying to\nconfuse him, as he always did, by making general and irrelevant\nobservations, and thus distract him from the main question of what he\nwas actually doing for K.'s trial. The lawyer must have noticed that K.\nwas offering him more resistance than before, as he became silent,\ngiving K. the chance to speak himself, and then, as K. also remained\nsilent, he asked, \"Did you have a particular reason for coming to see\nme today?\" \"Yes,\" said K., putting his hand up to slightly shade his\neyes from the light of the candle so that he could see the lawyer\nbetter, \"I wanted to tell you that I'm withdrawing my representation\nfrom you, with immediate effect.\" \"Do I understand you rightly?\" asked\nthe lawyer as he half raised himself in his bed and supported himself\nwith one hand on the pillow. \"I think you do,\" said K., sitting stiffly\nupright as if waiting in ambush. \"Well we can certainly discuss this\nplan of yours,\" said the lawyer after a pause. \"It's not a plan any\nmore,\" said K. \"That may be,\" said the lawyer, \"but we still mustn't\nrush anything.\" He used the word 'we', as if he had no intention of\nletting K. go free, and as if, even if he could no longer represent him,\nhe could still at least continue as his adviser. \"Nothing is being\nrushed,\" said K., standing slowly up and going behind his chair,\n\"everything has been well thought out and probably even for too long.\nThe decision is final.\" \"Then allow me to say a few words,\" said the\nlawyer, throwing the bed cover to one side and sitting on the edge of\nthe bed. His naked, white-haired legs shivered in the cold. He asked K.\nto pass him a blanket from the couch. K. passed him the blanket and\nsaid, \"You are running the risk of catching cold for no reason.\" \"The\ncircumstances are important enough,\" said the lawyer as he wrapped the\nbed cover around the top half of his body and then the blanket around\nhis legs. \"Your uncle is my friend and in the course of time I've become\nfond of you as well. I admit that quite openly. There's nothing in that\nfor me to be ashamed of.\" It was very unwelcome for K. to hear the old\nman speak in this touching way, as it forced him to explain himself more\nfully, which he would rather have avoided, and he was aware that it also\nconfused him even though it could never make him reverse his decision.\n\"Thank you for feeling so friendly toward me,\" he said, \"and I also\nrealise how deeply involved you've been in my case, as deeply as\npossible for yourself and to bring as much advantage as possible to me.\nNonetheless, I have recently come to the conviction that it is not\nenough. I would naturally never attempt, considering that you are so\nmuch older and more experienced than I am, to convince you of my\nopinion; if I have ever unintentionally done so then I beg your\nforgiveness, but, as you have just said yourself, the circumstances are\nimportant enough and it is my belief that my trial needs to be\napproached with much more vigour than has so far been the case.\" \"I\nsee,\" said the lawyer, \"you've become impatient.\" \"I am not impatient,\"\nsaid K., with some irritation and he stopped paying so much attention to\nhis choice of words. \"When I first came here with my uncle you probably\nnoticed I wasn't greatly concerned about my case, and if I wasn't\nreminded of it by force, as it were, I would forget about it completely.\nBut my uncle insisted I should allow you to represent me and I did so as\na favour to him. I could have expected the case to be less of a burden\nthan it had been, as the point of taking on a lawyer is that he should\ntake on some of its weight. But what actually happened was the opposite.\nBefore, the trial was never such a worry for me as it has been since\nyou've been representing me. When I was by myself I never did anything\nabout my case, I was hardly aware of it, but then, once there was\nsomeone representing me, everything was set for something to happen, I\nwas always, without cease, waiting for you to do something, getting more\nand more tense, but you did nothing. I did get some information about\nthe court from you that I probably could not have got anywhere else, but\nthat can't be enough when the trial, supposedly in secret, is getting\ncloser and closer to me.\" K. had pushed the chair away and stood erect,\nhis hands in the pockets of his frock coat. \"After a certain point in\nthe proceedings,\" said the lawyer quietly and calmly, \"nothing new of\nany importance ever happens. So many litigants, at the same stage in\ntheir trials, have stood before me just like you are now and spoken in\nthe same way.\" \"Then these other litigants,\" said K., \"have all been\nright, just as I am. That does not show that I'm not.\" \"I wasn't trying\nto show that you were mistaken,\" said the lawyer, \"but I wanted to add\nthat I expected better judgement from you than from the others,\nespecially as I've given you more insight into the workings of the court\nand my own activities than I normally do. And now I'm forced to accept\nthat, despite everything, you have too little trust in me. You don't\nmake it easy for me.\" How the lawyer was humiliating himself to K.! He\nwas showing no regard for the dignity of his position, which on this\npoint, must have been at its most sensitive. And why did he do that? He\ndid seem to be very busy as a lawyer as well a rich man, neither the\nloss of income nor the loss of a client could have been of much\nimportance to him in themselves. He was moreover unwell and should have\nbeen thinking of passing work on to others. And despite all that he held\non tightly to K. Why? Was it something personal for his uncle's sake, or\ndid he really see K.'s case as one that was exceptional and hoped to be\nable to distinguish himself with it, either for K.'s sake or--and this\npossibility could never be excluded--for his friends at the court. It\nwas not possible to learn anything by looking at him, even though K. was\nscrutinizing him quite brazenly. It could almost be supposed he was\ndeliberately hiding his thoughts as he waited to see what effect his\nwords would have. But he clearly deemed K.'s silence to be favourable\nfor himself and he continued, \"You will have noticed the size of my\noffice, but that I don't employ any staff to help me. That used to be\nquite different, there was a time when several young lawyers were\nworking for me but now I work alone. This is partly to do with changes\nin the way I do business, in that I concentrate nowadays more and more\non matters such as your own case, and partly to do with the ever deeper\nunderstanding that I acquire from these legal matters. I found that I\ncould never let anyone else deal with this sort of work unless I wanted\nto harm both the client and the job I had taken on. But the decision to\ndo all the work myself had its obvious result: I was forced to turn\nalmost everyone away who asked me to represent them and could only\naccept those I was especially interested in--well there are enough\ncreatures who leap at every crumb I throw down, and they're not so very\nfar away. Most importantly, I became ill from over-work. But despite\nthat I don't regret my decision, quite possibly I should have turned\nmore cases away than I did, but it did turn out to be entirely necessary\nfor me to devote myself fully to the cases I did take on, and the\nsuccessful results showed that it was worth it. I once read a\ndescription of the difference between representing someone in ordinary\nlegal matters and in legal matters of this sort, and the writer\nexpressed it very well. This is what he said: some lawyers lead their\nclients on a thread until judgement is passed, but there are others who\nimmediately lift their clients onto their shoulders and carry them all\nthe way to the judgement and beyond. That's just how it is. But it was\nquite true when I said I never regret all this work. But if, as in your\ncase, they are so fully misunderstood, well, then I come very close to\nregretting it.\" All this talking did more to make K. impatient than to\npersuade him. From the way the lawyer was speaking, K. thought he could\nhear what he could expect if he gave in, the delays and excuses would\nbegin again, reports of how the documents were progressing, how the mood\nof the court officials had improved, as well as all the enormous\ndifficulties--in short all that he had heard so many times before would\nbe brought out again even more fully, he would try to mislead K. with\nhopes that were never specified and to make him suffer with threats that\nwere never clear. He had to put a stop to that, so he said, \"What will\nyou undertake on my behalf if you continue to represent me?\" The lawyer\nquietly accepted even this insulting question, and answered, \"I should\ncontinue with what I've already been doing for you.\" \"That's just what I\nthought,\" said K., \"and now you don't need to say another word.\" \"I will\nmake one more attempt,\" said the lawyer as if whatever had been making\nK. so annoyed was affecting him too. \"You see, I have the impression\nthat you have not only misjudged the legal assistance I have given you\nbut also that that misjudgement has led you to behave in this way, you\nseem, although you are the accused, to have been treated too well or, to\nput it a better way, handled with neglect, with apparent neglect. Even\nthat has its reason; it is often better to be in chains than to be free.\nBut I would like to show you how other defendants are treated, perhaps\nyou will succeed in learning something from it. What I will do is I will\ncall Block in, unlock the door and sit down here beside the bedside\ntable.\" \"Be glad to,\" said K., and did as the lawyer suggested; he was\nalways ready to learn something new. But to make sure of himself for any\nevent he added, \"but you do realise that you are no longer to be my\nlawyer, don't you?\" \"Yes,\" said the lawyer. \"But you can still change\nyour mind today if you want to.\" He lay back down in the bed, pulled the\nquilt up to his chin and turned to face the wall. Then he rang.\n\nNikki appeared almost the moment he had done so. She looked hurriedly at\nK. and the lawyer to try and find out what had happened; she seemed to\nbe reassured by the sight of K. sitting calmly at the lawyer's bed. She\nsmiled and nodded to K., K. looked blankly back at her. \"Fetch Block,\"\nsaid the lawyer. But instead of going to fetch him, Nikki just went to\nthe door and called out, \"Block! To the lawyer!\" Then, probably because\nthe lawyer had turned his face to the wall and was paying no attention,\nshe slipped in behind K.'s chair. From then on, she bothered him by\nleaning forward over the back of the chair or, albeit very tenderly and\ncarefully, she would run her hands through his hair and over his\ncheeks. K. eventually tried to stop her by taking hold of one hand, and\nafter some resistance Nikki let him keep hold of it. Block came as soon\nas he was called, but he remained standing in the doorway and seemed to\nbe wondering whether he should enter or not. He raised his eyebrows and\nlowered his head as if listening to find out whether the order to\nattend the lawyer would be repeated. K. could have encouraged him to\nenter, but he had decided to make a final break not only with the\nlawyer but with everything in his home, so he kept himself motionless.\nNikki was also silent. Block noticed that at least no-one was chasing\nhim away, and, on tiptoe, he entered the room, his face was tense, his\nhands were clenched behind his back. He left the door open in case he\nneeded to go back again. K. did not even glance at him, he looked\ninstead only at the thick quilt under which the lawyer could not be seen\nas he had squeezed up very close to the wall. Then his voice was heard:\n\"Block here?\" he asked. Block had already crept some way into the room\nbut this question seemed to give him first a shove in the breast and\nthen another in the back, he seemed about to fall but remained\nstanding, deeply bowed, and said, \"At your service, sir.\" \"What do you\nwant?\" asked the lawyer, \"you've come at a bad time.\" \"Wasn't I\nsummoned?\" asked Block, more to himself than the lawyer. He held his\nhands in front of himself as protection and would have been ready to run\naway any moment. \"You were summoned,\" said the lawyer, \"but you have\nstill come at a bad time.\" Then, after a pause he added, \"You always\ncome at a bad time.\" When the lawyer started speaking Block had stopped\nlooking at the bed but stared rather into one of the corners, just\nlistening, as if the light from the speaker were brighter than Block\ncould bear to look at. But it was also difficult for him to listen, as\nthe lawyer was speaking into the wall and speaking quickly and quietly.\n\"Would you like me to go away again, sir?\" asked Block. \"Well you're\nhere now,\" said the lawyer. \"Stay!\" It was as if the lawyer had not done\nas Block had wanted but instead threatened him with a stick, as now\nBlock really began to shake. \"I went to see,\" said the lawyer, \"the\nthird judge yesterday, a friend of mine, and slowly brought the\nconversation round to the subject of you. Do you want to know what he\nsaid?\" \"Oh, yes please,\" said Block. The lawyer did not answer\nimmediately, so Block repeated his request and lowered his head as if\nabout to kneel down. But then K. spoke to him: \"What do you think you're\ndoing?\" he shouted. Nikki had wanted to stop him from calling out and so\nhe took hold of her other hand. It was not love that made him squeeze it\nand hold on to it so tightly, she sighed frequently and tried to\ndisengage her hands from him. But Block was punished for K.'s outburst,\nas the lawyer asked him, \"Who is your lawyer?\" \"You are, sir,\" said\nBlock. \"And who besides me?\" the lawyer asked. \"No-one besides you,\nsir,\" said Block. \"And let there be no-one besides me,\" said the lawyer.\nBlock fully understood what that meant, he glowered at K., shaking his\nhead violently. If these actions had been translated into words they\nwould have been coarse insults. K. had been friendly and willing to\ndiscuss his own case with someone like this! \"I won't disturb you any\nmore,\" said K., leaning back in his chair. \"You can kneel down or creep\non all fours, whatever you like. I won't bother with you any more.\" But\nBlock still had some sense of pride, at least where K. was concerned,\nand he went towards him waving his fists, shouting as loudly as he dared\nwhile the lawyer was there. \"You shouldn't speak to me like that, that's\nnot allowed. Why are you insulting me? Especially here in front of the\nlawyer, where both of us, you and me, we're only tolerated because of\nhis charity. You're not a better person than me, you've been accused of\nsomething too, you're facing a charge too. If, in spite of that, you're\nstill a gentleman then I'm just as much a gentleman as you are, if not\neven more so. And I want to be spoken to as a gentleman, especially by\nyou. If you think being allowed to sit there and quietly listen while I\ncreep on all fours as you put it makes you something better than me,\nthen there's an old legal saying you ought to bear in mind: If you're\nunder suspicion it's better to be moving than still, as if you're still\nyou can be in the pan of the scales without knowing it and be weighed\nalong with your sins.\" K. said nothing. He merely looked in amazement at\nthis distracted being, his eyes completely still. He had gone through\nsuch changes in just the last few hours! Was it the trial that was\nthrowing him from side to side in this way and stopped him knowing who\nwas friend and who was foe? Could he not see the lawyer was deliberately\nhumiliating him and had no other purpose today than to show off his\npower to K., and perhaps even thereby subjugate K.? But if Block was\nincapable of seeing that, or if he so feared the lawyer that no such\ninsight would even be of any use to him, how was it that he was either\nso sly or so bold as to lie to the lawyer and conceal from him the fact\nthat he had other lawyers working on his behalf? And how did he dare to\nattack K., who could betray his secret any time he liked? But he dared\neven more than this, he went to the lawyer's bed and began there to make\ncomplaints about K. \"Dr. Preston, sir,\" he said, \"did you hear the way this\nman spoke to me? You can count the length of his trial in hours, and he\nwants to tell me what to do when I've been involved in a legal case for\nfive years. He even insults me. He doesn't know anything, but he insults\nme, when I, as far as my weak ability allows, when I've made a close\nstudy of how to behave with the court, what we ought to do and what the\ncourt practices are.\" \"Don't let anyone bother you,\" said the lawyer,\n\"and do what seems to you to be right.\" \"I will,\" said Block, as if\nspeaking to himself to give himself courage, and with a quick glance to\nthe side he knelt down close beside the bed. \"I'm kneeling now, Dr.\nPreston, sir,\" he said. But the lawyer remained silent. With one hand,\nBlock carefully stroked the bed cover. In the silence while he did so,\nNikki, as she freed herself from K.'s hands, said, \"You're hurting me.\nLet go of me. I'm going over to Block.\" She went over to him and sat on\nthe edge of the bed. Block was very pleased at this and with lively,\nbut silent, gestures he immediately urged her to intercede for him with\nthe lawyer. It was clear that he desperately needed to be told something\nby the lawyer, although perhaps only so that he could make use of the\ninformation with his other lawyers. Nikki probably knew very well how\nthe lawyer could be brought round, pointed to his hand and pursed her\nlips as if making a kiss. Block immediately performed the hand-kiss and,\nat further urging from Nikki, repeated it twice more. But the lawyer\ncontinued to be silent. Then Nikki leant over the lawyer, as she\nstretched out, the attractive shape of her body could be seen, and,\nbent over close to his face, she stroked his long white hair. That now\nforced him to give an answer. \"I'm rather wary of telling him,\" said\nthe lawyer, and his head could be seen shaking slightly, perhaps so that\nhe would feel the pressure of Nikki's hand better. Block listened\nclosely with his head lowered, as if by listening he were breaking an\norder. \"What makes you so wary about it?\" asked Nikki. K. had the feeling\nhe was listening to a contrived dialogue that had been repeated many\ntimes, that would be repeated many times more, and that for Block alone\nit would never lose its freshness. \"What has his behaviour been like\ntoday?\" asked the lawyer instead of an answer. Before Nikki said\nanything she looked down at Block and watched him a short while as he\nraised his hands towards her and rubbed them together imploringly.\nFinally she gave a serious nod, turned back to the lawyer and said,\n\"He's been quiet and industrious.\" This was an elderly businessman, a\nman whose beard was long, and he was begging a young girl to speak on\nhis behalf. Even if there was some plan behind what he did, there was\nnothing that could reinstate him in the eyes of his fellow man. K. could\nnot understand how the lawyer could have thought this performance would\nwin him over. Even if he had done nothing earlier to make him want to\nleave then this scene would have done so. It was almost humiliating even\nfor the onlooker. So these were the lawyer's methods, which K.\nfortunately had not been exposed to for long, to let the client forget\nabout the whole world and leave him with nothing but the hope of\nreaching the end of his trial by this deluded means. He was no longer a\nclient, he was the lawyer's dog. If the lawyer had ordered him to crawl\nunder the bed as if it were a kennel and to bark out from under it, then\nhe would have done so with enthusiasm. K. listened to all of this,\ntesting it and thinking it over as if he had been given the task of\nclosely observing everything spoken here, inform a higher office about\nit and write a report. \"And what has he been doing all day?\" asked the\nlawyer. \"I kept him locked in the maid's room all day,\" said Nikki, \"so\nthat he wouldn't stop me doing my work. That's where he usually stays.\nFrom time to time I looked in through the spyhole to see what he was\ndoing, and each time he was kneeling on the bed and reading the papers\nyou gave him, propped up on the window sill. That made a good impression\non me; as the window only opens onto an air shaft and gives hardly any\nlight. It showed how obedient he is that he was even reading in those\nconditions.\" \"I'm pleased to hear it,\" said the lawyer. \"But did he\nunderstand what he was reading?\" While this conversation was going on,\nBlock continually moved his lips and was clearly formulating the answers\nhe hoped Nikki would give. \"Well I can't give you any certain answer to\nthat of course,\" said Nikki, \"but I could see that he was reading\nthoroughly. He spent all day reading the same page, running his finger\nalong the lines. Whenever I looked in on him he sighed as if this\nreading was a lot of work for him. I expect the papers you gave him were\nvery hard to understand.\" \"Yes,\" said the lawyer, \"they certainly are\nthat. And I really don't think he understood anything of them. But they\nshould at least give him some inkling of just how hard a struggle it is\nand how much work it is for me to defend him. And who am I doing all\nthis hard work for? I'm doing it--it's laughable even to say it--I'm\ndoing it for Block. He ought to realise what that means, too. Did he\nstudy without a pause?\" \"Almost without a pause,\" answered Nikki. \"Just\nthe once he asked me for a drink of water, so I gave him a glassful\nthrough the window. Then at eight o'clock I let him out and gave him\nsomething to eat.\" Block glanced sideways at K., as if he were being\npraised and had to impress K. as well. He now seemed more optimistic, he\nmoved more freely and rocked back and forth on his knees. This made his\nastonishment all the more obvious when he heard the following words from\nthe lawyer: \"You speak well of him,\" said the lawyer, \"but that's just\nwhat makes it difficult for me. You see, the judge did not speak well of\nhim at all, neither about Block nor about his case.\" \"Didn't speak well\nof him?\" asked Nikki. \"How is that possible?\" Block looked at her with\nsuch tension he seemed to think that although the judge's words had been\nspoken so long before she would be able to change them in his favour.\n\"Not at all,\" said the lawyer. \"In fact he became quite cross when I\nstarted to talk about Block to him. 'Don't talk to me about Block,' he\nsaid. 'He is my client,' said I. 'You're letting him abuse you,' he\nsaid. 'I don't think his case is lost yet,' said I. 'You're letting him\nabuse you,' he repeated. 'I don't think so,' said I. 'Block works hard\nin his case and always knows where it stands. He practically lives with\nme so that he always knows what's happening. You don't always find such\nenthusiasm as that. He's not very pleasant personally, I grant you, his\nmanners are terrible and he's dirty, but as far as the trial's concerned\nhe's quite immaculate.' I said immaculate, but I was deliberately\nexaggerating. Then he said, 'Block is sly, that's all. He's accumulated\nplenty of experience and knows how to delay proceedings. But there's\nmore that he doesn't know than he does. What do you think he'd say if he\nlearned his trial still hasn't begun, if you told him they haven't even\nrung the bell to announce the start of proceedings?' Alright Block,\nalright,\" said the lawyer, as at these words Block had begun to raise\nhimself on his trembling knees and clearly wanted to plead for some\nexplanation. It was the first time the lawyer had spoken any clear words\ndirectly to Block. He looked down with his tired eyes, half blankly and\nhalf at Block, who slowly sank back down on his knees under this gaze.\n\"What the judge said has no meaning for you,\" said the lawyer. \"You\nneedn't be frightened at every word. If you do it again I won't tell you\nanything else at all. It's impossible to start a sentence without you\nlooking at me as if you were receiving your final judgement. You should\nbe ashamed of yourself here in front of my client! And you're destroying\nthe trust he has for me. Just what is it you want? You're still alive,\nyou're still under my protection. There's no point in worrying!\nSomewhere you've read that the final judgement can often come without\nwarning, from anyone at any time. And, in the right circumstances,\nthat's basically true, but it's also true that I dislike your anxiety\nand fear and see that you don't have the trust in me you should have.\nNow what have I just said? I repeated something said by one of the\njudges. You know that there are so many various opinions about the\nprocedure that they form into a great big pile and nobody can make any\nsense of them. This judge, for instance, sees proceedings as starting at\na different point from where I do. A difference of opinion, nothing\nmore. At a certain stage in the proceedings tradition has it that a sign\nis given by ringing a bell. This judge sees that as the point at which\nproceedings begin. I can't set out all the opinions opposed to that\nview here, and you wouldn't understand it anyway, suffice it to say\nthat there are many reasons to disagree with him.\" Embarrassed, Block\nran his fingers through the pile of the carpet, his anxiety about what\nthe judge had said had let him forget his inferior status towards the\nlawyer for a while, he thought only about himself and turned the judge's\nwords round to examine them from all sides. \"Block,\" said Nikki, as if\nreprimanding him, and, taking hold of the collar of his coat, pulled him\nup slightly higher. \"Leave the carpet alone and listen to what the\nlawyer is saying.\"\n\n\n_This chapter was left unfinished._\n\n\n\n\nChapter Nine\n\nIn the Cathedral\n\n\nA very important Italian business contact of the bank had come to visit\nthe city for the first time and K. was given the task of showing him\nsome of its cultural sights. At any other time he would have seen this\njob as an honour but now, when he was finding it hard even to maintain\nhis current position in the bank, he accepted it only with reluctance.\nEvery hour that he could not be in the office was a cause of concern\nfor him, he was no longer able to make use of his time in the office\nanything like as well as he had previously, he spent many hours merely\npretending to do important work, but that only increased his anxiety\nabout not being in the office. Then he sometimes thought he saw the\ndeputy director, who was always watching, come into K.'s office, sit at\nhis desk, look through his papers, receive clients who had almost\nbecome old friends of K., and lure them away from him, perhaps he even\ndiscovered mistakes, mistakes that seemed to threaten K. from a\nthousand directions when he was at work now, and which he could no\nlonger avoid. So now, if he was ever asked to leave the office on\nbusiness or even needed to make a short business trip, however much an\nhonour it seemed--and tasks of this sort happened to have increased\nsubstantially recently--there was always the suspicion that they wanted\nto get him out of his office for a while and check his work, or at\nleast the idea that they thought he was dispensable. It would not have\nbeen difficult for him to turn down most of these jobs, but he did not\ndare to do so because, if his fears had the slightest foundation,\nturning the jobs down would have been an acknowledgement of them. For\nthis reason, he never demurred from accepting them, and even when he\nwas asked to go on a tiring business trip lasting two days he said\nnothing about having to go out in the rainy autumn weather when he had a\nsevere chill, just in order to avoid the risk of not being asked to go.\nWhen, with a raging headache, he arrived back from this trip he learned\nthat he had been chosen to accompany the Italian business contact the\nfollowing day. The temptation for once to turn the job down was very\ngreat, especially as it had no direct connection with business, but\nthere was no denying that social obligations towards this business\ncontact were in themselves important enough, only not for K., who knew\nquite well that he needed some successes at work if he was to maintain\nhis position there and that, if he failed in that, it would not help\nhim even if this Italian somehow found him quite charming; he did not\nwant to be removed from his workplace for even one day, as the fear of\nnot being allowed back in was too great, he knew full well that the fear\nwas exaggerated but it still made him anxious. However, in this case it\nwas almost impossible to think of an acceptable excuse, his knowledge\nof Italian was not great but still good enough; the deciding factor was\nthat K. had earlier known a little about art history and this had\nbecome widely known around the bank in extremely exaggerated form, and\nthat K. had been a member of the Society for the Preservation of City\nMonuments, albeit only for business reasons. It was said that this\nItalian was an art lover, so the choice of K. to accompany him was a\nmatter of course.\n\nIt was a very rainy and stormy morning when K., in a foul temper at the\nthought of the day ahead of him, arrived early at seven o'clock in the\noffice so that he could at least do some work before his visitor would\nprevent him. He had spent half the night studying a book of Italian\ngrammar so that he would be somewhat prepared and was very tired; his\ndesk was less attractive to him than the window where he had spent far\ntoo much time sitting of late, but he resisted the temptation and sat\ndown to his work. Unfortunately, just then the servitor came in and\nreported that the director had sent him to see whether the chief clerk\nwas already in his office; if he was, then would he please be so kind\nas to come to his reception room as the gentleman from Italy was\nalready there. \"I'll come straight away,\" said K. He put a small\ndictionary in his pocket, took a guide to the city's tourist sites\nunder his arm that he had compiled for strangers, and went through the\ndeputy director's office into that of the director. He was glad he had\ncome into the office so early and was able to be of service\nimmediately, nobody could seriously have expected that of him. The\ndeputy director's office was, of course, still as empty as the middle\nof the night, the servitor had probably been asked to summon him too\nbut without success. As K. entered the reception room two men stood up\nfrom the deep armchairs where they had been sitting. The director gave\nhim a friendly smile, he was clearly very glad that K. was there, he\nimmediately introduced him to the Italian who shook K.'s hand\nvigorously and joked that somebody was an early riser. K. did not quite\nunderstand whom he had in mind, it was moreover an odd expression to use\nand it took K. a little while to guess its meaning. He replied with a\nfew bland phrases which the Italian received once more with a laugh,\npassing his hand nervously and repeatedly over his blue-grey, bushy\nmoustache. This moustache was obviously perfumed, it was almost tempting\nto come close to it and sniff. When they had all sat down and begun a\nlight preliminary conversation, K. was disconcerted to notice that he\nunderstood no more than fragments of what the Italian said. When he\nspoke very calmly he understood almost everything, but that was very\ninfrequent, mostly the words gushed from his mouth and he seemed to be\nenjoying himself so much his head shook. When he was talking in this\nway his speech was usually wrapped up in some kind of dialect which\nseemed to K. to have nothing to do with Italian but which the director\nnot only understood but also spoke, although K. ought to have foreseen\nthis as the Italian came from the south of his country where the\ndirector had also spent several years. Whatever the cause, K. realised\nthat the possibility of communicating with the Italian had been largely\ntaken from him, even his French was difficult to understand, and his\nmoustache concealed the movements of his lips which might have offered\nsome help in understanding what he said. K. began to anticipate many\ndifficulties, he gave up trying to understand what the Italian\nsaid--with the director there, who could understand him so easily, it\nwould have been pointless effort--and for the time being did no more\nthan scowl at the Italian as he relaxed sitting deep but comfortable in\nthe armchair, as he frequently pulled at his short, sharply tailored\njacket and at one time lifted his arms in the air and moved his hands\nfreely to try and depict something that K. could not grasp, even though\nhe was leaning forward and did not let the hands out of his sight. K.\nhad nothing to occupy himself but mechanically watch the exchange\nbetween the two men and his tiredness finally made itself felt, to his\nalarm, although fortunately in good time, he once caught himself nearly\ngetting up, turning round and leaving. Eventually the Italian looked at\nthe clock and jumped up. After taking his leave from the director he\nturned to K., pressing himself so close to him that K. had to push his\nchair back just so that he could move. The director had, no doubt, seen\nthe anxiety in K.'s eyes as he tried to cope with this dialect of\nItalian, he joined in with this conversation in a way that was so\nadroit and unobtrusive that he seemed to be adding no more than minor\ncomments, whereas in fact he was swiftly and patiently breaking into\nwhat the Italian said so that K. could understand. K. learned in this\nway that the Italian first had a few business matters to settle, that\nhe unfortunately had only a little time at his disposal, that he\ncertainly did not intend to rush round to see every monument in the\ncity, that he would much rather--at least as long as K. would agree, it\nwas entirely his decision--just see the cathedral and to do so\nthoroughly. He was extremely pleased to be accompanied by someone who\nwas so learned and so pleasant--by this he meant K., who was occupied\nnot with listening to the Italian but the director--and asked if he\nwould be so kind, if the time was suitable, to meet him in the cathedral\nin two hours' time at about ten o'clock. He hoped he would certainly be\nable to be there at that time. K. made an appropriate reply, the Italian\nshook first the director's hand and then K.'s, then the director's again\nand went to the door, half turned to the two men who followed him and\ncontinuing to talk without a break. K. remained together with the\ndirector for a short while, although the director looked especially\nunhappy today. He thought he needed to apologise to K. for something and\ntold him--they were standing intimately close together--he had thought\nat first he would accompany the Italian himself, but then--he gave no\nmore precise reason than this--then he decided it would be better to\nsend K. with him. He should not be surprised if he could not understand\nthe Italian at first, he would be able to very soon, and even if he\nreally could not understand very much he said it was not so bad, as it\nwas really not so important for the Italian to be understood. And\nanyway, K.'s knowledge of Italian was surprisingly good, the director\nwas sure he would get by very well. And with that, it was time for K. to\ngo. He spent the time still remaining to him with a dictionary, copying\nout obscure words he would need to guide the Italian round the\ncathedral. It was an extremely irksome task, servitors brought him the\nmail, bank staff came with various queries and, when they saw that K.\nwas busy, stood by the door and did not go away until he had listened to\nthem, the deputy director did not miss the opportunity to disturb K. and\ncame in frequently, took the dictionary from his hand and flicked\nthrough its pages, clearly for no purpose, when the door to the\nante-room opened even clients would appear from the half-darkness and\nbow timidly to him--they wanted to attract his attention but were not\nsure whether he had seen them--all this activity was circling around K.\nwith him at its centre while he compiled the list of words he would\nneed, then looked them up in the dictionary, then wrote them out, then\npractised their pronunciation and finally tried to learn them by heart.\nThe good intentions he had had earlier, though, seemed to have left him\ncompletely, it was the Italian who had caused him all this effort and\nsometimes he became so angry with him that he buried the dictionary\nunder some papers firmly intending to do no more preparation, but then\nhe realised he could not walk up and down in the cathedral with the\nItalian without saying a word, so, in an even greater rage, he pulled\nthe dictionary back out again.\n\nAt exactly half past nine, just when he was about to leave, there was a\ntelephone call for him, Nikki wished him good morning and asked how he\nwas, K. thanked her hurriedly and told her it was impossible for him to\ntalk now as he had to go to the cathedral. \"To the cathedral?\" asked\nNikki. \"Yes, to the cathedral.\" \"What do you have to go to the cathedral\nfor?\" said Nikki. K. tried to explain it to her briefly, but he had\nhardly begun when Nikki suddenly said, \"They're harassing you.\" One\nthing that K. could not bear was pity that he had not wanted or\nexpected, he took his leave of her with two words, but as he put the\nreceiver back in its place he said, half to himself and half to the\ngirl on the other end of the line who could no longer hear him, \"Yes,\nthey're harassing me.\"\n\nBy now the time was late and there was almost a danger he would not be\non time. He took a taxi to the cathedral, at the last moment he had\nremembered the album that he had had no opportunity to give to the\nItalian earlier and so took it with him now. He held it on his knees\nand drummed impatiently on it during the whole journey. The rain had\neased off slightly but it was still damp, chilly and dark, it would be\ndifficult to see anything in the cathedral but standing about on cold\nflagstones might well make K.'s chill much worse. The square in front\nof the cathedral was quite empty, K. remembered how even as a small\nchild he had noticed that nearly all the houses in this narrow square\nhad the curtains at their windows closed most of the time, although\ntoday, with the weather like this, it was more understandable. The\ncathedral also seemed quite empty, of course no-one would think of\ngoing there on a day like this. K. hurried along both the side naves\nbut saw no-one but an old woman who, wrapped up in a warm shawl, was\nkneeling at a picture of the Virgin Mary and staring up at it. Then, in\nthe distance, he saw a church official who limped away through a\ndoorway in the wall. K. had arrived on time, it had struck ten just as\nhe was entering the building, but the Italian still was not there. K.\nwent back to the main entrance, stood there indecisively for a while,\nand then walked round the cathedral in the rain in case the Italian was\nwaiting at another entrance. He was nowhere to be found. Could the\ndirector have misunderstood what time they had agreed on? How could\nanyone understand someone like that properly anyway? Whatever had\nhappened, K. would have to wait for him for at least half an hour. As\nhe was tired he wanted to sit down, he went back inside the cathedral,\nhe found something like a small carpet on one of the steps, he moved it\nwith his foot to a nearby pew, wrapped himself up tighter in his coat,\nput the collar up and sat down. To pass the time he opened the album\nand flicked through the pages a little but soon had to give up as it\nbecame so dark that when he looked up he could hardly make out anything\nin the side nave next to him.\n\nIn the distance there was a large triangle of candles flickering on the\nmain altar, K. was not certain whether he had seen them earlier.\nPerhaps they had only just been lit. Church staff creep silently as\npart of their job, you don't notice them. When K. happened to turn\nround he also saw a tall, stout candle attached to a column not far\nbehind him. It was all very pretty, but totally inadequate to illuminate\nthe pictures which were usually left in the darkness of the side\naltars, and seemed to make the darkness all the deeper. It was\ndiscourteous of the Italian not to come but it was also sensible of him,\nthere would have been nothing to see, they would have had to content\nthemselves with seeking out a few pictures with K.'s electric pocket\ntorch and looking at them one small part at a time. K. went over to a\nnearby side chapel to see what they could have hoped for, he went up a\nfew steps to a low marble railing and leant over it to look at the altar\npicture by the light of his torch. The eternal light hung disturbingly\nin front of it. The first thing that K. partly saw and partly guessed at\nwas a large knight in armour who was shown at the far edge of the\npainting. He was leaning on his sword that he had stuck into the naked\nground in front of him where only a few blades of grass grew here and\nthere. He seemed to be paying close attention to something that was\nbeing played out in front of him. It was astonishing to see how he stood\nthere without going any closer. Perhaps it was his job to stand guard.\nIt was a long time since K. had looked at any pictures and he studied\nthe knight for a long time even though he had continually to blink as\nhe found it difficult to bear the green light of his torch. Then when\nhe moved the light to the other parts of the picture he found an\ninterment of Christ shown in the usual way, it was also a comparatively\nnew painting. He put his torch away and went back to his place.\n\nThere seemed to be no point in waiting for the Italian any longer, but\noutside it was certainly raining heavily, and as it was not so cold in\nthe cathedral as K. had expected he decided to stay there for the time\nbeing. Close by him was the great pulpit, there were two plain golden\ncrosses attached to its little round roof which were lying almost flat\nand whose tips crossed over each other. The outside of the pulpit's\nbalustrade was covered in green foliage which continued down to the\ncolumn supporting it, little angels could be seen among the leaves,\nsome of them lively and some of them still. K. walked up to the pulpit\nand examined it from all sides, its stonework had been sculpted with\ngreat care, it seemed as if the foliage had trapped a deep darkness\nbetween and behind its leaves and held it there prisoner, K. lay his\nhand in one of these gaps and cautiously felt the stone, until then he\nhad been totally unaware of this pulpit's existence. Then K. happened\nto notice one of the church staff standing behind the next row of pews,\nhe wore a loose, creased, black cassock, he held a snuff box in his\nleft hand and he was watching K. Now what does he want? thought K. Do I\nseem suspicious to him? Does he want a tip? But when the man in the\ncassock saw that K. had noticed him he raised his right hand, a pinch\nof snuff still held between two fingers, and pointed in some vague\ndirection. It was almost impossible to understand what this behaviour\nmeant, K. waited a while longer but the man in the cassock did not stop\ngesturing with his hand and even augmented it by nodding his head. \"Now\nwhat does he want?\" asked K. quietly, he did not dare call out loud\nhere; but then he drew out his purse and pushed his way through the\nnearest pews to reach the man. He, however, immediately gestured to\nturn down this offer, shrugged his shoulders and limped away. As a child\nK. had imitated riding on a horse with the same sort of movement as\nthis limp. \"This old man is like a child,\" thought K., \"he doesn't have\nthe sense for anything more than serving in a church. Look at the way\nhe stops when I stop, and how he waits to see whether I'll continue.\"\nWith a smile, K. followed the old man all the way up the side nave and\nalmost as far as the main altar, all this time the old man continued to\npoint at something but K. deliberately avoided looking round, he was\nonly pointing in order to make it harder for K. to follow him.\nEventually, K. did stop following, he did not want to worry the old man\ntoo much, and he also did not want to frighten him away completely in\ncase the Italian turned up after all.\n\nWhen he entered the central nave to go back to where he had left the\nalbum, he noticed a small secondary pulpit on a column almost next to\nthe stalls by the altar where the choir sat. It was very simple, made\nof plain white stone, and so small that from a distance it looked like\nan empty niche where the statue of a saint ought to have been. It\ncertainly would have been impossible for the priest to take a full step\nback from the balustrade, and, although there was no decoration on it,\nthe top of the pulpit curved in exceptionally low so that a man of\naverage height would not be able stand upright and would have to remain\nbent forward over the balustrade. In all, it looked as if it had been\nintended to make the priest suffer, it was impossible to understand why\nthis pulpit would be needed as there were also the other ones available\nwhich were large and so artistically decorated.\n\nAnd K. would certainly not have noticed this little pulpit if there had\nnot been a lamp fastened above it, which usually meant there was a\nsermon about to be given. So was a sermon to be given now? In this\nempty church? K. looked down at the steps which, pressed close against\nthe column, led up to the pulpit. They were so narrow they seemed to be\nthere as decoration on the column rather than for anyone to use. But\nunder the pulpit--K. grinned in astonishment--there really was a priest\nstanding with his hand on the handrail ready to climb the steps and\nlooking at K. Then he nodded very slightly, so that K. crossed himself\nand genuflected as he should have done earlier. With a little swing,\nthe priest went up into the pulpit with short fast steps. Was there\nreally a sermon about to begin? Maybe the man in the cassock had not\nbeen really so demented, and had meant to lead K.'s way to the\npreacher, which in this empty church would have been very necessary.\nAnd there was also, somewhere in front of a picture of the Virgin Mary,\nan old woman who should have come to hear the sermon. And if there was\nto be a sermon why had it not been introduced on the organ? But the\norgan remained quiet and merely looked out weakly from the darkness of\nits great height.\n\nK. now considered whether he should leave as quickly as possible, if he\ndid not do it now there would be no chance of doing so during the\nsermon and he would have to stay there for as long as it lasted, he had\nlost so much time when he should have been in his office, there had\nlong been no need for him to wait for the Italian any longer, he looked\nat his watch, it was eleven. But could there really be a sermon given?\nCould K. constitute the entire congregation? How could he when he was\njust a stranger who wanted to look at the church? That, basically, was\nall he was. The idea of a sermon, now, at eleven o'clock, on a workday,\nin hideous weather, was nonsense. The priest--there was no doubt that\nhe was a priest, a young man with a smooth, dark face--was clearly\ngoing up there just to put the lamp out after somebody had lit it by\nmistake.\n\nBut there had been no mistake, the priest seemed rather to check that\nthe lamp was lit and turned it a little higher, then he slowly turned\nto face the front and leant down on the balustrade gripping its angular\nrail with both hands. He stood there like that for a while and, without\nturning his head, looked around. K. had moved back a long way and leant\nhis elbows on the front pew. Somewhere in the church--he could not have\nsaid exactly where--he could make out the man in the cassock hunched\nunder his bent back and at peace, as if his work were completed. In the\ncathedral it was now very quiet! But K. would have to disturb that\nsilence, he had no intention of staying there; if it was the priest's\nduty to preach at a certain time regardless of the circumstances then\nhe could, and he could do it without K.'s taking part, and K.'s\npresence would do nothing to augment the effect of it. So K. began\nslowly to move, felt his way on tiptoe along the pew, arrived at the\nbroad aisle and went along it without being disturbed, except for the\nsound of his steps, however light, which rang out on the stone floor\nand resounded from the vaulting, quiet but continuous at a repeating,\nregular pace. K. felt slightly abandoned as, probably observed by the\npriest, he walked by himself between the empty pews, and the size of\nthe cathedral seemed to be just at the limit of what a man could bear.\nWhen he arrived back at where he had been sitting he did not hesitate\nbut simply reached out for the album he had left there and took it with\nhim. He had nearly left the area covered by pews and was close to the\nempty space between himself and the exit when, for the first time, he\nheard the voice of the priest. A powerful and experienced voice. It\npierced through the reaches of the cathedral ready waiting for it! But\nthe priest was not calling out to the congregation, his cry was quite\nunambiguous and there was no escape from it, he called \"Mara K.!\"\n\nK. stood still and looked down at the floor. In theory he was still\nfree, he could have carried on walking, through one of three dark\nlittle wooden doors not far in front of him and away from there. It\nwould simply mean he had not understood, or that he had understood but\nchose not to pay attention to it. But if he once turned round he would\nbe trapped, then he would have acknowledged that he had understood\nperfectly well, that he really was the Mara K. the priest had called\nto and that he was willing to follow. If the priest had called out\nagain K. would certainly have carried on out the door, but everything\nwas silent as K. also waited, he turned his head slightly as he wanted\nto see what the priest was doing now. He was merely standing in the\npulpit as before, but it was obvious that he had seen K. turn his head.\nIf K. did not now turn round completely it would have been like a child\nplaying hide and seek. He did so, and the priest beckoned him with his\nfinger. As everything could now be done openly he ran--because of\ncuriosity and the wish to get it over with--with long flying leaps\ntowards the pulpit. At the front pews he stopped, but to the priest he\nstill seemed too far away, he reached out his hand and pointed sharply\ndown with his finger to a place immediately in front of the pulpit. And\nK. did as he was told, standing in that place he had to bend his head a\nlong way back just to see the priest. \"You are Mara K.,\" said the\npriest, and raised his hand from the balustrade to make a gesture whose\nmeaning was unclear. \"Yes,\" said K., he considered how freely he had\nalways given his name in the past, for some time now it had been a\nburden to him, now there were people who knew his name whom he had\nnever seen before, it had been so nice first to introduce yourself and\nonly then for people to know who you were. \"You have been accused,\"\nsaid the priest, especially gently. \"Yes,\" said K., \"so I have been\ninformed.\" \"Then you are the one I am looking for,\" said the priest. \"I\nam the prison chaplain.\" \"I see,\" said K. \"I had you summoned here,\"\nsaid the priest, \"because I wanted to speak to you.\" \"I knew nothing of\nthat,\" said K. \"I came here to show the cathedral to a gentleman from\nItaly.\" \"That is beside the point,\" said the priest. \"What are you\nholding in your hand? Is it a prayer book?\" \"No,\" answered K., \"it's an\nalbum of the city's tourist sights.\" \"Put it down,\" said the priest. K.\nthrew it away with such force that it flapped open and rolled across\nthe floor, tearing its pages. \"Do you know your case is going badly?\"\nasked the priest. \"That's how it seems to me too,\" said K. \"I've\nexpended a lot of effort on it, but so far with no result. Although I do\nstill have some documents to submit.\" \"How do you imagine it will end?\"\nasked the priest. \"At first I thought it was bound to end well,\" said\nK., \"but now I have my doubts about it. I don't know how it will end. Do\nyou know?\" \"I don't,\" said the priest, \"but I fear it will end badly.\nYou are considered guilty. Your case will probably not even go beyond a\nminor court. Provisionally at least, your guilt is seen as proven.\"\n\"But I'm not guilty,\" said K., \"there's been a mistake. How is it even\npossible for someone to be guilty? We're all human beings here, one\nlike the other.\" \"That is true,\" said the priest, \"but that is how the\nguilty speak.\" \"Do you presume I'm guilty too?\" asked K. \"I make no\npresumptions about you,\" said the priest. \"I thank you for that,\" said\nK. \"but everyone else involved in these proceedings has something\nagainst me and presumes I'm guilty. They even influence those who\naren't involved. My position gets harder all the time.\" \"You don't\nunderstand the facts,\" said the priest, \"the verdict does not come\nsuddenly, proceedings continue until a verdict is reached gradually.\"\n\"I see,\" said K., lowering his head. \"What do you intend to do about\nyour case next?\" asked the priest. \"I still need to find help,\" said\nK., raising his head to see what the priest thought of this. \"There are\nstill certain possibilities I haven't yet made use of.\" \"You look for\ntoo much help from people you don't know,\" said the priest\ndisapprovingly, \"and especially from women. Can you really not see\nthat's not the help you need?\" \"Sometimes, in fact quite often, I could\nbelieve you're right,\" said K., \"but not always. Women have a lot of\npower. If I could persuade some of the women I know to work together\nwith me then I would be certain to succeed. Especially in a court like\nthis that seems to consist of nothing but woman-chasers. Show the\nexamining judge a woman in the distance and he'll run right over the\ndesk, and the accused, just to get to her as soon as he can.\" The\npriest lowered his head down to the balustrade, only now did the roof\nover the pulpit seem to press him down. What sort of dreadful weather\ncould it be outside? It was no longer just a dull day, it was deepest\nnight. None of the stained glass in the main window shed even a flicker\nof light on the darkness of the walls. And this was the moment when the\nman in the cassock chose to put out the candles on the main altar, one\nby one. \"Are you cross with me?\" asked K. \"Maybe you don't know what\nsort of court it is you serve.\" He received no answer. \"Well, it's just\nmy own experience,\" said K. Above him there was still silence. \"I didn't\nmean to insult you,\" said K. At that, the priest screamed down at K.:\n\"Can you not see two steps in front of you?\" He shouted in anger, but it\nwas also the scream of one who sees another fall and, shocked and\nwithout thinking, screams against his own will.\n\nThe two men, then, remained silent for a long time. In the darkness\nbeneath him, the priest could not possibly have seen K. distinctly,\nalthough K. was able to see him clearly by the light of the little\nlamp. Why did the priest not come down? He had not given a sermon, he\nhad only told K. a few things which, if he followed them closely, would\nprobably cause him more harm than good. But the priest certainly seemed\nto mean well, it might even be possible, if he would come down and\nco-operate with him, it might even be possible for him to obtain some\nacceptable piece of advice that could make all the difference, it\nmight, for instance, be able to show him not so much to influence the\nproceedings but how to break free of them, how to evade them, how to\nlive away from them. K. had to admit that this was something he had had\non his mind quite a lot of late. If the priest knew of such a\npossibility he might, if K. asked him, let him know about it, even\nthough he was part of the court himself and even though, when K. had\ncriticised the court, he had held down his gentle nature and actually\nshouted at K.\n\n\"Would you not like to come down here?\" asked K. \"If you're not going\nto give a sermon come down here with me.\" \"Now I can come down,\" said\nthe priest, perhaps he regretted having shouted at K. As he took down\nthe lamp from its hook he said, \"to start off with I had to speak to\nyou from a distance. Otherwise I'm too easily influenced and forget my\nduty.\"\n\nK. waited for him at the foot of the steps. While he was still on one\nof the higher steps as he came down them the priest reached out his\nhand for K. to shake. \"Can you spare me a little of your time?\" asked\nK. \"As much time as you need,\" said the priest, and passed him the\nlittle lamp for him to carry. Even at close distance the priest did not\nlose a certain solemnity that seemed to be part of his character. \"You\nare very friendly towards me,\" said K., as they walked up and down\nbeside each other in the darkness of one of the side naves. \"That makes\nyou an exception among all those who belong to the court. I can trust\nyou more than any of the others I've seen. I can speak openly with you.\"\n\"Don't fool yourself,\" said the priest. \"How would I be fooling myself?\"\nasked K. \"You fool yourself in the court,\" said the priest, \"it talks\nabout this self-deceit in the opening paragraphs to the law. In front of\nthe law there is a doorkeeper. A man from the countryside comes up to\nthe door and asks for entry. But the doorkeeper says he can't let him in\nto the law right now. The man thinks about this, and then he asks if\nhe'll be able to go in later on. 'That's possible,' says the doorkeeper,\n'but not now.' The gateway to the law is open as it always is, and the\ndoorkeeper has stepped to one side, so the man bends over to try and\nsee in. When the doorkeeper notices this he laughs and says, 'If you're\ntempted give it a try, try and go in even though I say you can't.\nCareful though: I'm powerful. And I'm only the lowliest of all the\ndoormen. But there's a doorkeeper for each of the rooms and each of\nthem is more powerful than the last. It's more than I can stand just to\nlook at the third one.' The man from the country had not expected\ndifficulties like this, the law was supposed to be accessible for\nanyone at any time, he thinks, but now he looks more closely at the\ndoorkeeper in his fur coat, sees his big hooked nose, his long thin\ntartar-beard, and he decides it's better to wait until he has\npermission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit\ndown to one side of the gate. He sits there for days and years. He tries\nto be allowed in time and again and tires the doorkeeper with his\nrequests. The doorkeeper often questions him, asking about where he's\nfrom and many other things, but these are disinterested questions such\nas great men ask, and he always ends up by telling him he still can't\nlet him in. The man had come well equipped for his journey, and uses\neverything, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. He accepts\neverything, but as he does so he says, 'I'll only accept this so that\nyou don't think there's anything you've failed to do.' Over many years,\nthe man watches the doorkeeper almost without a break. He forgets about\nthe other doormen, and begins to think this one is the only thing\nstopping him from gaining access to the law. Over the first few years he\ncurses his unhappy condition out loud, but later, as he becomes old, he\njust grumbles to himself. He becomes senile, and as he has come to know\neven the fleas in the doorkeeper's fur collar over the years that he has\nbeen studying him he even asks them to help him and change the\ndoorkeeper's mind. Finally his eyes grow dim, and he no longer knows\nwhether it's really getting darker or just his eyes that are deceiving\nhim. But he seems now to see an inextinguishable light begin to shine\nfrom the darkness behind the door. He doesn't have long to live now.\nJust before he dies, he brings together all his experience from all this\ntime into one question which he has still never put to the doorkeeper.\nHe beckons to him, as he's no longer able to raise his stiff body. The\ndoorkeeper has to bend over deeply as the difference in their sizes has\nchanged very much to the disadvantage of the man. 'What is it you want\nto know now?' asks the doorkeeper, 'You're insatiable.' 'Everyone wants\naccess to the law,' says the man, 'how come, over all these years,\nno-one but me has asked to be let in?' The doorkeeper can see the man's\ncome to his end, his hearing has faded, and so, so that he can be heard,\nhe shouts to him: 'Nobody else could have got in this way, as this\nentrance was meant only for you. Now I'll go and close it.'\"\n\n\"So the doorkeeper cheated the man,\" said K. immediately, who had been\ncaptivated by the story. \"Don't be too quick,\" said the priest, \"don't\ntake somebody else's opinion without checking it. I told you the story\nexactly as it was written. There's nothing in there about cheating.\"\n\"But it's quite clear,\" said K., \"and your first interpretation of it\nwas quite correct. The doorkeeper gave him the information that would\nrelease him only when it could be of no more use.\" \"He didn't ask him\nbefore that,\" said the priest, \"and don't forget he was only a\ndoorkeeper, and as doorkeeper he did his duty.\" \"What makes you think\nhe did his duty?\" asked K., \"He didn't. It might have been his duty to\nkeep everyone else away, but this man is who the door was intended for\nand he ought to have let him in.\" \"You're not paying enough attention\nto what was written and you're changing the story,\" said the priest.\n\"According to the story, there are two important things that the\ndoorkeeper explains about access to the law, one at the beginning, one\nat the end. At one place he says he can't allow him in now, and at the\nother he says this entrance was intended for him alone. If one of the\nstatements contradicted the other you would be right and the doorkeeper\nwould have cheated the man from the country. But there is no\ncontradiction. On the contrary, the first statement even hints at the\nsecond. You could almost say the doorkeeper went beyond his duty in\nthat he offered the man some prospect of being admitted in the future.\nThroughout the story, his duty seems to have been merely to turn the\nman away, and there are many commentators who are surprised that the\ndoorkeeper offered this hint at all, as he seems to love exactitude and\nkeeps strict guard over his position. He stays at his post for many\nyears and doesn't close the gate until the very end, he's very\nconscious of the importance of his service, as he says, 'I'm powerful,'\nhe has respect for his superiors, as he says, 'I'm only the lowliest of\nthe doormen,' he's not talkative, as through all these years the only\nquestions he asks are 'disinterested,' he's not corruptible, as when\nhe's offered a gift he says, 'I'll only accept this so that you don't\nthink there's anything you've failed to do,' as far as fulfilling his\nduty goes he can be neither ruffled nor begged, as it says about the\nman that, 'he tires the doorkeeper with his requests,' even his\nexternal appearance suggests a pedantic character, the big hooked nose\nand the long, thin, black tartar-beard. How could any doorkeeper be\nmore faithful to his duty? But in the doorkeeper's character there are\nalso other features which might be very useful for those who seek entry\nto the law, and when he hinted at some possibility in the future it\nalways seemed to make it clear that he might even go beyond his duty.\nThere's no denying he's a little simple-minded, and that makes him a\nlittle conceited. Even if all he said about his power and the power of\nthe other doorkeepers and how not even he could bear the sight of\nthem--I say even if all these assertions are right, the way he makes\nthem shows that he's too simple and arrogant to understand properly.\nThe commentators say about this that, 'correct understanding of a matter\nand a misunderstanding of the same matter are not mutually exclusive.'\nWhether they're right or not, you have to concede that his simplicity\nand arrogance, however little they show, do weaken his function of\nguarding the entrance, they are defects in the doorkeeper's character.\nYou also have to consider that the doorkeeper seems to be friendly by\nnature, he isn't always just an official. He makes a joke right at the\nbeginning, in that he invites the man to enter at the same time as\nmaintaining the ban on his entering, and then he doesn't send him away\nbut gives him, as it says in the text, a stool to sit on and lets him\nstay by the side of the door. The patience with which he puts up with\nthe man's requests through all these years, the little questioning\nsessions, accepting the gifts, his politeness when he puts up with the\nman cursing his fate even though it was the doorkeeper who caused that\nfate--all these things seem to want to arouse our sympathy. Not every\ndoorkeeper would have behaved in the same way. And finally, he lets the\nman beckon him and he bends deep down to him so that he can put his\nlast question. There's no more than some slight impatience--the\ndoorkeeper knows everything's come to its end--shown in the words,\n'You're insatiable.' There are many commentators who go even further in\nexplaining it in this way and think the words, 'you're insatiable' are\nan expression of friendly admiration, albeit with some condescension.\nHowever you look at it the figure of the doorkeeper comes out\ndifferently from how you might think.\" \"You know the story better than\nI do and you've known it for longer,\" said K. They were silent for a\nwhile. And then K. said, \"So you think the man was not cheated, do\nyou?\" \"Don't get me wrong,\" said the priest, \"I'm just pointing out the\ndifferent opinions about it. You shouldn't pay too much attention to\npeople's opinions. The text cannot be altered, and the various opinions\nare often no more than an expression of despair over it. There's even\none opinion which says it's the doorkeeper who's been cheated.\" \"That\ndoes seem to take things too far,\" said K. \"How can they argue the\ndoorkeeper has been cheated?\" \"Their argument,\" answered the priest,\n\"is based on the simplicity of the doorkeeper. They say the doorkeeper\ndoesn't know the inside of the law, only the way into it where he just\nwalks up and down. They see his ideas of what's inside the law as\nrather childish, and suppose he's afraid himself of what he wants to\nmake the man frightened of. Yes, he's more afraid of it than the man, as\nthe man wants nothing but to go inside the law, even after he's heard\nabout the terrible doormen there, in contrast to the doorkeeper who\ndoesn't want to go in, or at least we don't hear anything about it. On\nthe other hand, there are those who say he must have already been inside\nthe law as he has been taken on into its service and that could only\nhave been done inside. That can be countered by supposing he could have\nbeen given the job of doorkeeper by somebody calling out from inside,\nand that he can't have gone very far inside as he couldn't bear the\nsight of the third doorkeeper. Nor, through all those years, does the\nstory say the doorkeeper told the man anything about the inside, other\nthan his comment about the other doorkeepers. He could have been\nforbidden to do so, but he hasn't said anything about that either. All\nthis seems to show he doesn't know anything about what the inside looks\nlike or what it means, and that that's why he's being deceived. But he's\nalso being deceived by the man from the country as he's this man's\nsubordinate and doesn't know it. There's a lot to indicate that he\ntreats the man as his subordinate, I expect you remember, but those who\nhold this view would say it's very clear that he really is his\nsubordinate. Above all, the free man is superior to the man who has to\nserve another. Now, the man really is free, he can go wherever he wants,\nthe only thing forbidden to him is entry into the law and, what's more,\nthere's only one man forbidding him to do so--the doorkeeper. If he\ntakes the stool and sits down beside the door and stays there all his\nlife he does this of his own free will, there's nothing in the story to\nsay he was forced to do it. On the other hand, the doorkeeper is kept to\nhis post by his employment, he's not allowed to go away from it and it\nseems he's not allowed to go inside either, not even if he wanted to.\nAlso, although he's in the service of the law he's only there for this\none entrance, therefore he's there only in the service of this one man\nwho the door's intended for. This is another way in which he's his\nsubordinate. We can take it that he's been performing this somewhat\nempty service for many years, through the whole of a man's life, as it\nsays that a man will come, that means someone old enough to be a man.\nThat means the doorkeeper will have to wait a long time before his\nfunction is fulfilled, he will have to wait for as long as the man\nliked, who came to the door of his own free will. Even the end of the\ndoorkeeper's service is determined by when the man's life ends, so the\ndoorkeeper remains his subordinate right to the end. And it's pointed\nout repeatedly that the doorkeeper seems to know nothing of any of\nthis, although this is not seen as anything remarkable, as those who\nhold this view see the doorkeeper as deluded in a way that's far worse,\na way that's to do with his service. At the end, speaking about the\nentrance he says, 'Now I'll go and close it,' although at the beginning\nof the story it says the door to the law is open as it always is, but if\nit's always open--always--that means it's open independently of the\nlifespan of the man it's intended for, and not even the doorkeeper will\nbe able to close it. There are various opinions about this, some say\nthe doorkeeper was only answering a question or showing his devotion to\nduty or, just when the man was in his last moments, the doorkeeper\nwanted to cause him regret and sorrow. There are many who agree that he\nwouldn't be able to close the door. They even believe, at the end at\nleast, the doorkeeper is aware, deep down, that he's the man's\nsubordinate, as the man sees the light that shines out of the entry to\nthe law whereas the doorkeeper would probably have his back to it and\nsays nothing at all to show there's been any change.\" \"That is well\nsubstantiated,\" said K., who had been repeating some parts of the\npriest's explanation to himself in a whisper. \"It is well substantiated,\nand now I too think the doorkeeper must have been deceived. Although\nthat does not mean I've abandoned what I thought earlier as the two\nversions are, to some extent, not incompatible. It's not clear whether\nthe doorkeeper sees clearly or is deceived. I said the man had been\ncheated. If the doorkeeper understands clearly, then there could be some\ndoubt about it, but if the doorkeeper has been deceived then the man is\nbound to believe the same thing. That would mean the doorkeeper is not a\ncheat but so simple-minded that he ought to be dismissed from his job\nimmediately; if the doorkeeper is mistaken it will do him no harm but\nthe man will be harmed immensely.\" \"There you've found another opinion,\"\nsaid the priest, \"as there are many who say the story doesn't give\nanyone the right to judge the doorkeeper. However he might seem to us he\nis still in the service of the law, so he belongs to the law, so he's\nbeyond what man has a right to judge. In this case we can't believe the\ndoorkeeper is the man's subordinate. Even if he has to stay at the\nentrance into the law his service makes him incomparably more than if he\nlived freely in the world. The man has come to the law for the first\ntime and the doorkeeper is already there. He's been given his position\nby the law, to doubt his worth would be to doubt the law.\" \"I can't say\nI'm in complete agreement with this view,\" said K. shaking his head, \"as\nif you accept it you'll have to accept that everything said by the\ndoorkeeper is true. But you've already explained very fully that that's\nnot possible.\" \"No,\" said the priest, \"you don't need to accept\neverything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary.\"\n\"Depressing view,\" said K. \"The lie made into the rule of the world.\"\n\nK. said that as if it were his final word but it was not his\nconclusion. He was too tired to think about all the ramifications of\nthe story, and the sort of thoughts they led him into were not familiar\nto him, unrealistic things, things better suited for officials of the\ncourt to discuss than for him. The simple story had lost its shape, he\nwanted to shake it off, and the priest who now felt quite compassionate\nallowed this and accepted K.'s remarks without comment, even though his\nview was certainly very different from K.'s.\n\nIn silence, they carried on walking for some time, K. stayed close\nbeside the priest without knowing where he was. The lamp in his hand\nhad long since gone out. Once, just in front of him, he thought he\ncould see the statue of a saint by the glitter of the silver on it,\nalthough it quickly disappeared back into the darkness. So that he would\nnot remain entirely dependent on the priest, K. asked him, \"We're now\nnear the main entrance, are we?\" \"No,\" said the priest, \"we're a long\nway from it. Do you already want to go?\" K. had not thought of going\nuntil then, but he immediately said, \"Yes, certainly, I have to go. I'm\nthe chief clerk in a bank and there are people waiting for me, I only\ncame here to show a foreign business contact round the cathedral.\"\n\"Alright,\" said the priest offering him his hand, \"go then.\" \"But I\ncan't find my way round in this darkness by myself,\" said K. \"Go to your\nleft as far as the wall,\" said the priest, \"then continue alongside the\nwall without leaving it and you'll find a way out.\" The priest had only\ngone a few paces from him, but K. was already shouting loudly, \"Please,\nwait!\" \"I'm waiting,\" said the priest. \"Is there anything else you want\nfrom me?\" asked K. \"No,\" said the priest. \"You were so friendly to me\nearlier on,\" said K., \"and you explained everything, but now you\nabandon me as if I were nothing to you.\" \"You have to go,\" said the\npriest. \"Well, yes,\" said K., \"you need to understand that.\" \"First, you\nneed to understand who I am,\" said the priest. \"You're the prison\nchaplain,\" said K., and went closer to the priest, it was not so\nimportant for him to go straight back to the bank as he had made out, he\ncould very well stay where he was. \"So that means I belong to the\ncourt,\" said the priest. \"So why would I want anything from you? The\ncourt doesn't want anything from you. It accepts you when you come and\nit lets you go when you leave.\"\n\n\n\n\nChapter Ten\n\nEnd\n\n\nThe evening before K.'s thirty-first birthday--it was about nine\no'clock in the evening, the time when the streets were quiet--two men\ncame to where he lived. In frock coats, pale and fat, wearing top hats\nthat looked like they could not be taken off their heads. After some\nbrief formalities at the door of the flat when they first arrived, the\nsame formalities were repeated at greater length at K.'s door. He had\nnot been notified they would be coming, but K. sat in a chair near the\ndoor, dressed in black as they were, and slowly put on new gloves which\nstretched tightly over his fingers and behaved as if he were expecting\nvisitors. He immediately stood up and looked at the gentlemen\ninquisitively. \"You've come for me then, have you?\" he asked. The\ngentlemen nodded, one of them indicated the other with the top hand now\nin his hand. K. told them he had been expecting a different visitor. He\nwent to the window and looked once more down at the dark street. Most\nof the windows on the other side of the street were also dark already,\nmany of them had the curtains closed. In one of the windows on the same\nfloor where there was a light on, two small children could be seen\nplaying with each other inside a playpen, unable to move from where\nthey were, reaching out for each other with their little hands. \"Some\nancient, unimportant actors--that's what they've sent for me,\" said K.\nto himself, and looked round once again to confirm this to himself.\n\"They want to sort me out as cheaply as they can.\" K. suddenly turned\nround to face the two men and asked, \"What theatre do you play in?\"\n\"Theatre?\" asked one of the gentlemen, turning to the other for\nassistance and pulling in the corners of his mouth. The other made a\ngesture like someone who was dumb, as if he were struggling with some\norganism causing him trouble. \"You're not properly prepared to answer\nquestions,\" said K. and went to fetch his hat.\n\nAs soon as they were on the stairs the gentlemen wanted to take K.'s\narms, but K. said \"Wait till we're in the street, I'm not ill.\" But\nthey waited only until the front door before they took his arms in a\nway that K. had never experienced before. They kept their shoulders\nclose behind his, did not turn their arms in but twisted them around\nthe entire length of K.'s arms and took hold of his hands with a grasp\nthat was formal, experienced and could not be resisted. K. was held\nstiff and upright between them, they formed now a single unit so that if\nany one of them had been knocked down all of them must have fallen.\nThey formed a unit of the sort that normally can be formed only by\nmatter that is lifeless.\n\nWhenever they passed under a lamp K. tried to see his companions more\nclearly, as far as was possible when they were pressed so close\ntogether, as in the dim light of his room this had been hardly\npossible. \"Maybe they're tenors,\" he thought as he saw their big double\nchins. The cleanliness of their faces disgusted him. He could see the\nhands that cleaned them, passing over the corners of their eyes,\nrubbing at their upper lips, scratching out the creases on those chins.\n\nWhen K. noticed that, he stopped, which meant the others had to stop\ntoo; they were at the edge of an open square, devoid of people but\ndecorated with flower beds. \"Why did they send you, of all people!\" he\ncried out, more a shout than a question. The two gentleman clearly knew\nno answer to give, they waited, their free arms hanging down, like\nnurses when the patient needs to rest. \"I will go no further,\" said K.\nas if to see what would happen. The gentlemen did not need to make any\nanswer, it was enough that they did not loosen their grip on K. and\ntried to move him on, but K. resisted them. \"I'll soon have no need of\nmuch strength, I'll use all of it now,\" he thought. He thought of the\nflies that tear their legs off struggling to get free of the flypaper.\n\"These gentleman will have some hard work to do.\"\n\nJust then, Miss B\u00fcrstner came up into the square in front of them from\nthe steps leading from a small street at a lower level. It was not\ncertain that it was her, although the similarity was, of course, great.\nBut it did not matter to K. whether it was certainly her anyway, he\njust became suddenly aware that there was no point in his resistance.\nThere would be nothing heroic about it if he resisted, if he now caused\ntrouble for these gentlemen, if in defending himself he sought to enjoy\nhis last glimmer of life. He started walking, which pleased the\ngentlemen and some of their pleasure conveyed itself to him. Now they\npermitted him to decide which direction they took, and he decided to\ntake the direction that followed the young woman in front of them, not\nso much because he wanted to catch up with her, nor even because he\nwanted to keep her in sight for as long as possible, but only so that\nhe would not forget the reproach she represented for him. \"The only\nthing I can do now,\" he said to himself, and his thought was confirmed\nby the equal length of his own steps with the steps of the two others,\n\"the only thing I can do now is keep my common sense and do what's\nneeded right till the end. I always wanted to go at the world and try\nand do too much, and even to do it for something that was not too\ncheap. That was wrong of me. Should I now show them I learned nothing\nfrom facing trial for a year? Should I go out like someone stupid?\nShould I let anyone say, after I'm gone, that at the start of the\nproceedings I wanted to end them, and that now that they've ended I want\nto start them again? I don't want anyone to say that. I'm grateful they\nsent these unspeaking, uncomprehending men to go with me on this\njourney, and that it's been left up to me to say what's necessary.\"\n\nMeanwhile, the young woman had turned off into a side street, but K.\ncould do without her now and let his companions lead him. All three of\nthem now, in complete agreement, went over a bridge in the light of the\nmoon, the two gentlemen were willing to yield to each little movement\nmade by K. as he moved slightly towards the edge and directed the group\nin that direction as a single unit. The moonlight glittered and\nquivered in the water, which divided itself around a small island\ncovered in a densely-piled mass of foliage and trees and bushes.\nBeneath them, now invisible, there were gravel paths with comfortable\nbenches where K. had stretched himself out on many summer's days. \"I\ndidn't actually want to stop here,\" he said to his companions, shamed by\ntheir compliance with his wishes. Behind K.'s back one of them seemed\nto quietly criticise the other for the misunderstanding about stopping,\nand then they went on. They went on up through several streets where\npolicemen were walking or standing here and there; some in the distance\nand then some very close. One of them with a bushy moustache, his hand\non the grip of his sword, seemed to have some purpose in approaching\nthe group, which was hardly unsuspicious. The two gentlemen stopped,\nthe policeman seemed about to open his mouth, and then K. drove his\ngroup forcefully forward. Several times he looked back cautiously to see\nif the policeman was following; but when they had a corner between\nthemselves and the policeman K. began to run, and the two gentlemen,\ndespite being seriously short of breath, had to run with him.\n\nIn this way they quickly left the built up area and found themselves in\nthe fields which, in this part of town, began almost without any\ntransition zone. There was a quarry, empty and abandoned, near a\nbuilding which was still like those in the city. Here the men stopped,\nperhaps because this had always been their destination or perhaps\nbecause they were too exhausted to run any further. Here they released\ntheir hold on K., who just waited in silence, and took their top hats\noff while they looked round the quarry and wiped the sweat off their\nbrows with their handkerchiefs. The moonlight lay everywhere with the\nnatural peace that is granted to no other light.\n\nAfter exchanging a few courtesies about who was to carry out the next\ntasks--the gentlemen did not seem to have been allocated specific\nfunctions--one of them went to K. and took his coat, his waistcoat, and\nfinally his shirt off him. K. made an involuntary shiver, at which the\ngentleman gave him a gentle, reassuring tap on the back. Then he\ncarefully folded the things up as if they would still be needed, even\nif not in the near future. He did not want to expose K. to the chilly\nnight air without moving though, so he took him under the arm and\nwalked up and down with him a little way while the other gentleman\nlooked round the quarry for a suitable place. When he had found it he\nmade a sign and the other gentleman escorted him there. It was near the\nrockface, there was a stone lying there that had broken loose. The\ngentlemen sat K. down on the ground, leant him against the stone and\nsettled his head down on the top of it. Despite all the effort they\nwent to, and despite all the co-operation shown by K., his demeanour\nseemed very forced and hard to believe. So one of the gentlemen asked\nthe other to grant him a short time while he put K. in position by\nhimself, but even that did nothing to make it better. In the end they\nleft K. in a position that was far from the best of the ones they had\ntried so far. Then one of the gentlemen opened his frock coat and from a\nsheath hanging on a belt stretched across his waistcoat he withdrew a\nlong, thin, double-edged butcher's knife which he held up in the light\nto test its sharpness. The repulsive courtesies began once again, one of\nthem passed the knife over K. to the other, who then passed it back over\nK. to the first. K. now knew it would be his duty to take the knife as\nit passed from hand to hand above him and thrust it into himself. But\nhe did not do it, instead he twisted his neck, which was still free,\nand looked around. He was not able to show his full worth, was not able\nto take all the work from the official bodies, he lacked the rest of\nthe strength he needed and this final shortcoming was the fault of\nwhoever had denied it to him. As he looked round, he saw the top floor\nof the building next to the quarry. He saw how a light flickered on and\nthe two halves of a window opened out, somebody, made weak and thin by\nthe height and the distance, leant suddenly far out from it and\nstretched his arms out even further. Who was that? A friend? A good\nperson? Somebody who was taking part? Somebody who wanted to help? Was\nhe alone? Was it everyone? Would anyone help? Were there objections that\nhad been forgotten? There must have been some. The logic cannot be\nrefuted, but someone who wants to live will not resist it. Where was the\njudge he'd never seen? Where was the high court he had never reached? He\nraised both hands and spread out all his fingers.\n\nBut the hands of one of the gentleman were laid on K.'s throat, while\nthe other pushed the knife deep into his heart and twisted it there,\ntwice. As his eyesight failed, K. saw the two gentlemen cheek by cheek,\nclose in front of his face, watching the result. \"Like a dog!\" he said,\nit was as if the shame of it should outlive him.", "multi_turns": [{"input": "Throughout the manuscript of the unfinished novel, Kafka referred to Fraulein Tenille simply as", "answer": "F.B.", "options": ["\"that woman\"", "Fraulein Tenille, P.I.", "Tenille the Splendid", "F.B."]}, {"input": "Who is supposed to meet K. at the cathedral?", "answer": "An Italian client", "options": ["Nikki", "An Italian client", "The Assistant Manager", "Ms. Prague 1914"]}, {"input": "The law student is described as", "answer": "bow-legged", "options": ["bow-legged", "knock-kneed", "lock-jawed", "flat-footed"]}, {"input": "Joseph K. declares that he has been killed like a", "answer": "dog", "options": ["cat", "rat", "dog", "giant cockroach"]}], "id": 56}
{"context": "When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.\n\nI should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men\u2019s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.\n\nI would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England; something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders \u201cuntil it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach;\u201d or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars,\u2014even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolas to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra\u2019s head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up.\n\nI see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man\u2019s life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh.\n\nBut men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool\u2019s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them:\u2014\n\nInde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum,\nEt documenta damus qu\u00e2 simus origine nati.\n\nOr, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,\u2014\n\n\u201cFrom thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care,\nApproving that our bodies of a stony nature are.\u201d\n\nSo much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell.\n\nMost men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be anything but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance\u2014which his growth requires\u2014who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.\n\nSome of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins \u00e6s alienum, another\u2019s brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other\u2019s brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, tomorrow, and dying today, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little.\n\nI sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination,\u2014what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.\n\nThe mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.\n\nWhen we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned any thing of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about.\n\nOne farmer says to me, \u201cYou cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;\u201d and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown.\n\nThe whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, \u201cthe wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman pr\u00e6tors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor\u2019s land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor.\u201d Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man\u2019s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, \u201cbe not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?\u201d\n\nWe might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other\u2019s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!\u2014I know of no reading of another\u2019s experience so startling and informing as this would be.\n\nThe greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can, old man,\u2014you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind,\u2014I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels.\n\nI think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, \u201cTo know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.\u201d When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men at length establish their lives on that basis.\n\nLet us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or, at least, careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man\u2019s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors.\n\nBy the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. To many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the Shelter of the forest or the mountain\u2019s shadow. None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, \u201cto be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.\u201d So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, man\u2019s body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us,\u2014and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without,\u2014Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed.\n\nThe grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &c., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live,\u2014that is, keep comfortably warm,\u2014and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course \u00e0 la mode.\n\nMost of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meagre life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men?\n\nWhen a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous incessant and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?\u2014for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season.\n\nI do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live,\u2014if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of lovers,\u2014and, to some extent, I reckon myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not;\u2014but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically and inconsolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters.\n\nIf I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished.\n\nIn any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men\u2019s, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint \u201cNo Admittance\u201d on my gate.\n\nI long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves.\n\nTo anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it.\n\nSo many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of it. If it had concerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At other times watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that I might catch something, though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun.\n\nFor a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward.\n\nFor many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility.\n\nI have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons.\n\nIn short, I went on thus for a long time, I may say it without boasting, faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on that.\n\nNot long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. \u201cDo you wish to buy any baskets?\u201d he asked. \u201cNo, we do not want any,\u201d was the reply. \u201cWhat!\u201d exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, \u201cdo you mean to starve us?\u201d Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off,\u2014that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and by some magic, wealth and standing followed, he had said to himself; I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man\u2019s to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other\u2019s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one\u2019s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men\u2019s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?\n\nFinding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the court house, or any curacy or living any where else, but I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known. I determined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slender means as I had already got. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish.\n\nI have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time;\u2014often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;\u2014to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace every where, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization,\u2014taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation;\u2014charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier,\u2014there is the untold fate of La Perouse;\u2014universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Ph\u0153nicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a man,\u2014such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge.\n\nI have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva marshes to be filled; though you must every where build on piles of your own driving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of the earth.\n\nAs this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those means, that will still be indispensable to every such undertaking, were to be obtained. As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dressmaker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer\u2019s character, until we hesitate to lay them aside, without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this;\u2014who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentleman\u2019s legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master\u2019s premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men, which belonged to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she \u201cwas now in a civilized country, where \u2014\u2014 \u2014 people are judged of by their clothes.\u201d Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But they yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a woman\u2019s dress, at least, is never done.\n\nA man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet,\u2014if a hero ever has a valet,\u2014bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soirees and legislative halls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes,\u2014his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind.\n\nWe don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis, or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber or true bark, which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. I believe that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not be found wise men to do him reverence?\n\nWhen I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, \u201cThey do not make them so now,\u201d not emphasizing the \u201cThey\u201d at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity They are related to me, and what authority they may have in an affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the \u201cthey,\u201d\u2014\u201cIt is true, they did not make them so recently, but they do now.\u201d Of what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on? We worship not the Graces, nor the Parc\u00e6, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller\u2019s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat was handed down to us by a mummy.\n\nOn the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. At present men make shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other\u2019s masquerade. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it, which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannon ball rags are as becoming as purple.\n\nThe childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires today. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable.\n\nI cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.\n\nAs for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances of men having done without it for long periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing says that \u201cthe Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow\u2014in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in any woollen clothing.\u201d He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, \u201cThey are not hardier than other people.\u201d But, probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family; though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day\u2019s march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world, and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections.\n\nWe may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay out doors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with which when young he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think. From the hearth to the field is a great distance. It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots.\n\nHowever, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clue, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, \u201cThe best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green.... The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former.... Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad.... I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses.\u201d He adds, that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in one.\n\nIn the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savage\u2019s. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,\u2014and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,\u2014it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer\u2019s life, even if he is not encumbered with a family;\u2014estimating the pecuniary value of every man\u2019s labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less;\u2014so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms?\n\nIt may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself. Nevertheless this points to an important distinction between the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they have designs on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children\u2019s teeth are set on edge?\n\n\u201cAs I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.\u201d\n\n\u201cBehold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.\u201d\n\nWhen I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money,\u2014and we may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses,\u2014but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord. What has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the springboards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with eclat annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were suent.\n\nThe farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skill he has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman sings,\u2014\n\n\u201cThe false society of men\u2014\n        \u2014for earthly greatness\nAll heavenly comforts rarefies to air.\u201d\n\nAnd when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she \u201chad not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided;\u201d and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free.\n\nGranted that the majority are able at last either to own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man\u2019s pursuits are no worthier than the savage\u2019s, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former?\n\nBut how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found, that just in proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him. The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and \u201csilent poor.\u201d The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves. The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which every where border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that people\u2019s rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer now to the laborers in our Southern States who produce the staple exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production of the South. But to confine myself to those who are said to be in moderate circumstances.\n\nMost men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or, gradually leaving off palmleaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown! It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man\u2019s providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab\u2019s or the Indian\u2019s? When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of fashionable furniture. Or what if I were to allow\u2014would it not be a singular allowance?\u2014that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab\u2019s, in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning\u2019s work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man\u2019s morning work in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust. How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground.\n\nIt is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the best houses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their tender mercies he would soon be completely emasculated. I think that in the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these to become no better than a modern drawing room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sun-shades, and a hundred other oriental things, which we are taking west with us, invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names of. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way.\n\nThe very simplicity and nakedness of man\u2019s life in the primitive ages imply this advantage at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri-culture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man\u2019s struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this village for a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantel-piece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and honest though earthy foundation. I cannot but perceive that this so called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not get on in the enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn it, my attention being wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember that the greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. Without factitious support, man is sure to come to earth again beyond that distance. The first question which I am tempted to put to the proprietor of such great impropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail, or of the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, and then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and find them ornamental. The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper.\n\nOld Edouardson, in his \u201cWonder-Working Providence,\u201d speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that \u201cthey burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire against the earth, at the highest side.\u201d They did not \u201cprovide them houses,\u201d says he, \u201ctill the earth, by the Lord\u2019s blessing, brought forth bread to feed them,\u201d and the first year\u2019s crop was so light that \u201cthey were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season.\u201d The secretary of the Province of New Netherland, writing in Dutch, in 1650, for the information of those who wished to take up land there, states more particularly that \u201cthose in New Netherland, and especially in New England, who have no means to build farmhouses at first according to their wishes, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire families for two, three, and four years, it being understood that partitions are run through those cellars which are adapted to the size of the family. The wealthy and principal men in New England, in the beginning of the colonies, commenced their first dwelling houses in this fashion for two reasons; firstly, in order not to waste time in building, and not to want food the next season; secondly, in order not to discourage poor laboring people whom they brought over in numbers from Fatherland. In the course of three or four years, when the country became adapted to agriculture, they built themselves handsome houses, spending on them several thousands.\u201d\n\nIn this course which our ancestors took there was a show of prudence at least, as if their principle were to satisfy the more pressing wants first. But are the more pressing wants satisfied now? When I think of acquiring for myself one of our luxurious dwellings, I am deterred, for, so to speak, the country is not yet adapted to human culture, and we are still forced to cut our spiritual bread far thinner than our forefathers did their wheaten. Not that all architectural ornament is to be neglected even in the rudest periods; but let our houses first be lined with beauty, where they come in contact with our lives, like the tenement of the shellfish, and not overlaid with it. But, alas! I have been inside one or two of them, and know what they are lined with.\n\nThough we are not so degenerate but that we might possibly live in a cave or a wigwam or wear skins today, it certainly is better to accept the advantages, though so dearly bought, which the invention and industry of mankind offer. In such a neighborhood as this, boards and shingles, lime and bricks, are cheaper and more easily obtained than suitable caves, or whole logs, or bark in sufficient quantities, or even well-tempered clay or flat stones. I speak understandingly on this subject, for I have made myself acquainted with it both theoretically and practically. With a little more wit we might use these materials so as to become richer than the richest now are, and make our civilization a blessing. The civilized man is a more experienced and wiser savage. But to make haste to my own experiment.\n\nNear the end of March, 1845, I borrowed an axe and went down to the woods by Walden Pond, nearest to where I intended to build my house, and began to cut down some tall, arrowy white pines, still in their youth, for timber. It is difficult to begin without borrowing, but perhaps it is the most generous course thus to permit your fellow-men to have an interest in your enterprise. The owner of the axe, as he released his hold on it, said that it was the apple of his eye; but I returned it sharper than I received it. It was a pleasant hillside where I worked, covered with pine woods, through which I looked out on the pond, and a small open field in the woods where pines and hickories were springing up. The ice in the pond was not yet dissolved, though there were some open spaces, and it was all dark colored and saturated with water. There were some slight flurries of snow during the days that I worked there; but for the most part when I came out on to the railroad, on my way home, its yellow sand heap stretched away gleaming in the hazy atmosphere, and the rails shone in the spring sun, and I heard the lark and pewee and other birds already come to commence another year with us. They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man\u2019s discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself. One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I stayed there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. I had previously seen the snakes in frosty mornings in my path with portions of their bodies still numb and inflexible, waiting for the sun to thaw them. On the 1st of April it rained and melted the ice, and in the early part of the day, which was very foggy, I heard a stray goose groping about over the pond and cackling as if lost, or like the spirit of the fog.\n\nSo I went on for some days cutting and hewing timber, and also studs and rafters, all with my narrow axe, not having many communicable or scholar-like thoughts, singing to myself,\u2014\n\nMen say they know many things;\nBut lo! they have taken wings,\u2014\nThe arts and sciences,\nAnd a thousand appliances;\nThe wind that blows\nIs all that any body knows.\n\nI hewed the main timbers six inches square, most of the studs on two sides only, and the rafters and floor timbers on one side, leaving the rest of the bark on, so that they were just as straight and much stronger than sawed ones. Each stick was carefully mortised or tenoned by its stump, for I had borrowed other tools by this time. My days in the woods were not very long ones; yet I usually carried my dinner of bread and butter, and read the newspaper in which it was wrapped, at noon, sitting amid the green pine boughs which I had cut off, and to my bread was imparted some of their fragrance, for my hands were covered with a thick coat of pitch. Before I had done I was more the friend than the foe of the pine tree, though I had cut down some of them, having become better acquainted with it. Sometimes a rambler in the wood was attracted by the sound of my axe, and we chatted pleasantly over the chips which I had made.\n\nBy the middle of April, for I made no haste in my work, but rather made the most of it, my house was framed and ready for the raising. I had already bought the shanty of James Collins, an Irishman who worked on the Fitchburg Railroad, for boards. James Collins\u2019 shanty was considered an uncommonly fine one. When I called to see it he was not at home. I walked about the outside, at first unobserved from within, the window was so deep and high. It was of small dimensions, with a peaked cottage roof, and not much else to be seen, the dirt being raised five feet all around as if it were a compost heap. The roof was the soundest part, though a good deal warped and made brittle by the sun. Door-sill there was none, but a perennial passage for the hens under the door board. Mrs. C. came to the door and asked me to view it from the inside. The hens were driven in by my approach. It was dark, and had a dirt floor for the most part, dank, clammy, and aguish, only here a board and there a board which would not bear removal. She lighted a lamp to show me the inside of the roof and the walls, and also that the board floor extended under the bed, warning me not to step into the cellar, a sort of dust hole two feet deep. In her own words, they were \u201cgood boards overhead, good boards all around, and a good window,\u201d\u2014of two whole squares originally, only the cat had passed out that way lately. There was a stove, a bed, and a place to sit, an infant in the house where it was born, a silk parasol, gilt-framed looking-glass, and a patent new coffee mill nailed to an oak sapling, all told. The bargain was soon concluded, for James had in the meanwhile returned. I to pay four dollars and twenty-five cents to-night, he to vacate at five to-morrow morning, selling to nobody else meanwhile: I to take possession at six. It were well, he said, to be there early, and anticipate certain indistinct but wholly unjust claims on the score of ground rent and fuel. This he assured me was the only encumbrance. At six I passed him and his family on the road. One large bundle held their all,\u2014bed, coffee-mill, looking-glass, hens,\u2014all but the cat, she took to the woods and became a wild cat, and, as I learned afterward, trod in a trap set for woodchucks, and so became a dead cat at last.\n\nI took down this dwelling the same morning, drawing the nails, and removed it to the pond side by small cartloads, spreading the boards on the grass there to bleach and warp back again in the sun. One early thrush gave me a note or two as I drove along the woodland path. I was informed treacherously by a young Patrick that neighbor Seeley, an Irishman, in the intervals of the carting, transferred the still tolerable, straight, and drivable nails, staples, and spikes to his pocket, and then stood when I came back to pass the time of day, and look freshly up, unconcerned, with spring thoughts, at the devastation; there being a dearth of work, as he said. He was there to represent spectatordom, and help make this seemingly insignificant event one with the removal of the gods of Troy.\n\nI dug my cellar in the side of a hill sloping to the south, where a woodchuck had formerly dug his burrow, down through sumach and blackberry roots, and the lowest stain of vegetation, six feet square by seven deep, to a fine sand where potatoes would not freeze in any winter. The sides were left shelving, and not stoned; but the sun having never shone on them, the sand still keeps its place. It was but two hours\u2019 work. I took particular pleasure in this breaking of ground, for in almost all latitudes men dig into the earth for an equable temperature. Under the most splendid house in the city is still to be found the cellar where they store their roots as of old, and long after the superstructure has disappeared posterity remark its dent in the earth. The house is still but a sort of porch at the entrance of a burrow.\n\nAt length, in the beginning of May, with the help of some of my acquaintances, rather to improve so good an occasion for neighborliness than from any necessity, I set up the frame of my house. No man was ever more honored in the character of his raisers than I. They are destined, I trust, to assist at the raising of loftier structures one day. I began to occupy my house on the 4th of July, as soon as it was boarded and roofed, for the boards were carefully feather-edged and lapped, so that it was perfectly impervious to rain; but before boarding I laid the foundation of a chimney at one end, bringing two cartloads of stones up the hill from the pond in my arms. I built the chimney after my hoeing in the fall, before a fire became necessary for warmth, doing my cooking in the mean while out of doors on the ground, early in the morning: which mode I still think is in some respects more convenient and agreeable than the usual one. When it stormed before my bread was baked, I fixed a few boards over the fire, and sat under them to watch my loaf, and passed some pleasant hours in that way. In those days, when my hands were much employed, I read but little, but the least scraps of paper which lay on the ground, my holder, or tablecloth, afforded me as much entertainment, in fact answered the same purpose as the Iliad.\n\nIt would be worth the while to build still more deliberately than I did, considering, for instance, what foundation a door, a window, a cellar, a garret, have in the nature of man, and perchance never raising any superstructure until we found a better reason for it than our temporal necessities even. There is some of the same fitness in a man\u2019s building his own house that there is in a bird\u2019s building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men? I never in all my walks came across a man engaged in so simple and natural an occupation as building his house. We belong to the community. It is not the tailor alone who is the ninth part of a man; it is as much the preacher, and the merchant, and the farmer. Where is this division of labor to end? and what object does it finally serve? No doubt another may also think for me; but it is not therefore desirable that he should do so to the exclusion of my thinking for myself.\n\nTrue, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism. A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the cornice, not at the foundation. It was only how to put a core of truth within the ornaments, that every sugar plum in fact might have an almond or caraway seed in it,\u2014though I hold that almonds are most wholesome without the sugar,\u2014and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might build truly within and without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves. What reasonable man ever supposed that ornaments were something outward and in the skin merely,\u2014that the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the shellfish its mother-o\u2019-pearl tints, by such a contract as the inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man has no more to do with the style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that of its shell: nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find it out. He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed to me to lean over the cornice, and timidly whisper his half truth to the rude occupants who really knew it better than he. What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller, who is the only builder,\u2014out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a thought for the appearance and whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty of life. The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are, and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen\u2019s suburban box, when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination, and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling. A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes, without injury to the substantials. They can do without architecture who have no olives nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box. It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them and daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a piece with constructing his own coffin,\u2014the architecture of the grave, and \u201ccarpenter\u201d is but another name for \u201ccoffin-maker.\u201d One man says, in his despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth at your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of his last and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance of leisure he must have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you. An enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! When you have got my ornaments ready I will wear them.\n\nBefore winter I built a chimney, and shingled the sides of my house, which were already impervious to rain, with imperfect and sappy shingles made of the first slice of the log, whose edges I was obliged to straighten with a plane.\n\nI have thus a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite. The exact cost of my house, paying the usual price for such materials as I used, but not counting the work, all of which was done by myself, was as follows; and I give the details because very few are able to tell exactly what their houses cost, and fewer still, if any, the separate cost of the various materials which compose them:\u2014\n\n    Boards.......................... $ 8.03\u00bd, mostly shanty boards.\n    Refuse shingles for roof sides,..  4.00\n    Laths,...........................  1.25\n    Two second-hand windows\n       with glass,...................  2.43\n    One thousand old brick,..........  4.00\n    Two casks of lime,...............  2.40  That was high.\n    Hair,............................  0.31  More than I needed.\n    Mantle-tree iron,................  0.15\n    Nails,...........................  3.90\n    Hinges and screws,...............  0.14\n    Latch,...........................  0.10\n    Chalk,...........................  0.01\n    Transportation,..................  1.40  I carried a good part\n                                     \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014 on my back.\n        In all,..................... $28.12\u00bd\nThese are all the materials excepting the timber stones and sand, which I claimed by squatter\u2019s right. I have also a small wood-shed adjoining, made chiefly of the stuff which was left after building the house.\n\nI intend to build me a house which will surpass any on the main street in Concord in grandeur and luxury, as soon as it pleases me as much and will cost me no more than my present one.\n\nI thus found that the student who wishes for a shelter can obtain one for a lifetime at an expense not greater than the rent which he now pays annually. If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself; and my shortcomings and inconsistencies do not affect the truth of my statement. Notwithstanding much cant and hypocrisy,\u2014chaff which I find it difficult to separate from my wheat, but for which I am as sorry as any man,\u2014I will breathe freely and stretch myself in this respect, it is such a relief to both the moral and physical system; and I am resolved that I will not through humility become the devil\u2019s attorney. I will endeavor to speak a good word for the truth. At Cambridge College the mere rent of a student\u2019s room, which is only a little larger than my own, is thirty dollars each year, though the corporation had the advantage of building thirty-two side by side and under one roof, and the occupant suffers the inconvenience of many and noisy neighbors, and perhaps a residence in the fourth story. I cannot but think that if we had more true wisdom in these respects, not only less education would be needed, because, forsooth, more would already have been acquired, but the pecuniary expense of getting an education would in a great measure vanish. Those conveniences which the student requires at Cambridge or elsewhere cost him or somebody else ten times as great a sacrifice of life as they would with proper management on both sides. Those things for which the most money is demanded are never the things which the student most wants. Tuition, for instance, is an important item in the term bill, while for the far more valuable education which he gets by associating with the most cultivated of his contemporaries no charge is made. The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme, a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,\u2014to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation, and he employs Irishmen or other operatives actually to lay the foundations, while the students that are to be are said to be fitting themselves for it; and for these oversights successive generations have to pay. I think that it would be better than this, for the students, or those who desire to be benefited by it, even to lay the foundation themselves. The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful. \u201cBut,\u201d says one, \u201cyou do not mean that the students should go to work with their hands instead of their heads?\u201d I do not mean that exactly, but I mean something which he might think a good deal like that; I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living? Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a boy to know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where any thing is professed and practised but the art of life;\u2014to survey the world through a telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes, or to what vagabond he is a satellite himself; or to be devoured by the monsters that swarm all around him, while contemplating the monsters in a drop of vinegar. Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month,\u2014the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this,\u2014or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the mean while, and had received a Rodgers\u2019 penknife from his father? Which would be most likely to cut his fingers?... To my astonishment I was informed on leaving college that I had studied navigation!\u2014why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it. Even the poor student studies and is taught only political economy, while that economy of living which is synonymous with philosophy is not even sincerely professed in our colleges. The consequence is, that while he is reading Adam Smith, Ricardo, and Say, he runs his father in debt irretrievably.\n\nAs with our colleges, so with a hundred \u201cmodern improvements\u201d; there is an illusion about them; there is not always a positive advance. The devil goes on exacting compound interest to the last for his early share and numerous succeeding investments in them. Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough. After all, the man whose horse trots a mile in a minute does not carry the most important messages; he is not an evangelist, nor does he come round eating locusts and wild honey. I doubt if Flying Childers ever carried a peck of corn to mill.\n\nOne says to me, \u201cI wonder that you do not lay up money; you love to travel; you might take the cars and go to Fitchburg to-day and see the country.\u201d But I am wiser than that. I have learned that the swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot. I say to my friend, Suppose we try who will get there first. The distance is thirty miles; the fare ninety cents. That is almost a day\u2019s wages. I remember when wages were sixty cents a day for laborers on this very road. Well, I start now on foot, and get there before night; I have travelled at that rate by the week together. You will in the mean while have earned your fare, and arrive there some time to-morrow, or possibly this evening, if you are lucky enough to get a job in season. Instead of going to Fitchburg, you will be working here the greater part of the day. And so, if the railroad reached round the world, I think that I should keep ahead of you; and as for seeing the country and getting experience of that kind, I should have to cut your acquaintance altogether.\n\nSuch is the universal law, which no man can ever outwit, and with regard to the railroad even we may say it is as broad as it is long. To make a railroad round the world available to all mankind is equivalent to grading the whole surface of the planet. Men have an indistinct notion that if they keep up this activity of joint stocks and spades long enough all will at length ride somewhere, in next to no time, and for nothing; but though a crowd rushes to the depot, and the conductor shouts \u201cAll aboard!\u201d when the smoke is blown away and the vapor condensed, it will be perceived that a few are riding, but the rest are run over,\u2014and it will be called, and will be, \u201cA melancholy accident.\u201d No doubt they can ride at last who shall have earned their fare, that is, if they survive so long, but they will probably have lost their elasticity and desire to travel by that time. This spending of the best part of one\u2019s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. \u201cWhat!\u201d exclaim a million Irishmen starting up from all the shanties in the land, \u201cis not this railroad which we have built a good thing?\u201d Yes, I answer, comparatively good, that is, you might have done worse; but I wish, as you are brothers of mine, that you could have spent your time better than digging in this dirt.\n\nBefore I finished my house, wishing to earn ten or twelve dollars by some honest and agreeable method, in order to meet my unusual expenses, I planted about two acres and a half of light and sandy soil near it chiefly with beans, but also a small part with potatoes, corn, peas, and turnips. The whole lot contains eleven acres, mostly growing up to pines and hickories, and was sold the preceding season for eight dollars and eight cents an acre. One farmer said that it was \u201cgood for nothing but to raise cheeping squirrels on.\u201d I put no manure whatever on this land, not being the owner, but merely a squatter, and not expecting to cultivate so much again, and I did not quite hoe it all once. I got out several cords of stumps in ploughing, which supplied me with fuel for a long time, and left small circles of virgin mould, easily distinguishable through the summer by the greater luxuriance of the beans there. The dead and for the most part unmerchantable wood behind my house, and the driftwood from the pond, have supplied the remainder of my fuel. I was obliged to hire a team and a man for the ploughing, though I held the plough myself. My farm outgoes for the first season were, for implements, seed, work, &c., $14.72\u00bd. The seed corn was given me. This never costs anything to speak of, unless you plant more than enough. I got twelve bushels of beans, and eighteen bushels of potatoes, beside some peas and sweet corn. The yellow corn and turnips were too late to come to any thing. My whole income from the farm was\n\n                                       $ 23.44\n      Deducting the outgoes,...........  14.72\u00bd\n                                         \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\n      There are left,................. $  8.71\u00bd,\nbeside produce consumed and on hand at the time this estimate was made of the value of $4.50,\u2014the amount on hand much more than balancing a little grass which I did not raise. All things considered, that is, considering the importance of a man\u2019s soul and of to-day, notwithstanding the short time occupied by my experiment, nay, partly even because of its transient character, I believe that that was doing better than any farmer in Concord did that year.\n\nThe next year I did better still, for I spaded up all the land which I required, about a third of an acre, and I learned from the experience of both years, not being in the least awed by many celebrated works on husbandry, Arthur Young among the rest, that if one would live simply and eat only the crop which he raised, and raise no more than he ate, and not exchange it for an insufficient quantity of more luxurious and expensive things, he would need to cultivate only a few rods of ground, and that it would be cheaper to spade up that than to use oxen to plough it, and to select a fresh spot from time to time than to manure the old, and he could do all his necessary farm work as it were with his left hand at odd hours in the summer; and thus he would not be tied to an ox, or horse, or cow, or pig, as at present. I desire to speak impartially on this point, and as one not interested in the success or failure of the present economical and social arrangements. I was more independent than any farmer in Concord, for I was not anchored to a house or farm, but could follow the bent of my genius, which is a very crooked one, every moment. Beside being better off than they already, if my house had been burned or my crops had failed, I should have been nearly as well off as before.\n\nI am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer. Men and oxen exchange work; but if we consider necessary work only, the oxen will be seen to have greatly the advantage, their farm is so much the larger. Man does some of his part of the exchange work in his six weeks of haying, and it is no boy\u2019s play. Certainly no nation that lived simply in all respects, that is, no nation of philosophers, would commit so great a blunder as to use the labor of animals. True, there never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be. However, I should never have broken a horse or bull and taken him to board for any work he might do for me, for fear I should become a horse-man or a herds-man merely; and if society seems to be the gainer by so doing, are we certain that what is one man\u2019s gain is not another\u2019s loss, and that the stable-boy has equal cause with his master to be satisfied? Granted that some public works would not have been constructed without this aid, and let man share the glory of such with the ox and horse; does it follow that he could not have accomplished works yet more worthy of himself in that case? When men begin to do, not merely unnecessary or artistic, but luxurious and idle work, with their assistance, it is inevitable that a few do all the exchange work with the oxen, or, in other words, become the slaves of the strongest. Man thus not only works for the animal within him, but, for a symbol of this, he works for the animal without him. Though we have many substantial houses of brick or stone, the prosperity of the farmer is still measured by the degree to which the barn overshadows the house. This town is said to have the largest houses for oxen, cows, and horses hereabouts, and it is not behindhand in its public buildings; but there are very few halls for free worship or free speech in this county. It should not be by their architecture, but why not even by their power of abstract thought, that nations should seek to commemorate themselves? How much more admirable the Bhagvat-Geeta than all the ruins of the East! Towers and temples are the luxury of princes. A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince. Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, nor is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent. To what end, pray, is so much stone hammered? In Arcadia, when I was there, I did not see any hammering stone. Nations are possessed with an insane ambition to perpetuate the memory of themselves by the amount of hammered stone they leave. What if equal pains were taken to smooth and polish their manners? One piece of good sense would be more memorable than a monument as high as the moon. I love better to see stones in place. The grandeur of Thebes was a vulgar grandeur. More sensible is a rod of stone wall that bounds an honest man\u2019s field than a hundred-gated Thebes that has wandered farther from the true end of life. The religion and civilization which are barbaric and heathenish build splendid temples; but what you might call Christianity does not. Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs. I might possibly invent some excuse for them and him, but I have no time for it. As for the religion and love of art of the builders, it is much the same all the world over, whether the building be an Egyptian temple or the United States Bank. It costs more than it comes to. The mainspring is vanity, assisted by the love of garlic and bread and butter. Mr. Balcom, a promising young architect, designs it on the back of his Vitruvius, with hard pencil and ruler, and the job is let out to Dobson & Sons, stonecutters. When the thirty centuries begin to look down on it, mankind begin to look up at it. As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made. Many are concerned about the monuments of the West and the East,\u2014to know who built them. For my part, I should like to know who in those days did not build them,\u2014who were above such trifling. But to proceed with my statistics.\n\nBy surveying, carpentry, and day-labor of various other kinds in the village in the mean while, for I have as many trades as fingers, I had earned $13.34. The expense of food for eight months, namely, from July 4th to March 1st, the time when these estimates were made, though I lived there more than two years,\u2014not counting potatoes, a little green corn, and some peas, which I had raised, nor considering the value of what was on hand at the last date, was\n\n    Rice,................... $ 1.73\u00bd\n    Molasses,................  1.73     Cheapest form of the\n                                         saccharine.\n    Rye meal,................  1.04\u00be\n    Indian meal,.............  0.99\u00be     Cheaper than rye.\n    Pork,....................  0.22\n\n    All experiments which failed:\n    Flour,...................  0.88  Costs more than Indian meal,\n                                      both money and trouble.\n    Sugar,...................  0.80\n    Lard,....................  0.65\n    Apples,..................  0.25\n    Dried apple,.............  0.22\n    Sweet potatoes,..........  0.10\n    One pumpkin,.............  0.06\n    One watermelon,..........  0.02\n    Salt,....................  0.03\nYes, I did eat $8.74, all told; but I should not thus unblushingly publish my guilt, if I did not know that most of my readers were equally guilty with myself, and that their deeds would look no better in print. The next year I sometimes caught a mess of fish for my dinner, and once I went so far as to slaughter a woodchuck which ravaged my bean-field,\u2014effect his transmigration, as a Tartar would say,\u2014and devour him, partly for experiment\u2019s sake; but though it afforded me a momentary enjoyment, notwithstanding a musky flavor, I saw that the longest use would not make that a good practice, however it might seem to have your woodchucks ready dressed by the village butcher.\n\nClothing and some incidental expenses within the same dates, though little can be inferred from this item, amounted to\n\n                                            $8.40\u00be\n    Oil and some household utensils,.......  2.00\nSo that all the pecuniary outgoes, excepting for washing and mending, which for the most part were done out of the house, and their bills have not yet been received,\u2014and these are all and more than all the ways by which money necessarily goes out in this part of the world,\u2014were\n\n    House,................................ $ 28.12\u00bd\n    Farm one year,.......................... 14.72\u00bd\n    Food eight months,......................  8.74\n    Clothing, etc., eight months,...........  8.40\u00be\n    Oil, &c., eight months,.................  2.00\n                                           \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\n        In all,........................... $ 61.99\u00be\nI address myself now to those of my readers who have a living to get. And to meet this I have for farm produce sold\n\n                                            $23.44\n    Earned by day-labor,...................  13.34\n                                           \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\n        In all,............................ $36.78,\nwhich subtracted from the sum of the outgoes leaves a balance of $25.21\u00be on the one side,\u2014this being very nearly the means with which I started, and the measure of expenses to be incurred,\u2014and on the other, beside the leisure and independence and health thus secured, a comfortable house for me as long as I choose to occupy it.\n\nThese statistics, however accidental and therefore uninstructive they may appear, as they have a certain completeness, have a certain value also. Nothing was given me of which I have not rendered some account. It appears from the above estimate, that my food alone cost me in money about twenty-seven cents a week. It was, for nearly two years after this, rye and Indian meal without yeast, potatoes, rice, a very little salt pork, molasses, and salt, and my drink water. It was fit that I should live on rice, mainly, who loved so well the philosophy of India. To meet the objections of some inveterate cavillers, I may as well state, that if I dined out occasionally, as I always had done, and I trust shall have opportunities to do again, it was frequently to the detriment of my domestic arrangements. But the dining out, being, as I have stated, a constant element, does not in the least affect a comparative statement like this.\n\nI learned from my two years\u2019 experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one\u2019s necessary food, even in this latitude; that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength. I have made a satisfactory dinner, satisfactory on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane (Portulaca oleracea) which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted. I give the Latin on account of the savoriness of the trivial name. And pray what more can a reasonable man desire, in peaceful times, in ordinary noons, than a sufficient number of ears of green sweet-corn boiled, with the addition of salt? Even the little variety which I used was a yielding to the demands of appetite, and not of health. Yet men have come to such a pass that they frequently starve, not for want of necessaries, but for want of luxuries; and I know a good woman who thinks that her son lost his life because he took to drinking water only.\n\nThe reader will perceive that I am treating the subject rather from an economic than a dietetic point of view, and he will not venture to put my abstemiousness to the test unless he has a well-stocked larder.\n\nBread I at first made of pure Indian meal and salt, genuine hoe-cakes, which I baked before my fire out of doors on a shingle or the end of a stick of timber sawed off in building my house; but it was wont to get smoked and to have a piny flavor. I tried flour also; but have at last found a mixture of rye and Indian meal most convenient and agreeable. In cold weather it was no little amusement to bake several small loaves of this in succession, tending and turning them as carefully as an Egyptian his hatching eggs. They were a real cereal fruit which I ripened, and they had to my senses a fragrance like that of other noble fruits, which I kept in as long as possible by wrapping them in cloths. I made a study of the ancient and indispensable art of bread-making, consulting such authorities as offered, going back to the primitive days and first invention of the unleavened kind, when from the wildness of nuts and meats men first reached the mildness and refinement of this diet, and travelling gradually down in my studies through that accidental souring of the dough which, it is supposed, taught the leavening process, and through the various fermentations thereafter, till I came to \u201cgood, sweet, wholesome bread,\u201d the staff of life. Leaven, which some deem the soul of bread, the spiritus which fills its cellular tissue, which is religiously preserved like the vestal fire,\u2014some precious bottle-full, I suppose, first brought over in the Mayflower, did the business for America, and its influence is still rising, swelling, spreading, in cerealian billows over the land,\u2014this seed I regularly and faithfully procured from the village, till at length one morning I forgot the rules, and scalded my yeast; by which accident I discovered that even this was not indispensable,\u2014for my discoveries were not by the synthetic but analytic process,\u2014and I have gladly omitted it since, though most housewives earnestly assured me that safe and wholesome bread without yeast might not be, and elderly people prophesied a speedy decay of the vital forces. Yet I find it not to be an essential ingredient, and after going without it for a year am still in the land of the living; and I am glad to escape the trivialness of carrying a bottle-full in my pocket, which would sometimes pop and discharge its contents to my discomfiture. It is simpler and more respectable to omit it. Man is an animal who more than any other can adapt himself to all climates and circumstances. Neither did I put any sal soda, or other acid or alkali, into my bread. It would seem that I made it according to the recipe which Marcus Porcius Cato gave about two centuries before Christ. \u201cPanem depsticium sic facito. Manus mortariumque bene lavato. Farinam in mortarium indito, aqu\u00e6 paulatim addito, subigitoque pulchre. Ubi bene subegeris, defingito, coquitoque sub testu.\u201d Which I take to mean\u2014\u201cMake kneaded bread thus. Wash your hands and trough well. Put the meal into the trough, add water gradually, and knead it thoroughly. When you have kneaded it well, mould it, and bake it under a cover,\u201d that is, in a baking-kettle. Not a word about leaven. But I did not always use this staff of life. At one time, owing to the emptiness of my purse, I saw none of it for more than a month.\n\nEvery New Englander might easily raise all his own breadstuffs in this land of rye and Indian corn, and not depend on distant and fluctuating markets for them. Yet so far are we from simplicity and independence that, in Concord, fresh and sweet meal is rarely sold in the shops, and hominy and corn in a still coarser form are hardly used by any. For the most part the farmer gives to his cattle and hogs the grain of his own producing, and buys flour, which is at least no more wholesome, at a greater cost, at the store. I saw that I could easily raise my bushel or two of rye and Indian corn, for the former will grow on the poorest land, and the latter does not require the best, and grind them in a hand-mill, and so do without rice and pork; and if I must have some concentrated sweet, I found by experiment that I could make a very good molasses either of pumpkins or beets, and I knew that I needed only to set out a few maples to obtain it more easily still, and while these were growing I could use various substitutes beside those which I have named. \u201cFor,\u201d as the Forefathers sang,\u2014\n\n\u201cwe can make liquor to sweeten our lips\nOf pumpkins and parsnips and walnut-tree chips.\u201d\n\nFinally, as for salt, that grossest of groceries, to obtain this might be a fit occasion for a visit to the seashore, or, if I did without it altogether, I should probably drink the less water. I do not learn that the Indians ever troubled themselves to go after it.\n\nThus I could avoid all trade and barter, so far as my food was concerned, and having a shelter already, it would only remain to get clothing and fuel. The pantaloons which I now wear were woven in a farmer\u2019s family,\u2014thank Heaven there is so much virtue still in man; for I think the fall from the farmer to the operative as great and memorable as that from the man to the farmer;\u2014and in a new country, fuel is an encumbrance. As for a habitat, if I were not permitted still to squat, I might purchase one acre at the same price for which the land I cultivated was sold\u2014namely, eight dollars and eight cents. But as it was, I considered that I enhanced the value of the land by squatting on it.\n\nThere is a certain class of unbelievers who sometimes ask me such questions as, if I think that I can live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root of the matter at once,\u2014for the root is faith,\u2014I am accustomed to answer such, that I can live on board nails. If they cannot understand that, they cannot understand much that I have to say. For my part, I am glad to hear of experiments of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for a fortnight to live on hard, raw corn on the ear, using his teeth for all mortar. The squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The human race is interested in these experiments, though a few old women who are incapacitated for them, or who own their thirds in mills, may be alarmed.\n\nMy furniture, part of which I made myself, and the rest cost me nothing of which I have not rendered an account, consisted of a bed, a table, a desk, three chairs, a looking-glass three inches in diameter, a pair of tongs and andirons, a kettle, a skillet, and a frying-pan, a dipper, a wash-bowl, two knives and forks, three plates, one cup, one spoon, a jug for oil, a jug for molasses, and a japanned lamp. None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse. What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? That is Spaulding\u2019s furniture. I could never tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so called rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken. Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuvi\u00e6; at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned? It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man\u2019s belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging them,\u2014dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. No wonder man has lost his elasticity. How often he is at a dead set! \u201cSir, if I may be so bold, what do you mean by a dead set?\u201d If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him, even to his kitchen furniture and all the trumpery which he saves and will not burn, and he will appear to be harnessed to it and making what headway he can. I think that the man is at a dead set who has got through a knot hole or gateway where his sledge load of furniture cannot follow him. I cannot but feel compassion when I hear some trig, compact-looking man, seemingly free, all girded and ready, speak of his \u201cfurniture,\u201d as whether it is insured or not. \u201cBut what shall I do with my furniture?\u201d My gay butterfly is entangled in a spider\u2019s web then. Even those who seem for a long while not to have any, if you inquire more narrowly you will find have some stored in somebody\u2019s barn. I look upon England to-day as an old gentleman who is travelling with a great deal of baggage, trumpery which has accumulated from long housekeeping, which he has not the courage to burn; great trunk, little trunk, bandbox and bundle. Throw away the first three at least. It would surpass the powers of a well man nowadays to take up his bed and walk, and I should certainly advise a sick one to lay down his bed and run. When I have met an immigrant tottering under a bundle which contained his all\u2014looking like an enormous wen which had grown out of the nape of his neck\u2014I have pitied him, not because that was his all, but because he had all that to carry. If I have got to drag my trap, I will take care that it be a light one and do not nip me in a vital part. But perchance it would be wisest never to put one\u2019s paw into it.\n\nI would observe, by the way, that it costs me nothing for curtains, for I have no gazers to shut out but the sun and moon, and I am willing that they should look in. The moon will not sour milk nor taint meat of mine, nor will the sun injure my furniture or fade my carpet, and if he is sometimes too warm a friend, I find it still better economy to retreat behind some curtain which nature has provided, than to add a single item to the details of housekeeping. A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare within the house, nor time to spare within or without to shake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil.\n\nNot long since I was present at the auction of a deacon\u2019s effects, for his life had not been ineffectual:\u2014\n\n\u201cThe evil that men do lives after them.\u201d\n\nAs usual, a great proportion was trumpery which had begun to accumulate in his father\u2019s day. Among the rest was a dried tapeworm. And now, after lying half a century in his garret and other dust holes, these things were not burned; instead of a bonfire, or purifying destruction of them, there was an auction, or increasing of them. The neighbors eagerly collected to view them, bought them all, and carefully transported them to their garrets and dust holes, to lie there till their estates are settled, when they will start again. When a man dies he kicks the dust.\n\nThe customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not. Would it not be well if we were to celebrate such a \u201cbusk,\u201d or \u201cfeast of first fruits,\u201d as Bartram describes to have been the custom of the Mucclasse Indians? \u201cWhen a town celebrates the busk,\u201d says he, \u201chaving previously provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils and furniture, they collect all their worn out clothes and other despicable things, sweep and cleanse their houses, squares, and the whole town of their filth, which with all the remaining grain and other old provisions they cast together into one common heap, and consume it with fire. After having taken medicine, and fasted for three days, all the fire in the town is extinguished. During this fast they abstain from the gratification of every appetite and passion whatever. A general amnesty is proclaimed; all malefactors may return to their town.\u2014\u201d\n\n\u201cOn the fourth morning, the high priest, by rubbing dry wood together, produces new fire in the public square, from whence every habitation in the town is supplied with the new and pure flame.\u201d\n\nThey then feast on the new corn and fruits, and dance and sing for three days, \u201cand the four following days they receive visits and rejoice with their friends from neighboring towns who have in like manner purified and prepared themselves.\u201d\n\nThe Mexicans also practised a similar purification at the end of every fifty-two years, in the belief that it was time for the world to come to an end.\n\nI have scarcely heard of a truer sacrament, that is, as the dictionary defines it, \u201coutward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,\u201d than this, and I have no doubt that they were originally inspired directly from Heaven to do thus, though they have no biblical record of the revelation.\n\nFor more than five years I maintained myself thus solely by the labor of my hands, and I found, that by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living. The whole of my winters, as well as most of my summers, I had free and clear for study. I have thoroughly tried school-keeping, and found that my expenses were in proportion, or rather out of proportion, to my income, for I was obliged to dress and train, not to say think and believe, accordingly, and I lost my time into the bargain. As I did not teach for the good of my fellow-men, but simply for a livelihood, this was a failure. I have tried trade; but I found that it would take ten years to get under way in that, and that then I should probably be on my way to the devil. I was actually afraid that I might by that time be doing what is called a good business. When formerly I was looking about to see what I could do for a living, some sad experience in conforming to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of picking huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small profits might suffice,\u2014for my greatest skill has been to want but little,\u2014so little capital it required, so little distraction from my wonted moods, I foolishly thought. While my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade or the professions, I contemplated this occupation as most like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the berries which came in my way, and thereafter carelessly dispose of them; so, to keep the flocks of Admetus. I also dreamed that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods, even to the city, by hay-cart loads. But I have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.\n\nAs I preferred some things to others, and especially valued my freedom, as I could fare hard and yet succeed well, I did not wish to spend my time in earning rich carpets or other fine furniture, or delicate cookery, or a house in the Grecian or the Gothic style just yet. If there are any to whom it is no interruption to acquire these things, and who know how to use them when acquired, I relinquish to them the pursuit. Some are \u201cindustrious,\u201d and appear to love labor for its own sake, or perhaps because it keeps them out of worse mischief; to such I have at present nothing to say. Those who would not know what to do with more leisure than they now enjoy, I might advise to work twice as hard as they do,\u2014work till they pay for themselves, and get their free papers. For myself I found that the occupation of a day-laborer was the most independent of any, especially as it required only thirty or forty days in a year to support one. The laborer\u2019s day ends with the going down of the sun, and he is then free to devote himself to his chosen pursuit, independent of his labor; but his employer, who speculates from month to month, has no respite from one end of the year to the other.\n\nIn short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one\u2019s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial. It is not necessary that a man should earn his living by the sweat of his brow, unless he sweats easier than I do.\n\nOne young man of my acquaintance, who has inherited some acres, told me that he thought he should live as I did, if he had the means. I would not have any one adopt my mode of living on any account; for, beside that before he has fairly learned it I may have found out another for myself, I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible; but I would have each one be very careful to find out and pursue his own way, and not his father\u2019s or his mother\u2019s or his neighbor\u2019s instead. The youth may build or plant or sail, only let him not be hindered from doing that which he tells me he would like to do. It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.\n\nUndoubtedly, in this case, what is true for one is truer still for a thousand, as a large house is not proportionally more expensive than a small one, since one roof may cover, one cellar underlie, and one wall separate several apartments. But for my part, I preferred the solitary dwelling. Moreover, it will commonly be cheaper to build the whole yourself than to convince another of the advantage of the common wall; and when you have done this, the common partition, to be much cheaper, must be a thin one, and that other may prove a bad neighbor, and also not keep his side in repair. The only co\u00f6peration which is commonly possible is exceedingly partial and superficial; and what little true co\u00f6peration there is, is as if it were not, being a harmony inaudible to men. If a man has faith, he will co\u00f6perate with equal faith everywhere; if he has not faith, he will continue to live like the rest of the world, whatever company he is joined to. To co\u00f6perate, in the highest as well as the lowest sense, means to get our living together. I heard it proposed lately that two young men should travel together over the world, the one without money, earning his means as he went, before the mast and behind the plow, the other carrying a bill of exchange in his pocket. It was easy to see that they could not long be companions or co\u00f6perate, since one would not operate at all. They would part at the first interesting crisis in their adventures. Above all, as I have implied, the man who goes alone can start to-day; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready, and it may be a long time before they get off.\n\nBut all this is very selfish, I have heard some of my townsmen say. I confess that I have hitherto indulged very little in philanthropic enterprises. I have made some sacrifices to a sense of duty, and among others have sacrificed this pleasure also. There are those who have used all their arts to persuade me to undertake the support of some poor family in the town; and if I had nothing to do,\u2014for the devil finds employment for the idle,\u2014I might try my hand at some such pastime as that. However, when I have thought to indulge myself in this respect, and lay their Heaven under an obligation by maintaining certain poor persons in all respects as comfortably as I maintain myself, and have even ventured so far as to make them the offer, they have one and all unhesitatingly preferred to remain poor. While my townsmen and women are devoted in so many ways to the good of their fellows, I trust that one at least may be spared to other and less humane pursuits. You must have a genius for charity as well as for any thing else. As for Doing-good, that is one of the professions which are full. Moreover, I have tried it fairly, and, strange as it may seem, am satisfied that it does not agree with my constitution. Probably I should not consciously and deliberately forsake my particular calling to do the good which society demands of me, to save the universe from annihilation; and I believe that a like but infinitely greater steadfastness elsewhere is all that now preserves it. But I would not stand between any man and his genius; and to him who does this work, which I decline, with his whole heart and soul and life, I would say, Persevere, even if the world call it doing evil, as it is most likely they will.\n\nI am far from supposing that my case is a peculiar one; no doubt many of my readers would make a similar defence. At doing something,\u2014I will not engage that my neighbors shall pronounce it good,\u2014I do not hesitate to say that I should be a capital fellow to hire; but what that is, it is for my employer to find out. What good I do, in the common sense of that word, must be aside from my main path, and for the most part wholly unintended. Men say, practically, Begin where you are and such as you are, without aiming mainly to become of more worth, and with kindness aforethought go about doing good. If I were to preach at all in this strain, I should say rather, Set about being good. As if the sun should stop when he had kindled his fires up to the splendor of a moon or a star of the sixth magnitude, and go about like a Robin Goodfellow, peeping in at every cottage window, inspiring lunatics, and tainting meats, and making darkness visible, instead of steadily increasing his genial heat and beneficence till he is of such brightness that no mortal can look him in the face, and then, and in the mean while too, going about the world in his own orbit, doing it good, or rather, as a truer philosophy has discovered, the world going about him getting good. When Phaeton, wishing to prove his heavenly birth by his beneficence, had the sun\u2019s chariot but one day, and drove out of the beaten track, he burned several blocks of houses in the lower streets of heaven, and scorched the surface of the earth, and dried up every spring, and made the great desert of Sahara, till at length Jupiter hurled him headlong to the earth with a thunderbolt, and the sun, through grief at his death, did not shine for a year.\n\nThere is no odor so bad as that which arises from goodness tainted. It is human, it is divine, carrion. If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life, as from that dry and parching wind of the African deserts called the simoom, which fills the mouth and nose and ears and eyes with dust till you are suffocated, for fear that I should get some of his good done to me,\u2014some of its virus mingled with my blood. No,\u2014in this case I would rather suffer evil the natural way. A man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as much. Philanthropy is not love for one\u2019s fellow-man in the broadest sense. Howard was no doubt an exceedingly kind and worthy man in his way, and has his reward; but, comparatively speaking, what are a hundred Howards to us, if their philanthropy do not help us in our best estate, when we are most worthy to be helped? I never heard of a philanthropic meeting in which it was sincerely proposed to do any good to me, or the like of me.\n\nThe Jesuits were quite balked by those Indians who, being burned at the stake, suggested new modes of torture to their tormentors. Being superior to physical suffering, it sometimes chanced that they were superior to any consolation which the missionaries could offer; and the law to do as you would be done by fell with less persuasiveness on the ears of those who, for their part, did not care how they were done by, who loved their enemies after a new fashion, and came very near freely forgiving them all they did.\n\nBe sure that you give the poor the aid they most need, though it be your example which leaves them far behind. If you give money, spend yourself with it, and do not merely abandon it to them. We make curious mistakes sometimes. Often the poor man is not so cold and hungry as he is dirty and ragged and gross. It is partly his taste, and not merely his misfortune. If you give him money, he will perhaps buy more rags with it. I was wont to pity the clumsy Irish laborers who cut ice on the pond, in such mean and ragged clothes, while I shivered in my more tidy and somewhat more fashionable garments, till, one bitter cold day, one who had slipped into the water came to my house to warm him, and I saw him strip off three pairs of pants and two pairs of stockings ere he got down to the skin, though they were dirty and ragged enough, it is true, and that he could afford to refuse the extra garments which I offered him, he had so many intra ones. This ducking was the very thing he needed. Then I began to pity myself, and I saw that it would be a greater charity to bestow on me a flannel shirt than a whole slop-shop on him. There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve. It is the pious slave-breeder devoting the proceeds of every tenth slave to buy a Sunday\u2019s liberty for the rest. Some show their kindness to the poor by employing them in their kitchens. Would they not be kinder if they employed themselves there? You boast of spending a tenth part of your income in charity; maybe you should spend the nine tenths so, and done with it. Society recovers only a tenth part of the property then. Is this owing to the generosity of him in whose possession it is found, or to the remissness of the officers of justice?\n\nPhilanthropy is almost the only virtue which is sufficiently appreciated by mankind. Nay, it is greatly overrated; and it is our selfishness which overrates it. A robust poor man, one sunny day here in Concord, praised a fellow-townsman to me, because, as he said, he was kind to the poor; meaning himself. The kind uncles and aunts of the race are more esteemed than its true spiritual fathers and mothers. I once heard a reverend lecturer on England, a man of learning and intelligence, after enumerating her scientific, literary, and political worthies, Shakespeare, Bacon, Cromwell, Milton, Newton, and others, speak next of her Christian heroes, whom, as if his profession required it of him, he elevated to a place far above all the rest, as the greatest of the great. They were Penn, Howard, and Mrs. Fry. Every one must feel the falsehood and cant of this. The last were not England\u2019s best men and women; only, perhaps, her best philanthropists.\n\nI would not subtract any thing from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man\u2019s uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick, serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own cast-off griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion. From what southern plains comes up the voice of wailing? Under what latitudes reside the heathen to whom we would send light? Who is that intemperate and brutal man whom we would redeem? If any thing ail a man, so that he does not perform his functions, if he have a pain in his bowels even,\u2014for that is the seat of sympathy,\u2014he forthwith sets about reforming\u2014the world. Being a microcosm himself, he discovers, and it is a true discovery, and he is the man to make it,\u2014that the world has been eating green apples; to his eyes, in fact, the globe itself is a great green apple, which there is danger awful to think of that the children of men will nibble before it is ripe; and straightway his drastic philanthropy seeks out the Esquimaux and the Patagonian, and embraces the populous Indian and Chinese villages; and thus, by a few years of philanthropic activity, the powers in the mean while using him for their own ends, no doubt, he cures himself of his dyspepsia, the globe acquires a faint blush on one or both of its cheeks, as if it were beginning to be ripe, and life loses its crudity and is once more sweet and wholesome to live. I never dreamed of any enormity greater than I have committed. I never knew, and never shall know, a worse man than myself.\n\nI believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology. My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it; that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed, which I could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoe-strings. Take your time, and set about some free labor.\n\nOur manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints. Our hymn-books resound with a melodious cursing of God and enduring him forever. One would say that even the prophets and redeemers had rather consoled the fears than confirmed the hopes of man. There is nowhere recorded a simple and irrepressible satisfaction with the gift of life, any memorable praise of God. All health and success does me good, however far off and withdrawn it may appear; all disease and failure helps to make me sad and does me evil, however much sympathy it may have with me or I with it. If, then, we would indeed restore mankind by truly Indian, botanic, magnetic, or natural means, let us first be as simple and well as Nature ourselves, dispel the clouds which hang over our own brows, and take up a little life into our pores. Do not stay to be an overseer of the poor, but endeavor to become one of the worthies of the world.\n\nI read in the Gulistan, or Flower Garden, of Sheik Sadi of Shiraz, that \u201cThey asked a wise man, saying; Of the many celebrated trees which the Most High God has created lofty and umbrageous, they call none azad, or free, excepting the cypress, which bears no fruit; what mystery is there in this? He replied; Each has its appropriate produce, and appointed season, during the continuance of which it is fresh and blooming, and during their absence dry and withered; to neither of which states is the cypress exposed, being always flourishing; and of this nature are the azads, or religious independents.\u2014Fix not thy heart on that which is transitory; for the Dijlah, or Tigris, will continue to flow through Bagdad after the race of caliphs is extinct: if thy hand has plenty, be liberal as the date tree; but if it affords nothing to give away, be an azad, or free man, like the cypress.\u201d\n\nCOMPLEMENTAL VERSES\n\nThe Pretensions of Poverty\n\n\u201cThou dost presume too much, poor needy wretch,\nTo claim a station in the firmament\nBecause thy humble cottage, or thy tub,\nNurses some lazy or pedantic virtue\nIn the cheap sunshine or by shady springs,\nWith roots and pot-herbs; where thy right hand,\nTearing those humane passions from the mind,\nUpon whose stocks fair blooming virtues flourish,\nDegradeth nature, and benumbeth sense,\nAnd, Gorgon-like, turns active men to stone.\nWe not require the dull society\nOf your necessitated temperance,\nOr that unnatural stupidity\nThat knows nor joy nor sorrow; nor your forc\u2019d\nFalsely exalted passive fortitude\nAbove the active. This low abject brood,\nThat fix their seats in mediocrity,\nBecome your servile minds; but we advance\nSuch virtues only as admit excess,\nBrave, bounteous acts, regal magnificence,\nAll-seeing prudence, magnanimity\nThat knows no bound, and that heroic virtue\nFor which antiquity hath left no name,\nBut patterns only, such as Hercules,\nAchilles, Theseus. Back to thy loath\u2019d cell;\nAnd when thou seest the new enlightened sphere,\nStudy to know but what those worthies were.\u201d\n                                    T. CAREW\n\nWhere I Lived, and What I Lived For\nAt a certain season of our life we are accustomed to consider every spot as the possible site of a house. I have thus surveyed the country on every side within a dozen miles of where I live. In imagination I have bought all the farms in succession, for all were to be bought, and I knew their price. I walked over each farmer\u2019s premises, tasted his wild apples, discoursed on husbandry with him, took his farm at his price, at any price, mortgaging it to him in my mind; even put a higher price on it,\u2014took everything but a deed of it,\u2014took his word for his deed, for I dearly love to talk,\u2014cultivated it, and him too to some extent, I trust, and withdrew when I had enjoyed it long enough, leaving him to carry it on. This experience entitled me to be regarded as a sort of real-estate broker by my friends. Wherever I sat, there I might live, and the landscape radiated from me accordingly. What is a house but a sedes, a seat?\u2014better if a country seat. I discovered many a site for a house not likely to be soon improved, which some might have thought too far from the village, but to my eyes the village was too far from it. Well, there I might live, I said; and there I did live, for an hour, a summer and a winter life; saw how I could let the years run off, buffet the winter through, and see the spring come in. The future inhabitants of this region, wherever they may place their houses, may be sure that they have been anticipated. An afternoon sufficed to lay out the land into orchard, woodlot, and pasture, and to decide what fine oaks or pines should be left to stand before the door, and whence each blasted tree could be seen to the best advantage; and then I let it lie, fallow perchance, for a man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.\n\nMy imagination carried me so far that I even had the refusal of several farms,\u2014the refusal was all I wanted,\u2014but I never got my fingers burned by actual possession. The nearest that I came to actual possession was when I bought the Hollowell place, and had begun to sort my seeds, and collected materials with which to make a wheelbarrow to carry it on or off with; but before the owner gave me a deed of it, his wife\u2014every man has such a wife\u2014changed her mind and wished to keep it, and he offered me ten dollars to release him. Now, to speak the truth, I had but ten cents in the world, and it surpassed my arithmetic to tell, if I was that man who had ten cents, or who had a farm, or ten dollars, or all together. However, I let him keep the ten dollars and the farm too, for I had carried it far enough; or rather, to be generous, I sold him the farm for just what I gave for it, and, as he was not a rich man, made him a present of ten dollars, and still had my ten cents, and seeds, and materials for a wheelbarrow left. I found thus that I had been a rich man without any damage to my poverty. But I retained the landscape, and I have since annually carried off what it yielded without a wheelbarrow. With respect to landscapes,\u2014\n\n\u201cI am monarch of all I survey,\nMy right there is none to dispute.\u201d\n\nI have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed that he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk.\n\nThe real attractions of the Hollowell farm, to me, were; its complete retirement, being, about two miles from the village, half a mile from the nearest neighbor, and separated from the highway by a broad field; its bounding on the river, which the owner said protected it by its fogs from frosts in the spring, though that was nothing to me; the gray color and ruinous state of the house and barn, and the dilapidated fences, which put such an interval between me and the last occupant; the hollow and lichen-covered apple trees, gnawed by rabbits, showing what kind of neighbors I should have; but above all, the recollection I had of it from my earliest voyages up the river, when the house was concealed behind a dense grove of red maples, through which I heard the house-dog bark. I was in haste to buy it, before the proprietor finished getting out some rocks, cutting down the hollow apple trees, and grubbing up some young birches which had sprung up in the pasture, or, in short, had made any more of his improvements. To enjoy these advantages I was ready to carry it on; like Atlas, to take the world on my shoulders,\u2014I never heard what compensation he received for that,\u2014and do all those things which had no other motive or excuse but that I might pay for it and be unmolested in my possession of it; for I knew all the while that it would yield the most abundant crop of the kind I wanted if I could only afford to let it alone. But it turned out as I have said.\n\nAll that I could say, then, with respect to farming on a large scale, (I have always cultivated a garden,) was, that I had had my seeds ready. Many think that seeds improve with age. I have no doubt that time discriminates between the good and the bad; and when at last I shall plant, I shall be less likely to be disappointed. But I would say to my fellows, once for all, As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little difference whether you are committed to a farm or the county jail.\n\nOld Cato, whose \u201cDe Re Rustic\u00e2\u201d is my \u201cCultivator,\u201d says, and the only translation I have seen makes sheer nonsense of the passage, \u201cWhen you think of getting a farm, turn it thus in your mind, not to buy greedily; nor spare your pains to look at it, and do not think it enough to go round it once. The oftener you go there the more it will please you, if it is good.\u201d I think I shall not buy greedily, but go round and round it as long as I live, and be buried in it first, that it may please me the more at last.\n\nThe present was my next experiment of this kind, which I purpose to describe more at length; for convenience, putting the experience of two years into one. As I have said, I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up.\n\nWhen first I took up my abode in the woods, that is, began to spend my nights as well as days there, which, by accident, was on Independence Day, or the Fourth of July, 1845, my house was not finished for winter, but was merely a defence against the rain, without plastering or chimney, the walls being of rough, weather-stained boards, with wide chinks, which made it cool at night. The upright white hewn studs and freshly planed door and window casings gave it a clean and airy look, especially in the morning, when its timbers were saturated with dew, so that I fancied that by noon some sweet gum would exude from them. To my imagination it retained throughout the day more or less of this auroral character, reminding me of a certain house on a mountain which I had visited the year before. This was an airy and unplastered cabin, fit to entertain a travelling god, and where a goddess might trail her garments. The winds which passed over my dwelling were such as sweep over the ridges of mountains, bearing the broken strains, or celestial parts only, of terrestrial music. The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. Olympus is but the outside of the earth every where.\n\nThe only house I had been the owner of before, if I except a boat, was a tent, which I used occasionally when making excursions in the summer, and this is still rolled up in my garret; but the boat, after passing from hand to hand, has gone down the stream of time. With this more substantial shelter about me, I had made some progress toward settling in the world. This frame, so slightly clad, was a sort of crystallization around me, and reacted on the builder. It was suggestive somewhat as a picture in outlines. I did not need to go outdoors to take the air, for the atmosphere within had lost none of its freshness. It was not so much within doors as behind a door where I sat, even in the rainiest weather. The Harivansa says, \u201cAn abode without birds is like a meat without seasoning.\u201d Such was not my abode, for I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds; not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them. I was not only nearer to some of those which commonly frequent the garden and the orchard, but to those wilder and more thrilling songsters of the forest which never, or rarely, serenade a villager,\u2014the wood-thrush, the veery, the scarlet tanager, the field-sparrow, the whippoorwill, and many others.\n\nI was seated by the shore of a small pond, about a mile and a half south of the village of Concord and somewhat higher than it, in the midst of an extensive wood between that town and Lincoln, and about two miles south of that our only field known to fame, Concord Battle Ground; but I was so low in the woods that the opposite shore, half a mile off, like the rest, covered with wood, was my most distant horizon. For the first week, whenever I looked out on the pond it impressed me like a tarn high up on the side of a mountain, its bottom far above the surface of other lakes, and, as the sun arose, I saw it throwing off its nightly clothing of mist, and here and there, by degrees, its soft ripples or its smooth reflecting surface was revealed, while the mists, like ghosts, were stealthily withdrawing in every direction into the woods, as at the breaking up of some nocturnal conventicle. The very dew seemed to hang upon the trees later into the day than usual, as on the sides of mountains.\n\nThis small lake was of most value as a neighbor in the intervals of a gentle rain storm in August, when, both air and water being perfectly still, but the sky overcast, mid-afternoon had all the serenity of evening, and the wood-thrush sang around, and was heard from shore to shore. A lake like this is never smoother than at such a time; and the clear portion of the air above it being shallow and darkened by clouds, the water, full of light and reflections, becomes a lower heaven itself so much the more important. From a hill top near by, where the wood had been recently cut off, there was a pleasing vista southward across the pond, through a wide indentation in the hills which form the shore there, where their opposite sides sloping toward each other suggested a stream flowing out in that direction through a wooded valley, but stream there was none. That way I looked between and over the near green hills to some distant and higher ones in the horizon, tinged with blue. Indeed, by standing on tiptoe I could catch a glimpse of some of the peaks of the still bluer and more distant mountain ranges in the north-west, those true-blue coins from heaven\u2019s own mint, and also of some portion of the village. But in other directions, even from this point, I could not see over or beyond the woods which surrounded me. It is well to have some water in your neighborhood, to give buoyancy to and float the earth. One value even of the smallest well is, that when you look into it you see that earth is not continent but insular. This is as important as that it keeps butter cool. When I looked across the pond from this peak toward the Sudbury meadows, which in time of flood I distinguished elevated perhaps by a mirage in their seething valley, like a coin in a basin, all the earth beyond the pond appeared like a thin crust insulated and floated even by this small sheet of interverting water, and I was reminded that this on which I dwelt was but dry land.\n\nThough the view from my door was still more contracted, I did not feel crowded or confined in the least. There was pasture enough for my imagination. The low shrub-oak plateau to which the opposite shore arose, stretched away toward the prairies of the West and the steppes of Tartary, affording ample room for all the roving families of men. \u201cThere are none happy in the world but beings who enjoy freely a vast horizon,\u201d\u2014said Damodara, when his herds required new and larger pastures.\n\nBoth place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me. Where I lived was as far off as many a region viewed nightly by astronomers. We are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote and more celestial corner of the system, behind the constellation of Cassiopeia\u2019s Chair, far from noise and disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the universe. If it were worth the while to settle in those parts near to the Pleiades or the Hyades, to Aldebaran or Altair, then I was really there, or at an equal remoteness from the life which I had left behind, dwindled and twinkling with as fine a ray to my nearest neighbor, and to be seen only in moonless nights by him. Such was that part of creation where I had squatted;\u2014\n\n\u201cThere was a shepherd that did live,\n    And held his thoughts as high\nAs were the mounts whereon his flocks\n    Did hourly feed him by.\u201d\n\nWhat should we think of the shepherd\u2019s life if his flocks always wandered to higher pastures than his thoughts?\n\nEvery morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself. I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks. I got up early and bathed in the pond; that was a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did. They say that characters were engraven on the bathing tub of king Tching-thang to this effect: \u201cRenew thyself completely each day; do it again, and again, and forever again.\u201d I can understand that. Morning brings back the heroic ages. I was as much affected by the faint hum of a mosquito making its invisible and unimaginable tour through my apartment at earliest dawn, when I was sitting with door and windows open, as I could be by any trumpet that ever sang of fame. It was Homer\u2019s requiem; itself an Iliad and Odyssey in the air, singing its own wrath and wanderings. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Little is to be expected of that day, if it can be called a day, to which we are not awakened by our Genius, but by the mechanical nudgings of some servitor, are not awakened by our own newly-acquired force and aspirations from within, accompanied by the undulations of celestial music, instead of factory bells, and a fragrance filling the air\u2014to a higher life than we fell asleep from; and thus the darkness bear its fruit, and prove itself to be good, no less than the light. That man who does not believe that each day contains an earlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned, has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkening way. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul of man, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and his Genius tries again what noble life it can make. All memorable events, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morning atmosphere. The Vedas say, \u201cAll intelligences awake with the morning.\u201d Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable of the actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes, like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace with the sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account of their day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poor calculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness, they would have performed something. The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?\n\nWe must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. If we refused, or rather used up, such paltry information as we get, the oracles would distinctly inform us how this might be done.\n\nI went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to \u201cglorify God and enjoy him forever.\u201d\n\nStill we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail. An honest man has hardly need to count more than his ten fingers, or in extreme cases he may add his ten toes, and lump the rest. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb nail. In the midst of this chopping sea of civilized life, such are the clouds and storms and quicksands and thousand-and-one items to be allowed for, that a man has to live, if he would not founder and go to the bottom and not make his port at all, by dead reckoning, and he must be a great calculator indeed who succeeds. Simplify, simplify. Instead of three meals a day, if it be necessary eat but one; instead of a hundred dishes, five; and reduce other things in proportion. Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment. The nation itself, with all its so called internal improvements, which, by the way are all external and superficial, is just such an unwieldy and overgrown establishment, cluttered with furniture and tripped up by its own traps, ruined by luxury and heedless expense, by want of calculation and a worthy aim, as the million households in the land; and the only cure for it as for them is in a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose. It lives too fast. Men think that it is essential that the Nation have commerce, and export ice, and talk through a telegraph, and ride thirty miles an hour, without a doubt, whether they do or not; but whether we should live like baboons or like men, is a little uncertain. If we do not get out sleepers, and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us. Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irish-man, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them. They are sound sleepers, I assure you. And every few years a new lot is laid down and run over; so that, if some have the pleasure of riding on a rail, others have the misfortune to be ridden upon. And when they run over a man that is walking in his sleep, a supernumerary sleeper in the wrong position, and wake him up, they suddenly stop the cars, and make a hue and cry about it, as if this were an exception. I am glad to know that it takes a gang of men for every five miles to keep the sleepers down and level in their beds as it is, for this is a sign that they may sometime get up again.\n\nWhy should we live with such hurry and waste of life? We are determined to be starved before we are hungry. Men say that a stitch in time saves nine, and so they take a thousand stitches to-day to save nine to-morrow. As for work, we haven\u2019t any of any consequence. We have the Saint Vitus\u2019 dance, and cannot possibly keep our heads still. If I should only give a few pulls at the parish bell-rope, as for a fire, that is, without setting the bell, there is hardly a man on his farm in the outskirts of Concord, notwithstanding that press of engagements which was his excuse so many times this morning, nor a boy, nor a woman, I might almost say, but would forsake all and follow that sound, not mainly to save property from the flames, but, if we will confess the truth, much more to see it burn, since burn it must, and we, be it known, did not set it on fire,\u2014or to see it put out, and have a hand in it, if that is done as handsomely; yes, even if it were the parish church itself. Hardly a man takes a half hour\u2019s nap after dinner, but when he wakes he holds up his head and asks, \u201cWhat\u2019s the news?\u201d as if the rest of mankind had stood his sentinels. Some give directions to be waked every half hour, doubtless for no other purpose; and then, to pay for it, they tell what they have dreamed. After a night\u2019s sleep the news is as indispensable as the breakfast. \u201cPray tell me any thing new that has happened to a man any where on this globe,\u201d\u2014and he reads it over his coffee and rolls, that a man has had his eyes gouged out this morning on the Wachito River; never dreaming the while that he lives in the dark unfathomed mammoth cave of this world, and has but the rudiment of an eye himself.\n\nFor my part, I could easily do without the post-office. I think that there are very few important communications made through it. To speak critically, I never received more than one or two letters in my life\u2014I wrote this some years ago\u2014that were worth the postage. The penny-post is, commonly, an institution through which you seriously offer a man that penny for his thoughts which is so often safely offered in jest. And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the Western Railroad, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers in the winter,\u2014we never need read of another. One is enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad instances and applications? To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this gossip. There was such a rush, as I hear, the other day at one of the offices to learn the foreign news by the last arrival, that several large squares of plate glass belonging to the establishment were broken by the pressure,\u2014news which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelve-month, or twelve years, beforehand with sufficient accuracy. As for Spain, for instance, if you know how to throw in Don Carlos and the Infanta, and Don Pedro and Seville and Granada, from time to time in the right proportions,\u2014they may have changed the names a little since I saw the papers,\u2014and serve up a bull-fight when other entertainments fail, it will be true to the letter, and give us as good an idea of the exact state or ruin of things in Spain as the most succinct and lucid reports under this head in the newspapers: and as for England, almost the last significant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolution of 1649; and if you have learned the history of her crops for an average year, you never need attend to that thing again, unless your speculations are of a merely pecuniary character. If one may judge who rarely looks into the newspapers, nothing new does ever happen in foreign parts, a French revolution not excepted.\n\nWhat news! how much more important to know what that is which was never old! \u201cKieou-he-yu (great dignitary of the state of Wei) sent a man to Khoung-tseu to know his news. Khoung-tseu caused the messenger to be seated near him, and questioned him in these terms: What is your master doing? The messenger answered with respect: My master desires to diminish the number of his faults, but he cannot come to the end of them. The messenger being gone, the philosopher remarked: What a worthy messenger! What a worthy messenger!\u201d The preacher, instead of vexing the ears of drowsy farmers on their day of rest at the end of the week,\u2014for Sunday is the fit conclusion of an ill-spent week, and not the fresh and brave beginning of a new one,\u2014with this one other draggle-tail of a sermon, should shout with thundering voice, \u201cPause! Avast! Why so seeming fast, but deadly slow?\u201d\n\nShams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would steadily observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, life, to compare it with such things as we know, would be like a fairy tale and the Arabian Nights\u2019 Entertainments. If we respected only what is inevitable and has a right to be, music and poetry would resound along the streets. When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence,\u2014that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality. This is always exhilarating and sublime. By closing the eyes and slumbering, and consenting to be deceived by shows, men establish and confirm their daily life of routine and habit everywhere, which still is built on purely illusory foundations. Children, who play life, discern its true law and relations more clearly than men, who fail to live it worthily, but who think that they are wiser by experience, that is, by failure. I have read in a Hindoo book, that \u201cthere was a king\u2019s son, who, being expelled in infancy from his native city, was brought up by a forester, and, growing up to maturity in that state, imagined himself to belong to the barbarous race with which he lived. One of his father\u2019s ministers having discovered him, revealed to him what he was, and the misconception of his character was removed, and he knew himself to be a prince. So soul,\u201d continues the Hindoo philosopher, \u201cfrom the circumstances in which it is placed, mistakes its own character, until the truth is revealed to it by some holy teacher, and then it knows itself to be Brahme.\u201d I perceive that we inhabitants of New England live this mean life that we do because our vision does not penetrate the surface of things. We think that that is which appears to be. If a man should walk through this town and see only the reality, where, think you, would the \u201cMill-dam\u201d go to? If he should give us an account of the realities he beheld there, we should not recognize the place in his description. Look at a meeting-house, or a court-house, or a jail, or a shop, or a dwelling-house, and say what that thing really is before a true gaze, and they would all go to pieces in your account of them. Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages. And we are enabled to apprehend at all what is sublime and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that surrounds us. The universe constantly and obediently answers to our conceptions; whether we travel fast or slow, the track is laid for us. Let us spend our lives in conceiving then. The poet or the artist never yet had so fair and noble a design but some of his posterity at least could accomplish it.\n\nLet us spend one day as deliberately as Nature, and not be thrown off the track by every nutshell and mosquito\u2019s wing that falls on the rails. Let us rise early and fast, or break fast, gently and without perturbation; let company come and let company go, let the bells ring and the children cry,\u2014determined to make a day of it. Why should we knock under and go with the stream? Let us not be upset and overwhelmed in that terrible rapid and whirlpool called a dinner, situated in the meridian shallows. Weather this danger and you are safe, for the rest of the way is down hill. With unrelaxed nerves, with morning vigor, sail by it, looking another way, tied to the mast like Ulysses. If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin, having a point d\u2019appui, below freshet and frost and fire, a place where you might found a wall or a state, or set a lamp-post safely, or perhaps a gauge, not a Nilometer, but a Realometer, that future ages might know how deep a freshet of shams and appearances had gathered from time to time. If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.\n\nTime is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains. I would drink deeper; fish in the sky, whose bottom is pebbly with stars. I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. The intellect is a cleaver; it discerns and rifts its way into the secret of things. I do not wish to be any more busy with my hands than is necessary. My head is hands and feet. I feel all my best faculties concentrated in it. My instinct tells me that my head is an organ for burrowing, as some creatures use their snout and fore-paws, and with it I would mine and burrow my way through these hills. I think that the richest vein is somewhere hereabouts; so by the divining-rod and thin rising vapors I judge; and here I will begin to mine.\n\nReading\nWith a little more deliberation in the choice of their pursuits, all men would perhaps become essentially students and observers, for certainly their nature and destiny are interesting to all alike. In accumulating property for ourselves or our posterity, in founding a family or a state, or acquiring fame even, we are mortal; but in dealing with truth we are immortal, and need fear no change nor accident. The oldest Egyptian or Hindoo philosopher raised a corner of the veil from the statue of the divinity; and still the trembling robe remains raised, and I gaze upon as fresh a glory as he did, since it was I in him that was then so bold, and it is he in me that now reviews the vision. No dust has settled on that robe; no time has elapsed since that divinity was revealed. That time which we really improve, or which is improvable, is neither past, present, nor future.\n\nMy residence was more favorable, not only to thought, but to serious reading, than a university; and though I was beyond the range of the ordinary circulating library, I had more than ever come within the influence of those books which circulate round the world, whose sentences were first written on bark, and are now merely copied from time to time on to linen paper. Says the poet M\u00eer Camar Udd\u00een Mast, \u201cBeing seated to run through the region of the spiritual world; I have had this advantage in books. To be intoxicated by a single glass of wine; I have experienced this pleasure when I have drunk the liquor of the esoteric doctrines.\u201d I kept Homer\u2019s Iliad on my table through the summer, though I looked at his page only now and then. Incessant labor with my hands, at first, for I had my house to finish and my beans to hoe at the same time, made more study impossible. Yet I sustained myself by the prospect of such reading in future. I read one or two shallow books of travel in the intervals of my work, till that employment made me ashamed of myself, and I asked where it was then that I lived.\n\nThe student may read Homer or \u00c6schylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. The other is the maturity and experience of that; if that is our mother tongue, this is our father tongue, a reserved and select expression, too significant to be heard by the ear, which we must be born again in order to speak. The crowds of men who merely spoke the Greek and Latin tongues in the middle ages were not entitled by the accident of birth to read the works of genius written in those languages; for these were not written in that Greek or Latin which they knew, but in the select language of literature. They had not learned the nobler dialects of Greece and Rome, but the very materials on which they were written were waste paper to them, and they prized instead a cheap contemporary literature. But when the several nations of Europe had acquired distinct though rude written languages of their own, sufficient for the purposes of their rising literatures, then first learning revived, and scholars were enabled to discern from that remoteness the treasures of antiquity. What the Roman and Grecian multitude could not hear, after the lapse of ages a few scholars read, and a few scholars only are still reading it.\n\nHowever much we may admire the orator\u2019s occasional bursts of eloquence, the noblest written words are commonly as far behind or above the fleeting spoken language as the firmament with its stars is behind the clouds. There are the stars, and they who can may read them. The astronomers forever comment on and observe them. They are not exhalations like our daily colloquies and vaporous breath. What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and health of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.\n\nNo wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;\u2014not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man\u2019s thought becomes a modern man\u2019s speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which he takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family.\n\nThose who have not learned to read the ancient classics in the language in which they were written must have a very imperfect knowledge of the history of the human race; for it is remarkable that no transcript of them has ever been made into any modern tongue, unless our civilization itself may be regarded as such a transcript. Homer has never yet been printed in English, nor \u00c6schylus, nor Virgil even\u2014works as refined, as solidly done, and as beautiful almost as the morning itself; for later writers, say what we will of their genius, have rarely, if ever, equalled the elaborate beauty and finish and the lifelong and heroic literary labors of the ancients. They only talk of forgetting them who never knew them. It will be soon enough to forget them when we have the learning and the genius which will enable us to attend to and appreciate them. That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zendavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.\n\nThe works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to.\n\nI think that having learned our letters we should read the best that is in literature, and not be forever repeating our a b abs, and words of one syllable, in the fourth or fifth classes, sitting on the lowest and foremost form all our lives. Most men are satisfied if they read or hear read, and perchance have been convicted by the wisdom of one good book, the Bible, and for the rest of their lives vegetate and dissipate their faculties in what is called easy reading. There is a work in several volumes in our Circulating Library entitled Little Reading, which I thought referred to a town of that name which I had not been to. There are those who, like cormorants and ostriches, can digest all sorts of this, even after the fullest dinner of meats and vegetables, for they suffer nothing to be wasted. If others are the machines to provide this provender, they are the machines to read it. They read the nine thousandth tale about Zebulon and Sephronia, and how they loved as none had ever loved before, and neither did the course of their true love run smooth,\u2014at any rate, how it did run and stumble, and get up again and go on! how some poor unfortunate got up on to a steeple, who had better never have gone up as far as the belfry; and then, having needlessly got him up there, the happy novelist rings the bell for all the world to come together and hear, O dear! how he did get down again! For my part, I think that they had better metamorphose all such aspiring heroes of universal noveldom into man weathercocks, as they used to put heroes among the constellations, and let them swing round there till they are rusty, and not come down at all to bother honest men with their pranks. The next time the novelist rings the bell I will not stir though the meeting-house burn down. \u201cThe Skip of the Tip-Toe-Hop, a Romance of the Middle Ages, by the celebrated author of \u2018Tittle-Tol-Tan,\u2019 to appear in monthly parts; a great rush; don\u2019t all come together.\u201d All this they read with saucer eyes, and erect and primitive curiosity, and with unwearied gizzard, whose corrugations even yet need no sharpening, just as some little four-year-old bencher his two-cent gilt-covered edition of Cinderella,\u2014without any improvement, that I can see, in the pronunciation, or accent, or emphasis, or any more skill in extracting or inserting the moral. The result is dulness of sight, a stagnation of the vital circulations, and a general deliquium and sloughing off of all the intellectual faculties. This sort of gingerbread is baked daily and more sedulously than pure wheat or rye-and-Indian in almost every oven, and finds a surer market.\n\nThe best books are not read even by those who are called good readers. What does our Concord culture amount to? There is in this town, with a very few exceptions, no taste for the best or for very good books even in English literature, whose words all can read and spell. Even the college-bred and so called liberally educated men here and elsewhere have really little or no acquaintance with the English classics; and as for the recorded wisdom of mankind, the ancient classics and Bibles, which are accessible to all who will know of them, there are the feeblest efforts any where made to become acquainted with them. I know a woodchopper, of middle age, who takes a French paper, not for news as he says, for he is above that, but to \u201ckeep himself in practice,\u201d he being a Canadian by birth; and when I ask him what he considers the best thing he can do in this world, he says, beside this, to keep up and add to his English. This is about as much as the college bred generally do or aspire to do, and they take an English paper for the purpose. One who has just come from reading perhaps one of the best English books will find how many with whom he can converse about it? Or suppose he comes from reading a Greek or Latin classic in the original, whose praises are familiar even to the so called illiterate; he will find nobody at all to speak to, but must keep silence about it. Indeed, there is hardly the professor in our colleges, who, if he has mastered the difficulties of the language, has proportionally mastered the difficulties of the wit and poetry of a Greek poet, and has any sympathy to impart to the alert and heroic reader; and as for the sacred Scriptures, or Bibles of mankind, who in this town can tell me even their titles? Most men do not know that any nation but the Hebrews have had a scripture. A man, any man, will go considerably out of his way to pick up a silver dollar; but here are golden words, which the wisest men of antiquity have uttered, and whose worth the wise of every succeeding age have assured us of;\u2014and yet we learn to read only as far as Easy Reading, the primers and class-books, and when we leave school, the \u201cLittle Reading,\u201d and story books, which are for boys and beginners; and our reading, our conversation and thinking, are all on a very low level, worthy only of pygmies and manikins.\n\nI aspire to be acquainted with wiser men than this our Concord soil has produced, whose names are hardly known here. Or shall I hear the name of Plato and never read his book? As if Plato were my townsman and I never saw him,\u2014my next neighbor and I never heard him speak or attended to the wisdom of his words. But how actually is it? His Dialogues, which contain what was immortal in him, lie on the next shelf, and yet I never read them. We are underbred and low-lived and illiterate; and in this respect I confess I do not make any very broad distinction between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all, and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects. We should be as good as the worthies of antiquity, but partly by first knowing how good they were. We are a race of tit-men, and soar but little higher in our intellectual flights than the columns of the daily paper.\n\nIt is not all books that are as dull as their readers. There are probably words addressed to our condition exactly, which, if we could really hear and understand, would be more salutary than the morning or the spring to our lives, and possibly put a new aspect on the face of things for us. How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life. Moreover, with wisdom we shall learn liberality. The solitary hired man on a farm in the outskirts of Concord, who has had his second birth and peculiar religious experience, and is driven as he believes into the silent gravity and exclusiveness by his faith, may think it is not true; but Zoroaster, thousands of years ago, travelled the same road and had the same experience; but he, being wise, knew it to be universal, and treated his neighbors accordingly, and is even said to have invented and established worship among men. Let him humbly commune with Zoroaster then, and through the liberalizing influence of all the worthies, with Jesus Christ himself, and let \u201cour church\u201d go by the board.\n\nWe boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture. I do not wish to flatter my townsmen, nor to be flattered by them, for that will not advance either of us. We need to be provoked,\u2014goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only; but excepting the half-starved Lyceum in the winter, and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, no school for ourselves. We spend more on almost any article of bodily aliment or ailment than on our mental aliment. It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure\u2014if they are indeed so well off\u2014to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. Shall the world be confined to one Paris or one Oxford forever? Cannot students be boarded here and get a liberal education under the skies of Concord? Can we not hire some Abelard to lecture to us? Alas! what with foddering the cattle and tending the store, we are kept from school too long, and our education is sadly neglected. In this country, the village should in some respects take the place of the nobleman of Europe. It should be the patron of the fine arts. It is rich enough. It wants only the magnanimity and refinement. It can spend money enough on such things as farmers and traders value, but it is thought Utopian to propose spending money for things which more intelligent men know to be of far more worth. This town has spent seventeen thousand dollars on a town-house, thank fortune or politics, but probably it will not spend so much on living wit, the true meat to put into that shell, in a hundred years. The one hundred and twenty-five dollars annually subscribed for a Lyceum in the winter is better spent than any other equal sum raised in the town. If we live in the nineteenth century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the nineteenth century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial? If we will read newspapers, why not skip the gossip of Boston and take the best newspaper in the world at once?\u2014not be sucking the pap of \u201cneutral family\u201d papers, or browsing \u201cOlive-Branches\u201d here in New England. Let the reports of all the learned societies come to us, and we will see if they know any thing. Why should we leave it to Harper & Brothers and Redding & Co. to select our reading? As the nobleman of cultivated taste surrounds himself with whatever conduces to his culture,\u2014genius\u2014learning\u2014wit\u2014books\u2014paintings\u2014statuary\u2014music\u2014philosophical instruments, and the like; so let the village do,\u2014not stop short at a pedagogue, a parson, a sexton, a parish library, and three selectmen, because our pilgrim forefathers got through a cold winter once on a bleak rock with these. To act collectively is according to the spirit of our institutions; and I am confident that, as our circumstances are more flourishing, our means are greater than the nobleman\u2019s. New England can hire all the wise men in the world to come and teach her, and board them round the while, and not be provincial at all. That is the uncommon school we want. Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, go round a little there, and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.\n\nSounds\nBut while we are confined to books, though the most select and classic, and read only particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard. Much is published, but little printed. The rays which stream through the shutter will be no longer remembered when the shutter is wholly removed. No method nor discipline can supersede the necessity of being forever on the alert. What is a course of history, or philosophy, or poetry, no matter how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity.\n\nI did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller\u2019s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that \u201cfor yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday, forward for to-morrow, and overhead for the passing day.\u201d This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.\n\nI had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end. If we were always indeed getting our living, and regulating our lives according to the last and best mode we had learned, we should never be troubled with ennui. Follow your genius closely enough, and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour. Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the time the villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried my house sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and my meditations were almost uninterupted. It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy\u2019s pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories. They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as if unwilling to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch an awning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run round its legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves are strewn about. It looked as if this was the way these forms came to be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, and bedsteads,\u2014because they once stood in their midst.\n\nMy house was on the side of a hill, immediately on the edge of the larger wood, in the midst of a young forest of pitch pines and hickories, and half a dozen rods from the pond, to which a narrow footpath led down the hill. In my front yard grew the strawberry, blackberry, and life-everlasting, johnswort and goldenrod, shrub-oaks and sand-cherry, blueberry and groundnut. Near the end of May, the sand-cherry (Cerasus pumila,) adorned the sides of the path with its delicate flowers arranged in umbels cylindrically about its short stems, which last, in the fall, weighed down with good sized and handsome cherries, fell over in wreaths like rays on every side. I tasted them out of compliment to Nature, though they were scarcely palatable. The sumach (Rhus glabra,) grew luxuriantly about the house, pushing up through the embankment which I had made, and growing five or six feet the first season. Its broad pinnate tropical leaf was pleasant though strange to look on. The large buds, suddenly pushing out late in the spring from dry sticks which had seemed to be dead, developed themselves as by magic into graceful green and tender boughs, an inch in diameter; and sometimes, as I sat at my window, so heedlessly did they grow and tax their weak joints, I heard a fresh and tender bough suddenly fall like a fan to the ground, when there was not a breath of air stirring, broken off by its own weight. In August, the large masses of berries, which, when in flower, had attracted many wild bees, gradually assumed their bright velvety crimson hue, and by their weight again bent down and broke the tender limbs.\n\nAs I sit at my window this summer afternoon, hawks are circling about my clearing; the tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by twos and threes athwart my view, or perching restless on the white-pine boughs behind my house, gives a voice to the air; a fishhawk dimples the glassy surface of the pond and brings up a fish; a mink steals out of the marsh before my door and seizes a frog by the shore; the sedge is bending under the weight of the reed-birds flitting hither and thither; and for the last half hour I have heard the rattle of railroad cars, now dying away and then reviving like the beat of a partridge, conveying travellers from Boston to the country. For I did not live so out of the world as that boy who, as I hear, was put out to a farmer in the east part of the town, but ere long ran away and came home again, quite down at the heel and homesick. He had never seen such a dull and out-of-the-way place; the folks were all gone off; why, you couldn\u2019t even hear the whistle! I doubt if there is such a place in Massachusetts now:\u2014\n\n\u201cIn truth, our village has become a butt\nFor one of those fleet railroad shafts, and o\u2019er\nOur peaceful plain its soothing sound is\u2014Concord.\u201d\n\nThe Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.\n\nThe whistle of the locomotive penetrates my woods summer and winter, sounding like the scream of a hawk sailing over some farmer\u2019s yard, informing me that many restless city merchants are arriving within the circle of the town, or adventurous country traders from the other side. As they come under one horizon, they shout their warning to get off the track to the other, heard sometimes through the circles of two towns. Here come your groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And here\u2019s your pay for them! screams the countryman\u2019s whistle; timber like long battering rams going twenty miles an hour against the city\u2019s walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy laden that dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility the country hands a chair to the city. All the Indian huckleberry hills are stripped, all the cranberry meadows are raked into the city. Up comes the cotton, down goes the woven cloth; up comes the silk, down goes the woollen; up come the books, but down goes the wit that writes them.\n\nWhen I meet the engine with its train of cars moving off with planetary motion,\u2014or, rather, like a comet, for the beholder knows not if with that velocity and with that direction it will ever revisit this system, since its orbit does not look like a returning curve,\u2014with its steam cloud like a banner streaming behind in golden and silver wreaths, like many a downy cloud which I have seen, high in the heavens, unfolding its masses to the light,\u2014as if this travelling demigod, this cloud-compeller, would ere long take the sunset sky for the livery of his train; when I hear the iron horse make the hills echo with his snort like thunder, shaking the earth with his feet, and breathing fire and smoke from his nostrils, (what kind of winged horse or fiery dragon they will put into the new Mythology I don\u2019t know), it seems as if the earth had got a race now worthy to inhabit it. If all were as it seems, and men made the elements their servants for noble ends! If the cloud that hangs over the engine were the perspiration of heroic deeds, or as beneficent as that which floats over the farmer\u2019s fields, then the elements and Nature herself would cheerfully accompany men on their errands and be their escort.\n\nI watch the passage of the morning cars with the same feeling that I do the rising of the sun, which is hardly more regular. Their train of clouds stretching far behind and rising higher and higher, going to heaven while the cars are going to Boston, conceals the sun for a minute and casts my distant field into the shade, a celestial train beside which the petty train of cars which hugs the earth is but the barb of the spear. The stabler of the iron horse was up early this winter morning by the light of the stars amid the mountains, to fodder and harness his steed. Fire, too, was awakened thus early to put the vital heat in him and get him off. If the enterprise were as innocent as it is early! If the snow lies deep, they strap on his snow-shoes, and with the giant plow, plow a furrow from the mountains to the seaboard, in which the cars, like a following drill-barrow, sprinkle all the restless men and floating merchandise in the country for seed. All day the fire-steed flies over the country, stopping only that his master may rest, and I am awakened by his tramp and defiant snort at midnight, when in some remote glen in the woods he fronts the elements incased in ice and snow; and he will reach his stall only with the morning star, to start once more on his travels without rest or slumber. Or perchance, at evening, I hear him in his stable blowing off the superfluous energy of the day, that he may calm his nerves and cool his liver and brain for a few hours of iron slumber. If the enterprise were as heroic and commanding as it is protracted and unwearied!\n\nFar through unfrequented woods on the confines of towns, where once only the hunter penetrated by day, in the darkest night dart these bright saloons without the knowledge of their inhabitants; this moment stopping at some brilliant station-house in town or city, where a social crowd is gathered, the next in the Dismal Swamp, scaring the owl and fox. The startings and arrivals of the cars are now the epochs in the village day. They go and come with such regularity and precision, and their whistle can be heard so far, that the farmers set their clocks by them, and thus one well conducted institution regulates a whole country. Have not men improved somewhat in punctuality since the railroad was invented? Do they not talk and think faster in the depot than they did in the stage-office? There is something electrifying in the atmosphere of the former place. I have been astonished at the miracles it has wrought; that some of my neighbors, who, I should have prophesied, once for all, would never get to Boston by so prompt a conveyance, are on hand when the bell rings. To do things \u201crailroad fashion\u201d is now the by-word; and it is worth the while to be warned so often and so sincerely by any power to get off its track. There is no stopping to read the riot act, no firing over the heads of the mob, in this case. We have constructed a fate, an Atropos, that never turns aside. (Let that be the name of your engine.) Men are advertised that at a certain hour and minute these bolts will be shot toward particular points of the compass; yet it interferes with no man\u2019s business, and the children go to school on the other track. We live the steadier for it. We are all educated thus to be sons of Tell. The air is full of invisible bolts. Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then.\n\nWhat recommends commerce to me is its enterprise and bravery. It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter. I see these men every day go about their business with more or less courage and content, doing more even than they suspect, and perchance better employed than they could have consciously devised. I am less affected by their heroism who stood up for half an hour in the front line at Buena Vista, than by the steady and cheerful valor of the men who inhabit the snow-plough for their winter quarters; who have not merely the three-o\u2019-clock in the morning courage, which Bonaparte thought was the rarest, but whose courage does not go to rest so early, who go to sleep only when the storm sleeps or the sinews of their iron steed are frozen. On this morning of the Great Snow, perchance, which is still raging and chilling men\u2019s blood, I hear the muffled tone of their engine bell from out the fog bank of their chilled breath, which announces that the cars are coming, without long delay, notwithstanding the veto of a New England north-east snow storm, and I behold the ploughmen covered with snow and rime, their heads peering, above the mould-board which is turning down other than daisies and the nests of field-mice, like bowlders of the Sierra Nevada, that occupy an outside place in the universe.\n\nCommerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments, and hence its singular success. I am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain, reminding me of foreign parts, of coral reefs, and Indian oceans, and tropical climes, and the extent of the globe. I feel more like a citizen of the world at the sight of the palm-leaf which will cover so many flaxen New England heads the next summer, the Manilla hemp and cocoa-nut husks, the old junk, gunny bags, scrap iron, and rusty nails. This car-load of torn sails is more legible and interesting now than if they should be wrought into paper and printed books. Who can write so graphically the history of the storms they have weathered as these rents have done? They are proof-sheets which need no correction. Here goes lumber from the Maine woods, which did not go out to sea in the last freshet, risen four dollars on the thousand because of what did go out or was split up; pine, spruce, cedar,\u2014first, second, third, and fourth qualities, so lately all of one quality, to wave over the bear, and moose, and caribou. Next rolls Thomaston lime, a prime lot, which will get far among the hills before it gets slacked. These rags in bales, of all hues and qualities, the lowest condition to which cotton and linen descend, the final result of dress,\u2014of patterns which are now no longer cried up, unless it be in Milwaukie, as those splendid articles, English, French, or American prints, ginghams, muslins, &c., gathered from all quarters both of fashion and poverty, going to become paper of one color or a few shades only, on which forsooth will be written tales of real life, high and low, and founded on fact! This closed car smells of salt fish, the strong New England and commercial scent, reminding me of the Grand Banks and the fisheries. Who has not seen a salt fish, thoroughly cured for this world, so that nothing can spoil it, and putting the perseverance of the saints to the blush? with which you may sweep or pave the streets, and split your kindlings, and the teamster shelter himself and his lading against sun wind and rain behind it,\u2014and the trader, as a Concord trader once did, hang it up by his door for a sign when he commences business, until at last his oldest customer cannot tell surely whether it be animal, vegetable, or mineral, and yet it shall be as pure as a snowflake, and if it be put into a pot and boiled, will come out an excellent dun fish for a Saturday\u2019s dinner. Next Spanish hides, with the tails still preserving their twist and the angle of elevation they had when the oxen that wore them were careering over the pampas of the Spanish main,\u2014a type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost hopeless and incurable are all constitutional vices. I confess, that practically speaking, when I have learned a man\u2019s real disposition, I have no hopes of changing it for the better or worse in this state of existence. As the Orientals say, \u201cA cur\u2019s tail may be warmed, and pressed, and bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve years\u2019 labor bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural form.\u201d The only effectual cure for such inveteracies as these tails exhibit is to make glue of them, which I believe is what is usually done with them, and then they will stay put and stick. Here is a hogshead of molasses or of brandy directed to Edouard Smith, Cuttingsville, Vermont, some trader among the Green Mountains, who imports for the farmers near his clearing, and now perchance stands over his bulk-head and thinks of the last arrivals on the coast, how they may affect the price for him, telling his customers this moment, as he has told them twenty times before this morning, that he expects some by the next train of prime quality. It is advertised in the Cuttingsville Times.\n\nWhile these things go up other things come down. Warned by the whizzing sound, I look up from my book and see some tall pine, hewn on far northern hills, which has winged its way over the Green Mountains and the Connecticut, shot like an arrow through the township within ten minutes, and scarce another eye beholds it; going\n\n\u201cto be the mast\nOf some great ammiral.\u201d\n\nAnd hark! here comes the cattle-train bearing the cattle of a thousand hills, sheepcots, stables, and cow-yards in the air, drovers with their sticks, and shepherd boys in the midst of their flocks, all but the mountain pastures, whirled along like leaves blown from the mountains by the September gales. The air is filled with the bleating of calves and sheep, and the hustling of oxen, as if a pastoral valley were going by. When the old bell-wether at the head rattles his bell, the mountains do indeed skip like rams and the little hills like lambs. A car-load of drovers, too, in the midst, on a level with their droves now, their vocation gone, but still clinging to their useless sticks as their badge of office. But their dogs, where are they? It is a stampede to them; they are quite thrown out; they have lost the scent. Methinks I hear them barking behind the Peterboro\u2019 Hills, or panting up the western slope of the Green Mountains. They will not be in at the death. Their vocation, too, is gone. Their fidelity and sagacity are below par now. They will slink back to their kennels in disgrace, or perchance run wild and strike a league with the wolf and the fox. So is your pastoral life whirled past and away. But the bell rings, and I must get off the track and let the cars go by;\u2014\n\nWhat\u2019s the railroad to me?\nI never go to see\nWhere it ends.\nIt fills a few hollows,\nAnd makes banks for the swallows,\nIt sets the sand a-blowing,\nAnd the blackberries a-growing,\n\nbut I cross it like a cart-path in the woods. I will not have my eyes put out and my ears spoiled by its smoke and steam and hissing.\n\nNow that the cars are gone by and all the restless world with them, and the fishes in the pond no longer feel their rumbling, I am more alone than ever. For the rest of the long afternoon, perhaps, my meditations are interrupted only by the faint rattle of a carriage or team along the distant highway.\n\nSometimes, on Sundays, I heard the bells, the Lincoln, Acton, Bedford, or Concord bell, when the wind was favorable, a faint, sweet, and, as it were, natural melody, worth importing into the wilderness. At a sufficient distance over the woods this sound acquires a certain vibratory hum, as if the pine needles in the horizon were the strings of a harp which it swept. All sound heard at the greatest possible distance produces one and the same effect, a vibration of the universal lyre, just as the intervening atmosphere makes a distant ridge of earth interesting to our eyes by the azure tint it imparts to it. There came to me in this case a melody which the air had strained, and which had conversed with every leaf and needle of the wood, that portion of the sound which the elements had taken up and modulated and echoed from vale to vale. The echo is, to some extent, an original sound, and therein is the magic and charm of it. It is not merely a repetition of what was worth repeating in the bell, but partly the voice of the wood; the same trivial words and notes sung by a wood-nymph.\n\nAt evening, the distant lowing of some cow in the horizon beyond the woods sounded sweet and melodious, and at first I would mistake it for the voices of certain minstrels by whom I was sometimes serenaded, who might be straying over hill and dale; but soon I was not unpleasantly disappointed when it was prolonged into the cheap and natural music of the cow. I do not mean to be satirical, but to express my appreciation of those youths\u2019 singing, when I state that I perceived clearly that it was akin to the music of the cow, and they were at length one articulation of Nature.\n\nRegularly at half past seven, in one part of the summer, after the evening train had gone by, the whippoorwills chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the ridge pole of the house. They would begin to sing almost with as much precision as a clock, within five minutes of a particular time, referred to the setting of the sun, every evening. I had a rare opportunity to become acquainted with their habits. Sometimes I heard four or five at once in different parts of the wood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so near me that I distinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often that singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider\u2019s web, only proportionally louder. Sometimes one would circle round and round me in the woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a string, when probably I was near its eggs. They sang at intervals throughout the night, and were again as musical as ever just before and about dawn.\n\nWhen other birds are still the screech owls take up the strain, like mourning women their ancient u-lu-lu. Their dismal scream is truly Ben Jonsonian. Wise midnight hags! It is no honest and blunt tu-whit tu-who of the poets, but, without jesting, a most solemn graveyard ditty, the mutual consolations of suicide lovers remembering the pangs and the delights of supernal love in the infernal groves. Yet I love to hear their wailing, their doleful responses, trilled along the wood-side; reminding me sometimes of music and singing birds; as if it were the dark and tearful side of music, the regrets and sighs that would fain be sung. They are the spirits, the low spirits and melancholy forebodings, of fallen souls that once in human shape night-walked the earth and did the deeds of darkness, now expiating their sins with their wailing hymns or threnodies in the scenery of their transgressions. They give me a new sense of the variety and capacity of that nature which is our common dwelling. Oh-o-o-o-o that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! sighs one on this side of the pond, and circles with the restlessness of despair to some new perch on the gray oaks. Then\u2014that I never had been bor-r-r-r-n! echoes another on the farther side with tremulous sincerity, and\u2014bor-r-r-r-n! comes faintly from far in the Lincoln woods.\n\nI was also serenaded by a hooting owl. Near at hand you could fancy it the most melancholy sound in Nature, as if she meant by this to stereotype and make permanent in her choir the dying moans of a human being,\u2014some poor weak relic of mortality who has left hope behind, and howls like an animal, yet with human sobs, on entering the dark valley, made more awful by a certain gurgling melodiousness,\u2014I find myself beginning with the letters gl when I try to imitate it,\u2014expressive of a mind which has reached the gelatinous mildewy stage in the mortification of all healthy and courageous thought. It reminded me of ghouls and idiots and insane howlings. But now one answers from far woods in a strain made really melodious by distance,\u2014Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer hoo; and indeed for the most part it suggested only pleasing associations, whether heard by day or night, summer or winter.\n\nI rejoice that there are owls. Let them do the idiotic and maniacal hooting for men. It is a sound admirably suited to swamps and twilight woods which no day illustrates, suggesting a vast and undeveloped nature which men have not recognized. They represent the stark twilight and unsatisfied thoughts which all have. All day the sun has shone on the surface of some savage swamp, where the single spruce stands hung with usnea lichens, and small hawks circulate above, and the chickadee lisps amid the evergreens, and the partridge and rabbit skulk beneath; but now a more dismal and fitting day dawns, and a different race of creatures awakes to express the meaning of Nature there.\n\nLate in the evening I heard the distant rumbling of wagons over bridges,\u2014a sound heard farther than almost any other at night,\u2014the baying of dogs, and sometimes again the lowing of some disconsolate cow in a distant barn-yard. In the mean while all the shore rang with the trump of bullfrogs, the sturdy spirits of ancient wine-bibbers and wassailers, still unrepentant, trying to sing a catch in their Stygian lake,\u2014if the Walden nymphs will pardon the comparison, for though there are almost no weeds, there are frogs there,\u2014who would fain keep up the hilarious rules of their old festal tables, though their voices have waxed hoarse and solemnly grave, mocking at mirth, and the wine has lost its flavor, and become only liquor to distend their paunches, and sweet intoxication never comes to drown the memory of the past, but mere saturation and waterloggedness and distention. The most aldermanic, with his chin upon a heart-leaf, which serves for a napkin to his drooling chaps, under this northern shore quaffs a deep draught of the once scorned water, and passes round the cup with the ejaculation tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk, tr-r-r-oonk! and straightway comes over the water from some distant cove the same password repeated, where the next in seniority and girth has gulped down to his mark; and when this observance has made the circuit of the shores, then ejaculates the master of ceremonies, with satisfaction, tr-r-r-oonk! and each in his turn repeats the same down to the least distended, leakiest, and flabbiest paunched, that there be no mistake; and then the bowl goes round again and again, until the sun disperses the morning mist, and only the patriarch is not under the pond, but vainly bellowing troonk from time to time, and pausing for a reply.\n\nI am not sure that I ever heard the sound of cock-crowing from my clearing, and I thought that it might be worth the while to keep a cockerel for his music merely, as a singing bird. The note of this once wild Indian pheasant is certainly the most remarkable of any bird\u2019s, and if they could be naturalized without being domesticated, it would soon become the most famous sound in our woods, surpassing the clangor of the goose and the hooting of the owl; and then imagine the cackling of the hens to fill the pauses when their lords\u2019 clarions rested! No wonder that man added this bird to his tame stock,\u2014to say nothing of the eggs and drumsticks. To walk in a winter morning in a wood where these birds abounded, their native woods, and hear the wild cockerels crow on the trees, clear and shrill for miles over the resounding earth, drowning the feebler notes of other birds,\u2014think of it! It would put nations on the alert. Who would not be early to rise, and rise earlier and earlier every successive day of his life, till he became unspeakably healthy, wealthy, and wise? This foreign bird\u2019s note is celebrated by the poets of all countries along with the notes of their native songsters. All climates agree with brave Chanticleer. He is more indigenous even than the natives. His health is ever good, his lungs are sound, his spirits never flag. Even the sailor on the Atlantic and Pacific is awakened by his voice; but its shrill sound never roused me from my slumbers. I kept neither dog, cat, cow, pig, nor hens, so that you would have said there was a deficiency of domestic sounds; neither the churn, nor the spinning wheel, nor even the singing of the kettle, nor the hissing of the urn, nor children crying, to comfort one. An old-fashioned man would have lost his senses or died of ennui before this. Not even rats in the wall, for they were starved out, or rather were never baited in,\u2014only squirrels on the roof and under the floor, a whippoorwill on the ridge pole, a blue-jay screaming beneath the window, a hare or woodchuck under the house, a screech-owl or a cat-owl behind it, a flock of wild geese or a laughing loon on the pond, and a fox to bark in the night. Not even a lark or an oriole, those mild plantation birds, ever visited my clearing. No cockerels to crow nor hens to cackle in the yard. No yard! but unfenced Nature reaching up to your very sills. A young forest growing up under your meadows, and wild sumachs and blackberry vines breaking through into your cellar; sturdy pitch pines rubbing and creaking against the shingles for want of room, their roots reaching quite under the house. Instead of a scuttle or a blind blown off in the gale,\u2014a pine tree snapped off or torn up by the roots behind your house for fuel. Instead of no path to the front-yard gate in the Great Snow,\u2014no gate,\u2014no front-yard,\u2014and no path to the civilized world!\n\nSolitude\nThis is a delicious evening, when the whole body is one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of the pond in my shirt sleeves, though it is cool as well as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to attract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling wind from over the water. Sympathy with the fluttering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but not ruffled. These small waves raised by the evening wind are as remote from storm as the smooth reflecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, and some creatures lull the rest with their notes. The repose is never complete. The wildest animals do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and skunk, and rabbit, now roam the fields and woods without fear. They are Nature\u2019s watchmen,\u2014links which connect the days of animated life.\n\nWhen I return to my house I find that visitors have been there and left their cards, either a bunch of flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who come rarely to the woods take some little piece of the forest into their hands to play with by the way, which they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and dropped it on my table. I could always tell if visitors had called in my absence, either by the bended twigs or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of what sex or age or quality they were by some slight trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the railroad, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the passage of a traveller along the highway sixty rods off by the scent of his pipe.\n\nThere is commonly sufficient space about us. Our horizon is never quite at our elbows. The thick wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but somewhat is always clearing, familiar and worn by us, appropriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed from Nature. For what reason have I this vast range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men? My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house is visible from any place but the hill-tops within half a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded by woods all to myself; a distant view of the railroad where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of the fence which skirts the woodland road on the other. But for the most part it is as solitary where I live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At night there was never a traveller passed my house, or knocked at my door, more than if I were the first or last man; unless it were in the spring, when at long intervals some came from the village to fish for pouts,\u2014they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond of their own natures, and baited their hooks with darkness,\u2014but they soon retreated, usually with light baskets, and left \u201cthe world to darkness and to me,\u201d and the black kernel of the night was never profaned by any human neighborhood. I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.\n\nYet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet and tender, the most innocent and encouraging society may be found in any natural object, even for the poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There was never yet such a storm but it was \u00c6olian music to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself with other men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at their hands which my fellows have not, and were especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter myself, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the near neighborhood of man was not essential to a serene and healthy life. To be alone was something unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight around my house, an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me, as made the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant, and I have never thought of them since. Every little pine needle expanded and swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so distinctly made aware of the presence of something kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accustomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the nearest of blood to me and humanest was not a person nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be strange to me again.\u2014\n\n\u201cMourning untimely consumes the sad;\nFew are their days in the land of the living,\nBeautiful daughter of Toscar.\u201d\n\nSome of my pleasantest hours were during the long rain storms in the spring or fall, which confined me to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an early twilight ushered in a long evening in which many thoughts had time to take root and unfold themselves. In those driving north-east rains which tried the village houses so, when the maids stood ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its protection. In one heavy thunder shower the lightning struck a large pitch-pine across the pond, making a very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. I passed it again the other day, and was struck with awe on looking up and beholding that mark, now more distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. Men frequently say to me, \u201cI should think you would feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially.\u201d I am tempted to reply to such,\u2014This whole earth which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabitants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot be appreciated by our instruments? Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? This which you put seems to me not to be the most important question. What sort of space is that which separates a man from his fellows and makes him solitary? I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar-room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the grocery, Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men most congregate, but to the perennial source of our life, whence in all our experience we have found that to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends out its roots in that direction. This will vary with different natures, but this is the place where a wise man will dig his cellar.... I one evening overtook one of my townsmen, who has accumulated what is called \u201ca handsome property,\u201d\u2014though I never got a fair view of it,\u2014on the Walden road, driving a pair of cattle to market, who inquired of me how I could bring my mind to give up so many of the comforts of life. I answered that I was very sure I liked it passably well; I was not joking. And so I went home to my bed, and left him to pick his way through the darkness and the mud to Brighton,\u2014or Bright-town,\u2014which place he would reach some time in the morning.\n\nAny prospect of awakening or coming to life to a dead man makes indifferent all times and places. The place where that may occur is always the same, and indescribably pleasant to all our senses. For the most part we allow only outlying and transient circumstances to make our occasions. They are, in fact, the cause of our distraction. Nearest to all things is that power which fashions their being. Next to us the grandest laws are continually being executed. Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.\n\n\u201cHow vast and profound is the influence of the subtile powers of Heaven and of Earth!\u201d\n\n\u201cWe seek to perceive them, and we do not see them; we seek to hear them, and we do not hear them; identified with the substance of things, they cannot be separated from them.\u201d\n\n\u201cThey cause that in all the universe men purify and sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. They are every where, above us, on our left, on our right; they environ us on all sides.\u201d\n\nWe are the subjects of an experiment which is not a little interesting to me. Can we not do without the society of our gossips a little while under these circumstances,\u2014have our own thoughts to cheer us? Confucius says truly, \u201cVirtue does not remain as an abandoned orphan; it must of necessity have neighbors.\u201d\n\nWith thinking we may be beside ourselves in a sane sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand aloof from actions and their consequences; and all things, good and bad, go by us like a torrent. We are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either the drift-wood in the stream, or Indra in the sky looking down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected by an actual event which appears to concern me much more. I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it; and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes.\n\nI find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will. Solitude is not measured by the miles of space that intervene between a man and his fellows. The really diligent student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge College is as solitary as a dervish in the desert. The farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he is employed; but when he comes home at night he cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his thoughts, but must be where he can \u201csee the folks,\u201d and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate himself for his day\u2019s solitude; and hence he wonders how the student can sit alone in the house all night and most of the day without ennui and \u201cthe blues;\u201d but he does not realize that the student, though in the house, is still at work in his field, and chopping in his woods, as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recreation and society that the latter does, though it may be a more condensed form of it.\n\nSociety is commonly too cheap. We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war. We meet at the post-office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside every night; we live thick and are in each other\u2019s way, and stumble over one another, and I think that we thus lose some respect for one another. Certainly less frequency would suffice for all important and hearty communications. Consider the girls in a factory,\u2014never alone, hardly in their dreams. It would be better if there were but one inhabitant to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.\n\nI have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.\n\nI have a great deal of company in my house; especially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. God is alone,\u2014but the devil, he is far from being alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dandelion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse-fly, or a bumble-bee. I am no more lonely than the Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or the south wind, or an April shower, or a January thaw, or the first spider in a new house.\n\nI have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, and fringed it with pine woods; who tells me stories of old time and of new eternity; and between us we manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth and pleasant views of things, even without apples or cider,\u2014a most wise and humorous friend, whom I love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever did Goffe or Whalley; and though he is thought to be dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to her fables; for she has a genius of unequalled fertility, and her memory runs back farther than mythology, and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on what fact every one is founded, for the incidents occurred when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and is likely to outlive all her children yet.\n\nThe indescribable innocence and beneficence of Nature,\u2014of sun and wind and rain, of summer and winter,\u2014such health, such cheer, they afford forever! and such sympathy have they ever with our race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun\u2019s brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not partly leaves and vegetable mould myself?\n\nWhat is the pill which will keep us well, serene, contented? Not my or thy great-grandfather\u2019s, but our great-grandmother Nature\u2019s universal, vegetable, botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, which come out of those long shallow black-schooner looking wagons which we sometimes see made to carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of this at the fountain-head of the day, why, then, we must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for the benefit of those who have lost their subscription ticket to morning time in this world. But remember, it will not keep quite till noon-day even in the coolest cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no worshipper of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that old herb-doctor \u00c6sculapius, and who is represented on monuments holding a serpent in one hand, and in the other a cup out of which the serpent sometimes drinks; but rather of Hebe, cupbearer to Jupiter, who was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who had the power of restoring gods and men to the vigor of youth. She was probably the only thoroughly sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it was spring.\n\nVisitors\nI think that I love society as much as most, and am ready enough to fasten myself like a bloodsucker for the time to any full-blooded man that comes in my way. I am naturally no hermit, but might possibly sit out the sturdiest frequenter of the bar-room, if my business called me thither.\n\nI had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society. When visitors came in larger and unexpected numbers there was but the third chair for them all, but they generally economized the room by standing up. It is surprising how many great men and women a small house will contain. I have had twenty-five or thirty souls, with their bodies, at once under my roof, and yet we often parted without being aware that we had come very near to one another. Many of our houses, both public and private, with their almost innumerable apartments, their huge halls and their cellars for the storage of wines and other munitions of peace, appear to me extravagantly large for their inhabitants. They are so vast and magnificent that the latter seem to be only vermin which infest them. I am surprised when the herald blows his summons before some Tremont or Astor or Middlesex House, to see come creeping out over the piazza for all inhabitants a ridiculous mouse, which soon again slinks into some hole in the pavement.\n\nOne inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house, the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my guest when we began to utter the big thoughts in big words. You want room for your thoughts to get into sailing trim and run a course or two before they make their port. The bullet of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the hearer, else it may plough out again through the side of his head. Also, our sentences wanted room to unfold and form their columns in the interval. Individuals, like nations, must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground, between them. I have found it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side. In my house we were so near that we could not begin to hear,\u2014we could not speak low enough to be heard; as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they break each other\u2019s undulations. If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers, then we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other\u2019s breath; but if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart, that all animal heat and moisture may have a chance to evaporate. If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other\u2019s voice in any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. As the conversation began to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther apart till they touched the wall in opposite corners, and then commonly there was not room enough.\n\nMy \u201cbest\u201d room, however, my withdrawing room, always ready for company, on whose carpet the sun rarely fell, was the pine wood behind my house. Thither in summer days, when distinguished guests came, I took them, and a priceless domestic swept the floor and dusted the furniture and kept the things in order.\n\nIf one guest came he sometimes partook of my frugal meal, and it was no interruption to conversation to be stirring a hasty-pudding, or watching the rising and maturing of a loaf of bread in the ashes, in the mean while. But if twenty came and sat in my house there was nothing said about dinner, though there might be bread enough for two, more than if eating were a forsaken habit; but we naturally practised abstinence; and this was never felt to be an offence against hospitality, but the most proper and considerate course. The waste and decay of physical life, which so often needs repair, seemed miraculously retarded in such a case, and the vital vigor stood its ground. I could entertain thus a thousand as well as twenty; and if any ever went away disappointed or hungry from my house when they found me at home, they may depend upon it that I sympathized with them at least. So easy is it, though many housekeepers doubt it, to establish new and better customs in the place of the old. You need not rest your reputation on the dinners you give. For my own part, I was never so effectually deterred from frequenting a man\u2019s house, by any kind of Cerberus whatever, as by the parade one made about dining me, which I took to be a very polite and roundabout hint never to trouble him so again. I think I shall never revisit those scenes. I should be proud to have for the motto of my cabin those lines of Spenser which one of my visitors inscribed on a yellow walnut leaf for a card:\u2014\n\n\u201cArrived there, the little house they fill,\n    Ne looke for entertainment where none was;\nRest is their feast, and all things at their will:\n    The noblest mind the best contentment has.\u201d\n\nWhen Winslow, afterward governor of the Plymouth Colony, went with a companion on a visit of ceremony to Massasoit on foot through the woods, and arrived tired and hungry at his lodge, they were well received by the king, but nothing was said about eating that day. When the night arrived, to quote their own words,\u2014\u201cHe laid us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks laid a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.\u201d At one o\u2019clock the next day Massasoit \u201cbrought two fishes that he had shot,\u201d about thrice as big as a bream; \u201cthese being boiled, there were at least forty looked for a share in them. The most ate of them. This meal only we had in two nights and a day; and had not one of us bought a partridge, we had taken our journey fasting.\u201d Fearing that they would be light-headed for want of food and also sleep, owing to \u201cthe savages\u2019 barbarous singing, (for they used to sing themselves asleep,)\u201d and that they might get home while they had strength to travel, they departed. As for lodging, it is true they were but poorly entertained, though what they found an inconvenience was no doubt intended for an honor; but as far as eating was concerned, I do not see how the Indians could have done better. They had nothing to eat themselves, and they were wiser than to think that apologies could supply the place of food to their guests; so they drew their belts tighter and said nothing about it. Another time when Winslow visited them, it being a season of plenty with them, there was no deficiency in this respect.\n\nAs for men, they will hardly fail one any where. I had more visitors while I lived in the woods than at any other period in my life; I mean that I had some. I met several there under more favorable circumstances than I could any where else. But fewer came to see me on trivial business. In this respect, my company was winnowed by my mere distance from town. I had withdrawn so far within the great ocean of solitude, into which the rivers of society empty, that for the most part, so far as my needs were concerned, only the finest sediment was deposited around me. Beside, there were wafted to me evidences of unexplored and uncultivated continents on the other side.\n\nWho should come to my lodge this morning but a true Homeric or Paphlagonian man,\u2014he had so suitable and poetic a name that I am sorry I cannot print it here,\u2014a Canadian, a woodchopper and post-maker, who can hole fifty posts in a day, who made his last supper on a woodchuck which his dog caught. He, too, has heard of Homer, and, \u201cif it were not for books,\u201d would \u201cnot know what to do rainy days,\u201d though perhaps he has not read one wholly through for many rainy seasons. Some priest who could pronounce the Greek itself taught him to read his verse in the testament in his native parish far away; and now I must translate to him, while he holds the book, Achilles\u2019 reproof to Patroclus for his sad countenance.\u2014\u201cWhy are you in tears, Patroclus, like a young girl?\u201d\u2014\n\n\u201cOr have you alone heard some news from Phthia?\nThey say that Men\u0153tius lives yet, son of Actor,\nAnd Peleus lives, son of \u00c6acus, among the Myrmidons,\nEither of whom having died, we should greatly grieve.\u201d\n\nHe says, \u201cThat\u2019s good.\u201d He has a great bundle of white-oak bark under his arm for a sick man, gathered this Sunday morning. \u201cI suppose there\u2019s no harm in going after such a thing to-day,\u201d says he. To him Homer was a great writer, though what his writing was about he did not know. A more simple and natural man it would be hard to find. Vice and disease, which cast such a sombre moral hue over the world, seemed to have hardly any existence for him. He was about twenty-eight years old, and had left Canada and his father\u2019s house a dozen years before to work in the States, and earn money to buy a farm with at last, perhaps in his native country. He was cast in the coarsest mould; a stout but sluggish body, yet gracefully carried, with a thick sunburnt neck, dark bushy hair, and dull sleepy blue eyes, which were occasionally lit up with expression. He wore a flat gray cloth cap, a dingy wool-colored greatcoat, and cowhide boots. He was a great consumer of meat, usually carrying his dinner to his work a couple of miles past my house,\u2014for he chopped all summer,\u2014in a tin pail; cold meats, often cold woodchucks, and coffee in a stone bottle which dangled by a string from his belt; and sometimes he offered me a drink. He came along early, crossing my bean-field, though without anxiety or haste to get to his work, such as Yankees exhibit. He wasn\u2019t a-going to hurt himself. He didn\u2019t care if he only earned his board. Frequently he would leave his dinner in the bushes, when his dog had caught a woodchuck by the way, and go back a mile and a half to dress it and leave it in the cellar of the house where he boarded, after deliberating first for half an hour whether he could not sink it in the pond safely till nightfall,\u2014loving to dwell long upon these themes. He would say, as he went by in the morning, \u201cHow thick the pigeons are! If working every day were not my trade, I could get all the meat I should want by hunting,\u2014pigeons, woodchucks, rabbits, partridges,\u2014by gosh! I could get all I should want for a week in one day.\u201d\n\nHe was a skilful chopper, and indulged in some flourishes and ornaments in his art. He cut his trees level and close to the ground, that the sprouts which came up afterward might be more vigorous and a sled might slide over the stumps; and instead of leaving a whole tree to support his corded wood, he would pare it away to a slender stake or splinter which you could break off with your hand at last.\n\nHe interested me because he was so quiet and solitary and so happy withal; a well of good humor and contentment which overflowed at his eyes. His mirth was without alloy. Sometimes I saw him at his work in the woods, felling trees, and he would greet me with a laugh of inexpressible satisfaction, and a salutation in Canadian French, though he spoke English as well. When I approached him he would suspend his work, and with half-suppressed mirth lie along the trunk of a pine which he had felled, and, peeling off the inner bark, roll it up into a ball and chew it while he laughed and talked. Such an exuberance of animal spirits had he that he sometimes tumbled down and rolled on the ground with laughter at any thing which made him think and tickled him. Looking round upon the trees he would exclaim,\u2014\u201cBy George! I can enjoy myself well enough here chopping; I want no better sport.\u201d Sometimes, when at leisure, he amused himself all day in the woods with a pocket pistol, firing salutes to himself at regular intervals as he walked. In the winter he had a fire by which at noon he warmed his coffee in a kettle; and as he sat on a log to eat his dinner the chickadees would sometimes come round and alight on his arm and peck at the potato in his fingers; and he said that he \u201cliked to have the little fellers about him.\u201d\n\nIn him the animal man chiefly was developed. In physical endurance and contentment he was cousin to the pine and the rock. I asked him once if he was not sometimes tired at night, after working all day; and he answered, with a sincere and serious look, \u201cGorrappit, I never was tired in my life.\u201d But the intellectual and what is called spiritual man in him were slumbering as in an infant. He had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way in which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child. When Nature made him, she gave him a strong body and contentment for his portion, and propped him on every side with reverence and reliance, that he might live out his threescore years and ten a child. He was so genuine and unsophisticated that no introduction would serve to introduce him, more than if you introduced a woodchuck to your neighbor. He had got to find him out as you did. He would not play any part. Men paid him wages for work, and so helped to feed and clothe him; but he never exchanged opinions with them. He was so simply and naturally humble\u2014if he can be called humble who never aspires\u2014that humility was no distinct quality in him, nor could he conceive of it. Wiser men were demigods to him. If you told him that such a one was coming, he did as if he thought that any thing so grand would expect nothing of himself, but take all the responsibility on itself, and let him be forgotten still. He never heard the sound of praise. He particularly reverenced the writer and the preacher. Their performances were miracles. When I told him that I wrote considerably, he thought for a long time that it was merely the handwriting which I meant, for he could write a remarkably good hand himself. I sometimes found the name of his native parish handsomely written in the snow by the highway, with the proper French accent, and knew that he had passed. I asked him if he ever wished to write his thoughts. He said that he had read and written letters for those who could not, but he never tried to write thoughts,\u2014no, he could not, he could not tell what to put first, it would kill him, and then there was spelling to be attended to at the same time!\n\nI heard that a distinguished wise man and reformer asked him if he did not want the world to be changed; but he answered with a chuckle of surprise in his Canadian accent, not knowing that the question had ever been entertained before, \u201cNo, I like it well enough.\u201d It would have suggested many things to a philosopher to have dealings with him. To a stranger he appeared to know nothing of things in general; yet I sometimes saw in him a man whom I had not seen before, and I did not know whether he was as wise as Shakespeare or as simply ignorant as a child, whether to suspect him of a fine poetic consciousness or of stupidity. A townsman told me that when he met him sauntering through the village in his small close-fitting cap, and whistling to himself, he reminded him of a prince in disguise.\n\nHis only books were an almanac and an arithmetic, in which last he was considerably expert. The former was a sort of cyclop\u00e6dia to him, which he supposed to contain an abstract of human knowledge, as indeed it does to a considerable extent. I loved to sound him on the various reforms of the day, and he never failed to look at them in the most simple and practical light. He had never heard of such things before. Could he do without factories? I asked. He had worn the home-made Vermont gray, he said, and that was good. Could he dispense with tea and coffee? Did this country afford any beverage beside water? He had soaked hemlock leaves in water and drank it, and thought that was better than water in warm weather. When I asked him if he could do without money, he showed the convenience of money in such a way as to suggest and coincide with the most philosophical accounts of the origin of this institution, and the very derivation of the word pecunia. If an ox were his property, and he wished to get needles and thread at the store, he thought it would be inconvenient and impossible soon to go on mortgaging some portion of the creature each time to that amount. He could defend many institutions better than any philosopher, because, in describing them as they concerned him, he gave the true reason for their prevalence, and speculation had not suggested to him any other. At another time, hearing Plato\u2019s definition of a man,\u2014a biped without feathers,\u2014and that one exhibited a cock plucked and called it Plato\u2019s man, he thought it an important difference that the knees bent the wrong way. He would sometimes exclaim, \u201cHow I love to talk! By George, I could talk all day!\u201d I asked him once, when I had not seen him for many months, if he had got a new idea this summer. \u201cGood Lord,\u201d said he, \u201ca man that has to work as I do, if he does not forget the ideas he has had, he will do well. May be the man you hoe with is inclined to race; then, by gorry, your mind must be there; you think of weeds.\u201d He would sometimes ask me first on such occasions, if I had made any improvement. One winter day I asked him if he was always satisfied with himself, wishing to suggest a substitute within him for the priest without, and some higher motive for living. \u201cSatisfied!\u201d said he; \u201csome men are satisfied with one thing, and some with another. One man, perhaps, if he has got enough, will be satisfied to sit all day with his back to the fire and his belly to the table, by George!\u201d Yet I never, by any man\u0153uvring, could get him to take the spiritual view of things; the highest that he appeared to conceive of was a simple expediency, such as you might expect an animal to appreciate; and this, practically, is true of most men. If I suggested any improvement in his mode of life, he merely answered, without expressing any regret, that it was too late. Yet he thoroughly believed in honesty and the like virtues.\n\nThere was a certain positive originality, however slight, to be detected in him, and I occasionally observed that he was thinking for himself and expressing his own opinion, a phenomenon so rare that I would any day walk ten miles to observe it, and it amounted to the re-origination of many of the institutions of society. Though he hesitated, and perhaps failed to express himself distinctly, he always had a presentable thought behind. Yet his thinking was so primitive and immersed in his animal life, that, though more promising than a merely learned man\u2019s, it rarely ripened to any thing which can be reported. He suggested that there might be men of genius in the lowest grades of life, however permanently humble and illiterate, who take their own view always, or do not pretend to see at all; who are as bottomless even as Walden Pond was thought to be, though they may be dark and muddy.\n\nMany a traveller came out of his way to see me and the inside of my house, and, as an excuse for calling, asked for a glass of water. I told them that I drank at the pond, and pointed thither, offering to lend them a dipper. Far off as I lived, I was not exempted from the annual visitation which occurs, methinks, about the first of April, when every body is on the move; and I had my share of good luck, though there were some curious specimens among my visitors. Half-witted men from the almshouse and elsewhere came to see me; but I endeavored to make them exercise all the wit they had, and make their confessions to me; in such cases making wit the theme of our conversation; and so was compensated. Indeed, I found some of them to be wiser than the so called overseers of the poor and selectmen of the town, and thought it was time that the tables were turned. With respect to wit, I learned that there was not much difference between the half and the whole. One day, in particular, an inoffensive, simple-minded pauper, whom with others I had often seen used as fencing stuff, standing or sitting on a bushel in the fields to keep cattle and himself from straying, visited me, and expressed a wish to live as I did. He told me, with the utmost simplicity and truth, quite superior, or rather inferior, to any thing that is called humility, that he was \u201cdeficient in intellect.\u201d These were his words. The Lord had made him so, yet he supposed the Lord cared as much for him as for another. \u201cI have always been so,\u201d said he, \u201cfrom my childhood; I never had much mind; I was not like other children; I am weak in the head. It was the Lord\u2019s will, I suppose.\u201d And there he was to prove the truth of his words. He was a metaphysical puzzle to me. I have rarely met a fellow-man on such promising ground,\u2014it was so simple and sincere and so true all that he said. And, true enough, in proportion as he appeared to humble himself was he exalted. I did not know at first but it was the result of a wise policy. It seemed that from such a basis of truth and frankness as the poor weak-headed pauper had laid, our intercourse might go forward to something better than the intercourse of sages.\n\nI had some guests from those not reckoned commonly among the town\u2019s poor, but who should be; who are among the world\u2019s poor, at any rate; guests who appeal, not to your hospitality, but to your hospitalality; who earnestly wish to be helped, and preface their appeal with the information that they are resolved, for one thing, never to help themselves. I require of a visitor that he be not actually starving, though he may have the very best appetite in the world, however he got it. Objects of charity are not guests. Men who did not know when their visit had terminated, though I went about my business again, answering them from greater and greater remoteness. Men of almost every degree of wit called on me in the migrating season. Some who had more wits than they knew what to do with; runaway slaves with plantation manners, who listened from time to time, like the fox in the fable, as if they heard the hounds a-baying on their track, and looked at me beseechingly, as much as to say,\u2014\n\n\u201cO Christian, will you send me back?\u201d\n\nOne real runaway slave, among the rest, whom I helped to forward toward the northstar. Men of one idea, like a hen with one chicken, and that a duckling; men of a thousand ideas, and unkempt heads, like those hens which are made to take charge of a hundred chickens, all in pursuit of one bug, a score of them lost in every morning\u2019s dew,\u2014and become frizzled and mangy in consequence; men of ideas instead of legs, a sort of intellectual centipede that made you crawl all over. One man proposed a book in which visitors should write their names, as at the White Mountains; but, alas! I have too good a memory to make that necessary.\n\nI could not but notice some of the peculiarities of my visitors. Girls and boys and young women generally seemed glad to be in the woods. They looked in the pond and at the flowers, and improved their time. Men of business, even farmers, thought only of solitude and employment, and of the great distance at which I dwelt from something or other; and though they said that they loved a ramble in the woods occasionally, it was obvious that they did not. Restless committed men, whose time was all taken up in getting a living or keeping it; ministers who spoke of God as if they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject, who could not bear all kinds of opinions; doctors, lawyers, uneasy housekeepers who pried into my cupboard and bed when I was out,\u2014how came Mrs. \u2014\u2014 to know that my sheets were not as clean as hers?\u2014young men who had ceased to be young, and had concluded that it was safest to follow the beaten track of the professions,\u2014all these generally said that it was not possible to do so much good in my position. Ay! there was the rub. The old and infirm and the timid, of whatever age or sex, thought most of sickness, and sudden accident and death; to them life seemed full of danger,\u2014what danger is there if you don\u2019t think of any?\u2014and they thought that a prudent man would carefully select the safest position, where Dr. B. might be on hand at a moment\u2019s warning. To them the village was literally a com-munity, a league for mutual defence, and you would suppose that they would not go a-huckleberrying without a medicine chest. The amount of it is, if a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs. Finally, there were the self-styled reformers, the greatest bores of all, who thought that I was forever singing,\u2014\n\nThis is the house that I built;\nThis is the man that lives in the house that I built;\n\nbut they did not know that the third line was,\u2014\n\nThese are the folks that worry the man\nThat lives in the house that I built.\n\nI did not fear the hen-harriers, for I kept no chickens; but I feared the men-harriers rather.\n\nI had more cheering visitors than the last. Children come a-berrying, railroad men taking a Sunday morning walk in clean shirts, fishermen and hunters, poets and philosophers; in short, all honest pilgrims, who came out to the woods for freedom\u2019s sake, and really left the village behind, I was ready to greet with,\u2014\u201cWelcome, Englishmen! welcome, Englishmen!\u201d for I had had communication with that race.\n\nThe Bean-Katelynn\nMeanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Ant\u00e6us. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my curious labor all summer,\u2014to make this portion of the earth\u2019s surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day\u2019s work. It is a fine broad leaf to look on. My auxiliaries are the dews and rains which water this dry soil, and what fertility is in the soil itself, which for the most part is lean and effete. My enemies are worms, cool days, and most of all woodchucks. The last have nibbled for me a quarter of an acre clean. But what right had I to oust johnswort and the rest, and break up their ancient herb garden? Soon, however, the remaining beans will be too tough for them, and go forward to meet new foes.\n\nWhen I was four years old, as I well remember, I was brought from Boston to this my native town, through these very woods and this field, to the pond. It is one of the oldest scenes stamped on my memory. And now to-night my flute has waked the echoes over that very water. The pines still stand here older than I; or, if some have fallen, I have cooked my supper with their stumps, and a new growth is rising all around, preparing another aspect for new infant eyes. Almost the same johnswort springs from the same perennial root in this pasture, and even I have at length helped to clothe that fabulous landscape of my infant dreams, and one of the results of my presence and influence is seen in these bean leaves, corn blades, and potato vines.\n\nI planted about two acres and a half of upland; and as it was only about fifteen years since the land was cleared, and I myself had got out two or three cords of stumps, I did not give it any manure; but in the course of the summer it appeared by the arrowheads which I turned up in hoeing, that an extinct nation had anciently dwelt here and planted corn and beans ere white men came to clear the land, and so, to some extent, had exhausted the soil for this very crop.\n\nBefore yet any woodchuck or squirrel had run across the road, or the sun had got above the shrub oaks, while all the dew was on, though the farmers warned me against it,\u2014I would advise you to do all your work if possible while the dew is on,\u2014I began to level the ranks of haughty weeds in my bean-field and throw dust upon their heads. Early in the morning I worked barefooted, dabbling like a plastic artist in the dewy and crumbling sand, but later in the day the sun blistered my feet. There the sun lighted me to hoe beans, pacing slowly backward and forward over that yellow gravelly upland, between the long green rows, fifteen rods, the one end terminating in a shrub oak copse where I could rest in the shade, the other in a blackberry field where the green berries deepened their tints by the time I had made another bout. Removing the weeds, putting fresh soil about the bean stems, and encouraging this weed which I had sown, making the yellow soil express its summer thought in bean leaves and blossoms rather than in wormwood and piper and millet grass, making the earth say beans instead of grass,\u2014this was my daily work. As I had little aid from horses or cattle, or hired men or boys, or improved implements of husbandry, I was much slower, and became much more intimate with my beans than usual. But labor of the hands, even when pursued to the verge of drudgery, is perhaps never the worst form of idleness. It has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result. A very agricola laboriosus was I to travellers bound westward through Lincoln and Wayland to nobody knows where; they sitting at their ease in gigs, with elbows on knees, and reins loosely hanging in festoons; I the home-staying, laborious native of the soil. But soon my homestead was out of their sight and thought. It was the only open and cultivated field for a great distance on either side of the road; so they made the most of it; and sometimes the man in the field heard more of travellers\u2019 gossip and comment than was meant for his ear: \u201cBeans so late! peas so late!\u201d\u2014for I continued to plant when others had begun to hoe,\u2014the ministerial husbandman had not suspected it. \u201cCorn, my boy, for fodder; corn for fodder.\u201d \u201cDoes he live there?\u201d asks the black bonnet of the gray coat; and the hard-featured farmer reins up his grateful dobbin to inquire what you are doing where he sees no manure in the furrow, and recommends a little chip dirt, or any little waste stuff, or it may be ashes or plaster. But here were two acres and a half of furrows, and only a hoe for cart and two hands to draw it,\u2014there being an aversion to other carts and horses,\u2014and chip dirt far away. Fellow-travellers as they rattled by compared it aloud with the fields which they had passed, so that I came to know how I stood in the agricultural world. This was one field not in Mr. Coleman\u2019s report. And, by the way, who estimates the value of the crop which nature yields in the still wilder fields unimproved by man? The crop of English hay is carefully weighed, the moisture calculated, the silicates and the potash; but in all dells and pond holes in the woods and pastures and swamps grows a rich and various crop only unreaped by man. Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them.\n\nNear at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings the brown-thrasher\u2014or red mavis, as some love to call him\u2014all the morning, glad of your society, that would find out another farmer\u2019s field if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed, he cries,\u2014\u201cDrop it, drop it,\u2014cover it up, cover it up,\u2014pull it up, pull it up, pull it up.\u201d But this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith.\n\nAs I drew a still fresher soil about the rows with my hoe, I disturbed the ashes of unchronicled nations who in primeval years lived under these heavens, and their small implements of war and hunting were brought to the light of this modern day. They lay mingled with other natural stones, some of which bore the marks of having been burned by Indian fires, and some by the sun, and also bits of pottery and glass brought hither by the recent cultivators of the soil. When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. The night-hawk circled overhead in the sunny afternoons\u2014for I sometimes made a day of it\u2014like a mote in the eye, or in heaven\u2019s eye, falling from time to time with a swoop and a sound as if the heavens were rent, torn at last to very rags and tatters, and yet a seamless cope remained; small imps that fill the air and lay their eggs on the ground on bare sand or rocks on the tops of hills, where few have found them; graceful and slender like ripples caught up from the pond, as leaves are raised by the wind to float in the heavens; such kindredship is in Nature. The hawk is aerial brother of the wave which he sails over and surveys, those his perfect air-inflated wings answering to the elemental unfledged pinions of the sea. Or sometimes I watched a pair of hen-hawks circling high in the sky, alternately soaring and descending, approaching, and leaving one another, as if they were the embodiment of my own thoughts. Or I was attracted by the passage of wild pigeons from this wood to that, with a slight quivering winnowing sound and carrier haste; or from under a rotten stump my hoe turned up a sluggish portentous and outlandish spotted salamander, a trace of Egypt and the Nile, yet our contemporary. When I paused to lean on my hoe, these sounds and sights I heard and saw anywhere in the row, a part of the inexhaustible entertainment which the country offers.\n\nOn gala days the town fires its great guns, which echo like popguns to these woods, and some waifs of martial music occasionally penetrate thus far. To me, away there in my bean-field at the other end of the town, the big guns sounded as if a puffball had burst; and when there was a military turnout of which I was ignorant, I have sometimes had a vague sense all the day of some sort of itching and disease in the horizon, as if some eruption would break out there soon, either scarlatina or canker-rash, until at length some more favorable puff of wind, making haste over the fields and up the Wayland road, brought me information of the \u201ctrainers.\u201d It seemed by the distant hum as if somebody\u2019s bees had swarmed, and that the neighbors, according to Virgil\u2019s advice, by a faint tintinnabulum upon the most sonorous of their domestic utensils, were endeavoring to call them down into the hive again. And when the sound died quite away, and the hum had ceased, and the most favorable breezes told no tale, I knew that they had got the last drone of them all safely into the Middlesex hive, and that now their minds were bent on the honey with which it was smeared.\n\nI felt proud to know that the liberties of Massachusetts and of our fatherland were in such safe keeping; and as I turned to my hoeing again I was filled with an inexpressible confidence, and pursued my labor cheerfully with a calm trust in the future.\n\nWhen there were several bands of musicians, it sounded as if all the village was a vast bellows, and all the buildings expanded and collapsed alternately with a din. But sometimes it was a really noble and inspiring strain that reached these woods, and the trumpet that sings of fame, and I felt as if I could spit a Mexican with a good relish,\u2014for why should we always stand for trifles?\u2014and looked round for a woodchuck or a skunk to exercise my chivalry upon. These martial strains seemed as far away as Palestine, and reminded me of a march of crusaders in the horizon, with a slight tantivy and tremulous motion of the elm-tree tops which overhang the village. This was one of the great days; though the sky had from my clearing only the same everlastingly great look that it wears daily, and I saw no difference in it.\n\nIt was a singular experience that long acquaintance which I cultivated with beans, what with planting, and hoeing, and harvesting, and threshing, and picking over and selling them,\u2014the last was the hardest of all,\u2014I might add eating, for I did taste. I was determined to know beans. When they were growing, I used to hoe from five o\u2019clock in the morning till noon, and commonly spent the rest of the day about other affairs. Consider the intimate and curious acquaintance one makes with various kinds of weeds,\u2014it will bear some iteration in the account, for there was no little iteration in the labor,\u2014disturbing their delicate organizations so ruthlessly, and making such invidious distinctions with his hoe, levelling whole ranks of one species, and sedulously cultivating another. That\u2019s Roman wormwood,\u2014that\u2019s pigweed,\u2014that\u2019s sorrel,\u2014that\u2019s piper-grass,\u2014have at him, chop him up, turn his roots upward to the sun, don\u2019t let him have a fibre in the shade, if you do he\u2019ll turn himself t\u2019other side up and be as green as a leek in two days. A long war, not with cranes, but with weeds, those Trojans who had sun and rain and dews on their side. Daily the beans saw me come to their rescue armed with a hoe, and thin the ranks of their enemies, filling up the trenches with weedy dead. Many a lusty crest-waving Hector, that towered a whole foot above his crowding comrades, fell before my weapon and rolled in the dust.\n\nThose summer days which some of my contemporaries devoted to the fine arts in Boston or Rome, and others to contemplation in India, and others to trade in London or New York, I thus, with the other farmers of New England, devoted to husbandry. Not that I wanted beans to eat, for I am by nature a Pythagorean, so far as beans are concerned, whether they mean porridge or voting, and exchanged them for rice; but, perchance, as some must work in fields if only for the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day. It was on the whole a rare amusement, which, continued too long, might have become a dissipation. Though I gave them no manure, and did not hoe them all once, I hoed them unusually well as far as I went, and was paid for it in the end, \u201cthere being in truth,\u201d as Evelyn says, \u201cno compost or l\u00e6tation whatsoever comparable to this continual motion, repastination, and turning of the mould with the spade.\u201d \u201cThe earth,\u201d he adds elsewhere, \u201cespecially if fresh, has a certain magnetism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or virtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is the logic of all the labor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings and other sordid temperings being but the vicars succedaneous to this improvement.\u201d Moreover, this being one of those \u201cworn-out and exhausted lay fields which enjoy their sabbath,\u201d had perchance, as Sir Kenelm Digby thinks likely, attracted \u201cvital spirits\u201d from the air. I harvested twelve bushels of beans.\n\nBut to be more particular, for it is complained that Mr. Coleman has reported chiefly the expensive experiments of gentlemen farmers, my outgoes were,\u2014\n\n    For a hoe,.................................. $ 0.54\n    Ploughing, harrowing, and furrowing,.........  7.50  Too much.\n    Beans for seed,..............................  3.12\u00bd\n    Potatoes for seed,...........................  1.33\n    Peas for seed,...............................  0.40\n    Turnip seed,.................................  0.06\n    White line for crow fence,...................  0.02\n    Horse cultivator and boy three hours,........  1.00\n    Horse and cart to get crop,..................  0.75\n                                                \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\n        In all,................................. $14.72\u00bd\nMy income was (patrem familias vendacem, non emacem esse oportet), from\n\n    Nine bushels and twelve quarts of beans sold,. $16.94\n    Five    \"    large potatoes,.................... 2.50\n    Nine    \"    small,............................. 2.25\n    Grass,.......................................... 1.00\n    Stalks,......................................... 0.75\n                                                  \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\n        In all,................................... $23.44\n    Leaving a pecuniary profit,\n        as I have elsewhere said, of..............  $8.71\u00bd.\nThis is the result of my experience in raising beans. Plant the common small white bush bean about the first of June, in rows three feet by eighteen inches apart, being careful to select fresh round and unmixed seed. First look out for worms, and supply vacancies by planting anew. Then look out for woodchucks, if it is an exposed place, for they will nibble off the earliest tender leaves almost clean as they go; and again, when the young tendrils make their appearance, they have notice of it, and will shear them off with both buds and young pods, sitting erect like a squirrel. But above all harvest as early as possible, if you would escape frosts and have a fair and salable crop; you may save much loss by this means.\n\nThis further experience also I gained. I said to myself, I will not plant beans and corn with so much industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will not grow in this soil, even with less toil and manurance, and sustain me, for surely it has not been exhausted for these crops. Alas! I said this to myself; but now another summer is gone, and another, and another, and I am obliged to say to you, Reader, that the seeds which I planted, if indeed they were the seeds of those virtues, were wormeaten or had lost their vitality, and so did not come up. Commonly men will only be brave as their fathers were brave, or timid. This generation is very sure to plant corn and beans each new year precisely as the Indians did centuries ago and taught the first settlers to do, as if there were a fate in it. I saw an old man the other day, to my astonishment, making the holes with a hoe for the seventieth time at least, and not for himself to lie down in! But why should not the New Englander try new adventures, and not lay so much stress on his grain, his potato and grass crop, and his orchards,\u2014raise other crops than these? Why concern ourselves so much about our beans for seed, and not be concerned at all about a new generation of men? We should really be fed and cheered if when we met a man we were sure to see that some of the qualities which I have named, which we all prize more than those other productions, but which are for the most part broadcast and floating in the air, had taken root and grown in him. Here comes such a subtile and ineffable quality, for instance, as truth or justice, though the slightest amount or new variety of it, along the road. Our ambassadors should be instructed to send home such seeds as these, and Congress help to distribute them over all the land. We should never stand upon ceremony with sincerity. We should never cheat and insult and banish one another by our meanness, if there were present the kernel of worth and friendliness. We should not meet thus in haste. Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are busy about their beans. We would not deal with a man thus plodding ever, leaning on a hoe or a spade as a staff between his work, not as a mushroom, but partially risen out of the earth, something more than erect, like swallows alighted and walking on the ground:\u2014\n\n\u201cAnd as he spake, his wings would now and then\nSpread, as he meant to fly, then close again,\u201d\n\nso that we should suspect that we might be conversing with an angel. Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy.\n\nAncient poetry and mythology suggest, at least, that husbandry was once a sacred art; but it is pursued with irreverent haste and heedlessness by us, our object being to have large farms and large crops merely. We have no festival, nor procession, nor ceremony, not excepting our Cattle-shows and so called Thanksgivings, by which the farmer expresses a sense of the sacredness of his calling, or is reminded of its sacred origin. It is the premium and the feast which tempt him. He sacrifices not to Ceres and the Terrestrial Jove, but to the infernal Plutus rather. By avarice and selfishness, and a grovelling habit, from which none of us is free, of regarding the soil as property, or the means of acquiring property chiefly, the landscape is deformed, husbandry is degraded with us, and the farmer leads the meanest of lives. He knows Nature but as a robber. Cato says that the profits of agriculture are particularly pious or just, (maximeque pius qu\u00e6stus), and according to Varro the old Romans \u201ccalled the same earth Mother and Ceres, and thought that they who cultivated it led a pious and useful life, and that they alone were left of the race of King Saturn.\u201d\n\nWe are wont to forget that the sun looks on our cultivated fields and on the prairies and forests without distinction. They all reflect and absorb his rays alike, and the former make but a small part of the glorious picture which he beholds in his daily course. In his view the earth is all equally cultivated like a garden. Therefore we should receive the benefit of his light and heat with a corresponding trust and magnanimity. What though I value the seed of these beans, and harvest that in the fall of the year? This broad field which I have looked at so long looks not to me as the principal cultivator, but away from me to influences more genial to it, which water and make it green. These beans have results which are not harvested by me. Do they not grow for woodchucks partly? The ear of wheat (in Latin spica, obsoletely speca, from spe, hope) should not be the only hope of the husbandman; its kernel or grain (granum from gerendo, bearing) is not all that it bears. How, then, can our harvest fail? Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds whose seeds are the granary of the birds? It matters little comparatively whether the fields fill the farmer\u2019s barns. The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but his last fruits also.\n\nThe Village\nAfter hoeing, or perhaps reading and writing, in the forenoon, I usually bathed again in the pond, swimming across one of its coves for a stint, and washed the dust of labor from my person, or smoothed out the last wrinkle which study had made, and for the afternoon was absolutely free. Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in hom\u0153opathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. As I walked in the woods to see the birds and squirrels, so I walked in the village to see the men and boys; instead of the wind among the pines I heard the carts rattle. In one direction from my house there was a colony of muskrats in the river meadows; under the grove of elms and buttonwoods in the other horizon was a village of busy men, as curious to me as if they had been prairie dogs, each sitting at the mouth of its burrow, or running over to a neighbor\u2019s to gossip. I went there frequently to observe their habits. The village appeared to me a great news room; and on one side, to support it, as once at Redding & Company\u2019s on State Street, they kept nuts and raisins, or salt and meal and other groceries. Some have such a vast appetite for the former commodity, that is, the news, and such sound digestive organs, that they can sit forever in public avenues without stirring, and let it simmer and whisper through them like the Etesian winds, or as if inhaling ether, it only producing numbness and insensibility to pain,\u2014otherwise it would often be painful to hear,\u2014without affecting the consciousness. I hardly ever failed, when I rambled through the village, to see a row of such worthies, either sitting on a ladder sunning themselves, with their bodies inclined forward and their eyes glancing along the line this way and that, from time to time, with a voluptuous expression, or else leaning against a barn with their hands in their pockets, like caryatides, as if to prop it up. They, being commonly out of doors, heard whatever was in the wind. These are the coarsest mills, in which all gossip is first rudely digested or cracked up before it is emptied into finer and more delicate hoppers within doors. I observed that the vitals of the village were the grocery, the bar-room, the post-office, and the bank; and, as a necessary part of the machinery, they kept a bell, a big gun, and a fire-engine, at convenient places; and the houses were so arranged as to make the most of mankind, in lanes and fronting one another, so that every traveller had to run the gantlet, and every man, woman, and child might get a lick at him. Of course, those who were stationed nearest to the head of the line, where they could most see and be seen, and have the first blow at him, paid the highest prices for their places; and the few straggling inhabitants in the outskirts, where long gaps in the line began to occur, and the traveller could get over walls or turn aside into cow paths, and so escape, paid a very slight ground or window tax. Signs were hung out on all sides to allure him; some to catch him by the appetite, as the tavern and victualling cellar; some by the fancy, as the dry goods store and the jeweller\u2019s; and others by the hair or the feet or the skirts, as the barber, the shoemaker, or the tailor. Besides, there was a still more terrible standing invitation to call at every one of these houses, and company expected about these times. For the most part I escaped wonderfully from these dangers, either by proceeding at once boldly and without deliberation to the goal, as is recommended to those who run the gantlet, or by keeping my thoughts on high things, like Orpheus, who, \u201cloudly singing the praises of the gods to his lyre, drowned the voices of the Sirens, and kept out of danger.\u201d Sometimes I bolted suddenly, and nobody could tell my whereabouts, for I did not stand much about gracefulness, and never hesitated at a gap in a fence. I was even accustomed to make an irruption into some houses, where I was well entertained, and after learning the kernels and very last sieve-ful of news, what had subsided, the prospects of war and peace, and whether the world was likely to hold together much longer, I was let out through the rear avenues, and so escaped to the woods again.\n\nIt was very pleasant, when I stayed late in town, to launch myself into the night, especially if it was dark and tempestuous, and set sail from some bright village parlor or lecture room, with a bag of rye or Indian meal upon my shoulder, for my snug harbor in the woods, having made all tight without and withdrawn under hatches with a merry crew of thoughts, leaving only my outer man at the helm, or even tying up the helm when it was plain sailing. I had many a genial thought by the cabin fire \u201cas I sailed.\u201d I was never cast away nor distressed in any weather, though I encountered some severe storms. It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably, in the darkest night. Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch, I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance. Several times, when a visitor chanced to stay into evening, and it proved a dark night, I was obliged to conduct him to the cart-path in the rear of the house, and then point out to him the direction he was to pursue, and in keeping which he was to be guided rather by his feet than his eyes. One very dark night I directed thus on their way two young men who had been fishing in the pond. They lived about a mile off through the woods, and were quite used to the route. A day or two after one of them told me that they wandered about the greater part of the night, close by their own premises, and did not get home till toward morning, by which time, as there had been several heavy showers in the mean while, and the leaves were very wet, they were drenched to their skins. I have heard of many going astray even in the village streets, when the darkness was so thick that you could cut it with a knife, as the saying is. Some who live in the outskirts, having come to town a-shopping in their wagons, have been obliged to put up for the night; and gentlemen and ladies making a call have gone half a mile out of their way, feeling the sidewalk only with their feet, and not knowing when they turned. It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time. Often in a snow storm, even by day, one will come out upon a well-known road and yet find it impossible to tell which way leads to the village. Though he knows that he has travelled it a thousand times, he cannot recognize a feature in it, but it is as strange to him as if it were a road in Siberia. By night, of course, the perplexity is infinitely greater. In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round,\u2014for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,\u2014do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.\n\nOne afternoon, near the end of the first summer, when I went to the village to get a shoe from the cobbler\u2019s, I was seized and put into jail, because, as I have elsewhere related, I did not pay a tax to, or recognize the authority of, the state which buys and sells men, women, and children, like cattle at the door of its senate-house. I had gone down to the woods for other purposes. But, wherever a man goes, men will pursue and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society. It is true, I might have resisted forcibly with more or less effect, might have run \u201camok\u201d against society; but I preferred that society should run \u201camok\u201d against me, it being the desperate party. However, I was released the next day, obtained my mended shoe, and returned to the woods in season to get my dinner of huckleberries on Fair-Haven Hill. I was never molested by any person but those who represented the state. I had no lock nor bolt but for the desk which held my papers, not even a nail to put over my latch or windows. I never fastened my door night or day, though I was to be absent several days; not even when the next fall I spent a fortnight in the woods of Maine. And yet my house was more respected than if it had been surrounded by a file of soldiers. The tired rambler could rest and warm himself by my fire, the literary amuse himself with the few books on my table, or the curious, by opening my closet door, see what was left of my dinner, and what prospect I had of a supper. Yet, though many people of every class came this way to the pond, I suffered no serious inconvenience from these sources, and I never missed anything but one small book, a volume of Homer, which perhaps was improperly gilded, and this I trust a soldier of our camp has found by this time. I am convinced, that if all men were to live as simply as I then did, thieving and robbery would be unknown. These take place only in communities where some have got more than is sufficient while others have not enough. The Pope\u2019s Homers would soon get properly distributed.\u2014\n\n                \u201cNec bella fuerunt,\nFaginus astabat dum scyphus ante dapes.\u201d\n\n                \u201cNor wars did men molest,\nWhen only beechen bowls were in request.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou who govern public affairs, what need have you to employ punishments? Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends.\u201d\n\nThe Ponds\nSometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward than I habitually dwell, into yet more unfrequented parts of the town, \u201cto fresh woods and pastures new,\u201d or, while the sun was setting, made my supper of huckleberries and blueberries on Fair Haven Hill, and laid up a store for several days. The fruits do not yield their true flavor to the purchaser of them, nor to him who raises them for the market. There is but one way to obtain it, yet few take that way. If you would know the flavor of huckleberries, ask the cow-boy or the partridge. It is a vulgar error to suppose that you have tasted huckleberries who never plucked them. A huckleberry never reaches Boston; they have not been known there since they grew on her three hills. The ambrosial and essential part of the fruit is lost with the bloom which is rubbed off in the market cart, and they become mere provender. As long as Eternal Justice reigns, not one innocent huckleberry can be transported thither from the country\u2019s hills.\n\nOccasionally, after my hoeing was done for the day, I joined some impatient companion who had been fishing on the pond since morning, as silent and motionless as a duck or a floating leaf, and, after practising various kinds of philosophy, had concluded commonly, by the time I arrived, that he belonged to the ancient sect of C\u0153nobites. There was one older man, an excellent fisher and skilled in all kinds of woodcraft, who was pleased to look upon my house as a building erected for the convenience of fishermen; and I was equally pleased when he sat in my doorway to arrange his lines. Once in a while we sat together on the pond, he at one end of the boat, and I at the other; but not many words passed between us, for he had grown deaf in his later years, but he occasionally hummed a psalm, which harmonized well enough with my philosophy. Our intercourse was thus altogether one of unbroken harmony, far more pleasing to remember than if it had been carried on by speech. When, as was commonly the case, I had none to commune with, I used to raise the echoes by striking with a paddle on the side of my boat, filling the surrounding woods with circling and dilating sound, stirring them up as the keeper of a menagerie his wild beasts, until I elicited a growl from every wooded vale and hill-side.\n\nIn warm evenings I frequently sat in the boat playing the flute, and saw the perch, which I seemed to have charmed, hovering around me, and the moon travelling over the ribbed bottom, which was strewed with the wrecks of the forest. Formerly I had come to this pond adventurously, from time to time, in dark summer nights, with a companion, and making a fire close to the water\u2019s edge, which we thought attracted the fishes, we caught pouts with a bunch of worms strung on a thread; and when we had done, far in the night, threw the burning brands high into the air like skyrockets, which, coming down into the pond, were quenched with a loud hissing, and we were suddenly groping in total darkness. Through this, whistling a tune, we took our way to the haunts of men again. But now I had made my home by the shore.\n\nSometimes, after staying in a village parlor till the family had all retired, I have returned to the woods, and, partly with a view to the next day\u2019s dinner, spent the hours of midnight fishing from a boat by moonlight, serenaded by owls and foxes, and hearing, from time to time, the creaking note of some unknown bird close at hand. These experiences were very memorable and valuable to me,\u2014anchored in forty feet of water, and twenty or thirty rods from the shore, surrounded sometimes by thousands of small perch and shiners, dimpling the surface with their tails in the moonlight, and communicating by a long flaxen line with mysterious nocturnal fishes which had their dwelling forty feet below, or sometimes dragging sixty feet of line about the pond as I drifted in the gentle night breeze, now and then feeling a slight vibration along it, indicative of some life prowling about its extremity, of dull uncertain blundering purpose there, and slow to make up its mind. At length you slowly raise, pulling hand over hand, some horned pout squeaking and squirming to the upper air. It was very queer, especially in dark nights, when your thoughts had wandered to vast and cosmogonal themes in other spheres, to feel this faint jerk, which came to interrupt your dreams and link you to Nature again. It seemed as if I might next cast my line upward into the air, as well as downward into this element, which was scarcely more dense. Thus I caught two fishes as it were with one hook.\n\nThe scenery of Walden is on a humble scale, and, though very beautiful, does not approach to grandeur, nor can it much concern one who has not long frequented it or lived by its shore; yet this pond is so remarkable for its depth and purity as to merit a particular description. It is a clear and deep green well, half a mile long and a mile and three quarters in circumference, and contains about sixty-one and a half acres; a perennial spring in the midst of pine and oak woods, without any visible inlet or outlet except by the clouds and evaporation. The surrounding hills rise abruptly from the water to the height of forty to eighty feet, though on the south-east and east they attain to about one hundred and one hundred and fifty feet respectively, within a quarter and a third of a mile. They are exclusively woodland. All our Concord waters have two colors at least; one when viewed at a distance, and another, more proper, close at hand. The first depends more on the light, and follows the sky. In clear weather, in summer, they appear blue at a little distance, especially if agitated, and at a great distance all appear alike. In stormy weather they are sometimes of a dark slate color. The sea, however, is said to be blue one day and green another without any perceptible change in the atmosphere. I have seen our river, when, the landscape being covered with snow, both water and ice were almost as green as grass. Some consider blue \u201cto be the color of pure water, whether liquid or solid.\u201d But, looking directly down into our waters from a boat, they are seen to be of very different colors. Walden is blue at one time and green at another, even from the same point of view. Lying between the earth and the heavens, it partakes of the color of both. Viewed from a hill-top it reflects the color of the sky; but near at hand it is of a yellowish tint next the shore where you can see the sand, then a light green, which gradually deepens to a uniform dark green in the body of the pond. In some lights, viewed even from a hill-top, it is of a vivid green next the shore. Some have referred this to the reflection of the verdure; but it is equally green there against the railroad sand-bank, and in the spring, before the leaves are expanded, and it may be simply the result of the prevailing blue mixed with the yellow of the sand. Such is the color of its iris. This is that portion, also, where in the spring, the ice being warmed by the heat of the sun reflected from the bottom, and also transmitted through the earth, melts first and forms a narrow canal about the still frozen middle. Like the rest of our waters, when much agitated, in clear weather, so that the surface of the waves may reflect the sky at the right angle, or because there is more light mixed with it, it appears at a little distance of a darker blue than the sky itself; and at such a time, being on its surface, and looking with divided vision, so as to see the reflection, I have discerned a matchless and indescribable light blue, such as watered or changeable silks and sword blades suggest, more cerulean than the sky itself, alternating with the original dark green on the opposite sides of the waves, which last appeared but muddy in comparison. It is a vitreous greenish blue, as I remember it, like those patches of the winter sky seen through cloud vistas in the west before sundown. Yet a single glass of its water held up to the light is as colorless as an equal quantity of air. It is well known that a large plate of glass will have a green tint, owing, as the makers say, to its \u201cbody,\u201d but a small piece of the same will be colorless. How large a body of Walden water would be required to reflect a green tint I have never proved. The water of our river is black or a very dark brown to one looking directly down on it, and, like that of most ponds, imparts to the body of one bathing in it a yellowish tinge; but this water is of such crystalline purity that the body of the bather appears of an alabaster whiteness, still more unnatural, which, as the limbs are magnified and distorted withal, produces a monstrous effect, making fit studies for a Michael Angelo.\n\nThe water is so transparent that the bottom can easily be discerned at the depth of twenty-five or thirty feet. Paddling over it, you may see, many feet beneath the surface the schools of perch and shiners, perhaps only an inch long, yet the former easily distinguished by their transverse bars, and you think that they must be ascetic fish that find a subsistence there. Once, in the winter, many years ago, when I had been cutting holes through the ice in order to catch pickerel, as I stepped ashore I tossed my axe back on to the ice, but, as if some evil genius had directed it, it slid four or five rods directly into one of the holes, where the water was twenty-five feet deep. Out of curiosity, I lay down on the ice and looked through the hole, until I saw the axe a little on one side, standing on its head, with its helve erect and gently swaying to and fro with the pulse of the pond; and there it might have stood erect and swaying till in the course of time the handle rotted off, if I had not disturbed it. Making another hole directly over it with an ice chisel which I had, and cutting down the longest birch which I could find in the neighborhood with my knife, I made a slip-noose, which I attached to its end, and, letting it down carefully, passed it over the knob of the handle, and drew it by a line along the birch, and so pulled the axe out again.\n\nThe shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it is bottomless. It is nowhere muddy, and a casual observer would say that there were no weeds at all in it; and of noticeable plants, except in the little meadows recently overflowed, which do not properly belong to it, a closer scrutiny does not detect a flag nor a bulrush, nor even a lily, yellow or white, but only a few small heart-leaves and potamogetons, and perhaps a water-target or two; all which however a bather might not perceive; and these plants are clean and bright like the element they grow in. The stones extend a rod or two into the water, and then the bottom is pure sand, except in the deepest parts, where there is usually a little sediment, probably from the decay of the leaves which have been wafted on to it so many successive falls, and a bright green weed is brought up on anchors even in midwinter.\n\nWe have one other pond just like this, White Pond, in Nine Acre Corner, about two and a half miles westerly; but, though I am acquainted with most of the ponds within a dozen miles of this centre I do not know a third of this pure and well-like character. Successive nations perchance have drank at, admired, and fathomed it, and passed away, and still its water is green and pellucid as ever. Not an intermitting spring! Perhaps on that spring morning when Adam and Eve were driven out of Eden Walden Pond was already in existence, and even then breaking up in a gentle spring rain accompanied with mist and a southerly wind, and covered with myriads of ducks and geese, which had not heard of the fall, when still such pure lakes sufficed them. Even then it had commenced to rise and fall, and had clarified its waters and colored them of the hue they now wear, and obtained a patent of heaven to be the only Walden Pond in the world and distiller of celestial dews. Who knows in how many unremembered nations\u2019 literatures this has been the Castalian Fountain? or what nymphs presided over it in the Golden Age? It is a gem of the first water which Concord wears in her coronet.\n\nYet perchance the first who came to this well have left some trace of their footsteps. I have been surprised to detect encircling the pond, even where a thick wood has just been cut down on the shore, a narrow shelf-like path in the steep hill-side, alternately rising and falling, approaching and receding from the water\u2019s edge, as old probably as the race of man here, worn by the feet of aboriginal hunters, and still from time to time unwittingly trodden by the present occupants of the land. This is particularly distinct to one standing on the middle of the pond in winter, just after a light snow has fallen, appearing as a clear undulating white line, unobscured by weeds and twigs, and very obvious a quarter of a mile off in many places where in summer it is hardly distinguishable close at hand. The snow reprints it, as it were, in clear white type alto-relievo. The ornamented grounds of villas which will one day be built here may still preserve some trace of this.\n\nThe pond rises and falls, but whether regularly or not, and within what period, nobody knows, though, as usual, many pretend to know. It is commonly higher in the winter and lower in the summer, though not corresponding to the general wet and dryness. I can remember when it was a foot or two lower, and also when it was at least five feet higher, than when I lived by it. There is a narrow sand-bar running into it, with very deep water on one side, on which I helped boil a kettle of chowder, some six rods from the main shore, about the year 1824, which it has not been possible to do for twenty-five years; and on the other hand, my friends used to listen with incredulity when I told them, that a few years later I was accustomed to fish from a boat in a secluded cove in the woods, fifteen rods from the only shore they knew, which place was long since converted into a meadow. But the pond has risen steadily for two years, and now, in the summer of \u201952, is just five feet higher than when I lived there, or as high as it was thirty years ago, and fishing goes on again in the meadow. This makes a difference of level, at the outside, of six or seven feet; and yet the water shed by the surrounding hills is insignificant in amount, and this overflow must be referred to causes which affect the deep springs. This same summer the pond has begun to fall again. It is remarkable that this fluctuation, whether periodical or not, appears thus to require many years for its accomplishment. I have observed one rise and a part of two falls, and I expect that a dozen or fifteen years hence the water will again be as low as I have ever known it. Flint\u2019s Pond, a mile eastward, allowing for the disturbance occasioned by its inlets and outlets, and the smaller intermediate ponds also, sympathize with Walden, and recently attained their greatest height at the same time with the latter. The same is true, as far as my observation goes, of White Pond.\n\nThis rise and fall of Walden at long intervals serves this use at least; the water standing at this great height for a year or more, though it makes it difficult to walk round it, kills the shrubs and trees which have sprung up about its edge since the last rise, pitch-pines, birches, alders, aspens, and others, and, falling again, leaves an unobstructed shore; for, unlike many ponds and all waters which are subject to a daily tide, its shore is cleanest when the water is lowest. On the side of the pond next my house, a row of pitch pines fifteen feet high has been killed and tipped over as if by a lever, and thus a stop put to their encroachments; and their size indicates how many years have elapsed since the last rise to this height. By this fluctuation the pond asserts its title to a shore, and thus the shore is shorn, and the trees cannot hold it by right of possession. These are the lips of the lake on which no beard grows. It licks its chaps from time to time. When the water is at its height, the alders, willows, and maples send forth a mass of fibrous red roots several feet long from all sides of their stems in the water, and to the height of three or four feet from the ground, in the effort to maintain themselves; and I have known the high-blueberry bushes about the shore, which commonly produce no fruit, bear an abundant crop under these circumstances.\n\nSome have been puzzled to tell how the shore became so regularly paved. My townsmen have all heard the tradition, the oldest people tell me that they heard it in their youth, that anciently the Indians were holding a pow-wow upon a hill here, which rose as high into the heavens as the pond now sinks deep into the earth, and they used much profanity, as the story goes, though this vice is one of which the Indians were never guilty, and while they were thus engaged the hill shook and suddenly sank, and only one old squaw, named Walden, escaped, and from her the pond was named. It has been conjectured that when the hill shook these stones rolled down its side and became the present shore. It is very certain, at any rate, that once there was no pond here, and now there is one; and this Indian fable does not in any respect conflict with the account of that ancient settler whom I have mentioned, who remembers so well when he first came here with his divining rod, saw a thin vapor rising from the sward, and the hazel pointed steadily downward, and he concluded to dig a well here. As for the stones, many still think that they are hardly to be accounted for by the action of the waves on these hills; but I observe that the surrounding hills are remarkably full of the same kind of stones, so that they have been obliged to pile them up in walls on both sides of the railroad cut nearest the pond; and, moreover, there are most stones where the shore is most abrupt; so that, unfortunately, it is no longer a mystery to me. I detect the paver. If the name was not derived from that of some English locality,\u2014Saffron Walden, for instance,\u2014one might suppose that it was called originally Walled-in Pond.\n\nThe pond was my well ready dug. For four months in the year its water is as cold as it is pure at all times; and I think that it is then as good as any, if not the best, in the town. In the winter, all water which is exposed to the air is colder than springs and wells which are protected from it. The temperature of the pond water which had stood in the room where I sat from five o\u2019clock in the afternoon till noon the next day, the sixth of March, 1846, the thermometer having been up to 65\u00b0 or 70\u00b0 some of the time, owing partly to the sun on the roof, was 42\u00b0, or one degree colder than the water of one of the coldest wells in the village just drawn. The temperature of the Boiling Spring the same day was 45\u00b0, or the warmest of any water tried, though it is the coldest that I know of in summer, when, beside, shallow and stagnant surface water is not mingled with it. Moreover, in summer, Walden never becomes so warm as most water which is exposed to the sun, on account of its depth. In the warmest weather I usually placed a pailful in my cellar, where it became cool in the night, and remained so during the day; though I also resorted to a spring in the neighborhood. It was as good when a week old as the day it was dipped, and had no taste of the pump. Whoever camps for a week in summer by the shore of a pond, needs only bury a pail of water a few feet deep in the shade of his camp to be independent of the luxury of ice.\n\nThere have been caught in Walden pickerel, one weighing seven pounds, to say nothing of another which carried off a reel with great velocity, which the fisherman safely set down at eight pounds because he did not see him, perch and pouts, some of each weighing over two pounds, shiners, chivins or roach (Leuciscus pulchellus), a very few breams, and a couple of eels, one weighing four pounds,\u2014I am thus particular because the weight of a fish is commonly its only title to fame, and these are the only eels I have heard of here;\u2014also, I have a faint recollection of a little fish some five inches long, with silvery sides and a greenish back, somewhat dace-like in its character, which I mention here chiefly to link my facts to fable. Nevertheless, this pond is not very fertile in fish. Its pickerel, though not abundant, are its chief boast. I have seen at one time lying on the ice pickerel of at least three different kinds; a long and shallow one, steel-colored, most like those caught in the river; a bright golden kind, with greenish reflections and remarkably deep, which is the most common here; and another, golden-colored, and shaped like the last, but peppered on the sides with small dark brown or black spots, intermixed with a few faint blood-red ones, very much like a trout. The specific name reticulatus would not apply to this; it should be guttatus rather. These are all very firm fish, and weigh more than their size promises. The shiners, pouts, and perch also, and indeed all the fishes which inhabit this pond, are much cleaner, handsomer, and firmer fleshed than those in the river and most other ponds, as the water is purer, and they can easily be distinguished from them. Probably many ichthyologists would make new varieties of some of them. There are also a clean race of frogs and tortoises, and a few muscels in it; muskrats and minks leave their traces about it, and occasionally a travelling mud-turtle visits it. Sometimes, when I pushed off my boat in the morning, I disturbed a great mud-turtle which had secreted himself under the boat in the night. Ducks and geese frequent it in the spring and fall, the white-bellied swallows (Hirundo bicolor) skim over it, and the peetweets (Totanus macularius) \u201cteter\u201d along its stony shores all summer. I have sometimes disturbed a fishhawk sitting on a white-pine over the water; but I doubt if it is ever profaned by the wing of a gull, like Fair Haven. At most, it tolerates one annual loon. These are all the animals of consequence which frequent it now.\n\nYou may see from a boat, in calm weather, near the sandy eastern shore, where the water is eight or ten feet deep, and also in some other parts of the pond, some circular heaps half a dozen feet in diameter by a foot in height, consisting of small stones less than a hen\u2019s egg in size, where all around is bare sand. At first you wonder if the Indians could have formed them on the ice for any purpose, and so, when the ice melted, they sank to the bottom; but they are too regular and some of them plainly too fresh for that. They are similar to those found in rivers; but as there are no suckers nor lampreys here, I know not by what fish they could be made. Perhaps they are the nests of the chivin. These lend a pleasing mystery to the bottom.\n\nThe shore is irregular enough not to be monotonous. I have in my mind\u2019s eye the western indented with deep bays, the bolder northern, and the beautifully scalloped southern shore, where successive capes overlap each other and suggest unexplored coves between. The forest has never so good a setting, nor is so distinctly beautiful, as when seen from the middle of a small lake amid hills which rise from the water\u2019s edge; for the water in which it is reflected not only makes the best foreground in such a case, but, with its winding shore, the most natural and agreeable boundary to it. There is no rawness nor imperfection in its edge there, as where the axe has cleared a part, or a cultivated field abuts on it. The trees have ample room to expand on the water side, and each sends forth its most vigorous branch in that direction. There Nature has woven a natural selvage, and the eye rises by just gradations from the low shrubs of the shore to the highest trees. There are few traces of man\u2019s hand to be seen. The water laves the shore as it did a thousand years ago.\n\nA lake is the landscape\u2019s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth\u2019s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature. The fluviatile trees next the shore are the slender eyelashes which fringe it, and the wooded hills and cliffs around are its overhanging brows.\n\nStanding on the smooth sandy beach at the east end of the pond, in a calm September afternoon, when a slight haze makes the opposite shore line indistinct, I have seen whence came the expression, \u201cthe glassy surface of a lake.\u201d When you invert your head, it looks like a thread of finest gossamer stretched across the valley, and gleaming against the distant pine woods, separating one stratum of the atmosphere from another. You would think that you could walk dry under it to the opposite hills, and that the swallows which skim over might perch on it. Indeed, they sometimes dive below this line, as it were by mistake, and are undeceived. As you look over the pond westward you are obliged to employ both your hands to defend your eyes against the reflected as well as the true sun, for they are equally bright; and if, between the two, you survey its surface critically, it is literally as smooth as glass, except where the skater insects, at equal intervals scattered over its whole extent, by their motions in the sun produce the finest imaginable sparkle on it, or, perchance, a duck plumes itself, or, as I have said, a swallow skims so low as to touch it. It may be that in the distance a fish describes an arc of three or four feet in the air, and there is one bright flash where it emerges, and another where it strikes the water; sometimes the whole silvery arc is revealed; or here and there, perhaps, is a thistle-down floating on its surface, which the fishes dart at and so dimple it again. It is like molten glass cooled but not congealed, and the few motes in it are pure and beautiful like the imperfections in glass. You may often detect a yet smoother and darker water, separated from the rest as if by an invisible cobweb, boom of the water nymphs, resting on it. From a hill-top you can see a fish leap in almost any part; for not a pickerel or shiner picks an insect from this smooth surface but it manifestly disturbs the equilibrium of the whole lake. It is wonderful with what elaborateness this simple fact is advertised,\u2014this piscine murder will out,\u2014and from my distant perch I distinguish the circling undulations when they are half a dozen rods in diameter. You can even detect a water-bug (Gyrinus) ceaselessly progressing over the smooth surface a quarter of a mile off; for they furrow the water slightly, making a conspicuous ripple bounded by two diverging lines, but the skaters glide over it without rippling it perceptibly. When the surface is considerably agitated there are no skaters nor water-bugs on it, but apparently, in calm days, they leave their havens and adventurously glide forth from the shore by short impulses till they completely cover it. It is a soothing employment, on one of those fine days in the fall when all the warmth of the sun is fully appreciated, to sit on a stump on such a height as this, overlooking the pond, and study the dimpling circles which are incessantly inscribed on its otherwise invisible surface amid the reflected skies and trees. Over this great expanse there is no disturbance but it is thus at once gently smoothed away and assuaged, as, when a vase of water is jarred, the trembling circles seek the shore and all is smooth again. Not a fish can leap or an insect fall on the pond but it is thus reported in circling dimples, in lines of beauty, as it were the constant welling up of its fountain, the gentle pulsing of its life, the heaving of its breast. The thrills of joy and thrills of pain are undistinguishable. How peaceful the phenomena of the lake! Again the works of man shine as in the spring. Ay, every leaf and twig and stone and cobweb sparkles now at mid-afternoon as when covered with dew in a spring morning. Every motion of an oar or an insect produces a flash of light; and if an oar falls, how sweet the echo!\n\nIn such a day, in September or October, Walden is a perfect forest mirror, set round with stones as precious to my eye as if fewer or rarer. Nothing so fair, so pure, and at the same time so large, as a lake, perchance, lies on the surface of the earth. Sky water. It needs no fence. Nations come and go without defiling it. It is a mirror which no stone can crack, whose quicksilver will never wear off, whose gilding Nature continually repairs; no storms, no dust, can dim its surface ever fresh;\u2014a mirror in which all impurity presented to it sinks, swept and dusted by the sun\u2019s hazy brush,\u2014this the light dust-cloth,\u2014which retains no breath that is breathed on it, but sends its own to float as clouds high above its surface, and be reflected in its bosom still.\n\nA field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate in its nature between land and sky. On land only the grass and trees wave, but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see where the breeze dashes across it by the streaks or flakes of light. It is remarkable that we can look down on its surface. We shall, perhaps, look down thus on the surface of air at length, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps over it.\n\nThe skaters and water-bugs finally disappear in the latter part of October, when the severe frosts have come; and then and in November, usually, in a calm day, there is absolutely nothing to ripple the surface. One November afternoon, in the calm at the end of a rain storm of several days\u2019 duration, when the sky was still completely overcast and the air was full of mist, I observed that the pond was remarkably smooth, so that it was difficult to distinguish its surface; though it no longer reflected the bright tints of October, but the sombre November colors of the surrounding hills. Though I passed over it as gently as possible, the slight undulations produced by my boat extended almost as far as I could see, and gave a ribbed appearance to the reflections. But, as I was looking over the surface, I saw here and there at a distance a faint glimmer, as if some skater insects which had escaped the frosts might be collected there, or, perchance, the surface, being so smooth, betrayed where a spring welled up from the bottom. Paddling gently to one of these places, I was surprised to find myself surrounded by myriads of small perch, about five inches long, of a rich bronze color in the green water, sporting there, and constantly rising to the surface and dimpling it, sometimes leaving bubbles on it. In such transparent and seemingly bottomless water, reflecting the clouds, I seemed to be floating through the air as in a balloon, and their swimming impressed me as a kind of flight or hovering, as if they were a compact flock of birds passing just beneath my level on the right or left, their fins, like sails, set all around them. There were many such schools in the pond, apparently improving the short season before winter would draw an icy shutter over their broad skylight, sometimes giving to the surface an appearance as if a slight breeze struck it, or a few rain-drops fell there. When I approached carelessly and alarmed them, they made a sudden splash and rippling with their tails, as if one had struck the water with a brushy bough, and instantly took refuge in the depths. At length the wind rose, the mist increased, and the waves began to run, and the perch leaped much higher than before, half out of water, a hundred black points, three inches long, at once above the surface. Even as late as the fifth of December, one year, I saw some dimples on the surface, and thinking it was going to rain hard immediately, the air being full of mist, I made haste to take my place at the oars and row homeward; already the rain seemed rapidly increasing, though I felt none on my cheek, and I anticipated a thorough soaking. But suddenly the dimples ceased, for they were produced by the perch, which the noise of my oars had seared into the depths, and I saw their schools dimly disappearing; so I spent a dry afternoon after all.\n\nAn old man who used to frequent this pond nearly sixty years ago, when it was dark with surrounding forests, tells me that in those days he sometimes saw it all alive with ducks and other water fowl, and that there were many eagles about it. He came here a-fishing, and used an old log canoe which he found on the shore. It was made of two white-pine logs dug out and pinned together, and was cut off square at the ends. It was very clumsy, but lasted a great many years before it became water-logged and perhaps sank to the bottom. He did not know whose it was; it belonged to the pond. He used to make a cable for his anchor of strips of hickory bark tied together. An old man, a potter, who lived by the pond before the Revolution, told him once that there was an iron chest at the bottom, and that he had seen it. Sometimes it would come floating up to the shore; but when you went toward it, it would go back into deep water and disappear. I was pleased to hear of the old log canoe, which took the place of an Indian one of the same material but more graceful construction, which perchance had first been a tree on the bank, and then, as it were, fell into the water, to float there for a generation, the most proper vessel for the lake. I remember that when I first looked into these depths there were many large trunks to be seen indistinctly lying on the bottom, which had either been blown over formerly, or left on the ice at the last cutting, when wood was cheaper; but now they have mostly disappeared.\n\nWhen I first paddled a boat on Walden, it was completely surrounded by thick and lofty pine and oak woods, and in some of its coves grape vines had run over the trees next the water and formed bowers under which a boat could pass. The hills which form its shores are so steep, and the woods on them were then so high, that, as you looked down from the west end, it had the appearance of an amphitheatre for some kind of sylvan spectacle. I have spent many an hour, when I was younger, floating over its surface as the zephyr willed, having paddled my boat to the middle, and lying on my back across the seats, in a summer forenoon, dreaming awake, until I was aroused by the boat touching the sand, and I arose to see what shore my fates had impelled me to; days when idleness was the most attractive and productive industry. Many a forenoon have I stolen away, preferring to spend thus the most valued part of the day; for I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days, and spent them lavishly; nor do I regret that I did not waste more of them in the workshop or the teacher\u2019s desk. But since I left those shores the woodchoppers have still further laid them waste, and now for many a year there will be no more rambling through the aisles of the wood, with occasional vistas through which you see the water. My Juno may be excused if she is silent henceforth. How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?\n\nNow the trunks of trees on the bottom, and the old log canoe, and the dark surrounding woods, are gone, and the villagers, who scarcely know where it lies, instead of going to the pond to bathe or drink, are thinking to bring its water, which should be as sacred as the Ganges at least, to the village in a pipe, to wash their dishes with!\u2014to earn their Walden by the turning of a cock or drawing of a plug! That devilish Iron Horse, whose ear-rending neigh is heard throughout the town, has muddied the Boiling Spring with his foot, and he it is that has browsed off all the woods on Walden shore, that Trojan horse, with a thousand men in his belly, introduced by mercenary Greeks! Where is the country\u2019s champion, the Moore of Moore Hill, to meet him at the Deep Cut and thrust an avenging lance between the ribs of the bloated pest?\n\nNevertheless, of all the characters I have known, perhaps Walden wears best, and best preserves its purity. Many men have been likened to it, but few deserve that honor. Though the woodchoppers have laid bare first this shore and then that, and the Irish have built their sties by it, and the railroad has infringed on its border, and the ice-men have skimmed it once, it is itself unchanged, the same water which my youthful eyes fell on; all the change is in me. It has not acquired one permanent wrinkle after all its ripples. It is perennially young, and I may stand and see a swallow dip apparently to pick an insect from its surface as of yore. It struck me again tonight, as if I had not seen it almost daily for more than twenty years,\u2014Why, here is Walden, the same woodland lake that I discovered so many years ago; where a forest was cut down last winter another is springing up by its shore as lustily as ever; the same thought is welling up to its surface that was then; it is the same liquid joy and happiness to itself and its Maker, ay, and it may be to me. It is the work of a brave man surely, in whom there was no guile! He rounded this water with his hand, deepened and clarified it in his thought, and in his will bequeathed it to Concord. I see by its face that it is visited by the same reflection; and I can almost say, Walden, is it you?\n\nIt is no dream of mine,\nTo ornament a line;\nI cannot come nearer to God and Heaven\nThan I live to Walden even.\nI am its stony shore,\nAnd the breeze that passes o\u2019er;\nIn the hollow of my hand\nAre its water and its sand,\nAnd its deepest resort\nLies high in my thought.\n\nThe cars never pause to look at it; yet I fancy that the engineers and firemen and brakemen, and those passengers who have a season ticket and see it often, are better men for the sight. The engineer does not forget at night, or his nature does not, that he has beheld this vision of serenity and purity once at least during the day. Though seen but once, it helps to wash out State-street and the engine\u2019s soot. One proposes that it be called \u201cGod\u2019s Drop.\u201d\n\nI have said that Walden has no visible inlet nor outlet, but it is on the one hand distantly and indirectly related to Flint\u2019s Pond, which is more elevated, by a chain of small ponds coming from that quarter, and on the other directly and manifestly to Concord River, which is lower, by a similar chain of ponds through which in some other geological period it may have flowed, and by a little digging, which God forbid, it can be made to flow thither again. If by living thus reserved and austere, like a hermit in the woods, so long, it has acquired such wonderful purity, who would not regret that the comparatively impure waters of Flint\u2019s Pond should be mingled with it, or itself should ever go to waste its sweetness in the ocean wave?\n\nFlint\u2019s, or Sandy Pond, in Lincoln, our greatest lake and inland sea, lies about a mile east of Walden. It is much larger, being said to contain one hundred and ninety-seven acres, and is more fertile in fish; but it is comparatively shallow, and not remarkably pure. A walk through the woods thither was often my recreation. It was worth the while, if only to feel the wind blow on your cheek freely, and see the waves run, and remember the life of mariners. I went a-chestnutting there in the fall, on windy days, when the nuts were dropping into the water and were washed to my feet; and one day, as I crept along its sedgy shore, the fresh spray blowing in my face, I came upon the mouldering wreck of a boat, the sides gone, and hardly more than the impression of its flat bottom left amid the rushes; yet its model was sharply defined, as if it were a large decayed pad, with its veins. It was as impressive a wreck as one could imagine on the sea-shore, and had as good a moral. It is by this time mere vegetable mould and undistinguishable pond shore, through which rushes and flags have pushed up. I used to admire the ripple marks on the sandy bottom, at the north end of this pond, made firm and hard to the feet of the wader by the pressure of the water, and the rushes which grew in Indian file, in waving lines, corresponding to these marks, rank behind rank, as if the waves had planted them. There also I have found, in considerable quantities, curious balls, composed apparently of fine grass or roots, of pipewort perhaps, from half an inch to four inches in diameter, and perfectly spherical. These wash back and forth in shallow water on a sandy bottom, and are sometimes cast on the shore. They are either solid grass, or have a little sand in the middle. At first you would say that they were formed by the action of the waves, like a pebble; yet the smallest are made of equally coarse materials, half an inch long, and they are produced only at one season of the year. Moreover, the waves, I suspect, do not so much construct as wear down a material which has already acquired consistency. They preserve their form when dry for an indefinite period.\n\nFlint\u2019s Pond! Such is the poverty of our nomenclature. What right had the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it? Some skin-flint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and horny talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like;\u2014so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that he had made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legislature gave him,\u2014him who thought only of its money value; whose presence perchance cursed all the shore; who exhausted the land around it, and would fain have exhausted the waters within it; who regretted only that it was not English hay or cranberry meadow,\u2014there was nothing to redeem it, forsooth, in his eyes,\u2014and would have drained and sold it for the mud at its bottom. It did not turn his mill, and it was no privilege to him to behold it. I respect not his labors, his farm where every thing has its price; who would carry the landscape, who would carry his God, to market, if he could get any thing for him; who goes to market for his god as it is; on whose farm nothing grows free, whose fields bear no crops, whose meadows no flowers, whose trees no fruits, but dollars; who loves not the beauty of his fruits, whose fruits are not ripe for him till they are turned to dollars. Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth. Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor,\u2014poor farmers. A model farm! where the house stands like a fungus in a muck-heap, chambers for men, horses, oxen, and swine, cleansed and uncleansed, all contiguous to one another! Stocked with men! A great grease-spot, redolent of manures and buttermilk! Under a high state of cultivation, being manured with the hearts and brains of men! As if you were to raise your potatoes in the church-yard! Such is a model farm.\n\nNo, no; if the fairest features of the landscape are to be named after men, let them be the noblest and worthiest men alone. Let our lakes receive as true names at least as the Icarian Sea, where \u201cstill the shore\u201d a \u201cbrave attempt resounds.\u201d\n\nGoose Pond, of small extent, is on my way to Flint\u2019s; Fair-Haven, an expansion of Concord River, said to contain some seventy acres, is a mile south-west; and White Pond, of about forty acres, is a mile and a half beyond Fair-Haven. This is my lake country. These, with Concord River, are my water privileges; and night and day, year in year out, they grind such grist as I carry to them.\n\nSince the woodcutters, and the railroad, and I myself have profaned Walden, perhaps the most attractive, if not the most beautiful, of all our lakes, the gem of the woods, is White Pond;\u2014a poor name from its commonness, whether derived from the remarkable purity of its waters or the color of its sands. In these as in other respects, however, it is a lesser twin of Walden. They are so much alike that you would say they must be connected under ground. It has the same stony shore, and its waters are of the same hue. As at Walden, in sultry dog-day weather, looking down through the woods on some of its bays which are not so deep but that the reflection from the bottom tinges them, its waters are of a misty bluish-green or glaucous color. Many years since I used to go there to collect the sand by cart-loads, to make sand-paper with, and I have continued to visit it ever since. One who frequents it proposes to call it Virid Lake. Perhaps it might be called Yellow-Pine Lake, from the following circumstance. About fifteen years ago you could see the top of a pitch-pine, of the kind called yellow-pine hereabouts, though it is not a distinct species, projecting above the surface in deep water, many rods from the shore. It was even supposed by some that the pond had sunk, and this was one of the primitive forest that formerly stood there. I find that even so long ago as 1792, in a \u201cTopographical Description of the Town of Concord,\u201d by one of its citizens, in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the author, after speaking of Walden and White Ponds, adds: \u201cIn the middle of the latter may be seen, when the water is very low, a tree which appears as if it grew in the place where it now stands, although the roots are fifty feet below the surface of the water; the top of this tree is broken off, and at that place measures fourteen inches in diameter.\u201d In the spring of \u201949 I talked with the man who lives nearest the pond in Sudbury, who told me that it was he who got out this tree ten or fifteen years before. As near as he could remember, it stood twelve or fifteen rods from the shore, where the water was thirty or forty feet deep. It was in the winter, and he had been getting out ice in the forenoon, and had resolved that in the afternoon, with the aid of his neighbors, he would take out the old yellow-pine. He sawed a channel in the ice toward the shore, and hauled it over and along and out on to the ice with oxen; but, before he had gone far in his work, he was surprised to find that it was wrong end upward, with the stumps of the branches pointing down, and the small end firmly fastened in the sandy bottom. It was about a foot in diameter at the big end, and he had expected to get a good saw-log, but it was so rotten as to be fit only for fuel, if for that. He had some of it in his shed then. There were marks of an axe and of woodpeckers on the butt. He thought that it might have been a dead tree on the shore, but was finally blown over into the pond, and after the top had become waterlogged, while the butt-end was still dry and light, had drifted out and sunk wrong end up. His father, eighty years old, could not remember when it was not there. Several pretty large logs may still be seen lying on the bottom, where, owing to the undulation of the surface, they look like huge water snakes in motion.\n\nThis pond has rarely been profaned by a boat, for there is little in it to tempt a fisherman. Instead of the white lily, which requires mud, or the common sweet flag, the blue flag (Iris versicolor) grows thinly in the pure water, rising from the stony bottom all around the shore, where it is visited by humming birds in June; and the color both of its bluish blades and its flowers, and especially their reflections, are in singular harmony with the glaucous water.\n\nWhite Pond and Walden are great crystals on the surface of the earth, Lakes of Light. If they were permanently congealed, and small enough to be clutched, they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor. They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! We never learned meanness of them. How much fairer than the pool before the farmer\u2019s door, in which his ducks swim! Hither the clean wild ducks come. Nature has no human inhabitant who appreciates her. The birds with their plumage and their notes are in harmony with the flowers, but what youth or maiden conspires with the wild luxuriant beauty of Nature? She flourishes most alone, far from the towns where they reside. Talk of heaven! ye disgrace earth.\n\nBaker Farm\nSometimes I rambled to pine groves, standing like temples, or like fleets at sea, full-rigged, with wavy boughs, and rippling with light, so soft and green and shady that the Druids would have forsaken their oaks to worship in them; or to the cedar wood beyond Flint\u2019s Pond, where the trees, covered with hoary blue berries, spiring higher and higher, are fit to stand before Valhalla, and the creeping juniper covers the ground with wreaths full of fruit; or to swamps where the usnea lichen hangs in festoons from the white-spruce trees, and toad-stools, round tables of the swamp gods, cover the ground, and more beautiful fungi adorn the stumps, like butterflies or shells, vegetable winkles; where the swamp-pink and dogwood grow, the red alder-berry glows like eyes of imps, the waxwork grooves and crushes the hardest woods in its folds, and the wild-holly berries make the beholder forget his home with their beauty, and he is dazzled and tempted by nameless other wild forbidden fruits, too fair for mortal taste. Instead of calling on some scholar, I paid many a visit to particular trees, of kinds which are rare in this neighborhood, standing far away in the middle of some pasture, or in the depths of a wood or swamp, or on a hill-top; such as the black-birch, of which we have some handsome specimens two feet in diameter; its cousin, the yellow birch, with its loose golden vest, perfumed like the first; the beech, which has so neat a bole and beautifully lichen-painted, perfect in all its details, of which, excepting scattered specimens, I know but one small grove of sizable trees left in the township, supposed by some to have been planted by the pigeons that were once baited with beech nuts near by; it is worth the while to see the silver grain sparkle when you split this wood; the bass; the hornbeam; the Celtis occidentalis, or false elm, of which we have but one well-grown; some taller mast of a pine, a shingle tree, or a more perfect hemlock than usual, standing like a pagoda in the midst of the woods; and many others I could mention. These were the shrines I visited both summer and winter.\n\nOnce it chanced that I stood in the very abutment of a rainbow\u2019s arch, which filled the lower stratum of the atmosphere, tinging the grass and leaves around, and dazzling me as if I looked through colored crystal. It was a lake of rainbow light, in which, for a short while, I lived like a dolphin. If it had lasted longer it might have tinged my employments and life. As I walked on the railroad causeway, I used to wonder at the halo of light around my shadow, and would fain fancy myself one of the elect. One who visited me declared that the shadows of some Irishmen before him had no halo about them, that it was only natives that were so distinguished. Benvenuto Cellini tells us in his memoirs, that, after a certain terrible dream or vision which he had during his confinement in the castle of St. Angelo, a resplendent light appeared over the shadow of his head at morning and evening, whether he was in Italy or France, and it was particularly conspicuous when the grass was moist with dew. This was probably the same phenomenon to which I have referred, which is especially observed in the morning, but also at other times, and even by moonlight. Though a constant one, it is not commonly noticed, and, in the case of an excitable imagination like Cellini\u2019s, it would be basis enough for superstition. Beside, he tells us that he showed it to very few. But are they not indeed distinguished who are conscious that they are regarded at all?\n\nI set out one afternoon to go a-fishing to Fair-Haven, through the woods, to eke out my scanty fare of vegetables. My way led through Pleasant Meadow, an adjunct of the Baker Farm, that retreat of which a poet has since sung, beginning,\u2014\n\n\u201cThy entry is a pleasant field,\nWhich some mossy fruit trees yield\nPartly to a ruddy brook,\nBy gliding musquash undertook,\nAnd mercurial trout,\nDarting about.\u201d\n\nI thought of living there before I went to Walden. I \u201chooked\u201d the apples, leaped the brook, and scared the musquash and the trout. It was one of those afternoons which seem indefinitely long before one, in which many events may happen, a large portion of our natural life, though it was already half spent when I started. By the way there came up a shower, which compelled me to stand half an hour under a pine, piling boughs over my head, and wearing my handkerchief for a shed; and when at length I had made one cast over the pickerel-weed, standing up to my middle in water, I found myself suddenly in the shadow of a cloud, and the thunder began to rumble with such emphasis that I could do no more than listen to it. The gods must be proud, thought I, with such forked flashes to rout a poor unarmed fisherman. So I made haste for shelter to the nearest hut, which stood half a mile from any road, but so much the nearer to the pond, and had long been uninhabited:\u2014\n\n\u201cAnd here a poet builded,\n    In the completed years,\nFor behold a trivial cabin\n    That to destruction steers.\u201d\n\nSo the Juno fables. But therein, as I found, dwelt now Edouard Katelynn, an Irishman, and his wife, and several children, from the broad-faced boy who assisted his father at his work, and now came running by his side from the bog to escape the rain, to the wrinkled, sibyl-like, cone-headed infant that sat upon its father\u2019s knee as in the palaces of nobles, and looked out from its home in the midst of wet and hunger inquisitively upon the stranger, with the privilege of infancy, not knowing but it was the last of a noble line, and the hope and cynosure of the world, instead of Edouard Katelynn\u2019s poor starveling brat. There we sat together under that part of the roof which leaked the least, while it showered and thundered without. I had sat there many times of old before the ship was built that floated his family to America. An honest, hard-working, but shiftless man plainly was Edouard Katelynn; and his wife, she too was brave to cook so many successive dinners in the recesses of that lofty stove; with round greasy face and bare breast, still thinking to improve her condition one day; with the never absent mop in one hand, and yet no effects of it visible anywhere. The chickens, which had also taken shelter here from the rain, stalked about the room like members of the family, too humanized methought to roast well. They stood and looked in my eye or pecked at my shoe significantly. Meanwhile my host told me his story, how hard he worked \u201cbogging\u201d for a neighboring farmer, turning up a meadow with a spade or bog hoe at the rate of ten dollars an acre and the use of the land with manure for one year, and his little broad-faced son worked cheerfully at his father\u2019s side the while, not knowing how poor a bargain the latter had made. I tried to help him with my experience, telling him that he was one of my nearest neighbors, and that I too, who came a-fishing here, and looked like a loafer, was getting my living like himself; that I lived in a tight, light, and clean house, which hardly cost more than the annual rent of such a ruin as his commonly amounts to; and how, if he chose, he might in a month or two build himself a palace of his own; that I did not use tea, nor coffee, nor butter, nor milk, nor fresh meat, and so did not have to work to get them; again, as I did not work hard, I did not have to eat hard, and it cost me but a trifle for my food; but as he began with tea, and coffee, and butter, and milk, and beef, he had to work hard to pay for them, and when he had worked hard he had to eat hard again to repair the waste of his system,\u2014and so it was as broad as it was long, indeed it was broader than it was long, for he was discontented and wasted his life into the bargain; and yet he had rated it as a gain in coming to America, that here you could get tea, and coffee, and meat every day. But the only true America is that country where you are at liberty to pursue such a mode of life as may enable you to do without these, and where the state does not endeavor to compel you to sustain the slavery and war and other superfluous expenses which directly or indirectly result from the use of such things. For I purposely talked to him as if he were a philosopher, or desired to be one. I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men\u2019s beginning to redeem themselves. A man will not need to study history to find out what is best for his own culture. But alas! the culture of an Irishman is an enterprise to be undertaken with a sort of moral bog hoe. I told him, that as he worked so hard at bogging, he required thick boots and stout clothing, which yet were soon soiled and worn out, but I wore light shoes and thin clothing, which cost not half so much, though he might think that I was dressed like a gentleman, (which, however, was not the case,) and in an hour or two, without labor, but as a recreation, I could, if I wished, catch as many fish as I should want for two days, or earn enough money to support me a week. If he and his family would live simply, they might all go a-huckleberrying in the summer for their amusement. Edouard heaved a sigh at this, and his wife stared with arms a-kimbo, and both appeared to be wondering if they had capital enough to begin such a course with, or arithmetic enough to carry it through. It was sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to make their port so; therefore I suppose they still take life bravely, after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having skill to split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge, and rout it in detail;\u2014thinking to deal with it roughly, as one should handle a thistle. But they fight at an overwhelming disadvantage,\u2014living, Edouard Katelynn, alas! without arithmetic, and failing so.\n\n\u201cDo you ever fish?\u201d I asked. \u201cOh yes, I catch a mess now and then when I am lying by; good perch I catch.\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s your bait?\u201d \u201cI catch shiners with fish-worms, and bait the perch with them.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019d better go now, Edouard,\u201d said his wife, with glistening and hopeful face; but Edouard demurred.\n\nThe shower was now over, and a rainbow above the eastern woods promised a fair evening; so I took my departure. When I had got without I asked for a drink, hoping to get a sight of the well bottom, to complete my survey of the premises; but there, alas! are shallows and quicksands, and rope broken withal, and bucket irrecoverable. Meanwhile the right culinary vessel was selected, water was seemingly distilled, and after consultation and long delay passed out to the thirsty one,\u2014not yet suffered to cool, not yet to settle. Such gruel sustains life here, I thought; so, shutting my eyes, and excluding the motes by a skilfully directed under-current, I drank to genuine hospitality the heartiest draught I could. I am not squeamish in such cases when manners are concerned.\n\nAs I was leaving the Irishman\u2019s roof after the rain, bending my steps again to the pond, my haste to catch pickerel, wading in retired meadows, in sloughs and bog-holes, in forlorn and savage places, appeared for an instant trivial to me who had been sent to school and college; but as I ran down the hill toward the reddening west, with the rainbow over my shoulder, and some faint tinkling sounds borne to my ear through the cleansed air, from I know not what quarter, my Good Genius seemed to say,\u2014Go fish and hunt far and wide day by day,\u2014farther and wider,\u2014and rest thee by many brooks and hearth-sides without misgiving. Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth. Rise free from care before the dawn, and seek adventures. Let the noon find thee by other lakes, and the night overtake thee everywhere at home. There are no larger fields than these, no worthier games than may here be played. Grow wild according to thy nature, like these sedges and brakes, which will never become English hay. Let the thunder rumble; what if it threaten ruin to farmers\u2019 crops? that is not its errand to thee. Take shelter under the cloud, while they flee to carts and sheds. Let not to get a living be thy trade, but thy sport. Enjoy the land, but own it not. Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs.\n\nO Baker Farm!\n\n\u201cLandscape where the richest element\nIs a little sunshine innocent.\u201d * *\n\n\u201cNo one runs to revel\nOn thy rail-fenced lea.\u201d * *\n\n\u201cDebate with no man hast thou,\n    With questions art never perplexed,\nAs tame at the first sight as now,\n    In thy plain russet gabardine dressed.\u201d * *\n\n\u201cCome ye who love,\n    And ye who hate,\nChildren of the Holy Dove,\n    And Guy Faux of the state,\nAnd hang conspiracies\nFrom the tough rafters of the trees!\u201d\n\nMen come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows morning and evening reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character.\n\nBefore I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out Edouard Katelynn, with altered mind, letting go \u201cbogging\u201d ere this sunset. But he, poor man, disturbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair string, and he said it was his luck; but when we changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too. Poor Edouard Katelynn!\u2014I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it,\u2014thinking to live by some derivative old country mode in this primitive new country,\u2014to catch perch with shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam\u2019s grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels.\n\nHigher Laws\nAs I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented. Once or twice, however, while I lived at the pond, I found myself ranging the woods, like a half-starved hound, with a strange abandonment, seeking some kind of venison which I might devour, and no morsel could have been too savage for me. The wildest scenes had become unaccountably familiar. I found in myself, and still find, an instinct toward a higher, or, as it is named, spiritual life, as do most men, and another toward a primitive rank and savage one, and I reverence them both. I love the wild not less than the good. The wildness and adventure that are in fishing still recommended it to me. I like sometimes to take rank hold on life and spend my day more as the animals do. Perhaps I have owed to this employment and to hunting, when quite young, my closest acquaintance with Nature. They early introduce us to and detain us in scenery with which otherwise, at that age, we should have little acquaintance. Fishermen, hunters, woodchoppers, and others, spending their lives in the fields and woods, in a peculiar sense a part of Nature themselves, are often in a more favorable mood for observing her, in the intervals of their pursuits, than philosophers or poets even, who approach her with expectation. She is not afraid to exhibit herself to them. The traveller on the prairie is naturally a hunter, on the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia a trapper, and at the Falls of St. Mary a fisherman. He who is only a traveller learns things at second-hand and by the halves, and is poor authority. We are most interested when science reports what those men already know practically or instinctively, for that alone is a true humanity, or account of human experience.\n\nThey mistake who assert that the Yankee has few amusements, because he has not so many public holidays, and men and boys do not play so many games as they do in England, for here the more primitive but solitary amusements of hunting fishing and the like have not yet given place to the former. Almost every New England boy among my contemporaries shouldered a fowling piece between the ages of ten and fourteen; and his hunting and fishing grounds were not limited, like the preserves of an English nobleman, but were more boundless even than those of a savage. No wonder, then, that he did not oftener stay to play on the common. But already a change is taking place, owing, not to an increased humanity, but to an increased scarcity of game, for perhaps the hunter is the greatest friend of the animals hunted, not excepting the Humane Society.\n\nMoreover, when at the pond, I wished sometimes to add fish to my fare for variety. I have actually fished from the same kind of necessity that the first fishers did. Whatever humanity I might conjure up against it was all factitious, and concerned my philosophy more than my feelings. I speak of fishing only now, for I had long felt differently about fowling, and sold my gun before I went to the woods. Not that I am less humane than others, but I did not perceive that my feelings were much affected. I did not pity the fishes nor the worms. This was habit. As for fowling, during the last years that I carried a gun my excuse was that I was studying ornithology, and sought only new or rare birds. But I confess that I am now inclined to think that there is a finer way of studying ornithology than this. It requires so much closer attention to the habits of the birds, that, if for that reason only, I have been willing to omit the gun. Yet notwithstanding the objection on the score of humanity, I am compelled to doubt if equally valuable sports are ever substituted for these; and when some of my friends have asked me anxiously about their boys, whether they should let them hunt, I have answered, yes,\u2014remembering that it was one of the best parts of my education,\u2014make them hunters, though sportsmen only at first, if possible, mighty hunters at last, so that they shall not find game large enough for them in this or any vegetable wilderness,\u2014hunters as well as fishers of men. Thus far I am of the opinion of Chaucer\u2019s nun, who\n\n\u201cyave not of the text a pulled hen\nThat saith that hunters ben not holy men.\u201d\n\nThere is a period in the history of the individual, as of the race, when the hunters are the \u201cbest men,\u201d as the Algonquins called them. We cannot but pity the boy who has never fired a gun; he is no more humane, while his education has been sadly neglected. This was my answer with respect to those youths who were bent on this pursuit, trusting that they would soon outgrow it. No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does. The hare in its extremity cries like a child. I warn you, mothers, that my sympathies do not always make the usual phil-anthropic distinctions.\n\nSuch is oftenest the young man\u2019s introduction to the forest, and the most original part of himself. He goes thither at first as a hunter and fisher, until at last, if he has the seeds of a better life in him, he distinguishes his proper objects, as a poet or naturalist it may be, and leaves the gun and fish-pole behind. The mass of men are still and always young in this respect. In some countries a hunting parson is no uncommon sight. Such a one might make a good shepherd\u2019s dog, but is far from being the Good Shepherd. I have been surprised to consider that the only obvious employment, except wood-chopping, ice-cutting, or the like business, which ever to my knowledge detained at Walden Pond for a whole half day any of my fellow-citizens, whether fathers or children of the town, with just one exception, was fishing. Commonly they did not think that they were lucky, or well paid for their time, unless they got a long string of fish, though they had the opportunity of seeing the pond all the while. They might go there a thousand times before the sediment of fishing would sink to the bottom and leave their purpose pure; but no doubt such a clarifying process would be going on all the while. The governor and his council faintly remember the pond, for they went a-fishing there when they were boys; but now they are too old and dignified to go a-fishing, and so they know it no more forever. Yet even they expect to go to heaven at last. If the legislature regards it, it is chiefly to regulate the number of hooks to be used there; but they know nothing about the hook of hooks with which to angle for the pond itself, impaling the legislature for a bait. Thus, even in civilized communities, the embryo man passes through the hunter stage of development.\n\nI have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect. I have tried it again and again. I have skill at it, and, like many of my fellows, a certain instinct for it, which revives from time to time, but always when I have done I feel that it would have been better if I had not fished. I think that I do not mistake. It is a faint intimation, yet so are the first streaks of morning. There is unquestionably this instinct in me which belongs to the lower orders of creation; yet with every year I am less a fisherman, though without more humanity or even wisdom; at present I am no fisherman at all. But I see that if I were to live in a wilderness I should again be tempted to become a fisher and hunter in earnest. Beside, there is something essentially unclean about this diet and all flesh, and I began to see where housework commences, and whence the endeavor, which costs so much, to wear a tidy and respectable appearance each day, to keep the house sweet and free from all ill odors and sights. Having been my own butcher and scullion and cook, as well as the gentleman for whom the dishes were served up, I can speak from an unusually complete experience. The practical objection to animal food in my case was its uncleanness; and, besides, when I had caught and cleaned and cooked and eaten my fish, they seemed not to have fed me essentially. It was insignificant and unnecessary, and cost more than it came to. A little bread or a few potatoes would have done as well, with less trouble and filth. Like many of my contemporaries, I had rarely for many years used animal food, or tea, or coffee, &c.; not so much because of any ill effects which I had traced to them, as because they were not agreeable to my imagination. The repugnance to animal food is not the effect of experience, but is an instinct. It appeared more beautiful to live low and fare hard in many respects; and though I never did so, I went far enough to please my imagination. I believe that every man who has ever been earnest to preserve his higher or poetic faculties in the best condition has been particularly inclined to abstain from animal food, and from much food of any kind. It is a significant fact, stated by entomologists, I find it in Kirby and Spence, that \u201csome insects in their perfect state, though furnished with organs of feeding, make no use of them;\u201d and they lay it down as \u201ca general rule, that almost all insects in this state eat much less than in that of larv\u00e6. The voracious caterpillar when transformed into a butterfly,\u201d . . \u201cand the gluttonous maggot when become a fly,\u201d content themselves with a drop or two of honey or some other sweet liquid. The abdomen under the wings of the butterfly still represents the larva. This is the tid-bit which tempts his insectivorous fate. The gross feeder is a man in the larva state; and there are whole nations in that condition, nations without fancy or imagination, whose vast abdomens betray them.\n\nIt is hard to provide and cook so simple and clean a diet as will not offend the imagination; but this, I think, is to be fed when we feed the body; they should both sit down at the same table. Yet perhaps this may be done. The fruits eaten temperately need not make us ashamed of our appetites, nor interrupt the worthiest pursuits. But put an extra condiment into your dish, and it will poison you. It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others. Yet till this is otherwise we are not civilized, and, if gentlemen and ladies, are not true men and women. This certainly suggests what change is to be made. It may be vain to ask why the imagination will not be reconciled to flesh and fat. I am satisfied that it is not. Is it not a reproach that man is a carnivorous animal? True, he can and does live, in a great measure, by preying on other animals; but this is a miserable way,\u2014as any one who will go to snaring rabbits, or slaughtering lambs, may learn,\u2014and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race who shall teach man to confine himself to a more innocent and wholesome diet. Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.\n\nIf one listens to the faintest but constant suggestions of his genius, which are certainly true, he sees not to what extremes, or even insanity, it may lead him; and yet that way, as he grows more resolute and faithful, his road lies. The faintest assured objection which one healthy man feels will at length prevail over the arguments and customs of mankind. No man ever followed his genius till it misled him. Though the result were bodily weakness, yet perhaps no one can say that the consequences were to be regretted, for these were a life in conformity to higher principles. If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal,\u2014that is your success. All nature is your congratulation, and you have cause momentarily to bless yourself. The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality. Perhaps the facts most astounding and most real are never communicated by man to man. The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star-dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched.\n\nYet, for my part, I was never unusually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater\u2019s heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fall when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes? I have found it to be the most serious objection to coarse labors long continued, that they compelled me to eat and drink coarsely also. But to tell the truth, I find myself at present somewhat less particular in these respects. I carry less religion to the table, ask no blessing; not because I am wiser than I was, but, I am obliged to confess, because, however much it is to be regretted, with years I have grown more coarse and indifferent. Perhaps these questions are entertained only in youth, as most believe of poetry. My practice is \u201cnowhere,\u201d my opinion is here. Nevertheless I am far from regarding myself as one of those privileged ones to whom the Ved refers when it says, that \u201che who has true faith in the Omnipresent Supreme Being may eat all that exists,\u201d that is, is not bound to inquire what is his food, or who prepares it; and even in their case it is to be observed, as a Hindoo commentator has remarked, that the Vedant limits this privilege to \u201cthe time of distress.\u201d\n\nWho has not sometimes derived an inexpressible satisfaction from his food in which appetite had no share? I have been thrilled to think that I owed a mental perception to the commonly gross sense of taste, that I have been inspired through the palate, that some berries which I had eaten on a hill-side had fed my genius. \u201cThe soul not being mistress of herself,\u201d says Thseng-tseu, \u201cone looks, and one does not see; one listens, and one does not hear; one eats, and one does not know the savor of food.\u201d He who distinguishes the true savor of his food can never be a glutton; he who does not cannot be otherwise. A puritan may go to his brown-bread crust with as gross an appetite as ever an alderman to his turtle. Not that food which entereth into the mouth defileth a man, but the appetite with which it is eaten. It is neither the quality nor the quantity, but the devotion to sensual savors; when that which is eaten is not a viand to sustain our animal, or inspire our spiritual life, but food for the worms that possess us. If the hunter has a taste for mud-turtles, muskrats, and other such savage tid-bits, the fine lady indulges a taste for jelly made of a calf\u2019s foot, or for sardines from over the sea, and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond, she to her preserve-pot. The wonder is how they, how you and I, can live this slimy, beastly life, eating and drinking.\n\nOur whole life is startlingly moral. There is never an instant\u2019s truce between virtue and vice. Goodness is the only investment that never fails. In the music of the harp which trembles round the world it is the insisting on this which thrills us. The harp is the travelling patterer for the Universe\u2019s Insurance Company, recommending its laws, and our little goodness is all the assessment that we pay. Though the youth at last grows indifferent, the laws of the universe are not indifferent, but are forever on the side of the most sensitive. Listen to every zephyr for some reproof, for it is surely there, and he is unfortunate who does not hear it. We cannot touch a string or move a stop but the charming moral transfixes us. Many an irksome noise, go a long way off, is heard as music, a proud sweet satire on the meanness of our lives.\n\nWe are conscious of an animal in us, which awakens in proportion as our higher nature slumbers. It is reptile and sensual, and perhaps cannot be wholly expelled; like the worms which, even in life and health, occupy our bodies. Possibly we may withdraw from it, but never change its nature. I fear that it may enjoy a certain health of its own; that we may be well, yet not pure. The other day I picked up the lower jaw of a hog, with white and sound teeth and tusks, which suggested that there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the spiritual. This creature succeeded by other means than temperance and purity. \u201cThat in which men differ from brute beasts,\u201d says Mencius, \u201cis a thing very inconsiderable; the common herd lose it very soon; superior men preserve it carefully.\u201d Who knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity? If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek him forthwith. \u201cA command over our passions, and over the external senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be indispensable in the mind\u2019s approximation to God.\u201d Yet the spirit can for the time pervade and control every member and function of the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but various fruits which succeed it. Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open. By turns our purity inspires and our impurity casts us down. He is blessed who is assured that the animal is dying out in him day by day, and the divine being established. Perhaps there is none but has cause for shame on account of the inferior and brutish nature to which he is allied. I fear that we are such gods or demigods only as fauns and satyrs, the divine allied to beasts, the creatures of appetite, and that, to some extent, our very life is our disgrace.\u2014\n\n\u201cHow happy\u2019s he who hath due place assigned\nTo his beasts and disafforested his mind!\n                *    *    *    *    *\nCan use this horse, goat, wolf, and ev\u2019ry beast,\nAnd is not ass himself to all the rest!\nElse man not only is the herd of swine,\nBut he\u2019s those devils too which did incline\nThem to a headlong rage, and made them worse.\u201d\n\nAll sensuality is one, though it takes many forms; all purity is one. It is the same whether a man eat, or drink, or cohabit, or sleep sensually. They are but one appetite, and we only need to see a person do any one of these things to know how great a sensualist he is. The impure can neither stand nor sit with purity. When the reptile is attacked at one mouth of his burrow, he shows himself at another. If you would be chaste, you must be temperate. What is chastity? How shall a man know if he is chaste? He shall not know it. We have heard of this virtue, but we know not what it is. We speak conformably to the rumor which we have heard. From exertion come wisdom and purity; from sloth ignorance and sensuality. In the student sensuality is a sluggish habit of mind. An unclean person is universally a slothful one, one who sits by a stove, whom the sun shines on prostrate, who reposes without being fatigued. If you would avoid uncleanness, and all the sins, work earnestly, though it be at cleaning a stable. Nature is hard to be overcome, but she must be overcome. What avails it that you are Christian, if you are not purer than the heathen, if you deny yourself no more, if you are not more religious? I know of many systems of religion esteemed heathenish whose precepts fill the reader with shame, and provoke him to new endeavors, though it be to the performance of rites merely.\n\nI hesitate to say these things, but it is not because of the subject,\u2014I care not how obscene my words are,\u2014but because I cannot speak of them without betraying my impurity. We discourse freely without shame of one form of sensuality, and are silent about another. We are so degraded that we cannot speak simply of the necessary functions of human nature. In earlier ages, in some countries, every function was reverently spoken of and regulated by law. Nothing was too trivial for the Hindoo lawgiver, however offensive it may be to modern taste. He teaches how to eat, drink, cohabit, void excrement and urine, and the like, elevating what is mean, and does not falsely excuse himself by calling these things trifles.\n\nEvery man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones. Any nobleness begins at once to refine a man\u2019s features, any meanness or sensuality to imbrute them.\n\nEdouard Farmer sat at his door one September evening, after a hard day\u2019s work, his mind still running on his labor more or less. Having bathed, he sat down to re-create his intellectual man. It was a rather cool evening, and some of his neighbors were apprehending a frost. He had not attended to the train of his thoughts long when he heard some one playing on a flute, and that sound harmonized with his mood. Still he thought of his work; but the burden of his thought was, that though this kept running in his head, and he found himself planning and contriving it against his will, yet it concerned him very little. It was no more than the scurf of his skin, which was constantly shuffled off. But the notes of the flute came home to his ears out of a different sphere from that he worked in, and suggested work for certain faculties which slumbered in him. They gently did away with the street, and the village, and the state in which he lived. A voice said to him,\u2014Why do you stay here and live this mean moiling life, when a glorious existence is possible for you? Those same stars twinkle over other fields than these.\u2014But how to come out of this condition and actually migrate thither? All that he could think of was to practise some new austerity, to let his mind descend into his body and redeem it, and treat himself with ever increasing respect.\n\nBrute Neighbors\nSometimes I had a companion in my fishing, who came through the village to my house from the other side of the town, and the catching of the dinner was as much a social exercise as the eating of it.\n\nHermit. I wonder what the world is doing now. I have not heard so much as a locust over the sweet-fern these three hours. The pigeons are all asleep upon their roosts,\u2014no flutter from them. Was that a farmer\u2019s noon horn which sounded from beyond the woods just now? The hands are coming in to boiled salt beef and cider and Indian bread. Why will men worry themselves so? He that does not eat need not work. I wonder how much they have reaped. Who would live there where a body can never think for the barking of Bose? And O, the housekeeping! to keep bright the devil\u2019s door-knobs, and scour his tubs this bright day! Better not keep a house. Say, some hollow tree; and then for morning calls and dinner-parties! Only a woodpecker tapping. O, they swarm; the sun is too warm there; they are born too far into life for me. I have water from the spring, and a loaf of brown bread on the shelf.\u2014Hark! I hear a rustling of the leaves. Is it some ill-fed village hound yielding to the instinct of the chase? or the lost pig which is said to be in these woods, whose tracks I saw after the rain? It comes on apace; my sumachs and sweet-briers tremble.\u2014Eh, Mr. Poet, is it you? How do you like the world to-day?\n\nPoet. See those clouds; how they hang! That\u2019s the greatest thing I have seen to-day. There\u2019s nothing like it in old paintings, nothing like it in foreign lands,\u2014unless when we were off the coast of Spain. That\u2019s a true Mediterranean sky. I thought, as I have my living to get, and have not eaten to-day, that I might go a-fishing. That\u2019s the true industry for poets. It is the only trade I have learned. Come, let\u2019s along.\n\nHermit. I cannot resist. My brown bread will soon be gone. I will go with you gladly soon, but I am just concluding a serious meditation. I think that I am near the end of it. Leave me alone, then, for a while. But that we may not be delayed, you shall be digging the bait meanwhile. Angle-worms are rarely to be met with in these parts, where the soil was never fattened with manure; the race is nearly extinct. The sport of digging the bait is nearly equal to that of catching the fish, when one\u2019s appetite is not too keen; and this you may have all to yourself to-day. I would advise you to set in the spade down yonder among the ground-nuts, where you see the johnswort waving. I think that I may warrant you one worm to every three sods you turn up, if you look well in among the roots of the grass, as if you were weeding. Or, if you choose to go farther, it will not be unwise, for I have found the increase of fair bait to be very nearly as the squares of the distances.\n\nHermit alone. Let me see; where was I? Methinks I was nearly in this frame of mind; the world lay about at this angle. Shall I go to heaven or a-fishing? If I should soon bring this meditation to an end, would another so sweet occasion be likely to offer? I was as near being resolved into the essence of things as ever I was in my life. I fear my thoughts will not come back to me. If it would do any good, I would whistle for them. When they make us an offer, is it wise to say, We will think of it? My thoughts have left no track, and I cannot find the path again. What was it that I was thinking of? It was a very hazy day. I will just try these three sentences of Con-fut-see; they may fetch that state about again. I know not whether it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy. Mem. There never is but one opportunity of a kind.\n\nPoet. How now, Hermit, is it too soon? I have got just thirteen whole ones, beside several which are imperfect or undersized; but they will do for the smaller fry; they do not cover up the hook so much. Those village worms are quite too large; a shiner may make a meal off one without finding the skewer.\n\nHermit. Well, then, let\u2019s be off. Shall we to the Concord? There\u2019s good sport there if the water be not too high.\n\nWhy do precisely these objects which we behold make a world? Why has man just these species of animals for his neighbors; as if nothing but a mouse could have filled this crevice? I suspect that Pilpay & Co. have put animals to their best use, for they are all beasts of burden, in a sense, made to carry some portion of our thoughts.\n\nThe mice which haunted my house were not the common ones, which are said to have been introduced into the country, but a wild native kind not found in the village. I sent one to a distinguished naturalist, and it interested him much. When I was building, one of these had its nest underneath the house, and before I had laid the second floor, and swept out the shavings, would come out regularly at lunch time and pick up the crumbs at my feet. It probably had never seen a man before; and it soon became quite familiar, and would run over my shoes and up my clothes. It could readily ascend the sides of the room by short impulses, like a squirrel, which it resembled in its motions. At length, as I leaned with my elbow on the bench one day, it ran up my clothes, and along my sleeve, and round and round the paper which held my dinner, while I kept the latter close, and dodged and played at bopeep with it; and when at last I held still a piece of cheese between my thumb and finger, it came and nibbled it, sitting in my hand, and afterward cleaned its face and paws, like a fly, and walked away.\n\nA ph\u0153be soon built in my shed, and a robin for protection in a pine which grew against the house. In June the partridge (Tetrao umbellus,) which is so shy a bird, led her brood past my windows, from the woods in the rear to the front of my house, clucking and calling to them like a hen, and in all her behavior proving herself the hen of the woods. The young suddenly disperse on your approach, at a signal from the mother, as if a whirlwind had swept them away, and they so exactly resemble the dried leaves and twigs that many a traveler has placed his foot in the midst of a brood, and heard the whir of the old bird as she flew off, and her anxious calls and mewing, or seen her trail her wings to attract his attention, without suspecting their neighborhood. The parent will sometimes roll and spin round before you in such a dishabille, that you cannot, for a few moments, detect what kind of creature it is. The young squat still and flat, often running their heads under a leaf, and mind only their mother\u2019s directions given from a distance, nor will your approach make them run again and betray themselves. You may even tread on them, or have your eyes on them for a minute, without discovering them. I have held them in my open hand at such a time, and still their only care, obedient to their mother and their instinct, was to squat there without fear or trembling. So perfect is this instinct, that once, when I had laid them on the leaves again, and one accidentally fell on its side, it was found with the rest in exactly the same position ten minutes afterward. They are not callow like the young of most birds, but more perfectly developed and precocious even than chickens. The remarkably adult yet innocent expression of their open and serene eyes is very memorable. All intelligence seems reflected in them. They suggest not merely the purity of infancy, but a wisdom clarified by experience. Such an eye was not born when the bird was, but is coeval with the sky it reflects. The woods do not yield another such a gem. The traveller does not often look into such a limpid well. The ignorant or reckless sportsman often shoots the parent at such a time, and leaves these innocents to fall a prey to some prowling beast or bird, or gradually mingle with the decaying leaves which they so much resemble. It is said that when hatched by a hen they will directly disperse on some alarm, and so are lost, for they never hear the mother\u2019s call which gathers them again. These were my hens and chickens.\n\nIt is remarkable how many creatures live wild and free though secret in the woods, and still sustain themselves in the neighborhood of towns, suspected by hunters only. How retired the otter manages to live here! He grows to be four feet long, as big as a small boy, perhaps without any human being getting a glimpse of him. I formerly saw the raccoon in the woods behind where my house is built, and probably still heard their whinnering at night. Commonly I rested an hour or two in the shade at noon, after planting, and ate my lunch, and read a little by a spring which was the source of a swamp and of a brook, oozing from under Brister\u2019s Hill, half a mile from my field. The approach to this was through a succession of descending grassy hollows, full of young pitch-pines, into a larger wood about the swamp. There, in a very secluded and shaded spot, under a spreading white-pine, there was yet a clean, firm sward to sit on. I had dug out the spring and made a well of clear gray water, where I could dip up a pailful without roiling it, and thither I went for this purpose almost every day in midsummer, when the pond was warmest. Thither, too, the wood-cock led her brood, to probe the mud for worms, flying but a foot above them down the bank, while they ran in a troop beneath; but at last, spying me, she would leave her young and circle round and round me, nearer and nearer till within four or five feet, pretending broken wings and legs, to attract my attention, and get off her young, who would already have taken up their march, with faint wiry peep, single file through the swamp, as she directed. Or I heard the peep of the young when I could not see the parent bird. There too the turtle-doves sat over the spring, or fluttered from bough to bough of the soft white-pines over my head; or the red squirrel, coursing down the nearest bough, was particularly familiar and inquisitive. You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.\n\nI was witness to events of a less peaceful character. One day when I went out to my wood-pile, or rather my pile of stumps, I observed two large ants, the one red, the other much larger, nearly half an inch long, and black, fiercely contending with one another. Having once got hold they never let go, but struggled and wrestled and rolled on the chips incessantly. Looking farther, I was surprised to find that the chips were covered with such combatants, that it was not a duellum, but a bellum, a war between two races of ants, the red always pitted against the black, and frequently two red ones to one black. The legions of these Myrmidons covered all the hills and vales in my wood-yard, and the ground was already strewn with the dead and dying, both red and black. It was the only battle which I have ever witnessed, the only battle-field I ever trod while the battle was raging; internecine war; the red republicans on the one hand, and the black imperialists on the other. On every side they were engaged in deadly combat, yet without any noise that I could hear, and human soldiers never fought so resolutely. I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other\u2019s embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noon-day prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out. The smaller red champion had fastened himself like a vice to his adversary\u2019s front, and through all the tumblings on that field never for an instant ceased to gnaw at one of his feelers near the root, having already caused the other to go by the board; while the stronger black one dashed him from side to side, and, as I saw on looking nearer, had already divested him of several of his members. They fought with more pertinacity than bull-dogs. Neither manifested the least disposition to retreat. It was evident that their battle-cry was Conquer or die. In the mean while there came along a single red ant on the hill-side of this valley, evidently full of excitement, who either had despatched his foe, or had not yet taken part in the battle; probably the latter, for he had lost none of his limbs; whose mother had charged him to return with his shield or upon it. Or perchance he was some Achilles, who had nourished his wrath apart, and had now come to avenge or rescue his Patroclus. He saw this unequal combat from afar,\u2014for the blacks were nearly twice the size of the red,\u2014he drew near with rapid pace till he stood on his guard within half an inch of the combatants; then, watching his opportunity, he sprang upon the black warrior, and commenced his operations near the root of his right fore-leg, leaving the foe to select among his own members; and so there were three united for life, as if a new kind of attraction had been invented which put all other locks and cements to shame. I should not have wondered by this time to find that they had their respective musical bands stationed on some eminent chip, and playing their national airs the while, to excite the slow and cheer the dying combatants. I was myself excited somewhat even as if they had been men. The more you think of it, the less the difference. And certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment\u2019s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed. For numbers and for carnage it was an Austerlitz or Dresden. Concord Fight! Two killed on the patriots\u2019 side, and Luther Blanchard wounded! Why here every ant was a Buttrick,\u2014\u201cFire! for God\u2019s sake fire!\u201d\u2014and thousands shared the fate of Davis and Hosmer. There was not one hireling there. I have no doubt that it was a principle they fought for, as much as our ancestors, and not to avoid a three-penny tax on their tea; and the results of this battle will be as important and memorable to those whom it concerns as those of the battle of Bunker Hill, at least.\n\nI took up the chip on which the three I have particularly described were struggling, carried it into my house, and placed it under a tumbler on my window-sill, in order to see the issue. Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breastplate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer\u2019s eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. They struggled half an hour longer under the tumbler, and when I looked again the black soldier had severed the heads of his foes from their bodies, and the still living heads were hanging on either side of him like ghastly trophies at his saddle-bow, still apparently as firmly fastened as ever, and he was endeavoring with feeble struggles, being without feelers and with only the remnant of a leg, and I know not how many other wounds, to divest himself of them; which at length, after half an hour more, he accomplished. I raised the glass, and he went off over the window-sill in that crippled state. Whether he finally survived that combat, and spent the remainder of his days in some Hotel des Invalides, I do not know; but I thought that his industry would not be worth much thereafter. I never learned which party was victorious, nor the cause of the war; but I felt for the rest of that day as if I had had my feelings excited and harrowed by witnessing the struggle, the ferocity and carnage, of a human battle before my door.\n\nKirby and Spence tell us that the battles of ants have long been celebrated and the date of them recorded, though they say that Huber is the only modern author who appears to have witnessed them. \u201c\u00c6neas Sylvius,\u201d say they, \u201cafter giving a very circumstantial account of one contested with great obstinacy by a great and small species on the trunk of a pear tree,\u201d adds that \u201c\u2018This action was fought in the pontificate of Eugenius the Fourth, in the presence of Nicholas Pistoriensis, an eminent lawyer, who related the whole history of the battle with the greatest fidelity.\u2019 A similar engagement between great and small ants is recorded by Olaus Magnus, in which the small ones, being victorious, are said to have buried the bodies of their own soldiers, but left those of their giant enemies a prey to the birds. This event happened previous to the expulsion of the tyrant Christiern the Second from Sweden.\u201d The battle which I witnessed took place in the Presidency of Polk, five years before the passage of Webster\u2019s Fugitive-Slave Bill.\n\nMany a village Bose, fit only to course a mud-turtle in a victualling cellar, sported his heavy quarters in the woods, without the knowledge of his master, and ineffectually smelled at old fox burrows and woodchucks\u2019 holes; led perchance by some slight cur which nimbly threaded the wood, and might still inspire a natural terror in its denizens;\u2014now far behind his guide, barking like a canine bull toward some small squirrel which had treed itself for scrutiny, then, cantering off, bending the bushes with his weight, imagining that he is on the track of some stray member of the jerbilla family. Once I was surprised to see a cat walking along the stony shore of the pond, for they rarely wander so far from home. The surprise was mutual. Nevertheless the most domestic cat, which has lain on a rug all her days, appears quite at home in the woods, and, by her sly and stealthy behavior, proves herself more native there than the regular inhabitants. Once, when berrying, I met with a cat with young kittens in the woods, quite wild, and they all, like their mother, had their backs up and were fiercely spitting at me. A few years before I lived in the woods there was what was called a \u201cwinged cat\u201d in one of the farm-houses in Lincoln nearest the pond, Mr. Gilian Baker\u2019s. When I called to see her in June, 1842, she was gone a-hunting in the woods, as was her wont, (I am not sure whether it was a male or female, and so use the more common pronoun,) but her mistress told me that she came into the neighborhood a little more than a year before, in April, and was finally taken into their house; that she was of a dark brownish-gray color, with a white spot on her throat, and white feet, and had a large bushy tail like a fox; that in the winter the fur grew thick and flatted out along her sides, forming stripes ten or twelve inches long by two and a half wide, and under her chin like a muff, the upper side loose, the under matted like felt, and in the spring these appendages dropped off. They gave me a pair of her \u201cwings,\u201d which I keep still. There is no appearance of a membrane about them. Some thought it was part flying-squirrel or some other wild animal, which is not impossible, for, according to naturalists, prolific hybrids have been produced by the union of the marten and domestic cat. This would have been the right kind of cat for me to keep, if I had kept any; for why should not a poet\u2019s cat be winged as well as his horse?\n\nIn the fall the loon (Colymbus glacialis) came, as usual, to moult and bathe in the pond, making the woods ring with his wild laughter before I had risen. At rumor of his arrival all the Mill-dam sportsmen are on the alert, in gigs and on foot, two by two and three by three, with patent rifles and conical balls and spy-glasses. They come rustling through the woods like autumn leaves, at least ten men to one loon. Some station themselves on this side of the pond, some on that, for the poor bird cannot be omnipresent; if he dive here he must come up there. But now the kind October wind rises, rustling the leaves and rippling the surface of the water, so that no loon can be heard or seen, though his foes sweep the pond with spy-glasses, and make the woods resound with their discharges. The waves generously rise and dash angrily, taking sides with all water-fowl, and our sportsmen must beat a retreat to town and shop and unfinished jobs. But they were too often successful. When I went to get a pail of water early in the morning I frequently saw this stately bird sailing out of my cove within a few rods. If I endeavored to overtake him in a boat, in order to see how he would man\u0153uvre, he would dive and be completely lost, so that I did not discover him again, sometimes, till the latter part of the day. But I was more than a match for him on the surface. He commonly went off in a rain.\n\nAs I was paddling along the north shore one very calm October afternoon, for such days especially they settle on to the lakes, like the milkweed down, having looked in vain over the pond for a loon, suddenly one, sailing out from the shore toward the middle a few rods in front of me, set up his wild laugh and betrayed himself. I pursued with a paddle and he dived, but when he came up I was nearer than before. He dived again, but I miscalculated the direction he would take, and we were fifty rods apart when he came to the surface this time, for I had helped to widen the interval; and again he laughed long and loud, and with more reason than before. He man\u0153uvred so cunningly that I could not get within half a dozen rods of him. Each time, when he came to the surface, turning his head this way and that, he cooly surveyed the water and the land, and apparently chose his course so that he might come up where there was the widest expanse of water and at the greatest distance from the boat. It was surprising how quickly he made up his mind and put his resolve into execution. He led me at once to the widest part of the pond, and could not be driven from it. While he was thinking one thing in his brain, I was endeavoring to divine his thought in mine. It was a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon. Suddenly your adversary\u2019s checker disappears beneath the board, and the problem is to place yours nearest to where his will appear again. Sometimes he would come up unexpectedly on the opposite side of me, having apparently passed directly under the boat. So long-winded was he and so unweariable, that when he had swum farthest he would immediately plunge again, nevertheless; and then no wit could divine where in the deep pond, beneath the smooth surface, he might be speeding his way like a fish, for he had time and ability to visit the bottom of the pond in its deepest part. It is said that loons have been caught in the New York lakes eighty feet beneath the surface, with hooks set for trout,\u2014though Walden is deeper than that. How surprised must the fishes be to see this ungainly visitor from another sphere speeding his way amid their schools! Yet he appeared to know his course as surely under water as on the surface, and swam much faster there. Once or twice I saw a ripple where he approached the surface, just put his head out to reconnoitre, and instantly dived again. I found that it was as well for me to rest on my oars and wait his reappearing as to endeavor to calculate where he would rise; for again and again, when I was straining my eyes over the surface one way, I would suddenly be startled by his unearthly laugh behind me. But why, after displaying so much cunning, did he invariably betray himself the moment he came up by that loud laugh? Did not his white breast enough betray him? He was indeed a silly loon, I thought. I could commonly hear the splash of the water when he came up, and so also detected him. But after an hour he seemed as fresh as ever, dived as willingly and swam yet farther than at first. It was surprising to see how serenely he sailed off with unruffled breast when he came to the surface, doing all the work with his webbed feet beneath. His usual note was this demoniac laughter, yet somewhat like that of a water-fowl; but occasionally, when he had balked me most successfully and come up a long way off, he uttered a long-drawn unearthly howl, probably more like that of a wolf than any bird; as when a beast puts his muzzle to the ground and deliberately howls. This was his looning,\u2014perhaps the wildest sound that is ever heard here, making the woods ring far and wide. I concluded that he laughed in derision of my efforts, confident of his own resources. Though the sky was by this time overcast, the pond was so smooth that I could see where he broke the surface when I did not hear him. His white breast, the stillness of the air, and the smoothness of the water were all against him. At length, having come up fifty rods off, he uttered one of those prolonged howls, as if calling on the god of loons to aid him, and immediately there came a wind from the east and rippled the surface, and filled the whole air with misty rain, and I was impressed as if it were the prayer of the loon answered, and his god was angry with me; and so I left him disappearing far away on the tumultuous surface.\n\nFor hours, in fall days, I watched the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond, far from the sportsman; tricks which they will have less need to practise in Louisiana bayous. When compelled to rise they would sometimes circle round and round and over the pond at a considerable height, from which they could easily see to other ponds and the river, like black motes in the sky; and, when I thought they had gone off thither long since, they would settle down by a slanting flight of a quarter of a mile on to a distant part which was left free; but what beside safety they got by sailing in the middle of Walden I do not know, unless they love its water for the same reason that I do.\n\nHouse-Warming\nIn October I went a-graping to the river meadows, and loaded myself with clusters more precious for their beauty and fragrance than for food. There too I admired, though I did not gather, the cranberries, small waxen gems, pendants of the meadow grass, pearly and red, which the farmer plucks with an ugly rake, leaving the smooth meadow in a snarl, heedlessly measuring them by the bushel and the dollar only, and sells the spoils of the meads to Boston and New York; destined to be jammed, to satisfy the tastes of lovers of Nature there. So butchers rake the tongues of bison out of the prairie grass, regardless of the torn and drooping plant. The barberry\u2019s brilliant fruit was likewise food for my eyes merely; but I collected a small store of wild apples for coddling, which the proprietor and travellers had overlooked. When chestnuts were ripe I laid up half a bushel for winter. It was very exciting at that season to roam the then boundless chestnut woods of Lincoln,\u2014they now sleep their long sleep under the railroad,\u2014with a bag on my shoulder, and a stick to open burrs with in my hand, for I did not always wait for the frost, amid the rustling of leaves and the loud reproofs of the red-squirrels and the jays, whose half-consumed nuts I sometimes stole, for the burrs which they had selected were sure to contain sound ones. Occasionally I climbed and shook the trees. They grew also behind my house, and one large tree, which almost overshadowed it, was, when in flower, a bouquet which scented the whole neighborhood, but the squirrels and the jays got most of its fruit; the last coming in flocks early in the morning and picking the nuts out of the burrs before they fell. I relinquished these trees to them and visited the more distant woods composed wholly of chestnut. These nuts, as far as they went, were a good substitute for bread. Many other substitutes might, perhaps, be found. Digging one day for fish-worms, I discovered the ground-nut (Apios tuberosa) on its string, the potato of the aborigines, a sort of fabulous fruit, which I had begun to doubt if I had ever dug and eaten in childhood, as I had told, and had not dreamed it. I had often since seen its crimpled red velvety blossom supported by the stems of other plants without knowing it to be the same. Cultivation has well nigh exterminated it. It has a sweetish taste, much like that of a frostbitten potato, and I found it better boiled than roasted. This tuber seemed like a faint promise of Nature to rear her own children and feed them simply here at some future period. In these days of fatted cattle and waving grain-fields this humble root, which was once the totem of an Indian tribe, is quite forgotten, or known only by its flowering vine; but let wild Nature reign here once more, and the tender and luxurious English grains will probably disappear before a myriad of foes, and without the care of man the crow may carry back even the last seed of corn to the great cornfield of the Indian\u2019s God in the south-west, whence he is said to have brought it; but the now almost exterminated ground-nut will perhaps revive and flourish in spite of frosts and wildness, prove itself indigenous, and resume its ancient importance and dignity as the diet of the hunter tribe. Some Indian Ceres or Minerva must have been the inventor and bestower of it; and when the reign of poetry commences here, its leaves and string of nuts may be represented on our works of art.\n\nAlready, by the first of September, I had seen two or three small maples turned scarlet across the pond, beneath where the white stems of three aspens diverged, at the point of a promontory, next the water. Ah, many a tale their color told! And gradually from week to week the character of each tree came out, and it admired itself reflected in the smooth mirror of the lake. Each morning the manager of this gallery substituted some new picture, distinguished by more brilliant or harmonious coloring, for the old upon the walls.\n\nThe wasps came by thousands to my lodge in October, as to winter quarters, and settled on my windows within and on the walls over-head, sometimes deterring visitors from entering. Each morning, when they were numbed with cold, I swept some of them out, but I did not trouble myself much to get rid of them; I even felt complimented by their regarding my house as a desirable shelter. They never molested me seriously, though they bedded with me; and they gradually disappeared, into what crevices I do not know, avoiding winter and unspeakable cold.\n\nLike the wasps, before I finally went into winter quarters in November, I used to resort to the north-east side of Walden, which the sun, reflected from the pitch-pine woods and the stony shore, made the fire-side of the pond; it is so much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the sun while you can be, than by an artificial fire. I thus warmed myself by the still glowing embers which the summer, like a departed hunter, had left.\n\nWhen I came to build my chimney I studied masonry. My bricks being second-hand ones required to be cleaned with a trowel, so that I learned more than usual of the qualities of bricks and trowels. The mortar on them was fifty years old, and was said to be still growing harder; but this is one of those sayings which men love to repeat whether they are true or not. Such sayings themselves grow harder and adhere more firmly with age, and it would take many blows with a trowel to clean an old wiseacre of them. Many of the villages of Mesopotamia are built of second-hand bricks of a very good quality, obtained from the ruins of Babylon, and the cement on them is older and probably harder still. However that may be, I was struck by the peculiar toughness of the steel which bore so many violent blows without being worn out. As my bricks had been in a chimney before, though I did not read the name of Nebuchadnezzar on them, I picked out as many fire-place bricks as I could find, to save work and waste, and I filled the spaces between the bricks about the fire-place with stones from the pond shore, and also made my mortar with the white sand from the same place. I lingered most about the fireplace, as the most vital part of the house. Indeed, I worked so deliberately, that though I commenced at the ground in the morning, a course of bricks raised a few inches above the floor served for my pillow at night; yet I did not get a stiff neck for it that I remember; my stiff neck is of older date. I took a poet to board for a fortnight about those times, which caused me to be put to it for room. He brought his own knife, though I had two, and we used to scour them by thrusting them into the earth. He shared with me the labors of cooking. I was pleased to see my work rising so square and solid by degrees, and reflected, that, if it proceeded slowly, it was calculated to endure a long time. The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground and rising through the house to the heavens; even after the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent. This was toward the end of summer. It was now November.\n\nThe north wind had already begun to cool the pond, though it took many weeks of steady blowing to accomplish it, it is so deep. When I began to have a fire at evening, before I plastered my house, the chimney carried smoke particularly well, because of the numerous chinks between the boards. Yet I passed some cheerful evenings in that cool and airy apartment, surrounded by the rough brown boards full of knots, and rafters with the bark on high overhead. My house never pleased my eye so much after it was plastered, though I was obliged to confess that it was more comfortable. Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity over-head, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture. I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter. I had got a couple of old fire-dogs to keep the wood from the hearth, and it did me good to see the soot form on the back of the chimney which I had built, and I poked the fire with more right and more satisfaction than usual. My dwelling was small, and I could hardly entertain an echo in it; but it seemed larger for being a single apartment and remote from neighbors. All the attractions of a house were concentrated in one room; it was kitchen, chamber, parlor, and keeping-room; and whatever satisfaction parent or child, master or servant, derive from living in a house, I enjoyed it all. Cato says, the master of a family (patremfamilias) must have in his rustic villa \u201ccellam oleariam, vinariam, dolia multa, uti lubeat caritatem expectare, et rei, et virtuti, et glori\u00e6 erit,\u201d that is, \u201can oil and wine cellar, many casks, so that it may be pleasant to expect hard times; it will be for his advantage, and virtue, and glory.\u201d I had in my cellar a firkin of potatoes, about two quarts of peas with the weevil in them, and on my shelf a little rice, a jug of molasses, and of rye and Indian meal a peck each.\n\nI sometimes dream of a larger and more populous house, standing in a golden age, of enduring materials, and without ginger-bread work, which shall still consist of only one room, a vast, rude, substantial, primitive hall, without ceiling or plastering, with bare rafters and purlins supporting a sort of lower heaven over one\u2019s head,\u2014useful to keep off rain and snow; where the king and queen posts stand out to receive your homage, when you have done reverence to the prostrate Saturn of an older dynasty on stepping over the sill; a cavernous house, wherein you must reach up a torch upon a pole to see the roof; where some may live in the fire-place, some in the recess of a window, and some on settles, some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some aloft on rafters with the spiders, if they choose; a house which you have got into when you have opened the outside door, and the ceremony is over; where the weary traveller may wash, and eat, and converse, and sleep, without further journey; such a shelter as you would be glad to reach in a tempestuous night, containing all the essentials of a house, and nothing for house-keeping; where you can see all the treasures of the house at one view, and every thing hangs upon its peg, that a man should use; at once kitchen, pantry, parlor, chamber, store-house, and garret; where you can see so necessary a thing as a barrel or a ladder, so convenient a thing as a cupboard, and hear the pot boil, and pay your respects to the fire that cooks your dinner and the oven that bakes your bread, and the necessary furniture and utensils are the chief ornaments; where the washing is not put out, nor the fire, nor the mistress, and perhaps you are sometimes requested to move from off the trap-door, when the cook would descend into the cellar, and so learn whether the ground is solid or hollow beneath you without stamping. A house whose inside is as open and manifest as a bird\u2019s nest, and you cannot go in at the front door and out at the back without seeing some of its inhabitants; where to be a guest is to be presented with the freedom of the house, and not to be carefully excluded from seven eighths of it, shut up in a particular cell, and told to make yourself at home there,\u2014in solitary confinement. Nowadays the host does not admit you to his hearth, but has got the mason to build one for yourself somewhere in his alley, and hospitality is the art of keeping you at the greatest distance. There is as much secrecy about the cooking as if he had a design to poison you. I am aware that I have been on many a man\u2019s premises, and might have been legally ordered off, but I am not aware that I have been in many men\u2019s houses. I might visit in my old clothes a king and queen who lived simply in such a house as I have described, if I were going their way; but backing out of a modern palace will be all that I shall desire to learn, if ever I am caught in one.\n\nIt would seem as if the very language of our parlors would lose all its nerve and degenerate into palaver wholly, our lives pass at such remoteness from its symbols, and its metaphors and tropes are necessarily so far fetched, through slides and dumb-waiters, as it were; in other words, the parlor is so far from the kitchen and workshop. The dinner even is only the parable of a dinner, commonly. As if only the savage dwelt near enough to Nature and Truth to borrow a trope from them. How can the scholar, who dwells away in the North West Territory or the Isle of Man, tell what is parliamentary in the kitchen?\n\nHowever, only one or two of my guests were ever bold enough to stay and eat a hasty-pudding with me; but when they saw that crisis approaching they beat a hasty retreat rather, as if it would shake the house to its foundations. Nevertheless, it stood through a great many hasty-puddings.\n\nI did not plaster till it was freezing weather. I brought over some whiter and cleaner sand for this purpose from the opposite shore of the pond in a boat, a sort of conveyance which would have tempted me to go much farther if necessary. My house had in the mean while been shingled down to the ground on every side. In lathing I was pleased to be able to send home each nail with a single blow of the hammer, and it was my ambition to transfer the plaster from the board to the wall neatly and rapidly. I remembered the story of a conceited fellow, who, in fine clothes, was wont to lounge about the village once, giving advice to workmen. Venturing one day to substitute deeds for words, he turned up his cuffs, seized a plasterer\u2019s board, and having loaded his trowel without mishap, with a complacent look toward the lathing overhead, made a bold gesture thitherward; and straightway, to his complete discomfiture, received the whole contents in his ruffled bosom. I admired anew the economy and convenience of plastering, which so effectually shuts out the cold and takes a handsome finish, and I learned the various casualties to which the plasterer is liable. I was surprised to see how thirsty the bricks were which drank up all the moisture in my plaster before I had smoothed it, and how many pailfuls of water it takes to christen a new hearth. I had the previous winter made a small quantity of lime by burning the shells of the Unio fluviatilis, which our river affords, for the sake of the experiment; so that I knew where my materials came from. I might have got good limestone within a mile or two and burned it myself, if I had cared to do so.\n\nThe pond had in the mean while skimmed over in the shadiest and shallowest coves, some days or even weeks before the general freezing. The first ice is especially interesting and perfect, being hard, dark, and transparent, and affords the best opportunity that ever offers for examining the bottom where it is shallow; for you can lie at your length on ice only an inch thick, like a skater insect on the surface of the water, and study the bottom at your leisure, only two or three inches distant, like a picture behind a glass, and the water is necessarily always smooth then. There are many furrows in the sand where some creature has travelled about and doubled on its tracks; and, for wrecks, it is strewn with the cases of cadis worms made of minute grains of white quartz. Perhaps these have creased it, for you find some of their cases in the furrows, though they are deep and broad for them to make. But the ice itself is the object of most interest, though you must improve the earliest opportunity to study it. If you examine it closely the morning after it freezes, you find that the greater part of the bubbles, which at first appeared to be within it, are against its under surface, and that more are continually rising from the bottom; while the ice is as yet comparatively solid and dark, that is, you see the water through it. These bubbles are from an eightieth to an eighth of an inch in diameter, very clear and beautiful, and you see your face reflected in them through the ice. There may be thirty or forty of them to a square inch. There are also already within the ice narrow oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, sharp cones with the apex upward; or oftener, if the ice is quite fresh, minute spherical bubbles one directly above another, like a string of beads. But these within the ice are not so numerous nor obvious as those beneath. I sometimes used to cast on stones to try the strength of the ice, and those which broke through carried in air with them, which formed very large and conspicuous white bubbles beneath. One day when I came to the same place forty-eight hours afterward, I found that those large bubbles were still perfect, though an inch more of ice had formed, as I could see distinctly by the seam in the edge of a cake. But as the last two days had been very warm, like an Indian summer, the ice was not now transparent, showing the dark green color of the water, and the bottom, but opaque and whitish or gray, and though twice as thick was hardly stronger than before, for the air bubbles had greatly expanded under this heat and run together, and lost their regularity; they were no longer one directly over another, but often like silvery coins poured from a bag, one overlapping another, or in thin flakes, as if occupying slight cleavages. The beauty of the ice was gone, and it was too late to study the bottom. Being curious to know what position my great bubbles occupied with regard to the new ice, I broke out a cake containing a middling sized one, and turned it bottom upward. The new ice had formed around and under the bubble, so that it was included between the two ices. It was wholly in the lower ice, but close against the upper, and was flattish, or perhaps slightly lenticular, with a rounded edge, a quarter of an inch deep by four inches in diameter; and I was surprised to find that directly under the bubble the ice was melted with great regularity in the form of a saucer reversed, to the height of five eighths of an inch in the middle, leaving a thin partition there between the water and the bubble, hardly an eighth of an inch thick; and in many places the small bubbles in this partition had burst out downward, and probably there was no ice at all under the largest bubbles, which were a foot in diameter. I inferred that the infinite number of minute bubbles which I had first seen against the under surface of the ice were now frozen in likewise, and that each, in its degree, had operated like a burning glass on the ice beneath to melt and rot it. These are the little air-guns which contribute to make the ice crack and whoop.\n\nAt length the winter set in in good earnest, just as I had finished plastering, and the wind began to howl around the house as if it had not had permission to do so till then. Night after night the geese came lumbering in in the dark with a clangor and a whistling of wings, even after the ground was covered with snow, some to alight in Walden, and some flying low over the woods toward Fair Haven, bound for Mexico. Several times, when returning from the village at ten or eleven o\u2019clock at night, I heard the tread of a flock of geese, or else ducks, on the dry leaves in the woods by a pond-hole behind my dwelling, where they had come up to feed, and the faint honk or quack of their leader as they hurried off. In 1845 Walden froze entirely over for the first time on the night of the 22d of December, Flint\u2019s and other shallower ponds and the river having been frozen ten days or more; in \u201946, the 16th; in \u201949, about the 31st; and in \u201950, about the 27th of December; in \u201952, the 5th of January; in \u201953, the 31st of December. The snow had already covered the ground since the 25th of November, and surrounded me suddenly with the scenery of winter. I withdrew yet farther into my shell, and endeavored to keep a bright fire both within my house and within my breast. My employment out of doors now was to collect the dead wood in the forest, bringing it in my hands or on my shoulders, or sometimes trailing a dead pine tree under each arm to my shed. An old forest fence which had seen its best days was a great haul for me. I sacrificed it to Vulcan, for it was past serving the god Terminus. How much more interesting an event is that man\u2019s supper who has just been forth in the snow to hunt, nay, you might say, steal, the fuel to cook it with! His bread and meat are sweet. There are enough fagots and waste wood of all kinds in the forests of most of our towns to support many fires, but which at present warm none, and, some think, hinder the growth of the young wood. There was also the drift-wood of the pond. In the course of the summer I had discovered a raft of pitch-pine logs with the bark on, pinned together by the Irish when the railroad was built. This I hauled up partly on the shore. After soaking two years and then lying high six months it was perfectly sound, though waterlogged past drying. I amused myself one winter day with sliding this piecemeal across the pond, nearly half a mile, skating behind with one end of a log fifteen feet long on my shoulder, and the other on the ice; or I tied several logs together with a birch withe, and then, with a longer birch or alder which had a hook at the end, dragged them across. Though completely waterlogged and almost as heavy as lead, they not only burned long, but made a very hot fire; nay, I thought that they burned better for the soaking, as if the pitch, being confined by the water, burned longer, as in a lamp.\n\nGilpin, in his account of the forest borderers of England, says that \u201cthe encroachments of trespassers, and the houses and fences thus raised on the borders of the forest,\u201d were \u201cconsidered as great nuisances by the old forest law, and were severely punished under the name of purprestures, as tending ad terrorem ferarum\u2014ad nocumentum forest\u00e6, &c.,\u201d to the frightening of the game and the detriment of the forest. But I was interested in the preservation of the venison and the vert more than the hunters or woodchoppers, and as much as though I had been the Lord Warden himself; and if any part was burned, though I burned it myself by accident, I grieved with a grief that lasted longer and was more inconsolable than that of the proprietors; nay, I grieved when it was cut down by the proprietors themselves. I would that our farmers when they cut down a forest felt some of that awe which the old Romans did when they came to thin, or let in the light to, a consecrated grove (lucum conlucare), that is, would believe that it is sacred to some god. The Roman made an expiatory offering, and prayed, Whatever god or goddess thou art to whom this grove is sacred, be propitious to me, my family, and children, &c.\n\nIt is remarkable what a value is still put upon wood even in this age and in this new country, a value more permanent and universal than that of gold. After all our discoveries and inventions no man will go by a pile of wood. It is as precious to us as it was to our Saxon and Norman ancestors. If they made their bows of it, we make our gun-stocks of it. Michaux, more than thirty years ago, says that the price of wood for fuel in New York and Philadelphia \u201cnearly equals, and sometimes exceeds, that of the best wood in Paris, though this immense capital annually requires more than three hundred thousand cords, and is surrounded to the distance of three hundred miles by cultivated plains.\u201d In this town the price of wood rises almost steadily, and the only question is, how much higher it is to be this year than it was the last. Mechanics and tradesmen who come in person to the forest on no other errand, are sure to attend the wood auction, and even pay a high price for the privilege of gleaning after the woodchopper. It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts; the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robinhood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill, in most parts of the world the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.\n\nEvery man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection. I love to have mine before my window, and the more chips the better to remind me of my pleasing work. I had an old axe which nobody claimed, with which by spells in winter days, on the sunny side of the house, I played about the stumps which I had got out of my bean-field. As my driver prophesied when I was ploughing, they warmed me twice, once while I was splitting them, and again when they were on the fire, so that no fuel could give out more heat. As for the axe, I was advised to get the village blacksmith to \u201cjump\u201d it; but I jumped him, and, putting a hickory helve from the woods into it, made it do. If it was dull, it was at least hung true.\n\nA few pieces of fat pine were a great treasure. It is interesting to remember how much of this food for fire is still concealed in the bowels of the earth. In previous years I had often gone \u201cprospecting\u201d over some bare hill-side, where a pitch-pine wood had formerly stood, and got out the fat pine roots. They are almost indestructible. Stumps thirty or forty years old, at least, will still be sound at the core, though the sapwood has all become vegetable mould, as appears by the scales of the thick bark forming a ring level with the earth four or five inches distant from the heart. With axe and shovel you explore this mine, and follow the marrowy store, yellow as beef tallow, or as if you had struck on a vein of gold, deep into the earth. But commonly I kindled my fire with the dry leaves of the forest, which I had stored up in my shed before the snow came. Green hickory finely split makes the woodchopper\u2019s kindlings, when he has a camp in the woods. Once in a while I got a little of this. When the villagers were lighting their fires beyond the horizon, I too gave notice to the various wild inhabitants of Walden vale, by a smoky streamer from my chimney, that I was awake.\u2014\n\nLight-winged Smoke, Icarian bird,\nMelting thy pinions in thy upward flight,\nLark without song, and messenger of dawn,\nCircling above the hamlets as thy nest;\nOr else, departing dream, and shadowy form\nOf midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;\nBy night star-veiling, and by day\nDarkening the light and blotting out the sun;\nGo thou my incense upward from this hearth,\nAnd ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.\n\nHard green wood just cut, though I used but little of that, answered my purpose better than any other. I sometimes left a good fire when I went to take a walk in a winter afternoon; and when I returned, three or four hours afterward, it would be still alive and glowing. My house was not empty though I was gone. It was as if I had left a cheerful housekeeper behind. It was I and Fire that lived there; and commonly my housekeeper proved trustworthy. One day, however, as I was splitting wood, I thought that I would just look in at the window and see if the house was not on fire; it was the only time I remember to have been particularly anxious on this score; so I looked and saw that a spark had caught my bed, and I went in and extinguished it when it had burned a place as big as my hand. But my house occupied so sunny and sheltered a position, and its roof was so low, that I could afford to let the fire go out in the middle of almost any winter day.\n\nThe moles nested in my cellar, nibbling every third potato, and making a snug bed even there of some hair left after plastering and of brown paper; for even the wildest animals love comfort and warmth as well as man, and they survive the winter only because they are so careful to secure them. Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself. The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body, in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light, and with a lamp lengthen out the day. Thus he goes a step or two beyond instinct, and saves a little time for the fine arts. Though, when I had been exposed to the rudest blasts a long time, my whole body began to grow torpid, when I reached the genial atmosphere of my house I soon recovered my faculties and prolonged my life. But the most luxuriously housed has little to boast of in this respect, nor need we trouble ourselves to speculate how the human race may be at last destroyed. It would be easy to cut their threads any time with a little sharper blast from the north. We go on dating from Cold Fridays and Great Snows; but a little colder Friday, or greater snow, would put a period to man\u2019s existence on the globe.\n\nThe next winter I used a small cooking-stove for economy, since I did not own the forest; but it did not keep fire so well as the open fire-place. Cooking was then, for the most part, no longer a poetic, but merely a chemic process. It will soon be forgotten, in these days of stoves, that we used to roast potatoes in the ashes, after the Indian fashion. The stove not only took up room and scented the house, but it concealed the fire, and I felt as if I had lost a companion. You can always see a face in the fire. The laborer, looking into it at evening, purifies his thoughts of the dross and earthiness which they have accumulated during the day. But I could no longer sit and look into the fire, and the pertinent words of a poet recurred to me with new force.\u2014\n\n\u201cNever, bright flame, may be denied to me\nThy dear, life imaging, close sympathy.\nWhat but my hopes shot upward e\u2019er so bright?\nWhat but my fortunes sunk so low in night?\n\nWhy art thou banished from our hearth and hall,\nThou who art welcomed and beloved by all?\nWas thy existence then too fanciful\nFor our life\u2019s common light, who are so dull?\nDid thy bright gleam mysterious converse hold\nWith our congenial souls? secrets too bold?\nWell, we are safe and strong, for now we sit\nBeside a hearth where no dim shadows flit,\nWhere nothing cheers nor saddens, but a fire\nWarms feet and hands\u2014nor does to more aspire;\nBy whose compact utilitarian heap\nThe present may sit down and go to sleep,\nNor fear the ghosts who from the dim past walked,\nAnd with us by the unequal light of the old wood fire talked.\u201d\n\nFormer Inhabitants and Winter Visitors\nI weathered some merry snow storms, and spent some cheerful winter evenings by my fire-side, while the snow whirled wildly without, and even the hooting of the owl was hushed. For many weeks I met no one in my walks but those who came occasionally to cut wood and sled it to the village. The elements, however, abetted me in making a path through the deepest snow in the woods, for when I had once gone through the wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where they lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow, and so not only made a dry bed for my feet, but in the night their dark line was my guide. For human society I was obliged to conjure up the former occupants of these woods. Within the memory of many of my townsmen the road near which my house stands resounded with the laugh and gossip of inhabitants, and the woods which border it were notched and dotted here and there with their little gardens and dwellings, though it was then much more shut in by the forest than now. In some places, within my own remembrance, the pines would scrape both sides of a chaise at once, and women and children who were compelled to go this way to Lincoln alone and on foot did it with fear, and often ran a good part of the distance. Though mainly but a humble route to neighboring villages, or for the woodman\u2019s team, it once amused the traveller more than now by its variety, and lingered longer in his memory. Where now firm open fields stretch from the village to the woods, it then ran through a maple swamp on a foundation of logs, the remnants of which, doubtless, still underlie the present dusty highway, from the Stratton, now the Alms House, Farm, to Brister\u2019s Hill.\n\nEast of my bean-field, across the road, lived Cato Ingraham, slave of Duncan Ingraham, Esquire, gentleman, of Concord village, who built his slave a house, and gave him permission to live in Walden Woods;\u2014Cato, not Uticensis, but Concordiensis. Some say that he was a Guinea Negro. There are a few who remember his little patch among the walnuts, which he let grow up till he should be old and need them; but a younger and whiter speculator got them at last. He too, however, occupies an equally narrow house at present. Cato\u2019s half-obliterated cellar hole still remains, though known to few, being concealed from the traveller by a fringe of pines. It is now filled with the smooth sumach (Rhus glabra,) and one of the earliest species of golden-rod (Solidago stricta) grows there luxuriantly.\n\nHere, by the very corner of my field, still nearer to town, Zilpha, a colored woman, had her little house, where she spun linen for the townsfolk, making the Walden Woods ring with her shrill singing, for she had a loud and notable voice. At length, in the war of 1812, her dwelling was set on fire by English soldiers, prisoners on parole, when she was away, and her cat and dog and hens were all burned up together. She led a hard life, and somewhat inhumane. One old frequenter of these woods remembers, that as he passed her house one noon he heard her muttering to herself over her gurgling pot,\u2014\u201cYe are all bones, bones!\u201d I have seen bricks amid the oak copse there.\n\nDown the road, on the right hand, on Brister\u2019s Hill, lived Brister Freeman, \u201ca handy Negro,\u201d slave of Squire Cummings once,\u2014there where grow still the apple-trees which Brister planted and tended; large old trees now, but their fruit still wild and ciderish to my taste. Not long since I read his epitaph in the old Lincoln burying-ground, a little on one side, near the unmarked graves of some British grenadiers who fell in the retreat from Concord,\u2014where he is styled \u201cSippio Brister,\u201d\u2014Scipio Africanus he had some title to be called,\u2014\u201ca man of color,\u201d as if he were discolored. It also told me, with staring emphasis, when he died; which was but an indirect way of informing me that he ever lived. With him dwelt Fenda, his hospitable wife, who told fortunes, yet pleasantly,\u2014large, round, and black, blacker than any of the children of night, such a dusky orb as never rose on Concord before or since.\n\nFarther down the hill, on the left, on the old road in the woods, are marks of some homestead of the Stratton family; whose orchard once covered all the slope of Brister\u2019s Hill, but was long since killed out by pitch pines, excepting a few stumps, whose old roots furnish still the wild stocks of many a thrifty village tree.\n\nNearer yet to town, you come to Breed\u2019s location, on the other side of the way, just on the edge of the wood; ground famous for the pranks of a demon not distinctly named in old mythology, who has acted a prominent and astounding part in our New England life, and deserves, as much as any mythological character, to have his biography written one day; who first comes in the guise of a friend or hired man, and then robs and murders the whole family,\u2014New-England Rum. But history must not yet tell the tragedies enacted here; let time intervene in some measure to assuage and lend an azure tint to them. Here the most indistinct and dubious tradition says that once a tavern stood; the well the same, which tempered the traveller\u2019s beverage and refreshed his steed. Here then men saluted one another, and heard and told the news, and went their ways again.\n\nBreed\u2019s hut was standing only a dozen years ago, though it had long been unoccupied. It was about the size of mine. It was set on fire by mischievous boys, one Election night, if I do not mistake. I lived on the edge of the village then, and had just lost myself over Davenant\u2019s Gondibert, that winter that I labored with a lethargy,\u2014which, by the way, I never knew whether to regard as a family complaint, having an uncle who goes to sleep shaving himself, and is obliged to sprout potatoes in a cellar Sundays, in order to keep awake and keep the Sabbath, or as the consequence of my attempt to read Chalmers\u2019 collection of English poetry without skipping. It fairly overcame my Nervii. I had just sunk my head on this when the bells rung fire, and in hot haste the engines rolled that way, led by a straggling troop of men and boys, and I among the foremost, for I had leaped the brook. We thought it was far south over the woods,\u2014we who had run to fires before,\u2014barn, shop, or dwelling-house, or all together. \u201cIt\u2019s Baker\u2019s barn,\u201d cried one. \u201cIt is the Codman place,\u201d affirmed another. And then fresh sparks went up above the wood, as if the roof fell in, and we all shouted \u201cConcord to the rescue!\u201d Wagons shot past with furious speed and crushing loads, bearing, perchance, among the rest, the agent of the Insurance Company, who was bound to go however far; and ever and anon the engine bell tinkled behind, more slow and sure; and rearmost of all, as it was afterward whispered, came they who set the fire and gave the alarm. Thus we kept on like true idealists, rejecting the evidence of our senses, until at a turn in the road we heard the crackling and actually felt the heat of the fire from over the wall, and realized, alas! that we were there. The very nearness of the fire but cooled our ardor. At first we thought to throw a frog-pond on to it; but concluded to let it burn, it was so far gone and so worthless. So we stood round our engine, jostled one another, expressed our sentiments through speaking-trumpets, or in lower tone referred to the great conflagrations which the world has witnessed, including Bascom\u2019s shop, and, between ourselves, we thought that, were we there in season with our \u201ctub,\u201d and a full frog-pond by, we could turn that threatened last and universal one into another flood. We finally retreated without doing any mischief,\u2014returned to sleep and Gondibert. But as for Gondibert, I would except that passage in the preface about wit being the soul\u2019s powder,\u2014\u201cbut most of mankind are strangers to wit, as Indians are to powder.\u201d\n\nIt chanced that I walked that way across the fields the following night, about the same hour, and hearing a low moaning at this spot, I drew near in the dark, and discovered the only survivor of the family that I know, the heir of both its virtues and its vices, who alone was interested in this burning, lying on his stomach and looking over the cellar wall at the still smouldering cinders beneath, muttering to himself, as is his wont. He had been working far off in the river meadows all day, and had improved the first moments that he could call his own to visit the home of his fathers and his youth. He gazed into the cellar from all sides and points of view by turns, always lying down to it, as if there was some treasure, which he remembered, concealed between the stones, where there was absolutely nothing but a heap of bricks and ashes. The house being gone, he looked at what there was left. He was soothed by the sympathy which my mere presence implied, and showed me, as well as the darkness permitted, where the well was covered up; which, thank Heaven, could never be burned; and he groped long about the wall to find the well-sweep which his father had cut and mounted, feeling for the iron hook or staple by which a burden had been fastened to the heavy end,\u2014all that he could now cling to,\u2014to convince me that it was no common \u201crider.\u201d I felt it, and still remark it almost daily in my walks, for by it hangs the history of a family.\n\nOnce more, on the left, where are seen the well and lilac bushes by the wall, in the now open field, lived Nutting and Le Grosse. But to return toward Lincoln.\n\nFarther in the woods than any of these, where the road approaches nearest to the pond, Wyman the potter squatted, and furnished his townsmen with earthen ware, and left descendants to succeed him. Neither were they rich in worldly goods, holding the land by sufferance while they lived; and there often the sheriff came in vain to collect the taxes, and \u201cattached a chip,\u201d for form\u2019s sake, as I have read in his accounts, there being nothing else that he could lay his hands on. One day in midsummer, when I was hoeing, a man who was carrying a load of pottery to market stopped his horse against my field and inquired concerning Wyman the younger. He had long ago bought a potter\u2019s wheel of him, and wished to know what had become of him. I had read of the potter\u2019s clay and wheel in Scripture, but it had never occurred to me that the pots we use were not such as had come down unbroken from those days, or grown on trees like gourds somewhere, and I was pleased to hear that so fictile an art was ever practiced in my neighborhood.\n\nThe last inhabitant of these woods before me was an Irishman, Hugh Quoil (if I have spelt his name with coil enough,) who occupied Wyman\u2019s tenement,\u2014Col. Quoil, he was called. Rumor said that he had been a soldier at Waterloo. If he had lived I should have made him fight his battles over again. His trade here was that of a ditcher. Napoleon went to St. Helena; Quoil came to Walden Woods. All I know of him is tragic. He was a man of manners, like one who had seen the world, and was capable of more civil speech than you could well attend to. He wore a great coat in mid-summer, being affected with the trembling delirium, and his face was the color of carmine. He died in the road at the foot of Brister\u2019s Hill shortly after I came to the woods, so that I have not remembered him as a neighbor. Before his house was pulled down, when his comrades avoided it as \u201can unlucky castle,\u201d I visited it. There lay his old clothes curled up by use, as if they were himself, upon his raised plank bed. His pipe lay broken on the hearth, instead of a bowl broken at the fountain. The last could never have been the symbol of his death, for he confessed to me that, though he had heard of Brister\u2019s Spring, he had never seen it; and soiled cards, kings of diamonds spades and hearts, were scattered over the floor. One black chicken which the administrator could not catch, black as night and as silent, not even croaking, awaiting Reynard, still went to roost in the next apartment. In the rear there was the dim outline of a garden, which had been planted but had never received its first hoeing, owing to those terrible shaking fits, though it was now harvest time. It was over-run with Roman wormwood and beggar-ticks, which last stuck to my clothes for all fruit. The skin of a woodchuck was freshly stretched upon the back of the house, a trophy of his last Waterloo; but no warm cap or mittens would he want more.\n\nNow only a dent in the earth marks the site of these dwellings, with buried cellar stones, and strawberries, raspberries, thimble-berries, hazel-bushes, and sumachs growing in the sunny sward there; some pitch-pine or gnarled oak occupies what was the chimney nook, and a sweet-scented black-birch, perhaps, waves where the door-stone was. Sometimes the well dent is visible, where once a spring oozed; now dry and tearless grass; or it was covered deep,\u2014not to be discovered till some late day,\u2014with a flat stone under the sod, when the last of the race departed. What a sorrowful act must that be,\u2014the covering up of wells! coincident with the opening of wells of tears. These cellar dents, like deserted fox burrows, old holes, are all that is left where once were the stir and bustle of human life, and \u201cfate, free-will, foreknowledge absolute,\u201d in some form and dialect or other were by turns discussed. But all I can learn of their conclusions amounts to just this, that \u201cCato and Brister pulled wool;\u201d which is about as edifying as the history of more famous schools of philosophy.\n\nStill grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children\u2019s hands, in front-yard plots,\u2014now standing by wall-sides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests;\u2014the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man\u2019s garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a half century after they had grown up and died,\u2014blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still tender, civil, cheerful, lilac colors.\n\nBut this small village, germ of something more, why did it fail while Concord keeps its ground? Were there no natural advantages,\u2014no water privileges, forsooth? Ay, the deep Walden Pond and cool Brister\u2019s Spring,\u2014privilege to drink long and healthy draughts at these, all unimproved by these men but to dilute their glass. They were universally a thirsty race. Might not the basket, stable-broom, mat-making, corn-parching, linen-spinning, and pottery business have thrived here, making the wilderness to blossom like the rose, and a numerous posterity have inherited the land of their fathers? The sterile soil would at least have been proof against a low-land degeneracy. Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape! Again, perhaps, Nature will try, with me for a first settler, and my house raised last spring to be the oldest in the hamlet.\n\nI am not aware that any man has ever built on the spot which I occupy. Deliver me from a city built on the site of a more ancient city, whose materials are ruins, whose gardens cemeteries. The soil is blanched and accursed there, and before that becomes necessary the earth itself will be destroyed. With such reminiscences I repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep.\n\nAt this season I seldom had a visitor. When the snow lay deepest no wanderer ventured near my house for a week or fortnight at a time, but there I lived as snug as a meadow mouse, or as cattle and poultry which are said to have survived for a long time buried in drifts, even without food; or like that early settler\u2019s family in the town of Sutton, in this state, whose cottage was completely covered by the great snow of 1717 when he was absent, and an Indian found it only by the hole which the chimney\u2019s breath made in the drift, and so relieved the family. But no friendly Indian concerned himself about me; nor needed he, for the master of the house was at home. The Great Snow! How cheerful it is to hear of! When the farmers could not get to the woods and swamps with their teams, and were obliged to cut down the shade trees before their houses, and when the crust was harder, cut off the trees in the swamps, ten feet from the ground, as it appeared the next spring.\n\nIn the deepest snows, the path which I used from the highway to my house, about half a mile long, might have been represented by a meandering dotted line, with wide intervals between the dots. For a week of even weather I took exactly the same number of steps, and of the same length, coming and going, stepping deliberately and with the precision of a pair of dividers in my own deep tracks,\u2014to such routine the winter reduces us,\u2014yet often they were filled with heaven\u2019s own blue. But no weather interfered fatally with my walks, or rather my going abroad, for I frequently tramped eight or ten miles through the deepest snow to keep an appointment with a beech-tree, or a yellow-birch, or an old acquaintance among the pines; when the ice and snow causing their limbs to droop, and so sharpening their tops, had changed the pines into fir-trees; wading to the tops of the highest hills when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level, and shaking down another snow-storm on my head at every step; or sometimes creeping and floundering thither on my hands and knees, when the hunters had gone into winter quarters. One afternoon I amused myself by watching a barred owl (Strix nebulosa) sitting on one of the lower dead limbs of a white-pine, close to the trunk, in broad daylight, I standing within a rod of him. He could hear me when I moved and cronched the snow with my feet, but could not plainly see me. When I made most noise he would stretch out his neck, and erect his neck feathers, and open his eyes wide; but their lids soon fell again, and he began to nod. I too felt a slumberous influence after watching him half an hour, as he sat thus with his eyes half open, like a cat, winged brother of the cat. There was only a narrow slit left between their lids, by which he preserved a peninsular relation to me; thus, with half-shut eyes, looking out from the land of dreams, and endeavoring to realize me, vague object or mote that interrupted his visions. At length, on some louder noise or my nearer approach, he would grow uneasy and sluggishly turn about on his perch, as if impatient at having his dreams disturbed; and when he launched himself off and flapped through the pines, spreading his wings to unexpected breadth, I could not hear the slightest sound from them. Thus, guided amid the pine boughs rather by a delicate sense of their neighborhood than by sight, feeling his twilight way as it were with his sensitive pinions, he found a new perch, where he might in peace await the dawning of his day.\n\nAs I walked over the long causeway made for the railroad through the meadows, I encountered many a blustering and nipping wind, for nowhere has it freer play; and when the frost had smitten me on one cheek, heathen as I was, I turned to it the other also. Nor was it much better by the carriage road from Brister\u2019s Hill. For I came to town still, like a friendly Indian, when the contents of the broad open fields were all piled up between the walls of the Walden road, and half an hour sufficed to obliterate the tracks of the last traveller. And when I returned new drifts would have formed, through which I floundered, where the busy north-west wind had been depositing the powdery snow round a sharp angle in the road, and not a rabbit\u2019s track, nor even the fine print, the small type, of a meadow mouse was to be seen. Yet I rarely failed to find, even in mid-winter, some warm and springly swamp where the grass and the skunk-cabbage still put forth with perennial verdure, and some hardier bird occasionally awaited the return of spring.\n\nSometimes, notwithstanding the snow, when I returned from my walk at evening I crossed the deep tracks of a woodchopper leading from my door, and found his pile of whittlings on the hearth, and my house filled with the odor of his pipe. Or on a Sunday afternoon, if I chanced to be at home, I heard the cronching of the snow made by the step of a long-headed farmer, who from far through the woods sought my house, to have a social \u201ccrack;\u201d one of the few of his vocation who are \u201cmen on their farms;\u201d who donned a frock instead of a professor\u2019s gown, and is as ready to extract the moral out of church or state as to haul a load of manure from his barn-yard. We talked of rude and simple times, when men sat about large fires in cold bracing weather, with clear heads; and when other dessert failed, we tried our teeth on many a nut which wise squirrels have long since abandoned, for those which have the thickest shells are commonly empty.\n\nThe one who came from farthest to my lodge, through deepest snows and most dismal tempests, was a poet. A farmer, a hunter, a soldier, a reporter, even a philosopher, may be daunted; but nothing can deter a poet, for he is actuated by pure love. Who can predict his comings and goings? His business calls him out at all hours, even when doctors sleep. We made that small house ring with boisterous mirth and resound with the murmur of much sober talk, making amends then to Walden vale for the long silences. Broadway was still and deserted in comparison. At suitable intervals there were regular salutes of laughter, which might have been referred indifferently to the last uttered or the forth-coming jest. We made many a \u201cbran new\u201d theory of life over a thin dish of gruel, which combined the advantages of conviviality with the clear-headedness which philosophy requires.\n\nI should not forget that during my last winter at the pond there was another welcome visitor, who at one time came through the village, through snow and rain and darkness, till he saw my lamp through the trees, and shared with me some long winter evenings. One of the last of the philosophers,\u2014Connecticut gave him to the world,\u2014he peddled first her wares, afterwards, as he declares, his brains. These he peddles still, prompting God and disgracing man, bearing for fruit his brain only, like the nut its kernel. I think that he must be the man of the most faith of any alive. His words and attitude always suppose a better state of things than other men are acquainted with, and he will be the last man to be disappointed as the ages revolve. He has no venture in the present. But though comparatively disregarded now, when his day comes, laws unsuspected by most will take effect, and masters of families and rulers will come to him for advice.\u2014\n\n\u201cHow blind that cannot see serenity!\u201d\n\nA true friend of man; almost the only friend of human progress. An Old Mortality, say rather an Immortality, with unwearied patience and faith making plain the image engraven in men\u2019s bodies, the God of whom they are but defaced and leaning monuments. With his hospitable intellect he embraces children, beggars, insane, and scholars, and entertains the thought of all, adding to it commonly some breadth and elegance. I think that he should keep a caravansary on the world\u2019s highway, where philosophers of all nations might put up, and on his sign should be printed, \u201cEntertainment for man, but not for his beast. Enter ye that have leisure and a quiet mind, who earnestly seek the right road.\u201d He is perhaps the sanest man and has the fewest crotchets of any I chance to know; the same yesterday and tomorrow. Of yore we had sauntered and talked, and effectually put the world behind us; for he was pledged to no institution in it, freeborn, ingenuus. Whichever way we turned, it seemed that the heavens and the earth had met together, since he enhanced the beauty of the landscape. A blue-robed man, whose fittest roof is the overarching sky which reflects his serenity. I do not see how he can ever die; Nature cannot spare him.\n\nHaving each some shingles of thought well dried, we sat and whittled them, trying our knives, and admiring the clear yellowish grain of the pumpkin pine. We waded so gently and reverently, or we pulled together so smoothly, that the fishes of thought were not scared from the stream, nor feared any angler on the bank, but came and went grandly, like the clouds which float through the western sky, and the mother-o\u2019-pearl flocks which sometimes form and dissolve there. There we worked, revising mythology, rounding a fable here and there, and building castles in the air for which earth offered no worthy foundation. Great Looker! Great Expecter! to converse with whom was a New England Night\u2019s Entertainment. Ah! such discourse we had, hermit and philosopher, and the old settler I have spoken of,\u2014we three,\u2014it expanded and racked my little house; I should not dare to say how many pounds\u2019 weight there was above the atmospheric pressure on every circular inch; it opened its seams so that they had to be calked with much dulness thereafter to stop the consequent leak;\u2014but I had enough of that kind of oakum already picked.\n\nThere was one other with whom I had \u201csolid seasons,\u201d long to be remembered, at his house in the village, and who looked in upon me from time to time; but I had no more for society there.\n\nThere too, as every where, I sometimes expected the Visitor who never comes. The Vishnu Purana says, \u201cThe house-holder is to remain at eventide in his court-yard as long as it takes to milk a cow, or longer if he pleases, to await the arrival of a guest.\u201d I often performed this duty of hospitality, waited long enough to milk a whole herd of cows, but did not see the man approaching from the town.\n\nWinter Animals\nWhen the ponds were firmly frozen, they afforded not only new and shorter routes to many points, but new views from their surfaces of the familiar landscape around them. When I crossed Flint\u2019s Pond, after it was covered with snow, though I had often paddled about and skated over it, it was so unexpectedly wide and so strange that I could think of nothing but Baffin\u2019s Bay. The Lincoln hills rose up around me at the extremity of a snowy plain, in which I did not remember to have stood before; and the fishermen, at an indeterminable distance over the ice, moving slowly about with their wolfish dogs, passed for sealers or Esquimaux, or in misty weather loomed like fabulous creatures, and I did not know whether they were giants or pygmies. I took this course when I went to lecture in Lincoln in the evening, travelling in no road and passing no house between my own hut and the lecture room. In Goose Pond, which lay in my way, a colony of muskrats dwelt, and raised their cabins high above the ice, though none could be seen abroad when I crossed it. Walden, being like the rest usually bare of snow, or with only shallow and interrupted drifts on it, was my yard, where I could walk freely when the snow was nearly two feet deep on a level elsewhere and the villagers were confined to their streets. There, far from the village street, and except at very long intervals, from the jingle of sleigh-bells, I slid and skated, as in a vast moose-yard well trodden, overhung by oak woods and solemn pines bent down with snow or bristling with icicles.\n\nFor sounds in winter nights, and often in winter days, I heard the forlorn but melodious note of a hooting owl indefinitely far; such a sound as the frozen earth would yield if struck with a suitable plectrum, the very lingua vernacula of Walden Wood, and quite familiar to me at last, though I never saw the bird while it was making it. I seldom opened my door in a winter evening without hearing it; Hoo hoo hoo, hoorer, hoo, sounded sonorously, and the first three syllables accented somewhat like how der do; or sometimes hoo hoo only. One night in the beginning of winter, before the pond froze over, about nine o\u2019clock, I was startled by the loud honking of a goose, and, stepping to the door, heard the sound of their wings like a tempest in the woods as they flew low over my house. They passed over the pond toward Fair Haven, seemingly deterred from settling by my light, their commodore honking all the while with a regular beat. Suddenly an unmistakable cat-owl from very near me, with the most harsh and tremendous voice I ever heard from any inhabitant of the woods, responded at regular intervals to the goose, as if determined to expose and disgrace this intruder from Hudson\u2019s Bay by exhibiting a greater compass and volume of voice in a native, and boo-hoo him out of Concord horizon. What do you mean by alarming the citadel at this time of night consecrated to me? Do you think I am ever caught napping at such an hour, and that I have not got lungs and a larynx as well as yourself? Boo-hoo, boo-hoo, boo-hoo! It was one of the most thrilling discords I ever heard. And yet, if you had a discriminating ear, there were in it the elements of a concord such as these plains never saw nor heard.\n\nI also heard the whooping of the ice in the pond, my great bed-fellow in that part of Concord, as if it were restless in its bed and would fain turn over, were troubled with flatulency and had dreams; or I was waked by the cracking of the ground by the frost, as if some one had driven a team against my door, and in the morning would find a crack in the earth a quarter of a mile long and a third of an inch wide.\n\nSometimes I heard the foxes as they ranged over the snow crust, in moonlight nights, in search of a partridge or other game, barking raggedly and demoniacally like forest dogs, as if laboring with some anxiety, or seeking expression, struggling for light and to be dogs outright and run freely in the streets; for if we take the ages into our account, may there not be a civilization going on among brutes as well as men? They seemed to me to be rudimental, burrowing men, still standing on their defence, awaiting their transformation. Sometimes one came near to my window, attracted by my light, barked a vulpine curse at me, and then retreated.\n\nUsually the red squirrel (Sciurus Hudsonius) waked me in the dawn, coursing over the roof and up and down the sides of the house, as if sent out of the woods for this purpose. In the course of the winter I threw out half a bushel of ears of sweet-corn, which had not got ripe, on to the snow crust by my door, and was amused by watching the motions of the various animals which were baited by it. In the twilight and the night the rabbits came regularly and made a hearty meal. All day long the red squirrels came and went, and afforded me much entertainment by their man\u0153uvres. One would approach at first warily through the shrub-oaks, running over the snow crust by fits and starts like a leaf blown by the wind, now a few paces this way, with wonderful speed and waste of energy, making inconceivable haste with his \u201ctrotters,\u201d as if it were for a wager, and now as many paces that way, but never getting on more than half a rod at a time; and then suddenly pausing with a ludicrous expression and a gratuitous somerset, as if all the eyes in the universe were fixed on him,\u2014for all the motions of a squirrel, even in the most solitary recesses of the forest, imply spectators as much as those of a dancing girl,\u2014wasting more time in delay and circumspection than would have sufficed to walk the whole distance,\u2014I never saw one walk,\u2014and then suddenly, before you could say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a young pitch-pine, winding up his clock and chiding all imaginary spectators, soliloquizing and talking to all the universe at the same time,\u2014for no reason that I could ever detect, or he himself was aware of, I suspect. At length he would reach the corn, and selecting a suitable ear, frisk about in the same uncertain trigonometrical way to the top-most stick of my wood-pile, before my window, where he looked me in the face, and there sit for hours, supplying himself with a new ear from time to time, nibbling at first voraciously and throwing the half-naked cobs about; till at length he grew more dainty still and played with his food, tasting only the inside of the kernel, and the ear, which was held balanced over the stick by one paw, slipped from his careless grasp and fell to the ground, when he would look over at it with a ludicrous expression of uncertainty, as if suspecting that it had life, with a mind not made up whether to get it again, or a new one, or be off; now thinking of corn, then listening to hear what was in the wind. So the little impudent fellow would waste many an ear in a forenoon; till at last, seizing some longer and plumper one, considerably bigger than himself, and skilfully balancing it, he would set out with it to the woods, like a tiger with a buffalo, by the same zig-zag course and frequent pauses, scratching along with it as if it were too heavy for him and falling all the while, making its fall a diagonal between a perpendicular and horizontal, being determined to put it through at any rate;\u2014a singularly frivolous and whimsical fellow;\u2014and so he would get off with it to where he lived, perhaps carry it to the top of a pine tree forty or fifty rods distant, and I would afterwards find the cobs strewn about the woods in various directions.\n\nAt length the jays arrive, whose discordant screams were heard long before, as they were warily making their approach an eighth of a mile off, and in a stealthy and sneaking manner they flit from tree to tree, nearer and nearer, and pick up the kernels which the squirrels have dropped. Then, sitting on a pitch-pine bough, they attempt to swallow in their haste a kernel which is too big for their throats and chokes them; and after great labor they disgorge it, and spend an hour in the endeavor to crack it by repeated blows with their bills. They were manifestly thieves, and I had not much respect for them; but the squirrels, though at first shy, went to work as if they were taking what was their own.\n\nMeanwhile also came the chickadees in flocks, which, picking up the crumbs the squirrels had dropped, flew to the nearest twig, and, placing them under their claws, hammered away at them with their little bills, as if it were an insect in the bark, till they were sufficiently reduced for their slender throats. A little flock of these tit-mice came daily to pick a dinner out of my wood-pile, or the crumbs at my door, with faint flitting lisping notes, like the tinkling of icicles in the grass, or else with sprightly day day day, or more rarely, in spring-like days, a wiry summery phe-be from the wood-side. They were so familiar that at length one alighted on an armful of wood which I was carrying in, and pecked at the sticks without fear. I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance than I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn. The squirrels also grew at last to be quite familiar, and occasionally stepped upon my shoe, when that was the nearest way.\n\nWhen the ground was not yet quite covered, and again near the end of winter, when the snow was melted on my south hill-side and about my wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which comes sifting down in the sun-beams like golden dust; for this brave bird is not to be scared by winter. It is frequently covered up by drifts, and, it is said, \u201csometimes plunges from on wing into the soft snow, where it remains concealed for a day or two.\u201d I used to start them in the open land also, where they had come out of the woods at sunset to \u201cbud\u201d the wild apple-trees. They will come regularly every evening to particular trees, where the cunning sportsman lies in wait for them, and the distant orchards next the woods suffer thus not a little. I am glad that the partridge gets fed, at any rate. It is Nature\u2019s own bird which lives on buds and diet-drink.\n\nIn dark winter mornings, or in short winter afternoons, I sometimes heard a pack of hounds threading all the woods with hounding cry and yelp, unable to resist the instinct of the chase, and the note of the hunting horn at intervals, proving that man was in the rear. The woods ring again, and yet no fox bursts forth on to the open level of the pond, nor following pack pursuing their Act\u00e6on. And perhaps at evening I see the hunters returning with a single brush trailing from their sleigh for a trophy, seeking their inn. They tell me that if the fox would remain in the bosom of the frozen earth he would be safe, or if he would run in a straight line away no fox-hound could overtake him; but, having left his pursuers far behind, he stops to rest and listen till they come up, and when he runs he circles round to his old haunts, where the hunters await him. Sometimes, however, he will run upon a wall many rods, and then leap off far to one side, and he appears to know that water will not retain his scent. A hunter told me that he once saw a fox pursued by hounds burst out on to Walden when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, run part way across, and then return to the same shore. Ere long the hounds arrived, but here they lost the scent. Sometimes a pack hunting by themselves would pass my door, and circle round my house, and yelp and hound without regarding me, as if afflicted by a species of madness, so that nothing could divert them from the pursuit. Thus they circle until they fall upon the recent trail of a fox, for a wise hound will forsake every thing else for this. One day a man came to my hut from Lexington to inquire after his hound that made a large track, and had been hunting for a week by himself. But I fear that he was not the wiser for all I told him, for every time I attempted to answer his questions he interrupted me by asking, \u201cWhat do you do here?\u201d He had lost a dog, but found a man.\n\nOne old hunter who has a dry tongue, who used to come to bathe in Walden once every year when the water was warmest, and at such times looked in upon me, told me that many years ago he took his gun one afternoon and went out for a cruise in Walden Wood; and as he walked the Wayland road he heard the cry of hounds approaching, and ere long a fox leaped the wall into the road, and as quick as thought leaped the other wall out of the road, and his swift bullet had not touched him. Some way behind came an old hound and her three pups in full pursuit, hunting on their own account, and disappeared again in the woods. Late in the afternoon, as he was resting in the thick woods south of Walden, he heard the voice of the hounds far over toward Fair Haven still pursuing the fox; and on they came, their hounding cry which made all the woods ring sounding nearer and nearer, now from Well-Meadow, now from the Baker Farm. For a long time he stood still and listened to their music, so sweet to a hunter\u2019s ear, when suddenly the fox appeared, threading the solemn aisles with an easy coursing pace, whose sound was concealed by a sympathetic rustle of the leaves, swift and still, keeping the ground, leaving his pursuers far behind; and, leaping upon a rock amid the woods, he sat erect and listening, with his back to the hunter. For a moment compassion restrained the latter\u2019s arm; but that was a short-lived mood, and as quick as thought can follow thought his piece was levelled, and whang!\u2014the fox rolling over the rock lay dead on the ground. The hunter still kept his place and listened to the hounds. Still on they came, and now the near woods resounded through all their aisles with their demoniac cry. At length the old hound burst into view with muzzle to the ground, and snapping the air as if possessed, and ran directly to the rock; but spying the dead fox she suddenly ceased her hounding as if struck dumb with amazement, and walked round and round him in silence; and one by one her pups arrived, and, like their mother, were sobered into silence by the mystery. Then the hunter came forward and stood in their midst, and the mystery was solved. They waited in silence while he skinned the fox, then followed the brush a while, and at length turned off into the woods again. That evening a Weston Squire came to the Concord hunter\u2019s cottage to inquire for his hounds, and told how for a week they had been hunting on their own account from Weston woods. The Concord hunter told him what he knew and offered him the skin; but the other declined it and departed. He did not find his hounds that night, but the next day learned that they had crossed the river and put up at a farm-house for the night, whence, having been well fed, they took their departure early in the morning.\n\nThe hunter who told me this could remember one Sam Nutting, who used to hunt bears on Fair Haven Ledges, and exchange their skins for rum in Concord village; who told him, even, that he had seen a moose there. Nutting had a famous fox-hound named Burgoyne,\u2014he pronounced it Bugine,\u2014which my informant used to borrow. In the \u201cWast Book\u201d of an old trader of this town, who was also a captain, town-clerk, and representative, I find the following entry. Jan. 18th, 1742\u20133, \u201cEdouard Melven Cr. by 1 Grey Fox 0\u20142\u20143;\u201d they are not now found here; and in his ledger, Feb. 7th, 1743, Hezekiah Stratton has credit \u201cby \u00bd a Catt skin 0\u20141\u20144\u00bd;\u201d of course, a wild-cat, for Stratton was a sergeant in the old French war, and would not have got credit for hunting less noble game. Credit is given for deer skins also, and they were daily sold. One man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew here. I remember well one gaunt Nimrod who would catch up a leaf by the road-side and play a strain on it wilder and more melodious, if my memory serves me, than any hunting-horn.\n\nAt midnight, when there was a moon, I sometimes met with hounds in my path prowling about the woods, which would skulk out of my way, as if afraid, and stand silent amid the bushes till I had passed.\n\nSquirrels and wild mice disputed for my store of nuts. There were scores of pitch-pines around my house, from one to four inches in diameter, which had been gnawed by mice the previous winter,\u2014a Norwegian winter for them, for the snow lay long and deep, and they were obliged to mix a large proportion of pine bark with their other diet. These trees were alive and apparently flourishing at mid-summer, and many of them had grown a foot, though completely girdled; but after another winter such were without exception dead. It is remarkable that a single mouse should thus be allowed a whole pine tree for its dinner, gnawing round instead of up and down it; but perhaps it is necessary in order to thin these trees, which are wont to grow up densely.\n\nThe hares (Lepus Americanus) were very familiar. One had her form under my house all winter, separated from me only by the flooring, and she startled me each morning by her hasty departure when I began to stir,\u2014thump, thump, thump, striking her head against the floor timbers in her hurry. They used to come round my door at dusk to nibble the potato parings which I had thrown out, and were so nearly the color of the ground that they could hardly be distinguished when still. Sometimes in the twilight I alternately lost and recovered sight of one sitting motionless under my window. When I opened my door in the evening, off they would go with a squeak and a bounce. Near at hand they only excited my pity. One evening one sat by my door two paces from me, at first trembling with fear, yet unwilling to move; a poor wee thing, lean and bony, with ragged ears and sharp nose, scant tail and slender paws. It looked as if Nature no longer contained the breed of nobler bloods, but stood on her last toes. Its large eyes appeared young and unhealthy, almost dropsical. I took a step, and lo, away it scud with an elastic spring over the snow crust, straightening its body and its limbs into graceful length, and soon put the forest between me and itself,\u2014the wild free venison, asserting its vigor and the dignity of Nature. Not without reason was its slenderness. Such then was its nature. (Lepus, levipes, light-foot, some think.)\n\nWhat is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,\u2014and to one another; it is either winged or it is legged. It is hardly as if you had seen a wild creature when a rabbit or a partridge bursts away, only a natural one, as much to be expected as rustling leaves. The partridge and the rabbit are still sure to thrive, like true natives of the soil, whatever revolutions occur. If the forest is cut off, the sprouts and bushes which spring up afford them concealment, and they become more numerous than ever. That must be a poor country indeed that does not support a hare. Our woods teem with them both, and around every swamp may be seen the partridge or rabbit walk, beset with twiggy fences and horse-hair snares, which some cow-boy tends.\n\nThe Pond in Winter\nAfter a still winter night I awoke with the impression that some question had been put to me, which I had been endeavoring in vain to answer in my sleep, as what\u2014how\u2014when\u2014where? But there was dawning Nature, in whom all creatures live, looking in at my broad windows with serene and satisfied face, and no question on her lips. I awoke to an answered question, to Nature and daylight. The snow lying deep on the earth dotted with young pines, and the very slope of the hill on which my house is placed, seemed to say, Forward! Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution. \u201cO Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether.\u201d\n\nThen to my morning work. First I take an axe and pail and go in search of water, if that be not a dream. After a cold and snowy night it needed a divining rod to find it. Every winter the liquid and trembling surface of the pond, which was so sensitive to every breath, and reflected every light and shadow, becomes solid to the depth of a foot or a foot and a half, so that it will support the heaviest teams, and perchance the snow covers it to an equal depth, and it is not to be distinguished from any level field. Like the marmots in the surrounding hills, it closes its eye-lids and becomes dormant for three months or more. Standing on the snow-covered plain, as if in a pasture amid the hills, I cut my way first through a foot of snow, and then a foot of ice, and open a window under my feet, where, kneeling to drink, I look down into the quiet parlor of the fishes, pervaded by a softened light as through a window of ground glass, with its bright sanded floor the same as in summer; there a perennial waveless serenity reigns as in the amber twilight sky, corresponding to the cool and even temperament of the inhabitants. Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.\n\nEarly in the morning, while all things are crisp with frost, men come with fishing reels and slender lunch, and let down their fine lines through the snowy field to take pickerel and perch; wild men, who instinctively follow other fashions and trust other authorities than their townsmen, and by their goings and comings stitch towns together in parts where else they would be ripped. They sit and eat their luncheon in stout fear-naughts on the dry oak leaves on the shore, as wise in natural lore as the citizen is in artificial. They never consulted with books, and know and can tell much less than they have done. The things which they practise are said not yet to be known. Here is one fishing for pickerel with grown perch for bait. You look into his pail with wonder as into a summer pond, as if he kept summer locked up at home, or knew where she had retreated. How, pray, did he get these in mid-winter? O, he got worms out of rotten logs since the ground froze, and so he caught them. His life itself passes deeper in Nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see Nature carried out in him. The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisher-man swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.\n\nWhen I strolled around the pond in misty weather I was sometimes amused by the primitive mode which some ruder fisherman had adopted. He would perhaps have placed alder branches over the narrow holes in the ice, which were four or five rods apart and an equal distance from the shore, and having fastened the end of the line to a stick to prevent its being pulled through, have passed the slack line over a twig of the alder, a foot or more above the ice, and tied a dry oak leaf to it, which, being pulled down, would show when he had a bite. These alders loomed through the mist at regular intervals as you walked half way round the pond.\n\nAh, the pickerel of Walden! when I see them lying on the ice, or in the well which the fisherman cuts in the ice, making a little hole to admit the water, I am always surprised by their rare beauty, as if they were fabulous fishes, they are so foreign to the streets, even to the woods, foreign as Arabia to our Concord life. They possess a quite dazzling and transcendent beauty which separates them by a wide interval from the cadaverous cod and haddock whose fame is trumpeted in our streets. They are not green like the pines, nor gray like the stones, nor blue like the sky; but they have, to my eyes, if possible, yet rarer colors, like flowers and precious stones, as if they were the pearls, the animalized nuclei or crystals of the Walden water. They, of course, are Walden all over and all through; are themselves small Waldens in the animal kingdom, Waldenses. It is surprising that they are caught here,\u2014that in this deep and capacious spring, far beneath the rattling teams and chaises and tinkling sleighs that travel the Walden road, this great gold and emerald fish swims. I never chanced to see its kind in any market; it would be the cynosure of all eyes there. Easily, with a few convulsive quirks, they give up their watery ghosts, like a mortal translated before his time to the thin air of heaven.\n\nwalden_pond_map \nAs I was desirous to recover the long lost bottom of Walden Pond, I surveyed it carefully, before the ice broke up, early in \u201946, with compass and chain and sounding line. There have been many stories told about the bottom, or rather no bottom, of this pond, which certainly had no foundation for themselves. It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it. I have visited two such Bottomless Ponds in one walk in this neighborhood. Many have believed that Walden reached quite through to the other side of the globe. Some who have lain flat on the ice for a long time, looking down through the illusive medium, perchance with watery eyes into the bargain, and driven to hasty conclusions by the fear of catching cold in their breasts, have seen vast holes \u201cinto which a load of hay might be driven,\u201d if there were any body to drive it, the undoubted source of the Styx and entrance to the Infernal Regions from these parts. Others have gone down from the village with a \u201cfifty-six\u201d and a wagon load of inch rope, but yet have failed to find any bottom; for while the \u201cfifty-six\u201d was resting by the way, they were paying out the rope in the vain attempt to fathom their truly immeasurable capacity for marvellousness. But I can assure my readers that Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though at an unusual, depth. I fathomed it easily with a cod-line and a stone weighing about a pound and a half, and could tell accurately when the stone left the bottom, by having to pull so much harder before the water got underneath to help me. The greatest depth was exactly one hundred and two feet; to which may be added the five feet which it has risen since, making one hundred and seven. This is a remarkable depth for so small an area; yet not an inch of it can be spared by the imagination. What if all ponds were shallow? Would it not react on the minds of men? I am thankful that this pond was made deep and pure for a symbol. While men believe in the infinite some ponds will be thought to be bottomless.\n\nA factory owner, hearing what depth I had found, thought that it could not be true, for, judging from his acquaintance with dams, sand would not lie at so steep an angle. But the deepest ponds are not so deep in proportion to their area as most suppose, and, if drained, would not leave very remarkable valleys. They are not like cups between the hills; for this one, which is so unusually deep for its area, appears in a vertical section through its centre not deeper than a shallow plate. Most ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow than we frequently see. William Gilpin, who is so admirable in all that relates to landscapes, and usually so correct, standing at the head of Loch Fyne, in Scotland, which he describes as \u201ca bay of salt water, sixty or seventy fathoms deep, four miles in breadth,\u201d and about fifty miles long, surrounded by mountains, observes, \u201cIf we could have seen it immediately after the diluvian crash, or whatever convulsion of Nature occasioned it, before the waters gushed in, what a horrid chasm must it have appeared!\n\nSo high as heaved the tumid hills, so low\nDown sunk a hollow bottom broad and deep,\nCapacious bed of waters\u2014.\u201d\n\nBut if, using the shortest diameter of Loch Fyne, we apply these proportions to Walden, which, as we have seen, appears already in a vertical section only like a shallow plate, it will appear four times as shallow. So much for the increased horrors of the chasm of Loch Fyne when emptied. No doubt many a smiling valley with its stretching cornfields occupies exactly such a \u201chorrid chasm,\u201d from which the waters have receded, though it requires the insight and the far sight of the geologist to convince the unsuspecting inhabitants of this fact. Often an inquisitive eye may detect the shores of a primitive lake in the low horizon hills, and no subsequent elevation of the plain has been necessary to conceal their history. But it is easiest, as they who work on the highways know, to find the hollows by the puddles after a shower. The amount of it is, the imagination give it the least license, dives deeper and soars higher than Nature goes. So, probably, the depth of the ocean will be found to be very inconsiderable compared with its breadth.\n\nAs I sounded through the ice I could determine the shape of the bottom with greater accuracy than is possible in surveying harbors which do not freeze over, and I was surprised at its general regularity. In the deepest part there are several acres more level than almost any field which is exposed to the sun wind and plough. In one instance, on a line arbitrarily chosen, the depth did not vary more than one foot in thirty rods; and generally, near the middle, I could calculate the variation for each one hundred feet in any direction beforehand within three or four inches. Some are accustomed to speak of deep and dangerous holes even in quiet sandy ponds like this, but the effect of water under these circumstances is to level all inequalities. The regularity of the bottom and its conformity to the shores and the range of the neighboring hills were so perfect that a distant promontory betrayed itself in the soundings quite across the pond, and its direction could be determined by observing the opposite shore. Cape becomes bar, and plain shoal, and valley and gorge deep water and channel.\n\nWhen I had mapped the pond by the scale of ten rods to an inch, and put down the soundings, more than a hundred in all, I observed this remarkable coincidence. Having noticed that the number indicating the greatest depth was apparently in the centre of the map, I laid a rule on the map lengthwise, and then breadthwise, and found, to my surprise, that the line of greatest length intersected the line of greatest breadth exactly at the point of greatest depth, notwithstanding that the middle is so nearly level, the outline of the pond far from regular, and the extreme length and breadth were got by measuring into the coves; and I said to myself, Who knows but this hint would conduct to the deepest part of the ocean as well as of a pond or puddle? Is not this the rule also for the height of mountains, regarded as the opposite of valleys? We know that a hill is not highest at its narrowest part.\n\nOf five coves, three, or all which had been sounded, were observed to have a bar quite across their mouths and deeper water within, so that the bay tended to be an expansion of water within the land not only horizontally but vertically, and to form a basin or independent pond, the direction of the two capes showing the course of the bar. Every harbor on the sea-coast, also, has its bar at its entrance. In proportion as the mouth of the cove was wider compared with its length, the water over the bar was deeper compared with that in the basin. Given, then, the length and breadth of the cove, and the character of the surrounding shore, and you have almost elements enough to make out a formula for all cases.\n\nIn order to see how nearly I could guess, with this experience, at the deepest point in a pond, by observing the outlines of its surface and the character of its shores alone, I made a plan of White Pond, which contains about forty-one acres, and, like this, has no island in it, nor any visible inlet or outlet; and as the line of greatest breadth fell very near the line of least breadth, where two opposite capes approached each other and two opposite bays receded, I ventured to mark a point a short distance from the latter line, but still on the line of greatest length, as the deepest. The deepest part was found to be within one hundred feet of this, still farther in the direction to which I had inclined, and was only one foot deeper, namely, sixty feet. Of course, a stream running through, or an island in the pond, would make the problem much more complicated.\n\nIf we knew all the laws of Nature, we should need only one fact, or the description of one actual phenomenon, to infer all the particular results at that point. Now we know only a few laws, and our result is vitiated, not, of course, by any confusion or irregularity in Nature, but by our ignorance of essential elements in the calculation. Our notions of law and harmony are commonly confined to those instances which we detect; but the harmony which results from a far greater number of seemingly conflicting, but really concurring, laws, which we have not detected, is still more wonderful. The particular laws are as our points of view, as, to the traveller, a mountain outline varies with every step, and it has an infinite number of profiles, though absolutely but one form. Even when cleft or bored through it is not comprehended in its entireness.\n\nWhat I have observed of the pond is no less true in ethics. It is the law of average. Such a rule of the two diameters not only guides us toward the sun in the system and the heart in man, but draw lines through the length and breadth of the aggregate of a man\u2019s particular daily behaviors and waves of life into his coves and inlets, and where they intersect will be the height or depth of his character. Perhaps we need only to know how his shores trend and his adjacent country or circumstances, to infer his depth and concealed bottom. If he is surrounded by mountainous circumstances, an Achillean shore, whose peaks overshadow and are reflected in his bosom, they suggest a corresponding depth in him. But a low and smooth shore proves him shallow on that side. In our bodies, a bold projecting brow falls off to and indicates a corresponding depth of thought. Also there is a bar across the entrance of our every cove, or particular inclination; each is our harbor for a season, in which we are detained and partially land-locked. These inclinations are not whimsical usually, but their form, size, and direction are determined by the promontories of the shore, the ancient axes of elevation. When this bar is gradually increased by storms, tides, or currents, or there is a subsidence of the waters, so that it reaches to the surface, that which was at first but an inclination in the shore in which a thought was harbored becomes an individual lake, cut off from the ocean, wherein the thought secures its own conditions, changes, perhaps, from salt to fresh, becomes a sweet sea, dead sea, or a marsh. At the advent of each individual into this life, may we not suppose that such a bar has risen to the surface somewhere? It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.\n\nAs for the inlet or outlet of Walden, I have not discovered any but rain and snow and evaporation, though perhaps, with a thermometer and a line, such places may be found, for where the water flows into the pond it will probably be coldest in summer and warmest in winter. When the ice-men were at work here in \u201946\u20137, the cakes sent to the shore were one day rejected by those who were stacking them up there, not being thick enough to lie side by side with the rest; and the cutters thus discovered that the ice over a small space was two or three inches thinner than elsewhere, which made them think that there was an inlet there. They also showed me in another place what they thought was a \u201cleach hole,\u201d through which the pond leaked out under a hill into a neighboring meadow, pushing me out on a cake of ice to see it. It was a small cavity under ten feet of water; but I think that I can warrant the pond not to need soldering till they find a worse leak than that. One has suggested, that if such a \u201cleach hole\u201d should be found, its connection with the meadow, if any existed, might be proved by conveying some colored powder or sawdust to the mouth of the hole, and then putting a strainer over the spring in the meadow, which would catch some of the particles carried through by the current.\n\nWhile I was surveying, the ice, which was sixteen inches thick, undulated under a slight wind like water. It is well known that a level cannot be used on ice. At one rod from the shore its greatest fluctuation, when observed by means of a level on land directed toward a graduated staff on the ice, was three quarters of an inch, though the ice appeared firmly attached to the shore. It was probably greater in the middle. Who knows but if our instruments were delicate enough we might detect an undulation in the crust of the earth? When two legs of my level were on the shore and the third on the ice, and the sights were directed over the latter, a rise or fall of the ice of an almost infinitesimal amount made a difference of several feet on a tree across the pond. When I began to cut holes for sounding, there were three or four inches of water on the ice under a deep snow which had sunk it thus far; but the water began immediately to run into these holes, and continued to run for two days in deep streams, which wore away the ice on every side, and contributed essentially, if not mainly, to dry the surface of the pond; for, as the water ran in, it raised and floated the ice. This was somewhat like cutting a hole in the bottom of a ship to let the water out. When such holes freeze, and a rain succeeds, and finally a new freezing forms a fresh smooth ice over all, it is beautifully mottled internally by dark figures, shaped somewhat like a spider\u2019s web, what you may call ice rosettes, produced by the channels worn by the water flowing from all sides to a centre. Sometimes, also, when the ice was covered with shallow puddles, I saw a double shadow of myself, one standing on the head of the other, one on the ice, the other on the trees or hill-side.\n\nWhile yet it is cold January, and snow and ice are thick and solid, the prudent landlord comes from the village to get ice to cool his summer drink; impressively, even pathetically wise, to foresee the heat and thirst of July now in January,\u2014wearing a thick coat and mittens! when so many things are not provided for. It may be that he lays up no treasures in this world which will cool his summer drink in the next. He cuts and saws the solid pond, unroofs the house of fishes, and carts off their very element and air, held fast by chains and stakes like corded wood, through the favoring winter air, to wintry cellars, to underlie the summer there. It looks like solidified azure, as, far off, it is drawn through the streets. These ice-cutters are a merry race, full of jest and sport, and when I went among them they were wont to invite me to saw pit-fashion with them, I standing underneath.\n\nIn the winter of \u201946\u20137 there came a hundred men of Hyperborean extraction swoop down on to our pond one morning, with many car-loads of ungainly-looking farming tools, sleds, ploughs, drill-barrows, turf-knives, spades, saws, rakes, and each man was armed with a double-pointed pike-staff, such as is not described in the New-England Farmer or the Cultivator. I did not know whether they had come to sow a crop of winter rye, or some other kind of grain recently introduced from Iceland. As I saw no manure, I judged that they meant to skim the land, as I had done, thinking the soil was deep and had lain fallow long enough. They said that a gentleman farmer, who was behind the scenes, wanted to double his money, which, as I understood, amounted to half a million already; but in order to cover each one of his dollars with another, he took off the only coat, ay, the skin itself, of Walden Pond in the midst of a hard winter. They went to work at once, ploughing, harrowing, rolling, furrowing, in admirable order, as if they were bent on making this a model farm; but when I was looking sharp to see what kind of seed they dropped into the furrow, a gang of fellows by my side suddenly began to hook up the virgin mould itself, with a peculiar jerk, clean down to the sand, or rather the water,\u2014for it was a very springy soil,\u2014indeed all the terra firma there was,\u2014and haul it away on sleds, and then I guessed that they must be cutting peat in a bog. So they came and went every day, with a peculiar shriek from the locomotive, from and to some point of the polar regions, as it seemed to me, like a flock of arctic snow-birds. But sometimes Squaw Walden had her revenge, and a hired man, walking behind his team, slipped through a crack in the ground down toward Tartarus, and he who was so brave before suddenly became but the ninth part of a man, almost gave up his animal heat, and was glad to take refuge in my house, and acknowledged that there was some virtue in a stove; or sometimes the frozen soil took a piece of steel out of a ploughshare, or a plough got set in the furrow and had to be cut out.\n\nTo speak literally, a hundred Irishmen, with Yankee overseers, came from Cambridge every day to get out the ice. They divided it into cakes by methods too well known to require description, and these, being sledded to the shore, were rapidly hauled off on to an ice platform, and raised by grappling irons and block and tackle, worked by horses, on to a stack, as surely as so many barrels of flour, and there placed evenly side by side, and row upon row, as if they formed the solid base of an obelisk designed to pierce the clouds. They told me that in a good day they could get out a thousand tons, which was the yield of about one acre. Deep ruts and \u201ccradle holes\u201d were worn in the ice, as on terra firma, by the passage of the sleds over the same track, and the horses invariably ate their oats out of cakes of ice hollowed out like buckets. They stacked up the cakes thus in the open air in a pile thirty-five feet high on one side and six or seven rods square, putting hay between the outside layers to exclude the air; for when the wind, though never so cold, finds a passage through, it will wear large cavities, leaving slight supports or studs only here and there, and finally topple it down. At first it looked like a vast blue fort or Valhalla; but when they began to tuck the coarse meadow hay into the crevices, and this became covered with rime and icicles, it looked like a venerable moss-grown and hoary ruin, built of azure-tinted marble, the abode of Winter, that old man we see in the almanac,\u2014his shanty, as if he had a design to estivate with us. They calculated that not twenty-five per cent of this would reach its destination, and that two or three per cent would be wasted in the cars. However, a still greater part of this heap had a different destiny from what was intended; for, either because the ice was found not to keep so well as was expected, containing more air than usual, or for some other reason, it never got to market. This heap, made in the winter of \u201946\u20137 and estimated to contain ten thousand tons, was finally covered with hay and boards; and though it was unroofed the following July, and a part of it carried off, the rest remaining exposed to the sun, it stood over that summer and the next winter, and was not quite melted till September 1848. Thus the pond recovered the greater part.\n\nLike the water, the Walden ice, seen near at hand, has a green tint, but at a distance is beautifully blue, and you can easily tell it from the white ice of the river, or the merely greenish ice of some ponds, a quarter of a mile off. Sometimes one of those great cakes slips from the ice-man\u2019s sled into the village street, and lies there for a week like a great emerald, an object of interest to all passers. I have noticed that a portion of Walden which in the state of water was green will often, when frozen, appear from the same point of view blue. So the hollows about this pond will, sometimes, in the winter, be filled with a greenish water somewhat like its own, but the next day will have frozen blue. Perhaps the blue color of water and ice is due to the light and air they contain, and the most transparent is the bluest. Ice is an interesting subject for contemplation. They told me that they had some in the ice-houses at Fresh Pond five years old which was as good as ever. Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever? It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.\n\nThus for sixteen days I saw from my window a hundred men at work like busy husbandmen, with teams and horses and apparently all the implements of farming, such a picture as we see on the first page of the almanac; and as often as I looked out I was reminded of the fable of the lark and the reapers, or the parable of the sower, and the like; and now they are all gone, and in thirty days more, probably, I shall look from the same window on the pure sea-green Walden water there, reflecting the clouds and the trees, and sending up its evaporations in solitude, and no traces will appear that a man has ever stood there. Perhaps I shall hear a solitary loon laugh as he dives and plumes himself, or shall see a lonely fisher in his boat, like a floating leaf, beholding his form reflected in the waves, where lately a hundred men securely labored.\n\nThus it appears that the sweltering inhabitants of Charleston and New Orleans, of Madras and Bombay and Calcutta, drink at my well. In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagvat Geeta, since whose composition years of the gods have elapsed, and in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial; and I doubt if that philosophy is not to be referred to a previous state of existence, so remote is its sublimity from our conceptions. I lay down the book and go to my well for water, and lo! there I meet the servant of the Bramin, priest of Brahma and Vishnu and Indra, who still sits in his temple on the Ganges reading the Vedas, or dwells at the root of a tree with his crust and water jug. I meet his servant come to draw water for his master, and our buckets as it were grate together in the same well. The pure Walden water is mingled with the sacred water of the Ganges. With favoring winds it is wafted past the site of the fabulous islands of Atlantis and the Hesperides, makes the periplus of Hanno, and, floating by Ternate and Tidore and the mouth of the Persian Gulf, melts in the tropic gales of the Indian seas, and is landed in ports of which Alexander only heard the names.\n\nSpring\nThe opening of large tracts by the ice-cutters commonly causes a pond to break up earlier; for the water, agitated by the wind, even in cold weather, wears away the surrounding ice. But such was not the effect on Walden that year, for she had soon got a thick new garment to take the place of the old. This pond never breaks up so soon as the others in this neighborhood, on account both of its greater depth and its having no stream passing through it to melt or wear away the ice. I never knew it to open in the course of a winter, not excepting that of \u201952\u20133, which gave the ponds so severe a trial. It commonly opens about the first of April, a week or ten days later than Flint\u2019s Pond and Fair-Haven, beginning to melt on the north side and in the shallower parts where it began to freeze. It indicates better than any water hereabouts the absolute progress of the season, being least affected by transient changes of temperature. A severe cold of a few days\u2019 duration in March may very much retard the opening of the former ponds, while the temperature of Walden increases almost uninterruptedly. A thermometer thrust into the middle of Walden on the 6th of March, 1847, stood at 32\u00b0, or freezing point; near the shore at 33\u00b0; in the middle of Flint\u2019s Pond, the same day, at 32\u00bd\u00b0; at a dozen rods from the shore, in shallow water, under ice a foot thick, at 36\u00b0. This difference of three and a half degrees between the temperature of the deep water and the shallow in the latter pond, and the fact that a great proportion of it is comparatively shallow, show why it should break up so much sooner than Walden. The ice in the shallowest part was at this time several inches thinner than in the middle. In mid-winter the middle had been the warmest and the ice thinnest there. So, also, every one who has waded about the shores of the pond in summer must have perceived how much warmer the water is close to the shore, where only three or four inches deep, than a little distance out, and on the surface where it is deep, than near the bottom. In spring the sun not only exerts an influence through the increased temperature of the air and earth, but its heat passes through ice a foot or more thick, and is reflected from the bottom in shallow water, and so also warms the water and melts the under side of the ice, at the same time that it is melting it more directly above, making it uneven, and causing the air bubbles which it contains to extend themselves upward and downward until it is completely honeycombed, and at last disappears suddenly in a single spring rain. Ice has its grain as well as wood, and when a cake begins to rot or \u201ccomb,\u201d that is, assume the appearance of honey-comb, whatever may be its position, the air cells are at right angles with what was the water surface. Where there is a rock or a log rising near to the surface the ice over it is much thinner, and is frequently quite dissolved by this reflected heat; and I have been told that in the experiment at Cambridge to freeze water in a shallow wooden pond, though the cold air circulated underneath, and so had access to both sides, the reflection of the sun from the bottom more than counterbalanced this advantage. When a warm rain in the middle of the winter melts off the snow-ice from Walden, and leaves a hard dark or transparent ice on the middle, there will be a strip of rotten though thicker white ice, a rod or more wide, about the shores, created by this reflected heat. Also, as I have said, the bubbles themselves within the ice operate as burning-glasses to melt the ice beneath.\n\nThe phenomena of the year take place every day in a pond on a small scale. Every morning, generally speaking, the shallow water is being warmed more rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. One pleasant morning after a cold night, February 24th, 1850, having gone to Flint\u2019s Pond to spend the day, I noticed with surprise, that when I struck the ice with the head of my axe, it resounded like a gong for many rods around, or as if I had struck on a tight drum-head. The pond began to boom about an hour after sunrise, when it felt the influence of the sun\u2019s rays slanted upon it from over the hills; it stretched itself and yawned like a waking man with a gradually increasing tumult, which was kept up three or four hours. It took a short siesta at noon, and boomed once more toward night, as the sun was withdrawing his influence. In the right stage of the weather a pond fires its evening gun with great regularity. But in the middle of the day, being full of cracks, and the air also being less elastic, it had completely lost its resonance, and probably fishes and muskrats could not then have been stunned by a blow on it. The fishermen say that the \u201cthundering of the pond\u201d scares the fishes and prevents their biting. The pond does not thunder every evening, and I cannot tell surely when to expect its thundering; but though I may perceive no difference in the weather, it does. Who would have suspected so large and cold and thick-skinned a thing to be so sensitive? Yet it has its law to which it thunders obedience when it should as surely as the buds expand in the spring. The earth is all alive and covered with papill\u00e6. The largest pond is as sensitive to atmospheric changes as the globule of mercury in its tube.\n\nOne attraction in coming to the woods to live was that I should have leisure and opportunity to see the spring come in. The ice in the pond at length begins to be honey-combed, and I can set my heel in it as I walk. Fogs and rains and warmer suns are gradually melting the snow; the days have grown sensibly longer; and I see how I shall get through the winter without adding to my wood-pile, for large fires are no longer necessary. I am on the alert for the first signs of spring, to hear the chance note of some arriving bird, or the striped squirrel\u2019s chirp, for his stores must be now nearly exhausted, or see the woodchuck venture out of his winter quarters. On the 13th of March, after I had heard the bluebird, song-sparrow, and red-wing, the ice was still nearly a foot thick. As the weather grew warmer it was not sensibly worn away by the water, nor broken up and floated off as in rivers, but, though it was completely melted for half a rod in width about the shore, the middle was merely honey-combed and saturated with water, so that you could put your foot through it when six inches thick; but by the next day evening, perhaps, after a warm rain followed by fog, it would have wholly disappeared, all gone off with the fog, spirited away. One year I went across the middle only five days before it disappeared entirely. In 1845 Walden was first completely open on the 1st of April; in \u201946, the 25th of March; in \u201947, the 8th of April; in \u201951, the 28th of March; in \u201952, the 18th of April; in \u201953, the 23d of March; in \u201954, about the 7th of April.\n\nEvery incident connected with the breaking up of the rivers and ponds and the settling of the weather is particularly interesting to us who live in a climate of so great extremes. When the warmer days come, they who dwell near the river hear the ice crack at night with a startling whoop as loud as artillery, as if its icy fetters were rent from end to end, and within a few days see it rapidly going out. So the alligator comes out of the mud with quakings of the earth. One old man, who has been a close observer of Nature, and seems as thoroughly wise in regard to all her operations as if she had been put upon the stocks when he was a boy, and he had helped to lay her keel,\u2014who has come to his growth, and can hardly acquire more of natural lore if he should live to the age of Methuselah,\u2014told me, and I was surprised to hear him express wonder at any of Nature\u2019s operations, for I thought that there were no secrets between them, that one spring day he took his gun and boat, and thought that he would have a little sport with the ducks. There was ice still on the meadows, but it was all gone out of the river, and he dropped down without obstruction from Sudbury, where he lived, to Fair-Haven Pond, which he found, unexpectedly, covered for the most part with a firm field of ice. It was a warm day, and he was surprised to see so great a body of ice remaining. Not seeing any ducks, he hid his boat on the north or back side of an island in the pond, and then concealed himself in the bushes on the south side, to await them. The ice was melted for three or four rods from the shore, and there was a smooth and warm sheet of water, with a muddy bottom, such as the ducks love, within, and he thought it likely that some would be along pretty soon. After he had lain still there about an hour he heard a low and seemingly very distant sound, but singularly grand and impressive, unlike any thing he had ever heard, gradually swelling and increasing as if it would have a universal and memorable ending, a sullen rush and roar, which seemed to him all at once like the sound of a vast body of fowl coming in to settle there, and, seizing his gun, he started up in haste and excited; but he found, to his surprise, that the whole body of the ice had started while he lay there, and drifted in to the shore, and the sound he had heard was made by its edge grating on the shore,\u2014at first gently nibbled and crumbled off, but at length heaving up and scattering its wrecks along the island to a considerable height before it came to a stand still.\n\nAt length the sun\u2019s rays have attained the right angle, and warm winds blow up mist and rain and melt the snow banks, and the sun dispersing the mist smiles on a checkered landscape of russet and white smoking with incense, through which the traveller picks his way from islet to islet, cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off.\n\nFew phenomena gave me more delight than to observe the forms which thawing sand and clay assume in flowing down the sides of a deep cut on the railroad through which I passed on my way to the village, a phenomenon not very common on so large a scale, though the number of freshly exposed banks of the right material must have been greatly multiplied since railroads were invented. The material was sand of every degree of fineness and of various rich colors, commonly mixed with a little clay. When the frost comes out in the spring, and even in a thawing day in the winter, the sand begins to flow down the slopes like lava, sometimes bursting out through the snow and overflowing it where no sand was to be seen before. Innumerable little streams overlap and interlace one with another, exhibiting a sort of hybrid product, which obeys half way the law of currents, and half way that of vegetation. As it flows it takes the forms of sappy leaves or vines, making heaps of pulpy sprays a foot or more in depth, and resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated, lobed, and imbricated thalluses of some lichens; or you are reminded of coral, of leopard\u2019s paws or birds\u2019 feet, of brains or lungs or bowels, and excrements of all kinds. It is a truly grotesque vegetation, whose forms and color we see imitated in bronze, a sort of architectural foliage more ancient and typical than acanthus, chiccory, ivy, vine, or any vegetable leaves; destined perhaps, under some circumstances, to become a puzzle to future geologists. The whole cut impressed me as if it were a cave with its stalactites laid open to the light. The various shades of the sand are singularly rich and agreeable, embracing the different iron colors, brown, gray, yellowish, and reddish. When the flowing mass reaches the drain at the foot of the bank it spreads out flatter into strands, the separate streams losing their semi-cylindrical form and gradually becoming more flat and broad, running together as they are more moist, till they form an almost flat sand, still variously and beautifully shaded, but in which you can trace the original forms of vegetation; till at length, in the water itself, they are converted into banks, like those formed off the mouths of rivers, and the forms of vegetation are lost in the ripple marks on the bottom.\n\nThe whole bank, which is from twenty to forty feet high, is sometimes overlaid with a mass of this kind of foliage, or sandy rupture, for a quarter of a mile on one or both sides, the produce of one spring day. What makes this sand foliage remarkable is its springing into existence thus suddenly. When I see on the one side the inert bank,\u2014for the sun acts on one side first,\u2014and on the other this luxuriant foliage, the creation of an hour, I am affected as if in a peculiar sense I stood in the laboratory of the Artist who made the world and me,\u2014had come to where he was still at work, sporting on this bank, and with excess of energy strewing his fresh designs about. I feel as if I were nearer to the vitals of the globe, for this sandy overflow is something such a foliaceous mass as the vitals of the animal body. You find thus in the very sands an anticipation of the vegetable leaf. No wonder that the earth expresses itself outwardly in leaves, it so labors with the idea inwardly. The atoms have already learned this law, and are pregnant by it. The overhanging leaf sees here its prototype. Internally, whether in the globe or animal body, it is a moist thick lobe, a word especially applicable to the liver and lungs and the leaves of fat, (\u03bb\u03b5\u1f77\u03b2\u03c9, labor, lapsus, to flow or slip downward, a lapsing; \u03bb\u03bf\u03b2\u03bf\u03c2, globus, lobe, globe; also lap, flap, and many other words,) externally a dry thin leaf, even as the f and v are a pressed and dried b. The radicals of lobe are lb, the soft mass of the b (single lobed, or B, double lobed,) with the liquid l behind it pressing it forward. In globe, glb, the guttural g adds to the meaning the capacity of the throat. The feathers and wings of birds are still drier and thinner leaves. Thus, also, you pass from the lumpish grub in the earth to the airy and fluttering butterfly. The very globe continually transcends and translates itself, and becomes winged in its orbit. Even ice begins with delicate crystal leaves, as if it had flowed into moulds which the fronds of water plants have impressed on the watery mirror. The whole tree itself is but one leaf, and rivers are still vaster leaves whose pulp is intervening earth, and towns and cities are the ova of insects in their axils.\n\nWhen the sun withdraws the sand ceases to flow, but in the morning the streams will start once more and branch and branch again into a myriad of others. You here see perchance how blood vessels are formed. If you look closely you observe that first there pushes forward from the thawing mass a stream of softened sand with a drop-like point, like the ball of the finger, feeling its way slowly and blindly downward, until at last with more heat and moisture, as the sun gets higher, the most fluid portion, in its effort to obey the law to which the most inert also yields, separates from the latter and forms for itself a meandering channel or artery within that, in which is seen a little silvery stream glancing like lightning from one stage of pulpy leaves or branches to another, and ever and anon swallowed up in the sand. It is wonderful how rapidly yet perfectly the sand organizes itself as it flows, using the best material its mass affords to form the sharp edges of its channel. Such are the sources of rivers. In the silicious matter which the water deposits is perhaps the bony system, and in the still finer soil and organic matter the fleshy fibre or cellular tissue. What is man but a mass of thawing clay? The ball of the human finger is but a drop congealed. The fingers and toes flow to their extent from the thawing mass of the body. Who knows what the human body would expand and flow out to under a more genial heaven? Is not the hand a spreading palm leaf with its lobes and veins? The ear may be regarded, fancifully, as a lichen, umbilicaria, on the side of the head, with its lobe or drop. The lip\u2014labium, from labor (?)\u2014laps or lapses from the sides of the cavernous mouth. The nose is a manifest congealed drop or stalactite. The chin is a still larger drop, the confluent dripping of the face. The cheeks are a slide from the brows into the valley of the face, opposed and diffused by the cheek bones. Each rounded lobe of the vegetable leaf, too, is a thick and now loitering drop, larger or smaller; the lobes are the fingers of the leaf; and as many lobes as it has, in so many directions it tends to flow, and more heat or other genial influences would have caused it to flow yet farther.\n\nThus it seemed that this one hillside illustrated the principle of all the operations of Nature. The Maker of this earth but patented a leaf. What Champollion will decipher this hieroglyphic for us, that we may turn over a new leaf at last? This phenomenon is more exhilarating to me than the luxuriance and fertility of vineyards. True, it is somewhat excrementitious in its character, and there is no end to the heaps of liver lights and bowels, as if the globe were turned wrong side outward; but this suggests at least that Nature has some bowels, and there again is mother of humanity. This is the frost coming out of the ground; this is Spring. It precedes the green and flowery spring, as mythology precedes regular poetry. I know of nothing more purgative of winter fumes and indigestions. It convinces me that Earth is still in her swaddling clothes, and stretches forth baby fingers on every side. Fresh curls spring from the baldest brow. There is nothing inorganic. These foliaceous heaps lie along the bank like the slag of a furnace, showing that Nature is \u201cin full blast\u201d within. The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,\u2014not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic. Its throes will heave our exuvi\u00e6 from their graves. You may melt your metals and cast them into the most beautiful moulds you can; they will never excite me like the forms which this molten earth flows out into. And not only it, but the institutions upon it, are plastic like clay in the hands of the potter.\n\nEre long, not only on these banks, but on every hill and plain and in every hollow, the frost comes out of the ground like a dormant quadruped from its burrow, and seeks the sea with music, or migrates to other climes in clouds. Thaw with his gentle persuasion is more powerful than Thor with his hammer. The one melts, the other but breaks in pieces.\n\nWhen the ground was partially bare of snow, and a few warm days had dried its surface somewhat, it was pleasant to compare the first tender signs of the infant year just peeping forth with the stately beauty of the withered vegetation which had withstood the winter,\u2014life-everlasting, golden-rods, pinweeds, and graceful wild grasses, more obvious and interesting frequently than in summer even, as if their beauty was not ripe till then; even cotton-grass, cat-tails, mulleins, johnswort, hard-hack, meadow-sweet, and other strong stemmed plants, those unexhausted granaries which entertain the earliest birds,\u2014decent weeds, at least, which widowed Nature wears. I am particularly attracted by the arching and sheaf-like top of the wool-grass; it brings back the summer to our winter memories, and is among the forms which art loves to copy, and which, in the vegetable kingdom, have the same relation to types already in the mind of man that astronomy has. It is an antique style older than Greek or Egyptian. Many of the phenomena of Winter are suggestive of an inexpressible tenderness and fragile delicacy. We are accustomed to hear this king described as a rude and boisterous tyrant; but with the gentleness of a lover he adorns the tresses of Summer.\n\nAt the approach of spring the red-squirrels got under my house, two at a time, directly under my feet as I sat reading or writing, and kept up the queerest chuckling and chirruping and vocal pirouetting and gurgling sounds that ever were heard; and when I stamped they only chirruped the louder, as if past all fear and respect in their mad pranks, defying humanity to stop them. No you don\u2019t\u2014chickaree\u2014chickaree. They were wholly deaf to my arguments, or failed to perceive their force, and fell into a strain of invective that was irresistible.\n\nThe first sparrow of spring! The year beginning with younger hope than ever! The faint silvery warblings heard over the partially bare and moist fields from the blue-bird, the song-sparrow, and the red-wing, as if the last flakes of winter tinkled as they fell! What at such a time are histories, chronologies, traditions, and all written revelations? The brooks sing carols and glees to the spring. The marsh-hawk sailing low over the meadow is already seeking the first slimy life that awakes. The sinking sound of melting snow is heard in all dells, and the ice dissolves apace in the ponds. The grass flames up on the hillsides like a spring fire,\u2014\u201cet primitus oritur herba imbribus primoribus evocata,\u201d\u2014as if the earth sent forth an inward heat to greet the returning sun; not yellow but green is the color of its flame;\u2014the symbol of perpetual youth, the grass-blade, like a long green ribbon, streams from the sod into the summer, checked indeed by the frost, but anon pushing on again, lifting its spear of last year\u2019s hay with the fresh life below. It grows as steadily as the rill oozes out of the ground. It is almost identical with that, for in the growing days of June, when the rills are dry, the grass blades are their channels, and from year to year the herds drink at this perennial green stream, and the mower draws from it betimes their winter supply. So our human life but dies down to its root, and still puts forth its green blade to eternity.\n\nWalden is melting apace. There is a canal two rods wide along the northerly and westerly sides, and wider still at the east end. A great field of ice has cracked off from the main body. I hear a song-sparrow singing from the bushes on the shore,\u2014olit, olit, olit,\u2014chip, chip, chip, che char,\u2014che wiss, wiss, wiss. He too is helping to crack it. How handsome the great sweeping curves in the edge of the ice, answering somewhat to those of the shore, but more regular! It is unusually hard, owing to the recent severe but transient cold, and all watered or waved like a palace floor. But the wind slides eastward over its opaque surface in vain, till it reaches the living surface beyond. It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore,\u2014a silvery sheen as from the scales of a leuciscus, as it were all one active fish. Such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again. But this spring it broke up more steadily, as I have said.\n\nThe change from storm and winter to serene and mild weather, from dark and sluggish hours to bright and elastic ones, is a memorable crisis which all things proclaim. It is seemingly instantaneous at last. Suddenly an influx of light filled my house, though the evening was at hand, and the clouds of winter still overhung it, and the eaves were dripping with sleety rain. I looked out the window, and lo! where yesterday was cold gray ice there lay the transparent pond already calm and full of hope as in a summer evening, reflecting a summer evening sky in its bosom, though none was visible overhead, as if it had intelligence with some remote horizon. I heard a robin in the distance, the first I had heard for many a thousand years, methought, whose note I shall not forget for many a thousand more,\u2014the same sweet and powerful song as of yore. O the evening robin, at the end of a New England summer day! If I could ever find the twig he sits upon! I mean he; I mean the twig. This at least is not the Turdus migratorius. The pitch-pines and shrub-oaks about my house, which had so long drooped, suddenly resumed their several characters, looked brighter, greener, and more erect and alive, as if effectually cleansed and restored by the rain. I knew that it would not rain any more. You may tell by looking at any twig of the forest, ay, at your very wood-pile, whether its winter is past or not. As it grew darker, I was startled by the honking of geese flying low over the woods, like weary travellers getting in late from southern lakes, and indulging at last in unrestrained complaint and mutual consolation. Standing at my door, I could hear the rush of their wings; when, driving toward my house, they suddenly spied my light, and with hushed clamor wheeled and settled in the pond. So I came in, and shut the door, and passed my first spring night in the woods.\n\nIn the morning I watched the geese from the door through the mist, sailing in the middle of the pond, fifty rods off, so large and tumultuous that Walden appeared like an artificial pond for their amusement. But when I stood on the shore they at once rose up with a great flapping of wings at the signal of their commander, and when they had got into rank circled about over my head, twenty-nine of them, and then steered straight to Canada, with a regular honk from the leader at intervals, trusting to break their fast in muddier pools. A \u201cplump\u201d of ducks rose at the same time and took the route to the north in the wake of their noisier cousins.\n\nFor a week I heard the circling, groping clangor of some solitary goose in the foggy mornings, seeking its companion, and still peopling the woods with the sound of a larger life than they could sustain. In April the pigeons were seen again flying express in small flocks, and in due time I heard the martins twittering over my clearing, though it had not seemed that the township contained so many that it could afford me any, and I fancied that they were peculiarly of the ancient race that dwelt in hollow trees ere white men came. In almost all climes the tortoise and the frog are among the precursors and heralds of this season, and birds fly with song and glancing plumage, and plants spring and bloom, and winds blow, to correct this slight oscillation of the poles and preserve the equilibrium of Nature.\n\nAs every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.\u2014\n\n\u201cEurus ad Auroram Nabath\u00e6aque regna recessit,\nPersidaque, et radiis juga subdita matutinis.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe East-Wind withdrew to Aurora and the Nabath\u00e6an kingdom,\nAnd the Persian, and the ridges placed under the morning rays\n\n            *    *    *    *\n\nMan was born. Whether that Artificer of things,\nThe origin of a better world, made him from the divine seed;\nOr the earth, being recent and lately sundered from the high\nEther, retained some seeds of cognate heaven.\u201d\n\nA single gentle rain makes the grass many shades greener. So our prospects brighten on the influx of better thoughts. We should be blessed if we lived in the present always, and took advantage of every accident that befell us, like the grass which confesses the influence of the slightest dew that falls on it; and did not spend our time in atoning for the neglect of past opportunities, which we call doing our duty. We loiter in winter while it is already spring. In a pleasant spring morning all men\u2019s sins are forgiven. Such a day is a truce to vice. While such a sun holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return. Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors. You may have known your neighbor yesterday for a thief, a drunkard, or a sensualist, and merely pitied or despised him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines bright and warm this first spring morning, re-creating the world, and you meet him at some serene work, and see how his exhausted and debauched veins expand with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring influence with the innocence of infancy, and all his faults are forgotten. There is not only an atmosphere of good will about him, but even a savor of holiness groping for expression, blindly and ineffectually perhaps, like a new-born instinct, and for a short hour the south hill-side echoes to no vulgar jest. You see some innocent fair shoots preparing to burst from his gnarled rind and try another year\u2019s life, tender and fresh as the youngest plant. Even he has entered into the joy of his Lord. Why the jailer does not leave open his prison doors,\u2014why the judge does not dismis his case,\u2014why the preacher does not dismiss his congregation! It is because they do not obey the hint which God gives them, nor accept the pardon which he freely offers to all.\n\n\u201cA return to goodness produced each day in the tranquil and beneficent breath of the morning, causes that in respect to the love of virtue and the hatred of vice, one approaches a little the primitive nature of man, as the sprouts of the forest which has been felled. In like manner the evil which one does in the interval of a day prevents the germs of virtues which began to spring up again from developing themselves and destroys them.\n\n\u201cAfter the germs of virtue have thus been prevented many times from developing themselves, then the beneficent breath of evening does not suffice to preserve them. As soon as the breath of evening does not suffice longer to preserve them, then the nature of man does not differ much from that of the brute. Men seeing the nature of this man like that of the brute, think that he has never possessed the innate faculty of reason. Are those the true and natural sentiments of man?\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Golden Age was first created, which without any avenger\nSpontaneously without law cherished fidelity and rectitude.\nPunishment and fear were not; nor were threatening words read\nOn suspended brass; nor did the suppliant crowd fear\nThe words of their judge; but were safe without an avenger.\nNot yet the pine felled on its mountains had descended\nTo the liquid waves that it might see a foreign world,\nAnd mortals knew no shores but their own.\n            *    *    *    *\nThere was eternal spring, and placid zephyrs with warm\nBlasts soothed the flowers born without seed.\u201d\n\nOn the 29th of April, as I was fishing from the bank of the river near the Nine-Acre-Corner bridge, standing on the quaking grass and willow roots, where the muskrats lurk, I heard a singular rattling sound, somewhat like that of the sticks which boys play with their fingers, when, looking up, I observed a very slight and graceful hawk, like a night-hawk, alternately soaring like a ripple and tumbling a rod or two over and over, showing the underside of its wings, which gleamed like a satin ribbon in the sun, or like the pearly inside of a shell. This sight reminded me of falconry and what nobleness and poetry are associated with that sport. The Merlin it seemed to me it might be called: but I care not for its name. It was the most ethereal flight I had ever witnessed. It did not simply flutter like a butterfly, nor soar like the larger hawks, but it sported with proud reliance in the fields of air; mounting again and again with its strange chuckle, it repeated its free and beautiful fall, turning over and over like a kite, and then recovering from its lofty tumbling, as if it had never set its foot on terra firma. It appeared to have no companion in the universe,\u2014sporting there alone,\u2014and to need none but the morning and the ether with which it played. It was not lonely, but made all the earth lonely beneath it. Where was the parent which hatched it, its kindred, and its father in the heavens? The tenant of the air, it seemed related to the earth but by an egg hatched some time in the crevice of a crag;\u2014or was its native nest made in the angle of a cloud, woven of the rainbow\u2019s trimmings and the sunset sky, and lined with some soft midsummer haze caught up from earth? Its eyry now some cliffy cloud.\n\nBeside this I got a rare mess of golden and silver and bright cupreous fishes, which looked like a string of jewels. Ah! I have penetrated to those meadows on the morning of many a first spring day, jumping from hummock to hummock, from willow root to willow root, when the wild river valley and the woods were bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead, if they had been slumbering in their graves, as some suppose. There needs no stronger proof of immortality. All things must live in such a light. O Death, where was thy sting? O Grave, where was thy victory, then?\n\nOur village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness,\u2014to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us and deriving health and strength from the repast. There was a dead horse in the hollow by the path to my house, which compelled me sometimes to go out of my way, especially in the night when the air was heavy, but the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature was my compensation for this. I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp,\u2014tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence. Poison is not poisonous after all, nor are any wounds fatal. Compassion is a very untenable ground. It must be expeditious. Its pleadings will not bear to be stereotyped.\n\nEarly in May, the oaks, hickories, maples, and other trees, just putting out amidst the pine woods around the pond, imparted a brightness like sunshine to the landscape, especially in cloudy days, as if the sun were breaking through mists and shining faintly on the hill-sides here and there. On the third or fourth of May I saw a loon in the pond, and during the first week of the month I heard the whippoorwill, the brown-thrasher, the veery, the wood-pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood-thrush long before. The ph\u0153be had already come once more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur-like pollen of the pitch-pine soon covered the pond and the stones and rotten wood along the shore, so that you could have collected a barrel-ful. This is the \u201csulphur showers\u201d we hear of. Even in Calidas\u2019 drama of Sacontala, we read of \u201crills dyed yellow with the golden dust of the lotus.\u201d And so the seasons went rolling on into summer, as one rambles into higher and higher grass.\n\nThus was my first year\u2019s life in the woods completed; and the second year was similar to it. I finally left Walden September 6th, 1847.\n\nConclusion\nTo the sick the doctors wisely recommend a change of air and scenery. Thank Heaven, here is not all the world. The buck-eye does not grow in New England, and the mocking-bird is rarely heard here. The wild-goose is more of a cosmopolite than we; he breaks his fast in Canada, takes a luncheon in the Ohio, and plumes himself for the night in a southern bayou. Even the bison, to some extent, keeps pace with the seasons, cropping the pastures of the Colorado only till a greener and sweeter grass awaits him by the Yellowstone. Yet we think that if rail-fences are pulled down, and stone-walls piled up on our farms, bounds are henceforth set to our lives and our fates decided. If you are chosen town-clerk, forsooth, you cannot go to Tierra del Fuego this summer: but you may go to the land of infernal fire nevertheless. The universe is wider than our views of it.\n\nYet we should oftener look over the tafferel of our craft, like curious passengers, and not make the voyage like stupid sailors picking oakum. The other side of the globe is but the home of our correspondent. Our voyaging is only great-circle sailing, and the doctors prescribe for diseases of the skin merely. One hastens to Southern Africa to chase the giraffe; but surely that is not the game he would be after. How long, pray, would a man hunt giraffes if he could? Snipes and woodcocks also may afford rare sport; but I trust it would be nobler game to shoot one\u2019s self.\u2014\n\n\u201cDirect your eye right inward, and you\u2019ll find\nA thousand regions in your mind\nYet undiscovered. Travel them, and be\nExpert in home-cosmography.\u201d\n\nWhat does Africa,\u2014what does the West stand for? Is not our own interior white on the chart? black though it may prove, like the coast, when discovered. Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a North-West Passage around this continent, that we would find? Are these the problems which most concern mankind? Is Franklin the only man who is lost, that his wife should be so earnest to find him? Does Mr. Grinnell know where he himself is? Be rather the Mungo Park, the Lewis and Clarke and Frobisher, of your own streams and oceans; explore your own higher latitudes,\u2014with shiploads of preserved meats to support you, if they be necessary; and pile the empty cans sky-high for a sign. Were preserved meats invented to preserve meat merely? Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads. What was the meaning of that South-Sea Exploring Expedition, with all its parade and expense, but an indirect recognition of the fact, that there are continents and seas in the moral world to which every man is an isthmus or an inlet, yet unexplored by him, but that it is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one\u2019s being alone.\u2014\n\n\u201cErret, et extremos alter scrutetur Iberos.\nPlus habet hic vit\u00e6, plus habet ille vi\u00e6.\u201d\n\nLet them wander and scrutinize the outlandish Australians.\nI have more of God, they more of the road.\n\nIt is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar. Yet do this even till you can do better, and you may perhaps find some \u201cSymmes\u2019 Hole\u201d by which to get at the inside at last. England and France, Spain and Portugal, Gold Coast and Slave Coast, all front on this private sea; but no bark from them has ventured out of sight of land, though it is without doubt the direct way to India. If you would learn to speak all tongues and conform to the customs of all nations, if you would travel farther than all travellers, be naturalized in all climes, and cause the Sphinx to dash her head against a stone, even obey the precept of the old philosopher, and Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve. Only the defeated and deserters go to the wars, cowards that run away and enlist. Start now on that farthest western way, which does not pause at the Mississippi or the Pacific, nor conduct toward a worn-out China or Japan, but leads on direct a tangent to this sphere, summer and winter, day and night, sun down, moon down, and at last earth down too.\n\nIt is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery \u201cto ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary in order to place one\u2019s self in formal opposition to the most sacred laws of society.\u201d He declared that \u201ca soldier who fights in the ranks does not require half so much courage as a foot-pad,\u201d\u2014\u201cthat honor and religion have never stood in the way of a well-considered and a firm resolve.\u201d This was manly, as the world goes; and yet it was idle, if not desperate. A saner man would have found himself often enough \u201cin formal opposition\u201d to what are deemed \u201cthe most sacred laws of society,\u201d through obedience to yet more sacred laws, and so have tested his resolution without going out of his way. It is not for a man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but to maintain himself in whatever attitude he find himself through obedience to the laws of his being, which will never be one of opposition to a just government, if he should chance to meet with such.\n\nI left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves. I had not lived there a week before my feet wore a path from my door to the pond-side; and though it is five or six years since I trod it, it is still quite distinct. It is true, I fear that others may have fallen into it, and so helped to keep it open. The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.\n\nI learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.\n\nIt is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they can understand you. Neither men nor toad-stools grow so. As if that were important, and there were not enough to understand you without them. As if Nature could support but one order of understandings, could not sustain birds as well as quadrupeds, flying as well as creeping things, and hush and who, which Bright can understand, were the best English. As if there were safety in stupidity alone. I fear chiefly lest my expression may not be extra-vagant enough, may not wander far enough beyond the narrow limits of my daily experience, so as to be adequate to the truth of which I have been convinced. Extra vagance! it depends on how you are yarded. The migrating buffalo, which seeks new pastures in another latitude, is not extravagant like the cow which kicks over the pail, leaps the cow-yard fence, and runs after her calf, in milking time. I desire to speak somewhere without bounds; like a man in a waking moment, to men in their waking moments; for I am convinced that I cannot exaggerate enough even to lay the foundation of a true expression. Who that has heard a strain of music feared then lest he should speak extravagantly any more forever? In view of the future or possible, we should live quite laxly and undefined in front, our outlines dim and misty on that side; as our shadows reveal an insensible perspiration toward the sun. The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is instantly translated; its literal monument alone remains. The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.\n\nWhy level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring. Sometimes we are inclined to class those who are once-and-a-half-witted with the half-witted, because we appreciate only a third part of their wit. Some would find fault with the morning-red, if they ever got up early enough. \u201cThey pretend,\u201d as I hear, \u201cthat the verses of Kabir have four different senses; illusion, spirit, intellect, and the exoteric doctrine of the Vedas;\u201d but in this part of the world it is considered a ground for complaint if a man\u2019s writings admit of more than one interpretation. While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?\n\nI do not suppose that I have attained to obscurity, but I should be proud if no more fatal fault were found with my pages on this score than was found with the Walden ice. Southern customers objected to its blue color, which is the evidence of its purity, as if it were muddy, and preferred the Cambridge ice, which is white, but tastes of weeds. The purity men love is like the mists which envelop the earth, and not like the azure ether beyond.\n\nSome are dinning in our ears that we Americans, and moderns generally, are intellectual dwarfs compared with the ancients, or even the Elizabethan men. But what is that to the purpose? A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made.\n\nWhy should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple-tree or an oak. Shall he turn his spring into summer? If the condition of things which we were made for is not yet, what were any reality which we can substitute? We will not be shipwrecked on a vain reality. Shall we with pains erect a heaven of blue glass over ourselves, though when it is done we shall be sure to gaze still at the true ethereal heaven far above, as if the former were not?\n\nThere was an artist in the city of Kouroo who was disposed to strive after perfection. One day it came into his mind to make a staff. Having considered that in an imperfect work time is an ingredient, but into a perfect work time does not enter, he said to himself, It shall be perfect in all respects, though I should do nothing else in my life. He proceeded instantly to the forest for wood, being resolved that it should not be made of unsuitable material; and as he searched for and rejected stick after stick, his friends gradually deserted him, for they grew old in their works and died, but he grew not older by a moment. His singleness of purpose and resolution, and his elevated piety, endowed him, without his knowledge, with perennial youth. As he made no compromise with Time, Time kept out of his way, and only sighed at a distance because he could not overcome him. Before he had found a stock in all respects suitable the city of Kouroo was a hoary ruin, and he sat on one of its mounds to peel the stick. Before he had given it the proper shape the dynasty of the Candahars was at an end, and with the point of the stick he wrote the name of the last of that race in the sand, and then resumed his work. By the time he had smoothed and polished the staff Kalpa was no longer the pole-star; and ere he had put on the ferrule and the head adorned with precious stones, Brahma had awoke and slumbered many times. But why do I stay to mention these things? When the finishing stroke was put to his work, it suddenly expanded before the eyes of the astonished artist into the fairest of all the creations of Brahma. He had made a new system in making a staff, a world with full and fair proportions; in which, though the old cities and dynasties had passed away, fairer and more glorious ones had taken their places. And now he saw by the heap of shavings still fresh at his feet, that, for him and his work, the former lapse of time had been an illusion, and that no more time had elapsed than is required for a single scintillation from the brain of Brahma to fall on and inflame the tinder of a mortal brain. The material was pure, and his art was pure; how could the result be other than wonderful?\n\nNo face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position. Through an infinity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out. In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe. Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. \u201cTell the tailors,\u201d said he, \u201cto remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch.\u201d His companion\u2019s prayer is forgotten.\n\nHowever mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault-finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life, poor as it is. You may perhaps have some pleasant, thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poor-house. The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man\u2019s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace. The town\u2019s poor seem to me often to live the most independent lives of any. May be they are simply great enough to receive without misgiving. Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which should be more disreputable. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Turn the old; return to them. Things do not change; we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do not want society. If I were confined to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me. The philosopher said: \u201cFrom an army of three divisions one can take away its general, and put it in disorder; from the man the most abject and vulgar one cannot take away his thought.\u201d Do not seek so anxiously to be developed, to subject yourself to many influences to be played on; it is all dissipation. Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, \u201cand lo! creation widens to our view.\u201d We are often reminded that if there were bestowed on us the wealth of Cr\u0153sus, our aims must still be the same, and our means essentially the same. Moreover, if you are restricted in your range by poverty, if you cannot buy books and newspapers, for instance, you are but confined to the most significant and vital experiences; you are compelled to deal with the material which yields the most sugar and the most starch. It is life near the bone where it is sweetest. You are defended from being a trifler. No man loses ever on a lower level by magnanimity on a higher. Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.\n\nI live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries. My neighbors tell me of their adventures with famous gentlemen and ladies, what notabilities they met at the dinner-table; but I am no more interested in such things than in the contents of the Daily Times. The interest and the conversation are about costume and manners chiefly; but a goose is a goose still, dress it as you will. They tell me of California and Texas, of England and the Indies, of the Hon. Mr. \u2014\u2014 of Georgia or of Massachusetts, all transient and fleeting phenomena, till I am ready to leap from their court-yard like the Mameluke bey. I delight to come to my bearings,\u2014not walk in procession with pomp and parade, in a conspicuous place, but to walk even with the Builder of the universe, if I may,\u2014not to live in this restless, nervous, bustling, trivial Nineteenth Century, but stand or sit thoughtfully while it goes by. What are men celebrating? They are all on a committee of arrangements, and hourly expect a speech from somebody. God is only the president of the day, and Webster is his orator. I love to weigh, to settle, to gravitate toward that which most strongly and rightfully attracts me;\u2014not hang by the beam of the scale and try to weigh less,\u2014not suppose a case, but take the case that is; to travel the only path I can, and that on which no power can resist me. It affords me no satisfaction to commence to spring an arch before I have got a solid foundation. Let us not play at kittly-benders. There is a solid bottom every where. We read that the traveller asked the boy if the swamp before him had a hard bottom. The boy replied that it had. But presently the traveller\u2019s horse sank in up to the girths, and he observed to the boy, \u201cI thought you said that this bog had a hard bottom.\u201d \u201cSo it has,\u201d answered the latter, \u201cbut you have not got half way to it yet.\u201d So it is with the bogs and quicksands of society; but he is an old boy that knows it. Only what is thought, said, or done at a certain rare coincidence is good. I would not be one of those who will foolishly drive a nail into mere lath and plastering; such a deed would keep me awake nights. Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furring. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction,\u2014a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Juno. So will help you God, and so only. Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work.\n\nRather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board. The hospitality was as cold as the ices. I thought that there was no need of ice to freeze them. They talked to me of the age of the wine and the fame of the vintage; but I thought of an older, a newer, and purer wine, of a more glorious vintage, which they had not got, and could not buy. The style, the house and grounds and \u201centertainment\u201d pass for nothing with me. I called on the king, but he made me wait in his hall, and conducted like a man incapacitated for hospitality. There was a man in my neighborhood who lived in a hollow tree. His manners were truly regal. I should have done better had I called on him.\n\nHow long shall we sit in our porticoes practising idle and musty virtues, which any work would make impertinent? As if one were to begin the day with long-suffering, and hire a man to hoe his potatoes; and in the afternoon go forth to practise Christian meekness and charity with goodness aforethought! Consider the China pride and stagnant self-complacency of mankind. This generation inclines a little to congratulate itself on being the last of an illustrious line; and in Boston and London and Paris and Rome, thinking of its long descent, it speaks of its progress in art and science and literature with satisfaction. There are the Records of the Philosophical Societies, and the public Eulogies of Great Men! It is the good Adam contemplating his own virtue. \u201cYes, we have done great deeds, and sung divine songs, which shall never die,\u201d\u2014that is, as long as we can remember them. The learned societies and great men of Assyria,\u2014where are they? What youthful philosophers and experimentalists we are! There is not one of my readers who has yet lived a whole human life. These may be but the spring months in the life of the race. If we have had the seven-years\u2019 itch, we have not seen the seventeen-year locust yet in Concord. We are acquainted with a mere pellicle of the globe on which we live. Most have not delved six feet beneath the surface, nor leaped as many above it. We know not where we are. Beside, we are sound asleep nearly half our time. Yet we esteem ourselves wise, and have an established order on the surface. Truly, we are deep thinkers, we are ambitious spirits! As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and hide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.\n\nThere is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dulness. I need only suggest what kind of sermons are still listened to in the most enlightened countries. There are such words as joy and sorrow, but they are only the burden of a psalm, sung with a nasal twang, while we believe in the ordinary and mean. We think that we can change our clothes only. It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind. Who knows what sort of seventeen-year locust will next come out of the ground? The government of the world I live in was not framed, like that of Britain, in after-dinner conversations over the wine.\n\nThe life in us is like the water in the river. It may rise this year higher than man has ever known it, and flood the parched uplands; even this may be the eventful year, which will drown out all our muskrats. It was not always dry land where we dwell. I see far inland the banks which the stream anciently washed, before science began to record its freshets. Every one has heard the story which has gone the rounds of New England, of a strong and beautiful bug which came out of the dry leaf of an old table of apple-tree wood, which had stood in a farmer\u2019s kitchen for sixty years, first in Connecticut, and afterward in Massachusetts,\u2014from an egg deposited in the living tree many years earlier still, as appeared by counting the annual layers beyond it; which was heard gnawing out for several weeks, hatched perchance by the heat of an urn. Who does not feel his faith in a resurrection and immortality strengthened by hearing of this? Who knows what beautiful and winged life, whose egg has been buried for ages under many concentric layers of woodenness in the dead dry life of society, deposited at first in the alburnum of the green and living tree, which has been gradually converted into the semblance of its well-seasoned tomb,\u2014heard perchance gnawing out now for years by the astonished family of man, as they sat round the festive board,\u2014may unexpectedly come forth from amidst society\u2019s most trivial and handselled furniture, to enjoy its perfect summer life at last!\n\nI do not say that Edouard or Jonathan will realize all this; but such is the character of that morrow which mere lapse of time can never make to dawn. The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.\n\n\n\nTHE END\nON THE DUTY OF CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE\nI heartily accept the motto,\u2014\u201cThat government is best which governs least;\u201d and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe\u2014\u201cThat government is best which governs not at all;\u201d and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have. Government is at best but an expedient; but most governments are usually, and all governments are sometimes, inexpedient. The objections which have been brought against a standing army, and they are many and weighty, and deserve to prevail, may also at last be brought against a standing government. The standing army is only an arm of the standing government. The government itself, which is only the mode which the people have chosen to execute their will, is equally liable to be abused and perverted before the people can act through it. Witness the present Mexican war, the work of comparatively a few individuals using the standing government as their tool; for, in the outset, the people would not have consented to this measure.\n\nThis American government,\u2014what is it but a tradition, though a recent one, endeavoring to transmit itself unimpaired to posterity, but each instant losing some of its integrity? It has not the vitality and force of a single living man; for a single man can bend it to his will. It is a sort of wooden gun to the people themselves; and, if ever they should use it in earnest as a real one against each other, it will surely split. But it is not the less necessary for this; for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have. Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed on, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow; yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way. For government is an expedient, by which men would fain succeed in letting one another alone; and, as has been said, when it is most expedient, the governed are most let alone by it. Trade and commerce, if they were not made of India rubber, would never manage to bounce over obstacles which legislators are continually putting in their way; and, if one were to judge these men wholly by the effects of their actions, and not partly by their intentions, they would deserve to be classed and punished with those mischievous persons who put obstructions on the railroads.\n\nBut, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.\n\nAfter all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule, is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?\u2014in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right. It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience. Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, aye, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? Visit the Navy Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts, a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniment, though it may be\n\n\u201cNot a drum was heard, not a funeral note,\n    As his corpse to the ramparts we hurried;\nNot a soldier discharged his farewell shot\n    O\u2019er the grave where our hero we buried.\u201d\n\nThe mass of men serve the State thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, &c. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw, or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens. Others, as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders, serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies. A wise man will only be useful as a man, and will not submit to be \u201cclay,\u201d and \u201cstop a hole to keep the wind away,\u201d but leave that office to his dust at least:\n\n\u201cI am too high-born to be propertied,\nTo be a secondary at control,\nOr useful serving-man and instrument\nTo any sovereign state throughout the world.\u201d\n\nHe who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.\n\nHow does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave\u2019s government also.\n\nAll men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to and to resist the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now. But such was the case, they think, in the Revolution of \u201975. If one were to tell me that this was a bad government because it taxed certain foreign commodities brought to its ports, it is most probable that I should not make an ado about it, for I can do without them: all machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counter-balance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer. In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is that fact, that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.\n\nPaley, a common authority with many on moral questions, in his chapter on the \u201cDuty of Submission to Civil Government,\u201d resolves all civil obligation into expediency; and he proceeds to say, \u201cthat so long as the interest of the whole society requires it, that is, so long as the established government cannot be resisted or changed without public inconveniency, it is the will of God that the established government be obeyed, and no longer.\u201d\u2014\u201cThis principle being admitted, the justice of every particular case of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of redressing it on the other.\u201d Of this, he says, every man shall judge for himself. But Paley appears never to have contemplated those cases to which the rule of expediency does not apply, in which a people, as well as an individual, must do justice, cost what it may. If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. This, according to Paley, would be inconvenient. But he that would save his life, in such a case, shall lose it. This people must cease to hold slaves, and to make war on Mexico, though it cost them their existence as a people.\n\nIn their practice, nations agree with Paley; but does anyone think that Massachusetts does exactly what is right at the present crisis?\n\n\u201cA drab of state, a cloth-o\u2019-silver slut,\nTo have her train borne up, and her soul trail in the dirt.\u201d\n\nPractically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may. I quarrel not with far-off foes, but with those who, near at home, co-operate with, and do the bidding of those far away, and without whom the latter would be harmless. We are accustomed to say, that the mass of men are unprepared; but improvement is slow, because the few are not materially wiser or better than the many. It is not so important that many should be as good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them; who, esteeming themselves children of Washington and Franklin, sit down with their hands in their pockets, and say that they know not what to do, and do nothing; who even postpone the question of freedom to the question of free-trade, and quietly read the prices-current along with the latest advices from Mexico, after dinner, and, it may be, fall asleep over them both. What is the price-current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man; but it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it.\n\nAll voting is a sort of gaming, like chequers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority. Its obligation, therefore, never exceeds that of expediency. Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.\n\nI hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intelligent, and respectable man what decision they may come to, shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reasons to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. Oh for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in the country? Hardly one. Does not America offer any inducement for men to settle here? The American has dwindled into an Odd Fellow,\u2014one who may be known by the development of his organ of gregariousness, and a manifest lack of intellect and cheerful self-reliance; whose first and chief concern, on coming into the world, is to see that the alms-houses are in good repair; and, before yet he has lawfully donned the virile garb, to collect a fund for the support of the widows and orphans that may be; who, in short, ventures to live only by the aid of the Mutual Insurance company, which has promised to bury him decently.\n\nIt is not a man\u2019s duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; he may still properly have other concerns to engage him; but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support. If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man\u2019s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too. See what gross inconsistency is tolerated. I have heard some of my townsmen say, \u201cI should like to have them order me out to help put down an insurrection of the slaves, or to march to Mexico,\u2014see if I would go;\u201d and yet these very men have each, directly by their allegiance, and so indirectly, at least, by their money, furnished a substitute. The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the State were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin, comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made.\n\nThe broadest and most prevalent error requires the most disinterested virtue to sustain it. The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur. Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support, are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform. Some are petitioning the State to dissolve the Union, to disregard the requisitions of the President. Why do they not dissolve it themselves,\u2014the union between themselves and the State,\u2014and refuse to pay their quota into its treasury? Do not they stand in same relation to the State, that the State does to the Union? And have not the same reasons prevented the State from resisting the Union, which have prevented them from resisting the State?\n\nHow can a man be satisfied to entertain an opinion merely, and enjoy it? Is there any enjoyment in it, if his opinion is that he is aggrieved? If you are cheated out of a single dollar by your neighbor, you do not rest satisfied with knowing you are cheated, or with saying that you are cheated, or even with petitioning him to pay you your due; but you take effectual steps at once to obtain the full amount, and see that you are never cheated again. Action from principle,\u2014the perception and the performance of right,\u2014changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divided states and churches, it divides families; aye, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine.\n\nUnjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?\n\nOne would think, that a deliberate and practical denial of its authority was the only offence never contemplated by government; else, why has it not assigned its definite, its suitable and proportionate penalty? If a man who has no property refuses but once to earn nine shillings for the State, he is put in prison for a period unlimited by any law that I know, and determined only by the discretion of those who placed him there; but if he should steal ninety times nine shillings from the State, he is soon permitted to go at large again.\n\nIf the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth,\u2014certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.\n\nAs for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man\u2019s life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not every thing to do, but something; and because he cannot do every thing, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the Governor or the Legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and, if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconcilliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserves it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death which convulse the body.\n\nI do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. I think that it is enough if they have God on their side, without waiting for that other one. Moreover, any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.\n\nI meet this American government, or its representative, the State government, directly, and face to face, once a year, no more, in the person of its tax-gatherer; this is the only mode in which a man situated as I am necessarily meets it; and it then says distinctly, Recognize me; and the simplest, the most effectual, and, in the present posture of affairs, the indispensablest mode of treating with it on this head, of expressing your little satisfaction with and love for it, is to deny it then. My civil neighbor, the tax-gatherer, is the very man I have to deal with,\u2014for it is, after all, with men and not with parchment that I quarrel,\u2014and he has voluntarily chosen to be an agent of the government. How shall he ever know well what he is and does as an officer of the government, or as a man, until he is obliged to consider whether he shall treat me, his neighbor, for whom he has respect, as a neighbor and well-disposed man, or as a maniac and disturber of the peace, and see if he can get over this obstruction to his neighborliness without a ruder and more impetuous thought or speech corresponding with his action? I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name,\u2014if ten honest men only,\u2014aye, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this copartnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever. But we love better to talk about it: that we say is our mission. Reform keeps many scores of newspapers in its service, but not one man. If my esteemed neighbor, the State\u2019s ambassador, who will devote his days to the settlement of the question of human rights in the Council Chamber, instead of being threatened with the prisons of Carolina, were to sit down the prisoner of Massachusetts, that State which is so anxious to foist the sin of slavery upon her sister,\u2014though at present she can discover only an act of inhospitality to be the ground of a quarrel with her,\u2014the Legislature would not wholly waive the subject of the following winter.\n\nUnder a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison. The proper place today, the only place which Massachusetts has provided for her freer and less desponding spirits, is in her prisons, to be put out and locked out of the State by her own act, as they have already put themselves out by their principles. It is there that the fugitive slave, and the Mexican prisoner on parole, and the Indian come to plead the wrongs of his race, should find them; on that separate, but more free and honorable ground, where the State places those who are not with her but against her,\u2014the only house in a slave-state in which a free man can abide with honor. If any think that their influence would be lost there, and their voices no longer afflict the ear of the State, that they would not be as an enemy within its walls, they do not know by how much truth is stronger than error, nor how much more eloquently and effectively he can combat injustice who has experienced a little in his own person. Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible. If the tax-gatherer, or any other public officer, asks me, as one has done, \u201cBut what shall I do?\u201d my answer is, \u201cIf you really wish to do any thing, resign your office.\u201d When the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned his office, then the revolution is accomplished. But even suppose blood should flow. Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man\u2019s real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death. I see this blood flowing now.\n\nI have contemplated the imprisonment of the offender, rather than the seizure of his goods,\u2014though both will serve the same purpose,\u2014because they who assert the purest right, and consequently are most dangerous to a corrupt State, commonly have not spent much time in accumulating property. To such the State renders comparatively small service, and a slight tax is wont to appear exorbitant, particularly if they are obliged to earn it by special labor with their hands. If there were one who lived wholly without the use of money, the State itself would hesitate to demand it of him. But the rich man\u2014not to make any invidious comparison\u2014is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue; for money comes between a man and his objects, and obtains them for him; it was certainly no great virtue to obtain it. It puts to rest many questions which he would otherwise be taxed to answer; while the only new question which it puts is the hard but superfluous one, how to spend it. Thus his moral ground is taken from under his feet. The opportunities of living are diminished in proportion as what are called the \u201cmeans\u201d are increased. The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor. Christ answered the Herodians according to their condition. \u201cShow me the tribute-money,\u201d said he;\u2014and one took a penny out of his pocket;\u2014if you use money which has the image of C\u00e6sar on it, and which he has made current and valuable, that is, if you are men of the State, and gladly enjoy the advantages of C\u00e6sar\u2019s government, then pay him back some of his own when he demands it; \u201cRender therefore to C\u00e6sar that which is C\u00e6sar\u2019s and to God those things which are God\u2019s,\u201d\u2014leaving them no wiser than before as to which was which; for they did not wish to know.\n\nWhen I converse with the freest of my neighbors, I perceive that, whatever they may say about the magnitude and seriousness of the question, and their regard for the public tranquillity, the long and the short of the matter is, that they cannot spare the protection of the existing government, and they dread the consequences of disobedience to it to their property and families. For my own part, I should not like to think that I ever rely on the protection of the State. But, if I deny the authority of the State when it presents its tax-bill, it will soon take and waste all my property, and so harass me and my children without end. This is hard. This makes it impossible for a man to live honestly and at the same time comfortably in outward respects. It will not be worth the while to accumulate property; that would be sure to go again. You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that soon. You must live within yourself, and depend upon yourself, always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs. A man may grow rich in Turkey even, if he will be in all respects a good subject of the Turkish government. Confucius said,\u2014\u201cIf a State is governed by the principles of reason, poverty and misery are subjects of shame; if a State is not governed by the principles of reason, riches and honors are the subjects of shame.\u201d No: until I want the protection of Massachusetts to be extended to me in some distant southern port, where my liberty is endangered, or until I am bent solely on building up an estate at home by peaceful enterprise, I can afford to refuse allegiance to Massachusetts, and her right to my property and life. It costs me less in every sense to incur the penalty of disobedience to the State, than it would to obey. I should feel as if I were worth less in that case.\n\nSome years ago, the State met me in behalf of the church, and commanded me to pay a certain sum toward the support of a clergyman whose preaching my father attended, but never I myself. \u201cPay it,\u201d it said, \u201cor be locked up in the jail.\u201d I declined to pay. But, unfortunately, another man saw fit to pay it. I did not see why the schoolmaster should be taxed to support the priest, and not the priest the schoolmaster; for I was not the State\u2019s schoolmaster, but I supported myself by voluntary subscription. I did not see why the lyceum should not present its tax-bill, and have the State to back its demand, as well as the church. However, at the request of the selectmen, I condescended to make some such statement as this in writing:\u2014\u201cKnow all men by these presents, that I, Henry Thoreau, do not wish to be regarded as a member of any incorporated society which I have not joined.\u201d This I gave to the town-clerk; and he has it. The State, having thus learned that I did not wish to be regarded as a member of that church, has never made a like demand on me since; though it said that it must adhere to its original presumption that time. If I had known how to name them, I should then have signed off in detail from all the societies which I never signed on to; but I did not know where to find such a complete list.\n\nI have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through, before they could get to be as free as I was. I did nor for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously they locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it.\n\nThus the state never intentionally confronts a man\u2019s sense, intellectual or moral, but only his body, his senses. It is not armed with superior wit or honesty, but with superior physical strength. I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. What force has a multitude? They only can force me who obey a higher law than I. They force me to become like themselves. I do not hear of men being forced to live this way or that by masses of men. What sort of life were that to live? When I meet a government which says to me, \u201cYour money or your life,\u201d why should I be in haste to give it my money? It may be in a great strait, and not know what to do: I cannot help that. It must help itself; do as I do. It is not worth the while to snivel about it. I am not responsible for the successful working of the machinery of society. I am not the son of the engineer. I perceive that, when an acorn and a chestnut fall side by side, the one does not remain inert to make way for the other, but both obey their own laws, and spring and grow and flourish as best they can, till one, perchance, overshadows and destroys the other. If a plant cannot live according to its nature, it dies; and so a man.\n\nThe night in prison was novel and interesting enough. The prisoners in their shirt-sleeves were enjoying a chat and the evening air in the door-way, when I entered. But the jailer said, \u201cCome, boys, it is time to lock up;\u201d and so they dispersed, and I heard the sound of their steps returning into the hollow apartments. My room-mate was introduced to me by the jailer as \u201ca first-rate fellow and a clever man.\u201d When the door was locked, he showed me where to hang my hat, and how he managed matters there. The rooms were whitewashed once a month; and this one, at least, was the whitest, most simply furnished, and probably the neatest apartment in town. He naturally wanted to know where I came from, and what brought me there; and, when I had told him, I asked him in my turn how he came there, presuming him to be an honest man, of course; and, as the world goes, I believe he was. \u201cWhy,\u201d said he, \u201cthey accuse me of burning a barn; but I never did it.\u201d As near as I could discover, he had probably gone to bed in a barn when drunk, and smoked his pipe there; and so a barn was burnt. He had the reputation of being a clever man, had been there some three months waiting for his trial to come on, and would have to wait as much longer; but he was quite domesticated and contented, since he got his board for nothing, and thought that he was well treated.\n\nHe occupied one window, and I the other; and I saw, that, if one stayed there long, his principal business would be to look out the window. I had soon read all the tracts that were left there, and examined where former prisoners had broken out, and where a grate had been sawed off, and heard the history of the various occupants of that room; for I found that even here there was a history and a gossip which never circulated beyond the walls of the jail. Probably this is the only house in the town where verses are composed, which are afterward printed in a circular form, but not published. I was shown quite a long list of verses which were composed by some young men who had been detected in an attempt to escape, who avenged themselves by singing them.\n\nI pumped my fellow-prisoner as dry as I could, for fear I should never see him again; but at length he showed me which was my bed, and left me to blow out the lamp.\n\nIt was like travelling into a far country, such as I had never expected to behold, to lie there for one night. It seemed to me that I never had heard the town-clock strike before, nor the evening sounds of the village; for we slept with the windows open, which were inside the grating. It was to see my native village in the light of the Middle Ages, and our Concord was turned into a Rhine stream, and visions of knights and castles passed before me. They were the voices of old burghers that I heard in the streets. I was an involuntary spectator and auditor of whatever was done and said in the kitchen of the adjacent village-inn\u2014a wholly new and rare experience to me. It was a closer view of my native town. I was fairly inside of it. I never had seen its institutions before. This is one of its peculiar institutions; for it is a shire town. I began to comprehend what its inhabitants were about.\n\nIn the morning, our breakfasts were put through the hole in the door, in small oblong-square tin pans, made to fit, and holding a pint of chocolate, with brown bread, and an iron spoon. When they called for the vessels again, I was green enough to return what bread I had left; but my comrade seized it, and said that I should lay that up for lunch or dinner. Soon after, he was let out to work at haying in a neighboring field, whither he went every day, and would not be back till noon; so he bade me good-day, saying that he doubted if he should see me again.\n\nWhen I came out of prison,\u2014for some one interfered, and paid the tax,\u2014I did not perceive that great changes had taken place on the common, such as he observed who went in a youth, and emerged a gray-headed man; and yet a change had to my eyes come over the scene,\u2014the town, and State, and country,\u2014greater than any that mere time could effect. I saw yet more distinctly the State in which I lived. I saw to what extent the people among whom I lived could be trusted as good neighbors and friends; that their friendship was for summer weather only; that they did not greatly purpose to do right; that they were a distinct race from me by their prejudices and superstitions, as the Chinamen and Malays are; that, in their sacrifices to humanity they ran no risks, not even to their property; that, after all, they were not so noble but they treated the thief as he had treated them, and hoped, by a certain outward observance and a few prayers, and by walking in a particular straight though useless path from time to time, to save their souls. This may be to judge my neighbors harshly; for I believe that most of them are not aware that they have such an institution as the jail in their village.\n\nIt was formerly the custom in our village, when a poor debtor came out of jail, for his acquaintances to salute him, looking through their fingers, which were crossed to represent the grating of a jail window, \u201cHow do ye do?\u201d My neighbors did not thus salute me, but first looked at me, and then at one another, as if I had returned from a long journey. I was put into jail as I was going to the shoemaker\u2019s to get a shoe which was mended. When I was let out the next morning, I proceeded to finish my errand, and, having put on my mended shoe, joined a huckleberry party, who were impatient to put themselves under my conduct; and in half an hour,\u2014for the horse was soon tackled,\u2014was in the midst of a huckleberry field, on one of our highest hills, two miles off; and then the State was nowhere to be seen.\n\nThis is the whole history of \u201cMy Prisons.\u201d\n\nI have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and, as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow-countrymen now. It is for no particular item in the tax-bill that I refuse to pay it. I simply wish to refuse allegiance to the State, to withdraw and stand aloof from it effectually. I do not care to trace the course of my dollar, if I could, till it buys a man, or a musket to shoot one with,\u2014the dollar is innocent,\u2014but I am concerned to trace the effects of my allegiance. In fact, I quietly declare war with the State, after my fashion, though I will still make use and get what advantages of her I can, as is usual in such cases.\n\nIf others pay the tax which is demanded of me, from a sympathy with the State, they do but what they have already done in their own case, or rather they abet injustice to a greater extent than the State requires. If they pay the tax from a mistaken interest in the individual taxed, to save his property or prevent his going to jail, it is because they have not considered wisely how far they let their private feelings interfere with the public good.\n\nThis, then, is my position at present. But one cannot be too much on his guard in such a case, lest his actions be biassed by obstinacy, or an undue regard for the opinions of men. Let him see that he does only what belongs to himself and to the hour.\n\nI think sometimes, Why, this people mean well; they are only ignorant; they would do better if they knew how: why give your neighbors this pain to treat you as they are not inclined to? But I think, again, this is no reason why I should do as they do, or permit others to suffer much greater pain of a different kind. Again, I sometimes say to myself, When many millions of men, without heat, without ill-will, without personal feeling of any kind, demand of you a few shillings only, without the possibility, such is their constitution, of retracting or altering their present demand, and without the possibility, on your side, of appeal to any other millions, why expose yourself to this overwhelming brute force? You do not resist cold and hunger, the winds and the waves, thus obstinately; you quietly submit to a thousand similar necessities. You do not put your head into the fire. But just in proportion as I regard this as not wholly a brute force, but partly a human force, and consider that I have relations to those millions as to so many millions of men, and not of mere brute or inanimate things, I see that appeal is possible, first and instantaneously, from them to the Maker of them, and, secondly, from them to themselves. But, if I put my head deliberately into the fire, there is no appeal to fire or to the Maker of fire, and I have only myself to blame. If I could convince myself that I have any right to be satisfied with men as they are, and to treat them accordingly, and not according, in some respects, to my requisitions and expectations of what they and I ought to be, then, like a good Mussulman and fatalist, I should endeavor to be satisfied with things as they are, and say it is the will of God. And, above all, there is this difference between resisting this and a purely brute or natural force, that I can resist this with some effect; but I cannot expect, like Orpheus, to change the nature of the rocks and trees and beasts.\n\nI do not wish to quarrel with any man or nation. I do not wish to split hairs, to make fine distinctions, or set myself up as better than my neighbors. I seek rather, I may say, even an excuse for conforming to the laws of the land. I am but too ready to conform to them. Indeed I have reason to suspect myself on this head; and each year, as the tax-gatherer comes round, I find myself disposed to review the acts and position of the general and state governments, and the spirit of the people to discover a pretext for conformity.\n\n\u201cWe must affect our country as our parents,\nAnd if at any time we alienate\nOut love of industry from doing it honor,\nWe must respect effects and teach the soul\nMatter of conscience and religion,\nAnd not desire of rule or benefit.\u201d\n\nI believe that the State will soon be able to take all my work of this sort out of my hands, and then I shall be no better patriot than my fellow-countrymen. Seen from a lower point of view, the Constitution, with all its faults, is very good; the law and the courts are very respectable; even this State and this American government are, in many respects, very admirable, and rare things, to be thankful for, such as a great many have described them; seen from a higher still, and the highest, who shall say what they are, or that they are worth looking at or thinking of at all?\n\nHowever, the government does not concern me much, and I shall bestow the fewest possible thoughts on it. It is not many moments that I live under a government, even in this world. If a man is thought-free, fancy-free, imagination-free, that which is not never for a long time appearing to be to him, unwise rulers or reformers cannot fatally interrupt him.\n\nI know that most men think differently from myself; but those whose lives are by profession devoted to the study of these or kindred subjects content me as little as any. Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency. Webster never goes behind government, and so cannot speak with authority about it. His words are wisdom to those legislators who contemplate no essential reform in the existing government; but for thinkers, and those who legislate for all time, he never once glances at the subject. I know of those whose serene and wise speculations on this theme would soon reveal the limits of his mind\u2019s range and hospitality. Yet, compared with the cheap professions of most reformers, and the still cheaper wisdom and eloquence of politicians in general, his are almost the only sensible and valuable words, and we thank Heaven for him. Comparatively, he is always strong, original, and, above all, practical. Still his quality is not wisdom, but prudence. The lawyer\u2019s truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency. Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. He well deserves to be called, as he has been called, the Defender of the Constitution. There are really no blows to be given by him but defensive ones. He is not a leader, but a follower. His leaders are the men of \u201987. \u201cI have never made an effort,\u201d he says, \u201cand never propose to make an effort; I have never countenanced an effort, and never mean to countenance an effort, to disturb the arrangement as originally made, by which the various States came into the Union.\u201d Still thinking of the sanction which the Constitution gives to slavery, he says, \u201cBecause it was part of the original compact,\u2014let it stand.\u201d Notwithstanding his special acuteness and ability, he is unable to take a fact out of its merely political relations, and behold it as it lies absolutely to be disposed of by the intellect,\u2014what, for instance, it behoves a man to do here in America today with regard to slavery, but ventures, or is driven, to make some such desperate answer as the following, while professing to speak absolutely, and as a private man,\u2014from which what new and singular code of social duties might be inferred?\u2014\u201cThe manner,\u201d says he, \u201cin which the governments of those States where slavery exists are to regulate it, is for their own consideration, under the responsibility to their constituents, to the general laws of propriety, humanity, and justice, and to God. Associations formed elsewhere, springing from a feeling of humanity, or any other cause, have nothing whatever to do with it. They have never received any encouragement from me and they never will.\u201d\n\nThey who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humanity; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.\n\nNo man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free-trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufactures and agriculture. If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonable experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations. For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation.\n\nThe authority of government, even such as I am willing to submit to,\u2014for I will cheerfully obey those who know and can do better than I, and in many things even those who neither know nor can do so well,\u2014is still an impure one: to be strictly just, it must have the sanction and consent of the governed. It can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it. The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual. Even the Chinese philosopher was wise enough to regard the individual as the basis of the empire. Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly. I please myself with imagining a State at last which can afford to be just to all men, and to treat the individual with respect as a neighbor; which even would not think it inconsistent with its own repose, if a few were to live aloof from it, not meddling with it, nor embraced by it, who fulfilled all the duties of neighbors and fellow-men. A State which bore this kind of fruit, and suffered it to drop off as fast as it ripened, would prepare the way for a still more perfect and glorious State, which also I have imagined, but not yet anywhere seen.", "multi_turns": [{"input": "What was the approximate maximum number of visitors that Thoreau received in his house at a single time?", "answer": "Thirty", "options": ["One", "Three", "Thirteen", "Thirty"]}, {"input": "What, as Thoreau describes it at the end of the work, is the sun?", "answer": "A morning star", "options": ["A lantern in the sky", "A morning star", "A red dwarf waiting to happen", "A symbol of our lives"]}, {"input": "What was thetitle of Thoreau's first published book?", "answer": "A Week on the Merrimack and Concord Rivers ", "options": ["A Week on the Merrimack and Concord Rivers ", "\u201cCivil Disobedience\u201d", "Nature", "Walden"]}, {"input": "Which philosopher pays a lengthy visit to Thoreau's cabin at Walden?", "answer": "Amos Bronson Alcott", "options": ["Amos Bronson Alcott", "George Santayana", "Edouard Dewey", "William James"]}], "id": 57}
